…yeah, that’s right, I found my ultimate tilter. While some games are really bad at getting me on tilt, like for example one of my favourite games back a while – Omaha 8b, I found the ultimate tilter tonight…and it’s Fixed Limit 2-7 Triple Draw. My oh my! I played a little SnG and looked forward to bust some donkey balls and the donks sure as hell cooperate beautifully, the bad part: the cards didn’t. Start out with the best (stick to two card draws, never going without a deuce, etc). The followed the old Matusow song “Poker, oh Poker, it’s all skill…start with the worst and go uphill”. After the first few hands I honestly asked myself (and the other players in the table chat) if I was stuck in the middle of the “hidden camera show”. Unbelievable. Brick-city, yeah, I like pairs, next draw, yeah I like pairs, next draw yeah I still like pairs. The worst hand was were I’m starting out with 10-7-5-3-2. So I got the 8, 6 and 4-ball all working for me…first draw, I get a 10…next draw…I get a 10…last draw…I get the case 10 and I’m about to puke on my keyboard as my opponent wins with a 9-6…unreal. After that I went on a stone-cold tilt…

…at least the last 0.000001% of sanity kept me away from the cash tables. Instead I stumbled into a 1$ NL HE tourney…what better way to blow some steam than in such a donk tourney. Honestly, I tried to put some bad-beats on donks on purpose…and even that didn’t work out…i.e. Q5o limpi-limpi preflop…LP min-raises…hmm…donk…is that AA…hmmm….like 99% sure…call…flop comes a beautiful QQ9…I bet the pot he insta-pushes…I insta-call and he shows AA…I laugh and I’m getting ready to blow of a trash-talk-bomb in the chat when the Ace hits the turn…damn!

So, that didn’t help either, so instead of walking away I sat in a 180…and boy oh boy, play can’t get any worse than this…as does the attitude of some of those fuckers playing at my table. Someone calling down with K5 s000ted on an Ace-high board after I four-bet it preflop and you say “nh”, “nice call” etc? Wth are you doing at my table moron? But anyway, I didn’t really honor poker-etiquette and just told’em off “a little”…that helped…no more donkin for the day…I’m out of here, before I go bezerk 😉

Awww…almost forgot to talk about something else, because of all that steamin…watched the first two weeks of Poker After Dark and boy oh boy, I love it! It’s good to see that live poker is rigged sometimes too – the beauty of the one-outer and suckout…really nice. My favourite hand so far: Mike vs Daniel K7 vs K9…7 on the flop…turn K…Daniel pushes…Mike calls in a heart-beat…Daniel is all but dead…the 7-8-10-K leaves Daniel with sixes, eights, nines, tens, jacks…sure enough the 6 rolls off and the Mouth is out…brutal…

Looking forward to High Stakes Poker Season 3, which kicks off tonight., too..

Hit another 180 SnG tonight and it went pretty well…played my patient game early on, playing a token satellite on FTP while doing so helped a bit. Got my money in with the best and took the chiplead. Held onto it until just before the first break, still sitting pretty in 2nd though.

Second hour is a blur as there was not much action, 73o, 52o, 62o, K2o, Q3o, … you catch my drift…

15th out of 32, not all that bad…but I can’t catch a hand if my life depended on it and I wait and wait and wait…finally I look down at 77…EP min-raises…hmm…do I wait for a better spot or do I take the flip – at least that’s what I think it is. Lucky sevens, come on! One time! *lol*…not really…he flips AQo…so good so far…flop QQ3…thank you very much…two outer doesn’t come and I’m crippled (2k)…a few hands later I take my chances with 92 s00ted…at least I got a shot here if the flop comes uncoordinated…two callers though…pair of Aces crushers me…and I’m out in 26th…

Oh well…that could have gone another way, but hey, I’m not really disappointed…didn’t make any real mistakes…played a solid game and move my money in with the best of it (excluding the last hand shortstacked)…do I mull over the 77-call? Yes a little, but then again, if my read is correct (which it was) I’m moving my money in a slight favourite and I can bring myself in a position to be in the top 5 chip-wise. Didn’t work out…what can you do.

“Stats:”

1. Coinflips played: 1 real one 77 vs AQ…lost that one (another hand was no real-coinflip as the money didn’t go in preflop AK vs 88…flop was Axx, won that one though, so you could take that one and call it 1-1 on coinflips)

2. Suckouts: 0 / 0 (suckouts witnessed at the tables – too many to count, playing like a rock early on really pays off, that way you can watch em and not feel em ;))

So…no final table, no money…but at least I enjoyed myself and won the token at FTP 🙂

It’s my dad’s birthday today, so no poker during the day…but a little night session isn’t too bad even…so I fire up PokerStars and jump into a 180SnG…jab jab, grabble, grabble…break one….avg stack…suckout count: 0/0…basically only junk hands…next hour is interesting…Kings…against the big stack…he shows AK…the cowboys hold up…I’m comfortable way over the avg…next hand AKo…smaller stack (5k to my 13k) pushes from the cutoff…

…observation #1: the BB is sitting out…

…observation #2: I’m on the button…he could push with many hands…I’m the only player in his way…

So I call and he flips A5o….big slick holds up…and I’m sitting pretty in the chiplead with 19k…after that I go on a garbage hand-card-deadness streak, but I stay calm and fold, fold, fold, fold…some more folding before I hold Kings again…I make a sneaky “half-steal-looking” preflop raise (5.5x BB)…BB loves to call with sixes…my cowboys hold again and I’m back in second chip position….card deadness here I come again…nothing much to report for the next x minutes as we’re approaching the bubble. Then a heart-crushing suckout hits…but not me…another big stack pushes from the cutoff…BB is more than happy to insta-call with Aces…cutoff shows AKo…doominated…flop KJJ…turn…10…river K…ouch! Shortly after that the bubble bursts and we’re ITM.

I’m still card dead and when I finally look down at a semi-playable hand, 44 in MP, I’m already facing a raise and a re-raise…I throw them into the virtual muck…see the player behind me re-reraise…and I’m happy…until they get the money in the middle…AK, A10 and K9 are their hands and the flop comes down Q94…oooooh….turn and river are blank…and the worst hand takes the pot to triple up…that was the key hand…if I move in there…and win the hand…I’m sitting in the top 3 in chips with 13 players left…oh well…what can you do? Call all-in to a raise, re-raise and re-reraise preflop with fours? Not really…

The final table bubble burst after some big-stacks clinch in a preflop pushfest…and I’m happy to sit down at the first final table in a while…last in chips though…

After three orbits of blind stealing and folding I look down at the first “good” hand in a while and decide to push it in…KdQd…is not match to some random hand though and I bust out in 9th place…ooh well, final table..from the bottom…

I’m happy though, I played my A-game like I always did in the last few weeks, but with one difference: my hands, especially the really clear ones (70-75%+) held up…that’s all that is to it…

“Stats”:

1. Flips played: 1, won 1

2. Suckouts from me: 0

3. Suckouts against me: 0

4. Mood: happy 🙂

That’s the angle my cards made in contrast to yesterday. No chance in hell…5 Card Draw…thank you for making the second best hand at crucial times (incidently it was always a 1-card vs 1-card draw, I hold two pair, my opponent holds a flush or gutshot draw, guess who’s draw get’s there). Same goes for Razz and NL in a token satellite.

Last hope: WWdN…no joy…get Aces early…win small pot…then invest invest invest…no joy…Once I’m down to half my starting stack I bluff off half my remaining stack on a busted nut flush draw…and the rest is history…out in 29th of 44…oh well, at least I had a good time with V and the others at the table…

…at least some of the time – mostly when it counted. Started the session by going totally retro, 5 Card Draw Pot Limit SnG. Wonderful, reminds me of years back, before the NL Hold’em boom…it was our game of choice back then and I still like it, apart from the fact that I ran into some “cold decks” (QQQ vs KKK etc). Still was able to grind back from a 1-6 chip deficit to take it down. Score: Ingoal 1-0 others

After that it was time to come back a little…more new school if you wish…so I played some poor chap in a Limit Razz HU SnG and I kid you not, he was catching like crazy. I on the other hand was in the middle of brick-city, but at least I chat-crapped him good for the next 20 minutes. My favourite set of hands: he caught a 3 and I caught a King of fourth street for five consecutive hands…unreal…oh well…as I had told him it would all come down to one big hand and it did, my 7-5 held up and I was in cruise mode. Doubled him up again, but then busted him for good once he visited me in brick city catching 2A2 to his A275…lol…poker can be cruel sometimes, good to see that it’s not just cruel to me 😉

Score: Ingoal 2-0 others

After that I went straight to the new school for some 4-player HU action, winner takes all. The first table was a true battle and I finally prevailed after a good 60 hands. The second table wasn’t all that hard. He pushes in the first hand. I fold. In the sixth hand I flop top and bottom pair on a two-club board, I overbet, he instapushes…he shows J-high flush draw….turn 10h…river xs…and cya…nice to see that nice outs isn’t always enough against me…thank you.

So…I’m three for three for the night, nice to see those three mails from PokerStars sitting in my inbox…the good ol’ times…even better to see that making correct decisions does pay off, not always or even often…but at least sometimes 😉

So…I’m outta here for tonight…hope you all have a good time at the tables…maybe I’ll try to sneak into the WWdN tomorrow, depends on my sleep schedule…but the chance to make back-to-back final tables is appealing…oh well, we’ll see…

*lol*

Had a pretty bad run today, just couldn’t catch a break. Made wrong decision after wrong decision running into hands like it was the norm (JJ vs QQ, AJ vs AQ, 77 vs 88, etc etc). So, it sucked pretty badly today, but hey, there’s always tomorrow and that’s why I decided to quit for the day rather quickly.

I just came across Daniel Negreanu’s latest video blog – the mullet chop, funny stuff! Enjoy…

So…I played in a Skat (see Wikipedia if you’re not familiar with this game, which is probably the case) tourney with my dad tonight. Usually I only play Skat in a friendly cash game (where you pay the difference in points won or lost), so playing in a tournament was quite different. The first table started pretty slowly and I didn’t get many games – which is sort of bad as the tourney consisted of only two rounds with 24 games total each. So after the first round I was pretty far behind already (nearly 1k in points which is nearly impossible to catch up). The draw for the second table was fun…I drew a seat at the “killer table” which hosted both the leader and the player in second position and boy oh boy they were on fire. The player in second after the first table played and won the first 6 hands, without any problems. The leader waited his spots and played a game here and there and the final 5 in a row…that left a whole of 4 games for me. Unreal…but unlike in Poker, in Skat you can’t play your opponents, you need to play the cards you’re dealt, so if they’re crap you’re out of luck. So…the second table was finished in a blink of an eye and we had to wait up until the other tables finished their play – which took about another half an hour. The points were calculated (in tourney Skat you get additional points for every game you play and win, you get a minus of points for games you played and lost and the other two players get points for busting you in that game). So the final result was quite amusing: My dad – 3rd (the first player after the two card racks battling for first place almost in another world (points-wise)), me – second to last, lol. Oh well…it was a fun time 🙂

After I came home after the tourney I thought it was time for some “real cards”, lol, poker and BJ. I gotta say that I much like and dislike Blackjack for a number of reasons:

Likey:

1. Good way to grind out points towards clearing bonus(es)

2. With correct strategy, good chances to at least stay even (+/-) a little – at least in theory

Dislikey:

1. When the friggin dealer is dropping Blackjacks on your ass all the time (today the ratio was about 4:1 which isn’t really cool; everything in the region of 3:1 to 3:2 is alrighty, but 4:1, that’s a cold deck)

2. When you’re running hot, then running cold losing hand after hand to unreal hands (great 20, oooh 5 card 21, great 19, 5 cards 21, …etc)

So after grinding out nearly 40 points towards clearing my bonus at Pacific – and unfortunately dropping around 30 bucks in the process (well, I was way ahead in the first session, so I basically lost all that back + some more) – I decided to fire up the poker tables, but to no avail, I just couldn’t focus. So I took a walk to the couch and watched the European Poker Masters – Dublin Allstar Challenge which was running on Eurosport. There was even a german dude hanging at the final table, so it was quite cool. Not so cool: stopping the show once down to the final four. How stupid is that? Now I can go ahead and check the schedule for the next x days to find the damn second part. Stupid!

After the cooldown I fired up PokerStars to blow off some steam and what better way to do it than to play in a turbo donkey tourney in my new favourite game – Razz. So I jumped into a two-table tourney for nearly two bucks (lol) and opened the donkey/monkey/radio-box. Not only did the players not know what hit ’em, they also didn’t know what they were doing. Needless to say that I busted out rather early as they donks were in hot pursuit. They were running after me like the bulls in Pamplona, lol. And sure enough they tackled me and smacked the shit out of me with their “powerful” donk hands clearly behind at least a card, but strong enough to outdraw me by hitting the obvious perfect perfect about 99.9999999999999999999999% of the time 😉

So…I’m good now…off to read me some Little Green Book which I started to read yesterday…have a great weekend and may the anti-donk-force be with you…..heeeeeeeeeeeeehaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw!

So…I fired up PokerStars today and played in a double shootout to sunday’s million. Now I’m not a big fan of shootouts as there’s usually one dude at the table sucking out like the best vacuum cleaner you can buy, but hell…why not.

So we started off eight handed and I played pretty tight. The donks fooled around a little and traded chips back and forth. So after roughly half an hour we’re down to 6 players and I’m the short-stack. I play some decent hands though and chip up pretty quickly. Once we’re three-handed I’m the chipleader at the table, 2nd in chips is roughly 1k behind and the short-stack sits at just above 1k. The 2nd in chips takes out the short-stack and is slightly ahead once we enter heads-up. We trade chips back and forth for a while and then he slowly grinds away at me. I make a decent comeback and have a 2:1 chiplead. We play back and forth and he sucks out a flush on the river to get back to even. Two hands later it’s all over. I have A10 on the button and three-bet it. He calls. Flop comes down JJ10 two diamonds. He leads out, I call. turn is the 4d…he bets out small again. Now I’m a little concerned with the flush, but then again it’s two-handed…so maybe he’s got the jack? Hmm…river is an unsuspecting 3c…he pushes….

Now I’m stuck in decision land: basically two hands have me beat – three jacks or a flush…didn’t put him on Jacks earlier or I would have folded…so…is he really on the flush or on the stone cold bluff? Decision, decision. I call…and sure enough he shows KdQd…s00000ted!

So I’m out in 2nd at my table (10th overall – 8 at the final table)…damn! I need to go over my play again before making any bold claims, but basically I think the following statement is valid: I won too little with monsters (Qx – board QQx, J9o – board JJx; although the deck is pretty crippled here, but can’t he have the x and don’t believe me one time?) and lost to two suckouts…not bad-beats…suckouts…the first one was the diamond flush on the river (cough) to bring him back to even and the second one was the last hand (diamond flush on the turn, cough, should that have been a sign?)…oh well…DAMN! 😉

Oh god damn it! Oh god damn it! Damn it! Damn it!

Hehe…now that I’ve got that out of the way I can write a little write up about my latest adventure in 180SnG-land. Started out making some tough laydowns. Hovered around average for a while before making a great read…put him on AK (on an all under board) and was right…my 88 was good…so I’m double the average…cool…from there on I nurse my stack and play less pots, but if I’m in it…I’m letting it be know…

After the break I get moved to a quite bizarre table…the chipleader is there (suprise surprise, I was playing with the guy third in chips until this point)…then another player is moved to the table…yes…he’s 2nd in chips…so we got two dudes with over 18k at the table…then this hand happens…

I raise it preflop…he pushes back…what I’m I supposed to do here? Fold? Not really…too bad I ran into this again. Down but not out I get moved back to my old table right after the hand – this is out of the “are you kidding me”-category, isn’t it? Get moved to the monster stack table…run into this shit and get moved right back…

Oh well…the end comes a few hands later when I semi-steal with A9o from the cutoff…the button ponders and ponders and finally calls with AQ s00000ted….now I’m asking myself: you get 1.2:1 for your money and you’re anywhere from dominated (AK), in bad shape (pair) to dead (AA)…or slightly ahead (AJ down to Ax)…do you call 40% of your stack there? Well, he did…blank board…turn Q…river 9 thanks riverstars…the other 9 was supposed to be on the flop 😉

So I’m out in 47th and a little puzzled…play a game game for well over an hour…run into bigger pair…missed steal…and gone with the wind. This is frustration at it’s finest…why oh why can’t the fool have Jacks there? 😉

…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…