Posted by AlCantHang | Filed under Bloggers on the Rail
The FTOPS XIV Warmup tournament is just around the corner and should generate one of the largest fields of players in the history of poker. With a puny buyin of $5+.50 Full Tilt has guaranteed a prizepool of $250,000 which would be reached if the tournament reaches it’s 50,000 player limit. For this monster sized occasion I have come out of hibernation to run yet another “Live Blog”. I’ll be tracking my results as well as a few of the more famous and interesting players in the field.
12:00ET (Sunday): OK campers, rise and shine. The FTOPS XIV Warmup tournament is just a few hours away and there are still plenty of spots available in the field. 33,000+ players are registered at this point which seems surprising to me. I figured the field would be capped and a long waitlist forming. If the field does not hit 50,000 players there will be a significant overlay.
There was not much poker studying last night via the large field SnG’s as I spent my evening watching my beloved Phillies lose to the evil NYC empire. I ended drowning my sorrows in bad movies and even worse books. The next few hours will be spent grinding away at the cheap SnG’s trying to work out a better strategy so I can run deep in the Warmup.
If I didn’t have enough motivation, now I do. I shipped off an inquiring email to fellow Full Tilt blogger Michael Craig yesterday while I was torturing myself in the Early Daily Doubles. I thought maybe a friendly wager between the sites might add a nice little twist to the horror that will come by playing in a 5-digit-sized field. Ever the creative fellow, he came up with some interesting ideas. (Michael’s writeup of the prop bet can be read here)
I suggested three possible consequences for the loser: (1) Standing on the Strip at midnight for a half-hour with the escort-service pimps handing out copies of WATCHTOWER; (2) Making a collage from escort brochures into a giant “congratulations” card for the winner; and (3) Submitting losing keno cards from three crappy casinos. I later clarified this last one by saying “the winner picks the places as long as they are (a) in the Vegas area, and (b) certifiable shit-holes.” (I never really gave any thought to what agency would provide the certification.)
When everything was ironed out, none of the above were chosen. The loser would have to play in a poker tournament, a scary poker tournament. A poker tournament located downtown at 2am and responsible for their own personal security. The loser is required to play in the 2am Binion’s tournament next time we are in Las Vegas. I was in Binion’s during the WSOP when both blogger friends Drizz and BWOP final tabled their Omaha/8 “mini-series” tournament. Binion’s may be the mythical home of the World Series of Poker, but it is sketchy as all hell in the early morning hours with nothing else around. The winner also has half of the action in the tournament.
Now I have a little more motivation to do well in the FTOPS XIV Warmup. If I do end up losing I will comfort myself that at least the drinks were incredibly cheap at Binion’s once we dodged the locals and found the bar. It’s time to practice.
14:30ET (Sunday): Some have been wondering about how I could possibly consider taking such a risk prop betting with Michael Craig. The man’s reputation as a player is light years beyond anything I’ll ever accomplish in my lifetime. I’m much better known for the exploits on the fringe of these events, while others are trying for poker glory I am behind the scenes making sure a good time is being had by all. Let’s do the boxing routine and go to the “Tale of the Tapes”:
Michael Craig – professional writer, author of The Professor, The Banker, and The Suicide King, three (3) World Series of Poker final tables, friend and confidante of the pros.
AlCantHang – professional degenerate, author of nothing more exciting than some random drunken blog post, two (2) wins in The Mookie, master of the micro-limit.
As you can see here, my complete lack of experience must easily point to me being the favorite in my battle over Mr. Craig. I’ve played these low buyin tournaments, I know the players, their skills and preferences. I think I will be railing Michael at Binion’s in a few days.
In actual FTOPS XIV Warmup news, there’s a very good chance this tournament does not hit it’s 50,000 cap. That means we’re likely to see a decent overlay coming from the Full Tilt pocket. I’m willing to commit to a guess at this point and predict we’ll see just over 40,000 players in the event. Another prediction I’m kicking around is that we will see at least 10,000 players eliminated in the first hour of play. Keeping in mind that the first break will occur a little over 30 minutes into the tournament.
Any other predictions from my fellow lemur-fighting friends or readers?
15:05ET (Sunday): Along with keeping an eye on my adversary today, I’ll also be checking out several bloggers in the field. One of my favorite players will be Drizztdj, who I convinced to register for the tournament even though he’s completely unable to play. I was interested in seeing just how close he comes to actually min-cashing in the event. It should be fun.
The tournament has “started” which means they’ve begun the 15 minute process of seating the entire field. We have gone over the 40,000 player mark so my first line has been crossed.
Some of the bloggers in the tournaments include OtisDart, DrChako, BuddyDank, Joanne1111, and USAF_Trevor in addition to the aforementioned sitting out blogger Drizztdj.
Good luck everyone!
16:00ET (Sunday): Caught KK but no action as the non-stop min-raiser to my left folded when I repopped it. My notes told me that “overbetting for value” was the play in these cheapy events. I probably put too much in on my re-raise but had no doubt I’d get called down in several places. Apparently I have the only tight table in the tournament. No less than three times have I been dealt the all-powerful 53o, I’m tempted to start playing it if I keep seeing it.
My prediction of 10,000 players lost in the first hour of play is look very realistic. At the first break, 35 minutes into the tournaments, and we’ve already lost 5,296 players. Shaking my head at my tight table not giving action. I should have doubled up with the kings. Unfortunately a network problem has popped up thanks to the insane response. Awaiting the return.
In the blogger prop bet battle:
AlCantHang – 2130
Michael Craig – 2110
16:30ET (Sunday): And my prop bet with Mr. Craig is settled just that quickly. Before an hour was complete he found himself short after running into pocket kings. He pushed his stack in with ducks and the trusty weak Ace called and hit. Now he’ll have to trek down and play the dreaded 2am Binion’s tournament next week. I’ve already made the decision I’ll be going down also to play the tournament. What’s the fun of shipping someone down there without actually seeing their face as they look around the place and SMELL the other players.
The rest of the action was crazy. As soon as we come back from the break my table starts pushing their chips in the middle like they have somewhere to go. I actually saw pocket Jacks hold up against Big Slick and I lost a few chips in a blind versus blind battle but nothing spectacular. I picked up with blinds with AKo by raising to 210 in middle position, the big blind folded with only 215 chips behind.
Can you guess that hand the made mrhamilton321 shove in nearly 100 big blinds in the middle UTG+1? The mighty 77 wins again.
At 4:20pm ET there were 33,269 entrants remaining. That means I also win the prop bet with myself, over 10,000 players gone in one hour of play. 24% of the field eliminated in nex to no time at all. “Y’all some crazy players”, my offical moto of this tournament. The official number of entrants is 43,874. That means Full Tilt will be throwing over $30,000 into the prizepool. Not a bad overlay for a $5 buying tournament. First place will pocket $22,500 sometime early this morning (or late?). Here is the official payout for the final table:
1st – $22,500
2nd – $15,725
3rd – $11,500
4th – $9,000
5th – $7,250
6th – $5,750
7th – $4,500
8th – $3,250
9th – $2,000
You can view the rest of the “Live Blog” after the jump:
17:00ET (Sunday): I haven’t figure out how to play my latest table yet. The player to my right is impossible to figure out, how do play against someone who will give you a walk in the big blind and later raise it up big UTG with A7o? The rest of the table is full of min-raising monkeys but I haven’t found a spot to punish them yet. Hopefully I’ll figure it out before it’s too late. My stats are dreadful, just seeing 10% of the flops so far and my big hands are just picking up the blinds. I’m down to 1,500 and need to find a good place to double up.
Hard to beleive it possible but the action has picked up in the tournament as we’ve gone along instead of slowing down. At the second break we’ve lost just short of 20,000 players in less than 90 minutes of play. 45% of the field is sitting on the rail already. Our chiplead is HoneymoonChild3 with 33,075 chips and my “crazy poker player” award goes to another chipleader. BlueEyesMickey is sitting with a monster stack and will push all 200 BB’s in the middle preflop at any point. Cheers to you sir, see you at the final table. Or the rail next level.
17:10ET (Sunday): What did I say earlier in this post? Ace-rag is GOLD.
My tournament is over when I found the perfect spot to double up. I caught QQ in late position and a horrible player (rodrinho10) willing to throw in most of his stack with the delightfully bad AT off soooot. At least I didn’t have to sweat the turn and river as the suckout hit immediately. Nice hand sir, I feel confident going out of a limb and say you shall not win this tournament.
Now I can go about the rest of my day railing the tournament. I’ll be back with an update on your favorite pros and bloggers.
17:30ET (Sunday): Scott Fischman (9,531) and Bruno Steffanelli (8,840) are your only two remaing members of Team Full Tilt with Huck Seed just losing the battle recently. My experiment with blogger Drizztdj also ended unhappily, finishing somewhere in the 16,000’s. The players just didn’t cooperate and bust quickly enough.
Just a two hours into the tournament and 70% is on the rails and we should hit the money bubble sometime after this hour’s break since the 10,000 barrier is very close.
No other hands of interest since I steamed off my tilt with a huge glass of “you @$%^@$ing jackoff”.
18:00ET (Sunday): I almost overshot the mark once again by assuming the bubble would burst after this break. We came very close to doing it before the break as only 7,581 remain and 7,500 get paid. It won’t take very long at this rate to get into the money, maybe a half dozen hands at most. Blogger USAF_Trevor is one of the top stacks at this point with over 30,000 in chips, Fischman (17,000) and Stefanelli (12,000) also picked up a little over the last 30 minutes.
Here is the tournament by the numbers so far:
Entrants: 43,874
Players eliminated:36,293
Players remaining: 7,581
Players busted per hour: 14,500
Players buster per 10 minute level: 2,419
With these trends I’m going to say hand-for-hand action will last only one hand and that we’ll lose 15 players at once.
Update: Once again I was well short of the mark. During hand-for-hand play, we lost an amazing 55 players on the bubble. Crazier and crazier.
19:00ET (Sunday): Scott Fischman and Bruno Stefanelli were both eliminated in the last hour leaving us without a single Full Tilt pro remaining in the field. Both players ran into some issues and eventually went out in wonderful fashion. Neither player had enough chips at that point to put up too many complaints but they are never fun to watch.
The pace of play has never wavered throughout the entire tournament and continues to amaze. This hour began with 7,581 and ends with 2,405. Only 5% of the starting field remains and with the average chip stack holding about 20 big blinds things are not going to slow down any time soon. The only blogger I’ve been able to find is blaargh86 who is sitting with a little over 20,000 in chips (and the winner of yet another prop bet I made before the tournament).
The “big money” payouts over that hour:
1,801st to 3,600th – $15.00
3,601st to 5,400th – $10.00
5,401st to 7,500th – $7.50
19:30ET (Sunday): I’m going to call it a night as far as the “Live Blog” is concerned. It has become unbearable watching some of the action and I’ve been unable to locate any other bloggers since blaargh86 was eliminated near the top of the hour. I will keep one eye on the tournament in case any big names decide to run towards the top but I can’t track over a 1,000 players while doing the regular job of railing the Big Money Sunday games.
The top 10 chip stacks at this time:
gmsem – 272,024
MK48G – 235,314
nttiri – 228,689
king9off – 227,608
Xaziol – 215,748
zaksovas – 215,039
Golfball44 – 212,992
TIOJUCAVIX – 206,371
tylerhungary – 204,157
Yce – 202,926
Live Blog from Saturday’s preparations:
15:00 (Saturday): It’s just a mere 24 hours until the start of one of the biggest gathering of low-buyin donkeys in the history of online poker. The FTOPS XIV Warmup tournament is set to kick off at 15:05 ET on November 1st with 30,000 players registered already. The 50,000 player limit takes the prizepool up to the guarantee of $250,000, the payouts you see in the lobby are exactly what they’ll be tomorrow. That’s an insane number of players in one tournament and for this occasion decided it was worthy of a “live blog”. Starting 24 hours ahead of time.
Last evening I joined a few bloggers on the tables for some small-ball tournament action to prepare my weak game for the Warmup. My results were about as horrible as you could expect. There were some little 90-person SnG which caused more frustration then learning so I moved to cheapy single table tournaments for the sole goal of dusting off or sucking out. Call it my anti-tilt therapy.
The plan for today (Saturday) is to play as many low buy-in tournaments as I can get fired up to get myself ready for tomorrow, while also keeping a close eye on all the sports action and bigger games on Full Tilt. Proving my complete dedication to the site, I turned down great tickets to see my beloved Philadelphia Eagles take on the lowly New York Giants. That is some serious sacrifice.
I will return later this evening with my results and back tomorrow with the live blog during the tournament.
18:00 ET (Saturday): Looking down the list of available multi-table tournaments I quickly saw the Early Daily Doubles. Two simultaneous $5 tournaments should be just the thing to tune up my skills, see what kind of action I will be up against in the “big one” tomorrow. It was definitely a hard lesson to learn. Here are just some of the things I noticed throughout my short stay.
- Not really enough chips to make plays. Unless you are playing small-ball for tiny pots, it gets tough to make any decent moves past the flop unless you’ve built up a sizable stack. I flopped bottom set in a multi-way pot on a flushy, co-ordinated board. By the river I was dead, knew it and was correct, but never had enough ammo to move anyone around.
- I haven’t learned yet whether opening up my game or locking it down is the optimum play in these tournaments. It’s nearly impossible to put a read on anybody because position, pot-size, bet-size rarely seems to have any place in their thinking. I still have plenty of time to figure that out this evening.
- A-rag is playable from any position to any raise. Any Ace Face is the nutz preflop. Two raises ahead of you, you should definitely call of 3/4 of your stack with A3. Pay no mind to the fact that you are most certainly dominated, miracles happen all the time. And if you are holding JackAce or better? Ship in your chips, all of them no matter of stack size, because you are holding the nuts.
- OVERSHOVE! Do you have 50 big blinds? Maybe 60 or as “little” as 40. If it folds to you, or better yet if you are UTG, ship all those chips in the middle. It will definitely take away any chance you will be outplayed after the flop. The range for this move is officially “any two cards”.
Another puzzler is why players buyin to the Daily Double A and not B. Do players not realize that part of the buyin goes towards payouts for performance across both tournaments? There were 300 fewer players in the Daily B than Daily A. Very odd. I was up well early in the B tournament having hit a few hands. Unfortunately I put all my chips in the middle with QQ after watching an aggro-donk raise nearly non-stop preflop. This time the player actually had a hand as I ran smack into aces, out somewhere in the low 700’s.
The Daily Double A was a grind as I was getting most of my action in the other tournament. After getting myself down pretty low, I decided to make a stand in the BB with the dreaded JackAce. UTG raises for the 100th straight hand, late postion player makes a raise bigger than my stack. I called the feeling pretty confident UTG was coming along. He did and I flopped gold for the triple up.
My stack didn’t last long as I hit a string of second best and speculative hands (why oh why do I play JJ or 99 in ANY position?) and decided AQ was my take-a-stand hand this time around. No such luck this time as I ran into AT.
Next up is a few Multi-table Sit n Go’s while watching football and my Phillies.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Related Posts
- 2009 World Series of Poker Day 46 – Main Event Day 5 Live Blog
- Holiday $100k Live Blog
- 2009 World Series of Poker – Main Event Live Blog
- 2009 November Nine Live Blog
- 2009 World Series of Poker Day 49 – Main Event Day 8 Live Blog
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...Tags: AlCantHang, Bloggers on the Rail, FTOPS, FTOPS Warmup
One Response to “FTOPS XIV Warmup Live Blog”
-
Dr. Chako Says:
November 1st, 2009 at 5:35 pmNice win on the prop. Need pics of whatever you decide the loser has to do.
I just went out when my KK ran into a set of 8s (as I was typing this comment in fact).
-DrC
