First Tournament of the Year

Ok. It's about time to start the games for this year. I decided to play one 11$ speed NL Hold'em tournament at Party to start the year. Let's see how it goes...

First hand I win is 42 offsuit at BB. I just bet the flop (855) with nothing and end up winning the small pot. I guess this means that this year is going to be the year of the 'bluff' then :D

Sigh... So far it looks like that was the only winning hand today :( 20 minutes of play and no playable hands in sight. Had just A7 and considered playing but 2 guys went all in before me so no need to try... I would've won the hand though ;) The other guy had AK and the other 33 and the board was 8 7 9 4 9. Live and learn...

Uhh... The blinds are already 200/400 and I only have 2 000 left. It's getting closer to do or die stage of the tourney... What hand will it be that I have to charge with. Let's see 9 T ...no, Q T ...no not yet, J 7 and once again two all ins before me... No. 44 now I'm going all in. Let's see what happens. Shit!!! A T took the pot. He hit T on the turn. Oh well out on 179th position out of 410 entrants. Maybe next time then...

Year 2007 is over - NEXT, PLEASE!

Happy New Year! I think it's about time to make some update that what is going on... The fact is that I haven't been able to play that much at the end of the year since I've been busy working :( Yes. I know, I know... I should learn to prioritize a bit better ;) Maybe this year, maybe not. We'll see...

Anyway. I spend the last two weeks of the year 2007 in Estonia just visiting my wife's relatives. I basically ate, drank vodka and slept most of time ;) And at the end when we were supposed to come back to Finland we managed to miss our boat and had to spend one more night there... Trust me when I say that I was not a happy camper at that moment when I realized that we missed the boat.

And to top that I managed to get some kind of stomach flu on our last evening in Estonia so that I had a really fantastic start for the New Year :( I had to take couple of days off from work to get better which would be ok except that I would've much rather gone to work stayed at home in fewer and stomach ache...

Ok. I guess that's enough of that. I'm feeling better now so no reason to stay at home tomorrow :)

Sooo... What did I learn last year? Hmmm... I really think that I learned some new games but didn't really manage to get proper profits. In fact the whole year in total was quite heavily on the negative side :( Here's some stats:

Cash Game/Tournament Count : 500
Total Won/Lost : -575$
Wins : 232
Losses : 268

I guess I need to dig some more info that where did the money actually go... I started the year by trying to learn how to play Omaha drunk which was not the best way to start I guess ;) -333$ down the drain...

Next I played 7 Card Stud and managed to learn that quite fast in my opinion. I managed to get up to +240$ on my own before I decided to start learning Limit Hold'Em based on the book from Sklansky & friends. I think that it went quite ok as well since I did manage to get +91$ on that as well.

Next my friend convinced me to try out Omaha Hi/Lo which I did and to be honest I did play for quite some time before really understanding how the low hand actually was decided :D Well... I know that now but still the balance seems to be a bit on the negative side :D -42$ to be exact.

So... Where did most of the money go? To No-Limit Hold'Em of course ;) For some reason I used quite a lot of money to different kinds of satellite tournaments without really getting any proper winnings out from it. So... I hope you have been able to collect some of the -510$ that I have left to different micro limit tables on Party, Paradise, PokerStars and various home games.

Of course I have to mention that most of the lost money has been lost because of playing drunk but I still have a lot to learn anyway :D Patience and aggression and some understanding on when to be patient and when aggressive... So... Not much ;D

Ok. What's the overall situation? Here's a clip from CardPlayer statistics:

Welcome, M_ace_T. During your last cash game at PartyPoker you lost ($20). You are showing a net profit of $0 year to date and a lifetime winnings of $11,291.

And that's about it. Haven't played anything yet during this year but plan to start as soon as I get my head functioning normally :) Hopefully I can do better this year ;) And. I hope that You will do even better ;) C'Ya

Unreal...

If I ever have hit a streak of bad beats I think its now :( I haven't been able to get up from the 0.25/0.50$ level at Limit Holdem and I really have to say that it is not because of the players on that level are so skilled.

In my last few sessions I have managed to lose with at least three pocket kings, couple of pocket rockets not to mention the set of aces, king high flush and a full house to name a few... Phew! If this is not braking my back then nothing will ;)

Here's a little graph to document my agony:



See... I was not kidding when I said that I have had some major trouble lately on the 0.25/0.50$ level. And now... I have only 97.07$ on the PartyPoker bankroll so now I need to go back to the previous level... Sad... Oh well... Maybe I'll learn someday.

Now. I think I will play some other game for a while. Maybe some Omaha HI/LO on PokerStars... Yes. That's what I'll do. C'Ya there!

Damn Tuesdays...

Again... I participated to tuesday tournament at the Grand Casino Helsinki and ended up donating my 35€ to the pot with AK after about 45 minutes of play. Sigh... I'm starting to think that the tuesday tournament is not my cup of tea anymore...

Oh well... Live and learn. I've been thinking that maybe I'll start playing either some 'limited' amount of cash games per month at the casino or participate to the monthly 50 + 11€ satellite tournament where you can win a seat to the monthly 1050$ freezeout tournament. At least the 1050€ tournament has better structure than these weekday tourneys...

Phew... That's some frustration out of the head for now and next I can head out to continue my limit hold'em odyssey. Current situation: 138$ so as you can see I managed to get couple of steps back since the last update but I guess it's part of normal swing since I haven't really started playing worse all of a sudden. At least that's what I think ;)

Ok. That's all for now... C'Ya!

Weekend is Over :(

I think they should seriously start considering at least three day weekends in general. It seems to me that friday always goes by just laying around after mindnumbing weeks worth of work and then on saturday you just get wasted in some party or so and then you spend the sunday recovering from that...

Yeesh... Enough about that. I spend yesterday playing couple of home game tournaments with some friends in the center. First we played Texas No-Limit tournament with 10 participants and I ended up finishing at 6th place after pushing all in with pair of queens after seeing a ten high flop. The only opponent that was in the game bet 700 (7 * BB) after the flop and I figured that he tried to buy the pot there but unfortunately he had a set of deuces :(

Then we played a round of Seven Card Stud with 6 players who were left and once again I ended up dropping out early (5th) :( Nothing really to report about that. Just played one hand too aggressively at the start and then didn't really get anything proper to play with.

I think that the biggest problem with these home games is that you generally get to see only a very small number of hands and whenever you get something you basically need to play it quite aggressively unless you have big enough hand for slowplaying. Well... Still the more skilled players usually are able to get more chips out of the opponents in these situation anyway so I guess I just have to keep on training ;)

Oh, almost forgot. When I came back yesterday from playing I decided to show my Omaha Hi/Lo skills on PokerStars and ended up donating 15$ on the micro limit table. Live and learn. I guess I'm just a bit hard headed about this issue since I don't seem to realize that playing Omaha drunk is not propably the brightest idea ;) Not even in micro limit tables...

But. Something good came out of that too. I decided that I will start training Omaha Hi/Lo on PokerStars the same way I've been doing with Limit Hold'Em on Party. Now I just have to figure out that what would be the proper buyin, bankroll etc levels to be able to raise the bar somehow in a 'controlled' way.

Ok. Now I'll play some Limit Hold'Em on Party and then get to bed... Current situation: 136$ so still 64$ needed to get to the next level...

Good Night! Don't let the bad beats bite!

Another Tuesday - Another Wasted Opportunity

Sigh... Once again I participated to the Grand Casino No Limit Hold'Em Freezeout Tournament and yes... No success what so ever :(

The tournament started in the best possible way. Pocket Rockets on the first deal :D Nice! I bet out 3 times the big blind from the Small Blind after couple of guys had limped in looking weak. The flop was looking quite scary Q T T and I checked to see that what will happen... The next guy bet 3 * BB and the other one called. I thought that the first one might have AQ at most but I was more concerned about the caller. I decided to pull a little check-raise stunt and raised to 10 * BB to see if they really have something and what do you know they both folded...

Good start anyway and this time I can't blame the cards for not getting better results. I had AA once, AQs once, AQ twice, TT twice, AJ and KJ once and 88 once. Of course I ended up pushing all in with AQ at the end and 66 took the pot :( I finished around 37th or so so nothing to tell the grandkids about ;)

Well... I guess I can now continue my Limit Hold'Em quest ;) I'm still balancing on the 100$ limit since I have ended up losing in the 0.25/0.50 level and then won everything back quite fast on the 0.15/0.30. And this has now happened about 4 times or so. I guess it also has to do with the fact that I play multiple tables when playing the lower limit but play only one table on the higher level. Maybe I should just multitable all the time. That way I wouldn't get too frustrated and start playing crappy hands...

Anyway. Time to go to bed now... Or maybe after couple of games or so... C'Ya!

Bad Beats'R'Us

Uh... Last 6 session that I've played I only managed to win in 2 of them :( Sigh... Just as I thought that I might be starting to get the hang of this thing. I know, I know... That is just normal swing but since I don't like losing at anytime this REALLY SUCKS!

And since I managed to drop my bankroll below 100$ I have to get back to 0.15/0.30 tables... Ok. I have to start winning again so see you later...