Well, what can I say, I’m not doing good in the nine promotion so far. I’m not even half way through the points and all the suckouts and the bad run in the other side games (especially guts) is really taking it’s toll – half the bankroll gone and half my nerves with it. It’s just making me sick how unlucky I get in some of those pots, especially in guts again…I’m holding the nut straight in a monster pot, someone has three of a kind…I’m holding the nut straight again in a monster pot, someone has a straight flush…this is so sick – even winning one of these pots would have brought me right back to life, but no such joy. Then I get stacked in the ring games by a chaser with one card to come and I call it a day over at nine. Maybe tomorrow will bring me some better luck.

Off to WPX I go to play some SnGs. Same game, same shit, same results. Chasing M*****fuckers catching every time. So I call it quits there too and head over to Full Tilt.

At least some went my way there as I was able to stack some people who just couldn’t let go of their TPTK/TPSK. A HORSE SnG to finish the session and I hit brick city in Razz, then Stud H/L and finally in Omaha to seal the deal.

So I’m done for the day, at least I had some fun watching the latest tuff_fish (party poker) monster “shows”…man, tony just keeps crackin me up – even when I’m running bad 🙂

Well, tonight I thought I’d give some other (cash) games a whirl to clear my head. So I finally hit a royal flush tonight in the ultimate low level donk-fest called “Royal Hold’em” over at UltimateBet – why Royal? Because all deuces to nines have been removed, so the chances are way higher to catch one, and boy did I catch one…for a massive pot of 38cents…lol…still waiting on one in the real game though in what seems like a gazillion hands…

In all other cash games I pretty much sucked. Whenever I caught piece of the board someone else caught the better part (TPTK vs small set, etc etc)…so not too much joy, but still refreshing – the joy of sitting down and standing up whenever I please…

…:

1. Every hand you make is only second best…
2. Noone is giving you credit for your good hands, ultimately drawing out time and time again with incorrect odds
3. Examples for 1.: 79 in the BB flop 6-8-10 rainbow, turn x, river 10…opponent’s hand? 10-8o; K9 in the BB…flop 10-J-Q rainbow, turn and river x…opponent’s hand? AKo
4. Examples for 2.: 1010 EP, 5BB raise…one caller…flop 910x all spades, huge bet, call, turn x, huge bet, call, river x of spades…All-In…call…sure enough the dude is holding As9c – didn’t my huge bets make it clear that I had a hand…were the odds correct to draw to a runner flush? Probably not…; 88 in LP, 4BB raise, flop 8xx…you know the drill…turn: x…you know the drill…river Q…you know the drill….opponent’s hand? QQ…sigh…

But what can you do and now that this is off my chest I can breathe again. Why did I continue to play all that time? Because I was hoping to get lucky in the 5 billionth hand stuff on Stars…didn’t work out…no joy in getting dough off the table, no joy getting dough in the 5 billionth hand giveaway…ah well…at least I finally had a dqb-moment again..first in a very long time

…and I closed out the session with a SnG win at UltimateBet…so there’s that silver lining on the horizon again 🙂

First of all: it seems that Pokerstars is finally running the 4$ 180 SnGs around the clock, at least for now:

Played two of them today – did well in the first try and busted out on some suckout that I have blocked from my memory to finish in 47th place. The second one was at least as painful, but at least the suckout came early…AQo vs Q5o…Q5 hit two pair…and IGHN…after two hands…nice…NOT.

Played some more SnGs over at Full Tilt (3rd, 5th, 6th) and one at UltimateBet (1st)…so overall I’m not all that disappointed, but the first Stars 180 still hurts…it’s always tough if you’ve been playing for almost 2h just to bust out on a donkey hand…ah well…off to recharge…damn and now I missed the WWdN by a few minutes…hmm…I see that Wil is already out (65th of 65…ouch)…alrighty…gl to the rest…I’m off to catch some sleep….

Played a crazy mix of games today including crazy pineapple on UB (damn that game can be fun) , Stud and different cash and SnGs/MTTs of NL HE. Got the first nut kicking by getting outdrawn time and time in the Stud MTT on Stars, not to worry though, it was a donkey 1$ tourney, so you can’t expect much. No cashes in all the other SnGs on both FullTilt and Stars with the best finish being 4th (bubble boy) on Stars.

Then I decided that it was time to finally play a WWdN again….so I logged back on just in time and registered. My starting table included PokerChamp (aka TouristHater 😉 ), Chris (drewspop), Dan (denials – live blogging the event once again) and others…

I didn’t think that this starting table would be the last one for me, but unfortunately it was. Dumped some chips in the first orbit with KJ sooted, standard raise preflop, one caller…I hit the king…on the rainbow flop and fire out another 100….call…turn is a queen…I fire out another 100…call…River is another Queen… now I check and get popped 200…sure enough I call…can’t put my opponent on AQ there…thanks dealer for a runner runner set for my opponent. Down to just above 1000 within the first orbit, damn. Next hand I decide to play is Jh10h…I flop an OESD + Flush draw + gutshot straight flush draw (as far as I remember the flop came down 9h-Kh-8c)…opponent fires 80 on every round and I call it down not hitting anything, no straight, no flush and damn sure no straight flush…and I’m down to around 900 chips. Next orbit I’m sitting in the BB with 88…drewspop pops it up to 80 (blinds still 10/20)…I ponder and call…flop is all rags 7-5-2 or something…I fire out 100 to see where I’m at…he reraises to 300…so now I’m faced with the tough choice (call – doesn’t make too much sense as I would be commited anyway, fold – not really, push – ding ding)…I push and he shows AA….noooooooooooooo! So I’m out in 95th of 98. Why do I have to run into those damn bullets…I guess I should call Phil Hellmuth, maybe he can teach me how to dodge bullets 😉

…let the donkeys in, but watch out and don’t let them run you over (too many times).

Played some SnGs (4 single table on FullTilt, 2 two table on PokerStars, 1 single table at UB) after coming back from my birthday bash. The only success I had was a second place on UltimateBet, all other finishes were outside the money (4th, 7th, 9th, 9th at FullTilt, 10th and 18th on Stars) – hands of the day: KK vs A4o and KK vs A9o…donks raise, I reraise and/or push All-In…they insta-call like they were holding the stone cold nuts…sure enough their donkey play is rewarded when an Ace hits the board….what to do, what to do?!

Hand History:
Seat 1: nokhead (2,060)
Seat 2: ak_girl18 (1,590)
Seat 3: pokerfan007 (1,455), is sitting out
Seat 4: Lewdini (1,765)
Seat 5: Danegus (1,395)
Seat 6: Ingoal (1,420)
Seat 7: BigRedDanK (1,675)
Seat 8: JBHAWKEYES (1,420)
Seat 9: gsrob (720)
JBHAWKEYES posts the small blind of 25
gsrob posts the big blind of 50
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [Kd Kh]
nokhead folds
ak_girl18 folds
pokerfan007 folds
Lewdini calls 50
Danegus raises to 150
Ingoal raises to 1,420, and is all in
BigRedDanK folds
JBHAWKEYES folds
gsrob folds
Lewdini folds
Danegus calls 1,245, and is all in
Ingoal shows [Kd Kh]
Danegus shows [As 9c]
Uncalled bet of 25 returned to Ingoal
*** FLOP *** [Qd Ad 7h]
*** TURN *** [Qd Ad 7h] [Qs]
*** RIVER *** [Qd Ad 7h Qs] [4d]
Ingoal shows two pair, Kings and Queens
Danegus shows two pair, Aces and Queens
Danegus wins the pot (2,915) with two pair, Aces and Queens

On one hand all the donkeys playing are really good for all of us, as they’re the main source of the money that goes into our pockets, but on the other hand they’re the ones taking the money from us (in the short run) and what is even more important is that they’re getting to us, or is it just me? – I guess it’s gotta be so much easier to be a donkey from a mental point of view: if you win (with the best hand, by sucking out, who cares?) you’re the king of the world, if you lose there’s always tomorrow and nothing to worry about…after all you didn’t put much effort into your play, so why worry? One thing’s for sure though: I don’t want to be a donkey, I’m in it to win it – although “winning” is hard to define: basically I like the equation “up amount/percentage x over amount of time y“ where x -> infinity and y > some months/years. Variance is part of poker, so the reality is that you can’t win every hand, but it’s still hard to accept when you’re losing a big hand to a donkey, yet again.

In the end it all comes down to the fact that luck or “getting lucky/sucking out” is just another facet of poker – after all this is the fuel that drives the donkeys: if they were punished for their donkey play at all times, there would be no donkeys left in the games soon enough, as they couldn’t win many hands – let me rephrase that to they could win as many hands, but (almost) no big pots!

Now that I’ve got that off my chest I’ll do what I do best: vent (done with this post), log off for today and come back with a vengeance tomorrow….heeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaw! 😉

No matter what I played today, I sucked at all of the games…or the cards I got sucked…whatever…I played a Stud H/L MTT (busted out early), a Omaha H/L SnG (bubbled), two NL Hold’em MTT (busted out in the first hour in both)…argh!

I guess there’s no point in playing anymore today…better luck tomorrow I guess…or not…we’ll see…

Just played two small SnGs at UB today, nothing news-worthy…1 cash…1 bust.

After coming back from footie training in the freezing cold and having a few at a club, I logged onto Stars to find a lovely 3$ NL HE MTT…and Waffles was playing too…I didn’t check the player ranks, but he was transferred to my table, but I was moved to another table before we even played a hand. So I fire up Yahoo and the nice part of the tourney began, chatting it up and all. We agreed to switch 10%, which in the end amounted to virtually nothing…too bad we couldn’t get closer to the final table…

(No long hand descriptions here, just two noteworthy hands: early on I look down at JJ on the button, EP raises it up to 6xBB, Cutoff reraises to 12xBB…what to do what to do…I put at least one of them (EP) on either AA or KK…so I fold…EP shows KK…Cutoff shows AA…now guess what the board brought onto them….x-x-J-x-x, argh! That would have been a really nice pot, but without knowing the flop it was a correct play IMO. My last hand: I’m desperately short-stacked and look down a 10-10 in the SB…two limpers…I push…1 caller…he shows A-J…board is blank…until I can virtually feel how the final card is peeling itself off the deck….yeah, you guessed it….sigh….)

So I finshed 257th…Waffles busted out shortly after me in 149th….out of 2347…so not a bad showing…

Slow day for me today. Just played a few orbits of PL Omaha H/L at UB again…it’s hard to step down and play at the pennies again, but at least I had a winning session again, so that’s a good note. Got bored pretty quickly though, so I moved to PokerStars and continued my quest to conquer the SnG throne…

Played one PL Omaha H/L and two NL HE – with similar results: couldn’t get in the money to save my life 🙁

Couldn’t get much going in the Omaha 8b one and I’ll save you the “bad beat” stories of the two HE ones…just a quick note: whether it’s A-Ks or A-Ko it’s not enough to win against a dominated hand (K-J and A-10 respectively)…

I’m off now…got a dentist appointment tomorrow, yuck…this should be fun…NOT 😉

After dropping 2 Buy-Ins (or 40xBB) in 10 hands ( 🙁 ) I decided to change my plan. Instead of stepping down in limit, I’m going to try it with Limit Omaha H/L at the 0.25$/0.50$ tables. Maybe the craziness of PL Omaha H/L just wasn’t meant to be (yet). Let’s see how this works out…

Update:
Okay I give up…another 30 hands later and I’m out of another 20xBB which brings me back to my original plan as I dropped 100x BB in 3 days (2 playing days with a pause of 1 day, yesterday)… 🙁