Great thread and you come across as extremely humble. Best of luck in your new MTT adventures! Will be following.

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

It's been a while since my last update and I've really kept myself busy.

I went back to Macau after skiing in Japan, played a couple of sessions of cash and then headed over to City of Dreams every day for about two weeks of APPT Macau. My best (and only) result for this festival was a final table of an 80k ($10k) Highroller. My personal highlight was getting a jack napkin cold 4bet bluff through for 40% of my stack on the final two tables. Anybody who has played cash with me in Macau will know the childish enjoyment I get from winning pots with J2-J6o and an absurd 4bet/fold spot is even more fun.

However, this particular run ended pretty badly, I had chipped up to be either chiplead or second with 5 left. I limped SB with T4o BB checked flop was AKJr, I bet 1bb, 20k into 68k, he calls. Turn 4 I bet 142 into 108, he calls. River 3 I bet 596 into 498 and he has 150k back. He calls me down with J7o and just like that I catapult down to a short stack. Soon after I shove AKo into AA and I'm eliminated in 5th.

One thing I've definitely learned from deep runs is that it's crucially important to keep variance low wherever you can in order to protect your stack as long as you don't sacrifice a huge amount of EV. Like in this hand, I could easily just bet turn and river for normal sizes and the EV of both plays in chips should be fairly similar (I think overbet/overbet has more fold equity but smaller bets risk less) and if that's the case then the EV of the play that costs me way less chips and way less places on the ladder when it goes wrong is clearly far superior.

The main other hand of interest from APPT was in the SHR which was a 400k ($50k). This is basically just a bad beat story so apologies in advance, but I was pretty surprised and am still nonplussed by how the hand played out.

Really top elite reg opens HIJ at 3k bb, I peel BTN 97 BB calls. Flop is 852. Checks to me I bet 6800 into 20.4k, he check calls. Turn 4, I make my flush, he checks i bet 22.5k, he sets me in for 140k (!), I call and lose on Jriver to KK with K.

I talked about this hand with a number of friends and I'm still really not sure what's going on on turn. Seems to me like he has a great bluffcatcher. The only reason I see to shove turn is to shut down my equity but I think that I'm too deep for that to make sense because he loses too much when I have a flush.

After that I didn't play too many more interesting hands and proceeded to brick the remaining tournaments in mostly dull and standard fashion.

Next up was an immediate return to Japan for a sightseeing trip with friends from university. The basic breakdown of the trip was travelling from hostel to hostel using a 3 week rail pass to get around. So we went to the main city attractions: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima and a couple of other stops along the way. This was definitely a great way to see a lot of Japan in very little time and although I like my high-end poker style travelling- especially when it comes to the food, overall I prefer the backpacking style of travelling as you meet more people and I think it just brings a more relaxed overall vibe. However, whilst this was definitely the better approach for nights out, it means I haven't done the bouncing from Michelin star restaurant to Michelin star restaurant style of Japan that a lot of my friends have done, so I guess I'll have to go back yet again.

After Japan was a 1 day pit stop in Macau before heading over to Barcelona. I played 1 session in the 24 hours i was in Macau and picked up 6 buyins. Felt especially awesome because I had been on the fence about just going straight from Tokyo to Barca so the win really felt like money I shouldn't have had.

The feeling of having money I didn't deserve wouldn't last long though, I ended up firing 14 bullets at various different tournaments during MILLIONs Barcelona, I think I fired 7 10k bullets (not all in the main), a 25k, some 1ks and a 2k. So I quickly relieved myself of the 100k or so euros I'd picked up in my stopover. I was mostly pretty happy with my play, I lost like 7 flips or better and I got brutally coolered in a number of hands, definitely wasn't playing poorly at a minimum. I wasn't too annoyed by the dust, as I'm always way more annoyed if I've played badly than if I've run badly. I did make one small error though... I went out the night before day 2 of a 10k where I had bagged 18BB, managed to lose my phone, woke up at 1:30pm with a start time of 12pm and made it to the tournament to try and spin my remaining 10bb to no avail.

Despite, like I said, being fairly happy with my play at Barcelona, there really is nothing like losing a load of money to inspire you to work harder. Off the back of a month of drinking too much, eating like **** and bricking every tournament I came back to my family home in London and went into lockdown mode. I did a ton of studying, ate super clean and went to the gym every day. It was absolutely what I needed and I feel so much better now for having done it, both from a physical sense and also from a confidence sense.

Studying wise, I signed up for and watched all of bencb's RYE course which I highly recommend for anybody who is not already elite at tournaments. It can either serve as a great refresher course or as the building block for your tournament game if you're more of a beginner so I definitely think it's great value. I also ran a load of hands that I had noted down from Barca and Macau and made document write ups of each hand. I use these to double check how I've played the hand and I also go through each street to see what the overall strategy looks like. It's not as systematic as going through the results of a script, but I find it easier to learn and remember what PIO's strategy is for certain boards if it relates to actual hands I've played.

On top of that, I played a few online sessions in order to implement the stuff I'd been trying to learn and to brush up in preparation for SCOOP. I've been absolutely loving the online sessions, it's so much fun playing 9+ tables at once and there's so much more to learn from it. My results have been fairly mixed, I think I'm winning small, thanks to a 4th place in the Thursday Thrill and a couple of medium sized cashed in some other 500s here and there. But play wise, I can tell my game has come on in leaps and bounds.

My preflop ranges come to me way more naturally at different stack depths. I'm understanding and recognizing how to play on different textures from different positions much more than I did previously. I've got much better at looking around the table to see who is behind/what stacks they are. I fixed one huge postflop leak that was holding me back enormously which has helped me win way more small pots and chip up without relying on either coolers or enormous, high variance bluffs as much as I was previously. It was only a small sample of 5 or 6 sessions (22,000 hands) but I'm really happy with how I've been playing and I'm coming into SCOOP feeling ready.

Which brings me onto my plans. Although I absolutely plan on playing as much SCOOP as I can, I am really starting to feel the urge to make some good money because I've essentially been on a 9 month holiday at this point. Tournaments have pretty much just been a hobby since October, the EV (if any) is extremely small relative to what I can make grinding cash, and I've played less than 6 weeks of cash volume since November of last year, so Ive basically had 6 months off. Whilst that time is not completely wasted, and it has been really beneficial for me to play and enjoy a new format of the game, I do feel like I ought to play some cash before I go and spend a month punting around again in Vegas, so I'm heading out to Macau tomorrow morning.

My plan in Macau is to continue to smash the gym and studying and I plan to play a ton of hours whenever there are good games running regularly. But if the games are just mediocre, or if they're anything short of great on Sundays or Tuesdays, I'll be jumping straight in for some SCOOP/Powerfest sessions. That trip will keep me occupied until late May, then I'm back to London for 4 days for a good mates wedding, and then Vegas, which I can't ****ing wait for.

Really great write-ups. Like someone else said, you seem to be quite humble and dedicated to growing as a player. It's cool to see the attitude of somebody who's played high stakes. I can imagine how variance can humble somebody quickly.

A few questions:

In your experience, what playing styles are less/more effective as the stakes get higher?

What are some common characteristics of the best players?

What are some of the errors (e.g. strategic, tactical, thinking, attitude) that keep people from moving up from mid-stakes to high stakes?

What are your thoughts on cryto-currency after seeing the insane swings over the last few months?

I can only really answer from a live perspective but:

I think being too far on either end of the playing spectrum (overly aggressive/overly nitty) is untenable at high stakes. Everybody has their own style and take on what good poker is but there’s not really any room for out and out ‘aggro players’ or out and out nits as both are just too easy to beat.

The biggest winners (overall not winrate) work the hardest. In Macau this presents itself by being the guy sat in the game day in day out, those are who are winning the most. In online obviously study plays a more important role in hard work.

The biggest error holding everybody back at mid stakes live cash or lower is worrying about gto in general. It’s way more important to try and max exploit everybody you play against in all but the toughest live cash games. Figuring out how to destroy the competition teaches you how best to play against bad players and how to think for yourself rather than follow a set strategy from hesrt. It also wins waaay more than gto would win at midstakes. At a higher level a good idea of gto is essential but I would worry about that later and first make as much as possible and get as good as possible at exploiting if I was starting out right now.

I’m really confident in crypto long term so the swings haven’t bothered me too much. I have taken a step back from tinkering with trades daily though 😂

You have a high level view of poker. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

I think I understand poker theory and mathematics at a basic level. I haven’t practiced with the software they have now like solvers or flopzilla. Maybe I should study these things more. What do you think? Have these technologies changed the way you think about the game in terms of understanding ranges, texture and dynamics? For me, It feels more like instinct at this point, like pattern recognition and intuition than numbers based mathematics. Maybe I should go back and look at the math behind things more.

I like understanding players. What makes them tick? How honest are they? How do they think of trickery? People give off so many tendencies at live low stakes. They give away incredible information when they talk about hands or even their life. They reveal how they think about money and the world and relationships and human beings. Some of them understand image and know how to keep their opponents confused, but these guys are rare especially at 3/5 and under.

I still am not sure what gto actually is. I’ve seen a Doug Polk video on it and I’ve read some posts discussing it but I haven’t thought about it enough to understand the full meaning of it. Could you put it into your own words?

What are some more nuanced exploitations that low level players rarely apply to their game?

Thanks again for your time. You are a good teacher.

Thanks for the update man, was really enjoying your posts when you went dark.

Good luck this month!

What you should do depends on what you're trying to achieve. If your goal is to win at live cash I would steer clear from the solvers, try to play a lot, review your hand histories, ideally with friends and maybe try find a video course that helps with a basic overall gameplan. I don't really know what video series would help with that these days. I watched Alan Jackson on some old school poker training site like 5 years ago that helped with basic preflop ranges and flop betting, unsure what videos would suit you now.

GTO stands for game theory optimal. It basically means playing a style where your opponent is unable to exploit you. This means value betting, bluffing and calling at frequencies that leave it impossible for your opponent to beat you by bluffing more, bluffing less, calling more etc. This is important against top level opponents but if you're playing an old dude sitting in your local $1/$2 game and you call the river with third pair because if you fold 'you're folding too much' then you're going to lose a lot of money live in those spots.

I would say the best exploit you can make at low stakes is overfolding the river relentlessly. Unless you know that your opponent is really aggro and capable of sophisticated bluffs then you can go ahead and fold practically every straight bluff catcher and not worry about it too much until you're playing high stakes.

really nice updates dude, i love this thread ! gl @macau scoop and vegas

This is such a sick thread, love the insight into the Macau lifestyle, and the great HH. Thanks for taking your time to share this with us

PowerSCOOP Update

So I got to Macau 10 days or so ago now. I played 3 or so sessions. I thought I was playing really well, felt like I was engaged and playing my A game which is something I sometimes struggle to bring to the cash tables these days.

However, when I went through a few of the hands I had written down I think some mistakes for cash poker had slipped in from tournament play. The most notable thing was I was doing too much betting my range, something PIO often advises you to do in tournaments vs the weak BB range, but it's often not appropriate for deep stack cash where ranges are closer. Although this mistake itself isn't too bad, it did balloon into a 100bb bluff dust where I 3bet 99 w 9 BB vs SB and then cbet it on AT6 which PIO literally never does. Turn was J and I figured that on this specific turn I'm going to have basically no bluffs as I don't 3bet K5o or anything like that so in order for me to have one spade I either have to have KQ which is a straight, KJ which has some showdown, or some random raggedy hand that I'm unlikely to 3bet. So I barreled turn and river all in on a brick, which I think is well played (and PIO somewhat agrees, as on this runout if it had cbet with 88 which it does with some frequency, it uses it as a clear turn and river bluff). So I'm not too disappointed with the hand but it was a case of one small mistake being carried over from tournaments turning into a full on dust.

The action had somewhat dried up by Sunday, so since then I've got onto a great (nocturnal) sleep schedule for SCOOP out here and have been playing every day.

I've had some decent results. I came third in the Sunday 2100 highroller on stars (not a scoop event) for 30k and then finalled 3 powerfests I think for amounts from 5k-10k. So winning something like 30-35k so far.

Managed to do some ICM work on some of my final table hands that I'll post here. I thought I had come on a long way with regards to ICM, from some practice, from videos and from playing and improving your intuition. And whilst my decisions weren't awful I'm really becoming aware that there's no substitute for using HRC/ICMizer and actually just running it and playing around with different factors in order to get a better understanding. There's so many fairly subtle differences in stack setups that make a bigger impact on your play than I would have been aware of. My plan going forward is to run at least a couple of ICM spots after my final table runs on the day as I find this is when I have the most motivation to look at them and then I can always do some of the less interesting spots in a bulk study day when I have the motivation.

Anyway here are the hands that I reviewed yesterday morning.

Hand 1


I'm UTG, stacks are as follows and payouts below:

Me 12M (20BB) 1st $45140
CO 40M (75BB) 2nd $32,186
BTN 18M (30BB) 3rd $21,014
SB 50M (85BB) 4th $13,856
BB 9M (15BB) 5th $9,975

I get dealt 88 UTG and I thought that I could just shove this as it is strong enough. I hated the idea of raise folding it as I think that the blockers are bad and realistically I think I'd rather just have QJo if that was my plan.

So I plugged it into HRC after the session and I was really surprised at the results. It was a bad shove at equilibrium, and equilibrium had CO and BTN calling only TT+ AQ+ and SB calling 99+ AJs+.

I think in reality I'm going to get called much wider than this and when I edited the ranges it came out even worse.



So this was actually a fairly colossal **** up and it's especially concerning because in a Macau 80k HR which I ended up coming 5th in back in February I made two, almost identical shoves with 99 in the same spot which I hadn't run. So the takeaway is to be more respectful of 20bb stacks on final tables if you're not the shortest it's actually a lot of chips and we can't just shove mid pairs like you might at other points because the downside is too big.

Hand 2

530 powerfest PKO

Stacks Payouts

14.6M (58BB) $30k (18k + approx 12k extra bounties)
9.3M (38BB) $12.5k
4.1M Me (16BB) $9k
4.7M (19BB) $6.5k

In this hand the BB had bust the hand before so it was one big blind and no SB.

The two larger stacks folded to me on the BTN and i had T7cc. I wasn't really sure what to do as I hadn't put in the SB at all so I'm less committed to the pot but it's 16bb and T7cc and there's a lot of money for the win so I just ripped it in before I could think about it too much, which naturally made me want to review it afterwards.



So this time it turned out I had it right and T7ss was a clear shove. The reason I think is that given that we hav every similar stack sizes, the ICM pressure is in fact more on him than it is on me despite me having a shorter stack, something I wasn't entirely aware of, and he therefore still has to call pretty tight.

To confirm this, I ran it again but gave CO a 2M stack which mounts more pressure on the caller and the results confirmed this. In this new scenario I was able to shove even wider and he has to call tighter. So the lesson learned is that with similar stacks even if you're smaller the pressure is on the caller so we get to shove fairly close to cEV if the other stacks are significantly larger. And if there's a shorter stack we can shove even wider because it's the caller who faces the most pressure.

Hand 3


This was played at the sunday highroller.

Stacks Payouts

600k (40bb) $54.3k
2.4M (chunks) $41.3k
368k (23bb) $31.4k

So it's a fairly flat payout structure and not that top heavy. On top of that Ben86 who has 2.4M is the runaway chipleader so I think there's more pressure on me than usual to try and get to 2nd place. However I am significantly shorter than BTN so I don't think I have to play completely insanely tight.

In the hand, Btn folds and Ben shove SB for 23bb. I had KQo and tank called it off which i wasn't completely certain of but I was pretty sure it would be correct.

The results were that he should shove 92% from SB KQo was a +0.11 call, with my calling range being 55+ A5s+ KTo+ QTS+. I played around with the stacksizes and unsurprisingly found that if I give BTN a 200k stack instead of a 600k stack, Ben should now shove any two cards and I can only call 99+ and have to fold AK. I already had a decent impression of this sort of ICM but it's always good to reinforce it.

Anyway so I made one big ICM mistake and the other two were closeish but I happened to be correct. However, when playing around with the different stacks and factors in the software there were definitely a lot of results which surprised me and showed to me that I still have a hell of a long way to go and a lot of SIMs to look at when it comes to ICM before I'm anywhere close to good at it.

Going Forward

Despite some shaky final table play I've been really happy with my performance so far. I made some adjustments to my play that I think have really been paying off. I thought I was playing really well and was running up a bunch of stacks, playing 10-15 tables per night but last night I was pretty hungover so I decided to just play 6 high stakes tables and I was really shocked at the difference. I was able to find so many more precise plays, size things more appropriately, make more creative calls/folds rather than just pressing whichever sizing button seemed most appropriate so I'm planning to stick to 6 tables of high stakes for now apart from maybe on Sunday when there are too many good tournaments that I don't want to miss and I would rather sacrifice early game edge in exchange for a greater chance of deep runs.

In terms of enjoyment I've been absolutely loving it. I really like playing online, I love noticing and feeling the improvements I'm making and I'm happy to be priming myself for Vegas. I'm in a good place with routine, waking up at 10:30pm, grab 'breakfast', open tables at midnight, finish up around 9AM, gym and then asleep by 2PM ish in time for the next round. The games in wynn haven't been that exciting so I'm happy to keep this going until something drastic changes.

Anyway, rather than end things on a positive note here's a hh of shame from yesterday where creativity got the better of me and I decided to give away 200bb in a 2k scoop vs a solid reg.

haha that KQs is one hell of a punt, I like your posts man keep up the good work

Thanks for the update. Really enjoy reading the in depth technical analysis even though I don’t play tournaments. It’s refreshing to see how humble and hardworking you are.

And also fun to see you post hands that you misplayed. Really shows how even great players can look like donkeys on certain hands.

Matt!!

Monster fan of what you do, how you approach poker and your overall approach to life. I'm a young student of the game and I've really only focused on MTT's my entire career. I find that my "toughest" situations are 40bb+ situations. I'm playing $2.20 - $22 MTT's online.

What would you advice be for someone who has ONLY focused on MTT play to further improve their 40bb+ play.. even 100bb+ play.

Also, have you ever considered taking a student under your wing and play with/for you? Not saying myself but I've always wondered why HS crushers never do this.. seems +ev to get a lifetime % of a student.


Thanks,

T

Alright so SCOOP is ****ing awesome and I absolutely love playing online tournaments, this much is clear.

I am loving it. Despite being pretty angry with myself for some mistakes including an absolutely pathetic punt reminiscent of 2010 levels of play and reasoning, I am waking up every day exhilarated to fire up the online tables and get in there.

Unsurprisingly given the enthusiasm of this opening statement, I am winning. However, the winnings are disproportionate (think I'm up like 25k so far at most) to the amount I'm enjoying myself, so it's reassuring to see that I still love the game and it definitely makes me think I'm gonna have a good time showing up every day to the Rio which is the current summer plan.

(Although maybe it's online poker that I love the most, man 9 tables of action is so fun and is something I've missed)

I'm really liking the rhythm I'm in here in Macau. Despite having flown to pretty much the nut low timezone, I like my scoop routine:

-Wake up 10PM (The bad part)
-Squeeze in a quick meal at nearby restaurant before close
-Midnight Late reg 10pm powerfests, continue to reg high stakes tournaments with big fields.
-4AM powerfest turbos reg, 5AM I reg my last tournament unless I fancy some hypers/turbos
-Somewhere between 7AM and 12PM I die my final death, the later, the better.
-Average of 10AM gym session, feel like a normal human.
-12PM Lunch, go by the cardroom, see people. I like everybody who's in the cardroom these days so this gives me a 'The Sims' like energy reboost of that 'Social bar' for my mood. It gives me a little dose of humans and it's for this reason that I like Macau as a SCOOP venue compared to London where I would be feeling like a gremlin isolated in my flat out there waking up and snap grinding every day.
-2PM Sleep, gets me 8 hours and I feel refreshed by 'morning'

I'm also 4 weeks keto now, I had two days recently where I kind of wanted to punt but I think this was somewhat related to a big night just before them. It is really convenient for the grinds not really needing to desperately get a load of meals in. I'm not sure I feel the huge increases in energy though and I'm not sure my mental clarity is at a particularly elevated level. It could be that I've just got used to the feeling as I remember at first feeling some energy and mental clarity enhancements that people talk about but I also think these things are generally quite subtle and somewhat placebo anyway, so I'm not that surprised. I guess my morale has been pretty damn high the last couple weeks so I can't really report any complaints anyway.

Gym wise everything is going great. Pretty much back to peak or at a new peak on all my main lifts and feeling like I've got more in the tank so hopefully I can crack on with more progress in this department in the 2 more weeks of Keto Macau I have planned out here.

Onto the Bad...:

Hand of Shame

So, as I alluded to, I completely and utterly punted in a high equity hand on Sunday. I was 7/10 in the Party 530 Championship 1M Event (165k first 8.8k 10th) and I decided to do this:



So I mean this is just such a huge mistake. I had played so well (1 tabling and super focused) for the last 3 hours really pouring my heart into this tournament and then I do this.

I looked at the hand and thought yeah I will open this, but it is the bottom of my opening range here (two big stacks behind me but people have been playing fairly snug, I haven't seen too much ICM abuse, and I think opening in spots where people are playing for more money than they're used to is good).

Then I get 3bet out of the Small Blind and within 3 seconds I've shoved. I know that I'm doing this quickly because I know if I think about it I'm going to have to fold it. I want to just shove it before I can think about it so I don't have to fold and so I can't blame 'Me' for making a bad decision, I've done it so fast that nobody is to blame (what I think I'm trying to convince myself in that split second where I shove it)

What's gone through my head is 'oh this is such a great spot to abuse me here, I bet he's really light, there's loads up top so I should go for the win'. But really I just don't want to let it go, I'm too excited about trying to win the tournament and I get caught up in the moment and shove it without taking time to think about it rationally.

I definitely think a theme for me with playing tournaments is that as they get bigger and bigger I get way too excited. You can see this ages ago in this thread where I make a stubborn calldown on the final table of the big 22 (lol) because of my excitement.

In order to play better poker it would obviously be better if I wasn't quite as into it, but the excitement is reflective and is a big part of why I'm enjoying playing tournaments, so I don't really want to force myself to turn off and not have fun. I do need to focus on forcing myself to take my time in these situations, I think there's a balance that can be achieved where I'm still buzzing but I'm not making huge punts.

With regards to this, some of it is experience anyway, I now don't get these feelings/bad plays during standard runs in normal tournaments, it has taken an especially high equity one to bring out the same old mistakes now that I've been in the 'big 22 situation' a few times. I do appreciate it's pretty funny playing nosebleed games and then absolutely buzzing at final tables which are much smaller but **** it, this is why I'm enjoying them.

I have had mental game coaching before, maybe it's something that I should do again because I think tournament mental game is very very different to cash mental game and controlling yourself under mounting pressure is kind of a different skill set to trying to maintain an A game and remain patient which are some of the virtues of live cash. However, given that we are mid SCOOP, for now I will just focus on continuing the high standard of play I think I've been achieving (for the vast majority of the runs) and if I get deep runs I guess I just once again make a set of notepad goals for myself involving taking extra time on all decisions, holding myself accountable for decisions, and not completely losing my head and getting suspicious of any 3bet I see come out of an opponent with a larger stack. Hopefully I keep putting myself in the situations where this problem comes up anyway as it'll mean the deep runs are continuing to come in.

I took the day off today after that one, had a nice day involving watching my friends punting in all sorts of forms and then spent the morning checking up on a couple of spots in HRC and PIO and covered all bases. That little refresher was great and I'm about to go to bed now pumped to get back in there tomorrow, looking forward to the rest of the week and glad I took that day off.


Anyway here are a couple of other random interesting hands I marked over the last few days if you sat through all of that personal mental game analysis and wanted some poker to see:

Actually the theme of this latest post reminds me of one of the most amazing hands I ever played and what in my opinion must be up there with the all time biggest tournament punts.

I played this hand maybe in 2012 or 2013 and when I remembered it I think it's just too funny not to share.

It's 4 handed on GUKPT Grand Final final table. Lineup is me and Sam Grafton with 5.4M (chunks), this big fish, a huge russian guy called Viktor in his mid 60s and a live reg who earlier in the tournament has jokingly said to me I'm too good he doesn't want to play with me and is gonna fold everything vs me to avoid playing. Which was a joke but is exactly what he's proceeded to do for the next 18 hours of play. Viktor has like 3.6M and Peter has 900k.

So basically it's an incredible spot, me and Sam are supposed to print it off 1 and 2 and I liked my chances because I thought I was the best poker player on the planet at that time. Up top is £120k which is approximately my whole bankroll at the time.

Viktor hasn't done anything at all the whole tournament, I've played with him for at least 10 hours and I've stolen his blind, and every pot repeatedly. He's run incredible during the tournament though and has had a good stack which he's sat on contentedly throughout.

The exact details of the hand won't be completely right as it's 6 years ago but this is roughly correct.

I open 69 from CO, I can't remember sizings so I'll just make them up and then whatever I told you stacks were you can improvise, the point of them was just for the story.

I open to 400k chips and from the BB viktor thinks for a while and then aggressively smashes in two towers of chips which are a min 3bet to 600k. Obviously getting a million to one there's no decision here but although I've seen that when Viktor smashes chips in aggressively he's shown down a good hand whenever I've seen a showdown, I'm thinking to myself 'you know what I think he might be getting a bit frustrated I keep opening his big blind he might be light here actually'.

Flop comes AT5

He checks, clearly he's given up and the pot is mine, I bet 400k to take the free money in the middle and he... calls.

Alright guess he has Kings or something , maybe he's peeling with a broadway gutshot, who knows , should be pretty easy to wrap this one up.

Turn 3

He checks.

Alright boom, total brick. He's got Kings, let's ****ing go, easy game.

I bet 850k and he... min raises me to 1.7m?????

Oh my god, he's actually found the bluff hasn't he, he's got fed up of me and he's stubbornly check raising the turn now because I've stabbed too many times.

Well he has 1.3M back and I've got an ingenious plan now. If he is bluffing (and he is, obviously, it's plain for anybody to see that he's got nothing), there's NO WAY he's gonna find the balls to bluff for his tournament life for only quarter pot. So what I'll do, is I'll just call the turn, he'll obviously check the river and then I can shove for practically nothing and collect the pot I so rightfully deserve.

So, I find the turn float and me and Viktor, one of us clearly far superior to the other in skill, head to the river.

River 6

An irrelevant river card and Viktor heads into the tank. And now, somehow, out of nowhere, he slams in the rest of his money. 1.1M, Viktor is ALL IN.

What the ****. He wasn't going to bluff the river, I knew he wouldn't do it. But I also know he has nothing and he's fed up with me.

Oh. My. God.

He's found the river bluff. I didn't know he had it in him but Viktor has actually found the bluff here what the ****. But..

Oh. My. God.

I've rivered a pair. Holy ****, he's actually found the bluff and I've made a pair.

Well this is the easiest call of all time, all I have to do is call him down, he's gonna show his blindingly obvious King High, I show my pair of sixes and it'll going to be absolutely INCREDIBLE. (word for word what I was actually thinking)

So I put in the 1.1M to claim the monster chip lead.

And he shows.... ACES.

What the ****?? Aces???

The old guy who min 3bet pre, check called A high board, check minned brick turn and then jammed for quarter pot on the river... HAD ACES????

Wow what the ****.

Fortunately in this tournament an all in hand didn't require a showdown so I was able to quietly slide my set of tens into the muck and shake my head.

The very next hand I ran QQ into Sam's AA for like my remaining 1.5M and I'm out of there in fourth, having absolutely and completely eliminated myself with nobody else to blame.

These days I think it's one of the best poker stories I have and I think it's ****ing hilarious but obviously at the time this was fairly damn devastating and I was not too happy after this one for quite a while...

Hahaha, so good. I play live tournament fish all the time (hell, I am one myself vs the likes of you) and for the player type that hh just screams aces throughout. Every single step. GL with SCOOP sir and I'll keep an eye out in the Rio this summer.

Brilliant HH mate, glad to know its not just me who makes these absolute punts in big spots

That hand history was fkn hilarious to read.

A shame it wasn't a dream where Victor did pull off the bluff with K high and you won....


.....and then you woke up.

hahahaha the 96hh, what an insane punt, viktor's line was super classic super nutted hand line, great write up

Not sure why I only came across this thread now. Has been an awesome read, gl during the remainder of the series.

I love this thread and after reading it the past couple of days, picking up a few tourney tips along the way, I only went and won my first live tourney of the year today:

https://events.playgroundpoker.ca/pp...-wins-event-1/

Not a massive score and a turbo no less, but MossBoss inspired me to make this play when HU:

15k/30k blinds stacks around even ~900k Hero opens OTB 80k with J3 villain calls. Flop 160k 256 check we down-bet to 60k call. Turn 280k 6 check and we decide to fire big to take it down 225k leaving ~500k behind, but villain stubbornly calls. River 730k 5 and we think he rarely has 5x or 6x in his range here so we decide to ship it in and he snap folds

This got us to a big chip lead and we took it down a couple of hands later K9 > A5

So looking forward to at least a month playing summer tourneys in Vegas soon!

Nice, loving the jack napkin play, congrats!

SCOOP absolutely wrecked me yesterday. I had a couple of deep runs the night before that came to nothing so I was already slightly frustrated and I also only got half a night of sleep due to those runs. I woke up feeling fine though, had some ‘dinner’ and regged up. Pretty much the moment the tables popped up I suddenly felt exhausted, I tried my best to get on with it but I just played seriously tired, sloppy poker, limply calling rivers with any bluffcatchers in awful spots, missing my 3 bets, timing out preflop, missing auto bets and miss-auto betting on other boards. Nothing was going right. At the 2AM break, so after 3 hours of play and a fair amount of dusting I pulled myself together, made some goals for the hour, fired up another pot of cofffee and actually started to play well. It was at least my B game and pretty much A game, I was back on top, focusing, correctly ranging my opponents and playing accordingly.

I felt really good for having brought that session back from the brink. Suddenly I had stacks in both SCOOP H events, a party 1k, and the daily B.B. HR. Just as I was feeling good about the session and how I had played, MTTs decided to let me know that even if you can control your own game it doesn’t mean ****.

Have to get in a 400k pot with AKs vs JJ vs TT in B.B. HR and dust, get aces in 4 times across different tables, win one of them. On the one I win proceed to get cold 4B shoved for 60bb by Ole Schemion in a PKO, he was bounty hunting with A4ss I had KK and gg me.

Then I get limp raised in the 4max 2k scoop, call with A9dd and call down on 922, 4d bdfd turn and 3o river for 40% pot. He’s got 56o. Lose 2 more flips and I’m down to 3 tables which I just play so insanely sloppily and I’m taking every spot basically trying to bust it.

Obviously as an MTT player you’ve got to be able to roll with the punches when it comes to preflop all ins, and usually I would say that my mental game is pretty strong, however just the way this session materialized, with a huge struggle just to get back to playing well, suddenly feeling really happy with myself for pulling it back and then immediately getting smacked right back down, it was hard to take and I would say it’s the first time I’ve properly tilted in my play in a number of years.

It’s definitely time for a day off, these online series can be pretty tough. But it’s ****ing scoop Sunday today. I’m obviously not taking it off. So I hit the gym, relaxed a bit, looked at a couple hands (not the tilt dust ones) and got to bed at 12PM, getting myself 9 hours sleep. I’ve fired in for a delightful curry for breakfast now and I’m feeling good. Wolfing it down and will then be ready to fire up the tables one more time for a big Sunday session. Excited for it!

Glgl everybody else today

Favourite thread on here just now, gl


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Glgl today, been enjoying the thread