[Pokey]

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all,

Pokey is at the RTR Freeroll FT. Go sweat him.

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RTR Freeroll? What? Where?

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I cheated my way to a final table appearance at the Full Tilt RTR Freeroll.

I was busy working on other things, data mining FT $100NL tables in the background, when BLOOP! The Lobby of the Freeroll pops up on my screen. I had forgotten all about it. I figured I could get in, donk off my stack, and get out rather quickly. The table starts, I say "Good luck, all" and nobody responds. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img] The hand is dealt. S-L-O-W-L-Y player #1 times out. Then #2. Then #3. Curious, I min-raise. Player #5 slowly times out, and #6, and #7, and #8, and #9. BOOYAH: I'm the only person at a nine-player table.

Over the next 45 minutes, I min-raise my way to #6 out of 589 players, gradually bankrupting my entire table one set of blinds at a time. (This was the "cheating" part of my tournament play.) Only at that point did I actually have to start playing poker; it was interesting seeing your HUD stats report 100% VPIP, 100% PFR....

Eventually I worked my stack up from the 1500 starting chips to over 200,000. By the time the final table started I was about #3 out of the nine remaining players. I worked up to #1 for awhile, but other people bankrupted each other and I was #2 out of 5 when my final hand occurred:

With blinds of 5,000 and 10,000 and an ante of 1,000, two players folded. I look down on the button and see JJ, so I raise to 25,000. The small blind (largest stack at the table) makes it 75,000 to go, and I reraise all in, and get called by AKo. The flop comes KQT, putting me behind but with seven outs to a win (three aces, four nines). The turn is a Q, giving me three more outs to a win (the jacks), but I miss on the river and bomb out of the tournament in fifth place -- $228 richer after about four-and-a-half hours of playing in a freeroll.

Thanks to everybody who sweated me at the final table, and I hope you enjoyed the chat, which was noticeably more amusing than the normal final table chat tends to be.