…let the donkeys in, but watch out and don’t let them run you over (too many times).

Played some SnGs (4 single table on FullTilt, 2 two table on PokerStars, 1 single table at UB) after coming back from my birthday bash. The only success I had was a second place on UltimateBet, all other finishes were outside the money (4th, 7th, 9th, 9th at FullTilt, 10th and 18th on Stars) – hands of the day: KK vs A4o and KK vs A9o…donks raise, I reraise and/or push All-In…they insta-call like they were holding the stone cold nuts…sure enough their donkey play is rewarded when an Ace hits the board….what to do, what to do?!

Hand History:
Seat 1: nokhead (2,060)
Seat 2: ak_girl18 (1,590)
Seat 3: pokerfan007 (1,455), is sitting out
Seat 4: Lewdini (1,765)
Seat 5: Danegus (1,395)
Seat 6: Ingoal (1,420)
Seat 7: BigRedDanK (1,675)
Seat 8: JBHAWKEYES (1,420)
Seat 9: gsrob (720)
JBHAWKEYES posts the small blind of 25
gsrob posts the big blind of 50
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [Kd Kh]
nokhead folds
ak_girl18 folds
pokerfan007 folds
Lewdini calls 50
Danegus raises to 150
Ingoal raises to 1,420, and is all in
BigRedDanK folds
JBHAWKEYES folds
gsrob folds
Lewdini folds
Danegus calls 1,245, and is all in
Ingoal shows [Kd Kh]
Danegus shows [As 9c]
Uncalled bet of 25 returned to Ingoal
*** FLOP *** [Qd Ad 7h]
*** TURN *** [Qd Ad 7h] [Qs]
*** RIVER *** [Qd Ad 7h Qs] [4d]
Ingoal shows two pair, Kings and Queens
Danegus shows two pair, Aces and Queens
Danegus wins the pot (2,915) with two pair, Aces and Queens

On one hand all the donkeys playing are really good for all of us, as they’re the main source of the money that goes into our pockets, but on the other hand they’re the ones taking the money from us (in the short run) and what is even more important is that they’re getting to us, or is it just me? – I guess it’s gotta be so much easier to be a donkey from a mental point of view: if you win (with the best hand, by sucking out, who cares?) you’re the king of the world, if you lose there’s always tomorrow and nothing to worry about…after all you didn’t put much effort into your play, so why worry? One thing’s for sure though: I don’t want to be a donkey, I’m in it to win it – although “winning” is hard to define: basically I like the equation “up amount/percentage x over amount of time y“ where x -> infinity and y > some months/years. Variance is part of poker, so the reality is that you can’t win every hand, but it’s still hard to accept when you’re losing a big hand to a donkey, yet again.

In the end it all comes down to the fact that luck or “getting lucky/sucking out” is just another facet of poker – after all this is the fuel that drives the donkeys: if they were punished for their donkey play at all times, there would be no donkeys left in the games soon enough, as they couldn’t win many hands – let me rephrase that to they could win as many hands, but (almost) no big pots!

Now that I’ve got that off my chest I’ll do what I do best: vent (done with this post), log off for today and come back with a vengeance tomorrow….heeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaw! 😉

Yup, today (already past midnight here, so it’s April 17th) is my birthday! So I guess I won’t squeeze to many hands in over the day or night, so I played a little now…4 SnGs…1x 1st, 2x 2nd, 1x 4th…Nice…I guess the poker gods are in a giving mood as it’s my birthday 😉

Alrighty…I’m outta here…a now 28 year old git shouldn’t be online at 2:30am… 😉

Catch you all on tuesday (WWdN)…

Massive rant ahead…move along…there’s nothing much to see….you’ve been warned!

Sometimes it’s hard to believe in the “skill part” of poker, especially after losing hand after hand after hand to crappy, dominated hands. I guess the low limit SnGs and ring games I’m currently playing shouldn’t be classified as poker, they should be classified as “donkey-stack-slinging-odds-defying-card-game”…the sad part about this form of the game is that raises, odds and cards for that matter are irrelevant. So it gives you no edge to be a 90% favourite with your hands…it’s like every player is playing in the dark – all the time…so luck 99.9999…9%, skil 0.000000…1% – the skill you need is to NOT go insane putting up with this crap….examples:

Stars SnGs:

1. AQs vs Q10o in the first hand, flop comes down Q-8-2 rainbow…I bet…he raises All-In…hmm maybe a set…but I guess not…call…turn is a 10 enough said
2. AJo vs Q10o, rivered flushes are nice if you’re holding broadway
3. J10s vs Q9o – I raise preflop and go all-in on the J-10-6 flop, sure enough he calls (after all donkeys always draw – but then again: in some hands where I decide to draw because the odds are “in my favour” I tend to be kicked in the junk (17outs, or roughly 50% at that given time) – so I guess it would be best to rephrase the “donkeys always draw” part to “donkeys always draw and connect almost every time!”…) and the OESD hits on the river and IGHN

Now that I’ve got that out of my system I can come to the second part of this post which is rant free. I logged off Stars and opened FullTilt and played another low limit SnG there…nothing spectacular, besides that I didn’t get sucked out on more than once and that was when I was in commanding position…a nice little tourney and I even got to heads up play and in the end took it down! A win, a win…the joy. Now I’m going to get the hell out of dodge and get some rest…World Cup of Poker 2006 – Team Germany Qualifier coming up at 8am ET = 2pm here…wish me luck 🙂

Logged on after an evening of board games to find some card action, nothing much going on so I jump right into a donk-tastic SnG…first hand I’m dealt ducks (22) some limpers, one min-raise…I call…flop comes down 8-2-9 rainbow…I bet the pot…the original raiser pops another min-raise…I push…he calls with 77….nice, so he either needs a 7 or two running cards to make his straight…turn 6…river 10….bam! Although I love poker I could call it quits sometimes, am I too emotional about it? Probably, but I can’t help it…I guess I should order a titanium cup, at least the junk kickings won’t hurt as much then…

After that junk kicking in the first hand I looked around the tourney section and saw that there was one of the new WSOP Bracelet Races about to start. I checked my account and yup, one token left, so why not? 228 players entered, so the first two finishers are awarded a 2k WSOP package (1.500$ buyin to a WSOP tourney of choice + 500$ spending money) and the remaining final table players are ITM. I decided to play pretty tight, not taking any shots and so I played…grinded my way up to 2.2k in chips over the first few orbits, then looked down at AK…pop it up before the flop, one caller…flop and turn all low with a straight and flush chance…so I got the hell out of there…nothing much afterwards until I look down at AK again in the next orbit. I pop it up to 4xBB…one caller in LP…flop comes down K-10-9 two spades…now I hold the lovely TPTK once again, so I fire the pot…he reraises the pot…I go into the tank and think about what sort of hands would he call the preflop raise…not much info on the player, so I put him on a hand like K-x (if that x is a 9 or 10 I’m probably screwed) or two spades for a flush draw…so I raise the remaining 120 of my stack and I’m all in. He shows 9c-10c, so he was playing suited connectors, wanting to see a flop at all cost and connected perfectly…no help on the turn or river…and I’m out in 141st (of 228) after just 35 minutes of play. I guess I should have sticked with my original plan to abstain from playing until sunday (World Cup of Poker – Team Germany Qualifier), but the WSOP is starting to call my name…and I had to answer the call 😉

…so I didn’t feel like playing any ring games or bigger sngs/mtts today…just two hee-haw SnGs over at FullTilt. One 5th place one 4th place. Not bad, but this hee-haw playing is hurting me more than doing me any good…the play is just too awful. So I guess I’ll take a break for a day or two and come back recharged on sunday (I’ll try to win my way into the World Cup of Poker to represent my country: Germany! I couldn’t find the tourneys yet, but they’re in the schedule for 16th/17th April, so I guess they’ll appear once all the canadian/american satellites are finished…we’ll see….)

Stats of hee-haw:

1. Aces held: 0
2. Aces I ran into going broke in the process: 1
3. Aces cracked while I wasn’t involved: 2

A day out of the “I shouldn’t have opened FullTilt today”-series…the complete opposite of yesterday, which equals losing all I won yesterday times 2. Nice, not. Damn! Losing boat over boat isn’t fun, seeing a guy getting his Aces cracked twice within one orbit (in a donk-masters turbo token satellite: once vs J10o, once vs KK; personally I busted out 10th…no token baby) was fun though, no replacement for my xxx lost BBs though…god bless that I’m playing strictly micro/low limits these days…side note: bankroll at FullTilt nontheless is down to an all-time low 🙁

Played some more shorthanded low limit ring games and what can I say: I had fun! All the cards that I haven’t seen in ages kept hitting me in the face (AA twice within 1 orbit, KK, QQ, 10-10) and they all held up…this is the side of variance that makes it enjoyable to play – at least while it lasts.

After winning an insane amount of BBs I broke two promises:

1. That I’m never ever going to play a 1$ SnG on Full Tilt again
2. That I’m not going to play a SnG/MTT until my exams are over

It didn’t hurt though and I can really recommend the 1$ SnG as the ultimate tilt-test – why? Because the play is so friggin awful that it’s almost not even funny anymore…if your mission is to not get on insta-tilt though, it’s both a really hard test and fun at the same time (watching all the donks playing Ace-rag like it’s gold at all times, calling All-Ins for a pot of 60 chips, etc)…I held off the tilt until we were down to three-handed – the implied tilt odds were just too damn high to no do it (I’m in the SB, the BB lost two hands to crap hands in a row)…didn’t work out, but I’m smiling nontheless as I write this…time to catch some sleep now…night night.

After the disappointing results of the last few days I decided that a change was in order:

1. Focus on low limit ring games, like I said yesterday
2. Focus on playing the game
3. Play a good game with good decisions without trying too hard
4. …try to have fun in the process

So I sat down at numerous shorthanded low limit tables at FullTilt tonight and I did well. I avoided the old “second best is da nuts” style of play and was able to double and triple up numerous times – sidenote: hitting some nice flops helped too, no doubt 😉

The last hand was a total twist of my luck, but it didn’t put me on tilt or anything, I just said to myself: enough for the day and that’s that. Scenario: I hold A7o in the cutoff, BB+1 raises to 3xBB, I cold call…the others fold…flop: 2h-7c-Ac…BB+1 leads out with 9xBB…now I think she’s probably holding a strong Ace and isn’t chasing the flush…re-raise All-In…sure enough she shows AK which is far behind atm…turn floats my boat as the Ah hits…now enter the twist: river is the Kc…giving her Aces full of Kings over my Aces full of sevens….wow…rivered by a 3 outer…oh well…you can’t win ’em all 🙂

…making bad decisions because of it or along with it (- as in “trying too hard”) is a whole other matter. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m running bad or if it’s just that my game is off atm, but I caught myself doing some pretty stupid things tonight: I have to get up early tomorrow, so only a short session (1 Shorthanded SnG at FullTilt, 1 180SnG at Stars and some ring games)…and I caught myself “taking shots” more often than I needed to – we all know that you will have to win some coin-flips (and/or touch hands) in order to reach the top of a poker tourney, but only if the situation is in your favour (or if you’re desperate or if you truely feel that you’re ahead…): so I catch myself calling a hand down with nothing but TP and sure enough the paired board made trips for someone…now this isn’t bad luck, this is stupidity! In another hand I call off my stack with AQ high…running into a small pair in the process…
I think I should get my game straightened out again and focus on playing better…it’s hard these days with my last exams at uni coming up (next wednesday and friday) and the corresponding stress-level rising…so the question is if I should be playing atm at all…I guess not really, but a little game here or there won’t hurt so I’ll focus on playing some micro ring games and no tourneys/SnGs until the exams are over 😉

…so this post is all about moaning – if you’re running good don’t read any further or my “bad luck” might rub off on you 😉
No matter what I touch these days, it all turns into crap. Played a Stars 180, flop my broadway, get crushered by a runner flush – out 148th. Nice way to start off a session. Change of scenery and game: FullTilt PLO8 ring game, I’m prepared to shout “Scoooop”, but either my hand get’s counterfeited or I even lose the whole hand (4 to the wheel on the flop, …no low)…sweet, bye bye 3 Buyins…

Back to Stars, another SnG, single table as the cheapo 180s aren’t running…J-9…flop 8-9-9…sure enough some CB holds A9…Ace on the turn (not that he needed it – just for good measure..) …damn!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [And yes I know that calling his big bet at the river is/was questionable…he might as well have had a crap flush already made on the turn which would have had me beat…but I did put him on Ax…which was true, didn’t think it was A9 though…]

Alrighty…enough moaning for today…off to watch the latest episode of Las Vegas… 🙂