Well, I guess no better way to start this blog by a general introduction. I’m a 24 year old student from Belgium, who started with PokerStrategy in June. If by then you had told me I would be writing this blog, I’d have probably laughed. Hard. And see, now it seems that I’m the first English community member who reached NL400 (although undercover82 had build up a bigger bankroll but cashed out more and moved up later). That doesn’t by all means says that I’m a great player. Decent might be a better description. I made some stupid plays last night, and my 1800$ I won at NL400 is already diminished to a measly 600. True, that’s “only” 3 buyins I lost, so no real harm done. But somehow, for a player who still played NL50 not even 3 months ago, and who plays NL10 with his friends every monday, it still feels like a lot of money. I could have made more money though, because I accidently played at a table last night where Sebra was coaching. My evil mind thought for a moment about joining in Teamspeak to hear his cards, but nah :p I didn’t want to cause a next Potripper scandal ;-). I guess you could summarize my poker career through this graph. Oh yeah, this one’s without the loss of yesterday, off course. What, do you think I want to look stupid?

Winnings graph

For the past few months, I’ve been having the urge to move up constantly. I studied articles, posted hands, watched video’s, read books, and played, played, played. 125k hands, thank you very much. But that urge is now no longer there. I feel NL400 should be a great habitat for me to further improve my game and to win consistently at the same moment. The time has come for me to make some money, because after all, apart from the love for the game, that’s the main drive for many players. And it’s no different with me, off course. Sure, I’ll move up again (I hope), but no rushing to it. A busy schoolperiod is coming up, so I’ll be playing less anyway the coming weeks and months. And, I want to finish off “No-Limit Hold’em: Theory & Practice” (Sklansky & Miller) for the second time before that examination period is coming up. It’s a must read for every serious student of the game, and while reading it for the second time, I’m still learning from it.

You’ll probably see more of me here in the future, because I was asked to do some more stuff besides this blog, like videomaking. I hope I don’t make as stupid plays as I did yesterday though, because I’ll not exactly be setting a good example for my viewers. To be continued

// EDIT: For some reason the graph was removed unintentionally…it should be available again.

I reached NL400 yesterday.

Although just 10 days ago i was saying i hope to reach it by the end of the year ( I don’t really push myself to achieve too high goals) , it has been a great 10 days , and thus i reached the - for my standards - necessary BR for NL400. And i also reached a personal milestone , sitting with over 1k stack on 1 table. I know it is a bit dumb but whatever :> . Funny thing is that i have only had massive winning sessions , apart from my coaching where i got destroyed on NL50 and lost 3 stacks. There was this one particular fish who won 150$ off me in the most ridiculous pots and suck outs. Maybe i am too bad for NL50.

At least i start getting a bit more used to coaching and it is a pretty fun experience , although slightly -EV so far . We get a decent amount of listeners as well which is a bit of a surprise to me since there are a lot of coachings with more experienced players during the week.  Maybe people love our heavy accents after all ~~ .

Things look fine on NL400 so far. One thing that makes moving up a limit harder , apart from the bigger stack sizes of course , is that you do not have stats on many of the players. Yesterday i had trouble finding any fishes , and i was a bit worried , but today i saw that even on this limit , fishes are swimming happily.  So hopefully i can beat the limit , and if i do i will probably hang around for a while. On NL600 and above the population on party really seems to thin in numbers ,which i dont like that much. But i guess it will be sometime until i have to make the decision of moving up there :D.

Although i didn’t have many badbeats during those days , this is the biggest one that happened to me. I think i had 82% equity when i put the money in.

***** Hand History for Game 6535745834 *****
$200 USD NL Texas Hold’em - Sunday, November 25, 20:45:59 ET 2007
Table Table  127009 (No DP) (Real Money)
Seat 3 is the button
Total number of players : 6
Seat 1: tracedyew ( $317.60 USD )
Seat 4: ZlatiPrst ( $190 USD )
Seat 5: ucthelegend ( $208.25 USD )
Seat 6: primewise ( $244.23 USD )
Seat 3: FatDela ( $189.20 USD )
Seat 2: kmsbnn ( $211 USD )
ZlatiPrst posts small blind [$1 USD].
ucthelegend posts big blind [$2 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to ucthelegend [  Jh 7h ]
primewise raises [$7 USD]
tracedyew calls [$7 USD]
kmsbnn calls [$7 USD]
FatDela folds.
>You have options at Jackpot #1306774 Table!.
ZlatiPrst calls [$6 USD]
ucthelegend calls [$5 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, 6d, 7c ]
ZlatiPrst checks.
ucthelegend bets [$26 USD]
primewise calls [$26 USD]
tracedyew folds.
>You have options at Table  127079 (No DP) Table!.
kmsbnn calls [$26 USD]
ZlatiPrst calls [$26 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3h ]
ZlatiPrst checks.
>You have options at Table  126845 Table!.
ucthelegend bets [$95 USD]
primewise raises [$190 USD]
kmsbnn folds.
ZlatiPrst folds.
ucthelegend is all-In.
** Dealing River ** [ 3s ]
primewise shows [ Ks, Kh ]two pairs, Kings and Threes.
ucthelegend doesn’t show [ Jh, 7h ]two pairs, Jacks and Sevens.
primewise wins $14.75 USD from  side pot #1  with two pairs, Kings and Threes.
primewise wins $486.50 USD from  the main pot  with two pairs, Kings and Threes.
>You have options at Jackpot #1306774 Table!.
#Game No : 6535747728

He should have probably raised on the flop because board was too drawy , but what you think of his turn play? Could you maybe muck the overpair? I figured that if i was him and i had a guy betting OOP on 2 streets vs 4 people , i would realize that my overpair is most likely not good. I certainly wouldnt play that strong if i only had TPTK for example. But i guess it might be a tough laydown for anyone.

So , me and Andrei (Phisherman) are “honored” to be the first bloggers on the english site. Thanks Puschkin!

I guess i should start with some boring personal info. I am from Greece, 25 years old , i study electronics and i am a poker legend (Hence my nickname on partypoker) . I had some (bad) previous experience with online poker before finding PS around 1 year ago and i decided to focus on becoming a winning poker player and why not make an easy living out of it eventually. My past experience with online gaming has helped me in that goal . After all aren’t the Ps owners ex-pros on Starcraft?

I have some experience both with the SSS and the BSS , and FR and SH tables. At the beginning i was mostly focusing on SSS because it is so much easier to learn. But around this summer i reached NL1K with the SSS where i lost 5k within 2-3 weeks. I still think i had some ugly luck and the limit treated me horribly , but of course the skill level there was a lot better than what i was used to as well. So i switched to NL SH BSS and i have to say i am pretty happy that i made that move , because the game is a lot more fun. Anyway , i am currently playing NL200 , and i am hoping to reach NL400 by the end of the year. I have already cashed out a few times to give me motivation to keep on playing. (The feeling of being actually rewarded for the time and effort i have dedicated). Although the stuff that i bought - an HDTV and an XBOX360 ( Can’t escape my gaming past ) - seem to be -EV ~~ .

It coincides that today that i blog for the first time i had my most profitable session ever , 1250$ in 830 hands. Partypoker was hugely rigged in my favor today , and i hope it stays that way . Or maybe i can try to lose more than that in my next session , that would be fun too. It is pretty dissapointing that the $ keeps hitting all time lows though. Lame american economy ^^.

I am not really sure how this will be an interesting read , i have no experience with blogging , and i envy some blogs that i see with interesting links and videos. I ll leave that to Phisherman , at least for now , and stick to text .

Anyway , last thing that comes to my mind for now is that me and the Phish were offered a “coaching duo” position few weeks ago , which we accepted , and so we are now coaching every saturday , on some low-ish NL SH limits. It would be nice to drop by if you have the time , and you play something like NL10/25/50 SH.

Till next time