Weekend poker

I played the blogger donkament at Full Tilt on Friday. Apparently it's been going on for a while but I just read of it this week. A $1+$1 rebuy with a $1500 add-on. I'm not a huge fan of rebuys, but this one had a few things going for it. It was cheap. It was clearly just for fun. It was cheap.

I set my options for maximum auto-rebuy and headed off to see how stupidly I could play. The answer, apparently, was very, very, very stupid. I recall briefly holding the chip lead, but donking it all away. Seven rebuys and an add-on, and I still couldn't get anywhere.

BuddyDank again provided tunes and commentary during the tournament. He even noticed my subtle request for some classic Thorogood. Thanks, Buddy. I look forward to your future 'casts.

Full Tilt has finally stopped spending money on cute new avatars and has made a few worthy program upgrades. They now offer a time bank like PokerStars and have a full two minutes of disconnect protection. The latter may or may not be a good thing, largely depending on your perspective. If you have a flakey connection like I did when living in the hotel, it should be a great feature, particularly if they also did something with the part of the software that detects the disconnect. That was always my issue. It took their software forever to recognize there had been a disconnection and to then reconnect. Fortunately, I now have a very reliable connection, especially since dumping that POS D-Link wireless router.

While waiting for the blogger donkament I played another of the turbo tier one ticket tournaments. If you have patience and don't get greedy, these things tend to be fairly easy. Playing for fourth or fifth is a lot simpler than playing for first. Highlights included a beautifully slow-played AA and me catching a set of fives against a slow-played TP aces, Q kicker.

I just don't get some people. I'm pretty sure my understanding of the game has not progressed to the point where I've completely lost touch with the beginning levels, but some play still mystifies me. One limp and it's to you in the SB with AQo. You call. Eh? I don't get it. AQo isn't strong enough to slow-play, but it's certainly strong enough to put in a decent raise here. I'm making it 4-5BB and hoping I can grab the BB and the limp. But he just calls.

The flop comes A72 with two spades. No spades in your hand. Top pair, strong kicker in a hand with all limpers. You're probably ahead here (you do have the mighty hammer to be concerned about, but there were no pre-flop raises so you're probably safe there), but there is a spade draw looming. So, what do you do? Bet the pot or a bit more and take it down right now, right? Nope, you slow-play your TP by just checking. Oh, yeah, this is always a good move.

The pre-flop limper bets 2/3 the pot. Okay, so your slow-play has paid off and it's time to make your move, right? Nope, you continue your slow-play, just calling. Huh? How do you not move in here? You're almost certainly ahead, but you're vulnerable. There's a flush draw and a straight draw staring you right in the face and you decide to continue the slow-play? This is a rather Hoy-esque move, but I don't think even the master would have just called at this point.

The turn brings a 5. It doesn't look like a scare card, though it does fill the straight for the 34 and it also brought a second flush draw. You continue the slow-play and check. Okay, I can't disagree with this one. The other guy bet the flop so there's no reason to think he won't bet the turn. If the plan is to move in now, the check makes sense. Might as well give him a chance to throw some more chips our way.

But, whoa, the other guy moves all-in. And he has us covered. If he had a 34 the five made his straight. Do we really want to risk the rest of our chips calling an all-in with just TP? Of course we do! What? Wait! We're calling an all-in with two flush draws and a potential made straight, and a possible OESD on the board? And all we've got is TP?

This guy had three bites at the apple before the turn and he passed up all three. Then, looking at a board with a ton of draw potential (none of it his) and an all-in from a player who's shown some strength already, he calls with TP for all the rest of his chips. I don't usually like to critique other people's play -- at least not publicly -- but this struck me as someone determined to make mistakes until he gave away all his chips. I don't think it would have been possible to play this particular hand worse than this. Folding the AQo rather than completing the SB would have been a lesser mistake.

So I almost double up and take a fairly commanding chip lead. If this was a normal tournament I would have pressured the hell out of my table, but in this one the top five all get the same prize. I should have just phoned it in from this point. Hell, I should have sat out. Unless it dragged out for a long time, there's no way I would have blinded out before we were down to the last five.

Instead I got aggressive/greedy with QQ and ran it into an AK that flopped an A. (We got it in pre-flop.) I had him covered by a wide margin so I was far from out of it, but I couldn't coast to victory. We had three serious shortstacks at the final table. After they were gone it was just a matter of not being the next eliminated. I succeeded in that at least. So I'm all set for the MATH tonight.

I continued my quest to clear my PokerStars bonus. $1/$2 limit hold'em was kind to me on Saturday, though I gave it all back on Sunday. I think it was about a wash. And I did clear the bonus. This may be the first bonus in ages I've cleared without losing two to three times the bonus amount in the process. Things are looking up!

I'm looking forward to besting my effort last week in the MATH tonight. Hope to see you there.