Winter is coming

Everyone who has watched the TV-Series “Game of Thrones” knows this phrase. If you haven’t watched Game of Thrones yet I would recommend it over any other Series which is out there at the moment. Maybe I already mentioned it before but it’s just fantastic. I’m already looking forward to reading the book-series “A Song of Ice & Fire” which I will be taking with me on holiday in January.

It’s winter in 7 days but I haven’t seen this much sun in autumn in my life. Winter is normally a time to stay inside the house, watch a movie or play video games and well, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing lately. This is mainly because of the stress I’m having at work. I think I can handle stress very well, even last year when I worked my ass of trying to achieve Supernova Elite I never was that stressed. The last few weeks I’ve felt more stress then ever. When I come home I just need to blow off some steam. There is no better way to do that then play mind-less video games. It relaxes the mind and it takes you away from your normal daily routine. I’ve finally finished the StarCraft II campaign, played a lot of custom games and tried to get as many achievements as possible.

I’ve also played a lot of Tennis lately. I tried it out a couple of weeks ago after not having played any tennis for over 14 years. It wasn’t a wise thing to play tennis for a long time after I had surgery for a hernia and being diagnosed with a second hernia after surgery which is still sort of out there. I had surgery when I was 17 and I’m now 12 years later and fitter then ever. I’ve visited the gym a lot over the past years, I’ve lost weight and slowly but steady I’ve build up enough strength in my back to do the things I used to love. I just wanted to try out tennis to see how it would go. The first time I still had a little bit of pain in the lower back, the last two times I played were completely pain free. I move better then ever, I’m getting better each time I play and my friends are enjoying themselves to. Cycling isn’t really a sport for the winter, but tennis can be played indoor & outdoor. I just bought a new tennis racket and I’m hoping to play tennis twice a week for the coming months. I’m never going to be very good at it since I’m just to slow but a competitive sport is just so much better then the gym, I’ll just have to be careful to not overdo it and will have to listen to my body very well.

My weight challenge is going pretty okay. This wasn’t my best week but overall I’ve lost 5kg in 8 weeks. I’m planning to keep it up until Christmas at least, then enjoying the last days of the year before starting the new year with another two healthy weeks. Then I should be able to enjoy my holiday and when I’m back in February it’s just another 2,5 months till I’m cycling the Amstel Gold Race. I have no problems keeping this up and doing it together with my girlfriend helps as well. We are really trying to get into a healthy lifestyle together, if we would have kept up with the lifestyle we had together, we would go out for diner about twice a week and the rest of the week we would be enjoying ice-cream on the couch about every evening. Let’s see how it goes for the coming weeks, hopefully the end result is not only less weight but also a healthier lifestyle for the future.

Besides this weight bet I really wanted to do a small poker challenge again. From Friday the 25th till Tuesday the 30th of November I’m going to grind for 5 days non-stop. This means that I’m either sleeping or playing poker. I’m not sure if I’m going to start Friday morning, evening or maybe I wait till Saturday morning but I’ll work out the details before I’ll start. The only thing I’m allowed to do besides poker is Tennis and of course eat something every now and then. I should be at least playing 12 hours a day, roughly 1100 hands/hr but I’m aiming for a little more. It should be way over 50.000 hands in total, all playing $2/$4 LHE 6-Max. As said, I’ll work out the details in a blog I’ll post later as it depends a little on my schedule but I’m going to do this for sure. It’s not something which is ground-breaking so I won’t be prop-betting it or anything, I’m doing this purely for myself but will of course report how things are going on Twitter as well.

Last week the Master Classic of Poker was held in Amsterdam. The biggest tourney series of the year in the Netherlands and one of the oldest tournaments in Europe. It’s been going for 20 years now and I think I’ve visited the MCOP since 2005 or 2006. I didn’t really feel like playing the tourneys myself and regretted that right away when I walked in on Monday. The €800 KO just started and an old poker-buddy of mine eventually won it. I played a little bit of 5/5 No-Limit but didn’t really liked the live grind. I normally love playing live poker but playing No-Limit is just to boring. I either want to play Limit (more action) or NL tournaments but a No-Limit cashgame isn’t really my cup of tea. On Wednesday the €5.250 Main Event was held and a lot of well known poker-dutchies attended again this year. Friday I returned to the casino to do some live-railing as some familiar people were still in the tournament. With 294 people attending, the first 36 would be in the money and a poker-friend and a good buddy of mine both made it into the money. The first busted a few seconds later as 36th but my buddy almost made it to the final table. Unfortunately he busted in 13th, winning €19.000 which in the end is good money but a final table would have been really epic. Eventually the Main Event was finally won again by a Dutchie, the unknown David Boyaciyan won €382.200.

On Saturday I did play the €300 Turbo Freezout which was really a Turbo so after flopping an A with AQ there was no way I could fold and ended up against AK. Joep van den Bijgaart managed to win the €750 Freezout, winning €61.230 which makes this an incredible year for Joep after getting 7th in the EPT Berlin earlier this year and at 900.000+ VPPs he probably will also manage to become a Supernova Elite this year. The MCOP was also covered on television by RTL and I think it’s a really nice coverage. The casino itself got a lot of attention but I don’t really see that as a problem as it makes sense they need some promotion out of this as well. If I would have been at home I would have watched the live broadcast at internet for sure, you can see/listen to some of the live-coverage in the episode as well. You can watch the whole episode at RTLXL.

It was fun to see a lot of the people again which I normally only meet in Las Vegas. I made some profit on the cashgames on Saturday, did a lot of railing and know for sure that next year I’ll be back to play some more tournaments myself. I might go the Belgium in December for some live poker and hope that the Dom Classics in Utrecht will be back in January (not during my holiday) since I’m looking forward to play some live tournaments again. Meeting all these people also fueled my plans to go to Las Vegas next year again. Due to the European Championship Soccer in June I’ll probably not stay around for long but I’m hoping to visit Vegas during the end of May, beginning of June. Hopefully a LHE event is held at the start of the WSOP but else I’ll be playing some of the NL events or play the Venetian Deepstack which are also always really good tourneys. The planning will start as soon as the WSOP schedule is released but I’m pretty sure I’ll be going, if not during the WSOP I’ll go with the party crew in October anyway!

Life is good, there are plenty of plans in the making and I’m healthier then ever. I wish I could say that for everybody as last week I attended the funeral of my old manager, who taught me a lot of tricks of the trade at work. Also on the 6th of November it was 5 years ago my own father passed away. He always stressed that you should enjoy life every day as it can be over before you know and that’s exactly what I’m always doing, I just hope you all are doing the same thing!

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