DeucesCracked Blog Entries

My Poker Room

EUSSI — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 22:02:32 +0000

Hey guys,

I was a little bored this evening so i decided to put up some pictures i took from my room.

This is my poker/chill room, This is where i spend my time when i'm home, not sleeping/eating/ or going to the bathroom.

It includes the usual like my tv, some loungy one sits, computer + screens, and my self build poker table.

I will make a thread in the forum so you guys can start posting pictures of your poker setup aswell, think its cool to see where other people sit when they play.

The first thing you see when you enter the room ;-)

my poker/work/other stuff - setup

my lovely poker table, well actualy it isnt mine, a friend of mine made it himself, didnt find the space to put it, so its been at my place for 3y now, he aint getting it back ;-)

So thats it, this will be posted in the normal forum thread aswell, hope you guys put some pics of your setup in their aswell.

Cya all

The End (24K hands 551.37€)

EUSSI — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 21:57:03 +0000

Hey guys,

So i dicided to conclued my 10 -> 20NL challange since Victory poker changed to Cake Network.

Now i cant play in €'s anymore so my graphs wont make any sence no more.

I Decided to just start another challenge the moment i start playing at a new client.

Thinking about moving to Merge network or Ipoker, not sure wich one i'm gonna pick.

I will start out playing my last couple of sessions in 10nl and then jump to 20nl, i will make a new challenge called :

20 -> 50NL wich i will keep you updated about.

Here is a printscreen of my last restults at victory poker :

So thats it for this challenge, will let you guys know what my future plans are shortly.

Thank you all for reading this one and cya guys around

It has been a while...

Scots75 — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:36:15 +0000

...since I posted an update the last time.

I actually decided to take a short break from poker after bouncing between games pretty heavily. I played a little bit FL Shorthanded, switched back to NL 6max and grinded some MTTs. All without that much focus, as my decision which game to play in the future is still open.

In the meantime I watched some DC videos to find out what I wanna do next. I have to admit that I found some pretty impressive video series in the DC library. Especially the NL HU series with Krantz and WiltonTilt and the PLO videos of DJ Sensei got stuck in my mind. In addition to that, I got aware that there is a min series from Bones which covers HUSNGs, something I completely missed before.

Right now, I am really considering moving to NL HU. I will try HUSNG to get used to the HU game and swith to NL50 once I feel comfortable. I know that HUSNGs usually do not prepare players for HU cash, but I really do not wanna grind 25NL HU on PartyPoker as the rake would kill me.

I also listended to the EPTPE again. I think it was the third time I listened to Tommy and Wayne and it is still amazing. I still catch some parts which I did not think about before. Never listened or watched something comparable before.

That´s it for now. I still feel bad for switching games again. but I guess this is the way it is. I need to work on my game, especially on the mental part to be a better player than I am right now.

Cheers

Scots75

Break from Poker

Syous — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:00:53 +0000

just for a week. I ended my month on a great note, +4k. 3.5k from PLO and 500 from HUSNGs. I only played because I wanted to clear the 400 vpps I had left on my stars account to make platinum star, unfortunately I didn't make it, I was 120 vpps too short. FML :(

I feel really great. Trying to take as much of a break as I can. I really don't like to be 100% absent as I feel guilty about it. Since I'm coaching, I still have to do some poker work.

I'm really optimistic about Sept and so forth. Look out 25/50 PLO 2011! I had only one outburst this session but PLO does that to you. Kept calm, focused, and played well. Analyzed hands, thought about multiple I could make between hands, and yeah, I'm going to be a machine in HUPLO soon.

I'm in Montreal right now on an impromptu trip with the gf. I'm moving back to San Diego next week. Since I'll be living in the states for about a year before I move back to Korea or somewhere abroad, I'll try to get a DC get together in SD sometime this year.

Cheers,

Mike

Victory poker goes Cake

EUSSI — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:46:35 +0000

Hey guys,

So Victory poker has changed network.

The former everleaf skin is now part of the Cake poker network.

I tought this would be good for Victory :

- More traffic

- Less rake ( Also less rakeback, thats a - )

- Better use of poker points

- More tourney and SNG

So i started playing on the new software today

And to be honoust, i'm pretty disapointed, the software looks like crap...

There are some bugs in it like the filter doenst work, 4color deck arent working and some other things.

But then the worst thing, i had about 550€ in my victory poker account, and now i got $550 in the new account, this isnt acceptable, 550€ is like $680 roughly estimated.

So i send them a mail and got this respond :

Hello Mattthias,

Thank you for your email. We are currently looking into this and will respond shortly, please be assured any funds missing will be replaced.

Please let us know if we can be of further assistance.

Kind Regards,

Sean

VictoryPoker Support

So i hope this problem will be fixed soon.

I was blogging a challenge, 10 -> 20NL in 50K hands, but since the currencys has changed i think i'm gonna end this challenge and start a new one.
The moment my missing currency is deposited i think i'm gonna cashout and go with another EU poker client.

I'll keep you guys informed about the missing $

Grtz

Iron Maiden=Boomswitch

TtheAntlers — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:43:48 +0000

I had my first session of September today. I thought I played well, but I started losing and just couldn't break free. After about 450 hands I was down almost 4 buyins. I wanted to quit, but instead I fired up the bloody katana table skins and turned on some Iron Maiden for the following 100 hands. In those 100 hands I made 5 buyins before I had to quit. My conclusion- Iron Maiden=boomswitch.

Be Champions.

9.1.10

M. Night Shamadonk — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 05:00:53 +0000

# of hands 2092

Net gain: 54.74

$1.64 above EV

8.31.10

M. Night Shamadonk — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:57:44 +0000

# of hands: 2408

.43 cents above EV

Net Loss: 71.99

New Month, New Blog, New Start

Hightower — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:40:16 +0000

Hi all, and welcome to my Blog :)

About me: 20 year old Economics student called Alex. Known about poker for 3 years or so I guess, although only started playing regularly from Autumn 2008 onwards in a university home game. Misspent rest of '08 and a good part of '09 one/two-tabling SnGs online before hearing of DeucesCracked/Cardrunners late-ish last year. Reinvested my SnG winnings in a monitor sharpish and, beginning at 5NL with a fledgling $50 bankroll, have been grinding full ring cash games since then. Have visited the DeucesCracked forums on and off over 2010, and after watching some sample video clips finally decided to take a step in improving my poker and pay up for premium membership. Have had an account for about a month now and DC is definitely a great poker community and resource. So far, I think my time spent lurking the forums has helped me in becoming a reg at 50NL and hopefully some more studying, now that I have access to the great video library here, can push me a bit higher yet...only time will tell.

Anyway, figured it would be good to keep a record of my progress from here on in, more for my own benefit than anything else, although any interest is more than welcome. Aiming to turn over a new leaf this month: ramp up the volume and the time studying-last chance I have before final year of university starts and I've little else on for the next 4 weeks, so it's a good opportunity to work on my game. Any luck it will all go to plan.

Hope everyone at DC has a successful month. Good luck at the tables...........just so long as you're not on mine ;)

My Motivation

GingerViking — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 20:42:12 +0000

Don't think I have done a personal post before but looking ahead on the year I want to write down how I feel about poker and my life for the next year, I will try and keep it short. When I was about 15 I emigrated to Capetown in South Africa, I lived there for 6 months and hated it so when I came back to England for holiday I decided that I didn't want to go back to South Africa. Therefore when I came back to England I was 16 and had no GCSEs because I had been in South Africa during the time my friends had taken them. Due to me not having these basic qualifications I had to go back a couple years to get them, so how is this relevant?

Last year was the first year of university for my friends (and me if I hadn't moved to SA) and I was doing my first year of A levels but some of my friends had decided to take a gap year. Therefore I still had some of my mates around that hadn't gone to university and I had a girlfriend. Now it is the beginning of the new academic year in the UK and the guys that went to uni last year are now in their second year, and the guys that took a gap year are now a first year at uni. Moreover I have just ended my relationship with my girlfriend of two and a half years. To put it simply none of my good friends are around and I don't have a girlfriend :(

I am now starting my last year of A levels and plan to go to university next year (September 2011). This year I have accepted is going to be hard, I am going to be working really hard to get good grades at college and get into a good university. However I also want to really work on my poker game and this is the whole point of this post.

My motivation for playing poker is that this year is going to be hard work and not going to be a hugely sociable one so my thought process is "work really hard and then it will set you up for future years". For example when I go to uni I would love to be comfortably beating 100NL just so I feel somewhat financially secure and don't have to worry about a part-time job. I don't have a stupid and unlikely ambition in my head that I will be the next durrr, I would love that, but I need to take it a step at a time.

Cliff notes: This year I am not going to have a life, it is literally going to be college, poker, part-time job, swimming, working out. While I am grinding the shitty uNL: stakes I will be thinking about the future and that I need to crush these to progress and be slightly more comfortable in the future. Also if for whatever reason I fail at poker and haven't broken out on uNL by this time next year I won't regret all the hands and hours I am about to put in because poker will/has taught me how to be more disciplined, tackle problems better and to look at decisions rather than results which I think are all valuable skills in life.

First Post

ThatBlackGuy — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:26:25 +0000

Getting back into the schwing of things

Definitely Going Back to the U.S. Open Next Year

bosoxx34 — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 18:15:09 +0000

Here are my thoughts on my first night session, was fortunate enough to have Heineken suite tickets so I was a little spoiled. We were allowed in for the end of the Sharapova match which was the last match of the day session. If we had regular seats we would've had to wait another 2 hours to get in. Here are my thoughts

The Nadal-Gabashvili match was great. I've never been to a live tennis match before and I'm amazed at how hard these guys hit the ball. Not only that, how deep they routinely hit it, it really is something that has to be seen in person to appreciate it. Gabashvili hung tough and most of the crowd was rooting for him to win the second tie break but Nadal was just too good. I can't believe how high his second serve kicks up and Gabashvili just couldn't return it.
The atmosphere of a night session at Ashe is unreal. The crowd really knows when to rally around a certain player and it's just very cool. The rhythmic applause at the start of the second tie breaker despite the chair asking for quiet was something to remember. Nadal backed off and walked around a bit, wasn't sure if he was upset or just letting the crowd have fun and continue with it a bit longer.
The rhythmic applause during a challenge sounds much more rhythmic on TV, live it's more like random clapping.
A kid behind me said watching a woman's match after this is going to suck and while it was funny he was right. It was cool watching the Sharapova match when we got in, but watching the Wozniacki match after it was easy to tell the difference. Also, woman seem to mishit the ball much more than men.
With that being said, I have no complaints about Wozniacki's outfit last night.

-------------------------

"Did you win a lottery to be a linesman. " John McEnroe after disagreeing with a call.

improve your grasp of psychology

KRANTZ — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:44:48 +0000

http://www.spring.org.uk/2007/11/why-we-all-stink-as-intuitive.php

Very relevant to playing poker. One of the biggest leaks players have is a poor understanding of how their opponent thinks. One of the most useful ways to spend your time would be in making yourself a better intuitive psychologist. Your opponent doesn't think the same way you do, he doesn't even think about the same things that you do nor does he weight them the same way you do. What would be the "right" move against yourself can be the wrong move against another person. They take their seat at the table under an entirely different set of circumstances than you do.

A good way to get better at this is to always ask why. Why did he open shove the river? Because he is a fish is usually not the most useful answer. Why did he 4-bet pocket fives? There is usually never one obvious answer to these questions at first. Instead there are a variety of possibilities that you can weight based on your experiences at the table, with him and other opponents that have made similar moves against you in the past.

Always try to understand why. Make it your mantra. We should put it on a t-shirt.

August stats and thoughts about september

simpleasspie — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 14:07:10 +0000

lol, ive played like at least one hand at any game within $.05 - $20 big blind, I even played some razzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (boring)

I ve started playing at about 10 or 11 august and yet managed to play 24k hands playing nolimit 50% of hands even. Two main problems i have in the game are the following:

- i look at the result in hem while playing, its a problem cuz it affects me - not in the way i play (i hope) but it affects the time i might play, ie if im losing i obviously just play until i refresh my hem and see green things there or a 4 digit red ones, lol, i think it did not happen this august, but i was close

- the second i think is not that big but when i lose a good amount or feel not like playing my main game i play other games, of course its not that bad while youre still controlling yourself, but i sometimes (like 80%+) am not - lose some buyins in NL, close all tables, open up 4 tables of 100PLO, and maybe play not that good or gamble more than i should, lose some more buyins, as a result try to get out of minus, lose some more, feel even worse.

So, starting from september Id like to make thoese things better in game by:

1. Not fucking playing other games near my usual stakes in Hold'em unless I'm drunk

2. Truing to lessen the times i look into my HEM while playing (it d be hard for me to stop it at all in one moment)

3. Not playing tired, trying to get out of negative result and all that stuff, rather watching videos, getting myself better at by poker other ways or just not thinking about it till the next day.

Hola Septiembre!

orestto — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:53:17 +0000

New month, new goals.

1. Wake up early to walk my dog for 30-40 minutes. Monday to Friday.

2. Watch the CR PLO videos that came out during August + September. Keep up with DC and BFP as well.

3. Start out playing 200plo 6max. Stay at this stake for the month unless I drop 5 buy-ins.

4. Do more video reviews with fellow players. I'd like to do at least 2 per week.

5. Play at least 5k hands of HU PLO (100plo). Prepare to get raked.

6. Finish reading Mathematic of Poker and/or The Intelligent Investor (Benjamin Graham).

Of course, it's not going to be ALL work during September. I'm very much looking forward to new seasons of The Office (also S6 DVD release!), It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and Eastbound and Down. I'm also going to be flying out to Austin TX for some good times: Ratatat and probably some comedy clubs. There's probably some other good shows / movies coming out as well that I'm not remembering or aware about, so feel free to remind me!

Good luck to all in September, GET SOME!

Other place. Same time.

izaque — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 13:45:29 +0000

Since i think having this progress blog is kindof lame. Dont think anyone would care if i win or loose @ 20 - 50NL i decided to stop this blog.

I have a thread on 2p2 were i do pretty much the same. but with hands and stuff. So i dont feel the need to do that at 2 places at once.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/174/poker-goals-challenges/restarting-580-playing-nl30-goal-100nl-reg-jan-2011-a-862258/#post21277458

September Goals

lostevil1 — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:54:12 +0000

Let's see here are my goals

Post a winning month in PLO so I can move from 10 PLO to 25 PLO in October

Play over 8,000 hands of PLO this month. I only have a couple of hours a day to play so this is going to be hard.

Move from Silver to Gold Star on Poker Stars.

Review 2 whole PLO series on DC. I learn more the second time I see these videos. I think it is due to a better understanding of the game I have now.

I will post updates as the month goes so to myself good luck.

This is a blog post

inavacuum — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:39:13 +0000

My first one, in fact.

Why now? I have no definitive answer beyond "I felt like it". I have always shied away from the idea of creating a blog simply because of the associated vanity a blog implies. Fortunately DC makes it so easy to blog that I feel a little more ok with the concept. I couldn't stomach actually going to the effort of setting up a domain, or even a blogspot account, simply so that the world be entreated to my verbosity. Really one needs a good reason to do that. Within the poker sphere it is fine to do that if, for example, your name is Jay Rosenkrantz. It is not fine to do it if your name is Bob Random and you grind NL25. Outside of the poker sphere it is ok to blog if you have genuinely interesting topics to blog about (Guido Fawkes strikes me as particularly relevant UK-based example). If you don't have anything interesting to blog about it is still ok as long as you are a brilliant writer. It is not ok to blog a kind of drawn-out elongated twitter-vomit.

Here are some poker-related facts about me:

I play mostly 2/4, 3/6 and 5/10, 5 and 6max NLHE.
I coach up to 1/2 NLHE.
I am a player first and a coach second.
I will not post a pretty graph. I don't particularly care if anyone knows I am a winner or not. If I were to post a graph it would show me beating the games I play in for an expected winrate. That isn't very exciting. If I do something truly amazing, like beat 5/10 6max for 9bb/100 over a huge sample, I promise I will post the graph.

Here are some things I have done this week:

Taken a shot at 10/20 (it didn't go well, it was fun, I improved)
Downloaded the Yeasayer album Odd Blood (would I recommend it? Yes I would. Does that mean anything to you? Possibly not).
Watched Chris Morris' Four Lions (but we all know the man's a genius, so I'm sure this is on everyone's to-do list)
Stepped in human poo (I have an 18 month old, not a bowel condition)

Confession

mitch — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:10:12 +0000

So a few months ago I was, scammed I guess, by an ex-gf I'd always been close with and some friends. They took basically everything I had in a pretty sick way (how they did it hurt a lot more than what they took, although it was in the six figures) and they live half way around the world now so I have basically zero chance of getting anything back. I had to go into debt to cover some things and having only a few K online that's when I stopped playing NLHE and started learning PLO. So for the past few months I've been trying to move up, paying for living expenses and paying off this debt all on a PLO100 wage with a few months PLO experience under my belt. Stressful times to say the least but atleast I was making progress which made me feel fine about it.

Now I'm on a 50BI downswing, haven't won for weeks and not sure how to stop it. I dropped down from 6, to 4, to now 2 tables, I'm reviewing every pot over 20bb with friends to make sure I'm not just on lifetilt, they all say it's just variance and I'm playing fine but I hate this being so out of my control. In the last few months I got the debt down from 25k to 10, but now with only 2k online, a 10k debt, and not remembering what it's like to have a winning day, I'm not sure what I'm meant to do. I know I should have planned for this, it was inevitable, I guess I was just hoping I could take a risk early and get to a safe level before the run bad.

Maybe I'll take a few days off and see how things go at PLO50.

Sometimes life throws challenges at you and all you can do is step up and give it your best.

Peace out
Mitch

Setting my comeback for September 1st

caperbii — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:06:44 +0000

When I left off in July I had built my bankroll up to about 1k and was playing mostly 25nl and 50nl. I plan on jumping back here pretty quick but I'll start off slower with modest september goals.

I've just set aside $500 + $40 initial online buy in aside for a poker bankroll. I'm going to start in at 10nl to get warmed up then move to 25nl when I feel ready. The only goals I'll set in september is to play my A game as often as I possibily can; and if I don't feel I have it in me, don't play at all. Also for a hand goal I'll play 20,000 hands of RUSH poker (2 tabling) and 10,000 hands of standard 6max NLHE (3-4 tabling as usual)

Hope this all goes well -