FTOPS Event #4 Pot Limit Holdem

Since yesterday I've been having a very mixed run of cards and play. I did six $100 9 seated SNGs. The first two I placed 1st and 2nd (in the case of the 2nd I had my opponent all in as a favorite and lost the critical hand and giving my opponent a 5-1 advantage. The next four, however were all bubble outs 4th place finishes with some truely bad-beat situations. In the first I was crippled to a short stack after calling a preflop raise with AA and checking a flop of TTT to my opponent who went all in with JQ. Turn and River J's gave me a gutshot punch to the stomach and a tiny stack that got blinded out in 4th. The next 3 were all 4ths as well (even with me trying not to take any excessive risks while on the button) AQ vs QJ all in preflop, QJ rivers a straight, etc. I did make some mistakes, but all in all I was very happy with my play in all of the sngs.

That's not what this entry is about, though. This entry is about transvestite poker players.

During the first hour of event #4 of the Full Tilt Online Poker Series I'm sitting next to someone named pokerguy7070. They didn't LOOK like a pokerguy...



I've played poker live quite a lot and one thing I guarantee you I don't see very often is this:



Especially on a guy...

Back to the actual tournament, though. I'm bleeding chips by a sieve by basically playing like a donkey. I've had a couple all-in moments, including me sucking out on pocket queens with my pocket 8's while short stacked. The last hand I played there was a minimum raise in early position with 4 callers and me in the BB. I raised pot with AKo which was almost all of my chips and the early position player reraised forcing everyone out. He had AKo also and the flop gave me a backdoor flush draw that didn't materialize so we chopped the limpers chips. It's not much, but I'll take it over the KK or AA I was half expecting him to flip over.

The tournament started with 696 players and there are 396 left. I have 1629T left which is about 1/3 of the average stack so I need some help soon. The blinds are at 60/120. Well speak of the devil. I reraised all-in with QQ preflop and ran into American Airlines. No help on the board for me and out 381st. The flop was all undercards so no getting away from this hand unless I fold it preflop which isn't likely. Oh well, there's always FTOPS #5 tomorrow...

FTOPS Event #3 Limit Omaha-8

Event #1 and #2 of Full Tilt's online poker series didn't do too well for me. I survived through about 2/3 of the field (2000 entrants in the kickoff event #1) and then got hit by two nasty hands in #2 (the limit holdem event). Two hands crippled me almost back to back and they were against the same player.

In hand #1 they raised (middle of the tournament) with Td 6d and I called in the BB with 88. flop 966 turn 7 and a river 4 kept me in the hand until the end to pay off his miracle trip sixes.

In hand #2 I raised in middle position with As Ks and the same opponent called with Kh Jd and the flop? Of course it was KJx. River was another K to ensure I lost maximum with this hand.

Back to today's event. For the first hour I'm sitting next to Full Tilt pro Stuart Paterson who is losing chips like a mofo. People are calling double raises pre-flop with hands like 87J2 and hitting while lows are counterfeited, etc. For the first part of the tournament I was doing pretty well, but some monster draws failed to materialize, or pots were chopped when I had by far the best of it on the turn. For example I had KKxx double suited and caught top set on a flop of KQ (low). There's two diamonds and opponent #1 has the nut flush draw and opponent #2 has AQQ6 and is giving huge action. Oppenent #1 has A35 for backdoor low draws, so in order to scoop Opponent #2 has to hit the case queen and to get low he has to have the cards come runner runner 3 5. They come runner runner 3 5 no diamond and I chop with uber dog.

Here's Stuart at the first break:


After the break
things started to go seriously wrong as my preflop multiway raises with A23x hands were greated with flops like TTx and I chased a couple hands through the turn when I should have folded. At this point I have 510T left and the blinds are 160, so I'm looking for some good cards and a good flop and ... well I need some help!

Help didn't come in the form of this hand heads up (all in except for 92 chips pre-flop and I bet the 92 on the flop when they had 4 outs to scoop). Ah well, that's poker.

Donktastic!

A few years ago I wrote an article on Low Limit Holdem called On Fish about reasons not to berate other players at the table. Since that time, with a lot more public exposure of professional poker players, a newer term is out, but the concept is the same: Don't call people donkeys! In fact, just read the On Fish article and replace "fish" with "donkey". Enough said about that.

The fastest improving cardroom right now has to be Full Tilt Poker. Even when they started they had a great interface, but now they've really taken it to a new level. Little touches like an "I'm Ready" button during tournament breaks/startups let you keep the action going if the other people at the table are ready instead of forcing everyone to stare at the screen for five minutes. Also, importantly, they now have a feature that autosaves hand history information to your hard drive for later analysis with programs like Poker Tracker. Finally the player population at Full Tilt is getting larger and larger thanks to their massive promotions online and on television. I've seen over 60,000 players online and right now, at midnight Eastern time, there are over 20,000 active players.

Low Limit Holdem is running a promotion during the month of August, 2006 giving away a lowlimitholdem.com Polo shirt to people who join Full Tilt and also a chance to win a Chipco poker chip set worth over $500. Information on that is here.

The other poker room that is giving Party Poker a run for its money is Poker Stars, perhaps from all the attention it gives from having back to back to back WSOP winners come from their site (and the current chipleader in the 2006 WSOP is also a Poker Stars player). I see 60,000+ users on both Poker Stars and Party Poker on a regular basis although I believe more of them are playing tournaments at Poker Stars than at Party.

The people on the Low Limit Poker Forum have created a series of weekly private tournaments at Full Tilt for fun. These are $5 + $0.50 events that are password protected (you can get the password on the Forum) and we're keeping a leaderboard. The top three at the end of the year may get something from the site (who knows?) but mainly it's just a chance to get together and play some poker. Feel free to join us!