RaSZi

Посты - Октябрь 2009

• PKR Heads Up, Nations Cup, Travveeell

  Октябрь 18, 2009

  PKR Heads Up

  The PKR Heads Up Grand Slam took place in London, right after the EPT. As far as I know, the objective is to become the European NBC Heads up. They invited some players and the rest of the field was filled with people who qualified for it. The brackets looked pretty good, with some tough players here and there. I drew Nam Le in the first round, a very tough opponent for me. He knows my style, and he plays the opposite. He adjusts well to aggressive opponents, whereas I don't adjust too well versus passive/tighter ones. I have a lot of trouble playing people who limp or minraise on the button. I played some higher stakes people heads up online to try and learn to counter this at a fast rate. When you play some of the best people known in a certain style, you learn a lot faster. This is why I played people like Deldar (Pokerbluffs) heads up a while back. He is a very good minraiseuser.

  Anyway, now to see if it helped me at all! Everything was organized very well for the tournament and after waiting for the first heat to finish, we were off. The structure could have been a little better. We started with 10,000 chips and 50-100 blinds. This is pretty fast, but I have to say I liked the 30 minute blind levels. If they would have given us 150 big blinds at the start, we would have had a very solid structure. He started out limping and minraising a lot, as I had expected. The first time he limped the button I made it 350 with . He called to fold the flop, but I didn't necessarily like this. I was planning on bumping it up from the big blind to counter his limps anyway, but I would rather have air the first couple of times, and hands when he decides to make a stand. Over the next couple hands I lost some chips and then the keyhand came up.

  He limped the button again and I made it 350 with from the big blind. He limpraised to 1350. This is a pretty big raise and last time I raised it from the bb this he didn't see I had a real hand. I think he would expect me to do this a lot, so I had expected him to limpraise some too. That and the fact it's a heads up sng, and I like to gather chips in a more spewy fashion, made me say allin. He snapped me with KK and outplayed me, even though it is a setup. The flop comes ... ! bink ! The donkey gets paid off. After a couple random button-shove situations, I ended up winning a small flip to knock him out. I was pretty relieved to win the first round. I really want to play a lot of TV events and doing well in my first international one wouldn't hurt.

  Randomfailstunt video tobreaktheletterfieldandmakeit morepleasureabletoeye

  Next round I was to play Luke Schwartz. He knocked out WCOOP champion Timoshenko in the first round. Luke is a heads up specialist, but I think most people will know him for banter and antics. He has a history of trashtalking the regulars at nosebleeds, but also backing it up with solid play. Should be interesting since I can talk a lot at the table too. I never played him, or had any dealings with him, so I didn't expect there to be any trouble, and there wasn't. We talked a bit about random things and then started for our match. After only a couple of hands, he pushed allin with [7s} when I 3-bet him with . We both flopped a set, but craziness stayed home I wona monster pot. I had a 37k vs 3k chip advantage in 100-200. he still had a playable stack so I had to watch out I wouldn't get sloppy and spew too much.

  He won 3 coinflips in a row, to come back all the way to 17k. This is of course the worst possible scenario lol. Also it really sucks to lose to someone who was down to nothing. IT's a very weird feeling to be ahead 23k vs 17k heads up, but feeling like ur losing by a landslide. I have to mature in this way and close off the idea of someone being short. I just have to look at it as a new situation. Luckily, the next flip was mine and I won with TT vs his QK. This means we are in the money and I was guaranteed at least 20,000$ with a shot at the 120,000$ first prize! I played a young English kid in the next round and he seemed pretty good.

  I could tell he didn't have a lot of live experience, but that didn't seem to matter much, cause our heads up lasted less than 10 hands. I opened button, he 3-bet, I call with . Flop is . He bets, I raise and we get it in. He has . The boards bricks off though and I'm on my bike. I was disappointed I couldn;t get any deeper, but I was still happy I got to the quarter finals.

  I booked a flight to Vienna, cause the Nations Cup waited.

  Nations Cup at Poker EM in Baden

  I was in the Dutch team together with Marcel Luske, Rob Hollink and Marc Naalden. There were 18 teams total, all consisting of 4 members. Each member had to play a 18 man sng in Stud, PLO and NL Holdem. They had a point system for the different places you could finish and then all the points of a team would be added to the country team total. I did pretty well in the stud, but lost to a pair of tens holding . That was a pretty sick dodge by him and it hurt bad. The structure was the sickest turbo I have ever seen in a 5k buyin event. I finished 7th and gather SOME points, but the rest of the team didn't do anything. This resulted in us being at the bottem of the leaderboard. Next up was the PLO and it was same story. I re-pot preflop with to be called by a weak player. Flop was and he bet-called my allin. with . He turned a 6 and that was my PLO. The others shared my faith and now we were pretty much nailed in the last spot. We had to win 2 holdems and a top 5 spot to go to the 9-team final lol.

  So we didn't have any hope for the final, but I got up and tried anyway =]. At least, I thought so, but my phone was on UK time, so I was half an hour late :(. When Marc got knocked out and I lost 22 vs AA, we didn't have any final hope anymore, so I booked my ticket to go back home. I've hardly been home, so I couldn't wait. Luckily Stevie and Kiko, 2 friends of mine, dropped by as soon as I was home, and I got destroyed by alchohol. I don't drink a lot or often, but I this took it's toll haha. I was braindead next day and then I got sick for a couple of days . I just got better and I feel great now. This has also to do with the fact I quit smoking. I haven't smoked for about 11 days now and it's not too hard on me. I wanna start playing some more poker too, cause I've been slacking online. SNElite is going to be really hard for, with all the travelling and new plans coming up, so I'm moving that down my priority list.

  I have a lot of sick news coming up, but I can't say anything about it just yet. Stay tuned though for more : ))))

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• Travel Skill, EPT London, Cashgame win.

  Октябрь 07, 2009

  Getting good at travelling

  No jetlag. Does that sound like a lie? Does it sound impossible? Am I that running good? Or did I just figure out how? I think it might be the last one. I didn't sleep before my plane left Vegas at 6 am. I slept 3 out of 4 hours from the flight to Washington. Ate light at the airport, had a good connection, and was on my way to Amsterdam 2 hours later. In the last leg of the trip, I watched Hangover, while half falling asleep constantly. I was half-awake when eating my steak, denying the cheesecake as dessert. Went flat, took a sleeping pill, earplugs in. I fell asleep to be woken up by the pilot, saying "Cabin Crew, prepare for landing". Best message ever. We landed in Holland 7 am local time. To my body this must have made perfect sense. I left tired when it was dark, hadn't seen daylight till I got out of the plane, and I slept a lot. After I got my bags, took a cab home and I felt really rested.

  As soon as I got home I went to get some food for the next couple of days and some new released movies. Eating a lot definitely helped me getting through the day without crashing. I played some Rock Band and Guitar Hero to not doze off. At night I had dinner with some of my best friends and we had a blast. After some chilling at my place I went to bed around midnight, taking some melatonin half an hour before. This pattern repeated itself the next 3 days and I felt great every day. Maybe felt jetlag for an hour total. Eating shitloads of healthy food and strictly keeping to normal schedule helped enormously. I took care of some chores and business and that must have added to piece of mind.

  Random Rockband video I made, for those interested

  London

  EPT London has never been one of my favorite EPT's. I think it has to do with the fact I have bad results in both tournaments and cashgames, but also I never liked the food, the traffic and the weather. This time around though, Jaco and Maarten, two friends of mine, were coming with. Maarten lived here for half a year and he was determined to change my mind about London. Jaco, Maarten, Fatima and me left for London, on the 50 minute plane ride. It might have been having friends with me, or maybe I was a bit more unbiased this time, but I'm loving it so far. The first day we immediately went into the city center, to find some food and walk around. First we had to checkin though. The tournament was held at the Hilton Metropole, one of the more quality hotels in the city. I'm very happy with this decision, because the London casino's are small and cramped up. The hotel offered us the possibility to upgrade to a deluxe twin room, getting 2 queen sized beds in stead of 2 regulars. We got to the room, but I couldn't see myself spending 10 days there, so I spewed a bit and asked for the biggest room they had open.

  This room is very nice (definitely for Eurohotels standards). It has a kitchen, bedroom and a living room, consisting of a dining table, a couch with saloon table, and a desk with a comfy deskchair. It definitely helped me to relax and enjoy London a bit more. Everyone is haning out in my room, playing online or just chilling. In the city we walked around a bit I liked the atmosphere. After we went to the Pokerstars party, catching up with some friends and meeting some new ones. The next day I went shopping and bought some shoes shirts and a new jacket.

  EPT

  I played day 1B and had an ok table. A couple of spots to my left were Huck Seed, Theo Tran and Thayer Rasmussen. I got off to a good start winning a pretty big hand vs Huck. The weirdest hand of the day definitely was in the 200-400 50a level, where a guy to my right, who I had constantly been 3-betting, made it 1100. I 3-bet to 3100 with KTo. Everyone folded and he 4-bet to 8000. We both had 28k behind. I didn't feel like shoving or folding. I was expecting him to make a stand after all this time, and I wanted to play a flop, even though we weren't deep at all. The flop was perfect . He bets out 12k, I shove, he tanks ??!? and calls with . My read was right preflop and I was pretty happy it worked out like that. I finished the day with close to 90k.

  Not much to say about day 2. I played bad and in the hands where I had good holdings I missed, but I definitely fucked up myself. A good lesson to learn. I felt very uneasy and restless and it showed on the table. Made stupid continuation bets and bad calls out of position. I busted in the 3rd level or so and felt pretty demotivated. Jaco and I hung out a bit and played some online with Jornxx and Busto_soon.

  I found the perfect anti-tilt remedy though:

  Rest

  Tomorrow I'm playing Nam Le in the 10k heads up tournament here in London. Im pretty confident about my heads up game so I can't wait to play. No matter what happens in the tournament, I'm staying in London till I have to leave for Austria. I'm playing the Nations Cup there for Holland. If I have some days off, I'll play online. I have been playing and running a bit better and booked some wins. I discussed my upcoming travels the upcoming months with Pokerstars and I don't know if I will make it to supernova elite with all the travelling. I would like to, but it hasn't been a priority since I didn't do any bets on it. We'll see though, might change. For now, lot of live stuff happening. Hope to write about headsup win next time .

  If you wanna follow me around and read updates on tournaments or travelling, add me.

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  PZzzzz

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