got back from Berlin last night and got some rest I really needed from the fun but exhausting week in Berlin. I played far more poker than I initially planned, the cash tables were so soft I just couldn’t pass up on them. I mainly played €20/€40 PLO, with the option to missisippi-straddle on the Button to €80. I obviously did straddle when stacks were deep enough and so did the other players, which made the game quite bigger. Anyway the edge I had in those games were huge, results wise I felt like I ran slightly above EV and ended up an decent amount.  I also noticed that variance in those live-games are far smaller than online, you just don’t get the high-variance “I-don’t wanna-put-it-in-but-I-have-to” spots. Run it twice helps aswell, and it doesn’t hurt to be able to pick up every medium sized pot because the cards of the other players are written all over their faces Other than PLO cash I played the main in which I busted vs Igor with a big 3barrel on Day1A. Staked him and Fabi in the €10k high roller, but no luck there aswell. Overall pretty happy how I performed, especially with my nowadays pretty rusty NL-Game. Wondering if that bluff was necessary vs the only good player at the table though, will discuss it with Igor the next few days.
Other than poker, I had a great time in Berlin, mostly meeting up with old friends and getting to know new interesting ppl. Also the Players Party turns out to be a positive surprise, had a lot of fun there and the hours after

again, big thx @ Marcel, Yohei and Sayaka for the hospitality!

cheers

just wondered how little I applied the stuff I learned in poker (goal setting, mental approach etc) to my every day life, e.g. for my developments in gymnastics, so here is my little start. My main focus is on the DHM at the end of June, and also i might start in the 3. Bundesliga with NTT (Niedersächsisches Turn-Team) again this fall, which would be my main priority. Didn’t totally decided yet though if I want to do this again. anyway, here are some goals for the different apparatus regarding elements, distinguished in categories how likely I’m able to learn them:

“have-to-be-in-the-routines” till the DHM:

Floor Exercise:
- salto fwd. str. with 3/2 turn

Pommel Horse:
- stoeckli with 2/3 travel
- reverse stoeckli w dismount through handstand with 3/3 travel, 360° turn

Still Rings:
- inverted cross

Vault:
- Tsukahara streched

Parallel Bars:
- tucked double dismount backwards

High Bar:
- Adler with 1/2 turn

now to the elements I’d like to learn but kind of are “a-bit-of-a-strech”

FX:
- salto fwd. str. 1/1 in comb. w. salto fwd. str. 3/2
- salto sw. w. 1/2 or 1/1 turn
- tucked double back

PH:
- too much to dream of

SR:
- Maltese cross (“Schwalbe”)
- Yamawaki/Jonasson (don’t laugh at me!)
- if above is possible Honma should be too

VT:
- Kasamatsu

PB:
- Felge in hdst. and variations

High Bar:
- not sure what I can dream of without a proper coach, any ideas any1? guess I’ll start with a proper dismount preparation

key facts:

• played up to $100/$200 as you can see in my last post
• 300k hands in total
• 40k hands of $50/$100, 70k hands of $25/$50
• not-a-loser! actually on a decent heater, still will work hard to ensure I remain a winner. But the probability that I’m not winning is not that high though given the results
• 300VPP’s up to this point,  going for Supernova Elite this year

 doesn’t sound that bad right? The results are faaaaaaaaaaaaar above my goals I had at the beginning of the year,  so I’m super happy about it. The good results obviously boosts my confidence in my game, am pretty happy about how I’m playing most of the time (also kudos to my mental coach Jared!).  Now let my $100/$200 shots be successful and I’d have literally nothing to complain in my life

Let the rungood continue!

cheers,

-Tsubi

anyway, after focusing on playing online and getting my social life ongoing in a new city for the last few months, encouraged by some friends who always tell me that live-poker is so ridiculously soft, I decided to give live-poker another shot. But this time with cashgames, no longer boring NL-tourneys! I heard the Kings Casino is one of the best casino for poker players, they actually seem to care about the players unlike german state casinos. Ill keep you guys updated,

Tsubi

Poker Stars $20000.00 Pot Limit Omaha Hi – 5 players

Hero (SB): $19260.00
refaelamit (BB): $57416.48
mTw-DaviN (UTG): $85765.00
Jeans89 (CO): $61475.75
V. Wahlbeck (BTN): $15175.50

Pre Flop: ($300.00) Hero is SB with K 5 A K
1 fold, Jeans89 raises to $800, 1 fold, Hero raises to $2800, 1 fold, Jeans89 calls $2000

Flop: ($5800.00) A J Q (2 players)
Hero bets $3800.00, Jeans89 calls $3800

Turn: ($13400.00) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, Jeans89 checks

River: ($13400.00) 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, Jeans89 bets $13595.00, Hero calls $12660 all in

Final Pot: $38720.00

Hero shows K 5 A K
Jeans89 shows J T 8 9

Hero wins $38835.00

Now to some strategy, preflop and flop are totally standard. On the turn i was going to semibluff any backdoorflushdraw with my KK blockers, and I caught myself cursing when the 6d was put on the felt, how can I NOT turn the BDFD right? =) Still, I considered a jam but with just a potsize left, I figured he’d be not folding enough, so I decided to give up. But then, he checks back relatively quickly. The river is the 6h, a blank-ish card, even when it does pair the board. So now I’m really PRAYING to god that he checks back his hand, but obviously he doesn’t obey. At that point, I’m puking. Literally.
As you can see, I called. I timed down my whole Timebank, and after going back and forth trazillion times, I decided to call the LAST second. It felt SO GOOD when the pot was shipped my way

some factors that helped my decision-making:
- at that point, I thought he perceived me as quite straightforward, maybe even a little scared of the stakes since I’ve been quite new at $100/$200
- that makes my range superweak on the river, I might be able to trap the turn with AA/KT but I don’t expect him to think that I would trap twice, especially because it doesn’t make sense in the vacuum either, too many hands with SD Value will check back
- He perceives my 3b range, especially OOP, as very strong
- that rules AA out almost completely, and that makes a slowplay with KT highly unlikely because I am obv stacking off with AA. unless he wants to shift equities and fold paired turns (imo not the case, he should perceive me as an tight 3better but not as a Nit/Fish who just 3b AA, he’d be making wrong folds on paired turns if I bet sometimes)
- I thought he’d not jam AQ/AJ on the river with our history, although he’s certainly capable of it (I’d guess at least)

you might notice some points go both ways, for calling and for folding, depending how you interpret it. My main concern was that he almost has ZERO hands he needs to bluff BUT the EXACT HAND he had. obviously he is jamming any boat, but at least partially he should be jamming turn with QQ/JJ, which reduces the combination of boats on the river.

At the end, the likelyhood of an slowplay on the turn was too low for me to fold, and I am obviously superhappy the way it went down. Still not totally sure though if this was the right play, I’d love to discuss that with Jeans but I guess I can’t do that

Now when we play against each other, there is crazy shit going on, like me thinking on level 6 or even 7 trying to outthink him It’s quite fun actually.

Not much left to say, I’m happy I had the balls to call off for a 40k pot with such a weak hand, I’d have never imagined of  playing as high as PLO20k 2 months ago, nevertheless calling off with such a weak bluffcatcher

hope you learned smth off my analysis,

Tsubi

At the end of the last year I was tilting quite a bit, which made me tilt even more, losing a lot of money during that process.
Today I am obviously not totally tilt-free, but i made tons of improvements in the area of the mental game I didn’t even know such areas existed beforehand.

It was definitively the best investment i have ever made in my poker career by FAR regarding the improvement of my game, and for me, it probably was more than a simple fix of my mind. If you are interested, definately check out his book, its called “the mental game of Poker“.
I am so amazed what jared did to me unlocking so much potential by “just” talking to me. now i am real curious how/why that works, and also i can imagine myself doing some kind of similar performance-related psychology stuff in the future. that means, when I start to study again, it will probably be some kind of a psychology related major.
after so many years of seeking for my calling, I finally feel I might have a grasp what I want to do, which is an amazing feeling. but lets see how poker turns out this year first…

cheers

poker-related/financial goals:
-establish myself as a PLO5k+ player and win consistantly
-steadily work on my game to become one of the very best players in this game
-build a br which allows me to play the HIGHEST games, live and online
-win a major live tournament
-continuously improve my mental game

other:
- discover what i really wanna do with my life and find out about my calling
-blog at least 2times/month!

well, as usual, i have set myself pretty high, but any non-achievable goals.
the background on these goals are that I decided I will quit poker at the end of the year and focus on studying, unless i’m playing so high cash-game wise, that i’m continuously earning an amount of money that i am able to get rid of any financial concerns within 3-4years.
I fear if I dont quit poker completely, i won’t perform at my full potential in my academic career (I’m pretty upset how lazy I was during my bachelors degree “for poker’s sake”) and end up mediocre at poker AND uni. I rather strive for excellence in either of those two.
ill try to become one of the the worlds elite cash players this year, if it isnt meant to be i have no problems recognizing my limits and moving on. but until im sure about that, ill do everything within my capabilities to beat the best players.
right now it’s looking decent after recovering from my downswing till mid january, im playing mostly 5k+ and also took my very first $100/200 shots which went pretty well. but time will tell.

next to poker, my big life-goal is to find my calling what I really want to do with my life. inspired by the blog of galfond i did quite a bit of reflecting and came up with some thoughts, i’ll hopefully discuss that in a separate article.

hope you guys are doing fine,
Tsubi

haven’t written an entry in this category for a while so i thought i’d make an update on how things are going poker-wise. after coming back to Karlsruhe kinda unvoluntarily I’ve been grinding a ton that i can take some time off when i move to hamburg in mid-october.

as some of you guys might know, i took 2nd place in the wcoop event #34, $320+r PLO, which is my biggest tournament cash so far. obviously i ran pretty well, but the softness of the field was incredible. people made so many (even basic) mistakes that you had to seek for hands that were played in a good/ok manner. oh well, good for me. also played the main event and all the other bigger plo events like the 2k/hu, but didnt run well and busted pretty early, my hu match was finished within 5 minutes (2aggro bastards clashing hu = pretty short match )

cash-game wise i’ve been running pretty terribly prior to my 2nd place that the prize money got me even for the month >_< i had been playing up to PLO10k and was getting beat up variance pretty hard. so after my 2nd place i decided to take it easy and not to play plo5k and higher until i have a bigger cushion in my bankroll. that took the pressure off me mentally since plo2k is totally in my comfort zone, and thus i never tilted a tiny bit since. combined with a rungood of cards i managed to win all my losses back in the last week or so, so september turns out to be a decent month

after moving in together, tim and I have pretty intense theory sessions planned, so if there is any demand for strategy content let me know, i might publish some free stuff like videos i did few years ago.

cheers, Tsubi

That brings us to my future plans. unless my poker results develop exceptionally well (esp. cash-game wise, dont wanna count on one big hit in tours) I am planning to go back to uni in fall 2012. Totally don’t know where/what I want to study, not sure if T want to continue my Business Engineering degree. I might try out something totally different like physics or even psychology. Have to think about that, got plenty of time. The places I want to study isn’t sure either, but it’ kinda likely I will study somewhere abroad. vancouver, sydney/melbourne or the US west coast are my favourite destinations up to this point. They all got high quality universities and also these locations should provide high quality of life. But lets see how this year works out and look from there. I already have planned a lot of fun stuff the next few months, you gotta live in the moment, right?

that’s it for now,
Tsubi

PS: while writing this down i realised i have no real long-term plan, maybe work before the 30s, kids in the early 30′s? oh forgot the marriage…lets skip that