Well not much time to play or post, so just a quickie:

1. Busted some donkeys at bodog’s HU tables, 3 out of 4 not too bad.

2. Got my ass handed to me once again at FTP…unbelievable how some nice brick-sessions at Razz and kind rivers for my opponents can ruin everything…oh well…”the only thing that matters is making correct decisions”…yeah right, but losing still sucks 😉

I’m outta here…

…well, not quite yet, still another week of work before I’m free to celebrate christmas, the new year and get myself in the hunt for my diploma thesis. So, the “good to be back” refers to my game 😉

I started the evening with a token satellite on Full Tilt. Well, let’s just say that the first hand was the last one too. I just couldn’t get away from the hand, although all the signs were there – min raise preflop, reraise on the flop…I guess I was a little too excited about flopping two pair…oh well…

After that disappointment I took a seat at some crazy HA tables. It’s really surprising how many players are playing these without having the first clue about Omaha, lol. Still couldn’t start a bigger running and dropped a buyin. Not all that good.

So I fired up bodog and played some HU SnGs. Won the first two, then lost the next two. That really sucked, so I decided to quit HU for the night and as I checked the MTT tab I saw that the 2.5k guaranteed was about to start. The low buyin of 7$ + 0,50$ made the decision even easier.

Hours played: roughly 3.5

Times I was all-in and at risk: twice, early with a flip AK vs JJ…and then in the last hand..but more about that one below.

So I bumped and grinded and sometimes I really got a rush of cards (I must have held AA about four times, QQ about five times and some other lower pairs, but apart from that, well…not much). I had one goal for this tourney:

[Guess 1] Make money – nope

[Guess 2] Get down to last x players – nope

[Guess 3] Not get sucked out on – nope

The correct answer is: make correct decisions – and it worked out pretty good. It’s weird how sometimes a little pointer “back to basics” can really help you find your game again. After plowing through Super System II (highly recommended, but it’s sooo full of concepts and numerous games that you will have to read, re-read and re-re-read it on a regular basis), I started to read my next poker book entitled Pauly’s blog errm “The Tao of Poker”. It’s a set of 285 rules to “transform your game”. Well, I don’t know about the transformation part, but they certainly help. I only read the first 25 or something so far, as I said, I started to read it last night and I gotta get some sleep sometime, so can’t be reading all night. The first ones were really basic, but although you know all the concepts/ideas/rules (know when you’re beat; poker is a grind; ..) are clear and you probably have them all inside your head, but re-reading them really helps as they can’t get lost and/or blocked by other thoughts like “yeeehaaaw…donkey’s catch all the time, let me try this”…

But back to the tourney. There were 319 entrants, so the final four tables are ITM. As I already said, I went on a little rush early, before hovering around average most of the time. There are really only two hands I regret: one was when I bluffed off half my stack when we were about to get down to the last 3 tables. The last one was the last hand…at the final table 🙂 🙁

Yes, the final table…

…about time I saw one of these again. It’s been a while. (Side note: Don’t be fooled by the hand stats, this is for the whole session, so roughly the first 100 hands of that were HU with my usual 80+% flops seen)

Within the first orbit I busted though. After the first player was knocked out in the second hand of the final table, I was eager to play my AQo from LP…and why do I regret this hand?

[1] Remember the old “don’t go broke with a Queen in your hand”-mantra? It’s what crossed my mind before I raised preflop.

[2] I still had a chance to get away from the hand after the flop. Although the roughly 17k with 1k/2k blinds and 200$ antes would have forced me to make a move soon after that anyway (I started the hand with just under 23k, standard 3xBB preflop raise).

As you can see in the following screenshot, the flop came down Kc, 4d, Qc and my opponent insta-over-pushes. Well, what could he be pushing with? What was he calling with preflop? Basically it could have been any two cards preflop (BB, big stack), but after the push I should have believed the hand he claimed (Kx, maybe even with a flush draw) and waited for a better spot (within the next 8-10 hands). But oh well…I called and he showed KJ…turn K…river…K…them quads beetches! At least I lost to a really good hand…

Out in 8th of 319. I’m cool with that. Needless to say that I would have loved to move up some spots as the payout were starting to be really cool in the higher final table spots (1st – 625$, 2nd – 400$, 3rd – 277,50$, ..)…but hey…as I said earlier on, this one wasn’t for the money, it was for my mental game health – if there’s such a thing 😉

…so despite having to work today, I squeezed in a little play here and there. Bodog was not particularyl kind to me, yet again, but at least I was able to donk around at Full Tilt a little. The new mixed games rock. I guess I’ve never ever seen such an amount of “donkeys” invading the games before. The are probably good hold’em players, at least some of them, but bring in the other games and the game is a whole new animal.

Played some “HA” and said “HA! Got you” everytime I stacked up someone else’s chips in the A (Omaha Hi) part of the game, before handing some of them back in the H part of the game. In the end I was able to recoup the prior SnG losses to break even…so not really a good run, but at least not a bad one either…

Well, well…it’s been a while since I hit the tables, mostly due to work and an upcoming deadline of a little poker project (more on that once it’s live). So, a little SnG action on FullTilt…but wait, wow, they added mixed ring games, nice. Nah, fight the temptation to donk around…play some SnGs. 6max it is…and boy, you gotta love when you push your hand into the nuts EVERY single time. Sob. Ah well, let’s see what the bodog donks are up to…well, they’re up to taking my money. Hmm…Ace = gold…unless I hold one, that’s for sure 😉

Anyway, enough babbling…wish I could be in Vegas to donk around and drink my arse off…no such fun, so I’ll have to do the drinking around here. Good thing that the first christmas dinner is taking place tonight. My footie team has rented a restaurant like every year and by 8:30 tonight, I’ll hit the (dinner) tables hard…booze please. Thank you very much, lol! 🙂

Have a great weekend!

Played a little on FullTilt today, back to the roots. Bread and butter, SH SnG. Top two get payed. Won the first one after remembering the golden rule “play looser than normal, but not donkey style” 😉

Should have won the second one also, but didn’t due to some unlucky cards. Ah well, at least two for two in the money, so not to bad.

Then I went out to a local christmas market, didn’t feel like drinking though, so I drove over. After the thing closed down we decided to play a little poker tourney, lol. We sat down seven handed and play a cool little game. I was not running particularly well, but still okay (slightly up). Then “the” hand came up – yet again. I look down at 74o in the BB…three limpers, I check. Flop comes down 778…hmm…limper #1 checks, limper #2 checks, limper #3 bets out. I reraise. Limper #1&2 fold. Limper #3 reraises. Now I’m thinking: okay, he’s either holding 8X, an overpair or the case seven…probably outkicking me…after a little deliberation I decide to push as there’s always the (large) possibility that it’ll be a split pot and I could be way ahead…Limper #3 shows 75s0000ted. Hmm…so I’m slightly behind, but there’s two cards to come, so I’m hopeful. Turn 5. Thank you very much…meaningless 6 giving me a meaningless straight on the river. Ouch.

After that I bumped and grinded my way back to above average before slowly but steadily fading – what can you do if you catch (some) good starting hands, but just can’t hit a flop? Not much…I exited in fourth place (bubble boy) when my 33 stood no chance in the coinflip…oh well…the only thing I can blame myself for is that I played a little too loose after getting back above average…besides that…nothing much I could do…the blessing and curse of (turbo) tourneys…

…so not much playing or writing about the game. Let’s just say that I went from good (W) to bad (L) to worse (Tilt-L)…what put me on a slight tilt was the second HU match I played.

Did you ever play a guy that has got to be a little leprechaun sitting right on his pot of gold? You dominate him and build your stack. Then you hit TPTK, he hits bottom set, you pay him off. You rebuild your stack. You hit top two, he hits middle set. You pay him off. You rebuild your stack. You hit a straight…he turns a flush…you pay him off…etc etc. Unbelievable. Well, it’s believable, it’s just what it is – he was on a rush and caught the cards when he needed it…

That shouldn’t be enough to put me on tilt and drop the next match within the first 10 hands though… 🙁

Maybe I should stop altering my game all the time. Did you ever start to do something similar (tweaking here and there all the time) when you’re running bad? I guess the answer is a “yup”…sometimes it’s a good thing, sometimes it’s not…in my case I think it’s bad. I lost my groove. Not groovy. Time to sit back, check some hand histories and re-focus on my original style of play…

Side note: Despite dropping some dough at the tables today, it was a good day. First of the month, friday, weekend, time to relax and catch up on sleep and the money kept coming in…gotta love those “You received a PayPal Payment” mails…thanks to all the good folks buying text-links and reviews on this humble little piece of web-estate 🙂