New Blog!

Ok guys, I've decided to make a new blog called Poker Lifestyle: http://pokerlifestyle.wordpress.com/
I've been getting very lazy about blogging, but I would like to continue blogging so I decided to move and continue blogging on a fresh new blog!

I know, I know

I hardly ever blog lately and I have so much to tell :P. I don't know why, but for me it's pretty hard to find the motivation to blog on a regular basis, I'm thinking of joining a blog with one or two other people so I we can both keep each other motivated to blog.
I know I never ended up writing a trip report from Vegas and I won't right now, but it was tons of fun and I am definetly going back next year. There's still a lot of stuff I didn't do and I'd like to catch up on it. I was also in London for a couple of days and met up with a friend who is doing an IT-internship there. That was surely fun.
On monday I'll be on my way again, travelling to croatia to a friend's house and I think that will be fun too. It will also be a low-tech trip, because there is no TV or internet. That should be sweet and good for me to relax. I'll be taking "tipping point" and "theory of poker" and finally finishing those two books that I've been reading on a nd off for like a year or more. I really enjoy reading, but I feel like such a fast paced person that sometimes I just don't find the time to read an entire book (I start reading a book then another and another and I never finish, which I know is bad and something I wanna work on).
As far as poker is going, I had my first losing month in June. I lost like 3-4 buy ins on the month I guess, I don't know any exact numbers. This may however sound odd, but in a way I'm glad I had a losing month, it takes away the pressure from never having one and I think will aid me psychologically long term to just maximize my ev in spots where I might sometimes take a lower variance line to preserve a win.
Right now I need to go and grab some lunch with a friend. Whether's pretty good, but after Vegas I have trouble determing whether the weather outside is cold or warm, by local standards :P.
Later guys and gals.

vegas excerpt

This is a 5/10 hand I played at the Caesar's palace casino.

We are playing 9 handed. utg folds, utg+1 folds, mp1 raises to 40, I call in mp2 with KsTs, mp3 folds, co calls, btn folds, sb folds, bb folds.

mp1 is playing around 3k, I'm playing 2.3k and co is playing 1k.

I'm calling preflop, because I think my hand has impliead odds vs mp1 and I think he is good enough to laydown hands to me, when I represent a specific hand (I've heard him put people on hands given the board texture).

Flop (135$) is 8s6s3c, giving me the K high fd with two overs. Mp1 fires 120$, I smooth call with the intention of repping a 4, 5 or T on the turn if it hits. Co folds.

Turn (375$) 8s6s3c 4c, completing one of the straight draws with 75. mp1 bets 200$, I think for a little bit and make it 600$, at this point there is 1.5k left to go in on the river which is about a pot sized shove. Villain thinks for a little bit (1-2 minutes) and calls.

River (1575$) 8s6s3c 4c 3d, complete brick. At this point I put villain on weak made hands and possibly draws that missed and he didn't want to stick in on the turn. I figure I can follow through here and get a fold 50% of the time. I think for a little bit and fire 1.5k$, which is an effective all in. Random greek guy with balla watch: "I like your style."
mp1 snaps, I open muck saying nice hand, he shows 77 and rakes in the 4575$ pot with second pair to the board.

I left the table shortly after this hand to go and think about it. I came to the conclusion that his call was either pretty bad or pretty good. Thinking about it this way, if he thinks I raise all strong made hands on the flop then my turn range is skewed heavily towards semi bluffs and 75 and he actually has 77 then I really like his call down.

Now here's the added bonus, I accidentily string bet my 1.5k river shove and ended up getting 400$ back, giving me a 1.5k shove for 1.1k (he said he'd call 1.5k too, but the dealer wouldn't allow it).

That's my biggest po so far from playing live. I'm actually not trying to play a ton live, but that's kinda how it ended up going yesterday. Today is American Independece Day (yay) and there will be a ton of partying in Vegas. I'm actually a little annoyed that I'm slightly ill from the air conditioning in Vegas. This sounds pretty funny, but it's actually fairly cold in Vegas when your not outside.

I'll follow up with some pics in due time.

LGW

I'm currently in Landon GatWick airport, waiting for my 15 hour 30 minute journey to Las Vegas NV to commence. Slept fairly well in the Hotel last night, I feel like I need to get a good bed at my place so I can sleep like that too, but I haz no space.
I managed to play 1.1k hands of Holdem in my room last night. I ended up losing about 280$, but I think I played pretty well and tbh I'm happy to get hands in. It's like I have trouble finding the time to play, but my new notebook should help with this. 6 tabling is pretty sweet, small, but sweet.

I'm such a fish when it comes to travelling to the US, they literally ask you like 40 questions and I couldn't answer all of them... For example I didn't know the place where I was staying (the exact address), which is obviously not a smart thing to do, but I've also never been asked something like that before at an airport.... well I guess they did in Dubai, but it's different, because they don't enter the information into a computer. I also didn't know the address in Dubai, but he could tell I was some random Euro on holidays so he didn't make too much of a fuss about it.
Anyway I managed to get a hold of Noel online and he gave me the address, so I'll be prepared for any further questions. Bring it US government!
A friend told me the other day that they've started randomly selecting people at airports with notebooks and copying their hard drives for pirate material. I didn't know they did this, anyway I'm clean so no worries.
I should geto going now, maybe I can get some duty free shopping in, but seems unlikely.
L8rs.

travelling

I'm writing this from my hotel room in London. I have to spend the night here, because my connection flight to Vegas is tomorrow at 10 and I arrived in London at 11am. It doesn't really bother me too much, it's not much of a hassle for me.
I dropped by at Marks and Spencer's to pick some food, which I am eating right now. Practically everything they sell is super healthy, which is good for me. I really do not dislike healthy food, but I end up not eating so healthy most of the time, I believe mainly due to the fact that I'm too lazy to cook, but this will change soon I hope, when I get back to Innsbruck, I'll get myself a cook book and go shopping on a regular basis (I usually end up odering in, because I don't have anything in the house).
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit. I'm very excited about going to Las Vegas tomorrow and also meeting all the weird Americans. Seeing some of the Pros will be fun too.
Later.

Sup

Sorry I haven't been posting much lately. I've been busy with some exams and haven't been doing too much.
Right now I'm getting ready for Vegas, just making sure I have enough clothes and cash to travel. My plan is also to stay in London for a bit on my way back from Vegas and meet with a friend who is doing an internship there, which I'm excited about, I haven't been to London properly in a while.
I'm gonna do a bit of shopping now and then hopefully get in some hands before the EURO 2008 semi-final between Germany and Turkey.

how things are goin'

This month has been goin' pretty marginally so far. I dropped down to -3k pretty early due to my big hu session loss and running below expectation @ 3/6.
I've been up a little a bit aswell though, but right now I'd say I'm down about 400$.
I actually think I am playing well and my HU games is also really improving I feel.
I've also been working on my Omaha game, but mainly reading/watching vids (if you're a deuces cracked member, definetly check out the "Mad Potters" series on Omaha with Sensei and Riverboatking) and not so much playing.
I have an exam coming soon, so I'll be unable to put as much effort into my game as I would like to, but I'm fine with that.

no words

good morning

So it's 5:55am, which is pretty early, but the good news is that I didn't stay up till this time, but just woke up. I didn't want to wake up this early, because it means I'll be tired around 4pm-6pm, but it will help me get to bed early today so I can balance my sleeping.

I didn't actually get to see a football match yesterday in the EURO 2008, because of a missunderstanding. We're going to watch Sweden-Spain on Saturday and not Spain-Russia as I thought. Spain is on fire right now as they beat Russia 4-1 yesterday. Russia really wasn't bad from their overall game play, but Spain just had such deadly counter attacks, it was brutal.

The good thing about me being up early is that there is a decent chance my notebook is arriving today, so I won't be pulled out of any deep-sleeping.

Poker-wise I'm done with my Party rakeback days and I'm a bit dissapointed I wasn't able to play more hands, but I think my bad sleeping had a lot to do with it.
It's hard for me to filter out my exact results for Party (I don't know how to do it with HM), but I'd guess I ended up +1.6k from cash games with an extra 475$ cleared in bonusses and a wooping 1426.64$ rakeback in 5 days of play.
The plan for the rest of the month is to grind it out on iPoker 3/6, 2/4 6max and fullring and to maintain status before I go to Vegas. I'll also be playing some 2/4 hu on the side.

:S

I'm super wasted right now. I just played 1333 hands straight and ended up winning 367$ over 1/2 and .5/1. I think I played some spots a bit too aggro, giving my opponents to much credit for being capable of folding hands when my perceived range beats them.
The rake is lousy at those stakes. I only made 140$ in RB. I guess if I make it to 3k hands (not looking very likely), it'd be 300$.
I'm gonna go to town as I'm falling asleep in my chair as I am writing this.

Bad sleeping

Ok, it's time for me to admit, again, that my sleeping rhythm is completely off balance. I've decided to balance it by not sleeping today and trying to go to bed at around 9-10pm (note, right now it is 6:10am). Today is the last day I have 100% rakeback on Party Poker (which is soooo sweet), and I don't wanna waste it, so I've decided to multitable 8 FR 1/2 games and just "bonus-whore" basically.
Right now they're aren't enough 1/2 FR games running, so I'm playing .5/1 aswell ^^. I'll switch in as much 1/2 as possible, because I still think my edge is reasonable enough with little sleep and I get more rakeback there.
I'll post results of hand count and amount won (with and without rb) after I'm done.
I figure I won't be playing for too long as I have tickets for today's EURO 2008 game in Austria and Switzerland (maybe till like 4pm), Spain vs Russia.
This should be fun though.

It's party time

Today my Party Poker VIP days begin and I'll have 100% rakeback for the next 5 days. I wanna be putting in more hands than I usually would and I hope I'll be able to do so.

Yesterday I finally decided which notebook to get for Vegas. I decided against a Macbook Pro, not because I don't like it, but because I just don't feel comfortable with paying literally twice as much as for any other notebook out there that can do the same or close to it. So I'm getting an Acer Aspire 6920g, which set me back 1350€ compared to the 2500€ for the MBP. It's a 16:9 multimedia notebook with a high res 1920*1080 (1080p), 4GB ram, Core 2 Duo T8300 and Nvidia 9500 GMs. I must admit I'm not all too familiar with these components, but the notebook did pretty well in tests from sites that I trust, so it should be good.

Recap on HU match

Now that it's been a day I've had time to reflect on my match and get the tilt out of my system. I still stand by most of my decisions and I think I made correct adjustments to his playing style, but some key mistakes in deep pots. To my defence I haven't really played much 300 and 400bb deep, it's really very challenging and every decision can be for a lot of money. Tilting obviously becomes very expensive aswell as not focusing (some people would say it's the same thing).
I think part of why he was so tough to play against was that he must have had a pretty good card distribution to where it appeared to me that he was constantly making close to nut hands when he was betting. I must admit though that he played his style pretty well and made some good laydowns to me.
I'm definetly sure of my edge against this guy and I'd take some more shots at him given the chance, but I'm not sure I'll see him again too soon. He has some exploitable lines and he adjusts slowly to your change in play, so your chipping away at the small-mid sized pots. I think he plays large pots reasonably well though.
I'm sure a seasoned HU reg would've crushed him, but I can imagine other regs having troubles against him aswell. I don't think that some of the people berating me for being weak in deep pots not adjusting well etc, are being fair on me (and also not showing great comeradeship).
What I did take from this match was some valuable experience in both deep stacked and HU poker and some self-management aspects (possibly quitting him earlier, just to keep a clear mind. I feel that for me that this is especially true. I'm generally a very calm person, but I also absorb things a lot which is a) not healthy and b) will show it's side-effects, as my brain is processing these feelings additionally to the information at hand and rations between them as weird as that may sound. An example would be say you lost 3 pots and you're in a marginal spot again, the logical part will say maximize ev and the emotional will say I don't want to lose another pot. Obviously this has to be balanced with game flow dynamics (sometimes it can be correct to fold a marginally profitable hand to save momentum and push bigger edges later on).).

These are just my after-thoughts on my HU session. I took the day off today and I'll be playing a combination of party poker (100% rakeback for the next 6 days) ring games, ipoker ring games and FTP HU poker for the rest of the month. I also have a macroeconmics exam coming up at the end of the month, right before I go to vegas.
I've also decided to get a new notebook, a MacBook Pro. I'm gonna buy it in the US though, fully tuned it's a wooping 750€ (1100$) cheaper in the US than in the EU.

HU match

I just played a guy for five and a half hours on iPoker. I ended up losing 6 buy ins on the session and probably 7 to him.
He was playing so poorly that I felt I had an edge on him. I got back a lot on him at one point, but then staked off pretty light.
I think I made some mistakes in big pots, but at the same time he was playing such a crazy predictable style that I felt I could grind it back which I did several times, but I just couldn't take down a big pot.
I've never seen somebody play the way he has before. He reraised from the blinds everytime he played a hand, he'd call say 5% of the time. He called about 85% of my 4bets. He would check/fold every time on the flop and if he bet he had a hand typically. I think he almost never bluffed, I only caught him bluffing right at the beginning of the match.
One thing I must say though was that he never made a bad call down which was party of why it was so difficult to get back up on him.
It's crazy, but it's almost like he was cheating. It just doesn't make sense for him to show a profit playing the way he does.

Here are some of my most frustrating pots:

1
2
3
4

I won't lie I played some pots poorly aswell, but the match just wasn't in my favour in general. I'm going to implement a 3 buy in quit rule for now, just to make sure I'm not tilting. I'm also going to look for another site to play hu on, most likely Full Tilt Poker because I think they have the best software to play HU on.

ECOOP # 10

I just busted in the main event with AdKd against 4d9d, the guy was bullying the whole table and I was happy to look down at AK obviously, I couldn't hold however and busted in 78th out of 1277 after playing 8 hours straight. I ended up with 3k$ and overall winnings of 3550$ in the series which I can't complain about.

ECOOP # 9

This was a 250$ buy in PLO event. With 530 entrants. I got pretty deep in this tourney and got a bit unlucky towards the end when I put in most of the money ahead, but failed to hold. I busted 38th and cashed for 750$.
Tomorrow is the main event for 1k which this has all been building up to. All in all I'm pretty happy to have cashed and it's funny that it was in an Omaha event.
The level of play is fairly poor in these events though, worse than in the Holdem events. I'm not sure I encoutered anybody that really impressed me.

ECOOP # 8

I think I played this pretty well, I didn't invest any extra money in rebuys or add-ons and I busted 300th from 1570 entrants with 99 to a2o blind on blind. Bubble was at 200.
I'm down about 400$, I definetly wasn't playing my best today and I hope to just rest a bit today and come back focused into the game tomorrow. Then the month is pretty much over and I'll check results.

TURBO TABLES!

THEY TILT ME! They take away so much from your edge as a thinking player when you only have a short period of time to make your decisions. I lost a stack today making hasty decisions in a 5 second spot and I feel that things like that are just really unnecessary and take away from my edge as a poker player, plus this is one of the few things that can tilt me in poker.

ECOOP #7

The fact that I had to play a Limit Holdem MTT put me slightly on tilt at first, then it was interesting a bit and then it put me on tilt again. I don't know who would want to play these MTT's freely. Then again there were 508 entrants. People drop out really slowly at first untill everybody gets really short, like 5bb short and then the majority of spots you get in are like 60-40, 50-50, 65-35 spots with small stacks and good pot odds. I mean naturally I don't assume I play an optimal Limit MTT strat, but I felt like I wasted some of time on this tournament :P, but hey I need to take the freeroll right ^^.
Today's event, ECOOP #8, is a NL Holdem 100$ rebuy. This may sound funny, but I almost feel burnt out from playing MTT's and there is a party in town, so I'm not going to rebuy and add-on and push marginal plus ev spots early to either boost my stack or bust quick.
I'll take #9 (200$ PLO) and #10 (1k main event) more seriously after that.

ECOOP #6

"Hi there guys, this should be simple for regs to answer, but I'm just dabbling in some tournaments so I'm still learning.
This was a hand from the ECOOP #6 NL Holdem 6max event.
Blinds are 150/300 it folds around to me on the button I look down at KQo with 18bb. The SB has a 13bb stack and the BB a 15bb stack.
I wouldn't perceive these players to be regs, they aren't playing in a crazy manner however there reshoving ranges won't be "optimal".
The bubble is at 150 players and there are currently 400 players left.
My question is what line you would take here given my reads.
Open shove, raise/call, raise fold... Thx" - My cr post

I shipped KQ, BB snapped KK, nh sir.

Tommorow is a Limidonkament XD.

ECOOP #5

Busted 201st from 508 entrants. Down to 11bb I shoved AKs UTG and got called by a big stack holding 99. He wins the flip and I'm out.
I think I played well this tournament, avoided marginal situations, it just came down to winning the flip as so often in tournaments.
I ran pretty poor in all in situations the whole day however.
What was bad about the tournament is that it was a 750$ tournament and we had like 10 seconds to make all decisions. There was no time bank. This combined with no antes make Titan tournaments really bad for regs imo. I contacted support regarding the no time bank matter and they said they are looking into it.
Tomorrow is event #6, the game is NL Holdem 6 max, my specialty. I'm looking forward to this one. Buy in is 200, gurantee is 200k.

ECOOP II #4

Omaha hi r/a 100$ buy in. Busted around 160th from 830 entrants and the bubble was at 100 players. I felt I played reasonably well.
I busted when a guy limped utg and I look down at As5sAd9c with a 20bb stack, I thought this was a good spot to put my money in. BB overcalls and UTG calls. The flop is 4j5r, BB checks, UTG leads. At this point the pot is 12k and I have 12k in my stack. I decide I am commited to this flop and get it in against a wrap draw and a pair. I think I must have been like a 35% dog to win the hand, but can't say for sure, because the table closed so quickly.
Tomorrow I will be playing the 750$ holdem event. Let's hope for the best :P.

5 minutes

I just busted out of the 300$ event after 5 minutes. Blinds are 10/20 I look down at KK with a 3k stack. I open to 3x and get called by the co, the SB makes it 180. I decide that given the dynamics of these tournaments reraising will not get me any action from worse at this stage, so I decide to take a flop in position. Flop comes down KJT with a club draw. SB fires for about 70% pot and I raise it up, CO mucks, SB reships for his remaning stack, I obviously snap only to see the sickening AQo. I fail to suckout.

ECOOP II #3

Today is the 300$ buy in event with a guarantee of 500k$. I'm excited to play in this event and I think I am focused and well rested.
I wasn't really bothered too much about the PLO 8 event yesterday as I mentioned and I didn't make any rebuys or add-ons. I busted out after 34 minutes when I pushed a pretty strong draw multiway and got called by two weaker draws.
I had the nut low draw plus the second nut hi draw. I actually think I got bad beat in that pot, which is kinda funny, because PLO 8 is by far my weakest game.
I believe tomorrow is the PLO hi rebuy event, even though I am not a very good PLO hi player yet, I feel confident enough to rebuy in this event (rebuys are 100$).

ECOOP II #2

Today we are playing Plo Hi/Lo R/A. My initial plan was to study the game, but I was busy studying for exams and travelling so I kinda gave up on it.
I won't be rebuying, since I'm not very confident in my PLO 8 game. I understand the rules of the game and very very basic game concepts.
Should I cash it'll be pretty lucky.
Tomorrow's event is a 300$ NL Holdem event, which will be my next big shot at some moniez. I got feedback on my busting hand yesterday and I'm pretty sure my shove wasn't good now which is a shame, but I learnt from my mistake and hope to do better next time.

Busto

Meh, I bustoed as 211th from 1291 entrants when the bubble was at 150 players.
I don't know what to think about my bust yet. I made a pretty loose steal with a short stack. Sucks to play so long and bust in a marginal spot like that. At least I ran well in cash today, so my happiness level isn't down the drain ;).
I posted the hand on CR for some feedback.

MTTs

Poker has been treating me well this month so far. I'm up decently playing 2/4 and 3/6 cash. I don't know the exact results, but I've chosen not to check it, because it isn't really all too relevant as long as I am reviewing my sessions.
Today is the first event of the ECOOP II. It's a 200$ NL Holdem event with a 250k guarantee. I'm missing a garden party of a friend, which sucks, but at the same time I'm not gonna give up on an opportunity like this, plus if things don't go too well early on, I can still go to the party.
I'll report back on how it goes.

Dubai Trip Report

Hi guys and gals. I came back from Dubai on Saturday and I had a really great time. Dubai is a really interesting place to visit. Naturally it's a different culture, because it's a state in the UAE (United Arab Emirates), but at the same time there are a lot of Europeans and Americans there, in the heart of the city that work in Dubai.
Petrol is really cheap in Dubai, I believe we paid about 30 euro cents per litre. Which is nothing compared to the 1.50€ we pay in central Europe.
Most of the people there are very wealthy and I saw a very high rate of upper class vehicles. I'd see atleast a dozen Porsche's each day and then the occasional Enzo, Gallardo etc..
The only "poor" people are the workers, which consist mainly of Pakistanis and Indians. There are also some Asian immigrants.
There are no taxes in Dubai which naturally makes everything a bit cheaper, but you have to be carefull where you shop, because some places have high prices relative to the fact that they don't pay taxes.
Driving in Dubai is like madness, 50% of the cars are Jeep size or bigger and we were driving around in our rental Ford Focus Limousine so we didn't have maximum road respect. Sometimes people will just try to push you away by cutting into you.
There are speed limits now, but people will still drive very fast in areas that are known not to be controlled. Up to 2 years ago there were no speed limits.
I'm lucky to have had an appartment available to me from my friend whom we were visiting and who works in Dubai.
All together with shopping, flight, food and everything I'd guesstimate I paid about 1k euros which I think is very reasonable considering where I was.
These were just some random impressions with no specific chronological order. I really have so much to say about Dubai that I'm not going to bother writing a whole blog entry about this matter :P. If you have any questions AIM me or something.
Below are some pictures I selected from my stay. The guy im sitting next to with the hookah is the guy I was staying with. I may add some more pics at a later point.

Survivors

The higher I've moved up in my poker career the more stressful poker has become for me.
I think a lot of people will agree with me when I say that having the perfect poker mindset isn't realistic, but I definetly think an approximation of it is possible.
Maybe I should summarize briefly what I mean by the "perfect poker mindset".
What I think about when I say this, is a poker player that is emotionally unattatched to the money he is dealing with and will at all times be able to make the decision that maximizes his expectation in the long run.It would be great to be able to play like this. We wouldn't have to worry about emotional tilt ever and could just keep on playing in good games assuming we are not ill or tired.

I'm sure a lot of you are aware that Phil Ivey once said that he thinks all players play worse when they're losing. I never used to believe in this, but I was also playing lower at the time and as I said it was less stressful and ergo easier to manage emotions. I certainly think that this now holds truth for myself. My game does deteriorate slightly when I'm losing. It is harder for me to keep the pressure on when I'm down 11 buy ins as the line between tilt and good aggressive play becomes thinner and harder to determine. The result of this is that I subconciously protect myself by playing on passive tilt.
As the word says it's tilt, but it's passive the best kind of tilt some say. It is however tilt after all and I think it is best for me to just take a break after I think I could be tilting passively and then come back in an hour two.
I think that the way people deal with there emotions in poker will vary from player to player and shoudl vary. Not all people are the same and knowing your own limits is vital to being a successful poker player. If you have problems with this, maybe you should try getting a friend to sweat you and tell you when he thinks you are doing something unheard of.

Now to the title of my post, survivors. I chose this title, because I think the best and most succesful poker players in the long run are suvivors. Imagine the best player in the world who beats the game for 10ptbb/100, but has know sense of tilt control what so ever. A small downswing of say 7 buy-ins could destroy him and eradicate his existence off the poker network he was playing on if he were uncapable of managing tilt and would monkey tilt off the rest of his bank roll.
In contrast to this take a 14/12/3 rock who plays 8 tables and beats them at 1.5ptbb/100 and never tilts.
Who will be more succesful in the long run? I am by no means trying to encourage people to be rocks, but I think you get the drift.

These were just kinda random thoughts I had floatin through my head and I thought somebody might find them valuable.
Dodgyken sent me this really cool link of an interview with Samoleus, punkety on Poker Stars, the other day. You should check it out it's pretty good imo.

boomswitch some?

I guess I don't only run bad on Party Poker...

Party oh party

I don't know why, but it seems as though I can't run well on Party Poker. I feel like I could even be down dollar wise on Party overall, but it's hard for me to tell, because I've had several PCs since I started playing there.

Here are my KK v AA hands for today:

KKvAA1

KKvAA2

Some QQ v KK:

QQvKK

This guy was a loose fish. I wasn't sure what to make of his minraise preflop. I decided to take a flop in position and play postflop as I think I can extract more value from weaker hands as opposed to putting in a lot of money preflop when he likely only gives me much action here from KK, AA.
The way he played the hand I was pretty sure I was ahead on the river, I guess not.

top set no good

This kind of cooler is standard for PP. I don't mind these I guess, because they won't be profitable for villain. It just adds to my can't win on Party run.

Pain

I'm in a lot of pain right now. I have some initial muscle tears along the back of my upper-thigh. I hurt myself playing football by myself whilst sprinting. No pain killers. Agony.
Can't do sport for up to 6 weeks. Have to give myself an injection tomorrow and I hate those things. The injection is against trombosis so no pain killing.

It's a wrap

It's a wrap people. I just finished I think my worst month ever, I am however still in the green for the month due to 1/2 hu and one 3/6 session. I think I also made about 1kish off of bonusses.
I think I went through periods of suboptimal play and I noticed at times that the down got to me and made me play weaker in some spots.
However it's time like these that challenge your game and challenge you to think harder about it.
When I decided to start playing professionally I knew that a month like this could happen and so I was pre-prepared mentally.
I should add that I also won 3420$ in tournament buy-ins as I posted in an earlier entry which adds to the positives.
I'm gonna go post a couple of hands from my last session now and then probably go and watch the champions league semi-final Chelsea v Liverpool.

Omaha and studies

I've been studying a lot lately, because I have a lot of important exams. I had one yesterday which I think went ok for the time invested, but by far from great.
I started learning too late for it and that hurt my results.
Now I have to study for accounting one of my least favourite subjects for sure, but what can you do. I won't be specializing in it so it's just a basic course that needs to be done.

Poker has been ok over the last couple of sessions. I have been winning again and I think I'm break even at 2/4 and up on the month, because I'm up on 3/6.
Party Poker released a not so satisfying update to their VIP system yesterday.
I think it has some merits, but it is very volume-binding and I don't like this idea.
It's almost like your working a real job with 50% weekly goals that need to be achieved and so on.

I recently purchased a pretty good Omaha book called Pot-limit Omaha Poker, by Jeff Hwang. Here is the link to it:
This guy has also written articles for Motley Fool, the online investing guide and seems to be competent. I definetly find the book informative and it's just at the right level of difficulty for a NL player transitioning to PLO (ie not too simple, but not too advanced either).
Def worth checking out imo.

I've been having some problems with booking my flight to Vegas, I'm trying to reach the agency I booked over and see if everything has been processed and I hope it has been otherwise I may have to deal with extra costs.
I'm actually flying over London for about 600€, because the flights from Austria/Munich were 1.2k+ which I thought was ludacris. Yes, for you americans thats like 1.8k dollars. Anyway pretty sick.

Month is almost over and I think I'll post a summary of how things have been going down tomorrow.

TexasTournamentKing

I guess I just run good in crap shoot donkaments. I just qualified for the ECOOP II (European Championships of Online Poker II) through my titan VIP status and a special tournament. I won about 3400$ in tournament buy ins for the ECOOP II. There are some pretty sweet guarantees and I'm pretty excited to be freerolling on them.
Here is the entire listing for the series: http://titanpoker.com/ecoop_may_2008.html .

As for cash, things still aren't going my way and I'm now break even over 22k hands, but there are others I know that are running worse this month which is comforting (not because they are running worse, but because I know they are good players too so tough times just come and go).

RoR

For all of you that don't know what RoR means, it stands for risk of ruin. I've been thinking about bankroll management and this as of late. Now many people have a lot of different opinons on this and I agree that it is totally dependant on your situation, how conservative you plan to be with your bankroll or not.
As an economics student that plays for a living, I need to take several factors into consideration. For one if you play with a 40-50 buy-in bankroll, how will you deal with larger downswings, financially and mentally? I feel really complacent with my lifestyle right now and even though I'm in a pretty good position, it's not pleasant to have a month where I lose say 25% of my bankroll. I also think the fact that we lost x amount of our bankroll can impact our game, but more importantly our every day life.
Something interesting Raptor said about this in his blog was that being a poker player at higher stakes isn't healthy and that with a lot of the dollar swings comes a lot of stress, even if you are capable of dealing with it well, it has an impact on your life expectation.
Some things I should add are that I don't think you should have 100 buy ins actually online in your poker account, but say 50% of that in a high earning savings account, which is easily accesible, ie you could quickly wire more money from it to an online account and the other 50% online across say NT, MB, FTP, PTY etc.
Also I'm not gonna strictly not take shots at higher games when I have between 50 and 100 buy-ins, but I won't consider myself a regular at those stakes untill I have reached the 100 buy in or close to it mark.
Just my 2 cents on managing your bankroll as a professional player.

cntgetmedown

Down

I just hit another big downswing. 10 buy ins. Today I took some time off went running ate some good food and them came back to play again and that really helped with focus and tilt, but I'm still not winning. I've been going over my big losing pots and I think 90% of them are very standard spots.
I don't think a reg has showed me anything else than AK, AA or KK over my last 7k hands in a preflop allin or postflop rr pot.
All I can do is focus review hands and play it cool till variance swings around again.
I'm up only slightly on the month due to a successful shot @ 3/6 and some 1/2 hu winnings. But I will definetly grind it out on 2/4 for now and hope to hit some more 3/6 at the beginning of next month.

I'm a grinder

I just played 4k hands on Party Poker, because I was clearing a promotion where you get 5 rake free days plus the chance to win even more in a VIP freeroll.
I think I played pretty well with one questionable spot that Vbizzle was kind enough to point out, where I had JJ utg and got reraised by a tight player without history.
I called pf and felted a low flop. He proceeded to show me the rockets.
It's an awkward spot without any specific reads or dynamics.
Besides that I had a ridiculous amount of splits vs regs pf with hands like KK, AA and AK. They kept on showing up with the same hand and at the same time owning my QQ with KK and AA.
I'm really glad I got into some good spots vs some of the fish. Some of the hands are pretty crazy. Here are a few.


Multiway action

Here my bet sizing could have been slighlty too small. The original raiser was very loose and aggressive preflop so this was for sure a value raise with a ton of dead money.

Partyments

The funny thing was that when I saw the Q and the K I actually thought I could still be ahead here. Yes UTG called off 430$ with 98o.

busto

Busto in 26th place, shame. I went on a bad run where I lost AK v a5s, AK v 99 and 22 v KTs. What can you do, I still came pretty far though so I can't complain.

update

36 left, i have 8.7k blinds are 400/800.

ECPT Madrid qualifier

I'm currently playing this qualifier for the ECPT Madrid, which I qualified for through Titan Poker. 211 registered, 117 left. I have 4650 in chips with 100/200 blinds.
Top 10 players get a 3,000$ package to the ECPT which would be really sweat if I could go, cause I love Spain as you may have noticed :P.

Hmha

I just had a session that frustrated me for the most part, but somehow I came out ontop 4 buy ins @ 2/4 on party. The last couple of sessions have been frustrating me and it's odd, I don't quite understand it, especially running ok. I guess spots where I'm not absolutely sure about my play frustrate me regardless of the results.
I actually left a table because I just felt completely off of my game on that specific table.
Here are some weird hands:

dude

This guy had the stats of a reg and so no specific reads him besides that. I feel that I have to call down a reg here, because his line is very fishy for a monster, but may make sense if he thinks I'm always stabbing the ace and he can fold me out easily. Not saying I like his play by any means, but if that were the case there could be some value in playing draws like this. Now on the river all the draws miss and he makes this weird small bet. Against a fish I think I'd be beat fairly often, but he can also have a lot of missed draws. So I think in retrospect that it's a call, but I mucked given that I couldn't make up my mind fast enough and it's just spots like that that frustrate me. I have a strict fold when you don't know what to do policy, but I think I can make a case for a crying call here. He can also have weaker aces here that he wants to take down the turn with so more merit to calling the river, just meh imo.

nits

I usually don't fold AK pre with these stacks, but I do have 3 bet stats and this guy was an extremely nitty 3-better over 1kish hands. I only had 30 invested and would've had to commit 400 more against a guy with very tight reraising stats. Despite his tightness I'd still give myself around 35-40% against his calling range, but off the top of my head I figured this shove was -ev.
Let's do the quick maths with 37% equity:
(38+433)*0.37-403*0.63=174.27-253.89=-79.62
So I guess I'm pleased with my fold here given my analysis of his range.

All in all my fold when I have no clue policy has served me pretty well and sometimes I make weird folds, but I'd rather make a neutral ev fold than a guessing call. I think it also helps psycholigically.

:/

I just finished a 3/6 - 2/4 session up 1.4k and am actually a bit annoyed at how it went. I think the frustration comes from playing a bit tired and making small mistakes that I normally wouldn't. I also got in tricky spots where I felt beat, but ended up sucking out on villains, which is also annoying as it is not winning poker.
To my defence I also ran a straight into a higher straight. I decided to play today despite feeling a bit tired, but this session could've easily gone another way I feel.
I guess from a broader perspective you could say I got lucky. Lucky, because I ran well when not playing optimally, but in the future I won't make the same mistake again.
I guess my only options are to play lower when feeling tired or not play at all. I think it's silly to lose money when you know you shouldn't have been playing in the first place.

Dubai

Hi all. A friend of mine is currently working in Dubai and he invited me over to stay in his flat. I think this is a great opportunity to get to see the city and I accepted. I just booked the flight with another friend of mine who is also coming along for the ride.

poker things

Grinding out hands last month was a good experience for me. It was almost like I had forgotten what it was like to put in hands at a limit. I think me running well over small sample sizes kept me from striving to play more, but it is really vital for me to put in more hands if I want to reach my financial goal for 08 and improve as a player.
I'm thinking about putting some money on Bodog and playing in some of the 3/6 games that run there for no specific reason really. Table selection is low so I have no clue how good or bad those guys are, but it's nice to mix things up. If anybody knows anything about the 3/6 games , I'd be glad to here some input on it.

What a month

This month has been very swingy for me, it started off well, but then I went on a 12 buy-in dowswing. I was slowly recovering, playing some NL 200 on party where I then hit a 9 buy-in dowswing. I put in a ton of hands after my trip to Spain though and things started to go my way again eventually finishing the month @ roughly +8k.
To top it off, today I played the 50k freeroll from the Winter League and won. This netted me a profit of 13k. Combined with coaching and bonusses this ends my month @ well over 20k.
I still have to play a little bit more on iPoker to ensure my VIP status for months to come though. I think I might do that now @ 200 as I don't really feel like playing, but I just need to put in the hands for the points and I'd like to take the day off tomorrow.
I also finished 11th in the rake race which is fair enough. I get 150$ bonus for achieving that.
I think I'm gonna go and 8 table NL 200 and 400 full ring for the remaining amount of points I need for my Diamond status.

Out of energy

Today is the last day of the VIP loyalty race. I'm pretty exhasted and as I suspected the top 5 are virtually untouchable for me. Right now I'm in 11th place and I think I have a decent shot @ making the top 10. The good thing about this race is that I'll probably make the highest VIP status in the process, which will net me more RB in future months.
Today I'm also playing the 50k freeroll from the Winter League, I've told my friends already that if I cash for a decent amount I'm getting a new TV plus a Nintendo Wii.
As far as the month is going in general I really can't complain as I've made a huge recovery from a difficult start to the month. Tonight I'll post my results from the month with my graph where you can see a 12 buy in and a 9 buy in downswing.

Loyalty Race

Been grinding it out the last couple of days for the loyalty race @ titan poker. I'm currnetly 13th in the list. My goal for today is to make it to the top 10. The only really financially interesting spots are the top 4, which I think will be too difficult to reach for me, but I will use this promotion to motivate me to put in a lot of hands. So far I've played 1.6k hands, I'm gonna shoot for 2.5k.
I usually wouldn't have this much time to grind 4 days in a row, but I'm still a bit ill from the last day of my holidays so I'll try and use my time well.

Spain

Ok so here I go with my blog entry on Spain. I'm gonna try to give a brief summary about my time there. Basically I have some friends in Valencia that I met in the summer when I went there for a language course. They still study there and told me about this festival, so I decided to drop down and have a look at things. The festival is called "Fallas" and a Falla is like a statue that I will show you in some of the pics below. I don't exactly understand all the details of the festival yet, but over a period of 5 days the 300+ fallas are setup all over town and you can go and look at them. They have huge fallas and smal ones for children. All but one of them are burnt to ashes at the end of the festival and that one that is not burnt is put in a fallas museum. K, here I go with the pics.





Some friends of mine from England.







Some Friends of mine from Germany and Austria. The one on the far right is a guy I met in the summer, the other girls we met there. They went to the same language school as I did in the summer.









A pic with some more friends from the summer. The guy in the middle is an old flat mate of mine, he studies mathematics in Valencia. He does some crazy things when he has been drinking...but super fun to hang out with.






This was the "Virgen" aka virigin. They put flowers on here by hand by throwing them up. The end result is a dress of flowers. I think it took them like 12 hours to complete it.








These are two pics of the biggest fallas they made. The first one is uncontested, because it was some special one of the city, the latter was place 3, both got burned.



Here is a burning falla. Those things get pretty hot, it's crazy a lot of people were running away from it after being too close.

Here are some fireworks. They had a lot of fireworks. Everyday was a big one like this and over the course of 5 days. We guesstimated one to cost something like 200k.

Yesterday I purchased Poker Tracker Omaha and have decided to dedicate 3k of my bankroll to playing PLO 50. Should be a fun experience and a nice change of pace. Not sure how many hands I will be getting in a month, but NLH will obviously still be my main focus.

comeback

It was a tough start to the month, but I took some time off and since I came back I've been running well again for the majority. I think I played pretty well in general though this month.
I think it's too far fetched to say I didn't tilt a bit, but anybody who knows me, knows that my definition of tilt for myself is very mild.
I've also started coaching a bit and I think I might look for more students. I'll probably not coach more than 2-3 people at a time though. My motivation to coach isn't mainly finanacially, but more on the basis of thinking about the game and by explaining my thoughts to others, further improving it.
My next post will be about my trip to Spain, I just need to get my pics from my digicam to my notebook and then start uploading.

quick update

Hi there! Back from Spain again. I'm gonna be lazy and make a post without a pic here, but I think it's better than not blogging at all :P.
Played some more of the Winter League today and came first in one of the tournaments and 5th in the other. But I hardly won anything, due to the small player pools. Probably paid like 40$ in buy ins and won 85$. Anyway I just wanted to secure my place in the 50k freeroll and I also won a spot in a 10k freeroll on the way.
6 max has been going steady for me so far. I think I should be able to make the green for this month, assuming I can put in enough hands. I've started playing some Party Poker. It's funny playing again on the site where I first started playing poker. I withdrew the rest of the money I had on ABS poker and I usually have two sites with money so I picked Party as my second site to play on.
When I get all my pics loaded up on my notebook, I'll post some more from my trip to Spain.

madness

Yesterday I was travelling from 7am till 3am. It started off with my flight being delayed 1 hour and me consequently missing my train, which happend to be the last one for the day. Then having to wait 3 hours for a bus, then riding the bus for 4:30 hours. Arriving in Valencia and finding out that there is some kinda strike and little taxis and no busses, but I finally made it. Here are some pics from yesterday...Sounds like I'm in a war zone here, but it's just crazy people partying.


Barcelona Airpoirt

I took this pic so you can see that they speak Catalan in Barcelona the bottom lanugage is Castelan (Spanish) the top is Catalan. Catalan is similar to Spanish, but some words are different and definetly confusing for foreigners who only speak Spanish.

Wasted me after travelling all day.

I took this pic whilst waiting for a taxi, this was close the heart of the town in Valencia.

on the road

I'm at the Munich airport right now. This is a pic from the inside of the airport. My next flight is to Barcelona and from there I'm taking some trains to get to Valencia. It's a bit complicated, but I didn't realize that now is our Easter break and thus the direct flight prices to Valencia are bizarre. The average flight was 700 € and to Barcelona I am paying 150 €. However I don't really mind travelling through Barcelona, as I haven't been there before. I think on my way back I might try and leave a day early from Valencia and stay in a hotel in Barcelona for some sight seeing.

relaxing

Been winning again over the last couple of sessions. And yesterday I fired up some low buy in donkaments just to mix things up. Came second in a 10+1 winter poker league event from Titan Poker, but the entrants were low so it only netted me 150$. However it's always nice to final table a tournament. It was a shame I didn't take it down with a 3-1 chip lead hu, but the stack sizes were so small that it was not possible for me to push my edge in the match.
Anyway the good thing about my placing was that it netted me a top 200 place in the league's leaderboard. So I get an entry to a 50k freeroll which is nice.

I will be in Spain for a couple of days at the end of the week and I decided to fly last so I need to go and get that sorted out now. Uni has also started again so I'll only be gone for a couple of days. I'll try and take some pics and upload some to my blog. I will be taking my notebook with me, but probably won't be able to play any poker, due to lack of secure connections (they have some WLAN connections that I can receive in my appartment, but it's not worth the risk in my opinion).

swingy

As planned I put in some more hands today. Right off the bat I lost 3 stacks:

1

This guy was a maniac, definetly a cooler to run into set over set against somebody playing very aggro and too many hands.

2

mixing it up vs a fairly tight early postion raiser. I don't like reraising it here and getting it in preflop that is why I opted to call and raise a good flop. My play worked out besides the part of running into KK.

3

Maybe I am not fully adopted to more aggressive play yet, but I think this is a bit spewy against my first 4bet. I guess some people expect you to 4bet light the first time, so maybe he was just levelling himself here. I don't think his play is necessarily horrible, but I don't think he will turn a profit in this specific spot.

As you can see though my luck soonly turned around. My downswing peaked at -12 buy ins, which I think is a new record, but not a total shocker as I've been on three 9 buy in downswings before. I basically ended up winning some bigger pots and then chipping it up to turn a profit of 650ish.
Here are some of my winning pots.

a

Villain did think befor felting this here. Imo if he is reraising he should be snapping. I don't mind his play here, he can't really fold preflop and cold calling can get him into some icky spots. So I think 4bet felt is reasonable.

b

Villain was a reg here. I think his play is pretty poor. My range is crushing him. He is calling to hope for a flip at best. I'll never have worse aces here except an Adxd.
4 way he needs to look for other alternatives than his line.

c

As you can see people don't give me much respect preflop. I guess one of the advantages of havign a LAG image.

d

Still no credit.

e

Villain in this hand was loose and aggressive (bad). Thus my reasoning for completing 43o against him. His timing was pretty bad so I felt very confident in check calling this river as opposed to betting. He was very aggressive so I expected him to bluff a missed draw practically 100% of the time. Sometimes I get owned here by some backdoor draw. I'm however not concerned about boats, if he has a back door draw it is likely a hand like xc5c or xc8c and that's about it.


Arsenal took Milan for 2-0 yesterday which I am very pleased about. Arsenal play a fun style of football and it's always a pleasure watching them. Wenger does a really great job there and I am sad already for when he decides to leave. I hope Arsenal can go far this year and hopefully win it. I think Wenger and the team def deserve it.

As expected Heroes is pretty good and addictive. I'm up to episode 17 so far of season 1. The story line is pretty decent. My fav character so far is the Japanes Kid, he just amuses me somehow. I'm also fond of Japanes culture though, so I'm probably biased.

I like

Sup folk! I'm still feeling pretty good about my play yesterday, I don't think I played any hands tilty. Tomorrow I feel good about getting back into the games. What I'm gonna try and do is play 5-6 tables instead of 7-8, because a lot of my edge comes from thinking through spots well as I don't play an ABC style.
Right now I'm going to watch Arsenal v Milan in the Champion's League. Arsenal is my team and I will be rooting for them. I think they have a decent shot at beating any team and many would consider them to be under the top 3 clubs in Europe, including myself.

Time off

I decided to take a day off, clear my head, watch the first season of Heroes and then try and get back on track again.

9 buy ins down

Just had a pretty big downswing session. 3788$ over 2k hands. I think I played well though, I'll go over my hands here as a form of review.

big pot

A somewhat standard spot. I reraise light vs an aggresive opener and get cold called from the BB. I decide to cbet to try and get him off over overcards and small PPs. This is the only marginal spot I can find in this hand. I bet 74$ to win 114$ meaning that he should fold the flop: x*114+(1-x)*(-74)=0
114x-74+74x=0
188x=74;x=0.39
39% of the time for the play to be break even, so I don't mind it. I think the turn bet could be a bit bigger so I can get the money in more easily on the river. Evaluating his play, I think his hand can be tricky to play and I don't mind his cold call given our stack sizes and his position. The river is a very close spot, but I don't think I am valuebetting worse here given our dynamics.

reg on reg

Another standard hand I think. Villain plays it straightforward and avoids tough decisions which I think is a fine play here.

good table

Needless to say I think villains play is terrible, but I am not complaining.

flopped the nuts

I don't like the way villain played his hand. I don't think he will show a profit here very often by check calling me out of position with a 7 high flush draw. It's really hard to get paid off with flushes when you are not the one leading the betting action. I am not sure if he would have also checked had he not picked up extra outs, his standard line may be to lead the turn here unimproved. I guess he made the most of it by check raising the turn to get me off of marginal hands that I would be betting to protect but would fold to a raise. Good spot for me to be in anyways.


awkward

This hand was a bit awkward to play. Villain is pretty solid. I don't like 4betting him here given the stack sizes, because I think it forces him to reraise with a tighter range, so I opted to call and checkraise a low flop. Since the board was really dry. I made a small checkraise to about 2.25 and he just called. On the turn I decided to represent air, but in retrospect I think I should just shove it for value from 99,TT,JJ the river is a really awkward spot, because it is hard to valuebet QQ here in my opinion. There is a small chance I am behind here to AA and KK and now also to TT. I think 99 will fold and I am only getting value from JJ. I don't know how I would have reacted to a bet, because I don't think he will be betting JJ here often enough for my call to be good. I really think I cost myself a lot of value by not betting the turn.

amusing

Another fish I found, I find it amusing that he tries to bluff me off of a hand on the river with a 75$ bet into a 314$ pot.

the biggest station I've seen so far

This guy was just completely bonkers. He was raising roughly 65% of his hands and I was cold calling a lot with decent hands in position hoping to get value from this guy. I decided to bluff raise him once on a very dry board, he snapped and insta-overbet-donk-shoved the turn for 600 into a 150 pot.

light call down

This guy was fishy and seemed to have some bluff in him. I know that some fish lead with their top pair hands here, but not all of them. I decided to call down here getting good odds with all the draws missing and he showed me air. I think it's important to note that a lot of these guys have a lot of randomness in them so one shouldn't try to delve too deep into their minds to avoid self-levelling.

If you've come this far you may wonder how I managed to lose 9 buy ins...here we go.

dude

Can't really complain about this spot. We were 120 big blinds deep, but when you move up in stakes it is important to realize that hand values go up in stealing spots so I'm commiting myself pf by reraising. I think villain definetly overplayed TT here and I don't like his reraising size as he is commiting himself with a lot of bluff hands without necessarily knowing it.

move

This villain was reraising light a lot so I decided to put a move on him on a good board. This happend to be one of them, sadly enough villain had the nuts here. Definetly a high variance spot though. I did the maths on this situation today and I'm pretty sure it's plus ev given the right dynamics.

set theorem anyone?

I think the Beluga Theorem commands me to muck my hand on this turn, but I didn't know villain that well at this point and a lot of logical sets were unlikely plus I had top two and the turn card only completed a gutshot straight draw. I decided to commit to my hand on the turn and villain showed me the unlikely 66.

marginal

This is definetly the most questionable play of mine today. Villain was 26/22/4 and calling my bets light. It really doesn't make much sense for him to lead with anything decent here. I decided I had fe and outs so I shoved. He snapped with the second nuts. I guess he levelled me in this hand and I have to give him credit.

big draw

I flop the straight and flush draw and just stick it in. Bit of an overbet in retrospect, but I was playing a couple of tables and just stuck it in. It's good in a way, because it gives higher flushes bad odds to draw. Villains call is horrendous, because my range is crushing him. I have a feeling a reraise may have gotten him to fold, but you never know with these guys.

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 55.051% 54.14% 00.91% 536 9.00 { 6h5h }
Hand 1: 44.949% 44.04% 00.91% 436 9.00 { Kc6d }

read play

My read on this guy was that he leads weak and is capable of firing multiple barrels. My read was correct, but he backdoored me. I interpreted the river as a good card in this context, because it made it less likely he actually had a hand.

oops

I must admit that I thought he lead into me multitabling (I might play less tables next session) but the way the hand actually played out my play wasn't terrible. I see him cbetting here often enough for my semi-bluff to show a profit.

AA

Villain takes a very fishy line and folding here is out of the question, especially with the backdoor nfd. He happens to show up with a hand and I miss, but this will definetly be a high ev spot for me long term.

Ok

I think my play here is ok, I think the flop and turn play is fairly standard. On the river I check to induce bluffs from missed draws and if you check to induce you need to pay off the bet. I'm not sure his stats actually converged with my assumption that he'd bluff a missed draw, but I was putting him on a missed draw and played accordingly. Again my read was correct, but villain hit an out to beat me.

Turned second set

I actually considered folding this river, because this villain was very very nitty. His hand looked alot like QQ and AJ to me, but I wasn't sure if he was capable of raising KQ and QT for value here so I decide not to make a hero fold. I think the way my games play I'm fine with calling here as the edges I am pushing are not as tiny as they may get at higher stakes, I just couldn't find the time to fold here, but definetly not a nice spot to be in.

More sets

Very standard cooler, with my equity against their ranges I need to snap call and hope to hold up.

Sucked in

Is what I got in this hand. I feel his insta min flop bet can be air a draw or a J. I just couldn't find a fold with all the draws and the fact that I had position, but it could have been the better play. As played I think the turn call is fine and the river was more of a potodds/keephimhonest/figureouthowheisplaying call.

I will try not to post my entire session. These were the biggest pots I played for the day I feel confident with my play in the majority of those hands, but I think I'll post one or two in a forum to get some second opinions. I'll take a break now for the rest of the day and try and come back refreshed tomorrow. As it stands I'm down about 2k for the month, nothing too tragic.
I'll be back!

Feb results

Obviously I'm lame, because I didn't play as many hands as I should have been playing :/, but I am working on it. I need to really try and put in the hours to reach my yearly goal for 08. Since this is HM bb = big blinds and not big bets, I ran at about 7.3ptbb/100 which is nice. From what I could tell though I was still running above my expectation slightly, but not by too much, since I did run into some coolers @ 3/6 and had good table selection @ 2/4.

I've also started coaching a bit this month which is an interesting experience. Right now I only have one student and I'll see how it works out. I think it will be a nice learning experience for both of us.


My plans are to go to Spain for 1 week in March, but since I won't have too much uni for starters I think I should be able to put in some hands early in the month. I hope to be hitting the 3/6 tables again soon aswell.

dollar, dollar bill y'all?

I just realized after cashing out 1k the other day that the dollar course has been really bad lately. I'm glad I have some of my bankroll offline in euro accounts and some of it online in euro accounts. I'd estimate that I have about 40% still in dollars though. It sucks to cash out larger amounts when the course is like this, but I don't have much of a choice. I think I'll try and split it up 50/50 with my euro accounts and dollar accounts to decrease losses and hope for the course to get better sometime soon.

1-0 3/6 v Danny

Getting owned a bit, but playing well for the most part. I didn't expect to maintain 10ptbb/100 over the entire month anyways. The good thing about me losing again is that it gives me more motivation to do better and play more. I'm down about 1.8k @ 3/6 for this month which nothing really, but I decided to play some pure 2/4 till I reach 9k again and then take some more stabs.
Cheers to Dodgy for taking the time to look at some of my tougher 3/6 hands.
I've figured out a way how to post hands from iPoker using Holdem Manager, you have to copy all the xml files to a text file and then upload it as a sinlge session on weaktight and you get an output of the hands you want. Here are some of my 2/4 hands:

preying on weakness

This hand is a pretty standard spot, a weak and fishy player leads out on a dry board. This was the third time he did this to me. The first hand I raised him and he folded. The second time I raised him he called, I hit my hand on the turn, small lead/raise/call, and followed through on the river and he folded. I decided that I'd just keep on applying the pressure but when he calls again, even though I pick up outs I decided it was better to try and hit getting ridiculous odds.

questionable

I think this hand was questionable, villain was opening a lot of hands from late position and I figured I could get him to fold out a lot of over cards that were in his range. I felt obliged to follow through on this turn since he can be calling with a lot of one pair hands and small pps and maybe even some a high hands, because of the wheel draw. Given the way he snap shoved this turn I feel he flopped big.

muppet # 1

Not much to say about this guy, I was commited to the pot so I tried to get the money in. Not a super +ev spot I thought at first, untill I saw his hand.

meh

This guy was a big fish and a big station. I think I need to check and fold this river. There is a small chance villain might play a hand like T8 this way, but I think his range his heavily weighted towards flushes here. Especially against weaker players I can find a lot better spots.
Just kinda frustrating when you have AA against a big fish and he hits, but it won't be profitable for him and that's why I think it's important to muck here.

Hmm

This was an awkward spot against this reg. His lead doesn't really make any sense as a bluff, because this flop hits my perceived UTG range pretty hard. It's pretty unlikely he has a set here, JJ at best and I think a check raise extracts more value here with JJ. I am in pretty bad shape if he has Ahxh here, drawing close to dead, but I didn't think it made a lot of sense given his pf play. AQ is a possible hand he can have here too I guess aswell as aggro played TT. I think if I raise here I should raise slightly bigger to lay myslef better odds to call a shove. All in all not a great spot, but I ran well in the hand and I think villains preflop call is pretty bad. I don't really like calling on this flop , because I don't think villains range is strong enough to give me value on later streets and I raise a lot of my strong hands here so it's hard to rep a strong range by calling and floating. A fold seems weak here, I'm open for input on this hand.

standard

Somewhat I guess, if he is reraising JJ here he shouldn't be folding imo. It's also an awkward spot for him to be in with JJ, but I don't think he can fold this against my image preflop and I don't like calling pf. I know some regs smooth call here, but I don't see too much value in doing so.

awkward

I decide to smooth call my AJ vs a wide openers btn range. I don't like reraising here with the stacks and I think you should either fold or call pf. Postflop I am in a weird spot as I do not want to build the pot so this is a spot where I think pot control>hand protection. Unluckily I get an overcaller who at this point I put on quads or a flush draw. On the turn I think I am ahead against the villain betting small almost always so I call again, but we get reraised and I find an easy fold.

very thin

I contemplated for a long time whether I should bet here or not. I knew if I bet it I'd have to fold to a raise, I almost think I need to check it down here, because it is unlikely he can call me with much here the way the hand played out. I kinda felt obliged to put in a bet here, I am not sure about my play.

just bet

I think it is the best play here unless against a weak player that will bet his entire range here when checked to. My check doesn't make too much sense here as I think I am betting almost all the time on the flop and it will get checked back a lot from a villain that has air as he will think I am up to something. My reasoning for checking at the time was that I am trying to put in the last bet with drawing hands to maximize the profitability of playing them. Anyway he checked back I pick up a lot of outs on the turn so I go ahead and rep a slowplayed strong hand. Villain calls and on the river I think I need to follow through as his line doesn't include a lot of strong made hands and I think I can fold out a lot of middle pair type hands or missed draws maybe. I also picked up some timing tells, my read was right villain was weak on the flop and turn, but he hit.

messed up hand

This hand played out weird. UTG was very tight and SB didn't reraise much for the most part. The timing, the small reraise seemed so suspicious to me that I decided to call which I think is reasonable given my read. The flop gets a bit icky. Typically this is a reraise to allin without much thought, but I was still very worried about this hand. I felt I could make a correct tight fold on a later street so I called. Villain didn't really think long before shoving the turn and I really thought I was behind here, I don't see him shoving air or JJ, 99.

dude

Well this was an interesting spot. Out of position this is a fold, but I had position and I was getting 3-1 to call on a rainbow board. The downside was that I had a one card striaght draw and the implied odds are low as we all know. I decide to call hoping to get value from set hands and maybe a two pair hand. After he check calls the turn I am putting him on a set that he is not capable of folding. He thought a while before calling the river and I was very very surprised about seeing AA. This player even seemed fairly reasonable. I don't know what he put me on that he thought he was ahead of. His turn and river play is very poor and I also think if he is limping AA to balance his open limping range he should be reraising with air and monsters instead of limp calling.

i like

These are the kinda guys you want to have sitting at your table. Slowplays JJ pf (can be reasonable at times obv), check and minraises drawy boards, gives you freecards, leads weak on the river and doesn't fold to a raise.

some 3/6 action

I decided to do a MS Paint for this blog. This is me vs 3/6. I'm ready to take on the limit. Still haven't played much yet though, because I just came back from partying in Munich. Although I probably shouldn't have been playing I fired up 3 tables of 3/6 and made a buy in. I wanted to post some hands from Holdem Manager, but I couldn't work it out how to get the naked HHs. I'll ask a friend and then update with some hands.
My biggest pot was vs a very tight ABC reg that seems to be beating the limits for a decent amount, I basically hit trips with my AK vs his JJ and nearly got his entire stack. I'll update with some analysis later once I figure out what the problem is and also with some pics from my weekend when I get them uploaded on my Notebook.

Meh

Didn't get round to playing 3/6, because a friend of mine had a birthday party. The games weren't good anyway when I checked, but they are pretty juicy right now. I will however have to pass, because I cam back from drinking. Tomorrow I'll be going shopping and partying in Munich. The pictures here are from the club we are going to, looks pretty nice.

Some poker stuff

It's been a while since I've posted any results, but I think you'll find this interesting. The green line is my actual winnings for this month so far. The blue line represents money I've won @ showdown, the red represents what I won with hands I didn't showdown. I used Holdem Manager to make this graph, which I purchased the other day. It's a pretty neat tool and definetly faster than the current PT version, but I think they could improve the hand replayer. I'd really like to see some database stats in there and an odds calculator.
I think you can tell that I am running hot for this month so far. I'm not losing much @ showdown. I can't complain really. I have enough bankroll to move up to 3/6, so I'll be contemplating doing that soon. It's just a bit odd, because I haven't really played many hands @ 2/4. I don't really think the difference should be too big though. I'll just datamine it and jump into some juicy games for starters.
I'll go to town now and datamine some 3/6 then try and get some hands in, I'll update how it went.