Two more Bodog cashes

I played two more tournaments on Bodog this afternoon, simultaneously, starting 15 minutes apart. The first was $15+1.50, with a $1000 guarantee, the second a $20+2, with a $2500 guarantee. Neither one made the expected numbers, so both had an overlay.

The first one was meh. Frankly, once the second one started, and I got off to a good lead in it, I paid it far more attention. After all, it had a higher buy-in and a prize pool 2.5 times as large. I'm not particularly good at dividing my attention, so the $15 tourney got short shrift, with me looking at what was going on only when it was my turn, and the rest of my time spent following the action in the $20. That probably turned out to be a wise move.

I did cash in the $15, but only a little, finishing in 8th place (out of 64 starters) for $45.




That allowed me to turn full attention to the second one. That worked out pretty well. I ended up seeing this lovely screen at the end:




The payout was actually $750. For some odd reason, when there is an overlay Bodog first displays the amount you won from the prize pool generated by the players' entry fees, and then separately adds in the extra owed due to the guaranteed prize pool. This screen shows it correctly, however:




I didn't do anything spectacularly brilliant--just played solidly, patiently, more willing than usual to let go of hands when challenged by most players, waiting to get paid off with the occasional big hands. It worked. I only sucked out three times. The first time we were at the final table and I was getting very short, so open-shoved from the button with Q-9, called by J-J in the small blind, rivered a queen. The second one I'm no longer remembering.

The third was in the final hand of the tournament. I entered heads-up play with a 4:1 chip lead and still had it (124K to his 32K) when this hand came up, less than ten hands into the two-way action, with blinds 1250/2500/250. I had Jc-10d. He min-raised to 5000 from the button, I called. Flop Kc-10c-2h. I checked, intending to check-raise if he bet. (He had been the most aggressive player at the final table, so I expected a c-bet even if he whiffed.) He checked behind. Turn: 2c, giving me two pair and a flush draw. I bet 8100. He min-raised to 16,200. I shoved, he called. He had Qh-10h, so he had been ahead, but with the board paired we now had the same hand (king on the board playing instead of our kickers), except that I had a flush draw. River was the Js, giving me a better two pair and the win.

I'm not sure that it's right even to refer to that as a suckout. The only money I put in when not a favorite was the original pre-flop min-raise amount. By the turn we were 61% to chop, but I had 12 river cards to win (three jacks and nine clubs), while he had just five (the two non-club queens and the three remaining kings).

I wish I could put that into an animated replayer for you, but I can't. One of the annoying things about Bodog is that it doesn't save your hand histories on your computer. You can get them from the site, but only in a format that is not read by any hand replayer that I know of. (There is a software package you can buy that saves your Bodog hand histories and converts them to a usable format, but I don't think it's worth the cost for my purposes.)

I think that is the first MTT I've won outright on Bodog, at least the first since I moved to Vegas. Of course, I haven't played there much at all until this week. I think it's also my biggest online cash in more than a year. It also means that I've cashed in and final-tabled four of the last five NLHE MTTs I've played on Bodog: 4th, 3rd, 8th, and 1st, all in $10, $15, or $20 events, for a net profit of about $1025. (In the one failure I went out on the second hand. Started with A-Q, flopped a queen, turned trips, then lost to a guy who rivered a crub flush. Of course.) I am pleased with myself for this little streak.

To paraphrase Garrett Morris as the Dominican baseball player on Saturday Night Live, Bodog been berra berra gooda to me.

What to do with the profit? Well, part of that has already been decided. I'm cashing out just enough to buy myself a plane ticket and go visit my wonderful friend Cardgrrl in Washington, D.C., for her birthday next month. Thanks, Bodog!


Incidentally, it looks like I was wrong about something. The other day I mentioned that Bodog has a platform-neutral version (Flash) that Mac users can play with. Looking into it more closely, it turns out that that version will only support cash games, and only one at a time. No tournaments at all, and no multi-tabling cash games. Pretty pathetic. Sorry for the misinformation.