Another Nice Tournament Score

So I've mentioned a few times this week about the UBOC tournament series running over a ten-period period over on UltimateBet. As you know if you read here, I do love the software, the players and especially the tournament structures at UB, with deep stacks and just generally more skill-favoring, slower blinds escalation than at any other major online poker site. By a mile. Even in the non-deep-stack events end up having better stacks and more time to play than most other online mtt's available today. So I've dipped my toe in to several of the UBOC events this time around, for the first time I have ever played in UB's version of FTOPS or WCOOP, and one that I was really looking forward to was UBOC #4 last weekend, the $120 buyin, 30k guaranteed sniper (bounty) tournament. I play the nightly 9pm ET sniper mtt with a $120 buyin most nights I play on UB, and it is one of my favorite tournaments out there and one I have had a lot of success in, so naturally this larger version of my nightly favorite immediately attracted my attention. And, while I'm too lazy at this point to do a full recap post for this run, here's what I ended up with last Friday:





So, it was $4758 and change, another awesome score, and now my second score in under two months in a major online poker site's periodic tournament series, building on last month's 27k win in the Mini-FTOPS on full tilt. Plus, I also managed to score 18 bounties by the time all was said and done -- as with my live bounty tournament win a couple of weeks back in AC, I was chip leader through most of the last three hours of this tournament -- for another $360 in bounties bringing my total cash over the 5k mark in Friday night's UBOC 30k guaranteed $120 Sniper Event.

All that said, as I mentioned I was the chip leader in this thing for most of the last few hours heading up to the final table, having built a massive stack when I made a straight on the turn against one guy's flopset and the other's pocket Kings when they both decided to bet and call tiny bets and easily priced me in for the draw based on pot odds alone, let alone the implied odds in a no-limit event like this. I lost the chip lead heading into the final table, but I got it back at some point around halfway through. I recall at one point I fought my way back to the chip lead again with 5 runners left. 25 minutes later, I would exit, out in 4th place, leaving 12k on the table between my payout and the 16k first prize. How did this happen to me again?

I've looked and looked and re-looked at my screen shots from the final table run, and I think my problem here is best attributable to an incredible run of bad timing when down to the last half of the final table, after about five hours of having great timing with my bets and raises to be able to survive this late along the way. I've written a lot about the importance of having great timing in any large-field nlh tournament, but so much of mtt success, especially late in tournaments, comes down to not pushing into the guy with Aces, or top pair, or AK, and not running any monsters into higher monsters, which are always crushers in final table play. But halfway through the final table in UBOC 4, over the span of 25 minutes, I raised preflop and then was forced to fold to an allin reraise before the flop 7 consecutive times. That's never good. UB is deep, but nowhere is it that deep that you can literally raise preflop and then fold to a reraise without even giving yourself a chance to see or win a flop after seven consecutive failed raises. I could not believe it, and this after raising pretty much with reckless abandon for over 7 hours to even have survived anywhere near this far (you don't eliminate 18 shitdonks without betting and raising a lot and mixing it up quite a bit). But two of those 7 raises were standard button-steals from me with two low unconnected cards, both of which were easy folds for me rather than risk calling off a big stack on. Two of them were also button- or cutoff-steals with decent cards -- one with KTs (I folded to a reraise from a guy who despite being a little short had not pushed his entire stack in for more than an hour and was clearly just in holding-on-for-dear-life mode), one with KJo (I knew the reraiser held an Ace, and at the time he had just under the number of chips that I held). And the other three were also standard preflop raising hands for 5 left at the final table, one A6o in early position, which I folded rather than call a large allin reraise with a likely dominated hand, and two were 44 and 77, also both easy raises pre in this spot but neither of which did I have any interest in calling an allin reraise with and then racing or being dominated for most of my stack. It was just a terrible run of I think the right play preflop and frankly the right play by me to fold as well, but it took my chip-leading stack and turned me into the short stack over the span of 25 minutes without me having any chance to even play some poker or see a flop to show for it. And as the short stack, I ended up raising a guy allin on a 9♠5♠3♥ flop with a flush draw and an over when I held A♠7♠, my opponent made the pretty much mandatory called with pocket Kings, I did not hit and IGH in 4th place.

So again, 5 large is 5 large, and to have the opportunity to make that kind of money from this game and have such a great time doing it -- knocking out 18 people from a single tournament is always a good time in my book -- is awesome of course, no doubt. But once again I find myself more angry than pleased with the result, as half an hour earlier I had been chip leader with 5 left and in line to nab 16 grand and change for first prize, and then boom, out in 4th for "only" 5 grand.

It's a good consolation prize to be sure. But I need to keep focusing on turning these 4-figure scores into 5-figure scores if there is to be any chance of me stepping up my game from here heading into 2010. It's been a great January so far for me poker-wise, but just one or two big wins here is what separates a good month from a good year in poker profits.

Sigh, mouth fail ? plus some...

As I said in the last entry, I am having some trouble recovering from some mouth surgery that I had. It’s now been 10 day since the surgery and I’ve been back to the doctor about five times. He’s been amazingly friendly and helpful about it. He even came into the office on a holiday Sunday (this past Monday was a Cayman holiday). But, unfortunately, he hasn’t quite been able to clear up the problem. To explain a bit, I had a benign cyst removed. It was blocking a salivary duct (ie, where saliva is let out into your mouth, particularly when you’re eating) so it had to come out. After it he took it out, things actually felt way better — for about 36 hours. I had the surgery done on a Monday afternoon and when I woke up on Wednesday, it was absolutely killing me when I tried to eat. Normally I would consider this to be standard considering I had an open wound in my mouth along with some stitches but… it hadn’t really hurt much the day before. After a few days of some really bad pain whenever I tried to eat/chew/swallow/etc, he eventually pulled out a stone (like a kidney stone but in the salivary duct) this past Tuesday. Yesterday it felt a lot better and the swelling went way down. But, today, it has kind of regressed and gotten a bit worse again — although not nearly as bad as it was over the weekend. I had xrays done and they don’t show another stone so right now his plan is for me to finish my course of antibiotics (started on Monday) and see how it feels in a few days. I’m still skeptical that there isn’t something else in there blocking the duct but I obviously have to defer to the doctor for the time being. We’ll see how it feels.

In another event in my recent medical woes, I had a pretty minor break on my left ring finger a few weeks back from a flag football game. Nothing too bad but it definitely hurt pretty bad for a week or two. It’s actually starting to feel better now and I’m starting to use it again (although no football yet). So I went to this new gym which just opened up a few days ago and got in a relatively short workout last night. It’s amazing how fast cardio goes. My cardio last night wasn’t even close to what it was even two weeks ago. I’m sure it will return quickly but I was struggling to even do two moderately fast miles on the treadmill. Before the finger & mouth problems when I was working out 4-5x/week, I was doing four miles at good speed without much trouble. I will work on it to get it back.

I also have recently been inspired to do some real strength training. I’ve lifted weights and whatnot for probably about 15 years now. I think I started when I was 12… maybe 13. So I have spent a lot of time in weight rooms but I’ve never really done “real” exercises. I have never done any serious squatting, deadlifting, power cleans, etc. I have done them on and off but never for real where I do them routinely, track progress and focus hard on form. And wow did it show. I actually did three sets of squats and three sets of deadlifts and the weights were pathetic. My legs and upper back are so sore. Granted I was really focusing on form and not on weight amount but I could barely do three sets of squats at 85 lbs. They were real squats though with a full range of motion. I can’t believe how sore my hamstrings are. I expect to make a bunch of gains pretty quickly as I improve my form and gain core strength to be able to stabilize the weight on my shoulders through the full range of motion. Then, of course, I will plateau and make more normal gains over the course of time. I’m hoping to be able to do 3 sets of 5 reps of body weight squats by the WSOP. Hopefully that’s a reasonable goal. I am not going to rush it if I don’t think I’m going to make it but it is the goal that I have in mind.

As opposed to the exercises I just rattled off, the one respected power lifting exercise that I have done before is bench pressing. I haven’t done it with a free bar in years because it is kind of scary to push yourself when you don’t have a spotter and there’s no safety bar to stop the weight. I am a big proponent of occasional sets where you go until “failure” in order to get stronger. And that isn’t possible with a bench, a bar and no spotter. However, when I was in college and I lifted with my friends, I would actually push myself pretty hard on benching when I had some help if I was about to drop the bar on my chest. Sometime during my sophomore year I weighed around 220 lbs and I was benching 275 one rep. I could bang out 6 reps at 225 without a problem and I am pretty sure I remember doing at least a few sets of 10 reps at 225.

So, as far as bench press goes, I actually have a decent background in it. And it’s part of my new strength routine so I started it out a bit higher than most beginners would do. I currently weigh 175 and I put it at 135. For most people of my weight, they need to train to get to this weight. When I was benching regularly, I could do 135 probably 20 times before I even felt anything. So I didn’t expect much of a challenge. I was wrong, it was actually kind of hard. Much harder than I remember it being. I guess, until I did that exercise last night, I didn’t realize how much stronger I was when I was 20 as opposed to now. Obviously it has a lot to do with training and weight but it was amazing how different 135 felt compared to six/seven years ago. I was able to do three sets of 8 reps without much of a problem but the bar felt heavy and I don’t think I could have done, say, sets of 12.

So, long story short, I am going to focus on squatting, deadlifting and bench pressing a lot. As well as some other of the big power lifts. I really want to build up real strength and, more specifically, core strength. I want to be able to do a full pistol (can’t come all that close right now) with either leg and there’s really nothing else like these exercises to build up that sort of strength. Things like yoga are great and all but I just don’t think they do it with the same level of efficiency and speed. I will update this over time with progress updates (or lack thereof)!

Pokerstars Where Is The...

A few days ago I wrote about Full Tilt Poker’s new innovating game called Rush Poker.  In the past few days this got me thinking to how Pokerstars was going to respond.  Would they try and buy rights to the game for Pokerstars or could they try and come up with something similar, or even [...]

Mtt Update

Still haven't had the time to do a proper recap of my score in UBOC Event #4 a few days back. It's just hard to find the time this week in the evenings with all the double-guarantee tournaments running all day long on full tilt in addition to the rest of the UBOC series on UltimateBet. If I don't get to do a real recap, I might just post the two or three most significant hands for posterity's sake, but hopefully this is something I will get to in the next day or two.

In the meantime, I had my first cash in a big mtt on full tilt of the past three days, a tiny score for just a few hundy in the 150k, which is double the usual 75k guarantee which runs nightly at 8pm ET for a buyin of $150 + $13. Normally this is a tournament I stay away from, because (1) I am rarely home in time to play it from the beginning anyways, and (2) even the few times when I have been able to play, I find the level of competition to be noticeably better than at the $50 or $100 level where my mtt play tends to focus. I think I've only cashed in this thing twice before in my entire life, so in that sense running through to the final 60 or so players was a nice feat, especially with the mtt being double its usual size, up in the 1200-player range on the day. But in the end, a run to the 60s just doesn't mean squat in terms of cash in a tournament like this, so I'll take my $300 profit and plow it back into full tilt's double-guarantee tournaments over the next couple of nights.

For the first night in a few, I did not participate in any of the UBOC events. They smartly have a "mini-UBOC" which runs the exact same tournaments as the big UBOC events at the exact same times, but at one-tenth the buyin. The problem with these events for me is that, for the most part, the mini UBOC events only have a tiny guarantee -- usually 10k or less -- and I just don't generally take the time these days to play any mtt without at least a 20k guarantee. I just don't want to go through the rigamarole and roller coaster of luck and timing that it takes to run deep in one of these tournaments, bust out in 4th place, and win what? $500? Definitely not worth it from my perspective. So I've been staying away from the mini UBOC events generally, but otherwise I think the variety of events in the UBOC has been pretty great, personally. They've had some rebuys at reasonable buyin levels, they've had some nice deep stack sniper (bounty) tournaments in the $100-$200 range, and they've had events in no-limit and limit holdem, both 6-max and full-ring, as well as plenty of Omaha and Stud events to pique my interest. As I mentioned yesterday I have built up a massive stack in a few of these other events but so far it has not translated to any big scores since UBOC #4, and on Wednesday night I was tempted by the $1000 buyin nlh event that seemed to be attracting all the big pros from UB's roster.

I originally registered for the 1k buyin tournament, but later unregistered after more carefully considering the situation. I have the money in UB thanks to my score last week in UBOC #4, but do I really want to drop a grand to play this tournament? It struck me how different buyin levels are at live vs online tournaments. In a live casino, a tournament with a $1000 buyin would be big, but nothing so huge in my experience that it would attract all pros or something. Not even close. For the most part, if I play a $1000 buyin event in a live casino in Atlantic City or Las Vegas, I would expect the average level of skill of my competition to be mediocre at best, with plenty of total donkeys in the mix ever-ready to get involved with subpar hands and try to suck out on someone even for $1000 a pop. But in an online tournament, the 1k buyin events in my experience tend to turn out a whole different level of opponent. I'm not trying to say these things are not beatable or anything, but in an online event, a 1k buyin tournament will generally speaking be comprised of mostly solid players, something I would never say about a live 1k buyin event. I've written about this before with respect to the Monday 1k mtt on full tilt -- that field every week is good enough such that my expected value from playing the tournament is measurably lower than when I play, say, the 5050 or a similar-level of buyin. The bottom line is that, for online poker play at the major sites available in the U.S., all the lower limits available make a buyin like 1k something that generally speaking only the best of the best tournament players are looking into.

With that in mind, I ended up unregistering from the 1k UBOC tournament and saving that dough for a better spot. Again, it's not a question of not having faith in myself or not thinking I can do it. I do have faith and I do think I can outlast anyone in the world in the right situation in a large-field mtt. But, that doesn't change the fact that my expected ROI of entering the 1k event is significantly lower over the long run that my expected ROI of entering the other tournaments I normally confine my play to.

Tonight's UBOC was much better as I recall, although I think there is only one of them instead of the normal two events starting simultaneously at 8:05pm ET. I think tonight's is a $200 or $300 buyin pot-limit Omaha event or something like that. Too lazy to look it up. But I checked on Wednesday night and I recall thinking that Thursday's UBOC would be a fun one to play, so I will definitely plan to be there at 8pm. I'm sure I'll make an appearance in the $26 buyin 28k guaranteed (56k this week!) 8pm mtt on full tilt as well, and you might even see me once again in the 40k (80k this week), $150 buyin mtt at 8pm as well. The 8:30pm ET 50k ($30 rebuy) that I won recently is also a distinct possibility. I haven't had a big cash yet in this week's double-guarantee festival on full tilt, but that won't stop me from trying. It only takes one great run to make up for several months days of mtt futility.

Big MTT Week

Whew! With the UBOC going on over on UltimateBet -- and the events starting at actually playable times for Americans (mostly 8:05pm ET) as opposed to WCOOP at pokerstars these days -- as well as Full Tilt's double-guarantee week, I have been playing the most mtt poker I've played in probably a year over the past week or so. As I have alluded to previously, I made a deep run to the final table in one of the UBOC events earlier this week, about which I plan to get a post up later this week for sure recapping what ended up being another solid tournament score for me, albeit one where I -- again -- left a lot of dough on the table thanks to multiple bad breaks when down to the final few at the last table. But otherwise, I have been trying to get in on as many of the larger mtt's on full tilt in the evenings as I can, even taking it so far as to leave work a bit early one day this week to get in on the 7pm ET mtt's which I pretty much never, ever get to play anymore thanks to work and family obligations.

So far, as I mentioned I made a big hit in the UBOC a few days ago, but on full tilt I have just not been feeling the love yet after two nights of heavy mtt playing (heavy for me, anyways). I continue this week to amass some massive stacks in the UltimateBet tournaments -- some leading to small cashes and some to no cash at all, sadly -- but I have had very little luck getting anything serious going on full tilt so far, and I'm not sure exactly why. I think part of it is that, despite my hope that there would be tons of overlay in these events with the guarantees doubled, what we're finding instead is that every fonkadonk and his mother are joining in on these tournaments to try to get a piece of the swollen prize pools that this week offers. As a result, unlike past times when this double-guarantee promo has been run, I have literally yet to see a single tournament on full tilt with any overlay at all. The 50-50 usually attracts around 1000 runners for very close to the 50k guaranteed in the prize pool. So this week, they turn it into the "Fifty Hundo" with a 100k guarantee, and what happens? 2200 donklickers show up to try to slip on some banana peels and stagger their way into the money. The 28k at 8pm ET on full tilt, which usually attracts around 1500 runners at $26 apiece, this week suddenly sports fields of over 3000 runners every night. And like I mentioned, for the most part these additional players are not the more skilled players who you might normally find participating in the large-field $26 and $50 mtts available on line. No, for the most part I think these extra guys are by a vast majority flonkeys -- the kind of guys who would never normally play in an mtt at this level -- but you are just hoping to get lucky and get deck-smacked for a few hours and try to make a hundy or two.

With such a huge influx of flonkadonks in the big guarantees on full tilt, it's no wonder to me that I am not having success. I've never really done particularly well in the $26 level nlh mtts on full tilt. If you think about it, most of my success has either been at the next level or two up ($50 or $75 buyins or more), or in rebuy events which again distort the buyin levels up from just allowing anybody with $26 of scratch in their full tilt account to register to donk it up. As compared to a guy like, say, Chad, who has been called the King of Donks for a reason after he won the nightly 10pm ET 32k on full tilt like seven times in one year, I simply do not fare as well against the lesser competition as I do against just one level up from the bottom of the large-field mtts. I have written about this before and have long thought that this is because these clowns simply do not understand when to fold, be it preflop, on the flop, or afterwards. And you know what? I could not count how many times -- just in the past two days of double-guarantees week on full tilt -- I have been called down in a big mtt by an abject moron making a hideous play, even some times where they actually turned out to be ahead. Because I have noticed that, when the board comes down 9TJ with two suits, and then the river brings an 8 of the same suit as the other two sooted cards, there is just no way you're getting your opponent to lay down his pocket Kings, not on the flop, and not on the turn, and it just doesn't matter how much you're betting or how well you have told your story of strength right from the getgo in these things. I've always fared better against opponents who know how to fold at least a little bit, and that is exactly what appears to be missing from the fields this week on full tilt as opposed to the normal participants in these events.

But that doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying. I would love to say that I'm just not going to try to push anyone off a hand unless I am holding a monster for the rest of this week on full tilt, but in a nutshell I get dealt a monster hand only about once a week or two, leaving me with no other option but to make plays when I know more or less exactly what my opponent has that I cannot imagine him calling me down with. They just keep calling anyways. Thank god there's been UB this week to get my game on in sort of the opposite -- a smaller field of players where people are at least willing to fold if it is obvious they are beat, even if they started off with two good cards in the hole. I don't see this as much of an issue on full tilt in general, but this week it's just been painful watching these tournament morons call call call with shit, and then either suck out or just end up ahead because they aren't smart enough to fold their pocket pair to the obvious straight or flush on the board, etc. Unfortunately I do not think Wednesday's action in the UBOC is any good from what I recall, so I might be stuck playing a million full tilt mtts again, resigning myself to just hoping to limp to the min-cash like all the other monkeys while praying to get slapped in the face with the deck.

There's just so much money at stake, I feel like I can't stay away.

Ballys Tournament Win

A couple of weeks back I headed down with some friends to Billy's poker room in Bally's in Atlantic City and played in the $200 bounty tournament the poker room was running, which ended up having 45 runners and a total prize pool of a little over 6 grand. I knew going in this would be a real luckfest, typical of most daily tournaments in Atlantic City, with 20 minute blind rounds, usually lasting 4-5 hours from what I was told when I registered at the counter. And, never having played a live bounty tournament before, I learned that each participant would be given a single $25 actual casino chip along with 10k in starting $T chips, which would have to be given to the person who eliminates you along with your chipstack. Although stacks were deep for the first few minutes with starting stacks of 10k and blinds that would begin at the standard 25/50, those blinds would jump quickly in this aggressive tournament structure to 50/100 after just 20 minutes of play and then double again to 100/200 just 40 minutes after the start. Again, this is also typical in my experience of most of the daily poker tournaments available in AC these days.

Early on, not much happened with me for the first couple of rounds, so I tried to be patient while I looked for a way to double up early. I won a couple of pots with aggressive betting -- standard Super/System sort of stuff -- and quickly I climbed my stack up to around 12k in chips for the early chip lead at my table. But then I let my read get me into a very bad situation, one I was lucky to escape from. I open-raised from late position with ATo, the best hand I'd seen by about 45 minutes or so into the tournament, and the old man in the big blind, who had defended a couple of times before despite seeming very tight like most old men are, defended again by calling my preflop raise, and I put him on shizznit after he had already shown an over-willingness to defend his blind in just a few minutes that this tournament had run so far. From watching him I felt like I knew this old guy woulda reraised me if he had anything substantial in the hole, especially given how actively I had been open-raising already in the earlygoing, so I was liking my AT here, and I liked it even moreso when the flop came down AJ7. The old man checked, I confidently bet after his check, and he paused a bit before calling. I wasn't sure what this meant, but my best guess after this call was either a small pocket pair, or perhaps a low ace that he just got lucky with. The turn then brought a raggy 3, the old man checked again, so this time I made a bigger bet to try to end this right here with my likely-ahead-but-vulnerable top pair. And this was when the guy nearly fell out of his chair "thinking over" his response. I mean, he leaned back, took a very loud deep breath/sigh, stretched out his arms and legs very prominently, and just made a huge production of the whole thing as he considered his options. Eventually after a good, solid minute of very overt activity, the guy check-raised me allin. He had been a little short already before this hand began, mostly from defending his blind to liberally and then taking it too far, and it was all just such a stoopid production he made that I figured he just had to be bluffing. I mean, who would make such a damn production out of it if he was actually strong? I thought to myself, "That has got to be 'strong-means-weak' in action", even though I knew this guy was generally an old, tightish guy. I thought quite a bit over it, knowing that AT on this board is nothing to write home about, but in the end my gut told me he was weak since before the hand began, and so I decided to listen and called for half of my remaining stack. Old man flips up? The ever-mighty A3. So he defends his blind against a preflop raise with A-rag, and then he makes the very questionable move of also calling my c-bet on the Ace-high flop with his top pair no kicker. He lucksucked me hard by hitting his kicker on the turn after his bad flop call, made a ridiculously huge public production to further suck at poker and accidentally "trick" me into thinking he must be weak just because no one with even half a brain would ever want to make it so obvious that he had a strong hand. Anyways, he effed me and I would be down to just over 2000 chips from my 10k starting stack, and that's when the river rewarded the better player by dropping a miracle 3-outer Ten for the resuck. Ahh the resuck. Nowhere else in poker is something so unwelcome and unfair when done to you and yet so deserved and just when it works in your favor. And with the turn of a card I moved from losing 80% of my stack to nearly doubling up late in the first hour of what I understood was normally a 4-5 hour long event. A very good turn of events for me.

Early in Round 4, just more than an hour into the tournament, I called a preflop raise from across the table with my 66 in the big blind, against a guy who had open-raised almost every single time the pot was unopened when it got to him the entire way through this tournament -- I mean seriously, maybe ten different times in an hour -- and always c-bet the flops after he was the last raiser pre-. The flop came TT4 with two clubs, and I checked to the preflop raiser who led out with his standard c betty-looking thing, which I opted to call as I assumed my pair of 6s was at least as likely to be ahead here as to be behind, and the betting was still small compared to the stacks. The turn brought another miracle card -- a 6 to turn me a boat -- and of course I checked and of course the unstoppable aggromonkey bet again, smallish. I thought it over for a while, hollywooding as much of a thought process as I thought would be believable, and then I once again just called, eying the amount in the pot and deciding that I could still make a credible river bet or raise for most of his stack if necessary. When the river brought an offsuit Queen, I figured my best chance to really get paid here was if the guy happened to have a big, big hand, and his betting out twice after the flop supported such a conclusion. David Sklansky's No-Limit Holdem book a few years ago covered this same topic, but sometimes the best way to get paid big in nlh is to bet as if your opponent has a large hand, and assume you weren't going to get paid much anyways if he doesn't have a big hand, but this way you are sure to maximize your big hands when you are in fact up against another monster. In this case, I immediately moved in my entire stack, which was much larger than the size of the pot given my recent near-double, and just hoped for a call. When the guy started agonizing, I knew I had made a good decision; clearly, he had something he really liked, and he did not just want to give it up like that. As my ooponent kept thinking, the seconds ticked by and I began to worry that he might fold. So I tried to channel my very best bluff face by acting completely stone-faced, like I was afraid the guy might see through my ruse. I tried to put up the exact same face that I look for when I think someone is bluffing. Whatever I did, eventually it worked, as the guy turns to me and says "I can't find a way to lay it down."

As soon as I heard that, I knew I had his stack, and my second $25 bounty chip in just the first hour and a half of the tournament. No way he says that line if he also has a boat, and with anything else on this board I know I've got him beat. Turns out, he had AT and had flopped not only trips, but trips with top kicker. I probably would have had to really do something crazy to get him to fold, but I didn't, and I shot up near the top of the leaderboard before the end of Round 4 in a tournament that would end up finishing during Round 13.

At this point, with a nice fluffy stack of chips in front of me, I did what I do best and commenced operation bullystack. With my big stack and as close to full utility as I was going to get in this fast-paced tournament, I turned on the jets and absolutely steamrolled the table, garnering several comments over the ensuing hour or so in the process while I bet and raised everyone else out of pot after pot after pot. I raised pretty much every time the action came unopened to me, mostly with absolutely no regard to the cards I was dealt. I remember winning a pot with a raise holding 42o, another with 86o, and there were many more just like those as well. And I didn't just drop the hammer on these guys during this stretch, either; I dropped it twice. Within the span of maybe 7 or 8 hands. Most people do not know this, but live hammers -- in particular, when not done to other bloggers -- are so much more dramatic than they are online, by a factor of like ten. People get really taken aback by that shit for some reason, who knew. But I love the boost it gives my image, and I just need to be sure to be prepared to show down some better cards for a while if need be. Or, just keep on pushing and try to make more than I lose from the aggression, which is exactly what I did over the next couple hours of this tournament. The key was that without exception I managed to fold to any reraises I faced when I did not have the hand or the pot odds to back it up. Yes it caused me to lose chips after having raised preflop with some regularity, but again the key to playing the bully is to make sure tht overall I am making more chips from the times everyone folds to my raises then I'm losing from the times people keep pushing me off my largely bullshit hands. Playing first-in aggro but smart to reraises, I knocked out three or four other players along the way to the final table, but we finally consolidated around Table 1 -- the table I had started at a few hours earlier -- when down to ten left.

I entered the final table as the chip leader, as we took our second break of the tournament just after we re-drew for seats to start the run to the money in the top 6 positions. I know I was the chip leader -- I had around 87k in chips to start the final table out of the 450k total chips in the tournament -- because when I came back inside from my second smoke break of the event, they had removed the yellow 100-dollar chips and brought in a nice light-blue color chip denominating 10,000 dollars in its place. I remember it so vividly because I had left for my smoke with a massive pile of chips in front of my seat, so big and unwieldly from repeatedly scooping up tons of little pots with nothing in there, sprinkled in with a few stackings of shorties for good measure. The pile was so big that I remember I had been having trouble finding places to keep my arms as I reached down to peel up the corners of my hole cards. But then out of nowhere, when I came back from the 10-minute break, I had this tiny little pile of chips, and at first I was all whatthefuckjusthappened and ready to go find the Tournament Director, until I realized that the primary change in my stack was the switching out of 3 1/2 huge stacks of red 1000-dollar chips and replacing them with a pile of just 8 of these light-blue 10,000 chips. But I also knew I was the chip leader because nobody else around the table had more than two blues along with their remaining reds and the purple 500 chips, while I had 8 of 'em. The rest of the stacks around the final table ranged from shorties with around 10k to about 60k for the closest stack to my own.

Mercifully, mostly due to the silly structure of this tournament that had even me as chip leader holding just over 10 big blinds with blinds of 4000-8000 and a 400 ante, the beginning of the final table went fast as the shortest stacks were forced to push almost on their very first big blind when sitting with Ms of just around 2 or even less. Typical daily casino nlh tournament structure, with typical laughable final table pushfest ending. The good part of that at least like I said was that the first 3 final table eliminations happened fast, with me grabbing one of them when a shorty pushed under the gun and I found AJs in the big blind and called. He had A8s and I held to pick up my 7th knockout chip of the tournament and getting me back to break-even for my buyin (including my own bounty which I still held on to at the time). These first few elims took us down to 7 players remaining, with 6 slated to pay out, in amounts roughly equal to $500, $600, $750, $900, $1200 and $2100, give or take some change on each. So as the bubble loomed -- a bubble which lasted probably about 40 minutes thanks to at least three allin suckouts from the short stack as any self-respecting tournament bubble would insist upon, which is an extremely long period of time for when the average chipstack was about 65,000 chips while the big blind had risen to 10,000 chips -- I noted how much the payouts in this tournament were weighted towards the top two spots, increasing by roughly just a hundred bucks a spot between 6th and 5th and 4th and 3rd place. This would make it especially important to make it to the final couple of spots in this event, and in my mind it also increased my desire to do a chop if anyone was interested since with just an average M of 6 this was obviously anybody's game -- even I as chip leader had an M under 10 -- and it was clear we were going to be subject to the vagaries of poker luck, and who happened to pick up TT vs 88 first or who got the AK and won a race against JJ. So, after about half an hour of bubble play, as the blinds moved up to 6k-12k, further dropping the average M to near 5, someone suggested a save for 7th place, which I readily agreed to and literally took $20 cash out of my pocket and suggested that everyone do the same. Pretty quickly everyone left agreed as well and I offered to be banker for the $140 save to ensure that 7th did not go home empty-handed, and hopefully loosening up the action a bit among the short stacks. And it worked, as within just a few minutes a shorty with an M under 2 pushed KTs and got called by AK, sending him home with his $140 cash booby prize plus whatever bounties he had managed to amass, and launching us into the payouts for the final 6 finishers. At the moment I had slipped to second place after folding a couple of times to allin reraises from stacks big enough to cripple me (any reraise is crippling when even the chipleader's M is under 10!), but when one of the two super short stacks suggested a chop, even I figured it wasn't worth pushing for then as two or three of these guys would likely be gone very shortly and then would increase significantly the chance of us actually finding some unanimous agreement on splitting up the remaining prize pool.

We played a bit further, and as expected two more guys dumped out early when luck and the silly blinds forced them in with lesser hands, one of the running into AA as I recall thinking at the time how fun that is to pick up pocket rockets at the final table of any tournament. Unfortunately, I had had a couple of more times where I laid down questionable hands to reraises in an attempt to amass a stack to last until those lucrative top two spots, and finally when down to four remaining I found myself the short stack with about 65k in chips, a little under two-thirds of the current average. When the action folded around to me in the small blind a few minutes later, I felt compelled to push with any two cards to pick up the 12k from the big blind and try to increase my stack by almost 20%. I did so, and the big blind, who was the chip leader at the time and thus had the chips to burn, began to agonize over whether or not to call. That sucked for me, since I was holding 53o, and I tried to give off my best indication of strength, acting confident, strongly stating my chip count when he asked, and just generally looking around and being active like I picture someone with pocket Aces would be, as opposed to the stone-faced, motionless aura I try to work when I want someone to think I am bluffing. It did't work, the big stack called me and flipped up A9o. Whoops.

The flop was a whiff for both of us, still leaving me with 6 outs twice, and then the turn brought the most beautiful 3 I can ever remember seeing in a poker game, securing my double up and reallllly pissing the big stack guy off bigtime. He referred to this derisively as a "suckout" the rest of the way through the tournament, including while we waited to receive our payouts from the overworked TD as well, and I didn't bother correcting him that (1) his A9o -- a hand I imagine would have called there with as well -- was only roughly a 60% favorite when the money went in, not exactly a suckout-level beat, and, more importantly (2) when I pushed with the 53o, I was far more than 50% to win the hand given the likelihood that the big stack would fold there, plus my 40% chances of winning with what would surely be two live cards vs. just about anything the big stack was likely to call my push with. But no matter how you slice it, I had doubled up with 53o, and thanks to the extremely short stacks around the table, this put me slightly back in the chip lead, a lead I would lose a minute later when I once again folded a hand I had raised with preflop (KJs) when one of the other large stacks pushed in on a reraise. The guy to my right then eliminated the 4th place finisher and took a comfortable chip lead when his AQ bested the shorty's A6 allin preflop.

It was at this point, down to just three players left with me in 3rd place around 100k in chips, while the other two guys had around 150k and maybe 200k or so, that the big stack surprisingly offered to chop. He was a really good guy, someone who I had gotten to know a little bit over the past four hours where he was mostly at my table, as well as over a couple of smoke breaks along the way, and I was happy to see that he had enough knowledge and experience in casino poker tournaments (turns out he comes to AC a couple of days per week) to be willing to agree to a chop even when holding the chip lead. His immediate proposal was for each of the three of us to take $1200, and then leave the last $900 and change in the prize pool to play for. I always like a chop that assures everyone a decent payout of at least the minimum that the next player out would receive but then still leaves some skin in the game to go ahead and finish things up, so I agreed, and so did the 2nd place guy after a few minutes of finagling. We all shook on it and then moved on to play it out.

And that's when I picked up my only big pocket pair of the tournament -- a big fat pair of pocket Aces. So sweet. Long story short, the big stack raised ahead of me with what turned out to be QJo, and my allin reraise from my short stack wasn't enough for him to consider folding given the odds, and I ended up doubling to a nice fat stack. While I was still stacking my chips, the shorty to my left was eliminated in 3rd place on the next hand, his face still clearly smarting from losing his chip lead to my 53o, and as soon as we found ourselves heads-up, I offered the nice guy who had originally offered the chop to chop out the remaining $900 as well. Looking at our stacks, I had probably just under three times as many chips as him, and I quickly offered him a 600-300 chop of the remaining 900, with him being allowed to retain his own $25 bounty chip as well as part of the deal. He quickly reviewed the stacks, took a second to think, and then happily agreed.

Two smokes and a bunch of wasted time later -- the TD was just starting to pay out a 12-way chop in a turbo tournament that ended at the same time as ours when we agreed to our final chop -- we recieved our receipts to take to the cage for our payouts. 3rd place took our chopped amount of $1200, plus the three $25 bounty chips he had won during the tournament, and the nice guy in second won $1500, plus his two bounty chips and of course his own that he retained as part of our deal. And I cashed out with the remainer of the prize pool per our deal, which came out to $1890 and change. Plus, I had won a whopping nine bounties along the way at $25 a piece -- some nice booty for playing big-stack bully for about three hours straight to end this short tournament -- and retained my own as well, giving me a total of an extra $250 for my efforts on top of the $1890 cashout from winning the tournament. How I managed to eliminate more than a fifth of the total people running in this thing seems pretty incredible, but more than that, I played a solid game from start to finish. I made the one big mistake early on my semi-misread on the turn against the guy who had lucked into two pairs, but that's one of the big lessons I've learned over my time playing mtt's over the past few years -- the good players are the ones who not only play well, but the guys who make the most of the good luck that they do receive. I got lucky to get that guy in there willing to call a preflop raise and then call a flop bet with top pair worst kicker, I got extremely unlucky with that 3 on the turn, and then I scored a major resuck suckout on the river to not only keep from losing 80% of my stack, but to score an early double as a result. Would I go on to spew everything away over the next couple of blind rounds? Or, as I did, would I take that "second chance" to give serious consideration to every play I made, settle down and start playing my game the way I know best? That's one of the keys I am noticing more and more during my big tournament runs as well as those of most people I know: everybody gets lucky sometimes, but the best players make the absolute best of that luck when it does happen to them.

And so goes the story of my second live daily casino poker tournament win, good for around 2 large net of all expenses and the buyin. Most importantly, I had a blast playing live poker as usual, and once again I found myself throughout simply overwhelmed with all the information I felt I was picking up from these players after what seems like a lifetime of purely online play. Not only am I pleased to have a nice start towards my most important poker goal for 2010 -- to turn more of my rare final tables into victories instead of just top-4 or top-3 finishes -- but this only strengthens my resolve to find a way to play some more live poker during 2010, however that has to happen. It's very hard for me to get out to a casino and play at a time when they have regular tournaments scheduled, but I have just had such an amazing run of success in live poker tournaments of late that I am left feeling like I am straight-up leaving money on the table if I don't find a way to get in a little more live tournament action this year than I have in the past. In fact, after this win in AC to start off the year right, my thoughts have turned towards Foxwoods, where I know they run a major poker tournament series every Spring and again every Fall in what I understand to be the nicest, best poker room on the East Coast. I haven't been to Foxwoods in more than a decade -- certainly since before their WPT poker room was installed in the basement of the Rainmaker Casino -- but I'm thinking that 2010 should be the year that all that changes once and for all.

Football Frenzy, and Favre F*cks...

Kostanza FTW!! That's right -- after going an abysmal 6-21 or whatever it was in my final 27 picks of the NFL season, including the first two rounds of the playoffs where I finished 3-5, it had become painfully obvious to me that I had turned into the Joe Bloggs of picking NFL games. There's just no other way to see it, and I am nothing if not introspective. So, being that I was still interested in picking these games, that left me with little else to do last Thursday night other than to pull a George Kostanza from undoubtedly the best Seinfeld episode ever, and just pick each game exactly as I normally would, and then bet the opposite of those picks. I mean, I literally won just 6 out of my last 27 picks, so that means I was reliably wrong in my analysis an amazing 78% of the time! Who in the world has access to an indicator that spot-on for NFL games, right? Just me. And the result?

A big, fat 2-0 on the weekend. And what a weekend it was of NFL football.

Where to begin? I suppose let's start with the Colts. I don't want to write a lot about what an amazing performance Peyton Manning had against the vaunted Jets defense, who coming in had only given up 8 passing touchdowns all season before Manning torched them for three on Sunday afternoon, mostly because I know everyone else in the world is gonna be gushing about the guy for the next two weeks straight. But it's pretty clear what happened in that game in my eyes. When the Jets played the Bengals in the playoffs, Darelle Revis essentially took Chad Ochocinco out of the game as far as big plays, and qb Carson Palmer and the Bengals couldn't get it going anywhere else enough to make a game out of it with the Jets. Then last week, when the Jets visited the Chargers, once again Darelle Revis essentially took Vincent Jackson out of the game from a big-play perspective -- V-Jack actually had a very productive day but he was not in the picture in the big plays and did not sniff a touchdown on the day. Although Antonio Gates also went on to have a similarly nice day in stats but never getting near the end zone, the bottom line is that Phillip Rivers and that team were simply not able to make effective use of their other players once V-Jack wasn't going to be catching any 45-yard touchdowns on the day, and the Jets' defense ended up totally stifling and embarrassing the Chargers in front of their home-town fans. So when the Jets brought Darelle Revis into Indy-town this weekend for the right to play in the Superbowl, they figured he would be able to essentially keep Reggie Wayne out of the end zone, and once again they were right. But unlike Carson Palmer and the Phillip Rivers before him, Peyton Manning had just the answer for the deletion of Reggie Wayne from his repertoire in this game: Pierre Garcon and Austin Collie. Two rookies. Rookies! And this time it was the Jets who just had no answer, as Manning absolutely lit up that defense for nearly 400 yards and 3 touchdowns just through the air, and as expected the Jets were just not able to keep up.

Think about the Jets' side of things for a minute, it hardly needs to be said out loud how clearly this was a very solid year for the beleaguered "second franchise" from New Jersey York. I mean, this was a rookie head coach in Rex Ryan who, by the end of the season, seemed to have more or less figured out this league, didn't he? What he did to the Bengals was one thing, they had a very good year and many expected them to win the game in the Wildcard round a few weeks back, but it was the Chargers game that really cemented this team's season this year as more than just a passing fancy. And they also played a rookie quarterback behind center all season as well, and even though there were a great many low points during Sanchise's 2009 campaign, he certainly finished up strong, winning seven of his final eight starts before losing to the Colts, and winning three out of four on the road in his final four games of the season to make it to the conference championship in his first season as a pro. This team has a long way to go to be able to best the likes of Peyton Manning, but at the same time, unlike some teams that played this weekend, it's not like they mistake'd themselves into losing to the Colts on Sunday. The best team in the AFC from start to finish is the one going to the Superbowl now, and the Jets made a nice effort but simply did not have what it takes to stop Peyton Manning, most likely the greatest quarterback to ever play the game. When you see a guy doing what he does statistically -- taking on all comers, including the NFL's best defense in the Jets this weekend -- and also clearly playing the role of offensive coordinator, audibling and calling the plays regularly on offense, and the offensive line coach, etc. it's easy to forget that no other player in the league does that. Manning is just mind-numbing.

Anyways, I promised myself I wouldn't write about Peyton like that in this post. So moving on to the other game, this was another great shootout-style of game like we've seen elsewhere in the NFC playoffs this year, only the point totals at 31-28 were not quite as high as previously, mostly because there were 87 turnovers in this game. And the New Orleans Saints are going to their first Superbowl ever. For those of you who have spent any amount of time in New Orleans over the years, can you even imagine the party going on there last night (and still now I am sure)? Or in two weeks if the Saints manage to find a way to outscore Peyton and the Colts? Wow. Drew Brees only threw for 197 yards, but his three touchdowns were enough to keep pace with the Vikings, who badly outgained the Saints on the day and seemed to move the ball at will before either AP, Brett Favre, or a combination of both AP and Brett Favre would fumble the ball, with the occasional interception thrown in as well for good measure.

And for the Vikings fans out there, what a sick, sick way to end the 2009-2010 season, obviously. The Favre haters out there -- and lord knows there are a shit-ton of you, you know who you are -- could literally not have scripted this thing better. I mean, the poetic justice of Favre coming back to the Vikings this year, having the year he had, with 30-some tds and just the 7 interceptions, to then end the team's run in a situation where his team basically had a long field goal attempt to win the game already, and really only needed 5 or 10 more yards to give their kicker a really good shot, by throwing that interception. It's like a movie, almost. A horror flick for the Minnesota fans out there, that is for sure. Favre actually threw too hideous picks in the game, as I've heard some monkeys on the radio since the game give Favre a pass due to the rush about to hit him on his first pick, in reality that's exactly what made that so horrible. He Eli Manning'ed it! The rush was coming in his face, and rather than chuck the ball away, or just tuck it in and take the sack, instead Favre leans back on his heels, falling backwards, and just sidearms the ball forward to avoid getting tackled with the ball. And it goes right to the Saints defender cutting in from the side, who of course Favre didn't see as he fell backward and lashed out his arm blindly at the last possible second.

And then Favre's interception with his team very close to field goal range with 8 seconds left in a tie game....I mean, if you're Brett Favre, how do you throwing a fuggin pick there? How? Your team is close to field goal range, your kicker's career long is the exact 57 yards that this kick would be right now if the Vikes cannot pick up any more yards. If you can get maybe 5, maybe 10 more yards, that would probably make a big difference. Just run the ball, maybe throw a real short, real quick screen or something. Whatever you do, just make sure you don't throw a pick. Not with a chance to win the game and go to the Superbowl already within our grasp. While Mark Sanchez of the Jets for the most part played a solid game against the Colts in the early game on Sunday, it turned out to be Brett Favre who played more like Sanchise, throwing just 1 touchdown but the two huge interceptions that kept his team from having a chance to win this game in a spot where they very nearly already had a chance to win if they could have only held on to the ball.

And while I'm on the topic, Brad Childress embarrassed himself so much as a head coach this year. I mean, he's actually worse than Andy Reid! Hands down. Not only was there the whole debacle this year where Favre bent him over and fire-raped him when Childress failed in his attempt to wrestle play-calling control back from Favre who was repeatedly changing running plays to passing plays all season long, but Childress single-handedly contributed to his team's breakdown at the end of regulation, and it was the kind of mistake that is so blatant, so overt, that people all over the country (yours truly included) were pointing it out right when he did it, as opposed to just after the fact. After Chester Taylor ripped off a nice run for a new first down in Saints' territory, Brad Childress made the unthinkable decision to just run the clown down until there was just time for one or two plays left, rather than using a couple of well-intentioned running plays to do that while also picking up a few more yards along the way. Instead, because Childress allowed time to whittle down to only one or two plays left, when his team then made an incredible procedure penalty to get moved our of field goal range, he put Favre in a situation where Favre felt pressure to make some kind of a play, and to do so fast. This doesn't absolve Favre from his shit throw or his penchant for ending seasons and dashing his fans' hopes with overtime interceptions late in the playoffs, but Childress deserves a huge amount of the blame for his utterly obvious, even-in-real-time evident gaffe that directly cost his team a trip to the Superbowl. Brett Favre might be careless in the clutch, but Brad Childress, you are a bona fide moron.

This week I should have two fun posts on stories of nice tournament scores I have made of late, one at Bally's in Atlantic City in their daily bounty tournament and one in the UBOC going on right now at UltimateBet.

Rush Poker is Pretty Cool!

Just last week Full Tilt Poker added a new game to their site called Rush Poker and it is quickly becoming very popular.  Rush Poker is basically a sped-up version of normal poker that uses a pool of tables to constantly switch players around so that they are always in the action.  Unlike a normal [...]

Phil Galfond Joins PKR TV

Phil “OMGClayAiken” Galfond has teamed up with PKR as a commentator on PKR TV.  Galfond will be playing cash games live this weekend on PKR as well as commentating on the games over at PKR.com. Here is the official press release from PKR: London, January 22, 2010 ? High Stakes cash game legend Phil ?OMGClayAiken? Galfond will [...]

Speaking of Quakes

A few days ago there was an earthquake here in Cayman. No real damage to speak of. I didn’t even hear about anyone getting injured let alone dying. But it was a 5.8 and it was definitely enough to wake me up. A lot of people were understandably freaked out given what had just happened in Haiti. I went outside on my porch to a lot of screaming and yelling. Thankfully though, nothing really happened after that.

I’ve been dealing with this stupid dental surgery all week. I had a relatively minor procedure done on Monday but I have some stitches in my mouth and it’s causing a bunch of swelling. One side of my face looks a bit messed up but it’s been improving slightly today. It has caused a bunch of problems with stuff like eating because, pretty much, the whole inside of my mouth hurts. A lot of it is referred pain from the area with stitches but it’s definitely very unpleasant to eat right now. But, according to the guy did the surgery, this is totally normal and usually mouth surgery tends to heal very quickly. I guess it’s one of the good things about the human body that it makes the mouth a top priority to be healthy. He thinks I should be back to normal in a week.

In TV news, I am excited 24 is back. As usual, I was pretty bored with it for like the first hour or two. I was actually questioning whether I even wanted to watch it this season. But it has managed to suck me back in after four hours so I am definitely excited to see the rest of the season. I am also ridiculously excited for the last season of Lost so I am counting down the days until that starts back up. I also just finished rewatching every Curb Your Enthusiam. What a terrific show. It took me a few months to get through the whole series but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Does anyone know anyone who is a PHP/MySQL expert with experience working with vBulletin? I am not looking for someone who simply knows PHP/MySQL on a basic or even intermediate level. There are tons of those people out there. The person or group that I’m looking for is harder to find. I am looking for someone who knows hardcore MySQL optimization, how to integrate fast full-text search options into vBulletin (such as Sphinx, dtsearch, Lucene) and other more advanced procedures. Ideally, the person would also be an expert at finding slow queries in MySQL, knowing how to fix them (ie, which indices to add, how to change the query, etc), how to change server configurations to optimize performance, etc. Lastly, being a vBulletin expert would be a huge plus. And just having installed vBulletin doesn’t count. I am talking about having a detailed understand of the hooks in vBulletin and how to make serious core-level changes to the code. This is a potentially lucrative opportunity for the right person so please pass along my email (natarem@gmail.com) to anywho who might be interested. And, if you couldn’t tell, this is someone we could use to get the new PocketFives done faster.