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#847 – FTOPS XIII Update #2 – Welcome to My Nightmare
We have played the first fifteen events of FTOPS XIII and I am, as usual, miserable. This is despite making my first FTOPS final table. But the performance was bracketed by disappointments and, even worse, Aaron Bartley upstaged me by winning $70K in the Turbo FTOPS last night.
There have been some outstanding performances by red pros during this FTOPS but none have taken the big prize. In the first fifteen events, four red pros have made final tables. I made my first FTOPS final table yesterday in Event #13, $300 + $22 NLHE Shoot-Out. I will tell more of my sad story later but I finished ninth. Isaac Baron finished sixth in the Sunday KO event, worth almost $28,000. Andy Bloch was runner-up in Stud, cashing for $17,000. And last night, Aaron Bartley, after taking a deal, finished third in the Turbo event, scoring $70K.
Red pros are making it into the money all over the place in this FTOPS. The leaders, with four cashes, are Isaac Baron and Scott Clements. David Pham, Svetlana Gromenkova, and Christian Kruel have cashed three times. The following additional players have two cashes through fifteen events: Brandon Adams, Stuart Paterson, Ryan Daut, Andy Bloch, Artie Cobb, and Scott Fischman.
I have just one cash so far, $2,900 for finishing ninth in the shoot-out yesterday. You would think the final-table finish would be a silver lining in my perpetual cloudy FTOPS experience. Nah. The dark cloud’s silver lining was itself surrounded by dark clouds.
I was a raving psychopath after I busted from the $1k NLHE on Monday night. Apart from capping off $4,000 in tournament losses in two days, I took a ludicrous beat with a big stack with the chip lead at stake to bust short of the money. I read my opponent perfectly, played him perfectly, trapped him perfectly, and then he made a full house out of his pocket deuces on the river. I had to walk around the house screaming for fifteen minutes.
That hand gave Deuces Guy the chip lead – MY chip lead – and he cashed for over $160K. There are all kinds of reasons why I should not think of that $160K as “mine.” But I don’t wanna hear ‘em.
It was sweet redemption to make the final table in my next event and I ran extremely well. How well? When I was heads-up with the chip lead at my second table, my opponent moved all-in while I was holding quads. Then nothing went right at the final table. I lost a bundle on a bluff that should have worked. Then I lost another big pile when I put in a big reraise during the first level with Ac-Kc, only to fold when the original raiser moved all-in for 240,000.
I busted after getting all my chips in with top pair post-flop. I was called by the original raiser, who had a coin flip with two overs and a flush draw and hit an ace on the river. Then I played well and lasted a long time in the HORSE and Turbo evening FTOPS events but busted short of the money in both.
Then Aaron Bartley torched the Turbo FTOPS and made me watch.
Aaron occasionally sends me instant messages on AOL, usually to give me shit about something. This is how it started last night:
Bartley: Dude, they’re going to be writing about me tomorrow.
Craig: I knew it would happen Aaron. Did you take a shot at the President?
Bartley: I’ve got the chip lead at the final table of the Turbo FTOPS.
Although Bartley hasn’t yet won an FTOPS event, he regularly turns in strong performances. This was his fourth FTOPS final table.
The final table was five-handed when I started watching. Bartley had the chip lead, but not overwhelmingly, and of course it was a Turbo so nobody had a very deep stack. He then ran into some bad luck. Another player picked up pocket aces twice in about a dozen hands and eliminated two other players, putting Aaron well behind when they were three-handed. After several hands, one of the other players asked about making a adeal and they paused the tournament.
This was my first opportunity to see the new deal software in action. In the first fifteen FTOPS events there have been final-table deals in eleven. With three exceptions, the deals have occurred when heads-up or three-handed. Even though this deal was negotiated smoothly and swiftly, it seems a folly to spend much time on deals until getting down to the last three.
At Aaron’s final table, the chip leader, River_Vlad had 2.6 million chips, Aaron had 1.48 million, and the snaffler had 1.42 million. Without a deal, first place would recieve about $110,000, second place $70,000, and third $48,000.
The deal software recommended that they play for $6,856.17 and divide the rest as follows: River $85,908.58, Aaron $68,353.38, snaffler $67,421.06. This was acceptable to River and Snaffler but Bartley wanted a little something extra.
Aaron proposed a split of 85/70/$66,683.02. The others went for it so Bartley picked up $70,000, by far the biggest cash by a red pro in this FTOPS, and they played winner-take-all for the last $6,800. After a dozen hands, Aaron went out by re-raising all-in with K-Q and running into the snaffler’s pocket queens. I watched the heads-up, assuming it would take just a few more hands. It took another fifty-five hands before the snaffler won nearly all the chips with pocket jacks against River_Vlad’s pocket nines and took the last few chips on the next hand.
If I get the opportunity, you will be reading more about Aaron Bartley and this tournament. Aaron is an interesting guy and is living the life that is the goal of hundreds of thousands of other people: online poker pro. If I get out to Vegas soon, I will profile Bartley for the blog and see if I can get him to share his hand history from the tournament so we can discuss and debate some key points of turbo tournament strategy for your benefit.
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