Only two weeks left until my vacation in England. I will visit Manchester an other cities like Sheffield, Liverpool and Leeds-Bradford. My hotel will be the Premier Inn in Old Traford, so I’m near the enemy (I’m a Gunner). I hope that ten days are enough to see most interesting things in the cities. The good thing is that the train is very cheap in England. I only payed 28 pounds for the the three cities (1way and return).

After my holdidays I will upload many pictures for you from all the cities to get an england feeling ;-). In Austria the summer has now arrived and its getting hotter and hotter. That’s a thing you don’t have to worry about in England. It’s never too hot ;-).

I’m looking forward to the semi finals and hope that the Netherlands and Spain will win cause I really like that teams (sorry Tobi :P). I will update the blog once or twice until my holidays and maybe also in my holidays. Last thing as every time will be the monthly graph. Good luck at the tables to all of our readers! :-)

I have 27k VPP left to collect until I’m Supernova. I hope I can accomplish this target until my holidays. Football WM is not my best friend in these days, I struggle to collect the points I need. Today i made a PLO 2k shot which ended up losing one stack because I hit zero and on my table where one loose fish and you can imagine that the action there was really loose aggressive. So i had no chance, although I tried to play looser Preflop.

I’m now looking forward to evening football match England vs Algeria. Gareth Barry is back in the team which should be the key to succes for the English team. So there is no Gerrad-Lampard in the central Midfield (Gerrad should be now lef-midfield) which is the best thing that could happen.

Germany today lost against Serbia and also lost his favorite position. Not a big suprise in my opinon because Serbia have normaly a very good Defence and a solid Offense. The key point off course was the yellow-red card for Klose. Badstuber had big problem with Krasic and I’m thrilled if he will play against Ghana or if Jansen get his chance. It wasn’t a bad match by Germany at all but Podolski wasted too many chances.

Slovenia vs USA was suprisingley a very good match. In general the second round at the World Cup is much better than the first round. The first round was really boring but now the matches are getting better. I hope this continue…

Like every time the last thing will be my Graph (1-15) . Good luck on the tables to all of our readers! :-)

I open two wonderful cards from EP/MPish and the guy direct on my left flats me. Flop is 445 rainbow, I cbet, he raises and I 3bet and he calls. At this point it was fairly clear to me what he has (a one-pair holding) and I want to bomb him off. Turn J, I bet he calls and river is a disgusting 4 and I still shove because I think I still get enough folds. He calls fairly quickly with AA and wins an 800bb pot.

San Marino in general is pretty sweet, the food is great and the location stunning. Went running today and the panoramic view is really awesome. The restaurant in my hotel is pretty awesome as well (apart from the prices). Haven’t found a pub or anything similar yet, but that’s not a big deal since from here to Rimini it’s 30mins.

Last week at Portroz was pure party 4 days long. I really enjoyed it even if I felt really tired at times. I busted out there immediately on Day2 after I had a humongous chiplead after a couple of hours at Day1a. Unfortunately I kept running with TT into AA and with AQ into AK :/.

Going to bed now, I’m somewhat k.o. after grinding online all day long after my quick appearance at the IPT. Would love to have a massage right now, too bad there is no such thing here :(.

-tob

Of course it’s a little bit frustrating to hit another 2^nd place but I can’t really complain. I totally misplayed a hand with 8 left, where I 4bet 88 preflop and have to call a push from the chipleader when I was the 2^nd biggest stack. He had KK and I bink an 8 on the flop… I mean what can I say?! That pot pushes me to almost 500k aka 50% of chips in play and from there on it was almost easy since I crippled the best player of the remaining field, another good guy was kinda short and the remaining 5 players were really scared money. After agreeing the deal the HU lasted about 5 minutes before I busted out as 2^nd. Day1 was kinda exhausting, run with AK in AA for a huge pot, lost 90% of flips and check-shipped a bare A-high FD against topset for a massive pot which I lost. Still I managed to accumulate lots of chippies since the field was really soft. In Day2 I activated as mentioned before the beloved god-mode, just lost one smallish pot with AJ vs A5. Rest of the 70/30 I won, won about 3 of 4 flips, sucked out big with 88 and had a soulread on the future so I agreed to the deal. This almost-win pushes my weekly profit to over 50k. It’s only my second 50k+ week ever thus I’m obv. superhappy.

Playing a smallish €550 donkament in Portroz (Slovenia) in couple of days. It’s more like holidays but still I’ll try to win that as well : ). I’ll keep you guys posted.

-tobi

After more than a half month later I would say there is a chance that I will potentially try it again but not soon. The Pound/Euro exchange rate is now horrible at the moment and my whole money that I have (also my BR) is in Euro. When I flew to England the exchange rate was 1/0,88 and now it is 1/0,828.

My my next England trip will be soon in mid July but just as holiday. I will tell you more about the vacation in one of my next blog entries :-).

The poker month may began very good but ended really bad. My first losing month this year and also the first month with a negative EV. At the end of the month my poker play was just bad, I tilted very soon in a session and my minset was also a problem. I felt really bad and had the feeling I couldn’t make one good session.

The consequence of that was that I moved down to 1/2 just to get a good feeling, to get my concentration back, to get self confidence back and to improve my play. I also have to add that I felt that I was very lazy in may with studying my game and watching videos. A big mistake in my opionon and maybe one of the reasons why this month become so bad (I should also add that I hadn’t had more setups in month than may). So I try to get June to a much better poker month than may. As usual the blog entry will end with a graph of the month (or half the month cause i played just from mid to end of may) and of course I wish you all good luck on the tables! :-)

I’ll be staying here till Tuesday as I grind with my young padawans Majors and the Italian version of SCOOP. Played about 18 hour’s life poker and had not a single tough spot. Pretty boring but that’s live poker I guess. Of course I spewed as usual and I almost always got away with it. Busted out from the ME with TP vs OESD for pretty decent stack very early in Day2. I’ve never ran good in the side but managed to stay in there almost 8 hours before busting in flippaments.

Pretty expensive weekend overall, I’ve lost a bunch with prop bets and last longer as well. Going out now, having little bit fun before shipping tomorrow : o )

-tob

My schedule for June and July is this:

27.05.2010 – 01.06.2010:
Poker Grand Prix Saint Vincent

05.06.2010 – 06.06.2010:
Casino Seefeld Open

09.06.2010 – 14.06.2010:
Power Poker Championship Portrose

16.06.2010 – 21.06.2010:
Italian Poker Tour San Marino

24.06.2010 – 28.06.2010:
Poker Grand Prix Saint Vincent

15.07.2010 – 19.07.2010:
Casino Austria Poker Tour Velden

22.07.2010 – 26.07.2010:
Poker Grand Prix Saint Vincent

28.07.2010 – 02.08.2010:
Italian Poker Tour Venice

Everything but Seefeld is final. I’m very happy with this schedule and I prefer this plan instead of the Vegas plan. In the meantime I’ve become good friends with Bebo and Pao and I’d like to play with them (live and online). I also decided to grind heavily MTTs in June, beginning the 30^th of May till the 13^th of June. In this time period Stars.it runs SCOOP and they guarantee lots of money what will attract lots of fish. I’ll play as many events as possible and I’m looking forward to do some props.

After the series I’ll take a little break and won’t play too much online besides Sundays. I still want to learn lots of things about live-tells and that’s just one of the thousand things I want to study. Obviously I won’t study day and night because there is the Football World Cup and I also want to go on mountains fairly often. Recently I started mountain-running at the break of dawn and I love it. It feels fantastic and life seems so peaceful.

I want to conclude this post with an amusing picture of Bebo who shipped his first Sunday Major last weekend. He won the Major on Gioco Digitale and shipped 19k€. Good thing he and Pao always play from my flat and we split all tournaments we play together evenly 33% so I won a little bit money as well : ).

-tobi

Again, I slept not even three hours and I felt like a piece of shit. In addition I run out of Guarana and Caffeine pills. The first half hour was actually pretty nice, we’re playing 6 handed and I was totally crushing the table. I think I raised something like 20 hands in a row and nobody played back at me ever. Couple of minutes later keyhand#1 occurs. Blinds are 25/50 and two very loose passive players limp in front of me and I raise obviously the button with KTo to 275. Flop is AK7 with 2 clubs and the initial limper donkbets 1/3 pot. The Italian guy murmurs something like “I have to call” and is acting a little bit weird. Now that’s exactly what I’ve learned the past few days, he is acting weak and strange in combination with his muttering what means he is actually pretty damn strong. Then he calls. I realize that this is actually every single time a hand close to the nuts but refuse to go with my read and raise to 975. I do this because I thought his muttering is an unconscious act, I did not expect him to be a actor. First villain folds and the Italian guy calls. Turn is a blank and he checks and I bet for value as I’m sure he’s continuing  to call me down with FD’s and worse Ks. I bet something like 1,4k and he c/r to 3k. Now here is definitely the point where I just have to fold but again I misinterpret the tells he is giving me and call down. Luckily he checks river and I check back and he shows me A7. On the turn he acted a little bit weird as well, he was kinda nervous and people are more often nervous when they have a hand than when they don’t. Online I’d have raised the flop as played and bet the turn and then fold every single time to his c/r. However, I think live this is a pretty trivial flop fold because it’s so obvious what he has, but unfortunate I was unable to realize that.

Keyhand#2 is another horrible played hand where I 3bet IP JJ vs and MP raiser. First of all I 3bet too little, I made it about 975 when he openraises to 350. Online this might be okay but live, deep against a random fish I have to build the pot. Now flop is Kxx with a flushdraw on board and he donks 1,2k in me. I call. So far so good. Turn is an A and he bets 1,4k and I call. Now this is a pretty trivial fold I have no fucking idea why I thought I had to call but I do remember my wooly thought process that I had to call any non-fd hit river if I call turn. Yeah he bombs river I snap and he has AQ. Awesome.

Little bit later I reshove once with 66 with 25bbs bvb and villain folds. The very next hand I repush 99 vs open and cold call for about 30bb+ and got snapped by KK and my tournament was over :/. Push is pretty standard, villans are definitely capable of calling me with worse and I don’t wanna play a multiway pot at all. All day long I felt a little bit dizzy because of the absence of sleep and I think that made the difference today. It doesn’t feel good to burn 2k that way but at least I had a somewhat forgiving Saturday night (after I slept an hour and watched how Bayern won German cup) with another +3k day (the 3th this week :]).

-tobi