No poker yesterday due to exam preparation (exam was this morning, went well). Little poker today. I was grinding out some dough on the low limit NL HE tables. Not much profit, but at least I cleared another few bucks of the signup bonus – 40% cleared now.

Bounty Hunting: This sunday it’s Waffles’ birthday tourney and fellow bloggers/players are starting to offer bounties (see Waffles’ post about it)…I’m still trying to figure out what I will offer…maybe I’ll come up with a good idea tomorrow…enough brain-work for the day already…so this will have to wait until tomorrow.

Quick brainstorm left me with the following so far (not sure if it’s going to be something out of this list yet):

1. A poker book (i.e. Tales from the Tiltboys, Little Green Book, …)
2. A poker DVD (i.e. Rounders)
3. Something online related (then again Kat is already offering a custom banner/sidebar graphic)
4. Something personal (i.e. a special T-Shirt or something, I’ll have to come up with a practical solution though as shipping from Germany to the US (etc) would cost too much…maybe CafePress or similar will do..)
5. Something not related to poker at all

After spending the whole day revising for my first uni exam of the semester (in a series of 4 exams which are my last ones at uni, yeah!) I thought to test the waters of the two table token SnGs again (6$+0.60$, top 4 get a token, 5th gets 4 bucks back). After logging into FTP I check the HE tables first and saw that Mike Matusow was really 4 tabling – 2 full tables, 2 short handed all $10/$20 NL…he was joined by other pros (David Singer and John Juanda)…cool stuff…above my current limit though:

After watching for a while I jumped into a token satellite and I don’t know what it is, but I’m running good atm. Not so much when it comes to card luck, at least not more than usual, but in the way I play. Maybe it’s my reassessment of some aspects of my game and my better understanding of some (crucial) aspects of the game in different settings (including but not limited to: 1. Trust instincts, period. 2. Loosen up just enough to not blind myself down all the time in MTTs/SnGs 3. Switch gears, especially in faster games (SnGs)…etc etc). Whatever it is, it works. No boring hand histories or bad beat stories this time, just some facts and one interesting hand. Most interesting hand of the night: I look down at QQ in the SB…BB+2 pops it up to 2xBB…button calls…I cold call as BB+2 is a maniac and button is a total rock (so that might be KK/AA there)…BB folds…so we’re three handed and looking at a AA7 flop…check all around…turn is another 7…I check…maniac checks…rock on the button bets 800…now I trust my instincts here and lay it down…maniac cold calls…hmm…this is interesting…we’ll see why…river is a J…maniac checks…rock on the button bets another 1k…maniac cold calls (probably feared an Ace too)…showdown…see below…interesting to see three big pocket pairs (JJ+QQ+KK) + AA on the flop in a single hand…crazy…

Second interesting hand (without a screenshot), we’re still sitting 6 handed, I’m 4th in chips and look down at 99 in the SB…folded around to me…I pop it up to 900 (3x BB), BB calls…flop comes down 9-J-x, I check…BB checks…hmm…turn comes another blank I check…BB pushes All-In…I had a feeling that my trips was good there…call for all my chips (he has me covered by over 2k)…he shows A-x…river brings his Ace, but no help and I double up…I’m in the chiplead and cruise into the money (or the tokens ;-))…cool. So I’m 1/2 since winning my last token. Nice!

Now to the latest pimpage: like you might have already read on veneno’s blog or on waffles’ blog itself…Waffles birthday is approaching, so there will be a tourney at Full Tilt Poker in his honor. See the following banner for all the infos…

Apart from the usual NL HE fun with all your favourite bloggers there will be added excitement as there will be bounties and all – I already told Waffles that I’m going to offer a bounty on my head, too. Just need to think of something…so…be there or be square!!!

Iggy pimped it, Gracie pimped it, Dr. Pauly pimped it, Waffles pimped it…so here I go:

Tomorrow is another charity tournament – if you need more information about it go read one of the other bloggers’ posts (links above)! Here are the short facts:

Site: Noble Poker
Date: Thursday March 2nd, 2006
Buy-in: $10 + 1
Time: 7:30pm ET
Password: charity

Tonight brought the opportunity to put my hard earned 26$ token to use. I entered the Double Stack 6k guarantee tourney at 14ET. I didn’t take proper notes, so no real play for play, but let’s just say that the double stack start with a normal blind structure really helps my tight game. So I was able to pick my spots and hovered in the top 50 for most of the time. One particular hand was news-worthy though, I cracked Aces with pocket 6s, all the money went in after the flop, initiated by the guy holding pocket 4s (poor guy) reraised by me and called by Mr. Aces (even poorer guy):

In the second hour I was joined by “Scary Lady“.

Nice. At the second break we were still at the same table and doing fine. I don’t remember exactly when Joanne went out, but she was rather card dead and becoming shortstacked quickly…so she busted out in 43rd – 16 from the money. Shoot, I would have loved to play with her at the Final Table. Moving on…in the third hour I made an almost critical error which caused me half my stack: I chased…in my defense: after the flop I had outs and his min-raises didn’t suggest he had the flush or an Ace for that matter…I should have known better, but what can you do when the “he doesn’t have the ace”-bug bites you?

So I was facing elimination with the bubble approaching, lucky enough I caught some decent cards to make the money. Up and down afterwards, but never able to get ahead of the massive blinds and antes (1500/3000, 400 ante)…so I went out in 13th place.

Just one spot from the next payment level, so I won a whooping $66,96. I gotta say I love this tournament structure and all, but roughly 67$ for a finish 4 from the final table (playing roughly 3.5h)? You gotta be kidding me. I mean the final table combined pays 85.6% of the price pool (279 players entered, so the price pool is 6.696$) – nice if you’re sitting there, but not if you bust shortly before it starts (especially if you’re considering the 26$ buyin).

But hey…I played my A-game and the final table was in reach, so no need to bitch and moan 😉 Next step: get my hands on some more tokens! 🙂