Sweat your balla Cardrunners blogger!

is currently 5th of 18 on Day 3 of a $1500 HORSE event at the WSOP. Updates here

win plz lj

Thanks for reading,

George

Won the $3 rebuy

It was a very long night of donkamenting. From about 80 left down to 12 I was below average and just tried to stay patient. There were several wackjobs at my table so I couldn't open light, I just had to wait for hands before coming into pots. Finally with 12 left I got some cards and went on a huge rush. I got it in with QQ vs the maniac chip leader's JT on a ten high flop. A ten came on the turn, but the river gave me a flush and I survived.

That moved me up to 3rd, then a few hands later he doubled me up again. I raised the SB with 44 and he called. Flop was 864. Normally I would bet such a drawy board but this guy was a maniac I figured he'd bet his whole range if I checked it to him. So I checked, and he shoved 2.4 million into a 400k pot, I called, he had 82 and I held. That gave me the chip lead, and a few hands later I won another huge pot with AA vs KQ all in pre, adding to my chip lead. Then I just started raising every single hand, busted two more players and went into the final table with 11.3 million. 2nd place had 3.3 million and everyone else was under 2.5 million.

At the final table I continued to raise a ton and put pressure on the shorter stacks. Eventually we got down to 4 handed with me having about 60% of the chips in play. It took forever for someone to bust out though. I kept doubling up the short stacks, then stealing constantly and beating them back down, then doubling them up again, etc. But at long last it was down to heads up, with me holding an 18 million to 11 million chip lead over Misclick, who was the only other good player at the final table. I chipped away at him and took the lead when he tried to run a bluff into my top pair. Then I shoved 11 BBs with 86 and got there against his K9 for the win.

It feels awesome to win, I've made several deep runs in this tournament over the last couple weeks but wasn't able to break though. It's such a massive field you need a lot of luck and need to dodge a lot of landmines, so it's great that the stars aligned for me. The first time I played this tournament two years ago(back when I was terrible) I got 2nd, and I had no appreciation at the time of just how tough it is to beat out that many people, even though most of them are very weak players. Thanks for pauliec84, rc33, lj and lucko for the rail.

Thanks for reading,

George

End of the BBT

BBT5 has just come to the end, with actyper and jjok winning the main event seats. Congrats to both players. Now comes the question of whether they will actually play in the main event, or just pocket the money. During the TOC, Al said in the chat that this would be the last BBT, mainly because most people seem to be keeping the money instead of going to Vegas and playing. He makes a good point, because there's no benefit for Full Tilt if they're just giving money away and not getting the publicity of having qualifiers from their site play in the biggest tournament in the world. And while I think it's pretty disingenuous to play in the BBT and the TOC if you have no intention of playing in the World Series, I don't think that's whats happening in a lot of cases. Instead, it's Full Tilt's own disinterest in the BBT as a whole that's causing the problem.

To illustrate what I mean, I'll take you through what happened after I won a main event seat during last year's TOC. A few days after the TOC, Full Tilt added $10,000 to my account and sent me an email congratulating me on winning a main event seat. I was a bit surprised at this point because almost all the WSOP packages Full Tilt gives out for their regular satellites are worth $12,000, $10,000 for the tournament and another $2,000 for expenses. I was disappointed, but still ecstatic about the chance to play in the World Series. So the next step was of course to get the $10,000 off the site and into my bank account. This turned out to be a difficult process, as the only withdrawal method available to me was a check, and the maximum withdrawal was $5,000. This meant all I could do was a wire transfer, but the minimum for a wire transfer was $20,000. So I had to email Full Tilt support asking for special permission to make a $10,000 wire transfer. They approved it, but only I after I sent them a scanned copy of my drivers license and a scanned copy of a bank statement.

Once I finally got the $10,000, that was the last I heard from anyone at Full Tilt. They never offered me any free Full Tilt gear to wear when I played, or contacted me at all asking if they could use me to help promote the site, as in "Here is the story of busto donk Loretta8. Thanks to this great promotion we have at Full Tilt, Loretta8 won a trip to Vegas to play for millions in the world's biggest poker tournament. Next year, this could be you, etc."

Now this may come across as whiny, but I don't mean it that way at all. It was a fantastic opportunity for me, and I greatly enjoyed my time at the World Series. But for someone who's actually a responsible adult with a family to provide for like PokerFool, I can understand perfectly why he chose not to play. Here's how Full Tilt should handle the BBT, in my humble opinion:

1. Actively promote it. Whenever I log into Poker Stars, a window pops up telling me about the latest promotions on the site, from main event satellites to the big winners in their Sunday tournaments to Stars' own blogger freeroll. Full Tilt makes almost no effort to promote the BBT, so it's no wonder they don't get more players who want a cheap way to win their way to Vegas.

2. Make a better effort to get the winners to play in the event. The first step is to make the packages worth $12,000. You're already giving away 10 grand, what's another two so the player doesn't have to go into his own pocket for expenses? Additionally, the email I got congratulating me on my win should have contained detailed instructions on how to get the $10k off the site and to the Rio. Full Tilt wants me to play, so they should make it as easy as possible. And throw in some bonuses for the winners once they get to the Rio as well, like giving them access to the Full Tilt VIP suite where all their pros hang out. And in exchange for all these perks, have the winner agree to wear Full Tilt gear when he plays. This to me is the most baffling part of the whole thing; what the hell is the point of giving someone $10,000 to play in the main event if you don't give them Full Tilt gear to wear, and don't use their story to promote your site? I really don't understand it.

Al and Full Tilt have been very generous in setting up the BBTs, and if they're really coming to an end, it's too bad. But with some simple changes and a little more hands on the effort on the part of Full Tilt, prize pools would soar, Full Tilt would get more rake, and they'd be much more likely to have the TOC winners play in the main event.

In other news, Stoner finished 3rd in the WSOP $2500 no limit tournament, taking home over $200,000. Congrats to him, $200k will buy quite a lot of hookers.

Thanks for reading,

George

Gooooooo Stoner!

Best of luck to Stoner, who's 8th of 20 going into Day 3 of a $2500 WSOP event. You can get live updates at PokerNews.

Also the BBT TOC is tonight, good luck to everyone playing, especially these three people.

Nothing too exciting going on for me in poker, made some deep runs in some huge field Stars MTTs but haven't been able to break though late. Hopefully I'll bink something today.

Thanks for reading,

George