Played only two SnG today. The first one was the usual PL Omaha H/L and I bubbled, out of my own stupidity. We’re down to four players (3 ITM), I’m the SB, shortest stack is BB and almost All-In (40T$ left). The two huge stacks call, I decide to push the BB All-In, bad idea as it put me all in and he wisely folded hoping for me to bust out – which I did. Argh! The correct move would have been to fold and watch him either be pushed all-in by the others post-flop, or see him be all-in in the next hand (after all I would have been the button and he the SB), but no…I decide to do the donkey and bubble… 🙁

After this stupidity move I was steaming inside, nontheless I decided to give it another shot, this time at NL HE though. This really payed off as I won the thing. I didn’t get all that many cards, but if I did I could do (almost) no wrong. The BB special was especially nice…all limpers at the table so I only saw the flop in the BB in the first 3 orbits, and I won all those hands 🙂

Then I went ahead and busted a player out and when we were down to 5 players I busted two players out at the same time, so welcome ITM. The rest is a blur, but I did good and won. Nice. Donkeys 1 – Ingoal 1 🙂

I continued my “SnG challenge” at PokerStars tonight. I came back from playing Skat all night (a card game, if you’re not familiar with it read more about at wikipedia) and winning an unusual amount of money (which I didn’t collect as I “donated” it to the drinks pool as I hadn’t payed anything for my drinks in a while) so I felt good – and indeed the cards started to fall my way early on, then I bubbled 🙁

I thought I couldn’t end a successful night on such a low note, so I played another one and came out on top. Sweet!

So the current standings are (PL Omaha H/L / NL HE; both 3$+0.40$ SnG):

1. SnGs played: 6 / 2
2. ITM: 2 (1st + 2nd) / 0
3. Amount won/lost: 0.2$ / -6.80$

Summary: so far I’ve been losing some, but I guess I will push it a little and play some of them continously now and see how it goes…

On another note: I didn’t forget about the weekly poll, but it’s already early and WordPress inline editing + dpolls-iframe-solution seems to not mix up too well (that’s why some of you might have not been able to vote or see the results, apart from the fact that this thing is breaking my valid and accessible xhtml format…) – so I will try to find a solution tomorrow (probably and “external” (outside of WordPress) html file containing the poll)!

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….

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!

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 😉

I just played a little Stud H/L Limit S&G over at AbsolutePoker and what can I say – this is going to be the last one for quite a while. This was the first tournament of any sort that had me frustrated quickly…and not because of the cards that I was dealt. Let me explain: you sit at a one table S&G and play Stud H/L and one player at the table uses all the time he’s got on his hands all the time…so you’re basically sitting there waiting with each and every card that is being dealt – the other players weren’t too fast themselves which didn’t help either.

So I was trying to get out asap as after one hour of play we were heading nowhere and I’m right in the middle of it. This is the first and only time that I didn’t care if I won or not, I just wanted to get out asap, even if that meant taking last place – and this is what happened. I raised every card and busted myself with nothing in hand. So, I’m out of 2$+0.40$ fee, but more importantly I barely escaped with a sane mind and a few nerves less…

I guess a pic says more than thousand words…:

Just donked off some money with a little two table S&G. Turbo Limit Stud H/L was the game and making the final table (top 8 of 16) was no problem, but staying alive longer was as both the ante and the blinds were raised every 5 minutes. So that leaves you with little choices as even calling down a hand can put you all-in quickly (after all there are 5 betting rounds)…I guess I should stick with normal tourneys or S&Gs when it comes to Stud…

Now I’m going to play in the “Donkeys Always Draw Invitational” over at PokerStars…this will be my second poker blogger tournament…more of this later on….

After the ups and downs of today’s Omaha H/L play I decided to play a little S&G (9 players, 0.50$ + 0.10$ fee, top 3 in the money) over at AbsolutePoker and what can I say, I dominated the competition!

Look down at the first hand (5-5-Q-J) and watch as the board developed my way…up from 1500 starting chips to 4620 in the first hand…not a bad way to start a tournament:

A few hands later I looked down at 2c-3h-5h-5c and once again the board developed beautifully, flop: Ac-4c-10d almost nuts already, turn: 2d, river: 3c for my first ever straight flush and the nuts/nuts, too. Yeah baby!

Just played the really promising hands afterwards hence building up my stack to a massive chip lead (around 9000 of 13500 when hitting the money) – although I gotta say that most hands were promising for quite a while as I kept hitting full houses all over the place. When heads up started I was even further in front (9700 to 3600) played some donkey hands, but then was able to finish the deal and come out on top. Finally a S&G victory again! Nice

Seems I’m hitting rock bottom at PokerStars. Played a little 7 stud H/L turbo S&G (16 players, Buy-In 1.5$ + 0.25$ fee, top 4 in the money). Played my game as usual and was able to scoop some pots early on, then I kept running into the chip-leader three times in a row…busted out at the final table in 8th position. Argh!