MATH Recap, FTOPS #4 Sat, and Poker Ace HUD

Another 47 runners and over-$1000 prize pool for Mondays at the Hoy last night, and the action as usual did not disappoint. Some of the big BBT guys including Blinders, Alan and Waffles got busted early for the first time in a long time, and some others like Bayne, Iggy, jeciimd and Buddydank added more points to their already top-10 runs. And after Iggy failed to cash despite running to the final table, I'm sensing that everyone's favorite dwarf will be overtaken by a new BBT king for the week. But for that you'll have to tune in to Al's BBT leaderboard to view the most updated standings after this week's MATH tournament.

Briefly (because that's what it was), I donked out of the Hoy and I can honestly say also for the first time in a long time that it was completely, 100% my own fault. I mean, let me qualify that. I raised preflop and was called by ChapelncHill. The flop came QJx. I made a big move at that flop because the blinds were getting big (we were down to 29 players remaining out of 47 entrants, about 85 minutes in to the tournament) even though the flop had completely missed me, and Chapel insta-called, flipping up QJo. You make your own judgments about that play, but basically I ended up trying to run a bluff into a guy who had flopped an unlikely top two pair. I wouldn't lay that down and obviously he wasn't gonna either. So be it. It feels good to know I caused my own demise last night for a change. And I can't kill myself over it because I really got hosed running into top two pairs after having my raise called by Chapel preflop. So another BBT tournament, another no-points for me. It's official now -- I have not doubled up in a single blogger tournament in 4 weeks. And I play mostly all of them. I haven't gotten to double the starting stack in any blonkament in four weeks. That is sick.

As usual, although I played like donkey again, many of you did not. After the customary three hours or so of tournament play, here are the six cashers in this week's Mondays at the Hoy tournament:

6th place: $67.68 ChapelncHill in his second straight Hoy cash in a very impressive performance for Trip's brother. Once again the guy who eliminates me from the Hoy ends up at the final table. I'm a springboard. A stepping stone. A starter wife. That's me.

5th place: $90.24 Wes the Big Pirate, making his second MATH cash since the BBT began six weeks ago after several weeks of solid play in his renewed focus on blogger tourmanents during 2007.

4th place: $124.08 BuddyDank, a fairly new blogger (new to this year as far as I know, anyways) who was in 10th place on the BBT standings before this week's MATH tournament and turned in another impressive performance.

3rd: $169.20 Bayne_s, who was already in 2nd in the BBT standings before another impressive 3rd place finish last night to add to his BBT totals. Although Bayne also wins the award of the douchebaggiest railbird friend of the evening with some anushole from the San Jose area, a very nice job for Bayne on the night.

2nd: $248.16 is Wippy1313, who outlasted a very tough field down to heads-up play for his first MATH cash of the year.

And this week's winner of the MATH title, also making his second MATH cash since the BBT began last month and winning $428.64 along the way as well, is Canadian blogger Astin. Although I joke about Astin getting good cards from time to time, he is a very solid player who played very solid, aggressive poker throughout Mondays at the Hoy this week and truly earned himself the victory in what was as usual a donkorific and suckout-filled tournament. Congratulations to all our cashers this week, and way to go Astin on the big win!

And now here are the updated 2007 MATH moneyboard standings as of this week's tournament:

1. Iggy $641
2. Astin $616
3. Columbo $606
4. Hoyazo $580
5. Bayne_s $579
6. Julius Goat $507
7. mtnrider81 $492
8. scots_chris $474
9. Fuel55 $458
10. Chad $379
11. Pirate Wes $372
12. IslandBum1 $357
13. ChapelncHill $353
14. Zeem $330
15. Miami Don $312
15. cmitch $312
15 oossuuu754 $312
18. VinNay $310
19. Waffles $294
20. Wigginx $288
21. ScottMc $282
22. Blinders $275
23. Manik79 $252
24. Wippy1313 $248
25. Byron $234
26. Omega_man_99 $210
27. NewinNov $190
28. bartonfa $180
29. 23Skidoo $176
29. Tripjax $176
31. Santa Clauss $170
32. Iakaris $162
32. Smokkee $162
34. lester000 $147
35. DDionysus $137
35. lightning36 $137
37. Pushmonkey72 $129
37. InstantTragedy $129
39. Buddydank $124
40. Ganton516 $114
41. RecessRampage $100
42. Gracie $94
42. Scurvydog $94
44. Shag0103 $84
45. PhinCity $80
45. jeciimd $80
47. Mike_Maloney $78
48. Alceste $71
48. dbirider $71
50. Easycure $67

So, with now an even 50 players to have cashed somewhere in the MATH so far this year, the angry dwarf retains his temporary spot atop the 2007 MATH moneyboard for one more week, but we do have a new #2 and a new #5 on the list, as Astin's big win on Monday combines with an earlier big cash to skyrocket him up to just under Iggy at the top of the board. Meanwhile, Bayne's continued solid play has him cracking into the top 5 this week as well, just one measly dollar underneath yours truly. Yes, somehow I'm still in 4th place in this thing, despite no cashes since the Treaty of Ghent, but I'm falling fast. What a fun run while it lasted though, huh?

So on Monday night I did in fact play in the super satellite at 6:30pm ET into Monday night's FTOPS Event #4. And I doubled up very early when a guy played pocket Aces as badly as could possibly be imagined, only betting small on the flop and again on the turn, explicitly pricing me in to draw to my pair, straight draw and flush draw. On the river when the straight and flush card fell, the guy insisted on moving in with his rockets, and I doubled. What a goon. But after treading water for the next 45 minutes to an hour, I got horrifically sucked out on with AQ < AJ and then JJ < 88 on consecutive hands, and I was done about 2/3 of the way through the field, but still about 100 spots from winning a seat. That sucked. But I didn't see any bloggers among the cashers for FTOPS Event #4, although I did note that the $1000 buyin event attracted over 900 players for a prize pool of close to a million dollars. Sweet. Too bad I couldn't be a part of it.

I did however play some more $400 6-max nl cash last night, and once again managed to win more than half a buyin. My stats at 2-4 6-max so far are legendary, as I have yet to post a significant losing session. And more than that, I truly feel completely comfortable at these tables, actually moreso than I ever did at 1-2 or lower limits. The play is just slightly better than at 1-2 IMO, in that I still find it pretty dam easy to read other players and know what their cards are, and yet the slight improvement in play seems to be mostly in being willing and understanding enough to lay down when my bets clearly indicate that I am ahead (even if I'm not actually). But I know I am comfortable at 2-4 because I've been taking down lots of small pots with small or nothing hands, while my big pots have almost all been with big hands. It's been a blast and I'm more excited to play cash these days than I am about any mtt's out there. Never would have thought I'd be saying that, but it's definitely true. Building a roll online is only about 1,884 times easier playing cash games than playing tournaments. And take out a few vicious suckouts I've suffered at the 2-4 tables over the past week, and my stats would be even better.

I also finally got Poker Tracker to work last night. I datamined at a bunch of 1-2 and 2-4 tables and filled up my entire 1000 hand database as part of my PT trial that I'm on. I will probably go and register the product tonight so I can keep up with the data mining, which does seem to be the wise move if I really plan to play serious cash nlh for the time being. Which I do. I just like money too much not to play, what can I say.

So thank you to yesterday's commenters -- someone hit it dead on that my Windows Vista O/S was not permitting full tilt to write directly to the FullTiltPoker directory without my express permission, and it started working immediately after I created a new folder for my hand histories in a new directory right on my desktop -- and now my PokerTracker appears to be working perfectly. However, I've still got a problem with PokerAce HUD. I'm running it, it is pointing towards that newly-created hand history file that full tilt and PT are saving my hand histories to, and my HUD recognizes me at whatever table I'm playing at. But still, the numbers it puts up next to each player are all "N/A", and I don't know why. Yes my filter is set to just 5 hands in order to start keeping stats, so that's not the problem, and yes I probably played a good 150 or 200 hands after finally getting PT to work, so I am kind of at a loss here. Again, my HUD shows me at the table I'm playing at, and it does now point to the correct new directory for my hand histories. Anyone have any suggestions for a guy just trying to even the playing field with all you stat-hounds out there playing online cash nlh games?

Tonight is FTOPS #5, the HOSE event. As I mentioned previously, I am very much not in to deleting razz from the HORSE rotations, as I think that is a hugely poooosay move, but at the same time razz is clearly the most frustrating poker game out there in my book so I guess there are worse things in life. This is a tournament I satellited in to early last week as I recall, so I'm looking forward to another very well-attended FTOPS tournament this evening, and hopefully my third lifetime FTOPS cash out of I think 40,000 attempts. So gross how I tend to play in these FTOPS tournaments. In the satellites I'm a champion. In the actual events, I'm a dawg. Sick. Also don't forget the Wheatie tonight on pokerstars, where I will be tonight at 8:30pm ET (password is "monkey" as always) if I am able to log on by then, although I still wonder why I continue to subject myself to that kind of poker abuse, but hey it's always good to get together with some bloggers and Wil really wants to bust me with AJ one of these days, so I figure why not tonight. And whether I can get PA HUD working this evening or not -- I'm really hoping I can now that I have 1000 hands stored up in my PokerTracker database -- I will probably be hitting up the 2-4 6-max cash tables as well to let the poker gods score some vengeance against me for writing about my success so far at their lovely $400 nl tables. See you tonight!

MATH Pimp, PT and PAHUD Questions, Play It or Lay It, and 7 Random Things

Monday again! Yep -- time for another Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt!



The Battle of the Blogger Tournaments rolls on into its sixth week today with the latest MATH tournament at 10pm ET this evening, password is "hammer" as always, and all are welcome (except "loose1" on full tilt -- you donk!). Last week was a new MATH record at 54 entrants for a total prize pool of $1296, and plus another $108 that goes directly into the BBT prize pool including the end-of-year BBT Tournament of Champions freeroll for the top 50 BBT point getters plus anyone who has played in at least 20 BBT events. So tonight is a very good night for all of you to get started on lifting up those BBT numbers, because as it stands now it looks like we're going to have a pretty hot freeroll going on in a couple of months. And even if you haven't played in any of the BBT events so far, the point totals are still low enough that you would be very close to the top 50 BBT spots if you won just the MATH tonight, so it's not like it's anywhere even close to too late to get the benefit of starting off your BBT quest today.

And speaking of the BBT, don't forget that this coming Sunday night is the next Blogger Big Game, hosted by Miami Don. Remember, this badboy sports a $75 or Tier II token buyin, so this is your last week to accumulate yo'self one of those snazzy tier II tokens to buy in to what was over a $3500 prize pool event the last time around in April. In furtherance of this goal, I will once again be beginning my week long assault on that 9:45pm ET token frenzy tournament on full tilt, the one where you buy in for $14 and the top 18% or so of finishers in the tournament, usually in the neighborhood of 120-150 entrants total, emerge with a $75 token.

OK, now as far as my poker this weekend, I will begin by saying that I donked again in FTOPS #1 on Friday night. I don't know what it is about these FTOPS events generally. I play quite well in mtt's as a general rule, but over now three full FTOPS series, I have officially cashed in 2 out of 11 events. That is just not acceptable behavior, not when I'm focusing on qualifying for these things or buying in with cash at high buyin levels. Not good. I never got anything going on Friday, topping out at around 3200 chips (3000 starting stacks) early on before making a terrible call for a lot of chips when I knew I was beat early in the second hour, and then about three hands later trying to bluff a guy I knew I couldn't bluff. I played like total and complete ass. And I don't even mean ass like "donkey". I mean like someone's actual, living ass. Hopefully I can turn that around starting tonight, where I will be playing in the $216 buyin supersatellite into FTOPS Event #4 tonight. The supersat goes off at 6:30pm ET, so I'm leaving work early and everything to go play online poker! Yay! And hopefully I will be among the top 19% or so of finishers in the 6:30pm supersat, so that I can play in the 9pm ET FTOPS #4 $1000 buyin nlh tournament. So tonight, if all goes well, I'm looking at the FTOPS #4 supersat at 6:30pm, the FTOPS #4 at 9pm, the token frenzy at 9:45pm and then of course the Hoy at 10pm ET. Hopefully I can see a bunch of you in all these things tonight. And congratulations to Chad as the only blogger I saw cash in FTOPS #1, ending I think in 165th place out of over 2500 players, and in fact the only blogger I think I saw cashing in any of the FTOPS events over this weekend. Much more blogcashery to come this week I hope I'm sure.

Anyways, back to the weekend of poker. No big tournament scores to mention, but I did move up to the 2-4 tables, and right now at least I don't foresee myself going back. The play is definitely up a noticeable notch from 1-2, in that the 2-4 guys at least know when to fold. The difference between having $200 at stake and having $400 at stake is really noticeable when I actually played 2-4 this weekend, and I am just much more comfortable in the knowledge of my opponents generally speaking at 2-4 than I ever have been at 1-2. And the best part is, even though the general level of the competition has improved slightly from 1-2, there are still the same total donkass mofos playing $400 nl as there are playing $200 nl. I sat at a 2-4 table with one of 'em this weekend with cmitch, and he and I took turns raping the guy of a nice-sized stack until I finally left up a buyin and a half when I realized I was getting too aggro with the guy, trying to isolate on the monkey every time he moved at a pot preflop, almost without regard to the actual cards I was actually holding. But there are guys all over the place like that, even at 2-4, and that's who I'm looking for when I sit down to the cash tables.

OK, so about my move to 2-4, this weekend I finally decided to take the plunge and go get Poker Tracker and Poker Ace HUD. I downloaded both products, but I'm having some trouble and I would love if anyone has any suggestions for me to fix the problem with either Poker Tracker or PA HUD.

First off, my Poker Tracker is not working. Let me start from the beginning. I downloaded PT, and then followed the tutorial instructions in going to my full tilt client under "Options", choosing "hand history" at the bottom, and then checking the box saying "Save my hand histories". The default filepath for where to save those hand histories to came up as "c:\ProgramFiles\FullTiltPoker\HandHistory\", but when I looked at "my computer", there were actually no sub-folders within the "FullTiltPoker" folder in my Program Files. Thus, I went into "my computer", opened the FullTiltPoker file, and created a new folder inside called "HandHistory". My thinking was this would then automatically save my hh's from full tilt right to this new folder I created inside of the FullTiltPoker directory. So, in the end this is what my full tilt options window for hh's looks like:



But, when I click on the "Open Folder" button from this screen, it opens up the "HandHistory" subfolder in the FullTiltPoker directory, but it just says "The folder is empty", and clearly no hand histories are loading into it. That sub-director is in fact empty, even though I've chosen it as the folder to save my hand histories to per the above screen shot.

Anybody have any idea what I'm doing wrong here? I really want this shiat to work now that I've taken the plunge. Any suggestions or help is greatly appreciated! I should also disclose that I am running on Vista, but I've followed their instructions and elected to run the program as administrator (I double and triple checked this over the weekend already) so that is not the problem here.

Also, on Poker Ace HUD, I can't any stats to upload or show at all on-screen. I am correct that HUD relies on poker tracker being present and running concurrently on the system in order for HUD to do its thing? If so, then that explains my problem. If not, then my PA HUD ain't working either. I have configured HUD to show the stats next to the players on my screen, but the numbers are all just N/A right now, and again it is not receiving any hand histories analyzed from poker tracker if it needs them to run properly. Again, if anyone can make any suggestions here I would be most appreciative, although as I mentioned above I suspect that no poker tracker means HUD won't run properly either, but I just don't know that for sure.

With my desperate plea for help out of the way, I'd love to do a new feature here at Hammerplayer, which I'm cleverly calling "Play It or Lay It?" This is actually a theme that I started last week with a post where I show you some preflop action and a decent starting hand for you, and ask if you would lay down your hand or play it against the action you're seeing so far before the flop. So, here is today's "Play It or Lay It?" hand:

We're playing 6-max nlh with $2 - $4 blinds. We have the biggest stack at the table, although most of the other stacks are big enough to be worth going after under the right circumstances. We are dealt JJ on the button. UTG folds and UTG+1 limps for $4. The cutoff folds, and action is to us with the pocket Jacks.

I think this is a fairly obvious raise here, so I raise it up to $18, to try to win it right here or at least get heads-up against the initial limper with most likely the best hand going in:



To my surprise, the small blind smooth calls the $18 by throwing $16 more into the pot. The big blind folds, but then the UTG+1 player, who had originally limped in for $4, now suddenly reraises big, making it $68 to play:



Now the question: Play it or lay it? Are you calling / reraising here, or does the reraise in the face of a sizable raise and a call of that raise before the flop sufficiently scare you enough to lay down your Jacks? What's your move? You can skip down to hear my thoughts.
















After struggling for a bit, I laid this hand down here:



In cash games at limits I care about I just do not like to call big preflop reraises from guys who limped from EP already before the flop, unless I have a hand that is going to play very well after the flop. Basically, in my experience the EP-limp-then-reraise-two-raisers-and-callers-big-preflop move almost always means one of three or four things -- it's either Aces, Kings, AK, maybe Queens. Think about it. Is that guy going to limp from UTG+1 with a hand like 7s, and then respond to a big raise and a caller of that raise from guys who were not at all priced into the hand by reraising it up big with those 7s? Highly doubtful. Similarly, is he going to limp with a hand like AJs from UTG+1, see a big raise and a call of that raise, and then put in a large reraise to nearly $70 with a hand like AJs? Also doubtful. In my experience, the EP limper who then reraises strongly a lot of action in front of him is usually sitting on a real big hand. So, I reasoned that probably at best my pocket Jacks are a 51% favorite over two overcards, at least one of which is about 95% likely to show up on the flop as those of you who play medium-high pairs as often as I do will attest, and quite likely my Jacks were a sufficient underdog. What's more, if that flop comes raggy and my opponent does not bet out on the flop, I could get hit for a bigger loss by having to fold to a large reraise on the turn if I lead out to try to take the hand down after the fourth card hits the virtual felt. So I opted to just lay it down. What do you cash gamers think of that move?

Anybody curious what these two guys had who were still going at it when I laid this down here? Rather than spoil it for you right on the blog, just click here if you want to see that final screenshot.

OK before I go for a Monday morning and remind you one last time about the MATH and the token frenzy tonight, Donkeypuncher tagged me late last week with this "Seven Random Things" meme that's been going around the blogiverse lately. Now, you may not know this about me, but I don't like memes at all. I'm trying to quit. No seriously, I'm not so into the whole idea so I don't plan to forward this on to anyone. But since I write not too much about my own personal life, I thought I would indulge myself and come up with seven random facts about myself as per he who punches donkeys's suggestion. So here goes:


1. As a middle-schooler I won the NJ stock market game with two friends of mine, beating out over 2500 other schools in New Jersey to take first prize. As I recall we profited from buying shares of Sony (shows how long ago that was!), as well as from United Air Lines being bought out at the time by a larger rival (I think that deal never ended up happening). They drove us up to a banquet right outside of New York City up in North Jersey, and Cheryl Tiegs was there handing out the awards certificates. Crazy. I'm sure she's really into the middle school math geek types.

2. I have never had any pet of any kind whatsoever, not even for a day. The Hammer Parents still talk about "Speckles", their collie who they got during their first year of marriage, and who by not ever being properly trained, managed to ruin generations of petless life for myself and my brothers. So I never had a dog growing up, nor a cat, and probably due to the lack of any other pets in my life as a child, not a hamster or a guinea pig or a snake or even a fuckin turtle either. Nothing. Nada.

3. I absolutely love game shows. And infomercials. And I've seen 'em all too. Hammer Wife goes crazy sometimes because late at night or early on a weekend morning sometimes I'll just sit around and surf the tv for infomercials or game shows, which I can then watch for hours on end. Needless to say, Hammer Wife isn't so into that. But if anybody needs an indestructible, perpetually self-sharpening new set of knives or a great guaranteed formula for making money in the stock market, I'm definitely the guy to ask.

4. I have run several different websites over the past 12 years or so, with this blog just being the latest in a long line. In the past I have had a sports website, a couple of lawyers' websites, a financial information website and a few other random ideas as well -- really all blogs, just before we called 'em "blogs". I ended up turning the financial information website I ran several years ago into a business, making investment recommendations a few times a week to my subscribers in exchange for $30 a month. Good stuff and a nice little side income for a time, but in the end just more trouble than it was worth.

5. I was the guy who called the ambulance when Reggie Lewis, former captain of the Boston Celtics, died on the campus of Brandeis Univeristy in Waltham, Massachusetts back in the summer of 1993. I was working at Brandeis for the summer, and I was in the gym watching Lewis when he shot a free throw, and suddenly kinda fell back real slowly until he keeled over onto his side. I ran over immediately and within a few minutes had called the ambulance, which eventually showed up and pronounced Reggie Lewis DOA at the nearby hospital. While I still lived in Boston I used to get calls almost every year at the anniversary of his death from news reporters and such looking for an inside scoop or an interview, since my name and number were on the police report.

6. I'm a real northeasterner at heart. I have lived exlclusively in one of Boston, New York, Philadelphia (where I'm from originally) and Washington DC during the past 15 years straight. And I have no plans of changing that anytime soon, as I am liking New York after five years still far more than any other city I've ever lived in. I feel like I'm as much a "real" New Yorker as anyone who's lived here far long than me, and I think most people who know me would agree with that (and it's a compliment in my mind, regardless of what you out there might be thinking about it).

7. Lastly, I once "quit" my law firm for a month and drove the nearly two hours to Foxwoods from Boston every day for four weeks, to see if I could hack it as a professional gambler. This was some years ago, and the games of choice at the time were blackjack (counting cards, of course) and craps (I had a great system, of course). Not miraculously, after four weeks of making up excuses to get out of assignments and calling in sick to the office, I begrudgingly had to accept that I was not going to make a profitable living playing small-stakes blackjack and craps, even if I did count the cards at blackjack. I think I recall losing something like $800 over the course of the month, which wasn't bad given the number of hours I was logging playing what essentially amounted to -EV games, but no way it was enough to make me think I could do that long-term. I was disappointed, and surprised to tell the truth, because I would have committed murder if it would have gotten me out of the law firm environment and I had to accept that it wasn't quite time for me to leave yet.

Hopefully that gives you all some nice insight into Hoyazo's World. While you ponder all that, please remember to sign up for tonight's token frenzy at 9:45pm ET on full tilt to start winning your Tier II tokens for Sunday's Big Game. And come rail me on my way supersatting in to tonight's FTOPS #4 event with the $1000 buyin. And of course I'll see you tonight as well in Mondays at the Hoy!!