|
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: won).
|
