Full Tilt MTT Final table

I've been having a terribly busy month at work, which should help to explain the dearth of content here on the Poker Blog. I've been really focusing on playing a lot more poker lately, albeit just a couple nights during the week. I'm not playing as much as I need to be, but I'm playing more than I was last month and that's a step in the right direction.

I've been back to the SNG grind, of course, playing my regular $30+3s and mixing in some $50+5s as well, to evaluate a move up to that level thanks to the bankroll boost of my last big tournament win.

But I'm also making the time for MTTs much more often, per my major poker New Year's Resolution. I've been hitting at least four MTTs a week for the past month, and got on to do more MTT damage tonight if I could.

By the time I hopped on the computer I'd missed the Party $40k Guaranteed (my favorite MTT of late) so I jumped in the first two MTTs that were starting next, regardless of buyin: a $33 MTT with 795 entrants on Party Poker and a $10+1 MTT with 356 entrants on Full Tilt.

I busted out of the Party MTT about two-thirds of the way through on some unspectacular hand, getting outkicked on top pair I think. But in the Full Tilt tournament tonight i made my first MTT final table of 2006.

I took over the chiplead when we were down to the final four tables, and held it for quite a while. battled back and forth between second and first for the duration, until we collapsed to the final table where i dropped in as third in chips:

lost the first couple pots i played, calling two raises with with pocket pairs and folding to post-flop aggression when I didn't hit a set or overpair. Then won a big pot with pocket nines to jump a little higher than I started, to T109k.

Lost a really good sized pot a few hands later, calling a preflop raise from the chipleader (whom i've got position on) with KQc. Flop comes king-high rainbow, he leads out and I raise. He quickly calls my raise. We both check the turn and then he pushes the river obviously having me covered as the chipleader. I make a really weak fold after thinking it over, because I really feel i have an edge on the table and I'm still in third place despite the weak play, albeit with only T65k in chips. UPDATE: posted this hand on the Two+Two forums if you want to see exactly how it played out. Sparked a pretty good discussion over there...

We lose our first player a few hands later, and we're down to eight. Later in that orbit, i find the short stack (T12k) in the big blind (T2k plus antes) against my small blind and push him all-in with T4o just looking to steal his big blind, assuming he will fold a really wide range looking to just hang on. However he instacalls with A5soooted which holds up unimproved, and i've just dropped to T37.5k, and fourth place in the chipcount. First and second are running away, both over 170k. We lose another player on the next hand, another two hands later, and another two more hands later, and we're down to the final five. I win the first hand we play five-handed with AJo and move to T45k, in fifth place in chips but only ~7k behind fourth place.

We run around a couple orbits, see a couple flops, no major confrontations. The big stacks are effectively whittling the other shortstack and I down, and i'm waiting for a big hand at this point with pretty much zero FE.

The next hand I play, UTG raises the standard 3xBB raise that the bigstacks have been using, and I look down to find AQo. Happily i push over the top, and the UTG bigstack calls me with KJo. The flop punishes me with AKJ, and I'm in trouble as a 37%-61% underdog with what was the best hand (63%-37%) preflop.

So after catching no help, I bust out in fifth place, paying roughly 25x my buyin, for a nice boost to the Full Tilt bankroll. Nothing major - nothing like the month Rizen is having, for example - but a good confidence builder with yet another MTT final table, and cheap MTT experience to boot.

And thanks to the MTT final table, plus 75% ITM / 104% ROI on the $33 SNGs I was playing in the background of the Tilt MTT, I ended up with a net of more than $100/hour played tonight (thanks PokerTracker for the stats), not bad at all for my bankroll level.