Hehe. Today I hit the Razz tables again…and my junk is still hurting from all the kicks…but hey…I only dropped twenty before being fed up, so not too worried.

After that I ran back…well…to the Hold’em tables ;)  Not too much going my way there either, but at least I finished up a little…

Well…Hold’em is totally annoying me atm. I can do what I want, good decisions, decent decisions, mediocre decisions, bad decisions…they all end in the same result – someone backing up a few steps and then kicking me in the junk with full force 🙁

So after the most recent ball-busting junk kickings (yesterday afternoon) I decided that I’m going to walk away for a few days…maybe even a little longer. No, I’m not quiting poker or anything, I’m just putting hold’em on hold…for now.

My equalizer for now is going to be limit razz. Yes, I usually hate limit games as your space to (out)maneuver your opponent is, well, limited. In Razz it’s a little different though. True, just like in any other poker game you can still be kicked in the balls (which formed my new mantra “brick brick brick, really makes me sick” ;)), but it doesn’t hurt all that much. Why?

Because if you just stick to some BASIC game strategy (start with a decent hand, depending on the table 86low or better), you should come out on top most of the time. On another note: yes, Razz is more of an automatic game due to the limit structure and board information – on the other hand it’s a fun and challenging game as you gotta switch on your brain again (remember board information, discarded cards, etc)…so it’s quite a change and so far I’m enjoying it…

…needless to say that I had my fair share of unbelievable beats already (board lock, sixth and seventh street go brick brick (me) perfect perfect (opponent) etc), but I’m proud to say that despite all that, I didn’t have a single losing session (yet) as I was pretty far ahead already when such wicked beats occured…

…so for now…expect me to write about the all new Razztastic adventures happening in a country far far away from one-outer hold’em hell…. 😉

Bodog: Well, my hot-streak is definitely over. I mean, I’m not losing big or anything, but I’m losing (money). Played 9 HU SnGs after work, won 5 of them. Cool, so far…although I’m still thinking about the four matches I lost…1 was a wrong move by me…that’s cool…but the other three…well, they just sucked. Pushed with the best hand (postflop)..lost to a runner runner straight…pushed with the best hand after the turn…lost to a rivered flush…pushed with the best hand (postflop)…lost to a runner runner flush…and the last one was the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen: I totally outplay my oponent and I’m up 1850/150…I look down at AK…I push…he calls…shows 77…the lucky sevens hold up. Now we’re at 1700/300…next hand I push him in again with Ax vs Kx…King hits on the turn…now we’re at 1400/600….next hand I push him in after the turn…he got the nut flush draw with one card to come…it comes….now we’re at 800/1200…next hand we get the money in again after the flop…my 99 is best…until he pulls the runner runner flush out of his ass on the turn and river…nice play, luckbox!

After footie training I fire up bodog again and as I lose 3 matches in short series I quit…best one was me holding A2…flop comes down A27 rainbow…I bet…he raises…I reraise…he pushes…hmm…I call…he holds? Yup, 22…nice that the case 2 on the flop could make it…

FullTilt: After the bad hold’em run it’s time for a change of scenery…so I fire up the donkey razz tables…weeeee….and boy can the donkeys get pissed off as soon as someone is really playing the game as it should be played (raising at every spot that justifies it)…took down some dough…nothing major…but at least I enjoyed it…

Fresh of yesterday’s win at Red Rock, Phil Gordon was playing this afternoon…at a .05/.10 NL Hold’em table…nice to see Phil donking it up with the guys and gals at this level!

And last but not least, german comedian Stefan Raab is setting up his second celebrity poker night, which will feature german celebrities and one online qualifier. In contrast to the first one this time he’s got PokerStars to join in this time. Freerolls are starting immediately, only available for german players though…hmm…maybe I’ll give it a shot if I find the time this weekend…(100.000$ prize pool doesn’t sound all that bad, although the chances are slim – first you gotta make through the online qualifiers 1:x, then you gotta beat the five other “donkeys” at the tv table…tough….)

Well, well….I thought I’d give the good ol’ bonus hunt another try today, after all I didn’t have all that much points to clear left at nine. So I try to fire it up and it only leaves me with the option to uninstall or cancel. Hmm…so I uninstall and nothing happens. Alrighty then…

I head to their site and download the new client…just to see that their POP system is gone. Hmm…that doesn’t look good…so I head over to PokerSavvy and the promotion is gone…hmm…I head to the forums and they’re still waiting for the referral-dude to get back to them about how they’re going to handle the switch…

Damn you nine! You better sort this crap out or I’ll go berserk on your arses that’s for sure!!!

Sidenote: This is the first bonus hunt that took an unexpected turn (and I don’t blame PokerSavvy one bit, it’s nine’s poor relationship management skills/customer information skills)…down over 70bucks and reward hangin in the balance…me not likey…

Unbelievable weekend. Left work earlier on friday afternoon as I was starting to feel a little pain in one of my teeth, no biggie I thought. Wrong. Fast forward a few hours and I’m in major pain. So I call the dentist to see if I can sneak in on short notice and yup, I can. So I drive to my dentist and he drills a little here a little there, I feel nothing due to the local anesthesia. I wish him a good weekend and he tells me that I should come back if the pain returns.

The pain doesn’t return until yesterday evening…what a brilliant timing…saturday night, time for yet another round of our home game and I’m in pain. Brilliant. Damn it. Ah well, I take some pain killers and make the trip to the home game. We’ve got a nice turnout of 11 players. I start at the 6 player table and the action is hot early on. In the third hand I suffer the first beat…I hold 10-2o, yup the Doyle Brunson, in the BB…two limpers, so I check. Flop comes 22J…nice…SB checks…I check hoping that the player behind me hit his jack or is at least taking a stab at it. He does as he bets out 2x pot. SB folds…I ponder and reraise the pot. He ponders and calls. Turn is a beautiful ten. Boat baby! I check again…he bets out again…now I’m thinking: two to the flush on board…if he really has the Jack I’m pretty safe…2 outs max…so…I just call…River…Jack (!)…great…I check…and I’m really disgusted, but I call his small bet on the end nontheless…he shows J4 for the higher boat…okay, so I’m a little steaming and thinking to myself: “great, just great. Third hand in and the first two-outer hits against me”…and before I can curse a little the SB chimes in…”Damn, I folded a Jack…my 3 kicker was so weak”…now I’m on insta-tilt as it was indeed a one-outer…damn!

Oh well…after that I took some hands off and then went back to the tight-aggressive game-plan. It worked out pretty well for the next x orbits as I was able to build my stack again. Then there were some consecutive sucky-sucky hands (four outer on the river, runner runner two pair to beat my TP, lost coinflip) and I was down to half my original stack. The blinds slowly but steadily eating me up…so I look down at A7s in the SB…the BB is basically auto-all-in as he’s got less than another BB left…one limper in front of me…I push…BB calls (no surprise) but then the EP limper calls. Hmm…I show my A7..BB shows his K7…EP limper shows QJ s000000ted….flop QQx…and IGHN in 7th place (6 make the final table, top 3 ITM)…damn!

In other news: our resident “luckbox” had a little bit of luck again…all-in with less than 3BB…oooh he got QQ…they hold up….fast forward to the final table…ooh…all-in again with less than 5BB…ooh he got AA…they hold up…etc etc…in the end his luck ran out as he lost back to back coinflips (77 vs AJ and 22 vs some random hand)…nontheless, yet another second place finish…it’s going to be a hard one to catch him in the POY race…

Now back to the tooth pain and car wreck…my teeth were still hurting like crazy, but I decided that I would play a sidegame if there was one. Two players took off to fetch some burgers from McD…and they took quite a while. Then another while..and they still weren’t back as the phone rang…”…What?…anyone hurt?” – uh oh…turns out the took a left turn (were it wasn’t allowed) and another car hit them smack in the middle with around 50-60 km/h…ouch…

My teeth are still hurting like crazy…was at the hospital today, but they couldn’t help me (apart from giving me more painkillers), so I’ll have to pull through it until I can visit my dentist again…

So…I leave you with my personal favourite hand of the night…dem quads biotches!! (Way to go, I eliminated a player and won the huge amount of 2xBB with it; sorry about the bad quality, but I forgot to switch to night vision on my good ol’ nokia mobile – the felt should actually be green, not blue 😉 )…

Last monday, November 13th 2006, marked the one year anniversary of poker-tastic.com and basically the end of my first year in online poker…and what a wild ride it has been.

I started out on fire, had the usual swings every now and then and I can’t even count the number of hands I’ve played, the hours I’ve spent playing the game, thinking about it, talking about and writing about it. Well, so far so good, it’s been worth every cent invested and every hour spent!

Ups:

1. “Meeting” all the (poker) broggers who enjoy the game as much as I do.

2. Playing with all the broggers in numerous events (WWdN, DADI, Mook, etc)

3. Learning a lot

Downs:

1. Playing against donkeys day in day out.

2. Treading water

I’d like to take a minute and have a closer look at my results for the first year:

Counting all money deposited vs all money withdrawn (yup, I actually withdraw money from time to time) I’m a losing player for the first year. How much did I lose? The grand total of 29 dollars. *lol* So nothing to worry about. Most of this can be credited to a handful of “facts”:

1. It’s tough to stay ahead of the rake at the levels I started out (and still play for the most part, 5-10$ SnGs, 25NL, …). If you add the call-happy donks and variance, it’s really tough.

(2. I “donated” quite a bit of money to brogger community by playing in a lot of brogger tourneys. To be honest I had no business in some of them – early on when my “roll” consisted of 50 bucks at Stars (buyins usually at 10+1) and I had little to none experience in NL Hold’em. But ‘s all good, I marked that down as an investment/amusement charge and in retrospect it was well worth it!)
But I’m not here to make excuses, especially as the combined grandtotal makes me a winner for the first year. Combined grandtotal? Yup, add everything that was earned with online-poker and substract everything that was bought for poker (books, buyins, etc). As I did some bonus whoring (PokerSavvy, PokerSourceOnline) along the way and due to the fact that I earn some bucks with (text/review) ads on here, I’m up…and I hope that’ll stay that way in the future.As for the future: One thing’s for sure…I’m really looking forward to the next year in online poker 🙂

If I’ll step up (money wise) or not, is yet to be decided as I don’t see online-poker as my “second income” (yet). So, I guess you can look forward to yet another year of low-limit-donkery, enjoy! 🙂

Bodog: W, ooh you got Aces…nice – L, oooh you chased with 68o…nice – L, ooh the river brought you there…nice – L
FullTilt: Razz…groovy…start at the low levels, see how it goes. Bad…dropped some dough due to chasing donks…and who can blame ’em when a complete bet is so low.

Jump up two levels to 1/2…nice…jab jab…grabble…(A3)5…6….K…9….(A)…opponent (55)7…6…J…A…(3)…there’s goes the twenty…really nice to see that my luck today can be described with a single character: 0 🙁
That’s it for today…better luck to all of you…

Edit: …and as you might have guessed, my “losing tolerance” is really low these days 😉

…so hard, that it’s hard to focus on the game that is in progress. I fired up bodog yesterday eve and hit the HU tables once again. One match stood out and it was not due to the game itself, or the result (I won, duh!), but my opponent or his trash talk to be precise.

I sat down at the table and my opponent was already waiting. The first thing he types into the chatbox is “You can only win if you suckout”. *lol*. Now I’m usually not even starting to chat during the matches, I’m focussing on my game and that’s that. If my opponent starts a quick friendly chat (the “gl”…”how you doing” type of chat), I’m cool with that and I wish my opponent good luck before getting down to business. In this particular case I had to get involved though. I went ahead and told him that it’s probably the other way around and that I wished him good luck trying to beat me. He went into insta-trash-talk-mode and tried to get under my skin with a variation of (what he thought) cool ways to get your opponent on tilt.

He started of by telling me that he was Johnny Chan to me. My comeback line was that he should stop sniffing his insecticide infested orange. *lol*…that shut him up for about half a minute before he went on about telling stuff about my mom. Now I’m all for good fun, but that’s borderline, then again, he was probably a little immature boy trying to be cool. So I schooled him a little about mommies and how I’m going to tell his mom that there should be no more WSOP for him on tv. etc etc…so it was all funny as hell, at least to me. I finally busted him after around 30 hands and he told me about how I sucked and all…I just typed a quick reply telling him that I hope that the 5$ he just lost wasn’t his whole month’s allowance…*lol*…

Another cool match was against a familiar player. I had played with him before and he’s ultra-passive. So I opened the cage and let the aggression monkey out, raising EVERY pot, c-betting every flop and generally putting constant pressure on him. In the final hands he got lucky on me twice – the last hand was A9 vs A8…he hit his 8 on the turn and I couldn’t improve on the river. To my surprise he instantly started to talk shit in the chatbox about how he finally caught me (errm yeah, getting in behind and catching a lucky card is totally catching me, d’oh) and I thought “WTF?!” so I told him what I thought about that line and he went on to tell me how I was playing to aggressive and blablabla…I justed laughed and told him that his style sucks (sir fold-a-lot) and that he’s the one that needs to be lucky to win, not me and that I’m not too aggressive, after all I “only” had a look at 72% of all flops in that particular session (~ 400 hands) 😉

All in all a nice session yet again, won 15 out of 20 matches, should have been 17, but hey…can’t count on your opponent not hitting his (few) outs all the time, so ‘s all good…

After that bodog session I remembered that I still have some bonus clearing on FullTilt to do, so I fired up some CAP NL games for a quick hit and run session – which was successfull. Then I played some Stud and Razz to close out the night. I gotta say I’m now starting to grasp why many people like Razz so much (e.g. Jordan‘s “high-roller” razz experience), it’s basically one of the easiest games around. Hell, I like 7Stud, I like 7Stud H/L even more, so Razz is basically the logical next step…just low, no straights or flushes to look out for…sweet. I guess I’ll have a go on the lower limit tables in the near future, hoping not to go brick-brick-brick all the time 😉

The name doesn’t mislead you, Cardroom Supply, Inc. could be your supplier of cardroom  related items. Their offerings range from my favourite playing cards (copaq plastic), over different chipsets and low-end folding table-tops to high-class poker-tables made of beautiful wood.

First impressions are important, so I was pleased to see a familiar icon during my first visit to the site. The Yahoo icon instantly hit’s the eye – or maybe it’s just my geek eye, who knows. That’s not a bug in your favourite browser, but due to the fact that Cardroom Supply is using the complete Yahoo shopping solution. The banner in the left hand column shows the whole five stars for top service, but as I’m not familiar with the Yahoo shopping solutions, I can’t tell you if that’s the rating of the shop itself, or a bold claim by Yahoo – one way or another, I tend to trust solutions using big players a lot more than home-coded shopping carts though. What adds additional trust is that by using the Yahoo shopping solution the shopping cart’s encryption is up to par (256bit AES) and hence your data, especially of your credit cards, is secure and the fact that there’s both an Info and about page telling the visitor and potential customers a little about the company’s background and showing all contact details including mail address, email address, fax number and even a toll-free number.

After checking out the background infos and the shopping cart itself, it was time to take a deeper look at the shop and it’s products and let me tell you: I’m impressed, especially by their wide range of different poker tables. I didn’t even know that they made such beautiful (and sadly rather expensive) poker tables out of wood. Even if you’re not a fan of such elegant tables, there’s a good chance you’ll find what you’re looking for, as the casino (style) tables are up for grabs too, as are the low-end (home-game) tables.

And what could be even more important than a nice table? Yup, the chairs you sit in. I almost immediatly fell in love with this chair, too bad that flying such chairs across the great pond doesn’t seem to be a +ev proposition 😉

Add a nice chipset (or order some real clay-chips), a tournament timer and some playing cards and you’re all set for your next home-tourney, although there’s one setback – they won’t deliver the beer and snacks with your poker stuff.

Almost forgot to tell you: You’ll be please to hear that there’s free shipping on all orders above 100$ and there are regular specials – and who doesn’t love special deals. What I can’t tell you though is if the prices of the items are a steal or not, I’m not familiar with the domestic US gaming supply landscape, I leave that up to you to decide once you visit the shop yourself…

Well, what brings me to this topic? The fact that a new site opened yesterday. It’s called ReviewMe and is offering bloggers an opportunity to make extra cash.

The concept is quite old, but the platform is new, although basically the same as with text-link-ads (aff). You register an account and add your blog(s) to the marketplace, where people looking for advertising opportunities can find you. They can order a review of their site/product/whatever from you for an automatically calculated amount x – which is based on stuff like Google PR, Technorati Ranking, etc, so the more “blog juice” your blog has the more money you will earn for the review. If someone orders a review, you get a message telling you that there is a new request. Then you can have a look and you can either accept it, or decline within the next 48 hours. If you accept it you’ve got another 48 hours to write the post, which needs to be clearly labeled as being sponsored. Once you’re done, you submit the link (to the sponsored review) to the system and that’s that. The cut of ReviewMe is 50% which sounds steep, but they hand you the customers and handle all the payment stuff etc, so it’s basically alright. Especially due to the fact that you can be sure that you’ll receive your money in a timely manner and I prefer having 50% in my pocket opposed to chasing down the promised x > 50% on other sites.

As for poker-tastic: as it’s my poker-blog and basically an almost ad-free zone (if you discount the fact that I slapped some poker room banners on it, which have earned me the whooping sum of 0$ thus far and some text-links, which are earning nice cash), I decided to only accept reviews that are related to poker-products/poker-sites etc.

So, I just wanted to let you readers know that there might be some review posts coming up in the near future (truth be told, the first one is already lined up as I got the first review request within 4hours of signing up)…I hope you all don’t mind, after all I gotta pay the server somehow and I dislike using part of the (ever so small) poker roll… 🙂

[This sponsored review has been brought to you by ReviewMe]