[Closed] There's no I in threesome

ahahaaha I need to go to Barcelona some day ♦
awesome story

Awesome Blog!!!

The first couple of weeks of my trip are now over, I'm on a plane to Singapore and my girlfriend is on her way back home. We spent 10 lovely days in Krabi, and the next four in Bangkok. Most of our trip consisted of pretty standard tourist stuff, but that's what holidays are for. I've had my share of extreme holidays - for example, I've traveled around the small islands in the south-eastern part of the Pacific Ocean such as Tonga and Vanuatu, living with local tribes and being close to a very active volcano - so close that we had to dodge flying balls of ash and lava. Anyway, back to the subject.

The price/quality ratio of the hotels in Thailand is generally very good. Traveling in Europe sucks, because you have to pay 150€ per night for a decent hotel and they're still usually a bit shitty and nobody cares about customer service. In Thailand and the neighbouring countries you can get a five star hotel for 50€/night and service is always top notch as well. Or if you're on a tighter budget, you can get a three star hotel that's comparable to a four star hotel in, say, Spain, for 20€. Our hotel of choice was the most expensive in the entire Krabi if you discount private resorts. We paid 50 euros per night for a superior room in the Maritime Sea&Park Resort. I've been to a lot of hotels during my poker career, from a 15€/night motel in France to a 300€/night suite in Prague. Of all these hotel experiences I'd say our Krabi hotel was easily in the top 5%. It also helped that for some reason the hotel was almost entirely empty. We were there a bit off-season (and I really mean a bit - we arrived four days after the end of the main tourist season, and it was still +35c and sunlight every day), and there were like 20 other people in the hotel. We had the pool to ourselves on most days and whenever we needed anything we had multiple people serving us immediately.

Many of our days consisted of just lying on the beach and working on getting a tan, eating the always awesome Thai food and walking around. But we did explore a bit too. We rented a motorbike on our first day in Krabi, which turned out to be a good decision because none of the interesting attractions were within a walking distance.

Elephant trekking: I'm generally very animal rights oriented, and almost nothing tilts me as hard as poor treatment of animals. I've previously refused to do elephant trekking elsewhere in Thailand because I thought they seemed to treat the elephants badly. In Krabi the situation was very different. The elephants there had been forced out of the rain forests that are sadly now long gone to make room for luxurious resorts. When the forests were chopped down, many of the elephants were deceased because they simply didn't have a place to go. Some people in the area decided to save the rest of the elephants and offered them food and shelter in their farms. But it turned out feeding elephants was extremely expensive, and they couldn't afford the costs. As a result they started businesses where tourists could come to meet the elephants and ride them around the jungle, and this way the elephants could sort of earn their living. I know it's still a bit sketchy, but at least the farm people seemed to genuinely care for the animals and from what I could tell they seemed to be treated well. We chose to hire an elephant for an afternoon to go explore the jungle. So here we are:

The fella in this pic was a 3-year old baby elephant who did all kinds of cute tricks:

Going to see the elephants also involved the only accident we got ourselves into in Thailand. The farm was a bit off the map, about 15 kilometres from the city to a direction where there was hardly any kind of inhabitation. The map we bought was really bad, there were roads where there weren't supposed to be roads, and when there was supposed to be a turn there often wasn't a road at all. We took about 20 wrong turns and spent two hours on this trip that was supposed to be a 15 minute drive. We finally gave up hope when we reached a dead end on someone's backyard in the place where the elephant farm was supposed to be. We almost ran over a chicken when entering the yard. "Let's turn over", I said to my girlfriend. "I can't see any elephants around here, let's just go back to the hotel and hire a cab tomorrow". She agreed. As I tried to perform a 180 degree turn, the ground suddenly gave up half-way resulting in our bike skidding and us falling over in mud. Or at least we thought it was mud. It wasn't. Instead, it turned out to be elephant shit. We had, after all, come to the right place. Too bad we were now covered in shit and got a few wounds in our feet and elbows so we had to retreat to our hotel anyway.

Temple visiting: Out of all the temples around the region we chose to visit the one with the most difficult access. The Wat Saa Kaew (Tiger Cave Temple) is situated 20 kilometres outside Krabi on the top of a mountain. There are no roads or even paths up, the only way to visit the temple is to take the stairs. All 1327 of them. If the temple were on the top of a scyscraper, that'd be about 70 storeys of climbing stairs. That in itself would be a piece of cake, the really tough part was that this wasn't a building, but instead a set of ancient stairs that were REALLY steep. Some of the stairs were so tall that you had to pull yourself up using your hands. They weren't symmetrical at all, so you never really got in the rhythm. And it was hot, +35c and extremely humid. We were soaking wet from sweating when we finally got to the top, but the view was well worth it. We were also lucky to encounter a lot of wild monkeys on our way up!

Phi Phi: The highlight of this part of our trip was visiting the Phi Phi islands. If you've seen the only bad Danny Boyle movie out there, The Beach, (have you guys seen 127 Hours by the way? I thought it was awesome. I was really skeptical it could possibly be any good, because watching a full-length movie happening in one place and staring at James Franco's face for the entire time didn't seem like a good idea, but man he pulled that part off SO well and Boyle's directing was great as ever), the breath-taking views in the movie were all shot in Phi Phi. Most of the main island was destroyed in the 2004 tsunami and about 1000 people lost their lives. On the bright side, the tsunami also stopped the tourism in the area for a while, allowing the prestigious coral reefs to recover, and they're now in much better shape than before the tsunami. Again, it made me feel kind of bad to go and snorkel around the reefs that I know are very vulnerable. But you can't go to Krabi and not visit Phi Phi. It's kind of like going to Paris and not vising the Eiffel tower, or going to Spearmint Rhino and not taking a lapdance. So yeah, we went snorkeling. We would've dove too, but we simply didn't have time to take the whole course (I've dove before in Australia but my girlfriend hasn't).

We hired our own boat with a driver for a day and we cruised around the islands until finally settling on a beautiful lagoon. The underwater views were just AMAZING. We saw all kinds of rainbow-coloured fish (such as the parrot fish), sea hedgehogs, sea lions, and tons of random neon-coloured fish whose names I don't know. I really caught the snorkeling/scuba diving bug based on this experience and I'm going to make sure that my next trip includes a lot of underwater activities. Sadly I don't have any underwater pics, but here are a couple of ones taken from the boat. The beach photos are from the only actual beach in the Phi Phi islands, accessible only by a boat from the mainland.

PS. Are the pics too big? I'm on a tiny Vaio so I can't tell, everything looks too big on this one.

Great post! Looking forward to more

And no the pics are just the right size mate. ♦

OH NO MONEYS ! RUN!

I've been following this blog regularly and it never fails to deliver ty for writing.

I've also just returned from Thailand and i'm kinda sad i didn't go to Krabi (the temple especially seems awesome) , did you go to Maya Beach night camping on phi phi Leh? That , for me, was the best of Thailand - altho they've allready started building cement buildings on the island and as far as i could tell there's allready people living on the island in their makeshift houses while they're building.

Hello from Australia!

I've been so busy during the past week and a half that I haven't had time to blog. Well, that's actually a lie, since I could have easily blogged had I wanted to. But I've chosen to fill my calendar with surfing, snorkeling, swimming, sunbathing and live poker. I know I was supposed to continue on my traveling ramblings, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to continue on that subject later. I'm not sure if a lot of interesting things outside poker have happened, except that I had one MASSIVE drunken night in Singapore. Highlights: accidentally almost scoring a job in a large company as a some kind of corporate lawyer trainee, and having heartfelt discussions with a random lesbian about, err, licking the carpet.

Anyway, since this is a poker blog after all, here is a painfully detailed story of all the live poker tournaments I played here. I'm running out of time as I have to hit the airport soon, so I'm just rapidly writing this and won't have time to check spelling errors etc.

Side event 1 - $330 Hold'em

What a massive donkfest that was. People were 15xbb opening, limpcalling 7bb isos with 82o, never folding a pair post, etc. Probably softer than the EPT Deauville sides were and that's much said. The only negative part was the structure which was way too fast.

Anyway, I grinded the 5k starting stack up to 30k without any major showdowns and was feeling pretty dominant. Then at 600/1200 the average was 18k or something and people were playing pretty scared with 3 tables left. I shoved 10BB effective bvb vs a nit with 96 and he woke up with AK, didn't hit. A few hands later I lost KK<AA pfai in a close-to-chiplead pot to bust in 22/102 out of the money.

Side event 2 - $220 NL/PLO rotation 1R2A

The players were even worse than in the last event. Like omfgafdffdsds they were SO bad. Two example hands, in which I wasn't involved:

1) First hand of the tournament. 25/50, 8k to start. UTG limps utg holding KJo, someone raises to 250 utg+2, overcall, overcall, BB cold 3bets to 1k. UTG insta flats, isoer flats too, the rest fold.

Flop 972 with flush draw. BB bets 2k, UTG insta flats his K high, the isolater folds.

Turn no flush, BB shoves for the remaining 5k, UTG thinks for maybe 3 secs and snaps it off. Doesn't beat BB's QQ.

2) 5 hands into the tournament, MP raises to 150, HJ raises to 300, SB cold 4balls to 900, MP and HJ both call leaving like 1,5x psb behind. Board runs AKT62 and it's checked around 3 times. I expect them to show JJ, QQ, KQ type of stuff. Well, not quite. The cold 4bettor has 76o and the others muck shaking their heads.

In PLO people didn't know the rules, they were punting 200bb stacks with no pair no draw. Too bad I didn't manage to win a single hand all day. I played semi tight because people were such massive stations, I missed every single flop in both games and didn't just stand a chance. My 8k starting stack (4k+4k rebuy) had drained to 6,5k when they announced it was the last hand of the rebuy period. 75/150 NL I raised my first actual hand, JJ to 400 UTG and got called by an awful mega spewtard asian who was one of the guys in hand 2 above. Flop 874 all spades, I had Js too. I bet 3bet it in and he has Q9ss. He was definitely bad enough to raise/call it here with like red deuces / any spade / gutshot / whatever and had been running mega spazzy bluffs too so not much I can do there. That was the first time I ever I didn't even make it to the add-on break.

Side event 3 - $550 6max

16/96 in this one, top 10 paid. It was again a massive donk fest, for example there was a lady in my table who was as close to being blind without actually being blind as it is possible, she didn't see her cards at all sometimes and also seemed to have some sort of dementia. I got some sick donations, for example a drooler limped btn with AJ and then bet 3bet got it in on 972 vs my 97 from BB.

The structure was ridiculously bad again, 6k starting stack, 30 minute levels missing every other level. I grinded it up to 37k when the average was 18k at 500/1000 and it was looking pretty good with 18 left. Then I lost a mandatory flip when a tilted shorty pushed for his last chips and I called with A8, he had 66 and won. I had 30k left, folded a few hands, and the blinds went up. I had about 22BB when a laggy CO raised and I shoved 77 from SB in a standard manner. BB woke up with JJ and I didn't hit.

Side event 4 - $220 rebuy PLO

The quality of the field was - once again - so bad that it's an insult against the human race to have to play against these people. I didn't have to rebuy (after my initial rebuy for a 2x stack) but it had a double add-on so I used $820 total.

I was the only person to raise in the table in the ENTIRE TIME during the 4 hours I managed to stay there. EVERY POT went limplimplimpilimpilimp. I think the table's stats were like 90/10 (the 10 coming from me) for the time period. The average age was about 60, myself included.

I grinded the 6k starting stack to a lucrative 30k without ever being anywhere close to being at risk to losing my chips. SUCH an easy table, I've never felt that dominant anywhere. I think I played a very good strategy for this kind of thing, I played like 30/10 limping along with any potential hands from EP and isolating in LP with good/decent hands. I know 30/10 sounds fishy from an NL player standpoint but I think that's very close to optimal in PLO full ring with godawful fish with no post flop skills. If I raise they all call anyway, so why make the pot 4 times bigger by raising pre when I can just see a lot of flops with always having huge implieds if I hit something?

So, I'm close to being cl with 30 left. There's an old guy in my table who's seemingly annoyed at me. On the break I heard him complain to another guy that they can't let me run over them (and lol I've raised like 10% of hands). He's complained to me multiple times that it's against the etiquette to raise pre-flop in this game. Every time I've raised, he's gone bat* crazy, calling me a thief. And everytime I've raised on his blind he's called.

Of course I lose my stack to this drooler in two hands. First I isolate over 5 limpers on the button with AAQxds. The others fold but this guy calls from HJ. Flop Jxx with a double backdoor, he calls my cbet. Turn brick but opens me a backdoor (it's like J762) I barrel putting him all but 2k chips from all-in. He insta-calls, river J and he shoves his remaining 2k into 25k or something. Kinda sucks and I almost folded, but I thought he was tilted enough to maybe sometimes have some crazy missed flush draw he just wants to go home with etc, so I called. He had a quite dominated AQJx rainbow, nice catch dude.

Well, no worries, I still had way over average. An orbit later I pot it to 2800 on his BB from EP, folded to him and he snap calls saying "I can't let you keep doing that". I have QQT9ds.

Flop ATx with my flush draw, against a lot of people I'd check this back but he was SO bad and not capable of bluff raising so I value cbet (he's calling with naked worse flush draws etc). He calls. Turn T, he checks, I bet an inducey 1/3 pot, he says TAKE THIS YOU THIEF or something along the lines and pots it, I repot all-in into a chiplead pot with 26 left or so and he goes into the tank. Then he says "I can't let you keep doing that, I call" and proudly turns over JT94r. He has jacks and fours to get the cl... J on the river, gg. He covered me by a couple of chips.

At this point it had all got so frustrating I wanted to jump out of a window, as you can read from this rant I wrote on 2+2:

"Many times I've been happy after busting a live tournament, because I've been owned by someone better than me and I've learnt new things. When ElkY knocked me out from EPT Vilamoura after I made a horribad 4 bet bluff I shrugged and thought ok, he deserves that, wp (he went for a thin 3bet call and read my soul). But ever since January, ever since bricking 11 tournaments in EPT Deauville against French ridiculous donkeys losing to gutshots and being badbeated 11/11 times out of tournaments, I've been incapable of winning anything. 16 tournaments in a row after this one. And this is just like France. Despite me being really nice to everyone it seems as if the whole casino hates me, all the old people are teaming up against me trying to knock me out because I'm the only person under 60 and I'm ruining their precious limping game by being a naughty raiser. And of course these idiots outdraw me left and right in every single tournament."

Side event 5 - $440 Hold'em

I did manage to final table the last event, got 6th for $1550. I had a ridiculous 70k stack with 20 left when the average was just 20k, but it was all downhill from there. Tried to fire three barrels on an 863KA board against an old nit who had A5. He said he was tired of me raising every pot and "decided to hit an ace on the river". He didn't have a clue about showdown value and stuff so he wasn't calling with his ace high, he was calling because he "knew" the ace was coming. That pretty much illustrates the level of play again that day, people were SO bad it's hilarious.

After that hand I lost 20k TT<A9 and then 25k more AK<QQ and was all of a sudden short-stacked. The blinds went up pretty quick and I managed to keep my stack aflotat with resteals (people 3x folded 10BB deep ) but never got it above the 20BB zone to open up my game more. It's kind of hard to get your stack up without showdowns when the blinds go up every 10 hands. It was just a loooong grind until the bubble burst and shortly after I busted A9<QQ when I had just 13BB left and shoved from the CO. Well, at least I got the Aussie flag on my Hendon Mob page. This was my first cash outside Europe after about 30 attempts so about time eh?

$2500 Main Event

My starting table was really soft, mostly old guys I had played with before during the week in side events, all weaktight stationey type. I had a lag image in the eyes of half the table before it even started. I got a sick preflop card rush in the first two levels, but lost every hand post flop and it got kinda expensive. The worst was when a guy who raises like top 2% hands raises to 300 in the cutoff and I get to 3bet AA on the button. He hates me because I always raise his limps, so I make it big because he will call anyway - almost 4x to 1150. He calls. (Starting stacks 20k, we were like 18k deep)

Flop K94r, he checks and I bet 1450. He raises to 3600. I've played with this guy a ton, and I know he likes to make info raises and hates committing chips without the nuts. I elect to call, his range is like [AK 90% set 10% bluff 0%] and I think he will fold AK always if I raise. I know it doesn't correlate with my image but trust me on this one. If I call, he will probably fire the turn again with AK, and if not he might be dumb enough to check-call half pottish bets on the turn and river. So I call. Turn is of course the 2-outer K and he insta crams. I lolfold. After this and other similar dumb hands I've got 15k left from 20k despite getting 3xAA 3xAK 3xJJ during the first 30 hands or something. Just nothing I could've done there, lost the absolute minimum with all of them. I folded JJ on 9xx flop once when my opponent literally jumped from her seat when she saw the flop and donk potted. She proudly tabled top set.

I get moved to a new table which is the best (softest) table I've ever been in a 1k+ buyin tournament, including all the wsops I've played. It was perfect. No one was raising pots except me, they were all weaktight nits who loved to call preflop and always folded post. I played in this table for the next 4 levels and during that time I won probably about 40% of all pots. It was such an easy grind. I would've got a really big stack had the following hands not happened:

1) The only other guy who liked raising even a bit and seemed positionally aware raises to 500 at 100/200/25 from the CO and I make it 1350 otb with AJ. He calls of course. Flop KJTx (I have the backdoor), he checks. I think this is a trivial checkback against many people, but he was a station post and I had a megalag image so I cbet half the pot. He calls in rhythm. Turn is a brick bringing me the bdfd, he checks I check. River J, bingo! He bets for like 1/3 pot, I reallllllllly wanna raise because I think he'll call with QJ so often and sometimes with a K too if I make it smallish, but something about his physical appearance seems really strong. I just call and he has 76s for the flush.

2) The only bluff that didn't work out: I iso an UTG+1 limper from LP with KJdd and he's the only caller. I fire 3 streets on 2s 4d Ts 8s As, such a great barreling board. The river bet puts him all-in into a 25k-ish pot but he doesn't fold his QsTx.

3) I raise T9s in LP and get called by both the blinds. This is 200/400 already, think I made it 925 or so, the pot was 3k on the flop. T92 rainbow flop, I'm like YEAAHHHH finally I hit something, now value please. They check and I bet 1850 and they both call. Turn J, they check again, I bet 4500 and BB still calls. River bricks and he bets 4200?? He was such an old nit, I don't know if I should even have folded this, but I had to call 4200 into 20k+ so I called and he had an oddly played KQ.

I also managed to 4bet bluff shove a female live pro with T6s. At 100/200/25 I make it 500 UTG, there are 4 callers and she makes it 2400 from SB. This is like the 6th consecutive hand I play, and the table has just been talking about how I've gone berserk because of the antes recently arriving, so I feel se might want to "punish" me. And also live pros 3bet fold absurd stuff. And there's a ton of dead money. So I 4bet shove for 13k and she tank folds QQ face up ♦

After these I had about 17k and I got moved into a new, much tougher table with young people. In the first hand I play I'm blind vs blind against a young guy with a massive fps. I've played with him in the side events, he views me as very lag, and I view him as a spazzy lag moron. If you know how David Steicke plays, this guy is exactly the same, and it's funny cos I saw him talking to the real David Steicke today and they look kind of same so maybe he was his brother or something.

Anyway, 200/400/25, 21k effective. I raise to 1200 from SB with K5s and he calls in the BB. He'll 3bet KQ+88+AT+ for value I think against me. Flop 998, I cbet 1625 and he raises to 4350. I almost start laughing because I know what a massive drooler he is and that he's full of * here ALWAYS. He's flatting all A highs and K highs and boats and trips and two pair 100% of the time against me, there's just no way he ever has me beat. And since he'd also flat QJ QT JT type hands, pretty much his entire raising range is two random undercards. I think about 3betting, but I don't think it reps very much and he might David Steicke 4bet shove it as a bluff (and I still don't want to call it off with K high), so I just call. If he bets the turn I'll shove and if he checks he's probably caught a showdown value card and I'll have to fire the river. Turn 4 I check and he checks. I'm like 100% sure he has a 4 in his hand. River A and I bet 5500 and he tank calls with 54o. NICE CATCH.

I manage to grind it up a bit, until finally at 300/600 I've got 17k left and a pretty laggy image, I've been 3betting a fair bit during my short presence at the table. A young, 25yo-ish guy makes it 1600 from UTG+2 in a 7-handed table, a mega spazzy old loose guy flats. I have a bit of a bad feeling because the opener has been pretty quiet, but I only have a 30-minute sample, there's 1600 of dead money from the flatter, and I have my image, and his raise is from the hijack, and I'm in the SB with pocket tens and 28BB, so I don't think I can not get it in. I make it 5400 just to induce bluffs or flats from the drooler (think it's marginally better than shoving), he insta shoves and I'm like "I know how this is going to end..." but obv can't fold. He has AA and it's gg for me.

All in all with flights, rescheduled flights, re-rescheduled flights (I was supposed to fly to Melbourne yesterday but I was so tired I couldn't be arsed to, so I bought a new Perth-Singapore flight for tonight), hotels (man they're expensive in Perth, I've been staying in pretty normal four-star ones and they cost almost $200 a night), motorbike/snorkel/bike etc rents, meals, tournament buy-ins, etcetcetc this trip cost me about $10k. When I realised how expensive this has been a few days ago I decide to have a lockdown grind in my apartment for a few nights. It worked pretty well and I managed to win $7k online, so after all it wasn't very expensive at all. I'm heading to the airport now to fly to Singapore, I'll spend about 36 hours there and then head back to Finland.

I'm not sure if I'm going to play more live before the WSOP. EPT Berlin is a bit too soon, I'd go but I'd have to fly out of Finland like immediately after arriving there, so I can't be arsed to. EPT San Remo is going to be a massive donkfest but sadly it's at the same time with the Finnish drinking festival, vappen, so I'm not going there either (yeah I know, I've got my priorities straight!). I might go and play the Irish Open, or some other smaller tournament, but we'll see. The only thing I know for sure I'm going to have a big WSOP and I'm flying there in the beginning of June.

I'm still looking for WSOP backing/sponsorship. I know it's a bit of a long shot, but if someone who runs a backing fun/poker site etc happens to read this, you can post itt to open negotiations. I'm going to play a full schedule anyway even if I fail to find anything, but I'd prefer to be backed just because I'm in such a happy place financially and don't really want to go down from here by having a disastrous expensive WSOP again. I believe I can pull of a 100% ROI in the smaller events and the main and probably around 50% for the 2,5k-5k ones, so this would actually be a solid investment for someone with deep pockets.

That's all for today kids, until next time!

wtf, how did i miss this before, must be the bad blog title

and how could you miss me in singapore?

good luck and update soon ♠_cool:

no more updates?

Originally posted by MiikkaAnttonen
Here's part one.

1) (Allegedly) hijacking a cab, being beat up by policemen and getting robbed @ Unibet Open Portugal

Best seller. :f_eek:Thank you that was so funny to read.

I'll get back to updating at some point. Right now I'm pretty shaken by the black friday, I've got half my net worth stuck in there and it's kind of hard to be optimistic until you actually see the money. ONE TIME cashout go through?

MTTs on fulltilt and ps just got harder, first you need to have an insane amount of run-good to crush a big field, then you need to pray that they don't use your 1st prize to pay their fines

I'm sure it'll go through, just needs some time, otherwise durrrr will pay you

Good luck with the cashouts, I'm pretty sure it's gonna be fine for us Euros eventually. Just my _personal opinion_ though.

You don't blog that often but these are always well worth the wait. Keep it up!

Yeh, I'm not that worried about my own cashouts. I had ~5k under my own accounts there which is totally fine if I lose it and I think I will get it. Here's what's really fucked though.

1) I scored a WSOP backing deal for the summer. I'm not going to go into detail about it, but it was a done deal with two well-known high stakes players and it would've included me playing the entire WSOP without investing a cent myself, but getting a nice cut of the profits with no make-up. It was exactly the deal I wanted and worth tens of thousands of dollars. Sadly my backers were american, and they both have about 90% of their net worth stuck, and unless there are some pretty damn drastic improvements on the situation happening in the near future, they won't even be able to play the WSOP themselves.

2) I've also been struggling with converting money to usd for the WSOP since it costs so damn much to convert it and take it to Vegas. You can't carry more than $10k which sucks. And when you convert like 25k it costs you easily 1-2k with the fee they take on Moneygram and such companies that transfer it to Vegas for you. Well, no worries, I came up with a brilliant idea. I transfered the money for myself for the entire summer in Vegas (hotels, food, drinking, cash games, gambling, etc), which was A LOT, to a good friend on Stars three days before the crisis. Guess if he's from the US? Yes. Guess if he had withdrawn it yet? Sighhhhhhhhhhhh

Originally posted by MiikkaAnttonen
Well, no worries, I came up with a brilliant idea. I transfered the money for myself for the entire summer in Vegas (hotels, food, drinking, cash games, gambling, etc), which was A LOT, to a good friend on Stars three days before the crisis. Guess if he's from the US? Yes. Guess if he had withdrawn it yet? Sighhhhhhhhhhhh

U say u got scammed by your good friend or am I wrong?

He's saying that his friend couldn't withdraw te money after black friday, so his money was stuck in the friend's account

Yeah arisko's right, it's not his fault. Luckily the money is on Stars and not FTP and it looks like he'll be able to withdraw it, so no personal losses apart from the WSOP sponsorship gone sour. My sponsors would have been FTP pros and it looks really bad to everyone who's playing there, so no Vegas for me this summer I think. But actually, it's quite fine. Last summer I missed the entire Finnish summer because of the ***ing WSOP. In Finland our Summer lasts about 2,5 months, from early June until mid-August. It's short but awesome and I really hate missing it every year because of the series. Last year I played live poker non-stop from June 6th until July 21st and the summer was basically over by the time I got back. This year I'm just going to chill in the sun, maybe do a few short trips to europe to play in some random live tournaments if I feel like it, and skip the damn WSOP. I mean yeah freerolling for the whole series would've been fun, but I have a long career in front of me, so what's the rush?

I'm going to Venice and Nova Gorica in a couple of weeks to play the Eureka Poker tour Main and the high roller. After that I'll go almost straight to Cork for the UKIPT, and from there I'm flying straight to Alicante, Spain to play the 1k Estrellas Poker Tour. With side events that's about 12 tournaments in 17 days so not bad at all, plus these places are going to be heaps warmer than Finland is right now, so it'll be nice to get a head start for the summer.

I reallllly need another flag in my hendon mob page, I was supposed to make it to the Finnish all-time top 50 with my aussie cash last month, but the courses changed a bit at the wrong time and I'm $13 behind the guy who's in 50th. As a result I'm going to play every silly 100€ tournament I can find just to cash in something ♦

Hey Miikka,

how is the challenge going? Just wanted to say that your blog is really awesome and the best on ps.com! The Content, epic stories, travel stuff just great. So keep it updated

Hi blog.

I'd state where I am but to be honest, I'm not even sure in what country I'm in. I'm positive it's either Slovenia or Italy, because I'm exactly at the border. I'm here to play some poker. I played the Eureka Poker Tour 800€ Main three days ago and busted on 4th level AQs<AA pfai. I 4bet shoved 50BBs in a spot where I opened CO, a loose fish flatted his button and a young guy 3bet so that I shoved 10k to win 2,5k. Although 50BB is a bit much I think it's still fine and don't feel bad about it at all.

I played the PLO side event yesterday which I final tabled and ended up getting 5th. That was my 3rd Hendon Mob-worthy final table this year so that was cool, especially as PLO isn't my main game.

I played the 6max highroller today. I final tabled it too, and when the final table started I was 1/6 with 150BBs and going strong. 30 minutes later, I was busto.

I've recently ran really bad in everything I've played, I've ran 40k under ev since January and it's starting to hurt. I've played huge volume and I've had several deep runs everywhere, including a couple of sunday major final tables, but I've always lost the one crucial coinflip. And I've dropped a ton bricking major live tournaments. I've took massive beats in key spots and I can honestly, honestly say that for the most part I've played really well and definitely been 50%+ ROI in everything I've played, so it's just been a bad run.

Except for today. I played so retardedly bad for some stupid reason that I'm embarrassed. I have no idea why. I slept for 10 hours, I watched some 6max training videos just before going to bed, I ate well and felt pumped in a good way before the start of the tournament. But I just... fucking punted a huge stack with 0 outs in two huge pots where I have no idea what I was thinking.

I'm just going to copy-paste my bustout hand here from 2+2 since I'm too lazy to write it over (I was left with like 15BB after this which I lost QJ-A5 bvb). It's in the form of a question since I posted it at the hsmtt forums:

Villain is a 20-25 year old italian guy who strikes me as a cash game player. He seems to have some idea, he's been 3/4betting a ton and is the most active player in the table. He's a bit too splashy for my liking and definitely does some stupid italian-esque stuff but isn't bad by any means. He was in my starting table and now in the final table, and in his eyes I probably have a pretty weaktightish image. My starting table broke pretty soon and I lost every pot for the entire duration of my time there. I played a lot of pots against him always folding on the turn or river when the boards ran in a stupid way and the only times I tried bluffcatching him he had it. In this ft he's 3bet me twice and I've folded both times, I've lost like all hands post-flop. It's pretty funny cos I played and ran really well in the tables where he wasn't present but in his eyes I'm probably really weaktight at least for 6max.

I've seen him 3bet in this exact same spot with 66 before which I think is kind of important. Top 3 only get paid. Stacks: 80k, 60k, I have 40k, he has 32k, the two other guys have 30k.

200/400/25 so it's lol deep.

Loose young guy opens to 900 from HJ and I flat J♣9♣ on the button. SB folds and Villain flats in the BB.

Flop comes 9♥7♦2♦ (3000)
Checked to me and I bet 1800. Villain counts his chips for a while and raises to 4350. HJ folds and I call.

Turn K♠ (11700)
He looks at his stack and bets 5500. I call

River J♥ (22700)
He shoves for 19750.

The reasons I really want to call are the following:
-His sizings don't look like a set at all, but rather it's as if he's trying to set up a big river bomb sizing
-Based on history he'd 3bet 77 and 99
-If he had 222 why would he bet the river since what can I have that can call a shove, and shouldn't I valuebet two pair if he checks anyway?

The reasons I don't want to call are the following:
-I feel I have a slight skill edge and the player to my right is a huge spazz (everyone else seems okay)
-I don't think he's turning Jx into a bluff and he'd probably rather check-call with Kx

I tanked for 5 minutes before doing what I will reveal later. Thoughts on everything please?

(I called and he had K9dd).

I'm going to Cork next week to play the UKIPT, then to Alicante to play the Estrellas 1k, and then to Helsinki to play the Midnight Sun series. Let's hope I can stop spewing like a retard and actually get better at poker because with the way I played today I shouldn't be allowed to play buy-ins above $5.

Yo.

After the last post I headed to Ireland to play the UKIPT Cork. I busted in the last level of the day 99<AA. After admittedly screwing up the highroller in Nova Gorica I can say from the bottom of my heart that I played really damn well in Cork. I made one significant mistake during 13 (!) hours of play when I got into a bit of an ego fight and 5bet bluff/folded against a 60 year old guy. I ran into a dozen silly spots, I folded a flush once and would've been up against a bigger flush, folded AK in a 3bet pot on a king high flop to a 5x pot donkbet shove and he showed two pair, etc. I couldn't really get my stack going at any stage as I just ran plain bad. I'm really proud of my fight though, at my lowest point I had 7k but I told myself to fight until the end and really really concentrated all the way through, and didn't just tilt shove despite facing pretty brutal stuff on multiple occasions. I think I also outlasted a lot of people who were clearly not used to 13 hour sessions. I was dominating my table pretty big time in the last two hours despite not really having a stack, because people were just too tired and making too many mistakes. In the last hand there was no way I could ever fold 9s there so I'm happy with that too, and I can say without any doubt that my ROI in this event was 3-figs because people were ridiculously bad and I actually played pretty good.

I also played a three side events in Cork - I almost cashed the 6max event. I lost a flip AK<QQ for what would've been like 4x average on the bubble just a couple of spots before it. The field was so soft and the villain in this hand was the only good player - and he was directly to my left - that I thought it would be a good spot to take a huge gamble although it was ICM suicidal. Had I won the flip I would've won the whole thing like 50% of time because I could've just run over everyone, but him being to my left and 3betting every other hand made things difficult. The other two sides I busted on second level.

I also saw the Queen in Cork, it was apparently her first visit to Ireland since she became Queen. People were pretty excited, and it was pretty funny watching her walk around some farmer's market. I was like two meters from her at one stage and got a couple of good pictures.

When we left Cork for Alicante there was a weird incident on our way to the airport. We were in a taxi, and I noticed someone passing us driving like 100mph. He was followed by a police car, at which point I thought it's just a random idiot driving too fast. But soon after came another police car. And another, and another. In five minutes we got passed by at least 15 police cars which in a town the size of Cork is a lot. It turned out that some mental hospital patient had escaped and hijacked a vehicle, ending up at the airport stabbing someone: http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0522/cork.html Crazy stuff. Our plane left 30 minutes late.

In Alicante I played just one side event and the Main. I don't remember much about the side, I think it was a turbo and I was pretty card dead until eventually busting 77<TT on the 100/200 level. The 1k€ main was a long grind, again.

I had a great starting table and just ran over everybody to turn my 15k starting stack into 62k before the dinner break. Average at the time was 20k and the blinds were 150-300, so I had a huge chiplead in the whole tournament probably.

After the dinner break everything went disastroustly bad. In the first hand after the break I opened KJ and had to call a 14BB shove and lost to AQ. A few hands later I lost a massive pot AQs<QJs against a massive drooler and dropped to 35k. After that I just lost every pot, trips<trips for another 10k, and generally every time I 3bet I got 4bet and the one time I 5bet bluffed I ran into aces.

I was down to 8k about 90 minutes after my high point, but refused to give up and came back fighting. I climbed back up to 50k at the highest, then made two calldowns that I think were ok but had disastrous results (see below). Then finally in the very last hand I busted AQ<AK after being in push/fold mode for two hours. It's pretty funny I played over 24 hours total in Cork and Alicante main events yet I still didn't make a day two. I haven't made one since EPT Deauville in January so it's getting pretty annoying.

Here are a couple of interesting hands from Alicante. I'm copy-pasteing them from my 2+2 HSMTT threads so they are in form of questions.

1. Turning two pair into a 3bet bluff on the river:

My table is really soft, everyone else is bad but this guy is very good. He's a HSMTT reg who I've seen around but whose identity I can't recall, I think he's dutch or german. He knows I'm Chuck Bass, we discussed 2+2 previously.

I've 3bet him a couple of times and he's folded, but we don't have any special history or dynamics going on. We've both stacked spanish donks all day long to get our stacks and have mostly stayed out of each other's way.

100/200. Starting stacks were 15k but I've got 35k, he's got 30ish.

I raise to 500 from UTG+1 with 9♦8♣, he thinks and calls from the SB, BB folds.

Flop A♦ 9♥ 4♣ (1100)
Check, I cbet 625 and he calls in rhythm.

Turn K♠ (2350)
He checks.
Q1: I barrel this all day long online, but do you think live against a very good player who expects you to barrel a lot and will station down with AJ/AQ type hands it's fine to check back and either raise his river bet or against a river check make an isildur style 2-2,5xpot bet if we don't improve?

I check back.

River 8♠ (2350)
He checks, I bet 1450. He raises to 4525. I raise to 14500.

Q2: My thought process was that I beat zero value hands, because he shouldn't have any worse two pair combos. This could be a bluff or we could have the same hand, but I think it's much more likely he has 44 or AK (I'm not sure he 3bets AK there pre because he knows I'm extremely hoodflatty and we're 150bb deep). I think checking the river with a set is fine, because when I check back the turn I'm going to have a pot controling hand a lot that'll value bet the river. I know my line doesn't represent a whole lot, but is this a spot where he'll have to fold (almost) his whole range, especially as I have two set blockers? I don't think it's impossible at all that I'd have AA-KK here.

Results are he folded 44 face up and I was pretty proud of myself.

2. Calldown #1

Villain is a Polish hs reg who won the European masters grand final a couple of years ago. He's complimented my play and he's been extremely solid. I've had a huge stack all day and he's stayed out of my way despite having position. He's 3bet me exactly once from SB, I hoodflatted and won the pot post-flop. He's definitely capable of things. I have an aggro image obviously. Both blinds are weaktight guys with big stacks so my opening range is wide and he knows that.

300/600/75, average is 25k, I've got 60k and he's got 19k.

I raise to 1300 from CO with A♥9♥, he calls on the button and both blinds fold.

Flop K♥9♦8♣ (4250)
I cbet 2450 and he raises to 5150.

Wtf? With positions and everything I think 88 would be a trivial 3bet get it in pre (he should also easily see me 4bet bluff there a ton) and it's pretty hard for him to have two pair. And if he has a king I'd expect him to flat always... What's my line?

Results are I went into calldown mode as his line just didn't make sense. I turned a 9 and stacked off against his 88 so my ranging was just wrong - I thought he'd play the differently on both pre- and post flop.

3. Calldown #2

Villain is one of the worst players I've seen in a long time. He's a classic vamo but even worse than most of them. Spanish, 30 years old, wears a fake armani shirt and a fake watch, muscular.

He came to table with 60bbs and doubled up when he called a nit's 4x UTG raise with QTo, raised his cbet on T28r a bet/called 9 turn. The nit had AA obv and villain binked a queen on the river.

On another occasion he flatted a 4bet, check minraised an A22 flop and folded to a shove having 60% of his stack in.

On another occasion, there was a raise and a 3bet in front of him, and he tanked for a long time before folding showing me A9 (I still had cards lol) and shaking his head as if it was the toughest laydown ever.

He's been flatting every second hand pre and check-raised a ton of flops. He's been getting away with it a lot but almost all of the spots have been really stupid regardless of what he has.

300/600/75. An old nit opens for 1400 from MP, Villain calls from the CO, I call on the button with 44, blinds fold.

Flop JJ6r (5850)
Check, check, check.

Turn 3x (5850)
Check, check, I bet 2650. Nit folds and Villain raises to 9000. I have about 27k after my bet (so if I call this for 6350 I'll have 20-21k and the pot will be 23-24k).

What's my plan? The nit is really loose-weak bad post, he's been making the kind of lines where he opens AK and check-calls brick boards without firing a cbet. I'm expecting both of the players to fire any pocket pair on both streets, the old nit could maybe check the flop with JJ or AA but would surely bet the turn. I don't see why on earth villain would expect me to bet the turn so that it'd make any sense for him to check twice with a jack.

Results are he had 33 and checked (?!?!) the river, I checked back and lost.

I was planning to play a lot more side events, but instead I spent my time getting drunk with 2+2 heroes BakinCookies, lnormajean and GAWA9, and at the beach with my girlfriend. While Cork was a bit depressing after busting (small town, nothing to do, rain), I had such a great time in Alicante that I didn't feel too bad about it.

So yeah, this year has been rough ever since January. I've lost a lot live and broke even online for way too long now. I put an ad on 2+2 seeking for a mentor as I could use some new inspiration. I think I have every required quality to make it big at the highest stakes, but I have a mental block of some kind stopping me from doing it. I can't really put it to words, so I'm going to call it the fear of winning. It all goes a long way back. I was a pretty decent tennis junior known to fuck up all the easy matches. So many times I was up 6-1, 5-1, 30-0 and lost. I also played soccer for over 10 years and I missed the empty net way too many times because I tried doing something fancy.

I think this, to an extent, is a problem in my poker game at the moment too. It's called FPS and it's a fact that I FPS spew way too much. I always want to make the "perfect" play, like floating some reg's check-raises with air stealing the pot on the turn, cold 4bet-bluffing, stuff like that. When, in fact, the perfect play in a lot of cases would be to play a solid game, take chips from idiots and not always clash with the toughest reg in your table and try huge bluffs.

And for some reason I also just hate winning. It's so weird. It's the worst possible attitude in a poker tournament, but way too many times when I'm deep in a tournament I find myself thinking "I don't have to win this. It's fine if I get 2nd or 3rd.". As if I was already preparing myself for the inevitable loss that's going to happen, and sure enough, I never win when I have this attitude. I just don't know how to get rid of it.

I played a tennis match against my best mate a couple of days ago, who's also very good at tennis. He plays an extremely solid game, doesn't make you run a lot, but doesn't spew around either. He is without a doubt a lot worse than me, and he's never been coached unlike me, and he doesn't have a single killer move in his arsenal. Yet I always lose to this guy. ALWAYS. We've played probably 15 matches in our time and I've won him once. And why do I lose? Because I always FPS against him.

He's just a returner, and an easy way to take him down would be to play solid tennis, make him run a bit, and wait for him to make a mistake. But what do I do instead? I try to make every shot the perfect shot, I hit my 2nd serve as hard as my first resulting in 20 double faults per match, I try stoppers and slices and stuff like that in retardedly stupid spots and end up hitting the net. And second, I also fear winning him. I have no idea why, that's just the way it is. So despite leading the last set 4-1, 40-0, I lost once again. I double faulted three times to let him get to deuce, then hit two easy shots wide and let him break my serve, breaking my game at the same time. I don't know if I won a single point after that, but what I do know is that it lasted like 15 more minutes and I was gone.

I read Andre Agassi's extremely good biography recently, and it turns out he struggled with the same issue for most of his career. It took him 5 years to find a coach who helped him stop FPS'ing and start winning. And with that coach, Brad Gilbert, he started winning Slams big time. This is why I think I'm in need of a coach too. Not someone who'd teach me how to crush technically, because I already know how to crush, but who'd remove the mental block inside my head.

I've also turned to sports psychology in my search for a solution, and I ordered a truckload of books which I'm going to read during the summer. I bought Jared Tendler's poker psychology book which is supposed to be good, and the following pieces (there are more but I'm too lazy trying to remember what they were):

Gary Mack: Mind Gym
Daniel Coyle: Talent Code
Timothy Galway: The Inner Game Of Tennis

Hopefully these will be helpful. I've read all Malcolm Gladwell's stuff already, and it has helped me tremendously getting better at forming a professional attitude, so maybe a book will be the perfect solution for this too. We'll see how it goes, when I'm playing the Midnight Sun series next week:

1050€ 6max PLO
1050€ HA (PLO/PLHE rotation)
2150€ NL Main Event
630€ Terminator (bounty event)

and maybe:

1050€ 7 card stud
200€+rebuys 5 card stud.

After the MNS I'm just going to chill, enjoy the summer, hit the beach and exercise a lot, and fucking crush online. CRUSH. I still need to win like 70k to get that 100k year, but it's definitely doable.

In other news, I sent an english video of my SCOOP heads-up highroller tournament to the Pokerstrategy people, let's hope they like it and decide to publish it as it has some interesting spots for sure. Plus, you'd get to hear my accent.