Live Tournament Recap

So on a whim I got a late-night text from some friends on Friday night and decided to head down to Atlantic City on Saturday night for the $65 turbo tournament at Caesar's, a tournament I played in one other time earlier this year as well. When I played this event this past spring, it was all of one table, a 10-person sitngo with a turbo structure that paid out just the top two finishers. So of course I head out to play that same tournament again this weekend, and this time it finally ended with 19 runners for two starting tables.

We started the tournament with 10,000 in starting chips, and blinds of 25-50 that, like with any good turbo tournament, quickly escalated to 50-100, then 100-200 with s 25 ante, and then on to 200-400-50, so don't be fooled by everyone starting out with 200 big blinds -- within 45 minutes even if you haven't lost a single chip, that 10k starting stack will only be 25 big blinds and your M will be less than 10 already. So this is truly a tournament that is made to be played fast and aggressively, and if you think you're going to sit around with that blinds schedule and 15-minute rounds and wait for pocket Aces or Big Slick, your chances of success in this event are as good as your chances of being dealt those types of hands 7 or 8 times in a 3-hour live event. Damn near nil, in other words.

In any event, I won the first hand of the tournament when we were just 5-handed with a c-bet with K5s when I failed to connect on the flop, as pretty much all four of the other players at my table seemed to be quite tight and pretty easy to read, and nobody seemed to have connected with the flop from the looks on their faces. I stayed aggressive and chipped up a bit more over the first blind round, probably getting out to a small chip lead at the table but not having to show a single hand as my aggressive betting basically cleared the way through the early pots for me for the most part.

I had the opportunity to have what I call a "Chad hand" early on about 20, 25 minutes in to the tournament, which is what I call it when you win a big pot and get to show down utter and complete crap in doing so, simultaneously destroying your image but also causing people to talk about you at and around the table like you are some kind of hardened maniac. It's fun and it's not something I get to do very often, unlike Chad who seems to have this effect on at least a couple of occasions every time I have ever sat down at a cash table with him. But basically, as I mentioned I had been betting and raising fairly aggressively, and when the action folded around to me in middle position preflop, I put in a standard live-game raise of 4x the big blind to 400 with 64o. Of course, my cards were irrelevant at this point as I was solely playing my position and continuing with the aggressive image I had built up, but there I was raising with 64o from late position, and the very readable, fairly tight woman across the way called me down from the cutoff. The flop came down JT4 rainbow, a flop which I figured does poorly against the expected holding of someone who calls a preflop raise, but since I did make a tiny third pair on the flop, I figured I should keep the ruse going and I fired out 650 into the 850-chip pot. The lady across the way paused very briefly and then slid it 650 chips into the pot for another call, clearly indicating that she had probably at least a Jack, or maybe a Ten with a decent kicker, but my read was that really it could not be much other than that.

When the turn sent out a miracle 4, giving me the most hidden of hidden trips, I put this horrible look on my face and disgustedly checked to my opponent, pretending to cede control of the hand and trying to look as dejected as I could while doing it. She took my cues and led out for 2000 chips into what was already a 2100-chip pot. I had observed her making very large bets on both the flop and the turn already a few times in the tournament, so I did not read too much into her betting out almost the full amount of the pot here, but I figured she was likely on a solid top pair or maybe even two-pair hand, and probably did not believe much in my betting given my aggression so far at the table and my act prior to her bet on the turn, which I have to admit was a fine bit of hollywooding if I don't say so myself. So after thinking and thinking and going out of my way to look like I was agonizing here, I slid out two pink $1000 chips for what I tried hard to make look like a crying call, and then I completed the ruse by quickly checking out the river as well after a harmless 8♥ fell on fifth street, and my opponent did exactly as I had hoped and bet out another 3k, which left me with only about 4k or so behind in chips. I stared at the pile of chips she had bet for a few moments, and then I resignedly announced "allin" and piled out the rest of my stack. And I then assumed the position, which when I actually want a call generally means freezing, unbreathing, and starting at a fixed point in space as if I am bluffing and do not want to be caught. My opponent was not happy with my raise after I had just called on the flop and looked so disgusted doing it, but after what felt like a couple of minutes she eventually called for most of the rest of her stack. I then had the wonderful Chad moment of getting to flip up 64 offsuit and show the table what I had raised preflop with and then led out with on the JT4 flop as well. My opponent never showed her cards, but threw her hand face down on the table and did not stop muttering to herself and the others on her end of the table for quite some time about me playing 64 offsuit, how can that guy play that hand, what a joke, etc.

Of course, with my image being totally and completely shot for the rest of the tournament after this hand, I had to tighten it down a bit after that and try to play better hands, in particular after the flop, because I knew I would be getting called down a lot more than I had been thus far. Which made it so great when I picked up pocket Queens maybe 15 minutes later or so, and the aggro Asian guy to seats to my right open-raised ahead of me. I just smooth called him, and we saw a heads-up flop of J65 rainbow, to which my opponent fired out his standard c-bet as he had every single other time he had aggro-raised preflop over the previous hour. I just called, not wanting to scare him away with a raise on this particularly raggy board since it was so unlikely that he actually connected with a flop like J65 given that he had open-raised from fairly early position before the flop. The turn was another rag, an offsuit 2, and my aggropponent, never one to give up with just one barrel fired, immediately shot out another bet of around 2/3 the size of the pot. At this point I figured I almost surely had him with my overpair, but once again I figured I might lose him with a raise here, and in case he did have AJ or KJ, etc., I wanted him to be comfortable leading out again on the river, or at least calling a bet from me, so I just flat called him again on the turn card. The river brought the ugliest Ace I had ever seen, and when this time aggroboy shot out a huge bet -- more than three times the size of his bet on the turn -- the warning bells went off in my head and I just knew I had just been rivered. I folded very quickly in complete and utter disgust -- why do those bitchy Queens hate me so fucking much?! -- and my opponent flashed the table AJ for the two pairs he knew he was ahead with all along. Little did I let anyone know that I had just made a big laydown after getting rivered hard despite convincing an opponent to move in about 40% of his stack before the river card when he was drawing to just about 6 outs. Ahh, poker.

So this hand took me back down near my starting stack after calling two sizeable bets from this guy when ahead on the flop and the turn. As sick as my river fold was, I kept telling myself, it would have been 10 times sicker if I had raised the flop or the turn, which a super aggro guy like this opponent would never have laid down his TPTK to especially considering my own image at the table at the time, and then I had sat there and watched him 6-outer me at the river to grab 80% of my stack, so at least I had that to be thankful for. I just hate getting involved in huge hands with just an overpair, and just Queens at that, but here was one instance where a raise would have been better since I was well ahead of this guy's top pair top kicker at the time.

Just a few hands later, still somewhere in Round 4 of the tournament with blinds now up to 200-400 and an ante of 50, I picked up AKs in 2nd position, and I watched in enjoyment as the utg player, a repeated preflop limper with subpar cards, limped in once again from utg for 400 chips. Given the aggression of several other players after me in the hand, I opted to just limp along as well (even though I would have raised here if the action had not already been opened utg in front of me) on the thinking that there was a decent chance that somebody would go for the squeeze in which case I could really win some chips in this spot. So I limped behhind for 600, and we got one more limper as well before the small blind a young blond kid who had not played in too many big pots to this point -- kicked it up again, but only to 1000. Now, when playing against good, experienced and sophisticated opponents, a reraise that small with two other players already in the hand does not look a whole lot to me like a squeeze play. The preflop squeezer wants you both to fold and wants it hard, so that raise would generally not be anywhere near as small as just 2.5x the original bet, which with two other limpers in there as well, is almost impossible to fold to from purely a pot odds perspective. But in this case, I didn't know what to make of the raise but I was not scared of its small size like I might be against someone whose game I actually respected.

So the utg player, the calling station chick to my right, called for 1000 more, and at this point I decided to kick it up to 5000, purposefully clearly committing myself as well as anyone at the table who opted to call me. The other preflop limper folded, the original preflop raiser in the small blind called, and even my calling station friend to my right thought it over long and hard before finally folding before committing what would have been all of her short stack before the flop. The flop comes down KT5, giving me top pair top kicker and with the King instead of the Ace, which I like more because you never know when someone is in there with A5s or something and flops two pair when you flop a pair of Aces with big slick, but the chances of someone being in there with a suited King are far less and thus I actually prefer to hit the King than the Ace most of the time when I am playing big slick to see a flop. The small blind checked to me, and I paused a few seconds for effect before announcing "all in". It was only another 5k or so chips into what at this point was already a pot with more than 12,000 chips in it, easily enough such that the winner would be the tournament chip leader with 15 or 16 runners left immediately upon winning this pot.

The young kid across the way thought it over for all of maybe 20 seconds, and after requesting a quick count of my bet he went ahead and announced that he was calling. He flipped up KQ on the KT5 board, and immediately looked sick when I tabled my AK for the higher kicker. I had just looked up at the tv screen to figure out how much I was going to win in this tournament with my bigass stack when the dealer peeled off a Queen and placed it down for the turn card. The river brought no re-suck for me, and I was crippled, down to under 2k in chips from the 10k starting stack. It's happened a million times before to me and to every one of you out there, but with the flip of what turned out to be a 2-outer (one of the other players had folded a Queen before the flop as well), the turn card made a 9% underdog hand into an almost insurmountable favorite, and IGH a few hands later when the same guy called me down with pocket 6s preflop and then outran my KJs of course.

The moral of all this? Live poker is fun, and can be extremely easy when you play at a table where clearly your opponents are simply not sophisticated poker players. I'm not sure I've ever sat and a table and been this in-tune with my reads over a concerted period of time, and yet there I was not lasting even to the first break in this thing despite my superior play. Given the very low buyin for this tournament ($80 total, including the vig) for a live casino event, and especially considering that this is a turbo which makes it even more luck-based than your average daily casino tournament, people simply will not lay down top pair with any kind of reasonable kicker, and such was the case in the hand of my demise as well on the day at Caesar's. And the most important lesson of all from all this?

Live poker is rigged.

PC Attack and Maniac Hand Wrapup

So I get home Tuesday night after a long day fighting with other dick lawyers at work, and after a delicious home-cooked dinner I sit down to see what's up with online poker for the evening and hopefully to log in to the latest WPBT even that I forgot all about until the evening (as an aside, man did I luck out with Hammer Wife -- although she does not cook as much as she would like due to other distractions running screaming around the apartment all day, dam she is one fiiiiiine cook when she takes the time to prepare meals at home). So I open up my laptop screen and see an unusual message on an otherwise black screen: "Error. Hard Drive Failure Samsung HM0601-(S1)" or something like that. Followed by a warning that I am about to lose my data and that my computer's "SmartFailure" feature is warning me before the hard drive crash occurs. Oh shit.

Fast forward literally 120 minutes later, and I'm just hanging up with Dell support, with an agreement that they will send me a new hard drive right away and that a technician will come out to reinstall everything and get my laptop in good working order. So fortunately, allegedly my pc will be ok. Eventually. But unfortunately, I won't have a computer for the next two weeks or so it seems. That's not good given my daily nighttime hobby. We still have the "old" pc, the one that I always used up until the new one arrived just a few months ago, but since that time the old bugger has unofficially become Hammer Wife's domain, and I'm sensing that it's gonna be next to impossible for me to win back any online poker time at anything resembling a good hour in the evenings for a little while.

So I'm sure I'll still make have my chances to play, but for a few weeks those chances may be a little few and far between. For example, I would really like to play the Mookie tonight as usual on Wednesday at 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"). Other than while Lost was on in originals on Wednesday nights, I don't think I've missed a single Mookie tournament in a year and a half. I love that thing. It's fun seeing how I'm going to get donked out tonight, yknow? With the way the full tilt server has been lately, and given the play you fonkeys usually come up with during our regular weekly get-togethers, I'm ready to expect anything. Most weeks lately in the Mookie, I have the chiplead at some point in the event, most commonly when down to around 15-20 players left, so I'm hoping to continue that trend tonight, and maybe finally make my run all the way to victory lane. But all of that rests squarely on Hammer Wife's shoulders, as it will require her to very generously give up her own computer time in favor of my hobby that she isn't so into. So we'll have to see, who knows. I'll keep everyone apprised of the status of the computer issue, but for now hopefully it won't change my playing too much and won't change my blogging at all. I still love this game and love to write about it every day, so there ya go.

So back to the hand I've been profiling this week. Thanks again to everyone for all the comments. Speaking of which, I have tried to be clear about this in the last few posts but just to make it official, for the record, this is not the way I recommend to anyone that you play AQ. I don't even play AQ in this way, and this is literally probably the only time I have ever limped utg with it in my entire life (literally). There is just so little use to ever limping utg with a hand like AQ, especially at a shorthanded table, that I don't recall ever doing it before and I probably never will again. This is not one of those posts where I'm trying to show you guys a clever way to play two high cards from early position. Do not attempt this yourself at home. You will get stacked. It's -EV, bad poker.

But I did it for a reason. This is the way I like to play my poker, and it's worked out pretty well for me in my cash and tournament games. I think I play different from most people, in that I never go into a tournament or even a given hand with any kind of a plan. I don't worry about a thing like position as much as some other good players do because sometimes I like to bet out on flops from up front instead of always from the back, and sometimes I like to be the guy raising behind the early position lead bettor on the flop. I make up my mind as I go along, and if I have a particular read or a particular play that seems like it will work against someone, I'm likely to try it in a spot that I think makes sense for me.

Similarly, I am all about targeting the weakest player at the table. It's a bit of a poker cliche at this point, but I've literally sat at poker tables -- most often in casinos but even in homegames on occasion -- where there were one or two horrible players at a full ring, and the rest of us were basically just staying out of each other's way and all trying to isolate and then dominate the donkeys. On this I think I am actually quite similar to a lot of the good players I know, in particular the good cash players. Give me a seat at a shorthanded table with myself, three strong players who are all solid historical winners, and two utter fish who are solid long term losers at the game, and an hour later I will have a stack and a half from just the two weaklings. That's how I play. I remember playing at the WSOP Circuit event at Caesars in Atlantic City this past spring, and amongst an hour or two of card death to start things off, the only two pots I won were nice-sized ones where the obvious calling station donk at the other end either limped or minraised, and then one of the tricky guys in middle position put in a big raise (or reraise), clearly attempting to isolate. In both situations, I reraised big -- once with pocket 7s and once with AQo -- and got everyone to fold. I was actually hoping in each case that the donkey would call and the trickster would fold, but I'll take it. It was very clear to me that the tricky guy was trying to isolate on the weakdonk with what was probably a less than premium hand, and that was my same strategy myself in making both of these moves. My point is, I absolutely do always figure out at every poker table I ever sit at where the money is likely to come from, and to the extent that I know the player's game, what is the best way to obtain it.

So with all that in mind, let's conclude the hand. To review, there was a tremendous drunkdonk at the table who had just sat down and had gotten his entire $300+ stack allin at some point in the hand in 4 of the 5 hands he had played at the table. In my mind there was no way he had been strong in all of those hands, and to me he just seemed like a tilting, drunk mofo who was about to spew off his chips like a giant supernova. I always see guys like this and I can't stand it when I don't get the cards to take those chips before someone else does when the donk busts out in a tremendous bluff of glory. I wanted that to be me, so when I found AQo utg at a 2-4 6max nlh table, I limped utg in the hopes that the donk in the small blind would see a flop with me and he would give me an opportunity to take his chips. The button then raised the $4 bet to $22, and my target donk smooth called the bet. Since I felt the button was probably making a position play and certainly could not have known I had a strong showdown hand given my utg limp, and since I wanted real bad to get heads-up with just the donk, I then reraised it up to $86 to play. My plan worked as the button folded and then the drunkdonk called, which I basically knew he would given how he had played his five hands so far.

At this point the flop comes down T62 rainbow, about as raggy of a flop as possible, and the target aggrodonkey immediately moved allin for his last $237 into the $195 pot:



on Tuesday I asked whether you call or fold here.

Now again, there is no doubt that under different, more normal circumstances it is an absolute, obvious must-fold situation with AQ unimproved on the flop and facing a sizeable allin bet. Hopefully that goes without saying for all of you reading this out there. But here, let's think about what has happened so far. I picked a strong showdown hand to play against a guy who I knew was moving in lots of chips -- all of chips in every hand but one since he sat down to play, in fact -- with basically anything / nothing, and yet no one had required him to show a single hand yet. As far as I was concerned, he would have and did call the preflop raise and then my reraise with literally Any Two Cards (ATC). I mean, to be fair he probably wasn't calling $86 preflop with 53o. But literally my range for him at this point given what I'd watched for the first few minutes was any hand in the top 90% or so of possible hands he could hold. 65o, he could definitely be in there with that. 98o, he's in there. 53o maybe not, but 98o or J8o I felt sure of it.

And, as some of the commenters pointed out, I absolutely knew from his previous actions that he was pushing allin blind on the flop, regardless of what it was. As much as I knew that my AQ was the best hand preflop. So, what it basically came down to here was whether or not my opponent happened to be holding either a Ten, a 6 or a 2 in his hand. If yes, then he was ahead now and I had 6 outs for a total of nearly 30% equity in the pot (you pokerstove donks could probably confirm this if you want, but for now my estimate should do fine). If he did not hold a T, 6 or 2 in his hand, then I was ahead, and he would have those same 6 outs to draw against me, giving me roughly 70% equity in the pot. Thrown in there are also some possibilities of some other draws he could have to beat me -- inside straights, back-door stuff, etc., where my equity was probably closer to 60% than 70%. But in the end, here was the super-quick estimation math I did in my head:

The odds that an opponent with just one hole card holds one of three random value cards in his hand are roughly 3 in 13. That is to say, a 2, 6 or a Ten represent three of the 13 possible card values he could hold for either card in his hand, and thus I think the odds that he has one of those cards are roughly 3 in 13 or 23% if he had just one card in his hand. Since he has two holecards and not just the one, the odds of him having at least one 2, 6 or Ten out of two cards chosen at random (again I understand these choices are not fully random, they would have to be adjusted for the AQ in my own hand, etc. but this is still a useful approximation) would climb to somewhere slightly less than 50%. Now, I felt that it was literally impossible that he had a pair or AK, so with no primary straight or flush draws possible on this ragboard, I estimated very quickly that I probably had somewhere between 50 and 60% overall equity in this pot against his likely very wide hand range. Plus, it could be that he has a lower Ace or a hand like KQ or QJ since he called my preflop raise and now moved so strongly at the flop. But this allin overbet did not smell like a monster hand to me, that's for sure, and in the end I simply could not find it within me to lay this hand down. With $195 already in the pot, and it costing me another $237 to win a $432 pot, there was just no way I was going to lay it down when I honestly felt I had more than 50% equity in this pot, and that he was going to monkeypush allin on that flop no matter what two cards came down.

So I called. I'll skip a few lines if you want to guess what he had, and then scroll down for the screenshot:



















Egads! What a donkey! So I'm actually dodging 10 outs (ignoring my redraws) twice, giving me in fact the 50-60% equity I had been envisioning in this pot. The situation was actually worse than I expected since he had the four outs to the inside straight, but still the equity was right where I figured it to be and I think I made the right call at that point in the hand as a result. And if you're interested in how the hand ended up, you can check that out here:



Woohoooo! It really is hard to believe some of the stuff you run into on a regular basis once you get up out of the microlimits, especially at the shorthanded tables, where making moves seems to become more a part of the game. And everyone out there should be on notice, if you somehow werent' already -- if I think you have nothing and I think that the pot odds are there, I'm not going to be shy, and it is not winning cash poker to be shy when you believe you have pot odds to stay in pots. Yes this is the literal first time I have ever called a large bet in a cash game with AQ unimproved on the flop, and it will probably be the last for a long, long time, but just take it from me, that's how big of a pushmonkey donk this guy had been acting like, and for once I got fucking lucky playing AQo in a -EV way and living to tell the tale about it.

Now go register for the Mookie already, willya? See you tonight at 10pm ET, I hope.

Phillies Playoff Chances Meter: 2%. What did I tell you about believing the hype?

MATH Recap, and Playing a Maniac Part II

Twenty-three runners came out and played in Mondays at the Hoy on Monday night at 10pm ET on full tilt, representing close to our usual slate of donkeys in what would prove to be a much donkier tournament even than usual with lots of highly risky, highly aggro and highly bullshit play across the board. As usual I started off slow, but amazingly picked up AA utg in the earlygoing. Having just taken down two consecutive pots on blind steals with air, I opted to limp utg with the Aces, a move that I have used to significant gain over time despite it seeming to me to be fairly obvious of a monster hand whenever anyone limp-raises from utg. Two players limped after me as well from middle position -- not good for me, but not a huge problem because I know I have to lay down the Aces to any real pressure once the flop is out unless I nail it. Such is the price of trying to limp with Aces once in a while, and if you're not someone who can lay 'em down when you think you're beat, then you can't take the chance of ever limping with them in the first place. Just raise instead. As far as I'm concerned, you can never, ever go wrong by raising with pocket Aces preflop in no-limit holdem.

Anyways, so I limped utg, two others limped from middle position, and then skidoo raised about 5x from near the button. Bingo! This is exactly why you limp Aces utg, especially in a blonkament, and at this point I am not a fan of smooth calling, which is a move I like quite a bit with Aces from other positions when I happen to get reraised preflop. But having limped utg, invariably the other player already does not put me on a hand, so I can typically re-reraise with impunity and still expect to get called. Especially me, with the image I have among the blonkeys. So I reraised skidoo's bet by a good 4 or 5x, and he calls to my delight. The flop came Queen high and I checked since the pot was already a bit larger than ski's already short stack, and I figured he would have to make a move at it with anything. Other than QQ there is just nothing else I am reasonably behind here, and I can't put the guy on QQ at this point in the hand. So I checked the flop, and to my slight surprise Ski checked behind.

The turn brought a Jack, which I didn't love because I was now behind QJ as well as QQ or JJ, but in the end I simply still could not put ski on one of those three hands. The QJ most likely doesn't even call my re-reraise or even reraise preflop, so really what I was worried about was QQ or JJ, both hands that are consistent with ski's preflop play. Nonetheless, I found those to be unlikely holdings considering the odds, so I found the patience to check it again on the turn. Of course I'm asking for trouble to all you weak tight fonkeys, but the playas out there will know exactly what I was doing. And doing well, might I add. This time after seeing me check the flop and the turn, ski was physically compelled to push allin. I instacalled as my plan had worked, and ski flips up...KJo. So we're looking at second pair Jacks with a King kicker. Obviously not worth raising the limpers with preflop, and surely a bad play to call my big re-reraise, but there ya go.

King on the river, and I'm never able to recover. IGH a short while later in 17th place of 23 runners. So it goes in the blonkaments. If you're not pushing in all your chips in big, silly overbets on every single street, then you risk being outdrawn. Even when you have the presence of mind and the patience to wait until after the turn card is out to make the large bets, the full tilt rng is simply not going to be your friend as often as it should. And that's what makes winning these blonkaments so dam difficult for just about anybody. The better you are at getting the money in ahead, sometimes it seems the harder it is for you to survive these things because there's basically always going to be someone there paying to draw at razor-thin odds. It really is unreal how bad some of the plays I saw in the first hour on Monday night were, but I guess that's what makes the MATH so much fun for so many people, and certainly it's what makes it such a profitable game for me and a few others over the year+ I've been running it now. But dam if that didn't piss my ass off on Monday night. I've always said it, but there's nothing worse than pwning some guy's ass on a particular hand and then still getting sucked out on in the end. Because when I'm even waiting until after the turn card to execute on my mindfux against my opponents, it's working and then I'm still losing to the 5-outer on the river, there's just not much you can do about that. 89% with one card to come to take another big chip lead early in the MATH. Can you tell I'm still annoyed? Grrrr.

As usual, the MATH tournament actually continued even after my untimely and certainly unwarranted demise, and like every week there was some strong play as the final table set in and we worked our way down to the top 3 finishers who would receive the cash on the night. Even though there were as many suckouts and overall worse donkeycallery than I can recall at any recent MATH tournament, in the end the guys who made the cash were very deserving and played hard all the way to get there. I did see pocket Aces cracked a good five times myself during the tournament, my hand above only being one of those times, so kudos to our three cashers who managed to survive the bullshit and take down the prizes in this week's Hoy tournament:

In third place this week, playing in one of his first MATH tournaments in some time, was everyone's favorite presto player Fuel55. Fuel won $110 for his night's performance. In 2nd place this week, winning $165.60, was a relative newcomer to the MATH tournament, jimdniacc. Jim said at the final table that he used to write a poker blog but now has little time for that due to being a student and a college golf player. And the man who took down this week's MATH tournament, who overcame a 2-to-1 chip deficit heads-up against Jim after a marathon hu session, the man who just announced a few days ago that he would be pulling a Barry Greenstein and donating all his poker winnings over the next six weeks or so to charity, is Byron aka bdidde. Fittingly for the end of this particular tournament, Byron ended things and won $276 in the process when his KJs sucked out a sick runnerrunnerrunner flush against Jim's pocket Aces. So congratulations to all three of this week's cashers, including jimdniacc making his first appearance on the moneyboard for the year.

And here is the updated 2007 MATH moneyboard, taking into account this week's Mondays at the Hoy tournament:

1. Bayne_s $1175
2. Columbo $1168
3. Hoyazo $1162
4. RaisingCayne $1110
5. Pirate Wes $792
6. VinNay $775
7. cmitch $774
8. Iggy $745
9. NewinNov $677
10. Lucko21 $665
11. Waffles $650
12. IslandBum1 $642
13. Astin $616
14. Fuel55 $568
15. Tripjax $561
16. Byron $510
17. Julius Goat $507
18. bartonf $492
18. mtnrider81 $492
20. PokerBrian322 $490
21. Chad $485
22. scots_chris $474
23. Emptyman $461
24. Mike_Maloney $456
25. RecessRampage $434
26. Otis $429
27. Surflexus $402
27. Miami Don $402
29. jeciimd $382
29. Jordan $382
31. Blinders $379
32. lightning36 $371
33. ChapelncHill $353
34. Zeem $330
35. LJ $326
36. OMGitsPokerFool $324
37. oossuuu754 $312
38. leftylu $295
39. Wigginx $288
40. ScottMc $282
41. Fishy McDonk $277
42. Irongirl $252
42. Manik79 $252
44. Wippy1313 $248
45. swimmom95 $245
46. wwonka69 $216
47. Omega_man_99 $210
48. katiemother $209
49. Pushmonkey72 $208
50. Buddydank $197
51. Gary Cox 194
52. 23Skidoo $176
53. Santa Clauss $170
54. jimdniacc $166
55. Iakaris $162
55. Smokkee $162
57. cemfredmd $156
57. NumbBono $156
58. lester000 $147
60. Heffmike $145
61. brdweb $143
62. Mookie $137
62. DDionysus $137
64. Patchmaster $135
65. InstantTragedy $129
66. Ganton516 $114
67. Fluxer $110
68. hoops15mt $95
69. Gracie $94
69. Scurvydog $94
71. wormmsu $91
72. Shag0103 $84
73. crazdgamer $82
74. PhinCity $80
75. maf212 $78
76. Alceste $71
76. dbirider $71
78. Easycure $67
79. Rake Feeder $53

Now back to the hand I posted about yesterday. To recap, I limped utg at a 2-4 6max nlh cash table with AQo, specifically in hopes of catching the uberdrunkaggrodonkey in the small blind who had moved basically his entire stack in at various points in probably 4 of the first 5 hands he sat down to play with. The button raised it up to $22, which may target donkey in the small blind just called, and action was back to me in the following situation:



I asked what you would do here. Some of you said fold, which I think is a perfectly acceptable position to take, and one which over time in general is probably a good strategy to follow with a hand as vulnerable as AQ against a reraiser and a caller of that reraise. But here's the thing, as I think Mike Maloney points out well in his comment -- I was hoping to get the donkey into a big pot against a hand where he would underestimate my holding due to my utg limp with a strong AQ, and that's exactly what happened, so why would I fold now? Of course the button player getting involved was not exactly foreseen by me, but he could easily have been making a position play, and in any event I had underplayed my hand for a reason and at this point I simply could not find the reason to believe I was behind either hand necessarily, certainly not more than a coin flip in any event. So I was not going to fold in this spot, and I have enough faith in my postflop play that I believed I could navigate some potentially tough flop action to correctly figure out where I was. And I simply could not escape the feeling that the donkey was in here again with nothing good, but would not want to lay it down as he had not shown himself able so far in his first five hands in my table.

So once I decided to stay in this pot, I think the right move was for me to reraise. Again, my objective all along was to get heads-up with the disguised best hand against this uber aggro donkey mofo, and a nice-sized reraise here seemed like my best bet, hoping that the button was in fact just making a position play. 6max can be like that, in particular above the microlimits, and position plays like this or fairly common among the better players at the levels I play. Again, I am definitively not recommending that others play AQ in the way I played it here. This is simply a story of how I tried to target an uberdonk and aggressively take his chips before what I estimated was just a few hands before someone else did exactly that. So I found a hand with great showdown value, underplayed it, got the donkey in for enough chips to maybe be worth his while, and now I wanted to go for the kill when I sensed the opportunity:



The button paused for some time, but eventually did this, which pleased me:



I was even more pleased when my target donkey just called my preflop reraise in this spot. Trust me when I tell you, given what I'd seen him do in just five hands so far and how he played those hands, the fact that he didn't just move it all in there before the flop told me all I needed to know about his hand -- he didn't have shiat.

So the flop comes down T62 rainbow. I'm thinking my AQ is probably in decent shape here against his expected hand range, which is just about anything but the good hands, with which he surely would have re-reraised allin preflop, trust me. While I'm considering my next move, donkeyboy busts out with this badboy:



So, I've gotten exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to get into a pot with this donkey who had gotten all of his chips into the middle in four of the first five hands since he sat down to the table. I swear I can smell the alcohol on his breath even though I'm not physically near him and in fact don't even know where he is. It was probably 2am ET at this point, and the way this guy was playing I just knew he was fixing to lose his entire stack, and everything I did so far in this pot was designed to get heads-up with him and have him commit his stack like he had in the four previous hands. Well now he did it. Do you call with the AQ unimproved here?

Tomorrow, The Conclusion.

Btw don't think I've gone soft on anyone here -- I have a ton to write about the sports world and the NFL from this past weekend, but things just keep coming up in my poker game that are more pressing, blogwise. I'll get to that stuff. Suffice it to say that I had another huge night at the 2-4 6max cash tables, winning another few buyins in one of the best cash streaks of my online poker playing career, so it's all good on that front. And of course, we can't forget my new feature on the blog for this week:

Phillies Playoff Chances Meter: Still 5%. Don't believe the hype.

Excited About Poker, and Playing Against a Maniac

Well, it's another Monday, which means another week at the grind for most of us, as well as another day spent analyzing fixed NFL games, redonkulous fantasy football losses, and, of course, preparing to be donked at Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt:



See you there at 10pm ET Monday evening, under the "Private" tab under "Tournaments" on full tilt. Password as always is "hammer". We've been having some fun lately all trying to stop RaisingCayne's Reign of Terror over the Hoy, and tonight will be the latest opportunity for you all out there to stop by and take a chance at getting your name and blog mentioned right here by ousting Cayne from tonight's event before he makes it 7 final tables in 8 MATH appearances. That is a sick, sick run, so hopefully you'll be there tonight to experience it for yourself. There's four of us now all in the $1100 club for the MATH in 2007, and the next one of the top four to cash in the tournament should have a good hold on the moneyboard lead as the third quarter of the year comes to a close.

This weekend was my first productive one in some time in the world of online poker. I barely played if at all during the first part of the weekend, but on Saturday late night, after another marathon session of Wii Tennis with my brother in law, I ended up playing of all things cash games and really getting in some great poker. I played smart, tight but aggressive poker, didn't donk around for a change and really made some awesome reads. I saved up a ton of hands just from that session so over the coming weeks you may get to see some of those, including one I will post about later today. But I ended up making over 3 buyins at 2-4 over maybe a couple hours of play, and had a blast doing it. More than that, like I said I played really well, avoided any major mistakes, and barely put any money into pots that I didn't end up winning which is always a good thing. But most of all, I really feel like I got my poker playing back on the right track. It was so great, in fact, that I am actually really excited about playing again tonight, and that's the first time I can say that in some time. For whatever reason my Saturday late night session left me feeling like my game is sharp, refined and ready to take on all comers, and I even followed this up with this minor win on Sunday, which if nothing else is good for symbolic reasons in that this is what I was winning a couple of months back when I was running so well:



Booom. Back to five $75 tokens in the account, just waiting to be donked with. I keep meaning to play those $75 buyin mtt satellites to the Monday 1k guaranteed, but basically that means I have to be starting an mtt at 11:30pm ET on a Sunday night which is not normally what I'm looking to do with my weekday evenings. Maybe I'll start trolling for sng satellites at the Tier II token buyin to this tournament, which is something I haven't thought of before. But otherwise, I generally like to use these badboys on mtt satellites rather than the 24k or 18k or whatever, because those guaranteed tournaments seem to be at off-times for me as a rule. That 24k is at I think 8pm ET, which is generally before I tend to get online these days, and the 18k that I know Smokkee and Iak used to love so much goes off at mignight ET, which is again a bit outside of my wheelhouse, time-wise. Anyways, all this is a roundabout way of saying that I might, just might, be coming out of my recent funk thanks to a great session of solid play this Saturday plus a nice mtt satellite win to start off the new week on Sunday. And that's actually what gets me excited right now. Well, that, and this. I can't do the YouTube embedding thing thanks to my dorkwork, but if you want to see a thorough domination rolled into about 2 minutes of football highlights, then look no further.

Anyways, after having so much fun reviewing that 3-suited flop hand last week, today I wanted to post another hand I played recently and get some thoughts and reaction to that situation. Unlike last week's hand analysis, this week we're going to jump to the cash tables, specifically to the 6-max no-limit holdem tables with blinds of $2 and $4 that I love to play at. This week's hand is actually a specific situation where I had been playing well at this table for a while, and after recently busting a short stack and creating an empty seat, a new player sat down two seats to my right. This guy's name was "sobersucks", and it was late night, and I am convinced in this case that the name was a good indication of the actual mental state of the player behind the cute little green turtle icon in the corner of my screen.

He had played maybe 5 hands by the time this particular hand I want to discuss came up. On the very first hand when he sat down, he had bet allin on the flop in a tremendous overbet of probably ten times the current pot and took it down without resistance. Two hands later he was in again, this time with a large preflop raise of against more than ten times the current bet after three players had limped in ahead of him to try to see a flop for cheap. On the very next hand (mind you, just the 4th hand since he sat down, giving all this action), sobersucks check-raised me out of a pot I was trying to buy on the turn, and since I had nothing more than middle pair and his raise was again oversized compared to the action to that point, I had to lay it down. So, I had formulated a read on this guy already, which was basically that he was utterly full of shit -- no one could normally expect to have that many good cards and hit that many flops so hard so early on in any session -- and was probably either hammered or just bad (or both) and fully expected to lose his entire stack quickly and efficiently. And I wanted to do whatever I had to do to get in there with him, especially since he had shown such a penchant for bets and especially for over-raises both pre- and post-flop.

So that's where I was at when the following hand came up, again the very next hand in sequence after those described above, and in total the fifth hand since this crazy aggro player had sat down at the table with me. Again, remember the blinds here are 2-4, and the target is seated two seats to my right, which in this case is the small blind since I am acting UTG. I look down to find AQo utg.

How do you play this hand? AQ is normally a very strong hand at shorthanded nlh. Normal raise like always? Bigger or smaller than usual? What do you like to do in this spot, with at least one player in the blinds who is just itching to get all his chips in with what I have to assume is a wide range of hands?

For me, I opted to just limp. I figured, best case scenario, sobersucks in the small blind has a smaller Ace, and by limping here up front, that gives me the best chance of getting him to see this flop, or hopefully to raise again preflop with shit, and that my utg limp should give off an impression of weakness that I would hope to take advantage of from him later in the hand. Honestly, this was the first playable hand I'd seen since sobersucks sat down to the table, and I wanted to do whatever I could to try to get into a pot and see a flop with him, and then outplay him later or hopefully get this donk to move it all in on me with an inferior hand. I just can't stand it when a blatant donk sits down at the table and then is relieved of his chips without me getting a good piece. And to be clear, limping utg with AQ I think in general is -EV poker, but I did this particularly because I had identified a major leak at the table and wanted to do what I could to exploit it. If I raise here, the donk in the small blind will likely fold his shit hands. But if I just limp, and especially if a few other guys limp behind me, then the donk won't be able to stop himself from getting in there:



So, the action then gets around to the button, who bumps the preflop stakes up to $22 to see a flop. Donkeyboy then in the small blind smooth calls another $18, and the action is back to me:



What do you like to do here? Who's folding? Who's calling? And who's raising, and if so, how much do you raise? And why?

Phillies playoff chances meter: 5%

See you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!

Bayne Cashes Big, and Playing Cash Against Aggro Raisers

First off, some big time blogger ups to dish out today. Due to my vacation this past weekend, I am remiss to have only seen yesterday that Maigrey cashed in 28th place in FTOPS Event #2 in HORSE. I left for the beach on Thursday night while FTOPS was just starting, and I didn't read a blog the whole time I was gone. In fact, I've been so busy working since I got back from vacay that I still have only gotten about 1/4 of the way down my normal daily list. So all you big time blog readers out there, check out how jealous you are of me today -- my schedule at work is a bit slower on Wednesday, meaning I should have time to catch up on 4 or 5 days of reading most of my favorite blogs out there. I can't wait for that.

Anyways, so congrats out to Heather for a huge finish in FTOPS #2. What else can you say, Heather really excels at all forms of limit poker. I've seen her win stud events and omaha events, and place big in multiple occasions in all kinds of HORSE tournaments, and I'm sure much more. But 28th place out of over 1000 entrants in a game as frustrating as I know limit HORSE can be is no fluke in this case for sure.

But the big news of the day has got to be Bayne, making I believe his first ever big time poker tournament score with a 9th place finish in Tuesday night's FTOPS Event #8 in O8. There I was, forced to eat my words after telling another blogger in the girly chat just two days ago that I did not think Bayne was that great of an O8 player. I was sure to IM back near the beginning of Bayne's tremendous late-night run on Tuesday evening to officially eat my words and admit that Bayne really knows his shit in this game. I mean, I watched the man play for maybe a total of around two hours out of his first four hours in the tournament, and he made a lot of good plays. Most of all, Bayne mixed up his play -- sometimes checkraising with good hands, sometimes betting out, making it nearly impossible to get a solid read on his holdings until at least the turn in most cases. In short, Bayne was awesome. And he is now rewarded with what I believe might be his biggest ever cash payout (not counting satellite wins where I believe Bayne won his way into the Aussie Millions a year or two ago), which I believe was something like $3400 and change. That my friend is a domination, and I was more than impressed with your play. Congratulations to you.

I, like the smart bankrolly guy I have been lately, opted not to buy in direct to FTOPS #8. Despite knowing that I am good at the game and having final tabled several satellites to this event, I also don't feel particularly like I could really win the thing. And let me tell you, that is not a common occurrence or an enjoyable feeling for me. In the end I'm thinking now why the F would I drop $216 to play a game that I don't realistically think I can win? I mean believe me -- it is really hard for a pompous ass like me to accept that I am not the best player at any brand of poker. I have had success in all the games and I have read and played a ton at each of them, and that in addition to my generally pompass nature, it is a rare and uncomfortable thing for me to face the fact that I'm not the best out there at any kind of poker. But it's true. Just like I am not KOD in large-field nlh tournaments, I am not the equal of some of the really good O8 players out there. It's just true. So, no $200 buyin for me, no $216 loss to my bankroll, and I am a happier man for it I guarantee you that.

So what did I do last night while I wasn't in FTOPS #8 and Bayne was going on his sickass run?

Cash games. My old new friend. After a huge run at 2-4 6max nl, I went on a month-long cooler that basically saw me lose much of my profit from my first 7000 hands or so at this limit. Then about a month ago, all that changed, I stopped getting drawn out on in 85% of my races and 65% of my 2-to-1 favorites. I started hitting some effing draws again, at least once in a while. Call it, with a full half the regularity that the odds would otherwise suggest, which for me is as good as it gets. And of course I've been playing better with a little confidence and a little luck coming my way.

I thought I would show you a few hands I did play on Tuesday night that I think illustrate some fun or interesting strategies for no limit cash play. Plus, I have to admit I effing love putting myself out there with what are usually very correct cash game strategies and then watching the loserdonks post negative things about the way I play these hands. Don't ever stop with that, guys, please.

So anyways, the first thing I have started focusing on more of late is adapting my nl cash game play to the huge aggrodonks who inevitably show up at your table at some point, raising before the flop basically every single time the action folds around to them unopened in any position. Sure they'll win a few hands before anyone realizes what is happening, but much sooner than later people catch on that this guy is just playing aggromonkey poker. So what do you do about this kind of a guy sitting at your table? Well, let's turn to the literature shall we? In Sklansky's great no-limit holdem book, he advocates loosening your reraising standards against these raise-with-anything types as the best way to counteract the advantages that such aggropoker may provide. A similar strategy has been suggested by Doyle Brunson and Phil Hellmuth (reraising megalomaniacs) as well as some other poker authors who are evading my mind right now. But the point is, when someone is raising with anything, reraising him not only sends the message that you cannot be raised indiscriminately out of pots, but you actually get yourself an edge in a larger pot when you push back with some of the better non-raising hands against a normal opponent.

Now, to be sure this is a hard thing to do, as it involves you reraising, thereby putting at risk a bunch of chips, with a hand that you might otherwise fold for fear of being behind (if not dominated). But, the bottom line is, against this kind of an aggromonkey, those very same hands that I readily fold against raises for fear of being dominated (hands like AT, KQ, QJ etc.) can become very strong because they can at least represent overcards if not be the dominators instead of the dominatees against a guy who is raising with basically any two not-horrible cards. So, for example, after identifying this guy across the table from me as an aggromonkey, when he open-raised from the button, I pot-reraised him with A3o and he thought for a while before folding. Rounds 1 and 2 to him when I folded to his relentless steal attempts, but here, Round 3 goes to me. And as I pointed out in my recent posts on stealing and restealing, a resteal is worth a lot more than a regular steal. Assuming all raises are the size of the pot, at 2-4 in most instances a steal-raise from outside the blinds is to $14, winning the stealer $6 in blinds for every successful steal pulled off. But, once the stealer raises the two blinds to $14, reraising the pot from a blind is roughly to $44 or so, so when that resteal works at the cash table, you win $20 in blinds and in the stealer's raise, rather than the $6 won from just a regular steal attempt. So, you will note that one successful resteal at 2-4 nlh 6-max is worth more dollars than three successful blind steals. So this resteal here got me back above where I was before this reckless monkeyraiser ever sat down at my table to begin with.

Just a very few hands later, I was faced with this situation, where the dude at the bottom is the aggromonkey raise-with-anything guy I am writing about above:



KTo. Normally an easy fold even at 6max, on the thinking that this guy probably has an Ace or a pair, or could easily have two paint cards in which case I am in bad shape with that Ten in my hand. But in this case, I am loosening up my reraising standards against this raiseclown, and KT is just the kind of hand that is likely ahead of his nearly ATC range:



That's right you monkey -- $52, more that the size of the pot.



Within 5 minutes, this player had up and left the table, leaving us back to play some actual poker instead of dealing with an aggromonkey raising it up from any position every single time the action was unopened when it got to him preflop. All this is to say that so far, reraising the hyperaggroclowns with strong but not the strongest hands has in fact proven to be a winning strategy so far for me. Is this guy maybe wrong that restealing is -EV in cash games? I will have to keep thinking about that as I continue to refine my game and play based on my reads of other players at the nlh cash tables on full tilt.

Tonight is FTOPS Event #9, which is a $300 rebuy 6-max nlh tournament. Of course I love 6-max play, but how the hike am I going to play in a $300 rebuy event? This was probably the dumbest FTOPS event on the entire slate; I have to give full tilt the definite thumbs down on this one. The attendance will have to be low in this event, and the number of rebuys and addons will be far below what is normal for a rebuy tournament due to the large number of satellites present into this event. It's one thing to run satellites into a $20 or even a $50 rebuy tournament, because people may want to play the events and be willing to rebuy a few times if needed, as is basically always the case in large rebuy mtts. But you award a satellite buyin into a $300 FTOPS rebuy tournament, and who do we know who is going to be willing to rebuy in this thing? Sure you can find some of the richer players among the full tilt client base, but in general as far as an FTOPS event, Wednesday night is a dumb idea and I can only assume this will be the least-attended of all the nlh events in the series. I personally refused to play any of the very winnable satellites into Event #9 for this very reason, and I never even considered playing in this event this evening. And you know if I of all people am refusing to play in a solid buyin 6-max rebuy mtt as part of the FTOPS, then full tilt has really screwed up somewhere. So kudos to full tilt on the FTOPS in general, but a bad job with Wednesday night's tournament.

So tonight instead, definitely come play in the Mookie at 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"). I will be there and most of your blogger and non-blogger friends will be as well, with Miami Don the defending champ after Don won his third Mookie title of the year last week with a dominating performance replete with the necessary trash talk that only a tilty Don can produce. With no reasonable FTOPS alternative, I sincerely hope all of you donkeys out there will find your way into the Mookie for the most fun time with a large group of bloggers every week. Hopefully Buddy will be back on the radio for the tournament as well, where you will get to listen live to my domination on my way to my first Mookie title ever. Ha ha yeah right. Never happen. Ever.