Nothing working late in the 180s. Played one yesterday, made some moves busted out 96th. Today I played another one and built up my stack to well above average. Then I hold my precious AA again…pop it up preflop…two callers…flop comes down all spades…you guessed it, I don’t hold the As…checked to me…I fire another shell…one caller…turn is blank…checked to me…I check…river is blank…now he fires out 800…now I suspect I’m beat – bs I know I’m beat, but I’m on “I hold bullets and it can’t be true that they get cracked yet again, so I’m the sheriff for this hand”-tilt…sure enough he holds As5s…well…too bad he couldn’t lay it down preflop to a 4xBB raise…next hand is bs and I fold preflop…next hand I hold 66…all try to limp in, so I pop it up…3 callers…this table is full of calling stations, damn. flop comes down A-3-3…I fire a shell…short-stack pushes All-In (another 350 to call)…all others fold…I call and show my 66…he holds AA…[thanks poker gods for mocking me time and time again both with and against AA, thanks!]. So I’m down to 350 chips now and can’t believe what just happened….so I built my stack back up and I’m up to 5000k in three orbits…we’re down to the final 36 now, but no joy when my flopped Jack is dusted by a Queen on the turn…out in 29th.

Lesson learned: AA is from now on my personal nemesis. I’m fed up with this bs hand! 😉

Let’s see if I’m still awake at 2:30am, maybe I’ll join the WWdN again then…it’s been a while since a played the last one…

• Hours of poker watched: 7h
• Hours of donkey poker witnessed: 6.75h
• Learning experience? Yup, just because it’s a 1 Million $ tourney doesn’t make the players any better (in all fairness there are some good players in the field, but most players are really playing heehaw-get lucky-or not-poker and to navigate through a field of 5k+ players you will need some kind boards along the way)…basically a real crapshoot for the most part…so this is def one I’m not going to try out for…
• Player that impressed me most: Per-18, knocking out almost everyone from his table to reach the final table with nearly 3Million in chips

Now it’s past 6 am and I need some sleep…the final table is still at 9 players, so I guess I’ll read about the result on the pokerstars blog later today… 🙂

Played two 180SnGs at once this afternoon, one went fairly well the other was horrible (out rather quickly 121st or something) – can you spell outkicked at all times…in the first one I was able to survive quite long and when it came down to get some more chips (I was hovering quite a bit below average – I hold KhQh, min raise preflop…one other caller, so we’re looking at the flop three-handed…Ah xh Qs, I check, original raiser fires out 400 (= 2xBB), other caller comes over the top…I ponder
for a while and think that 9 outs seems to justify the chance to triple up…the other player calls…turn is blank, river is Jc…so no help for me…they both held AJo…out in 49th)…

Edit: Another 180 SnG this evening…almost three hours played and I bust out in 12th place…66 vs QQ ouch… :-( 😉

After today’s exam, which went fairly well to say the least, and an afternoon of hitting the books for friday’s exam, I decided to play another 180SnG…no boring hand histories…long story short: I played well, had some good cards in tight spots and even sucked out once (at the final table, Ax vs KK, Ace on the flop)…first final table in these buggers…came in third. W00t!

No poker tomorrow (or later on today to be precise) as I gotta hit the books one last time for friday’s exam – my last one at uni! Wish me luck… 🙂

…as I’ve got my second to last exam at uni tomorrow. Only poker I played today was a relaxing 180SnG at Stars…played tight…when we were down to around 50 players I look down at AcKc…loose cannon infront of me pushes All-In (he would push with any Ace)…I shove…to my surprise one caller behind me…loose cannon shows As9s (lol)…caller behind me shows KK…K on the flop and IGHN…overall I’m still happy with the play though, I would have busted the loose cannon and with a little bit of luck (namely an Ace and no King) I would have tripled up – which would have been at top 5 position at that time…

Alrighty…I’m outta here…gotta get up rather early tomorrow and write the exam…wish me luck 🙂

A day out of the “I shouldn’t have opened FullTilt today”-series…the complete opposite of yesterday, which equals losing all I won yesterday times 2. Nice, not. Damn! Losing boat over boat isn’t fun, seeing a guy getting his Aces cracked twice within one orbit (in a donk-masters turbo token satellite: once vs J10o, once vs KK; personally I busted out 10th…no token baby) was fun though, no replacement for my xxx lost BBs though…god bless that I’m playing strictly micro/low limits these days…side note: bankroll at FullTilt nontheless is down to an all-time low 🙁

Played some more shorthanded low limit ring games and what can I say: I had fun! All the cards that I haven’t seen in ages kept hitting me in the face (AA twice within 1 orbit, KK, QQ, 10-10) and they all held up…this is the side of variance that makes it enjoyable to play – at least while it lasts.

After winning an insane amount of BBs I broke two promises:

1. That I’m never ever going to play a 1$ SnG on Full Tilt again
2. That I’m not going to play a SnG/MTT until my exams are over

It didn’t hurt though and I can really recommend the 1$ SnG as the ultimate tilt-test – why? Because the play is so friggin awful that it’s almost not even funny anymore…if your mission is to not get on insta-tilt though, it’s both a really hard test and fun at the same time (watching all the donks playing Ace-rag like it’s gold at all times, calling All-Ins for a pot of 60 chips, etc)…I held off the tilt until we were down to three-handed – the implied tilt odds were just too damn high to no do it (I’m in the SB, the BB lost two hands to crap hands in a row)…didn’t work out, but I’m smiling nontheless as I write this…time to catch some sleep now…night night.

Head on over to Jordan’s blog, Trip’s blog or the new DADI blog to find out all about it (there will be added prices donated by PSO and PokerOnAMac). Check the following banner for the vital infos:

After the disappointing results of the last few days I decided that a change was in order:

1. Focus on low limit ring games, like I said yesterday
2. Focus on playing the game
3. Play a good game with good decisions without trying too hard
4. …try to have fun in the process

So I sat down at numerous shorthanded low limit tables at FullTilt tonight and I did well. I avoided the old “second best is da nuts” style of play and was able to double and triple up numerous times – sidenote: hitting some nice flops helped too, no doubt 😉

The last hand was a total twist of my luck, but it didn’t put me on tilt or anything, I just said to myself: enough for the day and that’s that. Scenario: I hold A7o in the cutoff, BB+1 raises to 3xBB, I cold call…the others fold…flop: 2h-7c-Ac…BB+1 leads out with 9xBB…now I think she’s probably holding a strong Ace and isn’t chasing the flush…re-raise All-In…sure enough she shows AK which is far behind atm…turn floats my boat as the Ah hits…now enter the twist: river is the Kc…giving her Aces full of Kings over my Aces full of sevens….wow…rivered by a 3 outer…oh well…you can’t win ’em all 🙂

…making bad decisions because of it or along with it (- as in “trying too hard”) is a whole other matter. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m running bad or if it’s just that my game is off atm, but I caught myself doing some pretty stupid things tonight: I have to get up early tomorrow, so only a short session (1 Shorthanded SnG at FullTilt, 1 180SnG at Stars and some ring games)…and I caught myself “taking shots” more often than I needed to – we all know that you will have to win some coin-flips (and/or touch hands) in order to reach the top of a poker tourney, but only if the situation is in your favour (or if you’re desperate or if you truely feel that you’re ahead…): so I catch myself calling a hand down with nothing but TP and sure enough the paired board made trips for someone…now this isn’t bad luck, this is stupidity! In another hand I call off my stack with AQ high…running into a small pair in the process…
I think I should get my game straightened out again and focus on playing better…it’s hard these days with my last exams at uni coming up (next wednesday and friday) and the corresponding stress-level rising…so the question is if I should be playing atm at all…I guess not really, but a little game here or there won’t hurt so I’ll focus on playing some micro ring games and no tourneys/SnGs until the exams are over 😉