A new start at poker

I was too tired to play 6-max today so I decided it was time to get some experience in HU. But then a thing happened I know SakiSaki talked about a while ago: Nobody wanted to play me I sat in on a table, played 20 hands and then the guy says: "You are good, GG". I like "what?" You are a winning player, do you just play against real real fish? I cant say I am a good HU player since I almost havnt played that game at all and they reject me just because I can 3bet and 4bet. This happened 3 or 4 times before I could play a guy 30 minutes after I really wanted to play.

How did it go then? Over 300 hands we battled it out pretty good. Until the last hand I was down 1/2 BI or something. I felt he had an advantage but not that huge, so if I played my A-game I felt I could beat him. We also had a nice flow in the game. However, the last hand I played terrible and had to quit the day.

I was a bit tired and didnt think too clear in the hand. He had played a hand like this before with like TP so I put him on like AJ/QQ or something and thought I could push him off the hand on the river (since I thought he would raise a really big hand on the turn). Guess my inexperience in HU comes in here.
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/603804

Guess I should stick to 6-max or atleast go down a level or something if I want to play HU.

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I went into the class today with a positive mind - thinking this could be a rather ok term. Well, it became a real bad beat!

My teacher tilted me so bad - it seemed like he couldnt speak with even the slightest entusiasm... He had the same tone in his voice all the time which is very annoying! I cant imagine how I will survive 5 months with him

My class seemed ok but none of the really bright people in the class came in my group. Whats worse, I happen to know most of them from before:
- cute girl who sometimes is ok but most of the time is pretty annoying. Guess she is quite the opposite of me so I guess she is ok deep inside.
- ok guy that has very determined thoughts - unfortunately they are not always that good. Not too brite but perhaps my escaperoute this year from going crazy.
- ugly girl that tilts me so bad just to see her. She has been in my group before so I know what to expect. She talkes so quietly and so slow that I kinda wish I could inject her with drugs so she becomes hyperactive (which would be like a normal person talking). When she walked into the classroom I wished with all my heart that she wouldnt be in my group but that didnt happen. She also lives outside Uppsala so she "decides" all the meetingtimes and now she is dragging me up 8:00 AM every morning to have the groupmeeting. Gahh!! She is also one of the few people in the whole education that I thought was going to quit because she is like one of the worst students ever.. I havnt heard like one good thought yet! WHY OH WHY?
- quiet girl that I dont know much about. Hope she is ok and if she is I can just ignore ugly girl and maybe get past the term without breaking all my stuff.
Not a good start of this year...

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the past two days I have played poker for the first time since november. The first hour yesterday felt really bad but today I felt the game coming and I feel it can become a really great pokeryear!

Tonight the pokersession didnt start well though. I lost a few big hands and was down 3BI after 300 hands. However almost everyone at the table was hugh fish so I didnt tilt or anything stupid and continued to play well. The turnaround came in this hand, one of the biggest pots in a long time:
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/602566

I ended the session 1/2BI up or something. Totally the past 2 days I´m up 1k, most of it from NL200 yesterday. Nice to get a good start and from now on I´ll try to crush NL400!

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I am really tired but happy to be home again! I have been on a long trip, first to Malmö to celebrate christmas and then to Sälen for a week of skiing. It has been two amazing weeks with lots of relaxing and fun!
I didnt belive it pre-trip but I have actually played some poker. Not online which is a pitty but against friends and relatives. Mostly we played who would buy the hot chokolate the next day in the ski slope or like 20SEK - and it has been lots of fun! Even if there was some hugh differences in skill I made it fun for myself (and for them) by playing a solid LAG style of 90/80/4


Before I can start my new pokeryear I need to make a summary of the past year.

2008 started ok and I was up €10k the first 4 months or so. When the summer came many things went wrong, I had a dowswing so I did many other stuff instead of playing poker. But as usually I recovered and this autumn has been fine - I´m up more the $10k. Live I am also up like 50k SEK during the year (probably more but I am not that great at writing down my results).
As a total for the year I think I am up like 275k SEK ($35k) or something (maybe a bit more but I dont have all the numbers since I started with PT3 first in august). Even if I had higher expectations for the year I am ok with this since I havnt played that many hands and havnt made the big effort I need to really improve and become a great player.


My goals for 2009 is to become so much better then I am right now. I will watch CR movies, go through my PT database after every session and try and find my leaks. I also want to play higher then I do now - a goal could be to play like NL1000 at the end of the year.
But I actually only have one big concrete goal for 2009: I want to have $25k in my pokeraccount in May (I have about half right now) - then I will fullfill a dream and go to Las Vegas! After that I will take a year off from lawschool, play poker and maybe study some economy if I feel for it. Except from this I wont set up too many goals. These first months I will do my best in poker, study some, start to train and just wait until the summer comes - I hope it will be epic!


Good luck every one in 2009 and I hope to see some of you in Las Vegas this summer!!

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So I had my exam yesterday. I dont think it went very well. I misinterpreted a question and I think that will result in me missing the highest grade I also got the fever right afterward so I was home sick instead of partying...

Well, around midnight I took a couple of aspirin and went to play some livepoker at a new place I havnt heard of before. It was such a nice place! A building furnished just for poker with a couple of nice tables, dealers, great people and free food if you wanted that. The game was 20/20 (SEK) and it was very loose! It was also very agressive with a standard raise pre to 140-200, and even if you raised more you would get several calls (we were playing 5-7 persons at the table).

I started of winning some pots on bluff just to give it back after a couple of missed flops etc. The first interesting pot came after an hour or so. UTG straddles, utg+1 limps (which was odd since he had raised several pots to 300 just before - he was ultraaggressive so I put him on a weak hand), I raised on the button to 200 with AJo, utg and utg+1 calls. Flop comes 443r and they checked to me. I bet 400 or something. utg folds, utg+1 raises like 800 more - but the way he acted told me he still was weak (and didnt hit the 4x - which is very likely hand in his range) He had done this many times before and I think he even has things like J9o in his range. So I pushed for like 3k and he calls with 56 and spikes the 7 on the river. Dont know if my play is good but it cant be that bad since I am only beat by 55, a 4 or a 3.

2 hands later I won it back from another player, me hitting top two on T75ss and got called by T9. The night ended ok with me slightly up.
I am definutely going back there! It was real fun and the loose-agressive style around the table gave great action and the people were very nice.

I also tried a small session online today but that went as bad as it can get. I played very bad and lost 1100$ in an hour. Guess it wasnt that surprising since I havnt played any livepoker in several weeks. Havnt decided yet but it could be a good thing to go down to NL200 just for a day to get my pokermind right again.

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I have my big exame tomorrow but I cant sleep! WTF, our gouverment has released a report (SOU in swedish, something like Swedish Government Official Report in english - anyway, the first step to a new law) that says a lot of bad things for poker in sweden!

I cant go into detail right now since I must go to bed but before I can do that I need to get out all my angry feelings somewhere.
Practical they want to make it much harder for us swedes to play poker!!

* Any form of live tournament play will be forbidden except in the casino (cashgame is already forbidden and that wont change)
* We will only be allowed to play internetpoker at svenskaspel.se (I give an extra mad smiley since I cant explain how much I hate that site!)
* They will prevent all other pokersites with a ban (our IP-adress will be prevented to go to their pokersite)

Cant see anything good come out of this!!

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Last week I mentioned that I promised myself that I would take a pokerbreak... suprisingly I am actually keeping it! I am studying 10-12 hours a day and when I come home I am too tired to be able to play, even if I wanted to. Guess I will keep on doing this until the 16th when the exame is. A good present if it goes well is to play some 3-500bb deep livepoker (10/20 SEK) against some people here in uppsala.. I am longing for that already!

Besides the school work I had the annual christmasconcert tonight! It went very well and I am so proud over my orchestra! It is a great feeling to play for more then 3000 people and get all the reactions afterwards! I am looking forward to next year already!


GL everyone at the table! I expect you all to run much better now that I am gone

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This month has been very odd in many ways and I have broken a few records:

* Least hands played in a month when I had the time to play: under 15k
* Best winning month ever: with RB and liveplay it´s almost exactly $7k
* Played my biggest pot so far, around 1500$
* Played above NL200 and felt comfortable (except NL400 I also played 150 hands at HUNL600, NL600 and NL1000 with a 1300$ profit)


So a good month lies behind me even though I havnt played much at all. I am happy over the result but not about my play. I give away a lot of money on the flop and I feel my big leek is there right now. I will try and improve that a lot when I pick up poker again.
One thing I am fairly pleased with is that I played about a 20/16/3 game this month, a nice step forward. Since the games are so aggressive in NL400+ I guess that is ok. Just a bit looser and more aggressive and I am happy!

Right now I am taking a small pokerbreak, my first in a winning streak. The next 2 weeks I am too busy to play and I dont want/cant have that destraction right now. I have a big exame the 16th and I have to study a lot to make a good result there. I am also having a big Christmas-concert next sunday so the orchestra, the choir etc will have to practice some to make it work. So there will be little time to play poker...

Finally the monthly graph:




Goals for december:
* Find some time to play poker. As it seems now I wont be able to play many days at all..
* Win the few times I manage to play. This month I won almost 7BB/100, thats a very high number but if I can get 3 I am happy..

GL everyone in December!

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Yesterday I went to the casino for the 5th time this year. I love it! The atmosphere is great and when you are a bit tired you can walk away, go get something to eat and just discuss everything with your friends! It also helps when you feel you are the captain of the table, pawning at everyone and getting respect with your plays

The big difference yesterday compared to the other visits was the action around the table. The blinds are 20/20 (SEK) and before the action was like utg: "160" - call-call-call-call. Yesterday it went a lot like: limp-limp-limp-limp all the way around to me in late position. I make it 200. Either I get 6 callers or 1 (depending mostly on the first limper). If I get one caller he would always check the flop, I CB and he folds. If I get several callers I just hope to hit a big hand and stack someone It was just so easy to play against them as they almost told me what they had.

One example: 1 person limps and I raise 76o to 160 in middle position. The SB calls and the limper too. Flop is QJ7r. SB donkbets halvpot and limper folds. This says a lot since he would never donkbet with a draw or a marginal hand, so he has AQ, KQ or QJ 99% of the time. So I call. Turn is 2 and he bets 400 into an almost 1100 pot. If he had QJ he would have bet like 700 so I am sure he has AQ/KQ and since he has over 4000 behind I call again. River is a 6, he bets 500 and I push after some hollywoodiing and he calls with KQ. Most of the players around the table thought it was a very bad play from my part but I think I played it well!

After almost 7h of play I finally ended up 14k (1800$) which is the second time now in 5 visits. So far I have won more then 1000SEK/hour in that casino Guess there will be more visits in the future!

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I´ve tried NL400 over 1000 hands now for the first time! Pretty exciting since the pots are bigger and players better. I´ve had some standard coolers, KK v AA etc but I am still running good, over 2 BI profit so far.

Some things that are different from NL200:
* Some regs are much tuffer. It seems like NL400 is the lowest level even som good players tend to play. Today I met a 100k+ winner from NL1000 and that is not profitable... Therefor I am tableselecting heavy to get as much value as I can. There are some table that are very profitable on NL400 and I tend to choose them .
* Players are much more aggressive, both preflop and post, especially on the flop. I think I have to tighten up on my CB much more than before. I guess that my constant CB on NL200 made my non showdown winnings so bad, but I think that was compensated on NL200 since I could come to the showdown cheap if I didnt improve. On NL400 so far I havnt been allowed to check down... so I have to win money without a showdown to be a winner at this stake.. The last 3k hands I have actually been profitable on non-showdown winnings which is a great step forward since i havnt been that on my previous 80k hands on FTP!

Another adjustment I have made is to datamine more than before. That way I have some clue about how they are playing before I even sit down and that has been a hugh help so far!

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