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#288 – FTOPS Bulletin – Finale – One Day to Live
It’s Sunday morning, November 18, as I write this. I’m in the Full Tilt bunker, preparing for the last day of FTOPS VI, having just missed the 30th anniversary of my first day with Jo Anne. I didn’t even call her to talk about the occasion, thinking a clean break would be best. Few Full Tilt pros are as ancient as me, but they’re beat up too and their gashes are bleeding cash. I feel like I’m drowning here, even though it’s one of the best months of my life in poker. Yet if I called for a life preserver, I think someone would throw me a radial tire.
Playing in the Turbo Hundo last night, I ran into Mandy B on the bubble. She had just 150 more chips than me and pushed all-in. I called with my pocket kings. She had pocket fives and spiked another five on the flop to bust me. She apologized but I don’t think her heart was in it. “Now we’re even,” she also said. I think she was referring to how I busted her on the bubble several days earlier but she could have been running an errand for Steve Z.
A few days back, after losing on the first hand of consecutive SnGs ($110, $220, and $330), I played my first ever $525 turbo SnG. Zolotow was there waiting for me, joking “You’re finally getting smart Michael, picking your SnGs based on my presence.” I snuck into the money by winning with a dominated hand and into second place with another one. It took only one hand heads-up for Z’s K-Q to run into my A-K. That 40 minutes was my 13th biggest cash of 2007 and I knew there would be some paying of the piper.
The piper must have been working overtime. No Full Tilt pros cashed in the first 3 events. 3 broke through in the first PLO event, Toto Leonidas, Kenny Tran, and Max Pescatori, though the best any of them could manage was Max’s 57th place ($862.40).
In event #5, $100 + $9 NLHE with rebuys, I went for 4 rebuys and an add-on, only to lose with A-Q on a flop of Q-Q-5. I flat-called a raise and gave J-J enough rope to hang himself. What a tangled web when he hit a jack on the turn. Out of 15 pros in this one, only Jon “PearlJammed” Turner cashed. His $645.12 for 104th barely covered my buy-in – not that he offered – much less all the money blown by his other 13 Full Tilt colleagues.
Last Sunday, November 11, now there was a bloody Sunday. I had a shitload of chips early in both events, SEOB and NLHE, before finishing 208th in SEOB – 96 got paid and my friend Yuvee04 took the $17,606.06 cake. Only PearlJammed outlasted me and he made the money, 64th, for $249.86. I won 4 seats for the $300 + $22 NLHE afternoon event, which is great for reasons other than stretching my legs out (additional entries are payable in cash, and I also won multiple entries into the $1,000 + $60 event and the Main Event, which I point out solely to brag). I lasted 4 hours, longer than 80% of the field and 27 of the 30 Full Tilt pros. Not even a Good Sport Award for my efforts. Mandy B, that foul temptress, finished 521st and Max Pescatori finished 442nd. Good for them but not me, or “us”, as the Full Tilt pros burned about $10k in buy-ins for this one.
But don’t shed any tears for me, not that you would anyway. Late late late Saturday night, not finding any more takers for SnG satellites into the $300 + $22 event, I played a single $14 + $1 SnG into SEOB, as much to reorient me to the game as to win the $100 + $9 entry. I lost a bunch of chips early in a 3-way pot pushing two low pair on fifth street that never made a low and got beat for high on seventh when the guy with a king showing picked up a second pair. The other player going low asked why the hand played out as it did. I explained that I had the high hand and a great low draw, plus I knew he didn’t have the straight he was representing because he needed a five – I had two of them and the other two were exposed. Mr. High claimed he had his two pair on fifth, which was a lie, as he would have been giving us what Ted Forrest called The Gaspipe.
Mr. High got so angry when I implied – I didn’t even SAY it – that he was either being untruthful or played the hand poorly that he said “you suck so bad I’ll play you heads up for any amount of money.”
WHOA.
All I said was that I played the hand the way I did because I had the high hand and a great low draw. But this guy wouldn’t let up so I said, “$50-$100″ and opened a SEOB table. Mind you, I don’t think I’ve ever played SEOB for cash for any amount and certainly never heads up. Nor have I ever played any game online for cash at that level.
But I knew I had him. If he really had two pair on fifth street and wasn’t raising competing low hands, there was no way he was aggressive enough to play the game heads up. Besides, I’d been challenged.
To put it as politically correctly as possible, I made him my bitch. After I burned him for over $1800 in 40 minutes, he quit me, beat up so bad he never even posted the $100 + $9 to play the event the next morning – the one in which he was playing the $14 + $1 satellite when he decided he had to get in my face at a cost of nearly two dimes.
So between SnG piracy and the occasional challenge, I’m money good for this FTOPS, but you sure wouldn’t know if from how I’m playing in the events themselves. In the $1000 + $60 6-handed, I played like a man with two seats, finishing 943rd of 1332 and never REALLY playing. Only 11 of 30 Full Tilt pros cracked the top 900 so it must have been a collective malaise. Only J.J. Liu (125th) and Lynette Chan (40th) finished in the money. Ironically, they were both at my table at a 6-handed WSOP event and I crippled one, busted the other, and outlasted them both. I mention this not out of any malice but merely to brag. It’s not like I cashed in that event or even played well after they were gone ….
I was very pleased with how I played in the next event, PLOEOB, after getting and giving out Chris Ferguson’s advice. The only thing that would have been better would have been cashing, but you have to finish in the top 126 out of 1331 to do that. 249th didn’t cut it. Only John Cernuto, who someone told me was an air traffic controller driven – is there a bad play on words there? – to poker by Ronald Reagan’s treatment of his union, cashed, finishing 13th, the best FTOPS finish by any Full Tilt pro to that point.
I skipped FTOPS #10, the $300 + $22 rebuy but already wrote about that one. Five pros cashed but it was probably a collective money loser for Full Tilt pros. FTOPS #11 and #12 were limit events, $500 + $35 HORSE and $200 + $16 LHE 6-handed and I played unbelievably awfully in both of them. Out of 623 in HORSE, I finished 607th. Marco Traniello, to make me feel better, busted right after me in 599th. David Chiu, with 4 bracelets, went even before I did. Only Keith Sexton cashed, 49th for $1370.60, a good return for him but not for the pros in total, who dropped about 12 dimes on this one. In the limit hold ‘em, out of 1057, I couldn’t crack the top 1000.
I think I was on slow motion tilt in both events. I’ve done very well in limit events on Full Tilt and at the World Series. But I just got knocked on my ass by how bad people play. I know it sounds bush league to do lousy and complain about OTHER bad players but I’m not used to it in limit events. I never complain about how bad people play in no-limit because I’ve adjusted. It’s just part of the game. But no one gets to play enough limit poker to adjust the same way, at least I don’t. I don’t go crazy and throw my chips away, but I just couldn’t keep my equilibrium after going through eight raises with my pocket aces by the time the guy with pocket nines caught a nine on the turn. Or the guy who, with 3 hearts on the board, was obviously on a naked flush draw and went for max raises WHILE HE WAS DRAWING on the flop and turn.
Just 2 pros finished in the money in limit hold ‘em, J.J. Liu and PearlJammed. J.J. Liu is one of the best FTOPS performers and Jon Turner? He’s the Abominable Snowman.
That leads up to yesterday’s events, $2500 + $120 NLHE and PLO with rebuys. In the PLO, Steve Z and (of course) PearlJammed finished in the low money. But the future ex- Mrs. Craig (a/k/a Clonie Gowen) came shining through, finishing 10th. I watched her for the last two hours and she played extremely solid. She finally built up some chips and lost them when she thought someone was making a move. I had 5% of her action and she actually apologized to me, but she played beautifully. Best finish by a Full Tilt pro in FTOPS and don’t think we/they don’t take these serious. Clonie said “I have to go throw up” and logged off.
I’ll give you the stats after it’s all over, but I think the Full Tilt pros are over a hundred grand in the red. Aaron Bartley and Scott Clements are the last two standing in the Big Boy, and we still have the $150 + $13 Knockout and the $500 + $35 Main Event to go.
I swear, this is my time. I WON the first big knockout tournament on Full Tilt and I am so well prepared for the Main Event that I even have a schematic with when we’ll get into the money (I think about 8:50 PM MST) and when we’ll get to the final table (about 1:30 PM MST). Not that any of that actually improves my likelihood of succeeding, but I believe, so that’s something, right? On the way to death by a thousand cuts, it’s amazing I have that much.
