*Caution: Rant ahead*

Hehe…sometimes it’s just not meant to be and you should walk away while you’re not too deep in doo-doo…I decided to do just the opposite.

Start things off with a heads up HORSE match for a fiver. “Donk” off 2/3 of your stack in the H as your opponent hits EVERY single flop while you hit every third-fourth one with middle pair. Great start. Battle your way half-way back in O8b and Razz then let your opponent outdraw you in every hand. Whoop-di-doo…now HORSE but a busted HORS…argh!

Then I thought I should play some of the soft 6$+0.60$ token satellites and to be honest they’re really soft with donks calling all-ins with middle pair etc…unbelievable. Even more unbelievable is the fact that you can’t seem to catch a hand and if you do you get a royal nut-kicking…I’m so mad atm that I could really smash the screen with my keyboard, but I won’t do it…I will log off now in an effort to calm down and get ready for some more action tonight…hopefully with some cards falling my way…(Result of the token SnGs: two 10th place finishes)…

Example hand to show you just how lucky I am today (all money went in pre-flop):

*End rant*

Tonight I thought that mixing it up a little bit would be a good idea as the (extended) weekend was all NL HE. So I log on FTP and see that a 5$ HORSE tourney is about to start. What better way to mix things up than with 5 different games (all limit: HE, Omaha H/L, Razz, Stud, Stud 8/better).

Although I haven’t had the chance to play a single hand of Razz prior to the tourney Razz was one of the best variants of poker in the tourney and the fact that 3 of the 5 variants are Stud (normal, H/L, low) is really good as I consider Stud to be among my best games.

I hovered above average for the first two horses and busted out in the third H because the blinds were just massive (300/600) compared to my stack of 2k…no way to limp in or really push (all limit remember)…so I had to take a shot…didn’t come through…’s all good though….42nd out of 126 is not bad for the first time…

Because I was running late tonight and missed the usual 17ET 1$ tourney on FTP, I played a 4$+0.40$ token satellite. Winner gets a 26$ token and runner up gets 10$. Seems like a good deal with a 9 player table.

I was playing my usual tight game and was starting to get short-stacked. Just in time my pocket threes turned into a monster:

Dem quads beetches! Nice one. After that I pushed from the button with 4-4, 3xBB sort of stealing blinds, when the SB decides to push all-in…now I’m faced with a decision…probably racing for 1200 more….or let him have the 600 + blinds…I decided to call and to my surprise he shows 3-3…he never improved and we’re done to 3 handed. Hero: chip leader, 2nd player around 500chips down and a short stack…Opponent takes him out in the next hand and we’re heads up for the token:

Bad thing though as I push from the button in the 3rd hand. I hold AJo and opponent decides that calling an all-in is a good option with JTo instead of letting the 400 go…sure enough flop is T-7-7 and I never improve…argh! Nontheless I’m satisfied with my performance and I guess I’ll give it another shot tomorrow…

After yesterday’s marathon live game I wasn’t too keen on playing poker at all today, but I decided that I should at last play one or two tourneys while watching Waffles, Wes and Iggy at the 750k tourney on Stars. So I decided to play the $1 MTT again and a freeroll to the Jersey Days Finals (where you can win your own personalized Full Tilt Hockey Shirt).

The $1 tourney was quite nice and I was able to hold my own. No special hands come to mind, except one: the finest way to crack Kings…

It seems that this hand came back to haunt me though as I looked down at KK just before the bubble…and promptly lost to A-3o on a runner runner flush…argh! I was able to dodge ITM though, so it’s all good…although the profit was marginal (to say the least…buy-in $1, amount won: $1.64, 😉 ).

Not a bad showing though, I can live with a 67th place finish out of 729 players.

Jersey Tourney: 1000 players entered and I was able to play on and on, before I busted out in 36th place. Not a bad showing either – and I knew from the beginning that getting the ticket to the main event was slim (3 out of 1000 to be precise). At least I played another solid tourney and had my fun…so ‘s all good….

After busting out in 11th in the WWdN Euro Edition and busting out of two MTTs early on I was something like 20$ down at PokerStars and decided to call it a day at Stars. As it was fairly early though I decided to finally get some cash into FullTilt. Some minutes after I bought in a 1$+0$ fee MTT started and I thought what the heck, let’s give it a shot.

I was playing my usual hold’em fold’em game for the 1st hour and was fairly short-stacked. In the following two hours I was able to really get into the zone though…it was like I had a read on the guys and gals, especially when I smelled weakness. One critical hand came when I looked down at KK (for about the 6th time (including the WWdN where I held it 3 times)) and see what happened:

They held up and I was in good shape. The following 1.5hours of play are a blur, but sure enough I wound up at the final table, w00t!

After another break we were down to three and I busted out the last shorter stack to play heads up for the win.

Then I became literally card dead, or at least so dead that I missed every flop. So I was a large dog soon and I couldn’t do much as I was down in chip 1:5…so I shoved it in and lost…but hey, I’m not sad at all. Invested 1$ and won 74.24$ more than doubling my buy-in (deposit of 50$) in the first MTT…what a way to end the day!

On another note: I declare February 10th the KK-day (hand counted 10times today, no bullets, but KK plenty)! Now it’s time to catch some sleep as I’ve got a nice live home game tomorrow…wish me luck…!

So, I continued my quest to become a better stud player and it’s looking good. I was able to get up from 1000 to 7000 chips in two hours over at FTP and from 57.000 to around 62.000 over at PP. Nice going so far, the only sad part is that most tournaments and S&Gs are really Texas Hold’em and not much going on the stud tables. Can anyone recommend a Poker room with a decent stud crowd when it comes to tournaments or S&Gs?

As I’m having a hard time with Hold’em these days I’m trying to expand my game by (learning/) playing other games. Started to play 7 card stud tonight on FTP…I gotta say it’s a really interesting and yet challenging game as you gotta observe and calculate all the time (at least third to sixth street) and a rewarding one, too. As you can see all the third to sixth streets of the other players you can’t only guess what they might be holding, but see cards that you can’t catch anymore, too. Really really interesting.

Started the night with 1000 play chips and held my own at a 10/20 fixed table…doubling up in the process, before donkeying* out some chips near the end of my playing session (when you play stud you shouldn’t be tired and I am as it’s already almost 3am over here)…still a successfull night and I’ll practice a little more over the next days…and if everything goes well I will start playing for real in a couple of days!

* speaking of donkeys – how do you like my FTP avatar?! 🙂