Donkin on a Monday

Wow, boredom set in in an awful hurry for me in the BBT4. This was even quicker than in previous series. With the attendance at the weekly tournaments dropping noticeably here in just the early third week of the 13-week challenge, I must say that without even realizing it, I am just part of the herd losing interest in the series, and in actually trying to play well when I do sit down to play.

Of course it didn't help that I got riversucked out of four sitngos in under and hour on Monday night heading into the Riverchasers tournament. I stopped playing the sngs when I got a bit short in one ring sng, picked up KQ in the small blind and raised two preflop limpers. To my mild surprise, both called. When the flop came K22, I pushed my last chips in on the flop on an overbet to the pot, knowing this would appear like I was pushing short when weak. Again, to my amazement, the first player called, the second pushed allin, and the first insta-called. When the first guy flipped up KK for the flopped overboat, I just chuckled. I did not even see the other guy turn over his pocket 2s for the flopped quads vs. flopped overboat until after the hand was over and I was eliminated, when I noticed all the chips in the other guy's pile and wanted to replay the hand to see what had happened. A good rule of thumb I try to live by is when I've been riversucked four times and then run KQ on a shrot stack and on a K22 flop into KK and 22, it's time to hang 'em up.

By this point, unfortunately, the Riverchasers had already started, and I was feelin' tilty. I quickly dropped down to around 2500 chips from the starting stack of 3000 on donkish stabs at pots with nothing and on silly resteals for little chips early. Basically I was pissed off and wasn't into the tournament and thus was just trying to push shitty cards and steal somebody's stack on a suckout or something. Stoopid. Eventually I allin overbluffed on the river against someone for about 4 times the current pot, and got called down instantly by a pocket pair below top pair. That one definitely surprised me, but I guess I just have to be happy with someone making a play that I will double up on 98% of the time. It was actually the second time I had been called down on a big bet with nothing in my short time in the Riverchasers on Monday, both times of course with me hardcore bluffing with nothing. I guess I was giving off the vibe that I was feeling inside -- that I should not have been playing, that I did not want to be playing, and that I was just going to make stoopid bets and raises with no rhyme, no reason, and no plan for the hands I got involved in. That worked about as well as you might expect from reading that description.

Needless to say, I didn't last long and I didn't stick around any longer than I had to on the night. After making the points and nearly final tabling the first three events of the BBT4, I stopped giving a crap any more than I did right before the series started, and it severely shows in my play. In my last four BBT tournaments, no money, no final tables, no points, no good play at all. Well, except for the Mookie last week when I got two-outered after the flop by someone who spent the entire previous week bitching in his blog about how unlucky he is and how great everyone else runs. Running bad at this game just fucking blows.

It's gonna be at least a few days before I get the bitter taste of last night out of my mouth. You might want to call me down in the HORSE tonight in the skillz series, because I'm going to be calling and betting with absolute shit and just hoping to donk somebody out early. Bitches.

Riverchasers Win Again

I won another Riverchasers tournament on Thursday night, in highly improbable fashion. This one was funny like most anytime anyone wins an RC event, in that I recorded a sickening suckout early when purposefully playing like a donkey, and then I got crizznushed late and entered final table play well in last place and with literally less than 10% of the first place player's stack. Then I stole like a crackwhore, got lucky with position plays a few times against shorter stacks, and before I knew it it was over. For the first time I can recall in a long time, I won a blonkament where I never had a chip lead or anything even remotely close to the chip lead until the very last hand of the entire tournament. With 28 players the field size was similarly small to the other events of the past week, but big enough to still be interesting.

Here was the gross early suckout, against one of the original good bad girls of poker, Joanada. This hand occurred maybe 15 minutes in to the Riverchasers tournament on Thursday, where Jo raised preflop and I reraised with AKo. Standard stuff for me early in blonkament action. She called and the flop came down JTx, giving me three Ace outs, three King outs and four Queen outs for the inside straight. I checked, Jo bet out smallish, and I went for the allin reraise with lots of outs. She instacalled and flipped up pocket Tens for the well-played set, and suddenly my overcard outs were nil:



Ahhh, but the river. That lovely, lovely full tilt river:



Bloom. Doubled up the Riverchasers way -- by overplaying the most overplayed hand in poker just to try to donk someone with a pair. Or a set, as the case may be. And FWIW, I apoligized to Jo for a good five full minutes in the girly. Someday I hope to progress to where I no longer feel guilty when I suck out on someone. Lord knows I have about another 3 or 4 billion of those coming to me just to even shit out.

Still, I called a lot early, which is totally opposite to normal approach to the blonkaments, as I was still trying more to suck out on someone a bit I guess than to actually hold on to my stack. In the first 25 minutes of the tournament I flat-called before the flop with 43o, 32s and 98s among other hands. I also got donked pretty hard by a well-played hammer by blonkament crusher surflexus. But I got him back near the end of the first hour, when I picked up the hammer in middle position and open-raised 3x the big blind to 150 chips. Surf called, and I c-bet into him on an AKx flop, which he also called. I checked the raggy turn card, willing to give it up to a likely bet from surf, but he checked. I then bet the pot on the river and got to take down the rare hammer river foldout hand to end the first hour in 6th place of 18 players remaining with 5,749 chips.

Early in Hour 2, I once again overplayed AK as I still had not quite lost my intention of playing like a donkey. I know I've mentioned this before, but it is sick how often that particular strategy leads to a victory in the Riverchasers more than any other event. This time I again open-raised 3x the big blind from middle position, but then I faced a smallish reraise and an allin re-reraise behind me:



Knowing this is a poor spot to push with AK and that I was obviously behind at least one of these players, with at least one or two of my Aces and Kings also probably out, I still went ahead and pushed. I then begged for the call with all caps in the chat, but snarf didn't bite, claiming he folded QQ. I ended up allin against pocket 8s heads-up for a big pile of chips, and I flopped a King to get the big bounce up to 3rd place of 16 players remaining.

In this position in the tournament, I should probably have been playing a little bit closer to the vest, focusing a bit more on protecting my stack than on insisting on taking on races for big portions of it, but I just could not keep out of my own way. At one point I called an allin reraise from someone who I knew thought I was stealing with my late position open-raise. I had A9s, but I felt I had to call because I know from my blog that my own perceived range is so wide in my opponents' heads, and that perception therefore actually forces me to call more with a much wider actual range, with hands just like A9s. I turned out to be up against pocket 4s and I did not catch, losing a third of my stack in the process. Later I would push my shortish stack allin with my A3o from utg, which DDionysus instacalled with his KTo, and promptly flopped a Ten to take that one down. After this hand, I found myself down at the bottom of the leaderboard, in 11th place of 11 players left.

At this point, I just figured phuckit, and I started stealing like crazy. I steal-raised allin almost every single time the action folded around to me for a long span, literally pushing in five times out of 10 consecutive hands here:











Even despite all this stealing, I could barely stay ahead of the advancing blinds, and when the 10th place player finally busted out, here I was at the RC final table, still in last place:



With me still in last place and nowhere near the leaders at this final table, I did what I know best and just continued stealing and playing like a maniac with a bunch of marginal hands but in spots where I felt I could get maximal leverage and would have maximal fold equity. So, for example, I did the allin raise-the-limpers move here with a very marginal hand that is likely behind if I get called, and not possibly far ahead even if it's not behind:



Everyone folded, and I chipped up a bit. Then, over the next 12 consecutive hands, I once again steal-raised allin in 6 of them:













It was purely ridiculous, really, but somehow once again I failed to get called in any of these, some of which I am obviously going down and out of the tournament if anyone steps up with the call. At break #2, I found myself in 4th place out of 7 runners left (top 4 would get paid) thanks to all this stealing, but take a look at twoblackaces' stack there in first place:



So we all knew we had our work cut out for us, especially with that huge stack sitting in the corner of tba who has been on quite a blonkament run recently. Luckily for me, early in Hour 3, I was dealt AQ and AJ in rapid succesion, was able to raise one and reraise the other, both allin once again, and win both before the flop. This gave me a bit of breathing room at least as the blinds advanced to 300-600 with a 75-chip ante, leaving most of the bottom of the field with an M of 6 or fewer. Making our task all the more fun was this hand, when tba's pocket Queens held up against AK in the hands of the second place chip stack, giving tba an even sicker stack:



There you can see tba holding over 60k of the 84k total chips in play, with an incredible 7 times (more than 7 times, actually) my second-place chip stack with five players remaining. That right there is a sick, sick beating, one that would require a lot of luck for any of us to have any chance of coming back. I got some of that luck though pretty quickly once we got down to 5-handed, as first Pirate Wes pushed into me with ATC based purely on position, and I was lucky to wake up with a big hand and called:



And then just a couple of hands later, snarf pushed allin from utg and on a short stack, a move which I do not tend to trust and I therefore called his allin for a third of my stack with my A7o, and got lucky once again to both be ahead and to hold up on a 62% or so hand I would estimate:



These two-high-cards-vs-two-low-cards or one-high-one-low-vs-two-middle-cards types of hands, all coming in as somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% favorites, end up being probably the single biggest determinants of how an aggressive player like myself ends up in the blonkaments. No way anyone can completely avoid these types of showdowns as the blinds climb and everyone is pushing from all directions, and when you're in there as much as I am, clash is inevitable, so I really lucked out in these two spots to get two smaller players' stack sizes added to mine as we moved through the bubble and into 3-handed play. Chip stacks were around 63k for tba, 15k for me and 8k for DDionysus. Still lots of work to do, and since I could literally not care any less about third, second or even first place money in the Riverchasers but instead care only about winning the thing outright, I just went right back to overpushing allin almost every time I perceived myself to be ahead, regardless of the amount of chips in the pot.

Examples:



And here is one of my better moments from the RC this week:



Again with the allin over-raise. I just didn't feel like negotiating stack sizes and planning my bet amounts accordingly when I was this far out of first place. In this particular situation, commented asked in chat that I must not have an Ace to make a bet like that (I had raised preflop). I responded with "so clever", which I immediately regretted in fear that he would call because of it, but mercifully he folded and I got to show my third and final hammer of the day:



Still well less than half of tba's stack, but at least I was creeping back little by little. All that was wrecked though when tba took out DDionysus a few hands later, leaving me heads-up with 24k in chips against tba's 60k. I can't stand when I am at a chip deficit and then 1st place takes out 3rd place instead of me in 2nd place taking out 3rd place, but that's what happened last night. If I could have offed DDionysus instead of tba, then we would have been very close to begin the heads-up portion of the tournament, but instead all my work disappeared as I was right back to less than 2-to-1 in chips when #1 took out #3 himself.

Still at the big chip disadvantage, I opted to continue not considering stack sizes or bet sizes and instead to just overpush every time I thought I was ahead or could generate a fold. Not sure how else you can overcome a chip deficit like I was facing, especially against a solid player like tba, without just brazenly pushing him around and hoping I can get him to make a mistake, so that's exactly what I tried to do. The only thing I had going for me was that I know that secretly tba really likes winning the blonkaments just like I do, so I figured he would likely play a bit tight with the chip lead here in an attempt to preserve his surplus and his chances of winning with a big hand. Thus, I stole and pushed all over the place once again:







(this one I wanted to make appear stealy like all the others after I had been stealing so much through not just the shorthanded portion but really the entirety of this tournament).





Every one of the above hands drew a fold from tba, whom I believe I was right, he was in fact trying to preserve his lead more than many of the other bloggers out there likely would have. Finally after this last hand, tba typed "ok hoy" into the chat, indicating I figured that he was tired of being bullied and it was time to play some pokah. Me likey. And me likey even more when the shit set up exactly how I wanted, as just one or two hands after tba's "ok hoy" comment saw me hit a huge turn card to make the ignorant end of a straight on the board. I raised:



and then tba surprised me by pushing allin on the reraise:



I gave it quite a bit of thought here but eventually decided, still at a chip deficit, that the possibilities for tba holding top pair, two pairs or most likely some combination of a straight draw and something else were just too great for me to fold here. I definitely feared a higher straight a little bit, but I had to make the decision here at crunch time with so much of my smaller stack already invested in the pot and with the turn card having made me a pat hand unlike a lot of the hands I envisioned in tba's reraising range given his frustration at my recent bullying. So I made the call and I saw this:



I avoided a few outs and suddenly I had a 76k to 10k chip lead. When tba pushed in his last 10k on the very next hand, I thought it over and opted to call with Q9s. It was not my best move, but I literally had tba on ATC here, and my Q9s is ahead of the average starting holdem hand, and the sootedness put it over the edge for me. I am nothing if not a soooted donk of course. Anyways I proved to be up against T7s, a decent call for me after all given the stack sizes involved, and mr. sooooted donk himself hit a flush on the turn to Take It Down:



Wooohoooooo!



At the end of the day, the $130 and change I won from this, my sixth or seventh lifetime Riverchasers victory, almost completely covered what I lost playing these recockulous 300-chip super turbo sngs newly available on full tilt on the night. If you like turbo poker, that shit is like crack right there.

OK that's all for today. The RC victory will take precedence over the continuation to the early-tournament drawing hand I profiled on Thursday, which I will get right back to on Monday because I think it generated some good discussion and analysis as usual. Until then, don't forget Kat's donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt, password as always is "donkarama". Not sure if I make it out for that today or not, but as always I will be there at least in spirit. Have a great weekend everybody.

Chips Donking to Me Left and Right

I had another deep run and fun time in the Riverchasers last night, a tournament which I have historically performed very well in although I doubt I have final tabled it since my last RC win in mid-January of this year. After a red-hot January, my February and March in blogger tournaments only brought a total I think of two blonkament victories -- one Dookie and one Donkament -- and since the BBT3 has arrived I had been on a real cold streak, blonkament-wise, even while running red hot in my mtt play generally for part of that time. After basically a month with no BBT3 cashes whatsoever, on Wednesday this week I got set up repeatedly along the way to a 4th place finish, sort of out of nowhere after a long string of BBT3 tournament flameouts. And now on Thursday, I final tabled the BBT3 for back-to-back nights with a 6th place finish in this week's Riverchasers. The total cashes from the two final tables brings my cumulative BBT3 winnings to nearly $1200 I believe, which I am very pleased with overall, and hopefully can continue the confidence boost I've been on this whole week ever since taking on those ftp "pros" to end a nearly poker-free weekend at the Hammer household.

Like my performance in the Mookie on Wednesday, my Riverchasers run on Thursday saw me jump out to a nice chip lead around the middle of the tournament, and hold on to that lead pretty much all the way till around time for the final table. Unfortunately, also like the Mookie earlier this week, I did not actually play all that well in the RC. In the Mookie I basically got AK > AQ allin preflop early and otherwise waited until Push Time began and I got better cards than my short, desperate opponents in better position than them, repeatedly. In the RC it was a little different, in that I was not picking up the premium starting cards but I did manage to channel me some of this guy as I flopped and turned nut straights and nut flushes a couple of times early. And the funniest thing was, people were paying me off like it was their jobs, even worse than usual for me.

It all started early in the tournament, probably fewer than ten hands in or so, when muhctim called off half his deep early stack on the turn when I made the nut flush with my A9s, and then the other half of his stack on the river. I showed my nut flush and the pot shipped to me, but unfortunately the table shut down immediately after that hand and I never got to see what muhctim actually had. He wasn't playing it like a made flush, so I am thinking it had to be maybe top two pairs, or maybe even a set? I don't know, but I jumped from 3000 to 6000 chips almost immediately in the tournament after making the nut flush with A9 of clubs.

Not too soon later I jumped up to 9k early without really having any decisions to make myself when scottymc raised the 50 blinds up to 200 from early position with what turned out to be TT. Mrs. Cracknaces called the 200-chip bet before the flop, which gave me the impetus to call as well out of the small blind with my 66. The flop came down a very pretty 346. Scott bet out, at which point I had him on an overpair of some kind or maybe AK, and I started thinking how can I possibly get all of his chips on this hand? I know Scott is a thinking player, and yet aggressive when necessary, and I figured he would probably lay down a hand like 77 (the hand I actually was envisioning for him as this was all going on) to any sizeable raise from me, period. Scott has repeatedly shown himself one to think very seriously about calling off his stack early with just one pair. So, I figured I had little chance of winning a big pot in this case, but that just in case he maybe had Aces or something, I would minraise, which I never normally do. Scott's spidey senses immediately started tingling, which I figured they would, and he typed into the chatbox "set?". Now I like scotty, and I figured it might be fun to mess around with the chat a lil' bit, so I responded "yes". Scott almost instantly pushed allin on the reraise then. I definitely thought for a few seconds, thinking I had been pokerstars'ed with Scott's 57 or some shit like that for the flopped straight, but he flipped up his pocket Tens and I held for another full stack pop on a hand that largely played itself.

Fast forward maybe 45, 50 minutes or so, and I am I think the #2 stack in the entire tournament still, with this player AUS-Package or something like that who I recall seeing once or twice before sitting at my table to my immediate right, with the largest stack in the tournament. He was just a few chips higher than me, but basically the two of us were something like twice the third place player's chips, in a league all of our own here still early in the Riverchasers. Shortly after sitting down with him, this guy forced me to play a huge pot with him and take his entire stack to give me a huge mountain of chips in a hand that I still can't believe played out the way it did. Remember here we are the two prohibitively largest stacks in the tournament at this point when the hand went down. Basically I think the flop came down Ten-high, maybe something like T93 rainbow or so. The hand had checked around before the flop and I think I was in the big blind to his small blind, so I was in there with some garbage hand like Q8o with nothing but a gutshot on the flop. He checked and I checked behind, neither of us indicating any strength at this point in the hand. Then the turn miraculously made my inside straight, and with nothing but two of a suit on the board I was holding the nuts. Then AUS led out for roughly the size of the pot into my nuts. I paused to figure out wtf he might have, figured he is just making a move with nothing, and so I raised him on the flop, but only 3x his bet. With our two huge stacks we both probably had around 15k at the start of the hand, and AUS's bet on the turn was 600, and I think I raised him to 1800 straight. He instantly pushed allin for 15k in chips. Into me, holding the turned nuts. I instacalled with the nuts and his AT, one pair of Tens, was drawing dead at the river, giving me a monster pot and a massive chip lead. For those of you who looked at the leaderboard during most of the middle part of the tournament, this is how I got 33k early when second place had like 13k in chips. Like I said, people were just throwing their chips at me all night long, giving me no choice but to accept them as I mostly just sat around waiting for shit to come to me.

Lastly there was bonedaddy, who gave me my last large pot of the night with a hand that really could not possibly be ahead. I will purposefully butcher this hand history because I know it bothers bonedaddy, but I guess I raised preflop holding QQ or some other nice pocket pair, and he called me from around back in I think a heads-up pot. The flop came Jack high, a few seconds later he was calling my allin with his? J9. I remember being confused because I thought bonedaddy had some kind of performance-based bet with others on the BBT3 tournaments? This one must not have been included or something.

I should probably mention what happened between myself and Evy when there were probably around 20 players left in the tournament, because it was pretty sick and was another great example of me being handed huge piles of chips without really doing much of anything. At one point I got all in with AJ i think on JTx flop. I bet the flop, Evy thought for a while and called. The turn brought a rag, and I read Evy's pause and smooth call on the flop for weakness, so I pushed alliin, which she insta-called with TT for the flopped set, and I lost half my stack and my chip lead all in one fell swoop.

But no sooner had I moved beyond this hand that a few hands later with Evy, we got it allin preflop once again, and I got to proudly show my KK as she even more proudly showed her AA. But then a King on the flop and I sucked out mercilessly against her. What can ya do. Funny enough, I had a nice stack going in the pokerstars 5050 last night as well when I lost it all with my KK vs AA allin preflop. That's poker, right? I've lost AA to KK more times than I've won it this year for sure, so I can't feel too bad though I did not want to do that to Evy or anyone else in the tournament.

Unfortunately, my streak of just lucking bass ackwards into chips ended abruptly after the fateful Evy hand. I lost three favorite hands in the final 40 minutes of play for a total of about 60k in chips between them, all of which were between 59 and 69% favorites when the money got in. Eventually as my stack dwindled from these losses, I open-pushed A6 from late position and got instacalled by AK in the big blind (sound familiar?). I called shorty Alan's push with my 77 as second-shorty left at the final table, he flipped up K4s but hit his K on flop, taking most of my remaining stack in the process. Then in an attempt to "get Alan back" I called his allin raise of me from his big blind vs my small blind with my killer 95o. I did not hit, and IGH in 6th place on the night. I saw this moring that Alan went on to win the whole thing, wtg.

So that was my week in blonkaments. I missed the MATH while I was at the Yankees game, I was out early again in Skills, and then I came away with 4th place in the Mook and 6th in the Riverchasers. Yeah you can look at the fact that an hour or two before the tournament ended I had a big stack going, but looking at it from the larger picture, this was a great week for me, confidence-wise if nothing else. For the first time since the BBT3 began, I actually can tell myself I will win a BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat and not know I am just messing around. I need to get back in the final table blogger groove, as two days in a row now I have made it to the final table with a nice stack only to see it frittered away on steals and resteals gone bad, and a couple of hero calls that simply could not hold up when I needed them to. So it's been a nice enjoyable and confidence-inspiring week for me if nothing else. Something I may try to take to the latest donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt. Password as always is "donkarama". Perhaps I will see you there.

Oh, actually I also won a seat on Thursday night into the Friday night 9pm ET Bracelet Race on full tilt. This is the $216 buyin tournament that pays out the 2k prize packages to preliminary WSOP events, and last night I won a $26 buyin satellites that had 60 players and awarded seats to the top 5 finishers, where I was chipleader for the entire last 75 minutes or so and never had any stress at all about lasting to the seat winners. So if I am around, I may try to play that event, but if not I will unregister and just keep the $T for a later try at the big time.

Another Fun Night, and the Bracelet Races are Back!

Thursday was an interesting day for me poker-wise. As you know if you read here with any regularity, my Thursday nights basically consist of anticipating Lost, watching Lost and then thinking about Lost. I am completely mesmerized by that show and although it is once again seemingly changing the entire direction of the show this year, they are once again pulling it off well. Anyways, so the plan as on most Lost Thursdays, is that I simply do not log on to the pc until 10pm ET or so after we catch up on the DVR at the end by starting it at 9:20 and then skipping through all the commercials.

This week I opted to do something just slightly different from that. Figuring that the buyin is a mere $11 in the face of a nice heater I am on here, and given that it is the BBT and all with the Tournament of Champions seat up for grabs, and since after all the Riverchasers is the tournament that I dominate above all others, I decided to play in the RC but adopt an unusual strategy. Since as I mentioned Hammer Wife and I don't usually start Lost up until around 20 past the hour on the DVR, I figured I would play a few hands of the RC when it starts, and just make sure that I either double up or bust out when it's time to watch Lost. If I doubled, then I could sit out the rest of the hour for Lost and then jump back in for Hour 2 in not too bad of shape. It's not the first time I've done this, and it has actually worked for me a few times over the past couple of years. This week, it did not. I ended up eating a late dinner with Hammer Wife and didn't even sit down to the Riverchasers until about 9:15pm ET. I maybe played 3 or 4 hands, just waiting for any two high cards to push with in the 5 minutes I knew I had to play, and ended up reraising allin preflop with A4o. Big Slick made the easy call and IGH. Them's the breaks, I knew what I was doing, and I noticed that the guy I donked my stack to did not end up winning the tournament despite briefly having the chip lead when down to two tables remaining.

And before I forget, congratulations so swimmom95 who took down this week's Riverchasers and the latest BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat. When I shut it down with around two tables remaining, Lucko was getting into position with a top-5 stack and I thought for sure he would be a force at the end, but of course no one is a match for swimmom in these things. So far the ToC is shaping up to have all kinds of different playing styles. Good times.

So I started my Thursday poker later than usual due to Lost, and, not feeling up to another late-night marathon mtt session, I ended up running a bunch of sitngos. Those $55 and $110 turbos that I've been loving for a while. My recent mtt success has made it very easy for me to focus primarily on the $110 level turbo sngs without fear of significantly depleting my roll, and I have to say so far I am definitely winning at this level. Most of the players simply do not understand strong turbo sng play, period. So I ran a bunch of sitngos, starting with a 6-max $55 turbo sng where the top two players win roughly $250 and $150 respectively. So we're down to three-handed and it was a pretty tight race between the three of us, making for some fun bubble play. I must have allin raised with ATC four times in a row from my small blind against the big bling, and after the fourth or fifth time he types in this:



"Next time you do that I am calling and taking you out."

Why? Why would you ever say this? I mean, does anything show total and complete tilt and just throwing up your hands and giving up than telling someone you will autocall them the next time they push on you? It's highlarious, and to a guy like me it makes my entire night better to even see him feeling and speaking this way. I love it. So I fugged with the guy back n forth for another minute or two in the chatbox, and on the very next small blind to me, I pick up this hand:



So of course I instapush again and type him some chat designed to belittle him further. And the pussy folds, even after proclaiming he would call and eliminate me the very next time I did this. I let him have it good. And then to make matters worse, on my very next small blind I pick up this hand:



I taunted him appropriately again in the chat before I pushed in here, and he instacalled me with?



Booom! Taunting and then getting the cards to back it up is one of the best feelings in poker. Especially when you're sitting at a table full of puds. Four hands later, I won the sng and the $217 or whatever it is. Later I would win a $110 9-person turbo sng outright for $495, I would fail to cash in two other sngs at the $55 and $110 level, and then I ended the night by defeating a guy in a $110 hu plo turbo sng. Good times, and total profit on the night from sngs: $478. I'll take it.

At some point near the end of the night, I even sat down at my old stomping grounds, the 2-4 6max nlh tables on full tilt for a little cash nlh action. First time I've played online cash nlh other than with bloggers since I rediscovered sitngos maybe 4 or 5 months ago. It was fun to crack back out the cash skillz for the first time in a long time, and I played one hand in particular that I would love your thoughts on.

So middle position at our 6-person 2-4 table limps in for $4. It folds back to me in the small blind, where I have KQo. I limp for the half-bet, and the big blind checks his option to bring us a 3-way flop. I checked, figuring someone else would be out and I could raise and take it down here or figure out if I am somehow beat. The big blind bets out $12, the size of the pot, and then the middle postion limper minraises him up to $24:



What do you do here?

I opted to smooth call. I reasoned I'm only beat by one or two specific hands, neither one of which is indicated by the 3-way limped pot preflop, but I was a little spooked by the bet, the raise and then the overcall behind my call on the flop.

Then the turn card came a harmless-looking 7:



Now how do you play it?

As you can see, I checked again. I just think given that I had already checked the first time around, it only made sense to check again here to not one but two players who had made aggressive moves on the flop. And here is what the big blind did:



Now what? Am I assuming I am ahead and just pushing here? Or do I know I will empty out on the river so maybe add a little deception by just check-calling here? Should I be worrying about being beaten? What's the best move, cash gamers?

I will post the results of this cash game hand later after some people have provided their comments.

Anyways, overall it was another good day on the poker front. I ended up a few hundy after all was said and done, and I had a really fun time doing it as well. I just keep trying to appreciate this good streak while it lasts. I mean even cash was fun for me, which is not something I would have said by the end of last year.

Oh one other thing, something that I consider to be Big News: the Bracelet Races are back on full tilt! That's right, the first Bracelet Races ran on Thursday afternoon, with already three winners of the 2k WSOP preliminary event prize packages. Although as I have mentioned previously the suspense is gone this year in that I easily have the roll to fund a trip to play a preliminary event or two in this year's WSOP, I still do plan to try to win as many of the Bracelet Races as I can. The first accessible tournament for me is a $216 buyin Bracelet Race that takes place Friday night at 9pm ET, same time as le donkament. I have won a $216 Bracelet Race satellite in each of the past two years, and generally speaking the larger-buyin BR sats are a great tournament structure for me, personally. So I'm looking forward to that, and I encourage each and every one of you to try to get yourself into as many of the Bracelet Race tournaments as you can play. If you love poker like I do, then once you've played at the actual World Series of Poker in the Rio you will never want to miss it again.

Have a great weekend everybody. Lost kicked ass again, did it not?

Riverchasers Win #5

So this Thursday night I was back to my favorite blonkament stomping grounds other than maybe my own MATH tournament -- the weekly Thursday night Riverchasers event. I won four of these RC tournaments in 2007, plus at least another two 2nd place finishes (one to the 12-year-old button masher that I still remember like it was yesterday), and lately I have been on another good streak here with two cashes in my last three appearances. For 2008 Al and Riggstad and crew have decided to make the Riverchasers a weekly instead of biweekly tournament on full tilt, and to alternate between nlh and a rotation of non-nlh games on a weekly basis. This week's selection was Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo 8 or better, or O8.

Although I know and have studied well how to play O8, I have been very vocal that it is actually my least favorite form of all the poker variants. Sometimes it seems like razz is taking that title away from O8 with me, but in general like razz I guess I just find the game a little bit too simple (not to win, but to play), mostly due to the fact that if you're dealt A2 in your hand you often don't need to do anything other than just sit and call call call to win half the pot. Now don't get me wrong, I understand that it doesn't work quite like that and I know that is an oversimplication there, but for example I've been playing Stud Hilo in the casinos of Atlantic City since I was a teenager and I've always loved the split aspects of that game because the low is going to be awarded to the best low hand that develops during the hand, not to the person who is dealt the two lowest cards in the deck to start the hand.

Anyways, I digress -- my point is, I've played a lot of O8 in my day, it's something that I have won a little bit at, including satellites and an occasional 1- or 2-table sitngo at most. I've definitely never won an O8 tournament of the size of the 44 runners showed up to play the first time I can recall the Riverchasers setting up an O8 event this week. Thank god it was at least PLO8 and not regular limit O8, which I find just increases the donkery to almost intolerable levels for me personally.

So the tournament started off slow for me as usual, as I went down a bit early, losing first a small pot with rivered top two pairs to a rivered straight, and then another smallie when I chased an oesd on the flop and folded after missing it on the turn. But I quickly got back to near even on this allin call by me preflop against a super short stack who had lost about 90% of his stack already in a previous hand, I think to Gracie who hit some huge ones early:



I didn't run the math here but I have to figure those two hands are pretty close to even allin before the flop.

About four hands later I had my first big hand I made all night, when I turned two pairs Kings over Eights and then rivered a boat with no low possible. But, I still managed to funk that one up by checking the river from up front after three opponents had all called me on the turn, hoping for and expecting a bet from at least someone so I could either raise or call depending on how many overcallers seemed likely. My river check proved to be a big mistake, as noone out of my three opponents bet out at the end. Still, the hand got me back over 3000 chips for the first time since the opening hand of the tournament.

I won my first sizeable pot I scooped on the night right here against Waffles which I think always at least doubles the intrinsic worth of the chips involved:



Basically I made a fourth pair (3s) to go along with my second pair (Kings) on the river on a hand where I was sure Waffles was playing with nothing much, so I bet out 300 into the 600-chip pot, which Waffles clearly knew was a suck bet from his chatbox commentary and yet still went on to call. That is always good, although I'm still glad I did not bet more because 2nd and 4th pair is basically not a strong hand in Omaha games, even in O8 without a low on the board, and I figured I could be beat pretty easily if I wasn't careful. In the end Waffles called with just top pair, which is most definitely not gold in Omaha, but I guess he doesn't trust my plays any more than anybody else does so for once it worked out for me there and got me up over 3800 chips for my largest stack of the day about 25, 30 minutes in to the Riverchasers.

I had another big pot about 30 minutes in or so when I flopped this big wrap straight draw on a board with no low draw looming on the flop:



So here, any 8, Ten, Jack or King would make me a straight, so I checked with the intention of checkraising the short stack on my right who I figured more or less had to bet strong given the size of the pot and his stack. He did bet, I checkraised and Waffles folded, which was doubly good because I had less to worry about a heart draw in just the short-stack heads up pot. Turns out the short stack had just AA and an inside straight draw to the Ten, taking away three of my outs unbeknownst to me. The turn and the river came running Kings and I won my biggest pot of the night to that point. The Omaha odds calculator said I was 35% to win on the flop given that my Tens were not outs, but my 2-to-1 underdog hand held up and I was off to the races with just over 6000 chips.

Then at this point something I found to be incredible happened. Perennial Riverchaser and dominant poker player in her own right Lori (Donkette) proclaimed in the chatbox that I was going to win the whole thing. It was way early, I was up to 4th place at the time out of I think 38 players still remaining. Waffles responded with "I bet he doesn't", and that was where Donkette offered to bet on it. To my dismay she bet Waffles $20 straight up that I would win the tournament. Not final table, not cash, and no odds were requested by Donkette or even discussed. She just straight-up bet Waffles $20 that I would win the tournament outright, which he was of course all too happy to oblige. This is a complete insane bet by any standards and one that should have to get mega odds given the unlikelihood of any one person winning, the fact that were were a full 38 players still remaining, and the fact that I wasn't even in the top 3 at the time of the bet, but there it was. $20 straight up on me to win. Now if that ain't confidence, then I don't know what is. The pressure was on. Inspired by the confidence and support of one of the finest poker players Riverchasers has to offer, I set out to make Donkette proud.

The first step to this was, of course, eliminating Waffles from the tournament, which happened maybe 15 minutes later or so when I flopped another middle pair plus a wrap draw, which I raised on the flop with what I figured was a whole boatload of outs:



Unbeknownst to me, Waffles had actually flopped top set here with a pair of Jacks in his hand, but with all those outs I had going there was no way I could be planning on so many redraw outs for Waffles. In reality, here were the odds on the flop, if I had known Waffles' actual holecards:



So he's basically a 71-39 favorite over me with the made set and redraws to several boats, but I thought I was sitting on a pile of outs so I played it strong. Waffles just smooth called my flop raise, playing it trappy on a straightening board. When my nut straight filled on the turn, I checkraised Waffles allin (minus 1 chip of course -- just an accident of course):



And in the end:



Waffles no boat, and he goes home early. Insert Donkette cackling in the chatbox. Now I am back up to 4th place of 34 left, and when the first break came a few minutes later, I entered Hour 2 in 5th of 30 players remaining and feeling good about my game and once again by the repeated chatbox support from Donkette, one of the finest poker players in any of the blonkaments and an excellent judge of poker talent at that.

I won a nice pot early in Hour 2 when stb chased just a nut low draw with A2 and 34x on the board by betting on the flop, again on the turn when no low hit, and then even betting out on the river with just the missed low draw. I would have had to fold the river but I was lucky enough to make trip 10s and figured it was good for one more call against a guy who I figured might just bet the missed draw there given a somewhat short stack. But even here I had gone runner-runner on the turn and river with my two Tens to make trips, so I was very lucky to survive in this pot and really keep intact a streak that lasted through the entire tournament for me where I really did not lose a huge pot all night long, thanks in very large pot to some lucky cards for me. I played I think pretty well in the tournament, but I flopped a lot of big draws and was lucky enough to outrun some long odds and even record a couple of massive suckouts along the way to get to the end.

Around this time I laid down AAxx on the flop in two consecutive hands when I failed to improve. Laying down Aces in Omaha high is a crucial skill and one that will absolutely crush you if you insist on playing them all the way to the river when they don't improve and there is any significant action on the flop. But failing to lay them down in O8 is complete tournament suicide since you're splitting the pot with the low hand half the time on top of your unimproved Aces not holding up to win very often. There were a few of these on the night but I just wanted to illustrate that I was using some of my general Omaha skills as well along the way here.

I had some nice foreshadowing about halfway through the second hour when I doubled up Pirate Wes by getting him allin on his short stack with my A2Q8 with three hearts. He had raised and I determined that my hand was good enough to push into a shorty, which in retrospect was a bad decision. He called me with A22x, hit a 2 on the turn and stayed alive while about a sixth of my stack disappeared. Grrrrr, but I would be clashing again with Wes soon enough.

Interestingly, I decided to follow some advice I have received from some other bloggers as well as a few books on O8 over the years and I dont think I raised preflop once the entire night in this thing except when trying to isolate against a shorty but not based on my strong starting cards, which seemed to continually work to my advantage. I may have raised an AA2x hand one time but that has to be about it. As I said, this is a more recent strategy for me, after reading Lyle Berman and Ray Zee's thoughts on Omaha and O8, essentially to the effect that there is just not much worth raising preflop in an Omaha tournament without a specific reason to be doing so. So I didn't, and instead I limped almost every hand I played or smooth called someone else's raise before the flop except against shorties, and this worked greatly for me all through the second hour of O8 on Thursday night.

I made the first move that might have been a real mistake in the tournament a short while later, when I decided to push strong with a pot-reraise preflop with A22K, all different suits here:



I would rather be suited to the Ace here, or have a higher pair than deuces, but at the time I sensed some kind of weakness and thought with an Ace and two 2s in my hand there probably were not real strong low draws in my opponents' hands as well. It was probably not the best move in O8, especially when I completely whiffed the flop:



But I did a little move that worked for me several times on the night and only bet half the pot as you can see above. I figured I had nothing but did not want to give up into this massive pot, and that maybe I would get lucky and Gracie would be on a low draw after all, or a double-pocket-pair hand or something. I needed a fold obviously since I didn't have shiat, so I figured that a halfpot bet might seem more like I wanted a call so I could milk some more chips into the pot with a monster hand. Of course this could totally backfire if Gracie had been the one who had flopped a monster hand, but I got lucky and she folded to this bet, giving me my biggest stack of the tournament to that point.

Probably my biggest hand of the tournament occurred shortly before the end of Hour 2, and as with most of the large pots I won in this thing, it occurred when I flopped yet another very big draw. I had called a preflop raise from heffmike with a high-only hand, but that's a move I'll do on occasion with a big enough stack and against another big stack to see if I can flop to it huge, and in the end I think I flopped about as big of a draw as you can possibly flop in Omaha:



So I had a big wrap straight draw, with any 5(4), 7(3), 8(3), T(3) or J(4) making me a straight, plus a flush draw that had only four higher diamonds available to outflush me anyways, and in a heads-up pot again the higher flush didn't seem like much to worry about in any event. So the flush outs added 6 more outs to the 17 straight outs I already figured I had, giving me a total of 23 outs twice, which was enough for me to push as hard as possible, eventually getting it allin against another of the largest stacks left in the entire tournament -- we were down to just two tables at this point in the event.

As with an earlier hand with Waffles, it turned out that heffmike was holding the nut flush draw, eliminating all of my flush outs, and with some backdoor low and straight draws in there, I somehow was still behind on this flop as shown on the Omaha odds calculator here:



So I was about a 55-45 underdog at this point on the flop, though even at the time when the cards were flipped I figured myself to be probably more like a 55-60% favorite, but those backdoor outs plus I guess the Ace overcard in heffmike's hand really cut against me. Nonetheless, I lucked out and won the biggest race of the entire tournament thanks to very friendly turn and river cards here:



This pot propelled me way into first place with just 14 players remaining:



and with Donkette still cheering hard and clearly believing in me from the rail, I knew I had to do whatever it took to take this biatch down.

Then commenced my only real spate of card-death in the entire night's tournament, where I probably went close to 30 minutes without seeing beyond a flop or getting involved in any big pots. I still managed to maintain my chip lead with a few preflop and flop steals of small pots, but only barely. I also called daiwee's short stack allin preflop push with a small rundown of 4567 with the 4 and 5 soooted, and managed to outrun his KKxx hand to maintain my spot in first place as we inched down towards the Riverchasers O8 final table.

Just a few spots away from the final table, I faced this situation against aggro shorty SoxLover and fairly tight player IslandBum1 after I had over-limped with A23K rainbow:



With the A2, the counterfeit protection of the 3, the straight potential with the A23 and the AK-high in my hand, I figured this was strong enough for pot-reraise against Sox, who would clearly push but is highly aggro and thus did not have as strong of a range, and that tighty IslandBum1 would likely fold:



Unfortunately tighty IslandBum1 pushed allin after Sox's allin push, and at that point I felt priced in for 10k more into a 40k pot with A2 and AK and the extra low card in my hand. I think I had to call at this point based on pot odds alone but I was not exactly optimistic about my chances having seen the action in front of me from both players:



Yuck! So I was up against another A2 and an A3, both counterfeited in my own hand, plus a suited Ace for Sox and AA for IslandBum. Not good. Here's the numbers on the three-way allin push in this spot so that you can see the ugliness for yourselves:



So this is a pretty close one in the end, with me in third place heading into the flop but in a fairly tight 38% - 35% - 27% race to see who would enter the final table on a huge huge stack. Somehow, I pulled through again:



BOOOOOOoooooooom! Now here is me entering the final table as the massive chip leader, in a game that I am still not convinced a whole lot of the people in the Riverchasers this week had much experience in, so I was in good shape here:



From here the action went pretty fast, much faster than I thought given that the blinds were still somehow low relative to the number of chips in the remaining stacks. I busted dino_burger first at the final table when my AAxx held up to best his KKxx and a short stack. I stole and raised pretty recklessly with my bullystack, but never into huge pots where I could really get hurt by a reraise, and when we were down to 6 players remaining I had managed to increase my lead considerably still to 73k for me and 18k for second place as we sat on the money bubble.

Unfortunately, I did not see many good starting hands or hit many flops for a while at this point, which gave Pirate Wes, still alive after my gratuitous doubling of his short stack an hour or so earlier, a chance to bust some people and build up a stack to compete with mine. As the money bubble broke, I was still sitting on 70k in chips but Wes had claimed second place with 23k and five players remaining.

Another of those easy laydowns here with AAxx on a flop where I was checkraised, even by a much smaller stack than my own:



Down to four players remaining, with riggstad and donkeypuncher as shorties, Wes was starting to play a little tighter again before the flop, which I read to mean that he had started getting fewer good hands. So I was able to resume the bullying, stealing some pots preflop and on the flop, but always had to worry about one of the two desperate shorties with a quarter of even Wes's stack and less than 20% of my own pushing in on me in a spot where I did want to give anything back as Wes was slowly building his 2nd place pile o' chips.

About 10 minutes after 5th place was eliminated, riggstad raised preflop and I put him allin with my KK63 with one King soooted:



Although Jim was holding A2xx with the Ace soooted, I was still a slight favorite here in yet another race:



and I pulled it out to bring us down to three remaining players:



I am well aware that if I lose that 53-47 favorite in a race in that spot, I am quite possibly not winning this tournament given that Wes continued to amass over on my left. Meanwhile, a few hands later saw Wes eliminate donkeypuncher in third place when Wes's A345 bested DP's KK24, each with one soooted pair of low cards, bringing myself and Pirate Wes, whom I had doubled up from allin with a short stack earlier in the tournament, to heads up play with me at about an 81k to 50k chip lead:



At this point I knew I had to win this thing. I care quite a bit about winning blonkaments, I have proclaimed as much here in the blog and it is something I choose to expend my effort and energies doing because I enjoy it more than just about any other poker that I play online. And more than that, I cared about not letting down Donkette. Donkette, who comes out and gives it her all and kicks ass every single night at the tables, who had brazenly laid $20 on the line on me at impossible odds a few hours earlier and I felt I owed her this.

In the end, both Wes and I each had what I would consider to be one real bad hand apiece in heads-up play, and both cost us pretty bad. Wes had been playing his usual tight brand of poker, enabling me to steal a lot of pots both before and after the flop, but it also got me used to betting out quite a bit and in the end I got nailed when I was forced to lay down this hand:



Basically I had flopped bottom two pairs here with 87 in my hand, and I had bet it strong because you dont slowplay two pairs in O8 as far as I'm concerned, and especially because I had been betting a lot of weak hands on the flop on bullysteals, and betting your stronger hands as well is really the only way you can protect this sort of bullying behavior. I had put Wes on an Ace when he called my potbet on the flop, and on the turn as you can see another Ace came, with the pot already at nearly 58,000 in chips. Even scarier, Wes, whom I had already put on an Ace in his hand, then proceeded to check the turn. I checked behind, not trusting that check one little bit, and when he instabet allin on the river I felt sure I was beat by the trip Aces so I folded, annoyedly. Although I definitely think that was a fairly easily correct laydown there on the river, this hand cost me my chip lead, leaving me down suddenly in chips around 85k to 45k.

After a brief comment to Donkette on the rail not to give up on me yet after what proved to be my one really bad hand of the heads-up match, I went right back to resuming stealing, folding whenever Wes raised preflop or on the flop, and slowing it down as much possible whenever Wes called. This worked, and I avoided running into any monsters for the rest of the heads-up session.

Then I flopped another draw -- this time just a plain vanilla oesd plus some backdoor crap on a shitty board, after Wes had raised it up preflop, one of his only preflop raises of the heads-up session. This made me think Wes had AA or KK or something, all of which he would have to lay down to my giant reraise here for just about all my chips:



Unfortunately, Wes called my allin pretty quick here, but in the end he made the call with just top pair Jacks and an inside straight draw. This is not the kind of hand I would ever want to get it allin with, with the chip lead in the heads-up portion of an Omaha tournament, but to his credit Wes must have had a read and he was right, he had gotten in well ahead with just two cards separating him from Riverchasers victory:



So once again I am down 72% - 27% with two cards to come, even though I will say again that I do not like Wes's call in this spot with just top pair and the inside straight draw, and knowing how Wes plays, I am still surprised he made it. I mean, if I am holding any Queen, King or Ace in my hand and one of those falls, his top pair is beaten. It's not a strong hand, but he was spot-on with his read so what do I know? Anyways, in the end what I was saying above is exactly what happened -- I turned top pair Kings and took down the monster pot, giving me my biggest stack of the night and really crushing Wes's chances at winning in that spot:



At this point I knew I had to be in uber stack protection mode, and not get stooopid again, which for me included pushing too hard with two low pairs on the flop with an Ace on board like the hand in which I had lost my chiplead to Wes originally a few minutes earlier. But this is also where Wes went into protection mode with his short stack, so I could not help but attack his blind again and again. It's just in my nature I guess. When he raised, I mostly folded, but otherwise I was able to nab a full 50% of his remaining short stack that way over maybe 5, 10 minutes of the next hour after a much needed bathroom break courtesy of Magic Hat #9.

Just after the break, with me up about 8-to-1 in chips, the tournament mercifully ended when we got it allin preflop for Wes's last 13k or so in chips with my AJT5 (three hearts) against his AA97 double suited, also including hearts. I was actually only a 59% - 41% dog in this spot despite two of my Aces being in Wes's hand and with my heart draw trumped by his, thanks largely to my far superior low draw to Wes's:



and in the end my 41% hand held up as I made a wheel at the river to take it all down:



So there it was, the story of my 5th Riverchasers tournament, and the first of this year for me:



So it was $176 in cash for my efforts, in what was for sure the largest O8 tournament I have ever won. I know I have won a larger prize in multiple O8 satellites before, but it was for sure the biggest cash prize I have won in an O8 tournament, and of course when you're flopping so many big draws and winning so much from slightly behind and even on occasion from way behind, it always feel like a really fun time while playing. And I have to say, having the confidence and the support of a killer poker player like Donkette all along the way from the rail, even putting her money where her mouth is early on and taking a 20-spot from everyone's favorite Waffles, was really the thing that kept me going throughout the night in this tournament, even when I lost my chip lead for the first time in more than an hour during heads-up with Wes, who proved to be a very formidable opponent as always.

A few minutes after the tournament ended, I received a full tilt funds transfer of $10, and I looked it up and it was Donkette sending me the $10 for winning her at least $20 from Waffles (I know at one point she was trying to add another $20 on top to that bet but I do not recall whether or not that bet was offically agreed to or not by Waffles or Lori). But I did what I think was definitely the right move and promptly sent Donkette back her $10, plus $10 more on top, as a little gift of my own for her confidence boost and support in leading me to victory on this night. It really means so much to have such a gifted poker player on my side, you guys probably just wouldn't understand.

Good times, this Riverchasers. See you all at the donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt, password as always is "donkarama".