Just as I was about to submit a lovely post about DADI9 and how the poker dealers/gods crapped on my head again, the server foobared and the post was gone 🙁

As I’m too lazy to retype everything again, here’s a wrap-up:

DADI9 tonight! Be there or be squared! …Unfortunately I’ll be squared as my new real-life commitment (internship) has me on a new schedule, which is more related to my actual timezone, so poker tourneys at 3 in the morning (which is 9pm ET) are out of the picture for the time being 🙁

Have fun, nontheless and don’t let the donkey…errrm…horse kick you 😉

Attention:

1. DADI9 moved to FullTilt, so don’t wonder that you can’t find it on PokerStars 😉

2. The password is pokertrust

I finished the original post with a rant about how the dealer/poker god crapped on my head again (set over set, set to straight, etc)…I hope to be reporting better news soonish, after all I can’t lose all those monsters in the long run 😉

…in the live game. Tonight we played our home game – about time we got together to throw some chips and cards around again. I drew a seat at table two along with Mr. Luckbox and our resident maniac (aka “The Host”) to start off the tourney. Not a bad deal as I had position on both of em. The best hand I’ve seen all night was AA in LP in the first hand, which didn’t give me all that much.

After a long back and forth battle we were finally down to the last 6 (on both tables combined) and the outlook was rather grim: From our table I was one of the last three players standing, but the chipcount was rather disheartening: Me – 7.2 Euro, Player 2 – 3.2 Euro, “Luckbox” 109.6 Euro, yikes…

So it was pretty obvious that I didn’t have much options at the final table – the blinds at 1 .2 / 2.4 Euro with a .30 Euro ante. I drew a nice seat, but I was the first BB…I look down at AsQs and watch the situation unfold…Player 2 (from my first table) calls the BB and has got .80 Euro left…Player 3 calls…Player 4 and 5 fold…I push….both player 2 and 3 call…they show..AKo and AKo…wtf????!!!! No help on the board, Player 2 and 3 split the pot and I’m eliminated…damn! Even better: Player 2 went on to win the whole thing…an amazing run of cards I would assume, as coming back from 3.2 Euro with 240 Euro being in play isn’t your everyday display of superior skills 😉

After I busted out of the Main Tourney I sat down at the second chance tourney and did quite well, but in the end I just couldn’t catch anything when I needed it, so I busted out fourth (2 ITM)…overall not a good result, but at least I played my A-Game….the cards just didn’t fall my way…

Wheeeeeeeee! DADI 9 has just been announced. The newest edition is called “Back in the saddle”. Why? Because it’s HORSE. Nice! You gotta love the banner too:

I’m still laughing at the donk on the horse and the first thing that came to my mind while looking at it: the true catchphrase for this tourney should be: Heeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaw meets yeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw! 😀

For further information and updates, just checkout the DADI homepage…

Played the WWdN tonight and once again did not fare all that bad. I would say that it was the elevator tourney for me – straight up at first, then someone cut the wires and doooooooown we go. Final hand was my typical exit: a coinflip, what else is new? AKs vs QQ…boom headshot…out in 29th.

Thoughts about my play tonight: can’t find a bigger mistake I made, what stood out was the fact that I didn’t have a hand when I was in the BB after level 1. I mean it’s easy to call 60 chips or something in the beginning (standard 3x raise), but in the later stages I won’t call of that much with the hands I held in the BB (short, but representative selection: 103o, 104o, 83o, 94o, 23o, 24o, 75o, …). So all in all a nice tourney yet again with Kat, surf, hoy and numerous others at my table with the usual finish – I don’t have exact notes, but I think that I busted out of the WWdN (and brogger tourneys in general) in the last 8 out of 10 times. Damn you rigged coin 😉

Token in hand, satellite to qualifier about to start, nothing else to do, let’s go 🙂

80 entered, Top 5 go ahead to tonight’s qualifier, 3 other places receive cash. I like those chances. Up and down, up and down…final two tables, AJ on the button, BB thinks his hand is good…

…and of course he’s right, at least they were s00ted…out in 15th place, yuck 🙁

Quick wrapup: it cost me more than the 10+1$ entry fee…I was a little short shortly before it began (a few cents) so I decided to do a quick hit and run at the cash tables…hit I did, outsucked I got and then I ran…to fire up neteller 😉 🙁

So anyway, started of the table with the host himself and went on a little run early on…then I went into the fold’em wasteland as I couldn’t catch a hand if my life depended on it…then I get my money in with Jacks vs wonka’s AK…A on the flop…down to slightly over 1500. Fold’em, fold’em fold’em…and then I look down at presto (55), not the best in the world, but hey…best I’ve seen in a while and the blinds are eating me alive…no joy though against A10…out in 16th (of 38).

My quick summary: fun at the tables, coinflips played: 2, coinflips lost: 2…go figure…for a live-blogging style post about the tourney check out Mook’s post…

Man, you wouldn’t even believe how long a friggin SnG can take if everybody, and I mean everybody literally, is a total rock at the table. I tried to switch my style accordingly, but it’s a dance on the razor’s edge as mr. rock x..y will play his Aces just like his old limping ass hand. Sometimes I doubt the randomness of the shuffle and while I know that that’s bs it’s sometimes the only way to cope with the shit, just put it on the rigged deck, lol. I can’t count the number of times I waited for good cards tonight just to push them right into the nuts and I’m not even counting the vicious dominated hand-suckouts (AK vs AA three times, AQ vs AK two times, etc, and  as sure as hell (one of the) case ace(s) showed up every friggin time). Anyway, so I was able to win one nontheless and score a third place to end the SnG session just a little down for the day. Not bad, so I jump into a MTT and the same shit happens. So I decided that tournament poker was not very kind to me today, so ring game time it was.

Donk around a little on the NL10 tables, but was quickly bored with the scared folks folding even to minor bets. So I jumped into some NL25 action and came out ahead by a longshot. Nice one, especially the one hand I stacked a player flop J93 rainbow, he checks I bet, he calls, turn is another J,  he pushes…now he either has the case Jack (with a hopefully worse kicker, which is not playing) or a boat. I call…he shows QJ, I show KJ, river is blank. So all in all a nice session tonight and I’m a step closer to getting the 200 points I need to clear the PSO bonus (9000 points).

I didn’t have the time to finish up a long ass post which I started yesterday, hopefully I’ll have the time to finish it soon – it’s working title is “The Poker Preacher (Part II)”…should be interesting to read, at least I think so, so stayed tuned…

Sick, sick sick sick. No, not the cards or that they don’t fall my way or anything, nope. I’m sick, sick as a dog. I can’t even remember the last time I was this sick, coughing, sneezing
and snoting like crazy – I guess it’s due to the fact that I don’t get sick very often (a cold every two years or something and that’s about it). So not too much poker played in the last few days.

Today was the first day I felt like I could get some hands in again though. Bad idea. You shouldn’t be playing if…

…you’re misreading the board on a consistent basis (yay I got two pair, wait, no I got one pair, d’oh)! This usually doesn’t happen to me, so I can attribute that + my impatience at the table to my cold + headache…so I’m not going to throw more money into the fish tank today. Hope I’ll be back in better shape, both physically and hence mentally, soonish.

…not much going my way today. Too bad, boohoo…I spare you the rant and leave you with my final hand of the night…

No, I’m not dead…I just didn’t have that much time to really play a decent amount of poker over the last few days, so just a quick roundup will have to do, for now.

I continue to play most of my SnGs over at WPX and so far so good, I almost double my deposit, w00t. 100% rakeback helps, but it’s not just that. I like to play shorthanded SnGs, so WPX is a perfect fit as their shorthanded SnGs are really shorthanded – 5 players at the table, 2 ITM (70/30 cut). It took a while for me to adjust to the 10 hands/level structure (instead of the x minutes/level which is used by most other rooms), but now I enjoy it – in the beginning it’s easy, you get to be the BB twice per level, then after a few eliminations things are speeding up, which is a good thing. The highest (in game) levels I’ve personally seen thus far were 500/1k with a table full of rocks, usually the games are much faster though, especially if you’ve got dudes at the table who like to severely overbet the pot or outright push from EP with blinds of 10/15 – good idea donks…no…your pair of treys is not good there most of the times, duh ;)  One of the ups of playing that many SnGs in such a short amount of time is the biggest downside as well: you get to experience quite a decent number of junk-kickings – I have never ever lost such an amount of dominating hands in such a short period of time, but I didn’t let it get to me. Most of the times I was even able to come back despite being severely crippled by dominating hands (AQ vs A6, AK vs A3, etc etc, 80% favourite – runner runner straight, 73% favourite – runner runner flush, etc), so I can slowly but steadily see some major progress in my game: a few weeks ago I would have (tilt) pushed the next hand in order to end the SnG and/or donk off my chips in the very next SnG – now I can sit there, steam a little, but don’t cloud my judgement, which is really good to say 🙂
As the WSOP wasn’t on around here (and I was too cheap to cough up some bucks for the final table PPV) I relied on Pauly’s coverage along with updates from pokerwire. I couldn’t follow the last few hours as I was heading out to an interview for an internship (my last requirement prior to writing my diploma thesis), so I missed Jamie Gold taking down the win and 12 million. I’m hoping to get my hands on a recording of the final table once ESPN airs it, should be fun to watch. So, bye Joe Hachem, hello Jamie Gold – newest hot commodity of poker. I guess we’ll find out soon enough if the fact that yet another amateur won will bring us the next “boom” / “explosion” in poker…and I’m also wondering if bodog is going to market the shit out of this (which is almost certain) and if they can catch up in terms of traffic.
Over to Full Tilt: I received an email today that the stuff I’ve won in the WSOP Fantasy thing will be credited in points. Cool stuff, so there should be 2200 Points more sitting in my accont shortly – I had won 4th place in one of the early events which was good enough to win a FT baseball cap (which equals 2200 points). I guess I’ll be using those points for tournaments instead of the cap. As I finished in the top 20 of one of the freerolls during the fantasy promotion I had the chance to win a seat for the 2007 WSOP tonight…wasn’t meant to be. Started out good by busting some dudes, but then I pushed right into the nuts to lose half my stack (hammer flop 772 rainbow, I hold 1010 and push, one of the guys in LP calls, he shows 77…ouch). Then I lost some coinflips and I was gone – upside: I went with my gut feeling, made the correct reads, put the money in (way) ahead or at least even money (e.g. a player in EP overbets the pot by some hundred chips, I put him on a small pair…I push with AK…he shows 33…but I don’t improve) the cards just didn’t fall my way sometimes and while that would be awesome (cards falling your way all the time) it’s just not the reality, so I’m good.

Over to poker books: I finished reading the book of bluffs and while some stuff in there was obvious, some stuff just made me think a little more about certain situations and I think it helped my game – short term: check, long term: we’ll see about that, but I’m confident.

That’s all for now, time to catch some sleep before I have to get up for footie training in less than five hours from now, yikes! So I’m leaving you with two of my new/old favourite SnG/MTT mantras:

1. “You must be willing to die, in order to live.” (Amir Vahedi)

2. “The best you can do is get your money in the middle when you have the best hand and hope it holds up.” (unknown)