So after second guessing my decision of upgrading at all due to CPU restrictions, I've decided to go ahead and order the GTX 460. However I decided against the Gainward version with 2GB. I think I was clearly overvaluing the 2GB in graphic memory. I've decided instead to go with a MSI version of the card.
My final decision was a MSI GTX 460 GDD5 OC Cyclone 1GB. Which is an overclocked 1GB version of the 460 card.
I could have gone with a Gainward 1GB version which would have been faster, but I heard it had the tendency to be noisy aswell. I'll be installing the card when I get back to Austria at the beginning of September and will give you some feedback on whether or not the upgrade was worth it or not.
I also have a cool video link of Tekken versus Streetfighter Gameplay. This game should be coming out in 1.5 years time and I'll definetly be purchasing it when it comes out. I've been having a hard time getting people to play Streetfighter with me, because it's a fairly difficult game at first and my edge is pretty big on them. I obviously softplay them, butit isn't enough to keep the action going.
I find Tekken to be slightly more mainstream than Streetfighter (because Capcom didn't bring out a new Streetfighter version for such a long time) so it should be more easy to get people to play with me. For the interim Fifa 11, which is coming out in October will have to suffice in terms of Xbox action. Here's the video link:
I managed to play about 1700 hands of poker yesterday, which is good for me, because I haven't been putting in the volume I would like. I started out running pretty cold, but ended up running hotter than I ran cold and was able to book a small profit of about 1 buy-in. I played a decent (from what I've seen so far) 6-max reg hu at 5/10 and we got into some interesting spots, so that should be interesting to analyze. I hope to get some more action going later today, but I'll be heading out to a grill party with my mother in a bit.
That's right, London baby. I try to make it back home 2-3 times a year. And during the Summer period I usually try to make that one of them. My summer visits usually consist of visiting friends and family, enjoying the small things that the UK has to offer (for example junk food, a bigger selection of shops and products, movies in their original versons etc.) and also grinding, because I'm very undisturbed out here. This year I brought one of my Samsung 204b's with me, because I had one spare after the purchase of my new 27" Dell and I've just finished setting it up. It's actually a reasonable setup with my 17" laptop to accompany it. I've set this up at my Mum's house, which is actually slightly outside of London, to the east in Sittingbourne. I believe I'm about 2 hours away from the city centre.
I'll be staying out here for a total of 2 weeks, before I have to go back to Austria and start prepairing for Uni to start again. I'll probably not be doing much more travelling when I get back, though I do have a trip scheduled to Italy with some friends in early September. The only thing that could hinder those plans were if the weather were really bad.
On another note, I'm still struggling to get back into a groove with football practice. I've been plagued with minor injuries to my hamstrings ever since I've gotten back into the game and at times it has been tough to keep my motivation/momentum going. I can play to some degree, but it's like I'm constantly playing at 80% performance. This two week trip will be good for my hamstrings as they are starting to give me problems again. My plan is to do a lot of swimming, have some hot baths and eat and sleep well. That should get me in good shape to go at it again in the championship, hopefully.
Gaming has been kinda frustrating latley, because I allways get lag when I play multiplayer Starcraft II as soon as the battles get bigger. 2v2 and 3v3 will consistently lag for me, nomatter the settings, though naturally the least on the lowest settings. Now I know my PC is about 2.5 years old and at the time I purchased it, it was not a high end pc, but I still pretty much meet all the criterea for the recommended specs for Starcraft II. The only area where my PC falters is in terms of graphics. Recommended would be a 8800GTX and I only have a 8800GTS, but ffs I'm playing on minimum settings :S (1280x1024 res). I even have a SSD and a fairly new installation of win7 64bit prof, which should increase my performance some.
Now I've been thinking about what I can do to get a smoother performance without being as drastic as buying a new PC just so I can play SCII on maximum settings smoothly.
Here is what I came up with:
This is a Nvidia 460GTX GS with 2GB ram. It should set me back around 250$, but should clear up the problems I have with lag. This will also enable me to upgrade from DVI to HDMI which should give me an even better picture on my 27".
Ok, I really need to grab some food now and hopefully put in some hands of poker. If I could get in around 2k hands that would be nice. I have been really motivated lately, but have been having trouble finding the time to put in the volume I would like to. However I hope that will soon change.
So here's the deal. I go for 2 years straight without breaking or losing a pair of sunglasses. When I was in Vegas I headed over to New York New York to grab a bite with a friend and check out the arcades.
While we were in the arcades I must have taken off my sunglasses at some point and left them out of sight for a couple of minutes, which lead to somebody taking them. I informed lost and found about my loss and gave them my number.
The next day I headed to "Las Vegas Outlet" for some shopping and picked up a pair of Maui Jim sunglasses, which were kinda cool. I managed to keep that pair until my recent trip to Prague, where I'm fairly sure that one of the cleaning ladies ended up taking them.
So by this point I'm down 400$ in sunglasses. I get a call from New York New York lost and found saying that they found my Ray Bans, I'm thrilled obviously that they would still call me after so many weeks had passed. I give them my CC details so they can ship them out with UPS. I got the package today, but surprise surprise the package does not contain my sunglasses, but similar ones. I try them on, they suck obviously. They seem like original Ray Bans though probably worth around 200$ so maybe I can trade them with somebody at a lower price and get another pair.
I don't really think there is much point in sending them back to New York New York for another 25$ or so in postage. It seems unlikely the original owner would get them back by this point.
Funny side story, about 3 years ago my 150$ pair of Ray Bans were stolen from me at a lake whilst I was swimming with friends. GG me.
So I got back from Prague on Monday. The primary purpose of my visit was to play in the Unibet Open. The tournament itself was well organized and the hotel was nice. We stayed in the Hilton Prague by the river, which is apparently the biggest five star hotel in Prague. The service was good, but the downsides were that the rooms were very small and internet for five days was 120€ per person. We also had to pay 140€ for parking. So there were a lot of hidden costs.
We decided to upgrade our room to executive status upon arrival for an extra 60€ a day. I arrived with my friends Philipp and Bernd and we had just booked the one room so the receptionist advised us to upgrade so we would have more space. Benefits of the upgrade were that we had access to the executive lounge where we could have breakfast and drinks for free (alcoholic and non-alcoholic).
The first two days we were playing in the tournament, so we didn't get to see much of Prague. I met some of the players I play with on Unibet in the process and they were generally nice people.
The hotel itself actually has a reasonable lounge called the Cloud 9 Sky Bar & Lounge.
This is where the Unibet meet and greet opening party was. Other than the in-hotel lounge, we also checked out a club in the city centre that claims to be the biggest in central Europe. It is called Karlovy Lazne. I wasn't too impressed by it. I mean it is bigish, but you don't notice it as much, because it has so many floors and each floor isn't that big. The ambiente also wasn't very nice and for some reason there were way too many guys.
We also went to the club Duplex in the city centre. This is where the Unibet players party was. The location of this club was nice, because it was on the roof tops of Prague.
All in all Prague ended up being an interesting experience. The city is really beautiful and the night life is acceptable. The food was reasonable. One has a lot of options when it comes to restaurant selection.
I didn't have a lot of contact with people that actually came from Prague, but from my limited experience, they did seem a little reserved.
Here are some pics of our stay:
These are some pics of the inner city. It is one of the nicest historic city centres I've seen to date.
Sorry for the bad picture quality. This was a pic of me and Bernd in the executive lounge having some drinks.
This is a shot from the to of the Duplex club.
This is a picture from me, Bernd and Raz in Karlovy Lazne.
And finally a pic of me playing.
Just busted 76 out of roughly 425 players in the main event. Money was at 54. Bust out hand was the following:
Blinds were at 100/600/1200, I had 22k. UTG+2 opened with roughly 40k 8 handed. I jammed from MP2 w/JJ it's folded to the BB who thinks for a bit and rejams for roughly 50k. UTG+2 sigh-folds, BB flips over QQ and wins. It's funny, because my bust out hand in the CAPT Innsbruck main event was very similiar. A guy raises early, I ship JJ for 18bb and he calls with QQ. Flop came Q high in both hands and both times was close to the money. Variance can be gruelling in live MTTs, especially if you know how large swings can be. Right now I'm -100% ROI for the year in live tournaments, however I've only played six so far.
I got on some waiting lists for 100-200 (NL800€) and 200-500 (NL2000€), but I think it's gonna be complicated to get a lot of Czech crowns without paying high fees. I probably should have brought some with me from Austria.
Anyhow this now leaves me with some time to actually go and see a bit of Prague and go to the players party tonight at midnight. I also haven't taken many pictures so far and I would like to post some to my blog.
I'm currently getting ready for my trip to Prague. I will be playing in the Unibet Open with some friends of mine. Prague is only a 5 and a half hour drive from my house. That's the cool thing about where I'm situated right now. In regards to boarders, I could probably drive to Italy, Switzerland and Germany in 1,5 hours. In about 5 hours I can get to Hungary and the Czech Republic.
We will be getting into Prague two days before we actually have to play so there will also be time to check out the city some. I've heard mixed statements about Prague, from great to dull, but the majority were positive. Regardless of what people say, it's atleast worth checking out once.
The next Unibet Open will be in Valencia. Valencia is a really cool place to visit. I stayed there for one month once to learn Spanish and I had a pretty good time. I kinda sucked, because I should've learnt more Spanish, but I got lazy speaking to all the Germans that were there.
Anyhow it would overlap with the EPT and CAPT Baden which kinda sucks. Those tournaments are definetly better for making money, but I think Valencia will be a lot more fun, so I'll have to see how I handle it.
As far as grinding has be going, I still haven't gotten any real momentum going. I am playing, but not as much as I would like to. I feel I should be working on poker 6-8 hours/day and maybe taking one day a week off, preferably on the day with the least traffic, but it's easier said than done when you have a lot of friends that do not work and are just partying/chilling most of the time. At times I feel more like a recreational player than a professional player.
On another note I still have no copy of Starcraft II, even though I preordered it. What bs. I even ordered from Amazon, but it's like preordering carries no weight. In there defence, I ordered the English version from Amazon.co.uk so it will naturally take longer, but there delivery estimate is 17 days after release. That's just too much on a preorder and by Amazon's standards.
I'm not super bothered, but obviously have to complain on principle.
I got round to watching Inception the other day. I think it's a really good movie, however I don't see it getting as much recognition as Avatar did for example. Don't take me wrong. I actually think it was better than Avatar, but I'm pretty sure it's a little too complex for your average cinema viewer for it to be as enjoyable as Avatar.
That will be all for now!
Pics will follow obv
Daniell
Hey guys. It's been a while since I've posted. I know I must sound like a stuck record, but I go through phases of posting a lot and phases of not posting so much. I think a lot of it has to do with momentum aswell. Sometimes something get's in my way and my whole rhythm get's messed up.
Anyway I'm feeling fairly healthy as of now. No major injuries, no sickness, eating fairly well and trying to work out on a regular basis. I've done the majority of my travelling for the summer with Vegas, Ibiza and Gräfenhainichen (a place near Berlin for the Melt! festivities).
Next up is Prague on the 4th of August. I will be playing the Unibet Open there from the 5th-8th and checking out Prague a bit. After that I may either travel to Italy for a couple of days to go to a water park called Caneva World that I've been wanting to go to with friends for a couple years now. In late August I'll be flying to London for two weeks to visit friends and family and then I'm pretty much back to studying for Uni exams.
All this travelling is surely fun, but it's tough to get into a rhythm of doing stuff on a regular basis.
I try my best, but at times it can get frustrating. The thing is, I probably even have a good work ethic, but I try to do too many things at once and often end up not getting things done.
Anyways that'll be all for now. All the best.
...just so you know. We got here on Saturday evening. I'm staying with my friend Philipp who qualified through 888 for the main event. Our room is pretty balling. Here are some pictures (we have three flat screens 19", 40" and 32").
hallway
bathroom
phil
main room lcds
phil + bed
waiting list from the venetian in the room
So far we haven't done a whole lot. We've been to some restaurants around the Palazzo. We tried to go out yesterday, because it was independence day, but somehow we couldn't make anything happen. So we just ended up walking around the strip a little bit.
Tonight we are going to 888's vip party and then will probably hit up some places with some other poker players from 888 I could imagine.
So far I've been playing some 10/20 and 5/10 cash games, I don't have any plans of playing tournaments. I feel like they're a lot of regs in the cash games, but they lack a deeper understanding of the game and they play very deep so you can still have a reasonable edge on them even when you're playing in a game full of cash game regs, but you can hardly compare hourlies to online. A decent 1/2 reg makes more an hour than a 5/10 reg live. 25% rakeback in the Venetian is pretty neat though.
This year I actually wired money to the casino to play. It's kinda neat, because you don't have to carry around cash and it only took three days from Europe which is sweet aswell. The fees weren't too bad, but I always feel like I'm getting charged hidden costs somewhere. I think the banks don't give you the proper exchange rates. The Venetian claimed that they didn't charge me for my wire.
Anyways I'll update you guys if anything eventful happens.
Hi guys. It's been a while since I last blogged. I still have to update you on my trip to Ibiza.
I just wanted to make a brief update on my new purchase of a 27" Dell. It's really sweet, because I can put six tables on one screen easily wihtout having to resize, it's great and the colours are very nice.
I've also ordered a new SSD Hard Drive, OCZ Vertex Turbo 120gb. That should drastically increase working on the PC and also help some with games, though the only game I really play on the PC is Starcraft II.
Busted about an hour ago. Blinds were 1500/3000 with a 400 ante. We are 7 handed and I had just recently doubled up when I reshoved A9o over a hi-jack open with a reasonable stealing frequency and he called me w/qjo when I had 9bb total. So now I have 55k in chips. Mp1 folds and mp2 opens for 8k, I believe he had about 100k behind. it's folded to me in the SB and I have red jacks. I have this physical tell on him for when he's strong that I think is fairly acurate and he was exhibiting it mildly, I wasn't quite sure. But JJ is pretty much towards the top of my range for restealing here so regardless of my tell there is no way I'm not jamming here for less than 20bb shorthanded.
I rejam and it's folded back round to him. This is where his act begins. First he asks for a count. Which is reasonable. The dealer tells him how much I have. Then he requests the amount he raised be taken out of my stack so he can see the difference, still fine. Now he starts stacking chips to see how much of his stack it would be to call. Then the speech begins. He starts going on about how I rejammed over him several times yesterday, implying that I'm overbetting and that it's only fun so long it works. I only rejammed over his open once yesterday for 20bb when he opened to 3.5x from the CO.
He's clearly implying marginality of his holding so far, so I think I'm atleast coinflipping v AQ or crushing v 77-TT. He now proceeds to ask me where I am from and if I speak German, even though we've already spoken German with each other and I had been speaking German with the table. Someone says I'm from Great Britain so he starts speaking to me in English until somebody tells him that I'm fluent in German. I'm not reacting to his talk and am trying to practice being well composed.
By this time I'm fairly sure that atleast 2 minutes have passed. He finally anounces call I flip over my jacks and he literally slams down queens like he made some hero call. Obviously I was on minor tilt and told him that he could've called quicker with a hand as strong as queens. He doesn't seem to think his call was standard and said I could have had AK...
The flop comes down Q high and I fail to make running quads and am out in 23rd place. I shake his hand despite his blatant nitroll and that of one other player and promptly exit the casino. In his defence I don't think he was aware that what he does is considered bad sportsmanship, but it doesn't change the fact that it was.
All in all I wasn't really tilted just slightly agitated by the situation, although I did play for 12 hours without cashing.
Next up will be a 850$ event in Ibiza in early June, it's more of a fun trip to be honest, but it's a Betfair hosted event so the structure will be very reasonable. I was dissapointed with the structures of the CAPT, even the main event wasn't too great, but definetly playable. I think if I play another CAPT event, the next will be Baden and I'm only playing 1k+ events. That was my original plan, but I've played around 4 events live this year with a buy-in lower than that, which also had a lot to do with friends of mine playing a lot of the lower buy-in events and the gain in experience.
I played some 500NL whilst waiting for a seat in a 1000NL game in Casino Austria, but it's just such a small game (for live) and such a grind. I actually didn't play my best, because it felt like I was playing 50NL online.
At one point I got on a 1000NL table and we were 5 handed. A bunch of people were on the list, but nobody came to claim there seat. The table was pretty good, but nobody wanted to play 5-handed :S except for me and one more guy. He asked if I wanted to play HU and I accepted, because I thought it was a pretty good spot for me. Only problem was that I didn't have a bunch of cash on me, because it was a bank holiday and the banks were closed. In addition to this my friends were all not in the Casino at this time so nobody could spot me some cash. Either way I really wasn't gonna play lower and I thought I might aswell just take a shot with the 1200 in front of me and see if I can hit some cards to avoid downswonging. He even wanted to play 10/20, but I wouldn't have been short with the cash on me so I had to decline sadly. Some may be wondering why I didn't withdraw money from the Casino. Well first of all in Austria ATMs only give you 400€/day :/ and withdrawing from the Casino per credit card comes with a service charge of 3,5%. So if I had withdrawn say 3000€ they would have charged me 105€. It's potentially still a good spot even then, but it feels like burning money paying 105€ to withdraw 3k.
Anywho we played a bit and I ended up losing 600€, my opponent was a good sports man and it was fun to play with him. I'm actually not sure how much casino rake cuts into my profits in this instance and what the rake cap is, because live rake is crazy high. I should probably do some research on the matter for future reference. Had I thought about it earlier I would've probably asked the floor man if we could've paid a time rake instead of a rake per pot since we we're generating action and waiting for the table to fill up.
Anywho I need to go and get some stuff done for Uni. Talk to you soon.
