I haven’t been playing much tournaments at all the last six months or so, but now I’m on halfway on my 5 or 6 tournament trip. I started out with the Everest 5k and 10k in Monte-Carlo. The 5k main event was first, I busted in the end of day one. I had about average and then there was a hand where I called a small raise from BB (raiser was on the button) with 43s and flopped two pair on 346 and we got the money in and the guy had 66 so there was not much to draw there. Pretty sad to get it in with a good hand like that, and I think I folded every hand for two hours before that.

Then there was the 10k highroller. I had a pretty good start on that one, at least half of the first day I was 1st or 2nd in chips, but then I lost most of my stack in the end of the day with some questionable plays against a fish and didn’t have much more than the starting stack to go with to day 2. I thought the second day starts at 2pm but it started at 1pm (they prolly announced it properly, but I just left pretty fast when the day was over and missed that) so I missed a little bit of the beginning and there was only 6 player left anymore (day 2 started with just 7 players and they lost the worst player of the table who had a big stack before I arrived) of the original 17 players. First 4 players to the money and I was one of the 3 short stacks. Then I was dealt AKs on UTG, I open, SB 3 bets, I 4-bet it in and get called by his AQo. The flop is K53, but he backdoors a flush. Would’ve had a decent stack after this and there was two really small stacks so would’ve been close to the money if I’ve won that one.

The next one was the EPT San Remo Main Event. I slept only two hours the night before so it was not the nicest thing to stand in the registering queue just to find out that there was another place to register in (with no queue at all) for the people who bought in with bank wire. That’s tilt. Even tho I was tired and tilted I think I played ok but got a bit unlucky. First I called a small 3-bet with 43s on the first level and I flopped bottom two on J43 rainbow. I check-raised and get called. The turn is a king and I keep betting. He calls again. The river is a 6, I bet 9500 (about half pot) leaving 11k behind. He moved in and I ended up folding. I’m pretty sure he had it (JJ or KK). Altho in the Everest Main I thought I made a good laydown with QQ preflop facing a 5-bet on 100/200 blinds. When I saw him 4-betting with A7 later I’m not so sure about that anymore.

If I could go back in time now I would move in but he def was representing AA or KK for sure so basically I could just beat a bluff. I saw some weird stuff in the Everest 10k as well. A tight guy opens UTG, a solid guy on SB 3-bets, BB (seemed relatively tight too) 4-bets, first raiser folds, SB 5-bets, BB thinks a few minutes and folds. SB shows one of his cards: 4. People have gone crazy. How can that kind of poker work anymore. It's like the Isildur tournament mode, or how I used to play them. It just doesn't take you far.

Now I just arrived back to San Remo for the 10k highroller. This place is so bad... internet doesn't work, no room service (at least at this time). I don't want to stay here any more than necessary for the tournaments. I'll much rather stay the days between the tournaments in Monaco. Well, at least the field is soft in the tournaments here.

After this one I'm heading to Madrid for the EPT. There isn't any time in between really, the highroller here ends on wednesday and the highroller in Madrid starts on thrursday. I not 100% sure I'll play the 25k in Madrid since I can't know for sure if I'll be there on time. At least I'll play the 10k main event there. Then I'm heading to Finland. Even tho I've been hanging out in Monaco the last two weeks I don't live there any more, I moved back to Finland about two months ago. I have settled down nicely there and happy to be back. I knew the whole time I'm not gonna live more than five years in Monaco, but it turned out two years was enough. It's a great place and I really enjoyed living there even tho Finland feels more like home.

Sick things are happening in online poker again. It's interesting to see how things settle down. And when. It's not really that bad thing for me right now, I haven't played on FTP for almost a year now so didn't have any money there (or Stars or UB) which is nice. I was actually thinking about making a comeback to FTP soon, but now it feels a little too risky and I have to at least postpone it. The European networks are gonna get more traffic now which is obviously a good thing. The time will show if the "big games" are gonna move to some European site now, I guess partypoker could be potentional because it's so big but they would have to do major changes to their game selection. 25/50 is now the highest level and they are missing HU tables (I know they have anonymous HU tables up to 10/20NL but no PLO HU tables and they should have tables up to 200/400 or 300/600 I think). And I personally don't like the software or the network too much.

I actually started writing this blog like two weeks ago when I was on a good upswing online, but then I hit a big downswing and was too tilted to finish it.  Now it's a good time to write this since the internet doens't seem to work here in San Remo. And I turned my downswing around and I'm doing pretty good again.

About this whole FBI thing... I'm glad I'm not American, it would be sick if overnight they just take away your ability to work. They have the whole profession at risk at the moment, and even their bankroll on the sites is not 100% secure I guess. This is a good thing for live poker, but that's a big step for an online pro. There aren't highstakes live games in that many places, and live poker is so slow!! You can play like 5k hands online a day (if you multitable and work hard the whole day), it's prolly not possible to play even 500 hands in a day in a live game. The value might be better live tho, there aren't that many fishes online anymore as there are live. But me, I like playing short session often - it's nice to play an hour or two and then do something else. But it's not that easy to go back and forth live, you should play like 8 hours straight and then come back the next day. It's a whole other world.

Have to see how things develop. A lot of players will be moving out of US, that's one thing for sure. Just have to wait and see what happens. But gladly it's not affecting me that much at all. And the affect for European networks is good, they're getting a lot of players from FTP, Stars and UB. It's also interesting to see if americans can keep playing on Bodog and Merge (I believe those are the only networks accepting US players now). I think I'm gonna stay with 4-7 largest European networks, I think there is enough action for now.

It looks like the internet just started working here! It connected after an hour, what a great place to be in. Now I can send this blog to Coinflip and maybe have a look if there is any good action going on online.