Well, well…what a lovely sunday for sports. We, as in the german team, won the IHF handball world championship today. W00t! What a dramatic game and we came out on top clinching our first title since 1978, on our own soil no less. Nice!

After that it was time to watch some football (soccer) and my home team VfB Stuttgart won, too. Nice!

After that I head over to PokerStars to punish some donks and punish I did, although they got the best of me sometimes. Unlike yesterday they hit like crazy in some matches. Flush draw vs flopped straight – boom headshot, top set vs flush draw – boom headshot, etc etc…in return I cracked some aces and had fun nontheless. Won 6 out of 10 matches, so I can’t feel bad…still some matches away from my next goal, which is moving up to the next HU level once my bankroll hit a certain mark on PokerStars. It’ll come soon enough I think, so no need to rush it.

…and now…it’s time to watch the SuperBowl…at least the first half or something, depends, if the game is good I’ll maybe even watch the whole thing…we’ll see…

Edit: Well, well, Sir Choke-a-lot is finally coming through….29-17 with less than two minutes, that should do it for the Colts…nice…

Played another nice session at PokerStars tonight and boy did I get down to business. I stuck to my new formed LPM/MPM-strategy and didn’t let anything get to me. But let me explain the LPM/MPM-part a little bit more.

Least Possible Mistake: That’s what I’m aiming for. Even if I hold a “monster” preflop, I don’t get too excited about it. After all where’s the gain in pushing there? I know that I can outplay most of my opponents, especially if the flop is somewhat favourable to my hand, so why take the biggest risk and freeze me out of my own advantage? So, I personally try to make the least possible mistake. One of the things that I change in my game is that I don’t put it all on the line when I’m not sure. For example, I hold top pair with a good kicker, but the board could easily given my opponent two pair or better on the river…how big is the pot? Is it worth taking the shot right here? If nope, my cards fly into the virtual muck faster than my opponent can curse his bad luck for me not paying him off. Or let’s say I hit two pair, but I’ve got the feel that my opponent might have slowplayed his trips or whatnot…fold fold fold. Wait for a better spot and get the money in with all the cards out and me holding the nuts (or close to it). Because remember that folding a hand is usually only a small mistake. If he’s jumping for joy, showing his cards, after bluffing me out of a 200 chip pot (3000 chips in play), so be it, let’s see who’s got the last laugh…All the while I try to force my opponent to make the MPM…

Maximum Possible Mistake: I try to convince my opponent that he has the best hand. Once again, this usually doesn’t happen preflop, but mostly on the turn and/or river. Especially if he can’t put me on the hand. Let’s say I hold 97s and raise preflop from the button – after all you can’t be too predictable. He calls the raise and is first to act as the flop comes down A97. He’s sure as hell making the cbet and if it’s a pot sized bet I’m 90% sure he holds Ax and I sure as hell hope it’s not A9…or let’s say I hold the same hand and the flop comes down K99…I sure hope he has the king…and when I smooth call on the flop I know that he’s drawing to two outs…sure, you can lose some by slowplaying, but it’s worth the risk, at least if you can afford to lose the pot. I’m trying to force him to make the maximum possible mistake by overvaluing his hand.
After this basic outline, which could be discussed in a loooooong post by looking at many different hands – which I don’t feel like doing atm, I want to get to some more thoughts on hands and situations that occured tonight:

1. AA on the button. If there’s one monster preflop in headsup, this is it. Even better if your opponent reraises you preflop…you smooth-call and the flop comes down 33K…your opponent fires another shell…you smooth-call….turn is blank…your opponent fires again…you smooth-call….river is blank…your opponent fires another shell…you smooth call with every intention to laugh at him for making this play with Kx…he shows 83o…snow man tater legs just cracked your aces. Are you mad? Sure, but do you let it get to you? Not really. Why? Because he just made a 600 chip pot by cracking your aces, but he’s still under the starting stack. So, too bad, it happens.
2.  First hand of a match, you start with a decent hand, raise it preflop and your opponent smooth-calls. You hit the flop and fire a half-pot bet. He calls. Turn is a blank (5)…you bet…he calls…river is a blank (2)…you fire…your opponent calls. He shows 52o…second hand of the same match…you start with a decent hand…call…you miss the flop…check check…turn hits you, but puts three clubs out there…you bet…he calls…river is another blank, but also a club…you bet…he calls…he shows 7c4s…you look down at your stack and you had it rough so far. You lost 300 of your initial 1500 chips by him hitting runner-runner two pair and a four-flush to suck out on you. Oh well, at least you know that he a) calls too much; b) doesn’t reraise with the winning hand; c) isn’t afraid to fire with nothing. You continue to play him the same way, even letting him run over you for a hand or two, before you make a stand after the river…he called all along and well, he can’t lay his hand down after the river…not even if he’s holding only second pair. Thank you very much, you made the maximum possible mistake by handing me all those chips. The game ends a few hands later.
3. etc

So…all in all I played 8 matches tonight and despite taking some horrible beats (Aces cracked, Kings cracked, runner runner flush, runner runner straight, two outer trips, etc) I didn’t lose a single match. Yes, I won all 8 matches. Now I’m not blind to the fact that there’s always some luck involved and this could really be one of the nice little upswings that variance grants us every now and then, but I’m still confident that the victories can be attributed to me playing good, maybe even better than good. Let them come to me…if they suckout…well, that’s the game…but it’s about the only way they can beat me…I’m sure the time will come again, when I have to lose some matches (e.g. two pair vs two pair, where you just have to pay it off), but considering my new, patient, approach to those matches, there’s room for a few of those. I even took some of those beats tonight. Those hands weren’t for all my chips though, so there was always room for my opponents to make their own, bigger than mine, mistake… and that’s what I’ll be aiming for in the next matches…make the LPM and force my opponent to make his very own, deluxe MPM…I’m outta here…good luck at the tables everyone…

Gotta make this a quick one as I’m pretty tired…

Football training kicked off today (that’s soccer for the americans), time to get in shape for the rest of the season (the season is currently on winter break) as the challengers will come out and try to take the lead from us (we’re currently ranked 1st in our division). Funny how 6 weeks of doing nothing but sitting on your ass can take away your breath…was pretty short of breath after the first 15 minutes…ouch. Let’s see if my bones hurt tomorrow from all the running…

But back to poker, had the chance to jump into the 5 Card Draw MTT which I final-tabled yesterday, but just didn’t feel like it. After all it would have taken around 3h if I made it deep again…and I wasn’t really into “long poker night” mode after eating a nice whopper menu with onion rings at BKs after training…*lol*…nothing better to get the pounds right back on your hips after you worked out 😉

So I just played some HU SnGs at Stars…won 4 out of 5 by using a simple strategy…be patient, let them come to you, make good decisions. They handed me there chips close to drawing dead practically every time. The best one was a dude that min-raised every hand preflop and bet out pot-sized every time. Not a bad strategy – you’re not giving away anything and it’s hard to put him on a hand. Then again, this strategy will only work if he’s able to get away from a hand himself once his opponent, me, plays back. Obviously he couldn’t. He’s on the button and min-raises, no surprise there. I repop him 4x with KK…he repops me to 8x….I repop him to 16x…he repops me to 32x…I’m convinced he has some sort of hand, hoping that it’s not aces, so I push…he calls after 10 seconds of deliberation…showing J3o…errm…very well played sir…*lol*…flop 7-8-9 rainbow and I’m thinking…are you serious?…turn 7…river 2…thank you very much sir.
The only match I lost came down to one tough hand…opponent min-raises preflop…this could be anything, after all it’s headsup and I don’t have any infos about my opponent yet (no this wasn’t the first hand, but the first few hands didn’t give away much)…flop comes down 8-9-10 rainbow…not a bad flop for my Q2o…*lol*…my opponent checks…I check behind…turn brings a 2…opponent bets the minimum…well…for all I know my deuces could be good here (maybe he has AK?), or they’re a (huge) dog…but for a min bet…I’ll see the river…the river is a beautiful J…giving me the Q-high straight…my opponent insta-pushes…now I’m faced with a tough decision…what could he have:

1. Small-medium pair…flopped trips – possible, but wouldn’t he bet to find out if it’s good/to get money into the pot?

2. AK/AQ…flopped nothing but a gutshot…now made his straight (AQ) or has two napkins (AK)

3. QJ…flopped the stone-cold nuts and wanted me to take the lead, I didn’t comply

4. KQ…maybe sooted…that’s the only hand I’m really worried about…preflop raise – yes…cbet – yes…check on the turn – yes…push the river – yes

Hmm…so I’m thinking…in 3 out of 4 cases we’re chopping or he loses…he has got to have exactly the KQ to beat me…I call…he flips KQ…bingo! Well, the only thing I did wrong there is that I could/should have gotten away from the hand, after all there wasn’t that much money in the pot…I would have still been in the game virtually even with the chance to wait for a better spot…then again…if I’m right…we chop, I retain my lead, or he loses…I win…sometimes it pays off to be greedy, sometimes it doesn’t…bad decision…noted…moving on…

Well, played some headsup at FullTilt to start off the evening, but I lost interest quite quickly. I did win 2 out of 3, but the opponents were such jerks that I didn’t have any fun. Well, that’s not entirely true, I had some fun making fun of them…yes it’s always a good idea to (over)push after the river…hmm…no I don’t believe you had the nuts every time…so…it’s a donkplay and a nice “heeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaw what a donkey play, you only get called if I have you” is in order. If you can’t take that, play a better game donk. After that I jumped over to Stars and found that a lot was going on, but nothing that sounded really interesting…apart from one MTT…the lovely PL 5 Card Draw MTT that was 1 minute away from starting. I jumped in and play my usual game, start out with a decent hand and hope not to get unlucky. The next well over 2 hours are a blur, but I’m getting ahead of myself…quick pic dump…

105 players remaining at the first break and yes, you guessed it, the chipleader was just moved to my table, lol. I’m wondering if it’s only me, but I can’t remember a MTT (with a shitload of tables left) where the chipleader wasn’t moved to my table. It’s been ages since that didn’t happen, but hey, what can you do. He tried to run over the table and he was out in less than 20 minutes after the break. Way to go dude donking off all those chips. No, a reraise for all their chips doesn’t mean they’re holding a good hand. Wait…it does. Surprise surprise. Continued to play my game and watch as donks busted themselves left and right.

Final four tables and I’m sitting not all that pretty in 19th, time to catch some hands. I do and this time I don’t care for the money – yes we’re already ITM, but the “real” money starts at the final table as usual – so I wait for a decent spot and go with my hand. I start out with two pair and I don’t boat up. My opponent draws one too and I’m more than happy to see that he didn’t make his gutshot straight. Nice. Double me up. The way to the final table is a blur, I did play some nice hands though, so this time I don’t come in as the shortstack.

I wait two orbits before I play my first hand and when I do I win it. Small pot, but fine with me. Then I go on a roll. I get dealt a made flush and a made straight back-to-back. No customers though. The next hand I get dealt two pair, queens up. I three-bet it as usual and the other player within the mid 40k repopps me. Now I’m faced with a tough decision. Does he have a real hand or is it that he doesn’t believe my “rush”? And even more important: do I want to commit to this hand? I ponder my options and decide to go for it. I repopp him to put him all-in and he calls. I draw one…brick…he draws two…uh-oh…that’s most certainly trips and yes, he shows trip eights. Now I’m crippled with 10k. I don’t feel bad though. I made my play and if I won the hand (by boating up), I would have been slightly under 100k and second in chips with a real chance to cruise into the top 3 spots paying in xxx figures. Oh well, can’t be too mad. Made my play, didn’t work out. Apropos out, I wasn’t out yet. Next hand…I start with slighlty over 10k and get dealt two pair again. I push and the huge chipleader insta-calls. I draw one, he draws one. I brick he bricks…he has trips though. Now I’m still not mad. What can you do? Back-to-back two pair, five handed, ran into trips back-to-back. It just wasn’t in the cards for me to claim the W or the 2 or 3 spot and who knows, if I sit around and wait for the next “big hand”, I might be blinded out in 5th quicker than you think with blinds at 2k/4k…so all in all…a nice showing…gg me… 🙂

Played another short session on Stars tonight, back to the roots, mano-a-mano, headsup. Boy, did I play good in those buggers, no kidding. Despite that, I lost the first match…to a suckout, no surprise there…after all you can only be beaten by a suckout if you moved in with the best of it – correct decision, score one for me, money for the donks. In the second one I trapped and trapped and I finally got him to give me all his chips, without a suckout. Nice.

The, by far, most interesting match was the third one though. It lasted for over 80 hands, which is a rare occurance in a headsup match, after all the donks can’t wait to push their stack in with TPNK. This match was different though. It was one of the better opponents and he started to hammer away at me right from the start. Some good reads later I sit pretty with a 2,5:1 chiplead and nothing much to worry about. I get him to commit his chips with the worst of it and the only thing that can save him is hitting one of his six outs. He doesn’t hit those though, instead it goes runner runner straight, yet again. I don’t feel bad though and continue my game. We battle back and forth and we’re about even again. Then I win a big one again and I’m sitting at 2:1 in chips. Then the first big laydown of the night occurs…I turn a straight, which puts three diamonds on board though. He bets substantial and I ponder my options…I mean in a headsup match the chances that he really has the flush aren’t all that big, then again, the way I’m currently running I’m almost sure that he’s got me. I lay it down and he shows the nuts. The next big laydown is a set of sevens when the ugly four flush hits the river. Loose calls on the flop and turn by my opponent, but hey, I can’t do much more than make it incorrect to draw, the rest is up to my opponent. A few hands later I lay down yet another big hand when my spidey-sense goes “uh oh” again on a pretty concealed straight board. We battle back and forth again and my chiplead is dwindling, but I’m still almost 2:1 in chips. My opponent pushes preflop on the button…I put him on a low pair and call with my A4 s00ted…he shows presto and he’s halfway out the door as the flop comes 44J…not a bad flop for my hand, lol…turn blank…river 5. Presto! Oh well…suck and resuck, what can you do. In the next orbit I finally bust him though as he calls my reraise with a dominated KQ. My AQ holds up and I finally take down the match….nice way to end the session…and a match I truely enjoyed, not because I won, but because I made correct decisions on crucial hands which ultimately led to my victory.

That’s enough poker playing for today…and as I’m almost done with all the poker books I had on my shelf, I just ordered two new ones at Amazon…Hunting Fish…and the Professor, Banker and Suicide King, should be some interesting stuff to read…and best of all they’re free, well not literally free, but as I used my last SavvyPoints (aff) on Amazon gift-certificates, they’re payed for and I still got plenty of money left to spend at Amazon…yay, bonus hunt 🙂

Not much poker to talk about in the last few days. I was madly busy with some uni stuff, so not much poker playing. When I did play though I got ripped of royally. As you may know I started a new bonus hunt at Poker.com and every since my first deposit I get kicked in the junk, big time, every time, every single god damn time.

I think this could very well become the worst bonus hunt in history, apart from maybe my nine poker disaster. Every single time I hold a good hand, I trap someone into giving me all his chips – the bad news is that every single time, at least it seems to be that way, they catch their damn miracle card, AK vs Ax, AQ vs Ax, K10 vs K7, etc etc. On the other hand I run into cold deck after cold deck. Always nice to see AJ vs AQ headsup, Ace + two rags hits the board…hmm…QQ vs Ax…no chance….Jacks vs Kx…no chance, etc etc…I’m about to lose it…even worse: as if the junk kicking isn’t bad enough, I grinded out the HUUUUGE amount of 400 Comp Points….well….only 14600 more to go….d’oh!

Maybe I should stop reading Waffles as it seems that I caught the Waffles virus*… 😉

*Waffles Virus aka opponents’ relentless runner-runner-goodness aka 80+% equals no chance aka I can trap them all I want they will find a way to get lucky aka …

So, I finally visited the PPA-site again and yes, they finally fixed their signup site, despite never getting back to me about my email complaining about it not working for people outside of the US. So, I finally had the chance to signup – bucks well spent I think! If you didn’t join already, do so, just click the banner below (no affiliate banner!)…

After getting that out of the way I started a new bonus hunt: Poker.com it is, for the chance to get my hands on another 1000 SavvyPoints. Started the bonus hunt right on the wrong foot, forgot to enter the correct signup-bonus code to get the initial deposit bonus, great! After that I multi-tabled some low-limit HE and did fairly well…running into the eventual cold-deck, but all in all it was alright. After that I threw away some money at BJ, old habits die hard. After that I fired up some SnGs in order to build the roll. Bad idea. I’ve honestly not seen that many cold decks within such a short-amount of time, seriously.

I dominated a match, I get KK vs AA lose…get JJ vs AA some hands later…I crack the Aces, nontheless I lose the match. Next match HU…66-88…okay I had a substantial chiplead, back to even, all good. A few hands later AA vs KJ…flop KKK…thank you very much. Next match second nut-flush vs nut-flush…etc etc…hell of a start, this is going to be a short ugly ride if my luck continues that way…

On another note: the bonus requirements seem to be unreal 15.000 Comp Points, then again take a second look and see that each hand in which you’re dealt in is worth 3 Comp Points, even at NL10 which equals 5000 hands. Shouldn’t be that hard after all, I guess I’ll abstain from running in too many SnGs the next few days though and instead I’ll multi some cash games, hopefully (re)building the roll…

Had a blast last weekend in Austria. Drinking, drinking and drinking with the guys. Some snow on the mountain tops, not much in the lower areas, so we mostly resorted to the local pubs most of the days and nights.

I thought I could get away from Poker completely on the trip and I almost did. I didn’t play a single hand, although some of my teammates had brought a chipset and some nice PokerStars cards…it seems that the “poker virus” is spreading fast over here in germany. People who had no interest whatsoever a while back are suddenly playing (both live and online) – tells you a little about the advertising efforts of the major players in the market (PokerStars and Party), it pays off. But back to poker, the only thing I did in relation to poker was talk a little strategy and watch a rerun of the EPT while we were waiting for the others to get ready for dinner and booze.

So, I’m totally relaxed and ready to hit the tables again. Well, tbh, I already did that and it was horrible. The only upside is that my mood isn’t influenced by this (yet). I played something in the neighborhood of 15 HU SnGs and I’ve seen it all again, from the beautiful one-outer, to the usual resuck or two-outer…I even kept track of it while playing. So what’s different? I’m relaxed after the weekend break and so all I did after those beats was type a quick, “wow one outer” or “nh” in the chat and that was that. No tilting, no swearing – well, that’s a lie…I back-trashtalked as one of the suckers goes on and tells me off after sucking out on me. This was a disturbing trend tonight – move in with the best, get sucked out on and then the donk goes ahead and tells me how he “owned me”…lol…this happened in four different matches. Really classy donks…you’ll make it far in this “business”…

Some stats:

1. Times I lost to one-outer with one card to come: I

2. Times I lost to a two-outer with one card to come: II

3. Times I lost to a two-outer with two cards to come: I

4. Times I lost to a 3-8 outer: II

5. Times I lost to a 8+ outer: not counted

6. Times I lost to a runner runner straight/flush: II

7. Times I lost with dominating hands: II

8. Times I lost to the hammer with Kings: I

Being crippled after that hand: ouch

Coming back to even and then taking the chiplead: nice

Losing to a 2 outer some hands later: Priceless 😉

PokerStars Game #8006365327: Tournament #40897120, $5.00+$0.25
Hold’em No Limit – Match Round I, Level II (15/30) – 2007/01/18 – 18:10:34 (ET)
Table ‘40897120 1’ 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: HOGIECRF888 (1360 in chips)
Seat 2: Ingoal (1640 in chips)
Ingoal: posts small blind 15
HOGIECRF888: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [Qd Qc]
Ingoal: raises 60 to 90
HOGIECRF888: raises 60 to 150
Ingoal: raises 1490 to 1640 and is all-in
HOGIECRF888: calls 1210 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [8d Qh Kh]
*** TURN *** [8d Qh Kh] [5h]
HOGIECRF888 said, “gg”
*** RIVER *** [8d Qh Kh 5h] [6h]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
HOGIECRF888: shows [Th Ac] (a flush, King high)
Ingoal: shows [Qd Qc] (three of a kind, Queens)
HOGIECRF888 collected 2720 from pot
Ingoal said, “or not”
HOGIECRF888 said, “wow”
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 2720 | Rake 0
Board [8d Qh Kh 5h 6h]
Seat 1: HOGIECRF888 (big blind) showed [Th Ac] and won (2720) with a flush, King high
Seat 2: Ingoal (button) (small blind) showed [Qd Qc] and lost with three of a kind, Queens

…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…