thecortster's Poker Blog

WSOP Main Event Day 1b

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 20:35:00 +0000

Like everyone else in the Main Event, I began the day with 20k in chips. I didn't recognize anyone at my table, but later learned that the player to my right was Keith "The Camel" Hawkins. I chipped up early and the table dynamics became quite clear: Keith and I were doing the raising and betting, everyone else was doing the checking, calling and folding.

There was one lady at the table who was too funny for words. She thought that a bet of 600 was the solution to all problems at the poker table. I'm not kidding when I say that her open-raise was 600 (blinds 50/100), her 3bet size was 600 (raise from 275 to 600) and her bets on the flop, turn and river were also respectively 600 each! As you can probably imagine, it didn't take her too long to bust out, I did the honors with QQ on a KcTs9s flop against her AK for her last 3.8k in chips. A jack on the river sealed her fate.

Loaded with around 30k in ammunition, Keith raised from EP to 600 at blinds 100/200. He had me covered and I made the call with 22. Everyone folded and the flop came down 7c 8c 2h giving me bottom set. He surprisingly checked and I fired 1k, which he very quickly called. The turn was the 10d. He checked again and I fired 2400, which he once again called quickly. The river was the 3c, completing the flush. However, it was not very relevant because I think he is almost always contbetting that flop with a flush draw, so I opt for a value bet of 5k even which he SNAPS. To my surprise, he reveals 96o for the straight and I lose almost 30% of my stack.

The very next hand I raise 88 and flop a set against someone else, allowing me to win back approx. 5k in chips. The next orbit Keith raises from the same position again and I know his range is so incredibly wide not only because of his showdown beforehand, but also because the guy in the BB is probably the tightest player to ever have played the Main Event. He literally never played a hand, constantly complained about the crap the dealer dealt to him and almost had a heart attack when we had to play 7-handed for a couple minutes while we waited for new players. He called the floor over at least 4 times to remind them to send someone over ASAP.

Anyway, new blinds are 150/300 and Keith raises to 800 and this time I elect to 3bet to 2500 with JTo. He calls and we see a flop of Js4d2d. He checks and I check it back for deception as well as the fact that I don't want to be pushed off my hand quite yet. The turn is the Jc and he check/calls my 3300 bet. The river is a Qs, he checks and I go for a 7100 value bet, which should confuse him beause my line looks a little strange. He makes the call and instamucks when I show him my hand, later on he told me he had 66.

With the final break about to begin, an old man (stack ~16k) raised UTG+1 to 1200 and I found AQs in MP. I made the call and we saw a flop of As9h7h. This old man hated me because I had already 4bet him twice, only with kings and once with T9s, though neither went to showdown. Still, I had the feeling that he was not in the mood to be giving me any more chips. He bet 2k and I made the call. The turn was the Kh and he announces "All-in" for 12.7k (double the pot-size). This was now a pretty difficult decision. I tanked for about 3 minutes and after some chit-chat I finally made the call. He showed JhJd, I dodged his 11 outs and sent him packing.

The last level consisted of me moving to a new table, making a bad fold against an unkown that should have sent him to the rail and then losing a few chips in the final hands because I thought people would just want to get through the day without much confrontation. Still, I ended the day with 66,350 chips so all is well for now. Play continues on Tuesday and I'm ready to get back in the zone.

Vegas Pics, Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:37:00 +0000

Rockstar, the instruments have been sitting around ever since

View from the Pure night club

Sutti, Daniel, Matthias

Sonja + Seri

girls we met at the club

in the gabbana

Seb teaching Ferguson how to play Stud Hi/Lo

Sieg!

A vegetarian grilling meat, kind of ironic

Our first house barbeque

at the Tao Beach

Come on! Go Nico!

Wendy and Seb

Schnib, Rifter and I think Heiko just hit my head trying to give me the bunny ears

Instant classic

I still have pics to post from the bracelet party, the villa and other random adventures, I'll probably upload them at the end of the trip.

Lights out, party, ping pong and steak

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:39:00 +0000

The bracelet party for Seb/Martin/Jens was planned for Saturday night and it ended up being at Tao at the Venetian. When all was said and done we were a party of 40+, so it made it kind of difficult to get a big enough table without sacrificing a good location near the dance floor. Though some people were forced to stand, I think most had a pretty good time.

The night was made interesting 2 hours before the limos came to pick us up, when the power in our house went out. We prayed it come back in time to get ready, but inevitably everyone ended up showering putting on the finishing touches using laptops as the only light source. Though it was interesting, I certainly wouldn't want to repeat it, it's amazing how much we depend on electricity these days.

Anyways, back to the party. After picking up some girls on the way there (not those kind of girls, though) we made our way into the club. They were a little slow on getting us the alcohol, but once it was there it was flowing pretty much nonstop until I left at around 4am. I have some pictures on my camera as well, but for the meantime you can checkout Intellipoker's gallery of the party located here: http://www.intellipoker.com/gallery.php?id=98&act=list . Luckily they cut out the inappropriate pictures, which some people I'm sure are relieved about :)

Other than that, I've just been keeping it low around the house. Somehow I managed to lose a mid 4-figure amount betting on the wrong horses at ping-pong. I seriously couldn't win a match, it was pretty sick. I haven't been able to chase those losses yet, but I'm sure opportunity will come knocking soon enough!

Last night was one of the rare times we went out to eat well. In the whole near month I've been here now, I've only made it to Ruth's Chris one time and the rest of the time it's been a random mix of burgers, pizza and chicken wings that I've been shoving down my piehole. Last night we opted for the N9ne Steakhouse at the Palms Resort and Casino. The steak (New York Sirloing) was, needless to say, phenomenal. The wine was right on the money and and price could not have been better either, considering Seb got stuck with the bill yet again after losing credit card roulette. In all fairness, he is running pretty bad in that game, haha.

Event 46, $5k shorthanded

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 19:46:00 +0000

I expected the field in the $5k shorthanded tourney to be somewhat strong and in fact it was probably the toughest table I've ever played at at the WSOP. To my immediate right was ThAY3R, to my immediate left was Shane "Shaniac" Schleger and to his left was Lou Esposito. Luckily Shane was eliminated in level 3, only to be replaced by Ryan Daut.

I built my stack up to 20k or so without many showdowns and then ran a terrible blind-on-blind bluff against Ryan Daut. Had I known it was him, I never would have tried the bluff, but I thought it was some random guy who couldn't stand 3 barrels of heat on a 3s6sJhTcKs board. He snapped me with J8o and I was down to 10k.

I then got lucky for the first (but not last) time against Lou Esposito. He raised and I jammed from the BB with Ad7d. He called with AQo and I flopped a flush draw and turned the flush. He wasn't thrilled to say the least.

After chipping down again I squeezed KQo all-in after a button raise and an SB flatcall. The button folded and the SB unfortunately made the call with AJo. Blank blank blank blank King to the rescue!!!

On the final hand before the break I had around 16k and once again got it in bad, which was kind of the running theme of the day. On a flop of AdJs6s I had Ks7s for the nut flush draw and was checkraised by my friend Lou Esposito. I jam on him and he instacalls with AJ. Well, I guess I'll just have to hit a spade then, which is precisely what I did on the turn. 32k stack now.

I then doubled someone up when my TT could not hold against his A5o, but I certainly was not going to start complaining. After losing a few more pots I was once again down to around 12k when the following freaky hand came up:

I shove 12.6k UTG+1 with 99 at blinds 400/800/100. It's folded around to Lou in the SB, who says loud and proud: "CALL." He then throws 400 in the middle, thinking he was just calling the BB. He then looks over at my 12.6k stacks of greatness I have in front of me and realizes he just got himself in a sticky situation. The floor is called over, Lou is extremely heated and the floor forces him to call the complete 12.6k. The BB folds and it's my 99 vs Lou's 64s for my tourney life. He flops a gutshot but fails to improve, doubling me up and reenforcing his eternal hate for me.

After a few preflop 3bets I was now up to over 50k entering the final level of the day with around 100 players left, 78 getting paid. I was moved to a new table towards the end and with 3 minutes left on the tourney clock I was dealt AKo in the CO. I raised to 3200 with blinds 600/1200, the button called and the SB makes it 13000. It kind of sucks because I have absolutely no reads, but he does have me slightly covered. Still, he has no reads on me either so I elect to shiperoo with my 45k stack. He tanks and eventually makes the call with QQ. Blank blank blank blank blank busto.

It sucks to play so long for nothing, but that's poker. The Main Event will most likely be my next tourney, Day 1B ftw.

On a side note, congratulations to Martin Kläser for winning a bracelet in Event 43! Ship it!

All kindsa stuff

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 23:56:00 +0000

WSOP:
I haven't played any tourneys lately, my next tournament is the €5k shorthanded coming up on Thursday. After that I will most likely lay low until the Main Event, which I think I'll be playing on Day 1B, but I'm not 100% sure yet.

Big congrats to Seb for taking down the Stud Hi/Lo bracelet!!! It was really fun to be part of his cheering section, it figures that Luckbox would be the first one to ship a bracelet.

€5k Challenge:
With Chris leading 3-1, we dove into table tennis as our next match. After an incredibly long warm-up, he finally wanted to play the game and I took it down 11-8. He was so tilted that he insisted we play mini golf immediately.

We drove to Circus Circus where they apparently had mini golf, which turned out to be a joker course with 17 holes and an 18th hole that could not have been created any stupider. Anyway, he won by 5 strokes (which is supposedly not that much he tells me?) and finally admitted that he might have an edge in mini golf. O rly?

Bowling was up last night and I took it down with relative ease, something like 152 to 125. So now the score is 4-3 with 4 more games: Pinball, Crossbar shooting, Basketball and No Limit Hold'em. It's still all open and I remain optimistic!

Vegas Pics:
They're coming, be patient!

By the way, I ended up getting a Sony Vaio, so whoever Stefan A is, you won $50! Drop me a comment with your email address so I can contact you regarding payment.

$2500 Shorthanded Tourney

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:02:00 +0000

We were running a few minutes late getting out of the house on time so by the time I arrived at the Rio and eventually my table, I had missed a couple hands. As I finally saw my table in the distance, I started to walk as fast as possible because I saw the dealer dealing out a hand. As it turns out, it was my BB and I didn't *quite* make it to the table in time, but since the dealer saw me coming, she held on to my hand for me (thanks again, Heather!).

As it turns out, UTG raised to 150 (blinds 25/50, starting stack of 5k) and the button 3bet to 600. I look down at Queens (thanks again, Heather!) and contemplate my options. I opt for a cold 4bet to 1800, obviously committing myself to my hand. UTG folds and the button shoves in for 5k. I make the call and was pretty shocked when he flipped over 55. The words that then came out of his mouth were pure gold:

"Oh my f***ing God. We're playing 6-handed and I'm dealt a pair and you get a higher pair. What are the odds of that? What a cold deck."

I put on a little smile and look over to him expecting him to be smiling as well, but as it turns out he was dead serious. I dodged the two remaining 5s in the deck and doubled up to 10k thanks to the unbelievable "set-up" situation of pair vs overpair (thanks again, Heather!)

I continued to chip up to 15k, playing with the likes of Chris "Jesus" Ferguson and Bill Edler, who by the way is one of the nicest poker players I have ever met. I lost a substantial part of my stack after raising to 550 with blinds of 100/200. The SB 3bet me to 1550 and I 4bet him all-in with AQs for around 7k because he had 3bet me so often. He made the call with 99 and I lost the race. I suppose I could have slowed down and just called the 3bet or even folded preflop, but if I had won that hand I would have been patting myself on the back for playing so well. Results-orientation ftw.

My stack continued to whiddle down before I found myself with just 3800 left and blinds of 100/200/25. The button (most active player at the table) raised to 600 and I shipped my stack in with A9o. The BB reshoved for 4600 and I figured I was drawing to 3 outs for sure. To my surprise, he tabled 77 after the button folded and I had 6 outs to hope for. However, I bricked all 5 community cards and found myself in the taxi line a little sooner than I would have wished for.

Not much else to write about, I'm going to be playing online these next days and stop donating to these WSOP prize pools for a while. I think we're going out partying tonight. If I'm in the mood I'll take some pictures and post those later. Peace!

Break

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 22:23:00 +0000

I'm in Kansas until Sunday evening so there won't be any updates as I won't be playing any poker. I'll be back in the groove of things on Monday, my new computer and 30" monitor are all set-up for the rest of my time in Vegas!

$5000 Shootout

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 05:13:00 +0000

It took me a while to finally motivate myself to write something and even now I really don't feel like writing much. My shootout table was full of no-names and it only took a couple hours for Phil Tom (father to Scott Tom, the founder of Absolute Poker) to eliminate 8 of the players on his own and begin heads up plays vs me. He started with a 4:1 chip advantage and throughout the whole 3.5 hours of heads up play I was never able to build up my stack to over 30k in chips.

Because I was so shortstacked I was forced to limp most of my buttons in order to not invest too much money with raises and cont-bets. This worked pretty well against him because he played relatively ABC, check-folding most flops when he missed and rarely getting out of line. Unfortunately I ran like cancer during most of heads up play and he continued to run like Jesus.

With blinds of 400/800 and a 14k stack I limped the button with 6s8s, planning to make a move if he raised as he had raised the last 3-4 times I limped the button. He did indeed make it 2400 and I shoved all-in, which he instacalled with 66. Just to be sure, the case 6 came out on the flop and I was toast.

As fate would have it, he went on to win the tournament and is now a proud owner of a WSOP bracelet and an additional $477,000. Well done, sir. Maybe he can take some of that prize money and pay back some of the millions that his son stole from innocent Absolute Poker players.

WSOP $1500 shorthanded

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 16:45:00 +0000

I must say, shorthanded is soooooooooooooooooooooo much better than longhanded and I think that gets magnified even more when it comes to live poker. You get to play so many more hands because each hand doesn't take 3 minutes like it does at a longhanded table and because each player is forced to play so many more hands it really increases the edge that good players have against their less-skilled opponents.

My first table started with Ted Lawson on it and other than him it was a real cakewalk. A few old guys and one really young guy were playing incredibly passive and not surprisingly all 3 of them donked off their chips early in the tournament. They were then replaced by better players and the table became a little tougher but luckily it was broken and I was moved to a new table. Again, people were not able to make the proper adjustments to shorthanded and ended up folding way too much, meaning stealing blinds and antes became almost like stealing candy from a baby.

At this point I had around 6k (3k starting stack) when I lost half my stack with an overpair vs flush draw situation. Still having 3k with blinds of 100/200/25, Kevin "Belowabove" Saul raised to 600 from the CO (he had been raising between 70-80% of his hands) and I find 6d4d in my BB. The combination of my hand's equity, my perfect resteal stack size and Kevin's tremendously large hand range I decided to push. He thought for about a minute and called with A9o. The flop was TT7, turn 3, river 4 and I doubled up.

Once again I was moved and was able to build up to 11k without a showdown. After getting played back at a few times I had around 9k when the following hand went down: Blinds 150/300/25, button openlimps for 300, crazy chatterbox in the SB makes it 950 and I make it 2950 from the BB with QQ. Button folds and crazy guy thinks for a while and calls. At this point I have him on something like TT or JJ with the slight possibility that he's slowplaying something even bigger. The flop comes down K62 rainbow and he checks. At this point I have just around a potsize bet left but don't think I'm ever getting called by worse, so I decide to check behind for pot control / to be able to catch a bluff on a later street. The turn is another K which is a pretty good card for me. At this point he bets 3200, almost exactly half my stack. There's no real difference in me shoving or calling here, so I elect to call because there's no real danger of giving off a freecard and maybe I can get him to bluff off his last barrel on the river if he's crazy enough. The river is a 9 and he shoves, I snapcall, he shows KTo ftw.

Today is the $5k shootout which I will most likely be playing. Should be a good tournament. Ciao!

In Vegas

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 13:56:00 +0000

My trip to Vegas went over smooth as can be. The house is amazing (pics to follow), the people are all easy-going, so the next 6 weeks should be a really good time for everyone. The house is now stocked with electronics and groceries (over/under for the food bill was set at $1150, the bill came out to be exactly $1111) thanks to stops at Frys and Albertsons. Today will be my first tourney, the $1500 shorthanded NL event. More updates to follow...

Hits and misses

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:20:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Mon, 26 May 2008 23:26:00 +0000

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?

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Sat, 17 May 2008 18:16:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Sat, 10 May 2008 22:54:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Fri, 02 May 2008 22:36:00 +0000

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.

They see me grindin'

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:54:00 +0000

I'm pretty proud of myself for finally getting a backup internet connection last week. Every once in a while my DSL goes out and I am immediately disconnected from all my tables with no chance of reconnection. Apparently BossMedia are too incompetent to program a reconnection function that actually works. Anyway, those issues should be solved now as I have two connections running simultaneously. For anyone interested, this is what I got.

Grinding itself has been going surprisingly well and I tried to save some interesting HHs from the past days. In no particular order:

My line looks like it doesn't have an ace in it so I can understand why he changed his hand into a bluff, because he certainly could not have been expecting to be called by worse

His turn donkbet confused me but I went with my gut here. I guess he had some kind of diamond draw, but I was not anticipating to win the pot when I saw the river

I was pretty sure he didn't want to play for stacks (200bb) with most of his range here, and I can easily have a random 5 in my 4bet bluffing range so I thought there was a good chance I could push him off his hand

You didn't think I was only going to post winners, did you? :)

I throw a good beat on someone after playing my draw pretty aggro here. He was not thrilled with me after this hand.

This opponent seemed somewhat tilted at the time after I just stacked him at another table. I really dislike his play for 150bb here because he is never ahead and could easily be drawing dead.

Strange line for queens but whatever floats your boat

Time for another good beat, this time I hit one of my 9 outs and dodge a heart for the win. My opponent apparently "thought I was solid but was mistaken"

Nuts no good. Can't blame him for his play, though

I wouldn't advocate 3betting 93s but if you do I would recommend flopping like this

Pretty nasty river but a pretty good situation for me if I can get him stacking with 44 here

Alright that's enough hands for now. Because Hans Martin Vogl was here over the weekend I now have the new weight loss updates for all 3 of my horses:
Hans - currently 85kg, needs to hit 80kg by July. I'd estimate an 80% chance he makes it, though he did scarf down 5 Dunkin Donuts in one sitting while he was here
Stefan - currently 99kg, needs to hit 90kg by July. 50% chance
Seb - currently 95kg, needs to hit 85.5kg by July. 10% chance

1 week until the cruise, woohoo!

Booyakasha

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 23:39:00 +0000

I was happy to leave Monte Carlo, though I definitely had a great time while I was there. Luck games treated me well for the most part, though I did donk off €3k in a 1-2nl home game we started with Max, Chris, Flo, Seb and myself. Other than that, I went 1 for 2 in food eating prop bets because Tobi thought he could 3 meals in 30 minutes (he finished 1 and a half meals). The other one was when Seb, Max and I went out eating and we were all stuffed after a full 3 course meal. We challenged Max to finish all 3 desserts (3/4 banana split, 1/2 fruit bowl and the other half of his banana split) and to my surprise he came through like a champion. Needless to say, he wasn't feeling too well afterwards.

I now have two weeks before I fly to Venice on the 2nd of May. The PartyPoker cruise sets sail in Venice and will make stops in Bari, Olympia/Katakolon, Izmir, Istanbul and Dubronik. I'm especially looking forward to the stops in Greece and Croatia, hopefully they'll allow us enough time to do some exploring. I'm pretty sure the cruise is going to be an amazing time to say the least.

Until then I'm just going to grind. I've decided to leave NL5k out of my routine until I recover fully from the €30k I lost in March, so until then I'm sticking with NL1k and NL2k. Hopefully it won't take me too long because it really hurts to see how soft 5k games can be at times, but I really want to stay strong about this.

I don't have too many interesting hands (I've only played 12k hands so far in April) but I'll try and save some over the next few days and get them posted. This one was my own fault for slowplaying, but I was still pretty shocked when the cards were flipped :)

My camera died in MC and I forgot to take many pictures in San Remo, so I'll just post the views I had from each of the hotel rooms.

San Remo

Monte Carlo

Update from Monte Carlo

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:39:00 +0000

I spent Saturday (Day 1a) hanging out doing nothing except playing Fifa 08 on the PS3 that Pokerstars had set up in their players lounge. The first game I played against an American who wanted to play me for money, so I beat him 3-0 and the second game he preferred to play for no money :) Then Chris Moneymaker came over and wanted to play me so I gave him a 2-0 beating with him having 0 shots the whole game. Ship it.

Day 1b was yesterday and I busted out in level 5 (150/300) after getting it all in with AK vs 88 in a button vs big-blind situation for 11.5k. The road up to that point was a wild up-and-down as always. I had a really sick table after the 1st hour, as I was sandwiched inbetween Dario Alioto two seats to my right, Max Pescatori to my immediate right, Marc Goodwin to my immediate left, Gus Hansen two to my left and Antonio Esfandiari three to my left. The last thing I wanted to do was get into too many pots with these guys, especially against Gus or Antonio when I was out of position, but because we played so long some situations were inevitable.

I made a nice fold against Gus after I raised QQ UTG and he 3bet me, which I called. I check/called the 943 flop and check/folded the 6 on the turn. He had a set, which he didn't show but I later read in his blog ;) In a later hand I flopped a flush against Esfandiari after defending my BB with 76s. I got two streets of value from him after he called the flop & turn but folded the river.

I escaped that table and was moved to a new table with Isaac "WestmenloAA" Baron to my immediate left. I had around 20k at this point but lost 8k after firing a couple barrels with AK on a missed flop. Then came the aforementioned hand with AK vs 88 where I got it all-in preflop and lost the flip.

And so ends a very disappointing EPT season for me. I played 7 tournaments and cashed only once for slightly over €10k. I'm not disappointed with the way I played, though, as I feel I made pretty good decisions throughout most tournaments. The large field tournaments are really high-variance so not much can be said after just 7 tournaments, so that's not really what I'm worried about. The fact of the matter is that I had a lot of fun, got to travel to a ton of cities and will certainly be back next season with better results.

I'm now going to forget my troubles and devour a €25 cheeseburger from room service. I'll add a €10 chocolate mousse to that and wash it down with an €8 bottle of Evian. This place is a pretty big ripoff, but food options are limited so I have no choice.

Monte Carlo baby

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:22:00 +0000

My few days off in Berlin were nice, believe it or not I actually won online! Yesterday we flew from Berlin -> Zurich and then Zurich -> Monte Carlo. Originally it was just me, Chris Niesert, Tobi Reinkemeier and Flo Langmann but at Tegel we ended up bumping into Johannes Strassmann and Freddy Keitel. Unfortunately our seats were spread all throughout the airplane so we couldn't get any group chinese game going. I played Chris HU and won a little bit, which certainly made the flight go by faster.

After arriving in Monte Carlo we all went out to eat at a local Italian restaurant "Gianni." Katja Thater, Jan von Halle, Sebastian Ruthenberg, Benjamin Kang, Max Bracht and Daniel Zink joined us so we were a pretty big group! The food was excellent, the coversation was all about poker (what else?).

After I registered for the Main Event (playing Day 1b) a few of us decided to join a €1090 SNG, where there are 10 players and winner takes all (Main Event seat or cash). To make a long story short: After capturing the early chip lead, I then lost everything except 1BB only to make a full recovery and then chop 50/50 with a pretty weak Italian player when the chipcount was 13.5k for him and 11.5k for me HU. I got €5300 for my efforts, not a bad start.

Today's plan is basically to chill (remind me to post pictures of the hotel/view/Monte Carlo when I'm back in Berlin) and get my head clear for a long day tomorrow. One time Monte Carlo!!!

EPT San Remo Day 2

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 16:19:00 +0000

I pushed my 8.9k chips all-in the very first hand of Day 2 with K4o on the button and gathered the blinds + antes. A few hands later I did it again with A9o and gathered them again. Now I had 13.3k and someone in EP raised to 3k. I shoved on him with QQ and he tanked before finally calling with 77. The board came down 56842 and I was kicked out, which is a shame because that was a 30k pot and I would have had a playable stack had I won it.

I fly back home on Saturday, so I have today and tomorrow to just hang around San Remo. Then I need to take care of some things in Berlin before flying to Monte Carlo on April 11th. It's about time that I cash in one of these things again...

EPT San Remo

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:50:00 +0000

I played Day 1A today and I'll start with the good news: I'm still in. The bad news: I have 8.9k with blinds of 500/1k. Before I get into the rollercoaster of today, I'll start off with what happened yesterday.

I ended up meeting Moritz and Nico in Zurich as we all had the same flight to Nice together. Chinese poker on the plane didn't run quite as planned but I managed to win back my losses later in the hotel. At night, Nico and I went to the Pokerstars Welcome Party, but because it was a boring sausage fest as usual, I ended up leaving pretty quickly.

The tournament started today at 3pm and throughout the whole 9 levels of play I was pretty shortstacked. My strategy was to tighten up a bit as opposed to the last EPTs I played. I had JJ 3 times and AA once during the day but could never really build a significant pot. I tried to focus a lot on pot control in most of my semi-strong hands, something that ended up saving me a lot of money. I also made some pretty big laydowns (with the exception of one hero call that left me crippled) which is something I'm proud of.

Once I was short I had several auto-push situations where I was flipping:
79 vs K8 - I win after a 7 hits the turn
JTs vs A6 - flop QTQ and I double, though this push was questionable
AK vs AQ - the board double pairs and we split :(
Q5 vs 22 - flop QKQ, easy money
AKs vs Q4 - river 4, this was one of the last hands of the day

So as I mentioned, I now have 8.9k but anything can happen really. I'll definitely be pushing so hopefully I can find a nice situation and double/triple up to get a playable stack.

Other than that, San Remo is beautiful. Italy is a wonderful place to be in April as the weather is very pleasant. I'm also a big fan of Italian food and so far everything I've tried (spaghetti, lasagne, cappucino, red wine) has all been fabulous. The only thing that bothers me is that most Italians seem to show absolutely no interest in even attempting to speak English. I guess you can't have it all.

Quick and sweet

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:14:00 +0000

I need some sleep and I have an early morning tomorrow so here are the notes:

-March was the worst month I've ever had pokerwise
-flying to San Remo in the morning
-playing Day 1A
-coming back to Berlin on Saturday
-flying to Monte Carlo that following Friday
-playing the Main Event, don't know which starting day
-profiting hopefully (one time!!!)

Expect updates from San Remo after Day 1a, wish me luck!

Happy Easter!

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:43:00 +0000

It's March Madness time and as a result I've pretty much been glued in front of the tv these past few days, catching as many games as possible over NASN. To spice it up I've also been doing some betting on the games with mixed results. Also, my bracket has pretty much gone to shit after losing some key "coinflips" such Marquette-Stanford, Western Kentucky-Drake and Duke-West Virginia. Still, it's exciting as ever to watch and I'm very glad we finally got the satellite/Premiere deal hooked up in the apartment.

Online I've been sticking cash game grinding, though I admit that I have not played as much as I would have liked to because I'm having trouble motivating myself to play. One thing I am really motivated for is EPT San Remo, though. I'm flying to Nice on the 31st and will stay in San Remo until April, at which point I'll probably return to Berlin before going to Monte Carlo. I'm not sure if I'll play Monte Carlo, I really don't want to fork up the €10k buy-in on my own so we'll see if I can get that figured out somehow.

The next few days will be spent relaxing (as always) before going to Hamburg for Seb's housewarming party on the 29th. Apparently he has more liquor there than any one person should own so hopefully it won't get too out of control. I'll see if I can get some pictures of it posted when I get back.

(Un)successful in Vienna

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 22:58:00 +0000

The €750 Freezeout on Wednesday was over rather quickly for me. At night, another €20/40NL game started up and so I bought in with all the cash I had with me at the time (6k) in order to get max value from the three Russian fish who sat down to play as well. Don't ask me where they get their money from, but there definitely does not seem to be any shortage of it. To make a long story short, I ended the night down €1.5k after playing for a solid 12 hours. I witnessed the sickest action I've ever seen in an NL cash game before and I wasn't able to capitalize. All in all the Russians (one in particular) probably dropped somewhere around 30-40k to the table.

The €1500 Second Chance Freezeout on Friday also didn't run that well for me. After having a pretty tough starting table (Markus Golser, Michael Keiner, Philipp Roch) I lost a signifcant chunk of my stack with KK vs QQ all-in pre and then shoved J8 as first in from the cutoff with <10bb. I can't even remember what hand called me but I do remember that I didn't suck out :)

I did manage to make a score in our private NL200 game we opened up at CCC. I always love playing those private tables, it's some of the most fun poker you can imagine. I also hit a couple nice flops so I ended up around €1700. Not bad for 1-2.

As a whole, this was the first trip to Vienna where I went home without a profit. Matter of fact, this trip was even quite unprofitable. Still, I had a good time as I always do in Vienna. CCC is just the absolute nuts when it comes to European casinos, if you've never been there I would highly recommend it! I won't make it for the tournament week in the summer, but I'll surely be back again this fall for the Austrian Classics.

*Congrats to Philipp Roch for final tabling 4 out of the 6 tourneys he played (!!!), Stefan Jedlicka for taking down the all-round leaderboard and Tobi/Brian for their 1st and 2nd place finishes in the 1.5k tourney!

Wiiiiiiiien

noreply@blogger.com (thecortster) — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 06:03:00 +0000

So it's 7am and I'm not tired enough to sleep yet, so I figured why not blog? I arrived in Vienna on Monday afternoon and my first stop was my hotel. I must say, I was plesantly surprised. It's an apartment hotel, which means that I have my own kitchen and living room/bedroom, making for a very spacious stay. The place has 4 stars and is relatively new, breakfast is served 24h/day, I could definitely get used to this kind of life :)

Once I got settled in headed over to CCC, where I didn't do much other than play a couple rounds of €5/10NL. I netted around +€1000 after making a nice call on the river with 2nd pair against an overconfident opponent. I went back to the hotel pretty early to get enough sleep for the Main Event on Tuesday.

The €3150 Main Event had a starting stack of 15k with blinds of 25/50, a structure significantly better than EPT and most WSOP tournaments. With 90 minute levels, the skill factor is definitely increased and I couldn't help but smile when a few players at my table complained about the "long blind levels" because it seemed to them like no action was happening. Apparently they were spoiled with 10BB average stack, push-or-fold poker, so they had no idea how to play something this deep. My table was great and it didn't take me long to build up to 19k after I made a straight with 88 on a 457Q6 board and my opponent tried to make a move.

Then came a hand that was really strange: Blinds 100/200, effective stacks 16k. UTG2 limps (he was new to the table and had limped a couple hands during his first orbit), I make an isolation raise to 800 in the hijack with ATo, which he calls. The flop is T62 rainbow and he check/calls my 1200 continuation bet instantly. The turn is a 4 completing the rainbow. Once again, he checks and then snapcalls my 2500 bet. The river was a 7 and he checks again. At this point I'm wondering what hands I can get three streets of value from, but since he usually has a random T in this spot, I elect to make a small value bet of 3500. Before I even let go of my chips, I get the insta-check-minraise to 7000 in my face. At this point I have just under 9k left, so calling would leave me with 5k+ chips. So I tanked it pretty long trying to put him on a hand. I finally decided that his line is just too strong to justify a call and mucked my hand, I guess I'll never know.

Now I was pretty short and got moved to a new table, where I busted with KhQh on a QcJs6c flop. My opponent check/raised the flop and I came over the top for my last 7k+ chips, which he snapped with QJ. Turn and river brick off. Whoops, that went faster than I would have liked it to.

Next stop: NL €20/40 table. 8 people were on the list, but only 3 show up to the table. Am I that intimidating? We (a Russian, a German from Wiesbaden and myself) start the game 3-handed and the first pot of significance was me raising 6d9d from the button to €120, both blinds call. The flop is KdTd5s, giving me a 9-high flush draw. It's checked to me and I fire €240, which is raised by the SB to €560. He only has €2k total since he lost a pot to the Russian earlier, so I shove another 1500 over his raise, which he snapcalls with KT. The turn is a T and that seals the deal for him. Whatever, I reloaded 2k and was ready for business again.

Then I have Q2o in the BB and the Russian limps in the SB. I check and we see a flop of 2c2h5h. He checks, I bet 60, he calls. Turn is the 7s. He checks, I bet €180, he calls. River is the As. He checks I bet 400, he check-raises to 1100. I make the call and he shows me 43o for the straight. NH sir.

An interesting hand happened when Davo (?) sat down with 2k and posted his BB. I raised K9o to 140 and was called by the button and from Davo in the BB. The flop came down 9c4c2s and I contibet 300. The button folded and Davo immediately pushed for 1860. I thought for a couple moments and made the call, the turn and river left me unimproved and I just hoped that it was the same could be said for him. I was kind of surprised when he showed down 33, but I'll take whatever presents I can get :) He stood up, patted me on the back and left right after the hand.

Then came the key hand of the night: I raise KsTs to 140, the Wiesbadener reraises to 340 (eff. stack 3k, he had JUST reloaded after losing his stack to the Russian the hand before) on the button. Beacuse it's almost a minraise I elect to call and we see a flop of 7s9s3h, giving me two overcards and the 2nd nut flush draw. Taking the stack sizes into consideration, I choose to donk/3bet. I make it 300, he makes it 700, I make it 2000, he shoves, I call. Turn comes down 6d and river is some blank. He immediately starts whining about how he always misses and shows AsQs. I inform him that I missed, too. His reaction is that of a man who is 6k richer and his mood changes noticeably for the better.

I quit about an hour later, the total damage was -€5k. Bleh. Tomorrow's a new day.