After dropping 2 Buy-Ins (or 40xBB) in 10 hands ( 🙁 ) I decided to change my plan. Instead of stepping down in limit, I’m going to try it with Limit Omaha H/L at the 0.25$/0.50$ tables. Maybe the craziness of PL Omaha H/L just wasn’t meant to be (yet). Let’s see how this works out…
Update:
Okay I give up…another 30 hands later and I’m out of another 20xBB which brings me back to my original plan as I dropped 100x BB in 3 days (2 playing days with a pause of 1 day, yesterday)… 🙁
I guess I won’t be playing the HORSE tourney tonight as the starting time of 22 ET is 4am my timezone and after a short night this would be just a little bit over the top, even for me. So good luck to all players and I’m looking forward to read some recaps tomorrow! 
Update to 1.: Woot, he did it! He won the whole thing! Wow! Congrats Ryan!
…can be fun, but it can hurt, too.
So, I decided that it would be a good idea to change levels in Omaha H/L, after all I grinded out +100% (not quite 100% if you count the earned bonus, substracting the bonus it would be more like 90%) in the 0.01$/0.02$ PL Omaha H/L ring games.
The jump to the next level is a little bit big though as the next available PL Omaha H/L level at UB is 0.10$/0.25$ and as you can imagine that is quite a difference to pennies. Combine that with a (bad) run of cards and you’re out of the “hard earned” money quite quickly. I played three sessions today and finished two of them down, one even. So I’m out of 2 Buy-Ins (20BB each) and second guessing myself. On the other hand a step up in levels is inevitable as the daily grind in the penny sections is not only sucking the life out of you, but it also doesn’t get you anywhere (at least not fast or quickly).
So I guess I’m giving it another shot tomorrow and we’ll see how that plays out, we all know that swings in poker are normal, but the effects are bigger the higher you go in terms of blinds.
My plan is going to be:
I’ll keep you posted…
…and finally, finally I made the final table at a blogger tourney! Yes!!!
PokerStars Tournament #18186252, No Limit Hold’em
Buy-In: $10.00/$1.00
67 players
Total Prize Pool: $670.00
Tournament started – 2006/01/17 – 20:30:00 (ET)
Dear Ingoal,
You finished the tournament in 5th place.
A $53.60 award has been credited to your Real Money account.
Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.
After a little back and forth and a nice comeback by barclay1701, Bad Blood finished him off and took down 1st place. Congrats! Here’s the final result:
On another note:
Update: Wil has a nice write-up about the tourney over at cardsquad*, I didn’t know that he was live-blogging the event, cool! Check 8:18pm (river suckout time) and “8:34 PM – Ingoal pushed with AT, OzCDN called with QJc, and paired his queen on the flop. Ingoal paired his T on the river, but it wasn’t enough, and he goes out in 5th. Great game, Ingoal!”* – Thanks Wil, I enjoyed to play once again. See you at the tables next week!
…and a not totally satisfying 9th place finish.
60 players had entered the 5$ Omaha H/L Fixed Limit tourney and I was really looking forward to yet another good session of Omahatastic Poker. Early on I was establishing myself as the table-captain and long time chipleader. Then I almost donked of all my chips in 2 hands and was desperate with a not all that good hand of J-9-4-5, the J-9 connected for a nifty boat on the river though and so I was back in good shape. Then, as we approached the bubble, I asked myself: continue to play like you did the whole tourney or stall? I did the latter and barely made the final table being desperately short-stacked, but hey, at least I was in the money…and in the BB immediatly (800 – my stack 2400), so I pushed with my A-K-4-8 but couldn’t connect for the high or low (as I lost to a A-3-x-x hand). So I’m out in 9th place, not too good, not too bad and I’m back in business (given my micro bankroll at AP).
So we meet up for a private home game today and decided to play No Limit Hold’em. We were 9 players and I was literally card dead most of the whole thing, so all I could do was make a move every now and then and wait for some better cards – and that never happened (I held one ace throughout the whole game (A-7) which didn’t connect on the board 🙁 ), so I went out early, which really was the first time in ages that I dropped out early. The play dragged on and I waited for the second game to start, but the current round just wouldn’t finish…until finally the bubble broke (top 3 payed) and the play was a little bit more aggressive, going back and forth.
After the round was finished I was eager to play the second round in which all but one player entered, so we were down to 8. I was able to pick up some blinds every now and then and got some good hands, too (10-10, J-J, K-Q (which held up!), …). When it was time for the bubble (top two payed this time) the player UTG just called the BB, the SB went all-in…I’m in the BB and look down at 6-6…and I ponder if it’s worth to gamble at this momemt (I was the slight chipleader), I opted to fold…the player UTG call and we had our showdown…Qc-7c (SB) vs. K-x (UTG) the rag card connected and we were down to heads up.
A little back and forth…I was up maybe 60/40 in chips and pickup Qd-3d, I raise 4xBB…the BB calls. The board is a beautiful Q-3-5 rainbow and I check, trying to sandbag my opponent, after all I’ve got top pair + bottom pair. My opponent checks right behind me, so I thought that he was probably holding a King and something, I move all in after the turn comes down 7, he ponders and calls – yes! He shows the anticipated K-5. So it’s my two pairs (Queens and threes) vs. his pair of fives…the only card that can help him is another King on the river…but that never happens as the river comes down Jh. Yes! Finally a real life victory again after a long drought (I was one of the last 3 players and mostly even heads up for the last 7 out of 10 times, including today, but my last victory was some months ago)…
Sidenote#1: Although I still consider myself one of the best players, if not even the best, at our homegames, but ever since we started to play No Limit the balance of power has slightly shifted – after all an All-In bet is really a great equalizer, especially if you can’t put your opponent on something at any time…
Sidenote#2: I’m now up 7+ Buy-Ins at our homegames which is nice! 🙂
As it was my dad’s birthday today I didn’t play much (just two orbits just yet) and I just couldn’t play any longer after dropping the hammer to crush aces (unfortunately I was too slow to take a screenshot as it was a turbo table, so hand history will have to do)
PokerStars Game #3627828185: Hold’em Limit ($0.02/$0.04) – 2006/01/13 – 21:32:46 (ET)
Table ‘Janus III’ Seat #10 is the button
Seat 3: Ingoal ($0.44 in chips)
Seat 5: sarasfw ($1.16 in chips)
Seat 7: Am_I_Spam ($0.20 in chips)
Seat 8: pawliwalnuts ($0.27 in chips)
Seat 9: jean1977 ($0.36 in chips)
Seat 10: i love eggs ($0.31 in chips)
Ingoal: posts small blind $0.01
sarasfw: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [7c 2h]
Am_I_Spam: folds
pawliwalnuts: folds
jean1977: folds
i love eggs: folds
Ingoal: calls $0.01
sarasfw: raises $0.02 to $0.04
Ingoal: calls $0.02
*** FLOP *** [Js 7h Jd]
Ingoal: bets $0.02
sarasfw: raises $0.02 to $0.04
Ingoal: raises $0.02 to $0.06
sarasfw: raises $0.02 to $0.08
Betting is capped
Ingoal: calls $0.02
*** TURN *** [Js 7h Jd] [Qc]
Ingoal: bets $0.04
sarasfw: raises $0.04 to $0.08
Ingoal: calls $0.04
*** RIVER *** [Js 7h Jd Qc] [7s]
Ingoal: bets $0.04
sarasfw: raises $0.04 to $0.08
Ingoal: raises $0.04 to $0.12
sarasfw: raises $0.04 to $0.16
Betting is capped
Ingoal: calls $0.04
*** SHOW DOWN ***
sarasfw: shows [Ac Ad] (two pair, Aces and Jacks)
Ingoal: shows [7c 2h] (a full house, Sevens full of Jacks)
Ingoal collected $0.72 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $0.72 | Rake $0
Board [Js 7h Jd Qc 7s]
Seat 3: Ingoal (small blind) showed [7c 2h] and won ($0.72) with a full house, Sevens full of Jacks
Seat 5: sarasfw (big blind) showed [Ac Ad] and lost with two pair, Aces and Jacks
Seat 7: Am_I_Spam folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 8: pawliwalnuts folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 9: jean1977 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 10: i love eggs (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Hammertime: 
So, it was gamb00ling time this morning as the DADI Special Omalympics tournament was held over at PokerStars. The “fear” of Jordan and others that there would be significantly less players than in the inaugural DADI event (NL HE) was totally unnecessary as 47 players tried their luck with Omaha 8b PL and I think, at least, most of ’em – including me – had fun.
First newsworthy thing: It took over 20 minutes before the first player busted out. I think that’s a new record for any blogger tournament (?!), although it’s pretty normal in split games (with a High and (possible) low pot).
As for myself, it took a little over 2h for me to bust out, just prior to the second break for my highest finish in blogger tournaments so far: 14th place, just 5 shy of the final table and the money (previous high finish was 17th in a WWdN thursday tourney). I was kind of short-stacked (a little over 2k chips) and looked down at A-A-K-7…here’s what went down:
Table ‘17497958 7’ Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: yosoyveneno (8282 in chips)
Seat 2: ZeemJr (3582 in chips)
Seat 3: mowenumdown (5881 in chips)
Seat 5: Jestocost (8669 in chips)
Seat 6: Ingoal (2412 in chips)
Seat 7: dbirider16 (12187 in chips)
Seat 9: SirFWALGMan (3861 in chips)
Jestocost: posts small blind 200
Ingoal: posts big blind 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [7c Kc As Ac]
dbirider16: folds
SirFWALGMan: folds
yosoyveneno: raises 400 to 800
ZeemJr: folds
mowenumdown: folds
Jestocost: folds
Ingoal said, “hmm…i got the antidote!”
Ingoal: raises 1612 to 2412 and is all-in
yosoyveneno: calls 1612
Jestocost said, “That no chat during an all-in feature is about the most annoying thing”
*** FLOP *** [5d Qs 8d]
*** TURN *** [5d Qs 8d] [4c]
*** RIVER *** [5d Qs 8d 4c] [9d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Ingoal: shows [7c Kc As Ac] (HI: a pair of Aces; LO: 8,7,5,4,A)
yosoyveneno: shows [7h Ah Kh 6s] (HI: a straight, Five to Nine; LO: 8,6,5,4,A)
yosoyveneno collected 2512 from pot
So I was basically dead at the turn and double dead on the river as veneno’s OESD hit on both ends. Not really a bad beat, after all Omaha 8b is all about draw/re-draw/re-redraw, so I wasn’t too frustrated. If my hand would have held up (for the high) it would have been a split pot nontheless, so I would have been stuck in the same situation again.
My summary:
Ups:
Downs:
Stats:
You finished in 14th place (eliminated at hand #3608628522).
166 hands played and saw flop:
– 7 times out of 21 while in small blind (33%)
– 11 times out of 22 while in big blind (50%)
– 15 times out of 123 in other positions (12%)
– a total of 33 times out of 166 (19%)
Pots won at showdown – 6 out of 9 (66%)
Pots won without showdown – 16
See you all at the tables next time…maybe even very soon (April’s HORSE tourney at FTP – I would need to learn RAZZ first though…hmm…we’ll see…)
Oooh what a day. Played an even wider mix of games today in order to, hopefully, get my bankroll (which was micro to begin with) at AbsolutePoker back from life-support. I played in various HE games ranging from fixed limit 0.10$/0.20$ to 0.10$ NL along with the usual session of Omaha H/L. I couldn’t get much going and so I decided that it would be a good idea to play some S&Gs.
Good idea. I won the Omaha H/L one, bubbled in a HE NL and finished outside the money in the other one. Nontheless some solid playing time without risking too much. I guess going with multiple S&Gs Omaha 8b is the way to go if I want to rescue the remaining few dollars there.
So that’s what I’m going to do! Either I run up my bankroll at AP over the cashout threshold or I go bust…whatever…it doesn’t get me anywhere anyways…the ring games are just too tough (either you play against the calling stations hustling for a (re-re-)draw all the time – after all you can’t push a calling station out of a pot especially in limit or low-limit PL and even if the cards fall your way some of the time, it’s not enough to seriously build up your stack – or you face a NL crowd with a fat roll…you just can’t survive with a minimal bankroll…at least I can’t atm)…
But enough reporting/ranting…I’m going to watch the final table of the “Battleship at Atlantis” Heads Up tourney now…should be interesting!
Side Note: the main event of the PCA is a done deal, check out Brad’s (Otis’) coverage here if you haven’t already. Spoiler: 22 year old student and PokerStars regular Steve Paul-Ambrose has won the thing…1.363.100$ + the WPT championship seat (25k$) not a bad pay-day for a student(!), ka-ching!
I played a wild mix of games today ranging from the usual penny PL Omaha H/L to 0.25$/0.50$ Limit Hold’em. Was able to stay ahead in Omaha over at UltimateBet, but busted myself out of 10$ over at Absolute Poker, although I held quads twice…just a bad swing today I guess as I wasn’t able to catch anything while holding good hands (Hold’em: K-K…nothing apart some aces on the board; A-K – blank board; Omaha: A-2-3-x, board is something like 2-3-K-10-Q, etc etc)…