Shit out of luck, that’s how I feel on Stars these days. No matter how good, mediocre or bad I play a hand, I’m going to lose it if it’s a big pot. Now, it’s a given fact that you’re going to lose some matches due to errors, but it seems that I tend to lose the matches in the following order:

1. Getting unlucky.

2. Cooler.

3. Error.

It’s really frustrating to say the least. Today’s session had it all again, from the usual coolers (JJ vs KK, 77 vs QQ, AT vs AQ, etc) to the outright bs hands (QQ vs 62o overpair vs bottom pair…bottom pair obv good by the river when he hits his bs “kicker”, 56 vs 45 two pair vs straight draw…..gutter ball obv good). So sick I could puke. Unreal how bad I’ve been running the last few days, it’s not even funny. I had a look at some of the more “entertaining” hands and there’s a small error percentage on my part as far as I can tell – e.g. “slow playing” in some spots (e.g. not betting the pot, but half of it if I put the opponent on less than 6 outs) isn’t really an error in headsup, unless your opponent hangs around to catch the gutterball (or some other low percentage draw)…then he looks like a (idiot errrm) genius. The prime example was the QQ vs 62o hand. I raise it to 3BB preflop. He calls. 6BB in the pot. Flop comes  Tx2. I fire out half the pot. He calls. Turn 6. I lead out and he raises. I think a while and can’t put him on a hand that makes sense. How could the 6 help you here? So I push and he obv insta-calls. River brick. Well…how can I dodge that bullet? I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense. How can you call preflop with 62o? Well, easy, if you hit two pair or better you can bust a big pair, all good. But after you hit your duck with no kicker, how can you call on the flop? It’s a mistery to me, but oh well…

So…I’m going to take a break at PokerStars for a few days as it’s obvious that I can’t win anything on there atm. I mean, I’m not ready to get out the tinfoil-hat just yet, but it’s starting to get mad annoying. Everytime I’m about to bust a move again (e.g. hitting bankroll x) I run into such a bullshit run on Stars…amazing. Oh well…WSOP is about over…I’m annoyed with PS…so I’m going to take a break and focus on some FullTilt action for now.

…that’s exactly what I did after the shitty run on Stars. The result, one bubble and two wins. Amazing…I’m out….

So beautiful. I really managed to walk into every god damn donkey there is on Stars. Even third pair was good enough to call me down on straight and flush heavy boards with overcards galore…didn’t matter. At least I managed to lose only some chips to get the valuable information that my opponents wouldn’t fold ANY pair. Good stuff, unless you get so card dead that you miss the flop 17 times in a row. So beautiful. After that I managed to push A9 into AJ, AT into AQ, AQ into AK…all headsup…pretty hawesome. All in all I managed to pull out one W in four matches.

After that I jumped over to Full Tilt and played some Razz and NL headsup. Managed to win both although it seemed that I wouldn’t. In the Razz one it was brutal. Start with the best hand, brick out. Start with the best hand, brick out. So I had him down to 300 three times before I was finally able to bust him. So sick. Oh well…at least I did win in the end…still makes me want to puke, it’s just ridiculous…

Boy, what a shitty sunday. First you wake up and the sun is shining, you feel good and it seems that it’s just your average lazy sunday. Then shit hits the fan.

After feeling not so well yesterday, my father felt even worse today, developing a higher and higher fever during the day. This afternoon the doctor had to call the ambulance to take him to the hospital. After driving my mom to the hospital and waiting and waiting, we were finally able to see him. After getting some infusions and what not he was feeling a little bit better, no word from the doctor about a diagnosis though…that’ll have to wait until tomorrow I guess…he has to spend the night in hospital.

Damn. After that I really didn’t want to play any poker today, but as I didn’t feel like sleeping yet, I decided to play at least one SnG. Why did I even bother. Eliminate some donk and cripple another by pushing KK (vs ace rag x 2) – check. Losing cooler a few hands later – check. Oh well…we’re three handed and the new chipleader has 4.6k, the donk I crippled chipped up to 2.2k and I’m sitting with 2.2k. Then the usual happens. The donk has been very aggressive so far and when I look down at AT s00ted in the BB, I think that it’s time to get aggressive. The donk in the SB limped…so I push for 2k more (blinds 100/200). He thinks for a while and calls all-in with the monster K4o. As usual, he hits the 40-ball like it is nothing. It seems that the current bubble-rule with pokerstars is (40% shot? Call all-in without being nowhere near pot-commited? Donkey? You win!)…so friggin FUGLY! I hope this donk never catches a flop again…bastard!

Superstitious? Not me…I guess that’s partly to attribute that my father was born on a friday the 13th. But back to poker content. After spending all day setting up the stuff for tomorrow’s football+drinking tournament (you play 2 against 2 and everybody is drinking heavily) I decided to play a little poker.

The first six-handed SnG was a blast, wait, not really. Within the first orbit I lose two thirds of my stack with JJ against the mighty Q9o…I pop it to 6BB in the BB…LP decides that this is a good opportunity to call…flop comes 79T…not bad…I bet the pot…he calls…turn is a beautiful 9….I lead out again….he calls. A blank hits the river and I decide to a little defensive bet. He calls…flips over his monster Q9o and drags the pot….nice play sir, especially the call preflop and on the flop…and even nice the flat-calls on the turn and especially the river…no reraise? *lol* you’ll make it far in poker (incidently his sharkscope numbers are exactly as expected, down 2.5k in 12$ SnGs…wheeee). I fold and fold and fold and once the blinds hit 25/50 I’m stuck with 8BB, it’s folded around to me and I find A5o on the button, I push in…BB decides that calling +7BB with QT is groovy…okay…they were s00ted…so who am I to blame him….*lol*….board….QJxTx….beautiful. So I exit in sixth.

The next one wasn’t much better…I don’t even remember the exact hand, but it involved someone with two live cards hitting his two pair on the river…wheee….down to 950. Oh well…I finally push with 66 on the button once I’m down to 12BB…BB calls with AKs…board AQJxx….oh well…at least there was one interesting hand in between: Can someone tell me what the odds are of FLOPPING A ROYAL FLUSH?

PokerStars Game #10923178372: Tournament #55381622, $12+$1
Hold’em No Limit – Level II (15/30) – 2007/07/13 – 19:17:54 (ET)
Table ‘55381622 1’ 6-max Seat #5 is the button
Seat 1: whenindought (2855 in chips)
Seat 2: FA-DEED (1300 in chips)
Seat 3: sebbe all-in (1190 in chips)
Seat 4: bsm8 (1455 in chips)
Seat 5: iwannagohome (1290 in chips)
Seat 6: Ingoal (910 in chips)
Ingoal: posts small blind 15
whenindought: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Ingoal [Ah 5s]
FA-DEED: folds
sebbe all-in: folds
bsm8: raises 90 to 120
iwannagohome: calls 120
Ingoal: folds
whenindought: folds
*** FLOP *** [Qc Tc Jc]
bsm8: bets 180
iwannagohome: calls 180
*** TURN *** [Qc Tc Jc] [7h]
bsm8: checks
iwannagohome: checks
*** RIVER *** [Qc Tc Jc 7h] [Kh]
bsm8: checks
iwannagohome: bets 60
bsm8: calls 60
*** SHOW DOWN ***
iwannagohome: shows [Kc Ac] (a Royal Flush)
bsm8: mucks hand
iwannagohome collected 765 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 765 | Rake 0
Board [Qc Tc Jc 7h Kh]
Seat 1: whenindought (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: FA-DEED folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 3: sebbe all-in folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 4: bsm8 mucked [6s 7c]
Seat 5: iwannagohome (button) showed [Kc Ac] and won (765) with a Royal Flush
Seat 6: Ingoal (small blind) folded before Flop

Pretty much the most beautiful hand I’ve witnessed in a long time. After that two six place finishes I decided to play one headsup match and quit no matter the outcome. I won, so only slightly down for the night.

On another note: I won’t be defending my title in Kat’s rebuy madness tonight. I would love to, but I have to get up at 9am to get ready for the footie+drinking tourney and with the start time of 3am it’s no g00t for me tonight…good luck and have fun everyone…I’ll be back in the hunt for the rebuy madness title next week…

It’s not an upswing, but it isn’t a real downswing either, it’s more or less a going nowhere swing. Win one lose one, win one lose one…rinse repeat…

That pretty much sums up my headsup experience these days, I just can’t get a streak going, once I win a match there’s the next cooler waiting in the next match, really frustrating.

If I would be in that zone in the shorthanded SnGs I would be satisfied these days, but I ain’t. I’m the bubble boy too often. It’s just that everytime the bubble comes around, no matter if I’m short, medium or big stacked, it’s just that I run into spots that see me lose it, somehow and if it’s by a fugly river card…today was no exception…just as the blinds are about to jump to 300/600 ante 50…this hand comes down…

What am I supposed to do there? Reraise preflop – I put him on a steal, which means ATC…but I think I’m 60/40…I still like to flat call and see what evolves. What evolves is that I flop two pair and he was s00ted…sure enough the river brings his friggin diamond ball and I’m pretty much crippled…I get it in with two live cards in the next hand and can’t catch anything…and I’m busto bubble-lo….so fugly…

I found one new soft spot on PokerStars though…played some headsup Razz…I mean, Razz is the ultimate tilter, but it’s not really if you play against people who capped it while being board-locked….oh well…can’t fault him if he really thought he was playing Stud….lol…I’ll keep hitting that soft spot for a while now I guess….

Not much going on today, not really in the mood for any longer sessions either, so just a quick one. Played 4 headsup matches, managed to win 3. Played one six-handed SnG and yes, the usual, 3rd aka bubble boy…oh well…could have been worse…I’m out…

…is almost as good as Vinnie Vinh’s chair, almost. It managed to cash today, lol. Not twice, but at least once. Not too bad. How did it come that far? This afternoon a mate of mine contacted me about an online-tourney at MermaidPoker (no link love for you suckers). A friend of his is running a (real life) poker series in the area and they had a nice price left over, so they decided to play a online-tourney for it. First price poker vacation to Copenhagen, Denmark including airfare, hotel and buyin to the tourney – all in all a 3k value. Buyin was 5+0.50$. Nice tourney with only a few runners. So I download the software and register. Then I deposit some money and register for the tourney. Later I login again, or should I say I try to login again. It doesn’t work. I try a few times before trying the “lost pw”-feature. That doesn’t work either. So I wait a few minutes before trying again – nothing. Then again – nothing. So I contact support – nothing. I try again a few hours later – pw recovery is working, yeeehaaaw. I try to login and it says “no no, you entered a wrong password too often, your account is locked for 24h for security purposes”. Errm thank you suckers, my tourney is starting soonish. So I contact support again and finally get someone to respond to me. After I email all the requested things – nothing. Thank you very much, you won’t see me play one god damn hand at your crappy site.

So…my mate contacted me earlier tonight and told me that I had cashed in the tourney. “You’re in the money. 8th place. 11$” and I’m laughing my ass off. On one hand I’m really pissed about missing the opportunity to win a 3k package for 5 bucks, on the other hand I’m glad that my chair pulled off this amazing feat – at least I didn’t lose any money and I’ve got something funny to blog about 😉

So…let’s get down to the fugly part, which is all so normal these days. The daily rant, brought to you by fucking god damn fugly situations (TM).

I start the session with some headsup and I drop the first four matches in a row. I can’t win a god damn hand. No 60/40, no 40/60, no 50/50, nothing. I lose to sick straight flushes (one outer gutter ball) sucked out two pair, etc etc. Oh and yes, every time I’ve got the idiot end of a straight, someone will have the upper end, no doubt (that cost me two matches, one directly and one by crippling me).

So I jump to six handed and soon enough we’re down to headsup. I’ve got a nice lead, then I look down at presto, which is allegedly gold, but not headsup, he shows JJ. The next hand he raises preflop and as I’ve played a lot of hands with him so far I put him on ace rag. Why? Because he had raised with nothing else so far (I know because I called him down every single time or he called me down A3 vs my AQ, A4 vs my AT and he had lost both hands). I look down at QTo and decide to have a look. Flop comes down JT2…he insta-pushes…ah ha…I instacall and indeed he holds the oh so powerful A6o as expected. Turn Ace…cya. So fugly.

After that I played two more headsup matches. Won one, then lost one, so 1 in 6 for the night.

After that I jump back into the next six-handed one and things are looking good until I make a move with Kh9h in the SB. BB is the only bigger stack than me and I raised it 3BB preflop. He calls. Flop comes down Qh-4h-6d. I lead out 120 into the 180 pot, he reraises to 360. I call. Turn comes 6h. I check he pushes. Well…he was the BB and he could basically have ATC. But honestly, what hands am I afraid of here? Sure, I don’t particularly like the paired board, but I think I’ve got the best hand. So I call…and what does he have? 6s4s…can you believe that god damn bullshit. It was s00ted, so I can understand the donkbox call preflop. Then on the flop he’s golden with two pair and then the god damn dealer peels off the god damn 6h instead of one of the other 8 hearts to bust me. So fugly, but all too fitting into my current run. Everytime I’ve got a monster, someone got a monster+1.

I’m sooooooo damn mad now I could play on and on, but I see that it’ll lead to nothing. I mean come on. I play against calling station after calling station and I chop them down and chop them down, then just in time they catch enough to get it all back and then some. The best example was one really bad fish. I chop him down and hold a 2:1 chiplead. Then he goes on a tear hitting TP or better every single time it comes to showdown. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t normally know if I didn’t have a god damn hand in each of those hands, too. He TPBP, me MPBP, He TPTK, me TPSK, etc etc. So sick. I’ll leave you with a random pic dump of the nice hands of the night…I’ll probably see some of you at Kat’s rebuy donkfest tomorrow night…apart from that I’ll stay the hell away from poker as it’s really fucking with my head these days…

Calling a raise preflop, then calling on the flop with nothing but a god damn gutterball…maybe I should have layed it down on the turn, but I didn’t see how I can put him on 45o there…

Once again…how can I put him on 64 there? I mean yeah, if he put me on a flushdraw on the flop, his push on the turn should have been the warning sign, but I didn’t feel like folding there.

Here’s the good old cooler, not that bad, after all I didn’t have to push that hard there. I could waited for a better spot. That being said, I’ve still got plenty chips left after the hand.

But this next one is just as I describe it above, I knew exactly what he had and I was 100% sure I had the best hand…sure enough the three twenty-five aces in the deck are enough for one to come off on the turn…

Yet another classic. I chop him down to 1k. He comes back like a madman as I can’t catch a god damn thing and each and everytime I try to move him off a hand he has at least TP. Oh well…at least this one ended the match pretty painless…three outs on the flop…two outs on the turn to kill me…nice.

Similar to the one above, I can’t catch a break once I’m far ahead, my best shot would have been to push all-in every god damn hand, I guess I may have won that way. The way it was, I got down low again…pushed…and he was s00ted.

…or aren’t they? Well, tbh, I finished the session a bit down, but at least I didn’t get too many unreal suckouts, more “normal” suckouts, which feels like things are looking up.

I started the session of with the usual headsup matches and I couldn’t catch anything, my steals worked not nearly as much as they would need to carry me through my card-deadness, so there’s not much I could do. Just brutal to see a donk misplay hand after hand after hand and there’s nothing you can do about it. Why? Because he’s hitting TPNK eight times in a row and won’t fold, not ever. Just brutal.

So after that I decided to switch it up a little and played a double-shootout to the sunday million. We started the table with 6 players, which I really liked. As it was no turbo, I didn’t play many hands early, unlike some of the other guys. They kept firing like crazy which I just can’t understand. With 15 minute levels there is so much play left, especially early, so why risk unreal amounts of chips stealing the blinds (30 chips)? Oh well…they payed a dear price for that and so soon enough we were four handed and I didn’t play a single hand yet.

Once I get some hands going I chip up quite a bit and once the fourth player is knocked out I got my hands full. Three handed, time to get something going. Didn’t work out that well. JJ vs A5 s00ted…nut-flush on the turn…I managed to lose the minimum there. Some orbits of up and down and I finally ran my middle- and bottom-pair into top- and bottom-pair. Oh well.

After that, I played some more headsup and managed to win four out of five. Honestly, it should have been five out of five, but I let this donk get to me. I really handed his ass to him and was up 2.2k/800 after the first twenty something hands. Then he started to push, a lot. Normally I would applaude him for doing that, but not this time. I made a little fun of him as I waited for a monster to bust him. Bad thing the monster never showed up and soon enough we were back to even. He still over-raised a lot and it’s just tough to play back with 49, 37 and 28o…my usual holding in those spots. Once I decided to push back with QT s00ted, he didn’t even blink before instacalling with A6o…I can understand him, A6o is the nuts after all….lol….

So…a little down for the night, but at least I saw a little progress in coming back around to the “normal luck level”…that’s fine with me…I’m out…

Today was just like it wasn’t today, but yesterday. I jump into a six-handed SnG and play tight early. As soon as I pick up some hands I’m able to win some small pots. Soon enough we’re down to four, then lose another player, so we’re down to three. One player has a monster-stack and the other guy and me are rather short, although I’m in last position chipwise. Then the following hand comes up…

SB special vs BB special and sure enough the best hand of the night so far is absolutely no good there. Hmm, Gordon’s pair principle says: JJ – 3 handed…4.5% chance that someone holds a higher pair…why oh why does it seem that 4.5% = 100% these days.

After that one I really thought about logging off, but instead I decended into micro limit hell for some more six handed action. I can’t say that my hands held up or anything, but when it counted, they did. So I took down two for two. Wheeeee….so, I finish the night slightly up and that’s good enough for me today…

…and ain’t a damn thing changed. After a nice, pokerless, weekend I returned to the tables tonight and it wasn’t pretty. I started off with some donk action at FullTilt – it’s been a while since I played there, but I decided to redeposit some dough to play in Katitude’s friday night rebuy madness last friday. Played some headsup and managed to pull out 3 wins in 5 tries.

After that, I jumped to PokerStars and shit hit the fan, again. To start things off I play a six-handed SnG and after beating up some donks in a few pots I’m sitting pretty, second in chips, trailing the chipleader only by 200 despite the fact that he had already eliminated a player. So things are good and I look down at JJ. Push comes to shove and sure enough I have the best hand…he has TT…board TxAxx…cya…so fugly.

So I jump into headsup mode and all is good. I win the first two matches easily and then it happens again. I can’t have a god damn hand hold up. Gutshot, boom. Runner runner, boom. Two outer, boom. Three outer, boom…and ain’t it the best when you hold a significant chiplead, then someone runner runners you good to get close to being back in the game and then the following hand comes up…

Guess how that match worked out after that hand? Yup, another lovely bottom pair + gutshot hitting the gutshot on the river a few hands later. Poker is so beautiful sometimes. So…all in all I lost the next 6 matches in a row. Gutterballs, counterfeited two pair, two pair against set etc etc, all the beautiful hands out of the freezer. Lovely. Somehow I managed not to tilt off too badly and won two matches to close the session.

Consolation prize of the night: my bad luck was good enough to finally clear the 10 Billionth hand bonus, so at least my losses for the night are covered, still sucks though. I mean, come on, not a single god damn 4:1 (AA vs KK (see above), 88 vs 55 – he flops a set, JJ vs TT – he flops a set) hand held up for me, I took sick beat after sick beat, how long can this happen to a player? God damn it… oh well…better luck next time…and I’d better have some “more normal” luck soonish as this is just unreal 😉