Wow. Now that was the blogger tourney with the biggest price-pool that I can remember. 1450$ in total, after 62 buys, 160 rebuys and 48 add-ons (including the 100$ addon from Mike’s site). Really nice to see that the winner could take home 435$ 🙂

It wasn’t me though, but I’m still satisfied. It was fun, although it was crazy early on. That’s what sets rebuy tourneys apart from most other tourneys. Players are not worried about pushing their (more marginal) hands early on as there’s always the chance to rebuy until the first break. So basically the first hour is really different from any other first hour of the regular brogger tourneys (WWdN, Mookie, etc). I was able to push my 1010 into Wes‘ QQ early on, but then, after my first and last rebuy and some nice pots, the hand happened: I look down at KK and they hold up against Wes and another opponents hand and I’m looking at a monster-stack of over 15k in chips (starting chips 1500). So I was in the chiplead after 35 minutes and should remain in the spot at the sun for another hour:

After that I went into the maintain stack modus. It was easy enough to steal some blinds here and there as we approached the first break and the end of the rebuy period. Most players took the addon (2k chips for 5$), I passed as I was still in the chiplead.

Then the card-deadness set in and I thought it’d be a long night, then I look down at the hammer in the SB…folded around and I raise to 800 (4xBB)…DuggleBogey in the BB only has a stack of slightly over 2k left, so he pushes…now I can’t laydown the hammer to a 1.2k raise, so I call…Duggle shows 66…sure enough the hammer does me good with a 7 on the flop and the not necessary 2 on the river. I bust Duggle and take a note to self: “Hammer g00t!” 😉

After that it’s more card-deadness…I swear I’ve never seen so many 47o, 48o, 36o in my life. In what feels like an eternity (I didn’t really have a look at the clock, so it could have been only 20 minutes) I didn’t see a single face card, so it was fold fold fold, even when in the BB as people starting to turn on the heat. Then I finally look down at a real hand again QQ…I raise the usual 3BB, one caller…flop comes down xKx with two hearts. I check, he bets…I call. Turn is another heart. I check he checks behind me. River is another heart. Now I don’t have a heart and I’m almost certain I’m done…I check, he checks. He shows flush King high (he held 44 with the 4h). Yuck. This hand got me thinking: First mistake – not betting at least half the pot. If I make a half-pot sized bet here he can either fold, call or reraise. If he’s reraising I can still think about the pot-odds and if I believe his King in the first place. So a informational bet would have been in order here. Second mistake – bet the turn, even if he had a King chances are good he doesn’t have a heart at all or at least a small or two small ones. Third mistake – bet the river (if it would have come down to this), he had “only” 5k left, which would have put a dent into my stack, but I’m not sure he would have called down in the first place with his measly 44…so this one was clearly my fault.

After that hand I’m down to 10k with the average stack size approaching 15k. Damn! A few hands later a short-stack pushes and it’s up to me in the BB to decide: fold or call the additional 2.5k with Q9. Now I’m the first to admit that this is a loose call, but Q9 was the best hand (apart from the QQ) I was holding in ages and the fact that a short-stack can push with such a huge range of hands made me call. He shows K10, K on the flop and that’s that. Now I’m stuck with roughly 7.5k. The biggest stack at the time was smokkee approaching 50k. Now I’m not on tilt or anything, but my card-deadness, the fact that it’s after 5am and the fact that I want some chips back lead me to play looser and looser. A few preflop raises called just to fold on the flop or turn quickly lead me to an all-time low and the back of the pack with just 2.6k left. So I basically have to push with the next semi-decent hand. I’m UTG and look down at A5, not really a decent hand, but hell, next hand I’m the BB which would cost me 800…so there’s no other option. One caller…his K10o beats my ass as yet another King hits the flop. Out in 22nd place 🙁

Ups:

1. Playing at a tough, but really entertaining starting table including our table rebuy-kings shadowtwin and Wes…

2. Holding on to the chiplead for quite a long time…

3. Playing with a lot of other broggers, including “The Blogfather Himself“, Wes, Bobby Bracelet and all the others…

4. Actually having a great time along with the chance to win some nice dough…

Downs:

1. Card-deadness, especially bad when playing with some of the most aggressive players you’ll find…

2. Some bad plays I made in the end…time to get down to the analysis on some of the hands…

Last but not least: Thanks again to Jordan and TripJax for setting up yet another classic brogger tourney!

In his most recent post he’s thinking about starting a last longer pool…

Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Chris Ferguson, Perry Friedman or Mikey the Monkey

🙂

My thoughts on this proposal:

Well, I don’t have a clue what they are thinking putting a monkey into the Main Event, although many people have already called this year’s WSOP a zoo, so it might be not that far out after all. That said, I don’t have a clue about what the monkey is capable of either, so it’s really hard to say…so I’m moving on to a comedy prediction…:

I. Phil Hellmuth will have a strong run in this year’s Main Event. One thing is for sure though: he will blowup sooner or later (I’m guessing later this time), but it inevitable – the super-donkeys-worst-players-ever-tilt is upon him for sure, especially due to the donkey/pro ratio which should be huge this year.

II. Negreanu: I hope he goes deep, I like to watch him. I guess it all depends on the run of cards in the end (remember last year where he got sucked out on time and time again and couldn’t make a hand in return when he was drawing?)..

III. Perry Friedman: Hmm…maybe his faces he paints on his hands sometimes can give me a clue :p

IV. Chris Ferguson: Jesus will do well, too. I don’t see him going ultra-deep though

V. Da Chimp: He will spend most of the time in the later stages of day 1 on the rail for dropping a p&p-bomb – yes that’s a poo&pee-bomb: after starting out pretty well by sucking out on some donkeys, it’s going to be his time to get sucked out on. After getting sucked out on, he’ll turn on the inner aggression monkey and crap all over the table…this will earn him a 2h penalty, which will be enough to almost blind him out. Shortly after that he’s going to be all-in with da bananas (77) and double up, which in turn will lead to yet another railtime as the “happy monkey dance” isn’t allowed on the dealer’s head…this time the penalty is only 1h, but it’ll be enough to blind him out… 🙂

So my last-longer guess is:

1. Friedman

2. Phil Hellmuth

3. Da Chimpster

4. Chris Ferguson

5. Daniel Negreanu

Anyone willing to put a banana split on that? 😉

Started out with Waffles, Duggle, Miami Don and our host at table 1…played a mix of tight-passive (early on)/tight-aggressive poker and was successfull. After nearly two hours we sit down at the final table…

…then right before the second break the following hand comes down:

I’m in the BB with 88, Dnasty raises it 3BB from the SB, I call…flop comes down 8-9-10 rainbow, so unless he’s got me set over set I’m golden, he insta-pushes…I insta-call…he shows AA…nice! So no straight to fear…dealer does his magic and drops a friggin A on the river…no 9144 chips for me, but out in 8th place (6 ITM, top 3 get the ipods).

Now I’m not going to go off in a Hellmuth style rant or moan like The Mouth after getting yet another junk kicking…after all it was best hand in, best hand out, but considering the fact that the money didn’t go in preflop, there’s at least a little thing to moan about: flop 86/9 (5 tie), turn 77/5 (18 tie)…friggin river 0/100…and a Mike “The Mouth” Matusow quote is in order “There’s no justice in poker…”…thank you.

…and before I forgot it due to the whole steaming like a fresh pile of poo thing: Once again thanks to Mike for hosting!

Sometimes you gotta wonder if the old myth of the first time luckbox is really true. Tonight we played our 15th home game with three premiers and a surprise:

1. We bought two real poker tables to replace our old setup of two “normal” tables with some felt overlay.

2. We started our “championship race” – we will play our home game tourney like always, but we take out a small percentage of the prize pool and the final table players will receive points for their finish. At the end of one year from now, the top three in the championship will receive something extra (we haven’t decided yet if it’s going to be cash or prizes).
3. We welcomed a new player

4. The surprise: we’re getting some t-shirts made for all the (regular) players…I’ll post a pic of the logo as soon as I get my hands on the digital files.

The rest was the usual: the usual crowd, the usual setup, the usual payout, etc. So we start off at our first table and I’m running good early on (up almost 100%). Then I’m bouncing up and down until we’re at the final table. I’m sitting in the middle of the pack and after some players bust out we’re on the bubble. Sure enough I’m card dead and have been for a while. So I’m happy to push once I look down at a rag ace…just to be called by our new player, who holds, what a surprise, AK…no help for me and I’m out on the bubble. A few hands later he busts the remaining two players with a pair of threes (vs AKo and A5s)…so first game, first win. Nice…he played well, but he got lucky not only once but on a few occasions. All good though…we all know that variance will kick in sooner or later 😉

After the results were written down we decided to start a second tourney, this time with half the buyin and just one table (only 5 players wanted to play again)…quick summary: Got some good cards early on and maintained my stack until we were headsup…yes…against the new player…it all came down to one hand…I look down at 1010 on the button, but I just call…he checks out of the BB and is first to act after the flop comes down AA5…he pushes…now I’m either in big doo-doo or I’m golden, I decide that I don’t believe he’s got an ace (why would he push there with one?)…so I call and he flips K2o…my 10s hold up and I win the second tourney…w00t.

Now I come home to write this down along with the results and I find that my mail-server is acting up…great to see that all mails of the entire day were rejected (yup, that’s rejected, so no queue…gone…), great…I found that the antivirus software was the culprit…I hope that an update will solve this mess, if not this thing is out of here…alrighty…enough babbling…gotta catch some sleep…see you all on sunday (blogger pods)…if you didn’t signup already head over to pokeronamac and register – it’s more competition for me and the other players who already signed up, but it’s good for Mike (dbirider) and what’s good for Mike is good for us in the long run as I would love to see similar promotions in the future 😉 so get your lazy behind in gear and register, before it’s too late…

I’m registered in the Poker on a Mac BloggerPods tournament

Almost forgot, next week it’s time for yet another DADI. It’s almost guaranteed to be a donkeylicious event, after all it’s the first rebuy ever! There’s added prices and what not again, so check the following pic for all the details.

…and you can always check out the posts of Jax or Jordan or the official DADI blog to get the lowdown…

What many fellow bloggers and players in general already told over and over again is really true: (some/most/a lot of) players at PartyPoker are weak. So I hit the SnGs the last few days, although I mostly dislike the costs. What am I talking about? I mean at the limits I play (usually 5$ SnGs) Party is by far the greediest poker room I’ve seen in my life – 5$ for the SnG, 1$ fee (all other rooms I play charge .50$). So that sucks, but it’s not all that bad if you’re running good. I played 4 SnGs (3 shorthanded, 1 full) and cashed in 3 (would have been 4, but we’ll leave the bubble suckout of J7o vs my QQ out of here)…so I’m up with one win and two second place finishes. All good.

Tonight I decided to get some cash into Stars again and play the WWdN. 52 players showed up and I busted out in 44th. Really ugly if all you see is 23o, 24o, etc all the time. Then you see some semi-decent hands and bust out quickly. I hold AcJc and get the blinds, in the very next hand I hold AsJs and get reraised…what to do…roughly 900chips, blinds will reach 50/100 when they hit me…so nothing much left to do, although I could have let that one go, but no…I decide that this is a good time to call the push…sure enough opponent shows AKo…K hits the flop, not that she needed it…but better out quickly than to run low on chips again after x hours of poker. So I’m not all that bitter. Off to catch some sleep now…cya all at the WWdN next week…

Playing while drunk can really be fun, although it still hurts if you lose with Ax vs Kx three times in a row, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Friday started out with some SnGs at FullTilt and trying to catch up with all the revealing trip reports of all those in attendance of the WPBT Summer Classic. Man, I really really wanted to be there, but it wasn’t to be. Maybe next year when I’m finally done with my degree at university.

So we headed to a mate’s birthday (the host of our regular home game) and we basically had no intention to play any poker 😉 but in the end it was the good ol’ drunk early morning game. I was able to finish ITM in the first one, then quickly donked out of the second one. In the third one I was the monster chip leader at one point – 3000 chips were in play and I held around 2200 of them. Then the already mentioned three in a row Ax vs Kx hands happened: I called a double-All-In with my Ace rag and one of the other players almost tripled up. Then we were All-In again, same result. Then again and it was over with. Let’s just say that neither luck nor concentration was on my side – we were approaching 8am (!) and were slightly buzzed up to say the least. Come next friday we’ll play our regular home game again, which brings me to the next topic…

…we talked about finally getting a (semi-) decent poker table for our game as we were playing on a regular table with some felt thrown over it, which is kind of ugly. So I ordered one tonight, a foldable one, a true bargain considering the regular listings around here. I’m really looking forward to play at a real table.
On saturday, after the ultra-relaxing (note: lie) 2 hours of sleep on the couch I already needed to get up again as I was picked up at 10:30am to play a private footie (that’s soccer for the americans) tourney which involves drinking, too. Well, it basically revolves around drinking…nothing like getting your buzz on again easily with a nice cool beer. Play and drank the day away and when I finally made it home at 9pm I was so knackered that I almost fell asleep on the spot. Then I remembered that I should take a shower and treat my sunburn from drinking and playing footie in the sun all day. Almost needless to say that I was well awake again after the shower, so I watch a movie and at midnight I was finally going to bed…just to get up again at 9am today (sunday) to help clean up the location of our tourney.

So some live poker friday, no poker on saturday and only one SnGs on Party – a one shorthanded table donkfest which I won after I successfully trapped two donks in a row (nice to flop or turn the boat, seeing your opponent chasing the useless flush and pushing when it hits: priceless). Apart from that I was looking around at FullTilt and PokerStars and unbelievable how many players turned out to play the monster seat tourneys (FTP: 100 seats, Stars: 150 guaranteed) tonight. Good thing that you don’t need to win those things to earn a seat, but by looking at the numbers I would say that the guy/gal who wins the one on Stars should save some himself some time and stay at home – after beating a field of 7737 (s)he should have used his/her luck for the whole year, so no point in showing up in the main event 😉

Alrighty…enough babbling for tonight…I should catch some sleep anyway after this quite exhausting weekend, especially considering that I’ve got a dentist appointment tomorrow…

So I log into FullTilt and browse the SnG section, which I haven’t done in a while. I find a new (to me at least) token satellite – shorthanded, 1 table, 6$, first gets the token, second gets 10 bucks. Not bad I think as I jump right into one. I sit back and relax and just play solid poker, pick up some pots and observe the competition. I’m seeing that one player is basically weak tight, one is agressive and the rest is trying to play tight. After some sucks and resucks we’re finally three-handed, so it’s bubble time and I find myself in the mix with the aggressive and the weak tight player. Cool…until I cannot get the weak tight fellow to put down his hand preflop…yes, you guess it, his cards were s0000ted (J9), so who can blame him calling my push preflop 😉

At least I’ve got him covered and I hope for better luck next time we run into each other. Not to forget about mr. aggressive, I let him steal some of my blinds as I’ve got no intention to call with 7 high out of position, even though some of my crap cards are s0000ted 😉

Then the hand of the night goes down: he’s on the button again and raises 3BB…I’m smiling as I look down at KK in the BB…and I’m not only smiling because of the cowboys, but the fact that I’ve got him outchipped maybe 3:1, so even if I lose that pot to some runner runner bs, I’ll still be more than healthy. So I call and he shows 1010…to my surprise my Kings are good for once and we’re headsup for the token and I’ve got the chiplead (roughly 2:1). After a lost race (my AKo vs 77), I start to put the pressure on, after all he’s mr. weak tight, so what the heck. He folds and folds and folds and when he finally calls a hand, he’s behind in it (my A4o vs his K3o). Neither one of us hits anything and I take down the last pot with Ace high. Gimme the token, thank you.

Sidenote: I enjoy playing shorthanded quite a lot and this one table format is really cool as it should be done in less than 1h (or even 45minutes) in most cases. I’ll give those a few more test runs and as soon as I’ve got  some tokens I’ll try to play some of the guarantees again or maybe even the satellites to the WSOP 100 Seat tourney. We’ll see…

So I decided to try the latest PokerSavvy (aff) promotion and signed up for Mansion Poker. Deposited some dough and jumped right into the first SnG (what else is new?). The play dragged on and once again people were calling stuff down like crazy, so I decided to pop it up preflop whenever I held something decent and pound those suckers at every chance after the flop. It worked quite well and I was in a comfortable chiplead, then I was gone in fourth place after getting kicked in the junk three friggin times within two orbits…

1. KK vs J2o, backdoor four flush board goodness

2. KK vs J10s, turned flush goodness

3. A10o vs Q9s, I raised to 6xBB preflop…flop comes down 95A…I push…he calls…just to turn a 9 against me…

Well done there once again. So I played one friggin SnG and I could already rip some of their players’ throat out for playing like friggin retarded half-monkeydonks and having the guts to trash talk after their crappy play…side note: and yes, one single player, probably both the dumbest donkey and the luckiest git I’ve ever seen, sucked out on me in all three hands… (his screen-name is millar33 so beware of him, he must have interbreed CJ’s luckbox with the “Back from the future” home fusion generator…)

I’m going to cool down now and come back with a vengeance later 😉

Edit: To hell with cooling down, I hit the cash tables and what would you think who sat down a few minutes in? Yes, Mr. Suckout himself. I don’t want to get to deep into it, but let’s just say his suckout are limited to SnGs and/or very short-term as I stacked him three times within 20 minutes 🙂