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Closing Time on FTOPS 1 | |||
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The Last Testament of Mike MatusowMike Matusow was near the top of the leaderboard, Huckleberry Seed and Steve Zolotow were in the hunt, and Erik Seidel, the night's host, was on life support.Erik Siedel, host of FTOPS III's Event #1 Seidel hung on for a long time on short chips, eventually finishing in 309th place, three spots short of the money. I'll spare you the analogy to the crushing blow I suffered the night before when I finished three spots short of the money in the $30,000 Guarantee. Erik, I trust, didn't wake up his wife to complain or say, 'I just want to cry.' Not that I did any of that, either, of course. It took three hours, forty minutes to make it to the money. Matusow, with a lot of chips, was not playing the aggressive 'stealing game.' In fact, he hardly played any hands during the half hour after the third break. With blinds at 500-1,000 and a 125 ante, the player on the button raised Mike's blind to 3,000. Mike re-raised to 10,000. The raiser called and pushed in his remaining 3,000+ chips. He had K-9o. Matusow had pocket kings and moved up to seventh place with over 64,000 chips. There were 261 players left. Z went out in 228th place, leaving just Matusow and Seed among the Full Tilt pros in the field. At the fourth break, after nearly 4 ˝ hours, Mike was stuck on 60,000 chips, good for 30th at the time. There were 138 players left. The largest stack had 225,000 and the average was 41,000. Mike's tournament fell apart immediately after that fourth break. The rail's collective verdict was 'another Matusow blow-up.' The truth had a lot more to do with the nature of late tournament play. On the first hand after the break, Mike raised on the button to 6,000. (Blinds were 1,000-2,000, with a 250 ante.) The big blind moved all-in for 19,000. Matusow called the remaining 13,000 with 9h-6h. The big blind had A-Jo, which held up, dropping Mike to 40,000 in chips. Even though dozens on the rail howled at the moves, the pro made absolutely the right plays. With everybody folding to the button, 9-6s is a good enough hand to raise. According to the tables Andy Bloch has shared with me ' they will be in The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide ' Tournament Edition, due out on June 1 ' 9-6s is in the top 35% of starting hands. In a tournament with antes, the button should be raising 59% of the time. (The book will include explanations about where these numbers came from.) If you're not a numbers person, you can simply say this: All he has to get by are the big and small blinds, who have random hands. Matusow hasn't played many hands and the very, very few he has played have been monsters. What about calling the re-raise with 9-6s? Surely the rail was correct that this was the dumbest move since that lady astronaut put on a diaper and drove 800 miles to 'talk' to her romantic rival with an air gun and a can of pepper spray, right? Wrong. Look at the numbers. Matusow was deciding whether to call 13,000. The pot had 5,250 from blinds and antes, his 6,000 raise, and the 19,000 call/re-raise from the big blind. There was over 30,000 in the pot. Mike had to put in 13,000 for a pot with a final value of 43,000. That means he was getting the right price if he wins 30% of the time. (13/43=.302, though I'm rounding all these numbers a bit.) I didn't have to ask Mike if he knew he was behind or that his chance of winning the hand had to be less than 50%. But how much less than 50%? If Mike was certain that his opponent had A-Jo, he is 38% to win. The shorthand for this is that you are always less than a 2-to-1 underdog against overcards. In fact, if you took all the two-card combinations with an ace and all the pocket pairs, 9-6s is 38% against them. (Thanks again to Andy Bloch for this.) It's an EASY call, even though probably a losing one. A few hands later, he gets hamstrung by almost exactly the same situation. He is in the small blind and it is checked to him. He raises, the shorter stack in the big blind moves all-in, and he is priced in to call with Q-4o. The big blind has the same hand as his last opponent, A-Jo. He loses and is down to 25,000. (Q-4o is a worse hand than 9-6s, though in this instance, he has only the big blind to get through. Again, because he has generally been playing tight ' though no one ever believes Matusow has a hand and he just showed down 9-6 ' he may have figured that his opponent would call only with a quality hand and he was likely to get a fold. Naturally, he didn't count on seeing A-Jo again.) Mike went out before the next break, in 83rd place, losing nearly all his chips calling a small-blind's all-in bet with A-3o. The small blind had 8-7o and drew out. Huckleberry Seed offered a few words in support. That, plus his presence as the last Full Tilt pro in the field, assured that the Carnival on the Rail would move to his table. Seed had the misfortune of running into A-A when he had K-K and went out in 71st place. My Pro-spective on the Rest of the Tournament While drowning my sorrows in the $30,000 Guarantee, I peeked in on the remainder of FTOPS #1. It is not my intention to elevate the Full Tilt pros at the expense of the online players who bested them, but I was somewhat limited in my ability to get an inside story from the last eight tables. I didn't know any of the competitors, nor could I talk with them during breaks or ask their families or friends on the rail about them. I couldn't even do the reporter's trick by covering up my lack of access by describing the players and the setting. ('The bikini-clad temptress, a placid smile on her face, called the chimpanzee's 42,000-chip bet as the lights of the Las Vegas Strip beckoned in the background.' No, I don't think that will do.) I will make some attempts at describing the action, especially if I'm part of it myself. I expect to cover the final table of the Main Event, and am considering a number of ideas to make my coverage of some other events unique. The event ended at 5:49 AM EST, more than 8 ˝ hours after it started. The final table took just an hour, though the action immediately before the final table was protracted. By the time the tournament was down to 9 players, the average chip stack (640,000) was less than 20 big blinds (17,000-34,000). The biggest stack (960,000) had fewer than 30 big blinds. Here is how they finished: 1. jpo123 - $70,729.60 2. BigBukkinChickn - $43,437 3. Pugnacious23 - $28,445.60 4. linkocracy - $22,679.60 5. dAvAko - $17,298 6. jpa24 - $12,377.68 7. durrtyD - $9,033.40 8. cdbr3799 - $7,111.40 9. E Tyme - $5,381.60 They Don't Give Out Avatars, But Still a Great Tourney My own night ended as these nine players started final-table play. At the risk of sounding like a shill for the house, let me recommend the $30,000 Guarantee tournament that runs nightly at 11 PM EST. It is a 6-handed double-stack event, so it offers the challenge of balancing the deep stacks against the need to be active at short-handed tables. In fact, we got a lot more play out of our final table ' notice how effortlessly I was able to slip in that I made the final table ' than the group in FTOPS #1. With 312 players in the $30K G, the average final-table stack was about 150,000. Blinds were just 1,500-3,000 at the start. Even after 20 minutes, the shortest stack had 15 big blinds. Coming Soon (I hope): FTOPS #2 ' HORSE, hosted by Andy Bloch Turbo satellites Total Rebuy Hennigan Begin Again If you have any ideas or comments, try finding me at michaelcraigfulltiltpoker, or just look for me in the tournament . or the tournament the losers of the Big Event are playing. I'm going to ask the poobahs at Full Tilt to put in a feature that allows you to make comments, though I'm sure I have to wait in line behind this payment-processor thing they seem obsessed with. | |||
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