So far the journey has been really fun. A mixture of online poker, live poker, skiing, prop betting, drinking and eating badly.
We met up in Salzburg on the 19th of March and made our way to our home for the next 6days. We got really lucky in the resort we chose and the comfort was perfect conditions for long hours of grinding as Serkules was soon to find out. The first night we got the introduction between Serkules and Jasonc6 over and opted to grind some super turbos which left Jasonc6 pretty amazed at the lines Serkules chose to take and how well they worked vs his opponents in this structure.
The next morning we went skiing and Serkules, through my advice, decided he didn't need a ski coach and would just learn at the top of the mountain. Poor Serkules learnt the hard way that skiing isn't for everyone. After his poor attempt to learn which consisted mainly on the floor Serkules decided to throw the white flag in and walk back to the ski lift and leave the nervous Jasonc6 and my over confident self to the challenge of skiing down the mountain. I definitely lost the confidence soon after trying to bomb it down the mountain with out really knowing how to stop without diving to the floor to stop. After a couple of hours and feeling a lot more comfortable on the snow the ski lifts closed and we made it back to the hotel to rendezvous with Serkules again. We again grinded the night away with a a deal that the person to make 5k in one day to buy a bottle of the most expensive champagne we can find when we go out to a club, Serkules had already managed this by the time we got back from skiing and I am looking forward to going out in Vienna to have Serkules pay his dept :).
That night we decided to spontaneously play the $500+$500+$100 turbo bounty tournament where on the bubble I found myself all-in with q4o to the aq of my opponent, with a 4 on the river I managed to cash in my first big live event and came 4th when the SB put me all-in in the BB I had A9 to his KQs which hit a queen on the turn to crush my dreams of winning an EPT side event, but hey I can't complain and was happy taking the $2350 for 4th place giving 30% to Jason for his staking in the tournament.
The next morning myself and Serkules played the main event which in my opinion the level of play was horrible and felt very confident at each table I was moved to. I lost 2big pots before busting out after the dinner break my first one was when I raised AQ in the hi-jack and called by the cut off who had been flatten in position a number of hands and felt he had a wide range, the flop came KsQsQc, I c bet half pot and he called, the turn came 10d, I bet half pot again and he called, the river came 3s and now I was left with a tuff decision, I can either check call or bet fold. I made the decision that bet folding is my best option in the long run as If I was to check and only pay him off the times he bets then I am normally behind his river value betting range and will be loosing money on the times he has a flush, straight or a full house but am loosing value the times he checks back all the Kx Qx hands he would probably check back on this river so if by check calling I am only paying him off when I am beat then bet folding becomes the most profitable line for a number of reasons. 1. I gain value from his hands that he would check back on the river that I actually do beat. 2. I can control the pot and put in a less amount than the amount my opponent would bet with his straights and flushes, so I save chips on the times I am beat. 3. I keep my river ranged merged to be less exploitable in future, if I am planning on barrel bluffing this board in future I need to be merging this river range with my nut hands, my middle value hands, my turned into bluff hands and my pure air hands. 4. Simply to stop my opponent seeing my hand.*edit* he ended up having js9s so I ended up playing the hand good imo because I controlled the pot and lost less in terms of ev than I would have taking other lines, also I made my opponent play super bad having str8 on turn and flush on river and still I controlled the pot :). Live players play soo bad :) *edit* The second main hand I played was when I had AKs in the SB, the button raised his standard 2.25x and I had around 60bbs I 3bet 2.5x I made it a little more than my standard 2.25x as I was oop and I also wanted to try and get stacks in preflop with the very competent button. The BB with 40bbs shipped his stack in button folding and I couldn't get my chips in sooner for him to show me KK and went on to hold. The hand I busted out with I had a10s for 17bbs and decided to open ship mid position which I think was over standard and I ran into kk again to the same player. I left the tournament with a massive smile on my face as I was really happy with the way I had played in both events and boosted my confidence as a live player further. Serkules played really well and ended up busting out a few hours before me when he flopped a full house with JJ on J1010 board and got it all in to his opponents kings with an instant 2 outa on the turn to leave Serkules dreams shattered :(. FML.
We then went to Fulltilt red pro: Crisbus' hotel room and grinding the night away with other Italian pro's and had a really enjoyable night meeting new people and talking strategy as I played my first $500 6max sng on stars for the fun of it as I had been doing so well, but I bubbled sigh.
The next day Serkules experienced a -$10,000 day and as he wasn't too tilted and still playing his A game. He loaded his stomach up with every energy drink invented and grinded non stop for 24hours before ending the session + $3,000 up and with a big smile on his face, it amazed me how he managed to keep playing his A game the entire 24hours and always kept a smile on his face as he knew he was still playing well with the aid of his all in ev graph. Big props to Serkules in his dedication in this time period playing a total of 500 games.
The rest of the time in our mountain town we spent grinding online and skiing we had loads of fun and in the end of the 6days there we ended up collectively $42,000 + RB. Serkules: $26,000 Jasonc6: $5,000 and myself: $11,000.
On the last night I met up with Thorsten (a high stakes German poker player living in London) and a bunch of his friends from pokerstrategy.net and the young Italian Pro's living their dream as well as we let the champagne poor and had a really good night with them all. We will be meeting up with the Italian poker players again in Vienna for some more grinding and more fun times. Also in Vienna we are planning on meeting HUsng pro's Canis Canem and Domonox, am looking forward to meeting both of them as I respect both players highly.
I wrote this on the way to Vienna but am just uploading this now. I will update the further success of all players in Vienna and props to Leon (notgoingnewhere) on his cash in the WPT main event.
