On the road to midstakes!

Originally posted by Farmarchist
Hey man

I'll follow you ;). Where do you live in Belgium? (I'm from Dendermonde)

Are you serious? I'm from Buggenhout ♦

Originally posted by NIVEKii

Originally posted by Farmarchist
Hey man

I'll follow you ;). Where do you live in Belgium? (I'm from Dendermonde)

Are you serious? I'm from Buggenhout ♦

Hehe awesome ♦. You can always add me on skype (same nickname).

Wow, a good poker player, that like's football and cycling? You must be my soul mate, wanna be my best friend?

Now, in a more serious way, I've been playing in Pokerstars, but I'm willing to try a new poker room full of fishes, to play NL10/NL25, is Everest a good choice, or can you recommend somewhere else?

Thank's and good luck at the tables.

Originally posted by Faria18
Wow, a good poker player, that like's football and cycling? You must be my soul mate, wanna be my best friend?

Now, in a more serious way, I've been playing in Pokerstars, but I'm willing to try a new poker room full of fishes, to play NL10/NL25, is Everest a good choice, or can you recommend somewhere else?

Thank's and good luck at the tables.

Hi Faria,

where you from man? Sure I wanna be your best friend, we can start with friends on PS (sent you friend request).

Everest is probably the best choice for nl25 atm but they are transitioning to ongame next week so I can't comment on that actually. I hear pacificpoker is great too!

back at home since thursday and checking on PS now for the first time. Hence the late answer, sorry for that. Next post will be big update!

Haven't checked pokerstrategy at all since I left for the USA so here is a lengthy report to make up for the lack of updates last weeks! Enjoy the read!

Mo 17/09: departure

We had to get on the plane in Amsterdam. When we arrived at check-in, we were apparently overbooked and were most probably not going to get on any plane that day. That sucked. We rushed to the gate and praid to all possible gods that we would get a seat after all. We got lucky and ended up getting two seats after all. Relief all over the place!

Arrived at Seattle and got our car immediately. Ford Fusion, very comfortable and smooth drive. Had to get used to the automatic shifting. Didn't see much of the city, too tired.

20-21/09: Glacier NP

Our first steps in a NP after driving for 2 days. These driving days were actually pretty cool too, roads are really relaxed to drive and scenery is amazing amost everywhere. In Glacier NP, the 'Going to the Sun Road' was blocked for a big portion due to road works. So first day we did the west part, 2nd day the east part. 2nd day was by far the best. Great views and got to see a lot of animals: black bear + 2 cubs, moose + 2 calfs, mountain goat + 2 lambs. Glacier is amazing!

View at Medicine Lake

2 black bear cubs crossing the road

23-26/09: Yellowstone NP & Grand Teton NP

In Yellowstone, we saw hundreds of buffalo's and of course the waterfall and geisers/hotsprings. The geisers/hotsprings didn't appeal to me as much, once you've seen one or two, you've seen them all actually. And there are a lot. We went bading in a river where a hotspring flows into it, that was really awesome!
Grand Teton was great, the mountains there are fenomenal. The aspens were coloured yellow/orange, also very nice!

Buffalo in Yellowstone

Oxbow's Bend in Grand Teton NP

27/09-02/10: Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Grand Canyon and Zion NP

Gonna speed up the report a bit here. ♦ Capitol reef was nice, Bryce canyon was weird (crazy eroded shapes) and the view over Grand Canyon (north rim only) was really impressive.
Zion NP is really beautiful, a green oasis inside a (relatively small) canyon. We hiked to 2 awesome viewpoints. The hike to Angel's Landing was definitely one of the highlights of the entire journey.

Me at Observation Point (Zion NP)

02-03/10: Las Vegas baby

So after hiking to Angel's Landing before noon we drove to Las Vegas and arrived in a totally different world. I love Las Vegas. It's like a big theme park for adults. We stayed in the Tuscany hotel, a little of the strip but very cheap but quite luxurious (definitely after caming for some days). We checked out the different hotels/casino's on the strip which was really fun to do. I think the Venetian/Pallazo was the craziest. They do a pretty good job of recreating Italy inside there. New York New York was fun too.

inside Venetian/Pallazo

I obv played some poker too. I decided to play a tournament in Ceasar's Palace first day, 85$ buy-in. First time ever I played in a casino! I was so nervous I had trouble not to shake. Obviously, I didn't play anywhere near decent and got it in with 99 preflop for about 70bb stacks. I was mostly relieved to get out of there honestly. I was very disapointed and figured that live poker would never be my game and I should stick to online poker.

The initial plan was to leave for California the day after. But my wife and I both wanted to relax in Las Vegas for another day. So we did. We strolled along the strip again, winning some money playing slots in the meantime. ♠_cool: Afterwards, we relaxed a bit at the pool and had great dinner in italian restaurant in our hotel.

At night, I felt the urge to play another tournament. I just couldn't leave Las Vegas with such a bad poker experience. So I went out and played the 70$ tournament in the Monte Carlo. Unlike the previous day, I felt very relaxed. I was more used to sitting at the poker table + players were considerably worse than in Ceasar's Palace. The structure of the tournament was a lot faster though. Anyway, I chose my spots carefully and managed to double up w KK vs JJ all-in preflop. Not sure but I think I doubled up another time with a dominating ace. Effective stacks went down to 10bb and less quickly. Everyone called waaayyy too tight so I gathered some chips by stealing.

Eventually got to the final table (25 starters). Won a huge pot immediately after stealing w 92 (minraise) and got called. I cbet/called A99 flop and villain turned over AK. People were still calling too tight, so I kept stealing and getting chips without seeing flops. A couple more people went out and eventually I got heads-up and we decided to chop and leave 50$ for the winner. I ended up loosing a big all-in for almost all chips w Q9 vs J9. Anyway, 430$ in the pocket. ♠_cool:

From 5-handed on, it wasn't really very interesting because we were so short. It was just a shove/fold game. Still felt like a boss though! ♦

4-10/10: Sequoia, whale watching, San Francisco

Missed Vegas We both didn't feel like hiking/walkig much. So we decided to keep Sequoia short and skip Yosemite. Saw 2 humpback whales. Impressive, but not really spectacular.
Went to see 49'ers game in SF, impressive!

That's it for the trip report. Ask me if you want to know more

Cliffs:
- wildlife: black ears, moose, elk, ton of buffalo's, bighorn sheep, humpback whales
- national parks: glacier, yellowstone, grand teton, capitol reef, bryce canyon, grand canyon, zion and sequoia
- las vegas: 2 poker tournaments, failed one and got 2/25 in 2nd tournament
- saw 49'ers game

Wow, that should be a template for how tripreports should be written, it was awesome!

Sweetass pics, and awesome shippaments in the tourney!

Originally posted by lpdlamei

Originally posted by Faria18
Wow, a good poker player, that like's football and cycling? You must be my soul mate, wanna be my best friend?

Now, in a more serious way, I've been playing in Pokerstars, but I'm willing to try a new poker room full of fishes, to play NL10/NL25, is Everest a good choice, or can you recommend somewhere else?

Thank's and good luck at the tables.

Hi Faria,

where you from man? Sure I wanna be your best friend, we can start with friends on PS (sent you friend request).

Everest is probably the best choice for nl25 atm but they are transitioning to ongame next week so I can't comment on that actually. I hear pacificpoker is great too!

back at home since thursday and checking on PS now for the first time. Hence the late answer, sorry for that. Next post will be big update!

ahah, thank's

I'm from Portugal, I found out your blog just digging randomly, and it has been a nice read, like that last post about your trip.

So overall, what's your opinion about the USA?

Amazing, incredible! What an experience

Originally posted by Faria18

ahah, thank's

I'm from Portugal, I found out your blog just digging randomly, and it has been a nice read, like that last post about your trip.

So overall, what's your opinion about the USA?

USA is absolutely awesome. If you have the time/money, definitely go there once! People are very friendly and spontaneous compared to Belgium/Europe. Always free refills at restaurants and nature is beautiful obv. Downsides: expensive beer/alcohol in general + no online poker.

Originally posted by lpdlamei

Originally posted by Faria18

ahah, thank's

I'm from Portugal, I found out your blog just digging randomly, and it has been a nice read, like that last post about your trip.

So overall, what's your opinion about the USA?

USA is absolutely awesome. If you have the time/money, definitely go there once! People are very friendly and spontaneous compared to Belgium/Europe. Always free refills at restaurants and nature is beautiful obv. Downsides: expensive beer/alcohol in general + no online poker.

Then you have to come to Portugal, we have all that, plus the online poker, and one of the best beers in the world, and really cheap, like 1lt €1.70.

Originally posted by Faria18

Originally posted by lpdlamei

Originally posted by Faria18

ahah, thank's

I'm from Portugal, I found out your blog just digging randomly, and it has been a nice read, like that last post about your trip.

So overall, what's your opinion about the USA?

USA is absolutely awesome. If you have the time/money, definitely go there once! People are very friendly and spontaneous compared to Belgium/Europe. Always free refills at restaurants and nature is beautiful obv. Downsides: expensive beer/alcohol in general + no online poker.

Then you have to come to Portugal, we have all that, plus the online poker, and one of the best beers in the world, and really cheap, like 1lt €1.70.

Good beer for such a price? Sounds like heaven to me!

I will come to Portugal one day. Hadn't really thought about it untill now but it sounds nice!

Hi guys,

next saturday, I will play a live tournament again! Event 2 of the Fall Poker Series at Grand Casino Brussels, really looking forward to it. Buy-in is 330€, quite high so I requested staking in the staking section (staking thread). I strongly encourage staking me! ♦

Anyway, looking forward to play on saturday

Since I 'm back from holiday, I started playing at everest again. There seems to be quite a lot of action at nl200, so that's nice. No profits yet, at a small loss for the month.

I sent my database of last 4 months to Bogdan to check for leaks. Think he 'll have some work writing all my leaks down

He peepz,

Just got back from the casino, where I played the 330€ event. Short report:

We started with 20k chips and bb=50. Blinds went up every half hour. In the beginning they actually doubled every time and then bit slower later. I acually like the structure now. It felt very fast in the beginning but it ended up taking quite long anyway.

I started writing all somewhat interesting hands here but it seems to end up being a boring list of standard hands. So I'm going to only post my last two important hands.

We are 9-handed at final table. UTG+1 shoves for 6.5BB. I wake up w QQ in MP3 so I call (I had 15 BB and was 3d/4d in chips). BB shoves over for 11.5bb. I 'm really not happy with this but made the call without much thought. Can I ever find a fold with these odds. It was 3d time UTG+1 shoved in 5 hands so his range is very wide but BB should be supertight.
BB showed AK and UTG+1 AA. Not really that bad because BB only has 4 outs and if I win the sidepot, I only loose 25k + knock one out (100€ bounty for knocking a player out!!!). Obv an A came on the flop.

So couple hands later, I 'm in SB and openshove A3o for 4.8BB. Get called by QJo, Q on the flop and I'm out.

At first I was obv disappointed but now I 'm just really happy about how I played. Also, there was apparently a 100€ bounty (ridiculous for a 300€ buy-in right?). Knocked out 2 players so that's 200€ as consolation prize.

I'm tired now. Good night all!

Nice blog!
Keep it up!

Get ready, this post will be the beginning of an important step in my poker carreer! (I think ♦ )

This year has been great pokerwise. I just checked my goals from back then, here they are:

analyse hands during/after every session --> way too little
watch 3 vids a week --> well that didn't happen!
improve mindset (watch mindset videos, read on the matter) --> didn't really study it but improved a ton, feel like I have a great mindset
get back to nl100 --> most important goal, and reached it! ♠_love:
own bitches so I can post cool hands in my blog fish biggrin --> meh, not so much

So I studied well as this blog started but since I 'm at nl200, I didn't read/watch vids at all. With the big break due to the US trip, I 'm now completely out of the grinding zone. I just donked/tilted away a stack at nl200. It 's probably 9-10 months since I last did that. So I quit playing immediately and withdrew all my funds at everest. It 's time for a fresh start!

So how does this fresh start look like? I don't know yet. There are 2 aspects:
1. Studying the game again. Already booked a database review by Bogdan last week. He would finish the report this weekend so I'm looking forward to that. Besides that, I will start posting hands where I have doubts in the hand evaluation thread. 3d: learn ranges better (e.g. what hands is 5% range).

2. New poker room. This will definitely be unibet and maybe pokerstars. Problem with unibet is that I 'm not tracked there.

I'm gonna end this post by already setting 2 big goals to achieve in 2013:
Play nl400/nl500 zoom regularly
Play a Unibet open event! ♠_cool:

Good luck, and crush those fish. ♠_thumbsup:

Wow, another long stretch in between 2 blogposts. This obv makes my posts superexciting!

I feel like I'm still not in true grindmode. Started out at nl100 Zoom but quit that after couple K hands. I ended up playing tourneys at stars (without succes) after a bad session. That's what stars does to me ♦

So after that I decided to move to Unibet. A true fishpond there, really enjoy it. Not tracked there though.

My game still needs a lot of work. I 've been watching some pokervids and they always make me overthink situations and I suffer from FPS. Positive thing is I 'm really investing time in improving.

Oh yeah, I should mention that I am now a calling station:

Prima, $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

CO: $36.89 (36.9 bb)
BTN: $139.23 (139.2 bb)
SB: $179.46 (179.5 bb)
Hero (BB): $194.46 (194.5 bb)
UTG: $151.03 (151 bb)
MP: $107 (107 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BB with 6 7
4 folds, SB completes, Hero raises to $3.50, SB calls $2.50

Flop: ($7) 2 3 4 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $5, SB calls $5

Turn: ($17) 6 (2 players)
SB bets $17, Hero calls $17

River: ($51) 6 (2 players)
SB bets $153.96 and is all-in, Hero calls $153.96

Results:

Prima, $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite.

CO: $104.08 (104.1 bb)
Hero (BTN): $171.50 (171.5 bb)
SB: $73.80 (73.8 bb)
BB: $112.94 (112.9 bb)
UTG: $28.90 (28.9 bb)
MP: $234.57 (234.6 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BTN with 9 9
UTG folds, MP raises to $3.50, CO folds, Hero calls $3.50, 2 folds

Flop: ($8.50) 2 Q 6 (2 players)
MP bets $6, Hero calls $6

Turn: ($20.50) T (2 players)
MP bets $14.80, Hero calls $14.80

River: ($50.10) T (2 players)
MP bets $97, Hero calls $97

Results:

Just took my shot at nl200. Failed hard Back to killing nl100! ♠_cool:

Hehe... cold. That graph looks exactly like my own at NL200 at 888. But selfbashing should be the way to achieve success

How is the traffic at NL200 at Unibet?

It 's good, about 10-15 tables running at evening/night I think.

Already looking forward to next shot, hope I run a bit better then/play better by then. I feel confident that I will beat it