Joes poker blog

October was the most swingy month this year by far. I started out nicely by winning almost 10k in the first week only to get the worst downswing ever as far as absolute amount goes - I lost 24k in the second week, setting myself to about -$14k after 2 weeks into the month. Luckily for me, it turned again and I had a couple huge winning days in the next week, including my biggest single winning day this year in cash games, when I won about $7.5k.

In the last week of the month, I went to Budapest for the EPT for which I qualified in the ps steps. I was sick colddecked there though, busted from the tourney in the end of Day 1 and proceeded to lose another $3-4k on live poker in the next 3 days. Pretty dissapointing considering how fishy the games were. Also, dealers and casino staff in Budapest are a fucking joke. At least I ran decently online in the few hours I managed to put in while in Budapest (had to grind out some VIP points for rakeback purposes).

Anyways, here is the screenshot of my online cash game results:


It is incomplete because I played some on my laptop, total for online cash is +$18,924 usd. With tournaments and live cash, where I lost a bit, I am up $18,246 usd for the month total (not counting rakeback). It is an ok result, could be better could be worse. I expected and hoped to make a bit more, but given the downswing in the middle of the month I am quite happy with it.

PS: those few 100/200 NL hands was a drunk shot, really felt like it one night, luckily it worked out good NL 50/100 was while sober, felt like it was a +ev game and I was shortstacking.

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(bump, see post below)

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Hey guys!

EPT Budapest is coming close, starting in less than 3 days. I decided I would like to sell part of my action in that tournament.

The buy-in is 4,350 eur (~$5,655).
I would like to sell about 30%.
1% is for 48 eur ($62.50 usd). (It is with 10% premium.)

PM me or post in comments if interested.

Also, who else is coming to Budapest?

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I won the EPT Budapest package worth $9,250 via PS EPT Steps, which seems to me like a kinda easy way to EPT's btw.

That means, I am coming to Budapest on the 27th of October and will stay there till 2nd of November probably.

Anyone here knows Budapest? I heard its a nice city, so I would like some recommendation on where to go, what to visit, etc.

Also, who else is coming from LP?


On an unrelated note, I am currently going through probably the worst downswing this year so far. I started the month very good, being almost +10k in first 4 days, but since then I have been losing every single day and managed to lose like $24k or something like that playing mostly 3/6 with a bit of 5/10. Kinda dissapointing since I was hoping October would be my best month of the year as it was the past 2 years. Well there is still a chance to make it the month of the year, but I would prolly need to hit some tourney or get on a sicko heater for the rest of the month in cash games.

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I havent updated my blog in quite a while, so I thought now that September ended, it is a good time for some update.

First a quick word about August:
In August I was travelling throughout Spain, Portugal and south France in my car with a few friends from high school. It was a very cool trip, we drove like 11.5k kilometer and visited almost every important city/place in Spain. We also made a quick detour to Maroco, which was my first time being in Africa ever I might post a few pictures once I get them.

I played close to zero hours of poker during the entire month, but I still somehow managed to end up +$500 for the month in poker


Now lets move to September.
So I came back home for September after being abroad for more than 11 weeks (except for a few days inbetween). I was going to play a lot of poker and was looking forward to it I was also about to go back to school after half year's break.

With the school it went kind of complicated, I dont want to go into details, but everything should have been sorted out by last friday and so far it is still not unclear whether or not I am actually coming back or not for this semester. We shall see

With poker I indeed played quite a lot, putting in almost 50k hands, which is a lot by my standards as I usually only play around 30-35k hands. I also put up a challenge for myself in the beginning of the month to make 30k VIP points on Unibet, which ensures me 50% rakeback. It was a tough goal as I never made more than about 18k before. It was kinda tough but I made it I had to play like 12 hours of 6-8 tabling in the last two days though, which was kinda sick for me.

Also, in the middle of the month I attended a live tournament in Casino di Campione, close to Milan, Italy. It was a 1,500 euro freezeout and I was being sponzored for this by Unibet Unfortunately I didnt make it to the money, but it was still a very nice trip. And btw, the cashgames there are pure sickness, I can recommend it to anyone. Eventhough they have uncapped rake, which is kinda sick for a 10/20 CHF game (1 CHF is almost 1 USD, like 0.9x), the game is sickeningly soft because most players there are very loose / very passive who pay any amount for any draw, no matter what.

Btw, does anyone else think that 10 CHF (Swiss Frank) looks like a playmoney note? We all agreed on that with my friends.

Ok enough rambling, lets go to the results:


Final result: +$22,680 - finally I had a 20k+ month again, after long 5 months. I am quite happy with this result, eventhough my goal for the month was slightly higher (+25k). I think I ran slighly below expectation though, especially in the 2nd half of the month.

Looking forward to October, it has been my best poker month of the year in both 2007 and 2006, so we shall see if this continues to 2008 - I hope it will!

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Hello LP,

today I am leaving for my 1 month long trip to Spain and I wont probably be playing any more poker this month and very little the next month. So I decided to make quick summary of how July went before I leave.

The first half of July I was in Vegas attending the WSOP Main Event and some other tourneys. I didnt do well in the tournaments only cashing in one for the minimum prize and overall I ended up about $7.5k down for all the tourneys. Anyways, I managed to win about the same in cash games, live and online together.

Then when I came back home, I started grinding midstakes and played a fairly nice style, which combined together with decent run and fishinnes of my opponents resulted to me winning close to $17k in about 13k hands, which is pretty nice and is also my final result for the month.

I am in somewhat a hurry atm, I will try to post more stuff later. Cya later lp!

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Sorry to dissapoint all of you who put fayth (and money) in me, but I failed. Busted after about 12 hours at the very end of Day 1. Was getting pretty coolered, I was dealt sick amounts of premium starting hands only to almost always find out, that someone was dealt an even better hand - like QQ vs KK 2 times, AK vs KK 2 times (sucking out once), TT vs KK (possibly foldable but its tough with 18 bb stack) and few others.

But at least I had a good time playing at my table, good table talk and stuff. Was not an easy table though, with John Juanda, 6 young internet players and 2 semiyoung guys who played tight and although they werent esp. tough to play against, they definately wasnt free chips or anything...

I am pretty dissapointed atm.

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So today I accomplished one thing for the first time - I finished in the money in a big live tournament - the Venetian's $2,500 deepstacked NLHE event with a prize pool of about $661k.

Starting day 2 as one of the shortest stacks with 38 left I managed to sneak into the top 27 who made the money. I ended up 25th for a prize thats only slightly bigger than the buyin - $3,325. That means I made a nice profit of $815 after about 17 hours of play. Nice $48 / hour winrate, yay!

But I actually did have a shot at getting further in the tourney. When the bubble was over I had a chipstack of about 140k and the average was like 220k, not that bad. Unfortunately I lost a big part of it when I flopped AJ8 with TT in the pocket and clearly my opponent hit the flop better (of bluffed me). Then I still had like 85k and was in the BB. SB was even shorter then me with about 78k and when it got folded to him, he decided to push. I look at my A6o and figure I am ahead, so I instacall, he flips over 47o. I wish him 'Good luck' and of course my wish is fullfilled when the board comes 48859. My last hand I lose 22 vs QTs and am out.

I am of course a bit dissapointed because I was only about 2 maybe 3 flips away fom the final table and the big money, but still quite satisfied, because I managed to make the money in a big live tournament with definately not an easy field.

As for other people in the tourney, I was quite surprised that almost noone from the familar faces made it to day 2, the only one I recognized was FrinkX (think it was him), but he busted unfortunately about 2 or 3 places before the bubble.

I hope that this finish was a good sign for the upcoming main event My day 1 is on Saturday and I am already quite looking forward to it...

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Today (or it is actually yesterday already but whatever) I decided to go and play that tournament. It has a nice structure and I thought the field might be quite soft. Well in that I was completely mistaken, the field of 288 was actually pretty tough with most of the people being young internet pros, amongst which were also several familiar names - I was for long time at a table with pbdrunks, who seemed to know like every single person there, so I got to know, that there were also some LP'ers in the tourney (frinkx, lurped, rainkhan) and several other very good players (zeejustin, bodokari, ...).

Well, the tourney started at the noon and for the first 9 hours I was sick colddecked, basically played no hands at all and being still there only thanks to one sick suckout with 56s vs. JJ vs. AKs aipf Later on it got slightly better and I was able to keep up with the average.

Then came this situation: About 42 players left (29 is itm), blinds are 1,500 / 3,000 with 500 ante. Average stack is about 115,000. I have like 129,000 and am in the big blind. It is folded to the CO and the guy raises to 8,000. He has about 97,000. He is a rather young, definately internet player and about normally aggressive. It is folded to me and I find TT in my pocket. What is my move here? Is this a nobrainer reraise / push? Or should I ever consider calling to see flop? If yes, what is my plan then? Or should I even consider folding?

Anyways, I didnt think long about it and just pushed thinking this was the only correct play. He insta called with QQ and my miracle board didnt come. After that our table is split, I play like 2 more hands and then the tourney is over for the day.

So, I am coming to Day 2 crippled to 31,000 in chips. 39 players left (29 makes the money). Not sure what the next level of blinds is gonna be, but probably like 2,000 / 4,000 with ante 500. I wil be starting in one of the middle positions, not sure exactly which one. What is my plan there, what range should I shove? I think quite a wide range, right?

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It is already the 1st of July, which now means 2 things for me:
1. I need to write a summary of how June went
2. Its my birthday today, so I am officially 24 now (oh my, am i really this old yet? )

The beginning of June

So to the summary of June. As those who follow my blog posts know, I wasnt doing exactly good in the 2 previous months, basically only breaking even or being up like 2k or something I dunno exactly anymore. So, at the beginning of June I wasnt particularly keen into playing lots of poker, maybe also because the weather was nice and all and I didnt feel like sitting at the computer all day, maybe also because I was playing Dota a little more than before recently

So anyway, I was slowly grinding my way up, making some profit and looking for brighter poker future and it looked quite ok 10 days into the month when I was up about 9k not really spending a lot of time playing. Sadly, in the next week I managed to lose most of it. So at the time I was really looking forward to finally leaving for Vegas and hoping things would change there.

The first week in Vegas

I left home for Vegas the 18th of June being just little over $4k up overall. I arrived to Vegas with no problems, the journey was good, but it still took a total of 24 hours, but oh well, not that bad considering how far it is. I got to my hotel, which was a small motor hotel called Todd's. I didnt expect it to be great or anything and it wasnt, but it was ok enough and the price was good. But it was way further from the main parts of the Strip than I originally thought and also the internet there worked like shit.

So, my first week in Vegas was basically exploring the Strip casinos and places a bit and mostly playing live cash games at the Wynn. I was mainly playing 2/5 because I didnt have a lot of cash here and also wanted to test it out first. Well the results were so so, not bad but not great, but I was winning. I was up about 4k after like 5 days of grinding mostly 2/5, which was ok, but then 2 pretty bad session came - first one I started it all good, bought in for $1k (2/5 at the wynn has unlimited max buyin) and soon getting up to 1.4k without really winning any big pots. But then I managed to lose AA vs JJ allin preflop (hi Myth! ), which started off the mess. After that I was pretty colddecked and because I felt pretty uncomfortable sitting there doing nothing to get my money back (bad attitude, i know, but what can you do), I started running some weird bluffs and simply doing random shit. Some of it worked but a lot of it didnt and after I lost another coinflip preflop I decided to call it a session, being down about 2.3k. But it wasnt over, the very next day I played again and sadly kept playing the same crap as before, which combined with colddeck ended up in blowing another 2.2k that day. Well, so after about a week of playing I was down to 0 from live cash games...

Fortunately I figured that my internet connection was quite ok during night hours, so I managed to put in a few hours of online poker too and luckily I ran pretty hot whenever I played, too bad I didnt get to play more I won about $5k online during the first week here in Vegas in those few hours I played, which was sweet.

The second week in Vegas

After the first week, I decided to move to some better hotel nearer to the main part of the Strip - so I moved to Circus Circus, which is in the north part of Strip. So far I am still staying there and its decent, internet is good and price is ok, at least compared to other hotels at the Strip.

Thanks to better internet connection I was able to put in more hours online, eventhough usually only 1 or 2 tabling, because I got a small portable laptop, which is not really good for playing poker. I am actually strongly considering buying a new big screen laptop while here, not decided yet but I think it might be +EV
So, I kept running quite ok online, not as hot as the first week, but I still made another 5k or so, maybe slightly less. I played somewhat less live poker because I didnt really feel like it, but still played enough, because I wanted to clear 50 hours of playtime at the Wynn to qualify for a $100k freeroll. Results live were still rather dissapointing, but at least I won some money - overall I am up about $1.1k for live cash games in Vegas, which sucks hard, but at least I am not down.

The live tournaments

Also, I played 2 live tournaments in the last week - the WSOP $5k NLHE 6-max event and a $1,000 NLHE DeepStack tournament at the Venetian. Both tournaments had quite a good structure. But being a tourney donk, who didnt polish his luckbox enough, I busted out of both of them far from the money. In the 6-max event I ran quite good from the beginning and kept having above average stack throughout the first 5 hours or so, at one point being even amongst the biggest stacks in the tourney. But then I got pretty colddecked for a longer period of time and then opted to make one bigger move, which seemed quite ok in the vacuum, just the guy I tried it against was absolutely oblivious to stuff like table image etc. and simply wasnt going to fold his KJo... oh well. The other tourney went bad from the very beginning, first I got AK vs JJ in rred pot and flop came KJ4, I being the nit somehow managed to get away from it for only 100bb (it was 300 bb deep). Then I had to fold Aces on some sick sick board and somewhat later I got aces again being about 80bb deep, but some guy decided that limp calling ATo utg and check calling with it on a QT2 flop is a good idea and it was - turn came another Ten and I didnt make the soul read to fold my aces again after putting 2/3 of my stack in already.

The final result

But oh well, all in all I managed to end up for June, everything summed up, my profit for the month is about $11,500 + I am about to get another like $1.3k from rakeback. $11.5 for a month is not that bad, but given how much time I played especially in the last 2 weeks, its not really a satisfying result. But yea, June is still my best month in the 2nd quarter of the 2008, so yay

The upcoming future

Thats about it for my June poker results, so lets have a look at what will be next:

Tommorow I am playing the $100k freroll tournament at the Wynn, its nothing big but if I luckbox it, it will be sweet

The day after tommorow there is a nice tournament at the Venetian - a $2,500 NHLE Deep Stack event. This tourney has a really good structure and there should be probably around 300 players in it, which is the field size I like the most. I am not sure yet whether or not I am gonna play it, depends on how I will do tommorow and on other things too, like for example whether Sean Nolan is gonna play it (because if yes, he might talk me into playing even if I wouldnt otherwise ).

Then of course there is the WSOP Main Event - the main reason why I am in Vegas Looking very much forward to it and hoping to make some cash there, will definately do my best to do so!!!

After ME I am coming back home. There is a bigger poker event in my country in the end of July and thats where the introduction of Unibet CZ/SK pro poker team is going to take place and I am trying to qualify to get to the pro team (which basically means playing a lot on unibet ). Hopefully I will make it, because it might be cool if it actually works out as planned - the Unibet pro team is prolly going to be sponsored for a lot of live tournaments and stuff like that and it would be cool if the whole team consisted of me and my 3 friends, which actually seems kinda possible now Of course still nothing is for granted and in the end Unibet representatives will decide how it will actually be.

Anyways, after this action, I am leaving for a big trip to Spain with a group of friends. We are going by 2 cars (group of prolly 7 people) and we intent to travel throughout the whole country and maybe Portugal too (like we did last year in the USA). Looking forward to it a lot. Btw if anyone has some recommendations on what to visit in Spain etc. let me know pls

I am not sure whats gonna be next, I am most likely returning to school for the fall semestr. But I definately plan on going to some EPT event during fall, would especially like to go to EPT London but dunno yet. Thats all still quite far now.

Uh, I wrote much more than I originally wanted to, but whatever. So thats it for now!

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