Played the Saturdays with Dr. Pauly four-card bingo tourney tonight, finished in a disappointing 21st out of 29…didn’t even make the first break. I guess I should abstain from playing PLO tourneys, even if they’re blogger tourneys. Why? Because

1. Although I love PLO8, I hate PLO.
2. I can’t catch a break in PLO.
3. I’m usually (slightly) tilted after playing a PLO tourney…if not I’m at least a little ticked off.

So after busting out early I hit the NL SnGs…and it wasn’t pretty. When I didn’t make a mistake it was either a cooler or a flip and I couldn’t win either one of them. Especially disturbing: I had some tighty Mc tight tables tonight and every time we got to the bubble or near it, I tried to put the pressure on…didn’t work out all that well. I guess I’ll be back on thursday…until then gl at the tables and enjoy the random pic dump…

As I’m filling in for a colleague of mine I’m pretty much too tired to play at night. So, I didn’t play, at all, since my last post. What I did was my usual reading some stuff routine. I had ordered a good load of books over the last few months and I’ve been reading them, thoroughly, for the last few weeks.

Here’s a list of my newest additions:

1. Alan Schoonmaker – Your Best Poker Friend: Increase Your Mental Edge and Maximize Your Profits: Increase Your Mental Edge (read)
2. Alan Schoonmaker – Your Worst Poker Enemy: Master the Mental Game (I’m currently reading this one)
3. Gus Hansen – Every Hand Revealed (ToDo)
4. Tom Schneider – OOPS! I Won Too Much Money: Winning Wisdom from the Boardroom to the Poker Table (ToDo)
5. David Sklansky – No Limit Hold’em: Theory and practice ( ToDo )

Some good stuff there, I’m almost done with YWPE…so I’ll get to Gus’ book next…should be fun I guess…on another note: if I feel like it, I guess I’ll play a little over the weekend, we’ll see…if not…you’ll read about my newest adventures come next thursday (bank holiday…so looooong weekend thursday to sunday….wheeeeeeeeeee )

…not much poker today either…just some quick HU action where I crushered my opposition. I’m off to catch some sleep now…after all it’s my birthday today…so I should be well rested for the afternoon/evening action (not poker action)…

Happy birthday me…30…I feel old 🙄

…move along 😉

Just another quick session tonight…4 SnGs…2Ws…in and out in less than an hour…good enough for tonight…hopefully some more poker content as the week progresses…we’ll see…

Crushing some fool headsup quickly…grinding in a PLO8 headsup match for an hour…get sucked out on when the blinds are huge…then switch to bodog…get “crushed” in two headsup matches…my favourite was the exit in the second one…A9 s00ted vs A3o…I raise on the button…he calls…flop comes down A39…wheeee….money goes in…turn blank….river 3….the beeeeeyooooty…I’m outta here before I puke… 😕

Quite a nice feeling if you play in total peace…making all the right moves at the right times…and having most of your hands hold up. Noice. Played just a quickie tonight…four SnGs…four ITM…3rd 1st 2nd 1st…noice. I’m outta here…

Played the now usual 9-handed SnGs a little today…no joy in either one of them…managed to squeeze into the money once (3rd), bubbled 3 times…busted out earlier 4 times…yuck.

Then I played a little four-card bingo courtesy of Saturdays with Dr. Pauly…my starting table included the host himself and the action was pretty wild early on. I managed to dump more than half of my stack against Aces…I knew he had them…but after the turn gave me a straight- + flush-draw along with the good old trips and two pair draw I just couldn’t fold…I guess I could have gone broke here, too…but didn’t. I managed to bust out soon enough though…AKJx against QQxx and TTxx…I flopped the ace…turned two pair…but managed to lose to a straight on the river…oh well…bingo…reverse…after that I watched the rest of the tourney and saw Waffels do pretty good…until he busted out in fifth. Seems he’s back into the same routine as me in recent MTTs…”Do well until you can see the finish line…then manage to crap into your pants infront of the stall-door”…too bad…I would have loved to see him win another one…

Anyway…I’m outta here…time to catch some sleep and maybe the (SnG-) World will look brighter tomorrow…

You all heard me complaining, whining and moaning for the last few weeks….well, ever since I came back…it’s a mix of “bad luck”, emotionality and selective memory I guess…and I’m trying hard to change my attitude atm. Thinking positive is my new (and old) mantra…and while it’s tough to stay positive when you’re running into coolers left and right and can’t have a hand hold up (when it counts), I’m trying…hard.

Today I made a switch that I didn’t plan on doing…it was some sort of spur-of-the-moment thing…although the (little) reasoning behind it is quite straight forward:

Fact 1: I’ve been running bad the last few weeks – at least in my own biased opinion.
Fact 2: Ever since I upgraded to a 24″ screen I never play less than four tables/SnGs at once.
Fact 3: I love to play shorthanded…more action…you don’t need a monster every hand…
Fact 4: I like to play turbos…not because they give me a decisive edge…nope…because they got the perfect time-frame for me to stay really focussed (max. 45min)…

Combine those facts and you’ve got: pressure. Pressure because it’s six handed. Pressure bcause only the top two pay. Pressure because of the turbo format. Pressure because of the multi-tabling. Pressure because of the rake*…Pressure…

So I thought…are all those facts benefiting your game, which is a rather patient/passive game with select aggression. The answer is a big fat no…and while I’m not willing and able to switch to an optimal game right away (which would probably be a game which is not a turbo, involves more skilled players who can actually fold second pair no kicker, etc), I did make a switch to a “better game” for the moment. To make a long story short, I switched to full table SnGs…still playing four at once…still playing the turbo format…but still I’ve seen an improvement in my results. Now I won’t be fooled into believing that one session (10SnGs) is anywhere near a representative sample, as we all know that’s not the case and short-term luck can bias those results in a huge way…but I’ve seen a change in attitude right away. Now don’t get me wrong…I’ve run into the same cooler and bs hands on and off the bubble in those SnGs – the big difference was the effect those hands had on me.

It would be a lie to tell you that they didn’t have any effect on me. They sure did and I made some nice screengrabs (which I will omit here)…the point is that I didn’t feel the urge to break something…or chase or do something stupid in the other SnGs or the following SnGs, which is huge for me. What adds to that positive feeling is that the payout structure of those 9-handed SnGs fits me well. If I win just one out of 4, I turn a (small) profit – which isn’t a big break in a monetary sense, but it’s huge mentally at least for me. That’s the first difference to the 6-handed SnGs where winning one isn’t enough to turn a profit. Now it’s a given that winning a 9-handed SnG should be harder than winning a 6-handed SnG (1/9 to 1/6)…but in reality it isn’t as the three added wildcards are likely to bust themselves and/or others in the process.

So…to make a long story short, I’ll try to play those from now on and we’ll see what happens…just watch this space, hopefully with more of the “hey look here what I did today/this week, happy”-posts and less of the “oooh, whine, bad beat, unhappy”-posts…oh…and btw…today was my first winning session in quite a while…wheee….played 10 in total…3W, 1x 2nd…which is enough for me to be up 4.9 buyins…not bad 😉

* it’s hard to believe how much rake you’re really paying…all those 50 cent here, 1 dollar here really adds up over time…I know that the higher limit players will probably laugh at those numbers, but for a (really) small time grinder like me they’re mind-boggling…especially if you didn’t even keep track…ever since I got Tourneymanager those are directly on my screen though…and they tell me that I payed 640$ in SnG-fees in the last 12months…now that’s quite a number to overcome if your bankroll is around xxx$ to low xxxx$ 😯

Started the session of with a little headsup action to get me going. My opponent was really weak, he caught a good rush early on though…still wasn’t enough to win for him…I overcame a 2.2k/800 deficit to bust him. Then I turned my attention to some 6 handed SnGs and I still can’t catch a break on the bubble. I’m not saying that I was totally unlucky, after all you’re supposed to lose a few there, it was just that every time we were on the bubble it’s a huge stack (who caught good early or right before the bubble) and some other guy scraping around with me. Maybe it’s time to turn down the aggression factor on the bubble…I honestly don’t know…but really I don’t see myself folding AT, AJ, etc in that spot on the bubble…too bad that this week is AJ (vs my AT), AQ (vs my AJ) week…oh well…they can’t wake up with a hand all the time no can they…so I’ll be back trying to grind it out tomorrow…maybe I can finally turn things around and score a winning session again… 😐

Man what a brutal session it was today…I can’t put my finger on it…but something is awefully wrong these days. I’m spewing chips like an ATM…it’s not even funny anymore. I can’t put on a winning session anymore and I’ve finally managed to evaporate 2/3 of my bankroll. Downswing? Bad play? Bad luck?

I honestly don’t know…but I’m trying to get some insight on this by going back to some analyzing and more extensive record keeping…on that note: I played 18 SnGs…won 2, finished second in 1, bubbled 5 times and busted out earlier in 10…now those are no pretty numbers.

All I know is that of the 5 times I bubbled I had the best hand going in 5 out of 5 times. Aces…cracked…Kings…cracked….Kings…cracked…etc…I got sucked out on in 4 of the other early finishes…sucked back in both wins…won 0 coinflips (yes I counted 😉 )…ran overpairs to the board into yet another higher overpair thrice…lost with dominated hands four times…all in all I would say: hmm…pretty unlucky with some bad decisions in between…(I guess I could have survived at least one of the overpair vs overpair situations…if your opponent puts in the third raise preflop and you hold jacks…seeing a flop of T63…you should be able to get away from it when he open pushes…then again…I’m soooo curious these days…why? Because ppl don’t play like they’re supposed to (surprise, surprise)….

Here’s a pic to send you off…it’s entitled “My Night”

I’m off…and if the decline is continuing at this pace I’m going to be off for an extended period…no doubt…