Howdy,
yesterday, I went to the casino in Oostende, and there were 2 tables running in cash games. First time for me that I played there, so it was a quite intresting experience. blinds were 2€/4€ - min buy-in 100€ max buy-in 500€
instead of rake, they charge every player 15€/hour for playing, which is quite hard, but well, I don't know if it's better then the 10% rake the casino's usually charges -_-'
anyways, I bought in for 500€ and was sitting pretty next to the dealer, which is my favorite position, and the only keyhand I played was when I was dealt AhAs, and the flop goes 2c3c5s , I raised pf 20€ and I got two callers behind me. I bet 40€ on the flop, one caller, one fold. Turn goes Ad. I shoved all in and the guy calls, river 7s. He turns over AKo and I rake in the pot with my set. There was another hand that was mentionable though. I had AT on the button and raised 16€ pf and got 2 callers. flop goes T23 , I bet 25€ on the flop, call, and the guy raised to 75€ .. wow on that board, what can he have? I'm thinking and I fold. turn goes 5. check, bet from that guy and the other guy calls 100€. river 7. the guy bets 150€. other guy calls and turns over 64 straight and the original reraiser shows 33. Good fold Ryu :p
anyways, I ended up a little bit after an hour, about 100€ while my other friend went up about 300€, so it was all by all a nice session for that one hour we played. I had fun, and I'm looking forward to playing some live cash again in Macau next month :)
Ryu
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
lord oh lord
Hi :)
it's been such a while, and actually I have quite a few stories to tell, since my last blog post.. so I guess I'll start out with my trip to Macau. I went there with a friend from Singapore (Jason) and to be honest it was superfun :)
Macau has 3 venues now where you can play almost 24/24 live NL holdem poker. Two casino's have live card tables, and one is where you sort of sit behind a computer and see your hole cards on the screen, it's like playing online basically, but you can wave to your friend across the table lol :)
Anyways, I started some 10$/20$ at the Grand Lisboa casino and I managed to be amazed about the play. First of all you have to know that it's totally limping heaven.. and if you decide to raise a hand, be assured that definitely 5 or so will call your raise.. so I needed some time to adjust myself to the play. Also my friend said in chinese to the players at the table that I was some rich japanese kid who didn't know how to play poker and that they should be gentle with me. haha.. funny! :) Although I think by saying that they called me even more preflop :)
I managed to grind it up to about 3700$ (buy-in was 2000$ max) and then the keyhand came, one guy raised preflop, a caller between me and him, I 3-betted him with my AA and then he 4-bets me and I shoved all in preflop. He had KK and spikes an K immediately on the flop. It was my welcome to Macau bad beat I guess for the day -_-' . I tried to cool myself a bit, because I worked hard to grind it up and then lose it all in one hand where I had what I wanted.. but that's poker. I rebuyed immediately and at the end of the night, I somehow managed to get about 4500$, which made my day, since I still ended with some profit.. but how sweet would it have been if my aces would have held :p
Second day, I decided to move it up a little notch and played at the 25$/50$ table, there was only was 1 table, so I sat down with 5000$ (max buy-in) and checked out the competition. On my left side there were some americans who knew what they were doing and played pretty solid and some korean guy that was a terrible luckbox fish on the right side and also some tight/solid swedes in the middle. I played an awesome hand, where I had Qs7h and the flop goes Qd2d4h. I bet out, and the two americans called, and the korean guy. The turn came a 6d. so obviously the flush was there. I decided to check, the first american bet out, the second one called, and the korean folded. I looked at my hole cards again.. and slowly called. The river came a Td. I checked, and the first american betted again and the second one called. I slowly looked at my hole cards, putting on some act. Everyone on the table was looking.. I took my time and looked again and then reraised the pot size. The swede was already saying.. 'oh really???' 'flush for sure' Good comments, that helped :) so the first american was thinking and his fellow friend looked at him, no man he has it for sure... and they both mucked their hand, both had baby flush cards. Proudly I flipped over my top pair bluff cards and everybody on the table was laughing :)
I also hit a full house on that table, but then I was afraid of a higher full on the river, so I played it badly, so scared.. but I ended up almost doubling my buy in after that session.
The next day we decided to go to the newly opened pokerstars pokerroom in the Grand Waldo. The rake was almost half of what the lisboa was taking! It was awesome.. but the max buy in was only 1000$ on 10/20 so that kind of sucked. I ended up on a huge fish table, with a girl, some holland guy and two guys that could have been in an asian maffia movie. The game was super, they were playing all very bad and I ended up with a 4.5K stack in about 2 hours. I played a tournament 1000$ buy in donkament and ended on 6th position... which is the bubbleboy spot :D
After that I played some 20$/40$ at the Waldo and sitting on a shark table with two pro's. I somehow managed to get called 'fish' by them (I agreed) and won like half a buy in. So all in all good days and great fun in Macau.
I'm definitely going to be back, and hopefully be able to hit something big at the APPT Macau and if not, try to grind some side cashgames again for sure. Lately I've been totally back in the grind and making some good money on the tables, so I'm definitely not complaining. I also started making some videos from my play and shared it with my friends as some form of 'test', and it's quite fun to see and hear yourself play, I don't think I'll share it online though. Anyways, I'll better try to keep my blog more up to date, so I'll try to post more stuff and more hands in the near future.
Ryu
it's been such a while, and actually I have quite a few stories to tell, since my last blog post.. so I guess I'll start out with my trip to Macau. I went there with a friend from Singapore (Jason) and to be honest it was superfun :)
Macau has 3 venues now where you can play almost 24/24 live NL holdem poker. Two casino's have live card tables, and one is where you sort of sit behind a computer and see your hole cards on the screen, it's like playing online basically, but you can wave to your friend across the table lol :)
Anyways, I started some 10$/20$ at the Grand Lisboa casino and I managed to be amazed about the play. First of all you have to know that it's totally limping heaven.. and if you decide to raise a hand, be assured that definitely 5 or so will call your raise.. so I needed some time to adjust myself to the play. Also my friend said in chinese to the players at the table that I was some rich japanese kid who didn't know how to play poker and that they should be gentle with me. haha.. funny! :) Although I think by saying that they called me even more preflop :)
I managed to grind it up to about 3700$ (buy-in was 2000$ max) and then the keyhand came, one guy raised preflop, a caller between me and him, I 3-betted him with my AA and then he 4-bets me and I shoved all in preflop. He had KK and spikes an K immediately on the flop. It was my welcome to Macau bad beat I guess for the day -_-' . I tried to cool myself a bit, because I worked hard to grind it up and then lose it all in one hand where I had what I wanted.. but that's poker. I rebuyed immediately and at the end of the night, I somehow managed to get about 4500$, which made my day, since I still ended with some profit.. but how sweet would it have been if my aces would have held :p
Second day, I decided to move it up a little notch and played at the 25$/50$ table, there was only was 1 table, so I sat down with 5000$ (max buy-in) and checked out the competition. On my left side there were some americans who knew what they were doing and played pretty solid and some korean guy that was a terrible luckbox fish on the right side and also some tight/solid swedes in the middle. I played an awesome hand, where I had Qs7h and the flop goes Qd2d4h. I bet out, and the two americans called, and the korean guy. The turn came a 6d. so obviously the flush was there. I decided to check, the first american bet out, the second one called, and the korean folded. I looked at my hole cards again.. and slowly called. The river came a Td. I checked, and the first american betted again and the second one called. I slowly looked at my hole cards, putting on some act. Everyone on the table was looking.. I took my time and looked again and then reraised the pot size. The swede was already saying.. 'oh really???' 'flush for sure' Good comments, that helped :) so the first american was thinking and his fellow friend looked at him, no man he has it for sure... and they both mucked their hand, both had baby flush cards. Proudly I flipped over my top pair bluff cards and everybody on the table was laughing :)
I also hit a full house on that table, but then I was afraid of a higher full on the river, so I played it badly, so scared.. but I ended up almost doubling my buy in after that session.
The next day we decided to go to the newly opened pokerstars pokerroom in the Grand Waldo. The rake was almost half of what the lisboa was taking! It was awesome.. but the max buy in was only 1000$ on 10/20 so that kind of sucked. I ended up on a huge fish table, with a girl, some holland guy and two guys that could have been in an asian maffia movie. The game was super, they were playing all very bad and I ended up with a 4.5K stack in about 2 hours. I played a tournament 1000$ buy in donkament and ended on 6th position... which is the bubbleboy spot :D
After that I played some 20$/40$ at the Waldo and sitting on a shark table with two pro's. I somehow managed to get called 'fish' by them (I agreed) and won like half a buy in. So all in all good days and great fun in Macau.
I'm definitely going to be back, and hopefully be able to hit something big at the APPT Macau and if not, try to grind some side cashgames again for sure. Lately I've been totally back in the grind and making some good money on the tables, so I'm definitely not complaining. I also started making some videos from my play and shared it with my friends as some form of 'test', and it's quite fun to see and hear yourself play, I don't think I'll share it online though. Anyways, I'll better try to keep my blog more up to date, so I'll try to post more stuff and more hands in the near future.
Ryu
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
back to the grind
I've been running back and forth from Asia to Europe, and I had some people asking me how I was able to play on Party Poker in Thailand, well.. the secret revealed, just use a VPN to get an european IP address and you can play perfectly from anywhere in the world, as long as you are legally able to play on the site ofcourse. You can get very cheap one for already $36 a year on http://www.vpnhoster.com , pretty easy to setup, just login on the VPN before you do anything.
Anyways, I'm back at grinding online since my long break from poker. I've been mainly working on my bank project since they assigned me as their project leader.. so no poker for a while. But with the new APPT season coming up soon, I'm back at post. Normally the first stop will be Manila (Philippines), so hopefully we'll be doing some damage there :)
I've been also active as a poker coach more and more lately, a lot of players seem to be intrested in learning more and finally understanding that poker is a skill game in the long run and that there is money to be made.
oh, and I hope you have seen the new SilverRakeBack design.. must say it's a big improvement since last time :)
may the river be with you
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
Anyways, I'm back at grinding online since my long break from poker. I've been mainly working on my bank project since they assigned me as their project leader.. so no poker for a while. But with the new APPT season coming up soon, I'm back at post. Normally the first stop will be Manila (Philippines), so hopefully we'll be doing some damage there :)
I've been also active as a poker coach more and more lately, a lot of players seem to be intrested in learning more and finally understanding that poker is a skill game in the long run and that there is money to be made.
oh, and I hope you have seen the new SilverRakeBack design.. must say it's a big improvement since last time :)
may the river be with you
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Back in Europe
Hi guys,
Been a while since I've updated, been so busy with other sideprojects and not actually playing much online poker, so I decided to take a short break from it all for some time. I'm currently back in Belgium, and I must say it's sooooo cold, it's amazing how you get used to nice sunny weather so fast :p Well since it's so cold, there's pretty nothing much else to do then to play poker, so I've started to run it up again the last couple of days on both ChiliPoker and Partypoker. And so far everything is going normal, I've decided to move down to NL200 a bit before going back up to my normal limits again, why? just because I feel like it I guess, I'm trying some new strategies and I think it's always to advisable to try it on lower limits first :) But for the moment things are ging the right direction so I'm not complaining much. I'm getting a lot of bad beats on Chili still though, but all in all, I'm going up, so I guess things will work out in the longer run.
The plan is now to grind it up for the whole month, and go to some european poker events before going back to Asia. Hopefully I'll manage to keep my sanity over here, because to be honest, it's already getting boring after a week over here.. peace and quiet and perfect internet connection. It sounds very good, but it's very boring too :p anyways, it DOES do my poker well, I must admit that haha :)
anyways.. going to post some more hands later, so you can see the beats I've been getting on Chili :) gosh.. you have to love those 2-outers!
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
Been a while since I've updated, been so busy with other sideprojects and not actually playing much online poker, so I decided to take a short break from it all for some time. I'm currently back in Belgium, and I must say it's sooooo cold, it's amazing how you get used to nice sunny weather so fast :p Well since it's so cold, there's pretty nothing much else to do then to play poker, so I've started to run it up again the last couple of days on both ChiliPoker and Partypoker. And so far everything is going normal, I've decided to move down to NL200 a bit before going back up to my normal limits again, why? just because I feel like it I guess, I'm trying some new strategies and I think it's always to advisable to try it on lower limits first :) But for the moment things are ging the right direction so I'm not complaining much. I'm getting a lot of bad beats on Chili still though, but all in all, I'm going up, so I guess things will work out in the longer run.
The plan is now to grind it up for the whole month, and go to some european poker events before going back to Asia. Hopefully I'll manage to keep my sanity over here, because to be honest, it's already getting boring after a week over here.. peace and quiet and perfect internet connection. It sounds very good, but it's very boring too :p anyways, it DOES do my poker well, I must admit that haha :)
anyways.. going to post some more hands later, so you can see the beats I've been getting on Chili :) gosh.. you have to love those 2-outers!
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Going crazy!
The title says it all I think.. wow.. been running sooooo bad the last couple of days, and it seems like there's no improvement :( all my aces get cracked and I keep running against oversets or quads with my sets :( this is going to be very tough month on my winrate average lol. Anyways, I thought the rake race was going to be only for one skin, but it seems that the rake race is for the whole iPoker network, and there are some really hardcore crazy guys playing.. so, no way that I'm even going to be in the top 200. That being said, I think I should take a few days off from poker, I need to catch a break I think. I'm sad, because I still need 23K points to make it up to the next VIP level, which is certainly possible if I play a few hours every day until the end of the month, but if I keep running this bad, it's not worth it at all.
Meanwhile I've got this cold/fever that I just seem not to be able to get rid off. I just keep coughing and my throat hurts. I don't know what the problem is, I'm taking medication, but it doesn't seem to help. Some of my friends told me, it might be the toxic air over here.. but I think I should have adapted by now right? But well, I'm only staying here until mid February, after that I'm returning to Europe. Stable internet.. gosh.. it's going to feel so strange not to disconnect lol ;)
One of my friends did pretty well, and cashed in on the Aussies millions (40.000$), so I would like to congratulate him (eventhough he's dissapointed not to make the superbig money), congrats Matt! :)
and here's a one outer that I hit.. sometimes lady luck does shine upon me, I just hope by posting this, she will be with me again ;)
GAME #804200637: Texas Hold'em NL $1.00/$2.00 2008-01-18 10:00:46
Table Melrose
Seat 3: VicenteValencia ($285.52 in chips)
Seat 5: HERO ($199.90 in chips)
Seat 6: jib64 ($135.80 in chips)
DEALER
Seat 8: SnowmanT ($187.87 in chips)
Seat 10: Wendy22 ($110.85 in chips)
SnowmanT: Post SB $1.00
Wendy22: Post BB $2.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to HERO [C3 H3]
Dealt to SnowmanT [SJ CJ]
VicenteValencia: Raise $7.00
HERO: Call $7.00
jib64: Fold
SnowmanT: Raise $18.00
Wendy22: Fold
VicenteValencia: Call $12.00
HERO: Call $12.00
*** FLOP *** [SK D3 HJ]
SnowmanT: Check
VicenteValencia: Check
HERO: Bet $45.00
SnowmanT: Call $45.00
VicenteValencia: Fold
*** TURN *** [S10]
SnowmanT: Check
HERO: Bet $135.90
SnowmanT: Allin $123.87
*** RIVER *** [S3]
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $405.77
Rake $3.00
HERO: wins $405.77
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
Meanwhile I've got this cold/fever that I just seem not to be able to get rid off. I just keep coughing and my throat hurts. I don't know what the problem is, I'm taking medication, but it doesn't seem to help. Some of my friends told me, it might be the toxic air over here.. but I think I should have adapted by now right? But well, I'm only staying here until mid February, after that I'm returning to Europe. Stable internet.. gosh.. it's going to feel so strange not to disconnect lol ;)
One of my friends did pretty well, and cashed in on the Aussies millions (40.000$), so I would like to congratulate him (eventhough he's dissapointed not to make the superbig money), congrats Matt! :)
and here's a one outer that I hit.. sometimes lady luck does shine upon me, I just hope by posting this, she will be with me again ;)
GAME #804200637: Texas Hold'em NL $1.00/$2.00 2008-01-18 10:00:46
Table Melrose
Seat 3: VicenteValencia ($285.52 in chips)
Seat 5: HERO ($199.90 in chips)
Seat 6: jib64 ($135.80 in chips)
DEALER
Seat 8: SnowmanT ($187.87 in chips)
Seat 10: Wendy22 ($110.85 in chips)
SnowmanT: Post SB $1.00
Wendy22: Post BB $2.00
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to HERO [C3 H3]
Dealt to SnowmanT [SJ CJ]
VicenteValencia: Raise $7.00
HERO: Call $7.00
jib64: Fold
SnowmanT: Raise $18.00
Wendy22: Fold
VicenteValencia: Call $12.00
HERO: Call $12.00
*** FLOP *** [SK D3 HJ]
SnowmanT: Check
VicenteValencia: Check
HERO: Bet $45.00
SnowmanT: Call $45.00
VicenteValencia: Fold
*** TURN *** [S10]
SnowmanT: Check
HERO: Bet $135.90
SnowmanT: Allin $123.87
*** RIVER *** [S3]
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $405.77
Rake $3.00
HERO: wins $405.77
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
Friday, January 11, 2008
Fresh Air
Hi guys,
the new year started pretty horrible at the poker tables, I went into a -4000$ downswing on NL400 and gone down another 3000$ at NL600 which made that -7000$ in a few days :( didn't play that bad to be honest, a lot of serious bad beats, 5 in a row on NL400 where I lost with 90% or higher, anyhow, we're almost back to break even now, so I'm happy with that, only thing is that we haven't made any money at all and the month is already 1/3 passed, which is not good :) but there is some good news though, ChiliPoker (iPoker network) is starting a rake race starting on the 14th of January and ending on the 31st of January and they are giving away 100.000$ in total, so I think I'll be grinding a lot to make a top 10 position (at least) on that and give myself a nice bonus for this month. If there are still people interested in playing on iPoker network, feel free to mail SilverRakeBack for a good signup bonus offer!
after the bad beats and downswing I just decided to move out of Bangkok for a few days with my friends, heading to the beach at Pattaya.. well not that much beach to be honest, it's pretty small, but I always love having a coconut at the beach and sitting on my ass :)
We had lots of fun at the beach and ended up in some sleazy hotel surrounded by gay go-go bars.. wtf?! yes! gay go-go bars.. sigh.. Thailand is a pretty crazy country lol. But before I get flamed by gay people, I have nothing against it, it's just there are so many gay people in Thailand, I think it's strange, no other country has that many compacted on one area I think? or maybe I'm wrong :)
anyhow, it's going to be a heavy grinding month, and I don't think I'll do something else besides concentrating on grinding much! no more holidays, time to get serious, so wish me luck :)
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
the new year started pretty horrible at the poker tables, I went into a -4000$ downswing on NL400 and gone down another 3000$ at NL600 which made that -7000$ in a few days :( didn't play that bad to be honest, a lot of serious bad beats, 5 in a row on NL400 where I lost with 90% or higher, anyhow, we're almost back to break even now, so I'm happy with that, only thing is that we haven't made any money at all and the month is already 1/3 passed, which is not good :) but there is some good news though, ChiliPoker (iPoker network) is starting a rake race starting on the 14th of January and ending on the 31st of January and they are giving away 100.000$ in total, so I think I'll be grinding a lot to make a top 10 position (at least) on that and give myself a nice bonus for this month. If there are still people interested in playing on iPoker network, feel free to mail SilverRakeBack for a good signup bonus offer!
after the bad beats and downswing I just decided to move out of Bangkok for a few days with my friends, heading to the beach at Pattaya.. well not that much beach to be honest, it's pretty small, but I always love having a coconut at the beach and sitting on my ass :)
We had lots of fun at the beach and ended up in some sleazy hotel surrounded by gay go-go bars.. wtf?! yes! gay go-go bars.. sigh.. Thailand is a pretty crazy country lol. But before I get flamed by gay people, I have nothing against it, it's just there are so many gay people in Thailand, I think it's strange, no other country has that many compacted on one area I think? or maybe I'm wrong :)
anyhow, it's going to be a heavy grinding month, and I don't think I'll do something else besides concentrating on grinding much! no more holidays, time to get serious, so wish me luck :)
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
Thursday, January 3, 2008
Welcome to 2008
hi guys,
today I took a break from all the partying and going out.. gosh been partying a little bit too much (is that possible? yep :p). So I thought, why not start a little session to celebrate the new year, and it started off really bad.. overplayed my TT so badly and ran against KK, so I was down like 800$ but then suddenly I was focused and in the end I ended with 300$ profit or something on 600 hands. I'm happy with it, because I didn't play too well imo but as an excuse I haven't played for over a week so I needed to warm up and get back into my tight modus again :)
Anyways.. I moved up VIP level on iPoker this month, and I'm planning to reach my 100.000 points for the highest VIP level 6 this month, so I'm gonna move off Pokerstars for a month and concentrate my play on iPoker mostly. I've also started datamining NL600 and NL1000 tables on iPoker, just waiting to ship my stars bankroll on iPoker to have enough to multitable on those limits.
Enough poker rant? how was the partying? well.. everything was a big blur, so many things happened (good and bad), but I guess the most important thing is that I had some good times and have learned some important lessons for the near future. What about new year resolutions? well here are my goals for this year:
- try to reach about 100K$ for this year on the poker cash tables
- try to hit something big at a big live tourney
- try to complete my asian marketing project
- live happily in my own way
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
today I took a break from all the partying and going out.. gosh been partying a little bit too much (is that possible? yep :p). So I thought, why not start a little session to celebrate the new year, and it started off really bad.. overplayed my TT so badly and ran against KK, so I was down like 800$ but then suddenly I was focused and in the end I ended with 300$ profit or something on 600 hands. I'm happy with it, because I didn't play too well imo but as an excuse I haven't played for over a week so I needed to warm up and get back into my tight modus again :)
Anyways.. I moved up VIP level on iPoker this month, and I'm planning to reach my 100.000 points for the highest VIP level 6 this month, so I'm gonna move off Pokerstars for a month and concentrate my play on iPoker mostly. I've also started datamining NL600 and NL1000 tables on iPoker, just waiting to ship my stars bankroll on iPoker to have enough to multitable on those limits.
Enough poker rant? how was the partying? well.. everything was a big blur, so many things happened (good and bad), but I guess the most important thing is that I had some good times and have learned some important lessons for the near future. What about new year resolutions? well here are my goals for this year:
- try to reach about 100K$ for this year on the poker cash tables
- try to hit something big at a big live tourney
- try to complete my asian marketing project
- live happily in my own way
GP UP!
GP.Dragon
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