In order to revive my motivation for poker, I decided it might be worthwhile if I actually try to play the real thing.
The only time I played poker in my life was when I was on a floor ball age 13 camp where we played 5card draw with pennies.
So last night I took £33, and headed for a casino (which is about 7 minute walk from my flat) to go for a freezeout tourney. Circus casino Edinburgh
It really surprised me how the casino felt like any other entertainment facility, with standard pub price beer and food and large projector with football on. The card room has about 20 poker tables there, and had an internal league tourney, a stud tourney and a £1/£2 game running. The only bad thing was that air conditioning was broken, so it was like 30 Celsius in there - good for me losing weight at least, and free drinks all night were served to compensate. Tourney
The tourney itself was a 'Second Chance' which I didn't know what the fuck that meant. Like an hour into the tourney I realized that the one yellow 50 chip I have is exchangeable for 3,500 chips, and if you keep the chip you can transfer even after you busto.
I had the standard problems at the beginning, always asking people for whats in the pot and how much to raise. Later in the tourney when I doubled up I had a ridiculous number of chips and it took me an orbit or two to actually know what the hell is in my stack, and I had this problem throughout the day.
I was also confused when seats were changed to other tables, but the biggest challenge was dealing.
Thats right, they do not assign dealers for MTTs, and who gets the highest card has to deal.
First time I was on I just gave up, but the second time (18 people to go or so) I was forced to do it. This was the biggest fail, where I had to burn some 7 cards which I turned face up and my shuffling was by no means a proper shuffle, and I had to ask how many I burn at every street (its one lol ;D). Still a good experience, and it clearly just takes practice.
My performance
I was playing standard bronze pokerstrategy level chart poker. I probably made a mistake at the beginning when an old (and pretty annoying) regular raised pre and cbet almost AI on flop for 40bbs, and I called him off with jacks. (AA)
Since then it was push or fold for me almost all 6 hours, I played like 2 hands postflop the whole tourney lols.
Probably the funniest moment was when it was 16 to go and I had A5s in the sb with 13bbs - very very standard push. But as the regs are total retards and they love to talk I did something I learned to do - pretend to think heavily for 1-2 minutes while waiting for something retarded from the bb.
And it came - dude who previously folded to my 5bb Small blind shove and showed me an ace told me to fold in a very interested manner, a thing he has never done before. I giggled inside, turbofolded, and the mofo showed KK :D
The number of obvious reads that can be seen even with my 0 experienced eyes was ridiculous, the guys are always chatting about what they have, they love to show cards for some reason, and one dude was particularly funny when he all of a sudden check raised for the first time and became *really* interested in the darts on projector behind us and his drink when he always kept staring at the table in the previous pots.
He had a nut straight ofc -.-
Technically the people are retarded too, it seems to be standard to limp fold utg with 4BBs left with almost everyone, and to fold to 1k chip into 10k pot on river where there were no draws on turn.
I ended up pretty card dead in the end and I was coolered by a 12bb dude with AQ vs AK bu v sb to keep me on the shortstack till the end. I shoved 44 for my last 5big blinds/some 60k chips to end up 7th in a field of 60-70 and $100 cash.
Not bad for a first actual play of poker in my life.
Playing life
I got a new motivation for online poker, and pretty strong one. Life poker is so much fun, and the £1/£2 game running there is super juicy. 3-4 bad regs (the very same that limp fold with 4bbs left in a tourney), old geezers, and an old lady who burned some £800 that night while I was there.
This is awesome and I want to play in that, but first I need to build roll online to afford it. I think the people are so bad I can play with some 12BI comfortably - my motivation is now to make that online as I will never use my own money to play poker.
Although I will probably get a part time job in September (I need some sales or customer contact experience, as I would like to get into a Management Graduate scheme with one of the major banks after I graduate - I work in Finance dept right now with internal customers only), I can totally see myself being a pro with combination of life and online poker - it really breaks the stereotype and life poker forces me to think about shit before I act.
The obvious negative of live play will make it close to impossible to make as a student aiming at a 1:1 degree (70%+ average mark from all subjects) - the tourney took 6 hours where I busted in 7th place, and would take 7.5hrs for the winner, and the best cash games run between 10pm-3am in the local casino it seems.
I will probably have to wait until my planned gap year when I finish my degree to do proper 24 hour grinding sessions, but it sure seems like lots of fun -.-
Thanks for reading,
Random pic of of Kate B. for those who stayed with me: + Show Spoiler +
july has been mediocre so far (havent been putting in much volume ). I am still broke, still got bills to pay, definitely running out of time...but at least I kind of win at poker?
I'm not sure why, but I've noticed that every now and then, my notes on other players (pokerstars) disappear. It doesn't happen with all players, but randomly happens with some.
Is there a reason for this?
I know that when I used to use PT3, when pokerstars would crash, any notes that I had taken during that session would disappear. But that hasn't happened in months, so I was wondering why it would be happening. Thanks for any explanations
shittiest time of my life everby domyouji, July 24
so since I'm behind on sne I calculated and it comes out to be about 4.4k vpp per day, which is around 10k give or take a few hundred hands per day for everyday the rest of this year. After doing it for 4 days straight and running below ev it just feels tiresome and shitty. Ever since the run bad couple of months ago I have never completely recovered and now my 200 winrate has become measly 0.34, which is sad and boarderline fpp pro. life is just suck right now as all those other regs keep getting preflop coolers and then I lose to them on suckouts. Too much whine in this blog but this is gonna be 1 shithole year for the rest of this year.
I am going to lose my Super Nova status.by Amygdala, July 24
How the hell did things get this far? Well last month. I waited until the last moment to get enough points to keep my Super Nova status. I really had to work my ass off and this actually made me completely sick off poker. In the beginning of July I just figured to take a couple of days off after which I planned to put my grinding hat back on but I just didn’t feel like it. The Netherlands reached the final of the world cup of football/soccer. Which meant that I had to party my ass of during the last matches.
Even though we lost the final, the home coming of the team was completely crazy. It looked like we had won the world cup. The team got a parade through the Amsterdam canals with a salutation at the Museumplein. All that drinking and partying actually made me more tired and I simply didn’t feel like playing poker.
Instead I read a lot about marketing and social media. Learned how to use twitter to get hits for the website and I implemented a couple of new features in the site. Most of the time everything went wrong in the beginning. That was very frustrating and we all know that it is a bad idea to play when you are frustrated. So that didn’t help either.
At July 20th I felt it was time to start playing again. I had a good feeling and was ready to kick some ass. Things turned out differently
After this session I immediately was sick of poker again. In mylast blogs I told you guys how short my bankroll is. The pressure this kind of crap gives me is really getting to me. I know I sound like a wuz right now, but the last 6 months really has been hard for me. It just sucks.
I took another couple of days off and worked on the site again. And today I felt like playing again. I am still sick of Full Ring so I decided to play some 6 max and I actually ran very hot. It was raining sets. I actually flopped a set 35% of the times I saw a flop with a pocket pair. On average you only flop a set 11,5% of the time you see a flop with a pocket pair.
It felt so good that I decided to write something again. So although all my plans for July are a complete failure and I am going to lose my Super Nova status, I actually feel positive again.
If I really wanted to I could still earn the 7500k vpp’s needed to keep the VIP status, but I don’t think it is wise to do so. Last month it really took too much out of me and I want to keep positive feeling. Besides that, at the beginning of the month I already had 92500 VPP’s so I will get my Super Nova status back in no time anyway.
I can't stop playing this when I watch youtube vids now, click on a video, then pause the video. Hold the left Arrow until you see the snake on the vid. Let go of left arrow and now you can play the snake game using the arrow keys while watching the vid.
I'm going to NZ for APPT Auckland, my wife will likely come too. I know there's a few LPers from NZ, so what's fun to do around there other than the Casino?
While I was in Las Vegas this summer the people from our house insert name dropping here (oh wait this isn't a Hellmuth blog) went to Surrender @ Encore.
Just upload the video from my old Counter-Strike team to the YouTube.
Made by me in 2005!
FXCLAN THE RESURRECTION 2005 MOVIE
I splitted it in 3 parts cause the video is 20 minutes long.
This part has a presentation of each player and a nice introduciton to the FXCLAN THE RESURRECTION MOVIE
This part has the best frags, so if you are a fan of the game I recommend watching this! edit: this part also has a 3D bullet wee! its far from perfect but it's what I could do at the time
Great ending, pictures of the players, special thanks, sponsorship, etc
Soundtrack:
Craig Armstrong - Escape (Part 1)
Ma'am - Some Other Sunset (Part 1)
Journey to Transylvania (Part 1)
Nightwish - Wishmaster (Part 1)
Marilyn Manson - Rock Is Dead (Part 2)
Celldweller - Switchback (Part 2)
Cardigans - My Favorite Game (Part 3)
what in the motherfuk heads upby Night2o1, July 23
why can't I win at heads up, seriously I just can't figure it out, nothing ever ever goes as I anticipate it to when I am playing headsup. I feel completely impotent against any type of player
hey guys!
I'm stepping away from poker and I'm going back to school. I have 2 unfinished degrees (business and computer science) so I decided to go back and finish at least one while I'm still young and smart. I'm sure gonna miss the $$ from poker but I have a fine job (about 2.5K USD/month) for the Brazilian government so I don't need poker to make money. Poker is just not as fun as it used to be, I hate grinding tournments and the cash games tables (100NL+) are kinda hard to beat for a decent winrate, unless you REALLY push yourself. I had my days grinding 12hours/day but now they are gone. I'm just a young kid (20 years old) and I dont want to spend that much time in front of a computer anymore. I'm gonna go back to school, see my old friends, gonna fight BJJ again, spend more time with my girlfried... business school starts on monday and I just can't wait. I'm gonna be around here just cause I love LP.
So im facing a really nasty downswing.I decided to drop down limits and grind as much as possible but it turned out to be an epic fail.Instead,I'm going to try another approach and cut down tables to 4 maximum.Also i do feel that i got over excited trying to clear my 1st 4k bonus which meh partly led me to 9 table(my initial goal was to have it cleared until 15 Aug the day I'm going for vacation)
Oh now after my little confession,i have that feeling that im going to hit an upswing lol
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). I am still broke, still got bills to pay, definitely running out of time...but at least I kind of win at poker?
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