Home sweet home, rake issues and first working day in 2 weeks.

Feels good to be home. It was nice in Spain but 2 weeks was enough being there now when it's winter. My trip back was tiresome because I was in lack of sleep and I drove 300 km to the airport starting at 5 am in pitch black. Not the best conditions to be driving in but what can you do. The girls tried to keep me awake but they dozed of sometimes as would I do if I weren't driving. We were also pulled over by the traffic police because we missed the sign to the airport and had to go back and forth. I guess he noticed that and wanted to see if we were lost, I was nervous as hell though when he stoped us. Everything worked out nice in the end and after being in a traffic jam for 30 or so minutes. Good thing we missed the sign because if we didn't we would have no gas left in the tank because of the traffic jam. As we had to go back we filled up with a couple of litres. The rest of the trip went smoothly and we landed in Gothenburg at 15:30 pm. My parents were already waiting at the airport to pick me and my girl up and it was nice to see them again.

Today is my first day playing poker in 2 weeks and I must say that I have very little control over the situations especially when I play 9 tables at the same time.
But after 3 hours of poker I ended up 77 dollars ahead so I'm more than happy.

A hand that occured:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3784759

This player is a fish and he calls a lot pre-flop, over 50% and never folds to continuation bets. I only have 77 hands on him but it's enough to give me a vague picture of how he plays. He hardly raises pre-flop so it's a little hard to put him on a hand but I knew he didn't have a premium because he would have probably raised then. The flop was really not good against his range but I had to bet out to take the pot down right there. Unfortunately he minraised me, that move made me think he had a flushdraw because I'm pretty sure he would have just called with a pair there, so I called. Turn card was scary and in the same way good I guess because it made it more possible that he had a draw. When he bet half pot on the turn I had to call because I can still beat overpairs and draws for a cheap price. I had luck with the river card, it didn't complete any draws and when he bet 13 bucks into a 38 pot I was somewhat sure I had him beat and I had to call because of the great odds. I only have win 1 of 4 times to make this call breakeven and that is more than I usually get. A couple of hands later I ended his misery with my jacks on a low board and he then left.


I must recommend "www.marketrake.com" for people out there that want to see which sites take the least rake on different limits. It's an excellent way to get a nice overview where one should play to minimize their rakeloss. Some pokersites are tricky with their rake systems and you end up paying more than you need to. One more warning is that you should stay away from euro tables because they have a max rake limit of 3, as the dollar tables. Because euro is stronger than dollar right now you end up paying more in rake everytime the pot caps the rake.

Portugal and a night out in Huelva

Some days ago me and my girl took a trip to Portugal. We drove to Faro that lies in south Portugal by the sea. It´s a nice place and we had sunny weather so we were satisfied with the town. We ate a huge New York style steak there that the owner recommended to us, it was served with potato chips, kinda strange but good.
We went to the shopping district after our meal and bought a souvenir and I also donated some cash for the poor, that was the good deed for the day. After a while we decided to move on and get back to our car. As we approached the car I saw that someone had scratched it and I was so disappointed on just how little people care about their cars and how they drive. It´s madness down here. A couple of days ago I saw a woman parallel-park her car and it was the sickest thing, she tried to park in the smallest damn pocket and she hit the car infront and behind her several times as it was a standard thing or something, amazing!

The trip went on and we passed some towns by the sea and also visited a zoo. It was pretty cool to see crocodiles, camels and other animals. The zoo was pretty small though so it took 1 hour or so until we headed to our last destination right by the sea, where we saw a big and long beach that stretched itself over a couple of kilometers. I had no luck there as a big wave washed over my feet when I didn't pay attention. I was a little sad about getting wet but also laughed about it, and so did other people around me. Well it's a priceless memory atleast. The trip back was relaxing and we were so tired that we just wanted to get into bed and have a good night sleep.

The day after we were eager to go out and have some drinks. We finaly managed to make it happen and it was fun to meet other people and to practice on my english. We went to some bars and finaly to a night club that consisted of one big room and 2 bars opposite each other. Not the fanciest club but still fun. We stayed there until 6 am, the club didn't close then but we wanted to go home, we had enough fun for the day.

Interesting first few days of vacation.

My day started at 3 am when my alarm rang. I was so tired that I almost didn't want to get up from bed. I merely slept 4 hours and I knew that my trip would be tireing because of that. At 5 am we arrived to Landvetter airport and checked in our bags and boarded the plane at 7 am. My girlfriend was a little sick so she coughed a lot on the plane, unfortunately we had a dumb old lady behind us that couldn't stop complaining about how people that are sick should stay at home and such. The complaints were indirect but annoying and I gave her the evil eye but that didn't stop her from continuing. She really annoyed me, I nearly told her to shut the fuck up. I hate people that have a strange and narrow view of things. All the way to Paris she held a handkerchief infront of her face like that would help. When we was about to land the fog was so thick you could cut it with a knife. I saw the landing strip when we touched it, so you could imagine how our landing was. The plane hit the ground so hard I thought the wheels would snap. I sure was happy when the plane stood still and we could go on to the next one. In Paris was the first time I got inspected by a guard because the metal detector went of but everything was okay and I could proceed. Unfortunaly when we boarded our next plane to Malaga the damn lady sat near us again and I just hoped I wouldn't hear her complaints because I couldn't listen to her anymore. Everything went smooth though and we landed in Malaga where the sun was shining, it was real nice. That didn't last long though because when we were waiting for our bags to show up, they didn't!
20 or so people were looking for their bags but they couldn't find them so we had to wait in line for 3 hours at the information disk just to find out that the bags were still in Paris. What a bummer! They told us they would send us our bags as soon as possible and after hearing this we went to our hired car and began our 300 km trip to Huelva. Was pretty fun, the car was nice and the environment was even more nice.
Funny thing was that I saw a greyound in the middle of the freeway, that's something you don't see in Sweden.

When we arrived to Huelva it was pretty late and we were super tired, we ate some food and went to bed. We had a party booked the next day but after the first night here we got sick and that ruined our first days here because all we could do was watch tv in agony. We felt a little better when we were drinking and we planned on going out but time went bye and before we realized we should go out, the time was 4 am already.
I still feel sick today but I hope it will be better, we finaly got our bags and now I can put on some fresh new clothes. We also ate some nice food, it was all kinds of stuff and I really enjoyed it. There is nothing better than to experience new food in other countries.

I'm off now and hopefully we will find the strength to do a bar run tonight.

Ladbrokes Rakerace

Ladbrokes informed last month that they will cancel their rakeback promotion and instead have rakeraces. I am sceptic about how it will turn out but right now I'm getting more cash back than with the 30% rakeback promotion they had before. 3000 places get paid and they are very convinced that the rakerace promotion will give their players more value that they are willing to double the difference, if you get less than you would with the rakeback promotion. Sounds promising but I have another site in sight where I will get about 50% rakeback and I doubt the rakerace can top that. Ladbrokes gave me a lot of fish to feast on but it's time to move on as with everything else.

2 days until departure!

Time flies by surprisingly fast even though it doesn't seem like it sometimes, escpecially when you are waiting for something exciting. Only two days left until vacation, a lot of things to be done and of course having to pack my bag. That sure is boring, but it has to be done. I had some car troubles too, must be a late christmas present. It's all sorted out now though, so there's one less thing to worry about when I'm away. Right now I'm going to enjoy the company of some friends and put aside everything else that's tiring.

Motivation

It's hard to keep up the motivation and play as much as I need to these days, well to be honest I have had a problem with being motivated and play as much as I need to for quite some time now. Especially when I have a lot of things to do that interferes with my schedule. I mean I can see myself getting a nice rich life being economically independent if I just put my soul into playing, but I just can't and it bugs me a lot.
I hope this year will be better and that I can do some adjustments in my life that's necessary to keep up with the constant stress a poker player experiences. I'm often a little hesitant when I need to play because I'm always thinking, what if I will loose money this session? Even though I know poker is longterm and single sessions don't mean much when you are looking at the big picture. In the back of my mind I know I'm a winning player and that I will win in the long run, but still I can't seem to be in peace with that thought process. This automatically affects my motivation.

Right now I'm all excited about my trip to Spain and that means I will have to pause my writing for 2 weeks until I get back. I will then write a trip report about how it was there and after that it's all about poker.

First post!!!!

This is the kick off for my blogg and I hope it will grow big. I'm not so creative in my writing but I hope that I will improve after a while, so bare with me!

This blogg will be about me playing poker and the mental struggles that a fulltime poker player experiences. I will also post about stuff in my life if I believe its worth reading about.

Right now I have an income similar to what a normal job would bring me with tax per hour.
Now people might ask, why do I play poker instead of having a more solid income where I can meet and interact with people. The simple answer is that I haven't found a fun job that Im comfortable with and I don't like having a boss and being told what to do and when to do it. I love getting up every morning and work whenever I want. It's a very comfortable way of living, but it can cramp your social life somewhat. Luckily I have friends that play poker alot so we often communicate everyday and I try to meet up with the rest in weekends and such.

Sounds pretty sweet to be playing poker for a living doesn't it? It sure is but it can be hell aswell.
The emotional factor is a huge barrier one must overcome and you must be wiling to learn and read about different aspects of the game. Being up to date is important if you want to make progress but it's still not hard to beat the majority of people at the level I'm on right now, and I guess it will stay this way for quite some time. I will go into the mental process more later on, for now I'm pleased with my first post.