Day Off

I took today as one of my days off from the challenge. Heiko himself gave me a personal wake up call at 2:00pm so I knew the day wasn't meant to be from the get-go :)

I did a little shopping then played a couple sessions, starting off really strong (+€4k) but then donating it all back by the time I was done. It's kind of boring if I just post the hands where I stack someone or get stacked, so here are some bluffs from today:

I squeeze AQ and get a call on my continuation bet on the flop. My first instinct was to obviously surrender on the turn because it blanked, but I thought I could still push him off 88 or 99, which is what I assume he had. He has seen me give up in spots like these before, so my hand looks super strong to him.

Here I was playing against a superaggro opponent who was getting involved in all kinds of situations. I am pretty sure he's a good player, he just plays a high-variance game with tons of moves. I didn't believe his 2.5x raise so I shoved, assuming that I had at least 3 outs if I got called.

In this hand, psykoben (psychobenny at 6thstreet.de) owns me pretty hard. I try to sell a monster (22 or 55) but he ain't buyin it. I wuss out and don't fire the 3rd barrel, although he claims he would call a 3rd barrel in that hand against me.

I quit the session because I had incredibly headaches and my head felt like Las Vegas in the summer.

In other news, the Dollar continues to fall and I'm wondering if it's ever going to stop. It kind of makes me glad that CelebPoker made the switch to Euros, although I was pretty angry at first. Here's a funny picture that I'm sure many poker players in Europe are feeling:

Challenge, Day 6

Another good day, here are my results:

Played hours: 3.5 (max allowed)
Stacks: +5.20 (€4676.58)
Total stacks for the challenge: +20.84 (€18755.13)

Once again I ran pretty well, I'm also glad that Heiko ran well today, too. Though it's going to take some serious work on his part on some serious downswinging on my part for him to win the challenge, it would be nice for it to get somewhat close again. I saved some hands from today, here they are:

I'm not really sure what my opponent was up to in this hand. It's possible that I sucked out on him, unless he had something like AJ. He certainly didn't have the hearts, perhaps a set? I don't know, nor do I care :)

I really don't like the way my opponent played his hand. A 4bet is unnecessary imo, especially considering he was not even involved in the hand to begin with. My image was somewhat laggy but nothing to justify this.

Here's some proof that I don't always run hot! I called his 3bet in position preflop because the effective stacks were 230BBs and he is a pretty big donk. I have no idea what he thought he was beating on the turn. Matter of fact, I don't think he did much thinking at all.

Same opponent, a short while later. I'm pretty sure I didn't even need the fourth 8, but it was comforting anyways.

Once again the same guy and basically the same situation as with my QJ button raise. This time I have J8s and we're deep. His play is a little more understandable than in the previous hand, he typed in "AA" in the chatbox shortly before calling the river.

Standard and boring, overpair vs overpair against an extremely aggressive opponent. Not much I can do, considering how active this guy is.

I was really disappointed with myself in this hand. I picked a tell and was too stupid to follow my gut instinct, which was to call his squeeze and check/fold a missed flop. I obviously tried to take it down preflop and unfortunately committed myself, was certainly not surprised to see the showdown.

Song of the day: Dobie Gray - Drift Away

Challenge, Day 5

I broke my day into two sessions, the first one netting me 3+ buy-ins but the second one seeing me give most of it back. My results in a nutshell:

Played hours: 3.5 (5 were allowed)
Stacks: +1.24 (€1114.23)
Total stacks for the challenge: +15.64 (€14078.55)

I wanted to play the full 5 hours but most of my tables died off to the point where I became bored and unconcentrated, so I pulled the plug on the session. I'm still leading the challenge by a good margin, as Heiko once again did not have a great day at the tables. If I can keep this pace throughout the rest of the time I'll be very pleased by the time this thing is over.

Song of the day: Eric Clapton - Layla

Challenge, Day 4

I monitored the tables today and to my surprise there was no action whatsoever, so I procrastinated my session til the very late evening. I mixed in some tables at EverestPoker as well due to the fact that there weren't enough tables at Celeb. My results:

Played hours: 3.6 (5 were allowed)
Stacks: +6.72 (€6047.77)
Total stacks for the challenge: +14.41 (€12964.32)

I had a couple sick setups go against me at Everest but I made up for them over time and ended up profiting pretty well for the day. I was pretty tired towards the end of the session and that's the reason I didn't play the max time allowed. 5 hours are also allowed tomorrow so I'll definitely try and get all those under my belt and hopefully continue to increase my lead against Heiko.

Once again, the stupid hand histories are now showing up (have I mentioned that Windows Vista is a pile of crap?) Maybe I'll get Pokertracker sometime soon and see if they show up then, its certainly worth a shot. I've got a soccer game in the early afternoon, then I'll probably rest a couple hours and then fire up the tables tomorrow evening.

Song of the day: David Guetta - Love is Gone

Challenge, Day 3

Sunshine follows rain! I had a great session today, playing the full 3.5 hours over one stretch in the afternoon. Here are my stats:

Played hours: 3.5 (max allowed)
Stacks: +9.78 (€8804.67)
Total stacks for the challenge: +7.69 (€6916.55)

It feels great to get back on track after the crappy day I had yesterday. There were some nice fish at the tables today which always helps the bottom line. Also, I got the best of the regulars today. That's not all that importat, though, what's important is not to be losing to the regulars. Fish are the main moneymaker in any game, which is why game and table selection are so crucial.

I finally found a way to retrieve some HHs, here are some ones from today. You may notice that there are not many of me losing. For some reason, they are not displaying properly (no kidding!). I do lose, though, I just don't have much evidence :)

Sucking out is fun, here I hit my 2-outer after getting it all-in on the flop on a drawy board.

Battle of the blinds, once again I hit gin on the turn. Pretty unlucky for him, but I did get most of the money in when I was ahead.

I'm not too thrilled with my play in this hand. I 4bet OOP pretty deep against a very aggressive opponent who I tangle with on a daily basis. I flop a gutshot in addition to my overpair, but I think I am creamed more often that not in this spot. I make this call sometimes.

Here my opponent basically hands me his stack. This is one of many reasons why playing K8o OOP is not a great idea.

This is a call that I don't make against a lot of opponents, but I know this player to be weak and I knew that he would be gunning for me as I was constantly throwing 3 and 4bets in his face. I won the hand as a slight favorite (52% to 48%)

And finally, here is a hand where I took my opponent to valuetown and back.

Unfortunately, things did not go very well for Heiko today. I say that sincerely, too. I really want him to make a lot of money in this challenge as well, just not as much as me obv :) Looking forward to tomorrow...

Song of the day: Tubthumping - Chumbawamba

Challenge, Day 2

Day 2 didn't quite run according to plan. My results:

Played hours: 3.5 (max allowed)
Stacks: -5.39 (€4852.62)
Total stacks for the challenge: -2.1 (€1888.12)

The results are a combination of poor play and obviously bad luck. I played my A-game for about 90% of the session but I made some dumb errors that probably cost me around 1 stack total in expectation. I often got the feeling that I was playing my hands face-up to my opponents, because a lot of the things I were doing were just too predictable.

My hand histories are still not showing up so no HHs from today either. It's probably better that way anyway, because no one wants to hear or read bad beat stories!

Challenge, Day 1

Day 1 has come and gone and here are my results:

Played hours: 3.5 (max allowed)
Stacks: +3.29 (€2964.50)
Total stacks for the challenge: +3.29

I'm pretty happy with the result, even though Heiko outdid me for the day. Overall I ran relatively well, which is nothing I'm not used to to :) I broke the day into two sessions, one in the afternoon for 2 hours and one late at night for 1.5 hours. This is something I'll probably continue to do to get the best of both worlds.

Here are some interesting hands (predominantly large pots) from the first session of the day. For some reason the hands from my second session are now showing up right now, I may need to recover those tomorrow.

In this hand I was playing $10/20NL HU against a superaggressive opponent who had been going after me left and right with raises and 3bets. I clearly committed myself on the turn but I guess he figured his T2 was still good.

Same opponent, just a couple hands later. Pretty standard preflop and postflop, I give him rope to hang himself on the turn even though a case can be made to just continue firing at the draw heavy board. I had a supereasy call and dodged his 9 outs to take down the pot. He quit me after this hand.

This next hand is all but standard. I isolate a limper preflop and get a coldcall from the BB and the limper. I shut down on the flop and it is checked through to the river, where I hit my boat. Now all of a sudden the BB fires a pot bet and I have a decision. Call, raise or shove? My first instinct was to call, because anything he is checking through the whole way then potting the river is either killing my tiny full house or is a pure bluff where I am getting no value from a raise anyway. However, because the guy is a huge fish, I took the high variance move and shoved. I assume he called me with KJ or QJ, unfortunately the HH does not show his mucked hand.

Fish and I are each 200BB+ deep, I once again isolate his limp and we see a pretty nice flop for me where I hit bottom set on a 3-flush board. I fire rather large flop and turn bets, only to see him donk the river pretty strong. It's a pretty trivial call for me, as I'll be shown the naked ace of spades a ton in this spot. Needless to say, I was pretty shocked to see his hand.

Another set, I was obviously really happy to get it all in on the flop against a tilted opponent. He hit the flop pretty hard as well, though.

Once again, I have some more hands from the evening session but the HH function is currently not working. Looking forward to tomorrow...oh and thanks for all the people who voted for me to win, I'll do my best not to let you down!

The Challenge

The rules for the challenge against Heiko aka Swapshop have now been set. Starting this Wednesday, there will be 12 days to play as much as possible, limited to 3.5 hours during the week and 5 hours/day during the weekend. The ultimate goal is to win as many stacks as possible during the just under 40-hour period we each have to play. Because of the slight difference in stakes, we've calculated Heiko's avg. stack size at €200 and mine at €900. In theory, it is easier to win a stack at NL200 or NL400 than it is at NL1k or NL2k but I still have confidence that I can come out a winner.

Each of us can take 2 days off where we either don't play or just don't have our results judged for the contest, obviously to be determined before the session starts. Besides the evident goal of winning the challenge, I am hoping to come out of this with several new stacks to my name! The motivation for winning the challenge is also made up by the prize that the winner gets from the loser. Some examples (taken from the Jochen Schweizer website): skydiving, helicoptor flying, racecar (palindrome btw) driving, plane flying or Ferrari speeding are all valid suggestions that the winner can pick if he chooses so.

For any readers who predict the winner before Thursday at 23:59, we'll pick one at random and he/she can choose between Super System II, The Theory of Poker and the FTP Strategy Guide. Just drop a note in my comments and in Swapshop's comments as well using the same screenname.

I'll be playing pretty much only at CelebPoker, although I may need to sneak in a few iPoker tables if there isn't enough action at Celeb. Most of the time I'll be playing between 6-8 tables simultaneously, which will hopefully continue to run just as good as it is right now. I've been on a pretty nice heater these past few days and that is a great confidence booster going into the challenge.

Let the challenge begin!

Berlin > London, Vienna and Baden

I've been up to a whole lotta nothing since I finally returned to Berlin after three strenuous travel weeks. I've put in 16 hours of poker so far with slightly above-expectation results. Tomorrow morning I have a meeting with a tax advisor specifically for Americans living in Germany, so I'm pretty stoked to finally get some concrete answers regarding my situation.

Other than that, I'm just planning on taking it easy for the next two weeks until I fly to America for most of November to visit Olli in Boston and then see my family in Kansas for Thanksgiving. Olli and I are also planning on hitting up Foxwoods for the tournament week that's going on while I'm there. I'm really looking forward to all that (minus the travelling).

Also, Heiko from 6thstreet.de and I will most likely be doing some sort of challenge during the next two weeks, though we haven't agreed on how exactly to judge the challenge yet. I basically just want to motivate myself to play as many hours as possible before November and I'm pretty sure he wants to do the same. Once I have more details I'll post them here.

EPT Baden

I did not survive Day 1 of EPT Baden. My starting table was decent, there were 3 fish and a couple of really predictable old players so I thought I would be able to gradually build my stack playing smallball. However, my stack size began to decrease rather than increase after a couple bluffs were picked off and a couple draws never materialized. I won a few pots back after making some 3bets with nice hands (QQ, AK and AJ) and was back to 8k when the following hand came up:

UTG (superfish Italian, 4.4k stack) minraises to 400 with blinds of 100/200, everyone folds and I am in the SB with 77. I call the extra 300 and see a flop of 8s6s4s. I have the 7s, so I have middle pair + a 1card straight flush draw. I opt to check and see what he throws at me. He immediately bets 1k. To me that looks like a huge bet with an overpair who is now scared to see another spade come off, so I checkraise to 3k, thus committing myself is he shoves his last 1k on top of that. He indeed shoved and I was forced to call. He showed AsQs for the stone cold nuts and I was drawing thin to one out. It did not come and I was crippled.

With blinds of 150/300, I had just under 3k when I posted my BB. The action was folded around to the button, who raised it up to 900. SB folded and I looked down at AA. I obviously shoved, he was forced to call with JTo. The board came down JT972 and I was eliminated.

My flight back to Berlin is on Wednesday, so the plan is to use today and tomorrow as relaxing days. I heard that the hotel offers nice massages, so I'll go check those out with Expekter.

Life is good!

Austrian Classics

I haven't been doing much the past few days. I played a few hours of cash game, went out to the movies, celebrated my birthday at a club in Vienna and have just generally been taking it easy.

Yesterday was the Main Event of the Austrian Classics, which was a €2000 buy-in tourney that CelebPoker sponsored me for. 125 players showed up with the top 18 getting paid. I started off the tournament well when I doubled up with 9s7s against AsTd on a Ts5s4s flop. I then continued to cruise until Florian Langmann took away half of my chips with a set against my kings. I was able to recover, though, and found myself shortstacked at the final 3 tables.

I was at a super aggressive table and just could not find a good time to get my money in in an unraised pot. I finally got my chance with just over 6BBs. I was UTG+1 at a 7-man table, which is basically an any-two situation. As expected, the UTG player folded and I shoved J2o, only to get called by AKo. The flop came down TJQ and I was looking dead. The turn came down a 2 which gave me a shimmer of hope, but the river blanked and I was out in 20th place (ironically enough, I finished 20th in this tournament last year as well).

We then played a pretty long chinese session with Sebastian, Pontus and Richard Toth, where I ended the game up 30 points. Tomorrow night we'll all travel to Baden together where the next EPT tournament is to be held. I'm just going to try and play my A-game and see what happens...

It's me, Guy Keston

It's been a long time since my last update, so this one may get somewhat long. Sebastian and I decided to extend our stay in London to support Flo at the final table of EPT London. He went into the final table as the chipleader and eventually finished in 2nd place for 346,500 GBP after a rollercoaster at the FT (you can read his report of it here).

His win also secured me just over €32k, thanks to the 6.5% share I had with him. Originally I only had 3% and Seb had 10%, so after Day 1 I suggested that we "flip" for 3%, giving me either 6% or nada. He agreed and so we flipped a hand in 9-card Omaha, which I won with relative ease (little did we know it was a flip for more than €15k each!!!). I then purchased an additional 0.5% from him for a great price, so we both had 6.5% of Flo to sweat for. Seb made a ton of that money in chinese poker against me in London though, so he has no right to be upset!

We then all went out with Flo to party and eventually ended up at some club that played pretty decent music and was packed with attractive girls. To get into the club, our host gave us all "fake" names of people on the guest list who didn't show up. It was pretty funny to hear a bunch of Germans with strong accents try and convince the bouncer that their name was Gary Singleton, Larry Kendall, or Jay Bergen. I myself was Guy Keston (hence the blog title).

We partied the night through and took an earlybird flight to Vienna at 6:15am the next morning. I was way too tired at still play the €500+ 1 rebuy tourney that night, so I just got some nice sleep and then headed over to the Jedlicka's house to play the WCOOP ME. It was a $2.5k buy-in with an amazing structure. Starting stacks were 20k and blinds just 25/50. However, being the donkey I am, I managed to bust out in the first hour with JJ on a J97 flop. My opponent had T8 (obv) and I was sent to the rail.

Yesterday was the €200+rebuys at CCC, but I wasn't able to get much going in that tourney either. €5/10NL cash game went alright for me, I made just about €2k after several hours at a pretty soft table. Tonight is the €750 Freezeout and if I bust out of that one as well I'll probably just head back to the cash games, just because it would be a huge missed opportunity to pass up on the free money.

My birthday is coming up this Thursday, but I doubt I'll be partying too hard because the Main Event (€2k buy-in) takes place the very next day. Still, I'd like to go out and celebrate a little bit, we'll see what happens. Oh and speaking of the Main Event, CelebPoker made a nice gesture and decided to sponsor me for it.

One final note: While in London, Seb and I made a prop bet which I won. Now I get to choose his new Pokerstars/IntelliPoker avatar for the rest of the year. I don't want to blow my chance on the first thing that came to my mind so I'm taking a little time to make sure I get something really good. If anyone has any suggestions I would love to see them :)