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You can find me in the future here.

cya

Slow month take off

Nothing too exciting so far this month poker wise. I decided to reduce the amount of tables I am playing from 9 to 6 with the plan to play less auto pilot and therefore not only to concentrate more on some leaks I still have but also to try out other lines in certain situations. The plan works out pretty decent up to now. My confidence in my game comes slowly back and it is always fun to try out new things at the tables. I am just thinking a lot latley about the game in general, had this week already two good sweats and on top of that watched a vid from Split. It is pretty cool that he is now doing vids for Card Runners after Stox Poker got shut down since I realy like the stuff he is publishing. So everything together a lot of things which will improve my own play a lot.

Besides this it seems there is although some improvement in my mental game. Yesterday I checked out my current results at NL50 and I realized I am down ~$700 from my peak in March. The good thing is I am not upset about this nor feel sorry for myself. I know I have just a rough time and that this part of the game. There is no reason to stress myself to get it all back fast becasue that is not how it works in poker. There are times where nothing works your way but that is just short term. We can not influence the results in poker but the thign we an influence is the way we play. So just make the right decesions and everything even out in the long run. Ít took a long time for me to realize this but I am happy to be now a lot closer to the mind set needed in poker.

Today is the start of the 16th Mini-FTOPS. I will play in event #1, a $20 No-Limit Hold`em tournament. From my experience in the past I think the field will be around 6k entrants with a first price of ~$25k!
Ship it one time please lol.

Not sure yet about tomorrow. I will probably play the the $10 Rebuy (event #5) but I am not sure about the $20 Turbo Rush (event #6) yet. The field is probably pretty weak since a lot of people play aweful in a turbo structure (blind levels are increasing faster than normal) and it is although Rush, a variation which seems to attract a lot of fishs latley.

In case I bink the tourney today you guys are the first to be knowing it ;)

Sigh final exams are in four days, I am happy when I have this shit behind me.

r2w

Report April

April is finally over and I am not too sad about it. Just another awful month.

My little venture at NL25 came to a quick end after I dropped 6BI in my first session - 4BI under EV.... So I jumped back to NL50 and was somewhat lucky to end the month with a very marginal win after gruelling long session at Friday.

On a side not I did not play any rush but for some straneg reason HEM thinks so and tracked some NL25 hands from normal tabels as Rush hands. But whatever.

At least I made a decent amount with Rakeback over the 36k hands I played in April (never played more hands before).

I although played three tournaments at Friday. Not too much to say about them. Busted out early in the $5.50 Turbo with TT < AA. Got a little deeper in the $8.80 one but busted out of the mone there, too. Preflop I 3b AA in LP vs a EP open raiser. He flats, board is 78Tr, he checks, I shove the rest of my stack (~75% pot) and he calls with JJ. Turn is a J and GG me. Not that far away from the money. My deepest run I had in the $11. Got there ITM pretty easy with an average stack even I splitted a key hand earlier where I got AQ vs A8 AI on an ace high flop and he luckboxed a split pot on the river. In my final hand I shove TT vs a donk ( he calls one orbit before my resteal with Q6 vs my 99 and obv we split by the river) who got a caller behind him. He made of course the call for most of his chips with K8s and the cold caller came although along with 99 (lol). Board is J4JKx and I am out for a minimum cash.

When you run bad you just run bad everytime everywhere I guess.

No real goals for May since I will have to invest some time for my final exams so there will be not that much poker in the first 12 days. Besides this I want to write a raw version of the COTW (Switching Gears) I signed up for June. Otherwise I am looking forward to the Mini-FTOPs this month and maybe I can run good there one time. We will see.

My shedule will look like this I think:

#1 $20+2 NLHE (Fri 7th 13ET)
#5 $10+1 NLHE Rebuy (Sat 8th 15ET)
#6 $20+2 NLHE Turbo Rush (Sat 8th 17ET)
#19 $20+2 NLHE 1r1a (Thu 13th 13ET)
#22 $20+2 NLHE 6max (Fri 14th 13ET)
#23 $50+5 NLHE 4x Shootout (Fri 14th 17ET)
#26 $10+1 PLO Rebuy (Sat 15th 15ET)

This will might change and I will add or leave out some of them depending if I have the time to play.

Moving Down

After another few shitty sessions on Friday I decided to move down to NL25 for the moment. I am still very good rolled for NL50 but I just need some confident in my game which can not be that bad like my latest results are.

Today I stayed away from the cash game tables and played some tournaments for a change of scenery. I played like a total of 15, most of them NLHE but although some PLO and mixed ones in. PLO is a really interesting game I have to say and the overall play looks very horrible to me. The venture ended with a minus of around $100. I had two small cashes but for most of the part I just ran not very good.

So I will play NL25 from tomorrow on for the rest of the month I think. I really hope I can grind out some money.

Damn ya poker gods....

Once you think everything is going smoothly for a month the poker gods come into play and fuck around with you. Thats all for today to say.

Peace

Halftime month report March

Ok, so here is something new I want to introduce: I will write every month a halftime report for the month where I will give an update of how I am doing so far in that particular month. I think that is a good way to keep track for myself and the few out there who are really interested in what I am writing here lol.

So while this should give a good overlook about current results I do not want to stress myself or anybody else too much about short term results. I am reading a lot of poker blogs (~20 at the moment) and I always dislike to some point the short term ramblings in them. Nothing wrong with rambling about the latest downswing but those "I played yesterday a session and ended 2BI down after 800 hands. So so sick!" entries are not really that interesting since guess what? That happens to all of us more or less every day! We play a game which is all the long term. And with long term I mean long term. Hundred of thousands of hands. Period. Maybe a post about this topic in more length a bit later.

So here we go finally with my halftime report for April. Nothing too much exciting happend since my last blog. I am up another 1.5BI which puts me up for a total of ~12BI up for the month. So far my win rate (WR) is around 5.9BB (Big Bets) for the month which is obviously not sustainable in the long run... I would be happy to beat the games at 3-4BB at one point! Of course I take this high WR as long as it will last especially since I played a bit fuzzy the last two days. At least I had the feeling I did. Seems like I have to replay some hands to see if I really played a bit odd in a few spots.

The only thing which really sucks is my volume so far.... only 10.4k hands! That is a shy ~3.6k hands behind pace for the prop bet this month (aiming 28k hands whit 9 tabling again). I will for sure not fail again and donate another $150 like last month. It is time to stop being lazy and getting some more hands in! So I have to play each day from now on ~1.2k hands to finish the month with at least 28k hands. This should be not too difficult!

On the final exams front I got the "invitation" to it yesterday with the post. They are split between 11st and 12nd May. On 11st the so called "open part" will be written. That means you get a bunch of questions about project managment and have 3.5 hours to answer them. This part will counts 40% to the end note of the graduation. On 12nd the two other parts are will be written: economics & social studies and marketing. Each test will last 60 minutes and counts 20% to the end note. The good thing is they are both multiply choice so is it a lot easier to handle than the first part!

The last 20% is for the verbal test which will take place approximately 6 weeks after the written part. I have pretty much a lock on the economics & social studies part. I got this Monday in a simulated test around 94.5% and that without learning. So I will and have to concentrate more or less full on project managment but is so incredible boring!

I think thats all for the moment but stay tuned for the things that will come!

Chillin` like a villain is over again

My vacations are over in a few hours which is obviously not that good. I had a great but pretty uneventful time. I splited my time mainly between Poker and Assassins Creed 2 for my xBox (got it last weekend). I am nearly halfway through it and it is a very good game so far. A lot of the annoying of part 1 got removed or is just way better. The only thing I am not really love is the bunch of Jump and Run you have to do but that is just me since I am just not too much into that.

Poker was just a blast since my last blog. I managed to make 10 BI in maybe 3k hands which is just awesome. It seems like I am running on the other side of variance again but I think my play was pretty good, too. But then again Poker is so much easier to play when the cards just fall your way everytime.

When the heater is on it is in my opinion paramount to remember there is always spots to improve your game. It is just so easy to forget about that while running good since the money just rolls in your account even you are leaking in one or in another part of the game. And there is always room to improve. Poker is not a static game so even we assume someone is playing perfect now that doesnt mean he can beat the game endlessly. At least not when he doesnt pay attention to the state of the game. It is just important to be always a step ahead of the rest of the field. The time flies by and prior secret moves which are becoming general wisdom. So everybody are doing them at one point and the own edge is getting smaller. Of course it is not like everybody is doing it means everybody is doing it right so its a bit hard to say how smaller the edge is really getting.

With this in mind I am really psyched about Poker at the moment. I just enjoy to play and finding those parts of my game where I can improve and although adding a few moves to my repertoire. I think I am on a good way to beat NL50 for a good clip since I just see so many mistakes at the tables every day. In review it is pretty funny to think about me being a bit afraid about the "unbeatable" limit NL50 when in fact it is not really that much harder tahn NL25. The regs are for sure a bit better and the preflop action is a lot more aggressive. But there are a lot of fish out there and a lot of the regs are just meh (later post).

On a side note I have to stop being lazy when it comes down to my final exams. They are in exactly one month and so far I did exactly zero for them. I think I have pretty much a lock in them but it can not hurt to do a bit for them. Even I will not care too much about the results I want a decent graduation. It is always good to something to fall back on even when I am hopping to go pro at the latest in January 2011. But only time will tell if I have really what it takes to go this way.

I hope everybody has a good month!

Business like usual?!

I just ended one of my probably longest sessions I ever played. I played over 3.5 hours straight for a cool 2.2k hands. Unfortunately I finished it down 1.5 BI which put me break even for the day since I played a shorter session earlier where I won 1.5BI. I am bit upset about this since in the second session I got more than my fair share of AA and KK and although flopped great with some other hands. But every tiem I had it I got no action but got out drawn a pretty awesoem amount of the time. At least I reached my goal for the day which was playing 3k hands.
I did not play all Eastern cause family stuff and it was time to get back on track!

Even I am running a bit better than in the second half of March I still got more then my fair shares for bad beats/coolers. I do not want to complain too much about variance since this is nothing I can control. But when I am looking at my results at NL50 I can not be too happy. I played over 45k hands break even. This is a small sample size and not only variance is the reason for this. A fair share of it is although bad play i.e. spew and some tilt. It is not that NL50 is not beatable but it seems that I am maybe missing some points to beat it in the long run. But then again I remember I needed like 60k hands before I figured out how to beat NL25. Maybe I am just a slow learner lol.

One thing I will maybe do is to move down to NL25 to grind it a bit out. I am still well rolled for NL50 but I am a bit annoyed of the games and my results in them at the moment. I just need a string of winning sessions again to feel better about my game again. And therefore NL25 is probably the right play ground for this.

At the end a funyn hand from last Thursdays:


Full Tilt Poker $50.00 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players - View hand 627606
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BB: $51.85
UTG: $50.75
UTG+1: $52.75
UTG+2: $47.00
Hero (MP1): $64.10
MP2: $61.75
CO: $65.10
BTN: $54.70
SB: $50.00

Pre Flop: ($0.75) Hero is MP1 with 7 7
2 folds, UTG+2 raises to $1.25, Hero calls $1.25, MP2 calls $1.25, 1 fold, BTN calls $1.25, 2 folds

Flop: ($5.75) 8 J 9 (4 players)
UTG+2 checks, Hero checks, MP2 bets $1.00, BTN calls $1, UTG+2 folds, Hero calls $1

Turn: ($8.75) 2 (3 players)
Hero checks, MP2 checks, BTN checks

River: ($8.75) T (3 players)
Hero bets $5.00, MP2 raises to $10, BTN folds, Hero raises to $61.85, MP2 calls $49.50 all in

Final Pot: $127.75
Hero shows 7 7
MP2 mucks 6 6
Hero wins $122.40
(Rake: $3.00)



So here I call preflop to set mine vs a pretty unknown guy. The flop call is maybe a bit debatable but I have a inside straight flush draw and therefore awesome implied odds since it is likely some one is drawing to the ace high flush. And there is a small chance although a offsuit ten or a seven is good here. I do not think MP2 nor the BTN has a strong hand here like since MP2 would propbaly bet here bigger and BTN would raise here with a set. I am pretty happy it is checked behindme on the turn and I can draw here for free. On the river I hit gin and decided to bet out hopping to get raised from the ace high flush or even the king high flush. And there is a chance he he/they are still caliign with a smaller flush to look me up. When someone has the Queen of spades here it would be pretty sick but no way I lay down my hand here.
MP2 is nice enough to raise my even it is only a min raise. I decided against to 3bet here but just shipped here since he will ever call here with the ace of spades here and probably every time with the King of spades. He insta called here and showed the 6 high flush (!)..... Pretty nice from him to level him self into a call.

March Review / April Preview

A bit late for this but I had no time yesterday so here is it now.

Like said in the last blog I got on a downswing in the second half of the month which destroyed a good start into the month. But it is nothing I did not seen before and I knew that sometime this year my first downswing in 2010 have to come. That is just the nature of the game. Like said before just the timing was not really great. I thought about putting in a hughe session at Wendsday to have the small chance to finish above $0 for the month but... Well, just let say sometimes in life it doesn`t go like planed. And I have to admit it would have been a sick grind with a pretty low chance for success. So I lost on the top the $150 in prop bets but that is the way it goes sometimes.

So lets have a look now how I did in March:

[ ] Work your way through "The Poker Mindset".

I have to say thats it is a really good book and maybe I will write a book review about it in the next future. It definitively helped my approach to the game and pointed a few points out I never thought of before. But I think I do not practice everything from it so I will reread it at some point for sure.

[X] Play at least 28k hands.

I am a bit proud of this since I never played so many hands before in one month.

[ ] Get Iron Man.

Fail. I missed it by one day which kinda sucks. I wished it would be on a monthly base like the VIP system at Stars fro example since I made overall a lot more points then 25 x 200 you need fro Iron Man. I think I made like ~8k points.

[X] Perform good at the Mini-FTOPS

I am happy with my play and that is all what matters. It would be cool for sure when I made a big score on those but nothing you can do when the cards just do not fall your way. And I made a tiny profit which is better than nothing.

In total March was not a month I am really happy about but at the same time it was not that bad. I played good most of the times and  variance is just a part of the game we call Poker.  It would be wrong to reduce  the whole month just to its result since its a marathon for sure.

That said I have definitively to work on my game to archieve the goals I set myself for the year. It is alreaydy 1/4 of the year gone and I am not anywhere near to reach them. Maybe I have to rethink some of them. But we will see.

I have no real goals for April besides playing at least 28k hands again and just keep improving at my game.   I have vacations until the 11th so there should be hopefully some time to put soem voule in while revamping my game.