Today I had enough. Enough of the bad run. Now one could argue that “running bad” is a natural thing in poker and it’ll pass – it probably would, eventually, but I’m fed up. Bad beat after bad beat, suckout after suckout. So it’s been fun with bodog, while it lasted, but I can’t take it anymore, at least not atm. So I cashed out the remaining dough…not all that much left, luckily I had withdrawn three times already, so I’m UUUUUUP 🙂

So, I need a new room to donk around and I had a look around my favourite bonus hunt site PokerSavvy (aff)…once I hit the site I remembered that the bonus at nine was still uncleared due to the network switch of nine. So first of all I contacted Mike to ask how this would be handled (as the old point system couldn’t be converted to the new system, but I had almost done all the requirements)…as usual Mike and Team PokerSavvy did an amazing job. They contacted nine and got them to clear my bonus 🙂 Two thumbs up, once again.

With that out of the way it was time to decide on a new room….many left, but some of them are not for me (as I had signed up before coming across the likes of PokerSavvy)…so…the special promotion it is…sign up with Pacific till the end of the year, grind out 250 Comp Points and receive a whoopin 1200 SavvyPoints (which equals ~ 120$, the normal promotion for Pacific is 900 SavvyPoints)…now 250 Comp Points are not easy to grind out, but it’s a challenge and Pacific’s nice bonuses are a good start (25$ instantly into your account when you sign up via PokerSavvy and you receive the 25% (up to 100$ max) immediatly too!)…

Played some Blackjack and some ring games to get my feet wet and everything worked out nicely, until I ran into yet another nice hand: A9o on the button, EP min raises (hmm Aces?!), two callers, I call, flop comes AA3 rainbow…hmm..so he doesn’t have Aces…push and shove…he shows A3…gotta love those case cards and ugly kickers, lol. Oh well…by the time that hand occured I was already ahead more than I could lose, so ‘s all good…

So…for the next few days/weeks I’ll probably focus my play on clearing that bonus…10 points done, 240 to go…. 🙂

…or something…

After the bodog disaster I head over to PokerStars for one of the anniversary “freerolls” (why is everyone stating tourneys which costs something (in this case FPPs) to be freerolls these days?!)…it’s a donkfest and “Lady Maverick” Vanessa Russo is a no-show…I sit at a decent stack (twice the average) with 1k players to go and all falls apart…best hand in with a nice raise, second/third/… after the flop…fold…I finally bust out in the 900s after the fourth unsuccessfull preflop raise followed by a flop that has nothing in it for me…oh well…free…eerrm 10 FPP…always happy to donate to the donkey nation.

After that I head over to Full Tilt to win me a token…ha! Not really…first attempt is a turbo two-table S&G….no joy….coinflip hell and overcards are gold…too bad I went in with a pp two times…ah well…second attempt is a one table S&G…after some donking around we’re heads-up and about even in chips…long story short: everytime I have a hand, my opponent has the better one (not necessarily preflop, but sure as hell post-flop)…so I go out in second place…10 bucks…no token…no joy…

A Poker Room is such a lousy place to be in sometimes…better luck tomorrow…

Hehe…I just ran through a session which even made ME laugh, although the slaughter was brutal. I think bodog saved some special decks for me and brought them out the freezer just in time today….

Examples:

1. K7 vs K3…K-10-5 rainbow, money goes in…3 on the river

2. A7 vs A2 ….Ace on the flop…2 on the river

3. Jh9h…flop 8h9h3h…bet…raise…reraise…push…insta-call…opponent shows Ah2h…

4. KQ vs K5….5 hits the river

5. … x.  Same shit, different hands…

So…thanks bodog for rewarding the tards and happy holidays, bastards!

Yup, noone wants to hear about bad beats. So I’m not telling any 😉

Tonight’s session was supposed to be fun. It was, as I made correct decision after correct decision. Too bad if that doesn’t lead anywhere. Correct fold, opponent caught his gutshot on the river. Correct fold, opponent caught his two outer on the turn. Correct fold, opponent caught runner runner. Correct fold?! Incorrect push…Correct fold…correct fold…correct push…opponent sucked out….correct…correct…

God damn it! Ah well…better luck next time.

On another note: Tomorrow is my last day at work, weeeeeee. Happy, because it’s finally time to get some rest again, celebrate christmas with friends and family. Sad, because I really liked it there. Oh well, all things must come to an end…and the upside: I can finally chill out a little bit again, catch up on overdue stuff and hopefully join you all at the tables in the upcoming weeks. The next live game is scheduled for saturday, so there’s stuff to look forward to… 🙂

Yet another quick post….just some HU action at bodog today, too tired for any longer sessions…

Played 9 matches…won 6….should have won the last one too. How could I lose after hitting the best hammer flop ever?

Well not much time to play or post, so just a quickie:

1. Busted some donkeys at bodog’s HU tables, 3 out of 4 not too bad.

2. Got my ass handed to me once again at FTP…unbelievable how some nice brick-sessions at Razz and kind rivers for my opponents can ruin everything…oh well…”the only thing that matters is making correct decisions”…yeah right, but losing still sucks 😉

I’m outta here…

…well, not quite yet, still another week of work before I’m free to celebrate christmas, the new year and get myself in the hunt for my diploma thesis. So, the “good to be back” refers to my game 😉

I started the evening with a token satellite on Full Tilt. Well, let’s just say that the first hand was the last one too. I just couldn’t get away from the hand, although all the signs were there – min raise preflop, reraise on the flop…I guess I was a little too excited about flopping two pair…oh well…

After that disappointment I took a seat at some crazy HA tables. It’s really surprising how many players are playing these without having the first clue about Omaha, lol. Still couldn’t start a bigger running and dropped a buyin. Not all that good.

So I fired up bodog and played some HU SnGs. Won the first two, then lost the next two. That really sucked, so I decided to quit HU for the night and as I checked the MTT tab I saw that the 2.5k guaranteed was about to start. The low buyin of 7$ + 0,50$ made the decision even easier.

Hours played: roughly 3.5

Times I was all-in and at risk: twice, early with a flip AK vs JJ…and then in the last hand..but more about that one below.

So I bumped and grinded and sometimes I really got a rush of cards (I must have held AA about four times, QQ about five times and some other lower pairs, but apart from that, well…not much). I had one goal for this tourney:

[Guess 1] Make money – nope

[Guess 2] Get down to last x players – nope

[Guess 3] Not get sucked out on – nope

The correct answer is: make correct decisions – and it worked out pretty good. It’s weird how sometimes a little pointer “back to basics” can really help you find your game again. After plowing through Super System II (highly recommended, but it’s sooo full of concepts and numerous games that you will have to read, re-read and re-re-read it on a regular basis), I started to read my next poker book entitled Pauly’s blog errm “The Tao of Poker”. It’s a set of 285 rules to “transform your game”. Well, I don’t know about the transformation part, but they certainly help. I only read the first 25 or something so far, as I said, I started to read it last night and I gotta get some sleep sometime, so can’t be reading all night. The first ones were really basic, but although you know all the concepts/ideas/rules (know when you’re beat; poker is a grind; ..) are clear and you probably have them all inside your head, but re-reading them really helps as they can’t get lost and/or blocked by other thoughts like “yeeehaaaw…donkey’s catch all the time, let me try this”…

But back to the tourney. There were 319 entrants, so the final four tables are ITM. As I already said, I went on a little rush early, before hovering around average most of the time. There are really only two hands I regret: one was when I bluffed off half my stack when we were about to get down to the last 3 tables. The last one was the last hand…at the final table 🙂 🙁

Yes, the final table…

…about time I saw one of these again. It’s been a while. (Side note: Don’t be fooled by the hand stats, this is for the whole session, so roughly the first 100 hands of that were HU with my usual 80+% flops seen)

Within the first orbit I busted though. After the first player was knocked out in the second hand of the final table, I was eager to play my AQo from LP…and why do I regret this hand?

[1] Remember the old “don’t go broke with a Queen in your hand”-mantra? It’s what crossed my mind before I raised preflop.

[2] I still had a chance to get away from the hand after the flop. Although the roughly 17k with 1k/2k blinds and 200$ antes would have forced me to make a move soon after that anyway (I started the hand with just under 23k, standard 3xBB preflop raise).

As you can see in the following screenshot, the flop came down Kc, 4d, Qc and my opponent insta-over-pushes. Well, what could he be pushing with? What was he calling with preflop? Basically it could have been any two cards preflop (BB, big stack), but after the push I should have believed the hand he claimed (Kx, maybe even with a flush draw) and waited for a better spot (within the next 8-10 hands). But oh well…I called and he showed KJ…turn K…river…K…them quads beetches! At least I lost to a really good hand…

Out in 8th of 319. I’m cool with that. Needless to say that I would have loved to move up some spots as the payout were starting to be really cool in the higher final table spots (1st – 625$, 2nd – 400$, 3rd – 277,50$, ..)…but hey…as I said earlier on, this one wasn’t for the money, it was for my mental game health – if there’s such a thing 😉

…so despite having to work today, I squeezed in a little play here and there. Bodog was not particularyl kind to me, yet again, but at least I was able to donk around at Full Tilt a little. The new mixed games rock. I guess I’ve never ever seen such an amount of “donkeys” invading the games before. The are probably good hold’em players, at least some of them, but bring in the other games and the game is a whole new animal.

Played some “HA” and said “HA! Got you” everytime I stacked up someone else’s chips in the A (Omaha Hi) part of the game, before handing some of them back in the H part of the game. In the end I was able to recoup the prior SnG losses to break even…so not really a good run, but at least not a bad one either…

Well, well…it’s been a while since I hit the tables, mostly due to work and an upcoming deadline of a little poker project (more on that once it’s live). So, a little SnG action on FullTilt…but wait, wow, they added mixed ring games, nice. Nah, fight the temptation to donk around…play some SnGs. 6max it is…and boy, you gotta love when you push your hand into the nuts EVERY single time. Sob. Ah well, let’s see what the bodog donks are up to…well, they’re up to taking my money. Hmm…Ace = gold…unless I hold one, that’s for sure 😉

Anyway, enough babbling…wish I could be in Vegas to donk around and drink my arse off…no such fun, so I’ll have to do the drinking around here. Good thing that the first christmas dinner is taking place tonight. My footie team has rented a restaurant like every year and by 8:30 tonight, I’ll hit the (dinner) tables hard…booze please. Thank you very much, lol! 🙂

Have a great weekend!

Played a little on FullTilt today, back to the roots. Bread and butter, SH SnG. Top two get payed. Won the first one after remembering the golden rule “play looser than normal, but not donkey style” 😉

Should have won the second one also, but didn’t due to some unlucky cards. Ah well, at least two for two in the money, so not to bad.

Then I went out to a local christmas market, didn’t feel like drinking though, so I drove over. After the thing closed down we decided to play a little poker tourney, lol. We sat down seven handed and play a cool little game. I was not running particularly well, but still okay (slightly up). Then “the” hand came up – yet again. I look down at 74o in the BB…three limpers, I check. Flop comes down 778…hmm…limper #1 checks, limper #2 checks, limper #3 bets out. I reraise. Limper #1&2 fold. Limper #3 reraises. Now I’m thinking: okay, he’s either holding 8X, an overpair or the case seven…probably outkicking me…after a little deliberation I decide to push as there’s always the (large) possibility that it’ll be a split pot and I could be way ahead…Limper #3 shows 75s0000ted. Hmm…so I’m slightly behind, but there’s two cards to come, so I’m hopeful. Turn 5. Thank you very much…meaningless 6 giving me a meaningless straight on the river. Ouch.

After that I bumped and grinded my way back to above average before slowly but steadily fading – what can you do if you catch (some) good starting hands, but just can’t hit a flop? Not much…I exited in fourth place (bubble boy) when my 33 stood no chance in the coinflip…oh well…the only thing I can blame myself for is that I played a little too loose after getting back above average…besides that…nothing much I could do…the blessing and curse of (turbo) tourneys…