Last Saturday night, Matty and I decided to play some live poker @ edgewater casino, so we phoned in our names, and got on the skytrain to head to the casino.
We started talking about the whole year, and how brutal the variance had been for all of us. When I refer to all of us, I am mainly talking about Jordan (bigbluffzinc), Brandon (Mazurite), and then him and myself. Us four are a core group that have been around each other for some time now. Jordan and Matty were both involved with me in the SNGReasons project that lasted about a year, and then black Friday happened which ended that, and Brandon is a former student of mine, who moved to Vancouver and lived with Jordan last August and has since got a new place, which is just right down the road in walking distance.
A couple of months ago, we started bouncing around the idea of giving ourselves a team name.
We came up with Team Clickin it Back. The name itself is a popular online poker term, which im sure almost everyone has heard of thats familiar with online poker. Obviously our team name had to have something to do with poker, and mocking this phrase makes for a near perfect team name. Asides from us four, we also added Jay (YugiohPro), and Mike (Niet2maar3).
Anyways, before derailing this any longer, back to the skytrain conversation with Matty.
So were just going back and forth about how bad the year has been. We took so many shots, and came up just short so many times. Our group doesn't know what its like to bink a huge score. He even said to me at one point, sometimes I feel like were just chasing a pipe dream, and that binking huge scores isn't realistic. Our mindsets were clouded because we never ran good deep in the right tournaments. We would just say its variance, we just need to keep firing bullets, etc, but when you don't know what it is like to be successful you sometimes question what it is your doing.
We all had huge sweats for big scores this year, and every sweat came up short. Our biggest cash this year is Brandon's run in the 5K WCOOP main event where he got a little over 30k, which when you think about it, is a little over 6 buyins for that said tournament and isn't really a huge score given the buyin. We put ourselves in too many good situations to bink huge, and math says on average at least 1 of those would have worked out, but sadly variance is a bitch and none of the deep runs turned into anything.
We started going over plans for next year, how things will be better, how we plan on making a lot of noise in the MTT world, etc. We improved so much over the past year, we wanted to start getting rewarded for how good we are.
Matty was leaving on Monday, and given all the deep runs he had made in the past couple of weeks, including 2 milly runs, a FT bubble in a massive micro millions field, etc, I could tell the variance was starting to really effect him. We played live, we both lost money, and then we went home to get some sleep... this would be Matty's last Sunday before going back home for the holidays.
The next day, I remember it being about 2pm, and our living room, which is our grind room basically, the atmosphere was painful. Mike "Niet2maar3", who is here grinding for a little before going back to the netherlands, was just grinding SNGS, but for Jordan, Matty, and I, we were all blanking just about every MTT possible.
Next thing you know, Matty is getting super deep in one of the FTOPS, Im getting deep in the milly, Jordan has a huge stack + getting deep in the Sunday 500, and brandon is CL of the 109 rebuy super deep. Jordan and my runs ended like all the other runs in the past have ended, which wasn't good. My student/horse Hopez also had frustrating finishes in the Sunday kickoff (5TH) and the Sunday milly (11th... grrrr) but we proceeded to watch Brandon take down the 109$ rebuy for 51K, and we watched Matty take down a FTOPS for a little over 100K, plus a jersey!
Our biggest cash to date was 30k, we had two surpass that in the same day. It truly is crazy at how poker and variance work out like that. Mattys FTOPS was one of the harder ones to win as well, I think it was a 100$ buyin, and the field was huge. We celebrated with cigars and drinks on the balcony, and it was awesome seeing Matty especially after taking down a 100K score and having that surreal feeling. I couldn't be happier for both of them as a win for them is a win for all of us. We grind it out everyday together and its refreshing to finally see some good results.
More then anything, them winning two big tournaments on a Sunday motivated the whole group. We now know that positive variance in these huge field big payout tourneys is possible (not that we never did know that, but boy we questioned it a lot lol), and I think moving forward its going to motivate us to get as good as we can, to prepare ourselves for these big payday tournaments.
I am predicting a massive year for Team Clickin it back in 2013, the sky is the limit.
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
2012 Recap
It seems like it is the first time in my life, to this extent at least, that I can't wait for the future to come so I am able to strive and accomplish goals that I have set for myself. I haven't structured these goals out yet, and I have some time to do so, but I can not wait for 2013 to just come so I can move forward from a mediocre year in regards to mainly poker, but also life. I will touch more on this later, but for now I will just give a quick recap of the second half of the year.
So with my last blog post which was over five months ago (#smh), I left off at being in Vancouver for three more weeks and then I was off to go back home for a bit and to go to the WSOP for the first time ever. I went home, spent some time with friends and family, and then was off to Vegas.
WSOP was hands down, the highlight of my year. Vegas has so much opportunity during the WSOP. The cash games are extremely soft, the sattys are soft, and the rio daily tournaments are soft, basically just about everything is soft. Any game you sit down at you can expect to be a massive winner. For the WSOP Tournaments, The fields are large, the buyins are large, and the fields are pretty soft. You can get tough table draws, and late in the tournaments things tend to be a bit tougher as well, but for the most part fields are very soft. I ended up playing a 1.5k, a 1k, and the 10k main event.
Results wise, I broke even in tournaments. I finished 37th in the 1500$ for 12.5k, and blanked the 10k and the 1k. As for the rest, I made a little. The overall experience of Vegas was the real highlight for me. To finally see how much money you can make there during the series was a huge wake up call for me. As long as I am a poker professional, there is no way I won't be in Vegas for a month and half, every summer, for the WSOP.
After Vegas I came back to Pittsburgh again. Originally I had planned to go from Vegas to Vancouver, But I felt the need to come back and see my family and friends a little more before I came back to Canada for the rest of the year. I saw them some, but for the most part I did what I usually do while being in Pittsburgh, which is spend time at the casino grinding away at 1/3.
I feel like I am wasting time being back in Pittsburgh and grinding out 1/3 at the Casino, and putting off coming back to Vancouver, just to be able to see my friends and family for another 2-3 weeks. I did it twice this year, and its really not justifiable. We are all older now and everyone is busy and handling there business, I need to handle mine. It's something I do not intend to do in 2013.
I got back to Vancouver in mid August and I have been here since grinding away. Aside from Pete's Wedding (Jordan aka Bigbluffzinc's little brother), which was a blast, and the occasional once every 3-4 weeks night out, my life has been more or less consumed by poker.
In September there was WCOOP, in Late oct / early november there was Edgewater's WCPC, and River Rock's WSOPC events. In WCOOP my best finish was 15th place for like 3500$ in a 320$ PLO. I pretty much didn't cash in the rest of the events, including the 5k main. At the live series, I cashed in 1 tournament out of like 10, which was the WCPC 2k main event where I got 12th for 5.5k ish, which had 100k up top. I also played a 5k at the WCPC which brings my yearly + lifetime totals of 5k+ tournaments for 3. Blanking them all kind of sucks, but the only way to reach your expectation is to play, and I am happy that I am starting to shot take at some serious buyins.
For a lot of the time I have been back, my mind is all over the place yet again when it comes to game selection, and volume, and a lot of it can be solved by quitting smoking. I can no longer smoke out on the balcony of our apartment, meaning I have to take a elevator downstairs to smoke. The building we live in has probably the worse elevators in the world as there are 36 floors and two elevators. We are on the 31st floor so walking down and up to avoid elevators is not a option (especially walking up). This means during regular hours waits can be long. So for me to grind MTTS, its very hard as I won't be able to get down the elevator, smoke, and back up in time without missing hands. Due to this I avoided MTTS a lot, unless its after 8 PM where the elevator wont be likely to have a wait... This causes me to grind games without breaks, which is SNGS. When playing SNGS, you absolutely kill your hourly by playing shorter sessions. Given my addiction to smoking, that is exactly what I do, I grind for 2 hours tops, and then smoke, and then I start up again. Due to this my hourly is watered down a shit ton, I have realized this for some time now, and have "attempted" to quit a couple times now, the longest lasting about 2 days. Its a very very hard addiction to quit.
I have no more room for smoking in my life, It is just costing me too much money. Its making me approach poker in a non optimal way, which is costing me money, Its costing me money by buying them, and when you factor in long term EV, Its costing me money I will spend on my health later down the road. I have been smoking for almost 5 years now. I am starting to see a decrease in my health from my lungs, to my teeth, to my skin from it already. It is dragging me down, and it is dragging down my potential and I have no room for it anymore. I am setting the date of when I quit @ December 26th.
So here I am with two weeks left to grind. I need about 4k vpps a day to get my 300k milestone by the 17th, and this is a goal I will accomplish. I have a pretty good game selection strategy to get the VPPS, and I did my first day of 4k VPPS yesterday which went pretty shitty results wise, but I felt I played well and was happy with the work I put in. It just takes a lot of hours to do 4k VPPS for me, especially when you factor in how much the smoke breaks drag my volume down.
Overall this year has been pretty frustrating. Every big shot I took I blanked or cashed for a irrelevant amount. The games online are a lot lot lot lot harder, meaning variance is going to kick in a lot more often. Like when I first started grinding, I was just 30-40 tabling 6$ and 12$ 45 mans. I was beating these games for 17% ROI, and my variance was non existent. If you check out my sharkscope graph, you will see the first part of my graph has 0 variance. Now I am playing much bigger buyins, much tougher games with thinner edges, and when you play games where your ROI isn't that high, the difference it makes in your variance is just retarded.
At first I wasn't able to deal with the huge difference in variance. I would play bigger buyins, go on a COMPLETELY standard downswing, and panic. I think the worse downswing I would go on for the bulk of my career was like 2k-3k or so, and when it happened I was fine with it. I could keep grinding optimally knowing results would turn around.
This year, I would treat my downswings based on a $$$ amount instead of a Buyin #... I would go on like a 6-7k downswing with a avg buyin of 70-80$ or something, and then I would start grinding the hell out of lower variance games, such as 15-30$ SNGS and very soft, smaller buyin smaller field MTTS. This is very counter productive as I spend a huge portion of my time grinding away @ makeup total's by playing low buyin games, which in the long run just sabotages my hourly.
After being shown a blog post by nsdpoker that talks about variance, my mindset towards variance is much much better (for example, I am on a 7k downswing in the past week, and my Game selection today will be the same and I won't worry about it at all). If anyone hasn't read his blog post towards variance, I recommend you read it, its amazing at how informative it can be when it comes to variance. here is the link
http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/03/stt-pro/
My mindset towards poker and life in general is just changing, which is why I cant wait for 2013. 2012 was a much needed growing year for me as a poker player, and as a person. I won't post my full list of goals now because I am not sure what they will be, and what strategy I will implement to achieve them, but I will for sure make a blog post with my 2013 goals before the year is over. For sure though I will be getting SNE next year, I will take the time while I am still here to develop how I want to attack 2013, and will follow this post up sometime before christmas.
This ends the TLDR boring post... that is what happens when you try to cram 5 months into one blog post,
Thanks for reading,
Nick
So with my last blog post which was over five months ago (#smh), I left off at being in Vancouver for three more weeks and then I was off to go back home for a bit and to go to the WSOP for the first time ever. I went home, spent some time with friends and family, and then was off to Vegas.
WSOP was hands down, the highlight of my year. Vegas has so much opportunity during the WSOP. The cash games are extremely soft, the sattys are soft, and the rio daily tournaments are soft, basically just about everything is soft. Any game you sit down at you can expect to be a massive winner. For the WSOP Tournaments, The fields are large, the buyins are large, and the fields are pretty soft. You can get tough table draws, and late in the tournaments things tend to be a bit tougher as well, but for the most part fields are very soft. I ended up playing a 1.5k, a 1k, and the 10k main event.
Results wise, I broke even in tournaments. I finished 37th in the 1500$ for 12.5k, and blanked the 10k and the 1k. As for the rest, I made a little. The overall experience of Vegas was the real highlight for me. To finally see how much money you can make there during the series was a huge wake up call for me. As long as I am a poker professional, there is no way I won't be in Vegas for a month and half, every summer, for the WSOP.
After Vegas I came back to Pittsburgh again. Originally I had planned to go from Vegas to Vancouver, But I felt the need to come back and see my family and friends a little more before I came back to Canada for the rest of the year. I saw them some, but for the most part I did what I usually do while being in Pittsburgh, which is spend time at the casino grinding away at 1/3.
I feel like I am wasting time being back in Pittsburgh and grinding out 1/3 at the Casino, and putting off coming back to Vancouver, just to be able to see my friends and family for another 2-3 weeks. I did it twice this year, and its really not justifiable. We are all older now and everyone is busy and handling there business, I need to handle mine. It's something I do not intend to do in 2013.
I got back to Vancouver in mid August and I have been here since grinding away. Aside from Pete's Wedding (Jordan aka Bigbluffzinc's little brother), which was a blast, and the occasional once every 3-4 weeks night out, my life has been more or less consumed by poker.
In September there was WCOOP, in Late oct / early november there was Edgewater's WCPC, and River Rock's WSOPC events. In WCOOP my best finish was 15th place for like 3500$ in a 320$ PLO. I pretty much didn't cash in the rest of the events, including the 5k main. At the live series, I cashed in 1 tournament out of like 10, which was the WCPC 2k main event where I got 12th for 5.5k ish, which had 100k up top. I also played a 5k at the WCPC which brings my yearly + lifetime totals of 5k+ tournaments for 3. Blanking them all kind of sucks, but the only way to reach your expectation is to play, and I am happy that I am starting to shot take at some serious buyins.
For a lot of the time I have been back, my mind is all over the place yet again when it comes to game selection, and volume, and a lot of it can be solved by quitting smoking. I can no longer smoke out on the balcony of our apartment, meaning I have to take a elevator downstairs to smoke. The building we live in has probably the worse elevators in the world as there are 36 floors and two elevators. We are on the 31st floor so walking down and up to avoid elevators is not a option (especially walking up). This means during regular hours waits can be long. So for me to grind MTTS, its very hard as I won't be able to get down the elevator, smoke, and back up in time without missing hands. Due to this I avoided MTTS a lot, unless its after 8 PM where the elevator wont be likely to have a wait... This causes me to grind games without breaks, which is SNGS. When playing SNGS, you absolutely kill your hourly by playing shorter sessions. Given my addiction to smoking, that is exactly what I do, I grind for 2 hours tops, and then smoke, and then I start up again. Due to this my hourly is watered down a shit ton, I have realized this for some time now, and have "attempted" to quit a couple times now, the longest lasting about 2 days. Its a very very hard addiction to quit.
I have no more room for smoking in my life, It is just costing me too much money. Its making me approach poker in a non optimal way, which is costing me money, Its costing me money by buying them, and when you factor in long term EV, Its costing me money I will spend on my health later down the road. I have been smoking for almost 5 years now. I am starting to see a decrease in my health from my lungs, to my teeth, to my skin from it already. It is dragging me down, and it is dragging down my potential and I have no room for it anymore. I am setting the date of when I quit @ December 26th.
So here I am with two weeks left to grind. I need about 4k vpps a day to get my 300k milestone by the 17th, and this is a goal I will accomplish. I have a pretty good game selection strategy to get the VPPS, and I did my first day of 4k VPPS yesterday which went pretty shitty results wise, but I felt I played well and was happy with the work I put in. It just takes a lot of hours to do 4k VPPS for me, especially when you factor in how much the smoke breaks drag my volume down.
Overall this year has been pretty frustrating. Every big shot I took I blanked or cashed for a irrelevant amount. The games online are a lot lot lot lot harder, meaning variance is going to kick in a lot more often. Like when I first started grinding, I was just 30-40 tabling 6$ and 12$ 45 mans. I was beating these games for 17% ROI, and my variance was non existent. If you check out my sharkscope graph, you will see the first part of my graph has 0 variance. Now I am playing much bigger buyins, much tougher games with thinner edges, and when you play games where your ROI isn't that high, the difference it makes in your variance is just retarded.
At first I wasn't able to deal with the huge difference in variance. I would play bigger buyins, go on a COMPLETELY standard downswing, and panic. I think the worse downswing I would go on for the bulk of my career was like 2k-3k or so, and when it happened I was fine with it. I could keep grinding optimally knowing results would turn around.
This year, I would treat my downswings based on a $$$ amount instead of a Buyin #... I would go on like a 6-7k downswing with a avg buyin of 70-80$ or something, and then I would start grinding the hell out of lower variance games, such as 15-30$ SNGS and very soft, smaller buyin smaller field MTTS. This is very counter productive as I spend a huge portion of my time grinding away @ makeup total's by playing low buyin games, which in the long run just sabotages my hourly.
After being shown a blog post by nsdpoker that talks about variance, my mindset towards variance is much much better (for example, I am on a 7k downswing in the past week, and my Game selection today will be the same and I won't worry about it at all). If anyone hasn't read his blog post towards variance, I recommend you read it, its amazing at how informative it can be when it comes to variance. here is the link
http://www.nsdpoker.com/2011/03/stt-pro/
My mindset towards poker and life in general is just changing, which is why I cant wait for 2013. 2012 was a much needed growing year for me as a poker player, and as a person. I won't post my full list of goals now because I am not sure what they will be, and what strategy I will implement to achieve them, but I will for sure make a blog post with my 2013 goals before the year is over. For sure though I will be getting SNE next year, I will take the time while I am still here to develop how I want to attack 2013, and will follow this post up sometime before christmas.
This ends the TLDR boring post... that is what happens when you try to cram 5 months into one blog post,
Thanks for reading,
Nick
Friday, June 1, 2012
Sometimes you need to take two steps backwards to take twenty steps forwards
Finally I get some motivation to write a blog post, so this is me taking advantage of that as I am awful when it comes to updating this. In the past 3 months I have done a lot of things that have improved my poker game, and more importantly my life, and I have been super busy with everything and I find it tough to find the time to update my blog. Hopefully I can include writing blogs into my normal schedule, that way when I write I don't end up writing a novel, which I am expecting to do here in this post, but for now it is what it is.
I went home in late march for about month to do a few things.. I went to the annual bar tour at state college, which as usual was awesome. In years past we would usually go Friday and go to a house party with people we know that still go there, spend Saturday doing the bar tour, and leave on Sunday. We would spend the whole weekend hammered, and it would be a blast and that would be it. This time around it was waaaaay different. We are all 25-26 now, and we don't know nearly as many people that still go and live up there. It was very weird staying at a hotel there, it was very weird going to a bar Friday, and it was very weird going around campus just site seeing Sunday morning/afternoon. Overall the weekend was still a blast, and just as much fun as its always been, but the partying was for sure toned down a bit.
The rest of the time I was in Pittsburgh, I had a couple of nights out with my boys, but most would go home early. I ended up hanging out with my little brother a good bit, and spent the rest of my time in the casino grinding. The whole experience of being in Pittsburgh was a reality check for me, and made me realize the change of life that I am, or anyone around my age really, is going through.
You go from everyone being in school and working shitty side jobs, to starting out with whatever career you choose, and for the most part have very little responsibility's, and basically spending all of your time together with your friends having fun and just living your life free. Then in a blink of a eye it's gone and everything is changed.
One year ago, none of my friends were engaged or married, everyone was looking to party on the weekends, everyone was trying to do this and that, and everyone was still living their lives free. Today, all of my best friends, aside from two, are now married or engaged. It has been a very fast and very overwhelming change, and being single still is starting to suck when you see all of your best friends get engaged or married, or are in a very committed relationship which might as well count the same as being engaged. I am not living in Pittsburgh currently, but just being there for a month I started to realize that my friends stay in on the weekends a lot now, spend times with their significant others, or when we go out for a drink its just a couple and then its on our way home again. They are worrying about saving money and building credit to buy a house, they are worried about not getting in trouble as that would potentially fuck up their job situation, and they live their lives with much more responsibility's. in short everyone is growing up and moving onto a new chapter in their lives. Due to my friends settling down at such a young age, it makes me feel old even though I am not. I mean I am happy for them, so to them I say both congratulations and you suck.
While I was at home, I also got to see my newly born niece which was a fabulous experience. Up until then I had never held a baby in my life, and it was very uncomfortable for me to hold something so fragile. Scarlett (Baby's name) is doing very well now. Being born 10 weeks early was a scare initially, but she developed perfectly and is in perfect health and I couldn't be more happy for my brother and his wife.
Moving on to poker.
To start the year, I was having a bit of a rough go of things, and i approached my game selection very poorly. I was grinding SNGS only for the most part, and grinding very reg infested fields of 9 man and 18 mans. Due to how tough games were, I was only 6-8 tabling for the the first part of the year. I was playing poorly, very poorly, which is tough to do when your 6-8 tabling. I started out struggling, then I went on a heater, which may have been a bad thing for me as I still wasn't playing optimally. When I left for Pittsburgh, I was on a 5k downswing. When I came back from Pittsburgh, the downswing increased to 11k. I was switching my games from 18 mans to 45 mans and 180 mans, then back to 9 mans and 18 mans, loading a MTT session here and there, I was all over the place and basically whatever I did seemed to not work, I would have good days and bad days, but for the most part I just wasn't cutting it. I wasn't studying the game at all, I was just putting in hours, and lots of them, and with how much I played it really had me questioning what I was doing with my life as I felt the games were too hard, and I wouldn't go to the extreme and say I was on the verge of quitting, but the idea for sure crossed my mind.
Then just like that, how I approached poker changed in a instant. Jordan gave me advice on a certain hand I played, and just from hearing his thought process on the hand made me realize exactly how I was playing bad in all aspects of my game. I won't go into specifics, but for the next week or two, I was 4-6 tabling, trying new things out, and playing mainly just SNGS and working on my preflop game a bit, but mostly post flop. After having success in those two weeks and realizing a lot of the leaks I had, I started to feel much more confident in my game. After having a conversation with Jordan, I decided to change my game selection to strictly all MTTS, and mixing in 180's when I don't have many tables up, and 15-25 table SNGS b4 and after my MTT sessions to get VPPS and to reduce the MTT variance.
The very first week after my switch, which was about 3 weeks ago, I binked the big 27.50 for 5.2k, then a couple days later I binked the 11$ rebuy for 12.3k. I have also binked a 109 turbo for 4.7k, a 109$ freezeout for 2.8k, and I have a couple of 1k-1.5k scores as well. I am also 20 tabling 18 mans and 10 tabling 6 max hypers. I am also doing very well in both game formats and I am earning about 400 VPPS per hour doing either one, in the 6m hypers I get in a bit more VPPS, and its tough to say how much $$ per game I can make as the sample is still small for me playing this many tables.
I really felt like the few months I spent at the start of the month were two steps backwards, but I feel like I am now starting to take twenty steps forwards in the progression of how I play. I understand I am starting out on a bit of a heater with my new game selection, and It's easy to say I am just thinking this because of that because we as poker players tend to be very results oriented, but I don't feel that way at all. When I won 17 days in a row earlier in the year, and won 17k or whatever it was, I was literally on a heater and didn't play optimally for pretty much the duration of that heater.
Now I am entering days with proper game selection, focus, and how I am playing is much more solid and I am expecting big things from here on out if I continue to bring my A game to the tables. I beat myself up for mistakes I make, and for the first time in my 2 and a half year poker career, I am trying insanely hard to improve my game. I wish I had this mind set a couple years ago, but it is what it is, all I can do is make the proper decisions right now and in the future, and that I do everything I can to set myself up to be successful in this industry.
Jordan, Brandon (Mazurite), and Gave ($$$indabank) and myself also went to Ireland for 10 days from the 14th-24th of May, which was a amazing experience. This is something I will dedicate a whole blog post too in the next day or two.
I leave for Pittsburgh again on June 21st, The 22nd - 24th will be spent at My buddy Dave's cabin for his birthday weekend which we did 2 years ago and was a blast, then July 1st will be my buddy Adam's engagement party, and then my ass is on a plane first thing Monday to make it in time for the 1.5k WSOP event that starts at noon. I also plan on playing the 1k on Wednesday, and the Main Event, which day I start for the Main Event is TBD.
I will end this post with some poker goals I have for 3 weeks of grinding I have in June, which I hope to meet.
- 20k Game profit
- 60k VPPS
- Top 5 in monthly TLB by the time i leave (Prob won't be able to keep it for whole month, but to put myself in the top 5 before I leave would suffice)
And I'm grindin' until I'm tired
they say you ain't grindin' until you tired
So I'm grinding with my eyes wide
I went home in late march for about month to do a few things.. I went to the annual bar tour at state college, which as usual was awesome. In years past we would usually go Friday and go to a house party with people we know that still go there, spend Saturday doing the bar tour, and leave on Sunday. We would spend the whole weekend hammered, and it would be a blast and that would be it. This time around it was waaaaay different. We are all 25-26 now, and we don't know nearly as many people that still go and live up there. It was very weird staying at a hotel there, it was very weird going to a bar Friday, and it was very weird going around campus just site seeing Sunday morning/afternoon. Overall the weekend was still a blast, and just as much fun as its always been, but the partying was for sure toned down a bit.
The rest of the time I was in Pittsburgh, I had a couple of nights out with my boys, but most would go home early. I ended up hanging out with my little brother a good bit, and spent the rest of my time in the casino grinding. The whole experience of being in Pittsburgh was a reality check for me, and made me realize the change of life that I am, or anyone around my age really, is going through.
You go from everyone being in school and working shitty side jobs, to starting out with whatever career you choose, and for the most part have very little responsibility's, and basically spending all of your time together with your friends having fun and just living your life free. Then in a blink of a eye it's gone and everything is changed.
One year ago, none of my friends were engaged or married, everyone was looking to party on the weekends, everyone was trying to do this and that, and everyone was still living their lives free. Today, all of my best friends, aside from two, are now married or engaged. It has been a very fast and very overwhelming change, and being single still is starting to suck when you see all of your best friends get engaged or married, or are in a very committed relationship which might as well count the same as being engaged. I am not living in Pittsburgh currently, but just being there for a month I started to realize that my friends stay in on the weekends a lot now, spend times with their significant others, or when we go out for a drink its just a couple and then its on our way home again. They are worrying about saving money and building credit to buy a house, they are worried about not getting in trouble as that would potentially fuck up their job situation, and they live their lives with much more responsibility's. in short everyone is growing up and moving onto a new chapter in their lives. Due to my friends settling down at such a young age, it makes me feel old even though I am not. I mean I am happy for them, so to them I say both congratulations and you suck.
While I was at home, I also got to see my newly born niece which was a fabulous experience. Up until then I had never held a baby in my life, and it was very uncomfortable for me to hold something so fragile. Scarlett (Baby's name) is doing very well now. Being born 10 weeks early was a scare initially, but she developed perfectly and is in perfect health and I couldn't be more happy for my brother and his wife.
Moving on to poker.
To start the year, I was having a bit of a rough go of things, and i approached my game selection very poorly. I was grinding SNGS only for the most part, and grinding very reg infested fields of 9 man and 18 mans. Due to how tough games were, I was only 6-8 tabling for the the first part of the year. I was playing poorly, very poorly, which is tough to do when your 6-8 tabling. I started out struggling, then I went on a heater, which may have been a bad thing for me as I still wasn't playing optimally. When I left for Pittsburgh, I was on a 5k downswing. When I came back from Pittsburgh, the downswing increased to 11k. I was switching my games from 18 mans to 45 mans and 180 mans, then back to 9 mans and 18 mans, loading a MTT session here and there, I was all over the place and basically whatever I did seemed to not work, I would have good days and bad days, but for the most part I just wasn't cutting it. I wasn't studying the game at all, I was just putting in hours, and lots of them, and with how much I played it really had me questioning what I was doing with my life as I felt the games were too hard, and I wouldn't go to the extreme and say I was on the verge of quitting, but the idea for sure crossed my mind.
Then just like that, how I approached poker changed in a instant. Jordan gave me advice on a certain hand I played, and just from hearing his thought process on the hand made me realize exactly how I was playing bad in all aspects of my game. I won't go into specifics, but for the next week or two, I was 4-6 tabling, trying new things out, and playing mainly just SNGS and working on my preflop game a bit, but mostly post flop. After having success in those two weeks and realizing a lot of the leaks I had, I started to feel much more confident in my game. After having a conversation with Jordan, I decided to change my game selection to strictly all MTTS, and mixing in 180's when I don't have many tables up, and 15-25 table SNGS b4 and after my MTT sessions to get VPPS and to reduce the MTT variance.
The very first week after my switch, which was about 3 weeks ago, I binked the big 27.50 for 5.2k, then a couple days later I binked the 11$ rebuy for 12.3k. I have also binked a 109 turbo for 4.7k, a 109$ freezeout for 2.8k, and I have a couple of 1k-1.5k scores as well. I am also 20 tabling 18 mans and 10 tabling 6 max hypers. I am also doing very well in both game formats and I am earning about 400 VPPS per hour doing either one, in the 6m hypers I get in a bit more VPPS, and its tough to say how much $$ per game I can make as the sample is still small for me playing this many tables.
I really felt like the few months I spent at the start of the month were two steps backwards, but I feel like I am now starting to take twenty steps forwards in the progression of how I play. I understand I am starting out on a bit of a heater with my new game selection, and It's easy to say I am just thinking this because of that because we as poker players tend to be very results oriented, but I don't feel that way at all. When I won 17 days in a row earlier in the year, and won 17k or whatever it was, I was literally on a heater and didn't play optimally for pretty much the duration of that heater.
Now I am entering days with proper game selection, focus, and how I am playing is much more solid and I am expecting big things from here on out if I continue to bring my A game to the tables. I beat myself up for mistakes I make, and for the first time in my 2 and a half year poker career, I am trying insanely hard to improve my game. I wish I had this mind set a couple years ago, but it is what it is, all I can do is make the proper decisions right now and in the future, and that I do everything I can to set myself up to be successful in this industry.
Jordan, Brandon (Mazurite), and Gave ($$$indabank) and myself also went to Ireland for 10 days from the 14th-24th of May, which was a amazing experience. This is something I will dedicate a whole blog post too in the next day or two.
I leave for Pittsburgh again on June 21st, The 22nd - 24th will be spent at My buddy Dave's cabin for his birthday weekend which we did 2 years ago and was a blast, then July 1st will be my buddy Adam's engagement party, and then my ass is on a plane first thing Monday to make it in time for the 1.5k WSOP event that starts at noon. I also plan on playing the 1k on Wednesday, and the Main Event, which day I start for the Main Event is TBD.
I will end this post with some poker goals I have for 3 weeks of grinding I have in June, which I hope to meet.
- 20k Game profit
- 60k VPPS
- Top 5 in monthly TLB by the time i leave (Prob won't be able to keep it for whole month, but to put myself in the top 5 before I leave would suffice)
And I'm grindin' until I'm tired
they say you ain't grindin' until you tired
So I'm grinding with my eyes wide
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
Life goes on
Since my last post, my run good has continued with poker. I have had 17 winning days in a row now, with the game profit in those days being almost 16k. On Saturday I ended up final tabling the weekly 215$ turbo and got 5th place for 5k. I min raised AQo from the button with 15 bbs into a short stack in the SB, and the big stack who was really good and super aggro in the BB. I expected the BB to re jam fairly wide if the SB folded, which was the case, I obv called and he had K9 of clubs and rivered a flush. I would have been the chipleader with 5 left, with a good shot to take down 17.3k, instead I get 5th. I got pretty lucky to get that far, combined with the past 2 and a half weeks as a whole I can't complain at all. Then On Sunday I am stuck almost 2k with my buyins, run like god at a 60$ 180 man and get 2nd place to get me even for the day. I cashed in a couple other things and profited 400$ for the day. I have had a few days like that now where I am stuck a good bit and then come out of it before the day is over, this win streak is truly amazing and def marks my longest consecutive day win streak in my career.
I am impressed with myself and how I am approaching the games the same exact way as I was 2 weeks ago. In the past I would let this get to my head, think I was the best player on the planet, and play tough games and my avg ABI would be way higher than it normally is. I am still grinding 15-60$ sngs, playing soft 100-200$ sngs, and I am still studying daily, and I am still trying to improve as a player before I head back into the 100-300$ sngs on a regular basis. Doing this has hurt my VPP/FPP's tremendously. Given I am not going for SNE this year anymore, I am perfectly fine with sacrificing VPPS/FPPS to make sure my game progression is coming along well.
The grind house we have setup has been going pretty well. It is awesome to live in the same place with 2 sickos. Matty(Mrpaintball) has killed it so far this year and is just crushing 180 mans. Jordan (bigbluffzinc) has run into some tough variance, but given the buyins he plays, he is going to experience this kind of thing way more often. There will be months where he will win 40-50k in sngs, which is just not possible for Matty and I. He feels like he sucks at poker right now, as anyone who downswings would feel (I felt this way after my 8k downswing to start the year), but Matty and myself will be the first to tell anybody that he is better than us.
Its just really refreshing to live in the same place as people who do the same stuff you do. Reflecting on when I lived with my best friends Dave and Adam, it would be so hard to motivate myself to play when they were home, especially on the weekends. There would be so many distractions, whether its going out, smoking trees and playing video games, watching TV, or just simply shooting the shit. Now living with other poker professionals, we are motivated by each other. We wake up, grind grind grind grind, coach a little during the day, and end our days with studying. Or if one of us is deep in a MTT we all get into it and bounce ideas back and forth about certain situations, which imo is studying as well. We go out to eat a couple times a week, and go out and get drunk once a week basically, the rest of our time is dedicated to poker. There is no TV here, there are no video games, I have nothing to do but play poker when I am in this house, which is exactly how I would want to have it since I moved across the continent to play poker. I feel like I could balance life with work a little better, but given how fresh Matty and I are to being back on the grind, I have no regrets with how I have spent the first month and half here.
I will say this though, it is incredibly hard to be so far away from home. I have no family here, I have made new friends here, but the friends I have grown up, some since the age of 3, and experienced so much of my life with, are not here. It is very difficult to live your life in a place so far away from "home", and I feel sometimes that my body is in Vancouver, but my mind and heart is in Pittsburgh.
A couple weeks ago my brother Tony and his wife Rayna had to give birth to their child Prematurely. The baby was due on April 20th, they had it almost 10 weeks early, which is very very early. I forget the name of condition that caused the baby to be born prematurely, but from what my Mom told me it was very serious. This was very difficult for me because of the simple fact that I could not be there.
Since my brother got back from Iraq a few years ago, he changed completely, and grew very distant from my brother and I (My brother Tony is pictured to the right, where I am wearing my Kentucky blue hoodie). He completely mellowed out, and My brother Andy and I were just living completely different lifestyles. We were living the partying fast lane lifestyle, and he came back with such a mellow personality, which is understandable for a Veteran of war, and experiencing the things he went through. I felt like not being there for him for his first child period, let alone in this situation, is just making the distance between us bigger. I tried to call him a couple times and he did not answer, and when I would text him to see how it was going, he would answer my text messages with 2-5 word answers such as "Were fine". I ended up getting all of the updates from my mom, and things look good now! The baby is still in the hospital but has devoloped everything perfectly fine. I will be home in about a month for a few things, bar tour at penn state, pirates home opener, and Easter, but more importantly I will be able to see my brother, his wife, and my first niece.
I feel like since moving away from home, I have grown into a completely different person. I am appreciating a lot of the small things in life that I always took for granted. I am not sure if its the move, or just maturing, but I feel like my goals in life, and in general what I want out of life are a lot more clear to me. I have always been the one day at a time kind of guy, and in the process that has caused me to make some bad decisions in life. I do not regret these decisions as I might not be the person I am today if it weren't for those decisions. My outlook is that I am finally becoming comfortable with who I am and what I am trying to accomplish, and the feeling I have now might have not happened if I didn't make some of those bad decisions in the past.
I have been taking baby steps to get my health back, which is the biggest thing I have neglected in the past. In the past I would say im going to lose weight, I am going to quit smoking, I am going to do this, I am going to do that, Ill start tomorrow. The funny thing is tomorrow never came. I wake up now and say I am going to do this, and I am going to do that, and I am doing it today. I have attempted to quit smoking, which lasted a couple days. I am still smoking, but I have cut back from a pack a day, to anywhere between 6-10 a day, and everyday I am disgusted with myself for it. Quitting is in the near future, but I feel like I am overwhelming myself with getting back in shape + quitting smoking + grinding out poker 60 hours a week. I am smart enough to realize this may be my brain rationalizing postponing quitting, because I am a addict, But I want to quit, and have attempted to quit, which in itself has never happened, and I know my days of smoking are not going to last much longer.
I have been working out via jogging, situps, crunches, pushups, just standard easy stuff for now. My body feels great just doing a little workout everyday, and I wake up without needing to force myself to do it, I actually want to do it, which in my opinion is something you need if you actually want to change.
My biggest goal though, is to start living in Vancouver. I am out here to pursue what I love to do, and that is play poker, but in the process I do not think I am truly living in Vancouver yet. I will find more happiness with my life If i stop trying to live in the past, and start living in the present. I need to realize that at this age in my life, people move all around the world to pursue their dreams and goals, and its no different for me. All of the things I am missing about home will still be there when I go to visit a couple times a year, and when I am in Vancouver, I just need to say fuck it, lets live here in Vancouver, and that life goes on.
I am impressed with myself and how I am approaching the games the same exact way as I was 2 weeks ago. In the past I would let this get to my head, think I was the best player on the planet, and play tough games and my avg ABI would be way higher than it normally is. I am still grinding 15-60$ sngs, playing soft 100-200$ sngs, and I am still studying daily, and I am still trying to improve as a player before I head back into the 100-300$ sngs on a regular basis. Doing this has hurt my VPP/FPP's tremendously. Given I am not going for SNE this year anymore, I am perfectly fine with sacrificing VPPS/FPPS to make sure my game progression is coming along well.
The grind house we have setup has been going pretty well. It is awesome to live in the same place with 2 sickos. Matty(Mrpaintball) has killed it so far this year and is just crushing 180 mans. Jordan (bigbluffzinc) has run into some tough variance, but given the buyins he plays, he is going to experience this kind of thing way more often. There will be months where he will win 40-50k in sngs, which is just not possible for Matty and I. He feels like he sucks at poker right now, as anyone who downswings would feel (I felt this way after my 8k downswing to start the year), but Matty and myself will be the first to tell anybody that he is better than us.
Its just really refreshing to live in the same place as people who do the same stuff you do. Reflecting on when I lived with my best friends Dave and Adam, it would be so hard to motivate myself to play when they were home, especially on the weekends. There would be so many distractions, whether its going out, smoking trees and playing video games, watching TV, or just simply shooting the shit. Now living with other poker professionals, we are motivated by each other. We wake up, grind grind grind grind, coach a little during the day, and end our days with studying. Or if one of us is deep in a MTT we all get into it and bounce ideas back and forth about certain situations, which imo is studying as well. We go out to eat a couple times a week, and go out and get drunk once a week basically, the rest of our time is dedicated to poker. There is no TV here, there are no video games, I have nothing to do but play poker when I am in this house, which is exactly how I would want to have it since I moved across the continent to play poker. I feel like I could balance life with work a little better, but given how fresh Matty and I are to being back on the grind, I have no regrets with how I have spent the first month and half here.
I will say this though, it is incredibly hard to be so far away from home. I have no family here, I have made new friends here, but the friends I have grown up, some since the age of 3, and experienced so much of my life with, are not here. It is very difficult to live your life in a place so far away from "home", and I feel sometimes that my body is in Vancouver, but my mind and heart is in Pittsburgh.
A couple weeks ago my brother Tony and his wife Rayna had to give birth to their child Prematurely. The baby was due on April 20th, they had it almost 10 weeks early, which is very very early. I forget the name of condition that caused the baby to be born prematurely, but from what my Mom told me it was very serious. This was very difficult for me because of the simple fact that I could not be there.
Since my brother got back from Iraq a few years ago, he changed completely, and grew very distant from my brother and I (My brother Tony is pictured to the right, where I am wearing my Kentucky blue hoodie). He completely mellowed out, and My brother Andy and I were just living completely different lifestyles. We were living the partying fast lane lifestyle, and he came back with such a mellow personality, which is understandable for a Veteran of war, and experiencing the things he went through. I felt like not being there for him for his first child period, let alone in this situation, is just making the distance between us bigger. I tried to call him a couple times and he did not answer, and when I would text him to see how it was going, he would answer my text messages with 2-5 word answers such as "Were fine". I ended up getting all of the updates from my mom, and things look good now! The baby is still in the hospital but has devoloped everything perfectly fine. I will be home in about a month for a few things, bar tour at penn state, pirates home opener, and Easter, but more importantly I will be able to see my brother, his wife, and my first niece.
I feel like since moving away from home, I have grown into a completely different person. I am appreciating a lot of the small things in life that I always took for granted. I am not sure if its the move, or just maturing, but I feel like my goals in life, and in general what I want out of life are a lot more clear to me. I have always been the one day at a time kind of guy, and in the process that has caused me to make some bad decisions in life. I do not regret these decisions as I might not be the person I am today if it weren't for those decisions. My outlook is that I am finally becoming comfortable with who I am and what I am trying to accomplish, and the feeling I have now might have not happened if I didn't make some of those bad decisions in the past.
I have been taking baby steps to get my health back, which is the biggest thing I have neglected in the past. In the past I would say im going to lose weight, I am going to quit smoking, I am going to do this, I am going to do that, Ill start tomorrow. The funny thing is tomorrow never came. I wake up now and say I am going to do this, and I am going to do that, and I am doing it today. I have attempted to quit smoking, which lasted a couple days. I am still smoking, but I have cut back from a pack a day, to anywhere between 6-10 a day, and everyday I am disgusted with myself for it. Quitting is in the near future, but I feel like I am overwhelming myself with getting back in shape + quitting smoking + grinding out poker 60 hours a week. I am smart enough to realize this may be my brain rationalizing postponing quitting, because I am a addict, But I want to quit, and have attempted to quit, which in itself has never happened, and I know my days of smoking are not going to last much longer.
I have been working out via jogging, situps, crunches, pushups, just standard easy stuff for now. My body feels great just doing a little workout everyday, and I wake up without needing to force myself to do it, I actually want to do it, which in my opinion is something you need if you actually want to change.
My biggest goal though, is to start living in Vancouver. I am out here to pursue what I love to do, and that is play poker, but in the process I do not think I am truly living in Vancouver yet. I will find more happiness with my life If i stop trying to live in the past, and start living in the present. I need to realize that at this age in my life, people move all around the world to pursue their dreams and goals, and its no different for me. All of the things I am missing about home will still be there when I go to visit a couple times a year, and when I am in Vancouver, I just need to say fuck it, lets live here in Vancouver, and that life goes on.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
First month back on stars recap
Being back is great. I am truly enjoying poker again, and everything it has to offer. I am a little disappointed with my volume the past few days, and how I make use of my time, but overall I would say I am pretty happy with myself in respects to both volume and putting in the study hours to keep improving my game.
As i stated in my last post, One of my goals this year was to get SNE. With the 60k VPPS i got carried over from last year, and starting to play on the 23rd, this seemed like a realistic and doable goal. I am pleased to say today that I am not going for it, and I wish anybody luck that is adventuring into hell aka the SNE grind.
I am not disappointed with myself for not going for it, because it was something I said I was going to do without putting too much thought into it. After thinking about it thoroughly, the idea does not appeal to me at all. There is nothing fun about 20 tabling 90-100% reg pool games for 8-10 hours a day with 5 figure swings regularly. This is what I would have to do if I were to get it, as I would be spending roughly 2 months in the states this year for WSOP in June and to be at home in Pittsburgh. I might try to get it next year if regulation seems distant, as it is a 2 year minimum commitment, combined with a couple other variables, but its just unrealistic this year as I am not mentally able to handle the swings both financially and mentally.
Moving on...
The first two weeks I started grinding it went just about as bad as it could go. I won about 2,000 my first couple of days playing, and then I put together 12 losing days in a row aside from 1 where I put about 2k or so into a sunday MTT grind and ended the day up like 200$ or something. I was running horribly, which also caused me to not play optimally, its funny how those two things go hand and hand a lot. I went on a 8k downswing and the last two days of the downswing I moved down buyins to get my confidence back and I was grinding nothing but 15-30$ games, a lot of them being non turbo 9-27 mans, and those two days I lost like 200$ both days, which isn't a lot in the scheme of things, but I was still losing, and losing in really really soft games.
Mazurite came over and we did HH reviews of both of our games, as he was down swinging as well. I think we both mutually benefited from it, and we both pointed out leaks in each others game and bounced ideas and spots back and forth etc. More importantly it made me realize how important studying is and from that day I have studied just about every single day and it feels like it has made a world of difference.
I have had 13 winning days in a row now, and have made about 10k in those 13 days. My confidence is back up and I feel I am playing pretty well. Some of it is good variance, but most of it is playing well combined with game selection. I am just going to continue with what I have been doing and hopefully the results will keep coming. Playing this way won't get me SNE, but I will for sure get 300k, but will aim for 400k vpps, which is still a nice hunk of change in rakeback.
Overall though I need to manage my time better. I am putting in a lot and lot of hours playing, and a lot of the time I spend is watering down my hourly a lot. I am playing a lot of sets of 8-12 games, which I am fine with, but I will end up 1 tabling for like 30 minutes sometimes or something. I need to mix in hypers more to start/end my sets, Or I need to load my next set when I have 1 table left in my last set, which is a hard thing to do because I am addicted to nicotine.
Overall my focus is there, I am playing well, and I expect a lot out of myself this year.
I will end this blog with my stats so far for the year and I will follow this post up tommorow with some other stuff I want to write, but for now I am too tired to continue.
Frenzuh 2,059 $2.37 $37 18% $4,875 - N/A PokerStars 1/1/2012 2/23/2012
Frenzuh 1,862 $2.09 $36 22% $3,891 - N/A PokerStars 1/1/2012 2/23/2012 SNG Only
Frenzuh 197 $5 $49 -13% $984 - N/A PokerStars 1/1/2012 2/23/2012 Sch. Only
As i stated in my last post, One of my goals this year was to get SNE. With the 60k VPPS i got carried over from last year, and starting to play on the 23rd, this seemed like a realistic and doable goal. I am pleased to say today that I am not going for it, and I wish anybody luck that is adventuring into hell aka the SNE grind.
I am not disappointed with myself for not going for it, because it was something I said I was going to do without putting too much thought into it. After thinking about it thoroughly, the idea does not appeal to me at all. There is nothing fun about 20 tabling 90-100% reg pool games for 8-10 hours a day with 5 figure swings regularly. This is what I would have to do if I were to get it, as I would be spending roughly 2 months in the states this year for WSOP in June and to be at home in Pittsburgh. I might try to get it next year if regulation seems distant, as it is a 2 year minimum commitment, combined with a couple other variables, but its just unrealistic this year as I am not mentally able to handle the swings both financially and mentally.
Moving on...
The first two weeks I started grinding it went just about as bad as it could go. I won about 2,000 my first couple of days playing, and then I put together 12 losing days in a row aside from 1 where I put about 2k or so into a sunday MTT grind and ended the day up like 200$ or something. I was running horribly, which also caused me to not play optimally, its funny how those two things go hand and hand a lot. I went on a 8k downswing and the last two days of the downswing I moved down buyins to get my confidence back and I was grinding nothing but 15-30$ games, a lot of them being non turbo 9-27 mans, and those two days I lost like 200$ both days, which isn't a lot in the scheme of things, but I was still losing, and losing in really really soft games.
Mazurite came over and we did HH reviews of both of our games, as he was down swinging as well. I think we both mutually benefited from it, and we both pointed out leaks in each others game and bounced ideas and spots back and forth etc. More importantly it made me realize how important studying is and from that day I have studied just about every single day and it feels like it has made a world of difference.
I have had 13 winning days in a row now, and have made about 10k in those 13 days. My confidence is back up and I feel I am playing pretty well. Some of it is good variance, but most of it is playing well combined with game selection. I am just going to continue with what I have been doing and hopefully the results will keep coming. Playing this way won't get me SNE, but I will for sure get 300k, but will aim for 400k vpps, which is still a nice hunk of change in rakeback.
Overall though I need to manage my time better. I am putting in a lot and lot of hours playing, and a lot of the time I spend is watering down my hourly a lot. I am playing a lot of sets of 8-12 games, which I am fine with, but I will end up 1 tabling for like 30 minutes sometimes or something. I need to mix in hypers more to start/end my sets, Or I need to load my next set when I have 1 table left in my last set, which is a hard thing to do because I am addicted to nicotine.
Overall my focus is there, I am playing well, and I expect a lot out of myself this year.
I will end this blog with my stats so far for the year and I will follow this post up tommorow with some other stuff I want to write, but for now I am too tired to continue.
Frenzuh 2,059 $2.37 $37 18% $4,875 - N/A PokerStars 1/1/2012 2/23/2012
Frenzuh 1,862 $2.09 $36 22% $3,891 - N/A PokerStars 1/1/2012 2/23/2012 SNG Only
Frenzuh 197 $5 $49 -13% $984 - N/A PokerStars 1/1/2012 2/23/2012 Sch. Only
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
2011 fail, moving onto 2012
Wow, where to start? Its been about 8 months since my last blog spot, I will try my best to recap the last 8 months.
Post black Friday I tried to grind live. This ended up in a complete disaster. Grinding live has huge mental swings, huge variance, and being I had no experience as a live "pro", and wasn't accustomed to the environment that comes with live poker, I failed miserably.
When i received the money from pokerstars, combined with what I had saved up, I had a really good roll to grind live. Pit problems, combined with taking shots at too many high buyin tournaments and whiffing, my roll was depleting, and fast. I ended up going to just two WSOP circuits, Chester and New Orleans, and that was all the travelling I did.
I ended the Chester trip stuck about 2k after expenses, which wasn't too huge of a hit to my bankroll and easily manageable. When I went down to New Orleans, boy did I fuck up. I ended up whiffing every single tournament for a combined 4k ish, which wasn't bad considering I raped the 1/2 game there (won about 7k in 1/2 over the 12 day span I was there). Expenses were fairly high, but what really raped me was pit games. I should have had a 1kish profitable trip if I didn't touch the pit games, but i degen'd huge and lost about 8 grand in pits, and I left the trip stuck about 7k after expenses.
As far as experience goes, fuck Chester, it sucks, but New Orleans is awesome. The 1/2 game there is insane as it has a max buyin of the chip leader at the table, and is by far the best cash game I have ever seen. And just everything about the city is awesome.
moving on.
So just about 1 month as a live pro, and im now stuck 10 grand, which was a good hunk of my bankroll, and it didn't get better from there.
When I got home from New Orleans, I was now living with mom and dad, and I went to the casino just about everyday for the next month. The degenerate side of me took control and I found myself playing pit games more often then I was playing poker.
Just as a example of how bad it was, heres a little story. One night, I went in and started playing blackjack like I usually did, and they had a lucky lady bet which is basically a retarded bet and the houses edge is huge, but I did my best at counting cards and if there was a lot of face cards in the deck, I would usually bet at least 15$ on it (if you get 20 you win 4 to 1, suited is like 10 to 1, and suited match is 20 to 1, and QhQh pays 200 to 1, 1000 to 1 if dealer has blackjack). Anyways, halfway through the shoe the deck is hot as a mother fucker, so I put down 25$ and what do you know, i get Qh Qh, and the dealer is showing a Ace. Dealer ended up not having blackjack, but I won 5,000$ for it. I was up about 200$ before that so that puts my running total of being up about 5,200$.
After that, I lost track of time, and for the next 8 hours, which seemed like 5 minutes at the time, my gambling was out of control. I ended up losing all of it, I walked out of the casino up 100$.
Needless to say, with a problem like I had, my money wasn't lasting. Thank god I was smart enough to shut myself down before I lost everything. I took a hiatus from playing poker, and more importantly going to the casino.
From Mid June, till about mid August, I spent the 2 months literally doing nothing with my life. I went out with friends about once a week, and spent the rest of my time playing video games (World of warcraft mostly), and watching TV. I literally spent everyday stoned. Weed was a good escape from reality, but at the end of the day spending everyday like that just gets you depressed and makes you apathetic about life.
Then one day, I have a convo with BigBluffzInc, and I got to thank him, because he got me out of the funk I was in. He basically just said Im wasting time, and I needed to move if I wanted to make poker work.
Instead of moving immediately, I figured it would be better to wait to work on my game, combined with getting a head start on my VPPS for 2012. I spent the rest of 2011 ghosting bluffz, push0rdie, and my student mazurite a shit ton. I also got back into coaching a bit, and picked up a couple students.
I ended up going back to the casino as well, and i did ok, I didn't make a ton of money, but i made some. More importantly, I stayed away from the pit games, which in itself is a huge accomplishment.
For the year as a whole, I lost money, which as a professional poker player is just unacceptable. Most of my losses came from staking and black friday. The PF I was apart of lost a shit ton of money. The PF as a whole had 140k, and about 40k of that equity belonged to me. We def over-stretched out bankroll, as about 135k of the 140k was out in horses, which wasn't a huge deal as we were profit chopping with horses left and right, and if needed we could reload it. But of course, black friday hits us at the worse time, and we lose a shit ton of makeup (90% of the losses), and a lot of the horses ended up rolling the rolls that they had.
Of the 140k in equity we had, we got back about 20k of that, a little under 6k for me, which is a pretty withered loss of "just" 34k for me.
List of horses who stole and haven't had any contact with us since black friday, and can go fuck themselves include
- Dacoach76
- Goober37
- Bearfister
- Illgetyouontilt
As far as poker goes, I did good early in the year, and did ok to end it, I ended up making a little bit of money as a whole, and TBH even in the 2 months I completely spewed, I still made money poker wise, But you gotta count everything. I also had a couple of students do really well (Mazurite and M1ghtyducks) which netted me 10k or so as well.
Moving onto 2012.
MrPaintball and myself decided to make the move to Canada to live with bigbluffzinc in Vancouver. I have been here for a little under 2 weeks now, and it feels good to be back to playing on Pokerstars.
It took about 10 days to get setup, half our fault for being dumb (lol printer problems), and half stars management team for taking a week to verify our accounts. I feel good about my game and the preparation I did for the past few months. The games are harder, much harder, and Its going to take a lot of work to make sure I stay ahead. This post has gone on way too long, so I will just end it with some 2012 poker goals that I have.
- SNE
- 150k game profit
- 400k combined profit between Playing/Rakeback/Coaching/Staking
- Go to vegas for the WSOP, play the main event
I know I know... pretty ambitious goals, especially considering my results in the past do not show signs of me having a year like this, but I am optimistic.
I will keep this blog more updated now, esp for the SNE chase.
GL at the tables
Post black Friday I tried to grind live. This ended up in a complete disaster. Grinding live has huge mental swings, huge variance, and being I had no experience as a live "pro", and wasn't accustomed to the environment that comes with live poker, I failed miserably.
When i received the money from pokerstars, combined with what I had saved up, I had a really good roll to grind live. Pit problems, combined with taking shots at too many high buyin tournaments and whiffing, my roll was depleting, and fast. I ended up going to just two WSOP circuits, Chester and New Orleans, and that was all the travelling I did.
I ended the Chester trip stuck about 2k after expenses, which wasn't too huge of a hit to my bankroll and easily manageable. When I went down to New Orleans, boy did I fuck up. I ended up whiffing every single tournament for a combined 4k ish, which wasn't bad considering I raped the 1/2 game there (won about 7k in 1/2 over the 12 day span I was there). Expenses were fairly high, but what really raped me was pit games. I should have had a 1kish profitable trip if I didn't touch the pit games, but i degen'd huge and lost about 8 grand in pits, and I left the trip stuck about 7k after expenses.
As far as experience goes, fuck Chester, it sucks, but New Orleans is awesome. The 1/2 game there is insane as it has a max buyin of the chip leader at the table, and is by far the best cash game I have ever seen. And just everything about the city is awesome.
moving on.
So just about 1 month as a live pro, and im now stuck 10 grand, which was a good hunk of my bankroll, and it didn't get better from there.
When I got home from New Orleans, I was now living with mom and dad, and I went to the casino just about everyday for the next month. The degenerate side of me took control and I found myself playing pit games more often then I was playing poker.
Just as a example of how bad it was, heres a little story. One night, I went in and started playing blackjack like I usually did, and they had a lucky lady bet which is basically a retarded bet and the houses edge is huge, but I did my best at counting cards and if there was a lot of face cards in the deck, I would usually bet at least 15$ on it (if you get 20 you win 4 to 1, suited is like 10 to 1, and suited match is 20 to 1, and QhQh pays 200 to 1, 1000 to 1 if dealer has blackjack). Anyways, halfway through the shoe the deck is hot as a mother fucker, so I put down 25$ and what do you know, i get Qh Qh, and the dealer is showing a Ace. Dealer ended up not having blackjack, but I won 5,000$ for it. I was up about 200$ before that so that puts my running total of being up about 5,200$.
After that, I lost track of time, and for the next 8 hours, which seemed like 5 minutes at the time, my gambling was out of control. I ended up losing all of it, I walked out of the casino up 100$.
Needless to say, with a problem like I had, my money wasn't lasting. Thank god I was smart enough to shut myself down before I lost everything. I took a hiatus from playing poker, and more importantly going to the casino.
From Mid June, till about mid August, I spent the 2 months literally doing nothing with my life. I went out with friends about once a week, and spent the rest of my time playing video games (World of warcraft mostly), and watching TV. I literally spent everyday stoned. Weed was a good escape from reality, but at the end of the day spending everyday like that just gets you depressed and makes you apathetic about life.
Then one day, I have a convo with BigBluffzInc, and I got to thank him, because he got me out of the funk I was in. He basically just said Im wasting time, and I needed to move if I wanted to make poker work.
Instead of moving immediately, I figured it would be better to wait to work on my game, combined with getting a head start on my VPPS for 2012. I spent the rest of 2011 ghosting bluffz, push0rdie, and my student mazurite a shit ton. I also got back into coaching a bit, and picked up a couple students.
I ended up going back to the casino as well, and i did ok, I didn't make a ton of money, but i made some. More importantly, I stayed away from the pit games, which in itself is a huge accomplishment.
For the year as a whole, I lost money, which as a professional poker player is just unacceptable. Most of my losses came from staking and black friday. The PF I was apart of lost a shit ton of money. The PF as a whole had 140k, and about 40k of that equity belonged to me. We def over-stretched out bankroll, as about 135k of the 140k was out in horses, which wasn't a huge deal as we were profit chopping with horses left and right, and if needed we could reload it. But of course, black friday hits us at the worse time, and we lose a shit ton of makeup (90% of the losses), and a lot of the horses ended up rolling the rolls that they had.
Of the 140k in equity we had, we got back about 20k of that, a little under 6k for me, which is a pretty withered loss of "just" 34k for me.
List of horses who stole and haven't had any contact with us since black friday, and can go fuck themselves include
- Dacoach76
- Goober37
- Bearfister
- Illgetyouontilt
As far as poker goes, I did good early in the year, and did ok to end it, I ended up making a little bit of money as a whole, and TBH even in the 2 months I completely spewed, I still made money poker wise, But you gotta count everything. I also had a couple of students do really well (Mazurite and M1ghtyducks) which netted me 10k or so as well.
Moving onto 2012.
MrPaintball and myself decided to make the move to Canada to live with bigbluffzinc in Vancouver. I have been here for a little under 2 weeks now, and it feels good to be back to playing on Pokerstars.
It took about 10 days to get setup, half our fault for being dumb (lol printer problems), and half stars management team for taking a week to verify our accounts. I feel good about my game and the preparation I did for the past few months. The games are harder, much harder, and Its going to take a lot of work to make sure I stay ahead. This post has gone on way too long, so I will just end it with some 2012 poker goals that I have.
- SNE
- 150k game profit
- 400k combined profit between Playing/Rakeback/Coaching/Staking
- Go to vegas for the WSOP, play the main event
I know I know... pretty ambitious goals, especially considering my results in the past do not show signs of me having a year like this, but I am optimistic.
I will keep this blog more updated now, esp for the SNE chase.
GL at the tables
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Liveaments
I can't bring myself to play on the merge networks, or bodog, or whatever else is available, so I have been playing live, and lots of it.
I have played 7 of the past 8 days since April 15th, and I have logged in roughly 65 hours. I have had 4 winning days, and 3 losing days. The most I won in 1 day was 1,300, and the most I lost in 1 day was 1,500. Overall I am up about 700$ since the transition. I should be up over 2k, but I am such a huge degen and blackjack / roulette / craps have taken me for almost 1,500.
My plan moving forward is to play as much 1/3 as I can at the casino. I have logged in 10 hours or so playing 2/5 and just don't feel my hourly will be higher at 2/5 than 1/3. It sounds crazy I guess but the 2/5 games there are awful. Old guys who don't play a single hand, combined with the rake problems. If i steal the blinds, which happens a lot when I raise at that game, they take 1$ for badbeat jackpot every hand, and 10% up to 5$. This means when I steal the blinds, my 5$ gets added to the 7$ in the pot, which makes a 12$ pot, and they take 2$ from that (1$ for rake, 1$ for BadBeatJackpot). So when I steal the blinds, I make a 5$ profit off the 7$ I stole. If there was action, and big pots happened a lot, the rake would actually not be that bad as they max it at 5$ (which is actually 6$ if you include the badbeat jackpot). The problem is big pots don't really happen that often though, and when they do I lose almost all of them due to the old guys only play the nuts.
I plan on doing live hard for the next month or so, I will leave for Chester, PA (Near philly) in about a week. From there I will travel to New Orleans. Both of those citys will have WSOPC's there and action should be extremely juicy. After doing ST Louis I can't wait to get back into that kind of atmosphere where 2/5 is extremely soft, and live tournaments that are 350$+, that play like a 3$ MTT online, with very decent payouts.
I need to move out of my place by May 15th, I will move out most of my stuff this upcoming week, and finish when I get back from Chester. After I come back from New Orleans I will probably be at my parents house. I really hate living with them, and It really sucks but it wont be long. I may just hotel it for a couple of weeks to be honest.
My cousins wedding is on June 4th, and after that I have nothing keeping me in Pittsburgh so moving out of the country is a option, well see what happens.
I regret my last blog post because who am I to bitch about my situation when it can be a lot worse. I consider myself great at adapting in all kinds of situations, and that's really all I gotta do right now.
I have played 7 of the past 8 days since April 15th, and I have logged in roughly 65 hours. I have had 4 winning days, and 3 losing days. The most I won in 1 day was 1,300, and the most I lost in 1 day was 1,500. Overall I am up about 700$ since the transition. I should be up over 2k, but I am such a huge degen and blackjack / roulette / craps have taken me for almost 1,500.
My plan moving forward is to play as much 1/3 as I can at the casino. I have logged in 10 hours or so playing 2/5 and just don't feel my hourly will be higher at 2/5 than 1/3. It sounds crazy I guess but the 2/5 games there are awful. Old guys who don't play a single hand, combined with the rake problems. If i steal the blinds, which happens a lot when I raise at that game, they take 1$ for badbeat jackpot every hand, and 10% up to 5$. This means when I steal the blinds, my 5$ gets added to the 7$ in the pot, which makes a 12$ pot, and they take 2$ from that (1$ for rake, 1$ for BadBeatJackpot). So when I steal the blinds, I make a 5$ profit off the 7$ I stole. If there was action, and big pots happened a lot, the rake would actually not be that bad as they max it at 5$ (which is actually 6$ if you include the badbeat jackpot). The problem is big pots don't really happen that often though, and when they do I lose almost all of them due to the old guys only play the nuts.
I plan on doing live hard for the next month or so, I will leave for Chester, PA (Near philly) in about a week. From there I will travel to New Orleans. Both of those citys will have WSOPC's there and action should be extremely juicy. After doing ST Louis I can't wait to get back into that kind of atmosphere where 2/5 is extremely soft, and live tournaments that are 350$+, that play like a 3$ MTT online, with very decent payouts.
I need to move out of my place by May 15th, I will move out most of my stuff this upcoming week, and finish when I get back from Chester. After I come back from New Orleans I will probably be at my parents house. I really hate living with them, and It really sucks but it wont be long. I may just hotel it for a couple of weeks to be honest.
My cousins wedding is on June 4th, and after that I have nothing keeping me in Pittsburgh so moving out of the country is a option, well see what happens.
I regret my last blog post because who am I to bitch about my situation when it can be a lot worse. I consider myself great at adapting in all kinds of situations, and that's really all I gotta do right now.
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