online poker

Thursday 31 December 2009

Happy New Year and a short recap

First of all I wish all of the readers to get well into the new year. Have fun while celebrating. I am toasting to a successful 2010!

To summarize what I wanted to do for 2009:

Lose 20kg
- I managed to lose 20kg by May 2009 and have regained 10kg since then. Still a good and healthy weight loss.

Run the Great North Run
- I was registered for it and had payed the fee. Unfortunately due to my move to Spain/Gibraltar I couldn't attend.

Get my Poker bankroll to $1000
- Since the move to the south I concentrated on live games which made me a almost £3k profit. My online roll hasn't moved massively but stands at about $1200 as well. from the $300 of last year. Pokerwise it was a brilliant year.

2010 aims:

My wedding is due in August and I want to lose 15kg by then.

I want to pay back the make up of my staking deal by May which is about another £1400.

My brother already ran his first half marathon in 2009 and he wants to join me for the GNR in 2010. So I want to run 2010.

Have a fantastic wedding with all the people that accompanied me through my life.

Start my MBA studies and get another salary increase that lifts my lifestyle even more.

Let's see how we do.

Truthans.

Sunday 20 December 2009

What a comeback!

After that -£290 session that I played a while ago I had a sweet return to the felt. I was absolutely card dead all night but managed to bring home a tidy £674.50 profit. Yes! At my highest point I was sitting in this 0.5/1 game with a £1k stack. Sick. Most of the profit came from two hands which I would like to put down here. Reading through will reward you with a look on a picture of my roll nicely put scene within some Christmas decoration and another picture of some fine ham in it's original packaging ;-)


Hand 1:

I'm about 230bb deep and limp/call a raise with T8cc. We are heads up.

Flop: Jc 9s 10s

Hero: checks
Villain: bets pot
Hero: flat calls

Pot: ca. £90 now

Note: From what I know he could have anything here as in the past he was relatively week when pot-c-bet and I think I have a chance to win the pot on the turn as he tends to 2nd barrel a lot and I would check/raise a lot of turn cards. Any T, club, 7 or 9.

Turn: Js

Hero: checks
Villain: bets £35
Hero: calls

Pot: £160

Note: This has to be a scare card for him but he suddenly leads really week. I don't think he has got the J because he doesn't pot-c-bet the flop with TP. I am not entirely sure about this but I have never seen him doing that with a TP hand and I am trusting my read there. Now his turn bet is polarizing his range and makes it a nuts or nothing story.
I decide that I've got outs at least and actually may be ahead and take the bargain on the turn to play a river card as I thought this board left me some room for bluffing him of something like KK or AA which he didn't want to check behind on the turn because he may be has a spade with one of them but didn't feel secure either and went for a smallish bet. He plays overpairs very straightforward normally so this might be in his range.

River: 9d
Hero: bets £105
Villain: folds

Note: Now this is the absolute bingo card for me as it crushes 95% of his range. He can only call with a J or 9 but as we know I was very certain he didn't have either of them, this was a great spot. I said before that his range was polarized and against his air range I would have show down value and could check/call the river.
I decided to go for a donk-bet here as only with that I make him fold all his pocket pairs and his flushes as well. The J fitted perfectly in my hand and I don't even think he is clever enough to rule out me having a 9 in the hand so he probably puts that in my range as well. He folds and shows me AKss for the turned nut flush.

Because everyone was begging and I got offered a fiver to show my hand, I showed him my bare pair and he went steaming.

Hand2 (Villain is same person as above. This hand happened about 90 mins later.)

I found AA utg in that hand and had the option to limp or raise. Problem with a raise is that I probably get about 4 or 5 flat callers behind and have to play that hand OOP in a big pot which is nothing I particularly wanted to do.

I thought limp/raising is a good option. My utg limp/raise range is completely unbalanced but the table was thick enough to not realize that. To my surprise a single raise from MP1 (same villain as before) (although it was a 12bb raise) gets folds and it is back to me UTG. Now I decide to play that hand strangely and only flat my AA here. Given the history between us I think he might go broke very light if I don't appear strong PF. I am more than 400bb deep in that hand and he has about 700bb.

Flop: Ac, Qc, 9c

Hero: checks
Villain: bets ca. £25
Hero: raises to £61
Villain: raises to £175
Hero: raises all in.
Villain: calls ca. £290 more

He shipped his second raise in within milliseconds and looks as if he really wants to win this hand there. I return his raise with an insta-all-in and try to look the same way as I did when I bluffed him about 1.5h ago. "We had that before, didn't we Hannes?

He ends up calling and then mucking when sees my top set. He claims he had KK with the K of clubs. I do not believe it. No one mucks the nut flush draw in a almost 900bb pot. I think he went broke pretty light there due to our history. I didn't put any flopped flush in his range.

So, what do you think about hand 1 and hand 2

5 hands later I got KK in vs the table donkeys KQo - £150 stack. Was very relaxing to sit with a 1k stack in that game.

Here are the promised pictures:



Wednesday 16 December 2009

Tuesday 8 December 2009

Bayern Munich - Juventus 4:1

Weeeeeeeeeeheyyyy,

finally some good news from my favourite team. We smashed the Italians 4:1! Even better: We did it in Turin!

Sorry Toni, but Europe League can be fun too. ...Yeah I know you only needed to play draw against us in your arena but what can you do when you get outclassed by a superior team!

Gonna put a bet on Munich now to win this cup. Should be good odds.

I am a little drunk actually. Meh...gonna play some HU Cash now and spew a bit.

Sweet night that was!

Monday 7 December 2009

Friday Night Rollercoaster & PwC

Played 8 hours cash game on Friday night. I played like a dick as I was expecting to finally have a losing session again. Have not had a losing session for my last 14 sessions, so I forced it to be one. Had a super aggro to my right who probably had stats of 80/75 so that increased my Vpip substantially as well.

Was down 380 £after 3 hours. Suddenly went on a little rush and found myself being up £140!

The inevitable monster pot was coming. I misplayed this hand so badly it is unreal. Problem is that I still don't know how to play it. I was about £700 deep when I found 99 UTG. It was the fourth consecutive hand I open raised and the two nits to my left flatted immediately although they normally fold everything. Now it comes round to a PokerStrategy.com player is plays fixed limit mid-high stakes. Hand goes as follows

Game: NL Holdem £1/£2

UTG £700: Raise £9
EP1: Call £9
EP2: Call £9
MP1 £305: Raise £55
Folds back to UTG

UTG: calls £46
EP1: folds
EP2: folds

I just couldn't find a fold here as I thought that it is just too nice of a spot to squeeze. Both EP's will raise the top of their ranges against my open and my range could have been weak anyway. I was pretty sure that the opponent was good enough to make this play. Problem is I didn't know how to proceed with the hand. If I put him on a pre flop move then I could just 4-bet shove PF as I couldn't fold to a 5-bet shove anymore. I flatted which in hindsight was probably worst thing to do.

Flop: 8s7s6c

UTG: checks
MP1: bets £75

Now, how am I supposed to get away from my hand on a board like this? I don't need to call PF if I fold such a board? Right?

Pot is £203 now and opponent has roughly 170 behind. I ended up check-raising him all in and he snapped me with TT's. Blocking 2 of my straight outs and killing my set outs. The board blanked out and I lost this massive pot. Can I check/call the flop here? A bit ugly that hand. A shame I couldn't bink. Would have loved to sit with a £1000 stack in the game.

It's all not too tragic as I can concentrate on winning again and not just expecting to be losing just because it would be about bloody time. I could have kept the losses smaller though.


My girlfriend just managed to bink a job at PricewaterHouseCoopers and is very happy. This is something that makes me very happy! Nothing better than a happy girlfriend that doesn't moan about her shit job anymore. Normal working hours for her as well. Very good! And when we move in our now apartment in January she will have a only 3 Minute walk to the office.

I am going to Hamburg for a week in January and hope to play some cash at the Casino at the Esplanade there. I think it's a NL400 game but supposedly redic soft. Not as much limping as in Gib but opponents are supposed to give full payouts very light.

As a nice finish I give you one more picture of my new bath tub. It was still kinda under construction here:

Wednesday 2 December 2009

Sooo many news!

My god, there is so much that needs writing about that I don't even know where to start. I probably forget half the things that were interesting. I left it just far too long for this post. In general I am still enjoying my job and on good days we still reach the 20 degree mark down here.

Firstly, a couple of weeks ago we had our very good German friends over from England where we left them alone with the rain and the terrible football teams of the north east. I took a few days of work, although due to extreme business went in the office for 2 hours on my holiday to get some stuff done. It was all great fun, we had a look at a few places, got smashed in the pubs one night, got smashed at home another night and basically enjoyed being together again. I really missed that. We are living about 30 mins drive away from Gibraltar at the minute which kills a lot of my social life. So having really good friends over was superb. Just like it used to be.

Other than that my girlfriend is looking around for a new job as she can't really identify with the job that she has in gambling at the moment. She has made it through a lot of stages at PricewaterhouseCoopers so far and has another interview early next week. If she can get that job she would be a very happy person and that would make me a similar happy person. Although her job has improved quite a lot during the last few weeks and it seems as if they were to prepare her for a supervisor role.
Yesterday her company had a online Poker tournament for employees only. £1500 guaranteed and only 55 starters. I was watching her table and she gave me her hands through via skype and I obviously crushed the game. We made the final table and with 5 left we were chipleader. I then missed to fire a third barrel against an obvious flush draw when I had no showdown value and gave one of my opponents to much credit for being able to 3-bet light as a resteal and I 4-bet shoved and my J9 couldn't improve against his AK and we busted in 5th for £100. Which isn't too bad for a freeroll.

As mentioned before I got a little sick of the fact that my social life actually happens in Gibraltar which is 30 minutes away from where I life. This indicates that either I always need to drive, my girlfriend has to drive or I need a taxi. This indicates that 3 pints with the mates after work just aren't possible. Now that my salary has changed significantly I managed to convince my girlfriend to move to Gibraltar with me. Now we are moving into very new building in the centre of Gib in a apartement in the 14th floor with a huge balcony. The biggest asset of the new flat ist this though:





It's a very sweet area that includes six pools and another six jacuzzi's which are just in front of our door and can be used as freely as we wish and when we wish. The balcony of the apartment is huge as well. The flat itself is quite a bit smaller than our current flat and will only have one bedroom but it is definitely enough for us. Just our guests will need to cope with the airbed in the living room from now on.
I am looking forward to Gib. We are only moving in on the 25.01.2009

Next thing to happen was a quick e-mail by good friend and staker James Keys stating "I am in Gibraltar today. Give me a ring if you get this message" - I thought "sweet" and rung him. He was on a poker trip with a mate (bowburn) and I met up with him in the San Roque Club to rail Bowburn playing the tournament he qualified for. There was some real money on the line and with only 29 starters anything was possible. Unfortunately Bowburn busted in 7th place when he pulled out a resteal shove against a weak open-raiser but got unlucky and ran into SB's QQ's and couldn't hit his 30%. 5th was £5000.

I wasn't really part of the package but enjoyed the free drinks and the free buffet that had been prepared. Had good fun with Keys on the rail and won a bet for a tenner when he said that 10 people or less would bust within an hour and I had 11 or more. At 57 minutes 10 were out and I managed to bink the last bust out to take down the bet just before time running out.
After the tourney Bowburn was quite gutted and so they didn't want to go on a lash in Gib with me and play some cash. I can understand it. I would have puked in the dealer's face several times myself. Because keys had money on the 7th and the 6 th place finisher he would probably still join me in puking.

What else is there to report. Hm... maybe some poker. Online I have been crushing my opponents and busted everyone that played against me except for one hit'n'runner so far. It is good fun as well and I feel that there is so much more reasoning behind my decisions now than about 6 to 12 months ago. I consider myself as a good poker player now. I mean I am not amazing or sick but I feel I didn't get stuck in the game. I feel I evolved and can beat a certain range of different stakes. I wish I was able to put more time in studying stuff but hey whatever. I have read a few good articles about HU play and watched more videos. Still haven't put a lot of volume in but I never really will.

The live games have gone very nicely the last few weeks and I was running golden, golden, golden. Flopping a set with JJ's against QQ's and KK's was certainly one of my favourite moments. I haven't had a losing session for absolute ages and my graph looks rediculously pretty. Unfortunately I promised myself not to post my graph anymore before I had not played 50 sessions.

Here are the current stats:

Sessions: 33
Total Profit: £2011.50
Profit since Staking: £1049.50

Speak soon

Truthans

About Me