Let's Play Four - National Champs!!!

Nationals - Game #5

This was the winner's bracket final. However, we apparently decided to take the game off in the field. In what was easily our worst defensive game of the year, we got blasted 11-4 by a team of all-stars from California. I think only four of their runs were earned. We hit fairly well in this game, but were unable to get the timely hits to get us back into the game. Losing this game meant to win it all we would have to now win 3 more games all in a row with no breaks.

Nationals - Game #6

This was a rematch of the previous night's game (the team we blasted 13-1). They started a different pitcher this time, but the result was the same. We scored 6 in the second. They brought in the previous night's pitcher (I'm sure he was happy about that) in the 3rd. The shelling continued with 2 more in both the 3rd and 4th innings, and we cruised to a 10-2 five inning victory. This got us to the championship game, but we would have to win twice because the California team had yet to lose in the double elimination format.

Nationals - Game#7

First an aside - For those who don't know much about fastpitch, most teams from California have try-outs. As a result, they usualy are loaded with guys that are pretty built. I'm not going to say our team isn't built, but I will say our "big" guys aren't big because of their muscles :) Furthermore, this team's two main pitchers were picked up solely for this tourney and had never played with them prior to this tourney. Pickup pitchers are fairly common at higher levels of fastpitch, but it is something our team has never done. We play on the philosophy of "win with what brought us here."

After the debacle earlier against this team, I think they thought this would be an easy game for them. Little did they know they got our D- performance in that game. We started well and methodically scored runs all game long. Our pitching was fabulous. The result - an 11-0 domination. We just needed to keep this momentum going into the final game.

Nationals - Game #8

As I stated, momentum was a key. We batted first for the 7th time in the 8 games, and promptly put 3 on the board. However, they responded with 2 of their own. In the second, we scored 4 more, but they only countered with 1. The third had us adding 3 more, and after three innings we had a nice 10-4 lead. Unfortunately, these were the last runs we would score. The California team added 3 runs in the 5th inning to cut the lead to 10-7. In the last two innings, they were unable to mount any legitimate threat, and after a 1-2-3 7th, we had done it!

Notes:
Most importantly, this was a complete team effort.

Everyone in our lineup was locked in offensively. I'm not sure what we batted as a team, but my guess is something in the .400 to .420 range. This just shouldn't be possible at a national tourney.

Defensively, we played outstanding except for the one loss. Of note was Mark Beatty. He rarely gets to bat due to our potent offense, but when our number 1 pitcher is pitching he is our defensive specialist. I don't think he had an error all tourney long, and made numerous difficult in-between hop scoops. DJ (our SS/2B) also did fabulous. The last mention defensively is for Wes. He is normally our 3rd catcher, but due to an injury and a guy that couldn't make it, he had to catch all 4 games on Sunday. This was 24 straight innings behind the plate.

On the pitching side, Mike Godar had a great overall tourney. He pitched in 7 of the 8 games with 4 complete games. I believe he led the tourney in ERA out of all the pitchers who pitched enough innings. He is our rock on the mound and a complete bulldog. Our other pitcher up there was Al Ohms. This guy has seen it all (as he is in his early 50s). I can't speak for him, but I think his win in our first championship game might have been his biggest win ever. It also may have been his best game ever given the competition and the enormity of the game. Against a loaded lineup, he pitched 7 shutout innings. He had them off-balance all game long, and got out of a few very tough jams. This game was the most important of the whole tourney. It completely switched momentum for both teams.

We put 6 guys on the all-tourney team:

Mike Godar P/SS
Mike Klein C/1B
Wes Strowmatt OF/C
Eric Schultz OF/C
Isaac May OF (MVP of tourney)
Me OF

I plan on posting our stats for the tourney hopefully when I get them.

Nationals - Game #4

We are in a zone! We just won 13-1 against a guy that was bringing some pretty good heat. It was 1-0 going into the 3rd, but even then we were smoking the ball. Then the flood gates opened up. I think the other team was in shock at some of the shots we were hitting. In any case, our pitching was great as well as our defense this game. We are in the winner's bracket final tomorrow at 9:45 AM, and we have guaranteed ourselves at least 3rd place. If we can keep this train going, it could be a fun day!

Nationals - Game #3

All that needs to be said is we were up 9-0 after the first inning. 9-0!!! They had error after error all game and pretty much handed it to us. I'm not sure exactly how many of our runs were even earned. Things did get a tad precarious when they closed to 10-6 in the fourth, but we proceeded to put 6 more on the board, and ended it 16-6 in 6 innings. Everyone in our lineup is hitting right now. As long as our pitching is decent and we keep our heads in the game, things are looking good. We play our next game at 8PM tonight. If we win it, we are int he winner's bracket final tomorrow morning. If we lose it we will have to win 5 games in a row tomorrow to take the tourney down.

Nationals - Game 2

Wow! We played maybe our best game of the year. What I thought would be a low scoring nail-biter became a 10-0 blowout in 5 innings (and it was 1-0 going into the 4th). Their pitcher was not bringing it like he seemed to be doing last night. His ball was coming in flat, whereas last night he had a lot of movement. All three facets of the game (pitching, fielding, and hitting) were firing for us today. We play Bowen, IL tomorrow morning at 11:30. It's a team we've seen many times over the years, but have not played this year.

Nationals - Game 1

We won our first game at nationals 6-4. We didn't play particularly well, but we had a fairly easy opponent. Tomorrow's game looks like it will be against a pretty tough opp. Their pitcher is easily the best I saw out of the teams that were playing while we were at the softball complex. We play at 5PM. Here is the website link to check how we are doing: http://www.2008ws.nafafastpitch.com/a/a.htm. I doubt they update it too regularly, but the box scores might be the best spot to look for scores.

FTOPS Wrap-Up

Overall, I had a pretty bad/good series in my opinion. By this I mean, I lost a fair amount of money in the actual tourneys, but I won the contest I was in (because I had the most cashes of anyone in it). As a result, I actually made a little for the series. Furthermore, I thought I played really well in most of the events, but I could never break through for the big score. I cashed 5 times in 25 events. This is right around my historical rate of 18-20% and is perfectly fine. I also bubbled two big events (less than one table from the money).

In summary, if I had not won the contest, this would have been a very disappointing series because I felt I gave myself a good shot to get a big score, but it just didn't develop.

Up and Down Day

The bad news first: I busted out of the $2500 FTOPS event today on a decent sized coin flip early on.

The good news: I played 4 other tourneys today and cashed in 3 of them: 9th of 100 in a $200 PLO on Stars, 15th of 394 in a $300 NLH on Stars, and 29th of 1058 in the FTOPS $100 PLO w/ RBs. The last one also moved me into the lead in the FTOPS contest I'm in. The lead is very small though. I have about 568pts. Mig.com has about 566pts and Stevie444 has about 563pts. A handful of other guys still have a chance if they can get 2 cashes tomorrow or a final table. If I can snare a cash tomorrow it will be very difficult for anyone to pass me but the top 2 guys, and even they would need a very good finish.

FTOPS Update #2

I am pretty much having a pitiful FTOPS up to this point. Everything that can go wrong seems to be happening since my last update. Yet, somehow I am still in third in the contest. This is partly because I had three early small cashes, and partly because no one else in the contest is doing that much. There are three events left (today's $2500 event doesn't count). I need at least one cash to have a chance to win it. Hopefully, I can pull one out. Today's PLO w/ RBs is easily my best chance.

FTOPS Update

I ended up getting in a $500 contest on Pocket 5's. It has 28 entrants with some very big names. Here's the link for it: http://www.mttbacking.com/ftops.html. Through five events I should be in 3rd place after finally getting a cash in the $200 Stud tourney. I finished 56th out of 581. I think I played pretty well. I didn't get many good starting hands, but I picked my spots well when my cards were real live. I ended up hitting some big hands on later streets as a result. Tomorrow are two big events, the $500 PLO 6 Handed and the $100 NLH w/ RBs. I'll need a minimum of 4 cashes to get top 3 in the contest I think, unless I hit a final table.

FTOPS and the Summer Olympics

While the FTOPS is run 4 times every 1 year, the summer olympics are run 1 time every 4 years. I love the olympics despite the constant doping allegations and the prima donna pro atheletes that are now allowed in in many of the sports. It usually brings out the best in athletics. Some of the biggest names at the end of these few weeks are no names as we speak today. I plan on watching ALOT of the ridiculous amount of coverage spread over NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, USA, Oxygen, plus some others I'm sure I'm forgetting. My only disappointment is that curling only goes on during the winter olympics.

Now on to the FTOPS (which starts tonight)

This FTOPS has 25 events spread out over the next twelve days. I was hoping to get together a team for Pocket 5's contest like before, but Moon and J do not think they are going to be able to play enough events this time around. Unless I scrape together two guys (I am still working on it), it looks like it won't happen. I am still looking forward to this nonetheless. Here are my over/unders for the series:

Events I play: 24
Cashes: 4
Final Tables: 0.5
FTOPS All-time Leaderboard Ranking: 40th (I currently sit in 51st going into the series with
396 pts - 40th has 432 for perspective)

State Champs!

The fastpitch softball team I play on won the Class "B" state championship this past weekend. We went 5-0 and completely dominated the competition. The crazy thing is I don't think we played nearly as good as we could have, although we did hit like madmen. Our pitching was hit and miss (either very strong or pretty soft), and our defense was generally good, but we made some bad and almost critical errors. Of note on defense was Steve Godar at third base. He made play after play (some of them pretty fantastic).

The all state team included six of our players:

Mike Klein (C)
Derrick Johnston (IF)
Steve Godar (3B)
Mike Godar (P) Most Valuable Pitcher
Isaac May (OF) Most Valuable Player
Me (OF)

Isaac had a ridiculous tourney as our leadoff hitter. It seemed every time I came up to bat he was on base. In addition, everyone on our team seemed to contribute in some respect during the tourney.

This was our second state championship in four years. The group of guys I play with on the team are the main reason I keep playing. With my job in poker, I usually miss about half the season for the WSOP. It would be much easier for me to just give it up, but there isn't a guy on the team I don't like. It's hard to quit when it's so much fun to just be around the whole team. Furthermore, anyone that's been around our team knows that the wives and kids just add to the experience. Sometimes it seems like a daycare center at our games, and I actually love that. It is really a great family atmosphere that says alot about the quality of guys I play with. This is what makes winning state even more special.

We go to nationals in Mankato, MN in two and a half weeks. We have had little success recently at nationals, and hopefully we can turn this around this year. We definitely have a team that can do some damage if we play well.

Wise Words from the "2nd Best Razz Player in the World"

Anyone who watched or knows about the Razz final table I played at the WSOP should find this somewhat humorous. This came from an article on Pocket 5's about Mr. Klodnicki:

In the $1,500 Razz event, Klodnicki finished as the runner up to fellow PocketFiver Barry barryg1 Greenstein. On his Razz experience, he admitted, “I don’t have much of a Razz background. I like playing the 9:30pm HORSE tournament on Full Tilt Poker. I really like mixing up games in order to take a break from hold’em and I’ve always found myself chipping up the most in Razz.” He commented on players in Razz tournaments he’s entered: “People tend to play every street badly in Razz. I don’t think many people know how to play it properly. Knowing about odds is really important as well.”