Hi everyone!

After not reporting in for more than 2 month here's a roundup how I did at the tables.

After a very nice January followed a fine February in which I only played 30k hands due to moving in to my new apartment. I ended the month 3100€ up doing really fine at NL100, but dropped 580€ in 8600 hands of NL200.

March started off with yet another huge downswing (about 2k8€), which really hurt. Since I had to spent a lot of money on new furniture, security and stuff for the new apartment, I cashed out a lot, an therefore my overall online roll was so small, I had to move down to NL50 again. But I managed to make an impressive comeback one more time and finished March about 5600€ up.

April started supersweet and after just 8900 hands I'm a 3200€ winner, but that's not even the most exciting thing that happend pokerwise.

Two days ago I qualified for the WSOP 2010 Main Event by winning a 100€ buyin (1 Rebuy, 1 Add-On) satellite, earning myself the 10k$ buyin plus 2500€ for flight and accomodation. This is really something I could only dream of for the last two years, and suddenly it's becoming reality =) ! Qualifying at the first satellite I played this year is even more amazing.

Right now I'm waiting to get picked up by a friend for a fishing trip to Italy. We're going to the Po-Delta in Italy for 5 days for some serious carp angling, and I'm really looking forward to that. For one day we're gonna get a guide to try to catch one of those fishes the Po-Delta is really famous for, HUGE (european) CATFISH. For those of you who don't know the difference between american and european catfish, here's a short video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-jTsz1845o  (americans catfish eat frogs, european catfish eat dogs ^^ )

After my return on Monday I'm gonna start posting on a more frequent basis, I promise ;) !

Finally, here's my overall graph for 2010 until now:

Greetz,

R4ms3s

Hey folks!

To sum up january in short I just need one word: AWESOME!

At first, as you already know, I started off poor in 2010 and couldn't get anything going for about 29k hands. After my really bad downswing in december I lacked a lot of confidence in my game, so I felt that I had to change something.

I watched more videos, reviewed hands after intense sessions and really thought about what I could do better. The time I put in theory finally started paying of on January 8th, when I had my first session of the current heater, where I managed to win 2420bb on 3137 hands of NL100. Since then I'm a steady winner, with just 3 sessions where I lost more than 100bb.

Here's my overall stats and graph for January:

As you can see in my stats I played exactly one hand of NL400 which I lost. I was playing late at night last friday, and on one of my NL100 tables was a fish seated who played exactly 100% VPIP after more than 100 hands, sitting there with more than 500bb (he probably won some € on a slotmachine game or something else before and thought poker works the same way :D ). I opened a new NL400 deep table with minbuyin 50bb hoping that he or some other random fish would join. Of course I had auto-post-blind enabled, so when one of the most dangerous regs of my site (he plays nl1k/nl2k on stars) joined the table I was stuck with the hand, which isn't that bad holding AKs. However, the outcome was not that nice, especially considering my opponents holecards :P http://www.pokerhand.org/?5143398 !!! Since I'd never play HU vs an opponent I consider better than me, I just LOLed and left the table.

Looking back at the first month of 2010 I'm really satisfied with both the results and my game. I improved a lot, especially when it comes to postflop play vs. individual styles of play from different opponents. In 2009 I just played the same versus almost all the regs, just adapting slightly to loose passive or ultratight players. Right now I use all the fancy stats holdem manager has to offer much more to find the best line to exploit every individual player the most. You'd really wonder how more value you can get by c/c TPTK as PFA against guys that have "bet vs missed cbet in position" over 60% on flop & turn. Not only one might get more value of such unusual lines, but it also helps to balance your c/c range and it misleads other players that are on the table and watch the action, altough you'd never use that line vs anyone other on the table due to their different style of play. And the best about it all is that on smallstake-games noone, except maybe the very best of regs, adapt to you exploiting them.

So what's coming up in February? As I mentioned in an earlier post I'm moving in with my girlfriend. There's going to be a lot of stress with moving our stuff, buying & installing furniture, running from office to office ect...

Because of that I won't be able to play as much poker as I'd like, but I'm still looking forward to it, knowing that once all the work is done with the new appartment, I'll have a great environment both to live in with my girlfriend and to play some serious poker.

Greetz,

R4ms3s

 Hello there!

As I write these lines, I just finished another nice session, and it seems to be normal these days. Since my last post on Jan 9th I made another 3300€, mostly from NL200.

I'm really happy that coming back to the limit I was used to play before my downswing in December turned out so well, and I hope I can carry on the momentum until I'm rolled for NL400 again. Since that was the case for the last time I got a LOT better, and I'm pretty confident that I can beat NL400 now too.

The nice thing about beeing on a heater is that you can't do anything wrong, like this hand shows: http://www.pokerhand.org/?5091451

Another circumstance that comes along with heaters is that you flop a lot of nice hands, and the fish you're playing against also hits something that makes him at least believe he has a nice hand, like in this case: http://www.pokerhand.org/?5091529

This was the first pot that exceeded 1000€ I've played in a long time, and it felt great to take it down: http://www.pokerhand.org/?5091518

I've also won some hands, against regs I'd call better than me, that didn't play automatically. In this hand the standard line for me vs most opponents would be c/c all the way or c/c flop + turn & c/f river if the stats tell me he wouldn't bet worse on the river. This guy however plays up to NL2k on the Boss-Media network, so semibluffing is something that I can expect a lot of him. After his raise on the turn to my donkbet he gets 2,4:1 odds for his call, so he has to call all of his combo draws. All 1pair hands and even 2pairs he'd probably coldcall on the turn, so I believe he's holding something like AcTc, AcQc, 9c8c more often than 66 or 77, and JJ he'd often check back on this dry flop:  http://www.pokerhand.org/?5091574

If someone doesn't agree with me please post your thoughts about that hand.

Finally here's my updated overall graph for 2010:

My 5max-stats:

My HU-stats:

Greetz,
R4ms3s

 Heyho!

Finally it has arrived! The HEATER!

The last two days I ran pretty hot, and combined with my newly strengthened game this heater boosted me out of the red figures for 2010.

The next sessions are going to include some NL200 action again, and I'm really hoping to keep my newly gained confidence in my game and motivation up. Right now I feel like I'm playing my A-game, as I'm done with making stupid herocalls and firing multiple barrels in senseless spots.

Let's see if I can keep the rush, because some money might come in handy soon. Since today it's almost 99% sure that I'm going to move in a new apartment together with my girlfriend in February, and I'm really looking forward to that. We're together for almost 4 years now and this next step seems to be overdue to me.

For the first time I'm going to post hands now. Those where todays biggest pots.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5063672

In the next hand I float the flop with the gutshot, because it felt right 400bb deep vs this HUGE fish (77/34/35 stats).

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5063674

As usual here's my overall graph for 2010:

Greetz,

R4ms3s

 Hi again!

As the title of this post already gives away I'm still not back on track. It's even worse than ever before.

During the last days I had the sickest swings ever (not € wise but in BB), but before going into details I wanna show you that I'm actually able to win some money with poker by posting my graph from my old database, since the ones that will follow in this post won't lead to that conclusion...

Those are all hands I played on win2day since I began using Holdem Manager somewhere during 2008 on NL20 5max to November 18th 2009.

And here's my MTT graph for the Boss-Media network overall taken from sharkscope:

Looking back, 2009 was really sweet, but my present results are a bitter pill to swallow.

Since my last post I went from beeing up about 400€  in the new year to being down 875€, plus dropping about 300€ in MTTs.

I'm in a situation I've never been in before. My online bankroll shrinked from an average of 12k down to an actual 5k3 split up on 2 sites. If I drop another 5 stacks I'm going to play NL50, although I hate to just think about it. I haven't played that low since 2008, and I would really like to avoid that.

But what are the reasons for my bad results? As I told you in my last post I was really running bad all of december, and my EV graph shows that that's a fact. What adds up to that and effected my results even worse is my own inability to cope with that. Somewhere in december I started playing REALLY poor. I wanted to have some bin winning sessions again, so I started beeing a spewy monkey and a huge payoff wizard at the same time.

It might sound strange, but actually I'm "too good" to play that low. What makes you a winner on nl100 aren't fancy semibluffs or hyperaggressive play, but solid ABC-Poker. You can't make a fish fold who doesn't even know he's supposed to fold his 1pair hands on a 4straight + possible flush board. Vice versa there's no such thing than bluff-catching, since you almost never get bluffed. Sometimes people try to steal small pots, but almost never the 75bb bet on the river is bluff, no matter how good the board texture is to do so.

What exactly happend since my last post:

After the 700bb+ session I had another 531bb+ session, 1 short break-even session and a monster 4300 hands (10 hours) session. In this session I was down 700bb, made it back to break-even, wanted to have a small profit at least, dropped 700bb again, didn't want to call it an end beeing down so I fought back again and ended it break-even. After only a short break I started again at 2am that day, but there weren't any games going on at nl100 so I joined 2 tables of 5max nl200 with 2 very weak players on each of them. Of course I got setups and suckouts right in the beginning, leading to frustration that made me play like a ULTRADONK, and finally I was down 1113€ in just 885 hands.

The worst session since a long time was yesterday. I wanted to grind my loss back on nl100 and everything started off perfect. I was up over 700€ already, but than got into 2 big pots I really played terribly. After that I was "just" 400bb up, so I thought "Hm I lost 1k the night before, let's call it an end when I'm up 500 again". Of course being focused to win €€€ leads to bad plays, so suddenly I found myself being up just 200, then being down 100, and in the end I had another negative session and made -695€.

Dropping 14 stacks straight is something that NEVER happend before since I play poker, but after all that experience burned into my brain, and I hopefully start winning RIGHT NOW again.

Here's my 2010 graph for now:

Let's get back to work...........

Greetz,

R4ms3s

 Hi everyone!

The beginning of 2010 seems to be a good occasion to start a blog in my eyes, and I will post here from now on mostly to keep track of my progress myself, but also I'm very thankful for any feedback I'll get, no matter if it's positiv or negative.

I spare myself to write an introduction of my person again, since I did that already in the forum. Here's the link: http://www.bluefirepoker.com/thread.aspx?thrid=2839

So 2010 is going to be my 2nd year playing poker for a living, and I am really looking forward to find out where my limitations are and how far I can get within 1 year. Last year everything just happend, without really trying to achieve what I did. I played poker, but didn't really learn hard and dedicated as much as I probably should have. I made that 50k€ in 2009, and I enjoyed it a LOT. The only problem that arises with having way more money than you're used to is that you spend it very loose. Looking back I wish I would have saved at least 20k, but I bought myself everything I wanted to own, and therefor cashed out every cent that exeeded my 40 stack nl200 roll.

Unfortunatly I don't have an overall cg graph right now because I got a new PC in November, but I'll plug the old one within the next days to get it. Here's my graph from November 19th on:

I really run bad through all of December in the cashgames online, but managed to place 5th in a 25€ rebuy MTT for 3k7 and winning about 1k in live nl200 cashgames, so I made some profit. Still Dezember was the worst month of 2009.

2010 seemed to start off  very poor at first too, since I dropped 361€ yesterday. Today might be some kind of turning point, since I managed to make  720€ in just 525 hands of nl100. The graphs you will see from now on will document my progress in 2010, so here's the first of many to come:

I won't post any hands for now, I'll start doing that with my next post. All that's left to write down for now are the goals I set myself for 2010:

• build my actual 4500€ roll on my main poker site (win2day, only for austrians) back up to 12k
• grind some more to cash in 3000$ on Pokerstars and build it up to at least 30k until 2011
• play at least 1 EPT Main Event I qualified for online
• make an overall  profit of 100k

So this is what I'm aiming for in 2010, and I'm pretty confident that I am able to make it if I put in the right amount of hard work, especially when it comes to theory and hand reviewing ect. That was probably what I neglected the most in 2009. I hope I can keep up the motivation all year, because I enjoy playing poker for a living too much to fail ;)

Greetz,

R4ms3s