Haha! Sometimes to beat a donkey you gotta play the borderline hands, hard. Sometimes? Maybe more like “almost always”. Anyway, I had to do just that against two out of three opponents today. Good news, I was right, they were borderline donkeys. Now they weren’t pure fish, but pure losing poker players. The bad news, they caught like crazy on me in the right spots. Oh well…can’t do anything about that…so…moving on…

I’m really looking forward to the EPT grand final in Monte Carlo. I’m pretty excited to see that the webcast of the german EPT from Dortmund was such a huge success that they’ll continue to do it…finishing off the season in Monte Carlo. For those of you who missed it: they do a live webcast of the feature table and the final table. Now, it’s not as exciting as the WPT or similar edited formats as you don’t see the whole cards – then again, it’s exciting nontheless as you can try to put people on hands yourself and the commentary is usually really good (I really enjoyed John “The father of the EPT” Duthie on the Dortmund webcast)…check EPTLive.com for more info about this thing…

Poker, oh poker, it’s all skill, start with the worst hand and go all-in…lol…that should be the new Matusow donkey/poker song…apropos Matusow…out of the new FullTilt commercials, I like the Matusow/Cunningham one the best…although some of the others (especially the Phil Ivey and Chris Ferguson ones) are pretty good, too…check them out…here…

As for offline poker stuff…I finished both Joe Navarro’s book and the Suicide King and liked them both for different reasons. The Navarro book is a real eye-opener and I’ll be happy to at least try to apply some of the stuff he’s talking about. One thing will be hard though and that is deciphering  the “tell to reason for the tell”-relationship. Why? I discussed this with a fellow poker player of “my home game” and my point was this: It’s one thing to spot something in a player. If you spot this or that behaviour, cool, you should normally be able to put him on a narrower range of hands with this info. True and not true. The (big) problem? I’ll call it “hand perception”: Headsup pot, no raise preflop, Player A in EP holds nothing on the flop containing two hearts, it goes check, check, turn brings a low card, Player A exhibits a high confidence tell….what does he hold?

Now, if that Player A was me…I would have probably hit a set there…but the Player A, I’m talking about, just hit his pair (let’s say a pair of sixes) and he still got a flush draw (somewhere along the lines of the fifth nutflush draw)…see the problem here? He thinks he holds a monster, hence the high confidence tell…I don’t think so…but he does…so spotting the tell is worthless without the context and this is that much harder with people who don’t operate on the same “hand strength”-scale as you do…that said, if I spotted the same tell vs Player B on the same board, I would know almost exactly where I’m at…the beauty of poker…that said, about time that I get into a live game again…I’m itching to sling some cards…hopefully it’ll happen within the next two weeks…

As for the “Suicide King” book, it was really entertaining…now I gotta wait until Amazon get’s into gear and finally delivers me “Hunting Fish….” 🙁

Well, it has been a weekend full of surprises. Surprise Nr. 1, I didn’t play a single hand on saturday. I just didn’t feel like playing and why force the action if you’re not really in the right state of mind. Surprise Nr.2, late saturday night my laptop reminded me that it had adjusted the time due to DST. Wheee…there’s goes an hour of sleep. Surprise Nr.3, got owned in footie today. We played with our best squad and lost. The team we lost to is a real ugly bunch of guys and they shouldn’t even play in the same league as we do, but they do, and they did their job. We didn’t. So instead of being 8 points clear at the top of the table, we’re back to 2 points clear. Fugly!

That’s about all the surprises of the weekend. Today, I played some HU, but only two matches. Won both of them. The first one was the classic me vs donk. He pushed into my nuts beautifully. The second match was totally different. Either he was a complete donk or a genius. I guess the truth lies somewhere in between these two extremes. I bluffed off half my stack early on as he called me down with any pair. I got lucky to catch a hand to double up (A5 vs hs A3)…and then the same thing happened again, he just wouldn’t fold. So either he had a very good read on me or he just lost his mind (and got lucky that I had apeshit every time he really called me down)…anyway….after I was down to 600 again…I switched gears back to the regular game. I doubled up when I flopped a set with presto…which we all know is gold, lol, just ask Fuel 😉

After that I won some smaller pots to take a small chiplead, when I finally connected with the flop a few times. Then the hand came down. 77 on the button…raise…call…no surprise…flop 7KA with two diamonds….he bets…I raise…he pushes…no way I give him AA or KK here…so I insta-call…he shows 8d9d…turn is the 10d…damn…pair there board, pleeeeeeease….river…10c…thank you. So, you could say that I got lucky in that match. I almost lost my mind, but came back to my senses just in time to win it – no doubt, the cards helped there, too…when’s the last time I flopped sets with small pairs back to back…I don’t even remember…me happy…good night…

*lol*…nevermind. After yesterday’s WWdN “bubble-incident”, I was more than ready to play some more poker today. Footie training and the first good night’s sleep in weeks got in the way though, so no afternoon session. So, it was another evening/night session and boy, the donkeys were dancing, taking dumps on the table and spewing chips like crazy.

Worst moment: getting all the money in preflop with KK vs 33…3 on the flop…teehee…it was the fourth hand, so I already had him covered by 200…down, but not out…next hand…he sucks out a runner runner straight…teehee…this was one of the “destined to lose it”-matches…

Best moment: the board reads AQKJ9…little rewind: your opponent called the BB preflop…you check the flop…he checks…the turn is the most beautiful card you’ve ever seen, why, because you hold T5o…lol…no flush out there…you bet out…he calls…the river is the uneventful 9…you push…because the only way he’s going to call anyway is if he’s got one of the other 10s…think again…he insta-calls with A6o…rofl…man, that just made my day… 🙂

3Ws 2Ls…slightly up and with a big smile on my face…can’t get much better than that…lol…good night…

I dont’ know what it is, but I think it’s my unreal, insomniac, sleep-schedule over the last few weeks. I’m feeling totally exhausted today, so I decided quickly that there’s no more poker for me today, which means no WWdN either. I’m usually really looking forward to the WWdN, but I think it would be a waste of sleep, money and time to play it today.

So, on the poker front, everything groovy…played only one HU match this afternoon and it was really entertaining. I played my small pot poker and my opponent was more than willing to go along with that – which I like. I chopped away at him all the time and he was down to 200 chips. I put him all-in on the next hand, he shows QQ. Alright…nothing wrong here…best hand, holds up, he’s up to 400. A few hands later I put it in with the best hand…he sucks out a runner runner straight. So he’s up to 800. I chop away again and soon enough he’s down to 500 again. All the money goes in on the turn…I’m ahead..river…bingo for him…up to 1k…hmm…will this dude ever die? *lol* we repeated the chopping down and luck-double once more before the following hand came down:

Man, you gotta love it…that was the first time I went in with the worst of it…and like he did three to four times earlier, I sucked out on him…I mean, the flop was nice, the turn nicer…and the river? Are you kidding me…DQB…lol…

…as long as you give me your chips later on. Haha. Today I reverted back to my “old school”-approach in the HU section. Small pot poker: try to look at a lot of flops cheap, play aggressively with monsters or sometimes slow play them…let the opponent come to you, especially if he/she likes to overbet.

One of the downsides of this approach is the time it takes to finish a match…it usually takes a lot more hands to get the job done, but the swings and junk-kicks aren’t as massive, which is one of the big upsides. It’s similar to Phil Hellmuth’s approach…let them run you over for some time…then stick it to them once a really big hand comes down. One thing’s for sure, it isn’t easy to laydown some of the borderline hands, but I decided to keep two things out of my mind/from getting between me and the W today:

1. Ego – well, if he’s bluffing me once, twice or xxx…who cares? Let him feel good, let him feel that he totally owns you. He’ll think different soon enough. On the same note, refrain from getting chatty, especially after beats. Let him enjoy…complaining and thinking about it just takes away your focus from the current hand…

2. Not sticking with reads: If the first “hunch” is to fold, then fold…(unless it’s a significant underbet…pay off to get the info unless it’s getting you into trouble chip-wise)

I managed to stick to that and I was rarely all-in preflop (only against a shorty with the best hand, twice). I suffered some of the nastier beats too, got my only Kings of the night busted by K3o…he had the Kc and called off his stack on the turn with one card to come…fourth club hit the river…nice call sir..not really, but what can you do. I came back to win the match…

So…the results today speak for themselves…5 matches…5 Ws…without many “good hands”…had AA once (won 60), KK (cracked by K3o) and 77 (held up against K10o)…apart from that I had AK, AJ, A10 once each…the rest were the perfect small pot hands (T9o, J9o, Q9o, 75o, etc) which are gold if your opponent hits TPNK, especially if you flop two pair or turn a straight…really sad to see how many opponents don’t know the first thing about poker and overbet their “monsters” all the time…on the other hand…how beautiful to see just that…at least if your hands hold up once they called off their stack… 🙂

Not much poker playing today…too tired to play a long session. So I tried some new grounds, moving up a level in the HU matches. It worked out pretty good, although it might not be worth it if all the matches are similar to the one I played – it took a really long time as it was not the usual “TPNK = gold”-territory. I scored the W after a little over 100 hands. Quite a long ass match…

After that I played some “no-brainer” SnGs, one PL 5-Card-Draw and one SH NL HE…in both I didn’t get much going…oh well…can’t have a good run all the time. The 5-Card-Draw one was especially excruciating, I sat there folding hand after hand after hand…no pair, no draw…fold, fold fold fold fold…then I got some hands going…but then it was set over set over set time…at least I didn’t end up with the worst hand, the second best/worst it was 😉

To close out the session I played a donkey-level HU and it was good to see that donks will be donks…TPNK it is…good to see that if you flop the straight 😉

So I finish tonight 2-2…with a little profit to show for…I won’t complain about that 🙂

…hehe…after the last post I thought I was going into the right direction again, but oh well, not really. What can I say, had an awful session today and losing all those T$ doesn’t hurt any less than losing “real” dollars, the only win I could score today was in a turbo HU match. All others, I either donked out off (A9 vs AJ) or got pretty much cold-decked. It all started out in the PL 5-Card-Draw SnG. I totally annihilate the table, no I’m not exaggerating. I play aggressively when I had the goods…and after I showed down best hand after best hand and got payed off, the others were pretty careful about messing with me – and rightly so 😉

So..I bust the first one, I bust the second one and we’re down to three-handed with me holding roughly 55-60% of all chips in play. Then within 6 hands I’m gone, bubble boy. How did it happen? Set over set (he draws out with a boat), two pair over two pair (he draws out a boat) and two pair vs flush draw (he draws the flush). Oh well…had the luck of the draw earlier, now I got unlucky three times in a row…nothing new…nothing old, just the way it is sometimes.

So I jump into a double-shootout…and the donkey-department had a field-trip on my ass…so I’m thinking, slow down man, this is no good here…so I play a triple shootout…the play is fast and loose as expected and when I look down at 10-10 to a raise and call…I decide to repop it…one player between me and the original raiser calls, original raiser pushes, I push over the top…caller in between us calls…showdown me, 10-10, original raiser 8-8, caller AdQd….well…a coinflip…all three of us are looking to triple up…all good…flop is all rags with one diamond, why do I mention this? Well, if you haven’t guessed it by now…turn diamond…river diamond for the beautiful runner runner nut flush…here we go again. Now, as I said, it’s a coinflip when the money goes in, so all good, but the tease…I’m trying to sweat a Q, 8, or Ace and instead it comes runner runnering my ass again…not a thing I wanted to see…

So I’m 0-3 and I’m seriously thinking about closing the PS client…but I don’t…hehe…hmm…so I play a turbo HU match and I win it pretty easily. Wheeee…hope. I play a normal HU match and after a long-fought battle I lose. Damn! I try another triple shootout and it’s all the same mess again…once we’re down to three-handed I can’t get the job done. My exit comes at the hands of the beautiful ace rag, which proves to be gold again, at least on the river.

After that, I’m looking at my stats for the night and it’s not a pretty sight. 1-5. I decide that it’s time to play a little higher, which leads me to the conclusion that play should be a little “better” there…now…the 15-30$ region isn’t all that high and so it’s no real surprise that the play is even worse than I expected. A six-handed game should usually be somewhat aggressive, right?! Instead player after player is doing what donkeys do best – calling. Whether the have a monster, a draw, a small pair, big pair, middle pair, over pair, nothing…they call…bet after bet, street after street…as I witness that, I decide to sit back and relax, waiting for some big hand to take advantage of that. Haha. Oh well…let’s just say that I won a few, lost a few and then some really nice hands came down. The highlight was three-handed (bubble time)…I’m in the BB with 7s4s and I’m the shortest player of the remaining three…as I don’t like the 74 s00ted all that much, I’m delighted to see that the button and SB only call…I knock on the virtual felt and we see a flop of As2s2c…SB checks…I check…BB checks…turn is a beautiful Ks…SB fires…I think and call (maybe I should push here to keep him from hitting the boat if he’s on that draw, then again, he’s in the SB and could have any hand, I don’t put him on Ax or 2x here…so instead of pushing, I’m trying to get the button to call as well)…the button obliges and calls as well…river is blank…SB fires again…I push…and the button folds…SB shows? Qs3s…oh well…flush over flush…three-handed…nice. Cya…

So…I’m finishing the night on a low-note with a 1-6… 🙁

Edit: One last HU match…W…2-6…still not good…but feels better to go out on a W 😉

…aka how to get back from the road to insanity and turn 2$ into 215 (T)$ 🙂

Wow, after the last few weeks of ultimate bad luck, today was the quickest turnaround (money-wise) I’ve ever encountered. Oooooh what a rush. I’m still a little in shock. I started off by playing some PL 5-Card-Draw this morning. Back to basics, take a break from hold’em, plus it’s 6 handed (SnG), so it fits my style of tight-aggressiveness (basically start out with two pair/trips or better or a decent draw (OESD, OESD+Flushdraw, Flushdraw if it’s cheap early, etc), control the pot-size and fold when you think you’re beat). It worked out pretty nicely and I scored second. It should have been a W, but who cares? Should have, would have, could have is all hypothetical (when HU began I was 3:1 in chips, but I couldn’t finish him off after that, I had the chance once or twice, but he smelled that he was beat and got out with a few chips left; then he went on a total tear and I couldn’t do much about it…set over set…two pair over two pair etc and I had the worst of it).

Tonight, I started off with the same thing. PL 5-Card-Draw SnG. I did fairly well, despite not getting payed off with my monsters (pat nut flush etc). I had the best of it when a big pot came around and well…in the end it was a tough fight, but I had the best again (two pair over two pair). So a W it was and I was both relieved and energized, so I jumped into a triple shootout to the sunday million. It didn’t go all that well. No major suckouts or anything, it was just not going my way (draws not coming through etc). I thought about it and I decided to try another one…it was very slow to fill up, so I started to listen to the newest episode of Ante Up. Once the tourney began I paused and focused on playing the best I could. On table one, I was all-in one time with the best hand (coinflip 55 vs A6 and presto held up, what?! Yes, I won a coinflip right off the bat!)…so I was off to a good start. The rest of the first table is a blurr, I took it down.

After that I played the waiting game as there were still some tables going. After a while they were finally done and the second table was under way. I won some smaller pots early on, than lost some, than won some again. I just played a patient game and it was rewarded, boy was it rewarded. All the cards that I had been missing over the last few weeks came in, in a hurry. We are down to four handed and I went on a total tear. I had a hand-counted number of 4x AA and they all held up (I either won a small pot or busted someone)…and soon enough it was all said and done and I had won the second table, fittingly with the fourth pocket Aces of the night.

Then it was time for the waiting game again…two tables were still battling it out and I waited…after another 10 minutes the final table started and I was a little nervous. You know how all those thoughts come creepin into your mind once it’s crunch time? I shook it off though and started to fold, fold, fold, fold. After a few hands and the x-th button steal(-attempt) I finally called…a pretty loose call with Ks5s, but hey, he can’t have the nuts every hand. Flop comes down with two spades and he fires a continuation bet in. I call, hoping to see a third spade on the turn. Dealer turns…and it’s the most beautiful Ace of spades I’ve ever seen giving me the nut flush. He pays my bets off and I’m sitting pretty with over 3k. Nice! From the on I went into rock-solid mode again. KK UTG, raise…all-fold…yay…another big pair and it held up…the next few orbits are a blurr and once we’re down to three-handed (bubble-time) the action is fast and loose and I look down at one 63o, 48o, 93o after the other. So I fold fold fold, at least I’m not getting into trouble, except for the fact that I’m slowly getting short…then “THE” hand occurs…I have slightly under 2k…the other two splitting the remaining 7k among themselves get into a raise-war preflop…after the second reraise they’re all-in! I jump up from my seat and can’t believe my luck…there are three scenarios here:

1. Player 1 wins…and it’s over with

2. Player 2 wins…and Player 1 is crippled (400 chips)

3. Split pot and we’re back to square one…

I like my chances as they show 77 and TT…the tens hold up…scenario 1 it is…and it’s all over!!!!!!!!

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! How much one win can mean, especially considering the circumstances. Man, I’m so relieved now and this is the first time in weeks that the “destined to be”-part wasn’t me “getting busted”, but me “taking it down” 🙂

So…I jumped into the sunday million tourney tab to have a look…

Good to see my name there up on the “big one” list, but I’m not all too crazy about playing it. First of all, the win (215(T)$) will be a nice compensation for the recent bad run and secondly, I don’t want to push the envelope here. Playing such a tourney with such an unreal amount of players isn’t for me, at least not now. How’s the old saying? “It takes more than one swallow to make a summer” – and I think that’s exactly what it is…one swallow along a big group of big Ls or the first step on the road to redemption. So…I unregistered pretty quickly and I’m looking forward to use the tourney dollars to fuel my “comeback run” at the SnG tables…wish me luck 🙂

…crappin on my head all the time. I mean come on, this isn’t funny anymore and I’m seriously considering quitting, for good I mean – which most certainly comes down to a few weeks off and then coming back, because I just can’t help it.

Seriously though, I’m starting to feel like Negreanu on last season’s High Stakes Poker. Someone is having a blast torturing me, crapping on me, then kicking me in the nuts watching me fall, then crapping on me again as I lay on the ground. I’m about to go nuts…and I’m not even talking about the 60/40 hands (where I won exactly 0 going in as the 40% part and maybe 20% when I went in on the 60% part), I’m talking about the cold-deck bs…I’m starting to wonder if PokerStars has flipped the “must lose, all, fast”-switch on me or something, nothing better than to get a nice hand which is or evolves into the second best hand, at all times. Now I’m usually laughing at such claims, but this is getting so spooky that I need to blame someone, so why not Stars.

I realize that I’ve been in the same mood for what seems to be an eternity and I apologize for writing about running bad, injustice and/or suckouts post after post after post. It’s just that I’m currently cosumed by this whole mess. There’s no doubt in my mind that I’m responsible for some of the losses along the way, because ultimately, I’m so insecure and tiltable atm that I tend to “give it a shot” here and there…or when was the last time you heard me writing about taking 40%-shots for all the money on purpose?! But still, even with that in mind, there’s no way I can lose that much, it’s just nearly impossible – although mathematically speaking it’s not…after all you can lose 100 coinflips in a row or more for that matter, it’s all within the normal variance they say, that fact doesn’t give you any comfort though if you’re caught in the bad zone where…

…you lose all coinflips

…you lose all hands where you are the underdog

…you lose all crucial hands (where you go in with the best (anywhere from 70-98% favourite) for all the marbles)
Examples of the usual hands: AQ…flop comes Ace high…bet, reraise, reraise, reraise, push…lemur shows A5 for a pair of Aces no kicker, no flush draw but a runner runner straight draw to the wheel…turn, there you go, river, there you go, boom headshot.

AJ…flop comes down Ace high (AKx)…bet, reraise, reraise, reraise, push…lemur shows AK…wheeeeeee….no miracle for me…

77 vs AA…

Side note: I didn’t have any pair higher than Jacks in ages, no Queens, no Kings, no Aces and if I have them, they get me busted and not because I can’t lay them down if the boards + betting tell me too, I do lay them down there, but not against runner runner draws or 2-4 outers…AK/AQ/AJ is usually worthless and even if I hit it, someone hits better or sucks out on 4th/5th street…and don’t even get me starting on hitting sets with small pocket pairs…I can’t even count the number of times I had deuces, treys or fours over the last few weeks…and low and behold I flopped two sets….losing one to a runner runner straight…
Can someone shoot me, please…?!

…running really bad is harder, running really bad is even harder. I’m glad that the running really really bad seems to be over, although I’m still in the bad level “orange”…example from an early SnG hand…he’s short and calls my raise preflop (!)…he then pushes on the the flop…I push over the top..all fold…

So not only did he call short preflop with T6o out of position, no, he also pushes on the flop with second pair no kicker and hits the turn and river like a champ. Nicely played sir. You just made my day…NOT. So instead of sitting second in chips with five players, I’m sitting with 1k with six players. Win some lose some and I’m in for the exit in 5th with A10 vs AQ…too bad I was the BB…too bad he was the SB…too bad there was an Ace on the flop…too bad that I didn’t smell it…oh well…what else is new. The next one was quite similar. Lost some big pots with the best hand, then donk-trapped myself to make yet another 5th place exit.

I then gave myself a last shot in a HU match, which I ultimately won once his card-luck ran out…he pushed his flopped MPNK into my overpair…but before that…wow…no chance the turn and/or river didn’t hit him BIG, no matter what I bet on the flop or preflop…sometimes I wonder if you have to play donkey-strategy to win at those donkey levels…then again…I was winning consistently before this bad run…playing how I always play(ed)…patient but aggressive when the hand(s) commanded it…

On another note: I don’t know if it’s all the “bad luck” I experienced recently, but in the six-handed games tonight, I felt like I lost it. I just couldn’t put some opponents on hands, even after some orbits. Now this isn’t out of the ordinary if you consider that some of the opponents you face at the donk levels are soooo out of it that it’s next to impossible to put them on a hand, but still. I feel like the cards are against me and the rest is going with it…maybe it’s time to do something different…maybe I’ll try to get my feel back by playing some MTTs again…or maybe even some cash games…we’ll see…