A Little Vacation

I'm working tomorrow and then I'm on vacation until December. Sorry blog fans!

When I get back I have 20 days of pain planned that should get me to 1,000,000 points for the year and make me Supernova Elite!

During that stretch I'll try to post at least 10 hands of the day...of course I've been known to make empty blog promises in the past, but I'll do my best.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

FTOPS X Final Thoughts

Sorry about the lack of update on the last two events. I got a little burned out on blogging in the past few weeks.

In the $129 Knockout I gave myself a chance to go deep. After losing 60% of my chips 5 minutes in I figured it was going to be an early exit. But two hours later I hadn't gone broke or picked up any chips. Then I went on a total tear. By the time we were down to 1,000 players from the 7,000 we started with I was in 6th place. But as we approached the money (which was the top 720) I had A TON of moves backfire on me.

One of my big strengths (which has come from the experience of playing thousands of tournaments) is going after other players with total air because I know the situation is right. Normally when I have a big stack and we're getting close to the money I'm very good at running over the table (no matter what cards I get) without making it too obvious (you can't just raise every hand and expect to get away with it no matter how many chips you have). This time it seemed like every time I made a play someone played back at me. So by the time we'd made the money I was back to average, and went broke soon after when I made a bold, but solid play and ran into a big hand. I busted 3 people along the way (which isn't very many at all given I went from 5,000 chips at the start to over 120,000 at one point), and made a net profit of $138 (including the knockouts) for the tournament.

In the $535 event I went broke in very unusual fashion. Specifically I lost with AA to 23! That's not something that happens every day, and I bet 99% of the time it happens it's because someone slow played their aces. I, on the other hand, actually raised more than I normally would have and the guy with the 23 wasn't even in the blinds!

We started the tournament with 7,500 chips and I had about 6,000 left. The blinds were 50/100 and I raised to 350 in first position. I got called by 4 players in the field and the big blind! ACK! The flop came a bunch of junk with 2 clubs. I bet the pot and everyone folded around to the button who moved all in for about 10,000. I called, he had 23 of clubs, a club showed up and that was it.

In the end I took my $10,000 starting bankroll and turned it into $36,565. Of course all of that profit came from one tournament and if I hadn't played that one the FTOPS would have resulted in a fairly substantial loss.

At the start my goal was to have 4 cashes and one final table. I ended up playing 15 events which was a few less that I had originally planned (the fact that a ton of the tournaments started at 6 p.m. stopped me from playing more), so I'm happy to have had 3 cashes and of course my second place in the $256 PLO felt wonderful.

According to the FTOPS X leader board I tied for 67th place in terms of the player of the series competition. That's pretty cool since there were probably around 15,000 unique users that competed in the FTOPS.

Unlike the WCOOP the FTOPS is a twice a year thing (I think), and I know ultimate bet which has just joined forces with absolute poker runs a similar (but certainly smaller) set of tournaments which I've been meaning to check out. So before you know it I'll be back in the action. For now it's back to the daily point grind. I'll try to put up a hand of the day or two this week.

In conclusion I want to just add...SECOND PLACE! $33,000 BITCHES!

FTOPS Main Event Satellites

I just stumbled upon what might be some great value. Fulltilt has a set of about 5 $109 Satellites to the $535 main event. In all of them they've guaranteed AT LEAST 45 seats will be given away. That means they need at least 240 people to sign up to hit that guarantee. Right now with 5 minutes to go before it starts the first only had 142 players registered. The others are starting in like an hour and then every 30 minutes after that and have just about no one signed up. I looked like I've got a great shot to get into the $535 tournament cheap. Just a reminder to my backers that you too have a piece of all the FTOPS satellites!

FTOPS Update

Sorry for the major blog slacking! I went broke in the $216 FTOPS event in unspectacular fashion on Friday (I don't think I ever mentioned that result), and I just wasn't in the mood to play yesterday afternoon so I blew off the $109 PLO with rebuys.

I did have an interesting hand come up in the $535 heads up matches. I'm going to call it hand of the day #4. About 10 hands into my first match I got dealt 84 off suit in the big blind. My opponent just called and I checked. The flop came down QJ8 all hearts, I checked and my opponent bet 30 into the 60 chip pot. I didn't have much with bottom pair no kicker, but since my opponent could have just about anything I thought it might be the best hand.

The turn brought another 8! BINGO! Now I was hoping I was up against a Q or a J. Looking to get maximum value I checked and when my opponent bet 90 I made it 270 to go. We'd both started the tournament with 3,000 chips and I'd started the hand with a few hundred more than my opponent so I knew if he overplayed the hand or made an insane all in bluff I could bust him and move on to the next round.

After a long stall my opponent called my raise. I was thinking anything but a heart, a Q or a J would be a good river card. Instead I got a great one - a 4! There was almost 700 in the pot and I decided a bet of 400 was about right. To my delight my opponent made it 1,700 to go. This looked like a total bluff to me, but no matter what it was my only move was going all in.

My opponent instantly called and turned over T9 of hearts. For a second I thought about how I'd just put a sweet bad beat on him...and then I saw that T9 made a straight flush! AHHHHHHH!

Losing a full house to a straight flush is not something that happens everyday. I lost an ace high flush to a straight flush about a week ago, but I think it's been a few months if not years since I've lost a full house to a straight flush (I've never lost with 4 of a kind or better, but I have beaten 4 of a kind twice with better quads).

I was left with about 300 chips and actually brought that back to over 2,000 before getting it all in with a flush draw and losing to two pair.

In other news I've decided to skip the $1,000 in person tournament next Sunday. I need to get my FPP production back into full swing, and that's the day before I go on vacation for over a week which will no doubt take some prep time.

So today is the end of the FTOPS X. Hopefully I can do something in one of these last two tournaments. I'll give you all the final total at the end of the day today or tomorrow and I'll be sending out backer checks early next week.

FTOPS Satellite Update

SO CLOSE! I finished 10th of 88 in a $322 satellite to the $5,200 FTOPS event where the top five finishers got seats. The good news is I only played two other satellites, a $216 to the $5,200 event and a $109 to todays $535 heads up matches event.

In the latter the top 42 finishers of 227 entrants got a seat and while I was about 3 hands from being anted off I made it to the top 42! So it lookes like I'm playing $535heads up matches at 11 am. To make the money I'll need to win 3 matches, each vs just one opponent. I really enjoy this format, but I haven't had a ton of success playing in events with this structure so that's why I left it off my original schedule.

Of course I played the satellite on a total whim. In fact the tournament had already been running for 5 minutes when a message in the chat box of one of my other satellites mentioned it and said registration would be closing soon. For $109 I figured what the hell. Maybe it's destiny!

I also have $109 PLO with rebuys at 1. I'm 2 for 2 in PLO events in the FTOPS so I'm feeling good about my chances.

FTOPS Event #18, WSOP Champs, and Peter Eastgate Trying to Kill Me

I got my starting stack of 4,000 chips up to 8,000 at one point in Event #18 ($322 Razz), but that was as far as it went.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this tournament was I got to play against 1996 WSOP main event Champ Huck Seed until he went broke. Huck has two WSOP bracelets in Razz so it was interesting to watch one of the worlds best razz players play for a few hours.

This makes 5 world champions that I've played against. Specifically, Tom McEvoy (1983), Phil Helmuth (1989), Huck Seed (1996), Chris Ferguson (2000) and Chris Moneymaker (2003).

Also of note I've played against three WSOP main event runners up: Dewey Tomko (1982, 2001), Erik Seidel (1988), and Julian Gardner (2002). And of course like everyone who has ever been to Vegas I played craps with 1985/2000 runner up T.J. Cloutier.

This leads me to briefly mention the 2008 WSOP main event champion Peter Eastgate who was recently crowned the champ. Have you seen this guy? Did you see his reaction when he won over $9,000,000 and the world championship? He looked like he was watching episodes of Full House that he'd seen five times before. He looked like he was waiting for his bags at the airport. He looked like he was playing 50 cent blackjack and they told him it was time to shuffle the deck. Did no one tell him about the $9,000,000? Was he on some massive depressants or something?

Of the 9 people at the final table he was the worst one for the promotion of poker. He has all the charisma of a bowl of plain, lite oatmeal. He makes Greg Raymer look like Brad Pitt's character in Fight Club. He makes Robert Varkoni look like James Bond. He makes Jaime Gold seem like an F-ing mix of Mick Jagger, Tiger Woods and Han Solo! When is someone with a little personality going to win the world championship? You're killing me Peter Eastgate! You're Killing me! If someone with the vitality of the keyboard player of any marginal 80's rock band could win, online poker would get a major boost. Instead we have Peter "plain rice cake, fat free vanilla pudding, room temperature water" Eastgate. ACK! If (cough, when, cough) I ever win that shit I'm going to need 6 agents to negotiate all of the sponsorship deals!

Whew! Sorry Peter. I laid it on a little thick there. I'm sure you're a great guy and I'm sorry I spent the last few paragraphs slamming you. I'm sure you don't deserve it.

In all seriousness, Eastgate played great and he deserved to win. I was rooting for Chino Rheem (who I played against at the final table of the $1,000 HORSE second chance tournament in the WCOOP), but Eastgate did his thing and maybe in the coming months and years he'll turn out to be an admirable champ.

But for now, YOU'RE KILLING ME PETER EASTGATE, YOU'RE KILLING ME! YOU'RE SO BORING! AHHHHHHHHHHH!

PPA Congress Ratings!

Check to see if your congress person is good or bad for online poker here! Of the three listed for my zip code one got an F- (ACK!), another got an F and another got a B.