Donking in the Wheaties, and a Bunch of Hands to Review

First off, if you happened to enjoy my post yesterday on taking notes on different players, then you should really like Lucko's note-taking post yesterday, which takes things maybe even a bit further than mine into some specifics of his strategies around what he makes sure to note of his competitors' actions. It's great to hear from a cash and tournament game specialist like him on the same topic at the same time that I'm posting about it (thanks again to windbreak247 for the idea), and most of the commenters seem to have gotten a lot out of reading both posts in conjunction with one another. As you hopefully can understand, neither Lucko nor I feel that we're in a position to give away too many details of exactly how and what we take note of among our opposition at the virtual poker tables, but I think between the two of us we have provided a pretty solid and hopefully helpful look into why we focus on the things we focus on, and somewhat of a snapshot into the specific types of notes we take. Go check both posts out if you haven't already, and just remember all I ask that is that you don't use any of these strategies to take notes on either Lucko ("donks out of blonkaments even faster than hoy") or myself ("loses to any two overcards and then goes on massive donkey tilt") since that just wouldn't be right to use our own stuff against us.

So very briefly, and this isn't something I'm necessarily proud of given my recent comments on the level of skill involved in these tournaments, but I did final table and cash in both the WWdN and the WWdN2 last night. I was asked in the chat after I made the cash in Wil's second chance tournament (limit O8 btw, who woulda thunk it) if this means that my streak of blonkament frustration has finally come to an end. In a word? No. There is one simple reason why I did so well in the Wheatie after weeks of futility across all the major blogger tournaments:

I got great fucking cards. All night long.

I'm serious. No doubt I played them well and got the most out of my hands. But nonetheless, I was dealt quality starting hands on several occasions, and more than that, I was hitting flops. I mean, smacking 'em up good. I'd see a free flop out of the big blind with Q6o? Q86 on the flop. Call a raise and three raise-callers from the small blind with 8s? A85 rainbow. I think I flopped a set at least twice if not three times during the WWdN, which is about 2 or 3 times more than that's happened all year so far in all the other blonkaments put together. I made some dqb on the river once. And I consistently got it in before the flop against shorter stacks with pocket pairs when I happened to be holding higher pocket pairs. I know I've said this several times before, but it's amazing how easy this game can seem when you're getting cards. And I'm not above admitting it, last night in the Wheatie I hit a ton of flops, and I believe I busted 9 of the 47 players in the event on my way to the final table. Now granted, I busted in 7th or 8th place at the final table when I raised with a medium Ace (sooooted of course) from middle position, got reraised allin, and when I realized that a fold -- clearly the correct move in this spot -- would leave me with just 3000 chips and well in last place, it took me...oh...about 1.2 seconds to determine that I just didn't feel like playing from that position. So I called, took my loss to AK like a man, and got outta there a happy donkey.

As I mentioned, the WWdN2 last night was limit O8, and this one had 17 runners gunning for the top 3 cash spots. Once again, I was dealt a fair amount of good starting hands, and I hit a lot of flops and a lot of boards with just what I needed to get it done. I played very well, and I even have a little admission for all you donkeys who could not stop cutting on my O8 play in last February's FTOPS when I posted after bubbling in the 580-some person event after missing 8 consecutive low hands with A2xx in my starting hand. This time around, I barely ever raised preflop, with A2 or otherwise. And it worked very well. I've just been reading another of the Cloutier-McEvoy books, the one just on Omaha, and they make the point again and again that in Omaha tournaments, almost no hand is worth open-raising with before the flop. There are several arguments for this, but the general thinking is that it's one thing to reraise from late position with a very strong hand in O8, which is often a perfectly wise and profitable move, but to open-raise even with AA23 double suited, or any AAxx or A2xx hand for that matter, just doesn't make a whole lot of sense because you're giving away more information about your hand than whatever gain you're getting from putting in this extra bet so early in the hand in a game like Omaha where basically everything ends up riding on which cards come out on the flop and beyond. So, I barely raised preflop at all in the WWdN2 last night, and the end result was people never really seemed to put me on the nuts when I had them, and I was able to get paid off consistently on what again were very good cards overall on the night. It didn't hurt to nail some big river draws as well, including this one, my personal favorite on the night:





Blammo! DQB baybeeee! This was originally referred to as a one-outer by the victim at the table, but note that in reality I had 10 outs, not one, to make a winning boat (or better) in this hand. Nonetheless, I'll take it, and the DQB makes it look a whole lot better than the 20% shot that it was heading into the river.

Of course I hit my river suckout King in a phucking $5 donkfest and not a 400k guaranteed tournament. My suckout King comes of course in more like a $100 guaranteed than a $400,000 guaranteed. Not even, actually. An $85 guaranteed tournament. Phuckers.

Anyways, much as in the original WWdN, my great cards and consistent pounding the board kinda left me shortly after making the cash positions, in the top 3 in the O8 event, as I busted out on this gem of a hand:



As you can see, I flopped not only the nut low draw but also a made nut flush. Then it was just a question of getting my opponent to give me as much of his chips as possible. That involved me checking the flop, betting the turn and then getting it allin on the river, only to see this gorgeous runner-runner bullshiat:



Lovely, huh? Runner-runner 4-A to make a boat for my opponent, and at the same time counterfeit my low draw on those same two runner-runner cards. You have got to love the way O8 goes sometimes. Especially on pokerstars, still the suckoutiest riverbullshitiest site I've ever played at. Ever. Anyways that hand staked o-hole-ne to about a 13-10 chip lead heading into heads-up play, but I was outta there at that point and didn't even stick around to see who won. But it was fun not embarrasing myself in front of the bloggers, for literally the first time in as long as I can remember. I mean, I ended 11th in last week's Riverchasers tournament, but to me that was highly embarrassing as I truly folded and limped my way into the BBT points, literally blushing from shame in front of my computer screen as I open-folded on the button repeatedly, I declined to open-raise with A9 in the cutoff+1, etc. Weak weak weak play is not something I'm proud of anyone else to see coming from me. But last night in both WWdN tournaments I played strong and the cards cooperated in a big way. Don't expect that to repeat anytime soon, I almost never get cards like that, and even in my big tournament wins I am usually seeing less than 10% of flops and winning far more based on bully tactics and bluffs than on the strength of my actual cards.

The even better news from last night as far as I'm concerned was in my cash game play. I have been winning with much consistency at the 1-2 6-max nlh tables, so much so that I'm even considering moving up levels and seeing what 2-4 is all about. I haven't moved up yet because what I'm not doing at 1-2 is winning 2 buyins a night or anything. What I am doing, though, is winning consistently in the vast majority of my sessions. Probably an average of around half a buyin over a 90-minute session. I don't know what that equates to in big bets per hour, but let's just say that all of my 6-max play in the 30k and the related satellites has left me feeling very comfortable with 6-max nlh generally, and I typically have a very good feel for when my starting cards are likely to be best. And combine that with good hand-reading and player-reading ability at the tables, and I am basically almost always coming out ahead in these sessions. It's been great, and there was no doubt whatsoever that even just a month or maybe two ago, I was a cash game donkey. I'm definitely not anymore. My strength is definitely in 6-max cash as opposed to ring games, and I seem to really excel in situations where everyone tries to steal the blinds every opportunity they get with a pot-sized raise like occurs at every table I sit at in 6-max $200 nl. That kind of thing isn't happening nearly so much at a full ring, and I have to say a good portion of my winnings are occuring in those situations where I call someone's steal-raise with a fairly good hand from my big blind, flop something good, and then let them make one or even two big bets at me before I scare them away. It's been very profitable lately, and has helped to easily absorb my lack of significant tournament victories over the past week or so, other than my normal satellite wins that have themselves not led to any significant cashes. I did win my way in to the nightly avatar race for the second time last night, and let me tell you, at $216 a pop, you might be tempted to think the quality of play in these things is good. Wrongo buster, wrongo. Check out my bustout hand from last night as a great example (and I tell you, this is par for the course with the players in this thing, despite the attendance list also including some of the biggest-name guys around in the online mtt space):

I'm just under the starting stack about 40 minutes in to the event, and a guy I've only seen raise one pot so far before the flop puts in a good-sized (3.5x) raise from early position. I've got two Queens, so figuring him for a decent-sized pair I move it all in:



What does this guy do? He calls for 2/3 of his existing stack, when he only had 210 in there to begin with and could have easily folded, with Ace-fucking-Six:



That is just laughable. Normally this is where I would suggest that this guy ought to get a blog right away with the way he played this hand. But shit, even the blonkeys out there don't make this call with A6. You clowns like to save this type of move for AT or AJ or AQ. A6, that is just plain old dumb stuff. Unbelievable. This is a perfect example for Smokkee's note of "soooted donk" that he mentioned in the comments to Lucko's notes post yesterday. And this:



is another shining example of full tilt's fucking random number generator rewarding a soooted donk for his oh-so-fine play. On the river of course. I've been thinking, I really should get one of those t-shirts that say "F*cking River!" on them. That's becoming my mantra lately. Who sells that shit anyways? I've definitely seen it advertised on somebody's blog or somewhere that I read on the Internets. So anyways that was me busting out of the avatar race last night less than an hour into the event. But don't kid yourselves -- the play in this thing is mediocre at best, and as long as you can avoid the big names -- the THAY3R's, the PearlJammed's, the Hoyazo's, you should be just fine. Heh heh.

Now, before I leave today I'd like to post my biggest pot in a cash hand of the night, and find out from you cash game donks and otherwise if you think I played this hand well or poorly, and how or why. Because I was very surprised with the way this hand shook out. And you tightydonks who say I should always fold to any pressure with only one pair can be my taint-hounds for the night (that one is for you, big fella, I'm doin' my part!)

So I'm UTG+1 with pocket Aces, and the UTG player has pot-raised it up. I feel like I've got a good handle on him either having a high Ace or a high pocket pair to be raising the pot from UTG like that, so I go ahead and just call with my Aces. I figure (correctly) that no one else is gonna stay in the pot anyways after this early action, so I'll get to heads-up before the flop which is where I want to be anyhow, while at the same time getting a lot of deception in against a guy I am clearly dominating in a big way:



The flop comes 346 with two hearts. I don't have the Ace♥, but I don't see how I can really be concerned here, right? That's just about the raggiest flop possible, and my Aces have got to be good here against a guy who pot-raised it from UTG. When he bets out $13 into the $17 pot, I again elect to go with the smooth call, thinking this guy has an overpair and I can get a bit more from him on the turn if I play my cards just right (pun intended). There's now $42.75 in the pot heading into the turn:



The turn is the 2 of clubs, putting 2346 on the board and making a possible straight with any 5. My opponent leads again at the pot, this time for $37:



Now what am I supposed to do here (again, tightydonks need not reply, we all know what you would do)? Fold my Aces because I fear that he's got a 5 in his hand that he pot-raised with UTG before the flop? Come on. Am I supposed to put him on two pairs here, pot-raising UTG preflop with a hand like 43 or 64? Please. I am aware that he could technically be on a set, but he did pot-raise it preflop from under the gun, which I wouldn't even do with a hand like 66, 44, 33 or 22. Nope, that is still just not as likely as my original read on the guy -- I've still got him on an overpair, which I believe is far and away the most likely holding given the action so far. So I put him to the test:



I'm actually hoping that he calls me here, because I don't see how he can put me on holding a 5 either, since I called his pot-raise from UTG+1 preflop. I have the guy on an overpair, so actually nothing would make me happier than to see him stay in with his QQ or KK or whatever he's got. I'm sure my Aces are good here.

My opponent responds by moving allin for an additional $85 more on top of my big raise. Now at this point I am trying to figure out how I just lost the hand. I mean, I guess it's trips? He really open-raised UTG with a shitty pair like that? That sucks. In the end, it was $85 more to me into a $350 pot, and I decided I had to call it, since I had put the guy on a big pair all along and I figured it was at least 1-in-4.5 likely that he did indeed have something like KK or QQ. Of course I bascally knew I was beat already when he re-reraised me allin, but for those odds I felt I had to make the call.

Who wants to guess what he's holding? Take your guesses, I'll give you some space so you don't ruin the big surprise.

























So there you have it. Open-raising the size of the pot UTG with 75s. Gee, wonder why I couldn't put him on this hand on the miracle 346 flop. Tell me, is this fixed or is this for real? Cheesus christopher. But that's what it takes for me to lose big pots nowadays in the cash games, where even despite this recockuhuge pot on Tuesday night I still ended the day up nearly a full buyin through several tables and several hours of $200nl 6-max play.

I would really love to get everyone's opinions as to how you think I played this hand, where you think I went wrong and what if anything you think I should have done differently. I have had a great run in the cash over the past month but at the same time I recognize that I have a lot of room for improvement, and any and all input is welcome. All I ask is that you try to put yourself in the position of actually being in the hand at the time, instead of just being the guy reading about it the next morning and assuming the worst, etc.

OK that's all for today. Don't forget the last BBT event of the week -- the Mookie -- is tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt, with the password of "vegas1" as always. I don't need to give the usual spiel about how this is always the biggest and the most fun blonkament of the week, because you all know that by now. And you don't need even a Tier I ($26) token to play, as the Mook is always a mere $10 buyin for the pleasure of playing with and getting to learn from some of the best poker players in the world. Ok, I surely did not mean that, but it's fun as hell and you should definitely check it out for that reason alone, not to mention all those awesome cash and other prizes available to the top BBT players of the year as we near the end of the first month of the three-month BBT tournament schedule. And don't forget about Lost tonight either -- it's up to you to figure out how to balance the Mookie and Lost both starting at the exact same time on Wednesday nights -- where we will get to find out the scoop on this chica who fell from the sky out of her helicopter at the end of last week's show, who I swear was sent by Desmond's sexay ex-woman. Can't wait for that, and then I'll see you at the virtual tables sometime after as well.

Running Bad, and Hot Hand #11 (Part III)

It's happening again.

Since my big 5k+ win in the nightly full tilt 30k tournament last Thursday evening, I am once again playing like total donkey. And I'm consciously watching myself do it too. I mean, I'm pushing allin preflop very early in tournaments with AK or 44 against one raiser. I'm calling sufficiently large bets on the flop with hands purely on the come. And I'm reraising allin on the flop with top pair, even when I pretty much know I'm beat. I'm not exactly doing this as a suicide mission, but rather I just tell myself "awww, it's only an $8 satellite, and maybe he'll fold his better hand." And let me tell you, "maybe he'll fold his better hand" is not where you want to be when all your chips get into the middle in an $8 online satellite tournament.

It's all part of a very familiar fucking pattern with me, one which I've written about before here on several occasions and which torments the shit out of me since I know it's coming and still seem utterly unable to do a damned thing about it. I win a big tournament, I make a big huge score in an mtt online, and for the next couple of months, I play like an arrogant fuckass at the tables. I make moves just like the ones I've described above. I managed to hold it together after my big bracelet race win a few weeks back, and I was so effing proud of myself for that, but I guess this 30k tournament score on the heels of the bracelet race is just too much for me, that it's just made my head too damned big for its britches. It's very frustrating. I want to play good poker. I mean to play good poker when I sit down to the virtual tables at night. But then something happens, and I suddenly watch in horror as my hands are clicking on the wrong buttons, clicking "call" when I want to muck preflop, clicking "raise" when I want to fold to a continuation bet on the flop. It's really terrible, and I am just mired in the throes of it right now. I'm at my worst at the poker tables lately, and I know it. And I don't seem to be able to do a damned thing about it.

Of course, it doesn't help that I'm running into one of the worst patches of luck I've ever experienced over the past week or so. Those two always seem to coincide for some reason -- when I'm playing my worst and not making the smart moves that have led me to the mtt success I've had as a poker player, that always seems to be the same exact time that all the 2-outers and 3-outers are hitting against me, and all the perfectly refuckulous flops are falling to give me a second-best hand while giving my dominated opponent the unknowable near-nuts at the same time. It's the perfect storm of frustration, the confluence of bad play and bad luck that always seems to strike me after a big win and render me utterly powerless to stop. I hate it.

Let's see. Last night I played in the 8:30pm ET $8 rebuy satellite into the 30k, as well as the $14 sat at 8:45pm ET. In the rebuy sat, I doubled up early and was near the top of the leaderboard, but eventually down to 11 players left with the top 7 winning seats and me in 6th place, my AQ on the button lost to a donkey in the big blind who called my allin with pocket 4s. That's a scary bad call -- knowing you are basically exactly 51% to win or 20% to win -- for a guy who desperately needed to hold on to his chips at that point near the bubble, but when you're up against me right now the 4s are definitely going to hold. In the 8:45pm ET version, I busted maybe 15 minutes in when my pocket 9s were busted allin preflop by an uber fucking donkass who called my preflop allin with -- get ready for it -- King Jack. Offsuit. Now obviously I am a fool for allowing myself to get allin preflop with pocket 9s that early in the tournament, and there is no doubt that that is true, and that is the bad play part of my recent trend in online poker for sure. In this particular case there was a preflop raise and then two callers of the raise ahead of my 9s, and I thought I might be able to push everyone out even though I figured I was surely racing against at least one opponent. Still a fully donkish play on my part just 15 minutes into a tournament in which generally bad players and bad play are rife. But putting that aside for a second, to even think about making that call (everyone else had folded) with KJo in a tournament is beyond comprehension. I mean, I can't imagine how horrible I would have to be as a player to even take a second's pause before mucking that garbage hand against all that action. But there you go, there's the bad luck element coming into play. He calls, I'm laughing, and then the Jack on the river (of course, it's always the river at times like this) takes me from laughing out loud to instead steam pouring out of my ears.

At the same time was the 8:30pm WWdN tournament, where I started off nicely, chipped up a bit, and then found pocket Aces UTG no more than 15 or 20 minutes into the event. I limped, a move I make quite often with Aces UTG (only UTG, btw), especially since I had limped and even limp-folded from early position several times already at this table. Of course nobody raises and like 7 players see a flop of I think KJ8 rainbow. Knowing it is still highly likely that I am ahead with no straights or flushes possible on this flop, I bet out the size of the pot, and get only one caller. I put him on a King, and when the turn is a harmless-looking offsuit 4, I bet the pot again. This time he raises me probably 2.5 times my original bet. Yes, I have no doubt I'm beat. There's the horrible luck again coming into play. And yes, I made the call anyways. There's the bad play. He flips up?

K4. Now he's not at all a donkey here, in that I let him limp in for free from middle position (not that I would have even put up 30 chips with that dog of a hand preflop, but I can't fault the guy for making the play for that small bet that I myself made possible by not raising with my Aces UTG). Nonetheless, my Aces are still a favorite over any other hands on this flop with no straights or flushes possible, and I knew by his lack of reraise that he hadn't nailed the flop hard (this is a blogger type as opposed to a wwdn donk that also tend to populate Wil's weekly tournament on pokerstars, so I've played with him several times before). Then the turn just has to be a five-outer 4, completing the unlikely two pairs for my opponent and setting me up for another hilariously bad call on my part where I knew -- I absolutely knew -- I was beat but of course I donkeycalled it anyways, at that point mostly just so I could make it official and write about the beat here on the blog today. That's just the way things are going for me lately.

I also played the 9:45pm ET Token Frenzy that I wrote about yesterday on the blog last night. I was very happy to see a bunch of bloggers in there, which I take as a very good sign that people are making a concerted effort to qualify for this Sunday night's Big Game, hosted by the blogtournament specialist himself. I myself played, and in fact as I recall I had a blogger at each table I was seated at through the event, starting off with Buddydank and then eventually moving over to a table with cmitch. And btw, out of the blue yesterday cmitch's blog started loading on my work pc after over a year of being consistently blocked by websense. Not sure how many people read cmitch on a regular basis, but he is a very accomplished cash and mtt player (witness his 10th place finish in the 19k guaranteed on full tilt just last night) over a long period of time, and has lots of great hand analysis on his blog which makes for a really great read. As I've written about here many times before, I do about 99% of my blogreading at my office during the day, so being able to add cmitch to the daily reading list is a major plus for me, and you should go check his blog out if you haven't yet, or if you have previously been unable to view his blog due to dorkwork restrictions like I have at my office.

Anyways, although I eventually busted in the middle of the pack from the token frenzy (another fucking big blind special, just par for the course for my night last night and really the entire last week), it was great to see so many bloggers in that thing last night trying to get in to the Big Game this coming Sunday. And congratulations to Al as well as to new blogger Wippy for both winning their Big Game tokens in last night's frenzy. Lost permitting, I plan to be in there again tonight, at 9:45pm ET, taking my next stab at winning a $75 token for this Sunday's Big Game which is also part of the Battle of the Blogger Tournaments challenge, and I encourage as many of you as possible to join in again and continue our blogger assault on the $14 buyin tier II token frenzy tournament this week on full tilt. At one point last night while that thing was filling up, it looked more like a blogger tournament than a regular public full tilt tournament with all the bloggers signing up early. Let's try to get even more bloggers in there tonight. Remember, it's $14 to buy in, and about the top 18% of the field will leave less than two hours later with a $75 token in their account. Let's do it tonight! And if you're lucky, you start out at my table, because I am playing like a complete fuckass lately and I'm getting horrendous luck to boot, so me chipas es su chipas or however someone would say that if they knew how to make those verbs and pronouns plural in Spanish (as I, obviously, do not).

OK, so back to Hot Hand #11. Yesterday we left off with me betting out half the pot from the small blind after nailing top set on the turn of 67TK with my slow-played pocket Kings, and then my opponent in the big blind raising me on that flop from my 100 chip bet to 400 chips, making it 300 for me to call, and I asked what you all would do in this spot. The comments I received were somewhat varied, starting with one or two bloggers suggesting that I just call this raise here, and then check the river in the hopes of inducing a bigger bet at the river from my opponent. A few other guys proposed a more of a slow-raise approach, suggesting I re-pop it here to 900 or 1000 chips to try to either take it down right now, or to induce a call or reraise from a clearly worse hand than my top set. I think the majority opinion, however, was to just move it allin here, in the hopes that this guy actually has hit something big and will be willing to dump off the rest of his stack to me. The thinking here seems to be that since my opponent has reraised me fairly big here, and since I have the near-nuts, why not make the biggest play I can and hope he will have to call since he likely has something big to be making the raise here to begin with.

To be honest, I tend to like that last approach, in situations where I feel my opponent clearly has a strong hand, and it's something that I do all the time when I am in that position of having Aces when I think my opponent has Kings, or having top set on the flop when I think my opponent has bottom set, etc. However, in this spot, I just didn't get the feeling yet that my opponent really was necessarily on a huge hand. The raise to 400 chips here, to be honest, felt more like a steal to me than anything else. I mean, it's hard for me to expect this guy to have any kind of a big hand on the turn here given the lack of a preflop raise (so probably KT or any pocket pair is out since against just my small blind limp preflop, he might probably have raised me right there with those hands), and it's not like he committed a huge portion of his stack with his raise. Although 400 chips is a raise of the size of the pot, due to the lack of a preflop raise and the checks from both of us on the flop, the pot is still small now relative to the stack sizes of both myself and my opponent, and thus I was more of the impression that this player didn't necessarily have anything great in his hand yet. Given that, I opted not to go for the allin move, which again I would be very apt to do if I had a better read of real strength from the guy with the way he had played this hand from before the flop until now. At the same time, I also opted not to just call his bet here, as I think he has committed enough to the pot that there is some likelihood of him feeling tied on enough to call a little bit more, and given that, I would be remiss if I didn't go for those extra chips now. Plus as an added bonus of reraising here, the pot will be that much bigger after the river comes, meaning that if he does call a reraise from me now, then he may be that much more apt to call some more chips into the pot on the river, including maybe his entire stack. His raise was also small enough in absolute terms on the turn card here that I did not want to just call in case he was semi-bluffing me with just a flush draw and an overcard or something like that, and then hit his flush on the river because I let him draw to it for just 400 chips instead of getting him to lay down with a reraise here.

So, I didn't want to just call in this spot because I wanted to get some more chips from him invested now when I believed he was willing to do so, and I didn't want to move allin on him just yet because I was afraid he wasn't strong enough with whatever he had to call that. So, I ended up going for the reasonably big reraise, enough to show him I mean business and make any draws laughably fidiotic for him, while at the same time keeping it maybe just barely small enough that if he is on something like top pair or two pairs or something, he might be willing to call my reraise as well:



No sooner had I congratulated myself for making this reraise here and for getting this guy tied on with my slowplay from the very beginning of the hand, that my opponent responded (fairly quickly, btw) to my reraise with this:



The allin re-reraise on the turn. KT76, two suited cards, with me sitting on two Kings in the hole.

Anybody folding here? Why?

Assuming no one is folding, I will tell you that I did call his allin raise here, quickly in fact as I got this fugger to do exactly what I wanted him to do from the moment I first checked the Kings before the flop. Anybody want to guess what he was holding? Think back to all his moves from before the flop, the check on the flop on a T76 board with two suits, the pot-size raise on the turn of KT76 with two suits, and then the quick allin re-reraise on the turn after I had reraised 3x his raise on that same flop with the top set on the board. I think I will hold back the final screenshot showing what he had until you all have a chance to venture your guesses. I think a hand like this is an excellent exercise in hand-reading as far as reviewing all the actions at every stage in the hand to put a player on a holding or range of holdings. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I'll get up here tomorrow with the final results of what this guy had in his hand.

Tonight, token frenzy at 9:45pm ET, and then the Mookie at 10pm ET (password is vegas1 as always) as the BBT rolls on tonight. Everybody come out and play in this thing, as I bet we're on track for more than 80 players in the Mook as the big blogger tournaments all look to be setting records for participation and interest with the onslaught of the BBT. And oh yeah, one other key point -- in light of Miami Don's utter and complete destruction of the blogger tournaments over the past couple of weeks, I am officially laying a bounty on Don's head for tonight's Mookie. I want to tie this bounty to the BBT in a good way, so given what I've been calling for this week in attacking the token frenzy tournament, I am hereby laying a $15 bounty on the head of Miami Don, so whoever eliminates the Don from tonight's Mookie tournament will receive a $15 transfer from me on full tilt, enough to pay the $14 buyin plus the rake in one of these tier II Token Frenzy mtts later this week or weekend on full tilt. So, knock Miami Don out, and I personally will pay you to play for a token into Sunday night's Big Game to help shake things up even more in the BBT. Hopefully that will be just the incentive needed to make some bloggers show some sack in the face of Don's relentless aggrodonking ways tonight at the Mookie. See you then!

Wheaties Night, and One More Hand to Review

Well, call me a fonkey but I final tabled not one but both WWdN tournaments last night. In the "real" WWdN, I got off to a nice start, somehow lucking into winning I think 25 out of 25 pots from Columbo as every time I pushed he didn't have enough to call, and every time he seemed to have a big hand I had nothing much. I can only imagine Ray is not too happy with me this morning, but what can I do. To be honest I had jeciimd on the girly chat rooting me on through most of that since jec tells me that Columbo kinda has his (jec's) number, so you see in the end it all balances out. Next time I'm sure Columbo will eliminate me as he has done several times in the past, but last night I could do no wrong against him and that helped me get off to an early big stack in the Wheatie.

From there I basically coasted, eliminating a few more players along the way until the final table came after a few hours, with me nestled comfortably in the middle. I got a few cards for a change at the final table, and before I knew it we had made the money in the top 5 positions, with me up near the top of the leaderboard. After a big suckout helped me to eliminate 5th place, I found myself with a significant chip lead over the rest of the field before running into 3 setups and some bad luck which eventually ended my run in 4th place. First I was dealt Tens and called an allin pushmonkey from the short stack who flipped up KJs (hmmmm), but the King on the flop ended all speculation there. Then, I got 88 when another player had QQ and that was about a quarter of my remaining stack. Then maybe 10 minutes later I once again found 8s and called a pushmonkey allin raise preflop which turned out to be Aces, and IGH. Still it was a nice run and something I really enjoyed doing given how hard it is to navigate the donkfield in this tournament in particular.

And oh yeah -- to the WWdN participant who insisted on following me around on multiple tables and berating me in the chat for an hour after I sucked out on you, please recognize that you are barking up the wrong tree and just embarrassing yourself. I'm going to make three suggestions to you for better things to have done with that anger last night:

1. Go find Lee Jones whose server provided me the set on the turn that beat your pocket Aces, and spew your venomous bile at him for an hour instead. It's not like I chose the 2-outer to hit. Pokerstars took care of that. Getting all angry and worked up in the chat towards me just makes you look silly. To all of us. And it gives me an opportunity to agigtate the crap out of you in the chat while I'm still at the final table and you're on the rail, an oppotunity I have yet to pass up against a single angry railbird chatter in almost 2 years of online play.

2. Go find Euclid or Isaac Newton or whichever famous mathematician devised this whole "percentage" concept. Because your pocket Aces are an 80% favorite in that situation. And, while that means you will win 4 out of 5 such showdowns, that also means you're going to lose 1 out of 5. One time in five ain't nothing. It's not like you lost to a 1-outer on the river after getting the money in on the turn, something you could expect to win 99 times out of 100. You lost to a more than 2-outer before the flop, where I had five chances to hit one of my two cards, or to make a miracle straight or flush. 20% of the time you're losing that one. If you don't know what that means or are angry that one of your 20 times in a hundred came up last night, go find Dr. Math and beat him up in the chat. How dare he discover percentages that mean your Aces won't hold up every single time. Because of course you're the only guy who's ever had his Aces cracked, no doubt.

3. If you can't or won't do options 1 or 2 above, at least you should try to restrain yourself from publicly questioning my call in that situation. Because I can only assume you fear playing me once the flop is out, you pushmonkeyed me preflop with a stack that was less than mine, and I held pocket 9s. When your comments in the chat -- which everyone else can see, lest you forget -- indicate clearly that you don't realize that this is a perfectly acceptable call for me to make (not the "joke" you referred to my call as last night), you might want to at least consider what everyone else at the table and on the rail is thinking of your skills at this game that obviously riles you up so much. Generally speaking, I don't find myself doing or saying things that make me look like I have no clue about basic poker tournament strategy when I'm at the virtual tables. If saying things that gets everyone to think you're a tournodonkey floats your boat, then more power to ya. Nonetheless, after you're finished whining like an infant, calling a pushmonkey's allin with pocket 9s is still objectively a perfectly acceptable call. Greatest call ever? Maybe not. A fine call? Obviously. Recognize.

OK enough of that mini-rant (Double Dave, I think that's the best I can do for you today, hope that helps you out a bit on another boring work day). On to the WWdN 2nd Chance, which was PLO8. Despite my obvious terribleness at this game, star of stars I happened to final table that event as well yesterday (imagine that). I got there basically the exact same way I have final tabled all of my other pot-limit Omaha (high or hilo) tournaments where I have ever done this -- by hitting one or two big hands where I held the nuts on the flop or the turn, and controlling my betting such that someone else was willing to push hard with the 2nd or 3rd nuts. I've always thought that's the key to Omaha games -- not so much in limit, but in pot-limit where you can still take a bunch of chips from someone if you can take the action into the later betting rounds -- in my experience it's all about (1) not pushing too hard yourself with the 2nd or 3rd nuts, and (2) getting other people to push too hard with the 2nd or 3rd nuts. That's the way I've rolled in all of my successful PLO and PLO8 tournaments, and it worked for me again last night.

Worked, anyways, until I think 7 people left at the final table. That's when I took a flop for a small raise preflop with KK-something-something double-suited, and when the flop came K55 with two hearts, I knew I was set. Not only was there only one playable low card on that flop, significantly decreasing the chance of me having to split this pot with a low hand, but I had flopped the nut boat. When both of the other players bet and called on the flop, I knew I had at least one person in there with a 5 in their hand, and I was going to stack the crap out of them if they hopefully held an Ace as well, a good chance since they had called a raise preflop. On the turn (another low card, making a low draw possible now heading into the river) someone bet, I raised and not one but both players called, and I was smiling big at my pc. The river completed the runner-runner low, which sucked ballz for me but when all three of us players got allin for the amount of whoever had the smallest remaining stack, I was thrilled because I knew I would be splitting half the now huge pot with my nut boat.

Oops. Make that almost nut boat. Somebody had brilliantly called a preflop raise with 55xx in their hand -- definitely a WWdN-style play for an O8 game, no doubt -- and my flopped "nut" boat lost to flopped quads. Nothing like losing a flopped nut boat to flopped quads, is there? So that's what it took to get me out of the 2nd Chance Wheatie, but I have to say this was a whole lot more fun than I've had with the Tuesday night crowd in quite some time. Give me just a little bit of cards to work with, and even maybe a tenth of the luck that some of the other regulars out there seem to consistently get, and I guess I can run with the donkeys just a little bit. Good times. And congrats to Fishy McDonk for taking down the WWdN after a seesaw heads-up battle with A-arab-Zaraq or whatefer his name is. That one looked like it was over on a couple of different occasions once down to just the final two, but Fishy pulled it out after two nice comebacks from big chip deficits with his typical brand of solid, aggressive, stealy, hand-reading play that I always enjoy watching. If I knew who took down the PLO8 WWdN tourney I would report that here as well. But I don't, so I won't, but congrats to you too whoever you are.

OK now back briefly to yesterday's hand question, where if you recall I posed the situation where you're in the big blind with the big stack (300k) at the table, the final 2 tables of a large no-limit holdem mtt with just 12 players remaining, and it's folded around to the button who has 120k and raises your big blind up from 4000 to 15000. The small blind folds, and you have J2s. I asked what you would do here, and I think it's fair to say the answer was close to unanimous. Almost every one of the commenters I believe said they would fold. FWIW my two cents here is that I agree whole-heartedly. I'm on a big stack, so I would be willing to take some chances here, and my cards are sooooted, so all the more reason to be willing to do something. But, in this case, it's the 2 in my hand that leads me to just fold here and wait for a better spot. Well, I guess it's really the combination of the 2 and the Jack, in that if I held A2s I might be willing to take a chance and reraise. But when my high card is a Jack, and the button has already raised it up preflop, that means in my mind that my high card is very likely lower than the button's high card. And we know my 2 is lower than my opponent's kicker as well. So, this means that I am almost surely behind whatever my opponent is holding here, and the presence of the 2 in my hand means I am at absolute best a 40% dog, and possibly closer to 35%, and even possibly lower than that if the button actually picked up a hand here. Those of you who know me know that I am an aggressive nlh player by nature, but even I do not want to jeopardize any of my big stack here with such a weak holding that is almost impossible to be ahead of my opponent. I've never been one to go nuts with "any two cards" just because I'm on a big stack.

Now, I mentioned yesterday that I asked that particular question because a guy whose game all of us know and whom I at least have a lot of respect for recently analyzed this hand, and I found his analysis of the hand very interesting, and somewhat different from my own thoughts on the hand. Rather than say just yet who this was and what exactly his thoughts on the hand were, I would like to pose one more hand that was also analyzed by this same guy and get your thoughts on that one. Then tomorrow I will let the cat out of the bag as to this guy's views on both hands, and why I am bringing them up here.

So, here's the 2nd situation: You are about an hour in to a single-table sng. 9 players remain, with you sitting in the cutoff+1 (so in 6th of the 9 players, starting with UTG as player #1). Blinds are 50-100, and unfortunately for you you've taken some bad beats and you are down to just 50 chips remaining at this point in the tournament, by far the smallest stack left at the table (and just half the current big blind), with the next smallest stack being somewhere north of 700 chips. So, you're done. Toast. Nonetheless, you have your last 50 chips to play out and you want to find the smartest situation to play them in.

Player 1 (UTG) folds, Player 2 calls, Player 3 raises the 100 big blind to 350. Player 4 calls and Player 5 folds. Action is to you, and you look down to find 43s.

What do you do here? Is this a good spot to move in your last 50 chips? Here you are obviously behind whatever caused UTG+1 to limp, UTG+2 to raise 3.5x, and UTG+3 to call that raise. That said, however, with your stack size you are the true meaning of desperate. And, with 150 in blind money, plus the 50 chips from at least three other players already in the pot, you do have a chance to quintuple up here. And you've got a suited connector in your hand (admittedly a low one). Do you call for your last 50 chips, or fold here and wait for a better spot?

As I said, this hand was reviewed by the same guy who reviewed yesterday's hand, so I am interested in hearing what people think about this one as well. Then tomorrow I will cover what this respectable player had to say about both hands, once everyone has had a chance to comment on this second hand as well. And of course I will give my own thoughts as well (of course).

Tonight at 10pm ET is another Mookie (password is vegas1 as always) that I will probably miss to watch Lost with the Hammer Wife, but you should not miss it as the Mookie continues to be one of the best times every week with the bloggers at the virtual tables. I will try to play the 2nd chance Mookie tonight at 11:30pm ET if I can, since it is apparently PLO as chosen by Astin and PLO is one of "my" games. I think there might also be one of those juicy $69 buyin Bracelet Races on full tilt tonight, which I will also probably miss, but those $69 races are where it's at in my opinion -- the perfect balance of not too big a buyin to crush the roll, but big enough to net a 2k prize package winner for every 30 or so entrants so that you don't have to play down to and then completely win the final table just to win the big prize and go to the WSOP this summer. Hopefully I will be on at some point tonight and bump into some of you, if not in the bracelet race or the Mookie then at least in the Dookie tonight at 11:30pm ET on full tilt.

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

How the fuck did I ever win a WWdN?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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














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

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





AQo.

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

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

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

KQo.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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