Tao of Poker

Crashing the Mookie

By Pauly
Hollyweird, CA


Several months ago, I stood in the middle of a ballroom at a resort in Nueva Vallarta, Mexico and watched in bewilderment as the federales shut down a live poker tournament. A couple of politico types claimed there was a discrepancy in the paperwork, but I knew that I was in the middle of an old fashioned shakedown.

That was the last time I was involved in a tournament where the result was.... incomplete. Well, until Wednesday night.

When AlCantHang goaded persuaded cajoled begged invited me to play in the Mookie, I quickly accepted. AlCantHang sent out a tweet that there would be a bounty on my head. It's never fun to be a target, but I accepted the challenge. I have not played in the Mookie much in 2009 due to a hectic writing schedule finishing up the first draft of Lost Vegas. I only played twice this year, both times in late March, with modest results... a 14th and a 25th place showing... yet zero cashes.

I wasn't paying much attention during the early levels. I knew that with the bounty, everyone would be gunning for me, so I slipped into super tight mode and focused on a my cash games tables (low-stakes PLO and 5/10 LHE) instead.

I usually take detailed notes when I play poker but I didn't take any on Wednesday night. I was distracted and listened to the touching Shronk tribute that the gang at Poker Road broadcasted live from the Fontana Room inside the Bellagio. I gotta say, there were times when I was a little teary-eyed especially when several friends of mine spoke about their favorite Shronk moments. Perhaps it really wasn't the best time to play poker.

Early on, I picked up some chips and nearly doubled up against AlCantHang. I flopped a set of fives against his Cowboys. We got it all in on the turn when I boated up.

I also flopped quads against PokerFool for a timely double up.

It was a little blurry from that point on with the emotional show on Poker Road Radio playing in the background. However, I definitely recall raining on DakotaBlock's parade with two vicious river suckouts. On the first one, I avoided elimination by a sickly three outer. We got it all in on the King-high flop. My K-J trailed Dakota's K-Q, yet I promptly rivered the Jack to double up. I avoided elimination. Thank you, RiverStars.

On the anemic suckout, I raised with Ks-10s and Dakota called. The flop was K-J-10 and he check-called a pot-sized bet. The turn was a deuce. He checked. I bet the rest of my chips (around 15K) and he called with K-J for a bigger two pair. The river was a fortuitous ten and I sucked out. Again. Jesus, sorry Dakota. That was just brutal. Not once, but twice.

I surged into the chiplead with two tables to go.

Here's the final table of the Mookie:
Seat 1: veryjosie (32,172)
Seat 2: MaggieO (7,430)
Seat 3: ElSnarfGrande (43,750)
Seat 4: xXGetLuckyXx (34,775)
Seat 5: Tarpie (8,825)
Seat 6: DeepChitNJ (18,804)
Seat 7: DrPauly (57,936)
Seat 8: noollab (27,228)
Seat 9: Drizztdj (18,080)

I picked up lots of small pots and pushed my stack to 105K with 7 to go. That's when the servers crashed. My initial reaction? Ratshit. Total ratshit. I was more than pissed. I was livid. I rarely play tournaments, let alone have almost 42% of the chips in play with seven players to go. A victory was on the horizon, but I covered enough tournaments to know that a chip lead, no matter how large, is always vulnerable. But that's not the point... the tournament was left in limbo because of a technical faux pas.

Here's a screen cap (courtesy of Al) of the chip counts when the servers went down.

Drizz was one of the shortstacks when the severs crashed. He sent me an email and said that he was going to bed. I gave up after an hour and went back to writing a short story about a petty thief who worked at a pickle factory instead of siting around holding my dick in the wind and retardedly click the FT icon on my desktop hoping that the site would all of a sudden spring back to life.

When I finally woke up, support emailed me an update...

When a tournament is cancelled after it reaches the money, according to tournament rule 31.3:

* All remaining players will have their tournament fee of $1.00 refunded and be awarded with the next guaranteed payout of the tournament, $33.20.

* The remaining prize pool will be divided and distributed according to chip count - (Remaining Prize Pool)*(Your Chip Count)/(Total Chips in Play) = Your Share of Remaining Prize Pool.

In your case, this means $551.95*104891/249000=$232.40

Tournament Fee Refunded: $1.00
+ Next Guaranteed Payout: $33.20
+ Your Share of Remaining Prize Pool: $232.40
Total Amount Credited to Your Account: $266.60

Alas, I won the Mookie by default via a chip chop technicality. Thanks for Mookie for hosting and thanks to AlCantHang for encouraging me to play.


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