I started things off with a solid cold decking, and within minutes I was 3rd overall: Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 10/20 Blinds 3 Ante (9 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com UTG (t6043) UTG+1 (t6006) MP1 (t6253) MP2 … Read more…
Finished a very frustrating 12/500 in this, capping off a long and shitty day of poker. I was in very good shape approaching the bubble, then got scooped in two sizable pots to get busted down to average as we … Read more…
I won’t be a back-to-back champion in the $2000 2-day FTOPS. I actually had quite good luck with my table draws, recognizing no one at my starting table and only two players over the course of the three and a … Read more…
This was the second rush tournament I’ve played, and while I miss having reads and establishing dynamics at the table, I will say that rush otherwise allows for great tournament structures. You get in a ton of hands at each … Read more…
Full Tilt Poker hosted a Tournament of Champions today for everyone who won an FTOPS event in any of the last four series. The only prize was a $10,000 WSOP seat (no details whatsoever on how/whether it can be cashed … Read more…
Don’t Try to Bluff a Guy Named Psycho This one’s a little embarrassing. I shoved turn here hoping to get him off a mid-pair, but here’s what happened instead: Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 6000/12000 Blinds 1500 Ante (8 handed) … Read more…
We played for 10 hours, so obviously there were a lot of hands, but here are two that stick out in my head: Full Tilt No-Limit Hold’em Tournament, 250/500 Blinds 50 Ante (9 handed) – Full-Tilt Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com … Read more…
Woke up at 6AM this morning, drove from Boston to Baltimore, got in just in time to fire this bitch up, and 10 hours later I am through Day 1 ranked 22/106, with 946 runners starting. I actually burst the … Read more…
Congratulations on busting durrrr in the following tournament: FTOPS Event #25 (2-Day) (147664209) Your Full Tilt Poker account has been credited with a bounty prize of $200.00. In addition to your bounty prize money, you’ve also earned a T-shirt to … Read more…
Like the $100 rebuy, this one ran with an overlay. I was only in for $900, so I had like $240 in overlay. It went down basically the way I expected it to: got some fish to clown off their … Read more…
I’ve had some deep runs lately in the Saturday $300 6-max, so I was looking forward to this event. Unfortunately, it didn’t really go my way. I lost a big pot (though not my stack) with AJ vs. AQ on … Read more…
OK I did play it ;-). It didn’t end up taking up much time at all. I’m still not sure about this fold. He certainly ought to have more than AA to do this, but you never know with these … Read more…
I finished 12th in this, out of 1024, meaning I made it to the Sweet 16. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail about hands here because I’ll probably make a video of this for Poker Savvy … Read more…
Story of the FTOPS for me for as long as I’ve been playing it: I went deep but not quite deep enough. After nearly 7 hours, I took 37th and won less than 4 buy-ins. My bust-out hand was pretty … Read more…
My tournaments results have been pretty good the last few months, culminating most recently in two PCA seats and a win in the FTP $300 Saturday 6-Max. I attribute this improvement to a disciplined effort to avoid bringing the aggressive … Read more…
The whole idea of betting for protection is one that I feel I am really only now starting to understand. Most people, when they first start playing, are way too concerned about protecting their hands. You see them overbetting and … Read more…
Particularly earlier in the year, running too many big bluffs in tournaments was a substantial leak of mine. I’ve made a concerted effort to confine the monster bluffs to the cash tables, and my tourney results have improved a bit. … Read more…
I was not playing very well on Saturday, and it showed through in my results. I think I’m pretty good at letting bad beats and unlucky cards roll off my back, but I have a lot more trouble getting over … Read more…
I lasted no more than 15 minutes in this tournament and got 3-bet no fewer than four times. The final time, I raised 44 in the SB, shoved over a 3-bet from the BB, and lost the flip to AQ. … Read more…
I donked my way out of this one with a quickness, lost my ass with QQ on a 972 board with two clubs. Worse, it was to a guy who’d previously called KJ on a J74 flop, potted the turn … Read more…
About three hours into this tournament, it was looking to be short and sweet. I shoved 33 from the SB over an aggressive guy in the CO who’d been raising most of the time it was folded to him. The … Read more…
I really wish FTP had found a way to avoid scheduling this on Valentine’s Day. Emily told me she was OK with me playing it, which I think she would have been, but that’s really all the more reason to … Read more…
I really wish FTP had found a way to avoid scheduling this on Valentine’s Day. Emily told me she was OK with me playing it, which I think she would have been, but that’s really all the more reason to … Read more…
As I’ve said many times before, my preference in Stud tournaments is not to build big pots on 3rd street. That’s generally a high-variance, low-edge strategy, and it makes otherwise large mistakes on future streets much less severe. Unfortunately, people … Read more…
Not surprisingly, the quality of play in this was something like atrocious. Judging from the chat and general play, I was at a table full of clowns, which was cool. My favorite hand saw a guy raise pre-flop, and get … Read more…
I almost didn’t play this because my experience with limit tournaments has always been that even if I am not doing well they take forever. At least in NLHE if it isn’t going well you don’t waste a lot of … Read more…
Given the deep stacks, short-handed format, and substantial buy-in, this was probably the FTOPS event I was looking forward to the most. Sadly, the other players at my table were giant nits during the rebuy period. I got AK on … Read more…
I almost didn’t play this because my experience with limit tournaments has always been that even if I am not doing well they take forever. At least in NLHE if it isn’t going well you don’t waste a lot of … Read more…
This was an odd format. If you lost all 5000 of your starting chips in the first two hours, you got a free T5000 rebuy. However, if you reached the end of those two hours with chips, even if you … Read more…
Not a lot to say about this one. Only remotely interesting hand was this one: Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em Tournament, 60/120 Blinds, 9 PlayersLeggoPoker.com – Hand History Converter CO: 5,090BTN: 10,960SB: 3,465BB: 9,106Hero (UTG): 4,070UTG+1: 6,958UTG+2: 7,021MP1: 9,145MP2: 7,050 … Read more…
Thought I’m not playing the FTOPS events as compulsively as I have in the past, I am playing my favorites. So far, though, it hasn’t been too interesting and I decided to spare you the litany of bad beats. Last … Read more…
Just kidding, I didn’t play this 😉
I was in for the minimum, but that’s about all that went right with this tournament. For the next hour and a half, I was catching absolutely nothing. AK, JJ, and TT were the best hands I saw. I won … Read more…
I was really rolling in this for a few hours. There was a giant over-aggressive donkey at my starting table, and I was lucky enough to get more than a few hands against him early on to get up a … Read more…
It’s so rare to find a tournament with a structure as good as this one. Level increases were gradual and staggered every thirty minutes, and stacks started deep. There were a couple of good tournament players at my table, most … Read more…
It was Razz, so obviously nothing too interesting happened. I felt like I ran terrible, but I think everyone feels that way when they play Razz. I’m not going to bore you with any bad stories. Naturally there were a … Read more…
This one was over quick. I 3-bet AT on the button against a pretty loose bad player in the CO whom I’d 3-bet several times before. He called. The flop came T-high with a flush draw. He checked and called. … Read more…
My first table was pretty unremarkable except for Erick Lindgren a few seats to my right. He was playing a kind of loose and passive style, but he was making it work for him. After I got myself knocked out … Read more…
Once again I had some rough table draws, ending up with a lot of high-stakes cash players. As I previously explained, this is bad in an FTOPS tournament for a number of reasons. One of them took me to valuetown … Read more…
This ran simultaneously with the HORSE, and I didn’t even realize it was scheduled. I think turbo tournaments are stupid, but it was an FTOPS, I was already playing, and it as going to require close to 0% of my … Read more…
I knew Monday night’s FTOPS was a 1K NLHE, but I was pleasantly surprised when I was “seated” to find only five other players at my table. I had no idea it was a 6-max! I was less pleasantly surprised … Read more…
This event replaced the usual $200 FTP $750K Guarantee and had an appropriately weak field. I didn’t do anything special to chip up, aside from occasionally abusing the fish on my right. I did find check-folding Aces on the turn … Read more…
I went pretty deep in the $500 heads up matches, finishing in the top 64. Here’s a blow-by-blow: Round 1 My first two opponents were ridiculously soft. I polished the first off in minutes, then waited over an hour for … Read more…
This was a $200 6-max tournament with a $40 bounty on each player. I lasted a few hours but only won one bounty. Because it was 6-max, I was able to accumulate chips without a lot of big hands. Eventually … Read more…
Event 7 was the $100 rebuy. On the first hand I raised AQ on the button, called a shove for half a stack (ie the guy didn’t double rebuy), and got shown AA. I reloaded $100 more and that’s all … Read more…
I’m not great at PLO, but I played the $500 PLO 6-max FTOPS event because I want to get better and I was sure there would be plenty of worse players. There were. Unfortunately, they ran good: Full Tilt PokerPot … Read more…
Event 4 was a $300 NLHE tournament that allowed one $300 rebuy and one $3000 add-on. The initial $300 bought 2000 chips, the rebuy bought 2000 chips anytime during the first hour that you had 2000 chips or fewer, and … Read more…
I almost didn’t play the $500 PLO 6-max, but a few people convinced me I should, and I’m glad I did. The field was really weak, and it was a lot of fun to boot. Well, except for losing a … Read more…
This was a $200 PLO tournament with a $40 bounty. Predictably, there were a ton of people playing trashy hands. I imagine a really good PLO player could have done a lot more to take advantage of that, but the … Read more…
The $200 buy-in for this event was actually smaller than that of the regularly scheduled tournament it replaced: the weekly $300 6-max. Still, it was an FTOPS with thousands of entrants and thousands of fish. I didn’t recognize many names … Read more…
The day started well enough. I began my Sunday earlier than usual to play the $240 knock-out FTPS event and the Poker Stars $2 Million Frequent Player Point tournament. I got up nice stacks in both, and did manage to … Read more…
AT $2500, this was one of the largest buy-in online tournaments I’d ever entered, and the first two-day event. It had a great structure, with gradual blind increases every half hour and deep starting stacks. I got a pretty good … Read more…
$200 6-max NLHE. Same old, same old. I’ve already posted most of the key hands on 2+2, and I don’t feel like re-converting them, but you can check out that thread if you want to see them. Two were kind … Read more…
If you haven’t picked up on the pattern yet, last night’s $300 Razz tournament involved me running terribly against a bunch of atrocious calling stations. I’ll try to include some discussion on a few interesting spots so that this isn’t … Read more…
This was a $200 PLHE/PLO mixed event. I was thinking it would be pretty juice because of how poorly even some of the better hold ’em players would do in the PLO portion, and boy was I right. Unfortunately, I … Read more…
Last night was the $300 rebuy 6-max. I was in for “the minimum”, meaning a double rebuy initially and the add-on, but I use scare quotes because soooooooooo many people weren’t rebuying. I was the only one to double rebuy … Read more…
Tuesday night’s $200 O/8 event was the best I’ve done in this year’s FTOPS, which just means I got to play for five hours and leave empty-handed. The play was atrocious, but it’s tough to do much in O/8 if … Read more…
This was a $1000 6 max, a great event for me, but it just didn’t come together. I was getting re-raised left and right, and I’m not sure if people were catching hands or just that stupidly aggressive but it … Read more…
Edit: Mistitled, this was Event 9. Been too busy for the kinda weak events of the last few days. Looking forward to this week’s lineup though, starting with the $1K tomorrow night. I was rocking it pretty good tonight, winning … Read more…
Lasted a little over three hours in the $500 HORSE, then made an illustrative Stud mistake: FullTiltPoker Game #5166723748: FTOPS Event #3 (35825861), Table 26 – 500/1000 Ante 100 – Limit Stud Hi – 0:35:56 ET – 2008/02/08Seat 1: zartarious … Read more…
Grrrrrrrr I missed the PLO Bounty event, I didn’t realize it was an afternoon tournament. The $500 HORSE is tonight, so that’s what I’ll be playing instead.
This was just a standard $200 NLHE event, but it attracted 5000 runners, more than FTP’s Sunday tournament. I got off to a slow start but eventually built up a big stack and was 55th with 2000 remaining. Then I … Read more…
The $500 NLHE Main Event was yet another in a long series “close but no cigar” FTOPS finishes for me. We started with quite deep stacks, and so I came out of the gate swinging: Full Tilt Poker, NL Hold’em … Read more…
I almost didn’t play the $500 HORSE FTOPS event last night because I was pretty tired, but generally the quality of play in these things is so bad, and the opportunity to play large-field, mixed-game tournaments so rare, that I … Read more…
Last night was the $300 rebuy with 6-handed tables, which is the FTOPS event in which I felt my edge would be largest. Though my finish wasn’t anything spectacular, I was quite happy with how I played. Here’s one kind … Read more…
Since I was away over the weekend, this was only the second FTOPS event I played. It was a $1000 NLHE tournament, and although I lasted about three hours, I really didn’t have any interesting hands come up. I ended … Read more…