Donkey Island Poker

After about a year of anticipation after the first dribs and drabs were leaked to the poker blogger press, finally "Donkey Island" poker has been officially announced. The brainchild of none other than Julius Goat, Goat and BuddyDank are teaming up to offer this unique combination of blogger tournament and Survivor -- a show I've never watched -- in what is without a doubt the most original and unique blonkament series that this our group has ever experienced.

I'm not much for restating someone else's rules and someone else's game, so I'm just going to link to Goat's post announcing Donkey Poker here, and encourage every one of you reading this to head over to Goat's site and check it out. Goat has the description of the game -- essentially a 16-person prop bet over a series of tournaments over eight weeks starting in February -- and the basic rules of how things will go. I tend to agree with Goat that there may be several angles no one has really thought of to this beyond just what is addressed on Goat's blog right now, but then I tend to think that is going to be part of the fun with this whole thing.

A couple of other quick points before I sign off, thanks to work utterly kicking my ass these past few days. First, I just wanted to commend Goat and Buddy not only for their originality, but just for taking a step to do something to reinvigorate and reignite interest in our weekly blogger tournaments that has waned so much over the past few years. I have no doubt that we're never going to get back to the mystique and the popularity that existed back in the WWdN days -- for a lot of different reasons -- but the weekly games are always fun and, save for those who routinely let their anger get the best of them, they are always some of the most fun you can have any week when you stop by and check out the action with your favorite fake internet friends. It's a great chance for us old-timers to catch up with our old blogging friends, and an even better opportunity for the newer readers to sit down and play poker with some great players and even better writers who you may feel like you've "known" for years from reading their blogs without ever having had any kind of a one-on-one interaction with them.

I also wanted to mention that I understand from some girly chats with Buddy that he is finally doing the obvious thing -- something I've railed about for more than a year now -- and changing the name of "the Mookie" to the more appropriate "The Dank". For those who don't know, Mookie -- who for the record is and always has been an awesome guy -- has not been setting up or really associated with the weekly Wednesday night Mookie tournament for the better part of what, two years now? Buddy has taken on administration of this tournament for a long time now, and he has set the standard for blonkatainment -- yes that's a new word I just made up right now to combine "blonkament" and "entertainment" -- by broadcasting live on BuddyDank Radio almost every Wednesday night during the Mookie festivities. This thing has been Buddy's tournament as clear as day for literally years now, and I have long since thought and publicly claimed that having Mookie's name associated with it at this point is not the right idea from a marketing perspective, given Mookie's lack of involvement with the group or his blog anymore in any public way. Changing the name of the Mookie to the Dank is long overdue in my book, and associating the tournament with the new Donkey Island poker extravaganza is a great way to help stimulate action and interest in our weekly games, something that has been more or less totally lacking for going on three years or more now at this point.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that it is not lost on me how utterly hopeless it is for me to try to succeed at any poker series that involves needing the votes of others in order to survive. Although I routinely destroy you all in pure poker, I am well aware that I have no possible shot in this particular setup. But that's ok. Anything that (1) Goat spearheads, (2) Buddy is into on the radio, or (3) helps generate interest in our weekly games is a-ok and a good time in my book. And something tells me this one is going to lead to more than a few interesting blog posts along the way as well, another thing a shizz-stirrer like me is obviously well into.

So one again, click on over to Goat's post today to read all about Donkey Island poker. I am already confirmed as one of the players, and although I can't confirm this, I believe that there may still be spots available as I write this post. Follow the directions in Goat's post if you are interested in participating, and I'll see you at the games starting in February, including Goat's newly-hosted tournament on Sunday nights at 9:30pm ET when that time comes. And in the meantime, why not stop by "the Dank" tonight at 10pm ET (password as always is "vegas1") and get your groove on, and start get re-acclimated to the donkeyrific pokerings of your fake internet friends. And for those of you so inclined, perhaps to start laying the groundwork for your many fiendish alliances and backroom deals in advance of Donkey Island's official beginning in a few weeks. I plan to be there tonight -- maybe you can too.

Pencil Him In

Well I had a post I was going to complete today talking about my past World Series performances as part of my psych-up for my Vegas trip, which is now amazingly less than two weeks away. I still cannot believe that; when I first bought my plane tickets, it felt like two years until Vegas time. I know these next 12 days will still feel like two years, but it's a lot less time than it was back then. In the winter, those tickets, this whole trip, another WSOP, it was all just a dream, just an idea. Now as I sit here thinking about it, it's a reality. And it is soooo close....

Anyways, the plan yesterday was to complete sometime during the day my WSOP reminiscence post and get that up here today. But then a strange thing happened. I woke up, literally whispering the name "osu". Really, you can ask my wife. I had a crazy premonition and I mean I literally sprung out of bed, bounded down the stairs, and checked out the old laptop where I had left up the lobby of Wednesday night's Buddy tournament. And fudge if I did not think I was looking at a cached copy or something -- oossuuuuu won again, now his amazing third BBT5 win, and more importantly for those of us skilled enough to already be in the upcoming Tournament of Champions, now bringing that ToC down from its original plan for 24 seats now to 22. With three 10k prize packages and two 2k prize packages in play in that thing, the value of those last few remaining BBT ToC seats just continues to go up. $34,000 in prizes to be distributed to 5 out of 22 players? Check my math but I'm thinking that is 1 and 12/22 = 1 and 6/11 = 1.545 = $1,545 of EV per seat in the ToC. And with I guess four more seats available in this thing, oossuuu might be able to get it down to just 18.

Three ToC seats. Three. And I think he's won them all kind of recently too. Let's face it guys -- you can pencil oossuuu in for one of the two 10k prize packages. He's earned it, and he's going to win it. This guy bullies a table so badly that I'm scared of him. And he always has it. Always. Well, has it, or hits it. One way or another, he is betting or raising, and your chips just keep sliding sliding sliding his way. And he's been absolutely killing it during the BBT, which worked so well for jeciimd back in BBT2 when he crushered the field during the series, and then held on to win the jackpot 18k prize to the Aussie Millions as well. The very best players in the last BBT as I recall -- Tuscaloosa Johnny as always, 1Queensup, Jordan -- I don't think any of them won the seats in the end in the ToC, but here we are again with one guy who is simply head and shoulders above the rest.

oossuuuu, this post is my homage to you. I bow to you, and I am willing to cede you one of the 10k prize packages. Just don't include me in your path of destruction and eliminations along the way so that I may have a fair chance at surviving. I'll donk to you in the WSOP even if that is the price of protection. You are the most skilled of all the bloggers in playing the blonkaments right now, and no one else is even remotely close. You have figured it out; you have figured us out.

Odds on oossuuu nabbing five ToC seats before this is all over, anyone?

BuddyDay, the BBT and Lost

Wednesdays are fun during the BBT, ain't they? Tonight will be the third of six Buddy tournaments during the BBT5, and tonight we will also learn the identity of the 12th of 24 qualifiers for the series-ending Tournament of Champions. After tonight, it's halfway gone. You guys who keep getting in ahead but just not lasting to the end, keep at it and with twelve more chances you've still got a better chance of getting there than anyone else in the field. Those of you who've been off your game, pushing too hard for the early double-up, stacking off earlier than you're used to with subpar hands, after you bust early tonight you will have wasted half of your chances to get in to the ToC without even playing the way you have had success with in the past. So sad, and so unnecessary. Let the halfway point be your wake-up call to start making better decisions, and in particular stop calling and pushing allin so early in the tournament when you know you are either behind or at best only slightly ahead if you get called.

I will probably be paying better attention than usual tonight since in the recent past I would often watch Lost a second time on Wednesdays during the Buddy just to figure out what the hell went on, but that's just not necessary for this show as it continues its de-evolution into Heroes. Last night, the candidates can't be killed by the bomb if the Losties don't pull the wires out. But if they do pull the wires out, then they can be killed? Oy vey. And the whole story -- from the start six years ago to the finish -- of Jin and Sun? Sucked. They never made those two actually relevant, to anything. Then for like two years they kept having one of them think the other was dead, which was done undramatically. Then a couple weeks back they finally had the at-long-last reunion between the two, and that was botched perhaps as badly as any scene this season. Who cares about Jin and Sun? Who ever cared? And certainly who cares about them now? I don't know either. Sayid? Who cares. They're leaving Claire? Who claires?

Oh, and by the way. Is there no opening that can simply eject that tiny little bomb from the submarine? They have to surface -- which apparently was 50 miles up in the just the 10 seconds they had been under water -- to get rid of the bomb, because otherwise, there's what, no airlock on this baby? No place where divers or passengers could exit the sub if need be or in case of repairs or emergency? No hangar or portal of any kind where a flat, square thing that easily fits in a breadbox can be just let out into the water to blow up there? What about the hatch they entered the sub through, is there no emergency override that would allow them to open that hatch up for 10 seconds and let this bomb out? Sayid hugging the bomb tightly and running to another part of the ship is the best plan they had huh. So a bunch of people discover a bomb on a submarine that they have total control of, they've got 3 minutes before it blows, and their best suggestions for dealing with the situation are to (1) let it tick down, because nothing will happen, (2) pull two random wires and hope it stops, (3) surface, or (4) hug the bomb tight and run away. Next thing you'll be telling me Jack's real name is Hiro and that he has the superpower to erase time or something. Sheesh.

And I'm not even going to get in to what a generally horrible job the show has done of actually explaining in any kind of a convincing way why almost any of the people currently "with" Flocke are actually with him. What was Kate ever doing there this season, "helping" him, actually? Why on earth was Jack ever there helping Flocke? Ever? They didn't even really try to put up a good explanation for Jack coming along with Flocke last night. Flocke just said, "I could kill you and all your friends, but I'm not. So you have to help me." And Jack just ate that one up, hook line and sinker. Makes sense, right? Evil incarnate tells you he could kill you -- a fact which we know from multiple episodes this season including the end of the show last night that Jack is positive is not true, mind you -- and that means you have to help Pure Evil escape its prison and unleash itself on the rest of the universe forever. Lezdoit!!

At least next week's scenes look good -- as I've been saying all season, next week's scenes, with Jacob and the Man in Black, and what looks like some flashbacks of theirs, the little boy who keeps the rules, that's the only shit anyone really cares about anymore. Sideways world, Desmond, even the battle with Flocke and Widmore doesn't mean doggy doo to me anymore. Just show me the mythology bitches. So next week's episode looks good. But this week was to say the least, not a good show. Stupid, insultingly stupid plot lines, just plain horrible killing off of characters in totally gratuitous and often silly ways, clearly in an attempt to just narrow down the surviving candidates one by one by one for us. The show has become so simple it is almost like watching the Teletubbies some times.

Anyways, I digress. Tonight is the Buddy at 10pm ET on full tilt. The password as always is "vegas1". The BBT5 is in effect again today, so I would probably expect maybe 85, 90 runners tonight once again, maybe more, in the battle for the $10 buyins, with the most skilled player in the field this evening sure to grab the midpoint seat in the upcoming ToC later this month.

The Buddy and the BBT

Well, tonight is Event #3 of the BBT5, and I'm sad to say I'm not going to be there to join in the festivities. Or rather, my buyin will be there, and my avatar will be there, but I won't be. I have plans tonight that will keep me out until after the last of my stack is likely blinded away this evening when the first Mookie tournament of the latest BBT goes off at 10pm ET on full tilt, but I figure it is only fair for me to contribute my $10 to whoever has the sack to take me down.

And while we're on the topic, ever since I discovered several weeks back that it was now BuddyDank who has taken over organizing and running the Mookie, while Mookie has basically withdrawn from blogging, playing poker and from being involved with his old tournament, I've been referring to this tournament as what it really is: The Buddy. So that up there was the last time you will hear me refer to the Buddy as the Mookie, when talking about it from this point forward. Sure, when we reminisce about what this tournament once was for our group back in the day, it's the Mookie. I'm not trying to rewrite history here. But I'm also not for continuing to call a tournament by the name of its former organizer when that guy is no longer a contributing member of our group, and while another guy who is a contributing member of the group in a big, huge way is now hosting and running it. And broadcasting live on the radio via internet during it!

So that's it. The Wednesday night tournament is "the Buddy" in Hoy's world and has been for some time. The Mookie had an awesome run, but just like the new Monday night Poker From the Rail tournament isn't called the Hoy or the MATH anymore, the Buddy shouldn't still be called the Mookie either.

So tonight is the Buddy, the first Buddy of the BBT5. It should be a blast. With the new PFTR tournament on Monday getting what, mid-80s for participation, the Buddy tonight ought probably to get over 100, maybe even solidly so? It's always hard to tell with these things but I mean if 85 or whatever ponied up the $26 the other day for a brand new tournament, then a long-running tournament with a new name (the Buddy FTW!) ought to draw in considerably more than that in these BBT times, one would think.

The BBT has been fun so far, and I think there are several things that combine to make this easily the best conceived and best structured BBT ever. First off, unlike the FTOPS which seems to be going on in one of its many forms almost every few weeks at this point on full tilt, the BBT has smartly been reduced to a once a year thing. When it's been 11 months since we last geared up for a series like this, it feels a whole lot better to get into the grind than when we just did it four or five months earlier. By the time Al announced the BBT5 a few weeks back, the blogging public was rip-roaring ready for it, and the fact that it was such a surprise to have back at all really added to that.

Secondly, the grind that is a tournament series like the BBT has been significantly and smartly reduced this time around. When we first started the BBT, I think we used to run somewhere around 55 events over a three-month period, and frankly, to me that did not seem like too long of a time. In fact, back then were it up to me, we could have run the BBT like the WPBT and just kept score over the entire calendar year, and I would have been down with that. At first, the prospect of getting some friendly competition going and seeing who can do the best in the private games was an awesome one, and like I said, personally I would have loved to have seen it last all year long.

But once we ran these 55-event series a few times, we all seemed to realize the same thing: we like our private blogger tournaments to just be relaxing, enjoyable times to chat and donk around sometimes, without the pressure that comes along with everybody playing for big, big prizes and a shot at serious cashish. After three months straight of every blogger tournament, every week, full of pressure-cooker situations, dirty chat and a lot of hard feelings and jealousy for thirteen straight weeks, most of us had really had enough. It became a serious grind, one where you felt like you didn't want to miss any of the events, so you end up getting all worked up to play four or five nights a week and you feel like you can't skip it, and it just feeds off itself and in the end it just felt too long to most people it seems.

The BBT5 fixes this in that the whole series lasts just six weeks. Now, that will also make it correspondingly more difficult to get in to the series-ending Tournament of Champions, since there will be a maximum of only 24 chances to get in instead of more than twice that many as we have had in past years. But you gotta give a little to get a little. And on the good front, the whole series takes up just six weeks of our lives. I think that is a major improvement that I imagine most of the participants appreciate as well.

In addition to helping make the series less of a grind by making it last a shorter number of weeks, another smart move from Al and full tilt this time around was including fewer tournaments per week in the series. This year we are just looking at the new PFTR tournament on Monday nights at 10pm ET and the Buddy on Wednesday nights at 10pm ET. For those in the Invitational tournament, that is a third tournament each week, on Sunday nights at 7pm ET. So for most players out there, the BBT5 is just two tourneys a week, and some of us a third as well, which is much better than back in the day when we had the Big Game every Sunday night, the MATH on Mondays, the Skills on Tuesdays and the Mookie (remember when it was called the Mookie?) on Wednesdays? I know the Riverchasers was in there on Thursdays for some time as well, but I don't think we ever had a 5-nights-a-week BBT, but I know we've had multiple weeks with four tournaments week in and week out. And again, especially once we shifted over to a Tournament of Champions-based structure for the final tournament, it was hard to let yourself miss many of these tournaments if you really wanted to play for the big prizes, so in the end we would spend 13 straight weeks each getting it up four nights in a row every single week, and it all really contributed to the grind in a big way.

Nowadays, the BBT5 is just twice a week for the open events, and once more early on Sunday nights for the Invitational. And the whole thing lasts six weeks to determine the winners. This is a much kinder, gentler, and far more user-friendly BBT than we have ever had before, and yet as far as I can tell prizes are better than ever before, including three WSOP ME seats if I recall correctly. That is some sick shizznit right there.

Oh, I should also mention the other thing I love about the Invitational part of the BBT5 is that it awards ToC seats to the top two finishers, not just the overall winner. I know as well as anyone how hard it is to win a tournament -- I do play 999 mtt's a night and often go months and months without any scores as I know you know -- and to me it is a significant difference to award seats to the top two instead of just to #1. For one thing, with around 80 runners invited to each event, that absolutely gives each one of us twice as good of a chance of getting in to the ToC. I'm not saying everybody in the Invitational field has the exact same mathematical odds of making the ToC, which I'm sure is not the case, but no matter what your odds are, they are going to basically double when we add a second seat to each Invitational tournament, plain and simple. Without a doubt in my mind it is significant easier to finish second or first, than just to finish first in any tournament field, and this consideration can even have a definite effect on proper strategy at the final table in these events depending on stack sizes, which is an area where I feel good skill players can really excel.

Oh -- and the fact that there is no buyin and a $2000 prize pool for each of these Invitational freerolls ain't bad either!

So I won't be at the Buddy tonight, but you definitely should be. It's at 10pm ET on full tilt, password as always is "vegas1". I'm looking for well into triple-digits in participants, with the winner nabbing some nice cash in addition to a seat in the BBT5-ending Tournament of Champions in late May. And if you're lucky you might even be at my table when I arrive home at 11:40pm and insta-push my last 200 chips into the middle with that 72o preflop.