Tzen

New Year’s resolutions for 2013

Dec 172012

I’m one of those guys who like to make new year’s resolutions. Sometimes I stick to them (2007,2009 & 2010) but a lot of times I fail big time (2011 & 2012). You can read all about my 2013 new year’s resolutions in this blog.

I remember last year at the PCA I told everybody I would lose weight, I went from 105kg to 98k but today I’m back at 105kg. I remember making a bet with a friend about the amount of VPPs I would grind out this year, I didn’t even come close. I wanted to crush my personal record on Alp d’Huez but only beat it by 1 minute. Last week I already wrote about my 6 months no alcohol propbet which I think is a great start to achieve all the other goals I have for 2013. I noticed that a lot of people who responded on this didn’t read my blog at all but just responded on the title. I’m not doing it because I’m alcoholic or I think drinking has a negative impact on me as a person. i.e. I don’t get into fights and I don’t drink to try and forget normal life. Most people who do top-class sport don’t drink because it has a negative impact on your overall performance. Now I don’t want to compare myself with somebody who does top-class sport but I do want to push myself to the max for 6 months and by quitting alcohol I will improve my performance in all the goals I want to achieve.

To make sure I wouldn’t change my mind before the end of the year I was willing to put a max of $2k on quitting alcohol for 6 months. Most people on the forums said this was to easy, most of my friends laughed at me in my face and said I would never be able to pull it off. So far I only have 1 person who was willing to bet with me for $250, I’m really happy with this and not because I think it will be easy. After agreeing to the bet I started thinking about what I had already planned to do during these 6 months. At the end of January I’m going away with 36 people for a weekend of fun in a huge/farm house, normally this involves a lot of drinking. In April I’m going away for a weekend to the Amstel Gold Race with 11 guys, normally this involves a lot of drinking. In May I’m going to Greece with my girlfriend for 10/12 days, normally this involves at least some wine during dinner. I was planning to go to Las Vegas as well in June, I doubt this is still an option if I’m not drinking any alcohol. These are just holidays, I probably have somebody’s birthday every other week and let’s just hope nobody is getting married. Yes I can do all these things without drinking but it will be very hard. If I didn’t put any money on it I’m sure I would have allowed myself to drink on all these “special” occasions, which often leads to giving up on it somewhere down the line. I really hope I will be able to finish the bet, $250 might not be enough money to keep my away from drinking alcohol but my own will to accomplish the goals I have for 2013 should!

I’ve been thinking a lot of what I want to do within these 6 months and I think it’s a good idea to list some big goals and some smaller goals. In case for whatever reason I’m not able to make any of the big goals I should still be happy with making some of the smaller goals I’ll set for myself. I want to divide my goals into 3 categories: Poker, Lifestyle, Cycling. I want to finalise the list early next year since I’m going to start with this when I return from the Bahamas but this is what I’ve been thinking off so far.

Poker
I agree with most other people that setting a monetary goal is not a good idea. You can’t really predict how much money you are going to make since this heavily depends on the games that are running and how lucky you are in terms of variance. I’ve always put my goals in terms of VPPs which made sense because it said something about how much I grinded. This year however I’m going to do it slightly different, I’m putting my goals in # of hours. This is because I want to play less tables and putting a goal in terms of VPPs will often result in playing to many tables. Therefore I set a goal of playing 500 hours of poker in 6 months which means roughly 20hours a week. This is next to my part-time job of 24hours of course. This is going to be pretty hard since I will miss some week(s)ends due to holidays but I’ll just have to deal with that by grinding a bit more the other weeks. I will actually start counting the hours from January 1st and I have until Friday the 12th of July to make it is a little bit more than 6 months but since I’m away to the Bahamas as well this means only 4 days extra and I doubt I’ll be grinding on the 1st of January. It doesn’t matter if I’m playing cashgames or tourneys, live or online as long as I’m playing poker. I can’t really think about any other poker goals for 2013 but I think this will be a pretty good challenge already!

Lifestyle
The obvious one in this category is 6 months without alcohol starting the 13th of January until the 12th of July(so I can have a beer again in France on the 13th). The other one is of course losing some weight again, let’s start with < 100kg then < 95kg and my ultimate goals is 93kg. I’m 105kg at the moment, with Christmas still to come and a week in the Bahamas so there is probably about 10-15kg to lose. Losing weight is actually not the goal, losing fat is but I doubt I’ll gain a lot of muscle by only cycling. 93kg is doable but I would already be extremely happy with < 95kg, I need to drop weight to climb those mountains faster!

Cycling
I can think off a lot of cycling goals. I want some goals which I can achieve while training and some ultimate goals. The first goal is to get my segment record back on my own strava segment. When doing the sports bet back in September I lost it to Diede and my first goal is to get it back which means I have to cycle 13,4km in 24:30 (32,8km/h). It might not sound fast but it goes up and down a lot so it’s not that simple. My own PR is 26:12 so I do have to improve more than 1:30 minute. Another training goals is a ride I often do to Scheveningen. It’s 72,5km and I would like to ride it solo in 2hours and 40 minutes which means an average of 27,2km/h. I never really ride it solo but the last time I did it it took me 3hours and 7 minutes and with a friend of mine I did it in 02 hours 56 which means I have to gain a lot of speed. The big goal this year is to finish the 150km Amstel Gold Race in April and on the 13th of July after not drinking for 6 months it’s time for another try at Alp d’Huez and this time I do want to crush my personal record! Currently it’s 1 hours and 47 minutes and I want to do it in 1,5 hours, a huge difference but I feel I can do this. It’s probably the most challenging goal I will set myself this year. The last one is to ride up the Galibier for the 1st time, this is going to be the masterpiece of my trip to France!

So these are all the goals I have. I’ll keep track of my weight and poker hours in a spreadsheet and Strava.com will keep track of my cycling goals. If you have any ideas about other goals I could add just let me know. I can think about them for another month or so. I’m also still willing to take on some more “6 months no alcohol” bets.

If I don’t blog before the end of the year, merry x-mass and a happy new year!

Buying Time with a 6 Months Alcohol Propbet

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Dec 072012

I wish I could buy time. I don’t even work full-time and I’m still complaining but 24 hours in a day just isn’t enough. I have so many plans in my head but I just lack the time to execute them. For some of these things it’s not only time that’s lacking, I need to improve my own skills and for that I again need time.

My motivation for poker is at a peak, I’ll explain later why. It’s probably as high as it was before my SNE run in 2010 with the big difference that I have less time to spent on playing poker because my private situation has changed in these 3 years. I’m now living together with my girlfriend and back in 2009 our relationship had only just started and she went away for the first 5 months of 2010. Also my part-time job has changed from a job I could do with my eyes closed to a job in which it hard to do it proper in just the 24 hours I should be working. This is not really a complaint, it’s just merely stating the facts. When I look at my current situation and my overall happiness I’m at a peak as well, one which started many years ago but I’m sure that being able to work part-time and play poker have a lot to do with it. Sure I have my ups and downs as well but my I’m blessed feeling the way I feel.

In 2010 I’ve worked really hard to achieve SNE and I continued to put in the same effort during the first months of 2011 but since black Friday this shifted to less poker and more work. Basically in 2012 this continued, with the addition of taking a lot of time off to relax. I didn’t work a single day in January (Bahamas, Aruba, Curacao), went to Vegas for 2 weeks, a week to Barcelona and I did a couple of short trips as well. I’ve doubted a lot if I should stop playing poker, mainly because it became harder and harder to balance my job and poker but also because I had lost some motivation since black Friday, it just wasn’t the same. There are multiple reasons to not quit poker, money is one thing, having more freedom is something else and the odd chance to still win something big one day is still lingering in my head as well. The biggest reason not to quit poker however should be the fact that the quality of life has so much improved since 2009, something I sometimes forget because you start to take things for granted. I still love the game, it doesn’t bore me like most computer games do after a couple of weeks/months, pretty strange when you think of it.

I’m 30 now and I’m at a stage where a lot of things around me start to change. People around me start settling, get married and make babies. I see some examples of people who play poker and have small kids, I think this is doable but I think it’s really going to be though if you have a part-time job as well. It’s already hard to balance things now, adding another factor for sure isn’t going to make it any easier. My girlfriend is almost 25 and we are not at the stage yet that we are thinking about kids, however that time will probably come one day. When that day comes I’ll probably also have to make a choice between my job and poker but till that day as long as I enjoy both I want to continue doing both. So knowing that at least for next year (but hopefully longer) I’m still playing poker I think I should get as much out of it as possible and that’s one of the reasons why my motivation is at its peak.

The other reason is the talks I’ve had with many poker players the last couple of weeks. This started at the Master Classics of Poker and continued at the “Open Poker Dag” in Utrecht two weeks ago and the PokerStars VIPClub party last Saturday. The best way to get motivation to play poker is to talk about it with other people who have the same drive. I’ve talked to a lot of people at these events, amateurs but also other professional players and this gave me back the motivation I had missed since black Friday. The “Open Poker Dag” was a big freeroll with 240 players with free drinks and food so you can already figured out what happened 🙂

The next day I felt pretty tired but managed to make a pretty deep run in the Sunday Warm-up, finishing 56th with QQ < TT. I played with some friends in Amsterdam and it was a lot of fun to support each other while we were all playing the MicroMillions Main Event and other tourneys. Going deep in a MTT is for sure another way to get motivated 😉

At the PokerStars VIPClub party we didn’t play any poker but again the drinks were free so I ended up drinking a lot of alcohol again. Having evenings like that is great fun, however playing poker the next day is really hard and most of the time it means that you start playing pretty late since you are still hung over. As said I’m lacking time and I think I know where to gain to most from, stop drinking alcohol. Now this has been a subject many times before in my blog and sometimes I kept my promises for a couple of weeks but most of the time it didn’t last too long before I got back into my old habits. I don’t need alcohol to have fun but especially the last 1,5 years I prioritised fun above anything else and this resulted in suboptimal poker conditions during most weekends. I’m definitely not planning to quit alcohol forever but if I complain about time and want to be serious at playing poker I think it’s a no brainer that I can gain the most from quitting alcohol for a period of time. Drinking less often or just less would be a better way I do know that but after all these years I still can’t find a good mode, the switch is either on or off. Quitting alcohol will help my other goals for next year as well. As you might know my weight has been another topic which has been discussed more than once in this blog and the other big plan I have for next year is my cycling week in France and guess what would really help? Indeed quitting alcohol for some time.

So the plan is that I won’t drink alcohol for 6 months, starting the day I return from the Bahamas, January 13 till the day I leave for France, July 13. I’m also so sure about this that I’m willing to propbet it at even odds for a max of $2.000. If people are serious about making this bet the only rule I have is that I need to have seen you in real life at least once. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog, twitter or facebook if you are interested. The reason for wanting to make a propbet out of this is because most of the time I don’t find it difficult to quit for a couple of weeks, then the moment comes that you drink just this one time at a party and from there on you are back to your old habits. If I propbet it I know that the step to drink at only that one party will be a lot higher so I hope that this will prevent me from doing it at all.

The last few weeks after the many talks about poker I have a good idea on how I can improve myself as a poker player. I’m back in love with LHE cashgames but if that doesn’t work out I think SNG’s will be my back-up plan. I will also definitely continue to play MTTs, my results have been pretty good the last months and I really hope to get lucky and make a big(ger) score. I don’t expect to win a Sunday Million out of the blue but with my many deep runs lately I’m hoping that I can get just that little bit deeper and this time make it to the top 3. If I’m really lucky it’s in one of the big ones, the feeling that this could happen is one of the reasons I started playing and I’m still looking for that sort of excitement when I’m playing, something that’s less around when playing cashgames. My main effort will however go into improving my LHE cashgames by studying, I’m planning to do this in a real mathematical approach. When people who are not into poker ask me why I’m good at poker I often answered that it was because I’m good at math but that’s probably only half true. I think it has more to do with the fact that I’m very analytic, a useful skill for both math and poker but I never really went far with using math at the poker tables, something that a lot of people have been doing for a long time in poker already.

This month you might see me play less tables, maybe not even playing at all because I’m studying 🙂 After I return from the Bahamas I should have a lot more time in the weekends since I’m not hung over and I hope to use that time to play a lot of poker again, lose some weight and be faster on my bike then ever!

MicroMillions III challenge summary

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Nov 192012

Yesterday DaWarsaw and I did a MicroMillions challenge in event #28 till #34. The loser would be the personal assistant of the winner for 1 day at the PCA (Bahamas). Check out my previous blog for details, beneath a summary of what happened:

Sunday November 18, 10:00 – 12:00

My alarm went off at 10:00 and I woke up instantly. I went downstairs to get some breakfast and checked the PokerStars Lobby for any FPP Qualifiers to event #28-#34. My strategy was to qualify for all tournaments first so I could focus the remainder of the day on playing the tournaments. DaWarsaw wasn’t awake yet so I was happy to get a head start. I regged all FPP qualifiers I could find, there wasn’t a limit on the amount of FPPs we could spent and I just wanted to get this done as soon as possible. Pretty soon I was playing 6-max, full-ring, heads-up Hold’em and Stud Hi/Lo on 12+ tables at the same time. At these moment I really love poker.

At 10:14 I already shipped my first ticket, event #32 regged! 4 minutes later I won my heads-up qualifier and got the ticket for event #30. Event #34 followed quickly but somehow I didn’t manage to qualify for event #28 yet. In total I played 20 satellites to this event and after I won my first, I won another 3 tickets since I had already regged for more sats. Event #29 quickly followed and I had event #31 and #33 left to qualify for. Event #31 was a Stud Hi/Lo event and I really really don’t like split pot games! Luckily it only took me 3 sats to qualify for this one and at 11:40 I had qualified for all events. In total it cost me 3868 FPPs to qualify for the 7 events and I won in total $50,3 in tickets which means my FPP’s where worth $0,013 cents. I would recommended not to fire all types of games at the same time since definitely this could have gone better but at least I was done qualifying so I could get the real work started.

Sunday November 18, 12:00 – 14:00

Event #28, a $5,50 6-max Hold’em event. I’m firing up some other MTTs to play at the same time, I don’t want to focus on just the MicroMillions events. DaWarsaw busts first but my stack isn’t great. 9.889 runners and I need 1650th place for a cash, still a very long way. I shove my 99’s all-in at a T84sss board and get flushed out by AQ. Since 6-max is DaWarsaw’s specialty I’m happy with the result, at least I was freerolling for some time.

Sunday November 18, 14:00 – 16:00

Event #29, a $1+R 3x Turbo Hold’em event. I never play rebuy events and after checking the lobby I see that the rebuy period lasts 90 minutes! Since rebuys will get deducted of the winnings I can’t rebuy to often! I do the first before we get started and double up pretty quick with AJ vs AT, pfew. DaWarsaw decides to add some more tactics to this challenge, he is going for the single bullet to limit the amount of rebuys, a smart move. I gather some more chips and got a healthy 25k stack for only 1 rebuy! 99 UTG, I open, a guy who rebuys every 2 hands shoves all-in, the table chipleader shoves all-in, he does this every hand…. I can get a lot of chips by winning this pot, but to many rebuys could be fatal. I don’t know why but I call, shorty shows A4o and the chipleader shows TT, $*(%@! double rebuy, double rebuy again, double rebuy again, doube rebuy again! Oh boy….. DaWarsaw enters the event, he doesn’t even rebuy! He wins his first hand, his 2nd, his 3rd, oh boy…. I did 9 rebuys and an add-on for a total of $9,1, he only took the add-on for $0,91.

Luckily he busts first again, freerolling for the 2nd time. I got a decent stack and open KK UTG, 2 callers. J87ss board and I get it all-in vs a flushdraw. The river is a 2s and I’m out, two events down, no money won yet but $8.19 behind due to rebuying 🙁

Sunday November 18, 16:00 – 18:00

Event #30, a $3,30 Heads-Up Turbo Hold’em event. We start at 17:30 and I lose 900 chips (5k startstack) already in the first hand with KJ on K629Q. From there on I pick up 90% of the pots, I open or call every hand and pick up any pot preflop or on the flop. He plays 100% fit or fold and doesn’t hit anything. If he bets I fold and he never wins more then 180 and I go up pretty fast. I pick-up 99, he 3bets and I call. He fires on a Q75 board, I call. He checks on the turn, I bet and pick up a big pot. He’s short now and after he raises I move all-in the next hand with ATo, he calls with AKs but I get lucky. I won my first HU in 12 minutes, unfortunately so does DaWarsaw a few moments later again.

Sunday November 18, 18:00 – 20:00

The 2nd round of the HU starts at 18:35. After a minute my first bluf goes wrong but rather now then later. He picks up a lot of pots, at least he doesn’t seem to play fit or fold like the previous opponent. With 69o on T87ss8T I get value 3 streets vs AQs. I lose some pots and I’m at 2445 points. QQ vs AQ and I’m back, he wins some back and I move all-in with AJ vs AK but win! A good bluff 3 hands later and he never recovers. 2nd HU won but unfortunately so does DaWarsaw a few moments later.

Event #31, a $3,30 Stud Hi/Lo event. It was going to get busy, I already had a lot of tournaments running and even more started in this timeframe. Paying attention to Stud Hi/Lo while playing a bunch of Hold’em events is pretty hard. I played pretty tight but looking at my opponents there was no need to, most people sucked. There are never a lot of Stud Hi/Lo (or other mixed games) MTTs running and I think that’s so great about the MicroMillions. You can’t only play small buy-in Hold’em events but also games like Razz, 2-7 Triple Draw or in this case Stud Hi/Lo. After getting a bit more feeling with the format I was started to gather some chips, cashing in this one would be a surprise but who knows?

Event #32, a $11 Hold’em event (Sunday Storm Special Edition). The Sunday Storm is always a big event but this time it was even bigger. Cashing in the Sunday Storm isn’t that hard normally and I expected that we both could go deep in this one. Since it was also to most expensive tournament cashing in this one would be worth the most money. We started at 19:30 but nothing really happened the first half hour.

The 3rd round of the HU started at 19:46, winning this one means that I’ll cash. I completely crush the guy, I win every single hand and within 40 hands it’s over. ITM!

Sunday November 18, 20:00 – 22:00

Plenty of people are railing by now as I’m watching DaWarsaw’s HU vs wyoung83. DaWarsaw is ahead most of the time but luckily wyoung83 is a comeback kid! Lots of trash talking going on and I put some more pressure on DaWarsaw by telling him that I’ve won and he needs to win this one to stay ahead. I’m not exactly sure anymore what happened but wyoung83 manages to win, happy me! Thanks again wyoung83 😉 So I’m ahead but not really by far, I’ve won $8,35 but spent $8,19 more in the rebuy event which means I’m ahead by $0,16! DaWarsaw doesn’t exactly know how much rebuys I’ve taken so he doesn’t know if he’s still ahead or not, I’m of course not telling 😉

My 4th HU round starts, now that I’ve cashed anything extra would be useful. Just like the previous match I’m picking up almost every pot, I never knew HU could be this easy! After grinding him down in very small pots he only has 1185 left and I win a flip with AJ vs 44. $13,27 in the pocket, I’m ahead by $5,08 now!

Event #32 is still underway but nothing really happens there. DaWarsaw busts which is always good news, freerolling in this event as well! The same counts for event #31, the Stud Hi/Lo one, which means up till now I’ve freerolled in all events. I actually have a pretty decent stack and started to like it a little 😉 Not much later I bust myself as well in event #32, I would have loved a cash in this event but with almost 40.000 runners you’ll have to be lucky sometimes as well. Betting all streets in two Stud Hi/Lo pots and getting rivered twice is costly and I also bust the Stud Hi/L.

Event #33, a $2,20+R 2x Turbo Hold’em event. In the earlier rebuy event DaWarsaw added some extra tactic to this challenge by playing the rebuy with a single bullet. Luckily he already gave away this tactic so I unregged this event and waited till DaWarsaw regged himself. To my surprise he didn’t reg while he was behind, fine by me 😉

Sunday November 18, 22:00 – 24:00

The 5th HU round had just started and my start is pretty good. This HU goes both ways and both of us have had above 7.000 points a lot of times. While I’m ahead in chips we get it all-in with AQs vs JJ but he wins, when we are almost even we get it all-in with my toppair vs his straight draw, he wins and I’m out. I’m really happy that I’ve cashed but could have used the extra $8. A min-cash for DaWarsaw in any event is still good now since I’m still only $5,08 ahead.

DaWarsaw late regs event #33 and so do I. I don’t want to lose by rebuying to often in this event so I try 1 bullet and lose, DaWarsaw already rebuyed once and so do I. I lose again and leave the tourney. I hate to play it this way but if DaWarsaw uses this strategy while I’m ahead I have no other choice. He’s freerolling for the first time and I can only watch him play since I’ve busted everything else. He does well, 17.188 runners entered, 2250 places paid and there are 6.000 left, people bust quick, only 4.000 left. Blinds go up fast and DaWarsaw is a little carddead. Blinds go up again and DaWarsaw only has 4,5BB left but almost everybody is short at his table. The big blind only has 10BB’s and DaWarsaw pushes all-in, 3300 people left and surviving another round of blinds could get him a long way, a min-cash is $15,33, enough to win the bet! The big blind calls and DaWarsaw shows two small cards, the big blind is ahead but not by far. The boards runs out bad for DaWarsaw, busto in 3222nd place! Close, very close! Pfew.

Sunday November 18, 24:00 – 02:00

Event #34, a $5,50 6-Max, Turbo, Shootout Hold’em event.The table started out 5-handed and I didn’t really understand why the table wouldn’t fill up. Only after 20 minutes I figured out this was a shootout. It wasn’t only a shootout it was also 6-max, DaWarsaw’s regular game. I gained some chips early on and wasn’t impressed by the other guys at my table. Cashing this event myself would even be better then hoping for DaWarsaw to bust. With QQ in a blindwar on a A62ssA9 board vs a relative shorty (1.875 with a 5.000 average) I couldn’t find a fold on a river shove after 2-barreling myself, he showed A2. Another relative shorty opens, I 3bet TT and he shoves all-in. I call and can’t beat A4o. Still 3k left and I 3bet QQ in the SB. The BB calls and the IR folds, we get it all-in on a T54 rainbow flop and he shows KQo, it can’t get any better! A king on the river kicks me out of the tournament. Argh, how did this happen?! I’m still ahead but my fate is in DaWarsaw’s hands now.

Looking at how easy my table was I think his chances are pretty good. He’s 2/4 at the moment I start watching his table closely, then he gains momentum and has almost 12k chips (45% of the chips in play). Still 4 people left and he loses some chips again, a shorty busts and he’s 2/3. It feels strange rooting against somebody you know but I really don’t want to lose this challenge! I’m too lazy to take care of myself, let alone be DaWarsaw’s PA for 1 day! He loses some more chips and is 3/3, up & down, up & down. Boom, all-in and he’s behind, the boards runs out bad again for DaWarsaw and I’m victorious!

This feels good. Winning by $5,08 isn’t much, but these are the MicroMillions so what do you expect? I can finally start thinking of what DaWarsaw can do for me at the PCA. He had already made a list on his blog and I think some of his ideas were great 😉 I’ll probably start with ordering some breakfast when I wake up and I definitely want to play some tennis again in the Bahamas. I watch a lot of tennis on TV and you always see the ball boys do a lot of useful work (gatherings balls, handing out towels and drinks) and as I said earlier, I’m pretty lazy myself. I think DaWarsaw will be a perfect ball boy!

After the tennis match I’ll probably relax a little at the pool while DaWarsaw brings drinks and food… Wow this already sounds like the perfect trip to the Bahamas again! This was really a fun challenge, it was pretty close and pretty exciting but at the end but only 1 can win 🙂

GG DaWarsaw!

MicroMillions III challenge, PCA & Master Classics of Poker

Poker 9 Responses »

Nov 142012

This time an update right after the Master Classics of Poker as promised. I’ll start out with some fun news regarding the MicroMillions which starts tomorrow, a challenge!

Grzegorz “DaWarsaw” Mikielewicz and I will be dueling coming Sunday in a MicroMillions challenge. The rules are as follows:

– Sunday November 18, MicroMillions Events #28 till #34
– We can only play if we’ve qualified using FPPs
– We are only allowed to play FPP qualifiers on Sunday, starting at 06:00
– We can rebuy as much as we like, but only after we’ve qualified with FPPs
– Whoever wins the most money (rebuys will be deducted, FPPs won’t) in these 7 events is the winner!
– The loser of this challenge will be the personal assistant for one full day at the PCA! (we hope to make a short movie out of it)
– In case we tie, we are both going to be Tyler “frosty012” Frost’s PA for a day (That would be really worst case scenario!)

Well, I’m at least looking forward to it! Looking at the schedule, event #28 till #34 are the following events:

Event #	Buy-In	Name	Date	Time (CET)	Guarantee
028	$5	MicroMillions-028: $5.50 NL Hold’em [6-Max, $40K Gtd]	Nov 18	12:00	$40,000*
029	$1	MicroMillions-029: $1+R NL Hold’em [3x-Turbo, $75K Gtd]	Nov 18	14:30	$75,000*
030	$3	MicroMillions-030: $3.30 NL Hold’em [Heads-Up, Turbo, $25K Gtd, No Late Reg]	Nov 18	17:30	$25,000*
031	$3	MicroMillions-031: $3.30 Stud Hi/Lo [$10K Gtd]	Nov 18	19:00	$10,000*
032	$11	MicroMillions-032: $11 NL Hold’em [Sunday Storm Special Edition, $300K Gtd]	Nov 18	19:30	$300,000*
033	$2	MicroMillions-033: $2.20+R NL Hold’em [2x-Turbo, $75K Gtd]	Nov 18	21:30	$75,000*
034	$5	MicroMillions-034: $5.50 NL Hold’em [6-Max, Turbo, Shootout, $20K Gtd, No Late Reg]	Nov 19	00:30	$20,000*

Greg normally plays NL 6-max Cashgames but hardly any tournaments. There are two 6-max (1 Shootout) tournaments which should be in Greg’s advantage. We are both not very good at Stud Hi/Lo so that could be interesting. Cashing in event #32 would be very nice but this tournament will get a lot of runners. Overall qualifying should be no problem but it might cost a lot of time! I’ve been playing a lot of tournaments lately so I feel pretty confident in this bet. Since most tournaments are turbo’s Greg’s cashgame experience is less relevant but it’s still an advantage.

It’s especially fun that I’m doing this bet with Greg since I’ve got to know him last year at the PCA and since then we’ve been in contact a lot. He visited Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago and I’m already looking forward to meeting him again at the PCA. This also means I’m going to the PCA again! I haven’t qualified for the Main Event yet but will try some more satellites for sure. If I don’t qualify for the Main Event I’m going to select a couple of side events and hopefully win big in those.

This weekend at the Master Classics of Poker I didn’t win big but I did win! I busted the €750 event on Friday pretty quick after getting it all-in with AT vs A5 in a blindwar, 5 on the turn and the only thing left which I could do was drinking. I excelled at the drinking part of the day but had some troubles waking up on Saturday to play the €300 event. It was a Turbo and in Holland Casino this means that after an hour everybody is playing push/fold poker. Somehow I managed to keep my stack going without showdowns which is the easiest way to make sure you don’t bust 😉 When we arrived at the last two tables my fear of final table bubbling (after doing that 4 times in a row) popped up, I had an average stack most of the time but after 6 shorties survived their all-in I had paid a lot of blinds and feared to miss the final table again if somebody called me and had me beat or got lucky. After picking up the blinds twice another shorty pushed all-in in the SB and I had to call with any 2. Luckily I picked up J7 vs his 76. Finally a final table again!

I was 3/9 but with 3k/6k blinds and an average stack of 81.000 there wasn’t a lot of room to play. I could find some spots to reshove to keep my stack alive while some of the shorties busted. With 5 left I had a bit below average stack, just 12Blinds and pushed QJs from UTG. After a tankcall from the Big Blind for 95% of his stack he called with AJo, a flush draw on the flop, open ended straight draw on the turn but I didn’t hit any outs and busted in 5th place, winning €5.006. The pay-outs were pretty steep, 1st paid €21.627 which would have been very sweet but still I was pretty happy I can’t complain about my good run in this tournament. After I busted I did an interview with Pokernews.nl (I appear at 06:49):

I did another interview earlier that week(I appear at 04:28):

I’m ready for the MicroMillions Challenge and ready for the PCA! See you at the tables.

Too much to talk about

Poker 1 Response »

Oct 292012

There is just too much to talk about, that’s what you get if you don’t blog every week like you should. To help you skip things you don’t want to read about I will title each section. If a blog requires an index you could say it’s too long but it’s up to you if you want to read everything or not. If you are bored at work this could be a good way to kill some time but in case you only read those parts that interest you, I don’t blame you 😉

WCOOP LHE

I ended my last blog with: “I’ll probably blog again when I’m back from Barcelona unless I win one of the WCOOPs.” Well that almost happened! I didn’t play a lot of WCOOP’s because of my trip to Barcelona but I did play Event #20: $215 Fixed Limit and finished 11th. During my deep run in the Sunday Million I was pretty nervous and wasn’t really that confident that I was one of the better players, during this event I wasn’t nervous at all and was really confident that I would reach the final table. When we arrived at the last 2 tables there were some good players left but after Debilne_Ucho busted in 13th place the only good player remaining was djk123. I’m not sure how often he plays Limit but at least I considered him as the best player left. I was really card dead for a long period and when finally catching a good hand (AdQc) I got it all in on a 4d,5s,7d,2s board vs As9h and was 3 outered (4 outs for a split) on the river.

I was probably even more disappointed than when I busted the Sunday Million. While the first prize for the Sunday Million was way higher, LHE is my game and having the chance to win a bracelet in the game which you’ve been playing for years would have been amazing. I’m really eager now to get a final table in a big tournament as getting so far twice really gives confidence for somebody who rarely plays tournaments. Let’s hope it was more than luck 😉

30th B-day

The 15th of September I celebrated my 30th birthday and what a great party it was. 60/70 friends, lots of presents, alcohol and good music. It’s great to have all the people you care about in one place at the same time. Such a great and happy bunch and sometimes you wish you could freeze time! Some of my friends are already married and/or have children but most of them are not that far yet, I really wonder how my birthday party will look like in 5 years time and obviously how my own life looks like. Hopefully I’m as happy and healthy as now, 30 isn’t that old after all!

Barcelona

So after my birthday party it was time for a week in Barcelona. It started pretty good when we arrived at our hotel. The hotel was in the old city center but from the inside really modern and had a great vibe. The reason for picking this hotel was the rooftop infinity pool, we’ve used it every day to relax after walking around this great city. Lots of cava, great sushi, tapas and sunshine of course. My girlfriend gave me a great birthday present, tickets for Barcelona – Spartak Moscow. Like a real tourist I bought a Messi Barcelona shirt and seeing Barcelona play in Camp Nou was magnificent! I hope to be back soon again, maybe for the next EPT?

Poker

Since my return from Barcelona I’ve been very busy with poker again! LHE cashgames have become really hard lately, there are less tables at each stake and there are hardly any High/Mid-Stake games running. Now I don’t even want to play High Stakes games but since the players who do can’t play High Stakes they move down a bit so this makes the Mid Stakes games harder. Some Mid-Stake grinders then move down to avoid the better players and then those games become harder as well. This happens at every stake and the result is that all the games become harder which is bad for everybody. This has been going on for some time now and it’s not like the games are completely unbeatable but I was kind of done fighting the same regs over and over. Some regs moved to other games and I was wondering if I shouldn’t do the same.

I’ve been thinking about playing more MTTs because of my deep runs as of late but in general I wanted to improve my NL game. To do this I decided to grind some ZOOM 25NL, mainly because I also really love ZOOM. The fast pace and the fact you can play a lot of hands/hr while never playing more than 4 hands at the same time is great. I have a pretty good idea of people’s ranges in tournaments but had never really put in a decent sample in NL Cashgames. The biggest different is of course that you almost always play more blinds then in a MTT and it took me some time to adjust to this. I couldn’t believe how tight people were in these low stakes ZOOM games. Nobody was ever bluffing, at least that was what I experienced in 20.000 hands of ZOOM. You probably don’t have to bluff to win at the lower stakes but I really was shocked how tight these games played. I really missed the reckless fish in these games and because of the fact you play a lot of different players in ZOOM games, it took a long time before I really figured out it played out this tight. I took notes on people but since I hardly played against the same people and had little stats to base my decisions on I called off way to light in a lot of cases. Since I’m used to play with a lot of stats available I figured out that regular cash tables were probably better for me then ZOOM and this proved to be true. I can’t call myself a real NL shark yet but I’m up on the normal tables (of course running below EV 🙂 ) and have been working on my non showdown winnings.

The sample is really small still but I’m planning to keep playing some more NL cash just to get the hang of it. The idea still is to play more MTTs and I’ll probably try to get in a good sample during the last two months of this year. I enjoyed putting effort to get better in poker again but I can’t say I really enjoy playing NL Cashgames. Because of the very nitty nature of the game I think LHE is way more fun. You can play more hands, there is more action postflop and I really missed the LHE cashgames these last weeks. I want to use to remainder of the year to freebee a bit between games and might decide to go back to LHE or maybe even move to PLO, who knows? I did sign up with Leggopoker and so far I’ve enjoyed watching a couple of videos. I think they offer great NL and MTT videos and I think it could really help me in my overall NL game which I never really gave any attention at all.

MCOP, PCA & Other Live Events

Next week the Master Classic of Poker starts in Amsterdam. This is the largest tournament series in the Netherlands and has a €5.000 Main Event. Unfortunately there are no online qualifiers since our government doesn’t allow these but last year there were still over 300 players. 5k is a bit too much for myself but I will be playing 3 side-events, starting Saturday 3 November with the €1.500, the €750 event on Friday 9 November and the €300 Turbo on Saturday 10 November. I’m really looking forward to playing these tournaments, this time I hopefully make it to the final table instead of busting in 15th or 11th 🙂

On the 24th of November I’ll attend the Open Pokerdag 2012 in Utrecht. Within 3 days this event already reached the cap of 200 players and after upping the cap to 240 it was sold out a day later and now even has a waiting list of 40 people! I think it’s really going to be fun to hang out with 240 poker minded people and since a lot of people know each other via the online communities I expect a lot of trashtalking and drinking. On the 1st of December there is another event which I will attend but I’m not sure what I can say about it at this stage but I’ll probably write something about it in my next blog.

Then we are already heading towards the end of the year which means the PCA is getting close as well. I attended the PCA during the last two years and I really hope to be back again this year. I’ve already played some qualifiers but so far didn’t have any luck. I’ve played in the $10 10 Packages Guaranteed Qualifier which are every Sunday as well, qualify for just $10 would be really sweet! I’ll definitely try out some more qualifiers and encourage you to do this as well since it’s just such a great event. You can check out more info here: PCA 10th Anniversary

DaWarsaw visits Amsterdam & Cycling/Tennis Sports Bet with a friend

I’m really eager to play poker but unfortunately I have a really busy schedule apart from playing poker and of course my day-job. Luckily these other things are almost always fun things so my life ain’t that bad 😉 Fellow TeamOnline DaWarsaw(Greg) visited Amsterdam for 3 days last week and I helped him out hosting a Poker Tournament for 80 Polish bankers in Amsterdam. I was shocked how bad 80 high educated people were at playing poker but it also reminded me at how the early days of poker actually looked liked. I was probably as bad as these players when I started out but I also remember the beginning of the poker boom when I already had some experience but most other players really didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I wish….

The next day we walked around Amsterdam, even visited a museum (Rijksmuseum) and enjoyed some Sushi. I’ve only met Greg last year at the PCA but already consider him as a good poker friend and hope to see him again at the PCA, else I definitely visit Warsaw somewhere next year. If you haven’t watched his short Team Online movie yet, check it out below:

This weekend I also finished a sports bet with a friend of mine. In Las Vegas we talked a bit about doing a sports bet and although I don’t consider myself to be great at sports I did think I had a good chance of winning this bet. We agreed we would battle in cycling, tennis and table tennis and the fun part was that we had never played with or against each other so we had no clue how good the other one actually was. I considered myself favorite in cycling an table tennis so hoped to win the bet. 3 weeks ago we started out with cycling and to my suprise he beat me by more then 1,5 minute!

Last weekend we scheduled the tennis match and after the warm-up I felt that he wasn’t as big of a favorite as I thought he would be. I was really concentrated and had a pretty good start but after he broke my serve at 3-3 he made it 3-5 on his own serve and took the first set down. The second set he started serving but this time he broke my serve at 3-4 and again took the set down in 3-6. So match lost, bet lost, which meant I would stake him in the €300 MCOP side-event. We did however agree that the loser would have some % in the tournament so in case he ships the event I’m not that sad after all 🙂

New Team Online Members & Team Online Freerolls

Last month Team Online welcomed two new members. The first one is Naoya ‘nkeyno’ Kihara and was the first Japanese WSOP bracelet winner. He plays both MTTs and PLO Cashgames. The other player is Caio ‘pessagno’ Pessagno who is a Brazilian poker player who plays mainly MTTs. This month Team Online welcomed another new member and this time it was the very well known Isaac Haxton. Most people know him from the High Stakes NL Cash tables and as the guy who played Isildur1 twice in the PokerStars Superstar Showdown. He also finished 2nd at the PCA in 2007, this bluff in the HU against Ryan Daut made some great TV:

Currently he participates in another great PokerStars Promo called the All-Star Showdown in which he already won his first match against Kanu7 and can win more than $500.000!

He might be able to find some time in his agenda to join next week’s Team Online Freerolls which are every 1st Sunday of the month. Click on the banner below to see how you can play these freerolls!

I think this blog contains plenty of content again and I’ll hope to give an update after the MCOP bragging about a final table or even a victory. See you at the Master Classics or Online!

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