Only half an hour into tonight’s Midnight Madness and I haven’t had anything in thirty hands. A big stack at the table has more than three times the starting stack and is throwing his weight around with a VPIP of over 70%. In the small blind I pick up 
and raise to 200 with two limps ahead of me. The big blind drops out but both of the limpers match the bet. The flop comes out 
and I check. The big stack drops a bet of 420 and I figure it’s time to put up or shut up with my nut flush draw, pushing in my remaining 985 chips. The third guy folds but the big stack stays in, flipping over 
for a flopped straight from a hand in the 15th percentile. I still had about a 35% chance but the turn and the river didn’t bring me another heart.
Tag Archives: Full Tilt
Special KK
Ten hands into a Full Tilt $10K Guarantee turbo tournament and I pick up 
on the small blind (40/80). UTG with nearly three times my chips raises to 200 and is called by UTG+2 who has a little less than I do. I push all-in and the big stack drops out. UTG+2 has KhKc. The cards come out 
and the kings take me down to 95 chips.
on the button, I’m all-in before the flop with the big blind putting in the extra 15 chips to call. The flop misses us both, he’s got an 8 instead of a 9 to go with his ace, and I’m up to 230.
isn’t the best hand in this situation, but my chips go all in again. With three folds ahead of me, perhaps I should have been thinking that the hands on the other side were all potential greats, but the small bling raises, forcing out any other players. A 
on the flop and on the turn give me a gut-shot straight draw. Or it would if the guy I was up against didn’t have two of the kings I need on the table in front of him.
Deep-Sixed
Forty minutes into Midnight Madness (40/80 for the blinds) tonight and I get pocket aces on the button with a raise and a call at 160 ahead of me. I pop it to 480 and the only caller is the big stack (9K where nobody else is above 3K and most are under 2K). The flop is J♠ T♣ 6♣. I bet 800 with another 1,300 behind, he puts me all-in, and shows pocket sixes when I call. K♠ and T♠ on the board, so the full house takes me down again.
Dialing In?
I’ve played Full Tilt’s Midnight Madness eight times now, mostly in the week since Christmas, with a deep run last Saturday night. Since that win, I’ve been trying to fine-tune a new strategy based on the results of my pre-flop calculator testing.
I see a few possibilities from the results above:
- I don’t have enough data points to accurately gauge the results of the new strategy.
- I’m too distracted by looking up hands on the new tables I’m using to pay attention to the rest of the action and play as well as I had been.
- I’m delivering consistent results but I need to get a better feel for the new strategy and improve it.
- The new strategy sucks compared to the old strategy.
Crowded
Full houses were my bane in a tournament tonight. I called a bet on the turn with a straight in my hand and a set of threes for the bettor, then a queen on the river paired his other card, leaving me with just a bit more than the big blind, which was a couple of hands away from me. I managed to triple up going all-in with Tx 7x and hitting a straight just before I was forced to take whatever I was dealt, but another full house in the next round took me down for good.
Full Tilt’s Midnight Madness was a bust tonight. Only big chip win in the 40 hands I played was with a Mutant Jack, then my king-high flush was beaten by an ace-high flush.
Progress or a breakthrough on the pre-flop odds calculator I’ve been working on (or not) since last Christmas (the original Objective-C files are dated Christmas Eve, 2009). Maybe more on that soon.
New Year
Unbearded for the first time in more than two decades.
I’d been planning to play one of the last satellites for today’s Full Tilt Aussie Millions qualifier at 1:20 this morning but after having a couple of beers, a Mai Tai, and a rum and Diet Coke while listening to The Jim-Jams at Mississippi Pizza for New Year’s Eve, I fell asleep about 1. Australia and The Bahamas are safe from me this year.
Instead, I shaved off my beard.