incoming hopefully

Super hyped that things have turned around d! gl for in december bzzzt. You coming down for grosser's annual german beer hall thing? <3

reminds me of your eoic unstuck into downswing that never ended fkn tough times

"if you never swing up you cannot swing down"

reminds me of everyday whole life

Way to bounce back bud

Cheers bru!

Haha yes it's a mistake - it's just 6max on one of my sites. I would for sure be in for some online 10max though haha, love me some FR teh Cadillac of poker

Lol, yea it wasn't the most fun. But also it voz not the wurst

Maybe

Gutted I didn't come this year and meet Corleone's chick. I flew home from Portugal that Saturday but could've looked into changing flights as they were cheap cheap even with my golf clubs.

Next year maybe

2deep



Cheers brutha, honestly I'm gutted not to be railing a 50z propbet haha, hope the situation with Bodog resolved itself.

==============================

Gonna jump in with the rare mid-month life update.

Been going hard on the poker grind, but been finding little pockets of time for other things here and there. We've been doing a productivity challenge this month with all the bitb cash students, one of the categories being sports/gym/exercise. So I decided to be 'that guy' and ask someone to take a video of me rolling with Daniel, who's a strong blue belt and the instructor at the new gym. I say instructor, but I haven't actually been to anything but open mat since the old gym closed as all the classes are evening time except open mat on sunday afternoon. Our banter with '1 out of 5' and all that was a list of things he told the video taker to look out for, including:

- me giving him crucifix position
- me catching a darce choke from his underhook
- him catching a guillotine... **** like this can't remember the others



Aaaaaand some more piano goodness, been working away at this one - still not quite happy with this rendition but you gotta draw the line somewhere I guess - I ****ed up the last bridge bit but yeah - not gonna devote my whole life to piano playing so perfection will remain elusive



I look like a bit of a dick swaying around all the time lol, hard to play with feeling/emotion without it though. Captain serious

Anyway that's it for now, will give a poker update once I finish up for the month just before I fly back out to Mex.

GL out there gang!

Amazing piece please poast moar. Merry xmas bud

Yo. Happy new year everyone!

Just spent half an hour or so putting together my results for the year as I don't have all the hands in 1 database. From my pokerstars audit, looks like from 1st Jan till 4th April (when my current DB starts) I netted $56,175 at the tables (my memory of this time was that i was heaps above ev, which I obviously was in the purest sense, but looking back on my early year updates looks like i wasn't that far ahead of allinEV).

Then started the biggest downswing in buyins of my career so far:

Since then, things have picked up very well:



As my confidence and bankroll recovered, I took another small shot at some good 1k games, which unfortunately didn't go so well, so I'm still quite a long way from recovering fully in $ and ev$ terms:



If these graphs look exceptionally swingy towards the end it's because I've been playing a fair bit of the new 3 blinds games on stars where one 'giant blind' = 2BB.

So yeah - I'm down $4,876 since my high water mark for the year in April (lol) plus I got $3,548 in rakeback from stars (around 10%), plus probably around 1k from other sites. In MTTs, I took some shots at SCOOP with a fair chunk of action sold which went terribly, but I had some extreme luck with a piece of a good friend recently so I'm probably around even on that score. So yeah, overall this year excluding bitb stuff I'm going to call it $55,847. This is actually quite a lot better than I thought it was tbh - I'd forgotten just how good I ran in January and March especially. No year graph/reports I'm afraid, would take too long to get all the hands on 1 database.

======================================

I made it out to Mexico with no problems on the 29th and I'm settled into our new apartment here. The internet looks like it's a heap of **** so unfortunately I'm going to be tethering from my phone to play with a stable connection - far from ideal as I probably won't be able to coach or join study calls for a month, but not a great deal I can do about it, it's just one of those things here.

During the journey out I was reflecting a lot on my poker career and how to take things forward. Even after so long in the game I still love to play, and I try to be thankful every day that I have my freedom and something competitive and rewarding to do with my time. I wrote down a bunch of stuff relating to my process and my goals for the year some of which I'll share here:

- $100k from playing poker this year
= 40 playing weeks
= $2.5k/week
= 10x 500hand sessions
= $250/session
= average stake 500nl, 5bb/100

- Triple my hourly
= 200 study sessions (1 per playing day)
= 5 sims/session
= Increase bankroll by 3x
= Improve myself every day

I bought myself a new notebook in the airport and I'm going to do my best to keep track of my progress towards these goals. Obviously I'm not a complete robot, and obviously staying healthy just supercedes all these goals, but yeah - these are my goals and I think I have a plan which, if executed properly, will get me there. The hardest thing I think will be the mental game side - playing average stake 500nl means for every hand of 200 I play, I'll need to play 0.8 hands of 1k, so I'll need to move up a fair bit over the course of the year to achieve this and handle the swings/additional pressure that that entails. I'm also going to try and learn 40bb, and I'm planning on working properly on my MTT game and playing a weekly MTT session on sundays. I think my updates here will be fairly infrequent and probably quite life-focused, but we'll see how it goes.

Thanks to everyone who's read/posted to this blog over the last year, and here's to crushing it in 2020

GL out there!

edit: 1 other thing, I've been reading this blog https://www.runitonce.com/chatter/mobius-poker-blog/ and it's great content imo - really good analysis of downswings towards the end especially.

insane ds man that would have realllllly tested mental game, and wicked regrind!!! gl in 2020

Best of luck man

gl 2020 bro hope i dont see u too much at the tables

Some super sickening downswings/poor run in there. It's almost the spitting image/story of my 2018.

Fwiw, i think the profit goals can add more stress than motivation. I'd much rather have hand/study goals and let the green and orange lines do what they gotta do. You obviously know all this stuff and you probably don't lend too much weight on the having to make 2.5k$ a week, but if it was to play on your mind, even a little bit (you are a human just like the rest of us who feels disappointing when goals are not hit - particularly in the short term), i just see it as an unnecessary pressure.

Anyway, not here to preach, just my 2c. Really hoping you're able to bounce back and crush 2020 on the tables. And ofc, you're already smashing the off table life! <3

Cool to have such a brutal year and still make money tbh, wp

+1

I have similar goals in terms of a profit/net worth goal but it's not so much a goal in itself, but just a way to quantify how well I execute those smaller tangible goals you listed, which are the important ones you can actually control.

GL mate!

Well done on the piano stuff Donald! I'm actually thinking of picking up piano this year too, want to brush up on my theory hah. Any tips?

Nice recovery on the year, gl in 2020!

Man, variance is insane. How many people did you kill in a past life??

GL in 2020!!

sick comeback to end the year , gl in 2020 crush them goals!

Hey man, congrats on the huge regrind & the successful year to boot. Takes a lot of mental fortitude to keep pushing when you're getting hammered day in and day out like that. I do really think, though, that these periods are good for us in the long run. During this year I actually learned to get less attached to results than I ever would have otherwise, and learned how to be happier in my day-to-day life no matter what is going on @ the tables.

I incorporated journaling into my schedule this year too, I write in it every morning while I drink my coffee and I really like it (and found it easy to stick to). I just write a sentence or a paragraph about the previous day, and have a list of things that I check off (gym, meditation, bjj, etc).

BJJ - how is it that a blue belt teaches in the gym? I've never heard of that. Do you do gi and no-gi? I usually go to 2 gi and 1 no-gi a week, I like both for diff reasons. Lastly, nice vid! Armdrag to darce is my go-to.

Lastly gj on finding enjoyment in poker even though you got the sh*t end of the variance stick this year. To me, staying in poker is a no-brainer because of the positives it affords me. The benefits that it provides are second to none imo, both having freedom in regards to time and freedom from the typical workplace BS are just such huge benefits for someone, especially if you have a lot of interests/hobbies like you do.

Keep up the good work brah, glgl

I wanna be caught in crucifix position too, looks enjoyable.

cheers man!

thanks very much





Ah yeah - tbh I should've taken those lines out - I was basically working backwards from the end goal and seeing what kind of volume/average stake/WR would be likely to get me there - definitely won't be holding any stock in my weekly results if I can help it, was more like showing my working

Yeah absolutely - I was more thinking about the kind of process I'd have to execute throughout the year to get where I want to be, I might make $100k and I might not, I'll be trying not to sweat it too hard but I will be trying to make sure I tick off the process goals every week.

Gl to you too

Cheers Ted! Honestly IDK what the value of studying the theory stuff is. When I was a kid I was doing grades/had a proper teacher and did everything with music - now I kinda just learn the tune and then put the music away as quickly as possible. I definitely enjoy it more this way, and IDK what you can learn about theory to actually help you play better or get more out of it. That said, I do occasionally think about how mad music itself is - the fact there's 8 notes in an octave, 12 including semi-tones and like - some stuff my mum has told me about our instincts especially wrt speaking to children - iirc mothers instinctually call to their children with a high note then a low note that is exactly a 'minor third' interval. Pretty crazy to think that it's all just vibrations of a certain frequency, yet it obviously evokes a ton of emotion and has a character that almost everyone identifies with.

Wall of text answer lol, but short answer is I've never really done much theory outside my grade 5 music theory to allow me to sit the practical piano grade 5 aswel, and would guess it's over-rated. If anyone had a book recommendation about that kinda stuff though I'd be interested enough to add it to the already massive pile of books I intend to read

Lol, one way to look at it! Hopefully none??!?

Gl yourself man

Thanks dude!

Big +1 this - I used to care so much about whether a hand imported to my DB and such things, now I realise that even the world's most enormous sample isn't a measure of your worth as a human or as a poker player, you could still have massive up or downswing starting the next hand, having Xevbb/100 over Y hands doesn't make you immune from that or even help that much. Definitely feel stronger mentally and technically after coming through such a stretch.

Basically I was in a gym with a world championship level black belt teacher, but the landlord decided to turn the place into student flats So it's not so much a proper gym, more like a group of enthusiastic ex-students who roll/help each other along. I like the social side a lot so wouldn't really consider going anywhere else. I only do no-gi, did a few gi classes while I was living in London years ago but I'd be lost in it now. Missing it out here a bit, hopefully get right back into the swing of it once I'm home and finally find time to compete

Cheers for the thoughtful response, best of luck in 2020 brother

lol, you

============================

So, been going to a coffee shop to use some proper internet and get some group study in, while there yesterday morning I sent a small amount of $ to an account I transact with all the time.



Haven't been able to sit a table since, emailed them twice and haven't had any response. What the **** do I do now? Does anyone have a contact at stars I can escalate this with? Really don't want this to drag out any further than it has to, so obviously just needs a real person to look at the situation for <5m to fix.

**** stars, honestly

rut roh.. what did you do donald?

Probably sent 0.02 to vinivici for rungood and got banned bc sending to murrican account

"usually completed within minutes"

If you check the "Internet Poker" section you'll find several people reporting that they've been waiting for weeks..

Having been in a similar situation myself, I suggest contacting @StarsSupport on Twitter. Once you tell them your Stars username they'll check your case. I had my account re-opened one hour later after initially waiting for 2 weeks.. Oh and fwiw, my account was frozen simply for depositing using the same card I had previously used for deposits & withdrawals plenty of times..

Edit: By the way, I've also seen people claim their account was permanently closed for sending/receiving money to/from "shady" accounts. Don't know if that's the whole truth, but it seems we can have our accounts closed for unknowingly transacting with the wrong people...

hopefully account in question is not shady

Who knows what Stars are thinking.. Could be that player A sends money to player B who in some way has done something shady. Then player A sends or receives money to/from player C and they both end up getting flagged by Stars. Just a thought though, don't know if they'd do such thing in practice.

Weirdest thing is when they don't even tell you what you're supposed to do... At least in my case they requested verification documents, though they didn't bother accepting/rejecting them for 2 weeks (after they incorrectly told me I sent the wrong documents within 24 hours...)

tweet them D. They respond much faster/take your query seriously when it's in the public eye