Are you a Pro?

I'm back to Munich and start to find my way back to real life.

But before we flew home we had a nice day in Boston with our friends. As we went to lunch we talked a little about Poker and if it is really important to get the right cards. We were still talking as we entered the subway and I told them about "playing the players not the cards" and other stuff including some things that happened during my visit to the WSOP. Next to us was a young guy (obviously barely 18) who tried to follow our conversation and finally asked "Are you a pro"? Isn't that funny? Just talking about some advanced concepts makes some people think that you are a professional poker player.

It's hard to imagine that you play against this kind of people online every day. But at the same time I realized again the big difference between live play and online play. Of course you get a lot of information about a player if you stay aware playing online. But if I imagine to play against this guy live seeing his personality, following the way he talks and acts I get a whole lot more information to realize who am I playing with. In fact just talking to him on the subway for a few minutes gave me a good picture of him before even playing a single hand of poker. On the other hand I can leave a different mark on my own action if somebody has to look into my eyes instead of just looking at my avatar. Nothing new but still good to remember from time to time.

On our sightseeing tour we also went up to the Prudential building and got a nice view of Boston from above. And I got a nice shot of MIT (Massechusats Institute of Technology). Seeing MIT is something special for somebody who played advanced Black Jack. As you may know some of the best Black Jack card counting teams came out of MIT. The now famous poker player Andy Bloch was a member of one of these MIT teams in the past.

Today I had my first online game again (the Xing tournament) but it was uneventfull. I never was able to improve my stack in a good way and finally busted 30th out of 53 after I was forced to give up pocket tens on a bad flop (A-K-7) and a great draw against a decent reraise. Hopefully the next tournaments will run better.