…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…

Well, what can I say, I’m not doing good in the nine promotion so far. I’m not even half way through the points and all the suckouts and the bad run in the other side games (especially guts) is really taking it’s toll – half the bankroll gone and half my nerves with it. It’s just making me sick how unlucky I get in some of those pots, especially in guts again…I’m holding the nut straight in a monster pot, someone has three of a kind…I’m holding the nut straight again in a monster pot, someone has a straight flush…this is so sick – even winning one of these pots would have brought me right back to life, but no such joy. Then I get stacked in the ring games by a chaser with one card to come and I call it a day over at nine. Maybe tomorrow will bring me some better luck.

Off to WPX I go to play some SnGs. Same game, same shit, same results. Chasing M*****fuckers catching every time. So I call it quits there too and head over to Full Tilt.

At least some went my way there as I was able to stack some people who just couldn’t let go of their TPTK/TPSK. A HORSE SnG to finish the session and I hit brick city in Razz, then Stud H/L and finally in Omaha to seal the deal.

So I’m done for the day, at least I had some fun watching the latest tuff_fish (party poker) monster “shows”…man, tony just keeps crackin me up – even when I’m running bad 🙂

Hehe, I’m not sure about their official spelling, but I guess it’s 9poker, not that it mattered as both domains (.com) are connected. So, why am I even talking about that? Because I selected nine to be my next bonus hunt “victim”. After finishing bodog within such a short time (points still pending, I hope I’ll get them soonish) I was on the lookout for another good promotion. The nine promotion at PokerSavvy sounded good: the usual 50 deposit and you’ll need to get 250 Points with nine to get 700 points. Fair enough, so I got to it yesterday.

Quick review of my experience so far:

1. Signup was mostly painless, there were numerous inconsistencies and inconveniences though:

– the sign up is done via the secure part of their website, so far so good, the only thing they should explain to me is why I can use all letters, numbers and symbols on their website, but not in the poker client. I had the feeling that this was the reason I couldn’t login in the poker client. So I fired up Live Chat support and got the answer and the password changed right away. Fine, I still told the support guy to bitchslap the designers and that they should get this fixed…this is ridiculous..a simple character check in the sign up form shouldn’t be hard to implement *cough* 😉

– I deposited via the signup and once I was able to login I was facing the next problem: where’s my money? So I fire up the cashier, nothing, I fire up the FAQ, nothing, I fire up the account info, money there, but how to transfer it? Cashier, nothing. I fire up support yet again…aaaaah there’s another cashier, which is a symbol in the poker client. Error #1: I clicked on “deposit to poker” during signup, money still went to “normal” (sports betting) wallet. Error #2: Why would the “transfer funds from (other) wallet” be only a symbol, but the same functionality isn’t available via the cashier menu???

– The points you grind out are only updated once a day as far as I’ve seen so far…this sucks!

So after that little headshaking and laughing at the messy system I fired up some poker games and played for a while. As it was approaching early morning, yet again, I decided to quit though and so I pause my play until this afternoon. Impressions so far: the games are good, the sidegames (Chinese Poker, Guts, etc) are addictive, the traffic seems to be 98% from Canada (at least 90-99% of the players I’ve met so far were from Canada), the UI is not the best I’ve seen…I mean it’s pretty looking…

…but some features are just a big PITA, e.g. the raise function – the standard raise function is a min raise, so far so good, if you want to raise more though you don’t have a bar to pull right away, but you have to click on “raise other” first and then adjust the bar (or type in the amount) and then click the raise button…not really good.

So…so far I would rate the room with a two thumbs up for their quick and easy support (via live chat), two thumbs down for their inconsistent stuff all over the place, one thumb down for their poker client. Let’s see how long it’ll take for me to grind out the 250 Points…

On another note: Did you know that Matt from PokerSavvy added a nice little item to the shop? For every 450 points you can order a money transfer of 45$ to either paypal or Neteller. This really rocks! Now I don’t say that Gift Certificates are bad, but they’re limited in use (e.g. only for Amazon.com) and the other stuff is basically out of reach for international customers like me (shipping&handling is not worth it)…so instead of going a route like PP gift certificate -> PP acount -> withdrawal to Neteller, you can now go the direct way PokerSavvy -> Neteller/Paypal, this clearly puts PokerSavvy ahead of the competition, so I’ll probably focus my search on their partners once I’m done with nine.

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 😉

…played a shit load of SnGs today, 10 in total which is quite a lot as those aren’t turbos. Even better: finished ITM in 9 out of 10 🙂

So my hunt for the 9000 PSO points is nearly completed, I guess after another time played bonus tomorrow I should be under 5 SnGs to get there. Nice, just over a week of low limit grinding and I almost tripled up my deposit 🙂

I guess I’ll get some Amazon gift cards once I get the points and I’m positive that I’ll keep playing at bodog for a while, after all there are that many donkeys around, why not take their money?

Ups: 2 wins and 7 other ITM finishes for a total of 9 out of 10

Downs: Folding the nuts some of the time – no those were all correct plays, it’s just that the board would have rewarded me (55 folded to a raise and all-in reraise, opponent showed AQ and QQ…flop 55x; 67o folded to a raise and big reraise, opponent showed KK and QQ, board:  A7AJ7; etc)

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 🙁

Hehe! Well, poker can really be fun sometime even if both the play at the tables and the result are bad. I’m near clearing the bodog points to finish the PSO promotion which is a good thing as I’m about to lose it with bodog. No, not my money, I’m way up, but my sanity! The play of some, if not most, players is so awful that it hurts to watch them even if you’re not in the hand and sometimes even more when you’re in a hand.

That’s when I said to myself: Why keep it in? Why not have some fun at the table, especially due to the fact that there was one particularly chatty player at the table anyway. So I went ahead and did a little Public Service Announcement…lol…

Ingoal: if play get’s a tiny bit worse than this bodog is required to hand out mandatory barf bags…
Ingoal: …so please get your act together or the rake will go up
Kevin_thekid_A: LOL
Ingoal: cheers the management
Ingoal: lol

Man, I’m still laughing at this one, and you know why? Because it’s indeed the awful truth. So, my plan is to grind away at the points to finish the promotion asap and then I’ll probably take a few days off before returning to bodog to skin more fish.

I leave you with some stats and one of two lovely hands which included the same shit, AQ vs QQ…no Ace to be found, but the case queen…

…the other similar hand was even better, A10 vs 1010, flop comes Ace high…turn blank…river case 10…yeeeehaaaw! I was so shocked that I didn’t make a screenshot.

Stats: Coins won 2, Coins lost: 3

…nothing spectacular to report, just the same ol’ same ol’ bullshit at the SnG tables. Sometimes it’s just to hard to take, sometimes it just makes you laugh your ass off. The latter applied to a hand that played itself out nicely: AJ in LP, I limp (I know I know, but I don’t want to commit too much at this particular table as “people are calling like crazy anyway” (c) tuff_fish ), flop comes down AAQ, checked to me, I check, turn is the case Ace…hehe, check check, river K, player in EP pushes….lol! So you’re holding a King after all, I instacall and show my quad aces 🙂

Apart from that nothing, and I mean nothing literally, going my way especially down the stretch…can’t win a coinflip once again…and people are sucking out like Dyson’s top model, unreal…and before I puke because my junk is hurting so badly I’ll quit with a slight loss tonight…

Coinflips: 5, won:1, lost:4

Sucky sucky: errm…dominated hands? What does the deck care…lost all 4 of ’em…

Play is still aweful, although there are some regulars, like myself, who try to both get their hands on the fish and keep the level of play a little bit above “stinkin aweful”.

Good news: made money like always despite numerous suckouts against me plus the fact that I couldn’t win a single coinflip for a while (including yesterday’s coinflips starting with the mook I went a whoopin 0 for 5 before I finally won one again – now we all know that coinflips don’t work in the win one lose one way, but it still sucks if you’ve got such a consecutive streak of losses). Just slightly over 50 points to go to clear the PSO bonus, too. Should be done soon enough (I’m guessing early to mid next week). Cool stuff as I doubled my deposit too…so I’m going to keep playing there for a while even after finishing the bonus 🙂
Bad news: I’m starting to wear out and it’s hard to stay focused, although my hand reading ability has benefited from the grind – it’s almost scary how accurate I can put my opponents on hands most of the time…okay, it’s not all that hard with most opponents either as they don’t know what the heck they’re doing. One question I asked in the table chat tonight was: “Does anybody around here have a post-flop game?” – and it’s a valid one as most people know only two ways to play (especially preflop): push or fold. Now there are some people, including myself, who try to exploit it…but for the most part a push means either nuts or something else (d’oh), namely small pair or weak Ace…lovely to see this, especially if the player is in EP and you’re looking down at a monster.

Coinflips played: 5, lost: 3, won:2

“Coolers” and suckouts: 55 vs AA lost, QQ vs KK vs AA lost but not broke as the spidey sense kicked in just in time to only lose me 200 odd chips, AQ vs AK lost, AJ vs AQ lost, AJ vs AK (all those lovely AJ vs hands were three- to four-handed, nice shuffle there), times I sucked out: 0, times I got sucked out on: 4

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…