Posted by Editor | Filed under Andy Bloch, Erik Seidel, FTOPS
We’ve been at it in FTOPS #2 HORSE for 3 hours, 15 minutes, and we’re at the third break. Andy Bloch, whose superb play in HORSE won him long-overdue recognition for his skills last summer, not to mention a million dollars, went out about a half hour ago, the first pro to bust.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under Andy Bloch, Erik Seidel, FTOPS
We’re at the second break in the HORSE. The field is still big, 439 players left. The leader has 13,280. I am in second place with 11,589. Aaron Bartley leads the Full Tilt pros in the field with 7,726. Stuart Paterson has over 5,400, David Chiu about 5,000. Erik Seidel has 4,597, Andy Bloch has 3,463.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under Erik Seidel, FTOPS
… if I keep flopping quads.
We’re at the first break in the second FTOPS event, HORSE. It’s a much different feel than, and a much different crowd from, last night’s No-Limit Hold ‘Em tourney.
The numbers: The guarantee was $100,000. With 569 in the field, the pool exceeds that. 56 will be paid, ranging from bottom money of $625.90 to first-place money of $28,450. There are 5 Full Tilt pros in the field – host Andy Bloch, last night’s host Erik Seidel, David Chiu, Aaron Bartley, and Stuart Paterson. We start with 3,000 chips and play 15 minute levels, so there is a lot of play at the beginning. We have lost just one player at the first break.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under Andy Bloch, FTOPS, Mike Matusow
The Last Testament of Mike Matusow
When we left off last night, FTOPS #1 was more than three hours old. Mike Matusow was near the top of the leaderboard, Huckleberry Seed and Steve Zolotow were in the hunt, and Erik Seidel, the night’s host, was on life support.
Erik Siedel, host of FTOPS III’s Event #1
Seidel hung on for a long time on short chips, eventually finishing in 309th place, three spots short of the money. I’ll spare you the analogy to the crushing blow I suffered the night before when I finished three spots short of the money in the $30,000 Guarantee. Erik, I trust, didn’t wake up his wife to complain or say, “I just want to cry.” Not that I did any of that, either, of course.
It took three hours, forty minutes to make it to the money.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under FTOPS, Mike Matusow
It’s Break no. 3 at the first FTOPS event. Mike Matusow is still in the hunt. There are 387 players left (306 will be paid). The chip average is 14,899. Huck Seed is making a run with over 18,000. Z is hanging in with 17,000+. Erik Seidel is four spots from the bottom, with 3,920. All the other pros are safely tucked in their beds, dreaming of future FTOPS, no doubt.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under FTOPS, Mike Matusow
Once you get to the top thousand, nobody really cares about the tournament, right?
You are correct in gathering that I didn’t make it to three digits, busting 1,117th. I’m pretty sure that’s out of the money, but now that I have a pipeline to Stu, the tournament director, I’ll ask him if in the future they can flatten the payouts and maybe pay down to 1,200 in a 1,900-player event like this.
Matusow has over 14,000 chips, in 42nd place at the break. This makes him a very dangerous player. With a smaller stack, and/or earlier in the tournament, the pros are willing to take chances, bet on coin flips. It’s also not impossible that it’s not worth the same effort or focus as a live event with a five-figure buy-in.
But, now that more than half the field is gone and Mike has a lot of chips, it really FEELS like the competitive fires have been stoked.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under FTOPS
The stats: we started with 1,922. First place pays over $70,000. Over 300 will cash. 1,510 players are left. The average stack is 3,818. Sadie leads with 16,975.
13 pros started in the field. Rafe Furst went out 1,912th, Barny Boatman 1,682. 11 still in. Mike Matusow leads the pros in the field with 6,290. He’s 171st. He benefited from a necessary turn card and a helpful river on separate hands to get there.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under FTOPS, Mike Matusow
OK, I have to admit that I’m selling the sizzle a lot more than the steak with this. The gang at Full Tilt asked me to “cover” the FTOPS like I’d cover a live tournament. There are, however, three problems with this: (1) I haven’t actually covered that many live tournaments. My M.O. is to hang around the players I know and occasionally, sometimes months later, write about the experience from that vantage point. I’m very proud of some of those pieces and I hope to create more, but that’s not exactly “real-time tournament coverage.” In fact, it’s not even approximately real-time tournament coverage. (2) I have no idea what Full Tilt is looking for. (3) They have no idea either.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under Clonie Gowen, Gavin Smith
Deep Thoughts and the Art of Hammer Maintenance
You can get, on your Google home page, the streaming Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey. I was sold instantly by this bit of wisdom:
”If you go through a lot of hammers each month, I don’t think it necessarily means you’re a hard worker. It may just mean that you have a lot to learn about proper hammer maintenance.”
On Wednesday night I entered, as I frequently do, the Full Tilt Poker $35,000 Guarantee tournament. I noticed that Clonie Gowen had also entered, so I was watching how she was doing. (It would be a nice fantasy to believe she kept similar tabs on my progress, but that’s delusional even for me. She has asked me on multiple occasions for my screen name. It’s Michael Craig.)
Gowen Plays Poker with – but not in – a Vacuum
I went out early but occasionally looked to see how Clonie was doing. She plays, to the extent I know about it, a pretty solid game. Her stack wasn’t moving much. In fact, by the time the average was about 10,000, Clonie had 4,000. I left my computer for a few minutes to visit with my family – see, I truly am a loving husband and father – and when I returned, Clonie had 28,000.
On AOL, I instant-messaged her.
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(0 votes, average: 0.00 out of 5, rated) Posted by Editor | Filed under Uncategorized
I am overwhelmed by the positive response to my Full Tilt Poker Blog. I have gotten such a swelled head over it all that I’ve tried to minimize the swelling through repeated humor. Unfortunately, that just made it worse. Count on my wife Jo Anne coming to the rescue.
[WARNING: Any implication from the following that Clonie Gowen and I have slept together is purely a matter of your imagination. Or mine.]
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