The big surprise...

Wish me luck!

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7405584

I run so darn hot...!

Two important events have controlled my poker life the last couple of months:

First is trying to qualify for the Belgian Championship. After a disappointing 22the place finish in a live qualifier in the beautiful casino of Namur I turned my attention to the online qualifiers on Unibet.
They ran several of those for pokerclub.be members. Top 7 placed for the final super satellite. On the very day of my birthday I managed to finish fourth. Ran hot. Ran boiling hot. I even felt guilty when we entered the final table stage and I had a 12k chip advantage towards the player in second position. I folded my way to the top 7, joined in with the "We've already won our seat so who the hell cares" flipament and celebrated both my birthday and this achievement. Go me.

The second big event is trying to qualify for Poker4Charity. This is a charity tournament which - this year - will be organised for the second time. Last year I was asked to join Team Limburg (there were 10 teams, each representing a province in Belgium). I finished 5th out of 90 players and was happy with this result in my very first live tournament (became 21-years young just 3 days before the tourny).
This year all players need to qualify for their team. Team Limburg therefore organises 4 SNG's in which points can be earned. A ranking will decide which top 7/8 will be part of the team. After a fifth and a first place finish I was ranked 3rd overall. Not being able to play the next one dropped me to 6th place. My last chance of qualifying will be tomorrow, October 5th.

I might have a big surprise for you in store in my next update.

Xau

Let's summarize my months of absence

I've been enormously busy and haven't had the chance to a) play poker a lot, b) update this blog. I will turn this run of events around and try to be as prolific as I can be in both a) & b) (even more so as I will have my laptop in August and play poker whenever I want).
So what has happened in the previous months:

1) I've won the SG tournament with ease to get my 6th tournament win in my online career and to break with the curse of March.

2) I finished 21st in the Flemmish Poker Challenge in Oostende. Played too overly tight in the beginning of the tournament and when I got on a decent run I had a too small stack to do anything.

3) I finally have a new homegame up and running. During our first get together I finished 2nd in our 8-man sit 'n' go, making about € 20 profit. Not much seeing I make more online but still a nice win.

4) I don't know what the hell is hapening with me in live tournaments but I finished 21st as well in a qualifier for the Belgian Championship in Namur. Played enormously solid, build my stack up fairly quickly after the rebuy period (paid € 100 for one rebuy and one add on + € 65 buy-in) but made one blunder by making a move vs a known limp/reraiser (limps a lot and reraises whenever someone raises after him. This is a sign of strength, though he showed down a lot of weak hands after he limp/reraised) with KJo. He pushed and I was pot commited. He showed AKo and his hand stood up. GG me...

5) Although I normally play $10 and $20 tournaments online I have found that the $1 and $2 tournies are so much fun on PKR: soft competition and a decent pay out (first place is almost $100). Played 3 of these when I had a bit of free time on my hands: cashed in all 3, final tabled twice (2nd and 3rd place in 300+ fields).

After this week I'll jump back into the world of poker with August being a very poker-filled month: FTOPS IV, qualifiers for the Poker 4 Charity tournament (the tournament I finished 5th in last year), trying to qualify for the EPT Barcelona...

I'll talk to you guys soon.

Xau

So this is -EV poker...?

Before I blog about my domination on Full Tilt I thought this might be a very nice topic to discuss. The JJ vs T8s hand yesterday on Poker After Dark between Jennifer Tilly and Patrik

Some background info:

Antonius is an up and coming European star of poker, having made several WPT final tables and having an EPT title under his belt. He's more know for his very aggressive online cashgame style.

Tilly on the other hand is one of those celebrity players. Former actress who decided to take up poker, winning a WSOP bracelet in 2005.

The following hand has been a topic of discussion and humour on several poker forums. It seems appropriate to discuss this hand and show what make this one so awesome.

First: visit the following link (www.nbcsports.com/poker/feature1.html) and watch Tuesday's second segment starting 2:20 minutes from the end.

BLINDS: 200/400

Seat 1: Phil Gordon (folds Q3o)

Seat 2: Phil Ivey (folds 42o)

Seat 3: Erick Lindgren (folds 52o)

Button: Jennifer Tilly

Small Blind: Patrik Antonius

Big Blind: Jennifer Harman (folds 42s)

Tilly (JJ): Raises to 1200

Antonius (T8s): calls 1000 (calls with this mediocre hand because he believes Tilly's raise is a position raise)

FLOP: Ts - Jh - 7c

(Tilly makes a set/3 of a kind, while Antonius hits his T and has an inside straight draw (needs a 9 to make it))

Antonius checks, Tilly bets 2000, Antonius calls

(Tilly should've put in a pot-sized bet (pot is 2800) which wouldn't give Antonius the odds to call. Now he has about 2.5-to-1 odds which are more than enough to call with a flopped middle pair and a straight draw. Remember, this board ain't safe for a set of Jacks and Tilly should know that. Bigger bet = more info on Antonius' hand)

NB. Notice the heavy breathing by Tilly when the flop hit her.

TURN: Ks

Antonius checks, Tilly checks

(WTF!!! Tilly checks behind Antonius with a set on a very dangerous board!!! Not putting in a bet of about 2/3 of the pot is a crucial mistake. The King is a danger card, giving anyone with a Queen a straight draw as well. Q9 actually would've made a straight now... Not betting here won't give Tilly the information she needs to play the River.)

RIVER: Kc

Antonius checks, Tilly insta-checks and shows the winning Full House

(WTF WTF WTF!!!1111 Did Tilly just check down a Full House on the River!!!??? No valuebet, not even a small suck-in bet?!? What did you say Ms. Tilly? You thought he had pocket Kings? OMFGWTF!!! How the bloody hell did you get that bracelet?!?)

If you don't believe my amazement and disgust are justified, let's take a look at the faces of the other pros at the table, right after the hand:

Antonius:

Harman:

Lindgren:

Ivey:

To summerize this blog post:

February vs March

We're only one week into March and already I'd love to throw my PC to the other end of the room.

I must say that February was an awesome month for me: 2 MTT final tables, 1 MTT win, consistent wins at the 6-handed and full table SNGs and loads of monies won. I don't know what I've done wrong to deserve this but March on the other hand has been a one-way ticket to poker hell. It's difficult to explain and I can post a lot of hand histories to show what has happend, so I thought I'd make it easier for you guys by giving an artistical view of the past week:





Looks "hair-pullingly" disastrous, doesn't it?

Thus I've decided to play at Full Tilt the last couple of days because of the following: FTP have started their WSOP satellites this week. For all kinds of buy-ins, players get a chance to qualify for the biggest poker tournament in the world. Because I - still - haven't made a deposit on FTP I decided to go for the 315 players & 630 players freerolls. Simple system: win one of those and you qualify for the 2nd round; make it to the final 9 in that one and you qualify for the super satellite where the top 2 get a seat at the WSOP. I've played 4 of these yet:

RESULTS FOR 315 PLAYERS FREEROLL: 16th, 16th, 14th
RESULTS FOR 630 PLAYERS FREEROLL: 11th

Hopefully I'll break through in one of these in the following days, getting rid of the sour aftertaste of March's first week.

Finally: if you want to see me at work, then you can sweat me on Sunday March 11th 3PM ET (20.00 GMT) during the SG Forums Freeroll @ Full Tilt Poker. A full report and maybe a recording will follow.

Long Live Barry G!

Before I bring you some much needed amusement, a little report on Saturday's tournament:

I played like a donk, I busted early like a donk...

Now on with the good stuff!
A few weeks/months ago, professional player Barry Greenstein was asked by the 2+2 community if he would say the famous words "lol donkaments" on national television. He finally took the offer if the 2+2'ers (the biggest online poker community) would pay $10,000 to his charity. Agreements were made and yesterday, during High Stakes Poker, the following occured:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSINeUHLNw0

We can now officially conclude that Barry Greenstein is a God amongst men!

Bad Beat Week Beaten...

Pictures speak so much more than words:




Yes, dear readers, I've won my first tournament of the year, my 5th in my online career. This was a 180-players qualifier to the 2nd Qualifying Round for a seat at NBC's Poker After Dark television program. Top 2 qualified to the next tournament, which will be played on Saturday 24th February @ 8.05PM GMT (sweating me is much appreciated). Top 9 in the 2nd Round qualify for the Final Super Satellite where the winner gets a seat amongst 5 poker pros to play for $ 120k in Las Vegas. Wish me luck!

(btw I'll be recording my progress in the 2nd Qualifier and post asap on the blog)

The following is a guide to my tournament win including all the hands I played and my point of view concerning some plays as well as some strategy tips:

http://rapidshare.com/files/17989872/poker_blog.doc.html