Officially Licensed Product
Here's one next to the actual badge:
Notifications
Clear all
- "So what did you do at work today?"
- "Ah, just cleaning up duck poo again."
Yes, a lot of lifeguarding to do at the lake, though it mostly just amounted to the above recently. Those ducks are such a bunch of trolls... yesterday, they even pooped on the floating trampoline, so I had to paddle over there to clean it. This was the first time I have been on this thing, I can now see why people like it. I can't quite see why the ducks like to use it as a toilet, however.
Sleep is a rare commodity, and tomorrow will likely only provide some minor relief, as I signed up for some unpaid work at the karate dojo before noon. It also turned out that this was the only way to get out of doing yet another lifeguard shift tomorrow - I just received yet another text message begging me to come. I remember Vorpal mentioning how people can use someone's sense of duty against them, and I am starting to suspect that this is exactly what is going on here.
Not surprisingly, poker is suffering a little from all that, and my fatigue from the last Trollympics meetup doesn't help matters. That's why I only have a mincash and some bounties to report for this week so far, but while I did play pretty poorly on Tuesday the rest was mostly due to being card dead or getting sucked out on, which happened on Wednesday, in a game that could have had a very good run.
The above refers to Badugi, that is. Stud8 had another game on Wednesday, because my lifeguard shift was cancelled on short notice because of bad weather. In this one, just a cursory skimming of my (incomplete!) study notes immediately revealed that I made some bad mistakes. Looks like this is the area to focus on right now, I see a lot of untapped potential in Stud8.
Originally posted by Harrier88
- "So what did you do at work today?"
- "Ah, just cleaning up duck poo again."
Here on Canada's Wet Coast we have Seagulls, aka "shit hawks".
If you leave your car at the ferry terminal and walk on board, you pretty much have to run it through the car wash on the way home again.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Sleep is a rare commodity, and tomorrow will likely only provide some minor relief, as I signed up for some unpaid work at the karate dojo before noon.
maybe it's an age thing, but I've lately been sleeping more than eight hours every night. Feeling much better for it too.
Originally posted by Harrier88
I remember Vorpal mentioning how people can use someone's sense of duty against them, and I am starting to suspect that this is exactly what is going on here.
I hate it when that happens
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
maybe it's an age thing, but I've lately been sleeping more than eight hours every night. Feeling much better for it too.
I expect my typical amount of sleep on weekday nights to range between four to five hours these days. On the plus side, I have lately always been able to fall asleep quite quickly, which is not surprising. On most of those weekday nights, I already found myself falling asleep at the laptop, sometimes in the middle of a poker tournament. 
When I did have a rare day off last Saturday, I realized how important it was for my overall well-being, and how much I have been missing it. Unfortunately, it seems like these days will continue to be a bit of a rarity throughout this summer, unless the weather gets worse. But that's how it goes, the days when people typically have the most time for leisurely summer time activities are also the days when lifeguards are in the highest demand.
We had a fair amount of satty action today. So much, in fact, that I totally forgot about today's Stud Hi-Lo.
The $0.55 satellite for the $5.50 Mini Octopus (8-Game) finished with a ticket - despite Razz hands like these:
The target tournament was another story, couldn't get much going there at all, except for a decently paid off flush in Stud Hi early on. It was Friday, however, so the main focus was on the Boogie, the new weekly $22 Badugi tournament. Two satties for that one again, $2.20 and $3.30, and this time, it was the $3.30 Deadline Sat that qualified me for the tournament - though the other satty at least "final tabled".
Unlike the Mini Octopus, the Boogie actually delivered. After a bit of a bumpy ride, I did find myself at my first final table in there.
I probably should have done a little better, but at least I secured us a decent cash for our investment.
This makes 3 out of 3 cashes in the Boogie, though this was the first one that wasn't a mincash. It also means that while four satellites were played in total for this tournament and only two of them were successful, I managed to qualify on both days when I played these satties.
Looks there is another Badugi tomorrow as part of the Mystery Bounty series, so I definitely plan to play some of the satellites for that one too, even though there is some inconvenient overlap with dinner time.
Bowser jr. is back ...
at the MTT tables and was eager to play! Finally, my first FREE Saturday after ....a long time! No more "Trollette Open" this year, so Saturdays are free again for poker! And we had a good start: Got a 0,11 $ satty ticket in the Free to play around the clock-freeroll and we qualified for the Big Quarter freeroll satty final at 9 p.m. tonight.
Let´s see, if we can manage to get that 11 $ ticket for the Big Quarter! 
Wasn't sure if I wanted to write an update tonight at all, because this session was something else. As I announced before, there was a special "Mystery Bounty" Badugi MTT for which I played four satellites, while also trying to satty into the Snowman (a weekly $22 Stud8 tournament). There was a lot of overlap, so I got a little overwhelmed by the amount of tables at times.
To get the results out of the way, three Badugi satties lost, the fourth one ended with a consolation prize. While the exit hand was a cooler, I wonder if according to the special dynamics in satellites, I should have found a fold to begin with. One of the two Stud8 satties got me a seat, and I had a good run in the Snowman - but unfortunately, without an ITM finish. Some nice hands, but when it really mattered, our opponents were the ones rivering their scoop cards. Despite the results, the successful satty and the good run demonstrate once again that there should be a lot of potential in Stud8 in the long run.
Tilt was a big issue tonight, and as one issue outside of my control, I received yet another call from the bathing lake in the middle of my busy session, once again begging me to please please please come tomorrow morning because they're really in a pinch and I am needed oh so much - something I have heard a lot from them this summer, and last summer too, frankly. Not being willing to re-schedule my entire day tomorrow on such a short notice, I eventually angrily agreed to at least show up in the afternoon, but it's simply getting too much - just earlier today, after getting up for my cleaning assignment at the dojo, I found myself falling back asleep at the kitchen table again and dreaming about work.
So yes, getting pestered into doing yet another shift against my will for another weekend without any free days surely got me on tilt, and my frustration kept creeping up throughout the session, but this is largely beyond my control, and in my opinion a pretty natural reaction. For something that should be well within my control, I found myself really struggling with "mistake tilt" once again, which is a common problem for me. I wish I had saved the chip graph from the first Badugi satty, because it should have demonstrated it quite nicely. I was in a good situation earlier on, then something went wrong across one or several of my tables, and all of a sudden I'm in spew mode and end up finishing on the bubble.
This is not the first time something like this has happened to me, and it has been enough to start entire downswings in the past. If anyone has any practical tips on preventing this kind of tilt in the middle of a session after I spot myself making mistakes, I would be very glad to hear them.
Busting because of a lucker ....again!
No ticket for Bowser jr.! Because bad play got rewarded by luck! AJ < QTo! 
THIS is why I´m a cash game player ...
Ouch, my nerves! :rage::facepalm:
Prim sure prefers her cash games. I said on her other blog before that it's the complete opposite for me, and I struggle with the mentality behind cash games instead. My MTTs come with their own challenges, of course, including the fact that you typically only get one chance per day in each game.
The previous hot streak has cooled down by now, only being interrupted by the big weekly Badugi tournament that I sattied into. I updated my satellite tracking spreadsheet the other day, so I think we should see some interesting stats at the end of the month. I'm not really worried about Badugi, which is still going strong overall, but Stud Hi-Lo is on a six day losing streak as of today, once again disregarding a successful satellite.
Yes, I made mistakes, and while it tends to bother me, I try to see it as a learning process, because let's be honest, I'm still learning that game. It's not about crushing the games right now, it's about figuring out what to watch out for and what mistakes to avoid in the future, so I can successfully grind those games eventually. Today's game had one mistake very early on, I think, where I put myself in a high vs low spot with buried Jacks and correctly tried to pressure my opponent out of the pot when he caught bad on 4th. My mistake was not to get out when he caught an ace on 5th, which paired one of his hole cards, as expected. Other than that, I think it was mostly being card dead and getting bad runouts.
But back to the learning process, I finished my Stud Hi-Lo notes today, so the next step is to memorize them and put them to use in my games until I can formulate a winning strategy around them on a larger scale. I should also keep revisiting those notes after my games to see how well I stuck to them, and occasionally look through the source material, which explores some situations in more depth.
If I can keep all of that up and also keep my cool throughout the inevitable swings, we may have a winner within about a month's time. Getting to actually play the game will also depend on my work load, however. Bad weather (which is now good weather to me) ended last Sunday's shift a little earlier and got me off the hook entirely today. It seems like things will continue roughly along these lines, so... maybe we really will have some time for poker. 
Originally posted by Harrier88
Prim sure prefers her cash games. I said on her other blog before that it's the complete opposite for me, and I struggle with the mentality behind cash games instead. My MTTs come with their own challenges, of course, including the fact that you typically only get one chance per day in each game.
For me, it is a matter of time.
I can't devote 3 or 4 hours to a tournament, so hyper-turbos or spins are about all I can do.
Cash games I can play for an hour or so and leave.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
For me, it is a matter of time.
That can be an issue too. I experimented with afternoon MTTs a few years ago, but didn't like it. Playing for 3-4 hours to conclude the day in the evening is fine for me, but if I do it shortly after getting home already, it seems like I wasted an entire day on it.
The Stud8 tournaments are a bit of an exception, since they start earlier in the evening (around 6-7 PM my time), same with most of the satellites. I currently don't mind those at all either, because frankly, after all the excitement with the karate and half marathon training, as well as other places to be at all the time, I found myself longing for some quiet hours at the PC when I'm home. Not to mention that I neglected poker a lot in the previous months, so I was eager to return.
German players on Pokerstars are surely familiar with the message below. Its a mandatory pop-up that appears every hour, and it's usually only a minor annoyance. Today, however, it was much more of a nuisance, for one simple reason: Nothing happens if you click on "Okay".
Not only does that mean that you can't continue to play, but you cannot even close the tournament window, or the Pokerstars client, for that matter. I tried a few workarounds, closing Stars first via the taskbar and then through the task manager, but the problem always persisted after logging back in.
Restarting the PC got rid of the pop-up above, but introduced another one:
I am familiar with this message too, it usually shows up if you have played at another licensed poker room before switching to Stars. Normally, you would simply have to wait a bit until you could open any new tables. This time, it only went away after I re-started the client again. I think this whole affair has cost me about 10-15 minutes, all in the middle of the game, forcing me to sit out.
So maybe I have an excuse for my lack of success today. I think I did a pretty decent job keeping up until the late phases, where a couple of bad runouts did me in again. Nevertheless, I'm not all that sure whether or not I played well overall, and that worries me, because I think it means that I haven't understood the game that much yet. Like they say, if you don't know who the sucker is, then it may be you.
I did try to avoid some of the bad situations that caused me problems in previous games, and I think I did a much better job finding those early folds, but I wonder if I ended up getting a little too tight, and possibly too passive at times in the process. Either way, we had another session full of bricks today, just like yesterday, so it's starting to look more and more like a downswing. This month will therefore feature a mix of both very good and very bad stretches, and I am looking forward to the stats. Thanks to the earlier upswing, however, finishing the month with a decent profit is all but guaranteed.
Why is that message popping up in a tournament where you are forced to take breaks every 55 minutes anyway?
How is sitting you out of tournaments helping with your "gambling addiction"?
Where is the word retarded in that long post?
Have you checked if throwables work while this message blocks your play? Maybe I should've started with this important question.
Imagine in a live tournament how the tournament director would come every 55 min, put a blindfold on your face and drag you away from the table and all you have to do is play with his nipples to sit back at the table. And here's the absurd part - he has no nipples.
If only throwables were a thing in live play...
Originally posted by nsavov
Why is that message popping up in a tournament where you are forced to take breaks every 55 minutes anyway?
cuz I hafta pee, and I really hate sitting out to go pee[1] and come back to find I've missed AA, KK and a flopped straight.
I've trained myself to make breakfast and go to the toilet and be back in 5 minutes — even faster if I'm UTG next hand.
I love 888 — I get an extra minute, so I can even make toast
[1] There is no truth to the rumour that I once used a pee bottle during a micromillions tournament — and you sure as hell can't do that in live tournaments
Originally posted by nsavov
Why is that message popping up in a tournament where you are forced to take breaks every 55 minutes anyway?
How is sitting you out of tournaments helping with your "gambling addiction"?
Where is the word retarded in that long post?
Have you checked if throwables work while this message blocks your play? Maybe I should've started with this important question.Imagine in a live tournament how the tournament director would come every 55 min, put a blindfold on your face and drag you away from the table and all you have to do is play with his nipples to sit back at the table. And here's the absurd part - he has no nipples.
If only throwables were a thing in live play...
just quit Stars ffs 
I corrected that "mistake" long time ago...
I quit stars as well. But since it has literal monopoly in my country, I "hafta" quit playing altogether.
To those still playing there - beware the Canadian collusion ring!
As you know, I quit Stars too because of their terrible bureaucracy and "security checks" for German players.
Wow, I didn't expect to see such a lively discussion when I got home. Quite refreshing.
Originally posted by nsavov
I quit stars as well. But since it has literal monopoly in my country, I "hafta" quit playing altogether.
To those still playing there - beware the Canadian collusion ring!
While it doesn't have a literal monopoly in my country, it effectively has one when it comes to the games I care about, so it's also "Stars or nothing" for me. It was fun to mess around on SwC, but I'm sick of OFC by now, and the other games (well, OFC too) have almost no traffic apart from freerolls.
Besides, the regulations are from the German government and every licensed room has to adhere to them, so it doesn't make much sense to blame Pokerstars for them, though they definitely messed up big time in the way they handled the switch two years ago, and I had an absolutely atrocious experience with their chat support regarding my verification last year. Also, there's just no excuse for the "Okay" button failing in yesterday's pop-ups, even though I saw other German players in the tournament who didn't seem to be affected.
Originally posted by nsavov
Why is that message popping up in a tournament where you are forced to take breaks every 55 minutes anyway?
How is sitting you out of tournaments helping with your "gambling addiction"?
Not much point in trying to look for anything reasonable in government-enforced regulations like that. To the minds of the people who came up with them, poker is most likely interchangeable with roulette and slots, so let's not even imagine them caring about game formats.
Originally posted by nsavov
Where is the word retarded in that long post?
Maybe my anti-tilt zen is better than I often give it credit for.
But just for the record, in case it wasn't clear: The forced sit-out was a technical failure. As nonsensical as these pop-ups are, it's normally just a matter of clicking one button every hour, which is still annoying, but tolerable. It used to be worse, actually. When these pop-ups were first introduced, they would appear at every table that is currently open, as well as in the main lobby, I believe, and you would have to close them all manually.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I've trained myself to make breakfast and go to the toilet and be back in 5 minutes — even faster if I'm UTG next hand.
I love 888 — I get an extra minute, so I can even make toast
It's one of my general MTT rules: Always use the bathroom in the 5 minutes break, even if you think you don't have to - because you likely will, before the next break.
And I'm actually worried that getting back into those MTTs is leading me to adopt bad snacking habits during those breaks.
Originally posted by nsavov
I quit stars as well. But since it has literal monopoly in my country, I "hafta" quit playing altogether.
To those still playing there - beware the Canadian collusion ring!
Oh no! What did I do now?!
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Originally posted by nsavov
I quit stars as well. But since it has literal monopoly in my country, I "hafta" quit playing altogether.
To those still playing there - beware the Canadian collusion ring!Oh no! What did I do now?!
Now it´s offical! Vorpal is a TROLL! 
*trollololol*
(Aren´t they cute?)