…or how should I say it? I log onto Stars to play a little, find a 5-Card-Draw PL MTT that is just about to start and jump right in. I play my solid game and build the stack. I play a lot of small pots, some bigger ones when I’m comfortable and feel that I have the best of it. Then it happens.

!!!WARNING: EXPLICIT RANTING AHEAD!!!

We’re 1h 45min in and I’m 10 out of 81 (56 ITM; 437 original entrances). Who get’s moved to my table? Yes, you guessed it, the chipleader (I have a 12k stack, he has a 26k stack after coming to the table with a 23k stack and bullying around, raising every hand – big stack poker). I look down at JJ224 in the SB…he pops it 1860 to 2460. Now this could be any kind of hand, I’ve got a powerful hand and still a redraw to a boat. Let’s see what he’s going to draw. I draw one, miss. Hmm…he draws 3. Okay, so he got a pair, most certainly Aces. Feeler underbet. He insta-pops it 7k. Now this would cripple me and I ask myself:

1. Why did I even get involved in this hand? – Correct answer: because I likely held the best hand preflop. His play could be any 5 cards as he’s in steal position.

2. Assessment after the draw: He’s drawn 3, three friggin cards after popping it +3 times the BB…Hmm…so what are his chances…he held a pair of Aces for sure…donk!…trips – 2 outs…drawing a pair in 3 cards – tough one…no real data on this case…

3. So…does this overbet mean that he caught his third Ace? A second pair? Nothing?

So…what did I do? I call as the only way I’m going to lose this hand is if he got incredibly lucky and I got unlucky in the process. – STOP! HAMMER TIME!* – So I call…and he shows AA77T….very well played donkfish mofo…god damn it…I was really undecided whether to puke up my keyboard or go on a tuff_fish-style-rant (TM)…I decided to go with the latter and cursed him out quite nicely in the chat…what a fucking tool. Raising in position with this crap…then I draw crap but I’m like 80/20 sure that I got the best hand** and he get’s TOTALLY lucky on my ass….very well done.

So…I look down at a 2k stack with slightly over 70 players to go and what the hell…the next decent hand I push and another donk shows a better hand (which had happened to me for the really huge number of 2 times before this evening – once against the superdonk chipleader in the hand I just described)…unreal…I still can’t believe it… out in 77th when I should be sitting tight with a 24/25k stack waiting for the bubble to burst…I mean, in the grand scheme of things, this means nothing. So, he got lucky…I crapped on the table (not literally) yet again…oh well…there’s always next time.***

Well….fuck it! Next time…next time…why oh why do the donkeys ALWAYS**** get lucky on me, not in a non-crucial-pot, but in the damn deciding hand. Can you answer me that question? …and it’s not like this has been the first time, or the second or the thirtieth…I can’t fucking get a break in the important hands…just can’t…

Now that this is out of my system, one final thought on MTTs: Yes, “you need to get lucky to win one of those” – me, I would settle for just “not getting unlucky” “one time”…

* I commited only 1/6 of my stack here…and I could let it go. Then again, I feel I have the best of it so I go with my old “trust your first instincts”-plan…it didn’t work out…again….

** I guess another player, not in the hand could have a totally different view on this:

1. You had the best hand. You made the correct assumption that his drawing 3 couldn’t lead him to a better hand in most cases, it could though in some cases. You made your decision, it was wrong.

2. Why didn’t you reraise pre-draw? Why didn’t you bet out more after the draw?

What’s your opinion here?

*** Consolation price: yes, the superdonk chipleader plays like this for a little longer, getting his ass handed to him, busting out in 25th for a hefty 8$ profit on a 5$ investment, very well done sir, hope you never get lucky again in your lifetime. Thank you. *lol*

**** ALWAYS = perception of recent events, surely the numbers are more like “near” the “normal” percentages of outcomes, but still you can’t help but wonder if you can’t win the obvious ones, then catch no break in close ones and get burned regularly in underdog situations…is this really normal? I don’t think so…

PokerStars Game #7888139718: Tournament #39824804, $5.00+$0.50 5 Card Draw Pot Limit
– Level IX (300/600) – 2007/01/11 – 21:17:37 (ET)
Table ‘39824804 56’ 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: superdonk chipleader (26120 in chips)
Seat 2: Ingoal (12255 in chips)
Seat 3: xxx (3545 in chips)
Seat 4: xxx (12020 in chips)
Seat 5: xxx (6445 in chips)
Seat 6: xxx (1310 in chips)
superdonk chipleader: posts the ante 60
Ingoal: posts the ante 60
xxx: posts the ante 60
xxx: posts the ante 60
xxx: posts the ante 60
xxx: posts the ante 60
Ingoal: posts small blind 300
xxx: posts big blind 600
*** DEALING HANDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [2d Jh 2c 4d Jc]
xxx: folds
xxx: folds
xxx: folds
superdonk chipleader: raises 1860 to 2460
Ingoal: calls 2160
xxx: folds
Ingoal: discards 1 card [4d]
Dealt to Ingoal [2d Jh 2c Jc] [5c]
superdonk chipleader: discards 3 cards
Ingoal: bets 600
superdonk chipleader: raises 7080 to 7680
Ingoal: calls 7080
*** SHOW DOWN ***
superdonk chipleader: shows [7h Ad Th Ac 7s] (two pair, Aces and Sevens)
Ingoal: shows [2d Jh 2c 5c Jc] (two pair, Jacks and Deuces)
Ingoal said, “luckbox”
F0LD–IT collected 21240 from pot
Ingoal said, “unbelievable”
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 21240 | Rake 0
Seat 1: superdonk chipleader (button) showed [7h Ad Th Ac 7s] and won (21240) with two pair, Aces and Sevens
Seat 2: Ingoal (small blind) showed [2d Jh 2c 5c Jc] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Deuces

*lol*

Had a pretty bad run today, just couldn’t catch a break. Made wrong decision after wrong decision running into hands like it was the norm (JJ vs QQ, AJ vs AQ, 77 vs 88, etc etc). So, it sucked pretty badly today, but hey, there’s always tomorrow and that’s why I decided to quit for the day rather quickly.

I just came across Daniel Negreanu’s latest video blog – the mullet chop, funny stuff! Enjoy…

So…I started the heads-up series against Veneno today. We decided to stick to my original “challenge” schedule of the following matches:

1. NL HE (L)
2. Pot Limit Omaha 8b (L)
3. Razz (W)
4. 7 Stud
5. PL HE
6. Pot Limit Omaha
7. HORSE

So…we started with the NL Hold’em and I sucked, sort off. Couldn’t get past the poison as she was hammering away on me, figuratively and literally, for the whole game. She took an early lead and I just couldn’t put her on a real hand, just on the “I know what you got? – Oh really? – Yes, you got what we call the best hand”-type of hand. So I was down, but not out, quite quickly before fighting back to take the interim chiplead. After that another downward spiral hit and I was soon very low on chips. The final hand was true poison style…I look down at AQ…ooh wee…but I have only around 2xx chips left, so no doubt she’ll call (almost with any 2)…she shows A3…the rest is history…

So..down 0-1…and off to the second match. Pot Limit Omaha High/Low split. Hmm tasty, directly from the torture chamber of hell…lol…after all we know that there can be some wild shit flying around your ears in this game, which makes it both fun and excruciatingly painful sometimes…the match is a blur as I can’t remember many hands…early on I took the chiplead with a scoop…took down another few smaller pots before giving back most of it and then some…the last hand was 10-8-6-2…board comes 10-8-6…I overplay my three-pair and we get the money in…V shows 7-9-9-K for the straight…I don’t improve and busto….0-2, yikes.

After that we head over to the Razz-table and I think ran away with the match. The cards fell my way and I was even able to bluff a little here and there. In the last hand I held a chiplead of 2600 to 400 and sucked out on 6th and 7th street…ooooh the sweet taste of triple atomic antidote…lol…should have used that in the first two matches too 😉

So…I’m down 1-2 after 3 matches and it’s crunch time! Really looking forward to the next matches! You better be ready V, I sure will be 🙂

Well not much time to play or post, so just a quickie:

1. Busted some donkeys at bodog’s HU tables, 3 out of 4 not too bad.

2. Got my ass handed to me once again at FTP…unbelievable how some nice brick-sessions at Razz and kind rivers for my opponents can ruin everything…oh well…”the only thing that matters is making correct decisions”…yeah right, but losing still sucks 😉

I’m outta here…

…so despite having to work today, I squeezed in a little play here and there. Bodog was not particularyl kind to me, yet again, but at least I was able to donk around at Full Tilt a little. The new mixed games rock. I guess I’ve never ever seen such an amount of “donkeys” invading the games before. The are probably good hold’em players, at least some of them, but bring in the other games and the game is a whole new animal.

Played some “HA” and said “HA! Got you” everytime I stacked up someone else’s chips in the A (Omaha Hi) part of the game, before handing some of them back in the H part of the game. In the end I was able to recoup the prior SnG losses to break even…so not really a good run, but at least not a bad one either…

Well, it was a bank holiday in germany today, so I had a little time for some poker. First of all I watched some of the WSOP 2006 coverage. Good stuff there, especially Dimitri telling CJ about how he would tighten up and all after spewing chips.

Then it was time for some poker of my own. Quick summary:

1. Nine: I’ll be damned, but once again, “cold-deck” after “cold-deck”…down a nice junk and still not in reach to clear the bonus. Sigh…

2. FullTilt: Busted some fish at the CAP SH tables…then thought it was a good idea to play some Razz and PLO8 SnGs…no g00t….still up for the night though…

3. Bodog: If you’re running not all that good and want to finish the night on a high note…fire up bodog…play some HU…won the first two…lost the third…

Time to catch some sleep now as I’ve got a grueling headache and I need to get up for work in 6 hours…so…night and night…and have fun at the Mook!

That pretty much sums up my session at FullTilt. Started out with busting some donkey balls at the CAP Hold’em tables. Then decided that it was time to play some other games again. Stud went fairly well. Stud H/L in return didn’t go well at all. Then I fired up two PLO tables and the shit really got sour.

I mean, I’m certainly no expert at PLO (in contrast to one of my better games PLO8), so it might be that I played some hands the “wrong” way, but some hands just went so bad that I couldn’t believe it.

Example: I hold AsKs4c5c, flop comes 2s5sAh, so I’ve got top two with and inside straight draw and the nut flush draw…pot by my opponent…raise pot = CAP by me…admitted loose call by my opponent…he shows QQ77…hmm…turn 7c river Qd…nice, NOT!

Example #2: I hold As2sAd2d…now that’s not the best hand in the world, but not the worst either…pot preflop…two callers…flop Ah6dJh….EP pots it….I reraise CAP…other player folds…showdown 6s6h2h2c…wheeee….turn 7h…d’oh…one time dealer…pair the board….as if…damn it 😉 …river…10h…

Oh well…slightly down for the (playing) session, still slightly up due to some cleared reload bonus dough so ‘s all good…

Today I realized that I’m caught in low limit nirvana, the wasteland, nowhere, whatever you would like to call it. At the limits I’m currently playing (not higher than .25/.50) there are some good players (and I would consider myself one of those), but mostly mediocre to bad players.

Good stuff if and only if you can take full advantage of it and recently I can’t – don’t get me wrong: if you substract variance I’m a winning player and you shouldn’t count short term results anyway, so it’s all good – but still: playing at those levels keeps me in a endless loop of winning and losing (mostly on bad beats or at least getting drawn out with incorrect odds) and there’s not much I can do.

How should I put it?! Playing at those levels takes away some of your best options. You can wait and wait for monster hands and then bet the living jebus out of them, just to see them win in some cases or get a horrible beat. Nothing much in between. Example: one of the precious “tools” of poker is the bluff, right? The catch: at the levels I’m playing there’s a deadly mix of players involved in almost every hand I play – the majority will call you no matter what, even with fourth pair on a straight-, flush- or any scary-board in general…the good ol’ “I don’t believe you”, “I’ll be the sheriff this round, I can’t let anyone bluff me!”, “I wanna see that” attitude…so the bluff is mostly out of the picture (unless I’m heads up with a player which has proven his/her ability to laydown a hand – after all that’s one of the reasons why you keep book, right?). So what to do, what to do?

Two possibilities:

1. Move up in limits. That’s no guarantee for a donkey free zone though and with my current bankroll constraints it’s basically out of the picture – no point in trying to survive on a short short roll, it would be the recipe for destruction.
2. Stay at the same level and deal with the daily hurting involved in grinding it out.

So, I’m basically stuck…damn! I guess I’ll schedule poker free days from now on to alleviate the pain…I guess a titanium cup won’t hurt either, so I’m ordering one tomorrow 😉

Today’s results: Some success at FullTilt: PLO8b HU – won, SnG – ITM, some success at PokerStars: cash games, slightly up…

Tonight I discovered some new forms of tilt. I don’t know if they’re totally new, but at least they were new to me – until now.

After watching hours of high stakes poker (the GSN show and laughing my ass off at some trash talk at the table) I thought it was time for some low limit SnGs…so I jump on PokerStars and find myself the next best NL Hold’em SnG. Right in/after the first hand I discovered the first new form of tilt:

“I should have played that last hand”-tilt: First hand I’m looking down at 44 in EP. I decide to limp, as do some players after me. LP raises to 160 (10/20 blinds). SB folds, BB pushes All-In. Now the logical move is to fold and so I do. Sure enough LP calls. Showdown: LP = AKs, BB=1010…Flop: A43, turn: x, river: 10. Well…trip 10s win and I’m sitting at my desk and tell myself: you did the right thing…nontheless I would have eliminated two players and tripled up in the very first hand. Still the correct move – no point in risking your whole stack in the first hand with a measly pair of 4s.
All good there, although my head is telling me that I should call down half my stack in the very next hand with second pair. Hmm…I would consider this the new form of tilt – the “I should have played that last hand (although I know that I did nothing wrong it sort of tilts me now although I don’t want it to)” tilt. Sure enough I catch rockets in the next hand and my opponent outdraws me with AK (nice to see a flop with two kings in his spot)…

After this 3 hand experience I should have know better than to play any longer, but still I did. This time for a little higher stakes, a single table PLO8b SnG. After scooping some pots early on I find A2Q10 double suited and “gamble” a little…sure enough I’ve got the nut low draw and hit two pair, just to be outdrawn by a flush on the river…no low, too and there goes a good part of my stack, yikes. Next hand…similar hand, same result…outdrawn on the river, no low. Yikes^2. That’s when I discovered the next new form of tilt:

“Let’s gamb00l as you’re going to outdraw me anyway”-tilt: Next hand I pop it up preflop with 4 low connectors…opponent bets the pot, one caller, folded to me…I push my remaining stack in there…both call…flop: OESD, turn: blank, river: bingo…bad news for me…my bingo card puts three hearts out there…and sure enough my straight is no good. Sigh…the bad thing wasn’t to get outdrawn in that particular hand (after all Omaha, especially H/L split is all about drawing), but that by getting outdrawn in the prior hands I convinced myself that it was bound to happen again anyway, so why care…bad bad!

Note to self: You’re not as tilt-proof as usal when jumping into a game “just for fun”. Your mental preparation before playing in a “normal” setup is invaluable! Stick to it!
This post is brought to you by the letter T for tilt. Time to catch some sleep now…night all…

…making bad decisions because of it or along with it (- as in “trying too hard”) is a whole other matter. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m running bad or if it’s just that my game is off atm, but I caught myself doing some pretty stupid things tonight: I have to get up early tomorrow, so only a short session (1 Shorthanded SnG at FullTilt, 1 180SnG at Stars and some ring games)…and I caught myself “taking shots” more often than I needed to – we all know that you will have to win some coin-flips (and/or touch hands) in order to reach the top of a poker tourney, but only if the situation is in your favour (or if you’re desperate or if you truely feel that you’re ahead…): so I catch myself calling a hand down with nothing but TP and sure enough the paired board made trips for someone…now this isn’t bad luck, this is stupidity! In another hand I call off my stack with AQ high…running into a small pair in the process…
I think I should get my game straightened out again and focus on playing better…it’s hard these days with my last exams at uni coming up (next wednesday and friday) and the corresponding stress-level rising…so the question is if I should be playing atm at all…I guess not really, but a little game here or there won’t hurt so I’ll focus on playing some micro ring games and no tourneys/SnGs until the exams are over 😉