The old saying is true, you can’t do more than move your money in with the best. It’s what happened in 90-95% of all hands, still not that much joy. Played seven headsup matches, won 4…lost 3…out of those 3 I would say I deserved to lose 1, in which I clearly overplayed a hand which ultimately lead to my defeat. In the other two losses it was brutal though…dominated hands meant nothing as the three-outers would hit like crazy…oh well…what can you do. The last match was especially brutal….we battle for well over 100 hands, which is quite uncommon. Why did we play for such a long time? Because he just wouldn’t go broke. After a long long battle I’m sitting with around 3/4 of the chips…A10 vs A7…7 is all it takes…throw two coin-flips in the mix (I lose both, haha, no surprise here)….and he takes the match.
I threw another double shootout in the mix, a little torture can’t be bad for character building, lol. This time it filled up pretty quickly, 100 players. So the final table was all ITM with the top 4 claiming a ticket to the sunday million. The table started of like a madhouse. First hand…a player bluffs off all his chips. I’m sitting there cursing him for making such a donkey play as I layed down the winning hand (K9o in EP)…lol…I don’t have to wait long though…second hand…I’m in the BB…MP min-raises…LP calls…all fold…I call…with my powerful 69o…flop comes down 6A9 rainbow…now if he’s got Aces, sixes or nines I’m willing to go broke here….I bet out…MP reraises…LP pushes…I push…MP calls all-in….I show the two pair…MP shows A7o….LP shows 88….my two pair holds up…and I triple up in the third hand. The table is down to seven handed and I’m way out in front. From there on it’s a long ugly drag though…I can’t catch anything and when I do…I catch just enough to lose some chips to a better hand. AQ on a queen high flop….he shows Aces…etc….just nice to see everyone at the table showing their winning Aces one after the other. Weird. Another good 40 minutes of jab and grabble action and I just can’t catch a break. I keep myself in the game by stealing blinds. Nothing more nothing less….I finally go out in the last hand before the break…Ac7c on the button four handed…I’m not exactly laying that down….big stack calls with presto and he shouts just that as it holds up….damn….at least I had fun at the table as we had a really good time after the first three donks were busted, so after the second hand…at least something positive…

Totally unrelated to today’s session: Wheeeee….the AIPS leaderboard just got an update, not that I have any points yet…but at least I’m on it….tied for 30th (= last place) lol… 😉

Not much going on, besides mr. spambot x and y trying to spam every single post on this blog. Good thing that my antispam-solutions are holding up, I heart WordPress + Plugins 😉

Played a small session at Stars, the usual, some headsup and a double shootout. Won all three headsup matches. The first one was really only one hand, lol. I limp with Ad9d…he checks…flop comes three baby diamonds…I check…he checks…turn is the 10d…he bets out…I reraise him small….he reraises me small….I reraise him small…he reraises me small….I push….he insta-calls…now I’m looking forward to see his Kd…but instead he shows the Jd…lol….well, well, son…I could understand a call with the Kd (sort off), but with the Jd? Are you kiddin me? Nothing better than to flop the joint in the first hand and get all the chips. The second match was more of a grind, although the passive style of my opponent made it easy to see flops and get payed of when he had a piece of the flop or thought he had the goods – example: he min-raises preflop…flop comes down 642 rainbow…he min-bets…I hold J6o…I call…turn is another 6….he bets bigger…I repop him…he repops me…I push….he insta-calls…shows his Aces….turn and river don’t show the two outer and I’m home free. The third one was gold too….79…one of my new favourite, mega-juicy hands…no action preflop…flop comes down 684…he bets small….I call…turn is the beautiful 5…I’ve got the nuts….he bets big, I reraise…he reraises me small…I push…he shows Q7…drawing slim to a chop…river is blank and I win the third match.

After that I invested some of the dough into another try at the Double Shootouts. The games are really juicy as there are donkeys left and right more than willing to get their money in bad. Too bad if you can’t catch a hand to break em. So I sat there again winning some small pots while another player stacked donk after donk. Once it came down to playing a few bigger hands he had the chips to make the calls without much risk and got lucky here and there….I got unlucky against another player…33 vs 66…oh well…that’s that. Coming back to the second part of the title: Two views of the same situation: 1. I need to get lucky here 2. I just need to NOT get unlucky here…

1. was generally true for the other player

2. was generally not true for me

Sucks to be in that spot…oh well…can’t help it…keep choppin away I guess…3 tries down….more to go…but not tonight…

Yawn…pretty early, yet again, so no loooong ass post, but a quick wrap-up. Jumped into Stars and first of all I played a double shootout. Haven’t played these in a while and they seem to be quite juicy, first hurdle is to win the first table…from there on out you’re usually in the money and you’ve got a shot at one the entries to the sunday million, which is worth 215T$. As an SnG junky I would most certainly unregister from the tourney and take the T$, but first of all you need to get your game on and win one of those things. That’s what I tried. The first one wasn’t totally filled up, only 70 players, so there were 10 tables with 7 players each. We jabbed and grabbled for the first twenty minutes and I was able to bust on player. From there on out I went card dead for quite a while. In the meantime a player was running hot. He knocked out player after player with an unreal run of cards. He knocked out two players within two orbits, showing JJ and KK twice each in the process. Nice going sir, yuck. So we’re down to four-handed and I get my money in with AQ…not the greatest hand, but hey, it’s four-handed so I’ll take it. Mr. Cardrack instacalls with Kings…and knocks me out. Nice going sir. No way you can win the first table if you got a player at the table who’s catching like crazy. Oh well, can’t fault him, I’ll take such a run of cards every day, lol.

So I walk away and wait for the next double shootout, this time a turbo one. The thing is almost filled up and so this time we start out with a full table. Most hands are a blur, all I know is that I got my money in with the best and it usually held up. So after a long battle back and fourth we’re finally down to three-handed, then mr. big stack busts out the other player and we begin heads-up.

So we battle back and forth and he’s still out in front, but I see my chance to double-up into the chiplead with 22, the ducks….I limp and we see a flop, which makes me believe he doesn’t have a monster here. Flop comes down 4-6-7 with two clubs. He leads out and I push…he calls…showing Jc8c….hmm…okay…so he got two overs and the flush draw…I hold the 2c…so he got 6 + 8 = 14 outs twice….hold up one time please! 😉

Turn pairs sixes and the river is the Jack of Hearts…and I’ve never seen an uglier Jack at that…lol…oh well…so close and yet so far…better luck next time.

Just as I’m about to logout for the night a little reminder pops up. Aips 2 Event #2 is about to start over at FullTilt. For all of you who are not familiar with AIPS, it’s a series of tourneys initiated by the folks of AnteUp (the podcast…)and it’s stud tonight and only five bucks…so why the heck not…

The tourney starts like any good “chase me down, after all it’s limit, DUDE”-tourney…I start out rolled up and one player says “Heck, it’s so cheap, I’ll call you down no matter what”, well he doesn’t say it out loud, but I think it’s almost certain to assume that he thought along those lines. So I lose a third of my stack in the first hand…nice…NOT. After that I go on a three-to-the-wheel roll, too bad it’s not Stud 8…so I muck muck muck…until I catch some nice hands and I bring my stack up to over 2k. I get bounced around a lot until I finally land at a nice table just before the first break.

The dwarf bringing it in is Chris Cosenza, to my right is Scott Long…so I landed at the table where both Ante Up Hosts held court. Nice. Not so nice that I lost most of my stack in a nasty hand. I finally fold on fifth street as “Vorune” has three hearts showing and is betting like crazy, Chris isn’t far behind though, in terms of betting at least. He finally catches up on the river to suck out an ace high flush against Vorunes (King/Queen?! high) flush (Side note: I’m really looking forward to the next podcast and if Chris will have a comment on his play in this hand, lol)…I’m sitting with less than 1k and it’s not looking all that good. I get the money in a few hands later with a pair of Kings (K8K)…my opponents catches a King on fourth…hehe…too bad he had the Ace in the door as he had a King underneath…brick brick brick…the usual and I’m out…oh well….had fun…and now I can catch some sleep…. night…

Received an email from Mike (from PokerOnAMac.com) today that there’s going to be another bloggerpods event soonish. Three ipods up for grabs…I’m in…what are you waiting for?

Mac Poker

Oh me oh my, people were sucking (out) like vacuum cleaners tonight. *lol* 😉

Ran into a couple of fellows that play fairly well, so I had to play patiently and wait for my spots, the spots came and the money went in…let’s just say that the best hands, well my hands, didn’t hold up quite that often. I mean, clearly a hand like Doyle (10-2) vs 3-5 can be juicy, but only if you play it right…flop 10-10-4…check check…2….check check…river 6…bet…he reraises all-in…I smile and call…now that’s a clear hand…the other ones with cards to come, especially with only one to come were unreal. I mean, I understand that people play badly and usually I’m cheering them on – after all that’s where the money comes from – but today, I would have loved if they just folded in some spots as I could almost feel the perfect card coming before it even happened. Four-outer…boom…two-outer…boom…two-outer…boom…eight-outer…boom…three-outer boom…etc…it was brutal…oh well…better luck next time…I’m done for tonight 3 for 8…and to the donks: Keep playing like this, can’t betray the odds over the long run fellas 😉

Side note: Almost forgot, during the first few matches PokerStars had some minor problems with their connection…first time I ever witnessed something like this…

“Administrator: Many players have disconnected due to Internet routing problems,
additional time to act added [2007/02/11-18:30:47 ET]”

Well, well, I’m still a little puzzled as how I could overlook my hand yesterday evening. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter one bit and even if I won the hand, you never know how the tourney would have played out from there. But still, this is officially the first time ever that this happened to “Mr. Poker”, aka me myself and I. Oh well, it’s over, I wrote about it and that’s that, it sure won’t lose any sleep about it…

So…today I only watched a little poker on tv, a rerun at that, as the shows I’m waiting for (High Stakes Poker, Poker after dark) won’t be around until tuesday…apart from that, only a small session at Stars tonight. Won the first two matches easily…then stormed into the third one, took half his stack in the first two hands, then couldn’t finish off and lost to a nice runner runner spade four-flush with my AhKc vs his Ac10s…oh well…same ol’ same ol’…so I finish the night at 2-1…and with a big grin on my face…boy is my new display nice 🙂

Wow. Tonight we played our usual home game. It’s been almost 2 months since we last played, so I was pretty excited to see all the fellas. We had 12 runners tonight, so the price pool was nice. As usual the final 6 would compile the final table and I sure hoped to be one of them. One thing was different tonight though: I was there to play cards, have a drink or two or three and to enjoy the game, period. No intention to win it, play my best game or whatever. Just sit there, chat with the guys and play the cards I’m dealt – if I win, dandy, if not…no hard feelings.

I started out at table nr. 2 with two loose players and three other conservative players. The first bustout came pretty quickly (OESD vs trip Kings) and so we were down to five handed. I played tight, really tight. One of the loose players pushes all in and it’s “only” 20% of my stack to call him…so I call with QJo as I read him for being in the desperate mode. He confirmed my read as he showed J7 s00ted. D00minated he was…didn’t matter though…board: 892…turn blank…river 10…thank you very much (Edit: Errm, yup…found the error yet? I sure did, just after writing this post…I don’t even know why I didn’t see it at the table, or any of the other 5 players for that matter…7-8-9-10-J…sure…a straight…but doesn’t the 8-9-10-2-x board give me a straight also and a higher straight at that?! 😉 Well, well…8-9-10-J-Q…hmm…Queen High Straight beats Jack High Straight…or not?! Homer Simpsons says: D’oh!!! Oh well…I still can’t figure out why I didn’t see it, I guess it was due to the fact that someone “sucked out on me” yet again, which is basically a normal occurance at our game and so my brain crapped out for a few seconds or something…too bad I didn’t realize it at the table. For one, I would have been in much better shape with only two eliminations to go till the final table. Secondly, we wouldn’t have seen the first royal flush ever (see below)…so I guess this mistake was for a good cause :)). Some hands later, with the blinds increasing I push my measly stack in the middle and get three callers. Wow. I think I’m pretty much done with my pocket treys as overcard after overcard keeps hitting the board, but to my surprise I win the pot, eliminating one player in the process and I’m back. A few hands later I pickup A7 s00ted and as it’s four-handed, I’m pretty sure I can raise here in the SB…BB calls…hmm…flop is 10-high…I check…he pushes…well…I muck and he shows pocket Kings…nice shuffle. Some hands later I’m desperate again, but my AJo is not match to the powerful 94o (or something) and I exit in 7th place (6 at the final table)….oh well…got in with the best of it most of the time, couldn’t do much about the hands…and…I enjoyed the game…

As the final 6 are heading for the final table we start our sidegame and after 5 minutes all hell breaks loose on the other table (the final table of the main tourney). The first ever royal flush has just been dealt. A10o vs Qsxc…board read As-10s-x…turn Ks…river Js…wow! That was one to remember. We’re playing our home game pretty regularly and for over a year now the “best hand record” was sitting at the flopped straight flush my mate flopped against me….now we got a new record…Spade Royal Flush…wow!

But back to our sidegame…it was pretty wild….once we were down to three-handed (ITM) it was pretty much push or be pushed…and push I did on some hands…in the end I took it down after my Qc10s sucked out a four flush over my mates A7 s00ted (lucky for me, no spade)….so I ended the night with some money in my pocket…nice!

Alrighty…that’s the quick recap of the night….I’m outta here…

Well, yesterday was hammer day, but today was clearly donkey day. I met some of the most annoying people ever at the tables. Played headsup, nothing new there. Won the ones I was supposed to win, lost those which I was supposed to win. All in all in split six games. So down the rake and down some time which nothing can bring me back.

Highlights: Total donkey, fish, whatever you want to call it…he’s so bad, he already dropped over 1.1k in HU SnGs in the recent months. We get the money in preflop…my AKs vs his A9o…no surprise to see a nine on the flop and another one on the turn. Still no surprise that he tells me about “how he owns me” and all after that suckout. It made me laugh so hard that I couldn’t even stop talking some trash in the chat. He didn’t even understand half the things I told him, so I let it be and sucked it up. He got the last suck though as he sucked out again to bust me. Nice.

Then I played the slowest player I’ve ever seen, seriously. Well, not a bad tactic if you’re a donk. Play only a few hands during the first few levels as you’re taking like 20 seconds on every decision, then try to luck out on the more expensive blind levels. He did a fine job there, bored me to death until the blinds were at 50/100…then got his money in as a 80/20 dog and sucked out…very well played sir…

Man, this makes this session officially the lousiest and most annoying ever…spent too much time at the tables with absolutely nothing to show for…oh well, that’s the grind – at least sometimes. I guess I will take a hiatus from online poker tomorrow as the next home game is scheduled for tomorrow night…and as usual I expect to get sucked out on, at least in the critical hands, so I don’t want to put too much stress on my titanium cup 😉

Almost forgot to pimp this, as it’s 4am over here, it’s already hammer day…07.02.2007…or 2/7/2007 for the americans…so…what’s up on hammer day?

Yes, a special hammer day event…come and play…all infos in the pimp pic below…thanks to Al and Mookie for the added  100$, get 7.20$ out of your wallet and play…thank you!

Played in the WWdN as usual and it didn’t go all that well. Started of with AA in the third hand, won a small one. Had to laydown AK on an all-under, straight heavy board, which was cheap though. Then I ran AJ into 77 on a A-7-9-6-10 board. That cost me half my stack. Not much action after that and when the blinds just move up to 50/100 I think A6o in LP is good enough to try to steal…only 700 chips left…so…I hoy and get one caller…well…essentially not a caller as he re-raises all in to isolate me from the button….he shows JJ…blank flop, blank turn…meaningless 6 on the river…gg me and I’m out 31/45…not even made it to the first break. Oh well, quite a change from the last three WWdNs…6th, 6th, 5th, 31st…d’oh!

I’m outta here…oh almost forgot: Next live game is scheduled for friday! Has been almost 8 weeks since I traded the virtual cards for the real deal, really looking forward to it. Let’s see how it goes (recently it has been a nightmare as everyone was catching against me and I, wrongly, tried to force the action, which lead to an even bigger disaster)…