FULL TILT POKER BLOG

#340 – FTOPS is a Curse (separate from “The FTOPS Curse”)

Posted by Editor | Filed under Uncategorized

So we’re 12+ events into FTOPS and, despite all my efforts to the contrary, I am miserable. Why am I miserable? I’ve played 8 events without cashing. I played extremely well in HORSE and finished about a half hour short of the money, and extremely well in Omaha EOB and finished in the middle of the field. In those events in total, I made a few mistakes in HORSE which cost me some chips but had nothing to do with my elimination and played mistake-free in Omaha. All that good play was meaningless. I played extremely well in the NLHE rebuy event, which proved to be meaningless. In fact, during one period over the weekend, I busted out of nearly $1,000 worth of tournaments with an overpair, a pair of aces, or two-pair, all against small pairs that flopped sets. That happened four times in less than 200 hands.

But it wasn’t all the fates conspiring against me. I played like shit in the first event, way worse in PLHE, and well and then awful in both NLHE events last Sunday. Essentially, I have undone all my excellent play in January and early February, which exactly what happened to me in at least 3 previous series of FTOPS.

I do so much to prevent this. I devised a contest, “Michael Craig is Giving it Away”, to take some focus off my own performance. I won $3,000 worth of satellite entries, which is approximately the cost of all my entries (including my rebuys and add-on last Saturday). I’ve even arranged to go on assignment, playing in and covering the NBC Heads-Up Championship Satellite Tournament to avoid playing events ##17-20 this weekend, which will save me $3,500 (but will leave me wondering constantly whether I missed what would have been my best chance at scoring a six-figure payout).

I’m also miserable about the Blog. I’ve got some good entries during the last week, but here is what I DON’T have:

1. The contenders in the contest.

2. All the other entries in the contest, which were funny, sad, weird, disturbing, and illuminating.

3. TedForrestFan’s heroic performance in Event #1.

4. Sammymorb’s heroic performance in Event #1.

5. My own performance in Event #1, including slaying David Benyamine.

6. An episode I’ll call CleavageGate.

7. The $271 Soap Opera, about a vicious fight I had with my daughter Ellie while multi-tabling a pair of big Sunday night tournaments.

8. Event #11, playing Omaha EOB while watching Howard Lederer return to online poker. There were some great hands, some great lessons, and some great chat. (Someone asked Howard, “How come every other pro on this site has an avatar that looks 50 pounds heavy and yours looks like the male version of Audrey Hepburn?”)

Some of these posts may be combined but as you can see, I have plenty of catching up to do. As is sometimes the case, if I get too far behind, I’ll just cross some items off my list. This I don’t want to do.

In fact, because I just received Theresa’s shipment of cookies – in a box big enough to store a football helmet – it would really be unfair to skimp on my coverage of “Michael Craig is Giving it Away” or the performance of the winners in Event #1.

So I’m going to get right to that.

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