Donkey Tourney Tactics: Stalling

Sit down my friends, pull up a chair, and enjoy this tale of umm, whatever it is. Before we get to today's entry, I'll talk about some personal things. As you may have guessed from my last entry, A Week in the Life of the Morphy Household, I have a problem with my elbow that needs to be addressed. Although the previous suggestions of doing nothing and a whole bunch of shit that doesn't work seemed appealing, I've decided to go the surgery route. Friday June 2nd I'll be going in for surgery to relocate the ulnar nerve in my left elbow. It's an outpatient procedure, so I'll be home that day, and I'm only missing a week/week and a half of work, so it's nothing like the neck surgery from last year. But I'll be without the use of my left arm for a good 6 weeks. The doctor says I should be able to type after a few weeks, but the arm will be in a splint, so I'm not sure exactly how that will go. It's a damn good thing I'm right handed, or I would probably force myself to week-long sessions of Razz to end the pain. So anyway...

Today, Manifestites, I'll be venturing back into the poker world to share with you a tale of donkey play, donkey poker theory, and donkey tilt, all in its finest forms. Apologies for the lengthy introduction, but I do have to consider my non-poker playing readers here.

One of the larger problems with online poker tournaments today is the problem of stalling near the bubble. (For non-poker people, the bubble is the area between people who don't get paid and people who do. Let's say the tournament has 1000 people in it. In a typical payout structure, the top 100 people get paid. The bubble is considered the spots just shy of 100.) Now, most tournaments have a top-heavy payout structure, where the "real" money is in the top 3 spots. Typically the spots at the lower rungs of the payout ladder are just over the buyin of the tourney, or maybe double the buyin. This seems ok, but when the difference between 100th and 1st could be thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars, it seems silly to be content on "making the money."

Yet there are some poor, pathetic, wretched souls out there who are just that, content on making the money. They look at cashing in a tournament as a big accomplishment, and feel that once they've made the money, anything after that is just an added bonus. The problem is, in the long run, their passive play near the bubble is a losing battle, and without many trips well within the money ranges, they tend to lose money overall playing tournaments.

Then there are the stallers. These people are worse. Once it nears the bubble, these complete wastes of human space decide that instead of playing and trying to accumulate chips, they will take all of their time allotted and hope other people go out before they do, so they can sneak into the money. These people have very little actual poker skills, so they rely on the play of others to help them by. Pathetic, really. While this may work for them from time to time, what it really does is screw up the tournament for the players who are in it to actually play and make the final table, and are aiming at the big prize. Because these idiots stall every hand, the number of hands played per round go down drastically, and it puts everyone at a disadvantage. But, these stalling fuckwits don't care. They are in it for their fame and fortune, that $20 prize that says "I worked hard to earn this."

Now that we have the history behind stalling down, let's revisit last night's festivities. The scenario: a $33 tourney on UltimateBet with 399 entrants, and the top 40 spots paying. The payouts started at $68.75 for 40th place, and slowly increased to the final table, where payouts then ballooned up to the $3200 first prize. There were about 60 players left, and then it happened. The donkey staller showed up. With blinds at 150/300, he had 4800 chips, well within the ranges available to play and try to win some chips to get fairly far in the tourney. He wasn't a big stack, but he certainly wasn't short stacked either. Then he started stalling. Every single turn. He took up all of his time, every turn. A few of us made comments to try and get him to play instead of stall, especially this far out of the money, but he insisted on stalling, and from his chat comments, he seemed proud to do so. This lasted about 15 minutes until our table broke and he moved away. I wished him well, and he moved. (I think my actual words were "I hope you rot, staller.")

A few minutes later I was curious to see how the donkey staller was doing, so I opened his table. Sure enough, he's taking up all of his time every turn. The table was going nuts on him, even as far as to tell him that he wouldn't make it and had to play. He ignored them, and even fired back some asinine comments regarding the fact that he was going to play how he wanted, and his style was stalling. Fast forward a bit...this donkey has folded every hand, and blinded himself down from 4800 chips. Finally, with 41 people left (remember, 40 get paid, 41st gets nothing), he was forced all-in on the big blind, and lost the hand, finishing in 41st place the table erupted, and I joined in with a few lines of "hahahahahahahahahahahaha" and the bubble burst.

The story doesn't end here though, folks. Curious as to the level of tilt this guy would be on, I added him to my buddy list. Sure enough, a few seconds later he shows up at a $1/$2 NL holdem table, with the awe-inspiring amount of $43, surely his last money on the site (these tables have a max buyin of $200). I felt the need, no, I felt it was my duty to both wish him well and make fun of him. So I jumped on the table, told him what a well played 41st place finish he had, and informed the table of the situation and that he was playing with scared money and would surely lose all of it.

Then I went back to the tourney, where I was in a bit of a predicament myself. I look at his table from time to time, and he seems to be holding his own. Then it happens. I didn't actually see the hand, but I saw him all-in, and I saw the $150+ pot being pushed to his opponent. He sat there, with $0, and obviously no way to reload. This is where it gets good.

Fast forward .00000000003 seconds, when I see this on my tourney window:

stantheman00 (obs) says "x your ax your a *** hox your a ax is A "

XaQ Morphy says "uhhh what?"

Wanting to pour more salt into the wound, cause you know, I'm that likeable kinda guy, I added:

XaQ Morphy says "congrats on 41st stan, well played"

We pause for what's most likely 2 minutes of breaking something:

stantheman00 (obs) says "TY JERK"

XaQ Morphy says "anytime"

So I knew I had something going here, and felt I could string it along a bit. I was mostly unsuccessful:

XaQ Morphy says "what language was that anyway?"
XaQ Morphy says "dumbassese?"

stantheman00 (obs) says "YOURS"

With one last ditch effort, I tried:

XaQ Morphy says "stan, reload"
XaQ Morphy says "lol"

But to no avail. Stan obviously went off to break stuff. I hope he has good insurance! Until next time, which may be a few weeks, unless the one armed Morphy wishes to make an attempt at typing...

Yours Donkily,

Morphy