Hand of the Day
...though I wasn't personally involved. This happened on the FT as well as the outright bubble of one of tonight's freerolls.
The 9♣: seemed like a great card for the opponent on my left, so I'm sure they were excited to see the other player being willing to put their stack in on the river. Until it turned out that they also had a very good reason to like that card.
Wow! Have been away for a loooooong time, sorry ... ♠_frown:
Been too busy with a lot of work to be posting about anything, alas.
We've been eating from our 'easy garden concept' for weeks already. Harvesting spinach three times already (leafs of about 25cm :P) and stil harvesting kale and lettuce a lot. Also yellow tomatoes, radish and more. It's so much, we can't eat it all, so I dry it for the winter.
The carrots are ready to harvest, as are a lot of beans and strawberries. The unions and garlic may take some weeks to a month, but we already harvest the leafs.
All biological and very healthy 
The tomatoes we harvest are still producing after being producing at my attic first. I put them outside in may and the still produce flowers, so more tomatoes may be coming
Today we ate Kale, yesterday Spinach and tomorrow we eat beans. After that there's carrots and lettuce. Nice!
Great to see you again, Zeezout! 
Our "Gardening Queen" is away on vacation right now, as you may have read, but her work is progressing very well at home. Can't really say the same about my bonsai, but I suppose I should do an update on them soon.
Love the self-sustained living that the two of you are pulling off. I would like to do something like that too, but with my crazy schedule right now, I'm happy if I find the time to even cook something that's not just some version of a sandwich when I return from work. I hope this is about to change when at least the sports schedule will lighten up a bit. It's about time we return to some kind of cooking series anyway.
I have written about the insane variance in OFC before, particularly the lowball version, and I will surely do it many times again - including tonight. Because today, I even found some (still affordable) higher stakes tables for this game.
The first game went very well, and single-handedly took care of this year's previous losses, as they were shown in the graphs above. The second game, which just concluded, was another huge rollercoaster, starting out well, then putting me more than 100 points in the red and forcing me to add more chips, only to bounce right back into profit, and finally into a loss of 76 points again. This means that I still finished the day in a profit, but only a marginal one, as opposed to the sensational comeback it could have been.
One reason for the big variance - and yes, I have mentioned it before - is how close a big winning hand can be to a complete bust if just one card is off. Add the concept of Fantasyland into the mix, and it's a single card that can make a difference between several stacks won or lost. Like in many other forms of gambling, taking big risks when there is a safer option can come with high rewards, and you may be kicking yourself if they don't pay off and you lose it all. And other times, it turns out that playing it safe becomes your downfall, because it makes you lose your only chance to punish your opponent.
Cold, hard mathematics can help give an objective answer to what course of action is the better one, but this is not easy to do on the spot, or sometimes even afterwards. Also, like in investing, risk-management is a factor, and some choices may be similar in expected returns, with different degrees of risk involved.
All that being said, sometimes you simply get trolled - like in this hand. Everything is all set up, now we just need a low hand in the middle. T-lo or better. Ideally, we would want a :4x:, which should be reasonably live, with only one out dead, but any other low would do, and we get three cards to choose from. Shouldn't be a problem at all... right?
Hand of the Day
Actually didn't even pay out that much, I certainly had much more spectacular hands when it comes to payouts... but hey, it's a Royal.
Originally posted by Zeezout
Also yellow tomatoes, radish and more. It's so much, we can't eat it all, so I dry it for the winter.The carrots are ready to harvest, as are a lot of beans and strawberries. The unions and garlic may take some weeks to a month, but we already harvest the leafs.
Okay, we also harvested lettuce, spinach and radishes - but tomatoes?? Aren´t you from the Netherlands? Guess your tomatoes are in the greenhouse? Because tomato-season usually starts in July here in Germany, normally end of July.
Yep, I still harvest tomatoes. I had them indoor in winter and put them outside when it got warm here, somewhere in April. I put them in a small greenhouse the first weeks and then outside. We had some very dry, nice months this spring.
Later it became colder and I had to throw away some tomatoes that were affected by the cold, but now new flowers delivered new tomatoes and new plants are growing to replace them later this month.
The tomatoes are the yellow snack tomato.
Also had orange pepper this winter, but they didn't taste nice, so I threw away the pepper. Outside it did grew, but the taste didn't got better.
Here I normally harvest tomatoes starting the end of June. I live near the sea, so it's not that cold in winter and not too hot in summer. Although the cold sea keeps spring temperature low normally. That sometimes is a problem growing some kind of vegetables. This year it was a good spring.
After summer, we normally have a warmer fall, so I can harvest longer.
Whoah, so hibernated your tomatoes in the greenhouse? I have never done that before, but I think some peppers and chilis may hibernate this year indoor here, but must use pestizides!!! Cannot do that without any chemical pestizides because of the lice!
Got tomatoes, too, some are in the greenhouse, some on the field, some on the terrace.... but no flowers yet, spring was quite cold and dry here... not really great for the mediterranean veggies. Let´s see what summer will bring ...
I think my tomatoes were from october or november last year. I do use good working growing lights though. Also had lots of Kale and lettuce, carrots and spinace this winter in that greenhouse.
Did you know the leafs of carrots are very healthy and tasteful?
I didn't have lice in my attic greenhouse this winter. Lots of these small flies though.
You can fight lice with a mix of garlic water and green soap. Or catch some ladybugs and keep them in your greenhouse.
I have a net over the attic greenhouse to keep insects out and ladybugs in, but the flies were in the ground already.
Interesting gardening discussion going on here. I'm sure Primrose is already itching to go back to her own garden once she returns home from her vacation. Like I said before, I will have some bonsai news soon, but first, there is the sports update.
We took a major step today, finishing our 12 miles run - the toughest one in the entire program, only a little over a mile short of the actual half marathon distance. I was happy with my time too, finishing in 1:58:49 minutes.
I will be very happy if I can achieve a time below two hours in the half marathon, which should be doable. The distance may be a little longer, but the track should be much more even than the hilly terrain I am currently running on. Any time below 2:30 hours would be acceptable, though, and really, the most important thing is to just avoid a DNF. As long as I can do this, it's all good.
The main thing is that the most difficult part of the program is behind me now. It's downhill from here, with the toughest remaining run being only eight miles long, which is a distance I ran many times before. I will have to make minor adjustments, however. The schedule is intended for a race that would take place on Sunday in three weeks, while my actual race will be on Friday in four weeks. Maybe I will repeat one of the final weeks, or parts of it.
Let's celebrate with some expired Kilkenny tonight!
The crypto poker adventures continue, though I would like to get back to Stars soon too. There have definitely been some highlight hands in tonight's session.
How's that for a deal? You can repeat Fantasyland by either placing trips on top, or quads or better in the back. This hand allowed us to do both, while also putting a perfect wheel in the middle. You could hardly ask for more, right?
Nevertheless, it didn't pay out as much as the monster it could have been. The reason is that my opponent had a very good hand too, even including better trips on top. This also means that both of us got to repeat FL.
But even outside of Fantasyland, there have been very noteworthy hands. Like this one - mamma mia, was that a spicy draw...
Paid off pretty well this time too.
Originally posted by Zeezout
I think my tomatoes were from october or november last year. I do use good working growing lights though. Also had lots of Kale and lettuce, carrots and spinace this winter in that greenhouse.Did you know the leafs of carrots are very healthy and tasteful?
I didn't have lice in my attic greenhouse this winter. Lots of these small flies though.
You can fight lice with a mix of garlic water and green soap. Or catch some ladybugs and keep them in your greenhouse.
I have a net over the attic greenhouse to keep insects out and ladybugs in, but the flies were in the ground already.
Hey, didn´t know that! I use to give the leafs of the radishes and carrots to the chicken! 
We have some chicken (and roosters) in our community and I always used to give those leafs to them. They love it!
Unfortunately, I don´t have a greenhouse in winter, but our living room is kind of a winter-garden. I´m thinking about hibernating the peppers and chilis, but not sure yet. Got growth-light too. So far, only pestizides helped against those sh** -lice!! Tried everything organic, nothing worked! Only pestizide-sticks helped. 
Radish leafs are also very healthy.
A lot of leafs are being thrown away by many people, because they don't know they are very healthy. Ofc. not every is eatable, always check, but many are.
- carrot
- radish
- sweet potato (even better than the sweet potato itself)
- beetroot
- cabbage
- swede
- onion
- garlic
- winter pea
- cauliflower
- broccoli
and more ...
Hope I got the names right 
Warning: (Never eat normal potato leafs!!! Sweet potato is not a normal potato, more like a carrot!)
I also dry a lot of leafs etc. for macaroni in winter. I use a food dryer for that. Today I dried Kale again.
Troll Draw
Last night's session didn't go so well overall, and featured some heavy trolling at times... like here:
Okay, so our Kings are resting comfortably on aces for a very unspectacular hand, which would nevertheless get us to Fantasyland, which should almost always be our main goal, while also earning decent royalties for that pair, at least. We still need to make our low, just T-lo or better, so any low card that doesn't pair up would do... and we get it, but with the last two remaining Kings to go with it, leaving us with no way make a legal hand, despite hitting our draw. 
Less than a week until the belt exam, and there is still work to do. An exam has a kihon (showing basic techniques on command), kata (doing a certain choreographed sequence of moves) and kumite part (attacking/defending moves with a partner). I used to think that the kumite should be the least problematic part, but last Thursday, the sensei called me and one of my kumite partners to me, telling us that with a performance like that, our exam would be failed.
In my case, the weak point were the Mae Geri blocks. A Mae Geri is a basic forward kick, no need to even show any videos. As for the blocks, this is the only part in the kumite where we have two choices:
1. Gedan Barai
2- Gedan Nagashi Uke
I am much more familiar with the Gedan Barai block, so I decided to go with that, but at least last Thursday, it didn't look right at all. Despite my lack of experience with the other move, I therefore think that it should be worth it to switch. I imagine the Gedan Nagashi Uke as shown above should have less potential for errors.
We will see... two more practice sessions left this week, plus one or two more on the weekend, before the big exam on Sunday. That still leaves me some time to get the new move down while trying to get rid of the last few mistakes anywhere else too.
Long time no see. Well, Primrose just recently returned from her vacation, and for me, things were quite hectic. Aside from the super crazy schedule which now included both work assignments and karate sessions on the weekend too, we also noticed the general lack of interaction here as well as the declining activity on the forum in general, not to mention that poker went mostly poorly, but more on that later.
Prim and I briefly talked it over in private. When it comes to the blog, I could kind of take it or leave it, and while there are many good memories associated with the forum, including meeting Primrose here in the first place, having to drop out wouldn't be a huge deal either. Quitting poker entirely, after more than 13 years of playing through good and bad times, however, really would be a little sad, I believe. Nevertheless, it's something that has been on the table more than once. I can't deny the bad mental impact it can often have on me, and Primrose, who is typically the first person to hear about it, has been very clear that she is getting annoyed by it too.
Despite having a decent enough income from my two jobs, I still long for the days when poker generated a nice little amount of additional money, even if it's just $1K a year, or so. The lack of this kind of cashflow is not just due to poor results, but mostly because I have been saving up any winnings, looking to get into a position where I could possibly branch out to other games at higher buy-ins. Whether or not this approach ever made sense in the first place is highly debatable, so we would have to take a look at the bigger picture.
We will do that soon. But before that, to wrap something up that has previously been teased on the blog as well before I let things go: The karate orange belt exam has indeed been passed last week. Here it is:
It is still a little questionable how long I am going to continue with this sport, as I noticed myself kind of losing enthusiasm for it too. But that's another question entirely. Let's deal with poker first, in our next post.
Okay, real talk. To get the more recent things out of the way first, while the crypto experiment was fun, it will be nothing to focus my energy on. 2-7 OFC showed some promise, which was brutally thwarted recently after a few bad sessions, some of them on higher stakes. It can't be helped, that's just how this game works. Payouts depend on absolute hand strength, so if your opponent manages to hit five trips on top in a row (and yes, that happened to me on higher stakes), there is nothing you can do about it - several weeks' worth of profits may be gone in a flash.
More importantly, the legal situation surrounding these kinds of games in Germany appears to be questionable at best, with this being an unlicensed operator. So even if things did go well, there is a decent chance that the money would be moot, making it pointless to invest much time and energy into it. Bottom line: Crypto poker will continue, but only as a gap-filler on off-days, with freerolls and maybe the occasional satellite. I never invested any of my own money there anyway, so I think this is appropriate.
Pokerstars is where it's at, I should get back into it. You may have seen my most recent stats update after the end of March, which already showed things declining rapidly, and nothing has improved since then. These would be the most up-to-date stats on MTTs on Pokerstars, since keeping track of them in 2020:
It may not look like much of a crisis, since we are still in the black, but I wouldn't count on it staying that way this year for long. Even historically, while 2022 was a good year, 2023 was pretty bad, and success in 2024 and 2021 has been sporadic at best, with many prolonged bad stretches. The amount of games has been declining continuously, which is no surprise when your motivation is declining too.
I remember bad stretches in 2020 as well, but motivation has probably been on an all-time high back then. What is not depicted is that from about mid-2016 to early 2020, I have been playing almost exclusively PL Badugi MTTs, and I started withdrawing anything in excess of a certain bankroll level in early 2018. I think I stopped doing that some time in mid-2021, trying to pave the way for higher games instead. Ever since then, it was all bankroll building.
Does this approach make sense? Well, extra games in addition to Badugi have been added as early as mid-2020, dating back to around the creation of my older blog. It went well for a while, but I remember it coming with some complications. I tried to branch out on a bigger scale in 2021, and yes, maybe a case could be made that it did more harm than good.
Should I get back to Badugi only? It seems like the safest option, and it is now more feasible than ever. Just last Friday evening, I opened the Stars lobby and was surprised to find this tournament already running:
A $22 PL Badugi PKO?? 
This is exactly what I was longing for all these years. I couldn't help it and had to jump in straight away, despite not having played for a while. It wasn't even a complete disaster, with me securing a mincash and a bounty for at least a break-even finish.
Grinding this game regularly, at least on Fridays when I have time, would be a little risky, to the point where most of my success in MTTs would depend on that one game alone, but I think it would be worth it. As it turns out, however, this risk is unnecessary, as there are satellites available too. So yes, let's boogie in those satties - the regular $4.40 Badugis can stay as well.
So going for Badugi only seems to be the safest bet, but is this really what I should do? Maybe there is still room for a bit more, but there are a couple of DON'Ts to consider (we already established that crypto poker is out as a serious grinding option):
- Stud (Hi): I gave it another try yesterday after going through my notes from the Super System. This game is just frustrating in its simplicity and dependence on good runouts, probably only being topped by Razz in that regard. While I do suspect that there could be some profit to be made, it would have to be on lower stakes, and the $4.40 tournaments are the only available option on Stars - nothing below, nothing above and not even anything in other time slots. In my situation, these games are a really poor fit.
- Five Card Draw: I said it before, and I am going to disagree once again with what appears to be the general consensus on this site: 5CD is a high variance game, not a low variance game. That doesn't mean that you can't make a profit - I'm not one of those people who use "variance" as a kind of curse word for "likeliness to lose". PL Omaha, for example, is a high variance game too, and many people make good money in it. Again, though, it means that it's a poor fit in my situation, at least on the stakes that are available to me.
- Lowball: Triple Draw, Single Draw, Razz... it's generally not for the faint of heart. My overall stats in 2-7 TD still seem good, but those are just not the games to focus on right now. Lowball is a different beast in general compared to other forms of poker, and it seems like you need to turn into a beast in your own right to master the level of deception and variance-management required to succeed in these games. Sorry, not now, and probably not any time soon.
So what are possible options to explore? I'm mostly thinking of Stud Hi-Lo and PL Courchevel Hi-Lo. I enjoyed short-term success in both, so I suspect that I may be able to turn those games into winners if I expand on my theoretical knowledge. I will compile some notes and see if they could have a place in the grind.
What about 8-Game, maybe even HORSE? It seems worth a try, even though it contains many of the "less desirable" games mentioned above. Satellites may be my best bet there, allowing me to test the waters without committing too much.
Our opponent got the fullest of full houses, which was still no match for ours.
Got an unexpected day off from lifeguard duty due to bad weather, so I made it count at the tables. The result was a 2nd place finish in Stud8, which included the hand above. Payout was $44.47 for our $5.50 buy-in. After the poor results in this game earlier this year, it definitely came in handy.
I also managed to satty into the Mini Octopus (8-Game) for only 55 cents, which means that any bounty would have been an automatic profit. Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be in that one. I even managed to build a good stack, but the cards just didn't come when it mattered, and all the available bounties went to other people.
Looks like my brief (but still incomplete) reading of Todd Brunson's Stud8 chapter from Super System 2 paid off. I personally find it a lot more useful than Sklansky's chapter from the first volume, mostly for the simple reason that Sklansky writes about Stud Hi-Lo with no qualifier instead, which is not the ruleset used on Stars, and therefore somewhat irrelevant. Also, much like many other older poker strategy articles, including some still found on this site, it seems to assume that other people are more willing to throw money at you with inferior hands than they really are nowadays, thus resulting in a strategy that may be overly nitty. This just appears to be a case of time marching on - I assume that people really did play like that back when those articles were written.
