Back to green

A couple good things happened today. For starters, I was able to complete my $2500 rake goal, which means I am getting at least $625 as a rakeback payment as well as a $100 loyalty bonus. The other piece of good news is that I was able to make money while doing so. I started off bad, then I made a nice run, peaked at +$600, lost a little, won a little, and at the end of the night my total comes out to +$458.

If I can somehow squeeze out $300 for tomorrow, I will hit +$5k for the month. That would give me a bit of personal satisfaction, even though this month was much more turbulent than the past two nonths. I am certainly in no spot to complain, though. Let's just see how tomorrow goes...

Lots of red numbers

Right off the bat I lost a $215 SNG this afternoon and I had a bad feeling in my gut about how my day was going to progress. I cashed in the next three SNGs and should have been feeling good, but I still had that crappy feeling. This should have been my sign to stop for the day, but I ignored it and kept playing. I then had the following run:

-$109, -$104.50, -$109, -$109, -$55, -$55, -$55, -$215, +$45, +$391, -$109

That's -$484.50 for the day and a very unhappy Cort. There's one hand that I can't get out of my head. It was the last $215 SNG and I held QhJc in my BB. Blinds were 50/100 and the action comes to me with two limpers, one of them being UTG. The flop comes QJ5 and it looks good to me. I bet out 200, which was 2/3 the pot and the UTG player raises me to 600. This is where I'm questioning myself. Do I need to push all-in here? I still had around 2k left in my stack and I pushed in, only to find myself up against a set of 5's. Does anyone not go broke here? If I had to do it over, I think I would still push. Top two pair is hard to lay down there. Anyways, I doubt you guys want to have me go on and on about this one hand, so I'll just give you the screenshot and call it a night:

Quick Recap

Monday:
7.3 hours of play, -$454.50

• Best part of the day: Earning plenty of rake for my $2500 goal
  
• Worst part of the day: Losing $655 playing $15/30 Limit Hold'em with Brian McFadden (worst player on the net, not kidding)

Tuesday:
8.9 hours of play, +$519

• Best part of the day: Winning my final $109 SNG
• Worst part of the day: Hard to pick the absolute worst, but if I had to choose I would pick the Celeb League tourney, where my AQ lost an all-in preflop to A9 and then just to seal the deal I lost my desperation AK all in vs AJ.

Not much poker

Friday:
Just when I thought that I was on the road to starting a positive run, Friday comes along and I lose -$298 over the course of a couple hours. I stopped playing at 9:15pm and went out for the night. First stop was the casino of course, where I won €90 playing roulette. It's such a game of luck but somehow I managed to win by putting €4 on the number '12.' That money was all spent up on alcohol at the club we went to afterwards.

Saturday:
I didn't play a single hand of poker for a change, which was definitely a good feeling. +-0

Sunday:
1. CelebPoker League Double Points $20+2 - 20th place, 2 points, I suck at the league!
2. Scottish Weekly $30+3 - 330 players - top 33 got ticket - I end in place 39 after more than 2 hours of play, big disappointment!
3. $250k Qualifier $53+5 - 21 players - top 2 got ticket - I end in place 3 for $53 = minus two dollars and extreme frustration!

At least the SNGs ran somewhat well, I managed to win a $109 SNG. Total results for the day: +$310

I'm back!

Wednesday:
I was absolutely fuming on Wednesday for a few reasons: A) I was taking horrible beats all day, getting my money in with the best hand only to get it down B) the horrible game Germany-USA and C) I was two minutes late to sign up for the Celeb League tourney. They have a new scoring system so now everyone gets a point just for playing in the tourney. I missed my chance at another point in a time when every point counts.

Around 10:30 I was totally pissed off and made the mistake of playing online poker. When you are mad, there is no reason to be gambling for money, that is a fact. I'm afraid I did not learn my lesson, though, because I made a late night rally! I played a couple $55, $109, and $215 SNGs and brought my daily tab all the way back to a positive number of +$71.50. Lucky me, that could just as easily gone horribly wrong.

Thursday:
Woot! Woot! Here's my day:
$55 SNGs - Total played: 12
1st place - 3 times
2nd place - 2 times
3rd place - 3 times
out of the money - 4 times

I went on an amazing run all day and it feels soooo good! I didn't make as much rake as I would have liked, but therefore I made some serious money again. I played a $109 SNG to finish the night, which I also won :)

Results for Thursday: +$1081

There is hope

Monday:
Another day in which I lost money. Highlight of the day was the Poker-Tester.com Forum Tournament, but I got kicked out of it pretty quickly. Then I lost a couple MTTs, a few SNGs, then a quick late night rally winning two $100+4.50 HU SNGs. At the end of the night I had a total of -$203.00

Tuesday:
The long awaited winning day. Stuck ONLY to the 10-man SNGs at CelebPoker and made a profit of +$362. These are the things that were happening on a daily basis in January/February/early March and these are the days that I have been missing. My only hope is that this streak continues forever and never ends. But that would be just too wonderful...

Double Points

I'm really not in the mood to write, so this is going to be short and snappy. If you were one of the many players who got a part of my money today, then please enjoy it. You may be the guy that beat my:

AA with 53o
QQ with J7
KK with AA
QQ with AA
AJ with KQ
TT with 66
AA with 33

Those hands combined with my own horrible play landed me a -$800.80 day.

There is one piece of good news: I came in 5th in the Celeb League Double Points Sunday Tourney. I earned $59.20 for my efforts and will get 10 points in the league. Those are really big points for me, I hope that this gets me going for the next tourneys!

Return of the Late Night Rally

I played a lot of poker yesterday and it started off right where it left off the day before. I just couldn't get anything going for me. Then I was able to book a few wins, then a few losses, and so on and so forth, until around 1am. That's when I rallied my last 5 SNGs and made a profit of $633 for the day!

I also realized that because I played so much, I might even have a chance to generate $2500 of rake for the month again. I'm around $1000 short right now, but with regular play throughout the end of March I will probably be able to hit the $2500 mark again. That would mean $625 of rakeback and a $100 loyalty bonus. Definitely sounds good to me!

Is this for real?

"Everything I touch turns to gold." This is very true for people like Donald Trump and Bill Gates.

"Everything I touch turns to shit." This is very true for thecortster's poker day.

When I woke up this morning I was $922.99 richer than what I am now. Over the course of 7 hours I dropped money at all tables that I played. I was losing left and right. Yes, I did get very unlucky, but at the same time, I was not playing my A game. Because it's easier to blame it all on bad luck, let me lay out a situation that ended my Celeb League tourney.

Blinds 75/150. I have a 1300 chip stack with 2o players left. As you may or may not know, only the top 10 get points for the league. Then comes my rush:
QQ in MP, I raise to 450, everybody folds
AA in MP, one limper I raise to 600, everybody folds
KK UTG, I raise to 450, everybody folds
VERY NEXT HAND: QQ in my BB, everyone folds to SB, he mini raises to 300, I want to go with the image that I am a loose player who just wants to leave (and hope that he has been paying attention the last round) so I push all in. He calls with KT suited, all is fine and dandy until the K falls on the turn and I am out!

That was written very horribly and for that I am sorry. I'm extremely frustrated with the way things are going, obviously. My current run is -$804. That's $804 that I've lost consecutively without winning a single dollar to break the streak. These are the ups and downs of poker, it's really a rollercoaster ride. Tomorrow's plan is to read up in my poker book library, watch some strategy videos, and then hope that things turn around for the positive!

There and back

Wednesday saw me totally messing up the Celeb League tourney, I finished just a couple spots away from the points and things are generally not looking good for me in the league. I am not going to quit, though. Failure just makes me want it even more. I'm gonna win that package, no excuses. I lost a total of $118.71 over the whole day, which isn't too bad.

Today went much smoother. I played a total of 7.3 hours and recouped $663.45 for my efforts. Most of that money came from playing $1/2 NL cash games, although I did play a couple tourneys. They did not run very well, I finished in 35th place in the 8k guaranteed (top 30 got paid). I am still pretty happy with the day, though. It feels great to get back on the winning track!

Ouch

OK, I can now say that the previous day was not a fluke, because I continued losing plenty of money today. I played for 5 hours and managed to lose 11 tournaments (a couple were qualifiers at Pokerstars). My only success was a whopping $3.30 win that came from a $2/4NL ring game. Other than that, my losing streak combing the previous night with the day was at around -$900. Obviously that isn't too much fun to go through.

Results for March 14th: -$601.20

I quit playing last night at 7:30pm and went to go play some tennis. I had to get poker out of my mind and relieve some stress. Thank you, Sutti, for also stopping playing poker in order to play tennis with me.

@flutsch: I'm glad to know that enjoy reading my blog, I always wondered how many people really do read it. I hope you enjoy the blog in the future, hopefully you'll be able to read some positive figures again here very shortly.

Need a new plan

It was pretty clear to me that my run would not last forever. As far as I know, maybe my run isn't even over yet. I do know, however, that yesterday was my first losing day in a while. Lucky for me, I only lost $78. If I consider the fact that I was playing $55 and $109 tournaments all day, it's not very much at all.

I made a nice run at the Celeb League tournament and entered the final table at 2nd place in chips. Leave it to me to blow all my chips away and finish in 8th place for a measily 3 points. At this rate, I might as well forget the League. I'll need to step up my game if I want to have a shot at this. I think my new strategy will to only be playing 2 tables MAX when I am in the league tourney, if not only the league tourney itself. That will allow me to concentrate on the tournament and hopefully gain some knowledge about my opponents. We'll see on Wednesday.

So close

Saturday:
I am having a really hard time winning anything in the $55 SNGs. It seems like every tourney I enter I just end up getting kicked out around place 4-6. Saturday was no exception. Luckily for me, though, things are the exact opposite at the $109 SNGs. I won two of those on Saturday and the other ups and downs of the day brought me in a total of +$364.

Sunday:
I knew from the start that Sunday was going to be a big day. I was planning on playing four tourneys at night:
20:00 Bodog $100k Guaranteed ($109 Buy-in)
22:00 CelebPoker League Double Points ($22 Buy-in)
22:00 CelebPoker $109 MTT ($109 Buy-in)
22:30 PokerStars $1 Million Guaranteed ($215 Buy-in)

20:00 Bodog $100k Guaranteed ($109 Buy-in):
The nice structure of the tournament allows the players to actually play some poker and not be forced in by the blinds. I was able to build up a chipstack of around 5k (2.5k starting chips) but then lost a few crucial coinflips. Right after the first break I was forced to go all-in, I honestly can't even remember with what, nor do I remember what place I came in. I think it's best if I just forget this tourney.

22:00 CelebPoker League Double Points ($22 Buy-in):
What a wasted opportunity! I had the chance to collect double the points and really get my name up there in the leaderboard. Instead, I ended the tourney in 15th place when my shortstacked 66 met someone's 99. No points. No money. No nada.

22:00 CelebPoker $109 MTT ($109 Buy-in):
It is still my goal to win this tourney in March, and after Sunday night, my goal is looking harder than ever to meet. I wasn't able to build up any decent amount of chips, didn't get any decent cards, and therefore didn't get any decent finish. That's how simple it is. After losing this tourney, I found myself -$392.97 for the day. This number should not have been so large but I got into some problems playing HU matches. Early in the morning, some idiot beat me in a $100+4.5 HU match and then challenged me to a $300+10 match. I gladly accepted, because he was really horrible, and lost that one too! Something was going to need to happen in the Pokerstars tourney!

22:30 PokerStars $1 Million Guaranteed ($215 Buy-in):
5669 players showed up for the tourney, creating a $1,139,800.00 prize pool! How insane is that! I put my full concentration into this tourney, I really wanted to go somewhere with this one! It started off well, then I dropped down a bit, but then I amassed good chips when I got AA, AA, and KK, which all held up. Before I knew it I was at the bubble (825 got paid). Now I started to have some troubles because the cards were just not cooperating. There were some crazy guys at my table but I wasn't able to exploit it because I was only getting 53o, 84o, K3o, etc.

I was totally shortstacked when I finally got Kings, which I used to double up. Then a few rounds later Queens fell into my hand, which doubled me up again! Before I knew it I had a very decent chipstack (50k) with around 250 players left! I was at a table with a lot of big stacks, and I mean a lot. There was a lot of preflop raising, stealing, and plenty of loose action. Then came my destiny:

PokerStars Game #4268437113: Tournament #20354660, Hold'em No Limit - Level XVIII (2000/4000) - 2006/03/12 - 21:23:56 (ET)
Table '20354660 607' Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: bsbarber (131535 in chips)
Seat 2: bberard34 (44301 in chips)
Seat 3: Gambaholic (157638 in chips)
Seat 4: staffpoker (31954 in chips)
Seat 5: champ89 (55225 in chips)
Seat 6: MilesTrane (92868 in chips)
Seat 7: rounder81 (29048 in chips)
Seat 8: 58RDE (132648 in chips)
Seat 9: thecortster (51176 in chips)
bsbarber: posts the ante 200
bberard34: posts the ante 200
Gambaholic: posts the ante 200
staffpoker: posts the ante 200
champ89: posts the ante 200
MilesTrane: posts the ante 200
rounder81: posts the ante 200
58RDE: posts the ante 200
thecortster: posts the ante 200
staffpoker: posts small blind 2000
champ89: posts big blind 4000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to thecortster [Ts Td]
MilesTrane: folds
rounder81: folds
58RDE: folds
thecortster: raises 8000 to 12000
bsbarber: folds
bberard34: folds
Gambaholic: raises 38000 to 50000
OK, this guy has been doing this a lot, coming over the top like this. I think for a good 60 seconds before deciding: This is my shot.
staffpoker: folds
champ89: folds
thecortster: raises 976 to 50976 and is all-in
Gambaholic: calls 976
*** FLOP *** [6s 8c 9c]
*** TURN *** [6s 8c 9c] [5s]
*** RIVER *** [6s 8c 9c 5s] [Kd]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
thecortster: shows [Ts Td] (a pair of Tens)
Gambaholic: shows [Jh Kh] (a pair of Kings)
Gambaholic collected 109752 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 109752 | Rake 0
Board [6s 8c 9c 5s Kd]
Seat 1: bsbarber folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: bberard34 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: Gambaholic (button) showed [Jh Kh] and won (109752) with a pair of Kings
Seat 4: staffpoker (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 5: champ89 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 6: MilesTrane folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 7: rounder81 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: 58RDE folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 9: thecortster showed [Ts Td] and lost with a pair of Tens

There it is. The fate of my tourney life in one hand. After almost 5 hours of play I came in place 202 of 5669 and earned $1,025.82. So close. That hand really hurt me, I had problems falling asleep last night. I'm sure some of you know the feeling. Woulda shoulda coulda, if and but, who knows. Take a look at Seat 1 at my table. He went on to finish in 2nd place for $91k I believe. Wow.

Results for Sunday: +$417.85

Steady Profit, Stupid Move

Thursday:
I played a total of 7.8 hours and should have had a killer payout. Unfortunately, the cards just did not cooperate. And I mean totally did not cooperate. Here's an example in the form of a screenshot (yes we were all-in preflop):
I decided to call it a night after losing another all-in preflop with AA against someone's JJ, J on the turn. Luckily I had made enough money before to be a $248 winner for the day. I guess I shouldn't be complaining.

Friday:
The 10pm $109 MTT went surprisingly well and I finished in 4th place for $408. I should be happy about that but I made a huge mistake that pretty much cost me the tourney. When we were 4-handed, I had 11k, chip leader had 15k and the other two had 8k and 7k. Blinds were 500/1000 and I was dealt 99 in the SB. The CL raised to 3k and I went all-in without hesitation. I realize now that the right play would have been to call and see a flop. Well, as you can imagine, the CL had AK, flop comes 2A2, turn 3, river 2, I'm out in 4th place. I had a really good chance and I blew it. Grrrrrr

I messed up the Celeb League tourney and earned no points. This is going to be a difficult challenge but I am confident that I can come out on top. Tomorrow is the double points Sunday tourney and I plan on going all the way!

Saturday results: +$576.50

Two day blog

Tuesday:
The day started off with a bang and then I went on a $400 losing streak. Luckily the winnings from earlier in the day combined with winning my final SNG for the night brought me to a plus of +$31.46 for the day. Whew

Wednesday:
Since CelebPoker was down for maintenance in the early day and I had nothing to do at work, I decided to play some tournaments at Pokerstars. I wanted to try and qualify myself for the Sunday $1.000.000 Guaranteed Tournament (Buy-in $215) by playing the $11 double shootout qualifiers. I played 3 ofthem and the third one did the charm, I won myself a seat in the Sunday tourney. I also played a couple MTTs that did not run so well at PokerStars.

At night I switched back to Celeb, where I went on a nice little rush, winning 3 of 4 $55 SNGs. I wasn't able to achieve anything in the two $109 tourneys I played, which cut into my daily winnings.

I played the $1 Rebuy Tournament at Celeb and made the new record for rebuys: 25! My record is safe at least for a week, but I have a feeling I'll be able to keep it a while. I didn't cash in the tournament, so I lost a total of $27. No biggie.

At 10pm the second tourney in the Poker League series was held. As I mentioned in a previous entry, I want to win this league! That means I need to collect points points points! Tonight I came in 4th out of 29. Only the top 3 got paid, so I bubbled, but I really don't care because I am there for the points, not for the money. It feels very good to finally get some points on the board, my next chance is Friday.

Results for Wednesday: +$509. However, this does include the $215 tournament entry for Sunday at Pokerstars, meaning my Sunday numbers will have -$215 unless I cash in the event. If someone has a better way of how they keep track of satellite entries, please let me know.

Failed Start

Well tonight was the first tournament of the CelebPoker League, and I finished 23/38. I was horribly card dead the whole way and eventually lost my all-in with AQs against 77. I will still have plenty of opportunities to score some points and hopefully my name will be at the top of the list in September!

I was able to grind out +$306.50 playing the SNGs today. There were many times when I got lucky, as well as plenty of times when I was unlucky. That's the thing about poker. Some people only talk about how unlucky they are, but they never mention the time when their questionable play got lucky against a big favorite. The luckiness and unluckiness balances itself out in the long run, it just takes a lot of patience and overview of the whole situation to really notice it. Alright this got pretty off topic. I'm going to bed, dreaming about the $15000 WPT seat that the Celeb League is giving away to the winner. I'm going to give it my absolute all to win that package! Wish me luck!

Wasted Time

Other than my usual $55 and $109 SNGs, I decided to play a couple $109 MTTs at night as well. The first one was the Bodog $100k Guaranteed at 8pm. As usual, only 800 some people showed up and so the overlay was slightly less than $20k! I played solid, disciplined poker and after 3.5 hours we found ourselves right around the bubble.

81 players got paid and around 100 were left. I had a 10k stack, which was below average. Blinds were 400/800/100 ante, and I was dealt TT UTG+1. The guy before me (20k stack) limped and I straight up went all in. It folded back around to him and he called, showing KQ offsuit. We all know the rest of the story. Q on the flop and absolutely nada for thecortster. Did he really think he was a favorite calling such a big bet with KQo? I really can't understand how someone could make such a play, but hey, he's the one still in the tournament and I'm sitting here writing about how I made no money. All I know is that I would not have made that play, I don't think it's a profitable long term bet.

I did make the final table of the other $109 MTT I played, the CelebPoker 10pm tournament. It wasn't very difficult, though, because only 61 players entered the tourney. I was very shortstacked the whole way, mainly due to the lack of playable cards, and I was kicked out in 9th place when my desperation all-in with K6s was called by KQs. It only paid me $183, but oh well, I can live with that. I'm lucky the SNGs are running so well, I made a total of $531 today!

Friday/Saturday

On Friday I did not play a single hand of online poker. Therefore I did play some live poker, and managed to lose €250 in a 3/6 limit game and a 1/2NL game. It did not feel very great, it sucks losing cash out of my wallet. Losing online money is a different feeling, because it feels like virtual money. Losing cash has a very more "real" feeling to it. Oh well.

Saturday I played a total of 5.1 hours of poker and was rewarded with +$876.70. I mixed up my play a bit by heading over to UltimateBet to continue working off my reload bonus. I was up around $500 playing 1/2NL when the server froze up. They have been having some serious problems since their March 1st upgrade, mainly cashier and server problems. Luckily all of my money arrived back in my account and I will wait a little while for them to make some more adjustments before I continue playing there. My plan is to cash out everything as soon as I am done working off my bonus.

Easy Money

When you're on fire, nothing can stop you. That's the impression I'm getting right now. Today's results:

$50+5 SNGs - 5 played - 1st/2nd/2nd/no money/no money
$100+9 SNGS - 2 played - 1st/2nd
$50+5 MTT - 1 played - no money

That's all the poker I played today, just 3 hours of poker and still a profit of +$802. I guess there are some days that things just work out...

USA 1 Poland 0

I got my rakeback payment this morning of $625! That was a definitely a good start to the day. I didn't play too much poker today, though. Just a couple SNGs that won me a total of $116.

Just for fun I played the $1 Rebuy tourney at Celeb at 10:30pm. I made a total of 1 buy-in, 9 rebuys, and 1 add-on so my investment was $11. Unfortunately I finished in place 9 (top 6 got paid). I'm not too upset about it, though, it sucks to play almost 3 hours for nothing. I'll get over it, though.

In other good news, USA beat Poland 1-0 in Kaiserslautern tonight! Yeeeeeeaahhhhh

February Wrap Up

Sunday, February 26:
After coming off such a bad poker trip in Vienna, I was quite surprised that I found my online poker flow right away, netting me +$596 in just 3.5 hours of play.

Monday, February 27:
I played a total of 7.2 hours but unfortunately lost -$243. Is that a double negative? Well, I definitely lost that money. I was happy with my play, but the cards were not cooperating.

Tuesday, February 28:
What a day! This was my last day to gather rake for my $2500 goal and I was still missing $230 of rake. I decided to play the $109 Shorthand SNGs and see if I could play enough poker to meet my rake goal, as well as make some money. Some of you who have been reading the blog for a while know that shorthanded is not my specialty. Well, today I went on the sickest rush I can ever remember and won a total of +$2341.50. There was no big MTT cash in there (although I did come ITM in an MTT), it's just mainly from those SNGs. Furthermore, I made enough rake to earn the $100 loyalty bonus, and I can also expect a $625 rakeback payment over night! That is what I'm talking about!

February Goals Wrap Up:
1. $2800 winnings - GOAL MET - $8,476.66 total February Winnings (this number does NOT include the Vienna trip, because this goal was specifically for online poker)
2. Finish off deposit/reload bonus - GOAL MET
3. Contribute $2500 of rake at CelebPoker - GOAL MET
4. A) Play concentrated, disciplined poker in Vienna - GOAL FAILED
B) Come back to Berlin from Vienna with more money than I left with - GOAL FAILED

March Goals:
I don't want to set as many goals for March, but I do have a one thing I would like to accomplish, and that is to win the 10pm $109 MTT at CelebPoker. Since the tourney averages 50-60 players, I will be very disappointed in myself if I do not accomplish this. Good luck to everyone, have a successful March!