Tuesday, November 21, 2006

MATH and Other Suckouts

Mondays at the Hoy was a huge success for me last night. Huge, that is, until Mattazuma cc'd me, insta-calling my preflop allin reraise when fairly shortstacked with my pocket 6s. So, you're thinking, he insta-called my allin preflop reraise, so he must have had, what? Pocket Jacks or better? Maybe AK? AQ sooted?

Nope.

King-Jack. Offsoooot. Gotta love it. No time at all taken to consider this move, just another insta-call with a hand that is just about as easily dominated as any hand imaginable in that situation. As I've covered before, if you know my play then you know I'm not reraising an EP raiser with less than a pocket pair, or at least a strong Ace. So, therefore my opponent had to know he was behind when he made the call, and yet, the call was made instantly. Interesting play. Less interesting was the highly predictable Jack falling on the turn. So, I went home in 10th place out of 20 players, leaving the tourney just before the final table which I was forced to watch from the rail.

In the end, it was Wes taking down I believe his second Hoy tournament, outlasting Iggy (click link for the super-secret NEW dwarf blog) and the aforementioned Mattazuma, who I will credit with playing a great game after that redonkucockulous call against me -- never once at the final table did Mattazuma fall out of the top 3 or 4 positions, and he played a smart, solid final table game, pushing aggressively when appropriate and making enough smart plays to get to the cash. So congrats to Wes, Iggy and Mattazuma, and I look forward to seeing everyone next week at Mondays at the Hoy:



Also, special thanks to Saradawg, who played in her first ever MATH tournament last night, as well as to Maudie who may not have been in her first Hoy, but definitely has not been a regular, which we always welcome.

Second, just thought I'd show you this screenshot from last night's 25k guaranteed tournament:



Gorgeous, isn't it?

I really only include this to illustrate the fact that I am so still in the poker gods' doghouse, you would not even believe it. I mean, last night I played in 6 tournaments, and I got bad beat out of 4 of them. Of the two that were not traditional "bad beats", one was the KK vs. AA hand above, and the other was just a horrible set-over-set on the flop that busted me from the nightly 4k guaranteed HORSE tournament during one of the O8 portions of play. Disgusting. Luckily my razz and PLO cash games have been working early and often for me, and I've managed to make a profit on the night in each of my last several nights of play. I'm having so much fun playing things like the nightly 4k guaranteed HORSE tourney on full tilt, and these PLO and O8 cash games, that I have been kicking around the idea of running a weekly private multi-game poker game, if there might be interest in that sort of thing. I don't really care about attracting a huge crowd per se, and the buyin would probably be similar to the $20 buyin for the weekly Hoy tournaments, but it's just something I've been kicking around lately. I just think it'd be fun to get some of the really good multi-game specialists out there together for a regular game of HORSE or something like that. Let me know if anyone has any thoughts.

Ok that's all for now. Tomorrow I have a post ready where I'll be discussing the min-raise, and when I tend to use it and when I think it is not as effective, all of which was spurned by some good discussion going on in response to my latest Cardsquad post on how I played flopped quad against a bunch of bloggers in Miami Don's latest Big Game.

10 Comments:

Blogger Pokerwolf said...

If you're going to do a higher buy-in mixed game set up, make it a $24+2 setup.

That way, you'll get more people and the prizes will be larger. Bloggers love them peep SnGs too.

2:09 AM  
Blogger TripJax said...

I think DADI X - while controversial - was a good indication that the $24 + $2 might work for a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly event. Most people who usually buy-in to the $20 will have no problem with the $26 and the others will have a chance to satellite.

You noted you don't necessarily want/need the fields to be large, so the amount of the buy-in might be built around what type of tournament and interest you are looking for...

Good luck yo.

2:34 AM  
Blogger Blinders said...

You might want to learn how to fold KK preflop. I did it the other day in a cash game, though I doubt I could muster the strength to fold cowboys preflop in a MTT. NL Holdem is all about aggressive folding. You will learn someday.

4:53 AM  
Blogger lucko said...

I would be up for the mixed game, let me know when and where.

And always fold KK to a short stack's raise, you are never good there.

5:05 AM  
Blogger Hammer Player a.k.a Hoyazo said...

Yeah Blinders I read all about your KK fold earlier today. You're a nutcase.

Truly, I can ask for nothing more than to play against someone who will fold KK to a raise preflop. I'm getting hot just thinking about that.

5:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, it was a donktastic move. I average one of those every 30-45 minutes of play.

I had over triple your stack & kind of wanted to knock out the host. So I made a -EV move.

I'm in for a mixed game as well.

10:53 AM  
Blogger Hammer Player a.k.a Hoyazo said...

Thanks, Mattazuma. I like a guy who can own up to his donkery. In the end it wasn't a bad beat or anything, you just won a 49% toss-up so I can't really complain about the result. I've enjoyed playing with you and am sure I'll have the chance to return the favor at some point in the not too distant future.

6:17 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I love me some mixed games.

Just wish I was able to play an hour earlier to play in your tourneys.

3:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I would be interested in a mixer. I think PWolf and Trip have the right idea as well- token eligible.

3:29 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

You wrote:
I might be likely to reraise with 2/3 the average stack here with any pocket pair, or perhaps with AK.

Excellent, that lets us run the numbers. Against this range, AQ suited has 42.4% pot equity. The odds being offered are break even for chips at 38.3%.

Tournament considerations certainly dictate some caution here (but how close was it to the next increase in blinds?) but a raw edge of 4% is hard to pass up.

And all this assumes that you would never put in a bluff raise here from the blinds against a player in stealing position.

1:50 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home