Finally over!

I really should be less lazy updating my blog, but hell.. who reads this anyways :D

anyhow.. I ended up losing in the semi-finals in the Thailand HU donkament.. I wasn't in the mood really, I basically gave up because I was still tilting from my cashgame downswing bleh.. anyhow, it was fun while it lasted. Definitely my first matchup where I cracked AA twice hihi.. fun fun fun :p

Last month I totally went into robot mode and grinded out basically almost 10 hours a day, but I ran like a dog, so my winrate was like supershit, and the goal that I put up (which was 20K$) was totally off radar and far away from reached :( sad sad panda yes..

I played also a few live MTT's, first one in my own city where I lost a 3 way pot in a critical moment. I had QQ vs AK vs 33 .. all went fine, but then the river came a K that I couldn't dodge.. sad sad panda.. again, but my brother in law managed to end runner up, so that was cool.

I then played a live MTT in a Casino in Oostende, which was sooooooo excrutiatingly long, it took me 9 hours or so to get into the final table.. to then bust out on my very first hand.. I had JJ shoved it in, behind a guy instacalls and a few guys after another guy instacalls also.. result: JJ vs AA vs KK .. yeah.. cold deck? and everyone had a spade and a heart.. bad shuffle imo, because it was a brand new deck and new table.. but what can you do about it? I did share action with my brother in law this time and he managed to end up 4th spot for some monies (yeah, maybe he should turn pro instead :p) and maybe I can become a pro staker lol :D

anyhow, my tickets for Boston are booked and I'm flying out later this week, took like a whole week off from poker after my grinding month (which I used to just watch series and lay in bed :p) and boy did it feel good.. it's amazing :D being lazy is what I needed :p anyhow I played my first 250 hands or so for this month, and wow, I won some monies.. so to keep the good feeling, I stopped :D gonna go update some of the projects I have been putting on the side because I didn't have time for it due to the heavy grinding, but now I'm gonna put playing poker a bit on the side and focus on these projects a bit, because it's time for some change :)

have fun ya'll and hear you soon from Boston USA

Ryu

Back in Europe :p

Yeah after staying almost a year in Asia, it's my temporary return to the motherland Belgium.. it has been a very exciting time though, visiting Cambodia, Laos, Macau, Vietnam, and so on... it has been extremely fun and exciting, however, I haven't been grinding that much as I am supposed to, which clearly affected my game and level at the moment..

since my return to Belgium, I'm sitting in a downswing, yes I'm running below EV but still, I'm not very happy with the way I'm playing either, can't seem to stay focused for a longer period of time and swings are affecting my mood a lot more.. I think I seriously need to focus more on myself and my play in forthcoming period because I feel pretty upset about it :(

so this week I've just been playing MTT's just for fun, shipped 1 on the first day (out of 7 totally played), final tabled 2 (out of 5 played) on the second day, but busted out 8th position on both due to severely bad beats (KK lost to AQ and AA lost to 75) and then on the 3rd day I only played 1 MTT and final tabled it and busted out 7th position (A9 lost against K9), 4th day I also only played one and busted out very fast (AQ, flopped a Q but he rivered a K and 3 outered me with AK that he couldn't fold on the flopshove)

I've been playing in the Thailand HU Challenge 2009 also, which is just for fun and bragging rights ofcourse, and luckboxed my way through the semi-finals now.. you can see the brackets here: http://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=335321 and the thread on the 2+2 forums.

enjoying my time here in Belgium and then it's up to Boston USA..

ship!

I am Robot

yes that's what I am.. just spend the whole night at the tables, wooow.. yeah marathon 12 hour poker sessions are definitely something unhealthy, but I needed to assure my rake race position, and maybe make a surprise jump, but it didn't happen, I only managed to secure my position.. but well some fun things happends like me shipping a main even qualifier with a free 11$ token that I received from exchanging my old comp points.. now if I only could ship the main even also, I would be happy haha.. anyways didn't win that much, so it was a bit dissapointing hehe all in all. 

Jason dropped over and fell asleep apparently again in the club, he is such a regular lol. He is a bit unlucky I'm in the most grinding mood ever though, but I'll definitely meet up with him later on for sure obv. now my internet is so bad, and the new rake race has started, thinking about going to Johannes his place to grind since his internet is the nuts now since he has his own private line (me so jealous :p) but it's quite a distance and I haven't slept and I'm worried I'll fall asleep in the BTS and end up waking up beneath the BTS station like Alex lolz...

anyhow, I'm gonna keep the grind up and hope it will finally the month that I deserve.. May is the month! ship ship ship!

Ryu

back in rainy Bangkok

Back from my trip, it was amazing, so much has changed, people seem to be doing fine and I was very glad to have met everyone again.. old friends, family, and so on.. I thought it was a bit too short, but I sure did enjoy my time in Vietnam. There are actually some casino's now there in Saigon (not allowed for vietnamese people) but sadly I didn't see any poker action going on, so I couldn't bust my roll there haha.. 

anyways, I'm back at grinding, and the guys on the rake race were so nice to wait up for me a bit :p so I think I'll still get a decent 4th position for this month, that will give somewhere 700$ ish extra on top of my rakeback, so that's pretty decent.. also they have launched a VIP shop, and points aren't deducted from rakeback so, that's all on top of everything.. it's a pretty sweet deal imo, and the playing level is pretty soft.. 

I got back and starting grinding right away, I sort of missed it after not playing for a week actually, strange realisation to be honest haha :) anyways, I got 3 bad beats, and I quit, day after I got like super bad beats, like oversets being cracked by runner runner flush and so on.. 4 in total before I finally could press the quit button.. but then morning sesh was so awesome had a few 1K$ on nl200 tables (imagine :p) so I made up for all my losses and I actually made some profit so far.. today was another tilting moment I was in two 200+$ pots with one both I have hit my set, and then my internet just disconnected.. and well, I lost both hands, no disc protection left apparently sigh.. suckage -_-' anyways, I ended break even in that sesh, shortstackers kept hitting sets against my top pair lolzors.. ^_^ but it's better to break even then to lose money right? anyways.. I'm like up 12k$ ish for this month which is decent for the amount and limits I played this month (not sick NL5k spews haha) and I think I play very solid lately, so I'm not complaining, add some rake race money and I should end this month around 13K+ I think

should be enough to cover my expenses for my next trip.. think it's going Cambodia by the way, some poker friends over here wanted to check it out over there, so I'll probably tag along :)

so may the river be with you.. always

Ryu

off to the roots

Ok it's almost 1 am now, and I have to wake up at 5 am to catch my flight to Vietnam.. but I somehow can't find a way to get sleep.. tried everything, even playing the peacock game on facebook with Chris but that didn't help either.. lol

anyways, I'm off for a smallish week of holidays together with my gf to visit the family and say hi to my friends over there, so that means I won't be on the tables for a while.. sad actually, because I was doing well in the rake race haha :) 

anyways, this month has been pretty horrible so far, as in getting bashed, coolered and cracked.. so my winrate dropped like crazy, with also losing this 1.8k$ pot with a full house vs quads this morning just before shipping towards my thai school.. anyhow, I'm still up almost 10K$ ish for this month, so I guess that's better then one would think, but still, I feel I deserved 20K at least.. but that's not the case, so why am I ranting about it? because I want to :p

hope things will go smoothly and taking a few days off will give me some good energy to give it a last end of month sprint on the tables before May arrives..

gonna make another trip somewhere in May, should be Macau or Philippines.. not sure where to go yet, and with who, but it should be interesting and fun to play some live games again :)

have been shipping off and cashing in some free massages on prop bets and daily poker results, I like it, it keeps me motivated :D and been through some sick birthday party's from pokerbuddies over here (with sick flips for birthday dinner bill - I luckily dodged the first one, got 35o so it was pretty safe for me.. too bad for 78 though, he flopped a straight :D) and I bought out on the second one, because I felt I was running bad, and it was Omaha Hi-Lo :p

I've also decided to continue my thai course, and extend it to level 2 (it's starting to get interesting now) and still doing my weekly futsal thing and football in the thai league.. a bit less running in the park now though, guess the weather also has to do something with it, but all in all, it was been a good period for me over here.. maybe a better run on the tables and things would be awesome instead of just good :)

Songkran in Thailand.. what can I say, it's just plane sick.. spraying water with my big big watergun and getting splashed and powdered like crazy by thousands of thais.. you just have to be there and got through it at least once to know how it is.. went to RCA and Silom, which was just awesome, having thai dancers on stage while getting sprayed, walking through the battlefield on Silom shooting down peacocks or getting ice water buckets splashed over you, it's a treat, that I can assure you :) There are just no words to describe it, really a lifetime experience.

cheers!

Ryu

no ship :p

gonna be a short post again.. since I'm too lazy with stuff:

first of all.. took a shot a NL5K last month, dropped 25K$ nothing much to say more about it.. fish = me lol

secondly did a nice (but expensive) trip to Singapore, read TR about it on Munchu's blog = http://mrmunchu.blogspot.com/

have just started playing a bit again today for this month, and well ran pretty bad again, but still managed to get some profits by doing crazy stuff like flat call reraise on flop, check shoving on turn with air (he folded) and then value reraise on river with A high, villain calls me with A high also, but worse kicker *grin*

been playing weekly 11-a side football in the thai league, which has been very fun (although my fitness is at the absolute zero) and also playing futsal with the pokerdudes who live around here.. seriously trying to get my ass fit again, so I'm doing gym & runs around the park whenever I can.

I also have been taking up Thai class now.. very intense I must say, gotta go 2 hours every single day (except weekends) which kinds of screws up my clubbing habits.. but well, gotta roll with it now, I'm not a quitter :) Pretty sure it will make my thai speaking skillz awesome afterwards though..

Booked a trip back to Vietnam by the end of April to visit my family, and also have some time off from everything and just chill.. might also plan a trip with some pokerguys to Macau by the end of May and play some live games.

A lot of plans.. so I should be grinding more to be able to pay for those plans :p good luck to you all, hope you are having more luck then me right now

cheers,

Ryu

ship?

been here in Thailand for quite some time now, and I feel really at home and peace.. having so much fun hanging around these degen poker players that I probably going to extend my stay here for another 3 months before going to the USA...

you can read some trip reports on my padawan's blog: jasonsamsonov.blogspot.com 

he dropped by for a few days, and it sure had some really memorable moments :)

anyways.. I am now combining a few sites, and playing on FTP as well as Poker Nordica, a skin on Merge Network, it's a fairly small site, but it has medium stakes action, and wow.. the action and level of play is so sick. As in soooo weak. So I'm grinding pretty well on there, maybe break that rake race for this month also if I can.. if you are looking for a small skin that accepts american players, is soft and has a decent software, just contact me on dragonize80@gmail.com and I'll hook you up with a very good deal.

In general I can honestly say that this month is so much better in January, ok, I didn't play that much last month, but I'm very happy with the level of poker that I'm playing right now, and I made a few sessions already on NL5K, now the discomfort feeling is a bit more or less gone.. ofcourse it still hurts when I see AK. I think I overplay that hand so badly, maybe I should fold it PF haha :) but I really hate that hand..

Ryu

Happy New Year!

Howdy fellow grinders, wish you guys all the best of luck and a massive good run in the upcoming year!

my new years resolutions for 2009 are as following:

1. Learn HU, I'm totally jealous at some guys winrate on HU, so I'm going to learn it!

2. 200K goal this year

3. be less lazy, grind more, and ship more :)

4. take care of my gf

and not in that specific order lol :) but I have a feeling this year is going to be just awesome :D

Ryu