Learning Texas Holdem Poker

Is the winter sleep of this blog over?

2010-03-04T20:07:00.003+01:00

Yes and No.
No, cause I don't have the intention to update this blog on a fixed schedule. I will post when I want to post.

Yes, cause I did start playing poker again! Not much, but now and then I kick off a $2.20 180 seater at Stars. The idea is to play a set of 50 and see how far I do get.
I did deposit $25 in the beginning of the year, but the initial deposit is already banked, together with a small profit. At the moment the bankroll stands on $110.47.

Since the beginning of this year I already have played 7 of them. In 2 of them I did finish ITM. And first and third place.
In stead of keeping detailed stats I will trust on pokerprolabs. You can follow my stats here.

Curious if I can make a profit with these.

The stats at the moment:
Played: 7
ITM: 2
Best result: 1
Worst result: 121
Total money cashed: $150.84
Total profit: $135.44

Yep, you are correct. For once I doing a challenge with the knowledge that I will make a profit due to my great start.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Hibernation

2009-12-17T18:31:00.000+01:00

The tittle says enough!

Back to Stars, Back to SNG

2009-12-11T18:46:00.002+01:00

Well I have to admit my defeat. Cash games are not mentioned for me. It took $125 to understand this lesson.
Also a big downside of Doyles is that it is not possible to withdraw an amount below $50.

So it is back to Stars and back to SNGs.
I did convert some FPPs into $11 via a satellite. So that will be my BR to start with.
Let's how far it will bring me. I will start @ the 17 seater @1.75.

Cheers,
dremeber

A lot to learn

2009-11-25T20:35:00.003+01:00

Well ring games are more difficult than I expected. I did know that it wasn't easy, okay, but it never crossed my mind that SNG play will cost you a lot of money at ring games.

In the first week I did play 1849 hands. Most of them @ NL10. The result is shameful. A loss of $49.2. If I add to this the rakeback I did have a net loss of $41.56. Luckely, I made a profit of $6.34 @ NL20.

The second week was a little bit better. Combined with the rakeback and a part of the bonus I did clear I did made a profit of $12.94. But here again the dreadful story @ NL10. 1436 hands played and a loss of $12.94. @NL20 the results were better, played only 83 hands good for a profit of $9.98.

Trying to find my leaks I downloaded a trial version of PT3.
With the small size of hands it is maybe to early to pull some conclusions. But the first one is that I need to play a significant amount of hands from first position. I didn't realize that first position is good for 25% of my losses.
Another rule I did set for myself is that when I increased with 50%, I will leave the table. For some reason or the other I'm capable of building a stack to loose it when a smaller pocket pair made their set. So to prevent this, this rule is in place.

Will let you know on friday how week 3 has ended.

Cheers,
Dremeber

I moved to Doyles

2009-11-13T15:42:00.002+01:00

Unfortunately, the SNGs they are offering are my cup of tea. So I decided to learn the pure art of poker: cash games.
I will start @NL10. Why NL10. I have a rakeback deal via rakeback.com. A rakeback deal @nl10 and with 300 hands will give me an advantage of a dollar per day. That's around 25 to 30 per month which means a big deal for me.

Also it will allow my clear more parts of my bonus. At the moment Doyles is giving out a 110% bonus up to 600$ for a first deposit. While the SNGs are not my cup of tea, the cash tables at lower limits seems pretty soft. There is also enough crowd fill up plenty of tables. Multitabling is also not a problem. It is not as fancy as @ stars but I will give it a 7 out of 10.

I you decided to also go to Doyles. Do yourself (and me) a favour a sign up via Rakeback.com. It will give the same rakeback deal as I have, which means a 33% rakeback with the dealt rake method.
The dealt rake back method means that the rake per pot is split between all the players who did het hole cards.

Cheers,
Dremeber

set 8: completed! Who am I kidding?

2009-11-05T22:00:00.002+01:00

Maybe the better question is: What the fuck is wrong with the Stars SNG.

I'm just having it @ Stars. Giving me one bad beat after another. The pricks. In set 8 I had a loosing streak of 11 SNGs without a cash. Getting bubbled out, getting 2 and 3 outers against me. I know that bad beats are part of the game but it almost reached a point where it starts to have an impact an my mental state outside of poker, which is ringing an alarm bell.

So for the moment I will clear my Stars account. Don't know when I will return to there. Maybe I will try the Doyles room. For sure, this time I will sign up to a room via rakeback.
Titan, where I once started with online poker, sounds appealing. The problem is that I don't have rakeback there. I did close that account some months ago, will have to contact there support team.

Let's quickly sum up the stats of the 200 sngs I played:
Money collected: 418,15
Profit: 68.5
ROI: 19%
ITM: 56
Wins: 16
Second: 18
Third: 13
Fourth: 11

Cheers,
Dremeber

Stepping up, stepping down

2009-11-02T23:22:00.002+01:00

Well despite the good luck wishes of Amatay I have to step down after only 1 set at the $3.40 level.
Only 6 cashes and a loss of $20.2 sealed my faith.
It could have gone different but I did get bubbled out on a few occasions with the correct push but no luck. This evening I also ran twice into KK and once into AA, just bad luck. In the last 2 I did get eliminated with AJ vs KQ and KQ vs K10. Especially this last one was a hard one to swallow. The other one, despite being ahead after the push it was a correct call from the chipleader.

I'm confident that I can make a profit on this level, no question about it, I just do need some more luck. But I have to follow my BR management. So, stepping down I will. The good thing is that I only do need a profit of $20, so after a set of 2 I should be capable of stepping up again.
The BR is still above $100, so no real harm done.

I guess it was just the wrong moment to step up again.
Back to square 1. Here we go.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Change of plans

2009-10-31T14:16:00.001+01:00

Did not play for 2 days and still I did made a profit. The guys from RTR did pay-out the syndicate members. This pushed my BR above the targeted $125.

This means that I now have a BR big enough to play at least one set of the $1.75 one and one set of the $3.40 one. So according to my BR management I should step up a level, which I will.

It feels strange I can tell you. While the $1.75 one were a minefield it felt like home. But I hope that it just like moving, while mostly it feels strange, you normally make a step upwards in the real estate level and quickly the new residence feels like home.

I did bank some money, so the BR at the $3.40 starts at $130. Meaning that a loss of less then 5 bucks will mean that I can stay at the same level.

Wish me luck,
Dremeber

Set 7: Acceptable

2009-10-30T00:08:00.002+01:00

Set 7 is finished. The good news is that it did bring my BR above $100. A little bit faster then expected.
Set 7 was good for a profit of $21.05, 2 wins, 9 cashed and 19 FT.
I donked away 2 SNGs in which I got eliminated within the first 2 hands. Twice with AK, trying to steal the pot. I still cannot explain why I did this.

The overall profit now stands on $74.45. Good for a ROI of 24%.

If everything goes according to plan I can leave the $1.75 behind me after set 7. I did hesitate to step up to the next level but to honest I don't see any reason not to step up. My BR supports it and I always can step down.
I do expect a drop in ROI but I don't expect a negative one. This expectation is based on the stats I have at the $3.40 level. Played already 218 games at this level, they were good for a profit of $81, representing a ROI of 11%.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Set 6: the zone?

2009-10-25T21:51:00.003+01:00

Set 6 did end with a bummer, 2 2 outers against and 5 non cashes but for the rest it was a great set.

16 FTs, that's 2 less then the set before. But a mighty 5 victories, add to this 1 second place, 2 third places and 1 fourth place and the result is a profit of $31.85. Good for a ROI of 72,8%. With other words, not bad.

Very glad with the 5 wins, which makes a big difference in profit.
The FT ITM conversion was 56,25%. Could be better but we cannot complain about everything.

With the pauout night at RTR this week, I hope that after set 7 I can move up a level.
BR at the moment is around $84.

The combined profit at the moment is a little bit above $50. A ROI of around 18%.

If set 7 is half as good as set 6, I'm a satisfied man.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Set 5: Not complaining

2009-10-19T21:55:00.003+02:00

Set 5 has been finished. While I did made a profit, it could have been better/bigger. I bubbled in 4 SNGs. If I did made it ITM in 50% of these the profit would have bigger. One I bubbled out with AQ vs A3, another time when my AK didn't get any help and lost against 99, more unfortunate was the preflop push with 77 when I did run into JJ. But I could live with this push. It was in late position.

I did reach 18 FTs of the 25. Not bad at all. My conversion rate FT into an ITM place is 38%. This should increase in the future.
The 7 ITMs were good for an overall profit is: $10.25. A ROI of 23%, which is good enough.

I only won 1. Not good enough. On the other hand 4 second places. I don't have the feeling that my heads up play is not good enough. I just picked some wrong time to push or call.
The fact that I didn't end on a fourth place is also a good sing. I hope it does mean that my bubble play is getting more aggressive.

The overall profit over 125 SNGs has increased to $21.55, with a still to low ROI of 9,8%.
The average ending position in this set was 7,24, which is excellent for me.

I also finally did came to the conclusion that the quantity of games played in the SNGs is important for and your profit and to wipe out variance.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Stats first 100 SNGs

2009-10-16T22:06:00.003+02:00

My stats of the first 100 SNGs I played:

Profit: $7.8
Final Tables: 57
ITM places: 27
FT ITM conversion: 47,36%
Wins: 7 (7%)
Second: 8 (8%)
Third: 5 (5%)
Fourth: 7 (7%)
Average finishing position: 8,3
Winning streak: 3 (2 times)
Loosing streak: 7 (2 times)

To be honnest not stats to be proud of. So, let's try to improve them!

Cheers,
Dremeber

Set 4: Incredibly bad

2009-10-16T21:22:00.003+02:00

Didn't see that coming for sure not after the excellent set 3. But set 4 delivered a loss of $14.10.
The strangest thing is that I reach in 17 occasions the FT. So I can only blame it on variance, not?

In did cash in 6 of them but not victory. Not even 1. 3 of my cashes were 4th places and that's almost the same as not ending up ITM. My average finishing position was 7,64. Almost the same as in set 3.
In 3 occasions I was the bubble boy, add to this 4 six places.

The good news is that in 80% of the cases that I pushed my chips to the middle of the table I was ahead. The bad news is that I did loose these pushes in 80% of the cases. Bummer. Nothing more I can tell about this. Also got my aces cracked twice in this set.

BR now is at $43.95. Set 5 will have to point me again in the right direction.

Cheers,
Dremeber

The way to go?

2009-10-14T18:50:00.003+02:00

At the moment I was playing without a real goal. Like everybody the idea is to make some money but this is hard at the 18 seater of $1.75. I know I need to move up a level, but I had no idea when I should move up the level.

I did start playing the $1.75 stakes because my BR simply didn't allow me to play at a higher level. I do understand that the key in these games is simply patience. Even playing ABC poker can cause you to end up in a real mind field. It is not uncommon at these level that players do call a raise and re-raise of 500 chips with 57sm hitting the flop and crushing your mighty high pocket pairs.

Normal BR plans say that you should need around 20 to 30 buy-ins of the next level before moving up. Because I'm playing sets of 25 games I will alter this a little bit and create my own BR management.

First let's do some calculations:
2 sets of the 18 seaters at $1.75 costs $87.50
1 set of $1.75 and 1 set of $3.40 costs $128.75
2 sets of $3.40 costs $170.00

Every finishing a set I will look at my BR. If the BR is below $128.75 I will play at the $1.75 stake, if the BR is above $125 I will play at the $3.40 level. If after this set the BR is again below $125 I will drop back a level.
I know that a lot of people will disagree with this approach and if you do, feel free to post your ideas via a comment.

At the moment the BR is standing at $56. I expect to collect around $30 from the RTR syndicate. Lifting my BR around $90.
I hope that 1 can lift my BR above $125 after I finished 3 more sets. So this will be my short term goal.

And now a chapter with which many of you will disagree. At the moment I still have around $100 left on MB and around $30 on PKR. Besides trying to lift my BR at Stars, I should also try to lift my reserve BR. When I did reach the $3.40 stakes I will bank after each set of 25 games. I will bank half the profit, if made, of the set to MB.
There are several reasons behind this. One is described above, I do want to bank once in a while, and the other is that I don't know if I'm ready to move up another stake. I dont know if my level is good enough. I know that the only way to find it out is to play at the level but cause I don't feel the urge to do so.

Feel free to spread your ideas about this post.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Set 3: That's more like it

2009-10-10T11:24:00.003+02:00

While set 1 and 2 were coolers, set 3 was the complete opposite. It was good for a profit of $29.2, turning my figures from red into green.
On the overall I'm now having a profit of $25.40.

I did cash 10 times out of 25 and reached 15 FTs. I did win 3 of these, besides that I also had 3 second places.
In 3 SNG's I was out in place 17 or 18, which never should happen. All three of them I did get eliminated with high pair pre flop.
My average ending position was 7,48.

I tried to incorperate the advice in the comments, tightened my early game, loosing up when I did reach 10 BB or with only 5 players at the table.

Due to this great set, the BR is getting healthier. A little bit above $60. The mistake I do need to avoid is to move up to quickly in buy-in level. I should not do this without having a BR which supports at least 2 sets at the level, which are 50 buy-ins. Which is around $170. So a long way to go.

So, let's see how set 4 will evolve.

Some stats at the moment (probably all meaningless):
- set 1: -$0.55
- Set 2: -$3.25
- Set 3: $ 29.20
Overal profit: $25.40

Games played: 75
ITM: 28%
FTs: 53%
Average pr0fit per game: $0.34
Average ending position: 8.52

Cheers,
Dremeber

Set 2, did I lost it?

2009-10-07T21:13:00.002+02:00

Mmmh, very surprised about this result. Again a loss.
Played again a set of 25 18 seaters ($1.75) and I did record a loss of $3.25. Only 12 FTs, that's 1 less as set 1. One miserable win. And 4 other paid places.

Tried to tighten my game in the early stages. But this brings some problems later on in the SNG when staying card dead, resulting in push fold games. And if then lady luck does not want to support you it becomes really hard. AA crackes by QQ, KK by 99, 999 by a river flush and so on. But this can't explain it all. So I have to lift my game to a next level.

Let's hope that set 3 will be better. The start was promising with 2 cashes out of 4 games, but the next 4 were crap again.

Cheers,
Dremeber

First set of 25, not a success

2009-09-25T22:52:00.002+02:00

Surprisingly I did not make a profit in the first set of 25. I did had 6 cashes, 3 times I took it down. Still not enough to make a profit, in stead a loss of $0.55 is recorded. The problem is that once I have a decent stack I start playing to defensive. I know I should be more aggressive but ...
When I decided to increasethe aggressiveness I lost every race I had. So in my eyes a lot of misfortune but don't we all say this.

I should try to increase the number of FTs to around 65%. Thats somewhere around 15 FTs out of 25 games if I then can maintain my ITM of 50% when reaching the FT I should make a profit.

Let's see if set 2 will be better.

Cheers,
Dremeber

syndicate

2009-09-20T23:04:00.003+02:00

I joined the $11 poker syndicate at RTR. The idea is that everybody plays 5 $11 MTTs. All the winnings will be put into a pot and shared amoung all the members which did play all 5 games.
At the moment I played 3 and did cash in ione. A great 96the place out of 2702 contenders. Good for $40. I'm glad that I could add some dosh to the pot.

Also trying to play a set of 25 games of the $1.75 18 seater. I need to find out what my best play ground is. I did want to try 6 seaters at a lower buy-in than the $3.40 one but there aren't any. So the 18 seater will be a good starting place. At the moment I did finish 8 of them. Cashing in 2, giving my at the moment an intermediate result of a loss of -$0.5. So some improvement is needed.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Here we go again

2009-09-11T21:01:00.002+02:00

Didn't play a lot during the past weeks. The weather was to good and I just wasn't interested.
In stead of playing I was searching the net for a new laptop with a blu ray player. To bad for me but my specs made it to expensive. Let's see if I can collect some dosh with Poker. The target stands on $1000.

In the last 3 days I played 6 6 seaters, cashing in 5 of them. Not bad.
Will this be my new play ground? Don't know yet.

Will keep you posted.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Switched to PKR

2009-06-28T22:49:00.002+02:00

I decided to it was time to give Stars some rest. So the question was where do I want to play?
After reading some room reviews my eye fell on PKR. For a recreational player, like me, the user interface really is worth a try. Also I did find out that it is a real fish pound.

In my first 5 days I made a profit of $70. Not bad. At the moment I'm trying to clear my bonus.

I would say give it a try. Use the bonus code PKRBONUS to profit from their deposit bonus.
PKR.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Second loosing day in a row! Auch!

2009-05-29T21:27:00.000+02:00

Luckily I did manage to win my last SNG I played or the damage would have been much bigger.
Played 12 SNGs yesterday (10 10 seaters and 2 18 seaters). Didn't cash in the 18 seaters, while I should have in one. But a donk move from my side with AK during the bubble did get me eliminated. Very stuped cause I was atm second in stack.

Did cash in 3 10 seaters but the amount won was not enough to cover all my antes of the day. 1 first and two thirds.

I did replay all my major loosing hands of the day and came to the following conclusions:
A few non cashes were simply my own faults but the red line of yesterday that I wasn't capable of hitting the flop and that my Ax never won a race against small pocket pairs. On the other side, none of my pocket pairs held up against their Ax. Add to that flushes being beaten by higher flushes and then you have a perfect poker misfortune cocktail.

PT is giving some indications of leaks but still to early (not enough SNGs available yet) to form some conclusions. On the other hand I have the feeling that I'm playing more focussed. Don't know if it has anything to do with PT.

I'm confident that I can break my loosing streak this evening.

Note to myself: Third places are worthless, third places are worthless.

Cheers,
Dremeber

A fresh start!

2009-05-28T08:42:00.000+02:00

I decided to upload some fresh funds to Stars and I'm not planning to throw it away like the previous one. But that is easier written down than done. For the first time since long I had to upload funds cause the previous BR dried up, normally I'm able to cash my deposit with some profit but not last time.

One of my major BR leaks is that I don't build up a bankroll. I to quickly cash some profit or the initial deposit, which isn't a sign of confidence in myself. I will try not to make this mistake again. The deposit was only a miserable $75. Still plenty left in the poker bank account.
To plan is to wipe out my loss of $80. Again easy to write down, more difficult to acchieve but not impossible.

Like written before I tried to analyse my game with the help of SiTAndGo Wizard. But this tool is not for me. I hate the fact that it gives advice and your % of winning chances but that you can't see the outcome of the hand.Now I have downloaded a trial version of PokerTracker. The downside is ofcourse that it doesn't automatically imports the SNG results but with the POP3 import this isn't a problem which can't be overcome. The only hassle is that I need to restart PT3 after importing them otherwise I don't see the results in the tournament tab.
I also decided that I need to step back to the single table SNGs in stead of the 18 or 45 seaters. There is a much more winning percentage in these and I have the feeling that it should be easier to end up ITM in these.

I'll keep you posted!Dremeber

Tilt

2009-05-24T21:48:00.003+02:00

The tittle says it all. Lost $60 in the last few days. With one MTT running, the br is standing on the nice round figure of zero!

I don't know what is happening and why I'm loosing. Have to analyze my game. Perhaps I need to starts playing single tables again.
Reaching the FT enough but I just can't get into the money. Loosing each race, running into sets and so on.

I downloaded a trial version of Sng wizard! Maybe that tool can me give me some insight in what I'm doing wrong!

Cheers,
Dremeber

Uhm?

2009-05-22T11:03:00.002+02:00

Nothing much to report.
Stepping down is making me a profit but it is smaller than I hope for!
I still have to much swings in my game not getting ITM for 10 in-a-row and than cashing in the next three.

I have now played 32 games at the $3.40 buy-in and getting a ROI of around 19%. At least 6% below my target. But the good news is that my BR is back climbing. Also cleared 50% of my deposit bonus.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Where did my profit go? Did you see it?

2009-05-15T18:19:00.000+02:00

Don't know what happened but I lost it. With IT I mean lots of things. Like my luck, the ability to learn poker, the ability to pick the right moment, my coolness and so on.

Yesterday I lost a staggering 80 bucks, which meant a decrease of my BR with more then 60%. WTF!!!
I tried playing 18 seaters, 45 seaters, 2 in one session, 4 in one session, and single tables. But nothing worked!

I cannot blame variance. I only should blame myself. Making incorrect decisions, using the all-in functionality to much (for sure a new leak in my game), afraid to play some opening hands. On the other side, each flush possibility against becomes a flush, the same with straights but what staggers me most is the number of sets I ran into, failing myself to hit one.

In the end I tried cash tables, where I did see my aces cracked, running into 4-of-a-kinds and so on. With other words: not a success!

So drastic measures has to be taken. Maybe you can compare it with the financial crisis. Maybe I was playing SNGs at a buy-in level where my BR wasn't adequate for. A loosing streak then immediately crushes it. Putting a higher pressure on you to get ITM the next one.
I still have $45 left. (Still plenty poker cash elsewhere but that's besides the point) So meaning that I could only play 6 more SNGs at the $6.50 level. If I step down a level or 2 and move back to the $3.40 level I could give myself 7 attempts more, so I should do that.
This also implies that I have to postpone my challenge at the $6.50 level but I'm confident that I can continue this after the summer holidays. In the old days I always started with a BR of around $50 and always played at this level and always made a profit in the end. The strange thing is that I'm still making a profit at the $6.50 level. $27 during 82 SNGs. I hope that stepping down will increase my confidence, my profit per SNG and in the end my overall profit.

But I have to put this beside me and focus on the game. Not playing more than 2 SNGs at the same time. Back to the basis!!

Cheers,
Dremeber

Blame it on the Stars

2009-05-14T20:50:00.000+02:00

Well I'm recently undergoing a down swing. So as a result I didn't play a lot in the last few days. Probably a wise decision cause the Tilt monster was trying to catch me. Due to this down swing and a $50 withdrawal my BR decreased to a miserable $120. So less than 19 buy-ins left.

In stead of playing I did replay my last 8 SNGs to see if the down swing was caused by bad play or the RNG of Stars. Well I think I can blame it on the stars.

2 twice my Queens were beaten by a set of threes. 2 times well hidden and with a flop with all cards lower than my pocket queens. Maybe I should have discovered some signs but I didn't. The question which arise is if this is a bad beat or not. Personally, while my feelings do have another opinion, I don't think so. Most of the stack was pushed into the middle of the table post flop, when the set of 3s already were a fact. So my bad!

Other SNGs were destroyed due to donkey calls of the villains. With 6 people left at the table (so around 12 to 13 players left in the SNG) I got dealt AK. Cause my stack was less than 10 buy-ins I decided to push, to see some asshole calling with 67s. This call should have left him behind with a stack of 100, but he doubled his stack when the flop was 667, sigh. Okay, it is a race but still how can you call a push of a tight player (didn't play more than one hand before this) with 67s.
The other one did even hurt more. Situation is almost the same as above but this time I got called with a fucking 23s. Come on, get real. Stars should close down accounts for calls like this. A fucking 3 on the river sealed my faith.

I'm in a situation were I just can't win races, where the hole cards are rubbish and the donks get rewarded for their stupidity. 3 and even 2 outers are no exceptions. AQ gets beaten by Q2, with a 2 on the river and so on. I can say that I lost faith in the RNG of Stars.

I hope that lady luck thinks that I have been punished enough.
After 2 weeks I did clear some 30% of the FPPs needed to clear my bonus. 120 SNGs more to go before I get rewarded. Plenty of time left.

Maybe better the focus some more on the 18 seater, cause stats indicate that I should end up more ITM in these compared with the 45 seaters!

Cheers,
Dremeber

Slowly making some progress

2009-05-04T11:17:00.002+02:00

While I stated in my last post that I probably was going to stick with the 18 seaters and put my investigation between the 18 and 45 seaters on hold, I did play 4 45 seaters yesterday evening and I'm glad I did. Only cashed in 1 of them but this was a second place so good for an overal profit of 34 bucks for the evening. Which is great for an amateur at my level. It could have been more but in 2 occasions I ran into AA with my queens. Bugger. Also in the SNG were I came in second I lost against a runner-runner-runner-runner flush. But it eases the pain when these happens heads-up and a second place is alreasy a fact!

This results also lifted my br above $200 at stars, long time that I did see such a figure there. Also a good thing is that I didn't bank any of these winnings. I probably will do when the BR raises above 250, but first I need to get there.

Besides the profit I cleared around 15% of my bonus. So that free $26 is coming closer. I know it is not a lot but for me its at the moment more than 10% of my BR.

I updated the stars on the right side. It is good to see that I made a profit of $122 in 53 SNGs. That's more than $2 per SNG. I can live with these figures. But with some hand of hand analysis, playing when I have time enough and stuff like that I should be capable of increasing this.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Did I find a leak in my game?

2009-05-01T23:38:00.002+02:00

Well I hope so and I also hope that I closed the leak. After looking at my stats I came to the conclusion that I didn't reach the final table enough and you can't get ITM when you aren't sitting at the FT. Now what was the problem? I maybe took the play tight in the beginning of an SNG a little bit to strict. Now I try to loosen up my play when we are only with 5 peeps left at the table. And it appears to be working.
The intermediate goal now is to increase the percentage of FT finishes. At the moment it stands at 51.32% I like to increase this to a figure between 60 and 65%.

This evening I played 5 SNGs and the results were great, not super cause I failed to take one home one, but still great. The results: 5, 3, 10, 2, 2 (again) and 9.
Still a lot of SNGs has to be played to get a good idea of the my results on the 18 seaters but If this line continues it is ok for me. The stats on the right are updated!

The only thing is that I doubting now to switch to the 45 seaters. The idea was to play 50 of both of them and then decided where my results were best. Maybe now or then I will play a 45 seater to see if I can collect some decent data, but for the moment I have the feeling that I should stay at the 18 seater.

So maybe I did learn something by analyzing my play. Glad I did!

Cheers,
Dremeber

Just in Time

2009-04-28T21:09:00.002+02:00

A week and a half ago I cleared my account after going into tilt mode. The idea was to wait until Stars offered a new reload bonus and it was coming faster than I expected/hoped. Until the first of May you can profit from this reload bonus and like always it is also a bonus which can be cleared by small stakes player. (Bonus code: 09series) It is their second reload bonus period of the year, normally they will offer reload bonus 4 times per year!

For every bonus dollar one has to clear 20 FPPs. The downside is that you have to cover your complete bonus before it gets deposited, the positive side is that stars gives you a gigantic time frame of half a year!

I have deposited $130, good for 20 buy-in at the 18 or 45 seater ($6.50), hoping that I'm now on the other side of variance, that I will play more concentrated or more of that shit!

Good luck with it,
Dremeber

Runner, runner, runner, runner flush ...

2009-04-20T23:20:00.002+02:00

... It does happen. And it is always against me. This time after so many 3, 2 and even some 1 outers against me (in about 15 SNGs) it was the drop that flood the bucket. So with one SNG ongoing I decided to cash-out my complete bankroll!

Luckily I came second in the other one, leaving me behind with a bankroll of $32.something. Just enough for 5 buy-ins. Have to spend them wisely.

On the other hand I may not complain, cause I made a profit of over $200 in the last 60 days, which is an excellent figure for me! Strange with this in mind that some stupid donks with unreasonable calls can make you go into tilt mode! Or am I the donk? Possible and in some hand absolutely true, but in general just above donk level!

I update my stats of the 18 and 45 seaters. Not excellent results but I can cope with them, specially with a loosing streak of 10 SNGs at the 18 seaters.
We will see how it will progress from here.

I will keep you posted!
Dremeber

status update

2009-04-16T19:28:00.000+02:00

Overal
The most important of all is that I'm enjoying playing online poker again. So the break did me well.
I also have the strange feeling that my level of play is increased (like that was hard :)). Can't explain why. It could be that I'm more relaxed when I'm playing, have more patience or that the break gave me some other insights.

BR
It currently stands on $101. Not bad concidering that I cashed 2 days ago 25% of my BR back then, dropping my BR to $80. I was having a bad day, played horrible and probably was chasing to much. So I decided to bank some money. Which always brings me back to my original problem. I just can't build up a bankroll on Stars. I keep on banking, withdrawing everything in a tilt session (which isn't actually so bad) and loading up again when I'm ready for it. I'm still underestimating the power of a well filled/equiped BR. It should drop the pressure inmensily. It is a vicuous circle where I am in! I should not bank the profit so easily. First I should create a nice bankroll, which allows me to play what I want, when I want. Curious if I ever can escape the circle of cashing/funding.

Stud MTT
I did play some more Stud tournaments. I did end-up ITM in around 60% of them, which I consider darn good. The problem is that for the bigger bucks you need to end within the final 3, and 5th place is at the moment my best result! So, still a lot of progress which can be made.
I now also fully understand that it is important to do an inmediate re-buy, even before the first hand is played. This gives you an advantage on the players, who don't. I'm still doubting about the add-on. At the moment I still have the rule, that I only buy the add-on if I still have a clear chance on getting ITM. So let's say that before the add-on I should be within the top 50%, otherwise it smells like chip dumping.
I have never collected so money points for the MTT leaderboard as this month and we are only half way.

Holdem MTT
Also started to play the $5.50 Texas Holdem MTT. Full of fishes. The best proof of that is that I ended 3 times out of 4 attempt ITM. Okay, the winnings aren't big, but every nickle helps.

Holdem SNG
Yep you are reading it right. I'm also back where I started. SNGs.
The difference is the buy-in and the number of participants. I'm giving it a shot at the $6.50 18 and 45 seaters. If I played focussed and concentrated enough I should be capable of boosting my BR by playing these. But that's the theory, we will have to wait how it turns out in real!

Goals!
doing something without having a goal is most of the time useless, so I will force myself to set some goals for the reminder of the month:
- Don't cash any money from my Stars account! Only when I did Tilt of the BR reaches at least $175. In the latter case I'm allowed to withdraw a maximum of $30. This way I did recover my uploaded funds from a week ago. Already did withdraw $59.
- Win at least one $6.50 45 seater or at least podium finishes.
- Win at least 3 18 seaters.
- Cash in at least 5 other MTTs (Stud and Holdem)
- Have fun, have fun, have fun!!!

Cheers,
Dremeber

And another cash!

2009-04-10T15:01:00.003+02:00

Well to be honest I don't understand it. I'm not the best card player in the world. There is no question about that. So there are the following possibilities:
- I'm on a roll,
- 7 card stud is easy,
- The other players are even stupider than me.

You are free to pick the one which suits me best. Another possibility is that I finally did find the game I'm good at. Which is possible but it doesn't explain the back-2-back cashed.

Yesterday there were 48 participant and 7 paid places. So making it to the final table was crucial. Once the FT was started I was 6th in Chip lead. Rather safe ITM. But the shortstack doubled twice and was suddenly way ahead of me. Suddenly I was playing to secure my place in stead of going for the pots, which is never a good situation to be in. To be honest I played like a chicken! the reason behind this is easy! Bankroll, bankroll, bankroll! With a bigger bankroll I probably would have played more aggresive, risking to end just OTM but with more chances on better result!

Next step is to try to get it to the break without needing a rebuy. It should be possible. The last 2 times, I needed a re-buy and also used the Add-on. I guess that the add-on is crucial when you are in the middle of the field.

cheers,
Dremeber

Yeah! First time ITM @ 7card limit stud R/A

2009-04-09T21:05:00.003+02:00

My first final table and ITM came faster as expected. Yesterday I ended at the 4th spot out of 32 contender. Have to admit that I had to use 1 re-buy after a stupid "I cannot lay-down" action and used the add-on to give myself some more time after the add-on period. During the rebuy time I also had the nightmare that my laptop crashed. No idea why!
To bad that I went out with 2 pairs. The river completed them but his/her river completed his/her straight.
Particularry proud on the fact that I was capable of laying down pocket Ks after a raise and a re-raise. Glad that I had the power cause the AA probably would have crushed my hand.

Not so bad for a complete noob and fish at the 7 card stud tournament. Before a week ago I didn't even know the game. Today was the first day that I read some articles about tournament play. It is strange what a wild west the first 2 rounds can be at 7card stud.

This is my track record so far:
April 3rd -> 12th out of 48
April 4th -> 40th out of 56
April 7th -> 21th out of 41
April 8th -> 4th out of 32 (Good for $61.60)

What I like about this tournament is that it normally doesn't run more than 2 hours and it starts after Lars his sleeping time.
What do I like about 7 card stud, well the fact that there is much more information available but still not enough to put the players on their hands.

Curious if I can end up ITM again next week.

May not forget to mention that I also won a watch with a cycling fantasy game. My second prize this season. But the other prize was a cyling outfit, like I could use it!

Cheers,
Dremeber

Challenge?

2009-04-08T20:23:00.002+02:00

Well why not! I'm giving myself 10 buy-ins at the 8.80 stud re-buy tournament at 16.45 Stars time, hoping that I can reach the final table.
Yesterday I did start and spent 2 buy-ins, I used one rebuy, no add-on but ended in a miserable 20th place out of 45. I have to admit that it was my own stupid fault.

Check back tomorrow!

7 card Stud

2009-04-04T12:20:00.003+02:00

Yesterday I had to brilliant idea to play some tournaments. Cause I didn't pay attention, I registered for a 7 card stud tournament. Buy-in 8,80 + rebuys. So, I had to learn the rules along the way. And after half an hour, I really like the game. Ended up 12th out of 48 with 7 paid places, when my pocket 4s lost against pocket 2s. For sure, i will play this again!

Also play a regular Texas holdem tournament. And again an excellent result. 166th out of 2250, with 324 paid places.

My BR did take a dive due to some bad luck and probably also some bad play. But I'm still having fun and thats what it is all about for me. I have to enjoy as long as I can before the Belgian government will ban Pokerstars! Probably around Septermber this will happen :(

Cheers,
Dremeber

Change of plans

2009-03-29T22:19:00.002+02:00

Well actually not a change of my plan, cause there wasn't any. But I switched again to SNGs. I guess it still is my main habitat.
The fact that a colleague of me, is showing some excellent stats was the only push I needed. Also the fact that my son has a better sleeping regime helps. another factor is that I have far away plans to try to aim for Silverstar and SNGs are the fastest way to get there.

With all this in mind, I left the 18 seater, $3.40 behind and move to the 6.50$ 9 seaters. And to be honest I did see much of a difference in level of play. In the beginning I do loose some dosh but that cause my SNG play was dusty. Now it is getting much better.

Will keep u posted!

Good luck at the green felt,
Dremeber

I'm back!

2009-03-05T22:04:00.003+01:00

Surprise! I'm playing again!
Not frequently, just for fun and without any pressure. And I have to admit I love the game (again).

In stead of playing SNGs I switched to cash games. Why? It is so much easier to start and stop when you want. You don't have to wait until a SNG is filled and you don't have to play until it is over. So it has all to do with time management. The reason can be seen in the picture! :)

For once I did not set goals or targets. I'm not recording my results. Hey I even cash my winnings if their big enough. I cashed $110 in the last week. Not bad for 2 hours play.
I don't follow bankroll management rules, etc... I do play above my limit. Playing NL50. But hey I'm having fun and that's what it is all about! Maybe that's something that we all forget. Fun. We all started cause we liked the game and suddenly, while we still like the game, we start to focus on making money!

Cheers,
Dremeber

A happy 2009

2009-01-03T13:33:00.003+01:00

I guess everybody has made some new years resolution. Some for the regular life, some for the poker life. Well all my new years resolutions are for the regular life so I won't bother you with them.

Since 3 weeks I'm playing again. Not frequently but once in a while a SNG. I did deposit a fresh bankroll of $50 on stars, still my favorite poker room. I can proudly tell that the BR has increased to $65.

I will see where it brings me.

For all of you a very healthy and profitable 2009.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Merry X-mas

2008-12-24T15:45:00.002+01:00

Do I miss playing poker?

2008-09-27T01:04:00.002+02:00

Well sometimes I do but being busy with my son is so much more fun!
Last weekend I cleared up my accounts. I now have $212 in my Moneybookers account. So it could be worse. This is a nice BR to start all over again when my sun has a more predictable sleeping regime.
Just got an email today from rakeback.com that they are offering rakeback on ultimate and absolute poker, even if you already have an account there. So I assume these rooms are desperate for players after their scandals. Maybe worth a try. There are 2 requirements to qualify for this bonus is that you may not have played for 3 months on there and your account may not be tagger to someone else. That second part is the problem.

Good luck,
Dremeber

Hibernation

2008-09-18T18:16:00.004+02:00

Yep, the tittle says it all. This blog and my poker career are going into hibernation. At the moment I have limited time to play and even less desire to play the game. So there not much to blog about. Once in a while I will still play, I still have a BR on Stars and Cake.

My other blog: European Sports Betting will continue. So if you feel the desire to contact me it would be wiser to do it via that blog! I had my first big win yesterday!

hope to be back!
Dremeber

Straight flush ...

2008-09-16T21:29:00.002+02:00

... but not for me! Bugger. Did only play 1 session in the past 5 days. To busy with my son, football, sportsbetting and playing tennis.

So Sunday evening I logged in, prepared to turn my Cake poker account into a winning account but 10 minutes later I lost 2 buy-ins and shut down. The first time I lost with KK vs QQ. All low card on the flop but a Q on the turn. The problem is that I never did put him on QQ. I did not slow play my kings not did I played them strong enough! I did loose with pockets kings 5 times out of my last 6 times I got them dealt.

The other buy-in was lost when my straight was beaten by a straight flush. Nothing I could do about it!

Better luck next time I guess.

Cheers,
Dremeber

Bugger

2008-09-11T20:23:00.002+02:00

Yep, the title says a lot. I lost my BR at Cake Poker. Luckily it was not my money (yet). Still it is a bummer. I cannot stand being a loosing player at any site, so I did deposit a fresh $50 of my own. With this money I will try to clear some of the bonus but my main focus will be to become a winning player.

So, the plan is playing on NL20 until my BR reaches at least $75, when I will allow myself a shot at NL50.

We will see how things evolve.
But like I said before Poker is only a sidekick in life. There are much more important things in life, like health. The one who will read it, will know what I talking about. Keep the faith! Remember that you can count on me!

Cheers,
Dremeber

Bonus cleared at PStars, profit made and cashed

2008-09-09T12:21:00.002+02:00

I have cleared my deposit bonus on Pstars. So an extra $34 was added to my BR, this combined with another upswing and my PStars story was a success. Including the bonus I made $144 profit on Stars, pretty darn proud on this. After the bonus was released I withdrew most of my funds to my Moneybookers account, leaving $44 behind.

The question now is what am I going to do with the collected FPPs? Not sure about it. It would be stupid to buy Pstars gear with it, although their soccer shirt looks really good. I don't read any poker books so that also not an option. Time will tell I guess.

So, what is the next step?
YPC deposited my No Deposit bonus on Cake poker. I have 3 months time to clear another $50, so I will be focusing on that. I need 850 points to clear the extra $50 and 1200 points before I may withdraw the cash.
In the meanwhile I will have to wait until Stars offers a new deposit bonus.

Also, tried Holdemmanager yesterday. After a hassle of installing the PostGreSql I did find out that they don't support cake poker due to Cakes TOS. Bugger. So Holdemmanager has no added value for the moment.

Cheers,
Dremeber

An upswing is always followed by ...

2008-09-08T01:27:00.002+02:00

... a downswing. At least in my case. And this time it hit me really hard. I cannot blame variance for all my losses but at least 60% of my loss was pure variance or that is my opinion.

While my BR at stars was on the second of September at a healthy $163 it was crushed to a ultimate low of $68 yesterday. Slowly I'm now trying to recover my losses. Hoping to end this week on at least $90. Most of my losses were cause by pocket pair Kings. I lost 5 times in a row with the mighty kings. Most of these were PFAI. But which makes is more frustrating is that I never faces pocket Aces against me. So that why I think I can safely blame it on variance.

On the bonus front, I only need to clear another 40 Stars FPPs so that they will release my $34 deposit bonus. After I cleared these I will withdraw most of my BR from Stars and will wait on another deposit bonus, which is apparently a motivator for me.
After this I can start clearing my bonus on Cake poker, which will be much harder cause my starting BR there is only $50, which leaves almost no room for error. I need to clear there 160 FPPs to release another 50 and 1200 to be allowed to withdraw my money, cause it is a no deposit bonus.

Good luck,
Dremeber

UpSwing on Stars, no swing on FT

2008-09-02T22:24:00.002+02:00

Yep, let me first start with the downswing on Full Tilt. I had $30 left there and lost when twice my KK was beaten by AK, once with an A on the turn, the other time with the A on the river. Nothing I could do about it. But my story on FT didn't cost me a dime. I cleared all the points I needed so that YPC now can release my $50 no deposit bonus on Cake poker.

Now to the better news. First of all my day started good when I opened my mailbox and there was a surprise package in there. I won a book about Johan Bruyneel. The man who made Lance Armstrong big.
The most important news of the day is that my son is doing fine.

And pokerwise I had a great Poker session on Stars. I sat down with a miserable $17.50 on a full ring NL50 table, to leave it 30 minutes later with $78, lifting my BR close to the $200 border. I got even better when Stars did deposit my $5 price money for ending on the 88th place in the Benelux PokerLeague. Woooot! Lol.

BR at the moment is $335. So already close to my September target of $350.
Also already cleared 80 FPPs, so only 226 more to go to clear my deposit bonus.

Cheers,
Dremeber

August Recap

2008-09-01T00:27:00.002+02:00

Hey lets forget about Poker. I made a profit of $115, enough said. I had my downswing, my coolers, my bad plays and on the positive side one MTT win and another FT.
But the most important thing this month was the birth of my son, who seems the be healthy! No poker achievement can top this.

What are my aims for September? Well try to play a decent amount of time and make a profit. At least clear another 100 PokerStars FPPs, so that I'm at least can clear my bonus this year. This has to be done via ring games cause I doubt it that I will have time for SNGs with my son needing a lot of attention :). Lifting my BR to above $350 will be a nice target.

I will keep you posted,
Dremeber

And suddenly Poker became ...

2008-08-28T00:18:00.003+02:00

... 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 ...

2008-08-24T12:13:00.003+02:00

... 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

2008-08-22T22:44:00.002+02:00

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

2008-08-21T19:39:00.003+02:00

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!

2008-08-18T23:12:00.002+02:00

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

2008-08-17T23:47:00.003+02:00

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!

2008-08-10T13:18:00.002+02:00

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!!!!!!

2008-08-08T22:57:00.004+02:00

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

2008-08-07T22:59:00.003+02:00

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?

2008-08-04T22:07:00.004+02:00

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!

2008-08-03T21:53:00.002+02:00

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

Bugger! I never did see them in this size!

2008-07-29T19:42:00.001+02:00

Attracting title isn't?
So what I'm talking about! I mentoined a few posts ago that I finally did got my new car. Well here it is.So where r we now? The topic still doesn't cover the tittle or does it? Now there are much bigger cars than this one. For sure.
Yesterday evening driving home from work, the little disaster happened. It was dark within minutes and this at 6.30 pm in the evening during summer. Few minutes later the hail started to poor down. If have never seen so big and violent hails in my life before. As a result, more than 100 dents in the hood, same for the roof, same for 1 door, etc...
My biggest worry (car wise that is) is that the insurance company belonging to the lease agancy will write a one week old car off, like they would do in Germany. In dutch: declare it "per total". In English total loss.

So here are the hails:

So indeed: BUGGER.

Good luck at the table,
Dremeber

Did I loose it?

2008-07-27T00:38:00.002+02:00

Okay I never was a great poker player. Let's put me in the middle of the field but my results today gave me an indication that even that not the correct place for me.
I played 8 SNGs and only did get once ITM. I lost the internet connection when playing my first 2 SNGs. Result a 6th and 7th place in the $3.40 18 seater. After my connection was restored I gave it another shot with a promising third place and a shameful 14 place.
The SNG where I ended in 14th place should have been an indication. Luckily I did lay down my QQ post flop to minimize the loss. But I was forced to play my jacks all-in pre-flop to ran into AK. The A on the flop sealed my fate.

Later that evening I tried a combination of 2 18 seaters and 2 45 seater. Again no cashes. Bugger! I did ran into my hand histories. Maybe I was not playing aggresive enough during the bubbles or crucial moment. On the other hand I ran into so many pocket Aces that it is almost unbelievable, but thats poker !

Good luck,
Dremeber

Back to square 1 and Pstars

2008-07-23T22:54:00.002+02:00

Okay, it is going downhill. In the past few days I lost 33% of my Titan BR and my complete Unibet Poker BR. So time to shift gears, step down a level a return to my favorite PokerRoom. In the hope that the Poker Gods will credit me for that move.
I know that it sound incredible but almost all my losses are based on 1 and 2 outers against me. And of course all on the river. But hey I only have (had) a small BR and there are more important things in life for me. Okay, I'm trying to collect enough for a decent LCD but if I don't I don't. There are far more important things in life.

The main reason to move to Stars is that they have a double reload promotion. 40% in stead of the regular 20%. So I now have 180 days to clear 680 FPP to clear my $34 bonus.

Besides the poker side of life, the rest is going great. I got a raise above my expectations and last friday I picked up my new car. A great Ford Mondeo. I will publish some pics later on this month.

More luck at the felt than me,
Dremeber

Fighting back

2008-07-21T17:58:00.003+02:00

Fighting back is always harder than making the original profit. Don't know why but it is.
In the past few days my BR has increased again to a miserable $79. All of this profit is made on NL50. Don't know what I'm doing at that level but I'm there. I should step down back to NL25 ans I don't know why I'm not stepping down.

Personally I don't see much difference in playing NL25 and NL50 besides that stakes of course. The advantage of NL50 is that I'm clearing my bonuses much quicker but this is a lousy reason to stay playing at that level. While the I know that NL 50 is way above my BR I probably won't move down until I'm starting to make some decent losses there and then it is too late.

Total BR was 2 days ago, 178 EURO. ($282) The weak $ is helping European players. But we have to life with this fact.

Good luck at the felt!
Dremeber

One day isn't the other

2008-07-17T22:30:00.002+02:00

No matter how much you try you can't dodge variance. I tried and tried and tried but at the end 50% of my BR was gone. This streak was spread over 2 days.

Running into 2 outers time after time, even 1 outers against me were not rare.

I evaluated my plays and didn't see anything wrong. Shit happens I guess. So back to square 1.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Here we go again

2008-07-14T23:32:00.002+02:00

Starting to enjoy poker again. Can even cope with the bad beats again. Maybe the switching point is that I now have a goal. A real goal, something where I can work to. It will take me ages to collect the money to buy one of the LCDs in the previous post but it really gives me the motivation I need.
Started again on Titan, with some decent result. The BR isn't growing as fast as I was hoping for, but at least it is growing. Had some really bad beats during the bubble today otherwise my BR would have been above the $100 mark. But it will come, I'm confident that it will. I will keep playing on Titan until my bonus period ends. After then we will see. Probably I will be switching to FT.

If you also want to start playing on Titan poker then visit pokernetonline. These guys are giving away No deposit bonuses for the biggest fishpound on the net.

Good luck,
Dremeber

A new goal?

2008-07-10T00:24:00.005+02:00

Maybe I have found a new goal to play for. It is getting time to replace our tele. When I bought it was state of the art but now it starts having difficulties when starting up. Shutting down without intervention. So the search for a new tele has started. And immediately ended.

At the moment there are only 2 options left:
Option 1: the 42 inch LG scarlet LCD.

Option 2: The samsung 40 inch 6 series:

At the moment other bills have a much higher importance level. So why not try to gather some of it via poker. I think I need to win around $1500 to buy it completly but when I reached that profit they probably will not build this TV anymore.

But hey we can give it a shot and see how much we have cleared at the end of this year.

At the moment my BR is:
Titan Poker: $57.35
Unibet Poker: 29.95 EURO
Online account 1: $85
Online account 2: $50
Unibet Sportsbook: 9 EURO

In total this makes: 38,95 EURO and $192.35. But cause I will have to pay my TV in EUROs, it is 161,2 EUROs. Lots of money needed :) O man, dreams.

Good luck,
Dremeber

Back to Titan?

2008-06-29T23:03:00.002+02:00

A few days ago I had to deposit 50$ to Titan so that I can transfer some money to a friend. Played quickly some SNGs with a mixing results.
Today I logged on again to play one or two SNGs during the EC final and I noticed that for some reason or another I was entitled for a deposit bonus. The maximum bonus which I can clear is $35. Sweet :) but, and there is always a but. With the $5 sng you only build up 8,5 titan points per SNG. And to clear a block of $5 you need 600 points. Meaning 71 SNG to clear $5. Lol. Strange how these deposit bonus are always so hard to clear for low limit players. I have until the 20th of September to clear as much as possible, which will probably only $5.

I won one SNG today, bringing my BR back above my deposit amount. Wooot.
We will see how things will develop from here.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Update

2008-06-17T17:44:00.001+02:00

Because I didn’t delete the blog, I feel kind of obliged to write an update now and then. And this is a now moment.
Like I wrote in my previous post I’m currently only playing cash tables at the moment. Playing cash tables gives me more freedom about my play time. It is much easier to stop when I want or to join a cash table then starting an SNG. A few days ago my BR was crushed from 40€ to 8€, this due to unmotivated play during SNGs resulting in a streak of no Cashes!
I now proudly can announce that my current BR just broke the 50€ barrier. Apparently the combination of watching the European championships and playing 1 NL20 table is the ideal combination. To bad that I discovered this too late!

Also the level of play helps and this was a surprise to me. There is a big difference between the level at Pokerstars and Unibet Poker. To be short. The best to describe my game is “as tight as Spandex”! So the others should know/understand that if I raise or re-raise that my monster is made of is very close with almost an unlimited number of outs. But no, the fishes here keep funding the post, which obviously will be mine. I can’t complain about this.
Another strange thing is my buy-in. The first time I bought in for 8€, cause that was all that was left in my BR. But I still buy myself in for 8€. How strange is that. It is even worse when I buy-in again after a break. I only buy-in for the profit I made during the previous session, assuring break even for the day. It seems that the other players give you much less respect with a lower buy-in than when you would buy-in for the maximum amount. Luckily I can profit from this at the moment. The downside of course is that you don’t get maximum value out of your monsters. But I can life with this. As long as my BR is growing, doesn’t matter how fast, and I’m enjoying the game, it is fine for me. I also try to stick to the rule that when I doubled my buy-in I’m gone.

I also started to update/clean up the Amatuer poker bloglisting. I’m removing all the dead blogs on there and blocking the ones which doesn’t have a link back to the bloglisting. It sounds harse but the rules are clear! I’m now half way. I finished this task already with the Sportsbetting bloglisting (http://sportsbetting.onbloglist.com). On the other side, I’m gentle enough to inform the people if they have placed a link on their blog but without their referral ID.

On the sportsbetting side, I’m still making a profit during this European Championship. Mainly due to one correct score bet. 2 days ago I was close to another correct score but Cech had others ideas about this.
You can find my bets in advance on my sportsbetting blog (http://dremeber-mybets.blogspot.com). Hey, I even created a widget for that blog. You can find it in the left side bar, feel free to post it on your blog. It goes without saying that I’m happy to return the favour.

Good luck at the green felts,
Dremeber

thx for the comments

2008-06-12T23:02:00.002+02:00

Hi all,

Thx for the comments. I made me decide not to delete the blog from the internet. The main reason is that like somebody posted, it would be much easier to kick start this blog in stead of creating a new one when I feel like blogging again. I love the layout of my blog and it took me some time to get it how I wanted it. So it would be a shame to erase this effort. Thanks for opening my eyes.

Played some poker in the past few days. Had deposit 40euros on unibet poker, the place where I started. Due to still a lack of motivation this had dropped to 8 euros. This evening I doubled it, so the way up has started. So again a lesson learned. DONT PLAY WHEN YOU DONT FEEL LIKE PLAYING. It seems that when I'm playing while I shouldn't I can't care if I win or loose a hand.
So, I decided to the few time I will play, I try some cash games. This way I can leave at any time I want, which isn't the case with SNGs.

Cheerios,
Dremeber

The last post!

2008-05-26T15:02:00.001+02:00

Because it will be my last post on this blog it will be rather long one cause I want to end in style! So if you don’t have to time or aren’t interested in the long version the short version is that I will stop blogging and that this blog will be erased from cyberspace on the first of June!

Why?
As you could have guessed based on the frequency of my posts I will stop this blog. I lost the motivation to keep this blog alive. I’m glad to see that other people still find the drive to keep their blog going, some more than several years. Even better some of these blogs are really good!. A standard I would never achieve. It is also good to see that a lot of bloggers really improved their poker abilities. Even some of these fishes are giving it a shot at the pro level. Good luck guys!
Let’s be honest this blog will not be missed. Maybe I will regret my decision within a few weeks/months but I doubt it. I don’t even have the motivation to write this post but I don’t want to end with a meaningless post. I preferred to go out with explaining my reasoning behind my decision and to make it clear that there is no use to visit this blog again cause it will not be updated anymore. Even better it will be vaporised from cyberspace.

My poker career!
Like if there was any!
If I look back at my poker career so far. I think that the following sentence sums it up: In the beginning a fish, more than a year later still a fish equals always a fish.
My progress, if there is/was any, is going slowly. My results and play are still in rollercoaster phase. Resulting in the fact that I can’t move up SNG levels, which was my goal. Like every fish I did have some nice results, probably more based on luck then on ability. These results were good enough to stick around in the online poker community and isn’t this the intention of the online poker rooms to keep the fishes a board cause without fishes no shark. And no shark means a lot less income for them!
The problem is that if I really want to move up levels I need do some homework and poker study but pfff nope, no can do. So what is the use then of blogging about my poker experience.
I guess the final drop which killed my motivation is the current loosing streak at Stars. I know that part of the game is that you loose some races and you win some races but it really gets frustrated when you always are loosing them while you move was correct.
However I still want to thanks some of the RTR member for trying to lift my level and giving me advice. Also I want to thank MrPink for our never ending email discussions!
Maybe my biggest mistake is that I saw and still see poker as a way to spend some free hours. Besides this I was also to focussed on short time results (maybe one of the biggest mistakes in poker). On the other hand if short time results indicate that you suck there is no use in finding proof for this in long time results.

I did find out that poker reflects my life a little bit. A lot of ups and downs. And just like with most things in life I don’t excel in it nor underachieve in it.

Will poker still have a place in my life?
I think it will. I just won’t blog about it anymore and the playing hours will decrease even more. At the moment I still have $180 in my stars account and $114 in my online poker account. There is no use in cashing this due to the weak dollar and also I don’t want it. The plan is to secure another $100 from my stars account cause a tilt session is quickly approaching. This way I still have a nice BR stacked away for a fresh start at another room some day. The remaining $ at stars will be used at the $6 SNGs. So it can end quickly or last for ever. We will see.

All, thx for reading my blog and all the luck in life and at the poker table,
Dremeber

Hello world

2008-05-18T20:52:00.002+02:00

I know it has been a long time since my last post. Just didn't feel like posting.

Let's see what happened since then. Just back from a holiday to Turkey. Never thought that I would recommend this to anyone but it was a great holiday.
On the poker front I'm still playing the 18 seaters at Stars. Until yesterday only the $3.40 ones but now I also am playing the $6.50 ones. The results are promising due to a hard drive error I lost all my stats. Bummer. Now I'm playing around with the trial version of tourney manager. And it does everything I expect from a tool. It records my SNGs and gives my back my ROI, ITM etc... The only downside is that cause the 18 seater are 2 table tourneys I still need to edit the SNG result when I didn't reach the final table. Luckily this happens less frequently than before.

Will try to update more often.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Battle of the planets

2008-04-17T23:22:00.003+02:00

Stars started with the battle of the planets and I really enjoy the setup. I don't play enough barely get enough to qualify for a set of 20 and for the moment the results are depressive :). BUT I get enough ITM to make a small profit. A 60$ profit. But hey a profit is a profit.

Will try to update more often but the tennis season has started.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Back to Stars

2008-03-30T00:21:00.002+01:00

Don't know why. Probably cause I find Ring games to boring and I love the setup of the 180 seater at Stars, so why not try to take one down.
I deposited for 20 attempts to start with but I'm successful at the moment. Played 10 of these today. Best result was a 20th place, so nothing much to brag about. Closely followed by a 24th an 27th place. Needless to say that I find that lady luck is not on my side.
Got rivered out in 5 of my attempts, which hurts and brings my the Jokerstars feeling.

Good luck at the felt,
Dremeber

Update

2008-03-19T20:41:00.003+01:00

A little bit strange. I made a loss at the tables and still I have a bigger BR than in the beginning of the month. This all thanks to the bonus Littlewoods is offering at the moment. Everybody who gathers 375 MPP this month got a 25GBP bonus.

I never have played so much cash hands in a month as this month. In total 4469 hands, good for a loss of 31$. The loss at the NL50 is 63$ while there is a profit of $31 at the NL25.

So maybe I should make the decision to leave the NL50 for what it is for the moment but I will see.

Cheers,
Dremeber

First steps @ NL50

2008-03-11T22:59:00.002+01:00

Nothing much to say. I tried my first hands at NL50. I know that my BR is not ready for this but once in a while you need to take a gamble.
The damage is acceptable. A loss of $33.

Strange that I don't have much to say. Doesn't happen to me a lot.

Raisetheriver is going to start a new Season of the RaiseTheRiver Premier league. Unfortunately I will not be participating this season. The play ground will be on Virgin Poker and this is one of the room which don't accept MoneyBookers. If you fancy 10 weeks of enjoyable banter with very decent poker than go take a look.

Thx, for all the nice words.

Dremeber

I'm back

2008-03-06T11:46:00.003+01:00

Hello world. Hello again. I'm back.

I'm not going to bother you with my physical problems but there are some but things are improving. I was feeling so bad that I didn't play much Poker in the beginnen of this week and major part of last week.

For the moment I only have a live BR at Littewoods and playing the MTTs and the cash games there with moderate success. Yesterday I final tabled for the first time in my life a bounty tournament.

Last month I made a 100$ profit on the cash tables loosing it with the SNGs and MTTs. Never would have expected that.

The rakeback from last month was a little bit of a cooler. Only 8$.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Update

2008-02-21T17:49:00.001+01:00

On Tuesday I played one 30 seater at Titan to become the bubble boy. While it is always hard to end just outside the Money for sure after an SNG of an hour and a half. To be honest I probably should have played the bubble differently. I was third in chip lead when the bubble started with 2 or 3 shorties. So the first idea was the sit back and wait until they did eliminate each other. This was easy cause I was completely card dead but the shorties were doubling up like crazy. In the mean time I stayed card dead and the blinds were eating my stack. At a certain moment I had to push with K4 in SB. The BB called with qj and made his straight on the river. Bummer.

Yesterday I lost my first buy-in of the month at the cash tables. Played 2 sessions. In the first one I won a buy-in so it was a break even evening. The lost buy-in was a combination of bad luck and a SNG play style. UTB I was given pocket Kings. Before it was my turn to act there was already one limper in the pot and a standard raise from 1$ (3BB + 1BB for the limper). I decided to push. Bad idea cause for the raiser with pocket Aces it was a simple call. If I would have called the raise of attempted a re-raise I probably would have folded after the flop cause an A was on the board. The push was with $11, so way to aggressive. Hope I learned my lesson.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Improving

2008-02-18T23:20:00.003+01:00

Only played 1 30 seater this evening and yes I made the money. Only a 4th place but money is money. This brings my BR back to $33 on Titan.
Add to this the $75 I already banked this month from Titan and then I may not complain.

I have to admit that the 30 seaters are tougher to cracke then I thought but still 6 buy-in left. Or maybe it is time to switch back to the 10 seaters. In 11 attempt only 3 cashes. So a lot of improvement is needed. 9 times I made it to the FT. One time I went out as first :(. Meaning a loss of $2. Bummer. Still I'm confident that I can make this 30 seater SNG profitable!

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Blacklisted

2008-02-17T22:13:00.002+01:00

Mmh, it looks like that my blog has been black listed somewhere. At least that is what my visitor counter is telling me. Not that I had a lot of visitors but I had some and these last few are also disappeared. Bummer! But there are more important things in life.

On the Poker front:
On titan I still have 3 buy-ins left for the 30 seaters. Played 6 of those today. The results in chronological order: 17th, 9th, 21st, 30th (lol), 3rd and 13th.
Giving me still 3 chances. A little bit short for the fourth buy-in. So a cash is needed.

On LW I played a headhunter. But went out in 120th place without taking a head. My AQ ran into JJ and no help on the board!

Trying to make up some losses on the cash tables at LW.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

The wrong side of variance

2008-02-17T13:13:00.002+01:00

Yep, back again on the wrong side. Nothing you can do about it besides sitting back and wait.
But it is causing a lot of frustrations, which brings one closer to Tilting. So I decided to remove almost all funds from Titan, leaving 4 buy-in behind for the Auckland 30 seaters.
Maybe a variation in SNG clears my mind. I will bust this small roll or bring it back above $75, so that I can continue my Challenge but for so long the 250 SNG challenge is on hold.

Played 5 10 seater SNGs yesterday. 6th was my best result. I have to blame myself for 2 eliminations but the other 3 were just bad luck. Loosing AK vs AQ, A4 vs J9, 2 pair vs flush, etc...

Already played 2 30 seaters: The results 18th and fourth.

This is the story of my fourth place. It is an unedited version of the things I was thinking during the SNG:
AK from early position. Raise 3 BB. 1 caller. Flop missed. Flush warning on board. pretended to have the flush and took the pot uncontested!
44. Limped in. Flop 699. Raised 120. Pot uncontested.
AA. Raised 4 BB. Flop AQ2. Villan raises 240. I reraise to 480. He goes all-in. Easy call. Had Q10.
No help for him. Bringing me into 4th position.
33 in SB. Pot was unopened. Only BB stolen.
JQs. Stole the blinds from early position. Hand before a 3 way pot was decided. It was won by a set of 7s vs. AK and 88.
People are dropping like flies now. FT should be achievable.
Tried to steal with 45 from SB. BB calls. C-bets after the flop gives me the pot uncontested.
12 left, me in 4th place.
FT. Good cause there where 2 bully at the table with a massive chip lead nothing i could do about
with my cards.
9 left. 4 more to survive.
8 left. 3 more to survive. (6th in chips)
7 left. 2 more to survive. (This happened in 3 hands)
AJ. Going out for a steal.
Will wait for premium hands. Need the cash!
A4 in middle pos. Raise 3 BB. Stole the blinds.
6 left. 1 more to go. 5th in chips.
Playing with fear, which isn't good.
J10s in SB, big raise from chipleader, so easy fold.
Almost the double of the stack of the 6th, Problem is that if he doubles up, I'm fucked.
88, folded due to a big raise in front of me. From UTG.
Blinds are hurting now. 5 BB left. that's only 2 rounds.
AK in BB. Going to push now. Regardless of the raises. Phew, pot is mine. UTB raised, I pushed he called with Q6.
ITM. Yeah.
5 to go. Shorty only has 700 left.
Shorty tripled up.
QK. Limped in. Folded when shorty went all-in and big stack called. GF would have lost.
66. Stole the blinds.
pushed with Q9. Stole the blinds again. Still shorty.
out in 4th.
Lost with KJs vs AJ.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Friday night wrap up

2008-02-16T12:00:00.002+01:00

Yesterday the final Match day of the second season of the RTR Premier league was due. And I'm almost a little bit ashamed to tell to I was the decisive factor. 2 players still had change on a EPT sat tocket, worth $530, those were RickyRose and BurnleyMik.
After a half hour play I found Ladies in my hole cards and decided to push it. I guess RR was screaming out loud cause he had pocket aces and his stack was comperable with the one of Mik. He calls instantly to see his nightmare come true. A Q on the flop. Sorry Ricky, not proud on it.
I ended the tournament in 7th place. 10 minutes later it was my turn to see my aces cracked in the 3 way AIPF pot. Kenn121 was holding pocket 10s and also some QQs were involved. 10 on the flop and bye bye.

Also played 2 other MTTs. A 10 euro MTT on LW and a 2 GBP at LW.
These stories in short.

10 euro MTT, 124 players, 20 paid places
Did not play a hand in the first two level. In level 3 I stole the blinds out of boredom with J10. In level 4 I played my first hand. I raised 400 from late position with A4 and the BB called. Flop is 996. BB checks I go all-in and he folds.
Went out in Level 5 when my AK was beaten by a ..... AK. He made the flush on the river. Out in 54th. Did nothing wrong and it is very hard to go out this way.

GBP2 MTT, 378 players, 40 paid places
Only played 2 hands. Won an all-in pre-flop race with AQ vs AJ. J on the flop, Q on the river. Justice!
Went out with a badly timed bluf against another middle stack. I lost with top pair but a weaker kicker. My own fault. Out in 149th.

To close the evening I decided to play one cash table at the $0.15/0.25 level. I bought in for the minimum which is $10. To step down from the tables with $40.
Was very lucky when the K on the river completed my FH to beat the straight. Won another big pot with AA. And lost of small pot cause I identified the sucker at the table. There is a first time for everything.
Some stats from the cash session:
Hands played: 107
Profit: $30.87
BB/100 hands: 57.7 (this is immense)
Overal PFR: 13.08%

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Running hot!

2008-02-12T17:56:00.000+01:00

February is not even half way and I did manage already to win as much SNGs as in January. This does not say that I will break the record of January but there is a big chance. Still 17 days to add some more to them.
So what’s the difference? Well I play a little bit more aggressive during the bubble. Focusing my aggression on the middle stacks and trying to leave the big and short stacks alone. The short stacks have much less to loose and the big stack are more willing to take a gamble. So no reason to attack these. But also the lady luck appears to love me a little bit more than in January, which is a factor which can’t be underestimated.

My february stats at the moment are:

23 SNGs played
5 wins
4 second places
2 third place

ITM: 47,8%
ROI: 62%

Did not play much on LittleWoods these days. Don’t know why but depending on the time I have available and the mood I’m in I will decide which room to open. And Titan appears to be my first choice. Another reason are the disappointing results in the “Double your money” SNGs. Played 16 of those and only managed to get 9 times ITM for a whooping profit of $2. Also find it strange that the Rakeback deal I have on Littlewoods does not motivate me more to play there. But it is hard to build up a decent rake when only playing these DYMs and the $0.03/0.06 6 max ring games. Takes ages. And only playing to build up rake or to chase a bonus is in my opinion dangerous cause it does influence my play and the amount that I play.

Any ideas which is the best way to spend the Titan Poker Points? I did only find sats where you can buy-in for 200 or 300 of these points where u can qualify for tournament where money can be won!

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Strange results

2008-02-10T23:25:00.000+01:00

Yep, having some strange results. Both on titan as on LW. At the moment I made a profit on the cash tables on LW. Incredible. Curious if I can keep this going until the end of the month.

At Titan I decided to bank another $25 after 5 SNGs OTM (outside the money). Decreasing my BR to around $61. And you guessed it right the SNG afterwards I won, than one OTM and a second place. This is confirming my theory that it isn't hard on Titan to bring your BR above $100 but to keep it there is extremely hard. Don't know if they put you on the doomswitch list or that at that moment in time my play is completely different. BR is now back at $85 so hoping to face this challenge again.

Don't know why I have trouble with staying up above $100. You can also clearly see these moment at the Sharkscope graph.

On the bright side is my ROI, which stands at 45% at the moment, which is excellent. The strange thing is that I did not end 3rd this month. Or it was a win or a second place or OTM.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Falling star

2008-02-09T01:15:00.000+01:00

Nope for once a real falling star! Tonight when I went out to put away the garbage I saw my first real falling star. Like it supposed to be I made a wish immediately. We will see if it comes out.

Nothing much to say on the Poker front. Didn't play a lot. Made some money on LW with, yep believe it or not, the cash tables.
On Titan like expected, I'm on the other side of variance! No cashes in the last 4 SNGs but now my BR is back under 100 I'm sure better results will follow again.

To be sure that it was just variance I replayed all my SNGs:
SNG 1: 4th place.
Double up pretty soon with AK vs 99. But after that I was completly card dead and the table was so aggressive that I could even try to steal. When the bubble arrived I pushed with K7 to run into Q10. A Q on the flop and a 10 on the turn ended my SNG.

SNG2: 4th place.
Card dead the complete SNG. Won some small pots, lost some small pots. At the bubble my steal attempt from on the button ran into JJ.

SNG3: 10th place
Yep, last in, first out. Hand 13. Dealt QQ, raised 4 times the BB, got re-raised all-in. I knew I was in front and my call proved this to me. The 7 on the turn made his set and no Q to make mine. Where are women when u need them? Lost my last chips against the same player when my 2 pair was again beating by his set of 7s. At that moment you know that it is not going to be your night.

SNG4: 7th place
My own fault. I pushed in a steal attempt with KQ. Not a bad hand. The BB called with AJ, which is to bad to be true but a standard move at this level. No help on the flop for me.

Still in the green figures for this month on Titan, but the profit is decreasing.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

The Tilt Monster: My ideas about it!

2008-02-05T22:40:00.000+01:00

To face the Tilt monster is the biggest nightmare of all poker players. You can try to escape it but it is like an unseen monster who is trying to get a grip on you. Nothing you can do about it but every poker player will face it at least once in his career. But you can take actions in advance to minimize the damage and it I think it is even possible to postpone being caught.

This is how I see it.
Every poker player starts in the beginning with an empty Tilt bucket. There are various things during playing poker which can/will fill up this bucket and then suddenly without knowing it, your bucket floods. This is when you are getting into Tilt mode. The biggest problem is that the water which fills the bucket is invisible and therefore it is very hard to see or judge how full your bucket already is. Also the size of the bucket differs between players. Some players have by nature a bigger bucket; others are capable of upgrading their current bucket by a bigger one by experience. But although they have a bigger bucket doesn’t mean that they are Tilt free. No matter how experienced or good you are, the Tilt monster is always sitting around the corner waiting for an opportunity.

So, you need to try to unload your bucket once in a while. It never will be empty but at least you can try to decrease the amount of water inside.

First let’s take a look at what I think which situations are filling the bucket:

Loosing a big pot at a cash table,
Loosing a buy-in at a cash table,
Not getting ITM in a SNG,
Running into a bigger monster with your monster,
Getting your aces or kings cracked,
Loosing a race,
Suffering from a bad beat,
Getting deep into a MTT and being eliminated during the bubble,
A failed steal attempt,
Using the odds in an incorrect manner (if a starting hand has a win ratio of 80%, then don’t forget that there is also 20% chance that you will loose the hand),
While having the odds and calling correctly none of your outs has hit the board (it is hard to see that none of the 21 cards which could help you appeared on the board.).

Besides these things, there are factors which can speed up the filling process. Getting your aces cracked is bad enough but to see them cracked twice in one session. The second time a lot more water will go into the bucket than the first time. Also situation outside poker can speed up things, like playing when you are mad/ill, had a fight with the misses, had a bad day on work, and so on.

The following things should decrease the water level in the bucket:

Getting ITM in a SNG,
Getting ITM in a MTT,
Closing a cash session with a profit,
Dealing out a suck-out (if you are like most of us, these are hard to remember must harder than the bad beats we are suffering. If so, place a little paper besides your PC and put is mark each time you dealt out a suck-out. It will never level cause you are the better player and statistically there is more chance that you will be beaten with a bad beat than you were saved by that miraculous river. But good things do happen to you!),
Seeing one of your outs appear on the board,
Analyzing your play: sometimes the call of the villain was perfectly understandable cause he had the right odds, so what appeared to be a bad beat actually wasn’t one, or you can take a look how much money you already won with the mighty Aces which should ease the pain when they are cracked,
Time (even invisible water vaporizes over time): It is always a good idea to take a break when you lost 2 buy-ins (also it decreases the risk that you are going to play emotionally against some particular villains) or had 2 or 3 SNGs without getting ITM,
Banking (there is nothing better to bank some of your profits, not only it gives a great feeling but it also minimizes the damage which can occur if you get caught by the Tilt monster).

Some of these points are straight forward; others are not so straight forward like time. Even a break of 20 minutes between 2 SNGs session can make a big difference.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

February started good!

2008-02-04T01:58:00.001+01:00

Just as in January, my start in February is good.
Did not play any cash games on LW in stead I tried some Double your Moneys. Played 9 of those and only cashed in 5, which way below expectations. But I expected this cause I wrote in my last post that these games were good for me.

On Titan I played 11 SNGs. Won 3 of them and came in second in 2 other ones. Good for a profit of 44$, which brings my Titan BR back above $100. Excellent figures: 45% ITM and a ROI of 73%.

I have played now more than 200 SNGs at Titan. 204 to be exact. And again the ITM% is excellent: 40.2% but the ROI is a little bit behind. 16.98%. Good for a profit of $190.

Going to watch the second half of the Superbowl now.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

January 2008: Round up

2008-01-31T20:32:00.000+01:00

The first month of the year is passed. Many of us will be looking back to see if January was according to expectations, are the challenges still possible to fulfil, etc… And so will I.

First thing first, I made a profit so that’s fine but it should have been a bigger profit. It didn’t turn out this way due to a big downswing between the 20th and the 27th. Also went Tilt once, which is never good.

Titan:
I made a profit and cashed $25. The banking was inspired by my Tilt. It thought and still think that it was better to bank some money, so that I couldn’t loose it. And for me $25 is a lot, it increase my online bank account with more than 10%. So everything is relative.
I did win 5 SNGs and my ITM% was good, very good (40%). The problem was/is that I’m ending to much in 3rd place. Resulting in a miserable ROI. I will have to work on this.
The biggest downer is that at peak moment my BR at Titan was above $130, ending at $60 (after banking $25). On the positive side, after my tilt the BR was below $25.

Littlwoods:
A complete different story on LW. I made a profit but this is mainly cause I cashed twice in a RTR premier league. But most of this profit was lost on the cash tables. No I was not playing above my roll, I played the cheapest cash tables at LW, which are the $0.03/0.06. I just suck at them. Stijn from PokerInfo.be did point me on some leaks in my game. It appears that I’m playing more hand from UTG than from on the button. How fishy is that. Also ashamed that I didn’t look at that myself. Stijn, thx for the eye opener(s).
At the moment, the “Double your money” SNGs appears to be a small cash cow for me. Probably this has ended now cause I wrote it down. Murphy’s law.
Which is also a downer is that more than 50% of my profit at LW is the rakeback gathered in December of last year. But this proofs that Rakeback also can be the way to go, for microlimit players. At least if you have a good RB deal.

The bloglisting:
I removed some blogs from the bloglisting cause those blogs didn’t exist anymore or it appeared to be a webpage. At this moment there are 94 blogs listed and the list is still growing. So, if you are not on there move your ass and list your blog at the “Best amateur Poker Bloglisting”. Thx!

February 2008:
For once I’m not going to set profit targets for next months. Or let me rephrase this, I’m not going to write them down and I will not try focus on it. In stead of concentrating on a profit target I should focus in trying to decrease the leaks in my game.
I will try to play much more cash hands and focus in stead of the profit or the loss on stats like VPIP and stuff like that.
I’m also thinking to first try to build a bigger BR cushion with the Double your money SNGs and play the cash tables with the profit I hopefully make in these.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Review: MagicHoldem Poker Odds calculator

2008-01-29T17:40:00.000+01:00

Normally I don’t use any poker tools when I’m playing poker but I decided to give MagicHoldem Poker Odds Calculator a try.

After installing the tool, I simply opened a few poker tables and MagicHoldem automatically detected these tables and attached itself to them.

MagicHoldem uses a special PVA (Pixel Video Analyzer) program to calculate all the odds and cause of this they are compliant with 93% of all poker rooms.
The MagicHoldem calculator engine immediately reads all the table parameters, calculates the data and displays all the real-time odds, game statistics and information you need to know. Besides the odds it gives you visual information about your outs, gives you the odds that you have the best hands, etc…

MagicHoldem Poker Odds Calculator helped me avoiding simple mistakes, analyzed my game and strategize it with ease. For example, it warns me every time there is a possible flush or straight.
One of the biggest advantages is their lay-out. It looks pretty smooth and you have the freedom the place the information wherever you want.

Their support organization can be easily contacted by email and have a very decent response time.

You can download here a trial version of MagicHoldem, which allows you to play 100 free hands.
On the webpage you also can enter for a drawing. They are giving away 4 lifetime licenses per month.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Where did it go wrong?

2008-01-28T18:04:00.000+01:00

Long time ago that I tilted so heavily. So time to take a look why I tilted. Luckily I recovered 50% of my tilt losses.

So why did I go into Tilt mode:
- During the past week I lost around 50% of my Titan BR. This without making wrong decisions. the cards were just against me!
- I focus to much on short time results.
- My expected profits are too high. (I know many of you have told me this before)

If you combine this with the following:
- Making my stupidest move of the week during the RTR league game
- playing a GBP5 headhunter waiting on AA or KK. To see that your aces are cracked by a one card flush, pre-flop all-in.

The result of all this is to see Dremeber go into one of his rare tilt modes.

So, it is good to know why you are tilting, preventing this is another.

Maybe I'm playing to much SNGs. The downside of SNGs is that around the bubble almost everybody is into push/fold mode which takes away the fun in poker if you get eliminated before the bubble has popped. Add to that the fact that tight is right in the
beginning of SNGs. So SNGs are kinda boring.
In cash games there is much more freedom and the pre-flop all-in are less frequent.

Which brings me to the conclusion that I have to decrease the number of SNGs per week and increase the cash table hours. Also, I will not set a profit target for once. I will just start fresh with a tight is right principle. Later on, I can still decide to play some more starting hands, but first I need to get back to the golden rule: tight is right.
I also need to make sure that the others are not getting the correct odds, meaning that I have to bet more pre- and post flop if I think that my hand at that time is the best.

Only 4 more days before my deposit bonus period ends at Titan. If I play 3 more $5 SNGs, I will clear another $5. Does not seem a lot, but currently this is 10% of my current BR.

I will give myself considerably more time to complete my 250 5$ challenge. There is no reason to put pressure on this.
Also I should keep a minimal BR at Titan, cause I noticed that if my BR is above $100 my gambling increases. Better to bank more often to keep my BR under pressure which forces me to play wisely. If I think that I'm ready for the $10 I can still refund.

Also I should forget the fact that I have a rakeback deal on Littlewoods. Rakeback should be a bonus and with the stakes I’m playing I really should see it as a bonus. Nothing more nothing less.

And last but not least I may not forget that I’m still making a profit, so why I’am I whining? There are a lot more poker player who are only losing money than there are players who are making a (small) profit.

One question to the world: What is a good ITM% for SNGs. Currently my stats say (over 150 SNGs) that I’m 40% ITM.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

This fish needs a break

2008-01-26T00:03:00.000+01:00

How much can a pokerroom hate you?

2008-01-24T23:32:00.001+01:00

I finished my first 50 SNGs on Titan.

So time for a recap. Yep, I made a profit of a fucking $5. That's a ROI of 1.82%.
As good as my start was, so bad was my run of my last 15 SNGs.
In total I won 5 SNGs, came in second in 3 others and just got ITM 11 times. Good for a ITM% of 38%.

Lets take a look at my last 15 SNGs where I won once, did not ended up in second place and ended 3 times in third place. Thats only 25% ITM.

So I came up with this explanation. Titan does not love me when my BR is above $100.
There isn't much difference between the play in the first 25 SNGs and the last. So the difference has to be somewhere else. I evaluated my last SNGs to look for leaks and in 3 or 4 SNGs I made stupid mistakes. But to give an example of today. I get into the bubble as chip leader and I tried 4 times to eliminate shorty. 2 times with better starting hands, 2 times with minor hands but got beaten 4 times and got eliminated in fourth place.

So Titan, fuck off!

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Weekend overview: running bad

2008-01-21T17:43:00.000+01:00

Since my win of the RTR premier league matchday 5 my luck has turned. Only one thing pops out as positive and that my third place at matchday 6. This was an amazing comeback. After hand 5 I had only 60 chips left.

But for the rest my results really sucks. My BR at Titan took a steep fall from $150 to $90. It seems that I lost all my poker knowledge and because was so small already it is difficult to find.

In stead of donking away some more money I did something I almost never do. I replayed my last 15 SNGs in PO. The strange thing is that I don’t see any leaks. 90% of the time I’m ahead and the villain are getting rewarded by their foolish calls with runner runner straights, flushes or 2 outers. I know that this is a variance which is kicking in but o man it is such an assault on my confidence. It does not only wipes out my confidence, which was really high, but it also decreases the fun in playing poker, which is my main raison of playing poker.

I know that I will never win a big MTT or making a quadzillions $ of profit. But it would be really nice to see that the board has hit you once in a while. So the same problem at the cash tables. If a see KK or AA in my hole cards and even try to minraise, everybody runs away from the pot, if I do the opposite the same result. Lower pairs will results in to much action at the table. If the board hits me, it is so obvious that somebody has hit the straight of flush.

Luckily I can’t play much poker in the next days. Some days of probably will do my good. I have the feeling that I have to re-invent my game, which I will do in the next days. Still I’m making a profit this month, which is nice and for the first time my BR at littlewoods is bigger than my BR at Titan which I never expected. And if so I was hoping that I won some big pots at Littlewoods but I did not see it coming that this situation is the result of a whooping loss on Titan.

But reading the other blogs of the RTR, I’m not the only one suffering from this. I’m not glad to read those stories but it eases the pain.

Good luck,
Dremeber

My biggest comeback so far!

2008-01-19T16:20:00.001+01:00

Yesterday I played the RTR premier league (16 runners) and what a thrill it was.

In the 5th hand I got dealt 99. Don't know why but I did go all-in when it was my turn to act. One insta call and the villan presented me a big pocket pair. Leaving me behind with only a stack of 60 chips. (the starting stack was 1500)

It took some time but I did come back and ended the tournament in third place.
Even with the smallest stack I kept my cool and awaited my moments.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Staying on Titan and the 250 SNG challenge

2008-01-17T18:31:00.000+01:00

I will not withdraw my complete BR from Titan. Why not? well, it has several reasons.

There are several reason not do this. Maybe the most important reason is cause I feel comfortable with playing on Titan, which is priceless.
I will still continue to play on Littlewoods but I will restrict my game there to the headhunters, RTR premier league games and cash tables. If I will start playing my SNGs there I will probably run into the pitfall that I will be playing to collect rakeback and probably start playing above my comfort zone and BR.

Why a new SNG challenge? Well this is simple. I’m playing now the $5 SNGs for around half a year. So it is time to create a challenge which will hopefully bring my BR to a level which allows me to play the next level ($10).
I tried some 10$ SNGs in the past with promising results. 4 attempt, 3 times ITM, 2 second places and one third. But my BR management does not allow me to step up yet. I need to
have at least 35 buy-in ($385) and should drop back to the 5$ SNGs when my BR drops down below 30 buy-ins ($330). Stepping back up again if my BR reaches 35 buy-ins again.

My banking plan for Titan makes the challenge even more challenging. My Titan banking plan has the following rules: I should withdraw at the end of each month a minimum
of $25 and a maximum of $50 if my BR is above $100. Can’t exactly explain why I’m setting myself this restriction but It was there since the first of January and I will stick to it. It is to soon to break a new year’s resolution.

This means that I need to make a profit of at least $443 during this challenge. So my initial targets have to be changed.

The original plan:
Expected results:
250 SNGs
25 wins (10%)
38 second places (15,2%)
50 third places (20%)
Profit: $320

The altered plan:
Expected results:
250 SNGs
30 wins (12%)
40 second places (16%)
50 third places (20%)
Profit: $445

Here are the rules I going to stick to:
- The deadline to finish this challenge is set at the end of April, cause in May the tennis season starts.
- Each session will start with multitabling 4 SNGs.
- I will not register for a new SNG after all 4 of them are finished and at least a 20 minutes break. This will result in maximum 8 SNGs during weekdays.
- I will not start a session when I have the feeling that I don't have enough time.
- Each week I will review my stats and decide if I have to decrease the number of SNGs I play simultaneously.

The challenge is finished when one of the following criteria is reached: (in random order)
- I have played 250 SNGs.
- The month May has started.
- My BR is above 400$.

Wish me luck!
Dremeber

Looking back

2008-01-15T23:18:00.000+01:00

I took time to read some of the earliest blog posts of this blog.
To be honest I like my blog now more than back in the dark days. One of the reason of existence of this blog was to ventilate frustrations but I did not expect that 80% of my posts back then where negative. Apparently I almost abandoned the ship twice but I'm still here.
Also I did make me realize that my poker level improved (a lot). My style is completely different. I can compare this with how I'm now playing at the cash tables, like a complete fish, not knowing what to do.

I even had the idea in the dark days that playing tight in the beginning of SNGs and MTTs was not the way to go.

Yesterday I tried to withdraw almost my complete BR from Titan. For once it has nothing to do with bad beats or negativism. But it feels stupid to play my SNGs on a site where I don't have a rakeback deal and even the deposit bonuses suck for low limit players. So I did intend to play only on Littlewoods. Be playing the same amount of SNGs there, I would easily gather $10 more on rakeback. But Titan did not allow me to clear the money I intended cause I'm still in the deposit bonus mode. Which means that at least my initial deposit has to remain there until the deposit bonus period is over or I clear another 500 FPPs.

So now I'm in dubio. What shall I do. Still keep playing on Titan, which is more or less my cash cow or go ahead with the plan and play solely on Littlewoods?

Time will tell I guess. First I will try some SNGs @ Littlewoods and if the ROI is almost the same, the choice will be easy.

If you can understand dutch it is worth to bring the blog of Claudius a visit. He describe my blog as the following (translated): Dremeber plays on microlimits but takes the game very serious and has lots of nice stats on his blog.
He couldn't be more spot on. Good luck mate.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

What is wrong with this picture (besides my stack)?

2008-01-14T21:50:00.001+01:00

First RTR premier league victory

2008-01-12T00:27:00.000+01:00

Don't know how but I did it. While there were only 17 contenders I really did not expect playing the bubble let alone that I would win it. Really proud on this cause there are some really good players at RTR.

I did read in the chatbox @ RTR that this would almost have doubled my BR and they could not be more wrong. It was only an increase of 33%.
It was really a strange FT. Everybody was adjusting their play to Kenn aggressive play style. And that it comes down to pure luck. The biggest example of this is sitting in the BB HUs, looking at your hole cards and discovering Pocket Aces and more important seeing that you opponent went all-in.

Besides this I lost a stupid 6$ on the cash tables cause I was not concentrating.

On the Titan site, everything is going fine. As you can see in a widget in the right frame I have set myself a challenge to control my eager to step up to soon to the next level. I hope that my BR after this 250 SNGs at the $5 level is big enough to make the step. But we will see.

Cheers,
Dremeber

4 SNGs at the same time: For the first time

2008-01-09T21:42:00.000+01:00

Because I recovered all my losses on the $0.03/$0.06 from this and last year it was time for some real excitement. I granted myself to play 4 SNGs simultaneously. So I registered for the first 4 10 seater 5$ SNGs on Titan after 7 p.m..
The idea came during lunch today, probably cause I watched a training vid yesterday where one of the Pros did the same. Needless to say that the stakes there were at a complete different level. I was confident cause normally my ITM% is around 50%. Meaning that if I could achieve this figure, my maximum loss would be $2. But

The first one started @ 19:07, the second @ 19:10, the third on 19:13 and the fourth @ 16:16.
I promised myself that I would play very tight in the beginning of the SNG and get more and more aggressive near the bubble and it PAID OF big time.

First I got eliminated from the second SNG(33 hands), ending in 7th place. Where did it go wrong? Lost a first big pot, when my double pairs ran into a 3-of-a-kind leaving my behind with only 590 chips. I managed to build up my BR again to 1200 when I lost a race against 77. Had to push here, was getting the right odds and the blinds were starting to hurt my stack.

Than I made one of the most stupid mistake at SNG 1. Mainly cause I was multitabling. During hand 32 I doubled up with pocket pair of Aces. So I for sure wasn't under any pressure. But my good feeling was over when I thought that I had pocket 8s in late position but after my push it appeared to be only 68 off suited. Was furious on myself when the BB called with KQ. No rescue on the board and out in sixth place.

In the mean while everything was running smoothly in SNG 4 (86 hands). Just like in SNG 1, I doubled up way before the blinds would force me into decisions I didn't like (hand 21). My A9 allin-post flop was no competitor for the QQ the vilan was holding (strange call from him, cause it was the only the first pot I contested). Got lucky in hand 37, where I did hit on of my 17 outs on the river. After the flop I called an all-in with A9 of spades and 2 spades on the flop. The result a massive chip lead. After that I started to play very aggressive, bullying the tables as much as I could. The HU started at hand 74. Had a 5k chip lead. I lost my chip lead when I was forced to fold on a nice raise of the villan. But I link to think that it was a good lay down. After the lay down the chip be equally divided while If I pushed I was way behind. In hand 82 I crippled him with Q7 vs QK. Second time lucky in this SNG (Just a reminder for myself. I sometimes do get lucky in SNGs!!!!). I finished it off in style with JJ.

So all the pressure was gone now, I was assured of at least a profit of $3. So I could finish without any pressure my third SNG (95 hands). I won a first small pot in hand 44 where the SB went all-in and I only had to call $20. My A4 was good enough, lifting my stack to 2000 chips. In hand 48 I got QQ in late position. So I pushed and got called by the BB with 99. No help for him. And again a nice stack. In hand 80 I saw pocket Js. So again a push. Only 3 players left so already ITM. The BB called with A7s but again no rescue for him. After this one played major short stacked and 2 players with almost the same stack. I eliminated him in the next hand when he went all-in in the SB and I called the $630 raise with 45s. And again I was lucky (Reminder number 2, please refer me to this post again when I start moaning again about no luck in the SNGs this month (45s against KQo)). The 5 on the flop meant game over for him. So the HU started in hand 82. And my luck wasn't over yet. In hand 89 I took almost all chips when I called his allin with A4s. Still no luck at the turn, but I did hit my 3 outer on the River. And the luck was not all over yet. In the last hand I went all-in trying to put him under pressure with K7s. With the reminder that I could win the pot or that he would fold but he called with QQ. The flop was A47, the turn gave an 8 and the RIVER gave a fucking beautiful K.

So a back to back victory and a profit of $28, lifting my BR again above $100. Woohoo.
My SNG stats this year at Titan are looking great. 16 played, a profit of $48, ROI: 53% and 50% ITM. 3 victories, 2 times silver and 2 times bronze.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

First SNG win of the month

2008-01-08T18:15:00.000+01:00

No time for a major post cause I have to go out with my classmates from my Spanish Class. But just wanted to let you know that the first SNG victory is within the pocket. Played 3 SNG yesterday. In two of them i played very very bad but in the other one the victory was sweet.

Have to admit that I got the right cards at the correct moments but also I had the gut the call an all-in to see that my flush was one card higher than his. This happened twice in 10 hands time and two times against the same opponent.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

Weekend update

2008-01-06T23:31:00.000+01:00

Did not play so much this weekend. I'm trying to keep the flu away which is sitting around the corner waiting on one of my weakest moments.

On Littlewoods I made a small profit of something around $0.60. This due to the 2 MTT I played in. In one I just took a gamble and went out and in the other I did not believe that my AQ was beaten by an AK.
So all my profit came from cash games, what is that for a surprise.
Overall I played 1077 cash hands this weekend, good for a profit of $8.11. All on the $0.03/0.06 tables. My biggest profit was when I had 4 10s. Felt really nice.

I almost cleared my December loss on this kind of table. Still $0.42 to go. In total I still have a loss of $99 on littlewoods. So lots of work has to been done there.

Also played some SNGs on Titan. 9 played. No victories but I'm confident that they will come this week. 2 second places and 3 third places. So more than 50% ITM, which is not so bad.

To good thing is that I'm sticking to my BR management plan. Some adjustments have to be made. At the moment according to my plan I could move up when my BR will hit 100$ but I'm going to increase this to around 40 times the buy-in of the next level. Cause the next level will be the 0.03/0.06GBP, my BR has to be at least 60GBP or around $120.

I also downloaded a new poker calculator MagicHoldem, when my trial period has ended I will write a review about it.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber

First Rakeback Received!!

2008-01-03T21:32:00.000+01:00

Today Littlewoods deposit my first rakeback ever. It feels great. Besides this the amount was also higher than I expected. A stunning $15.92, which gave my Littlewood BR the boost it deserves.

On the tables itself it is a real struggle. These 0.03/0.06 six handed tables are a real minefield. Raises of 6 times the BB with 38 are no exceptions. So it is waiting to have a monster but that takes patience. Within 2 days my profit stands on 3.88$ and I have to play at this level until my BR hits 100$ and than I will move to the 0.03/0.06GBP tables.

Still 9GBP to go, thats around $18. Let's hope that I can clear this soon. But I may not forget that Poker is more like a marathon than like the 100m sprint.

Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber