No, I’m not dead…I just didn’t have that much time to really play a decent amount of poker over the last few days, so just a quick roundup will have to do, for now.

I continue to play most of my SnGs over at WPX and so far so good, I almost double my deposit, w00t. 100% rakeback helps, but it’s not just that. I like to play shorthanded SnGs, so WPX is a perfect fit as their shorthanded SnGs are really shorthanded – 5 players at the table, 2 ITM (70/30 cut). It took a while for me to adjust to the 10 hands/level structure (instead of the x minutes/level which is used by most other rooms), but now I enjoy it – in the beginning it’s easy, you get to be the BB twice per level, then after a few eliminations things are speeding up, which is a good thing. The highest (in game) levels I’ve personally seen thus far were 500/1k with a table full of rocks, usually the games are much faster though, especially if you’ve got dudes at the table who like to severely overbet the pot or outright push from EP with blinds of 10/15 – good idea donks…no…your pair of treys is not good there most of the times, duh ;)  One of the ups of playing that many SnGs in such a short amount of time is the biggest downside as well: you get to experience quite a decent number of junk-kickings – I have never ever lost such an amount of dominating hands in such a short period of time, but I didn’t let it get to me. Most of the times I was even able to come back despite being severely crippled by dominating hands (AQ vs A6, AK vs A3, etc etc, 80% favourite – runner runner straight, 73% favourite – runner runner flush, etc), so I can slowly but steadily see some major progress in my game: a few weeks ago I would have (tilt) pushed the next hand in order to end the SnG and/or donk off my chips in the very next SnG – now I can sit there, steam a little, but don’t cloud my judgement, which is really good to say 🙂
As the WSOP wasn’t on around here (and I was too cheap to cough up some bucks for the final table PPV) I relied on Pauly’s coverage along with updates from pokerwire. I couldn’t follow the last few hours as I was heading out to an interview for an internship (my last requirement prior to writing my diploma thesis), so I missed Jamie Gold taking down the win and 12 million. I’m hoping to get my hands on a recording of the final table once ESPN airs it, should be fun to watch. So, bye Joe Hachem, hello Jamie Gold – newest hot commodity of poker. I guess we’ll find out soon enough if the fact that yet another amateur won will bring us the next “boom” / “explosion” in poker…and I’m also wondering if bodog is going to market the shit out of this (which is almost certain) and if they can catch up in terms of traffic.
Over to Full Tilt: I received an email today that the stuff I’ve won in the WSOP Fantasy thing will be credited in points. Cool stuff, so there should be 2200 Points more sitting in my accont shortly – I had won 4th place in one of the early events which was good enough to win a FT baseball cap (which equals 2200 points). I guess I’ll be using those points for tournaments instead of the cap. As I finished in the top 20 of one of the freerolls during the fantasy promotion I had the chance to win a seat for the 2007 WSOP tonight…wasn’t meant to be. Started out good by busting some dudes, but then I pushed right into the nuts to lose half my stack (hammer flop 772 rainbow, I hold 1010 and push, one of the guys in LP calls, he shows 77…ouch). Then I lost some coinflips and I was gone – upside: I went with my gut feeling, made the correct reads, put the money in (way) ahead or at least even money (e.g. a player in EP overbets the pot by some hundred chips, I put him on a small pair…I push with AK…he shows 33…but I don’t improve) the cards just didn’t fall my way sometimes and while that would be awesome (cards falling your way all the time) it’s just not the reality, so I’m good.

Over to poker books: I finished reading the book of bluffs and while some stuff in there was obvious, some stuff just made me think a little more about certain situations and I think it helped my game – short term: check, long term: we’ll see about that, but I’m confident.

That’s all for now, time to catch some sleep before I have to get up for footie training in less than five hours from now, yikes! So I’m leaving you with two of my new/old favourite SnG/MTT mantras:

1. “You must be willing to die, in order to live.” (Amir Vahedi)

2. “The best you can do is get your money in the middle when you have the best hand and hope it holds up.” (unknown)