Breaking even

This could possibly be the last post for this year as I am flying to Germany tonight for two weeks of Christmas vacation. Its going to be good fun with lots of alcohol and proper food. The only thing that pisses me off are the fucking exchange rates for fucks sake what a piece of shit this economy is. I haven’t got any euros left on my german accounts which means I will need to exchange Pounds. Puke.

Anyway pokerwise I missed to take down my Tuesday Pub League with a very disappointing result in the last tourney when I only needed to become second to win the jackpot money. I ran two pair into a turned wheel and was pretty gutted. On Monday night I wanted to play the PLO WBCOOP event but messed up the starting time and the tourney had already been running for an hour when I wanted to start playing. The Tuesday NL event started midnight and I played it full speed either getting a monster stack within 20 mins or bust. I obviously busted. Didn’t play the Wednesday PLO08 as it was starting far too late but Nathan took it down so congrats to him for that amazing performance and brilliant prize. The Thursday NL event started well but I then couldn’t get lucky with a Flush draw which I pushed into KK and then choose the wrong time when I tried to squeeze with AJ and run into AK and AA. Lol. But I played three sessions of heads up $1/$2 limit holdem. It’s only been around 300 hands but I am running at about 5ptBB which is far too high. I hope after 20k hands it will be around 2 -3 ptBB but we will see. I am not even sure yet how profitable this can be as the rake is an absolute disgrace at this level but I am not rolled for the $5/$10 tables. The HU SNG’s are not going too well atm but I will keep playing them as I really enjoy heads up and I think the time I spent in limit holdem really helped me to control my tilt and keep myself calm after I stacked of against some miracle. The LH 6max sessions on 0,50/1 didn’t go to well either but here I think I played well most of the time but was on the painful end of variance. That should outweigh soon if I can go on playing well. All in all it is again pretty much a break even month which starts to piss me off as I am playing break even for about 4 months now and I am sick of it. I hope I can set up the internet on my laptop when I am at my parents’ in Germany and really want to try to get some monster sessions in as my parents finally got a fixed pay monthly connection.

On the other side I think it could be time to evaluate this blog. I think starting blogging was a pretty good Idea as it made me to play more Poker because I wanted to have something to write about in this “Poker Blog” and furthermore it helps me to set myself aims and keep a little track of how I am doing. Furthermore I think my posting frequency is ok. I might even post too often? I don’t know. So I definitely want to keep this little online diary going and hope it will help me to achieve my tough aims for 2009.

Oh I almost forgot to report that I’m busto on Stars. I put my $ 4,21 on two 1p/2p cash tables and ran QQ into A2 and overplayed J6 on a 456 flop when villain flopped the straight. Lol I can’t beat 1p/2p. Now I haven’t even got $ 0,10 for one of those brilliant 360 runner tourneys left. Damn it. Donations are welcome. Lol.
I wish everyone a lovely Christmas time and a happy new year. We’ll see us at the tables in the new year.

Poker Fun

Although I decided to take down last Saturday’s DUPS tourney I busted in 11th place. I don’t know how that happened especially considering that I stacked two people within the first 20 minutes with a turned straight and 77 > AK. Think it was three pots of which I need to win at least one but couldn’t. JT < QT; KT < 99 and AQ < 77. I won’t complain as I should probably just fold JT and KT Preflop on a full table which would only leave the standard flip with AQ vs 77 but I am going to this tourney to play not to fold. Although I was pretty embarrassed by having to show JTo (which I raised UTG) when Isaac went AI with his last chips and had QT. The 1p/2p cash game was hilarious afterwards. After all those weeks I finally was able to play it with Tony at the table which had to be massive +EV for all the other players. I decided instead of just playing every hand I was going to min-raise every hand pre flop which was great. Ridiculous how often people shoved into me after my min 3-bet and I obviously had to call with 95 or whatever. I think I was in for £15 when I finally started to hit miracles: QT > A6, A2 on a JQA flop. Turn 8, River 9. Get in! And one of the best moments was me min-raising a 18p raise from UTG to 36 obv and he shoves and I snap with A2 and he shows KK. Flop: xxx and I tell him not to worry because I will hit an Ace on the river. Turn: A, River: x, lol he was so disgusted. A few hands later I completely busted him when my A6 held. This game was so funny there were hardly any hands without an PF AI. I was really sad when Matt announced to deal the last hand.

I started another Sunday session of HUSNG’s and it seems that Sunday’s are a bloody bad day for me to play Poker I played roughly 40 HU’s now and the only ones I lost were on Sunday’s. During the week I won every single HUSNG just to throw away the week’s profit on Sunday. I have to go on with them and yesterday even after losing three in a row I didn’t feel I was tilting and was able to fold AK on a flop where he obv flopped some random middle or bottom pair and moves in. Keep practising Hannes. After I ended the session I started to prepare the sandwiches for work today and after being accepted for the WBCOOP I looked a bit on Stars’ lobby to see what is going on as I haven’t played on Stars for ages. I had $ 0,31 left in my Stars account and decided to sign up for a 360 runner, $ 0,10 tourney (It’s a bargain! They do not even want rake! lol). Turned out this was the best thing I could have done after losing money on the HU’s. This is sooooo funny. I just laughed my cock of when players limp for 80% of their stack UTG just to fold to a raise. :-D Absolutely great fun. If you are playing on Stars and you need to get off tilt sign up for one of those it is absolutely hilarious. Honestly. I actually became 3rd for a return of $ 4. Lol. Massive BR increase though. Good things about this tourney are:

• Hilarious level of play (emotional ++++EV)
• Only lasts about 2h max.
• No other skill than PF hand selection involved at all. It is push or fold from the very beginning.

With those $ 4,21 I decided to try and spin it up to whatever amount. I think two buy-ins for a 1c/2c cash game should be enough. With this confidence boosting 3rd place finish I am well prepared to take down one of those WBCOOP events and win this premium tourney package. I haven’t decided yet which one of those I am going to take down but I’ll let you know asap. It starts tonight with some PLO I think.

Hans Bratwurst

Fairly good week

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

The WBCOOP is an online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers.

Registration code: 811427

On Tuesday I won my own Pokertourney back to back. It was the first time that I won a Tournament back to back since I started playing Poker. So I can tick the box for that. Looks like I will finally become a pro. Lol. Best thing about this is that about four weeks ago I talked to one other regular of this tourney that I had decided to win the last three tourneys of the league. 2 out of 3 are won and who knows? Another good thing about this is that this result moved me into third place in the leaderboard and therefore I get the chance in the last league tourney next week to have a shot at first or second place which would guarantee me something of the current Jackpot. Check out: http://www.myspace.com/the_sally_poker
This as well means that I am well in the profit zone for live tourneys since the two leagues started again. nice.

In other terms I played a few more HUSNG's. Last week I wanted to start a session being a little longer than normal but then lost seven out of eight HU's to completely fuck my mood up. I walked away from the HU's for a few days and now I'm winning again. I only played about 27 of them now and with an ROI of 19% or so I am quite satisfied. But we check again when I played 300 which will aproximately be in 2014. Man if I go on to grind the Poker as slowly as at the moment it will take me deep into retirement age before my Poker winnings will be enough to buy a 3 day Mallorca holiday. I need to play more Poker. I am going back to Germany next friday for two weeks holiday so I might squeeze in a few more hours.

Yesterday was cashgame time at 147's Underground High Stakes Poker Basement. The first 1.5 hours I created my image by limping, calling and donking off chips loads to the left, right and centre and then started playing a bit more reasonable in the middle when I caught a few hands and flops after 90 mins I was in for £25 and after about 180 mins I sat on about £40 and the rest of the night I went on donating my money to Paul. Poor student's can need it. He couldn't even afford to buy a sandwich for some random bum lately. WHAT AM I THINKING, HE HAS A BANKROLL OF SEVERALL THOUSANDS. As usual Isaac run as good as an armless table tennis player. I really feel sorry for you Isaac. And the only thing I really regret is me not folding T8 on a 79x66 board where the flop had three clubs and Paul flatted my 3-bet on the turn and then 3-bet my river bet and the only hand I could beat was a stonecold bluff. He showed me his flopped flush with QTs and I really think his value 3-bet on the river was really good especially because he only has the seventh best hand there or so and got me to donate some more chips to him with my straight.

Right I think that's it for now. I need to find out how to register for that WBCOOP thing Stars has going.

P.S. I decided to take down Saturday's DUPS tourney.
P.P.S. Why do people apologize to me when they make jokes about Hitler? Do Germans give you the impression that they would like him? So sick.
P.P.P.S "I am a turtle" looooooool
P.P.P.P.S "One guy one cup" ouch!
Pace

Major Tournament Success again!

After not having cashed in my own organised Poker tourney for 11 weeks I finally didn’t blow up when the last 5 players were left and took it down. I bubbled this tourney incredible 6 times in those 11 weeks! My Poker on the bubble is obviously absolutely awful. It was about the 426th time I made it to the bubble with a massive stack and this time I managed not to call with hand in a marginal situation when I would give another player far too much respect in making a play against me. I think the most crucial hand was that one: I raised loads from the button, cut-off and small blind so I actually had a pretty loose image although I have to admit I raised so much because I was relly getting a few nice hands. But the other players didn’t know that as I didn’t show my hands. Then I wake up with ATs in the SB when it was folded to me and I raise 3.5 BB and the very passive BB min-raises me. Here I started to convince myself that I’m ahead as I raised so much before and he just got sick of me and he could have almost anything there and already counted out what a call would be. Fortunately a call would have commited so much of my stack that decision was narrowed down to push/fold. I started thinking again and remembered that he barely raised and I only remembered him raising AA before. He even limped AQ five handed UTG. Then I found he was looking supicously like hoping I would call. I folded and he showed TT and I knew avoiding to go broke there will mean I will win. Which I did. But no worries I’m still financially down for this tourney but with the profit from my DUPS tourney win I am about break even for live tourneys since September.

I started thinking about my aims for next year and with that an interesting bet between me and my fiancée evolved.

1.) Lose 24 Kg (3.7 Stone) of weight between 1st January and 1 August
2.) Save £ 2500 of my hard earned money between 1st January and 1 August
3.) Run the Great North Run
4.) Finish the Great North Run in Under 2h:20
5.) Get my online Poker Bankroll back to $ 1500 till 1st August

Ok aims 1 – 3 are linked to the bet with the gf. We have got to buy a new car next August as my Citroen will run out of the German equivalent of MOT and because I am sick of driving 60 miles a day with this shithole of a car. If I win the bet my gf will pay half the money for the “new” used car which will probably be at a range of £ 5000 in total. If I lose I have got to pay the car alone. So I am nicely motivated and am already checking out the offers for used Audi A4’s.

Aim number one will involve going to the gym 3 times a week and get my piece of shit of a body back in shape. (I really used to be very sporty and slim and then I came to England and discovered take away food. But no, it’s not England’s fault as the most of my weight I gained before I came to England when I had two very bad injuries and couldn’t do any sports anymore for a year.) Furthermore a pretty tough drinking ban will have to be put in place for me. I only want to drink on very special occasions from 1st of January (No, being finished with work for the day will not be a “very special occasion”. Hmmm, maybe it is…). This will hopefully contribute a big part to the aim of losing weight and save money. The Great North Run is just in there to have a proper aim for all this working out.

Aim number five will be one of the most difficult. Not because I think I am not good enough to win some money from Poker, just because getting the volume in will be very hard. 3k hands a month won’t do the trick. I definitely need to get something done to have a proper weekly poker schedule. I wish I could get about 5 – 10 hours in every week. At the moment I play about 1 hour of online Poker a week which is completely ridiculous and pointless. One of the few things I miss from not being a student anymore.

Anyway pokerwise I decided to take a break from the limit tables as I realised that my limit game has quite a few more leaks than I thought. I started browsing in the limit forums on 2+2 and read quite a few interesting things. Especially implied odds and the value you can expect and how to create and play multiway pots with marginal holdings are a few topics where I should specialise in order to beat the low stakes limit tables with more than 0.9 ptbb/100. With that I started to re-read small stakes holdem by Sklansky which was a great idea because the concepts seem to get more in my head now than when I read it first time. But as I obviously cannot stop playing poker I decided to give the famous HUSNG’s a go and have to admit that I enjoy them and seem to be winning. Although the thing about winning is hard to judge as I haven’t played anything near enough of them to have a sample size. I think I played 15 so far. Lol. Anyway I will be sticking to them and see how it goes. After my studying of limit holdem theory is over and I hopefully played a few hundred HUSNG’s my plan is to hit the $1/$2 HU limit cash tables as I realised the level of play is pretty poor there. Heads up limit is probably one of the swingiest games you can play I guess.

Well. So far so good. Let’s see how things will develop.

Todo bien, todo guay

Hasta luegito chicos. El Truthansinho

Motörhead, the Premier League and the Bad Beat Jackpot

I had my best friend from Germany being over for a week holiday which meant I didn't play a lot of Poker. Last Friday we went to see Motörhead in the Carling Academy in Newcastle and I was very suprised. Motörhead was absolutely brilliant and especially the crowd commited a lot to a superb concert. I had seen Motörhead live in Germany before and it was a big disappointment as sound quality was very bad and the crowd was absolutely lame and full of retired people/pensioners. The only good thing about the concert in Germany was the support band Mondo Generator which is one of my favourite bands. As mentioned the English crowd enjoyed Motörhead so much more and the sound quality was brilliant as well as the show was. It even included a littel acoustic session with Mr Lemmy Kilmister playing the harmonica to some acoustic guitar sound by Mickey D. Fantastic. The support band was Saxon and to be honest they were boring. Typical boring, slow, uninspired heavy metal. Saxon sucks big time.
The day after we went to the Stadium of Light to see Sunderland vs. Portsmouth which was the first live Premier League match I have seen so far. We had good seats and the match was ok as well but we were a little disappointed by the lack typical fan activities. No real loud singing, no drums, nothing special. Just 40.000 people sitting and watching a match and clapping their hands when something happened. I try St. James Park next time and see if that's any better. Anyway we went on to go down Durham and getting nicely hammered. There was a brilliant Punk cover band playing in this Shamrox pub which was awesome. By midnight my friend was so pissed that they wouldn't let him into Lloyd's bar so we decided to go home. He was so pissed that he fell over in my bathroom and obviously raped my toilet with his inner liquids. When I checked if he was still alive I found him lying next to the toilet covered with the duvet and holding the toilet brush in his hand just like a king his sceptre. Absolutely hilarious. I love this bloke. Already looking forward to Germany for two weeks at christmas and getting hammered 14.5 out of 16 days. Weehaa, let the games begin!

Pokerwise nothing special happend. I played 500 hands in November for a tiny profit. A sick hand occured in my Tuesday Poker tourney. Player 1 raises from BTN. SB calls. All others fold. Flop 10c, 8s, 3s a little bit of betting follows. Turn is 10s, players get all of their chips in the middle. Player one shows 10h, 10d for a turned quadzilla and Player two shows Js9s for the turned flush with straight flush draw. The river is obviously the Qs to destroy Quadzilla and set the pub in a general "Oh my fucking god" expression. As tournamnt organiser I obviously had to honor this horrendous beat somehow and bought player one a pint of fine lager. lol. On Party Poker a hand like this is worth about $50.000

Right that's it for now. I hope to get some more hands in tonight as my girlfriend's regular sunday bath is coming up soon which gives me a quiet two hours of poker.

Laters,

Moaning obviously helps

I just wrote a post and when I was finished my laptop suddenly shut down and everything I wrote was gone. What a fucking nightmare. So this is going to be significantly shorter than the other one. Had brilliant start into November with taking down the Poker Soc tournament. I really needed that and treat it as a major success just like winning a bracelet. lol.

I give you a few hands from the tourney. I got involved a bit more early on and accumulated a few chips then lost a biggish pot when I folded KT on a KQJ board on the turn and villain showed me KQ. I was short stacked from this point onwards until I reached the final table. I had between 3 and 5 bb blinds almost for the whole tourney. With 16 left I shoved A2dd from MP and got called by A6 in the BB and luckily split the pot. Next hand was my major suck out when I shoved A7cc and got called by AT in the bb. Flop 7xx; Turn T; River 7. Yeahaa. A few hands later a russian player limps UTG. He was a complete beginner as he even needed to use a hand ranking card and always had to ask at the showdown if he won. Everyone else folds and I find KK in the bb and min-raise it. Russina player re-raises and I go AI. He snap calls with 22. lol. I flop a set and everything is fine. On the final table I knock one player out with my 88 that hold up against his 77. Only made one little bit advanced play when Isaac raised from CO and I think his range there is as wide as my bottom. So I 3-bet him with my J8dd. Everyone else folds and Isaac calls. Flop is a King and two rags. Isaac checks and I c-bet. How can he put me on AK there. I knew he read my last blog entry. lol. With 3 players left I shove AQ into a Button raise and get called from K9. My hand holds up. As there wasn't enough time to finish playing I was declared the winner as I had more than 50% of the chips. Now my name finally appears in the leaderboard on the poker soc website. Yeah. I hope I can keep this up and that November will be a good month. Oh, and guess what I didn't have AK once in this tourney. How does it happen that I moan in the blog about me not winning a tourney for ages and getting fucked by AK and the next tourney I play I win immediately and never found AK to fuck me up. What is going on?

Anyway my girlfriend is having a bath at the minute so I take the chance and get a few hands on Full Tilt in.

Hasta Luego

P.S. Below you find one of the memorable AK moments I promised in the last post. Is there any worse flop I could catch there. May AA8 or KK8. Nevermind.

Nemesis Poker Hand of the Month Award

First of all I think this is going to be little bit of a October review. In Poker terms there is not really anything positive to write about. To be honest I think it was the worst month I ever had in Poker since I started playing. Online all except one session were losing sessions. Normally my October plans were to finally move up in the limit and never look back but as Poker does not do what you wish for I ended up swinging down in October. Since the Durham Poker Society tournaments have finally started again and all the Poker playing students are back in town I started to play a little bit more live. I did not cash in a single freaking tournament I played this month with the two worst results being me busting in the first hand of the Poker soc tourney when I made fours full on the turn and the other bloke turnt Quadzilla with his pocket 66's. Chips in the middle, flip cards over, puke in the dealer's face. Obviously I was unlucky enough to have dealt that hand myself so I would have needed to puke in my own face. What a freaking tragedy. The tourney starts at 5.30 and I park my car always close to the uni building but have to pay and display for the last 30 min. before its 6.00 . In this tourney I was out at 5.35! I couldn't believe I was out before my parking ticket was due. Second bad result was last Tuesday in the tourney I organise myself. I made the final table incredibly short stacked with about 6 BB in the next few hands 3 players bust and we are suddenly already on the bubble. At this point of time I had only 3 BB left and find KK. From this moment I had a unbelievable 10 minute rush to make me the chip leader. I was now very confident to take it down. Somehow I managed to lose my whole stack within the next 15 minutes and busting on the bubble getting my last chips in the middle with AK and run it into TT that flopped a set.

This now brings me to the "Nemesis Hand of the Month" award. And the award goes to... AK.
This hand fucked me all over the place this month. I run it into KK and AA unbelievable amounts of time, could almost never win a flip and got my pairs outdrawn by it too often. Because I'm so annoyed by this hand this month I'm not gonna play the hand for the whole next month, so it can sit in the freaking corner and think about what it was doing to me. That bitch.

Here one of the classic October AK memorable moments:

...hm damn it... doesn't work with the HH as I want it... I see later what I can do. Maybe I see how those hand replayers work.

Anyway I'm not too sad as the losing amounts were normally pretty small. What brings me especially in the cash games to a point I have been thinking about for a while now. Since I am working full time now and my wage is not one of the worst, the stakes I'm playing the cash games in seem to lose their meaning to me. I don't know if it would be a good idea to deposit some more money and just step up to some stakes that start bothering me. I will have to think about that more deeply. Anyway I could need a win in a freaking tourney so I hope I run a little better in November and get a moment of succes. Psychologically this would be pretty important for me. Ok I stop crying know and look forward to whole month of not playing AK. What a bitch.

On the Golf side of life I still only managed to play Par once. I normally play the 9 hole course which is right around the corner from where I live. I am playing a 50 at the moment and this course is a Par 29. On 9 holes obviously. I am getting better but it is pretty slow. Last time I only fucked up my first drive. All the other 8 were something between average and good. Winter kicks in soon and there will be less golf I think but I definetely love this game. Although a 4 or 5 put tilts me more than my AK experiences of this month. If the "not playing AK" experiement works out in December when I start playing it again I will try to do the same with the clubs in my bag that regularly fuck my swings up. Those bitches. Well then November is knocking on the door and I look forward to it just for making this bloody October forgotten. That bitch.

Laters

Truthans

How it all began... (Part II)

On the online front things were always a bit slow. After about 8 months of only playing live I set up an account with PokerStars and deposited $50. I started with LHE and later turned to the 1 cent/2cent cash games. My bankroll double up within a few weeks but then I couldn't play anymore because at my home in Germany we had a Internet connection were we had to pay exactly what we have been using it. Like with a normal telephone line. This made online Poker a bit difficult as my parents did go mad about the trillion hours I spent online and causing loads of monthly costes only to win rediculously small amounts in the 1cent/2cent games. When I arrived in Durham I started to play more online again on Stars but after a few weeks I was sick of it and just burned my Bankroll on Stars by playing bad and silly and just having fun. This is something I nowadays only do in the live cash games. :-) People that have played with me and reading this will now nod with their heads.
In the early 2008 I set up an account with Full Tilt as they offered Rakeback and I was getting more motivated for online Poker again. I deposited $200 and started playing the NL10 tables. About 2 or 3 at a time. This went pretty well and my BR reached $450 within about 3 months. I've got to say this happend with an average of about 5k hands per month. Then the FTOPS VIII eight started and I felt like playing the 6-max NL event for $200+16 which is pretty stupid as it was half my BR but I was in the mood and had some money left and actually planned to redeposit that money if I wouldn't cash. I didn't cash and didn't re-deposit.
After realizing that I was tilting so badly when I got a bad beat in the NL cash games I started to play on the limit holdem tables on Full Tilt as soon as I was tilting. I discovered that those tables were really soft and a ridiculous amount of players were playing 40% - 60 % of their hands preflop. The problem with LH is that you obviously get outdrawn a lot more than in NL as you have not really a chance to protect your hands. But players seem to play pretty bad at the LH tables and I started winning money in almost every session I played with the advantage that LH at these stakes normally never causes you to make a difficult decision. It was a walkover for the first weeks. I stepped up pretty quickly to $0.5/$1 and was still winning. Then I didn’t find a job and needed to withdraw some money. I left $200 on the account to have the BR to grind my way back up. Since that I grinded my way back up to about $450 but for a few thousand hands I am only break even and I do seem to reach the $500 mark again at which I normally would start throwing in 0.5/1 every now and then. Anyway since the mid September I start feeling a little more motivated again and hope to put some more volume in than in the last weeks. Oh every now and then I throw in a $5 HU SNG on Absolute Poker as I have some money left there which I got for free. That means I couldn’t withdraw it. I had like 11$ left on there and invested $10 in a HU Sng which I won and since that playing 5$ HU Sng’s which are incredibly soft but I do not really enjoy them. I have only lost one out of 15 so far. Really running well there.
Anyway this is about everything that happened so far and from now on I’ll be looking forward to see if I can make some progress. Tonight is the little 5 Pound tourney which I organize in a Pub. I really want to win this tonight as I haven’t cashed in a tourney for a few weeks.
Until next time
Truthans

How it all began...

Alright, let’s try to get this blogging thing started. I have no idea for the moment how interesting this blog is going to be but may be it will develop and help me to evaluate my progress in Poker and if not then at least I have got something more to do when it is quiet at work and I can’t think of anything else to do.
I should probably start with some history about myself just to get this a little more personal I guess. My educational career started in Germany, which is where I originally come from, in a small College in a east German city called Gera. I studied Business Management and Administration there for three years and after finishing I decided that I want to do a BA in the same subjects. As this would have taken me another two or even three years to do in Germany I decided to come to England and do it within one year. (Yeah, loving England) So a good friend of mine, his girlfriend, my girlfriend and me moved over here in a two bedroom house very close to the college. The sick thing about this is how we moved. As we did not have enough money we had to organise everything very cheap. So I borrowed a van of my brother and we got all our stuff in there including a Pearl drum kit, four bicycles, a Marshall TSL 100 with a 4 x 12” Marshall 1960 box, four guitars and a full size Poker table with 12 chairs. Of course we had our normal stuff like clothing and the other less important things in there as well. As the van was only a 3 seater my mate, his girlfriend and me drove up the 1000 miles all the way through Germany, France, Belgium and England (We arrived in Dover and went to Durham). We arrived the next day at about lunchtime after about 18 hours of travel. We spend half a day in our new house went to sleep and next morning my mate and me drove the 1000 miles back to the deep east of Germany because we had to bring the Van back and pick up my girlfriend. So another 16h or so later we arrived back in Germany. Spending half a day at the old home, went to sleep, got up next morning and did the same 1000 miles one more time with my very cosy Citroen Saxo. FFS is was completely fucked after those days and it took me a few days to recover. I’m not gonna move house in such a silly style again. Anyway we arrived in England, studied for a year, got the degree and decided we like Durham. So we stayed and now work and live in Durham.
I’m 23 now and play Poker for a little more than 2 years with more or less minor success. I’ve done the usual things like reading Theory of Poker, two German Poker books called Poker Schule and Poker Uni, Nigel Goldman’s “Make a Million with Onlline Poker” which was actually the first book I’ve read about Poker and it was a present by the author who I coincidently got to know when I lived in Spain and played Poker in a pub with some mates and he asked if he could join. We played a SNG and he busted in the first hand with K9 and left five of his books as presents on the table.

I guess my biggest success was a live tournament win in Germany. The tourney was € 15 buy in and was half shootout half freezeout. Everyone had to play a 10 seater SNG first and the winner qualified for the second stage which was a freezeout then. You could play as many qualification SNG’s as you wanted but obviously had to pay € 15 for each you played. I managed to win my first table without even having had to play HU as I knocked 2nd and 3rd place out with my QQ. For the freezeout there were 30 players left and I got had a nice rush of cards and had a big chip lead by the time I was HU. In the first hand my opponent only had one BB left and he doubled up but in the second hand I got 88 which held against his 55. More than 200 players participated in the qualification SNG’s but only the top three players got some prizes. In Germany cash prizes were and still are forbidden for Poker tournaments so you always get some kind of a different prize. In this tourney 3rd place got a set of 500 Poker Chips which is completely ridiculous. Second place got a cheap digital camera and my first price was a full size Poker table with 12 chairs and a buy in for a 888 sponsored 100.000 € guaranteed tournament with max. 1000 players in the Czech Republic. The Poker table is brilliant and I love it but it is not of much use for the moment. In the old house we used it as a large kitchen table because I had a carpenter make a wood cover for it. The tournament of 888 was cancelled 24h before the start. I had already flown over to Frankfurt and stayed at a friends house and wanted to go to Czech the next day. In the night I received the call that the tourney was cancelled as some officials did not allow the Casino to put large tents on their premises to accommodate all the players as they could not have accommodated 1000 players inside the Casino. So I spent some completely useless 5 days in Frankfurt and went back to Durham. What fucking waste of money and time this was. I was considering to claim compensation but just wanted to forget about all this bullshit and didn’t do anything. Except that I only won minor live tourneys with the biggest cash win being € 150. Not very impressive. I know. This is getting really long now and I will stop here and continue this later. I can't really risk to put everyone off reading this blog within the first post. To be continued...

Truthans