Stupid Cheater of the Week

Think of this as the Poker edition of Jeralyn Merritt's regular Stupid Criminal of the Week feature on TalkLeft.

Paul Phillips points us to this amazing post on LiveJournal by one ronny bojangles:

so I've officially gone from poker player to strategist.

tonight, seth (played wednesday night cards with us last week) and I played a $10+$1 turbo/rebuy tourney for a seat to the $215 NL buy-in $350,000 guaranteed weekly on pokerstars. I think around 62 total people in the qualifier. after rebuy/add-on period was over, 8 places qualified, 9th paid $170.

it got down to about 18 people and me and seth were at the same table. I was 1-up on him (sitting to his left, acting after him most hands). I had about 6000 in chips and he had about 4000. The only way we figured either one of us would get a spot is to dump our chips to each other. blinds were so fast that if we played alone we'd get knocked out around 11th and 10th, which pays nothing. since I was in best position, we both decided that we should dump chips.

I was in SB, seth was on button. BB had around 10x BB, so with a raise and a call he would probably fold. Everyone folded to seth, who I told to go all in with A8o. I had 87d and I reraised all-in over Seth. BB folded his 3k, so that was guaranteed to one of us as is. If I sucked out a 7 or diamonds on seth I'd have more than enough chips to qualify. If seth's hand held up he'd have more than enough chips to qualify. We decided that we'd shoot for one seat and take the payout.

I lost the hand to seth, and lost my remaining 800 a couple hands later. Seth got a qualifying seat to the $215 easily. We sold the seat for $180.

Seth spent $33 between rebuys and add-ons. I just spent the original $11. So we worked out the deal that we'd take our buy-ins out of the $180, then split the rest of the money 60/40. In the end, I earn $54 and seth earns $82. And it was all so easy, but very lucky.

The highlight of the tourney was right before the first break. I was in about 11th position out of around 44. Under the gun, I go all in with KQo, hoping to pick up the blinds or get a low stack to call. The whole point of turbo rebuy tourneys is to get as many chips as you can as fast as you can. I ended up getting called by 3 people, and lost that pot. I was down to $90, and after the break the blinds were going up to $100/$200. I'm BB first hand, so I'm all in regardless. I get 1 call, AQ vs my 98. I end up getting a straight. Two hands later, I have AJ. I double up again.

I doubled up so many times that I was in 4th position with about 26 people left. But the blinds came so fast and my hands were garbage that I just tried to hold out. Then I got put next to seth and gave him my chips.

I feel great because of this. For once, teamwork worked. Everything went according to plan and I'm $54 richer because of it.

If I were low enough to collude in an online poker tournament, I don't think I'd be so amazingly dumb as to post about it in my LiveJournal. Hell, I'd at least friends-lock the damn thing.