My First Mookie!

So I decided to dive into the blogger tournies a bit. I put $500 on FTP and figured we'll see what happens. Without being too arrogant I figured it was safe to assume that I was better than the majority of the field. I was pretty pleasantly surprised by the quality of the play for the most part. There were a few guys who I was very impressed with and quite a few more very solid players. There were definitely a lot of people who just had very little if any concept of how to play around the bubble, but that's to be expected especially when many of the players in a tourney like this probably aren't regular tourney players. I was able to steal quite a few chips on my way to the final table and eventually the win. That's right! The win!!! I took down my first The Mookie in my first ever attempt!





The $200 and whatever prize really wasn't a big deal - I win about that in any normal sng win - but this is definitely some bragging rights. I'm pretty tired but I'll give everybody a quick rundown of events from memory the best I can. Things started out pretty well. I think I had AA twice in the first level and basically ended up with about 4k in chips right off the bat. I hung right around there until blinds were at 120/240/25. At that point Lucko caught the wrong end of me getting a nice run of cards. He kept raising to 655 and I kept on raising all in. This happened I think 3 times in 9 hands or so. The first one I had A3d in the BB and he raised that from the CO or Button...don't remember. I felt like it was a pretty standard steal and with about 4k in chips I could push him off with a resteal push. He had about 8k at the time and I'd played very tight up to that point so I didn't see him being in a big hurry to get involved. My resteal was successful. Then, next hand if I remember right, he made the same raise and I woke up with JJ. I figured I'd go all in again and maybe get paid by a hand like Ax or smaller pocket pairs. He folded again. My next BB the exact same situation came up with the exact same raise. I had JJ again and pushed again. He folded a third time and told me if I pushed again he was calling me. I told him I had the hand every time, but I'm not sure he believed. I think I kind of came off as a dick and I really didn't mean to at all. Lucko if you're reading this no hard feelings okay? After that it was pretty smooth sailing with normal blind steals. Nothing really of note except getting caught stealing by iam23skidoo. I raised to 800 with T7h on the button and he reraised to 2100. I didn't think he was that strong and he gave me pretty good odds to take a look. The flop came J high with 2 hearts. He pushed in for his last 1500 or so and it was a pretty easy call with the flush draw...I may have had an inside straight too but don't remember and I'm too tired to look right now. I missed my draw and that left me at about 2500, but I was able to steal my way back to about 4500, split a pot with AJ against AA all in preflop (extremely lucky) and then double up with AK in about 5 minutes. After that it was smooth sailing to the bubble. I was chip leader or one of them anyways at ~17k when the worst hand of the tourney happened. 9 were paid and we were down to 10 with 5 at each table. Mookie was the shorty with about 4500. He raised to 3k UTG. I look down and what to my wondering eyes does appear? Pocket Aces just ship that bounty right over here! I smooth call and the flop is KJX. Mookie pushes and of course I call. He turns over TT. Turn is a blank and then the river of course is the T. Brutal. I can't really complain considering how well I ran in this thing, but that was just nasty. Can't fault Mookie for playing it that way either...nothing wrong with it, it just sucked. I was able to grind back to about 20k in chips out of 111k in play going into the final table and Mookie did eventually become the bubble boy if I remember correctly. The final table wasn't really that interesting. Basically me raising a ton and calling all ins when I had odds to. I got some pretty good cards and eventually got to heads up where I felt that I played extremely well. If you read this blog at all you know I'm an SNG player so deep stack heads up (by that I mean more than 20BB in play) is not my specialty at all. I don't remember any of the hands imparticular except that last one where I won a race with KJo against 88. Jack spiked on the flop and there you go! Thanks to anyone who played and anyone who took the time to read this. I've been reading several of your blogs for a while now and I hope you can find time/find this interesting enough to stop by here once in a while too.

O yeah...almost forgot. Here are my SNG results today. At least it was a winning day...I hate SNGs...alot...sometimes.

Today: 37 $44 sngs played, +$64

May: 72 $44 sngs played, +$108

2007: 1756 $44 sngs played, +$14,248