January, oh January

What a pleasing month that is so far. I managed to play almost 3k hands at the 0,50/1 LHE tables which for me is a very good amount considering only a few more hands and it will be the month in which I played the most hands since August when I was unemployed. It still will be difficult to play 5k hands each month especially because I am only two tabling at the moment. This is necessary because I changed my style to 31/20/2.2 which is far more limit holdem like and profitable than my much tighter style beforehand. I read quite a few interesting things in the last couple of weeks and two tabling helps me to apply certain concepts and ways of thinking at the tables. I hope after about 7k hands I will be comfortable enough to 4-table. Good thing is that I am crushing the limit at the moment with 2.3 BB/100 which is a pretty good number in Limit Holdem. After a few months of breaking even my BR has finally hit the $500 mark and stands at a solid $540. I hope I can go on like this.

Something interesting for those of you playing on Full Tilt: Check out Stoxpoker and Cardrunners. You can now create an account and your Full Tilt Points count towards free videos. For 625 points you already get a week of access to the stoxpoker video stuff and for cardrunners you need 1125 for a free week. If you manage to collect 7000 FTP’s a month you get one month free unrestricted access to Stoxpoker and Cardrunners. 2500 for a free month of Stox and 4500 for a free month of CR. The best about this is that your FTP’s stay on your account. You just need to earn them but you will not lose them and your rakeback won’t be affected either. So it’s basically completely free!

In other terms I started my diet on the 06.01.2009 with 108.8 kg (17.13 Stone) of weight. Within nine days I managed to lose 3.4kg (0.54 Stone) which is a very good result. The working out in the gym will start on Friday when I get my induction. Means I will be going to the gym 2-3 times a week and still hold my diet. This should be good for a few kg’s to drop within the next months. The beginning is obviously easier and as soon as I lost my first 10kg it will become considerably harder. Furthermore I registered for the Great North Run and now have to hope that I will be entered into one of those general ballots as this would mean that I don’t have to do it for charity. In case I do not get a place in the general ballots I will have to raise between £300 - £400 to take part while the general ballot only costs me £42. Let’s hope I’ll be lucky.

I hope to get a good amount of hands in over this weekend as there will be two 3-day trips within the next two weeks where I won’t get the chance to play. One love and culture trip (lol) to Edinburgh with the fiancée and one business trip to Sweden.

Aims so far:

Weight still to lose: 20,4 kg (3.21 Stone)
Money still to earn in Online Poker: $ 960

Ok then, keep on grinding.

Truthans

First 2009 Experiences

Right I am trying to get a quick post in while I am at work as I will be pretty busy over the next few days. First of all I wish a happy new year and all the best to everyone reading this. I hope everyone can easily achieve the aims set. I had a brilliant time in Germany being drinking in the pubs till 7 am while sitting at the bar smoking. Quality country this is. I have to admit that with the current exchange rates it wasn’t a cheap trip especially because I managed to spend £ 150 on a normal drinking night out twice. I am not going to bore you with my drinking stories here as those stories are only fun to read when you were there yourself. I didn’t get the chance to play the amount of Poker I wanted to play as for some reason I could not get a connection to Full Tilt at all from my parents PC. I only played once at my girlfriend’s family’s place two tabling LH $0,5/$1 for 600 hands and a decent profit. I hope to get some more Poker in over the next days but I doubt it as do not really feel like playing at the moment. Maybe that will change when I play tonight with the lads from my pub tourney.

One story I really have to tell here is the story of my disastrous return from Germany. My flight was scheduled to leave on Sunday evening to Newcastle. In the night from Saturday to Sunday it started to snow quite heavy in Germany so we thought we start a bit earlier with the journey to the airport in Hannover which normally is a 2.5 h drive. Unfortunately everyone decided to come back from holidays on this Sunday and go from south back to north which meant that the motorway was so full of people it was unreal. Especially so many Polish people. Where the hell were they going to? Anyway the country roads could not have been used as they weren’t cleared from the tonnes of snow. So we had to stay on the motorway on which we could not go faster than 25 mph for a distance of 150km (93 miles) and sometimes everything completely stood still. This obviously resulted in the normally 2.5h trip taking 7.5 and therefore me and gf missing the plane by 25 mins. They closed airports in four or five different cities that night almost every flight that left was minimum 45 minutes late but our fucking plane left perfectly on fucking time. FFS. That meant that we had to book new flights for Monday which resulted in flying with flybe to Manchester for a sweet £440 for two tickets + £ 100 for a hotel room at the airport. Then all the things tasty and alcoholic things I had in the suitcase which I wanted to bring back made my suitcase weigh 30kg which is 10kg more than allowed. I asked the pisshead at the check in how much I would have to pay for those 10 kg and he said € 13 per Kg. Fuck my life. So I had to get rid of a few things crouching on the floor fiddling in my open suitcase full of dirty clothes and booze in front of about a trillion people. I managed to get it down to 21 Kg and he let it get through. Then he wanted to check my hand luggage which was 6.6kg too heavy so I had to get rid of more stuff as I wasn’t willing to pay their sick overweight prices. Got it down, he checked again, 11kg. This time he didn’t let me get away and I had to unpack again (everything happened beneath the check-in counter) I got it down to 9.8kg and he was satisfied. Now I had about 1 ton of sweets, alcohol (Herb liquor, Obstler), books, bread, sausages and meat to give away. I found a Taxi driver outside and made him a late Christmas present. He was quite happy. I was quite pissed off. Of course this time the flight was delayed one hour! AAARRGHHH
Quite relieved this horror trip is over now. When I go back in May I take my Saxo again and cope with the 16h drive which is still by far more convenient than a trip experience like this. Or I take the ferry, or a fucking Zeppelin or the train or a submarine or a camel or a sleigh with fucking reindeers. I won’t fly by plane.
I try to get back with something positive in the next post. £600 in the bin. Still can’t believe it.

P.S. Sorry Tony, your Frankfurter Sausages have now been eaten by a Hannover Taxi driver.