Do I miss playing poker?Well sometimes I do but being busy with my son is so much more fun!
Last weekend I cleared up my accounts. I now have $212 in my Moneybookers account. So it could be worse. This is a nice BR to start all over again when my sun has a more predictable sleeping regime.
Just got an email today from rakeback.com that they are offering rakeback on ultimate and absolute poker, even if you already have an account there. So I assume these rooms are desperate for players after their scandals. Maybe worth a try. There are 2 requirements to qualify for this bonus is that you may not have played for 3 months on there and your account may not be tagger to someone else. That second part is the problem.
Good luck,
Dremeber Hibernation Yep, the tittle says it all. This blog and my poker career are going into hibernation. At the moment I have limited time to play and even less desire to play the game. So there not much to blog about. Once in a while I will still play, I still have a BR on Stars and Cake.
My other blog: European Sports Betting will continue. So if you feel the desire to contact me it would be wiser to do it via that blog! I had my first big win yesterday!
hope to be back!
Dremeber
Straight flush ...... but not for me! Bugger. Did only play 1 session in the past 5 days. To busy with my son, football, sportsbetting and playing tennis.
So Sunday evening I logged in, prepared to turn my Cake poker account into a winning account but 10 minutes later I lost 2 buy-ins and shut down. The first time I lost with KK vs QQ. All low card on the flop but a Q on the turn. The problem is that I never did put him on QQ. I did not slow play my kings not did I played them strong enough! I did loose with pockets kings 5 times out of my last 6 times I got them dealt.
The other buy-in was lost when my straight was beaten by a straight flush. Nothing I could do about it!
Better luck next time I guess.
Cheers,
Dremeber BuggerYep, the title says a lot. I lost my BR at Cake Poker. Luckily it was not my money (yet). Still it is a bummer. I cannot stand being a loosing player at any site, so I did deposit a fresh $50 of my own. With this money I will try to clear some of the bonus but my main focus will be to become a winning player.
So, the plan is playing on NL20 until my BR reaches at least $75, when I will allow myself a shot at NL50.
We will see how things evolve.
But like I said before Poker is only a sidekick in life. There are much more important things in life, like health. The one who will read it, will know what I talking about. Keep the faith! Remember that you can count on me!
Cheers,
Dremeber Bonus cleared at PStars, profit made and cashedI have cleared my deposit bonus on Pstars. So an extra $34 was added to my BR, this combined with another upswing and my PStars story was a success. Including the bonus I made $144 profit on Stars, pretty darn proud on this. After the bonus was released I withdrew most of my funds to my Moneybookers account, leaving $44 behind.
The question now is what am I going to do with the collected FPPs? Not sure about it. It would be stupid to buy Pstars gear with it, although their soccer shirt looks really good. I don't read any poker books so that also not an option. Time will tell I guess.
So, what is the next step?
YPC deposited my No Deposit bonus on Cake poker. I have 3 months time to clear another $50, so I will be focusing on that. I need 850 points to clear the extra $50 and 1200 points before I may withdraw the cash.
In the meanwhile I will have to wait until Stars offers a new deposit bonus.
Also, tried Holdemmanager yesterday. After a hassle of installing the PostGreSql I did find out that they don't support cake poker due to Cakes TOS. Bugger. So Holdemmanager has no added value for the moment.
Cheers,
Dremeber An upswing is always followed by ...... a downswing. At least in my case. And this time it hit me really hard. I cannot blame variance for all my losses but at least 60% of my loss was pure variance or that is my opinion.
While my BR at stars was on the second of September at a healthy $163 it was crushed to a ultimate low of $68 yesterday. Slowly I'm now trying to recover my losses. Hoping to end this week on at least $90. Most of my losses were cause by pocket pair Kings. I lost 5 times in a row with the mighty kings. Most of these were PFAI. But which makes is more frustrating is that I never faces pocket Aces against me. So that why I think I can safely blame it on variance.
On the bonus front, I only need to clear another 40 Stars FPPs so that they will release my $34 deposit bonus. After I cleared these I will withdraw most of my BR from Stars and will wait on another deposit bonus, which is apparently a motivator for me.
After this I can start clearing my bonus on Cake poker, which will be much harder cause my starting BR there is only $50, which leaves almost no room for error. I need to clear there 160 FPPs to release another 50 and 1200 to be allowed to withdraw my money, cause it is a no deposit bonus.
Good luck,
Dremeber UpSwing on Stars, no swing on FTYep, let me first start with the downswing on Full Tilt. I had $30 left there and lost when twice my KK was beaten by AK, once with an A on the turn, the other time with the A on the river. Nothing I could do about it. But my story on FT didn't cost me a dime. I cleared all the points I needed so that YPC now can release my $50 no deposit bonus on Cake poker.
Now to the better news. First of all my day started good when I opened my mailbox and there was a surprise package in there. I won a book about Johan Bruyneel. The man who made Lance Armstrong big.
The most important news of the day is that my son is doing fine.
And pokerwise I had a great Poker session on Stars. I sat down with a miserable $17.50 on a full ring NL50 table, to leave it 30 minutes later with $78, lifting my BR close to the $200 border. I got even better when Stars did deposit my $5 price money for ending on the 88th place in the Benelux PokerLeague. Woooot! Lol.
BR at the moment is $335. So already close to my September target of $350.
Also already cleared 80 FPPs, so only 226 more to go to clear my deposit bonus.
Cheers,
Dremeber August RecapHey lets forget about Poker. I made a profit of $115, enough said. I had my downswing, my coolers, my bad plays and on the positive side one MTT win and another FT.
But the most important thing this month was the birth of my son, who seems the be healthy! No poker achievement can top this.
What are my aims for September? Well try to play a decent amount of time and make a profit. At least clear another 100 PokerStars FPPs, so that I'm at least can clear my bonus this year. This has to be done via ring games cause I doubt it that I will have time for SNGs with my son needing a lot of attention :). Lifting my BR to above $350 will be a nice target.
I will keep you posted,
Dremeber And suddenly Poker became ...... not so important anymore. 2 days ago, my wife gave birth to my first born son. So, I will spend the next days together with my wife enjoying our beautiful creation. Poker suddenly dropped in my importance list. Let me say that both my son and wife are filling up place 1, 2, 3, ... you get the picture I think.
Every parent thinks that their child is beautiful, for sure I do.
Thx Ms Drem for this gift beyond imagination. You will probably never read this but I can't thank you enough for it. The inly thing I did was cutting the cord!
Welcome to this world Dremeber Junior. I promise you that I will do everything within my power to make your life great and that you will get all the chances my parents gave me.
I hope that I can be such a great dad as my dad is. I will try harder than I tried anything else in my life.
Cheers,
Dremeber Quick August update cause ...... I have the feeling that it will take a while before I will have another chance to update. For the ones who know me, well it is very close!!!!
Yesterday I concentrated on playing SNGs on Stars. Don't know why but it did pay off. I made $35 profit, which is not bad for playing on my level. It seems that my doomswitch has been turn off.
Maybe it is to soon for a monthly review but here I go anyway.
Full Tilt
The good news is that I cleared my FT points and that I could withdraw all my deposited money and leaving some dosh behind. But FT punished my for that by switching on the doowswitch. The biggest part of my profit was won in one MTT, where I ended 4th.
My BR at FT at the moment is $37.
PokerStars
Well it was a month with up and downs but at the moment I'm still making a decent profit there. At the end of last month I deposited $85, which entitled my for a reload bonus of $34, which is gigantic for me. I already cleared 50% of the points needed. My of the profit was made with ring games but due to yesterday I may not underestimate the profit made in SNGs.
In the beginning of the month, the BR was $120, but after one bad beat to many I decided to withdraw my initial deposit leaving me behind with only $35. But... at the moment my BR is back above $100.
YPC
After clearing my required points on FT, I registered for a No deposit bonus on Cake poker. I know that there are Rakeback deals available for Cake Poker but I don't play enough to profit from a rakeback deal. So lets see what I can do with these free $50.
MoneyBookers
At the beginning of the month my Moneybookers account was empty :(. This due to my decision to upload funds to PS to chase the deposit bonus. But now the account statement says $85.59. So no complaints here.
In total a profit of around $100, which is great for me.
Good luck at the felt,
Dremeber I can't believe it myselfI know when I would read it on another blog that I would doubt it. We all know that poker has some part of luck involved. And that the other side of luck is misfortune. We also all think to know that sometimes you are riding a wave of luck, while other days you are trying to jump of the wave of misfortune.
Today I had the great idea to play a MTT on FT, while grinding away grinding some NL10 tables.
The MTT was over in 10 hand. Hand 9 I got KK in my hands. So it was a no brainer to call the pre-flop all-in raise from on already crippled stack. He went all-in with a fucking 95 off suited. Can you believe that? And yep can you believe that I lost the hand vs 2 pair?
So, the next hand again pocket kings. So, I thought that FT was trying to make something good. I hade to move AIPF and it went to a 3 side all-in. Luckily no pocket aces. But the A10 off suited got the A on the river. So out in two hands without making mistakes.
In the mean time I already lost half a buy-in at one of the 2 NL10 tables I was running, when I ran into AA with my JJ and all rainbow community cards below my Js. Just bad luck. Nothing wrong with this. 10 hands later at that same table I finally got AA and just needed to call an all-in pre-flop. The Q on the river turned his pocket queens into a set. Again I cannot blame myself.
At the other cash table I'm completely card dead! Yeah.
At the stupidest thing of all, is the stupid withdrawal rule of FT, that the minimum withdrawal is $50. Almost impossible for me now to lift my BR to that amount. Fucking FT.
So I fired up 2 90 seater knockout SNG hoping to make it to the cash. But so far, after 20 minutes of play, I didn't get playable hands.
I know that there are more important thing in life but still this frustrates me. I hope that this blog post did drop my stress level a little bit.
Or maybe I just such in playing poker. Which actually could be true!
Thx for reading,
Dremeber Working hard for small profitsYep, poker wise life could be better. Today I decided to play another game of the Benelux Poker League. Still running but at least everybody gets one point, which should assure me of a paid prize. A mighty free 5 bucks. In the mean time I fired up a NL25 cash table. After 15 minutes I was $5 up, so everything was going well until I got dealt KK. I raised 3 BB and got one re-raiser. I didn't think that he had Aces so I shoved everything to the middle of the table. After some hesitation he called. The flop was K73. The turn was a J and the river a 9. And yep I lost against a flush. He had queens. Bugger. 400 more PokerStars points to clear, which is a lot. I think that I should drop a level until my BR on Stars is back above $100. So instead of collecting points it is time to collect so cash.
On FT the BR is more or less status quo. Here I have dropped to NL10 and decided to only play during ring time happy hour. I only need 20 points more to clear, which should be done this evening. Than I can apply for the no deposit bonus on Cake poker, which YPC is offering. Maybe I should go for Rakeback deals but I'm not playing enough to collect a decent rakeback.
Yesterday I played 2 hours there for a miserable $4 profit.
Edit: HELP, it keeps getting worse. Decided to withdraw most of my BR from Stars until my bad luck is over, leaving $35 behind. That should do the trick I hope. Have been beaten today on stars by the most ridiculous hands. It was like other people could see the community cards pre-flop.
Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber Frustrated!Lost half my BR at FT. Sets being beaten by higher sets etc. You all know the story.
So I decided to play a $3 KO 90 seater. Tight is right? Correct. So after 20 hand after folding everything I got I finally get rewarded with AA. So I raised 3 BB, 2 callers, 1 reraiser to 400 and a call. So I decided to shove it all to the middle of the table. And yeah baby one caller with a fucking QK. The flop Q 3 4. No worries! Turn Q. River Q.
I rest my case.
Have to make sure that I collect another 150 FTPs and then I'm gone baby.
Cheers,
Dremeber UpdateA good poker streak is always followed by a bad streak. It is an unwritten law of poker. The questions are how do you deal with it and how much does it cost you?
The answers on both questions: for once I could keep my cool. Luckily. I did loose around $50 this week, which is a considerable amount of my BR but I'm still up for the month. The loss on stars is limited to a miserable $10 but all the rest was lost on FT. Mostly due to bad calls of the hero, so nobody to blame. I can now complain about variance but that wouldn't be fair after last weekend cause what goes around comes around. I can be mad cause I missed the straight danger once, which did cost me a tenner, so the sum it up: it were fishy mistakes.
Still need to score 200 FT points and around 400 Stars points. All the BR left on FT is still profit and it should no problem to score these points with my $71 BR. Collecting the remaining Stars points will be more difficult but I have more than 5 months left to clear it. So that also should be fine. The BR on Stars is $115, from which $35 is my own money and the remaining $80 is profit. I did withdraw $50 already from Stars to fund my FT BR, but that 50 is already back to the back account.
I'm standing still 31th at the Benelux League board but when Stars will update the ranking I will probably drop to place 60 or something thereabout. If I look at the previous months my 31 points should be enough to collect $5 for ending between place 51 and 100.
Gl,
Dremeber Another MTT FT! That's 2 in one weekend!This time it was the $3 re-buy at FullTilt with 80 entrants. Eventually ended in 4th place, good for a pay-out of $64. The good thing is that I didn't need a re-buy but I did choose to take the add-on.
The key hand was just for the bubble when I was forced to go all-in with A4. I did get 2 callers both with AK. But the 4 on the flop and the bonus 4 on the turn brought my tournament life back to life.
I did made one mistake which costed my probably the top 3, where the even bigger pay-outs were, when I did call from the BB an all-in raise, which I thought was a steal attempt. My K3 were powerless vs the Kq the villain had.
With one MTT win and a 4th place this is my most profitable poker weekend so far!
Good luck,
Dremeber I won my first MTT. WHOOOOOT!!!!!!Finally something great to write on my blog.
Okay I have to admit that there were only 143 entrants and that the buy-in was only $1. But hey, I took the fucking baby down. O man, it feels so sweet. To bad to first price was only $38. But hey what am I complaining about, that was 30% of my BR.
 Have to admit that actually it was my second MTT win. The other one was BritBloggerment 19, ran by Acornman and Mr. Cloud. somewhere last summer. But then there were only something about 40 or 50 players, on the other side the pay-out was bigger. Around $78.
But still I'm incredibly proud on myself. Never thought that I could win an MTT over 100 entrants. Of course there was some luck involved. Specially during heads up. I took a gamble when the Villain went all-in post flop with a flush chance for me and I called. A blank turn, but a lovely river. 5 hands later I took the gamble with A3s. He showed QQ and again the river rewarded my aggressive play with a A.
After all, it maybe was a deserved victory. I eliminated 5 players during the FT and was from the moment the bubble did burst chipleader with most of the time a major chiplead. Never played for 4 straight hours. After taking the obliged screenshot I did shut down stars to cool down.
Due to this win, I'm kinda forced to play this MTT some more this month, cause it has a monthly leaderboard. I now have played 2 of these Benelux Poker League games at Stars. the first time I went out in 27th place, just inside the money, and now I took it down. So, now I have 25 points, which will probably place me around the 20th place in the leaderboard.
Acornman, thx for railing me. Maybe you don't believe it but it did help me.
Duece00Seven, I was nice playing with you, sorry that I had to bully you around all the time.
MrPink where were you when I finally could brag about something pokerwise!
Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber Doing better than expectedI can't complain about my poker. I did manage to lift my Pokerstars BR above the $100 border. Now it proudly stands on $120 or something there about. In the past few days I made a profit of $40. Not bad if you consider that I have played only a few hours and always only 1 single table. This gives me the opportunity to write the preview of the different European football leagues for my sports betting blog.
The doomswitch for the SNGs is still on but the light is shinning very brightly on the cash tables. I also have the feeling that my cash game play has matured. Today I was very proud that I was capable of laying down pockets 7s. After the pre-flop raise, we were still with 2 players in the pot. The flop was 9Q9. So I tried a continuation bet of around 35% of the pot. The villain called. The turn gave another Q, so instead of blowing my complete buy-in I decided to check and fold if the villain would raise the pot and so I did. Maybe I was still ahead, I will never know. But I didn't tagged his play style yet and it was not worth the risk.
 Quickly back to the football side of life. The Belgian football is going throe the drain. If our best club isn't even capable of eliminating the Champion of White Russia in the second CL qualification round, alarm bells are ringing. BUT since today we maybe have to best logo for our Premier league. Okay, the name is still lame but it is a start.
Good luck at the green felt,
Dremeber How can I win with these hands? I know I not the best SNG player in the world. You can even call me average but with these hands even Yvey would not be capable of winning SNGs. All hands below are from the past 4 days.
From worse to even worser:
First my hand:
AQ vs 22 -> AIPF -> 47% -> no help at all
A9 vs A5 -> AIPF -> 59% -> the 5 on the flop said enough
A5 vs Q7 -> AIPF -> 60% -> a Q on the flop and river
AJ vs A10 -> AIPF -> 68% -> he made his fucking straight on the river
55 vs A2 -> AIPF -> 70% -> no a split pot after the following community cards: 6 7 8 9 10 (in random order)
AQ vs A7 -> AIPF -> 70% -> an A and a 7 on the flop
1010 vs K9 -> AIPF -> 71% -> K on the turn to crush my hopes
QQ vs A7 -> Flop 10 8 6 -> AI Post flop -> 71% -> 5 on the turn -> 4 on the river
QQ vs 1010 -> AIPF -> 81% -> 10 in the flop
A8 vs AQ -> flop 8 2 5 -> AI post flop -> 86% -> turn blank -> river what else than a Q!!!
Really I have no words for this!
Dremeber
Heroes, could come up with a better title!No not poker Heroes. Last weekend I bought the first series of Heroes and I have to admit that I like it very much. Due to this I'm playing a lot less poker. At the moment I'm focussing at colleting enough PokerStars FPPs to clear my bonus. I have cleared around 15% already. It is going faster than I imagined.
This is probably because I'm playing way above my BR. You can find me most of the time at NL50. I always buy-in for the minimum playing a spandex game, collecting FPPs and making a miserable small profit but it a profit (I believe I wrote this sentence way to much on this blog).
Today for the first time I played the Benelux league game at Stars. This is a daily MTT for a $1 buy-in. First attempt, first cash. I went out in 27th place, the last paid place. Ran out of luck I guess.
I have stopped playing SNGs cause the doomswitch has been set to on!
Going to focus now on the bloggerment!
Good luck at the felt,
Dremeber Bugger! I never did see them in this size!Attracting title isn't?
So what I'm talking about! I mentoined a few posts ago that I finally did got my new car. Well here it is. So where r we now? The topic still doesn't cover the tittle or does it? Now there are much bigger cars than this one. For sure.
Yesterday evening driving home from work, the little disaster happened. It was dark within minutes and this at 6.30 pm in the evening during summer. Few minutes later the hail started to poor down. If have never seen so big and violent hails in my life before. As a result, more than 100 dents in the hood, same for the roof, same for 1 door, etc...
My biggest worry (car wise that is) is that the insurance company belonging to the lease agancy will write a one week old car off, like they would do in Germany. In dutch: declare it "per total". In English total loss.
So here are the hails:
 
So indeed: BUGGER.
Good luck at the table,
Dremeber Did I loose it?Okay I never was a great poker player. Let's put me in the middle of the field but my results today gave me an indication that even that not the correct place for me.
I played 8 SNGs and only did get once ITM. I lost the internet connection when playing my first 2 SNGs. Result a 6th and 7th place in the $3.40 18 seater. After my connection was restored I gave it another shot with a promising third place and a shameful 14 place.
The SNG where I ended in 14th place should have been an indication. Luckily I did lay down my QQ post flop to minimize the loss. But I was forced to play my jacks all-in pre-flop to ran into AK. The A on the flop sealed my fate.
Later that evening I tried a combination of 2 18 seaters and 2 45 seater. Again no cashes. Bugger! I did ran into my hand histories. Maybe I was not playing aggresive enough during the bubbles or crucial moment. On the other hand I ran into so many pocket Aces that it is almost unbelievable, but thats poker !
Good luck,
Dremeber Back to square 1 and PstarsOkay, it is going downhill. In the past few days I lost 33% of my Titan BR and my complete Unibet Poker BR. So time to shift gears, step down a level a return to my favorite PokerRoom. In the hope that the Poker Gods will credit me for that move.
I know that it sound incredible but almost all my losses are based on 1 and 2 outers against me. And of course all on the river. But hey I only have (had) a small BR and there are more important things in life for me. Okay, I'm trying to collect enough for a decent LCD but if I don't I don't. There are far more important things in life.
The main reason to move to Stars is that they have a double reload promotion. 40% in stead of the regular 20%. So I now have 180 days to clear 680 FPP to clear my $34 bonus.
Besides the poker side of life, the rest is going great. I got a raise above my expectations and last friday I picked up my new car. A great Ford Mondeo. I will publish some pics later on this month.
More luck at the felt than me,
Dremeber Fighting back Fighting back is always harder than making the original profit. Don't know why but it is.
In the past few days my BR has increased again to a miserable $79. All of this profit is made on NL50. Don't know what I'm doing at that level but I'm there. I should step down back to NL25 ans I don't know why I'm not stepping down.
Personally I don't see much difference in playing NL25 and NL50 besides that stakes of course. The advantage of NL50 is that I'm clearing my bonuses much quicker but this is a lousy reason to stay playing at that level. While the I know that NL 50 is way above my BR I probably won't move down until I'm starting to make some decent losses there and then it is too late.
Total BR was 2 days ago, 178 EURO. ($282) The weak $ is helping European players. But we have to life with this fact.
Good luck at the felt!
Dremeber
One day isn't the otherNo matter how much you try you can't dodge variance. I tried and tried and tried but at the end 50% of my BR was gone. This streak was spread over 2 days.
Running into 2 outers time after time, even 1 outers against me were not rare.
I evaluated my plays and didn't see anything wrong. Shit happens I guess. So back to square 1.
Good luck at the tables,
Dremeber Here we go again Starting to enjoy poker again. Can even cope with the bad beats again. Maybe the switching point is that I now have a goal. A real goal, something where I can work to. It will take me ages to collect the money to buy one of the LCDs in the previous post but it really gives me the motivation I need.
Started again on Titan, with some decent result. The BR isn't growing as fast as I was hoping for, but at least it is growing. Had some really bad beats during the bubble today otherwise my BR would have been above the $100 mark. But it will come, I'm confident that it will. I will keep playing on Titan until my bonus period ends. After then we will see. Probably I will be switching to FT.
If you also want to start playing on Titan poker then visit pokernetonline. These guys are giving away No deposit bonuses for the biggest fishpound on the net.
Good luck,
Dremeber
|
