CARDRUNNERS

In the 3 215's on Stars I got 64th in the 2nd chance, 30th in the warmup and 22nd in the million today. I've never made the final 18 of the million but think this is the 5th or 6th time I've made the final 45(and only top ~200 finish since the start of 2009). Today seemed like it wouldn't be a great day since my day started out by hurting my back at the gym to the point where sitting in a chair wasn't that comfortable. I persisted on and ended up booking a profit which is cool.

I'm currently thinking about maybe taking a week or two break from poker sometime in the next little while. I'm not doing this because of the usual "I busted a major on a sunday blahblahblah"... I was thinking I'd want a little time off at the beginning of the day too. The weather is getting nice, I've been inside a lot lately and wouldn't mind a break.

I also feel like my time hasn't been that efficiently when playing which in all honesty bothers me. I more or less play poker now because I enjoy it rather than to grind $(I enjoy that I can make money from it) and a lot of why I enjoy it is is because I enjoy getting good at something. Lately I have been doing very little work on improving my game and probably playing too many tables. I need to really cut back to playing just 16-18 for a while.

I also want to work out a better schedule to play such that I don't feel like I'm missing out on much by cutting back on tables. I kinda want to try playing a sunday or two where I just don't play on Stars. No one has a very high winrate there and I especially don't think I'm a huge winner playing reg filled tournies with a pile of tables going. Other sites have smaller prize pools and less to be spent on buyins, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are worse tournaments. Doubt I'll actually go forth with this, I just think if I wanted to  say scale back to 12 tables, I'd probably have trouble getting rid of say the 2nd chance or 109 cubed turbo but in reality a random 100 FO and 33r on a euro site or cake/Cereus is likely better.

Anyways, my sleep schedule has been really off lately, hopefully tomorrow will be back to normal, gonna sleep now

 Hey, I was just featured on episode 112 of the 2+2 pokercast yesterday, I figured I'd link anyone who was interested. I think this link should work pokercast.twoplustwo.com/listen_and_browse.php I apologize that I talk like such a like valley girl but I'm sure anyone who watched my videos is familiar with this. In other news, does anyone know how to fix this? Being out of school/work was made me really relax how I write/type and although I don't have a huge problem with talking this way, I know it would make for better videos/interviews if I could find some program/resources to work on it.

I'm back home from Berlin, I still am kinda shocked that it was actually robbed(I talked a little about my cowardly behaviour on the pokercast). I bricked the 2k and high roller events for my first losing trip in a surprisingly long time(considering I should lose money on the vast majority of poker trips)... think it was only like my 2nd losing trip since the EPT season started in August, but maybe I'm forgetting one.

I plan on playing online a fair bit in the next few weeks, and getting back to a consistent routine after eating/sleeping/lifting fairly poorly in Germany. Yesterday I took a 7 hour nap, so I guess I'm still a little jet-lagged. I made a bet last night with KingDan for the next 2.5 months where if either one of us has a day of REALLY poor diet or exercises under 3 times in a week they owe the other one $. Dan turned 21 recently, so I like my chances.

Thats about it for now, gonna go make some breakfast

 Well my goals of March being better than February are off to a rough start after bricking 3 live tournaments and being part of a robbery. For anyone who hasn't heard, EPT Berlin got robbed by several armed gunmen right as registration was closing for the high roller(the time when the most cash would be behind the cage), I've heard lots of numbers about how much they got away with, the most common is 800k euros but obviously I have no idea. There are lots of videos floating around 2+2/youtube that should be pretty easy to find if you're curious. There's also a giant thread on 2+2 if you want to argue about whether or not you'd have been a hero and single-handedly fought off all the robbers just like all the other internet tough guys, feel free to do that a well!

Anyways, I started the high roller at noon and the field was a little smaller than expected but not a big deal or anything. I definitely didn't have a soft table, but it wasn't an absurdly tough table by any means either. I had won one or two pots and was up to 23k from 20k when we heard some commotion outside. The tournament area was in a room at a hotel and the registration area was just outside(and the doors were closed so you couldn't see much)... at first there was a rumor that there was a fight, then that people had seen guns. I think the high roller players were more aware of situations like this than a lot of other people and despite being some of the further tables from the only safe exit, most of us were able to get out of our seats and head to the back of the room fairly quickly. I figured if it was a hostage situation I'd be a pretty top candidate in Germany so I snap took off my FTP patches. All of a sudden you heard people yelling that they heard shots fired, and the one robber was shouting he had a bomb(neither of these were true) but this caused a fucking stampede of people to get out the one exit. Some people got trampled on, some people stuck around and hid under tables, table(s?) got flipped, the set of the televised table fell over, it was absolutely nuts. It was also scary since we really had no idea, like I was probably one of the first 20 or so people to get out the back exit, and I had no idea whether we could run into a gunman trying to use the same exit, or even if there was gonna be a safe exit.

Even once I got outside I had no idea what to do, there were people running everywhere, and the street I was on was unfamiliar. Obviously the robbers would end up on the same city block as us, so even now I had no idea what to do to be safe. If I were by myself, I'm pretty sure I'd have just kept running , but ended up going with some friends into a restaurant to call the police. After this my adrenaline was going like crazy and if I could have had the opportunity to cashout from the high roller(like they did in the 1k and ladies event) I would have probably done so(maybe not since I had increase my stack 15% and I'm a huge nit, but it'd have been a close decision). Once I got back I was kinda feeling the come-down from the adrenaline while my heart was still pounding and just got really tired all of a sudden. I ended up getting coolered a bunch and then losing a flip to bust and then took a 5 hour nap which I recently woke up from to read more about the happenings online.

Anyways, I am really beginning to doubt that Berlin is as lucky for me as Dortmund. I'm really glad to hear everyone's ok, and am wondering about hearing more details in the future(whether people get caught, exact amount stolen etc etc)

If anyone has any more questions that I may be able to answer(could have forgotten things) feel free to pm or post as comments, I obviously don't have much more info than you can get online, but I'm sure people will be curious about this

My flight to Berlin went well, I ended up arriving here at 8am and was expecting(but not hoping) to play day 1a 4 hours later. Fortunately I was able to get my starting date pushed back to 1b. I had a pretty long nap and then woke up to get food with DJK, Funkii, Mement_mori and JSchnett and Tufat. After that me, Funkii, Mement and JSchnett all decided to grind online. The session went really well for me(best or 2nd best so far this year) and I final tabled the 75 FO on FTP and a 54 on ongame,, got 2nd in the 33r on AP and got 3rd in the 216 turbo on FTP. I had regained all the motivation I had lost Sunday and was pretty excited for the EPT.

I get seated and only recognize 2 players at my table and overall think its quite a good draw. The tournament gets off to a great start and after 35 minutes I have 40k. Immediately after winning an 11k pot, I open HJ-1 to 300 at 50/100 with KdKc and a French player whose been very active(3 or 4 3bets already this tournament) 3bets the button to 850, I make it 2350 and he fairly quickly makes it 7k with 28k behind. I'll say right now that against 80% of people in an EPT I'm ~never stacking off with KK preflop 350BB deep but against this guy I'd have been comfortable stacking off JJ and AK. I thought that as agro as he had been, I doubt he's ever really 7betting much or heroing a 6bet and I think he'll make some mistakes postflop so I elected to call. 
Flop: Js7s2d with 14,150 in the pot, check, check
Turn: Ts, I bet 8500, he jams 19k more, I call and he has 9s5s and I'm down to 4k

I hover around there for a few hours and then lose 88 to AKs to bust the last hand of 100/200. Maybe next year they'll move the Germany EPT back to Dortmund!

Anyways, I'm going to be grinding side events quite a bit while I'm over here, gonna go register for the 2k in an hour or so.

 Hey, haven't updated in the last few weeks, not too much has been going on, I played online more in February than I have in quite some time. It was a pretty lame month but after adding everything up I lost a lot less than I expected. This month I played at least 30 MTTs on 13 days and over the course of the month I played 623 tournaments with 102 cashes and lost about 18k across 103k in buyins. Off of swapping, backing, rakeback etc I made money but not enough to make it a winning month. Despite having very few wins/big cashes I still enjoyed myself for most of the month... I've been really enjoying poker the last few months. Yesterday was the one exception to that and was just a really really bad Sunday. I played 63 tournaments with 5 cashes(the largest for $306) and just overall I almost never had chips in anything. I was joking with my friend that anyone who could just see my screen and how I did in everything could be nearly certain that I am a significant loser.

Anyways, March is gonna be better(actually in all likelihood it will be more significantly losing just since I'll have some live mixed including a highroller in there and its pretty easy to brick those ) and I really think it'd be cool to make another deep run in Germany. Over the last 2 years I feel like the caliber of German players has improved more than just about any other country(maybe Russia would be a close contender) so I doubt this tournament will have anywhere near the value it did the last 2 years. That said, I really enjoy how the EPT's are each more of a series rather than a single tournament and if I bust the main I should probably end up playing 3-5 other tournaments which is always nice. Having such a brutal Sunday yesterday definitely hindered my motivation a little bit but after waking up I felt a lot better and am now pretty excited.

Alright, the flight is boarding fairly soon, I really hope I can sleep on the flight since I got registered to play day 1a which starts 4 hours after the flight lands and although Deauville went extremely well on sleep deprivation, I'd rather be well rested.

Hey, I'm back in Waterloo and after thinking lots about whether or not to post trip reports I realized this really wasn't a very worthwhile tournament to comment on. I basically won allins for a few days, then lost a ton of chips on the final table bubble, won 2 allins at the final table, then lost 2 allins and was out. Overall  won almost every allin this tournament and thats more or less how I went deep. I had very few hands that were very interesting, if I remember any super cool hands I'll comment on them

Anyways, since getting back I've been lifting a lot and playing online a lot. Lifting has been going great and I made a log on 2+2  http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/85/health-fitness/timexs-ss-log-706333/

Online I was on a bit of a dry spell... I suppose I haven't entirely ended it but it was nice to get some winning days in. In recember I won 8/8 online sessions, up until yesterday I had lost 8/8 sessions in 2010. I profited yesterday and today so that was kind of nice for the confidence... I've been cashing everything lately, these 2 winning sessions I cashed 19/74 tournaments which was pretty insane. I won my first online tourney in a little while today(the 50r on cereus) and have had lots of deep runs in biggish tournaments. This Sunday was really weird, I didn't have any decent cashed but I had enough like $800 cashes that I managed to only lose very slightly despite playing 12.5k in buyins. 

One other pretty cool story... yesterday me, shaundeeb, funkimunki, stealthmunk and yellowsub were crossbooking 100,000% in the $0.02 990 man hyper-turbos, such that if one of us one you would get $4,400 from each of the other 4 players in addition to the $4.40 you get from winning the tournament. We played 3 or 4 and funkimunki lasted the longest in each of them and ended up winning $250 from each of us, but we flipped for that, and shaundeeb had to play everyone's share. Stop the presses, shaun deeb is back to playing MTTs and losing 1k 50,000 buyins in his first session

Hey, I've had dozens of people offering me their condolences for getting 3rd after losing those 70/30's and at least this time around, I feel like I'm pretty much over being super disappointed when I get deep and come up short. In Dortmund last year after coming 5th, I made a blog post entitled fml(it was really short, and was actually not that much complaining but I was really upset, and one of the first readers commented and said "FYL..... WTF FML!!!" or something along those lines and I sort of realized how stupid I was an took it down). This year after busting despite getting it in pretty good in the major hands I lost(JJ v A7o and JJ v ATo  for people who didn't watch) I was pretty happy, I could have so easily just came 8th or 500th. I've been realizing so much over the last few months, that basically when playing poker its the money that matters, if you are winning money, you shouldn't be upset about poker and if you are losing money, you shouldn't be upset since you are accepting a profession where you can lose large sums of money over a long period of time. This year I was thinking about how much I expect to make with playing a reasonable amount of live volume, most Sundays and an average of about 1-1.5 other days during the week, and have now made almost twice that in January. If I don't make my goal for the year, then I might go back to the immature ranting Mike of Dortmund last year.

I'm likely going to writeup daily trip reports so you guys can see just how well I ran. For the people who watch my videos and say I need to "play more poker" and outplay more people and do less coolering/getting it in bad and winning, I REALLY don't recommend reading these 

 Hey, 850k euros for first, the final table starts at noon or 6am EST.

Yesterday was a pretty swingy day as far as these things go, I got from 1.9m up to 4.1m when average was 1.5 or 1.6m or so after JJ>AK (he flopped an A, I turned a J) and after 44 >77 bvb  (flop 543, turn K giving up a flush draw that I somehow faded) + winning lots of small pots. After that I lost one huge pot where I called a guys HJ raise pre(the current chipleader who I had covered by a bit at the time), called his bet on a K54cc flop, raised his bet on a J turn, and thankfully checked behind the Q river after much deliberation to be shown ATcc for a 2.3m chip pot, then A9s<66 then lost many other small pots where people just flopped pairs or outplayed me or something along those lines.

Anyways, right now chip counts are

Seat 1: Claudius Secara - 795,000
Seat 2: Jake Cody - 4,650,000
Seat 3: Michael Fratty - 1,595,000
Seat 4: Teodor Caraba - 6,915,000
Seat 5: Peter Eastgate - 695,000
Seat 6: Craig Bergeron - 3,135,000
Seat 7: Stephane Albertini - 3,555,000
Seat 8: Mike McDonald - 1,815,000

and payouts are