So its been a pretty busy couple of weeks for me and a lot has happened in the past month.

First of all there was the Grind for Rwanda project that I mentioned in my last blog, basically Stars gave me a 4000$ bankroll and I got four days to see how much I could grind it up to and whatever was left was donated to the project (if you are interested you can read more about the organization here: http://www.educat.dk/educat/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=16&Itemid=15).

I decided to for a low-variance approach so instead of playing the tournaments I normally do where I could easily go broke on the first day I decided to mainly play the 45/180 man sngs. I had 2/4 winning session and ended up profiting 1226$ making the total donation 5226$ (Thanks for being awesome Pokerstars!), it would had been nice to run a little better but at least I managed to book a profit.

Besides that I have managed to set up internet desk and computer and now I finally have a proper grinding station. Its the first time in three months I have played on something else than my crappy laptop and even though I was getting used to it its really nice to be back playing on two big monitors. Despite my new set up of that I only managed to put in around 750 games this month but my priorities have just not been very focused on poker and I still managed to profit 5k (and do really well staking) so I cant complain. I also finally got around to installing Hold Em Manager 2 and have started playing around with it for a bit. For someone who have never really learned to use a hud before its a bit intimidating but hopefully il learn it eventually If anyone here plays mtts and use a hud please post in the comment section, I am really curious about what kind of stats you keep on people and why.

So my main goal this month has been to lose some weight and get in better shape. I am not obese but like most people who spends the majority of their day in front of a monitor I weight a little more than I should.
I have known for a while that it would be very good for me to change my habits and get in shape but always managed to make up bs excuses and use procrastination to avoid it. I decided that was going to change in November so I got a gym membership and traded my sodas and candy out for water and fruit.
To say its been a good decision would be a massive understatement. As tough as it was in the beginning I am glad I stuck through with it and at this point I am thoroughly enjoying going to the gym now and started to enjoy salad and vegetables that I used to find gross. I have gotten a lot more energy (and feel less sleepy all the time), feel better about myself and lost 5 kilos in the process. To anyone who is in a similar situation all I can say is that you should start doing it now, dont wait until next week or until you can make it your new year's resolution, just start doing it. As cheesy as it sounds I find it a lot like poker in that if you just consistently make good decisions and put in volume the results will follow.

The last week I spent playing the APPT Macau tournament and although I busted the main event late on day 2 I had a really great week. The hotel is one of the best ones I have ever stayed in and minibar and internet was free which was a really nice change of pace from the hotels I usually stay in:



There were some minor things about the tournament and the staff I wasnt too keen on but overall it was a very well-run tournament and the fields are very soft, I wouldnt be surprised if Macau turns into the poker mecca that a lot of people have predicted in the next few years. I was planning on playing a few side events but due to jetlag and too much drinking I decided it would be wiser to skip them. I also had some really good food there, one of the highlights being Macaus best Hot Pot restaurant (its like chinese fondue) where they didnt have english menus so Bryan Huang ended up ordering for us.
All of it was really delicious, it was not until the next day that I found out we had been eating one of the grossest things ive ever seen, Geoduck:




As far as my plans for December goes I decided to skip the whole Prague trip because while the schedule is pretty good its just gonna be too much travel for me and I dont want to be burnt out with PCA coming up so soon. I'm just going to grind some online (im calling dibs on Pokerstars 10k Anniversary Highroller), play the GUKPT 2500£ and then go back to Denmark to see my family and friends during Christmas.

So another month passed pretty quickly. I still havent gotten a reliable connection here in London (should be here early next week - knock on wood) so I haven't played much online this month. Actually I think October might have been my lowest online volume month since Vegas, according to Sharkscope I only played 465 games (four-five sessions) and managed a profit of 12k. Most of the month have been spent travelling and playing live poker though, first I went to Copenhagen to play in The Danish Championships, I busted in the middle of day 1 to the eventual champion Simon Ravnsb¦k in a chiplead pot with AK vs AA. In retrospect I think we both played it pretty badly (with me probably playing it the worst) and I probably should have folded but its certainly not a hand im gonna lose any sleep over. Congratulations to Simon for winning the whole thing, a lot of people picked him as the favorite before the tournament started and he didnt disappoint, a very desserving champion.

I also played EPT San Remo main event and a bunch of sides, I was very happy with my play over the week and had some pretty good runs. I made three day 2s (busted the main in the last level) and ended up having two cashes on the trip to make me about breakeven. One was 7th in a 1k sideevent where I 3-bet/called nines from the smallblind vs. a cutoff open and ran into aces, the other was a mincash in a 1000+1000 turbo bounty tournament.
The bounty tournament was actually pretty sick as half of the prizepool goes to the bounty the optimal strategy is a lot different than in a regular turbo and covering people becomes a lot more significant and you have to make a lot of calls that are -cev because of the bounty equity against shorter stacks. You start with 30k chips in the tournament and I managed to get my stack to 445k (!) without getting a bounty by basically losing every all-in against the shortstacks and doubling through all the bigstacks. I have taken a little break from live and decided to skip EPT Loutraki to settle into our new apartment and get a chance to grind some online again so my next tournament is gonna be APPT Macau which I am really looking forward to.

One thing I am really looking excited about is a danish campaign that Pokerstars are running the next week called "Poker for Rwanda" where the players, media and team pros are gonna try and raise money for the organization Educat that helps educating locals in leadership and entrepreneurship in a way that can make them less dependent on development aids and emergency reliefs.

Pokerstars have given both me and other danish Team Pro Theo Jorgensen a 4000$ bankroll and we then have from monday until thursday to see how much we can turn into and whatever is left is going to be donated to Educat. I am pretty excited about the opportunity and I am looking to put in a lot of volume (planning on playing whenever im not sleeping) while practicing solid bankroll management so I expect to play a lot of 180-man sngs and low-mid stake tournaments, wish me luck!

So it's been a long time since I have updated the blog, over five months actually. I have been thinking about updating it a dozen of times but I somehow always manage to convince myself to push it a couple of days and come up with excuses about how I am too busy to blog, how my english isnt good enough etc. but someone asked me on twitter the other day why I hadn't updated my blog in so long and I realised I really dont have any good excuse so here I am!

Brief recap of what has been going on since my last blog post:

- I went to Las Vegas for the first time this summer (and my first real visit to America too) for a couple of months to play WSOP events. The poker wasn't a huge success, I had three cashes including a 26th in the 1500 pot limit holdem (lost KK to 88 for 2x avg then AQ vs 78s for the comeback) and and 15th in one of the big 1500 NL events (openshoved 77 into TT). So overall I think I ended up playing just shy of 20 events and had two deep runs which I am pretty happy with. The fields were as soft as what I had been told but I still dont feel like wsop is nessecarily the must-play series that a lot of people make it out to be, Timex summed up my thoughts pretty well in his wsop blog: http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/Timex/10-comments-on-the-wsop-why-i-loved-it-and-why-you-shouldnt-play-it

However I had such a blast hanging out with the four guys I rented a house with that it was easily some of the best months of my life and something I am defintely going to do again next year.
Going to the wsop was a bit of a last minute decision for me and I took a bit of gamble by staying with two people I had only talked a bit with online and two guys that were complete strangers to me. It turned out great though and I had such a good time with them, seeing friends that I only get to see 1-2 times a year and meeting a lot of of new and awesome people, definitely the best pokertrip I have done.

- I have moved to London! As much as I enjoyed living in Copenhagen near my friends and family I felt like it was time for some new scenery. I love London (been there 15+ times since my aunt used to live there) and ive always wanted to try and live in another country and now just seems like a great time to do it since I really don't have any obligations. I dont own any property, I dont go to school, I dont have a girlfriend, im young and all I need to work is a laptop and an internet connection! Ive moved in with my good friend and fellow poker player Andrew Teng in an apartment near Paddington and so far im enjoying it a lot. The last month has been so busy because of WCOOP and EPT London that I barely have had a chance to explore the city but il be blogging a lot more about London in the future.

- I havent been grinding a lot the last couple of weeks but I played a lot during WCOOP. I had a lot of really deep runs in WCOOP events and got top 100 in 5-6 nl events (including 52nd in the main where I ran AKs into AA) and third in the 215 Stud event. I think I played very well overall but just lost some crucial flips towards the end. I am very proud of how much I grinded though considering just how badly the month started out, here is my full graph for the month (couldnt figure out how to post it in a bigger size but you can click it):




- Probably the biggest news since my last update is that I have signed with Pokerstars to be a member of Team Online! Even though its only been about a month I have enjoyed all the aspects of it so far. It's been pretty fun to do interviews and photos etc and I have talked a bit with them about ideas for upcoming events/promotions and I think they have some really great ideas, its still a little early to say but I think this could be end up being one of the best decisions I have ever made. They put up a small bio about me here: http://www.pokerstars.com/team-pokerstars/team-online/mickey-petersen/

- I have played a couple of Epts and other live tournaments in Europe without too much success, I honestly think I am playing pretty great though and when I bink one eventually its just gonna feel that much better! I might try and make a graph over all the live tournaments ive played as I am pretty curious just how much I am down and post it in my next blog.

This ended up a lot longer than I expected but I guess thats what I get for slacking for so long. Right now I am in Copenhagen on a brief visit to see some family and friends and then on thursday I am leaving for EPT San Remo.


Mickey
ps. I found some old recordings that I havent used so I will try and make that into a video sometimes next week, stay tuned!

Sorry I haven't updated in a while but I have been so busy the last couple of months I haven't really found the time to write a proper blog which is a shame, il try to make this a more regular thing in the future.
Anyways at the start of November I was sitting third in the Bluff OPOY race and did some calculations and figured out I actually had a pretty good shot at winning it (id say around 70-80%) if I could just play non-stop until the end of the year. Even though it wasn't something that meant a ton to me I still thought it would be a cool title to have and since I would probably never have a year where I put in as much volume also a once in a lifetime opportunity. So I set out on a mission averaging about 120 tournies a day playing 16 hour sessions across six sites day in and day out. My schedule for the first three weeks where literally like this every single day:

4-6pm: get up, run errands and figure out some dinner arrangement
6pm-9am: play poker 20-30 tabling throughout almost the entire sesison.
9am-4pm: sleep

Rinse and repeat, im sure you get the picture.

During this period I lost the vast majority of my sessions, didn't see the sun once, had almost no time for a social life and sat in a chair staring into a screen all day. I cared more about signing up to a 75$ Stud tourney than I did about going grocery shopping or preparing a proper meal. Without being results oriented I think it's safe to say that going for the OPOY race with such a big gap between me and the guy in first was a pretty stupid mistake. By the time November ended I was still in contention, I estimate I had a 25-30% chance of winning it but with the prospect of spending another month trapped inside in front of my computer playing all day, not getting enough sleep and not seeing any of my friends I wisely decided to drop it. I definitely wanted to win it and i'm a little disappointed I gave up on it, but in the end it wasn't really worth the price I was paying.

I haven't played much since then but I have cut significantly down on the number of tables i'm playing (it's still
more than most people play but realizing you don't have to play every 20r and 55fo is a big step for me ), finally started using HEM and dedicated more time to studying and watching videos again. The first day back I won the 109c at a very tough final table, last sunday I won the 215r and 53 Super Turbo and yesterday I got 2nd in the 215 plo and had some other deep runs as well. I am 4/4 in profitable sessions in December and couldn't be happier about how I am playing and how some of all the small adjustments I have made are already paying off (cutting tables, less surfing around and fewer/shorter sessions).

That brings us to this sunday where I was grinding with a good buddy of mine who lives in Iowa but is visiting Copenhagen for christmas. my session started out pretty well and I build a lot of decent stacks most notable being 15/20 in the AP 500 and 18/27 in a huge 109fo on Stars and 3/13 in the Super Highroller on Party.
But this is where the nightmare begins when my connection all of a sudden and with no warning goes down. Now in the last year I think I have only disconnected once before and it was up and running again in minutes (and needless to say I use my internet A LOT) so I fully expected the same would be the case here. After five minutes the connection is still down and I try to remain calm, I try a different computer, try to reset the router, try to see if any of my neighbors have a connection without password and nothing works, FUCK. I like to think I handle bad beats for huge amounts of equity about as well as anyone, but being in a situation like this where you have zero control over the situation is insanely frustrating. I try to call around to all my friends to find someone who can take over while I work on a solution but everyone is either playing or not picking up.

After thirty minutes the connection finally gets back up but at this point I have blinded off around 6k in equity and all of my big stacks are completely demolished. I quickly unreg the rest of my schedule and kick myself for not having a backup plan for a situation like this. I quickly bust most of the remaining tournies except Partys Super High Roller where I chip up nicely to 3/7 until the following hand happens for the chiplead:

***** Hand History for Game 9937294686 *****
NL Texas Hold'em $2,000 USD Buy-in Trny:56800584 Level:17 Blinds-Antes(1.000/2.000 -200) - Sunday, December 12, 21:46:38 EST 2010
Table $50K Gtd Super High Roller (2083963) Table #1 (Real Money)
Seat 8 is the button
Total number of players : 7/10
Seat 8: CuteCupcakes ( 69,070 )
Seat 7: PartBoss ( 59,995 )
Seat 6: SirWatts ( 51,306 )
Seat 4: YongSupremcy ( 27,497 )
Seat 5: dxfcghbj ( 143,644 )
Seat 10: maffasa ( 47,944 )
Seat 9: raidalot ( 80,544 )
Trny:56800584 Level:17
Blinds-Antes(1.000/2.000 -200)
YongSupremcy posts ante [200]
dxfcghbj posts ante [200]
SirWatts posts ante [200]
PartBoss posts ante [200]
CuteCupcakes posts ante [200]
raidalot posts ante [200]
maffasa posts ante [200]
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to CuteCupcakes [ Jh Jd ]
YongSupremcy folds
dxfcghbj folds
SirWatts folds
PartBoss folds
CuteCupcakes raises [4,000]
raidalot calls [3,000]
maffasa is all-In [45,744]
CuteCupcakes is all-In [64,870]
raidalot folds
** Dealing Flop ** [ As, 4h, 9c ]
** Dealing Turn ** [ Ts ]
** Dealing River ** [ 8c ]
CuteCupcakes shows [ Jh, Jd ]a pair of Jacks.
maffasa shows [ Ac, 2s ]a pair of Aces.
CuteCupcakes wins 21,126 chips from the side pot 1 with a pair of Jacks.
maffasa wins 100,888 chips from the main pot with a pair of Aces.

Im left with just 10 big blinds after that and really over the whole sunday. For those who don't know the tournament has a buy-in of 2k and has a really steep payout structure that pays first 25k, second 15k and third 10k so mincashing is worth a lot. Somehow I manage to chip up nicely by shoving a lot preflop and winning a flip and before I know it I am right back in contention as 2/5. After that I lose a flip but almost immediately after I know out Youngsupremacy with my KQ vs his AK that catches a lucky straight on the turn. Fourhanded the stacks are almost dead even and playing for a 10k bubble is a little nerve-wracking even for me :) Thankfully someone busts after only 20 hands and the chipleader takes out another guy and all of a sudden I am heads-up against Raidalot! We exchange blinds back and forth a bit before I lose a big pot with 75 vs his T7 on 46938 and soon after it's over when my AJo dosent flip well versus his eights.

I was thrilled to get second though and end up slightly profitable for the day instead of a disastrous sunday like it looked like it would turn into only a few hours earlier. First thing I am doing tommorow is getting a backup connection and I urge everyone else who plays poker on just a semi-serious level to do the same, it's probably one of the best investments you can make!

Besides that there really isn't much to report on, I have started dabbling in some cash games at the smaller stakes but haven't really put in any real volume yet, I might post a graph and go into some more details about it once I have a more significant sample.

This blog ended up being way longer than I expected but il try to make them shorter and more frequent in the future, also I am really happy for all the positive feedback me and Timex have gotten on our first video of his deep WCOOP run. Mike is one of the guys who have taught me the most about poker and we often discuss strategy so making these videos is a lot of fun for me as well so hopefully we can have the second one out in the near future.

So I had a great time in London but unfortunately the poker didn't work out as I bricked all 9-10 live tournaments I played. The two biggest were WSOPE where I busted for 2x avg early on with KK vs T9 on a 28TJ board and the EPT where I was all-in for the first time when I jammed 18bbs blind vs blind with A6s and ran into KK twenty spots away from the money. I have been meaning to get my next video ready for some time but after returning from London I got pretty sick (and still am) but il try my hardest to have it out as soon as possible, sorry for the delay.
The good news is that I have finally gotten back my desire to grind online and even though my results so far this month have been very underwhelming I am putting in a ton of volume so i'm confident it will turn around soon and il climb out of my downswing soon. Also starting next week I have a 3k bet with Kleath and Smokrokflock where the player who has the 20 best scores in the next month wins so hopefully that will keep me motivated to put in some epic volume! Also I don't plan on using it much outside of poker but I made a twitter account you can follow here: http://twitter.com/#!/mickeydp

So after Vilamoura I went directly to Cannes for a week for the Partouche Poker Tour (main event was a‚¬8,500).
I busted the main event on the last level of a very long day with A6cc vs AJo on J75cc after having a really rough day where I wasn't really able to accumulate any chips and had QQ vs AA and QQ vs KK that both made sure I was never above avg. The tourney was really soft and the structure was amazing as well so I was a bit sad I wasn't able to make day 2 but that's just how it goes sometimes. Cannes is a beautiful city though and with the amazing weather I pretty much just spent the entire week walking around the city, laying on the beach, eating at nice restaurants and catching up with friends I hadn't seen in a long time. As I am sure some of you are aware I also played in a 2ka‚¬ sideevent and was planning on playing the 3ka‚¬ heads-up tournament as well. I'm not gonna get too much into it here but I decided to skip the heads-up tournaments due to some questionable rulings from the staff (if you wanna read more about there is a huge thread here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61/mtt-community/cheating-accepted-partouche-poker-tour-868424/).

I have played a bit of online lately but without much success, I am currently on my biggest downswing ever and I think my next blog might be about how to handle the variance, downswings, live tournaments and stuff like that.

Anyways I am in London right now for the WSOPE and staying on Tufats couch until the EPT begins (actually his couch broke down so I am sleeping on the floor!) planning on playing a lot of live and online tournaments while im over here. Yesterday I played the 2,5k£ 6-max WSOPE event and I had a really tough starting table with Kingdan, PureProfitFour and a bunch of competent guys I didn't recognize. The structure was pretty shallow so after 3betting AK three times, bricking all of them, cbetting and getting shoved on all three occasions I was pleased that my starting stack of 7,5k had only dwindled to 6k. Then I got moved to a table with Sorel Mizzi, Praz Bansi and Phil Hellmuth! Hellmuth played a bunch of absurd hands and was generally way more agressive (though not necessarily better) than the impression I got from watching him on TV. After sitting there for about an hour Hellmuth busted me in the following hand:

My stack: ~ 6000
Phil Hellmuth: ~15000
Blinds 100/200-25a. I have Qd5d on the button
Preflop: folds to me I make it 475 and Hellmuth defends his big blind.
Flop: Flop: 6d 8d 8c
Hellmuth checks and I bet 500, he says "yo lets raise it up son" (not kidding) and makes it 1100, I think for 40 seconds and ships my stack in and he tanks for two minutes before calling with 69o and I brick for an uneventful exit.

Pretty happy with how I played just unfortunately that I couldn't get any momentum going at all. I am really enjoying London so the next couple of days are gonna be filled with sightseeing and WCOOPS and then the 1,5k sideevent on saturday.

So I started out day 2 busting on the fifth hand in a spot where I stacked off in an inexcusable spot. It was just one of those hands where everything told me I should fold and I KNEW it was a fold and somehow I still managed to put all my chips into the pot. I really hate when I do dumb stuff like that especially live because I pride myself especially live where you have so much information at your disposal and time to think things thoroughly through. The hand occurred at 500-1k and I have 36k to start the hand, Allan Baekke opens to 2,2 from lp and I make it 5,8k from the sb with JJ, obviously with no plan of ever folding. Unfortunately the big blind makes it 11,8 and Allan quickly folds and after a couple of minutes I decide to stick it in vs QQ for an early exit on day 2.

I think it's pretty clear that my range for sticking it in that spot should be exactly QQ+AKo+ against that guy and deviating to either side is gonna be a fairly big mistake, oh well can't play well all the time unfortunately :(

The good news was that I busted in time for the 2k sideevent where I had a pretty good table with the only good players being Tom Marchese and Gray31 and although a few good players came and went during the day I grinded my 12k stack up to 60k before calling a big riverbet with QQ on 88499 vs 99 where I don't think I could ever fold to having a shortstack going into the last level. Thankfully I got QQ otb vs Dan Heimillers AJs in a 70bb pot where he called my 4b jam and with just a few hands left to go of the day he hoodflatted my 5bet where I had KK and folded to a small bet on the flop. When all was said and done I ended the day with 96k with avg being 56k and 26 players remaining (12 got paid). Unfortunately nothing went my way on day 2 where I had to fold Ad3d on a AxKd4d6x4x board in a 3way pot. Soon after I got seated next to Antesvante who is an excellent Swedish tournament reg (he won EPT Copenhagen last season) where it gets folded to us blind vs blind at 800-1600-200 where I have about 80k chips and he covers me by a ton. I raise to 4k with 97o (id often fold this vs a player of his caliber but I think it plays well enough esp with the big antes) and he flats. Flop comes 9h9x4h and I bet 4,8k which he calls pretty quickly.

Turn is an offsuit 8 and I bet 7,8k this time which he calls again. River is the Kh and I bet 11,8k with the intention of folding to a shove, unfortunately he calls with Jh8h and I lose a huge chunk of my stack on a hand that plays itself. With 13 left I am the shortest stack but Tom Marchese busts to burst the bubble and I double up with KQo vs 88 on the very next hand! with 10 left we are playing five handed and I have 25bbs and jam AJo over an open but unfortunately I run into JJ and when the board runs out Jxx i'm out.

It is a little disappointing that I am running so bad in the endgame of live tournaments (my record looks like this: 10th,4th,5th,8th,14th and 12th) but at the same time I have been really fortunate to run well enough to get all those deep runs so it's hard to complain. I'm learning something new every time im playing live though so hopefully il take one down sooner or later. Im off to Cannes tommorow before I head back home for the WCOOP grind.

¯»¿¯»¿Hey guys and welcome to my very first blog!

I haven't been active here on Cardrunners for the last couple of days because I have been so busy flying to Vilamoura and playing events trying to be a livepro. I come from an online background and that's how I was taught and learned the game but about a year ago I played WSOPE which was my first live tournament, ever since then I have had the live bug and now i'm travelling around Europe trying to follow most of the EPT circuit and chasing the dream of fame and fortune.

I got through day 1a with a disappointing 38k (from a 30k starting stack) but I had a pretty tough table with James Mitchell, Bryn Kenney, Pieter de Korver, Antony Lellouche and Gray31 so can't complain too much. My day 2 table is looking much softer with the only really notable players being my fellow countryman Allan B¦kke (EPT Snowfest winner, 5k husng reg and overall sicko) and the guy who won it last year (his only cash on Hendonmob).

I am going Directly to Cannes afterwards to play in the Partouche main event followed by WCOOP and then WSOPE and EPT London, gonna be a crazy couple of months.

There has been an overwhelming response to my first video and il try to get back to everyone who had questions once I am done playing day 2 here and try to get more involved in the strategy forums as well.