hola - nach langem gibts wieder mal was von mir zu hören.

Sind jetzt schon 2 Tage in Barcelona und nachdem wir der Pokerstarsparty einen Kurzbesuch abgestattet hatten hab ich gestern im Casino gerailbirded und den Pool unsicher gemacht!

Barcelona übertrifft eigentlich alle Erwartungen und gefällt mir wirklich gut, obwohl ich bis jetzt nur die Standgegend kenne. Eine gewisse Sprachbarriere ist aber schon da, da kaum einer der Locals deutsch oder englisch spricht…mit Händen und Füßen lässt sich aber gut kommunizieren!

Ansonsten haben wir eine gute Zeit mit den deutschen Jungstars und auch einige ehemalige Magicspieler hab ich gesichtet (Max Bracht, Sebastian Zink, Dario Minieri…) . Viel Chinesepoker wird auch gespielt - meistens ohne mich -  da ich noch immer nicht verstehe was den Reiz daran ausmacht =)

Vom gestrigen Tag sind Cort und Niki gut dabei und unter den Chipleadern von Tag 1A, für mich gehts in einer Stunde los!

ciao

 Stefan

Short update:

doing good in the EPT, finished my day 1 with 51k, average should be around 25k.

had very good table draws, was down to 5k very soon when I failed to win with my AA twice.

I think I played really well today, made 2 small plunders but definetely saved insanse amounts on the 2 AA hands I lost. Or so I like to think, tournament pros would probably consider it normal.

Doubled up to 12k with KK vs JJ, and stole alot of small pots from then on.

Won a 60k pot with K5 on a 455J board when I rereraised Sverre Budgo ( surname prolly a little off), who put me on a bluff or a draw and called with a 4, drawing dead.

eventhough he admits that it was a bad call, I give him credit for making the call, sticking to his read and putting in an avarage stack at that time with just bottom pair.

Anyway, I lost some small pots after that, Im in a good position but with the 1hour levels and really slow dealers here you dont have too much roomfor making plays.

Oh yeah, I made one really good play that Im very very (very) proud of, but its to complicated to share now. maybe at a later time.

Have 2  5%shares in the tournament, and both of them have even more chips then me, so I expect to get at least my 8k back ;).

apologies for the bad language and mistakes, its really late and Ive been up for nearly 24hours.

good night,

niki

That much for online poker: I plan to take a serious break from the big games.

While a lot of luck was involved in my big upswing during the last 2 months, even more luck is involved in my current downswing.

I´m really afraid to play sets at the moment, if I don´t have top set someone else does and even if I should be so lucky to hold the nuts on the flop I usually end up losing to an open ender to go with a pair or **** like that.

Once again I finished a session very angry, which is so untypical for me.

Now I will have to play the EPT today with a 200k loss in the back of my mind, what a motivation.

While I´ve learned from previous mistakes in my carreer and think that I´m able to step away from games I just don´t beat nowadays, it´s going to be very tough to step away from this one, because I belief I´m one of the best in it.

But at the rate I´m blowing through my bankroll at the moment, I don´t want to risk any more money in that game in the near future.

That much for intentions, I´ll probably be sitting there again tomorrow. GRRR.

As I´ve mentioned, I´m playing the EPT Barcelona today, should be fun, it´s gonna be very easy to top my last and only EPT appearance, where I lasted for 2 or 3 levels I belief.

Wish me luck.

My brother and I arrived in Barcelona yesterday, and I enjoyed the trip so far, catching up with some friends, playing a little chinese poker (losing there too,wtf) and visiting the PokerStars Party, I´m playing for PokerStars since I bought in with W$. Got a pretty nice deal buying them and basically get the hotel for free.

Thats it for now, big group breakfast and chilling at the beach is all I´ve planned till 5pm, when the EPT starts(very late imo).

l8r,

Niki

It had to happen eventually.

On a 7-figure downswing, not winning any pots and losing a lot on tilting.

Will maybe go down in limits for a while after my break, I´ve done a bet that I wouldn´t play online poker for a while and it´s not just for money but for the real torture:

playing the lowest limit holdem game on FullTilt until I have made a certain amount of money.

This sounds like pure pain and will motivate me not to play and eventually very likely save me money.

However I´m allowed to play chinese poker online which I´ve done quite a bit lately and am a little up. It can be very entertaining and hopefully will distract me from real poker for a while.

I´ve also thought about taking a spontaneous holiday but there´s not really enough time since I´m flying to Barcelona on the 27th with my brother for the EPT event.

I will be a lot of fun since I´m gonna meet even more people I only know from playing online and tons of cool people I already know will be there as well.

I´m looking forward to chilling at the beach a little each day, eating delicious see food and playing some chinese poker. Oh, I might actually get something going in the tournament with a little luck and a little more motivation than in London.

My careless approach to tournaments is really stupid once the buyin reaches 8000 euros, lots of money for a few hours of entertainement.

Wish me luck, may my will be strong enough to overcome my addiction to 4card- gambling.

later,

niki

I´m in Zurich right now and just had a massive breakfast including lots of fruit, which was great after a week of eating nothing but fast food, since its very hard to find good restaurants in London.

It´s not that there aren´t any, but you cannot just walk down the street and find a decent one as you can in my area in Vienna. So it´s been mostly sandwiches for me for a whole week.

As expected I busted very soon in the NPL MainEvent, wasn´t playing well and didn´t get any cards.

Can´t really tell any bad beat stories, since I was always behind when the money got in. Got a little unlucky when people made “bad” calls but then kept improving so I couldn´t push them out.

As it turned out, it was good that I got out so fast, since I went home afterwards to have one of my biggest winning days yet, completely destroying a tilting IDreamOfJenna and winning quite a lot of Ziigmund, who was just a little too curious in the end, when he kept telling me that he knew I had a certain hand that beats him but made the calls anyway.

Also won a little of David Benyamin who might be the person running the worst against me. He just never wins a big pot, no matter if in front or behind.

I won a little over 600k that night, and decided to leave London in the morning.

I went to Zurich to meet some friends and family at the Austrian border to celebrate my 20th birthday.

Only one more year until I will return some of the money I won online to the place it probably came from, the Bellagio.

I really hope to be smart enough not to lose too much on my first trip to Vegas, since playing in live cash games is so much harder for me than online.

Due to my bad sleeping schedule, I got up in the middle of the night and played quite a bit, running over the tables in the beginning, basically winning every single pot for about an hour, before getting in a big HU battle with Phil Ivey.

I started out winning, as I usually do against Phil because he doesn´t seem to care too much.

This time, though, he showed why he is world class and started playing great after that, and I really enjoyed our match.

We played some massive pots, each hand usually went to the river since we both don´t like to give up. The average pot size in the match was between 15k and 20k, so we really played very fast.

I think I got a little unlucky in the beginning, having strong 2nd best hands a couple of times, but was definitely outplayed in the end. I could have saved 100kish there if I had quit him sooner, but somehow wasn´t willing to give up.

I eventually quit him after he beat me for about 300k, mainly because I was still up a little for the night and didn´t want to get stuck and then play forever to get even.

I´m very proud of my ability to quit games/sessions nowadays and belief it´s one of the reasons for my recent success.

In the earlier days of my career and basically only quit a game when I couldn´t keep my eyes open or when my account was cleared.

At some point, the day would come up when I would go on tilt and/or find someone to dump my money to in a high HU game, now I really ask myself every now and then during a session whether I´m playing well and whether my opponent is really worse than me.

I´m very confident in my HU game at the moment, so recently I wasn´t the one quitting sessions, but I´m happy I pulled the trigger against Ivey, who I basically have to give props to for playing really well in our long, interesting and very entertaining battle.

I´m sure we´ll match again, I hope he goes back to his “I don´t care for online poker”- mood, otherwise I will really need to step up, play my best and hope.

So I finished this night up about 15k on PLO and another 7k on chinese poker.

While this is not a big win, it´s still a whole lot of money to make on a single day and I´m very happy to book another winning day, showing that I´m beating the games pretty constantly.

Now I´m going to check out Zurich a little since I´ve never been here and I´m staying right in the old part of the city. What I´ve seen from the cab ride, it looks a lot like Vienna with many small streets and nice old buildings.

I´ll probably be tired after that and will wake up once again in the middle of the night.

I guess I have to get a tan in Barcelona then.

later,

Niki

—————-

Just had a walk, nice city, nice area.

Came back to play a little and won 130k in 30 minutes. Back to normal. ;)

good night

Sorry for not posting a blog sooner but Ive been busy.

Im in London at the moment to play the NPL, a new televised tournament series, with a main event of 2,500 GBP, so about 5k USD.

At the smaller tournaments leading up to the main event (all of them also televised btw) the turnout has not been great and there has never been more than 3 tables. Oh well, its still fun to play and Im not motivated anyway.

Played 3 tournaments so far and not a final table yet.

Despite the whole NPL thing not being a great succes so far, Im still having a blast in London. I´ve met a lot of people I only knew from playing online, seems like everybody is in town because there are so many different tournaments going on.

There is the NPL, the Dutch Open, the Scandinavian Open (a televised cashgame with 2 “amateurs” who won their buyin in online satellites), some womens tournament finished a few days ago I think.

So far all I´ve done is playing the NPL tournaments, playing online, going out for food with a mix of cool people ranging from players, dutch celebreties and officials from online poker rooms, playing a little chinese poker with Roland deWolfe, Ziigmund and Luigi, who obviously won the most in the shortest time, but there were no big winners anyway. I broke even.

Online poker is going well for me, just finished a good session where I won about 330k, 160k of it in Limit Holdem. It could and should have been about 100k more with a little better luck and better play in the end, but Im very pleased with the result, especially since I am really enyoing Limit Holdem again.

Its good to have a 2nd game for times when you dont feel like playing Omaha or there just aren´t games running.

The few people playing the 1k-2k holdem game are David B., Hoss_TBF, AlRaysia, EDEE and myself, Im having fun playing it again and am winning about 400k in the game this month, but I have been running very good and wont be able to keep up this win rate for long Im afraid.

So far Ive been avoiding HU play except for 1 session against David where I took a small profit after just outcarding him basically. Maybe I´ll challange Hoss_TBF again, but the last time I did at the 500-1k game it didnt end well for me. We´ll see.

The Omaha games are great at the moment with lots of really passive players who cannot seem to find an answer to Davids or my aggressive style, so it is very easy to just gring them down.

Winning most of my money playing HU, took about 100 of Phil Ivey today.

I plan to play tomorrow night again after yet another quick exit from the NPL tournament, but I´ll probably get stuck on playing chinese.

Later,

Niki

Just lost about 150k at PLO, played horrible and was badly on tilt. No idea why, happy not to lose more.

Luckily I could win about 100k in 1k-2k LimitHoldem vs. Hoss_TBF and AlRaysia so the day isn´t too bad.

Very short update this is, need to do some analyzing to find out why I was tilting so bad.

later

Niki

Just finished a little session and for the first time in a long time I finished a poker game in anger.

I´m well aware that in poker winning and losing goes hand in hand, and that I cannot expect to be the biggest winner every day, but what happened in this session just makes me want to throw my notebook out the window.

First of all, I dropped nearly 10 buyins in less than 1 hour, simply by losing every single pot simultaniously on 4 tables. While usually there is some sort of tilting involved in such a big loss in such a short time, I´m just sure I played great.

I had a big losing day about 2 weeks ago with me dropping 800k, after which I experienced the sunny side of variance big time for the next couple of days, and I really hope that the same will happen this time.

But even if this isn´t followed by a big upswing like last time, it´s not in my place to be dissappointed, since I cannot really complain about having bad luck recently.

Without wanting to come of sounding arrogant, I feel like I play way better than most players on the big games online, but I´ve also been running really lucky this past month.

The sick part really is, that after all this complaining, I think I am still up for the day, or pretty much even. It´s hard to say since I do not use PokerTracker and am lending and collecting money every day, so its hard to keep track.

Even if I´m losing a little today, I am having a great month and leading the “Leaderboard” at HighstakesDB

The other thing that really got me pissed was the amount of shortstackers around today. It usually doesn´t bother me at all, but today it was just ridiculous.

At certain times I would sit with 4 shortstacks, 3 of them sitting out, and the other one joining them after winning just a couple grand, not even playing to double up.

I truly belief that you are better of keeping your emotions totally out of poker, today I just cannot help it.

Grrrrr, I am off banging my head against the wall.

later