You'll See Me, in the Tee Oh Cee

When I won my seat to the BBT3 Tournament of Champions on Tuesday night, I did it in a surprising and yet unsurprising place: the Skills Series. The Skill Series! Can you believe that? If you had told me that was going to happen at any time over the past three months I would have snarfed my Killians Red right out my nose all over you. If you had told me that just one week ago today, I would have thought you were a dam fool. Dumb enough to have two blogs even.

But then a strange thing happened: I found my blonkament game out of nowhere for no apparent reason last week, which not coincidentally coincided with going on a nice hot streak of cards. Not so much starting cards, but hitting some draws and winning some big pots in key spots. It's been happening to me now for a week straight, as I cruised into my third consecutive BBT3 final table on Tuesday with once again a nice stack to make some noise with. In this week's Stud Hi-Lo Skills event, I played great poker for about 98% of the time, making only a small handful of mistakes on the entire night, and on a couple of those occasions managing to come from behind anyways to win some big hands and eliminate some donks. I lost some big pots and did absolutely nothing early, but as the bringins and the antes started to climb and the pots started to really matter, I consistently got in the bets when I was ahead and managed to drop out of most of the big ones when I was a long shot to win. As I've mentioned here several times before, hilo is probably the single poker game I've been playing the longest, going back to playing it at the Trump Taj Mahal in the early 90s as a teenager with my father. So I know the game, and I know enough to know what a minefield this was going to be, no different from the other Skills Series events that have been so well attended so far.

So as I mentioned, I had literally zero big hands in the Skills Game through the first 90 minutes I think. Literally nothing. It sucked, and it was a fairly typical beginning for me in Skills in general, although I did remain very focused on playing tight and not chasing donkey pots especially early. But as a result, I was below 2000 chips from the 3000 starting stacks by the end of Hour 1, sitting in 54th place of 66 players remaining (70 started) with 1900 and change:



So, not a good beginning at all, and I wasn't even good about not spewing too much early. Twenty minutes in to Hour 2, I scooped my first pot of the night with two low pair off bonedaddy who knew I was low but thought his buried Jacks might be good for the high. That got me back "up" to 2400 chips, still well below starting stacks now 80 minutes in. Blech. And even more blech when I dropped back below 2000 chips again by the 90-minute mark, when I took a snapshot of my stats in the tournament to date:



Now I am farrrr from an expert in proper stud hilo tournament stats, but those be lookin dam fugly to me. Not sure what I was doing in this first 90 minutes or so, to be totally honest. Just trying to survive I guess. Which is all I was doing.

My first big pot of hour 2 happened here shortly after the halfway point, where I got into a 3rd street raising war with Riggs:



I am starting with under 1700 chips here, so you can see things are still not going well. But I have three straight flush babies to start with, so especially given my stack size I am definitely planning to play it long and strong here against the Ace up.

Eventually we got it allin:



and BOOOOOOOooooooooom!:



From there I quickly jumped up to over 5600 chips and 14th place of the 47 remaining players when I took down a large pot against lakefront that he seriously misplayed I think. This was where he went wrong:



I mean, just look at my upcards. With the 8 showing. Ugh.



So, sitting in the mid teens as the second hour drew closer to winding up, I played a flush draw and chased a little bit against Don and got rewarded. I called with an Ace-high flush draw and trip 2s against Don's four cards showing to a high straight and a bet from Don on 6th street, and then I filled my nut flush on the river. When I suddenly checkraised at the end, I'm sure Don knew he was beat, but in the end I knew I was drawing to a boatload (pun intended) of outs with both my flush and full house draws, and I made my flush on the river to take the big pot and bring me up to 8161 chips and 6th place of 42 remaining with ten minutes left in Hour 2.

At the second break, I was 17th out of 32 leftr with just over 6000 chips after I chased a couple of streets and folded when I missed and/or my opponent caught good on 4th or 5th. Still alive, but still not exactly dominating like I had through most of the mid-game in the most recent Mookie and Riverchasers tournaments. In fact, just 8 minutes in to Hour 3 of the Skills Stud8 event, here I am in 22nd of 28 players remaining as my relative chop position continued to worsen:



Down to under 4000 chips a short while later, I looked down to find my only rolled-up hand (2s) of the entire tournament, and dammit if heffmike didn't nail his low on 7th street once I was already allin and ahead both ways after 6th.

My next double came at the hands of Archimedean on this hand, where he made a bad call on 5th with what turned out to be nothing more than I made 87-low against my 243 showing:



That is not good hilo poker right there, and it cost Arch and got me a much-needed double up to buy me some breathing room as the blinds were already up to 600-1200 with a 100 ante per hand, leaving me with an M of basically 3 at that time. A lucky break when I absolutely needed it most:



Generally, I floundered around for the next 25, 30 minutes of Hour 3 after the Archimedean double-up, getting me back down below 4000 a couple more times. Most of the chips I won -- which as it is only managed to help me to tread water and certainly not to build my stack to any particular degree -- were from steals and really more positional-type of raising than anything else. What I mean by this is, the action on 3rd street folds around to me in middle position and I have the only Ace upcard left. I raise even though my downcards are rubbish, and I take it down. Or, the on 4th street I catch good for a second low card while my two opponents, both of whom also showed low upcards on 3rd street, both catch bad. Now, even though my two downcards are rubbish, I may raise and take it down right there. This is the kind of stuff that you simply have to do in limit poker, in particular in the non-holdem variations where there are upcards in everyones' hands to supply information to all the players, and I definitely took advantage last night. Again, it's not that I am building my stack with that stuff, which simply does not amount to enough until maybe the final table to be worth a ton of focus, but those extra chips won were the very thing that enabled me to still have 4000 chips instead of only 1600 chips when I finally doubled up again, etc.

I won a big pot against myelephants on this hand, where I looked ahead on 4th street so I pushed and got called allin in this spot:



Eventually here was the end result:



Now here I believe I was accused of sucking out, but I have to take umbrage with that. I don't know the exact odds especially given that this is a split game, but I have the higher high card hand, I have the higher three-flush draw, and I have the better 3-card low while my opponent got me allin with his only 87-low onj 4th street. If he is ahead at all, it's surely not by much and not nearly enough to be fairly called a suckout. I call this a bad play by him with the 87-low and one that ended up like many such plays with 8s and especially 87s showing on 4th street in the split games. This hand got me to 9th of 17 players remaining.

After scooping a big pot to eliminate the ever-present swimmom in our limit games when she checkraised me for all her chips on 6th street with just a flush draw and an 8-low draw that never filled and get me up to over 18k in chips for 5th place of 13 players remaining, I completed myelephants's night by taking his short stack on allin here with my three low cards against his split 9s:



and then surviving thanks to a sweet river King:



Here I was at the third break in the Skills game:



Now with 9 players remaining, we are playing at super-shorthanded tables, and no doubt that shorthanded limit split games (especially the Stud variants) require lots of stealing and again really more positional stuff than actual steals like the moves I described above. That's what I did for another few minutes into Hour 4 until the final table was reached:



It was a good final table, but not one that I was intimidated by or anything like that. Not sure how many lifetime blogger tournament wins there were contained at that final table, but I was happy to see that it certainly was not a slate full of (1) aggro types who are hard to deal with, (2) luckboxes who are also hard to deal with especially in the limit, chasedonkish games or (3) guys who win blonkaments for breakfast and routinely run over the other bloggers, who are perhaps the most annoying of all to deal with because I don't really know of a strategy to beat that kind of a player per se. I started at the final table in 4th place out of 7 remaining as two players were knocked out on the last hand right before the final table was set. The biggest issue to note about the final table was that a big bet was 4000 chips already at that point, so even first place at the FT has only like 10 big bets. That is gheyer than ghey, and really in the end makes this tournament very close to a luckfest as far as who actually ends up the last person standing.

I won a big pot very early at the final table off of iwantitall when he/she had to fold to this bet on 6th street as my board kept getting better and better and his/hers was moving in the opposite direction:



Here I moved up to 35k in chips and into 3rd place of 7 players remaining. And I wasn't done mixing it up with iwantitall, who a short while later got involved in this hand, where s/he called not once:



but twice:



but an inside draw to a wheel, which did not fill as my pair of Aces held up to scoop in the end:



and suddenly I was in 2nd place, well above 3rd place and within just a few grand of PokerEnthusiast in the mid 40k range in chips.

Fast forward about 10 minutes and I eliminated CK on an interesting hand where she started off obviously very strong, but I felt I had a hand worth calling with here:



Then, when CK caught bad for her low draw but still bet out on 5th street and I felt it reasonably likely that my two pairs were ahead, I raised her here:



and, just as I had been hoping at this point in the hand, CK felt committed to go with it and hope to make a hand to win against what looked on my board like a completely weak set of upcards. And here was the final board, with CK's 8-low never filling and my pair of Jacks just edging her pair of 10s for the big scoop:



giving me 68k in chips, well in 2nd place of 5 left but still behind PE who was winning most of the big pots at the final table and really since about two tables remaining. Congrats out to CK though for what I believe was her first ever blonkament cash. Way to go, that was a long time coming and certainly was well-deserved from CK's play this week in Stud8.

Two hands later I put short-stacked bone daddy all in with my (K5)5 vs his King upcard, reasoning that he is unlikely to have a King underneath since I know I have one under and he already has one showing as well. I was right:



and it held on to win and to nab me probably my 6th or 7th bounty of the night:



More importantly, this was my first chiplead of the entire tournament as well, which is a great thing to experience when you're down to 4 players remaining at the end of a long minefield donkeyfest.

And then came by Biggest Hand of the Tournament. The one that basically set me up with the chiplead that I rode the rest of the way to victory without ever giving it up again. My largest pot and just generally when it all comes down to it, the most proximate cause of my winning the Skills Stud8 event.

It started off as I called to see a rare three-way 4th street with four of us still remaining at the final table with three spades on 3rd street, including an Ace and a 2. Don't see myself laying this hand down much on 3rd street in this spot:



When I picked up a 4th spade -- unfortunately (or fortunately, I suppose) not another low card as well -- I checked and then smooth called once again a bet from each of my two other opponents in the hand to this point. I debated raising here, in an attempt to get a free card or two later in the hand, but I figured it was unlikely that a raise would get me a free card given the amount of other action I was getting on this hand. So I thought it best not to telegraph my 4-flush with a raise -- which I think would be pretty obvious if I suddenly raised in Stud8 when a sooted 9 falls on the turn -- and went for the smooth call instead for the second straight street:



Now here is where the hand got really interesting. On 5th street, I picked up a Ten to give me split tens and still my Ace-high four-flush, while both of my opponents in the hand broke out into nice 3-card lows. I did not like missing my flush of course, so I checked up front, and by the time the action got back to me it was suddenly a bet and a raise to play:



So it was 16 grand to me into a 50k pot, and both of my opponents were looking certainly to be going low, with no obvious flush or straight draws out there to threaten my Ace-high flush draw. Surely if there had just been one bet this is I think a no-brainer call, but with the raise -- and the possibility of short-stacked Alan moving in right here and now on this street behind me as well -- I agonized quite a bit over this decision. In the end, I decided to make the call, reasoning that if I could get in against the other table big stack and try to make my flush on 6th or 7th, then maybe just maybe PE would fail to make a low and I could go for a huge scoop. I figured I would take one more street of betting at most, and I might even have folded if Alan reraised and PE made it four bets to go here. Instead, to my delight, Alan paused, asked for time and eventually folded himself here, leaving me up against the player I had been less concerned about anyways in this particular hand.

Here comes 6th street:



BOOOOOooooooooom!! There's my flush. When PE bet out, I raised him, again figuring I will probably split but figuring with the Ace-high flush and no reason to fear a boat or a flush in PE's hand that I was freerolling to the high half of the pot, so let's just see how much money I can get in in case my opponent does not actually have or make a qualifying low hand. After 7th street, PE check-called my 8k bet once again, bringing the total pot to nearly 115,000 chips, I had him on a low hand, but instead he had this:



for the hidden trips, and I scooped the entire thing with my Ace-high flush. Exactly the kind of thing I am hoping for when I make these freerolling type of hands like this. I mean, if I make a wheel on 5th street and my opponent has some high cards already showing, I know I have the low part covered. Even if my opponent is showing TJQK as his upcards for the likely higher straight to win the high, why not bet it when you are sure you have half the pot locked up all to yourself? I was very lucky that this freeroll play here paid off as well as it did and that PE did not hit any of his full house outs, and suddenly I was sitting in this chip position:



Bloooooooom! 143k for me to 27k for second place, at the time a guy named Tom Jefferson.

And now, I had to win the tournament and nab my BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat while the getting was good for me with this kind of chip lead. No more final table donking like was the story for me last week at the Mook and the RC. So I got very tight here for a bit, as I did not want to double up any of the other stacks playing loosely. While I sat tight, Alan busted out in 4th place shortly after my monster hand, leaving us with three players remaining, and my 140k in chips to 35k for Tom Jefferson to 25k or so for PE. We played a long time 3-handed like this, probably for a good 30 minutes or so, with everyone playing real tight without near-nut hands and really trying not to get caught for a big pot without a big hand or large two-way draw to back it up.

Eventually, I did make a bad spewy-type of play, almost giving up my chip lead as I made a few bad decisions in a hand against PE. I think the source of my problem can be traced to my call on 5th street here, where even though I have some nice up cards, I am behind his own up cards for low and am holding absolutely nothing worthwhile whatsoever for the high side, and yet I made this call anyways:



Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. Then I even called here just because PE was so short-stacked, I figured he basically has to bet out with literally any six cards here on 6th street, another foolish move for me:



And suddenly I'm only up 92k to 76k to 41k in chips. Shiat!! That right there was pure, unadulterated spewage, and it was probably the worst play I made all night at just about the worst possible time. Luckily, I still had my chip lead, albeit slight, and I was able to hold it together emotionally enough to immediately commence those stealing and position-raising sorts of moves I have described above that are typical of any high-blind, high-ante stud tournament, which I was able to use to quickly get my stack back up over 100k.

Here is the final table and chipstacks at the fourth break:



So I'm still doing well and sitting pretty, with 119k in chips to 66k for Tom Jefferson to 24k for PE.

Within the first hand or two of Hour 5, PE busted when the money got allin here on 4th street when PE held a low pair and a 3-card low draw:



but PE could never improve his low or a high hand and was soon eliminated in 3rd place after a strong run that saw him in the overall chip lead for much of the final quarter or so of the tournament:



And so heads-up Stud 8 play began between myself and blonkament unknown Tom Jefferson, with me up roughly 113k to 93k, so I was holding about 55% of the total chips in play:



Almost immediately, Tom asked in the chatbox if I wanted a chop. With a slight chip lead playing a game as frustrating as heads-up split pot games can be, where even heads-up I only have around 7 big bets, and that is as the chip leader? And with a BBT3 ToC seat on the line for the winner? Fawk yeah I'll chop it! So I told Tom the truth -- I don't care about the money per se, but what I really want is the seat. I wanted any chop to be in public and to avoid if possible whatever discussions stemmed from the earlier chop that got Scottymc his ToC seat and that was the subject of so much controversy in the blogosphere.

So, first place in this week's Skills event was slated to pay $245, and second place paid $161. As I said, frankly that amount of money is meaningless to me, and yet I cared quite a bit about winning the BBT3 ToC seat. So I told Tom sure, I'll chop him more money than I if he gives me the win and the coveted ToC seat. He thought for about two seconds and readily agreed. Smokkee got in his requisite "there is an asterisk on this win" comment in the chatbox, and then Tom commenced raise-folding a few times to officially put the chop in place. While we were doing this, Tom suggested that I pay him $225, nearly the $245 awarding to first place, and I agreed. I literally asked him to name his price, and that's what he came up with, and I took it. At one point after I had accepted his offer of a chop out at $225, he came back and said he would only chop for full first-place money, which frankly I rejected. I want the seat, but I didn't want it that bad that I wasn't willing to play a game where I had at that point a decent chip lead and I believed a skill advantage in any event. So I wasn't going to pay out first place money for a tournament that I had every reason to believe I would have won outright anyways, but Tom quickly re-agreed to $225 and we completed the chop as Tom raise-folded his way out, leaving me the Skills game official winner and the latest recipient of a BBT3 ToC seat:



Blooooooooooooooooom!

I would be remiss if I did not mention a special thanks to out to Donkette for her consistent votes of confidence, dating way back when to when she bet this guy near the beginning of a Riverchasers tournament that I would win the entire thing, and then I went on to come from behind to win. This time, Donkette's involvement was a bit more direct in my success in this week's Skills tournament, as before the Skills tourney she and I were chatting on the girly when it came out that she had bet someone a cool hundy in cold, hard cash that I will win at least one BBT3 tournament. Slowly it dawned on me that this means someone has bet against me winning at least one event. Ouch! With all the blonkament success I have had, this year and in past years? With my WPBT success a couple of years back, with my 4th place finish in the first BBT? People are still out there making bets that I cannot win a single BBT3 tournament? Wow, that really slammed me good, I have to be honest. I mean, to tell the truth I have a similar prop bet about my own performance in the BBT3 tournaments with someone in our ghey group, but it's one thing for someone to openly bet me that I can't win a tournament. Seems to me it's entirely another thing for someone else to bet with someone else that Hoy will never win one. So that more than anything else really lit a fire under me and kept me focused as I sat down for the start of the Skills game this week. Then there I was some five hours later being congratulated by Donkette for nabbing my ToC seat as well as winning one of my biggest backers, and still the actual best poker player of all the bloggers, her $100 prop bet all in one fell swoop.

So, with my Tournament of Champions seat now all sealed up, the better question may be: Who is willing to bet me again that I won't win another BBT3 event before all is said and done?

Maybe tonight in the Mookie, huh? Why not? I can always dream of being a shithead, can't I?

Friday Musings

As we head into the weekend, today I've got a bunch of random musings, and a little bit of poker content, that I think I'll share. During the week I've got so much poker-related stuff swirling around in my head, and more adding every night as I play and am always seeing interesting, funny or crazy things at the virtual tables, that I tend to write half-posts and then save them as drafts in my blogger. Then on days like today when I decide I've just got too much random stuff saved up in draft form, I'm just going to do a dump of a bunch of that information, all of which was intended to be up on the blog already but which keeps getting replaced by other material as it becomes available to me. I don't know in the end if this format will turn out looking much different at all from my usual stream-of-consciousness posts, or maybe it will be very different (I doubt that), but hopefully you will like it. I think I'll say what I have to say up front, and then I can end the post with a stud hilo tidbit that I had originally planned to put up here today anyways. But you guys can use a nice random musings post from me on a Friday, right? Thought so.

So first off, how's about a nice family-oriented story. Last weekend the Hammer Wife and I took our kids to the Museum of Natural History in the Upper West Side of Manhattan on Saturday. It was a holiday weekend, and it was cold outside, so when we got there around lunchtime the museum was utterly and completely mobbed. Uberpacked, if you will. It was hard to even push the stroller around the hallways and exhibits with all the A7s tourists and kids running around that place. The worst part of all was that, after we took M, the older Hammer Girl, to her favorite exhibit which has this big huge life-size blue whale hanging from the ceiling and also shows at one place a gigantic sperm whale chowing down on a giant squid (for some reason M loves that one more than anything else in the entire museum, possibly even anything in all of Manhattan), M decided she wanted to go eat in the museum's food court. She loves it there but I hate it, mostly because it's all fast food and pretty crappy at that (chicken fingers, pizza, burgers that have all been sitting out under the heat lights for an hour, you know how it is), but we went because, well, when M wants something even semi-reasonable she has a way of making things so ugly that it's pretty much always a more attractive option to just do what she wants. Sad but true. So we go down there, and not surprisingly the cafe is mobbed like nothing I've ever seen. There are no seats available at all (it's a huge room), so Hammer Wife and I decide to do the family thing, and she takes M inside to get some food for us all, while I take K in the stroller and try to nab a table for us.

To make a very long story short, after fighting hard through the throngs, I finally find a family that is cleaning their trash up and obviously getting ready to leave. Even though most tables seem to have someone waiting like a hawk to pounce on the seats as soon as they get up, for whatever reason I lucked out and there's no one else waiting to grab this one, so I get my stroller in position and am pleased that I've finally got a bead on the table I've been jostled so hard to find for the past 10 minutes or so. And let me tell you btw, being jostled by a bunch of New Yorkers ain't exactly fun. So, while these people are just pulling their trash into bags and trays and starting to stand up and get their own stroller together, this 60-year-old or so mom walks up with what looks like a 9- or 10-year old boy. Either it's an old mom with her amazingly young son for her age, or maybe it was a grandmother with her grandson (or maybe she just looks old as shit). I don't know. And I don't care. This grandmotherly lady sees the family getting up from the table, and then she looks over at me. She looks me right in the eye, I point to the table and shake my head "yes", saying to her that this is my table and I've been waiting. There was no confusion about who got there first or anything like that, as I watched this bitch walk up to the table and I'd already been there waiting for a good five full minutes at least. Anyways, she starts looking around antsily, as if she's also been trying to find a place for her son/grandson and her to sit for some time among the crowdedass cafeteria, and I can just tell what she plans to do. Of course I'm not going to let her, but then when the fucking family stands up, they end up pushing their own stroller over right in front of mine, completely blocking me off to get their own kid in his stroller, and before I'm able to get near the seats, this bitchass sits down with her 10-year-old and they start to eat.

Now, you just have to take my word for it here. She knew exactly what she did. She knew the table was mine, and she knew that the family who had been sitting there had blocked me out. She saw her opportunity and she bitchingly took it. I was floored. Now those of you who know me well will note that I am a vengeful s.o.b. There was aboslutely no doubt whatsoever that I was going to exact some form of revenge on this whoremonger. I debated my options.

The first thing I thought of was just to sit down right on her lap and act like she wasn't even there. I actually gave serious consideration to this. Because, I am a fair man after all, and I want the punishment to fit the crime at all times. And in this case, the table was clearly mine, so why not just have me treat it as if it is in fact clearly mine. And if you know me, you know that sitting on some old grandma's lap is not going to feel good for her one bit, not unless her lap is made of steel or something (I'm 6 feet tall, and beefy to boot). Not wanting to physically assault the woman, I then pondered whether I could just take the two empty seats at the table, act like the bitch-n-son weren't even there, and then make sure to have my two girls cause such a ruckus, and be so rude and messy and swearing and loud myself, so as to ruin this chick's entire meal and make her sorry for ever sitting there in the first place. Both of these were nice options as I thought them through, but each was going to require me to make quite a scene in order to adequately make my point. In the end, I decided I didn't feel like creating that kind of a scene, but at the same time one of the things that bothered me the most about this situation was the boy. Here he was, nerdy-looking and all of 10 years old or something, and I solemnly guarantee you he is now going to grow up doing this exact same kind of thing to people as he gets older. Why? Because he watched his fucking mother do it while he was growing up! She does this and makes it appear as if this kind of behavior is acceptable even though we're living in a fucking society here, and then this poor, impressionable nerdboy is going to grow up and probably piss off 100 other families over the next 40 or 50 years by cutting in line and stealing people's tables, etc. And as I thought more and more about all those innocent victims spread out across this young boy's future, that's the part that really got me the most of all. I really didn't feel like creating a big scene after all, but I had to do something that would make it clear to the boy that his mother's behavior was wrong, and not something to emulate in any way. And I needed something that would make a lasting impression on him, hopefully something he would not forget for some time as I really wanted this lesson to sink in. So after much deliberation, I did the only thing I could think to do that was approaching deserving of the crime, and yet got the message I wanted to get across to the boy as well. I went over to the table (the other family had left by this point), I walked right up to the boy (not the (grand)motherfucker, and said to him, in my angriest voice I could muster:

"Your mother is a cunt."

Then I left. I never even looked at the old hag to see what her reaction was to the whole thing. That oughta make for some interesting conversation at the rest of their meal. What a bitch. But I think I did ok defending myself and my family's honor in the end.

Wow, I've been wanting to tell that story for days. Love me or hate me, that's just the kind of guy that I am. And if you think I regret saying that at all, then you just don't know me. I regret not saying it sooner maybe, but that's about it. Whore.

OK now on to some other random thoughts:

I think it would be cool if Janice kills Tony on The Sopranos. They've already shown what a psycho raging temper she has back when she shot Richie Aprile in the head about 5 seconds after he hit her for the one and only time. They've shown what a fucking dysfunctional family the Sopranos are. All the pieces are there. After Tony got his revenge on Bobby for beating Tony up by forcing Bobby to go kill someone for the first time in his life, Bobby of course, being the fuckup that he is, managed to leave his shirt and his DNA not only at the scene of the crime, but right in the dead fucking hands of the victim. He's gonna get busted and get busted good, and it's going to be very hard even for the mafia to do anything about that with that kind of evidence out there. When Janice figures out that Tony made Bobby do that guy just to get back at Bobby for beating Tony up, and then Janice's gravy train and baby daddy goes off to jail for murder (if that's what ends up happening), I don't think there's any doubt that Janice is going to go absolutely apeshit. I haven't read this prediction anywhere else, so let me be the first to put it right out there. Janice flips out and in an absolute fit of rage, goes to see Tony and kills him dead. I could see it. I really hope The Sopranos doesn't totally jump the shark in what they know is their last season, but it wouldn't shock me if Tony gets fucked up real bad before all is said and done. I also think btw that I saw an interview with the actor who plays Pauly Walnuts where he referred to when he gets whacked. I might have mis-heard that, but I don't think so. Which means that my new favorite non-poker blogger the Blonde is going to be pretty upset, as she is a huge Pauly Walnuts fan according to her comments. That guy's been trending towards disloyal for a long time now, so although nothing yet would indicate that's going to happen, I'm pretty sure that's what the actor said in this interview I saw on E! or something.

Entourage is officially better than The Sopranos now. I love that show. I didn't used to love it, but over the years it's really grown on me. I did enjoy the Sopranos episode this past Sunday, but the premiere of Entourage really kicked ass. Although I don't really care much either way about Turtle, that Johnny Drama absolutely kills me. You could not have picked a better actor to play that character than Kevin Dillon, seriously. He's perfect. And no mention of Entourage can be made without mentioning Ari. Jeremy Piven, also the fucking perfect cast for this character, really steals the entire show IMO. They're very smart to bring him back and make him a central character even in the premiere, and you can see that they're planning to keep the focus on him for the time being, which is very smart. Between Drama and Ari, I am hooked. And as Lost also appears to be heating up right now, I am just super psyched for the next couple months of television, something I haven't said for a long, long time.

On to the world of sports. As most of you know, I am a die hard Philadelphia fan across the board. Philly is my hometown, and I am every bit the quinessential Philadelphia fan as anyone you'll ever meet. Although I wasn't at the game, I was cheering silently myself when Michael Irvin got injured at the old Veteran's stadium against the Eagles, the injury that eventually ended his career. I've thrown garbage, I've thrown snowballs, and I've booed anybody and everybody as I had season tickets to all of the Eagles, Phillies and Flyers at various points of my life growing up. I live and die by the Philly professional sports teams -- which being in New York is hard to do, mind you -- and when I talk about the baseball team in Philly, it's a whole lot more dying and very little living. The Phillies effing disgust me. They have started off the season now 2-7, including an opening-series sweep at home at the hands of the Atlanta Braves who finished something like 16 games out in the division last year, in what has become an annual ritual for the Phils as they look to start off the season by digging themselves an insurmountable hole before things really even get underway for the dog days of summer in MLB. Jayson Stark has a great article on ESPN this week describing how teams that start off this badly basically never make the playoffs, and clearly that's what's in store, yet again, for the losingest franchise in all of professional sports. There should be a rule for cyring out loud that when one owner fails to make the playoffs as much as the current owner Bill Giles has, in a major market like Philadelphia, he should be forced to sell the team. Give him fair value for it, I'm not trying to penalize him financially in any way, but he does not belong owning a major league team. He's not a winner, and he's not interested in becoming or even trying to become a winner. He's a loser, plain and simple. The city of Philadelphia has enough trouble with the Sixers and the Flyers suckin right now. The Phillies are so bad that they've transcended being just an embarrassment to themselves and to the city of Philadelphia. They're a national embarrassment as far as I'm concerned, and a black mark on the eye of Major League Baseball. It's one thing when the Royals or the Pirates suck every year, with their $25 million payrolls, etc. But for the 5th largest market in the country, with a payroll of over $87 million this year and every year, to fail to make the playoffs as much as we do, it is a fucking embarrassment and something should be done about it. Personally, I am sick and fucking tired of already knowing before tax time every single year that the Phillies' season is over. The people of Philadelphia should revolt against this guy and throw his ass out of the city. Bring in Rocky, make him the owner of the Phillies. Now that's what I'm talkin about.

Don Imus, you are a donkey. I have no clue what all the hubbub is about this particular racist and sexist comment that you made, since you've been making comments at least that offensive -- actually, far more offensive -- for a long, long time. But I'm glad this happened. I hate Don Imus. Your show is just about the least funny thing I've ever heard. It's real simple, Donny boy. Thirty years ago you used to get high as a kite, and drunk as a skunk, and do your show. And people liked it, it was funny. You were funny. When you were sloshed. But 10, 15 years ago all that changed. You sobered up. Normally I might question if you are really sober or not nowadays, like I would with other known allegedly former drug-heads like Rush Limbaugh who sounds high to me every time I've ever heard him. But one listen to your show makes it very, very obvious. You're sober, and you're not even remotely funny. It's that simple. Your show sucks, so even though I cannot possibly understand why this comment is the straw that broke the camel's back, I'm just glad you're off the air. Now hopefully they will move Mike and the Maddog to the morning show on WFAN in New York City, finally giving us our full 24-hour complement of sports radio programming, and that will be a major, major upgrade as far as I'm concerned. But don't kid yourselves, anyone. This is not happening to Imus now because he finally offended the black community and they're forcing this firing to happen. Imus has been offending the black community in this country for about 20 years. He's a racist, sexist, hateful pig and always has been, and he's made millions by insulting and offending anyone and everyone, so I am at a total loss about why this particular comment has led to this chain of events. But I'll take it. Good riddance, Don Imus.

One does wonder, though, where we draw the line. How come Howard Stern is still allowed to be on the air when he says what he says. He is far more offensive to black people, to gays, Jews, Italians, you name it and he offends. Unlike Imus, I find Howard to be generally really funny, but that doesn't make his show any less offensive. And I for one will be the first person to say that a lot of what comes out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth is highly offensive to me. In fact, Rush's station WABC here in New York is chock full of people who offend me with their political shows on an almost minute-by-minute basis. Where do we draw the line? I just wish I understood again what suddenly got people so up in arms about Imus's comments the other day. Yes they were completely and totally racist and sexist, not a doubt in the world about that. But why now? And does this mean that guys like Chris Rock will have their shows taken off the air now? What's next?

OK before I leave you with this post for the weekend, I thought I would post briefly about a hand I ran into near the end of the bracelet race last night on full tilt, which was a $26 buyin HORSE event. Yes, the very same low-buyin limit HORSE that I promised myself I would never play in again. Well, I forgot about that, and quickly regretted my decision. Never is it truer that Donkeys Always Draw than in these small limit HORSE events, where people are always playing shitty cards because they generally have no clue how to play these games and what constitutes good starting hands, and due to the limit nature of these games, people feel like they can just keep drawing and drawing and drawing with abandon. And inevitably, some of the people hit their draws, and it's often impossible to even guess because how can you really put a real human being with an actual brain on staying in for two big bets before the turn and the river just to try to catch an inside straight, right? Well, it happens.

Anyways, a couple of hours into this thing on Thursday evening, I played in a fun stud hilo hand that I think illustrates well the principle of playing with a freeroll. Now, to be honest, this is not any kind of an advanced hilo move. It's actually quite basic, and to those of you out there who have even a medium amount of experience in playing stud hilo and/or in HORSE, this point will be largely wasted on you because it will seem obvious, which it is to someone with a bit of experience at the game. But I definitely remember a time when this was not intuitive to me, so I'm going to post it here in case it can help anyone out there who is just getting into hilo or maybe would like to start playing the HORSE events online but doesn't have much experience with high-low split games.

So the game is stud hilo, and a guy with a 9 showing bets out on third street. The action folds around to me near the end, and I have (64)7. A good three-card low, with straight possibilities as well. Now, in the big game in the Bellagio, am I playing this hand for $8000 cash on third street? Probably not. But in donkeyville against just one player showing a 9? You betcha. I call.

Fourth street brings an 8 to my opponent for a board of (xx)98, and I pick up a 5 for a board of (64)57. So here I've got four cards to a low, and my opponent almost surely can't catch me on the low side at this point, so I like my low possibilities with 15 outs three times to a low (four Aces, four 2s, four 3s and three 8s). But what's more, I also now have an open ended inside straight draw, with a chance to hit one of seven outs (four 3s or three 8s) in my last 3 cards to have a great shot at scooping this pot. When my opponent bet out again with the 98 showing here, I figured I have 45 outs to a winning low and 21 outs over three cards to scoop the entire pot. Even though right now you are almost surely behind to the pair of 9s or pocket pair that your opponent was obviously betting from third street on, you have to raise here with all those outs to win half if not all of the pot:



In fact, with all those outs and so many cards to come still, when he re-raised me, I very quickly capped it there on 4th with what I consider to be as close to a freeroll as you will often get in hilo. Yes I was still one card away from making my low, but with 45 outs to the low over 3 cards, it is highly likely I'm going to make a low, and that low is going to win half the pot given what my opponent is already showing, and with 21 outs also to scoop, it was an easy decision to cap it then and there, which also got him allin in the process:



Now again, I'm not trying to represent this as any kind of an advanced move. It's fairly automatic for any experienced split-game player when you've got a made lock (or a near-made lock such as my low in this example) for half the pot, and a good number of outs to the other half as well. I just remember being surprised when I first figured out that sometimes it is right to raise, and even cap the betting, in a split game like this even when you technically have nothing in your hand right now, and you know that currently you are behind your opponent. Situations like that rarely occur in holdem, where you would be significantly favored enough to get it all in while you still don't have any kind of a made hand, but in a split pot game like hilo or O8, this kind of situation will arise and you have to be aware of it in order to maximize your opportunities. In this case, I was basically looking at 45 outs over 3 cards to win half the pot with the low, and 21 outs over three cards to win both the high and the low, plus the other added outs on the high side if I could pick up trips, two pair or some other kind of a winning hand over what was just a 98 showing for my opponent. I'm all about pushing my edges in a limit game like hilo, so this was the move I thought I would show today because it may seem counter-intuitive to some hilo beginners out there to be willing to get it all into the middle without even having a made hand of any kind against a guy who you know basically has some kind of a made hand that beats you.

Incidentally, here was the final board on this hand (turns out my opponent had QQ in the hole to be betting this hard early in the hand):



Yay 6th street! Making me look like I actually know what I'm doing in this game. This hand helped me chip back up at a crucial time in the bracelet race, where I ended up busting just short of the final table, in I think 12th place overall, in what I really, truly hope will be my last ever low-buyin limit HORSE event of my entire life. I won't forget this again next Thursday, don't you worry.

OK please make sure to play in tonight's 9:45pm ET token frenzy on full tilt if you're online, and try to win those tier II tokens for Sunday night's Big Game hosted by Miami Don (and congrats to crazdgamer, the only blogger I saw out of the 14 or so who played in last night's frenzy who ended up winning his token, wtg crazdgamer!). The Big Game is also the next event in the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments series, and barring any unforeseen circumstances I definitely plan to be there. Which means that somebody is going to get the easiest double-up around somewhere in the first few minutes of the tournament, no matter what I do to avoid that outcome. So far we know that in these BBT blogger tournaments, you can call my preflop raises with anything, and you will not only flop a huge hand but it will also be a flop that hits my own hand pretty hard too so you'll be really set up. And on top of that, if you don't get it allin preflop, you can call my allin on the flop with nothing but two shitty overcards, and one of those will still hit on the river even if you're a 20-to-1 underdog at the time. I'm the fish of all fishes in these events, so come out and play the Big Game on Sunday and hope to god that you get to start off at my table. I may not be able to make the token frenzy tonight as the Hammer Wife's family is coming over for me to kick their asses in hearts (I dominate that game), but I should be on at some point later this evening, and either way I will see you Sunday for the Big Game!

One more quick thing, I'm sure Al will be posting all about this later, but the big announcement is finally here. Al has set up a bloggers-only Bracelet Race on full tilt, paying out at least one $1500 prize package to the WSOP if enough players sign up. The details are:

Tournament name: Blogger Bracelet Race @ Full Tilt
When: Sunday, April 29th, 7pm ET
Game: NLHE Deepstack
Buyin: $24+2 or token

Please email blogger_wsop@yahoo.com to receive the password

Only bloggers will be sent the password for this event, so as to ensure it's a real-life blogger who wins his or her way to the preliminary event of their choice in the 2007 WSOP. Either way, by my calculations it looks like we will need 63 players to join in order to make one $1500 prize for the winner, so go email the address above for the password, and get registered for this bigtime blogger extravanganza. If my math is correct, 125 players will mean two $1500 WSOP prizes can be awarded to bloggers, so get in there and register as early as you can, and tell all your poker blogging friends about it as well.

W-W-Donk-N, and Starting Hands Part III

How the fuck did I ever win a WWdN?

You have got to love the WWdN. There's probably more than one reason why, but for whatever reason, the quality of play in the WWdN can be really funny sometimes. I mean, all the blogger tournaments usually see a few nutty plays here and there (especially when Waffles is playing), but the WWdN is a rare bird. I'm guessing it's because in our other regularly-scheduled blogger events, it is mostly poker bloggers -- guys who actually play a lot, and think a lot about poker, and spend some amount of time analyzing their plays and the plays of others, etc. Whereas, Wil tends to attract a slightly more diverse crowd. Sure you've got your regular run-of-the-mill poker bloggers, but you've also got a certain amount of TNG geeks fans, and a sometimes even larger number of just general "celebrity" hounds. And, for the most part, people in these latter two categories don't really know a whole lot about the finer points of no-limit holdem strategy. So, when you play the regular Tuesday night WWdN tournament, you really never know what you're going to be up against as far as quality of play goes, and as most of you know, you can't really put your opponents on a hand or on a particular play if you can't even put them on a poker thought.

Last night, on my way to being eliminated in the middle of the pack from the 46-person field in the latest WWdN, I saw truly one of the worst plays you're ever going to see in an organized poker tournament, in particular from someone who I know plays in at least this tournament with a fair amount of regularity. Let me set the setting for you.

It's maybe 30 minutes into the tournament. Probably 37 or so of the 46 starting players were remaining, and I was a bit under my starting stack of 1500 chips, around 1250 or so, as I failed to get a good hand dealt to me in the entire night of play. I'm UTG and am dealt AKs. I make one of my favorite plays here, which is just to limp UTG for the 50 chips. Unlike AA or KK, AKs is a hand that plays great with multiple players in the pot, so I don't mind if nobody raises after me preflop here. And what's better is that if someone does raise behind me before the flop, I can go ahead and re-pop it with high confidence that I can still win the hand no matter what my opponent is holding. I don't make this play very often UTG with AK, but maybe 15-20% of the time in this situation I'll just limp and see what develops.

So, I limp for 50 chips UTG with AKs. Two folds to my left, and then the player three seats to my left (let's call this person "Fonkey" for lack of a better term, in keeping with my belief in not identifying anybody specifically when I "question" their poker play) pops it up 3x more to 150 from middle position. I'm lovin' it. Then the next player to act calls the 150 chips (you have to wonder what that person has, no?). Then the player after that also calls the 150 chips (hmmm. Wonder what "Fonkey" is thinking about his raise now?). Then the last player to act also calls another 100 chips out of his big blind, and action is back to me, with 4 other players already in the pot for the 150-chip raise after me UTG limp.

Me, I can't believe my good fortune. There are now 625 chips in the pot, and while someone could easily have some kind of pocket pair here, nobody appears to be particularly strong, and I #1 probably have the best hand right now anyways, and #2 even if I don't, I have no worse than a 49% chance of winning if this goes to showdown. And I've got a ton of fold equity, with about 1200 chips behind here and nobody else in for more than 150 chips so far, so I know I can push with my at-worst-50/50-shot hand, and each of the other four players involved has ample reason to fold. They don't seem particularly strong so far, and it will cost them another 1000+ chips to see what I limped and then push-reraised with UTG. So I go for it, allin for my last 1200 chips.

Fonkey, the initial raiser, mulls this over for a loooooong time. His problem is that he not only has to call me for the rest of his chips, but he's got the not one, not two but three players behind him still to act, each of whom already happily called a 3x raise before the flop when he put it in a minute earlier. After letting his time run down to almost zero, he goes ahead and calls my allin limp-reraise from UTG, with the three raise-callers still to act behind him.

All of you out there, do me a personal favor and take a second and think, what would you need to make an allin call in this spot? Again, I limped from UTG, you kicked it up 3x more, got not one not two but three callers of your raise. And then to top it off I allin-reraised all four bettors from UTG, where I had limped from originally. So you've got to call your last 1200 chips into a 625-chip pot against my UTG limp-allin reraise (scarrry), plus you've got to worry about all three of your preflop raise-callers behind you still to act and who might get into the hand as well. Do me a favor and think of your calling range here. I don't want to influence you at all, so just take one second and think about what you would need to have in order to call here, and maybe some hands you would never call with here.

I'm going to skip some space to give you a chance to think this one over.














OK so you got it? What are you calling with here? I'll tell you my thoughts. I just saw a solid player (ahem) UTG limp and then allin-reraise four raise-callers preflop. That guy alone has got to have a medium-big pocket pair (probably 9s or Tens or better) or AK. Not sure what else makes that play. Plus, with three other raise-callers behind me, I've got to be looking at at least one decently high Ace, maybe a big suited connector like KQs or something, and probably one pocket pair. These are guesses but all educated ones, and are probably more or less right on. So, just to call the UTG player I would need to have a big pocket pair myself or maybe AK if I was feeling frisky. But with the three raise-callers still to act behind me as well, at least one of whom almost certainly has a pocket pair of some kind, there is just no way I'm even making that call with AK. Not this early in a tournament, with this few chips invested in the pot so far. Presumably your thoughts are similar to mine here, but if not I'd love to hear about it.

Well either way, what did it turn out Fonkey made this call with?





AQo.

Niiiice. You have got to love these people. So he's taking AQo up against the UTG limp-allin reraiser and three other players who've already called a preflop raise. That is awesome. Just great, intelligent poker right there. Everyone else folded after Fonkey called my allin reraise, and when the cards were turned up, showing my AKs as an 82% favorite or whatever it is, I had to laugh. How you make that call with AQ is completely and utterly beyond me. The WWdN is great.

Pokerstars, of course, is even greater though, and let's just say I failed to win the hand thanks to the river card, and leave it at that. As I've written about here profusely of late it seems, it is just unreal how often these fuckyfonkey calls get rewarded by the poker sites these days. Absofuckinglutely unfuckinreal. AQ calling an allin UTG limp-reraise with 3 raise-callers still to act behind. That is fucking scary folks, absolutely scary. You will be extremely surprised to note that Fonkey still didn't manage to even outlast me in last night's tournament, which totally shocks me given the tremendous tournament mindset he must have had to make that call there, as I've also written about a lot lately.

Now jump ahead maybe 30 more minutes, about half the original WWdN field is gone, and I am short stacked but still holding on. UTG limps for the 150-chip big blind (let's call her "Fonkette", just to keep the gender right), and I'm UTG+1 with pocket 7s. I'm short (around 700 chips as I recall), so I go ahead and move it all in which by all rights is quite likely to be the best hand preflop here. And since UTG has a decent stack, I'm hoping against hope she might call with whatever Ace she is limping with here, or maybe if I'm real lucky, with a smaller hand like pocket 6s or pocket 5s and I can get back into this thing. The action folds back around to Fonkette, and she thinks and thinks. She thinks so long that I now know I'm ahead, and am considering that she could actually have a hand like 22 or 33 or something. Anyways, she finally calls -- admittedly for only another 550 chips, but it was 550 chips into a pot that was at the time around 1100 chips. But take it from me, Fonkette hasn't got a clue about pot odds. I don't even think Fonkette knows what a "pot" is, let alone what "pot odds" are. Trust me on this one. She just fonkey-called me here for another 550 chips, and with what hand, mind you?

KQo.

Another brilliant move. It's unreal. Now again I understand that at 2-1 it was reasonable for Fonkette to assume she had maybe a 35-40% chance against a likely Ace with an undercard in my hand. But the whole thing is still funny. This player doesn't know what pot odds are, and most certainly doesn't know what her specific odds of winning are with KQ against an Ax in my hand. And she had to know she was behind here. Had to. Am I pushing here for 700 chips with KTo? 98s? Come on you fonkeys. But never fear, pokerstars to the rescue. King on the river, and IGH. Oh what a night.

Did I mention how recockulously often the poker sites reward players who make allin calls with dominated hands like AQ, AJ and KQ? It's effing sick.

OK, now before I get to yesterday's Stud High starting hand, I want to post a couple of really great items here.

First of all, if you have not yet read Miami Don's incredible retrospective on the past year, then you are severely missing out. Go check it out right now! As you know I read an effing fuckload of poker blogs, and I will say without hesitation that this is my favorite post I've seen on any blog so far this year. I've already read it 3 or 4 times and it only gets better. Go click that link and take a read of some of the background of one of our favorite cash gamers and all-around great guys. Simply unbelievable.

Secondly, I wanted to personally mention how thrilled I am that the Iggy, the uberdrawrf himself, is returning to his rightful home at Guinness and Poker. Iggy, you will always be my one and only when it comes to poker blogging -- not only the first, but clearly the best -- and there still can never be anything like a genuine Iggy uberpost to destroy my workplace productivity like nothing else. But to echo some sentiments voiced by Al earlier this week, there were two main problems with your move to pokerworks. First, as Al mentions, my dorkwork blocks all the pokerworks blogs, and frankly my work day is where I do about 95% of my daily blog reading. I will admit that over the past few months since Iggy's move, I have gone from reading 100% never-possibly-miss-one of his posts, to instead reading probably 25% of them, and almost never in a timely fashion. Sadly this is true for most of the pokerworks crew because I simply cannot get access to them during the weekdays ever, but with Iggy it was by far the worst because you couldn't have paid me money to ever miss anything Ig had to say before 2007. So for that reason alone, the move back to Guinness is obviously the right thing.

But more than that, I have got to say that the whole pokerworks thing just was not the same IMO for the original uberposter. I never got the same feel with Iggy's pokerworks blog as I always had for it when it was at G&P. Even though Iggy still called them "uberposts", they were just not quite the same thing. Different feel, different structure, something. It's intangible, but it was real, trust me. I went through a smaller-scale version of the same thing when I was writing for Cardsquad, so I know what I'm talking about here. Writing for the two blogs was fun and all, but believe me when I say that #1 it was draining, and more importantly #2, I never felt like I could be quite myself on Cardsquad. For one thing, the structure of the blog was totally different from my own corner of the blogiverse here. Also, I felt pressure for my posts to be shorter, smaller, and more structured. Writing as part of a larger group of writers kinda builds in its own pressures as it is, and while I loved every minute of it -- don't get me wrong -- it was definitely very much different from what I was doing here at good ol' hammerplayer dot blogspot dot complain. I never wanted to rant quite as personally as I do with abandon here, and I know for a fact that the overall tone in my Cardsquad posts was just not nearly as edgy, or ultimately not nearly as real, as what I do here on a daily basis. It's hard to explain unless you live it, but I have and so I'm here to say, Iggy, the blogiverse was sorely worse without you at your rightful home, and I for one could not be happier for you, and for us all, that you're now back where you belong. So go give Iggy a look at his new old home. And for those of you who've never had the honor of meeting the man, the myth, the legend before in the flesh, there is an awesome picture of him up on G&P right now if you want to go see one of the rare times he'll ever let someone take a snapshot of him close-up.

Lastly but not leastly, go check out Blinders, who has a couple of great posts up this week where he scours the pokertracker details of his recent ladder challenge. For a guy like me who never uses pokertracker, it is highly interesting and entertaining to even see just how powerful a program like this can be to analyzing your game, your strengths, your weaknesses, and I think more than anything else, just your tendencies in how you play no-limit holdem. After reading Blinders' last couple of posts, I am quite sure that if I were a cash game guy I would be downloading pokertracker immediately. I think its usability is far less for an mtt-only guy like myself, where you're constantly getting shortstacked and end up pushing with lots of utter garbage hands from late position, the blinds, etc., but for a cash game specialist, Blinders does a great job this week of (1) showing all the great details you can get from a program like pokertracker, and (2) providing the kind of analysis of one's play that one can get by just using this program and keeping an open mind about what the results are telling you. I've read Blinders last few posts several times, and am still captivated by all his pokertracker stats have to show him, and by how objectively the man is able and willing to analyze his own play by use of tools like this. We should all be so objective and introspective about our play as Blinders is here. Really, really good stuff, and super cool of him to post since on some level it does give away some information about his style of play.

OK, with that out of the way let me turn back to yesterday's Stud High starting hand post. If you'll recall, I had posed the following hand to you all:



where I am in middle position with QJ(T), straight possibilities, flush possibilities, and only one other high card showing. Unfortunately, that high card is a King, and double unfortunately, that King has already raised it up before the action gets to me. This hand in particular interested me because, unlike my first two omaha hands this week where I feel like the right move really is to fold both of them in most cases, with this one I thought it was a little more up in the air.

I got a lot of good comments here, which seemed basically pretty evenly split between calling and folding. Even the posters who suggested calling were pretty unanimous that if I don't improve on 4th street and face another bet from King Boy, then I would have to lay it down, something with which I defintely agree if I even decided to take one card off in the first place. That said, let me show you what I did here:



Yeah. I folded it. I'm still not at all sure this was the "right" play or "best" play here, but it is an example of my generally tight strategy in most of the HORSE games, and in fact mostly all the poker variations I play. I have made more money than I've lost in my life in HORSE games of all kinds (cash, tournament, individual or in HORSE format) by generally giving people credit for what they represent on the early betting rounds. That is, when someone plays their King upcard as if they've got a pair of Kings, sometimes I try to chase them down, but for the most part that's been a losing strategy for me, and I've been much happier and much more profitable by playing my hands on the assumption that the guy really does have the pair of Kings that he's representing. Maybe in this case the guy was bluffing. If that's true, I probably lost my chance to win a few chips in this particular hand. But, I barely lost any actual chips in my stack, so that's not a bad outcome at all for me in any event. And if he did have the pair of Kings, I was a big dog in the hand the way I see it.

Here's the thing -- if I had had KQJ, and he had a Ten up and had bet it, I would have surely called. I might have raised it even. Then I've got three overcards to the pair he's representing, and with no other high cards showing in anyone else's hand here, I've gotta love my chances of pairing any one of my three cards and being ahead of my opponent with the exposed Ten on 3rd street. Given my aggressive nature and my faith in the math of poker and odds, I'm probably even calling here if he has a Queen showing and I have AKQ. Then I think it's that much less likely that he actually has a pair of Queens since I've got one in my own hand already, and even if he does, I've still got the Ace and the King to pair and take the lead over him at some point later in the hand. In fact, given my confidence in my ability to lay good reads on people, I would definitely even consider calling if I had QJT and he had a Jack up and had raised it on third street like this. Again I've got one of his jacks buried in my own hand, plus I've got the overcard Queen, and I've got the straight possibilities working here (plus of course the high two pair chances, etc.). But, in this case, since I have nothing but three undercards to the pair he's representing here on 3rd street, and since I haven't lost a dime into this pot yet so far in the hand other than my measly 25-chip ante, I figured I'm laying this thing down here. The two-flush doesn't do much for me at this point (unlike a 3-flush on 4th street which I certainly like a little more), and the straight chances are nice, but with one of my Kings and even an 8 already out as jeciimd points out in his comment, even those straight chances are tempered somewhat. And I just can't escape the thought of what happens here if I, say, pair my hidden Jack on 4th street, and then King Boy bets into me again. Not only am I already still behind to his likely Kings, but even if I make a backdoor two-pairs on 6th or 7th street, he has just as much of a chance of that as I do, and his pair of Kings will win the pot from me in that situation. So I laid it down. As I said earlier, I'm still not sure this is the exactly correct play, and if anyone thinks I screwed it up please feel free to say so, but what I am sure of is that it was the safest, and lowest-risk play since like I mentioned above I didn't actually put any chips into this pot yet other than my 25 that automatically went in for the ante.

OK so lastly today, I'm going to profile a starting hand from 7 Stud Hilo. This incidentally was the game of choice for last night's WWdN 2nd chance tournament, which I again lasted through the middle of the pack until some clown guy called me down on 6th street for all my chips -- no, he raised me actually for all my chips -- with nothing. That's right, nothing but a flush draw. I called with the pair of Jacks that I had so skillfully camouflaged all the way through the hand, because that's just how I roll, and boom! Flush on the river, and IGH. Unreal the quality of play in Wil's tournaments. It should make them easier according to all you donks who claim I should want the lowest form of poker clowns in my mtts. But you're wrong. It makes them much, much harder to survive in. I want the donks, don't get me wrong, but just not the lowest form of donk who doesn't have a clue when they're beat, and therefore is just constantly getting bailed out by these fucking asshole poker sites. Disgusting.

Anyways where was I. Oh yeah, Stud Hilo starting hand. It's the same HORSE satellite from this weekend, but a few minutes later than in the Stud High hand above. I'm still around 5th place out of probably around 16 players remaining, with the top 3 winning seats to the big HORSE tournament, and I'm dealt (24)5 in middle position. The low card, a 4, brings it in for 20 chips, and the next player limps for 20 with an Ace showing. The next player, showing a Jack, folds, and then the player to my right limps as well with a 6 up. Now the action is to me, with 3 players still to act after me, all of whom are showing high cards on 3rd street. So again, I've got a 4, an Ace, and a 6 already limping in ahead of me for 20 chips, and I have (24)5 rainbow in my hand, with nothing but high cards to act after me.

What do you like to do here? Obviously I've got a very strong starting low hand. But, I'm also looking at a number of other low upcards, and with them limping into this pot, they've probably got at least one other low card each underneath. So this takes away some of my potential low hits here and makes my low hand less "live" than it otherwise may appear. And I don't have much good for high, especially with an Ace already in the pot ahead of me. Does anybody fold this 5-low on 3rd street? If not, does anybody raise it up, or are you just calling here? Why?

As always I'll be back later with my analysis of the comments as well as what I did on this particular hand and why. Thanks again to everyone for their thoughtful comments on yesterday's Stud High post.