There's no particular overriding theme to these hands, but I think they're worth posting and make for a good read...

This is a story of 3 hands from the 1K sat I managed to bubble the other week (heh). After a $10 dealer addon, we started at 11K chips and 25/50 blinds. Other than me in Seat 4, my first table had a couple of solid 2+2'ers, but otherwise seemed pretty loose passive, with the exception of Seat 6. Seat 6, a late 20-something guy with an Ipod who looked confident, was playing at least half of his hands - open limping and overlimping everything, then firing at a lot of flops. Unlike most people that play like that, though, he clearly took flop texture into account; he'd never fire, say, an Axx board, but he wasn't afraid of 2 barreling when the flop and turn were low. As a result, he picked up a truckload of small and medium pots without a showdown or even a river and had around 13K at the end of the 30 minute first level.

I really wanted some of those chips, but with him to my left, this was going to be tricky. I resolved to play loose preflop, knowing that I'd be folding a lot but would get some of his c-bets in the pot when I hit - especially with my no doubt weak image. I got to see a couple of flops, missed them and folded (there's no reason to play a hand with guys like that without hitting *something*), so the first important pot came during 50/100:

Seat 6 limped UTG, three more people limped and I completed 87o/the BB checked. The flop came Q76r, we checked to him and he bet ~350 into 600. Everyone folded to me. Ordinarily, I'd obviously just fold, but here, I called, planning on check/calling the turn and river unimproved - a risky play but one I felt I could afford to try this deep with what was quite possibly the best hand. A very nice 8 hit the turn, I checked, he fired about 800, I thought before raising to 2200 and he turbofolded, for the first decent pot he'd lost all day.

[Sidebar: The reason I CR'd here was, of course, value in case he actually had a queen/to protect my hand in case he randomly turned any one of a number of draws I'd have to pay him off on. This was not, however, the way to get the most chips in the pot - if a 7 came off I'd likely check/call and possibly even check some rivers. I might also do this if I had Q7 on a Q762 board. In those cases, where his marginal hands would be drawing dead and I wouldn't be so vulnerable to most of the deck, I'd usually want to let him see a scare card like an ace on the river and decide to fire again.]

After that hand, the guy clearly geared down for a while and the rest of 50/100 passed without much incident from our side of the table, but he'd taken a couple of more pots off loose players at 75/150 and was probably around his original 11K when Hand 2 came up:

I caught jacks in EMP and raised. Seat 6 called (I got the feeling he wanted to play a pot vs. me) and we saw a KT8, 2 spade flop HU. I bet ~700 into 1225 and he predictably called. [Sidebar: the reason I bet here is to control the bet size - no reason to check/call 1K - and because I could probably fold to a raise. If I felt I couldn't, this would likely be a check/call.] The turn was a brick club - making two clubs - and went check/check.

The river: a red jack. Ordinarily, we'd just bet and hope to be called by a ten, a bad king, etc.; even if he were to bluff a missed draw a lot, we'd likely get paid more on average if we set our own bet size, since he'd never call a checkraise. But here, when we just checkraised the villain once already, the CR is a perfect play; most live players would never be able to resist a call with any showdownable hand the second time around. So I checked, he bet 1100, I made it 2600, he called and mucked.

Hand 3 came at the end of that level. A 2+2'er raised in MP (not needing too much), someone called in LP, I overcalled KJ on the button, and Seat 6 made it four handed to a K97 flop. It was checked to me, and I bet 1200 into ~1700, mostly just wanting to take it down. Since this is called '3 hands against the same opponent', Seat 6 naturally shoved for about 7K.

I thought it over for a full two minutes. Basically, against any other player at the table, this would be an autofold - except for three straight draws, it was a dry flop, 97 was a distinct possibility, and he would certainly shove with a set. Could he be tilted enough, or mad at specifically me, to do this with a worse king? Possibly, but what worse king? On the other hand, I couldn't see him with AK, and thought he probably wouldn't be here with K7s. Overall, I felt that I was right around 40% - maybe a shade less - against his range and getting just about the right odds. Eventually, after taking longer than anyone at the table to that point, I made the call against what, luckily, turned out to be KT. Oddly enough, I'm still not sure that a call was the right play - it turned out that he *could* have a worse king, and, of course, I had to take his potential tiltiness vs. me into account, but if I'm right and sets/97 need to be weighed more heavily in his range, I might have lost a few G-bucks here.

C'est la vie.

---

A quick announcement: As of today, I'm officially the newest guest pro at Cardrunners.com, where I'll be doing videos and the occasional full tournament HH summary/review (like the ones I used to do at 2+2 a long time ago.) The good news is, while CR is a paid content site, I'll no doubt have a bunch of outtakes and the like left over, some of which I'll definitely be posting here. Expect to see an "Adanthar busts out half an hour into a bunch of tourneys" video or two around mid-September.

So, right after mentioning I was gonna go back to cash, I basically didn't play for a week except for a random night of razz somewhere in there. Part of that was game selection (kinda meh games on Cake this week), but most was probably just post-live tournament burnout. Other than Korea in a month, I'm definitely not going to play any live tournaments for a while; they do a number on my willingness to play afterwards, even though my game itself spikes up later. It's too much of a grind to live out of a hotel room for long periods of time.

edit: I just finished my TS review, and have a particular topic in mind for my next entry (unless something cool happens tomorrow and I get to blog about that instead. Here's hoping.)

Wound up going back home last night and playing a full schedule tonight, where I proceeded to lose something like $60 on the day. Given the $1500 or so in entries this isn't even a negative, except in tilt dollars. The highlight was another decent finish in the Sunday Million, where I took 167th after losing two huge pots deep ITM (AQ < A9, then AA < a 3 way KQs/AJ AIPF big pot where I induced a squeeze) and then a 15xBB flip for the deathblow. I also took a huge stack into Hour 3 of the 535 FTOPS ME, then busted out after going *0 for 91* consecutive hands (in a 9 max tournament this is something like a one in ten thousand spot...ugh.)

Anyway, the highlight of the day is this hand, which I also posted on 2+2:

ull Tilt Poker Game #3302830235: FTOPS Main Event (22695133), Table 406 - 20/40 - No Limit Hold'em - 18:17:34 ET - 2025/08/19
Seat 1: Dorothy Parker (5,265)
Seat 2: pcon23 (4,825)
Seat 3: Bbuddy4brkfst (4,805)
Seat 4: silas22 (4,912)
Seat 5: gawyn (4,957)
Seat 6: Adar (5,375)
Seat 7: saladfingers44 (5,086)
Seat 8: Tarantula_Joe (5,035)
Seat 9: zeeland (4,740)
pcon23 posts the small blind of 20
Bbuddy4brkfst posts the big blind of 40
The button is in seat #1
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Adar [Js Jd]
silas22 calls 40
gawyn folds
Adar raises to 160
saladfingers44 folds
Tarantula_Joe has 15 seconds left to act
Tarantula_Joe raises to 525
lots of people fold
Adar calls 365
*** FLOP *** [2s Ac Jh]
Adar checks
Tarantula_Joe checks
*** TURN *** [2s Ac Jh] [Ad]
Adar bets 640
Tarantula_Joe has 15 seconds left to act
Tarantula_Joe calls 640
*** RIVER *** [2s Ac Jh Ad] [Kh]
Adar

I think I post too many of these hands, in part because I've run really cold in these spots (I swear that nobody runs into a bigger boat/quads with a full house as much as I do given my volume), in part because I feel that they're partly avoidable. Earlier on today, in the Bodog 100K, I made a mistake and busted in the first hour on an AA vs. KK hand where I slowplayed PF, bet the 6648 board when he check/called (correctly reading him for an overpair that would stack off), but then shoved anyway when he bet into me on the K river - at that point, I should know his most likely hand got there and just call. That hand was in the back of my mind when I was playing this one, so despite feeling like I "had to" pay off, I wound up just check/folding.

Fun sidenote: after the hand, I looked this guy up on pokerdb and found that this was almost definitely someone's backup account (total of 3 tournaments in the last 2 years, none over $24.) This actually made me want to pay off a little more, but given that he'd played only one hand in 30 minutes, it was probably fine anyway.

After today, I'm probably partly going back to cash for a little while - still playing plenty of tournaments, but also jumping into the Cake 10/20 and 25/50 NL games when they're soft. That plus razz should keep me happy for the rest of the month; I feel like I need the practice with bigger stacks.

In four years of playing poker, I've never managed to outright bubble a big satellite until today. 35'th/169 with 34 paid - they tried their best to bust before I did, but just never quite got there. I think there are a couple of spots where I missed open shoves, but in the end it was more of a case of too many short stacks winning coupled with too much outright stalling eating what used to be a very safe stack with 45 left. Ugggggh. Since I consider sats my best game, there's just no excuse for this, and I'm really surprised at how annoyed I am about losing some fraction of 5K in equity (yes, it's a big 1K satellite to a 5K event, but MTT's are like that - I was playing 4 handed for a 48,000 first place prize only a few days ago and didn't even feel disappointed when I finally lost.)

On top of that, my roommate is in the hospital with a very screwed up finger, so since I never had any plans to play the main event here if I didn't satellite into it in the first place, this is making me want to leave TS and go down early for the weekend. I'll figure that out tomorrow morning.

Some fraction of my life tilt is doubtless contributed by the hand before the bustout: I'm in the (4/8K) BB with a 12K total stack *before* posting when MP, the second shortest stack at the table, decides to shove ~20K (gape.) SB calls blind *expecting me to be committed and overcall* - of course, I instafold.

MP's hand: KK. SB's blind call? K5 suited. Despite that clear riggedness, he even managed to hit a 5 on the turn! Like I said, life tilt.

In conclusion, I'm managing to be remarkably whiny about winning some number > 10K on this trip. Hmm.
---

Today's 1K non-satellite final table featured mlagoo (2nd, 36K) and kalensc (third, 22K - he's the same guy who won the first event) along with a couple of other guys I know. In other words, my clique pretty much destroyed Turning Stone (and the Internet MTT's held during that time) after pretty much destroying the Internet during Vegas, too. Even when you bubble sats, I guess poker is easy.

I'll be honest - I tried to figure out how to recap that tournament from a couple of days ago and couldn't really do it, because it winds up being one big "I raise with a decent hand, flop/turn/river the nuts somehow and get paid off" fest. I think I have good instincts in all limit games, especially when making thin value bets and calldowns, but if I had to rank my HORSE game, this would be #4 (I probably play gin rummy better than stud high.)

So, in lieu of a recap that's probably wildly wrong, I'll just post some fun hands that I'm pretty sure of. This one in particular is just ridiculous:

Seat 1: Carmen35 (3,255)
Seat 2: strohsix (2,680)
Seat 3: MrKrabbs (3,150)
Seat 4: quincyg (2,685)
Seat 5: Adar (3,565)
Seat 6: AK_47_JAZZ (4,033)
Seat 7: tommyturks (2,650)
Seat 8: jtsnakes (2,850)
Seat 9: bodark77 (2,132)
Adar posts the small blind of 15
AK_47_JAZZ posts the big blind of 30
The button is in seat #4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Adar [Kh 9s 4s Ks]
tommyturks folds
jtsnakes folds
bodark77 calls 30
Carmen35 calls 30
strohsix folds
MrKrabbs folds
quincyg calls 30
Adar calls 15
AK_47_JAZZ checks
*** FLOP *** [Kc 5s 2h]
Adar bets 30
AK_47_JAZZ folds
bodark77 calls 30
Carmen35 calls 30
quincyg raises to 60
Adar raises to 90
bodark77 folds
Carmen35 calls 60
quincyg raises to 120
Adar calls 30
Carmen35 calls 30
*** TURN *** [Kc 5s 2h] [Jc]
Adar bets 60
Carmen35 calls 60
quincyg calls 60
*** RIVER *** [Kc 5s 2h Jc] [7s]
Adar bets 60
Carmen35 calls 60
quincyg raises to 120
Adar has 15 seconds left to act
Adar raises to 180
Carmen35 folds
quincyg calls 60
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Adar shows [Kh 9s 4s Ks] three of a kind, Kings, for high
quincyg mucks
Adar wins the pot (1,140) with three of a kind, Kings
No low hand qualified
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 1,140 | Rake 0
Board: [Kc 5s 2h Jc 7s]
Seat 1: Carmen35 folded on the River
Seat 2: strohsix didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: MrKrabbs didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: quincyg (button) mucked [5d Ad 5h Th] - HI: three of a kind, Fives
Seat 5: Adar (small blind) showed [Kh 9s 4s Ks] and won (1,140) with HI: three of a kind, Kings

PF, my hand is terrible, and later in the tournament it's a fold, but here I have the odds just to flop top set (and hope it holds.) I do, so I bet/3 bet the flop, not because it's a very good hand right now (I'm pretty screwed if some low cards hit) but because there's lots of people in the pot and I probably have enough equity to pop it. The turn alters nothing, but the river brings a low, so now I'm only getting half the pot; the reason I bet is because there's 2 others in with me and I may as well get an extra 1/2 bet in now, before they decide to check behind with A4 on the end or something. Except, for no apparent reason, the guy with a smaller set decides to go berserk, raise one more time and let me 3 bet (after I double check that I do have the high lock, lol) to knock out the very likely low hand in the middle, winning the whole pot. Wow.

If you haven't realized how easy it is to overplay a hand in O/8 yet:

Seat 1: Carmen35 (2,096)
Seat 2: strohsix (6,388), is sitting out
Seat 3: MrKrabbs (3,575)
Seat 4: quincyg (1,780)
Seat 5: Adar (4,395)
Seat 6: AK_47_JAZZ (7,006)
Seat 7: mjorgenson13 (4,080)
Seat 8: LUVEMnLEAVUM (4,375)
Seat 9: bodark77 (1,960)
AK_47_JAZZ posts the small blind of 50
mjorgenson13 posts the big blind of 100
The button is in seat #5
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Adar [3d Ks Ac Kd]
LUVEMnLEAVUM folds
bodark77 calls 100
Carmen35 has 15 seconds left to act
Carmen35 folds
strohsix folds
MrKrabbs folds
quincyg folds
Adar raises to 200
AK_47_JAZZ calls 150
mjorgenson13 calls 100
bodark77 calls 100
*** FLOP *** [Qd 2d 7d]
AK_47_JAZZ checks
mjorgenson13 bets 100
bodark77 calls 100
Adar raises to 200
AK_47_JAZZ folds
mjorgenson13 calls 100
bodark77 raises to 300
Adar calls 100
mjorgenson13 calls 100
*** TURN *** [Qd 2d 7d] [Js]
mjorgenson13 checks
bodark77 bets 200
Adar calls 200
mjorgenson13 calls 200
*** RIVER *** [Qd 2d 7d Js] [4c]
mjorgenson13 checks
bodark77 bets 200
Adar raises to 400
mjorgenson13 folds
bodark77 raises to 600
Adar raises to 800
bodark77 calls 200
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Adar shows [3d Ks Ac Kd] a flush, King high, for high and 7,4,3,2,A, for low
bodark77 shows [Ad 3s 5d 3c] a flush, Ace high, for high and 7,4,3,2,A, for low
bodark77 wins the high pot (1,950) with a flush, Ace high
bodark77 ties for the low pot (975) with 7,4,3,2,A
Adar ties for the low pot (975) with 7,4,3,2,A

I flop the second nuts for high, river the nut low, and...get quartered after putting in at least one bet and possibly 3 bets too many on the river. Given the way the hand went down, the other guy almost always has an ace high flush when he does that call/3 bet move on the flop, so on the river, I'm just not winning over half the pot. Even if I do raise the river on principle, though (I think going for the overcall may be better), I should just call the 3 bet.

Somebody was wondering about my (all but) bustout hand, so here it is:

Full Tilt Poker Game #3258606818: FTOPS Event #8 (22618608), Table 95 - 40000/80000 - Limit Omaha H/L - 5:54:55 ET - 2025/08/15
Seat 2: Adar (381,430)
Seat 3: muckmehard (1,554,222)
Seat 6: Kiajessie (971,724)
Seat 8: AD-Stars22 (311,624)
muckmehard posts the small blind of 20,000
Kiajessie posts the big blind of 40,000
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Adar [2c 2h 3s 7c]
AD-Stars22 folds
Adar raises to 80,000
muckmehard folds
Kiajessie raises to 120,000
Adar calls 40,000
*** FLOP *** [3c Ks Jc]
Kiajessie bets 40,000
moetman (Observer): u should be folding here adar
Adar calls 40,000
*** TURN *** [3c Ks Jc] [5h]
Kiajessie bets 80,000
Adar calls 80,000
*** RIVER *** [3c Ks Jc 5h] [6d]
Kiajessie bets 80,000
Adar calls 80,000
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Kiajessie shows [Ad Ah 2d Qc] a pair of Aces, for high and 6,5,3,2,A, for low
Adar mucks
Kiajessie wins the high pot (330,000) with a pair of Aces
Kiajessie wins the low pot (330,000) with 6,5,3,2,A

Nothing I can really do about this one - it's obvious he has aces PF, but when I flop a flush draw shorthanded in a big pot, I'm locked into the hand until the river. The river call is mandatory because I know two of his cards, and the only thing that scoops me out of the entire pot is exactly AA2x, AA4x or AA7x. Oh well.

---

Obviously, I skipped the 500 dollar tourney the following day (I busted at 6 AM, it started at 10 - not good) and also skipped the 1K event today in the mistaken belief that there was a 1K satellite this afternoon. Turns out that's tomorrow, so I've got an extra day to rest up, celebrate Nath's birthday (that's today - wish him well, everybody!) and win myself a 5K ME seat.

Oh yeah - Turning Stone hates cameras or something, so so far I have exactly 2 pictures on this trip. Dammit.