common people

During the last 5 years of my career I've been kicked out of sites around 5 times and I had to deal with thousands of connection and banking problems. Although it earns you lot more than the avarage salary you can make in any other job, you're far away than realizing your full potential when playing poker from Turkey.

I'm saying these cause I've just been banned from the site I was recently playing because I reside in Turkey. Now I think I have to go manage my playing time between Full Tilt and Microgaming but I feel I really lost my energy to focus playing. I no longer wish to train myself as I was doing before and I'm playing a careless, mechanized poker most of the time. I find myself complaining how tough today's games are and how unlucky I am all the time.

There is truth in when I say I'm unlucky and it is true in the world's current economic situation the games are tough but I've just seen the video interview of Patrick Antonius which seems he made it as an answer to my doubts about online poker. When times are hard you just need to train more and focus more, otherwise you will be one of the money suppliers to the poker economy.

I always said I never complained about dropping my stakes, although it hurts me now to admit that I feel uncomfortable at stakes like 2-4, I think I will drop my self down until nl 200 to grind full time until I gain my full confidence on Full Tilt and Micro. Then I believe I can make it up untill nl 2000 in a short period of time if the games allow.

http://www.pokertube.com/ChannelFilms.aspx?movie=13857&freetext=antonius is the link to the video which helped me to regain my lost belief in poker.

Good luck all,

Vamos el Mambo!

It's been a long time since I posted my last entry here. Well things didn't go better, but I've been stubborn enough not to quit poker, instead I decided to take coaching for my HU which I've lost the biggest amount during the past few months.

Well I can say that the coaching helped a lot and I put myself on the road again. I had to quit Boss Media and I'm now playing on Microgaming and Entraction which I'm not very happy about because of the amount of fishes around and the willingness to play of other regulars. I always hated these bumhunters, now I hate them even more and I will hate them for the rest of my life. They don't let you grind regularly all the tables broke and a new one appears all the time with a new fish there.

Because of bankroll issues I had to drop to 5/10 but unfortunately because of banking issues I'm stuck at 2/4 at microgaming and I can't find any 6-max games on Entraction. I have to grind fast to have a reasonable amount of roll at Micro.

I'm more and more into my game theory study at the university. Being a semi-pro is decreasing the amount that can be won at poker dramatically but also we have only one life so we have to do things that satisfies us and makes us happy as well as earning money.

I now can better understand the feelings of old-school regulars that can't win anymore online. As the competition get tougher more and more regulars will find themselves in the same place. And unfortunately knowing a lot about poker doesn't help you much in other careers in life. If I would be a dictator I would penalize gambling for the sake of cumulative happiness of the people probably, but no I'm afraid not, I'm a liberal I just can't do that, I even don't think I would penalize any kind of drug.

Well gl guys if anyone still reads this blog.

let's run the improbability drive

I made a mistake and I played against the same guy I played yesterday. I lost 13k , here are the hands:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172914 I don't know what can I put him on, in this one I called and I lost. I'm not folding second pair with draw on 1/4 pot to stack ratio and he check raises turns with draws as well.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172930

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172931

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172934

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172939

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172942

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172946

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172949

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172956

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172959




This was not the only HU I played today, there is another HU game and also some 6 max

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172973

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172985

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172994

I know his calling range in this one, so I thought I had the best hand 90% of the time. I hit my pair on turn unfortunately
http://www.pokerhand.org/?5172996

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5173006



I played a short 6 max table, there was an action giving guy so I was lucky I had two big hands against him:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5173009
http://www.pokerhand.org/?5173016

Besides facing the top range of everyone, I am 30 k down in equity this month so far, I don't know why I am playing poker or if I will continue to do so...

worst possible run

it's been around 6 months that poker is going really really bad.

I'm more than 65k euro down in equity during the last 6 months (at least 65 k cause I calculated the mucked cards on boss as if the villain has the hand with the biggest equity possible and still I'm 65k down in equity). Only this month I'm 25 k below equity.

Well this is not the biggest of the problems. The biggest problem is that I'm always against the top of the range of people when I make a hand. I just ended a HU match against a huge fish who doesn't fold anything at all and I lost him 10 k. He raises 80% and folds 20% to 3-bets, he 3-bets 24% and folds 18% to 4-bets. He cbets %70 and folds %22 to raises on flop. and when vs a cbet he folds 36% on 3 bet pots. I played 6,7 k hands vs him and here are the big pots..

I made a 2 pair on a 3 bet pot against him:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170861


if you think he is capable of folding KQ in a similar spot: a bluff attempt
http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170849


I called his 3 bets on deep tables 35 times with pp's, I made set two times, first of them was check folded by him (one of the 2-3 times he did) the other one was below:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170867


here is how my KK is crushed:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170870


if you think he is able to fold any pair, don't:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170872

I couldn't fold this one, maybe I should have but couldn't put him to anything reasonable

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170877

here comes another hero call attempt by me, maybe you won't agree but I would call this against this guy if we play the hand 100 times more, I know that any pp pushes pf and any pair is pushing on the flop, this is full or trips only:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170883

here you can see an example of the usual line of the guy:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170892


yes he calls 4 bets and flops something nice:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170898

it's not possible to beat him

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170907

I thought I was finally lucky in this one:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170908

going all in with AK pf is a bit speewy against him

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170912

AA doesn't hold neither, a weird line by me, I maybe a bit on tilt on this one:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170918

did I say he doesn't fold to 4-bets?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170922

hey look I have an overpair, how would you like I lose this one?

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5170927


well, this goes on a bit more with smaller pots and I didn't post the coinflips I lost, I won some hands as well but they weren't enough to cover my losses. The HU against this guy was almost a resumé of what is happening to me in general. This was just a little bit more intense.

My patience is at its end

Sors salutis et virtutis michi nunc contraria, est affectus et defectus semper in angaria

I don't want to talk about this but I wanna keep a record of it. This month I met the wrath of variance. I really don't want to tell badbeat stories and if I start I'll have to write hundreds of hands. Every day after beeing sucked out in big pots and lost every coinflip I told my self that the next day would be a better day, but in fact it turned out that the next day was even worse. I'm grateful such a downswing hit me in my 4th year of playing poker because if I would have experienced it earlier I'd go broke or quit playing poker because it would seem like total nonsense.

Again I see that poker is not a game for everyone, people lack the temper to handle this variance.

O Fortuna, velut luna statu variabilis, semper crescis aut decrescis

I ended september with a very small amount of winnings but it's ok for a downswingy month. I try to play HU with regs around but a few of them is interested. Luckily the guy "ki$$e" from Sweden played a long session with me. Although he crashed me in the beginning I managed to cath up a little bit in the following days. He thinks I run better than Hussain Bolt, I think he runs better than Flash. We'll see who is right when we'll have the oppurtunity to play enough hands to minimize the luck factor.

That game with the guy made me realize that I'm still an underdog against a good HU player. I started to play nl100 and nl200 HU's in Full Tilt and it surprised me how good the players in these little stakes are at Full Tilt. They have weaknesses but not that obvious fundemental ones. It seems that they all have a very solid structured game and playing 500 hands with each of the regs I found around was a perfect exercice for my HU during the end of the month.

By the way I made one of my worst ever run in terms of bb/100 during this exercice period. Luckily I haven't suffered this in the usual stakes I'm playing (or maybe I did and I can't count them cause it's impossible to calculate EV adjusted in Boss) Here are the results of my small stakes HU games:

Ok I uploaded the pic in a weird manner but it seems ok. Well, yes I suggest you all to give it a try to play small stakes HU at Full Tilt to exercice. I will do it a little bit more in the future and try to increase my stakes (playing with 20 bi right now, I'll increase it when I reach at 5-10 probably)


My PhD starts this week therefore I'm not sure if I'll be able to play as much as before, but I am very dedicated about playing poker and doing the PhD and sacrifice my social life except my girlfriend this year.

gl all.

ride of the valkryies or the anschluss of austria

I am here to discuss why people are playing poker. From bottom to top people have many different drives to play poker. I read an article at cardrunners.com about 2 years ago, the title was "poker economy" and the author was trying to categorize where the money comes from and where it goes in a poker network (in terms of winning and losing players, exluding the network fees). We have blue collars, white collars and whales for losing players and we have different stakes pros as winning players.

Blue collars are the ones playing very small mtt's once or twice a week and micro stakes cash. They can afford losing 5-25 dollars a week and when they hit the prize in a tourney they usually withdraw their money. Poker is a kind of entertainment for them when they come from work to home and they like to tell the stories of how they won a prize in tourney when they do. I believe this segment is the most important of all as it keeps the big machine working.

White collars have a higher status in real life than the blue collars. They are managers or small entrepreneurs with a huge ego that comes with it. They like poker because they like to compete, they like to proove that they are smarter than other people. They can afford losing up to 1000 dollars a month and satisfy themselves about being smarter than others while blaming their luck for the amount they've lost. When they hit a big prize in a tourney they usually tend to sit at a high stakes cash game. They are important because they move the money from bottom to top.

Whales are very rare to find in online poker but there are more of them in casinos. They are rich people who see poker as a way of interacting with common people and realize how rich they are. They enjoy watching other people winning or losing and seeing how important that amount of money for them. They don't care much about winning or losing, they like that ambiance where everything is related with the money in the middle. That's why they don't care which stake they are playing but they enjoy playing higher stakes more.

There's not much to talk about the winning players. Most of them are playing to earn their lives and when you're playing online you're confronted with them 80-90% of the time. But there are people who have different drives amongst them as well. When I asked Mr.Aki why he still plays poker and how he didn't lose his ambition, he replied "respect". I said I'm sure he's getting enough respect, one must be fool not to show him respect, then he said "there are different levels of respect". Well, that I believe shows the difference between being a winning player and a top player.

GL all.