Italian Vegas

In other news…

• I’m all moved into my new flat, got everything set up and settled in really nicely.
• Playing a home virtual game at Andy’s tomorrow night, not played live for a few weeks due to work and the move, looking forward to it!
• Circus are doing a £150+15 Christmas Cracker tourney at the end of december. The buy-in will represent under 10% of bankroll so I’m thinking of taking a shot at it. More to come.
• Just booked tickets to Stockholm for January, awesome cheap deal from Ryanair £30 all in return flights from Glasgow with some mates.

The second is losing to bad players. This one has always been a big leak since I’ve started playing poker. I get stuck a buy-in or 2 to a massive fish and just lose it. I know I’m crushing this guy long term, but he’s taking my money short term, it really frustrates me. Worst of all I don’t want to quit because the action is juicy. However despite the juicy action I can’t play unless I’m in control and playing my A free online game. I need to realise that he’s put me off my free online game and apply the correct strategy to beat him, or stop playing completely.

Paying too much attention to short term results
During sessions I usually bring up PT every 30mins or so to check out my win/loss$. At the end of each session I’ll look at my win/loss$ and check out my PokerEV and PokerGrapher graphs. This is just way too short term results oriented, hell I even posted recently on how well I was running across 1.5k hands. If I’m going to take playing poker seriously then I can’t take too much notice of the short term results of the virtual online games. When you watch any top player play on CardRunners you just don’t hear them talking about how much they’re up or down for the session, it doesn’t affect their decision making.

Taking my foot off the gas
I’ve noticed this pattern not just in poker, but in everyday life too. Whenever I get ahead, I always take my foot off of the gas. Whether if it’s playing pool, squash, football, or even with my workload at work… if I’ve got a strong lead I almost intentionally shift to my B virtual online games. I think I need to keep myself concious of this, and just try to focus on the situation less and instead on giving my 100% regardless.

It’s funny, having a bad session doesn’t make me feel like stopping playing. I guess this is one of the reasons poker is so profitable, so many players just can’t quit when they start playing badly. When I have a bad session I become hugely driven to find out the mistakes I made and resolve them.

Being too results oriented
Looking back over the video I didn’t realise I was so results oriented. I saw myself start to tilt and question my plays in hands I played perfectly. The amount of $$$ I was losing was directly affecting how I was playing. Being results oriented isn’t so bad when I’m winning, but it really hits me when I have losing sessions… if I was results oriented through a long downswing it would really crush me. I need to focus more on how well I’m playing and the decisions I’m making, rather on the amount I’m winning or losing. I need to try to factor out my win/loss$ at all stages of playing a session.

There are 2 big reasons that usually cause me to tilt… The first is playing tired/fatigued. I need realise when I’m tired and quit instantly, or better still anticipate that I’ll get tired before starting the session and deciding to spend time doing something else like watch a CR video.

Different people tilt in different ways, I tilt by playing too passively. I’ll start limping into too many pots, playing a few more hands than I should, and taking way too passive lines in hands. I just don’t concentrate hard enough, don’t analyse hands deeply enough, I feel like I’m playing to “catch a hand” rather than make money, and I 1st level think everything (just go by the strength of my hand).

Going to re-read my copy of the fantastic Zen and the Art of Poker over the next couple of weeks. I think that’ll help reenforce some of this stuff in my head. Another great reference for those interested: free articles by Piemaster, who co-wrote The Poker Mindset with Matt Hilger.

By stopping playing completely I need to quit all tables instantly regardless of where the blinds are. When ending a regular session I’ll uncheck auto-post and wait for the current orbits to finish on all of my tables. However when I’m playing on tilt I need to just get out of there before I get the chance to overplay hands trying to subconciously “win it back” on the last orbit.

Playing my A online game
This one’s pretty tough. I need to make sure I’m playing my A online game every time I play. This means both before I decide to play a session, and mid-session when I start tilting.

To top it off I was playing 1 last table (after I should have insta-quit out them all), but this one was still super-fishy… guy shoves 20xBB with 45o, I call from SB with AQo, BB (massive donkey) calls from the BB with A4o, we get it in on an A84 2-flush flop, I drop a buy-in while waiting on the orbit finishing. New rule, if quitting because I’m not playing well, don’t uncheck auto-post… just quit regardless.

Rant over.

Ugh, what a fucking shit session. Played on super-loose tables, lost some pots to donkeys, went on tilt, stopped analysing hands correctly while playing, started throwing away money. Worst part was despite playing bad, and knowing I was playing bad it took me like 30mins to stop playing. Ugh I just fucking hate the sessions that go like that. I don’t have many of them but when I do they just piss me right off.

EDIT: Actually sklansky bucks run me as break-even for that session. I dropped $250 btw, in 350 hands. VPIP/PFR was 21/15. 2363 hands played into the new 10k. Position stats looking good, no thanks to this session though. Running at 12BB/100, $575 up.

Playing against utter fucking donkeys catching no cards and they’re just calling me down with nothing and hitting. Ugh fucking pile of shit session, there was no way I was getting away from a decent loss there, but I definately didn’t help it. I should have just quit when I started tilting, and wasn’t playing my A game online. It’s tough though when the tables are so good you don’t want to leave. They were like 55/6 and 43/9 tables. It was ridicuous, as fishy as it gets any they just hit everything on me.

I must concentrate and play my A online game in my future sessions. There’s just nothing more frustrating that playing your Z online game and getting done by a bunch of donks.

So, not gonna play another session ’til I’ve analysed my last 2.5k hands. It always goes like this, start the 10k running hot, then piss money away. I do this with everything, pull ahead hard, then take my foot off the gas… every time. I need to sort it.

Ugh fuckit, at least I didn’t break anything, and for some reason I did record the whole 2nd half of it with Camtasia, was gonna use it as a vid for the study group, but for some reason that PAHUD stats didn’t show up in the recorded video. Unfortunate because the video is kinda like watching a GP video descend into Tuff Fish.

My daily routine lately has been almost perfect. I have been waking up early and our wonderful nanny/chef continues to impress with wonderful new dishes on a daily basis. After fueling my body I head down to the 24 hour fitness for a workout and warm up. I am happy with my workouts lately, my body feels good again. The golf course is right across the street from the gym, so after a good workout my body is ready for the range, but since my thumb is not yet healed 100% from an old Muay Thai injury, I have not been able to golf this past week. It looks like I am going to have to take ten days off, since I want to make sure it heals correctly. After golf it is back to Maya’s house and hang out with Mila and Maya all night. I usually find a little time to play online if the online games are good. Now if my shoulder was a little better and I could throw some tennis in there somewhere I would have my perfect day.

Phil Ivey called me while back and told me there was going to be a “Big Game” on Friday night. It has been a long time since I played live cash virtual games and I was excited to sit back down at the tables and at real people in the eyes. It was the usual line up, I had Jennifer on my right and Minh on my left. Bobby Baldwin, Doyle, Guy (Noatima,) Eli, Lyle, and David B. were all in the online game.

I am sure that I am not the only one who finds live poker so boring after playing online. I was also a little upset that we were only playing $2k-4k instead of $3k-6k or $4k-8k. We played a mixture of four virtual games, NL Hold em, PLO, Limit Holdem, and Stud high. There was a $60,000 CAP in the NL and PLO virtual games. I lost with AKs to KK in a capped pot and chopped with KK vs 77 since we ran it twice in another capped pot. I did still manage to leave the online game a small winner, but the fre online game was slow that I could not take it anymore and quit the virtual online games after five hours. The fre online game was moving just to slow since we were playing nine handed and it felt too small, even though $2k-4k is a big fre online game.

The Bellagio was getting pretty busy while I was playing the other night. This is a great sign, hopefully when the tournament rolls around, the stakes are bigger are more players are in town. I have talked a few times with Brian Townsend, Guy, and Bobby Baldwin about getting the $1k-2k NL and PLO fre online game going again during December. I will play the Main Event in the upcoming WPT Five Diamonds, which brings back a lot of great memories and a few sour ones too.

On the way from the poker room to the valet pick up, I managed to take the long route so I could stop by the blackjack tables and hopefully win some money or break even while building up some comps for the Holiday season. I lost a little and when I finally got to my car I was a small winner on the whole poker, BJ trip. Maya on the other hand who came with me, hit two jackpots on the slot machines while I was playing poker and made more money than I did. She is a lifetime winner at slots and if poker does not work out, I might have to stay home with Mila and let Maya play high limit slots all day and support the family.

Online poker has been a roller coaster still, but the past few days have been profitable and on a little hot streak. I have been sitting at Martins Poker waiting for opponents, but no one has sat down. Actually, I forgot to stand up and leave the tables the other day and while I was in the shower, someone sat down and stole my blinds on three tables. That added up to 900 Euros, so I was not too happy about that, but I will get it back, someday.

Mila is starting to crawl and it is so fun to watch her grow each day. It is amazing how fast it all goes. She will be going off to school before I know it. Maya’s family is visiting, her Mother just flew in from Israel and her brother from LA with his new Fiance. We are having a Thanksgiving feast today, my first Thanksgiving ever, and with our nanny cooking, it is going to be great I am sure.

I am off to the Bellagio, I just got a call that there is going to be a $3k-6k virtual game and it is shorthanded. Wish me luck and I will let you know how it goes soon.

Good luck at the tables

-Patrik-

Bleh, it’s late so no time to post up some hands, will just do that at the 2k mark. Won a sick $300 pot with quad 9s on Sunday, and tonight a delicious $240 pot FH over FH. Here’s some quick screengrabs though… new stats are getting there. Gonna try to open up even more from the CO/BTN and get my PF Raise up about another 1% too.

EDIT: who’s that Amanda Leatherman chick on their site, she’s gorgeous! She looks kind of posh-cute but filth at the same time. Yum.

Oh yea…
Check out www.pokerroad.com for podcasts, videos, interviews, strategy, etc. Listened to the podcasts hosted by Sebok and Gavin Smith quite a bit today and they’re really good. Pretty funny with some great stories and hand analysis too.

I think a lot of the profit has came from good table selection. I fire up 6 or 7 tables before settling on 4 to play, as soon as a table tightens up I fire up more tables to pick one that’s more profitable. Lots of the weeknight tables are full of regulars, but there’s still fishy tables to be found with good selection.

On a tear right now at $100NL, absolutely loving it. $650 up in the 1,600 hands I’ve played over the last 3 days. Running at 20BB/100, playing 21/16.

Results
The first graph shows my actual $$$ win/loss, the 2nd graph plots my bucks against Sklanky Bucks… this is my theoretical win/loss removing (as best possible) how the cards ran after we got money in.

MP (2)
Current VPIP = 18.5%
Ideal VPIP ~ 12%
Again, too loose out of position here, need to play MP similar to UTG but with a couple of extra hands. I should be opening with KQ/AT+/22+.

It’s clear to see that my position play needs some work, and over the next 10k hands it will be my #1 priority to get it in check. Play tighter from the SB/UTG/MP and loosen up even more from the CO/BTN. I know the ranges of hands I should be playing now, so there’s no reason not to stick to them.

CO (1)
Current VPIP = 24.5%
Ideal VPIP ~ 30%
The CO is where it start getting fun. I should be opening with MORE hands from the CO. I can play a lot looser than I am currently from here. Again it’s important that I don’t limp often if at all, I should always be open-raising. I can add a load of extra hands here. High suited connectors and one gappers (QTs, T9s, etc), pretty much any 2 face cards. I can also open aces from A7s up.

I’ve paid $626 in rake, so on my 30% rakeback deal at BlondePoker I’ve recieved about $200 of that back too. I took me 136 table hours to log 10k hands at 6-max, 4-tabling that’s 34 hours, so really I should be able to log around 8k hands per month playing part-time. My BB/Hr rate was 1.86. Meaning that my hourly rake without RB is about $7.50/hr, and theoritcal hourly rate is around $24/hr.

So I started off by swinging up HARD, which was nice. Then I’ve gradually been dropping $$$ since the 3k hands mark, which has sucked. But as the 2nd graph illustrates my equity has actually been rising steadily right from the off. It’s amazing to be able to see this, mainly just to be able to tell myself that I’m still playing theoritically good poker despite not winning $$$.

I’m ignoring the winning sessions stats, they really mean nothing. I can’t datamine at iPoker so I’ll often sit in 5-6 tables before deciding on the best 4 to play, so often take small losses.

If I can achieve these goals in the next 20k hands then I’ll have a great base to develop my virtual online games from. Back to the grind for me.

Position
One of the main areas I want to look at is my positional stats. I’ve been reading Verneer’s blog a lot recently and also looking at Brymstar’s low limit guide on CR and I found out pretty quickly that I’m not positionally aware enough at 6-max. So below is my position stats for the last 10k hands.

So my profit over the last 10k hands was $507. Running at 2.5BB/100, which is good but an ideal achievable winrate for me at 100NL would really be 7-8BB/100. If I calculate my theoretical winrate by looking at the Sklansky bucks it sits at around 6BB/100, which is really good.

VPIP/PF Raise
Current = 22/13
Ideal ~ 19/16
Play less hands but raise more often preflop.
VPIP is the amount of money I “Voluntarily put in the pot”, or more simply just a percentage of the hands I play preflop. It’s a good indicator to how loosely I’m playing. PF Raise is the percentage of hands I raise preflop. 22/13 means I’m playing a a little more hands than a “tight” player, but certainly not raising enough to be an “aggressive” player. My aim here is to tighten up to improve my discipline, then I can maybe add in more hands in the next 10k. The main thing though is that I need to be more aggressive preflop. My PFRaise should be 3-4% under my VPIP, so I’m aiming for a very TAG 19/16.

Goooood evening. Time for the much put off 10k stats review, with the goal of trying to find a lot of leaks in my free online game to give me specific areas to adapt or improve on in my next 10k hands.

BB
Current VPIP = 11%
Ideal VPIP ~ 11%
I play about right from the BB, which is cool. Right being tight as a rock.

BTN
Current VPIP = 27%
Ideal VPIP ~ 34%
I have a free pass to be super-aggressive from the button. I thought I was aggressive as it is, but I can ramp this up a little more with A4s+, and suited connectors/one gappers down to 67.

SB
Current VPIP = 32%
Ideal VPIP ~ 25%
I’ve already tightened up a lot from the SB over the past month, but I need to tighten up even further. Folding most hands, but calling with things like PPs for set value.

For now I’m keeping it simple. Become a very positionally aware TAG player.

Flop/Turn/River Aggression
Current = 4.3/2.5/2.8
Ideal ~ 4.3/2.1/1.7
I’m not too far off where I want to be here. My flop aggression seems ok, but my turn/river aggressions are a bit high. Also my river aggression is higher than my turn aggression, I’m not exactly sure what that means, maybe I take a bet/check/bet line too much or something? So my cbetting looks about right, but just tighten up a little more on the turn, and a lot on the river.

Conclusion
I could look into a lot more things using poker tracker, but I’ve decided to keep my objectives for the next 10k hands focussed on the above. When I hit the 20k mark I’ll hopefully have my stats much more in line with these, and I can begin looking at how I fare HU vs. Multiway, how well I play PPs vs. Suited Connectors, postflop play, etc.

UTG (3)
Current VPIP = 17%
Ideal VPIP ~ 10%
So I’m playing way too many hands from UTG. I should raising out of UTG with KQs/AJ+/22+ and folding anything else.

Tight Aggression
There are a few key stats for detailing how tight aggressive I’m playing in the pic above. Here are the ones I think are most important.

What a few days. The action on Full Tilt has been incredible the past week.
I wish I could tell you that I have been winning everyday; instead I have been
on the roller coaster ride of a lifetime. The first day the action was crazy,
I had one of my all time great days. Unfortunately the next three days no
matter how good my cards were, Full Tilt found a way to make me lose.

Last night was the icing on the cake. I played a marathon online session
and it was not looking good at all, but somehow, I grinded away and at
the end of the night had booked a win. It was a wild session with huge
swings up and down, Gus, Zigmund, and Kaibuxxe, were all gambling. I
played a little HORSE at the end of the night, but most of the session I was playing PLO.

The past few nights, Maya and my assistant have been playing
the FTOPS tournaments. It has been a lot of fun watching
them go deep and giving advice if they want it. Maya often wants
the advice, but when the advice does not suit her, applying the advice
is a different story. So the other night I decided to have a little competition
with them and see who could go the furthest. The tournament was a $200
PL Hold em event. It was only the second online tournament I have played this year, and I managed to make it to the final table.

I went into the final table with the chip lead, but it was not meant to be.
I got knocked out 5th which was still good for $14,000. Not bad for a
last second entry. On the way to the final table I played a big pot with
poker pro Chip Jett and knocked him out. For busting the Full Tilt pro,
I got a $200 bounty and a T-Shirt saying, “I knocked out Chip Jett.”

Now for a gambling story on the golf course. I played a few days
ago with Jani (KObyTapOut) and I lost a little under $100,000.
Overall I am stuck a little over $100k in golf bets so far, and to be
honest I do not like being stuck. In the past when I get stuck at something,
it usually means I am going to put a lot of time into getting so good that
I can get even and make some good money. For now, I look at the loss
as a initiation to the golf gambling world. My swing under pressure is not the
same on the range, so once I can master that, I should be in great shape.
Golf is such a great virtual game and I see why poker players love gambling on it.
I hope when its all said and done, I am the biggest golf better around.

Yesterday at the golf course, my thumb started to kill me. We had to cancel
our round and I just putted for a little while. I ran into Daniel, I
watched him hit a great chip shot on the 9th hole. It looks like all of
Daniels hard work on his short fre online game is paying off.

My shoulder is starting to finally feel better, so I should get
back on the tennis court this week. I have only played two or three
times in the past two months, I need to get my virtual game ready for Mr. Hansen.

I am getting excited for the upcoming WPT at the Bellagio. There are going
to be some huge cash virtual online gamess and I feel as ready as ever. All of the big
players in town will be ready to gamble in Bobbys Room. I really hope we can
play the uncapped NL and PLO virtual game we played during the WSOP. The next
few days I might join Maya in some more online tournaments, so keep your eyes open.

Good luck at the tables

-Patrik-

JJ on an A-high 3-flush board – Villain is 27/11, bet this flop? Lead the turn? On the river I realised I’d ballsed the hand a bit, but thought my line could look like a FD, and also he could have air. Fire that river?

I’ve hit the 10k hand mark at $100NL, which is great. Well it’d be better if I wasn’t running like a retard chasing a pigeon… but what can you do.

JJ on 3-flush flop OOP – Villain is 60/22. I’ll be honest I have literally no idea what to do here. I feel like I played this a little weaktight, I always end up getting bet off these types on pots.

JJ again and another 3-flush flop with an overcard – No reads on villain, he’s just joined. What am I meant to do on the flop here? HALP!

Interesting opponent handreading hand – New to the table so no reads. Pretty standard follow up on that flop? I went for a delayed c-bet to control the pot size. He bets small on a 2-flush turn, was planning on floating and firing the river. He bets under half pot on the river and now I’m worried he’s got a middle pair or something so ditch my AK. Is this a good point to fire at him on the river? I guess my line doesn’t really represent any type of hand.

Rockets against a maniac – CO is a LAG maniac, he’s on monkey-tilt. I *heart* my preflop line, but do I play this too passive post-flop? I check because he’s going to fire like 80%+ of the time here, but should I c/r? On the turn, lead or give him a chance to bet at it again? River JJ just got there, I bet for value.

Other hands I played like a fish

Am I weak-tight?

Getting heat from a LAG – Another possibly weaktight play against a villain that’s playing back at me a lot. He’s 30/22. Should I just check the turn?

More importantly I’m now reviewing hands from every session I play, here’s what I got from the last 1k.

Anyways, I’ll post a PT analysis for the last 10k hands at some point this week… and some goals on what I want to achieve with my next 10k hands. I’ve stuck up a new objective to get to 20k hands by the end of the year, which I think is achievable if I really drive towards it.

How to play these 3-flush flops!?

Flopped strong 2 pair on a super drawheavy high board – BB is LAG. I think I’m well ahead of a LAG range here with all the draws out… shove on him for $57 more?

Pitching AK to an UTG 3-bet – UTG 3-bettor is 25/15, first time I’ve seen him 3-bet. I’m pretty happy mucking AK here.

AQ to a maniac re-raiser – This guy is on ultra-mega-spastic-tilt, I know he’s going to fire big on any flop. Just call and try to hit?

The old standard blogspot 2 column layout seemed a bit rubbish (really, I thought Amatay’s new layout looked sexy and decided to steal it) so we now have a new one. Delicious. If you’re interested in sticking 3 columns on your blogger, there’s a great tutorial here. Took me about 10 mins.

New Goals – and recap
I recently wrote this introduction of myself for the study group, which gradually turned into a re-evaluation of my goals for poker. So, from the top…

Current bankroll: $3,747

I’ll be moving up to $200NL when I hit the $6k mark and when I have a large sample of hands showing that I’ve crushed $100NL.

I joined CR a couple of months ago and have found the community and videos to be fantastic. It’s given me a whole different outlook on the free online game, and I feel that I now have the tools that I need to learn how to be a top player. My goal is to achieve an hourly rate of $100+/hour including rakeback, by the end of 2008. I have a lot of goals to meet along the way, which will involve putting lots of hands in at $100NL then $200NL and upwards, and a lot of study. But this should be a fun and profitable process!

… oh, this probably means I’ll be ACTUALLY posting hands now. With strategy and decisions and dollars and everything. Interesting.

I bankrolled myself $5k at the start of 2007, but due to work stress, having to move flat, and splitting up with my girlfriend near the start of the year I never really got going early ‘07. During the summer I sorted out my finances and set myself a new bankroll of $2.5k with new targets for poker. I used to focus mainly on SNGs/MTTs but I’m progressively moving over to cash online games. I play primarily on iPoker with 30% rakeback, 6-max $100NL and $200NL. I’m winning at both but not over a conclusive sample of hands, and I feel that I’ve got a lot of leaks in my virtual online games.

Bankroll
Not gonna be classing my bankroll as split across Cash/SNG/MTT/Live any more. My whole roll is now together. I’ll still be playing a few SNGs/MTTs but the buy-ins will just come out of the overall roll, my focus will be be on NL Cash a lot more. The main reason for bringing the roll together is so that I feel comfortably (30x buyin) rolled at $100NL.

New Study Group, New Layout
I joined the study group after being really impressed with some of blogs by it’s members. Their hard work at improving really motivated me to join in, and after only a few days I feel hugely motivated to push forward with my NL cash virtual online games play. Some of the blog links are for Card Runners or group members only so they’re mainly for my benefit… but some of them will probably work for all too.

Now I’m really enthusiastic to meet up with similar like-minded players, and put in some hard work to get to where I want to be. I enjoyed reading the blogs of a lot of players in SSNL Grinders, and gained a lot of motivation from the hard work put in by players like
Chris and Marc. I joined the group to help motivate me to play more hands, to increase my links with poker buddies to chat over hands with at sessions or on messenger, and to help others in the group achieve their goals.

I started making some extra $$$ doing casino bonii to help fund my degree in 2004/2005 when it was really profitable. After I graduated and the bonuses dried up I decided to move to poker to make some extra income. Soon after this I became hooked on the fantastic virtual online games and I’ve been working on improving ever since. I started playing poker properly early 2006 with a $100 bankroll at the microlimits, and ran that up to over $10k by the end of the year without re-depositing. Most of the profits came from poker bonuses and incredibly lucrative affiliate freerolls.

I flew back to Monaco last week and I have been ordering all new
appliances and furnishings for my loft and have been spending a few days
getting everything set up. It is a great feeling being able to design
the loft just the way I want it and install all my favorite things.

My friends Mikko, Tommi, and Jani all flew into town and we golfed at
least 18 holes everyday, so it was a great time. I even I even decided that
I was ready to put some money down and start gambling on the golf course.

We showed up at the Monte Carlo Country Club the first day and Jani
said I would need two shots per hole because he was a 6-7 handicap. Jani did everything he could to make sure my first day gambling on golf was a good one. He had not played for a few months and was not able to play up to his standards. I booked a win and
what a great way to start my gambling golf career.

On the second day we changed course and played at the beautiful Four Seasons Resorts Provence at Terre Blanche. I played good enough to beat the rusty Jani. It was starting to feel like making money at golf was too easy.

On the third day we decided to mix it up and play a team competition.
I was partnered with Tommi and Jani played with Mikko. Mikko was driving the ball farther than I have ever seen. He carried their team as Janni was still not playing up to his potential. I was happy to play with Tommi since he was playing the best of all of us going into the day.

It was a very tight match coming down to the last hole. We got very unlucky
in the end and they ended up beating us. But we all had a great time
and I cannot wait for the next golf vacation. Maya and Mila spent some time in Hawaii this summer and Maya is still talking about how wonderful it was. I might take the family there for a week or two and enjoy Hawaii’s beautiful golf courses.

One thing that I cannot believe after watching the ESPN high stakes
golf is how all of the poker players bend the rules when they golf.
They use Vaseline on their clubs to keep the ball straight and other
tricks that are not legal. I want to learn real golf and will not bet
with those kinds of crazy tricks.

Enough about golf, onto poker, I was going to have a high stakes heads
up poker match in Amsterdam, but we are going to postpone it to a later
date. Every once in awhile I get offers to play in high stakes virtual online gamess
around the world.

I have been putting some time in online. My favorite poker room
Martins Poker just opened some high limit tables and I will be playing
there often. Lately I have been running very good at HORSE, I really
enjoy playing the different limit virtual online gamess. I do not have a ton of
experience at Stud or Stud 8 so it is great practice for me so when I
am playing these virtual online gamess in the Big Game against Barry, Chip, Phil, and Gus, I can make better decisions. No matter how good you get at poker, you can always improve and
practice and fine tune your virtual online games.

A few days ago I finally got the best out of my good friend Ziigmund in PLO. At the end of the session we even ran two flips and I won both of those. In limit Hold em,
Hoss_TBF and I have been battling like usual and lately he is getting
the best of me, but hopefully things turn around soon.

Mila turns six months in a few days and is getting cuter and cuter
each day. She is developing ahead of schedule and it is amazing to see it. She is growing
so fast and just started to sit up on her own. She is even recognizing our friends. I cannot wait for her first steps and her first words should be very soon.

On a funny note, I had a crazy dream a few nights ago where Maya got
3rd in the Main Event at the WSOP next year; we had a big argument
because I wanted all the money since I taught her everything she
knows. We had a good laugh about it at breakfast the next morning.

Good luck at the tables
Patrik