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