Hi.
My name is Chris and I'm a 21-year-old philosophy student in Salzburg, Austria. I'm both british and austrian.
I'm currently playing $30 cap NL $0.5/$1, which I switched to about 10 days ago. More on my online poker career up to this point further down.
I plan on playing poker for a living, at least as long as I don't someday decide to become a doctor or something. Details will follow.
I'm starting a blog now because I decided a while ago that I'd like to start a blog when I reach a point in my career that is interesting to read about. I thought maybe when I reach $2k BR or NL100, but I'm actually starting it because I've started playing live in a so-called 'card casino' in Salzburg.
Details below.
read on below the line if interested. It's split into three sections, so you don't have to read it all at once, and I'll post the first section now and the other two later.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1: yesterday's casino visit
I first went there a week or so ago with some friends and played a €27 freezeout. I finished as 2nd bubble boy (gay bubble boy 
), but the place is attractively furnished and has a good atmosphere, friendly staff, etc. , and I don't mind the slow pace too much. There were also some NL200 cash games running that looked insanely fishy, and the occasional PLO and higher limit NL table.
Anyway, I returned yesterday and started off by playing a €10+3 rebuy. (1000 starting stack, 90 entrants, 12 payed, unlimited rebuy for the first three levels: 25/25, 25/50, 50/100, 30 minutes each, and shorter levels after that, 2000 chip add-in for €10)
I somehow ended up going all-in both of the first two hands. First hand I had JJ, 4 or so players limped, and I for some reason thought I only had 20BB, and just pushed directly nobody called. next hand I had some kind of draw in a family pot where everyone was going broke.
In the end I never managed to get a really big stack and busted in 20th after making 4 rebuys or so.
Just to give you some idea of the level of play in this MTT, the best player at my table was an old guy from eastern europe who was a very bad rock, and whose line with the toppest of pairs was always to check, wait for someone to bet, then instantly and very loudly say 'ALL-IN'.
A friend of mine and I then decided to play NL200 with €200 each. We sat down at a table that had some open seats, which turned out to be mainly young guys, including a guy who turned out to be from pokerstrategy.de and somewhat solid despite having given me the impression of being retarded. He was there with a friend, who was probably the most remarkable of my opponents. The friend was very heavyset, about my age, with a huge, square head, short, upwards-pointing hair, glasses, small eyes that stared intensely and looked in completely different directions, a small beard, and a mouth with corners that pointed downwards like on an unhappy smiley. He was really a HUGE maniac/spewtard, who liked to dish out snippets of poker wisdom about table-image, raise-sizes, etc (which included critisising my friend for making a normal-sized raise with AA instead of raising to at least 8BB, which would be the optimal play, as it gets you HU!). Oh, and he loved very loudly saying 'CHECK IN THE DARK'.
To the play: I'm pleasantly surprised that I wasn't at all playing with scared money, even when I had a stack of over €400, despite never having played anywhere near this high.
I actually managed to play some interesting hands, probably making some mistakes. Two of them involved bet/calling on the river in spots where i would have made an easy fold or a hero-fold online, but I called because it was live, and for information.
The biggest pot I played was something like €380. I raised to €7 with AJo and got 3 calls, including the cross-eyed maniac. Flop: AQh5h, position on the maniac. I made a bet of €22 or so, and the maniac instantly raised to over €70. I had the Ah, and just called. Turn Q, hu, he checked, I CB. River blanked, he checked, and I made a €100 value bet ♦
he called and mucked. Pretty standard, I guess, but pretty sick by my standards. After this my stack included a huge red and black €100 chip
In what was a slightly more interesting hand, I had AA, raised, and I think the maniac was my only caller. I was OOP on QQXr, and made a small bet. He called. It now gets interesting because he had made a sick float against me in a previous hand, calling preflop and flop with 73o or something and bluffing the turn. Same bet sizes on my part and very similar situation otherwise. So I checked the turn, and he bet. Should I call or raise now? I thought the best line of action was to let him know, by saying something, that I knew he had bluffed me in a situation just like this, and then to raise, in the hope that he thinks I'm re-bluffing him. Unfortunately, he folded. Should I just call? And then B/C or C/C or C/R river?
Anyway, my friend wants to become a reg there, going there on week-days after uni, so I guess we'll be doing that. Not sure how profitable it is though.
One noteworthy fact is something that the guy in the cage told me, namely that a lot of rich russions come here on holiday around russian christmas, which is the 7th of january, and play poker. I doubt I'll be rolled for bigger games by then though
Congrats on Platinum!