HU Cash

I am dabbling a bit around in the online poker world. My usual game is NL100 full ring but I am getting bored by that at the minute. I tried my bollocks another time at the short handed tables but I seem to do essential mistakes in my short handed game. I am especially stacking off far too light and have a tendency to be over-aggressive. No idea why I only have those tendencies in short handed games. Just seems to not be my kind of game and I decided to give up on NL 6-max. Maybe I need to switch to the limits where they respect my raises. ;-)

As I have recently read about it in James Keys' blog I thought I give HU Cash on PKR a go as well. Because I have no real clue about that game, I watched some videos on PokerStrategy.com and decided to try my luck at NL25 HU tables. I really enjoyed it and managed to beat my opponent up in a two hour match to claim a 4 stack profit victory. I am not sure if I am tilt resistant enough though to play that kind of game consistently. I was close to implode when my TT got outdrawn by 85o but managed not to blow up after taking deep breaths for 2 minutes. I guess in HU tilt is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you and bringing your opponent on monkey tilt is probably to most profitable way to approach HU. I have no idea. I used to play fixed limit heads up quite a bit but it is a completely different game and the experience doesn't help for NL HU games whatsoever.

I think I am going to try playing 4 or 5 other opponents on NL25 HU and see how I feel. If I feel I was in control I will switch to NL50 HU but am aiming to play NL100HU. I wouldn't mind doing some bum hunting either but I feel that this might not be necessary on PKR. I think on a site like Stars or FTP even those low stakes games must be kinda tough to beat if you don't put enough effort in.

Our long time German friends which we lived together with in the UK for a while are coming to visit us here in Spain for a week. I got a few days of work and hope to enjoy a nice long weekend. Very much looking forward to the banter the next days. Bought a bottle of Gin, Vodka and Jack Daniel's. I think total the cost was £3.50 ;-)

Just read that Robert Enke committed suicide yesterday and I am actually quite shocked. He was a superb personality and a great goalie! Also he was on a good way to be our number 1 for next year's World Cup. German football lost a great personality and sportsman. RIP.

Laters,

Truthans

Two Faced

This post is solely gonna be about my last nights cash game session so if you can't be bothered to read about poker hands you can stop right here. I just need to write this off my mind. Go to the last 3 lines to get a summary.

They have changed the Poker director in our local Casino and since that the cash games on Friday and Saturday are starting at 8:00 pm which is good for a smooth 8 hours of play. I bought in for the full 150bb stack at 9:00 pm and didn't know yet that this was going to be one of the most volatile and mood changing sessions I have played so far.

My first table was very soft. I had an extremely nitty PokerStrategy.com player to my left who would just fold everything except the top 8% of his range. The rest of the table was either very loose/passive or very tight/passive. With loose I mean VPIP of ca. 80 and the tight players probably around 40. lol. I played pretty solid and check-raised a lot of drawy boards to take down a few £20 - £40 pots. I didn't go to show-down for while until I had pocket 3's. Three way pot, I am the PFA. A52 - I am first to act and it goes check, check, check. Turn: A - I check, check, Button bets £10 into £12 pot. I have a good read on this player and know his betting patterns. He would have bet any ace on the flop. He never checks behind on the flop with an ace. Every time he has got a hand, he over bets the pot as well. I was pretty certain he had air as he does not bet a 5 or 2. River - 6 , I check and he bets 15 in that pot. The only thing I can beat is air but I make the call and he shows me J9. Confidence booster.

Then the first hand I played for a stack. I limped KTo from early mid and call a small raise from the small blind, who is a guy that is pretty drunk and just looked and smelled like a bum. He probably went back to his cardboard-box-home after the game. Anyway, K85 flop he leads and I am raising hoping to get it in. I saw him getting it in with a lot of shit before so I am ahead here the majority of the time. He calls and shoves his last £10 on the blank turn. River is a Q and he shows me pocket QQ's. I didn't really mind as he had the better hand and I had a pretty aggro image, so I probably get QQ in against myself as well. Just a shame the lady pops on the river. I think the pot was not even that big. hm...can't remember.

Then I remember shoving my flush draw into the PFA to my left who had c-bet the flop but the turn should have been a scare card for him and I thought I had FE. He had turned the Nut Straight with a gut shot and I missed my flush outs. Stack down.

I am stuck now and open up my gambling mood. Interesting hand follows.

MP - Limp
CO - Limp
BU - Raise £5

I wake up with TT in the SB and think about 3-betting. Problem is that the button is really passive and I think it is the second hand he raised in two hours. I didn't want to fold to a 4-bet shove and decided to flat call. It goes round to the former limpers and CO suddenly makes it £35 and button snap folds.

No I am not sure what this is. I am pretty sure that he doesn't overlimp AA,KK,QQ or JJ from the CO. Doesn't make sense. He just doesn't do that. I gave him the following range: AJ+, 44 - 99. And personally the whole situation smells more like the small PP and not like overs. Other than that my hand is pretty well disguised and he can't know that I am as strong as I am. I set him all-in and he shows AKs and I hold. Stack up.

Another English drunkard comes to the table and quickly donates another £150 in 10 hands to me. Now I got a bit sick of the table as there were 3 drunk english man at the table who had fun in berating themselves and slowing the game down to about 5 hands an hour. On the second table were 4 PokerStrategy players and no one else but it was a pretty sick line up. Simon "Schnibl0r" Muenz who is a high stakes reg at a variety of games. I think he was one of the best Fixed Limit HU players around a few years ago, playing $500/$1000 but he switched to NL later where he plays up to NL40k at the minute as far as I know. Next player is a dutch guy who is our Pro Team Manager and a NL2k to NL4k reg with a couple of big tourney cashes as well. Then there is our Head of Business Development who is not a good Poker player but he doesn't give a damn about the stakes and one other guy like me on a normal wage that hasn't made shitloads of Poker so far. Everybody is completely wasted except for me and the other "normal" guy. The game plays huge and I see bottom pair taking down a £500 in the first hand when it got a call by A high. I can't believe my eyes. I don't really know how to approach the game and have to fold my huge 3-bets twice when it got 4-bet shoved onto me. We were so fucking deep. Suddenly I find 86 of hearts and PF it's only £8 to call. lol. Flop is a sweet 9,5,7 and I get it in for a £600 pot. I change back to table one.

Lose another big pot in a 3 way all-in on the turn when I got like 6:1 for my straigth draw which didn't get there. Then I win AQ vs. AK on a Qxx,A,x board. All in on the flop. Then I lose a big pot with A8 vs. J9 on a 9,8,3 board where I made a terrible call.

In the end I finish a 7 hour session £18 up. lol. FML. Could easily have been £400. I am really annoyed by myself.

Anyway, £368 profit since staking. £1330 in total.

P.S.: Big congrats are going out to my staker James Keys who shipped a 2nd place finish for approx. $100k in the Baltic Poker Festival. Sick player, who is crushing the scene at the moment.

Visitors from Germany and my Performance Review

On Friday two mates from Germany which I had not seen for two years came to visit me for a few days. They also brought along an Australian lad who is on a trip through Europe at the moment after he stayed in Berlin for a year and will be returning back to Australia in December time. They started off their trip renting scooters to drive from Malaga to Sotogrande which is a 2.5 h drive on a scooter. Anyway the only lasted one hour before one had a crash, causing some pretty harsh skin damage all over his body and a wound that needed some sewing in the next best Spanish Hospital.
After that first bit of action they brought back the scooters and decided to hire a car instead, which turned out to have been a wiser choice. So the rest of the holiday my mate was on a lot of painkillers and vodka but he was ok. I asked for pictures and hope to get them at one point.

All three of them are really nice blokes and one of them actually is the bass player of the last band band I was active in before I left Germany more than two years ago. We had really good times going on the piss on Friday including a visit in the discos that Gibraltar has to offer which are playing ridiculously bad music.
Saturday we went to the beach for a short while enjoying the Mediterranean Sea and went to get some munch and a cash game in Gibraltar in the evening. Coming back home Saturday Night and sitting on the balcony till 5 am drinking, chatting and watching funny youtube videos and grinding the Bop-it toy.

Sunday was another day at the beach but this time we went to Tarifa to spend a few hours at the Atlantic Sea. Yes the weather and the water are still warm enough to actually go in there, so that's pretty cool. Almost November and we took a little bath in the sea. In the evening we went for a pretty cool all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant that I know, which offers insane value for money.

They did the basic tourist stuff like seeing Gibraltar's monkeys yesterday and in the evening we went for some more exclusive food at a restaurant in the Port of Sotogrande. I had really nicely cooked fillet medallions in Roquefort sauce and really enjoyed the meal.

Other big topic for me was my long overdue performance review at work, which finally happened yesterday night. It went really well and when you get told sentences like "your commitment and motivation are far beyond what is normal and you certainly belong in the top 10 of the company including senior management with that kind of performance" "that was by far the best performance I have seen of anyone in the first 4 months so far" it really slips down a treat!

I spoke pro-actively about a change in salary and asked for a 20% pay rise which I didn't get as my line manager said that it would not be enough and gave me a 33% rise in salary starting from 01/10/2009 and so he handed me as well an envelope with the money I didn't have on my paycheck last month. Clearly, I was amazed by the appreciation of my performance. My line Manager finished the meeting with the sentence: "that was the fastest and biggest (percentage wise) increase in salary that I ever gave".
So all what's left to say is: SHIP IT!

Furthermore my line manager let me know that they see me evolving into another role in the period of the next 6 - 12 months were I could make more use of my potential and promised me another meeting in 6 months time where we are going to talk about what my career path should be looking like. So next year I probably be thinking of doing a distance learning course which will go for 18 months and do an MBA in order to upgrade my current BA(hons) degree and possibly sneak into a role in our Operations Department.

You can bet that I am close to explode of pride at the moment and my motivation batteries have reloaded quite nicely. I am ready to take the next steps.

Btw, I started entering the working life last August and since then managed to more than double my initial wages. Man, my testicles are having the size of watermelons at the moment.

Cash games have been going ok as well with small, but steady profits. So even the stakers investments seems to pay off.

Ok, I'm finished bragging now and return to dancing around like the gay mantis again.

Talk soon

Truthans

A really good day

First of all I am congratulating myself that this blog is now 1 year old. I think I did ok with the blog. Some posts where funny some weren't but it felt good anyway to have something like a diary going. I tried having diaries when I was younger but failed after a maximum of 4 months. I am quite happy that I did a somewhat consistent effort to post on this blog and I haven't had a month yet in which I didn't post. So, well done me. Looking forward to the next year of blogging which should bring some interesting stories. For now I am just going write down what a nice day I had this Saturday.

I woke up at 9:00 and drove my girlfriend to work. Went back home and went back to bed. I didn't really feel tired so I thought I watch a movie and decided to watch Lesbian Vampire Killers. This was good for some early hilarity as I absolutely loved the character called Fletch. Some might argue that the story is flat and in the end it is just a average horror movie parody but I actually quite enjoyed the light hearted entertainment that Saturday morning.

After that I got up and decided to play some online Poker for a few hours which I had not done for a while. The session went good and I finished 2.5 stacks up at NL100. This added to my good mood and I was already dancing around in my flat like a gay mantis wearing boxers.

Next on the plan was the match Germany vs Russia in Moscow. I watched the English live stream on a sports betting website and was blessed with a pretty ok German performance that led to a 1:0 victory on Russian soil. We played 20 minutes with only 10 on the pitch and the Russians had not been beaten on home soil for like eh... I don't know...maybe since Ivan the Horrible reigned. We are qualified directly and I am looking forward to the World Cup next year. Congratulations by the way to England as well, by first qualifying for the Cup and then by really kicking the shit out of Croatia when you lost your last match. Man, what a well deserved revenge.

Now after the football I picked up my girlfriend from work in Gibraltar and we needed something to eat. So we popped in the nearby Morrison's and I convinced the lady to buy those nice looking venison sausages with some interesting seasoning of which I can't remember what it was anymore. Back home in Spain she got the meal cooked (ye good ol Bangers & Mash) and the Sausages were delicious. Fortunately the girlfriend could not manage to eat her 3rd sausage which means that I got 4 of them. I couldn't believe my luck.

On Friday it was her birthday and I bought her Sims 3 besides some other surprises which I am not gonna reveal here. Anyway, on Saturday she then told me that if I would install the game for here I could go to the casino and play Poker. Weeeeeeeeeeee!

I was a little afraid if my laptop was good enough to run this game but I was very fortunate and the game worked absolutely perfect although the installation took absolute ages.

Having had the girlfriend sorted out with her game I grabbed a few chips from the bank roll and made my way to the oh so beloved Gala Casino in Gib. Losing a 3 way all-in PF with AK against KK and AQ saw me being down £75 early on but I couldn't fold to the 4- bet shove anymore when I got 3,5 : 1 on my call. I then moved table and dominated the other table for the rest of the night mixing up my game and getting two light 4-bets through with A4s and 9Ts. I played mostly small pots and never was all-in again that night. In the end I made a profit of £142 which is good. The other cash table had two sick hands happening:

£1100 pot - 4way all-in - Board Js9s8c
888 vs. 95o vs. 6s5s vs. As2s
Board blanks out and the set takes down the pot. Juicy!


£480 pot - 2 way all in - Board Q,5,T rainbow
AA vs. A4o (The Aces raised PF and open shoved the flop, A4o snap called)
Turn: 4, River: 4

This boosts my total profits since June to £1214.
Since staking it is £252

A really good day that was!

Report soon

Truthans

Plodding along

There isn't really a lot to talk about but I thought it was time to throw an update in here. Since my last post I received the much wanted staking and got going on the live felt again. I'll talk about that later.

Other than that I had my car repaired which means I can park in public again as my boot is now locking again. Yeah! Yesterday we had 32 degrees C here which is pretty awesome for 3. October. Today it's 26 or something. Still pretty cool.

I will get my performance review at work and very much hope that I can report of the pay rise in the next post. Fingers crossed.

I am eating to much and have re-gained 5kg since being in the south. This is mostly due to the fact that my company provides free food on a daily basis and I really struggle to keep away from it. I just love those huge Ciabattas with Bacon, Brie and Avocado on them. And the hot food is nice too. Not sure how I am going to handle this problem but I should give it some serious thought before I turn back to be a fat fucking German again. Well, to be honest I just shoved a Pizza in the oven so... I think I should definitely keep hold of my supersize trousers in case I'll need them again. I wish I had the time to go to the gym.

Pokerwise I am going through a pretty awful break even stretch at the moment as you can see from the graph below. Since the staking is going I am up £110 but effort and result are standing in no relation. Played far to many hours for far too less profit.
Played like a dick/moron/donkey for a few sessions when I got back as well. Probably left about £500 on the table just by being a jerk. Anyway I have started to play better again and yesterday played some of the best Poker I have played since June. Finished about £90 up although I was down £150 after 20 mins when KK < QT. I clawed it all back and made profit. Good stuff.

Made a King high call on a 567 two spades, Td, Qc board when my action went check/call; check/check; check/call and he showed me J9 and I tabled KJ. I know this guy very well by now and couldn't do the same against a lot of other players but I just know his betting patterns so good that I was pretty sure to be good here a lot of the time. Had a good run of cards yesterday athough I have to say that I lost KK and had JJ 3 times as well but lost all of them in smallish pots. Anyway I am looking forward to my next exploits at the live felt and hope to have brought my break even stretch to an end yesterday.

Speak soon.

Truthans

Profit since staking: £110
Total Profit since June: £1072
Sessions played: 27

Looking for staking

I had a few thoughts about what I am gonna do Pokerwise. When I started playing cash in Gibraltar I made about £1100 very quickly and never felt that I was particularly running good, just average. Now since my girlfriend arrived and we moved into the new flat, I spent those winnings and was left again with a live bankroll of £0.

Although I wasn't able to play for the last two months due to time restrictions I didn’t worry too much cause I knew building a new roll would be relatively easy.

Now it’s September and I finally find some time again to play some live poker which I had been looking forward to because the games here are very juicy. Unfortunately I had a bit of bad luck recently and crashed my car which sees me spending €1600 on the repair as well as I will have to spend £2000 on a new scooter because we will need two vehicles to get to work. And we sorted out some relatives with a €2500 loan which we’ll only get back at the end of the year.

Furthermore the girlfriend and me decided that 21.08.2010 will be the day we get married and I am forced to save some money towards that as well because I know some of you guys had an interest in coming to Germany for that event and I don’t want you having to eat chicken wings on my Wedding. ;-)

In conclusion that meant that I have only 2 buy-ins left per month to play live poker and that is surely not the way forward because:

1. If I lose those two buy-ins at the beginning of the month I have to wait till the next month to play again.

2. I start playing bad because I am playing scared money “If I lose my second buy in now I will have to leave and wait till next month”

I guess I already proved that I can beat this game at a quite solid rate and am looking for some staking in order to be able to play that game whenever I've got the time and to play it fearlessly. I do realize that staking someone for live cash games is a bit tricky because you will have to rely on my honesty. On the plus side it is a pretty save investment as there is a ridiculous amount of dead money lying on the table.

So that’s what I am looking for:

• £ 1500 staking for live cash games in Gibraltar (NL£100 – NL£200)

What is on offer:

• 50% of the winnings in those games
• I am happy to ship winnings after every session if wanted
• I post results after each session
• In case of emergency I am happy to ship back the monies (or what’s left of it ;-) )
Things to consider:
I am not looking for a two months staking. It should be seen as a longer term investment as I am obviously not able to play a gazillion k hands in a live game.
I will probably ship back the monies as soon as I have made myself a profit of £1500. So that means a maximum profit of £1500 is in for you.

I have never been staked before so all details are negotiable to your convenience. I just want to play those juicy games without scared money. I hope there is somebody of you interested because those games are running every night of the week and I am itching to make some dosh. Drop me a line if you are interested or have any questions, would be cool.


Off topic:

I have posted no pictures of Gibraltar since I am living here because my camera is fucked as well (talking about bad luck) but there was a company bbq a few weeks ago and I want you to have a look at the video. Working in Poker is fun: click


Truthans

Life Tilt

I run like god at work but when I want to go home it turns around and I run like a huge piece of elephant shit. I just managed to crush my car against a pylon in the garage of the office building. It was the same fucking pylon I crashed my car against the first time about a week ago. Before that somebody vandalized my car and kicked of my side mirror and kicked a bump in my left front wing. And the other incident was me having left my car key in the boot while I had already remote locked it. Meaning key in the car, car locked -> Sunday -> calling locksmith service -> paying €105 for 5 minutes work to open my car again. It seems as me and my car are cursed. I managed to run it down from as good as new to being a complete piece of shit in 9 weeks.

I was so happy about my "new" car and now even my old citroen Saxo that I had before would look like a fucking Mercedes S-Class in comparison.

Fucking hell. Means the money that I wanted to spend on a new 125cc scooter is probably going into the boot of my car.

Payrise in September as far as I got told. I hope they will be doubling, tripling or quadrupling my wages. I wish.

I haven't played Poker for ages cause I am working too much probably doing something like 90 - 100 hours a week but getting praised for my commitment and results all over the shop.

Anyway. I am fucking angry, annoyed and aarrggh! Could you please punch some walls for me Nathan? I am too soft and am afraid to break my hand as I seem to run like shit as soon as I leave the office. Hm...I could punch a office wall tomorrow.

Laters.