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!

Bday, real lífe ramblings, month take off

My bday party was pretty cool. So on Monday I went out to dinner with the GF and my very close friends at this realy nice restaurant near my home. It has this NYC style - brick and motrar look, some cool wood interior and some smooth Jazz music in the background . Maybe a bit hard to explain but I hope you get my point. And they have a hughe bar! Which ended with me having already two coktails before I got my entree and a third before I finished dessert. Good times.

After this we went to a bar to far away. It is not a gorgeous place by any meanings but the alcohol is not that expensive and they have a separate smooking room. Non smooking bars sucks! A few Barcardi Sprites (one of my favorite long drinks) and a few more Tequiallas later I had a realy good time with some very interesting discussions about politics, sports and life in general. I was home at like 3AM - glad I had the next day off from work lol.

Well, I spend some money on the night but is was worth any penny. It is just great to have all of your important non family people around you and just having a good time. Especially that will not happen again in the near future. My best friend traveled the next day to Australia the next day for one year. This was the reason the party started already on Monday evening even I had birthday on Tuesday. I hope he will have an amazing time there!

I am happy when I finish my job training this June. The last ~3 years where just meh. I lived on a very thight budget while doing nothing I realy enjoy. I mean it is not the worst job in the world by any meaning but it just nothing I am in love with. Even I am glad to see the end of this life period this leads into the next problems. I have just no real clue what I will do after it. I could go the safe route and take the job offer I have from the company where I am at the moment. This means a poor paid half-time position for at least one year. Which means to live furthermore on a tight budget while searching for a somewhat nice flat (want to move thogether in with the GF from August on).

Besides this offer it seems the job situation is pretty bad right now. I will get a good graduation so this is not the problem. There are just not that much open positions! And even I would find something decent it is just not realy what I want to do longer than I have to. In my opinion working only for the money without passion for the work is just soul reaping in the long term.
So what do I want instead of grinding the office life? Well, obviously grinding the tables! I know playing for a living is note like heaven on earth. It contains a lot of up and downs and is just a hard way to make an easy living. But the idea of playing someday professional is in my mind for a few years now and finally it seems I am somehow on the right route to archive this. The only argument against taking this route is the fact I have no savings. But without money on the side for 3-6 month life expenses going pro is a pretty meh idea.

It looks like I have to get a job I will hate not too much after the final exams and save some money first. So sick.

Just in case you every wonder how the office life is:

I had a pretty good take off into March. Like always I have the strong feeling it could be better. It is funny when so many people congratulate you on your improvment and you self have the feeling you still sucks sometimes bad and only win because there are people out there who just sucks way more than you do. It is not like I have a low confidence. I am just very competive. When I do something I want to be the very best at it. This is like I always was. Applied to Poker this means I want to one of the best at every limit I play and not just a slightly winner or even worser a rakeback / FPP pro. Am I already one of the best? For sure not. Do I have the ability to be at that stage someday? Maybe. Time will tell. Will I do everything I can do to archive this goal? You can bet on this!

That said I am happy with the start of this month and hope the rest of the month will be that good, too. But in Poker only the longterm counts so I will forget about results and only try to make the right decisions every time I play for the rest of the month.
That said I am in pace right now for my volume goal this month but today the whole family will come over and celebrate my and the birthday of my younger brother (he went 20 on Monday) so not too much Poker today and no clue how much I can play at the weekend. We will see.

r2w

Random thoughts out of boredom

Here I am sitting now at work for one more hour with not much to do. And since I can not surf at the forum I just will throw some random stuff out here to kill the time a bit.

So far I have something like 6.4k hands down this month which is pretty okay for me. But I am only break even over this sample which is ~1.6pt (about 4BI) under AIEV only. I know HEM EV calculation is not 100% right. But it is at least an indication that I am not running that good especially the other funny things like set under set, set under straight or straight under straight are not into this calculation.

I know this is just variance and over the longrun the distribution between good and bad run is for everybody the same. So I can not really care about it even it makes me sick what kind of beats I get.

But what I care about is the fact that I have the feeling I just give every single session like ~1.5pt (maybe a little bit lesser) cause bad / suboptimal play away. A main problem is still my red line but my not good run influences that, too. But besides this I have still so much work to do especially on turn and river I think.

But then again I maybe try to plug / optimize too many things at once. It seems like I should really concentrate on one or maybe two things at once and therefore doing them right.

I have the hope I can turn things around for this month and have a shot to win / tide the prop bet. I do not care that much about the $50 I put on the line but I simply do not like to lose bets lol.

Another thing I am really looking forward is the solution on SSer FTP wants to make this month. I am bit afraid they will not pull off something this year because we are talking abot FTP which have not the reputation to change things really fast. Anyway a real solution on this matter would make the games so much better i.e. profitable IMO.

Already talking about FTP: the next Mini-FTOPS are there. But I will only play one event, the $22 tourney on 18th Dec (150k GTD). I considered to play a few more but this would just collide with my work/school shedule and I am not in the mood to pony up too much in tournaments entires when I am struggling at the cash tables. When I run good in this toruney I will maybe play the $55 ME on 20th Dec, too.

Thats enough for the moment. I killed enough time and can finally call it a day here.


At the end a funny hand I played when I started a table last Staurday.

reflop: Hero is SB with ,
Hero bets $0.65, BB calls $0.50

Flop: ($1.50) , , (2 players)
BB bets $0.25, Hero raises $1.50, BB calls $1.25

Turn: ($4.50) (2 players)
BB bets $0.25, Hero raises $4, BB calls $3.75

River: ($12.50) (2 players)
BB bets $19.73 (All-In), Hero calls $18.98 (All-In)

Total pot: $50.46

Results:
Hero had 3, 3 (three of a kind, threes).
BB had Q, 9 (high card, King).
Outcome: Hero won $49.96

May all our opponents be like this.

r2w