It’s weird how everytime something REALLY bad happens in the world, you tend to not only remember it for a long time, but also where you were/what you were doing when it happened. I still remember it like it was yesterday. 9/11/01 started out like every other day for me as I was chilling at home during the semester break from uni. I got up in the morning, enjoy my breakfast and newspaper and went on to play some XBox later on. Once I turn on the tv, flipping through the channels looking for nothing special, just zapping, I came to channel 23 (which is CNN on my tv) and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

I sat there in shock as the whole thing was evolving in front of the world’s eyes. As soon as the second plane hit, I knew that there was something horribly wrong…I watched the whole day until there was nothing new to report anymore…friends were calling in to talk about it and we all couldn’t believe what was going on. An attack on the USA? With american planes? In the middle of NY City? Wtf is going on? Is the world gone insane…

As I type this, six years later, I still can’t figure out how someone could do something like this and so all that is left for me is to say: my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their friends and families…may something like this NEVER happen again…

Crosspost from Ingoal.info

Remember that I made a purchase in the PokerStars FPP Store not long ago? Underpromise and overachieve is the motto…promise delivery time of 6-8 weeks…deliver in under two weeks (order arrived this tuesday) with Online Order Tracking and the whole shebang…thanks PokerStars…you rock 🙂

Just one more week and it’s going to be High Stakes Poker time again. Season 4 will kick off next monday, 9PM on GSN, and I gotta say, I’m really looking forward to it.

Browsing through the player lineup, I came across the following pic:

Phil “Best Hold’em player in the world” aka “Cash game donkey” Hellmuth Jr. is making a return and look at his promo shot for his player profile, totally hawesome!

Shit out of luck, that’s how I feel on Stars these days. No matter how good, mediocre or bad I play a hand, I’m going to lose it if it’s a big pot. Now, it’s a given fact that you’re going to lose some matches due to errors, but it seems that I tend to lose the matches in the following order:

1. Getting unlucky.

2. Cooler.

3. Error.

It’s really frustrating to say the least. Today’s session had it all again, from the usual coolers (JJ vs KK, 77 vs QQ, AT vs AQ, etc) to the outright bs hands (QQ vs 62o overpair vs bottom pair…bottom pair obv good by the river when he hits his bs “kicker”, 56 vs 45 two pair vs straight draw…..gutter ball obv good). So sick I could puke. Unreal how bad I’ve been running the last few days, it’s not even funny. I had a look at some of the more “entertaining” hands and there’s a small error percentage on my part as far as I can tell – e.g. “slow playing” in some spots (e.g. not betting the pot, but half of it if I put the opponent on less than 6 outs) isn’t really an error in headsup, unless your opponent hangs around to catch the gutterball (or some other low percentage draw)…then he looks like a (idiot errrm) genius. The prime example was the QQ vs 62o hand. I raise it to 3BB preflop. He calls. 6BB in the pot. Flop comes  Tx2. I fire out half the pot. He calls. Turn 6. I lead out and he raises. I think a while and can’t put him on a hand that makes sense. How could the 6 help you here? So I push and he obv insta-calls. River brick. Well…how can I dodge that bullet? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. How can you call preflop with 62o? Well, easy, if you hit two pair or better you can bust a big pair, all good. But after you hit your duck with no kicker, how can you call on the flop? It’s a mistery to me, but oh well…

So…I’m going to take a break at PokerStars for a few days as it’s obvious that I can’t win anything on there atm. I mean, I’m not ready to get out the tinfoil-hat just yet, but it’s starting to get mad annoying. Everytime I’m about to bust a move again (e.g. hitting bankroll x) I run into such a bullshit run on Stars…amazing. Oh well…WSOP is about over…I’m annoyed with PS…so I’m going to take a break and focus on some FullTilt action for now.

…that’s exactly what I did after the shitty run on Stars. The result, one bubble and two wins. Amazing…I’m out….

So beautiful. I really managed to walk into every god damn donkey there is on Stars. Even third pair was good enough to call me down on straight and flush heavy boards with overcards galore…didn’t matter. At least I managed to lose only some chips to get the valuable information that my opponents wouldn’t fold ANY pair. Good stuff, unless you get so card dead that you miss the flop 17 times in a row. So beautiful. After that I managed to push A9 into AJ, AT into AQ, AQ into AK…all headsup…pretty hawesome. All in all I managed to pull out one W in four matches.

After that I jumped over to Full Tilt and played some Razz and NL headsup. Managed to win both although it seemed that I wouldn’t. In the Razz one it was brutal. Start with the best hand, brick out. Start with the best hand, brick out. So I had him down to 300 three times before I was finally able to bust him. So sick. Oh well…at least I did win in the end…still makes me want to puke, it’s just ridiculous…

…is almost as good as Vinnie Vinh’s chair, almost. It managed to cash today, lol. Not twice, but at least once. Not too bad. How did it come that far? This afternoon a mate of mine contacted me about an online-tourney at MermaidPoker (no link love for you suckers). A friend of his is running a (real life) poker series in the area and they had a nice price left over, so they decided to play a online-tourney for it. First price poker vacation to Copenhagen, Denmark including airfare, hotel and buyin to the tourney – all in all a 3k value. Buyin was 5+0.50$. Nice tourney with only a few runners. So I download the software and register. Then I deposit some money and register for the tourney. Later I login again, or should I say I try to login again. It doesn’t work. I try a few times before trying the “lost pw”-feature. That doesn’t work either. So I wait a few minutes before trying again – nothing. Then again – nothing. So I contact support – nothing. I try again a few hours later – pw recovery is working, yeeehaaaw. I try to login and it says “no no, you entered a wrong password too often, your account is locked for 24h for security purposes”. Errm thank you suckers, my tourney is starting soonish. So I contact support again and finally get someone to respond to me. After I email all the requested things – nothing. Thank you very much, you won’t see me play one god damn hand at your crappy site.

So…my mate contacted me earlier tonight and told me that I had cashed in the tourney. “You’re in the money. 8th place. 11$” and I’m laughing my ass off. On one hand I’m really pissed about missing the opportunity to win a 3k package for 5 bucks, on the other hand I’m glad that my chair pulled off this amazing feat – at least I didn’t lose any money and I’ve got something funny to blog about 😉

So…let’s get down to the fugly part, which is all so normal these days. The daily rant, brought to you by fucking god damn fugly situations (TM).

I start the session with some headsup and I drop the first four matches in a row. I can’t win a god damn hand. No 60/40, no 40/60, no 50/50, nothing. I lose to sick straight flushes (one outer gutter ball) sucked out two pair, etc etc. Oh and yes, every time I’ve got the idiot end of a straight, someone will have the upper end, no doubt (that cost me two matches, one directly and one by crippling me).

So I jump to six handed and soon enough we’re down to headsup. I’ve got a nice lead, then I look down at presto, which is allegedly gold, but not headsup, he shows JJ. The next hand he raises preflop and as I’ve played a lot of hands with him so far I put him on ace rag. Why? Because he had raised with nothing else so far (I know because I called him down every single time or he called me down A3 vs my AQ, A4 vs my AT and he had lost both hands). I look down at QTo and decide to have a look. Flop comes down JT2…he insta-pushes…ah ha…I instacall and indeed he holds the oh so powerful A6o as expected. Turn Ace…cya. So fugly.

After that I played two more headsup matches. Won one, then lost one, so 1 in 6 for the night.

After that I jump back into the next six-handed one and things are looking good until I make a move with Kh9h in the SB. BB is the only bigger stack than me and I raised it 3BB preflop. He calls. Flop comes down Qh-4h-6d. I lead out 120 into the 180 pot, he reraises to 360. I call. Turn comes 6h. I check he pushes. Well…he was the BB and he could basically have ATC. But honestly, what hands am I afraid of here? Sure, I don’t particularly like the paired board, but I think I’ve got the best hand. So I call…and what does he have? 6s4s…can you believe that god damn bullshit. It was s00ted, so I can understand the donkbox call preflop. Then on the flop he’s golden with two pair and then the god damn dealer peels off the god damn 6h instead of one of the other 8 hearts to bust me. So fugly, but all too fitting into my current run. Everytime I’ve got a monster, someone got a monster+1.

I’m sooooooo damn mad now I could play on and on, but I see that it’ll lead to nothing. I mean come on. I play against calling station after calling station and I chop them down and chop them down, then just in time they catch enough to get it all back and then some. The best example was one really bad fish. I chop him down and hold a 2:1 chiplead. Then he goes on a tear hitting TP or better every single time it comes to showdown. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t normally know if I didn’t have a god damn hand in each of those hands, too. He TPBP, me MPBP, He TPTK, me TPSK, etc etc. So sick. I’ll leave you with a random pic dump of the nice hands of the night…I’ll probably see some of you at Kat’s rebuy donkfest tomorrow night…apart from that I’ll stay the hell away from poker as it’s really fucking with my head these days…

Calling a raise preflop, then calling on the flop with nothing but a god damn gutterball…maybe I should have layed it down on the turn, but I didn’t see how I can put him on 45o there…

Once again…how can I put him on 64 there? I mean yeah, if he put me on a flushdraw on the flop, his push on the turn should have been the warning sign, but I didn’t feel like folding there.

Here’s the good old cooler, not that bad, after all I didn’t have to push that hard there. I could waited for a better spot. That being said, I’ve still got plenty chips left after the hand.

But this next one is just as I describe it above, I knew exactly what he had and I was 100% sure I had the best hand…sure enough the three twenty-five aces in the deck are enough for one to come off on the turn…

Yet another classic. I chop him down to 1k. He comes back like a madman as I can’t catch a god damn thing and each and everytime I try to move him off a hand he has at least TP. Oh well…at least this one ended the match pretty painless…three outs on the flop…two outs on the turn to kill me…nice.

Similar to the one above, I can’t catch a break once I’m far ahead, my best shot would have been to push all-in every god damn hand, I guess I may have won that way. The way it was, I got down low again…pushed…and he was s00ted.

That sounds about right. Today’s play was both awful and awfully painful. I’ve seen it all today, from the lovely case-card (one outer), to the usual two, three and four outer to the usual cold-deck bs.

Sooooo fugly. I start HU and win the first three matches easily. No flips, no all-ins preflop, I get my opponents to put in their money drawing very slim and they don’t catch. Nice. Next thing you know I’ve dropped 6 matches in a row and a nice string of bs hand…from the usual 88 vs KK…to the AT vs Q6 (guess the river card)…to the case card, everything in there brother.

I’ll spare you the other screenshots as they make me wanna puke even while uploading them. So I’m three out of 10 and I seriously consider quitting as it’s obvious that I won’t make any dough today. Instead I decide to fill the dozen. So I win the 11th match and then in the 12th match the same bs again and I decide to quit NL for the night (5/12).

So I fire up a PLO8 game and the same bs over and over again. I start with the best hand and guess what, I can’t make a hand, not even if my life depended on it. Then it’s finally time to have the best hand, my opponent catches perfect to quarter me on the river. After that I was basically tilted and ready to close friggin PS, but I finished the match. The next hand seals the deal…very nice to see yet another case card…wheeeeeeee….gives me enough to finally hang myself….

In remotely Tilt related news, Amazon managed to ship out my newest order yesterday, so the Full Tilt Strategy Guide Tournament Edition should arrive tomorrow or something….nice…finally a new read…

Not much poker playing today, just the usual bit of headsup. Played 7 matches and managed to win 4 of them, should have been 6, but hey, I can’t do much more than put my money in way ahead. The most beautiful match was against a real aggressive oberbetting donk. I let him run me over, time and time again, then when it was time to get payed off big time he sucked out on me on the river. His advice 2 sec after the suckout: Dude, buy a book, you’re awful. *lol* *lol* *lol* I didn’t even get into arguing with this donk, because it would be a total waste of my time, I just told him “ah, we have another gracious suckout winner. gg enjoy”. So beautiful how some donks behave on the faceless interweb, so beautiful.

But enough of the online poker chatter…it’s time for some shout-outs:

1. The first shout-out goes out to BuddyDank. I stumbled upon your “poker radio” and I really enjoyed the mix so far when I’m playing. Cool stuff there, keep it up…especially dropping the f-bomb while giving updates on blogger tourneys in progress (e.g. yesterday’s rebuy donkfest….m’fuckin breaktime…m’fuckin be right back….m’fuckin final-table….just beautiful to hear some good old swearing in the a.m. 😉 ).

2. The second shout-out goes out to Dr. Pauly. I respect him a lot, not only because he’s one of if not the best poker blogger around, but because he “introduced” me to the whole blogger tourney thing, back when he held his series at PokerStars. After today, my respect has risen to a whole new level though:

Source: PokerNews.com

Damn! Talk about representing the poker blogger community! REPRESENT!

…especially when you’re running sort of bad. I started the session with some HU tonight…and for the first time in a long time a won a match quickly.

No surprise that it went downhill from there. Played another HU match and lost that one. Then I jumped into a six handed SnG. Man, those are really killing me these days, it seems that the donkeys can’t wait to jump into them. It’s just beautiful when you look at their sharkscope stats and they’re all so fishy that you can literally smell it – until they suckout on you though…surprise surprise. I busted out in fifth when I played my nutflush draw aggressively – that’s the sixth in a row that doesn’t hit, oh well. All good there, it happens. I jump right into the next one and I play my usual tight game early. After folding the first orbit I get some hands and I raise from UTG+1 with queens, cbet on the flop get’s me the pot. Next hand I look down at AQ s00ted in the cutoff…raise…the same donk calls again…flop comes Q high…I cbet after his check and he folds again. Next hand I look down at AJo on the button…folded around to me…I pop it up again…the same donk decides that he’s going to mix it up this time…he pushes from the SB and the BB folds…action is on me. I replay the last few hands in my mind and I come to one conclusion: he’s fed up with my “constant”/consecutive raises and he wants to take a stand, most certainly with a medium-garbage hand…I decide to call and yes indeed, he got the whole 3 outs with his QJo…lol…I’m still confident after the king high flop…then the usual bs happens…runner runner…ty very much….god the deck loves donkeys….

So fugly…I bust out within the next orbit when my next AJ runs into AK…so fugly, fugly fugly. Oh well…after that bs I decided to play some more headsup and won the next two matches. That’s enough for me today…

As we all know, most computers are running some version of windows these days, but what about those who don’t? Are you running linux or Apple’s MAC OS? Then CompatiblePoker.com is for you.

You can find out about poker rooms offering native version of their poker client, as well as about poker rooms offering webbased versions – including Java based clients – for both MAC and linux.

While most people prefer native clients, the reality for MAC and linux users is that most poker rooms still don’t offer one. So what are they supposed to do? Either play at one of the few rooms that offer native clients (Mac: Full Tilt, PartyPoker) or use one of the java or webbased alternatives. But is that really all you can do? Not really. There’s always the possibility to use a dualboot system or a run time environment (e.g. WINE) to run the native windows versions. Both possibilities are outlined on the site, although the “Option 2”, as they call it, running poker clients with WINE is all little more in depth than “Option 3 – Dual Boot”, which is only mentioned – I guess that’s understandable as it’s too hard to give a complete guide on how to do it with all possible combinations of windows versions and linux distributions.
All in all, a good guide for all linux/mac users looking for a place to play online poker…and even if you’re not using a linux or mac based system, let’s say you want to know which sites still accept US players, then you’re in the right place, too…just checkout the USA Poker Sites section…so, what are you waiting for, checkout CompatiblePoker.com!