The Prop Bet and the Mets

Wow, 94 runners in the Mookie this week! That was awesome. I mean, the blogger "community" as such is clearly dead, has been for a loooooong time, but it was nice to see us do something as a group for the first time in quite a while. Very awesome. I wish someone could figure out a way to bring what's left of the "group" together like this more often, in a way that isn't designed to bring monetary profit to someone, that is. Oh well, one can always dream.

Congrats to Texas April this morning for taking down the biggest non-BBT Mookie tournament in I bet a couple years at least. Good times and a great run for April in a huge field that showed up to help give Waffles a chance in his prop bet to outcash LJ. Who knew a guy like Waffles could actually bring this group back together like he did? I'm really amazed about it still, but happy.

Anyways, about the prop bet. Now that it's over, let's tell it like it is: it was a dumb bet. I mean, Waffles historically has had some success in the blonkaments, but with the emphasis on some. He's proven beyond a doubt that his skills have improved -- in particular when he puts himself out there with a bet or challenge like this -- but to give oneself only a small handful of chances to make up a large dollar deficit like he was facing, in a raging minefield tournament like the Mookie, well that is just a lost cause. I'm not saying it was literally impossible, but let's just say that I made out like a bandit betting against this thing right from the getgo. Then Waffles got hot and recorded a couple of near-the-top cashes, and that's when I really cashed in. I was able to make bets giving less than 10 to 1 odds against Waffles winning essentially a nearly impossible bet to more than a few bloggers and blogger watchers for what I viewed as basically free cash. And liking the guy like I do, nothing would have made me happier than having to pay out on those bets if Waffles managed to win, which I was really rooting for even down to the last day on Wednesday night. And when I keep saying it was an impossible bet, this is not meant as a slam on Waffles at all. Phil Ivey couldn't come in to the Mookie and win enough money over 8 tournaments or whatever it was to pass LJ with more than a one or two percent shot in my view. The Mookie just is what it is, and winning it, let's just say that it takes something less than optimal poker skill to take this badboy down.

Truth be told, and I know this is something a lot of people have been thinking whether they admit it or not, but there is no way you can't be impressed with what Waffles has done lately. My only real comment about it is that it shouldn't take him putting himself out there like he has to much success recently in order to play this well. Given his strong performances once he has issued a public challenge this year, it is obvious that Waffles has actual tournament skill buried somewhere deep, deeeeeeep inside that head of his. But there is something wrong with this picture to need to issue public proclamations and promises of success in order to bring it out. Hopefully he will take this latest Mookie escapade as a good chance to learn that lesson. That's why, earlier this year when the guy went completely off the deep end and challenged me to an mtt contest event though he's never won a large mtt of any size whatsoever, I failed to respond. I like Waffles quite a bit, and I don't want to be part of his need to challenge himself publicly in order to get him to play his best. Rather, I want to be part of him realizing that he obviously has it in himself to play this way all the time, without the need to force himself to up the stakes like he has with the Mookie bet, his BBT3 prop bet with Bayne, and some others.

And of course he would have had no chance against me in a large-field mtt bet anyways, who am I kidding.

Anyways, even though Waffles failed in his bet, it was in truth about a 100-to-1 shot to win the kind of challenge he came up with, and most other, more reasonable prop bets about the Mookie would have seen him win them with how well he played over the past couple of months. So I for one congratulate the guy on a job well done. But like I said, it's not finished yet. The real victory for Waffles will be if he takes this tremendous opportunity to realize that he can play this way every night, that he can win a large-field mtt someday soon without the need to shame himself in public if he doesn't. There's no way I believe that Waffles is the worst poker player except when he has issued a public challenge on his blog. Obviously he has the skillz, now is just the time for the guy to step up to the next level and make it happen without the need for any external reason other than just that he's sitting down to play some poker tonight. That should be all it takes. So anyways, congratulations to Waffles for a job very well done yet again in this challenge, despite the outcome not working out the way we all would have liked.

And pay up, all you deadbeats. You know who you are. Full tilt transfers will do just fine, thank you.

Even with the Waffles action last night in the Mook, that was nowhere near the highlight of my night. That honor rests squarely with, once again, the New York Mets. I wrote about them the other day and have several times in the recent past, but Wednesday night was pretty much a microcosm for how I feel about the Mets over the entirety of the past two seasons. So they're obviously locked smack in the middle of a major playoff race -- entering the action on the night they were 2.5 games behind the Phillies in the NL East and 1 game ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers with just 4 games to play on the season. So this was a huge, huge game for them, and they are up against the Chicago Cubs, pretty much the best team in the Major Leagues this year. They go down a bit early, but they rally back to a nice lead thanks to a 5-run third inning, only to give up five runs late and need a late-game miracle to get back in it. Which is exactly what they get, scoring a key run to tie it up in the 8th, and as we move to the bottom of the 9th inning, with the hometown fans going crazy, they lead off the 6-6 game with a triple. So there's a guy on third, nobody out, 6-6 game against the best team in the league in a huge spot, and to boot the Mets have Wright, Delgado and Beltran coming up on deck. This has to figure to be what, 98, 99% that they're going to win here? And yet somehow this team full of chokers cannot bring the guy in. Rather than walk him, Lou Piniella embarrassingly decides to pitch to Mets "poster boy" David Wright, who promptly goes up in the count 3-0. Amazingly, he swings at the next pitch, missing it. Fast forward a few more pitches and there is Wright striking out on a high fastball, well out of the strike zone. Cough cough!! Wright, what a step-down artist in September. Then the Cubs wisely walk the next two guys to load the bases, only to see the Mets ground out weakly on a fielder's choice to home, and then they nab the third out as well and move to the 10th. The fans, as you can imagine, are crushed, many of them leaving the stadium after the team failed to take down this crucial game in the 9th. And naturally, before most of those fans are even off the stadium grounds in their cars, the Mets bullpen gives up not one, not two but three big runs in the top of the 10th, and the team goes whimpering into the night with yet another crushing defeat.

And on the same day, the Mets brass announces that hapless jackmonkey GM Omar Minaya is getting a four-year contract extension!! That franchise is too funny. The guy way overpays Carlos Beltran who has disappointed since the day he showed up here and everyone in baseball knows it, he way overpays choker Pedro Martinez who has been horrible basically since the second year of the well overpaying 4-year contract Minaya signed him to, he won't give up on that bum Reyes even though the guy gets worse and worse every year, he couldn't bring himself to fire Willie Randolph until it was far too late in the season, and then fired him very unceremoniously and without any class at all, the list just goes on and on. Extending Minaya right now -- really, doing anything but firing him at this point -- is no different when it comes down to it than all these Wall Street CEOs getting huge severance packages after running their firms into the ground. Minaya had his chance, and he has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he's a chump, a guy who will overpay anyone to bring him to New York even though everyone else passed on him for the money the Mets offered him because he clearly isn't worth it, and the Mets go and extend the guy for four more years just as the team is in the middle of completing yet another late-season collapse orchestrated almost entirely by the very players Minaya has brought in here over the past few years. Like I said, that team is too funny. That game last night was absolutely classic to watch, as a Mets hater like I am. Between the Mookie and the Mets, and throw in those juicy 1-2 PL O8 tables on full tilt and I had a really great night on Wednesday.

Maybe I will come out and win the Riverchasers again tonight, or maybe not. But it's at 9pm ET, password of "riverchasers" if you want to try your hand at the tournament I pwn for one night tonight on full tilt.

Thoughts of Running Bad

I've got nothing fresh or original about poker swirling around my head today to be quite honest. The truth of the truth is that this past week has been one of my least enjoyable weeks of poker in a looooong time. The thing with being me is that when I run bad, I will take 15-20 bad beats a night. It is sick. I've learned to handle a ton of bad beats, and really I can't remember the last time I even close to tilted from any particular beat. But as mostly a tournament player, these bad beats never seem to come at a good time or in an unimportant pot, and lately they have been ending some nice runs I've been building up over several hours, most often just short of the bubble in the nightly majors.

Consider just the most painful ones from just Thursday night. I lost a ragingly monstrous stack in the Riverchasers when I got it in with my AA against KK allin preflop, and I still couldn't find a way to win the hand. When I caught someone bluffing with their 74o allin reraise vs. my pocket Queens late in the 32k, the guy rivers the straight. And in the $150 satellite to the $1060 buyin FTOPS #10, first my JJ loses to 99 allin preflop to rape half my stack, but through my greatness I managed to rebuild and was back in the top third of the field with about half of the entrants eliminated, and then my AA loses allin preflop to QTs when the guy flops a migga fligging flush on me. I mean WTF.

Anyways even I have to admit some digghead ranting about the bad beats he took last night is no kind of good blog reading. It doesn't even feel good to write it, believe me. Suffice it to say that I when I run bad, I take a lot more bad beats than most people could deal with, and it can really sap away my enthusiasm pretty quick if it continues for long. So today after yet another night of spankage, I got nothing fresh.

So be it.

Let me change things up then by asking a few questions of the readers today.

First, Esquire80 left me this comment to yesterday's Bet or Check the River post:

"I've got to agree w/ shrike, your optimal play is to bet out right into him. In this particular case he would have most likely folded but he could have called, folded or you would have induced a bluff which you were prepared to snap off.

Based on your read you are assigning him something like a 10% chance of a flush?

Overall, you are losing value here unless your plan is to check raise the river with your strong holding in an attempt to squeeze more out of him. In this case he didn't have anything to squeeze but if he had someting like Krag w/ 2 pair or got a cooler w/ a set you could felted him.

Frankley, to be results oriented I don't think you could have got any more value out of that hand given his holding but the value bet on the river is the superior play in the long run." (emphasis added)

This is a very black-and-white-ly stated position, and in my experience in poker such matter-of-fact strategies generally prove not to be nearly so cut and dried. So I get it, my presumed fellow lawyer guy, you say that betting is better than checking in this spot. But not once do you say why that is correct. And the why is at least as important as the what. So do tell, I am all ears.

Secondly, let me ask a more general question here. Am I the guy everyone is talking about who uses too many commas and uses them too liberally? I mean, I like to think I'm pretty self-aware, and it's not like I don't know that I seem to write more and longer posts than most people. But when people are out there commenting on how people use commas all wrong, have they actually been talking about me this time for real? That would be fucked up.

Here's another good one: Who the fuck would ever be betting on an NBA game right now? Go read that link. I have to credit our man for the inside scoop on the betting lines in Las Vegas Miami Don for that link. But dayummm, who on earth is betting basketball these days? Think the NBA might have to revise its stance that this was an isolated referee, acting alone, all along? Christ, that shit just gets worse and worse.

Oh and before I go, for those who don't know, Bayne and Waffles have a $100 staight-up bet going where Waffles bets that he can climb to the top of the year's Mookie leaderboard within I think two more months or so. When the bet was made earlier this week, I think Waffles was in 7th place or something, and was basically $260 or something behind the current leaders, LJ and Surflexus. Well, already Waffles busted out with a third-place finish in this week's Mookie tournament, climbing a bit on the board and narrowing the amount he has to recover in the next several tournaments. So today I am going to establish some odds on this bet, which I will plan to track the rest of the way through the challenge.

When Waffles agreed to bet $100 straight-up that he could climb Donk Mountain enough times to overtake the leaderboard top spot in just a couple of months in the Mookie of all tournament, in my own head I set Waffles' chances at about 3% of winning that bet. Now, however, after this week's performance alone, I'm going to kick those odds up to about 12%. That is a big jump right there, but think of it this way: what kind of odds would I be willing to offer someone who wanted to bet me, say, $50 that Waffles would win. So I get to keep his $50 if Waffles does not take the Mookie lead, but if he does take the lead at any time in the next two months, would I be willing to pay $500 in exchange for the $50 now? I would not, not quite. I'm setting that line at around 8 to 1 odds, like I would take the $50 now if I knew I would have to pay out $400 if Waffles wins the bet. So 8 to 1 is where I'm setting "the Waffles line" for now. 8 to 1 everyone, place your bets, 8 to 1.

Monday Craziness, and When Does the FTOPS Start Again?

Another Monday, another BBT3-enabled Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt:



See you tonight at 10pm ET, password as always is "hammer". $26 buyin shorthanded no-limit holdem is the game, same as ever. 13 events left to win your BBT3 Tournament of Champions seat, so get in the game tonight at 10pm ET on full tilt.

Anyways, as I reflected over the weekend, a bunch of crazy shit actually did happen while I was out of commission for a couple of weeks, most of which I never even had the chance to mention in the blog since I was so dead to the world for about a week and a half or two weeks there.

1. In the feat whose craziness simply cannot be topped, Waffles went and won the BBT3 Player of the Month for April, along with the 2k WSOP preliminary prize package that goes along with it. When we had chatted on the girly at some point before he officially claimed the POM, Waffles said he would not play the actual WSOP with the money unless he wins the Main Event package in the upcoming BBT3 Tournament of Champions. At some point when I caught up on my blog reading after resurfacing sometime last week, I think I saw a post from Waffles that he was considering playing one of the preliminary WSOP events. Waffles, if you're out there, come play the 2k nlh tournament with me on Thursday, June 12 I think it is. You will crush that field I am sure. Anyways I know I was close at some point near the end, and I went on a big run in the middle of the month there, but when I got sick there was simply no chance of me playing. It wasn't a question of heart and it wasn't a question of pain threshold. Those of you who've had mono I am guessing will understand. I could not sit down and play for more than 5 or 10 minutes. Period. And in the end, Waffles was outplaying me thus far in the month, he was leading the race by a decent margin, and he would have gone on to win anyways.

Now at least we all get to see what we thought we'd never even have to think about seeing -- Waffles' spewage after his first big score. All you guys who've won a big tournament or made a big online score for the first time will know what I'm talking about. With 2k sitting in that account, it is gonna be dam hard for Waffles to play smart poker for a while me thinks. It's fun to get to be in that situation, don't get me wrong, but continuing to play smart gets about 10 times harder once you get a little roll to help you not worry about things.

2. I am still trying to figure out wtf happened to Buddy Dank radio while I was gone. I knew something about a new thing called Live Poker Radio, which I had processed as really just a name change, but maybe I was wrong about that. But otherwise, I basically passed out for two weeks with BDR being just BDR, our normal awesome online radio show hosted by Buddy and IT, rolling live and on-air during most of the weeks' private blogger tournament. But then I wake up and like Rip Van fuggin Winkle, now it's officially called Live Poker Radio, and they're broadcasting from the Borgata? WTF?

As you might have guessed I have been unable to listen to BDR or whatever it's called now for the past several weeks, where I am sure most of these details have been hashed and rehashed, but for those of us who haven't been awake enough to listen, can somebody give me the scoop? Are Buddy and IT down in Atlantic City broadcasting this shit live from the Borgata? How often are they broadcasting from there? Whatthephuck is going on with that shit, I have no idea but it sounds really awesome.

3. The quarterly FTOPS series of high-buyin poker tournaments basically started without me even knowing. And if you've read here for a while then you know how rare and odd that really is. Usually I am all about the FTOPS, and I will devote basically the month before the tournament to qualifying for as many FTOPS as seem interesting to me, usually averaging around 30-40% of the buyins spent to qualify for as many events as I want to play. This time around, however, I struggled to stay up to play in the Mookie last Wednesday, and when I logged in to full tilt I suddenly see the graphic up top of the lobby on the client that says FTOPS #1 and has some unnamed, probably horrifically bad red FTP pro's picture on it. I was like "Holy shit, the FTOPS is going on right now already?" So I literally missed the final two weeks of qualifying for the FTOPS before the series started, and as a result of this total lack of ability to plan, I haven't even thought about playing a single event yet. I saw some blogger donkeys qualifying for several seats so far, but I've been too out of it to even know although I have not heard of any big blogger scores so far in this thing.

So here's my plan for this week. The one FTOPS event I did qualify for this weekend in a $69 buyin 1-table sng is the one coming up I think on Tuesday evening, the $216 buyin Turbo nlh tournament. I play a whole lot of turbo tournaments in my nightly satelliting, and this thing definitely sounds interesting to me. Yes it will be quite a crapshoot about 80 or 90 minutes in or so, but it's a crapshoot that I definitely have developed the right game for, so I'm looking forward to that one. I know I say this all the time, but if you have the means, I highly recommend the $75 buyin sng sats to the $216 FTOPS events. They are so choice. You pay $75, and the top three finishers out of 9 players win their seat. It's quick, and it's effective if you know what you're doing. Top 3 out of 9 donkleshits just isn't that hard to do if you know how these things play.

Otherwise, there are probably only a couple of other FTOPS I would realistically play in at this point. I would have loved to have played in tonight's 1k buyin tournament as I have in the past two FTOPS series, and I would have too if not for being sick given how easy this one is to qualify in in one of the many, many satellites they run, but that's not gonna happen this time around. I played in the megasat on Sunday night for the 1k FTOPS event, but I picked up the dreaded open ended straight flush draw early in that one. I say "dreaded" because somehow I always end up allin against some top pair monkey or a higher flush draw, and somehow my oesfd never seems to hit despite being the alleged favorite on the flop to take it down.

Anyways the real plan is to probably play in most of the 9:45pm ET mega satellites this week, which FTOPS will run every night as they always do these days during the FTOPS. For those who don't know, these are almost always $50 buyin tournaments, and they run as mtt satellites, posted on the regular mtt tournament lobby in dark blue font. They are almost always satellites into the following night's FTOPS event, whatever that is, and typically they will take the exact same format as the underlying FTOPS event itself. It's good stuff, and with the advent of $T I can even play a gheyass game like razz where I would never actually drop the actual $322 to actually sit down and be dealt rolled up trips three times an hour at razz. No way. But I'll play it and keep the $T in a second. And with so many seats available in these 9:45 mtt sats -- that's why I always call them megasats -- they are much, much easier to qualify for the FTOPS in. Again, of course, the caveat is If you know what you're doing. To only have to end up in the top 100 finishers out of a 486-person mtt, again, it's just not that hard. Not saying it's a walk in the park, but top 100 out of 486? Come on.

The other thing I will have my eyes on this week are the nightly 10:45pm ET megasats into the FTOPS Main Event. These are typically $100 + $9 buyin mtts, they guarantee at least ten $535 FTOPS ME seats, and on average they probably attract somewhere between 55 and 80 runners a night. So basically it costs $109 to play, which may make these tournaments prohibitive for many of us and that is something I can completely be down with at this buyin level. But again, if you have the means, a 20% chance of satelliting in to the ME every single night this week? I don't care if I win the seat right away tonight, but as long as I am feeling up and awake for it, I will try to get in there every night this week until the FTOPS concludes with the $535 buyin Main Event next Sunday at 6pm ET. And if I do win a seat, then I will try to figure out how to get Hammer Wife to be cool with me playing. Man if they could just move that shit to 8pm instead of 6pm ET, I would be golden. But either way, I will definitely take at least a few cracks at the ME this week, and if I can play my way in for less than the $535 buyin, then I will view my goal for the week as being accomplished.

That, and winning a few more BBT3 tournaments maybe.

See you tonight at 10pm ET for Mondays at the Hoy on full tilt!