Hello poker addicts and other gambling people. Now the PSOP have passed, I started to concentrate on my online game again. The PSOP made me realize I still have to work on my tournament skills, because I want to become the best overall poker player, not only a brilliant cashgame player. So I returned to the poker room where it all began for me, Everest Poker, to play some tournaments.

Pity: the hand histories from Everest Poker are totally disgusting, so not a single poker hand replayer will convert them. So I’ll just paste the hand history over here:

Starting game 5003919898.

Mr Brown69 is at seat 0 with 2,375.
mandrin81 is at seat 1 with 985.
elmelun888 is at seat 2 with 715.
Henry6 is at seat 4 with 950.
sodos is at seat 5 with 990.
fortunafreak is at seat 6 with 1,000.
9hertz40 is at seat 7 with 1,000.
madjumber is at seat 8 with 995.
nicomathilda is at seat 9 with 990.

The dealer is seat 1.

elmelun888 posts a blind of 5.
Henry6 posts a blind of 10.

(Mr Brown69 is dealt 5c 2c.)

Pre-flop:
sodos calls for 10.
fortunafreak folds.
9hertz40 folds.
madjumber folds.
nicomathilda folds.
Mr Brown69 raises 30.
mandrin81 calls for 40.
elmelun888 folds.
Henry6 folds.
sodos calls for 30.

The flop comes
 4c 6c 7c.

sodos bets 10.
Mr Brown69 raises 70.
mandrin81 folds.
sodos raises 295.
Mr Brown69 raises 885.
sodos goes all-in for 575.
310 is pushed back to Mr Brown69.

Showdown:

sodos shows: 10c Qc
 Qc 10c 7c 6c 4c
 Flush, Queen high

Mr Brown69 shows: 5c 2c
 7c 6c 5c 4c 2c
 Flush, Seven high

The turn comes Kc.
The river comes 6d.

Mr Brown69 shows: 5c 2c
 Kc 7c 6c 5c 4c
 Flush, King high

sodos shows: 10c Qc
 Kc Qc 10c 7c 6c
 Flush, King high

sodos wins pot (2,035).

You see, this is obviously a clear case of punishing the good player and rewarding the poker donk. I make a very good raise on the cut-off with an hand which is very easy to play after the flop in that position. Two loose players call this raise BUT I FLOP A FLUSH + THE STRAIGHT FLUSH DRAW! Donk 1 leads out with the minbet, I raise while opening a bottle of champaign. Then I get reraised by this monkeyman as he flopped the higher flush. He’s so lucky I don’t make my straight flush. I’ll keep informing you about my pushes.

Submitted by Mr. Brown.

The Pokerheist Series of Poker have come to an end. It was Ms. Pink who won the deep stack Main Event, her second ‘bracelet’ and a 210€ prize. In the overall classification, Mr. White and Mr. Blue ended up with the same amount of points (20) and as both won one event, the classification of the Main Event was deciding for giving away the 150€ and as Mr. White finished third and Blue fourth, White also won our second ‘challenge’.

By winning the Main Event, Ms. Pink was the only player who won two events. Just like in the real Main Event, the best players were knocked out first, with myself finishing in sixth place. Ms. Blonde was eliminated next in fifth place. What followed was a very long period of play between the other four players, mainly due to the fact that both White and Blue knew that if one of them was eliminated next, the other one would win the overall ranking and the 150€. In the end it was Mr. Blue who was knocked out by Ms. Pink, when they both turned a flush: 8 high vs. K high.

White played like real nit meanwhile to avoid elimination and had become very shortstacked and that’s why he was busted in third place. Then it was between Ms. Pink and Mr. Orange, both already owner of one bracelet. Ms. Pink had about 14500 chips, Orange about 9500. This hand decided everything after twenty minutes of heads-up play:

Ms. Pink (button, sb 200)  KsJd

Mr. Orange(bb 400) 3c3s

Pink raised it up to 1000, Mr. Orange made it 2500, Pink called. Flop came Js8s3d . So top pair versus bottom set, a flop which would create some action you would think. But Orange slowplayed his set and Pink checked behind. Turn came 2s, so Pink added a King high flushdraw to her hand. Then Orange bet 3000, and Pink moved all-in, putting Orange all-in. Orange made the call and river came… 7s, making Pink a flush. This challenge was a new succes, we’ll see about a third one!

Submitted by Mr. Brown.

Our second Event in the PSOP took place yesterday, a NLHE tourney with rebuys and add-on and it was win Ms. Pink who won the Event and $126, beating Mr. Brown who won a $54 prize but was down six bucks nevertheless .

That was because he had to rebuy when this was still possible and decided to buy an add-on, so he was in for 60€ total. However, by finishing second, he acquired 5 points for the allround ranking, where Brown, Blue and Pink all have 9 points now (Orange/White 6, Blonde 3). This was becaused Mr. Orange, runner-up in the first event was eliminated early this time and didn’t opt for a rebuy. Some moments later exactly the same happened to our other newbie, Ms. Blonde. So it was the old gang from that moment on .

Ms. Pink and Mr. White (each one having eliminated a player) were the chipleaders, Brown and Blue were short. Brown went broke right before the break and decided to rebuy and add-on one hand later. Pink also opted for an add-on. Right áfter the break, Mr. Blue was eliminated by Ms. Pink when his pocket Tens didn’t hold up against Pinks AQ. I didn’t have to see the rest of the tournament and decided to throw my laptop on the table and play some online poker for the rest of the evening. Not a bad decision: I made $70 playing some double-or-nothing tournaments. The deciding hand in our tournament was again played threehanded:

Mr. White (button) 3800, Kh9s

Ms. Pink (sb, 50) 9500, 8s3d

Mr. Brown (bb, 100) 4700, JdTh

Mr. White raises it up preflop (350) with a reasonably good hand shorthanded and gets called by Mr. Brown. The flop comes KsQs3h and gives Mr. White his toppair but Mr. Brown the OESD. Brown checks and White makes a continuation bet of 550, called by Brown. The turn is the one you probably already guessed: the 9 (of diamonds). Brown checks again and White bets 1250 and Brown moves all-in. White puts him on a spade draw and calls of course. The river is a blank, the Ace of diamonds.

It were two big stacks against each other from that moment on in a very long heads-up session. At one point Brown had a chiplead of 13k vs 5k, but when Pink was short stack and finally HAD to play aggressive, she took some big and important pots. Final showdown was Pink shoving from the SB with KJ, called by Brown with KT: KJ held up. PLO next time!

Submitted by Mr. Blue

I’m very happy to inform you about my victory in our first Event of the PSOP . I beated Mr. Orange heads-up in the quest for 90€ and six points for the overall classification.

Mr. White and Ms. Blonde were already knocked out during the second blind level. Blonde went broke on slowplaying Aces against Mr. Brown, who catched his flush on the river. And Mr. White couldn’t throw away his Queens preflop against my Kings. About 45 minutes later, Ms. Pink left the table and Mr. Blue, Mr. Orange and Mr. Brown were left to play the most important pot of the evening:

Mr. Blue (button) 4600, 6c7c

Mr. Brown (sb,30) 3800, AcJc

Mr. Orange (bb,60) 3600, As7s

So some pretty huge hands three handed. I raised it up from the button to 180 and I was raised by Mr. Brown to 600. Orange called, so did I. Flop came: 5cAd4c. Brown bets 600 again with toppair and the nut flushdraw, Orange min raises to 1200 with hís Ace and I shove with my huge draw. Brown of course calls and Orange folds. Turn is 8h and gives me the straight, river is a blank: Ks. After that hand I have 10200 chips against Orange with 1800 chips left.

When the blinds were 100/200 the final hand was played. Orange pushed his 2200 chips in the middle with KdQd and I called with 88, which held up. Looking forward to Event 2!

Submitted by Mr. Blue

LOL did Mr. Blue show a royal flush from me last time in Pot Limit Omaha, this time I just flopped a straight flush in TEXAS HOLD’EM! I just cashed out my bankroll when a couple of dollars rakeback was deposited in my account, so I decided to play a little sit ‘n go for a buck or something when I was bored .

I was playing like almost every hand and the funny thing was: I almost won 60% of them ^^. So we were down to three players when I got…

…KQ suited in the big blind. A shorty moves with an Ace and is CRUSHED LIKE HELL on the flop hehe. As the odds of flopping a straight flush depend on the kind of hand you hold in the hole, it’s hard to say what my exact chances were here. The best chance you have is when you hold  mid range suited connectors from 45 to TJ, you are about 1 to 5000 in that case to flop a straight flush. Guess I was lucky^^.

Submitted by Mr. Brown

Yes you may remember that Mr. White wrote a post during the challenge about the so-called ‘Phil-theory’. I think I understand what he was saying and I made use of it myself, Mr. Blue, when playing a tournament on Pokerstars yesterday.

The profit I made during the challenge resulted in a nice bankroll for me so I’m playing some good tournaments atm and made a cash out of $224 yesterday. When I got eliminated I remembered a situation very early in the tournament when I had KK in the hole but an Ace came on the flop and I was really convinced my opponent flopped toppair. So that’s what is meant by ‘there are better spots’.

Because later on, when I had acquired a loose-aggressive image (YES, Mr. Brown), I was able to make a comeback with the next premium hand:

So this guy just thinks I’m fooling around and pays me off maximally. From that moment on I was on fire! Thanks for the pokerlesson Phil and Mr. White

So Mr. Brown was watching some High Stakes Poker yesterday and I saw a really great pot during episode 11 of season 4. It’s one of the last episodes in this season where the players have decided to bring $500k to the table. This means there’s $5 million total on the table.

Now there’s of course the always tight playing Sammy Farha (you must love the man), French cash game player David Benyamine and his fellow countryman Guy Laliberté, the founder of Cirque du Soleil. I’ve got the hand right here for you, it starts after 7 minutes:

Now how sick is this?? Sammy of course calls Guy’s preflop raise with 32 suited and flops the flushdraw. But Guy realizes this is a dangerous board and bets his topset. Now it’s probably because there’s an extra player in this pot with Sammy that Guy bets his set directly and that saves him a LOT of money. Of course Sammy makes his flush and Guy is lucky to make a boat but the poor Benyamine would have made running quads…

Yes it’s all over . I made a big cash-out of $351 just a few hours ago and that resulted in a bankroll of $1102, being the first one to pass the 1k-border! At that moment, Mr. Blue had $886, ending up as the runner-up, and Ms. Pink finished third with $202. They have the honour to deposit me $100, together with the 200 Mr. Brown-dollars^^.

So what happened? I decided to play a $24+2 Knock-Out sit and go with 90 players. KO means $20 of your buy-in goes into the prize pool and the other $4 is a bounty everybody receives each time he eliminates another player, so 90 in total. I played a very solid tourney and ended up heads-up, which was the point I knew I was gonna win the battle . Anyway I deserved to win the $576 for first place instead of the $351 for runner-up.

My final opponent played very loose-aggressive and I was just waiting for the right moment to trap him. This moment finally arrived on the next hand:

So I flop quads, which is nice , and I immediately knew I would be able to extract some chips from my aggressive opponent here. This happened right away on the turn when he moved with his flushdraw. Unfortunately, the moron got lucky a few minutes later:

I just move all-in for all my stack because I knew he would prolly call any lower raise and then I would have to make a decision on the flop if I wouldn’t hit. Of course he calls right away with AQ and catches one of the three Queens… Anyway, I’ll go treat the other players on some beers, I think I have some pocket change left .

Submitted by Mr. White

Unlike some people predicted last time, there still isn’t a winner of our battle . Moreover, Mr. White had a little downswing and was obliged to hand over the lead in the challenge to Mr. Blue: $831 vs $807.

I finally had a good run myself again, making some $80 profit (bankroll at $234). However, it’s not that important anymore concerning the challenge, but at least I can pay my $100 with it . So it’s still very close between the other two guys and it seems like they have both chosen the least risky way towards that magical $1000: by playing heads-up sng’s.

Mr. White played some so-called ’shoot-out’ tournaments with 4 players. You play heads-up, but you have to beat two opponents in a row to win the entire prize pool. As I told you, he didn’t have a very good run at these games, but some guy really chose the wrong moment to bluff against him:

Mr. White flops the nuts in an unraised pot and gets the perfect value from his opponent who just moves all-in on the turn, drawing dead to win the hand (a split pot with a 6 on the river is his best scenario). He experienced another exciting situation heads-up as he flopped quad aces yesterday^^. He made this picture:

The difficult thing about flopping quad aces with only one ace in the hole (the odds of this to happen are 1 to 19 599, or 0.01%) is extracting some value from your opponent. Of course, your opponent turning a full boat helps^^. Maybe we’ll have a winner next time!

Submitted by Ms. Pink

So this graph makes at least one thing very clear: Mr. Brown is eliminated in the battle and will have to pay $200 to the winner, which is most likely going to be me . He and Ms. Pink played their ‘now or never-tournament’ and Mr. Brown was eliminated in 5th place. So from that moment on Ms. Pink knew she’s wasn’t going to end up last if she would reach the money, which she accomplished with a second place, worth $105. She’s now at $153. Brown only had $25 left and lost his last money on the heads-up tables.

Meanwhile I’m preparing myself for receiving an extra $400 besides my soon to be $950 of poker profits, after taking back the lead with an $868 bankroll. I played some big multi-table tournament for a change and was able to make a nice cash-out of $145. This hand was very important in the ‘final’ phase of the tourney:

So I make a standard raise with pocket Queens and the chipleader shoves all-in with his enormous stack. Now with QQ you only fear two hands: KK and AA. Now it makes no sense to just shove with those 2 hands so I had to call. It sucks to play a coinflip situation for your entire stack but luckily it held up. This means it’s $868 vs $802 (Mr. Blue) now, so the battle can be over any moment now…

Submitted by Mr. White

Btw: Mr. Brown is playing on Party Poker now, he said it’s interesting when you use the Party Poker Bonus Code.