Roundup
Wednesday May 10th 2006, 4:03 am
Filed under: MTT,No-Limit Hold'em,Poker Stuff,PokerStars,S&G,Tournaments

Didn’t get around to posting anything the last two days, well, there wasn’t much going on anyway…some SnGs…so nothing big missed there.

Today I decided to play some late night poker, yet again. I started the session with a turbo SnG and won, w00t. Just as it was about to finish I noticed that the WWdN was about to start, so I jumped in.

My starting table featured the host himself:

starting table wwdn rmgustaf invitational

Groovy stuff. Played tight, didn’t take any chances and was able to hover in the top 20-25 for most of the time. No suckouts or anything until the dreaded hand came up (I can’t even remember the exact hand, but I think it was my AQo vs QJ, AQx on the flop, 10 on the turn, K on the river…runner runner goodness…yuck!) – it didn’t cripple me, but it put me right back into the average field, so it sucked, but hey…it’s poker… Then I had the “honor” of busting out Wil. My J10 flopped a pair of Jacks, KJx all diamonds though, check check, turn 10, I bet 300…now Wil only has 505 left, so he goes into the tank…at that time I put him on a flush draw, which was true, he pushed with As7d, I called and dodged another diamond on the river…w00t…presenting the Ingoal invitational (although Wil wrote it “InGoal”…):

WWdN Ingoal invitational

W00t! After Wil busted I kept playing my tight game and it really worked well…until the blinds kept increasing and I just couldn’t get anything going against all the big stacks – and if I had a decent to good hand I didn’t get any customers…ah well…too bad. Out bubble+1 = 11th…not too shabby πŸ˜‰

During current Hold’em session you were dealt 181 hands and saw flop:
– 9 out of 24 times while in big blind (37%)
– 2 out of 24 times while in small blind (8%)
– 6 out of 133 times in other positions (4%)
– a total of 17 out of 181 (9%)
Pots won at showdown – 6 of 10 (60%)
Pots won without showdown – 18

I’m really satisfied with my performance, but the same thing that got me that far broke my back in the end: playing (too) tight…I guess I should have been a little more lose come bubble time… alrighty…off to watch the other guys battle it out….6 left….and then it’s off to bed…already past 5am…yikes!



Birthday gift and next live game
Tuesday April 18th 2006, 3:24 pm
Filed under: Live Play,No-Limit Hold'em,Poker Stuff,Tournaments

Forgot to mention that one of the gifts I received was a gift certificate for my own “poker survival kit” consisting of a four colour deck of 100% plastic copag cards, a bottle of Jaegermeister and a Cohiba cigar…oooh…can’t wait to get that stuff…one for me (cigar) two for all of us (Jaegermeister + 4 colour deck)…nice one…here’s an edited scan of the certificate:

scan of part of the certificate

Hopefully the stuff will arrive till saturday – the date of our next live tourney πŸ™‚



WPBTonline
Sunday February 19th 2006, 12:08 am
Filed under: Poker Stuff

I was wondering about the whole WPBT thing:

  1. How do you get in there (or are you member just by running a poker-blog)?
  2. Who is responsible for the online presence?
  3. Why has the domain expired (it’s now occupied with a clone of pokerroom.com)?

Can someone enlighten me? Side note: WPBT.info is still available for registration….



Phil Hellmuth Jr. starts blog
Tuesday February 07th 2006, 3:19 pm
Filed under: Poker Stuff

I don’t know if you’ve heard about it yet, but Phil Hellmuth has started a blog. It seems to be hip these days for the pros to start a blog – which is cool when it’s really a blog.

So I had a look at the “blog” and let me tell you: it’s a good idea, although I don’t consider that to be a blog! You want to know why? Let me give you two simple pointers: A blog should…

  1. …have syndication, whether it’s RSS or Atom doesn’t matter, but give the (potential) readers to get notified when there’s new content…chances are slim that they will visit regularly to check if there’s an update or not, especially when there hasn’t been an update in a while (this is what I told Phil (or who ever gets the mails from the “Ask Phil” section first) right away as this is really important).
  2. …offer a possibility for readers to comment. Alright, by giving the user/reader the chance to comment you add the high risk of spammers starting to hammer your blog with spam messages, but there are effective countermeasures these days (Bad Behaviour, …) and you don’t want to shut out your reader, or do you? If there’s no interaction between writer and reader then what’s the point, you don’t need to label it blog then…it’s just another content site (or in this case another section of your content site).


Right back at you…
Tuesday February 07th 2006, 1:52 am
Filed under: Limit Hold'em,No-Limit Hold'em,Poker Stuff,PokerStars,Pot Limit,S&G,Tournaments

…or the case of the accidental hammer clash (more about that later).

After running bad the last few days it was time to get back into shape or back in the saddle of the donkey, so that’s what I did. Played some SnGs (NL HE 3$+0.40$) and was ITM in 3 of 4. The total is: 1x1st, 2x2nd, 1x8th (donkey chasing and connecting) – on a side note: I was down roughly 1:3 in all of the heads up finishes. Was able to turn it around once, although I did well in the other heads ups too…I came back to around even and even took the lead for a while, but just couldn’t finish my opponent…

Apart from the SnG action I played some MTTs, too. Nothing spectacular to report from the PL Hold’em tourney, busted out pretty early. Then I played a Fixed Limit one and the funniest thing ever happened. This poker episode is entitled “The accidental hammer clash”: I’m UTG+3 and look down at the hammer (7c-2d), folded to me and I decide to limp in, flop comes down 7d-Jd-7h…BB leads out, I raise, he reraises, I cap…turn is the 10c…back and forth again…river is the Js…full house baby…back and forth again…showdown (see pic below): clash of the hammers

The funniest thing: I correctly shout “hammer time, nh!” in the table chat and I can feel that most of the table is thinking “WTF?!”. The BB asks me: “Why did you call with 72o?” I answer “It’s the hammer, you gotta trust it! … (poker blogger insider)”…he smiles…nothing funny after that and I bust out rather quickly again as I just can’t catch anything.

Then I decided to complete the evening with a NL HE MTT (3$+0.30$). I play some good poker and after roughly two hours of play (already ITM) I bust out in 288th place with Ac-Qc vs As-9c when Mr. BigStack calls my All-In and catches his nine…. not a perfect way to end the evening, but at least I had a good rush today!

Sidenotes:

  1. I never had so many AA and KKs in a single day…which is nice, as most of them held up too.
  2. The whole single table SnG thing with lots of heads up action today was good training…or at least it should be…I better get in shape for DADIII (see below)

Pimpage:
dadiii

Be there or be square!



Poll of the week
Monday February 06th 2006, 9:19 pm
Filed under: Poker Stuff

Hmm…last week’s poll didn’t really get a lot of votes (a grand total of only 4)…the resultΓƒβ€šΓ‚ (PokerStars 2, FullTilt 1, PartyPoker 1) along with the new Poll of the week (What’s your best game?) can be found here.

I voted Stud 8b…it’s not that I’m bad at Omaha 8b or NL/PL/Limit Hold’em, but the analytical part of Stud 8b (or H/L) just makes me think that it’s my best game. What’s your’s? Feel free to elaborate in the comments…



Studtastic and HE-drastic
Friday February 03rd 2006, 3:16 am
Filed under: 7 stud H/L,Limit,MTT,No-Limit Hold'em,Poker Stuff,PokerStars,S&G,Tournaments

I guess I should come up with better post titles, but it’s 3am, so I blame that fact for it πŸ˜‰

Played a 7 Stud H/L MTT on PokerStars – the first in quite a while and to my surprise I was right back in the action (after all I was playing 7Stud H/L exclusively for quite a while) and able to scoop quite a bit in the beginning. Just before the bubble I was able to triple up and cruise into the money. Didn’t catch much of anything after that and just survived another level (antes 200, limits 1000/2000)…finished 47th of 456…for a whooping profit of 1.48$ (3$+0.30$ buyin)…Had three hours of poker fun though πŸ˜‰ stud result

After that I played a NL HE SnG and promptly busted out in 8th, those buggers have been totally -ev in recent days, I think I’m going to start playing MTTs again…



Weekly Poll #2
Monday January 30th 2006, 3:32 pm
Filed under: Poker Stuff

The last poll closed on sunday and the turnout wasn’t all that great. I guess it’s partly due to the missing traffic and partly due to technical problems (when you’re trying to use an iframe within content (i.e. a paragraph) it totally breaks the code and the design/validation), so I came up with a simple, but effective solution: Put the poll-code into a simple external html file and link to it :mrgreen:

The results of the prior polls can be found here. So most voters have either lost or won a minimal amount of money, not what I expected, but with 16 votes this initial poll isn’t all that representative…
The new poll asking the question: Which online poker room do you frequent the most and why (comment)? (Feel free to elaborate on the “other” option or your answer in the comments) can be found at: Polls along with all prior polls – voting will end next monday, february 6th.

On another note: if you’ve got a pop-up blocker installed it could be that it’s blocking this link, don’t worry though, you can allow popups from my site as the only thing that popups will be used for are the polls (no ads, …)! Once I’ve pimped the polls page a little bit I will try to reintegrate it with the site so that this shouldn’t be a problem anymore…



First weekly poll (2006)
Monday January 23rd 2006, 12:36 am
Filed under: Poker Stuff

I thought it would be a good idea to add something new to the blog and so I came up with something that I’ve seen on other blogs before – a poll. This (probably) will be a weekly thing, with a new question, I’m really interested in, being put up every monday. You can vote for a week, then I’ll take a look at the final results. Hopefully enough people will have fun and submit their answer so that this will become a worthwhile thing.

Sidenotes:

  1. the weekly blog is using dPolls.com – you gotta love these Ajax powered polls.
  2. feel free to elaborate on your answer in the comments…

First weekly poll (2006):
The poll has been moved to a central poll location



Late Pimpage
Friday January 20th 2006, 11:16 pm
Filed under: Poker Stuff
  1. Absinthe is doing the blogger world proud, he’s down to the final two tables at the LA Poker Classic at Commerce! W00t! And what’s even more impressive: he’s live-blogging about it, or at least he has done so, so far. Wish him luck and check his blog for further updates!
  2. Feeling horsey? Don’t forget about April‘s HORSE tourney tonight on Full Tilt, the event starts at 22 ET – password is “princess” and to quote April “Be there or be a no-fun Razz-fearing pansy!”

I guess I won’t be playing the HORSE tourney tonight as the starting time of 22 ET is 4am my timezone and after a short night this would be just a little bit over the top, even for me. So good luck to all players and I’m looking forward to read some recaps tomorrow! :mrgreen:

Update to 1.: Woot, he did it! He won the whole thing! Wow! Congrats Ryan!