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

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

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.

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 : )

First of all, what is PQ? Punto Quota is a local gambling provider and they recently launched a poker client (Italian Ipoker network). I’ve talked with the responsible persons and they seem happy as well to have me in their team. I’m very satisfied that I’m able to play totally variance free the tournaments I want to play.

I’m going to sign next week and the first tournament I’ll be playing is the EPT San Remo and in case I bust that early the 2k Side Event. After San Remo I’ll be playing the CAPT and the PGP in May and immediately after I’ll be playing WSOP. End of June again PGP followed by CAPT and another PGP in July.

Happy Easter!

-tobias

On an average I slept 4 hours a night and never went to bed before 7am. Luckily I had a personal wake-up service provided by Pao and Alberto :P. We grinded something like 13 hours a day and then went out every single time. It wasn’t obviously not the best thing to do while we’re still in the tournament, but we managed to had tons of fun w/o drinking too much. In fact all I needed was maybe some more hours of sleep, but fortunately there exist things like guarana and caffeine.

The tournament organization was really good, there were no queues, no problems, everyone was friendly and the tournament started punctual. Even the buffet in the hotel was good. Now I know this is standard for most other tournaments (in other countries), but from my past experience with Italian donkaments I’ve never seen such a good organization.

I’m not going to talk too much about the tournament, mainly because there were not too many interesting/though spots. I also run godlike in table and seating draws, besides the first couple of hours in Day1 I had the aggressive guys and those with chips always to my right. I finished Day1 as chipleader, I had probably 2 or 3 all-ins as a big to huge favorite and won them all. Rest of the chippies I got by simply playing smart and lagish IP, 3betting a ton and playing straightforward OOP.

Day2 started very interesting because I had a totally crazy chick on my right. She kept owning my soul as I continued to miss every single flop when we tangled. Later I had her on my table when we’re on the bubble and out of 10 hands I probably won 8. The other 2 hands she 4bet me or did some other sick stuff to get me to fold or play weakish. She was definitely one of the better players in the tournament, in fact I even think she’s the best female player I’ve ever seen.

I was told he plays goodish and so I decided to test him out immediately and if appropriate abuse him. Basically playing like I always do : ). After couple of hands I had to show him that I 3bet 75o vs his EP open because Pao 4bet shipped over me and I was pot committed. Shortly after that he 4bet shipped 22 vs my KK preflop and binked his 2 outer. If I win this pot I fly to almost 1,2millions and would have had about 33% of all chippies with 16 players left. But okay, poker doesn’t work like this and I know and accept that. After the beat I was down to little under 200k and I proceed to lose every all-in possible and so I busted in 14^th. However, I’m pretty happy with my performance and I really enjoyed playing. Bebo busted similar with JJ vs 88 in 12^th place and Pao made the final table, but busted a little but unfortunate in 5^th place for almost 19k.

*Pics provided by CardplayerItalia.com

Recently both of them signed a sponsorship deal with a local gambling provider and thus they are able to play some live donkaments. Yesterday we met and they told me about the donkament and obviously I couldn’t resist. Pretty excited for this one, structure is fairly good, 20k starting stack, 1 hour levels, really deep play early on and with 1,5k€ buyin something okay to shot with my damaged bankroll. I expect about 200-250 runners what would be nice.

Pretty happy to be here although unfortunately I’m not in the same hotel as the other guys but that’s okay, the town is really small and the hotels are very close anyway. Hopefully I run good these days and if I don’t that’s kind of okay as well because we’re definitely going to make a little bit of party here :P

Stay tuned for some pics, hands and trip report. Wish me luck

-tob

Dessweiteren wurde ich heute richtig schön gerippt. €2k am Flughafen umgetauscht und nur 1,3k britische Pfund bekommen. Ärgerlich und nicht notwendig. Dafür habe ich mich bereits fürs Main Event angemeldet. Im Moment bin ich Entry#93. Ich hoffe das wird bis morgen nochmal deutlich mehr.

Livereporting gibt es übrigens hier und hier (livestream).

Hab heute noch nichts gegessen und warte verzweifelt auf den Roomservice bei dem ich schon vor Ewigkeiten was bestellt habe. Danach gehts direkt ins Bettchen, hab heute auch noch nicht geschlafen =)