Assface drop

Noooo! So I was kinda happy doing well for november, had a pretty decent hourly etc. Kinda blev all of that last 2 playing days.

Whatever, shit happens. Funny to lose that much in 83 hands. The rest today was lost 100$ish on PLO mostly on an all in TTxx vs A35x on T62 (obv 4 on river but he had a flushdraw too) but then I kinda spewed 180$ in NLHE.

That kinda ruined my mood for poker but Ive booked a flight back to europe for christmas so I will book a little profit for november, then play sparsely in december with the studies ending and then try to grind as well as get a nice vacation, I am thinking 50/50 play/fun.

Room Review; Palamor Card Club, San Diego, CA

Promotions; 40$ Earlybird special + badbeat jackpot
Rake; 5$ drop (per hand!!)
City: San Diego (central)
Date of review: Nov 2013
Other; Dealers frequently play in the games.


I played at Palomar card club yesterday at the 2/3$ game btw. Let do a review of that place. So El Cajon road is a semi-rundown road with some non-appealing bars and restaurants and an old 60's-sign. I walked up that road finding Palomar on the top of the hill and it doesnt look special. I read the reviews and they are, as usual, pretty correct.

They have paigow, blackjack I think but mainly poker is played. The games that have been running the 2 times ive been there is 2/3$ NLHE, 3/6$ FLHE, I believe 10/20 PLO (not sure if it was running but it was on the board) and perhaps 5/10$ NLHE as well. The rake is 5$ no matter the potsize. People say its standard in California but the argument that "its okay because that is what everybody else is charging" doesnt really quite fly. You must enjoy poker A LOT to play at the lower stakes with that rake. Add up the times you get AKo vs JJ-AA and take out  1,67 BB and you wont have much edge even if you are Phil Ivey. Regarding the game quality then it would have been a good game online but IMO kinda tight and not fun live. Very hard to exploit the loads of people that play weaktight given that high rake.
They also spread very very high games (last night was 600/1200$ mixed games with a very famous player btw) which is kinda cool :).

Some people commented on rude staff and especially the owner. I found him to be nice but then again, I rarely have attitude problems given that I am usually polite and friendly.

Dealers that play in the games (continue below if you dont care about why its wrong)
What was more disturbing though is the fact that the dealers played. Find any type of cheating extremly unlikely (even though the dealer got run over by the deck and busted me last time, haha lol) but it feels weird with dealers playing and they also have an semi-unfair advantage by dealing to the same players they play against (they collect information  about the players game without giving away any themselves).

The biggest problem with that though is not really any of the above, it is just that they will be very boring opponents since 9 of 10 are supertight.

(Continuation)
All in all I had a better experience playing in any room in Vegas given a) the rake was lower b) you also get free drinks! c) the atmosphere was nicer IMO and d) the games were a lot looser and then e) If you are like me and want to play higher then 2/3 but lower then 5/10 then you are obviously out of luck. Maybe free drinks would compensate but then again, there are tons of cardrooms worldwide that charges more rake and also has less tables.

I will personally come back when/if I would play a bit higher stakes.
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Vegas part 2 and crusssshing it!

Yo people! So I went to Vegas just recently and withdrew my skrill balance. Unfortunatly that cash arrived my last day in vegas but whatever, the bare $500 cash I brought survived for a little 8/16 and 10/20 FLSH as well as some 1/3 NLHE. Got completly shitfaced during a small winning session and ended up doing something I would kinda regret. I am trying to think though that bad stuff happening to you gives you some sort of balance and makes you human.

Played 10/20$ the other day and noticed old-style poker again, long time ive seen that. Like late position steal, I call on BB and flop A96 comes and I c/r K6o and get a fold either on flop or turn from a huge range. Online has come to this situation where any flopped pair might call you down all the way and you have very little fold equity so you stop doing that too loosely. But now you can run people over again without spewing away chips! It is still full ring though but I thought I played it well.

Anyways! I am down 500ish dollars this month live, no biggie. What is better is online, specifically today! So this friday I was overintoxicated and normally I can handle my stuff well but it turned out I embarrsed myself more than I have ever done. Perhaps not to the most important people (thank god) but in the worst way at least. So why do I mention that? Well because the pokergods compensated me today by giving me cards to win 1120$ in like 90 minutes :D:D:

800$ish I won at this mobile pokersite that just have awesome value at NLSH (even I can win) while the rest was at PLO and FLHE. Got some cash from other sources just recently and hooked up a good way to go to the oceans11-casino so I hope to go and play some 15/30$ FLSH there soon. Have set a kinda strict BR-rules so if the first session goes bad it might be the end of live poker for this year.

October update; Played very little my first month in the US.

Whatsaap!?
Now I have been in the US for one month. So I generally played very little poker, still havnt registered for any US-facing site really but one good site still offers me service and the plan now is to play FLSH + PLO simultanously (before I try to seperate them) and that works pretty fine. I won a huge 70$ while I lost 400$ one night playing live.

Reevaluated the idea of playing at oceans 11 (google maps showed the wrong timing, 2 hours is actually just 1 hour) but I am still waiting for two big transfers. Its very possible ill play there on the weekends, depending on how it goes obviously. Gonna take out 3k$ and possibily play 15/30$ FLSH or so. Low roll but dont mind busting.

Will possibly try to go to vegas to when time allows but again, I try to focus on schools and its enough for me to play 3-4 months per year during summer and the christmas break. Feel very excited about poker again and I am already excited when I get time off and can put in huge volume.

I have been very disorganized btw, trying to find my daily routines etc so I hope to get my shit together and use my time more effectively and perhaps then I will be able to handle school, have a nice social life + poker too.

Really good september + Moving to the US

Yoyo!

PLO res

FLSH-results

So september was great. Spend 2 weeks travelling as I mentioned, came 3rd in a tourney and had a nice WR at both PLO and FLHE. I am especially happy about the PLO-result even though it is lol samplesize and I also ran very good :D.

Up 20 buyins after 6k hands, 9 buyins in EV at PLO.
13k FLSH was played and was up a nice 2.55 BB/100.
I tried to pull up my stats for the mixed games (2,8k hands or so) but couldnt figure out how pokeit works in that regard.

Excluded more or less HU which made the results more stable. All in all I feel great about the summer, I checked some stats. So I played 74k hands at low stakes and won a shy 0.3 BB/100. Filter out the HU though and it rises up 0.8 BB/100 which, considering a bad august + very very high rake to be kinda neat. 195 hours in total (maybe 95% correct) and won 7 out of 9 weeks.

 At the stakes of 1/2-3/6 then it doesnt really amount to a fortune but def a nice addition for a student and I definetly proven that a) I am still a winning player b) I dont have to get a normal job next summer. I am also now rolled to play slightly higher next summer and the expected EV by playing 1/2 in comparison to 3/6 and 5/10 is not just 3-5x as high but more, considering the rake.

So the idea now is to find some american sites, play PLO there and also play live poker. The amount of time I will play live will prob depend on what kind of studying is required for my subjects. If it is a lot of reading etc then I can easily do that while playing but if it will be more project-based then perhaps there will be very little time for poker. A very good thing is that one of the busiest cardrooms with suitable stakes is very very close to my school and where I intend to live :). I think I will put between 2k-3k and form a "live bankroll" and play some FLSH but mainly NL and would be kinda nice to grow it from there. Play O8 and mixed games but obv these play a lot higher so it might be wishful thinking.

Gonna fly on friday, start school on monday so I guess I can grind some but I expect the following weeks to be kinda pokerfree and priority will now change to be 70% school, 15% socializing, 10% working out and 5% poker.

Disciplined man. Summer-grind approaching the end.

Yoyo! Whattapp!? So Ive continued grinding and it's been good. I had a great day with up 722$, and some others too. I am pretty happy with being up 3183$ in play (2150ish is the tourney :D), especially since I feel like ive been playing my b-game a lot when I am doing some mixed games and also tourneys. I need to keep the games separate.

Anyways, so sunday was up and I had to defend my place but unfortunatly I went out kinda early. Went very deep in a big tourney at stars.es but was a bit spewy in bad spots which was kinda undiscplined but then I went out with 1,5 average stack close to ITM with AQ vs JJ and that was that. Decided that I will only use my fpps/pps for mtts, never gonna pay the 215$ or whatever, feels like an okay balance.

So I was deep in one then and that forced me to play a very long session. You can see that it was 4,5h or so and I normally only play 2h:ish. I am really happy with my comeback, the wtsd/w$sd is probably the sickest (I know its easy to say this a lot) considering the 2,5k actually played but I won this mega-hand of 280€ or so in PLO and then kept my focus and also run a lot over EV (finally!) and managed to go from -650$ to -33$ for a long day of 3812 hands and 8 hours. I lost 450$ in tourneytickets that i didnt pay for but got like 200$ in rakeback so I dunno. It was an okay day but like that I kept my spirits up.

Its very easy btw to keep spirits up when you had recent success. I know success is a bit strong word but relative to my living style etc then I am happy with what I have earned this summer, mainly in end of july but now then also early september which august being shitty. It doesnt feel like a waste of time and I noticed today that I dont get down being stuck 200 BBs or whatever. Great feeling.

Booked a vacation now to Japan and prob gonna bring the laptop but grinding will prob not happen that much. I expect one more grinding week and then that is it before going to the US.

What a comeback, long monste-rgrind

I was also about to post some mixed game result but I was suprised of how few hands ive actually played. I have around 300 hands of each game. Its kinda irrelevant in that sense but im winning at fl08, razz, nlhe while losing at the stud and stud08 as well as triple draw. Anyways, gonna start later on to actually check stats and some stuff, I love stats :D.

Nice start to september: Deep cash at final table mixed game + 640$ in cashgame

Yo! Another week, another dollar. Several dollars in fact! Been kinda dismotivated getting pwned by partypoker but also running bad last week and august in general after a great start. Last week I lost 714$ in play in 12 hours. Thought I played more though :P.

Anyways, I realized that I prob wont reach platinum in september and thought I use my FPPs for tournaments. I got this unexploitive shovechart that takes into your position, stacksize, with or without antes and it appears that you can openshove unexploitively up to 26 BBs which is like 90% of alla tournaments. That means a losing proposition obviously given the rake and that you only square the field but at least I can count the 215$ tourney ticket as 200$ EV and not disregard it since I dont feel that I am a superawesome NL-MTT-player. Actually, I am starting to change that approach a little. Not that I am awesome, but ive actually watched some MTT-coaching lately and it appears that if I just tone down the aggression, cbet a lot smaller then I would do in CGs then I think I can be a winning MTT-player. Or maybe that is pushing it, maybe winning in terms of playing when 90% of the field are noobs but then probably getting crushed when more savvy people are still there. So yeah, given the very high ratio of recreational players then I think i have re-evaluated my EV for mtts.

So, I played some tournies! I was doing allright in all but got it in pretty standardly with shoving like 11 BBs on CO with JJ vs AA on BB, another QQ vs KK and then it was something pretty stupid. Ohh yeah I remembered I did a very questionable shove with 99 into topset on Q6T8 haha. Given how the hand went out then that was prob not the best but then there were some hands I think I played a lot better then my opponents. Did some cool moves. Also people donated chips freely. I was kinda shocked why someone would overbetshove 4x pot on Q569 with AQ when I had 87.

So anyways, I bust out of sunday million, partypoker 200k and sundaystorm+big but I registered for a mixed game tournament. I have only played this tournament twice, first time I won in a 3k field for freeroll cash (think i won 150$ in bonuses) and this time the buyin was 100$+ and a field under 100. It was kinda nice though, you have decent chance to get high up, anything more then 3k$ for first would be awesome and motivating for me.

Tourneys in mostly fixed limit betting structures are kinda interesting. At first thought you would think that it would be a total snoozefest at earlier stages but I thought it was well-tempoed throughout in all that I have played, the blinds feel meaningful but not too big with an exception. It would be nice to slow it a bit more in the later stages. Its waay to rushed and there is not that much skill playing 5 BB deep FLSH or anything fixed for that matter.

I also dabbled with this pokertracking-software that works for all games and I think it would be kinda invalueable and an edge that most people do not have. So I imported the tourney and it got through correctly but I cannot find/start a replay, haha. There was 3-4 interesting hands that I recall. This guy I have played some FL08 with went very deep with me and it was crazy how much he thought people folded. I think he plays winning but often suboptimal shorthanded O8 (fulring is totally different btw, moreso then any other shorthanded vs fullring ever could be categorized. I also count myself in that category, I probably do some pretty stupid things, easy mistakes and whatnot but play better then the opposition. Same thing with tripple draw where I prob do some really fishy stuff preflop and dont know stupid easy stuff like how a 762 fair against 743. Or you know, how much eq 8652 have against 234. A bunch of stuff :D. But I think I play better postflop then some.

Anyways, I lost a freaking huge pot with this retard playing one of the worst razzhands ive ever seen, not that I have seen much. He thought I was gonna autofold given that I showed a 7 and he 3bet an A and 3bet my steal. Nevermind, cant find it but I was prob 95ish% to win a megapot.


So here was a kinda keyhand that was nice.

Link to HH, (7card stud hi/lo)

Not so hard to play though. So everyone folds to me and I see K and 2. If the K would chose to vpip then it it would mean KKx 95%, 5% 3cardflush and should be fine, I will likely have position on 4th. Then 2 is obviously not bad but I have apparently 63,1% vs a random 2, 54% eq vs 234, 51% vs A24 etc. I am fine and in my opinion I can probably play well later on if he gets high cards.

Supersetup really. Nice to get paid the max :D.

Link to FL08-hand
I had 2-3 hands that was very interesting that I cannot find but here is another big important hand. Its not big per say but given the fast structure towards the end it cost me a lot of daaaalllarz.

So here on turn I faced the first real decision. I had a lower flush as well as a shitty low-draw and I was considering raising due to his aggressive nature but wisely decided against that thinking I can be crushed vs a lt of hands and that we dont have all that much fold eq in FL08 anyways. Called and it turned out i was 80% and he mega-binked the river for a megapot (like 25% of all remaining chips) and threehanded. Then we ended up chopping with 3 even stacks and played for a smaller sum. Actually, the absolute worst player won the whole thing which was kinda surprising since he was down a lot.

Anyways, I placed top 5 and had a nice score 2k$+ as well as I was running really really good at the cashgames (I noticed after awhile that I was playing a lot worse than normal) and I was actually up 930 sick dollars but I ended up 630$ so all in all it was a very good day.

Had a real urge to continue to play mixed game MTTs + MTTs in general but not gonna go all nuts on that. Stick to current stakes and hopefully earn some more cash the following weeks before school starts. Would be great to win a bit more and hopefully build a live bankroll, I really want to "cultivate" one that is primarily seen as a roll for travelling and playing live poker and if I lose then i wont mind. Would be cool to make nicer and nicer trips and play higher and higher games but thats well lnog in the future :D. But say its only 1k$ then if I live in california then I could easily use that to go to Vegas, play there. Win to 3k. Take that cash and spend extra on a trip to Florida for the live games there. Then up t 20k$ and go to monte carlo, haha you get the drift. That is since a) i want to play more live but not only on stakes that motivates 10 hands/hour and b) live games in general is often very loose and swingy.