The King of Rebuys

PokerStars Tournament #116642819, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $5.00/$0.50
3087 players
Total Prize Pool: $59665.00
Tournament started - 2008/10/31 - 18:00:00 (ET)

Dear AVIGANOLA,

You finished the tournament in 251st place.
A $59.66 award has been credited to your Real Money account.

You earned 60.33 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at
http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/


Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

This is the first rebuy MTT I have played in 2 weeks. Maybe I should play nothing but them! Happy Halloween. Tony

The State of Online Poker

A friend of mine thought that after the government’s BS law got passed that Online Poker would slowly die out. I totally disagreed but he had some valid points. The harder it got to fund/withdraw from your account the less fish there would be playing online. I am starting to agree with this idea, but a few nights play does not prove this. Last night was just brutal for me online. I ran A-K into a set after flopping and Ace or King around 8 times. Then whenever I would flop a set I would get no action at all. This second point had me thinking about my friend’s theory. The good players will jump through every hoop possible to fund their accounts. The bad/fishy players that are losing a ton of money might not go through all the trouble. Also they will need to reload their accounts much more often than the good players. I don’t know, these are just my recent thoughts on online play. Maybe if I start crushing the games again I will think differently. How about ESPN’s WSOP coverage Tuesday night? We enjoyed it so much! The hand where Chino flops a set of Tens and loses to pocket Nines who makes a straight was just so brutal. I loved how well Chino handled this loss. If it happened to Hellmuth we would still here his ranting about it. Tiffany Michelle came off as being a not very nice person, to say the least. Wife and I couldn’t figure out why ESPN would make her look so bad. Maybe her behavior was so much like what they showed that they didn’t have a choice? I would think they would want to make her out to look like the next great thing in poker. Young and attractive females are always good for ratings! Now I am looking forward to the final table, finally. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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Crushing Low Limit HE

Finally a winning night! I just crushed the Full Ring Limit HE tables on Full Tilt and Ultimate Butt last night. Couldn’t stop myself from playing in Ultimate’s .50-1.00 Jackpot tables. The rake is completely riduculis there being they take out an extra .50 for the Jackpot. In the long run you really can’t beat this game but with the Bad Beat Jackpot at over 500K I couldn’t help myself! I beat that game for 25BBs over 2 hours of play. At Full I multi-tabled Limit HE with a ton of success also. Won around 30BBs in two hours of play. Only place I lost last night was at River Stars. My wins at the other sites more than made up for that loss. As for Sit-N-Gos, am ready to give them up forever! I bubbled another one with pocket Kings all in pre-flop against A-Q. As usual River F**kers gives my opponent an Ace to send me home on the bubble! At the same time I was playing in another frustrating Step one Sit-N-Go. I had the chip lead when I get dealt A-K of hearts in the big blind. Keep in mind this is a turbo so can’t wait around for a hand. The short stack, in the small blind, shoves into me for half my stack. I considered folding but he had been shoving every other hand for an orbit. I call and he has J-9 off. You know how this ends, nine on the river and I am now the short stack. An orbit later I get knocked out in forth, to get $1.50 back for me $7.50 entry. Last week this same thing happened to me, 4 Step ones in a row! I got back $1.50 in all four of them. These seem so easy to win but lately I just can’t finish them off. Think I will take a break from playing in them for my sanity. Only one week left until the US election. I think it will be a lot closer then the polls are reporting, we will see. I intend to play some live poker on Saturday at the Borgata in Atlantic City so expect a trip report on Saturday or Sunday. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Was I Cheated?

Just got totally screwed playing on Poker Stars. Really felt like something underhanded took place. Please comment on your opinion of what happened to me. Woke up this morning all excited to play my Step 3 ticket on River Stars. I feel like playing the Sunday warmup, since Stars has changed their policy a Step 4 ticket can now be used in any $215 tournament. Great move by them, why restrict our use of our step tickets? Anyway I get into my tournament and played very well to have a medium stack once down to 6 players. (Players finishing in 4th and 5th win a repeat step 3 worth $82.) With the blinds at 150-300, 25 Ante the chip leader makes it 900 to go. The short stack insta-shoves for 975, a 75 raise. It folds all the way around to the big stack who pauses for 5 seconds and then folds!!!! WTF how can you fold for 75 more into a pot of 2000 chips?? What an idiot or was he chip dumping to his friend. I notice but players are from Germany. Is it possible they are playing together? We berate him in the chatbox and he stats it was a mis-click. M****r F****r, mis click this. I got knocked out a few hands later on the bubble. So instead of a bad beat I get this BS! This is not a good sign for the rest of the day. What do you think? Should I even bother emailing Stars for an investigation? Am I just crying over spilt milk? Thanks for listening to my ranting and good luck at the tables, you will need it! Tony

Bad Beat Day

If Sunday is Donkday then Saturday is bad beat day. I have literally been knocked out of 10 SNGs/MTTs today by 2 outers on the river. FU River Stars is what I say! Thankfully I am playing very low stakes today. Mostly Step 1s for $7.50 each and a few $11 mtts. I am currently taking a break to try to get off tilt and get my A game back. Was supposed to go to AC today and play at the Borgata but didn't feel like taking the 2 hour drive so I am playing from home instead. Hope things turn around soon. I will post about my progress later or tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening to my ranting. Tony

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Cousin Neil's Home Game

We had another fun home game at my Cousin Neil’s house last night. I am feeling the effects of it now, had a few glasses of red wine. Whenever I drink wine I don’t sleep well and sometimes have a slight headache the next day. Good news is we chopped the first Sit-n-go three ways so it was a slightly profitable night for me. We could have played it out but we were all close in chips. At this point it really was a luck fest. Besides five players were waiting for us to finish so we could start the 2nd one. I am not greedy, even though I felt I had an edge on the other players, am always willing to chop it. After all it’s a friendly game that I play in for fun, not to make money! One thing that peeves me is when I offered the chop one of my cousin’s started to egg on my cousin Neil to play it out. I think this is bad edict being the chop should be decided between the players left and no one else. Just my two cents on this subject. It was really a crazy game last night, saw quads 3 times in one night. We had one really crazy sick hand that I would like to share. Neil and Mike got all in pre-flop with pocket twos for Mike and pocket sevens for Neil. Flop came 2-rag-rag, so Mike has a set and Neil has him covered. Turn was a blank and Neil is yelling for a seven. My cousin Nick turns over the burn card, by accident and it’s a seven. Neil start yelling all happy until we point out that isn’t the right card. He gets a totally dejected look on his face. Then is happens Mike messes with the Poker Gods and says, “Boy that would be sick if the next card is a seven.” Sure enough Neil catches the case Seven for a one out re-suck on the river! We all went nuts after this hand. It was one of those crazy games for sure. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

DonkDay

Playing Online started out really bad yesterday. If you read my last Post(Rant), got crushed with Kings over and over again. Those weren’t short pushes either, had decent stacks every time. It’s just that on Donkday people will call you real light. Like call an all in push, with 20BBs behind, with A-8 off? I was getting real frustrated but tried to play through it. Did have success in a Bounty Tournament on Ultimate Butt, finished in 11th out of 201 players for 2 times buy in cash. After this one I decided to shut it down for awhile. Later on we were about to go out and while I was waiting for the wife decided to play a little live Full Ring to pass a few minutes. I just crushed it big time. In 20 minutes I won 20BBs at Limit HE and 10BBs at low limit Stud on Ultimate Butt. This was enough money to cover all my bad beats in MTTs and SNGs from the morning. So I shut it down with a small profit for the day. I went out in a better frame of mind, for sure. I’m still feeling sick with a bug I have had for a little over a week. Can’t seem to knock it so I have been living on Aspirins for 8 days. Probably not a good thing for my stomach but hopefully this will pass. BTW I played in two Matrix Sit-N-Gos on Full Tilt this weekend, they are so much fun. Don’t think can make a big profit in them but they are a lot of fun to play in for us Stats Anal people! What happens is you buy in for the price of one Sit-N-Go and you play in four with all the same players. You win money for finishing in the top 3 in each one and then there is an overall leader board where the top three get paid. You get a point for outlasted each player knocked from your table. Also get a knockout point for each player you eliminate and there is a bonus for finishing in first. It’s a good way to test your skills against the same bunch of players at each table. If you don’t have a Full Tilt account please join through this BLOG with Promo. Code “AVIGANOLA”. If you do email me at Aviganola@Yahoo.com and I will send you an extra bonus, on top of Full Tilt’s 100% deposit one!(Just State that you joined Full Tilt through my BLOG and include your screen name.) Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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Kings Suck!

I have decided that Kings are a bad hand on Sundays Online! I got knocked out of 5 SNGs/MTTs this morning with them! All In against Ace-Rag, Q-7off, A-K, A-Q, etc. etc. Just so sick! I am declaring today Donkday again. Be very careful Online today! Good luck you will need it. Tony

A Bad Omen

I had a terrible week of work. Also I was sick most of the week. I just knew I would have bad luck last night and of course I was right. The first tournament I played in was an indication of how the night would go. Early in the the third level I flat call a late position raise from the Big Blind with pocket Queens. Flop comes A-Q-4 with two spades. It goes four bets on the flop, with the last one me going all in. Of course I got hit with the ultimate cooler, a set of Aces over my set of Queens. This from a guy who was open raising every hand where he was the first one in. This kind of BS always seams to happen to me when I decide to make a stand. Things continued like this for me in Sit-N-Gos for the next 2 hours. Finally I decide that I had bad Karma for the night and I shut it down. Today is another day and I will start over. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Online Night

Had a good solid winning night playing Online. Only played in 2 Sit-N-Gos with one bubble and one third place finish, so that was a small loss. Did very well at Full Limit Ring HE on full Tilt. I won 20BBs in two hours play. Also played some low limit Stud on the Anti-Christ Site(Ultimate Bet). I don’t know why I am playing there again but have so much bonus waiting to clear there that I decided to try them out again. I lost a small amount there but cleared enough bonus to make up for it. At this point I highly doubt they will be cheating their users again, after all the bad press that has come out about them lately. Besides at the low limit I am playing I doubt a super user would even bother, LOL. Will probably play there for a few months, just to clear my entire bonus. As for BODOG I totally quit playing there a few months ago. I requested a check and it took them 6 weeks just to approve me for check withdrawal. Then I got an email stating that it would take up to 45 days to get a check. It’s almost 45 days and I still don’t have a check! It’s not a lot of money but have lost faith in them totally, doubt I will ever go back to that site. Really the big two are where I will be playing primarily from now on. Happy Friday. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

More Sick Poker

I played more Poker while being sick yesterday. It wasn’t a complete disaster, like playing sick usually is. I won a small amount playing in Sit-N-Gos. Lost a small amount playing in Full Ring Limit HE. Played in one MTT, Hi/Lo Stud and got deep but got coolered close to the money. I had Aces and Fives on fifth street with a backdoor low draw. I played the hand hard and made a crappy low on the river. (Actually an 8-7 low with my Aces up.) It looked like my low was good and maybe my Aces up was good for high. Nope I got beat in both directions! A donkey who started with Q-8-9 backed into a better low than me and the other donkey made a set of 3s! I went from a nice comfortable 7K in chips down to a short stacked 2K, in one hand. I was knocked out a few hands later. MTTs, with poor structures can be so brutal. I will play tonight, but not too late being the last Presidential Debate is on. I am not telling you who to vote for, just get out there and vote period. We need a new president in a bad way right now! Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony.

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Sick Days

Not much Poker for me the last few days. I have been home sick for the last two days. Played a few Sit-N-Gos and was basically even. Lost a litte playing Full Ring games. Really I wouldn't ever recommend playing sick. Usually when I do it I have really bad results. I have learned from this so yesterday I hardly played at all. Feeling better today, still not at work, but I will play more today. Look for a post later on about todays play. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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Sunday Poker

Great morning of Online Poker so far. I played in two $15 satellites on Full Tilt, winning one of them. Unregistered and now have more tournement dollars in my account. Played in one Sit-n-Go and won it. Also have played in two PCA Step ones on Stars, won repeats step ones in both of them. Live play has been so so, basically breaking even. It's all good being this is Donkday, so anything won is very lucky. Happy Sunday. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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Weekend Playing Online.

I almost forgot how crazy/bad people play online on the weekends. I have taken every bad beat possible today, but I am still slightly winning. Need to have the right frame of mind to play on the weekends. My Sit-N-Go results have been sick bad today but my MTTs have made up for it. Hope tomorrow will be calmer but I doubt it! Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

Neil's Home Game

Last night I finally broke through the home game jinx. I won our 2nd Sit-N-Go at my Cousin Neil’s house last night. Really didn’t get many good cards all night. I just picked my spots well and stayed out of trouble. Got one big pair all night, pocket Kings with the king of spades. It was the first hand of our first Sit-N-Go. I lost half my chips when the flop came ten high with 3 spades. My nemesis, cousin Ant M., chased my every bet till the river when and ace fell. The river went check, check and he turns over A-J with the Jack of spades! He chased me down with a Jack high flush, which if it comes he gets felted! Instead he once again has my number, oh well I will beat you one of these nights. Back to good news, the Sit-N-Go I won. My best hand of the night was A-Q, twice I flopped top top with it and won huge pots both times. I felt I played it perfectly, on the bubble. My brother John, loose crazy player, brought it in for a raise 4 handed. I flat called with A-Q off. Flop comes Q-10-4 with one heart. I check and my brother c-bets. I know he is going to shove at one point in this hand.(It’s just the way he plays.) If I re-raise here he may fold and I want the double up. The turn brings the three of hearts. So I check and he insta-shoves. I thought about it for a few seconds and I made the call. It was worse than I thought he had the A-K of hearts. So I had to dodge any Heart, King, or Jack. For a change my hand holds up and my brother is crippled. This was the deciding hand that I carried through to get heads up with my cousin Tony. Heads up, after around 10 hands, I took it down. Felt good to finally be on the winning end of a game at Neil’s house. I my post about some interesting hands between Tony and I tomorrow. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony.

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Sit-N-Go Frustration!

I did it again, jinxed myself by writing about how well I have been playing in Sit-N-Gos. Last night was just brutal but I stopped the bleeding before I could do any real damage. I moved up to the next level of Sit-N-Gos, which cost double my current level. So I fired up four of them at once and was doing really well. I was running so well that I was the chip leader in each of them, at one point. We got down to four players at all four of them. Really thought I was going to cash in all four of them! Instead I bubble each and every one! It was so frustrating. I lost three coin flips and one hand were I was behind 2.5 to 1 with A-J sooted all in against A-K. This seems to happen to me every time I move up in stakes I have bad luck right away. Really felt I was playing well to start these off. Maybe it’s just variance being I have been crushing Sit-N-Gos lately. At this point I shut down my computer and gave up for the night. Tonight I am playing in a Home Game at my cousin Neil’s house. This is the game that I never have any luck in. Maybe tonight will be different. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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King of Sit-N-Gos!

I am the King of Sit-n-Gos once again, LOL. Last night I played in eight of them with 2 firsts, 2 thirds, 3 bubbles, and 1 seventh. Which works out to be a 43% ROI for the night. My overall ROI is up to the 15% goal that I gave myself a few months ago. (Now I think it’s time to move up to the next Sit-N-Go level.) Really feel that my game has improved a lot since I started playing looser. Also I no longer play turbos. I have been focusing mostly on Full Tilt and always have better success in them there. The no ante structure for me is the way to go. The most important thing is that I feel I am playing well in them. I’m not tilting, no matter how many bad beats get laid on my head! Less than one month to go until the election. We need a new president in a bad way! Can’t wait to watch the debate tonight. Also ESPN is playing another WSOP Main Event episode tonight. I am torn between watching it and the debate. I will have to tape one of them and watch the other, just not sure which to watch and which to tape! Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony.

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Online Poker and Good Movies

I had a good weekend playing Online. Played all day yesterday being we decided not to go to the Borgata after all. My wife worked late on Saturday night and I didn’t sleep well myself. We woke up at 7:30 Sunday morning and it was raining really hard so we decided to not go. I didn’t sleep well being I watched an awesome movie, but it gave me nightmares. On Friday I bought a few movies and one of them was “Blood Diamond”. If you haven’t seen it rent or buy it! To me this is the best movie made since, “Saving Private Ryan”. I also bought “The Departed” but thought that Blood Diamond was far and away better then it. Yet they gave best picture of the year to “The Departed”. Anyway I am going off on a Tangent today. Both movies are great but IMHO “Blood Diamond” is way better. So back to poker which I started playing at 7:30 in the morning and didn’t stop until 6:00pm. I played in three $15 satellites to the $55 Super Sat. on Full Tilt to their Sunday Brawl. I got severely cock-blocked in the first two. I bubbled both of them is ridiculous fashion. In the first one a guy was open shoving every other hand behind and yet sucking out. I had a decent stack when 3 people limp as does the shove monkey and I wake up with Jacks. So I shove all in and everyone gets out of the way but the shove monkey insta-calls, like he has Aces. Instead he has black pocket fours and the flop comes A-K-3 all hearts. I have the Jack of hearts and the turn brings a black 8. So guess what he is down to one out, the four of diamonds. You know how this story ends, four of diamonds on the river and IGH on the bubble. Same BS happens to me in the second Satellite. I shove A-K off into A-3 off who rivers a three and I once again go home on the bubble. The third one was a charm being I am able to win my seat into the super. By 11:30 I am too tired to play in it so I unregister and now I have $55 more in my tournament dollars account on Full. After my lunch break I decide to play in the 12:00 Deep Stack tournament on River stars. I go deep in this one for a cash of 2 buy ins, which takes almost 6 hours of work. I will write about this tournament tomorrow. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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Battle of The Planets Update

I got close but no cash for me. I bubbled in a 27 man and took 3rd in an 18 man to end it off. Ended up with 298 points, not bad but needed like 440 to cash. We canceled our AC trip for today, due to fatigue and bad whether. Will try to qualify for the Sunday warm-up on Stars and the Brawl on Full Tilt. Happy Sunday. Tony

Battle of the Planets

I have an outside shot of cashing deep in Poker Stars Battle of the Planets today. I have 268 points with four Sit-n-Gos to go. Right now I am playing in a 9 man, 18 man, and a 27 man. Need to cash in all three, really need to win the 27 man. If you are on Stars come out and sweat me. I will post how it went later on. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

The Turn Around

See I told you things would turn around for me online. Once I put that post up about losing the doom switch was turned off for me. I played in two Sit-n-Gos on River Stars. I got knocked out in 5th in the first one but I won the second one. Won a monster pot with pocket Aces on a 7-7-J-7-Q board. Busted two donkies on this board to take a huge chip lead once we were down to 5 players. At this point I totally abused the bubble by raising 2 out of every 3 hands. When we made the money I had a 3 to 1 chip lead over the player in 2nd. He busted the third place player so when heads up I had a 2 to 1 chip lead. It ended real fast, think he was tired of my raising. Second hand of head up on a flop of Q-10-2 we got it all in. I had Q-9 and he had pocket threes! So I took this one down, will help improve my ROI on Stars. Also played Ring Limit HE on Full for an hour. I won 6BBs which was fine after the night before’s beating. Still considering an AC trip this weekend. The Borgata just added a short tournament series starting on Sunday. At 11:00am they are having a $220 Stud tournament with a 20K guarantee. Being Stud based games are my best think I will have to make an appearance. Look for me there everyone. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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Doom/Bad Beat Switch

The Bad Beat switch was thrown on for me last night on River Stars. I have noticed that two things always turn it on for me. One is if I write about running good always run bad for a few days after this. Second is whenever I do a withdrawal I always run sick bad. It’s a conspiracy I tell you. Maybe Online Poker really is rigged, not! I have been winning consistently for the five years I have been playing Online so I don’t believe this at all. What is happening is whenever I run sick good and write about it I get hit with the downside of variance. Usually I have been running super lucky so now my luck is evening out. Same thing with the “Withdrawal Curse”. Whenever I do a withdrawal it’s because I have been running good and have run my account up enough to be able to take some out. So last night I played Full Ring Limit HE and lost 42BBs in two hours. It was especially bad on River Stars where I lost the bulk of it. I also ran bad in Sit-n-Gos but still turned a small profit. Played in four and took a first in one of them. Just kept get coolered in all my Sit-n-Gos. I shoved pocket Tens into the Bid Blinds pocket Jacks. Then in another one I shoved pocket Queens into pocket Aces. So it wasn’t bad beats that got me here just bad set up hands. While now that I am writing about running bad tonight I should run good again. I have this all figured out, LOL. I am itching to play me some live poker. Maybe an AC trip this weekend would cure the itch, we shall see. It’s great living in between AC and Foxwoods/Mohegan Sun in Connecticut, for poker players. I have so many choices of where to play or I could just stay home and play Online. We will see what the weekend brings. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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The Downturn

Last night I got hit with a dose of reality. Every bad beat that could happen to me occurred. This is the drawback to running good at Sit-n-Gos, eventually things turn the other way. At least I kept the loses to a minimum, didn’t even lose half of what I made the night before. So I decide to play some Full Ring Limit HE instead. Guess what my luck was bad there also. After a few minutes play I lost all desire to get punished anymore so I shut it down. Only lost 11BBs in 30 minutes but I could tell it would snowball into a bad night. This worked out well being it was around 7:50 anyway so I could go and enjoy ESPN’s Main Event coverage. I did fully enjoy it last night. The best part was watching the hands when they were on the bubble around 3 from the money. One hand would have caused me nightmares if I was on the losing end of it. A guy gets all in, 3 from the money, with a set of sevens on a flop of 7-4-2. He is against 8-7 off who is drawing super thin. Guy catches running eights to knock the set of sevens out close to the bubble. This hand illustrates how unfair Poker and life can be at times. Also I loved watching the former chip leaders spewing chips away. They got those big stacks by playing recklessly and they lost them the same way. In the one hand this guy puts in the forth raise pre-flop with A-5 sooted. He gets called by A-Q for half of his stack. I was glad to see the best hand win for a change. Another fun thing to watch was Johnny Chan at the feature table. Judging from the coverage you would think he was a calling station. He was right more times than he was wrong. I guess when you are a former world champ people take shots at you all the time. Overall the coverage was great and I enjoyed watching it last night. Looking forward to next week’s coverage. Thanks for reading and good luck at the tables. Tony

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