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 🙂

Well, well…spend most of the grind at the BJ tables tonight…it seems to be the quicker way to get the Comp Points although it’s basically at the same rate (10$ bet = 1$ vs 10$ wagered in “raked pot”), but you can get much more “hands” in (after all every bet counts vs only the bets you put into the pot in a raked pot)…so I’m up to over 60 points now…190 to go – side note: really insane, 250 Comp Points equals 2500$ wagered…wow. Played in one of their initial depositors’ freerolls tonight…although my play didn’t amount to much as I misread the starting time, so I basically entered the tourney “Phil Hellmuth style” (reasonably late – 45mins) and half my stack was gone with the blinds being half of my remaining stack. Oh well…so I sat until the blinds almost got to me…pushed from EP with 44…three callers…heeeehaaaw…KQ took it down…

But enough of that and on to the main topic: Poker Goals 2007

Everyone else is doing it, so why shouldn’t I and how’s the old (german) saying – roughly translated to english – “You can only achieve your goals if you have any”. So, without further ado…my poker goals for 2007:

• Get a thicker skin – While I think my tolerance of “bad beats”, major suckouts, medium suckouts, minor suckouts and all other suckouts in general is at an all-time high, it’s still not high enough. I mean, yeah, it’s understandable to go bezerk (at least mentally) after losing to a one-outer or moaning about the occasional two-outer or runner-runner-straight/flush, but apart from that, the usual “dominated hand wins with his/her shitting kicker hitting” shouldn’t affect me. Good decision made? Money in with the best of it? Yes and yes? Then suck it up, you did good, the donks will hit every now and then, this is what keeps ’em in the game in the first place. Play your game and get their money the next time.
• Move to a higher level – while I’m pretty satisfied with the levels I’m currently playing (mostly NL10/NL25), it’s -ev in the long run as good play isn’t rewarded all that much in those levels (especially NL10 – are you kidding? There’s more friggin donks hitting their miracle time and time in rotation for you to really crush the game). So I’m planning on building the roll to a higher level and moving to at least NL25 as my main feeding ground. As soon as I feel comfortable there and show a regular profit, I’ll try to move up another level. But the first goal is to establish a good winning rate at NL25.
• Play less (cash games) – while this may surprise some people, it’s one of my goals. Yes, playing (online) poker is very entertaining and a good way to spend your time, but a little less won’t hurt. My reasoning is that once I move up a little, the game will challenge me more again and the profit (if any) will more than justify playing less (after all having a huge winning rate at NL10 or similar brings out a mere laughter to the higher level player).
• MTTs – MTTs (along with SnGs) used to be my bread and butter. I just feel comfortable to play for set amount x (buyin) and go with it. A loss or “not-win” doesn’t affect me nearly as much as in a cash game. Looking back at 2006 two or three (minor) tourney scores were the difference between an empty account and life. I actually enjoyed the last MTT I played (where I final-tabled the bodog guaranteed) and that’s what has been missing in a while. So playing more MTTs again is one of the goals.
• SnGs – Try to focus on the token satellites on FullTilt to get into some of the “bigger” tourneys for cheap.
• Live (home games) – Back to the roots. Winning or losing isn’t really important. Why? Because the “tourney style” we’re playing is too much to overcome if the cards are against you. So, why did we start this home game in the first place? – Fun! So back to having fun, no matter what the outcome is.
• Live (“real tourneys”) – One goal is to play at a real tourney. As my mini-bankroll isn’t really a good starting point to chase 12/15/17k tourney packages to the WSOP, WPT or similar, it seems to be more reasonable to try to qualify for another tourney. The EPT. Less travel, smaller buyins (although 5k is still a lot of money). So my goal is to qualify for one of the remaining EPT events, most likely the one in Dortmund, Germany in March. If that doesn’t work out I’ll try to get into one of next season’s events.
• Bonus hunt – Still plenty of poker rooms left to hunt for, so many Points at the poker bonus hunt sites to get. Why not try?
• Stay away from -ev (non poker) gambling – This is my final goal. Looking back at some of the sites I busted out  on early “in my career”, it was mostly due to -ev non poker gambling (BJ, Slots, Video Poker, etc) which busted me, not poker. So this is one of the most important goals…stay away from this shit, it’s not worth it, just ask some of the pros who won fame and fortune playing poker and gave it all back at the craps table…

That’s about it…let’s see how many of them I can achieve…

On another note: I don’t know if I will be posting again until the new year arrives, so if I don’t: Happy New Year to all of my readers, fellow broggers and poker players…and a sad sad bankroll-depleting non-two-outer-hitting year for all the donks out there, hope you give me all your money, cheers! 😉

Well, not much going on. On the grind over at Pacific, mostly treading water, but hey…treading water is better than being stuck 🙂

So that works for me…36 Comp Points done, 214 to go…

Today I had enough. Enough of the bad run. Now one could argue that “running bad” is a natural thing in poker and it’ll pass – it probably would, eventually, but I’m fed up. Bad beat after bad beat, suckout after suckout. So it’s been fun with bodog, while it lasted, but I can’t take it anymore, at least not atm. So I cashed out the remaining dough…not all that much left, luckily I had withdrawn three times already, so I’m UUUUUUP 🙂

So, I need a new room to donk around and I had a look around my favourite bonus hunt site PokerSavvy (aff)…once I hit the site I remembered that the bonus at nine was still uncleared due to the network switch of nine. So first of all I contacted Mike to ask how this would be handled (as the old point system couldn’t be converted to the new system, but I had almost done all the requirements)…as usual Mike and Team PokerSavvy did an amazing job. They contacted nine and got them to clear my bonus 🙂 Two thumbs up, once again.

With that out of the way it was time to decide on a new room….many left, but some of them are not for me (as I had signed up before coming across the likes of PokerSavvy)…so…the special promotion it is…sign up with Pacific till the end of the year, grind out 250 Comp Points and receive a whoopin 1200 SavvyPoints (which equals ~ 120$, the normal promotion for Pacific is 900 SavvyPoints)…now 250 Comp Points are not easy to grind out, but it’s a challenge and Pacific’s nice bonuses are a good start (25$ instantly into your account when you sign up via PokerSavvy and you receive the 25% (up to 100$ max) immediatly too!)…

Played some Blackjack and some ring games to get my feet wet and everything worked out nicely, until I ran into yet another nice hand: A9o on the button, EP min raises (hmm Aces?!), two callers, I call, flop comes AA3 rainbow…hmm..so he doesn’t have Aces…push and shove…he shows A3…gotta love those case cards and ugly kickers, lol. Oh well…by the time that hand occured I was already ahead more than I could lose, so ‘s all good…

So…for the next few days/weeks I’ll probably focus my play on clearing that bonus…10 points done, 240 to go…. 🙂