After footie training I fired up PokerStars to pick up where I left yesterday evening – at the micro SnGs. Two junk kickings later and I’m frustrated (8th place finish in NL HE, which was okay, my play sucked as did my cards – I pot it up with 99, my first decent hand of the night, one guy reraises me to All-In, I ponder and suspect that he got me beat, but the “maybe not, just suckout”-monkey on my shoulder tells me to call…so I do and he shows his black Aces…IGHN; bring in the PLO8 and everything is looking better, until we’re down to 6 handed, this is where the story of the super-charge-luckbox-deluxe begins. This one player keeps raising every pot, which is legitimate if there are three shortstacks and you’re holding a decent amount of chips, but you’re not entitled to win every friggin pot, especially not in PLO8 and even more so if you’re pushing all the time with crap like 67KQ. As soon as we’re down to 5 handed I think “okay, time to get something going”, so I’m waiting for a decent hand and then it’s time to counterpunch…he pushes again, one of the remaining shortstacks calls and is All-In and I hold AK23, so I push, he calls…sure enough there’s no low in sight and he wins with his crap hand (I can’t even remember the exact hand, but it was something like KJ57 and he hit his 7 to J straight…way to go fool)…so we’re both out and the others are in the money. I wish the other two good luck and watch as they bust within 4 hands to the super-uber-charge-magic-deluxe-luckbox…unbelievable! I’ve never seen such a rush before…)

That’s enough PS for the night and I head over to FullTilt and play over an hour at the .10/.25 NL tables…win some, lose some…big hands don’t pay off…weak hands don’t cost me much and I call it a night slightly up…so, all in all a truly uneventful evening at the tables…

I played some more, this time a little SnG of PLO8…first of all I witnessed a Royal Flush…

PokerStars Game #4231941580: Tournament #21037996, Omaha Hi/Lo Pot Limit – Level III (25/50) – 2006/03/09 – 19:39:28 (ET)
*** SHOW DOWN ***
candid123: shows [Ks Js 4d Qc] (HI: a Royal Flush)
gh234: mucks hand
candid123 collected 625 from pot
No low hand qualified
Ingoal said, “wow”
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 625 | Rake 0
Board [5c Ts As 7h Qs]
Seat 1: D0MINATED (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: candid123 (big blind) showed [Ks Js 4d Qc] and won (625) with HI: a Royal Flush
Seat 4: plumberran folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 6: dawn1 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 7: kendozzz folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 8: Ingoal folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 9: gh234 mucked [Qd 2c 7d 5s]
Seat 10: the_snake11 (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)

Even better that I took down first…woohoo me… 😉

What can I say. I’m pretty much speechless. Dropped around 10$ playing .10/.25 in the first session, not much I could do, believed my hands were good and they mostly weren’t. Too bad…sometimes TPTK just isn’t enough. All good there.

Then I start to play the second session tonight and there’s nothing going my way: either I miss the flop (most of the times), or I hit the nuts (flopped boat with a nice flush draw on board) and don’t get payed off despite slowplaying. Just as I’m about to wrap things up I look down at AsAc – alrighty, one more orbit won’t hurt (how wrong you can be about a sentence like this follows)…the orbit is one hand in length…buyin goes in the middle and I get kicked in the nuts…once again. It’s tough to see Aces cracked yet again 🙁

I guess in the long run variance, the old beetch, will smoothen such nut-kickings, but in a situation like this it’s hard to believe (and looking back at my not so complete statistics – I guess I should get something like PokerTracker – I’m now officially something like 3/10 to win AA)…

So that’s the session on FTP for tonight, time to stop the bleeding (21% of the bankroll over the last four days) as nothing good will come off additional play on FTP tonight…maybe it’s time to play some on PokerStars to chill out…

Sticking to things that you’re accustomed to isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it can be a real PITA. My day in poker is told fairly quickly today. Started off with a token satellite. Bad idea, once again my strong Ace ran into Aces within the first orbit – I should start to keep track of such things, what are the odds of your opponent holding pocket Aces when you’re holding one? Whatever the odds are, it seems that it’s happening more often than you think, especially when I’m holding a big ace.

After that quick bustout I decided to cool things down with the 17ET 1$ tourney, always nice to try some new things for a buck. A standard play broke my back though. I find pocket Aces in EP within the first orbit and pop it up to 3xBB, 2 callers, this could be fun! Flop comes down 9-7-3 rainbow. Checked to me, I bet the pot, one fold, one reraise to 2x pot…I think about it and if he flopped a set, so be it…I push…he calls…sure enough my gut feeling was right and he doesn’t hold a set…he’s holding TPSK (yup, that’s top pair shit kicker) – 96s in this case. To make a long story short: 6 on the turn and IGHN. Way to go, cracked Aces with 96…argh!

After that I was a little frustrated – to say the least. I wanted to spend some time (and little money) playing a decent amount of poker. As this plan didn’t work out I decided to play some ring games. Everything fine at the .05/.10 NL HE front and I quintuple up in no time. Which makes me think: Maybe it’s time to move up in limits again. This time with a better bankroll behind me (after all I more than tripled up my deposit since starting to play at Full Tilt less than a month ago). So I head to the .10/.25 NL HE games and play around a dozen orbits. I leave down a little, but not much. To change things up a little bit more I play some limit Hold’em (.25/.50) too, with not much success as the draw donkeys just keep outdrawing me.

So, why the post title “change of plan”? Because I decided that I’ll quit playing SnGs and MTTs for a while. I mean it’s all good and I did fairly well in MTTs and some SnGs, but overall I just can’t get through. So the new plan is to spend the extra poker time grinding it out at the cash tables – at the new limit of .10/.25 – until my bankroll is a little bit bigger. Then I’ll try to hit some of the bigger buyin MTTs and/or SnGs (10$+) and maybe I’ll even try to win my way into the WSOP then – the whole 100 WSOP seat tourney (July 16th) is just too tempting, especially if you could achieve satelliting into the thing.

I guess there are days when you should leave the different PokerSites rest for a day, especially when you’ve been fixing a server melt-down most of the day.

A lesson learned…played one SnG at Full Tilt…running good….sucked out on…then didn’t get it yet, so played another one at PokerStars…we’re down to four-handed…I battled myself to the chiplead…and I’m looking to win this thing (top 3 payed)…A10o on the button…enough to bully around a shortstack in the BB…sure enough he pushes…I call…he shows AA…what else is new? Two hands later I look down at a suited King and push again…huge stack calls…shows his Ace…ding Ace + OESD for me on the flop…no joy though…out in fourth…off to catch some sleep now…good luck to all of you in the WWdN and good fight, good night to Kat and Veneno (2nd match is tonight)…hopefully Waffles will post a recap 😉

Argh! Today I had the superb idea to just do a quick kernel-update on the server. So if you were trying to access the site earlier on you were probably seeing that something went wrong. Now I’m in the middle of restoring all the backups. Good thing I keep off-site backups of all files, databases and mails or else I would be in big doo-doo now.

Hopefully I’m done with rebuilding soonish…I want to play some poker, damn it! 😉

Edit: Most of the network sites are back online, can’t be arsed to do anything more today…the rest of the sites can wait until tomorrow…now it’s time to play some poker!

…playing at PokerStars. After busting out of my first deposit a while ago, I reloaded to play in Waffles’ tourney last night. I donated the first 11$ to a worthy cause, so I’m in need of some grinding to get myself into better shape again. So, I played a little low limit NL HE this afternoon (winning 5 buyins) and one session this evening (losing 1 buyin). I guess I’ll try to get some more afternoon sessions in at PokerStars and check if the results are really that much better compared to the evening/night sessions or maybe the results will tell me that today was just a glitch in the matrix 😉

Nothing spectacular at FullTilt either, grinded some bucks out of some poor souls’ back…would have been even more if my AQo wouldn’t have lost to AsKs on the river (Q on the flop, another Q on the turn, but unfortunately already two spades, river is another spade)…but overall a good day.

Never before has the phrase “a picture is worth a thousand words” been more true than with the DADI IV Shorthanded tourney banner:

Hat tip to Trip and Jordan. Cya at the felt.

Due to the massive network outage of FullTiltPoker Waffles’ birthday bash has been moved and rescheduled. New venue is PokerStars, it starts in less than an hour (9pm ET) check the private tab…password is: wafflesrocks

Side note: So I bit the bullet and reloaded on PokerStars…and I’m in…16 20 22 26 players so far…should be fun…

Side note #2: Couldn’t think of a cool bounty, so I’m not putting one up for this one…sorry 🙁

Edit: Nothing much going my way…card dead…then I look down at 99…push…two callers (TraumaPoker 10h-10 and STeelerJosh K-10)…four heats on the board and IGHN…17th place of 26. So my PokerStars “hotstreak” continues…back to grinding it out I guess….nontheless a fun game…and HAPPY BIRTHDAY WAFFLES!

Forgot to post earlier on. Just a single token SnG today, finished 6th out of 18…so no token and no joy…got short-stacked….busted out in 6th…rivered by a 7…need I say more?

Hopefully more joy tomorrow in Waffles’ birthday bash tourney aka SirOldMan’s Tiltfest…cya there…

Side note: Just came back from a mate’s 30th birthday party…nice to wait for a cab for like 1.5h just to catch a bus, sit down, see the taxi arrive just as the bus is taking off…then get off the bus at the nearest location to home and walk through freezing cold weather in ankle-high snow…hmm…joy…NOT… 😉