This is just a quick reminder today for this weekend to all you poker blogger types out there. That's right -- the World Poker Bloggers Tour returns for its spectacular kickoff tournament to the 2007 WPBT season, coming this Sunday night at 9pm ET on full tilt. Come join everyone who's anyone in the poker blogging community as the group's best and the brightest come out to play and mix things up in what is, in this blogger's view anyways, without a doubt the best concentration of poker blogging skill and mettle anywhere on the Internets.

The WPBT, conceived of by Byron and now this year managed as well by Columbo, is a series of poker tournaments, limited only to poker bloggers or at least players with some actual semblance of an actual blog. The series first ran in 2006, and Byron has conceived of a brilliant scoring script (B recently explained to me what a script actually is, so now I get to use that word and put it in italics too!) that enables them to award Player of the Year (POY) points to the top half of finishers in each event, and to keep a running tally throughout the year of all the players' performances. The semiannual live WPBT poker tournaments held in Las Vegas each summer and winter also count towards the WPBT POY scoring, and generally the live tourneys have the heaviest weight as well due to the higher live-casino buyins, so this only adds to the excitement already generated by this fun and hotly-contest series of poker tournaments among our little group. And the end result is the WPBT Player of the Year leaderboard, which will be hosted and updated regularly on either Byron's and/or Columbo's blog, where anyone can view the list of the top points-winners thus far in the year's WPBT tournaments. Personally, I found this to be one of the most fun aspects of playing poker with the bloggers during 2006. But then, that might have had something to do with the fact that I ended the year in 4th place in POY overall points among the 150+ bloggers who showed up to play in one or more of these tournaments last year.

In any event, this coming Sunday night at 9pm ET marks the first new tournament of the 2007 WPBT season, so all of you bloggers out there will want to make sure you get in early so as not to fall behind in the POY race for the year. Especially you guys who did poorly early in 2006, and a great number of you who started blogging later during 2006 and thus did not have the chance to gain enough POY points to make the top of the list, this is your time to get in there and make an early splash. This Sunday's event will be no-limit holdem, and bears a $26 (tier 1 token) buyin on full tilt, so not only are there the first round of WPBT POY points at stake, but also a nice amount of cash to play for as well. So be sure to come on out and join the crowd this weekend, and support your fellow bloggers as well as make your mark and show your skills for all to see for 2007. I am already registered, so I am definitely looking forward to seeing you all there. Best of luck though, as I always seem to get it up for these WPBT tournaments, so you'll want to watch out for me if I pop onto your table at some point along the way.

Have a great weekend everyone, and I'll see you on Sunday for the WPBT on full tilt. Also, go stop by Miami Don's blog today for a nice post detailing the odds-on favorites to take down the 2007 WPBT POY race. Don can always be counted on for the Vegas odds spin on things, and the WPBT is no exception.

Mondays at the Hoy went off again last night at 10pm ET, at its regular home on pokerstars, and I showed up ready to play and to defend my current top spot on the 2007 money leader board for the MATH tournament. We got our usual 20 runners for this, the first of the weekly blogger tournaments every week, although the list of players last nght did include some new Hoy virgins in addition to many of the old standbys.

I started the Hoy off poorly, calling a preflop raise from steal position from Astin with a mediocre QTo myself, knowing Astin's tendency to bluff with nothing in these blogger tournaments (sorry to spoil your secret, Astin!). When Astin checkraised me on the turn on a board that missed my hand entirely, I had to fold, despite figuring that Astin had nothing, because I couldn't beat any pair, Ace-high or even King-high on this board. Luckily, I soon regained my chips and then some as I was able to make pocket Queens hold up (can you believe it?!) when my flop check induced an allin push from NewinNov with just A4o on a flop of 249 rainbow. This built my stack back over 2400 chips (starting stacks in the MATH are 1500), and on the very next hand I looked down to find pocket Aces.

Pocket Aces. How much do you love taking down a big pot in a no-limit holdem tournament, and then finding pocket Aces on the very next hand, when many of the players are apt to put you on an aggressive Doyle-esque attempt to raise with nothing just to try to make a rush for yourself? It's a rare opportunity, and while I pondered how best to milk as many chips as possible out of my tablemates, Fuel55 limped for the 50-chip big blind from UTG+1, and then relatively new poker blogger Julius Goat followed that up from UTG+2 with a 4x raise to 200. It's like McDonald's says: I'm Lovin' It!

No sooner had I raised this bet to 500 chips preflop with my pocket Aces from middle position, that Mattazuma quickly made it 1200 chips to go from right behind me in the cutoff. Yes! Could I have planned this one any better? Fuel and the Goat (wisely) folded their hands, and of course I moved in for my last 1680 chips. Mattazuma insta-called, and flipped up pocket Jacks. Probably a questionable play on his part, but as he explains on his blog this morning, he in fact thought that I was just making an over-aggro move on the hand following my pocket Queens and the big pot I was able to win with them. And he certainly did the right thing and re-reraised it up big with those Jacks, knocking out Fuel and the Goat, in support of what was basically a necessity to get the pot heads-up were he to have any realistic chance of winning such a high-action preflop pot with pocket Jacks. And he especially did the right thing when the board came Ten - Six - Eight - Five...

Jack on the river. IGH in 16th place out of 20 players. For the second time in the Mondays at the Hoy tournament, Mattazuma knocked me out of a hand from behind after making what I consider to be not such a great play preflop. That said, for the second time, Matt also managed to make great use of my chips, playing much smarter and more selectively aggressive poker from there on out, ending up busting on the bubble in 4th place for another strong showing for the guy who claims he is just donking off the rest of his money online in blogger tournaments due to the latest news from Neteller last week. So my night at the Hoy ended early, but I did stick around to watch most of the rest of the tournament, which was one of the better ones we've had recently on pokerstars.

In the end, after without a doubt the longest bubble period with 4 players left in any Hoy in several months, it was jeciimd ending in 3rd place for an $80 payout, and last week's winner VinNay finishing in 2nd for $120, bringing his 2-week Hoy money total to over $300. And winning the event was Fuel 55, using pocket Kings to call VinNay's pocket 5s preflop in the final hand to ice his first-ever Hoy title, and Fuel's second blogger tournament win in about a week's time. Congratulations to all three of our Hoy cashers this week, and following is the updated 2007 Chase for the Hoy leaderboard, including last night's results:

1. VinNay $310
2. Hoyazo $200
3. Fuel55 $200
4. Zeem $120
5. Ganton516 $114
6. PhinCity $80
7. jeciimd $80
8. Manik79 $76

You may note that three of the eight players who have cashed this year and found their way onto the early leaderboard in the Hoy tournament are non-bloggers, two of which are friends of friends of mine who have never blogged in their lives. So this should give some impetus to all of you out there who are not necessarily involved or even a part at all of the "blogger community" to come out and play next week and in future MATH tournaments, because as you know we always encourage new players to join and see what all the fun is about. I look forward to seeing you next week in the 2007 Chase for the Hoy, and thanks to everyone who came out to play last night as always.

Today I will conclude my earlier post on how to handle a flopped flush draw, specifically in this case (see screenshot at left) where I've got a minbet and a nice raise already in ahead of my action on the flop. We received a number of really excellent comments to the first straight flush draw post, which I will discuss briefly here.

For the most part, the readers were more or less in agreement as far as how to handle this play here. I guess I was just a tiny bit surprised (but not really) that no one suggested folding. I certainly would not fold here, but I do think it is important to remember that a big draw, even an open-ended straight flush draw, is still just that -- a draw -- and that right now at this time I technically have made nothing more than a pair of 5s. With the first player minbetting, he could easily be on a draw himself, but the second player's nice-sized raise I think makes it pretty clear that I am in fact behind here. Even with 15 outs twice, which does generally speaking make me the favorite to win the hand if I stay through to the river, it's important to remember that I'm only a little more than a 54% favorite. So, if you think about it from a glass-half-empty perspective, my odds situation here is not a whole lot better than when I have a medium pocket pair and my opponent has two overcards, one of the same suit as my cards, before the flop.

That said, the old OESFD is certainly the best individual draw that one can have at any point in a holdem hand, so this is not a hand where I would fold, and none of the commenters seemed to think so either which I think is a good thing. In fact, the only real debate among the comments seemed to be whether to push here or not. Almost no one recommended a smooth call here, another viable option in my mind. In the end it is not the option I chose, because my draw is in fact so big, but I do think for what it's worth that a smooth call here is a viable play given the first player's minbet, which smacks to me of a blocking bet or a weak-lead, typical of someone holding a draw of his own here. And if I'm up against another flush draw with the clubs, then my OESFD is really not nearly as good of a draw as I think it is. So I do think just smooth calling here would be a defensible play, check out what happens on the turn and then re-evalute things there.

All that being said, however, I am with the majority of the commenters who say a reraise is in order here. Seems like most of you ended up recommending the straight-out allin push here, which is a move I like because the relative chip stacks are such that this bet gives my two opponents a realistic and opportunistic chance to fold now, which deep down is what I'd really like most given the hand situation on the flop here. Because my draw is probably a greater than 50% favorite, I don't mind at all going to the river with the hand, but taking it down now is a perfectly happy outcome for me here, and one that I would aim for given the roughly 46% chance that I miss my draws entirely, and that nagging possibility (albeit unlikely) of a higher flush draw out there.

In the end, I looked at the relative chip stacks of myself and my opponent who put in the raise on the flop, and I determined that I had the ability to make a large enough bet that it put the pressure in the hand on him, and yet could still leave me with enough chips myself that I was not going to be bankrupt if I lost the hand (courtesy of poker author extraordinaire DoubleAs). I just didn't love the idea of putting everything in with a 54% favorite hand, on the assumption that my opponent was going to call no matter what I did since he had raised so much on the flop already. So, I went for a reraise to 1000 chips, which is basically the same thing as a push from my opponent's perspective. He in fact responded by pushing allin, which I clearly called, and we flipped 'em up.

Anybody want to guess what he was holding here? Rather than make you wait, I'll just post this link for your viewing pleasure. You will note that, as expected, I was behind there on the flop, and actually was facing a draw that could beat most of my outs already, so it was not exactly a great situation for me, which really illusrates again why I don't always necessarily want to get it all in on the flop even with an OESFD. But never fear, here is the final shot of the hand, where justice did, in the end, prevail.

Thanks again to everyone for the well-reasoned and insightful comments, as always. Have a great weekend, and maybe I'll run into you out on the virtual tables somewhere.

It was another fun night yesterday in Mondays at the Hoy, as 19 bloggers and non-bloggers alike came together in the Chase for the Hoy. As I've mentioned previously, last week (the first non-holiday Monday of the new year), we officially began keeping the leaderboard for the 2007 money leaders in the weekly Hoy tournament, with me actually grabbing the early lead after taking down the first official event of the new year. Although I did make the final table, in the end it was a big blind special that eliminated me, as my A6s on the button in an unopened pot proved not enough to best the big blind who found AKo and a single Ace on the flop, easily enough to convince me to move in the rest of my chips right into the open arms of my opponent.

Overall, last night at the Hoy was another hard-fought bout, with 19 runners setting out to make their mark on the year's money list, and in the end it was a trio of relatively new players in the blogger games that took down the cashish. Winning first place and the $190 first prize was VinNay, with whom I've only played on a few occasions so far but who I hope to see more of in the future. Finishing in second place for $114 was Ganton516, whose blog I could not find on the internets for the life of me, and rounding out the cash spots was Manik79 in third place, putting in his second strong performance in the Hoy in just the last few weeks and winning $76 for his efforts last night.

All this all leaves our 2007 Hoy moneyleader board as of now looking as follows:

1. Hoyazo (yes!) $200
2. VinNay $190
3. Zeem $120
4. Ganton516 $114
5. PhinCity $80
6. Manik79 $76

I look forward to seeing you next week in the 2007 Chase for the Hoy, and thanks to everyone who came out to play last night as always.

Don't forget, tonight is Mondays at the Hoy on pokerstars. Here are the details:

What: Mondays at the Hoy no-limit holdem tournament
Where: Pokerstars, "Private" tournament tab
When: Monday nights at 10pm ET
How Much: $20 + $2 buyin
Password: hammer

Although I've run Mondays at the Hoy every Monday since the Spring of 2006, this year we're starting something new as I will be keeping a running tally of the year's leading moneywinners at the MATH tournament. So far yours truly is in the lead, as I won last week's event in spectacular fashion for just my second career MATH title. I will definitely be looking for my first repeat tonight, so come on out and make a run at the yearly cash leaderboard, and try to dethrone me in the process. People love eliminating me from this tournament with just two crappy overcards, so why not come and give it a whirl in the battle for the $20 buyins? Last week we had 20 runners, and as always we're always looking for new Hoy players, and especially first-timers. So if you've never played a blogger tournament or just never played the MATH before, why not make tonight the night that all changes? Was one of your 2007 resolutions to play some poker with the bloggers? Then tonight is your night!

Also, I would like to congratulate Miami Don for taking down his own tournament, the blogger Big Game, last night on full tilt. Don put on quite a show, waiting it out when the action got fast and furious with many allins as soon as the 3 cash spots were reached, and then playing a smart and careful end game to capture all the chips in the end. Kajagugu won the second-place prize, and CC rounded out the cash spots with his third-place finish. I ended the event in 4th place, bubbling out of the primary cash spots, but not before securing a deal that got me back my $75 buyin from the top 3 cash finishers. In all, it was another fun night replete with lots of great poker players and great poker play. I'm looking forward to more of the same this evening, so I'll see you tonight at Mondays at the Hoy!!

I cashed in 2nd place in the last of the Big Game tournaments that took place in December, and I will be there tonight again at 9:30pm ET to try to continue that run while I also play in the weekly 30k HORSE tournament at 9:30pm ET which I won a couple of weeks ago. I look forward to seeing you there at the Big Game tonight on full tilt!

Our friends at Full Tilt have taken a page out of Byron's WPBT schedule of poker tournaments from last year and started up a very interesting new tournament format this weekend. It is called the Full TIlt Daily Double, and it is actually two tournaments, both $10 + $2 buyin no-limit holdem events, each held nightly at 9pm ET starting on Friday night, January 12. Both events play just like normal nlh freezeout tournaments on full tilt, but for those players who are willing to buy into and play both tournaments simultaneously -- if you're not a notorious multitabler like myself then this event might not interest you so much -- there are a number of added bonuses and gimmicks to make this new dual-tournament event that much more alluring and enjoyable.

To support the extra payouts and bonuses for the Daily Double, full tilt has started up a new progressive jackpot just for the new tournaments, which they began yesterday at $10,000. One dollar from each player's entry fee into each night's tournaments will go towards the following day's progressive jackpot, so for example the jackpot already grew from $10,000 even on Friday to now $11,735 heading into Saturday night's Daily Double tournaments. The jackpot can be paid out in a number of ways to players who participate in both events:

* All players who cash in both tournaments -- using full tilt's regular mtt payout schedule -- will share equally in a prize pool that totals 3% of the current progressive jackpot level.

* The player(s) who average the highest finish in both tournaments each night will be awarded a prize pool totaling 2% of the current progressive jackpot level.

* All players who reach the final table of both tournaments in any night will share equally in a prize pool totaling 20% of the current progressive jackpot level.

* Any player who wins both tournaments in the same night will be awarded 75% of the current progressive jackpot level.

Just to give some examples to show how this works in practice, last night on the first night of the Daily Double experience, the best double finish won $200 (2% of the opening 10k jackpot), and 26 other players each received $11.54 for cashing in both events (a 26-way split of $300, or 3% of the opening 10k jackpot). Each tournament last night had over 1000 entrants, making the tournaments attractive in their own right as normal $10 buyin events, even if you're not interested in the Daily Double aspects. But, I can easily envision a night in the not-too-distant future when the progressive jackpot is up to, say, $30,000, and only 10 players cash in both events, meaning that each of those players would receive $90 for their dual efforts. And these payouts are in addition to the normal payouts the players receive for cashing in each respective event to begin with.

As an added bonus, full tilt plans each day to include the names of each dual finisher from the previous night's Daily Double tournaments on the Daily Double promotions page on the full tilt website. So, if you're a multi-tabling kind of guy or gal like me, why not enter these two tournaments one night soon at 9pm ET, and take a chance at not only some nice payouts, but also seeing your name in lights on the full tilt website for all your friends and family to know just how great of a player you really are?

As my fellow blogger Joanne reported earlier this week right here on CardSquad, Full Tilt is bringing back the Full Tilt Online Poker Series (FTOPS) in mid-February, marking the third FTOPS since last summer as Full Tilt continues to make inroads in the online poker space with this particular series of high-guarantee holdem and non-holdem poker tournaments. The FTOPS is really a great thing for a guy like me, because not only does it represent a nice group of large guaranteed tournaments over a short period of time in all the games I love to play, but many of the events occur at nighttime, which is the only time I ever play online poker.

Well, I am pleased to say that last night I took a big step in my quest to qualify for however many of the nighttime FTOPS events there are, which usually applies only to the weekday tournaments, as the weekend events tend to start in the late afternoon for the most part. I played a satellite tournament called an "FTOPS Holdem Avatar Race", which has been running starting this week every night at 9pm ET on full tilt, for which the buyin is $75, or a Tier II token. The great thing about this particular satellite is that the seat prizes for winning the satellite are grouped into $648 prize packages, representing three $216 buyins to each of FTOPS Event #1, Event #5 and Event #8. This is the perfect satellite for me to play in, since each of Events 1, 5 and 8 will occur during the week, starting at 9pm ET between February 9 and February 18. So, for $75 apiece last night, 57 players went at it in a no-limit holdem tournament format, with the top 6 finishers securing the buyins to each of these three no-limit holdem FTOPS events next month.

Long story short, I played aggressively and got off to a nice chip lead in what was actually my second run in this Avatar Race satellite this week, but I took a couple of bad ass beats that had my stack sitting in 12th place out of 14 players remaining, nearly 2 hours into the tournament. This was when I ended up calling an allin reraise before the flop, with me holding T9s and basically knowing I was well behind to the guy who had reraised me for most of his chips, but I also knew that folding at that point would leave me in a deep, deep hole, way in last place of the remaining players, and with almost no chance of coming back to win my seat. So, I made the call, and my T9s was well behind to my opponent's pocket Aces, until I spiked three miracle cards on the board to make a straight, stay alive, and eventually go on to survive to the end and win my three FTOPS seats, as per the graphic above. I have a full writeup of last night's tournament over on my blog, so if you're interested in reading about what I think is one of the best ways to get into a bunch of the FTOPS events for fairly cheap (relatively speaking), go take a gander at my writeup and see if this sounds like it's right for you.

This really is a great chance for many of you to play not only in the satellites for the other FTOPS events, but also in the actual FTOPS tournaments at a cheap price. There are one or two more events that I may try to qualify for in the coming days and weeks, so hopefully I will see some of you out on the virtual felt.

Oh what a night! There really is something special about winning one's own tournament. Maybe Wil can comment on this as well as he has held the weekly WWdN tournament on Tuesday nights for well over a year now by my records. Actually I guess I don't specifically recall Wil ever winning the WWdN (unlike some people) -- I definitely remember more than one top-3 finish for him some time ago, but maybe Wil can fill us in on the details -- but last night I had the honor of winning my second Mondays at the Hoy tournament and my first of the new year. Even better, I managed to pull off the big victory in the very week that I announced on my blog that I will be keeping a weekly tally of 2007 Money Leaders for the Mondays at the Hoy tournament, which I will post here every week after that week's event.

So it is with great honor and pride that I present to you the first MATH Money Leader Board for 2007:

Hoyazo ... $200
Zeem ... $120
PhinCity ...$80

Really, last night's Hoy is just the latest notch in my belt after what has been a very hot streak for me at the virtual tables over the past couple of months. In fact, last night I also managed to cash in 32nd place out of 1585 entrants in the nightly 25k guaranteed no-limit holdem tournament, which bears the exact same start time of 10pm ET as Mondays at the Hoy, and I also final tabled the nightly HORSE mtt on full tilt, which runs at 10:15pm ET every night. Throw in some full-out donkery from me over a few hours at a blogger 1-2 nlh cash game, and I was a four-tabling machine last night, losing a bit in the cash but making nice scores in each of my other three tourneys that ran concurrently into the wee hours of the morning. I plan to have more of a writeup on those three tournament cashes on my blog later today, but suffice it to say, I am running hot hot hot and can't wait to log on every night to see what I'm going to dominate next.

Hopefully, my streak will continue for one more day, as I am really looking forward to tonight's Winner's Choice tournament on Full Tilt at 9pm ET, for which I won a qualifier this past Sunday as well. It's a $216 buyin no-limit holdem tournament, and the winner wins a $12,000 prize package, including 2k in travel expenses and a buyin to any $10,000 WPT or WSOP event of the winner's choice (hence the name). If I'm lucky I can get on in time to play Wil's WWdN tournament as well, which as always will run tonight at 8:30pm ET on Pokerstars -- password as always is "monkey". See you there!