After the < 2 hour run at TS, I put in a full tournament schedule tonight but quickly busted out of everything except the FTOPS LO8 event I entered on a whim...where, 9 hours later, I just finished fourth for $17,700. I mostly did this by running ridiculously hot with my starting hands and having very few actual decisions anywhere. "lol, donkaments" indeed.

I'll recap this later, as much as I'm capable of analyzing a limit Omaha/8 event (not much at all.)

Short update:

I wound up not playing Event 3 (the bounty tournament) for sleep reasons, either. I did play the 6 max this morning (and the 1K 6max FTOPS event last night), but didn't last long.

I did play a couple of interesting hands from those two events. From the 1K FTOPS, with 3K starting stacks:

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Adar [Ad Ah]
Adar raises to 60 (UTG)
doheme calls 60 (Button)
*** FLOP *** [8d Td 7d]
Adar checks
doheme bets 80
Adar calls 80
*** TURN *** [8d Td 7d] [7h]
Adar checks
doheme bets 260
Adar calls 260
*** RIVER *** [8d Td 7d 7h] [Qh]
Adar checks
doheme bets 380
Adar calls 380
*** SHOW DOWN ***
doheme shows [9c 7c] three of a kind, Sevens
Adar mucks

Even in 6 max, this flop is ugly enough (particularly because of the increased range that your opponents have) to play it slower, especially when you have the A and don't fear the main draw. (If my aces were black, I'd probably do something like check/call, bet.) Once the turn pairs the bottom card on the board, I'm committed to a showdown but still don't want to invest too much - too bad that it turned out to be his gin card. BTW, betting out here is fine too; the main problem is that if raised, a 3 bet doesn't get you anywhere except into a 300 BB pot with the worst hand. Anyway, I wound up losing the minimum here, then going broke with AT to 55 that limp/called a big raise on a T522 board with a flush draw. No biggie.

Today, I didn't really have a decision to make anywhere except 'cbet, then fold'. In 6 max MTT's, with escalating blinds and ramped up aggression, you have to hit flops, and I didn't, so busto came quickly (although AQ < AJ AIPF for a 50 BB pot to actually bust me didn't help - oh well.) I'm mildly unhappy with one hand that I did play, so I'll talk about it now:

At 50/75, with all my raises getting picked off by the guys to my left, I was forced to make a third straight raise UTG with A T (I say 'forced' because it's generally too good of a hand to open fold in that spot, but under the circumstances it might've even been better.) The player to my left, who probably had me pegged as weak tight because I'd had a habit of winding up with 8 high at showdown, called my raise and then called my cbet on a K 9 2 board. Now the turn came the 5 , and I had 2500 behind with 1200 in the pot. After thinking about how much to bet here, I wound up checking, planning to CR AI to anything resembling a 600-800 chip value bet, but to my annoyance, he bet 1100, instead. Now I had very little fold equity and ace high. "Oops".

In retrospect, I should either check/fold the flop (my image was probably so weak that this cbet simply wouldn't get him to fold anything) or be prepared to double barrel that turn. Really, the major issue there is the bad bet size/stack size ratio (if I bet 700 and I'm raised, all my options suck) and [before I check the turn] how often he has a king, vs. something like J9 or a flush draw I can blow him off of. If I felt he was going to full pot the turn when checked to with any frequency, clearly, I should just bet myself. Meh.

On the bright side, I got enough sleep to be ready for the tournaments in the next couple of days. Oh, and gobboboy chopped the 325+40 bountyment for 22.5K/nath won a decent $50 freezeout on Stars for 11K last night. Good track records.

The one problem with these tournaments (I'll have a trip report up at some point this week - this room and series are both very well run) is their start time of 10 AM, especially when I didn't get there until 10:30 the night before. The play was typically ugly save for the 18-21 "this is my WSOP" online crowd, but in a largely "when is this over so that I can go to sleep?" performance, I basically played Event 1, a 300+40, on autopilot for six hours, got it in as just over a 40/60 shot to somewhere around triple up to a nice stack, and lost. There weren't even any interesting hands involved - possibly one or two at most. A couple of people I know've had better luck; after bouncing all over the map and constantly sucking out (heh), Shaundeeb took fifth for around 8K, and Kalen (another roommate from the WSOP) is CL 4 handed for a nice first prize of 34K.

Event 2 today is the 200 rebuy, which I'm skipping because, as I'm writing this, I'm already playing most of my Sunday online schedule (plus that whole 'sleep' idea I was so fond on). From what I hear, it's a nice structure as well (who's ever heard of a 50/75 level? They have it in all of these, though) with some very deep play. I'm definitely a fan.

I'll be back to posting daily (or close enough to daily) for a while starting the day after tomorrow, as I'm taking a ten day trip to Turning Stone for the HPT series. Pretty much everyone I know in poker has been to one or more of these at some point, and a good chunk of them have made FT's (or better) there, so it's time for me to give that series a shot, too. The blind structure and event lineup do look incredible.

I played a lot for the first time in a while yesterday and today. While I got nowhere thanks to some bad beats (and, I have to admit, some bad play in tonight's HORSE FTOPS event - I'm just not as good in stud high and, to a lesser extent, stud 8 as I am in razz), but enjoyed myself and am looking forward to the live tournament scene/FTOPS combination again. (Though, to be honest, the WCOOP events on Stars are much, much better for me - between paying less for them thanks to W$ and all of the odd events I can dominate most of the field in, it's no contest.) I don't think I'll ever play the live tournament scene as much as I would have said I would before the WSOP - it's just too draining an experience overall - but it's a nice change of pace.

Time to go see how wearing the "Stars Million Winner" jacket alters my image, heh.

edit: Added some pics - back from my 'pre-haircut' and 'pre-shave' phase, obv.

I didn't play the Sunday Million last week and went out early the week before, but tonight, I made another deep run in the biggest tourney of the week to get a 40th place finish. I actually got it in behind a couple of times for a change and played a couple of hands questionably, but mostly made the right plays at the right times again until losing a consecutive flip and 62/38 very late (sigh). Two of these kinds of deep runs in nearly consecutive tries really does mean a lot, though.

Here's a fun hand against a guy that had been getting away with playing 40/30 or so for an entire hour:

Seat 1: never river (41470 in chips)
Seat 2: loonatic111 (36328 in chips)
Seat 3: HHHthegame88 (88449 in chips)
Seat 4: ANDREA1984 (62134 in chips)
Seat 5: A.Brandon (26250 in chips)
Seat 6: RyanT5o (64585 in chips)
Seat 7: Leonidas_l (72854 in chips)
Seat 8: gyme (36603 in chips)
Seat 9: adanthar (70124 in chips)
never river: posts the ante 250
loonatic111: posts the ante 250
HHHthegame88: posts the ante 250
ANDREA1984: posts the ante 250
A.Brandon: posts the ante 250
RyanT5o: posts the ante 250
Leonidas_l: posts the ante 250
gyme: posts the ante 250
adanthar: posts the ante 250
ANDREA1984: posts small blind 1250
A.Brandon: posts big blind 2500
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to adanthar [As Ad]
RyanT5o: folds
Leonidas_l: folds
gyme: folds
adanthar: raises 5000 to 7500
never river: folds
loonatic111: folds
HHHthegame88: raises 15000 to 22500
ANDREA1984: folds
A.Brandon: folds
adanthar: calls 15000
*** FLOP *** [6h 7c Ah]
adanthar: checks
HHHthegame88: checks
*** TURN *** [6h 7c Ah] [4d]
adanthar: checks
HHHthegame88: checks
*** RIVER *** [6h 7c Ah 4d] [5d]
adanthar: checks
HHHthegame88: bets 65699 and is all-in
adanthar: calls 47374 and is all-in
*** SHOW DOWN ***
HHHthegame88: shows [Kc 5h] (a pair of Fives)
adanthar: shows [As Ad] (three of a kind, Aces)
adanthar collected 145748 from pot