Double Trouble with Prim and Harrier - Poker, Sports, Cooking, Gardening, Mixed Drinks and more

We may not have a ton of followers here, but if you are one of them, you would be well-advised to check out Prim's brand new cash game blog, if you haven't already. Our shared blog right here will continue as usual, of course.

Crypto poker is currently a good gap filler for me on all those evenings when I don't feel quite ready for my "real" tournaments. Assuming I do find any tables, it would be mostly cash games for me there, with the occasional freeroll. I even somehow shipped a 'Big O' (Five Card Omaha Hi-Lo) freeroll there last night - I don't even like that game, lol.

The winnings in those crypto freerolls leave a lot to be desired, with even 1st place payouts amounting to what would be less than a dollar, but they can be worth it for fun and "bragging rights", especially when you are too tired to play anything more serious anyway. Other freerolls, however, are just utterly pointless:

Yes, I won a "Step 0" hyper satellite freeroll to qualify for yet another satty. What was so pointless about that? Well, for one thing, it's that the satty didn't even start. It was stuck on this screen:

The "Take My Seat" button did nothing. A restart of the client fixed it, but I didn't think of doing that until much later, mostly because I still had other tables running. By the time I could join, my stack already wasn't in the best condition anymore.

But yeah, apart from that, the next step would have started at 1 AM, when I should be sleeping already (okay, it's 1 AM right now, but I'll go to bed right after doing this). And then the target tournament would have been on a Friday night at like 2:30 AM. If it was Friday to Saturday, maybe it would have been worth staying up for, but whatever, didn't win the next step anyway.

I guess I just wanted to show Prim that I can freeroll my way into some satties too.

Drawmaha and Badeucy is where it's at in the cash games. Two very interesting games - when you do get an opponent to show up - and so far. we continue to do well... even though I was unlucky enough to run into what is the absolute stone-cold nuts in Badeucy tonight, with a hand that I felt justified building a good pot (the screenshot already shows the aftermath, not the pot itself).

Nice hand indeed. It was still a profitable session in there, despite that.

Better than nothing ....

Since I have enough BR on Party to play Cash Games, I´m not very keen on tournament poker anymore, but of course our freeroll challenges continue. I had to use up a freeroll ticket for the Fabulous Winner Spinner freeroll and before that, at 8 p.m. is the pretty profitable 450 $ Freebie freeroll. But today, the Freebie freeroll was a brick: ran with 55 into QQ. Bad luck! Next freeroll was the Winner Spinner, where Wendy and I at least managed to get ITM. +15 ct. Well, 15 ct. are 15ct., right? Better than nothing.

Coming up tomorrow: Women´s singles 50plus (team event)

So as this is a team event not a tournament, I will play a single´s match for the women 50 plus team of our tennis club. There will be just ONE Villainesse, who is not known yet. This time I play ONLY ONE single´s match. Some other team-mates will play the doubles.

It has been all crypto for me so far this week on the poker front. Not a lot of games, but somewhat steady progress in the ones I did play. I will try to improve my spreadsheet and keep playing for a while, maybe we will soon have interesting stats to present.

Other than that, more sports news, but let's focus on what is directly ahead of us for now, which is the above mentioned 'Trollette Open'.

Pre-Match Analysis

Only one opponent for the brave grindette this time, and I heard she is a bit of a dark horse. Primrose does not know her and initially couldn't tell me a lot about her, except that her official ranking seems to be somewhat similar to her own. I believe her opponent is a little older too, but I don't think this has been confirmed yet. Nevertheless, Prim expects her to be beatable, and I am going to agree with her.

Therefore, my prediction is going to be a clean win for Prim. Actually, I am going to predict that she is going to win all sets.

My guesses have been on point lately, so let's see if I am going to be correct again. Best of luck, Prim! Win it for Pokerstrategy.

A crazy game!

Well I just posted in my cash blog what I learnt today for the poker tables. First things first: I won! The result was 7:5, 6:0. So, now you wonder why 6:0 in the second set? Villainesse was actually a tough, solid player! But after the first set, she went on tilt! And I changed my tricky play with even some risky moves into a "rope a dope"! It was all about save and clean tennis in the second set and letting HER make the mistakes!

So, it was actually a close win, a clear win just because of tilt.

Congrats on your win, looks like I was spot on in my prediction once again.

I have updated my crypto poker tracking spreadsheet today. It is now capable of tracking both Drawmaha and Badeucy cash games, and I am still working on the freeroll tracking, which should soon include support for placements, field sizes and relevant statistics like % of field beaten. Eventually, I may even add a breakdown by game type.

Despite the OFC disaster, crypto poker may have a place in the grind after all, as a good supplement to the MTT grind on Pokerstars, which has been on a bit of a hiatus lately. I look forward to get back into it, but I can tell you already: This summer is going to be crazy! There is the half marathon, the Trollympics, our new endurance swimming challenge, potentially a karate belt examination for which training is starting to heat up now too, and I have already been asked for my first shifts as a lifeguard at the local bathing lake. Ah, and there is going to be tennis for me too. And that only covers the sporty side of things.

With so much on our plates, any success at the tables will be very much welcome. Primrose is already off to a great start in her new cash games blog, and I hope that I can present some sick graphs and results soon too.

In the meantime, I used today's day off mostly for some "housekeeping", including the aforementioned spreadsheets. I also made some Mojitos to kick off this year's cocktail season. Maybe we are going to see more mixed drinks on this blog too. I also had several plans for new cooking series... as you can tell, we are most certainly not running out of content - the difficulty is just to find the time for it all.

Step for step instructions on how to make your own Mojito at home - which I actually consulted myself when I made them - can be found here, on my old blog.

Late night update: I decided to combine the crypto spreadsheet with my previous OFC one, to make a one-size-fits-all tracking spreadsheet for crypto poker entirely, allowing us to get much more insightful stats, and comparisons to regular USD-based poker at the big rooms.

I also played a little tonight, and unfortunately, it went terribly. Got stacked twice in Drawmaha for a 120 BB loss (since I only bring 60 BB to the tables), which wipes out about two thirds of my previous profit. I fear that there may be a similar pattern as with the OFC games, which often started with a good streak, only to have me freefalling back into the red at some point, never to recover.

Maybe it was just bad luck tonight - or maybe it was just good luck before that. I only hope that I won't see myself forced to give up these games before I have any meaningful stats to present, now that I have put all that effort into the new spreadsheet. Because I can tell you guys right now that I am going to drop those games like a hot potato if it turns out that I am not a profitable player.

I ordered poison!!!

And I´m going on a mass killing spree!!! Yes! Gladly, only in the garden of course! Lemmy had to take a huge setback! Our sweet peppers are infected with pests, mainly lice! :facepalm::rage: We try to save as many plants as we can, but four plants had to be discarded! :f_frown::f_cry: We still got enough peppers, but now, we have to change the gardening-plan. We had planned some peppers for the terrace, but now, we will put just ALL healthy plants on the field (because it´s ORGANIC gardening there) and we keep the sick ones on the terrace and in the lower garden and those will NOT be organic anymore! We tried to kill the pests with organic pesticides - with little effect, to be honest! So, now I ordered the HARD STUFF! Either this or our plants die!

Luckily, we still have enough healthy plants which we can put on the field! Well. We went from "too many peppers" to "Do we have enough peppers?" Let´s see what we plant on the terrace, we already have some mini-tomatoes and maybe some of the surviving peppers, some salads and of course herbs.

Crypto poker may be on its last legs, after some more bad results on all cash tables. I know Prim keeps telling me that I tend to give up too quickly after setbacks, not just in poker. Well, there's still some faint hope left, because I am close to unlocking some rakeback rewards there. I will try to reach those somehow, then I would be perfectly happy just to return for the occasional freeroll.

It's probably time to get ready for a comeback on Stars anyway, like I planned. I may also take a look at some of the available satellites, so it's ideally not just Badugi. In any case, I would have to find a way to fit it all into my busy schedule these days, and speaking of which, I think we are going to have a major sports update tomorrow!

Some OFC and freeroll winnings at the crypto tables tonight - it's not completely over yet. But I did say we have a big sports update to get to...

The half marathon training schedule has been going smoothly, despite a week or so lost to sickness, and we have wrapped up the first half of the program with a 10 mile run last Sunday, the toughest one yet:

We even got started with the second half already:

As far as I am concerned, we have reached the point of no return, we have come too far to quit, so I have an announcement to make:

The Race is On!

I have completed my registration earlier today - save the date, I'm in the half marathon on July 4th. It's on!

Registration fee was €25, which is a little ironic, because I wouldn't reg for a poker MTT with such a buy-in yet, and I certainly have less of an edge in a half marathon than on most kinds of poker tables, I'd imagine (except PLO, possibly). We're in it for the challenge, however, and I even forked over an additional €25 for a t-shirt. It even says "Finisher" on the back... well, we don't know that yet! I better do finish now, though, or that shirt is only good enough for the bin.

Still about one and a half months left until the race, so let's keep practicing - the schedule is not going to get any easier.

I mentioned that I wasn't going to play any more OFC, but you know... I still have to generate some rake to unlock some rewards, and I figured those games are as good as anything else for that purpose.

So what did we get? We had this hand, for starters. Keep in mind that this is the 2-7 version, the middle row (and only that one) needs to be a lowball hand, T-low or better to qualify.

I put the four diamonds down, and later get the opportunity to complete the flush... but let's not do it yet - especially if we still have a low to complete, even though it is going to be crap now with the T. Note that our opponent has already completed a perfect wheel.

Well, we could complete our low now... but I say we put the kings on top. We just need to complete any low on the next turn, and the flush in the back should still be pretty live, not to mention that any Jack could give us a straight as well, thus giving us something to rest our kings on.

Turns out we did get our low, and we hit on the bottom row too... but not just any old flush:

Another competition is coming up .....

tomorrow. It will be again a Trollette Open team event, I will play single´s for our team: women´s singles 50plus. How will I do? We will see .... tomorrow.

With OFC and other forms of crypto poker still lingering around, and me still getting ready for a big MTT return, we should have more poker content soon too... but we also still have loads of sports content to get to. Let's start with the one that's right ahead of us tomorrow.

Pre-Match Analysis

Well, not much to analyze, actually. We don't have much info on Prim's villainesse at all, but based on what little we know, Prim told me that her opponent is "probably beatable".

Therefore, my prediction for tomorrow will once again be a win for the grindette, if nothing else to show my support for her. I won't speculate on how the sets will go this time, however. I just don't know enough to make an informed guess.

Ah well, just take it down!

Well, at the Trollette Open team events, our exact Villainess is unknown until competition day. However, we can look up in the tennis database and see all the rankings of the opponent team members. But WHO of them will play on a certain day, is not known. But at least, the whole teams looks beatable.

Bad play, won anyway! :f_ugly::f_ugly:

Guess, we all know this from poker: Sometimes bad fun-players just make their lucky draws. There´s not much luck involved in tennis, but yesterday, this wasn´t my A-tennis at all. I was already tired before the match and during the match I made some really stupid mistakes. And to add insult to injury, my yesterday´s Villainesse was a tough one! She was one of the toughest Trollettes I played this year, but I could pull myself together and manage a really close win anyway: 6:3, 7:6 (won the tie break in the second set). It took me more than 2 hours to win. Anyway, I´m not really happy with my performance ... but okay, a win is a win... let´s not sweat it!

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Guess, we all know this from poker: Sometimes bad fun-players just make their lucky draws. There´s not much luck involved in tennis, but yesterday, this wasn´t my A-tennis at all.

"Soccer is like chess, but without the dice." A quote often falsely attributed to the Polish-German star player Lukas Podolski, when it was really coined by a satirist doing a parody of him. In any case, I suppose the same thing can apply to tennis.

Well done yesterday, I'm sure your play can't have been that bad if you managed to beat a tough villainesse in two sets. And I see my prediction was correct once again.

It seems like NL Hold'em and I are still destined to be natural enemies. Today, I picked up a good chiplead close to ITM in a crypto freeroll, only to end up finishing right on the bubble, after running a blind vs blind steal into AA and then shoving AKs into JJ and losing the flip. I got my revenge later on, when I shipped a Drawmaha freeroll instead.

So yes, we are still playing poker, and I am looking forward to the crypto stats at the end of the month. Until then, I can't even really tell where we are going, OFC is just such a rollercoaster.

The sports schedule continues at full force, with more and more challenges coming up for the two of us. One of them will of course be the next "Trollympics" (German Sports Badge) this summer, and I am delighted to announce that the "Trollympic committee" has settled on a new logo for this year's edition:

Not only that, but the schedule stands now too. The standard track and field meetups will take place on June 23rd, June 30th, July 7th, July 14th, August 18th, August 25th, September 1st, September 8th, September 15th and September 22nd.

Problem is: I won't be able to make it to the first two of them due to lifeguard duty. Besides, I would still be training for the half marathon on July 4th during that time anyway. So I think we are going to wait until the big half marathon race, and essentially consider it the "opening run" of this year's Trollympics. Unlike last year's 10K run, however, it will not be considered a part of it, since there are no target times set for the half marathon distance.

This won't leave me much time before the break in mid-July, but maybe we can still get something going. I'm also free to go for the aquatic events until then, though I expect I won't stand much of a chance in them once again. Silver is probably the best I can hope for at the pool.

Lots of stuff to do for the two of us on and off the felt, as you can tell.

How about this for a highlight hand? This was already at the final table.

A nice straight in the draw pot (which was a gutshot, and even just a 3-outer, since one of the Jacks was on the board) which ended up hitting a flush on the turn, and a straight flush on the river. Tough to argue with that one.

You can't see the pot size anymore, but it was virtually a double-up that pretty much put me in the driving seat for the remainder of the game. We made it count this time. Only a freeroll, of course.

Some fun hands from tonight's 2-7 OFC session:

Check out this Fantasyland. In OFC hi, it would have been a great hand to hit, with three different kinds of trips to play, one of them upgradable to a full house. In 7-2 OFC, however, we just narrowly avoided a foul - even though only one of our 14 cards is above T.

How do you even play this kind of hand? Here is what I did, at least:

Brave decision by my opponent here, putting trip aces on top and going for a two-outer in the back:

Could have been massive.

On the subjects of trips on top, this was indeed a good draw to hit for me in this situation:

The follow-up hand in Fantasyland was pretty cool too, even tough we only won one out of three lines. Those royalties really matter, though.

And finally, for some visual comedy: It is indeed possible to foul in Fantasyland through no fault of your own, if a qualifying lowball hand simply isn't possible. Happened to me tonight as well. You can imagine what my opponent was feeling here, when such a foul forced them to let a Royal Flush go to waste:

And check it out: A Royal Flush would have been possible with the cards I received too, I just wasn't in Fantasyland. How cool would it have been to have a Royal vs Royal face-off in the back?

With so many big sports challenges around the corner, will we still find a way to squeeze a karate belt exam in, only about half a year after our last one? I don't know yet... but as far as I know, there will be exams on the second weekend of June (i.e. around the 14th), as part of a bigger "summer school". Technically, I could join - if my instructors think I'm ready.

There would be little shame in not getting the green light for it, nor in trying and failing, especially with me having had to skip quite a few lessons due to sickness and other factors. Knowing me, though, I'm pretty sure it would bother me... so let's give it a try - the orange belt (7th kyu) is potentially up for grabs.

What would be expected of me? Among other things, it would be this kata, which we have been practicing quite a bit already:

There is not a lot of time left - only about three and a half weeks, and plenty of room for improvement, to put it in a positive light. I have signed up for a specialized two hour practice session on Sunday morning, which may improve my chances... or at least give me the comfort of knowing that I gave it a good shot, if things don't work out, in which case I should always be able to retry this winter.

Of course, I'm supposed to run 10-12 miles later that day too, according to my schedule...