Slow day for me today. Just played a few orbits of PL Omaha H/L at UB again…it’s hard to step down and play at the pennies again, but at least I had a winning session again, so that’s a good note. Got bored pretty quickly though, so I moved to PokerStars and continued my quest to conquer the SnG throne…

Played one PL Omaha H/L and two NL HE – with similar results: couldn’t get in the money to save my life 🙁

Couldn’t get much going in the Omaha 8b one and I’ll save you the “bad beat” stories of the two HE ones…just a quick note: whether it’s A-Ks or A-Ko it’s not enough to win against a dominated hand (K-J and A-10 respectively)…

I’m off now…got a dentist appointment tomorrow, yuck…this should be fun…NOT 😉

The 3$ + 0.40$ PL Omaha H/L SnGs really seem to be beatable, just played one and went out in 2nd without any hassle. I guess I shall hit them hard the next few days and see how things work out – this could really be something goooood 🙂

Update: Played a second one and finished 6th – turbo doesn’t do you good when you’re card dead. Nontheless it seems that this is the way to go as most donkeys are pushing the envelope even with something like the third best low etc…unbelievable…I guess I’ll try to multi-table these bad boys for the next few days and have a lookie once I played a dozen or so how things are looking….

After dropping 2 Buy-Ins (or 40xBB) in 10 hands ( 🙁 ) I decided to change my plan. Instead of stepping down in limit, I’m going to try it with Limit Omaha H/L at the 0.25$/0.50$ tables. Maybe the craziness of PL Omaha H/L just wasn’t meant to be (yet). Let’s see how this works out…

Update:
Okay I give up…another 30 hands later and I’m out of another 20xBB which brings me back to my original plan as I dropped 100x BB in 3 days (2 playing days with a pause of 1 day, yesterday)… 🙁

…can be fun, but it can hurt, too.

So, I decided that it would be a good idea to change levels in Omaha H/L, after all I grinded out +100% (not quite 100% if you count the earned bonus, substracting the bonus it would be more like 90%) in the 0.01$/0.02$ PL Omaha H/L ring games.

The jump to the next level is a little bit big though as the next available PL Omaha H/L level at UB is 0.10$/0.25$ and as you can imagine that is quite a difference to pennies. Combine that with a (bad) run of cards and you’re out of the “hard earned” money quite quickly. I played three sessions today and finished two of them down, one even. So I’m out of 2 Buy-Ins (20BB each) and second guessing myself. On the other hand a step up in levels is inevitable as the daily grind in the penny sections is not only sucking the life out of you, but it also doesn’t get you anywhere (at least not fast or quickly).

So I guess I’m giving it another shot tomorrow and we’ll see how that plays out, we all know that swings in poker are normal, but the effects are bigger the higher you go in terms of blinds.

My plan is going to be:

1. Play the normal tight style that brought me this far in the pennies.
2. Stop playing this levels if (-100x BB)
3. Step up a level if (+200x BB)

I’ll keep you posted…

So, it was gamb00ling time this morning as the DADI Special Omalympics tournament was held over at PokerStars. The “fear” of Jordan and others that there would be significantly less players than in the inaugural DADI event (NL HE) was totally unnecessary as 47 players tried their luck with Omaha 8b PL and I think, at least, most of ’em – including me – had fun.

First newsworthy thing: It took over 20 minutes before the first player busted out. I think that’s a new record for any blogger tournament (?!), although it’s pretty normal in split games (with a High and (possible) low pot).

As for myself, it took a little over 2h for me to bust out, just prior to the second break for my highest finish in blogger tournaments so far: 14th place, just 5 shy of the final table and the money (previous high finish was 17th in a WWdN thursday tourney). I was kind of short-stacked (a little over 2k chips) and looked down at A-A-K-7…here’s what went down:

Table ‘17497958 7’ Seat #3 is the button

Seat 1: yosoyveneno (8282 in chips)

Seat 2: ZeemJr (3582 in chips)

Seat 3: mowenumdown (5881 in chips)

Seat 5: Jestocost (8669 in chips)

Seat 6: Ingoal (2412 in chips)

Seat 7: dbirider16 (12187 in chips)

Seat 9: SirFWALGMan (3861 in chips)

Jestocost: posts small blind 200

Ingoal: posts big blind 400

*** HOLE CARDS ***

Dealt to Ingoal [7c Kc As Ac]

dbirider16: folds

SirFWALGMan: folds

yosoyveneno: raises 400 to 800

ZeemJr: folds

mowenumdown: folds

Jestocost: folds

Ingoal said, “hmm…i got the antidote!”

Ingoal: raises 1612 to 2412 and is all-in

yosoyveneno: calls 1612

Jestocost said, “That no chat during an all-in feature is about the most annoying thing”

*** FLOP *** [5d Qs 8d]

*** TURN *** [5d Qs 8d] [4c]

*** RIVER *** [5d Qs 8d 4c] [9d]

*** SHOW DOWN ***

Ingoal: shows [7c Kc As Ac] (HI: a pair of Aces; LO: 8,7,5,4,A)

yosoyveneno: shows [7h Ah Kh 6s] (HI: a straight, Five to Nine; LO: 8,6,5,4,A)

yosoyveneno collected 2512 from pot

So I was basically dead at the turn and double dead on the river as veneno’s OESD hit on both ends. Not really a bad beat, after all Omaha 8b is all about draw/re-draw/re-redraw, so I wasn’t too frustrated. If my hand would have held up (for the high) it would have been a split pot nontheless, so I would have been stuck in the same situation again.

My summary:
Ups:

1. Playing with some really great people (including but not limited to: Daddy, Iggy, SirFWALGMan, veneno, Garthmeister, BoobieLover, …)
2. Playing solid poker all night (playing the (possible) nuts extremely aggressive, not taking any chances with possible second best hands etc – see stats below)
3. Chatting with some of the guys and gals on yahoo during the tournament!
4. Having a good time!

Downs:

1. Not reaching the final table, yet again…
2. Staying awake till after 5am can really screw up the following day 😉

Stats:

You finished in 14th place (eliminated at hand #3608628522).

166 hands played and saw flop:

– 7 times out of 21 while in small blind (33%)

– 11 times out of 22 while in big blind (50%)

– 15 times out of 123 in other positions (12%)

– a total of 33 times out of 166 (19%)

Pots won at showdown – 6 out of 9 (66%)

Pots won without showdown – 16

See you all at the tables next time…maybe even very soon (April’s HORSE tourney at FTP – I would need to learn RAZZ first though…hmm…we’ll see…)

Oooh what a day. Played an even wider mix of games today in order to, hopefully, get my bankroll (which was micro to begin with) at AbsolutePoker back from life-support. I played in various HE games ranging from fixed limit 0.10$/0.20$ to 0.10$ NL along with the usual session of Omaha H/L. I couldn’t get much going and so I decided that it would be a good idea to play some S&Gs.

Good idea. I won the Omaha H/L one, bubbled in a HE NL and finished outside the money in the other one. Nontheless some solid playing time without risking too much. I guess going with multiple S&Gs Omaha 8b is the way to go if I want to rescue the remaining few dollars there.

So that’s what I’m going to do! Either I run up my bankroll at AP over the cashout threshold or I go bust…whatever…it doesn’t get me anywhere anyways…the ring games are just too tough (either you play against the calling stations hustling for a (re-re-)draw all the time – after all you can’t push a calling station out of a pot especially in limit or low-limit PL and even if the cards fall your way some of the time, it’s not enough to seriously build up your stack – or you face a NL crowd with a fat roll…you just can’t survive with a minimal bankroll…at least I can’t atm)…

But enough reporting/ranting…I’m going to watch the final table of the “Battleship at Atlantis” Heads Up tourney now…should be interesting!

Side Note: the main event of the PCA is a done deal, check out Brad’s (Otis’) coverage here if you haven’t already. Spoiler: 22 year old student and PokerStars regular Steve Paul-Ambrose has won the thing…1.363.100$ + the WPT championship seat (25k$) not a bad pay-day for a student(!), ka-ching!

I played a wild mix of games today ranging from the usual penny PL Omaha H/L to 0.25$/0.50$ Limit Hold’em. Was able to stay ahead in Omaha over at UltimateBet, but busted myself out of 10$ over at Absolute Poker, although I held quads twice…just a bad swing today I guess as I wasn’t able to catch anything while holding good hands (Hold’em: K-K…nothing apart some aces on the board; A-K – blank board; Omaha: A-2-3-x, board is something like 2-3-K-10-Q, etc etc)…

Played some orbits at UltimateBet at the penny PL tables and I rocked…totally back in business now and almost up to double my original deposit. Groovy.

In preparation of DADI special Omalympics I thought it would be a good idea to play a S&G of Omaha H/L PL over at Absolute Poker – and indeed it was a good idea, despite me being the bubble boy. Usually I tend to freeze up on the bubble which is:

• a safe way to get in the money (most of the time)
• a safe way to not take any sort of chiplead

This time I said to myself: “Don’t fear the bubble! Play as you usually would” – so I did and it came back to bite me as I ran into the chipleaders A-A-2-K with my A-K-3-4…to bad so I’m out in fourth place (3 in the money), but not feeling all too bad about it. At least I played aggressively on the bubble and with one other card on the board it would have payed off.

On another note: it doesn’t hurt as much to bubble in a 0.50$ S&G than it does in a “major” tournament 😉

After yesterday’s bad run I had a rather good run at Ultimate Bet and was able to get back almost all I lost yesterday, along with some UP…so I’m heading towards clearing my bonus. Good stuff. Even got them quads once, beetches! 😉

The cards didn’t fall my way in my other session over at Absolute Poker, always hard to lose boat over boat…dropped one Buy-In…not in the mood to play anymore today…

Sidenote: Thinking about the term “in the grind”, “grinders” or “rounders” – I started to tag all the known grinders with a yellow user note at the current level I’m playing, this way it’s easier to see who the known faces are and if it’s even worth playing a table… 🙂

you’re at the bad end of variance. Although we all know that it happens 😉

So maybe it would have been a good idea to call it quits after my unsuccessfull session over at PokerStars…but I couldn’t resist to try at Ultimate Bet. What can I say, drop another cool two Buy-ins, in part due to donkey play in part due to suckouts…ah well…tomorrow will be another day…and hopefully a better one at that…