Copenhagen Marathon

Date: Tue, Apr 8, 2008

The annual Copenhagen Marathon is May 18th this year. I have decided that this year, I will give it a go. I haven't really prepared for it or anything, but I figure sheer willpower should be enough...

Are you now thinking something along these lines: "Wow, he must be out of his mind if he thinks he can prepare for a 42km run in little over a month."?

Well, I can only reply: RUN?!?!? Are you kidding me? I can't run 5km without lying prone for 2 weeks afterwards with severely aggrevated achilles tendons. I couldn't run 20 if my life depended on it, much less 42.

No sir, the plan is to do a poker challenge that puts no unreasonable demands on my limited physical abilities, time it roughly around the time all those crazed lunatics run around Copenhagen for hours and hours, and then just steal their name! Brilliant if you ask me, and a good opportunity to test the limits of how much online poker it is possible to play in an extended period of time.

Copenhagen Poker Marathon starts for me Monday May 11th, and lasts the whole week through Sunday. How hard I should challenge myself is still undecided. I am wavering between 50-70,000 hands in a week. 70k sounds cool (10k/day), but I am not sure it is realistic. At least it would demand a fairly big sacrifice, about a hundred hours staring at 8 tables, which may be too much. I am fairly certain I could do 50k without going mad. An essential part of the challenge for me is that I should maintain a high level of play. I should not have to move down in buy-in levels to complete the challenge unless my normal level is unavailable in the number of tables required. That means maintaining a decent hourly rate at 8 tables of 1000NL for at least 10 hours a day, probably more.

In any case, it should be a rich opportunity for prop bets, let me know if you want action. I will keep you updated on this blog as the event comes further along.

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Vegas, Baby!

Date: Fri, Apr 4, 2008

The plan for this years WSOP is becomming increasingly clear. Last year was a great experience, so this year it will basically be the same thing, except more of it, and better!

Along with 3 other poker players from the office, we are renting a big ass house with pool, pool table, BBQ and a fast internet connection. I am staying in Vegas from the 3rd to the 19th of June, and my wife is joining me for the first week. When she leaves, I will turn down the sight seeing, and get some serious gambling started.

Between the 10th and 17th, there are relevant NL Hold'em, WSOP events almost every day, so I should be able to play at least six events unless I go deep in some of them (hopefully that won't happen). Also, there should be a rich variety of regular poker tournaments in Vegas during the WSOP period, so I will be able to satisfy my cravings for live poker, have no fear.

With the impossibly devalued US$, another craving should be satisfied this year: The rental of very fast cars is not prohibitively expensive, so that will certainly be an item on the agenda. For example, I give you the Lambo Gellardo:



That one is a little expensive though, $1800 for one day, not including insurance, so I may have to make do with just a small Ferrari. Muhahahahaaaa!!!

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1st Quarter review.

Date: Wed, Apr 2, 2008

I've joined my poker databases from my two work places, and for the first time in a while had a chance to look at my cash game results this year all together. The results are great looking as I expected them to be. While I have been extremely lucky in all-in situations this year so far, I have also been solidly beating the games otherwise.

Back in November and December I had a tumble with variance as I tried to move up from NL600 to NL1000, and promptly decided I might as well play NL2000. The end result was a small hit to my bank roll which was unfortunately followed by a long losing streak at NL600.

In January things started rolling again, and I booked a decent winning month. Since then I really have moved up, and I am now a solidly winning NL1000 player, with regular succesful exploits into NL2000. I am not ashamed to admit that statement gives me no little satisfaction. In my opinion, this is not just another step on the ladder, in some ways I feel I have passed the final examn of mid stakes cash games, and the major obstacle that stands between me and any high stakes game now is simply a lot of money. I may be kidding myself, and I may be influenced by my prolonged stay at NL600, but my feeling right now is that the difference between the play at NL200 and NL1000 is much greater than the difference between NL1000 and any high stakes cash game regularly played. I am confident I would get my ass wupped in the long run if I sat down in some of the big games, but I believe with some table selection and a substantially larger bank roll, I could do fine. That was certainly not how I felt about NL1000 back when i started on NL200.

The plan for the next couple of months is to keep up the good work ethics and hopefully also the good run, pad my IRL roll, and take more shots at bigger games if things continue to go well. I had a firm reminder to keep my feet on the ground this Saturday, where I lost $11k. Still, March gave me about $32k, so I could afford it. But not too many of those please, losing 5 figure in a day regularly is not something my roll or my confidence is quite ready for yet. Actually I have not felt like playing much since Saturday, so the experience left it's mark. That must change though, as I will surely have more 5 figure days both ways in the months to come.

I have registered 86k hands this year, for a profit of $89,475, and an hourly rate of $567. That number has been inflated by some really mind boggling all-in luck. I am up $23k in that department, but I still think with this sample size I am not too optimistic to expect $300/hr at this point. A number that I think obligates me to get in a lot of those work hours, and stop sitting around not playing!

My multitabling ratio is at about 5.5, which is a little less than the ideal number of tables for me at this point. I really think I can play 6 tables and still maintain a high level of play. I regularly play 8, and even then I often have a very good feeling that I am in complete control of all tables, and don't really want to leave any of them. It was my plan a few months ago to cut down the number of tables, but that is no longer a set goal as long as the results and the quality of play is to my satisfaction. Only on really tough tables do I feel the need to play fewer than 6 tables, and in that case I would just as soon give up playing if I can't find better.

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Freeroll revisited.

Date: Fri, Mar 28, 2008

There was a comment to my last post, about whether or not villain should call my push knowing that he was splitting the pot, or losing it to a possible flush. It seemed wrong to me to fold the nuts with these stack sizes, but it is a situation where it is easy to calculate the correct action.

Let's put ourselves in his position. We know we both have the ace high straight, and that we are losing to a made flush. Our equity in the pot is 39.8%. Pot size is 1220. Bet size is 1514. The expected value of calling the shove can simply be calculated as:

EV(call) = equity * (pot size + 2 * bet size) - bet size = $177.

So if we fold here, that is what we are costing ourselves.

I messed with the bet size to figure out how large a bet we can profitably call. It turns out the sweet spot is about $2380. So if the effective stacks had been $900 larger, our villain should have folded, unless he thought there was a chance I was bluffing, or that I didn't in fact have a flush draw. If these probabilities are estimated to be significant, the bet would have had to be much larger to correctly fold. I suppose it is somewhat reassuring that the theory tells us not to go about folding the nuts too often, even with redraws on the board.

Situations were you can actually precisely calculate the correct action come up rarely in poker, but this was one of those cases.

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Pluggin' along.

Date: Mon, Mar 24, 2008

It has been a few weeks since last post. I went skiing for a week in France during that time, and haven't really had anything on my mind.

Overall I am running extremely well. I didn't destroy an ACL or break anything skiing, and to top it off, poker has been very good to me after my return. I am up over $15k in all-in luck this month, which is a ridiculous number. I am obviously very happy with the money sitting in my account, but it does feel a little awkward that I didn't really earn it. I suppose I will have to get over that somehow. It's not like I should have lost money or anything, I just shouldn't have been destroying the games nearly as hard as I did. I guess the main thing is to just enjoy it while it lasts, and try to maintain a realistic expectation of future results.

Compared to back in November when I had a streak of good results, I am much more focused on maintaining good work ethics. I may be getting a little bit more ambitious, as I am still happy with my results, but now I also want to get even better ones! Maybe it will pass, but at the moment I really feel like getting a lot of playing hours in, even though I am sitting on a comfortable pile of monthly income for March. It has been very motivating listening to the 2+2 pokercasts with interviews with some of the best poker players alive. Somehow listening to the radio show does not interfere at all with playing 6 tables of 1000NL-2000NL. Apparently I use two different parts of my brain for those two activities. Only when unusually tough decisions come up do I subconsciously tune out the pokercast. Anyway, I greatly recommend the shows, including the archived ones.

This may shock the hell out of all of you, but here is some strategy content. I recently had the opportunity to give myself a freeroll in a 2000NL hand:

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $20 BB (6 handed) Party Poker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com (Format: HTML)


Button ($515)
SB ($2124)
BB ($3892)
UTG ($2355)
MP ($2030)
Hero ($3467.50)

Preflop: Hero is CO with 2c, Ac.
2 folds, Hero raises to $70, 1 fold, SB calls $60, 1 fold.

Flop: ($160) Jd, Td, Kc (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $120, SB calls $120.

Turn: ($400) Qc (2 players)
SB bets $420, Hero shoves (All-In), SB calls.

River: ($5588) 8c (2 players, 2 all-in)

Final Pot: $5588
SB has Ts As (straight, ace high).
Hero has 2c Ac (flush, ace high).
Outcome: Hero cleans house.

Its an unusual situation that arises on the turn: I have the stone cold nuts, possibly tied with villain, but with a chance to improve! In this case it is very important to take advantage of your draw by getting some money in the middle. I am almost 100% certain that we are tied on the turn, but if I shove I give myself a 20% chance at taking his whole stack. Luckily, I run so well that of course I hit jackpot. Had I not shoved the hand on the turn, he may have gotten away from it, but you will never get a fold from an ace on the turn, even with much bigger stacks. Had the stacks in fact been much bigger, realizing the situation and shoving the full stack would have been even more important, and just calling or making a small raise would be a very expensive mistake.

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End of February.

Date: Fri, Feb 29, 2008

We have come to the end of an eventful month. Despite spending a lot of time on tournaments, and a lot of money on the EPT, I still came out of February with a tidy profit from cash games. Ironically, my cash game earnings exploded when I started to focus more on tournaments. Possibly part of the explanation for that is that I played fewer tables and fewer hours, but I am sure most of it can be attributed to simple luck.

While it hasn't been a very profitable experience, playing tournaments has simply been a lot of fun, and I intend to continue for a while with those, still mixing it with cash games. The worst part of tournament poker is that the bad beats you take are really devastating, both in terms of money and hours spent. The second worst thing is how you feel you are slowly bleeding to death in the periods where you don't make that one big pay-out. On average you only make the money in roughly 15% of the tournaments you play. So on my tournament days, a typical scenario is that after 4-6 hours and playing as many as 10-12 tournaments, you are sitting with your whole investment gathered on just that one or two tables where you have gone deep. That's when you really appreciate aces in the hole, and that's when a suckout for your tournament life hurts the most. The value of those stacks deep in large tournaments is huge, and that is the curse and the charm of tournaments.

The main advantage of tournament poker is that you never lose more than your initial investment, so even after a completely failed tournament session, you are never down more money than you can win back with a decent cash game session. This provides some extra motivation, and takes away that special tournament pro feeling of bleeding to death.

In March, I have a bet with some guys at the office on who will play the most cash game table hours. I hope this will provide further motivation to put in a decent work effort. I am allowed to play a cash game or two table along with tournaments, so the tournament hobby should not interfere. Funny how a bet for a stake dinner provides more motivation than an expected hourly rate that is probably worth more than the dinner.

I wish us all a profitable month!

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EPT Day 2.

Date: Fri, Feb 22, 2008

It's over. I finished in 60th place out of 460, prizes for 40. A harsh landing to be sure, but that is the way it usually is with tournaments.

The typical question after such a bust is: How do you feel? Are you just completely devastated? Actually I am not. I am quite at ease with the fact that sometimes the cards just aren't there for you to advance further. It would have really ruined my week if I busted out on a big mistake, but that wasn't the case. So yesterday I was fine with it, and hung out with the guys I know until the bubble burst. My friend Thomas Christiansen is still in it in 12th place, and I have 10% of him, so the EPT is not completely over for me yet. If he wins it all it will be my biggest poker win ever :). But after spending the last couple of days with green felt, colorfull chips, cameras rolling and 7-figured prize money, I must admit the day seems a bit grayer than usual today. It is a typical overcast danish winter day, and I wouldn't mind sitting in Casino Copenhagen among the last 40. I wouldn't mind it one bit.

I don't have lot of interesting hands to report, since I think the last 4 hours every hand was finished preflop. But here is a summary of the action.

I started the day as chip leader of the table, a status I quickly lost for good. The player to my right had a stack roughly equal to mine, and just a few hands in, he raised UTG. We both have about 50k chips, blinds are 400/800 - 100 ante. I call with AQo, all fold, pot is about 8k. The flop is QT5 with two spades, I have no spades. He checks, and I bet 5k, he calls. Turn is the 8 of spades, and he bets out 4.5k, a definite underbet that I can't really tell the meaning of. I consider raising, but elect to just call with the completed flush fraw on the board, with the intention of getting a cheap showdown. The river is another ugly spade, he shoves and I must fold.

I lost about 25% of my stack on that hand, and after that nothing went right for a while. The few raises I made was reraised, or I had to fold on the flop. I am down to 21k, when it is folded to me in CO, and I raise with AJ. A sweedish professional Bengt Sonnert raises me from the button which he has done before, and I am forced to put my foot down and shove. He calls with KQs. The flop is exciting with two of his suits, but I win the coin flip for my tournament life, crippling Bengt.

The rest of the day was back and forth between 25k and 55k, not a lot of big hands to report.

In my bust out hand, it was raised from UTG by an active player. Blinds 1200/2400 - 300 ante. He raised to about 6600, I am in UTG+3 and I look down on 88 with 40k in my stack. Calling is out of the question with my smallish stack, so it is push or fold. I shove due to the loose/weak image of UTG. Unfortunately I am called by no less than two players in late position, who wake up with AK and QQ, while UTG folds. There are about 100k in the pot, and I have 19% equity. The prize money equity of the entire pot is a staggering $100k. Unfortunately no help arrives, and I am out in 60th place. Bummer.

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EPT Day 1.

Date: Thu, Feb 21, 2008

I am very much alive in the EPT after a great first day for me. 174 players are left out of 460 starters, and I am in 17th place.

Here is a small recap of the big hands of Day 1. I will fill in the details freely when I can't remember the exact ones.

Half an hour in, blinds 25/50, effective stacks 10.000. UTG limps, UTG+2 raises to 200, two callers, I call from BB with 86 of clubs and UTG comes along. I can't complain when the flop comes 2c 4c 5c. I check/raise the preflop raiser to 2.000. UTG surprises everyone and possibly himself by reraising to 6.000. He is greek, and after making the raise he tries unsuccesfully to convince the dealer he wants to raise 'three'. Preflop raiser lays down aces (that's what he said, and I believe him), and I have a choice to make. I am very much afraid he has a bigger flush, but I feel he could also make the raise with a set. Since I have the 8c, that takes away several of his possible flush hands that he would limp UTG, and I thought a set was more likely. My speculations prove worthless as I push, he calls and shows 63 of diamonds for the flopped straight. He is clearly not the kind of player to worry too much about preflop ranges. He is also drawing absolutely dead, and I double up.


Last hand before the first break two hours in, blinds 50/100 (my stack is 20k), early position raise to 400, CO+1 calls (12k stack), and I 3-bet to 1500 from the button with AQo. CO+1 calls. Flop comes A97 with a flush draw. I c-bet 2.8k, and he checkraises me an amount that makes my decision a push-or-fold. I have very little fold equity. If I push and lose I am left with about 8k. My read is that he limp/calls a lot preflop, and that he has check/raised me once before in a smaller pot, but this is the first time he has put this much at stake. I make a good laydown IMO. Everyone has gone to the break, and he tells me privately he had 777. I certainly could not have made this laydown in a cash game (3-bet preflop 110BBs), so my mission to think more like a tournament player was succesfull in this case.

Shortly after the break, blinds 75/150, all folds to CO who steals, I 3-bet with AJ of diamonds, I forget the bet sizes, but I guess the pot is around 2400, and our stacks are both around 15k. The flop comes AhQd4h. He checks to me, and I creatively check behind. The pot is plenty big enough already IMO. Turn is 5d, and I pick up a flush draw. He bets the pot strongly, and I call. I consider to use my flush outs as an excuse for a raise, but I don't see him folding better hands, and I am not really scared of the heart draw. River is a blessed 8d, he bets 5.5k, and after a good show of thinking I obviously shove the nuts. He is shaken up by this and after significant anguish he makes a good laydown with 444. My stack is now 24k.

I then stack a poor guy with a set of kings over a set of sevens, giving me a stack of 34k.

After this, a long period of nothing special happened, until 40 minutes before the end of day 1. Blinds are 300/600 - 75 ante, I have about 28k chips. UTG raises, UTG+2 reraises to 4k, I am in the SB and look down on the sweet aces. I 4-bet to 12k, and UTG+2 who is a talker, talks for about 5 minutes about his decision before calling. He has me covered, but only by about 6k, so this is serious business for him also. I REALLY don't wanna bust 30 minutes before the end of day 1, so when I see the low flop, I am very relieved and shove after making another good show of thinking. I guess I could have slow played it since he seemed to have a good hand, but I just wouldn't be able to bear it if he picked up a set on the turn on that account. After another 5 minutes of talking he folds, and my stack is now 41k and regain the chip lead at the table. The last 20 hands, nobody wants to bust, allowing me to run over the table and bring my stack to 50.7k, which is what I will start with in a few hours.

Now that my focus has moved from just making it a good experience to actually making some money, I must admit I am strangely less excited about my situation. The payout structure is so top heavy, that even after a great day one it is extremely unlikely I make a big pay day. Even if I take 10th place, the prize money is little more than another big tournament entry after my backers have taken their share. Conclusion: Full speed ahead, skipper. Crawling into the money holds no interest for me, its do or die. I play for the win now!

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Getting excited.

Date: Tue, Feb 19, 2008

I am following the live updates from day 1A of the EPT, as I look forward to tomorrow. Two friends from the office where I play are in action now, and Matthias Andersen is one of the chip leaders near the end of day 1A. Go Matthias!!!

Yesterday I went home and made about $6000 in cash games after my early tournament exit, so despite dismal tournament results since Friday, I am quietly confident for tomorrow. I am already up a healthy amount for the month, so I am calmly prepared to meet the destiny dished out by the poker gods. My first modest hope for the tournament is simply to get in the game with some decent cards, and not be forced to sit and fold for hours. But all I can do now is relax, wait, and cheer for Matthias!

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Live tournaments are rigged.

Date: Mon, Feb 18, 2008

In preparation for the EPT Main Event, I played a warmup tournament at Casino Copenhagen this evening, a 5000kr. (~$1000) event with 100 players. The tournament lasted 20 minutes for me, then I called an early position raise with AQ from late position. The board came QT7 with a flush draw that I had none of. We were 50BBs deep, and I raised his c-bet. I now had 20 BBs invested, and he 3-bet, effectively putting me all-in. My reads were limited after only 20 minutes. He had been active early on, 3-betting from the blinds and then folding to a 4-bet, and limping with 58s from early position (he flopped a straight and stacked a donk).

I called and he showed QQ.

It is not a bust I am particularly proud of, but as a cash game player, getting away from TPTK 50 BBs deep is just against my nature :). I have no doubt that it is situations like this that seperate the great live players from the good ones. Making the correct decision is so dependant on physical reads and subjective opinions of your opponent.

The cash game/online player will typically focus on the given pot odds of a situation like this. He will focus on the fact that he is getting 7 to 3 on his investment, knows little about his opponent and he will assume there is always a decent chance of a bluff or draw. The live tournament expert will focus on the physical tells of his opponent. He will have studied an opponent and have an impression of his demeanor with strong and weak hands. If he knows he is beat by an overpair or set, well then 7 to 3 pot odds aren't good enough for a call, and it is not close. With the rock solid reads that are sometimes available live, you will see fantastic calls and folds that would be huge mistakes online, due to the anynomity of opponents and inherent uncertainty of their skills.

If you read my WSOP entries from last summer, these thoughts are not new to me, and it is clearly the area where I have my largest deficiency compared to the tournament pros. Technically and strategy wise I can always get better of course, but I believe I am much closer to the top in these areas. When it comes to reading people and putting an opponent on a hand, there are players in the field that are in a completely different class than myself and my fellow online pros.

In my opinion, the most important issue for me right now is not to develop better reads, that is something that can only be done through lots and lots of playing hours at the green felt. What I need to focus on is the mind set that reads are in fact very important when playing live. Once I have that focus, I will trust my reads more, make better use of my eyes and ears, and start to make decisions that are not always founded in solid cash game strategy.

I am playing Wedensday at 2pm local time, channel your luck my way!

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Gearing up for the EPT.

Date: Wed, Feb 13, 2008

After the holiday it's time to get serious again. Going on a safari is a very expensive vacation, my bank accounts are hungry, and the European Poker Tour is coming up next week in Casino Copenhagen close to my home. I will probably be one of the select few players in the tournament arriving on a bicycle.

As you know, I am not a tournament expert, so a bit of preparation is in order. As you may recall, I played 3 WSOP events last summer, but unfortunately I haven't been able to follow that up with more live tournaments since then. The biggest difference between tournament play and cash game play is the stack sizes. For most of the tournament, players are struggling to stay alive as the blinds grow, so efficient stack sizes quickly dwindle far below the 50-200BB starting stacks. The small stack sizes, or rather the huge blinds have a significant impact on the dymamics of the game, for example there will often be little or no post flop play. Back in the days (a little over one year ago) I was purely a Sit'n'Go tournament player, so I believe I still have a good feel for the tournament dynamics. The last year as a cash game pro should be more than adequate to handle the first levels of deep stack poker. In this event starting stacks are 200BB.

What I need now is to get it all together and improve my sharpness and feel. I am dedicating this week to playing as many multi table tournaments as I can cram into it. On Monday I am playing a $1000 warm up event live at Casino Copenhagen. Tuesday I will just relax and maybe drop by the casino to view the Day 1A action, and by Wedensday I should be prepared to kick ass. As some of you may know, I carry a good mental baggage from when I won the Partypoker Sunday tournament a while back for $95k. Although that experience is far behind me, I know from personal experience that it is possible to go far, and I am not afraid of choking come crunch time.

I got a head start last night as I played my first two MTT's in a while. Both were $55 tournaments, one on Party (~500 players) and one on Crypto (~250 players). That experiment was a success to put it mildly. I took 21st on party for $150 and I won the Crypto tournament for $3600! Those were both extraordinary results, and quite a way to start my MTT experience. Meanwhile I also destroyed two tables of 1000NL and pulled home $7500 on 550 hands. Of course I don't need to tell anyone how disgustingly lucky I was on both accounts, but who am I to complain? What a 'welcome back' that was.

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Back from Africa.

Date: Mon, Feb 11, 2008

I am back from a spectacular vacation in Africa. The first week we toured Tanzania. The main goals were the Serengeti National Park and the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. It was a spectacular safari, in which we saw all of 'the big five' (the big five includes the lion, buffalo, elephant, leopard and rhino), and many other beasts, often close up. I never expected to get so close to so many wild animals, but it turned out to be a regular National Geographic experience, live. I do think we were very lucky with the animals on this safari, though, such a success is not standard. I just run good on safaris.

Here is a video of a lunch break in the Ngorongoro crater. This is my first attempt at sharing a video with you, I hope it works. To top it all off, quite litterally, we went on a balloon safari over the Serengeti plains. A fantastic experience seeing the sunrise over the plains from above. We flew right over a big herd of buffalo. Not sure what they thought of us, but they ran away when we went down to a few meters above them. We had a ton of other great experiences, but I am sure everyone has better things to do. We finished off with a week of beach and sun in Zanzibar.

Now it's back to business. Next week the European Poker Tour comes to town, and I am in it. I will update very soon on my ideas on how to handle that.

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A look back.

Date: Tue, Jan 22, 2008

It's been a while since I've combined my databases and looked at my results for the last months. In November I was simply running too well to care, and in December I was running too bad to dare. I hope things have settled down now, and I am in the mood to get down to business. To properly focus on the present and future, I need to get the past out of the way, so here is a brief overview of the damage.

I had to end November early when I put up a $12k session around the 22nd. That gave me a great monthly total, and allowed me to focus on more important stuff, namely the computer game Company of Heroes. That came back to bite me though, as I burned most of my November profit in December, struck by a bad case of Nemesis.

January has not been exceptional in any way, but I am making a quiet profit, which is infinitely preferable to the blood sucking, life draining grind that was December.



Of course the harsh jumps around December 1st can be attributed to my forray into the world of 2000NL. My total 2000NL results are unexceptional, it was just a wierd fluke that I happened to have all the good luck bunched up in my first session there. Overall, since November 1st I have been making a little over $100/hr despite a terrible month which I hope not to repeat in the near future. If I include my entire database stretching back to the beginning of September (220k hands), I am up about $185/hr, so I have no reason to be unhappy with my luck. I'll just repeat that for my own sake. I have no reason to be unhappy with my luck.


My all-in luck graph which I mentioned in my whine post in December is just slightly negative since November 1st. Like I have said before, all-in luck is just a small part of the fluctuations that you experience as a poker player. The most interesting thing about my all-in luck is how extraordinary November was. Like any other poker player I didn't consider for a second how lucky I was back then (OK, maybe I did, honestly), but as you can see at one point I was up over $15k compared to my expected all-in winnings. December took care of that statistic quickly, and January has been semi bad as well in that respect. Remember that all-in winnings are not net results, I lose money on all the hands were I am not involved in an all-in situation (because I fold a lot in those hands)

Looking forward I hope to continue producing solid results, as well as continuing developing as a player. While I am happy with my income, I am not entirely happy with the fact that I am at the same buy-in level I was 10 months ago. I hope to focus more on mental and poker skill development in the upcoming months.

Post is getting long so I will finish up with two spectacular plans for the immidiate future: On Friday I am going to Africa. If I survive Nairobi, Kenya, I will cruise Tanzania for a one week Safari, and then spend a week beaching in Zanzibar. Also, I bought a ticket for the European Poker Tour Main Event in Copenhagen in late February, so when I get home from vacation I will have to spend some time playing MTT tournaments again. Later!

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I am back again.

Date: Sat, Jan 19, 2008

It has now been a whole month since my last entry, and a lot of water has run under the bridge since then. I don't know why I even bother to write anymore, since the number of visitors is actually UP since I left the blog. Weird, but thank you all for stopping by once in a while.

I think I owe you a short recap of what's been going on in my poker life during that month. Shortly after my last post, I kind of gave up on poker for December. I actually haven't had the courage to run the numbers, but I certainly ended up over $20k in the red. A horrible result, especially considering that I have never had a losing month before, and that I had gotten used to a monthly profit of 20k-30k.

This is the second time in my poker career that I experience a challenge like that. Last time was in the fall of 2006, when I played Sit'n'Goes for a living and broke about even for 3 long months. It may not sound horrible, you have to experience it to understand how tough that is to go through. Back then my response was switching to cash games which I certainly have never regretted. This time the experience was shorter, but unfortunately more costly. I have no plans to make a radical change such as switching games, but in January I have begun to change a few things that I hope will help me going forward.

One realization that I made during December was that I very often did not want to play poker at all. I had to force myself to sit down and play to get through the downswing. Getting into the habbit of losing had the unfortunate effect of instilling some fear of losing in me. Instead of thinking 100% of how to optimize my play, I spent some of my energy wondering when the next bad beat was going to show up. I honestly don't think it had a huge effect on my game, but every little bit counts. Playing good poker is a delicate balancing act, and while an experienced player will have an easier time playing reasonably well when mentally distraught than a newbie, there is no doubt that optimal poker requires peace of mind.

To achieve this, I have decided to mix up my short handed game with a bit of heads up poker, and perhaps some pot limit omaha as well. This should help me to always have a game available that I can approach with some excitement and energy. When I am running good in the 6-max cash game, I wont need to jump around in other types of games where my edge is smaller, but when I need a break or just get sick of playing the same thing day in and day out, I should be able to change it up. Perhaps it will even help me become a better poker player.

The second change that I have implemented is improved table selection. I don't think that my table selection even now is particularly good compared to some of the guys that I know, but I hope that it is at least passable now. A side effect is that I am playing slightly fewer tables than I did in November and December. I now don't HAVE to play 8 tables if there aren't any fish at 3 of them, whereas before it was almost a matter of principle to fill both screens with tables.

Even so, my January results have not been up to the standards that I was used to before my personal doom switch was turned on December 1st. I am not running super well, but at least I am showing a profit. Until tonight, when I actually did run super well and doubled my result for the month in 4.5 hours. A great session that I have been sorely needing. Yay me! I think I am up about $10k for the month now, so I am well on my way out of the hole. Hopefully the result will be more frequent posting here, to reward my loyal costumers.

Good luck to you all, until next time!

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