feed from marshall28 blog 2008-07-24T05:29:29+01:00 text/html 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 marshall28 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net In the spirit of giving back to the community and the desire to get back into doing coaching since I had to quit when I was severely struggling, I'm going to offer a free hour to anyone who wants it given I have enough time. Generally I'm just not busy so I'm guessing it won't be a big issue unless like 20 plus people ask, either way drop me a PM and I'll let you know my AIM if you are interested. BTW this is for 100nl and below. Additional hours I'll probably end up charging 50 bucks if people want it. I really enjoy coaching so hopefully this will invoke some new students. GL, Marshall28 text/html 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 marshall28 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net It's been like two months since I've blogged. Not much was happening. A lot of boredom, saving money, grinding micro stakes--- Which I happen to be very bad at. I did discover the main problem I was having, and am finally back in the driver's seat as it pertains to my poker career, that problem was PRIDE. : [ Even after four months in the red, I was still so hellbent on the idea that I was so much better than the fools at 50 and 100nl and even 200nl that I could play 37/33 - 33/28 and own their souls. God, I make so many mistakes. The other issue was I became so complacent with my attitude and general gameplan that I just started opening a bunch of hands, c-betting every flop, then giving up when called or raised, or double barreling when I had a good hand. I tried to win every pot and stack anyone I was in a hand with at any time. Wow as if it's a wonder I struggled through the first 6 months of this year. I think a lot of the delusional confidence and pride came from the fact that I was still coaching a friend who was struggling at 400/600nl. We had a lot of discussions about game theory, evaluating hand ranges, perceptions of ranges, and hand reading. Immediately after that he started killing the games. In just one sweating session I ended up making him like 6k in 3 hours at 600nl. I dunno, he had a ton of confidence in me, enough to pay me to help him, so it kept reverbing in my mind that I should just do what I was teaching him. This just doesn't work at micro stakes. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Micro stakes isn't real poker. There is almost zero psychology to it. So anyways, FINALLY I swallowed my pride and just screwed down to a 18/15 game at 50nl and 8 tabled it up. Ended up being able to move up in like a week and a half because I was winning something ridiculous like 15bb/100. So I moved to 100nl. Was there for about 3 weeks to a month, 8 tabling playing 20/17 for the most part, other than certain occasions where I would 4 table and play a bit looser. And now I'm up to 200nl, been there for about a week, up something like 4800, playing my old 25/20 game. I still don't even think I'm playing that well, not as well as I'm capable of, that's for damn sure. I guess one of the biggest things I learned through this recent forge upwards is that to beat the micro games, all you really have to do is NOT SPEW and avoid marginal spots. LOL, avoiding marginal spots is basically the antithesis of my normal game, maybe why I struggled so much. When I stopped playing that crazy laggy game and just tightened down, the results were basically instant and immediate. It's amazing how easy it became. I suppose anyone could just chalk it up to running hot or whatever, but at this point there's no way I can prove to anyone that even if I keep winning for over 100k hand stretch that it's nothing more than a heater. LOL I think I've decided that basically everyone is result oriented at their core. If in general you don't win, you suck. If you won for even a HUGE sample you suck, it gets to be to the point that it's so ridiculous that people who once respected my game decided to tell me how terrible I am and how I just got lucky. ANYWAYS enough ranting about that, I just think it's interesting how people respond, it also says a lot about a person who thinks something crazy like that. Anyways, in the spirit of continuing to swallow my pride, I've hired myself a coach, one who's been extremely successful w/ other players, so I'm very looking forward to that, beginning in August after WSOP. At some point in the future, after I can show a longer period of success, I'd really like to get back to coaching microstakes myself. I have always enjoyed doing it even moreso than playing. Hopefully that's something that I can re-materialize a little bit down the road, maybe when I am back at 2/4. And lastly, in addition, I've developed an excel spreadsheet outlining the money I owe to credit cards and others, showing how I'm going to pay it back, as well as begin saving 20% of my cashout every month. At this point I have no other choice but to be responsible. [img]http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/4351567469ffc08325c1e9dd78ef0c23.jpg[/img] Thanks for reading, and GL, Marshall28 text/html 1970-01-01T00:00:00+01:00 marshall28 http://marshall28.liquidpoker.net Bad Money Management So basically what I'm going to write about here is how bad money management can destroy your bottom line as well as make your life stressful beyond belief. Because I habitually keep extensive records it's actually going to be easy to show what bad money management and bad bankroll management will do. Okay so lets backtrack to Dec 8th, 2007. My bankroll was 31,522. Just before I was planning on leaving for Bellagio 5 diamond. I had felt a little burnt out on poker and thought that I was making a ton of money but none of it was going to anything worthwhile. This prompted me to think "I have all this money, what should I do with it? First things first ... 30,000$ is not a lot of money. It's actually a pretty standard bankroll for a 2/4 or 3/6 player. Nothing more. This obviously wasn't all the money I had. I had ~10k in equity from the old Lexus I was driving around, as well as about 5k$ in the bank, and another 5k$ on a different site. I was doing pretty good. So between December 14-December 27 I withdrew 27k$ and took 3k$ to stake a friend. Between these dates I was on a huge heater, I made 20k in the two week span. This is what made me believe this was going to be the norm and that I could basically afford whatever I wanted. So I went and bought a Porsche.... Put 20k down, got a loan to finance the other 25k$ it was worth. I figured I could throw 5 grand a month at it no problem if I wanted. LOL I actually thought that I could do no wrong and that poker was easy. After doing all this, I ran my roll back up to about 20k. Thinking that the 3/6 games were too easy for me at this point I went on and moved up to 1knl. Wow was this ever a bad idea. I proceeded to lose 5 or so buy ins. Some were bad beats, others appeared to be coolers ... in my eyes I was playing well and the game seemed very beatable. So I kept playing. LOL? ... I proceeded to lose another 10 buy ins there and finally quit when I had about 5k left in my BR. Though I took this straight to 2/4 to try to start rebuilding. WOW I deserve an award for like worst bankroll management ever. Eventually I went completely broke on that account. I remember staring at it and it saying something like 3 cents. Fast forward, you can go to the thread that says 22 hour session in my blog that points to how I rebuilt my roll up to 12k the next day (yeah from zero). So "OBVIOUSLY" my initial assumptions were correct since it proves that those games are easy for me and I should be playing at least 2/4. I hope anybody else reading this realizes how clueless I was. So anyways, after having such financial success over such a short period of time, I felt entitlted to continue that. I stayed up at at least 2/4 and basically refused to move down because I "KNEW" I could beat those games. I refused to look at any of the signs written in bold print "ITS POSSIBLE, YOU CAN RUN BAD". So I had this 12k to start off the new year. I knew taxes were around the corner in April, but didn't think too much of them, just figuring that I was going to be able to duplicate the results I had from September to December of 2007. So I lost 13k$ at those games in January ... But that was OK because I knew I could beat those games, so I moved my 5k roll off of the other site back on to PS, and made roughly 2100$ in coaching, staking deals, and rakeback, so I figured I was fine and things were going to turn around....Eventually. This is when I started to play really bad, and when I began to get a terrible reputation, if I didn't already have one. The downswing affected how I played so much that it turned me into scared money. I lost about 10k in February, but again, made about 2500 from coaching/staking/profit sharing deals so I kept on trying to beat the games that I obviously was -ev in. Now around March, I still knew that taxes were around the corner, but I had my Lexus to sell to pay for those. I obviously underestimated the amount of taxes I had to pay, because the Lexus only sold for 7k and taxes ended up being 15k. So I had to borrow money, now I was in debt because I thought the games were too easy to beat and that I had a huge edge completely oblivious to how poorly I was playing. So from the start of this little entry, it took three months for me to go from feeling on top of the world to feeling in the gutter. Why? Bad bankroll management. So I kept thinking about my 400$ ---> 12k$ run in one night, and kept trying to duplicate it. I made plans to move into an apartment with a friend in Tempe, and also was still committed to paying 500$ a month on the Porsche. Between March and up until now I've run my bankroll up to at least 5k (from nothing) and back down to nothing, and back up to 5k ... let me count how many times.....4 times? ... The bankroll management I was using was 15 buy ins up to the next level, drop if I have 20 buy ins for the one below it. I kept thinking eventually it will click and all my problems would be solved. It never happened. Today is May 20th and my BR has 600$ in it. I moved back home with my parents to try to save money and rebuild. Since I've been here I've built from 500$ up to $2700 and back down to where I am now. I feel like a Neilly ... except worse. Now I have to come up with about 2k$ a month in order to pay for all my previous commitments, and use anything extra to pay back my debtors. I've put so much pressure on myself to succeed that I think it's the main reason I haven't. Poker should be fun, it hasn't been fun for me in months. : [ If I didn't have blinders on and saw the signs from the start, I would still be comfortable, even after losing the 15k at 1knl and buying the Porsche. Luckily my move in date isn't until July 1st, and we made a deal where the first month of rent is free, so the 2k a month doesn't start until August 1st. I have one more shot at this to do it the right way or else I have to quit, sell my car, sell my watch, my laptop, and find a real job. Wow, how could so much bad stuff happen in such a short period of time? I guess the title of this entry answers the question.