April was the sickest month ever for me since I’ve played poker online. According to Hold’em manager (as if I wouldn’t remember anyway), I lost 12 full stacks in the month with AA, and a hefty 21 times with KK. Most of them all-in pre-flop and guys hitting on the river left right and centre! Poker can be a cruel game at times, but what I’ve learnt is that you can’t leave it effect you, you just have to keep plugging along and hope to play to the best of your ability and your luck will change!

However my luck didn’t change in May. Every over pair lost to under pair and it seemed to always happen on the river.
Here’s just an example of what was happening. All of which we got it all in pre….

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I didn’t leave it get me down though and considering how I was running I was delighted to finish the month on +14 buyins.

Just as I thought I could not run any sicker I entered the month of June. There was an unreal number of times my opponent and me had the same hand but they ended up hitting a four-flush. Here is but one example.

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I am down nearly 23 buyins for June but thankfully i don’t think it is possible to run any sicker. As a final hand to basically sum this period up, here is the worst beat I have ever taken which obv happened in a large pot. While there isn’t much to say about it, I just want to put it up to have something to refer to when anyone tells me about a sick beat they’ve taken

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I hate having to post details of such sick hands but I needed to get these hands of my chest so I can start feeling better about my bad beats. These 3 months have been very damaging and harsh but I am still playing well so fingers crossed my EV will turn for the best and next month I will have a cheerful blog with lots of winning hands to show you. I have alot of spare time on my hands at the moment so hopefully I can put in a bit of volume and change the account into winning ways.

GL at the tables….

Hi fellas in cyberspace,

no groundbreaking news since last time. I took a forced break from poker because of school. May is the month of doom its where u realize how little you have done the whole year and now you need to catch up for the examns. All you college-people know what I am talking about. I spent the last week writing a 40 page report on the German wind turbine idustry - actually very interesting stuff once I got into it.
I am way to undisciplined, which is something I definitely need to work on, so I promised myself no poker before I was done

However I managed to get some playing done today for the first time in a week. FINALLY!!!!
I got 1500 hands in, winning $1440 primarily from nl200 HU (a tiny bit from nl100 as well).
All in all pretty sweet. Suddenly the cards turn out better and I am catching up to my EV, which is nice.

with today’s results the month looks pretty decent. Still got a little catching up to do on nl200, but things look good as I have been absolutely destroying nl100, running at 25bb/100 for 12k hands. I am way behind behind my usual goal of 25k hands (16k), but this is kind of expected in this period because of school duties. Next month isn’t going to be much better unfortunately, but after june 19th I am a free man for almost 3months. summer and grind, here I come… (hope to include Vegas here I come next year!!)

I’ll be back sometime next week if there is something worth mentioning..

gl at the tables

Before anything I’d like to apologize in advance for possible language flaws. I am not a native English-speaker and I will be writing these blogs as the words pop up in my head so sorry to the grammar teachers out there reading my blog. I’m sure there is loads

One more warning: this blog is going to be rather long since I chose the long introduction to myself. Be patient If you get tired of reading or have no interest in me as a person, then skip to the word DOUCHEBAG

I thought the best entry to the blog circus would be a short introduction to myself and my “career” at the capital of the Poker World - Uncover Poker (yay)

So here we go.. HI GUYS! “hi Tore” whaaat? how did you know my name already?

I am 24 years young and of Danish origin. This is pretty funny since I actually happen to live en Denmark as well. I was a former elite-tennisplayer, but now I only play a few times a week to try to stay in shape. All this sudden available time away from the tennis courts I have spent on my university and my beloved hobby, poker. I am currently on my 2nd year at the Copenhagen Business School with one more year to go before I can brag about my bachelor’s diploma.

On the side I started taking poker more seriously last spring since I had too much sparetime because I am so darn clever and lazy at the same time, that I “forget” to read for my lectures. Until last spring my poker experinces consisted of 1-2years of 3/6 limit with a BR of $200 and insta-cashout once I passed the 300 mark. I have no idea how I kept afloat and manage to - at least not lose. then I heard of this crazy game called no-limit, where you could actually bet all your money at once !! Since I perceived myself as one hell of a poker God I though that my luck in life was finally there and I was gonna win millions of $$$$ within minutes. 3 months later after busting my massive poker account of $600 on nl50 (good BRM I know) I blamed the Gods for not wanting me to succeed in this game and put my last $5 in a tourney with 700 players on board as a “goodbye to poker”. Of course I ended up winning and BOOM was back at 600. This however was some kind of a wake up call for me. How and why I can’t remember, but I took 4months or so off from poker. Again I have no idea why??!!!

In the meantime I had bought a subscription to Cardrunners and started watching some vids. After a month or so I suddenly started getting why I was so unlucky all the time. Surprisingly I sucked. So I started up last may with a BR of $400 and the intention to keep strict BRM, something I can proudly say I have been doing ever since. the game was nl20 HU. Long story short things went ok without any major setbacks or boosts and I found myself playing nl50 by the end of july. Still I kept to HU solely. Then I had a long streak of big ups and downs, since I was still far to big a spewmonkey. But my BR still managed to grow somehow - even though at a pretty slow pace overall (my winnings curve looked pretty funny. A diplomatic description would be volatile I guess) As a got tired of the big swings I started mixing with some 6max as well.

Some time in the fall I heard of Uncover and checked it out. I read about the Academy and thought “wow, this would be like a dream come true. Play poker for free and actually get to keep a good amount of my winnings anyway”

So I applied and of course I ran like God for the whole trial period with one single losing day and running at 16 bb/100 on nl50 and which was equivalent to something like 30BI. I even managed to play a little nl100 as well which resulted in a rund of 14/bb100 over 7k hands or something. I am afraid I will never run this good again

So I got a ticket to heaven and was gifted with a BR of nl100 as of jan 1st this year. As a thank you I started losing 28BI with nothing going for me. A combination of poor play and a poor poor rund of EV vs $ won I found myself scared shitless for being thrown back out of heaven. Luckily the Academy had faith in me and I managed, through hard work, to get myself back on track and ended the month in a minor minus.

The two next months went ok. I found my game and saw my stats and winrate develop like they should be. both months I finished with 22BI each. the first three months I played 90% 6max with only a little HU.
April was another horrible month EV wise. At the end of the month I found myself 23BI under EV, which made me very proud to end with a 13BI+. This gave me good faith in myself as a player and I from that point I knew that I wasn’t dependant on my cards alone, which is nice. I started playing more HU again and liked it. I still like to mix the games in order to stay sharp in both.

DOUCHEBAG

After 4 months of solid play I have been rewarded with a double-up of my daily roll and became eligible for nl200 and this is where I am at right now. So far May hasn’t been any kinder to me than april and I am 10BI below my EV. grrrrrrrrrr. WHY DOES THIS ALWAYS HAPPEN WHEN YOU MOVE UP !!!! I take things easy though and know that it takes some adjustments to get used to new stakes. So right now I am somewhere close to even and still aiming confidently for my usual goals, which are 25k+ hands and 20+BIs.

I will try to update this blog pretty regularly, aiming for once a week. Stay tuned for more next week. There won’t be much to tell since school is first priority right now due to those damn exams. But I guess there will be time for a little sesh or two

gl at the tables

February Update- I left you in the middle of February on a +12 buyin streak. Unfortunately my luck turned for the worse and I ended the month on + 6 buyins when all was said and done. This coupled with being slightly down in tournaments meant I only ended up slightly for the month in real terms which was obviously disappointing.

March -March was another rollercoaster month for me. I started off down 4 buyins fairly quickly. I then cashed in a 10 dollar tournament where I came 3rd for $950 and unfortunately went out with QQ vs 99. We got it all in pre and he spiked a 9 on the flop and then made quads on the river. This was a disappointing finish to the tournament as that pot would of almost guaranteed me the top prize of $2800.

This result got me in the profit again for the month. Unfortunately, my Hold’em manager crashed so I wasn’t able to play as much as i liked as I was trying to fix it. I had to play over a week without it and i went back into the negative figures again. Just before the end of the month i got it back and ended the month just slightly in the profit again.

I went out playing golf for the first time ever with a friend of mine and I thought maybe a nice relaxing game would ease the pain of my bad beats. If you think poker can be a cruel and frustrating game try golf!! I came to the conclusion that poker is very similar to golf. One mistake leads to another mistake and then another and before you know it you have a 5 over par on the hole. ‘How is this similar to poker?’ you may ask. Well from looking over some hands that I have played badly I will see that I have made a mistake on the flop. To try and rectify this I will then have made a mistake on the turn and then compounded this with yet another mistake on the river. A mistake can be as simple as not making the optimum decision on any given street.

My friend who has been playing golf for a long time told me when you make a mistake e.g. hit it into the trees, you must swallow your pride and chip it back out onto the fairway. Now how can I incorporate this into my poker I started to think. I have come to the conclusion that when I make a mistake I will have to try and swallow my pride and give up on the pot if needs be. Too often I will not want to accept that I need to stop firing and wave the white flag.

They say you learn everytime you sit at a poker table. Golf has been useful in showing how to deal with poker situations by taking lessons from every-day life experiences.

February got off to a flying start. I was up 20 buyins after 8k hands and finally it seemed that my big hands were holding up and no-one was hitting runner runner or one outers to rob me. There is a poker god after all

Everything was running smoothly and I felt in total control of my game. Then, alas I hit a rocky patch and I couldn’t win a hand. I had a 2 day spree where I had every poker players nightmare but when I looked over hands I had played I noticed that I could’ve saved myself a few buyins. When any loss is down to playing bad or tilting pots away its vital to identify it early and make sure it doesn’t continue.

I found myself back at +7 buyins for the month. I decided to start marking players again and looking over hands to find spots where I went wrong. I also noticed that when I had a bad session I really had a bad session. Now I have come to the realisation that what makes a good poker player is not how much he wins in a session it is how much he can get away with losing when he is running bad. So hopefully now when I run bad I can get away with losing the minimum which in turn will keep me in the profit every month.

I came back fresh and feeling on form. I am currently on +12 buyins for the month so my target is to finish roughly on +20 buyins and I will be extremely happy. I have currently played 32k hands which is under my target for the month but at this stage I will be aiming for another 15k hands by the end of the month.

Heres a few hands for the month:

This was my biggest pot to date. We got it all in on the the river.

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Here’s a hand where a fellow Uncover Poker Academy member- icubluff- laughed at me saying I never fold AA on the flop. I actually did muck though which proved to be a good fold

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Heres a hand where I lost a big pot. Even with this horrible turn I was still a 1/4 chance of winning. But a dud on the river meant the pot travelled the other way.

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I can’t complain with how February has played out. Without my 2 bad days I would be up a hefty profit. I will get back in touch and let you know how February finishes for me.

Good luck at the tables!

In my last blog I told you I was going to up the amount of sessions and hours. Unfortunately, this is not what has ended up happening so far this year.

2009 started off badly as a good friend of mine fell ill and had to be hospitalized. For the first week of January I was up visiting him and because of this I couldn’t log my usual hours. I did still manage to get in 43k hands by the end of Jan, but this was well below my target for the month.

I never really felt like I got going in January. By the middle of the month I was down 15 buyins and nothing seemed to be going right. Just as I started to get it rolling again and got back to break-even, I soon dropped back down into negative figures. I just couldn’t get a run together, and with just two days to go until the end of the month, I was determined to get my account into profit.

This was helped after I logged 2 big winning sessions and just managed to pull myself into the black. While it obviously wasn’t what I had been aiming for, to avoid taking a loss after being down 15 buy-ins at one point gave me some consolation. My only goal for February is to concentrate on logging as many hours as I can and hopefully it will be my best month so far.

Here are a few interesting hands from the month. In the first hand, my opponent obviously decided he had too much money so he decided to give me a buy-in. This always helps when you’re trying to get some buy-ins back!

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In this second hand, it was a 3-way all-in on the flop. Obviously when the cards were turned over I was pleased that my opponents were sharing a flush draw and had some of each others outs. When I made quads I was even more happy of course

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In this final hand I was again all-in on the flop. Given that the guy only had a belly-buster or runner runner to win I wasn’t overly panicked but of course every player has to love that miracle on the river which gives the fish a buy-in.

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I left you in the middle on December when I was enjoying a five day winning streak. Unfortunately, my luck turned for the worst not too long after that last blog entry and it was back to negative variance.

I had nut hands busted on several occasions to runner runners, houses busted to one outers, trips into trips and so on and so on. It just seemed as if I was playing a computer game opponent who was on expert mode and I wasn’t going to be able to win a hand regardless of what I had. According to my Hold’em Manager program, I managed to lose 14 full buy-ins with AA in the last 10 days which is quite impressive and have also managed to lose with KK 28 times since joining the Academy. As much as I hate reporting these hands I want my blog to reflect whats happening at the time so there is no positive spin to put on hands like these.

Anyway, the result of all this was a sick sick ending for the month and ruined my plans of ringing in the New Year with a nice profit which had been the goal in my last blog. This is disappointing but one of the pitfalls if you want to set goals in poker- you can’t be disappointed if you don’t manage to reach them every time. And, obviously the only thing good about negative variance is that before long you hope to flip things round and maybe get a bit of help here and there. Lets hope this is what happens as we move into January.

My target for January is that I’m going to try and up the hours. I’m able to play long sessions and log a lot of hands and this is often the best way to iron out a bit of bad luck. I have a sneaky feeling January is going to be a great month for me as I’m feeling good about my game and positive about my ability to start making some big profits….fingers crossed though!

I have a included a selection of the most fun hands from the last few weeks so if you have a strong stomach make sure you have a look!

In the meantime best of luck at the tables and for 2009!

This hand involved a 3-way all-in on the flop… would’ve been a very tidy pot to take down obviously

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not a lot had actually happened until the river card in this hand… obviously when the turn hit giving him quads, my opponent was probably on his knees praying for me to hit some kind of draw/make a hand I could possibly pay him off with and, sure enough, filling up on the river meant that is exactly what happened

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Obviously all the money went in on this flop… while I didn’t fill up at least the opponent didn’t have me covered…

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this was another 3-way all-in hand on the flop which again I was on the wrong side of

lastly a hand where for a change, I decided to lose a buy-in with top 2 pair instead of a set….

I’m keeping fingers crossed these are the last beats I post in my blog- next time it’s going to be all big pots I win!!

After stating my targets in my previous blog things took a turn for the worse. My winning run came to an abrupt end with a huge loss on the 11th December. Two more losses on the 12th and the 15th put me near to the evens mark after being $5k up at my highest point. I had quite a few nasty spots with set over set and flush over flush around this period. Since then it’s been very up and down but I have put in 4 winning days in a row up until today so maybe i can still book a nice win come the end of the month.

Regarding my other challenge, the 150k hands, my efforts have dropped somewhat recently. I had played about 80k hands in the first 12 days and was well on course but a combination of my birthday, Christmas and a couple of very bad days stopped me from working during the middle period of the month. I now have three days (including New Years Eve :-s) to play 22k hands to hit my target! Maybe a couple of all nighters needed…

Best of luck at the tables

Following the great news I had been offered a place in the Uncover Poker Academy I started off playing 1/2 No Limit Hold’em. Unfortunately, I hadn’t actually played at these stakes for a while and so surprise surprise I started off very poorly! I had thought to myself before starting “I will go and kill these stakes”, but after beginning to play regular sessions I realised the general standard of play had got a lot lot tougher since I was last a regular at these stakes. Due to some general bad play, and finding myself being re-raised left, right and centre pre-flop and then not always responding well, my results were pretty poor.

I found myself behind in pots more often than not, and this- coupled with running slightly under expectation- meant that after just 4 days I had an overall loss of €1959. A terrible start for me at the Academy! I was approached by Chris, the Academy Director, and was told that due to the fact I was running/playing so bad my daily bankroll was being suspended while an emergency review would be conducted of my play to find out what was going wrong (no surprises there). I felt really bad that I had let everyone down and I was determined to get my bankroll re-instated and prove that I could be a valuable asset.

With a bit of haggling, hustling and persuading my daily bankroll was resumed. At my own suggestion I was now playing stakes that I was comfortable with and used to (50/1 No Limit). After 4 days I had won €1100 and was feeling very good and comfortable with both my play and the standard of the opposition. Unfortunately, I had 3 very poor days towards the end of November where I lost over €1100 and so I only ended the month making a profit of €577, but considering the start I had this is still very respectable.

December, my second month as an Academy player, started off very poorly and after 10 days my total amount won for the Academy was down to €89. I was running extremely bad and I managed to lose with trips vs trips 6 times in the space of 4 days which is obviously pretty sick. I also seemed to be losing with AA and KK hand after hand. I just couldn’t win with my MONSTER hands and all poker players know how frustrating that can get!

Here is just one example of the trips vs trips hands, and the way I was running it was typical I had to run into the big stack here with me also happening to have a pretty big stack at the time as well. I nearly folded to the 4-bet on the flop but with the flush draw out there- and the over-pair possibilities as well- I felt I had to call and pray he would turn over AA! Obviously A9 would be ideal as well but we can safely say this wasn’t very likely! Anyway, no surprise I was all-in on the flop drawing to one card in the deck and no and I didn’t end up hitting quads lol!

After such a hideous start to December I felt that the heat was now on again. I thought if I start to lose at these stakes I will surely be kicked out of the Academy. I decided to watch a few videos on cash games and also look over my hand histories just to get focussed again and start to think about my play more critically. I decided to change my strategy/game play to a very slightly more conservative style and for now this seems to have paid off very nicely. I’m currently on a 5 day winning streak where I have made over €1900 so for the first time this month I’m in profit for the Academy. Long may it continue!

I’ll update you as December comes to a close and hopefully this will end up being a big month for me.

Best of luck at the tables!