Going to California

I'm flying to California tomorrow to attend my Grandpa's memorial service on Sunday and his burial on Wednesday. I'll be coming back to Kansas City on the 4th of January. The planned trip to Salt Lake City is now cancelled, because the timing simply would not be able to work out with all this other stuff going on. Not sure how much internet access I will have out in Cali, so this may be my last post for a little while. To all my readers: Have a happy new year!

Sad and depressing

I had no plans the other night so I decided I would try the only remaining casino in Kansas City that I haven't been to yet, the Argosy Casino & Resort. I called in advance and was informed that a $2/5 NL game was running, which is right up my alley. When I got there I saw that there were a bunch of rocks and one semi-loose playing black man at the table. The night in a nutshell: 7 hours of play, -$290, several missed flops, a few failed bluffs, playing against rocks is not very fun.

I had a pretty nice Christmas with the family, although some sad news arrived on Christmas Eve as well. My grandpa's kidneys shut down and he will most likely die within the next few days, as he is refusing hospital treatment. This has changed our plans somewhat. We were supposed to be flying to Utah to go skiing today, but instead my mom is already in California visiting her father. I will fly out there as soon as he has passed away to attend his funeral and be with the rest of my family.

Because I took my mom to the airport on Christmas day and my sister was with her boyfriend's family, I didn't have too much to do. I figured this would be a good opportunity to make it to the casino. I decided to go to the Ameristar again because I had such a good experience there last time. One thing needs to be said in advance: I felt like a true loser when I was driving up there. Who goes to the casino on Christmas day??? Apparently I do.

And I was not alone. It was pretty depressing to see so many people gambling their Christmas money away. My hope was that the poker room would be filled with gamblers but unfortunately I was disappointed again. With the exception of two Asians (usually action junkies) who were only at the table for about 20 minutes, I was surround by Kansas City's finest tighties. Don't these guys have families? I dropped $300 within the first hour after an incredible suckout, but I got it all back with a set of tens shortly afterwards. From then on I only had minor fluctuations to my stack and I ended the night at around 2am with +$150. I can't predict the future and say if this will be my final Christmas casino trip, but I sure hope so...

Ameristar Casino

So I had some free time yesterday and I decided to spend it by trying out the Ameristar Casino in North Kansas City's Poker Room. Compared to the Harrahs room that I played in this past October, this place was really nice. 15 tables all nicely spread out throughout the room, friendly staff and good floormen all contributed to a nice atmosphere. The chairs were by far the most comfortable chairs I have ever sat in at a poker table. They were leather, reclined quite a bit and the height was fully adjustable on each chair.

They had several limit games and two NL games running, both with $2/5 blinds and a max buy-in of $300. Missouri has a law that no player can lose more than $500 an hour, so all chips a player purchases are swiped on their player card and must be done at the cashier, not at the table. I bought $300 of chips and took my seat after a short wait on the waiting list.

My very first hand I got KQo in MP. It was folded to me and I raised it up to $20 to potentially get credit for a total newbie who is here to have a good time. Because I also look so young, people who do not know generally do not give me credit for knowing what I am doing. When I am in Vegas, I will try to play this out a little bit more and experiment with some (intentional) amateur mistakes when I first sit down at a table. Back to the hand: the button calls and the BB raises to $60, I lay it down.

About 5 hands later, I am sitting on the button and six players limp to me. I look down at AA and raise it to $30. The SB contemplates and then says, "Make it $100." Internally I'm thanking him for making my life so easy, externally I am trying not to give off a reaction. All the limpers fold and I think for a couple seconds before declaring myself all-in. He says to me, "This is the worst call ever. I call." He shows AKo, I flip over my AA and there is over $600 in the pot. The flop comes 245. Turn 6. River 3. Split pot. It would have been such a nice start...

I take down a few smaller pots with hands like AQ, JJ, 67s and T9o, meanwhile building my stack slowly but surely up to around $500. I was then moved to the other table (the main game). As it turns out, the game I was in only acts as a feeder game to the main game. The main game looked a lot tighter than my table, but apparently I had no choice.

At the new table the first hand I played was TT, which I raised to $25 after one limper. I got two callers and saw a flop of JT3. I bet out $40, which was called by one player on a short stack. The turn came down an 8. I bet his last $60, he called and very proudly displayed Q9 for the straight. Certainly an interesting way to manage his stack and ignore all forms of pot odds, but hey, it's his money to spend. Unfortunately for him, the dealer whipped me out another J on the river for a full house.

A couple orbits later I had 87o in my BB and three players limped in front of me. I checked and saw a flop of 69J, giving me eight outs to a straight. The SB bet out $20 and I raised it to $60, trying to take the pot down right there. Everyone folded it back to him and he called. The turn came another 6 and he checked it to me. That did not change the situation much for me and I didn't think he was going to fold to a bet, so I checked behind. The river came down a K and he led out for $50. I thought that bet was kind of weak and seemed like a blocker bet. That King could be a good scare card for him, so I decided to raise it up to $150 on a stone cold bluff. He thought for a long while before laying it down. He later told me he had J9, not sure if I believe him.

I then went card dead for a good three hours before deciding to call it a night at around 1:30am. I played for around six hours and make a total profit of $380. At this point I am happy about any kind of profit, so this certainly was alright for me.

Other than that, I have just being doing some Xmas errands around town. In recent gambling news, Harrahs was bought out for $16.7 billion, Foxwoods is going to be building a new casino in Philadelphia and 888 founder Avi Shaked is offering Palestine $1 billion if they accept a peace offer by Isreal.

In the States

I arrived back in Kansas yesterday and I gotta say, it feels pretty good. I'll be in Kansas with my family until Christmas just hanging out with friends and maybe squeezing in an hour or two of online poker a day.

Here's my schedule for the next month and a half:
Dec. 26-29 I'll be flying over to Salt Lake City, Utah, to go skiing for a couple days
Dec. 29-Jan. 10 Back in Kansas for a little relaxation
Jan. 10-12 Flying out to California to visit more family (my family originates from California)
Jan. 12-31 Vegas, baby!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Jan. 31-Feb. 4 Final days back in Kansas
Feb. 4 Return to Berlin to resume my normal life

Busy bee

I made a very fast exit in the Real German Poker Champion tournament, losing all three matches right off the bat. It seemed to like my opponent was maybe not even taking the tournament very seriously, especially after playing the Omaha HU SNG with him. I held the chiplead for most of the match, then we were pretty much even when he rivered a straight against my trips (according to Cardplayer I was a 78% favorite - oh well). He dominated me in Limit Hold'em and after a couple sick hands I basically just gave up because I was sick of playing. Pretty disappointing, but life goes on.

Things online have been pretty break-even the past few days. From Thursday to Friday, Sutti and I are planning another 24 hour session, almost identical to the one we did back in the summer. It's going to be a blast and I am currently still debating which games I want to play during the session. I'll keep you posted.

Finally some heat

My online results these past couple days have been quite good. I've been making it deep in a few MTTs (although no big score yet) and consistently beating the shorthanded SNGs. Considering that I began the month down well over $2k, I can certainly live the $400 or so I am currently down. I never thought I would be so happy about being down...

I also got my Round 1 opponent in the RGPC tournament who is Frank "stealjmun" Debus. Unfortunately for me, this guy is about as well-rounded as it gets when you look at his stats. He has made final tables in just about every game being played in the RGPC tournament.

Let's look at each game we will be playing in chronological order:
1. Omaha PL High - I've been practicing these the past couple days. Maybe with a lotttt of luck!
2. Hold'em Fixed Limit - Aggression is key. I need to win this one to have a chance.
3. Seven Card Stud Limit - He has all the experience, I am about as donkeyish as they come.
4. No Limit Hold'em - Maybe I have a slim chance, assuming it's not already 3-0?
5. Omaha 8 or better - Jan "50outs" calls him an Omaha8 expert...great. Should I just sit out?

In other words, I don't give myself too good of odds to make it through Round 1, but hey, we're all winners!

Plano East vs John Taylor

Anyone who knows the rules of American Football is going to appreciate this video. This is the last 3 minutes of a game between Plano East and John Taylor and is by far the sickest thing I have ever seen happen in football.

See video here

A weekend to forget

Friday:
I lose precisely $1885.24 in around 4 hours of play online, although I must admit that the last $300 or so was just pure monkey tilt. Almost all of the losses were from the $109 shorthanded SNGs at CelebPoker (yes, the same ones I was bragging about a couple posts back).

Saturday:
I make the drive over to Schenefeld alone and make it in time to have a quick few words with Shadow, Moritz and Miamivice before starting the tournament. The tournament itself was a €540 deepstack tournament, which I began at Table 2, seat 5. My table was undoubtedly the toughest table of the tournament. I had Doc Thang Nguyen (the recent EPT Baden winner), Dr. Jalali (former German champion and recent Amsterdam Classics winner), a couple internet pros such as Patrick "Patricksjold", all of which certainly did not make my table too juicy. I started off by getting a couple premiums like QQ and AA. Unfortunately though, I was unable to accumulate too many chips with them and after a few failed blind steals as well as paid blinds, I end Day 1 with 4,600 chips (from a 5,000 starting stack).

After the tournament ended at around midnight, the casino offered various cash games. They had €10/20 Limit Hold'em, €10/20 PL Hold'em and €5/10 NL Hold'em. I opted for the NL Hold'em game and bought in for €500, which was enough to cover anyone at the table. Right away I was amazed at the quality (or lack thereof) of play at the table. I have honestly seen tougher $0.10/0.25 NL games online than this game. I was up €300 right off the bat after I got my AK paid off by a couple players. I then donked off a good €400 in various hands before reloading another €300 to my stack to take full advantage of any profitable situation that may arise.

Shortly before 4am, my chance arrived. I had AA UTG and because I had been playing so tight, I opted for a limp with plans to re-raise shall the pot be raised after me. Indeed, several players limped and the button min-raised to €20. Both the SB and BB called so I re-popped it to €100. I got 3 callers; the button, SB and BB. The flop came down KQ9 and it was checked to me. I fired in €200, the button folded, the SB min-raised to €400 and the BB went all-in for around €200. Now, I only had about €250 left and there was no way I was pitching my hand with so much money in the pot. I reluctantly threw in my €250 and told the dealer I was gonna need some help.

The turn came down 5 and the river was a 4. Now, it was time for a showdown. Any guesses to what the SB was so hot about min-raising the flop with? Queen-five. As it turns out, he was the one needing help, not me. The BB only showed a queen, I assume he had AQ. So, I stood up from the table as I watched the €1500 pot be pushed over to the next WSOP Main Event champion (I'm predicting it now and willing to accept wagers). I drove back to the hotel to get some sleep for Day 2 of the tournament.

Sunday:
With blinds of 200/400 and a stack of just 4600 chips, I needed to make some moves early if I wanted to truly contend for a win. I was all-in three times of the first 9 hands when it was folded to me with QJs, KQo and ATs in late position. Then I went super card-dead and was down to 4100 chips with blinds of 300/600, when I was dealt AJo in MP and Doc Thang limped in EP. He had done this a few hands before with T8s, so I decided to squeeeeeeze my last bit of fold equity out against him. Unfortunately, the player directly behind couldn't wait to get his chips in the middle, either. Thang folded and I quickly saw that it was my AJ against my opponent's QQ. The board came KxxJQ and I was eliminated in 29th place (out of 63).

Plans:
1. Forget about this weekend.
2. Read some poker literature to get my mind fresh.
3. Play as many of the Mansion Poker Added tournaments as possible during December, winning at least one of them. It's soooooo happening.

The Real German Poker Champion

The Real German Poker Champion is a tournament being organized by 50outs.com and Luckbox.de to determine the "best" player in the German-speaking nations of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The tournament itself is formatted into several heads up matches of 5 games each. Each player is assigned an opponent and they then play 5 heads up tournaments in the following games:

Omaha PL High
Hold'em Fixed Limit
Seven Card Stud
Hold'em No Limit
Omaha High/Low 8 or Better PL

You need to win at least three of the matches in order to advance to the next round. I'm not going to go into too much detail of my strengths or weaknesses, but I think anyone who has read this blog for a while can get a good idea of what I am going to be working on before gametime.

Some big names in the German poker scene have already signed up (a full list can be found here), which should create a pretty interesting tournament. The buy-in is $100, which I will be paying in the next couple days.

One special thing about the tournament is that each player gets to submit a "tag-line" of 100 words or less, which will be posted with that player on all results pages. Anyone have a good idea for a tagline for me? English or German, I don't care. If you have a suggestion, please leave it as a comment in my blog or send me an email at cortkm@berlin.de . The best submission will get a $20 transfer at Pokerstars as a way of me saying thank you!