Update in case of the current developments...

So, as you all know after my last post I arrived friday night in Malta and went quickly to bed thereafter bc I was dead tired.

After that some things happend:

I started playing on saturday again and managed to play around 12.000hands in 10hours which was pretty good... However I lost 2k $ in the process - basically all back to basics I thought.
On sunday however something strange happend. First my ass was alot better than all the other days. Unfortunately my teeth decided to start hurting me on that day because me without pain would be probably no fun...Ahh, yes, the strange thing. I started winning at the tables, I even started winning alot. I didn't even knew anymoar how it feels to be able to make this amounts in very short-term. The garphs will explain more than words I assume:

Upswingaments

Pretty decent upswing, basically teh first real one since february. I hope it still lasts a few moar days but we will see what happens.

Concerning my health I was at a very good dentist here in Malta who told me that the pain is coming bc I'm having an infection around my wisdom tooth on the right side. He thinks with 27years it's unlikely that the tooth will come out now so everything should be fine once the infection is gone. I will be taking some antibiotika the next days and see if it works out, However based on my recent luck I'm quite sure sooner or later I might get problems with the tooth again :(

Concerning the car I went for it earlier on and everything seems back to normal. The dealer told me there was a cable cut and they replaced it. This cable seemed to cause all the errors with the boardcomputer. In the end paid only 100Euro for the repair works so keeping my fingers crossed that this is really sorted.

Over the coming days I'm obv not planning to go out on teh antibiotiks so there will be alot time for teh grind. So far I don't really manage to play the nessecary amount for SNE but I'll keep ya posted...

cheers

Epic Road Trip fail... es kommt immer anders als man denkt...

Hope for teh best, expect the worst... running horribad...

In general I wanted to write this blog entry on my way from Palermo to Genova on the ferry, however now I'm sitting in my car in Pozzallo, Sicily waiting for a ferry back to Malta.

To make a long story short I started appr. 12 hours ago with my roomie and the Vette from Malta to Sicily, then we wanted to drive up to Palermo, getting from there to Genova via ferry and from then on driving down to Munich. Even before the trip signs were not too good bc last friday I managed to fall on my ass which responded in developing a massive bruise and even though it got better over the last days it is still a pain in the ass. Second sign was that my car already fucked up yesterday and we exchanged the battery because of this. Everything was back to normal – at least for a couple of hours until we realized in the middle of Sicily that probably the charger of the battery is busted while the boardcomputer giving all typ of errors and the instruments barely working. Awesome thing in sicily is that appr. 1 out of 100 people is speaking english which makes it kinda complictated to have a conversation... However we managed to find a guy who confirmed our thesis with the broken charger and this guy got us another guy who had a tow truck. 550Euro and 4 hours later Adrian is now waiting for a flight to Munich in Catania in some shady airport Hotel and I am waiting for a ferry back to Malta with my car praying that it starts later on to get it somehow on the ferry. In Malta another tow truck will be waiting for me which will be another 100Euro or so to get me to my mechanic who hopefully figures out the problem the coming days. Ferry is obvisouly not for free as well so I already spent a k today for a shitload of stress and some experience... However I should look at the brightside – it's not like I crashed the car completly, I'm more or less healthy and if the ferry doesn't sink I should survive the day.

Probably this all is kind of god's saying: „listen son, you are 27, u had a fucking massive summer, went out a shitload, been with some very beautiful girls and spent a decent amount of cash in the meanwhile – get urself a break and go back on track you cannot live like this the whole fucking year...“

Bottom line is that god is probably right. This was a massive summer. I cannot remember any summer so far which was even close to what happend this one. I'm regretting very few. But summer is over. This week was the end of summer party so it has to be over.

Atm I assume that I will not be flying to Munich for the Oktoberfest – I wasn't really to much in the mood going there before the trip but everything was booked and so on. In the end this prolly even saves me money because in Munich and on the way I would've def spent more than what I spent today.

Plus I will be able to work the coming 2 weeks. So to speak of work the month was pretty much as horrible as it gets. Good thing is I played decent amount so far and made appr. 55K VPP. Bad thing is that I'm up around 2k $ and basically breakeven again since 50k hands. EV is at around 5.5k $ which helps me nothing and in the end I should be still up EV-wise over the year so it's kinda pathetic to bitch here. You also may say, well, be happy, you are up, you made some money out of rakeback... While this is ofc troo I'm far to ambitious to think that way. Games atm are pretty much awesome and adding 6max was a very good decision for me. In fact 6max 200 was the only limit I ran hot and made like 6-7k with over 4PTBB but unfortunately I lost 3BuyIns at FR and basically lost at everything higher than 200 which is against mindblowing considering what games I play there (the people who play with me probably know what I mean).

For the year I'm sitting at the moment with around 470k VPP and believe me or not I really think about shotting for SNE again... I'm really motivated in case of grinding atm (prolly bc I'm not really satisfied with my year so far) and if you calculate everything than it would be appr. 60K$ I could make in 3 month only through rakeback and boni plus the added benefits for next year which will easily be another 10-20k$ - alot of money given the fact nobody knows how poker will continue.

Furthermore my actual plan is to leave Malta not b4 after Christmas whih gives me additional time on the way. Best case scenario would be to ship SNE between the 20^th and 23^th of december, fly to my parents for Christmas and piss of on the 26^th or 27^th to Thailand. If this should really be happening I'm almost certain I take the entire january of. However I give myself like 20-25% chance of reaching that goal bc it would be an insane volume, with horrendous swings and not too much free time... I definitely will grind alot in near future and I'm pretty convinced I should easily do the 800k milestone but another 200k after this gonna be sick considering I will try it with NL200 and 400 only to keep swings as low as any possible (which is not really possible ldo). The main factors are that I have to see if I can put in 3 four hour sessions on alot of days (never really did this so that is def kinda very tough) and if the games stay how they are which is unlikely tbh bc alot of people will try to grind for SNE themselves pretty soon and put in sick volume and will decrease the fish to reg- ratioo. And for me it is 100% sure that I will never start playing tables full of regs only to accumulate some VPPs. But at least I can try, see how it goes and then reevaluate once I hit something like 750k VPP and then decide if it is worth it to push for the rest.

I still have another 3.5hours til my ferry hopefully takes me and the car to Malta but my battery (again) is getting low and I don't really know what to write anymoar. Atm def a bit frustrated bc of that fucked up day and a little bit burned out of real-life but still looking forward what the next weeks will bring. If I'm lucky there even could be an upswing coming around. And maybe I can manage to do 4 weeks without alcohol at a certain point of time which would be well needed as well...

On a sidenote we spoke to our current landlord the other day bc our rent is running out and he wants to have significantly more money in future even if we would commit for a year so it's quite uncertain if I'm going to stay in that lovely penthouse after this year. On the brightside he likes the idea of getting a jacuzi installed which def would give the place some more value but we'll see what is happening.

Ps: when you read this thingy I probably just arrived at home being dead tired and exhausted so sorry for no pictures and alot of text this time but I need to sleep...

chin chin

The power of Vinivici9586 (Poker only update)

July is finally over and I managed to grind in the last 1000VPPs of 50.000 in order to maintain SNE.
The month was pretty interesting. I managed to lose 3.000$ pretty quickly, coming back to zero, losing 3.000$ again and coming back to zero. That was my first 60k hands aka 60 hours of work this month. Always nice to work for a 0$ hourly rate (b4 rakeback) :P
I definitely wasn't playing too well even though I cannot remember really bad mistakes I made. Was basically a mixture of running like a one legged hooker, getting set-upped here and there, being under EV, playing tired, playing at the wrong time and doing a little bit too much party. However it's always mindblowing what variance can do even if you are proven winner over almost 5million US hands... (and I was breaking even probably another 50-70k hands b4 that as well...) Ok, first part of the month.

2nd part of the month was alot better. I found myself at around 70k hands at the 20th of July, way behind pace for my 50k VPP monthly goal (I still could've skipped one month and still maintain SNE but somehow I wanted to play and make some money because no money no fun...). I checked my results and decided that it is time to kick NL100 out of my selection. It's not like I don't beat it but if you basically played NL200+ all the time and then start playing NL100 (I did that after Black Friday because traffic went down) your VPPs/hand getting a massive hit and I'm convinced that I'm overplaying the one or the other hand every now and then and broking a little bit too lite in some spots. Long story short I thought about the whole situation and my best game is by far NL200. Unfortunately I don't find 24 Fullring tables which I view as decent most of the time so I thought to myself it's time to give shorthanded another try. I mean in the end of the day it is the same game - yes, little bit more aggro, only 6 people but it is still NL200 and most of the regs are still pretty bad because otherwise they would play higher. So far things worked out well and after my first 20k shorthanded hands I'm up around 2k$ with a 2.5PTBB WR which is decent and which should be somehow maintainable even though there's some upswing included atm.
Basically the whole upswing started after mixing in shorthanded... All of a sudden I was winning flips, setupping people left and right AND playing alot better poker compared to the weeks before. From the last sessions I had there were definitely some in which I think I probably played the best poker I had played in a long while if not ever... Conclusion of all that is that I made 11.6k$ after July 19th in 10 working days and 66 hours which comes down to a sweet 175$ an hour (and only one losing day if you can call minus 250 a losing day haha :P). But to be honest there was definitely a good portion of upswing included - nevertheless it's a good sign!

To illustrate the whole thing here my final July garph:

Like 5days ago I changed my Stars avatar to Hayden Panettiere in honor of one of the best small stakes players ever existed (kid is unemployed after Black Friday unfortunately) and of course it made BOOM directly afterwards. Should've done that a long time before but better late then never I assume.

For August my goal is to make 50k VPPs again to keep on pace for the 600k milestone this year. However I get alot of people visiting me this month so I might end up a little bit short this time but we'll see what happens and as being said I can skip one month and I will lose Supernova Elite beginning october anyways so that it doesn't really matter. Goal at the tables is like always making some money and if I keep running like I do atm this should be realistic...

Speaking of real-life there was a really massive pool party at the villa of some other pokerfriends here in Malta with well above 150 people during the peak and an open bar. Was probably the most massive private event I ever attended and I cannot remember another night were time was passing by that fast which is in general a good indicator how nice the party was. Thanks again to the guys organized this one and made it happen - I'm sure it was not the last one this year.

Furthermore my parents visiting me in Malta atm which is a good thing but definitely will decrease my volume because these days I'm more busy grinding restaurants with them instead of grinding pokerhands... Oh, and my dad's birthday today! Happy birthday, dad!

Good luck at the tables and enjoy the summer!

best wishes from Malta

Finally new career peak after long break even stretch...

Somehow I cannot really motivate myself to write much in summer because there are so many other things to do which explains why my last post was more than a month ago... However now I feel like writing at least a little bit what has happend over the last 6 weeks...

In general life is good, it is summer here in Malta, each day above 30°C, sunny, no clouds. I probably haven't done that much party since I started my studies back in the days :P

3 weeks ago we rented a sweet farmhouse with a pool over a weekend on the neighbour island Gozo (which tends to be alot quieter than Malta...). On this weekend I went to La Grotta for the first time which is definitely one of the nicest venues I ever went.

Basically every week here is at least one massive event mostly openair with well known international DJs like Deadmau5, Guetta, Underworld, Basement Jaxx or artists like Snoop Doog and LMFAO. I can only recommend everybody to give Malta a visit during summer because I believe there are few summer hotspots in Europe where you can have this amount of fun and entertaintment for pretty cheap money.

Last week some friends visited me to celebrate the 30th birthday of my boy Markus Schneider so we went out 5 days in a row (which I haven't done in ages but it is still possible with 27 haha). After the week every single one of them was happy that they choose Malta to celebrate instead of somewhere else.

Don't really know what I should write about all those parties so I better let some pictures do the talking...

The only bad thing in case of the partying happend last weekend when me and another german professional poker player were massively attacked by a guy while partying in one of Malta's best openair venues but shit happens day and night and nothing you can do about it. My facebook followers will be informed about that case anyways and since yesterday the maltese police is as well so I will see how it goes. I'm fine in the end which is all what counts and this action definitely taught me the lesson to be a bit more careful no matter where I go...


In case of poker the last 5 weeks basically were a nightmare. I was running pretty bad, not playing enough, to many parties, etc. which resulted in a pretty long break even stretch (yes, I know, it could be worse..) After rakeback I still made ok amount of money so no reason for complaining. However I'm without a loosing day during the last 6 days and prolly playing the best poker I played so far in my life so it definitely goes in the right direction. Furthermore I stopped playing NL100 and started playing NL200 shorthanded instead which goes pretty well so far and which should've been one of my best decisions this year when things work out as planned. I even played some hands at the 1k tables where nobody have seen me during the last 4 months :)
Yesterday I reached a new career peak on PTR and managed to come back after I was down 3000$ two weeks ago. Now I'm up 3700$ not including rakeback which still sucks but month is not over yet so I hope to increase this figure a little further.
Finally presenting the current AI-EV graph for the month where you can see that the boomer just started...:

see you guys around, keep on rockin!

Life without Winter - trying to make it happen :)

Honestly I want to write more often here but somehow I'm too busy/lazy/whatever...

But now almost one month after my last post I think I can share a little bit (it's not that I wouldn't have stuff to post every week but yes, lazy me).

First off I thought about my near/mid future and what I want to do with it while I was not really able to sleep one night and came to the conclusion that I'm living life at 90% right now, but why not living it 125% or 140%? I'm playing since almost 3 years for a living now, stopped giving a fuck about money long time ago and still I'm not travelling like 1/4 of what I want to travel. I mean, I'm free like a bird, can basically work from everywhere in the world (ok wait, no longer in the "land of the free"), make decent money even if I only work like 80 hours a month and I'm not using the opportunities given because of that. Don't get me wrong, I feel pretty damn good atm in Malta, getting to know a shitload of new awesome people each week, have a massive circle of friends here, amazing Parties, etc. But winter is coming without a doubt and I'm definitely not looking forward to spent my time in winter here working 200++ hours a month to kill the time. I did that the last 2 years and I'm not getting younger unfortunately...
Ok, to make a long story short I'm definitely planning to leave Malta latest in November and not returning before late April 2011 (at least that's the plan). Also I definitely wouldn't mind spending another summer here next year - everybody who went to this island and is young and outgoing probably knows what I'm telling about. I doubt there are many places in Europe or maybe even in the world who give you that lifestyle combined with amazing weather for a reasonable price.

massive Beach Party at Armier Bay

About one month ago I was speaking to a friend who is definitely planning to go to some island in Thailand end of this year and my roomie is also very interested so this is going to be the first goal. This should go down somewhere between november and february.
Given the fact that in february is still european winter (even if it is not really cold in Malta) returning by that time is not really an option for me. So I definitely have to go on the other side of the world to run away from winter. 3 places came to my mind which I would really be interested to see/live there:

1. Buenos Aires - Argentina: There's alot of poker guys living so that I would be connected right from the start but it's spanish speaking so this probably would really cause problems even though I could go to a language school but when I'm to lazy to update this blog more often I'm not sure if that would work out.

2. Cape Town - South Africa: Another place I heard alot of and I definitely want to go to at a certain point. Only thing here would be security issues because I heard you really have to take care where you go and when you go and I don't really want to get robbed coming home latenight after a party. Sure you could rent some bodyguards there but that's probably not too cheap and maybe a little bit exaggerated.

3. Golden Coast - Australia: My current favorite. It's basically main season there from january to april, weather is amazing, lots of party people and I would finally make it to Australia which is ranked pretty high on the list of places I want to have spent some time. Also got alot of other pokerfriends who are really interested in this which makes it alot cooler than to travel alone. Only thing now is that this needs to be scheduled somehow but in general I'm pretty good in organizing stuff so I would say this is really going to happen!

Gold Coast

If some of you have other suggestions for places where I should go don't hesitate to share your opinion. Criteria is that it is not in the US and A, weather is comparable or hotter than the mediterranean summer and that there are some parties going on. Don't wanna go to some abandoned island - I'm still under 30 ;)




Malta life is pretty good atm. I think I found a pretty good balance between work, party, workout/run and relax which results in 2-3 Parties a week and 110-130k hands of poker a month which results in a 120-140hours working month.
Last month was my 2nd best month in case of poker this year so that I cannot complain to much. Crossed the 20k$ border a 2nd time 2011 nevertheless because of the Spring Championship of Onlinepoker (a very big and well known tournament series on Pokerstars) out of which I pulled appr. 8500$. The rest came from the cash tables and from rakeback. Also received 10k$ for the WSOP ME which I'm not going to play and also not really count as profit for may but it's money in my pocket anyways. Apropos WSOP in Vegas - at the current point it is very unlikely that I'm going to Vegas this year mainly because I never planned to play Live Poker anyways and since black friday I'm not even allowed to play Onlinepoker there as well so I would basically only go there just for partying, sunbathing and sexual harassment. I expect with flight, hotel, food, drinks, shopping and co. I would end up spending appr. a thousand dollars a day and the question is if I really want to do this or pay alot less and still have the good life here in Malta. Definitely tend to number 2 at the moment but my mind changes rather quickly so I will not give it a 100% yet.


Current month is pretty meh in case of poker so far but it is slowly getting better. This is mainly based on the fact that I run like a one legged hooker at NL400 and 600 and run g00t at NL100 and 200 but as always no matter how good you run at the lowest stakes if you get screwed at the higher ones you don't really make money. Here the current EV graph which shows that pretty much everything is ok. Don't wanna complain about it because year so far was fine but this is the only graph I can post because I'm basically started checking results maximum 2 times a month and don't even know at the moment if I'm down or up in money.

ALL IN EV June 2011

Biggest difference at around hand 255 results in a hand where spanish spewtard idiot xGabrielMooyax decided that KQo is good enough to ship over my 4bet at NL600 for 120BBs effective Button vs. Small Blind. Even if you consider the aggressive nature of todays games especially at NL400+ this play is ridiculous and you will probably not find a single reg who makes money who will disagree with that. I fistpump AKs and he flops gutter and bink a Q on turn for a 1.5k pot. To be honest I have not the slightest clue how a guy who has such obvious leaks can put down an NL400 leaderbord not long time ago but there are people who seem to run good and he is spaniard so power to him.


Next week some good german friends are coming over for a little visit (basically every month somebody is coming) so I will try to increase volume a little bit the coming days that I can take most of the time off end of the month to spent some time with these guys. Then end of the month is also Malta MTV music week with some massive events. Even Snoop Dogg is coming for the big final. At the moment me and Adrian trying to get somehow in contact to him that we can organize some sort of After Party at our penthouse or Hendrik's Villa with him so I will keep you posted about that one :)


In case of working out I'm coming closer and closer to the final body goal for this summer. At the moment I'm running 3 times a week and going to the gym the other 3 days with mostly one day off because of heavy drinking. When I left London in April I had about 80kg and now down to 74kg. 

Beginning June

Reaching 71-72kg would be really sweet because then I would have the perma 6-Pack, maybe even 8 but for that I would have to do at least a 2 week drinking break which is basically impossible at the current time. Furthermore I'm still eating pizza like twice a weak and some fries every now and then which doesn't really help but I'm still pretty satisfied with the results so far given the fact I started to get really serious maybe like 5 weeks ago. Nevertheless maybe I get lucky and loose the last 2-3kg somehow but who knows...


A little book tipp for the end for you guys who speak german (I'm not sure if these books getting translated into english but if so they are a must read).

The guy is Kurt Molzer and also wrote a book before that one which was also amazing. Think it's called "Kurt's Geschichten". If you like sex and have some sort of humor both of his books are definite must reads...


To finish this post I managed to get into some sort of disco fight for the first time after more than 10 years. Until now I'm not really sure what happend but let's say it was pretty decent and I drank a little bit that night (it all started in Nordic and the locals will know what that means). However I ended up in some "nice" after hour club and got into some trouble at the bar for some reason - don't know because of what but whatever. Next thing I remember is that pretty much before shit was about to get real the two bouncers were standing right besides me at the bar. I was pretty happy at that moment because I knew they gonna kick me out so I'm not getting in some fight down there on my own. Unfortunately the one of the bouncers didn't seemed to appreciate my pretty face and started trying to hit it while the other bouncer was dragging me out. Even if my defence was pretty nice given the fact 2.5°% were running through my body he somehow managed to hit me 3 or 4 times during our journey to daylight so that I got some nice cut behind the right ear which made me able to take this picture:

Vampire Party

Moral of the story: avoid bouncers - run as fast as you can.
If my mum is reading this: I'm good!!! This is obviously no real blood - was at a vampire party that night and this was part of the costume...


Rock on! Over and out...

Summer is coming

Because I'm lazy it's been a while since my last post. But whatever, alot of stuff happend the last 30 days and I was more or less busy for the most part...

As many of you know we got kicked out of our summer residence after 22 days so it was time to come up with something new and something better. This was the last place:

Unfortunately the new place has no pool but besides that I like it more because it's alot more in the center and we have no direct neighbours. But it was a long way to sign that one... Everything was basically set up but then the landlord received an anonymous phone call telling him a german and a new zealand guy were kicked out of their old penthouse and so he didn't wanted to rent the place to us anymore. Kind of reasonable. After a long email from me and my roomie, after a long talk of the Dhalia Real Estate Manager with the new landlord, after a reference letter from my old landlord (when I lived here one year ago), after increasing the security deposit from 3000Euro to 9000Euro and after a final meeting with our new landlord we convinced him that we are not as bad as we look and were able to finally sign.
In the meanwhile I lived for a week in another penthouse in Gzira on my own because two of my poker buddies, Bao and Beyne, who rent this one, were on vacation in Germany. Alot better and cheaper then ending up in a hotel room... However, on the 27th of April I finally was able to move into the new place and we haven't had any complaints since then and I'm still very satisfied. These days I'm almost happy we got kicked out of the old one haha... Alotta pictures are up on facebook so I only post a few here that you can get an impression:

We already had some pre-drinking at the place but as being said without any complaints, most probably because downstairs is only and office which closes around 4pm and further down there are 2 restaurants. That is one of the best part for me because atm I'm cooking max. 3 times a week which is amazing. I make a phonecall and 15 minutes later I receive a decent meal for a good price :)
In case of nightlife we are also alot closer than we were before which means you can just walk into Paceville in 15Minutes or take a cab for 5Euro which will take you there in 3 minutes.

Directly after moving in I got two good german friends coming over so that I ended up making alot of party the first few days after moving in. At the moment I'm going out like twice a week which works fine along with poker. But next friend is almost on the way and since I gotta entertain this people it's going to get a little harder in case of party towards the end of the month but I assume that I will have finished work this month around the 26th so that this isn't a big issue.
I'm also doing alot of stuff in case of my summer body atm so that I reduced carbs (even not enough yet) and going one day for gym and the next for a run. Lost like 6kg since I came from London and am pretty satisfied with the results so far.

On a sidenote my roomie bought a BMW Z4 2 weeks ago and we went to Gozo last saturday with the cars. Was definitely good fun and my arms got massive tan during the day - convertible for the win. Furthermore my first sober day at the beach. Gozo is the smaller neighbour island of Malta and you can only reach it via a ferry. About 40k people living there and it's pretty beautiful for a day but living there would prolly not be my style. But during carnival it's getting pretty crazy there from what I heard so that I definitely have to try and spent at least one carnival there :)
/culture

Back to poker it has been over a month since black friday.
In the end I can say for me it's positive. Games are better than ever and very few americans moved abroad so far - I can name 3 regulars who moved (out of 200++ I know). Sure there will be some moving the next 3 months but it seems like not nearly as much are moving as I expected first... I asked myself what I would've done if they close down poker in my country of residence and I'm pretty sure I would've moved in max. one week - I mean it's my fucking job, what should I do. On the other hand I realize that many people are not that flexible and free in this case like I am or maybe they don't have the focus I have, whatever...

Traffic obviously went down but games are good. For me the only thing which changed is that I have to mix in decent amount of NL100 which I basically haven't played the last 2 years but on the brightside this takes alot of variance out of the game and games at NL100 are insanely good so that I even should be able to make some decent money there.
Atm there is also one of the biggest tourmant series on Pokerstars running at - the Spring Championship of Onlinepoker. Most people know the fact that I hate tournament but because of Supernova Elite I had 5200$ which I had to invest in tournaments so that I splitted this amount into several SCOOP events. Running more or less decent so far even if I'm unlucky and lose in the very important spot but that's tournament poker. I'm up around 4k$ so far in this scoop (since I see every event as a freerole this is like 4k free cash) and I also have a couple of nice events left. Maybe I can use my one-time on one of these, preferably the 1050$ Main Event... In case of cash games I make slow but steady money so that I should be up around 5k$ here as well and with an additional 2.5k$ out of Rakeback it's a decent month so far. Nevertheless I hope for a strong finish or better said a tournament cash above 25k$ so that I can buy the last piece missing in the penthouse on my own - teh jaccuzi!

Doomsday / AND SUDDENLY AMERICA IS GONE

Today finally was the day. Some pessimists will say "I saw that coming long time ago", some optimists will just shake their heads and most players will probably not really believe yet what happend about 8 hours ago. But one thing is pretty damn clear. This day will change everything in case of Onlinepoker in it's current form.

So what happend?

Yesterday, friday the 15th I decided instead to go out and get shitfaced to do some work aka Poker instead. Shortly after I began my first session I became aware of the news that the 3 biggest pokersites who still operate in the USA are charged in case of illegal gambling, money laundry and some other stuff. At first I was like whatever but then after some time every american fellow player disappeared from the tables and in this moment I became aware that this might be really serious and in fact it is. Every US based player is from now on banned from playing Online-Poker at Pokerstars, Fulltilt or Ultimate Bet. And from what I read so far I don't expect to see one of these guys back at one of my tables this year.
I know alot of these people who play exclusively for a living like I do and am in contact with some of them via  Facebook and Skype. I would say for 95% of them poker is their only source of income and it's a pretty solid income or better said was a solid income. Some of them even make more money in a month than other people in 2 years of working. All these guys got fired tonight, everyone of them became unemployed from one second to another without any warning. For many of them there will be only one valid possibilty: Move home as soon as possible to a country where poker is still legal. For most of them it will be Canada - some of them I might see in Malta this summer. But there will be also guys who cannot just move and leave everything behind. Guys who are studying at a university, guys who have a family, guys who have kids, etc.
Good luck from my part to each of them whatever they end up doing.

Alot of players paniced today - me included. Is my money safe? What should I do? Will poker stay profitable? Will they ban it in Europe as well?

From my point of view the money should be still safe because for europeans there isn't much changing. I still have a significant 5 digits amount of $ online and am not really worried. Nevertheless I withdraw alot today, just to be safe if I end up being wrong in that case.

For me personally this development is definitely a good development short-term. Tonight the games were amazing and this will definitely stay like this for a while. Longterm it probably will be getting tougher especially at the midstakes because most of the people playing these stakes making over 100k a year and everyone of them will go abroad for sure because there is no other way.
NL200 will stay about the same I think because many of the US guys who are breakeven there will be now looking for alternatives besides poker. NL100 probably even gets softer because these regs are not necessarily going abroad and start working/playing life/shooting themselves instead.

The bad thing is that traffic will decrease significantly anyways for obvious reasons. When I had 60 tables to pick from before this, I will now end up having only 25-40 to choose from. Especially for the guys who playing mainly for rakeback and achieving a high VIP status this will cause problems when they sometimes just cannot find enough tables to play to make enough points. Since I'm not really planning to repeat Supernova Elite for the 3rd year in a row this isn't the worst problem for me. I'm fine when I only have 16 tables to play instead of 24 - no problemo.

Another good thing for me might be that my vampire days are finally counted. When there are no more americans than I don't have to play american time which means for me to play the peak from 9pm until 6 in the morning. So maybe I be able to get a "solid" schedule somehow where I wake noonish and go to bed at 2am. Who knows!

One thing is clear, american or not, nobody will forget this day soon... god bless Europe - continent of the free :)


cliffs:
- 3 biggest Pokersites who operate in US are charged of illegal gambling and money laundry
- american players are from now on not allowed to participate in realmoney games at Stars, FT and UB
- in europe everything stays the same
- traffic will decrease and therefore it will be harder to achieve high VIP goals at Stars
- games will get better short-term but probably end up getting tougher longterm
- our bankrolls should be safe