The ultimate tilter…
Tuesday January 16th 2007, 2:29 am
Filed under: 2-7 lowball,MTT,No-Limit Hold'em,PokerStars,S&G,Tournaments

…yeah, that’s right, I found my ultimate tilter. While some games are really bad at getting me on tilt, like for example one of my favourite games back a while – Omaha 8b, I found the ultimate tilter tonight…and it’s Fixed Limit 2-7 Triple Draw. My oh my! I played a little SnG and looked forward to bust some donkey balls and the donks sure as hell cooperate beautifully, the bad part: the cards didn’t. Start out with the best (stick to two card draws, never going without a deuce, etc). The followed the old Matusow song “Poker, oh Poker, it’s all skill…start with the worst and go uphill”. After the first few hands I honestly asked myself (and the other players in the table chat) if I was stuck in the middle of the “hidden camera show”. Unbelievable. Brick-city, yeah, I like pairs, next draw, yeah I like pairs, next draw yeah I still like pairs. The worst hand was were I’m starting out with 10-7-5-3-2. So I got the 8, 6 and 4-ball all working for me…first draw, I get a 10…next draw…I get a 10…last draw…I get the case 10 and I’m about to puke on my keyboard as my opponent wins with a 9-6…unreal. After that I went on a stone-cold tilt…

…at least the last 0.000001% of sanity kept me away from the cash tables. Instead I stumbled into a 1$ NL HE tourney…what better way to blow some steam than in such a donk tourney. Honestly, I tried to put some bad-beats on donks on purpose…and even that didn’t work out…i.e. Q5o limpi-limpi preflop…LP min-raises…hmm…donk…is that AA…hmmm….like 99% sure…call…flop comes a beautiful QQ9…I bet the pot he insta-pushes…I insta-call and he shows AA…I laugh and I’m getting ready to blow of a trash-talk-bomb in the chat when the Ace hits the turn…damn!

So, that didn’t help either, so instead of walking away I sat in a 180…and boy oh boy, play can’t get any worse than this…as does the attitude of some of those fuckers playing at my table. Someone calling down with K5 s000ted on an Ace-high board after I four-bet it preflop and you say “nh”, “nice call” etc? Wth are you doing at my table moron? But anyway, I didn’t really honor poker-etiquette and just told’em off “a little”…that helped…no more donkin for the day…I’m out of here, before I go bezerk 😉

Awww…almost forgot to talk about something else, because of all that steamin…watched the first two weeks of Poker After Dark and boy oh boy, I love it! It’s good to see that live poker is rigged sometimes too – the beauty of the one-outer and suckout…really nice. My favourite hand so far: Mike vs Daniel K7 vs K9…7 on the flop…turn K…Daniel pushes…Mike calls in a heart-beat…Daniel is all but dead…the 7-8-10-K leaves Daniel with sixes, eights, nines, tens, jacks…sure enough the 6 rolls off and the Mouth is out…brutal…

Looking forward to High Stakes Poker Season 3, which kicks off tonight., too..



Back-to-back…well almost
Monday January 15th 2007, 3:36 am
Filed under: Full Tilt Poker,MTT,No-Limit Hold'em,PokerStars,S&G,Shorthanded,Tournaments

Hit another 180 SnG tonight and it went pretty well…played my patient game early on, playing a token satellite on FTP while doing so helped a bit. Got my money in with the best and took the chiplead. Held onto it until just before the first break, still sitting pretty in 2nd though.

1st break - second in chips

Second hour is a blur as there was not much action, 73o, 52o, 62o, K2o, Q3o, … you catch my drift…

2nd break

15th out of 32, not all that bad…but I can’t catch a hand if my life depended on it and I wait and wait and wait…finally I look down at 77…EP min-raises…hmm…do I wait for a better spot or do I take the flip – at least that’s what I think it is. Lucky sevens, come on! One time! *lol*…not really…he flips AQo…so good so far…flop QQ3…thank you very much…two outer doesn’t come and I’m crippled (2k)…a few hands later I take my chances with 92 s00ted…at least I got a shot here if the flop comes uncoordinated…two callers though…pair of Aces crushers me…and I’m out in 26th…

Out 26th

Oh well…that could have gone another way, but hey, I’m not really disappointed…didn’t make any real mistakes…played a solid game and move my money in with the best of it (excluding the last hand shortstacked)…do I mull over the 77-call? Yes a little, but then again, if my read is correct (which it was) I’m moving my money in a slight favourite and I can bring myself in a position to be in the top 5 chip-wise. Didn’t work out…what can you do.

“Stats:”

1. Coinflips played: 1 real one 77 vs AQ…lost that one (another hand was no real-coinflip as the money didn’t go in preflop AK vs 88…flop was Axx, won that one though, so you could take that one and call it 1-1 on coinflips)

2. Suckouts: 0 / 0 (suckouts witnessed at the tables – too many to count, playing like a rock early on really pays off, that way you can watch em and not feel em ;))

So…no final table, no money…but at least I enjoyed myself and won the token at FTP 🙂



Final table…bottom end though…
Sunday January 14th 2007, 3:53 am
Filed under: MTT,No-Limit Hold'em,PokerStars,S&G,Tournaments

It’s my dad’s birthday today, so no poker during the day…but a little night session isn’t too bad even…so I fire up PokerStars and jump into a 180SnG…jab jab, grabble, grabble…break one….avg stack…suckout count: 0/0…basically only junk hands…next hour is interesting…Kings…against the big stack…he shows AK…the cowboys hold up…I’m comfortable way over the avg…next hand AKo…smaller stack (5k to my 13k) pushes from the cutoff…

…observation #1: the BB is sitting out…

…observation #2: I’m on the button…he could push with many hands…I’m the only player in his way…

So I call and he flips A5o….big slick holds up…and I’m sitting pretty in the chiplead with 19k…after that I go on a garbage hand-card-deadness streak, but I stay calm and fold, fold, fold, fold…some more folding before I hold Kings again…I make a sneaky “half-steal-looking” preflop raise (5.5x BB)…BB loves to call with sixes…my cowboys hold again and I’m back in second chip position….card deadness here I come again…nothing much to report for the next x minutes as we’re approaching the bubble. Then a heart-crushing suckout hits…but not me…another big stack pushes from the cutoff…BB is more than happy to insta-call with Aces…cutoff shows AKo…doominated…flop KJJ…turn…10…river K…ouch! Shortly after that the bubble bursts and we’re ITM.

I’m still card dead and when I finally look down at a semi-playable hand, 44 in MP, I’m already facing a raise and a re-raise…I throw them into the virtual muck…see the player behind me re-reraise…and I’m happy…until they get the money in the middle…AK, A10 and K9 are their hands and the flop comes down Q94…oooooh….turn and river are blank…and the worst hand takes the pot to triple up…that was the key hand…if I move in there…and win the hand…I’m sitting in the top 3 in chips with 13 players left…oh well…what can you do? Call all-in to a raise, re-raise and re-reraise preflop with fours? Not really…

The final table bubble burst after some big-stacks clinch in a preflop pushfest…and I’m happy to sit down at the first final table in a while…last in chips though…

Final table

After three orbits of blind stealing and folding I look down at the first “good” hand in a while and decide to push it in…KdQd…is not match to some random hand though and I bust out in 9th place…ooh well, final table..from the bottom…

I’m happy though, I played my A-game like I always did in the last few weeks, but with one difference: my hands, especially the really clear ones (70-75%+) held up…that’s all that is to it…

“Stats”:

1. Flips played: 1, won 1

2. Suckouts from me: 0

3. Suckouts against me: 0

4. Mood: happy 🙂

Final result



Unlucky in cards…
Friday January 12th 2007, 4:00 am
Filed under: 5 Card Draw,MTT,Opinionated,Poker Stuff,PokerStars,Pot Limit,Tournaments

…or how should I say it? I log onto Stars to play a little, find a 5-Card-Draw PL MTT that is just about to start and jump right in. I play my solid game and build the stack. I play a lot of small pots, some bigger ones when I’m comfortable and feel that I have the best of it. Then it happens.


!!!WARNING: EXPLICIT RANTING AHEAD!!!


We’re 1h 45min in and I’m 10 out of 81 (56 ITM; 437 original entrances). Who get’s moved to my table? Yes, you guessed it, the chipleader (I have a 12k stack, he has a 26k stack after coming to the table with a 23k stack and bullying around, raising every hand – big stack poker). I look down at JJ224 in the SB…he pops it 1860 to 2460. Now this could be any kind of hand, I’ve got a powerful hand and still a redraw to a boat. Let’s see what he’s going to draw. I draw one, miss. Hmm…he draws 3. Okay, so he got a pair, most certainly Aces. Feeler underbet. He insta-pops it 7k. Now this would cripple me and I ask myself:

1. Why did I even get involved in this hand? – Correct answer: because I likely held the best hand preflop. His play could be any 5 cards as he’s in steal position.

2. Assessment after the draw: He’s drawn 3, three friggin cards after popping it +3 times the BB…Hmm…so what are his chances…he held a pair of Aces for sure…donk!…trips – 2 outs…drawing a pair in 3 cards – tough one…no real data on this case…

3. So…does this overbet mean that he caught his third Ace? A second pair? Nothing?

So…what did I do? I call as the only way I’m going to lose this hand is if he got incredibly lucky and I got unlucky in the process. – STOP! HAMMER TIME!* – So I call…and he shows AA77T….very well played donkfish mofo…god damn it…I was really undecided whether to puke up my keyboard or go on a tuff_fish-style-rant (TM)…I decided to go with the latter and cursed him out quite nicely in the chat…what a fucking tool. Raising in position with this crap…then I draw crap but I’m like 80/20 sure that I got the best hand** and he get’s TOTALLY lucky on my ass….very well done.

Shoot the donkey!

So…I look down at a 2k stack with slightly over 70 players to go and what the hell…the next decent hand I push and another donk shows a better hand (which had happened to me for the really huge number of 2 times before this evening – once against the superdonk chipleader in the hand I just described)…unreal…I still can’t believe it… out in 77th when I should be sitting tight with a 24/25k stack waiting for the bubble to burst…I mean, in the grand scheme of things, this means nothing. So, he got lucky…I crapped on the table (not literally) yet again…oh well…there’s always next time.***

Shoot the donkey!

Well….fuck it! Next time…next time…why oh why do the donkeys ALWAYS**** get lucky on me, not in a non-crucial-pot, but in the damn deciding hand. Can you answer me that question? …and it’s not like this has been the first time, or the second or the thirtieth…I can’t fucking get a break in the important hands…just can’t…

Now that this is out of my system, one final thought on MTTs: Yes, “you need to get lucky to win one of those” – me, I would settle for just “not getting unlucky” “one time”…


* I commited only 1/6 of my stack here…and I could let it go. Then again, I feel I have the best of it so I go with my old “trust your first instincts”-plan…it didn’t work out…again….


** I guess another player, not in the hand could have a totally different view on this:

1. You had the best hand. You made the correct assumption that his drawing 3 couldn’t lead him to a better hand in most cases, it could though in some cases. You made your decision, it was wrong.

2. Why didn’t you reraise pre-draw? Why didn’t you bet out more after the draw?

What’s your opinion here?


*** Consolation price: yes, the superdonk chipleader plays like this for a little longer, getting his ass handed to him, busting out in 25th for a hefty 8$ profit on a 5$ investment, very well done sir, hope you never get lucky again in your lifetime. Thank you. *lol*


**** ALWAYS = perception of recent events, surely the numbers are more like “near” the “normal” percentages of outcomes, but still you can’t help but wonder if you can’t win the obvious ones, then catch no break in close ones and get burned regularly in underdog situations…is this really normal? I don’t think so…


PokerStars Game #7888139718: Tournament #39824804, $5.00+$0.50 5 Card Draw Pot Limit
– Level IX (300/600) – 2007/01/11 – 21:17:37 (ET)
Table ‘39824804 56’ 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: superdonk chipleader (26120 in chips)
Seat 2: Ingoal (12255 in chips)

Seat 3: xxx (3545 in chips)
Seat 4: xxx (12020 in chips)
Seat 5: xxx (6445 in chips)
Seat 6: xxx (1310 in chips)
superdonk chipleader: posts the ante 60
Ingoal: posts the ante 60

xxx: posts the ante 60
xxx: posts the ante 60
xxx: posts the ante 60
xxx: posts the ante 60
Ingoal: posts small blind 300
xxx: posts big blind 600
*** DEALING HANDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [2d Jh 2c 4d Jc]
xxx: folds
xxx: folds
xxx: folds
superdonk chipleader: raises 1860 to 2460
Ingoal: calls 2160

xxx: folds
Ingoal: discards 1 card [4d]
Dealt to Ingoal [2d Jh 2c Jc] [5c]
superdonk chipleader: discards 3 cards
Ingoal: bets 600
superdonk chipleader: raises 7080 to 7680

Ingoal: calls 7080
*** SHOW DOWN ***
superdonk chipleader: shows [7h Ad Th Ac 7s] (two pair, Aces and Sevens)
Ingoal: shows [2d Jh 2c 5c Jc] (two pair, Jacks and Deuces)

Ingoal said, “luckbox”
F0LD–IT collected 21240 from pot
Ingoal said, “unbelievable”
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 21240 | Rake 0
Seat 1: superdonk chipleader (button) showed [7h Ad Th Ac 7s] and won (21240) with two pair, Aces and Sevens
Seat 2: Ingoal (small blind) showed [2d Jh 2c 5c Jc] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Deuces



180 degrees
Wednesday January 10th 2007, 3:22 am
Filed under: 5 Card Draw,Full Tilt Poker,MTT,No-Limit Hold'em,PokerStars,Razz,S&G,Shorthanded

That’s the angle my cards made in contrast to yesterday. No chance in hell…5 Card Draw…thank you for making the second best hand at crucial times (incidently it was always a 1-card vs 1-card draw, I hold two pair, my opponent holds a flush or gutshot draw, guess who’s draw get’s there). Same goes for Razz and NL in a token satellite.

Last hope: WWdN…no joy…get Aces early…win small pot…then invest invest invest…no joy…Once I’m down to half my starting stack I bluff off half my remaining stack on a busted nut flush draw…and the rest is history…out in 29th of 44…oh well, at least I had a good time with V and the others at the table…



My favourite poker show…
Tuesday January 09th 2007, 10:11 pm
Filed under: Poker Stuff,Uncategorized

…goes into round 3 next monday. High Stakes Poker Season 3. Nice! I thought it was starting this week, but nope, next week it is…so I head over to the HSP3 section on GSN to find out if any new players will be joining the game…and wow…there will be quite some new players:

1. Jesus

2. Phil Ivey

3. Bill Chen

and many others including some of the most recent “big tourney” high finishers like Jamie “Luckbox” Gold (WSOP 2006 winner), Paul Wasicka (WSOP 2006 runner up) and David Williams (WSOP 2004 runner up), …

Really looking forward to see if “tourney players” and/or “flukes” like Gold get their ass handed to ’em in this cash game 🙂



PokerStars loved me tonight…
Tuesday January 09th 2007, 1:50 am
Filed under: 5 Card Draw,Heads Up,Limit,No-Limit,Razz,S&G

…at least some of the time – mostly when it counted. Started the session by going totally retro, 5 Card Draw Pot Limit SnG. Wonderful, reminds me of years back, before the NL Hold’em boom…it was our game of choice back then and I still like it, apart from the fact that I ran into some “cold decks” (QQQ vs KKK etc). Still was able to grind back from a 1-6 chip deficit to take it down. Score: Ingoal 1-0 others

After that it was time to come back a little…more new school if you wish…so I played some poor chap in a Limit Razz HU SnG and I kid you not, he was catching like crazy. I on the other hand was in the middle of brick-city, but at least I chat-crapped him good for the next 20 minutes. My favourite set of hands: he caught a 3 and I caught a King of fourth street for five consecutive hands…unreal…oh well…as I had told him it would all come down to one big hand and it did, my 7-5 held up and I was in cruise mode. Doubled him up again, but then busted him for good once he visited me in brick city catching 2A2 to his A275…lol…poker can be cruel sometimes, good to see that it’s not just cruel to me 😉

Score: Ingoal 2-0 others

After that I went straight to the new school for some 4-player HU action, winner takes all. The first table was a true battle and I finally prevailed after a good 60 hands. The second table wasn’t all that hard. He pushes in the first hand. I fold. In the sixth hand I flop top and bottom pair on a two-club board, I overbet, he instapushes…he shows J-high flush draw….turn 10h…river xs…and cya…nice to see that nice outs isn’t always enough against me…thank you.

So…I’m three for three for the night, nice to see those three mails from PokerStars sitting in my inbox…the good ol’ times…even better to see that making correct decisions does pay off, not always or even often…but at least sometimes 😉

So…I’m outta here for tonight…hope you all have a good time at the tables…maybe I’ll try to sneak into the WWdN tomorrow, depends on my sleep schedule…but the chance to make back-to-back final tables is appealing…oh well, we’ll see…



Sucky sucky and mullet chop
Monday January 08th 2007, 1:55 am
Filed under: Full Tilt Poker,MTT,No-Limit Hold'em,Omaha,PokerStars,Pot Limit,S&G

*lol*

Had a pretty bad run today, just couldn’t catch a break. Made wrong decision after wrong decision running into hands like it was the norm (JJ vs QQ, AJ vs AQ, 77 vs 88, etc etc). So, it sucked pretty badly today, but hey, there’s always tomorrow and that’s why I decided to quit for the day rather quickly.

I just came across Daniel Negreanu’s latest video blog – the mullet chop, funny stuff! Enjoy…



The Grind and the blogger game
Sunday January 07th 2007, 4:32 am
Filed under: Bonus hunt,No-Limit Hold'em,NPRG,Pacific Poker,PokerSavvy

Tonight I finished the grind over at Pacific Poker. Wow, less than two weeks and I grinded out the 250 Comp Points which are necessary to clear the PokerSavvy (aff) bonus. Nice that I was able to do it that fast and only losing a minimum (non of my original deposit, but some of the initial signup bonus) in the process. Insane, that 250 Comp Points really means that 2500$, yes 2.5k, were wagered to get those points. Seeing that the Comp Point conversion rate is ridiculous in relation to the accumulation formula of those points – priceless (10$ wagered = 1 Comp Point, 100 Comp Points = 1$, !lol!).

After the successful completion of the bonus, I decided to take some time off, watch some tv…and “tape” the on-going blogger game while doing so. The wonders of the modern interweb…beautiful…I’ll have my very own “high stakes poker”-show to watch tomorrow…and boy…after taking a peek, it’s going to be worth watching (I only saw one hand so far and it was sick, not Gus Hansen vs Daniel Negreanu for 600k sick, but sick…let’s just say 45o flopped a full house, which was no good after pocket aces improved to a better full house on the turn!)…

I’m not in the position to publish the video, at least I wouldn’t feel comfortable doing so without asking the players involved and everything which is a little too time consuming and most players wouldn’t want it to show up anyway (?!), so I’ll probably just retell some of the hands, if any other interesting hands are in it…or maybe not, we’ll see…

On another note: as a internet player, what’s your stance on “taping” such a game? Cool, not cool?



Game on!
Saturday January 06th 2007, 3:47 am
Filed under: Bonus hunt,MoneyMoneyMoney,No-Limit Hold'em,NPRG,Pacific Poker,S&G

So…I played in a Skat (see Wikipedia if you’re not familiar with this game, which is probably the case) tourney with my dad tonight. Usually I only play Skat in a friendly cash game (where you pay the difference in points won or lost), so playing in a tournament was quite different. The first table started pretty slowly and I didn’t get many games – which is sort of bad as the tourney consisted of only two rounds with 24 games total each. So after the first round I was pretty far behind already (nearly 1k in points which is nearly impossible to catch up). The draw for the second table was fun…I drew a seat at the “killer table” which hosted both the leader and the player in second position and boy oh boy they were on fire. The player in second after the first table played and won the first 6 hands, without any problems. The leader waited his spots and played a game here and there and the final 5 in a row…that left a whole of 4 games for me. Unreal…but unlike in Poker, in Skat you can’t play your opponents, you need to play the cards you’re dealt, so if they’re crap you’re out of luck. So…the second table was finished in a blink of an eye and we had to wait up until the other tables finished their play – which took about another half an hour. The points were calculated (in tourney Skat you get additional points for every game you play and win, you get a minus of points for games you played and lost and the other two players get points for busting you in that game). So the final result was quite amusing: My dad – 3rd (the first player after the two card racks battling for first place almost in another world (points-wise)), me – second to last, lol. Oh well…it was a fun time 🙂

After I came home after the tourney I thought it was time for some “real cards”, lol, poker and BJ. I gotta say that I much like and dislike Blackjack for a number of reasons:

Likey:

1. Good way to grind out points towards clearing bonus(es)

2. With correct strategy, good chances to at least stay even (+/-) a little – at least in theory

Dislikey:

1. When the friggin dealer is dropping Blackjacks on your ass all the time (today the ratio was about 4:1 which isn’t really cool; everything in the region of 3:1 to 3:2 is alrighty, but 4:1, that’s a cold deck)

2. When you’re running hot, then running cold losing hand after hand to unreal hands (great 20, oooh 5 card 21, great 19, 5 cards 21, …etc)

So after grinding out nearly 40 points towards clearing my bonus at Pacific – and unfortunately dropping around 30 bucks in the process (well, I was way ahead in the first session, so I basically lost all that back + some more) – I decided to fire up the poker tables, but to no avail, I just couldn’t focus. So I took a walk to the couch and watched the European Poker Masters – Dublin Allstar Challenge which was running on Eurosport. There was even a german dude hanging at the final table, so it was quite cool. Not so cool: stopping the show once down to the final four. How stupid is that? Now I can go ahead and check the schedule for the next x days to find the damn second part. Stupid!

After the cooldown I fired up PokerStars to blow off some steam and what better way to do it than to play in a turbo donkey tourney in my new favourite game – Razz. So I jumped into a two-table tourney for nearly two bucks (lol) and opened the donkey/monkey/radio-box. Not only did the players not know what hit ’em, they also didn’t know what they were doing. Needless to say that I busted out rather early as they donks were in hot pursuit. They were running after me like the bulls in Pamplona, lol. And sure enough they tackled me and smacked the shit out of me with their “powerful” donk hands clearly behind at least a card, but strong enough to outdraw me by hitting the obvious perfect perfect about 99.9999999999999999999999% of the time 😉

So…I’m good now…off to read me some Little Green Book which I started to read yesterday…have a great weekend and may the anti-donk-force be with you…..heeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!