Poker, baby!

So I had ~9.4k blinds in the flipout (~200k chips), and had everyone covered at the first 8 handed table. There was just one guy I wanted to beat (in the SB), since he also had ~9k chips, the rest was 3k and below in stacksize. But yea, lost to him and then it was over pretty fast. Result: $107,40 (free money so not complaining)

But my theory was right, the mincash for the 300k flipout was a bigger amount than the mincash for the 500k flipout. And when you combine that with the fact that smaller stacks were playing in the 300k flipout, your chances of winning a bigger amount increases, but yea, we will never know...
With the same payout structure of 25%, every payout was relatively higher in the 300k filpout compared to the 500k flipout. Something to remember for next year... (doing 11 missions instead of 12 and playing for the 2nd largest prizepool. Like I mentioned, the 12th mission was a small mistake from my end...

500k flipout payout overview:

300k flipout payout overview:

Still worth it in the end, the daily missions are very doable.

Blog update time! Haven't played that much poker in the last two weeks. I did play some mtts and got some mini cashes. Bisedes that, I mainly played All-in or fold format, AoF5 and AoF10 mixed in this graph:

And I also played some PLO10 in the last few days. I intend to play some more in February and see where I can improve my game along the way. January graph:

Fun hand (4way all-in with two guys having AAxx hands, 65% equity on the flop, cashed out, other guy hit his straight ott and river was flush suckout)

(all-in multiway pots are not included in the all-in EV graph, not sure how that changes the actual graphs, biggest pots come from multiway all-in pots...)

Another thing, I'm not sure whether I should join the bankroll challange here on the forum. I started this year with €500 bankroll. Thing is, I don't want to focus too much on bankroll results...

What I'm really looking forward to, is the upcoming weekend. We booked a house with 8 guys (all friends that I know 25 years+) in Germany, in a snowy area where also some winter sports will take place. But I will mainly be watching those games and enjoying the German beers
I'm also bringing my poker suitcase full of playing chips and we will play poker at least one evening. Live poker with friends is the best setting for me. We play cashgames with SB+BB being €0.10 and it's mostly family posts with a lot of limping going on. I also bring printed sheets with the poker hand rankings and some of these guys need to check them while playing haha. Should be a lot of fun!

So yeah, the weekend with friends in Germany was a great succes.
The outdoor temperatures were just below zero and the house we rented was on a hill with a tiny bit of snow surrounding it.
There was a hottub present and we sat in there on all the three days of the long weekend, accompanied with some German lagers
On Saturday we went to the World Cup Ski Jumping, which was a nice event to experience.

Played some live poker with 6 people in total. I must say that I think that playing the game live with friends, with not that much money at stake (BB=€0.10), is a lot of fun and the best way to experience the game. I played with vpip 90% and all the chips were standing in front of me at the end of the night. Although I must say I got lucky in a hand, where my opponent had flopped a flush and my 2 pair improved to a Full House on the river.

At GG poker I have played some PLO10 and will continue to so in the coming weeks. I will post the graph with results monthly at the end of each month.
I also qualified for the GG Poker flipout and got ~C$17 playing this all-in flipout. But still I feel unlucky in this tournament every single time, see below why I feel that way:

Spoiler

73o>77, yeah sure

Also, while playing Omaha I encountered this hand:

Spoiler

Would you use cashout in this situation? My opponents block each others and their ownn outs, so I thought I was safe... Quite sick and a missed big pot...

NL10 live homegame with friends is pretty high actually, we used to do NL5 and even that was too high for people.

Originally posted by taavi1337
NL10 live homegame with friends is pretty high actually, we used to do NL5 and even that was too high for people.

Casual home games don't have to be full stacked, however, which makes things a lot more manageable for many people. Even more so if it is not played in a No Limit betting format. Did you and your friends play NL, Timmay?

Originally posted by Timmaywin
So yeah, the weekend with friends in Germany was a great succes.
The outdoor temperatures were just below zero and the house we rented was on a hill with a tiny bit of snow surrounding it.
There was a hottub present and we sat in there on all the three days of the long weekend, accompanied with some German lagers
On Saturday we went to the World Cup Ski Jumping, which was a nice event to experience.

Sounds like you went to Willingen, then? It's not even all that far from where I live. No snow over here in the lowlands, though.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Casual home games don't have to be full stacked, however, which makes things a lot more manageable for many people. Even more so if it is not played in a No Limit betting format. Did you and your friends play NL, Timmay?

Yes, indeed, the average stacksize was 20BBs, so when all-in, the pots were not that big.
Normally, when we would go to the city after playing some poker, and the guy that won the most in the poker game would pay the first round of beers.
And yes, we always play the classic NL Hold'em poker variant.

Originally posted by taavi1337
NL10 live homegame with friends is pretty high actually, we used to do NL5 and even that was too high for people.

The above also answers this. And I think playing NL5 wouldn't make much of a difference.
(besides maybe that the winner of the evening has to spend more of his own money when buying the round of beers haha)
So yea, keeping things casual and fun, which losing a lot of money wouldn't be.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Sounds like you went to Willingen, then? It's not even all that far from where I live. No snow over here in the lowlands, though.

Yes, it was in Willingen indeed. A bit more than a 3 hour drive by car from where I live in The Netherlands, I live very close to the German border.
There was a really nice atmosphere at the Ski jumping event, kinda unfamiliar to me, since I'm not much of a winter (sports) vacation go-er in general.

I could be up like +200€ in NL5 homegames with best friends but that was like 10-15 years ago I wasn't the one hosting it and they didn't mind me winning all the 40€ cash in the collective "bank" when we ended at 3am... I was also playing 5$/10$ FLHE online back then and sometimes they made jokes like, "this stack is Taavi's one big blind in poker" being in awe etc :f_biggrin::f_drink:

Brutal session PLO10 today.

Some of these guys simply can't lose. Their trash holds or their backdoor draw hits, while I'm unable to hit my monster nutflushdraw and wrap outs...
All-in on the flop with topset vs. toppair topkicker on J63 turn is K river is Q so villain has a straight, stuff like that.

Another try tomorrow.

Guess I can post my mid-montly graph as well while we are at it.

This is from playing PLO10 R&C at GGPoker.

See if we can keep this up!

A force to be recognized ♦

Another brutal session last night, running 5BI's under EV at a certain point...
Also, not winning big pots that matter the most:

But there is also good news, getting max. value with a monster:

What I did find out though, is that my cashouts don't show as such in the GGPoker graph, when I cashout a hand and end up losing the runout, the hand is registered as the lost hand. So that would suggest that the GGPoker graph is actually more pessimistic than reality. When I paused my session for a moment to look at my graph it showed a loss of $60 while the actual loss was $30 at that moment. (comparing my bankroll with session start)

I did have a nice stack in the GG Flipout as a result, and only one guy covering me at the table. But then I get dealt J4o and the guy that covered me had A3o and won with ace high. These daily flipout tournaments are a big lottery, I know, but I also run really bad in them, when I have to beat just one player, regarding stack sizes, I didn't succeed in doing so for a few tournaments in a row now, and that feels really unfortunate.

Little update after playing some PLO10 cash, mystery bounty sit&go's and mtt's. Got some nice cashes in them, bankroll is going in the right direction!

Maybe I should have joined the Bankroll Challange earlier, instead of a few days ago. Or it might be beginners luck who knows... Time will tell!
This also works as a very welcome confidence boost!

Taking a break from poker and gonna look into some things where my edge actually pays off, bankroll challenge postponed untill further notice.
Thanks for reading

HOW IS YOUR POKER SESSION GOING?

Come play against me and call all-in with random hands that hit backdoor bullshit, it's fun and all strategy!
Also: Buy your solver software now!

Thought you guys want to see a grapgh of the session:

And that's kind of the story with me and poker, doing everything right, but not winning a lot of the time...
And people expecting you to keep playing your A-game, while getting bad beat after bad beat...
I mean, I want it to do something to me mentally, to feel that I'm still human.
Better quit when the session is just turning out to be shit, than try to grind it out and become a robot in the process..

"And people expecting you to keep playing your A-game"

people hope you go on tilt is more accurate

Originally posted by taavi1337
"And people expecting you to keep playing your A-game"

people hope you go on tilt is more accurate
You might be right, but I'm telling this to myself...

The badrun is lasting for weeks, I'm not kidding...
I'm talking playing omaha poker:
Topset getting crushed every time vs. flushdraw or straightdraw (I'm talking regular straightdraw 6 outer)
A guy was playing 96% of previous 100 hands, I went all-in 3 times with the best hand and lost 3 times... (this guy was clearly running hot)
Having nutstraight vs. set and them hitting their full house every time
Losing vs. 4 outers and even 2 outers (topset vs. overp type stuff)
Having monster draw with more equity than the caller, but their trashpair holds
The list goes on....

It's just brutal man, and I'm really at a point where I lost all faith in poker.

So the answer to the wquestion: would you rather be running above EV and make money or play good EV and lose?
I would pick the first every time. Since running under EV for so long will slowly kill your mental game, with all the new problems arising from that as a consequence. And it simply feels unfair to lose when you do everything right.

Also, I don't find it weird at all that people think that online poker is rigged. Runbad is real and hotrun is also real.
And don't come at me by saying you get enough satisfaction by playing good poker, in the end winning is also part of the game and the fun.

So yeah, my edge is not paying off and I don't like it at all.

I know I don't have a right to the pot, but when you keep losing while you get the money in correctly every time, you start to feel like you actually have a right to win, especially when that hasn't happened 10 times in a row....

Putting a face to my complaining:

While playing poker for 15 years now, I can tell you the best (secret) poker strategies:

not commenting on poker blogs is also toxic...

Here I go, trying to keep this community alive...

Also, it's perfectly normal to feel frustrated when you know you are the better player but are not winning vs. suckouts and are losing flips both ways...