Suckouts and Lay Downs, the Mookie Home Game

I don’t usually play too much on Wednesdays. I had told my wife that I would limit the nights I would play online to Sundays and Tuesdays. When Mookie started his weekly tourney, and I saw the crowd that he was attracting, I knew I wanted to play. Most of the players are people that I read and talk to regularly. Much like the weekly WWdN tourney, this one would be fun.

Last week, I jumped in at the last minute while my wife was watching Lost and bombed out pretty quick. I think part of that was me feeling a little guilty about playing in it, when I knew I shouldn’t have. The other part was, of course, my normal donkey play.

Last night, a couple hours before the tourney, I asked her if she minded if I played it. She said she didn’t, but I still wasn’t sure. Surflexus shot me an IM and asked if I was playing and I said I hadn’t decided but it didn’t look good. When I pressed her about it, she really didn’t seem to mind, so I jumped in. I had been up way too late the 2 nights before playing but figured I probably wouldn’t last too long anyway, so I would give it a shot, knowing I would at least have fun with the crowd.

Mookie had been pimpin the tourney, trying to get to a new high water mark. The previous high for the number of players was 23 I think. He was gunning for 28+, which would bump the number of payouts to the top 5 spots. He does a great job with this tourney as he gets a loyal following of bloggers, plus a chunk of his buddies from Austin to play too. He ended up getting 32 last night. Check out the live blogging from last night here.

I had a pretty good feeling when, within the first 15 minutes or so, I was dealt some great cards that were hitting the flop. I can’t remember exactly, but I think I was in the top 5 in chips within the first half hour and never left the top 5. It was one of those nights where you are on the winning end of overpair vs bigger overpair, Betting your TPTK and getting a caller with MP. There were at least 2 occasions where I knocked out 2 players in the same hand due to having a no brainer preflop hand like KK and getting pushed into. I got the cards, and it felt gOOt.

It is easy when the deck is hitting you in the face like that and I just played it pretty tight after I got a big lead. I continued to get premium starting hands and raising a lot of blinds. In most cases, they were not steals, just protecting my hand. There were a couple times where I layed down a good starting hand to a re-raise that I was probably ahead, but it wasn’t worth it to find out.

To get to the final table, and then heads up, it really came down to one BIG lay down, and one HUGE suggout for me. The lay down came earlier. I was on the button and tied with Waffles in chips, close to the lead at the table and I have QQ. Waffles raised it up 3xBB, SoxLover then pushed! Hmm, I thought. I had Sox covered, but I didn’t need to take a that one of them had KK or AA. Waffles does a lot of raising, but I was pretty sure he was going to call because of the money in the pot, and he had Sox covered. He called and flipped over his KK vs Sox’s QQ! Basically, Sox was now drawing almost dead to a 4 flush or 4 straight. It didn’t come, and Waffles took him out. I don't know what possessed me to lay down the biatches but I figured they both had to have at least overcards and it was early enough to lay it down. I got lucky there. Sorry, here is the hand history :-)

*********** # 75 **************
> PokerStars Game #4607888964: Tournament #22851247, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level IV (50/100) - 2006/04/12 - 22:50:48 (ET)
> Table '22851247 2' 9-max Seat #5 is the button
> Seat 1: SirFWALGMan (3460 in chips)
> Seat 2: jjok (1105 in chips)
> Seat 3: SoxLover (2360 in chips)
> Seat 5: drewspop (3460 in chips)
> Seat 6: T Nails T (950 in chips)
> Seat 7: wesmotv (3485 in chips)
> Seat 8: GCox25 (2195 in chips)
> Seat 9: mookie99 (1820 in chips)
> T Nails T: posts small blind 50
> wesmotv: posts big blind 100
> *** HOLE CARDS ***
> Dealt to drewspop [Qd Qc]
> GCox25: folds
> mookie99: folds
> SirFWALGMan: raises 200 to 300
> jjok: folds
> SoxLover: raises 2060 to 2360 and is all-in
> drewspop: folds
> T Nails T: folds
> wesmotv: folds
> SirFWALGMan: calls 2060
> *** FLOP *** [2c 7c Jd]
> SoxLover said, "qq"
> SoxLover said, "my fate"
> *** TURN *** [2c 7c Jd] [6d]
> drewspop said, "i had the other ones"
> *** RIVER *** [2c 7c Jd 6d] [9c]
> SoxLover said, "is sealed"
> drewspop said, "sox"
> *** SHOW DOWN ***
> SirFWALGMan: shows [Kh Kd] (a pair of Kings)
> SoxLover: shows [Qh Qs] (a pair of Queens)
> SirFWALGMan said, "gg"
> SirFWALGMan collected 4870 from pot
> drewspop said, "both of them"
> drewspop said, "gg"
> *** SUMMARY ***
> Total pot 4870 | Rake 0
> Board [2c 7c Jd 6d 9c]

The suckout was a totally different story, although I don’t think I could have played it any different. For those of you that saw it, it was pretty amazing. I flopped a straight and put out a bet. Rocco and I had traded chips a few times on some tough hands but I had him covered at this point. I bet out and he min-raised me. Cool, I will re-min raise, figuring he was just testing me. After I did, he pushed! I gladly called figuring I had to be ahead and didn't want any drawing. He had flopped a higher straight! Oops. There were only 2 diamonds on the board and I only held one in my hand, which was lower than the one that Rocco held in his hand. It looked like the only card that would help me, for a chop, was another K. Instead, I unknowingly hit my miracle 1-outer for the straight flush on the river to take out Rocco and get us to 3 handed with Waffles and Matt. Gotta show you that one too.

*********** # 225 **************
> PokerStars Game #4609093104: Tournament #22851247, $10+$1 Hold'em No Limit - Level X (400/800) - 2006/04/13 - 00:30:06 (ET)
> Table '22851247 3' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
> Seat 1: drewspop (19209 in chips)
> Seat 4: kaellinn18 (7214 in chips)
> Seat 6: RoccoBoxer (11097 in chips)
> Seat 7: SirFWALGMan (10480 in chips)
> drewspop: posts the ante 50
> kaellinn18: posts the ante 50
> RoccoBoxer: posts the ante 50
> SirFWALGMan: posts the ante 50
> drewspop: posts small blind 400
> kaellinn18: posts big blind 800
> *** HOLE CARDS ***
> Dealt to drewspop [9d 8h]
> RoccoBoxer: calls 800
> SirFWALGMan: folds
> drewspop: calls 400
> kaellinn18: checks
> *** FLOP *** [Td Qd Jh]
> RoccoBoxer said, "mook wasn't good to me"
> drewspop: bets 1600
> kaellinn18: folds
> RoccoBoxer: raises 1600 to 3200
> drewspop: raises 1600 to 4800
> RoccoBoxer: raises 5447 to 10247 and is all-in
> drewspop: calls 5447
> kaellinn18 said, "wow"
> *** TURN *** [Td Qd Jh] [8d]
> *** RIVER *** [Td Qd Jh 8d] [Jd]
> *** SHOW DOWN ***
> drewspop: shows [9d 8h] (a straight flush, Eight to Queen)
> RoccoBoxer: shows [9s Kd] (a flush, King high)
> drewspop collected 23094 from pot
> *** SUMMARY ***
> Total pot 23094 | Rake 0
> Gilain [observer] said, "holy carp!"
> kaellinn18 said, "gg"
> mookie99 [observer] said, "wow"
> SirFWALGMan said, "gg"
> SirFWALGMan said, "lol"
> drewspop said, "gg"
> RoccoBoxer [observer] said, "unbelievable"
> Garthmeister [observer] said, "I uh, I uh..."
> mookie99 [observer] said, "one kick to the junk"
> RoccoBoxer [observer] said, "all time worst beat"
> kaellinn18 said, "thank God I laid down A4"
> RoccoBoxer [observer] said, "i need a bucket"
> RoccoBoxer [observer] said, "i feel sick"
> SirFWALGMan said, "lol"
> drewspop said, "sorry dude"

Again, sorry Rocco but it's not like I didn't have a hand. I just got ridonkulously lucky.

We flopped around a bit 3 handed until Waffles ended Matt’s night and I was heads up with Waffles, the man of $20, 180-SNG mad rush fame. What was cool was that during the tourney, we were in the same voice chat conference on yahoo. It really had the feel of a home game at this point. The blogfather himself even joined us, which was cool. Waffles is a much better player than I am, so I knew I was going to need the cards. He had a lead, we got even, I pulled ahead, gave it back, etc. It was a roller coaster, but in the end, I once again got the cards and was able to win my first MTT scheduled tourney. I have some MTT SNGs before, but nothing like this.

It was kinda weird at the end. I was pretty happy and Waffles was very gracious about it but it was weird that it came down to someone I enjoy tracking. The dude is a riot and has obviously had a lot of success lately. Like I told him after, I won the $100 tourney while he wins the $1K tourneys. Regardless, it was a high for me, as jjok can attest, as I hit him up on MSN messenger to tell him, and he already knew.

Thanks to everyone that hung out and cheered on the action. Again, most of the railers know both of us, me less so, but there was support for both of us anyway.

> Katitude [observer] said, "i honest to god don't know who to cheer for"
> kaellinn18 [observer] said, "Chris of course"
> kaellinn18 [observer] said, "waffles knocked me out"
> Katitude [observer] said, "lol"

Thanks to George, Hoff, Kat, Garth, Trip, GCox, Hoyazo, jjok and Mookie for various words of encouragement and to the Birthday boy for hosting. I am sure I am forgetting others as I make my hour long, early morning train ride here. It was a great time.

No more posts for me until later in the weekend. The wife and I are actually going up to Maine for the night tomorrow, alone! I promised no poker tonight, which means I will be out of the action until probably Sunday or Monday. I did mention to the wife that my new nights for playing are now Tuesdays and Wednesdays. See you next week!