MATH Recap, and Cash Games Update

It was another fun time in the run for the roses as 36 players participated in a holiday-shortened MATH tournament field, one that saw many of the current BBT leaders bow out early due to various suckouts and just generally over-aggressive play. I made the BBT points again despite suffering not one not two but three hideous suckouts, all three of which where I double dog duped my opponent who took the bait hook line and sinker and then proceeded to hit his 3-to-1 or worse chance to steal thousands of chips from me. Phucking sick, but equally phucking typical. In the end I succumbed just after reaching the BBT points when I reraised allin with a soooted connector preflop on a shortish stack, and then proceeded to get called by someone for about 35% of their chips with...you guessed it...AJ. Of suit. As I told Bayne last night in the girly chat, at this point whenever a clown donkeycalls me for a big portion of their stack with the JackAce, I don't even stick around to watch. I just exit the tournament and move on to winning money at the cash tables. So I didn't need to wait around to see the Jack on the flop, I knew I was out but I will take the BBT points and leave it at that for the effort.

Anyways, back to the successful MATH runners, here are this week's cashers, out of 36 entrants, with 18 receiving BBT points and the top 4 cashing, a bit less for the MATH since the BBT rolled into town but not surprising given the holiday weekend:

4. In 4th place, winning $103.68 for his efforts, was perennial BBT tighty Blinders, who used a couple of very well-timed premium hands to swell his stack size after the BBT points were reached, executing excellently on the tight-early strategy for another fine BBT run and tournament cash.

3. 3rd place this week and $155.52 goes to NumbBono, who took the blogger world by storm earlier this year by winning I think his first ever Mookie tournament, and now is back this week with his first MATH cash of the year as well.

2. In second place this week is another big score for Tripjax, winning another $216 to add to his two other MATH cashes so far during the BBT. This also makes something like five consecutive weeks where either Trip or his brother ChapelncHill has cashed in the MATH. What a great poker-playing family.

1. And this week's winner, making I think his second MATH cash of the year, is NewinNov, who won $388.80 for his efforts in winning his first MATH title of 2007.

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. NewinNov $579
5. Bayne_s $579
7. Tripjax $561
8. Julius Goat $507
9. mtnrider81 $492
10. scots_chris $474
11. Fuel55 $458
12. Otis $429
13. Miami Don $402
14. Blinders $379
14. Chad $379
16. Pirate Wes $372
17. IslandBum1 $357
18. ChapelncHill $353
19. Zeem $330
20. Mike_Maloney $326
21. cmitch $312
21 oossuuu754 $312
23. VinNay $310
24. Waffles $294
25. Wigginx $288
26. ScottMc $282
27. Manik79 $252
28. Wippy1313 $248
29. Byron $234
30. RecessRampage $224
31. Omega_man_99 $210
32. lightning36 $205
33. bartonfa $180
34. 23Skidoo $176
35. Santa Clauss $170
36. Iakaris $162
36. Smokkee $162
38. NumbBono $156
39. lester000 $147
40. DDionysus $137
41. Pushmonkey72 $129
41. InstantTragedy $129
43. Buddydank $124
44. Ganton516 $114
45. Gracie $94
45. Scurvydog $94
47. Shag0103 $84
48. PhinCity $80
48. jeciimd $80
50. Alceste $71
51. dbirider $71
52. Easycure $67

So there you have it, including this week's winner NewinNov sliding up to a tie for 5th place on the 2007 Hoy moneyboard with his big Memorial Day takedown this week, and with NumbBono entering the moneyboard at #38 with his first MATH cash of the year. And there's me, still up in 4th place for the year despite my inability to cash in this event ever since the Watergate scandal, so I'm looking to help myself continue to slide down the board as the weeks progress in this thing. And congratulations again to all of this week's cashers, and to the 18 players who added some more BBT points to their leaderboard tallies as the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments looks to really heat up heading into the last month of the series.

So on the cash poker front, this was another very strong weekend for me, as I continue to run steaming hot at the $400 nl 6-max tables. Frankly, what I did this weekend was really calculated and almost embarrassing for me, and I have my doubts as to how fair it would even be considered to be by the other players involved. But, now that I have thousands and thousands of hands for over 2000 different players saved up on my Poker Tracker, I have started just going and searching out the biggest long-term donks to see who is online, using my PT stats as a filter, and then getting seats at their tables with those proven bad players on my right, and from there I just commence the abuse. And abuse these donkeys I have been doing.

Here were a couple of my biggest hands against these players, who for the most part are guys who are down around a couple grand or more over at least 1000 or hopefully more like 2000+ hands. So this way, I know these guys suck, and I have a high confidence that my sample size, although not optimal by a long shot, is sufficient for me to make some general judgments about the quality of their overall play. I mean, if a guy has had 29 sessions that I have recorded, has lost money in 22 of those sessions and is down, say, $2500 over 25 hours of play, I am ready to want that guy at my table. To my right, if at all possible, but I will take them anywhere to get to sit at the table with them.

In this hand, one of the big 2000+ hand losers open-raised from the cutoff to $14, which I reraised up to $44 from the big blind with AKs. My opponent then re-reraised allin for his last $220, leaving it at about another $175 to me to see a full board and take my chances:



In the end, this guy has lost so much money over time playing at 2-4 nl 6-max that I figured he could have a lot of different things, and I wasn't going to just put him on pocket Aces having made the third raise here. I figured a reasonable range for him was AK or JJ-AA. Against this range I liked my AKs -- and frankly, not to be a soooted donk or anything but the soootedness of my big slick really played into my decision here -- so I made the call, and found myself up against this:



Here is one interesting way that PT can actually hurt my play, I find. It can lead me to make decisions that are more based on past history, and less based on what I am observing in front of me during actual hand play. That's something I expect to work at over time, but for now I probably need to find a better balance between how much I weight what my instincts tell me, and how much weight I give to cold, hard, long-term(ish) statistics that I have on record. In any event, I was looking pretty grim there against pocket Aces, but never fear:



Booooooooom! God I love sucking out on people, especially at the cash tables. I think I made the right play here and I just love getting rewarded for that every once in a long while. Helps ease the pain just a little bit from the two $800+ pots I got sucked out on on Monday night alone at those same cash tables. That's right, four buyins down the drain on those two hands that should have both clearly been mine, in each case with me not getting all the money in until after the flop when my hand was at least a 3-to-1 favorite. Gross, but then I go get to experience suckouts like this one in my favor once in a while, so it's all good (I guess).

This next hand was against an even bigger money-loser, to the tune of over $3000 over the past few weeks that I have recorded stats on him, and here was one where it turns out there was just no way either one of us was not going to get this allin after the flop that came out. Basically, the fish raised it up preflop to $14 from the cutoff, and I elected to just smooth call from the small blind with pocket Aces. This of course is a variation play, but I like to throw in that kind of variation in this sort of situation, where I have little concern of a third player entering the hand by not reraising, and where the player making the initial raise plays a somewhat suspect brand of poker where I have reason to believe I could really get paid off with my ultimate overpair. So the flop comes AK8 with two spades, giving me the nuts with my set of Aces, so I lead out for $24 into the $30 pot. My opponent quickly reraises me:



OK so I know I have the current nuts here, I currently have my opponent covered, and he has more than 5 times the current bet still behind. Given his preflop raise and now his flop raise on the two-high-card board, I figured there was a decent chance I was up against AK or maybe AQ, either of which this known fishy player is likely to be willing to commit many chips with at this point given his stats so far on my Poker Tracker. So, I decide that the large reraise is my best move here:



He immediately moves allin over the top for his last $444 total (that move worked perfectly, huh?):



and check out what just happened to him:



Now this one is not a suckout of course as I was ahead on all streets including before the flop, but damn that is a setup if I ever saw one. It's not enough that he has the pocket Kings, and it's not enough that he hits his set on the flop. The flop also happens to contain an Ace, the most likely card for me to be holding given my own responses to his actions thus far in the hand, and what's worse, I have actually made top set on the flop where he has also made 2nd set with pocket Kings. That is rough. Rough, to the tune of $916 and change into my stack:



Sweet. And both of these guys have lost even more money now at 2-4 6-max thanks to me. And I'm all too happy to oblige.

Before I go, here are some more interesting Poker Tracker stats for my play so far at the cash tables since I got PT working a few weeks back:



Notice I am now the third most profitable player out of 2284 players I have tracked at the 1-2, 2-4 and 3-6 tables this month. So more confirmation that I am running very, very hot of late, though to be honest I am still getting sucked out on far more than I am the one doing the sucking out. So it's not like these results are based on luck at all, given what I've seen in the actual hands I've played to achieve these results. I am just consistently a winner at the cash games it seems, be it with bloggers or otherwise, and I know that table selection, and choosing actively to play with donks is a large part of the reason behind that success. I also found it interesting, however, that my Win % at Showdown (WSD) has now dropped to just under 47%, a stat which seems to be slowly dropping to the point that now it is the third worst among the 19 most profitable players appearing on this screen of my Poker Tracker. So I know I have simply got to get that number back solidly above 50% if I expect to be making high quality poker decisions in all aspects of my game, and in particular before I start thinking about another move up in stakes I want to prove to myself that I can get my WSD number more in-line with where I think it needs to be to be optimal.

In the middle of this screenshot you can see my most profitable hands listed:



Not surprisingly, pocket Aces is up at the top, but probably very surprisingly (certainly to me, and I think to this guy as well who claims he can't win with this hand to save his life) is that my second most profitable starting hand overall has amazingly been AQo. Yes that's right, not even sooooted. I've been dealt AQo an inordinately large number of 24 times, and of those instances, I have won 17 of those hands for a total profit of nearly $650 or over 1.5 buyins just with AQo. That's always good when you can turn a trouble hand like that into a consistent, measurable profit. Funny enough, each of my #2, #3 and #4 most profitable hands are all trouble hands, with AQo followed by the even lowlier T9o, and then by the fish trap known as KJs. So somehow, I am making it work with a number of typically questionable hands, which is obviously a big source of my profit so far through a little over 2000 hands of almost exclusively 2-4 play as far as what is recorded on my Poker Tracker database.

All that being said, a number of these "trouble" sort of hands are still costing me bigtime, as can be seen from this screenshot at the other end of the spectrum, my least profitable (biggest loss) hands over the past 2000+ hands I've played:



Right at the top (bottom) of the list, you will find everybody's friend KTs, which I have only managed to win at all with once out of the 9 times I have been dealt the hand. I think I always overplay this hand in particular, it is something I have specifically noted before but at the same time, being able to see it right here in statistical evidence form is always a great way to drive home that point. Make no mistake about it, KT (even sooooted) is trash in no-limit cash, and it needs to be treated as such, and you can bet I will be internalizing that further as my game progresses over the coming days and weeks. Other similar trouble hands like QJo and 98s also make appearances on this "least profitable" list, so I know I need to try to focus more on limiting my losses with hands that are easily dominatable and/or most likely subject to made straights, straight draws and even two pairs when I connect with them. Also on this list are a couple of random Ace-rag hands, which is not at all characteristic of my game but which I have a number of special circumstances for why I played these hands as often as I did and as far as I did in each case, and, annoyingly JJ is also sitting there as my fourth least profitable hand. Meh indeed.

OK I think that's all for today. I will try to be in the WWdN tonight at 8:30pm ET on pokerstars (password is "monkey" as always), but I don't know that I can get back from the gym in time so I may end up sitting that one out, but I'll almost certainly be back at the $400 nl 6-max tables at some point this evening to continue my assault on daily profitability from what I still view as generally the very formulaic play I routinely see at this limit. I may even dabble a bit in 3-6 just to see what that is all about, as most of the players I play with at 2-4 seem to play in 3-6 as well from what I've seen, but otherwise I should be hitting up the usual mtt stuff as well as some cash play during my poker evening tonight.

And did I mention that I'm leaving for Las Vegas in 8 days?! Eight. Fucking. Days. To say that I can't wait would be the understatement of the year. I have a WSOP elimination here just waiting for Joe Hachem to sit at my table. Digweed.

MATH Recap, and Back to Poker Tracker

Another fun time was had by most at Monday night's Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt, with 47 bloggers and non-bloggers alike coming out for their shot at a spot on the 2007 MATH moneyboard, some additional BBT points, and maybe a chance as well to take down the $26 bounty I laid on myself for anyone who sucks out on me with a dominatable bullshit hand that people love to eliminate me from poker tournaments with, especially these blonkaments. And as far as taking me out of this thing, although I did not pay the bounty, the redickulous bad beat sprite once again did not have to worry about going home disappointed about my exit.

How exactly did I go out, you ask? Well, I am dealt QQ (how many of my phucking elimination stories seem to begin that same way?) in middle position, where I open-raise the standard 3x to 180 chips. GCox calls my preflop raise from two seats to my left. The flop comes AQ4. Bingo! With 450 chips in the pot, I'm not a donkey so I'm going to lead out with a bet, into the player who likely has a strong Ace, and who will surely indicate to me from his actions on that bet whether he really likes his hand or not. This is Gary Cox after all, so I don't really have to worry much about him putting a move on me and reraising me with nothing in this spot. So I bet 360 into the 450-chip pot, and Gary minraises:



Now, if you know Gary, this can basically only mean one thing: AK. Literally of all the people I know, even Blinders isn't going to minraise here without a very strong hand, and I don't even think Gary would minraise with a flopped set, which I would think he would be a bit too weary of telegraphing his hand with a minraise. To me, the minraise just screamed out "AK! AK!" and that's what I figured I was up against at this point. So, figuring Gary is trying to figure out where he's at, I didn't want to move in here because I thought Gary might fold just the one pair on the flop (I could have AQ even and have him reverse dominated at this point). Instead I figured I'll just use his own move against him, and I min-reraised him right back:



When Gary smooth called instead of re-re-reraising me, that iced it. He had AK, and he still figured he was best here. When the turn came an offsuit Jack, I moved in the rest of my chips, only equalling half the pot at this point, knowing therefore Gary was likely to call given his large stack:



Gary insta-called:



Booooooom! Then, just as quickly, buuuuuuuust:



Just sick. And the worst part is, I didn't even get to pay out my donkey bounty for the night, as Gary knocked me out with AK and not some donkey-dominated hand like somebody else surely would have taken a run at me with sooner or later in this thing. And for those of you expecting a profanity-laden rant for Gary's play, sorry to disappoint you. He got abused, don't get me wrong, but he played his TPTK like many people would have played it, and I'm not going to kill him just because he fell victim to the kind of trickery that I busted out with early on in the MATH on Monday night. My play would have worked on just about anyone in that spot in this tournament. Once again my ire is directed at the frucking full tilt server that just continually seems to have it in for me in these blonkaments. I know that may sound lame coming from the guy who just won the Riverchasers tournament last Thursday, but the bottom line fact is that last Thursday was the exception and not the rule. I have about two or three too many now of these reconchulous river cards spiking to take my 85 or 90%+ favorite down and knock me out of a good spot in these events. The play is dubious enough in these tournaments already, but for me to be continually losing to 2- and 3- and 4-outers, in particular when I'm purposefully showing the restraint to wait until after the flop is already out before getting it all in, that is just too much to face. Dam you blonkament gods, why have you forsaken me?

Speaking of the blonkaments, I have noticed a very interesting phenomenon over the past few BBT tournaments: the players generally speaking are clearly playing tighter these days. I think over half of the BBT has gone by and has given people a chance to develop their own strategies for success, and frankly the points structure we're using to score the BBT tournaments has incentivized many players to play tighter than they normally would. Thus, lately it has definitely become harder for the fold-till-the-points-guys to just keep sticking around and survive. The full weight of the bbt is beginning to be borne.

I've also been thinking lately, maybe a year or two ago some of us gave DuggleBogey a little bit too much shite when he voiced his concerns over the WPBT tournament scoring system being formulated. Back then, Duggles made the point that scoring these tournaments on a week-to-week basis kinda ruins what many of us are generally trying to do in these blonkaments, which is to have fun, not "make the points". In particular when using a scoring system that does not even award points only to the final table or only to the cashers, but rather to every finisher in just the top half of the total number of entrants, there is a clear incentive to not be aggressive, not push some draws or some hands you might be able to win with, to not make that call preflop with the pocket 7s, to not push that suited AK on the flop with 2 to your suit and 3 raggy undercards, etc. It clearly has changed the play in these events, and while I definitely enjoy a little competition from tournament to tournament among our group, there is something fun about thinking about the WWdN tonight (8:30pm ET on pokerstars, password as always is "monkey"), and being able to "just play" without having to think about making the points, and is my opponent just trying to make the points, etc. On some level I think Duggles might really have been on to something when he voiced this feeling early in 2006 I believe, and maybe some of us were a bit too quick to judge his comments harshly. I certainly don't think the point of the blogger tournaments should be to see who can play supertight until half the field is out and they then feel free to open up their games.

Anyways, back to the MATH, here are this week's cashers, out of 47 entrants with 24 runners winning BBT points and the top 6 cashing as has been usual for the MATH since the BBT rolled into town:

6. Our 6th place casher this week, winning $67.68 for his efforts and a very nice run, is lightning36, who is scoring his second MATH payout of 2007 after a strong performance to make the cash payouts for the week.

5. In 5th place this week, winning $90.24, is Blogger Big Game host MiamiDon, who pads his top-10 BBT tally with yet another BBT final table and cash.

4. RecessRampage also added to his top-10 BBT point standings this week with another 4th place finish in this week's MATH tournament, plus $124.08 cash awarded for yet aonother MATH cash.

3. 3rd place this week and $169.20 goes to Tripjax, folowing in his brother's footsteps and now making it at least three straight weeks that someone in the Trip family line makes a big cash in the MATH.

2. In second place this week is another big score for current BBT moneyleader Mike Maloney, winning another 248.16 to add to his already over $1000 won over 7 weeks of BBT events.

1. And this week's winner, making not only his first MATH win but his first cash in the MATH in all of 2007 in a tournament that he rarely plays, is Pokerstars blogger and all-around fabulous writer Otis, winning 428.64 for his efforts in winning his first ever MATH weekly title.

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. Otis $429
11. Miami Don $402
12. Chad $379
13. Pirate Wes $372
14. IslandBum1 $357
15. ChapelncHill $353
16. Tripjax $345 (how cute the brothers are right next to each other!)
17. Zeem $330
18. Mike_Maloney $326
19. cmitch $312
19 oossuuu754 $312
21. VinNay $310
22. Waffles $294
23. Wigginx $288
24. ScottMc $282
25. Blinders $275
26. Manik79 $252
27. Wippy1313 $248
28. Byron $234
29. RecessRampage $224
30. Omega_man_99 $210
31. lightning36 $205
32. NewinNov $190
33. bartonfa $180
34. 23Skidoo $176
35. Santa Clauss $170
36. Iakaris $162
36. Smokkee $162
38. lester000 $147
39. DDionysus $137
40. Pushmonkey72 $129
40. InstantTragedy $129
42. Buddydank $124
43. Ganton516 $114
44. Gracie $94
44. Scurvydog $94
46. Shag0103 $84
47. PhinCity $80
47. jeciimd $80
49. Alceste $71
49. dbirider $71
51. Easycure $67

So, another strong week for the MATH moneyboard, as this week's winner Otis makes his first appearance on the board, while all five of our other cashers are repeat offenders in cashing in the Hoy during 2007. Congratulations again to all of our cashers and especially to Otis for taking the whole thing down for the first time.

OK before I go today I thought we could take another look at my Poker Tracker stats as I continue to build a database through several hours of playing and observing at the 1-2 and 2-4 6-max nlh tables on full tilt. To be honest I still have a very, very small number of hands to evaluate from (under 900), but it's about 9 times more than I had when I first posted these figures last week, and I'm still trying to figure out how to interpret all these statistics and really in some cases what these numbers even mean in practical terms. Plus, PT is good in that it allows me to compare my results and my statistics to the other profitable players I've seen online, and look at how I fare against those players in a number of key statistical areas.

For starters, here are my General poker stars via Poker Tracker:



Interesting items to focus on from this view include that I am up about 3.5 buyins at 2-4 over 887 hands. It may not sound so impressive to some of you (and to some of you that track record probably would not be that impressive), but #1 I'm not losing, as I used to consistently at the cash tables, and #2 these figures do not even include my first 4 or 5 buyins won when I first started with $400 nl 6-max cash about three weeks ago. I figure I am probably up more like 10 buyins over 1500 hands or so, which is much prettier than 3.5 buyins over 900 hands. So playing 400nl has been very profitable for me this month, and I feel like I am getting increasingly adept at knowing when I am likely ahead or behind, and acting appropriately based on that information. Also, I point out that you can see on that screenshot that I have won exactly 1 out of 8 times I've been dealt AK, either soooted or unsoooted. That is redonkulous and will not persist over time, especially since I am just about the last person online who you will ever see push unimproved AK into a raggy flop against anyone who's shown any semblance of strength so far in a hand. Otherwise, looking at the above numbers, the stats themselves do not seem to have changed too much since I first showed them at right around 100 hands played. Pre-flop raise is still at just under 20%, which is fine I think, and my VP$IP is up to 29, still a bit higher than where I think I want this to be over the long run. That said, I tend to use stealing blinds as an integral part of my strategy at 6-max, and that may explain why this number feels a bit on the high side for what I was expecting to see. The one number I still think really needs to get higher is my Won $ at Showdown percentage, which still sits right at 50%. 50% isn't terrible, but for a winning player who expects to keep winning more and more at this game, I think WSD needs to be closer to 60% or higher to really maximize the efficiency of my profits.

Here are my PT stats sorted by position:



What I love about the top of this screen is that you can see that I am basically playing profitable poker from every position at the table. Yes in the BB I am down $148.25, but if you add back in the price of the big blind I am up a good 5 hundy from there, and the only position where I'm not showing a healthy profit is 2 from the button, which I imagine is just random and over time will even itself out. I also note that at 2 spots away from the button, that is my only slightly negative position at the table, and it is also -- perhaps not coincidentally -- the only spot other than acting last on the button where my preflop cold-call % is over 1. Those of you who know my game know that I am definitely not much of a cold caller -- cold calling preflop is most definitely a recipe for poker losses and not poker profits -- but here you can see even in those few instances where I cold call preflop, it appears to be costing me over time in terms of overall profitability. Another interesting stat that goes along this one is that you can see I am going to the showdown more frequently from 2 spots away from the button -- my only money-losing position -- and I am winning at showdown less frequently with the higher percentage of the time that I see the river and show down the cards. So I can see already that I have some work to do there, as far as ensuring that from all positions at the table I am not staying in too long, in particular to see a showdown, without a hand of sufficient quality to warrant staying in.

Here at my stats sorted per winning hand:



As you can see and as is probably not surprising, with "high card" hands I am strongly negative, as these hands of course tend not to win nlh pots. That said, you can see that I am solidly in the green for every other type of winning hand better than high card. And I once again call your attention to the one-pair category, where I am now up more than a buyin for what is easily my second most profitable hand other than straights, which for some reason have been gold for me thus far, winning me 6 out of 6 showdowns with my straight hands. But my point is, I continue to show evidence that playing with just one pair at 6-max nlh can be a winning strategy, if played correctly, cautiously and if your reads are right-on. Of course it helps that I am not one to call big bets with top pair most of the time, but rather I focus more on overpairs, pocket Aces, etc. for situations to consider calling significant bets with just one pair hands.

Lastly, and this is one of my favorite screens on Poker Tracker, here are my general stats as compared to the list of the other most profitable players I have run into and recorded stats for over the past week I have been running PT during my nightly play:



I like this view because it can really show my generalized statistics against other good (or bad) players, stat-by-stat in the columns. So, out of 1177 total players I have recorded, my profitability has been 7th best among all of those players during the times I have been recording plays online. That is quality right there. I also note in the totals at the bottom that there are a total of 58% losers and only 41% winners during all the time I have recorded. That means there's a whole lot of fish out there to be draining money from, something which I have definitely found myself over recent experience. Anyways, this screen can help put some of my overall stats into good perspective -- for example, my BB/100 rate of 19.95 is actually fairly low, among the good players. That is interesting to me given my success, and the only thing I can think is that maybe I am playing a bit tighter than some of those other players are, or maybe I'm failing to maximize the profit I'm making from my best hands, I don't know. I tend to avoid sitting at tables with more than one large, winning stack, so that may also factor in to lowering somewhat my overall win rate. My VP$IP and my PFR also seems to be just slightly on the high side, as compared to the other profitable players who have recorded more than 3 or 4 sessions to give a good indicator of their general play with both good and bad starting cards, which is something which I have already identified as a potential area for improvement as far as tightening up just a little bit preflop where appropriate. And of course, of the top 19 most profitable players I have recorded at 400nl 6-max, my 50% win rate at showdown is in 15th place of those 19 most profitable players. Again, clearly something I need to improve at if I expect to keep winning, and to keep increasing my win rate, over the long run at this game.

OK so hopefully all those cash play stats are useful or at least interesting to you all out there. I would love any thoughts that any of you Poker Tracker guys have on my play generally or on the very quick analysis I give above on some of the things that jump out at me from these four pages of PT statistics. I look forward tonight to jumping back on to the cash tables for some more action winning with one pair and raising it up preflop a bit too often, in addition to possibly playing the Wheatie at 8:30pm ET on pokerstars, and maybe looking into that WSOP Main Event Tuesday night qualifier as well on full tilt.

FTOPS #6 6-max, and Learning to Evaluate My Play With Poker Tracker

Out of nowhere last night I went on a nice little run in FTOPS Event #6, the 6-max nlh tournament. In fact, last night was a solid night of poker all around, as I avoided the cash games but instead I made the BBT points in the first Mookie I've actually been able to focus on in weeks, going out I think in 24th place out of 61 total runners. I also took second place and cashed in the Dookie:



This was a fun tournament of turbo PLO, a game I love to play, and I was up about 2-to-1 in chips in heads-up play when I managed to get my shorter-stacked opponent allin preflop with his TTxx against my KKxx. And you know what? The flop didn't have one Ten in it! That's right. It had two tens. Awesome. Nonetheless the Mook n Dook were both fun times as always, and picking up some BBT points plus a cool $21 and a very small ego boost never hurts either.

And all the while I was in FTOPS Event #6, which I opted to buy in to directly with some of my recent $400 nl 6-max cash winnings. In this one I did the play-tight-and-wait-for-good-cards-early thang, ended up basically sitting around between 3000 and 4000 chips for the better part of three hours, and then finally managed to double up a couple of times during the third and fourth hours of the tournament, thanks in one instance to my only flopped set of the night (77 on a gorgeous AK7 rainbow board), and in the other instance shortly into Hour 4 thanks to a redonkulous move from a big stack in the tournament when I seemingly steal-raised from the button preflop with QTo. He tried to resteal from me with a 3.5x raise of my already-large raise due to the escalating blinds, and I put him on the resteal so I re-restole and moved it allin, a move clearly designed for him to fold if my read was right. Well, my read was spot-on, but this big stack broke one of the cardinal rules of late-stage tournament poker: never get personally involved in a hand. At the poker table, if you want to play optimally, then it's never personal. It's always business. So you don't get involved with specifically targeting one player who won a pot from you earlier. You don't let another player's verbal actions put you on tilt and get you off your game. And you never, ever call off a huge stack with a hand like T9o just because you don't want to admit that a guy successfully put you on a resteal move. And that's exactly what this guy did, calling my allin re-reraise preflop with my QTo against his T9o, and I doubled up again to go over 100,000 chips and get into the top 10 in chips out of around 250 players remaining at the time.

The money spots started at 306 players remaining out of the 2555 entrants who originally began the 6-max nlh FTOPS event on Wednesday night, so by this time we were well into the money in my first FTOPS cash since last November's pot-limit holdem event, which I am also playing in this time around on Friday the 19th. In the end, I was around 25th out of 55 players remaining when this hand went down, where an active preflop steal-raiser put in another big open-raise from the button, and I elected to move in on him with my K8o from the big blind. Again this player made a questionable move, calling for all his chips with just QJo, clearly a -EV move over time in this spot and getting him allin for all his chips when he was behind my holding by around 60%-40%. Nonetheless, the board helped him hard and I was whacked down to under 80k after spending the past hour or more between 140k and 170k in chips:



A few hands later I took the requisite suckout bad beat elimination with a very small stack, and I finished out in 54th place out of 2555 players in FTOPS #6:



Although it's always frustrating going out late but before the final table payouts begin in a huge event like this, I did make some decent coin from the tournament, all things considered:



So I made over a grand for my fourth $1000+ mtt score of the year so far, which is always nice. And the online roll can always use an extra Large in there given the current environment making it more difficult than we want it to be to deposit money into these sites. And although like I said I am certainly frustrated to have gone out as the favorite in a spot that would've vaulted me back into probably the top 10 remaining players in the tournament, the bottom line is that in a 6-max tournament like this with as many players as this one had, once you're in there for going on five hours, you've already been playing largely preflop-push poker for at least a good 90 minutes previous to that time. These online tournaments are just not set up to last a long time, and by even the beginning of the fourth hour of play, almost anyone below the average stack remaining in the event is almost in push and pray time already. So to have survived and persevered through 3 or 4 hours of solid play, and then another hour+ of monkey pushing time, I don't feel too terrible about the way I lost. Obviously I wish I hadn't pushed with the K8o, and the idea was surely that I knew he seemed weak so he was supposed to fold his Q-high unsooooted garbage hands, but I'm sure from his perspective he (correctly) assumed he had two middle cards to my one overcard and one undercard, so he knew he was probably around a 40% shot to win and he went for it. I think it's a bad play for sure in this spot in a big tournament, but I can't make him play it the way I would, and his logic isn't bloggerly the worst thing I've ever seen at the poker tables. And in the end I broke my 6-month long FTOPS no-cash streak which is awesome, won a grand which is nice, and hopefully I've now set myself up for a nice run either on Friday in the PLH event, and/or on Sunday for the vaunted FTOP Main Event with its $1.5 million prize pool. I'll bet 54th place in that badboy will give a lot more than $1022, that's for sure. Hopefully I'll be there to find out in just a few days.

Before I leave you for today, I thought we could look at my very, very statistically insignificant stats from just a few days' use of Poker Tracker. I know that 100 hands is not even remotely close to worth relying any serious analysis on, but it's all I got, and frankly I'm really into it at this point since I've just downloaded the application and am interested in seeing what there is to know about my own and other people's play. Incidentally my PA HUD is still not working at all, and I'm beginning to think it is just a Vista issue and that HUD maybe does not actually work with Vista, which would be really annoying because they won't admit that it is not properly compatible with Vista. But the more I read the boards and the forums out there, the more I see people complaining about HUD not working on Vista, and the more I see suggestion after suggestion from the HUD guys that just do not seem to be working for people. I'm going to keep trying but in the meantime my Poker Tracker stats are all I have to go on right now. I've collected data on a number of 2-4 and 1-2 tables I've sat at over the past week or so, and here are some interesting things I've seen:

First, at the top of the screen here are my positional stats so far from the weekend's play:



So interestingly, I am playing highly profitable poker from the blinds, the button and even under the gun, but it appears that middle position so far has been my biggest money drain through just a very small number of hands.

At the top of this screen are the hand stats for my overall play:



What stands out to me here is that I am at 28% VPIP which I think sounds about right, probably right around the middle of the range where I'd like to be for my game. I also see my preflop raise percentage here is over 18, which is definitely higher than I want it to be, probably also indicative of some nice cards and good situations for positional steals in the hands I played over the last few days. I see my Went to Showdown % is 31%, and Won at Showdown is 57%, both of which are ok I think -- all things equal, I wouldn't mind seeing a showdown slightly less than 31% of the time, and I'd like to win more than 57% of them, but both of those numbers seem about right to me. And looking at my play in the blinds, where I won more than half of my profits for the weekend sessions, and I see that I'm laying them down to steal attempts around half the time, which seems about right to me, and that I am attempting to steal the blinds right around 40%, which I also think is right around where I want it to be for my game. Many people steal less than I, but in 6max with my aggressive nature, 39% is a good place to be for blind steal attempts. In all these numbers seem fairly normal and good to me, if not a bit more aggro than optimal, but again if I got some good cards in that stretch then that's all good in my book, but I'd love to hear if anyone sees anything in these very preliminary numbers that does not sound right to you, in particular if you have experience evaluating the figures from poker tracker or another comparable program about your own poker play.

Now here is an interesting screen shot given the conversation here about winning with one pair in cash games over the past few weeks:



You can see up at the top of the screen there that "one pair" is far and away my most profitable hand situation over just the 109 hands I recorded with Tracker over the past week. Of course I was also profitable with two pair, straight and trips hands, all normally winning hands in holdem, but that one pair figure really jumps out at me, so there may be something to the fact that at 6max, players are just way more aggro than at full ring games, which I'm sure is generally true, and maybe that means that one pair hands are more profitable plays overall? I don't know, and as I accumulate more hands on Tracker I'm sure I will come back to this discussion point again in the future.

And lastly here are my summary stats for the period I tracked this week:



Here what sticks out most is the 87 BB/hour figure, which sounds very high and I assume is probably not sustainable over the long term. Out of all those players on the screen -- the most profitable players on my Tracker database thus far -- my VPIP appears to be a bit lower than the average, although not so much so, and again I think 28% seems perfectly fine for that statistic. Similarly, my preflop raise % of 18 looks to be around average for this group of the most profitable players I've run into at the tables, although I believe in general I want this number to be a bit lower than the 18 it is currently at (and I notice that 3 of the top 4 winningest players I've seen are 6% or lower for this figure, not sure if that is usual or not as it sounds a bit on the weak-tight side for me). If anything, the biggest thing that jumps out to me from comparing my summary stats to the most profitable players I've seen is again that Won at Showdown figure, where I am at 57% which at least is over 50% so it's not terrible. But when you look at it, most of the really profitable players are higher than 57%. Ideally I'd like to get my W$SD stat up closer to 75% than 60%, which I think is right where I want to be in order to play the best game I can play.

OK that's all for today. See you tonight at 9pm ET for the next BBT event, Al's Riverchasers tournament on full tilt (password is back to "riverchasers" this evening), and I may or may not play in the O8 FTOPS Event #7 tonight as well, we'll have to see what is up at the Hammer Household when the time comes.

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!!