Battle of the Donkeys #11: Team Tribun Lands Another Point

Published on 11 Aug 08 12:28 by SoyCD

With 31 players signed up, the eleventh battle promised a long night of tournament play. Yet, in the end, bad beats and a lack of cards put an early end to the efforts of our community contenders. Team Tribun wins with the best average finish!

The IRC channel was full, as 31 players took to the starting line in this week's battle of the donkeys. It promised to be an intense fight with all teams sporting solid line-ups. Yet, in the end, it would be two contenders from the community team, independente and sirilidion that managed to get the furthest. With 2182nd and 994th place respectively, they have both managed to qualify for spots on the admin teams next week.

In the team competition, Team Tribun rallied from behind and managed to end SoyCD's premature celebrations.

The Battle between the two admin teams started off with both teams taking a conservative approach. The first blind levels were filled with tight aggresive play for small pots resulting in both teams staying in the fight with 5 players sporting solid chip stacks for most of the early tournament. It was not until the blinds had increased to dangerous levels, that the push or fold phase started claiming the first victims. While Njord41 from Team SoyCD was the first admin contender to bust, things looked good for his team when TribunCaesar joined him on the rail just a short while later.

Yet the members of Team Tribun would not let themselves get dispirited through the elimination of their leader and rallied for an impressive average finish of 6,789. Best player of the team was Cakara who placed 2,695th and finished ITM for the second week in a row. With urmo1 from Donkeys Unleashed and SoyCD from Team SoyCD also finishing ITM there was a 3 way tie for best money rankings this week, so the only point distributed this week goes to Team Tribun for the best average finish.

The total admin team standings after 11 weeks can be found below, in which Team SoyCD still holds a solid lead.

Admin Team Rankings after 11 weeks
Team SoyCD	versus	Team Tribun
7,957	Average Finish	9,405
$611,46	Total Money Won	$229,17
13 Points	Weekly Victories	6 Points
Individual Admin Rankings after 11 weeks
SoyCD	versus	TribunCasear
6619	Average player finish	6245
4	ITM Finishes	2
$333,67	Total Money won	$46,53
3 out times of 10	Best Member of Team	5 times out of 11

This week we have also expanded the admin vs admin statistics. Currently TribunCaesar is still holding onto the lead in terms of average finish, which he has held for 11 weeks running, while SoyCD is ahead in terms of ITM finishes and money won. Interesting is also that 5 out of the 11 weeks he has played, TribunCaesar was the best player on his team, while SoyCD placed furthest from his team 3 out of the 10 times he played.
As the money bubble approached several players were still in contention, including SharkySmurf, Cannell555, urmo1, Cakara, independente, SoyCD and sirilidion. Of these, SoyCD and sirilidion were both nearly double average with over 30 big blinds. All the others had around average chip stacks and just needed to catch a few cards to also have serious chances at the deeper money ranks.

For SharkySmurf, this double up was sadly not to be as he found himself with AK UTG and ended up running into kings, ending his tournament just before the bubble. For players the others the cards were similarly cruel. urmo1 and Cakara both fell victim to A4o while dominant favorites (urmo1 held A5 and lost a large part of his chipstack and cakara was eliminated holding 55). For SoyCD, it was a series of hands against the same player that cost him the tournament, and just like the other hands they can all be found in last week's thread: Thread.

Sadly, none of the community members managed to reach the deeper money ranks, as the last player remaining, sirilidion pushed 57s with 7BB from the cut-off only to find two callers behind him in the form of 33 and AQo. While the hands of the two callers put him in a decent position as he had nearly 35% equity to win (AQ having 39% and 33 only 26%) but the board didn't help him and he went to the rails as 994th.
After busting in the 200k, TribunCaesar continued playing the PokerStars Sunday Million. As it began to get interesting, he started an impromptu MTT coaching session which lasted till 4 am. Among the listeners, some like Dalliveas and Roxylein cheered him on till the very end when he busted as 363th for $823,60.
As always, the top 8 finishers from the community qualify for the next week's admin teams. That means sirilidion, independente, urmo1, cakara, SharkySmurf, finchybg, cannell555 and Termi8r qualified for the admin teams. Please sign up in the thread and indicate if you have time, in which team you want to play, and whether you wanted to be staked or not: Battle of the Donkeys August 17th

Qualified for the Donkeys Unleashed team are: ForTexi, Jordgubban, Alex147Eddie, Dippy19 - also sign up in the thread please and indicate whether you have time and if you want to be staked or not: Battle of the Donkeys August 17th

All other players that want to play in the community team also sign up in the thread:Battle of the Donkeys August 17th

Results Battle of the Donkeys #11
Team SoyCD	Rank	Donkeys Unleashed	Rank	Team Tribun	Rank
SoyCD	2,197	urmo1	2,222	Cakara	2,695
Cannell555	4,564	Frozenrope	8,957	Termi8r	4,929
Velak	10,136	BuchoCZ	13,157	NRG.Blaze	5,348
Hlynkinn	10,964	swissmoumout	17,723	theDahl	6,698
Njord41	14,988	alex147eddie	19,729	TribunCaesar	14,275
Average	8,569		12,358		6,789
The Community Team
sirilidion	994	overbe	14,002
independente	2,182	awishformore	17,393
SharkySmurf	3,633	Dippy19	19,558
finchybg	4,057	Jordgubban	20,826
fostieh	6,105	Fortexi	21,868
Zeffke	6,938
bah22	10,655
bender834	12,440
Roxylein	12,924
Chiller3k	13,872
Average	11,214