64 But I Need More

Wow I am on a miserable run lately on the online poker front. My live poker game is as good as it's ever been -- I've mentioned before here that I remember not all that long ago the first time I ever played one of those daily holdem tournaments in a casino, I was so nervous, I got bounced early on a race I didn't need to take on at the time, and I distinctly remember thinking at that time how I would be lucky to ever even make the top 20% of any live casino tournament in my life. Fast forward five years or so, and I've won some solid coin in live events in Vegas, and more than that, I've won three different daily casino tournaments while just goofing around so far this year. But online, the past week or so has been absolutely brutal.

It's happened to me before. More times than I can count, really. In fact, truth be told, this downswing isn't even close to as bad as the worst it's ever been. But for the past few weeks, I just can't win anything I play. I've barely touched the mtt's over the past couple of months -- not sure why, although I do seem to recall having a similar period after returning from Las Vegas last summer, so maybe I burn out a little playing so much poker over four days that I literally see pocket pairs and flop-turn-river whenever I blink my eyes, I don't know. But I've been mostly playing turbo sitngos lately, and damn the variance on those things is just sick. Especially when you play a lot of turbo heads-up.

Oh, and a lot of super turbos.

I can't help it sometimes. I realized a long time ago that online turbo tournaments are a style that I can play realllly well, and to this day it is clear whenever I play turbo events that at least half the people at the table -- be it sitngo or mtt -- honestly do not understand the kind of adjustment that needs to be made in order to have long-term success at this pace. Sitting around and waiting for a big pocket pair might work in this one instance if you get lucky, and sure it might make you some money for a week or two while you run good and get just the right situations just when you need them, but over time it's a far losing strategy in turbo tournaments, and quite simply you should not be playing turbo if that is the plan going in. Anyways, these guys might get lucky against me in a given event or three of course, but in general I am at a major skill advantage whenever I'm playing in a turbo tournament structure online.

Narrow that down to heads-up turbo sitngos, and the skill advantage is even more obvious. Now granted, in heads-up play, it is also concurrently harder to take advantage of that skill differential because the play can be so automatic throughout, but at the same time it is just painfully easy to see the deficiencies in the games of most heads-up players at the stakes I tend to play. It's just them and me, and no one else to focus on or to complicate the analysis and make it harder to make moves, etc. And amazingly, if you take it a step further and play the super turbo heads-up sitngos, it is sad how much almost every single person dumb enough to be playing in these rake machines is truly totally out of it when it comes to strategy for these things.

If you play turbo heads-up sitngos at anything above micro stakes, I'm sure you've noticed the autobots who automatically min-raise every single time they act first before the flop. From start to finish, without deviation, every single time. And never a real raise, always just a min-raise. It's such an exploitable strategy, and once I've noted them, I'll usually just kick it back up 4x their raise on a reraise with air right there, they will invariably fold, and then I will instantly show them my trash. These auto-minraisers are such clowns, I will steal their minraise 7, sometimes 8 or more times in one turbo sitngo that lasts 7 minutes. It's unbelievable the free chips that are available over the long run from these people who think they've figured out the way to beat the games. It's so awesome, really. But the best part of all is, even in the super turbo heads-up sitngos, there are idiots who still are out there min-raising every single pre-flop when they act first. Minimum raising, when starting with ten big blinds and with 3-minute blind rounds. How can you not love that?

So yes, as I'm sure the snarkers out there are thinking, why am I on here writing about this instead of playing those super turbo min-raising idiots right now this very second? The answer of course is that I've been playing the super turbo heads up sngs for hours a day over the past several weeks, and yet I don't have anything good to show for it. Lately the variance has just been on the ugly side over and over and over again. Yes I'm getting in ahead with the same consistency as always, but when you're playing in super-turbo land, getting allin pre with A7s vs K9s is not just commonplace -- it's around the best you can really realistically hope for if you're the A7s guy. That's why the variance is so sick in these things. Cuz you're really coming out there and just trying to get it allin preflop with a 60-70% advantage and hope you get your worth out of that situation over the long run. But 59-41 or 63-37 is just not all that favored to be able to avoid getting beat with some actual regularity when you actually play it out, something I've always known but which is so easy to forget until you go through one of those rough patches that mathematically have to happen if you play this game enough times over a long enough period of time.

Over the long run, I've performed fairly well in the turbo and super turbo sitngos that I have played. But lately, 64 percenters and even a few 80 percenters have just not been holding up their end of the bargain. And it's been probably the most annoying few weeks of poker that I've experienced in a year or more.

Super Turbo Heads Up SNGs

That's right, folks. As I've gradually started getting back in to online poker as my son has started sleeping a good portion of the night, I noticed something brand new last night that I had not noticed before on full tilt -- the presence of heads-up sitngos in a super turbo format. Now, for those of you who don't konw, the super turbos are the satellites that start each player with just 300 chips, and 15-30 blinds, and the blinds escalate every three minutes. Basically, the structure in super turbo formats more or less forces you to play allin preflop poker almost every single time a flop is seen, certainly in the early part of the tournament. If you think you can bump the 30-chip big blind to 90 chips with a preflop raise, but then fold when reraised from late position, you're nuts because with 90 chips already invested, you have already committed around 30% of your stack in a tournament with very quick blind escalation. So it's either allin-or-fold right from the getgo in these things, and it's been well documented among several bloggers over the past year or so since the super turbo format first appeared in limited instances on full tilt that playing in the large super turbo's is basically just a crapshoot, at any level of buyin.

So it would stand to reason, then, that the heads-up flavor of these things would also be a total and complete crapshoot, right?

Not so fast. As I have written about here myself, and as I recall some others have chipped in as well, there actually is some strategy that can be used in the super turbo structure. Ultimately, there is little you can do to prevent yourself from taking your AQs up against someone else's 77 in the third hand of the tournament for all of your respective stacks, but there is a general way of approaching these hyper-quick tournament structures that can give you an advantage over others at your table who don't get it. And what I found last night is that, in the heads-up context, if you can get up against someone who doesn't have the same feel for the super-turbo game as you do, you can actually make some decent, albeit extremely high-variance, profits.

I was lucky last night. I ran into a guy sitting at one of these $160 + $4 super turbo heads-up sitngos who really had no clue how to play them. And more than that, either he was some sick points whore or he had wayyyyyyy too much money for his own good, because whether he won or lost, the guy immediately accepted a rematch offer within seconds of the last sng ending. Although I stopped counting maybe around 20, we must have played at least 25 of these super-turbo heads-up sngs, and in the end I think I won maybe five more than I lost by the time this guy had finally had enough. And more than that, net of any suckouts I foisted on my opponent during the session, he won three or four of our battles on hardcore dominated suckouts, situations where we got allin preflop with my AJ vs. his QJ, or my K9 vs his 97, etc. Plus he won another two or so on what I would call mild suckouts, like allin preflop my AK vs his T9 and hands like that where my preflop odds were probably not more than 60% but where I still had a nice lead when all the money went into the middle.

How did I play this such that I ended up +5 in sngs won, plus another 5 or so where my opponent sucked out but where really I was the odds-on favorite to win maybe 2/3 of the super-turbo contests we played? Given the speed, there are really just a few tricks I employed:

1. Push! Whenever I get relatively short and I am first to act preflop. With any two cards. So when he won the first couple of pots and the chip stacks were 390 for him to 210 for me, I would push in preflop automatically with my 30-chip big blind and his 15 already in the pot, even if I'm holding 34o, a hand I pushed with many a time through our 30- or 40-sng session last night. Almost every time he folded, and the couple of times he does call, I am generally only a 55-60% dog or so, which means I am winning more than 4 times out of 10 in any event even when he does call.

2. Read! My opponent. Yes it is hard to read too much into my opponent's actions when we are playing super-turbo which by definition forces the action quite a bit as it is. But there are still variations in the players who get mixed up in these things, and generally speaking you only have a few short minutes to figure out which kind of guy you are up against. Is he, like me, a push-n-pray guy every time he gets a little short, so that when he is short and moves in before the flop I do not necessarily have to fear being up against a monster. Or, is he one of these guys who only auto-pushes with any Ace or with any two face cards? Will he move in with that 34o if he is first to act and has already put big blind money into the pot, or will he try to wait for a better spot? Does a pause before he bets generally indicate that he has a big hand and wants to bait me into calling, or that he has a horrible hand and needs to psyche himself up into raising with it? These are the things I attune myself to right away in the super turbo structure tournaments, and in heads-up play it becomes significantly more important given that you're up against the same guy every single hand for all the marbles.

3. Know! My preflop pushing odds. This is the last key I used last night in abusing this guy in the super-turbo heads up sngs, and it really goes hand in hand with item #2 above. Once I can put some reasonable limitation on his hand range when he moves in in a given spot at a given speed, I need to know whether it makes sense for me to call given my own hole cards. So, for example, once I determined in our first 10 matches or so that this guy was pushing in with any two cards on the first hand of every tournament, then suddenly that K7o I was dealt becomes a calling hand and not a folding hand. And when I know for sure that this guy autopushes with any Ace or any King at all, that A6 or A7 I am holding once again becomes a caller instead of a possible folder. The key is understanding the math behind the allin preflop decisions, at least on a categorical level, for any reasonable two-card hands he and I might be holding.

Still, in the end as I mentioned above, the variance on these super-turbo badboys is more than anyone should have to deal with in trying to amass some quality results. As I pointed out, although I did end the 40-sng-or-so session 4 or 5 wins ahead of my opponent, these results did include a good 5 or 6 net suckouts on my opponent's part that severely hampered my ability to really lay a smackdown on him, but the fact remains that I got in good position to win his $160 buyin in a good two-thirds of the sngs we played simply by following the three keys above and executing my game plan without making rash calls or bad plays. I'm not sure I want to make a habit of playing heads-up super-turbo poker, but when a profitable situation presents itself I feel good knowing I am prepared with a plan that should work against most lesser-experienced opponents.

Ring Turbo SNG Strategy -- Part 1

OK so here it is. After numerous requests in the comments and over girly and email, today I will post the first part of my long-ago written strategy post on turbo sng's. I never actually finished this series of posts, though I had made an outline, so I guess it remains to be seen how far I take this series and exactly when. But tonight I am feeling like firing up a good old strategy post, and this is one that I wrote a while ago and frankly one that I have promised here on the blog for several months. Such is the life of the everyday blogger though, at least this everyday blogger. I basically never know what I'm going to write about when I get up in the morning. I probably have a hundred half-written (or completely written) posts saved in draft form on my server at blogspot. I think of something one day at 9pm, and I write it down and save it in draft. Maybe I get back to it a few days later, or a few weeks later, and maybe not for a year or more. That's what happened for example with my "Credit Card Mania" post from last week. I probably wrote that badboy 18 months ago, the first time anyways. I've gone back to it a few times since then, refined, added some more details that seemed to make the story better. And then one day out of the blue it suddenly seemed like the time. Who knows why. All I know is, today is the time for the beginning of the long-awaited and long-promised turbo sng strategy post. Enjoy.

Part I of this post will deal with starting card strategy. Before I start it is important to cover what I affectionately call "the disclaimer". Why I do this, I don't know, but it just feels like the right thing to point out at the beginning whenever I do a strategy post like this. So please understand, this post and any others that I do in this series are for me. They are by me, for me. It is me writing down my strategy that I like to take when I play turbo sngs. This strategy has worked well for me as a rule. I go through losing streaks in sngs just like anyone does. I get bored of them, make impatient plays and lose just as much as the next guy. But over time this strategy has worked for me. For me. This does not mean that it will or may work for you. I'm not trying to say it should or will work for you. In fact I'm saying it may not, or more accurately that I don't really care because, again, I am writing this post for me. Whenever I do a nice strategy post, I get better at the game of poker and better at the specific topic of the post I am writing. Every time. It's great, and I enjoy doing it. Just the act of analyzing the situations, thinking through hand ranges and possible results, and especially putting it all into some kind of structured presentation in a way that flows easily from simpler, more common concepts to the rarer and more complex ones, it all gives me a much better and clearer understanding of the topic of the post and makes me a better player overall.

So that's why I write a post like this. Now as my readers know, I am all about hand analysis and objective analysis of given hands. And I would be more than happy to do that here with these turbo sng posts. But please don't write me all pissy saying that you are following my system and losing money, and what an idiot I am. I'm not the idiot in that scenario. You're the idiot. I'm not posting a strategy for you to copy and try to use without regard to your own personal strengths and weaknesses as a player. I'm just posting my strategy, for myself to read, and doing so in a public forum where you are finding it and for some reason are insisting on trying to duplicate it yourself. Your bad, not mine. For me, writing this down helps my game immensely, I secretly enjoy doing it when I can find the time, and if it helps some of you too then that is a great outcome. But I'm not suggesting that this is how you should do or play anything. I am merely stating how I usually play the game. That is all.

OK with that out of the way, a few other opening points. Most important is to keep in mind that the strategy I will be describing in this post or posts is my own strategy and my own strategy alone. While I do believe that most sng pros play the game very similarly to how I play it, I do not know that to be the case and I'm not trying to say otherwise here. Again, this is just how I play the game, not how you do nor how anyone does or should.

Second, notice from the title of this post, this is my strategy for turbo sngs only. Make no mistake, the strategy in a non-turbo format is similar, but certainly different at the margins than the one I espouse in this post. In a turbo format, the entire 1-table sng is going to be over with in 40, 45 minutes in most cases, 50 minutes tops, so you simply cannot sit around and wait for premium cards. You're probably only going to see 100 hands or fewer in this thing even if you run all the way to the end and win, so it's not like you can just wait for the AA or KK which together only come once every couple hours or so. So this is a turbo sng strategy, not a regular sng strategy which would have to be tighter with fewer starting hands played.

Lastly, notice also from the title, this is for ring game turbo sng strategy. When you cut it down to a 6-max sng -- something which I love to play btw -- again the strategy tends to change, this time becoming even more aggressive and opening things up even further as far as perflop starting cards and similar issues. But again, this post is the strategy that I tend to use in ring game (typically 9-player) turbo format nlh sitngos.

OK, now finally on to the actual post. The first thing that I always keep in mind about starting hand selection is to always be very careful what I play from early position, because the turbo format leads to a very pusy-y game. In other words, with the turbo action working, and thus the blinds moving up literally every three minutes, it is often that a preflop reraise is an allin move, or at least an amount that basically commits the reraiser to get it allin on that play. After more than 15 or 20 minutes in, this will be the case for all but the top stacks remaining in the tournament. So, when I am in early position in the turbo sngs, I tend to be very, very careful -- even moreso than in a standard mtt or a cash table where I might have the chips and/or the structure to play a few speculative hands from up front.

All that said, in the turbo ring sng's, I tend to open with AJo or better from early position, including utg. Sometimes I will even do this with ATo, but really I have my doubts about the long-term profitability of playing even AT from this position. Even AJo utg is not a strong hand generally speaking, especially to play from out of position all through the hand, but I find that the turbo nature of the sitngo dictates that I can't just throw away AJ every time I see it or else I might end up allin in a worse spot not too much later on. So from early position, I will open-raise with AJo or better. From middle position in an unopened pot, I will ratchet that down a little bit, maybe to the A8/A9 range plus KQ. And from the cutoff, button or small blind, I will generally open-raise with any Ace and most strong Kings, and some of the higher soooted connectors as well.

Just a quick bit about bet sizing. The turbo sngs will start you off with 1500 chips, blinds of 10-20, and 3-minute blind rounds. In other words, it is not a deep tournament, and within 15 minutes or so as I mentioned above, you're basically committed if you call a single raise either before or after the flop, or very close to committed. As a result of all this, I personally do not believe in over-raising before the flop to really narrow the field to one or at most two players. I know some of the cardrunners guys advocate this and I saw some bloggers having the discussion a couple of months back, but for me, I just to 3x raises all the time in the turbo ring sitngos. I find this to be the easiest method to implement, requiring next to no thought, and since there are never antes in the turbo sngs on full tilt, I never feel the need to adjust up my standard raises above the 3x threshhold. 3x basically gets me to the 1.6 or 1.7 to 1 pot odds I want to offer to the other players at the table, so I tend to just make 3x raises all the time before the flop, and again this strategy has worked well for me.

Now a word about being reraised. Again, given the general opening strategy I described above -- open-raising AJ+ from early position, A8+ from middle and any Ace from late position, this dictates a certain amount of discretion early in the sitngo if I do get caught raising on the light side. Thus, I will lay down the lower part of all of those ranges to reraises early. So, if I open-raise the 30-chip blind to 90 eight minutes in to the turbo sng when I am holding A8o, and then the cutoff reraises me 3 or 4x my raise, I am usually going to fold. If I know I can't or won't have this kind of discipline, that is ok but then I need to tighten up my playable hand ranges even more than what I descibed above. If I'm going to raise A8 or A7 as a rule with several players still to act behind me, personally I will only ever follow that strategy if I know I can follow the second part of it, which is folding to reraises early, when my original raise has not yet committed me and when my opponents' hand ranges likely trump mine. Similarly, if I open-raise KQo from third position and then the button repops up another 3x my preflop raise, I am likely going to lay it down. I am probably up against an Ace, AQ or a pair a heck of a lot more often than I'm not, and why take a flop where I am taking the worst of it going on and where I will have no idea where I'm at almost no matter what actually falls on the flop.

As far as what I will call a reraise with early in a turbo ring sng, that is only the hands at the very top of the range I described above. AK is almost always good for a reraise or for calling a reraise, again only because we are talking about turbo here, and even AQ is often (but not always) worthy of calling a standard-sized (not allin) reraise with early in the sng. Otherwise, it is AK, maybe AQ, and the big pairs, down to maybe JJ or so. In a turbo format I think folding JJ to a preflop reraiser is a tough decision to make -- again in a regular-speed event I can lay this down much easier -- but when I'm facing an allin for 50 big blinds (1500 chips) very early in a turbo sng, a pocket pair like TT or certainly 99 or lower is not looking too strong at all. At that point I will typically want to fold, unless I can discern some read from my opponent that he may be holding a lower pocket pair. But that early in the tournament, with that little invested in the pot so far, I think it becomes very hard to justify taking an 80% chance of a race plus a 20% chance of being dominated by a higher pair. Later on in the sng you don't always have much choice as far as whether you can / should commit in this spot, but early in the sitngo I try to only call preflop reraises with the top four or five pocket pairs but the top one or two unpaired cards. Otherwise I would rather pass and wait for either better cards or a better spot to get my money in than that.

Lastly for today, as far as when to go allin with my own raises, I tend to follow the rule of 10x. I saw this somewhere in a book or online somewhere, and as a general rule I have found it to be a very useful guideline for when a standard-sized raise is likely to commit a player for his or her entire stack, and thus should just move allin instead of making the more usual, 3x type of raise. So, for example, if blinds have just moved up to 50-100, and I have AJo in middle position in an unopened pot with a stack of 980 chips, I'm not bumping that badboy up to 300. It's all in for the first move there. What do I want to push in 300 for, leaving me with a paltry 680 chips remaining in my stack in a pot where, even if I am called by just one other player, will likely have 750 chips in it by the time the flop is dealt. Obviously I am pushing with ATC on that flop, and obviously I am calling with my AJ before the flop if any opponent reraises me allin, rather than me folding there and leaving myself with just 680 chips and a big blind of 100. So since with fewer than 10 big blinds I know I will be pot-committed on the flop basically no matter what, or even before the flop if my opponent reraises me, I tend to just move allin myself whenever I want to raise and have fewer than 10 big blinds to play with.

Also, if I have fewer than 5x the big blind, then not only do I play the sitngo hand as an allin-or-fold situation, but I am significantly widening the range of cards that I will push allin with given my short stack. Basically, if the blinds are up to 75-150 and I am holding 650 chips, then my stack is so short that, for me, I want to move allin preflop into any unopened pot from any position with any kind of playable hand. Certainly I am allin with any Ace (completely regardless of my kicker) with such a short stack, and frankly, with fewer than 5 big blinds, I might be tempted to push allin with ATC from anything in middle or late position overall.

OK this seems like a good place to stop for the beginning to my ring turbo sitngo strategy post. There is a ton more content on this topic that I've already pulled together and written in many instances, but this should serve as a good general introduction to the turbo sng game that I like to play, when it comes to early-tournament, preflop decisions. Of course all of this changes once the sng wears on a little bit and the Ms begin their dramatic drop -- much more quickly in turbo than you might think -- but for a general guideline this is how I tend to play the turbo ring sitngos during the first few blind rounds when the stacks are still relatively deep compared to the blinds. My general approach, even in the turbos, is that there is no excuse for busting in those first few rounds out without a strong hand, period. As I said, that mantra changes quite dramatically fairly quickly in turbo sng land, but for starting off with the first few rounds, I try to raise with a fairly defined range, and I do not call off my chips in situations where my hand range is clearly behind that of my opponent.

I will try to get up Part 2 -- or really, Part 1(a) -- with a number of screenshots and other examples and discussion of my early sitngo approach before the flop, as soon as I can. If I'm a man, I will do it for my Thursday post. But, I guess that might be a little difficult to do here, what with me winning the Mookie tonight and all.

Don't forget the Mook, 10pm ET tonight on full tilt. Password as always is "vegas1". I am already registered and will be there for my weekly waste of time donation.

Beatin' Down on the FTP Pros

Don't forget:



Another Monday, another 6-max nlh Mondays at the Hoy tournament on full tilt! As always, the virtual cards are in the virtual air at 10pm ET on full tilt, and the password is "hammer". One $26 buyin is all it takes to take a shot at winning a seat in the BBT3 Tournament of Champions coming up in a couple of months at the end of the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments 3. Although I may be a bit late as I am being taken out by a law firm we use quite a bit to see the Yankees open up a can of whoopass on the Rays tonight, when I am back I will be in it to win it.

Speaking of which, my plan going in to this weekend was to take it easy from poker, and to try to find a way to get my confidence and my A game back after a few weeks of playing largely like dog. I did a great job early in the weekend with the first part, only jumping in for maybe 15 minutes (and probably 20 rebuys) in the Friday night donkament, and not playing a lick on Saturday after full tilt miraculously went down right while the later final four game was going on. Barely playing any poker therefore over the weekend, when Hammer Wife went to sleep early on Sunday, I sat down to play some poker and to work on part II of my weekend goals -- getting my confidence back. I need to get back to how I was playing a month or two ago, I want to start building that roll once again, heck I even want to represent in the BBT3 for the existing active poker bloggers, who thus far are being outright outclassed and embarrassed by the field. And as I'm struggling to figure out what to play to get that confidence boost I really feel like I need, suddenly I see the perfect mark just sitting in a heads-up $110 turbo PLO sng, waiting to be preyed upon:



Yup. Scott Fischman. In the flesh (not really). In one fell swoop I can take down an FTP "pro" in a game I love to play for stakes that actually matter to me, and at the same time I can avenge all of my blogger brethren for the myriad sphincter rapings foisted upon us by Fisch a month ago in the first Big Game to kick off the BBT3. I had to go for it, and we sat down to play some pot-limit Omaha high, as I said one of my favorite games to play in a tournament format.

We traded small pots for the first few hands, but then early on I got myself into a real pickle by overplaying a hand I had no business pushing hard with at all after the flop. But giving Scott his credit, he played it in such a way to make me believe I was ahead every spot in which I bet in the hand. Scott has raised the 30-chip big blind to 90 preflop, which I called with a run of low cards, a possible flush and an Ace. It's obviously not a great hand but Fisch had been raising most hands before the flop so far and I know I can't just keep folding to his raises without seeing a heads-up flop all night. Anyways I flopped bottom two pair, I decided to bet out and he called. When the turn did not help me I checked and he checked behind, making me think my two pair was probably ahead. Then when the river came an Ace, now giving me top and 4th pair, I concluded from the previous action that I was likely ahead and that Fisch might call with a lower two pair, so I bet out the size of now sizable pot. He called with this:



and while you're at it, go look at what he called my flop potbet of 180 with. Wow, does he think this is the BBT3 or what? So just like that on that bad read by me I am down 2310 to 690. Blech.

I did manage to double from 480 chips to 960 a few hands later when Scott called my 2nd-nut straight at the end with 45 (the ass end of straight):



So now I remained down in chips, 2040 to 960. At this point in time I am still scrolling through the sng boards after having seen Fisch in there for PLO a few minutes earlier, and the next red pro I see seated is another $110 turbo -- my favorite stomping grounds these days for sngs -- and once again in Omaha, but this time the game was O8 and the pro was this guy's mortal enemy Lee Watkinson:



I figured, I'm already taking on one ftp pro here, why not make it two and try to really get some confidence back from these guys.

OK, so back to Fischman as I got off to a decent stack early in the O8 sng with Lee Watkinson. Within the next five minutes or so I had an almost exact repeat of the earlier hand where I once again made the second-nut straight on the river, I bet out the size of the pot for 240 chips and once again Fisch called, doubling me up again this time with top two pairs on the flop:



So now I was down only 1640 to 1360. Fighting back baybeee.

My first big hand occurred next, at the 30-60 level when I was dealt AAxx with one of the Aces sooted. I raised preflop, Fisch called and we saw a lovely lone Ace on the flop. I decided to mix things up a little bit against a known aggromonkey and checked behind on this non-scary flop -- not my usual move I know:



When the turn brought a non-threatening 4♥, Scott bet out the pot for 360 chips, likely taking the bait from my flop check, and I just smooth called after a short delay, figuring if I raise here he puts me on AA and folds on this not too scary board. On the river I just went for the allin and he folded, putting me up 1915 to 1085 chips for my first lead in the tournament.

A few hands later saw another very similar hand, as Fisch raised preflop and I called with TTxx double soooted, a fairly strong hand I would say in HU PLO. I mean, obviously you have to be careful with it because it's generally not making anywhere near the nuts, but it's a decent made hand for hu play and has some nice flush possibilities as well that are winners far more likely hu than they ever are in ring PLO play. So again I lucked out and flopped top set, and this time I again check-called the flop, hoping aggro Scott will commit on the turn here:



I checked again on the turn, which made a flush possible with the 9♥, and Scott checked behind, I think suspecting I had hit my flush after just calling his bet on the flop. So, I jumped out and put him allin on the river, playing upon the flush I figured he had me on, and he instafolded. In retrospect I'm not sure whether I should be happy about that outcome or not, but at the time I was very pleased with the play as it put me up 2425 to 575 and within striking distance of ending this thing.

After I doubled Scott up when he raised me preflop and I put him allin with my sooted Ace and middle pair but then lost to his higher Ace, I was up around 2100 to 900 chips once again when I once again flopped top set, and Fisch bet into me again on that flop:



Once again, I opted to pause briefly and then smooth call, hoping to take advantage of Scott's known aggro nature. The turn card brought an awesome Ace, and Scott bet out for 480 of his 670 remaining chips. He had 190 left, making both him and I obviously committed for his remaining chips if I call this bet, no questions asked and no thought needed. And yet, I decided to go for the smooth call just to be a dick, knowing he pushes blind and I call blind on any river:



Just to be a dick. Score one for the bloggers!!

I won the hand:



and then my favorite part of the story is this:



Which is Fischman insta-declining the rematch. I mean he didn't let that thing sit up there for 2 seconds before clicking on decline. It felt good, I have to say. I woulda taken him again too, and he knows it. Also, flopping top set three times in a 20-minute sng didn't hurt either.

OK so one ftp pro down, one more to go in the O8 sng with Omaha afficionado Lee Watkinson. As I mentioned I had gotten off to an early stack in this thing when I turned a boat and topped someone else's trips, and I was able to nurse that stack all the way down to the bubble fairly easily, until here is me eliminating 4th place on an obvious pot odds call for me out of the big blind vs. a shorty to get down to the top 3 cash spots in the sitngo, still alive along with Lee and some other guy.



I entered ITM leading the three of us in chips with around 5200 to 4500 (Lee Watkinson) to 3800 for the 3rd place guy. Shortly into 3-handed play, my computer crapped out and I had to restart, although I was able to quickly jump on to Hammer Wife's computer, where I had very thoughtfully loaded full tilt some time ago into a hidden folder that she does not even know exists. But, I do not like to use the screenshot facility on that pc, so no screenshots until picking up here shortly after I eliminated the 3rd place guy as well, leaving me heads-up against Lee Watkinson for the sng win, with me up in chips 8200 to 5300 or so:



Lee just kept raising before the flop every single time I limped from the big blind preflop, indiscriminately it seemed. It was quite obvious, and I was a bit surprised that he would play so predictably, but for the most part I folded to these raises. But his complete lack of discretion or thought about it made me chuckle inside. Just give me one hand lordy, just one hand! I kept thinking to myself. I countered by raising myself preflop with some far less than stellar hands, and then pot-betting allin on the flop to steal without regard to the cards in question, and I was able to hold my own and retain my decent chip lead for a good 5-7 minutes of heads-up play to end the sng.

Here I called Lees' allin on the flop with what I figured were 15 outs to the high half of the pot between my oesd and the flush draw. With the odds I was getting, this seemed to be a good call in this spot -- in PLO it would be easier but it complicates things in O8 a bit since I likely have to split half the pot if any low card falls on the turn or river. Any of you Omaha chuckleheads out there disagree with me calling here?



Anyways, I missed everything, and Lee won the high and the low with AA2x. I was now down to Lee 10,000 chips to 3500 chips. Great:



On the very next hand I got it allin preflop with A26x heads-up and still managed to only split the low end when I ran into another A2 and some better high cards. That sucked. I then went down 11,750 to 1750:



I pushed in on the very next hand for my last 1750 chips, and I managed to beat out a hand that had to be ahead of me here -- I had a pocket pair, but he held three overcards to my pair, a higher flush draw and a better low draw. Nonetheless, I was back to "only" being down 10k to 3500 in chips again:



At this point after sucking out a small loser to double back up to 3500 chips, I got real aggressive, and with the chip lead hu Lee got really passive, much moreso than I think he should have. He folded two hands to me preflop in the next several, and folded as well to my preflop raises two other times when I held KJTx with three spades, and 78TT with three suits. I gradually fought my way back to nearly even in this way, mostly due to Lee's pussyness in not playing hands and not calling preflop raises without premium-looking cards with the chip lead. Eventually, I guess this got to Lee in some way, as out of the blue he started making what I thought were some very questionable plays.

Here is Lee Watkinson calling an allin preflop reraise from me for half his chip-leading stack with what?



QJT7 rainbow? What did I miss here? Did we suddenly switch to playing PLO? No, that can't be it because this would be a drivel call in that game as well. But in O8 it is near disaster. I'm still trying to figure out what happened there, but in any event I was suddenly back up 9800 to 3700 chips.

Just three hands later, perhaps still thinking about that redonkulous allin call by Lee, here I reraised him allin preflop with a pretty shiatty hand. I figured Lee was raising with literal shit before the flop, that we had already ascertained, but obviously I was wrong as he called with a strong hand, and won:



Bad play by me. Dammit. And just like that I am down 9400 to 4100 in chips again. Dammit. Did I say that already?

Five hands later, I am still down 8400 to 5100 in chips, and then Lee gets caught again making a move that I just don't understand. He has a nice chip lead, and he raises preflop, which I reraise allin for just another 1500 more chips:



and pot odds I guess dictate that Lee "has" to call with?



K964 with three suits, the only sooted pair being the 6-4. Wow. My better hand ends up making a boat and I am now once again up 10,200 to 3300. Wheeeeeeeeee!

On the very next hand, Lee moves it allin preflop and I am faced with this decision, knowing that if I fold, I am still up 9000 to 4500, and if I call and lose, we will basically be right back to even:



What would you Omadorks do here? I can make a low, albeit not a strong one, and I also have some decent straight possibilities plus the heart flush draw. But to be honest, I basically put Lee on any four cards here, as he had been raising quite a bit whenever he was behind, and he had just lost that big pot to drop him down to a more than a 3-to-1 chip deficit, leaving him with less than three big blinds. So my hand was not particularly strong either way, but it was 2100 to me to call into a 4500-chip pot, and in the end I was getting more than 2 to 1 for a hand that I figured had to be much better than 33% to win, so I made the call.

I made a straight on the turn to beat his KKxx with no suits:



And I took down the sng, including the $497 first prize!

So, from a confidence perspective, this was good weekend and Sunday was a strong night for me, probably the best from this point of view in a few weeks for me. Now what can I do with this new-found confidence? Well, for starters like I said I will probably be arriving late, but you can look for me at the MATH tonight to see if I have bounced back at all as a result of beating down on the full tilt pros over the weekend. I have definitely been playing more 6-max these days as I mentioned last week in preparation for a possible 6-max run in the WSOP in June, and I am feeling quite comfortable with it, so you never know. Hopefully I can keep the ball rolling and continue to build on this confidence boost from here.

Another Fun Night, and the Bracelet Races are Back!

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

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

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

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



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

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



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



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



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

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

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



What do you do here?

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

Then the turn card came a harmless-looking 7:



Now how do you play it?

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



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

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

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

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

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

Reversal of Fortune

Brrrrrrrr. Nothing like a minus 3 degree wind chill to get your work week started off right here in New York City. As usual for a Monday morning, I've got a ton to get to as much poker was played this weekend, but first, this:



Don't forget. The game is 6-max no-limit holdem, the buyin is $26, the time is 10pm ET and the place as usual is full tilt. And the password as always is "hammer". I've been thinking about soliciting a new banner for the Hoy, one that includes all of the above information so I don't really have to list it all out like that every week, and in particular one that doesn't have the (albeit hot) girlfriend of a cheating asshole on it, so if anyone with any skillz out there is feeling like creating some gratuitous artwork, I won't object. But seriously, come on out tonight at 10pm ET for the latest MATH tournament and have some fun in starting off the week in blogger tournaments with a bang.

So, let's follow the story of my tilt throughout the weekend. If you recall, I ended last week on a pretty deep spike of tilt. I was running horribly, suffering an inordinate amount of really recockulous beats and losses, and nothing had been going right, comparatively speaking. This led greatly into Friday night's FTOPS #5 tournament in 6-max limit holdem, where those of you who railbirded will note that I put on a clinic in trash talking to a table full of incredible donkeys who would not fold even Ace-high to three bets from me after the flop was out. Thanks to a cold which developed into full bloom during the day on Friday, I was already megatilted before ever even sitting down to that tournament, and when I saw how god awful the players were playing, I was seriously unable to control myself. I got no cards of course, and having to watch a table full of complete donkeys receive AA and KK three times apiece in the under two hours I played was really hard to deal with in the state I was in. Still, I perservered and early in the second hour I had the second-largest stack at my table thanks to some well-timed bluffs and a top pair or two on the flop. Nonetheless, eventually the unmitigating calling stationness of the donkeys at my table wore me away, and I finally got called down through the river for a large pot by a guy holding the veritable monster of K7 on an AKxxx board. The guy just could not accept that I held an Ace (or a higher King) and was willing to put his entire stack on the line for it. This was how the entire table played, and eventually thanks to my usual card death I got caught by it and went home right around the middle of the pack just short of two hours in. It sucked and like I said I was megatilted all through the night, but at least I think my chat was entertaining for a bunch of you sitting on the rail, so all was not lost on the night.

On Saturday I ended up qualifying late in the morning while the kids were out at a ballet with Hammer Wife for the FTOPS #6 $535 shorthanded PLO event, which took me two satellites and just over $200 to play my way in to. Although I did finish just one place short of the money in the first sat and won outright the second, to be honest it did little to assuage my growing tilt. I did manage to play the PLO event well, however, with minimal trash talking in the chat despite the players at my table regularly calling preflop raises with gorgeous PLO hands like KQ72 3-suits, 9984 rainbow and A256 as if we were playing the high-low version of the game. I managed to chip up on a couple of nice hands, once on a rivered boat against a donkey who had trouble laying down top pair (yes I did say just one pair) and a couple of times on straights with non-flush boards, and by two hours in I was in the top third of the remaining players with just over half the field already gone. But there it all dissipated in a flash, when my flop push got called by a player with just top pair 8s (yes you read that right) plus the ass end of an open-ender. I guess he told himself he had 10 outs, either way not nearly enough to justify calling allin with a nice-sized stack if you know what you're doing in this game, but that is the key conditional clause that I was missing out on. After the turn I was ahead with just three outs to beat me, and booom the river brought one of those three delicious outs and IGH. It royally sucked, but I can't say I was surprised given the way I have been running of late. So I closed up and got ready to head out to Tao for my brother and his fiancee's birthday dinner -- yes the same Tao as the one in the Venetian in Las Vegas. The shit, as always at Tao, was incredible and a great time was had by all.

And this brings me to Sunday. For starters, I took a page out of my own notebook and made the big step of wearing a brand new shirt as I started my poker play early in the afternoon. I wish I could put a finger on exactly what it was, but for whatever reason, the fog just seemed lifted for me. I ran a $110 turbo sitngo along with a 6-max and a full ring $55 turbo, and I found myself winning a few races and even a 40-60 shot on my way to winning the $110 outright for a sweet $495. I also won the shorthanded $55 and cashed in 2nd place in the other. A nice beginning. Then my kids came back from their friend's, and I logged off for a bit before signing back in shortly before the start of FTOPS #9, the $322 buyin nlh tournament hosted by Erick Lindgren. At that point I ran three more $55 turbos, in addition to trying my hand at another $110 turbo given my luck earlier in the day. The result? Another outright win in the $110 for another $495, and three more cashes (a first, a second and a third) in the $55s, bringing my total results to 7 cashes out of 7 sngs on the day overall. Again I managed to avoid most of the bad luck that had been plaguing me of late in my poker play, and even two suckouts on 60-40 hands once ITM in two of the $55 sngs didn't do much to faze me. With the new shirt and some solid success on the day, it all just felt different, like I might be freeing up from the tilt and the running bad that I had been experiencing. I went into FTOPS #9 feeling truly optimistic and light-hearted for the first time in a couple of weeks.

And promptly it all fell apart. Amazingly I was dealt AK on my very first hand in FTOPS #9. I raised preflop, got reraised by the button which I called, and then saw a raggy flop hit the board. I checked, the button bet out for the size of the pot, and I laid it down, not wanting to lose any more against a preflop reraiser with just AK unimproved. And then incredibly, on hand #3 of the FTOPS, I look down to find AA. I haven't seen AA this early in a big tournament is as long as I can remember, perhaps my entire life, and my heart was racing at the thought of a nice chip-up early for a change. I raised preflop, got called by two players, and again saw a raggy flop hit the board. This time I bet out, and got flat called in just one spot. The turn brought a Ten, and I opted for the checkraise on the raggy board, this time raising about 2.5x my opponent's turn bet. He smooth called my checkraise -- not a good sign at all for me holding just one pair -- and when he led out for the rest of his chips on the river even after my preflop raise, my flop bet and my turn checkraise, I knew my Aces had been cracked. I laid them down (my opponent showed TT for the turned set btw, thank you full tilt), but after those two hands out of the first three dealt to me, I was down to a lovely 745 chips from the starting stacks of 3000. What a suckdickitty beginning, and yet for some reason I was not tilted. The fog had indeed been lifted. I took it in stride -- bitching to no end in the girly chat to the guys who still listen to me on a nightly basis even through all the shit I chat while running bad, thanks guys -- but I decided to keep trying to turn things around and at least to maintain my mindset as there was lots of other good poker to be played on the night, and especially given what a strongly positive day it had already been for me at the online tables.

I waited patiently for another 20 minutes or so, and then about 30 minutes in I pushed allin for my last 750 chips or so against a preflop early position limper with my QJs. I got two callers (yuck) but I managed to flush on the river to triple up, back to 2245 in chips and at least with some room to make some moves. Unfortunately, the first move I made near the end of Hour 1 was back down to 1500 chips on a flop bluff gone wrong. I had raised preflop in late position with KJs, and the flop came all raggy against my two opponents in the small and big blind who had called my preflop raise. I bet out the size of the pot, unfortunately more than a quarter of my still short stack, and when the big blind check-raised me allin, I had to lay it down. Dammit.

Early in Hour 2, I called an early position preflop raise with KQs, and saw a flop of KKQ. Yahtzee! The utg player bet out with a c-bet, which I smooth called, not wanting to chase away the guy given my huge flop, and hoping he was on exactly AK which woulda been so sweet. When he checked the turn, I checked behind him (because I'm a man). I figured if he was willing to bet the flop, he might be willing to bet the river. Instead he checked the river, so I pushed in my last 900 chips or so, and he quickly called, flipping up AQ. This got me up to over 3000 chips for the first time literally since the very first hand of the tournament, and I was feeling good just to be back to where I started, though I could not help but wonder about what could have been if I had only not had those Aces cracked on the third hand of the night.

The rest of Hour 2 was uneventful, but early in Hour 3 I was lucky enough to flop a set of 8s, and when I bet out around 2/3 of the pot (because I'm a man) on the flop, my heads-up opponent raised me essentially a pot-committing amount for us both. I moved in the rest of my chips and he quick-called with 99, an overpair to the raggy board, and my set of 8s held up to bring me up to just over 6600 chips and my high point of the tournament to that point in time. Unfortunately the rest of Hour 3 saw a recurring theme throughout this tournament, which was that most of the times I raised with a holding not strong enough to call a reraise with, I got reraised. That happened several times throughout the balance of the third hour, with the result being that I entered Hour 4 desperate, holding around 5000 chips with the tournament average to that point sitting just over 9000 chips. Knowing I would have to be highly aggressive in order to survive another 500 players even to make the money positions which started with 738 players remaining, I ended up getting very lucky in pushing allin preflop and not getting called one time when I had 33, another time with A4o, another with A9o, and two more times still with KQo. Each one of those pushes during Hour 4 got through the entire table uncontested somehow, even when I did them from utg which I didn't want to do but was not willing to let any playable, pushable hand go to waste when I needed to be aggressive to avoid blinding out. I got very lucky not to run into any callers there. I also recorded my second big suckout of the tournament near the end of the fourth hour, when I pushed allin from late position against an early position limper with my KTo. It was a questionable move, but I read weakness from the ep limper who had not shown himself to be the type to limp strong there, and I was right as he ended up folding preflop. But where I fucked up was the big blind, who insta-pushed himself with pocket Aces, and it looked like my night would be ending early. But then the flop came down with a King and a Ten, and I avoided the board pair to jump up to over 15k in chips, then my highest point in the tournament, which I was thrilled about. Yes I had had pocket Aces cracked for 80% of my stack just three hands into this thing, so cracking someone's else Aces was in a way par for the course in this thing, but I still consider myself very lucky to have been able to chip up a bit during Hour 4 and to survive to the fourth break, just 8 players away from ITM, with me sitting in 375th place out of 746 players remaining (a whopping 5,637 players had started this event at 6pm ET). And I also made my biggest laydown of the entire tournament nearing the end of this hour, when I laid down pocket Queens to not one but two allins from larger stacks ahead of me. It turned out to be KK and AA pushing and I would have been eliminated, so good laydown by me in a key spot of the single best starting hand I saw in my last four hours of play on the night.

The money bubble broke just 8 minutes into Hour 5, with me sitting in 376th place out of 730 remaining. Just cashing one of these tournaments is not something I am proud about in itself, but recording my first FTOPS cash of any time in the last three of these tournament series, and in particular navigating through 5000 donkeys on my way to my largest cash tournament payout in a couple of months after running so poorly for the past two weeks felt big, bigger than it might otherwise have. I didn't get any more good cards in Hour 5, and when I found myself about 35 minutes later with a short stack and sitting on 97o in the big blind, but against a guy I had observed stealing from the button with the exact same 2.5x steal-raise about ten times in the past 90 minutes or so, I decided I knew he was stealing and I would just go for the allin resteal, raising his 2500-chip bet to my full 13,500-chip stack, representing just more than half of his tournament-average stack of around 27,000. But rather than admitting he had been caught stealing, instead he literally called off half his stack with QJo. While I puzzled over this inexplicably bad play, I hit a 7 on flop to give me the lead on the flop, but before I could celebrate he made a Queen on the turn and IGH in 496th place overall out of 5637 runners. What can I say. I got fucked by a guy making a horrible play in the end, I got unlucky, I got lucky, and I came out five hundy+ richer. And I outlasted over 5100 donkeys doing it too, and most of all, I had a blast playing again for the first time in a while. So I can't complain too much I guess. But what an awful dumbo play to go out on. People, if you take nothing else from this entire post, just admit you got caught stealing when you obviously get caught and are holding a hand that is quite likely dominated and almost surely behind. The dumbest thing you can ever do late in a huge tournament like this is just make an awfukkit call in that spot. Please, this is *real* money we're playing for here -- the winner of FTOPS #9 was slated to get over $291,000, so how do you just throw away half of your nice-sized stack by calling the allin push with Queen-Jack? Just terrible.

In the end, for the first time in the history of the FTOPS, the ftp pro hosting the event -- in this case, Erick Lindgren -- actually took down the entire tournament, winning the 291k and change and making a nice story to boot. How do you not love that shit? And meanwhile, our own Chad ended up busting out in 35th place at around 1:45am ET out of those same 5637 donkeys in FTOPS #9 for a some nice little pocket cash in the amount of $4904 and change. Wow way to go Chad!! Chad made some amazing plays in that tournament, got a little lucky, but made a lot of great luck for himself with lots of steals, resteals, and a couple of huge calls including one with J9s against two allins ahead of him with a short stack. I am still trying to figure that one out, but he ended up hitting a Jack against TT and 88 to help power him to another extra few hours of play and an extra few grand as well in the process. Again congratulations to Chad who played an amazingly patient and skilled game and made his own luck wherever he could along the way. It's always an eye-opener to rail players who are better than I at poker tournaments and see what they do differently than what I do, and last night saw a few key such spots where I hopefully learned something to incorporate into my own game going forward.

One last thing -- while all this was going on, I noticed earlier in the evening that full tilt seems to have finally gotten off its collective ass about running satellites to the FTOPS Main Event coming up next Sunday afternoon. I had been bitching about the site's unwillingness to run very many of these sats at all, and finally yesterday I noticed an 8:45pm ET $109 sat into the FTOPS ME, as well as a 10:45pm ET sat of the same buyin. What's more, full tilt is very smartly running a few supersats to play into those $109 satellites every night a couple of hours before the actual satellites go off, making a real opportunity for most of us out there to make a run in one night at the Main Event. So I sat down to the 8:30pm ET $26 super sat with some other bloggers in a race to finish in the top 18 or so out of 78 runners to win a seat into the $109 sat at 10:45pm ET on Sunday night while FTOPS #9 was still running, and I managed to win that seat fairly easily, nabbing the outright chip lead just before the bubble broke and basically coasting from there on a few nice hands and nice plays along the way.

Only Chad and I played in the actual FTOPS ME satellite on the night, which paid Main Event seats to the top 10 finishers plus $150 cash to 11th place with 55 total runners. My first big news from this tournament was when I found KK utg and accidentally minraised instead of my usual 3x raise in this spot, about halfway through the field and with me sitting on a nice stack near the top of the leaderboard already. Full tilt "pro" JJ Liu pushed allin on the button for the massive overraise, and although I pondered AA for about 1.5 seconds I knew I was going to call regardless. She flipped up pocket Queens, and my Kings held up to shoot me up to the top few spots on the leaderboard, and more than that, to award me a $100 bounty in the process for busting a pro. Now of course I will have another of those fatty "I busted a donkey!" t-shirts to go along with the other four I already own but never wear, but better than that was the $100 pad to my bankroll after what had already been a very profitable day for me at the tables.

Then, to top it all off, after survivng donking off half my big stack to Chad with around 20 players remaining, there was this:



So I am now officially in to the FTOPS Main Event next Sunday afternoon, which is all good, and I won my way in in only my third satellite attempt, with me having spent a grand total of $29 the first time in a $20 rebuy satellite that I bubbled in 2nd place in (winning back $13 cash for my efforts), plus one $26 satellite for a total expenditure prior to Sunday night of $54. Then on Sunday I did the dream of running $26 into $109 and then $109 into a $535 seat, all within the span of maybe four hours of play. And I had fun doing it, which again is far and away the most important thing given the way I had been running previously.

Overall Sunday was one of my best, most profitable, and most importantly, most fun nights of poker in a long, long time. Hopefully this can help turn things around for me heading into Monday night's MATH tournament as well as FTOPS #10 $1060 buyin nlh 6max tournament, the closest thing I will have played to my cash in last year's WSOP since that tournament at the WSOP. I don't know offhand of any other bloggers in this thing, but I'm hoping someone gets off their ass and joins me tonight, maybe through the turbo satellite tonight at 6:30pm ET that they run the night of all of the FTOPS events. And I definitely plan to keep my eyes on those FTOPS ME satellites running it looks like at least twice nightly (8:45 and 10:45pm ET), as I think those things are a great opportunity for someone like me to pad my roll with $535 a pop if played well and with a little luck along the way.

Turning things around when on a bad streak as a regular poker player is a feeling that cannot really be put into words. This weekend I got to experience it and it's like a big, dark cloud has been removed, like a huge weight has been lifted from off my back. And as far as I'm concerned, it couldn't have come at a better time.

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

Sunday Bloody Sunday, But Another FTOPS Sat Win

Ahhhhhh. Is there anything better than heading on to public transportation on a Monday morning? In glorious New York, the subway riders are even more polite and cheery than usual on Mondays, and I have to tell you, what a pleasure to be around, all of them. Today's special was the clown who would not get out of the way to let some other people off the subway at the business stop in midtown, I guess just because he thought he should be allowed to block the entire doorway since he didn't feel like going to work. Or something. It's always something new with these guys. But don't worry, I elbowed him good in the ribs as I went by. Asshole.

Anyways, that last paragraph pretty much sums up how I feel after a long night of poker on Sunday night on both full tilt and pokerstars. Actually I only played one sitngo on stars, but on full tilt I ran of bunch of 6-max and full ring $55 turbo sngs, plus an mtt or two and a few satellites as well. And unsurprisingly, it was a little bit of good, a larger amount of bad, and a whole lotta ugly. Let me show you what I mean.

But first...



Don't forget, tonight is 6-max nlh blonkament time again at Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt. The time is 10pm ET, the password as always is "hammer", and we are located under the "Private" tab under "Tournaments" on the full tilt lobby interface. Come on by, and as a reminder, anyone is allowed and in fact encouraged to play the MATH every week, so don't be shy! Even if you've never played with the bloggers before but have always wanted to try, let tonight be your time to shine. We often have first-timers at the Hoy, and I have to tell you, they have had an ordinately good performance as a rule when losing their MATH virginity, so let that be you tonight and come out with your $26 in tow. Just don't expect solid play, that's really the only requirement. We are all blonkeys after all. But you can expect to have a good time, play some aggressive poker, and have a chance to get yourself known or at least recognized by a group of guys who all love to play and write about poker in their various blogs. And of course I will list n link you here tomorrow if you cash in the tournament tonight. So come out tonight at 10pm ET and join the fun at Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt! Winner gets to take home Giselle up there for one night as well, although only if Tom Brady is too hobbled to catch you. Best of luck with that.

OK so back to this weekend. I played the donkament on Friday, ran my KQ into eventual winner SoxLover's QJ on a two-Jack board and IGH somewhere short of the final table as a result. Ran a few other sngs, did reasonably well, and called it a night somewhat early as I recall. On Saturday I managed to squeeze in a couple of 4-tabling sng sessions in the afternoon, but then slept right through the evening without logging back in, having already secured my 200 FPP points and thus Gold Iron Man status for the month of January, while also working tantalizingly close to earning out my entire end-of-year Iron Man bonus of $750 or so. And then came Sunday.

Sunday saw me run a bunch more of these $55 turbo sngs, something which I am having a lot of success at and which I am very pleased to say I seem to have discovered a winning formula to. I could probably 10-table these things if my laptop monitor was big enough to fit more than 4 at a time at the smallest size I prefer to play at, without suffering hardly any degradation in my quality of play, because it really is pretty close to formulaic at this point until you get down to the bubble times when the shizz gets really interesting and I really find myself playing as much by "feel" as anything else. I will definitely be running my series of turbo sng strategy posts one day soon, but as is often the case with me I find myself having too much pokery stuff to say every day and just don't end up getting to them. But they're all about 75% written and they will definitely be going up one day soon, I promise.

Anyways, as is typical for a Sunday, I took an inordinately large (even for me) number of recockulous suckout-eliminations from tournaments on the day, as well as some truly primo setup hands. I will show you without a doubt my favorite of the many of these hands I saw on Sunday, and in keeping with my stated attempts to "get it right" I'm just going to post the actual hand history here:

Full Tilt Poker Game #5022098357: $55 + $5 Sit & Go (Turbo) (38130698), Table 1 - 25/50 - No Limit Hold'em - 20:46:01 ET - 2008/01/27
Seat 1: toribum (1,345)
Seat 3: hoyazo (2,450) So notice, I'm already in great chip position early in this thing, just trying to play tight and not make any big mistakes or lose any big pots.
Seat 4: zoey11 (2,845)
Seat 5: edmiami (420)
Seat 6: NVN76 (1,940)
hoyazo posts the small blind of 25
zoey11 posts the big blind of 50
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to hoyazo [8d 8h]
edmiami folds
NVN76 folds
toribum calls 50
hoyazo calls 25 Again, playing it conservatively, much more so than usual for me in fact, which is fairly typical for me with a nice stack early on in a turbo sng.
zoey11 checks
*** FLOP *** [4s 8c 4d] Ding ding ding!
hoyazo checks This is how much of a man I am. Even I am not going to bet out with the flopped overboat on a checked flop. Why bother?
zoey11 checks
toribum checks
*** TURN *** [4s 8c 4d] [Qh]
hoyazo checks Did I mention I am a mega man?
zoey11 checks
toribum bets 150
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo calls 150 Serious manliness once again.
zoey11 folds
*** RIVER *** [4s 8c 4d Qh] [6s]
hoyazo bets 250 That's right biatch. Now you're gonna have to call it too!
toribum has 15 seconds left to act
msandler1403 (12:15:13 AM): toribum has 15 seconds left to act
toribum raises to 600 Hahahahahah I love being the dominant male.
hoyazo has 15 seconds left to act
hoyazo raises to 1,144 Reverse hoy, special just for this guy.
toribum raises to 1,145, and is all in
hoyazo calls 1
*** SHOW DOWN ***
toribum shows [4h 4c] four of a kind, Fours Total, complete stunned silence.
hoyazo mucks
toribum wins the pot (2,740) with four of a kind, Fours
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2,740 | Rake 0
Board: [4s 8c 4d Qh 6s]
Seat 1: toribum (button) showed [4h 4c] and won (2,740) with four of a kind, Fours
Seat 3: hoyazo (small blind) mucked [8d 8h] - a full house, Eights full of Fours Crickets chirping.
Seat 4: zoey11 (big blind) folded on the Turn
Seat 5: edmiami didn't bet (folded)
Seat 6: NVN76 didn't bet (folded)

Now, I am happy to say that in the end I won that particular sng outright anyways, so no hard feelings. But for a minute there it was like I was playing back on pokerstars all over again. Nothing quite like slow-playing the flopped overboat right into flopped quads, is there? Unbelievable. And that was pretty much par for the course on the night. That fit in quite nicely with the couple of dominated-hand suckouts I suffered at the final tables of events I really wanted to win on Sunday, including my $75 token attempt to satellite in to last night's NL Avatar Race where I ran AQ into the mighty Q4 on the bubble and lost to a 4 on the flop. Q4o, that is a hard hand to beat right there.

On the good side, I did somehow manage to outlast the Sunday donkery for this:



So I am in to FTOPS #1, which is coming up a week from this Wednesday, on February 6, at 9pm ET. This is a straight-up $216 buyin nlh tournament, the same tournament that full tilt has started the FTOPS with for at least four or five series in a row now, and I again managed to satellite in for around my usual 30% or so of the true buyin price. This $10 rebuy satellite has proven to be a gold mine for me as far as the FTOPS is concerned, as this time around I won my way in on just my second attempt at this rebuy sat. The first time was $11 down the drain on a final table suckout, and this time was $31 thanks to an early double-rebuy from me, for a total of $42 spent to win the $216 buyin. I'll take it.

Other good news from Sunday night is that in the middle of one of my turbo sngs, I got the window popping up informing me that I had cleared my entire end-of-year Iron Man bonus of $750. In the end, it wasn't even that hard. And I did it almost exclusively by playing tournaments -- sngs, mostly, with some mtt's and a little omaha cash thrown in, but not much of either of those. Basically the $55 and $110 turbo sngs rode me to the bonus, with 4 days to spare. Thank you full tilt, and thank you for the sucking fuckouts all night on Sunday night, easily costing me the entire value of the $750 bonus and then some. You are so fucking clever you guys. So clever.

Before I go, here is another example of a point I have made here several times on the blog about not calling allins in key spots with little pocket pairs, most recently just a couple of weeks ago when 22 called my allin in the Mookie and busted me in the first half hour or so. So I am in a $20 rebuy satellite to the FTOPS ME last night -- the first time I have attempted to satellite in to the ME this time around -- and I have amassed a nice chip lead with 4 players remaining, with me at around 12k to 8k to 6k to 5k for the 4 players left. Then, the guy with 6k sucks out on the guy in 2nd place, eventually taking the rest of his miniscule stack on the very next hand on a tilt-push. Now that guy has more than my stack, and of course not 3 hands later, he sucks out again on the remaining player, leaving me and my beautiful prior chip lead now at a 20k to 10k chip deficit heading into heads-up play, against a monkey who didn't have a clue how to get himself into good situations late in the game in mtt satellites. I hate when that happens, and it underscores the importance of being the guy to eliminate the final player or two before heads-up play, or else you often find yourself at a chip deficit even if you had been leading with just a few players remaining.

Anyways, so it's just me and this other guy, in essentially a winner-take-all heads-up battle for one FTOPS ME seat, and I look down to find 55 in the small blind against his button. Although I have closed the gap some from the starting 2-to-1 chip deficit in hu play, I am still down in chips and I am looking to win the blinds and antes so that I can get into the chip lead, always crucial in heads-up play so that I can win the entire tournament with one big hand. So I push allin as I had been with most pocket pairs during the hu session:



The guy pauses for less than 2 seconds, and types in the chat, "I have to call."

Another 2 seconds and he also types in "gg and good luck in the tourney."

Then he calls with? Check it out:



Yep. Pocket 6s. Now of course I turned out to have pocket 5s and of course he won the hand and the satellite and the ME seat, while I had to settle for a sweetass $5 cash prize for second place. Gross. But here's the thing: Why would he call this bet here? Why on earth? He has the chip lead in heads-up play for crying out loud. If he folds, we are still even in chips with both over 14,500, and he lives to fight another day with 100% certainty. But instead, he says he "has to call". Has to call? Allin with the chip lead heads-up with pocket 6s and you have to call? Come on donkey. Unless there was a man in a ski mask with a gun to your head at your pc, then you most assuredly did not "have" to call, and in fact, calling there is a putrid poker play. I just raised you allin before the flop, so the odds of me having two cards higher than 6s are probably what, 90%? And the chance of me having a pocket pair higher than 6s are what, maybe 15-20%? Pick your numbers, but the point I am making here again today just as I have said it before is, you should not call allins preflop with low pocket pairs for significant chips in key situations. It makes no sense. When you have the chip lead and are down to heads-up, such a move becomes even more laughable than usual. You are either taking a chance to race for all your chips in a spot where you already have the lead in chips, or you are going to be dominated a significant percentage of the time since the other guy already raised allin before the flop. Why do it? Don't do it. It works against me like an absolute charm of course, but against your average player, calling allins for significant chips when the chip leader in heads-up play is moronic. Learn this, and you will be ahead of the game in late-stage tournament play already right off the bat, and this applies very well to both mtts and sngs.

OK that's all for today. I'll see you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt! And don't forget, Lost is back for the first of eight powerful episodes this season, coming this Thursday night at 9pm ET on ABC. Can't wait!

Final BBTwo MATH, and Back On My Game

This weekend, it would seem that I finally came out of the semi-slump I had been experiencing for the past little while. Couple of months even I guess. I mean, I've had some nice wins smattered throughout that time, but in my personal opinion I have not been playing my best game for some time, and I think I've seen that in my results. But I digress....



That's right boys and girls. Tonight is the last night of the BBTwo-enabled MATH. Oh don't worry -- the weekly Monday night MATH tournament as we know it will continue on into perpetuity, or until I die an untimely death or when they finally outlaw and prevent anyone in the U.S. from playing poker online. But this is the last week of the BBTwo, with four juicy tournaments for each and every one of you to pick up one of the last four BBTwo Aussie Millions Tournament of Champions freeroll seats. We've got the MATH on Monday night, the Mookie on Wednesday, Riverchasers on Thursday, and then we will end the BBTwo just the way it started, with the Big Game on this coming Sunday night for your TOC-qualifying pleasure, and it all begins with tonight's MATH tournament at 10pm ET on full tilt. The password as always for the MATH is "hammer", and tonight the game is once again 6-max no-limit holdem. No turbo, nothing fancy, just plain old 6-max nlh. I think I alluded to this in an earlier post, but my plan for the time being is to make the MATH a 6-max nlh event for the foreseeable future starting in 2008. I mean, it will be 6-max tonight and again I believe next Monday, but I have something fun planned for the last two Mondays of the year, as they happen to occur on Christmas Eve and then New Years Eve, so only the abject junkies(including myself) will be playing in those two events. Otherwise though, for the time being I think we're looking at 6max nlh, starting with tonight for the MATH at 10pm ET on full tilt. Same $26 buyin, same "hammer" password, but come out tonight for your last chance to qualify for the BBTwo ToC for the Aussie Millions in the Hoy.

OK so back to the weekend. As I mentioned earlier, while you guys were all out living it up in Las Vegas over the weekend, I went and turned my game around in a hurry from right here in my bedroom.

The fun started when jeciimd, your current 2nd place on the BBTwo leaderboard btw after a 3rd-place finish in the first BBT, hit me up on the girly and talked me into starting up one of these 90-person $24 knockout sngs on full tilt. I think I've never played a 90-person sng in my life on full tilt, though I used to enjoy those 180-person tournaments on assholestars so I figured why not, I would give it a shot. Fast forward about 2 1/2 or 3 hours, and 7 $4 bounties later to mean I was already freerolling the thing, and I had ended up in 2nd place overall out of 90 runners. Total profit of over $350 net, I will definitely take me some of that. That will buy me into my next 35 Mookie's right there without ever winning one, you can't beat that, right? I was disappointed not to win it, but I entered heads-up play as about a 3 to 1 chip underdog, and as it is I got allin on the flop with a pair and an OESD. Unfortunately my opponent held a higher pair, and the OESD did not fill, and I just didn't have the chips to withstand that kind of a beat. I would push again at a 3-to-1 chip deficit with pair + OESD, so I'm happy about how that whole thing turned out overall. My final table play was impeccable to get to that point, and for that I have got to credit playing a lot of one-table sngs recently. More on that in a minute.

Anyways, the real reason I was on on Friday night and willing to start that 90-person sng is that I knew the Kat-less donkament was going on and I figured I would jump in there as well. I was laughing about it with some friends on the girly chat this weekend, but I basically get my ass mauled in that thing every single week during Monkey Hour. I mean, one time I got lucky a few times and I went on to win the donkament that week after I ended the first hour with the chip lead and just never relinquished it, but the way I see it, everyone takes out their anger and aggression on me for playing so aggressively in all the other blonkaments every week and for ranting and raving like a lunatic here on the blog about the play of others, and as a result I end up having to buy in at least 10 or 12 times without exception, sometimes as many as 20 times or more, and in the end I basically always end the first hour right around the minimum possible stack. I do enjoy playing the donkament, but even though I joke that it is my poker therapy for the week, in reality I see it more as poker therapy for my opponents against me rather than actually for me. In any event, the story was the same this week, as I ended Monkey Hour at just under 4000 chips and about 2/3 of the way down the leaderboard. Nonetheless, after three hours of grueling play, here was the end result:



Booooooooom! My second donkament win of the year, and a huge $30 profit for exactly three hours of play and hard work. Wow.

But the real story of my big run this weekend was at the sng tables. Although a lot of people have noticed or even participated in the recent string of sng challenges and similar assaults on the sng tables among the poker bloggers, few people know that I actually started this assault a few weeks back. I began hitting up the $55 and $110 turbo sng's about a month ago, something which a number of other bloggers quickly started doing as well, although I'm happy to say I don't run into many other bloggers at the 55s and 110s where I focus most of my play. Really I'm more often in the $55 turbos than anything else, and I have to say that overall the results have been really great in a few key ways. First and foremost, the bottom line. I don't keep detailed stats and I don't have any foncay graphs to show of my performance, but I would estimate that I am up around 2k on the $55 and $110 turbos in the past month. Just this weekend alone, I cashed in 12 out of 17 $55 turbo sngs, including 7 outright wins for $247 and change apiece, or a net profit of over $180 in each. And that doesn't even count the two $110 turbo sngs I also won outright for each a $495 payout. It was a very profitable weekend for me overall at the tables for a number of reasons, the sngs being a big part of it. That 90-person sng from Friday and the donkament helped too, as did three other large mtt cashes on the weekend including in the 50-50 on Sunday night which I qualified for for $28 earlier in the night, but overall my results really shot up this weekend so at least I had that to hang my hat on while knowing all the fun that was going on in my absence in a certain place in the desert.

But more than the profits, these sng's have really been helping with my confidence in my game in general, my end game in particular, and have also helped me to focus on some realities of tournament play that I haven't spent a lot of time focusing on of late. There is nothing -- no way whatsoever -- that is going to help your shorthanded or late-game tournament play more than sitting in a bunch of 1-table sngs. I mean, where else can you get the hands-on practice at shorthanded, low-M nlh tournaments that you can get every time you sit down to a sitngo tournament? You just can't. At the $55 level, the money means enough -- at least to me -- to take the play very seriously, and as a result I find that if I make marginal calls of preflop raises with hands like the jackace and pocket 6s, I'm going to run into trouble. Playing as many sngs as I have in the past month -- I would estimate it is something around a hundy of them at this point -- I have gotten to relearn what kinds of hands to push with early and what kinds of hands are worth passing on before the pots get big to begin with.

Another thing that these 1-table turbo sngs are great for is reading players, and in particular reading players for steals and resteals. I cannot tell you how many times over the past month I have reraised a button open-raiser with air and won (and a few times I've lost btw) just based on watching their play, the pace with which they put in their bets and just their betting amounts and patterns generally, and this is all good for my game. As I've written about here many times, I tend to play my game based more on my instincts and my reads than anything else, and I purposefully go out of my way to encourage stealing and restealing, because I invite this sort of approach from my opponents because, frankly, I believe I am better at it on balance than they are. So these sng's have really helped me to hone my reading abilities and my penchant for sniffing out blind stealers, which is all good for me and my game, at all parts of a tournament.

One other aspect of poker math that I am constantly faced and re-faced with as a result of all of these turbo 1-table sngs is heads-up allin preflop odds. Especially with the turbo structure, give it 20-25 minutes or so and it becomes pretty much automatic for a short stack, for example, to open-push allin from the button with almost ATC, and certainly with any Ace. So, for example, I am re-learning just how likely one is to win with a hand like QJo when up against Ace-rag. After all these sng's, I have re-learned all over again about figuring pot odds given the large blinds in the late stages of these short tournament to know whether it makes sense to call with that QTs against a guy I know is pushing any Ace. As anyone who's played a lot of these sngs recently can attest, these two-middle-cards against a top-and-bottom hand showdowns really end up deciding the final finishing order and payouts of the turbo sitngos a whole lot more than most people may think, so making keen decisions based on pot odds -- even when you think you are likely "behind" but not that much -- is a crucial skill and one that I think most people have not developed nearly as much as it can be developed.

All this is to say that this weekend really got me thinking back in the right frame of mind after several weeks of tilty attitude that definitely had me playing less than my best poker game. So while I look forward like I always do at this time of year to reading all about the great times that were had by all out in Vegas for the WPBT this time around, be forewarned that I've gotten my game back on and I'm coming looking for you tonight in the Hoy and through the rest of this week as well. Monday night's field may still be a bit small due to the return from Vegas of 120-something of our closest fake internet friends, but then with this being the last week to qualify for the freeroll I guess I could see the crowds going either way for the MATH tonight as well for the other blogger tournaments to round out the BBTwo this week. And don't forget to get into that 9:45pm ET nightly token frenzy on full tilt to get your $75 token for this Sunday night's Big Game on full tilt. Even though I already won my token last week and registered for the Big Game, I will probably try to play the frenzy every night this week if I'm around as a showing of solidarity with you all. And although I will write some more about this later in the week, don't forget that KOD is hosting a new Sunday night HORSE knockout tournament as well, starting this Sunday night, also on full tilt. You can look me up to find the tournament, which I believe has the password right on the tournament lobby. Get in there as well for what I am really looking forward to as far as you non-holdem-all-the-time donks out there. More on that later.

See you tonight for Mondays at the Hoy!!