EPT SNOWFEST

So far the journey has been really fun. A mixture of online poker, live poker, skiing, prop betting, drinking and eating badly. 

We met up in Salzburg on the 19th of March and made our way to our home for the next 6days. We got really lucky in the resort we chose and the comfort was perfect conditions for long hours of grinding as Serkules was soon to find out. The first night we got the introduction between Serkules and Jasonc6 over and opted to grind some super turbos which left Jasonc6 pretty amazed at the lines Serkules chose to take and how well they worked vs his opponents in this structure. 

The next morning we went skiing and Serkules, through my advice, decided he didn't need a ski coach and would just learn at the top of the mountain. Poor Serkules learnt the hard way that skiing isn't for everyone. After his poor attempt to learn which consisted mainly on the floor Serkules decided to throw the white flag in and walk back to the ski lift and leave the nervous Jasonc6 and my over confident self to the challenge of skiing down the mountain. I definitely lost the confidence soon after trying to bomb it down the mountain with out really knowing how to stop without diving to the floor to stop. After a couple of hours and feeling a lot more comfortable on the snow the ski lifts closed and we made it back to the hotel to rendezvous with Serkules again. We again grinded the night away with a a deal that the person to make 5k in one day to buy a bottle of the most expensive champagne we can find when we go out to a club, Serkules had already managed this by the time we got back from skiing and I am looking forward to going out in Vienna to have Serkules pay his dept :).

That night we decided to spontaneously play the $500+$500+$100 turbo bounty tournament where on the bubble I found myself all-in with q4o to the aq of my opponent, with a 4 on the river I managed to cash in my first big live event and came 4th when the SB put me all-in in the BB I had A9 to his KQs which hit a queen on the turn to crush my dreams of winning an EPT side event, but hey I can't complain and was happy taking the $2350 for 4th place giving 30% to Jason for his staking in the tournament. 

The next morning myself and Serkules played the main event which in my opinion the level of play was horrible and felt very confident at each table I was moved to. I lost 2big pots before busting out after the dinner break my first one was when I raised AQ in the hi-jack and called by the cut off who had been flatten in position a number of hands and felt he had a wide range, the flop came KsQsQc, I c bet half pot and he called, the turn came 10d, I bet half pot again and he called, the river came 3s and now I was left with a tuff decision, I can either check call or bet fold. I made the decision that bet folding is my best option in the long run as If I was to check and only pay him off the times he bets then I am normally behind his river value betting range and will be loosing money on the times he has a flush, straight or a full house but am loosing value the times he checks back all the Kx Qx hands he would probably check back on this river so if by check calling I am only paying him off when I am beat then bet folding becomes the most profitable line for a number of reasons. 1. I gain value from his hands that he would check back on the river that I actually do beat. 2. I can control the pot and put in a less amount than the amount my opponent would bet with his straights and flushes, so I save chips on the times I am beat. 3. I keep my river ranged merged to be less exploitable in future, if I am planning on barrel bluffing this board in future I need to be merging this river range with my nut hands, my middle value hands, my turned into bluff hands and my pure air hands. 4. Simply to stop my opponent seeing my hand.*edit* he ended up having js9s so I ended up playing the hand good imo because I controlled the pot and lost less in terms of ev than I would have taking other lines, also I made my opponent play super bad having str8 on turn and flush on river and still I controlled the pot :). Live players play soo bad :) *edit* The second main hand I played was when I had AKs in the SB, the button raised his standard 2.25x and I had around 60bbs I 3bet 2.5x I made it a little more than my standard 2.25x as I was oop and I also wanted to try and get stacks in preflop with the very competent button. The BB with 40bbs shipped his stack in button folding and I couldn't get my chips in sooner for him to show me KK and went on to hold. The hand I busted out with I had a10s for 17bbs and decided to open ship mid position which I think was over standard and I ran into kk again to the same player. I left the tournament with a massive smile on my face as I was really happy with the way I had played in both events and boosted my confidence as a live player further. Serkules played really well and ended up busting out a few hours before me when he flopped a full house with JJ on J1010 board and got it all in to his opponents kings with an instant 2 outa on the turn to leave Serkules dreams shattered :(. FML.

We then went to Fulltilt red pro: Crisbus' hotel room and grinding the night away with other Italian pro's and had a really enjoyable night meeting new people and talking strategy as I played my first $500 6max sng on stars for the fun of it as I had been doing so well, but I bubbled sigh.

The next day Serkules experienced a -$10,000 day and as he wasn't too tilted and still playing his A game. He loaded his stomach up with every energy drink invented and grinded non stop for 24hours before ending the session + $3,000 up and with a big smile on his face, it amazed me how he managed to keep playing his A game the entire 24hours and always kept a smile on his face as he knew he was still playing well with the aid of his all in ev graph. Big props to Serkules in his dedication in this time period playing a total of 500 games.

The rest of the time in our mountain town we spent grinding online and skiing we had loads of fun and in the end of the 6days there we ended up collectively $42,000 + RB. Serkules: $26,000 Jasonc6: $5,000 and myself: $11,000. 

On the last night I met up with Thorsten (a high stakes German poker player living in London) and a bunch of his friends from pokerstrategy.net and the young Italian Pro's living their dream as well as we let the champagne poor and had a really good night with them all. We will be meeting up with the Italian poker players again in Vienna for some more grinding and more fun times. Also in Vienna we are planning on meeting HUsng pro's Canis Canem and Domonox, am looking forward to meeting both of them as I respect both players highly. 

I wrote this on the way to Vienna but am just uploading this now. I will update the further success of all players in Vienna and props to Leon (notgoingnewhere) on his cash in the WPT main event.

$150k on sharkscope reached

Proud moment of reaching 150k and also to be in the top 20 for any stakes husngs and 16th any game on fulltilt so far this year:)   (sngs only)

Feb/March

Feb was a great poker month, had alot of fun and feel like it has been probably the most I have learnt in a single month since I started playing. I feel like I am on a massive rush and felt myself getting a little over excited so I decided to slow it down a bit/take a couple of days away from the grind and think about my situation at this point in my life and just chill out with my mates. I obv couldn't help puttin in a lil session here n there lol. I feel that taking these breaks after running so well can help prevent the next downswing from happening.
Feb:
Mr Jasonc6 came and stayed with me in London for the first week of Feb, we had alot of fun playing 2 live tournaments and alot of cash games/drunk cash gaming is always fun. (Congrats to Notgoingnewhere on his win in the £300 entry live tournament for £13k) We also went out on the piss up which was cool to see jasonc gettin drunk but still being in control of himself and not giving into the peer pressure of shots coming from his close mate maximilian0407 who's bday it was :).

I started of the month playing my first $350 games and ended the month feeling very comfortable in the stakes and found myself sittin some $550's against selected oponents. Its always nice to have first shots at new stakes work out because so often it doesn't. I guess I was really ready and motivated to play the higher stakes. I am definately considering moving up again soon, but I don't like to jump into the deep end without being 100% ready, and the main thing I consider when moving up is have I got enough roll to take a potentially big dwnswing and have I got the confidence to be sat by regs of the higher stakes. When playing 350s I made sure I was ready to be sat and too rematch as often as regs wanted to and I think I played really well against the oponents I was fearing the most but I had fun and ended up alot in the new stakes :). So I woun't be open sitting 500+ too regually but moving up is something I will be considering in the forcoming months.
On the mtt front of things, I decided to play a bunch of mtts, I feel REALLLY comfortable in how I am playing in mtts, and feel I have become a much better mtt player lately. I had some cool deep runs some notable ones were 2nd ina $24 donkament for $3600 and a 17th place in the double deuce when my kings were crackd by the all in pre jacks. I would have been 4th in chips and winner got $35k.
I also had a big realisation on how well I can handle things poker throws my way, I never even tilted after the hand got cracked, maybe I am just in such a good place I havn't been result orientated at all lately in poker, I guess this is easier for some to do, I think its probs one of my stronger points.

I booked 3trips last month. One for the EPT/WPT Austria I am going to be flying out to snowfest for my first ept main event and then to vienna for my first wpt main event. (I sold 70% of action cus 7250euros seems a lil out of my br at the moment lol) I will be flying with Jasonc6 to meet serkules in snowfest and then we are all catching a train to vienna to meet notgoingnewhere to play the wpt. I also read on livb's blog he will be going aswel so would be pretty cool to see him.

2nd trip I will be taking is to go to California for 2 and half weeks and then to Vegas for half a week, but I might end up n vegas earlier depending on if I want to play some wsop events or not. I will be flying into San Fran and will travel through california staying in hotels along the way, hopefully can pop in and see oopa11 for a catch up and then I will make our way to vegas for the pool parties and fun times :).

3rd trip will be with my brother and some friends I grew up with, we will be going to vegas for a week, hopefully I will end up playing a bunch more live cash games this year than I did last year, would be cool to get a better feel for the 2/5 game and maybe 4/8 5/10 games depending on what my finanial situation is like nearer the time.

So that brings me to now, I am feeling very happy and confident in myself at the moment but I need to start eating more and puttin more structure into when I grind because at the moment I have no routine and sleeping patterns are pretty messed up. I will be preparing myself very hard for the trip to Austria so I might blow out some steam this week because I don't want to touch any heavy drinking sessions just before I go away. I am still thinking of a new topic to talk about and have had some ideas such as: 'The effects of drink on a poker player', 'how to tell distant family and friends you now play professional poker without them looking at you like your about to loose the shirt on your back', and 'multi personalities in poker.' I will try and cover all 3 subjects at some point in the future.

SWINGS

So in this post as I said previously I wanted to talk about a particular topic, I covered a bit about swings in my old blog but wanted to go into it again as it was a pretty good subject and definitely relevant to the games I'm playing.

First of all I would like to say swings happen in poker, no1 can withstand them, for some people they may be crucial loosing 100buyins + and for others they may just be a smaller win rate over a big sample size eg some1 consistently beating a game at 5% roi and goes 1k games winning at 2% roi.
Loads of things effect swings, way more than most people think at the time a swing is occurring. I'm going to focus on just 3 of the many aspects of swings; confidence, tilt, simply the maths.

Confidence to me seems to be one of the main factors in swings, this isn't for everyone but for me a lot of my game flow plays/ thinking outside the box happens when I have just ran good over a sample size and decide to make a couple of ev+ plays to keep things flowing and I 'expect' them to bring a return on ev+ play I make. I use the word 'expect' as obviously if I am making an ev+ play I am always expecting them to bring a return but when confidence is booming you tend to think more positively about taking them. With confidence low it can bring a scared factor into it and can prevent you from taking an ev+ play even though you know it will bring a return but if it doesn't then the variance of the play will make you feel less confident again and then can cause your thinking to start rejecting some ev+ spots to reduce variance but really missing them spots are what will increase variance and in turn make a downswing last longer.

Tilt; I decided to talk about tilt after confidence because I think confidence is a big factor in tilt. I feel main parts of tilt can come in two different forms when we are considering confidence being the cause for tilt. I feel that when confidence is low and I may start missing some nice spots and then I realise I have missed some spots I begin to tilt because if I'm missing ev+ spots then I am playing bad poker imo (this excludes the times I choose to not take a slight ev+ play because I feel I can wait out a more ev+ play against a particular opponent). So the way tilting can effect a downswing can make the downswing continue further as you now realise that you are playin bad and when 'trying' to play better a player can make even more ev- in order to make up for the good spots they missed. This is getting pretty hard to explain but a good example of this is in an mtt I played back in November. I was on a final table with 2nd in chips and had been getting 3bet/4bet quite a few hands in a row, my plays were certainly ev+ and was obv running under ev in the small sample size on the final table, a spot came where I had perfect stacks for a 3bet 5 handed and I opted to fold because I wanted to slow down the pace of the game as I had been played back in 'a few' spots I had tried and wanted to reduce variance for a few hands, I then realised I should have taken the ev+ play and was a lil annoyed at myself, I then noticed a few hands later I decided to 4bet in a really bad spot which was probably even ev- given I was oop to a super aggro opponent, this situation laid it down clearly to me that 1 I should have taken the 1st ev+ situation and 2 I shouldn't have taken the ev- situation and unconsciously I believe it was down to confidence becoming low and tilt kicking in that caused this to happen.

Tilt can also kick in when confidence is booming and you are running over ev in a bunch of situations, If a player is playing extremely confidently and picking a bunch of spots (both ev+ and ev-) and there working out in a good way this can cause a player to become over confident and a superman effect can come on the player where they feel invincible and nothing they can do can go wrong, this is again because their results over a small sample size has been overly good and the good results of this small sample can keep the ev- plays in their game un noticed for a long period of time (maybe infinitely if they don't work on their game constantly enough) and can cause downswings to continue extremely long without realising the problem.

Maths is obviously going to be a key factor in downswings and upswings, and the best and easiest way to explain it in terms of a break even player would be to take a coin and flip it a thousand times, if you was to plot the results on a graph you would certainly see points in the graph where heads was running super under ev and equally when tails was running under ev but if you was to do it say 50,000 times then its pretty certain that their would be no correlation - or + for either heads of tails and this is the same for a break even poker player, they will have some good days and some bad days but if they consistently played break even poker then they would in the long run break even its when the other factors such as confidence/tilt kick in where they can go from being break even into being a ev- player. So when you see a player with a consistent 10% roi over 15k games at husngs then its pretty clear that they are playing at a 10% roi level and same as with a loosing player over big samples its pretty clear these are not long up n downswings that these players are winning what their level of play dictates them to win. (When talking about swings in terms of games I don't want to include mtt's as these are pretty different as results do not always determinen the level of the player involved)

Ok so this is kinda just some quick writing and probs the first bit of thought processed writing I have done since writing essays at uni so in parts my point may seem unclear and the grammar and punctuation will be horrible I expect as I am TERRIBLE at English but I just wanted to write about a topic and thought swings would be a nice one to cover as it is so relevant. I will do another post in the next couple of days to talk about Feb and will include my week with Jasonc6 one of the sickest Husng players online at the moment and a bunch of fun things that happened in the month.

Jan summary and Feb goals

Jan ended a super sick month for me, in fact the best grinding month (bar when I can 2nd in the brawl) I have had, I played 1816 games which is probably the most volume I have ever put into a month. I used my ftps to buy a 1k bonus and I had enough Iron man medals to get me a $600 bonus. I thought about whether or not I wanted to put my results on here for each month and decided against it as those interested can always check scope and those who aren't it doesn't matter.

I feel really chilled out, been exercising, drinking a lot less and been spending a lot of time with my girlfriend. In terms of health I think this could possibly be the healthiest; mentally, socially and physically I have been since I used to play rugby at 16, so I am really happy.

Feb goals:
I have just moved up to $350 games and have some swings already, pretty excited bout it as if I run well could be another sick month, started out well already but can easily change.
The goals I'm going to make are pretty much to play 1800 games again and to keep watching videos from mersenneary and maybe some other coaches I have never really given time to watch.

Pretty boring post but just wanted to some up Jan and intro to Feb, for my next post I think I'm going to write about a particular subject I will think about it and post when I have something worth reading.

Weekend away from poker

I have just come back from a really fun weekend catching up with my friends I made at uni and an old time friend I have known since I was young.

When I was younger I used to do a lot of graffiti art work. So now and again I plan to do nice positive pieces to de-stress from poker and have a time out doing some non standard things. We woke up early Friday morning, had 'beer for breakfast' and painted probably the best wall we have ever painted together and made me really happy as its quite self fulfilling to do nice pieces after the amount of time I have put into painting over my teenage life.

The rest of the weekend I spent it chilling and had a good 5 days off from poker which consisted of partying (craziest house party I have ever seen), eating out, going to cinema, and having a nice meal in.

This now does leave me in a situation where I dropped from 3rd to 10th in the fulltilt Husng leader boards so in order to get that extra 14 buy ins I need to work a lot harder this week to get myself back up to that situation.

Month results so far are incredible for the first month of the year but will give full updates at the end of the month.

Goals for this month

I am in a bit of confused spot in poker right now. I have moved up the stakes and have been crushing some games and then I hit a rut when I take a dwn swing and find myself 3tabling 200 super turbos with little concentration. I have decided to take a couple of weeks of playing as many super turbos as I have been playing, I feel like the swings are really effecting my game and makng me really play worse when I do play a normal speed husng, mainly because why am I busting my balls trying to wait out a fish when I could have taken 10 flips in the time this one game has taken. So as I want to get back to grinding some normal and turbo games I will make some doable goals for this month.

1: I will unreg all games when I have more than 2 tables of stakes above $100 up, I can still 4 table lower stakes if I ever get that kinda action.
2: I will not mix sessions of normal speed and turbo games with super turbo games, when I feel like a super turbo session I will set aside the day to playing them when I have alot of time to endure the swings.
3: I will have atleast 1 session reviewing atleast 3 games I played a week
4: I will re watch every croixdawg video on my computer (1 each day am grinding)
5: I will set sessions into timed and more structured sessions ie, 5hours at a time and then take sensible breaks as am not eating or exercising well at all.
6: I will buy a new computer and a monitor and a comfortable chair as lieing in bed just isn't professional.
7: I will try and get out of the habit of drinking so oftenly and freely.
8: I will not use msn/facebook whilst playing games and will not let real life problems effect my games, when I find this happening I will address the problem and deal with it before playing a session.

I know alot of these are a bit out there and maybe some are more doable than others, these are more guide lines for myself to gain some structure in my poker carreer as I lack massively structure in my life at the moment and am working hard on gaining more. I read notgoingnewheres post on being a professional and feel like lately I have just not been professional as I used to be. I guess as long as I notice it I can do something about it.