More Full Tilt Disgust

Man I could ruminate on this full tilt business forever. This morning I have two quick thoughts I've been focusing on.

For starters, take a spin around the poker blogs you read these days, and you will still see a ton of people defending full tilt against the allegations that they were a ponzi scheme. I mean, I've seen or heard like five or six well known voices in the poker blogiverse saying that exact thing over the past 36 hours or so. Never mind the fact that, during the last year of its existence, full tilt operated at a massive shortfall in actual cash of some $130 million below the amount of funds in player accounts on their site, because the site was unable to find payment processors willing and able to transfer them the cash from depositors' accounts. They never told anyone this -- went out of their way to hide it in fact -- and spent the better part of their last year as an online poker site with again a 9-figure amount of "phantom funds" that were in play on full tilt's site, but which full tilt was never able to actually collect from its players' bank accounts. As a result, the last year consisted of full tilt funding player withdrawal requests out of other players' deposits (actually, out of what was left out of other players' deposits after the 19 owners and board members took their $5-10 million a month in distributions, that is), while only maintaining a small fraction of the total player poker funds available on the site in actual cash, resulting in the figures announced from Black Friday when full tilt had $390 million of player fund obligations, but only $60 million on hand with which to pay them. The whole thing was not designed as a ponzi scheme, no -- and the system has nothing to do with the traditional pyramid-style scheme that often many ponzi schemes take the form of -- but over the past year when funding player deposits became a huge challenge for tilt, the owners and those in control simply let those funding discrepancies linger, unnoticed and unannounced, and kept their business running in the hopes that no more than 15% or so of their players would make cashout requests at once which is all it would have taken for tilt not to be able to cover the withdrawals given the Black Friday figures. By June 2011 it would have taken just 2% of players to request withdrawals of their funds on full tilt for the company not to have had the money -- anywhere -- to pay their players out. This, my friends, is basically the textbook definition of a ponzi scheme, as asserted by US district attorney Preet Bharara in the amended complain filed earlier this week. And yet, I've read in several places in the poker media this week how it was wrong to use the term "ponzi scheme" to describe the site, that full tilt was just poorly-managed but not at all a ponzi scheme, that the district attorney is just trying to use the well-known and sensationalistic term in the media to gain the upper hand against the poor site being depicted falsely, etc.

Face it guys. Full tilt quickly became a way for the owners and founders to loot their players of our cash and live their extravagant lifestyles basically for free. But when things got out of control, the powers that be knowingly and willingly turned the site into a ginormous ponzi scheme scam, and when the events of April 15, 2011 caused massive withdrawal requests from U.S. players, the proverbial shit hit the fan and the jig was up, just like when Bernie Madoff could no longer meet his own fund's withdrawal requests and was forced to turn himself in. Pay withdrawals out of other people's deposits, and never actually have close to enough money to return everyone's investment near the end -- this is how ponzi schemes almost always end, and it's the essential nature of what makes them a ponzi scheme in the first place. But my question is: Is it seriously not time yet to stop defending these pieces of shit thieves just because you like to think of some of them as your friends? Stop posting that they're being mischaracterized (they aren't), stop posting that the district attorney is lying to get the media and the public on his side (he isn't), and stop saying that this was all just an innocent business enterprise gone wrong (it wasn't).

The other thing I just can't help thinking about these past several hours is the BBT. To be honest -- and frankly I wrote about this here a few times so this is no surprise to anybody -- but after those first couple of BBT series, I never really could understand how full tilt could willingly continue forking over 30 or 40 grand a pop for these BBT series, only to see the winners repeatedly pocketing the cash and not even playing in the WSOP with the winnings, or better yet, people taking the money and going out and playing, but then never blogging one whit about the experience in the first place. Several people commented on this over time on their blogs actually -- it just seemed odd that tilt would keep coming back and offering up more and more free prizes to us, when the BBT participants as a rule pretty much consistently fucked tilt off when tilt looked to get the benefit of their bargain by someone posting publicly about the experience that full tilt enabled them to win.

Well now we know how Full Tilt "had" the money to keep "spending" on "free" stuff for us in the various BBT tournament series, don't we? Full tilt "gave" us all this "free" stuff for the BBT series, over and over again, because in the end it was our money all along that they were just giving us back a small fraction of! I mean, when you're paying yourselves $443 million over a few years out of accounts into which players have deposited $390 million but which have only $60 million left as of Black Friday, what's $150,000 spread over four BBT series to help get a bunch of poker writers to write posts that are sure to bring at least some new players to the site, thereby generating more funds which the founders could pilfer for themselves? Why not give us the money and see how much we can generate in deposits? Since it was the deposits themselves that the full tilt owners were stealing -- and just not the rake from all the participants as we had all believed when the BBT series were going on -- what on earth would possibly make these people hesitate for a second in spending $150,000 of our money -- not theirs in any sense of the word -- on prizes for us, to try to generate more deposits to allow the company to keep its fraud going for just a little while longer. That $150,000 sure seemed like a huge amount of "free" "prizes" to be giving to little old us back in the day....Doesn't seem quite so large an amount anymore these days, does it?

Full Tilt Fully Sinking In

Wow. With a day to really absorb all the latest news from Wednesday's amended complaint by the New York attorney general in the online poker ban case that, among other things, adds Howard Lederer, Jesus Ferguson, Rafe Furst and Ray Bitar to the charges, it already feels like just an amazing revelation, one that is far and away the story in the history of online poker as we know it thus far.

Long story short, yknow that bunch of the biggest poker pros we all know and (used to) love from tv -- "the Professor", "Jesus", Phil Ivey and several others -- who started full tilt poker several years ago now? Well, guess what? Turns out they were actually literally stealing money out of your and my accounts -- yes, your and my money -- and paying it mostly to themselves over a several year period, while simultaneously running the entire poker site as a massive ponzi scheme. For real. I've seen some other bloggers arguing that ponzi is not really a fair description of what happened here, but I have to differ with that view, as I'll get to.

To provide some summary details for those not inclined to read all the various press reports about the amended complaint, or the new complaint itself (which you can read in full directly from the source right here, if you're interested), here's the basic gist, with quotes directly out of CNN.com's front page coverage of this story on Tuesday, with the emphasis and brackets mine:

"The prosecutor said that, as of March 31 [2011], Full Tilt Poker owed about $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S. players. But the company only had $60 million in bank accounts to pay them back.

Full Tilt paid more than $443 million in player funds to the board of directors and other owners, with $41 million going to Bitar, $42 million going to Lederer, and nearly $12 million going to another board member, Rafael Furst.

The company paid $25 million to Ferguson, and said that it owed him another $62 million, according to the prosecutor's office, noting that much of the money was transferred to Swiss and overseas accounts."

So that's the basic gist of what happened. Over the past few years, full tilt paid 19 owners and board members more than $443 million, including 42M to the Professor, 41M to Ray Bitar, 12M to Rafe Furst, and owing over $87 million to Jesus Ferguson, having only paid out some 25M of that amount thus far. Forbes also reported that "another owner, described by the feds as a professional poker player, received at least $40 million in distributions, as well as millions of dollars more characterized as loans from Full Tilt that have only been partially repaid." This statement obviously refers to Phil Ivey, so that's another 40M+ guy to add to the list of beneficiaries of cash payouts from full tilt over the past few years.

And I'd like to call attention to the two passages above that I highlighted in bold. First is the statement directly out of the amended complaint itself that much of the money from these full tilt owners and board members was transferred to Swiss and overseas accounts. Not that this surprises me per se, but there it is pretty much right there in black and white -- these guys knew on some level what they were doing was illegal, or at least that the funds might be subject so seizure and return at some point in the future. While "blithely" (to use Preet Bharara's excellent choice of words) and repeatedly assuring players in the U.S. and around the world that our funds were "totally safe and secure" on their site, the owners of the site were busy shipping their money the fuck out of the country, to Swiss bank accounts and other countries where they felt the U.S. would have the most difficulty recovering the funds when the shit inevitably hit the fan like it turns out these guys pretty much all knew it would.

And secondly, I just want to note that the Forbes coverage refers to the $4 million in loans we've all heard about to Phil Ivey not as loans but as amounts "characterized as loans", suggesting that there is some question as to whether even that was a fair description or whether what we're really looking at is just another example of someone stealing funds to support I'm sure an excessive and certainly excessively gamblerific lifestyle, with no intention of ever actually repaying that money.

I also wanted to take a minute to discuss what really turned this from your typical run-of-the-mill corporate raiding story and into a true life poker ponzi scheme, as the US attorney alleges in the amended complaint. Read this passage, also from the CNN coverage, describing full tilt's response when over the past year or so it became increasingly difficult for full tilt to actually find payment processors willing and able to withdraw the funds from its depositors' bank accounts:

"In order to maintain its false image of financial security, Full Tilt continued to credit player accounts without disclosing its inability to fund those credits," the prosecutor said. "When players gambled with these phantom funds and lost to other players, a massive shortfall developed."

So there you have it. This happened to me multiple times by the way, where I made a small deposit onto full tilt during the final year or so it was in operation, played with those funds for several days, and then at some point a week, two weeks, even a month or so later I was informed that my deposit was never deducted from my account (which I confirmed, of course) and thus my balance was deducted for the amount I never really deposited into the site. But what if I had already lost all of that money? Where did it go? Answer: (1) into other players' accounts, and (2) into the owners' and board members' pockets. Plain and simple, that's what happened. For the better part of a year, full tilt was having massive trouble actually getting the cash from players' bank accounts, and yet it still allowed those players to deposit "phantom funds" onto the sites, play with it, and either win (and presumably withdraw it into real cash) or lose (and thus transfer their losses to other players' accounts, who then presumably would look to withdraw it and turn it into real cash). I mean, you could not make this stuff up. Every time you saw Howard Lederer or Jesus Ferguson or Phil Ivey on tv over the past several months before the U.S. online poker ban in April of this year, they knew behind that face that they were literally operating at a shortfall in their own players' funds available on the site, allowing gambling of fake funds.

Note as well that the complaint alleges that "this scheme continued even after the original complaint was filed and the criminal indictment unsealed in April." Recall that the complaint alleges that, as of March 31 [2011], Full Tilt Poker owed about $390 million to players around the world, including $150 million to U.S. players. But the company only had $60 million in bank accounts to pay them back. As also reported by CNN, "As time went on, the poker site had even less money to pay its customers. By June [so this is less than three months later], Full Tilt owed $300 million to players around the world but only had $6 million to pay them, according to the prosecutor's office." So even after the online poker ban went down on April 15, the company continued to draw down on its meager cash available for depositors, owners, for everyone, raiding the company's last remaining cash that could have conceivably been used to return at least some fraction of player funds, from $60 million down to a mere $6 million, while player fund liabilities dropped only from $390 million to still $300 million owed. What a fucking disaster.

The Forbes coverage also has some good tidbits to help elucidate some of the details of this amazing, eye-opening story (again, emphasis mine):

"Federal prosecutors claim that Full Tilt’s board members got rich because the company used player funds to pay them massive amounts of money that largely was transferred to their accounts in Switzerland and other overseas locations. Specifically, the feds allege that Bitar pocketed $41 million and Lederer got $42 million. Jesus Ferguson allegedly was allocated $87 million in distributions and received at least $25 million, federal prosecutors claim. Another owner [Ivey obv], described by the feds as a professional poker player, received at least $40 million in distributions, as well as millions of dollars more characterized as loans from Full Tilt that have only been partially repaid. The government claims Full Tilt continued to make payments to its owners of up to $10 million per month even after the company was insolvent."

[Note that Tuesday's Wall Street Journal coverage pegged this number at $5 million per month paid to the full tilt owners starting as far back as April 2007.]

And later in the Forbes article:

U.S. government lawyers believe that Full Tilt Poker started to face a growing cash crunch in 2010 because it could not collect funds from U.S. players due to the federal government’s efforts to disrupt the payment processors that facilitate the flow of funds in the online poker industry. Indeed, Bharara’s office says that by August 2010 Full Tilt’s payment processing network had been severely disrupted and that the company could no longer withdraw money from U.S. players’ bank accounts. So instead, the feds claim, Full Tilt continued to credit player accounts without disclosing its inability to fund those credits, letting players make online poker bets with $130 million of “phantom funds” that resulted in a massive shortfall when other players won the bogus money in poker games.

The management of Full Tilt Poker, the feds say, “operated Full Tilt Poker with the hope that only a small number of players would try to withdraw funds at any one time, and that Full Tilt Poker would regularly receive additional deposits in amounts greater than any withdrawal requests.”,

Now if that last paragraph right up there ain't ponzi, then I don't know what is. For a period of several months, the owners and operators of full tilt poker intentionally, knowingly and willingly ran their company as a ponzi scheme, paying out those who withdrew funds from the site with the deposits of others, knowing all too well that the company was facing a potentially 9-figure shortfall in amounts deposited and in action on its site but which it could not collect and had no plan to be able to collect at any point in the future. And just like any good ponzi scheme, it was all premised on never more than a small percent of the site's users actually demanding their own money back at any given time. As long as those withdrawl requests were tiny in relative terms, having $60 million of cash on hand while supposedly "holding" $390 million of your customers' money worked out just fine. But when the shizzle hit the fizzle over the past year, there was never close to enough money to make the players whole. Oh, and meanwhile, the owners and directors paid themselves some $440 million out of those exact same corporate accounts that by April of this year contained only $60 million, and just $6 million by June.

Look, these guys raided your funds. My funds. Our money. It's like the CEOs of Tyco, Adelphia, and any other number of large company executives who have been busted over the past several years for using their company's funds to support a life of personal excess in almost every conceivable way. Only, this is much, much worse even than those examples. When the Tyco CEO took corporate funds to spend on expensive New York City call girls on business trips, at least he was taking funds that belonged to his company, and that were generated as revenues in exchange for his company's goods and services provided to customers. In this case, the full tilt guys took our money, not theirs and not full tilt's. This was not revenue in any sense of the word for full tilt. They were like a bank, merely holding on to our funds so that we could use them as we saw fit on their internet site. That's it. So while Dennis Koslowski and others in corporate America diverted money from their companies to fund ridiculous, extravagant lifestyles, in this case, Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Jesus Ferguson et al stole cash directly from their customers to fund similar endeavors. There's just no other way to spin it.

Oh, and by the way. I mentioned this briefly yesterday, but there seems to me to be a good chance that some of the crew of Lederer / Ferguson / Bitar / Ivey end up doing some jail time from all this, given the recent revelations. The corporate CEO's go to jail, and trust me when I say what they did is not close to as bad as what the full tilt owners are alleged by name to have done in this case. Why shouldn't these fucking pigs go to jail for a long time? Because they play a game as their professional jobs that's been frought with lying, cheating and dishonesty for the past couple hundred years? Because Howard Lederer came and blew smoke up the poker bloggers' asses at Caesars' poker room in Las Vegas at the summer WPBT gathering back in 2006, all the while he was literally stealing our very cash right out of our bank accounts and living high off the hog off of it? Seven or eight years ago, I most definitely idolized each one of Ivey, Lederer and Ferguson to some degree, without a doubt. Right now, make no mistake, I would bang the gavel myself and order them each to serve 30 years in the mutha fuckin slammer. And I probably wouldn't hesitate to cast them down with the sodomites either.

Unbelievable Full Tilt

Some of the details of the amended complaint are truly amazing, even given everything that has happened so far.

From Wicked Chops Poker (with my editorial commentary in blue font):

The Southern District of New York (SDNY) has amended its civil complaint against Full Tilt Poker, expanding the scope to include distribution payments to ownership totaling $443,860,529.89 and specifically naming Ray Bitar, Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, and Rafe Furst.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara went as far as to call Full Tilt Poker’s operations “…a massive Ponzi scheme against its own players.”

Bharara continued:

“Full Tilt was not a legitimate poker company, but a global Ponzi scheme. Full Tilt insiders lined their own pockets with funds picked from the pockets of their most loyal customers while blithely lying to both players and the public alike about the safety and security of the money deposited.” This pretty much says it all in a nutshell.

Key highlights from the complaint include:

■As of March 31, 2011, Tilt owed players from around the world over approximately $390,695,788 but had only approximately $59,579,413 in its bank accounts. (page 72)Yikes!
■Howard Lederer received approximately $37M in distributions as well as another $4M in profit sharing (page 72). What an asshole.
■Chris Ferguson received approximately $25M in distributions. (page 72)Asshole.
■Rafe Furst received approximately $11.7M. (page 73)Ass Hole!
■In all, it claims there are 19 owners of Full Tilt Poker. (page 73)
■An owner, named as “Player owner 1″ but clearly Phil Ivey, is alleged to have received at least $40M in distributions, “as well millions of dollars characterized as loans,” of which $4.4 million have not been repaid. (page 73)Perhaps the biggest asshole of the entire group, given how things have gone down.
■On that note, interestingly no other Full Tilt Poker owners where named in the amendment.
■Owners continued to receive approximately $10M/month even though beginning in the summer of 2010, management/the board of directors were aware of issues in collecting funds from U.S. players. (page 73) Assholes!
■Approximately $130M in U.S. player funds were never collected due to payment processing issues. (page 74)This is one of the most unbelievable statistics of the entire sordid full tilt affair, showing just how ineffectively run the company was. They had just $59 million in their accounts, and $395 million of players' funds, but failed to actually collect a staggering $130 million of that moneys. Unreal these clowns.
■The amendment claims that Tilt was “extremely insolvent” by March 2010, however owner distribution payments continued as late as April 1, 2011. (page 74)
■After 4/15, Tilt continued to accept funds although it had worldwide liabilities of over $300M. (page 75)Assholes.
■In an internal e-mail on June 12, 2011, Ray Bitar expressed concern that a company announcement regarding lay-offs and the Board (including himself) being replaced would be seen as bad news (which we find unbelievable–as most would’ve considered it great news), which in turn would cause a “new run on the bank,” adding that “it could be a huge run” and that “at this point we can’t even take a five million run.” (page 75)
■Any property, including money, used in [an illegal gambling business] may be
seized and forfeited to the United States–or better put–the accounts assets of Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Ray Bitar, and Rafe Furst would be gonzo. (page 77)

We can only hope these pigs all go to jail for a long, long time. Which sounds to me like a very distinct and realistic possibility given the above.

Poker Media Still Sitting Quietly While Full Tilt Embarrasses Us All

Wow, what a bunch of masochists we all are. Seriously guys. Hasn't even one of you out there reading this wondered why exactly Phil Ivey -- the world's greatest poker player and perhaps greatest gambler -- "owes" full tilt $4 million? This is being widely reported by every major poker media outlet in the world, and has been for a good few months now as Ivey's alleged "White Knight" deal (which not coincidentally also involves the forgiving of Ivey's personal $4 million debt) is still said to be under negotiation to save the company in some form and -- hopefully -- to secure U.S. players the return of their funds that had been commingled into full tilt's own accounts. And yet, I keep waiting and waiting and waiting, and not one single person I can think of in the poker media has even questioned why, or how this could be. Pretty much all of them have lost their own money even on full tilt's site, and yet still, complete and total radio silence. The relationships, the history, and ultimately the downright adulation that these people still feel for all those poker pros you see on tv has blinded the media to providing any real coverage whatsoever of probably easily the worst scandal in the history of online poker. Sorry folks, but superuser doesn't even come close to stealing our money for their own and living high off the hog off of it. It's just not close.

Think about this. Phil Ivey is quite simply the single greatest poker player in the world today, I don't think many people would really dispute that fact at this point. The guy is a huge action junkie, he takes prop bets left and right, and he wins millions live and millions more online every year from this game. So, for starters, why does Ivey even need a $4 million loan from full tilt? And why did full tilt give him $4 million of their money, even assuming he did need it for something? Or, let me correct myself there -- why did full tilt give Phil Ivey $4 million of our money? And make no mistake -- that's exactly what commingling of players funds with full tilt funds means. They took the money we deposited with them, and then they just mixed our deposited funds in with all their money, using it for their own corporate purposes. Such as, apparently, "loaning" Phil Ivey $4 million.

Do you think Humberto Brenes ever owed pokerstars millions of dollars? What about Daniel Negreanu? How about UB, those scoundrels...d'ya think Phil Hellmuth owes UB $7 million or something? You think they lent Annie Duke a couple hundy large to complete an addition on to her house? Me thinks not.

And yet somehow, this that you are reading right here is the very first place to ever question or even mention the ludicrity of this $4 million debt from Ivey to full tilt. Somehow, I loaned Phil Ivey 4 million bucks even though I don't remember being asked about that decision, and I certainly know I didn't get to review any of his financial information or to sign off on his intended use of my funds. Last time I checked, I don't loan money to professional gamblers to throw on roshambo bouts, 18-foot puts on the greens, weight loss contests and WSOP bracelet bets against the rest of the best players in the world.

Or do I?

Along those same lines, I sat in silence for a good three weeks on this story as well, hoping against hope that at least one of these poker media outlets or bloggers would jump on this story with even a small fraction of the tenacity that was used to investigate and resolve the UB superuser scandal, but I simply cannot leave this post in "draft" mode any longer since it's obvious that, once again, the poker media is perfectly happy letting full tilt walk all over everyone, themselves included, because I guess they're just too busy staring agog like little schoolchildren at the very people who have stolen the cash right out of their pockets. But did anybody see the story a few weeks back when Todd Brunson tweeted that he had run into Howard Lederer in Las Vegas and that after telling Lederer how short he (Brunson) was on cash, Howard offered to pay Brunson what Brunson had locked up on Full Tilt at the time of the U.S. online poker ban? You're telling me the major poker media outlets never heard this story? Yeah right. Well, apparently it's true. Here are Todd Brunson's tweets of the events, which again happened just a few weeks ago on July 19 in Las Vegas:

"Look who I just ran into.. I told him the wsop killed me and I was cash short...... http://lockerz.com/s/121600156"
ToddBrunson

"He asked how much I had on tilt and I told him 150k.. He said come with me. We went to his car and he opened his trunk and paid me!!!!!!"

At first I figured this had to be a joke, especially given the complete dearth of coverage (let alone uproar) about it among the big poker sites. But nope, apparently it is all true -- the poker media is still just too busy planning how to blow the full tilt pros to spend any time letting you know that this happened. Brunson ran into Lederer in Vegas, took a picture to prove it, and when Brunson complained about being short on cash, Lederer apparently paid Brunson the $150,000 he had locked up on full tilt, right in cash out of the trunk of Lederer's car.

Now, putting aside the obvious questions on why on god's green earth Howard Lederer is driving around with more than 150 grand in his trunk (will somebody please carjack this asshole, PLEASE?!), wouldn't you think it would bother someone at wicked chops, at poker news, one of the big poker bloggers, anybody enough to mention that while little old you and me sit around waiting (forever?) to get (all? some of?) our money back that has been locked up at full tilt since April 15, the big dogs who know the founders of the site personally -- yes, those same founders who commingled your funds with their own -- are getting paid out by their friends the site's founders, in hundred-large chunks?

Wouldn't you think that it would have occurred to somebody in the media -- anybody at all -- to stop to think for a minute that maybe, if Lederer has $150k of full tilt funds sitting in his fucking car trunk that maybe, just maybe, that money could be disbursed to everyone whose money full tilt has stolen, and not just to the personal friends of the founders? Might one even suggest that this type of behavior by Lederer is more or less the exact same thing that got him into trouble in the first place, taking our poker deposit funds -- yours and mine -- and treating them like his own personal fucking ATM? I mean, can you imagine how many of us little people could have been paid out in full with just that $150,000 of my money and your money that Todd Brunson gratuitously got from Howard Lederer, just for happening to bump into him in a restaurant in Vegas?

I say again. Can you imagine if the posters on 2+2 were actually running with story like they did the UB mess a few years ago? Can you imagine if Haley was out there reporting on this complete and utter pile of bullshit every single day like she was back then with UB? Don't you wish Amy and Tim were glomming on to this story as surely as they did the WSOP missing chips scandal a couple of years back? And why aren't they? Why isn't anyone?

Seriously guys. WTF. It's getting very close to where we actually deserve what we get from full tilt here.

Is it me?

Is it me, or does it seem like the full tilt red pros really did not come up with many gold bracelets at the WSOP this year? I mean, how often have you heard Lederer Ferguson's name at a WSOP final table this summer, or even Cunningham or Seidel, or Ivey? Juanda bested Hellmuth for one red pro bracelet, but otherwise at least it looks like these guys have far too much on their mind right now to play their best.

Woe is Full Tilt

What the fruck is going on with Full Tilt and cashouts to U.S. players? And why aren't more people making more of a stink about it? Among our group anyways, it seems like it's basically TBA, a little bit of Josie, and then about a hundred quivering blobs of protoplasm too afraid (of something) to speak out against the site that has given us poker bloggers so much opportunity over the years to beef up our prize pools, let our group play rake-free, and even the (largely untaken) opportunity to play in the WSOP (yeah right).

Do any of you people really think that giving away a bunch of stuff to us over the years -- stuff which, believe you me, full tilt thought they were getting fair value for when they "gave it away" to us to begin with -- gives an online poker site the right to, or in any way absolves them from, commingle our U.S. player funds with the site's own funds, and now the consequent problems in giving us back our money? Can anyone really think that way? I've seen a few bloggers out there voicing that opinion, but as this cashout saga draws on and on and more and more details emerge about what is and is not happening at full tilt, is it possible that people really continue to just throw up their arms and give this site a pass?

Here's all I know: Pokerstars took what, ten days to get us our money? Less, even? They saw that they could no longer offer real-money play to U.S. players, and they basically immediately entered into a deal that would ensure the return in full of all U.S. players' funds, in conjunction with the U.S. government. This could only be done because pokerstars looked at their accounts and knew right away that they had segregated somewhere all the money they needed to cover all U.S. players' deposits somewhere in their coffers.

Now UB / Absolute, we like to think they are a different story. They're probably never returning any U.S. players' funds, and ultimately I think anyone who played at that site who expects them to do different now, simply is not in tune with the history of fraud and abuse at this company. Those funds are probably gone, and hopefully those of you who did play there anyways (like me) hedged against that risk by never leaving anything more than a few hundy on that site at any time. But guess what, guys? Full Tilt might be in that same boat as UB when it comes to returning your funds.

Yeah, I said it. And how much "free" stuff they "gave away" to bloggers over the past several years has precisely zero to do with it. What would that possibly have to do with whether or not full tilt is going to give players back their money? It doesn't. In fact, why should all the blogger "giveaways" over the years mean that we even give full tilt the benefit of the doubt at this point? Pokerstars got it done right away, because obviously they did not have player funds commingled with pokerstars funds. Full tilt, on the other hand, obviously did. And can anyone really feel secure when a bunch of professional poker players control an online poker site, and those players have just had the incredible cash cow that online poker is for most of their rolls, totally revoked, possibly forever but at least for a decently long, undetermined time to come, and when it turns out that that site now also had its own funds commingled with U.S. players' funds? Throw in what, tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars that now needs to be returned and cashed out to U.S. players, and someone thinks I should give these funds-commingling scumbags the benefit of the doubt?

I have news for you rose-colored glass, all humanity is good, etc. people out there. Commingling our funds with the company's own funds -- that is, not actually having our cash separated on hand to pay us each back if and when we ever requested a cashout -- that already is the crime, as far as I'm concerned. Whether U.S. players end up getting all or most of their money back eventually, is almost secondary in my mind. The fact is that it turns out that the people who run full tilt have been running a kind of a modified ponzi scheme -- as long as people keep depositing, there are enough funds to go around for everyone to do what they want to do, but when they have to cash out all U.S. players in one fell swoop, guess what? They can't find the money for it all. And of course this is why the communications from full tilt have been so horrible (and so scarce) over the past couple of weeks, because they don't know how to explain this situation without admitting obvious guilt / fraud / etc. Think about it -- Pokerstars had the money, they knew they were going to be ok as a continuing business offering online poker only outside of the U.S., and they got their U.S. players their money back as quickly as humanly possible, and were very clear in their communications with respect to the situation. Full tilt, on the other hand, does not necessarily have the money to return to their U.S. players, and the long-term viability of their business is much more in doubt as full tilt was primarily focused on the U.S. market, and thus far it is just lie after lie, story after story, and excuse after excuse.

For any institution with access to individuals' finances to commingle its participants' funds with its own funds is punishable in almost any context and almost every circumstance. So no matter how this story ends up, Full tilt is already guilty in my mind. I am still proceeding on the assumption that I will one day see my $265 and change left on the site at the time of Black Friday, but I'm sure as hell not counting on it at this point. And with every passing day, the odds that we ever see that money dwindle further and further IMO.

Setup or Stoopid?

So after a rollercoaster weekend in which I qualified for Iron Man Iron status once again while at the same time seeing my fortunes fluctuate wildly based on some aggressive and in some cases reckless decisions, I sat down to the latest Big Game ready to extend my dominance in this particular monthly blogger tournament. I believe I have cashed in fully half of the Big Game's I have ever participated in, including one win, one second place and one third place in just the small number of these that have been run over the past year, year and a half or so. Actually, I forgot all about the tournament and missed the first half hour due to a charity auction I was attending, but when I got back I quickly doubled up off of smizmiatch with AK allin preflop against his pocket Jacks, and from there I remained in the top 10 of the tournament throughout the balance of the first hour of the event.

Early in hour two, with me still perched near the bottom of the top 10 with about a third of the starting field of I think 62 runners already eliminated, I engaged in maybe my third or fourth battle of the blinds with Julius Goat who was seated to my immediate right and thus got to have me attempt to steal his blinds almost every chance I got. He pushed back some, he let me have them some, and in the end I was happy with that situation, especially when this hand came up which saw me open-raise from the button I think with JTo. Goat called from the small blind and the big blind folded. We saw a heads-up flop of JJ9.

This is exactly why I like to steal so much even from early on in mtts. Now, there is no doubt that the value, even the necessity, of stealing increases dramatically later on in tournaments when the antes kick in, the blinds are high and the Ms are correspondingly low. But for me, I have enough confidence in my abilities to avoid trouble most of the time after the flop with marginal hands, that I like the kind of opportunity that being known and recognized as a blind stealer has brought to me over time right from the earlygoing in these tournaments. So when I can raise preflop from late position and know I am going to be put on a steal, and then a follow-up steal-cbet on the flop, I like my position. And occasionally I flop a monster like I had here from steal position, and then I know, in the words of immortal blowdog "pro" Josh Arieh, it's on.

So here I am, I've steal-raised from the button, been called by a guy I know thinks I am a blind stealer -- in fact he had called me down earlier for a large pot on the river with just KT-high on the assumption I was full of shit from the blinds -- and now I have flopped JJ9 with JT in my hand. It's a good situation. I don't remember exactly the action but I believe Goat checked this hand to me, and I bet out my normal-sized continuation bet, knowing Goat would give me no credit whatsoever for the play. And frankly he is right, because a lot of the time I am going to bet out here with ATC after the action checks to me in position in a heads-up pot that I had raised preflop. So he checks this flop, I bet my trips -- because I am a man -- and Goat I think flat called. Now I know he has some kind of a hand.

The turn is some raggy biatch card, an offsuit 2 or something. This time Goat checks to me again, I bet out about 3/4 the size of the pot, and Goat fairly quickly minraises me. A minraise of a bet from me, coming from the Goat, definitely suggested that he liked his hand in this spot, I was sure of it. But still, I felt in a stealy-button vs small blind confrontation, my JT had to be ahead of his range, which would include most Tens, most pocket pairs and probably some KQ or other two-high-cards-plus-a-draw kind of hands as well. So I reraised Goat allin there on the turn, and he beat me into the pot with his call for almost all of his chips. He flips up?

99. I think the river brought another 9 as well, giving Goat quads instead of his boat just for good measure, and I was left dealing with another setup hand elimination from a BBT3 tournament.

With a few hours now having gone by to think about the situation, I am left wondering just how much of a setup hand this really was. I mean, I know it was a setup in that it is clearly not wrong of me to believe I am ahead in this circumstance, and I happened to flop a set with a decent kicker in a heads-up pot from a stealy position, and yet happened to run into the flopped boat from my opponent in the small blind. It is affirmatively hideous luck, I don't need anyone else's opinion to know that. But the question I have for you today is: Did I need to go busto on this hand? What would you have done with this hand? Who out there is not going to push hard with JT on the JJ9 flop from a stealy situation, and, more importantly, why not?

Don't forget, the 6-max nlh Mondays at the Hoy is back tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt as the BBT3 rolls on:



Password as always is "hammer", the buyin as always is $26, and anyone and everyone is welcome to join as there are no prerequisites or other requirements for anyone to be able to play. Just log in to your full tilt account, click on the "Private" heading under the "Tournaments" tab, find the MATH and register for the event using the password of "hammer". That's all it takes to sit down with the bloggers and get donked.

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

Another Run at Riverchasers

One thing I've been loving about all the big blonkeyments getting double stacks at some point during the BBT is that now I can really pull a Hellmuth and show up late to almost every one of them without it really mattering too much. I mean, even at 1500 starting chips, it didn't matter much if you show up, say, 20 minutes late and your stack is down to 1420 or something. But it's really no biggity to walk in like I did on Thursday night about 20 minutes late to the Riverchasers tournament now that it starts off with 3000 chips, so when I came back late from hitting the bars after a longass day of work, I slid right in and was only down to like 2955 chips as I got things going.

I started off bluffing like crazy as per usual in Thursday's Riverchasers tournament, since I got almost no actual cards to work with. I did get dealt QQ once within the first 30 minutes of the tournament, my one truly playable starting hand, and naturally a King-high flop fell. But after the flop and the turn checked around, I bet out on river and won the pot. Otherwise, I got no good cards, and won a number of small pots with just bluffs and steals. What else is new.

My first big hand happened about 30 minutes in and it went down at the expense of fellow blogger Garthmeister. Stlphily had raised the 50-chip big blind to 175 from the cutoff, and after he had spent basically the entire tournament stealing in probably 90% of the chances where the action was unopened to him in late position, I put basically no credence whatsoever on that particular raise, so I called with my KQ from the button, as did Garth in the big blind. The flop came KQ7 rainbow, and when stlphily led out for 450 into the 700 chip pot, I figured right there to minraise with my top two pair, a hand I will often slowplay with but in this case I figured why not vary a bit with a minraise and see where that can take me. Well no sooner had I clicked the button with this minraise that Garth was in there over the top allin:



Stlphily folded quickly to all this action ahead of him, and check out my chat to Garth in that image above. I basically knew what he had, knew I had the non-set nuts, and had to do some quick math before I decided that the likelihood that Garth was actually behind me plus the 4 outs I would have even if he did have the dreaded set of 7s was enough to get all my chips in with top two pairs. To be clear this is not someting I would have done even with top and bottom pairs or bottom two, but with top two pairs and the chance that I was ahead even now to AK or K7 or AA or something like that, I felt the call was the right move, even openly suspecting I was up against a flopped set. So I called Garth's allin, and he did in fact have the 7s I had feared:



But the river came down one of my four outs, and I was off to a big stack early thanks to a little bit of luck:



Not knowing for sure that Garth had the 7s, I don't actually think I played this hand too badly. I think the real man move is to lay down the two pairs there to the likely set, but since I had one of each of the top two on the board, I felt it sufficiently unlikely to be a set other than 7s, and with my extra redraw outs anyways, I think I make this play again. But the real man lays it down on the pocket 7s read I think. In any event that was how I got started off to a big stack earlyish in this week's Riverchasers tournament, and it was one of two suckouts I came up with on the night in the tournament.

The next hour saw me bluff and steal my way along to retaining my big stack and even growing it just a bit. I saw my first of a number of AK's in the tournament during this time, with which I managed to bust HappyHarry50 when he tried to take the JackAce up against my big slick. This hand helped me enter the first break in 5th place of 29 players remaining (44 total runners started the event at 9pm ET).

I started off Hour 2 trying to continue my bluffing ways, but twice in the first half hour I got caught. Once it was a no-name guy who raised me allin when I moved on the turn after a checked flop, and in that case I quickly laid down my Ace-high hand. A second time about 90 minutes in, it was Alan again raising my bet, this time on the flop, and once again I had to lay it down before I got involved in a big pot without a big hand. That was one of my big strategies that I executed so well on the night, especially for a blonkament -- I never let myself get busted with nothing on a pure bluff. When I got "caught" betting or raising with nothing, I slowed down, never once putting in one more bet after getting the vibe that I might be behind in actuality on the entire night. Well done me. That right there is the secret to winning no-limit holdem IMO. Steal those small pots, but don't go broke with nothing in them. Last night I played this game to perfection, doing a ton of stealing and bluffing but not getting busted in a big pot without a big hand.

I mentioned earlier that stlphily was going absolutely crazy with the steal-raising, so he became a target of mine for resteals, as in this hand, where stl folded to my reraise:



Simiarly, I continued stealing as the second hour of Riverchasers came to a close, which I continue to state here for the record really is the only way to survive and eventually win these blonkaments -- or just about any mtt for that matter -- unless you're a luckbox, which I can honestly say I basically never am. You just have to take a hand with some potential when the action folds to you on the button or the cuttoff, and stizzle with it:



J8s? Check!



98o? Check!

These sorts of moves basically kept me afloat all through Hour 2, leaving me in 8th place of 13 remaining at the second break. I had 8430 chip, while Kat sat in first with 20,845. So I knew I had my work cut out for me to even make the final table let alone the cash (top 5 of 44 would be paid).

About 20 minutes into Riverchasers Hour 3, I reverse hoyed shamanalix with AQ on a QJ3 2s flop, and he called allin with T9o for the oesd, which did not improve on the turn or river. This elimination vaulted me up over 16k in chips for the first time in the tournament, into 3rd place of 11 remaining. This was a big hand for me in retrospect, as it got me into a much better chip position relative to the other remaining players than I had been previously, and it all stemmed from a 65% hand holding up for me against shamanalix.

A few minutes later we made the final table, with me solidly in 4th place of 9. Nowhere near the leaders, but measurably above the smallest stacks as well. This is a great place for me to be heading into a final table, where as I've mentioned here previously I often try to play a little less recklessly and a little more close to the vest at first, to let some of the short stacks drop out and to try to get into a good position to double up against one of those more desperate stacks. So for example, in contrast to some of my steals and resteals above at a time when I was more willing to be a little reckless earlier in the event, this is how I like to resteal early at an mtt final table:



So early on here at the final table, where it pays to not play so crazy for a bit, I try to pick a good, strong hand with solid showdown value and move aggressively and strongly against a middle position opener who by virtue of that position is likely to be weakish. I was actually hoping for a call here in this spot above -- he folded. The thing that's so strong about this move is that my opponent, unless he's playing donkish, really has to fold even middle pocket pairs if he cares about surviving to the money here.

More stealing at the final table, this time a semi-standard move for me with any Ace in the cutoff or on the button:



And here's another huge resteal for me:



The above is a good example of the evolution of my aggression as the final table wears on. Here you can see we are already down to 7 players left from the original 9 at the final table, and in this case TATA on the left side of the screen had been stealing so consistently, so repeatedly any time she was given the chance that I felt I had to make a move here, if for no other reason than to show myself as someone who can't just be relentlessly pushed around. She folded (thankfully), leaving me in 3rd place of 7 remaining as we neared the bubble at 6 players left in the tournament.

And here, nearing the bubble, is where Evy35, apparently a friend of Al's, absolutely blew up. First she found AA at the final table and knocked out gator845 in 8th place. Then she called allin against another largeish stack with her 77 vs his JJ, and promptly flopped an oesd and then turned trips! And then there were 6, and we were officially on the bubble.

I kept stealing as many pots as I could, enjoying seeing others picking up the elusive final table pocket Aces, and managed to maintain my position as the 6 players jockeyed to avoid being the guy on the outside looking in when it comes to the cash payouts for the Riverchasers tournament. Eventually, though, when I found my best hand to that point at the final table in AQs and Evy had open-minraised from middle position ahead of me, I pushed allin and actually felt indifferent to whether I wanted a call or a fold here. Unfortunately, Evy showed me this:



So that's two pocket Aces at the final table now, and I'm about to head home on le bubble. But then the flop brought me my second of two big suckouts on the day:



and we were back in business. Two suckouts in my favor, and two suckouts against me on the night in the latest Riverchasers tournament, but this one was huge against the definite table luckbox outside of this particular hand. And suddenly, I was right up with the biggest stacks, slightly in 1st of 6 left and finally not so much in danger of bubbling out of the tournament any longer. It's a gross way to get there, but I'll take it.

Eventually a few hands later saw RakeFeeder busted when he open-pushed with T3o and got called by A9 from Kat's button. I had made the Riverchasers money again! I was in 2nd place of 5 remaining when the bubble burst on the night, with Kat back in the lead with 36k in chips to my 30k at the time.

Here is me continuing to steal as the final table wears thinner, again moving in for a standard raise amount with a hand with potential on the button:



Unless you're a serious luckbox, if you want to win mtts with any consistency, I've said it before and I'll say it again, you're just going to have to steal, resteal and steal some more. That was me last night, and basically every night I play in these blonkaments that we all love so much.

Here was another funny hand:



That's right -- now the third pocket Aces for Evy at just the final table! That is some seriously unreal rng shit right there. Fortunately, while I was complaining about this redickulous luck with the pocket Aces, I managed to pick up pocket Aces of my own (my only AA or KK of the tournament, mind you), and I busted Kat when she got it allin preflop with me with her Hammer. Somehow my Aces held up, and we were down to four players, with me again in the chip lead with 59k to 51k for Evy to 12k to 9k for the last two players.

Meanwhile, Evy's sick final table luck continued, as check out this highly dubious call:



and then her reward for this play:



Yeeeech. But now I was in front with just 3 players remaining. I lost my chip lead a few hands later when PouringReign and I got allin preflop with my Ace-high against PR's King-high, but trip Kings on the flop did me in and knocked me briefly down to third place of the 3 remaining players.

About 7 minutes of 3-handed play later, I made this check-raise on the flop with what I figured to be the best hand and a good spot where PouringReign might be willing to push in with any of a few possible draws:



PR eventually called with this hand, after asking if I was the one with just a draw (I did not respond), and I held on to eliminate 2nd place:



So Evy and I entered heads-up play at this week's Riverchasers tournament at basically a dead heat, 66k - 66k in chips. Of course with the way the final table had gone for her to this point, I'm busy seeing flashes of the 12-year-old in my head, and just hoping not to see a repeat of that abomination of a night for me. Luckily, I would not have to wait long to get it on with Evy. On the very first hand of heads-up play, I ended up making the 4th-nut flush on the turn, and after I checked the turn and it checked back to me, I made this recockulous overbet on the river, hoping to elicit a call from what I felt sure was a worse hand than mine at this point given the action from Evy on the hand:



As I mentioned, only four hands could beat me at that point, and I felt very sure that Evy did not have a higher flush than mine given the passivity with which she played this hand, and some of the more aggressive betting I had seen from her in other spots throughout this final table. Just like a hand I played at 1-2 cash with Fuel55 a few months ago that I wrote about here, I opted to take a page out of Sklansky's no-limit holdem book and figured I should play this hand as if my opponent had either a middle flush or possibly had made one of a few possible straights with the cards on the board that might be enough for a tired player to run with and call off her stack.

Well, it worked:



That overbet trick has come in handy on a couple of occasions for me when I think I have concealed an actually strong hand that I am sure is ahead, and where the board is such that I think it is possible that my opponent could be slow playing some (lesser) good hand already as well. It worked for me there, leaving Evy with just 400-some chips to my 131k.

Here is the last hand for Evy's last 440 chips:



and I had taken down another Riverchasers tournament!



The best lesson I can take from this particular event, and from my three Riverchasers tournament victories this year in fact plus the one 2nd place loss to the 12-year-old, is to drink up for this thing. Last night was probably the drunkest I've played a blonkament in several months, perhaps since my last Riverchasers victory, and I plan to continue that trend heading into the next several blonkaments in the coming weeks. As usual, if possible I will plan to play in Kat's $1 rebuy Donkament tonight at 9pm ET on full tilt (password is "donkarama" as always), where hopefully I can continue my return to a winning streak after taking down the Dookie on Wednesday and now another Riverchasers tournament on Thursday. So what if I'll never win a Mookie, right, who cares?!

MATH Recap, Stealing the Blinds, and FTOPS

Monday night was one of those nights where I got tired early, probably largely due to my recent hot streak which has kept me awake at least fairly late into the morning each night as I have played to the bitter end of several tournaments and mtt satellites basically every night over the past week. As a result, once I busted from this week's MATH, I pretty much went right to sleep. OK ok I auto-tilted out of the small stack I had going in one other mtt at the time, and then I went to sleep. So I really don't know what happened to end the MATH this week. I missed the entire final table after I busted in I think maybe 12th place out of 27 runners on the night. I played great through most of the tournament, playing active, aggressive poker from the getgo and relying on my reads to steal pots before, on and after the flop, and using the image this created to get paid well on my good hands. The highlight of my night was busting brand new player AcesKing (sorry if that name is not exactly right, please correct me in the comments if not) from the tournament with the Hammer in a showdown, when I reraised allin on a raggy flop containing a single 2 and got called by AQ and a flush draw, somehow dodging 15 outs twice for the win. Otherwise, my recent aggression finally caught up with me short of the final table in this week's MATH, when even with a big stack I got suck pushing KQ into what turned out to be a dominating AK preflop in a blind vs. button showdown. I won't quite call it a setup for me to lose out of the blind with KQ against the button, but the way I play, it's pretty damn close. Early on in the tournament that is closer to a bad play, but with my aggression level, that is pretty close to a setup at that point in the tournament on Monday night.

Just the top three spots paid out in this week's MATH tournament, and here's how it ended. Jordan went out on the bubble in 4th place, with Mike Maloney finishing in 3rd for $129.60. Columbo took second again this week, continuing his recent MATH hot streak and winning $194.40 in the process, while recent newcomer to the MATH RaisingCayne powered to the victory and $324 cold hard cashish in just his third (I think) MATH tournament ever. Congratulations to all three cashers this week, and if anyone has any stories to share about any of the play at the final table, I am all ears because I missed it entirely.

Which brings us to the updated MATH Moneyboard for 2007, including this week's tournament:

1. Bayne_s $1175
2. Columbo $1168
3. Hoyazo $849
4. VinNay $775
5. cmitch $774
6. Iggy $745
7. NewinNov $677
8. Lucko21 $665
9. Waffles $650
10. Astin $616
11. Tripjax $561
12. RaisingCayne $522
13. Julius Goat $507
14. bartonf $492
14. mtnrider81 $492
16. PokerBrian322 $490
17. Chad $485
18. scots_chris $474
19. Fuel55 $458
20. Mike_Maloney $456
21. RecessRampage $434
22. Otis $429
23. Miami Don $402
24. jeciimd $382
24. Jordan $382
26. Blinders $379
27. Pirate Wes $372
28. lightning36 $371
29. IslandBum1 $357
30. ChapelncHill $353
31. Zeem $330
32 oossuuu754 $312
33. leftylu $295
34. Emptyman $288
34. Wigginx $288
36. ScottMc $282
37. Fishy McDonk $277
38. Irongirl $252
38. Manik79 $252
40. Wippy1313 $248
40. Byron $234
42. wwonka69 $216
43. Omega_man_99 $210
44. Pushmonkey72 $208
45. Buddydank $197
46. 23Skidoo $176
47. Santa Clauss $170
48. Iakaris $162
48. Smokkee $162
50. cemfredmd $156
50. NumbBono $156
52. lester000 $147
53. LJ $146
54. Heffmike $145
55. brdweb $143
56. DDionysus $137
57. Patchmaster $135
58. InstantTragedy $129
59. Ganton516 $114
60. Fluxer $110
61. hoops15mt $95
62. Gracie $94
62. Scurvydog $94
64. Shag0103 $84
65. crazdgamer $82
66. PhinCity $80
67. maf212 $78
68. Alceste $71
68. dbirider $71
70. Easycure $67
71. Rake Feeder $53

So once again all three of this week's cashers have previously cashed in Mondays at the Hoy this year, including Cayne rising to an impressive 12th place overall after just three weeks playing this thing. And Columbo meanwhile remained in 2nd place overall on the moneyboard, but used yet another big score this week to climb to within just $7 of BBT luckbox Bayne atop the leaderboard. There is plenty of play to come over the coming weeks and months as we are still just in summertime of 2007, so the moneyboard race should continue to heat up with all these great players hitting up the MATH every Monday night at 10pm ET on full tilt.

OK, with all the talk about stealing and restealing of late here and in lots of other blogs, I thought I would reproduce a very a propos point that I have found in the latest poker book I am reading. The book is called Winning in Tough No-Limit Games, and it is by two well-known online pros, Nick "Stoxtrader" Grudzien and Geoff "Zobags" Herzog. Not that I had ever heard of these two guys prior to reading this book, but I found a link to it on amazon and poof!, a week later I was sitting down to start my latest poker text.

To be clear, Winning in Tough Hold'em Games is written about limit holdem and not no-limit, as is the case with most of the great cash game holdem books available on the market today (Holdem Poker for Advanced Players and Winning in Small Stakes Holdem come most immediately to mind for anyone who hasn't read those two books yet, if that is even possible). But, I find that most of the text has great applicability to my cash game and even tournament play. This is especially true since I tend to focus on 6-max nlh games above the lowest 5 or so levels available for real money play at the major online sites, which are exactly the aggressive, short-handed, stealy sort of games that Grudzien and Herzog write about in their text. The book reads a whole lot like many of the other 2+2 books, which is a good thing in that the text is very on-point and presents a whole host of aggressive poker-related issues that I have not seen addressed like this anywhere else.

There must be more than 100 pages in this book dedicated just to stealing, restealing, and blinds defense. As someone who plays a lot of 6-max nlh online at the $200 and $400 level, this has high relevance to my own cash game play. As someone who likes to run deep in a lot of mtts as well, this focus on stealing and restealing is gold Jerry gold. I thought I would share here with you today these two successful players' basic strategy on playing in a steal situation, and I may include additional ideas on when to three-bet (i.e. resteal) against a stealer as well in later posts, because the book is just chock full of useful tidbits like this. Basically, the authors posit that a good target steal percentage from the cutoff is just under 30%, and from the button somewhere around 40%. That is to say, that around 28, 29% of the time the action folds to you preflop in the cutoff, or around 38, 39% of the time the action folds to you on the button, you should be raising it up. The authors claim this is based on millions of hands of actual play and tens of millions of hands of computer simulations. I'm not doing any work to disprove the numbers myself, but take them for what you will, your mileage may vary. I find the numbers to make sense as good guidelines, ones that of course will change depending on the playing tendencies of the blinds. And remember, these guidelines are actually for limit and not no-limit holdem, which certainly has some impact on these criteria, especially at the margins with those hands that are right on the edge of being steal-worthy from the cutoff or the button. But I think the insight provided here is invaluable to anyone who takes playing cash holdem seriously, at either a limit or no-limit level, at any kind of stakes above the lowest limits offered in the major online cardrooms.

More than just these general percentage guidelines, the authors of Winning in Tough Hold'em Games then take things a step further by providing the hand range that corresponds with the general target percentages specified above. Thus, they argue that, when the action folds around to you in the cutoff position, you should open-raise (in LHE) with all pocket pairs (22+), all suited Aces (A2s+), all unsuited Aces from A5 and higher (A5o+), K7s+, K9o+, Q9s+, QTo+, J8s+, T8s+, 97s+, 87s and 76s. So basically, they are recommending an open-raise from the cutoff with any pocket pair, any suited Ace, unsuited Aces A5 and higher, suited Kings K7 and higher, unsuited Kings K9 and higher, most two-paint hands suited or unsuited, and most suited connectors, one-gappers and two-gappers from the J8s range and upward.

That right there is a lot of hands to be stealing with, but that's the figure that works out to be approximately 28.5% of hands you will receive from the cutoff. Obviously some of those raises won't really be "steal" raises as they will be hands like AA or AK which are actually worth a raise in that spot or any spot before the flop, but I think it's a great idea for everyone reading this to take a look at your own play, and ask yourself, when you're playing in a tough game, are you going to open-raise from the cutoff with a hand like 97s? Q9s? How about QTo? These guys say they've run the simluations and have the poker tracker data to back it up (there is tons of poker tracker data in this book, for you PT heads out there if you're into that kind of thing). And yes, of course again this applies to limit holdem, but the bottom line is that I would argue that open-raising standards in a short-handed game at any reasonable limit plays a lot like this, and I find that raising with standards at least in this general neighborhood are +EV moves if played correctly in that context.

The suggest hand range for open-raising from the button, as you might imagine, is widened even more to accomodate a near 40% target of hands to raise with, instead of the 28.5% target from the cutoff as described above. So, if the action is folded to you on the button in a short-handed, aggressive game, the authors recommend a raise with 22+, A2s+, A3o+, K2s+, K9o+, Q5s+, Q9o+, J7s+, J9o+, T7s+, T8o+, 97s+, 98o+, 86s+, 75s+ and 65s. Summarizing again then, from the button the recommendation here is a steal-raise with any pair, any suited Ace or suited King, most suited Queens, about half the suited Jacks, Tens, Nines, Eights and Sevens, and only about the top third or so of unsuited Kings, Queens and Jacks, and about half the unsuited Tens and Nines. Together this equals 40% of the hands you will find in a random sampling, and I think the upshot is -- again, think about your own game here for a minute -- to ask yourself, do you put in a steal-raise from the button preflop when it folds to you and you are holdng a hand like Q9o? What about T7s? 98o? These guys recommend yes to all three of those hands. Raise raise raise, until you are stealing approximately 29% of the time from the cutoff and 40% of the time from the button. That is the strategy of the authors of this very interesting and informative new poker book (published April 2007, so it's really new to the market) when it comes to steal-raising from late position in tough or short-handed holdem games like the ones I play in.

There is lots of good stuff in this book that I may bring up again in the future, including a suggested steal range for when it is folded around to you in the small blind, but I think this is enough information for today. Hopefully this is interesting if not helpful for some of you out there; I know I find it a very useful outlook when it comes to my own game, again in particular since I am playing at the 6-max tables most of the time when I'm sitting down to a cash nlh game. I do not really think stealing blinds is much of a consideration in your typical full ring game online at the lower limits, so a lot of this will have limited applicability in that context, but I think its relevance increases once again when you talk about tournament play, and in particular late-stage tournament play.

Speaking of tournaments, Tuesday night is the last night before the beginning of FTOPS V on full tilt, something I am very excited about. KOD, Goat and myself are already satellited in to FTOPS Event #1 ($216 nlh) on Wednesday night, all courtesy of that juicyass 9:50pm ET $10 rebuy satellite nightly on full tilt, and I would love to play my way in to FTOPS Event #2 in HORSE as well over the next night or two, or else I will likely buy my way in directly as I definitely plan to play in the HORSE event on Thursday evening this week. In fact, my big plans for tonight will be to sit in as many of those FTOPS HORSE satellites as I can, get as many of them to fill up as possible and give myself a couple of chances to get into FTOPS #2 on the cheap. Chad, jec, FishyMcDonk, cemfredmd, Otis, Blood and anyone else who might be interested in play in this event, if you're around and online on Tuesday or Wednesday night, either hit me up in the girly chat, or just look for me registered in one or more FTOPS sng satellites for the HORSE event on Thursday, and let's make something happen and help a couple of us play our way in to that event for less than the $216 direct buyin like I'll probably end up doing. Hopefully I will see some of you tonight, and congratulations again to Cayne for taking down this week's Hoy tournament. Talk about beginner's luck!!

Avatar Race, and More on the Resteal

So Tuesday night was the first Avatar Race on full tilt, which again this year awards buyins to 13 of the 14 FTOPS events coming up in early- to mid-August plus an entry to a super sat for the 14th and largest buyin event. If you recall I had satellited about 5/6 of the way in by winning $240 cash on the bubble of Monday night's $75 satellite, so I put up the last 60 big ones and gave it a shot last night.

Things started off badly. Very badly. I pushed hard against a guy whom I've already noted as someone who resteals effectively against me and seems to have a good read on me generally. He's eliminated me from the big buyin full tilt mtts before, and I remember his name well. Long story short, he got me again. I had pocket Aces, the flop came something like Q66. He check-called my potbet on the flop. Then he checkraised me allin when then turn came a King. I folded my Aces to a big loss of probably close to a third of my stack. Note btw that my Aces streak is still alive and well, as it only pertained to cash games. Right now btw, it is either 31 for 31 or 32 for 32, I don't remember which, but there have been one or two more pocket rocket cash wins since my 30-win streak announcement. But this is tournament land, where I am free to lose with my Aces from time to time, and in that hand I did.

A few hands later was even worse. The flop came KK8 and I decided to represent a King and bet about 3/4 the pot, which that same opponent called after some pause. Then the turn ragged off and I checked, intending on checkraising, and my opponent responded with a bet of about half the pot. I checkraised him 3 times his bet, figuring for sure he lays down anything but a King in his hand here. He re-reraises me allin, putting my last 900 or so chips in jeopardy, so I fold meekly with my tail between my legs. My nemesis rakes the huge pot and shows me AK. Nice timing, Hoy.

But I perservered. I don't even remember the couple of big hands I had to get back in it, but I do know that I made some great plays and basically got back up over 6000 chips and went into the first break in around 36th of 110 or so remaining. In a good sign of things to come, Tuesday night's first Avatar Race of the season had a whopping 160 entrants, far more than in any other Avatar Race I can recall for the other FTOPSes, which meant that the top 10 spots would each receive what is a huge, $4500 prize package. 1 in 16. It means you have to play well, very well even, but there is also some chance for not being the best guy at the table on the night and still being able to persist to victory.

With about ten minutes left in the 2nd hour, with me in approximately 40th place of 70 players left, this big hand went down, once again against my nemesis, a guy named "tiltedpony":

Full Tilt Poker Game #2979428768: FTOPS Avatar Race (22499547), Table 17 - 80/160 - No Limit Hold'em - 22:48:08 ET - 2007/07/17

Seat 1: QT1 (4,655)

Seat 2: AJKHoosier1 (3,626)

Seat 3: vetiver (5,405), is sitting out

Seat 4: padirk165 (6,380)

Seat 5: zestfulyclean (5,415)

Seat 6: hoyazo (6,010)

Seat 7: ISPEWCHIPS (2,370)

Seat 8: tiltedpony (7,127)

Seat 9: Lord Admiral (3,710)

hoyazo posts the small blind of 80

ISPEWCHIPS posts the big blind of 160

The button is in seat #5

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to hoyazo [7c Kc]

tiltedpony calls 160

Lord Admiral folds

QT1 folds

AJKHoosier1 folds

vetiver folds

padirk165 folds

zestfulyclean folds

vetiver has returned

hoyazo calls 80 So it's folded around to me in the small blind with just the utg player limping. There is 400 in the pot, I have K7 sooted in clubs and it's just 80 more to me to call into a 3-way pot. Obviously I call.

ISPEWCHIPS checks

*** FLOP *** [Jc 4c 9d] Pot is $480.

hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act

hoyazo bets 420 Here I'm thinking I have flopped the 2nd-nut flush draw plus an overcard, against one utg limper (must be careful of that!) and a big blind who just checked. Unless someone else has hit a Jack here or maybe flopped an oesd, they should fold to my aggression here. I will do the usual and bet somewhere under the size of the pot.

ISPEWCHIPS folds Good.

tiltedpony calls 420 Not necessarily bad. This guy has floated against me before, and he could have 2nd or 3rd pair or a draw, or I of course have a 35% of hitting my flush draw in the next two cards and maybe winning some real chips from this guy.

*** TURN *** [Jc 4c 9d] [6h] Pot is $1320.

hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act

hoyazo bets 1,060 Well, I bet on the flop and got called by a guy who is a known floater. The offsuit raggy turn cannot reasonably possibly have helped either of us. I just don't read this guy for being ahead of me right now. This player limp-called from utg before the flop, and although sometimes that means Aces, he has played this hand so unbelievably passively that I cannot possibly believe he would be butchering pocket Aces this badly. He's a good player. Thus, I have to put him on either a low pair, a low Ace or low suited connectors. Maybe 98 or A4 to have called on this flop. Maybe he still has a draw which clearly missed on the turn. With any of these hands I see him folding here to a properly-sized bet. With the 1060 bet I have set my opponent's pot odds right where I want them to prevent flush and straight draws from calling anywhere near their roughly 1-in-5 chances of filling, and also far more than anything other than top pair can call in the hopes of hitting his kicker.

tiltedpony calls 1,060 Oops.

*** RIVER *** [Jc 4c 9d 6h] [9c] Pot is $3440.

hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act Bingo!!! I actually hit a draw and nailed my flush on the river. It did pair the 2nd card on the flop, but that's actually a good thing for me, since I've been betting the whole way, I know this guy can't possibly put me on a made flush here. This means that he will have to think his trip 9s are good if he just made that. So what do I do to get the most chips from this guy? Well, he's called me on two streets, and I suspect he might have just made trips with the river 9, or perhaps two pairs or something like that, surely something that loses to my rivered flush. Since I think he might be strong, and he's already called progressively larger bets from me on two streets, I'm just going allin, which is actually only about 34% bigger than the current pot size anyways. If I double up I'm in the top 4 players in the tournament with 70 remaining, and the top 10 getting seats. It's go time.

hoyazo bets 4,370, and is all in

tiltedpony has 15 seconds left to act He is delaying. He obviously doesn't have anything strong. Time to try to elicit the call.

hoyazo: FOLD

hoyazo: you can do it

tiltedpony calls 4,370 Haha what an effing donkey to have fallen for that!

*** SHOW DOWN ***

hoyazo shows [7c Kc] a flush, King high Read it n weep, dickhead!

tiltedpony shows [Qc Ac] a flush, Ace high Uh...Whaa???????

tiltedpony wins the pot (12,180) with a flush, Ace high

hoyazo stands up Dazed. Did he just call 1060 into a 2380 pot with just a flush draw? And please don't quote me the two overcards. With the way I bet this hand, only a donkass counts on 6 more outs with the Aces and Queens. And I won't even point out that he still doesn't have the right odds even adding 6 overcards as outs. Did that just happen?

*** SUMMARY ***

Total pot 12,180 | Rake 0

Board: [Jc 4c 9d 6h 9c]

Seat 1: QT1 didn't bet (folded)

Seat 2: AJKHoosier1 didn't bet (folded)

Seat 3: vetiver didn't bet (folded)

Seat 4: padirk165 didn't bet (folded)

Seat 5: zestfulyclean (button) didn't bet (folded)

Seat 6: hoyazo (small blind) showed [7c Kc] and lost with a flush, King high

Seat 7: ISPEWCHIPS (big blind) folded on the Flop

Seat 8: tiltedpony showed [Qc Ac] and won (12,180) with a flush, Ace high

Seat 9: Lord Admiral didn't bet (folded)


So that's how I didn't win the Avatar Race in my first attempt.

I have the worst fucking luck ever with flushes. Let me put it this way -- for you poker tracker guys n gals out there, my lifetime stats over more than 10,000 hands now are that I have lost over $1300 with flushes overall. No that's not a typo -- I have actually managed to lose over $1300 when I have made flushes on the hand. Now, lest you starting thinking the worst about me, let me clarify a few things. I reviewed all 19 of my flushes where I've gone to showdown (I have won 11 and lost 8). In only one instance did I make the flush with just one of my hole cards, a hand which I went on to win anyways. So in 18 separate hands since I started running pokertracker, I've made two-card flushes, and I've somehow lost 8 of them! And again before you get all Sherlock Holmes and try to figure this out, let me also clarify that in not a single one of these instances did I lose to a full house (or better). Not one. So I'm not betting with just one-card 8-high flushes and losing to another high one-card flush. And I'm not at all that guy betting the flush as hard as possible when the board is paired. Nope, instead, I have taken 18 two-card flushes to showdown, and lost 8 of those 18 to higher two-card flushes. On two occasions these flushes were even backdoor flushes made on the turn and river. Still lost to a higher backdoor flush. Twice in 10,000 hands! So even though I am well positive with trips / set and obviously with full house or better, in the middle of all that is me down over 1300 bucks with made fucking two-card non-paired-board flushes. Flush over flush is the bane of my cash existence right now, and last night that spilled over into my tournament game to combine with a horrifically poor call by a longtime nemesis of mine to eliminate me from what would have been awesome position in the first Avatar Race on full tilt. F flush-over-flush. I hope flush over flush gets AIDS. Please.

OK so I wanted to talk a little bit more today about stealing and restealing, which was the topic of my post from this past Monday. I got a lot of good comments to that post, and I thought I would address some of those comments specifically, in addition to giving my own thoughts on some concepts introduced in those comments, because I do have some more to say about the topic overall. The resteal is one of my favorite moves, after all.

Schaubs left a comment to Monday's post where he wanted to know do I still apply these same general rules on restealing regardless of the size of the tournament I am in? Generally speaking, yes. I mean, in a blonkament that is only 20-70 people or so, the chip stacks never get real big, and there just isn't the long (two hours or more, somtimes) period near the end when the Ms are low basically across the board where stealing and especially restealing become so important. But once you get up into the several hundreds of players, and on to as large as any tournament I've ever played in, I'm stealing and restealing like this near the end all the time. I almost never resteal early in a tournament because the blinds and antes don't make you, but in any largeish event, by definition just because of the structure itself there's going to be a looooong time where stealing is just about all you'll be doing if you want to stay ahead of the blinds.

And yes, Schaubs, I do use a similar strategy during bubble play, although obviously you have to be more careful because you don't want to endanger your own position vis a vis the bubble. In other words, if I'm a prohibitively huge stack with 15 players left in an mtt satellite where 14 players win the seat, I am not likely to steal or resteal much. Why bother? Why take the risk with an abjectly huge stack when I can probably just sit around and wait for someone to bust and then win my seat? Generally I would only steal and certainly only resteal if I thought there was some chance I might actually need those chips for later in the tournament. Otherwise it's often not worth the risk.

Blinders, thanks for weighing in with the ubertight view. Suffice it to say, not only is restealing a +EV move if it is executed correctly, but it is the only way to have any chance of winning a large mtt. I would estimate you probably need to resteal several times in the last few hours of any big mtt if you are to win it, period. I don't think there's any other way as the blinds and antes get huge and the tables get shorthanded so those blinds are coming around faster and faster. You'd have to be Astinthe luckiest guy in the world to get enough good cards to wait without ever making moves with nothing great in that situation. And don't get me wrong, as I mentioned in my original post, you will surely donk yourself right out of a number of these mtts with less than strong hands against guys who were raising with actual good cards. No doubt you will, so to that extent in any individual tournament, of course the resteal can be a -EV move. But overall it is an absolutely key piece of any really deep mtt run, in particular online where the structures are sufficiently fast to basically ensure low Ms for most of the players through most of the last few hours of the event.

Blinders and a number of the other commenters to Monday's post also raised a few more factors that clearly do weigh on the decision of whether or not to resteal. Blinders correctly mentions things like "position of the raiser, your position, stack sizes, raisers image, your image", all of which weigh no doubt. As a poker player late in an mtt you are screwing up if you're not using every single bit of information that is available to you when making every single decision. I did not mention position of the raiser or my own position in the analysis in my original post, but of course those do go into the equation. I didn't mention them because for me they are almost always the same in the situations where I might consider a move like a resteal. In other words, you're almost never in early or middle position to do a resteal. I'm not limping into hardly any pots very late in an mtt, so the only time I would ever resteal is from late position. Similarly, restealing from an utg raiser is something I'm almost never doing late in an mtt, unless I have personally observed the guy raising utg so often that I know he must be stealing with those hands, and even then it is almost too risky of a move to get too involved in doing against an utg raiser. So, almost all the time where the resteals happen -- at least for me in the big mtts -- is when I am on the button or in one of the blinds, and when the stealing player is in the cutoff, the button, or maybe in the small blind vs. my big blind. So I might take into account the relative positions of the players involved, but in mostly every case it is basically the same for me because I try not to get myself into positions where I am restealing from an utg guy who probably has a strong hand to begin with.

The other factor Blinders mentioned are the relative images of the players involved (he mentioned stack sizes too, but I wrote a great deal about that already on Monday). But Blinders is totally correct, the raiser's image plays heavily in this decision. This is why I wrote the other day about targeting players whom I have seen open-raising quite a bit from late position already at the table. These are the guys who you know like to steal with less than premium cards in the right spots -- the guys with the stealy, loose-late images -- so these are the guys I like to do most of my resteal attempts from. Similarly, my own image clearly plays into the resteal decision as well. I didn't mention this specifically in my post because if you've ever watched me late in an mtt, you know that I raise all the time. Nobody can really get much of a read on me because I have raised, and I even reraise people enough -- with some good hands and some bad ones -- that my own image is usually basically the same by the time we are down to the final few tables in any big mtt. But it's certainly something you have to keep in mind when deciding whether or not to resteal -- i.e., if you've just been caught twice in a row trying to resteal from a late-position open-raiser and having to show shiat cards, then a third resteal attempt is not nearly as likely to be met with the fold that you so desperately want. That is basic poker psychology, but something you certainly need to think about in late-stage mtt play if you are to truly take advantage of all the available information out there.

DaSwam, whom I think is a first-time commenter on my blog, asked on Monday how much I typically bet when I steal and when I resteal. Good questions. Anyone who has played a lot with me will know that I am a very standard raise amount kind of a guy. In other words, I tend to raise around 3x with any kind of a hand, from any position, until the antes are big. Once the antes are big enough late enough into a large mtt, I will increase my standard raise amount to something more like 4x or even 5x the big blind, to make sure I am giving any kind of soooted connector or whatever poor odds to take a flop and try to bust me. So if there's already 5000 in the pot but the big blind is only 2400 (because there are $200 antes from all 7 people around the table), I'm not going to just bump it up to 3x the 2400 or 7200 to do a late-position steal attempt. If there's already 5000 in the pot, a raise to 7200 is going to give a lot of hands a lot of odds to make the call. In that spot I will want to probably close to double what's already in the pot, which is 4x the big blind or more, as a result of the big portion of the pot created by the antes.

For restealing, I tend to have a similar approach. Remember, with a true resteal, your objective is clearly to get your opponent to fold the hand he just open-raised with from late position. You don't typically want a call, or else it's not really a re-steal, but rather a regular re-raise with a strong hand that you don't mind if he calls you with. But for a resteal, my objective is generally to reraise enough so that the guy has to fold anything but his strongest hands. So, let's take my example above again here. 7-handed table, 1200-2400 blinds and a 200 ante. There's 5000 in the pot before the hand even begins, and it folds around to the button, a guy I have observed steal-raising several times already in the past half hour or so, who bumps the bet up to 10k, just more than 4 times the big blind. Say he has 100,000 chips in his stack after the 10k bet here. Here I will want to reraise him up to something like 30k or 40k. I will amost always raise at least 3 times his steal-raise, because that's the kind of bet that it's going to take to get him to lay down his Q9 or 76s that he is stealing with here. And if he wants to call me for that huge of a reraise with a hand like Q9 or 76s, then I'm going to have ample opportunity to get him out of this pot on the flop or after. But again, remember the idea is to get this guy out of the pot when you're restealing, so a 2x reraise to me is not designed to get him to fold.

I also try to look at how many chips I will have left after I put in this big resteal raise here. If the amount I have left compared to the amount already in the pot will likely pot-commit me, then so be it and then I'm just going to move allin. Similarly, if I look at my stealing opponent's stack and think that even a 3x or 4x reraise of his steal raise will not likely be enough to get him to fold what is an otherwise large stack, but I think that an allin re-reraise by me is big enough to get him to fold, I might move in there as well instead of just the normal 3x or 4x reraise. But to me the allin decisions are basically made with reference to either my stack size and/or my opponent's stack size, and not at all with reference to the cards I'm holding.

And DaSwam made one other important question/point at the end of his comment on Monday as well: it is absolutely crucial, at least for my game, that I do not betray the strength of my cards at all by the sizing of any of these steals or resteals. In other words, if I have pocket Aces in the big blind, and the button puts in an obvious 4x steal-raise, I will reraise him the exact same 3x or 4x that I would raise if I had shiat for cards but was just sure he was stealing. The bottom line fact is that, while I cannot speak for the quality of play or experience of any individual at any final table that you might happen to be playing at, in general the good, experienced, sophisticated players at any poker table will easily figure you out if your idea is to always push in when you have a super strong hand on a reraise, or just reraise 3x with the weaker holdings, or vice versa. As those of you who play with me often will know, my game is about raising, raising with a lot of preflop holdings and a lot of flops and turns, etc., so the entire focus of my game relies on my making the exact same moves with my lesser raising hands as I do with my Aces and Kings and big slicks. I suggest that other newer players follow that same approach, but I also am well aware that there are a number of winning styles of poker that people can play. If yours involves you trapping a lot with big cards, more power to you. That ain't me. I don't like letting in lesser hands with my pocket premiums and then losing to those hands. I'd rather take those pots down early with my monsters, and let the big pots take care of themselves during any mtt.

Alan asked a good question the other day as far as how do I counter a resteal. Being someone who loves the resteal in late-stage mtt play as much as I do, I loved this question. The answer is, there is no really good strategy for "countering" a resteal. The best move is usually to fold, which is why the resteal is such a great move. And if you actually happen to have a hand, this is a situation where I find the most usefulness for my read of a particular player and a particular situation. The example Alan gave was just about one of the toughest decisions you're going to run into late in an mtt -- he had AJ, open-raised from late position before the flop, and another player reraised him allin. What do you do with a hand like AJ? There's just no good answer, other than to say you dig deep, use everything you've ever seen about your opponent and his play, how many players are at the table, the relative stack sizes and if that might make it more or less likely for someone to be pushing in light here or more likely that they would have to have a big big hand to be playing back like that, etc. You just have to look at your cards and look at all those factors involved, and decide if you think your AJ is best. Generally speaking, I would be inclined to fold the JackAce, because generally speaking the JackAce is complete and utter shit against an allin reraise, even shorthanded, but it's certainly the case that most of the blonkeys don't know this fact, so who knows what I would've done in your situation. One of the real beauties of the resteal is that it puts your opponent to a lot of tough decisions like this. What if he has AJ like Alan had here? To me I am likely to fold that hand, all other things being equal. Similarly what if he has 77? Are you going to call an allin reraise with 77? All things equal, I don't want to call there where I have to figure I am likely at best a 51% favorite. Restealing can be very effective for this reason, even against players who are not actively stealing with ATC but rather are waiting only for, say, the top 50% or even less of hands to make stealy moves.

I think I mentioned this earlier already, but to answer LJ's question, I am generally not even thinking about restealing from anyone early in tournaments, only rather when the blinds and antes get sufficiently big, and the M's get sufficiently small, to warrant taking on the risk that you take every time you resteal with less than a premium hand. In general, restealing early in tournaments is a recipe for not lasting the first hour. Especially in blonkaments, you have to start off tight (not weak, just tight) and you can't be risking bluffing off half your stack with nothing at the beginning too many times, or you're gonna get burned. I've been there more times than I can count, I would know.

I liked Astin's comment to my Monday post as well, in that it raised another interesting factor that I didn't get into in my post on Monday, which is the relative bet size of your opponent. In other words, you have to pay attention to which opponents tend to make their steal-raised all 3x the big blind, or which guys tend to go bigger whenever they are raising without much of a hand. I specifically ommitted this from my earlier post because, frankly, this tell is so easily faked by any kind of a sophisticated player, so there is not much usefulness of it standing-alone in my own game, but I'd be lying if I said I never use relative bet sizing (relative to the person's other similar bets under different circumstances) to aid in steal-resteal decisions. Just be careful of jumping all over somebody with a resteal just because they only min-raised from the button into an unopened pot. Minraising can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, and just because someone isn't stealing with a huge raise relative to the blinds, that doesn't meant that they aren't playing a strong hand a little bit slow to try to drum up some action.

Lastly, anybody have any clue what this "DP" character was getting at in his comment on Monday? I assume maybe he is just on drugs or something, as the comment he left hardly makes English sense. Any ideas are welcome.

Ha ha.

See you tonight at 10pm ET at the Mookie. Same thing as with the MATH this past Monday (I'm talking to you, emptyman) -- anyone and everyone is welcome to join in, whether you've played in this event before or not, whether you have a blog or not, and even whether you have even played poker before or not. The Mookie buyin is $11 on full tilt, it is at 10pm ET every Wednesday night, and the password is always "vegas1". It's the largest weekly gathering of bloggers and non-bloggers in a private tournament setting, and I cannot possibly win the tournament due to a curse laid upon my ancestors about a thousand years ago, so I come to donate to the cause week-in and week-out. Tonight is your night to be there too.