First session: this morning, some NL cash and 8 NL HE SnGs…mostly good…3x1st 2x2nd in the SnGs….slightly up in the cash game.

Second session: this evening, 8 NL HE SnGs…1x 2nd…that’s it…the other time I totally lost it. I basically ran into more coolers than I’ve ever seen. Sure, there was the one or other bad play in between, but every time a big pot came down, it was pretty much a hand that automatically plays itself. QQ vs KK…JJ vs AA…along with some coinflips of which I won the grand sum of 0.00000000000. Pretty sick. Especially sick was one game where a donk ran so hard over the table that it was a done deal within 15 hands. He sucked out on two fellas in the first hand. Down to for. I was next along with another player…I had the best hand going in…He busted us both….headsup took two hands before he sucked out and won. I’ve never ever seen such a SnG before where a player ships it into the middle behind on every god damn hand and wins em all…he made CJ look like the unluckiest player alive…

Random bubble hand (the usual in the second session):

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 3: 11p0wner ($1965) –
Seat 5: xamou ($3615) –
Seat 6: Ingoal ($3420) –

PRE-FLOP:

xamou posts small blind $50
Ingoal posts BIG blind $100
Dealt To: Ingoal

FOLD 11p0wner
CALL xamou ($50)
CHECK Ingoal

FLOP:

Pot: $200
   

CHECK xamou
CHECK Ingoal

TURN:

Pot: $200
     

BET xamou ($100)
RAISE Ingoal ($200)
RAISE xamou ($300)
RAISE Ingoal ($400)
RAISE xamou ($3515)
CALL Ingoal ($2920)

RIVER:

Pot: $7635
      

SHOWDOWN:
xamou:

Ingoal:

xamou collected $6840 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $6840 Rake: $0

Final Board:
     

Seat 3: 11p0wner button folded before Flop didnt bet – Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 5: xamou small blind showed [Ac Kd] and won 6840 with three of a kind, Aces – Net Gain/Loss: ($3520)
  
Seat 6: Ingoal big blind showed [As 5s] and lost with three of a kind, Aces – Net Gain/Loss: ($-3420)

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

I was pretty satisfied with my play tonight…especially amusing was the last HU match though. I play against a pretty aggressive player. So I limp on the button with KK awaiting his pop…he obliges and I repop him….he repops me…hmm…I repop him…he shoves…no way I can fold…I commited myself after the repop….sure enough he shows Aces….as I say “nice cooler…gg”…he laughs….the laughing stops when the king hits the river. I say sorry and he goes ahead and berates me how he would have folded my hand preflop. Yeeeeeeah, right. If I ever meet a person that will fold Kings headsup in a 6$ tourney, I’ll let you know.

Moving on…I did a little catching up tonight…it’s been over a week that I had listenen to my favourite poker podcast (anteup)…to my surprise episode 159 was the last one…at least in the current setting. Chris and Scott are moving on…leaving the St. Petersburg Times to start their own poker magazine “Ante Up Magazine“…they said they’ll continue the podcast over there…I sure hope they do…but we’ll see if the “startup” is leaving them enough time to do it…we’ll see…I’m outta here…gl at the tables everyone….

*lol* where ppl can call pot-sized bets preflop, on the flop, on the turn and on the river….pretty nice…especially if you lose with trip aces…then the very next hand same deal, this time it’s pot-sized bets preflop, on the flop and on the turn (all-in) and you get call by TP and a gutshot against your Aces with the nut-flush draw…sure enough the gutterball hits on the river….*lol*…that’s so sick that I can laugh really hard about it…

Apart from that I went 2:1 in HU SnGs…and enjoyed myself listening to PokerRoad’s Crew (including Annette_15) ribbing my main man smokkee about his WSOP backing deal…who pitched it to them? The Smokkeester himself :p

Good night and gl at the tables….

That pretty much sums it up. It was pretty unreal what kind of hands came down tonight and I’m not talking about “some coolers”, it was like it was anarctica day – going both ways. It started on bodog where I donked around a little on the HU-SnG-killing-fields. I toasted a donk twice, he literally had no chance, I mean it was pretty sick how he payed me off even with his worst hands. It took quite a while to bust him though as he kept hitting two and three outers on my ass, but oh well, a W is a W and such a W is even sweeter because I didn’t let it get to me during play (not calling shoves etc, but continuing to play small-ball until I busted him). Then I jumped to Stars where I started with A HU SnG as well, busted the guy pretty quickly.

In the end I finished the session with a Double-Shootout to the Sunday Million on Stars…and it was an interesting match. I got coolered in the mid stages of the first table, then coolered the player right back in the next hand (QQ vs AA…Q on the flop…boom)…in the end I won the table.

Then came the second table and while the table was tighter than a virgin’s punani to begin with, it tightened up even more once we were on the money bubble (8 left, 7 payed). That’s when this hand came down. In retrospect I guess I could have folded after the big-stack cold-called my raise and the following shove by the shorty, then again, if they are both drawing to a flush or hold TPTK or something I’m golden and the only way I’m out of the money is if the shorty wins the hand and the big stack has my hand beat and on the upside, if I win the hand I’m the chipleader by a long-shot and can start to bully ppl around bringing me closer to the 215T$. So I went with it. Made my boat on the turn, but too bad that the big stack indeed held a set…making him a bigger boat…oh well…

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

Seat 1: kent2ben ($1573)
Seat 3: bertbarndoor ($1692)
Seat 5: mistery31000 ($900)
Seat 6: dedor ($2495) –
Seat 7: zwerg12 ($2010) –
Seat 8: Ingoal ($1795) –
Seat 9: AnotherTran ($1210)
Seat 10: eltigre666 ($3325)

PRE-FLOP:

zwerg12 posts small blind $25
Ingoal posts BIG blind $50
Dealt To: Ingoal

RAISE AnotherTran ($100)
CALL eltigre666 ($100)
FOLD kent2ben
FOLD bertbarndoor
FOLD mistery31000
FOLD dedor
FOLD zwerg12
CALL Ingoal ($50)

FLOP:

Pot: $325
   

CHECK Ingoal
CHECK AnotherTran
BET eltigre666 ($300)
RAISE Ingoal ($600)
RAISE AnotherTran ($1110)
CALL eltigre666 ($810)
RAISE Ingoal ($1695)
CALL eltigre666 ($585)

TURN:

Pot: $5425
     

RIVER:

Pot: $5425
      

SHOWDOWN:
Ingoal:

eltigre666:

AnotherTran:

eltigre666 collected $1170 from side pot 1eltigre666 collected $3655 from main pot

SUMMARY:
Total pot: $4825Main pot: $3655
Side pot: $1170
Rake: $0

Final Board:
     

Seat 1: kent2ben folded before Flop didnt bet – Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 3: bertbarndoor folded before Flop didnt bet – Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 5: mistery31000 folded before Flop didnt bet – Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 6: dedor button folded before Flop didnt bet – Net Gain/Loss: ($0)
Seat 7: zwerg12 small blind folded before Flop – Net Gain/Loss: ($-25)
Seat 8: Ingoal big blind showed [7d 4d] and lost with a full house, Fours full of Sevens – Net Gain/Loss: ($-1285)
Seat 9: AnotherTran showed [Ks As] and lost with two pair, Aces and Fours – Net Gain/Loss: ($-1160)
  
Seat 10: eltigre666 showed [5h 5s] and won 4825 with a full house, Fives full of Fours – Net Gain/Loss: ($3030)
  

Free hand converter brought to you by CardRunners

So I’m logging off up a little…and I’m happy with that…gl at the tables….

This whole SnG grinding thing is really starting to get me. It’s not so much the hours, the dedication or the frustration, it’s the realisation that you can only be profitable if you get a few less junk-kicks than you’re willing to hand out, that and the fact that the rake (“tourney fee”) keeps eating you up when you try to grind it out in the low-end of the pond.

I know that everyone is about to be fed up with the constant whining and complaining – after all all sorts of beats are part of the game – yeah, well, easy to acknowledge and to deal with it if you’re sitting on a good roll. I’m not, so it’s tougher, maybe even tougher than you are realizing. It really eats me up that I can win and win and then lose and lose and win and win and that it’s a slow but steady downwards spiral, because I can’t win enough to constantly beat the rake. There I said it, I just can’t.

Why? Because no matter how good I run, someone else seems to be running better and guess what, the house doesn’t care, all it’s digital representation says is “kaaaaaaaa-chiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing, ty for your money, come again”. For those who still care, the rake at the current donk-level I’m playing is 8,3%.

In a good night I can easily crush that mark and then some. In an average night (like tonight) I might win (in a general game-related sense) but still break even or finish a small loser (due to the rake)…and don’t even get me started on a bad night. So I’m starting to think about my “strategy” in general and the future I have in online poker (if any). Maybe I should sit down and have a look at my extensive stats (both automatically logged via TourneyManager and manually kept in form of my own “results sheets”) and take it from there, as what I’m currently doing is obviously not working (side note: maybe it’s really the biggest losing streak I’ve had so far and it’s a mixture of down-swing, bad luck and bad decisions; maybe it’s just that I can’t beat the game; maybe it’s ???; to give you an idea about my downswing I can tell you this much: within the last 9 months I slowly lost 77% of my roll)…

To quote the great old green fella: “Meditate on this I will”…until then enjoy the (not so random pic dump), enjoy the kickass WSOP coverage of DrPauly and PokerNews and enjoy life…I sure will…away from online poker…cya on the other side…nn and gl at the tables…

…some would say seeing some of the brutal beats I took in the four SnGs I played after the fucktastic FullTilt-session. Others would say: hey, you got lucky first. Why? Because I usually had a monster-stack when the bad luck hit me and we all know it’s much easier to take if you’re not out or crippled when you take a junk kick. Maybe the latter is true, I got lucky in a sense that ppl were willing to donk-off their stack with second pair or some similar bs. The only true cooler hand was me raising with KK on the button after someone in MP had raised preflop. He flat-calls. We see a flop of KTT…I lead out small, he pushes…sure enough he has a T and wow…no one outer this time. But honestly, should I consider myself ultra-lucky there because my opponent thought he was Doyle Brunson (he raised and flat-called my reraise preflop with T2o)? I don’t think so. Or what do you think he put me on? Exactly…nothing at all…and even if he did…he was probably rubbing his hands because some hands in my range there (AKs/AKo/KQs/KQo/etc) would have been in dire-straits against his hand after he flopped lucky trips. Too bad I had exactly the hand he didn’t want to see.

Enough rambling though…I’m outta here with a smile….four SnGs…2 Ws…1 second…good enough to forget about the earlier FTP-incident…ty Stars for kicking my in the junk, but x times softer than FTP. I’m out…gl at the tables….

So…I decided to make a comeback at FullTiltPoker tonight. I haven’t played there in months as I had the most horrific luck and totally busted out in a rare tilt-flash a few months back. So I decided to reload tonight to join Kat’s rebuy madness. Because the start of the tourney is so late (for me – 3am), I decided to kill some time donking around at the PlayMoney Horse-Tables…and to my surprise, after a few minutes, a red pro sat down. David Bradley, the stud specialists, joined the game and was quite chatty and all. Sure enough the table chatter was starting to fire up and the wait list grew. So I played a while and then gave my seat to another player…

So, then it was time to start the donkarama…and it started out like a charm. Rebuy. Rebuy. Rebuy. Quadruple up. Rebuy. Rebuy. Rebuy. Well, double-rebuys can really be a PITA quite quickly. So in the end I decided no to rebuy anymore after I had already rebought 15 times and my second real hand of the night (JJ) was obv cracked as I couldn’t dodge two overcards…too bad…the first time ever that I didn’t even last through the rebuy period…but honestly I didn’t see much point in dumping more chips and cash…enjoy the random pic dump and I’m outta here…

It really was a quick session…wanted to play earlier and then longer, but a quick idea got into the way. First of all I bought a new digital camera today (nothing fancy), but I thought about starting a photoblog…which has been on my “list” for quite a while, so I set that up…which took a little longer than expected…turns out debug mode helps and the problem (image magick not accessible by webuser) was solved rather quickly. But…it kept me from playing earlier…so just a quick session. The awesome part of it was that I played strictly against fish and I’m not guessing here…sharkscope approved fish…lol…and they were playing just like their icon suggests…fishy…fishy…fishy…won 3 out of 5…should have been 4..but two outs are g00t…oh well…

While playing I started to rail the Bodonkey ToC…the thing that really sucks is that the railbirds can’t chat at bodonkey…pretty fugly if you ask me. I mean, it’s a general policy and while it has it’s upsides in general (no beggers, hustlers and annoy-o-bots), but in a private tourney? Come on…at least the players who played in the bodonkey should be able to chat – on another note: I didn’t expect bodog to change this tonight, after all it was like that the whole season…you played in the bodonkey at a table and couldn’t even chat with the other tables. FUGLY, I’m telling you. I gotta get a hold of smokkee and ask him if he can pass on some suggestions to Nadia or whoever at bodog…

I’m off to the laptop to rail a little more…ToC is really slow so far. Columbo is Gigli…first break coming up…17/18 players left…

Especially if the dealer keeps rubbing it in…presto no good…obv…now, I made a bad move on the flop…and I was a 4:1 dog preflop…so all good…but why give me the damn 5 on the river ffs, are you out to get me on tilt? Obv..yeah…

*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $22.95 | Rake $1.10
Board [3s 9d Js 9c 5d]
Seat 1: Ingoal showed [5s 5c] and lost with a full house, Fives full of Nines
Seat 2: cafecanuck folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 3: doccincy (button) showed [Jh Jc] and won ($21.85) with a full house, Jacks full of Nines

Back to bread and butter, I get slaughtered at the SnGs for the most part…so I’m off, down and out for the night. Really need to think about this online poker journey. It’s leading up and down and up and down and up and down down down…pretty sick and discouraging.

No, not Greg Mueller, but Full Blown Tilt. It really hurts when you’re making some questionable (read: bad) decisions early on in session. It hurts even more when you get your shit together and get kicked in the nuts repeatedly. Got into some nasty hands, basically cooler hands, no big deal, but the hands that really ticked me off were the dominating hands (AK no match for K5, AK no match for AQ, etc etc)…so sick when you get the money in good and your opponent has the whole three outs…and hits it EVERY GOD DAMN TIME.

I’m outta here before I bust myself…