Such Sundays

Had decent score in the f.tilt 100r 1a, coming 2nd for just over $6k which was pretty good form leaving me optimistic of the weekend tournaments ahead. Well a near miss the stars Saturday $300 gave me $1100 and that was about it for Saturday, fired blanks for the rest of the session.

I didn't play a full Sunday schedule due to being in Australia and the warm up starts at 2.45am here, sigh. My first tournament of the day was the UB 200k which had a nice overlay but that didn't affect me as i was out 10 before the money, lol. I made the cash in the F.tilt 750k before being on the wrong end of a Ak vs QQ coup, moments later I was on the losing end of the same coup to bubble the mulligan, sigh.

Coming to the end of my session I was going well in the 100r stars, and the 30r on full tilt. Stars ended like this, instant life tilt:

PokerStars Game #17211228504: Tournament #86967639, $100+$9 Hold'em No Limit - Level XVII (2000/4000) - 2008/05/05 - 00:04:26 (ET)
Table '86967639 26' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: nofingclue11 (61078 in chips)
Seat 2: AaronBeen (49602 in chips)
Seat 3: uclabruinz (111253 in chips)
Seat 4: loluno123 (99535 in chips)
Seat 5: bluffdeez503 (64946 in chips)
Seat 7: bigegypt (82345 in chips)
Seat 8: Paolo69 (69475 in chips)
Seat 9: bigtruck4w (113921 in chips)
nofingclue11: posts the ante 400
AaronBeen: posts the ante 400
uclabruinz: posts the ante 400
loluno123: posts the ante 400
bluffdeez503: posts the ante 400
bigegypt: posts the ante 400
Paolo69: posts the ante 400
bigtruck4w: posts the ante 400
Paolo69: posts small blind 2000
bigtruck4w: posts big blind 4000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Paolo69 [As ]
nofingclue11: folds
AaronBeen: folds
uclabruinz: folds
loluno123: folds
bluffdeez503: raises 60546 to 64546 and is all-in
bigegypt: folds
Paolo69: calls 62546
bigtruck4w: folds
*** FLOP *** [ ]
*** TURN *** [ ] []
*** RIVER *** [ ] []
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Paolo69: shows [As ] (a flush, King high)
bluffdeez503: shows [ ] (a flush, Ace high)
bluffdeez503 collected 136292 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 136292 | Rake 0
Board [ ]
Seat 1: nofingclue11 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 2: AaronBeen folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 3: uclabruinz folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 4: loluno123 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: bluffdeez503 showed [ ] and won (136292) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 7: bigegypt (button) folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 8: Paolo69 (small blind) showed [As ] and lost with a flush, King high
Seat 9: bigtruck4w (big blind) folded before Flop

This was for 4th place chips and 30 players left with $48k FTW, :-( I regained my composure to make the final of the f.tilt 30r but that euphoria was to be short lived as I was on the wrong end of this hand. This didn't hurt as much as the 100r as I would have played his hand the same in his shoes, just compounded the misery from the earlier 100r beat.

Full Tilt Poker Game #6293320519: $22,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (47210787), Table 7 - 2000/4000 Ante 500 - No Limit Hold'em - 1:16:57 ET - 2008/05/05
Seat 1: rdjbluf (78,430)
Seat 2: winston621 (126,052)
Seat 3: DWCFLORIDA36 (284,578)
Seat 4: double6 lounge (119,500)
Seat 6: Belabacsi (227,114)
Seat 7: daisyxoxo (185,780)
Seat 8: pbdrunks (83,742)
Seat 9: LEADBOOTS (164,804)
rdjbluf antes 500
winston621 antes 500
DWCFLORIDA36 antes 500
double6 lounge antes 500
Belabacsi antes 500
daisyxoxo antes 500
pbdrunks antes 500
LEADBOOTS antes 500
pbdrunks posts the small blind of 2,000
LEADBOOTS posts the big blind of 4,000
The button is in seat #7
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to LEADBOOTS [ ]
rdjbluf folds
winston621 folds
DWCFLORIDA36 folds
double6 lounge folds
Belabacsi raises to 10,500
daisyxoxo folds
pbdrunks folds
LEADBOOTS calls 6,500
*** FLOP *** [ ]
LEADBOOTS checks
Belabacsi bets 16,000
LEADBOOTS has 15 seconds left to act
LEADBOOTS raises to 40,000
Belabacsi raises to 216,114, and is all in
LEADBOOTS calls 113,804, and is all in
Belabacsi shows [ ]
LEADBOOTS shows [ ]
Uncalled bet of 62,310 returned to Belabacsi
*** TURN *** [ ] []
*** RIVER *** [ ] []
Belabacsi shows a flush, Ace high
LEADBOOTS shows two pair, Queens and Tens
Belabacsi wins the pot (334,608) with a flush, Ace high
LEADBOOTS stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 334,608 | Rake 0
Board: [ ]
Seat 1: rdjbluf folded before the Flop
Seat 2: winston621 folded before the Flop
Seat 3: DWCFLORIDA36 folded before the Flop
Seat 4: double6 lounge folded before the Flop
Seat 6: Belabacsi showed [ ] and won (334,608) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 7: daisyxoxo (button) folded before the Flop
Seat 8: pbdrunks (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 9: LEADBOOTS (big blind) showed [ ] and lost with two pair, Queens and Tens


Anti-climax to the big weekend tournaments, but there is always next week, lol

back to my first love, for now

Apologies for the time Ive taken to update, no excuses, just kept putting it off really. April has been a very up n down month for me poker wise, but ending on a high eventually. Its been a complete write off cash wise with me finishing $32k down, sigh. Quite a bit of running bad mixed in with some bad plays from me and that was the final result.

Since last week I decided to return to the mtt front in preperation for the WSOP and to get away from cash for a while. Well its gone pretty well so far, with me winning 3 tournaments so far and a scattering of final tables/deep runs. My wins were for $5400, $3600 and $11.5k :-) This coupled with my 3rd place in the stars 1k and my win in the 30r means its a pretty good month overall despite losing 30k on cash which is a bonus.

Tournaments were my first love at poker and am enjoying playing them again at the moment. However the long hours required to play as well as the frustration that comes along with tournaments I can always see myself returning to the cash game route after the WSOP, but we will see.


During the month of June, I will be sharing a house in Vegas with several other poker players including Moorman and we have decided to have a bet for the month. The winner will be the one who has the highest PLB score on pocket fives for the entire month. The loser has to pay $1k to the other guy, take the whole vegas house out for dinner and wear a t-shirt in the main event saying the other guy owned his soul, lol.

I think moorman definately has an edge in the bet, but should be fun, it isnt for a lot of money just pride and bragging rights and I relish the challenge. Congrats to moorman who cracked the top 5 of online rankings today

Just finished my tournaments for today with a few cashes including a 3rd place in the stars 50r for $4500 ish. I did blow a huge stack in the full tilt 100r 6 max though which I was pretty angry at myself about as I had played really well to accumulate a stack in the 1st place, but nevermind. Ill leave with you a hand from the 6 max tournament that won me a lot of chips with a soul read, lol

FullTiltPoker Game #6242663487: $100,000 Guarantee (Rebuy) (46782014), Table 15 - 170/340 Ante 25 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:46:29 ET - 2008/04/30
Seat 1: JLew (11,116)
Seat 2: CravingChips (22,298)
Seat 3: onefreekingtime (8,883)
Seat 4: YoungSupremacy (13,593)
Seat 5: LEADBOOTS (27,622)
Seat 6: Bussa Buss (5,651)
JLew antes 25
CravingChips antes 25
onefreekingtime antes 25
YoungSupremacy antes 25
LEADBOOTS antes 25
Bussa Buss antes 25
YoungSupremacy posts the small blind of 170
LEADBOOTS posts the big blind of 340
The button is in seat #3
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to LEADBOOTS [9d Ah]
Bussa Buss folds
JLew folds
CravingChips raises to 880
onefreekingtime has 15 seconds left to act
onefreekingtime calls 880
YoungSupremacy folds
LEADBOOTS calls 540
*** FLOP *** [2s 5s 9h]
LEADBOOTS has 15 seconds left to act
LEADBOOTS bets 1,700
CravingChips raises to 3,400
onefreekingtime folds
LEADBOOTS calls 1,700
*** TURN *** [2s 5s 9h] [6h]
LEADBOOTS checks
CravingChips bets 3,640
LEADBOOTS calls 3,640
*** RIVER *** [2s 5s 9h 6h] [Td]
LEADBOOTS checks
CravingChips bets 14,353, and is all in
LEADBOOTS has 15 seconds left to act
LEADBOOTS has requested TIME
LEADBOOTS calls 14,353
*** SHOW DOWN ***
CravingChips shows [9c 7c] a pair of Nines
LEADBOOTS shows [9d Ah] a pair of Nines
LEADBOOTS wins the pot (45,746) with a pair of Nines
CravingChips stands up
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 45,746 | Rake 0
Board: [2s 5s 9h 6h Td]
Seat 1: JLew folded before the Flop
Seat 2: CravingChips showed [9c 7c] and lost with a pair of Nines
Seat 3: onefreekingtime (button) folded on the Flop
Seat 4: YoungSupremacy (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: LEADBOOTS (big blind) showed [9d Ah] and won (45,746) with a pair of Nines
Seat 6: Bussa Buss folded before the Flop

Lazy week

Since the 3rd place in the stars 1k, I have been pretty lazy poker wise hardly playing at all. I did put in one marathon cash session that went pretty badly with me finishing -$20k all on 10/20. I ran pretty badly but also made one terrible bluff for a double buy in, oops. Since that ive played a few small sessions and got about $8k back leaving me $22k down for the month on cash. Still up for the month after the tournament scores but really hoping to turn round the cash side of things in the 2nd half of the month or hit another score in the $1k mtt, lol.

I sat down to play the Sunday tournaments yesterday buy gave up and unregistered from everything before the Sunday million ever started. I lost AA vs TJ AIPF in the warm up and QQ vs AJ in the party 300k to break my tolerance early.

Finally sorted my plans for leaving Australia today which sees me heading to Hawaii for a week of relaxing and time away from poker, before I become completely immersed in it for the 7 weeks after. I don't have enough extended times when poker is completely off my agenda so I'm hoping it will be a good recharge period before WSOP.

Thats all for now,

Pab

PS. here are the links to the animated hand history's of the two tournaments I mentioned in the previous post. You need a pokerxfactor account to view the links but its free to join. Any questions/random abuse of my donk play is welcome, enjoy.

Tilt - $30r win - http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HH125445/594_20080412_103634

Stars $1k 3rd place - http://www.pokerxfactor.com/HH124054/594_20080403_075927

April only 3 days in But plenty of Incident

So march finished and after playing very little I made a decent amount of $$ so was happy. I am back settled in Sydney again and the plan was to start playing a lot of poker again in April.

After a decent few months I decided to take a stab at the 25/50 games again at the start of April. Ive had a lot of success here in the past and my flatmate Dave (geeforce1) thinks the games have a lot more donks than 10/20. This hand was my first big pot I lost, I think How I played the hand by checking on the turn I have to go broke when he shoves the river, no getting away IMO, others may differ.

http://weaktight.com/150049

After that I kept playing but didn't play any more interesting pots but couldn't win a 3 bet pot to save my life and ended up $15k down on the session. Ill be moving back to 10/20nl for the time being, even though I am rolled for $25/50 I wouldn't want to put pressure on myself my incurring pretty big losses at 25/50. Ill keep taking shots if i see a weak game, or coming off the back of a good week, but 10/20nl will still be my regular game.

Onto tournaments and they have been a mixed bag in the last few days. I played a lot of the Sunday tournaments including the $1k buy in Sunday million on pokerstars. On the 8th hand of the tournament I had AA vs KK in preflop and lost to cripple me. I managed to hold on with my short stack for quite a while and then made a re-steal with 24s at the 500/1k level and ran into JJ, he time banked it for 15 BB's, lol . No cashes and I ended up quitting early through pure frustration, although I did give my $200 to charity as promised, :-)

Monday was a day off and then came back on Tuesday to play a few tournaments including the $1k buy super Tuesday on pokerstars. I managed to get 3rd in the Stars tournament for $34k and also won the F.Tilt $30r at the same time for $6.6k, ship the $40k. I would like to compliment Pokerstars on a amazing structure in the $1k tournament and would definitely recommend playing it to those who can afford it, or attempting to satellite in for lower stakes players I wont talk about the tournaments just yet as I'm looking to animate the HH's on pokerxfactor or cardrunners over the next few days and post the links up here.

All this week I am 'In the Well' On the blondepoker forum. Basically it is a week long QnA session with me. Moorman did it last week, and I was approached to be in this week, here is the link:

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=32412.0

If I manage to animate the HH's, ill post them on the blog, that's all for now,

Pab

EPT poland

Well, it took 30hrs to get door to door, Sydney to Warsaw, and I lasted a whopping 4 hrs 10 mins in the tournament. Such a long journey is not ideal preparation for a big live tournament but that was out of my control, so had to deal with it.

I was playing lots of small-medium pots in the first 2 levels, dropping a little bit then getting back to starting stack, very uneventful. The first indication that this wasn't to be my day was at the end of the 75/150 level when i picked up KTs on the button. This was the last level where I felt i had the stack to see a flop for cheap and try to flop big. A player opens in Mid position who seemed fairly loose, calling a RR with 85s in a previous pot OOP. I call on the button and the BB comes along as well. I see a near perfect flop containing the QJ spades and 1 small card giving me a proper up n down straight flush draw. The BB and the original raiser both check to me and I bet just under the pot size, maybe about 900 into 1100, the BB folds and the original raiser calls. I have no idea what this means as I'm very new to the table and have no image myself or any real information on my opponent. The check call by him led me to believe he had a hand like AJ, KJ, or maybe slow playing QQ or JJ. The turn is a low blank and he checks again, I thought about betting but didn't want to get blown off my hand if he was slow playing a big pair. Also by checking it shows weakness and looks like i was just having a stab on the flop in position. Unfortunately I miss my millions of outs on the river and he makes a pot bet into me and I give it up.

After that the blinds start creeping up but my stack is stagnant. A guy on my table plays out a pot where he is bluffing with T high and has to show it down on the river and doesn't seem happy at all, since it was one of those instances where the winning player requested his opponents hand be turned over after a river bet n call. The very next hand I raise 89 hearts UTG and the T high man from before is my only caller. Raising this hand with my stack was very marginal but my image was tight. The flop comes T 8 2 with 1 heart and I check, he instantly bets close to the pot size. I have enough to raise his bet 3x if i shove all in which is what I decided to do since i felt there was a good chance he was steaming from the previous pot and I have a couple of back door draws as well. So I shove and he instantly beats me in the pot with AA, good read me, I pick up a heart draw on the turn but miss on the river and depart. My play on the final hand is a little risky but i feel with my image and my perception of my opponent i get enough folds on the flop to make it profitable, but meh.

As I said it wasn't the best preparation for a big live tournament but since I won the seat online my hands were tied. This is likely to be my last live tournament before the WSOP although I am considering going to Costa Rica for the LAPT event a few days before the WSOP starts, but not sure. The Hyatt hotel in Warsaw was very nice but i didn't manage to venture out into Warsaw itself, simply due to the fact I was lazy. I arrived in Poland wearing jeans and a T-shirt, got into a taxi and the driver asked me If i flown in from Barbados, lol. 2 coats and a hat seemed to the standard attire for the weather.

As far as online poker goes, I had an issues with my copy of windows since when i first purchased vista I bought an upgrade version instead of the full one, but it gave me a 30 day period before ceasing to work. So I only had my mac OS for about 2 weeks which restricted me to playing on stars and f.tilt, whereas I wanted to play cash on ipoker. I hardly played cash at all during this period but did play a full session of Sunday tournaments which went dreadfully, the less said about it the better. I did make a pledge on the blonde Sunday thread to donate $200 (avg buy in) to charity everytime i play a full compliment of Sunday tournaments so i feel like I've done something worthwhile for the day.

With my windows been out of commission and with me traveling to the EPT etc.. I have only managed 7500 hands this month, but managed a $24k profit, the majority on ipoker 10/20nl. I will be trying to get more money onto stars and full tilt to play 10/20 on there if there is no action on ipoker or if Dave (geenetic) is playing on ipoker as we are living in the same flat.

That's about all for now, will be trying to play mostly cash with a few of the bigger buy in tournaments online starting with the stars million (quarterly $1k buy in) this weekend.

Pab

Long time no update

I have been rather lazy updating this blog, so thought I best do it now to try and get back into the habit as the WSOP is fast approaching. February was an up n down month, tournaments on a whole were very frustrating, with a few near misses but no real scores. I did spin up a step 3 EPT ticket which i didn't know i had into a EPT Warsaw package which is pretty sweet. I didn't play as much cash as liked due to the FTOPS series tempting me to play too many tournaments instead. I ended up about $15k down for cash, but with a few tournament cashes and the value of the EPT package it was about break even.

March has started better, no online tournaments so far which is fine by me, and $12k up from cash over 3800 hands. Ive been slacking putting in the hours in as I have just gone back to Sydney to meet up with friends from home and been having to much of a good time really. I have played a few of the WSOP steps on stars and have made it to step 6 twice, busting out of both to 3 outers in preflop, meh. Stars have just announced the Latin American poker tour (LAPT) which looks like great fun. I traveled Peru and Chile in 2005 and it was a great experience but one of my friends traveled S.America more extensively and had nothing but great things to say about it. Traveling that far to play a relatively small buy in mtt doesn't really appeal to me, but if i spin up from some steps and get to go for a freeroll id jump at the chance.

I am currently in Warsaw for the EPT, and will be starting day 1A in little over an hour. I did have a bitch of journey from Sydney, 30hrs door to door and had a women throwing up in the seat next door but 1 to me for the 1st 7hr flight. The taxi driver asked me if i had flown in from Barbados, I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, as it was 2 degrees in Poland.

Anyway hopefully ill run good in the EPT and get a nice score to report, live updates available on the blondepoker forum. A quick shout out to moorman who took down the $5k entry winner take all tourney on stars this weekend. Even though its a winner take all, moorman struck a deal either 3 way or heads up, but eventually took it down for about $55k i believe. For more details im sure he will have a write up on blog soon.