Tzen

I love StarCraft… I mean Poker!

Feb 152011

Okay guys, I admit: “I’m a little hooked to StarCraft”. I haven’t played the campaign that much yet but I’m just hooked to all those Tower Defense custom games. I’m actually not that addicted but time flies when you are playing those games, I just wish a day had a couple of more hours. I still feel like I have a constant full schedule but it’s not that bad lately. If I can play StarCraft a couple of hours a week it means I have plenty of free time. Let’s just hope Diablo III doesn’t come out till next year because I love that game even more!

Next to having some more free time I also finally got a nice gym schedule going. I’m still to heavy and haven’t lost any weight since the PCA and I was pretty pissed at myself when I noticed that. If I would let myself go for a couple of months I’m easily back in no time to 120/130kg and that’s just not going to happen. I used to always lose weight in the winter/spring and gain some in the summer/autumn but this year I only gained weight during the winter. I normally work out in the gym with a friend of mine and if he canceled I would to but I now have the determination again to just go as often as I can. 3 times a week just isn’t enough for me to lose some weight so I set the bar to 4 minimum. This week I’ll try to go every day and set a streak of 8 times in a row, I’m currently at 3 but will hit the gym after I’ve finished my blog.

On the poker front this have been going okay. I booked a $750 plus this week and if I add the VPPs & Bonuses I’m above $100/hr. Now that’s a lot more then last year and my winrate compared to last year is just so much better. Still I’m not satisfied by my results which is good but on the other side I should embrace the fact I’m winning again and just play more. I just try to come up with to many excuses to stop playing when I’m in a session. It’s really hard for me to keep playing when I’m up over lets say $1.000 (it isn’t really a fixed number) and the last two days I proved myself right which is even worse 🙁 Both days I was up a good amount 3/4 into the session but I told myself to keep playing. Obviously I lost most of my winnings at the end, going to bed with a bad taste in my mouth. The stupid thing is that if I would have been down all night and ended up winning the same amount I would be extremely happy. Sure that is what 99% of the people would feel but it’s the wrong mindset. The only reason to stop playing is when either you play bad or the line-up at the tables changed so the competition got better. The fact that during both sessions I’ve kept playing is a good sign, now I just need to keep winning at the end of my sessions and the problem solves itself 😉

I keep telling myself lately: “Whine less, play more” but now that there is no ultimate goal(SNE) that scares me, it ain’t that simple. I still play more then 20 hours a week, so it’s not that I hardly play but it would be smart to play a lot when you are doing good on the tables. It’s actually not funny when I look back at last year, why didn’t I do the things I did to improve my game earlier? With the volume I put in last year and the winrate of this year I could have earned crazy money. Still it’s not really that simple, I play less tables most of the time which is of course already a big help. I sometimes still play 24 tables but not all night long. I just fire up all $3/$6, $5/$10 & $10/$20 tables and I don’t really care how much tables I play in total. I haven’t played a single hand of $2/$4, not even when I was only playing 10-12 tables. When the amount of tables available drop, I just tell myself to try and learn as much as possible since I’m playing less tables in stead of adding $2/$4 to keep getting the most VPP/hr as possible. Last year that wouldn’t be possible due to my VPP goals and this year I still look at the VPPs but it’s not priority 1 anymore. In case I come short, I’ll play a Friday or Saturday to catch up. I’m currently 1.080 VPPs behind my original schedule which gets me to 800.000 VPPs so I ain’t doing that bad on the VPP front either. 800.000 is still so close to 1.000.000. It’s 250 hours more to earn $20.000, a $5.200 WCOOP Main Event ticket and roughly $11.000 in VPPs but I just don’t have those 250 hours left in my schedule. I also expect the games to dry up a little in the summer as always so for now my decision is set. In case I really need the money I could always try to get myself killed during the last 3 months of the year, just like any other SuperNova Elite chasers 😉

Another reason why I might do better this year and I couldn’t do different myself last year, is that the player pool has changed a little. There are some new people, who ain’t that good, putting in a lot of volume at the tables and some good people are playing different games this year. I’m of course not complaining and have to say I still really like to play Full Ring Fixed Limit, so I don’t have any plans to change to another game myself. Since I’m playing $10/$20 again I also got the “adrenaline rush” back sometimes. I don’t even notice anymore when I win a real big pot at $5/$10, it’s just another pot and when I played my best it’s all good. At $10/$20 I have that adrenaline pumping again when I flop a good hand in a multiway pot and I think that’s really good. It wouldn’t be good if that would affect your judgment of course so you should never play scared money (for to long), but I think you do need that adrenaline to motivate yourself to do good. You don’t want to play bad when you know you get the adrenaline pumping when you are butchering the tables. Now it’s not like I butcher the tables all the time but when I’m on a streak at the $10/$20 I feel damn good about it. Last year I was only playing pots which never really bothered me if I lost and it might be comfortable when you are actually losing all the time but I think you also should always try to look for that adrenaline rush. $15/$30 seems like a small step from $10/$20 but I’m not going to play those stakes for the time being. My focus is to get back in the green at $10/$20 lifetime and win some more before I move up again. Getting back even at $5/$10 seems really undo able but I’ll do my best 🙂

I might be talking like I’m a big winner but I’ll show my Year-to-date graph to show that things are still pretty swingy and could improve a lot.

On the other side, comparing the above with my last years, Year-to-date graph at 15/02:

I did play 150.000 hands more, that might have been worth a lot of money in VPPs & Bonuses but I think most people will agree that the first picture looks a lot prettier.
Now there is a small problem incoming, I’m running out of Podcast to listen to. I had downloaded 282 Radio 538: Dance Department Podcast and I only got 26 left. I got a couple of CLR Podcast that I haven’t listened to and some Pache NYC Podcast but I’m probably done within a month or so. I think Podcast are great because you hear new music all the time and for me hearing a good new song, or an old time favorite, can really bring some happiness when I’m playing. I could of course recycle them since I’ve probably not memorized them after only listening to them once but in case you do have an interesting (preferable dance music) Podcast to listen to, please let me know!

I have no plans for the coming week other then a birthday party at Saturday. I’ll try to hit the gym every day and stay away from alcohol and do some damage at the tables again. The week after I’ll be playing tourneys again on Saturday and Sunday and I’m already really looking forward to that! I got plenty of stuff to do now, but I might squish in a little game of StarCraft first 😉

It’s hard to always play your A-game!

Poker 2 Responses »

Feb 082011

I left January behind and was ready to set some records this month. I had an okay session on the 1st of February but again lost at the $5/$10 and won at $3/$6 and $10/$20. Then last Sunday things went completely different. I started out pretty bad and was down about $900 before things turned around. I grinded my way up, was playing really good for a long time and near the end of the session I won a $772 pot at the $10/$20. I haven’t checked it but this must be the biggest pot I’ve ever won at the $10/$20.

Poker Stars $10/$20 Limit Hold’em – 10 players – View hand 1164072
DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter
CO posts a big blind (1 SB)
Pre Flop: (2.5 SB) Hero is UTG+2 with 5 of clubs 5 of diamonds
2 folds, Hero raises, 1 fold, MP2 calls, 2 folds, BTN calls, 1 fold, BB calls

Flop: (9.5 SB) 8 of hearts 5 of spades 7 (4 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, MP2 raises, BTN 3-bets, BB calls, Hero caps!, MP2 calls, BTN calls, BB calls

Turn: (12.75 BB) 8 (4 players)
BB checks, Hero bets, MP2 calls, BTN raises, BB 3-bets, Hero caps!, MP2 calls, BTN folds, BB calls

River: (26.75 BB) 5 of hearts (3 players)
BB bets, Hero raises, MP2 3-bets, BB calls, Hero caps!, MP2 calls, BB calls

Final Pot: 38.75 BB
BB mucks 8 of spades 9 of clubs
Hero shows 5 5 of diamonds (four of a kind, Fives)
MP2 mucks 4 8
Hero wins 38.6 BB

After this pot I was up about $1.400 and managed to win another $600 on top of that for a total of $2072,50, my best session ever! I wasn’t only up at the $10/$20 and $3/$6 this time, I actually managed to win the most at the $5/10, winning $1.289,50 at 4.19BB/100. Sure that isn’t a normal winrate but it felt like I finally got what I deserved after running bad for some time at the $5/$10. Since it was the night of the Superbowl there weren’t many tables to play and since I don’t have a SNE grind on my mind I just kept playing $3/$6 – $10/$20. I could have added some $2/$4 tables to get more VPP but I choose not to and focus more on my game. It worked out this time and I went to bed early (05:00) feeling pretty happy!

So after Sunday’s session I was ready for another good score yesterday. There weren’t any $10/$20 tables to play early in the evening and I was down $600 really quick before getting back to break-even after which I took a small break to have some food. When I got back I continued to run good and was already seeing big numbers again in my head, then I got reminded about what’s poker is all about, swings! All of a sudden around 04:30 a lot of new tables popped up and after playing only 15 tables of $3/$6 and $5/$10 I was suddenly playing 24 tables which included 3 $10/$20 tables. At first it went really good, I was down $900 but grinded my way back to -$130 and just at that moment I lost 2 big pots on the river which would have gotten me in the black again. After that I just couldn’t play my A-Game anymore. I wanted to stop because I knew I wasn’t playing really good but I didn’t want to stop because there were a lot of tables going with a lot of bad players so the conditions to play were really good. I should have known that although the table conditions were fine to play, my state of mind wasn’t anymore but that’s an aspect that is always hard to grasp at the moment you are in it. As mentioned before I hardly tilt but this time I did make some stupid mistakes time after time. It ain’t the kind of tilt where you shove 27s all-in because they where suited but it’s more betting the river when you know the river card probably hit the other player but you just don’t want to believe yourself you got rivered again. I lost a total of $1.095 putting my feet back on the ground after the record session on Sunday.

I think the changes I’ve made to my game are really good. I think I’ve played better then ever during the last weeks and I believe I can win up to $10/$20 if I play my A-game. The hard thing however is to keep playing your A-game. It’s not like I can tweak a bot and it can repeat itself over and over again and win forever. I’m still human and my game changes without me even knowing it. I got in situations yesterday where I wasn’t really sure anymore what I could do best, while if I’m in the flow I’m not even really thinking about what I should do, I just know it. I hope to continue to play well, stuff like yesterday shouldn’t happen anymore but it’s inherent to poker. After writing this blog I will do some studying again to make sure I keep improving my game.

Something else, in 2010 I lost most of the weeks but now since things are going better I remember a feeling which I sort of forgot about. When I’m winning I find it hard to play a lot. It’s not like I’m suddenly a big winner now but I already experienced the feeling again on Sunday. I want to quit while ahead because I’m scared to lose the money again. It isn’t really about the money, it’s more the feeling of winning. If I stop playing, I can’t lose that feeling anymore so I rather quit then I keep playing. Also I rather not start a session, since as long as I don’t start a new session, I’m still a winner. I’ve always had this and it’s really something I should work on. I shouldn’t be scared of losing my next session, I should just always keep thinking about playing my A-game and that’s it. If I do that, winning or losing is nothing more then variance but I wish it was as simple as that. I think that was also the reason why it was so easy for me to put in the volume last year, I was losing! When I’m losing I got nothing to lose the next session. I’m a loser already so it can only get better. Most gambler’s are not addicted to winning but to losing, I don’t want to compare poker with gambling of course but I do think my poker addiction comes with losing, not winning as well. Not that I really feel addicted to poker anyway, I have that “losing” addiction in any game I play. I actually think that it’s really a good thing to have, since a lot of people are demotivated when things get bad and I get only more motivated to do better. I’ve seen that difference a lot when I played World of Warcraft, I could try over and over to defeat an almost impossible boss but some people already want to give up after 2 tries and rather go fight the easy bosses. It’s something I should put on my list to work on, cause grinding a lot when playing good of course gets you the most money 🙂

Winning does keep me busy nowadays and I really hope I can do good this year. I think nothing but me stands in my way to grind back my losses from last year and that is really a personal goal. I would love to see my own lifetime graph going up again and currently pick that above trying to make as much as money, possibly by getting SNE again. It’s a hard thing in poker anyway to determine what’s the best way to earn the most money. If I’m a winner this year putting in as much volume as possible is of course the best thing but do you keep winning if you play that much? Nobody knows! I do however know that I value some more free time as well so I’m almost positive I’m not going to get SNE this year. I might be able to beat $5/$10 and even $10/$20 which gives me a good VPP/hr rate but I rather not get back to playing 24 tables non-stop and have poker on my mind 24/7. When I write this down it still hurts… The *5 multiplier is just crazy, the $20.000 bonus at the end is crazy but it’s also the idea of trying to accomplish something during a whole year that really attracts me to it! I think it might be the only reason why I would really love to play poker full-time but I also still really love my job so I’ll have to live with it.

Besides poker I still have a full schedule with activities. Last week I had 3 birthday parties which started with an evening of indoor paintball. I wasn’t really sure what I should expect from an indoor paintball field but it was a lot of fun. I only got 1 purple bruise and managed to hurt some other people pretty good. We all had aching muscles the next day, we are really getting old 🙂 The next day it was time for some heavy drinking but somehow I managed to go home early (02:30) because I wanted to go to the gym on Saturday. Saturday evening I had a birthday party in Amsterdam and after the party we went to Club Air. Besides outdoor festivals and Awakenings I hardly go out to clubs anymore but I remembered again why I always loved it so much. I did feel a bit old inside but I’m not to old to party. We stayed till 04:30 and the next day I again woke up without a hangover which made it a perfect weekend! Tomorow it’s my girlfriends birthday, she turns 23! After spending a lot of time thinking what to buy her I think I found something fun to do together, I hate buying presents 😉 Next weekend is then the only weekend without a birthday and then I got 3 weekends in a row again. I used to never have a lot of birthday parties but it seems like everybody wants to celebrate their birthday nowadays, it’s fun but it’s hard to stay away from the alcohol 🙁

I’m planning to record a (bi-)weekly Pokernews NL radio item with Remko Rinkema somewhere this week as well, so listen to Pokernews NL Radio coming Sunday. We missed last Sunday’s show because Remko managed to reach the Final Table of the Estrellas Poker Tour finishing 4th for €26.100, not a bad excuse to cancel the show 😉

January, good or bad?

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Feb 012011

January is already over and I’m not sure if I should be happy with it or not.

I started with a normal session last week on Sunday playing $3/6 and $5/10 which was okay. Going to bed at 06:00 in stead of 08:00/08:30 was already nice for a change and I played less tables at the same time to get into the groove again. The day after I did exactly the same thing, I started with $3/$6 and $5/$10 but around 23:00 there were hardly any tables. I opted to do two things: Add a bunch of $2/$4 tables or add a couple of $10/$20 tables. VPP wise you can play 1 table of $10/$20 in stead of 3 tables $2/$4 to get the same amount of VPPs, then the question is of course what will I win or loose on the tables. My idea was that I could better play less tables and try to learn from it, then try to mass table and make the same mistake as last year. Sure it isn’t smart to just move up when you are not even beating the previous limit but I did had some idea’s why I would be more succesful this time.

I’m very confident about the changes I’ve made to my game. I think they are almost all good and I feel I now got the tools to beat the games again. The question is of course till what limit can I beat them. I rather try out now how I’m doing on the $5/$10 and $10/$20 because in case I do well on these limits I can still make a run for SNE. If it doesn’t work out I can always quit playing $10/$20 again and just go for my original goal of 700.000VPPs. If I wouldn’t try now to beat the higher limits and do get there later in the year it might have been a huge waste of SNE value.

Back to the session, I ended up with a small loss, lost about $1k on the $10/$20 but was up on $3/$6 and $5/$10. Not that happy with the session but I knew it was study time the next day. I had a lot of idea’s on how to study my opponents, I’ve had them since last year but basically never executed them which might have been my biggest mistake of 2010. With the volume I play any small tweak can lead up to a lot of profit and working on my game should be as important as playing. I won’t explain in detail what I’ve done since there are probably plenty of foe’s reading my blog but when I hit the tables later that night I crushed the games at $3/$6 and $5/$10 and won almost $1.200 in a little over 4 hours.

This was of course a huge confident boost and my next session was last Saturday. Since it was the last Saturday of the month I was planning to play some tournaments on the side as well. I played the Monthly Gold Freeroll, a WBCOOP qualifier tournament and the $215 Weekly Fixed Limit Tournament. I didn’t play many cashgames on the side, only the $5/$10 and $10/$20 tables. I also had two friends playing at my house so the conditions weren’t optimal to focus. I did however do good in all 3 tournaments. I had never played the Weekly Fixed Limit Tournament and found it extremely soft for a $215 tournament. Maybe that’s being result oriented as I made the finale table and got 5th for $1.040. I got my aces cracked twice on the final table and without that I think a top3 finish wouldn’t even have been a question. It would be nice if the tournament gets some more players, so I encourage you all to sign up next month 😉 I busted the WBCOOP qualifier in 181th place, nothing special but it did earn me a ticket for the WBCOOP Main Event on Sunday. I made a deep run in the Gold Freeroll but after losing KK vs 88 for a top5 stack I never recovered and finished 31st for $160. Not a bad score for the first tournaments of 2011, I did however lose $540 on the cashgames (only at $5/$10).

On Sunday I had the same sort of thing planned. I was playing the Sunday Warm-Up, Sunday Million, the Turbo Takedown, the WBCOOP Main Event and of course our weekly $11 Yanks Zandvoort Home Game alongside some cashgames. No friends at my place this time so I could focus a little better. I busted the Warm-Up pretty quick with a bad move and busted the WBCOOP Main Event in 20 hands with AKo after I 3bet all-in on a AA3dd flop against 33. The Turbo Takedown was an early exit as well and after winning with QQ vs AA in the Sunday Million I busted with a coinflip (JJ vs AQ), argh! So only early exists and even my Home Game tournament didn’t really go well. Only upside there is that we had 45 people playing whom I all know personally so that was great fun 🙂 The first tournament Sunday sucked and I’m not sure if I want to continue playing them mixed with cashgames. Looking back on the hands I don’t think I made any big mistakes except in the Warm-Up but I might make it a tournaments only evening once a month. I’ll then add some $11/$22 tournaments so I’m more focused on playing NL only but again I didn’t really do bad mixing it with cashgames and I wasn’t playing that many until I busted all tournaments anyway. I won $67 in the cashgames after being down all night so was happy with the end-result but of course not happy with the total result of both days.

So yesterday there were no tournaments, no friends, so no distraction at all. Time to whoop some ass and finish strong during the last session of January. I was playing roughly 20 tables at all times and was playing all $3/$6 till $10/$20. Every time I won a pot on $10/$20 I lost 4 at $5/$10. It was just bizarre! Looking at my stats I didn’t get many good hands at the $5/$10 tables but it wasn’t that bad either. I had huge swings but it just never really went my way. It could be that (some of) my opponents already adjusted which makes sense but I dropped $2.193 at the $5/$10 tables in a little over 5k hands, losing -4.35BB/100. That’s not bad, that’s monkey bad! On the other side I won $1.443 in 1.400 hands, which is 5.1BB/100 at $10/$20. I’m not sure what I can tell from that, sure I was running hot there but the difference is so huge, I’m not sure if I should be happy or sad. I had a small plus at the $3/$6 as well, but did lose $660 in the complete session.

Looking at the total month (which was only 2 weeks due to the PCA) my graph/stats look like this:

I’m happy with the $3/$6 and $10/$20 result but what the hell happened at $5/$10. That just looks so 2010 and I was hoping I was over that 🙂 I’m up $496 in online tournaments this month and had my first Hendon Mob (http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=184844) Flag due to winning $10.960 at the PCA so all in all not a bad month but I’m not sure what’s in store for me in February. After I’m done blogging I will do some more studying and hope to improve my game so I can beat the $5/$10 as well and of course continue to beat the $3/$6 and $10/$20.

I’m certainly happy with my “new” rhythm. It’s just a little less poker but it feels like I’m more relaxed. I went to the gym 3 times last week and I’m planning to do the same or more this week. I do have 2 birthdays the coming weekend where the “no alcohol rule” doesn’t apply but I didn’t drink any alcohol last weekend which always helps to feel fit to be able to play concentrated for longer periods of time. I’ll again have to stress everybody to watch the new season of Spartacus, since episode II was again just brilliant! I’ve also finally started with 24 which is something I’m watching with my girlfriend, which is the first time ever I watch a series with her. I normally watch most series in the break between my poker session and thought it would be fun to watch something “good” together, so we picked 24. So far I think it’s a little to predictable but I do enjoy it and my girlfriend as well so I’m sure I’ll get to Season 8.

I’m ready to rock February!

Ready for 2011

Poker 2 Responses »

Jan 222011

Another blog this year and I haven’t even played a hand on the LHE Tables in 2011 yet!

After coming back from the Bahamas I didn’t want to start playing straight away. I figured I would be tired after the first days back at work and I could have played small sessions but I rather take some more time away from the tables to do some other stuff before I start grinding again. The last week I’ve been updating my PokerTracker database, I’m a real geek when it comes to this. I’ve completed my database with all hands, tournaments and SnG’s since 2006 and have manually checked all tournaments to enter any rebuys/add-ons that were missing. I’ve played close to 3million hands and a little over 500 tournaments and SnG’s. I just like to be as complete as possible when I’m doing something so I really spent a lot of time on it. I’m currently creating a new PokerTracker database with only my 2010 hands since those will be more relevant for my HUD. Data from 2009 isn’t that relevant as most players have changed their game by now, maybe it would have been even better to only import the 2nd half of 2010 but I like to have big samples on people.

I’ve figured out my poker plan for 2011 as well. Currently I’m not planning to go for Supernova Elite again. I really would love to reach it again, but last year has showed me that leaving no time to work on your game can cost you a lot of money. I’ve not totally scrapped it of my list but currently I’ve planned to get roughly 750.000 VPPs this year. My standard week looks like this:
– Sunday Evening/Night: 7.500 VPPs
– Monday Evening/Night: 6.500 VPPs
– Tuesday Evening: 3.000 VPPs
For a total of 17.000 VPPs a week. This should take me about 20/22 hours and I will still continue to work 24 hours a week as well so it will be a packed schedule anyway even without going for Supernova Elite. Now if suddenly I’m a big winner in the game I can always move up and increase my play to still get SNE but I have no reasons to believe this is going to happen. This also needs to happen pretty early in the year as else I’m to far behind to still make a run for it. In case this dream scenario isn’t happening I will probably end up at 700.000 VPPs so I can give myself some more free time when things are not going as planned or when it’s beach weather.

I will continue to play $2/$4 till $5/$10 Full Ring Limit Hold’em but will also mix in some tournaments this year. I’ve made an excel sheet with a planning of the whole year and have made a fixed schedule of when to play tournaments. Every last Saturday of the month I will be playing the VIP freerolls and the $215 Weekly Fixed Limit Tournament. Every last Sunday of the month I will be playing the Sunday Warm-Up, Sunday Million and Turbo Takedown. I might add some smaller tournaments next to these as well but will most likely play those during the week when I just feel like playing around. On days I play tournaments I will most likely only play a couple of cashgames on the side since I’m very bad in mixing cashgames with tournaments. I will also make a selection of tournaments this year in which I want to participate during the SCOOP and WCOOP, which will be most likely a mix of LHE, NL, Razz or maybe even 8-game.

Tomorrow will be my first day back at the LHE tables and I feel a bit rusty. Normally it just takes a couple of hours to get used to the game again and I’m planning to continue with the changes I’ve made to my game late December which proved to be successful over a small sample. I’m hoping this change will help to be a winning player in the game again as this is also one of my main goals this year. I had very few negative comments on becoming a member of PokerStars Team: Online but those who commented pointed at my negative outcome at the tables. It’s something I’m not happy with either but it’s not really true that I’m only a rakeback pro. I’ve been a winner since 2006 and this year is my first losing year on the tables. My SNE chase of course has something to do with it but not as much as most people think. If I would have been a losing player without making SNE I would have lost way more and in case I would have dropped going for SNE there is no guarantee I would have been a winner in the game. I hope I can show people I can win money on the tables as well but if I’m only a winner after rakeback then it’s not that bad as most people say it is. If you are winning after rakeback you still beat the game, you are just not beating the rake. You are still better then the average player and you still profit from playing. Sure it doesn’t look that cool but you at least still make money from the game and most people can’t say that. Still I would really like to do better on the tables, not only to look goal but simply to make more money out of playing poker!

I’m not planning to suddenly show up at a lot of Live tournaments but I am planning to got to the Venlo Vip Days (Netherlands) where 4 tournaments are held from the 31st of March till the 3rd of April. I’ll probably play the first 3 tournaments which have a buy-in of €200, €300 and €1.000. Based on how my year and tournaments are going I still have to choose if I’m getting $10.000 cash, a WSOP Main Event Package or a EPT Grand Final Package as my second SNE reward. I would love to play another big tournament but I’ll postpone that decision till later in the year.

Next to poker I’m planning to hit the gym a lot as well, starting Monday. I’m feeling bloated lately and I have nobody else to blame but me. That’s also a big factor in deciding not to go for SNE again because if I would I know I wouldn’t have time enough to exercise. I’m planning to hit the gym on Monday, Wednesday and Friday like I did last year as well (only skipping less this year) and cycle on Monday or Tuesday afternoon, Thursday evening and Saturday or Sunday afternoon. This seems like a lot, but it’s okay if I miss 1 or 2 sessions once in a while and as long as I at least exercise 3 times a week I’m happy. We’ve signed up with 10 people to do the Amstel Gold Race in April so that is going to be great fun. I’m the only one that really cycles a lot and most don’t even have a suitable bike for the race so we definitely have to start training. We are only doing the 65km route but it still contains some ugly climbs. I cycled the 100km last year so I doubt I will get into trouble but I’m already excited to scream my mates to the top. I’ll try to take them with me as much as possible when training on the bike and most of them have already started working out again in the gym as well. We will probably all lose a couple of kilo’s and that’s a welcome bonus! It’s really good that we all have a goal which motivates us to exercise. It’s my mother’s wedding day at the 24th of June and I really want to look fit at the pictures, so next to exercising I also going to try to drink alcohol as little as possible and eat a lot more healthy for the coming months. I’m not totally quitting alcohol, which I’ve done multiple times in the past, but I want to minimize it to parties and birthdays only this time. 92 kilo’s is the goal for the 24th of June and I’m roughly 102 kilo’s now. I’ve promised myself that whenever I got above the 100 kilo mark (after being 135 kilos in 2007) I would always make sure my priority would be to lose weight again, so that’s definitely one of my main goals for the coming months!

I think that’s most of it about my goals and plans for 2011. I’ll continue with some random stuff which I’ve been doing or planning to do the coming weeks. I’ve been catching up with “The Big Game” which was recommended by a lot of people to watch. I’ve only watched week 1 so far but I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes as well. I hardly ever watch poker on television but this is really a good format and funny to watch. You can check all episodes on http://www.pokerstars.tv but I’m sure most of you out there have already seen it so this shouldn’t be a shocker. Next to watching the big game I can’t wait for Season 2 of Spartacus that started this Friday. I so loved this series and I hope Season 2 is as good as Season 1 was. Next to Spartacus, V, Fringe and White Collar have already started again and I’m also waiting for new episodes of Entourage & True Blood. Not sure when they are all coming but there are plenty of series to watch this year. I got a huge list of stuff I still want to watch as well but I think I might get into problems if I start following even more series.

Coming Sunday I will most probably play the Prerelease of the new Magic The Gathering set: Mirrodin Besieged. I haven’t played Magic in almost a year now but I still love the game and I think it’s going to be good fun. It’s in Amsterdam so pretty close and I think we will go with the four of us so we are going to have fun anyways. I’m also still planning to play the StarCraft II campaign but for the moment I don’t really have more free time then I had last year since there is plenty to do but it’s still on my list 🙂 I just love playing games! That actually reminds me of the fact that this week I did play some Poker, I played 8-game on PokerStars Home Games. It’s not like I’m a trendsetter with playing 8-game as most pro’s are getting more into mixes games the last 2 years but I really love it. I’ve played Stud before, actually hardly played Omaha, never a Hi/Lo game and had never played 2-7 Triple Draw. My least favorite game in 8-game is Hold’em NL and I actually like all the others. I’ve always loved Razz, I like stud (not so much the Hi/Lo) and actually like both Omaha games. I’ve only played for 0,20/0,40 with friends and we had the standard type of fun where people were still thinking we are playing Razz while already switched to Stud. I also always get the feeling my cards are faced up after first playing Stud games and then switching to Omaha. It’s just good fun and it’s really good the sharks can’t join our games 😉 Next Sunday we also have our first Home Games Tournament scheduled and probably we’ll have some side action on the cash tables as well. I hope it doesn’t distract me to much as I really have to start grinding!

Next week I will also participate in the WBCOOP (World Blogger Championship of Online Poker) but unfortunately I can’t really play a lot of these tournaments as most are not really suitable for people from Europe. I’ve never played the WBCOOP but it’s a free series of tournaments for people who have an active blog so thought why not sign up? If you want more info you can go to http://www.pokerstars.com/blog_tournament/. Maybe I get to win some SCOOP tickets, I’m playing tournaments anyway next weekend so it fits right into my schedule.

The last thing I want to mention is that I’ve updated my blogroll on the right side. I’ve added all PokerStar Team: Online blogs, all the SNE blogs I could find and some other random poker and non-poker blogs. In case you want to be added feel free to leave a comment. I’m not really the guy who’s going to do the “I add your link if you add mine” but feel free to add a link to my blog on your website. I will update the 2011 goal pages later this week.

I’m ready for 2011 and wish everybody the best on the tables!

Bye Bye Bahamas

Poker 3 Responses »

Jan 172011

I’ve never tried this before but I’m currently writing a blog from my iPhone while in a plane to Newark. I don’t have Internet access but I’m able to save it local and publish it later so why not do this in stead of watching a move I’ve already seen.

This makes me realize more it’s really time for me to buy a portable device and from the suggestions I got on twitter most people advised me to buy an MacBook. The thing is however that I really would like to have pokertracker installed on the laptop as this is a crucial tool for me to play cashgames. Any suggestions are welcome 🙂

On Thursday I played the 270+100+30 bounty turbo event and not without success. I started out pretty bad, having a lot of fun but probably playing to tight looking at some others at my table. I was shortstacked for the first 10 levels and I managed to fold twice after losing a pot to an even shorter person before I ended up on the BB where I had to call all-in blind considering my stack. My T2o hit the board and from there on it went fast. 24 people got paid and I had a pretty nice stack when I busted somebody to get my first bounty when only 16 people were left. I had a nice chiplead from that moment and reached the final table also as 1st or 2nd in chips. I busted three people, one with A5 vs AJ for almost my tourney life and we are down to 4handed. For some time we all shove but nobody calls so the chips are only going round and then I bust another player who shoves KJo into my A5. Chipleader and only two more to go!

The best player at the table is short and I’m confident I can beat the other with some help from the deck of course since we are playing turbo event. The shortie shoves 22 into my A3 and holds. Then again the chips go round for some time before the weaker players shoves and I find 77 to go all-in as well. The third player insta-calls unfortunately and it’s A6 vs 77 vs JJ. JJ holds the dealer counts our chips and I have 1k chips less then the winner but do get 2nd for $11k. I didn’t play a single hand heads up and the winner got paid $8k more so heads up we would’ve probably made a deal but that’s life.

I was pretty happy with the result of course and for me it feels like I go home with profit since the main event felt like a freeroll. It wasn’t close to the $2M, but I might give that another try at the EPT finale or WSOP.

I’ll write another blog pretty soon with my 2011 goals so stay tuned 😉 I’m planning to start grinding again on Sunday but might play a bit of poker (Home Games) before that.

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