Playing while drunk can really be fun, although it still hurts if you lose with Ax vs Kx three times in a row, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Friday started out with some SnGs at FullTilt and trying to catch up with all the revealing trip reports of all those in attendance of the WPBT Summer Classic. Man, I really really wanted to be there, but it wasn’t to be. Maybe next year when I’m finally done with my degree at university.

So we headed to a mate’s birthday (the host of our regular home game) and we basically had no intention to play any poker 😉 but in the end it was the good ol’ drunk early morning game. I was able to finish ITM in the first one, then quickly donked out of the second one. In the third one I was the monster chip leader at one point – 3000 chips were in play and I held around 2200 of them. Then the already mentioned three in a row Ax vs Kx hands happened: I called a double-All-In with my Ace rag and one of the other players almost tripled up. Then we were All-In again, same result. Then again and it was over with. Let’s just say that neither luck nor concentration was on my side – we were approaching 8am (!) and were slightly buzzed up to say the least. Come next friday we’ll play our regular home game again, which brings me to the next topic…

…we talked about finally getting a (semi-) decent poker table for our game as we were playing on a regular table with some felt thrown over it, which is kind of ugly. So I ordered one tonight, a foldable one, a true bargain considering the regular listings around here. I’m really looking forward to play at a real table.
On saturday, after the ultra-relaxing (note: lie) 2 hours of sleep on the couch I already needed to get up again as I was picked up at 10:30am to play a private footie (that’s soccer for the americans) tourney which involves drinking, too. Well, it basically revolves around drinking…nothing like getting your buzz on again easily with a nice cool beer. Play and drank the day away and when I finally made it home at 9pm I was so knackered that I almost fell asleep on the spot. Then I remembered that I should take a shower and treat my sunburn from drinking and playing footie in the sun all day. Almost needless to say that I was well awake again after the shower, so I watch a movie and at midnight I was finally going to bed…just to get up again at 9am today (sunday) to help clean up the location of our tourney.

So some live poker friday, no poker on saturday and only one SnGs on Party – a one shorthanded table donkfest which I won after I successfully trapped two donks in a row (nice to flop or turn the boat, seeing your opponent chasing the useless flush and pushing when it hits: priceless). Apart from that I was looking around at FullTilt and PokerStars and unbelievable how many players turned out to play the monster seat tourneys (FTP: 100 seats, Stars: 150 guaranteed) tonight. Good thing that you don’t need to win those things to earn a seat, but by looking at the numbers I would say that the guy/gal who wins the one on Stars should save some himself some time and stay at home – after beating a field of 7737 (s)he should have used his/her luck for the whole year, so no point in showing up in the main event 😉

Alrighty…enough babbling for tonight…I should catch some sleep anyway after this quite exhausting weekend, especially considering that I’ve got a dentist appointment tomorrow…

Wow is all I can say to the final table lineup of the 50k H.O.R.S.E tourney at the WSOP:

1. Chip Reese
2. Doyle Brunson
3. Andy Bloch
4. Phil Ivey
5. Jim Bechtel
6. David Singer
7. Dewey Tomko
8. T.J. Cloutier
9. Patrik Antonius

I think it couldn’t get much better/harder than that…let’s see how this one works out in the end…play will start at 9pm tonight…excitement! The only thing that’s a little weird is that they have battle back and forth in 5 different games for 2 days and now the final table is strictly NL Hold’em, hmm, I guess it wouldn’t take too long to finish otherwise…

Nice, so I log on to PokerSavvy (aff) today and find that 900 SavvyPoints have been credited to my account for the successfull completion of the Mansion promotion. Sweet. What’s really cool though is that I was able to complete it within a day (the requirements were fairly easy: deposit 50$ and wager 50$ in poker, casino or sportsbook – so I basically donked around the blackjack tables and slots for a while and I was done).

As I mentioned in one of my prior post, there were quite some amazing things up for auction at ebay. The crown jewel of this first set of auctions was, at least IMHO, the Phil Gordon package including not only a signed copy of his “Little Green Book”, a signed copy of his DVD “Final table poker” and a signed photograph, but also an one hour phone lesson. Wow! Although I was eager to get my hands on this one, but in the end it was a little over my price range (the winning bid was 321.27$) – still one heck of a steal at this price!

So while I bid in numerous of the other auctions (including the signed photograph by Isabelle “No Mercy” Mercier and Mark Seif’s Jersey) I set my sights on my second favourite item, which would be Daniel Negreanu’s package including a signed T-Shirt, a signed hat and a signed photograph – so basically a three in one deal. I went ahead and put a bid in and to my surprise my “early bluff at the pot” resulted in all of “my opponents’ ” folding.

So I take it down. Nice. Now the only thing between me and the package is finding the best way to ship it to me (to Germany) without it costing a fortune, but I’m sure that Shelly Hokanson and/or Bob Nardi will sort that out for me. I’m so excited that I’m able to help this good cause and receive such great stuff in return, which makes it even more exciting.

I want to take the opportunity to point your attention to the ForPeyton homepage once again and especially to the auctions page as there’s a good chance that there will be more exciting things up for auction in the (near) future! There’s also the ongoing possibility to simply donate some money to the cause, see the donations page for further information.

Furthermore I would like to spread some link love to all the pros who were generous enough to devote time and/or donate things and/or money to this good cause (in no particular order):

• Phil Gordon
• Phil Hellmuth
• Phil Ivey
• Gavin Smith
• Mark Seif
• Michael Mizrachi
• Daniel Negreanu
• Scott Fishman
• Isabelle Mercier
• Joe Hachem
• Josh Arieh

So I log into FullTilt and browse the SnG section, which I haven’t done in a while. I find a new (to me at least) token satellite – shorthanded, 1 table, 6$, first gets the token, second gets 10 bucks. Not bad I think as I jump right into one. I sit back and relax and just play solid poker, pick up some pots and observe the competition. I’m seeing that one player is basically weak tight, one is agressive and the rest is trying to play tight. After some sucks and resucks we’re finally three-handed, so it’s bubble time and I find myself in the mix with the aggressive and the weak tight player. Cool…until I cannot get the weak tight fellow to put down his hand preflop…yes, you guess it, his cards were s0000ted (J9), so who can blame him calling my push preflop 😉

At least I’ve got him covered and I hope for better luck next time we run into each other. Not to forget about mr. aggressive, I let him steal some of my blinds as I’ve got no intention to call with 7 high out of position, even though some of my crap cards are s0000ted 😉

Then the hand of the night goes down: he’s on the button again and raises 3BB…I’m smiling as I look down at KK in the BB…and I’m not only smiling because of the cowboys, but the fact that I’ve got him outchipped maybe 3:1, so even if I lose that pot to some runner runner bs, I’ll still be more than healthy. So I call and he shows 1010…to my surprise my Kings are good for once and we’re headsup for the token and I’ve got the chiplead (roughly 2:1). After a lost race (my AKo vs 77), I start to put the pressure on, after all he’s mr. weak tight, so what the heck. He folds and folds and folds and when he finally calls a hand, he’s behind in it (my A4o vs his K3o). Neither one of us hits anything and I take down the last pot with Ace high. Gimme the token, thank you.

Sidenote: I enjoy playing shorthanded quite a lot and this one table format is really cool as it should be done in less than 1h (or even 45minutes) in most cases. I’ll give those a few more test runs and as soon as I’ve got  some tokens I’ll try to play some of the guarantees again or maybe even the satellites to the WSOP 100 Seat tourney. We’ll see…

As most of you might already know there is an effort to raise money for the little girl Payton (if that doesn’t ring a bell, head on over to ForPeyton.com ) and the first auctions have started on ebay – a little less than two days left.

Sidenote: I already contacted Bob Nardi about the possibility to ship overseas and he said that something can be worked out (e.g. via USPS), so I’m going to bid (as a matter of fact I already did on the signed Isabelle Mercier photo, but Sir Al bid higher and holds the highest bid at time of writing this). So get out your wallets, help out for a good cause and get some cool signed stuff of a pro player in the process! Reraise your fellow bidders!

The items currently up for auctions are:

• CardPlayer shirts, hat and Phil Hellmuth DVD
• Phil Hellmuth DVD and Poker For Dummies DVD
• Joe Hachem autographed photo
• Isabelle Mercier autographed photo
• Phil Ivey Full Tilt Poker jersey
• Gavin Smith Full Tilt Poker jersey
• Mark Seif Absolute Poker jersey
• Michael “The Grinder” Mizrachi autographed Absolute Poker hat
• Daniel Negreanu autographed Full Contact Poker hat, shirt and picture
• Scott Fischman “Fishtank” sweatshirt, two hats, and Nintendo Gamecube WSOP video game

Sorry to say that, but the WSOP mostly sucks big time so far. Why? Because there is no tv coverage over here and so I’m relying on the good ol’ internet. Last year I was more than uptodate with the awesome coverage done by the good doctor himself – this year it’s just not the same, because the greedy WSOP dastards sold the rights to report chip-counts etc exclusively.

What a joke! I mean it’s okay to squeeze out every last bit of dough, but please, at least make it right and add to the contract that the coverage has to live up to certain standards (e.g. chip count updates with a lag of several hours is not okay, not listing all players still in contention is not okay, writing two half sentences per half hour is not okay, ..).

One thing’s for sure though, the suits accomplished three things with that move:

1. The made more dough…
2. They screwed reporters and photographers who were doing heck of a job in keeping people updated and entertained (guys like Dr. Pauly and probably many others)…
3. They pissed off fans who don’t have any other means to get “live” (or let’s say “almost real-time”) coverage…

So, “Harrah’s whatever corp or inc” thanks for nothing!

The only upside of this year’s WSOP so far is that people I like (to watch) are going deep and/or even winning bracelets (Rafe Furst, Sam Farha, Phil Ivey (2nd place), Phil Hellmuth (2nd place), …), keep it up guys – too bad that you are not getting the exposure you deserve 🙁

So I decided to try the latest PokerSavvy (aff) promotion and signed up for Mansion Poker. Deposited some dough and jumped right into the first SnG (what else is new?). The play dragged on and once again people were calling stuff down like crazy, so I decided to pop it up preflop whenever I held something decent and pound those suckers at every chance after the flop. It worked quite well and I was in a comfortable chiplead, then I was gone in fourth place after getting kicked in the junk three friggin times within two orbits…

1. KK vs J2o, backdoor four flush board goodness

2. KK vs J10s, turned flush goodness

3. A10o vs Q9s, I raised to 6xBB preflop…flop comes down 95A…I push…he calls…just to turn a 9 against me…

Well done there once again. So I played one friggin SnG and I could already rip some of their players’ throat out for playing like friggin retarded half-monkeydonks and having the guts to trash talk after their crappy play…side note: and yes, one single player, probably both the dumbest donkey and the luckiest git I’ve ever seen, sucked out on me in all three hands… (his screen-name is millar33 so beware of him, he must have interbreed CJ’s luckbox with the “Back from the future” home fusion generator…)

I’m going to cool down now and come back with a vengeance later 😉

Edit: To hell with cooling down, I hit the cash tables and what would you think who sat down a few minutes in? Yes, Mr. Suckout himself. I don’t want to get to deep into it, but let’s just say his suckout are limited to SnGs and/or very short-term as I stacked him three times within 20 minutes 🙂

…aka the biggest bullshit I’ve seen in my life. German tv host Stefan Raab hosted the first german celebrity poker tourney tonight. Setup: There were 4 other celebrities invited (german pop singer Sasha, TV comedian Elton, actress Heike Makatsch and comedian Bully Herbig) which were joined by an online qualifier (a 19 year old student, who allegedly beat a field of nearly 50.000 players to win the seat). Starting chips: 10k, blinds starting with 50/100.

There were some weird plays early on and you could really feel that most of the players at the table didn’t know what the hell they were doing. They were calling down bs hands like crazy and there was not much movement at the table. Then the luck/bs factor came into play as they kept raising the blinds like crazy (up to 3k/6k within the last 30 minutes). The host Stefan Raab put a bad beat on the online qualifier as he cracked the pocket kings with 36o, shortly after that he busted out in 4th, not to shabby though – 10.000 Euro for a little poker on television.

In the end it was happy go lucky as tv comedian Elton hit the deck like crazy to take down the 50.000 Euro. I was really looking forward to the event and I was disappointed. Too few poker hands crammed into a two hour format with commercial after commercial and a crapshoot blinds structures, all I can say is one thumb up for Bully Herbig’s comedic performance at the table and two thumbs down for the overall tourney…

…maybe it’s time that a major player in the poker game (e.g. PokerStars, FullTiltPoker, …) got involved in such a tourney…

A little late to the party, but nontheless:

Scott better known as doubleas has his book on the market now. It’s called “Pressure Poker – Poker Strategy and Tools to improve your game”

…head over to his post about it…there’s an Amazon link where you can order it directly and give him some extra affiliate money in the process! So what are you waiting for? Don’t be a fool, get your copy today!