Poker tales from Monkey Island

Good morning 2011

2011-01-06T11:05:00.003Z

Happy new year everyone!

That was a pretty long break from blogging and to be fair I still don't really feel up to it but well it's a new year and new energy. I suppose my recent increase of facebook status spam activity has taken away some of my urge to spread my mental diarrhea on this blog.

I don't really want to update too much about the last few months since after my wedding nothing too interesting happened. I still work and live in Gibraltar, I still play a lot of live cash games and I still get severely drunk on weekends.

So, what are the plans for 2011? Well, since my weight was down to 89kg in June 2009 I have re-gained 15kg and after the Christmas period was now back up to 104 kg. This is only 6kg away from the heaviest I ever was. Obviously that means that 2011 is another dieting year. I definitely see myself jo-joeing it up for the next few years weight wise. The aim is to lose 19 kg in about 6 months and get down to 85kg.
Diet started this week and I lost 1.5 kg so far.

Pokerwise I will continue to re-build a proper roll and have to stop spending all winnings on stupid things like 500 gramms of silver or forex trading. Meh, I guess it's not that stupid. On the other hand it's good to spend the money before I can blow it up at the Roulette table or some of the other very attracting coin sucking machines. (new fancy Stargate slot machine here in the Casino)

Online I will concentrate on bigger tourneys between up to the $216 ones on Stars and FTP. Mainly because we will start a Sunday MTT group in our offices where a few people get together and play MTTs on the projector. Last time was quite eye-opening since we managed to play several hands super well in a group on which we each individually would probably have failed. So the aim for 2011 is a 5 figure cash and I am positive that it will happen.

Additionally I need a holiday! One that I don't spend in Germany with my family but in a place with a pool where nobody knows me. It looks like I am going to Rome with the wife in a few months.

Gonna move into a new apartment again in about 2 weeks time. We found one that is closer to the Casino (30 seconds walk instead of 50 seconds), has a second bedroom and is cheaper. Only thing we have to give up is our lovely view. Moving down from the 14th to the 4th floor. Oh well.

Well, all the best for 2011 to you guys. I hope I'll blog more regularly here again.

Truthans

Poker, Dolphins, Miss World and National Day

2010-09-18T10:53:00.008+01:00

First to the pokers. After my return I got active in the tournaments and cash games here again. In the tournaments I have been doing quite well, taking two down and cashing in another two of about 7 tournaments I played so far. Unfortunately I had swapped quite a bit of my action in order to reduce variance but so far none of the people I had action of made me any return, so I haven't made as much cash from the tourneys as I should have.

In the cash games I am currently having mixed results. Trying to tighten up my game a bit and avoid spew, which is going ok, but I can't get a lot going recently. I am about break even for cash games since my return which is a little disappointing but I think that's just a phase that I am currently going through as I don't seem to do a lot of mistakes currently. I started counting/guessing how long I haven't flopped a set anymore and the counter must be between 26 - 30 pairs now. So I am guessing that I should be flopping sets all over the shop anytime now. Please.

Next week there is the Gibraltar Poker Masters again. This time it's a 300 GBP - 10.000 GBP guaranteed event with two starting days. 20k starting chips, 30 minute clock and expected to be ridic soft like almost all tourney in this area here. I am obviously not rolled for 300 GBP tourney again yet so I am willing to sell 50% of my action at face value. You can get 10% of the winnings for already 30 GBP. First price is expected to be around the 6k - 8k mark with the numbers they are expecting. Let me know if you are interested.

Next topic from the headline is the cool dolphin tour that I finally managed to do with my wife and wanted to show you a few pictures. So if ever anyone of you guys comes and visits me, we definitely have to go for that tour.

Next thing from the last weeks was that I was out for a few beers with friends and colleagues and we ended up on the casino balcony and to our surprise Kaiane Aldorino - Miss World 2009 was also there. So I got a picture:

Furthermore there was Gibraltar National Day last week which is pretty much the biggest day of the year for a Gibraltarian. Everyone is on their feet drinking and dancing from the early morn to late a night. I had my first Sambucca at about 11:30 and was pretty damn shitfaced shortly after. Was a very good day out I have to admit.

Good old friend from Durham is coming over next week for an interview at PokerStrategy.com. I hope he can bink the job. Anyway, I am looking forward to a few beers and some poker with an old pal.

Truthans

Just married... (Part 1)

2010-09-09T16:13:00.007+01:00

It's about time to get back in the swing of blogging now. I was quite busy catching up with things here in Gibraltar in the first 2 weeks after the holiday. Yes, I am a married man now and although this must be one the most shocking news for all women out there: I am off the market. Sorry ladies.

The 2 weeks in Germany were amazing and I am going to try and give you a few details of our great experience. After landing safely in Germany on Friday 13th and then spending the weekend meeting old friends we had to start for the eve-of-the-wedding party which was scheduled for Wednesday 18.08. in my little home village.

The rain falls in Germany had basically forced us to find an alternative to our idea of putting 4 big beer tents on the field next to our house. So we had to move somewhere with solid underground. Fortunately we were able to go into the community building of our villages "Schützenverein" which was just great. I had hired a DJ, bought alcohol, bought Bratwurst and steak and our families prepared a mountain of salads.

It is a German tradition to throw old porcelain in front of the door of the future couple and for the guests that normally means a lot of fun as they know that the couple have to clean up the mess the next day. Another thing they love is to throw shitloads of metal crown caps as they are really nasty to get rid of as soon as a few people stepped on them. The cleaning the next day took ages and produced 600kg of rubbish.

The party in the evening had about 150 guests and many old friends were seen. I had bought 400 bottles of beer (0.5l). Those were gone by midnight and I had to rely on my friendly neighbor who luckily had another 100 bottles which turned out to be enough fortunately.

A lot of drinking, chatting, embarrassing games, dancing and displays of the carnival group of my mother in law were involved in the party. I very much appreciated that there were no fights or any other unpleasant surprises. Except maybe this guy falling over the massive bbq grill at 4 am.

for now I am not gonna write much more about the party but give you some pictures. Next blog entry will be more general stuff and poker stuff and then I continue with the details of my wedding, whether you like it or not. :)

It's Gibraltar national day tomorrow so I better get my red and white clothes ready. I don't want to stick out in the masses.

Freerolling

2010-08-05T14:47:00.003+01:00

PokerStrategy.com had a great promotion this week where you had to deposit at least 20 Euros on 24h Poker and rake 10 Euros to qualify for a €10.000 guaranteed tournament. The freeroll was only announced 2 days ago and the qualification period is already over. Fortunately I managed to qualify in time and will now be playing the €10.000 freeroll on Sunday with an expected starter field of less than 200 people!

That's some good value I would say. Hopefully I can ship something for a change.

Other than that the wedding is coming dangerously close and a typical "I think I forgot something" feeling is slowly arising. As my girlfriend and our families have put a lot of effort in the organisation I guess that everything will turn out to run nice and smooth.

Gala Casino Gibraltar have started offering PLO 100 games on Monday nights which sounds like fun. I guess I am going to check them out once I am back from Germany.

Talking about Germany, our flights are actually leaving on Friday 13th next so please cross your fingers that we will touch ground safely. :-/

Alrighty then.

Truthans

Disappointment

2010-07-24T15:54:00.003+01:00

Oh well what can I say. Busto. 124 players turned up and it looked to become an exciting tournament with a confirmed 1st price of 22.500 Euros. I stayed tight and patient for the first few levels and kept myself between 10 - 11k not really getting any hands except aces once. Until the fourth level I had not played a turn card yet.

It then went all pretty quickly first opening JJ in late MP getting 5 callers and a KQ9 board. Lots of action and I fold. I then lose 55 against AT on J7J, 3, A board when I called the c-bet of the guy and we checked the rest down.

Then comes the key hand. I complete the sb with KQcc with 2 limpers in the pot. On a JcTx8c flop I check raise all in to an overbet of one of the limpers. He doesn't think very long and pretty much snaps me with J7 without clubs. I got almost 70% against his hand but I manage to miss my gazillion outs and am pretty crippled from here on. Last chips go in in a BvB when I flop second pair + OESD and BD Flush draw, get snapped by TPNK again and miss again.

It was a good experience anyway and the tourney is very good value and seems to be full of beginners overplaying their hands. Hilarious stuff could be seen. A lady to my left limped UTG then called a button raise of a friend of mine. On a 855 board she check-calls a potsize bet. On the 9 turn she check calls the all-in of my colleague. She shows AT with no draws and the 77 of her opponent hold also on the river. That was a bit of a wow moment for me.

Even better than the tourney, the cash game seemed to be. I had some time watching the NL1k Euro game and it was truly outrageous. Average age at the table was definitely something between 50 - 60 years. There was a lady that would make up for a good betting game "Which parts of her body are still original". Most funny were her lips that just looked like car tyres and screamed "too much botox". Needless to say that she was wearing lots of expensive looking bling bling.

Other funny thing were 3 men that looked exactly the same, probably the perfect example for the Marbella mid-life-crisis rich boy. All 3 with grey, longish hair that was geled to the back with a cute little quiff at the end. All 3 wore pink shirts, with the sleeves pulled back a bit and wearing a huge watch on the arm. For me that was pure comedy. Only shame about the cash games there seems to be that rarely anybody buys in deep. 3 tables of NL1k and 1 table NL500 was running.

I took some 200 euros and short stacked the NL500 euro game for a while but was card dead and only shoved a random ace once, so basically blinded away some euros. The game was definitely softer than the typical game in Gibraltar.

So all in all I am disappointed with the results of this Friday as I was determined to achieve a good result. On the other side I have confirmation that the games here probably belong to the softest games you currently maybe able to find in Europe. So I'll definitely be back in September for the next Marbella Classic.

I think that was my last bit of Poker until the end of August but I will come back strong and fresh in September and will start grinding it out again.

Truthans

Getting ready + Hartmut

2010-07-23T17:28:00.004+01:00

I am getting picked up for the 700 Euro tourney in Marbella in one hour and am pretty excited. I guess this eagerness for an upcoming tourney will often result in even bigger disappointment but I just hope that my run good batteries are fully loaded. I just need to remind myself of a few things:

- don't get fancy play syndrome
- 95% of players in the field do not have the capability to do sophisticated bluffs
- When the fish overbets/shoves it's never a bluff
- Limp calling AJ+ is a standard play in a casino
- Some ranges can be wider than you think
- Stop fucking spewing
- No point in hero-calling retards
- Be aware of my opponents stack size

Ok, let's see how the supposed to be full-of-maniacs-tourney goes. One time!

Other than that I was on the Feria (fun fair) in Spain yesterday with a group of friends which was a very good laugh. Some of the games actually seemed to be +EV. ;-) I really liked the rifle shooting for shots. Whenever you hit the aim you got a shot and we had a very good sniperish guy in our group who actually managed to hit something around the 95% of all shots.

But the coolest thing was that I won a goldfish. Today the girlfriend bought one of those bowls and stones and a plant and now our new pet is making us feel like parents.

May I introduce you to our new family member, Hartmut:

A different rythm

2010-07-22T10:17:00.002+01:00

So I haven't played Poker for a while now and instead I found the motivation to do some sports again. So I joined the gym around the corner and started to work out. Currently I seem to be going to the gym 5 times a week and am finally motivated enough again to watch my eating habits a bit more.

So I guess there is a fair chance that with an ongoing strong will I should be able to lose weight again before I get married.

Other than that I feel more awake currently since not playing Poker currently which is quite logical as I am not playing to 4 am three times a week when I got work the next day. I am currently thinking that I may return to regular playing on the felt after my wedding in August.

Until then I will only try to play some special events if they occur, like this weekend in Marbella. I have been lucky enough to find two backers that are willing to stake me for the 700 Euro tourney and I hope I can pay back the trust with a good result.

Other than that Gibraltar had a somewhat funny incident that happened two day ago. Some idiot thought it was a good idea to walk unmasked into a Swarovski store on the main street with a handgun and ask for money. He actually took three hostages as well. You can image how big of a event that actually was in a small place like Gib.

What did the guy think? That he then would just cross the boarder with his bag full of not too valuable glass crystals and maybe 2k in cash? Trying such a robbery on the main street at lunch time in a tourist place like Gib? Unmasked? I thought seriously wtf?

But this morning the Gibraltar chronicle told us the story behind this mastermind of armed robbery. Here a little excerpt:

The gunman who tried to rob a Main Street jeweller's on Tuesday made a shocking statement in court yesterday: he claimed spies had implanted a microchip inside his head.

Speaking through an interpreter, Alejandro Rodrigo Parres Navarro told the judge that he was in the seventh year of a program run by an unnamed "intelligence service" and that staging the robbery was his only way out.

"My only solution was to provoke an incident, or suicide," he told the court, having first requested permission to speak. "I'm going through a very bad time."

Parres was arrested after a major armed police operation on Tuesday, during which Casemates and the northern end of Main Street were sealed off.

Beautiful, isn't it? That, of course, explains everything.

Staking?

2010-07-15T16:15:00.005+01:00

A bit gay to do another staking request here but rumor has it that there is a pretty cool event coming around.

Click

I am talking about 350 + 350 Euro event on 23/24 July (next weekend) in the Casino Marbella. The reason for this tournament being more juicy then others is obv. the time of the year. Marbella is a Holiday place and known to be the place for the wealthy people at the Costa del Sol. I have talked to some Marbella regulars and they said it is going to be pretty good value. First prize is expected to be between the 12.000 - 20.000 Euro mark.

I am obviously not rolled for the event and am checking my options for staking again. Even if I bust the tourney there is probably one of the juiciest 2/5 games going you could possibly find.

As this is only a two day event and no long-term staking I would offer to give 70% of all profits back + of course the original staking amount in case of a cash.

I could actually imagine that it might make sense to combine it with a short term cash game staking in case I bust the event. So I guess there are several deals possible:

- 700 Euro staking for just the tournament (30% of profits less buy ins for me, rest for you)
- 1500 Euro for Tournament + Cash game 2/5 (70% you, 30% for me)

- 2500 Euro for Tournament + Cash game 5/10 (70% you, 30% for me)

I guess James Keys, who staked me before is happy to vouch for my integrity.

If you can afford it, it's pretty good value imo. Let me know in the comments if you are interested or drop me an e-mail: hefeklosag(at)yahoo.de
I am flexible on the deal making btw, so whatever your idea is, just get in touch.

Day of payback would be 26.07.2010

Truthans

The way forward

2010-07-13T17:16:00.004+01:00

First of all I am sorry about the embarrassing drunk post from a few nights ago. A lot of emotional shit in there that surely does not belong in this normally up-beat blog. On the other hand I didn't feel like deleting it either when I read it again the next day. Hopefully a lesson not to post whiny bullshit when coming home drunk at 4 am.

Secondly, thanks for your comments guys. I appreciate your empathy.

But in the end it's not all that bad. I had a bit of a psychological problem. A couple of weeks ago my net winnings reached the $10.000 mark for the first time. Furthermore together with the staking money I suddenly had about $10.000 lying at my place too.

I started feeling a bit invincible and the bad things got worse and chain of unlucky occurrences hit me. I wasn't really prepared for it and couldn't cope with it. My offline bankroll is below the $1000 mark now, so I guess seeing more than $9000 disappear was quite painful. But I need to realise that I am not a professional. I don't rely on this money and to be honest I didn't even invest my own to get this money. Means there is no reason to be dragged down but some standard shit.

True is that Poker was not much fun for me lately and I actually forced myself to go and play as if I would need to in order to survive. This is of course bullshit.

I am going to take a break for a few weeks from Poker. It may most likely be 2 or 3 weeks but maybe it's going to be more. we'll see. I just want to refresh my batteries. Just as you said Marc, it's definitely going to help me.

I guess my girlfriend is going to like the next few weeks. Tonight, instead of going to the Casino I'll go down to the pool with her and drink a few beers. I may play the odd tournament once a week or so but I am not sure.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is, that all is good and I am feeling great. I come back to Poker in a few weeks.

I guess I will still be blogging regularly even without the Poker but probably about different life things.

Enjoy your summer folks, it's freaking beautiful outside I just realised.

Truthans

2 Folds

2010-07-11T03:48:00.003+01:00

So many years have gone by, so many I have spent loving what I am doing. Poker used to be a minor part in my life. I never played big stakes, big names or big locations. I ground my way up from the smallest games on Stars to the NL200 within about 200.000 hands. I always was a live player. I always was a person that found fold equity in good spots and had enough balls to use and the either way around I always made people think they had fold equity when they didn't.

A high variance game was always how I approached every hand. I always thought about "how can I win this pot". I was shown full houses when I called with A-high in polarized situations and showed bottom pairs ftw in spots when my opponent missed. I earned "wow"s for sick winning calls and "donkey" for sick losing calls.

I always loved this game. I always played it fearless. My nickname became "4-bet-light" locally.

I always loved this game.

I ran into a series of bad play, incidents and run-bad, but dominantly bad play. I have lost the spirit for the game that I had a 3 months ago.

When I was staked I had the aim to make my profit for me and the staker. I knew what I was doing at the table. Since paying off my staking deal, I wasn't working towards anything anymore.

Since that I am forgetting to look at my opponents stack sizes, giving myself fold equity where I have basically non and am unable to set myself a stop loss limit.

Currently I am one of the biggest fish in the game because I am doing almost everything wrong. I am moving in against pot committed people, Fold against the "any2"s, etc. Looking at my results since the staking and now after the staking makes me sad. As long as I was not playing my money and was willing to proof that I am a good investment, I was playing some incredibly great poker. Playing with my own money I am a spew-monkey-level-donk-idiot-gay-fuckhole-tart.

I have no idea how to turn things around. I have no idea which rules I can set myself?

There's a weird character in me. Way too much emotionality mixed with some skills that are essential for that game.

Why am I writing this whiny bullshit? You guessed it. I again almost broke. What's even worse: I managed to outplay a table full of regs tonight. Getting folds PF from QQ. Making a straight fold, etc.. All of this to lose my 600 GBP profit against the same player who I know that he always owns me and always makes me what he wants me to do.

I think I have to change something. I don't know what. I used to be the biggest winner in my regular game by far. By miles. Now, I am just donating.

What do I want to do with Poker? I breath this game. I spend about 80 hours a week with the game. I just don't want to be miserable anymore! I am not at all depending on the money.

You guessed it, I am almost broke again. Approx. 500 left (from 7.6k atone point). I paid back my staking deal and I am proud of that.

I can only wish you some proper good luck/lick. I may be off this surface. There is a fair chance that this may be my last blog post.

I love my girlfriend. To the end. It was a good trip going with you guys.

Live is fun and...fun is not Poker.

Hannes "4-bet-light" Hanusch

Joke

2010-07-09T18:15:00.003+01:00

I read the following on facebook and had to laugh pretty hard:

Breaking News in the hunt for gunman Raoul Moat in the North East: After 6 days of a stop and search police in the Newcastle area targetting those of a solid build, with many tattoos and missing teeth, the police have admitted it has been failure and will in future narrow it down to just men.

Had a monkey-tilt poker session in the Casino on the night when Germany lost. Needless to say I lost 430 GBP that night. I stormed out of the Casino when I got it in on a 775 Board with J7 vs. 97 and the river is a bloody nine 9 for a 300 GBP pot. Well actually it was the hand after when I stormed out the casino when in a BvB I limp raise QJs all-in with my last 50 bbs and flip against 99. I could not hit anything after a ATx flop.

I have serious tilt problems currently. To help coping with that I started playing Stud-Hi online. No idea if that helps but the spew doesn't tilt me as hard.

A very good friend and colleague is leaving Gibraltar next Wednesday and we are having a private cash table in the casino tomorrow with no rake taken. He pays 150 for the rent of the table and we get a dealer. This is going to be 10 regs that are battling it out. I am expecting some serious deepness and some sick pots. No shorties at the table.

Little side info, for those of you that haven't seen it yet, PokerStrategy.com is now on 2+2.

I made a video blog last friday when I was drunk. Unfortunately it's 300 mb and I failed to get it up here as there is a 100 mb restriction.

Going for a meal with the missus now and for a little party later. Have a long, long workshop to go to tomorrow and also some work on Sunday.

Have a great Weekend

Truthans

Recovery

2010-07-02T09:11:00.005+01:00

I guess it's time to update a bit about my poker exploits. Since almost going broke I managed to dodge the worst and had a slight recovery. I booked some good winning sessions and on Tuesday I won the Casino's 20 GBP + 5 GBP Bounty Freezeout with 40 runners for a nice 340 + 40 in bounties.

The investigation on the money that disappeared from my flat is still running. I do not expect any results.

I had a losing session in the cash games yesterday but still feel confident over all that I manage a full recovery. I have also a couple of bets on the quarter finals going and hope they are coming in.

Before we are getting smashed by Argentina tomorrow I would like to rub it in one more time (I am the guy with the Germany hat):

Have a good weekend

Boooom!!!

2010-06-28T10:40:00.005+01:00

Booom! Bosh! Bang! In your face!!!

What an incredibly exciting match that was. Another one that will go into the history books. Such a joy to see how completely and utterly we outclassed this extremely lame English squad. Any English person trying to rectify their horrible performance by hiding behind the, admittedly bad, referee decision, is just lying to himself.

A little bit more clever in front of the goal and England should have been trailing by 4 goals already at that time.

I watched the game in a sports bar in Gibraltar. Approx. 200 people there of which 30 where our German group. Needless to say that we were the only 30 in the pub that had an enjoyable Sunday afternoon. :-) We were very loud and it was a pleasure to rub salt into the wounds.

Btw, the ball clearly wasn't in:

Until the quarter final I will enjoy this victory every day very excessively. I am currently wearing my German shirt at work so I can rub it in without saying something. Gonna do an expanded office walk today I guess and visit every desk that has an English person sitting behind.

I don't even care if we bust 5-0 against Argentina in the quarters. Yesterday's victory was all I could have asked for. For me the World Cup is a massive success already regardless from the results to come.

Good Bye (England)

Truthans

Germany vs. England

2010-06-24T10:48:00.005+01:00

Although we struggled a bit to beat Ghana we fortunately managed to win our group with 6 points. The constellation has it that Germany will face England in the k.o. stage of the last 16.

Of course Germany vs. England are matches with a big history that created a lot of tales that are still being told by those that witnessed. I know that Germany is probably the team that injects any England player the most motivation possible but I also know that there are possibilities of some England players shitting their pants already with the prospect of busting out a World Cup yet again against the German Tanks.

The German team has a lot less of this "tank" cliche nowadays than in the 90's and I think we actually have some pretty fine football players in our squad, which means that I don't think it's going to be as much of a fight as 1990 for example. But maybe I am wrong.

For me this match is very special as of course, first of all I am a proud German and a huge football fan but secondly because I lived in England for a while and have a slightly emotional connection to the country and the people. I am so excited about this match already it's unreal. I am so glad that it will likely go over 120 minutes because I really want to suck in every minute of the upcoming penalty defeat that Germany will put on England. :-)

I guess if Germany wins I need a day of on the Monday after.

Bring it on!

Maybe today?

2010-06-23T09:00:00.004+01:00

After Moritz "Trader" Schmejkal was unable to beat his opponent and came 2nd in the HU Championship event, PokerStrategy.com has another hope at the tables:

Team PokerStrategy.com Pro Konstantin "BongBob" Bücherl made the Final Table of the $10k PLH Championship Event. With 7 players left he is currently the chip leader.

GL, GL, GL to him!

Good Luck

2010-06-21T12:28:00.003+01:00

Good luck to Moritz "Trader" Schmejkal a Online High Stakes SNG player and PokerStrategy.com member who made the final of the $10k HU Championship. Ship it Moritz!

Btw, I am not broke yet but it's getting very tight now. Will updaate later in the week.

I may be broke tonight

2010-06-18T10:07:00.004+01:00

Have a lot to talk about but haven't got time currently. I was back in Germany for the first time within almost a year and ate a ridiculous amount of Bratwurst.

Nasty Events:

2.5k GBP stolen from my home
1.25k GBP lost in a NL100 session
1.5k GBP left.
Going to play NL1k in Marbella tonight. Make or Break.

I am probably broke tomorrow.

Should I go broke I probably quit Poker and the blog for a while. Maybe forever. Wish me some run good.

Happy Events:

Germany takes down the world cup.

Whiffed

2010-06-02T09:37:00.004+01:00

10.000 GBP Gibraltar Masters took place last weekend. With 75 starters the prize pool reached almost 17k GBP with 6k going to the winner. Was the highest buy-in tourney I ever played. The field was redic soft as there was a group coming from a poker club in Sevilla to play this tourney. After the 1st hand at 25/50 UTG made it 600 to go, I knew where this was heading. My whole table did not have a single capable player sitting at it. I guess the only one at my table I could say had a clue about the game at all was a super-tight female who had the look and the voice of a man.

She was running pretty bad against all the calling stations. She had a flopped straight outdrawn twice. Once to a 4 outering two pair that boated up and the other to a back door flush draw. In those moments I thought "god if I was her I would need to puke into the dealers face". I gave her looks of sympathy every time she got outdrawn.

I myself had troubles to find good spots to get something going. I am fine with playing between 10 - 25 BBs but with 25-60 BBs I was a little toothless. Deeper than 60 and I think I am fine again. Played pretty tight and just tried staying afloat with a few open-raise/c-bets. Had a weird hand with a idiot to my left in a BvB battle. I opened the SB with A3o which in hindsight is a bit gay as this guys calling range is probably 90% of all hands. On a T38 board I checked and he checked behind. 8 on the turn goes check,check. 8 on the river now makes me feel I could indeed value bet here which I did and get instantly min-raised. WTF? I didn't see him having a T or 8 and thought he may have a 3 too or some 44-66 and some random gay bluffs. I played my hand completely retarded and called off the min-raise just to be shown KT.

Our table broke and the new table was way better for finding spots for some aggressive play. I got down to 15 - 20 BB and started overshoving in good spots and kept myself afloat nicely. Then found AQs and a 12 BB stack shoved from the CO and I overshoved from BU. My AQ was unfortunately no match against A2 when I was drawing to one out for a split on the turn. Had a little comeback but then missed 18outs to get back on a 12 BB stack.

On Friday I donked off 400 GBP wasted and in frustration about a argument I had with the girlfriend. Lost some more on Roulette and the video poker. Sadly that didn't really make me feel better.

Monday I got back on the cash tables and finished 505 GBP up after 3 hours of play which made me feel better. That's it from the boring poker stuff.

The play last week went really well and I absolutely enjoyed being on stage again. At times the audience was dying of laughter and I had to wait up to 30 seconds for the laughter to calm down before delivering my next lines. I only ever did serious drama before and you don't really get any interaction with the audience going. So this was my first comedy and the interaction with the audience was sooo much fun.

We got a lot of praise and the nicest compliment anyone could get was something in the lines: "If I didn't know that you were amateurs I wouldn't realise that you are. I think there was no difference to a professionally produced show. You all were incredibly good."

There are loads of pictures but I need to get them in digital format before I can get them up here. But here is a little picture that someone from the audience took and put on facebook:

Other than that I played a lot of guitar hero and am drumming half of the songs on hard by now but am starting to struggle with some of the songs on hard. Still the game is incredibly funny.

I am off to Germany on Friday for a week and to make it interesting I am going to bring back my car to Germany. So I'll be driving and will be stopping to see a good friend in Austria who just recently moved there from the UK. Another 3k kilometer trip but at least I am going with the girlfriend so I won't be alone this time.

Next week I am going to Berlin to see "John Garcia plays Kyuss" which is going to be an epic concert as Kyuss have split up in 1995 and this project by the former lead singer is probably the closest I will ever get to see Kyuss live. Kyuss is beside the Queens of the Stone Age my favourite band and I am really looking forward to this concert. I hope that my good friend from England can make it too as that would guarantee the doubling of enjoyment. Have a listen: Kyuss - Hurricane

Gibraltar is warming up like a Sauna currently and we are starting having to use the aircon when we are going to bed. From now it's only gonna get hotter and hotter till August but that's exactly what I want with the pool area and the beaches just around the corner.

Good luck to everyone playing in the WSOP and I hope you bring home some great results. I have to look into buying some Main Event shares.

Over and out
Truthans

$10.000

2010-05-24T12:46:00.003+01:00

Despite Munich losing the Champions League final to a very clever playing Inter Milan it was a very good weekend. I crushed the game on Friday and on Saturday for almost 1k GBP in total profit. This takes my total offline poker cash game profits to 7.317,50 GBP which with today's courses is exactly $10.590,50 and I have therefore surpassed the magical $10k mark within pretty much exactly 11 months.

I guess the next mark is 100k. Well, should be doable in round about 9 years. ;-)

After testing the Guitar Hero game with the drum kit that comes with it on a party a while ago, I finally decided to buy one myself. I am quite impressed by the accuracy of this 100 Euro set. I think it's really good value. I think I spent 10hours on it yesterday and am absolutely loving it. As a former hobby "musician" and drummer, beating the easy level was pretty well... easy. I played the first few songs on medium and it's still pretty manageable. Let's see how quickly I can make it to expert. I watched some youtube stuff from a good drummer that actually really rocks the shit out this game:

Scream Aim Fire

The play is going on stage tomorrow for the next three days and my nervousness is rising but I am quite looking forward to it.

Then on Saturday there is the 10.000 GBP guaranteed Gibraltar Masters which I am hoping to take down. Shouldn't be too hard if I can run as good in the tourney as I am running in the cash games lately. :-)

Truthans

Well done me (serious brag)

2010-05-19T09:49:00.006+01:00

So today is going to be a proper poker post. I've been doing very well the last few weeks and since the end of a downswing in January I went on a sweet 5000 pound upswing. This of course means the my staker has locked up his profits and will get the reward for his trust transferred on his bank account in a few days.

Again Mr Keys thank you very, very much for the trust. I know it's not a usual thing to give money away to someone that is 1800 miles away and you have to trust the stories about the results that he tells as you can't find proof for winning or losing online.

I am currently playing exceptionally well and am full of confidence as I am the biggest poker winner in Gala Casino Gibraltar. I know it's some ridiculous bragging but I love it how the regs collaboratively sigh when they see me entering the poker room cause they know that they will have to play a lot more 3- and 4- bet pots as soon as I sit down and the quiet, limp game is over. Most of those guys feel really uncomfortable playing deep stacks while for me the potential of playing pots between 400 - 800 bb is where my edge gets huge.

I have developed a very good ability for 3- and 4- betting in good spots and would say that the spot-picking is one of my major advantages as the regs just can't get away from their standard game. Man that's really a lot of bragging now...

Time for a graph:

Btw, total profit since June 2009 is exactly: 6147.50 GBP

Had really good evening yesterday going out with friends and ending up in a sick home game with a fixed limit SkyHigh-stakes player that plays 500/1000 and 300/600 regularly another NL10k-40k player that just came second at WPT Bucharest and another NL2k reg and 3 other standard players like me. At 9:00 am we had 4000 pound on the table. The game was probably the most aggressive game I ever player as literally every hand was 3-bet and every third hand was 4-bet and there was a PFAI's about once every 10 hands.

I owned one of the high-stakers with K-high:

Schnibl0r: opens UTG to 9 pound
Truthans: 3-bets KT to 25 pounds
Schnibl0r: calls

Flop: 9,6,6 two clubs

Schnibl0r: checks
Truthans: bets ca. 38 ish
Schnibl0r: calls

Turn: 3 of diamonds

Schnibl0r: checks
Truthans: bets ca. 70
Schnibl0r: raises to 160
Truthans: calls

River: J of spades

Schnibl0r: bets ca 200
Truthans: calls

Schnibl0r: "Your six is good."
Truthans: "I haven't got a six."
Schnibl0r: Shows 85o
Truthans: Shows KT
Truthans: Wins the pot with K-high.

Schnibl0r: "Wow, did you just completely fucking own me? Man, I don't think I ever got owned as hard in a live game before."

Truthans: "I thought you got owned pretty hard in PartyPoker's big game a few weeks ago?"

Schnibl0r: "Yeah, but not as hard as this."

We were in the Casino earlier that night and it was the first time we got a PLO game going and played six-handed PLO100. Was good fun although I lost a little.

Two friends and me are probably putting some cash together and make a short trip to Marbella next week or so. It is the place for the rich people at the Costa Del Sol and they have a very juicy NL1000 Euro game going there on Fridays. So we are going to give this a shot by sharing and investing 1k euros each.

I've been doing ok online as well on PKR and started shots at NL200 which went pretty well. I hope to establish myself this year on NL200 there. Would be pretty cool as I went through NL10, NL25, NL50, NL100 just as you are supposed to. I have to admit that I always used a aggressive bank-roll-management but hey I am not 24-tabling 6-max games but I 2-table full-ring games. Btw, I finally realized that I get beaten up in six max games. I don't know why but I think I have troubles to adjust from the weak-passive people in the full ring games to the more aggressive and better players in the 6-max games. I am having trouble to bring my strengths from the live felt to the online felt anyway.

Next week our play goes on stage and I am starting to get the butterflies as we are currently rehearsing on a daily basis.

Stay cool.

Truthans

Introduction to Poker Ecology

2010-05-07T09:29:00.002+01:00

"Poker Ecology" - what does it mean?

The term "poker ecology" refers to the balanced (or unbalanced) system of:

a.) strong or weak depositing and withdrawing
b.) losing and winning players.

In this thread we will discuss a stand-alone poker room in its simplest form.

It is worth noting; that what is explained for an affiliate based stand-alone room, also applies to the skins on a poker network - so the same principles apply.

1. The Flow of Money

A poker room can be seen as an economic circuit. Deposits bring new money to the system. Money leaves the system through cashouts and rake (to be more specific: effective rake after all boni / rakeback etc.).

This is a kind of flux equilibrium, where in the long run:

Deposits = Cashouts + Rake

2. Basic Rules

I. Every Dollar that a poker room earns in rake or a player cashes out was is deposited by the players playing poker.

II. If (Deposits < Cashouts + Rake), the poker room will shrink and tables will become tougher.

III. If (Deposits > Cashouts + Rake), the poker room grows and the tables will become softer. Good players will win more (ceteris paribus).

Thus it stands to reason that rule III should be our clear goal.

3. The Strategy

To try and make sure that (Deposits > Cashouts + Rake), we have the following options:

Option 1: Lower Winnings / Cashouts - clearly no. clearly no. The attraction of a poker room absolutely relies on how much you can win there as a good player.

A poker room can only be successful if it is able to offer that to players. This means both deposits and rake must be shaped in such a way that consistently high winnings / cashouts are possible.

Option 2: Increase Deposits - clearly yes. This is the big leverage. This is the big leverage. To increase deposits means to bring in more recreational players (often called 'fish') to the poker room.

However, there is a problem; recreational players generate a lot of net deposits, but not a lot of rake. This is the exact reason why it is wrong that a lot of poker rooms measure their success and the success of their affiliates, just by measuring rake.

As a poker room, you must know that money deposited by a recreational player can leave the system in just two ways;

• Winnings / Cashouts => good - as it motivates my high-rake / high-volume winning players and thus increase their rake.
• Rake => good - as I earn money with it.

Option 3: Decrease Rake - yes this is a relevant option; however it is a little more complex in that a poker room needs rake to cover its costs and turn out a profit. A poker room therefore, needs to decide how to invest the rake:
• increase rakeback / create VIP programmes / races etc.
• increase deposits

Which is better?

We think both are important, but the clear focus should be on generating deposits. Why?

Simple, if a poker room creates more than $100 in deposits, by investing $100 in marketing / retention of recreational players; then an added value is created for the poker system. This money will either benefit a winning player (which is just as good as or better than a little extra rakeback) or be turned into rake.

This rake can in turn be invested to generate more deposits. Thus an upward spiral is created; the poker room grows and tables become softer.

4. Summary

• For a poker room to be attractive to players (especially high-rake players), they need to be able to win a lot of money there.

• To enable this situation it is necessary to attract more and more deposits / recreational players to the eco system of the poker rooms. This money will then ultimately land in either a winning player's pocket or appear as rake, i.e. the pockets of the room itself.

• The rake must be used to increase net deposits / generate recreational players.

5. Competition between Poker Rooms

Competition between poker rooms does not just mean: "Who gives the highest rakeback %?"

Competition between poker rooms, especially for high-volume winning players; means creating a better environment (good software) for players to enjoy their game of poker and also earn money (winnings plus rakeback).

There are networks and rooms where you can get 60% rakeback, however you still cannot earn more money there, as there are too few tables and these are just too tough.

On the other hand PokerStars, the world's biggest poker room; do follow the ecological principles we have described above and thus are a very good choice for many winning players.

Competition between poker rooms happens on three levels:

Level 1: Basics - Software, Customer Service
Level 2: VIP System / Loyalty Schemes
Level 3: Growth and softness of Tables

In doubt, level 3 will always be the most relevant factor in the long run.

6. How do affiliates now fit into the picture?

Affiliates are service providers to the poker operators. They generate new players and offer them services to increase their lifetime value and retention rate.

How must an affiliate be to have a positive effect on poker ecology?

The same principles as mentioned above apply:

The money an affiliate earns should be used to increase deposits. If he generates more deposits (real net deposits - no reload nonsense), then that in turn increases his earnings in the long run. Therefore, the affiliate has a positive effect on the poker ecology.

But what about classical rakeback affiliates?

Do they invest a single cent of their income to attract new recreational players to a poker room or online poker in general?

We guess you know the answer: hardly any rakeback affiliates invest a single cent to introduce genuine new players and net deposits to the eco system of online poker!

This means: a rakeback affiliate changes the shape of the equation Deposits = Cashouts/Winnings + Rake:

• more winnings
• profit of the rakeback affiliate
• no new deposits

But it even gets worse:

rakeback affiliates make sure that a winning player will hardly ever sign up directly with a poker room, or through an affiliate that is directed towards recreational players.

This means that the player mix of beneficial affiliates will have a lot of net depositors, but nearly no high-rake players. As the success of the affiliate is measured in rake, this means that beneficial affiliates will get less and less money - and suddenly, there is no incentive for the poker rooms to undertake marketing campaigns that are directed towards recreational players.

7. What can I do as a player?

• Most importantly; know about and discuss this issue! If this topic is discussed by winning players then this will ultimately have a positive effect on the poker rooms, networks, skins and affiliates.

• Ideally, you could even actively give feedback to poker rooms stating that you would prefer a better regulation of their poker ecology.

• While the system is still skewed, you can of course continue to look for the best deal for yourself - you should not sacrifice your own profits.

The most important thing:
Stop seeing illegal rakeback affiliates as 'player advocates'!

Giving more money to the players (in the short run) makes it easy for rakeback affiliates to act as if they were the players' best friends, while basically just abusing a flaw in the market to earn profits.

Acting against illegal rakeback affiliates is not just the right thing to do; it is also in your best interest.

If an illegal under-the-table deal offers other players additional rakeback at PokerStars, you are then at a competitive disadvantage against them. This is neither fair nor good for you.

8. "What about rakeback and bonuses in general?"

First of all, no one wants to reduce the average rakeback / bonuses a player gets. On the contrary, a fair and healthy eco-system would allow for more rakeback to be given out to players. This is because you do not have a 'middle man' in the form of a rakeback affiliate that takes his cut.

The important thing is that every affiliate should offer the same monetary incentives / rakeback to players on any given poker room. This has three major advantages:

1. Sustainability - It improves the poker room ecology.

2. Growth - It gives small affiliates additional marketing tools to attract more recreational players and prevents poaching that reduces the margins of those who bring in recreational players.

3. Fairness - Last but not least: It is just fair if every player on a poker room gets the same monetary incentives.

What I forgot to mention

2010-05-05T11:44:00.003+01:00

Congratulations to Tobias "PokerNoob" Reinkemeier for taking down the EPT Monte Carlo High Roller event and the € 956.000 first prize. At PokerStrategy.com we have been expecting this for a while as he kept performing well in a lot of EPT events and we are actually pretty sure he can be named in the same sentence as a Jason Mercier, ElkY or Timex.

All the anticipation and then he waited till the very last event of the EPT season. Well, I have a feeling that Tobias could have a $3 Million year. We'll see what happens in Vegas.

Truthans

Official Poster

2010-05-03T18:58:00.004+01:00

One more time

2010-05-01T10:58:00.002+01:00

Once again Team PokerStrategy.com pro Tobias "Pokernoob" Reinkemeier has made the final table of a EPT High Roller event. He is currently 3rd in chips with 8 people left in the tourney at EPT Monte Carlo.

I hope he is going to shp it this time.

You can find the live stream here:

http://www.pokerstars.tv/poker-video-5156-eptlive.html

147_star is a sick man

2010-04-26T10:12:00.003+01:00

Massive, massive congrats mate!

Showing off

2010-04-23T08:28:00.009+01:00

My Wedding is getting closer and is only 4 months down the line. With the proximity of this event now I started getting nervous about a lot of things. In the end it's a big decision which in the ideal case will be made affecting the rest of your life.

I guess it's very normal that you ask yourself questions about the future. What's more important is that you come to the right conclusions. I am feeling very happy about my wedding and am looking forward to the event. Organisation has gone relatively smooth so far.

I still hope that some of the family members that I had to invite won't confirm attendance so I could invite a few more friends. Fuck family, seriously. ;-)

I have set a deadline for end of May for confirming attendance, so whoever hasn't done so by then will have to stay at home.

Following are a few pictures from the Apartment we moved into in January. All except the rock view pic are taken from my balcony, so yeah, nice view!

Today I am going to present some pictures which I promised for ages and some other real life info.

Very just notice about my recent poker exploits: I am running very good at the moment and am making constant profits. What worries me little is that I made some seriously bad decisions in the last few sessions and still came of good. I think my decision making is a bit flawed currently due to some serious run good. I would be way out of make up if every time my goes in way behind I could prove my suck out skills.

Most horrible thing I did recently when drunk was 5-bet shoving 73s from the SB about 450bb deep. Got snapped by AKo and couldn't improve. Since that happened I am playing better again. Hope I can keep this up.

Yesterday I flopped top two pair twice, check-raised it All-in twice, run into a flopped straight twice and hit my Fullhouse re-draw twice.

150 GBP and I am out of make up and can ship back the staking money + profit. I hope the run good continues for another 17 years.

A little change happened in the Job. I changed from being the Executive Assistant for the Head of Finance to be the Executive Assistant of the big boss CEO and topics I am working on currently are massively interesting and more Poker related.

Network ecology is a new favorite topic of mine and I think I want to publish some stuff here in the near future.

Plans for this weekend include to see a good band tonight and get shitfaced, tomorrow going to the pool, swimming, reading, drinking champagne.

Life is good. I mean seriously, life is awesome.

The new rising star of Gibraltar

2010-04-06T13:25:00.006+01:00

Again I did let some time pass before updating about some real life topics but in this post I am going to bring you up-to-date about my new old hobby. Back in the days when I lived in Germany I used to be part in a drama group since I was 13 years old. In my last school year it was my big aim to become a professional actor and I wanted to study performing arts in Germany.

But then I wet my pants because being an ugly actor is kinda tough business today. You can be pretty and be a bad actor and have a chance, but it is getting considerably more difficult if you are ugly and just an average actor. Up to this point I was not even sure if I actually may be ugly and bad.

Today I know I would have been a made man as I turned out to be good looking (incredible Keanu Reaves look-alike) and an awesome actor too. Probably as talented as Tom Hanks + Meryl Streep together.

Anyway, I decided against my glorious career and became fond of business management theories in my studies which now earned me a job behind a laptop for 98.8% of my working time. While studying I became a metalcore shouter and poker player.

Now my long-haired metalcore times are over and I had to find a new hobby for myself. Suddenly Gibraltar Radio was announcing rehearsals in the radio for a comedy play that was going to be put on stage. I took the chance and secured a big role in a play called "Holiday Snap" by Micheal Pertwee.

It is a light-hearted comedy that includes some affairs, naughtiness, alcohol and slapstick. We are rehearsing for quite a few weeks now and are making good progress. The play will be on stage at the end of May for three nights.

Acting is a lot of fun and I enjoy it but I don't regret having gone down the business way because otherwise I would not have met my soon-to-be wife.

If you want to come down and see this great piece of literature put on stage then you just need to get in touch with one of the big travel agencies that sell event packages for this. Something like two nights Hotel, VIP seats at the debut show, back stage passes and some one on one time with one of the main actors.

Should be visible just below some other irrelevant Broadway theatre packages on all known websites.

In all seriousness: If you want to come down and see it I can probably sort you out with a good deal for your overnight stay. ;-)

Even my name is spelled completely wrong. Just as it happened with every great star on the rise.

1.1k

2010-03-27T05:07:00.003Z

It's arlready fuking late and Iam xompletyely wastee and I have to write on a german keybvoard.

I played a 90/85 style tonight and just could not lose what ever I dsid. I boutht in for 25 and later another 50 (comllplety cufkin wasted). I finished now with 1.1k GBP up although I porbably still oww 200 GBP for Champaign.

Sich night.

Played the worst poker anyone could ever play.

At 3:00 am I was sittting wiht 2500 BB while the next big stack had 400 BB.

sickedidickedidu

I never ever thouht th9is would happe to me but I out-shoved this game.

2010 suddenly turned into profit now and I am right on track with my goal. Congrats to James Keys who had the trust and wiilll gett ghis rewards deservfedly!

God, God, God, How well did I ru n, 5 Hours of live poker meams about 100 to 130 hands and I won a rediculouuous a mount if noney.

Fuck
AwesineQ!

Two big pots.

2010-03-26T09:20:00.004Z

I have changed the name of this blog as I found the old name really gay for a while already and I most likely change the appearance a little bit as well. Not sure if I have enough clue how to make things look pretty. I'll give it a shot.

2010 is tough so far:

Pot 1:

EP2: Raise 6
MP1: Call
MP2: Call
MP3: Call
Button: Call
SB: Call
Hero (BB) has 99 and makes it 46

Folds to MP3 who shoves 202 in total
Button calls 70
Hero thinks "MP 3 is a aggressive good player, he knows I am capable of squeezing light, he doesn't overcall TT+, I am 100% sure I am at least flipping, If I am flipping, there is a fair chance that MP3 and Button are blocking each others outs"

156 to call into 342

Hero: calls

Board: 87T 2 Q
MP3 shows: AQo
Buttons shows: Q2s
Hero tilts... "For fucks sake how can I never win one of the big flips. Every time I win a flip lately it's for 30 fucking quid and when I lose it's for a freaking stack or more. Why am I actually flipping so often for stacks lately?"

Hero: Quickly orders a lager and a Baieys to de-tilt.
Hero: Steam-o-meter returns from 130% to 40%

Pot 2:

Pot 2:

MP 3: raises to 10
Hero (CO): calls with JTo
Button: calls
SB: calls
BB: calls

Board: 983 two diamonds

SB: checks
BB: checks
MP3: bets 10
Hero thinks: "OESD + Overs...hm... overs might not be good here, they complete too many other draws. MP3s bet is soooo weak. I want initiative in this pot and hopefully get it HU or be able to take a free card on the turn."

Hero: Raises to 25
Button: folds
SB: calls
BB: calls
MP3: calls

Pot size: 150
Hero thinks: "Oh well...7 of spades, 7 of spades, 7 of spades - one time!"

Turn: 7 of hearts

Hero thinks: "Uh yeah, the bingo card! Ship, ship, ship, Belly dance...I've been looking for freedom...Bratwurst and Sauerkraut FTW!, I am Rick James bitch and I got the fucking nuts!"

SB: checks
BB: checks
MP3: checks
Hero: bets 75

SB: folds
BB: calls
MP3: folds

Hero thinks: "no diamond, no diamond - please. One time"

River: 8c

Hero: Rolls eyes

BB: Bets All in

Hero: has 130 behind and gets sick in the stomach.
Hero thinks: "I know he is the worst player at the table. What can he have here that I've got beat? A8, K8, Missed flush, 56. FML"

130 to call into 430

Hero: calls
BB: shows 77

Hero: stands up, pukes in the dealers face and mumbles "that's so sick, that's so fucking sick. How does he...oh...fucking hell is that sick!"

Well the two stories of the big pots yesterday. I am little annoyed because winning the second one would have put me into the profit zone for 2010 and that would have been amazing after a horrible 2010 poker year so far. Now I am stuck ca. 620 quid again. Considering I was down 1500 GBP about 3 weeks ago I can probably live with that.

Anyway, my mindset is right again and I will get into profit for 2010 eventually.

It is going to be difficult to get out of make up by May as I planned. I am already way behind for all my other goals for this year.

To tell another bad beat story, I got on my scale about a week ago and it showed 100kg for the first time again since last April. So since June 2009 when I had my lowest point in weight I have regained 10kg. Now my boxers are starting to get too tight again.

Means I am on a diet. Again.

Right there is a life update due on this blog which I hope to get in this weekend. Thanks to Paul "147_Star - HSV ein Leben lang" and his encouraging e-mail I got reminded that some people actually read what I write here. So I will return to updating more regularly. The lack of updates just came from the harsh downswing I endured but I have learned to cope with it.

Next topics I need to update you about:
- Wedding
- New Apartment
- Gibraltar Amateur Drama Association
- Small change of job

Final Table

2010-01-14T09:14:00.004Z

Team PokerStrategy.com Pro Tobias Reinkemeier made the final table of the PCA High Roller Event and will go into the final day as the chip leader of the last 8 players. This final table didn't come as a surprise as Tobias had gone deep in 5 out of 6 EPT events that he played coming very close to a final table at EPT London and busting a little unfortunate in 46th place at the PCA Main Event in a set over set situation a few days ago.

He is a incredibly aggressive young player that normally is by far the most active at any table he is sitting down, which was also true so far for his appearance in the high roller event.

I have a feeling that 2010 might becoming his big year but for now I wish him good luck in taking down the event and the 576k first price.

The high roller event will be shown in a live stream which you can find here:

live stream

Play will resume at 18:00 my time, which is 17:00 UK time.

Take it down mate!

Tobias is a active video producer of PokerStrategy.com. If you are interested then click the banner near the top and get yourself signed up. You get $50 for free on any partner room you haven't signed up for yet and get access to some pretty good poker videos, articles, live coaching, forums, bonuses, rake races, etc. at no extra cost.

Sorry for sounding like a car salesman.

ShipShipShip

Happy New Year and a short recap

2009-12-31T19:07:00.002Z

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.

What a comeback!

2009-12-20T11:50:00.004Z

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:

Gibraltar Headlines

2009-12-18T12:00:00.005Z

A little Christmas Cheer

I love Gibraltar!

Miss World 2009 - Gibraltar

2009-12-16T11:32:00.001Z

Bayern Munich - Juventus 4:1

2009-12-08T21:54:00.002Z

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!

Friday Night Rollercoaster & PwC

2009-12-07T11:24:00.003Z

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:

Sooo many news!

2009-12-02T20:02:00.003Z

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

HU Cash

2009-11-11T09:45:00.004Z

I am dabbling a bit around in the online poker world. My usual game is NL100 full ring but I am getting bored by that at the minute. I tried my bollocks another time at the short handed tables but I seem to do essential mistakes in my short handed game. I am especially stacking off far too light and have a tendency to be over-aggressive. No idea why I only have those tendencies in short handed games. Just seems to not be my kind of game and I decided to give up on NL 6-max. Maybe I need to switch to the limits where they respect my raises. ;-)

As I have recently read about it in James Keys' blog I thought I give HU Cash on PKR a go as well. Because I have no real clue about that game, I watched some videos on PokerStrategy.com and decided to try my luck at NL25 HU tables. I really enjoyed it and managed to beat my opponent up in a two hour match to claim a 4 stack profit victory. I am not sure if I am tilt resistant enough though to play that kind of game consistently. I was close to implode when my TT got outdrawn by 85o but managed not to blow up after taking deep breaths for 2 minutes. I guess in HU tilt is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to you and bringing your opponent on monkey tilt is probably to most profitable way to approach HU. I have no idea. I used to play fixed limit heads up quite a bit but it is a completely different game and the experience doesn't help for NL HU games whatsoever.

I think I am going to try playing 4 or 5 other opponents on NL25 HU and see how I feel. If I feel I was in control I will switch to NL50 HU but am aiming to play NL100HU. I wouldn't mind doing some bum hunting either but I feel that this might not be necessary on PKR. I think on a site like Stars or FTP even those low stakes games must be kinda tough to beat if you don't put enough effort in.

Our long time German friends which we lived together with in the UK for a while are coming to visit us here in Spain for a week. I got a few days of work and hope to enjoy a nice long weekend. Very much looking forward to the banter the next days. Bought a bottle of Gin, Vodka and Jack Daniel's. I think total the cost was £3.50 ;-)

Just read that Robert Enke committed suicide yesterday and I am actually quite shocked. He was a superb personality and a great goalie! Also he was on a good way to be our number 1 for next year's World Cup. German football lost a great personality and sportsman. RIP.

Laters,

Truthans

Two Faced

2009-11-07T13:34:00.006Z

This post is solely gonna be about my last nights cash game session so if you can't be bothered to read about poker hands you can stop right here. I just need to write this off my mind. Go to the last 3 lines to get a summary.

They have changed the Poker director in our local Casino and since that the cash games on Friday and Saturday are starting at 8:00 pm which is good for a smooth 8 hours of play. I bought in for the full 150bb stack at 9:00 pm and didn't know yet that this was going to be one of the most volatile and mood changing sessions I have played so far.

My first table was very soft. I had an extremely nitty PokerStrategy.com player to my left who would just fold everything except the top 8% of his range. The rest of the table was either very loose/passive or very tight/passive. With loose I mean VPIP of ca. 80 and the tight players probably around 40. lol. I played pretty solid and check-raised a lot of drawy boards to take down a few £20 - £40 pots. I didn't go to show-down for while until I had pocket 3's. Three way pot, I am the PFA. A52 - I am first to act and it goes check, check, check. Turn: A - I check, check, Button bets £10 into £12 pot. I have a good read on this player and know his betting patterns. He would have bet any ace on the flop. He never checks behind on the flop with an ace. Every time he has got a hand, he over bets the pot as well. I was pretty certain he had air as he does not bet a 5 or 2. River - 6 , I check and he bets 15 in that pot. The only thing I can beat is air but I make the call and he shows me J9. Confidence booster.

Then the first hand I played for a stack. I limped KTo from early mid and call a small raise from the small blind, who is a guy that is pretty drunk and just looked and smelled like a bum. He probably went back to his cardboard-box-home after the game. Anyway, K85 flop he leads and I am raising hoping to get it in. I saw him getting it in with a lot of shit before so I am ahead here the majority of the time. He calls and shoves his last £10 on the blank turn. River is a Q and he shows me pocket QQ's. I didn't really mind as he had the better hand and I had a pretty aggro image, so I probably get QQ in against myself as well. Just a shame the lady pops on the river. I think the pot was not even that big. hm...can't remember.

Then I remember shoving my flush draw into the PFA to my left who had c-bet the flop but the turn should have been a scare card for him and I thought I had FE. He had turned the Nut Straight with a gut shot and I missed my flush outs. Stack down.

I am stuck now and open up my gambling mood. Interesting hand follows.

MP - Limp
CO - Limp
BU - Raise £5

I wake up with TT in the SB and think about 3-betting. Problem is that the button is really passive and I think it is the second hand he raised in two hours. I didn't want to fold to a 4-bet shove and decided to flat call. It goes round to the former limpers and CO suddenly makes it £35 and button snap folds.

No I am not sure what this is. I am pretty sure that he doesn't overlimp AA,KK,QQ or JJ from the CO. Doesn't make sense. He just doesn't do that. I gave him the following range: AJ+, 44 - 99. And personally the whole situation smells more like the small PP and not like overs. Other than that my hand is pretty well disguised and he can't know that I am as strong as I am. I set him all-in and he shows AKs and I hold. Stack up.

Another English drunkard comes to the table and quickly donates another £150 in 10 hands to me. Now I got a bit sick of the table as there were 3 drunk english man at the table who had fun in berating themselves and slowing the game down to about 5 hands an hour. On the second table were 4 PokerStrategy players and no one else but it was a pretty sick line up. Simon "Schnibl0r" Muenz who is a high stakes reg at a variety of games. I think he was one of the best Fixed Limit HU players around a few years ago, playing $500/$1000 but he switched to NL later where he plays up to NL40k at the minute as far as I know. Next player is a dutch guy who is our Pro Team Manager and a NL2k to NL4k reg with a couple of big tourney cashes as well. Then there is our Head of Business Development who is not a good Poker player but he doesn't give a damn about the stakes and one other guy like me on a normal wage that hasn't made shitloads of Poker so far. Everybody is completely wasted except for me and the other "normal" guy. The game plays huge and I see bottom pair taking down a £500 in the first hand when it got a call by A high. I can't believe my eyes. I don't really know how to approach the game and have to fold my huge 3-bets twice when it got 4-bet shoved onto me. We were so fucking deep. Suddenly I find 86 of hearts and PF it's only £8 to call. lol. Flop is a sweet 9,5,7 and I get it in for a £600 pot. I change back to table one.

Lose another big pot in a 3 way all-in on the turn when I got like 6:1 for my straigth draw which didn't get there. Then I win AQ vs. AK on a Qxx,A,x board. All in on the flop. Then I lose a big pot with A8 vs. J9 on a 9,8,3 board where I made a terrible call.

In the end I finish a 7 hour session £18 up. lol. FML. Could easily have been £400. I am really annoyed by myself.

Anyway, £368 profit since staking. £1330 in total.

P.S.: Big congrats are going out to my staker James Keys who shipped a 2nd place finish for approx. $100k in the Baltic Poker Festival. Sick player, who is crushing the scene at the moment.

Visitors from Germany and my Performance Review

2009-10-27T07:20:00.005Z

On Friday two mates from Germany which I had not seen for two years came to visit me for a few days. They also brought along an Australian lad who is on a trip through Europe at the moment after he stayed in Berlin for a year and will be returning back to Australia in December time. They started off their trip renting scooters to drive from Malaga to Sotogrande which is a 2.5 h drive on a scooter. Anyway the only lasted one hour before one had a crash, causing some pretty harsh skin damage all over his body and a wound that needed some sewing in the next best Spanish Hospital.
After that first bit of action they brought back the scooters and decided to hire a car instead, which turned out to have been a wiser choice. So the rest of the holiday my mate was on a lot of painkillers and vodka but he was ok. I asked for pictures and hope to get them at one point.

All three of them are really nice blokes and one of them actually is the bass player of the last band band I was active in before I left Germany more than two years ago. We had really good times going on the piss on Friday including a visit in the discos that Gibraltar has to offer which are playing ridiculously bad music.
Saturday we went to the beach for a short while enjoying the Mediterranean Sea and went to get some munch and a cash game in Gibraltar in the evening. Coming back home Saturday Night and sitting on the balcony till 5 am drinking, chatting and watching funny youtube videos and grinding the Bop-it toy.

Sunday was another day at the beach but this time we went to Tarifa to spend a few hours at the Atlantic Sea. Yes the weather and the water are still warm enough to actually go in there, so that's pretty cool. Almost November and we took a little bath in the sea. In the evening we went for a pretty cool all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant that I know, which offers insane value for money.

They did the basic tourist stuff like seeing Gibraltar's monkeys yesterday and in the evening we went for some more exclusive food at a restaurant in the Port of Sotogrande. I had really nicely cooked fillet medallions in Roquefort sauce and really enjoyed the meal.

Other big topic for me was my long overdue performance review at work, which finally happened yesterday night. It went really well and when you get told sentences like "your commitment and motivation are far beyond what is normal and you certainly belong in the top 10 of the company including senior management with that kind of performance" "that was by far the best performance I have seen of anyone in the first 4 months so far" it really slips down a treat!

I spoke pro-actively about a change in salary and asked for a 20% pay rise which I didn't get as my line manager said that it would not be enough and gave me a 33% rise in salary starting from 01/10/2009 and so he handed me as well an envelope with the money I didn't have on my paycheck last month. Clearly, I was amazed by the appreciation of my performance. My line Manager finished the meeting with the sentence: "that was the fastest and biggest (percentage wise) increase in salary that I ever gave".
So all what's left to say is: SHIP IT!

Furthermore my line manager let me know that they see me evolving into another role in the period of the next 6 - 12 months were I could make more use of my potential and promised me another meeting in 6 months time where we are going to talk about what my career path should be looking like. So next year I probably be thinking of doing a distance learning course which will go for 18 months and do an MBA in order to upgrade my current BA(hons) degree and possibly sneak into a role in our Operations Department.

You can bet that I am close to explode of pride at the moment and my motivation batteries have reloaded quite nicely. I am ready to take the next steps.

Btw, I started entering the working life last August and since then managed to more than double my initial wages. Man, my testicles are having the size of watermelons at the moment.

Cash games have been going ok as well with small, but steady profits. So even the stakers investments seems to pay off.

Ok, I'm finished bragging now and return to dancing around like the gay mantis again.

Talk soon

Truthans

A really good day

2009-10-12T16:17:00.002+01:00

First of all I am congratulating myself that this blog is now 1 year old. I think I did ok with the blog. Some posts where funny some weren't but it felt good anyway to have something like a diary going. I tried having diaries when I was younger but failed after a maximum of 4 months. I am quite happy that I did a somewhat consistent effort to post on this blog and I haven't had a month yet in which I didn't post. So, well done me. Looking forward to the next year of blogging which should bring some interesting stories. For now I am just going write down what a nice day I had this Saturday.

I woke up at 9:00 and drove my girlfriend to work. Went back home and went back to bed. I didn't really feel tired so I thought I watch a movie and decided to watch Lesbian Vampire Killers. This was good for some early hilarity as I absolutely loved the character called Fletch. Some might argue that the story is flat and in the end it is just a average horror movie parody but I actually quite enjoyed the light hearted entertainment that Saturday morning.

After that I got up and decided to play some online Poker for a few hours which I had not done for a while. The session went good and I finished 2.5 stacks up at NL100. This added to my good mood and I was already dancing around in my flat like a gay mantis wearing boxers.

Next on the plan was the match Germany vs Russia in Moscow. I watched the English live stream on a sports betting website and was blessed with a pretty ok German performance that led to a 1:0 victory on Russian soil. We played 20 minutes with only 10 on the pitch and the Russians had not been beaten on home soil for like eh... I don't know...maybe since Ivan the Horrible reigned. We are qualified directly and I am looking forward to the World Cup next year. Congratulations by the way to England as well, by first qualifying for the Cup and then by really kicking the shit out of Croatia when you lost your last match. Man, what a well deserved revenge.

Now after the football I picked up my girlfriend from work in Gibraltar and we needed something to eat. So we popped in the nearby Morrison's and I convinced the lady to buy those nice looking venison sausages with some interesting seasoning of which I can't remember what it was anymore. Back home in Spain she got the meal cooked (ye good ol Bangers & Mash) and the Sausages were delicious. Fortunately the girlfriend could not manage to eat her 3rd sausage which means that I got 4 of them. I couldn't believe my luck.

On Friday it was her birthday and I bought her Sims 3 besides some other surprises which I am not gonna reveal here. Anyway, on Saturday she then told me that if I would install the game for here I could go to the casino and play Poker. Weeeeeeeeeeee!

I was a little afraid if my laptop was good enough to run this game but I was very fortunate and the game worked absolutely perfect although the installation took absolute ages.

Having had the girlfriend sorted out with her game I grabbed a few chips from the bank roll and made my way to the oh so beloved Gala Casino in Gib. Losing a 3 way all-in PF with AK against KK and AQ saw me being down £75 early on but I couldn't fold to the 4- bet shove anymore when I got 3,5 : 1 on my call. I then moved table and dominated the other table for the rest of the night mixing up my game and getting two light 4-bets through with A4s and 9Ts. I played mostly small pots and never was all-in again that night. In the end I made a profit of £142 which is good. The other cash table had two sick hands happening:

£1100 pot - 4way all-in - Board Js9s8c
888 vs. 95o vs. 6s5s vs. As2s
Board blanks out and the set takes down the pot. Juicy!

£480 pot - 2 way all in - Board Q,5,T rainbow
AA vs. A4o (The Aces raised PF and open shoved the flop, A4o snap called)
Turn: 4, River: 4

This boosts my total profits since June to £1214.
Since staking it is £252

A really good day that was!

Report soon

Truthans

Plodding along

2009-10-04T13:33:00.004+01:00

There isn't really a lot to talk about but I thought it was time to throw an update in here. Since my last post I received the much wanted staking and got going on the live felt again. I'll talk about that later.

Other than that I had my car repaired which means I can park in public again as my boot is now locking again. Yeah! Yesterday we had 32 degrees C here which is pretty awesome for 3. October. Today it's 26 or something. Still pretty cool.

I will get my performance review at work and very much hope that I can report of the pay rise in the next post. Fingers crossed.

I am eating to much and have re-gained 5kg since being in the south. This is mostly due to the fact that my company provides free food on a daily basis and I really struggle to keep away from it. I just love those huge Ciabattas with Bacon, Brie and Avocado on them. And the hot food is nice too. Not sure how I am going to handle this problem but I should give it some serious thought before I turn back to be a fat fucking German again. Well, to be honest I just shoved a Pizza in the oven so... I think I should definitely keep hold of my supersize trousers in case I'll need them again. I wish I had the time to go to the gym.

Pokerwise I am going through a pretty awful break even stretch at the moment as you can see from the graph below. Since the staking is going I am up £110 but effort and result are standing in no relation. Played far to many hours for far too less profit.
Played like a dick/moron/donkey for a few sessions when I got back as well. Probably left about £500 on the table just by being a jerk. Anyway I have started to play better again and yesterday played some of the best Poker I have played since June. Finished about £90 up although I was down £150 after 20 mins when KK < QT. I clawed it all back and made profit. Good stuff.

Made a King high call on a 567 two spades, Td, Qc board when my action went check/call; check/check; check/call and he showed me J9 and I tabled KJ. I know this guy very well by now and couldn't do the same against a lot of other players but I just know his betting patterns so good that I was pretty sure to be good here a lot of the time. Had a good run of cards yesterday athough I have to say that I lost KK and had JJ 3 times as well but lost all of them in smallish pots. Anyway I am looking forward to my next exploits at the live felt and hope to have brought my break even stretch to an end yesterday.

Speak soon.

Truthans

Profit since staking: £110
Total Profit since June: £1072
Sessions played: 27

Looking for staking

2009-09-09T08:38:00.007+01:00

I had a few thoughts about what I am gonna do Pokerwise. When I started playing cash in Gibraltar I made about £1100 very quickly and never felt that I was particularly running good, just average. Now since my girlfriend arrived and we moved into the new flat, I spent those winnings and was left again with a live bankroll of £0.

Although I wasn't able to play for the last two months due to time restrictions I didn’t worry too much cause I knew building a new roll would be relatively easy.

Now it’s September and I finally find some time again to play some live poker which I had been looking forward to because the games here are very juicy. Unfortunately I had a bit of bad luck recently and crashed my car which sees me spending €1600 on the repair as well as I will have to spend £2000 on a new scooter because we will need two vehicles to get to work. And we sorted out some relatives with a €2500 loan which we’ll only get back at the end of the year.

Furthermore the girlfriend and me decided that 21.08.2010 will be the day we get married and I am forced to save some money towards that as well because I know some of you guys had an interest in coming to Germany for that event and I don’t want you having to eat chicken wings on my Wedding. ;-)

In conclusion that meant that I have only 2 buy-ins left per month to play live poker and that is surely not the way forward because:

1. If I lose those two buy-ins at the beginning of the month I have to wait till the next month to play again.

2. I start playing bad because I am playing scared money “If I lose my second buy in now I will have to leave and wait till next month”

I guess I already proved that I can beat this game at a quite solid rate and am looking for some staking in order to be able to play that game whenever I've got the time and to play it fearlessly. I do realize that staking someone for live cash games is a bit tricky because you will have to rely on my honesty. On the plus side it is a pretty save investment as there is a ridiculous amount of dead money lying on the table.

So that’s what I am looking for:

• £ 1500 staking for live cash games in Gibraltar (NL£100 – NL£200)

What is on offer:

• 50% of the winnings in those games
• I am happy to ship winnings after every session if wanted
• I post results after each session
• In case of emergency I am happy to ship back the monies (or what’s left of it ;-) )
Things to consider:
I am not looking for a two months staking. It should be seen as a longer term investment as I am obviously not able to play a gazillion k hands in a live game.
I will probably ship back the monies as soon as I have made myself a profit of £1500. So that means a maximum profit of £1500 is in for you.

I have never been staked before so all details are negotiable to your convenience. I just want to play those juicy games without scared money. I hope there is somebody of you interested because those games are running every night of the week and I am itching to make some dosh. Drop me a line if you are interested or have any questions, would be cool.

Off topic:

I have posted no pictures of Gibraltar since I am living here because my camera is fucked as well (talking about bad luck) but there was a company bbq a few weeks ago and I want you to have a look at the video. Working in Poker is fun: click

Truthans

Life Tilt

2009-08-20T20:47:00.005+01:00

I run like god at work but when I want to go home it turns around and I run like a huge piece of elephant shit. I just managed to crush my car against a pylon in the garage of the office building. It was the same fucking pylon I crashed my car against the first time about a week ago. Before that somebody vandalized my car and kicked of my side mirror and kicked a bump in my left front wing. And the other incident was me having left my car key in the boot while I had already remote locked it. Meaning key in the car, car locked -> Sunday -> calling locksmith service -> paying €105 for 5 minutes work to open my car again. It seems as me and my car are cursed. I managed to run it down from as good as new to being a complete piece of shit in 9 weeks.

I was so happy about my "new" car and now even my old citroen Saxo that I had before would look like a fucking Mercedes S-Class in comparison.

Fucking hell. Means the money that I wanted to spend on a new 125cc scooter is probably going into the boot of my car.

Payrise in September as far as I got told. I hope they will be doubling, tripling or quadrupling my wages. I wish.

I haven't played Poker for ages cause I am working too much probably doing something like 90 - 100 hours a week but getting praised for my commitment and results all over the shop.

Anyway. I am fucking angry, annoyed and aarrggh! Could you please punch some walls for me Nathan? I am too soft and am afraid to break my hand as I seem to run like shit as soon as I leave the office. Hm...I could punch a office wall tomorrow.

Laters.

Man am I busy!

2009-07-23T13:10:00.002+01:00

The last two weeks been great! The job is going superb at the moment and I get involved in a lot of really cool things and I am getting more and more responsibility and am starting to supervise a team and to make changes to things where I find then necessary. So cool.

Other than that I am owing you the result of my one month journey of live cash grinding. The challenge ended on Wednesday 15.July when my girlfriend arrived.
Challenge accomplished ladies and gentlemen. I am a proud little fucker now. Just a shame I can't grind as much anymore now.

Booooom:

Stats

Tournaments:
Played: 5
buy ins: £160 (rake included)
Winnings: £250
Profit: £ 90

Cash:
sessions played: 15
profit: £ 952
profit per session: £63
estimated hourly winrate: £16

Total: £ 1042

Weekend ahead

2009-07-10T16:56:00.003+01:00

I actually wanted to post some hilarious videos that I've got of myself but I need to do a couple of very annoying things before I can put them up here. So I'll do that whenever I feel like it which will probably be around 2013 I guess. Maybe earlier. Who knows.

Next week my girlfriend will finally be with me which I am very much looking forward too. Those 5 weeks where the longest period we have ever been apart from each other in over 4 years.

On the other hand that means that this is probably the last weekend were a can grind the local poker games freely as a fish in the open sea. Next week I'll go back in the tank.

I have a fair chance to actually complete my challenge and reach the £1000 pounds profit mark within the next few days. So please wish me good luck and some running good.

Casinohans

Stats

Tournaments:
Played: 4
buy ins: £120 (rake included)
Winnings: £250
Profit: £ 130

Cash:
sessions played: 12
profit: £ 731

Roulette:
sessions played: 3
profit: -£38

Total: £ 823

88,3 kg

2009-07-05T14:23:00.008+01:00

I'm still in the company flat as I haven't got any Internet in the new flat so far but that should be sorted next week. Telefonica said that they will need 4 days to sort me out. I think that's abosolutely brilliant. Yesterday I began to bring some of the heavy boxes to the flat and basically starting to move in. I parked my car in the underground garage and from there I put all my stuff in the lift and wanted to go on the floor where my flat is. I obviously blocked the lift door so I could calmly put all teh boxes from the car in it.
Eh, well, the lift didn't like that and decided not to do anything anymore. It's about 37 degrees outside and I can't get the lift moving. "you are joking me" "oh my god that can't be true!" "oh, fuck off you fucking piece of fucking technology" "MOVE YOU FUCKER"

Those are pretty much exactly the things I was screaming towards the lift getting louder at the end. So I considered my options.

1. Bring the stuff upstairs using the staircase (I live on the first floor so from the undergroung garage it is two floors up and an estimated 36 - 44 steps.

2. Bring the stuff back to the car, drive up in front of the house to the ground floor and get the stuff up to the flat using the staircase between floor 0 and floor one something between 16 to 22 steps.

3. Get the stuff back in the car and wait till the lift gets repaired next week and try again then.

4. Leave the stuff where it is, go down the road and find some kids that would carry the stuff up into my flat for a rediculous underpayment.

Well I went for option one and had gone up and down 11 times so far. Sweating like a polar bear in a sauna. One box left in the lift.
I just came back out from the appartment to go back down to get this last fucking box when I can hear "ding dong" from the lift that arrived on my floor, opening the doors and showing that it carried up the last box for me. If I would not have been that exhausted I obv would have exploded and probably puked in the lifts face but I just didn't have any energy left. It was completely silent around but it felt like I heard the lift laughing at me in ear-deafening noise.

I'll definitely get him back. At the latest that will be the first time when I come home pissed and have a wee into the corner of that cunt. I called the lift Eddie btw.

Contrary to what I said last week I didn't go and play cash that day and didn't go the next day either. I went the last two days and they have truly been exciting rollercoaster rides.

Friday started super bad again running KK into AA again! The pot was actually a 4 way all-in with two shorties involved as well that had KJ and A9s. Was an early hit. A few hands later I see KK again and make standard raise UTG and get called by UTG+1. Everybody else folded! Wtf! I flop a set, make a super weak c-bet and opponent snap folds. I make £5.50 profit in that hand.

Suddenly a second table opens and a group of young spaniards and two girls sit down at the table. Me and my mate from work instantly stand up sit down at the other table with the max buy-in of £150. UTG raises to 6 and I make it 16 with AA UTG+1. UTG calls with now about £50 behind and we see a 734 rainbow flop. The girl checks to me and my bet gets check/raised by her. I move all in and she goes in the tank and finally calls me with AK. Ship.

I am not gonna write everything down as most of you guys are probably sick of reading about a poker hand. So I am only gonna report two more hands.
I got 52cc OTB. There are 4 limpers in already and CO makes it 4. I call and the BB suddenly makes it 10. One limper calls, CO calls. How could I fold here for £6 into £35. Flop is KJ5 two clubs. This is probably the best I could have hoped for. BB bets 10 and the two other players fold. I decide to play my draw passively and flat it. Turn is blank and BB bets 10 again. I flat it again and the river is the much needed Queen of clubs. BB now checks and I decided to move all in (something I learned to do in the right spots against a certain kind of player) for about 90 quid and the spaniard snap calls with AJo. LOL. When he saw my flush he was like "oh no, didn't see the flush, oh no" Brilliant. Third pair FTW.

Now in between I lost two biggish pots with 98 and top two against the turned higher top two and with 88 on a 8KK board when the turn brought another K to counterfit my set and make AA hold up.

I am down quite a bit when the dealer announces "last three hands". In the penultimate hand I find 88 again we see a six way raised pot. I flop a set again. Cut off bets 20. I call. BB calls. UTG calls. ?!?.

I decide to donk the turn for £60 and get two calls. I move all in on the river when the board pairs and get two calls again. I show my hand and both of them muck. I win a £500 pot to bring a tidy £270 profit for the night. Man was I happy about this hand.

Yesterday was fun as well but I don't think anyone wants to read more poker stuff now. So may be later. Yesterday's profit was £75 btw.

Just if you are wondering about the title of the post. Yesterday I stepped on my scale the first time for weeks and 88,3 kg was what it said to me. Meaning I have lost ca. 22 kg so far this year. This is more than 3 Stone!

Tournaments:
Played: 4
buy ins: £120 (rake included)
Winnings: £250
Profit: £130

Cash:
sessions played: 10
profit: £599

Roulette:
sessions played: 3
profit: -£38

Total: £ 691

Pictures of my new place!

2009-07-02T11:47:00.009+01:00

Some pictures of my new appartment.

This is a bit ugly atm but it will probably become the office anyway. Definitely needs some changing.

Both of the bathrooms have huge mirrors.

I...

Love...

the terrace!!!

Yuck

2009-07-01T09:50:00.005+01:00

Still no proper post. Sorry. Had a horrible session last night with £250 down the pan. Getting 4's in vs. K's on a QJ4 rainbow board for the river to be a King. That was just 20 mins after I had 97 on a 68T board against the same player. Got it in obv and he showed J9. The turn brought the queen. From there I tilted and spewed. Last hand I played I check/raise bluffed a PF 3-bettor on a 346 board when I had basically no pair and no draw with A9 and he had flopped the nuts with 57. Disgusting.

The combination of runnig shit and playing worse can be really fucking expensive.
Wouldn't even be that dramatic if the villain wouldn't be one of the most annoying fuckholes I ever played with. What a fucking dickhead. I think I need to put in a very suitable and appropriate sentence of Mr Ptevey's blog here just because it makes me feel better: "Eddie, whoever you think you are, I am coming round to your house and pissing in your face and shitting on your wife."

aahhhh what a relieve.

Today would normally be the break from the Casino as I should get some sleep. But I will go and I will be running hot. hm... such a shame. Stayed away from the Roulette now for a while and will leave it like this.

What a shit post this is but at least I got it off my mind now. I really felt like telling somebody about how bad I ran yesterday. Hey you, somebody, thanks for listening. What you mean? You are deaf? FML.

One little positive side note before I'll go on drowning in self-pity. I found a beautiful appartment which I will be moving into next week. I'll really have to find out how to post pictures as that would make you, dear readers, throw up in the places you live in. No offense. :-) Just one detail for now: I've got a Jacuzzi!

Tilthans

Tournaments:
Played: 4
buy ins: £120 (rake included)
Winnings: £250
Profit: £130

Cash:
sessions played: 7
profit: £153.50

Roulette:
sessions played: 3
profit: -£38

Total: £ 245.50

Just Stats

2009-06-29T01:49:00.002+01:00

I'll just post some stats for now before I forget the numbers.

Tournaments:
Played: 4
buy ins: £120 (rake included)
Winnings: £250
Profit: £130

Cash:
sessions played: 6
profit: £403.50

Roulette:
sessions played: 3
profit: -£38

Total: £ 495.50

Hi Hi, He He, Ho Ho

2009-06-23T11:42:00.003+01:00

this is going to be solely about Poker and it is probably not going to be extremely entertaining either but I feel like writing a little report about yesterday’s cash session. I felt good in the evening and decided to give the Casino another go. It is so brilliant to have that opportunity within walking distance.

When I arrived there was a £20 re-buy just about to start but I gave it a miss and thought I grind the Roulette a little before the cash games start. Meh, the Roulette did some extremely weird things yesterday and after two hours I found myself down £45 which in the end I was actually quite happy about considering that I had my last 25 of the 100 I was planning to play on red just a few spins before. There was a run of 16 times a number higher than 18. That cost me some money. Sick wheel.

Anyway I got some chips changed and went with 2 stacks two the .5/1 table that was just starting. At the beginning the table was relatively tough with about 5 solid/good players and one typical Spanish short stacker who represented the value at the table. I chipped up a little at the beginning check raising FD+Pair on the flop and following this through with a bet on the turn (which I missed) to make my opponent fold TP.

Then there came a hand where I lost a little:
I call a MP (good/solid player) raise with KQs from the SB and flop is Q,5,7 rainbow. I check call a bet hoping to keep the pot small on this dry board with the only scare card being an Ace. Turn is a 3 and it goes check, check. River is another 3 and there are basically no hands that make sense that could have me beat except maybe AQ still unlikely. Who checks the turn with TPTK on a dry board like this? Anyway I lead for ¾ of the pot and get re-raised.

1. Question: Why did I lead the river? Well I thought I might be able to get a call from 88 – JJ, QJ, A7 and couldn’t see that I could be behind here on the river.

2. Question: What’s his fucking range here? I mean if you ask me there is no hand that should check the turn and raise the river on this board. There a plenty of hands that might be calling behind. I just couldn’t figure the raise. (Help appreciated)

3. How often is he bluffing here? That’s what ran through my head. Normally in a Casino a raise on the river 98% of the time is a monster/the nuts. But he was a solid player and I thought he was able to bluff here with a missed AK, AJ, AT, KJ. I am so not sure about this?!?

In the end I called and he showed me a set of 5’s. I still think that the check on the turn doesn’t make a lot of sense, except that it makes me call the raise on the river maybe? Almost any hand that calls a bet on this flop will call another bet on the blank turn. I hate the check. I still think that this could be a lead and a call with positive EV on the river as I think he is paying me off with one of the above mentioned hands and he is bluffing often enough as well. Don’t know. I am far too lazy to do a EV calculation atm. What do you think?
Some more details to the hand:

Pot Pre: £9
Pot on flop: £23
Pot on turn: £23
River: I lead for £11 (any comments on the bet sizing?)
He raises to £31
Pot: £65 with £20 to call

Would be nice if I could get some comments on this hand and what you think about my reasoning.

Shortly after that I double to about £140 (sat down with £100 at beginning) with KK’s and suddenly this game develops to become the wildest I have ever played. A Spaniard in his 40’s sits down at the table with about £300. The max is normally £150 but no one complaint. He started shoving his £300 in PF over a single raise to £4. He kept shoving, 3-bet, over betting like a hippopotamus on LSD. People obv realized that and started trying to make a hand in order to get his stack in miles behind. A French lad (my special friends) bought in for £60 and left the table two hours later with £650 !!! I mean wtf. Unfortunately for some of the other players, the Spaniard was incredibly lucky and was distributing bad beats all over the shop.

My favourite:

£600 pot

The Spaniard donk-shoves for his whole stack (ca.£800) on a 3,7,9 flop with two clubs. One player calls with his £250 remaining chips and shows KK. Spaniard shows 78 with no clubs. Turn: J; River: T !

Man the other guy was steaming.

During my last few sessions I learned how to play in that game and feel very comfortable. I played rock solid and finished the Session with a £211.5 profit.

Happy days.

Truthans

So the stats for the "busto or convertible challenge" are:

Tournaments:
Played: 2
buy ins: £60 (rake included)
Winnings: £250
Profit: £190

Cash:
sessions played: 3
profit: £216

Roulette:
sessions played: 2
profit: -£34

Total: £ 372

First Week impressions

2009-06-21T21:30:00.004+01:00

well to be honest I haven't even been in Gibraltar for the week. Last Tuesday I had my first day and started off with a busy 11 hour shift in the office. This is going to be fun over the next months. Anyway on Wednesday I only stayed in the office till lunch time and then got off to Hamburg with the boss. As we were bloody late we had to go at 250 km/h (ca. 130 mp/h) in order to catch our flight. Man was I close to throw up in his Mercedes SL. Btw the speed limit is 120 km/h (ca 65 mp/h). Well we caught the flight and I had a few interesting days in Hamburg including a 5 star meal, free drinks everywhere, a 5 star hotel and the pleasure to be driving through Hamburg in a Aston Martin DB7. Unfortnately the boss was driving and I didn't dare to ask if I could have a go.

There were a few more cool experiences I made but I need to be relatively careful with the publishing of information on the web. Actually before I went in the offices in Hamburg I had found out that the heads of some departments had googled me in order to find out who I am. Well they found a profile of me on a social networking website and went through some pictures. Party pictures never really make a good first impression. Guess that was a bit blind of me. Anyway I sorted that out and it's all good again. Was still fucking embarassing. They told me actually that they had planned to print some of the pictures and hang them on the walls in the office before I come in. I'm glad they didn't!

Well I got back Saturday morning and was allowed to drive the boss's Mercedes SL from Malaga to Gibraltar and he kept saying "come on go a bit faster, go on, gogogo"
But I was reluctant to drive at a speed of more than 210 km/h which is still 90 km/h faster than permitted. Was superb fun though.

Let's talk about some Poker. My first tourney (£30 FO) last Sunday ended just before the final table when I run QQ in KJ and the cash session ended with a £13.50 profit. I only played cash for an hour in order to get pissed with some new found friends.

Yesterday was a lot better though. I won the £5 re-buy tourney in the Casino for a £250 payday. One of my best tournament results ever and the even more astonishing thing is that I went into heads-up play with a 6:1 chip disadvantage. I fought back and kept shoving, check raising and generally outplaying my Spanish opponent until I found myself with a 3:1 chiplead. He then started to tilt and shoved every hand blind. I waited to find an Ace which came relatively quick, called him, won the hand and therefore won my first Casino tourney.

The following cash session was a bit more of a disappointment as I played very solid with four super loose calling stations at the table and managed to make some profit until I ran KK OTB into BB's AA. Yuck. 300bb down the drain. Reload. Again played solid and made profits until I flopped a set of 8's and got it all in against a set of Q's. PUUUUKE. A little later I got my Aces cracked by QJ where I wasn't good enough to fold the river although I clearly was beat. Was a bit steaming I guess. But now we are getting positive because in the last 2 hours I finally fought back and my hands held up. After being £250 down in the first 3 hours I managed to finish with a loss of £9. What a comeback! Seriously that made my night. Just imagine how profitable this game could be if you just run average! I am really looking forward to this.

So the stats for the "busto or convertible challenge" are:

Tournaments:
Played: 2
buy ins: £60 (rake included)
Winnings: £250
Profit: £190

Cash:
sessions played: 2
profit: £4.50

Roulette:
sessions played: 2
profit: £11

Total: £ 205.50

Suspicion confirmed! (Trip report inside)

2009-06-14T15:51:00.002+01:00

This is going to be my first Gibraltarian blog post while the outside temperature is about 4,788 degrees Celcius. I really want to write down some funny stories from my epic trip to Gib as my last few entries been somewhat meh.

Fml the first part of the trip was so boring that I haven’t even got a single funny encounter to write about. Last time I posted I left the flat and headed to the Port of Tyne. Well, up on the ferry, to the bar, two pints slip in, go to bed, wake up, off the ferry in Amsterdam, 7 h drive, home. I was only supprised that I didn’t get checked by the police leaving drug land (NE) in my rundown Saxo packed with shit. If they’d stopped me and said “please unpack your car. General drug check.” I would as usual have puked directly in their face. Didn’t happen. Boring.

At home I packed the stuff from the Saxo in my Mum’s Focus as she was friendly enough to give me her car for the trip. Ship the AirCon! Next morning saw me leaving towards Gibraltar. First of all through the whole lot of Germany. Fucking German's favourite hobby is driving, which means that the full motorways didn’t make for a pleasant journey.

Heidi: Hey Fritz sweetheart what are we gonna do today? Going to the beach? For a long walk? Sit in the park? Go for a drink? Meet friends? huh?

Fritz: How about driving up and down our motorways till our tyres have completely disappeared?

Heidi: Oh yes Fritz, you always know exactly what the deepest possible satisfaction is for me. I love you!

Germans. lol.

The Polish btw do the same. Only problem is that they do not have speed-limit-free motorways with 3 lanes. So they come to Germany to drive up and down the motorways, enjoying their favourite hobby together.

Arrrgh

After Germany the trip was expected to get interesting as I was going to go through the whole lot of France. Before the trip four rumours occured and had to be confirmed or destroyed.

Rumour 1: France is one of the most beautiful countries in the world!

I can confirm this. The countryside is quite inspiring and impressive. Why did we give that back in 1944?

Rumour 2: There might be French living in that country!

Sad but true. Nothing else to add.

Rumour 3: French people are different!

Again, true. When the sun goes down they are sitting at the side of the roads looking like zombies and waiting for a few frogs trying to cross the street, just so they could eat them alive. Was quite scary to witness.

Rumour 4: The French besides the English are the only other folk in Europe who do not speak any other language than their own.

Well I don’t know it of all European countries but for the French it is (I’m afraid) true again. Midnight I arrived in a place called Moullins and with the help of the SatNav managed to find a so called “Formule 1 Hotel” which in France is a chain of cheap road hotels. Of course the receptionist did only speak french and after about 14h in the car almost made me puke in his face.

“FOR FUCKS SAKE MATE, I DO NOT SPEAK A FUCKING WORD OF FRENCH! DEUTSCH; ENGLISH; ESPANOL. I ONLY WANT A FUCKING SINGLE ROOM FOR ONE FUCKING NIGHT”

Receptionist: shum lu plum le po le dans me plubilibab de bib de blub?

AAAAAARGH

After 30 mins I got a room without a shower or toilet. FML.

Unwashed and without a morning shit I went on. Oh, btw I decided not pay the horrendous road tolls France is asking for and went the whole way on the toll free roads which was the reason for seeing so much of the countryside. Haha, you don’t get my money you french people!

The rest of the trip was an absolute pleasure and was superb driving by me. No blocked roads in France or Spain. Was loving it. In Spain I went for the toll road which came as a bargain of about €70 from the very top to the very bottom. FML. (I am really starting to love the abbreviation)

Had a 2.5h kip in between and arrived in Gibraltar 9:30 this morning. Well done Hannes! Met with a lady from the company and she moved me into the flat. City centre. All new. AirCon. All good. I settled in and sorted my clothes out. Skype’d with the gf and then thought I’ll go for a walk and get myself 200 cigarettes for 9.90. Yes, not even a quid for a pack! I am going to polute the environment even worse than Middlesborough and Stockton together! Suddenly I recognised that it is fucking hot and I am terribly prepared for the bank holiday in Gibraltar tomorrow. Making my way to Morrisons and getting:

The most expensive anti-transpirant deodorant armpit roll on thingy
The most expensive normal deodorant
Sun loction - protection factor 40 – (I just realise that it is already to late. FML. Ouch)
Shaving Gel
Pasta
6 pack Beck’s (not Beck’s Vier)
2 Bulmers

I should be sorted. I am so not used to this climate that I am sitting in boxers in the flat although its got aircon. Already changed the boxers 3 times today as well. But I didn’t do that the last two days so I guess it’s ok.

30 Pound FO in my new local Casino tonight followed up by my first cash session as a local.
4 Weeks of free grinding while the gf is still in England. Hopefully I can buy the much wanted cabriolet after that. I guess the challenge for the next 4 weeks is called “the busto or convertible challenge” lol. I am taking bets if you can make a good suggestion for some odds.

Personally I think this was a relatively amusing post so I very much hope it at least made you smile once. If it did, let me know please.

Sorry for the spelling. The spell check doesn’t work for some reason.

Wish me good luck for tonight.

Gibraltarhans

Good Bye England

2009-06-10T14:12:00.003+01:00

I am sitting in on the floor in my completely empty flat and lots of memories from the past two years are running around in my head. My ferry to Amsterdam is leaving in a few hours and I will head to the port in a few minutes. I managed to get almost all the personal belongings of me and my gf in my tiny little Saxo. Well except those mountains of things that I had to sell obviously.

My last few days in England were great as I had the chance to properly say good bye to almost everyone that I met during my time here. Last Saturday I went out with my former Uni mates from Germany and some English mates who I did a little bit of music together. I got absolutely hammered and had a quality night, getting very emotional at the end.

Sunday saw me going to Aidan's Beer Festival with a mate and meeting all the quality lads from the Poker Soc there. The afternoon was pure fun with really good banter. I got slightly drunk again and said good bye to this amazing bunch of people. That day I planned to leave my car at Aidan's and pick it up next day but being the lazy fuck that I am I decided that I could still drive and did that. So glad that I didn't get caught or killed somebody.

Yesterday I said good bye to my other Poker lads from my Pub game which was very emotional as well.

I really want to point out that I feel very fortunate that I had the chance to get to know so many amazing people and therefore really got a deep insight in a different culture. Thanks for everything guys you made two years of England a lot of fun!

It is always difficult to stay in touch but it would be really nice if we could do so and hopefully see us all again on my wedding next year. Keep it up! Keep it German! :-)

I am not gonna spoil this good bye post with Poker but the blog will now move to Gibraltar and hopefully I will have some cool stuff to report. So, see you guys on here in the near future.

Hasta Luego

Truthans

SHIIIIIIIP IIIIIIIIIIIT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2009-05-05T15:24:00.002+01:00

After not getting any news on Friday I just received the good news that PokerStrategy.com offers me the position as Executive Assistant to the CEO!!! Benefits for me include:

6k more pay than I get now

Moving to Gibraltar

Moving in an appartment which is payed for by PokerStrategy in the newly built Ocean Village in Gribraltar

An estimated number of 20 Poker related Business trips per year. (including events like EPT's)

A chance to climb the career ladder in one of Poker's biggest companies.

I can use all my language skills.

300 days of sun a year.

Living at the mediterranean sea

Living in a "you can smoke wherever the fuck you want" country.

Litre bottles of Vodks for £4

Zigarettes £1.50

A free company laptop

shipshipship ship shipididipidi ship dip dip.

ship

More news later. I'm too exited now.

Regards

Shiphans

Gibraltar + Poker

2009-05-01T12:14:00.002+01:00

Gibraltar was very nice. Got there on early Thursday afternoon last week. Quickly put my stuff into the hotel. The hotel was an absolute shithole. How can you put an applicant into this hotel bwin? It didn’t even have a real window just some glass flaps which you could either open or close. It is difficult to explain. I should have taken a pic. I had to iron two of my shirts so I thought I get this straight out of the way. So I got the key for their ironing room which was another 100% disgust. With the iron not being able to create water damp it was almost impossible to get the crinkles out of the shirts. I needed the same amount of time for two shirts as I normally need to iron my whole fucking wardrobe, my girlfriends and the wardrobe of our neighbours together.
Yeah I try to earn an extra penny wherever I can. You should see me in my ironing outfit. Completely naked but wearing a far too short apron. Business is running better since I lost weight.

After that mess I had a nice slow walk through the city enjoying some 27° C in the sun. I then found the newly built Gala Casino and obviously couldn’t resist. It being 4:00 in the afternoon meant that there was no Poker on yet. So I multitabled their auto roulette tables and won myself £80 till about 7:30pm. Keeping in mind that I only small balled it with £1 bets only on the evens. In between I got a few more pints in. Gibraltar is so good for me. I bought two packs of Marlboro lights for £1.50 each and the best thing is you can smoke fucking everywhere! Paradise! So I was smoking and drinking all the time while grinding the roulette in the casino.
At 20:30 there was a £20 + £10 Bounty + £5 Rake freezeout which I played and managed to go bust in the first hand with 99 vs QQ. I’m such a massive fish. Don’t even know if there are sufficient big enough ponds left in the world to accommodate my massive fishiness. Got back to the roulette and won another £5 with small balling the roulette machine.

Went back down in the Poker room later to playe the .5/1 NL cash game. There were a few more Germans at the table and I got to talk to them. All 3 of them worked at one of the companies I was supposed to have an Interview with next day. One of them guys owned me so hard in two hands that I just felt raped. Classically outplayed by a superior player. I definitely have to admit that. First hand I call his raise in the small blind with 97ss. Flop is 9KK and I check call his potsize bet hoping to get some more info on the turn. Surely he is never betting a K there. Turn is an A and he leads for the same amount as he did on the flop. This made my alarm bells ring and I thought this is a super weak second barrel. I couldn’t really figure a hand he would second barrel there with so weak but I thought I can definitely make him fold TT or JJ and AT, AJ, AQ. What I did was shoving my stack over his bet and he snaps me with pocket AA for the second nuts. Yuck. That was a complete misread. I played really well before that hand but couldn’t really get my aggression in at the right spots. Another hand I had against a Spanish player. I raised PF with 67o and got called from the small blind. The final board read something like K5T28 no flushdraws but I still decided to triple barrel this hand and couldn’t make villain fold QQ. He was close though and needed about 5 mins to make the call. I think my river bet was a bit small to be honest. A bit bigger and I would have made him fold I think.

Then the second hand against the German. I open raise KTs from early mid. The german and another one calls. Flop 5-2-Q two diamonds. I check and it’s checked around. Turn J. I check, German bets, other player folds, I call not knowing where I really am but thinking that I am in good shape with lots of outs. River is 8 diamonds. I pretend some deliberation as if I was thinking about check-raising a flush and then checked to the German. He now put a super small value bet of about 1/3 of the pot in. And I was not expecting a bet at all as I can not figure a hand that would bet the river. From what I know he would not have checked the Q on the flop. Even if has the Q he probably checks the river behind. He never bets the J on the river. He was unlikely to have a weird two pair like J5,J2,J8. He could have checked a flush draw on the flop and bet it on the turn but I thought that this would be a strange line for him as well so I thought a flush is possible but unlikely. Only hand that makes sense is 9T. I thought there was only this hand that bets the river and everything else is a bluff. I think about making the call with K high as I didn’t want to raise in case he really has 9T but making the hero only costs me £15 and I have a fair chance of winning that pot. I decided that there is no other K there that has me beat as AK 3-bets PF, KJ checks behind, KQ bets flop and possibly checks river behind. But I figured that there were too many random aces out there that have me beat and could be bluffing there. AT, A9, A7,A6. I folded in disgust and got shown 67 for 7 high. I then played a bit tilty and played about 5 flopped OESD very aggressively but could never get there and ran in top pair or two pair each time. Left with a £ 180 loss and the terrible feeling of another disappointing session. I think I have to step away from the live games for a while as I seem to do a few fundamental mistakes at the moment. I am not Tom Dwan and should therefore not try to win every pot.

Yesterday’s game at 147’s Poker basement was a bit of a disappointment as well. I played some perfect poker for about the first 25mins and then started to blow up slowly and ended up calling AI with JT on a 578 rainbow board when I 3-bet pre from the button and Tony donked into me on the flop and I was 1000% sure he had air there. I thought I either hit one of ten outs or I’ll go to bed. Well he had AJ and I therefore only 7 outs. Didn’t hit. Went home.
Online is going break even at the moment but that’s ok. Won’t complain as I feel I am playing well. The times I get my money in behind or call of too light are getting fewer and fewer but the times when I seem to pick up bluffs well with second or third pair kind of hands seem to stay the same. I am definitely improving my game at the moment at a good pace. I might have to book a losing Poker year this year but I feel if I keep trying I will keep learning and am on a good way. If I compare how I am playing Poker at the moment with the way I played it a year ago it seems like I made lightyears of progress. But this might be an illusion that I keep projecting to myself. We’ll see.

The job Interviews went very well in Gibraltar and I am hoping to get some positive news today. Sickest thing about the Interview at PokerStrategy was that I had my first Interview with them in the morning and it went on longer than expected 2 h instead of a scheduled 1h. Good sign?
After my second Interview at bwin the PokerStrategy people said that they wanted to see me again. Good sign? So I got back there and the guy that held the second PokerStrategy Interview with me was the Head of Finance and it was the German guy that owned me twice at the Casino the night before. Ups. Bad Sign? In the second Interview I wasn’t as good anymore as in the first one but after 6 hours of interviewing someone might have some understanding for that. I was super impressed by the company and really do want this job. I am going to be sooooo disappointed if I can’t get it.

If I get positive news today. I will get hammered.
If I get negative news today. I will get even more hammered.
If I get no news at all. Well, then I go to bed at 8pm.

Truthans

Stats:

Weight lost: 17.3 kg (2.72 stone)
Weight to lose: 7.7kg (1.21 stone)

Poker

Stars: - $ 84
PKR: + $ 265
Live cash: - £ 51.5
Live tourney: - £ 122

It had to happen

2009-04-20T13:13:00.002+01:00

My visit at Aspers on Friday quickly pulled me back to ground after feeling sooo good about life and Poker for the last few weeks. I quickly busted the tourney making a terrible call with TP to find that I was outkicked. I bet and then called the shove with TP and he showed me AQ to my KQ. I got up and wished good luck to everybody when the dealer put a K on the turn and I couldn’t believe my luck and apologized to the other player. Well, Ace on the river. And I haven’t even read the book. A re-suck-out definitely hurts more than a normal suck-out as you come from the emotional high of having sucked out on somebody and therefore get smashed back to the ground from a higher point when you get re-sucked-out on. It is never over before it is over I guess.

I then played some Roulette as the cash tables had not started yet. The Roulette was good to me and made me £ 40.

I got to the cash tables and bought in for £ 120. After my last live cash session in B’ham I felt quite good about playing that game but I was clearly mistaken. I managed to stack off with 77s in the third hand I played. I am so fucking angry about the way I played that hand it is unreal. SO FUCKING ANGRY ABOUT MYSELF! Hand goes like this: Straddle to £4 is on. A few limpers join the fun. I find 77 on the button and make it £ 21 to go. Straddler calls and limper to my right calls. Q45 rainbow flop. Checked to me and I make it £ 53 basically committing myself. I get shoved on and make the disgusted call and get shown AQ. I reload for another £120 and decide to rock it up. I get small pay offs with TP hands and pocket QQ. Then lose a bigger pot with a straight to a flush. Last hand of the night was AJs. I called an UTG raise from late position. As did two others. Flop JT6 rainbow. UTG bets, one player calls I shove my £90 over the top. Player to my left calls with his last £40, UTG goes all-in as well and the other player states “there is too much in the pot to fold” and he is clearly right with that. UTG shows AJ and the other both players are showing KQ for the up and down + overs. 9 on the river to make the straights and I am going home at 1 am. I played so fucking badly all fucking night. The table was actually very nice with about 4 complete idiots at the table. One guy was in for £ 800 by the time I left. He was massively pissed and kept making gifts to people with terrible bluffs und 4th pair kind of hands. Only problem was my seat. I had all the good players (5) to my right and they kept isolating the fish nicely so I never really got the chance to get involved. I know normally its good to have the dangerous players to the right but on this table it was a weird dynamic as the 4 fish were sat next to each other on my left hand side and the other 5 capable players were sat to each other on my right hand side. I find the best position at this table is clearly the seat right after the fish. You can raise or min 3-bet lots of the time and therefore make the other nits fold and get the fish heads up.
But I could have easily made a profit at this table if I would not have decided to stack off early on and to then win it back by desperately trying to find a shoving spot. I’m such a donkey.

In B’ham I played my absolute A game and was super in the zone. Furthermore there was one big difference between the B’ham and the Aspers cash game. In B’ham the table was full of nitty students that were playing underrolled and therefore they were easy victims to run over if you are aggressive. In B’ham all night only one player joined the table for about one hour which I would call a massive fish. The style I played there fitted perfectly in the environment. In Aspers it’s the other way around. You get half the table with loose passive people that don’t care about calling a 4-bet with J9o OOP and the other half of the table is just sitting tight waiting to make a hand and trying to get paid off. I just need to change my approach next time as there is no reason to be overly creative. I should have limped a few more suited Aces and connectors or something in position in order to make a hand but when I was in position with a hand like this, one of the regs had already made a pot size raise and after the limpers being in already it was normally something between 9 and 20 quid when it came round to me. I definitely learned another lesson.

Most annoying about the 77 hand is that I just randomly assumed that I could run over the table although I was only at the table for 3 hands so I had no read or information at all at this point of time. I just should have limped behind in position flop a set or not and play the hand straight forward without getting too fruity when having no information about the table. This is not supposed to be another whiny whinge post. I didn’t get sucked out on or anything. I was just in the worst seat at the table and played terribly. So I fully deserved to get £240 stuck.

I am still positive about my game at the moment and as I am going to Gibraltar this week I will have a good opportunity to turn things around again and I promise I will! I will be spending my Thursday evening in the Gala Casino in Gibraltar probably play their £20 FO and play some £ 0.5/1 later on. Yes they have got 0.50/1 tables there. Brilliant isn’t it!

So what exactly have we learned:

I am not fucking invincible

Other people give a fucking shit about how good I am feeling

I have no fucking, in stone carved right to get all the money of the fish

Not everyone who does look like a fucking fish turns out to be one

I am a fucking massive fish if I am not playing my A or at least B game

Do not fucking over think a hand against a moron player but have a proper fucking thought process against a capable player before making a decision

Apply some fucking seat and table selection rules to the game. If you can’t get a better seating position than the toilet seat just do not fucking play

As mentioned before I am not crying or am in a bad mood or anything. I am just a angry about my own idiocy.

Online I made the step up to NL25 and had some first profits. The level of play does not seem to change on PKR between NL10 and NL100. You rarely get more than 3 capable players on a full ring table. I hope the game stays as soft as it is and I hope I can keep up the running well.

Didn’t get on the scale this morning so I can’t update the weight stat. I suppose no one is really interested in that stat anyway.

TriTraTrallala Trutfish

Poker:

Stars: - $70
PKR: + $294
Live cash: + £ 163.50
Live tourney: - £ 82

Life is good

2009-04-17T11:11:00.002+01:00

I am a quite happy and relaxed person at the moment. UKSPC holidays + Easter + 2 days off from work having flu, really reloaded my batteries. I got some great news from my job search in Gibraltar. I managed to take down two interview appointments for next week. One of them is a great job and a good opportunity. The job I really want is being the Executive Assistant for the MD of the following website: www.pokerstrategy.com

This would involve travelling the world, having an own marketing team to manage and the organisation of live promotion events. Obviously the job will have its boring sides as well but I only picked the good ones here to show off. 25k + bonuses don’t sound too shabby either and with a free-to-live in flat for the first 6 months this is a supreme job. I want this job so much. If everything goes like I wish then I might be living in Gibraltar at the beginning of June! Keep your fingers crossed for me.

The other job is a customer service role for bwin and nothing I am really keen on but bwin is the company that will pay for my flights and accommodation for the interviews so I am willing to please them with my attendance although I can’t see myself taking that job. I will be going to Gibraltar next Thursday morning. Looking forward to it. Means I get another short week at work. Yeehaa.

Oh this reminds me that I got offered a promotion at my current job as well. Basically promoting me into the ranks of a Sales Manager. No specific details so far but my salary would increase by a few k and I would need to travel Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg for one or two weeks a month. So this sounds great as well. Good times.

On the online Poker front I keep doing ok. I normally planned my first shots at NL25 yesterday but I felt very fruity, fresh and good so I bought in with a full stack at a NL100 table. I was one tabling and trying to concentrate on picking good spots. I got in a lot of very tricky decisions early on and had lost half my stack after 10 hands.
I decided not to give up as I still felt good and reloaded to a full stack. Immediately after my reload two epic fish sat down at the table. One to my left and one to my right. The guy too my right played some beautiful 90/2/0.5 (those stats are just guessed as I can’t use PT with PKR) and the guy to my left played some 70/5/0.5. It was brilliant. The rest of the table was pretty tight so when I was in HJ,CO, BT my favourite opponent was normally the open limper. I always raised there with basically any hand. The guy to my left came along most of the time as well and the blinds folded mostly. A simple C-bet was enough to take about 95% of those pots without any problems. Fortunately the fish to mi right had cracked two other players AA and KK at the very beginning with J7 and J5 and was therefore sitting on a $300 stack. I kept making the same move for 2 h and they kept folding to me. So good. Despite being half a stack down after 10 hands I managed to finish close to a full stack in profit. Good times.

My diet is going a bit slowly at the moment but this is mainly due to me being lazy with the working out and eating and drinking like I used to for the last two weeks. I just feel like playing more Poker at the moment. I am sure this will turn around when the next downswing arrives.

I’m going to Aspers tonight and will be donating my 20 quid to their Friday crapshoot, a few more quid to the Roulette and hopefully win it all back at the 1/2 cash games.

DiDabbaDabba DabbDaDa Life is good weehaa.

Stats:

Weight lost: 16.3 kg (2.56 Stone)
Weight to lose: 8.7 kg (1.37 Stone)

Poker:

Stars: - $ 70
PKR: + $ 256
Live cash: + £ 403.50
Live tourney: - £ 60

UKSPC 09 Fairy Tales

2009-04-08T10:07:00.003+01:00

Let’s talk a bit about the 3-day UKSPC trip. I picked up “147 Super Star” at about 9:00 am on Wednesday and from there us both good looking young men made our way down to B’ham. To make the drive appear a bit shorter we started playing some 1p/2p HU cash game while I was driving. As last year we stuck the cards of the board to some blue tack spots on the cockpit. The game finished when there was still one hour to go to B’ham but “147 tight ass” refused to reload after he donated 4.50 Pound to me. He obviously was afraid to go broke! He could easily have made a profit from the game but he wasn’t good enough to fold 77 to a 5-bet-shove of mine when my range clearly can only be AA or KK. :-) I had QJss and flopped the flush draw which got there on the turn. Good start to the trip I thought. At least he is respected by all to be a world class HU player. But then he had to play me...unlucky him...

Once in B’ham we popped in the casino and it seemed like everybody (Isaac, Nick, Paul) had to play day 1A and I was on day 1B. That basically meant that I had to do something else and therefore met up with Nathan in a pool place. I managed to run like god on amphetamines and gave Nathan a very tough time in beating me at 9 and 8 ball. I had a 2 -0 lead in the 9-ball game actually but then still lost 2-3. So close. As this trip was supposed to be a nice break from the diet for me I was smoking, drinking and eating like *insert name of fat, smoking and drinking celebrity here (Paul Gascoigne e.g.).”

9:00 pm came round soon and that was when the 10 pound side event started. I was already majorly pissed by that time. Anyway I had to queue for 30 minutes only to get on the alternates list and then wait another 30 minutes to get a seat. As I finally had a seat I limped my first hand (I already had to pay a penalty) and folded to some action on the flop. The next hand I folded. Then I got T3dd on the button and shoved 20 BB’s after only one MP limper was only in the pot so far. Small blind folds, Big Blind SNAP calls with K5o and the limper snap calls with AA. Oh dear. I flopped a pair with flush draw but couldn’t get there and was out after three hands. What a waste of time. Oh by the way the hand was won by K5 as he turned 2 pair. The guy with AA was very disgusted.lol.

I think afterwards I started to donate money to the casino at the 3 card poker. Lost a coinflip to Mr Keys for I have no idea how much money and got nicely hammered. After tournament play for the day was over everybody decided to head to our appartment to play some proper 5p/10p. Beforehand we stopped to buy some booze: tons of lager, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a bottle of Frosty Jack’s Cider ???, and a porn magazine with DVD so we were all fine prepared to repeat our last year’s cash game session. I quickly popped to my car with Isaac to get the chips and when we got back the two professional Poker players had fallen asleep and I was unable to wake them up. That’s what those guys do huh? Tell you that they’ll come and lose some cash at your table but only need a place to sleep in the end. I crumbled a biscuit over Mr Keys head which reminded him all next day about this disappointment by itching horribly. So we played four handed but I cannot really remember about this cash game as I was absolutely hammered but I think I finished like 60 or 70 quid up. As far as I now I couldn’t get away from 45s pre flop and always managed to hit.

Next morning I was still very pissed and started the day with a lager and some frosty jack’s and then headed to the casino where I had another two lager and after them I basically had the same level of drunkness as the night before. I came to my table and trash talked my cock off. Declaring half of the talble to be big online MTT winners. I think my banter caused general amusement although the dealer was pretty annoyed be me. The dealer btw looked like a woman with a terrible hair cut and when I asked her/him for the name she/he said David! I started laughing thinking that it was a joke but it turned out she really was a he! Upps! The table was obviously super tight so I open-raised basically every second hand with all sorts off trash and even min-raised blind UTG as I wasn’t allowed to straddle. I picked up KK in the second hand and was all-in on the turn but didn’t get called and won a few chips and kept winning chips in small pots. Then I lost half my stack when I flopped a straight against one of the ladies at the table and got loads of action from her top pair but she rivered a backdoor flush. That’s unlucky. I then got bored and shoved my AQ on a JTxQx board when villain had a straight with 98 and slow rolled me when he was thinking for about ten minutes and eventually called. “I thought you might have AK.” I mean wtf!? Anyway I busted after 2.5 hours and that was longer than I expected. In the afternoon we went to Riley’s to play some Pool/Snooker. Being the moron that I am I offered to play Snooker for money against “147 Ronnie O’Sullivan” if he gave me 4:1. I still can’t believe what an idiot I am. I might as well just stick it in his pocket without playing. At least I crushed him in the HU cash game!

Later I managed to win three 9-ball matches against Isaac in a row. Obviously not playing for money. How can you be such a good pool player Isaac and lose three times in a row against a pissed German moron?

Made the way back in the casino for the side event. Before the event started I got stuck another 130 Pound at the roulette tables. Betting on red always red but it kept bringing black about 17/20 times. Registered for the side event on time and got seated next to Nick which obviously had to be good for some action. Normally we agreed to shove the first hand regardless but Nick voided the bet as we were at the same table. Chicken! I busted this tourney after 5 hands. Limp-fold JT, fold flop with AK, fold pre, fold pre, limp-shove 66. I run into 99 and TT but clearly my limp shove can only be AA or KK here again. :-) One guy at the table tells me that he already folded a 6 so I’m hoping for my one outer. TT flop a set and I am drawing dead but to make it worse I managed to hit the one outer on the turn. The pot gets taken down by the 99 as they spike a flush on the river.

Well I get myself to the bar and am working hard to keep myself nicely pissed. I get to talk to Imran (one of the organisers) and he introduces me to some people. Most importantly to Chris “John Kane” or something who suposedly is a 2+2 legend and used to be a 1000NL reg before his parents forced him to get a job. There is a soft Omaha game going and everybody begs him to play it and take stakings. I have only 70 Pound left in the wallet and run to the cash machine. The cash machine is outdrawing me and is not giving me any more money as I already withdrew my daily maximum. What a sick beat. The staking deal was brilliant. He said I give you your money back regardless + you can have 10% of the winnings. No staking for me due to lack of cash in the wallet. He lost the whole stack very soon anyway so no winnings missed. A nice group of us now sits down at the 1/1 pound table to play some cash. This cash session was the best I played my whole live so far. Here a few hands: I straddle the first hand and get dealt AT. Imran had raised from EP and I called from the straddle. Flop: TJx. I check, Imran bets, I raise, He shoves, I call and he has 99 SHIP!!! Up to roughly 140 Pound. One orbit later I straddled again. Imran raises, Chris 3- bets, Unknown player 4- bets, comes round to me and I find 44 and have a sick feeling about this hand and 5-bet shove it. Everyone folds and I take down the pot pre flop and showed that I had the nuts! :-) I then lose a few pots and am all-in in the dark on the flop with AJss against one 60ish year old guy. Turn is a J and he mucks his hand on the river. From there it went up up and up. I got a bit lucky when I raised K7ss from the cut off and got called by the MP limper and I manage to flop a flush. We get it in on the flop and he has a set of 6’s but my flush holds. I had a few brilliant moments. One of the best being a 6-high tripple barrel bluff I got through which won me 10 quid in a side bet as well which I had for showing a tripple barrel bluff. Was the only one that I attempted as well. Spot perfectly picked imo. A few hands later I picked up a bluff/super light 3-bet by a student player when he committed himself pre and we get it in with my A9ss against his T7o and I hold. I made plenty of well timed floats, 3 and 4 bets, bluffs and good value bets and got lucky to never get coolered with set over set or anything. When ever I got my money in I was ahead and held. I finished this cash session on a 400 Pound stack!!! Having bought in for only 70 Pound this is a pretty sick result. Especially because I didn’t hit and run I was at the table when we started and I was still at the table when everything was over. I played from beginning to the end. This nice session obv helped to cover some losses and costs and I will keep having sweet dreams about how well I played there. There are so many more small stories and details to tell about but this post is already longer than it should be.

I am ill at the moment so can’t go to the gym. I am doing some extreme dieting atm and finally got rid of the gained weight from B’ham. I hope to get below the 90kg mark in April.

I am running really well on PKR as well, basically crushing the NL10 there and had a minor tourney cash as well. Shot taking at 25 NL will follow soon.

Stats:

Weight lost: 15.3 kg (2.40 Stone)
Weight to lose: 9.7 kg (1.52 Stone)

Poker:

Stars: - $ 70
PKR: + $ 170
Live Cash: + £ 403.50
Live Tourney: - £ 55

That’s it. Thanks for reading.

Truthans

Outdrawn

2009-04-03T16:43:00.005+01:00

I arrived back home from UKSPC safely which is good as I was terribly tired and hung over and it's a very annoying and lonely and long drive from B'ham to Durham. I post a report in a few days time and if you (who ever is reading this blog) are lucky it might be a funny post as well. :-)

The reason why I am writing this atm are the news from radio and telly that Madonna is not allowed to adopt that Malawian little girl. The saddest character in this story is the little girl who is getting outdrawn by authorities forcing her to stay in Africa in probably poor circumstances instead of living in the US and being an adopted child of probably the world's biggest Pop star. As soon as the little girl is old enough to realise what happend when she was little she is probably going to commit suicide. This is a very sick outdraw.

"You know what, when you were little you almost were adopted by a super-rich Pop Idol. Willing to let you live with her in her massive Beverly Hills villa"

"WHAT! WHAT HAPPENED!"

"You got outdrawn"

--- PENG ---

Not funny again!?

2009-03-27T10:58:00.000Z

I wrote a bit much blabla the last two times I posted and kind of forgot to write something to laugh about. I apologize for that as I never wanted to be too serious about my Poker exploits in this blog. Last time I also forgot to write about the lesson I learnt in Jan and Feb. As I mentioned several times before I went into this year being super ambitious and motivated to make it a year where I would make some progress in my Poker game. I kind of forced myself to play more online Poker than I would normally do. I read as much theory as I could and adjusted/completely changed my game. I sat down at the tables and was ready to harvest the fruits as I was sure I was on top of my game and would deserve a big upswing. All this bullshit that I told myself and all the changes I did to my game as well as forcing me to play although I wasn’t in the mood made me play shit and deservedly burn money. I started hating the game and it started feeling like something I had to do. As if I was paid for playing shit.

Suddenly I was sick of me playing shit and running bad and playing when I didn’t want to and had lost enough money within the first two months. So I decided to withdraw my online bankroll. I bought myself a Wii with some games from the online money and stepped away from the tables for a while. Because staying in the same environment would have reminded me too much of the horrible times of Jan and Feb I had to change this as well. I moved from 6max LHE and HU LHE back to the roots and started playing some micro stakes NL full ring and tourneys. I only played when I was in the mood too. Suddenly I started winning again. I started feeling confident again being at the tables and enjoyed the game. I found that as long as I am in the mood of playing and enjoying the game it was a lot more easy for me to deal with the inevitable bad beats. They didn’t affect me or my general mood anymore while in comparison to that every bad beat in Feb felt like someone put a knife into me.

Now I seem to have amour against those knives. Obviously I have the aim to play at some proper stakes again but only if I am able to grind my way through the micros. I did it before and I can do it again but I do not care when it is going to be. Will I step up a limit next month? Will it be in October or in fucking 2023? I don’t fucking care as the most important thing is to enjoy this game.

Of course we are playing to make money from the game as this is what makes it interesting and what got us hooked up with the game but as I do not plan to make a living of poker at any one point in my life I do not have to put me under the same pressure as somebody that needs to live of this game. I have no pressure at all. So why putting myself into that? Is it because the human being seems to normally do well when put under pressure? That is true for life threatening situations but not for the way I thought pressure would be good for me. The only thing that I consider as a good way to apply some positive pressure are little challenges like the ones we could hear about the last few months. See Skolsuper’s blog, Nathan’s blog, The durr challenge, Boku87, The guy that played HU in Vegas for like 3 straight days,…
Challenges like that are getting our competitive natures going. It makes the poker feel more like a sport and this is a good thing. So this might be the way forward for me at one point but I need to think about a challenge that will demand some commitment but will still be possible for me to achieve without making me hate the game. I will see. I just wanted to share my thoughts here.

Another thing I will start from now is writing done where I stand moneywise in Poker so I can determine how much I am winning/losing. Especially because I never kept track of live winnings/losses. I will start from $0 on PKR, from -$100 on Stars and from 0 for live cash and tourneys. The results of the last few weeks have been recorded by me and I will do adjustments to the starting figures. See at the end.
Furthermore in the last blog I said that I will be moving to Gibraltar this summer and thought it will need a bit more explanation. I started applying for jobs like Account manager, CRM Manager, etc in the Poker industry and hope to get some Interviews sorted out for June or August. I will be flying down there in August and live at a mates place for few weeks there. Actually the mate is a girl and lives in Gibraltar for two years now already. In that period of time I will try to pummel out a massive amount of job interviews and sort out a new flat. Up until then I need to develop plans for how to get rid of a lot of stuff which I’ve got in my flat. Basically all my furniture. I let you know what happens.

The diet is going well and I am doing 4 miles running at 6 mph + 30min cycling + 5 different muscle exercises 3 times a week. My clothes are getting far too big. I might have to revise my weight loss aim. But first things first, I am now officially registered for the Great North Run and received my sponsorship sheets and stuff going with it. I will be running for Christian Aid. This is a more international charity which is doing a lot of projects in Africa, South America and Asia. I count on your monetary support. I will get more specific on this later.

Well I think there is still nothing funny in this post. Where is my humour gone? Sad enough the only funny thing I remember at the moment is a hilarious hand I played yesterday on PKR: I called the raise from MP with QTss from the button and the BB comes along as well.

Flop: As, Kd, Js

BB bets like ¼ of pot, MP calls I raise about ¾ of pot.

BB now min raises, MP moves All-in, I move All-in and BB calls

BB: AA
MP: KK

The board bricks out and my hand holds and I almost fall of my sofa in laughter. I run so bad!

There is UKSPC next week and I am very much looking forward to it. Its probably not going to be as funny as least year as we are not all staying in the same place. So I will have to play heads up for rollz with Isaac through the nights. Looking at my roll that shouldn’t take too long. Hmmm, we might have to play LHE then. Sounds juicy.

Ok then, keep your panties clean

Truthans

Stats:

Weight lost: 14.4 kg (2.26 Stone)
Weight to lose: 10.6 kg (1.66 Stone)

Poker:

Stars: - $68
PKR: + $51
Live cash: + £2
Live tourney: - £5

Bring me the sun

2009-03-20T17:03:00.001Z

I haven’t been blogging since cried like a girl in my last post although there were loads of things I was willing to write about. Unfortunately now I cannot remember all of it and I don’t want to write another ridiculously long post.

So lets get to the Poker. After cashing out almost my entire Full Tilt Bankroll (leaving $20) behind I decided it was time to treat myself with the poker winnings. So I bought a Wii + Balance board. So the amount of time I am not spending at the tables anymore I am now spending at the Wii playing Wii sports, Red Steel, Wii Music, Skate it or working it out with the Wii fit software. This Balance Board thing is a brilliant piece of gear. Especially because I can use it as base drum pedal and hi-hat machine for the drum simulator in Wii music. This is great because I missed drumming a bit since I sold my kit. Its not like a £1500 Roland V-drum kit but its fine.

On Stars I turned the $7 I had left from my $100 deposit into $30 without paying rake as I grinded the $ 0.10 360 man SNG’s. I 18 tabled them in push or fold mode until I reached the final tables and then played a bit more reasonable. I will be getting my $100 back from Stars even if it’s the last thing I am doing! Even better if I could manage it without paying rake. But the Stars grind is on break for the moment as I deposited $50 on PKR and am trying to release my deposit bonus. PKR truly is an even more horrible site than I expected. I can 3-table as an absolute maximum otherwise my laptop will just die. After a PKR session I will have to restart it as it will be completely knackered. Anyway the games are super, mega, duper soft and even I can make profits on that site. I played some hilarious hands on there during the last sessions and would love to post them here but I can’t really figure out how to get a hand history. Very annoying that I have no idea how many hands I played and how I am running. PKR Roll stands at $115 at the moment. Still a bit too go until I can play some proper stakes. I will take shots at NL25 when reaching $200 and step back down to NL10 if I fall below $150. We will see what happens.

The live cash games I used to reload my luckbox and tried to play every hand in most of the games so that I could put a massive outdraw on a big hand. This clearly put me back into a good state of mind.
Another big thing has happened this week. After the normal plan of my and my girlfriend was to leave England next summer we decided that we already leave the country this summer. We decided to move to Gibraltar in August. This gives me a nice chance to work in the Poker industry and we finally get away from the terrible weather here. More details about this later.
The diet is still going well as you can see from the stats below:

Diet:
Weight lost: 13.1 kg (2.06 Stone)
weight still to lose: 11.9 kg (1.87 Stone)
Truthans

Up and down like a whore's knickers

2009-02-20T16:38:00.003Z

I was actually goint to post a nice positive, up-beat blog entry a few days ago but I couldn’t finish it so I postponed the publishing a bit. In the meantime things have changed and I have no reason for an up-beat post anymore. Here just a quick conclusion of what happened since I last posted. My Full Tilt withdrawal was cancelled as I did a mistake with my IBAN number. So the money I wanted to withdraw landed back on the account and I decided that this was a sign from heaven and sat back down at the cash tables, playing 1/2 LHE HU, .5/1 LHE 6max, .05/.10 NL 6max and the odd tourney. All in all I went on to run like a boat in the dessert crying to find an ocean but it won’t even start raining. For some very strange reason I decided to deposit $100 on Stars as they have .5/1 LHE HU tables which seemed really, really soft to me when I checked them out with opponents limping their buttons 98% of the time and being as aggressive as turtle on Marijuana.

So I gave Stars another go although it is tough to beat those limits as the rake is insane (as mentioned before) and Stars unfortunately doesn’t do any rakeback. But the first couple of thousand hands went well and I was beating the game as well as the rake. Then last weekend I managed to bust the complete $200 dollar BR within a very few hands when my opponents on this day just seemed to hit every fucking board and outdrawing a ridiculous amount of my made hands. Having a 2k hands losing session with AA,KK and QQ belonging to my losing hands basically says it all. I guess I should have stopped at one point of time and gave it a break of a few days but instead I went on playing and obv started playing terribly as soon as I only had like $60 left in the account. Stars BR now stands at $7.20

Stars will never see any of my money on a cash table ever again. On Full Tilt I basically ran the same, with a little streak of success in between when my BR was over the $550 mark once again and went back down to now $420. Well all in all January and February have been my absolutely worst Poker months ever and I regret every minute I wasted in front of my Laptop just to switch it off in massive anger. So I decided once again to withdraw my money from Full Tilt, leaving $20 behind to grind the micro buy in tourneys just as I did when I started. If those $20 are gone I am done with Full Tilt, as I do not plan to re-deposit money there. If the money gets more, fine. The same will be done with the $7 on Stars. For those $7 I have the aim to grind them back up to $100 then withdraw and then uninstall the Stars software. If I won’t manage, then fine.

As Stars and Full Tilt have not treated me well in 2009 I decided it is time for a new site to try. I decided to give PKR a go. This has the reason that any decent Poker player would normally avoid this site. This brings me to the conclusion that all players there are terrible. So I will fit in perfectly. Rakeback + bonus sounds fine as well. The limited opportunity of multi-tabling doesn’t really affect my as my average amount of tables is 4 anyway and that is possible with PKR. I am not sure yet what my standard games on the site are going to be but I am sure I will find out soon.

This altogether will mean that in future I will play a lot less volume than I played in Jan/Feb. I will shut down any poker table as soon as I realise that my mood will be affected in a bad way. My poor gf had to cope with my grumpy post poker mood for two months now. She’ll surely leave me very soon if that goes on and I won’t let small stakes Poker make that happen with my life.

It is really a shame that this year started so terrible pokerwise as I had plans/aims and a lot of motivation. Well I guess that’s the game and whoever wants to be good at it has to learn to live with periods like this. Poker aims are now excluded from the aims section. At least for a while.

Aims:

14.9 kg to lose (2.34 Stone)

P.S. Sorry for this terribly whiny post but that are my feelings atm. So the decision is either not to post or to post this whiny crap. I obv decided to post. Things will change. Surely. Hopefully. PLEASE.

Señor Truthans de la gente que no pueden ganar dinero jugando.

It's a long way down

2009-02-06T12:57:00.004Z

There is actually quite a lot to tell in this post but I will try to keep it as short as possible so people will not be thrown off reading till the end. I think I am actually going to split this into two parts and start with the non-poker-life-happenings. As mentioned in the post before I went to Edinburgh and Stockholm for a few days. Edinburgh is a beautiful city and I even liked the haggis stuff. So many Germans in this city though that it really annoys me because normally I can just talk loudly to my gf in german and no one would understand which means we can slag off about people without hesitation or anything. This is one of the best things about living in a foreign country. On Saturday night we went to the theatre to see a play called “the man who had all the luck” and it was an alright play with some actors that had TV appearances in relatively big movies (Bad Boys, Titanic, East Enders(lol)). Anyway in the row before us there were 4 german girls sitting! I mean what the fuck! It was an english, non-musical, non-classic play for £ 25 per ticket and you still get germans to sit in front of you?! I mean you can go to a small theatre in Berlin watching a german, non-musical, non-classic piece of theatre play and try to find an Englishmen sitting in there. No chance imo. German bitches.
Only downside on the trip was the location of our room in the hotel. They had a night club right in the Hotel which was massively crowded with people and obv was playing loud dancy,trancy,disco jives. Puke. Our room had a little balcony and a window on the side of the building where the entrance was, so it was pretty damn loud. Fortunately we were amazingly tired and still fell asleep pretty quick.

A few days later I went to Stockholm with some people of the company. We stayed in a very nice hotel in the city centre and had really good times on the company’s expenses. First night was just arriving and then going out for a meal in a very nice Italian restaurant were we got to talk to the gay, Italian waiter in there who apparently studied fashion design or something like that and lived all over the places in the world. I think it were about 6 different places in the UK, SanFrancisco and LA in the states, Munich in Germany, somewhere in Italy and in Korea !?. And yes he obv spoke german as well.
Thursday we spent in the factory to get some sales and tech training on some new products but in the evening we went out to one of the coolest places I have ever been to. It was 3 levels under ground and was a massive food and leisure place. The room was massive and had 2 big bars, 3-massive Pool tables with a proper size. Not those small ball(s) things from the UK. About seven car type things where you could play racing video games with the picture projected to the wall. One ball game simulator were you could kick or throw footballs, baseballs, pucks and all sorts towards a goalie or whatever. Two golf simulators were you are obv hitting golf balls on the screen and play on a virtual course and a virtual shooting range were you could shoot on wild ducks on a massive screen. Further back in the room there was the bowling alley with 18 lanes! Which is what we used and I am normally a pretty good bowler but kind of sucked this time cause I couldn’t get used to the too small holes in my 12 or 13 ball. Finally after the bowling thing they had a dart area with 5 dart boards. On of the best things in there was that it just looked like a proper place were the business people meet. Everyone was well dressed, no shouting, screaming or running around of kids, no idiots in tracksuits, just a very pleasant atmosphere. Please compare that to an English bowling centre! Furthermore everything was sooo clean. The tables in the pubs, toilets, streets, just everything.
After the bowling fun we had a really good meal. It was really gourmet like and how you see them in the telly sometimes. Massive plates with almost nothing on. I had something traditional Swedish as a starter with prawns and some other things. For main course I had wild duck fillet. Actually the duck was so wild that I found one of those small bullets in the fillet from when they shot the duck. I guess there are people out there that would try to hurt themselves by biting on it and then claiming compensation but I thought the food was too good to wind people up. After all that we went to some of the historical parts of Stockholm and had a look at them while it was dark and freezing. I actually saw the house in which they decide who will be awarded the Nobel prize. We went to an English Pub and got pissed on company expenses till 2 am and left Stockholm at lunch time next day. I brought home some chocolate, liquorish and horseradish crème for the gf and that was basically the only money I spent in those days. Unfortunately I am at work at the moment so I haven’t got a picture here to put on but I’ll see to do that later. In other terms the recession seems to hit our company now and I am trying to make myself as needed as possible in the company (writing blog posts during working hours does probably not count towards that) to avoid being made redundant if all bad things come together. Fortunately with ThyssenKrupp we have a massive company that could hold us afloat for years but they need to be willing to do that, which is obviously the other side of the medal, although our division is still one of the most profitable within the massive corporation. To be honest I am not really afraid to lose my job anyway as I have a good degree with 3 fluent languages and no commitments in England I could easily always just go wherever there are jobs and could still be picky about where I want to live. At the moment I am thinking if I would lose my job now I would probably move to Vienna (Austria) because it’s a beautiful big city and probably the best place in Europe to play Poker as well.

Oh dear me, this post will be getting loooong.

On the trips to Edinburgh and Stockholm I did a little break from the diet as everything else would have been stupid and so I was enjoying the food and drinks. I am back on the diet now though and can tell you how sick I am of rice and couscous and how much I want a Pizza.

The working out in the gym goes well I think and I am doing a lot of cardio at the moment to get back in shape. The treadmills are definitely my favourite machines. But I am doing some arm/should/back muscle stuff as well. I am very satisfied with the gym so far because it is normally very quiet whenever I go and so I can use every machine as long as I want and when I want and that for only £160 a year. This reminds me on my first day when I went to the gym. It was Friday and I had to fill in all those application forms and all the machines got explained to me. Then I started to work out not knowing when the gym will close and I was completely alone in the gym as well. I guess Friday nights are not very popular for working out. Anyway at about 2 mins to eight the lady in the reception turned off the music and told me that they are closing and I was like “oh…okay, eh…can I still have a shower?”
She: “As long as the security guy isn’t downstairs yet you should be alright”
Me:”Okay”

Obviously there was no security downstairs and I had a shower. Coming out of the shower, putting on the clothes, leaving the changing rooms and entering… darkness. This security guy had me locked in the building. Everything was dark and every door was locked. So I started calling a few people that could call other people that might be able to help me. So I had a friend on the phone and he said that there should be a fire door. I thought that was a good idea and went looking for one and instantly found it. Walking towards this door I saw the big green button that said “push” full of joy I am pressing it and opening the door and suddenly a very annoying loud fire alarm goes off. I look at the door and read the big red sign above the green push button stating “Caution. This door is alarmed.” Well then. At least I was out of the building and found the security guard that came to check why the fire alarm was on and told him that I got locked in. He switched the alarm off and I went home. All good.

Let’s come to the Poker things. I suppose this part could be a lot shorter than the rest as it is very disappointing and therefore not much fun to write about. After I started off the month very good and almost hit the $600 mark at one point things turned around pretty harsh. I ran ice cold at the LHE table in all limits that I played loosing at a rate of -17 bb/100 over 4k hands. This is a ridiculous bad run at the limit tables were -5bb/100 would be considered to be running horrible already. I decided that it was time to make a cut as I wasn't ablt to sit at the tables anymore with a clear and good state of mind which obviously resulted in massive tilt (which never happened before to me at a LHE table) and therefore playing badly as well. Keeping playing and thinking “it should turn around soon” will not help to overcome a swing like this I guess. As I told myself that this swing could still go on for a while as 4k hands are next to nothing variance wise I decided to cash out almost my whole bankroll and get myself a new suit and a nice meal for me and the gf. I left about $15 on the account and started playing tournaments. Which I thought would refresh my mind. It suddenly did and I banked a win in a 27manner SNG a third place finish in a 90 manner SNG and satellited into the $22, 100k guaranteed on FT for $2 in my first 8 tourneys. Over the next few months I will play very low buy in tourneys on Sundays and HUSNG’s during the week and try to grind up a roll. I will take $ 200 as the benchmark for when I want to hit the cash tables again. Its all a bit of a shame as I felt really motivated for online Poker this year, having studied a lot of game theory and was very willing to put in some good volume over the months. I talked to Matt on Saturday and he mentioned that I could be a bit more aggressive with my BR and possibly try playing a bit underolled at the cash tables and take stabs at higher limits, as those few hundred dollars in the online account do not really matter to me. I actually agree with him there but this is more a psychological thing with me that I want to prove to myself that I can beat the limits and move up when I feel confident with my game and not with my BR. Although this could mean that I am not playing to my best at the cash tables atm because the money doesn’t mean enough to me. Meh. Maybe I grind the roll up to $220 and then have a $200 stab at a 5/10 LHE table leaving myself $20 behind in case I need to grind it back up to $200 again. I kind of like that idea. I definitely do not want to redeposit. I don’t know why but for some reason that would feel like a defeat to me.
In live Poker things I am getting battered in the Tuesday tourney week after week for 5 weeks running now. I can not remember the last time when I got my money in behind. I am getting 1 to 9 outered all over the shop at the moment but this should definitely turn around if I can keep up getting my money in as a favour so I’m not worried about that. The first DUPS tourney that I played this year was pretty much the other way around and I finished with a £17 cash.

It is really gay
no one could outplay
Mr ABC-Poker Chris May

I reduced the Poker earning aim to 1k which is far to big but wtf.

Its Aspers tonight and I am due a deep run in that tourney.
If you really read this post to this point you are right sicko Sir. Hope you enjoyed it a bit at least.
Shorter post next time. I promise. Probably millions of grammar and spelling mistakes but I cannot be arsed to re-read this beast of a post.

aims:
money to earn: $978
weight to lose: 16.8kg (2.65 stone)

Truthans

January, oh January

2009-01-15T12:12:00.000Z

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

2009-01-06T16:58:00.003Z

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.

Breaking even

2008-12-19T13:33:00.000Z

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

2008-12-15T12:12:00.002Z

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

2008-12-12T14:24:00.006Z

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!

2008-12-03T15:29:00.001Z

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

2008-11-16T18:28:00.002Z

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

2008-11-02T19:12:00.003Z

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

2008-10-30T21:15:00.003Z

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)

2008-10-21T16:56:00.000+01:00

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...

2008-10-16T14:49:00.000+01:00

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

2008-10-15T14:13:00.010+01:00