From playing and running good to playing so-and-so and running “bad”…hehe…how fast poker does it. Oh well, all in all I’ll have to look at some of the hands again, but I can’t be too bummed despite dropping 220BB today and dropping the equivalent of another 139BB in SnGs…just some of these days where you got no chance in hell. Kings? Opponent Aces! You straight? Opponent bigger straight! You straight your opponent set? Board pairs! etc…

I’m outta here…

Still doing my thing, still grinding NL20 over at Cake, still loving it. That pretty much sums it up. I feel good, play good and might I say I still run good. I know that sooner or later reality will set in again, but honestly I don’t see myself running that much over ev, although PT3 is indicating otherwise (and honestly, 12.33BB/100 over the last 2.1k hands is pretty massive).

Why do I say that I don’t feel it? Because I can’t believe how often I will sit with the nuts (or close to it) and my opponent will either donkshove into the shiznuts, or pays off with less than stellar holdings (to say the least).

Anyway…I’m happy grinding out a profit again tonight…enjoy the pic dump and I’m outta here…

…I’ve been here for years, etc etc 😉

After poker has been kicking me in the junk over at both PokerStars and FullTilt – the latter kicking me in the junk rush style, quick and all the more painful – i had decided that I needed a break from poker.

Indeed I did take a break (June – August), time to reflect, figure out if I really wanted to continue this “hobby” at all. Sure enough, as you can see in this post, I came to the conclusion that, indeed, I wanted to continue, despite all the (small) highs and (big) lows.

This time I decided to go another route though. Bye bye Full Tilt, bye bye Stars, let’s see what else is out there. In the end I came across an interesting offer over at pokersavvy. A rakeback deal for cake poker, handing me back 33% of the rake. Cake, a site where traffic is not all that high (I’ve yet to see more than 5k ppl at any given time I played), but also a site without the PT3-HUD, etc.

All in all, I’m please with the results so far. Results? Why should they even matter? Well, because even if you don’t play “results oriented”, you gotta have some results or you’ll be busto. So far, I’ve managed to find my rhythm again, posting more winning than losing sessions, running “good” for once, etc. So I’m currently in my zone (NL20, 10$ SnGs, etc), where I enjoy the game and play every now and then – no pressure.

That’s all for now, now to the major pic dump. Part #1 is the “worst of” since my last post and (for now) the final chapter in FTP/Stars rants. Part #2 is for the new chapter “cake” so far (end of August until now). Enjoy…

Part #1:

Part #2:

Hehe…bored, so what do you do? Right, reload at FTP to hook yourself up to the Rush-Crack-Machine…who could pass a 100$ bonus offer? Hehe…

Dumped a few bucks making stupid moves, the biggest money drains were the usual hands though:

1. Pop it from the hijack with AsKs…get repopped, shove..instacall by Ah Kh…the rest is the usual

2. Call a raise in the BB with 77, shorty comes along in MP. Flop 8T6 all spades. Check, check, small bet. Call by me, shorty calls all-in short. Turn 9c. Straight baby. Check, small bet, min-raise, call. River 9s. Yikes. Check, ultra-small bet, donk call. Of course he rivered a boat.

3. Pop it from the hijack with AJs000000ted. Flat call from the button – hmm. Flop AJ6 all hearts though. Don’t care, bet pot, repop, shove, instacall by AcKc. Noice. Turn 6…river K…fuck me…

4. Pop it from UTG with QQ, small repop BB, call. Flop 688 bet, shove…ponder ponder…if you got me you got me – of course he got me, what was I thinking? lol

The new found ev tells me that I deserved to lose a little, but it also shows that I’ve been running nicely under ev…surprised? Not really. Anyway..not really pissed off, just tired and outta here…

…still nowhere near the money, close to the points though. It all started out pretty nicely, I don’t have my stats here as I switch to the laptop during the first break, but I can tell you this much:

1. Lucky: I got a shit-load of “monster hands” during the first hour, not such much the pocket pairs, but the AK/AQ hands…I think I had AKs thrice, AKo twice, AQs twice, AQo thrice, Aces, Kings once Queens.
2. Lucky: I flopped quads in the second hand with 33 on a K33 flop…
3. Unlucky: not much action though with most of the hands, even lost the usual “flip” with AQ vs JT…

In the second hour the deck cooled off considerably and the play is mostly a blurr. Two hands stick out…the first one was the following gem of a hand – you fold for 3-4 orbits straight as you look down at rag after rag after rag and face races everytime you’re in the blinds. This time you look down at Kings though…I like! What I don’t like is the instacall of my opponent preflop. Sure enough Aces…flop brings him the set and I’m pretty much out the door right before the second break, but wait, there’s two more cards to come.

After that play is mostly a blurr again as I fold and fold and fold. The next interesting hand comes up once I repop a standard raise preflop with JJ…sure enough I get instacalled by the monster KTs. I flop a Jack and my opponent is drawing dead on the turn. Life! Break time.

After that I pretty much fold myself to death again. I got a lot of monster-stacks, including the host himself at my table and one of them is putting the pressure on fa-shizzle and I’m nowhere near claiming the bounty on Smokkee’s head. Once I folded two orbits again I think it’s time to make a move with 15BB. I open for a standard raise, which represents 1/3 of my stack. I get repopped all-in. Hmmm….what level of thinking should I apply here? Any suggestions welcome (my thought process was rather difficult)…I decided to go with it…to my dismay my opponent shows me the usual AKo and I’m dominated, but wait…Qxx flop…wow…now I’m a big favourite, only need to dodge 3 outs twice…turn x….river A….booooooom headshot. Still disappointed about that river, but let’s be objective: he put his money in good…best in best out…still sucks though, but what are you going to do, at least I got knocked out with the second best hand for once 😉

So, I bust out in 16th of 45…two hours of poker fun…no money…insane rhythm and no sleep…wheeee….I’ll be back for next season, if there is one.

So…before I head to bed…I would like to take the chance for two quick thank yous:

1. Thanks to Smokkee for hosting!
2. Thanks to Bodog for all the extra added T$, cool stuff there!

I’m out…night night….

Well, well…wanted to play some poker as usual tonight, but no joy. For the first time in more than 6 years I’m having internet connection problems. I’m able to connect, barely, but with such a painfully slow transfer rate that playing is unthinkable (I’m on a 6MBit connection and my current downstream is 6kb/s). Hopefully my provider will have this sorted out by tomorrow or else I’ll have to kick some butt… Edit: …and just as I’m posting this my connection is back to normal (down > 600kb/s)…oh well…4:30am…no way I’m playing now….time to catch some sleep End Edit
No poker for me today, but still some poker “news”. I’ve been working on a little project, namely translating (half) of the PokerSavvy (aff) site into german. It’s been a long process and it was finally done some weeks ago…the graphics guru still didn’t get around to redo all the graphics (so they’re still in english), but at least the pure content is in german now.

Hopefully it’ll bring in a lot of hungry bonus hunters from the ever growing poker community over here in germany…if you want to practice your german, head on over to the german version and check it out…

Not much poker to talk about in the last few days. I was madly busy with some uni stuff, so not much poker playing. When I did play though I got ripped of royally. As you may know I started a new bonus hunt at Poker.com and every since my first deposit I get kicked in the junk, big time, every time, every single god damn time.

I think this could very well become the worst bonus hunt in history, apart from maybe my nine poker disaster. Every single time I hold a good hand, I trap someone into giving me all his chips – the bad news is that every single time, at least it seems to be that way, they catch their damn miracle card, AK vs Ax, AQ vs Ax, K10 vs K7, etc etc. On the other hand I run into cold deck after cold deck. Always nice to see AJ vs AQ headsup, Ace + two rags hits the board…hmm…QQ vs Ax…no chance….Jacks vs Kx…no chance, etc etc…I’m about to lose it…even worse: as if the junk kicking isn’t bad enough, I grinded out the HUUUUGE amount of 400 Comp Points….well….only 14600 more to go….d’oh!

Maybe I should stop reading Waffles as it seems that I caught the Waffles virus*… 😉

*Waffles Virus aka opponents’ relentless runner-runner-goodness aka 80+% equals no chance aka I can trap them all I want they will find a way to get lucky aka …

Tonight I finished the grind over at Pacific Poker. Wow, less than two weeks and I grinded out the 250 Comp Points which are necessary to clear the PokerSavvy (aff) bonus. Nice that I was able to do it that fast and only losing a minimum (non of my original deposit, but some of the initial signup bonus) in the process. Insane, that 250 Comp Points really means that 2500$, yes 2.5k, were wagered to get those points. Seeing that the Comp Point conversion rate is ridiculous in relation to the accumulation formula of those points – priceless (10$ wagered = 1 Comp Point, 100 Comp Points = 1$, !lol!).

After the successful completion of the bonus, I decided to take some time off, watch some tv…and “tape” the on-going blogger game while doing so. The wonders of the modern interweb…beautiful…I’ll have my very own “high stakes poker”-show to watch tomorrow…and boy…after taking a peek, it’s going to be worth watching (I only saw one hand so far and it was sick, not Gus Hansen vs Daniel Negreanu for 600k sick, but sick…let’s just say 45o flopped a full house, which was no good after pocket aces improved to a better full house on the turn!)…

I’m not in the position to publish the video, at least I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing so without asking the players involved and everything which is a little too time consuming and most players wouldn’t want it to show up anyway (?!), so I’ll probably just retell some of the hands, if any other interesting hands are in it…or maybe not, we’ll see…

On another note: as a internet player, what’s your stance on “taping” such a game? Cool, not cool?

So…I played in a Skat (see Wikipedia if you’re not familiar with this game, which is probably the case) tourney with my dad tonight. Usually I only play Skat in a friendly cash game (where you pay the difference in points won or lost), so playing in a tournament was quite different. The first table started pretty slowly and I didn’t get many games – which is sort of bad as the tourney consisted of only two rounds with 24 games total each. So after the first round I was pretty far behind already (nearly 1k in points which is nearly impossible to catch up). The draw for the second table was fun…I drew a seat at the “killer table” which hosted both the leader and the player in second position and boy oh boy they were on fire. The player in second after the first table played and won the first 6 hands, without any problems. The leader waited his spots and played a game here and there and the final 5 in a row…that left a whole of 4 games for me. Unreal…but unlike in Poker, in Skat you can’t play your opponents, you need to play the cards you’re dealt, so if they’re crap you’re out of luck. So…the second table was finished in a blink of an eye and we had to wait up until the other tables finished their play – which took about another half an hour. The points were calculated (in tourney Skat you get additional points for every game you play and win, you get a minus of points for games you played and lost and the other two players get points for busting you in that game). So the final result was quite amusing: My dad – 3rd (the first player after the two card racks battling for first place almost in another world (points-wise)), me – second to last, lol. Oh well…it was a fun time 🙂

After I came home after the tourney I thought it was time for some “real cards”, lol, poker and BJ. I gotta say that I much like and dislike Blackjack for a number of reasons:

Likey:

1. Good way to grind out points towards clearing bonus(es)

2. With correct strategy, good chances to at least stay even (+/-) a little – at least in theory

Dislikey:

1. When the friggin dealer is dropping Blackjacks on your ass all the time (today the ratio was about 4:1 which isn’t really cool; everything in the region of 3:1 to 3:2 is alrighty, but 4:1, that’s a cold deck)

2. When you’re running hot, then running cold losing hand after hand to unreal hands (great 20, oooh 5 card 21, great 19, 5 cards 21, …etc)

So after grinding out nearly 40 points towards clearing my bonus at Pacific – and unfortunately dropping around 30 bucks in the process (well, I was way ahead in the first session, so I basically lost all that back + some more) – I decided to fire up the poker tables, but to no avail, I just couldn’t focus. So I took a walk to the couch and watched the European Poker Masters – Dublin Allstar Challenge which was running on Eurosport. There was even a german dude hanging at the final table, so it was quite cool. Not so cool: stopping the show once down to the final four. How stupid is that? Now I can go ahead and check the schedule for the next x days to find the damn second part. Stupid!

After the cooldown I fired up PokerStars to blow off some steam and what better way to do it than to play in a turbo donkey tourney in my new favourite game – Razz. So I jumped into a two-table tourney for nearly two bucks (lol) and opened the donkey/monkey/radio-box. Not only did the players not know what hit ’em, they also didn’t know what they were doing. Needless to say that I busted out rather early as they donks were in hot pursuit. They were running after me like the bulls in Pamplona, lol. And sure enough they tackled me and smacked the shit out of me with their “powerful” donk hands clearly behind at least a card, but strong enough to outdraw me by hitting the obvious perfect perfect about 99.9999999999999999999999% of the time 😉

So…I’m good now…off to read me some Little Green Book which I started to read yesterday…have a great weekend and may the anti-donk-force be with you…..heeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

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 🙂