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