Poker Lifestyle

I’m in a rush, because I need to head out for Aikido training. I’m a little late, because we had some friends over and we cooked, but it was a lot of fun.

Samoleus is back in this part II interview on Poker Road.

Patrik Antonius is on the latest 2+2 podcast.

And you can find videos of Genius28 @ Pokerstrategy News.

These guys are all really good players and I think there is so much value in hearing there thoughts. Plus it’s cheap information. K guys, I’m heading out.

I just spent about an hour looking for a money management program for Europe. There seems to be nothing available on the Internet. There is one program called Quicken 2009 which seems to be my best choice, but it’s for Germany and is fairly expensive. Furthermore I think I won’t be able to use a lot of the features that I would be paying for. For the US, Australia and Canada they have a lot of fun looking programs aswell as some free sites that offer online-money-management. Somehow I can’t believe that that’s all there is to it. I think for the meanwhile I’ll just write up an excel sheet with basic formulas.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with going trail running lately. For those of you who don’t know, trail running is by definition this:

“Trail running or skyrunning is a variant on running that differs markedly from road running and track running. Trail running generally takes place on hiking trails, most commonly single track trails, although fire roads are not uncommon. A distinguishing characteristic of the trails is that they are often inaccessible by road except at the trail heads. The trails tend to traverse varying terrain; hills, mountains, deserts, forests,…”

I’m only a bit worried about ticks. Running through such terrain increases my likelihood of catching one and some of them are dangerous so I should probably set up an appointement with my doctor to see what precautions we can take to combat this.

I’ve successfully balanced my sleeping rhythm… kinda. I got up at 4 am yesterday and at 5 am today after going to bed really late. I feel a lot more balanced though and have a lot more energy during my waking hours. The weather has been really great lately and running early has also been a lot of fun under these circumstances. I’ve also been getting into some swimming as running is very intense on the joints. I love to run, but after a good session I can usually feel it for 1 or 2 days. I think it’s wise to pay attention to the signals the body gives us.

I’ve been feeling really confident in my MSNL games lately for some reason, maybe due to the fact that I’ve been winning again. I think I am starting to believe more in myself again and I feel that maybe for a while regs where running me over a little bit due to my downswing.

This coming sunday I think I might be playing the Sunday Million or the Sunday Warmup. A friend of mine qualified for the Sunday Million and since it is such a long tournament it’s nice to have other people around you. I’m excited how that will turn out. Now that I think about it, I’m not entirely sure I wanna play a tourney till the early hours of the morning after balancing my sleeping rhythm. I actually read an interview with the Danish player Peter W Jepsen and he says he never plays tournies online, but at the same time he never plays cash games live. To me that sounds like a reasonable approach to tournament play. I might go to Vienna and take some shots at some of the bigger buy-in donkaments sometime.

I rediscovered an old British TV series the other day. It’s called Red Dwarf, I can see how this may not appeal to a lot of people, especially non-British, but I think it’s pretty funny and thought you might enjoy this aswell.

As for the evening, I think I’ll go and watch some Champions League football with some friends. It’s been a while since I’ve been, but I think I’m looking forward to some good games again. I think it’s Real Madrid v Inter Mailand tonight..

“What time is it?” is the question I have been asking myself a lot lately. My sleeping rhythm is completely butchered. I went to bed this morning at 4am and when I woke up at 7.30am and didn’t feel tired, you can imagine my frustration. It is very hard to balance your sleeping rhythm when you don’t feel tired at times you should be sleeping. To some people who doesn’t make a difference when they go to sleep or when they get up, because they have that luxury of not having to worry about being places. I am however convinced that when I get up when it is dark outside I am a lot less productive, less healthy and less happy. This has a lot to do with the lack of sunlight. I really don’t know what to do right now, besides try and get up at a specific time and then just stay awake till a specific time and see how that works out. Right now it’s weekend so I’m not going to worry too much about that.

I’ve finally received all of my money from Mansion Poker and am in full throttle on PokerRoom. I am not sure I’ll continue playing there after I’ve cleared my initial bonus as there bonus system doesn’t seem very rewarding from what I’ve seen till date. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what options I have after I’ve dealt with the current deposit bonus.

2/4 hasn’t been too great for me this month. It started off well, but then I went on a losing streak of about 8 buy-ins. I took some time off from MSNL to just think about poker theory and I’ve also booked two coaching lessons with a coach that plays nl2k. I’ve never had a coach before and I’m pretty excited about this. I hope he can bring value to my game and add to my confidence when playing.

Otherwise all is well with me. I’m still having a lot of fun learning Salsa and Aikido. I also get to meet a lot of nice people. Right now I’m waiting for some food I ordered in. I had no other choice, because I slept so long that all the shops were closed. I think afterwards I’m gonna play some nl400 and maybe a donkament. I’ll have to see about that as they have the tendency to take up a lot of time, but I guess I enjoy the occasional donkament.

I’ll be back with more information as subjects arise, later.

Haven’t blogged in a while, because I have been busy lately doing all sorts of things. There has also been a lot of partying involved with semester opening parties and birthday parties. Right now I’m pretty tired due to recent events so I decided to do nothing today, but play some poker and relax. I’d also like to catch up on some of my reading for Uni and for my other interests.

2/4 was pretty brutal today, some how I managed to only lose 1k, but I felt like I was getting in a lot of cooler spots.

http://weaktight.com/450485

This opponent was playing very loose with a VPIP of 85 over 100 hands. To me this is a clear value bet spot and you just have to suck up the variance of him making two pair randomly.  Given his turn call i feel he might even sometimes manage to show up with a J here and call me down very light.

http://weaktight.com/450817

This hand was against another weak opponent. Basically when my SPR is so low on this board getting it in is also very standard.

http://weaktight.com/450818

I decided to just flat this hand here given that I had no history with 3-bets, with villain so far. Reraising is definetly the more standard play, but I like flatting here from time to time with these dynamics. It’s also good, because it makes my oop flatting range stronger. The post-flop play is pretty standard again and I run into the top of villains range. I think villains bet-sizing and timing was very note-worthy on this hand. He tanked for an unnaturally long time on the flop and then raised to less than 3x.

http://weaktight.com/450822

Villain just sat down at the table and has been spewing pretty badly. He just got stacked in a hand where he cold-called a 3-bet with a5s. After the flop checked through he open shoved for pot with just a gutshot and an overcard only to get called by the second nuts. I also played a pot with villain where I bet big on two streets with an overpair and he called down and rivered a flush. A 9 is definetly in his range here, but I felt he was erratic enough here, given the way he had been playing and the fact that he could be tilting after just getting stacked, to have draws, a T or air here enough to make getting it in +ev.

Those were the biggest pots of the day I lost on a another day I might have analayzed some more hands, but I’m pretty tired right now. I think I’ll finish watching my episode of Dexter and then try and get some sleep soon.

Finally Mansion has processed my cashout, it took them the typical 10 days, which involved me having to ring them up to see what they were up to. They even have “fast payouts” listed on their site as one of their strengths… ridiculous.

One last thing, I managed to play about half of the tourneys in the Paradise Poker 10th birthday promotion, which ended in me cashing once, slightly after the bubble, and breaking close to even in total. I definetly want to expand my Holdem game to tourneys aswell though. I don’t feel that learning PLO is worth it for me right now as the volume and softness of MSNL games in Europe is fine. Expanding to tourneys isn’t too time consuming and is allways valuable.

I should really get to going now, good night.

Sportingbet.co.uk is celebrating there 10th birthday by hosting 10 tournaments with each one having 10k€ added to it’s prize pool. The buy-in is only 10€+1, leading to a ridiculous overlay in my opinion. I’ve already missed 3 days of this due to excessive partying and not being aware of it having started yet and I’ll miss today aswell as there is an event in the city that I’d reallly like to go to. My plan is to play as many of them as I can though from Sunday onwards. For those of you who don’t know, Sportingbet.co.uk is Paradise Poker.

As expected Mansion Poker support dissapoints again. I contacted them yesterday and I found out that they hadn’t even yet started processing my cash out (in 7 days!). The lady I spoke to said she was going to forward the matter to the finance department, I told her how bad I thought Mansion Poker support was and that they are potentially costing themselves a lot of money by treating customers badly in this respect. She said it had to do with them changing networks, but I quickly countered that by explaining to her that I have cashed out with Mansion Poker in every single network they have ever been in and it never worked without me having to apply pressure to somebody somewhere down the line, which is completely bizarre.

NL400 action has been really good on Ongame, I’ve been 1-2 tabling Poker Room waiting for my Mansion Dollars to go through and have managed to run my 1k deposit up to 1.8k. I’ve also been playing some Titan Poker to fill up the empty space and have been running pretty well in those games. I’ve had some pretty ridiculous coolers been put on me on Ongame and have been running really well in all-ins on Titan at the same time. This hand is a good example http://weaktight.com/418552. I have the nuts with the straight flush redraw and manage to lose to a backdoor overstraight.

I’ve been feeling really tired lately, I think this is mainly due to too much partying. I also haven’t been working out well, just doing some excercises hear and there. I feel as though I’m back in a spot where I am a little bit overwhelmed with all the things that I have on my time schedule, but I’m determined to make this work so I’ll just need to figure out a rhythm that works for me and stick with it.

This was at my friend’s birthday party. He also plays poker, there is a link to his blog (RAISEMINIT) on the left.

Yesterday was the first day of Uni again. I’ve only had one Uni course so far, Macro Economics, but we haven’t done much yet. Just the basic introductions. I’m excited about the new semestre. I think my time management now is a lot better than it used to be and I chose an amount of Uni courses that I find realistic for myself with all my hobbies on the side.

I ended poker well last month finally coming out of my prolonged downswing that lasted for about 2 months. I really learnt a lot in this time about poker and life and I feel that even though it was unpleasant at times, I’m happy to have made the experience as I am stronger now for it.

This month has started off kinda lame with me not playing a lot of hands. I’ve been organizing a lot of stuff for Uni, trying to figure out when and where I have to be. I’ve also started with my Salsa advanced course and Aikido beginner. They both seem like fun so far and I get to meet new people which is great for me.

Over the last 2 days I’ve also been planning a trip to Vienna at the end of the month. They’re having this big party in the City Hall with about 9 floors and 60 different DJs. This is the link for anybody interested Paradise City. We’ve booked a pretty nice hotel that is really close to it which is great. You can check out the hotel here Austria Trend Hotel. I feel like a hotel in London with the same relative positioning to the City Hall would’ve easily cost me 5 times as much as what I paid for it.

I think this month I’m gonna try and play the bulk of my hands on Ongame, my only problem so far is some delay through a cash out from Mansion Poker which is disallowing me from depositing $ into my Poker Room account. Most of my accounts are kept in €, so converting money would be terrible. I didn’t notice any € possibility when setting up my account with Poker Room, so I’ll just have to wait. Mansion is really bad in this regard. I’ve never had a smooth cash out with them and have allways had to contact customer support to see what they are doing with my money. I’ll give them till tomorrow evening before contacting them. I must say though that Unibet has been very good in this respect.

I’m going to head out to a friends to watch a show about Derren Brown, author of “Tricks of The Mind”. Should be an interesting watch as my friend reckons his book is really good.