Team PokerStars Pro Lex 'RaSZi' Veldhuis is de laatste tijd veel in het nieuws geweest en op my.pokernews.com houdt hij zijn blog bij. Zo sprak hij eerder al over zijn voorbereidingen voor zijn optreden in High Stakes Poker en deze blog gaat over zijn avonturen aan de online en live highstakes cashgamestafels:
Door Lex 'RaSZi' Veldhuis:
High Stakes Poker
I cannot say anything about hands that went down or who won or lost. What I can say that it was an amazing experience. There were 3 shooting days and I played on day 2. I heard some stuff about day 1 and it even got me more excited. Simpel Media, a Dutch pokerproduction company, is shooting a documentary, and they were in Vegas as well. Most of the behind the scenes stuff will be in the documentary and also every day life around poker or things involving poker and travelling. I went to the Golden Nugget at 2 pm to get ready for the shoot. It was kind of lucky for me that it was a madhouse inside. Interview here, phone interview there, questionairre's there, more interviews, makeup, rule briefing, taking care of money etc. It was really crazy but it did help me to keep my nerves in check. It was the highest I had ever played. The highest before that being 100-200-400 euro. We played 400$-800$ with 200$ ante.
The moment I sat at the table it all seemed kind of real and the nerves disappeared. Greenstein told me beforehand that it was just poker, and it was. As soon as the set is cleared and the cards are dealt, you know what you're supposed to do and you're in your own habitat. I never felt nervous about the amounts and I tried to play my best. The table was ridiculously tough. My line-up on day 2 was (in order of seating): Dennis Phillips, Tom Dwan, Barry Greenstein, Phil Ivey, Andrew Robl, Patrik Antonius, Daniel Negreanu and me. Hellmuth got replaced by Andrew last second, which was kind of disappointing for me. Hellmuth generates a lot of dead money in cashgames, even though he sometimes plays over-the-top tight. It was a tough game, but at the end of it all, I don't think I have to fear big live games like this. I am a lot more confident in my live poker game at the moment. Not just cause I'm losing money all over the place online, but also cause I have been playing a lot of live this year and I'm getting better at it.
I used to play too impatient and make too many calls. I still play kind of crazy, but I change it up more now, where there are also periods I lean back and nit it up. The way I feel at the table defintely is a big factor to me. I don't care as much about game selection, cause I like to learn at the same time. Sometimes I play just to play though and that's when I lose a lot of money. i have had a couple days this year where I don't know what else to do and I go play poker like it's an xbox game and full throttle ahead. In these instances I have lost a lot of money and it's one of the biggest leaks in my game.
I also got to play day 3 which had a lot better table for my style of play: Negreanu, Eli Elezra, Tom Dwan, Doyle Brunson, me, David Benyamine, Elky, Phil Galfond. It's also a pretty tough table but there is a little more action or some more marginal play. I probably would play this table every day with a big part of my bankroll. I feel confident and especially with the history between Elezra and me I think I can extract a lot by making him think I play differently than I really do. The stuff he has seen during the WSOP featured table is definitely not the way I always play. I cannot afford to play in games like this all the time of course, so I guess I can only abuse metagame during HSP. All in all, HSP was awesome and I would like to thank the producers for having me on and again Daniel Negreanu for putting in a good word and making it happen. It will air in february so be sure to watch!!
Online Poker
After High Stakes I was ridiculously motivated to get better and get to a level where I can more comfortable play nosebleeds. This resulted in a lot of playing. I had been taking a lot of time off to get some rest before high stakes, so I played some midstakes to get back in it. Unfortunately there was 1 sunday where I decided to massgrind and I lost 100k on 10-20. The number is a little bigger than it should seems, seeing I played 42k hands. Funny when one guy broke the world record for playing so many hands in a 24 hours period. I had broken that record already a week before, but it wasn't documented or anything. Acutally I think i've done it a couple times. I wasn't very proud of this session though. But as I said, 50 buyins in a 42k hand period can be a pretty regular downswing when playing 3 handed. I was playing with tsifknits and supfoolio, 2 good regulars. Tsif normally plays tight, but was playing like a monkey this time and so were me and supfoolio. There were a lot of 6-10k pots, and I lost a lot of them. I couldn't get anything going and there was 1 stretch where I lost 13 flips allin pre in a row. This is all part of the variance, it just helps explaining how I can lose 50 buyns in a day. Of course I also lost money cause I was playing too long or I was too frustrated. There was one period, where I was playing completely borderline insane, and it definitely cost me about 20k.
I regret that day online. I busted my pokerstars roll and it destroyed my mindset. After that I have been playing without confidence and I had to get money on ps, which is like a walk of shame sometimes. I don't regret playing that game, I just should have done it more healthy or with a certain stop loss. I need to start implementing that into my game or something, cause the times I lose i LOOOOOOOOOOOSE. Like those -150k and -100k days I had during the WSOP on 25-50. Over the amount of hands it doesn't bother me so much, but there must have been a stack here and there that I didn't need to lose, regardless how many beats I had. I took a couple of days off and played some live poker. I started liking live but it seemed like I couldn't really win either. I was playing really well and managed to book some wins even though I lost some ridiculous hands or setups.
After those live sessions I got back into online and I felt motivated when winning 4.4k on 1-2 in a session. I decided I wanted to use what little money I had left on ps to rebuild and make it a bankroll challenge. When Bart Spijker and I played heads up he shot that challenge to bits cause we went to play 25-50. I lost 16k that session and again I didn;t stick to my gameplan. What the fuck. I don't care about swings, I don't care about game selection. I wanna get better and get to a level because of playing like this where I can rape stakes like 10-20 or 25-50 and make a lot of money. The way I'm handling shit now I'm not going to get to that point, cause I'm not playing to make my learning curve as steep as possible. At this point im being self destructive and I'm destroying my confidence and comfortability in certain games. After all this I had another -100k day online and that was it for me. Im going to stop for a week and work on my game. I haven't played for 4 days online while writing this and Im definitely gonna play less tables and evaluate every little decision when I start again to get my game back in shape. I hope next you see me play 40k hands I will be the one having 20k stacks. I just wanna improve so badly that it gets the best of me sometimes. I just really like poker and I wanna get the best I can be.
Best Cat Movie Ever:
Live Poker
As said above, the online fiasco got me into live poker again. This resulted in some small wins here and there adding up to like 30-40k. Then 2 days ago I played a 25-50 game that broke, where I lost 2 pr vs higher 2 pr for 20k pot vs devilfish and that was beginning of the end. The game broke and a fish wanted to play 50-100 heads up. The game filled up quickly and I was amazed how bad Vegas regulars are at accomodating a bad player. When he asked a question they responded short and grumpy and he didn't like playing so much as when he sat down. This seems dumb cause half of the regulars that play 25-50 live here are pretty bad players, so when someone like that comes pay their rent, they should manner up and give them a chance to lose it. The fish didnt reload and left. He seemed a nice guy, but was hanging out with friends and had enough of playing. After that we had a full 50-100 game that was really juicy. Some people ran like sungods, some were unlucky. I couldn't get anything going. When I flopped topset they folded, when I had 5 hi my confidence that was blasted didnt allow me to fire a third bullet that would have won me the pot.
At the end of the night I lost a 95k pot when playing 4-handed with Haffizle, Lee Markholt and Tommy Vedes. We played 50-100 25a and I lost Kings vs Aces. It was a very typical hand to me as it kind of told me: there is no point. I should have realized this a while ago, as I should have online. It could have saved me a couple hundred thousand dollars, but sometimes Im stubborn like that I guess. Sometimes there is just no way to win and you have to take a step back and work on some things. That time has come for me. Im going to call in some favors from friends to sweat them and work on my game to get the glitches out. Everyone gets glitches in their game when downswinging like this. The moment I feel im playing well, I can sit with confidence and not question myself when I lose 3 buyins on 2-4, becuase thats where it has come down to. I have had 2 days now where I didn't do much and got back on normal schedule.
One of best movies I have ever seen:
Rest
I have been working out a bunch. Mostly cardio cause I dont give a shit about muscletraining at this point. I just wanna get healthy and very fit. My stamina is a lot better thanks to some workouts this week and I wanna take it to the next level and hire a personal trainer. Quitting smoking has been really easy for me and didn't pose a problem after the last cigarette I smoked. Props to evy for quitting smoking too. Also I bought some Spanish books and Rosetta stone, cause I miss learning useful stuff. I have been at it for a day and I already learned a lot. I have no trouble learning new languages and Spanish is very useful. I hope rosetta stone is worth it, cause when I did the demo at the mall I had a lot of stuff right, purely by figuring out the way they asked questions and pictured answers. We'll see. As of now I'm ripping through the Spanish for Dummies book, cause I wanna know the grammer too.
Tomorrow I'm gonna scout for a personal trainer and work out myself. The schedule is good and I feel recovered from the horrible weeks I had in poker already. Still I'm gonna be on a short break from cashgames. I will however be playing the live tournaments for a bit. I'll probably play the 1500$ side event of the 5-diamond classic. The main event should be exciting, especially cause I had a lot of fun playing it last year. Also the PCA is coming up, so don't waste any time and try to qualify on Pokerstars. It has a ridiculous amount of sidevents and it's the best location ever!
Take some time and read this topic. Durrr and Viffer have started an initiative for buying toys for kids who wouldn't have had any presents otherwise. It seems like a very cool Christmas thing to do. If you wanna know more about this and help out, follow this link and read the thread. Viffer updates pictures of a room full of toys. A lot of people are jumping in!
That was a very long post, Im sorry it wasn't updated earlier but I was kind of swamped with feeling messed up and losing money!
If you wanna follow more closely:
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Hyves (dutch users): http://raszi.hyves.nl
Thanks guys
