Yoyo
I haven't been online a lot last week, biggest reason for this being the blackmember party in Hamburg. The Dutch community organised something so I felt like I just had to go as I had such a good time in Dusseldorf on the previous party. Because Hamburg is a long long way from where I live and also for other people we had hired a bus with a driver to bring us there. So at 7.30am friday morning (yes that time does exist!) me and a friend (Eliasveritas from PS) woke up and after buying some food we took a train to Antwerp where the bus would be. We were 30 mins early which was pretty stupid since we could have known that Leo is always late, and again he was so an hour after we arrived in Antwerp we were on our way to Hamburg.
The bus driver didn't look really happy, which had a reason... Whatever, we stopped at 2 other places in the Netherlands to pick up some people and then we thought we'd cruise to Hamburg with some beer. Boy we were wrong. The bus had a blackbox (ooooo) and the driver could only drive for 4 hours before taking a 45 minute break, so we took a break. We saw some shopping mall closeby so we went there, but most of us didn't get further than some cafetaria where we had a drink. Obviously we took a bit longer than the 45 minutes the driver said, so he got quite angry and said the now legendary words "RESPECT TAH COACH". Ok cool whatever drive already please.
After a very long journey we finally arrived in Hamburg (left at 7.45am arrived at like 8.30pm). Friday night we would go out to the Reeperbahn with our beloved Pokerstrategy admin Lars (havox) as our guide. Somewhere around here we also met the members of the English community and we grabbed a few drinks close to the hotel. It was a pretty boring place, so we went on to the Reeperbahn, with Lars acting like a teacher having a group of 50 6-year olds to take care of. Needless to say he did his job perfectly and we all arrived safely.
When we arrived at the Reeperbahn I was shocked, I've never seen such a place before. There's all flashing lights, hookers, tramps with bottles of vodka and cool clubs next to eachother. Combine that with what felt like a million people and you have the Reeperbahn. We ofcourse went to the hoo.. eh cool clubs where we had a great party untill deep in the night or later.
The next day everybody felt better than ever before because we only drank water the day before. It took some time to do something and we really shouldn't have done anything. The culture lovers that we are we went on some boat that would show us some beautiful things in Hamburg. We saw a few ducks, some expensive houses and we went over a huge traffic junction, that was 22 meters under us. Nobody of us liked the trip which says enough I guess. After that we took a few drinks and "prepared" for the night.
Like 2 hours later we were at the Stage Club and for the first time ever we were almost in time which was pretty cool since we could take as much food as we wanted. We were greeted by a few important and less important people, even by a Bet365 manager who could tell some pretty good and convincing lies. He told me dutch players could play on Bet365 for like 5 times, but ofc when I got home I couldn't play there but thats offtopic.
We had untill 11 to get drunk because after that we had to pay for the drinks. Some people took that a bit too far (8 prosecco in 5 minutes etc) but I think everybody enjoyed it. Somewhat after 11 the doors to the Neue Flora opened and slowly but surely other people (girls!) came in aswell. I really liked the place, only bad thing was that it took like 15-30 minutes to get a drink because the barkeepers were so slow and only 1 bar was opened. Some other people didn't seem to like it all that much and tried to get thrown out by the bouncers, in which 2 of them succeeded. Another guy was put in a cab by Leo and sent to the hotel, only to be dropped off at the wrong hotel because 2 hotels had the same name. Somehow he did manage to find the way back with the public transport though, pretty nice if you ask me. As it was getting later and later more people went home untill only a few of us were left, and around 4.45 we decided to go back aswell (pretty early but we had a long weekend ^^). Thelastnail was still dancing (dude what did you take) and I believe Tribun was still wandering around aswell.
The next day I was looking forward to another long trip home! This time everybody had a bit less energy and most of us were sleeping or just looking like a zombie most of the time. The busdriver however was still full of energy and he kept on talking about his black box, how he was just doing his job etc etc. After a great weekend I got home at like 9.30PM.
As geeky as I am I had to check the internet ofcourse, and directly went on tilt. I tried to register on bet365 but I couldn't, and when I called the VIP support they said I wasn't allowed to play there... Thanks for all the things you (bet365) offered me, but I can't really do with them, I hope you enjoy all my feedback and take good use of it so other people do want to play on your site. Next thing to do is checking my email, and then it got even worse. I cashed out $50k from 888, but had some problems with it, and I got a mail back from them saying I had to print something out and get it signed by a lawyer/public notary. Ye really nice since those people don't know that I play poker, don't know how online poker works and with the way online poker is looked at in NL I don't even know if they would sign it. Because of the way I felt and the tilt from reading those things I decided that I shouldn't play.
On monday I moved back to my own house, where I'm living with my brother now :) Feels great to live here on my own and kinda decide what I can and can't do. Up untill now I haven't really done a lot of useful things and it's still a mess, but I hope that will change soon. Yesterday I did send an email to a lawyer which is specialised in gambling taxes, because it's a grey area here in the Netherland and I wanna know if and how much taxes I should pay. Up untill now I always thought that I didn't have to pay taxes because the poker rooms already pay taxes, but it looks like it's not that easy and I probably have to pay 29% or even 52%. That's even more tilt inducing so even now I'm still really angry about those 3 things.
Poker itself goes better than ever though, so at least that's something I can be happy about. I staked somebody who went to the WSOP and he made some nice profits there, nothing really special, but it's always nice to get something extra in such a way. I haven't really been playing a lot myself, but I definitely can't complain. As most of you have probably seen I had my first 50k+ month in May, even though I didn't play a lot. May even started terrible with me being stuck 18k. After that it all went smoothly, with the best part being the last week where I won 30k making it a really sick month. This also kinda increased my confidence again which took a bit of a hit after the first 3 days of May.
With some more confidence I probably got overconfident. First 3 days I played as good as breakeven but only because I won on the higher stakes and lost on lower stakes. After that I took a 4day break for the blackmember party and didnt think too much about poker (no its not a paradox). So monday when I was in my own house, having nothing to worry about I started playing again. Only from that moment on I decided to throw BRM overboard and just play whatever I like on the sites I'm playing now. This means that I will sit on tables upto 300/600 which isn't really great when you have a BR of 150k and hit a downswing.
But as you guys probably already know I'm Jesus (PA is God and nobody is better than him) so it all went smoothly. I won 8k on 100/200 on monday in only 115 hands, needless to say I did run pretty hot, but whatever. Yesterday was even better, I won 14k on 250/500 and 150/300, but I also played some 50/100 where I ran terrible, which kinda evens the luck out for the day, but I'm happy that I ran sick good on highest stakes and sick bad on 50/100 and not vice versa. So those 2 days already made me want to make a brag blogpost about how much I won again (zzz), so earlier today I started writing this story. I did have my tables open however, and some dutch guy decided it was a good time to try and take my money, forst on 50/100 then on 250/500. He failed though, he lost his 1.1k on 50/100 in 7 minutes and his 10.5k on 250/500 in 11 minutes.
All of this results in the fact that I'm pretty happy right now, I made 38k in like 550 hands, but I'm also angry because I have to pay loads in taxes. I guess the happy part is dominating right now, but not by that much. It kinda ruins my plans for the next year or maybe 2 years. I wanted to try and see if I could make like €500k-€1m, buy a house and then start studying again without ever having to worry about money. But when I have to pay taxes I have to win more which seems impossible right now, or I have to take a longer break which I don't really want as I don't want to be 50 years old when I start my studies again. I am thinking about moving to another country where I don't have to pay any taxes, but that's not really what I want now. I don't know any other people who are going pro/are pro and want to move to another country with me for 1 or 2 years, and I definitely don't want to go on my own. So if any people are interested you can always add me on Skype or post something in my blog so we can get in touch.
To brag again here's my June graph:
All in all it's been a pretty long blog, but you guys deserve it after I didn't write anything for such a long time ;)
Yoghi
