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

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

The day started pretty bad, I barley slept three hours. In Austria I was stopped by the police because I was driving too fast, but hey, I even run well with tickets. The policewoman obviously fell in love to my innocent face and I got a discount from €25 to €10 :P.

I arrived 30 minutes late and I realized what crappy tournament structure the CAPT was since we’re almost in level 2 and only 15 minutes to go for level 1. Also the structure was kinda bad. Till dinner-break I was shortstacking all the time, I lost more or less every hand I played and was soon down to 4-5k (initial was 10k). I won flips lost flips blah it was one big grind. After the dinner-break I was able to win 4 flips in a row within 15 minutes and very soon I had almost 3 times average.

Later in the day I had Ivo Donev and Heinz Kamutzki at my table, Heinz a very good player and Ivo.. well let me tell you a some things about Ivo. I think he’s the most unfriendly poker player I’ve ever met. First he was talking shit all the time and then he wanted to teach me about what I am. I told him I was south tyrolean but he insisted that South Tyrolean’s don’t exist and thus I’ve to be Italian. That sounds like a phrase of a braindead Italian racist coming from a Bulgarian immigrant in Austria lol. I mean honestly I don’t give a fuck what people think and when they think I’m wrong that’s okay, when they think I’m stupid that’s okay as well but when people start berating me or want to instruct me about my nationality than they clearly have crossed the line. At the end if you can count 2+2 together it might be also possible for you to understand that nationality and citizenship are two different things. By all means I’m not unhappy to have an Italian citizenship, but this will never change the fact that I’ll be always German (or South-Tyrolean or Austrian or w/e). At the end I don’t even care when people think I’m Italian, I’ll take that with a smile. But I do get on tilt is when I meet such arrogant persons like Ivo. Sadly Ivo isn’t the exception and there are enough Italians who berate me and if I don’t put up my headphones in time I don’t play my A-Game anymore. On the other hand there is to say that most people at least accept my point of view and many of time are nice guys. Maybe someday I’ll understand why people start talking about this, about me or why this bothers them so much.

So I didn’t have the best start with Ivo, but what comes now is just lol. Ivo opens UTG (he’s tilting pretty heavily) and it folds to the SB who is Johan Brolenius. He thinks for a while and then folds and Ivo thought he was the BB. Ivo turns his cards and I see a black one and a red one and one of them was a nine. I told him I did see a 9 and make the call with QJo. Flop is Jxx I check and he openpushes (!!) 50k into 8k and I snap. He jumps up from his chair and starts berating me lol. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Knowing that he has one nine I have the fucking nuts and there is nothing I can do but calling. Then he starts saying things like I will regret this, I am an unfair player, I will pay for this ect. before he eventually berates me for calling QJo pre. Now honestly, I’d never fold that against him. He’s tilting so heavy after Heinz showed him a bluff and he opens almost every hand. He’s also doing some crazy/bad postflop stuff. Of course this is a muck against 95% of the players but I just cannot muck it against him. After Ivo busted the table was chatting about the hand and they agreed that there is nothing I did wrong.

I continued to build my stack to almost 120k and was very likely the chipleader with 20 left. With 20 left I got Markus Lehmann moved to my immediate left. He’s capable of applying pressure and obviously that’s not someone you wanna have on your left. However, I reacted accordingly, played snug (to not say really tight) because after him there were two other shorties. Not the best table draw but whatever. Then I open 43s from the CO and Markus 3bets me OTB. He made it about 2.5x my 3bet and I decided to click it back and he insta 5bet a-i. Now I had about 35 BBs and and usually you cannot 4bet/fold there. However, my image was nitty (I even gave him a walk once!) and he is playing the BU really aggressively. My preflop raise was small, his 3 bet was small and my 4bet was smallish as well. I thought his 5bet shipping range is not wider than AK,JJ+ and against that range I cannot call with 43s. If I add in AQ and TT to his range than I had to call but I don’t think he is 5betting them a-i against someone relatively tight random (and definitly not in that speed). So I threw my cards into the muck but unfortunately they collide with the button and turn over. Not only have I lost a good chunk of my stack I also know people are not going to give me too much respect in 4bet pots :/. Little bit later I made a standard reshove with QJs and got snapped by AKs and failed to suck out for 40bb’s total.

By the way Pokerfirma covers the CAPT tournaments and makes live reporting. They also took a picture of me where I seem a little bit tilty (I think it was after the 4bet :P).

Stay tuned for the 2k report guys and wish me luck

-tobi

I busted from the Main Event as 47^th for 19k. Day4 started pretty brutal. I’ve never felt so sleepy in my whole life I think. Okay that’s obviously exaggerated but it comes close. Sunday evening I eat dinner with Pokerccini and his friend and then we went out for a beer. So far so good. We decided that it’s best to go home early to be in good shape for tomorrow. Well, they had their hotel near the casino, mine was somewhere in the hills, at least 25 minutes away from the casino. On my way home I met Andy who I had at the table Sunday and we started chatting about various poker stuff. Somehow we decided to drink something, talk a little bit more about the game ect. Later a friend of him joined us and we’re discussing strategy, drinking couple of beers and having fun. I think at 12pm I decided to stop drinking and I switched to coke, but refused to go home because I thought it would be no problem for me to get up tomorrow. At 1am the bar closed and the guys wanted to go to the strip club, the last place in town where you can get alcohol. They somehow convinced me to come with them, at least for one beer. Well I did come with them and I wish I never did lol. To cut a long story short, I lost my sunglasses in the night club, went home, realized I lost them and had to go all the way back to get them. That’s more than one hour of night wandering trough San Remo. I have no fucking idea how late it was when I finally lie down in my bed but I do remember the fucking frogs in the hotel garden because they made such unbelievable loud noises. Of course I couldn’t sleep because I was loaded with caffeine. Honestly, caffeine tilts the hell out of me. I cannot drink coffee because my heart starts beating something like 400 beats per minute and coke has 99% of the time no effect on me. The only time it does I really want to sleep. Then of course I start pushing myself and that make things so much worse. It’s a vicious cycle, or I fall into sleep within the first couple of minutes I go to bed or I need literally hours to fall into sleep. I do remember the sunrise and my clock showing me it’s something like 6am till I finally fall into sleep. Obviously the tournament started at (!) 12am. Luckily I managed to get up somehow, took a cold shower and sprinted to the casino where the play was about to start. I better stayed in the hotel room as I busted out after 75 minutes right before the break. I had a total of three key hands that day and the first one I sucked out with 54s vs AA. I have no fucking idea what crossed my mind but I did 3bet Alan Baekkes openraise and a cc from a guy with 5-7bb. I mean I saw that this guy is damn short and I realized that this is every single time AA but I had a complete blackout for exactly this hand and I did 3bet and of course I sucked out for about 130k pot :o). In addition I obtained an awesome monkey image and immediately after that hand the French guy against who I lost with KK vs AA pf-ai for 200bb pot in Day2 decided to 3bet/snap for 60bb effectively with AQ. I was pretty happy with AK but we split for a massive 1,5-1,6 million pot. Shortly after that I flat QTo OTB vs his open and the BB comes along. BB is Swedish but seemed not really good. However, flop is 987 rainbow everybody checks to me and I lead for 2/3ish pot. The Swedish guy c/r with J8o, French guy folds and I ship it in despite the fact that I know I should have 0% FE. The problem is my hand plays way to good against his range. I was kinda surprised that he did not snapcall and he had to do the math before calling but whatever. I couldn’t improve and busted out.

I was grinding a little after San Remo, mainly because I had to and not because I wanted to. The fact that I run breakeven for another 500 SNGs/MTTs against an army of looney toons isn’t exactly the best thing for my grinding morals. At least I had fun. Bebo came almost every day to me and we grinded together. I think I never laugh so much while grinding. He’s down about 250 buyins in EV in 6max and 9max SNGs and he kept losing every fucking flip and 60/40 a-i. Italians are generally way more emotional than German or Austrian are but now image an Italian with some minor tilt issues losing every fucking pot. That’s fun big time :D. Of course I’m down as well millions in EV but whatever, that’s poker. At Sundays “The team” (PQ Poker team; Pao, Bebo and me) grinded Sunday Majors without any success. But again, fun was king and I was able to coach my students : ). Pao made a very deep run in the $322 Sunday FTOPs and busted out with about 90 left in a coinflip for the chip lead. Bebo made a deep run in the $640 ME but refused to suck out with AQs vs KK with about 200 left :/. Talking about “The Team”, we’re planning to rent an office for grinding. If that’s happening that’s probably the best investment I’ve ever made in my poker career. Not only is this going to be lots of fun but it’s also very hard to impossible (at least for me) to tilt with someone besides me. Also I don’t waste time doing stupid not necessary stuff, I just play poker : ). Not to mention the motivation boost and the pleasant side effect to be in a room with two other people who think similarly.

I’ve already made my May plans and I’m pretty satisfied with them. I plan to play about 500 6max 100s SNGs on PQ. Then I’ll play definitely the 1k and the 2k CAPT Innsbruck Open what is basically my home game. At the end of the month I’ll be again in Saint Vincent to play the 1,5k. I’m really looking forward to this as there will be again Pao and Bebo. However, my main focus of attention will be studying. I never learned anything about live tells and I have no specific knowledge about how people act and so on. That’s really something I want to understand and I think it will be quite useful as I’m playing so much live now. The monthly schedule sounds kinda lazy but I did this intentionally because with the arrival of cash game I want to grind really hard. Since PGP in March my life is one big party, it feels like having 4 Saturdays a week instead of one. I really enjoy life at the moment but to be honest, I can’t wait for the arrival of cashgame on the .it sites and the hardcore grinding and study sessions. Speaking of cashgame, I really want to skip Vegas if cashgame is introduced within June. And even if it’s not until July, I think I want to stay here, play some Italian tournaments and make lots of theory instead of mono tabling almost 9000km away from home in the desert.

I haven’t heard anything of Homer yet, probably they arrested him because he insisted to buy the Buckingham Palace :D

So far, tobi

Haven’t played too many before dinner break, but when I did than I 3bet about 80% of the time. Table was awfully tough: seat 1 HoldemDBoss, seat 2 italian satty qualifier who wasn’t terrible but in this competition definitely the soft spot, seat 3 me, seat 4 tight French ps qualifier, seat 5 BKice, seat 6 Barry Greenstein, seat 7 english high stakes cash player, seat 8 italian GD pro, seat 9 italian random pro, seat10 old good Swedish guy. I know BKice from 2+2 but never met him or anything but I can tell you he’s nightmarish player, you really don’t want him on your left side.

After the dinner break I activated god-mode, my image finally pays off and I double up the first hand. My KK hold vs AQs for 80bb eff. and I fly over 50k. Couple of minutes later BKice busted out w/ QQ vs AA AI-PF. As soon as he left I started raising all kind of crap and people did not play back. Slowly I was chipping up. Little later I got it in AI-PF JJ vs AA in BVB and I sucked out for 60bb eff and I fly to 110k : ). I also busted HoldemDBoss (stars pro and one of the best Italian 9max SNG player) w/ AT on T88 (up to 165k) when I minraised his cbet and he shipped J9 and I hold. All in all I played pretty decent but I’m not really happy with my overall performance. Haven’t misplayed anything but lost focus couple of times and failed to pick up important things. Hopefully I’ll improve my performance tomorrow.

Live chipudates can be found here. Livereporting is on Pokernews.it, Pokernews.com and like 1 milion blogs.

The good things:

• Sponsorship: I’m really fortunate to get such a nice opportunity. And this only because I played a tournament I had no intention on playing. Good that Pao and Bebo convinced me to play the PGP.

• Grinding: When I decided to grind I grinded. I grinded A LOT and most of the time very effectively. I’m really happy how I’m able to keep a high level concentration for couple of hours. It’s important that I learn to keep this level of concentration over more than just one or two weeks, that’s one of the most important quests the next months.

• Living healthy: Till beginning/mid March I had a somewhat regular sleep schedule, I worked out at least twice a week and I drank no alcohol. I felt really well.

The bad things:

• Downswings: 2010 from a monetary view is terrible. I run awful everywhere. It doesn’t matter what I do or play I’m down in EV ton’s of monies and I should have so much more than my actual winnings what are just rakeback. The only good thing here is that I’m still in a good mindset.

• My plans: It doesn’t matter how many I make I keep ditching them sooner or later. On the other hand I’m happy with my live and I’m happy that I can do whatever I want.. but still I’d like to see myself a little more persistent.

• Last couple of weeks: From hero to zero, I throw my good work ethic and my New Year Resolution overboard and turned into a lazy bastard.

Good thing that I’ll start tomorrow for San Remo. Tomorrow everything is going to change, again. : )

tob

14.04  -22.04 EPT San Remo
09.05 – 16.05 CAPT Innsbruck Open
27.05 – 30.05 Poker Grand Prix Saint Vincent
05.06 – 16.06 WSOP
24.06 – 27.06 Poker Grand Prix Saint Vincent
11.07 – 18.07 CAPT Velden
22.07 – 25.07 Poker Grand Prix Saint Vincent

Very happy with this schedule and already excited : )