Friday Thoughts

OMG I am getting crushed at work this week. Sorry for the lack of posting, but that's the culprit right there. But I did want to weigh in with some random thoughts here for a Friday heading into a long-awaited weekend for me after as many hours as I have put in in the office over the past several days. I've done posts like this before and I always seem to enjoy them, so here goes.

1. So the BBT4 is through its first two weeks. It's been fun for the most part, although the bigger crowds and more serious attitude are always a little bit of a downer for me. There've only been a few bitchy blog posts that I've seen, but give it time. The better stuff in my experience has been seeing the people who have to type in things like "nice catch" and who you can tell get really pissed anytime a hand that was at any one point ahead in the hand falls behind at any point later in a hand.

Personally, I've played very well so far in the first two weeks, ending the first sixth of so of the challenge right near the top of the leaderboard. I've made the BBT points in 4 of my 8 events, which is only worth mentioning because I never even consider making the points as I play any of these events. Al told me the other day the points are awarded to the top 25% of the field, so in your typical 80-person blonkament, that is 20 players who are awarded points on the big board. But for me to even be near the top of the board this early is great news, given that twice in my four non-points finishes I have gotten all the money in on the flop drawing to either two or three outs, and somehow managed to lose. Not that I typed "nice catch" into the chatbox about it. In the girly, maybe I blew up just a little bit. But that's nothing out of the ordinary as many of you know. I know I sound like a broken record, but you know you're running bad when you are waiting until after the flop to get your opponent with only two outs allin, and still finding a way to lose. But that's been me, especially in the past few BBT4 events. Overall, though, the crowds are a bit down from last time which I am kinda digging, and I have definitely played more of the events than I had expected to, mostly due to my 3rd place finish in the BBT4 opening Big Game, which paid the buyins for the rest of the entire series for me and bumped me up to the early chart-toppiness when combined with three other "in the points" finishes in the earlygoing here.

2. I understand there are multiple people working prop bets both for and against my action in this BBT4. Unlike some people I won't go chip dumping to try to wreck other people's prop bets, but just remember I haven't been playing nearly as much poker as I once did, and if I drop out of position on the monthly leaderboard at any point then I might be a candidate to skip some of these other games. And for god's sakes, consider who you're betting with. Just a friendly warning.

3. After Thursday's crazy action, there is probably a good 50% chance right now that three of the four #1 seeds in the upcoming NCAA tournament will be from the Big East. UConn and Pitt each lost their games on Thursday night, with UConn ending the day's slate of games with a truly incredible 6-overtime loss to the hated Cuse at Madison Square Garden early on Friday morning. But even with those two teams both losing in the Big East quarterfinals, it is highly likely that they will nab two of the #1 seeds given their current records and strength of schedule in what might have been the toughest conference in the history of college basketball this season. And now with the #2 and #3 seeds in the Big East tournament cleared, this has really paved the way for the regular season Big East champion Louisville Cardinals, who if they go on to win the Big East tournament and complete a 5-loss season, will then have won the regular season and the conference tournament in this year's Big East, which I figure will lock them in as a #1 seed as well this year. Carolina probably gets that fourth #1 more or less regardless of what happens in the ACC tournament this weekend, but I would estimate that there is around a 50% chance that Louisville beats Nova tonight and then the winner of West-Virginia - Syracuse tomorrow, which is highly likely to be WVU after the Cuse basically played two full games last night in their amazing victory over UConn.

4. The stock market -- what a ride! After slumping to fresh 12-year lows for about a week and a half straight with seemingly no end in sight, all of that turned around in a huge hurry a couple of mornings ago when embattled and now government-controlled "financial supermarket" Citigroup announced that it had operated at a profit for the first two months of 2009. Suddenly, a market that was as much oversold as I have seen any market be at any time in the past 20+ years shot up, led by the financial stocks which have been beaten down to truly, truly ludicrous levels. There's a stock I follow -- it's not actually a stock but an ETF, which is a fancy word for a basket of shares of other companies in a particular sector, geography or other grouping -- called the ProShares Ultra Financials, with the symbol UYG. This is a basket of I think 300 broadly defined financial companies, from asset managers to regional banks to money center banks to insurers and some other interesting companies as well. What I really enjoy about UYG is that it is double-leveraged, so that if the financial sector as a whole moves up 5% in a given day, then theoretically UYG will move up 10% that day. Similarly, when every bank on the exchange is down 15% on those horrible days, the UYG can lose 25-30% of its value in just one day. So it's not for the faint of heart, that's for sure, but this thing touched $1.37 a share earlier this week after trading as high as around $75 back in 2007 and around $45 in early 2008. And keep in mind, this isn't some individual stock that's taken a beating because they had some bad news, poor performance, or both. This is a weighted basket of some 300 broadline financial companies, and that entire basket is down about 98% from $75 to $1.37 earlier this week. I find it intriguing as a long-term buy and hold, because at these levels all we need is the banking sector to eventually survive, and as long as I'm willing to hold on to this investment until things have recovered nicely -- that could reasonably be ten years or more I suppose -- I expect it will be very difficult not to make 10 times my money at that price by waiting until the sector is healthy again. But make no mistake, right now as the banks go, so goes the broader stock market.

5. I found out this week from some random blog that Secretary Treasury Tim Geithner previously lived in my current home town. His house is currently on the market as he has moved his family to DC in light of becoming Treasury Secretary. It is a 3600 square foot, 5 bedroom, 4.5 bath home in a decent part of town. The price? $1,650,000. Somehow, New York metro has managed to remain the literal strongest real estate market in the country, with prices only dropping around 9% year over year for real estate in the city and surrounding areas. With the national average closer to 19% since last year this time, and with some particularly hard-hit areas like Vegas, Phoenix, Southern California, Detroit and Southern Florida all seeing 30% or more price declines year over year, 9% ain't bad, and it's made the real estate market in Westchester still look quite fluffy to me. So odds are, it's another year of renting for the Hammer Family.

6. The Hammer Family will be increasing by one, did I mention that here yet? Well yes, it's true -- Mookie, I'm coming to git ya.. There will be another Hoy Baby coming sometime this summer, and Hammer Wife and I are thrilled about it for sure. It's an interesting story, all true: when the Phillies were in the middle of the series with the Dodgers late last year, I told my wife, in all sincerity, that if the Phillies win the World Series then I would take that as a sign from the God I do not believe in that I should given in and acquiesce to Hammer Wife's unending demands to have another child. My only caveats were that I have full and undisputed naming authority for the baby, and that he or she would be in some way named after the Phillies if they won. True story. So fast forward about two weeks later, I got my wish, and the wife got hers. Oh, and the frontrunner if the baby is a boy? Cole. A girl? I'm not sure yet on that one.

7. Oh and btw, it's official -- I will be going out for my annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas to play in the World Series of Poker as well as to have a bachelor party for my other brother a year after bachelorizing my younger brother in Vegas last summer. The weekend of June 27 will be it for me in 2009, although it looks like I will likely be heading out on Thursday, June 25 sometime in the evening. Expectation is to stay at the Bellagio again, but that remains to be seen. And, it means that this will likely be the highlight of my trip in June:

World Series of Poker
Sat, Jun 27th
12:00 PM
3-Day Event No-Limit Hold’em (Event 51)
No Rebuy/Add-ons

Well, it's either that, or the $50,000 World Championship HORSE event on Friday at noon. I'm still deciding between the two options, any thoughts would be welcome.

Battle of the Blonkaments

Man, everywhere I look these days there is another post about the upcoming BBT4. I laugh because half of those posting about how much they are looking forward to playing in the series are the exact same people who were acting like tantruming children a year ago the last time we "got together" to do a BBT series. And believe me, if anyone knows about children having tantrums, it's me.

So let's see, this is four events per week from March 1 through May 31, plus three Big Games as well for good measure. That's thirteen weeks, four events per week for 52 tournaments, plus the three Big Games will make for 55 events total in BBT4, with buyins ranging from $5 to $75.

55 tournaments over three months. And with a whole lot at stake, as full tilt has once again come through in a big way with two Main Event seats to the World Series of Poker (typically these have come as $12k prize packages in the past) plus five WSOP preliminary event packages, which are worth $2k apiece. Al has indicated that there are likely more prizes to come (maybe those of us who finished in the top 20 in the BBT3 will be given the opportunity to "win" our FTP jerseys back again this time around?), but 34 grand is already quite a package for full tilt to be putting up just for a bunch of blonkeys to get together and play some pokah. So it's not like this is chump change here by a long shot. And, I have made no secret of my intention to make it back to Las Vegas this summer to play once again in the WSOP. Although we're not quite officially set in stone yet, the frontrunning weekend right now for the Hoy 2009 Vegas trip is looking like the weekend of June 27-28. Actually if all goes according to plan, I will be arriving in Vegas on Thursday or Friday, June 25 or 26, and staying until sometime early the following week. And there just happens to be a $1500 no-limit holdem tournament as part of the World Series that plays on Saturday the 27th at 12pm local time, which I definitely intend to be in on. So clearly, the money and prizes available in the BBT4 are much more than enough to capture my attention.

That said, I haven't exactly been playing a lot of blogger tournaments lately, have I? Sure, once in a while I will drop in if I've got nothing else going on, but in general I have really gotten away from regularly playing these things over the past year or so, really since the BBT3 ended. My god do you remember that bullshit from the BBT3? Talk about bringing out the ugliest, most pathetic sides of some people. It's a sad thing to have witnessed, in my case from the inside as I formerly hosted a tournament in the first three BBT series, but whereas I found the first BBT to be good, clean fun for the most part, I think the newness wore off on that somewhere along the way. By the time we got to the second and finally the third BBT series, several of the bloggers involved were pretty much regularly acting like assholes. Is it any wonder that attendance at blonkaments overall is what, down by 2/3 from a year or two or three ago?

So, the question is, will I be able to stay away from the BBT4? For a guy who has barely missed a single tournament in the first three BBT series, what's the over-under on the number of BBT4 tournaments will I end up playing in?

The Prop Bet and the Mets

Wow, 94 runners in the Mookie this week! That was awesome. I mean, the blogger "community" as such is clearly dead, has been for a loooooong time, but it was nice to see us do something as a group for the first time in quite a while. Very awesome. I wish someone could figure out a way to bring what's left of the "group" together like this more often, in a way that isn't designed to bring monetary profit to someone, that is. Oh well, one can always dream.

Congrats to Texas April this morning for taking down the biggest non-BBT Mookie tournament in I bet a couple years at least. Good times and a great run for April in a huge field that showed up to help give Waffles a chance in his prop bet to outcash LJ. Who knew a guy like Waffles could actually bring this group back together like he did? I'm really amazed about it still, but happy.

Anyways, about the prop bet. Now that it's over, let's tell it like it is: it was a dumb bet. I mean, Waffles historically has had some success in the blonkaments, but with the emphasis on some. He's proven beyond a doubt that his skills have improved -- in particular when he puts himself out there with a bet or challenge like this -- but to give oneself only a small handful of chances to make up a large dollar deficit like he was facing, in a raging minefield tournament like the Mookie, well that is just a lost cause. I'm not saying it was literally impossible, but let's just say that I made out like a bandit betting against this thing right from the getgo. Then Waffles got hot and recorded a couple of near-the-top cashes, and that's when I really cashed in. I was able to make bets giving less than 10 to 1 odds against Waffles winning essentially a nearly impossible bet to more than a few bloggers and blogger watchers for what I viewed as basically free cash. And liking the guy like I do, nothing would have made me happier than having to pay out on those bets if Waffles managed to win, which I was really rooting for even down to the last day on Wednesday night. And when I keep saying it was an impossible bet, this is not meant as a slam on Waffles at all. Phil Ivey couldn't come in to the Mookie and win enough money over 8 tournaments or whatever it was to pass LJ with more than a one or two percent shot in my view. The Mookie just is what it is, and winning it, let's just say that it takes something less than optimal poker skill to take this badboy down.

Truth be told, and I know this is something a lot of people have been thinking whether they admit it or not, but there is no way you can't be impressed with what Waffles has done lately. My only real comment about it is that it shouldn't take him putting himself out there like he has to much success recently in order to play this well. Given his strong performances once he has issued a public challenge this year, it is obvious that Waffles has actual tournament skill buried somewhere deep, deeeeeeep inside that head of his. But there is something wrong with this picture to need to issue public proclamations and promises of success in order to bring it out. Hopefully he will take this latest Mookie escapade as a good chance to learn that lesson. That's why, earlier this year when the guy went completely off the deep end and challenged me to an mtt contest event though he's never won a large mtt of any size whatsoever, I failed to respond. I like Waffles quite a bit, and I don't want to be part of his need to challenge himself publicly in order to get him to play his best. Rather, I want to be part of him realizing that he obviously has it in himself to play this way all the time, without the need to force himself to up the stakes like he has with the Mookie bet, his BBT3 prop bet with Bayne, and some others.

And of course he would have had no chance against me in a large-field mtt bet anyways, who am I kidding.

Anyways, even though Waffles failed in his bet, it was in truth about a 100-to-1 shot to win the kind of challenge he came up with, and most other, more reasonable prop bets about the Mookie would have seen him win them with how well he played over the past couple of months. So I for one congratulate the guy on a job well done. But like I said, it's not finished yet. The real victory for Waffles will be if he takes this tremendous opportunity to realize that he can play this way every night, that he can win a large-field mtt someday soon without the need to shame himself in public if he doesn't. There's no way I believe that Waffles is the worst poker player except when he has issued a public challenge on his blog. Obviously he has the skillz, now is just the time for the guy to step up to the next level and make it happen without the need for any external reason other than just that he's sitting down to play some poker tonight. That should be all it takes. So anyways, congratulations to Waffles for a job very well done yet again in this challenge, despite the outcome not working out the way we all would have liked.

And pay up, all you deadbeats. You know who you are. Full tilt transfers will do just fine, thank you.

Even with the Waffles action last night in the Mook, that was nowhere near the highlight of my night. That honor rests squarely with, once again, the New York Mets. I wrote about them the other day and have several times in the recent past, but Wednesday night was pretty much a microcosm for how I feel about the Mets over the entirety of the past two seasons. So they're obviously locked smack in the middle of a major playoff race -- entering the action on the night they were 2.5 games behind the Phillies in the NL East and 1 game ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers with just 4 games to play on the season. So this was a huge, huge game for them, and they are up against the Chicago Cubs, pretty much the best team in the Major Leagues this year. They go down a bit early, but they rally back to a nice lead thanks to a 5-run third inning, only to give up five runs late and need a late-game miracle to get back in it. Which is exactly what they get, scoring a key run to tie it up in the 8th, and as we move to the bottom of the 9th inning, with the hometown fans going crazy, they lead off the 6-6 game with a triple. So there's a guy on third, nobody out, 6-6 game against the best team in the league in a huge spot, and to boot the Mets have Wright, Delgado and Beltran coming up on deck. This has to figure to be what, 98, 99% that they're going to win here? And yet somehow this team full of chokers cannot bring the guy in. Rather than walk him, Lou Piniella embarrassingly decides to pitch to Mets "poster boy" David Wright, who promptly goes up in the count 3-0. Amazingly, he swings at the next pitch, missing it. Fast forward a few more pitches and there is Wright striking out on a high fastball, well out of the strike zone. Cough cough!! Wright, what a step-down artist in September. Then the Cubs wisely walk the next two guys to load the bases, only to see the Mets ground out weakly on a fielder's choice to home, and then they nab the third out as well and move to the 10th. The fans, as you can imagine, are crushed, many of them leaving the stadium after the team failed to take down this crucial game in the 9th. And naturally, before most of those fans are even off the stadium grounds in their cars, the Mets bullpen gives up not one, not two but three big runs in the top of the 10th, and the team goes whimpering into the night with yet another crushing defeat.

And on the same day, the Mets brass announces that hapless jackmonkey GM Omar Minaya is getting a four-year contract extension!! That franchise is too funny. The guy way overpays Carlos Beltran who has disappointed since the day he showed up here and everyone in baseball knows it, he way overpays choker Pedro Martinez who has been horrible basically since the second year of the well overpaying 4-year contract Minaya signed him to, he won't give up on that bum Reyes even though the guy gets worse and worse every year, he couldn't bring himself to fire Willie Randolph until it was far too late in the season, and then fired him very unceremoniously and without any class at all, the list just goes on and on. Extending Minaya right now -- really, doing anything but firing him at this point -- is no different when it comes down to it than all these Wall Street CEOs getting huge severance packages after running their firms into the ground. Minaya had his chance, and he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's a chump, a guy who will overpay anyone to bring him to New York even though everyone else passed on him for the money the Mets offered him because he clearly isn't worth it, and the Mets go and extend the guy for four more years just as the team is in the middle of completing yet another late-season collapse orchestrated almost entirely by the very players Minaya has brought in here over the past few years. Like I said, that team is too funny. That game last night was absolutely classic to watch, as a Mets hater like I am. Between the Mookie and the Mets, and throw in those juicy 1-2 PL O8 tables on full tilt and I had a really great night on Wednesday.

Maybe I will come out and win the Riverchasers again tonight, or maybe not. But it's at 9pm ET, password of "riverchasers" if you want to try your hand at the tournament I pwn for one night tonight on full tilt.

Thoughts of Running Bad

I've got nothing fresh or original about poker swirling around my head today to be quite honest. The truth of the truth is that this past week has been one of my least enjoyable weeks of poker in a looooong time. The thing with being me is that when I run bad, I will take 15-20 bad beats a night. It is sick. I've learned to handle a ton of bad beats, and really I can't remember the last time I even close to tilted from any particular beat. But as mostly a tournament player, these bad beats never seem to come at a good time or in an unimportant pot, and lately they have been ending some nice runs I've been building up over several hours, most often just short of the bubble in the nightly majors.

Consider just the most painful ones from just Thursday night. I lost a ragingly monstrous stack in the Riverchasers when I got it in with my AA against KK allin preflop, and I still couldn't find a way to win the hand. When I caught someone bluffing with their 74o allin reraise vs. my pocket Queens late in the 32k, the guy rivers the straight. And in the $150 satellite to the $1060 buyin FTOPS #10, first my JJ loses to 99 allin preflop to rape half my stack, but through my greatness I managed to rebuild and was back in the top third of the field with about half of the entrants eliminated, and then my AA loses allin preflop to QTs when the guy flops a migga fligging flush on me. I mean WTF.

Anyways even I have to admit some digghead ranting about the bad beats he took last night is no kind of good blog reading. It doesn't even feel good to write it, believe me. Suffice it to say that I when I run bad, I take a lot more bad beats than most people could deal with, and it can really sap away my enthusiasm pretty quick if it continues for long. So today after yet another night of spankage, I got nothing fresh.

So be it.

Let me change things up then by asking a few questions of the readers today.

First, Esquire80 left me this comment to yesterday's Bet or Check the River post:

"I've got to agree w/ shrike, your optimal play is to bet out right into him. In this particular case he would have most likely folded but he could have called, folded or you would have induced a bluff which you were prepared to snap off.

Based on your read you are assigning him something like a 10% chance of a flush?

Overall, you are losing value here unless your plan is to check raise the river with your strong holding in an attempt to squeeze more out of him. In this case he didn't have anything to squeeze but if he had someting like Krag w/ 2 pair or got a cooler w/ a set you could felted him.

Frankley, to be results oriented I don't think you could have got any more value out of that hand given his holding but the value bet on the river is the superior play in the long run." (emphasis added)

This is a very black-and-white-ly stated position, and in my experience in poker such matter-of-fact strategies generally prove not to be nearly so cut and dried. So I get it, my presumed fellow lawyer guy, you say that betting is better than checking in this spot. But not once do you say why that is correct. And the why is at least as important as the what. So do tell, I am all ears.

Secondly, let me ask a more general question here. Am I the guy everyone is talking about who uses too many commas and uses them too liberally? I mean, I like to think I'm pretty self-aware, and it's not like I don't know that I seem to write more and longer posts than most people. But when people are out there commenting on how people use commas all wrong, have they actually been talking about me this time for real? That would be fucked up.

Here's another good one: Who the fuck would ever be betting on an NBA game right now? Go read that link. I have to credit our man for the inside scoop on the betting lines in Las Vegas Miami Don for that link. But dayummm, who on earth is betting basketball these days? Think the NBA might have to revise its stance that this was an isolated referee, acting alone, all along? Christ, that shit just gets worse and worse.

Oh and before I go, for those who don't know, Bayne and Waffles have a $100 staight-up bet going where Waffles bets that he can climb to the top of the year's Mookie leaderboard within I think two more months or so. When the bet was made earlier this week, I think Waffles was in 7th place or something, and was basically $260 or something behind the current leaders, LJ and Surflexus. Well, already Waffles busted out with a third-place finish in this week's Mookie tournament, climbing a bit on the board and narrowing the amount he has to recover in the next several tournaments. So today I am going to establish some odds on this bet, which I will plan to track the rest of the way through the challenge.

When Waffles agreed to bet $100 straight-up that he could climb Donk Mountain enough times to overtake the leaderboard top spot in just a couple of months in the Mookie of all tournament, in my own head I set Waffles' chances at about 3% of winning that bet. Now, however, after this week's performance alone, I'm going to kick those odds up to about 12%. That is a big jump right there, but think of it this way: what kind of odds would I be willing to offer someone who wanted to bet me, say, $50 that Waffles would win. So I get to keep his $50 if Waffles does not take the Mookie lead, but if he does take the lead at any time in the next two months, would I be willing to pay $500 in exchange for the $50 now? I would not, not quite. I'm setting that line at around 8 to 1 odds, like I would take the $50 now if I knew I would have to pay out $400 if Waffles wins the bet. So 8 to 1 is where I'm setting "the Waffles line" for now. 8 to 1 everyone, place your bets, 8 to 1.

Mookie Thoughts

I just have a couple of quick points that I wanted to cover today.

First off, let me congratulate cmitch on joining the ranks of the donkeymofos really nice people who have won the Mookie tournament. That is a real accomplishment, especially for a guy who does not play too many of our blonkaments to begin with. I totally did not watch the last couple hours of action in this thing, but I think the last time I logged on with around 30 players remaining, cmitch was already in the chip lead, so it sounds like he ripped shit up all through the night on his way to joining the esteemed wall of fame down at the Big O poker room in Austin. Knowing that I can never get up on that wall makes it a bit jealousy-inspiring for me whenever someone new joins the ranks of eternal fame, but also somewhat awe-inspiring since I know just how impossible it is to get your picture up for all times at the Big O. Oh, and to KOD who won his second straight Dookie title this week in turbo razz, you can say whatever you want in the girly chat to me, but two straight Dookie wins is in fact nowhere near equal to one Mookie win. Nice try bub, I only wish it were that easy.

Speaking of the Mookie, for those of you who were not listening on Buddydank Radio early in the show yesterday, or maybe for those of you whose ears went permanently deaf after The Original Rantbox of all people said that I'm a nice guy but that I am just not suited for poker, Mookie and I officially agreed on our prop bet for 2008 for the Mookie tournament, both of us having never won the online version of this thing since it became what it is today. If one of either Mookie or myself wins the Mookie during 2008, then, in addition to the cash prize and the glory and the portrait on the esteemed Big O poker room wall and the winner's profile on Mookie's blog, the winner will also have his next three months' worth of Mookie tournament buyins paid for by the non-winner at $11 a pop. So this will add a little insult to injury to me when Mookie finally gets the victory that he's been so close to a few times before. I will keep crushing all the other blonkaments into oblivion, and Mookie will get the glory he deserves in addition to approximately $120 in prop bet victory cash from me as well when he finally takes his own tournament down. Can't wait for that one. Do I at least get to make up the profile questions for Mookie if he wins, since I will be paying him $120 in addition to all the glory coming his way? Something to think about.

Speaking of glory, the other thing I wanted to talk about today was how I actually got eliminated from the Mookie this week. I played ok in the earlygoing, winning my biggest pot of the night against LJ with 82s in a hand where I rereraised allin on the flop with top pair, and everyone around the table had the Jergens™ out in the hopes that she was holding AQ. Otherwise, the Mookie Curse was of course in effect, first when I raised about 15 minutes in and got one caller from the blinds when I held QQ. The flop came a nice-looking 9TJ rainbow, giving me the open-ender plus an overpair. RaisingCayne checked, I bet 260 into the 280-chip pot, and Cayne called. The turn brought a second 9 and another check from Cayne, and at this point I figured it was wiser to control the pot with a check, since I had just one pair on a scary board that just got a little bit scarier with the turn card and since I was the one with the nice draw as well. Well, the river nailed me with a beautiful King to fill my straight. This time Cayne led out with a bet of about 3/4 the size of the pot. Having made my straight on the river, and since I held two Queens in my hand therefore making it highly unlikely that Cayne also had one of the two remaining Queens, I figured a raise was in order. I didn't need to bump him allin since with the pair on the board he could have had a made boat, but to be honest I figured trips or two pairs was the much more likely scenario given the betting so far in the hand, especially with the way I have seen Cayne push things in the past when he is strong. So I raised him I think a little more than the size of the pot, and he just called. Wanna know what he had? AQ. So the river makes me my inside straight but also manages to make him a higher straight after calling my flop potbet with just the oesd. Lovely. And yet standard. Mookie-standard for me anyways.

But that was not what I actually wanted to talk about today. That Mookie Curse hand only eliminated a little over half my stack just 15 minutes in. The hand that actually knocked me out of the tournament was I think more worthy of discussion here. Basically, with me down to only around 1200 chips or so and the blinds still at 20-40 just around 20 minutes in to the tournament, Peaker in early-middle position raised it up to 140, and someone who I honestly cannot remember smooth called that 140-chip bet immediately to Peaker's left. When the action got to me in I think the blinds, I looked down to find the Hammer, so of course I pushed it allin for my last 1200 or so chips. Why not, it's the Hammer and that's my job. Peaker, as one could have predicted given his tight nature and the call and then allin raise behind him, folded, and the action was to this last player. He thought for maybe 5 seconds, typed something in about me knowing Peaker would fold, and then he called my allin for around 30 big blinds. And what did he call my for 30 big blinds (significantly more than half his stack, as I recall) with less than 25 minutes into the Mookie tournament?

22.

A pair of frigging deuces.

Now let's review. I am sure I've seen this on other blogs before, and frankly I'm just as sure that I've written directly about this myself right here on my own blog. But for some reason I feel like if I can even get through to one person out there who does not understand this very important principle about no-limit holdem, then maybe that will make this all worthwhile. So here we are 24 minutes into the Mookie, the guy is holding pocket 2s, and he is sitting on a nice deep stack for this blinds level of around 45 big blinds. He puts around 3 big blinds into the pot preflop on a smooth call of a tight player's preflop raise, and now here goes Hoyazo -- with whatever aggro donkey image you feel like assigning to me, go nuts -- moving allin for 30 big blinds. Tighty Peaker folds, and the action is back to our target player who has to either fold his mighty pocket 2s, or call for 30 big blinds and two-thirds of his stack just 24 minutes into the Mookie.

Now, some of you might be tempted to think that, since I am so obviously donkeyboy aggro jackass monkeyface idiot fuckhead loser shiteater cockballs Hoyazo, I might be pushing here with absolute and utter garbage. And hey, this guy has a pocket pair, so why not call here, right? He's got to be ahead, right?

This analysis could not possibly be any further from correct. First of all, I deny that I am a "shiteater" and I will go to my grave with that denial. Secondly, and more importantly from a nlh strategy perspective, what do you think you are getting by calling here with 22? Let's assign some equity to that hand here before the flop. Let's just take the absolute worst thing for me that I could possibly be doing here from a mathetmatical perspective, and say I am pushing allin here with literally Any Two Cards. Any two. Not even looking at my holecards, but I just saw a tight guy raise, an unknown guy call the raise, and I'm looking to push here and add a quarter of my stack on top of what I already have by raising it allin with no regard whatsoever to my holecards. Great. What do you think 22's chances are when allin preflop against ATC? Think about it now. What if I actually have a pocket pair, a reasonable holding given my allin reraise of two raisers and callers preflop, no? Then the pocket deuces are a 20% underdog.

So if I have a pocket pair, the deuces have approximately 20% equity. Now let's assume I don't have a pocket pair. Let's assume it is just any two random unpaired cards. Let's assume it's two shitty cards even, because it helps to illustrate my point very well. Say I have the collosally shitty hand of 83o. An Eight and a Trey, not soooted. What happens when you call my allin for 30 big blinds 24 minutes into the Mookie with pocket 2s? Well I'll tell you what happens. It's the classic race situation. A pocket pair vs. two overcards. It doesn't matter if my overcards are a lowly 8 and a 3, unconnected and unsoooted. My 83o has exactly the same chances against your 22 as A9o would have against 88, or very close to the same chances that AK would have against QQ. We're talking about all the same numbers here -- basically, a race situation. It's less than 55% in favor of the pocket pair against two random overcards. And I've got news for some of the numbers-challenged among you out there -- when you are holding 22, it's all overcards! It doesn't matter what garbage cockshit cheesefucker cards I am holding. Unless I also happen to have one of the three remaining deuces left in the deck, you are no better than a 52, 53% favorite. It is simply impossible to be anything else.

Now it's an entirely different can of worms if you have 22 and you choose to put in a substantial raise with your 22. Now you may pick up quite a bit of fold equity to go along with your roughly 50% at best pot equity in the hand, so that can be a fine move. Not one I recommend in any way against anyone showing strength -- no matter how monkey aggro shitforbrains moronic assheady you think they are -- just 24 minutes into an mtt, but at least you can justify that move by thinking there is, say, a 75% chance that your heads-up opponent will fold, plus a roughly 50% chance that you will be win if he calls you with two unpaired overcards. That gives you an overall equity of well into the 80s and if you want to take that chance early in an mtt, at least it can be justified on those grounds.

But, and I am speaking in facts and not opinions here, I don't think there is a possible poker-sensible justification for calling an allin for 30 big blinds with pocket 2s just 21 minutes into an mtt. Realistically speaking, there is a greater than 95% chance that you are either a 20% dog or a 52% favorite. Realistically, it's almost impossible for you to be anything better than racing here -- and you might well be up against a pocket pair as shitty as 33 in which case you are still only 20% to win, and you're willingly choosing to do so for two-thirds of your stack and 30 big binds just 21 minutes in to an mtt? I mean, I know quite a few calldonks out there among our ghey little blogging crew, but even most of you fewls know better than to call here. And of course the results of this play last night (I was eliminated early from the Mookie by this call) are completely irrelevant to the point I am making -- as in, the results literally could not have any less relevance because their relevance is precisely zero to the very accurate point I am making here: You cannot profitably call with pocket 2s for 30 big blinds just 21 minutes into a regular-speed mtt. You can't even make this call in a turbo mtt. Not if you want to play correct, intelligent, profitable poker you cannot. And none of us have any choice or opinion or debate in this matter, either.

End of story. Don't call with low pocket pairs -- least of all pocket 2s -- for a significant size stack very early in an mtt that you want to win. It's bad poker. Integrate and incorporate that into your mtt game, and then I am fine with this week's Mookie Curse and my continued complete inability to survive in this thing no matter how well I play or how well I hit the board like in the hand with Cayne. Just don't make my efforts here today go to waste by not taking the time to understand what I'm saying. Do me that one favor, please. Humor me. Just move your eyes over the words at least and pretend you understand, willya?

Riverchasers tonight, 9pm ET on full tilt. Password as always is "riverchasers". Why I keep playing these things with the plays that are made against me and then of course rewarded by full tilt on a regular basis is beyond me, but I am already registered and I await the beating. Just try not to call me allin in the first 30 minutes with any pair lower than 6s if you can help yourselves, mmmmmkay?

Lawyers and Poker

In the 6-handed MATH this week, at one point near the beginning of the tournament I was seated at a table with four out of the six of us being lawyers. Someone commented to this effect in the chat, and what ensued was the normal dribble of lawyer jokes and some interesting conversation related to the number of lawyers in our ghey little group of poker bloggers. This got me thinking about a post a short while ago that Tripjax had written basically asking the same question: why are there so many lawyers who are also poker players and poker bloggers? In that post, there were something like 20 comments left, with many of the same answers repeated throughout, and yet in that many comments I could not believe that no one had posted what I think is a very simple answer. I think I've written about this before here in the blog but not for some time and maybe not as directly as this, but I'll get to my reasons in a minute. First I wanted to go through some of the answers given in the other comments to Trip's post and what I think about them.

1. One common comment to that post was that this is just selection bias at work, and that there are not really a disproportionate number of lawyers in our group. I believe this is false, albeit not hugely so. There are at least nine lawyers I know of among the poker bloggers -- myself, F-Train, CK, PirateLawyer, HoP Jordan, SoxLover, Pirate Wes, muhctim and LJ -- and that is without even stopping to think if there are any others (I'm sure I am forgetting one or two more). Offhand I can't think of any other profession of which there are nine among the blogger crew, other than IT professionals generally. Now #1 IT professionals is a very broad job range, much moreso than "lawyer" is generally speaking, and #2 I think that there is a disporoprtionate number of IT guys who are bloggers in my experience, so that's how I explain that one. But otherwise, I do think there are more lawyers in our group than one would expect from the random distribution of jobs out there in the world.

2. Another common theme there in the comments to why so many lawyers play poker was that it is a stress reliever for us lawyers, who need some outlet to let out our frustrations after a long day of stress. On this point I just have to laugh. I mean, I'm sure there is some of that for some of the lawyer poker players, but I would imagine just as much for plenty of the other non-lawyers involved as well. All of us have stress in our lives, and there are some doctors in our group who I imagine have some stress, some financial industry guys with some stress, and frankly plenty of IT and other employees who have stress. People write about their gheyass work situations all the times in their blogs, and if it's not work that is producing stress for their lives, then it's their health situations, or it's their famliy situations. I guess my point is, I think it is just a little too pat to just say that lawyers need more stress relief than anyone else and thus they play more poker. For myself, I have less stress than most people I know, and what stress I do have from work has very little to do with my legal work and much more to do with the jackfuckers who are supposed to be here working with me. And one other point to make here -- in a way I think playing online poker as a "stress reliever" is a kinda silly idea. I mean, I guess if all you ever play are ghey blonkaments for $11 a pop then maybe you might just not encounter much stress (speak for yourselves on that point though, blonkey poker drives me crazy sometimes as you all know well), but personally I run into more tense situations at the virtual tables on an almost nightly basis than just about anything I'm doing at my "other" job as a lawyer. So that point, too, I think is really not hitting home on the answer.

3. Some people wrote about lawyers just having a lot of money to lose as well. I think that is downright recockulous. While I won't deny having some amount of disposable income for poker, I'm not making money hand over fist by any means. I guess some of our large law firm friends might be in a slightly different situation on this point, but even those guys in the big cities are not exactly rolling in the dough. Now, if you told me that a bunch of cardiologists or investment bankers or traders at the big banks are all playing poker, then I think you've got a point there. But my sense is that the lawyer poker bloggers as a group are not anywhere near even the same league as the guys I mentioned above there.

So you see, I don't really think that any of the common responses to Trip's thoughtful post really capture the essence of why so many lawyers seem to play poker, using our small group of gheyness as a microcosm of the world. My theory, and again I think I've mentioned this before here at the blog but probably sometime a couple of years ago, is that I think being an effective lawyer and being an effective poker player involve many of the exact same skills. Thus, I see a natural overlap between the two professions / hobbies, in that someone who performs well at the one is already naturally inclined to perform well at the other as well. Let me explain what skills I mean:

1. Logical analysis. Generally speaking, lawyers use logical anaylsis as a way of life. This may be true about some kinds of lawyers more than others, but I'm sure your typical litigator type would agree with this statement as far as analyzing arguments and counterarguments, the best way to approach a witness during testimony, etc. And as a corporate / negotiator type of lawyer myself, I can say that all I'm doing all day is basically analyzing contractual terms and conditions, the best way to negotiate them, the counterarguments I have heard and similar things like that. It's what we as lawyers do. And as poker players, I find logical analysis to be at the heart of basically every move we make. Or every move I make, anyways. Basically no move -- be it call, raise, reraise or fold -- on no street is done without thinking through the reasons behind that decision and its likely ramifications.

2. Risk analysis. This one is closely tied to #1 above, but again, as a corporate lawyer type I find that almost more than anything else, I am asked to analyze risks. This involves thinking about the odds of a certain outcome occurring (i.e., my client being sued because our supplier's product infringes a third party's patent), and then sizing the likely impact to my client of such a negative outcome occurring (i.e., the likely size of such a patent infringement lawsuit, given the extent of our usage of the vendor's product and the price we are paying to use it, is, say $1 million), and weigh it against the relative expected positive benefits to my client of any other options available to us with a given contract. Again, this is what I do as a corporate lawyer all day long. And it's the exact same thing in many ways as the kinds of calculations I need to do at the poker table, basically all night long. Analyze the risk associated with a certain play, make a good estimate or calculation of the likely downside and weigh it against the likely upside if it works out. Then assign probabilities to the likely outcomes, and just do the math. For example, the calculation I mentioned above regarding the risk of an infringement suit against my client is almost the exact same calculation that I would do when determining my pot equity in a given hand. With my open end straight draw I know I have 8 outs if I call my opponent's flop bet, and if I don't hit on the turn, which will happen roughly 83% of the time I will likely have to fold and lose the amount that I called on the flop, since my opponent is likely to bet again, say, 90% of the time. And if I do hit one of my 8 outs on the turn, which will happen roughly 17% of the time, then I am likely to win the rest of his stack. So much of both fields involves doing analyses just like these, doing them accurately and quickly, and making quick decisions based on those results.

3. The importance of aggression. This one may be stretching it a little, but really, I do all of my negotiations exactly the same way as I play poker. In negotiations just as at the tables, aggression is king. If you consistently take passive stances and offer up less than what your client really wants, you will see comparatively negative results over time your results in negotiations. That's just the way it is, and it's not a debatable point. Poker in many ways is exactly the same way. Play passive poker -- call a lot, decline to bet when you "should" because you have a strong hand but on a draw-heavy board -- and you're going to find yourself a loser over time. This is just one of the fundamental precepts of playing poker -- aggression is king. Good lawyers, again in particular I can speak for the corporate side of things because that's what I personally am familiar with, are simply more predisposed to using aggression and to even being comfortable being aggressive, and thus I think good poker tends to come easier to them and might even be more attractive as a hobby than it is to someone who is not used to the wonders of aggression all day every day already.

4. Bluffing. Chad made a comment to this effect in Trip's post the other day, and it was done tounge-in-cheekly I think, but I really think there is something to it: lawyers, in all walks of the profession I think, are just much more used to lying / bluffing than in many other professions. While I'm sure the doctors and firefighters and IT guys and financial professionals among our group all have occasion to tell a bit of an untruth in their professional lives, as a lawyer I can say that lying it is almost a way of life. I don't want to paint a bad picture of lawyers here, and I certainly don't think there is anything wrong or unethical at all about what I'm describing, any more than it is wrong or unethical to lie at the poker table, but let me give you an example of what I mean. Recently I was trying to renegotiate a very poor contract that one of my predecessors had put in place a few years back. I had a new lawyer on the other side, someone who himself was not involved in the original negotiation, and I was pushing hard (aggression) to get a certain provision included in the agreement. At some point, the other side's lawyer asked me if this aggressive pro-my-client provision had been included in the previous contract (because he had not seen it), I almost instinctively told him that I didn't know, and that it would not matter to me either way because we needed to get a better provision in place between us now. In fact I had seen a copy of the old agreement and surely could obtain it again if needed, but why would I admit that to him during our negotiation now when I knew that the old agreement did not say what I wanted it to say? I surely would not tell him a big whopper and claim that it affirmatively was not included in the old agreement, because that is to me an outright lie that I don't really like to tell in my job, and of course he could easily find a copy of the old agreement and know that I was wrong anyways. But that doesn't mean that I need to volunteer him the complete slate of full information that I have on a topic, at least not the way that I approach my job.

Or let's take an even easier example -- I know my clients have told me that they absolutely, positively need to sign a contract with a particular customer by this Friday, or my company is going to miss its earnings estimates and they will all be in hot water. That is good, crucial information for me to know as I negotiate the contract with this customer during the week, but do you think I'm going to tell the Customer on Tuesday that we have no choice but to sign the document on Friday no matter how much they have agreed to our suggested language by then? Of course not! If anything, you might easily find me in that situation telling the customer that a particular provision is of the utmost importance to my clients and that we might not be able to sign with them if they do not agree. Of course that is a lie, but it's just part of doing my job and doing it well, just like lying, deceiving, misleading and bluffing are part of playing poker well. A necessary part in fact. So my point here is that lawyers by their nature and by virtue of what we do in our daily professional lives are simply more suited to, more accepting of, and more willing to bluff (and probably better at it, too). We tend to accept that "lying" or at least bluffing can be an accepted and useful part of our jobs, so we tend to have an easier time and probably more experience as a profession in many of the nuances of bluffing when it comes to poker than most other people who are not lawyers by trade.

5. Reading people. To me this is the key area where being a lawyer and being a poker play tend to merge to the same crucial skill. Much of what I do in my job is negotiate contracts. It's not all that I do, but it's a lot of it. And when I negotiate, maybe 20-25% of the skill involved I would say is actual legal knowledge, knowledge of contract law, knowledge of the business details of the deal in question, etc. But to me, the real skill and expertise that I personally bring to the table in my job is the other 75-80%, which is reading people. It's reading the other side and their attorney. When I tell the other side's lawyer that my client will flat-out require a certain provision in our contract, and she responds by telling me that her client is probably going to refuse, the real value-add from me is being able to tell, to know, that she is going to give in eventually, just from the way she presents her argument to me. Similarly, when I ask for a certain security-related protection for my clients in a vendor contract, and the vendor hesitates a bit before saying they'll have to look into it, my value add comes from being anbe to decipher the meaning behind that hesitation, to notify my clients that perhaps they need to investigate the security of the vendor in a bit more detail themselves before agreeing to this contract. This is what I do, and like I said above, most (not all, but most) trained lawyers could learn the bases of contract law that comprise that 25% of the skills I mentioned above, given enough time and training. Only a small percentage of lawyers could really learn to excel at this key ability to read between the lines, to pick up on small nuances and hesitations and to accurately determine their meaning.

This, ultimately, is exactly what playing poker comes down to. Even online I feel like I can often tell from the timing and amounts bet by other players what the real strength (or lack thereof) of their hand is. It's a "feel" thing, something that often cannot be taught, as opposed to a knowledge thing that could be learned by most people with enough training and time, and I think this is something that lawyers as a group are a lot better-versed in than the public at large. And don't get me wrong -- I know plenty of guys who are not at all lawyers and have never negotiated anything in their lives yet who are still great poker players and awesome readers of other people and their hands. So I'm not trying to say at all that one has to be a lawyer in order to have developed this skill. But it definitely helps IMO. And this is true whether you are a corporate lawyer, negotiating contracts or negotiating for a big merger deal to go down, or if you are a litigator cross-examining the other side's witness on the stand. The ability to successfully and comfortably make on-the-spot reads of one's "opponents" and act effectively based on those reads is one of the things that makes someone a great lawyer, and this skill ends up being one of the most crucial parts of being a great poker player as well.

So there you have it. I think the biggest reason for the overlap between lawyers and poker players is not the stress or the money coming from being a lawyer, as there are just too many other professions with equal or more stress, or with equal or more money, who are just not represented at all or at least way less represented in our ghey group of poker bloggers. While I definitely buy into F-Train's comment on Tripjax's post that most lawyers are used to using the written word in their jobs quite a bit, and that may therefore explain the attraction to the blogging part of poker blogging (not that I know any wordy lawyers, but that's what I hear about some of their blogs....), to me the reason that so many lawyers seem to be attracted to poker is not the above but rather that by their very nature as lawyers, they already have the comfort and acceptance, if not the facility and skill, with many of the exact same attributes and actions that make up a good poker player from what they already do in their daily lives. I am still surprised that not one of more than twenty comments to Trip's recent post about this topic mentioned this overlap of skills, but hey I guess if other people don't realize this to be true then that doesn't hurt me at the tables so I can live with it.

I would be interested to hear from some of you litigation-type of lawyers if you really do see this same skills overlap that I clearly do when it comes to negotiation on the corporate law side.

Don't forge the Mookie tonight, 10pm ET on full tilt (password as always is "vegas1"). All are welcome to the biggest and baddest gathering of poker bloggers this side of nowhere every week to donk it up and see if the biggest jackass can win yet another Mookie before me. And dammit I never spoke to Mookie today about our prop bet -- Mookie what's the word? You wanna say the loser buys the winner into the Mookie for a month or something when one of us (you) finally wins the Mookie before the other (me)? Maybe that, plus a special profile of the winner on the loser's blog, since lord knows I'm never getting a Mookie profile up on your blog any other way? What do you think?

The Curse Lives

That's right everybody. This is just a brief post today to remind everyone as 2008 comes to a close that my own personal Mookie Curse lives on. Lucky for you all, this particular curse only seems to affect me in any consistent, disgusting way, but it is truly recockulous the way I get beat out of this thing mostly every week. It's unspeakable, that's what it is. This is The-Curse-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, right here in the flesh, and I am living through it.

I would estimate that thanks to the Mookie conflicting with the television scheduling of Lost, I probably missed a grand total of 9 of the 52 Mookie tournaments so far this year, meaning I probably played in 43 of them. Of the 43, I won, of course, exactly zero, giving me 43 bustout hands just during 2007 in the weekly Wednesday night Mookie tournaments. Of those 43, I would estimate that no more than 10 to 12 of them involved me actually getting in when I was behind. Of the other 30 or so bustouts, then, they are probably pretty close to evenly split between suckouts and setups, most of them utterly recockulous in nature. Reviewing my own personal year in Mookie's, these are the ones that stick out the most in my mind. I'm talking about Surf resucking out on me on the river in heads-up with him having just six outs to prevent me from winning my first and only ever Mookie title. I remember the other two Mookie final tables during the BBTwo, one of which saw me run AQ into KK allin preflop against a guy who should have been eliminated a few hands earlier if LJ had not folded to his hammer at amazingly poor pot odds to lay it down, and the other which was also some ghey setup the details of which I cannot recall right now. But it was bad and I was going to win the tournament if not for that hand, whatever it was. I remember thepokergrind or maybe it was pokerenthusiast getting allin against my KK with his JJ and then flopping quads. And there are many many many more stories just like that, all from this same little tournament that now yet another player has won but I have not as of this week.

And my elimination this week fits very very nicely into that same exact vein of suckout and setup stories. Not sure which kind I actually like worse, but this week was definitely the setup kind. I'm in third place out of 21 players remaining of the 51 runners who started this thing, having played well and recording no suckouts of course along the way to get to that point. I limp in to a 3-way pot with A4o. The flop comes down 64x, no suits. I don't remember what the x was, but trust me it was not material to the situation and created no draws, maybe a Ten or something, I don't know. It was either checked around or maybe there was a small bet by me, I don't recall and it really doesn't matter. The turn comes and it's another 4. I am stylin with trips and top kicker. I bet a reasonable sized bet on the turn, which muhctim raises huge over on my right. I ponder the situation, rexcognize that although I do not have the nuts, I do have a hand that beats the vast majority of the range of hands that muhctim would be raising with here (i.e., any other 4 in his hand that does not make a boat, and maybe two pairs as well). Plus, his raise was so huge -- something like 6 or 7 times my turn bet -- that I figured there's no way he is super-strong here. If anything, with that rather obviously large bet, I figured him for a low 4 and I was about to take a massive chip lead into the final 20 players.

I reraise allin, and muhctim thinks for a few seconds before typing "no way I can lay this down". When I saw this I was laughing all the more, knowing that with any of the four hands that actually beat my A4, there would be no hesitation and no doubt about his call. But what does he flip up? Pocket 6s. Indeed, one of the four hands that beat me, and IGH in 21st place. Abjectly sick is what that is. Just like so many of the other setup hands I have fallen victim to this year in the Mookie, if that third 4 does not fall on the turn, of course I don't lose another dime in this pot, let alone my entire huge stack of over 12,000 chips. But I defy anyone who says they would have gotten away from that hand in that spot. And if you would have, then you are laughable in my book. Period. End of story. Oh I'm sure certain dickheads will claim they would have gotten away to the big raise with top trips on the raggy board, but don't worry -- I have too much respect for those people's games to really believe the drivelcrap they regularly post here under the guise of "comments". I know exactly what's going on with most of the Hoy Haters™ and exactly why they come here to post what they post in reaction to my daily poker musings. But this was just another in a long line of sick setups and gross bustouts for me in the Mookie, putting a capper onto what was a great year for me in blonkaments in general, but utterly and completely despicable as far as the Mookie.

Amazingly, someone told me today I am still in the top 15 or something in Mookie winnings for all of 2007. That, my friends, is an indictment of you all. In terms of overall skill of play exhibited in the Mookie this year, I will happily take the top 15 banner and wear it proudly. But total winnings? You guys are all embarrassments to your race, and to poker players and bloggers everywhere.

And with that, I will end today's semi-rant post. This one should be easy for hoysynopsis to distill down into one or two lines.

Btw I'm still taking ideas for a fun prop bet between myself and Mookie at least, if not with others as well, regarding winning the Mookie in 2008. Mookie and I, both never having won his weekly private tournament despite having played it probably close to a hundred times apiece at this point, are considering a private prop bet fo 2008 on who wins this thing first, but I would love any and all creative ideas on how such a prop bet could work. Anyone out there have any good, interesting ideas other than the run-of-the-mill $10 from one of us to the other for whoever wins the Mookie first in 2008?