loved part 5, I have been having similar sentiments about my poker journey as of late, keep em coming!

Thanks man you too, I'm following your thread, although I can't even comprehend how you put in that insane volume

That sounds real good man. I wish I'd have approached poker the same way back when I played for the glory.

Man why do I keep getting asked about this stuff, got 2 similar PMs too this week. I do not want to, nor intend to at any point discuss any past backing stuff. It makes me angsty and panicky just thinking about it. I can promise you with 100% certainty that I will never back anyone or get backed ever again. And more importantly, stuff like that involves other people's finances and it's not my place to out them. All I can tell you is that don't get backed. By anyone. Ever. It's the single most irresponsible thing you can do with your poker career. That stuff can not only ruin your and someone else's finances but friendships and relationships outside poker too. No, I don't want to elaborate further and I'd kindly like to ask to drop the subject of backing ITT.

Edit: Meh, I guess that sounded almost hostile. I didn't mean to sound like a dick or anything. It's just that I don't have any answers to your questions and it just makes me really miserable looking back at my own past mistakes. I can't tell you what to do in your situation, I'd need more info, and quite frankly I don't want that info. All I can say is talk to your backer, try to work things out. If you think you're in too deep, that the games feel pointless, tell him that. But the sad fact is that any makeup is basically a debt and it's your job to play in whatever games your backer puts you in and try to make good of that debt. I can more than sympathize with some tournament with 1k first feeling meaningless. But it's *your* fault you ended up there and wasted a massive amount of someone else's money. Not that you meant to do it, but that's where you ended up anyway, and now as a result someone's lost a lot of money, and there's only one person in the world who can make good of that. You. So the least you can do is to try your best every day. Again I don't mean to sound like that's easy, I know it's not. You have your own life too, might be running out of money. How you wish you could just play those $22s on your own and had never got backed in the first place. But it is what is, gotta look forward, always. There's nothing stopping you from clearing that makeup, and every little cash is something towards that goal. Maybe if you do well your backer will let you have a % of winnings as a loan? I feel like when hopelessly deep in makeup a smart backer would try to motivate a horse with something like that? Just talk to him. There's also a makeup thread on mttc, I'm sure there are people who love to discuss this stuff there, I just really don't, sorry.

(None of the above reflects how painful of a horse I must have been, it's much easier for me to comment on other people's stuff, just like it's easier for me to coach than play. I was always like this, I can be pretty smart and offer great insight, it's my own **** I often can't fix. But yeah this is the one subject I don't really want to talk about more.)

I guess that's one way of looking at it, I do certainly dream of being able to do this for some more time. But to me it seems more like a question of whether I will do it or not, and not a faraway dream.



I might, although there's only so many puring your heart out posts one can make!


FWIW I think how bad or good someone's game selection is depends a lot on their personality too. There are a lot of steady personality types that can easily play 20ABI and play one $215 every week to chase the dream without if affecting them in any way. These are the types with all the money typically (see: Timex). But a lot of us make too big a deal of shots and put too much emphasis on certain singular tournaments and that's when stuff can get out of hand. I remember when I was really obsessed about winning the 109r I was playing so bad in my bread and butter games (50 and lower) because all I cared about was the 109r and I put like 50% of my focus in it out of my 20+ tables. I feel so guilty about it now Similarly, in cash games there's nothing wrong with taking a one buyin shot at 2/4 when you're playing 1/2. But how many of us are capable of 1) ending it there when we're hit with that 3-outer in a game twice as large, and even better, being completely unfazed by it?

There's a story in book #2, and this was in the bbv thread too iirc, about this Finnish guy I met in Thailand. He was hardworking, basically had a 10/10 personality for poker, but didn't really want to be a poker player. He wanted to be a cop. He CRUSHED 5/10 and sometimes also played 10/20NL. We lived in Koh Samui (small island off the coast of Thailand), and while he had a place there he rented another place in Bangkok just to fly there to play without distractions. He played every Monday-Friday, office hours, dedicated, didn't communicate with people during those days. Then he came to the island every weekend to hang out with us, didn't talk poker, didn't want to think about it. He just wanted to chill and enjoy life every weekend. Every Monday morning he'd fly to Bangkok on the first morning plane for work, and every Friday he'd return to the island on a late afternoon flight, always with a smile on his face, rehardless of how his games had been going. THEN he had his birthday on a Saturday and we were having a small party for him at my place. He said that he had never played 5kNL, but now he wanted to take a shot. One buyin, if he loses he'll quit. Just one shot, because he'd been thinking about it for some time, and couldn't think of a better day than his birthday to do it. So he borrowed my friend's laptop and sat down and fired a table of 25/50. We all railed him, excited. It turned out there was a huge whale at the table bigstacked. My friend sat to his right, grinded his stack up to 8k punishing the fish. This would've been more than a great result for a quick shot during his birthday party. But now he couldn't quit because he had position on a whale 8k deep. He only really wanted to play a few orbits, see how it feels like, it wasn't a double or nothing type of shot. But now he was sucked in and couldn't quit, because he knew his EV to be great and had to respect, even if he didn't want to play 8k deep. Then, finally, his time came. After 3-betting and isolating the fish relentlessly, and when it was becoming clear the fish was getting agitated, he was dealt AA. The fish opened, my friend 3bet, the fish called. Qxx flop. My friend cbets and the fish SHOVES 150BB. My friend obviously snaps, fish turns over AQ, Q river. 16 normal buyins against a huge whale to a legit 2-outer. My friend just shrugged, closed the laptop, didn't show any kind of emotion. And I saw, I could really tell, that he wasn't holding anything inside, he just wasn't bothered even that I don't think he was super rich or anything. This was definitely money that mattered to him, but he had already processed this possible outcome in his brain long before the shot-taking took place. So now he just shrugged, didn't work out, oh well, was fun. It was the most amazing thing and I'll never forget his reaction. Really inspirational, but at the same time I knew deep down I could never be like that, not with my personality.

I went on to ramble (shocker!), but what I was trying to say is that there are guys who handle pressure, beats, zoning in, zoning out, having a deep run in a tournament, sweating flips, etc etc significantly better than others. Someone with my friend's personality could probably play any schedule and make steady money regardless of what shots he takes and how much he gets butt****ed in them, and then there are guys like me, and maybe you, who are best suited to play in games that don't affect them because the stakes are low enough. I know when I used to play higher, poker came to my thoughts and dreams too, often when I was hanging out with my gf all I could think about was that damn AK vs AQ for 1/12 in Big 109. Now I forget everything 3 seconds after my last hand, and I'm just so much happier this way. **** glory, man. I'll take happiness and sanity over glory anytime.

PS. I'll only allow myself to be proud of the guidebook comment if you promise not to do all the stupid **** that I did. Seriously it's not cool, it was just dumb. Makes for great stories though.

Hey no problem dude. I don't take any offense to your post whatsoever and appreciate you still taking the time to answer it while you could have easily ignored it. Just don't worry about me. I don't play poker for a living, am not running out of money, neither is my backer and I'm still allowed to play all the games I want. I'll be fine. Actually, taking time off poker is doing really good things to me. It just felt like I had been so 'all-in' on poker for the past few years, I had neglected some things which are far more important in life. I really like this thread and it was by no means my intention to make you feel uncomfortable about your past one bit.

Great read. Much as always.

Good luck in both aspects poker and writing.

I am ****ing trying not to man. But I think I am more weighted towards your personality than your friends and it kills me.

I would have flipped the **** after losing a hand like that, hell I flipped the **** on went uber donk tilt losing like 3x normal buy ins taking a shot at a large game just last week!

You're right; game selection, whilst should purely be about the money, sometimes, people pick games based on what they want from poker. What they want to achieve from poker etc etc.

Your post are eye opening and I can relate a lot to the ideas and thinking that occurred when you were young, and trust me when I have no intention of repeating your mistakes!

Cash games= printing money and dont care what other thinks
MTTs=trying to make money on the road of chasing for glory

If ask MTT player Why you are playing MTTs not cash games, better hours, more freedom, less variance?
Most MTT plyers will answer that cash games are boring to them and they dont motivate them to grind...

Now that motivations to be the only one left at the table in difrent MTT is what drives us as MTT plyer to fire game after game. Day after day. The enjoyment of beein the winer, the thrill of beeing only one left and vitrually beeat all the others runers u cant get with playing cash games and wining all the money

I inderstand why are you saying. what you are saying, you are geting older and stres and variance is getting their tax on your health (both mental and fizical) and todays games are geting harder and harder and you has find your way to feead that hunger, that excitement. That thrill, but reducing the variance as much as u can reduce it and thats great, although tbh those swings are what makes mtts wins more excited ehen you are stuck like 10-15k and you are playing FT with like 40k+ for first
Gl

Hey Chuck, big fan here. Greetings from Lithuania, land of the greatest beer on Earth (yes indeed).

Unimportant semi-fever medication induced update

Played 8 days straight of 6-12 hour sessions, probably 70ish hours total. Won ~1500€ + a leaderboard score of either 250, 500 or 750€, will find out tomorrow for sure but I'm 95% I got the 500. Was pretty lame, I had such a huge lead before the last day that no one could even catch me, so I just played the last tournament for the lolz knowing I couldn't lose first place anyway. Then after I had busted with 7% equity I was hit with a popup saying that the last tourney is for double points. There was no mention of this in the client, the tournament lobby, or the leaderboard website, only found it in the smallest print of all small prints ever on a separate page behind an "expand" button. But knowing how poker site customer services typically work, I assume they are going to say I could have noticed it if I had spent 4 hours of my life going through the various corners of their website... sigh. Oh well as long as I at least get the 500 I won't be too mad. 25 ABI so all in all managed to win an okayish 80 buyins. I played really really terrible throughout for the most part, in the only halfway meaningful deep runs I thought I played quite well and did some really solid payjumping, but I completely butchered about 100 other tournaments at earlier stages and really just lit money on fire. But now I'm somewhat up to date after a long break. Totally bricked .fr SCOOP and Wseries till now and can't be arsed to play tomorrow despite the serieses still ongoing, I'll take tomorrow and possibly Tuesday too off and then I'll do another similar grind. Would expect to win a bit more this time due to not being rusty.

Lost 50BB deep HU today to a guy who was playing fullring with stats of 93/5. He was like a terribly coded bot, literally called any amount pre and post and donked 100% if he hit something. Like, 2BB limped pot, I have K3, runs Q98JT, checked to the river, I shove river for 16x pot, he snap calls playing the board. I open KT, comes KsTs7h, he check calls pot-sized cbet with 83hh (and gets the bd hearts obv). Was kinda interesting trying to keep the pots small but still getting value, since he was calling 100% of cbets I was valuebetting J highs on AA2 etc but then again was kinda interesting trying to combine that with keeping pots small. Anyway so yes I lost to this guy 50BB deep getting it in with 0% equity most I've laughed and enjoyed losing at poker in a while, genuinely happy for him to get the trophy.

Also I was sick the entire time I played, I've had this fever for 2,5 weeks now so I'll probably go see a doctor tomorrow to find out wtf is going on. It's weird, just a really tiny fever / sore throat / cough / tired around the clock but still feeling significantly better than usually when I'm sick. Kind of like an inbetween state between being sick and healthy but this just won't go away. I wouldn't say it has affected my poker playing at all, probably the opposite as I haven't even been able to exercise so it's been a good time to be trapped inside and click some buttons. But would be nice to get rid of this, I assume it's not very healthy either to have a fever for 17 days straight.

Moving elsewhere from this basement in a week. Not sure where yet, I'm not gonna book another place before I've seen a doc just in case this requires more extensive care in which case I guess I'd just fly back to Finland where we have free healthcare. Pretty small chance of that happening but no point booking an Airbnb before anyway. Miiiight also fly to Mexico until late May (if I go, I'm still intending to play 90% of days), but probably not until the end of WPT since I have a bunch of friends coming to Montreal. And I'd say staying here is the favourite still as long as I can find a good place somewhere. I've got a return flight to EU from Toronto in late May which I'll very likely be using. Funny, at the time of booking that I thought I might actually go to WSOP (haven't gone since 2010). Every year I've entertained the possibility and every year I've decided against it because summer in Finland and drinking beer when the sun is rising at 4AM > wanting to light yourself on fire in Vegas after a few days of that town. I like the off-strip Vegas but I can't take any part of that town for more than like 4 days before I enter a deep and dark degen mode. So yeah **** that ****, the plan is Montreal for a week -> ???? -> Finland for the summer -> Asia/Australia/NZ next autumn/winter methinks.

Found a place in Montreal that will rent me a car without a credit card. So assuming I'll stay here, I'm gonna take a few days off at some point, rent a 4WD, and drive north until I hit a polar bear or the Arctic Sea or driving conditions that force me to turn back. I don't know why but I've had this idea for a while so I'm gonna do it. I'll stop by in Quebec City on the way, and I really want to hike a couple of national parks here. If anyone in Montreal reads this and wants to participate on an adventure of the above kind let me know, would likely want to do this in early May for a few days.

I enjoyed your videos on cr

anyways great read,

subbed gl

Def go see a doctor, sounds like it's the same flu or whatever as I had (and a lot of other people I know). Doc gave me antibiotics and it was gone in 3 days where I had been sick for 8 days before.

I tried to go a bit less-starsy but was still way too much on the same horse.

Thought adding/reviving sites like party, 888, ipoker, stars.fr, ftp would do something but then I read you took an emphasis on HUDless sites so I thought of SWC, Yachting (hive I guess), Americas Cardroom, Winamax, Unibet but realized that the only site w/o a HUD are SWC and Unibet. on Hive you can pay 40$ for a workaround and get a HUD on it even thought there is no official support.

What damn sites did you dig in lol?

I also saw some sites that are in Rand, some others in Rubel. Kind of put me off.

Are some of these sites even on pokerscout?

I would assume that all but one of the sites I play on are tracked by PokerScout and probably are within the 10-15 biggest cardrooms traffic-wise but can't be arsed to look them up. I'd say 80% of my volume is on sites with HUD (I am very good with HUDs and benefit from them more than most I think, but obviously it would be great if they were banned everywhere). I have no idea what Rand or Rubel means. I don't really go for obscure sites, I want my money to feel safe etc. I don't play on any of the US sites like ACR and whatever else there is (as a Finn we have to pay taxes for that stuff, only .eu is tax free for us). I'd say my schedule is more about finding tourneys that no one else plays than finding sites that no one plays on. While I have a p5s profile it only tracks like 30% of my volume nowadays fwiw in case someone is trying to dig it up, I have a bunch of secret sns now.

Anyway like I said I'm obviously not going to lay out my schedule here or anything. But since these should be really obvious, here are a few pointers about figuring out if a tournament is going to be more profitable than others:

-Played on a "weird" software that most regs hate (to 90% of the MTT universe this is anything but Stars lol). Does the software hurt your eyes? Freeze multiple times during session? Is it hard to read the fonts? Are the colours annoying and you can't modify the theme? GREAT, that means no one else is playing so we are against a horde of fish!

-Played on a site that doesn't allow HUDs (drives away 20% ROI masstabler types)

-Played on a site that doesn't cooperate with Tableninja and similar (same as above)

-Is a strange format (this doesn't necessarily apply on Stars, but any non-NLHE games (and NLHE with bounties or big antes etc) are the softest thing on the planet on any other site. Party $55 PLO8 is softer than Stars Big $8 if you know the rules, etc.

-Has a low guarantee. The importance of a big fat guarantee is IMO the biggest misconception by tournament regs. Especially if the structures are deep (see how Stars destroyed EPTs for any non-dragons for example, the structures are too good now, I would not buy a share of anyone but like 30 players in the world at 1.15 MU for most EPTs). Big guarantee = every single reg on the planet will play it = endgame is always reg-infested and that's where the money is made. This used to not be a problem because 5 years ago there were maybe 300-500 good regs. Now there are probably 2000 of them, plus cash game players are starting to play more tournaments realizing they are the only soft thing left, and there are significantly less fish. These bigs and hots and whatever feel soft because at every starting table there's some epic drooler, some guy playing 59/7 donating chips. But try playing the last 2 tables when there are 2000 good players playing the same tournament, especially if it has a good structure... which ones do you think make it to the endgame, the regs or the idiots? Not to mention that the not so good regs are usually ghosted deep in Stars stuff and their support is doing nothing about it. And then there's the brutal variance which can be nice if you're a dreamer and just want to give yourself a shot at winning 20k every day you play, but which is terrible if you want to make a steady living. Personally the stuff I love the most is the 20€/1k guarantee type of stuff that no one plays that allows me to print 50% ROI with 2,5 hour time commitment for that specific tournament while all the idiots play the Stars Big $55 making $9 over 6 hours at the same time because ZOMG Big Guarantee!! It's in red text so I have to play it!!111, etc. Example: I play the Stars.fr 20€/500 GTD at 5PM GMT every day. I never ever ever reg their Big 20€ (I think it's 10k GTD, can't be arsed to check, some big fat gtd anyway). I consider the aforementioned to be significantly better value.

-Is not a turbo. Because **** turbos. 2% ROI, infinite variance, there's no bigger waste of money and time. But people play them because you can get lucky and get a huge prize quickly. Which is true but your hourly is still worse, not to mention the emotional toll when you keep ft bubbling 3000-person events.

-Is played during offpeak hours. This isn't something I personally do, because I like to play peak hours just based on how it's the best slot to play poker in life quality-wise for me, but there's no doubt that even Stars games are infinitely softer for the other 14 hours a day outside that peak period. If I were forced to play on Stars I'd make sure to only play hours between 1AM GMT -> 3PM GMT. I'd probably just get up at 7AM or so (5AM GMT) and grind until 3PM our time (1PM GMT).

-Is a part of some tournament series / leaderboard / promotion. No I'm not talking about COOPs. That's when you close your computer and have a holiday if you're not WCG|Rider. Worst time of the year to play online. Every single midstakes+ tournament is FILLED with regs because everyone is playing at the same time, even the dragons who only bother to show up for COOPs have left their lairs in USA#1 and are temporarily in Canada or VPNing from the States and they are in every tournament. I'm talking about random little stuff that always runs on some site. Last week I played in Winamax Series, yes admittedly SCOOP .fr, RAY (Finnish site) Holdem Fiesta, and Ongame's NYX Gaming series. There's at least 2 things like this running somewhere all the time.

-Has overlay. Because overlay=free money. There's a ton of tournaments every day with infinite overlay. But they are not the red tournaments and they are not stuff that is marketed. LDO. It's under the radar stuff that, tada, no one plays. If a 20€/1k GTD only gets 40 players you have 20% ROI right there off the bat. It gets some getting used to to find these tournaments but they are all over the place outside the bottomless pit aka the graveyard aka Pokerstars. I remember years ago on UB (back when they still paid winnings to players) they had a $55 at like 3PM GMT that had a 3k guarantee and it would always get about 15 players. It ran for months without them fixing it. I remember winning it once when TEN players total registered, so 3k prizepool and 500 worth of buyins. So it was a 10-man $55 SNGs with prizes being 1500, 1000 and 500 (iirc). That's obviously a bit extreme, and I don't really even search for overlay stuff, but there are a few tournaments I play regularly that almost always seem to have some, so naturally I've made a note of that and never miss them.

-Is played on a site that has a sportsbook. Sportsbooks are the ultimate degen vacuum machine and these sites always have some newbies and the stream never ends. Again this is why low guarantees are so good. On Stars you play some 5000 person Big, so your chances of taking advantage of some guy who's never played poker before are pretty slim. But reg some 40-person tourney on a site where Sportsbook and Casinos feed players to try poker, and you will actively get to play with them and isolate them, whereas regs don't bother to play them because of the Stars glory factor. This is the MTT equivalent of the scene on Rounders where a tourist after another sits to play with the sharks, except that there's 5 tourists for each shark and not the other way 'round.


There probably 5-10 similar things I could list, all just super obvious common sense factors really. Tldr version: just stay out of Pokerstars and you'll do fine.


edit: I will add that mastering the art of creating a schedule, especially if you want a moneyprint schedule, takes some time and experience. You can't play everything, and it takes a lot of time to realize what tournament popping at what hour suits you best (I mostly prereg everything pre-session and have 20-30 tables popping up whenever in a beautiful mess scattered around my screen). That won't work for most, and you just have to figure things out by yourself, try, fail, etc. Some people can play 3 PLO tourneys, 2 PLO8 tourneys, 15 NLHE tourneys and two HU tourneys at the same time. Some can only do one variation on one site. Most people who're too used to playing on Stars can't even bear the thought of not playing on Stars. For me this was always easy, I played at Ongame for 2 years before I even made a Stars account, I always hated the Stars software, to me it's the 2nd or 3rd worst there is. I loooove Winamax, Microgaming and Ongame softwares. Unibet has a lot of hiccups but if they fix the bugs it could be great too. I can tolerate ipoker and 888, and I can tolerate Stars too, but it was never an issue for me to quit it. I'd even go on to say that perhaps my greatest talent as a poker player is being able to masstable euro sites. But yeah, why I feel comfortable posting even the above is simply because most people don't think like me and won't want to play on other sites.


edit #2: Also, that made it sound like I'm doing some epic MTT lobby search mission which isn't really true at all. Almost everything I play is pretty normal stuff. I'd say that 90% of whatever "success" I have these days comes down to two things: 1) Avoiding Stars / playing only on other sites, and 2) Avoiding big guarantee stuff/stuff that is an absolute reg magnet for the most part. The rest is just minor stuff that I barely notice, and comes from experience (like certain overlay tourneys), but that I could easily do without. I don't really look at lobbies or revise my schedule or anything like that, I just click away since this core "program" is what I've done since 2009 for the most part and it comes to me naturally. I suspect it would be quite difficult for someone from a Stars only background to implement it even in months.

Here's my graph from one site out of the 9 or so I play on (~1,5 years sample) that recently booted out all players from my country (RIP). I played more or less everything they had, which was only something like 8 tournaments a day because they were a small site with very limited tournament offerings. Virtually every tourney was like 20€ 6max / 1000€ gtd or something along the lines. The above ROI is not because I'd be a great player, but because I prefered to play this stuff instead of Stars stuff. I really played very mediocrily and did nothing out of the norm and I was the site's 9th biggest winner last year according to sharkscope, by playing 8 tourneys a day at 20 ABI. Lol.

in, gl

that's some money graph

Ongame still exists? I thought they were down since Amaya took over, or was this another site?

Microgaming eh, should have some accounts left there too on several skins.

Thx for your insight, tried to keep more non-stars tables going today, Unibet kind of annoyed me, but on other sites I got on 4 FTs with 2x1st and 2x2nd today on 888, ACR, iPoker and FTP.

The magic is happening

Awesome post man, I myself just recently realized that there is no point in a dickoff on stars proving who can overcome the biggest downswings and started playing untracked euro sites as well. Been an awesome change in terms of profits+my mental state is a lot better there.

Stars (incl. fr/it/es), 888, ipoker, Bodog, Winamax, Party, Microgaming, Adjarabet, Winning, Unibet, FTP, Hive - These are the top 15 sites on scout right now. Bodog isn't available here and I kind of am put off by the name Adjarabet. I am on all of the other sites. Sites that are more down on the list are Chico, Europe-Bet, Merge, Dollaro, Pokerdom, Enet, Nitrogen, win2day, Horizon, TonyBet .... - never put a foot on these ones.

1 South African rand =
0.067865 U.S. dollars

1 Russian ruble =
0.015091 U.S. dollars
Yeah, sites with rand and ruble seem obscure but winning poker doesn't seem that sketchy. I also deposited via BTC, so it's a plus for me.

Feeling safe with money, well we felt pretty safe on FTP late 2010 too..

About taxes, I really don't know how it is in germany. Our ministers are too stubborn to get that done.



I played on Unibet yesterday and although the site looks nice, I had huge problems getting into the flow and I honestly can say that I had less fun playing there while multisiting.


While this happens less and less, yesterday I played on ipoker and my PT4 crashed several times still showing the HUD but not updating hands. I may not the only one this happens to. Guess this affects regs.
This is really worth a try. My Omaha game sucks and my Stud game is recreational at best, but I played 109/215$ non-NHLE mtts just because satelliting in was so easy. My multitabling would suffer a lot but maybe the ROI makes up for it.
What happens here is I guess that on the low GTD tournaments we have some regs and some fun players while on the high GTD players we have all regs and all the bink-addicted degens. Seems like the degens don't make up for 1k grinders.
it feels for me this is not even an option. I have two kids and I can't pull a super sick schedule just because good games are running. When I'm starting my late night session around 8-9pm I can't really reg normal speed tourneys that end somewhere around 3-4am, also this is a misconception because of stars' field size. A 45man MTT on a smaller site shouldn't take longer than 3 hours and is softer than a 45man SNG on stars with half the buy in.

Yeah the morning schedule (3 ET - 7 ET) is so damn filled with aussies, you see a odd all in and instantly think "oh an aussie." You almost never see those players on the other half of the timezone, called peak.

You know what turned me off of that timezone lately? That not enough MTTSNGS were running on stars at that time (4x 3.5$R vs 21 x at peak). Misconception at its best.
Okay this might be a little contradictive with the point that the GTDs should be low, but I guess on those sites the big GTD are like a standard sunday on stars and likely way less.
instant rakeback. I usually achieved a lot of overlay by playing satellites but I never shipped a target :/

While you said that stars' sportbook doesn't have a real value in getting a fish to your table, FTP's casino and sites like iPoker, Party, 888 (888bingo ftw) really seem to attract fishes. Pro tip: don't gamble away the winnings of your 6 hour MTT session in 20 rolls of roulette. I got my casino banned on most sites


I guess this is true for 20$ ABI games, I'm on 2-7$ now which may be soft on any non-stars site, or?




Thx again


What's your stance on the poker rules like

a) Don't play when you're tired
b) Don't have skype open or any website, or even music (I remember you saying you grind without music)#
c) Don't play drunk (not even stoned? wtf )

vs Leatherass:

Unless you're dead sick and the games are good; go grind. If you were the boss of your pokeroffice and your players say something like "I only played 2 mtts because I wasn't at my best" would you give him a raise or fire him?
(I guess this really comes down to game selecting. If you are c-gaming on stars you are lighting money on fire while a d-game on some site with no more than 200-400 players at peak will be break-even pretty much and only if you run bad.

Yeah, it's not like I'm claiming to be an expert on any of this, and please note that the stuff I listed above is not a list of rules or anything. I'd say on average the stuff I reg meets 1-2 of the things I listed. It was simply a few things that I personally have found to be helpful in trying to figure out what to reg, and again different things work for different people. There are a bunch of people in the world who would make better money playing Stars only, because they are more used to the software and are beating Stars with a sufficient winrate already. If I was a good reg on Stars who was making 40% ROI I wouldn't play other sites if I wasn't used to the softwares, it takes a long time to adapt. So that was just a couple of common sense guidelines and nothing else. And also, my poker career has been filled with a lot of failures, so I'm not really the guy who you should statistically be listening to. I'm doing my best to answer though.

Re: the last bit that I quoted;

a) Not playing tired/sick/hungover etc: I'd strongly recommend playing if you're playing my type of schedule. I would expect to have very minimal monetial difference between my A game and D game on an average day. It's just printing, I do nothing basically. I could do the same in my sleep, or in 39c fever, or hungover, or after 2 hours of night sleep. But if I was an upper echelon Stars reg then I think I'd only want to play when I'm playing my best (not applicable for my own personality because as mentioned before I'm prone to choke when I'm supposed to be feeling good). But in a nutshell, if you're not beating your MTT games hungover, you have some serious regging/schedule leaks. Obviously we all need days off, nothing wrong with taking a day off when you're hungover. But if you have nothing else to do, why not play even if your brain isn't 100%? 80% is more than enough to print money. And typically those days when you're super tired etc aren't very productive anyway, what are you realistically gonna do? It's often actually better to make those days when you're physically incapable of getting much **** done the days when you just do what you have years of experience in (hopefully), printing some money playing plebs.

Disclaimer: That is obviously JUST my own opinion and also if I were backed or something I think it would be very disrespective to have an attitude like this. But in an ideal world most of us would be unbacked and playing games slightly smaller than what's the biggest we can beat with some margin, and that's the stuff we can just as easily beat hungover or tired. It's just round objects to round holes etc.

b) I think having skype, fb, browser etc open is bad. I'm definitely guilty of this though. I don't use skype at all these days, I found that to be too distracting, but I'd say I probably spend ~5 minutes (of non-break time) chatting and browsing 2p2 and whatever for every hour I play. It's just a habit, whatever, who cares. I obviously don't do it during peak hours but if I only have 10 tables I get bored and I don't have the mental strength to observe people in some dumb $22 while I could be learning how to make a perfect steak from the Gobboboy thread in OOT This is very bad obviously, but hey, we all have our leaks. One of the things I love the most about playing small stuff is that I really don't have to care about anything. I used to stress sooooo much about perfecting everything, I'd religiously time every break and have a schedule where I always prepare meals at x hour and make sure I get home a 18:47 at the latest so I'll make it to the 109r from the start and stuff. Now I just don't care about anything and play when I feel like it. Whatever happens, I don't care, and it's so relieving compared to before. One of my fondest poker memories from last year is this random weekday when I was starting early, I regged like 15 tournaments early on, and busted half of them almost immediately to some unfortunate hands. Everything else was in very early stages, and there was nothing else popping up for another 30 minutes. I then realized that I didn't have coffee, and I just shrugged to myself and thought lol you know what, this is my money, who the **** is going to hold me responsible if I do this? So I just sat out and took a nice 30 min walk getting a coffee and basking in the sunlight before I got back. I was in super good mood when I came back and made a decent profit. Also I remember last year in Malta I ordered food from the same place half the time and I became friendly with the food delivery guy. I'd always have to go down to the street to pick up my stuff because the buzzer was broken and I lived in the 3rd floor. So one day when he came I was ~20-tabling (but not fts or anything yet), and we just talked about random **** for like 15-20 minutes outside while I was sitting out from my tables. Because who cares, it's just plebs. Obviously this is very unadviseable, and I would NEVER do this with someone else's money on the line, and even with my own these are the only two occasions of sitting out on purpose I can think of. But the point is, it's BEAUTIFUL to play a schedule of stress-free stuff and be able to do what you want. Life's too short to stress about everything.

But yes, short answer, I think it should be obvious that any distractions in the form of browsers and chats are bad. I listen to music on and off, I think it's significantly better to not listen to music, but I definitely need it especially when things don't go my way. I think it's really important to start with no music on though. That's the main thing. When I start a session while listening to music I always play sloppy and find myself not concentrating. But if I have nothing but poker, I always get zoned in. I think music is a good tool later on in the session when you're getting tired or face beats and are getting a bit grumpy, it helps zone out the bad stuff, but I don't think it's good to play it all the time. Could be just personal preference, I don't know, I feel rather strongly about the starting with no music on though.

c) I would never play drunk or stoned. I have tried both and I did very poorly. I usually have a beer or two when I play live though, helps me get over some anxiety stuff. Stoned I just can't play at all, I think it's because I have a very creative mind and I just start thinking about 50000 things at the same time, whereas some other people can focus much better on one thing that way. I played live stoned once too (just some super tiny tournament) and it was ridiculous. I remember flopping a set and I just started laughing uncontrollably, tears were running down from my eyes because I was cracking up so hard. I just couldn't get over the thought of how funny it is to be holding these two cards and then have a third card of the same rank appear on the flop. Talk about live tells. I don't know how all the Americans do it, playing stoned every day. Not my thing, but I'm not a stoner anyway and don't intend to be. The only substance I have ever used to aid my poker-playing is caffeine.

You nailed your own question re: Leatherass stuff, although I'd expect to make money playing your D-game in certain tourneys. Just table select easier stuff if you really have no brain power.

QFT. Back just pre Black Friday when the bounty SNGs came out on Stars, they were like printing money. I seriously think my ROI was near twice as high in these as in the same BI regular format STTs.

Ahh the "good" old days. Can't say I miss the grinding, but I really like tournaments. As a live player these days, tournaments are so over-raked, and almost all basically turbos, they are basically unplayable below the $1.5K BI.

Ended up taking two days off completely, although I spent four hours today working on the final edits of book #2, but I don't count the book stuff as working. I'll grind from tomorrow onwards until Monday when I'm supposed to switch apartments... except that I don't know where I'll be moving to. As in, what continent I'll be moving to.

I've been trying to find another Airbnb from Montreal for two days now. Only 6% of places available, no worries, still about 20 decent options in my price range. I try to book a place, it takes them 12 hours to reply, "sorry this is not really available until June, I forgot to update the calendar!" Ok. I'll try another one, it's some guy who has ten different apartments listed. Takes him ten hours to respond, "sorry NONE of my apartments are available until late May." WTF??? How do you have TEN apartments listed if none of them are available? Same thing happened with a third person. Now there are only a couple of options left and if they end up being unavailable too (I'm currently waiting to get confirmation from person #6), I guess I'll gtfo from Montreal. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal when it comes to booking apartments, but if you've ever tried Airbnb I find this pretty absurd.

This makes things a bit hairy for exactly one reason which is the fact that I have that 27'' screen I bought a month ago. I really don't know if I can get it sold for a reasonable price that quickly. So I would probably have to travel with it, which would be ok, except that I already have a shiiiiitload of stuff on me, meaning that I would have to buy another suitcase and pay double baggage fees for each flight. This stuff adds up quickly and it just makes no sense to fly around with the screen a lot. So, in a way it would make sense to just go back to Finland, but then again it costs 700 euros to fly there, and I have a "free" flight (the return leg of my flight here) already paid for one month after I have to leave this apartment. So basically I could book a super overpriced place from here for the next month, and as long as it costs less than 700 euros more than I'd pay for rent in Finland, it makes more sense to stay. I could also go somewhere else within Canada, but the only reasonable option is Toronto, because I don't want to fly with the screen unless I have to and the only cities within train/bus distance are Toronto and Quebec. But Toronto is lolexpensive if you're living alone, cheapest Airbnbs are 1500/month. From here I could get a ridiculous palace for 1500/month, but then again... I'd be living in a 1500/month apartment which seems pretty dumb as opposed to living in a 800/month place in Helsinki where all my friends live...but then again that doesn't make sense because of the free flight. See what a vicious circle this is?

I think I'm giving myself two more days to find an apartment here. By then I'll have grinded through the entire Airbnb and if there's nothing left then I'm oi. No idea wtf I'll do but the most sensible option I can think of right now I sending all my heavy clothes to my address in Finland using some cheap, superslow mailing option, booking a flight to Mexico, packing the screen in my Samsonite, and gtfoing to Mexico until late May and then flying from there to Toronto to board my free flight back. I have a bunch of friends in PDC plus it's cheap and warm down there so why not. I wish I won't have to do this, because the weather here is just starting to get nice and I'm falling in love with several cafes in this city, but if I can't find accommodation I don't know what else I can do. I'd really like to stay, because I'm just starting to feel both at home and productive here, and I think I could get a lot of stuff done spending another month of vicious grinding and doing book stuff here. It took me almost half the month to get going, but now I finally feel like I'm being productive, and I'd hate to have to start all over.

If anyone in Montreal is reading this and in need of a monitor, there's a pretty good chance I have a one-month old Asus PB278 for sale, comes with original packaging+receipt+full warranty etc. If I can't find an apartment and can get that sold, then I think I'll just go to Finland and have another go at this world tour thing after the summer.

Hashtag firstworldproblems.


I really want to spend some time in Asia and AU/NZ next fall/winter/spring. I think I'll leave Finland in early September, and I'll likely spend a few months in SE Asia. I really miss the culture there, been way too long since I've spent longer periods there. And I finally want to go back to Sydney for a longer time, I spent my 20th birthday there so I'd better spend the 30th too (December 19). It would be incredibly awesome to live down there for the full three months my visa allows me to from like mid-December onwards. Then from there I could go back to Asia or maybe NZ or both. But yeah let's maybe first figure out what country I'll be living in next week, lolz.

Edit: I also really want to go to Oman. Spent an hour reading about it yesterday. Seems like an awesome and completely underrated destination. Everyone goes to UAE (Dubai etc) but I've never heard of anyone going to Oman. Why? Just look at the wikitravel, it looks really epic.

yo miikka:

you ve prob reduced your longterm hourly by about a dollar posting ur last couple posts. just a headsup

What a ****ing coincidence that I will travel to sydney around that time, pending your confirmation that we are going to kb kb with no degen and if I am not busto.

2/5, 500NL lesgooooooo

Well all I posted was super obvious stuff really. It's not like any of that was a secret, just common sense (the few regging secrets I actually have I'm never going to post). I predict that maybe 3 people will be giving other sites even a shot, they'll sit out too much in the first couple of days and they'll go back to Stars. Also the new Stars schedule will have people brainwashed for another six months at least.

Also, I hate Stars with all my heart and if any of my posting causes a dent to their income I consider it money well spent.

That's six in a row, many of them having listed multiple apartments. What the serious ****. French Canadians apparently have no idea how to use AirBnb. Only got two possible apartments left now, and assuming I'll run 8/8, it's byebye Montreal in five days. Anybody wanna buy that screen?

why don't you sell the screen at ebay? If you're too lazy to pack it up, make it only person 2 person. I'm sure there are 1 or 2 people, maybe even grinders, in Montreal who would buy a screen occasionally. Make it 1 or 3 day, starting price at 75% or something.
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I think this 20$ 1k gtd thing is like a 1.5$ 45man on stars. I was up to 7 BI in chips/1st yesterday in a 22$ on ACR and only busted before bubble because AK<AJ and AA<JJ pre. Really not hard.

Yeah my last schedule consisted of auto regging 24 MTTSNGs on stars and firing them off with a gamepad while watching Dittsche (german improv comedy) in autorotation. Didn't got that far reagrding concentration.

Just timed out 88 UTG because of this thread. Pre fold anyway?
I rarely play drunk and very often stoned, but I'm a daily user anyway so it's not like I go beyond the level where I can't work with numbers anymore. But even though my last big cash (1st in 3.5$R) was on a "huge amount" of sambuca which was only about 5 shots since I'm so sensitive to it due to not drinking a lot. I guess there are a lot of people here who only play sober as part of a "no unhealthy crap" PGC. I'd say at least 30% of grinders (canada/belgium etc.) are on dope at least bi-daily.


I tried out the and even thought it was only FTP, I chopped it knowing basically nothing useful about Stud & Omaha /8 FL/PL.

What's up with the air bnb guys? Is living in a commune not an option for you?

There have to be some grinders who have a desk and bed available in whole canada