One down and many many more to go

Well I FINALLY managed to complete the Pokerroom 500$ reload bonus sometimes in the early hours of saturday. End result: 181$ profit.

Out of a 500$ bonus.

What a fucking tragedy.

In all fairness, I got stuck miserably early in the reload process so any profit could be considered somewhat of a victory. But DAMN, did I ever get frustrated losing $ after $ against Scandinavian morons who figure it’s a good idea to cold call three bets with 6-2o and river FH's to crack your AA's and seeing them defending their play with such nonsense as "Pot odds dictated the call".

No, I didn’t get it either.

Anyways, a dollar earned is always better than a dollar loss so let’s just rejoice on that for now and move on to just as big and just as good other things...

Which, of course, would mean the 500$ Full Tilt reload bonus. As you all know, Full Tilt and myself have quite the hateful relationship going on. The anal raping was in full force in the early going when I kept losing with silly little hands like flopped sets and straights to runner runner FH and such bullshit. "Here we go again!" I yelled. The tide seems to have reversed and I now find myself down a measly 10 big bets. I also released 60$ of said bonus so there’s obviously lots more work to do.

My discipline at the table has been lacking lately. I’ve been guilty of running back to the tables mere minutes after booking solid wins, only to give it all back, and sometimes more, in the span of 50 hands. Such are the swings of shorthanded limit poker. So for the month of November, I’ll have to work on quitting the game when I’m up a decent amount instead of finding new and interesting ways of pissing it all back in mere seconds.


Good luck out there fellas!

Missin’ out on the Big Game

Ah well, almost. I came this close to winning a @#$%^ ticket to the big game but I bubbled on the tier two satellite. I was once suckout away from making it too. Some moron pushed his AQo from the button only to see the big time chip leading BB wake up with Kings. This push was beyond stupid since I was all-in by default in my BB in the next hand! Well AQ sucked out an ace on the turn and managed to double himself up. I got dumped on the very next hand. I won't wait 'til next Sunday to try and win the next, I can tell you that.

While I was on Full Tilt, I managed to get a few hands in towards clearing that never ending bonus. Is it possible to be eternally non profitable at a particular site? It doesn't matter what stakes I'm playing or what games even but the end result is always the same: Me + Full Tilt = -$. Flop a set? River will bring someone else a flush or a straight. Turn a straight? Villain rivers a FH. It just never fails and it's pretty @#$$%# annoying. Yesterday's biggest doozie (and there were many) was probably this gem of a heads up pot:

Me AK

Flop: A-A-3
Turn: 3
River: 3

Villain's hand? J3o

I love Poker.

*********************

Would you believe me if I told you I'm STILL not done with that Pokerroom bonus? This week should be the last stretch but man-o-man do I ever want to get out that place. I'm getting killed by these Scandinavian morons who figure it's fun to cap pre-flop with 3-5o and manage to river their flopped gutshot to crack your sets of aces. Is life so good in Scandinavia that they can afford to piss money away like this or what?

Sittin’ in the Big Game

I really couldn’t find much time to hit up the satellites to this thing this week and said time on the weekend should be scarce. No matter, I HAVE to get it on this thing. I’m heading to a home game tonight and then to a Pub with a few friends. I could try to squeeze in a SNG when I come back but I will be under the influence of massive quantities of alcohol. I have very few hours to work with on Saturday but my best chances will definitely be on Sunday IF nothing else comes up. If the satellite route fails, I guess I’ll just have to splurge out the money for this thing from my ‘Roll cause, Hey, I’m a Balla just like that.

Holla Holla Holla!!

All good things...

Well it was a good run. My consecutive blogger final table appearances ended at three. No one to blame but myself for this one since I simply did not show proper respect to the tourney. In case you hadn’t figured it out, I had a couple of cash games tables opened, trying to kill off bonuses while playing the tourney. +EV this is not, if anything, it made me play poorly in both.

I don’t remember much from the tourney, I really didn’t play that many hands. I won two respectable pots while defending my blinds with absolute air and lost a fairly big one to DoubleAswhen I re-raised his opening from the button with AJo only to see him come back over the top all-in for a pretty much my whole stack. I had to let that one go. My next key hand was a double up when I stood up to the table bully Huntsvegas Poker. Now this guy had a HUGE stack, at least 3X as big as anybody else at the table. He had gotten into the habit of open-raising every single hand that was folded to him and lord knows they were plenty of those. Having enough of this crap, I pushed from the BB with 10-5s on another hand where he pulled off his spiel . A really crap hand, but I really just wanted to see him stop this nonsense. He calls me with J7s. Ooookay. I guess he figured he’d be live. He did spike a J on the river but that one card also happened to give me a flush. C’est la vie.

I got dumped not too long after. On_Thg made a 3 X the BB opening from the CO and I made it 9 X the BB from the small blind with AQo. He cold called the raise. I pushed the flop of unders and he insta-calls with Jacks. I blank turn and river and IGHN.

Complete donk move by my part and I definitely deserve to be sent home for it. I really wasn’t paying attention to the table so I didn’t have any clue if he’s the type to steal-raise a lot nor did I even give him credit for a hand when I pushed. I’ll be back at it again next week, hopefully this time I’ll bring my focus to the table.

Three-Peat!!

I final tabled the WWDN last night which, I believe, makes it three final tables in my last three blogger events. I guess it's safe to say this donkey is running hot. 6th place was my final destination last night, although it should have been higher. Or lower, if you consider the god-awful suckout I pulled out with less than 15 players remaining (JJ against KK, spike a J on the turn).

This ride to the final table was not smooth sailing through and through in the least. I ran into monsters all night long. QQ, KK (twice), AK, it just never stopped. It sure as hell didn't help that I horribly misplayed my middle pairs and an embarrassing handling of a small pair of 3's led to my demise. In a strange reversal of fortune, I won a HUGE pot with QQ besting AK only to lose all those chips with AK against QQ a few hands after. I'm pretty sure I won the rest of my races after that so there's your definitive answer as to why I've been so successful in these lately.

I did win a few $ at the cash games which is always nice to see. Nothing major, but it's a win. Hopefully I get to squeeze out better results tonight. Can't forget the Mookie either.

On the fantasy Hockey side of things, so far so good. I'm in the top three of the 50 person pool at work, trailing the leader by maybe 4 points and I'm leading the one with my friends. While, this obviously means NOTHING, the season is all of two weeks old, it's still better to start up at the top than bringing up the rear. If I can avoid the ridiculous injury bug this year, I can do some real damage in these things.

The Seven Day Itch

Seven days ago, I snatched the silver in a blogger event for the second time in the past two weeks. Running well? Surely it plays a part but I'd like to think that my willingness to play more hands after the flop, making more moves on 4th and 5th street and seeing way more showdowns has helped improve my results tremendously. And these successes are not only related to < 100 blogger fields, I've gone fairly deep in other 400+ tourneys recently as well. The significant cashes are not there yet, but I'm sure those will come when I start playing bigger buy ins tourneys regularly.

The transition to 6-Max is still going quite well. I'm now over the "dealing with the swings" part of the game and I'm just loving the idea of seeing tons more flops and constantly having to make read based decisions and such. I'm telling ya'll folks, you are greatly missing out if you limit yourself to Full Ring. Shorthanded usually means worst players, action junkies, more hands and most importantly, bigger pots. I've played over 5000 hands any my results, so far, are decent. I'm not “Crushing the games” per se but I'm not embarrassing myself out there either. I've reloaded the max at Full Tilt and I'm data mining the 3-6 tables as we speak. Looks like this will be my next destination once I'm done with the never-ending Pokerroom Bonus.

BTW, are the Sens pathetic or what? Granted I'd rather see them struggle now than in the Postseason (again) but it's really quite appalling that the high salary players are, without ONE exception, the worst players on the roster. Now, obviously, this will not last, but it is beyond ridiculous. With that said, I really hope they split Heatley from Spezza soon. Heatley is good enough by himself to carry a franchise on his back let alone one line. I say pair him up with Fisher and Schaeffer and watch him do his stuff. He'll be more useful that way than waiting for feeds from “Giveaway” Spezza.

I'll see you guys at the WWDN tonight!

Grin-din'

Grin-din', when you know what I keep in a lining
[Censored] better stay in line,
When you see a [Censored] like me shinin' (Grin-ding!)

The Clipse
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It's that time again, rollin' up them sleeves and grindin' down the bonuses. I’m having a blast playing the 6-max games. It’s definitely more entertaining, you actually FEEL like you’re competing, trying to out play an opponent as opposed to the nut peddling exercise that is full ring. I was running quite well for a short little while but I’ve hit a few snags. Right now, my biggest leak is not cutting my losses short. I’ll spend a good chunk of a session being stuck, get back to even after a sweet card rush only to stubbornly lose it all trying to make it bigger. Gotta stop doing that.

I’ve played a few different limits, mostly 2/4 and 3/6 and both seem to play the same. I’m way over-rolled for these games but I get to enjoy learning the nuances without losing my mind due to astronomical losses. I’m getting there though and I’m hoping to be really profitable in those games soon.

I managed to break the top 30 of a 5$ tournament on Titan on Saturday. My reward for the 3 and a half hour tourney session? 11$. Yay me...

Poker Takes a Backseat

Haven’t been hitting the tables much in the past few days. Hockey season is now fully upon us and I now find myself submerged in fantasy drafts, hockey pools and just general hockey watching. Boy am I ever happy to have hockey back. And we spanked the Leafs yesterday for good measure. Whoo!!

I haven’t played a hand of Poker since Monday. I’ve been working on the Pokerroom bonus and cleared around 1000 out of the 5000 points necessary to release the 500$. All my sessions have been winners except for one. And yet, I find myself sitting on a paltry 32$ profit. Should have been over 200$ but I did lose a nice chunk of change in that one dreadful session. It should be noted that all this play is at 2/4$ 5-max, it seems I’m really getting a hang for the game and I’m not really interested in going back to Full Ring for anytime soon. We’ll see how long this lasts. I should be able to squeeze in a session later tonight.

Poker, we Hardly Knew ye?

Boy, these republicans have sure been hard at work lately! When they’re not too preoccupied spanking it to porn chat with underage boys, they’re busy voting cookies laws to banish online gambling. Nothing will entertain you more than the bullshit reasons they come up with for said ban:

Republican Dickhead :"Gambling is a serious addiction that undermines the family, dashes dreams and frays the fabric of society..."

Fair enough. But why stop there? Why not eliminate out all the Casino's where degenerates run too on a daily basis to waste their paychecks playing slots and blackjack? What about that billion dollar cash cow that is sports betting? Or alcohol, doesn't it fuck up lives too?

Ah yes, that wouldn't work since Bill Frist and the people who will finance his campaign make money by the ton of the back of these degenerates.

Which is what this is really all bout: The old boys club not getting their cut. Period. A lot of those online gambling servers are located in the Bermudas, the Barbados while others are on Indian reserves. All those billions and billions of dollars of rake that some odd 20 million American Poker players are paying are going straight into the pockets of black and red folks. And lord knows these fucktards don't want to see black and red folks get rich off the backs of white folks.

While Party Gaming surrendered quicker than the French at the sight of a German, I doubt online Poker is really going anywhere. It might be less available on television, whether it be programming or advertising, but I'm pretty sure American players will have plenty of options to choose from (I figure Full Tilt, Paradise, Absolute and Pokerroom will continue to go on although I think Stars will go the way of Party). We'll probalbly lose a shit-ton of fish though.

I wouldn't recommend COMPLETELY cashing out your entire bankroll and giving up the game altogether. If it might put your mind at ease then sure, withdraw some, but leave yourself something to play with and wait and see how this whole thing plays out. I'd cash the fuck out of Party right now though.