If you’ve got 11$ to spare and want some good No Limit Hold’em action, play in the WWdN #13 tonight. You can find it via Tourney -> Private (#18610753). The password is: monkey

Played only two SnG today. The first one was the usual PL Omaha H/L and I bubbled, out of my own stupidity. We’re down to four players (3 ITM), I’m the SB, shortest stack is BB and almost All-In (40T$ left). The two huge stacks call, I decide to push the BB All-In, bad idea as it put me all in and he wisely folded hoping for me to bust out – which I did. Argh! The correct move would have been to fold and watch him either be pushed all-in by the others post-flop, or see him be all-in in the next hand (after all I would have been the button and he the SB), but no…I decide to do the donkey and bubble… 🙁

After this stupidity move I was steaming inside, nontheless I decided to give it another shot, this time at NL HE though. This really payed off as I won the thing. I didn’t get all that many cards, but if I did I could do (almost) no wrong. The BB special was especially nice…all limpers at the table so I only saw the flop in the BB in the first 3 orbits, and I won all those hands 🙂

Then I went ahead and busted a player out and when we were down to 5 players I busted two players out at the same time, so welcome ITM. The rest is a blur, but I did good and won. Nice. Donkeys 1 – Ingoal 1 🙂

The last poll closed on sunday and the turnout wasn’t all that great. I guess it’s partly due to the missing traffic and partly due to technical problems (when you’re trying to use an iframe within content (i.e. a paragraph) it totally breaks the code and the design/validation), so I came up with a simple, but effective solution: Put the poll-code into a simple external html file and link to it

The results of the prior polls can be found here. So most voters have either lost or won a minimal amount of money, not what I expected, but with 16 votes this initial poll isn’t all that representative…
The new poll asking the question: Which online poker room do you frequent the most and why (comment)? (Feel free to elaborate on the “other” option or your answer in the comments) can be found at: Polls along with all prior polls – voting will end next monday, february 6th.

On another note: if you’ve got a pop-up blocker installed it could be that it’s blocking this link, don’t worry though, you can allow popups from my site as the only thing that popups will be used for are the polls (no ads, …)! Once I’ve pimped the polls page a little bit I will try to reintegrate it with the site so that this shouldn’t be a problem anymore…

I continued my “SnG challenge” at PokerStars tonight. I came back from playing Skat all night (a card game, if you’re not familiar with it read more about at wikipedia) and winning an unusual amount of money (which I didn’t collect as I “donated” it to the drinks pool as I hadn’t payed anything for my drinks in a while) so I felt good – and indeed the cards started to fall my way early on, then I bubbled 🙁

I thought I couldn’t end a successful night on such a low note, so I played another one and came out on top. Sweet!

So the current standings are (PL Omaha H/L / NL HE; both 3$+0.40$ SnG):

1. SnGs played: 6 / 2
2. ITM: 2 (1st + 2nd) / 0
3. Amount won/lost: 0.2$ / -6.80$

Summary: so far I’ve been losing some, but I guess I will push it a little and play some of them continously now and see how it goes…

On another note: I didn’t forget about the weekly poll, but it’s already early and WordPress inline editing + dpolls-iframe-solution seems to not mix up too well (that’s why some of you might have not been able to vote or see the results, apart from the fact that this thing is breaking my valid and accessible xhtml format…) – so I will try to find a solution tomorrow (probably and “external” (outside of WordPress) html file containing the poll)!

Logged on to PokerStars and saw that the 5$ rebuy satellite to tomorrow’s 700k guaranteed tournament was about to start, so I hopped in and the wild ride began.

FYI: I’ve never played such a thing before and I really dislike rebuy tourneys as it seems that the more money some ppl throw at it the higher you can get (or fall). So my strategy was clear: no rebuy and no add-on, play tight/solid poker and try to take advantage of the rebuy-donkeys early on an you should be fine.

Sure enough my strategy payed off early on as I was getting some nice hands and the rebuy-donkeys were more than willing to “take a shot” with all sorts of crap shoot hands (like K-2o, etc). The fourth hand I look down at bullets, woot! Two callers, one showing Q-Q and one showing (Q-3), hehe…sure enough I take it down and have a nice stack of 3610T$ (starting chip count 1500T$). The next few hands are blank until I look down at K-K in the 16th hand…I push, but noone wants to deal with me, so I take it down and I am sitting on 4420T$, nice! The 29th hand brings me back to A-A…one caller with 6-6…my bullets shoot him and I’m up to 5980T$ and slowly I’m feeling the rush.

Sidenote: there were two-three rebuy-donkey-monkeys at the table who were on their fourth-fifth buy-in already.

The 31st hand brings me KQd and I check in the BB to find a nice flopped straight, J-10-9 rainbow board, one poor soul pushes and shows trip Jacks…to bad buddy – up to 9110T$. In the 50th hand I hold K-K, also again, and take down a nice pot vs Q-To, up to 14410T$. Shortly after that the first break begins:

• players remaining 447/647
• hi: 33595T$
• avg: 7880T$
• me: 14310T$ (45th of 467)
• Hands dealt: 56
• Showdown: 4 of 4, 1 without showdown

People are adding on like crazy, but I stick to the original plan and don’t buy another 2000T$ for 5$. Nothing much to report from the next hour of play as I’m literally card dead, nontheless I’m able to steal some blinds so not all that much change at the second break:

• players remaining 219/667
• hi: 57153
• avg: 16803
• me: 14560 (107th of 219)
• Hands dealt: 122
• Showdown: 4 of 4, 4 without showdown

As blinds and antes are rising now it’s time to make some moves. In the 137st hand I look down at K-Jo, not great but I limp in to find a J high flop, sure enough I push a little, although the two hearts scare me a little. Opponent calls, turn brings another heart. Hmm…he checks, I check (maybe I should have pushed a little here to see where I was at?!)…he calls. He leads out after the river…I ponder and call as I didn’t think he would slow-roll me, sure enough he did though (with a lovely 9h-2h hand, argh!) – down to 4610T$ and now I’m in a desperate situation.

Sidenote: the guy slow-rolling me busts out in the next hand K-K vs A-A…way to go…argh!

The following hands:

• 140th hand: 7-7, I push, one caller A-J, board 4-7-J-4-6, yeah baby up to 10220T$
• 151st hand: Q-Q, I push, one caller 2-2, board J-J-8-7-6, up to 30098T$
• 161st hand: Ah-9h, I push to pressure a short stack in the BB, sure enough he calls with K-Jo and wins the hand
• 162nd hand: Ac-8c, I push, once again another short-stack thinks K-Jo is good enough and wins the hand…argh! Down to 9803T$
• 167st hand: K-10 is good enough to steal the blinds and antes, up to 11228T$
• 170st hand is the final chapter as my A-10o get no help against J-J, board: K-8-8-9-6

…and I’m out in 118th place – first 21 would have been a ticket to the tourney tomorrow (worth 530$), 22nd would have been 515$. Ah well, I had fun for almost three hours, I guess I just used up my good cards and luck earlier on…

I just upgraded the Poker-tastic blog (WordPress 2.0) with a nifty little plugin. It’s called lightbox and can be found here.

Effect: If a pic is too big to fit into the blog design, just resize it or create a thumbnail and once the user clicks on the pic it will display the full sized version – nothing fancy there you think? Think again, it’ll not open the pic in a new tab or window, but will display it over the current tab/window (magic JS here) – once you’ve seen it just click on the (x) on the top right and you’re right back at the original spot, cool!

Don’t know what I’m talking about? – Then click on the following test-pic showing the Sidegame of the WWdN #12:

Slow day for me today. Just played a few orbits of PL Omaha H/L at UB again…it’s hard to step down and play at the pennies again, but at least I had a winning session again, so that’s a good note. Got bored pretty quickly though, so I moved to PokerStars and continued my quest to conquer the SnG throne…

Played one PL Omaha H/L and two NL HE – with similar results: couldn’t get in the money to save my life 🙁

Couldn’t get much going in the Omaha 8b one and I’ll save you the “bad beat” stories of the two HE ones…just a quick note: whether it’s A-Ks or A-Ko it’s not enough to win against a dominated hand (K-J and A-10 respectively)…

I’m off now…got a dentist appointment tomorrow, yuck…this should be fun…NOT 😉

Once again it was time for the weekly WWdN and this time I even remembered that it was indeed already Tuesday again and that the WWdN would take place at the lovely starting time of 20:30 ET (= 02:30am in lovely GMT+1 land). I hesitated just a little before signing up as there were already MANY people signed up and I feared that this one was going to go on for a long time, but this “fear” wasn’t necessary as we shall see later on.

I sat down in the #3 seat on table 4 and only recognized Wes who was sitting in seat #6, said hi and gl to all and cards were in the air. Nothing exciting through the first orbit, but then it happened, the deck was on fire, literally! 😉 I got nice cards and the board matched them (6-6, flop 6-10-x; 10-10, flop 10-x-x; 9-9, flop 9-K-3, turn 3; etc) and the others kept betting into me until the realized that I really had an insane run of cards and it would be best to check in front of me. That’s when I got the first higher pocket pairs (J-J, Q-Q) which brought me the whooping SB+BB, yeehaw. One of the more interesting hands followed, I look down at A-A (on another note: the first in ages) and make it the standard 4xBB to go, only Wes calls. Flop comes down Kc 8d Kh, rainbow nontheless a little scary, I’m going to check it and wait what Wes does, sure enough he fires a shell (150), but does he really have a king? I don’t think so, but I only call, maybe the turn will bring me my boat…nope, no boat, the turn is: Jd. I check again, he checks right behind me and now I think I know I’m good, the river is a lovely 3h so no flush or straight draws after all. I fire out 180 and Wes calls…my A-A hold up. I pick up some more blinds along the way and find myself in a comfortable position of interim second with 4500k.

Most memorable hand of the first hour is the start of my downfall: I get dealt K-K, short stack in front of me pushes All-In (around 470 with BB150), I call – now this is questionable, the right move would have been to go over the top to isolate him, but as we will see as the hand unfolds I would have lost one way or another – one other caller who was commited from early position. The flop is scary for me as it is Qh-Kh-9h, I go into the tank and think and check. He bets out his remaining stack (1k). Now do I really put him on 2 hearts? Not really and I can’t and won’t laydown trip Kings. I call and sure enough he’s on a draw with A-xo the ace is the Ah though…the short-stack shows 5h-5c so he’s beat both ways…the turn is: sure enough a heart, argh! I think I made the correct play, although if I had raise All-In preflop, maybe, and this is a big maybe as this guy was catching and catching and hence calling and raising all the time anyway, I would have only lost the 600 something vs. the 5er heart flush…who knows. So I’m down to 2840 right before the first break.

First break:

1. 45 players remaining (hi: 6615, avg: 2600)
2. hands played: 82
3. showdown: 3 of 4 (see the KK above)
4. pots won without showdown: 7

After the break the tables turned a little on me and I was literally card dead. I guess my early stage run of cards hit the other side of the table as “RandomSam” stomped all over the table winning draw after draw (he really stuck to CJ mojo: 1. get in behind 2. suckout), until he ran into Drizz and another player in consecutive hands to bust out – ouch. I was then moved to a new table and was in a desperate position, either blind out slowly or try to get something going. I tried the latter and was able to steal some bets, before busting out in 28th:

I hold K-Js, I call flop comes J-Q-x, I bet out he raises…hmm…tank time…I’m committed with 1/3 of my stack, should I risk it here? The voice in my head says: don’t be a pussy, he’s trying to push you out! So I listen and push All-In, just to be insta-called by A-A…ouch…damn “Tiltboys style voice” in my head…

Enter the sidegame: Joanne setup a O8 PL table and I played a few orbits:

..but after donking of some chips and winning them back, I realized that it was already to early and my head wasn’t ready to play O8 at almost 5am. So I logged off and went to bed…aaaah sleep.

The final result is here:

As you see Gracie, Garth and Drizz all made it to the final table, woot! I’m looking forward to read a FT recap 🙂

I thought it would be a good idea to add something new to the blog and so I came up with something that I’ve seen on other blogs before – a poll. This (probably) will be a weekly thing, with a new question, I’m really interested in, being put up every monday. You can vote for a week, then I’ll take a look at the final results. Hopefully enough people will have fun and submit their answer so that this will become a worthwhile thing.

Sidenotes:

1. the weekly blog is using dPolls.com – you gotta love these Ajax powered polls.
2. feel free to elaborate on your answer in the comments…

First weekly poll (2006):
The poll has been moved to a central poll location

The 3$ + 0.40$ PL Omaha H/L SnGs really seem to be beatable, just played one and went out in 2nd without any hassle. I guess I shall hit them hard the next few days and see how things work out – this could really be something goooood 🙂

Update: Played a second one and finished 6th – turbo doesn’t do you good when you’re card dead. Nontheless it seems that this is the way to go as most donkeys are pushing the envelope even with something like the third best low etc…unbelievable…I guess I’ll try to multi-table these bad boys for the next few days and have a lookie once I played a dozen or so how things are looking….