Late Night Poker II

Tuesday: -$117.05
Since I have some time off work, I woke up at 2:30pm. Anyone who reads Daniel Negreanu's blog will know what I am talking about when I talk about my messed up sleeping schedule. At around 5pm I met up with Olli and Sutti to eat some spare ribs at a local steakhouse. We decided to do another poker night, this time over at Sutti's place. And so from 7pm-5am we all played poker, with mixed results.

I made it really deep in the $11 Rebuy $35k Guaranteed at Pokerstars, only to find myself donk off all my beautiful stack with A6s. I finished in 51st place for something like $114 (1st place was over $11k) and couldn't believe how stupid I can be to throw away such a great chance. Oh well. Life goes on. I lost a few SNGs and MTTs, hence my negative result for the day. I'm not too worried about it, though.

One funny thing I left out of yesterday's blog was pretty interesting. Sometime in the middle of the night, Olli had his pepper gas gun pulled out of his drawer. If the trigger is pulled, this gun is basically a real gun which blasts a form of pepper spray into the air. He has it as a form of protection against burglars, gangsters, or whatnot. Anyway, so he has this gun in his hand and he assumes it is unloaded. To make a long story short, he ends up pulling the trigger, instantly sending a cloud of pepper spray into the air. Our eyes tear up and we all begin coughing like crazy. For those who have not experienced it, pepper spray is no fun. It stings your eyes, burns your skin, and makes it nearly impossible to breathe without coughing. Within seconds, we were all jumped up and running out of the room, unable to stand the pain. My laptop still reaks slightly of that horrible powder today, I will need to give it a thorough cleaning. Don't press the trigger unless you are 100% sure, folks.

Online Poker Night

Sunday: +$73.50
My soccer team had its final match of the season in the late afternoon, and since I didn't get much sleep the night before (due to jetlag), I was so tired afterwards that I did not play any of the bigger Sunday tournaments. That and the fact that the buy-in for the Stars Million was set at $540, a number that really hits the border of what I am willing to pay straight-up for a Multi Table Tournament.

I did, however, manage to play the League Double Points tourney, which I failed miserably. I was really looking to make a score and get myself boosted in the leaderboard, but it just wasn't meant to be. The rest of the results come from the typical, boring, daily grinding of the SNGs.

Monday: -$242.50
Monday was a pretty fun time. Sutti, Olli, and myself decided to have a poker night. Not a live poker night, an online poker night. That meant myself and Sutti heading over to Olli's place, where we had 3 laptops and 1 pc all online and ready to go. We all had a really good time, although the results could have been better. It can be lonely somtimes sitting in front of your computer playing online poker alone. However, when you have three guys all feeling the ups and downs, the good beats and bad beats, all in the same room, it is nearly impossible to get bored.

We arrived there at 8pm and didn't end up leaving until around 5am, not taking the a break the whole time while we were there. Such a long session can be grueling, but I would do it again anyday. Matter of fact, we will definitely be repeating one of these poker nights in the near future. As for my results, I began the session up around $900, but then lost back over $1000 throughout the night. It happens.

*Side note: We never played at any of the same tables. Not only do I not agree with that kind of thing morally, the poker sites strictly don't agree with that behavior either. I have never felt the need to cheat, because I feel my edge is strong enough without it. Same goes for Sutti and Olli.

A warm welcoming

Saturday: +$961.50
I gotta thank CelebPoker and especially Pokerstars for giving me some nice cards today. I'm not gonna lie. I didn't outplay everyone in sight, nor did I bust out any super fancy moves. I straight up had amazing cards, and I extracted as much value out of them as I could.

I played strictly SNGs with the exception of the 10pm $109 MTT, which I finished in 18th place (top 10 got paid). My sleep schedule is totally out of whack, so I may be playing a 2am session at Stars. Those results will follow in tomorrow's blog, so stay tuned.

Back

I had a really good time in America, it was a good refreshment for my mind to get out of my daily routine in Germany for a while. That being said, I am happy to be back so I can get back to my daily routine again :)

I did not log many hours into poker while I was there, frankly because I was there for other reasons than to play poker. My sister graduated from college and that was the main reason for my trip. The free time I did have, I spent with old friends from Kansas, and I had an absolute blast. The rare occasions when I did play poker, I made a few bucks here and there, so I really can't complain.

Friday: -$119
I thought I was on track for a sweet day, but that quickly turned sour when I began running bad at night. Highlight of the day: 2nd place in the CelebPoker League tourney, that should bump me up to 3rd place. Sunday will be very important, I'll be bringing my A-game!

Pokerstars Blogger Tournament

Blogging has its advantages :) Expect a complete entry of my trip/poker experiences to come later on tonight...I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

Break

Because I am the States until the 26th of May, my blog will be put on held until then. I may sneak in one surprise blog, but I highly doubt it since I won't be playing much poker while I am here. Check back on the 27th for the next blog entry.

$250,000 Guaranteed

I took it down for $62,500!!!!! I'm just kidding, I busted out in 133rd place and got absolutely nada. Matter of fact, make that -$530. Here's a breakdown:

Hour 1 - I started with 2500 chips and slowly started grinding up to around 3k. Shortly before the 1st break, I took someone's AA out with my TT, after I flopped a set. We were all in preflop and I got pretty lucky, but I had him covered anyway. I ended hour 1 with around 5300 chips.

Hour 2 - I only played one hand for about 30 minutes, and that was 88 which brought me a set. Other than that, I was grinded down by the blinds. Shortly before the next break, I made two all-in pushes with A7s and AQo, which brought me back up to 5500 in chips.

Hour 3- With blinds now at 400-800, I was starting to get pretty desperate. I saw a free flop in my BB with Q4o. The flop came Q high and the SB pushed right away. He had done this before with a flush draw, so I had a tough decision to make. I used up most of my time before deciding to call. He showed KQ and I got no help from the turn or river. My call was borderline at best, calling off all your chips is really not a great idea with TP no kicker. However, I was playing to win and I thought this might be a good spot to get my money in with great odds against a flush draw. I could have, or probably should have folded, but that's so damn easy to say afterwards...

It's gonna be hard to get this one out of my head. I may skip the big Sunday tournments tomorrow, I'm not sure I'm in the right mental state to play them. I have a soccer game at 2pm tomorrow, maybe I'll head to the Spielbank for a round of Pot-Limit afterwards. Hmmmmm not a bad idea.

Finally a League Win!

Thursday: -$231
It was a break even tournament day, and a short session at $3/6 shorthanded was the sole reason for the negative result. I'm not too upset about it, though, because it was a flush-over-flush situation which was pretty unavoidable for me.

Friday: +$513
Now here's a day I enjoyed! The highlight was surely winning the CelebPoker league tournament, even though there were only 15 players. I really needed those points, I just hope I can back them up with a strong finish on Sunday!

Tomorrow is the $250k Guaranteed tournament at Celeb and so far there are 247 qualifiers. I am estimating that around 260-280 people will actually play in the event. With good concentration, a few good cards, and a little good luck, who knows what could happen? I've got my head full of dreams right now, let's hope they turn to reality tomorrow night!

Mid-week

Wednesday: +$695.12
I ran very well today, with the exception of a couple unfortunate situations. I lost a $900 pot playing $2/4 shorthanded when I was set up with flush over flush. Other than that, I stayed on track most of the day and came out quite well ahead. Here's one crazy hand from today's play, it comes from a $55 SNG:

Hand #294739896 at table: STT $50 NL
Started: Thu May 11 01:46:02 2006

biely is at seat 1 with 90.00
gravello1 is at seat 2 with 1610.00
arian2003 is at seat 3 with 2195.00
hawg buste is at seat 4 with 1000.00
játékos187 is at seat 6 with 3230.00
thecortstr is at seat 7 with 1805.00
batteau is at seat 8 with 5005.00
JaBreeze is at seat 9 with 3420.00
matlep is at seat 10 with 1495.00

matlep posts the large blind 100.00
JaBreeze posts the small blind 50.00

JaBreeze: --, --
matlep: --, --
biely: --, --
gravello1: --, --
arian2003: --, --
hawg buste: --, --
játékos187: --, --
thecortstr: Ad, Kc
batteau: --, --

Pre-flop:

biely: All in
gravello1: Call 100.00
arian2003: Call 100.00
hawg buste: All in
játékos187: Fold
thecortstr: All in
batteau: Fold
JaBreeze: Fold
matlep: Fold
gravello1: All in
arian2003: Call 1805.00

Showdown:

gravello1 shows: 2s, 2d (a pair of Deuces)
arian2003 shows: Js, Jc (a pair of Jacks)
hawg buste shows: 10s, 10d (a pair of Tens)
thecortstr shows: Ad, Kc (high card, Ace)

Flop (Board: 4h, Ac, 5d):

Turn (Board: 4h, Ac, 5d, Qs):

River (Board: 4h, Ac, 5d, Qs, Kh):

thecortstr shows: Ad, Kc (two pair, Aces and Kings)

Sidepot 4:
thecortstr wins the pot of 390 with two pair, Aces and Kings
Sidepot 3:
thecortstr wins the pot of 1830 with two pair, Aces and Kings
Sidepot 2:
thecortstr wins the pot of 3650 with two pair, Aces and Kings
Mainpot:
thecortstr wins the pot of 590 with two pair, Aces and Kings

(0.00 rake were taken for this hand)

Winning all four pots was very satisfying, believe me. This hand catapulted me to be chip leader and I eventually went on to win the SNG with little to no resistance.

*For those of you reading this that are wondering about poker-tester.com: We are having problems getting our nameservers set up correctly for our new servers, which are now located in Boston. Our webhost has been unavailable the past two days but I am trying to put pressure on him to get this fixed ASAP. This is a very simple mistake, which makes it even more frustrating that it is taking so damn long to get fixed. Thank you for your patience!

Not too shabby

Tuesday: +$598.35
I certainly can't complain about Tuesday's result, but believe it or not I was running bad most of the day. The sole reason why I have such a nice result is because I won my final $215 SNG for $1000 even.

Before that I was getting crushed in the SNGs I was playing and for a third day in a row, only managed to save myself in the cash games, this time playing $2/4 shorthanded and $3/6 shorthanded. I am experimenting with a semi LAG style that I think is working very well so far. I still have many aspects of my game which need some tweaking. I'm really trying to learn shorthanded hold'em very well so I have something to lean back on when all else fails.

On a side note, it looks like CelebPoker updated their SNG lobby, taking out all the unnecessary PL/Limit/TV tables. This makes it a whole lot easier to find the right SNG to register for. I do realize that absolutely no one cares about this, so I'm gonna go ahead and stop this blog for tonight :)

Monday

"Poker isn´t about money. Poker is about making good decisions, and money follows."

Monday: +$176.80
I really like that quote, it has some real truth to it. I'll need to think of that during my next downswing to remind me that I'm in it for the long run and the short term results are not very significant as long as I am making the correct decisions.

As far as today goes, I lost almost every tournament I played in, but managed to keep my head above water by playing $2/4 shorthanded cash games. I am very frustrated with the tournament results, but I am positive they will return back to normal pretty soon. I will continue to develop and improve my cash game play over the next few weeks and see where that leads me.

JJ no good

Sunday: +$1126.85
I played a total of 9 tables today and I'll take you through each one of them individually, in chronological order:
1. CelebPoker $3/6 shorthanded cash game - In one hour I went on an amazing run, and played very well on top of that. +$940.50
2. CelebPoker €3/6 shorthanded cash game - I played this one parallel to the other table because the table was very juicy. Converted into dollars I came out up +$530.35
3. CelebPoker $109 SNG - 3rd place, after a very unfortunate situation. Would rather not talk about this one, but one person (no names) knows what he did to me was pretty f***ed up. +$91
4. CelebPoker $55 SNG - Built up a nice stack but lost it all again before I was ITM. Too bad. -$55
5. CelebPoker $109 SNG - Honestly can't remember this one, but I think I might have bubbled. Couldn't have been that bad otherwise I would remember it. -$109
6. Bodog $100k Guaranteed - Shortly after entering the 2nd hour of play, I was kicked out when my JJ met someone's AK. The flop brought a self-explanatory ace. -$109
7. CelebPoker League Double Points Sunday - To my own surprise, I made it all the way to heads up! I had my opponent all in many times, and he was hitting wonder cards. It was really amazing. Anyway, I came in 2nd. Very good because I collected some serious points for the leaderboard. +$86
8. CelebPoker $8k guaranteed - Wow. I bubbled this tournament after 3 hours of play with JJ. I flopped a full house only to discover that I was drawing dead. A full description of the hand can be found here. This one really shocked me. Place 31. Ouch. -$33
9. Pokerstars $1,000,000 Guaranteed - After 2 1/2 hours I had to call it quits when my JJ was unable to beat AJo all in preflop. I had a nice stack, and it would have been even nicer if an ace didn't fall on the flop. Pretty disappointing, I finished in place 1100 something (top 750 get paid). -$215

Did anyone notice the trend? I got knocked out of all three significant MTTs with JJ. JJ is a very tricky hand to play sometimes. However, I stand my all my decisions and would do them again if the opportunity arose. I can still be happy with today's result, those cash games winnings really gave a boost to my day!

Quick Update

The results for the past couple days are insignificant. I don't feel like digging them out, but I am assuming it was around +-0. I have decided to improve my cash game play, and I have a secret weapon to help me along the way! So, I'll be studying cash game play gradually over the next few weeks and see if I can start grinding out the ring games together with my SNGs.

I was going to play at the Spielbank again tonight, but I decided to play the $100k Guaranteed at Bodog and the $1 Million Guaranteed at Pokerstars instead. Who knows? Maybe I'll strike it rich...

Pinch me

Thursday: - $592
On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most pissed off, I'd say I'm hovering between a 9.6 and a 9.7. If the weather wasn't so damn nice I may have hit the full 10. Words can not express the frustration I am feeling right now. I will save you the stories, no one wants to hear them. I was planning on playing a lot of poker this weekend, and now it's looking like it could turn into a poker break instead. Tomorrow is key.

A blog of few words

Tuesday: +$220.50

Wednesday: -$591

Can't wait for tomorrow...

Pouring really hard

Monday: +$1459
As the title suggests, I could not have asked for a much better day. I lost my first 6 out of 7 SNGs, but then my unbelievable tear started. 2nd in a $215 SNG followed by 3!! 1st place finishes out of my next 5 $109 SNGs! I was playing relatively well and running very very hot. Pretty much every time, I would go into heads up with a smaller stack, and then come out victorious. What a great feeling!

I even cashed in the CelebPoker League tourney for $34. Then came a 2nd place finish in a $55 SNG, another 1st place finish in a $109 SNG, and then a loss in a $215 SNG. All in all I played just under 6 hours today and I loved every second of it. In case you didn't get the picture, I'm a happy camper tonight :)