I did a huuuuuuuuuuge overhaul of my game around hand 50k~ or so, but unfortunately while prior to that I had been mostly playing bad/running good, I started playing good/running horrible, but still really really happy with how I played the last week of the month, I fixed soooooo many leaks and September is gonna be sweet. Also cut down to 3 tables of zoom (had been playing between 4-6 zoom or 4-9 regular), in conjunction with the game overhaul.
Stake breakdown is... 99% PLO100 Zoom, but about half the losses are from PLO200 Zoom and PLO100 Hu.
Got about 28,000 VPPs this month, 32,000 to go before back to supernova. Won a couple of hundred playing live and there's some bonuses etc in there, but numbers are pretty accurate. I think this is the 2nd or 3rd time I have a losing month ever actually, and it's definitely the least concerned I've been about one (if the month had ended around hand 50k I'd have been depressed, but taking a deep look at my own game I just realized there were so many things I could fix, it turned into something really positive).
I spent a couple of days really examining some common opening ranges in PPT, which is something I've been meaning to do for a long time but never got around to. Gotta say it wasnt as difficult or tedious work as I thought it'd be, PLO ranges may contain a lot more hands than NLHE but PPT has some pretty good syntax.
Volume wise, it's a little lower than I wanted but still decent. Next month I'm probably going to go back to Sweden for about a month or so (prob towards the end of the month), hopefully get a drivers license, maybe Vegas after around IPL time, then back to Korea again. Going to shoot for getting the 32k vpps I need for supernova before I go, if I run decent it shouldnt be too difficult (I know I said that last time but hey, this is a lot more modest of a goal :D). If I have to move down to PL50 then it'd be harder but oh well - will just have to buy a laptop in sweden and finish it there.
Its been a while since I posted my last blog entry and so have to apologise for that. Been busy grinding the NL50 levels on Stars and I seem to have found my optimal earning level. I can only describe my game as "automated" for want of a better description.
Many people would say "ABC" but that is just another way to say the same thing. Over the years I have practiced my ABC to should a level that it is almost as automatic as basic strategy in blackjack. I know that I will never be a mid-stakes player playing this way but I am doing well at my level and multi-tabling isn't harming me because I am not watching the players closely enough.
I use a HUD but only in a basic way and look at VPIP, PFR and 3/bet stats which are crucial around the blinds. But also in full ring then the tendency is for players to be more risk averse. I went through a bad run of results in the summer where my earn rate dropped over a 100k period. Luckily someone who I trust analysed my game and I was opening my ranges too much.
I just don't think that full ring allows you to do that but back on track now. I am also playing at better times of the day as well on www.pokerstars.co.uk while before I was playing in the day so that I had more of a social life......the choice had to be made.....either man up and play in the evenings and around midnight or pack it in.
Friend of mine needed a visa to China, couldn't get it in Korea so we decided to go to Hong Kong for the weekend. Had a pretty brutal first day ---
Some pre-info: My friend had to express re-new his passport as it had run out of pages, so we were due to pick up the new passport just a few hours before our flight left.
8 am: Wake up, get ready to go take BJJ test (first stripe white belt - I'm a fish).
11 am: Take test - scary as fuck, especially as I normally go to the evening classes so when at first I barely recognized anyone I wasn't feeling too at ease, but a bunch of familiar faces trickled in as time went on. Passed just barely, as did the other guy taking the same level test as me. Teacher asked me what I thought of my performance, I said soemthing along the lines of "I'm missing a lot of details, and whenever I have to do it left-handed I'm screwing things up royally". Teacher said "Agree 100% with that. Be better prepared next time!". Then turned to the other guy: "Exactly the same applies to you".
Tests are honestly one of the few things that make me nervous in life - like, I'm not insanely confident or outgoing or anything, but I don't actively dread most things... Tests will keep me awake at night. So glad I passed.
Come back, go to Seoul to pick up my friends passport from embassy, head to airport... head to checkin...... My ticket is NP, my friends ticket? "It appears it was cancelled....". After a long wait my friend has to basically re-book it on the spot (and gets a better price than me wtf, I booked in advance and picked a nicely priced one, wtf is this shit :D). Just barely make it to plane.
Arrive in Hong Kong, it's like.... 11 pm I guess? We get a crazy young HK taxi driver who has seriously 4+ phones all sitting in his dashboard and all connected to his head by various earpieces and what not. Crazy guy and also a bit of a hustler vis-a-vis tollgate fees but w-ever.
We get to our hotel, go to check in....... Ticket booked for 1 week from now. What..the....fuck? Friend re-books. We go to find an ATM and get something to eat, pretty tired by now. ATM eats my friends card. Does not give it back. I put in a random expired gym card, machine is like 'nah, i only eat credit cards' and gives it back... so apparently freak accident. We call support number and go eat, finally get through after 40 minutes on hold (looking forward to seeing what his phone bill will be after that). They say go bank and we can pick it up tomorrow.
Next day, wake up 6 am, get to travelling agency to apply for China visa at like 8:30~, head back to bank... Cute young bank lady is pretty helpful and calls around a bunch and determines that yeah, the card is there etc and let's go down and get it. Older bank manager type woman says hmmmmmmm, yeah the name on the card is your name, and you have a passport, drivers license, ID card, other card from the same bank and papers from said bank... but to be safe we're gonna ship this card back to canada, you can collect it there.
.............
So after 2 hours of this (bank lady #1 fought the good fight for us), my friend gets his card back. We go pick up the visa and do some shopping. Somehow vaguely disappointed with the shopping, I feel like we missed all the good spots :/ We checked out Times Square area, bunch of stuff along Henessy Road (SOGO, Jardine Crescent area etc) and some other random places. Feel like there could have been a lot more quality shopping with someone who knew the place a bit better.
So, Sunday we decide to go Macau for some poker. I've never played live poker in my life, haven't played Hold'em in forever, and my friend hasnt played in forever in general, but has played some live. When we arrived the first mode of transportation we saw was a free bus to the Venetian so we hopped on that, walked around til we found the poker area and sat down at a fresh HKD 25/50 table --- I guess that's like 3.5/7 USD). Probably the softest table in Macau that day lol
All fish except for 2 nits and they are basically 2 empty seats for all the hands they play. Unable to fold anything tho and keep paying the any-2-cards guy off monstrously with their overpairs.
One of the two nits was an old guy in a hoodie and headphones...
I don't know if any of you guys read the Live Poker guide by Rumnchess on twoplustwo, but in there, there's a description of a player type called "Old Man Coffee". Basically old man coffee is an older man who plays incredibly straight forward --- deuces is a limping hand, so I'll limp etc. This guy might have been slightly more towards a nit grinder than that, but when he busted out the starbucks I almost had to start laughing
Eitherway, this guy plays about 1 hand/hour at most, but will never fold top pair ever.
Finished up a little then went to eat at a really nice Brazilian steak house. Delicious o.o
Returned, got back to same table but completely different lineup: Old man-nit is still there, but the rest have been replaced by a bunch of very obviously chinese young-regs. We play 6 handed with them for a bit, until it fills up. One unpleasant retard - who thankfully leaves very soon - accuses my friend of string betting because the 4 chips he picked up to raise the river didn't all drop at th exact same mili-second (it was seriously dumb, the delay was infinitesmal). So 4k raise turns into a minraise. Might be a good thing as the guy talked himself into calling vs the nuts, but who knows.
This guy thankfully leaves, gets replaced by a Korean - we get to surprise him by saying we're from Korea too etc. Always fun. Anyway, funny hand happens.
Korean raises in ep A8s, old-man-nit calls AK behind him, chinese reg flats A3s. Flop A83, Korean bets, old man nit calls, reg raises, Korean calls, old man nit goes all-in. Chinese reg, who btw was a Chinese version of SaSe, complete with hat and everything, starts agonizing. Thinks for an eternity, and folds. Korean shrugs, calls.
Chinese guy sees old-man-nit has AK and goes crazy.
Not too much else interesting - had some run-good with A7 (kept flopping monsters with said hand), but there was one hand:
2 limps, reg in sb makes it 300, I 3bet in bb to 1k (we're like 8k deep or something). One of the limper folds and (accidentally?) shows an ace. SB makes it 2.3k. I felt incredibly strongly he had KK, considered calling for set+to bluff A flops, decided I was too likely to do somethign dumb on low flops and folded. Guy showed me KK, was so happy.
Got recognized at the table by some friends-of-a-friend, which was fun. Overall finished up a little bit, really enjoyed playing live tho --- really makes me 1) Miss hold'em 2) want to start taking some trips out to Walker Hill here in Korea.
Online this month has been meh - I feel like everytime I play badly, I run good and get rewarded, then when I play good I run like acid, part of poker I guess but still annoying to deal with, so much easier on your mind when you play good = win and play bad = lose. Down like 4 buyins or something in 30k hands.
Food in HK = amazing, one of the things i dislike the most about Korea is how difficult it can be to get a diverse selection of food... Korean Chinese restaurants generally only have Koreanized chinese food, and Korean sushi is on average pretty Koreanized too. HK had everything everywhere and that was sweet. Hong Kong also felt waaaaaay bigger than Seoul tho, kind of exhausting just being there. Want to go to Macau again badly, really hope the new table-cap law doesn't fuck over poker there....
I took like.... 3 pictures total from this trip because I'm the most horrible tourist of all time.
This post by RiKD got me thinking about a few things, I was going to write a reply in the thread it's from but thought it's a worthy discussion in its own right and deserves its own post.
On September 15 2012 10:33 RiKD wrote:
One thing to consider is poker can be pretty damaging to other facets of life and development.
Getting to the point:
[other text that was getting to the point in the thread but not the point here]
I'd love to hear some more thoughts from RiKD, and anyone else who wants to join the discussion, on how poker can be damaging to other facets of life and development. It would be good to get the perspectives of current other professional poker players, but actually especially valuable to get the perspective of guys like RiKD who have seen both sides of the fence. Guys who used to live the poker grinding freedom lifestyle and are now following different, more traditional paths, and so have seen both sides of the fence.
I have my own thoughts which I'll outline below, but do add to the discussion and let me know if you see it the same way, or where your perspectives vary, and especially new ideas I haven't been able to consider as someone who's only seen this side of the fence.
When you get strongly interested in poker (a period that i think pretty much all players that manage to become successful experience at some point) and the whole process of playing and learning and improving, you find you become addicted to this creative process and want to invest 100% of your limited mental energy+focus every day on the process. Personal growth generally happens as a result of mental energy/focus being invested in something challenging, and to limit the avenues you invest your mental energy in is to limit the avenues in which you'll grow. By investing only in poker you'll only grow in the areas of risk management, rational decision making, mental discipline and being able to play card games well (obviously). Breadth of experience will be sacrificed for great depth in one limited area, which can have all sorts of suboptimal consequences on personal development and therefore ultimately, happiness and quality of life (anyone disagree with this leap of logic?).
In my experience both personally and from talking to several other poker playing friends, a very common facet of life that poker brings negative consequences to is social development. As poker is inherently a very isolated profession, much more effort needs to be made to rectify the default situation than for someone in a traditional job who spends large parts of his work life interacting with colleagues, and social groups are easily and conveniently formed from the workplace. Generally, overcoming any kind of life-inertia like this takes some conceited effort and will, and so not everyone will do it. The problem can be especially compounded by the possibility that if the dedicated poker player is investing 100% of his mental energy into getting better at poker and/or trying to make more money, and some mental energy is required to overcome inertia, it's unlikely to happen if there isn't any left. Your most likely social group (the one for which the least amount of energy invested in overcoming inertia is required) as a poker player is other poker players, and so your perspectives and circle all become limited, which limits your potential avenues for growth, development and discovery (going back to the idea of breadth of experience being a positive).
I believe that while professional poker does present these challenges and can bring these pitfalls, it's up to the individual player to overcome the inertia of the default situation playing poker for a living puts you in with an investment of energy and will. This is quite a difficult thing to do generally, and that's why you see a lot of unhappy professional poker players and a lot of obese people to name another example. Since this is just some stream of consciousness thoughts to open discussion, I won't bother to write any sort of tidy conclusion beyond this and instead hope the discussion starts flowing from here
i'll try not to be too sentimental, but my party is over.
i'm out.
if poker gets legalized in the US, theres ~5% chance I play again, but for now I'm out. I did my time and I'm done.
I know most of you won't care, and you shouldn't!, regardless this site was a major factor in me being a 25nl noob to a supernova MSNL grinder for YEARS.
to be honest this was never the lifestyle I set out for, that being said it was an experience I will be forever grateful for. I will be pursuing higher education moving forward and trying to enjoy my time spinning on the rock.
There are far too many people I owe thanks to, and regretfully I am a fair bit too lazy to list them individually. I sincerely wish you all the best of luck in your pursuits regarding poker and life in general. You are all a good lot and brimming with potential in all corners of life. Our time on Earth is short and wild, and hopefully we will all do our best to make the most of it. I am incredibly fortunate to simply have been born in an age where I had the ability to communicate with people from such varied backgrounds as are present here and I'd like to thank anyone who contributed in any way major or minor for simply helping me to better understand humanity and the world as a whole. To think if we were born 60 years prior to now being in communication with people 200km away let alone 2,000 would be rare if not impossible is fascinating to me.
I'll probably still check up on the ROFL thread from time to time, and if anyone has any questions or comments about anything whatsoever feel free to drop me a line.
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