That’s the angle my cards made in contrast to yesterday. No chance in hell…5 Card Draw…thank you for making the second best hand at crucial times (incidently it was always a 1-card vs 1-card draw, I hold two pair, my opponent holds a flush or gutshot draw, guess who’s draw get’s there). Same goes for Razz and NL in a token satellite.

Last hope: WWdN…no joy…get Aces early…win small pot…then invest invest invest…no joy…Once I’m down to half my starting stack I bluff off half my remaining stack on a busted nut flush draw…and the rest is history…out in 29th of 44…oh well, at least I had a good time with V and the others at the table…

*lol*

Had a pretty bad run today, just couldn’t catch a break. Made wrong decision after wrong decision running into hands like it was the norm (JJ vs QQ, AJ vs AQ, 77 vs 88, etc etc). So, it sucked pretty badly today, but hey, there’s always tomorrow and that’s why I decided to quit for the day rather quickly.

I just came across Daniel Negreanu’s latest video blog – the mullet chop, funny stuff! Enjoy…

So…I started the heads-up series against Veneno today. We decided to stick to my original “challenge” schedule of the following matches:

1. NL HE (L)
2. Pot Limit Omaha 8b (L)
3. Razz (W)
4. 7 Stud
5. PL HE
6. Pot Limit Omaha
7. HORSE

So…we started with the NL Hold’em and I sucked, sort off. Couldn’t get past the poison as she was hammering away on me, figuratively and literally, for the whole game. She took an early lead and I just couldn’t put her on a real hand, just on the “I know what you got? – Oh really? – Yes, you got what we call the best hand”-type of hand. So I was down, but not out, quite quickly before fighting back to take the interim chiplead. After that another downward spiral hit and I was soon very low on chips. The final hand was true poison style…I look down at AQ…ooh wee…but I have only around 2xx chips left, so no doubt she’ll call (almost with any 2)…she shows A3…the rest is history…

So..down 0-1…and off to the second match. Pot Limit Omaha High/Low split. Hmm tasty, directly from the torture chamber of hell…lol…after all we know that there can be some wild shit flying around your ears in this game, which makes it both fun and excruciatingly painful sometimes…the match is a blur as I can’t remember many hands…early on I took the chiplead with a scoop…took down another few smaller pots before giving back most of it and then some…the last hand was 10-8-6-2…board comes 10-8-6…I overplay my three-pair and we get the money in…V shows 7-9-9-K for the straight…I don’t improve and busto….0-2, yikes.

After that we head over to the Razz-table and I think ran away with the match. The cards fell my way and I was even able to bluff a little here and there. In the last hand I held a chiplead of 2600 to 400 and sucked out on 6th and 7th street…ooooh the sweet taste of triple atomic antidote…lol…should have used that in the first two matches too 😉

So…I’m down 1-2 after 3 matches and it’s crunch time! Really looking forward to the next matches! You better be ready V, I sure will be 🙂

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 🙂

…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…

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…