O-Poker

The BBTwo Aussie Millions TOC Freeroll is right around the corner (tomorrow night).

For the few people reading this that may not know the details, the Battle of the Bloggers Two tournament of champions is a 27 player freeroll that awards one $18k Aussie Millions package to the winner. All the entrants won one of the 27 BBTwo tourneys plus two bloggers won their way in through writing a future trip report (2 people also won 2 events). FTP was awesome enough to add the $18k package thanks to Al.

I don't have high expectations. Most of the players are pretty good and I am very rusty when it comes to tourneys. I've only played about 40-45 online tourneys since the beginning of October (12 of those over the last few days) and most of those were satellites, BBTwo tourneys, or several smaller buy-in tourneys at the same time.

I started thinking about what kind of strategy I should apply to the game and then said WTF am I thinking. I never go into a tourney with a specific strategy. Why would I change that now? Instead I try to the most optimal way based on my table conditions - players at the table, position against the tight, loose, weak, good players, etc, etc. So depending on the table conditions, I may appear to the be the tightest nit or the loosest donkey and they may change throughout the tourney.

I think that I will have a great chance if I make it to the final 5 or 6 with an above average stack, because a lot of the players don't have as much short handed experience as I do (with a few exceptions). I'm not going to bitch about bad beats, suckouts, bad calls, bad plays, horrible players when/if I get knocked out. That is part of the game and there has been way to much blogger drama lately.

I was thinking about doing a last longer for the TOC, but I didn't get much response to an email that I sent out last night so it is looking like a no-go.

Handicapping the Tourney
I started to copy the names of the players in the tourney and was going to try to put odds to each player, but I realized I would only be able to do this for a handful of players. There are a lot guys that I haven't played too much against.

Who is going to win? Who are your top three?

I would have to say cracknaces, lucko, and xxmagicianxx have the best chance. They are all great tourneys players - even though Chad seems to think you have to be a huge luckbox to win it. Who are your top three?

Links to other bloggers handicapping of the TOC:

Chad - Funny comments about each player's chances. Astin FTW!!!

Vinnay - Good well thought out breakdown of each player that you may agree or disagree with. BTW, Alan and I are not the same person, but I take that as a compliment.

Hoyazo - He hasn't posted his odds yet, but I think there is a 99.9999% chance that he makes a post about it today. (assuming he doesn't put up another Days of Our Lives post)

Julius_Goat - He breaks down the players that he knows. I can see how he wrote himself into the tourney.

....let me know of any others.