May was an awful month. Many things went wrong in real life and poker suffered both in terms of volume and results because of that. About a fifth of the entire month's volume occurred during 2 days where I was on major life tilt. I still made money in cash, but lost money overall due to more run bad at MTTs. One of my aims for May was to put in some work on my MTT game and short stacked play and I did do quite a bit of work off the table. Bought Holdem Resources Calculator and played around a lot with Nash Equilibrium ranges for 5bb+ante, 10bb+ante and 15bb+ante stack sizes and I definitely have a much better idea of how to go about playing those stack sizes now. A shame I lose almost every flip though; as you can see from the screenshot below I ran almost 4bb/100 below expectation in EV in MTTs. I know most people don't measure tournament results like that but it just shows how far below Chip EV I was.
This month my aim is to buy a new car , get in tad more volume (As always) and have better results. The car I'm currently looking at is an E92 BMW M3, there are 2 that I'm viewing this week, just hoping one of them is up to scratch and I can get a good deal on my part exchange. I actually put a deposit down on an M3 last month, but it was stolen from the forecourt the day before I was meant to pick it up which pretty much sums up how bad I ran in every respect in May. Maybe it will turn out for the best and I'll find a better example of that car this month. I hope so anyway!
April was by far the lowest volume month of the year so far. Part of the reason for this is that I went to Korea on the 2nd and got back on the 10th, so I was already a third of the month down with 0 volume. To make matters worse I didn't make up for that lack of volume in the remaining 2/3rds of the month. Here are a few pics from the Korea trip:
Me with d.Apollo, an old friend I met at UK WCG 2008 who is now a SC2 commentator baller
Rum bucket with Dream.t)gongju and Dream.t)kyu. Korean friends I've known online for god knows how long
With Sea[Shield]
With Dream.t)HyuN, HuK and ToT)HayprO(
Group pic on last night in Korea with Dream.t)M18M, Dream.t)gongju, Dream.t)HyuN, Dream.t)ANNA, Dream.t)kyu, me, SLoG4[pG] and Dream.t)Jangbi. Love my Dream.t clanmates obvs
I am considering going back some time between June and August depending on how life goes in my home town to live for a year. It's prob a coinflip whether I will or won't at this point. Seoul is the nuts, I just wish I could take my house and friends and dump them all in Gang Nam.
Poker results were pretty good when I actually played. I felt a bit rusty when I got back from Korea and struggled at first, hitting some mini downswing, but since then I started crushing when I played and won 16 out of 18 sessions played. Still, given the pathetic volume I obviously didn't win too much.
Cash games:
Tournaments:
Results:
VPPs: 16,447.36
Cash: +$4,632.16
MTTs: -$734.78
Overall: +$3,897.38 (Not including VPPs and bonuses)
I think I need to do some work on my tournament game, especially with SCOOP coming up. I'm already down $5k+ this year in MTTs, which is naturally easy to do given the variance with huge fields, but I just don't feel too confident in my short stacked play in general, and since it's useful to be good at short stacked play in cash given the state of games in 2013 I intend to spend some time next month working on improving my short stacked play and MTT game. Yearly VPP goal has to be set at 500k VPPs now considering the volume I've managed in March and April, but I've somehow even fallen behind that pace by now. I can't see myself catching up much in the next month as I have a lot more social plans etc. Going to Korea would almost certainly be good for my grind, or if I stay here, when the weather gets worse I'll start grinding a lot more also. 500k VPPs is still plausible, but I don't want to fall too far behind during the decent weather we're finally getting or it will soon become a 300k VPP year of disappointment.
There may still be a couple of days left in March, but I'm not going to be playing on either of them so figured I'd post results now.
I have put in extremely little volume this month, in fact I've made barely more than 20k VPPs and so SNE is completely off the cards now. It's gonna be tough to force myself to sit down and put in volume without having a volume oriented goal in mind and I think it's hard to feel the same incentive to play hard in order to make 500k VPPs or 700k or whatever is attainable for me. Just doesn't motivate like the benefits of SNE can motivate (Apparently that wasn't enough to make me play much either though). I have been going out way too much and getting way too drunk this month and so I've felt a bit like a zombie most days. It was a very fun month though and life enjoyment is worth more than money anyway so I'm not overly sad about the fact I fucked up my SNE pursuit.
Despite not playing too much I have managed to spend silly amounts lately. I've withdrew about £9k (~$15.5k) from my Stars acc in the last 2 months which I definitely cannot sustain for long if I encounter a break even or losing stretch. Too much of the stuff I've spunked on is useless stuff that I didn't even need, but one expenditure I made that I'm excited about is the fact I booked tickets for Seoul, Korea. I'll be arriving there 3rd April and staying till 9th April. No doubt I will be drinking every day. If there's anyone here that's in Seoul who'd want to meet for a few drinks or food or whatever I'd prob be up for it, just send me a PM or whatever.
When I did play I did well this month. I was up 55 buyins in the first 30k hands of the month which was about $8.5k or something, unfortunately I ran like shit since then and went on a 20 buyin downer which I've just started recovering from. Still, I feel like I'm playing a lot better than I did in February, just need to refocus and get more volume in when I'm back from Korea and will hopefully still be able to make a 6fig year when rakeback is factored in. Yearly EV winrates at 200 and 100nl are both around 5bb/100 with almost 200k hands combined now so I'm feeling pretty good about continuing playing at those stakes and making some good money without a great deal of variance. I'll prob try and jump into 500nl games at times, particularly if there's a lot of 1 tablers or known fish, but since I'm not going for SNE anymore I won't force myself to play there much.
Next month I just plan to enjoy Korea, get in a good amount of poker when I'm back but not force myself to play too much or even at all if I'm not in the mood. Basically just to play when I feel like it and get in a reasonable amount of volume without going crazy I guess.
After a good January I expected more of the same in February, but it was not to be. I set 3 goals at the end of January and I failed on each one.
The first and foremost goal was to get back on track with SNE by getting in greater than SNE volume in Feb. I fell a long way short and only managed to play enough to make 50,108.55 VPPs, putting my yearly total to 113,467.52, about 50k VPPs short of SNE pace. I've never been a high volume player so this is a lot for me, but given all the time I have, I really ought to do better. I do have a poor internet connection which has slowed me down and there has been a couple of other reasons for the lack of volume. One reason is that I got a new car and I've managed to tally up ~2k miles in the 3 weeks since I got it at a cost of almost £500 in Petrol and a lot of hours away from the tables. Secondly my social life was way busier than normal and I think there was probably only 1 day in the entire month where I did not spend most of the day out the house despite poor weather on the whole. Also, later in the month I replaced 500NL Zoom with 100NL Zoom tables so that obviously negatively impacted the amount of VPPs I could make per hour.
As disappointing as it is to not get in the volume I'd hoped to, I wouldn't mind that much if I hit my other 2 goals. I aimed to make a positive EV winrate at 500NL Zoom, and in short; I failed miserably. I've now played almost 100k hands of 500NL Zoom this year and I've "made" -$8.4k in EV. I have never played any limit of NL and had a negative winrate over 100k hands so I'm struggling to deal with this at the moment. I can't help but feel like I've ran atrocious, and I certainly have ran AK/QQ/KK into better hands way more than opponents have into me, flopped set % of <10, and when I do hit one have frequently ran into overset/straight/flush etc. way more than in my favour, but after a sample as big as this I also have to consider the possibility that I might only be barely better than a breakeven player running poorly at best, or sadly, perhaps even a slight long term loser. Maybe I've been "coolered" so much because I'm being outplayed, perhaps people are making hero folds vs me in some spots where I wouldn't fold in their spot. I definitely need to rethink some spots and see where I'm going wrong. I'm definitely motivated to improve because if I cannot play 500NL without donating, then there is no way I'm going to achieve SNE. If I 8 table 200NL+500NL Zoom I can make SNE with a little over 3 hours a day average, if I 8 table 100NL+200NL Zoom, that jumps to about 4.5 hours a day, which is simply too much for me. I couldn't sustain that for a month, let alone a year. Hell, looks like I can't even sustain 3 hours a day let alone 4.5 hours so I really need to plug leaks etc asap or just reduce my goals.
I've managed much better at 200NL Zoom overall and I had a positive winrate there in February also, but sadly not as big as the 4 EV bb/100 winrate I had aimed for. It's clear to me that 200NL Zoom is considerably easier than 500NL Zoom (Duh), but I don't feel like the gap is as big as the results I've had so far this year indicate. Yes it's tougher, but there's also slightly less winrate ate up in rake and a lot of the same players play both 200NL and 500NL Zoom (Though admittedly, not the best of the regs) so it shouldn't be THAT much tougher.
I avoided MTTs this month, and only played in the Quarterly $1mm freeroll, but busted not too far short of the bubble on a flip.
Obligatory screenshot:
Monthly summary:
VPPs: 50,108.55
Cash: -$5,067,31 (Not including rakeback and bonuses)
MTTs: +$0
I'm not going to set any win x or achieve x winrate goals this month. I really ought to pay less attention to short term results anyway. It's clear that you can crush one month and get crushed the next without doing much different (As is proved by my January and February results, although I conceed January's success was largely due to running way above EV), but I would like to put in a lot of volume. SNE was always the goal but I can see that quickly slipping away, especially as I have a bunch more social obligations in March which will severely hamper how much I can play. I'm mainly just hoping to rebuild confidence at 100NL+200NL Zoom early in the month and then get back into 500NL zoom if I can and not lose too much ground on SNE if possible. If I can not lose too much ground with SNE and end the month with enough confidence that I can win at 500NL Zoom then I'll still have an outside chance of catching up through April/May etc, and if not, then I guess my SNE hopes will be done by the end of next month. We shall see!
Lloyd Irvin, a famous scumbag (those stories are for another day) grappling instructor put on an invitation brown belt no time limit submission only tournament he has dubbed the BJJ kumite. His student, Keenan Cornelius, is the next big name in BJJ. He won all of the biggest tournaments (worlds, world no gi, pan ams, european championships, brazilian national championships) at middleweight and absolute as a purple belt last year and was recently promoted to brown. Lloyd wanted to prove that Keenan was the best brown belt in the world, so he invited some of the other best guys in the world to compete against him.
Check out the 3 episodes:
Really enjoyed watching these. Lit a fire under my ass to start training a bit harder.
Lloyd Irvin, a famous scumbag (those stories are for another day) grappling instructor put on an invitation brown belt no time limit submission only tournament he has dubbed the BJJ kumite. His student, Keenan Cornelius, is the next big name in BJJ. He won all of the biggest tournaments (worlds, world no gi, pan ams, european championships, brazilian national championships) at middleweight and absolute as a purple belt last year and was recently promoted to brown. Lloyd wanted to prove that Keenan was the best brown belt in the world, so he invited some of the other best guys in the world to compete against him.
Check out the 3 episodes:
Really enjoyed watching these. Lit a fire under my ass to start training a bit harder.
My mom's kindle was tilting the shit out of her. She would order stuff from amazon and it wouldnt show up in her library, its a simple device with no buttons and hard to get used to and she preferred reading on her ipad so she gave it to me. Since then i've read 7 books and can barely put the thing down.
books ive read:
hunger games trilogy - was an enjoyable and quick read.
Speaker for the Dead: http://www.amazon.com/Speaker-Dead-Ender-Book-2/dp/0812550757
The sequel to Ender's Game. Well kind of the sequel. The author later decided to add lots of prequels and interquels so there are a few books that take place in between, but this is the next book he wrote in the series and I have decided to skip over most of the others. Loved it even more than Ender's game.
Xenocide: http://www.amazon.com/Xenocide-Ender-Book-Orson-Scott/dp/0812509250
the third book in the Ender's game series. its somewhat different than the first two, its turned very philosophical and talky but I love it. I have never been as infuriated with characters in a work of fiction as I am with this book and I think thats a good sign. I imagine most people who read Ender's Game either stopped after the first or second book and never reached the third. Def worth continuing forward.
My february reading list is the last few books in the Ender's game series. Children of the Mind and whatever comes after that in the main ender series. Then I will probably move on to some nonfiction works.
you guys recommend anything else that falls into line with the books ive been reading? or any recommendations whatsoever,im on pace to read about 85 books this year so probably have time for just about everything
My mom's kindle was tilting the shit out of her. She would order stuff from amazon and it wouldnt show up in her library, its a simple device with no buttons and hard to get used to and she preferred reading on her ipad so she gave it to me. Since then i've read 7 books and can barely put the thing down.
books ive read:
hunger games trilogy - was an enjoyable and quick read.
Speaker for the Dead: http://www.amazon.com/Speaker-Dead-Ender-Book-2/dp/0812550757
The sequel to Ender's Game. Well kind of the sequel. The author later decided to add lots of prequels and interquels so there are a few books that take place in between, but this is the next book he wrote in the series and I have decided to skip over most of the others. Loved it even more than Ender's game.
Xenocide: http://www.amazon.com/Xenocide-Ender-Book-Orson-Scott/dp/0812509250
the third book in the Ender's game series. its somewhat different than the first two, its turned very philosophical and talky but I love it. I have never been as infuriated with characters in a work of fiction as I am with this book and I think thats a good sign. I imagine most people who read Ender's Game either stopped after the first or second book and never reached the third. Def worth continuing forward.
My february reading list is the last few books in the Ender's game series. Children of the Mind and whatever comes after that in the main ender series. Then I will probably move on to some nonfiction works.
you guys recommend anything else that falls into line with the books ive been reading? or any recommendations whatsoever,im on pace to read about 85 books this year so probably have time for just about everything
As I'm aiming for SNE this year, I thought I'd start blogging a bit more about poker and hopefully find some extra motivation that way. In the past I've talked about what's going on in my life as well as poker in my blog, but this year I'm just gonna post about poker.
I've been playing 8 tables of Zoom200 and 500 in the hope of making enough VPPs for SNE by the end of the year and, somewhat luckily, January was my best winning cash game month since early 2011, which was the last time I was going for SNE (Was on pace until halfway through Feb then made ~100k VPPs for the rest of the rest) and doing well at PLO. However January has been the worst month I ever remember having at tournaments, though this isn't the end of the world since I've never put in much volume in tournaments so it's not much of a loss monetarily. Clearly, I'm largely doing so well due to my running way way above expectation at Zoom500, but I think that situationally I've ran pretty atrocious there. I do think there's a sizable skill gap between Zoom200 and Zoom500, but not so much that I should have near enough 7bb/100 EV winrate at Zoom200, and a negative one at Zoom500. TCOOP was the reason for the poor tournament results, nothing good happened there and I was only close to a deep run in one tournament, the $320 knockout NLHE tournament where I had above average chips with ~180 players left, only to bust not long after due to 2 lost flips. A shame, because the prizes were increasing rapidly from then on out, but not really a surprise given that average chips at that point was about 10bbs.
HEM2 Screenshots:
So for the month:
VPPs: 63,358.97 (20k behind SNE pace)
Cash: +$20,496.21
MTTs: -$3,829.33
Overall: +$16,666.88 (Not including fpps and bonuses)
Next month I'm mainly just hoping to have a positive EV winrate at Zoom500, aim for ~4bb/100 EV winrate at Zoom200, and get in as close to 100k VPPs as possible and start to make some headway on SNE.
Hey guys, let me see. I've been thinking about making this blog for quite awhile. But I kept delaying, since it didn't go as well as I had planned lol.
I heard a mate say "yea, people rarely if ever post a blog unless they've done really good, or won a lot". And I scruffed (not sure if that word fits here lol). Anyway, I felt some tingling, like "I'm so gonna make a shitty update poker blog". Or something along those lines!
So here it is!!
First I went into PLO, wanted to learn it. I read 2 books, I read the Bugs learning PLO, and I read "Transitioning to PLO". By that chinese guy none of you like.
Then I hit the table. I felt I did alright, but couldn't seem to win. I nagged a bit on a few people who are winning in PLO, and I mostly got "good" feedback.
I played 10plo on stars, and after 6 weeks, my roll was gone, it was around 550$.
Felt a little *sob*, and "ah well, at least I tried lol". But I felt a tingling, like I wanted to play more, and lately I had been dreaming a lot about "normal poker", no limit. So I went no my Stars account, and I collected the bonuses. Not 100% sure how much it was, maybe around 150 dollar or so, and then I started 5nl lol. (Yes, I started 5nl xD). I won "decent" winning at around 10 - 12 bb/100, something like that. And then I switched to EU site and started grinding 10nl.
And here is how that went + how I built up my work/study ethics n shit(I sometimes swear to come of a little cooler than I normally am).
I got to the new software, which I really struggled with. And I was just in time for a raked hand race. I wanted to compete in that, so I played 8 - 10 tables (max on the site is 10).
In hindsight maybe not best approach, since I've not played NL in a year or so, and when I did play then, I didn't play that much, and wasn't particularly crisp/good.
I think I fixed most of my big leaks. I play WAY to aggro, my normal game a few years ago was 100nl and 200nl. And I 3b quite a bit, also in pos. I bluffed rivers a bit too much. I also made a bit of bluffs when I had them on 3rd pair, 2nd pair, and I raged quite a bit getting called.
Also spewed a bit by 3b, and firing, sometimes multiple barrels. Other than that I felt I just ran quite bad. And was crushing it. But that might be bias.
I did get 2nd place in the hand race, for 200e, and I raked some, so even though it looks atrocious, it didn't go too bad lol. I also learned the software more, cut down on 3b oop, and stopped bluffing. And I felt it went much, much better.
Oh, and I spent a shit ton of time reviewing sessions, studying, watching video's, taking notes so forth. So felt I was getting much better, result just didn't show it yet.
My first stab at 20nl didn't go well, I ran 100e under EV, and I had to drop down to 10nl, for a few bi, but the 2nd stab went well, and after that I kept winning, and I felt comfortable, and it went quite quickly up to to 1000e roll, I hadn't set anything in stone yet. But in my head I wanted to take small stabs at 50nl, somewhere around over 1000e'ish.
So went a lot better here, but I think it's mostly me getting better. By now the first month is over, and this is start of December, maybe 1 week into december or so.
I cut out 3b oop, unless they had high fold to 3b lol. I got better at c-betting, I upped it up a notch, to around 70% most sessions. I also got a little insipired at the longple vod, and I started stealing absurd amount (absurd for me lol). I still didn't open enough CO perhaps, but I had session where I had opened 78% of buttons etc, and that felt nice. My SB steal vs BB was also much, much higher.
Also stopped spewing in 3b pots, and I cut down bluffing dramatically, to almost non existant. + I kept studying a lot. Oh, and I also cut down to 5 - 8 tables, never 9 or 10, since that makes me go into autopilot, clicking buttons way to fast, stressing, feeling a little flustered and "unsure" on my reads, table dynamics n such.
Auau, I think I've had 5 or 6 shots so far, at one point my roll was at 1800e, but I had a few brutal sessions which almost destroyed me lol. At one point I had to take 2 day break, since I went on tilt lol.
I know it's pretty standard and is to be expected here and there, but in the middle of a shot, where you're kind of under rolled, it buuurns lol.
But on a side note, the guy was pretty awesome lol. He stacked a few other regulars and wrote in chat we were all fishes, and he was going to 400nl, to see if he could find some better competition.
Whole table spammed NoooooooOoOoOooo, when he left xD
I think he was around 95/49, and hated when you bet or raised him, he'd usually raise back or shove. yay lol.
But that being said, I think I play worse on 50nl than I do on 20nl, I felt I have done some bad calls vs regulars, and feel a little uneasy, like I sometimes want to "save" money, since I know I'm shotting. So that's not good. (I also think Talented Tom scolded me on a few occasions on some of the hands, he wasn't all too happy about some of my plays u c).
Let me see if I can quote him right:
"This is beyond terrible, In this hand I can't tell if it's really you or Doc.Lemon playing the hand". (ouuchhh).
And when I have reviewd hands, the biggest mistakes have been on 50nl.
Not feeling I've been sucking lol, but could be a lot better xD
I've been doing something around 60% play, and 40% study. In the last 2-3 months I think I have maybe studied 200 hours or so. Which is more than I ever have in poker I think.
I know the results ain't all that, and some of you highroller, ballers, pussylickers, brawlers and crazy ppl might lol a bit. But pffth. At least I'm trying damnit xD lol
I've always struggled with Poker since it's not as fun as gaming is, I get such a high when gaming, think it's dopamine rushes, constant small rewards, and you don't have to think as mentally hard (when learning at least).
So I've been trying to go systematically about it. I have this nifty whiteboard I use to help me (which u can see in this picture right here:
(Tried linking the playlist I made, he has hundreds of movies, but I went through all the "concept/theory". Video's and made a playlist with just them (he has 22 of them, for NL), and I watched through them a couple of times + and I wrote some notes and shit).
Next I studied through the "Double your 6max Winrate video's, some Gekko guy on 2+2, has some huge coaching thread about it being all sick n stuff. So thought might be a good place to start after I was done with all the micro shit xD
Maybe 40 pages of Notes on that course, think the course cost 400e though, and consisted of 25vods, half of them 30 minutes, some less, and a txt document.
Here's what I thought was all my notebooks on poker from these last few months: + Show Spoiler +
But then I remember I had a big one, just for HEM/Hud shit, trying to get better at that stuff as well. I went on to that after I was done with the 6max course. This has been the most difficult to understand, lots of numbers n stuff: + Show Spoiler +
Got maybe 50 pages or so on how to set up hud, how to use it, how to go through your sessions, pop ups, stuff like that.
So the general idea is to use stats of situations that comes up the most frequent. I've tinkered a lot with how it looks visually. And I've kept adding more and more stats as I got used to them. When I added a stat I would make it purple, always, and just add 1 at the time, and when I got used to it, I'd add another one.
I think this is my limit, since I'm a little worried I might have too many, but I think this number is fine. I use 17 or so.
The top line is Preflop, so I thought I'd be smart to have VPIP, PFR, STEAL and Limp Call there.
The second line is 3B and Fold to 3B. I have IP and OOP on the popups, and I have 4B and Fold to 4B on the popups.
The grey text is aggression on each street. Wasn't sure where to put them, so put them there.
The 3rd line is Cbet/fold Cbet and Raise flop and donk bet
And last line is Hands, how much the BB and SB folds to steal, and WTS when they saw the flop.
I also color coded it with ranges. So in the example I set up, on Limp call, the super cally station fishes who calls a lot calls between 60% - 90% when we isolate them. And the more timid, only play their 2 cards fishes usually folds most of the time when we isolate. (Also the fishes who fold a lot, have a lot lower WTS and a lot higher Fold to c,bet).
I have this red, white, green system on most stats. On some I have teal, when something is exploitable, either too low or too high it goes teal. The reason for this is to not have everytihng mashed together. I have kept tinkering with it an awful lot, I even sat through all the different text types to find one that I felt was most soothing at the tables.
Ok, so that's about it. I almost didn't make this blog, since I failed my goal. When I deposited on the site I got a 400e bonus, but I had to play in 18000 points in 60 days. I just didn't make it. And mostly because I got really sick during the christmas, got the flu, and when I tried playing my brain would melt (not literally lol).
So ended up 2000 points short lol. Which is a bit annoying, and I regret playing sick, losing 300e in another 50nl shot when I was feeling awful, and didn't want to play lol.
So now the roll is at 1400e. And I'm wondering what to do next. I do feel a little burned out, and I do feel the results ain't quite what I had hoped for. But looking back at all the study, writing, and thought I've put into it. I'm quite proud of that, so yay xD
Ok, thanks for reading you dirty bitches (always wanted to say that xD).
Been listening to a lot of Joe Rogan recently, and I absolutely love how he brings up things that people just don't talk about all that often. I've been wanting to write this for a long time now, so hopefully it will be an interesting read. Sorry if it starts sounding like I'm rambling, because there will definitely be some parts that will be. The other day, Maz posted the 'How has poker changed in 4 years' thread and it really made me think about a lot of things. Clearly a lot has changed in the past 4 years. What will change in the next 10 years? If you're a poker pro, do you plan on still being a poker pro in 10 years?
When Daut won PCA (Pic w FrinkX, RainKhan, Daut, and me)
I consider 2007 the first year I became a full-time pro. I had finally made my way up to $2/$4 and $3/$6 6-max / heads-up dabbling in shots at $5/$10 from time to time. Even thou I was still in college at the time I basically brought my laptop to every single class / lecture room and played none stop. The games were still very soft, and anytime I found myself in a downswing the solution would be the same: Load up more tables and play for longer. There weren't regs that exploited auto-piloting multi-tablers. Just play more hands and eventually you'll stop running bad and win again. Cardrunners was already the leading poker training website, and anybody who was a serious pro was a member. You could see the regs fixing leaks very fast. I remember there was a 6-max reg who open-limped a ton. Every time he raised preflop it would be with JJ+ (not AK), and he just played very tight/solid post flop. I remember this guy because for a year straight I would shit all over him and he was the biggest loser on my PokerTracker by a large margin, even thou he was definitely still winning overall in these games... One day he stopped open-limping, and started raising all of those hands. That was a very sad day.
Grinding online in 2006
Eventually all the regs got a lot better, and the uber fish started to slowly die out. The games had become more aggressive, and with that came higher variance. Oct/Nov/Dec of 2009 there was a long stretch of time where I was down swinging online. My old strategy of just loading up more tables and playing for longer hours were only making things worse. I had lost the confidence to play. I would question if I was even winning anymore. I would always play stupidly over-rolled for any game, so it wasn't really losing money that was bugging me, it was seeing regs that I use to crush start crushing me. In an attempt to regain confidence I moved down to $1/$2 only to run into another break even stretch. One morning I woke up, and as I was loading up my tables, I get stacked in the very first hand I played. I instantly closed all the tables I was loading up and just sat there staring at the screen. I was listening to Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance'. Your brain can connect certain moments, thoughts, memories, feelings with certain sights, sounds, or smells. It was at this moment where I first thought about quitting poker. It's weird now that every time I hear that song Ooooh Oh, Caught in a Bad Romance... it immediately reminds me of how I felt that day. I got really honest with myself on that day and made a decision for the better. December 20th 2009, 3 years ago to the day, I quit playing online poker as a full-time pro.
ElkY and me at Wynn Classic 2008
Lucky for me, live poker is basically what online poker was in 2007. I know some people find live poker retardedly slow and frustrating but in a weird way I find it relaxing. There are a few things that have come to my attention over the past 3 years thou. You never notice this online since the player pool is massive (atleast at the mid-stakes on Stars & FTP it was) but when it comes down to it, poker is a negative sum game once you factor in the rake. There are so many players online that you rarely see the true effects of this. San Diego is not a small city, but it's not like Vegas, Miami, or LA either in terms of it's poker community. When I first started playing live, there were probably 40 players that called themselves a "pro". And by "pro" I mean, the only thing they did was play poker, and they brought in no outside income into the game. Of these 40 players, there are only 5 or so that remain. It's crazy how true AndrewSong's post in that thread of "90% of the regs from 2008 went busto" actually is. It will happen thou, a game needs outside income in it to run. If you put 9 pros at a table and have they are forced to play together everyday, eventually 8 will be broke and the lone winner will be left without a game to play.
For my next reference: The Hyperbolic Time Chamber from DBZ
Perhaps the funniest (soon to be sad and scary) thing I've noticed is the evolution of Hold'em in live poker and how it's starting to mirror the evolution of Hold'em in online games. In Dragon Ball Z (one of the best anime's ever made btw) there was this room called the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. When you're in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, 1 day in real world = 1 year in the time chamber. The room extends to infinity and the gravity is x100 earth's gravity and there is 1000 degree flames of fire and all kinds of fucking brutal ass-kicking shit. Goku and Gohan go in the Hyberbolic Time Chamber, evolve into higher level Super Saiyans, come out and rape everyone's face in the real world. Online poker is the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. You are able to learn the game so much faster online than you are able to live. In some ways, it's actually extremely hard to correctly learn Hold'em when playing live since it's so slow, it's very hard to see the long run.
Live @ The Bike: Nits make me laugh
Ronin Talken on 2p2 wrote a good article on 3betting meta game in Hold'em a while back and I'll just take a quote from it:
History of 3betting cliffnotes for lazy people:
- Everyone 3bets a merged value range.
- Everyone realizes that 4bets are really big in No Limit, and folding JJ preflop sucks.
- Everyone stops 3betting, unless they have KK+, AK.
- Everyone stops calling 3bets, because no one 3bets anything but QQ+, AK.
- Smart people started 3betting ATC because nits are hilarious.
- Nits got less nitty and started 4betting.
- Even smarter people invented polarization.
- Etc...
When I started live poker everyone was somewhere between the first two steps. Now most people have gotten to the: Everyone stops 3betting, unless they have KK+, AK. And some have moved on to: Everyone stops calling 3bets, because no one 3bets anything but QQ+, AK. This is where most live games are today, especially at the $5/$10 and $10/$20 level. That was like 2008 online poker! Sure enough thou, the improvements in player's game in live poker is mirroring how players improved online.
Live @ The Bike: Running into sets
So now I channel my inner Joe Rogan, and get real and honest. Online poker is most likely never going to return to USA. If it does, the games will be terrible. So where does this leave us as poker pros? What's the future like 10 years from now if you decide to continue playing this game? I know it might be depressing to think about, but it's definitely something that should be on everyone's mind. The longer you play this game the tougher it becomes to transition into other real world rolls. Is this something you commit to all the way? Will it still be viable to play without another source of income in the future? I'd like to hear your guys thoughts on the subject.
Been listening to a lot of Joe Rogan recently, and I absolutely love how he brings up things that people just don't talk about all that often. I've been wanting to write this for a long time now, so hopefully it will be an interesting read. Sorry if it starts sounding like I'm rambling, because there will definitely be some parts that will be. The other day, Maz posted the 'How has poker changed in 4 years' thread and it really made me think about a lot of things. Clearly a lot has changed in the past 4 years. What will change in the next 10 years? If you're a poker pro, do you plan on still being a poker pro in 10 years?
When Daut won PCA (Pic w FrinkX, RainKhan, Daut, and me)
I consider 2007 the first year I became a full-time pro. I had finally made my way up to $2/$4 and $3/$6 6-max / heads-up dabbling in shots at $5/$10 from time to time. Even thou I was still in college at the time I basically brought my laptop to every single class / lecture room and played none stop. The games were still very soft, and anytime I found myself in a downswing the solution would be the same: Load up more tables and play for longer. There weren't regs that exploited auto-piloting multi-tablers. Just play more hands and eventually you'll stop running bad and win again. Cardrunners was already the leading poker training website, and anybody who was a serious pro was a member. You could see the regs fixing leaks very fast. I remember there was a 6-max reg who open-limped a ton. Every time he raised preflop it would be with JJ+ (not AK), and he just played very tight/solid post flop. I remember this guy because for a year straight I would shit all over him and he was the biggest loser on my PokerTracker by a large margin, even thou he was definitely still winning overall in these games... One day he stopped open-limping, and started raising all of those hands. That was a very sad day.
Grinding online in 2006
Eventually all the regs got a lot better, and the uber fish started to slowly die out. The games had become more aggressive, and with that came higher variance. Oct/Nov/Dec of 2009 there was a long stretch of time where I was down swinging online. My old strategy of just loading up more tables and playing for longer hours were only making things worse. I had lost the confidence to play. I would question if I was even winning anymore. I would always play stupidly over-rolled for any game, so it wasn't really losing money that was bugging me, it was seeing regs that I use to crush start crushing me. In an attempt to regain confidence I moved down to $1/$2 only to run into another break even stretch. One morning I woke up, and as I was loading up my tables, I get stacked in the very first hand I played. I instantly closed all the tables I was loading up and just sat there staring at the screen. I was listening to Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance'. Your brain can connect certain moments, thoughts, memories, feelings with certain sights, sounds, or smells. It was at this moment where I first thought about quitting poker. It's weird now that every time I hear that song Ooooh Oh, Caught in a Bad Romance... it immediately reminds me of how I felt that day. I got really honest with myself on that day and made a decision for the better. December 20th 2009, 3 years ago to the day, I quit playing online poker as a full-time pro.
ElkY and me at Wynn Classic 2008
Lucky for me, live poker is basically what online poker was in 2007. I know some people find live poker retardedly slow and frustrating but in a weird way I find it relaxing. There are a few things that have come to my attention over the past 3 years thou. You never notice this online since the player pool is massive (atleast at the mid-stakes on Stars & FTP it was) but when it comes down to it, poker is a negative sum game once you factor in the rake. There are so many players online that you rarely see the true effects of this. San Diego is not a small city, but it's not like Vegas, Miami, or LA either in terms of it's poker community. When I first started playing live, there were probably 40 players that called themselves a "pro". And by "pro" I mean, the only thing they did was play poker, and they brought in no outside income into the game. Of these 40 players, there are only 5 or so that remain. It's crazy how true AndrewSong's post in that thread of "90% of the regs from 2008 went busto" actually is. It will happen thou, a game needs outside income in it to run. If you put 9 pros at a table and have they are forced to play together everyday, eventually 8 will be broke and the lone winner will be left without a game to play.
For my next reference: The Hyperbolic Time Chamber from DBZ
Perhaps the funniest (soon to be sad and scary) thing I've noticed is the evolution of Hold'em in live poker and how it's starting to mirror the evolution of Hold'em in online games. In Dragon Ball Z (one of the best anime's ever made btw) there was this room called the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. When you're in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, 1 day in real world = 1 year in the time chamber. The room extends to infinity and the gravity is x100 earth's gravity and there is 1000 degree flames of fire and all kinds of fucking brutal ass-kicking shit. Goku and Gohan go in the Hyberbolic Time Chamber, evolve into higher level Super Saiyans, come out and rape everyone's face in the real world. Online poker is the Hyperbolic Time Chamber. You are able to learn the game so much faster online than you are able to live. In some ways, it's actually extremely hard to correctly learn Hold'em when playing live since it's so slow, it's very hard to see the long run.
Live @ The Bike: Nits make me laugh
Ronin Talken on 2p2 wrote a good article on 3betting meta game in Hold'em a while back and I'll just take a quote from it:
History of 3betting cliffnotes for lazy people:
- Everyone 3bets a merged value range.
- Everyone realizes that 4bets are really big in No Limit, and folding JJ preflop sucks.
- Everyone stops 3betting, unless they have KK+, AK.
- Everyone stops calling 3bets, because no one 3bets anything but QQ+, AK.
- Smart people started 3betting ATC because nits are hilarious.
- Nits got less nitty and started 4betting.
- Even smarter people invented polarization.
- Etc...
When I started live poker everyone was somewhere between the first two steps. Now most people have gotten to the: Everyone stops 3betting, unless they have KK+, AK. And some have moved on to: Everyone stops calling 3bets, because no one 3bets anything but QQ+, AK. This is where most live games are today, especially at the $5/$10 and $10/$20 level. That was like 2008 online poker! Sure enough thou, the improvements in player's game in live poker is mirroring how players improved online.
Live @ The Bike: Running into sets
So now I channel my inner Joe Rogan, and get real and honest. Online poker is most likely never going to return to USA. If it does, the games will be terrible. So where does this leave us as poker pros? What's the future like 10 years from now if you decide to continue playing this game? I know it might be depressing to think about, but it's definitely something that should be on everyone's mind. The longer you play this game the tougher it becomes to transition into other real world rolls. Is this something you commit to all the way? Will it still be viable to play without another source of income in the future? I'd like to hear your guys thoughts on the subject.
Yo! this is for the swedes and its about taxes so I will keep it in swedish.
Jag har nyligen fått brev från skatteverket och dom vill att jag redovisar alla mina vinster utanför eu i perioden 2008-2012, inklusive netelleruttag och gud vet vad. Antar att det är fler än jag som åkt på den här grejjen och undrar om ni vet hur man ska göra. Jag har skattat för min sunday million-vinst men utöver det har jag fan ingen aning om vad jag plussat eller gått back år från år. Just att det handlar om någon slags årsredovisning gör ju att man kan bli riktigt knullad om man typ plussat 50k 2011 å sen backat lika mycket 2012. Någon som har en ide om vad man ska hitta på? Bara ignorera skiten och hoppas dom ger sig? Vilka möjligheter har skatteverket att kontrollera uppgifterna man lämnar?
I've been getting a few messages recently to blog more but everytime I get in the zone I end up doing something else and falling out of it. I write the blog in my head and than I just forget all about it until the next time comes up where I want to write. As the people who have read my blogs know I'm very very honest and open in what I write. Some say it might be to a negative point but really I don't see a reason not to be, this is me, this is my life, this is what I think, this is whats on my mind. I think so many people experience things in their life and never talk about it or express it in writing for themselves. Since moving over here to Australia I really haven't had anyone to talk to, I have my friends I skype with sometimes but it just doesn't feel the same to me, almost not real.
I should give an obligatory poker update since my last blog had to do my current poker mindset/strategy. I pretty much decided to do a 180 from what I wrote about before. I was chatting with a fellow mass multi tabler who has played some PLO but not a ton of volume and he was saying he wanted to start mass multi tabling for VPP. I tried explaining him how this wouldn't work out but if he was going to try it some things he could do that would be effective. Then I started looking at my recent results and saying to myself why don't I try all this shit I am talking myself. I realized that I needed to play less hands when I was only playing a few tables but just couldn't figure out how to do that effectively and in turn my variance was insane and I was making many mistakes. I decided to try mass tabling again with a different approach to the game pre and post flop and see what the effect would be. In turn my sessions become much less stressful, much lower variance, hands became easy to play and in turn started winning in bunches. All the terrible spots I found myself in before went away and was able to essentially revamp my pre/post play and still add in parts of my game that I felt like worked effective when I was playing like a maniac. I guess the problem now becomes that playing midstakes is pretty boring when you have like 500 buyins for the limit you play and no motivation to go with it. I really have no desire to play 5/10 ever again so using that as a goal or building block to work towards isn't really in the picture. Everything I would want to spend money on I already have, excluding some extravagent car purchase, which really doesn't interest me anymore. I think this is just a phase that can be explained by the next paragraph though.
I feel some long writing coming on here but might be good for me. I basically decided to write this after my last tweet which had to do with my mom telling me I should never do drugs because they are bad for your mind and body whereas I countered with what about doing them to the point where you are not abusing them. The overall idea behind it was finding a balance with it. I have heard many people say that it can ruin your mind, but to me my mind has been locked in some sort of black hole all my life and never thought past some sort of basic level. I think right now I'm also just having an adverse reaction to recent events that have transpired here while being in Sydney and my mind just has no idea how to react or what to do so constant thoughts like this come into my mind. Not sure I wrote much about this but I moved here to Sydney for someone I met in Ibiza this summer and did some traveling with throughout Europe after. At the time it was like magic being with her and really felt like I HAD to come here to see the possibilities of finding something special that I never have experienced before. Throughout my dating life I really have never liked anyone in this way, a majority of the time feelings would never stick around for a long time and subsequently I never really ended up dating anyone in a serious way. Then comes earlier this year, I'm doing amazing poker wise, finally going out for the first time in my life and at some point with a few poker friends of mine I decide that I should try something I never have before. Since this time I have looked at the idea of love in a totally different way. I don't think I have ever loved anyone previous to this year but now in my life I have found love that I never knew I could feel with some constants in my life in addition to falling in love with 3 people this year. 2 of these the first time we met both of us were on another level together which in turn feelings that I never imagined I could ever feel for anyone else were experienced. One of the problems with this is that you are tricked into thinking this type of feeling will always be there which is what happened in the case of my Sydney adventure I embarked on.
When I arrived here everything started off well, which is to be expected. As things progressed I became pretty unhappy with my poor poker results and having no good friends out here to talk to about anything eventually detoriating the relationship we had. I don't really want to get much into the relationship but while I was telling myself that I'm going to really give it my best try mentally and try to make things work here because really I didn't have any other options for anything else out here, she had already moved on and was staying with me to make me happy and lying to me about what she was doing, her feelings, other stuff. Only after being confronted with actual evidence of did she finally admit to some of the lying that had been going on for weeks now. In a way I was quite impressed with the ability to come off us such a genuine nice caring person while also being a pathological liar with the ability to lie about something for hours/days/weeks. I have lied to women in my dating life to a certain extent, most of the time being I would not say something like "yes im dating you and 2 other girls as well" but those relationships were never serious and I rarely would find myself saying things like I actually care about you alot or your the only one for me type of things but once I actually made the move here to Sydney I decide that I would try this way of living out. Being honest, one woman, really caring for the person and in turn when something like this happens I just feel crushed to a point I have never quite felt before. I'm sure alot of the reason is that i'm in fucking Australia and barely know anyone else but at the same time I realllllly cared for this pos so its like on one hand i wish death and on the other hand it makes sense to me. Those first times we had together in our zone tricked us into thinking that more was possible when in reality it wasn't there. lol no idea where I was going with any of this but I think it was just explaing how I got to the point where I decided to make my last tweet I made. Writing this stuff out I think is good for me and will help me overcome these crazy thoughts running through my mind.
So now here I am still in Sydney, I have a sick place for 2 more months, a 5k bed that I never want to leave, whole bunch of other stuff I bought because I thought I would be here for a long time and really haven't achieved much of anything. So I decided that I would get out there in the world and see what Sydney has. Have been doing a bit more raging lately and you guys can probably guess that in turn I start feeling a little out of this world more often and my mind starts thinking ideas that have never come up for myself before. I am hoping once I move past this recent breakup that I will be able to learn from it and look at things differently but until then I really have no fucking idea what to do or think or feel. Poker not sure where to go, life not sure where to go, so many options, so many ideas, never want to make the wrong decision and live with regret.
I like this title because I was sitting here the past few weeks and I couldn't remember when I actually won playing PLO. I would start my session by getting on a bunch of tables running, play most anyone heads up to start games and look at results at end of sessions and kept seeing losing. Would wonder what is going on, what happened. This kept up for about a month and here I am frantically checking my bank accounts, watching the countdown to busto happen, questioning life, question my existance in life, looking up work visa information for Australia, seeing how much I could make per month if I started personal training, looking into being male internet cam model, debating doing copious amounts of drugs. Eventually I decided I needed a break and took a few days off. I found myself on my computer a few days later and decided I would play super small stakes just to play, was maybe 8 tabling and lost 3 buy-ins but didn't feel tilt or too bad.
After this session I started actually thinking to myself, how did I crush for 5 months straight to start the year? How did I come back online and have a 210k month and then just can't win day in and out? The answer is obvious in theory, many have even told me since. PLAY LESS FUCKING TABLES to start but as anyone who mass multi tables now, there is just some mind fuck that happens where you think you need to be playing as many tables as possible. You need MORE fish, MORE money to make, MORE MORE MORE. Instead of focusing on the tables open, you are actively seeking out MORE bad players to play vs. Finally when thinking more about it I finally convinced myself to just calm the fuck down. You don't always need more. Its like dating women, you have sex with one and now you want more sex with more women and fall into a cycle where your always on the hunt and never actually focusing on what you have at the current time but looking forward to who is next. Pretty off topic but I could relate the idea of that to poker. I wrote down how I thought I was winning so much to start the year and wrote down why I thought I was losing so much now. Nothing from either list matched up . I realized playing in great games and being amazing at exploiting fish's weaknesses doesn't translate to mass tabling vs regs and playing good players heads up. Add in massive tilting during this and as shown its a recipe for disaster. When you tilt in position again someone with a terrible winrate, it never really ends up being THAT bad. You can make a questionable all in pre and often they end up with an even worse questionable all in pre against you. When playing vs regs though, there questionable range ends up being double suited AKxx and QQxx and any KKxx. When you get it on the flop vs fish with a bad flush draw and bottom pair, they show up with an over pair/no redraw or Top/Bottom pair and you end up usually having good equity when in reality you made a terrible play. Against regs when you make these same tilting plays though your always crushed. I mean in theory this is obvious but I have never really heard or read it ever put like that before.
I guess the basic idea I am saying is that I need to go completely away from what is not working and go back to what was working. I started writing down all my old strategies I used to game select and coming up with better ranges to play against certain types of weaker players in different situations. On the surface the idea is play less tables, bumhunt weaker players, win money. I think alot approach it like that and win but I probably went into it 10 times deeper during my peak of really thinking about it. As I started to win more money though I became lazy and went away from improving my ideas and strategies and went back to an abc approach at it. These last few days I have dove back into thinking about everything from all angles. Basically it is play 1-4 tables, depending on those tables and amount of action going on (ie: double jesus with alot of betting/hands getting to showdown instead of jesus seat with 4 other tigheter regs with not much postflop to follow) can add 2 more tables. Once that 4-6 cap is hit completely focusing on games being played instead of checking the lobby every couple seconds for new games or wait lists or anything of that nature. This is fine do to while I have been playing 1/2 up to 3/6 but I do realize once I start moving back up stakes that I will have to keep lobby open and pay some attention. With less tables to follow though that shouldn't be an issue. Actually taking notes and paying attention to what is happening during hands and when they get to showdown (ie: fish makes pot bet on river, note his hand and watch for similar spot in future to either solidify that note or exploit that) When I'm mass tabling I probably look over less then 5 hands in a weeks time, that idea to me thinking about it now is fucking insanely terribad. Everytime my note taking or paying attention to what is happening pays off I get very excited lol.
When I started writing this I was in a writing zone, then I went on my patio somewhere during the last paragraph and kinda lost it, I was just sitting here on my computer after finished last session and was like fuck man I am such an idiot for going back to my old terrible habits of mass tabling/spewing away thousands. I need to write this down now and not forget it again. I probably have so much more on my mind about all this and hopefully write more about it soon
I'm going to continue to stick to mid stakes for now and at some point add in 5/10 and maybe 10/20 again. I'm still rolled to play up to 50/100 (definition of rolled meaning I could lose a few BI there and drop down to rebuild comfortably) but that desire to lose massive pots isn't there for me right now. After regaining my confidence and winning this might change but until then there is still heaps of money to be made at mid stakes.
Here is my graph since going back to old process. As you can see I didn't full commit at first and after I won a bit decided I could 12+ table again and win and was hit with a your a fucking clown, don't do that again pretty quick. But so far so good
I've been starting to enjoy myself more living here in Sydney. Have a few music fests coming up here and went with my girlriend to Stereosonic last weekend. Had a great time there and really enjoyed seeing Tiesto. Thinking back on it though, I would have enjoyed anyone tremendously at that point in time of the night but it was fun. Had a chance to wear my spirit hood out for the first time in Australia
I was thinking about things today as I am a big believer in weird things like this. Ever since my girlfriend bought me this little koala my losing at poker, running bad in life, running bad in poker, playing terrible has started. I looked over next to my computer today and realized this fucking bear was bought 2 days before I arrived here around the same time I had a -130k session. IT MUST BE THE BEARS FAULT!! Here I am trying to stop this evil being
Hopefully it works
This is one of the graphs I have since I have been around this demon!
the last post i made was about finding a stake, i wasnt hopeing for to much as i felt going public like that would look desperate. I guess i was wrong? got tons of PMs from ppl (appriciate that, with extrathanks to dusty ( heart ) and his involvement in gathering people left and right to help me out.
But the first person sending me a PM just minutes after i posted was Smuft+crew. A couple of days later I ended up getting into a deal with a strong LP lineup of smuft/mig/nazgul and daut (with daut selling pieces to pinball/dusty aswell)
I got a really good longtermkindofadeal with alot of room to be longple and swing around on 2/4-5/10 in my standard fashion wich im very happy about.
There was some misscommunication between me and Ket regarding our previous stakedeal, wich u can all read some about in the last couple of comments in the last blog. But we worked it out pretty quickly and we felt like that was between me and ket and im glad ket is such a nice and easy person to deal with and its all good between us. It could have gotten really messy if ket wasnt ket.
Anyways, ive had a pretty rough year so far but im starting to feel the groove again and ill try to keep up posting some hands on LP and stay positive takeing it step by step this whole thing, and im sure its gonna work out just fine for me in the end.
Signed up for a meditationclass over 6 weeks that starts tomorrow, have been interested in that shit for a long time now and im looking forward to it alot, as i already do a fair bit of yoga (wich is an awesome way of working out imo, try it out and ull start sweating like a pig within 5 minutes).
I havent blogged on LP since May where i basically wrote that ive been loseing most of my roll going on adventures on 25/50 and 50/100$ wich ended badly (lost almost 200k$ from peak that month only).
Since then i went to thailand for a month to cool off and get my mind off poker, i ended up playing some there and lost even more and when i got back home, spending alot on the trip itself i continued grinding 5/10 ish stakes and voila nothing worked for me, i ran bad, probably played alittle bad and ended up loseing alot more.
in July i was left with not much money at all, wich ive been liveing on since then as i contacted a few LPrs personally for a stake to kind of get out of my panicmode and secure the money that i had so that i could live my life and pay rent and bills and stuff without a problem for the rest of the year. I ended up getting staked by our very own Ket.
things looked good in the start, i won alot on midstakes and playing SH Ket gave me alot of freeroom to take 10/20 shots aswell as takeing HU variancegames if i felt i had an edge (with my pokerego thats basically every1 except sauce and kanu)
i ended up loseing a ton while playing HU and winning alot playing SH
these were the results from the time playing with Ket as a backer:
I lost another 10k on Ongame and since Ket pretty much stopped playing poker and dosnt have any money online anymore, we decided to quit the stake since he didnt have enough to keep me going on 2/4-5/10 / didnt want to risk loseing more, wich is 100% understandable
Playing around with HEM filters
Those results dosnt look to sexy, but imo there is more to it than just that, and there is some good things to look at from these hands i played for Ket. alot of my losses have come from HU deep matches that ended badly, for example i lost 35k$ to a very compitent reg on 5/10 in a single session.
these are my ringgame results filtering out 3 players and more:
as u can see i didnt do to well in my HU matches loseing 50k$ on 2/4-5/10 HU in about 30k hands.
HU variance is pretty brutal and loseing 40 buy ins or something in a HU match is something ive done multiple multiple times in a day, and normally i shake it off pretty fast (when being rolled for it)
My HU graph lifetime would prettymuch be 100 buy in ups and 100 buy in downs in pretty small samples, and its pretty standard when faceing the type of people who wants to play me headsup on HS.
anyways, i feel like i really fucked up with Ket, not really handeling the situation im in to well, i mean, playing HU against the best guys on the limit is probably not the way to go with those type of swings when being on stake, where the % of winnings are reduced u should really just look for lower variance bigger edge kind of spots. longple gonna longple i guess.
im not really trying to scew this to trick a (possible) future staker on this whole thing, u cant just look at the winning days or winning limits, then i would have even sexier graphs then ive been posting here the last couple of years, overall results says that im a breakeven bb/100 player over 200k hands lately, wich isnt to much to brag about. But im just trying to sell myself as the winning player i know that i am, and looking at it from the positive angle (wich is filtering out the HU matches) where u can really see a pretty solid edge.
More tricks up my sleeve + what am I looking for?
Since what im looking for now is really just a stake to play SH mainly 5/10 and stay away from both HU and 10/20 until im back on my feet again and have a big roll, because these past 6 months have been really fucking hard on me and i really need some help because i have alot of energy and freetime obviously and im eager to play and get out of this hole that ive put myself in.
To scew the angle alittlebit more, (i feel like its somewhat relevant) filtering out the 10/20 results this is how my graph looks like dureing these past months playing for Ket. (wich is the results for the stakes that i want a stake for)
With that 20k$ dip in the end putting the nail on the whole thing (i stopped played HU after talking it over with Ket the last couple of weeks, things looked great but the big loseing day put me about 30k$ in the Red for the whole stake, wich was where we decided to end it.
All im trying to show from all these filtered results is that there is some relevans to it, since what im looking for is a 2/4-5/10 ONLY SHORTHANDED stake.
Feels kind of crappy to putmyself out like this as a broke degenerate that hasnt been winning for the past 7 months, but i dont really care how i will look after posting this. Ive fucked up bigtime, loseing alot of money this year on stupipidity basically. I have to bite in the sour apple now if i even wanna keep playing poker, wich is what i wanna do for atleast 1-2 more years since i feel like there is still alot of money to be made, and i still have a decently big edge in the games. not as big as 1 year ago maybe, but still a pretty big edge.
Im not sure if posting it this way will either shoot me in the leg or end up being a winner since i feel like i somewhat are talking around facts by showing different filters in HEM, and i probably have enough trust and faith from the LP community as a winning player that i dont need to show these filtered results. But im really tired of messing around like this, these last months ive been thinking alot about poker and life and yadda yadda and im tired of doing this now, i just wanna bumhunt for a while and get back on my feet, cuz my head hurts, i havent won anything this year and just gone on stupid rollercoasters takeing the thoughest HU and 3 handed games my whole carrer. I dont want that anymore, im getting old
im desperate for help since the only option i have other then getting a stake, is falling back on 0.5/1$ or something and spend 100s of hours grinding my way back up. I really think investing those 100s of hours playing my maingames even if not getting 100% of the winnings (possible winnings i guess) is a better way to go.
any1 interested? cuz im all out of personal contacts to ask for help.
if so, hit me up with a PM and we'll excange skypes and talk more there.
Alot of earlier results and information about me can be found earlier in this blog, im also pretty sure that there are some "big name" LPrs that are willing to vouch for me aswell if some1 wants that
Don't really know where to start with this, perhaps a warning to all readers that a very long and most probably very boring rant is about to commence.
I've not posted here in a long time, intentionally so, I withdrew myself from the community because of some shit I was going through irl. It all started last summer when I was in Korea trying to make things work with my then kind of ex kind of girlfriend at the time. It was an up and down roller coaster and stress levels were at an all time high, not helped by the fact I was going through a terrible downswing in PLO at the same time. To cut the story short, as I'm not here to tell tales, point the finger or talk shit about anyone, but it ended a year ago today and for that reason it seems like a reasonable time to talk about the situation. Both parties were at fault really, but I didn't deal with the breakup well. Shortly after the breakup I incurred some big losses which rounded off a $30k downswing overall in PLO which was something along the lines of 100 buyins given the average stakes I was playing, so I withdrew the remains of my battered bankroll and took to some quite heavy drinking for comfort to overcome the breakup and downswing.
I would frequently blow £100 on a night out, which is very easy to do in some parts of the world, but where I live, that's a lot of alcohol. 10-12 double JD and cokes was the norm, which for a 155lb guy is quite a lot, it was ugly and the follow day(s) were invariably a blur but it dulled the boredom and pain of life for a while. It went on from the end of October to the end of December last year, and on New Years I decided enough was enough. I got some money back online and started playing Hold'Em again, I drew up a workout schedule and started to figure myself out. Despite that, I was not over the breakup and the constant reminders of her on facebook were a major problem, it was clear from her posts that she cared not a jot about the breakup and that just rubbed it in and made it hard to forget even a couple of months on, so I decided to delete facebook for a month. This was fine for a while, she was no longer on my mind and January was a good month. I enjoyed the entire month, however deactivating facebook wasn't a good long term solution as there was a lot of stuff from friends that I wanted to see, so I reactivated, but went a different way about removing the constant reminders from her and instead decided to delete her and every mutual friend I had with her. This was a total of about 160 people, the vast majority of which I really really liked and most of whom I wish I still had contact. Unfortunately only 2 or 3 of those 160 people ever bothered to message me to see how I was doing or show any sympathy about my situation so in retrospect I probably didn't lose out on any real "friends", just acquaintances that were fun to be around at the time.
I'm not going to apologise to those people for doing what I did as they never showed me any sympathy and it certainly helped me overcome the problems I was still going through, but I do hope they'll understand my point of view. Naturally, the way I acted, shutting out so many people from my life including some friends I'd known for years just to avoid seeing anything of my ex on facebook sounds very naive, immature and unnecessary but, I was struggling real hard to overcome it and at one point was seriously considering the prospect of marrying her. I'm not here to try and reconnect with said 160 people or even apologise, but I do wish to explain my feelings at the time and hope that any of them that read this at least understand my thought processes at the time.
One of the reasons I felt inspired to post today, as well as the fact it's been a year since the breakup is due to the fact I was going through some old blog posts I made 3 years ago. I've cut off this community for a long time, but memories came back of how positively I used to be viewed here. So many people were writing in my blogs that have long since equalled or surpassed my level of success in poker and I do kinda miss the positive reinforcement from the community I guess. I don't expect any of that after this blog post, but still, it was nice to reminisce about the past and I have connected with a couple of LPers lately in Oddeye and sChOuA and have enjoyed interacting with them about poker and life and whatnot in the past couple of months.
Anyway moving on, working out was a real help in the first 3 months of this year. I went from 155lbs 20% body fat to 140lbs 12% body fat in that time frame, which ok, that's very light for a guy who is ~5ft 10, but the plan was to cut to lower body fat, then bulk afterwards rather than bulking from a starting point of 20% body fat and cutting later. Unfortunately, in March I injured my shoulder and until 2 weeks ago never bothered to get back into it. I'm really enjoying it again, and even after just a couple of weeks am seeing some progress again which is one of the most motivating things. It's an enjoyable process and that is more important if not more important than the end results. It's something I've spoke to Ket about a lot recently, and it's obviously key to spend as much time doing things we enjoy as possible. I've certainly been more productive this year than the last couple and that's the route I've wanted to take for a while and spent more time enjoying myself than I did last year.
Certainly, I've been more productive in terms of volume at the poker tables too. I've been aided quite significantly by the introduction of zoom poker, which has helped me get in a yearly total of a little less than 500k hands so far. That is probably double what I achieved in 2010 and about 50% more than last year and far more than half of those hands have come in the last 2 months where I've really made an effort to increase my productivity and reduce the procrastination to a bare minimum. Despite the positives, I haven't ran well this year, and off the back of the $30k downswing at the end of last year I immediately ran 50 buyins below EV at Hold'Em in the first 80k hands. It wasn't helping me in any way having to overcome more bullshit after the last half of 2011, but I got through it just seeing that my EV winrate was quite decent and seeing the unreal retarded plays people were making on a frequent basis. The first half of this year I was actually down money in cash games after running 25 buyins below EV @ 100PLO and, at this point, about 55 buyins below EV @ 50NL, eventually I said fuck it, said to myself "stop wasting time at these dumb stakes" and put more money online and started playing Zoom 100NL and 200NL. I immediately started running much better and in the last 2.5 months have made 5.8k at 100NL, 9.5k at 200NL, but unfortunately dropped 4k at 500NL, still, given an average of more than 1.5k VPPs/day I've made a decent bit of rakeback on top and am up over $10k in donkaments this year thanks to a 2nd place finish in some Sunday Turbo tournament for $15.5k. Overall, including rakeback I guess I'm only at about +~$30k for the year which seems abysmal for all the extra productivity, but I am about $4.5k below EV in cash games still and think I've ran pretty bad in tournaments in general, including the 2nd place finish for $15.5k where I started the HU with a 4:1 chip lead. Still, it's been drilled into my brain by constant self reinforcement that dwelling on the past is a complete waste of energy, and looking forward I have to say I'm confident about poker for the remainder of this year and the entirety of next year. Zoom NL is fun, I'm playing as well as I've played in a while, the games are very beatable and my productivity and general happiness levels are higher than they've ever been in the past year. In short, I'm well over the past and I'm looking forward to the future in every aspect of life. I may have alienated a lot of old "friends" and hope they can understand why I completely segregated myself from the community, I would not be against reconnecting with some of them, though the vast majority of the 160 people are not poker players and will never read this so that's not likely, either way, it's out there now and I'm happy with the direction things are going regardless.
Graph of bb/hand for the year... Still 60 buyins below EV for the year -.-;
This blog post probably should be about how I made 210k in the month of September or how I live in Sydney now or how I lost 250k the first few days I was in Sydney but lets leave that for another blog post, one that probably will just never be written because I just randomly have the urge to write. Even on facebook often I will just not respond to messages for days and then randomly will reply to all of them. I do enjoy talking to almost everyone who I exchange messages with fairly often on there but for some reason I just space out and do nothing about it. I noticed I even was starting to do that with text messages, someone would text me and I would just forget for hours/ever to respond, can't figure it out. I had stars reinstate my chat the other day, since I have threatened the terrorist aka devils worshipper aka voodoo man yousseffahmed more times then I can remember. We now live 15 minutes from each other too but I don't think he is very interested in meeting with someone who wants punch him in the face until the arms can't be lifted anymore. If anyone else was to inflict as much torture to someone as he has done to me this year I think they feel the same way I do. He keeps saying in chat that he runs so bad and is losing, well obviously because you play fucking terrible for hour long sessions, of course you should be losing. I could go on forever about it but probably best not to.
I don't really have a path or goal with poker at this moment in time, which has alot to do with how I made 200k in September. I just didn't give a fuck, played in mostly whatever games and won bunches in short sessions. Like always the longer the session I play the worse I tend to do/play, I think my ideal sweet spot is probably less then 60 minutes to be honest, I don't think I would ever adhere to something like that but it would be amazing if I could be disciplined enough overall to do that. Stinger will just play when games are good forever and suggests I learn to do the same but still not strong enough mentally to do that. I really didn't have any poker goals and still don't have any poker goals or for that matter even life goals, I pretty much achieved a majority of those already and never really thought I would. I made more money then I ever dreamed I would have, set some poker grind records, played highest stakes online, become known to the online poker world. I could try to become some famous name in poker but I realized at some point this summer that there really isn't much of a point to pursuing that because I don't even know what/where/how/why/anything about what I want out of life. Money doesn't really matter to me once I go past a certain point because I have done the same things when I have a 100k roll to when I have 500k roll to when I have 300k roll. Sure I could buy fancy car (have thougtha bout that but don't have any permanent living plans) or could invest/buy property/save up which once again doesn't interest me. I really haven't even spent much of my winnings this year. I have realized that this constant obsession you have over money when you play poker and the desire to play the highest stakes online or make alot of money till no money is left in the world to have is just fucking crazy. But if you aren't playing poker for money or to play the highest stakes which were original goals of mine and many many others out there then why else even play it. The people that are content with grinding xxxyyy stakes and making a projected xxxyyy amount of money a month and are legit content with it amaze me because I really wish I could do that and be able to focus on other potential passions in life. This constant obsession with money though is just wild, like after every session you check your balance and are trying to figure out your life roll to the fucking dollar. FUCK i lost 2843, i only have 398,435 left to my name, fuck, I just had 400,289 or whatever. I used to do this for like 2.5 years with poker and this year when something clicked I just stopped worrying and became some ultimate discipline machine. Lately though all my discipline for the most part has vanished. There are still sessions where the light is on and I revert back to earlier this year me but maybe constant drug use for 2 months is the answer, maybe thats just an excuse and the real answer is I'm just not trying hard enough because I am not motivated enough because I don't have any direction/goal/light at end of the tunnel. I just live in the moment and always worry about that moment when really it doesn't even fucking matter a majority of the time.
I came to Sydney because I met a girl in Ibiza this summer and I will save this story but we had an amazing time. I was unsure if I could actually go through with it and move out here but said fuck it, summer is coming up, it could be a magical time of my life, lets go for it. I came to Sydney with around 260k online. Fast forward to a few days later, I had 5159 online. I HAVE to blog about how it even is possible to do this because it needs to be out there as a way to show how fucked up you can become sometimes and maybe one person reads it and it saves them from fucking up at some point in their lives. I get alot of messages on here and 2p2 and fb from people who tell me what an inspiration I am and how they look up to me in how hard I have worked/what i have achieved/ how i live my life now. I felt at some point this year I turned a corner and actually said yea maybe I am to some extent for some people, but then I go and do that and launch off most of all my money from a 280k high point online. Like what a fucking idiot right? But in reality, it doesn't really matter and quite honestly with the mentality I have had the last month it was inevitable. Obviously it is great I still have lots of money offline and had Ben86 help me get some more money online and realize that I need chill the fuck out for awhile and still to nothing higher then 10/20 because the stress/swings you go through at the higher stakes really just isn't worth it. The positive doesn't outweigh the negative. Some would say 10/20 is still high but losing 2k 5k 10k is nothing on the stress level when you take a 120k losing day or lose an 80k pot. Somehow after I settled down though I was able to win 70k in the next 2 days playing only 5/10 and 10/20, i reverted back to old mentality and discpline and reminded myself how it felt to be broke and 24 tabling .25/.50 for 14 hours a day and wanting to die, that usually snaps me back into how hard it COULD be poker wise and that life is still good.
I was in the zone there for a bit and wrote all of the above but now I don't feel much in the zone anymore. Basically I'm hoping I can find some goals in poker and in life sometime soon. Basically now I just load up every 5/10 and 10/20 table and try to get as many deep games started as possible, I usually won't play like 2 or 3 people who like to start as well because they god mode me/are lot better hu but I like to learn and if someone is better then me but I still run medium against then I will battle and build the games so the players can come. It does suck that every reg who starts tables are all fucking bosses and up hundreds of thousands from poker but I think has helped my game alot and study what they do in certain spots has helped me to apply same thing in my game (sometiems for good and for bad). Sometimes a reg (jan82) will say he will play me hu anytime. Well I don't like to stick to only 1 v 1 without option for others to play but I will be sitting at 5/10 10/20 and 3/6 everyday until I can't anymore and you guys can get all the hands of heads up with me you want until the table gets going. Or at some point I might realize it more +ev in most aspects of life to be big big bumhunter again and go for variance free graph but where is the fun in that.
Side Note: I wrote all this like 2 hours ago and randomly decided to stop at some point. I think I was on another planet when typing but was completely sober, I am a crazy person I think
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