My Erev Christmas Present

*****Warning! Warning! Alert! Alert! Ultimate Bet Content Ahead!*****



Booo Yahhhh!

Just look at this thing. 160 runners, deep stacks to start, super awesome structure, and over $5300 for first place. 160 runners! This is like playing a 180-man sng on stars or full tilt, only with 20 fewer players, about a 20x better tournament structure and with a whole lot more money on the table. Sure you have to be able to handle a perceived increased risk of shenanigans from all the stuff that's been going on with UB lately, but you know what they say -- with increased risk comes increased reward.

Even with the great structure and deep starting stacks, the whole tournament took just a shade over six hours to win. And just as with my final table run in the 9pm ET bounty tournament at UB, the structure and stacks are so solid that I was able to withstand a bad loss deep in this thing -- running AQ into AK when down to 5 at the final table against the tournament short stack -- and still have enough chips to be able to make a move.

There were not too many big hands on my way to this mtt victory, few enough that I can recap them here. The strange thing about this particular tournament run was that I suffered no suckouts for, and no suckouts against. Dam that is a good feeling, I have got to say. Another strange but not unusual thing was that I received generally very poor starting cards, and most of my big pots were either on big flops to shitty starting hands, or, more commonly, just based on my reads and not a whole lot else.

My first big hand got me about a 50% increase from the 5000-chip starting stacks in the first 20 minutes or so of this event. I open-raised preflop with A4s from mid-late position, and only the small blind called my raise. Being in the blind, and since he didn't reraise me, I'm putting him on a middling to fair hand. No big pair, but maybe two big sooted cards, a medium pair, a connector, something like that. The flop comes 789 rainbow, the small blind checks, and I c-bet around 75% of the pot to try to take it down here:



The small blind smooth calls my flop bet. I still don't have him on much, maybe a pair or a piece of the straight draw, maybe an underpair, or maybe even just two overs. With the deep stacks there is plenty of opportunity to float in the earlygoing in this thing, and I didn't really have any read on this guy coming in to the hand, other than that he had done nothing but play straightforwardly so far in the tournament. The turn card brings another 9, pairing the top card on the board. I believe he would surely have raised that scary flop if he had held top pair or better, so I can't see him having made trips here. But with the pair the board has gotten even a bit scarier, and since I think he has to fear trips now, I opt to bet out strong again, this time around 80% of the pot:



The small blind surprises me by just calling again. Dam. While I already figured I was behind in the hand, two check-calls is a pretty solid line, indicating at least a pair and a draw, or maybe two low pairs, a flopped set or something similar. I don't plan to lose any more chips on this bluff.

But then look what happens, when the river brings a harmless offsuit 3:



Suddenly the small blind insta-bets, leading out for the full pot size after I had raised preflop, bet the flop and had gotten called, and had led out again on the turn and gotten called. This is like a delayed donk-bet -- again this is the poker forum term for leading out into the preflop raiser, and it almost never indicates a truly strong hand. Let's say this guy has a boat or something. I've just bet him preflop and on each street after the flop so far, even after getting called twice. Why would he insta-lead out here, and for such a large size relative to the pot, if he had a big big hand? The answer, it seemed to me, was he would not. Maybe he thinks I was on a straight draw that did not fill. Maybe he thinks he can scare my one-pair hand out of the pot, or that I was betting a hand like AK all along. I don't know. But my gut told me this guy was full of it, so I took my Ace-high hand and did this:



Almost an allin raise, leaving just a short stack behind which I think sometimes looks even scarier than a straight-up allin push. Again, I'm not trying to say that this is such an awesome play -- for one thing, my opponent, who at this point I have on a one-pair hand like a pair of 7s or 8s, could easily just donkey-call my bet, and of course I lose to any single hand he would possibly call with. And I have to give the guy a little bit of credit to think he could fold here. But his insta-donk-bet on the river just screamed out to me that he would fold to big action and didn't want to bust this early with his hand, so I changed my plan at the last second and followed my instinct.



Booom. Who knows what he had. Like I said, I think he had one pair and decided that I was trying to bully the pot, but then figured at the river that I had Aces or somehow had connected big with the board. Nice way to start things off, especially since I never even connected in the least with what proved to be a very scary board.

Near the end of the first hour, I got very lucky in that I picked up QQ and ran it allin against a shortish stack who turned up JJ. We both waited until after the flop to get the big money in, but when it came all rags he overpushed on me and at this point from watching him for an hour I knew he would make that move with any top pair and possibly even a draw. With all the flop overpairs I run into higher overpairs on a nightly basis, this one felt good as it popped me up over 11,000 chips and into the top 5 of the field during just the first hour of play.

I used my instincts in a potentially hairy situation again early in the second hour when I open-raised A9o from the button, and the small blind just called me with a stack of around 2/3 of my own. The flop came Ace-high, and once again my opponent insta donk-bet me, the full size of the 1800-chip pot:



I mean this was instantaneous. Once again as I have discussed many times of late here, I just could not see how this guy would make a play like that if he was holding AK, a set or a similarly strong hand. Most players will check to the raiser and then go for the raise either after I bet on the flop, or the allin move on the turn in that spot. Even the tricky ones who might bet out into the raiser a la Doyle Brunson are typically not insta-pushing there, and typically not for the full size of the pot. The last thing AK wants to do there is scare away a guy who might have open-raised a lower Ace, or for that matter might be stealing from the button and be willing to put in a sizable c-bet given my big stack at the time. So I put him on either a weak Ace or simply an attempt to steal the pot from me. So I smooth called him, opting to see what he did on the turn for some more information before deciding how much I really wanted to commit to the pot. But I felt like I was ahead at the time, that is for sure.

The turn brought a raggy 5, completing a possible heart flush but I could not put him on the flush draw given his insta-bet on the flop. What's more, the guy insta-pushed for almost his entire stack on the turn, to the point that he clearly did not give any thought whatsoever to any strategery on the play. So no way he had the flush here or any other big hand. My biggest worry was that he had called my perceived button steal from the small blind with a hand like A5 or A3 and had made two pairs, but the insta-betting he was tossing my way just did not seem like the moves of a guy with a secret strong hand. It seemed the opposite. With the second lead even after I raised preflop and called his full-pot bet on the flop, I had to put him on something. But try as I might, I simply could not match up his play with a hand stronger than my own. AT or better would at least be taking some time here, trying to draw me in before betting out, maybe not betting the full pot on both the flop and the turn, especially given my perceived preflop steal from the button. The best I could come up with was maybe a lower Ace, or a Ten plus the flush draw, something like that. So I raised him allin for his last 600 chips, and he called and flipped up this:



Blooom. Another spot-on read and another nice chip-up, taking to me third place overall of the then 109 players remaining:



At this point, I started bullying bigtime. I played many, many pots, leading out for full pot bets on almost every raggy flop I was involved in, taking pretty much every one down as no one wanted to get mixed up with my big stack this early in such a well-structured mtt. I also started raising any even remotely raiseable hand any time the action was not raised in front of me preflop from middle position or later -- hands like any Ace, any sooted King or Queen, any sooted connectors, stuff like that. Basically every single time the situation presented itself. And I don't think I had to lay down more than one time during the entire next hour as my stack slowly climbed from 20k to nearly 30k in chips without a single showdown along the way.

Around the beginning of the third hour, I won a race with 55 against a shorty with AQs, bringing my stack up to 37k, good for 4th place of the 52 remaining players. Later that hour, I lost a race when I opted to call a shorty allin reraise with my pocket 7s. He flipped up the JackAce, and of course turned a boat to crush me back down to 23k, which placed me in 13th of 40 players left at the time. The important thing as I have mentioned a few times with the UB tournaments is that the structure is so solid to these things, that even this big drop left me with more than enough big blinds to not let the loss get to me.

Near the end of Hour 3, I had my biggest hand of the tournament to that point, and also probably the only truly questionable decision I made all night. I was dealt JJ in the cutoff, and while I was deciding how best to play only the second quasi-premium hand I had been dealt all night, the UTG short stack pushed allin on a large overbet of nearly 18 big blinds, and then the largeish stack in middle position overpushed for 30 big blinds all in front of me:



Now, I should say, the UTG guy at the bottom of the screen was a proven raging donkey. He had overpushed allin almost every time he was UTG for the past several orbits on a short stack, and to be frank I really didn't give him much credit for a hand here. In fact, that fact alone was the biggest reason I couldn't put the MP player on a huge hand. If he had Aces or Kings, I assume he would not have overraised but rather just flat-called the big allin from the UTG player -- that's what I would have done anyways -- in the hopes of getting in some more action behind him. So what I was most worried about was AK or maybe AQs, both of which were not only possibilities, but highly likely, or possibly QQ. In the end, though, given how blatantly donkishly UTG had been playing with his UTG overshoves, I figured that widened the MP player's range sufficiently that he could be on a hand like 88-TT, in addition to a small possibility of AJs or maybe even ATs. Now, against 88-TT, QQ, AJ-AK, my JJ should hold up well, so I went ahead and made the call.



Like I said, it was questionable for sure, and I think the money move with a nice stack nearing the money in an mtt like this might be to fold the JJ there, but I explained above my reasoning in making the call. Interestingly, it was the donkey who had the two overs I needed to dodge while the MP player I was dominating, so that was good for me already in that I would win the large side pot even if an Ace or Queen fell, but in the end I miraculously dodged three Aces, three Queens and two Tens plus various runner-runner possibilities to nearly triple up and get into great position for another deep, deep run:



At this point I shifted my focus from bullying everyone sickly to playing aggressive poker but doing what I could to preserve my chip-leading position and make a run to the final table where the payouts start getting big enough to really care about. At a $120 buyin, the event paid only about $580 to the 9th-place finisher, but over $5300 to 1st place, so finishing in the teens somewhere really did nothing I gave a crap about to be honest. So no more dumb plays, no more questionable calls given my place on the leaderboard at the time.

With the structure what it is in the 8pm ET UB deep stack tournament, the tables tighten up dramatically heading to the cash, and really remain that tight all the way through to the final table and beyond. With a lot of cash at stake and with stacks that are so deep, there is just not much reason for anyone to push. It took about an hour to get down to the final table. To illustrate why the Ultimate Bet mtt structure is so attractive, when the final table began, the blinds were 1200-2400, and the average stack was 84000. This means the average player at the final table on Tuesday night had about 35 big blinds. 35 big blinds!! Just think about that for a minute -- where else in the world of online poker do you find that kind of average stack on a final table of an mtt, anywhere?. You just don't. Normally you're lucky if the average stack has 6-10 big blinds at any final table on stars, full tilt or Bodog.

Here I am in 5th place as the final table begins, thanks to my pushing my A8s into a short stack's AQ in the big blind with 10 players remaining:



So here I was, at another significant mtt final table just days after writing here about my lack of focus at final tables, and my failure to play solid final table poker over my last few chances in this spot. This time, I insisted on learning that lesson, and I can't tell you how many times I thought about that post and that promise I made to myself earlier this week about not letting my next final table opportunity fall by the wayside. I played the final table the way I believe you should, which is to be tight early and try to let the smaller stacks make mistakes or otherwise drop out so you can move up the money payouts. To this end, I folded 77, 44 and A7s to allin reraises during the first hour or so of final table play, opting to preserve my chances to double up and make the real big score I wanted instead of possibly calling off into a dominating hand. This to me is proper final table poker, and I played it to a tee this night after wasting my last couple shots at some real money.

At the end of Hour 4, I was in 5th of 8 players remaining in the tournament, needing some chips but willing to wait for the right opportunity thanks to the very skill-favorable UB tournament structure. I got that chance very early in Hour 5, when I picked up my biggest hand of the night -- QQ -- against TT allin preflop vs. the tournament chip leader. This suddenly bumped me up to 2nd place with over 138k in chips. Woohooooo! From this point, it was back to even more guarded play, as the players don't drop out of this thing with anywhere near the pace you see on the other online poker sites with single-digit Ms from even before the final table begins. But I really reined it in here while I waited for others to bust and only chipped up where my chances of winning pots without a showdown seemed highest. This meant that I did not bet out behind on the river with the low end of the straight on a TJQKs board, and my opponent flipped up an Ace as he attempted to get me to bluff into his nuts. On a later hand, then down to 5 players remaining at the final table, I opted not to not bet after the flop my A9 unimproved against a guy who called my button raise from his big blind. We checked it down on the all-rag board, and he showed AQ for the win. Plays like that -- surely different from how I would be apt to play these spots in either the beginning or the middle of most mtts -- are exactly what enabled me to stick around and move up the payouts instead of pushing myself into busting or even getting myself stuck with some difficult decisions in key spots.

As a result of my conservative final table play, though, I was in a distant 4th place of 5 remaining about 5 1/2 hours in to this tournament:



But notice, once again, the average stack is 168k, and blinds are just 4k-8k. Still, even with 5 players remaining, over 20 big blinds for the average stack, with 3 of the 5 left sitting on well more than 20 big blinds. Nice!

My biggest screwing of the tournament -- which again saw no suckouts for or against me from start to finish -- occurred with 5 players remaining, when I open-raised from the cutoff with AQo. The button, also the only player with a shorter stack than me left in the event, reraised me allin for about half of my remaining stack, and I pondered briefly and then called, figuring he cannot put me on a hand like AQ fro the button and that at worst I was looking at a race, which I easily had the pot equity for given the chips already in the middle from the blinds and antes and my own preflop raise. Unfortuntely, he flipped up AK, and I did not improve. So I was down to 5th of 5 left, with 46k in chips while even 4th place was sitting on 190k, and the chipleader at 250k. Still, with 6 big blinds I at least had a few hands left to try to make a move and get back into contention. A few hands later, sure enough I am dealt pocket 2s and I obviously push, getting called by the guy in 4th place who had just doubled through me, with him showing A6s, and fortunately I tripped up on the flop -- my only set of the night for that matter -- and even made quad ducks on the river just for good measure. I was still in last place of 5 remaining, but at that point I was back up to 115k and had around 14 big blinds thanks again to the UB tournament structure that is so solid.

Eventually, still in last place and shrinking once again, I called the small blind's open-push with my A5o in the big blind, and he flipped up A3o. Miraculously, not only did my A5 hold, but the 5 actually played thanks to the 4J29A board. Yessss! Suddenly I was back from the dead, all the way up in 2nd place of still 5 players remaining but now sitting on 235k in chips, with the leader holding 320k.

Over the next ten minutes or so, two players busted but unfortunately I was unable to take advantage, leading others to double up and increase their stacks while I was content to sit on my 200k+ rather than make any dumb moves and jeopardize my chance at the top prize of $5300 and change.

When three-handed, I had my biggest hand of the tournament where I believe my opponent overplayed a strong but not nut hand. I called the 8k big blind out of my 4k small blind with 95s:



putting 18,400 chips into the pot to see a flop of 667. With nothing good and only 9 high in my hand, and yet holding a draw to the inside straight for the nuts, I opted to check, and my opponent checked behind, which proved to be his undoing. The turn filled my miracle inside straight, and when I decided to bet the full pot to make this look as much like a steal attempt as I could, my opponent responded with the dreaded minraise:



The pot was getting big at this point, and my opponent easily had me covered, while I was solidly bigger than the 3rd place stack and did not want to get busted here and settle for the third place payout when I had been so far ahead of 3rd place coming in to the hand. But still, he had limped preflop so I wasn't putting him on pocket pair of 7s or 8s for the full house, and while I figured a boat with 67 or 68 was certainly possible, as was a higher straight with T9, an overpair, a pair with a draw, or of course a single 6 seemed like more likely possibilities to me. I made the decision that my hand was hidden enough and strong enough to go all the way, and once that decision was made, I opted for the pot-sized re-reraise rather than the allin, hopefully giving my opponent just enough rope to hang himself:



And he obliged:



And BLOOooooooooooom!



Now if I'm him in this spot, I like to think I would conceive of the possibility of a boat, any of the three straights, or even just a 6 with a higher kicker and at least might wait another street or two before getting it allin. In the end it was a beautiful setup for me and I played it well, but we were probably getting it allin there regardless in most cases. Anyways, this hand gave me a massive chip lead over both of my remaining opponents, of 565k - 143k - 129k.

From here it was just a matter of pushing hard every limp and every rag flop, but otherwise just try to see some flops and win after the flop instead of trying to take down every pot without seeing the flop given all these chips in my stack. The other thing I tend to focus on in this spot is trapping, which I don't normally like to do at final tables (or otherwise, for that matter) but which can be an awesome weapon with a dominating stack late in a tournament or an sng because your opponents will often feel pressure to attack your limps and try to chip up quick by getting you to fold. So a few hands later when I picked up AQo, I went for the limp out of the small blind to just 8k, and my 2nd place opponent across the table from whom I had won the big pot overpushed allin for his last 147k. I called, he flipped up A7s, and I held to get to heads up with a 730k to 107k chip lead.

The generous guy I was playing against informed me in the chat that he would give me just one chance to agree to a 50-50 chop. Not sure if he was joking or not, I ignored the proposal. On the 5th hand of heads-up play, I once again limped for 8k with A6o from my small blind, and my opponent pushed allin for his last 94k:



I made the call, which was my plan all along ever since opting to limp the A6 instead of raising preflop as I had been often during shorthanded play otherwise:



And booooyahh:



So there it is:



Now I just need to get this money off the site before it suddenly disappears or finds itself sitting in Phil Hellmuth's account out of nowhere, and it'll be alllll gooooood.

Ultimate Bet

So after watching Chad rip up Ultimate Bet like it's his job and hearing nonstop about the great structures available in the multi-table tournaments there, I decided to re-download the UB software and take a looksie for myself. I had an account at UB a good 3 or 4 years ago, played there a little bit, but quickly determined at the time that I did not like the software nearly as much as pokerstars -- the only other site I was playing on at the time -- and with the tournament availability at UB also paling in comparison to stars, I quickly got rid of the client and focused entirely on pokerstars until full tilt came into the picture some months later.

Now, the first thing you may be asking is how on earth can I put my money into a site that recently got caught with a massive cheating scam? The answer is I have no idea just how "safe" or "real" the poker there is, but if Chad has won fifty billion dollars there in the past couple of weeks, then I have every reason to believe that the site is now on the up and up. I certainly would never spend a dime at a poker site that I did not believe is offering legitimate poker (hence why I absolutely love when people claim the sites they play at are rigged or fixed in some way), and I know UB recently joined a new network of poker sites following the "superuser" scandal, so in an attempt to stay afloat it is probably fair to say that right now UB is among the safest of the poker sites. But I'm not trying to make any guarantees to anyone, I just figured it was worth checking out what a site that is bending over backwards right now to keep its users happy.

And what I found, I have to say I really liked. There are two aspects I was particularly into -- the software, and the tournament structures.

First, the software. UB has really got it going on in this department. I will still always be partial to full tilt, which I think has the best "last hand" feature, no problems with accessing hand histories, offers the best stats and the best in-tournament information about your current place in the tournament, stack size, etc. And I just like the look and feel of full tilt more than the other poker clients out there. But UB is right up there. The chat box is not intrusive and is easy to mute or detach, unlike some sites. The size and graphics of the cards is just right. They have a "bet pot" button and a good-working bet slider. You can get an array of stats at the click of one button for any playing session, and the "info" tab for tournaments gives you everything you want to know in one fell swoop. I know that in the past when I first sat down to play at a new site, it has taken me some time in all cases before being able to do well just due to adjusting to the new client, the graphics, where all the buttons are, etc. Not so with UB.

And this leads to the second big appeal of Ultimate Bet -- the structure of the tournaments. Every night at 8pm ET is a 20k guaranteed deep stack mtt, which starts you with 5000 chips and blinds of 5-10. Yes that is 500 big blinds to play with, which makes this totally unlike the daily tournaments at any other online poker site I know of. And the blind rounds in both the nightly 8pm 20k deep stack and the 9pm ET 30k bounty mtt are a full 15 minutes, which as I wrote about last week, make no sense IMO for a $10 buyin blonkament with a $150 first prize but which are awesome for a large mtt with a nice big prize pool worth winning. And the games play differently at UB as a result of these structural advantages, which I can say from just two mtt's played at UB so far. With stacks this deep and structures this slow, these things end up playing more like cash games for the entire first hour or so, if not more. There is far more limping and less raising in the earlygoing, and you can easily see a flop with just about any pocket pair or any speculative hand whatsoever and have sufficient odds to do so. There is far more postflop play for a longer period of time than in any other online site's regular daily tournaments, even the slow-structured mtts on full tilt and pokerstars like I have written about recently.

As a result, as these things get deeper, you pretty much always have the chance through the first several hours to raise, bet on the flop and still get away without decimating your stack. Imagine having just an average stack three hours in to the 50-50 on full tilt. Even at average, if you raise preflop and then c-bet the flop, if you have to fold after that, you just gave up probably 35-40% of your stack. Not so on UB. That would probably amount to 20% or less of your stack given the structure there, a good three hours in to their nightly guaranteed tournaments. And more than that, even at the final tables, the M's are a good 2-3 times higher than they are at the other major online poker sites. Now of course even with 15-minute blind rounds you're not talking about M's of 50 at the final table, but believe you me an average M of 15 is a hell of a lot better than an average M of 6 by the time the final table comes around. Anyone skilled at final table play should be thrilled to know that at UB the final table is not a complete push-n-pray cardrack fest like it is at most other sites.

That said, luck still plays a major factor in the final table play, of course. Here was me in my first mtt on Ultimate Bet this weekend in over three years:





So, a cool $2200 payout, plus 13 $10 bounties along the way to max out at just over a $2200 net profit for the tournament. And this, again, in my very first tournament with the new UB software that I had ever seen. That right there is a real testament to how useable the software really is, and how friendly the tournament structure is to skilled players. But as I said, luck still reared its ugly head in a big way for me at the final table, in two key hands. First, I picked up AA with eight players left, in the big blind no less, and to top it off the shorty in first position pushed allin before the action even got to me. We took the flop heads-up, with him holding JTs, and a totally innocuous flop quickly turned into tunner-runner straight for him and knocked me out of what would have been the chip lead. And, as if that wouldn't have been enough already, down to seven players remaining I got it allin with another shortish stack when I flopped two pairs before he again runner-runner four-flushed me to crush me.

This has been the story of my play of late -- I'm actualy making a fair number of final tables, but for some reason or another I just haven't been able of late to close the deal and home in on the top few spots when the real money is. Sure I am making nice profits along the way no doubt, and sure I've been able to crush at the end of some blonkaments, but those things are more like sng's than real mtts, and when the big money isn't on the line, it's just not at all the same thing. This weekend I thought I was playing well, but I will freely admit that after that second screwage at the final table on UB, my game was shaken badly and I limped my way to the next two spots before making an idiotic reraise against an UTG raiser with some shitty hand, 76o or some point, sitting on a miniscule stack of the five remaining players. But in other final tables recently, it hasn't been suckouts so much as lack of cards, lack of focus, or you name it. The bottom line is, any successful mtt player knows that the only way you really nail down profits over time in mtts is to consistently post top-3 cashes. You could make 50 big final tables a year, but if they are all 9th place finishes, you won't do nearly as well as the guy with 10 final tables, but including 4 wins, 4 second-places and 2 thirds. I need to focus better on final tables here as we head into the end of my best year by far in online poker, and this is a lesson I will not forget the next time I find myself in this situation, hopefully sooner rather than later.

The Return

Well, I'm back. Two days of orientation at my new job have come and gone, and on Thursday I will head to my real office for the first real day at my new employer. The move to our new house also went off pretty much without a hitch, the first move I would ever describe as "ok" or maybe even "pleasant". Not only did nothing get broken or go missing or anything, but in the end the price even came in under their estimate. Yes, New Yorkers, you read that right! They came in under estimate, mostly due to my having made several trips myself to and from the new house over the few days preceding our move, but I've always done that in the past as well and that's never stopped these fuckers from charging whateverthefuck they wanted to, hundreds of dollars for boxes, packing tape, fuel surcharges, you name it. So things are progressing well on that front and my life is slowly inching back towards normal for the first time in many, many months.

Unfortunately, all this shit over the past week has kept me from making a proper poker post here. But fortunately, a 35-minute commute each way on the train has left me with plenty of time to read and think about poker again, for the first time in quite a while actually, and that's what I'm really here to write about today.

Only once in a long while these days it seems, a poker book comes along that really makes a mark. So much literature has been written already as a result of the poker boom of the past five years or so that the truly game-changing poker books -- the Super/System's, the Harrington's -- are very few and far between. And that's not at all to say that there are no other worthwhile poker books out there; far from it, I've written much here about a great many books that I've gotten between something and a lot out of as far as my game goes. But I'm talking about the ones that really are the difference makers. And as I've said, nowadays that is a pretty rare thing.

Which brings me to my point today. Several months ago, on jeciimd's recommendation in fact, I read and wrote about Arnold Snyder's book The Poker Tournament Formula. Well, today I am here to say that I am a good way's in to the sequel to this book, and unlike so many of the recent poker books where the sequel is clearly made purely as a Matrix Revolutions-style money grab, the second Poker Tournament Formula is so far even better than the first. In fact, it is chock full of very thought-provoking ideas and strategy tidbits that frankly I had never quite thought about in the way that Snyder presents them. I am maybe a third of the way through the book at this point, and I already have at least a week's worth of blog posts coming just from ideas presented in the book, or things I have thought about as I have analyzed what I am reading in the book.

In a nutshell, Snyder's overall concept in the book thus far is that of tournament chip utility. This concept is absolutely essential to any poker tournament, and this is the key idea that has not in my view been expounded upon, or even recognized at all, really in any other poker book I have ever read (and I've read most of them). In a nutshell, Snyder uses the term chip utility to refer to the amount of utility, or usefulness, one can get from one's chip stack at any given time in a tournament. As someone with a modicum of tournament success myself, I have to agree 100% with this concept, and with the conclusions that Snyder draws from using the concept, even (and to me, most interestingly) where they flat-out disagree or contradict with other popular poker authors' thoughts on poker tournament strategies. The basic idea behind chip utility is that a skilled tournament player derives much more benefit from having what Snyder calls "full utility" -- that is, say 100 big blinds or more and the largest stack at one's table -- than just having that number of chips itself. Having full chip utility is worth so much more to a skilled tournament player because it allows him or her to use his or her chips as freely as possible, truly opening up the arsenal of moves one has the room to make to include all possible moves like raising preflop with connectors and then c-betting regularly, float-calling another c-bet on the flop to try to steal on the turn, betting for information on the flop, raising the flop "to find out where you're at", etc. With less than 100 big blinds, argues Snyder, these various weapons in a tournament entrant's arsenal begin to disappear, until down to 20-30 big blinds where in most cases one's only real option is to push allin preflop, or maybe in certain circumstances to raise preflop and then push in on the flop. But it is that freedom, that "space", if you will, in your chipstack to be able to make all the different moves a poker tournament player can make, that makes chip utility such a crucial tournament concept.

The most interesting thing about this concept to me, as I mentioned above, is that it leads to some very interesting conclusions about how one should play in tournaments. I mean, basically everyone knows that tight-aggressive is the way to play poker. It just is. Ask (or just watch) any good cash game player and you will see or hear it for yourself. You have to play tight, and you have to play aggressive. Most well-known tournament poker writers advocate this exact same TAGgy approach to playing in poker tournaments as well. And yet, argues Snyder in The Poker Tournament Formula II, the true best approach to playing in poker tournaments is actually far looser than it is tight. Aggressive, yes. Surely. But not tight. LAGgy is the way to go in poker tournaments, and that is all because of the concept of chip utility.

Now, I will be writing much more about this in the coming week(s) as I myself continue to read, reread and most of all to absorb all that Arnold Snyder is saying in this truly interesting and powerful tournament poker book. But let me ask you a question. How many of you have secretly sat and watched one of the red ftp pros play in a big mtt? Or better yet, tell me you haven't sat, either in secret or openly, on the rail while lucko or Chad have been on one of their incredible mtt streaks. I know I have had tons of railbirds basically for all of my final table runs over the past couple of years, as is the case with LJ and basically everyone else in our group who has final tabled with any regularity at all over the past several months. Think back over all those times you've sat and railed someone, especially early on in these tournaments, and you tell me: does lucko play tight poker early on in an mtt? Does Chad only ever raise or call with the top 5% of starting holdem hands? Is that how I play, be it in a blonkament or other large mtt? Of course not. Not even close.

Almost all of the successful large mtt players actually play this looser-aggressive style, especially early in tournaments. Although I suspect most of us -- certainly this includes me -- have never actually thought about things in terms of the concept of chip utility in any meaningful way, that's exactly what we're doing at its core. I can't count how many times I've chatted in the girly with one of these people about how I have no interest in sitting on a short stack early or really at any point in a tournament. Now, I know and watch tons of players -- admittedly most of them bloggers -- who are more than content to let their chip stack dwindle and dwindle all through the first couple hours of a tournament, just waiting for the one big hand to try to get a double up that, in the end, will only get them back to maybe 50% above their original starting stack even if they do manage to fully double with their monster starting hand. But that's not me. And it's not LJ, it's not lucko, it's not Chad, and frankly it's not Erick Lindgren or Daniel Negreanu or Doyle Brunson either. The bottom line is that, although cash poker often requires a tight, aggressive style of play, the concept of chip utility in poker tournaments typically means that it is well worth it for a skilled tournament player to play far looser early on, taking much more chance of busting out early in exchange for getting one's chip utility up near full utility early on, which really enables such a player to open up his or her arsenal of weapons. And that is how the best mtt players in the world approach the tournaments they play in, almost to a person.

As I mentioned, this is just scratching the surface of the ways that chip utility affects proper poker tournament strategy, and I will have much more to say about this topic in my posts over the next several days. But I'm telling you, if you're one of those people who has never had the success that so many other poker tournament players have, you don't understand why, and yet you also rely on things like tight-aggressive poker, the gap principle, regular pot odds (as opposed to "utility odds" -- more on that one coming later), etc. in your tournament play, then do yourself a favor and read The Poker Tournament Formula II. Read the first one actually, and then read the second. Read it, read it again, absorb it, and then live it at the poker tables. You will not believe how very off-base so many of the popular poker strategies can be when it comes to typical poker tournaments, and even moreso to online ones. With this book, an open mind and a willingness to challenge one's assumptions and to learn, there is no telling how your game can improve.

The Law Chica Scores Again, and Single Stacks vs Double Stacks

Don't forget the Mizzle tonight, 10pm ET on full tilt:



Password for the MATH as always is "hammer", and one and all are welcome as the BBT3 rolls on tonight for some 6-max nlh fun times.

So yeah I was gone for a couple of days there, I have heard about it from enough of you but what can I say, sometimes a guy just needs to recharge. Actually last Thursday the culprit was work, as one of my colleagues left my group and my company for good (riddance) that day, but the transition and the increased work responsibilities for me will be noticeable for the foreseeable future. That said, in the end I got just what I wanted as far as my promotion at work, and my company did not go out of business last week like some investment banks did, so for the time being things are going ok overall I suppose. And this past Friday was Good Friday, a bank holiday, and as such we are closed at work and I generally tend to take my holidays seriously even as blog holidays when I am able. So that's my excuse for two uncharacteristic days of absence, it's not much but it's all you're gonna get. I'm back now and better than ever, and that's all that matters.

For starters, last night I watched LJ absolutley manhandle the field in the nightly 32k guaranteed on full tilt, treating me to a masterful show by her over maybe two hours or so of early Push Time as she navigated the field from around 100 players left down to around 25 before I finally hit the sack for the night. LJ was playing like a pro, barely showing down a hand in two hours, and using selective aggression like a champion on her way to an eventual 2nd place finish out of 1721 runners for over $5600 cash money. You cannot play Push Time any better than LJ did there, and she is rewarded with her biggest ever online win. so go stop by her blog and congratulate LJ for yet another big tournament score. Does anyone in our group cash in the big ones with LJ's regularity? Anyone?

And while I'm on the topic, while I was away our man Smokkee went and came in 3rd place in the daily $165 buyin 40k guaranteed tournament at 3pm ET. Go read about his exploits at Smokkee's blog and make sure to congratulate the man on his largest-ever online poker cash of over $6000 and change! What is in the water this past week or so that has all the bloggers turning in huge performances for largest-ever scores? I don't know but I want to get me summa that for myself, I know that much.

So today I wanted to talk a little bit about one of my favorite topics -- the Mookie. Over the weekend I was reviewing my last few Mookie finishes among other things, and a very obvious fact jumped right out at me. There is quite simply a major difference in the proper tournament strategy for a 1500-chip tournament and a 3000-chip tournament. I've heard and read a number of people saying the opposite around the blogging world -- heck, I might have even said so myself at one point or another -- but that shit could not be further from the truth. When the blinds are starting out exactly the same in either format, the simple fact is that there is a ton more room to splash around, to play some small ball and try to see some cheap flops and nail 'em, or to wait for the good cards and pick your spots, in a 3000-chip event than in a correspondingly-structured 1500-chip one. Way more.

One of my many Mookie problems over the past couple of months is directly related to this. I have clearly been playing the regular-stack Mookie's identically the same way as I approach the 3000-chippers, and that is no way to survive and accumulate in a blonkament or any other mtt. It just cannot possibly work, unless I get smiznacked in the face hard with the deck, which just doesn't happen nearly often enough to plan a strategy around. Let me give you an example of exactly what I mean:

So I'm reviewing my hand histories and screen shots over the last several Mookie's, and here I go maybe 30 minutes in, with blinds at 25-50, limping in from middle position behind an EP limper with a hand like 97s. I'm hoping to attract a couple of more stragglers into the pot behind me and maybe hit something big with soooted one-gapper. So EP limps for 50, I limp for 50, the cutoff limps for 50, and then the button makes it 150 to go. The big blind calls the 150, as does the EP player, and now I have to call another 100 to see at least a 3-way flop and more likely a 5-way flop once I get in there with 97s. So I make the call, thinking my pot odds and especially my implied odds easily justify such a move here. And you know what? Implied odds probably do justify the call here with 97s, all other things being equal.

But here's the problem -- all other things are not equal, in particular in this context the variable of stack size. We are 30 minutes in to the Mookie, let's say my stack is right where it started at 1500 chips, and now here I am calling off 10% of my stack with 97s. I don't know about you, but that is definitely not where I want to be if I am trying to win the dam thing. 97s for 10% of my stack preflop? Blech. Whereas, if I had started with 3000 chips instead of 1500, making that same limp-call move 30 minutes in to the tournament doesn't bother me in the least. Yes it's still 5% of my stack with a speculative hand, but frankly the difference between those two is quite noticeable in my eyes. I have little trouble making a well-timed play for 5% of my stack preflop with a sooted one-gapper. If I miss, I fold and so what, I have 2850 chips instead of 3000 in my stack. No big whoop. But when I fold the flop after completely missing it and am down to 1350 instead of 1500, that is a much bigger difference.

But the even bigger problem for me has been coming after the flop is already out in the short-chipped Mookie. As most of you know, I tend to play pretty aggressive poker overall, and that definitely extends to my postflop play in addition to my preflop play. So if I like the flop for my hand, or more accurately, if I sense a lack of strength on my opponents' part, I am likely to bet at almost any flop at any point in the tournament. And, depending on the preflop action and the exact texture of the flop, I am likely to bet somewhere between 2/3 and the full size of the pot when I make such a bet on the flop. So look at what this does to me in the 1500-chip stacks:

So going back to my example above, let's say I do go and call the 150 and end up seeing a 4-way flop with my 97s, making 625 chips in the pot and bringing a flop of 983 rainbow on a hand where I had started out even with the starting stack of 1500 chips. The big blind and the EP player check to me, and what's my move? On this type of flop, I would likely as in most cases want to put in a bet of roughly two-thirds the size of the pot, which in this case is around 450 chips. So let's say I do that, and then someone in late position raises me allin. Now look at me. I've got 1500 - 150 - 450 = 900 chips left, and there is now 1075 chips in the pot. Yes I can fold my top pair no kicker to the allin raise on the flop here just 30 minutes in to the Mookie -- most likely that is the "right" move in terms of me probably being behind here in some way with just two cards to come -- but how sure am I that I am definitely behind here? Basically I am facing a poor decision either way on my part, one that is mostly a direct result of the fact that I have been betting over my head with a mediocre hand right from the getgo here. Either I decide I am pot committed and I call off my last 900 chips into a 1075-chip pot with just top pair 9s no kicker (and I am a donkey), or I fold my top pair and am left with just 900 chips and a very poor chance of recovery to respectability. Damned if I do, and damned if I don't, and again it all comes back to stack size. That exact same decision for the exact same numbers of chips involved just isn't nearly as tough if I still have 2400 chips behind as opposed to when I have just 900 behind. Laying down to the reraise is a much easier decision I think with just top pair 9s no kicker, and reraising allin is even a better option that simply is not available in the 1500-starting-stack scenario due to the limited number of chips involved.

When it comes right down to it, long before even the first hour is up in these 1500-chip blonkaments, the starting stack all but requires you to be nearly committed to the pot to even bet or call a normal-sized bet on the flop, one time. So, I need to play different kinds of hands differently in a 1500-chip tournament to adjust for this fact. I'm sure I used to know this back in the day when all of our regular weekly blogger tournaments were 1500 chips to start, but it didn't all click in my own mind again until this past weekend while reviewing my recent Mookie failures. I can't play a hand like AJo for a raise preflop and then withstand (or even lead) one round of normal-sized betting on an Ace-high flop in a 1500-chip tournament, whereas I can do so in a 3000-chip tournament quite easily without really risking a significant portion of my stack on the hand. With 1500 chips, I have to noticeably tighten up my preflop play, and more than that, I need to very directedly practice pot control from the very earliest parts of each hand in order to see flops, turns and rivers on my own terms. Once I start adjusting for that, I am hoping to see a noticeable improvement in my Mookie performances, hopefully in time to win me my prop bet with Mookie at some point before this year is out. Ha ha yeah right.

And don't get me wrong here btw, I'm not complaining even a little bit. I enjoy the 1500-chip format. I love the shorter (what used to be "normal") stacks and I am a huge fan of the variety in the whole thing as I have written about here previously. I am merely making an observation that I have not previously made, and in fact which I have been practicing as if the exact opposite of this observation were in fact the truth. So much of poker is all about adjusting, and in this case it's no wonder I haven't done squat in the Mook since the switch back to 1500 starting chips a couple of months ago. I've been playing it as if no switch actually occurred at all, when in reality a significant switch went down which has noticeable impact on the proper strategy of play compared to the 3000-chip donkfests I've become used to over the past half a year or so since the first BBT hit town and we all upped our tournaments to double stacks. I've been the deadest money in that tournament week in and week out, for going on a couple of months here.

But now all that changes. And hopefully I can start the change tonight by focusing on adjusting my game a little better for the 6-max superfast structure of Mondays at the Hoy as well. See you tonight at 10pm ET for the MATH on full tilt!