Played another DS to the sunday million tonight…patience at the first table is key, the donks are more than willing to hand you their chips, just gotta have the patience to wait for the right spot and you’ve got a good shot. I took out 4 out of 5 at the first table, even after being down to 500 chips early (losing a coinflip against a pushmonkey). The final table was brutal then. I was playing tight tight tight…just like everyone else, I for one didn’t do it on purpose though. Usually I would try to run over such a tight table in that spot, but it’s hard to do if you’re looking at 53o etc all the time. So I sat back and relaxed a little…once the blinds got bigger I finally had to resort to some all-in steals etc. The worked…but I couldn’t get anything going, not a single decent hand…once we were down to three I pushed…ran into a crap-flip 40/60 shot and lost…out in third…oh well…can’t complain here.

After that I donked around a little in the HU SnGs…and the game was brutal…I won my first match within 5 hands when my KJ on a KJx board was more than enough against my opponent calling a re-reraise-shove on that flop with K4o…well played sir….TPNK totally gold there…lol. In the next three matches it was cooler time. Flush into bigger flush…boat into bigger boat…nut flush into small boat…two pair into bigger two pair…you name it, I ran into it. Oh well, that’s how it goes sometimes…so I finish the session down, but down less than the rake…so I can live with that…

On another note: I finished reading Johnny Hughes’ book “Texas Poker Wisdom” yesterday…I gotta say a really good read, it made me smile a lot of times along the way with all the gamblers’ / poker players’ references by Old Cardslinger Matt…I can really recommend it…and I wonder if there’s going to be a sequel…

I have to check my shelf now as the poker reading material is starting to get slim…after all I have read a lot of stuff so far…I guess my next must read will be Doyle’s new book (autobiography?!)…if it is only nearly as entertaining as Amarillo Slim’s I will be a happy customer…alrighty…enough babbling…I’m outta here…gl at the tables everyone…

Put my tourney dollar to use today, tried to satellite into the Sunday Million again…had nothing going the first two tries (DS), almost lost it in the third one two. We’re down to three and I’m coolered, JJ vs 99 all-in preflop. I got him covered by a long shot…he manages to pull a two outer out of his head. I bust him not long after that nontheless. On the second table I’m sitting back until I find some hands. I knock out a few and sit pretty. Once we’re down to four shit hits the fan and I lose it all in two hands. The first one was pretty straight-forward, I look down at A7o in the cutoff. I raise it, BB pushes for about 1200 (I had raise the standard 600 at 100/200)…so I instacall…he shows presto and wins the hand. Presto obv g00t. Next hand I look down at A5o on the button. UTG fold, I push…SB instacalls…BB folds…he, who just doubled through me shows QQ…lemon. So I’m busto in fourth, good for 20, but still sucks. I watch how he goes on a tear and finishes the other two poor souls within 10 hands. Sometimes you’re just destined to win it…he was this time.

After that I logged off and watched some movies, nothing awesome to report there, I guess it’s going to be a while till the next real kickass movies come out (e.g. The Mummy 3)…so I switch back to some poker…and I get my ass handed to me for the most part. I still manage to win a 6-max, finish 2nd in a 6-max and win a 9handed turbo SnG…good enough to be slightly up for the night…and I’m out of here…gl at the virutal and real table, especially to the broggers still in the hunt for the donkus maximus (aka the WSOP Main Event)…

What else can I say, two things happened tonight….

1. I got kicked in the junk so hard, my sack is going to hurt for another week I guess. It was pretty unreal, I made good call/bet/raise and read after another and got fucked on all of them. Sure..3 outs is plenty…or not…tonight it was more than enough to kick me in the junk.

2. I hit my first (real) royal flush ever. It only took me nearly 3 years of insane online play to hit one…

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: il Priore ($2470)
Seat 2: spartana82 ($2160) –
Seat 3: Ingoal ($1760) –
Seat 4: n0valogick ($1260) –
Seat 5: gmu 6 ($1125)
Seat 6: knowjack ($225)

PRE-FLOP:

Ingoal posts small blind $15
n0valogick posts BIG blind $30
Dealt To: Ingoal

CALL gmu 6 ($30)
FOLD knowjack
CALL il Priore ($30)
CALL spartana82 ($30)
CALL Ingoal ($15)
CHECK n0valogick

FLOP:

Pot: $150
   

CHECK Ingoal
CHECK n0valogick
CHECK gmu 6
CHECK il Priore
CHECK spartana82

TURN:

Pot: $150
     

CHECK Ingoal
CHECK n0valogick
BET gmu 6 ($240)
FOLD il Priore
FOLD spartana82
CALL Ingoal ($240)
FOLD n0valogick

RIVER:

Pot: $630
      

BET Ingoal ($150)
CALL gmu 6 ($150)

SHOWDOWN:
Ingoal:

MUCK gmu 6

Ingoal collected $930 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $930 Rake: $0

Final Board:
     

Seat 1: il Priore folded on the Turn – Net Gain/Loss: ($-30)
Seat 2: spartana82 button folded on the Turn – Net Gain/Loss: ($-30)
Seat 3: Ingoal small blind showed [4d Kd] and won 930 with a Royal Flush – Net Gain/Loss: ($510)
Seat 4: n0valogick big blind folded on the Turn – Net Gain/Loss: ($-30)
Seat 5: gmu 6 mucked [Th Tc] – Net Gain/Loss: ($-420)
  
Seat 6: knowjack folded before Flop didnt bet – Net Gain/Loss: ($0)

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

First session: this morning, some NL cash and 8 NL HE SnGs…mostly good…3x1st 2x2nd in the SnGs….slightly up in the cash game.

Second session: this evening, 8 NL HE SnGs…1x 2nd…that’s it…the other time I totally lost it. I basically ran into more coolers than I’ve ever seen. Sure, there was the one or other bad play in between, but every time a big pot came down, it was pretty much a hand that automatically plays itself. QQ vs KK…JJ vs AA…along with some coinflips of which I won the grand sum of 0.00000000000. Pretty sick. Especially sick was one game where a donk ran so hard over the table that it was a done deal within 15 hands. He sucked out on two fellas in the first hand. Down to for. I was next along with another player…I had the best hand going in…He busted us both….headsup took two hands before he sucked out and won. I’ve never ever seen such a SnG before where a player ships it into the middle behind on every god damn hand and wins em all…he made CJ look like the unluckiest player alive…

Random bubble hand (the usual in the second session):

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 3: 11p0wner ($1965) –
Seat 5: xamou ($3615) –
Seat 6: Ingoal ($3420) –

PRE-FLOP:

xamou posts small blind $50
Ingoal posts BIG blind $100
Dealt To: Ingoal

FOLD 11p0wner
CALL xamou ($50)
CHECK Ingoal

FLOP:

Pot: $200
   

CHECK xamou
CHECK Ingoal

TURN:

Pot: $200
     

BET xamou ($100)
RAISE Ingoal ($200)
RAISE xamou ($300)
RAISE Ingoal ($400)
RAISE xamou ($3515)
CALL Ingoal ($2920)

RIVER:

Pot: $7635
      

SHOWDOWN:
xamou:

Ingoal:

xamou collected $6840 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $6840 Rake: $0

Final Board:
     

Seat 3: 11p0wner button folded before Flop didnt bet – Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 5: xamou small blind showed [Ac Kd] and won 6840 with three of a kind, Aces – Net Gain/Loss: ($3520)
  
Seat 6: Ingoal big blind showed [As 5s] and lost with three of a kind, Aces – Net Gain/Loss: ($-3420)

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

This whole SnG grinding thing is really starting to get me. It’s not so much the hours, the dedication or the frustration, it’s the realisation that you can only be profitable if you get a few less junk-kicks than you’re willing to hand out, that and the fact that the rake (“tourney fee”) keeps eating you up when you try to grind it out in the low-end of the pond.

I know that everyone is about to be fed up with the constant whining and complaining – after all all sorts of beats are part of the game – yeah, well, easy to acknowledge and to deal with it if you’re sitting on a good roll. I’m not, so it’s tougher, maybe even tougher than you are realizing. It really eats me up that I can win and win and then lose and lose and win and win and that it’s a slow but steady downwards spiral, because I can’t win enough to constantly beat the rake. There I said it, I just can’t.

Why? Because no matter how good I run, someone else seems to be running better and guess what, the house doesn’t care, all it’s digital representation says is “kaaaaaaaa-chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing, ty for your money, come again”. For those who still care, the rake at the current donk-level I’m playing is 8,3%.

In a good night I can easily crush that mark and then some. In an average night (like tonight) I might win (in a general game-related sense) but still break even or finish a small loser (due to the rake)…and don’t even get me started on a bad night. So I’m starting to think about my “strategy” in general and the future I have in online poker (if any). Maybe I should sit down and have a look at my extensive stats (both automatically logged via TourneyManager and manually kept in form of my own “results sheets”) and take it from there, as what I’m currently doing is obviously not working (side note: maybe it’s really the biggest losing streak I’ve had so far and it’s a mixture of down-swing, bad luck and bad decisions; maybe it’s just that I can’t beat the game; maybe it’s ???; to give you an idea about my downswing I can tell you this much: within the last 9 months I slowly lost 77% of my roll)…

To quote the great old green fella: “Meditate on this I will”…until then enjoy the (not so random pic dump), enjoy the kickass WSOP coverage of DrPauly and PokerNews and enjoy life…I sure will…away from online poker…cya on the other side…nn and gl at the tables…

…some would say seeing some of the brutal beats I took in the four SnGs I played after the fucktastic FullTilt-session. Others would say: hey, you got lucky first. Why? Because I usually had a monster-stack when the bad luck hit me and we all know it’s much easier to take if you’re not out or crippled when you take a junk kick. Maybe the latter is true, I got lucky in a sense that ppl were willing to donk-off their stack with second pair or some similar bs. The only true cooler hand was me raising with KK on the button after someone in MP had raised preflop. He flat-calls. We see a flop of KTT…I lead out small, he pushes…sure enough he has a T and wow…no one outer this time. But honestly, should I consider myself ultra-lucky there because my opponent thought he was Doyle Brunson (he raised and flat-called my reraise preflop with T2o)? I don’t think so. Or what do you think he put me on? Exactly…nothing at all…and even if he did…he was probably rubbing his hands because some hands in my range there (AKs/AKo/KQs/KQo/etc) would have been in dire-straits against his hand after he flopped lucky trips. Too bad I had exactly the hand he didn’t want to see.

Enough rambling though…I’m outta here with a smile….four SnGs…2 Ws…1 second…good enough to forget about the earlier FTP-incident…ty Stars for kicking my in the junk, but x times softer than FTP. I’m out…gl at the tables….

No, not Greg Mueller, but Full Blown Tilt. It really hurts when you’re making some questionable (read: bad) decisions early on in session. It hurts even more when you get your shit together and get kicked in the nuts repeatedly. Got into some nasty hands, basically cooler hands, no big deal, but the hands that really ticked me off were the dominating hands (AK no match for K5, AK no match for AQ, etc etc)…so sick when you get the money in good and your opponent has the whole three outs…and hits it EVERY GOD DAMN TIME.

I’m outta here before I bust myself…

Played some SnG-donkfests while waiting for the bodonkey to start – nothing unusual here, but I doubt that many of you would even consider to kill time until 3am…I do…not as regularly as usual, but for tonight’s bodonkey I’m doing it, again…

So I played some donkfests on Stars…and all in all I’m pretty satisfied with my play. I cost myself some money in one of the five I played. I look down at ATo on the button…I’m the chipleader, the SB is short, the BB is second in chips (I got him covered by 1k), UTG is short. As it’s a six-max SnG, we’re not on the bubble yet, but with blinds starting to rise again shortly (in this hand they’re at 75/150 and both shorties have less than 10BB) it’s crunch time. UTG folds, I standard-pop it to 450, SB folds, BB raises to 1450 which is around a third of my stack. I ponder, not very long and push. Hmm…BB obv instacalls with AKs…good timing…no help and he’s got a monster-stack now and the other two along with me are short. Next hand I open-push UTG with A6o…BB calls with QQ and I’m busto. Quick rewind. From first to out in fourth in two hands. Necessary? Not really, I mean yeah, the BB in the first hand could be making a move, but why should he with two shorties at the table? And even if so, I can wait for a better spot. So I blame myself for that one.

The other matches were pretty standard. I bubbled in one, where I shouldn’t have…money goes in on the flop KT vs K8 on a K-high board…he turns the three-outer and I’m busto. At least I was able to win one and finish second in another one, so slightly up for the night and not really in the mood to continue the “killing time theme”…so enjoy the random pic dump…and I’ll be back later after the bodonkey, let’s see how I can get unlucky this week

Started the session of with a little headsup action to get me going. My opponent was really weak, he caught a good rush early on though…still wasn’t enough to win for him…I overcame a 2.2k/800 deficit to bust him. Then I turned my attention to some 6 handed SnGs and I still can’t catch a break on the bubble. I’m not saying that I was totally unlucky, after all you’re supposed to lose a few there, it was just that every time we were on the bubble it’s a huge stack (who caught good early or right before the bubble) and some other guy scraping around with me. Maybe it’s time to turn down the aggression factor on the bubble…I honestly don’t know…but really I don’t see myself folding AT, AJ, etc in that spot on the bubble…too bad that this week is AJ (vs my AT), AQ (vs my AJ) week…oh well…they can’t wake up with a hand all the time no can they…so I’ll be back trying to grind it out tomorrow…maybe I can finally turn things around and score a winning session again…

Man what a brutal session it was today…I can’t put my finger on it…but something is awefully wrong these days. I’m spewing chips like an ATM…it’s not even funny anymore. I can’t put on a winning session anymore and I’ve finally managed to evaporate 2/3 of my bankroll. Downswing? Bad play? Bad luck?

I honestly don’t know…but I’m trying to get some insight on this by going back to some analyzing and more extensive record keeping…on that note: I played 18 SnGs…won 2, finished second in 1, bubbled 5 times and busted out earlier in 10…now those are no pretty numbers.

All I know is that of the 5 times I bubbled I had the best hand going in 5 out of 5 times. Aces…cracked…Kings…cracked….Kings…cracked…etc…I got sucked out on in 4 of the other early finishes…sucked back in both wins…won 0 coinflips (yes I counted )…ran overpairs to the board into yet another higher overpair thrice…lost with dominated hands four times…all in all I would say: hmm…pretty unlucky with some bad decisions in between…(I guess I could have survived at least one of the overpair vs overpair situations…if your opponent puts in the third raise preflop and you hold jacks…seeing a flop of T63…you should be able to get away from it when he open pushes…then again…I’m soooo curious these days…why? Because ppl don’t play like they’re supposed to (surprise, surprise)….

Here’s a pic to send you off…it’s entitled “My Night”

I’m off…and if the decline is continuing at this pace I’m going to be off for an extended period…no doubt…