Poker :: low limit donkrings

After another few months break from poker I hit $50 cash tables again at PokerStars. I call it donkrings, but myself, in the best case scenario I'm a zebra. Bit faster, more aggressive than donkeys, but still yet another type of a horse. I was off to a good start, but later on got a downswing of 10 buyins, where I stopped and moved on to finish off the master thesis :)

Sports :: Moletu Relays

Traditionally all the relays are packed towards the start of the season. So after a short break second competition took place today. As you can see from the pictures, weather went nuts - one week ago it was sunny and hot, and today it was snowing and freezing. This time I had to run first leg for the top team of my club. I was feeling alright, but fucked up everything bigtime right from the beginning when I lost my SI card. It happened it in a very silly way - at the start countdown (15sec... 10sec... 5sec...) I made a snowball and throwed it forwards when start went off, and my SI card went off the finger also :) I figured that I dont have any SI card when we were nearing the first control, so had to return (against stream of runners, since I was in front of the pack) to start to replace it, resulting in 6min loss. After that I ran alone most of the course, and started to overtake last teams just before the spectator control. All in all I was behind 8mins to the fastest time, and my teammates couldnt make up for it (we finished in ~7-8th place, cant remember exactly).

Start. As you can see I'm running without SI card already :p
(on my right hand, there's only white glove:)


Random shot of a control

Sports :: Kauno relays

So today (informal national liar's day:) first big relay of the season took place. It was in usual 3leg format. I was assigned to run for the first leg of a second team of "OK Azuolas" (name of our club, meaning "orienteering club oak" which is a bit generic:) Each leg was 8.5km long and there were 29 teams running the mens elite course. Since my current shape doesnt allow me to do any warmup (I need to conserve energy for actual race;) , I did some stretching just few seconds before the mass start:

The race itself went good, after about 1/4th of the course I was among top10 (because main "train" lost 1-2minutes on first control, which I found perfectly) but later on I couldnt and wouldnt keep the high pace, and finished in ~22th or so, loosing ~10min to leader, and ~5-6min to the main group. Ah, here I'm taking the right turn while punching the spectator control (dead tired, am I not? :)

Our club (first team) was leading after two legs with 3min margin to the second place, but one donkey completely forgot that he was registered and didnt arrive to the competition at all. So we had to let our (second team) anchorman run for the first team, which he bravely did, but he managed only the 13th place (loosing 20+ minutes:)

Too bad, cause the competition had 2min video coverage on the national TV in the main news, and it would've been nice to get our club's name into publicity some more.

Sports :: Phat ass on the move!..

Couch potato is striking back! Somehow I realized that regular exercise is really important and after lazy winter I'm gonna do what I failed to do last year - take sports much more serious. I took part in two weekend open training sessions of national orienteering team. Forests are still full of snow, but its already possible to run on the terrain. I did finish both courses, but long absence resulted in terrible performance, horrible physical feeling, etc. Heart beat rate is hyperhigh, and even after 6 hours rest after the exercise it is still well above 80bpm... Well, its the very start, so I should've expected smth like that.

Fun :: Winter Rally

Its horribly cold now. On Saturday me and bunch of friends watched winter rally event. It was first live rally for me and it wasnt too bad. Event didnt have any spectator-oriented infrastructure, there was no info on what is happening on site, but thats pretty much all the drawbacks. It was sunny, it was funny, noone got killed in a carcrash, and 6 hours strolling around the courses in a knee-deep snow + running into the bush when seeing another car coming was good fun. I like :) And our company would like to officially express our pity for that lot of girls who happened to be dragged there by their redneck boyfriends in their festive outfit - winter rally at -15C isnt really the place to show off your would-be-Prada equipment :) As they say, common sense is not so common.

Things :: Back from dead

Yo. Happy new year, pigs & pigettes.

Since I'm losing my ability to write, and 10 different words are enough for my usual daily talk (not counting "mhm", "doh" and "f" sort of words), I decided to update this blog at least twice a week to get things moving.

Recently I finished my prelast semester at university with pretty good grades. Now in 3.5 months I have to finish my master thesis, and I will be done with studies for good, leaving me much more free time for 'real life' whatever that is.

In poker world I'm in stalmate. Early January was very good, I was running over $10 Sit'n'Goes with ROI more than 150%. Then mid January I started to run very poorly, like, getting AK vs A2 allin preflop and praying for a chop pot, and still not getting there. Then I moved to cash tables for a change, where after good start I did blow off another few hundred bucks. So all in all I was up couple of hundreds up in January and am couple of hundreds down in February leaving myself nearly at starting point.

Worth mentioning was my venture to MTTs last weekend, where out of 3 played tournaments I did run pretty deep in two of them (40th out of 800 in $8 rebuy, and 20th out of 800 in $10 freezout, also was in top 10 with 100 left in another $10 freezout, but busted in ~70). Frustrating thing is that I busted out of all of them getting my chips in being ahead on the flop vs 6outers, and never held up. All those pots might have costed 4figures for me, since final table payouts were pretty good, especially in $8 rebuy (6k for first prize). I should try more MTTs coming weekends.

For the rest of the February I wont try to get creative, just play my daily four $10 SnG's on workdays, and some on weekend as time allows.

When I withdrew all my money from PartyPoker account, I invested them in EasternEurope and Russia funds, also bought some China 3-year bonds lately (bonds which are connected with stocks, ie their expected profitability is much much higher than simple bonds, but its more risk involved). During January my portfolio went up by $100, which is kinda nice.

I think my long term goal should be to be able to retire by the age of 30 :)

Fun :: Freetime party

Its a bit sarcastic, but this years edition of new year job-party (dont know the english word for the party that employer gives to its employees) was themed "Freetime". Like everyone's having any of it ;) It turned out to be fun with lots of things to do - music performances included covers of Norah Jones (boring but worked well to start talking & drinking amongst ppl), then followed Madona and finally Robbie Williams. After that some random DJs kept ppl awake till the morning. For side events one could take part in Arabic nights with lots of hookah going round, watch silent movies, try out hunting with e-guns, get a massage and so on, dont think I tried every room there was on offer. Whole place was full of baloons (gazillions of them) which you had to burst, and inside one of the baloons there was a "grand prize" for the night, which was kept secret. When some midlle-aged lady came to claim the prize, she found out that this prize is taking a bath of champagne in front of the whole crowd :) Too bad she became quite shy and seemingly didnt enjoy this prize to its fullest potential ;) Afther that our enterprise's president was forced to show an example of courage and take this bath too. He did much better job, bruised his head a little while diving into it, but luckily it was no serious injury.

Erica Jennings (a.k.a. Madonna) on stage ; overview of the party

Mantas (Robbie) and the "Hot Fudge" ; yaaaaya :)

Mr. President & Champagne

Cake for the night

Poker :: Back in black

OK, last month was pretty f*ck*d up. Lots of work, then another leg injury cause of overuse caused me to lay in bed for one week. Thus social activity was pretty dull with no new dates, no crazyness, well, lets just call it "real life variance" :) Did not play any poker at all for 3 weeks. However in last few days started moving chips forth and back once again. I had one live session 5handed which went for 8 hours until 3am, and 4 hours six tabling $50 cash tables on PokerStars for $10/hour rate. Got few pretty sick beats but luckily was able to pull it back into black :) Plan for the rest of the year is to keep that puny SilverVIP status on PStars (roughly ~3000 hands so that is another 8 hours of sixtabling) without decreasing the bankroll. Omg and it is Christmass approaching, need to go out to buy presents for everyone right now...

By the way, the winnings that I withdrew from PartyPoker account I'm going to invest into two SEB highest risk funds, and am expecting 30% increase over the 2007 :)

Poker :: Reevaluating things

So October is over and it seems I got the flow finally :) Some statistics from my uber poker excel sheet:

* the set goals were achieved by ~140%
* 4 losing sessions (total of 8 buyins) , good improvement from ~10+ losing sessions on previous months
* mostly grinding $50 tables, totaling 60 hours for a $17 / hour average rate
* assuming its 300 hands / hour (4 tables * 75 hands), it makes 11,3 BB / 100 hands

I am having some free time issues at the moment, so I wouldn't like to set steep goals for November. Crucial thing would be to move up to $100 tables and start feeling comfortable there. If I don't do anything stupid, my current bankroll should be sufficient for that. Official goal for November is 150% growth comparing with actual October result.

On the side note, I got a sallary raise recently, so majority of my income still comes from working in the banking domain. Moving up to $200 should solve this so I could start working just for fun and for some additional pocket money finaly. It is called Vegas dream, isn't it? ;)

Oh yes, and I'm on final year of Masters studies aswell :) Did I mention the free time issues? ;)

Fun :: La Music Awards ' 06

Jagshemash! Since there isn't anything interesting happening nowadays, here I'm posting few pics from one realy awesome party two weeks ago. It was a traditional 'yearly' event for our (IT) and one another (definitely more sexy) - Finance - department. Everyone who took part in this event was assigned to one of the five teams (one month in advance), which competed for the so called 'best team' prize.

Contemporary gangsta woman

The whole event started with 3hour long "treasure hunting" tasks. By completing these tasks teams were able to find out the exact location of the party (waaaayyyyy outside the city). Then, after all the teams successfully gathered at the place, both physically and mentally challenging exercises followed for the 'points', which, ironically, determined the best music team:) Take into account the industrial amounts of booze we consumed during "treasure hunting" part and even the easiest exercises, such as "drink 50cl of brandy then crawl backwards 15meters", start to look f**ing impossible;)

Yet another hot member
of "Sexually Extreme Blondes" team

Later into the night each team had to perform their live song, and also to demonstrate the music clip (the 'homework' part). After that the 'points' were summed up. All the winners and losers in different categories were announced, and the live performance of an infamous rock band "Shut the light" marked the start of the real partying. More music, more drinking, more dancing, less clothing, blah blah yada yada, you know, from dusk till dawn :)

Performance of my team "2.30am"
(i'm on the <----)

Despite of virtually nonexistant singing and choreography skills, we still did manage to win the most coveted prize for the "best live performed song" :) Our choice was a stadium-type song with good (good = loud:) beat, three repeating chords, custom lyrics and .. it was great i think :) K.I.S.S. - keep it simple, stupid - approach worked out perfect once again.

"Snail's Gang", the winners in the best outfit category
("sporty" chavs and chavettes ;)

Since majority of this blog's readers (two out of three that I'm aware off;) comment on lack of girl pics and therefore lack of relevant content on the site, this last pic is just for you, whiners :) pm me for a full size version ;)

Fun :: Autumn leaves

How often do I look, but do not see?
How often do I listen, but do not hear?
How often do I make love, yet do not love?

Life is getting bitter...

Stop listening for once!! Did you HEAR what I said? Life is getting BETTER =)

(click for BIG;)

Sorry for bullsh*t, cant help myself sometimes ;) Try going outside and kicking some fallen leaves instead of reading stupid blogs to understand what is all this about :)

Poker :: Justinville poker night

Show pictures or it didnt happen! So here are some screenies from our last weekend's friendly game. We played some usual 6handed SnG. By now most of the players know that fullhouse is better than flush and that two pair doesnt beat straight.

Nature morte

It is me in this photo (two hands:) finishing the chilli meal while everyone else is taking a smoke break in the balcony. Healthy way of living for the win! As you can see, the blinds have just risen to 20/40. The white-and-black-brick-resembling device on the southern end of the table is our tourney clock. The orangeish fluid in the glasses is Campari + grapefruit juice + icecubes, pretty welcome change to the usual 0.5 liter of Ballantine's per head :)

Chips

Blues are worth 50 each, so its 300/600 level already. Our tourney structure allows maximum luck combination ;) The knocked out players have to serve the ones still in the game (coffee / drinks / foot massage etc ;) so busting in the early levels could hurt some of the egos indeed!

Headz up

Basically its just what the title says :) Me in the far background, dealer on the left, villain on "this side" of the photo.

Woot, ace rag!

With blinds 500/1000 and 9000 chips in play total, its party time, allin pretty much every hand. Sorry, but A2 still no good vs ATs :)

Joy of the suckout

It's over because its 4am and 34s hit runner runner straight vs T7s flopped top pair:) Till the next time, take care:)

Poker :: October checkpoint

I'm on a roll. With less than 30 hours played the set goals for October have already been ahieved. Now I'm grinding the $50 tables with occasional shot at $100 with good success. If things go well and I'll manage to shut down the inborn donkiness of myself, early November I might go up to the $100 as the default limit even. Good to see that this little poker experiment is starting to pay off the time and money invested :)

Fun :: Gogo Absolute

Tjenare from Sthlm =) I'm down here with a week-long bussiness trip, meeting some very cool as well as some very funny AND unprofessional colleagues. Everything is great except the damn expensive beer and terrible food which we're getting for lunch in those self catering cantines. Hotel breakfast and evening meal (my fav was steak made from argentinian black cow meat) makes up for that though :) On the last night double checked the location of Sthlm international casino, which I found out was only two blocks away from my hotel, hoorray :) This time I did not play anything since there was plenty of what to do anyway and taking a break from poker is rly good sometimes.

Coolest and coolest place to get a drink ;)

WoW :: Bye bye mr troll pie

This is what I grinded down to... Full epic troll hunter with something 650 agility unbuffed, best of BWL, most AQ40, and one Naxx item :)

Since my life is getting strangely free of long term injuries nowadays (probably I should blame quitting the pro-sports for it;) , sitting daylongs in front of the PC became the least desirable option. So I quitted WoW raiding, got my guild rank demoted, and now am wondering if I should give a shot to the upcoming expansion set. Damn, right now I can think of 101 better ways to spend 500 hours which would be needed for that =)

Wakkawakka [Transcendence], Kor'gall EU

Poker :: In pigs we thrust

I created a PartyPoker.com account to see what is the world like outside PokerStars.com. What I found there is that $0.10/0.25 on Party is even more soft than PokerStars (can you believe this?:) It took 12 hours to get used to interface and not get broke while betting random amounts with that god-knows-how-it-works-slider, but during those 12 hours I also managed to go up and cashout my first ever B. Franklin :) Woohoo, so that would cover my PokerStars.com deposit, and made my goal for September complete - playing at $0.10/$0.25 and cashing a lil.

I also played one tournament, $5 rebuy $15k Gtd on Party, where I finished pretty deep - 65th out of 1300+ , for a little profit (I did buyin for $46 in total cause of early gambooling, and then got back $54 for my performance:), but dissapointingly busted out with 67o vs A3o trying to steal the BB from SB. I was pretty much shortstacked at that point, but not yet totaly desperate for sure. If my JJ would've worked a lil better before that, I might have had a real shot to final table or top3 even...

Since the end of September is drawing near, here are the goals for October - double up the bankroll and start playing $0.25/$0.50, cashout at least 2 x Franklin.

Poker :: Slowly but surely

Yo, got a bit lazy last month about updating. Did a lot of travelling, so was /afk most of this time, and did not play too much poker. And ye, i'll add the screenshot of my WoW toon too. Soonish:P
Few thoughts about "patience" in poker. There are two different kinds of patience - first one is short term patience, and more or less can be defined as playing TAG style. Rush thou must not, as Yoda would say. Avoid tilting, dont play J8s, and basically stick to solid poker. Its the easy part and most ( or at least many ) players do that.
The other patience is long term, and after getting broke twice and making some conclusions, I think this second kind of patience is even more important and harder to develop. It is about staying at current limits until you REALLY have the bankroll ( regardless the skill ) to move up so you can feel completely comfortable and be ready to take 4-5 bad beats at the next limit.
So finally after grinding my teeth off and overcoming vast amounts of donkiness and runner-runner outdraws at the 0.05/0.10, yesterday I moved up to 0.10/0.25, and won half a buyin there. So it was a true weee-session and confidence builder =)

Emptiness :: Sad But True

Work is like an Orgy, if you don't do it, someone else will.
Fate is like Rape, if you can't fight it, learn to enjoy it.
Hope is like Fantasizing, if you can't do it, at least think of it.
Learning is like Prostitution, you have to put in money and effort.
Life is like Masturbation, you can only depend on your 2 bare hands.

Fun :: Tilting 'n' Wiping

Everything is cool :)

* Poker is going downhill strongly, looks like I'm gonna finish August in red (a.k.a. "losing month"). So I'm taking a break from it and am playing only some occasional tourneys from time to time just for fun. When I get back that winner's instinct, I'll give it a shot again of course.

* To fill in some sleepless nights I reinstalled the WorldOfWarcraft (WoW) and am playing on my lvl60 full tier2 hunter (622 agility unbuffed, beat this :o) So at least in this activity I'm quite ahead of TillerMan :) To speak in poker terms, it looks like he is playing somewhere at $1/$2 stakes guessing from the looks of his mage and nub user interface ;) Just for info, my char is WakkaWakka on EU Kor'gal server. A troll.

<... ill try to extract 3D model and paste it in here ... >

* Last weekend I did that "lost in space" thing - I went on a three day long roadtrip with only a vague idea where or why I'm going. It turned out to be very fun, and included a birthday party, stoopid country festival, orienteering race (2 courses in 1 day, totaling for 2hours10mins of pure pain), overnighting in a random stationary trainwagon on a lake shore, visiting Chernobyl type nuclear plant, almost drowning with my car while driving through a bog and few other great things.

* As for Saturday 3k time trials, still havent done a single one :(

Poker :: success or suck-sess?

Yo, this will be a whine-post. And at the end you will find the dumbest hand I ever ever played in cash games.

I haven't cashed out in 10 SNGs in a row. Now some of them I just played bad. And these were all-ins preflop in quite late stages of SNG (on the bubble or just before the bubble):
Me with QQ calls an allin of A7. Ace on the river.
Me with 88 puts allin shortstack with 77. 7 hits the flop.
Me with KK puts allin shortstack with 23. 23x on the flop.
Me with A8 pushes allin and gets called by big stack T8. Im terrified cause I knew T would river, and it did.
AA vs QQ - lost
AA vs KQ - lost
...list continues...
Crap, how can one play following some strategy or tactics or whatever, when at the end of the day 5 out of my 6 pocket aces lost headsup allin preflop?
Good thing I didnt went tilting though this time, so my bankroll had suffered a big hit but is not totaly crippled.

Now the dumbest funny hand. Happened in cash games.

I am in the big blind with JJ. We have 3 limpers, button raises to 4BB, small blind folds, I reraise 10BB, one limper calls, button calls.
Flop K92 (one spade). I bet out 8BB, limper calls, button reraises allin. I fold, limper calls.
Turn - J of spades. I start banging my head to the wall.
River - rag of spades. Limper shows 94spades and takes down the pot (>3 full buyins), button shows KQ.

Now beat that :)

PS in the evening there was a big storm outside, with thunder and stuff, and one of the lightnings broke the alarm system of my house so it started blocking the DSL line thus cutting me off the internet and puting an end to my suffering =)