Mission To Malta

Let’s ramble a bit about theory.

I’ll throw this post together now and I don’t know if I’ll clean it up later or not. These are just some of the concepts I have been thinking about lately.

Every once in a while a thread pops up in a poker forum, either as a hand post or as a theory post, which deals with the theoretical concept of playing small pocket pairs from the blinds vs late position openers.

The opinion of most people, also some coaches here at DC, seems to be that we shouldn’t call to setmine, and rather fold, or even better 3bet these hands. Their reasoning is, that we don’t have sufficennt implied odds to setmine profitably OOP vs an aggressive regular who opens the pot from late position.

In a vacuum this is true.

I still disagree with it strongly!

Here are my thoughts on this topic:

Let’s start completely somewhere else: Our UTG opening range. I have stopped looking at this ″specific hands and their profitability″ filter in HEM. It tilted me, screwed up my game and in the end it’s utterly and completely useless.

Open it!

Yes, now!

OH NOES!!! I open 76s UTG, but I lose with it longterm!!! I should not open these hands anymore!!!
I call BS on this statement. It LITERALLY fucked up my game for a while, when I tried to make every hand from every position profitable. I finally came to the conclusion that this is not nessecary at all.

You know these turbonits and their 6% UTG opening ranges, don’t you? Will they ever get action from you with anything but a ″Smack or Crack″ range (i.e. Hands that smack their range right now, or have the potential to crack it postflop)? I hope not, and if they do, you should consider rethinking your approach towards situatons like that. These guys win marginally from the recreational players, but we here at DC have a good grasp of what it takes to win these players’ money. We all are here to study the game, get better at it and to achieve an edge over EVERY PLAYER in our games/stakes and beyond. We need to have hands in our UTG opening range, that won’t do super well longterm in order for us to get action on our big hands.

One could argue, that most regulars don’t pay enough attention and won’t notice how loose or tight you are from UTG. While there is some truth to that, it doesn’t really take that much observance to figure out your looseness. In fact, a few thousand DATAMINED hands will be sufficent, to determine if you’re rather a 12/10 or a 29/25 kinda guy. These numbers, while certainly not telling the whole story, will make a difference in your opponents’ approach to you at the table.

How does this all translate to setmining OOP?

Well, it’s the very same concept. I don’t care that if I apply the HEM filter ″blinds = true, facing late pos open = true, 22-66 = true, coldcall = true″ and whether it shows a profit or not. I myself setmine OOP and I will keep doing it, and I c/f A LOT, when I don’t hit a set. Very rarely will the board be good enough to bluffcatch profitably vs guys that I know will barrel a lot. However my OOP calling range is far from being comprised only out off small PPs. I call a lot of stuff. Broadways, and SCs mostly, with the occasional monster mixed in.

And then I checkraise, yo!

For those who haven’t already, I suggest you check out all the audio and video stuff that Improva has put out for free, since he talks about similar concepts, and is responsible for ″incubating″ this thought, which had brewed in me for quite a while.

When I started checkraising more, I realized that people are often times super paranoid towards checkraises (I’m no exception I guess). I thought about that and came to the conclusion that this gives me the right to checkraise them even more for thin value with lots of TPs for example. I still keep c/f’ing my small pairs though if they don’t hit. Once they do hit, however, I get way more value out of them than the proverbial ″Setmining Nit″, because even if my opponent doesn’t recall that I have barrelled off my stack once vs him with a busted draw, he’ll see two BIG GREEN numbers in my preflop HUD (has nothing to do with the situation, but leaves an impression nonetheless) and when he opens my popup, he’ll see an above average c/r flop %. Enough for him to call AT LEAST once with 97s on Q73.

Another reason why I hate 3betting these hands is that a small pocket pair is incredibly tough to play in a 3bet pot OOP, because most often you end up ″bluffing″ with it. I put that in qoutes, because you most likely had the best hand anyways if your opponent folds postflop. So you’re forced to c/f a lot of turns or bluff off 150BB with 2 outs (I refuse to call this a semibluff) like villain did vs me in the following hand:

$0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 3 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

Hero (BTN): $150.90
SB: $331.85
BB: $53.90

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with J J
Hero raises to $3, SB raises to $9.50, 1 fold, Hero calls $6.50

Flop: ($20.00) 4 7 7 (2 players)
SB bets $12.50, Hero calls $12.50

Turn: ($45.00) Q (2 players)
SB bets $30, Hero calls $30

River: ($105.00) 7 (2 players)
SB bets $115, Hero calls $98.90 all in

Final Pot: $302.80
Hero shows J J (a full house, Sevens full of Jacks)
SB shows 2 2 (a full house, Sevens full of Deuces)
Hero wins $301.80
(Rake: $1.00)

(thinly veiled brag, I know) ;-)

If I see a guy, like the one in the above hand, show down a small pocket pair, which he has 3bet vs me OOP preflop, then he has lost all of his credibility when he checkraises me in the future, because I know that a significant portion of the range that hes’s repping isn’t in his preflop flatting range to begin with.

To conclude the points I tried to make:

• If you want to get action on your big hands from UTG, you’ll need to have other, maybe not as profitable stuff in your opening range.

• If you want to punish your opponents for their wide late position ranges by checkraising them a lot, you’ll need to have strong made hands in your checkraising range.

All, feel free to give me some heat on this subject. I know that a lot of people will still disagree with me. That’s the fun with this game. A lot of ways lead to Rome, and arguing about them (DC style, not 2p2 style) will only make us all stronger players who will climb ″Mount Robusto″ faster and faster.

I’m talking to you here. Yes, YOU! You think Sugar Nut is totally wrong here, and 3betting deuces OOP is the nuts. Go ahead, rip my post here apart, write up a blog post of your own and link me to it in the comments.

Thanks for listening to my ramblings and:

Until next time,

Sugar Nut

So I started to play poker again. I really needed a break from the game in order to regain some of the energy that was required to reach my 2009 goal. The first session this year felt kinda weird. I didn’t really feel A-game-ish, made some stupid plays based on my “I Has Two Cards” thought process and overall felt like I need some time to really get my head back into this beatiful game.

That’s the point. I LOVE POKER!!! However I had learned to hate it in the past two months and especially in december. 90K hands in one month six-tabling was just a little bit too much for me, but in the end I don’t regret a single one of these hands. I’ll be paying significantly less rake this year on average. Well, I hope I’ll pay more rake absolutely (because I’ll play more hands) but relatively it’s gonna be less. This is huge for a player who beats the rake as it is.

I’ll be playing the majority of my sessions six-tabling still, however they’re gonna be shorter sessions and I’ll throw in four-tabling sessions regularly to REALLY focus on ranges and creativity. I can do that somewhat while playing six tables, but obviously i’m better at it the less tables I play.

My goal for this year (apart from january) is gonna be 60K hands per month while constantly improving my understanding of and working on:

1. Ranges!
2. Ranges!
3. Ranges!
4. Mental Stability (AKA Tiltlessness)
5. Mental Stability (AKA Tiltlessness)
6. Mental Stability (AKA Tiltlessness)
7. Math and Probability
8. Game Theory

I’m really looking forward to 2010. This is gonna be the year in which I’ll get my ass out of 100NL, which I’m really only still playing because I had never put in enough volume and had to withdraw too much. By the end of the year I want to be playing midstakes regularly, not having to worry or feel shitty after 10 buy in losing days because I’m not gonna be scared money in these games. Right now 100NL is the highest limit where this is the case for me.

Here’s a hand in which I take a non “standard” line against a splashy player who I knew (thanks to PTR) was mainly a midstakes HU player who seemed to play 100NL to splash around and “PWN Some N00bs”

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG: $99.45
MP: $100.00
CO: $100.00
BTN: $138.05
Hero (SB): $108.35
BB: $116.25

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is SB with A 7
3 folds, BTN raises to $3, Hero calls $2.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($7.00) 8 Q A (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $5, Hero raises to $16.50, BTN raises to $36, Hero calls $19.50

Turn: ($79.00) 5 (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

River: ($79.00) Q (2 players)
Hero checks, BTN checks

Final Pot: $79.00
BTN mucks T 6
Hero shows A 7 (two pair, Aces and Queens)
Hero wins $76.00
(Rake: $3.00)

In his mind I’m a somewhat LAGgy unknown 100NL “N00b”, who’s trying to get him of of his wide (prbably ATC) BTN opening range. His thought process is “He’s repping AQ, which he 3bets pre at least a non zero % of the time and 88 – LOLZ 3bet”

I call the 3bet to get him to spazz out even more on later streets. Unfortunately we weren’t deeper though because I guess that would have made it more likely for him to try and barrel me. I thought of betting something like $12 on the river, but in the end I don’t think that there is any way for me to get his whole stack, so whatever. I was quite happy with how I played the hand.

Before any of you guys comment and tell me that it’s unnessecary to do FPSsy shit like that. I know, that it isn’t nessecary. However, I make a living playing this game and the day I play a robotical “Standard” game is the day I should go work in a factory.

I need my OCCASIONAL FPS to sustain my love for this game. Hands like these, whether they work out or not, make me feel alive while sitting here alone in my appartement day in and day out. And believe me, not all of these hands work out. I get stacked viciously sometimes, but I’m beginning to love getting stacked aswell.

Life Is Good!

Until next time,

Sugar Nut

It’s been a long december and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last.

The Counting Crows: “A Long December”

So,

I promised a “Trip Report” about my last one and a half months, AKA my Supernova Run. On november 9th I was, like so many times before, rather unhappy with my work ethic in general. I was sure now that I wouldn’t even reach Supernova status on Pokerstars. Now, I have always been a player that saw rakeback as a supplement to my income and it was never my goal to be a “Rakeback Grinder”. Supernova however is something that a professional SSNL player should pick up along the way without really focusing too much on achieving it.

Looking at my VIP status page on PS disgusted me:

You need to earn 54,065.82 VPP by december 31st to achieve Supernova Status.

So, it’s less than two months to go and I’m not even half way there. In my defence I moved from FullTilt to Stars in april or may (don’t remember exactly), so It’s not as bad as it seems. Still I should have been supernova already or at least pretty close to it, had I grinded like I am supposed to, being a professional.

So I crunched some numbers, called my buddy and prop-bet him that I’d reach suoernova by the end of the year (see my blog entry from 11-15-2009).

On november 10th I sat down at my computer and started to grind…

Pretty much eight hours a day, pretty much every day with no days off. Well that was the plan, but how does this saying go (by genral Sherman I believe)? “No plan survives the first hostile contact!” or something along those lines. After a few days my brain felt like someone had put an immersion blender into it and turned it on at full throttle. My game suffered quite a bit and I “swonged” my way through november eventually pretty much breaking even for the month. Also I had days where I wasn’t able to put in more than 1.5k hands due to the fact that I just lost all of my focus, kept timing out everywhere etc.

I had put in 75k hands in november, which was by far the most volume I had ever put in over the course of one month. That’s a reason to be proud of, no? Well, yeah it kinda is. However I had only one month left and 90k hands in front of me. “I can stll do this, I can stll do this, I can stll do this, …” I kept telling myself and continued the grind. At this point I also got a bit better used to it and was able to maintain my focus for longer periods and overall started playing better. Couple that with one of the biggest heaters in my entire career and we’re looking at a good 45 buy in upswing over the first 20k hands in december (8 days).

What comes up…

Coming out of this heater, I entered the biggest downswing of my entire career. Over the next 40k hands (12 days) I ran 55 buy ins below all in EV (yes, fifty-five!). Couple THAT with numerous coolers and setups that won’t show up in the all in EV line and the fact that I’m not Tommy Angelo and certainly didn’t play my A-game when running like utter crap, and we’re looking at a 48 buy in downswing, dipping my month back into the negative.

I was on the brink of throwing in the towel. I couldn’t stand it anymore sitting down every day just to get beat up like an unpopular kid in highschool… EVERY SINGLE SESSION!

I said before that I didn’t see my friends a whole lot during that time so pretty much my only social contact over the course of this challenge was my “Pokerbuddy” Marc. I put that in quotes because since a very long time now (even before this challenge started) he’s become way more than just a pokerbuddy. It’s just that among all the people I know in my real life, he’s the only one I can also talk to about poker without explaining everything from scratch. Over these 52 days I think there were not more than five days that we didn’t talk on the phone. During my downswing he was the one who kept motivating me to continue: “Dude, you’ll have to go on. It’s just a bad run. Yes, it’s very bad, but just like any other bad run, it will turn around eventually. You’re a good player, No, you don’t suck, and you know that. Achieving this will be a major step towards your mission to Malta”.

In case you’re wondering: Yes, he is the guy who had $350 on the line against me in this challenge.

Thank You Marc!!!

Without you, this wouldn’t have been possible!

I still fell behind pace a good amnount during that time because even though I couldn’t really stop-loss, I had to quit numerous times because I went on big time monkey tilt. (EPTPE, I know). So before Christmas I had to make a decision. Go with my initial plan and take the holidays off to go see my family (and lose the challenge) or stay at home and grind…

It was not an easy decision, but I had come so far now and losing now would have crushed my soul even more. So for the first time ever I did not see my family for christmas. That was kinda tough for me but in the end it was a concious decision I made to achieve my goal, which will help me achieve the bigger goal I have in mind. Moving to Malta.

I still had a lot of pace to make up for, so from the 25th of december till the 31st I put in another 52 hours of grinding, thankfully running good again.

In the end I finished december up 38 buy ins and as a Supernova and am now enjoying my at least 7-10 days long break from poker.

My December graph lol (100% 100NL 6 max)

In the end I played 159,320 hands after november 9th 2009 to achieve this goal. I know for some of you grinders out there that isn’t too big of a deal, but I don’t compare myself to anyone else. I know my abilities and boundaries, and I know that I stepped over them quite a bit during these 52 days.

I’ll be back as a contributor on the forums soon, but right now I’m gonna take a break from poker pretty much all together, that is: playing, studying, watching videos and posting in the strategy sections of forums.

I deserve it!

Until next time,

Sugar Nut

Well, the fat lady will sing at january 1st 12:00 am. Right now I have 6.5VPP left to go for Supernova. I’m waiting for a buddy, who’s on his way here and my Pokerbuddy who’ll join me on skype/teamviewer for the last 20-30 hands.

It has been a BIG struggle to get here, including THE biggest and most soulcrushing downswing of my entire career. In the end though I finished in the positive and am extremely proud of myself right now.

I’ll get extremely drunk tonight celebrating new year’s with my buddies, most of whom I haven’t really seen in quite a while due to my constant grinding. I’ll write a detailed “Trip Report” about this whole thing once I sobered up, which I guess won’t be before january 2nd.

Until then,

Sugar Nut

… you will run worse than you ever imagined to be possible.

That’s a quote I read on 2p2 some time ago. I guess for me one of these days was today. At least my second session. I literally never thought it was possible to get boat vs quads twice, boat vs higher boat, and straight vs boat over the span of 1300 hands. Having each and every one of your top pairs outkicked doesn’t really help either.

In short, I dropped 8 buy ins over 1300 hands. Fortunately I had made 3 in my first session, so I’m only down 5 for the day, which is obviously not that big of a deal, but for the first time since I’m on this Supernova Run, I had to tilt-quit my session.

We all know bad runs, and we all know they suck. So in no way do I expect any simpathy or anything. I just needed to vent this somewhere, and since I have a blog now, why not here?

Before Joe Tall comes along and reads this, here’s my pre-emptive: EPTPE

Also, since I really liked This Article by MrWookie on 2p2 I guess I should refrain from showing you my boat vs quads hands, but much rather show you the one hand where I think I really “rocked” today.

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players -

UTG: $99.50
MP: $102.50
CO: $158.05
Hero (BTN): $204.90
SB: $104.55
BB: $98.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with 6 4
1 fold, MP raises to $3, CO calls $3, Hero calls $3, 1 fold, BB calls $2

Flop: ($12.50) 3 8 T (4 players)
BB checks, MP bets $9, CO calls $9, Hero raises to $22, BB folds, MP folds, CO calls $13

Turn: ($65.50) 6 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets $39, CO calls $39

River: ($143.50) 9 (2 players)
CO checks, Hero bets $140.90 all in, CO folds

It’s entirely possible that I had the best hand here and villain was on a higher flushdraw, but given my reads on him I knew that he wouldn’t put in 160BB without anything nutted. His hand is defined as either weak/made or a weak draw that might have paired up on the river. Most 7x hands don’t even get to the river (not even a whole lot of them in his preflop range to begin with) and I certainly get him off of any Tx, AdTd/KdTd J9 kinda hands with my shove. He might even fold Td9d here. All in all I think my FE is pretty damn high, and I only need him to fold around 40% of the time.

Earlier in my career I would have never been able to pull this move off. I would have checked the turn or river because LOL showdown value. I don’t think my SDV is ever strong enough vs his range to check it down so, since I know villain pretty well, I elected to turn my hand into a bluff.

Until next time,

Sugar Nut

This is gonna be a rather short entry. Just a little brag and a big THANK YOU to Deucescracked Coach Grindcore and his first video from yesterday.

Here’s the graph from all the hands I’ve played after watching his video.

This is all 100NL Stars btw.

Weekends! Don’t you just love ‘em? I guess for a professional gambler there should be nothing more fun than the weekly variance fest from friday til sunday. It’s just always so funny when you start your day playing your normal game: Guy limps UTG, you raise some suited trash to isolate and then you see it: cawl, cawl, cawl, cawl… Before you know it, you find yourself in a 4way pot with T4s and TPNK. Then you slowly realize it: Aaaah yeah, it’s saturday…

OK,let’s skew our range more towards highcards and most importantly: Tighten up OOP! Yup, that works better. Unfortunately I didn’t run too well today, so after 4,000 hands I was down a buy in. The funny thing however is: I’m in a really good mood. I am super happy with my performance today. I mean, I made some very bad plays, but I don’t think that there’s anyone out there who will play 4k hands without making a single mistake. Overall though, I playeed really well today. I’m also well on pace for Supernova. My Openoffice sheet says, that I have a bit more than 100K hands to go, which is more than doable.

Grinding 8 hours a day eery day without any days off however is quite an emotional challenge for me. I hadn’t seen my buddies in days and staying at home all day (with the exception of my lunchbreak walk and my evening walk on the beautiful river Rhine) can leave me a bit sad at the end of the day. So today I extended my lunchbreak to go see my buddies and cook a nice meal with them. I knew that that would mean that I won’t be finished before 10:00pm – 10:30pm but it was well worth it. I got home physically and emotionally refreshed and at around 6:00pm started my second 4 hour session.

Like I said before I didn’t run all that well, but despite some mistakes I made, I was playing very well and made some really nice “Readbased-Sugar-Nut-Soulpwnage-Betsizing-Tell-Ace-Hi-Calldowns” which netted me 140.5 big blinds:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players – View hand 382831
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $150.30
BB: $100.00
UTG: $97.00
Hero (MP): $164.55
CO: $170.70
BTN: $123.95

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP with T A
UTG calls $1, Hero raises to $4.50, 4 folds, UTG calls $3.50

Flop: ($10.50) 7 4 J (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $6.50, UTG calls $6.50

Turn: ($23.50) 7 (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $14.50, UTG calls $14.50

River: ($52.50) 6 (2 players)
UTG bets $21, Hero calls $21

Final Pot: $94.50
UTG shows T 9 (a pair of Sevens)
Hero shows T A (a pair of Sevens – Ace kicker)
Hero wins $91.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 4 players – View hand 382833
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $81.50
BTN: $39.50
Hero (SB): $101.00
BB: $100.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is SB with J A
2 folds, Hero raises to $3, BB calls $2

Flop: ($6.00) 2 4 4 (2 players)
Hero bets $4, BB calls $4

Turn: ($14.00) 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $6, Hero calls $6

River: ($26.00) 3 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $20, Hero calls $20

Final Pot: $66.00
Hero shows J A (three of a kind, Fours – Ace kicker)
BB shows J K (three of a kind, Fours)
Hero wins $64.00
(Rake: $2.00)

Villain in the next hand was running an incredible 68/43 oveer 80 hands and after I called him down with Ace-High in a 130BB pot…

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players – View hand 382828
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $103.95
BB: $106.50
UTG: $175.60
Hero (MP): $139.40
CO: $95.50
BTN: $92.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP with J A
UTG raises to $3, Hero raises to $10, 4 folds, UTG calls $7

Flop: ($21.50) 2 4 6 (2 players)
UTG checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($21.50) 6 (2 players)
UTG bets $16, Hero calls $16

River: ($53.50) 5 (2 players)
UTG bets $40, Hero calls $40

Final Pot: $133.50
UTG shows T 9 (a pair of Sixes)
Hero shows J A (a pair of Sixes – Ace kicker)
Hero wins $130.50
(Rake: $3.00)

… I also Yeti’d him shortly thereafter:

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players – View hand 382837
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

CO: $118.30
BTN: $224.65
SB: $97.90
Hero (BB): $192.05
UTG: $100.55
MP: $89.40

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with T 9
4 folds, SB raises to $4, Hero calls $3

Flop: ($8.00) 4 Q Q (2 players)
SB bets $7, Hero raises to $22, SB raises to $37, Hero raises to $188.05 all in, SB folds

Final Pot: $82.00
Hero mucks T 9
Hero wins $79.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Until next time,

Sugar Nut

Oh, wait! Blogs on DC are meant to be Poker blogs, right? Well let’s talk about some Poker then.

But before we do that I want to link you guys to an awesome thread on 2+2. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of you already know it, but if just one of you doesn’t, then posting the link is already worth it: On Changing Your Life . I’ts not that this thread inspired me to emigrate, but it certainly reinforced my will to do so.

So… Poker, huh? I haven’t been as active in the “Grinding Departement” as I would have liked to this year, and a few days ago I was again pretty unhappy about this fact. I was angry at myself for not even reaching Supernova this year. Just to show myself how impossible it will be to even try achieving Supernova, I opened the windows calculator thingy and crunched some numbers. What I found out was a bit surprising: Even though I came up with a number of hands, that I have NEVER in my life grinded in the span of less than 2 months, I knew that with discipline and willpower I CAN DO IT!
I called my one german Poker buddy, and offered him a prop-bet, that I will reach Supernova by the end of the year. I told him that in order to achieve that I had to grind around 150k-160k hands by december 31st, and when he heard that number he snap accepted the bet (he knows me pretty well, I guess). We’re wagering my $500 vs his $350, and even though this challenge will be pretty tough for me and is far from being a lock, he’s still kinda giving me odds here. His 7 buy ins vs my 5/2.5 buy ins (I play 200NL when games are good). Since we’re friends we don’t have to negotiate the hard way and anyways, betting on this challenge was not to gain extra cash, but more to have some more motivation.

I immediately sat down and wrote an open office sheet (those of you who have seen my “The Dude!” video probably know that I like excel/open office), which looks like this.

As you can see, I was again a bit lazy during the weekend, but I’m gonna catch up on the 2512 hands in the next few days to get back to my average of 4k hands/day.

I must admit that my game does suffer a bit, due to me being quite exhausted during the last 1,000 hands or so each day. I still have an edge though and so far I have spent way more time in the theoretical part of being a Poker pro than in the grinding part, so I guess it’s alright. Getting to Supernova will mean that I’ll be able to pretty much live off of rakeback from January on and since I’m not gonna put in all these harcore days without any breaks anymore, I will be able to grow my roll nicely to make the move to Malta sooner rather than later.

Here are some fun hands from today’s session.

Don’t mess with the Sugar Nut. Especially not when you rep air ;)

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $104.50
SB: $96.50
BB: $90.65
Hero (UTG): $127.20
MP: $173.10
CO: $125.20

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is UTG with 4 A
Hero raises to $3.50, 3 folds, SB calls $3, 1 fold

Flop: ($8.00) K 8 K (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $5, SB raises to $17, Hero calls $12

Turn: ($42.00) 6 (2 players)
SB bets $28, Hero raises to $106.70 all in, SB folds

Final Pot: $98.00
Hero mucks 4 A
Hero wins $95.00
(Rake: $3.00)

Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold’em – 6 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $130.15
BB: $103.65
UTG: $100.00
MP: $78.35
CO: $119.20
Hero (BTN): $159.85

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with 3 7
3 folds, Hero raises to $3, 1 fold, BB calls $2

Flop: ($6.50) K 4 6 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $4, BB raises to $12, Hero calls $8

Turn: ($30.50) 6 (2 players)
BB bets $22, Hero raises to $144.85 all in, BB folds

Final Pot: $74.50
Hero mucks 3 7
Hero wins $71.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Until next time,

Sugar Nut

… there was a Dude! A pretty sad and lonely Dude, who just got out of a 4 year relationship with a woman he had loved very much. He was a Dude, who was known to take these kinda things the hard way and so it was only normal that he felt like shit for quite some time. But since that Dude was not 14 anymore (in fact he was 31) and did not go through a breakup for the first time in his life, he knew better this time. He knew better than to enter into a self destructive pattern like he had been known to do in the past…

Well, even if it is pretty tough to guess, the Dude I’m referring to is myself. It is also true that I was pretty good a fucking everything in my life up badly after breakups. Once it got so bad, that after 3.5 years of still not feeling better and getting seriously suicidal I had to pay the local mental institution a visit (a visit that lasted for 11 weeks). After that I felt better, quickly got off the meds and found a new girlfriend soon thereafter. However, when you have the depression in you, it kinda never really goes away, so next breakup, next fuckup? FUCK NO!!! Not this time!

I decided that this time will be different. I conciously worked on myself from day one after the breakup and even though it’s a “2 steps forward 1 step back” kinda process, I’m feeling way better now than I would have in the same situation in my past. During that process of working on myself I also decided that I need a goal in my life. Well, the goal of having children with the woman I loved wasn’t available anymore, so I guess I decided that now I needed ANOTHER goal. “Grinding It Out” to pay the rent just wouldn’t cut it.

It had always been one of my dreams to one day leave this country (I live in germany), and now since I’m single again I don’t have to come to an agreement with anyone. I’m completely free to do whatever the fuck I want. I can spned long hours in front of my computer without anyone bitching about it and I can mvoe to wherever I want to move without considering someone else’s wishes, dreams, dayjobs etc.

I’m gonna move to Malta where the sun is shining a lot more than it does here (good for people like me with a tendency for depression) and most importantly where online poker is 100% legal. I’m gonna put in the effort that is nessecary to achieve this goal as soon as humanly possible.

This blog will track my progress towards that goal.

Sugar Nut