The Mookie

Played in The Mookie last night at Full Tilt. Attendance was down, probably because the tournament was inexplicably scheduled an hour earlier than usual. No doubt a time zone snafu since Mookie is in Vegas right now. If I hadn't logged in to play some limit beforehand I probably would have missed it.

I got off to a real shaky start. Just a few hands in I get T3o in the BB. Four players see a flop of TTQ. It checks around. The turn brings a 8 and makes the board a true rainbow. Lucko21 comes out for 90 (still 15/30 blinds). I do a clever and sinister min-raise to 180. It probably seems less clever and sinister if you don't realize my typical move in this situation is to triple the previous bet. Two folds and lucko21 calls. The river brings a 7. There are a number of hands that beat me, but I think I'm probably still looking good, particularly with the way the betting has gone. I bet 210 into a 480 pot. Lucko21 calls and turns over J9 for the straight. I guess he was afraid of the full house, so it could have been a lot worse.

That took about a third of my stack. I lost another good chunk when big slick didn't pan out. Not even through the second level and half my stack was gone. Things were looking grim.

An apparently good bluff brought my part way back. Then came the big hurt. A big blind special provided a flopped straight, but runner-runner diamonds put four of them on the board and I had to fold to rmbj494's river bet. He showed the ace of diamonds.

I was down to the felt and pushed with pocket eights. They held and I almost tripled up. I picked up a good bit more somehow during a disconnect.

I generally like the Full Tilt software. They need to work on the bet slider, but it's generally pretty good. Except for their disconnect logic. It's terrible. It takes forever for the software to recognize it has lost connection and then it takes even longer for it to establish a new connection. They really need to work on that.

From that point I pretty much got blinded away, eventually running AQo into pocket jacks. I finished 10th. Not terrible considering the bad start and the level of the competition.

Tonight is the WWdNot at PokerStars, 22:00 EST, password monkey.