Haha! Sometimes to beat a donkey you gotta play the borderline hands, hard. Sometimes? Maybe more like “almost always”. Anyway, I had to do just that against two out of three opponents today. Good news, I was right, they were borderline donkeys. Now they weren’t pure fish, but pure losing poker players. The bad news, they caught like crazy on me in the right spots. Oh well…can’t do anything about that…so…moving on…

I’m really looking forward to the EPT grand final in Monte Carlo. I’m pretty excited to see that the webcast of the german EPT from Dortmund was such a huge success that they’ll continue to do it…finishing off the season in Monte Carlo. For those of you who missed it: they do a live webcast of the feature table and the final table. Now, it’s not as exciting as the WPT or similar edited formats as you don’t see the whole cards – then again, it’s exciting nontheless as you can try to put people on hands yourself and the commentary is usually really good (I really enjoyed John “The father of the EPT” Duthie on the Dortmund webcast)…check EPTLive.com for more info about this thing…

Poker, oh poker, it’s all skill, start with the worst hand and go all-in…lol…that should be the new Matusow donkey/poker song…apropos Matusow…out of the new FullTilt commercials, I like the Matusow/Cunningham one the best…although some of the others (especially the Phil Ivey and Chris Ferguson ones) are pretty good, too…check them out…here…

As for offline poker stuff…I finished both Joe Navarro’s book and the Suicide King and liked them both for different reasons. The Navarro book is a real eye-opener and I’ll be happy to at least try to apply some of the stuff he’s talking about. One thing will be hard though and that is deciphering  the “tell to reason for the tell”-relationship. Why? I discussed this with a fellow poker player of “my home game” and my point was this: It’s one thing to spot something in a player. If you spot this or that behaviour, cool, you should normally be able to put him on a narrower range of hands with this info. True and not true. The (big) problem? I’ll call it “hand perception”: Headsup pot, no raise preflop, Player A in EP holds nothing on the flop containing two hearts, it goes check, check, turn brings a low card, Player A exhibits a high confidence tell….what does he hold?

Now, if that Player A was me…I would have probably hit a set there…but the Player A, I’m talking about, just hit his pair (let’s say a pair of sixes) and he still got a flush draw (somewhere along the lines of the fifth nutflush draw)…see the problem here? He thinks he holds a monster, hence the high confidence tell…I don’t think so…but he does…so spotting the tell is worthless without the context and this is that much harder with people who don’t operate on the same “hand strength”-scale as you do…that said, if I spotted the same tell vs Player B on the same board, I would know almost exactly where I’m at…the beauty of poker…that said, about time that I get into a live game again…I’m itching to sling some cards…hopefully it’ll happen within the next two weeks…

As for the “Suicide King” book, it was really entertaining…now I gotta wait until Amazon get’s into gear and finally delivers me “Hunting Fish….” 🙁

The Gaming Directory – The definite UK gambling resource. At first the site title seems to be a little cocky and after having a look around the site, I gotta say that the first impression might be the right one. Now I won’t start claiming that I’m an expert for casinos/pokerrooms in the UK, I’m not, but I have some points to be made.

When I visit a site for the first time, especially when I’m asked to do a review, I’m looking for ups and downs, good things, “bad” things and try to get an  overall impression, before providing, as I hope, constructive criticism:

When I visited the GamingDirectory.co.uk for the first time, I immediately noticed the design and I got to say, it’s pretty simple, which doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, although a little “eye candy” here and there will probably have a better and longer lasting impression on your visitors than a simple blue layout. The next thing I noticed is that the footer isn’t quite uptodate – ” © 2004 ” isn’t really what I want to see on a site if I’m looking for information about a (landbased) casino I might plan on visiting. So, dear webmaster, please replace that with something more current like 2004-2007 – sometimes it’s the small things that matter or maybe I’m a little nit-picky.

So, let’s have a look at the content, which is the more important thing. Once again, I might be a little nit-picky, but I’m not really overwhelmed by the content of most sections. Let’s take the Casinos page as an example – there’s not much info there and the formatting could be a little bit better. A new line or empty line here and there and the text would look a lot better. Or the landbased casinos page – nice that you listed them all and provided a link to a mapquest map, which should make it easier to find the places. The problems:

1. the links don’t work (at time of writing this).

2. there’s no additional infos on the casino(s) – what games are spread (if there is any pokerroom)? what games are available? at what limits?

A little more info and maybe even a picture or two would really help here. The same rings true for most of the other parts of the site. It’s a good start, but it seems that some sections need a little brush up while others need a little beef up to provide the user with enough info…

So, back in action today. First of all I was happy to receive the first issue of Card Player Europe today, nice! That was really quick, I didn’t have the time to really read it yet, but flipping through it, it seems that it’s just what CardPlayer’s description was: part of the US issue plus content specific to europe (including numerous ads of online poker sites I’ve never heard of before). Some more good news: next live game will be this saturday, w00t! Nothing better than some live card-flinging with friends.

Excited about those news, I thought I’d try my luck with some turbo SnGs tonight. First one went fairly well, busted two players early, busted two more later on and soon enough we were ITM. My opponent (fairly even in chips) busted the shorty and we are headsup…about 10 hands later I have a disgusted look on my face as he calls my preflop all-in (J10 s00ted) with the powerful 75 s00ted…sure enough flop comes down 567…thank you very much. Oh well, second place, not all that bad. So I open up the next one and I find myself with AQo in the SB in the very first hand. One limper in MP…all others fold…so I decide to pop it to 80…BB ponders and folds…limper calls…flop comes down Queen high…I bet out…he reraises me…I reraise him…he pushes…hmm…son…I think you’re full of shit…probably KQ/QJ or something…I call…he shows QTo…weeeeeee…..turn 10…thank you…

I congratulate him on his marvellous play and he defends his “groovy” play by saying “but I’m the one who pushed all-in and you called” errrm yeah donkbag…maybe, just maybe I’m supposed to call here with an 87%/12% edge…but maybe that’s just me…I’m out…

Not much poker today, just the WWdN. Played the hammer beautifully in the second hand: dealt the hammer on the button, one standard-raiser in MP, I reraise to 150…all fold…he calls…flop comes down three rags including a deuce…he checks…I bet 200 and take down the pot. A few hands later I find ducks…raise…one caller…flop three rags…check…I bet pot…call…turn rag…I check I bet half pot…call…river pairs sixes…he leads out with 300…I’m getting 2:1 and it might be a busted flush draw…but I fold…next hand I get AKo…standard raise preflop…one caller…flop comes down Ax2…check…I bet…call…turn 10…check…I bet…call…river Q..check…I bet…he calls…he shows 22…hmm…weird…why not a single reraise here?! Oh well…down to 700 odd chips…take some small pots…up to 1k…moved to another table…tourist in the BB…sox raises from the SB…I call…flop comes down 678 two spades…sox checks…I bet 60…sox calls…mistake nr.2…turn blank…sox checks…I bet 60…sox calls…mistake nr. 3…river 4s…Sox bets 90…i type “why do i think i’m a bluetooth here” and call…mistake nr. 4…sox shows…flush jack high…could I have played this hand any worse? It could have cost me more (if I push on the flop and he decides to call), but the way it went down…I lost minimum I guess…still horrible…

Next hand I fold A4…next hand I push with KJo from the button…BB wakes up with the s00ted tourist…good enough to call my 655 bet…and cya…

Summary: I don’t know what it is, but I played like crap. There I said it. I played like crap and I deserved to get knocked out early. Out in 37th of 47.

At least I got some more reading material now as another book arrived today, the professor, the banker and the suicide king…I guess I’ll read that parallel to the Navarro stuff, which is kind of heavy…this one should keep me entertained…a little more uptodate entertainment should be provided by Card Player (Europe)…I was planning on subscribing to at least one of the major card magazines (Bluff, CardPlayer, ..) for a while now and I finally did it, although their international rates suck…so I settled for Card Player Europe for now…” Combining the best articles from the magazine’s U.S. edition with additional content customized for European readers, Card Player Europe offers local tournament news, European player and venue profiles, and advertising that uniquely addresses the needs and interests of European audiences. ” (Source: CardPlayer Store)…sounds good…sign me up…can’t go wrong with a 1-year subscription for twenty bucks…I’m looking forward to it…let’s see how long delivery of the first issue takes…I’m out…

…at least that’s what I keep telling myself and it worked out pretty good tonight – not that I won anything, close but no cigar, but at least I took the usual beats with a smile. So, basically…I’m still trying to get back to normal, but things aren’t coming together, at least not yet.

Just like I promised myself (and you, my readers), I didn’t play a single hand of poker over the entire weekend and tbh, I didn’t miss it all that much either. I guess that’s easy to say when you’re running as bad as I was/am. But really, it made me think that maybe I should incorporate the “poker-free day(s)”-concept into my playing schedule, after all the consistent grind can wear you out, especially if you take the worst of it on such a cold run. If you’re running bad enough, everything will go wrong…but I’ll come back to that topic later.

Before I get to a closer look of tonight’s session, I’d like to take a moment to talk about some other poker related things.

1. I started to read Navarro’s book on tells (or “non-verbal behaviour”) and so far, I really like it. Some of the things he’s talking about in the first pages of the book make you wonder: How many of these things have I thought about so far? Did I spot something like this before? As I said, I’m just through the first twenty odd pages and after the introduction and everything he’s talking about the most reliable source of tells…the feet…lol…never thought of that before…but if you think about it and watch closely…he may be on to something here…although looking under the table as the flop/turn/river comes down isn’t a real possibility…although he comes up with some hints about how to spot it anyway…I’m really looking forward to the rest of the book and one thing’s for sure: this stuff can and probably will improve my live-game…although it takes work! But I’m up for the challenge…

2. Although I’m currently running bad, I’m still going to do whatever it takes to keep online poker alive, hmm, that sounds a little weird, maybe I should rephrase that to “I’m going to support the people who will do whatever they can/it takes to keep online poker alive”. So I joined the PPA a while ago (see here) and on saturday my “welcome package” arrived. It contained a letter, the membership card, a pin and a nice T-Shirt…maybe I’ll get around to take a pic of the stuff tomorrow…to make a long story short: Because I’m over here in Europe this whole US legislation doesn’t affect me personally (apart from the fact that good games could be hard to come by in the next weeks/months), but I’m not too blind to see that one thing could lead to the next and before you know it, the games dry up for good and other countries could adopt a similar stance on online poker and I don’t want that to happen. Think about it, even if that doesn’t happen, it’s still going to be a loss. Online players turn into “full time live players”, full time live players have no hand histories, no tools to track their play (to the same extent as in online poker) and before you know it, other stuff, like poker blogs, disappear too…and although that might increase workplace productivity, it would be a real shame. So, if you are (remotely) serious about your (online) game, join the PPA!
3. Full Tilt’s downtime on sunday: Bad but good. Why? Just go back and read the second paragraph. As I promised myself not to play any poker this weekend, I would have missed the bloggerpods tourney on Full Tilt, fortunately (for me) they had some server issues, so the tourney had to be postponed. I guess it’ll be played next weekend and I’m looking forward to it. Maybe I’ll get close like last time, maybe I’ll get the junk kick earlier, maybe no junk kick at all and I listen to my favourite jams on an ipod soon…who knows…one way or another, this is a cool tourney, thanks again to PokerOnAMac for hooking us up!

As for tonight’s session…I started with some “new stuff”. A cheap-ass triple shootout to the sunday million. Two bucks, short handed, chance to take down one of two seats. The first table was a real up and down and when all was said and done, I took it down. Almost an hour played, shorthanded, didn’t make any bad decisions (had to push one time with a marginal hand, because I got short, but that worked out okay…and not really a bad decision…or is it if you’re “forced to play”?). The next table was totally different though. Four out of the other five players where really “pushy”. The played almost every hand and the deck wasn’t too kind to me. I started out with the best…didn’t connect…had to let it go, time and time again. Made my exit with a 60/40 kind of hand, so not really a bad beat…it just wasn’t meant to be, but at least I got an hour of play…out in 22nd of 216.

After that I decided to try a three-table SnG and play was worse than I could imagine in my worst nightmare, really, it was THAT bad. I kicked one player out before getting my junk kicked yet again by a lovely two outer. Oh well, what else is new.

After that I went to the HU section and thought I’d give it a whirl. It was a good match, although it was kind of boring, not much between my opponent and me…first in usually takes the pot as we were battling 6-high vs 7-high on a regular basis. He was cool though, we chatted a little and I predicted that soon enough it’ll come down to one hand and to quote Scotty Nguyen “…it’s going to be all over” and I said it’s probably going to be something of the regular HU-nature, two pair vs set or something. Guess what? I was right…lol…although this isn’t too hard to predict either as it’s basically around a 33% shot (either that, T/M/BPxK vs x or monster vs monster are the usual scenarios).

I hold A4o on the button and I fire it up to 3x preflop…he calls…pot is 180 (blinds 15/30). Flop comes down A46 rainbow. Groovy! He leads out with a pot-sized bet (180). I reraise to 480, he insta-calls. Hmm…pot is 1140 (of the 3k in play) and the turn is blank (8)…he checks…I bet 400…he calls…pot is now 1940…so there’s basically no way the money isn’t going all-in…river is Kh…he pushes…now I’m worried about a small range of hands here…either AA (which would be a real cooler with the case Ace on board), AK (which would suck less, but still suck)…or he could have made a really bad call on the flop and turn and hit a set here (KK)…or I totally misjudged the situation and he had a hand similar to mine and his kicker plays as well (A6, A8)…or coolered by a flopped/turned set (44, 66, 88)…man, if you’re running bad…too many (bad) scenarios creep into your mind…maybe he has a hand that would make sense here, which is second best (AQ, AJ, A10, A9, …)…I make the crying call…and he shows?….KK for the set…now, if he any other hand mentioned above…I go straight to my closet, get out a hat and write “payoff wizard” on it…but KK…come on…two outs…again…sigh…now I don’t want to sound like a broken record here and repeat it over and over…but I just can’t help myself…why oh why? Why….oh why?

I guess the (short) weekend break wasn’t enough, as I can’t stand it…at least not any better than last week…I find myself in the same spot, complaining, moaning about the bad luck, feeling empty and annoyed and (maybe) annoying you with it…maybe I’m waaaay to deep into it all atm and I should take a longer break from it all? Maybe I should just learn to deal with it in another way? Maybe I shouldn’t play anymore at all? I really don’t know, one thing I know for sure though is the reason for all of this: I care about winning! I care about making good decisions! I care about “being better”! I care about beating my opponent(s)! I want to win every game I’m playing! I expect to win if I outplayed my opponent(s)! (I despise people “stealing” from me! I despise people making horrible plays and still winning with it! …) …I care about winning!
Maybe a bit too much – at least for a poker player?! Most certainly, as this whole “correct decision, correct play, wrong outcome, no reward”-stuff is still taking too big a toll on me. There’s no such thing as justice in poker – love it or hate it. All poker players do both…you love it when you’re running good and/or if you made a good/great play and it worked out, you hate it when you’re running bad and/or if you made a bad play or a good/great play that isn’t rewarded. The best way to deal with this fundamental “flaw” of poker, would be to be totally indifferent to results.

I’m trying to get there…but hell, it’s not easy, no, it’s HARD…and how could it be any other way?

He’s back…but just for a quickie. Stuck to my original plan not to play and full table SnGs today, only played two HU matches and no, luck didn’t change a bit, I will spare you going into too much detail as it’s obvious that I’m on a nasty unlucky downswing…so what’s the point of repeating the same sentiment over and over again (just two quick examples: K4 vs K5…flop KK5…we both slow play each other into oblivion and by the third min-re-raise I call to see the grim news…I still wonder how I could not go broke on that one; A2 vs 45 (happened twice in the same match) flop A24…major betting…turn 3….no, I didn’t go broke the first time, the second time did me in though)…

So…just a quick note that I won’t be playing this weekend, not a single SnG, not a single MTT, not a single hand, period. I think this is the kind of unlucky spell that you can’t play through, so why ruin my weekend? I’ll probably see you all at the WWdN on tuesday…until then…may all your monsters hold up and your opponents draw dead 😉

Me again…while I’m still in rant mode I forgot about something. The long time it recently takes to get a poker book delivered. Now I’m usually patient and all, but 4-8 weeks for books that have been out a while? Well, I could have ordered them from Amazon.com, but there’s really not much point as I won’t save anything as the shipping and handling (and the occasionally added customs) eats up the difference, so why not order from Amazon.de. So, I went ahead and ordered a bunch of new books as I’m all out of poker books for the moment (yes, Super System II, Little green book, little blue book are all books that you can re-read over and over, but sooner or later I need something new to keep me entertained)…so I thought I’d go for a good mix of strategy/entertainment…

The one part of poker that I’m more and more interested in is the “playing the player”, “reading the player”, etc part…online it’s pretty basic…watch out for “online tells” (stalling, fast-check, etc) and most important of all: betting patterns. Live, there’s a whole lot more to consider…well, maybe consider is not the right word here…after all there’s lots of information right in front of you and noticing all the bits and pieces is only one part of the deal, the other part is interpretation and analysis of the seen in relation to betting patterns and hand history. Add the , “player behaviour” (“real world tells”) to it and you’re in the area that I’m really interested in, at least atm. Tells.

Now I was torn between getting the classic (Caro) or the “new school stuff” – Joe Navarro, Ex FBI Agent. As I was pretty impressed with Joe Navarro on Ante Up in one of the recent shows, I went with that one…and after only a week’s wait, it was delivered today. Yay, new material that should really rock, I’m really looking forward to reading this one and I’ll start as soon as I’m done with this post…

Back to the title though, the other books I order back in january are still MIA…with ETA March 6-13th Professor, Banker and the Suicide King…and even worse with an ETA May 29th-31st Hunting Fish: A cross-country search for America’s worst poker players…good god, how can it take almost four months to get that one delivered to me? On another note: I’m really looking forward to that one, I just hope it won’t be a one-pager: “Log onto PokerStars.com day and night. The End”…pun intended 😉

I really didn’t feel like playing today, maybe due to the long run in the WWdN this morning, maybe because I’m just a little tired and busy with other stuff today. So, just a quick post about something I got in the mail this week:

I was sitting on some FullTiltPoints for ages now as I wasn’t able to “buy” anything nice with it – due to the fact that most items didn’t ship to europe. This has changed now though. I really don’t know if that’s because of the whole “Online Gambling” thing over in the US or if it just took them so long to start up european distribution, anyway, I’m happy that I can really order stuff now…so this is hopefully the first of many nice things I’ll get from the FullTilt store….next item on the wishlist: Custom hockey jersey…hmm…only 24k to go…*lol* 😉

Received an email from Mike (from PokerOnAMac.com) today that there’s going to be another bloggerpods event soonish. Three ipods up for grabs…I’m in…what are you waiting for?

Mac Poker

Today I was having mixed emotions at the tables and after yet another brutal suckout (pocket kings lost to the powerful ducks when a third duck said “quack” on the river) I asked myself: Is it really good to keep it all in(side) or is it better to get it all out? One thing’s for sure, to keep it all in is impossible in the long run, at least for me. Now I’m lucky in some ways, as I started this blog and so I’ve always got an outlet for my thoughts on hands, the way they were played and many other things. Sometimes this isn’t enough though. Tonight was one of these occasions where it wasn’t enough, I just had to get it out in the chat and so I went ahead and berate oned of the donks “Hellmuth style”. Is it good to do something like this? Well, the answer is yes and no. Yes, you get it out of your system and it’s a relief. No, for many different reasons:

1. While you get it out of your system, it distracts you from playing the current hand optimally as you’re busy typing whatever in the chatbox.

2. It can influence your opponent in a way that will come back to hurt you – at least sometimes. The read that you have on him/her might be useless from that point forward as he/she will switch up their game in order to punish you (and sometimes that works just fine if they suckout on you again, sending you into overdrive-tilt).

3. It’s bad etiquette.

4. In the long run you WANT your opponent to play that way, because pushing in with 1-20% chance is exactly what you want them to do. Why even make them think they could or should do it differently? (Assuming that some of the donks really aren’t that bad that they can’t learn from such situations)

5. Related to 1.: It can influence your game not only in the next hand, or the next, but for an extended period of time as your motive to play a hand can switch from “making the correct play/decision” to “I’ll show you donkey”…

6. etc

So, do I feel better now – absolutely. Did my outburst help my game, the decision making or the results in any way? Not really. Bottom line is, no matter how perfectly you played your hand or how bad your opponent played his, in the end the cards will decide the outcome. All you can do is make (near) perfect decisions and live with the results and I’ll pledge to stick to just that (and keep the ranting part exclusively to my blog ;)) in the future.

As for tonight, I think I played good, made sound decisions and won the matches I was supposed to win (4 out of 7). Out of the three losses, at least two were cruel, but hey, that’s poker, at least sometimes. I don’t want to go into greater detail about specific hands tonight, but I gotta at least break down one of the matches. This one could have been entitled “Just blind off, there’s no chance in hell you’ll win this match.”…I attack attack attack, hit some flops, don’t hit others, but I’m consistently grinding away at my opponent’s stack. I hold a significant chiplead and my opponent raises me preflop. I look down at QQ. Now remember, this is headsup and he’s in a desperate situation. I reraise him and he’s not commited yet. He pushes all-in. Can you laydown the queens here? I couldn’t…sure enough he shows AA and the rockets blast my queens. We’re almost back to square one as I’m ahead only a few hundred chips again. The grinding continues and soon enough I find myself in a commanding chiplead again. This time, I look down at KK. I raise from the button and he pushes all-in. Laydown Kings? Hmm, I can’t see him having Aces again here and if he does, then I’ll have to quote tuff_fish “God bless america, son of a god damn bitch!” 😉

I call and he shows the powerful 2-2, quack quack. Now I’m happy as I’m waaay ahead and he doesn’t hold the Kings nemesis, Ace rag. Flop is blank, turn is blank…river says quack, here I am. So I lose to a set of deuces on the river, lovely two outer. Wow, we’re almost even in chips, again. The grinding continues and soon enough I hold a bigger chiplead again. I hold KsQs…i standard three-pop it preflop and he flat-calls…flop comes down Kc-Qh-xc…I bet three-quarter the pot. He reraises me. I push. He insta-calls. Turn is Ac…River is xc…Showdown Jc7c…oh well…have a nice day. I’m down to slightly under 500 chips and the next time I look down at a semi-decent hand I push with A7 s00ted, he insta-calls with Q2 s00ted and sure enough a lonely duck is all it takes to beat me. Matches like these make me wonder if it would be a good idea to have some barf bags at my desk – hmm…maybe that’s a new business idea in itself, don’t you think that some players would spend a buck or two on the following one, after all what’s a buck or two compared to cleaning up your desk and keyboard 😉

But enough dwelling for tonight, I finished the session up, what more can you ask for…I’m out of here…