Hello my name is dirkb. Yakshemash !

So far this week I have played about 3k hands of 2/4 shnl and made about $750. Not exactly crushing the game, but I guess it's better than not winning at all (or god beware, losing). I would like to blame the fact that I am doing so much worse than last week on the cards, but I am simply not playing very well, not taking pots away from people when I could, making some awkward calls, etc etc. I might put up some hands later.

One thing I really, really, REALLY need to remember : Every now and then you feel (and you feel everyone else must think..) that you are terrorizing the table, because you have been contesting 12 of the last 15 pots, maybe taking many of them down with raises. It is now the 16th hand and you get a hand like JJ, and suddenly you are reraised pf by a Blind and get bet into on the T42 flop. He has it. My Jacks are no good. I know this. Yet a bunch of the time I think 'He's just getting tricky because he hates for me to be running the table so he's running a 'This aggression will not stand' - kind of play'. This is partially correct. He does hate for me to be running the table, and he IS playing back at me. But he still has Aces. Or Kings. Some premium hand anyway. Of course this changes as you move up limits, when I played 5/10 SHNL there were few hands that weren't raised and reraised preflop. But at 2/4, just believe him.

**Update**
Ok, so maybe I shouldn't be quite so negative. Played a little more, won a little, so I'm up ~1400 now for the week. Played 3 hours this morning, 2 hours last night, and maybe another 2 spread out over the week. That's $200 an hour and I am still whining :/
**********

I also have made zero effort to play at the Casino, I guess I got too annoyed last time, but as of right now Marco and I may be going to Dortmund this evening to play 10-50 Spread Limit Mixed Game Hold'em / Omaha / Stud or some odd game like that. Should be fun, at least.

The past weekend's live play brought some mixed feelings with it. I originally had intended to skip friday's session because I wanted to go to practice, but practice got cancelled since only 3 guys showed up apparently. The casino enforces a dress code, so I rushed over to H&M to get myself some hideously ugly pants and a shirt without even trying them on. I intend to throw them away this week anyway, so I pretty much considered them an 80 Euro two-day pass to the casino. I was going to meet up at a bar with the fabulous Kirsten so I only had 2 hours to play anyway, but somehow i made 1.3k Euros in those two hours. I hit a set of Kings and hit a flush but shouldn't have been paid off for either hand.
On saturday however, I intended to pretty much pull an all-nighter, but had all my hopes destroyed by the casino staff who somehow assigned seats to twelve players and had to take two seats away from people, one of them being me :( I couldn't quite bring myself to leave because that game was just sooooo juicy, so I stuck around for a few more hours before giving up.
Playing 2/4 SHNL on PartyPoker has been pretty successful for me this past week as well, as I made about $3300 total in maybe 10-12 hours of play. I think I might finally be getting a little bit better at it, too. Coming from a limit background so to speak, with the old 'raise-or-fold-but-never-call' school of thought and all, I am just now slowly beginning to master the art of the cold-call. I have played several hands now where at least until the turn my action was (or I think the correct action would have been...) cold-call the pf raise, call the flop bet, call the turn bet - and no, I'm not talking about flopped full houses :)

Can't figure out how to play this hand, or hands similar to it, and it seems to be popping up reasonably often. Seems like I'm not getting enough value from flopping bottom two, or losing. Of course could have check-raised the flop, but if it gets checked around (and it does often enough) then I am in a poopy position since on anything that looks like a 'blank' turn (basically any non-spade, non-king) I'm still in a position to lose a ton of money to turned two-pairs, sets, or gutshot straights...
Bleh.
Anyway, someone suggest a better line pls.

$400 NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, September 22, 11:16:02 ET 2006
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: igorek555 ( $272.48 )
Seat 3: bbmeplz ( $633.80 )
Seat 4: ralose ( $339.61 )
Seat 5: Stugus ( $437.87 )
Seat 6: HERO ( $394 )
Seat 2: brazola ( $198 )
Stugus posts small blind [$2].
HERO posts big blind [$4].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to HERO [ 6d 2d ]
igorek555 folds.
brazola raises [$8].
bbmeplz calls [$8].
ralose calls [$8].
Stugus folds.
HERO calls [$4].
** Dealing Flop ** [ 6s, 2c, Ks ]
HERO bets [$25].
brazola calls [$25].
bbmeplz folds.
ralose folds.
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3h ]
HERO bets [$202.33].
brazola folds.
HERO wins $283.33

dirkwork: [13:01] http://www.pokerhand.org/?517446
dirkwork: [13:01] wie findste die
dirkwork: [13:02] incl besonders call river
dirkwork: [13:03] also bei der letzten hand dacht ich mir halt schon dass er play macht
dirkwork: [13:04] deswegen spiel ich halt so wie ich spiel
dirkwork: [13:04] turn blank bet ich auch
szink: [13:07] jo keine Ahnung ob ichs in der Hitze des Gefechts auch so zocken würd, aber nh so... wenn er aufm Bluff is, is nice und wenn er doch ahead ist kann man for free drawen
szink: [13:08] kA wie schilmm es da is im Vergleich evtl value gg paar hands zu verlieren
dirkwork: [13:09] naja halt gegen KX seh ich halt super deppert aus
szink: [13:09] jop
dirkwork: [13:10] aber ka fand ich halt unwahrscheinlich wenn ich aufm flop schon denk mmm bestimmt play / semibluff
dirkwork: [13:10] dann wird das ja eher untermauert vom turn
szink: [13:10] jo wenne das denkst gibts halt nur die eine line eigtl
szink: [13:10] es sei denn du kannstn bluff raise inducen :D
dirkwork: [13:10] ich kann halt river miniraisen
dirkwork: [13:11] er hat noch 200 oder so aufm river
dirkwork: [13:11] wenn ich miniraise kann er noch 150 hinterherpushen
dirkwork: [13:11] und kann ja schon sein dass er sich sagt ja deine QQ kick ich raus
szink: [13:13] jo schon möglich

# posted by dirkb : Thursday, September 21, 2006  0 comments

So yea, couldn't bring myself to skip practice this week nor the 'night out' i had scheduled yesterday. Strangely I don't even feel bad about missing out on very profitable opportunities, although I probably should. I will definitely go at least once this week.
Played a little online poker this morning and somehow won a whole stack (only $200) by winning bunches of small hands within 15 minutes of one-tabling. Would have been two stacks but the last hand had this lil pretty :

** Dealing Flop ** [ 6c, 4d, Tc ]
Keith4009 bets [$20].
HERO raises [$291.86].
Keith4009 is all-In [$80.60]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 6s ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8h ]
HERO shows [ Js, Jd ] two pairs, jacks and sixes.
Keith4009 shows [ Jh, 6h ] three of a kind, sixes.
Keith4009 wins $233.20 from the main pot with three of a kind, sixes.

And I was feeling kinda bad for overbetting the flop :)

What I didn't really point out in my last post was that for the first time in what seems like forever, I was actually really happy with my play throughout the evening. Granted, some of my opponents and board situations made it easy for me, but I felt like I had a really good grasp of everyones play even as their play varied with changing stack sizes. I was especially pleased by this since I had been afraid that I might be a bit rusty since i play so rarely these days. Anyway, I'm excited about playing again and might even skip soccer practice to play tonight, if i can get a seat that is !

This weekend I finally made it to the Casino in Hannover, if only because Marco and martenJ were in town to game. They had called the Casino to reserve seats in the 5/10 PL game but were told that you could not make reservations on the phone, but that there would be no problem if we got there at seven (the game starts at eight). Obviously, when we got there there was only one seat left. Apparently nine people had reserved their seats during the week since you can do that when you're there in person but not on the phone. We were also told that there was little chance that anyone would quit in the middle of the game, and that there was no such thing as a waitlist. I took the available seat and predictably within an hour both martenJ and Marco had seats as well.
I chose to buy in for only 300 Euros initially (the minimum is 200) because I wanted to get an impression of everyones play before having a real stack, but within the first orbit on my first big blind i tripled up with J6 in an unraised hand when the flop came QJ6. It was pretty much smooth sailing from there on; I missed some big draws in the middle of the session but 'recovered' towards the end. I was tired and ready to leave at midnight but stuck out the game until 2:30 which was a very good thing since as always the game got juicier towards the end..
I never had too many crucial decisions to make. One came when martenJ got me into a bad spot; I had AK utg+1, utg limped and I made it 40. I had a stack of about 2k and right behind me was 'the doctor',the only player with more chips than I had, an 'typical' arabic-type guy : loose preflop, pretty lose postflop, likes nothing better than to 'play the player' and win hands with a bluff. Anyway, this guy calls and martenJ reraise to 160. This pretty much commits his remaining stack which I estimated at about 350, so i figured he has Aces or Kings. If I shove I don't expect the doctor to call with a hand I am ahead of, if i call and miss I have to fold to martens push, and if i call and hit I am still out of position with a giant stack against a tricky player who doesn't mind putting his chips in and against a player who I expect has me beat anyway. To make it short, I fold, and the doctor wins a 1200 Euro pot with his KJs against martens QQ. The flop was K53, turn was an Ace, and I'm sure I could have won a ton off the doctor. Had Marten made a smaller raise of about 120, I would have been in the hand and he could have gotten away from it. Oh well, hindsight etc..
Anyway, I won about 2500 Euros plus $200 online so a good time was had this weekend. Pretty sure I'm going back, too. The game appears to be just as I expected : Some arab-players (no racism intended, they just usually play a similar style) as described above - they like to play lots of hands, lose a lot of money early on, but win back most of it and often more when the stacks increase in size and their 'game' - being able to read people and run over them by being aggressive and stealing pots kicks in. A few local pros, semi-pros, or maybe-some-day-pros who all know how to ABC-poker are there too, but reasonably easy to play against because they are simply too tight. They mostly live on the third type, the occasional guy who just wanders over from the roulette table and loses his 200 Euro buyin within minutes.

How awesome. The Steelers won, so it doesn't even matter whether the whole thing was a scam or not - i have $2100 on www.mansion.com ready to be cashed out, I just haven't bothered to do it yet. Sadly I hedged more than half so only $400 is profit. Still, that's pretty nice for not actually doing anything (and theoretically not risking anything) - for many people that is a weeks work :)

So last night after hearing people talk about it all week I bet $1100 at www.mansion.com on the Pittsburgh Steelers to beat the Miami Dolphins. Mansion apparently, supposedly, hopefully maybe has a promotion where if the Steelers win, you win, but if the Steelers lose, they will refund your loss up to $1k. I then went to another site and bet $660 on the Dolphins, this time without a promotion of any kind (except for the 10% deposit bonus), to hedge my bet. So, IF this isn't a scam, and IF they actually let you cash out your winnings at either site without giant requirements, it looks like I am winning either $400 if the Steelers win or $550 if the Dolphins win (apparently the Steelers are lacking two good players).
Quite obviously though, they are just all going to run away with my $1700 and I will feel like a retard. Been there done that etc.
No poker this week yet.

After what seems like ages, I have finally regained a bit of interest in playing poker. Contributing to this were several small factors : PartyPoker FINALLY gave me my password back, my homegame with the soccer pals somehow became a 50c/1 EUR Pot Limit game, and the Casino in Hannover now offers a 5/10 PL game (with mediocre players, as most casino games here tend to be) three times a week. The Casino isn't as nice as Hamburg, Schenefeld or Bad Zwischenahn, but whenever you have a 1k PL game within walking distance, you don't complain.

That said, I skipped playing in it yesterday in favor of watching Germany break down Ireland and trying to build a bankroll on Party again (the money I have is kinda spread around, and I don't usually play big anyway). I won $747 in 1760 hands, but of course I dropped tons of value in all kinds of spots, made some bad calls and bad folds, tried to get too aggressive at times and played top pairs too passive at times, etc, etc. Whatever, I never said I was actually good at this game. Still, $747 is $747, and translated to Euros it almost buys you dinner.

That Monster Jackpot Thing (yes, I really haven't played in a while) seems to be costing you a lot of money, at least at that level. Since most pots are actually about $20, raking an extra 50c adds up pretty quickly. Hope it at least counts towards my MGR.

So anyway, expect more posts here in the future again.