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Full Tilt Poker Tournament #41742548 Bronze $10,000 Freeroll NL Hold’em
Buy-In: $0.00
1224 players
Total Prize Pool: $10000.00
Start Date: April 12 3:15 PM ET

Dear StatikKling,

You finished the tournament in 19th place.
There has been $25.00 added to your account.

Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.

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My flush never hit and top pair took a monster pot. The guy I lost to won the tournament. If only the river was kind enough to give me the card that it gave to so many people against me to keep them alive..

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Donkey Challenge update: Suckouts and lost coin flips cost me the $10 level; it’s back to the start again. This was my longest travel down the DC path and it sucks to go back to the start.

tags: donkey challenge, freeroll, ironman

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So I’ve never been one to complete a Donkey Challenge, I’ve never really taken them seriously. Now that I am going to play in the WSOP this year, I’m making a conscious decision to play better, to improve myself. The Donkey Challenges are a great way to do this. For 2006 it was take a deposit and triple it up, 2007 was my SnG Attack. For 2008 it’s a combination of the two. Taking a look at sharkscope for myself, it’s damn pathetic.

But since I started to focus on my goal, I’ve started to make a rebound. Around the first AIPS event this year, I made a funds transfer for a player that I knew on Full Tilt and he transfered funds to me on PokerStars. At the time, my PokerStars account was $0.06. After the transfer I had $11.06. I’ve taken that amount and through the SnG Attack I have brought my total up to $64.12, just with sticking to the $5 STT. The graph above, which you can refresh over at SharkScope, reflects this change. Currently I’m in my longest positive streak ever.

So, my Donkey Challenge for 2008 is, complete the previous years DC’s and take my SharkScope stats into the black. I have a nice hill to climb there, but if I focus and play smart, I should be able to do this. I have a reason to do this. I want to do this.

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So far, this month I am doing ok in the poker world. After thinking about how I have not completed any of the Donkey Challenges for 2006/2007, mu Donkey Challenge is to take poker seriously. I was mostly playing for fun and most of the time making bad choices. My own fault, just nothing thinking enough and trying to power through. I’ll never be able to make the next step if I don’t take poker seriously.

Since flipping that switch, I’ve cashed in all 4 of the $5 SnG’s that I’ve played in and took 78 out of 1500+ in last nights Midnight Madness tournament. I might be doing a light switch rave with that serious switch, so I will wait a few weeks and see how I am doing there. I will be resetting the DC data later today.

I’ve also decided to play in two WSOP events this year, which two, I’m not certain, but I will be playing in two events because, 1) It’s something that I’ve wanted to do and have watched fellow bloggers play in, 2) My in-laws would LOVE IT, 3) it’s the WSOP damnit!

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[updated] I believe the Summer Classic traditionally is played the same weekend the ladies event is played, so with that said, I think the Summer Classic will be on Sat, Jun 7th, with nothing that I feel comfortable dropping loot to play in (unless I figure out what a shootout is (Event 17 - June 9th)). So, looking at the event list, I think I may have to play in event 27 (June 14th), No-Limit Hold’em. Doesn’t that event sound like tournament that a blogger needs to win? The next event after that would be event 32, june 17th.

Now, I’m not going to stay in Vegas from Summer Classic (if it is on the 7th), through the 20th (when I make Day 3), too much time away from work and too long in a hotel, I really hope I do not have to choose between the WPBT Summer Classic and the WSOP. But it will probably come down to that. Either play in the Summer Classic and do the WSOP in event’s that I’m not comfortable with, or skip the Summer Classic and focus on the WSOP. That sucks. I guess I will know more when the dates for the Summer Classic are set in stone.

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I also have a holiday post that I should finish, so I will get to that tonight as well.

Oh.. hand of the moment, I call it Wasted Aces…

tags: donkey challenge, poker, WSOP

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I’ve pre-registered for The Mookie and Riverchasers. I’ve got to get my ass out of the bottom slots of the Battle of the Bloggers. I’ve only played in one qualifying event and it’s one third over. Tomorrow night will be a whole night of poker as the wife is heading out to a rock show, Velvet Revolver if you must know. She is taking one of her best friends, which is fine with me as I’m not that big of a fan of VR.

I’m hoping to get a good start on level 2 of the Donkey Challenge. I’m also working on a web based version of Generate Full Tilt Summaries, so if you do not want to run the exe version because you don’t trust my app, which is fine with me, you can still get the tournament summary. Unfortunately, there is no way I can grab all of the Sit N Goes because they disappear too quickly (about 15 minutes) I may need an extra windoze box to mine the data. Still in Alpha mode, so there’s no like yet, but I am grabbing SnG summaries inbetween stops for bug fixes or application failures. Currently I have over 1400 SnG’s in my DB ranging from the $550 buyin to $1 buyin. I had a few freerolls in there, but with the Poker After Dark and WSOP they are taking up a lot more time and space for stuff that I think most people do not care for. Maybe if I have enough time and resources I can dedicate a machine to just the freerolls, but I’d have to have a bit of poker related income for that to happen.

tags: full tilt, gfts, mookie, tournament summaries

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I didn’t pre-register like I normally do for the Mookie, but since I got home a little over an hour before the tournament started, I figured that I had enough time to take the dogs for a walk, fix dinner and get my game on. The walk with the dogs was great. I took a few streets that I haven’t gone down yet and there are a few houses that look amazing. Nice quiet streets, some with really big front lawns, others with a why-bother type of lawn. Paisley and Widget didn’t really care what the size of the lawn was, they wanted to sniff, eat grass and pee on them. I was able to look into a few of the back yards and wondered what it would be like to have a hill as a backyard that is taller than you house, but had a fence in the middle of the hill. Sure the back yard had a portion of flat land, but you could build a really neat cave! Oh and a waterfall!

On the way back we stopped by bunny park, about 30 minutes early from the invasion of bunnies, were the girls like to run and sniff for all things bunny. Widget actually saw a bunny run up the hill, but alas, her leash would not allow her to chase the bunny for very long. Drats, foiled again!

When we got back home, I had fifteen minutes to go for the tourney. I opened up the laptop and then went into the kitchen to figure out what I wanted to eat. I had decided on cheese enchiladas from Trader Joe’s. Dems are goot. Now I go back to the laptop and fire up Full Tilt. Error getting GetSystemColor from USER.DLL. That’s not good. Lets try again. Same error message. Now I only have 7 minutes left. The laptop is old and now I’m in a coin flip situation. Will I be able to reboot, load Full Tilt and be able to register for the tournament in time.

Time passes.

Windows reboots.

The background hasn’t loaded yet. Not good. Double click on Full Tilt.

Time passes.

Login window for Full Tilt appears, I have 1 minute left.

Private Tab is showing events that start at 22:15. The Mookie starts at 22:00. The Mookie is seating. I’m just a bit too late.

I load up a $5 SnG to see if I can complete the first level of my Donkey Challenge. I played pretty solid and ended up finishing second. I cashed in 7/8 of the SnG’s, Level 1 is completed. The night wasn’t a total loss.

tags: dogs, donkey challenge, full tilt, mookie

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Last year Columbo had his Donkey Challenge where you would deposit some amount and try to triple it up. I came close, within $100, but ultimately, I failed. Now with all of the payment processors dropping away, I wanted to continue the Donkey Challenge for 2007, but without having to deposit new funds. So I came up with my own Donkey Challenge.

This is a Single Table Sit ‘N Go Challenge. I must cash in 2/3* of 10 SnG’s to move up to the next level, starting at the $5 SnG tables, working my way up to the $30 SnG tables. I must complete the $30 Level to complete the Challenge. I will be skipping all of the Turbo Tables. If I fail to complete a level, I must start all over at the $5 SnG level.

* Since 2/3 of 10 isn’t a round number, 6.667, I’m going to round up to 7/10 of the SnG I must cash.

The levels are defined as :

• Single Table Sit ‘N Go with 9 players
• No Turbo Tables
• The Game Type will be No Limit Texas Hold’em
• Buy in’s will be in the following order: $5, $10, $20 and $30

I will post my progress on the Donkey Challenge 2007 page and via a pretty ‘widget’ on the sidebar.

tags: donkey challenge, poker

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After getting my ass handed to me during the Omaha and Stud sections of the WPBT H.O.R.S.E. tourney, I wanted to get a better understanding of how the game works, mostly with Omaha. Stud, I understand how to play, I just like to chase… a lot. Omaha, I’ve never really played before, but I knew that you must play two of your four hole cards. What I didn’t know is that striaghts, flushes and full houses where a lot more likely to win. Two pair is almost like Hold’em’s Ace high. It will win sometimes, but not likely. I also played a Razz ring game. I did rather well in the Razz sections of the H.O.R.S.E tourney since I learned how to play it.

When I was in school, I always waited until the last minute to work on a project, report, paper, whatever. I’m not sure if I was able to work better under pressure, or if I was just plain lazy. Now, when I look back, I think I did a little bit better under pressure that if I had started working on something right away. I think that’s why I wanted to play Razz while I was learning how to play Omaha. I only made one real bad rookie mistake, when there were four card to a flush on the board and I had the Ace. Yes, I had a flush.. but I didn’t as I only had one of the suit in my hand so I really had, Ace High. I laughed at myself after I had lost the pot and thought, “Wait! I had a Flu.. oh.. I needed to play TWO cards.. rookie! Heh.” (more…)

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I’ve started to realize that I play better whne I’m playing in WPBT events or MSR events, not so much MSR though. I’ve donked off just about my entire FTP bankroll, which wasn’t large to begin with, $48 down to a little over $1. I think I’m just about out of the Donkey Challenge 2006, unless I score HUGE in tonight’s WPBT event. The cool thing is, if you can call it cool, I’m not bummed at all.

That would only reward donkish play. I don’t want to be rewarded for being a donkey. I want to be rewarded because I played well.

(more…)

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Mr. Poker Wanna Be himself, made a post about his Donkey Challenge status and I made a comment to his post that I thought I would share here.

I took my bankroll down to, I kid you not, a little more than $9. I was bitter. I had almost failed. I stopped playing and focused on my play. Reviewing everything in PT and reading Harrington’s first book over again. You see, I remember mostly what I read last. The last chapter I read was Harrington’s second book, and the chapter about bluffing. I know it sounds stupid, but I’d bluff a lot more than I should, which usually made me place out of the bubble.

But after I sat myself down and did the research about my game and focused, I was able to make a huge comeback. I won a $1 tourney for $128, and placed 16th in a $5 tourney for a little over 3x the buy in. I had built my bankroll up to a place it’s never been before, over $310.

Now add in early morning SnG’s where I’d pressure myself for time, or losing focus, and I’ve dropped it down to about $220 (++haven’t logged into FTP for a few days, not sure where I’m at++ $199.27, playing while on tilt = bad.)

During the WPBT Sat, I noticed something about myself, which makes sense. I care about how the other bloggers think of me and what they think of my game play, so I brought my A game to the Sat. and to the last Winter Classic. I played really well. Random people in the SnG’s I could careless what they think, so I play just about any two cards and usually fail to make the bubble. So I think for me, the whole thing is mental.

I did make a few changes to the post, as I didn’t proof read the comment to Columbo’s post. Placing 166th in a $5 tournament, was actually 16th out of 458, and the $1 was 1st out of 502. Proof reading, another thing I need to work on.

But what I said is true, I care more about what other people think than I should. I have for most of my life. Sometimes it helps, but usually I just end up feeling miserable because I didn’t do something that I wanted to do, because I may look like an ass in front of people I don’t know at all and most likely will never see again. I’ve told that to myself many, many times, but I never do anything about it and I probably won’t this time either.

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… losing $40 on a set over set. I think I’m done for the day as all the +EV that I have for the donkey challenge is just about gone. OH well.. donkey is as donkey does.

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