thread title says it all guys

welcome to the grind.

i figure i will let this thread unfold piece by piece rather than trying to cover everything in one huge introduction

there are a lot of great PGC threads i've followed in this forum, and i hope that mine will be up to par and worth following for you guys. those that know me, know i've had 2-3 blogs in the past, and while i liked the idea, i think (hope) having a thread will work out better. in this way i can write and talk to a poker audience, not worrying about alienating myself from a more broad population with something i might say. i can also keep it pretty casual/informal with a more stream-of-conscious type approach. i'll try to keep this thread largely poker based, though i'm sure my outside life should weave it's way in here. all i ask from the 2p2 audience is to respect my privacy in some regards

i guess i'll go ahead and get the ball rolling. i am a 24 year old poker player living in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. I am from Florida. how I got to Rosarito from Florida is another story, that we will go over later, along with some details on my life here.

the important stuff: i am surrounded by an awesome group of supportive/motivated friends

for now, all you need to know is that I'm a tournament poker player. i play on stars, fulltilt, party poker, and just about every other site that will accept players. a majority of my volume comes from the major networks though. i am backed to play tournaments live and online.

i have been in makeup for about a year now. makeup means that before I can split profit with my backer, I need to make that amount of money.

unfortunately, I have been in 6 figures of makeup since SCOOP of last year. I've had a lot of really awful months, a few breakeven ones, and even a few months where I managed to make some money. ive made some mistakes with game selection, played too high, made several mistakes in-game. played too many tables, played not the right tables, played too few tables. played just one site, played all the sites, chased live glory. i mean you name a mistake, and i've made it in the last year.


i'm still confident though (possibly to the point of delusion). i work hard, and i've been working hard for a while now to get back to where i was. there's nothing like a big downswing to make you re-examine what you're doing. and i guess that's why i'm here. to remind myself that success is a continuous journey. cue an amazing tedtalks


if youre not willing to work hard, study and improve your game, and actually put in the hours, day-to-day, week-to-week. just know that there are thousands of people out there right now doing just that, working harder than you are, aiming for your spot. we could sit here talking variance, luck, and woulda/coulda/shouldas until the sun comes up. but in the end it all boils down to the grind and being as good as you can be day in and out. that 70/30 2 years ago is never going to go the other way no matter what you say about it. find your strengths, build on them. then focus on your weaknesses and improving them. im willing to accept that at no time in my downswing did i play perfect, and moving forward that's probably not a realistic possibility either, but i've plugged several costly leaks along the way and my game has improved dramatically, and the plan is to continue doing so.

i guess at some point i forgot what it was that made me successful at poker in the first place. and i'm making this thread to keep myself in check and accountable moving forward. and to continue pushing myself for more, because i know i am capable of it.


i'll leave it at that for now, but here are some goals for the month of March (will be missing some of the month online for my first break of the year, so lower playing volume than usual.).

-play at LEAST 1000 MTTs
-review at least 15 MTT HHs of my own
-review/exchange at least 5 MTT HHs with other regs
-1000+ ICM/PSM Calcs
-at LEAST 2 database studies with notes
-maintain winning red line in hypers (HU and/or 6max)
-new friends, new ideas


thanks for checking out my thread. i know you guys like graphs, so ill be sure to get one in here of my month/year so far at some point tomorrow. february was a good month for me though (erased away all the pain of TPOOP in January)

been a long day for me. put in about an 11hr session (a bit shorter than usual). managed to get a 4th in the 22c on Stars as well as 4th in the biggest 109 turbo of the day. headed to bed now after a few hours on non-poker time though. short day ahead of me tomorrow poker wise. going to wake up and go for a run on the beach, head to the bank, and pick up a new set of contact lenses I ordered. the eye doctor's doesn't open until 10am (after the 109r is done late regging), so it looks like I'll be starting around the Big 109 tomorrow.


i'll take some questions and try to answer them as i can. there's a lot of stuff i left out of the introductory post that we can tackle later. thanks again PGC

GL to us, this should be a fun ride.

First, GL.

Why no caps in title?!

2st. glgl

Great Thread. Quite motivational; & inspirational.
Subscribed...
Been a very longtime fan from the rails. You are one of my favorites to watch on Sundays.
Nice to see/hear the words & wisdom; from one of the better players I've seen play.
Crush it; GL at the tables, & maybe our paths will sometime cross in Rosa...

awesome glgl marty

GLGL! ur one of the all time greatest!
will be following

def subbed, glgl

in GL lipo

gl m8y, look forward to seeing this thread evolve and hearing your insight into the grind.

here are some graphs, for those visual folk among us

my year:




my february:



graph of my year comarping $0-$90 stakes to stakes $90+




have had a steady theme this year of making money on the weekdays and losing it on weekends. have had some runs in the big buyins, but the field size+ size of byuin makes it hard to come out ahead with my volume barring a score. i had a 4th in the brawl this month. i reshoved 99 at the FT and was sanpped by the guy with A9o who 5x called. the flop was AAx and I was drawing dead. we also had a 30th in the Sunday Million. here's to hoping the HS graph looks more like the $0-$90 graph this month

woke up for the day now but a little behind schedule. going to run a 5k on the beach and head to the bank. should be rolling into the eye doctor's to pick up my contact lenses a fashionable 20 minutes late or so. looking like I'll be aiming to start with the hot 16.50/8r 2x turbo and late reg some of the 1am start games.

Subbed awesome!

Nice thread.

Were you always a MTT player or did you play SNGs, if so, what kind? A little more background story please.

in good luck sir, after being in such a brutal 1 year downswing, did you ever consider changing games ? Ex cash games, hypers or what not.

looking forward to this, subbed. GL!

Sick, always thought u played on ur own. Time for a scoop title?

bol Lipo

Good read. Good Luck grinding, Subbed!

You've contributed a lot to these forums and I like reading your posts. You'll break through in some HS MTT's sooner or later, its bound to happen! Good luck!

Good luck marty. Will be a fun thread to follow and hopefully you get back on the right track and start winning some big ones.


Mission 19/some other sweet food in tijuana soon?

GL sir, all the best on the grind.

Looking forward to this one.

Best of luck, Marty

Subbd. GL this year. We go this

thanks so far everyone

i'll be sure to put up a brief history following the weekend, as well as a graph of how the month is starting out.

i FT'd the 20c on Stars and FTP yesterday, as well as the 50r turbo big antes on Pokerstars. i dont think we had better than a 6th, but managed some other big cashes so i dont think i lost much.

friday is my favorite day of the week to play poker. saturday is actually my least favorite day. and the fact that the weather is a perfect 75 degrees outside and i'm hungover isn't going to make grinding any better.

I plan to start with the 109r here in a few minutes and register until the 109 2x turbo tonight. about 10.5 hours of registering ahead of us today. i like to get to bed early on saturday nights, because i start before the kickoff on sundays (which starts at 5am here)

got home after a few drinks last night and had just about the best news possible. after more than a 12 week waiting period, i finally got paid a 2k cashout from lock/revolution poker. honestly didnt think this was ever going to happen and have sort of written the amount off. i used to load 109 on there every sunday to grind their major, one of the weeks i built a stack and was 4/112 when they decided to cancel the tournament. i was somehow awarded over $2000 for my chip equity so it's been a sweat since then trying to get the money off.

it's been a real cat and mouse game with some of these smaller networks trying to get money off, you often wonder if the headaches/hassle of getting the money is worth the little bit of extra equity.

anyways that's enough for now

GL to everyone this weekend. i more or less just left this soundcloud on all of yesterday while grinding:

https://soundcloud.com/feddelegrand

and plan to do the same for the rest of the weekend

saturday was a weird one. had a 9th in the hot75 as well as a 6th in the 109c turbo. ran really bad deep at FTs. both had top scores above 5 figures, but walked away barely making money. ended a little bit early last night and headed out for a dinner so i could get a good meal in me before the 4.30am start time today

i wanted to play later, but was a bit frustrated, plus there were a bunch of friends in town for the 7mil gtd tomorrow. had quite the assembly of MTT regs over at my house last night playing some open-faced chinese and bull****ting. so i obviously found an excuse to quit early

got up without much of a hitch, just had to force myself into the shower. it's weird looking out on the beach and seeinf 4-5 bonfires still going

ill have a full update after today, just wanted to give a quick weekend summary so far

looking forward to a big one today

glglglglgl!