Hits and misses

The games have been pretty good these past couple weeks, especially the NL5k+ games have had tons of action due to a select few fish who keep coming back for more. I've been playing the higher games when the spots were good and here are some of the more interesting hands:

NL10k: A heart would have been more realistic but running 6s will do the trick, too.

NL10k: 3bet pot against a pretty big fish. Pretty satisfying flop, pretty satisfying result.

NL10k: He takes it right back. His check-minraise looks strong, but he does it with a ton more than just sets so I don't mind my calldown too much. My whole line is pretty hero-callish and it doesn't get rewarded.

NL5k: Here my hero call actually does get rewarded by the poker gods. This guy is pretty aggro and we had been tangling in a few 3bet/4bet pots. He berated me in the chat afterwards asking me what I could beat, to which I responded: A9.

NL5k: The obligatory 3bet light and hit good hand.

NL5k: I'm pretty sure he knew he was drawing to precisely 8 outs (potentially even 6) and decided to gamble.

NL5k: I was pretty sure his minraise was a misclick so I 3bet expecting to take down the pot preflop. The 3bet gets coldcalled and we see a flop 3way where I elect to check behind a flush draw. I really like doing this occasionally (even sexier if it's the nut flush draw) because it makes your hand so disguised when the flush actually hits. I continue my deception on the turn at which point my hand looks like some random Ax hand. On the river, my hand certainly doesn't seem like it can take much heat (and JT got there which he could rep) and my opponent pounces on that and fires away.

NL5k: MirNiceGuy insisted that I post this one, but I was going to anyway obviously :) When you're constantly getting 4bet light then light 5bets definitely need to be in your arsenal as MrNiceGuy came to realize this hand. His hand was mucked but it's AK > 90% of the time here.

NL5k: I was shoving the river for value against a pretty big fish here but ended up valuetowning myself.

NL10k: It's close but I am a favorite here. Not when MrNiceGuy binks the river, though.

I'm down ~ $50k with the NL10k shots but have made about half of that back at NL5k. One of these days I'll hit my run-like-Jesus heater and then I'll show them! muhahahaha

€5k Challenge

Chris Niesert and I have been playing tennis once a week for several months now and we're both pretty competitive people. I've definitely been the dominating force on the tennis court but recently he challenged me to a series of games to be played right before and during our Vegas trip. In specific order:

1. Tennis
2. Foosball (Kicker)
3. Billard
4. Dart
5. Table Tennis
6. Pinball (Flipper)
7. Crossbar shooting (Lattenschießen)
8. Basketball - Around the World
9. Minigolf
10. Bowling
11. Heads Up NL SNG

Basically, each of us picked 5 games where we thought we had an edge in. Mine are 1,3,5,7 and 10. His are 2,4,6,8 and 9 with 11 being the tie-breaker. The challenge is over when someone wins 6 games. The bet is for €5000 and it can no longer be cancelled, even if it means playing a €5k HU SNG as a decider.

I got off to the start I was hoping for by beating him 6-2 in our tennis match. I was completely outmatched in foosball, he creamed me 10-5 and I let him know that foosball was the one game in the challenge where it was totally impossible for the underdog to win as we were playing to 10. With the score being 1-1 total, we then played billard where he achieved the upset when I scratched the 8-ball (ouch!). He also barely scraped out the win in darts, so now he leads 3-1 as we move onto ping pong.

The decisive games are going to be games 7 and 8, so a little running good for me certainly wouldn't hurt for me to turn the momentum of the challenge my way. I'll keep my blog updated (hopefully with good news) as we continue to get through each of the games on the list.

One week countdown til I fly to Vegas! Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Is this serious?

The last week I've been playing a couple thousand hands a day and have been unable to keep my good run from April going in May. I saved some interesting hands from the past week, enjoy!

-My plan was to donk a ton of turns, hitting the nuts certainly helped. The river completes the flush and pairs the board but I still had a pretty easy shove for value imo.

-This guy made such a tiny 3bet and since we were almost 300bb deep I made the preflop call. I felt he was gearing up for a checkraise on the flop so I checked behind and hit gin on the turn. I made the small raise hoping he would come over the top with some kind of draw as there were plenty of them out there. The river is really nasty, Olli was behind me when I made the bet and I said clearly "I'm gonna puke if he shoves." Needless to say, he shoved, I tanked it and prayed, bleh.

-Same opponent, interesting hand. Relatively thin value shove.

-There was a pretty big fish playing NL5k and I flopped gold (or so I thought) against him. His check minraise was suspicious, but I had seen him playing overpairs the same way, so made the 3bet and got it in. The backdoor would have been nice, but it wasn't meant to be. He left the table with ~45k, props to him.

-His line was so full of shit, so I came over the top of his check minraise as I could still rep some nice made hands. I was literally laughing out loud when it came to showdown, I'd really love to hear his thought process when he pressed call.

-Slowplay goes well. I'm not going to go into my reasoning for my line, but I really like it. It's pretty risky, unless you river quads of course. He tanked and called me with a flush. Bad luck for him.

-NL5k continues to be so f***ing rigged and I can't explain it. Sigh.

-Triple barrel for 200bb. My tiny bet sizing and then the river over potsize shove look so incredibly strong. He thought so long and asked me to show, to which I kindly obliged. I'm pretty sure he folded a Ten, and I probably would have as well.

-So symbolic for my NL5k experience. Why not?

Anyone with basic math skills can figure out that I'm down quite a bit for May. My confidence is not down at all, though, as most of those big pots were just nasty set-ups. I'm definitely going to continue playing quite a bit this month because I want to get it as many hands as possible before Vegas.

By the way, thanks to all of you for the suggestions regarding my new laptop. I haven't decided yet, but I think I'm going to buy a new one while I'm in America. I won't forget the $50 reward if I end up taking one of the suggested laptops, I promise!

PartyPoker Million Cruise

I just spent 7 days completely offline for the first time since I've had a computer. I must say that it was completely refreshing and I didn't even have the urge to go online because I was enjoying myself so much on the cruise. There was just always something to do and though I won't be able to write about all of it, I do want to jot down a few things accompanied by random photos from throughout the week.

One of many reasons for not being in my room or online: sunset

The $8k Main Event started off well for me. I had a pretty good table despite having Bond18 and Benjo at my table. A couple guys from Ukraine with very unorthodox playing styles kept the table active and flowing with loose chips. I got my hands on a few of them in several different pots but nothing too significant. At the end of the day I had doubled my starting stack from 10k to 20k. Day2 did not last long for me, though. After losing some sizeable pots I had 7k left with blinds of 250/500, Adrian Koy raised in MP, I pushed AJo from the button and the BB reshoved over the top with AKs. The flop was 5K5 and I was toast.

Day1 in the Main Event, a rare smile at the poker table

With the Main Event out of the way I had plenty of time for drinking and a few excursions as the ship made stops along the way. The first time I went offboard was in Izmir, Turkey, where several of us took a couple "horse taxis" to the local bazar in a mission to buy ping-pong paddles and balls.

It was semifrightening when the cars honked/buzzed past and our driver refused to check if the lane was free before switching lanes. An accident is basically GG for the horse and passengers so I'm surprised he was so careless.

At a local restaurant in Istanbul. Great service, great atmosphere, not so great food

Alex and Julia at the restaurant in Istanbul

I really enjoyed Istanbul the next day, though the weather was not that great. Croatia, specifically Dubrovnik, took the prize for best stop though. A truly awesome city with an amazing view and crystal clear water, wow.

Group photo in Istanbul: (l.t.r.) Flo, Alex, Mirijam, Benny, Tim, Seb, yours truly, Benjo, David and Chris

Dubrovnik, it was awesome to say the least

I did play a fair amount of live cash game on the cruise, much to my surprise. I've written several times how boring full-ring live cash games can be, but little did I know that our Russian friends from Vienna would be there playing every night so I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I lost by biggest live pot but I also won my biggest live pot ever and I did manage to make some money against them overall so that was good news.

For the last night of the cruise I decided to bust out my suit if Mirijam wore her golden cocktail dress, so we each held our promise and celebrated Alex's win in the disco. It was disappointingly empty, but one drunk Russian kid provided plenty of entertainment on the dance floor.

Looking spiffy

Congrats again to Alex Jung for taking down the Main Event!

Our last day we spent hanging around in Venice just enjoying the last rays of sun and eating a nice original Venetian pizza. Yum. I would be lying if I said I didn't completely enjoy the vacation, though it wasn't a complete vacation because I still did play plenty of poker. Hopefully PartyPoker will organize this again next year because having an active poker room on a ship definitely adds a nice spin to a cruise. If not, I probably won't go on a cruise for a while because 90% of the crowd was over 60 years old and they aren't very much fun to party with :)

Now it's a matter of a 3-week countdown until I fly to Vegas for the WSOP on June 3rd. In the meantime I need to find a new laptop that can support a 30" monitor. That basically means I need a graphic card with dual link DVI, if anyone has any suggestions please drop off a comment!
*Edit: $50 reward on Stars or FTP if you can find me a nice laptop that meets my qualifications:
-dual link dvi
-either 15.4" or 17" display
-not too loud and does not get too hot
-I do not want a Mac

gogogogogogo!

Just for the record

I did manage to make up all my March losses in April. A good feeling for sure.

Now I have to pack my suitcase (yet again) to catch the earlybird flight to Venice to start the cruise tomorrow.

Shipitonetimeplzkthxbye.