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