I had a very succesful first day here.

I was pretty exhausted after my trip, so I went to rest and woke up at 8pm, not a good time to get up, but alright if you have no plans aside from going to the casino.

I then met up with some locals I knew from my last visit at the Aussie Millions, and they all wanted to go gambling, not PLO, but real gambling, Baccarat to be exact.

In general I´m not a big fan of any games with a house edge, but since I was really bored and there was nothing going on at the poker room, I joined them and was going to play small for a while getting to know the game, I had never played before.

Now, it was pretty funny actually and I didn´t stick to my small stakes plan in the end, to noones surprise. I ended up making a deal with Mark Vos to make a big bet and double it up up to 3 times in case we won it.

To cut a long story short, we did win it, much to the entertainment of fellow players and railbirds. After all, I had just bet 40k on a single game and won it.

I ended up winning just over 70k, all that without having any money with me in the first place. Thanks for the 10k loan!

Now, I don´t want to recomment this game to anyone, the house has an edge and you are going to lose in the long run.

I know it is stories like this that make people try certain house games but I hope all my readers are mature enough to realize that this is not a smart way to bet their money.

While many people believe me to be just some lucky gambler over a talented player, rest assured I do not gamble like this very often, and I realize that I give up a certain amount of money with every spin at the roulette table.

Sometimes I just feel like it and it can be quite entertaining, but I would never bet a large part of my bankroll playing any game I didn´t see an edge in for me.

General advise: DON`T DO IT!

Advise Nr.2: BE SMART WHILE DOING IT!

Anyways, afterwards I had breakfast (for me, dinner for them) with some friends and played a little poker.

We got a 3 handed 100-100 PLO game going, and finished it with a little 400-800 HU limit holdem after the 3rd guy left. I was both playing and running very well which resulted in a 43k win.

Certainly not a bad first day here in beautiful Melbourne, on the negative side I can only mention my fucked up sleeping schedule now to go with a still cloudy sky.

thanks for reading-

Niki

Just arrived in Melbourne, Australia and checked into my suite at the Crown Towers, one of my favourite hotels.

The weather here is pretty bad at the moment, but it hasn´t got to be great during the next week anyway since I´ll be playing at the casino every day.

I think I´m gonna skip the HORSE event today to rest, after all I´ve been travelling over 25 hours, I´m confident it was worth it and I´ll have a great time once the weather improves.

pretty random update, but that is all I got

thanks for reading-

Niki

Very short update. Not much going on at the moment, spend my time with everything but poker.

Since it is getting colder and colder each day, I decided to leave for a sunny beach, after a little poker that is.

I am flying to Melbourne, Australia on tuesday, will be there attending the Pokernews Cup with some bigger side action, and afterwards go on my long desired and well deserved holiday.

I plan to get into better shape, maybe going to the gym or running and to hit the beach every day. I will go north for this, not sure where exactly, but I am thinking of either Noosa or Manly Beach, 2 of the places I liked the most while I visited this year.

Anyways, not much going on,

thanks for reading-

Niki

Probably not.

Feel like it at the moment, just went through nearly 300k in a few hours, and while I still feel like being completely outcarded and unable to ever hit my draws in the big pots, I just have to be honest with myself.

I played Ilari HU for a while and he completely outplayed me. I didn´t really see any difference in his play compared to our HU battles a month ago, but I still couldn´t figure out how to beat his aggressive style, which looks pretty plain and simple at first.

Anyways, I hope my upcoming vacation will help me get fresh for new battles, the way I´m playing right now I don´t really belong in those games.

It is always tough when u feel like you are doing something wrong, but just cannot figure out what it is. At first you always try to blame it on bad luck (and it usually starts partly with it) and then you often reach a point of total void, unable to think of anything that might have changed your play, that parted you from the road to success you were walking on.

I only can hope now that I will find what it takes to beat the games as soon as possible, poker is much nicer when you are winning LOL

2 updates in 2 days, wtf

thanks for reading-

Niki

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past weeks. I didn´t really feel like sharing anything and was too lazy to think of something to write.

Another good excuse would be that I didn´t have access to the internet the past week, and I must admit that I´ve become one of those new generation kids who just couldn´t imagine a world without it, I´ve really become accustomed to all sorts of technology and feel a little lost if I cannot google any info I might need right away.

Anyways, here we go:

I was in Baden for there annual tournament series consisting of the EPT Baden, a 2000euro buyin tournament called the BadenOpen and the 7-card-stud european championship with a buyin of 2500euros.

I only played the first two of the events, and busted pretty fast in both of them, due to a lack of patience and motivation.

No big deal though since there were good side games awaiting.

We started with a 50-100 PLO game and soon switched it to 100-100, where it stayed for the rest of the week.

This may not sound too big, but with some real gamblers, big buyins and occasional live straddles there was lot of big action in it. Oh, and did I mention alcohol?

Anyways, I was winning big in the beginning but somehow gave a lot back the following days.

I don´t think I played my A-game at all times, but even my B-game should have been more than enough to beat this soft game for more than I ended up beating it, which is a measily 40k in 5 days.

I must come off like a big whiner in this blog, but I´m just not happy with the way things are going for me recently, which should be understandable considering I was running crazy hot before.

Anyways, aside from that it was still a nice trip, I met some of the people I can only meet twice a year, be it either Velden or Baden, and we always get very nice, friendly games with lots of action going.

I would´t consider myself to be in this business for very long, but I´ve learned to appreciate games where the players just accept wins and losses with a smile, have a beer and go on with it.

I also tried to get myself a little momentum in the big FullTilt games but it didn´t quite work out yet. Today I had a really big chance but after building a big stack I got into a massive 3way pot with DavidBenyamine, had to call a 60k bet on the turn with a 20card draw and missed on the river.

Then I lost another big pot where I flopped a set and got it allin vs open ender+ FD and “got” hit.

Perfectly normal Omaha hand, the game we all love ;)

I also lost 60k to a player named Sassi on 500-1k limit holdem, and he either outplayed like I´ve never been outplayed before or he just got hit by the deck.

Funny enough, I still cant complain, I finish the day up about 140k, could have been 500k with a little luck, but feels good to book a 6 figure win after a while again.

Aside from that, I don´t think I will be playing too many live tournaments in the near future, I just find it very hard to focus and motivate for them.

I´m generally very exhausted after all this poker playing I´ve done the past couple of months, and that´s why I´m considering taking a little break (from live poker anyways), rent a house at a beach somewhere and take it easy, play a little bit online not to feel completely useless and relax.

The most likely destination for that will be Australias East coast, where summer ist right around the corner now.

I strongly recommend anyone who likes to travel around to check out Australia and New Zealand sometime, it is beautiful down there, good life style and good people.

Not to mention the Aussie Millions in january, a cool tournament series with lots of action.

I´m not advertising for FTP here, I just really liked this tournament when I visited this year.

anyways, this is getting pretty long, I´m too tired to proofread this now, so I´ll leave it for now.

as usual,

thanks for reading-

Niki

I just had the worst poker experience of my entire life.

I played someone HU for about 10 hours straight, and ended up losing only 50k to him, while I was up about 200 allready during the game.

It was a very interesting game and I feel (I say feel not to sound too cocky, but actually I just KNOW) that I completely outplayed him, which leaves me with a very bad feeling in my stomach.

A lot of people claim to never been as unlucky as during a certain losing session they just had, but I just know that this was the most extrem situation I have yet experienced in terms of bad luck.

I was usually up about 220k to 80k vs this guy (ZRC) and just wasn´t able to ever finish him off, mainly because I did NEVER hit a draw in those decisive big pots.

When I happened to be a huge favourite, he just sucked out.

This must sound like horrible whining after a losing session, but I know I will feel the same way after a good nights sleep, no matter how irrational I might be at the moment due to my sick feeling.

I´ve never been very emotional about poker, but this time I´m really close to just break down into tears, never ever have I deserved something in my life this much and got it taken away.

I don´t really care about the money, though I lost about 250k all thogether today (all my money on FTP and I cannot deposit) with the other games combined, but this goes down as my biggest defeat in my poker carreer.

Still, it´s just poker, and I had a good summer so I can´t complain too much.

thanks for reading and good night-

Niki