[Closed] Dendra's Mind Thoughtulations

Woah! Time goes by so fast! I'm here to give you guys an update on what has happened in the past 1-2 months, damn, it's been a while

I'm kind of sick now so I'm dodging playing poker and having fun in StarCraft II (funny enough, I found two solid players from PokerStrategy.com and recruited 'em for my clan, one of 'em turns out to be a Black Member here - sick sick

Anyway, I'll give you an upside down update since the most interesting things happened most recently ♦ Oh and yes, since I'm known for being highly unprofessional (well at least I know myself for that ♦), I will cross my fingers I am not leaking out any info that wasn't supposed to be for the public ears, but meh, this is my blog, I restrict it from all the legal rules and complications ♦

Trip to Gibraltar

I applied for the English editor job thingy some month(s) ago and after passing all the possible crazy tests, including the FBI's famous "find the secret agent" and "defend yourself from a tank attack with the ace of spades and a three-leaf clover", the PokerStrategy.com guys decided I will most likely manage to survive the trip to their office in Gibraltar.

So yes, on last Sunday around 15h, I boarded the Croatian Airlines airbus something and flew to Barcelona. Waited a good 3.5h for my next flight, aka to Malaga. When we boarded the plane, I thought to myself freakin' finally I'm flying to Malaga!

But noooooo, the plane circled around the airport for like 30 minutes or more, at one point, I even began to doubt if they cheated us and we were actually on a bus airplane-look-alike and we would be driven to Malaga on the ground.

However, the plane thing finally jumped off the ground some 31 minutes later or more and I could safely conclude that I was indeed going to fly to Malaga.

Quest for the driver

At the Malaga airport I only knew that some guy from ps.com will wait for me and drive me to the hotel. So I walked to the main gate and saw lots of ppl with names written on a piece of paper, etc.

Like a monkey, I circled around 'em all to find my name, but nope, nothing My mobile phone is crappy and old so my battery was dead, which made the situation oh so much more fun.

Like any Croatian would do - I calmly panicked. I thought to myself, if the guy is the company's chauffeur, he might be parked outside, waiting for me. So I went around the airport, checking out the cab drivers for any clues. Nothing...

Out of despair, I went to the only logical place I could go - back to the main exit of the airport. Now the doors are only for exiting, so I had to find my way back in. After successfully doing so, I went one step ahead and instead of just checking out the ppl holding names written on papers, I also asked some of them if they saw my name written anywhere or someone looking for me - as in it's so obvious to spot a person looking for Dendra because they are doing it so differently from the people who look for...other people.

Of course, nothing useful came out of my questioning, so I went outside again. Listened to some tourist guide give his speech to some rich white folks, then decided to return again inside the airport.

This time I got even braver and went for the security guards! No habla ingles! Damn it! But one of them 10 there actually spoke English and they all pointed their fingers to him. The guy told me that the people inside are taxi drivers for the people who ordered a ride somewhere, so my guy couldn't be there, but outside.

So I went outside and in the moment of my utter defeat and resignation in terms of figuring out a new way how to find my chauffeur, the guy comes from the darkness and goes like - are you Davor? (Dendra, that's me!)

And I'm like - Do I look like the only person who is looking for someone here - yes I do, so yes, it's me!!!!!!!

Drive to the hotel

Moments before the chauffeur found me, I managed to micro-manage my dead battery to send an sms to vali - "help me, I'm stranded in Malaga, black fat guys are looking to rob me, I don't know how much longer I can make it!!!"

So when the guy finally found me, I asked him to inform Vali I'm okay so he doesnt worry about his "precious" - and I threw in a bad imitation of smeagol's famous words "my preciousssss" ♦

So yes, the chauffeur pretty much had to face the reality that he had to pray for his life on the drive to hotel because behind his back will be seated an unknown Croatian who appears to be a lunatic, and you never know what'll happen when dealing with lunatics, right?

Oh yes, besides me, a Scottish guy was there as well. We pretty much stayed at the same hotel during our stay in La Linea - a city nearby Gibraltar. And by nearby I literally mean nearby because I had a 5-10min walk (max) to the border with Gibraltar.

I couldn't resist the temptation to torture the guy with bad jokes on Scottish people during our entire stay there (we stayed 'till Tuesday). As in - if men in Scotland wear skirts (kilts), what do the women wear? Or, since Braveheart failed to beat the English army, how do they like being British slaves since ever? And the Scottish guy goes - omg, we didn't lose to the English! - and I'm like Mel Gibson's face in the ending scenes of the movie begs to differ.

Ok he did shout freedom and all that, but he did die ♦ Ooops, sry for the spoiler if any of you haven't watched the movie - in that case, Braveheart doesn't die and he lives happily ever after in a gay marriage with King Richards or whoever he found the most attractive.

Oh yes, this was supposed to be about our ride to hotel - the car was AWESOME. Now I'm not into cars, I don't suffer for sports cars, I don't care about it - but damn, the car, well more like a van I guess or whatever, it was damn good feeling riding in it, such a smooth ride - smooth would be the best word to describe it.

When the chauffeur dropped us off, he realized he has to return the car and go home on his motorbike - which wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't raining in Spain!

Yes, so much about the sunny Spain - I personally thought I ended up in England, or even worse, Scotland! All the rain , damn, that didn't look like Spain at all (ok the Spanish language spammed everywhere on the streets made it less likely I was in UK, but still...)

It ain't fun if you do it right

The next morning I got ready for the interview - aka I lifted my ass from the bed, put on some clothes and gogogo. At the same time, the Scottish guy was leaving his room as well, all dressed up in a business suit, fancy lookin, highly professional outfit ♦

And he looks at me, my casual clothes (ok I had trousers and shoes which are actually a mixture of shoes and tennis shoes), and screams - F*** I KNEW I SHOULDN'T HAVE TAKEN THE SUIT.

Funny thing, a guy in suite looking up to me as the role model on how to dress for a job interview ♦ After a few soothing words that he looks just fine, we were ready to walk our way to the ps.com office.

During the short walk to the border he remembered he forgot something so we pretty much split apart, as I needed to get their earlier than he did. So yes, I had the google map with me, the route to the border went smoothly, it seemed like a piece of cake trip to the office - what could possibly go wrong?

The map clearly showed I should go here, there, bit here, there and then 2.5km down some big straight road towards the office location, which looked like the center of the town to me.

However, I noticed the last page of my map was missing the address!!! So yes, the map had all the check points written nicely, except for the last, most important one ♦ I had address written on like 4-5 places, but none on my mobile phone nor the map - facepalm.

It was time to panic again! I figured if I walk down the main road, I should bump into some nice building which will look like ps.com building and I'll find them.

So at point XXX (remember this because it will be of importance later on), I asked a lady to direct me to the center of the town/main street. Ideally, the main street was a short walk away from me and guess the irony - it's called The Main Street, oh you gotta love those creative Gibraltarians

So I walked down that road, which wasn't actually a road, more like a street with various shops in it. After a while, I realized I probably missed the ps.com office if it ever was close to my walking path.

So I remembered I have the chauffeur's number but damn it, no network available!!! So I walked around a bit until my mobile phone finally located a network and I sent him an sms (I'm a cheap Croat who saw no reason to get the roaming thing or whatever it's called, so you can make phone calls while in foreign countries).

The guy calls me some 10min later but I cant hear a word he sais because of all the noise. So he sends me the address via sms and finally(!!!) I could ask someone where the f** is that address.

So some lady tells me - oh my darling, that address is on the other end of the town, you might wanna get a taxi...

It's 20minutes before my interview and I'm on the other end of the town - hell yeah, time for some fun running! in shoes! in hybrid shoes-tennis shoes!

So I run and run and run, almost like Forrest Gump did, only bit faster and a lot shorter. I finally got to the area of the town where ps.com is supposedly located, and asked for some directions.

Now their address is kind of freaky and it has two street names in it. So let's say its A 2 B. I'm supposed to get to Road A, enter B and the building's number is 2. However, the natives of Gibraltar directed me to building 2 on the A street, not the B.

So when I got there, I realized I'm at the wrong place! So I had to retrace my steps and then make a turn into the road B at one of the roundabouts. I finally got in front of some large building and asked if this was the number 2, the guys outside go like - no mate, this is 1, we got no idea where 2 is.

And I'm like oh f** me twice and call me a tortois but where the hell is that place - and one of the guys replies, and what are you looking for, and virtually breathless I spit out - a company, pok.... And he is like, aaa pokerstrategy, yes, they are in here.

In the beast's belly

There I was, good ten minutes or so late for the interview, thinking to myself - it's okay, Germans like it when you're not on time, they hate it so much, nooo, why would anyone be precise. Surprisingly, they greeted me nicely, even offered some water and a massage and a ...ok, I'm lying, they just gave me some water and were like - get your ass in that room right now you little easy-to-get-lost Croatian weasel!

Yeh, I'm like one of those babies, you look at 'em, barely crawling around in a half a meter circle, drooling on the floor and wiggling their head. But turn your back for a moment and their gone! Like crawled to god knows where in the speed of light.

Anyhow, on a serious note, I enjoyed the stay at the office a lot, had a great time there, loads of fun, I was pretty much enjoying myself so much it didn't even feel like I was faced with some final test to get the job, I felt no pressure cuz of the interview or something, weird, but good I guess

I'm not sure if I'll get the job, if I do, I'll probably leak some info to you guys - like, vali wears a pink t-shirt at work and he has a fluffy chair with bunny paws on the ends of the armrest. Ok scratch that thought out, if he sees this he'll probably sabotage any chance of me getting the job, because he'll rather starve to death than to let the ppl know his favourite color is pink and he has a fluffy chair with bunny ears,paws and such to make it nice and comfy for him at work.

I met vali&jonas (two guys I have known for several years now since we worked together on MYM as well). Onkelhotte and other guys from the office were also there, and speaking of the office, there were also ladies there of course. In all honesty, I think they are giving Nicole weed or something because every now and then a short loud laugh burst out of her mouth and she seemed unable to suppress it, which led me to believe they were keeping her high on something or that it was damn funny to see a Croat in the office ♦

Oh yes, I almost forgot, I'm not sure if I'm the first Croat to land on Gibraltar, but me and my friends consider me that way. So in a way, I felt like Armstrong felt when he landed on moon - it is one small step from the border to ps.com, but one giant leap if you get lost on your way there.

The pain and going on a shopping spree

There are actually two meanings behind the word pain in the above subtitle. One is physical and the other is mental. Which one do you want first? I'll go for the mental because it's the one some of you might have been unknowingly waiting for ever since I mentioned the XXX location.

So, I left the office in the evening and decided to make my way back to the dreadful main street which nearly led me to China (or actually USA is closer) than to ps.com building.

Some 10minutes later, I found myself at the XXX location. So in total, there is like 20-25max minutes of walk from the border to the office and at that point, I realized I walked for over an hour for nothing! If I only knew where I was going, I would've saved myself and my feet a lot of trouble ♦

Speaking of feet, that's the physical pain. Walking/running in shoes took its toll on me, and I couldn't stand on the balls of my feet So I walked rather clumsy, however, I had no choice but to go shopping - friends from Croatia ordered some souvenirs from Gibraltar and the pain I was feeling was nothing to the pain I would feel if I was to return to Croatia empty-handed (chicks without gifts = rambo with a sledge hammer in his hand ready to smack you for eternity)

Obviously, take with a grain of salt everything I write in here

Anyway, I just remembered - I had a debate back at the hotel with my Scottish amigo - he claimed I got lost in Gibraltar.

Now my analysis of the situation was the following:

I didn't get lost. I knew the entire time where I was. What I didn't know is where is ps.com. So I didn't lose myself, I lost them ♦

Ok and excuse me guys, I'm a bit sick (think I mentioned it earlier) - the cold weather that greeted me in Zagreb probably has something to do with it. So anyway, I will take a break now, I will come back later to talk about a guy from Senegal and how we arranged a possible business between him and my mom (we spoke in French all the time which made it all the more interesting to me :)). See you later folks!

Oh yeh, regarding the job, you'll be the first to find out (after the people to whom I tell it first) if I got it or not Take care, have fun

u`r just spectacular :)))) , nice read ♦

woah woah woah, just too many things going on at the same time and just not enough willpower to update my blog ♦

I will definitely need to get it into my routine to stop by here and do some update, but the issue is - I am incapable of writing a small post, so every time I come here, I'm fully aware and in compliance with the fact that I'll spend at least 1-2hours on writing a post ♦

I will split this post into numerous pieces - "numerous" is my wild guess, because I can only think of two topics I'll cover, but I'm pretty sure more will come along as I begin to write, so yeh, there you have the explanation for the usage of the word "numerous"

Mission Gibraltar aborted!

As promised, you are among the first 100 people to know that I DID NOT get the job at the PokerStrategy.com office. My boss told me during my stay there his biggest worry is my young age for such a job - go figure, I don't have a classical point of view when it comes to age in numbers, aka I feel like I'm 14-16, but I judge my English skills and what not on a different scale.

Anyhow, I obviously can't reveal to you why I did not get the job and even if I could, I'm not sure I could fully explain it. Nevermind that, I had a blast in Gibraltar. Awesome day of meeting people and a great experience for my working days to come - in translation, it's been my first "real" job interview for a "real" job and I learned a bit how it works - though in general in terms of how I treat myself in such situations - I remain true to myself, goofy, sincere and crazy as a squirrel on LSD.

Monkey Gung Fu master in my apartment

Yes, believe it or not, I had a kung fu (gung fu, etc. however you wanna spell it) practitioner staying at my apartment in Zagreb for like a whole week. It was from the 2weeks ago Thursday to the last week's Thursday.

He is an old friend of many Croatian StarCraft: Brood War players. I spent with him like 1-2years under the roof of clan sfc. He promised back then in 2005-2006 that he'd come visit us all some day, and that day finally came

He is from Finland, but surprisingly, can't stand the Croatian winter cold - go figure. (btw I count autumn as winter too, cuz it's freakin cold as well!) Two interesting facts about him are that he is from Rovanniemi, the undisputed hometown of Santa Clause. Second fact is that he trains monkey style kung fu. He obviously isn't a master in it, but a tiny little apprentice, I just wanted to exaggerate a little bit in the subtitle

We pretty much spent seven days drinking until the morning and pissing of my boss for not being around to write news because we were drinking, eating, chasing dogs chasing cars on the streets, etc. He met god knows how many people during those 7 days, because everyone wanted to meet him. It would be a huge post in itself to describe everything that happened in those 7 days - so you can just tingle your imagination with the words "lots of beer", because everything started with or ended with beer

All in all, good times He'll probably come visit Croatia again, as his wife was born in Bosnia, so whenever they plan to visit her country, they kind of must visit us as well - or else we'd just go to his town and rip him apart for being such a gay dodger

Financial report for those who worry about my NL2 survival

So it's been like what, 3 or so months since I announced I'll cover my life expenses and what not primarily with NL2 grinding on PokerStars. I can't say I really did entirely depend on NL2, because I somehow always added an extra chunk of money from somewhere else - I honestly don't know from where, probably leftovers in my bank or something

Anyhow, I didn't play poker at all for the last 1+ month because of all the stuff that happened - my mom's promotion thing which lasted for a week, then the trip to Gibraltar, then being sick for one week, then having the Finnish guest for one week, then again being sick - and ops, wait a minute - I actually am still sick but now I'm forced to play, as it's do or die for me.

Basically, I borrowed around $350 from a friend. Gave him back $100, so $250 more to go. These are rough numbers, so anyway...my work for PokerStrategy.com in the past two months was enough to cover the last month's rent, so I can freely focus on earning money to repay my friend and earn enough cash for the upcoming rent aaaaaaaand I plan to buy a new PC - something worth around $1,000 - $1,500 probably.

Poker sessions report: NL2

I was kind of confident I'd easily grind on 20-22bb/100 on NL2 and just steamroll my way to returning money to my friend and earning money for other upcoming expenses. However...my first several days on NL2 were a disaster.

The story began on last Thursday/Friday, right after I dispatched my Finnish guest to a hotel for his last night in Croatia (his wife joined him in Zagreb and since I had no room to accommodate them both, I found them a hotel).

My sessions were just horrible, I couldnt win steadily - every time I'd have "bad luck", I'd end a session down one or two buy-ins. And I was like WTF, this can't be happening, I can't be actually losing money on NL2.

The games reminded me a bit of NL5, they felt a bit tougher than before and I was almost starting to worry that grinding money on poker won't be as easy as I thought.

However...I knew two things:

1. I was sick and tired from the past 7 days spent with my Finnish guest. So even though I might think I'm doing everything right and playing the cards right and in the same way I'd usually do - I actually probably failed, I was just too tired to notice where, because in such situations, it looks like you're doing it all ok, but you're not.

2. Ok damn, I forgot what the second thing was ♦ I'll have to make one up now and hope it's the right one ♦ Basically I knew that I just need to keep on playing and trust myself and everything would fall into place, as it wasn't the first time I had problems in the first several sessions after a long break/on a new limit - and after 1+ month break, NL2 can almost count as a "new" limit ♦

You just gotta keep in mind that you can't keep losing money constantly in a session and you can't end a session in deficit just because you have a few unlucky pots - if that's the case, you're doing something terribly wrong, or you don't have enough of an edge over others on that limit.

So after the first few days, I couldn't connect winning sessions, I kept losing every second session, etc. So I decided to change the surroundings a bit and went on Titan Poker NL4-10.

Once again, I just couldn't win. I kept losing and losing and then suddenly, I felt like I got "into the zone", suddenly I started noticing things - I was no longer playing cards, I was playing poker, was into the table flow, etc.

It felt great, my friend laughed later on and commented - "zen poker"

So anyway, my hands started to do the right things (aka my reflex movements started to be the correct ones, well correct according to my skill level), I just started to feel the game and felt a lot more focused on everything, seeing when a guy bluffs me, seeing when I can bluff a guy, etc. - all these things I tried to see in the first few days, but without that "feel", I was like a blind goat trying to jump over a fence.

I got back to NL2 on PokerStars and started winning again, yee! The results were not that great, but for a change, when I was terribly unlucky, I didn't end a session in a minus, but in a small profit.

Poker sessions report: NL10

My friend came some 3 days ago and told me how he owns NL10 on PokerStars, and his friend owns and blablablablablabla. So I thought to myself, hmmmm, nah, I can't go play NL10, I only have $160 bankroll and it isn't my money, as it's technically my friend's money, as I'm grinding it for him.

I dislike the swings on NL10+, so NL2 is a safe choice for me, literally risk-free, as it guarantees me a profit every time I sit down at the tables.

The biggest issue on NL10 for me was that I kept losing money and depended on winning bigger pots in all of my last NL10 sessions. As I concluded myself some time ago, and as I recently found out Nanonoko also points out - winning small pots is crucial, it's what it's all about if you want to be a winning player, big pots come and go

So the issue for me was that I had to play my cards, I had to get a big pot to end an NL10 session in a profit. Knowing that, I knew I could spend hours playing poker and not win a thing - whereas on NL2 I knew every hour would end in profit for me.

- Solving the NL10 mindset/game leaks

I will now try to describe all the steps that it took me to fix my game and start playing NL10 profitably.

The first thing that came to my mind was the way I played my hands on NL2 opposed to NL5 or NL10. Since I play NL2 heavily on the "money value factor" (I described that in some of the previous posts here), it is hard for me to play in that same way on NL5-10 because the bet sizes are bigger.

Consequently, I decided to just focus on making same size bets and noticing the same size bets compared to the pot size - aka if I think 1/3 pot bet on flop is a bluff on NL2, I will also think a 1/3 pot bet on Nl10 is a bluff - even though the money value is higher in the NL10 bet obviously ♦

So that was the first thing I had to clear up in my head - playing the hands similarly to the way I do on NL2, because the opponents are very similar, some even identical to the guys on NL2.

The second and biggest issue for me was how to fix the damn constant bleeding of the money from my bankroll! I knew something was terribly wrong and I knew it had something to do with my preflop hand range as well as post-flop decisions - doh, I just named entire poker game as the "leaky" part of my game

Regarding my preflop hand range - I kept thinking that I'm too tight, that I play too much my cards and therefore depend on the cards to win constantly. So I tried to imagine TwiceT or some other crazy coach yelling in my ear "you folded 86s there, you monkey! you're such a nit, you're supposed to raise that hand!!!!".

What I now realised is that this way, I entered pots I had no need to enter and since I lost most of them, I actually only increased the "bleeding" instead of reducing it.

It might seem small, but you must watch every blind you invest in a hand - if I raise 86s, I invest 3BB, that's 3BB down the drain if I don't win the hand and I can't just think about expanding my hand range, but also how will my opponents react.

Using brute force on micro stakes is suicidal. You have to play smart and pick your spots. By loosening up my preflop raising range (aka 86s in mp), I force myself to do a cbet and it will fail so often that it back-fires and makes me lose money.

So after realising these issues, I actually tightened up preflop to roughly 13/9. I started picking my spots very carefully, stealing blinds only in SB>BB and occasionally in BU/CO, as every failed blind steal negates 3 successful blind steals. That is also the mindset I use in many postflop situations, if my blind steal didn't work, I will not try to chase a weird hand, I will not try to invest any more money into my bluff, because every further investment will negate xxx more of my future blind steals - and if I give up right away, I only lose 3 blind steals. Obviously, if I feel the situation is right, I will try to steal the pot with a cbet, but as I said above, it is not mandatory for me and I actually feel good about giving up when I think about it in the way I just described.

Besides the preflop hand range, my worry was also my postflop play. In particular, I feared I get bluffed too much, floated too much and what not - because usually I'd cbet, a guy would call and I'd have to check/fold the turn due to an ugly card or make a desperate 2nd barrel which would rarely work.

Nowadays with my "improved" hand range, I cbet 57.8% and win the flops with a cbet 48.6% of the time. So my success rate has greatly improved. If you wish to know any other stats, feel free to ask.

I am more aware now when a guy has hit a flop and there is no point for me to cbet, I'm more aware of some attemtps to bluff me and I also pull off a bluff here and there.

Bluffing is particularly important for me with small pocket pairs. Because you only play with big stacks as opposed to deep stacks on NL2, you dont have that great implied odds for set mining.

Due to this, I tend to pick my set mining spots more carefully and also, it is good to know when you can take down a pot against the preflop aggressor. It is nothing revolutionary, just the standard donk bets, check-raises and bets when checked to you.

The easiest way to win the pot is if the guy checks to you, you just make a bet and bye bye preflop aggressor

Going for a check-raise looks pretty strong and many players are nitty, so they'll fold. However, I wouldn't advise you to abuse this, as it won't really work every time you hope it does ♦

Donk bets are kind of my third option and usually used on ugly boards for the preflop aggressor. If it's a J high flop I'm more likely to donk bet than on a K/Q flop, because his preflop raising range more likely has Q/K/A than J and lower.

All in all, I'm happy with my game on NL10 now. The key to my happiness is the fact that I make a stupid call or get in a cooler hand, lose 1-2stacks and then grind my way up...if you can win small pots and constantly move up, you don't have to fear the big pots. It's a great feeling and I'm loving it

I started playing NL10 some 2-3 days ago and I started "grinding successfuly" in poker since this Monday. My NL10 graph currently resembles a "yo-yo", not sure if it's the English term for that toy as well, but we called it yoyo, so if you don't know what it is - tough luck for you cuz you missed a lot of fun in your childhood days!

I made some mistakes, bad calls and had some crappy luck with KK preflop running into aces in virtually unavoidable spots for me, so the graph looks a bit ugly and jumpy, but I hope to stabilize it in the future sessions (btw my latest stats were VPIP 12.6/PFR 9.6 and due to such tight hand range, I can relatively easily play 16-24 tables depending on my mood and amount of focus I can put into the session)

P.S. I'm still not using HUD. I'm too lazy to set it up and the stats just confuse me, I'm not used to seeing numbers on my tables. And I feel like I don't need 'em now to beat NL10, so yeh, f** stats :))) I won't use 'em until they become my last resort. I know it's dumb and they'd only increase my winnings, but they just feel too weird and confuse me I'm just not used to it and too lazy to get used to it ♦

time passes by too fast, as always anyway, I'm here just to make a brief update of my latest endeavours.

Reaching Platinum on PokerStars via NL2 (prop bets?)

I'm Gold rank on PokerStars at the moment and my initial plan for December was to clean 5,000 VPP to get a $50 milestone. However, after analysing the situation a bit, I figured I could clean perhaps even two of those milestones by the end of the year.

This was basically the rough thought process that got me to the interesting fact that I could reach Platinum rank via pure NL2 gaming.

You need 7,500 VPP to reach Platinum rank on PokerStars. I have collected 1,295 VPP thus far in December by playing purely NL2 FR 24 tables.

I'm not sure if I will be able to make it by the end of the month, especially with Christmas coming, work I have to do and other random events in my life. However, for the kicks of it, I decided to give it a try.

So basically, now I need to earn another 6,148.64 VPP to achieve PlatinumStar.

If anyone is interested in some fun prop bets on this, I'm all ears Rough idea would be we bet for some smallish amount of $$$ whether I can reach PlatinumStar in December by purely playing NL2.

Let's say something like $20ish bucks or whatever and I give you 3:1 that I'll do it, aka you get $60 if I fail or lose $20 if I don't ♠_ugly:

This sort of thing would be generally to motivate me to play more/better/whatever since I noticed I usually play better when some prop bets are involved.

So if anyone is interested, lemme know (btw I reached GoldStar via NL2 and I can play 20k hands on some days when I'm free, so take that into account I personally don't see myself not doing this, though it will be very hard to separate enough time and organise myself properly to do it)
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Friday to Saturday Blood Curse

For some reason, I always manage to lose a huge chunk of my bankroll on Friday/Saturday. This has happened several times already, including November in which I was feeling all happy about myself, connecting 26 or so winning sessions, mostly NL10 - and then I entered twilight zone, instead of stopping when I knew I was tired, I went playing after work and ended up in a 30k hands session (19k+11k but it was a blood bath running virtually without a break).

The issue is I know I'm tired, I can feel the point at which I should leave the tables, but noooo, I have to keep on playing because the action is so good

So naturally, then if I lose to some cooler, I'm stuck and then want to get my money back and the longer I try, the more nitty players at the table get.

This is one of the key issues I noticed - I found myself sometimes running into a wall, trying to "outplay" NL10 grinders when I'm well-aware of the fact that I'm surrounded by set miners and just won't get any action at all.

So my lesson learned in that was to just drop the ball and go play in some other courtyard if the NL10 kids don't want to share their money with me.

I've had a ton of work lately so my poker suffered as usually, however, now I'm shifting my focus back to poker. It is kind of funny because my motivation is so shaky, one day I can go play 10k hands, other I don't feel like playing 1 hand.

Good thing is that nowadays I can see when I'm tired and as said above, I can recognize when my ego is playing when I shouldn't be playing at all with all the nits at the tables.

Due to my horrendous runs on Fridays, I have decided I will never ever again play anything higher than NL2 on Friday-Saturday. Lady Luck just hates me then or my focus drops the most at that part of the week.

Either way, it does me no good to play then, so it's better to just go do crazy stuff and mistakes on NL2 and lose $10 rather than lose $80 in the same amount of hands/crappy scenarios in which you put your money in and lose.
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bah there are so many things to talk about, I just wanted to give you a brief update on that PlatinumStar thing because it occurred to me last night that someone might be interested in a prop bet on that, so why not make it more fun :)))

On a side note - it's been hard to find concentration to sit at my pc and keep this blog alive, as I probably said earlier, primarily because I always have lots of things to talk about and it always takes me at least an hour for every post. So this blog will get back to regular updates when I feel like I can keep up the pace with my thoughts and events in life/poker.

Cheers guys, have fun and see you around - if anyone is interested in that prop bet, lemme know here or pm me on the site/ my skype - Dendra7. That's all from me for now, see you later alligator(s).

hiyo folks, correction of my previous post. The amount of VPP remaining to be cleared to become PlatinumStar were correct, though the number of VPP I collected thus far wasn't - as I used my Milestone clearance progress to check how much VPP I've collected - while in reality that number wasn't 100% accurate, missing a hundred VPP or something, anyway...

PlatinumStar challenge update

I need to collect 5,898.95 VPPs by the end of December to become PlatinumStar.

So far I have one prop bet going, a fellow poker player and my former nemesis/now msn buddy decided to bet against me. His initial reaction to the "challenge" was ,"wat, is that even possible?"....which turned into ~Okay, I believe you'll do it~

After my first calculations, I thought this would be relatively easy to pull off, though after 6-7days I realized that I'll be missing around 1,000 VPP if I continue accumulating points at the same pace.

So yeh, I'll step it up a notch, start playing like an animal and hopefully reach my goal. This will be a once in a lifetime stunt, as I doubt I'll ever again find time nor desire or any purpose to doing such a thing again.

There isn't much of a long-term purpose to this challenge, just proving a point, building up my stamina perhaps a bit, etc.

I'll see if someone else takes me on this challenge, judging how close it'll be, I reconsidered my odds and will most likely give 2:1 to people, depends on the amount of money we bet and how little they know me and how degenerate I can get ♠_grin:

As for my game in general, I've gained a few new insights. I've been especially focusing on the "way ahead-way behind" situations as hasenbraten calls them. I feel like I'm losing the most value in those spots, so I've been seriously reconsidering some of my plays in such hands. It's a bit longer topic I'll assume, so gonna write about it some other time catch ya later folks, I'm off for a food break and then it's time to continue the grinding mode harrr harrr

Cool blog
Very funny the way you write
!
Good luck with Poker and everything else :).
I should of been studying but I spent a good 30 minutes reading this instead lol

I've passed 100k hands for this month I'm not doing all too well profit-wise, mostly due to a pretty high amount of bad luck and naturally, a relatively high amount of my mistakes due to somewhat lesser concentration while playing.

The biggest issue today/tonight/more precisely last evening was the new PokerStars software update - it is horrible!

The font in the lobby is ugly as hell, some freaky blue letters written in italics+bold when you join the waiting list - or in red if you are seated at the table.

The biggest issue is the software's tendency to freeze every once in a while - aka your mouse becomes useless in PokerStars. This has cost me like a ton of folded hands, AA/KK/QQ, sets, etc. etc.

It sorta reminded me of my old titan poker days

So anyway, I'm on a short break now, I slept last night from like 11-12 till 5am and then from 9-10 to 3pm or so. This resulted in me not sleeping at all tonight

I currently need to earn another 5,681.95 VPP to reach PlatinumStar. I have no idea if I'll actually manage to do it, either way, the more I play, the harder it seems to do this challenge.

Besides grinding like a monkey on speed, I also need to turn profit to pay my rent, food, etc. so I can't really go crazy and just generate rake like a zombie - which makes this all so much more interesting ♦

A friend offered to help me out and grind for me a few days - but naaah, that would be cheating, that wouldn't be in the spirit of this challenge and I guess not in the spirit of Christmas either (don't ask me where I see the relation between the two, because I don't ♦)

P.S. glad you enjoyed the read steve, when I sort out stuff rl/in my head/wherever I'll probably write something fun to read here, for now it looks all chaotic and messy to me, to be perfectly honest ♦

Anyhow...here is a graph for December so far:

PlatinumStar challenge update

I need to accumulate another 5,551 VPP to reach PlatinumStar.

I've been having a great day today, my graph is finally coming back to what it should look like - something similar to a vertical line in nice green colour

So yeh, I seem to be catching a good rythm, both in number of hands per day and profit made. Yesterday, I needed an average of 254VPP per day to reach my goal, now I need like 240VPP or whatever, so I'm increasing the pace

I'm gonna take a short break now, see ya later folks, gl at the poker tables.

P.S. I noticed Hasen and Rebus/Remsu/Remso or whatever something with letter R I think are playing on Stars now. They're doing some bankroll builder thing yadayadayada.

This is relatively annoying because now I gotta watch my language a bit more, just in case they log on and play at the same tables as me during the coaching session - my average ratio of words idi*t and mor*n per hour is higher than my PFR probably so yeh, there is a high chance I could even call one of them something bad if they do something silly - since my method of fighting against fish is that they are entitled to being stupid and I'm entitled to letting them know how stupid they are - and in that barrage of flames, collateral damage is always possible.

Either way, I will try to mark both Hasen and his buddy in nice colour so I can spot them easily and turn on my mr.nice guy mode (yeh, I can be nice on nl sometimes, when I'm not bored and trying to make someone tilt ♠_evil: )

Woohoo, hey ho poker players and playeresses. Here's a small update on my PlatinumStar challenge:

• I need to earn another 4,810.77 VPP to reach PlatinumStar.
• I have played a total of 148,703 hands thus far.

Regarding the prop bets:

I give 3:1 odds if you bet $10 against me, 2:1 odds if you bet $20 and 1:1 if you bet $50. (aka you can win $30-$40-$50 depending on how much you bet).

Not much of a sophisticated prop bet, it was the first thing that came to my mind when I talked about it with my friend (he posted info on prop bet on some other cro/serb/bosnian forums).

I've got some minor action in the prop bets, so far three or so people have put $10 against me. I've got money pool to guarantee $700 in bets, aka I can put now another $600-ish of "bet weight" on my shoulders.

Either way, it's been a good motivation for me to have people doubt me. Heck, even one of my older of friends thinks I won't do this challenge - well, he thinks it is unlikely.

It is somewhat funny coming from him, because achieving this PlatinumStar via NL2 ain't even much of a biggie - it's totally possible and just comes down to pure will and spare time. On the other hand we've been playing StarCraft since 2005 and I've had plenty of fun there, breaking the laws of game in every possible way, just to push the boundaries of "impossible" - so yeah, hence I find it funny he doubts me in this challenge.

Crowning year 2010

I'm not sure what next year has in store for me, but I'll be happy to crown this year by doing this challenge - it seems only appropriate since I've domesticated myself on NL2 at PokerStars.

Obviously, poker coaches would probably flip their eyes and call me a nut case for wasting my time, but the thing is - progress is like water, it comes as it comes, you go where you go - it is that simple. There is never a need nor a proper long-run way to pressure yourself.

I guess that's one of the main issues for many people - losing faith in themselves, losing morale, etc. It is a big difference between being realistic and having a negative attitude - aka don't stress yourself about progress, results, time, money, etc., just go with the flow

I know my failures, I know my successes, leaks I am working on, leaks I plan on working on, leaks I know I'll discover next year, since progress is inevitable and so is gaining new and better insights into the game of poker and your own game.

You say left, I say nay

Since I'm a stubborn man, I couldn't care less if someone would criticise my way of doing things - I walk my way and as Tom Dwan would say, you gotta make decisions and be capable of handling the results.

I could watch many PokerStrategy.com videos, but it doesn't fit my mindset, my general life flow and overall time for things - by this I mean that I don't feel the need now to rush things and watch some high level content, I wish to focus on things around me and work on my game steadily.

I have to say listening to some of the UFC fighters like Cain Velasquez and Josh Koschek really inspires me, 'cause those guys are hardcore grinders, and as Kos sais - hard work pays off It is inspiring to see them constantly work on their game, improve every aspect of it.

Similar thing is in poker, you have to work on all aspects of the game. Main setback for me at the moment is the fact that my poker money goes directly to my life expenses, so I can't really go on some crazy run and swings, I rather take the safe and steady income road.

I've been busy with various stuff lately which has constantly delayed my plan on saving some cash for a shot at higher limits. On top of that, one-two months prior to these various obligations, I've been to lazy to focus on poker because I saw I can win $50-ish per day if I'm cornered and need money desperately, so that gave me an incredible amount of safety and confidence - allowing me to do what I'm pretty good at - slacking.

So anyway, this month will be relatively sick, I expect to accumulate 25k FPP and get that $300 bonus on PokerStars - I know some people play those Sunday tourney qualifiers or whatever and then sell the tickets for T$ - for me, it's just safer now to invest my FPP into pure solid cash, I just can't afford risking such a nice additional income on trying to make my FPPs more cost-effective.

Once again, I can't find the energy to fully focus on writing about some of the interesting topics that have been running through my mind lately - some of them are:

-way ahead/behind spots (as mentioned in one of previous posts)

- timing tells of bluffs (when we bluff, we often feel an urgency to do it)

- dream state speed of mind; ever had those 2-minute morning half-dream states when a whole story passed through your head, thousands of words and then when you wake up, you realize that epic line of thoughts lasted for less than 2-3 minutes?

the other day my head worked on that speed while being awake, which made me re-open the x-files on that topic, as I thought about it some 10 years ago or so and then dropped the case due to lack of options on how to properly research it - I am currently not sure how to trigger myself to enter that supra-thoughts' speed state, but I'm working on it - either way, the whole topic intrigues me, as I found this year the limit of my thoughts' speed in awake state - so if this "dreamy" level can surpass the speed barrier, that would be cool, 'cause I sure have lots of things to think about and only one life

P.S. I forgot to add - music is my drug, as such, I'm loving Rihanna's "Run this town" - I'm not much of a Rihanna listener, she is hot and that pon de replay was a fun song and that's pretty much it of my interest in her.

The Run this town song suits me just perfect now, I'm loving that viola tune (I'm not sure which instrument it is, it's too deep to be a violin)

PlatinumStar challenge update:

• I currently need another 4,106.93 VPPs to reach PlatinumStar on PokerStars.
• I have played a total of 187,468 hands thus far.

Today (14th of December) is the deadline for propbets. I have plans for the New Year, I'll be relatively away from PC on Christmas and I'll "waste" 2days on travelling - aka from Zagreb to Osijek and then back to Zagreb before the New Year. Each trip will cost me like 5.5h of train ride+1h of getting to the train station -so yeh, I'm not exactly looking forward to that.

Due to this, I will need to put in a bit more volume these days, because right now I'm clearing 41% of the challenge in 41% of the time (something like that), so while it looks good now, I'll be in trouble towards the end of the month.

I got one more prop bet going, so that'll keep me going with a bit more motivation to play, play, play

Future prop bets ♠_confused:

Maybe I'll have some challenges in the future that will be organised prior to their beginning. I'm saying this because I got the idea/need for prop bets in this challenge some week into it, so that kinda sucks.

The idea of prop bets here was/is also to motivate me, not earn some serious money - friend told me boku or someone else earned 30k from prop bets for one of his challenges, so that's cool - i.e. I had a guy willing to bet $1,000 vs me on this one, but a) he lost his will after checking me out and running the numbers, b) In order to accept such a bet I first needed to ask two of my friends to back me up with their entire bankrolls - which means I'd earn like $250 of that bet at most and split the rest among friends ♦

On that boku thing, maybe I knew it myself but forgot, so can't say I found out about it thanks to my friend telling me - and I can't say he reminded me of it because I'm not sure I knew about it in the first place - so let's leave that case at some neutral ground.

As for the bets, so as I was saying, if I/my friends come up with some insane idea in the future, we'll be sure to first organise the prop bets, make sure we have a stash of $$$ and then go do some huntin'!

I was thinking these past 2-3days about my next challenge and I don't know what the hell I'll come up with that'll be as insane as this, I first thought about playing 1mill hands in a month, but I'd need a whole f**ing team behind me, Phil Laak style (aka a team to make me food, to massage me, to keep me awake, to do whatever needs be done to make me capable of playing that much for that long - and I'd also need to get myself in a lot better shape).

On the other hand, I didn't plan to venture in the prop bets in the first place, so I guess they'll come naturally when they come - pretty much like this whole challenge came up.

Nearest future plan

My plan for the nearest future is to either buy the $300 bonus for FPP or save up points and buy the $650 one at the end of January. This will allow me to deposit $550 on Cake Poker (I love it because no Stats are allowed).

I'll see how things go, I'm not a man of plans, I just go with the flow and whenever I do make a plan, either life, Lady Luck, me, someone else, something else, etc. f** it up ♦ So let's keep this one between us (and two-three of my best friends who also know about this whole buy a bonus and go play on CakePoker plan).

(Just another random title in the block of text to make it easier on your eyes)

As for my game, with the end of this challenge I feel like I'll pretty much put a seal to my NL2 era, next month I'll try to dig really hard to get myself out of it - aka grind enough money to have a side-bankroll for playing poker and my general bankroll for covering life expenses and what not. This is doable and I know it was doable since some months ago, but I've always been lazy to play enough/focused enough to do so - aka if I see I can play a week to cover the money I lack to pay the rent, I'll just not push myself until it's the very last moment to start working or else I won't be able to pay and it's game over.

And it is in a way a game, I could pack my things and go home, but nah, I like it here, up in the hills, though still very close to the center of the town (I can get to any key spot in 30min time frame via bike). It almost feels like being in a cave, living in solitude with absolute peace and time for yourself and that's just the thing that I need - I'm in a mood to go isolate from life for like 4 years and just clear my mind, more like turning it into a tranquil water, so that I can see some things I can't perfectly see nor understand for as long as my mind is fidgety about it.

However, I got work to do, I got family and friends, etc. so I can't really say goodbye to it all - for now, it's time to play poker and earn money, once I earn enough money to do a vanishing act for as long as I see fit, I'll be gone like a ghost in StarCraft: Brood War

Ok see you later folks, it's time for me to play another session - I had a horrible Friday-Weekend, nothing surprising if you read about my Friday to Saturday curse thing.

I wish to have a great winrate and not just play for the points, so I've been working today(well actually since yesterday, as it's Tuesday already) on improving my winrate. It is very hard to play a large volume of hands and be a consistent winner - my original intention was to mix up winning sessions and grinding sessions, aka I'd play either to win or to earn points, because I can't have both mindsets and equal success in both goals in one-dimensional session.

Since I want to crush this month, I'll try now to both win a lot and play a lot - so my 2nd half of the graph for the month should have one cute vertical line, or else I won't feel fully satisfied with my performance - winning is not everything, winning with style is ♦ just kidding, I'm not sure if winning is everything, that depends on how you define winning, anyway...I'm off of the forum for now, catch ya later folks, best of luck at the tables and don't forget to have fun as well ♠_cool:

Damn, what is up with all these endurance challenges - who'll play most in 14 days, 10 days, x days, y days, insert whatever you wish to insert to end this sentence with.

Holiday Grinch

I guess it's that anti-Christmas spirit catching up with us all - don't spend time with your family, go grind and prove you're a sicker grinder than your friend. On the topic of holidays and special dates throughout the year - I think and probably have said several times before that they are absolute bollocks.

Why the hell should you buy something nice for a person you love on one specific day, why should you spend time with your entire family on one day, why should you do anything of that kind specifically when dates dictate you to?

To me, such things belong under the spontaneous category - if I see something nice that someone I know is looking for for a long time, I'll go get it - I don't care if it ain't birthday time or whatever, it's just an idea to give something.

Same goes for spending time with your loved ones - it's easy to be super nice and cool on specific days in a year, but hell no to being super nice throughout the entire year - I guess people would be exhausted if they were giving their best for their loved ones all the time, it's just so damn hard to be good and so damn easy to be lazy or just generally bad - bad under the assumption that it's anything below how good you can be.

PlatinumStar challenge update:

Ok back to the topic of poker, I'm itsy bitsy tired to go into some topics on life in general and what not. My challenge is going relatively well so far, I've played a total of 201,261 hands and need another 3,827.53 to reach PlatinumStar.

I'm almost half-way through the challenge. My graph for this month is horrible, frankly I'm so ashamed of it I just leave my firefox opened when I'm afk so that it covers the graph jpg file that is located on the desktop.

I did earn $291.48, so that ain't that bad too be all depressed about this month, but yeh, it could've been a lot better. I'm aiming to earn $700-1k by the end of this month. I'll also have or will be on the verge of having enough FPPs to buy the $300 bonus, so that's cool, too.

However, I am seriously considering saving up the FPPs to buy the $650 bonus for 50,000 points. I know there are many people who will go now and tell me to go play the Sunday Million satellite or whatever the crap is you can buy-in for 280FPPs - but, I will not to do so, because I could really use that bonus money and I really ain't in the mood to go on a rollercoaster hyper turbo SnG ride.

When I buy this bonus, I will consider using my following FPPs on playing those tournaments, but until then - nope, no way no how, I ain't doing it.

I will leave you folks for the night with the best of wishes to have nice sessions on whatever limits you are playing and in case you like a few pictures here n there, I'll drop my graph below (I'll post a graph after every 100k hands, since I play 100k hands per week, that translates into 16graphs this month, or 4 if your math is good)

I've done over 50% of the challenge now, but nothing special besides that to talk about at this particular moment, so let's switch to something else - short-stackers on PokerStars.

Yes, I put them in red because they are a pain in a**. Just to get one thing straight, I never was against guys playing with 20-50bb - you can push them around for a cheap price and you can also "go broke" with them and lose like a small portion of your stack.

However, the new breed of short-stackers on PokerStars is just disgusting. So I'll split it into two categories what we're talking about here - one is horrible, while the other is actually good, but irritating at times.

P.S. I won't be just crying around and flaming, I think I'll also add in there a few tips on how to play them, or to be more precise, how they play.

Nits v2.0 - ze 80c stackers on NL2

I hate big nits in general, but when you're dealing with big or deep stacked opponents, you can at least hope to run into a cooler hand with you getting the best of it. With short stacks the issue is that by the time you make a single c-bet with your top pair or a single 3bet preflop, you virtually have to call the short-stackers all-in because he's pretty much all-in anyway.

So before you start hitting yourself with a plank (made out of oak tree or something strong like that), calm down and assess the situation - for the deep stacks, it just came to my mind tonight that instead of trying to catch them on the wrong foot, lead them into a big pot with me or whatever, I'll just simply work on taking advantage of their nitty postflop play.

As for the short-stackers, let's take a look at the new breed of nits on PokerStars NL2 - aka they sit at the table with 80cents, yep exactly 80cents, I'm not sure who told them it's that exact number, but they seem to like it.

For the record, the old shorties on NL2 had $1 stacks. They liked to play even after doubling up and this usually made me love 'em, because they needed to run 3-4 times through me before taking my entire deep stack - and this translated into them having to win either 3-4 coin flips, coolers, suck outs, my bad plays, etc.

Chances of them walking away from the table with my money are equal to a guy flipping AK vs QQ five times and expecting to be victorious - it just ain't gonna work. So, to drop the nostalgic tone, let's get back to the main topic.

Preflop play against the 80c nitty m*r*n

There is one thing you have to watch out for in the preflop game - raises. The typical nitty short-stacking ninja plays AA-KK preflop for the most part. As such, he/she/bot is scared as sh*t when one of such hands finally comes- what to do, what to do...

Limp in...min3bet...and call opponents shove. Basically, they have several raising patterns. If you open-raised 6cents, they will reraise you to 10cents. If you open-raised 8cents, they will reraise you to 12-14. If you raised to 12cents, they love to raise to 22 - or the increasingly popular 25, just for the weirdness of it.

As I started my sentence with, they like to limp in those big hands and then min3bet you - for the sake of example, I decided to throw in some general examples of when they didn't have the time to limp in, as you were first to act. In the cases when they do limp in your shadow, watch out for those minreraises.

Another highly popular tactic is to open for 4cents - notice me keep using cents instead of BB, that's because I have a bad attitude towards poker and instead of playing for blinds, I play for money - don't do it, or actually do whatever you feel like, I personally count my bets or calls and such both in money and blinds, depending on which one is the easiest for my mind to process at the moment, if I'm too lazy to count how many freakin blinds were there in a $2.45 pot on NL5 - I'll just say the pot was pretty big at that point - with my friends obviously knowing the difference between a pot, a big pot, a huge pot and pot as in weed.

Soooo, back to the topic of raising - watch out for that 2BB raise, it's nasty. In case they like to raise 3BB - take a note on that. I saw a guy today raising 3BB his AA and 4BB his AK and such - so I naturally took a note of that to know for the future sessions.

Speaking of notes - I have picked up a sweet, sweet, most sweetest of all today notes - a player shoved preflop to a raise and the other player was thinking really hard whether to call - and the shovey guy yelled on the chat - JUST CALL!!!

Now my immediate reaction to such outbursts is that a guy has a real hand, so he actually does want me to call. While in reality, this guy was actually doing the basic dumbest thing - he didn't want to get called, so he bluffed being strong by saying he wants to get called.

So, now I know how he is thinking and I won't out-level myself in a hand against him and if I ever do end up in a hand with him and he starts yelling at me - I'll know what to do.

The guy had K5s and the fun part is that he probably wasn't even aware of me being there - something like a silent stalker, the sheep are just unaware that a wolf is lurking nearby with his eyes glowing in the dark.

This is a common mistake many people make - they show a bluff, they show this, to that, etc. - it's wrong. Never reveal information, because you never know who is watching you!

---

To summarize the preflop play against the 80c nit - just don't mess with him, if he camps all night long and suddenly limps, limp behind him. If he minreraises you, don't shove him thinking it's just 80c, because you'll be shoving your AQs or whatever into AA/KK - instead just see the flop and go from there.

I am constantly taking notes of these guys, to not donate them 80c. I also try to avoid such players, because they are useless - I actually don't even count such players under players. For example, I like to sit at the tables that have 7 players minimum, so if I join a table and see that it has 8people at it and two of them are marked as horrible to play with, I'll regard that table as a 6handed game and just go look for a better one.

Postflop play against the 80c nitty m*r*n

This one is gonna be short and fast, because there is pretty much no f**ing postflop play when a guy had a total of 80c to begin the hand with and now has like 60-ish.

If he goes for a check-raise or check-shove - fold unless you have a monster. Why? Because there is no way on earth he would do that unless he had a monster himself - aka very strong top pair being the bottom of his range.

Yes, the numbers might tell you to call, but there is no point in calling TPTK with 3:1 pot odds if you'll be drawing virtually dead against monsters. Mathematicians might disagree, but it's hard to give our opponent the credit for a 2pair because he'd often need weirdo hands for that - and we eliminate such hands by taking into consideration the nitty preflop play. So only three options we are left with are TPTK, overpair, set.

Our opponent might overplay a strong pocket pair and check-shove or donk-shove QQ on a K flop, but you gotta take notes on such players, so you'll know what such a play means.

If our opponent decides to call the flop, I'd suggest checking it down unless you spot something based on which you know you're ahead. Most of the time you'll be able to check it down, because any 2nd barrel from you will pretty much force you to go all-in, and if you have an A high hand, you really wouldn't like to call nits small all-in on the turn with more or less absolute air.

If he caught a pair, he won't let it go in most cases, so if you'll bluff and force him to fold, it'll be on the flop 90% of the time. Obviously, there are times you can 2nd barrel and even should, to prevent him from drawing or catching a miracle pair against your AK or something, but for the most part - stick to not pushing your nose too much into various pots against the shorty.

80c players - the green version

No, this does not mean these 80c players are eco-friendly, it means they are your bankroll-friendly.

Unlike the previously mentioned nits, these guys do minreraises with QTs, 97s and such types of hands. You can shove vs them preflop and expect to get called often, because damn those QTs look pretty and wow, that 97s looks even cooler, so why not call with it!

It is very important to differentiate these good guys from those aforementioned bad guys (seriously, I hope they'll burn in nit infested, short-stacked Hell one day, like living in a 1meter tall room with a poker table in it and being forced to play poker with a bunch of 1/0, or if they've been helping old ladies cross the street, 2/1 villains).

The great thing about these 80c players is that they like to limp-shove or open-shove small pocket pairs (they also like to open-shove KQ and such). Spot 'em, note 'em, hunt 'em down and take their rolls - because it's fun to bust people, and you sure should bust one of those buggers fast.

On the topic of these short-stacked horrible players, if there is one thing that I hate the most at a certain specific carefully hand-picked minute of my average session, then it's losing a stack to such a fish and then seeing him lose that money to a nit - be it the 80c nit version or a 250bb nit.

I was sitting today at the fast tables as usual when all of a sudden, my aces got cracked by one of these shorty's 88. River came an 8, I naturally saluted him and congratulated his amazing play, crossing my fingers he'd feel all warm, fuzzy and proud inside of how great he is.

The next hand I got 99 and the guy raised - so I thought to myself, yes Lady Karma and Bitch Luck (she's no lady, I'm more and more sure of that), it's time to gimme back my money and let me hit a set against this guy who now has a nearly 100bb stack and has absolutely no idea how to play with it.

Obviously, I didn't hit a set, but something else happened - the short guy started going crazy with his hand and I could see he was running into a set and god knows what the other guy had, but yeah, he was running into a wall - and I was yelling inside myself - DUDE what the f*** are you doing! Watch my money!

I guess that is similar to how mothers feel when they leave their babies to a babysitter and then get home late at night and see the babysitter doing some crazy sh*t and they go like - oh my god, what the hell are you doing, my baby nearly fell off that couch and bumped head on the table while you were watching Oprah interviewing Tom Cruise!

Nothing worse than seeing a fish handling your money, juggling it in front of two nits drooling and waiting for my sweet lumps of stack to fall into their hands.

They are just evil, I'd say even more than those 80c nits - I mean how cruel is it to take money from a guy and then give it to a complete nit? People are evil by nature I'm tellin ya, and I'll be the first to exemplify that.

Ok folks, I'm gonna go play a session, didn't play all that much, I'm pacing myself so that I can actually play over 400k hands this month - remind me what an idiot I am when the challenge ends, because now not even Alistair Overeem could stop me from finishing this challenge (Mr. Reem if you are by any chance reading this, please note that I am a funny guy with a subtle sense of humour that is not always easy to spot right away)

The grinding mode continues. I've been pretty inactive this week, I mostly focused on increasing my profit per session and then played a Friday to Saturday swingy mode - aka focusing on collecting VPPs.

I've had a couple of distractions, if we may call it that way, so the challenge isn't quite progressing good enough to make me feel comfortable. However, I can shift gears, could probably step it up another one or two levels higher in terms of hands played per day on average.

With that said, here is my current standing in the PlatinumStar challenge:

Total hands played: 233,935
Total VPPs collected: 4,345.15/7,500
Profit made: $372.21

I'll need to pay roughly $265 back to my friend who covered my back for the rent last month, count in $400 for this month's rent and yep, pretty much most, if not all, the money made in this challenge will go to the just mentioned two causes.

I'll earn quite a bit of FPPs, while the tiny profit from the prop bets won't be going to my bankroll (come to think of it, maybe in the future I get some prop bets going with my money at stake and winnings going to some charity or whatever, but I generally don't believe in charity and such, I much rather prefer to do something with that money instead of being oblivious to where it went and what's done with it).

Speaking of charity, it would be cool to open a poker training facility, as a friend of mine commented the other day - I earn as much as construction workers in capitol of Croatia, so yeh, considering how many Croats can't get a job - it always pisses me off to see them wank around, moaning how they can't get any cash, when in reality they can get a job, and even if they can't, they can play micro stakes @ poker and voila

Considering how real poker is, I wouldn't be surprised if one day we see professional schools for poker, as in college stuff - so far it's only been on the internet, but yeh, it won't be a surprise if at age of 40 I walk down some familiar street and see a new building pop in it with a sign at the entrance - Poker Gymnasium ♦

Anyway, where was I...so yeh, I'll either cash out early next month $300 in FPPs, or save up for the $650 bonus. Speaking of money, I might move to a new place - basically a friend of mine is living in an apartment which costs €300+ per month. Three persons can live in it and he's alone at the moment because his brother had to leave Zagreb.

So this creates an interesting situation for me, if we come to an agreement, I'll be moving to an apartment which is 30min closer to the center of the town and much cheaper/better than my current one - basically I pay $400 per month, whereas I'd only pay $300 if I was to move to that better apartment.

Due to an insanely good location and a much better price, I think this will help me with my poker career as well, because I won't need to walk up/down the hill for 15minutes to get to the main street, as I'll be practically living on the main street. Food expenses will be also like 10-20% of what they are for me now - because my friend goes to college, so we can go eat nice meals for like $1 or something silly as that.

On the topic of food, we can go eat like that now as well, but it takes me like 30-45min just to meet with him and then another 40min of bus ride back and forth and blabla - so it's time consuming and since I'm a lazy ass, I'll rather just grind a few extra bucks for an hour and go buy some food at the local store.

Only downside to this whole moving to a new apartment thing is that I'd need to move my stuff there - I have a huge-ass PC monitor (it's heavy, as in really heavy). I also have some other stuff, so it would be a pain in ass to carry it all to his place. Come to think of it, son of the owner of this apartment has a car, so I'll probably ask him to help me move the stuff, aka pile it up in his car and ship it to the new location

We'll see how things develop, for now, I just talked to that friend of mine, discussed the whole plan and after the New Year, we'll meet again and finalize the idea. Either way, I won't officially move from this apartment for at least 2-3 months - even though I'm not under a contract, I just can't tell the lady "hey, I'm leaving ya place, hope you find someone else to rent it to, take care, bye!".

It just wouldn't be right, so I'll give her 2-3 months to find someone new and until then I'll continue paying the rent for this place. I really like the people who own it, they're a nice family, have a cool dog, I even have "my own" cat now - some random cat came wondering around to us the other day and since nobody takes care of it, I give her some food from time to time and what not - I'm currently trying to domesticate her to enter my apartment at night and put it in my lap while doing poker sessions so that it serves me as a small radiator - since the heat is off after 11pm, so my night sessions are a true test of endurance, especially when I stop feeling tips of my fingers due to the cold

Anyway, that's all from my blog for now, obviously there are endless things and thoughts to write about, but I'm just too lazy to separate 5-6h to write a decent post on all the stuff I'd like to write - I tend to separate up to over 8h to write some stuff, so yeh, writing a blog post for a few hours wouldn't be anything strange to me

Merry Christmas folks, not that I celebrate it, but I appreciate the gifts -which kind of puts me in a celebrating mood.

Which reminds me, had a good laugh last night (I finally got home via 4h bus ride). My mom enters the room and goes like - oh my god, my employee just told me her bike got stolen. Dad and I give her the "yes, go on with the story" look and my mom sais - she left her bike outside the cathedral.

And dad and I go like - oh gee, and where is the surprise in that? Leaving something right next to the biggest thieves guild in history of mankind, no wonder her bike got stolen, ho ho ho, gotta love those catholic church related stories.

Miss Russian Community (noooooo)

Typically for me, I made a big blunder in casting my vote for the miss russian community thing. I probably mentioned earlier in my blog that Russia is somewhere around top5 countries in the world when it comes to women (ukraine,russia, some parts of serbia/croatia, romania, etc. are all in the top).

So anyway, I felt like snooping around that miss community thing and didn't really expect anything too gorgeous to come out of it - don't get me wrong, there are some hot lookin' PokerStrategists here, but I haven't had my jaw drop quite yet.

As the intro to this story went, one big noooo escaped my mouth a few minutes after I picked my fav girl to vote for - I actually thought it was a pretty clever choice, something unusual, brunette, a bit of a mystique in her, why not!

This is why not!

Facepalm to hell, my immediate reaction was - nooooo, let me vote again Either way, I can safely conclude that my jaw has been dropped and I can just hope she wins the whole thing, because the rest of the competition is just

Oh well, darn and my hastiness, if she loses due to one vote difference, I'll never forgive myself ♦

Challenge update (soon coming to your pc monitors)

Ok, let's see what else has been going around besides the miscast vote drama. Errrrm, my challenge is going so-so, I generally like to make things difficult for me. With that said, I can tell you that I'm having doubts whether I'll be able to make it.

My trust's last stand lies in the fact that I'm perfectly capable of playing a 30h+ session, so if a crisis arises, I will activate my backup batteries and turn on the zombie mode - for the Queen as the Englishmen would say, or in this case - for the sake of successfully passing the demented challenge of reaching PlatinumStar on PokerStars despite knowing that it will absolutely useless to achieve that rank if your ass isn't anywhere higher than the micros!

With this, I leave you for now, I'll be back later today to give you some numbers on the challenge. Take care and Merry Christmas folks, hope you're all still young enough to receive presents and all that stuff! (don't let them convince you otherwise)

P.S. Wawawiwa for that Ukrainian blonde PokerStrategist ♠_smile:

Aaaand on another note - I just realized there was a second voting going - aka she entered top 10, so ok, my spirit won't be restless today, since my vote went for the right miss ru community this time ♦

I'm currently on my home PC, so I'm lazy to turn on the laptop, combine my recent hand histories and such, to give you the precise number of total hands played so far in my challenge - so my rough guess is around 275,000 hands.

I need another 2,091.89 VPPs to reach PlatinumStar and I've earned roughly $450 so far, not the best of months in terms of profit, but meh, what can you do the name of the game is volume this time ♦

As for the Miss Ru Community thing - I'm clearly being misunderstood by my friends. Those who read my blog have miscast their votes (voting for mmysea and such, cough photoshop ftw, cough) - in case this wasn't explained clearly, by reading my blog you are obliged to vote for thebestpokergirl.

Speaking of which, it's quite funny that my top2 fav in that whole election thing are both named Катя, short for Catherine I'd presume. Aaaaanyway, where was I....so yeh, being misunderstood by my friends.

Truth be told, those who know me for a long time have cast their vote for the right girl - not because they believed I was right, but because they know me long enough to know I'd haunt them for ages if they didn't do the right thing

However, that didn't stop some of them to mock my opinion on who should win the competition - throwing in lines such as, "ehm, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't she second....from the bottom...right now? yep, you sure picked the best one..."

I'm relatively sleepy now, so I'll probably throw in later an entirely irrelevant to poker explanation of this peculiar case, aka why is she not no1 on the votes list right now.

In general, the reason why I've caught this miss ru community bug is that I enjoy seeing/hearing/etc. all the beauties of this world (be it something nice in nature, a nice song, a nice picture, a nice girl, etc.) and accordingly, it mildly annoys me if something is not recognised/ranked high enough as it should be - pretty much like some 2pac lyrics not being recognised because someone blindly believes all rappers are full of cr*p, or some artistic creation not being recognised by people just because it isn't aimed to please the masses or earn a lot of money to its creator and what not.

So errm where was I, hmm ye, so point being that generally speaking, that Ukrainian pokerstrategist deserves to be among top three if you take into account everything - even a single picture can tell you a lot about another human, it's often quite easy to guess someone's personality and what not.

Anyway, even if she doesn't win it this time, there's always a next year and my wild guess would be that many poker players are also interested quite a bit in poker results,which has a big effect on the votes.

By the way - that whole topic on why she ain't no1 is actually a branch of another topic which I've wanted to cover for some time now, so yeh, whoever stops by in this blog is in for a long post in near future - the topic of the post will be the general way of life nowadays (which I think sucks and is customized for average people, as it's overall most efficient way).

See you around folks, I'm gonna hit the bed for a nice evening nap and then we'll see what's in store for me for tonight, hopefully I'll have enough time/will/rest to play a longer poker session - I'll be playing like crazy in the following days, probably 20-30k+ hands per day.

It's that critical moment when you can crack and say - nah screw this thing, I'll just drop it all and lose some money rather than proving a point of little relevance to anything in life - au contraire! It's exactly these kind of spots that define you, whether you can defeat yourself or succumb to your weak and lazy side. There are actually many points of relevance in this challenge when it comes to poker and life in general, but anyway, I'm half-asleep already, so catch ya later folks

(this was probably one of my least useful posts in this entire blog, I'll give the crown to the posts in which I whine about bad beats, but in general yep, I'd say this was pretty much a bunch of words compiled for spending a few minutes of my time on doing nothing particularly mind-challenging and in your case, giving you a random line of words to read through ♦)

P.S. I hate whining about bad beats, seriously, 101% of my poker friends just constantly spam me with random hands and freak out all the time because fish are so dumb and make dumb calls - yep, that's why they're fish and yep, those hands were seen and played a thousand times before, there is nothing useful in moaning about a hand, just keep on playing, discuss stuff, discuss your plays, but gee, lay off of bad beat stories

I can understand the need to vent off, and it's usually easy to contain one guy's crying story of unlucky day, but if you enter a group of 7-8 people - you're doomed, you'll get like 200 new messages per hour, all about some random crap hands that player either couldn't have played any differently or f** up and refuses to admit it, as it's much easier to blame it on the donkeys instead of your incapability to read a donkey's play, disregarding the whole absurdity of the situation you've found yourself in, be it on the river, turn or any earlier street.

Happy New Year folks! I've achieved the PlatinumStar on PokerStars via NL2.

More info will follow in a day or two - I need to collect my hand history from home pc and my laptop. See you all later, have fun ♠_love:

happy new year dude! how many hands in NL2 to get to platinum?

I'm not quite sure yet, I need to import like 50-60k hands more from my home pc. By the looks of it, my rough guess now would be ~370k hands.

However, the challenge would've surely taken 400k+ had I not played like a monkey towards its end. I pretty much open-raised and/or 3bet any two cards. I also went broke relatively light in spots I knew I was most likely beat but could make a case for calling - so why not! This did cost me quite a bit of money, but I was so damn close to reaching my goal that some sacrifices had to be made.

I've got lots of stuff to do, so I'll provide you with some bigger updates and what not in a day or two.

I've finally combined my hand histories. So here is the graph for this PlatinumStar challenge:

I've got some work to do, so I'll do some bigger posts here in near future, see you around folks and have fun!

Sorry, I've only just caught up with your blog as been busy, well we both have ofc.

Great write up on Gib, sorry our paths didn't quite cross while I was there too, next time or maybe in England sometime.

Was Vali really still wearing that pink t-shirt... geez does he actually sleep in it too, is it welded to his body in some way? lol

Ahh bless him, I will always be a lifelong member of "Vali appreciation society" as I'm sure you will be

Finally just wanted to emphasise to everyone out there what a tremendous achievement you have done..... PlatinumStar on NL2 in very little spare time and just look at that impressive chart, not only in +ve territory but such great consistency too. Respect my friend, I am not worthy.

Best wishes to you & your family for the new year and will speak again soon

Bart