Alchemy of Poker

 Dear Alchemists, I hope you all had a nice Christmas time with your loved ones and could relax a bit. With me it went also so far quite well up to that I to my whole stress before it managed to tear me the third time my cruciate ligament. Unfortunately, I fell down in the evening and went to the MRI shortly before Christmas to have it examined. The nice doctors told me there that my knee was very good except for the fact that my anterior cruciate ligament was missing. Since I already had such an operation twice on my left knee, I can tell the people who have so far been spared that it is not as bad as it always sounds. From the physical side, you can actually walk again after 6-8 weeks and the pain is also within limits with the right anesthesia. What is a bit unusual for me is that I now put more weight on my operated knee, since my healthy knee is now also gone. At the beginning, this meant that my operated knee sometimes hurt more than the damaged one. It had to get used to the...

Dear Alchemists, I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and that you and your loved ones are healthy so far. For me, this Christmas season has been pretty Unfortunately I couldn't extend my streak and win another two weeks. I could play this time even only three sessions and have these completely in the sands set. This has different reasons on the one hand I did not run well and on the other hand I had several insecurities in spots where I was just not sure and often made wrong decisions. For this reason, this week I have been more concerned with educating myself on the theory side of the game. Going back to the lab is especially advisable in such moments, as it is the best way to clear one's conscience. I always find it very challenging that even after playing so much poker in the last few years, several sessions when you have lost always try to scratch your self-confidence. This always makes me especially aware of how challenging poker is in general and why I love the...

Dear Alchemists, From a poker technical point of view this is the first week since the start of my challenge that didn't go so well. I simply had a lot on my plate privately and had almost no time to play. I don't blame myself if I made the wrong decisions that led to this result. At least I was able to learn some new poker material, because I managed to finish reading "Whe Math of Poker by Collin and Douglas, which I can really recommend to anyone who is looking for a logical approach to poker. I also started reading the new book by Barry and Dara "Endgame Poker Strategy - The Icm Book. Since I have already read the two books in the series and found them great I am really looking forward to it. For me as a SNG and MTT player, there are a lot of things in it that I already knew, but also a few subtleties that I had not yet noticed in the way. I'm super excited to see what the rest of the book is like. I have so much time to read, unfortunately, because I stupidly ...

 Dear Alchemists, In the last two weeks I could hardly play at all. Except for my private coaching sessions, I had only 4 small sessions myself. It was my wife's birthday and I was a bit sick myself, which is why I didn't manage more. The nice thing about playing semi-professionally is at least that I have no pressure and can take care of my family. Nevertheless, I really hope that things will get better in the next two weeks. As if that wasn't enough, I had to deal with the new partypoker software which I find very interesting to say the least. This version is only available in Germany but with a little luck others will enjoy it soon or not so much. Party relies a lot on throwables, which there was already before with the diamondbalance, but I have the feeling that these unnecessary child rows are now even more present. I think for beginners they definitely have something for me it's rather annoying. I write about it because the software is still quite buggy. So you ca...

 Dear Alchemists,   Unfortunately I have to tell you that the last 2 weeks were very sobering for me. I had actually hoped to get more for poker during the vacations, but unfortunately it didn't work out. As you know, I'm still teaching at the university and I unfortunately forgot that the start of the winter semester fell exactly over the start of the fall vacations this year. In detail this means that I didn't have any time off as I would have needed it. On the contrary, I have to go to university five times a week. Although the semesters are in hybrid form due to the pandemic, it is super hard in terms of motivation when you actually thought you could relax a bit. To make matters worse, I have to do postgraduate studies for my PhD. In my old state exams are no doctoral eligibility like the new bachelor's/master's students have. This means I actually have to take courses at my department again myself. This means I spend a total of two days at the university taking...