Hand that put me over the edge:

*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [8h 8c] …
*** FLOP *** [8d 9h 6s]
Ingoal: checks
tulsabrian: bets $2
tulsabrian said, “uh oh”
tulsabrian said, “whatchu got meads”
Mieds: raises $4 to $6
tulsabrian said, “i smell something bad”
Ingoal: calls $3.70 and is all-in
tulsabrian said, “chit”
tulsabrian: raises $4 to $10
Mieds: calls $4
*** TURN *** [8d 9h 6s] [Ah]
tulsabrian said, “5 7″
tulsabrian: bets $80.05 and is all-in
Mieds: calls $1.60 and is all-in
*** RIVER *** [8d 9h 6s Ah] [5d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
tulsabrian: shows [5h 7d] (a straight, Five to Nine)
Mieds: mucks hand
tulsabrian said, “ahahhaahha”
tulsabrian collected $15.05 from side pot-2
Ingoal: mucks hand
tulsabrian collected $10.55 from side pot-1
Ingoal said, “omg”
Nethor: shows [Ad Jd] (a pair of Aces)
tulsabrian collected $2.35 from main pot
Ingoal said, “trip 8s no good”
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $29.35 Main pot $2.35. Side pot-1 $10.55. Side pot-2 $15.05. | Rake $1.40
Board [8d 9h 6s Ah 5d]
Seat 1: Ingoal (big blind) mucked [8h 8c]
Seat 2: Nethor showed [Ad Jd] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 3: tulsabrian showed [5h 7d] and won ($27.95) with a straight, Five to Nine

Apart from that a little grind at some other tables and over at Absolute Poker, not much joy though…especially when you’re sitting at another donkey table with two players seeing the flop 75% and 78% of the time…and connecting time after time….even cracking your bullets…be damned! I guess playing with lots of cold medicine is really -ev for my game and costing me more nerves and money than usual…

Sidenote: bullets cracked by runner runner straights or flushes in the last few days: 3, I’m so All-In preflop the next few Aces I hold

After that disappointment I went back to common grounds – to the low limit NL HE ring games at Full Tilt. I grinded out some bucks and cleared another bit of the bonus, so what do you do with the free money? Yup, play a SnG! Shorthanded NL HE sounded right so I gave it a shot. Bouncing up and down like a rubber ball for 45 minutes before Mr. Luckbox outflops me…out in 4th. Damn! Ah well, time to get some rest…I hope to see you all around at the HUC3 – Round 1 tomorrow…

After sticking my nose into uni stuff (mostly web-based integration and architecture of application systems) all day I didn’t feel the urge to really play, but playing a little poker won’t hurt to get your thoughts of the stuff, so what the hell. Donked around at AbsolutePoker for a little, playing a low limit NL HE MTT…which was a quick one despite holding AA early on (which held up on a scary board) and KK which was busted by pocket sixes to cripple me…the end was rather entertaining too…AQo vs KQs vs KQo…sure enough the two outer King hit…after that I donked off some dough at the cash tables when my pocket kings were crushed again, the hiltons held up though so only down a half buyin for the night…at least something.

In other news: I’m going to play in the HeadsUp Challenge 3 (aka HUC3)…should be fun…if you’re interested in participating and/or in reading the latest news, head over to the HeadsUpChallenge Blog

Things didn’t improve in the following 2 SnGs so I switched to the NL HE ones…took down 3rd and busted out in 10th of 10 again as my flopped trip 10s were rivered by trip queens:

Nothing exciting in MTT play either…Limit just isn’t my game (anymore). At least I finished the session on a high note…in preparation for DADIII – The HU Championship – I played a HU match on Absolute Poker and totally owned my opponent. I’m so looking forward to play DADIII!

60 players had entered the 5$ Omaha H/L Fixed Limit tourney and I was really looking forward to yet another good session of Omahatastic Poker. Early on I was establishing myself as the table-captain and long time chipleader. Then I almost donked of all my chips in 2 hands and was desperate with a not all that good hand of J-9-4-5, the J-9 connected for a nifty boat on the river though and so I was back in good shape. Then, as we approached the bubble, I asked myself: continue to play like you did the whole tourney or stall? I did the latter and barely made the final table being desperately short-stacked, but hey, at least I was in the money…and in the BB immediatly (800 – my stack 2400), so I pushed with my A-K-4-8 but couldn’t connect for the high or low (as I lost to a A-3-x-x hand). So I’m out in 9th place, not too good, not too bad and I’m back in business (given my micro bankroll at AP).

Good idea. I won the Omaha H/L one, bubbled in a HE NL and finished outside the money in the other one. Nontheless some solid playing time without risking too much. I guess going with multiple S&Gs Omaha 8b is the way to go if I want to rescue the remaining few dollars there.

So that’s what I’m going to do! Either I run up my bankroll at AP over the cashout threshold or I go bust…whatever…it doesn’t get me anywhere anyways…the ring games are just too tough (either you play against the calling stations hustling for a (re-re-)draw all the time – after all you can’t push a calling station out of a pot especially in limit or low-limit PL and even if the cards fall your way some of the time, it’s not enough to seriously build up your stack – or you face a NL crowd with a fat roll…you just can’t survive with a minimal bankroll…at least I can’t atm)…

But enough reporting/ranting…I’m going to watch the final table of the “Battleship at Atlantis” Heads Up tourney now…should be interesting!

Side Note: the main event of the PCA is a done deal, check out Brad’s (Otis’) coverage here if you haven’t already. Spoiler: 22 year old student and PokerStars regular Steve Paul-Ambrose has won the thing…1.363.100$ + the WPT championship seat (25k$) not a bad pay-day for a student(!), ka-ching!

In preparation of DADI special Omalympics I thought it would be a good idea to play a S&G of Omaha H/L PL over at Absolute Poker – and indeed it was a good idea, despite me being the bubble boy. Usually I tend to freeze up on the bubble which is:

• a safe way to get in the money (most of the time)
• a safe way to not take any sort of chiplead

This time I said to myself: “Don’t fear the bubble! Play as you usually would” – so I did and it came back to bite me as I ran into the chipleaders A-A-2-K with my A-K-3-4…to bad so I’m out in fourth place (3 in the money), but not feeling all too bad about it. At least I played aggressively on the bubble and with one other card on the board it would have payed off.

On another note: it doesn’t hurt as much to bubble in a 0.50$ S&G than it does in a “major” tournament

The cards didn’t fall my way in my other session over at Absolute Poker, always hard to lose boat over boat…dropped one Buy-In…not in the mood to play anymore today…

Sidenote: Thinking about the term “in the grind”, “grinders” or “rounders” – I started to tag all the known grinders with a yellow user note at the current level I’m playing, this way it’s easier to see who the known faces are and if it’s even worth playing a table…

So I sat down at a Pot Limit 0.10$ Omaha H/L table over at Absolute Poker which was fairly crowded. One thing was obvious: one player, let’s call him Mr. Bully, was raising every pot preflop. So the first chance I got with a decent hand I was in the middle of it…sure enough he caught his donkey runner runner flush draw and my first Buy-In was history.

I thought about leaving right then for a moment, but I thought “this can’t be happening”. So I rebought and reentered the game. I sat the for two hands and then I looked down at a beautiful Ad-2d-3c-5c…flop, turn and river were perfect…I held the nuts low (6-5-3-2-A) and high (2-3-4-5-6) and scooped the pot to almost quadruple up. Sure enough Mr. Bully busted out in the next hand against another player…serves him well for trying to take my chips

I sat and folded the remainder of the orbit as I was happy for the time being…up 1.5x Buy-In…that put’s me above my initial deposit again…and so I’m up on all PokerRooms now