And suddenly Poker became ...

... not so important anymore. 2 days ago, my wife gave birth to my first born son. So, I will spend the next days together with my wife enjoying our beautiful creation. Poker suddenly dropped in my importance list. Let me say that both my son and wife are filling up place 1, 2, 3, ... you get the picture I think.

Every parent thinks that their child is beautiful, for sure I do.

Thx Ms Drem for this gift beyond imagination. You will probably never read this but I can't thank you enough for it. The inly thing I did was cutting the cord!

Welcome to this world Dremeber Junior. I promise you that I will do everything within my power to make your life great and that you will get all the chances my parents gave me.
I hope that I can be such a great dad as my dad is. I will try harder than I tried anything else in my life.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Quick August update cause ...

... I have the feeling that it will take a while before I will have another chance to update. For the ones who know me, well it is very close!!!!

Yesterday I concentrated on playing SNGs on Stars. Don't know why but it did pay off. I made $35 profit, which is not bad for playing on my level. It seems that my doomswitch has been turn off.
Maybe it is to soon for a monthly review but here I go anyway.

Full Tilt
The good news is that I cleared my FT points and that I could withdraw all my deposited money and leaving some dosh behind. But FT punished my for that by switching on the doowswitch. The biggest part of my profit was won in one MTT, where I ended 4th.
My BR at FT at the moment is $37.

PokerStars
Well it was a month with up and downs but at the moment I'm still making a decent profit there. At the end of last month I deposited $85, which entitled my for a reload bonus of $34, which is gigantic for me. I already cleared 50% of the points needed. My of the profit was made with ring games but due to yesterday I may not underestimate the profit made in SNGs.
In the beginning of the month, the BR was $120, but after one bad beat to many I decided to withdraw my initial deposit leaving me behind with only $35. But... at the moment my BR is back above $100.

YPC
After clearing my required points on FT, I registered for a No deposit bonus on Cake poker. I know that there are Rakeback deals available for Cake Poker but I don't play enough to profit from a rakeback deal. So lets see what I can do with these free $50.

MoneyBookers
At the beginning of the month my Moneybookers account was empty :(. This due to my decision to upload funds to PS to chase the deposit bonus. But now the account statement says $85.59. So no complaints here.

In total a profit of around $100, which is great for me.

Good luck at the felt,
Dremeber

I can't believe it myself

I know when I would read it on another blog that I would doubt it. We all know that poker has some part of luck involved. And that the other side of luck is misfortune. We also all think to know that sometimes you are riding a wave of luck, while other days you are trying to jump of the wave of misfortune.

Today I had the great idea to play a MTT on FT, while grinding away grinding some NL10 tables.
The MTT was over in 10 hand. Hand 9 I got KK in my hands. So it was a no brainer to call the pre-flop all-in raise from on already crippled stack. He went all-in with a fucking 95 off suited. Can you believe that? And yep can you believe that I lost the hand vs 2 pair?
So, the next hand again pocket kings. So, I thought that FT was trying to make something good. I hade to move AIPF and it went to a 3 side all-in. Luckily no pocket aces. But the A10 off suited got the A on the river. So out in two hands without making mistakes.

In the mean time I already lost half a buy-in at one of the 2 NL10 tables I was running, when I ran into AA with my JJ and all rainbow community cards below my Js. Just bad luck. Nothing wrong with this. 10 hands later at that same table I finally got AA and just needed to call an all-in pre-flop. The Q on the river turned his pocket queens into a set. Again I cannot blame myself.

At the other cash table I'm completely card dead! Yeah.

At the stupidest thing of all, is the stupid withdrawal rule of FT, that the minimum withdrawal is $50. Almost impossible for me now to lift my BR to that amount. Fucking FT.
So I fired up 2 90 seater knockout SNG hoping to make it to the cash. But so far, after 20 minutes of play, I didn't get playable hands.

I know that there are more important thing in life but still this frustrates me. I hope that this blog post did drop my stress level a little bit.
Or maybe I just such in playing poker. Which actually could be true!

Thx for reading,
Dremeber

Working hard for small profits

Yep, poker wise life could be better. Today I decided to play another game of the Benelux Poker League. Still running but at least everybody gets one point, which should assure me of a paid prize. A mighty free 5 bucks. In the mean time I fired up a NL25 cash table. After 15 minutes I was $5 up, so everything was going well until I got dealt KK. I raised 3 BB and got one re-raiser. I didn't think that he had Aces so I shoved everything to the middle of the table. After some hesitation he called. The flop was K73. The turn was a J and the river a 9. And yep I lost against a flush. He had queens. Bugger. 400 more PokerStars points to clear, which is a lot. I think that I should drop a level until my BR on Stars is back above $100. So instead of collecting points it is time to collect so cash.

On FT the BR is more or less status quo. Here I have dropped to NL10 and decided to only play during ring time happy hour. I only need 20 points more to clear, which should be done this evening. Than I can apply for the no deposit bonus on Cake poker, which YPC is offering. Maybe I should go for Rakeback deals but I'm not playing enough to collect a decent rakeback.
Yesterday I played 2 hours there for a miserable $4 profit.

Edit: HELP, it keeps getting worse. Decided to withdraw most of my BR from Stars until my bad luck is over, leaving $35 behind. That should do the trick I hope. Have been beaten today on stars by the most ridiculous hands. It was like other people could see the community cards pre-flop.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Frustrated!

Lost half my BR at FT. Sets being beaten by higher sets etc. You all know the story.

So I decided to play a $3 KO 90 seater. Tight is right? Correct. So after 20 hand after folding everything I got I finally get rewarded with AA. So I raised 3 BB, 2 callers, 1 reraiser to 400 and a call. So I decided to shove it all to the middle of the table. And yeah baby one caller with a fucking QK. The flop Q 3 4. No worries! Turn Q. River Q.

I rest my case.

Have to make sure that I collect another 150 FTPs and then I'm gone baby.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Update

A good poker streak is always followed by a bad streak. It is an unwritten law of poker. The questions are how do you deal with it and how much does it cost you?

The answers on both questions: for once I could keep my cool. Luckily. I did loose around $50 this week, which is a considerable amount of my BR but I'm still up for the month. The loss on stars is limited to a miserable $10 but all the rest was lost on FT. Mostly due to bad calls of the hero, so nobody to blame. I can now complain about variance but that wouldn't be fair after last weekend cause what goes around comes around. I can be mad cause I missed the straight danger once, which did cost me a tenner, so the sum it up: it were fishy mistakes.

Still need to score 200 FT points and around 400 Stars points. All the BR left on FT is still profit and it should no problem to score these points with my $71 BR. Collecting the remaining Stars points will be more difficult but I have more than 5 months left to clear it. So that also should be fine. The BR on Stars is $115, from which $35 is my own money and the remaining $80 is profit. I did withdraw $50 already from Stars to fund my FT BR, but that 50 is already back to the back account.

I'm standing still 31th at the Benelux League board but when Stars will update the ranking I will probably drop to place 60 or something thereabout. If I look at the previous months my 31 points should be enough to collect $5 for ending between place 51 and 100.

Gl,
Dremeber

Another MTT FT! That's 2 in one weekend!

This time it was the $3 re-buy at FullTilt with 80 entrants. Eventually ended in 4th place, good for a pay-out of $64. The good thing is that I didn't need a re-buy but I did choose to take the add-on.

The key hand was just for the bubble when I was forced to go all-in with A4. I did get 2 callers both with AK. But the 4 on the flop and the bonus 4 on the turn brought my tournament life back to life.

I did made one mistake which costed my probably the top 3, where the even bigger pay-outs were, when I did call from the BB an all-in raise, which I thought was a steal attempt. My K3 were powerless vs the Kq the villain had.

With one MTT win and a 4th place this is my most profitable poker weekend so far!

Good luck,
Dremeber

I won my first MTT. WHOOOOOT!!!!!!

Finally something great to write on my blog.
Okay I have to admit that there were only 143 entrants and that the buy-in was only $1. But hey, I took the fucking baby down. O man, it feels so sweet. To bad to first price was only $38. But hey what am I complaining about, that was 30% of my BR.

Have to admit that actually it was my second MTT win. The other one was BritBloggerment 19, ran by Acornman and Mr. Cloud. somewhere last summer. But then there were only something about 40 or 50 players, on the other side the pay-out was bigger. Around $78.

But still I'm incredibly proud on myself. Never thought that I could win an MTT over 100 entrants. Of course there was some luck involved. Specially during heads up. I took a gamble when the Villain went all-in post flop with a flush chance for me and I called. A blank turn, but a lovely river. 5 hands later I took the gamble with A3s. He showed QQ and again the river rewarded my aggressive play with a A.

After all, it maybe was a deserved victory. I eliminated 5 players during the FT and was from the moment the bubble did burst chipleader with most of the time a major chiplead. Never played for 4 straight hours. After taking the obliged screenshot I did shut down stars to cool down.

Due to this win, I'm kinda forced to play this MTT some more this month, cause it has a monthly leaderboard. I now have played 2 of these Benelux Poker League games at Stars. the first time I went out in 27th place, just inside the money, and now I took it down. So, now I have 25 points, which will probably place me around the 20th place in the leaderboard.

Acornman, thx for railing me. Maybe you don't believe it but it did help me.
Duece00Seven, I was nice playing with you, sorry that I had to bully you around all the time.
MrPink where were you when I finally could brag about something pokerwise!

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Doing better than expected

I can't complain about my poker. I did manage to lift my Pokerstars BR above the $100 border. Now it proudly stands on $120 or something there about. In the past few days I made a profit of $40. Not bad if you consider that I have played only a few hours and always only 1 single table. This gives me the opportunity to write the preview of the different European football leagues for my sports betting blog.

The doomswitch for the SNGs is still on but the light is shinning very brightly on the cash tables. I also have the feeling that my cash game play has matured. Today I was very proud that I was capable of laying down pockets 7s. After the pre-flop raise, we were still with 2 players in the pot. The flop was 9Q9. So I tried a continuation bet of around 35% of the pot. The villain called. The turn gave another Q, so instead of blowing my complete buy-in I decided to check and fold if the villain would raise the pot and so I did. Maybe I was still ahead, I will never know. But I didn't tagged his play style yet and it was not worth the risk.

Quickly back to the football side of life. The Belgian football is going throe the drain. If our best club isn't even capable of eliminating the Champion of White Russia in the second CL qualification round, alarm bells are ringing. BUT since today we maybe have to best logo for our Premier league. Okay, the name is still lame but it is a start.

Good luck at the green felt,
Dremeber

How can I win with these hands?

I know I not the best SNG player in the world. You can even call me average but with these hands even Yvey would not be capable of winning SNGs. All hands below are from the past 4 days.

From worse to even worser:
First my hand:
AQ vs 22 -> AIPF -> 47% -> no help at all
A9 vs A5 -> AIPF -> 59% -> the 5 on the flop said enough
A5 vs Q7 -> AIPF -> 60% -> a Q on the flop and river
AJ vs A10 -> AIPF -> 68% -> he made his fucking straight on the river
55 vs A2 -> AIPF -> 70% -> no a split pot after the following community cards: 6 7 8 9 10 (in random order)
AQ vs A7 -> AIPF -> 70% -> an A and a 7 on the flop
1010 vs K9 -> AIPF -> 71% -> K on the turn to crush my hopes
QQ vs A7 -> Flop 10 8 6 -> AI Post flop -> 71% -> 5 on the turn -> 4 on the river
QQ vs 1010 -> AIPF -> 81% -> 10 in the flop
A8 vs AQ -> flop 8 2 5 -> AI post flop -> 86% -> turn blank -> river what else than a Q!!!

Really I have no words for this!

Dremeber

Heroes, could come up with a better title!

No not poker Heroes. Last weekend I bought the first series of Heroes and I have to admit that I like it very much. Due to this I'm playing a lot less poker. At the moment I'm focussing at colleting enough PokerStars FPPs to clear my bonus. I have cleared around 15% already. It is going faster than I imagined.

This is probably because I'm playing way above my BR. You can find me most of the time at NL50. I always buy-in for the minimum playing a spandex game, collecting FPPs and making a miserable small profit but it a profit (I believe I wrote this sentence way to much on this blog).
Today for the first time I played the Benelux league game at Stars. This is a daily MTT for a $1 buy-in. First attempt, first cash. I went out in 27th place, the last paid place. Ran out of luck I guess.

I have stopped playing SNGs cause the doomswitch has been set to on!

Going to focus now on the bloggerment!

Good luck at the felt,
Dremeber