Well, well…wanted to play some poker as usual tonight, but no joy. For the first time in more than 6 years I’m having internet connection problems. I’m able to connect, barely, but with such a painfully slow transfer rate that playing is unthinkable (I’m on a 6MBit connection and my current downstream is 6kb/s). Hopefully my provider will have this sorted out by tomorrow or else I’ll have to kick some butt… Edit: …and just as I’m posting this my connection is back to normal (down > 600kb/s)…oh well…4:30am…no way I’m playing now….time to catch some sleep End Edit
No poker for me today, but still some poker “news”. I’ve been working on a little project, namely translating (half) of the PokerSavvy (aff) site into german. It’s been a long process and it was finally done some weeks ago…the graphics guru still didn’t get around to redo all the graphics (so they’re still in english), but at least the pure content is in german now.

Hopefully it’ll bring in a lot of hungry bonus hunters from the ever growing poker community over here in germany…if you want to practice your german, head on over to the german version and check it out…

So, I finally visited the PPA-site again and yes, they finally fixed their signup site, despite never getting back to me about my email complaining about it not working for people outside of the US. So, I finally had the chance to signup – bucks well spent I think! If you didn’t join already, do so, just click the banner below (no affiliate banner!)…

After getting that out of the way I started a new bonus hunt: Poker.com it is, for the chance to get my hands on another 1000 SavvyPoints. Started the bonus hunt right on the wrong foot, forgot to enter the correct signup-bonus code to get the initial deposit bonus, great! After that I multi-tabled some low-limit HE and did fairly well…running into the eventual cold-deck, but all in all it was alright. After that I threw away some money at BJ, old habits die hard. After that I fired up some SnGs in order to build the roll. Bad idea. I’ve honestly not seen that many cold decks within such a short-amount of time, seriously.

I dominated a match, I get KK vs AA lose…get JJ vs AA some hands later…I crack the Aces, nontheless I lose the match. Next match HU…66-88…okay I had a substantial chiplead, back to even, all good. A few hands later AA vs KJ…flop KKK…thank you very much. Next match second nut-flush vs nut-flush…etc etc…hell of a start, this is going to be a short ugly ride if my luck continues that way…

On another note: the bonus requirements seem to be unreal 15.000 Comp Points, then again take a second look and see that each hand in which you’re dealt in is worth 3 Comp Points, even at NL10 which equals 5000 hands. Shouldn’t be that hard after all, I guess I’ll abstain from running in too many SnGs the next few days though and instead I’ll multi some cash games, hopefully (re)building the roll…

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?

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! 😉

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…. 🙂

Hehe, I’m not sure about their official spelling, but I guess it’s 9poker, not that it mattered as both domains (.com) are connected. So, why am I even talking about that? Because I selected nine to be my next bonus hunt “victim”. After finishing bodog within such a short time (points still pending, I hope I’ll get them soonish) I was on the lookout for another good promotion. The nine promotion at PokerSavvy sounded good: the usual 50 deposit and you’ll need to get 250 Points with nine to get 700 points. Fair enough, so I got to it yesterday.

Quick review of my experience so far:

1. Signup was mostly painless, there were numerous inconsistencies and inconveniences though:

– the sign up is done via the secure part of their website, so far so good, the only thing they should explain to me is why I can use all letters, numbers and symbols on their website, but not in the poker client. I had the feeling that this was the reason I couldn’t login in the poker client. So I fired up Live Chat support and got the answer and the password changed right away. Fine, I still told the support guy to bitchslap the designers and that they should get this fixed…this is ridiculous..a simple character check in the sign up form shouldn’t be hard to implement *cough* 😉

– I deposited via the signup and once I was able to login I was facing the next problem: where’s my money? So I fire up the cashier, nothing, I fire up the FAQ, nothing, I fire up the account info, money there, but how to transfer it? Cashier, nothing. I fire up support yet again…aaaaah there’s another cashier, which is a symbol in the poker client. Error #1: I clicked on “deposit to poker” during signup, money still went to “normal” (sports betting) wallet. Error #2: Why would the “transfer funds from (other) wallet” be only a symbol, but the same functionality isn’t available via the cashier menu???

– The points you grind out are only updated once a day as far as I’ve seen so far…this sucks!

So after that little headshaking and laughing at the messy system I fired up some poker games and played for a while. As it was approaching early morning, yet again, I decided to quit though and so I pause my play until this afternoon. Impressions so far: the games are good, the sidegames (Chinese Poker, Guts, etc) are addictive, the traffic seems to be 98% from Canada (at least 90-99% of the players I’ve met so far were from Canada), the UI is not the best I’ve seen…I mean it’s pretty looking…

…but some features are just a big PITA, e.g. the raise function – the standard raise function is a min raise, so far so good, if you want to raise more though you don’t have a bar to pull right away, but you have to click on “raise other” first and then adjust the bar (or type in the amount) and then click the raise button…not really good.

So…so far I would rate the room with a two thumbs up for their quick and easy support (via live chat), two thumbs down for their inconsistent stuff all over the place, one thumb down for their poker client. Let’s see how long it’ll take for me to grind out the 250 Points…

On another note: Did you know that Matt from PokerSavvy added a nice little item to the shop? For every 450 points you can order a money transfer of 45$ to either paypal or Neteller. This really rocks! Now I don’t say that Gift Certificates are bad, but they’re limited in use (e.g. only for Amazon.com) and the other stuff is basically out of reach for international customers like me (shipping&handling is not worth it)…so instead of going a route like PP gift certificate -> PP acount -> withdrawal to Neteller, you can now go the direct way PokerSavvy -> Neteller/Paypal, this clearly puts PokerSavvy ahead of the competition, so I’ll probably focus my search on their partners once I’m done with nine.

Nice, so I log on to PokerSavvy (aff) today and find that 900 SavvyPoints have been credited to my account for the successfull completion of the Mansion promotion. Sweet. What’s really cool though is that I was able to complete it within a day (the requirements were fairly easy: deposit 50$ and wager 50$ in poker, casino or sportsbook – so I basically donked around the blackjack tables and slots for a while and I was done).