I went on a mini twitter rant yesterday about doing strategy videos on PLO and I wanted to write more about the idea of giving away poker strategy in 2014. People have been putting out strategy/training videos for years now, this isn't new. People putting out more and more PLO specific strategy videos is more of a new idea and something I was hoping would take as long as possible to actually start to take place. With RIO training site, I could see how it would make sense for the end game bosses like Phil and Odds to put out training videos while actually dicussing good, in depth strategy. The more action they get and the more people that could make it to playing 25/50+, the better for their overall bottom line, which is very debatable if that is actually true/false. What made me write those tweets yesterday is when I saw a PLO 200zoom video being put out by a new video maker. I watched a bit of it and then I became very confused as to why this guy would decide its ever a good idea to make a 1/2 zoom video that is his main game with the intention of making people better at playing zoom. I can't imagine this guy is getting paid anything close to the point where it makes any sense at all. I don't think many of the players who were around to watch as the NL games get progressively tougher years ago are the ones making PLO stuff now because they realize how fucking dumb it is. Maybe the reason is similar to what Marshall said in a post on here as to why he is making videos now. They are looking for respect from there peers and want to help others get better at the game. I think all video makers should watch videos from one of the guys that play on the Barcode account on Pokerstars (Hac Dang). The team of people that play on the account handled video making pretty perfectly. They attached there name on the site when it first launched to help there friend out and get more people to the site while putting out a couple vids each where they basically talked about nothing.
In isildroon last video he mentioned something about how more regulars are playing alot better now and the growth of other players game was going much quicker. It sounded like he was not sure as to why this might be happening but you never can be sure with accents. When one of the better regs in the games is putting out 2 videos a month playing a bunch of deep tables and going in depth into different things, what do you expect to happen to the games over a 6 month period??? It is seriously mind blowing that some of these guys on different sites are continuing to put content out there as they watch the games they play in get tougher and tougher directly because of them. I know as PLO continues to grow/become more popular and the regs are getting more and more experience the games difficulty will continue to increase faster but all of this makes that happen much much much faster.
I can see a bit more merit for some of the small stakes guys to put out videos but not too much more. The amount of money they might be making from doing these videos might actually be a big percentage of their overall bottom line and with the player pool being so large at the stakes they normall play, they don't have to worry as much about directly impacting the games they play in on a daily basis. Also the people that tend to watch these videos are usually of lower skill level so they will end up misapplying different concepts to their own game often enough. If I was a 100 or 200plo regular and poker wasn't my full time thing or in my near future, I would be tempted to put out videos on a regular basis as well if I could.
I think the obvious live poker equivalent for this is when people don't shut the fuck up about talking strategy/over hands at the table while the bad players are sitting there confused and the meh regs who breakeven/lose a bit might get encouraged to actually work harder at there game because of something you said and end up turning into winning regs. I read something that Alec Torelli wrote about it that I really agreed with and is basically saying the similar things I've been saying in this post http://www.alectorelli.com/blog/sharing-information-at-the-table/
As I wrote a bit about in a few previous blog posts, I've been working on writing up different things for my website. The problem I've run into is that I've always been pretty anti-giving away strategy (read my 12k posts on 2p2 to confirm this) and many of the things I intend to write about are actually strategical type of things. None of it is really game specific strategy but as I was writing up something about how to set better poker goals for yourself and actually make a plan to achieve them I started thinking why the fuck I want to try to help people that make there money from playing poker (like I do) set better goals and work more efficient. I do have the desire to help people out but I just can't convince myself it is very smart to put out content that is going to help my direct competition or future direct competition be more effective in what we both do for a living. As I mentioned before, there is the chance that things I might suggest is completely wrong/bad and/or people are going to misapply the ideas completely, but I don't think it outweighs the times it helps take a breakeven small stakes player to a winning midstakes player. Instead I was thinking about writing up strategy that pertains to life, love, and happiness but even with that I think I might end up having too much of a positive impact. I do think I am overestimating the impact but if it is > 0 that is probably too much.
I guess it comes down to what type of person you want to be and what kind of impact do you want to try to have on others around you. Can you live with and accept that you might be making a certain area of your own life harder while potentially bettering others in many different ways beyond that specific area of your own life that you might be making harder. Poker is such a unique world to be in that anytime you help the people you are closest with your potentially hurting yourself. There is a bunch of merit to the idea that writing about these ideas and getting feedback will potentially having a bigger positive impact on myself than could be measured but I'm not entirely sure I believe that yet. I think I will end up focusing more on entertaining content with some life strategy and less on trying to make others more successful poker players.
Forcing myself to write that last blog post turned out to be a really really good idea and the writing spirit has been flowing through me again. I've been able to put together a few really good articles that I want to launch my site with and have recorded one podcast. I have some youtube stuff I want to put together that I think will be fairly entertaining for people that enjoy PLO and big pots.
Poker over the last few months has been going extremely well. Grinding in the anonymous shadows hasn't been as fun as grinding for glory but it has been going well. I wish I had adopted the approach to goal setting and away from the table studying that I have begun doing long long ago. When I used to play poker I really didn't have any goal beyond get Supernova elite, make a million dollars on my graph, play a zillion hands, try to have a sick ptr...... Now I have been able to set more short term goals that keep me focused but also control the degen side of me much better. I still get the itch to play the highest stakes running but I have found peace with the idea of not. Playing on websites like Bovoda, some American and sites where you have to vpn is a change and also forces you to keep less money online and usually play less games because the sites don't allow you to play more or the software is pretty bad. As it turns out this is actually a really good thing because what I failed to keep in mind during my big upswing is that playing less tables is really really really really good for you and playing alot of tables is really really really bad for you in terms of ev. I made a prop bet with a friend that I wouldn't post any graphs on social media or my blog for 6 months and I think this has actually hurt my motivation to make alot of money. That seems very very dumb but I have always been in it for the "glory". I do wish it was smart to post more PLO strategy out there or talk about it more openly on the blog or poker forums but anything beyond basic stuff has always seemed like a bad idea. With my website I have been trying to figure out a way to balance my dislike for talking strategy and my desire to help people out. But at this point in my life doing something beyond sitting around on the computer playing poker and mindlessly reading social media while living in the suburbs where I see my girlfriend each day is going to be a really really good thing for me and make me enjoy my life much more. If that means I have to help people become better poker players or happier at life, then why not. I've actually become 2000x better at improving myself with non-poker related things like working out, yoga, cooking, dieting, cleaning, basketball, fashion, piano, guitar and I guess a whole bunch of random different things I've tried to improve upon. I think that has impacted poker as well but I think I'm just being lazy using it as an excuse as to why I'm not working harder.
I feel like the whole glamorous side of poker that once existed has slowly eroded over time into a wasteland of terrible things. Maybe there is no glamorous side of poker and maybe the state of online poker is going to slowly deteriorate until it doesn't exist but as someone who's life has become something I never could have imagined from poker, I think there is inspiration to be shared, stories to be told and hopefully motivation to be given to someone out there hoping to make it at poker and change their life for the better. This is one of the visions I have in my head for what I can come up with for a website and I have no doubt it will be that on some level.
The whole idea for my website came to me when I woke up and did my usual go on twoplustwo and do nothing for 15 minutes in the morning. I was just confused why there aren't more poker related sites that I go to. I love poker, i love following poker, reading about it, being entertained through poker related things but it just seems like everything that exists out there is the same. The interviews are all the same general style and no one is really trying anything new. I think alot of this is to be expected as the American market declines and less people are playing poker online. I figured if there is no website that exists that I am looking for and no one is doing podcasts that would interest me then I would figure out a way to do it myself. I think another big reason, which I talked about a bit before, is my life living in the states in the suburbs with a girlfriend has become pretty boring. I love my girlfriend and love being around her but without raging and cold weather, I really don't end up doing too much. Diving into something like this and seeing what happens has to be better and more fun.
What's going on guys, I am having an impossible time actually writing anything for the past few weeks so I am making myself write about the project/idea/website thats been in my head for the last bunch of months. After I started writing about drug experiences and shot taking and about my time spent in Vancouver I thought I could figure out a better way to write about all this degen stuff I've spent the last 6 years of my poker career doing.
I was listening to a podcast interview a few days later and realized I never listen to anything poker related on podcasts anymore and for the most part most of the content out there, strategy or of a more entertaining nature is not very interesting. I think this is to be expected as poker in america isn't what it used to be when poker road, poker after dark, hsp, etc was going on and alot of different people were talking poker all the time.
I thought about it a bit more and realized I love love poker and its basically been my life for along time now and the only poker site I really ever go to anymore is twoplustwo which is basically a place you go when you want to talk about nothing of any substance. Through some type magic I then came up with the idea to build a site that poker players would be able to go that could have entertaining interviews, poker (PLOOO) strategy podcast, an in depth view into what its like to be a high stakes poker player who travels the world and randomly decides to go on week long benders (rage). From that point the wheels started going crazy in my head and I started brainstorming on the type of things I could write about, youtube videos I could make, things I could talk about on podcasts, and then I started working on building the website.
When I started using wordpress I was a bit annoyed that I couldn't do some things I wanted to do with basic themes so naturally I decided that I would study html, css, and some php and build my own theme and be able to customize everything exactly how I wanted. I also thought that learning more about programming and getting started down that path could help me eventually get into learning how to build my own programs for poker. At this point I realized how much I was neglecting actually playing poker so I went back to 10 hour days for about a month and kinda forgot about the idea.
Learning all this new language for programming I wouldn't classify as difficult but rather very time consuming. Friends have asked me why I don't just pay someone to do all this and play poker instead but all of this is really interesting to me and something I want to learn. I've never been the best with balancing 2 really big things at the same time and it seems like when I am working on this, I'm not really playing poker at all. Right now all I really need to get the website launched is this little thing known as content. I haven't been able to write anything at all or even get into the zone to write anything and when this whole idea is generated from the things in my head, it is problem.
This is all a pretty basic introduction to it and with that said I will make myself write another blog post explaining the website a bit more
Hello again... I think this makes the 2nd time I've blogged this year but I've probably written out about 20 blog posts over the year but always find a reason not to publish each of them. I did finish the rest of my story about my year spent raging and also wrote up a pretty epic trip report from my time living in Canada but talked myself out of putting those up for a few different reasons, mostly because on the surface it doesn't make me come off in the best way to the level 1 minds of the world who might not understand alternative viewpoints on why people choose to do things. Some might argue that why would you care what those types of people think or say about you but I've learnt over the last year in a few different times that what people think they know about you from what a sentence they may have read or a status update you might have posted can be communicated to someone that you would expect to be unaware about you at the most random times and cause some interesting drama in an otherwise boring life. When I write it out like that maybe I should just post all the stuff I have on deck because life is boring. I know many others feel that way, maybe making life .01 percent less boring for .01 percent of people I know may be my calling.
I've been living in the USA for the past few months so I am unable to post about my poker playing over that time I'm pretty sure I've put in a few hundred thousand hands over that time with pretty positive results but one thing has been really holding me back lately that I have gone back and forth on and that is the idea of shot taking. For the noobs that will read this from the fb/twitter world that don't play poker, shot taking is when you play a higher limit/stake than normal to you, higher in amount of money that you risk but also higher in relative skill level. IE. I play $2/4 with a 400 dollar buyin regularly and when I shot take I would be playing $10/20 with a 2000 dollar buy in or 10/10 (gives away a site I may sometimes play) or 25/50. Actually some nits probably think 3/6 would be shot taking if they play 2/4 but nits gonna nit.
Typically it seems like people shot take for a few different reasons. The obvious is that people love money, they want to make as much money as possible, playing higher stakes=making more money. Some people feel like they are bored with their current limit and want to challenge themselves more and shot take. A large majority of people these days will only shot take when a very -EV player is playing and they end up getting a good seat at that game. Sometimes people are just degens who want to be playing the high stakes and become famous and win all the money and be known as a boss. Other times its just the logical process that comes after you have had much success at your current stake and have built your bankroll up to the point where you can comfortably play higher stakes and if take a loss will not effect you to a large degree. In a perfect world everyone would take that last route but luckily for high stakes regs this is not a perfect world we live in and thus where the idea for me to write this blog post came from.
IF anyone has read my blog in the past or read my 2p2 posts/tweets I really never post anything strategic for the most part. That is another blog post in itself, but I suppose it might be time to actually say something someone might find a bit useful. I think the idea of shot taking for me has always been about the prestige of being successful at the higher stakes more than anything else. I think because of this during my first few years of playing poker it led me to put myself in a ridiculous amount of -EV situations playing for the sake of trying to "make it" or be the man or about that life or etc etc. In the early parts of my career I would grind hours and hours of 50cent/1dollar and 1/2 and shot take at 5/10 or 10/20. Sometimes I had short lived success, other times I failed right away, time and time again I would end up back at 50cent/1dollar grinding and grinding with the hope of taking another shot at higher stakes and having it be a success. I could have approached the whole idea of this in alot of different ways (not playing as high above normal stake, less tables, more table selection, etc...) but always found myself throwing any logical plan out the window. I think the biggest mental block that I have been unaware of until recently that I always fell back on was that I could always drop back down and make it all back with a little hard work. I probably have done this 150 times in my poker career, that seems crazy to make the same types of mistakes that many times in retrospect but this is what I've done in the past and still to this day do. In a way this actually justifies me shot taking all those times but it certainly does not justify the terrible approach I took along the way.
Without shot taking I would have never had my 500k upswing though. During this initial 6 month run I changed a few different way I approached things. I was coming off a ridiculous confidence boost by putting in a 500k hand plo month in December and managed to do way better than I thought during that time period. I padded my bankroll by winning prop bet/achieving Supernova Elite during that time and decided I was only going to play 4 tables max, actually pay attention to the hands (I had never done this before in about 5 million hands) and game select like a the nittest of nits. I've always said that I think the most important thing to moving up stakes or shot taking is that initial first few weeks. If you can run good and build up momentum and confidence you're set. Luckily for me I ran hotter than the sun and was working harder/more hours than I really had before and putting myself in ridiculously +EV situations all the time, mostly running hotter than the sun. During poker sessions for me in the past, I feel like I play 1 or 2 really big pots during that time that in a way save that session from being a disaster and help build back up momentum to end the session on a positive note. During this time period It felt like I had this happen soooo often. This sounds like I'm writing about the positives of shot taking, well in that magical perfect world this might have been the perfect scenario. Once PTR (pokertableratings) went down I really stopped caring about trying to put myself in those magical +++EV situations, which is another blog post entirely as well (one which I have actually wrote).
I think that story is pretty relevant to the reason why shot taking for myself now and for many others takes place. Most people always remember those epic runs they have had in the past where they made xxxxxx amount of money or that time someone they know or follow went on a ridiculous heater shot and that influences their decision to do it. I actually know 3 people who pretty much busto'd themselves shot taking during the time period I was and they told me the biggest reason they did it was because of my run at the time. Obviously this is a pretty extreme example and not really the angle that I am writing about here but I think that mindset still applies to a lesser degree. This is more geared towards the 100-200-400 regs out there. I think 100nl/plo is the first limit where you can really start to earn a good amount of money for yourself when you take into account bonuses and the first limit where I remember feeling that shot taking bug in me. I know there is a pretty large amount of people out there that grind these limits with less than 100 buyins in their bankroll and always worried about going on a bit of a downswing and putting themselves into this idea the "danger zone". I've personally always played with a variety of buyins for that limit but a majority of the time I shot took most would consider underrolled. I remember I used to play 10 tables of 5/10nl with like 25-30k online
I wish I realized this 3 years earlier instead of a few weeks ago but it was never really that obvious to me. Most of the time when I played higher stakes it was when I was on a bit of an upswing and my confidence was at a pretty good peak, I would then end up losing 5-10+ buyins at a higher limit which is pretty standard for PLO, whether it be by me running bad or playing bad or running bad/playing bad and be a bit crushed everytime about it and curse the poker gods for my bad luck and with my confidence shaken return back to the lower limits. Sometimes I've made the mistake of losing a bit more buyins than I should have allowed and have to drop back down to lower than my regular limits and grind it back up again. Obviously to the logical grinder's out their this seems really dumb but not many of us fall into that category which is good for you. The biggest downside that I've experienced without realizing it in the past but after looking over my data is that during that time I drop back down with shaken confidence, my play suffers a pretty sizable amount and sometimes it might take only a few days with a bunch of hours played or sometimes even longer to get back on track and back in the groove. During that time spent shot taking and returning to form I could have been in a pretty steady path at my regular stakes crushing away and gradually moving up being very over rolled and able to incur those losses without being to hurt emotionally or bankroll wise and do it a logical way but 150 times I have chosen not to do this. Although I did have that huuuuge upswing so perhaps with that occurring and the "potential" for something similar to happen again it is justified but I would argue having that happen to me was actually one of the worst possible things to happen. But I'm not sure I ever would have come to the realization I came to now without it.
One of the other big downsides to shot taking that I have heard more people talk about is that when you win a few buyin's shot taking the feeling is not as great as when you lose a few buyins during that same time. Everyone has a different approach to this happening but it seems that many of my friends I've had over time take the negative losses very bad and sometimes they end up just not playing for a period of time and essentially wasting a few weeks recovering from that while feeling terrible on their day to day activities in the process. I probably could expand a bit more on this and a few other ideas related to downsides I think occur but that writing sensation that comes over me about once or twice a month is fading away as I get more tired. I do have another blog post pertaining to goal setting and ways to plan to achieve them almost finished that I have been working on for the past month or two with some success that I think will be able to really help some people out there.
I should go back and read this before I post it but I'm semi sleeping at this point so I will say a small prayer that I logically wrote all this out and I didn't make too many grammatical errors along the way
I've been getting a few messages recently to blog more but everytime I get in the zone I end up doing something else and falling out of it. I write the blog in my head and than I just forget all about it until the next time comes up where I want to write. As the people who have read my blogs know I'm very very honest and open in what I write. Some say it might be to a negative point but really I don't see a reason not to be, this is me, this is my life, this is what I think, this is whats on my mind. I think so many people experience things in their life and never talk about it or express it in writing for themselves. Since moving over here to Australia I really haven't had anyone to talk to, I have my friends I skype with sometimes but it just doesn't feel the same to me, almost not real.
I should give an obligatory poker update since my last blog had to do my current poker mindset/strategy. I pretty much decided to do a 180 from what I wrote about before. I was chatting with a fellow mass multi tabler who has played some PLO but not a ton of volume and he was saying he wanted to start mass multi tabling for VPP. I tried explaining him how this wouldn't work out but if he was going to try it some things he could do that would be effective. Then I started looking at my recent results and saying to myself why don't I try all this shit I am talking myself. I realized that I needed to play less hands when I was only playing a few tables but just couldn't figure out how to do that effectively and in turn my variance was insane and I was making many mistakes. I decided to try mass tabling again with a different approach to the game pre and post flop and see what the effect would be. In turn my sessions become much less stressful, much lower variance, hands became easy to play and in turn started winning in bunches. All the terrible spots I found myself in before went away and was able to essentially revamp my pre/post play and still add in parts of my game that I felt like worked effective when I was playing like a maniac. I guess the problem now becomes that playing midstakes is pretty boring when you have like 500 buyins for the limit you play and no motivation to go with it. I really have no desire to play 5/10 ever again so using that as a goal or building block to work towards isn't really in the picture. Everything I would want to spend money on I already have, excluding some extravagent car purchase, which really doesn't interest me anymore. I think this is just a phase that can be explained by the next paragraph though.
I feel some long writing coming on here but might be good for me. I basically decided to write this after my last tweet which had to do with my mom telling me I should never do drugs because they are bad for your mind and body whereas I countered with what about doing them to the point where you are not abusing them. The overall idea behind it was finding a balance with it. I have heard many people say that it can ruin your mind, but to me my mind has been locked in some sort of black hole all my life and never thought past some sort of basic level. I think right now I'm also just having an adverse reaction to recent events that have transpired here while being in Sydney and my mind just has no idea how to react or what to do so constant thoughts like this come into my mind. Not sure I wrote much about this but I moved here to Sydney for someone I met in Ibiza this summer and did some traveling with throughout Europe after. At the time it was like magic being with her and really felt like I HAD to come here to see the possibilities of finding something special that I never have experienced before. Throughout my dating life I really have never liked anyone in this way, a majority of the time feelings would never stick around for a long time and subsequently I never really ended up dating anyone in a serious way. Then comes earlier this year, I'm doing amazing poker wise, finally going out for the first time in my life and at some point with a few poker friends of mine I decide that I should try something I never have before. Since this time I have looked at the idea of love in a totally different way. I don't think I have ever loved anyone previous to this year but now in my life I have found love that I never knew I could feel with some constants in my life in addition to falling in love with 3 people this year. 2 of these the first time we met both of us were on another level together which in turn feelings that I never imagined I could ever feel for anyone else were experienced. One of the problems with this is that you are tricked into thinking this type of feeling will always be there which is what happened in the case of my Sydney adventure I embarked on.
When I arrived here everything started off well, which is to be expected. As things progressed I became pretty unhappy with my poor poker results and having no good friends out here to talk to about anything eventually detoriating the relationship we had. I don't really want to get much into the relationship but while I was telling myself that I'm going to really give it my best try mentally and try to make things work here because really I didn't have any other options for anything else out here, she had already moved on and was staying with me to make me happy and lying to me about what she was doing, her feelings, other stuff. Only after being confronted with actual evidence of did she finally admit to some of the lying that had been going on for weeks now. In a way I was quite impressed with the ability to come off us such a genuine nice caring person while also being a pathological liar with the ability to lie about something for hours/days/weeks. I have lied to women in my dating life to a certain extent, most of the time being I would not say something like "yes im dating you and 2 other girls as well" but those relationships were never serious and I rarely would find myself saying things like I actually care about you alot or your the only one for me type of things but once I actually made the move here to Sydney I decide that I would try this way of living out. Being honest, one woman, really caring for the person and in turn when something like this happens I just feel crushed to a point I have never quite felt before. I'm sure alot of the reason is that i'm in fucking Australia and barely know anyone else but at the same time I realllllly cared for this pos so its like on one hand i wish death and on the other hand it makes sense to me. Those first times we had together in our zone tricked us into thinking that more was possible when in reality it wasn't there. lol no idea where I was going with any of this but I think it was just explaing how I got to the point where I decided to make my last tweet I made. Writing this stuff out I think is good for me and will help me overcome these crazy thoughts running through my mind.
So now here I am still in Sydney, I have a sick place for 2 more months, a 5k bed that I never want to leave, whole bunch of other stuff I bought because I thought I would be here for a long time and really haven't achieved much of anything. So I decided that I would get out there in the world and see what Sydney has. Have been doing a bit more raging lately and you guys can probably guess that in turn I start feeling a little out of this world more often and my mind starts thinking ideas that have never come up for myself before. I am hoping once I move past this recent breakup that I will be able to learn from it and look at things differently but until then I really have no fucking idea what to do or think or feel. Poker not sure where to go, life not sure where to go, so many options, so many ideas, never want to make the wrong decision and live with regret.
I like this title because I was sitting here the past few weeks and I couldn't remember when I actually won playing PLO. I would start my session by getting on a bunch of tables running, play most anyone heads up to start games and look at results at end of sessions and kept seeing losing. Would wonder what is going on, what happened. This kept up for about a month and here I am frantically checking my bank accounts, watching the countdown to busto happen, questioning life, question my existance in life, looking up work visa information for Australia, seeing how much I could make per month if I started personal training, looking into being male internet cam model, debating doing copious amounts of drugs. Eventually I decided I needed a break and took a few days off. I found myself on my computer a few days later and decided I would play super small stakes just to play, was maybe 8 tabling and lost 3 buy-ins but didn't feel tilt or too bad.
After this session I started actually thinking to myself, how did I crush for 5 months straight to start the year? How did I come back online and have a 210k month and then just can't win day in and out? The answer is obvious in theory, many have even told me since. PLAY LESS FUCKING TABLES to start but as anyone who mass multi tables now, there is just some mind fuck that happens where you think you need to be playing as many tables as possible. You need MORE fish, MORE money to make, MORE MORE MORE. Instead of focusing on the tables open, you are actively seeking out MORE bad players to play vs. Finally when thinking more about it I finally convinced myself to just calm the fuck down. You don't always need more. Its like dating women, you have sex with one and now you want more sex with more women and fall into a cycle where your always on the hunt and never actually focusing on what you have at the current time but looking forward to who is next. Pretty off topic but I could relate the idea of that to poker. I wrote down how I thought I was winning so much to start the year and wrote down why I thought I was losing so much now. Nothing from either list matched up . I realized playing in great games and being amazing at exploiting fish's weaknesses doesn't translate to mass tabling vs regs and playing good players heads up. Add in massive tilting during this and as shown its a recipe for disaster. When you tilt in position again someone with a terrible winrate, it never really ends up being THAT bad. You can make a questionable all in pre and often they end up with an even worse questionable all in pre against you. When playing vs regs though, there questionable range ends up being double suited AKxx and QQxx and any KKxx. When you get it on the flop vs fish with a bad flush draw and bottom pair, they show up with an over pair/no redraw or Top/Bottom pair and you end up usually having good equity when in reality you made a terrible play. Against regs when you make these same tilting plays though your always crushed. I mean in theory this is obvious but I have never really heard or read it ever put like that before.
I guess the basic idea I am saying is that I need to go completely away from what is not working and go back to what was working. I started writing down all my old strategies I used to game select and coming up with better ranges to play against certain types of weaker players in different situations. On the surface the idea is play less tables, bumhunt weaker players, win money. I think alot approach it like that and win but I probably went into it 10 times deeper during my peak of really thinking about it. As I started to win more money though I became lazy and went away from improving my ideas and strategies and went back to an abc approach at it. These last few days I have dove back into thinking about everything from all angles. Basically it is play 1-4 tables, depending on those tables and amount of action going on (ie: double jesus with alot of betting/hands getting to showdown instead of jesus seat with 4 other tigheter regs with not much postflop to follow) can add 2 more tables. Once that 4-6 cap is hit completely focusing on games being played instead of checking the lobby every couple seconds for new games or wait lists or anything of that nature. This is fine do to while I have been playing 1/2 up to 3/6 but I do realize once I start moving back up stakes that I will have to keep lobby open and pay some attention. With less tables to follow though that shouldn't be an issue. Actually taking notes and paying attention to what is happening during hands and when they get to showdown (ie: fish makes pot bet on river, note his hand and watch for similar spot in future to either solidify that note or exploit that) When I'm mass tabling I probably look over less then 5 hands in a weeks time, that idea to me thinking about it now is fucking insanely terribad. Everytime my note taking or paying attention to what is happening pays off I get very excited lol.
When I started writing this I was in a writing zone, then I went on my patio somewhere during the last paragraph and kinda lost it, I was just sitting here on my computer after finished last session and was like fuck man I am such an idiot for going back to my old terrible habits of mass tabling/spewing away thousands. I need to write this down now and not forget it again. I probably have so much more on my mind about all this and hopefully write more about it soon
I'm going to continue to stick to mid stakes for now and at some point add in 5/10 and maybe 10/20 again. I'm still rolled to play up to 50/100 (definition of rolled meaning I could lose a few BI there and drop down to rebuild comfortably) but that desire to lose massive pots isn't there for me right now. After regaining my confidence and winning this might change but until then there is still heaps of money to be made at mid stakes.
Here is my graph since going back to old process. As you can see I didn't full commit at first and after I won a bit decided I could 12+ table again and win and was hit with a your a fucking clown, don't do that again pretty quick. But so far so good
I've been starting to enjoy myself more living here in Sydney. Have a few music fests coming up here and went with my girlriend to Stereosonic last weekend. Had a great time there and really enjoyed seeing Tiesto. Thinking back on it though, I would have enjoyed anyone tremendously at that point in time of the night but it was fun. Had a chance to wear my spirit hood out for the first time in Australia
I was thinking about things today as I am a big believer in weird things like this. Ever since my girlfriend bought me this little koala my losing at poker, running bad in life, running bad in poker, playing terrible has started. I looked over next to my computer today and realized this fucking bear was bought 2 days before I arrived here around the same time I had a -130k session. IT MUST BE THE BEARS FAULT!! Here I am trying to stop this evil being
Hopefully it works
This is one of the graphs I have since I have been around this demon!
This blog post probably should be about how I made 210k in the month of September or how I live in Sydney now or how I lost 250k the first few days I was in Sydney but lets leave that for another blog post, one that probably will just never be written because I just randomly have the urge to write. Even on facebook often I will just not respond to messages for days and then randomly will reply to all of them. I do enjoy talking to almost everyone who I exchange messages with fairly often on there but for some reason I just space out and do nothing about it. I noticed I even was starting to do that with text messages, someone would text me and I would just forget for hours/ever to respond, can't figure it out. I had stars reinstate my chat the other day, since I have threatened the terrorist aka devils worshipper aka voodoo man yousseffahmed more times then I can remember. We now live 15 minutes from each other too but I don't think he is very interested in meeting with someone who wants punch him in the face until the arms can't be lifted anymore. If anyone else was to inflict as much torture to someone as he has done to me this year I think they feel the same way I do. He keeps saying in chat that he runs so bad and is losing, well obviously because you play fucking terrible for hour long sessions, of course you should be losing. I could go on forever about it but probably best not to.
I don't really have a path or goal with poker at this moment in time, which has alot to do with how I made 200k in September. I just didn't give a fuck, played in mostly whatever games and won bunches in short sessions. Like always the longer the session I play the worse I tend to do/play, I think my ideal sweet spot is probably less then 60 minutes to be honest, I don't think I would ever adhere to something like that but it would be amazing if I could be disciplined enough overall to do that. Stinger will just play when games are good forever and suggests I learn to do the same but still not strong enough mentally to do that. I really didn't have any poker goals and still don't have any poker goals or for that matter even life goals, I pretty much achieved a majority of those already and never really thought I would. I made more money then I ever dreamed I would have, set some poker grind records, played highest stakes online, become known to the online poker world. I could try to become some famous name in poker but I realized at some point this summer that there really isn't much of a point to pursuing that because I don't even know what/where/how/why/anything about what I want out of life. Money doesn't really matter to me once I go past a certain point because I have done the same things when I have a 100k roll to when I have 500k roll to when I have 300k roll. Sure I could buy fancy car (have thougtha bout that but don't have any permanent living plans) or could invest/buy property/save up which once again doesn't interest me. I really haven't even spent much of my winnings this year. I have realized that this constant obsession you have over money when you play poker and the desire to play the highest stakes online or make alot of money till no money is left in the world to have is just fucking crazy. But if you aren't playing poker for money or to play the highest stakes which were original goals of mine and many many others out there then why else even play it. The people that are content with grinding xxxyyy stakes and making a projected xxxyyy amount of money a month and are legit content with it amaze me because I really wish I could do that and be able to focus on other potential passions in life. This constant obsession with money though is just wild, like after every session you check your balance and are trying to figure out your life roll to the fucking dollar. FUCK i lost 2843, i only have 398,435 left to my name, fuck, I just had 400,289 or whatever. I used to do this for like 2.5 years with poker and this year when something clicked I just stopped worrying and became some ultimate discipline machine. Lately though all my discipline for the most part has vanished. There are still sessions where the light is on and I revert back to earlier this year me but maybe constant drug use for 2 months is the answer, maybe thats just an excuse and the real answer is I'm just not trying hard enough because I am not motivated enough because I don't have any direction/goal/light at end of the tunnel. I just live in the moment and always worry about that moment when really it doesn't even fucking matter a majority of the time.
I came to Sydney because I met a girl in Ibiza this summer and I will save this story but we had an amazing time. I was unsure if I could actually go through with it and move out here but said fuck it, summer is coming up, it could be a magical time of my life, lets go for it. I came to Sydney with around 260k online. Fast forward to a few days later, I had 5159 online. I HAVE to blog about how it even is possible to do this because it needs to be out there as a way to show how fucked up you can become sometimes and maybe one person reads it and it saves them from fucking up at some point in their lives. I get alot of messages on here and 2p2 and fb from people who tell me what an inspiration I am and how they look up to me in how hard I have worked/what i have achieved/ how i live my life now. I felt at some point this year I turned a corner and actually said yea maybe I am to some extent for some people, but then I go and do that and launch off most of all my money from a 280k high point online. Like what a fucking idiot right? But in reality, it doesn't really matter and quite honestly with the mentality I have had the last month it was inevitable. Obviously it is great I still have lots of money offline and had Ben86 help me get some more money online and realize that I need chill the fuck out for awhile and still to nothing higher then 10/20 because the stress/swings you go through at the higher stakes really just isn't worth it. The positive doesn't outweigh the negative. Some would say 10/20 is still high but losing 2k 5k 10k is nothing on the stress level when you take a 120k losing day or lose an 80k pot. Somehow after I settled down though I was able to win 70k in the next 2 days playing only 5/10 and 10/20, i reverted back to old mentality and discpline and reminded myself how it felt to be broke and 24 tabling .25/.50 for 14 hours a day and wanting to die, that usually snaps me back into how hard it COULD be poker wise and that life is still good.
I was in the zone there for a bit and wrote all of the above but now I don't feel much in the zone anymore. Basically I'm hoping I can find some goals in poker and in life sometime soon. Basically now I just load up every 5/10 and 10/20 table and try to get as many deep games started as possible, I usually won't play like 2 or 3 people who like to start as well because they god mode me/are lot better hu but I like to learn and if someone is better then me but I still run medium against then I will battle and build the games so the players can come. It does suck that every reg who starts tables are all fucking bosses and up hundreds of thousands from poker but I think has helped my game alot and study what they do in certain spots has helped me to apply same thing in my game (sometiems for good and for bad). Sometimes a reg (jan82) will say he will play me hu anytime. Well I don't like to stick to only 1 v 1 without option for others to play but I will be sitting at 5/10 10/20 and 3/6 everyday until I can't anymore and you guys can get all the hands of heads up with me you want until the table gets going. Or at some point I might realize it more +ev in most aspects of life to be big big bumhunter again and go for variance free graph but where is the fun in that.
Side Note: I wrote all this like 2 hours ago and randomly decided to stop at some point. I think I was on another planet when typing but was completely sober, I am a crazy person I think
Was waiting till I got back on the grind till I posted my summer blog
Basically started 3 day drive home to Vancouver, fly to Vegas, Win bunch at 50/100 plo and take bobbys room shot and profit, fly to San Diego for a few days, Fly to Ibiza for 1.2 weeks and proceed to fall in love with raging/drugs/edm/potentially a person, fly to Barcelona with group I met in Ibiza, fly to Belgium for Tomorrowland which was one of sickest things I ever been to in my life as well, fly to Malta to visit ze german TimStone and bigasiga, get convinced by stinger to fly back home to Chicago for Lollapolooza, Rage hardddd there and meet a crew of people who are into staying awake until 8am and raging crazy style, decide to go out with them for a few weekends in a row and wake up questioning my life lol, debate investing in a nightclub, book place for 3 weeks in Vancouver with stinger instead, and leads to this graph of being back these first 3 days. Now I HAVE to write the blogs for this summer because its some crazyyyy shit
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Forcing myself to write that last blog post turned out to be a really really good idea and the writing spirit has been flowing through me again. I've been able to put together a few really good articles that I want to launch my site with and have recorded one podcast. I have some youtube stuff I want to put together that I think will be fairly entertaining for people that enjoy PLO and big pots. 
. I realized playing in great games and being amazing at exploiting fish's weaknesses doesn't translate to mass tabling vs regs and playing good players heads up. Add in massive tilting during this and as shown its a recipe for disaster. When you tilt in position again someone with a terrible winrate, it never really ends up being THAT bad. You can make a questionable all in pre and often they end up with an even worse questionable all in pre against you. When playing vs regs though, there questionable range ends up being double suited AKxx and QQxx and any KKxx. When you get it on the flop vs fish with a bad flush draw and bottom pair, they show up with an over pair/no redraw or Top/Bottom pair and you end up usually having good equity when in reality you made a terrible play. Against regs when you make these same tilting plays though your always crushed. I mean in theory this is obvious but I have never really heard or read it ever put like that before. 
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