Lets crush! Holidayzz


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in 4 scoop buyin plz

i wont million

Fun update. Glad you're doing well in poker and things seem to have turned around a lot for you since the start of the year.

Can you give any insight to who the other regs are in your bread and butter games? How often does higher stakes action run? I assume it's all 4/5/6 PLO?

Sadly for you guys a holiday to Greece was booked last night. More freeroll's in the future though!

The bread and butter game usually consists of the odd punter and then a mixture of some London regs who have been around for 5+ years, some new international guys and some online guys who drop in and out.

I guess the most recognisable regulars that frequent it would be FullFlush, CHUFTY and Crazy Elior.

The game we play is a £5-10-25 and it's just 4card. I think most of the 4/5/6 stuff mainly gets played in Leicester Square at the Empire. It's usually a much smaller (albeit probably much softer) game.

Have fun in Greece bro. Greetings from Bulgaria.

P. S. : damn i wanted that freeroll... Just kiddin xD

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The 4/5/6 PLO mainly goes off at Aspers now rather than Empire, and it's only a 1/1. It's still obviously a soft game but sometimes the players are just so gambley and spewy pre that there's no post-flop game to have an edge in. Does kinda ruin the fun of it a bit too. The Empire game pops off every now and again and is usually 1/2.

Glad to hear you're back in the black though! Enjoy the holiday.

Birmingham for that 4/5/6 action

Theres been a lot of £5/£5 action going on for that PLO

Interesting that 4/5/6 plays significantly smaller in London. Most of the biggest games that run regularly up here (Scotland) tend to be 6o. Guess we're just a nation of punters.

Monthly Recap

Ended my month playing a pretty swingy game on Friday night. An old favourite was back in town and on Friday's we end up drinking wine a lot, which always opens up the action a bit. This week has been really swingy for me, losing £10k on Monday and Tuesday, before taking Wednesday off to regroup and come back and bank a £7.5k win across Thursday and Friday. It leaves my monthly graph looking like a good old rollercoaster and the month has mentally felt a bit like that. I haven't played my best poker this week, certainly on Friday. In the Friday game all the regs were being pretty spewy and I felt if I was really on it there was a big winning night out there but I was lazy and slack in some big decisions. This month I've lost two £20k pot with 70% equity, which meh, that's gonna happen a ton but equally I could have put up good numbers with a little blue line help.



That's how the month ended up and I guess with all things considered and some hearty downers in there I was happy to walk away with a month in the black.

Things to consider next month

I think a lot of time in live poker the skill is in the precision and completion of doing things correctly and not in the result itself. I mean at 30-50K hands a year what are we really accomplishing in terms of seeing whether we've ran good or bad.

May goals will be to focus and try and play A game at all time, taking extra thinking time for the big decisions. Outside of that I was a little all over the place with off the table work this month, spent too much time worrying about little things and not enough time working on myself. In may I want to run more and meditate in a more scheduled manner.

I'm away a few times in May, starting with going to Greece next month so it'll be a chilled one and light on hours. That's something I'm looking forward to.

Anyway, these month recaps are boring as hell. Run good, play good and stay out of trouble.

BigA.

Pain...It hurts..it hurts like pain

I'd break my recent spell into a simple mixture of pleasure and pain. I had the pleasure of going away for a holiday with my gf, that was nice; I've had the pain of coming back to the Vic, less nice.

I've had the pleasure of the games being exceptional, that's been nice; I've had the pain of being scooped a lot whilst not scooping, that hasn't been nice.

So yeah, the return to the felt has resulted in back to back -£10k nights.

Stinngggss a bit. It looks like the London games will remain pretty good for the foreseeable future. That's a bonus. My gun is starting to lack ammunition though so I would take a changing in the tide.

I decided to forego playing any SCOOPs for the first time ever this year. The truth with SCOOPs are they're kind of like hard class A drugs to me. I enjoy them a few times a year but I really shouldn't be doing them. I think the last time I checked by sharkscope I was down like $55k. I would imagine that SCOOP buy in's made up about $50k of that.

I guess my plan now is just to grind, grind and grind. Try not to get as annoyed as I do by the painful, brainless, nitty mother**cking regs I play with everyday. 90% leeches. Hopefully results will turn but if they don't then alas, it's not all so bad. Life is life.

In the style of Dr Joey Ingram, I'd like to give a shout out to my boy Mafews who is in the last 4 of the $2k HU PLO, so gllggllg pappiitoo papi pow pow...and all that bollocks.

Big A

From reading your blog I'd suggest that you should consider alternative options, whether that is a new full time profession or a course you could study while still playing poker on the side. This would help the transition out of poker when the time feels right. Personally, even though the hourly "ev" may still be high now there is a lot of ev missed in the sense of creating a path for the future and the longer you wait the harder it gets. I think after a few years the hollow nature of poker makes it a very unattractive pursuit in the long term especially when the prospects are getting increasingly worse. Recently I've been thinking more about things on a larger scale. What is the overarching end goal? Happiness/ fulfilment? Would winning 100k this year change any of that? If you tweak your mindset to thinking about a job/ course not just in terms of "hourly rate" but in relation to those bigger goals it makes the transition much easier. I might be way off but I do think it is healthy to take a step back and not look at other options with the "poker mindset" but in a way that is applicable to you and your long term goals.

It actually seems to me like you are very close to being able to crush these bigger games you play in on a consistent basis. The amount of hands your going to play is always going to be so small in live poker that it really is more important to have a good mental then actually be in a great player in a lot of ways. Often times one or two bigger pots you play determine the outcome of a session, and being focused and mentally prepared enough not to make mistakes in those spots can go a really long way.

Of course the reality of this too is that the variance is going to be a lot more brutal, particularly short term. You can play in amazing games and lose big chunks of money fairly consistently. This is just the nature of live PLO. It's extremely important to be honest with yourself and know when your game/mindset needs some tweaking and when your just simply running like sh$t.

The beautiful thing is there are games out here like this that exist, with guys putting 10k on the table with no idea what their doing. Unlike online, I don't think this is at risk of changing any time soon, so its important to always focus on the long term. There are always gonna be bad players with lots of money to throw around. As long as you show up and are prepared and focused, you will get your fair share of it.

It's funny what you said about scoop is exactly how I feel. I look at the prize pools, get hyped up, go deep in a few trnys and before I know it I'm stuck like 20k feeling like I had no chance of winning any real money. There is def a sick rush you get from mtts but I'm starting to realize its more like the rush you get from doing heroin then it is like playing a competitive sport lol. Glad to see you still going strong and best of luck.

Hey thanks for taking the time to post.

Funnily enough I had a therapy session yesterday prior to playing and this is exactly what we discussed. Strange timing!

I think a lot of my health and mental health issues this year stem from not having an idea of what life after poker entails. I think that leaves me to being one dimensional in my approach to completing a day to day approach to life.

Over the coming weeks and months I'm definitely going to start formulating a plan that allows me to see clearer towards a life after poker.

DankDaddy, much love brother. Always appreciate you dropping into the thread and your input.

Yeah I mean I'm fairly confident about my live game and ability to crush also. I've actually been pretty happy with my form this year, I think I'm thinking through most spots clearer than other regs and it's the classic live player thing to say but I've definitely been running way under EV in huge pot all ins.

I like your approach to breaking it down and focusing on being in the moment when it comes to preparation for bigger games and bigger pots that'll make up a huge % of my yearly takeaway. I remember you saying this last year on my thread and it's something I think I've improved on well. I definitely feel more clinical in the truly big decisions lately.

Also it's not lost on me that the greatest advantage in my life currently is that I live in a city with great action at high stakes. That really is a gem in the current poker economy. Hopefully the action continues and the liquidity flows throughout London.

Cheers for the words papi. Perhaps see ya in Vegas this summer.

A useful exercise is to identify the key areas of life that are most important to you in your profession such as fulfilment, work/ life balance, social interaction, £, your skill sets etc. and then give a rating for each area for every potential profession. This really helps to eliminate 95% of professions and then you can carry out further research on the ones that are left. It is also very useful to speak to anyone you know directly or through a friend working in a field or business that you are interested in as they will be able to give you some really good advice on whether it is for you or not. Personally, I've just gone through a similar transition and I've found talking to people, whether that be friends, family or employees at interviews the best way to define which path I should take.

Redemption

Hello party people. I've been a little lax with putting in some hard hours lately. I've had a few people visit and in between that been enjoying a little downtime. I grinded a good game on Sunday night but there wasn't any bite to it. It was mainly me and fun players, which sounds niccceeee. However, these fun players were anything but fun - this leads me to question whether the term fun player should be redefined, perhaps I should ask Joey this? They were limping a ton and basically doing whatever they could to cling onto their short stacks as opposed to play the game. It was the sort of easy grind that'll supply a variance free 0-50bb but at 4:30am i didn't have the heart to grind it out and booked a small win.

Monday Madness

Monday on the other hand was a different story. I decided to revise my strategy and turn up later in the day to catch the feeder to the main as this has been much better on average lately. On arrival the feeder was in fact 5 handed with me and 4 solid regs, not ideal. I got stuck £4k early with this hand. Where I raise AKJTds utg and straddler defends. Flop comes K62cc and goes check/check. Turn Kx. Straddler leads £100 and I make it £350. Straddler makes it £950 and I flat. River 2x. He jams like £2k and I call and lose to KJ96. I'm meh about it, basically this reg is capable I guess. I think for value however he only has specifically K6xx on the turn, not even K4. I guess having that narrow a value range but with capabilities of bluffing some blockers I don't hate calling but it's one of those funny live spots where realistically I know the guy didn't have the balls to make a big play in that line up so shame on me really.

Anyway some of those guys get moved to the main and the feeder fills up with a who's who of classic London fun players, eventually we all get moved to the main and it's a very good game. I play this funky spot when a fun player limps and I limp behind with QQ52ddcc. A new reg who is ok makes it £100 and we both call. Flop comes J85dd. Check Check and he bets £275. Fold and I call. Turn 7x and I lead for £700. He calls. River Kx. I bet £2k and he tanks for 10 minutes and calls with JJ98. I really like my bluff here and think this particular villain folds everything but JJ and some weird KK that makes it to river.

I ended up winning a bunch of big pots all night where I ended up getting looked up on rivers in spots where I had it and walked away a £23k winner. That was enough to put me back in the black for the month so hopefully looking to end it strongly from here.

Other than that been knocking about doing some chilling and some drinking. Was out in London last night with my brothers and my gf as my brother was visiting from Manchester.

Gl all, Big A.

nice! GLGL

I woke and thought it'd be refreshing to recap what has been a fairly spewy few days. I think some public reflection aids the recovery and albeit there will be an air of not this same old record again, it'll make me feel better.

Last week turned out to be a very solid week for me in my regular game. It culminated in a super long session going from Thursday night into Friday morning. A late surge meant that I ended the 19 hour marathon in the black. One particular fun player continues to bring a spike in stakes we're playing and the amount of action flying around.

WARNING RARE HAND - MILD STRAT

I played one kinda interesting hand very late on. I think there are two mistakes in the hand. I think Villain chooses a poor part of his range to peel turn and I think I probably am over ambitious with my river barrel; That said I've been brought up on a fire 1 or 3 approach to poker, never barrel two .

So we're playing £10/25/50 5 handed. People are, in my opinion, over opening buttons. Ok Reg opens button to £200, I 3bet JT97 to £700, folds round and Btn peels.

Flop: 553 - So not a great flop for our hand, but an ok flop for our range. I continue £500 and villain calls pretty quick. Flop is a history/levelling spot. Villain is somewhat sticky but my range, even from SB is wide here, I can have 5x, overpairs, air etc. Betting so small I'm giving a good price on the peel but for balance I'm doing this with everything and my opponent knows this.

Turn: 6 - Turn is kinda interesting. So in a nutshell it's a much better card for my opponent than me. Albeit he's gonna peel really wide on flop here. I actually think check raising turn here can be pretty sexy, then again could be spew. I pick up a mild bit of equity. I decide to go ahead and bet turn again, really small. I bet £900 and my opponent snap calls. From a lol live perspective the speed of his call is in fact very important. He basically never has a big hand here when he calls this fast. Live players ALWAYS take longer on streets where they have a hand. When he snaps I think he's probably got like JJ/QQ/KK, perhaps has maybe like gutter and spades, maybe big spades etc. When he calls turn that fast I was quite comfortable betting river at this point.

River: A. I think it's probably a river I have to bet albeit it definitely slashes my value range now. I think I'm credibly value betting AKx stuff and probably most Ax stuff here. That'll perhaps seem thin but I think my opponent would legitimately expect this of me. There is about £4200 in the pot now. I think I can bet anything from 30% to like 80% here. I don't think there is much merit to potting. I decide that given I'm obviously searching for a fold that I should size up a little but not so big that it looks too suspicious vs his perceived weak range. I decide to bet £2600, which on reflection I really liked. I think I bet this size with basically all my value on the river. I think villain expect me to bet either £3500+ or like £1500 with my bluffs. My villain hit the tank for over 5minutes and eventually had the fun player call the clock on him. He was given 60 seconds and with 2 seconds to go he made the call with AKJ3. I was kinda surprised to see his hand. I mean on the river once he's floated twice he's definitely gonna call so I don't get why he's tanked so long, I figure this must be testament to the sizing and timing on my river bluff. I think his flop call is fine but his turn call is way over ambitious vs an opponent like me. I think the fact he's blocking the hands that he'd be aiming to get me to fold makes his hand a fold on the turn, It's also got too little show down value in a bloated pot. Anyway, was kinda a fun hand to play 14 hours into a session at 5am in the morning.

I made a few big hands in the closing hours on the session and booked a £8500 win and it topped off my week at £32000, which I believe is my best week of the year - hopefully have a few more to come.

Unfortunately it wasn't a totally successful weekend. I got bit by the gambling bug this weekend, something that I just can't afford to let myself do with my gambling demons and issues. I ended up having £2k on the United game on bets that lost. I had £500 on the Cleveland game and that lost. I lost £500 on the German cup final and that lost. On the Sunday I was hungover and annoyed by my poor discipline on the Saturday. I lost a quick £1k online and then I started 6 pineapple games vs friends that have a edge on me and that'll likely cost me £2k. All in all the monetary losses won't hurt me that much, however the inability to control my urges and falling back into old habits definitely will, as evident in the manner that this thread began. I ended up reading back over the start of the thread after these losses and was saddened. I can't help but feel that my talent will be eventually be a sad waste.

I ended up chilling on Sunday, in the early hours of the morning I railed some close mates of mine who were playing in the SCOOP $10k but alas was a bad weekend for the boys with no one being able to make a good run.

Ok that'll do for now, gl and play good all.

BigAce!

Sorry to hear about your gambling set back but it seems you are making a lot of progress in other areas.

I think as poker players we become trained to make +EV decisions at the table, and this becomes like second nature to us. For instance you raise, tight fish 3bets you call and he checks 987 flop you are betting here without much thought because its +EV. But making +EV decisions off the table doesn't always come so easy. Often times we put ourselves -EV situations without even realizing it because we are so overly confident in our ability to make +EV decisions at the table. Drinking, playing on no sleep or in tougher games ect. are all examples of this.

As I said in my last post, particularly in live poker I think it's even more important to be doing the off table that will ensure we are as +EV as possible when we are on the table. Planning your arrival around when the must move game becomes juicy will give you maximum access to the best possible games, which is obv a huge part of having a big win rate live.

I don't think this is something that should carry over into our every day lives. Like we shouldn't be thinking about whether getting dinner at a restaurant with friends or chilling at home is +EV, we should just do what we want.

However in regards to poker, I think we should always be striving to make the +EV decision in every situation, on and off the table. For you, it is very clear that gambling is extremely -EV in every possible way. If you lose, you are certain to bet more, and in a lot of ways winning may be even worse because it will make you more likely to make wagers that are -EV in the future. Also, your workplace is a casino. If you can't control the urge to make -EV bets you will never survive in the long run.

You have made a lot of progress since I've first started following your threads and I feel like you are very close to just being able to steadily crush these games and make a really nice living for yourself. Best of luck

"I can't help but feel that my talent will be eventually be a sad waste." This is fully in your control. You have to want to actually change, it won't happen magically that you all of a sudden don't have the urge to gamble.

Big Asia, I have read most of this thread and good to see your getting back on top of Poker.

Health wise, try Yoga if you have not. I had yoga on my to do list for years and never gave it a go. Once I did I began to look forward to the one class a week, now a couple months into it twice a week and every now and again at home. if you want to try it leave all existing thoughts about it at home. give it a honest try. if you don't like the instructor (not all are good instructors) find another yogi that you like. It strengthens your mind and body, it make you fail and succeed, and its a perfect link of mind body and awareness. Let us know if you give it a try. It can take a couple sessions to start to get it, but it is awesome.

Im not sure that just doing what we want in life is the best way to go.

Usually the things we want to do are easy and lazy and not the best move for us so wagering ev-happinnes should be a better choice imo.

gl