Was away almost a week for the Norwegian national championship in the end of March. Its a massive tourney series held in Dublin, Ireland, since the Norwegian government don't allow it on Norwegian soil. Main Event had 1150 entrants, and there was also quite a few side events attracting nice fields. Pretty impressive organization and the event as a whole was well run.

Personally I'm as much using the trip to catch up with friends and have fun, as playing poker. I obvs do my best in the mtts I register in, but don't want to 'waste' time on (lowstakes) cashgames when Im in Irland and there is a bar or two to check out. I went to Irland the day after St. Patrick days just for good luck charm, so I was proberly 'warmed up' to joining up with a swarm of Norwegians.

I went kinda deep in the 6m PLO without cashing, we actually played 3-4 handed most of the day and that was obvs really fun. Was a nice triple chance format as well. The last, and second tourney I played was the Main Event where I lasted one hour into day 2. I'm satisfied with my play, and esp the PLO bust was annoying, but sometimes you just got to get it in and flip for a huge stack.

It was fun to play live again, besides the social part, so I will probarly look out for whats going in UK this year and maybe beyond. Any of you have recommandations for live tourneys in Europe that also have PLO events?



Ive 10 days of vacations coming up in April before the big summer grind is starting. The destination this time is Morocco. Ive never been there before, and might even do some surfing if the weather is nice.

PokerStars just recently released several new poker games and Ive made a quickie (video) in 5card PLO. Cardrunners have released a handfull of free video's for the new games. You find more info about it here.


In my latest blog Discussion about Partypoker, Pokerstars and PLO. I discussed the 20bb PLO cap tables:


'There is a poll (and opinions) in this thread: Do you support Pokerstars change to 20bb CAP PLO HU games? by 2p2 hero Napsus where 90.3% vote no to the change atm.. Im kinda positive that Stars will listen to that feedback for PLO and change it back'.


Pokerstars Nick just made an announcement post in the same thread today:


'Although there are still a significant number of players playing the new CAP tables, we have internally agreed that the conclusion the 2p2 PLO community came to regarding 20bb CAP not being appropriate for PLO is reasonable. As a result, we are going to remove the 20bb CAP PLO tables'.




Good luck on the tables!


Andreas
My Twitter

2p2 PLO discussions



PARTY network segregates players according to winrate !!!

Basically winners cant play losing players anymore, dont like this principle at all (understatement).

Dominik Kofert head of Pokerstrategy have made two posts on the subject earlier thats related and worth reading:

1: Don't Discriminate Against Winning Players

2: The Secret Value Of Winning Players

I assume its PartyPoker itself that 'Love to win'.



First of all I really like Pokerstars. Since Ive made SNE twice it goes without saying, I even make most of my videoes from their client, but ya, they are v good. Pokerstars usually listen to players but Ive to call this out.

Pokerstars recently asked HUNLHE forum about making 20bb cap HU tables, people was against it (afaik), but they made it anyway based on 'some emails'. HUNLHE mod Kjemmy's reaction was (I dont support this approach since I think further attempts on discussion should be done, but I understand why Kjemmy is angry) :
'topic no longer serves purpose. future topics by this pokerstars guy will be locked since they dont care about is being suggested anyway. locked'. Link.

Then some of you know its a thread in HSPLO called: POKERSTARS: Time to treat PLO and NLHE as different games!. Where the subject should be easy to understand. Cliffs PLO like FLHE, is not NLHE and want to be treated as a seperate games.

Then Pokerstars only ask for opinion in changing the short tables to 20bb cap in HUNLHE forum (with very low relative traffic) but also decided to change it for PLO. I thought it was a simple software mistake but seems like it was by purpose. Its simply redic to play 20bb HU PLO, rake kills you, equites are so close and u will get allinn v often. Its v bad for NLHE but maybe playable I guess (but hugely unpopular amongst regs, I should probarly not speculate to much on the subject of 20bb HUNLHE), for PLO its a huge joke in most opinions.

There is a poll (and opinions) in this thread: Do you support Pokerstars change to 20bb CAP PLO HU games? by 2p2 hero Napsus where 90.3% vote no to the change atm.. Im kinda positive that Stars will listen to that feedback for PLO and change it back.

UPDATE: Pokerstars Nick made this 2p2 post shortly after I posted this blog: HU PLO tables at PokerStars So looks like they are going in dialogue with the community! Timing is obvs coincidence, still happy that I was correct that they would listen to feedback.


Oddsen:

Last is a huge post from Odd_Oddsen about lots of issues in todays games.

He makes lots of good points and hopefully sites looks into issues.


I might seem negative and TLDR but there is some bad choices being made by sites right now in my opinion and I thought I should share it.

Pot-limit Omaha



PLO games are still lots of fun and action packed, but I really hope someone at Pokerstars management understand the difference between a two card no limit game and a four card pot limit game, when there are clearly so many smart people working there.

Hopefully Pokerstars take the time to read the post and replies on 2p2 and make the rake the same in bb/100 for NLHE and PLO. I know Pokerstars are busy with lots of stuff but taking time to sustain and make the online cash games more healthy sounds like a win-win proposition to me.

And its not even fair to rake PLO so much harder imo, Pokerstars admit trough other rake structure for limit games, that different games should be raked different. Pokerstars have a history of listening to players and 'getting it', so its a compliment that I direct these issues at them, since I think they are most likely to 'get it' once more.

The good news for PLO fans is PS Bryan's thread (22 Feb) : 'Hello all,

We have some big plans in place for Omaha tournaments in the relatively near future (6-8 weeks), including daily Omaha Bigs (bold red tournaments in Tourney/Special with suites of satellites, etc). Plans are still being developed, and the schedule of these tournaments has not yet been written. I'm very interested to know your opinions on what kinds of tournaments you think would be most popular in this kind of format, and will be checking this thread periodically, answering questions, reading feedback, etc.'


I also have to link to: PokerStars/2+2-users: April 2013 Meeting proposed

There have been mixed feedback on how much gets done on these meetings but it cant hurt try, and I hope there will be at least one PLO rep there raising the issues and opinions of the community.




GL on the tables


Andreas
Twitter

Video

Its a 6max quickie with two deep / fun highstakes hands.

Interview

Cardplayer interview is out, they choose the title:
High-Stakes Internet Poker Pro: 'I've Treated Poker Like A Video Game' and managed to add some BBV into it. Im satisfied about the interview as a whole, and dont think its more to say about it.

Visitors

Had a bunch of friends visiting last Fri-Wed, where we was going to see two football matches and do some other shenanigans.

As some of you know Brighton is the place I live. And first game was Brighton - Huddersfield.


Prematch pic.

Was a fun game Brigthon won 4-1. Brigthon is fighting for the Championship play-offs worth 85m pund to the winner, so it was def a important home game to stay in race.

***

Next game was Manchester United vs Real Madrid, second leg in Champions League last 16, where MU had some advantage with a strong 1-1 results away. Real Madrid manager Jose Mourinho called it the match "the world will stop to watch". We headed there on Monday to be sure to have a day safety margin on not getting there in time.

Most of you probarly already know that MU player Nani was given a red card (wrongly) with MU leading 1-0 before RM come back to win it 1-2 with C Ronaldo as the matchwinner.


Nani red card

We enjoyed the (match) atmosphere despite the hugely disappointing result, and the result just show how much variance it can be in sports. Mourinho said best team went out, and Ill just end the football talk with a twitter quote from MU defender Rio Ferdinand: 'I must say last night our fans done us + our club proud. Best/loudest support I've heard at ANY ground throughout my career. Thank you'.

Besideds the sports we had some fun with paintball, dinners and obvs some drinks including new fav Red Jager (glass of Merlot + a shot Jagermeister). Always fun with good company and visitors.


Have fun

Andreas
Twitter

In my last blog, 'againstouts' asked 'Can we expect some videos from you for CR in the future?'. The answer is yes, I'll do two quick videos within a reasonable timeframe. Actually after drafting this blog, Ive made and uploaded two deep quickies, that I think will be released in March.

First video is from 50/100 and 100/200 6max, while the other is two hands HUPLO vs Isildur1 at 50/100. Made the later video after some feedback for HUPLO material. I hope you will find these videos exciting.


@rouliroul won my Twitter draw for 1 hour of free coaching, so the competition is now closed. I look forward to brushing off my 1-1 coaching skills.




I have accumulated ~110k VPPs, so I am on pace for the schedule I've set for my Supernova Elite chase. Feels good to be on top of it, and I think Ill make it for the third time this year.





I also did a Cardplayer interview this week, which will probably be published soon. I think it went well, and I hope you'll agree!



People should be interested to read this tweet from Stinger: "I've majorly slacked on @CardRunners work over past year and a half or so. Regret that + want to change it. Starting with posts + NBCHU vid."

I feel the same, I'll partly blame Black Friday for obvs reasons, but I will be more active on Cardrunners from now on, so you will probably find both of us in the PLO forums, producing videos and blogging more.

I hate to be a tease, but I hope for some more exciting Cardrunners news soon.



If you want to follow me more closely, Twitter and Facebook is the place to be.

Thanks

I just had a decent start to the year volume-wise after spending new years in Rio De Janeiro with my girlfriend. The fireworks were amazing and it was lots of fun. We were in South America for just over two weeks total and also got time to visits Buzios (Brazil, picture) and Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Twitter (mine is @skjervoyAT) turned useful when looking for what Argentina is most known for, the best steaks in the world. I got a few good leads but it was not until the last day, for which I had saved the best lead, that I found gold. MTT beast @madsamot recommended La Cabrera and it was simply the best steak I've ever had (500g Kobe). I stole this picture online from the resturant but its v similar.

Besides questing for steaks we did lots of touristy stuff, for which Rio was especially good. The highlight was probably when I tried paragliding for the first time, since I could do most of the steering myself instead of being somewhat of a passive passenger like skydiving.

Travelling for New Years is a tradition for me and my long time girlfriend, and in the past few years we have been to Miami, Hong Kong, New Dehli and now Rio. Some parts of being a poker player are quite nice indeed, and I personally think it makes most sense to travel when weather is worst in Europe.

2013

First of all, this blog is inspired by the 'Online presence' made by PokerStars online pro GodlikeRoy, and another direct result of reading his blog is my new Facebook page.

Anyway, I want to continue to play for fun, as I've done for a while now. I want to challenge myself against the best, and not solely be a bumhunting leach that never start games or try to give some action. I obviously have to do it with an eye on bankroll management, but I will keep up my Scanditard reflexes.

Besides doing social media better (it is almost like a game) I want to do a better job at working out and eating then last year. No more injuries please.

Poker-wise I'll be playing more live, starting with the Norwegian Championships in March. Any other CR members going there? I am also going to test some cash games in London when I get the urge. Hopefully they spread OpenFaceChinese somewhere. That has to be the best invention for poker in a while, and it was fun to see that PokerStars spread it at the PCA. I just have to learn OFC before London, so I will hopefully get some Cardrunners videos about it soon.

I also want to fight for PLO, the second love of my life, in hopes that it will be marketed better and treated as its own game by sites. You can read Zimba's good blog 'Raising the torch for PLO' for specifics on this.

2012

I made SuperNova Elite and did a decent semi-comeback at the tables after a break. I did very well in both the untracked but also lowest games I played and ran bad higher. Variance works both ways as I learned in 2010, and I suppose I have seen the other side lately. I can't really complain though, and I either way had a decent year since I did run good at action-taking and Full Tilt Poker coming back. I can't even begin to describe how good that is for poker in general. I think PokerStars deserve tons of credit on how they bought the industry out of a huge image problem. It is also very easy to see how quite a bit of that money went back to the tables, and people started to relax bit on the worst bumhunting and gave more action and generally played higher.

FTP

Having Gus Hansen and Tom Dwan back on the tables will always create entertainment and action, and when FTP even signed Isildur1 I think they made a very good move. It is very smart to hire action seekers like those three, instead of insane EV hunters only. Phil Ivey comes to mind here; he will never play long sessions when he is down, even considering that he is/was infinity rolled, and is not very rail-friendly in my opinion because of this behavior. He has also stopped playing the big action games (NLHE and PLO), and basically seems afraid to test himself against the elite online in the big bet games. I think it's obvious that he would give anyone a race for their money, but maybe he is just not hungry enough anymore?

So, there is a big difference from Ivey to Isildur1, and it is all heart, entertainment and pushing yourself vs any opponent like Isil does. Also, Gus and Dwan are both underrated online right now, and these are two players that really understand the concept of giving action to get action.

Nutblocker

The reason for the break from playing I mentioned earlier was trying to get Nutblocker.com into what it deserved to be; the leading PLO community out there. Technical issues eventually put an end to it.

But I think one has to dare to fail and chase one's dreams. Just do your best and see if you can get it to work, and at least learn from the experience so that you're better prepared the next time you put your head out there. Fellow CardRunners blogger Kara Scott says this better then me in 'Sometimes a fig isn't a fig'. There is still some cool and free content on Nutblocker from several people known from Cardrunners, so if you have some time, feel free to take a look.

I'll round the blog up by saying I suspect there were lots of multi-accounting and account sharing after Black Friday, with accounts from Macau, Canada and Mexico as the worst offenders. I hope it will normalize soon, but until then I hope everyone is careful versus new accounts, especially in heads-up games.

Good luck on the tables

Andreas

Edit: Twitter draw for 1hour free coaching. (Update: @rouliroul won).

Been keeping up a very steady grinding pace since February after relocating to England from early January. Spending the first month getting settled and similar. Had some small laptop sessions mainly vs Gus if I remember correctly then, but hard to grind from a hotel. My real volume happened after getting back to a workdesk.

This leads me to the book I recently read trough the same day I got it. Jared Tendlers excellent The Mental Game of Poker. I wish I read it 8 years ago for the first time, because he hit home with me on this one. I def recommend it and have to say the obvs, if I had read it 8 years ago it would def not be the last time I opened it. I think I enjoyed the motivation chapter the most, but have to reread it and let it sink more before I decide.

Going back to my grinding from the first paragraph, as you can see from the graphs I posted in earlier blogs I had some nasty and v sudden 7 figure drop on my results mid March. By experience I know that I deal with downswings best by grinding trough them but I really found alot stuff to think about from the book esp on the chapter I already mentioned.

Im a believer that writters that just get you to think about the right stuff, is worth the money on that ground alone, even if their writing stinks. The beauty of The Mental Game of poker is its doing booth. Putting the right thought process/ ideas to think about into your mind, while it have excellent content to expand on that.

I might seem very positive here but for 50$ its an easy investment for any serious poker player.



Andreas


Link

Finally back in black on this computer so Im very likely to just buy a new since this one is meh. Just some silly goal I set myself, not changing the computer before I was up. But it worked at least!

Wrote a long post about how EV and complaining about it often is misleading, and how running good at higher stakes trump everything.

Pretty obvs that Im running bad higher when I win so many buyinns but almost 'non' dollars in this period, unless my edge is a lot smaller/non existing vs mostly the same players on 4-6x the stakes. This is somewhat offset by last year so its def not black and white.

But Ill pass on rambling more and rather give you the 2 graphs:

In BB

In $

Enjoy my swings!

Ps probarly not gonna post more EV in graphs, whatever way I run, cause its so misleading.

Twitter

Edit: its tons more 50 100 and 100 200 mixed in compared to the other graph. Mostly because its been running tons more post WSOP.

All hands in BB

All hands in $

All hands on my new rigged computer since mid March. Looks like I run hot or not?


Big drop is mostly 3/600a with some 2/400 mixed in. Grinding it back on 90% 25 50 with a bit of 50 100 and 100 200 when its running.

Im still up for the year so cant really complain, just grind it out. Just wanted to share how misleading graphs can be.

Obvs running the other way around would be pretty sick though.


Good luck

Andreas


PS think Im gonna take twitter more serious, can find me @skjervoyAT

Taking some vacation, so flying out tomorrow to Aruba with Anette. Direct flights ftw (coming from Norway, thats a rare luxury for foreign trips).

Planned it a long time ago but the timing is good after being on my biggest downswing ever (1m plus a lot of change). Running bad, but thats PLO.

Gonna grind out a ton 25 50 when Im back is the plan, hopefully mixing in some higher if its running at my working hours. Gotta get the tablestarter karma working again :)



Back in 2 weeks!

Andreas

Ive never slept in a park but I wanted to randomly call my blog something related to the last week.

Besided black friday happing I was back home in Norway for some days. Meet some old friends and family and had a good time.

On wedensday Gavz arrived and we have just being doing anything besides playing. Since Wazz was running a Marathon today I guess we had to balance by being generally less healty people. Galen/Gakn29 (check out his plo vids btw) actually joined us for last night as well and he also seemed like a guy enjoying a good party.

Being meeting a loot of great people in Brighton thats mostly poker players from western Europe liking how UK treat poker. And probarly wanting to experience living in a diff country. They are good at doing stuff together so was kind of lucky bumping into them.

So me and Gavz basically hang with them for his stay. Highlight was paintballing hangover with the other poker players and some friends of them. Even though Gavin owned me badly in one of the matches.

Or actually maybe the drinking was better. Great time anyway. Also have to give Galen kudos for coming down from London for just one day.

--

Im not the right person commenting much on the FBI situation. But games seems to have been been much less affected then worst case scenarios. Obvs long term is really hard to guess.

--

So basically Ive not been playing much poker lately. But will get back on the grind soon.

--

Want to round up by shouting at PLO regs. If we dont want to hurt our winnings/hourly rate we have to keep up starting tables with the US people (temporarly) away. Just look at how redic its for 6m NLHE and NLHE in general, and its easy to understand that we have to keep on getting games running. Even you have to play a reg for more then 2 hands HU once in a while.



Andreas