The grind continues and I’m making good progress so far at Pacific. Up a little and 85 Comp Points done 165 left to go.

After the slow and somewhat uneventful grind at Pacific I thought I’d put the latest token to good use in Full Tilt’s 2k Razz guaranteed and boy oh boy, can play get any worse than this? I repeat: Can play get ANY worse than this? Un-be-lievable what an amount of donkeys play this game at Full Tilt. I had three donks at my starting table and they played like ultra-maniacs, capping almost every hand with “starting monsters” like AAK and similar.

Now I’m usually really mild-mannered when it comes to Razz donkeys, as I’m pretty confident that their chips will come my way eventually. But this time it was a little different. I play one hand in the first four orbits and take it down. I’m up well above average and fold, fold, fold and fold while the donks are taking down pots with monster-hands, well…a K10 or J8 low is a monster, right…NOT!, I’m sitting there repeating my old razz mantra “three eight or lower, three eight or lower, three eight or lower” as I fold hand after hand. Oh well…so I wait and play a patient game, pushing donks off hands by (correct) reraising on the earlier streets is pretty much out of the picture, so I’m at the mercy of the cards…and to make a long story short…they betray me time and time again…I start out with the best hand every single time and in most hands I’m ahead until 6th/7th street…where the donk(s) hit the perfect cards while I put on my helmet to shield me from all the bricks falling down on me.

The exit in 60th place comes right at the first break where I start out with the best again…hit a brick on fourth street…good one on 5th street before walking the lovely brick-brick-sidewalk again…oh well…what can you do?

So…I’m out of tokens for now…so next stop at Full Tilt is to get some more…then it’s time for Razz again…until then…may the river be kind(er) to you, don’t drink and drive on new year’s eve, drink a lot though if possible and have fun…cya in 2007 🙂

Well, well…spend most of the grind at the BJ tables tonight…it seems to be the quicker way to get the Comp Points although it’s basically at the same rate (10$ bet = 1$ vs 10$ wagered in “raked pot”), but you can get much more “hands” in (after all every bet counts vs only the bets you put into the pot in a raked pot)…so I’m up to over 60 points now…190 to go – side note: really insane, 250 Comp Points equals 2500$ wagered…wow. Played in one of their initial depositors’ freerolls tonight…although my play didn’t amount to much as I misread the starting time, so I basically entered the tourney “Phil Hellmuth style” (reasonably late – 45mins) and half my stack was gone with the blinds being half of my remaining stack. Oh well…so I sat until the blinds almost got to me…pushed from EP with 44…three callers…heeeehaaaw…KQ took it down…

But enough of that and on to the main topic: Poker Goals 2007

Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I and how’s the old (german) saying – roughly translated to english – “You can only achieve your goals if you have any”. So, without further ado…my poker goals for 2007:

• Get a thicker skin – While I think my tolerance of “bad beats”, major suckouts, medium suckouts, minor suckouts and all other suckouts in general is at an all-time high, it’s still not high enough. I mean, yeah, it’s understandable to go bezerk (at least mentally) after losing to a one-outer or moaning about the occasional two-outer or runner-runner-straight/flush, but apart from that, the usual “dominated hand wins with his/her shitting kicker hitting” shouldn’t affect me. Good decision made? Money in with the best of it? Yes and yes? Then suck it up, you did good, the donks will hit every now and then, this is what keeps ’em in the game in the first place. Play your game and get their money the next time.
• Move to a higher level – while I’m pretty satisfied with the levels I’m currently playing (mostly NL10/NL25), it’s -ev in the long run as good play isn’t rewarded all that much in those levels (especially NL10 – are you kidding? There’s more friggin donks hitting their miracle time and time in rotation for you to really crush the game). So I’m planning on building the roll to a higher level and moving to at least NL25 as my main feeding ground. As soon as I feel comfortable there and show a regular profit, I’ll try to move up another level. But the first goal is to establish a good winning rate at NL25.
• Play less (cash games) – while this may surprise some people, it’s one of my goals. Yes, playing (online) poker is very entertaining and a good way to spend your time, but a little less won’t hurt. My reasoning is that once I move up a little, the game will challenge me more again and the profit (if any) will more than justify playing less (after all having a huge winning rate at NL10 or similar brings out a mere laughter to the higher level player).
• MTTs – MTTs (along with SnGs) used to be my bread and butter. I just feel comfortable to play for set amount x (buyin) and go with it. A loss or “not-win” doesn’t affect me nearly as much as in a cash game. Looking back at 2006 two or three (minor) tourney scores were the difference between an empty account and life. I actually enjoyed the last MTT I played (where I final-tabled the bodog guaranteed) and that’s what has been missing in a while. So playing more MTTs again is one of the goals.
• SnGs – Try to focus on the token satellites on FullTilt to get into some of the “bigger” tourneys for cheap.
• Live (home games) – Back to the roots. Winning or losing isn’t really important. Why? Because the “tourney style” we’re playing is too much to overcome if the cards are against you. So, why did we start this home game in the first place? – Fun! So back to having fun, no matter what the outcome is.
• Live (“real tourneys”) – One goal is to play at a real tourney. As my mini-bankroll isn’t really a good starting point to chase 12/15/17k tourney packages to the WSOP, WPT or similar, it seems to be more reasonable to try to qualify for another tourney. The EPT. Less travel, smaller buyins (although 5k is still a lot of money). So my goal is to qualify for one of the remaining EPT events, most likely the one in Dortmund, Germany in March. If that doesn’t work out I’ll try to get into one of next season’s events.
• Bonus hunt – Still plenty of poker rooms left to hunt for, so many Points at the poker bonus hunt sites to get. Why not try?
• Stay away from -ev (non poker) gambling – This is my final goal. Looking back at some of the sites I busted out  on early “in my career”, it was mostly due to -ev non poker gambling (BJ, Slots, Video Poker, etc) which busted me, not poker. So this is one of the most important goals…stay away from this shit, it’s not worth it, just ask some of the pros who won fame and fortune playing poker and gave it all back at the craps table…

That’s about it…let’s see how many of them I can achieve…

On another note: I don’t know if I will be posting again until the new year arrives, so if I don’t: Happy New Year to all of my readers, fellow broggers and poker players…and a sad sad bankroll-depleting non-two-outer-hitting year for all the donks out there, hope you give me all your money, cheers! 😉

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If you would like to give it a shot…feel free to click the following affiliate banner…make some dough and make me some dough…win win 🙂

Well, not much going on. On the grind over at Pacific, mostly treading water, but hey…treading water is better than being stuck 🙂

So that works for me…36 Comp Points done, 214 to go…

Today I had enough. Enough of the bad run. Now one could argue that “running bad” is a natural thing in poker and it’ll pass – it probably would, eventually, but I’m fed up. Bad beat after bad beat, suckout after suckout. So it’s been fun with bodog, while it lasted, but I can’t take it anymore, at least not atm. So I cashed out the remaining dough…not all that much left, luckily I had withdrawn three times already, so I’m UUUUUUP 🙂

So, I need a new room to donk around and I had a look around my favourite bonus hunt site PokerSavvy (aff)…once I hit the site I remembered that the bonus at nine was still uncleared due to the network switch of nine. So first of all I contacted Mike to ask how this would be handled (as the old point system couldn’t be converted to the new system, but I had almost done all the requirements)…as usual Mike and Team PokerSavvy did an amazing job. They contacted nine and got them to clear my bonus 🙂 Two thumbs up, once again.

With that out of the way it was time to decide on a new room….many left, but some of them are not for me (as I had signed up before coming across the likes of PokerSavvy)…so…the special promotion it is…sign up with Pacific till the end of the year, grind out 250 Comp Points and receive a whoopin 1200 SavvyPoints (which equals ~ 120$, the normal promotion for Pacific is 900 SavvyPoints)…now 250 Comp Points are not easy to grind out, but it’s a challenge and Pacific’s nice bonuses are a good start (25$ instantly into your account when you sign up via PokerSavvy and you receive the 25% (up to 100$ max) immediatly too!)…

Played some Blackjack and some ring games to get my feet wet and everything worked out nicely, until I ran into yet another nice hand: A9o on the button, EP min raises (hmm Aces?!), two callers, I call, flop comes AA3 rainbow…hmm..so he doesn’t have Aces…push and shove…he shows A3…gotta love those case cards and ugly kickers, lol. Oh well…by the time that hand occured I was already ahead more than I could lose, so ‘s all good…

So…for the next few days/weeks I’ll probably focus my play on clearing that bonus…10 points done, 240 to go…. 🙂

…or something…

After the bodog disaster I head over to PokerStars for one of the anniversary “freerolls” (why is everyone stating tourneys which costs something (in this case FPPs) to be freerolls these days?!)…it’s a donkfest and “Lady Maverick” Vanessa Russo is a no-show…I sit at a decent stack (twice the average) with 1k players to go and all falls apart…best hand in with a nice raise, second/third/… after the flop…fold…I finally bust out in the 900s after the fourth unsuccessfull preflop raise followed by a flop that has nothing in it for me…oh well…free…eerrm 10 FPP…always happy to donate to the donkey nation.

After that I head over to Full Tilt to win me a token…ha! Not really…first attempt is a turbo two-table S&G….no joy….coinflip hell and overcards are gold…too bad I went in with a pp two times…ah well…second attempt is a one table S&G…after some donking around we’re heads-up and about even in chips…long story short: everytime I have a hand, my opponent has the better one (not necessarily preflop, but sure as hell post-flop)…so I go out in second place…10 bucks…no token…no joy…

A Poker Room is such a lousy place to be in sometimes…better luck tomorrow…

Hehe…I just ran through a session which even made ME laugh, although the slaughter was brutal. I think bodog saved some special decks for me and brought them out the freezer just in time today….

Examples:

1. K7 vs K3…K-10-5 rainbow, money goes in…3 on the river

2. A7 vs A2 ….Ace on the flop…2 on the river

3. Jh9h…flop 8h9h3h…bet…raise…reraise…push…insta-call…opponent shows Ah2h…

4. KQ vs K5….5 hits the river

5. … x.  Same shit, different hands…

So…thanks bodog for rewarding the tards and happy holidays, bastards!

Just came back from the latest home game…it sucked…mostly…but I don’t want to write about that now…

I just wanted to wish all my readers happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa or (insert your name for the holiday, if you celebrate it, here)  🙂

Yup, noone wants to hear about bad beats. So I’m not telling any 😉

Tonight’s session was supposed to be fun. It was, as I made correct decision after correct decision. Too bad if that doesn’t lead anywhere. Correct fold, opponent caught his gutshot on the river. Correct fold, opponent caught his two outer on the turn. Correct fold, opponent caught runner runner. Correct fold?! Incorrect push…Correct fold…correct fold…correct push…opponent sucked out….correct…correct…

God damn it! Ah well…better luck next time.

On another note: Tomorrow is my last day at work, weeeeeee. Happy, because it’s finally time to get some rest again, celebrate christmas with friends and family. Sad, because I really liked it there. Oh well, all things must come to an end…and the upside: I can finally chill out a little bit again, catch up on overdue stuff and hopefully join you all at the tables in the upcoming weeks. The next live game is scheduled for saturday, so there’s stuff to look forward to… 🙂

Yet another quick post….just some HU action at bodog today, too tired for any longer sessions…

Played 9 matches…won 6….should have won the last one too. How could I lose after hitting the best hammer flop ever?