[Closed] There's no I in threesome

Originally posted by arisko
hate cliffhangers...

That coinflip for 11$k that you mentioned earlier, was that an actual coin toss or an all in 50/50?

Probably the best blog right now, love the long updates and the stories are top notch

This challenge will be really exciting, lets hope u can keep up updating in both communities frequently

Thanks!

I think it was a one-off PLO flip, but I'm not entirely sure as we were really drunk. To be more exact there was a $10k flip against one person and a $1k flip against another person. These weren't anywhere near my lifetime biggest flips, though. I've done a roulette flip of $20k and multiple $10k flips. I'm also down a fortune in PLO flips (I'm so bad at PLO I even lose at flips???). Once in Warsaw I ended up losing all my cash and my 3k watch I had just bough in PLO flips.

Oh and I also forgot to mention that I'm going to Gibraltar next week to visit the Pokerstrategy HQ... interesting stuff coming up.

edit: I noticed this jumped into page two, so for everyone who missed it: details of my $100k challenge at the bottom of page 1.

$100k challenge, week 1

I played a full session on monday, half a session on tuesday as I had to coach, a full session on wednesday and thursday and half a session today because of a terrible hangover. I want to be in as good shape as possible every time I play, and this whole challenge is about doing things right, so I pondered for a long time whether I should play today or not.

Long story short, yesterday was the graduation day in Finnish schools and a couple of friends of mine graduated. We partied until the wee hours, I passed out naked in a shower and woke up at 5PM today feeling a terrible urge to vomit. After preparing myself a hangover meal I wondered what I should do for the rest of the night. I figured that I'd just play really small stakes and less tables than usual. After all, on sunday night it's pretty hard not to win at $22 freezeouts. I ended up winning a $22 freezeout for $1034 and FT bubbling a couple of other tournaments.

All in all this week went pretty well. I ran real bad with connection issues, first having my internet break down in the middle of a session and then being booted out from Stars in the middle of another session thanks to their network crashing. I wasn't refunded properly, thanks again Pokerstars.

Anyway, fast forwards to results. I started with my $2000 capital spread across multiple sites like this:

Ongame $500
Microgaming $200
Pokerstars.fr $400
iPoker $300
UB $300
Partypoker $300

And now I'm standing at:

Ongame $954
Microgaming $801
iPoker $550
UB $252
Pokerstars.fr $1233
FTP $709
Withdrawals $775
Bankroll now: $5274 (+$3274)

Not bad for a first week of challenge. As you can see, I added FTP and quit Partypoker. I noticed the structures at Party are lollabad and don't fit my aggro style at all because they don't have antes, and when they do they are too small. Pots without antes are much less worth stealing, so you can't open as many hands, and that doesn't fit me. I won a ton at iPoker and withdrew some of it, it's now waiting on my account to be deposited to whichever site needs filling first.

I'm going to post just one hand from the week, this was really sick: http://weaktight.com/2981784

Villain is one of the best regs in the network. The logic behind this is that he can't have a king or a set or two pair because he checks the flop. He also can't have a flush draw for the same reason. In his eyes, I can't have a king either, because I check back the flop. He knows I'm capable of both value betting thin and stealing pots, and as I can't have a king my turn bet is kind of weakish. He's calling with his showdown value hand. On the river when I bet again (it's not really even thin because he shouldn't have any hands that can beat me except for TT), he realises his 98o isn't good. He knows that I can have AJ at best unless I rivered two pair. When he raises it's so sick - I'm getting crazy odds but that just can't be a bluff ever...can it? I figured that he knows I'm capable of laydowns too, and probably expects me to fold my entire range against this check-raise, and at the same time he's only repping TT (I don't think he thinks he can check-raise JT for value here), so I bet-called with middle pair and was good.

Sick first week. Congratz on the success. It's dangerous for me to read these blogs, I always want to start playing the same game. Started with STT SnGs after reading lessthanthree's blog...must......resist...urge for MTTs....

Anyways, I am sure u will succeed in this challenge and I wish I could play MTTs like you Like the analysis, a little bit too deep for me to understand, but u deserve credit for making the correct move on river. Waiting eagerly for next week's updates

Cheers!

I'm currently sitting at PokerStrategy.com's headquarters in Gibraltar. This is a pretty massive building, they have about 200 people employed. Opposite me is sitting Swedish Full Tilt Pro Johan Storåkers who's recording material for the Swedish players.

I went to Morocco yesterday because of a lost side bet, but nothing went as planned. First my flight from Finland was two hours late. Then my ship was two hours late. When I arrived in Morocco it was 8PM when it was supposed to be 4PM. The last boat back would leave at 9PM so I wouldn't even have time to visit the city.

I wanted to take a photo of the boat, and without thinking I snapped one despite local policemen also being in the picture. They got mad at me and took me into some kind of an interrogation office at the border. I made the situation even worse by wisely saying "can you please let me go as I need to get back to work on the 9PM boat" (thinking about this morning's PS meetings), when I had just claimed I was a student in the form you fill when entering the country. It's not usually very smart to say you're a poker player when you're entering a muslim country, so I figured "student" would be better as I look like one due to my age. One more thing to make matters worse was that I had 1100€ in my pockets which they searched for, and that led to even more questions.

After looking at my passport and checking my details and stuff they finally let me go. After this I found out the last boat back had been canceled due to a storm. I managed to get a ride back on a muslim cargo ship, which was an interesting experience...

The only pic from Morocco that wasn't deleted by the authorities... in the background is the building where they interrogated me

The classy (and only) toilet in the cargo ship

They had a praying room though, which seemed fitting given how high the waves were

The lights of the Spanish harbour of Algeciras in the horizon

This is where I spent my entire trip, as they didn't have chairs or anything. I've been to more comfortable boat rides, but at least I made it back.

I'm going to make some videos and possibly play Johan HU today along with a nice dinner at a Brazilian restaurant called Ipanema. I'm spending one more day here and then flying back to Finland early on Friday morning, as I have a high stakes go-kart tournament with some scandi highrollers early on saturday morning. The afterparty is going to be huge, so I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to grind before Sunday (no internet in my hotel here), so this week is going to be pretty disastrous for the challenge. Oh well, next week I'll grind overtime.

Originally posted by arisko
It's dangerous for me to read these blogs, I always want to start playing the same game. Started with STT SnGs after reading lessthanthree's blog...must......resist...urge for MTTs....

This!!

Lol, sick story. I bet they thought you were some finnish spy or something. Sick things seem to be happening wherever you go. Although this does not beat the story about when u got robbed. Keep 'em coming!!

Cheers!

$100k challenge, week 2

I only had time to play today. I was in Gibraltar until Friday and yesterday I had to go drinking with Finland's poker elite as there was a big highroller party that had been planned weeks earlier. I don't remember anything from between 11PM-4AM, I just kind of woke up from eating kebab in a night restaurant not knowing how I'd ended up there. When you think about it, it's pretty stupid to spend hundreds of euros on VIP parties and then get so drunk you miss the whole party, or at least don't remember anything afterwards.

This morning I was wondering whether I should play or not. I knew I'd pretty much break all the rules I set for myself if I played, because I was so hungover and not feeling well at all. In the other hand, I had absolutely nothing to do. I figured there's no way I won't be +ev in small stakes tournaments even if I wasn't thinking as clearly as usual. So I played less tables and a shorter session than normally, and also smaller stakes.

I ended up losing $800 but I really think I just ran horrendously. The games were super soft and I was just bad-beated out of every tournament I played. I hit a couple of final tables at Ongame $54 and Stars $22 cubed but didn't manage to make it past 9th place. Oh well, in retrospect I'm still happy with my decision to play today and the games I chose to play. Let's not be results oriented.

Now my travels are finally over for a while - I think my next live tournament is going to be EPT Deauville and that's over a month away - so I finally have time to be at home and grind. I intent to play at least 5 days a week for the rest of December and bring my challenge bankroll to at least $10k. I also have a few articles in the making and I need to record some videos and do other stuff for PS, so my life will be very poker-oriented in the near future.

Next week I have my own birthday - I turn 24 - and I'm going to be partying on Friday. On saturday there's a Finland vs Sweden poker match where I'm playing for team Finland. Also a couple of other PS coaches there. That's held in Estonia, but it's just a two hour boat trip away so it's not going to distract my grinding very much. My birthday party ends at 6AM and we booked the 8AM boat, and the games begin at noon. I'd figure I'm probably not going to be performing very well due to lack of sleep and hangover, but it's just a 370€ buy-in or something so whatever.

So yeah, week two of the challenge was pretty bad, but I didn't really have a choice as I was super busy for all of the Gibraltar trip. Next week I'll finally have time to post hands and analyse them here at the forums. Now I'm going to go to bed and get rid of this monster hangover.

Ongame $877
Microgaming $173
iPoker $550
UB $252
Pokerstars.fr $769
FTP $521
Withdrawals $1250

Bankroll now: $4392 (-$882)

PS. I talked to the PS people in Gibraltar who are in charge of the English videos. Alongside with the articles, they also asked if I'd like to make them a video series for beating small stakes MTTs. I promised to do it when I have time (=when I'm not feeling lazy), so more strategic content is on the way!

PS. Woohoo, my horse just won $18k from a tournament. This is the first time I got a four-figure return from buying shares. In this case I didn't even invest anything, I won the share from my friend's tournament in a coinflip ♦ Life is good.

Lol had to read that post twice, I thought u won $18K from a H.O.R.S.E tournament These PS videos about beating small stakes MTTs, would those be in english or finnish? another thing I've wondered about, why can't u just make swedish videos so at least I understand u and the whole swedish community understands as well as the finnish

Well well, good luck on week 3

Or in danish.. ;D

Nice blog you got going, very nice for fellow mtt'ers. ;D
Keep it up, looking forward to videos from you.

The videos will be in English. I lived in Australia for a long time and due to my weird cultural background I'm a next-to-native English speaker so despite having a bit of an accent I'm sure they'll be totally understandable. I've done videos for the Finnish Pokerstrategy for 5 months now, but I'm expanding to English as well.

No Swedish commentary, sorry - my Swedish sucks majorly. And definitely no Danish, you guys sound like you have a potato stuck in your mouth when you speak.

FML, I was 10th in the miniFTOPS HA tournament. I think I have a really big edge in HA (where hold'em is pot limit as well) because people are usually pretty clueless about how it plays out. In the last hand I 3bet bluff shoved on a paired flop:

2500/5000 I raise to 11250 on the button with A7o. SB folds and a semi-bad, splashy aggro guy who always flats his BB calls. Pot is ~25k and we have 130k behind.

Flop 552r, he checks and I cbet 13500, he raises to 36500 and I shove for 130k. He had been check-raising blank boards and paired boards before in kinda stupid spots where he's repping pretty much nothing. In this spot I thought he'd check back a boat or 5x some % of the time given he should probably think I'd have a high barreling frequency. No other made hand should want to check-raise that so I really thought my 3bet jam was pretty standard if he has a bluffing range at all, which I still think he does... oh well, I ran into 65s anyway and didn't manage to make an epic suckout.

Another fail was the Microgaming 25€ rebuy, one of the biggest nightly euro tournaments. 41 left, 40 paid and I'm 2/41. Then this happens:

http://weaktight.com/3014884

There are a couple of mini stacks and the first payout is 126€. Villain seems nitty, 17/5 and he's tightened around bubble considerably. In retrospect I expect his 3bet range to be approximately AA-QQ but in-game I thought he'd size bigger with premiums because of the bubble, and I had raised like 70% of hands so I talked myself into thinking that maybe he's 3bet bluffing, so I went into the "f him I'll outplay him post-flop" mode. So yeah I know I should fold pre, but I'm a scandi and don't like folding, so let's talk post-flop. My plan was to float all favourable textures (the kinds that provide me bluff outs such as 875, anything with a flush draw, etc) and try to take the pot away from him despite his likely overpair with my position, given we are still relatively deep. This is obv a great flop as I have 5 outs plus probably 10 bluff outs. My plan is to bet if a 4th heart lands and he checks at any point.

His river call is actually pretty sick, because he has the Kh and therefore I can't value bet worse (Qh can't value bet here). So either I have the Ah or a bluff, and my line looks a shit ton like Ah. For him to be able to call I'd have to have turned a made hand into a bluff or double floated. Most people aren't able to perform either, and despite me doing that here, he shouldn't have expected me to do that. I got knocked out 40th, at least someone busted before me in the end.

Originally posted by MiikkaAnttonen And definitely no Danish, you guys sound like you have a potato stuck in your mouth when you speak.

I think you are talking about the Dutch

Sick stories. Keep it up please.

Had no idea who you were until like 1 hour ago and now I feel bad that I was probably just staring at my screen while you were shown around our office in Gibraltar instead of extracting some more sick stories.

I'm an indie pop / singer-songwriter kind of a guy, you know, the type that listens to Bright Eyes and cries when masturbating.

best line I ever read in a poker blog.

Originally posted by DavidJMA
Sick stories. Keep it up please.

Had no idea who you were until like 1 hour ago and now I feel bad that I was probably just staring at my screen while you were shown around our office in Gibraltar instead of extracting some more sick stories.

I'll post more stories later, I promise!

100k challenge, week 3

This doesn't really have anything to do with the challenge but let me begin by telling about my birthday party on Friday. I had a group of about 20 friends, most of them poker players, and we had a nice restaurant and a night club lounge booked.

We met at the restaurant at 7pm and dined until 9pm. We played chinese poker for the whole time, some forgetting to eat. There were some girls in our group as well but I don't think anyone said a word to them.

After dinner we went to a place called Arctic Ice Bar, it's a funny place under the ground that's entirely made of ice. The tables, chairs, walls, etc are all made of ice, it's like a giant igloo. We played chinese poker for our entire time down there despite getting our fingers badly frozen.

After that we went to a night club full of 18 year old scandi girls. We played chinese poker for the entire time at the bar, although we got very drunk too and I have a big black hole from about midnight till 4AM. There were some random chicks in our table at some point and I'm not sure what happened to them, but at least one of us turned down an offer to go have sex because the chinese poker was still going.

We then went to have an after party at my friend Henri Ojala's place who just won the Unibet Open Prague for like 54308580431 euros. He has a pretty cool penthouse, where we played chinese poker until we passed out. All this chinese poker reminds me of what happened to a friend of mine, Pokerstars pro Ville Wahlbeck when he went to Thailand for a holiday with two poker friends. They played chinese poker non-stop for the entire week, I mean NON-STOP. For most of the time they played at the pool, which led to Ville getting badly sunburnt from the chest, the second guy from the back and the third one from his left side. They didn't get up or change positions during the whole time because the game was so intense... gotta love chinese poker. Just imagine one of the guys having his left cheek bright red and the other cheek pale white at the airport ♦

I had to leave at 7am or so to catch a ferry to Estonia where I played in the Finland-Estonia poker match. The last thing I heard when I left the house was that most of the guys were sleeping on the floor, but Henri was still on his computer stone drunk and yelled "YO I JUST GOT AN OPPONENT AT 100/200 PLO HEADS UP, WHO TAKES % OF ME???!?!?". He normally plays PLO 1/2. I'm not sure what happened to him but chances are it ended up being an expensive night.

I was still very drunk and tired when the tourney started five hours later but I still owned my table pretty hard. I played like 40% of hands and people just folded all the time. I busted at 150/300 though in a fairly standard hand that I'm too lazy to explain. Basically I stationed down with two pair against a turned boat in a spot that I'd play the same way every time and don't feel bad about.

After the tournament I took the first ferry back to Finland. Of course there was a massive storm outside and our small boat didn't do wery well in the middle of the high waves. I don't get seasick like ever, but I was SO hungover and hadn't eaten solid food for like two days so I spent the whole trip, which lasted for 4 hours instead of the standard two due to the storm, clinging to a door knob with one hand and holding a vomiting bag in the other. I've had better trips than that.

Last night, when I finally got to sleep, I slept for 15 hours to get ready for the grind today. I did pretty well, finishing 5th in the euro MiniFTOPS Main Event out of a really large field:

I ran really fucking bad from two tables on, losing three crucial pots as a big favourite. I'm pretty confident there's not much else I could've done, I played well from the beginning and owned pretty much everyone in my tables except for Elky who I tried to 4bet bluff. When you can't win pre-flop all-ins you can't, period.

That lasted for 8 hours and I have all the hands stored so if people would like to see them analysed on a video, I can make one for Pokerstrategy. It includes a LOT of 3- and 4-bet bluffing so it could even have some educational value.

What comes to the challenge, I played only on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and today because of the birthday party plus an unfortunate incident called my gf forcing me to go watch Harry ******* Potter on thursday (she is awesome, the movie is not). I lost pretty big on tuesday and wednesday and ran REALLY crying-out-loud-lollabad all week, and would've ended up in a hole had I not cashed big in the MiniFTOPS. I'm very confident with my game at the moment though and I'm looking forward to finishing the year with a bang, probably grinding for most of the holidays.

Ongame $359
Microgaming $1191
Pokerstars.fr $516
FTP $6731
Withdrawals $861

Bankroll now: $9658 (+$5266)

BOOM!

http://weaktight.com/3036558 4bet bluffing at the final table. Villain is an Austrian EPT regular who is very good and probably thinks I'm a maniac given I've played 41/38 throughout the tournament. Still, can I *not* 4bet this given how the other stacks play out? He probably expects me to raise 100% of buttons as the SB is a nit.

http://weaktight.com/3036560 Villain is a TAGish reg with no imagination. He's been opening a fair bit bvb always with the same sizing. On the flop I call because my hand is best pretty often. On the turn I check for the same reasons, plus I know he knows I'm float capable, so I expect him to check his entire value range that wants to go broke here OTT too, and I don't wanna get forced to fold my double gutter equity in case he has it.

Isn't the river a pretty sweet spot to rep a 4, a boat or a straight?

http://weaktight.com/3036563 10ish spots off the money. Reg vs reg spot where we both have an aggro image. Pre-flop: standard call in position imo. Flop: standard float with the bdfd and position imo.

Turn: The most obvious barrel card in the deck lands, so he'll obv barrel that. When I raise, I'm betting 20k to win 25k. Therefore this doesn't have to work more than 40% of the time or something. He only has 20kish more behind after his turn bet (10k+my raise) but shouldn't it be irrelevant given we have 0% equity anyway if he doesn't fold?

First of all, this is an absolute A+ read. Good job. The mixture of content and balla-stories is great.

Have played both EMOP/ GSOP as well since I live in Malta but dont think I bumped into you. Just would recommend keep playing them as u already mentioned the terribadness of the fields

I havent posted here forever, but I feel ur blog deserves some feedback. I am a MTT-player myself and I feel you tackled a lot of important stuff for anyone who is serious about playing mtts to the max possible ev.

Id like to comment/ pose some questions to the points u made:

Concerning the sleeping schedule, did/do u manage to keep it up after a long session?
I often feel pretty exhausted after like 8-9h of playing and therefore end up sleeping a lot longer than I should, which in turn makes it difficult to prepare sufficiently for the next session i.e. working out, eating well etc and an overall imbalance.

I like the point u made about focussing. I guess a lot of tournament regs, especially the ones who are clearly +ev in the game give up quite a bit of attention ( myself included) by chatting, surfing etc. Did u actually implement your intentions regarding this point?

One thing regarding your challenge: I havent read all of it, so bear with me I this is obvious. Why do you give up playing higher stakes ( as u r obviously both rolled and skilled to do so) ind order to increase your ROI extensively for doing the challenge? Did u take enough side-action to compensate for the potential losses or is it a motivational thingy?

Finally, gratz for the ship and some words to the hands:

#55: Im not exactly sure if I totally like it. Probably depends a lot on the level villain is on. Till river is obv fine. I mean it is pretty obvious that hes going for some sort of thin value there and he should know that u should have noticed this urself. Ur line on the other does make sense with some hands, but these are pretty few imo. U can credibly rep A4-A3, 33,44 and some 56s,45s-ish type of hands. I dont think u defend much more than that vs a 3x raise.

However, what bothers me most is the fact that his range on the river is sort of weak and cannot really stand much heat given the entire situation. Therefore, I guess u would often go for thin value represented by a smaller raise ( though it looks stronger, but Ax often talks itself into a call blabla) than shipping it with folding out most of his valuehands.

That said, its still hard to call i guess- so im kind of undecided overall and would like to hear some more opinions on this

#Q7s: Its sort of a similar spot to the previous one. I like it a lot vs a random average reg, but I again think u would prolly call ur entire value range again on the turn. Stacksizes however make it a pretty powerful move imo.

Cheers.

Originally posted by neelix

Id like to comment/ pose some questions to the points u made:

Concerning the sleeping schedule, did/do u manage to keep it up after a long session?
I often feel pretty exhausted after like 8-9h of playing and therefore end up sleeping a lot longer than I should, which in turn makes it difficult to prepare sufficiently for the next session i.e. working out, eating well etc and an overall imbalance.

I like the point u made about focussing. I guess a lot of tournament regs, especially the ones who are clearly +ev in the game give up quite a bit of attention ( myself included) by chatting, surfing etc. Did u actually implement your intentions regarding this point?

One thing regarding your challenge: I havent read all of it, so bear with me I this is obvious. Why do you give up playing higher stakes ( as u r obviously both rolled and skilled to do so) ind order to increase your ROI extensively for doing the challenge? Did u take enough side-action to compensate for the potential losses or is it a motivational thingy?

Hey, and thanks for the feedback

Sleeping schedule: this is the part that I've screwed up the most during the challenge. It's partially because I've had all kinds of parties and trips abroad (I've been abroad for half of december and drunk/hungover for the other half) sot it's not entirely my fault - in January I intend to stay sober and maintain my schedule much more. But yeah, I haven't totally fucked it up, I'd say I've woken up between noon and 6PM every day. I was planning to have a good rhythm and schedule for this entire week, but then the MiniFTOPS screwed it up as it lasted until the early hours and I couldn't sleep until 8AM because of the adrenaline rush.

Focusing: Yeah, this one I've totally nailed. I'm SO much more focused these days. Sometimes when I have too few tables I just take random notes about how regs play. I now have a shitload of notes about everyone that might come in handy. For example today I ran into a spot where a reg checked back a Kxx flop and I was about to take a stab as a bluff on the turn. But then I read my notes: "pot controls too much with weak TP type hands", and realised he can very well have a weak king or a pocket pair. I ended up 2x potting the turn and river instead of a regular bet, getting him to fold top pair I assume.

Stakes: I was/am only playing the upper mid-stakes. I've never played the 100rs or 1ks or anything apart from random shots. My ABI without the challenge would have been about $50, and I dropped it to $20 for it. And I had in mind to win enough in December to be able to play the 50s again by January, and then the 100s by February, so I only gave up 1-2 months. I've got 5 figs worth of side action, and I highly doubt I would've won more on average without the challenge, at least not much. And yeah it was partly for motivation - I needed a challenge. And I had a really dark streak from October to November, and when you drop 600 buy-ins in a couple of months you start questioning yourself. So it felt good to drop down a bit to play against absolute monkeys, just to get my self confidence back on track and get the feeling you get when you own the table.

I almost back-to-back won the Microgaming 6max cubed I won yesterday. I was 1/3 against two godawful fish, but lost my stack in three almost consecutive hands:

http://weaktight.com/3039907
http://weaktight.com/3039909
http://weaktight.com/3039911

Had a nice +1,3k day today as well though, so now, three weeks after the start of the challenge I'm standing at $13k. It looks like it's time to change my MTT schedule a bit and start playing the $55s!