2007: My year in review

2007 was without a doubt my best poker year ever. The transition that I made this year alone is something I never thought possible. I'd like to wrap it up by summing up each month of the year with a few sentences.

Rewind to the beginning of the year. At this point I am an SNG grinder, playing $109 -$320 SNGs for a living.

January '07: I make my very first trip to Vegas with Sutti and Olli, staying at the Excalibur for 3 weeks. I had an amazing time, but ran supercold at the tables. All in all I lost something like $1k playing NL $2/5, so the experience wasn't ridiculously expensive. I wrote my review about it here.

February '07: A month of SNG grinding (why did I do this to myself for so long?) with some various heaters.

March '07: Another successful trip to CCC for the Spring Poker Festival, where I first met Ragen, Swapshop and Benjo. Random cash game success inspire me to explore a change from SNGs to cash games. This was the smartest decision I have ever made. It is my biggest regret that I did not make the switch sooner. Because I had a decent roll from SNGs, I begin at the NL400/NL600 level. I quickly pick up the basics of loosening up and get off to a nice start.

April '07: I move up to NL$1000 but can not play very much due to moving into a new apartment with no internet. When I finally do get to play, I have a record day that digs me out of a 7 buy-in hole. The karma in the new apartment is phenomenal.

May '07: Highlight of the month is certainly my 2nd place finish in the EverestPoker $100k Guaranteed for $12k.

June '07: We arrive in Vegas on June 21st and the very next day I register for WSOP Event #49. A total of 3,151 players showed up and after 3 days of play I took 6th place for $96k. An amazing experience for sure that prompted me to extend my Vegas stay to include vacation time and play the Main Event.

July '07: My run in the Main Event only lasts until Day 2. I spend a lot of time just chilling and gambling around the house. Here's a picture blog of my stay. Klaus Hausmann takes this picture, which I still smile about each time I see it. Great memories:


August '07: I win the $100k Guaranteed at CelebPoker for $24.5k and then proceed to cash at EPT Barcelona, making me one of very few people to cash in their first WSOP and first EPT tourneys. Perhaps a good omen for my first WPT tourney sometime in the future?

September '07: I travel all over the place, first to Bremen, then to Hamburg and make both final tables of the Herbstblatt tourneys. I make a very early exit at EPT London, lasting only 1 hour in the tournament. Luckily, Flo Langmann took 2nd and secured me a nice little share after me winning a huge coinflip against Seb.

October '07: I flew straight to Vienna from London and celebrated my birthday there. I didnt get anything going for me in Vienna and then headed straight to Baden for the EPT, where I busted early yet again. At the end of October, I start a challenge against Heiko aka Swapshop, was there really ever any doubt I would win? :)

November '07: I visit Olli in Boston and we go to Foxwoods for an extended weekend. Things run pretty well for me. Unfortunately, I then go on a sizeable downswing to close out the month.

December '07: EPT Prague doesn't run that well for me, but I have a great time hanging out in Prague. I decide to finish the year by just relaxing in Berlin, grinding out cash games with uninteresting results thusfar.

I myself have not set any particular goals for 2008, but continuing to move up the ranks in cash games is something I will certainly be striving to do. Also, I plan on taking some nice trips again this year, starting with Australia.

As a whole, 2007 is a year I will certainly never forget. I want to thank my blog readers for constantly coming back and dropping comments, I appreciate it a lot. I wish all of you the best of luck for 2008!

I can only repeat what I have said so often before: Life is good!

Hands and pictures

I must have been the only poker player without Pokertracker...until yesterday. For the longest time it was not compatible with Bossmedia, but now things seem to be working fully. The only problem is that the program does not recognize the difference between the multiple gaming currencies, so the total winnings/losses stats are slightly off.

I really like playing the Euro and GBP tables though because I think people underestimate the value of the money, meaning they are a lot more likely to stack off lightly and make looser calls at GBP600 rather than at USD1000, even though the USD1000 is significantly less money.

Luckily all the important stats at Pokertracker like VPIP, PFR, AF, etc. are still accurate and my first 60k hands give me a good idea where I and where my opponents stand for now. One additional benefit is that the hand histories are saved and easy to locate, which is something I always had problems with in the past. Here are some big HHs from the last few days:

NL5k stack says adieu: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1825560

Literally 5 minutes later, another one bites the dust. Sick setup here against one of the biggest winners at Boss: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1825563

My aces hold on a pretty sketchy flop: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830868

We're pretty deep and I 4bet preflop and then checked behind on the flop to rep AK, though it would not have made much difference: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830875

I am pretty embarassed to post this hand, this is bad on so many levels. This move is incredibly -EV, please do not try this at home: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830857

I like this move against these two particular opponents on this board. The river is awesome for me and my half-pot fake value bet takes it down: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830883

I flop a monster draw and get it in, hit the river obv: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830885

Of all the hands in his range (which is very isolated btw), I was certainly not expecting to see this one at showdown: http://www.pokerhand.org/?1830895

All in all things have not been running too smoothly lately, but I'm sure it'll turn around pretty quick, I'm very happy with my game right now, so it's just a matter of time.

Oh yeah, one anonymous comment poster requested some pictures from Prague, so here you go:

Group photo at the Coyote Bar (Czech version of Coyote Ugly)
from l.t.r Chris, Seb, Morris, Flo, Flo's friend, me, Tobi...not pictured: the Zink brothers, Freddy

Someone thought it would be a good idea to order champagne. Gives me a reason to post a pic of our waitress.

Tobi and Seb armwrestling for money. Tobi won with ease and both lost the beer chugging competition to Flo, haha.

Random gambling in the hotel room. Me most likely losing. Pretty boring.

EPT Prague

It took me a while to post it, but EPT Prague didn't go all that well for me. I busted about 5 hours into Day 1. I lost most of my stack with AK vs AQ all-in preflop and then eventually busted with A4 against T8 on a A87T board. That's 3 EPTs in a row with me making an early exit, a habit that I can hopefully soon break :)

The rest of my Prague trip was really fun, though. There were definitely some interesting nights to say the least, though I can't post all the details here. As always there was a ton of gambling; mainly highcarding, lowcarding, flop guessing, 9-card omaha, Cort/Seb/Chris/Seri Poker, hearts, etc. I just about broke even in the end, so it's all good.

I tried another $500 Aussie Millions qualifier at FTP today but failed to get my package. An opportunity has been presented to me to purchase a package through another site for just over €6k, so I may do that instead. I'm probably going to be in Australia from January 10th-24th, one thing I'm not looking forward to is the over 24hr travel time just to get there...

Aussie Millions

So I've decided to fly to Australia for the Aussie Millions and to take a 2-week vacation in the sun. Therefore I've made it my top priority to win a tournament package. My first attempt was last night at bwin, where there was a $650+50 qualifier with 51 players, which guaranteed 1 $20k package for 1st place. I started off slow, but eventually began to really take over. The quality of play at bwin is pretty astonishing it become especially apparent in this tourney because it was exclusive to bwin players.

I became chipleader with two tables left and continued to gradually build my stack. Unfortunately my image took some hits when I got caught getting funky with J6o, but most players were too scared to make a stand. Eventually we hit the final table and I remained chipleader until we were 3-handed. One of my opponents was mega passive, constantly complaining about his cards in the chatbox, while the other opponent was super-loose, but in a very strange way. He would constantly defend his blinds with J4o, 93, etc. claiming "thecort you like bluff way too much." In theory it's great for me when he's defending those trash hands, but he was flopping miracles with them, which ended up crippling my stack immensely.

Before I knew it we were HU and he had 120k, I had 40k. I managed to double up once, but it was unfortunately not enough. He put a solid amount of pressure on me and eventually I shoved Q7s with 8 BBs, he called with A7o and I got no help. I was pretty disappointed as you can imagine, but I'll continue to try and get a package tonight. I was supposed to fly to Prague tonight but since all the Aussie Millions qualifiers are running tonight, I just booked a new flight for tomorrow so I can play all the qualis at home this evening. I'm gonna make this...

Bad bookie

Since Max Bracht is in town for the week, we decided to go to the Spielbank Berlin tonight to play some €5/10NL. The game attracts a ton of weak/tight/passive fish because the minimum buy-in is just €150 (15 BBs). The game plays just like you would imagine it to: lots of limping, lots of folding and little to no raising.

We played almost 6 hours and I netted somewhere around €800. That would have been fine and dandy, but I somehow managed to lose €1200 during the session in a completely random heat of the moment sportsbet. Basically, the UEFA Cup game Nürnberg-Alkmaar was being shown on tv and in the 78th minute it was 0-1 Alkmaar. I asked Max what kind of odds he would give me on Nürnberg scoring a goal, we agreed on 5:1 for $50. About 6 minutes later they scored so it was now 1-1 and I won the bet.

I then tried to offer Max a similar bet that no goal would be scored in the last 6 minutes + stoppage time. I started at 7:1 but he didn't want to, so finally I offered 12:1 odds that any goal would be shot. Another player at the table said he would take that bet and for some dumb reason I agreed and let him bet €100. Literally 10 seconds later Nürnberg shot the 2-1 and I was out of €1200. I really should have just kept my mouth shut but it was obviously too late by the time I realized that. Lesson learned.

On a completely random note, I finally got around to ordering the books for the winners who voted for me to win the challenge. My e-mail provider berlin.de decided to switch e-mail systems a couple weeks ago and somehow managed to temporarily get rid of all saved e-mails until yesterday. Now that I finally had the addresses of the winners again I was able to make the order tonight and the books should be arriving within the next couple days. Sorry it took so long.

I fly to Prague on Sunday, until then I'll just be grinding online. It's been going really bad for me these past couple weeks but I can feel an upswing coming up. It's all about staying optimistic.