PKR Heads Up, Nations Cup, Travveeell

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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