Thx DanteA! Your Gl wishes immediately transfered into a 4th place in the h75

March:



4k w/ rakeback +about 1k in live cash

Stars server issues hit me pretty bad. There were numerous sessions i had to unreg everything a couple hours in or skip days entirely because i couldnt even connect to/update the software.
It all hugely affected my play and threw me off my game. Def more then it should have. I kind of realized i was getting tilted for being so tilted about this..
On a positive note, given i wasnt simply able to bring my A-Game anymore due to the steam, the rational disciplined german in me decided to just reg 180's and all the softer turbos for the last 4 or 5 sessions to get some momentum back. As usual in life, discipline pays off as i got 3rd in the 16.50$ 20k for 2.1k and 1st in the $3.30 2x rebuy for 3.6k to end a ~5.5k downer.

edit: My Cambodian friend tricked me into eating dog.. Can not recommend^^
and yesterday i had to taste snail to not be disrespectful.
(a couple hours later i had a headache and stomach issues)

Yumyum

April:



-231 w/ rb -550 on eurosites -277 in live cash

Results resemble my play.
Now, I should at least be able to learn from my mistakes and address those mental leaks. Not only did I play poorly but I also lost the drive and didn't work on my game as much as I should have (10 hours of strat compared to 35-40 hours for the last months).
So it really feels like I wasted a whole month of time.

Admittedtly, circumstances were kinda rough this month.
Stars servers going apes**t at the beginning of the month, my internet provider going apes**t at the end of the month (huge server crash in Hong Kong) + the occasional power cut along the way.
One of those lasted for 4+ hours during the sunday grind.. (my battery holds out for 3hours) I stopped regging and luckily didn't run deep in anything to bust my last tourney 5 minutes before my pc would've shut itself down^^.
Yet still, thats no excuse for throwing random German curses around.

I am improving at a very slow pace while playing as many tables as i can "comfortably" handle (which is 12). Therefore I'll be capping tables at 6-8 during SCOOP and see how that works out.
Whatever hourly I might be grinding out atm it simply won't be worth it if I keep on making the same unnoticeable mistakes over and over and it's pretty clear by now that it makes much more sense for me to spend my time studying and improving.
Luckily I'm in a spot where I don't need to grind, as my living expenses are pretty low and the roll is healthy enough.
Only concern is the 6500 VPPs I need to get in to not lose Supernova (already missed 1 month).

Anyway, SCOOP is about to start. Will play about ~33-38 events

GLA

weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee



What a sick run that was.
mement_mori almost crushed my dreams when he took my chip lead twice. 99<KK in a sexy bluff spot 23bb effective and then after working it up again KK<AA when i was 1/10 for the world in chips (funny how he always has it).
Obv he didnt know who he was messin' with as I busted his ass in 3rd place..

Only just went through the HH very briefly but had to make a decent amount of very close ICM decisions.
Made some very disciplined folds that the majority of the MTT population hate to make, got down to <2bb after i doubled a shortie with 5 left but then the binkage was on my site (see graph).

Nice bankroll booster right there (up to 45%)

Nice thread. Congrats on the score(s). I take it you only play on Stars? Do you grind normal hours there (it seems like you might be grinding the weeee hours in the morning...).

I also grinded MTTs in Asia, but found myself having to grind cash as well, cause I did not want to change my afternoon-evening grind schedule.

All the best in your utopian goals

Thx Dubnjoy, appreciate you're chiming in!
I've been reading you're Travel-Blog with great interest. You seem like a legitimately cool guy! ("living out of a backpack for 18 years" )

I've added Stars.fr and 888 last month and will up my volume within the next weeks/months, possibly adding winamax and ipoker too.
I'm still struggling regarding my set-up.
I use "StackAndTile" now but have not yet managed to put it to good use. Given that I grind on my laptop my options are limited/I need to stack everything.

Yeah, the timezone is definitely a problem when playing MTTs.
I start within 9.30pm (Hot 33) and 11pm (Big 22) usually.
It works best for me to wake up in the evening, eat, grind and then still be able to see the sunlight in the morning.
Could still be worse though. Could be living in Australia^^

Hey, thx for the kind words and following my thread Am curious about to where your journey will end up as well...

Are you still in Sihanoukville? I was there for a couple of short stints, in Otres beach for 3 weeks to focus on the grind, and stayed at the Beach Road Hotel for 1 week on a different occasion... You are renting a hotel or an apartment?

When you say you play with your laptop, I take it you have an extra monitor (or 2)? I also play with my laptop, but since I rarely play more than 8 tables, an extra 23 inch monitor is sufficient...

And when do you plan on revealing to us your 2 Utopian goals (or 1 of them...)?

GL, looking forward to the updates

Win $ today and then spend it on a wild night. Promptly report back. Thanks.

^ Gonna be one expensive night

Pretty incredible sunday. Haven't played online in 6 days, come back and this happens..





Gotta love them massfield MTTs
I always assumed the Storm was just a gimmick from Pokerstars and unbinkable.. but i got close^^
99<ATs bvb for 30 bigs could've made an epic score happen but will feel pretty good about it when i wake up tomorrow

The Bigger $5.50 went very smoothly, was chip leader for most of the late game/ft and did own here and there

both hands vs same guy, second hand might be the most exploitive I've EVER played

http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hand...773_0075BD2627

http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hand...869_C71CC48160

what's GTO?

May:



16.9k w/ rb -200 on eurosites +1.2k in live cash

Feels good to be on the right side of the variance

Why did you leave Thailand, Tyler? Why?

Yeah, same same. I extended my Visa yesterday for another 6 months (in a supermarket)
Weird that I'm living in Asia for half a year already..
As you will know, it's a very very chaotic city to say the least and frankly I don't like it that much.. It's not beautiful by any means, and there's this depressing feel to it, caused mostly by devastating poverty and pollution.
Add to that the child labour! (I've seen kids clinging on garbage truck's and children working on construction sites, holding shovels taller then they are) and it gets confusing how this place ever became so popular in the first place.
A lot of the prostitues and TukTuk drivers are on meth, a remarkable % of the population is HIV+ (not to mention tuberculosis), and the newspapers report random murders/rape/drive by's/stabbings (and asian mobsters raiding hotel rooms armed with katanas to execute russian low-level thugs) almost on a daily basis.

If you ever wanted to start a "GTA" type of career, come to Sihanoukville!
You'll start with escorting hookers and the distribution of low-quality crystal over to hotwiring SUV's and bribing cops over to random brawls vs. asians, who don't do martial arts and obv continuing the distribution of low-quality crystal over to shootous with the chinese to eventually die trying to murder the Korean Druglord... with a bazooka, dressed up as a ladyboy!

I also don't benefit from ridiculously cheap weed/cigarettes/hookers&booze basically EVERYTHING the countless degens come by every year.

Now.. WHY ON EARTH do you stay, you may ask^^

It's because of the people I meet.
The locals are just incredibly adorable, especially the women.
Sometimes I would love to just walk around and hug every one of them.
All the "Khmer" (Cambodian) I know by now, I've learned from various purchases at the markets etc. and they absolutely love you for trying.
When I go out with my Cambodian homies I'm often the only one who's not Asian and most of them seem to appreciate that I hang out in corners where "barangs" are spotted very rarely.

Then there are the expats and the backpackers.
Realtionships with the latter mostly last for a day or two but I really got to enjoy meeting new people after being "isolated" on this 50km2 tiny sister-island of Malta for 1 year.

There's this 30 year old (Bangladeshi/grew up in London) girl that really fascinates me.
She quit her five-figure job at Barclay's to travel around and eventually built up this vegeterian (basically 95%+ vegan) restaurant (and made it to #1 on Trip Advisor).
The place is awesome, I eat there 4-5 times a week, it's always filled with interesting individuals, people who work for NGOs and very little money.
I remember, telling this norwegian woman: "I play poker for a living and I might be the most boring person in Sihanoukville right now"

Secondly. Buddhism.

Pretty hard to explain w/ my command of english but you'll prob get the idea.
Undoubtedly it has a substantially positive influence on this culture, it's actually incredibly inspiring and (imo) mind-blowing to see how the people are able deal with their Lifes in such extreme circumstances.
Unlike most "religions", you can grasp a lot of the core concepts philosophically without actually "accepting" it's truth.
It adresses Human's condition very honestly and accurately.

To answer your question: I live in an appartment in a nice quiet area and pay 250 bucks for it

All on a 19"

Nice intense post. And yeah, I agree with you. I feel somewhat torn in between the + and the - when I think of most Asian countries I have been to. And frankly, I am really not a big fan of Sihanoukville at all. The sex industry, the general vibes...

I feel that there is still a ton of tension that floats around in Cambodia... call it bad vibes, reminisces of the civil war or universal suffering, but there is something in the air : you can tell that the people were exposed to lots of struggles. To a genocide. Yet they remain so friendly. Welcoming. Love the Khmer people.

I feel that India is another country that creates that same sort of paradox : as a foreigner, you are surrounded by unescapable poverty, suffering, yet you cannot help but feel amazed by the serene magic that resides in that country...

Keep us updated, and more emotionally charged insightful posts like the last one please

You summarized it quite well.. The atmosphere is intense

As for the goals, I apologize for the "secret-mongering".
I mainly didn't reveal any of them in the OP because i would (rightfully) appear pretty delusional.^^
I'm an idealist (not in the platonic philosophical sense) or at least try to remain idealistic.
I've had these "goals" in mind long before I wrote them down.
I have given this a lot of thought. To me this seems to be the way I can have the most efficient positive effect on this world that I can think of.

Goal #1 I'll reveal as soon as this 32 year old half Argentinian/half Italian woman (with the hottest spanish accent of all time) comes back to Sihanoukville to discuss everything in detail.
She already showed great interest and would be the absolute "nut-perfect" person to help me with the first goal.
For every goal I will need to rely on people that have talents and skillsets that I'm simply lacking and I'm going to have to trust them.

Took a lot of days off this month to study.
I'm having a hard time putting theory into practice it seems and feel that there's still a wide gap between my theoretical understanding about poker and my play, which is a big obstacle I simply have to overcome.
But on the bright side, I think I got 2x better at poker over the course of the last 6 months.. Which is really not that hard to do when you really suck

I think I'm going to start to post some adjustements I make and some hands I think I misplayed or are interesting +general observations about MTTs (when I'm not that sleepy after a sunday grind).
Would appreciate if you guys get involved

I'm starting to get that french money over at stars.fr.
Got 2nd in the hot30 2 weeks ago and just got 5th in the french WU (first try).

Nice scores man, keep it up!

So, it turns out the Chinese are building a new casino in town and bought the whole apartment complex I'm currently living in..
The Landlord was so sad when she told me I need to leave.
Over the course of the last months she became this cute Asian grandmother that I always wanted to have.

I was feeling way too privileged in that house anyway, and I think those Chinese people brought a curse into this place..
Maybe I've seen too many Asian horror movies but there are some strange things happening since they got here 2 weeks ago^^
For example, there's this mold growth on some of my clothes, books and furniture. One of the walls is soaking wet and two days I ago when I woke up to go to the bathroom I noticed a large crack in the ceiling. Thought about telling the landlord, but obv after I continue my sleep.
1 or 2 minutes later half of the ceiling (including wires) came down with a huge bang!

I'll be heading to a 120km distant small little beach town called "Kep",
20km from the Vietnamese border. Possibly staying for a month, maybe visit Vietnam afterwards, dunno.


Leaving the apartment will also mean I'll be leaving my good friends:


and


Who are especially disgusting if you are currently beating "Dead Space".


and



Realize this is my 1k post. Think I'm just gonna delay it until I find something "1k post worthy"

Enjoying the thread, congrats on the sick May. GL

Good luck there

Curious what you will think of Kep... it remains one of my favorite little towns, especially to focus on the grind or other introverted activities. GL.

thx fellas. encouraging to post moar

Yeah, I remember hearing about Kep for the first time when you mentioned it somewhere in the cambo thread.
Pretty awesome so far^^
Went trekking for 13 hours yesterday. The scenery is astonishing.
Cambodia has huge problems w/ illegal logging so it's quite rare to see so much green.
It really looks like the Cambodia I was imagining.

June:



fortunately stars.fr saved the month



+544 in live cash. Comes to about: ~2.8k
Which is cool, considering I effectively only played half the month to spend time watching Ben Sulsky videos and to partay a little bit more then I used to.

There's a tournament series held for the first time in Vietnam next month and Sihanoukville is going to host the APT in october for what I'm already excited about.
That's going to be one hell of a grind and I'm going to have the hometown advantage^^

It felt like a little haven to me and was a perfect getaway for 10 days of grinding/studying.

One of my favorite things to do over there, was to go for a massage at sunset (in that massage place by the seafood market) on the second floor, facing the sea with the breeze and all. Quite the peaceful experience.

Hope all is good in your world!!!

Well, there's been a change of plans: I left Kep after 2 weeks.
I just saw my KK going into the muck one too many times.. none of my 2 backups worked either..
I was expecting the internet to be an issue but I just had to go for it anyways.

Besides that it was quite the fun. I got trolled by Gibbons when I was wandering through the jungle (one of very few in cambodia where you don't need to fear stepping on a landmine). I heard this very strange animal sound coming from behind my back. It sounded like a elephant/wild hog mixture, no kidding, just relly really weird and hilarious thinking about it now^^
Back in the days the area was filled with bears, elephants, tigers, leopards and such but they all retreated when all those lolhumans came along.
Nowadays you get to see deer, lizards, wild hogs and scorpions if you're very lucky.
So, I turn around, looking for this "wild hog", when the tought that I might don't want to encounter the wild hog anyway came to my mind.. As they get crazy aggressive and I didn't want to end like King Robert of Baratheon + I had only about 2 hours until sunset and I was still in the midst of it.
I continue on my path and hear a similar noise again (this time no elephant tho^^) coming from my immediate right, which was strange because I was in ~250m altitude and it appeared to be unlikely there's something down the hillside. So I shrug, turn around to continue my way when it hit me that monkeys imitate sounds of larger/dangerous animals to scare away intruders. I think I recalled that from a documentary.

This French guy told me about some infamous caves about 20-30km far from Kep. During rainy season they are supposed to be filled with water. One of them completely, so you can actually swim through the cave, another one filled waist-deep.. So I make may way to these caves through this astonishing rural part of cambodia and it's super friendly habitants.
Unluckily it didn't rain for the last 24+ hours, which I didn't notice and is quite rare. So the caves were filled only in parts that werent accessible or not leading anywhere. If I had only known this .
If I were to stay longer I woul've came back immediately after the rain for this. I was hoping you would need to dive to reach certain parts of the cave or get out of there..
Regardless, it was a great experience. Theres no way you can make it through if you weigh more then 90kg, at least the path that I took. It was a bit claustrophobic for sure.
I almost didn't make it out as the exit that I took, (there are several, some only reached climbing vines) was ridiculously small and steep.
I had to climb sideways while in a crouching position holding my torch in my mouth in pitch black and balancing all my weight on tiny ledges. The wet limstone didn't help either. It was so f***ing intense!
I could literally only see within the small light beam of my tiny torch that I was pointing directions with.
Then I had to climb upwards and I couldn't find anything I could get a grip on except this one promising hole in the limestone on my left that I could use to get myself in a better spot. The thing was, that I was balancing most of my weight on my left foot already.. Moving said foot now would mean risking to fall. I was hanging there for quite a while and was pretty exhausted at this point. I was reeeeaaalllly unsure if I could make that big leap to this hole.
In Malta I got myslef in 2 similar situations were things could've ended quite badly. In both occasions the same thing happend. And it happened now.
This intense feeling of FEAR. Like 100% pure FEAR. Oh my.. How intense it that fear is..
And fortunately it's always been followed by an adrenaline rush.
And it's always what got my out of these situations. Same as here. Basically my instincts took over and I took this huge leap with my left foot pushing myself off with my hands, and it worked.. I found some ledges I could use to drag myself out of this tiny area bascically right into exit.
I got rewarded by this 6th century Hindu Shrine on my way out:
(Cambodia was mostly Hindu up until 13th century)



couple of pics from the caves:



I'm making my way up north to Siem Reap now to finally get to see the temples.
I've been staying in Phnom Penh the last 3 days, will do a write up of what happened here.. This city is so much fun

Off to the Underground Poker World of Phnom Penh^^