But you're only allowed to push/fold in SNGs!

Agree with you man , pple NOT respect ICM ... I think the best way is addapt vs this random pple ..

The people who like money respect it

Had one of my worst days ever.

Total damage: 6k

Felt some weakness in my hands today, think I've been grinding way too long. Long day off tomorrow and I'll be back on the grizzy for the Super Tuesday.

Have entered a dark period I guess. Definitely losing more than my fair share of huge equity pots deep in tournaments. Deeeeeefinitely no crying in poker after binking out of MU though so will keep putting my best and happy foot forward.

Every day I am having a very enriching conversation with my coach about poker. It just feels great being able to talk spots with such an influence. He's also introduced me to the legendary simpledude16, someone who I always had a lot of respect for pokerwise but is also just a really nice guy. I feel very fortunate to be in this spot.

Stalled out at about only 3.1k VPP today. Not sure why the 5k days aren't flowing as smoothly as before. The 5k days are huge psychologically because they make it so you only need 200x 5k VPP days to clear SNE

just because that guy called with ak off don't mean it was an unprofitable shove. raise fold is an option as u mentioned but he can abuse you with that line

So I'm having a very weird year in SNGs. At the start of the year I was basically playing a lot of BvB spots incorrectly. SNGs were keeping me afloat for sure though. I was barely even game selecting and hitting 5k VPP days easy. These days I haven't even loosened up game selection, I've actually tightened it since then. And I'm playing better due to coaching and still studying ICM. But now on a huge downer in SNG's. A lot of this is variance and that's fine for me.

So I broke some promises to myself not to be curious and pulled up some figures expecting to be getting hosed in $100+ buyins. But I'm actually up for the year in $100+ and getting hosed in $30-60. Now I'm only down about 80 buyins so it's not like I'm losing my shirt. But it does not feel good! I promised myself I wouldn't do this but I actually think it's a good idea for players who are usually winning to console themselves with the redline and cev performance when going through a rough stretch.

I reset this HEM1 database about a month ago I think and I'm down over 80k in chipev in 18 mans. Starting stack is 1500 chips so this is not good. So I guess I can keep going at it and be happy. It's funny I was about to bet a well known SNG regular this year that I could maintain 8%+ roi in 18's. We both decided not to do the bet for now because it was pretty high variance because I wanted really good odds in my favor. Pretty sure I would have gotten dusted for it but at least now I know even the odds I wanted are probably too low. It's very hard to play your way out of a bad chipev stretch I think. I had quite a heater in 18's last year (I now realize) but when it comes back, it better be glorious. These are dark times.



At the end of the day we should just all focus on getting better and those who are aiming for SNE need to hit it! I guess I feel better since I just binked some huge MTT's. Not sure what to make of this but fun times are ahead I guess. Suddenly now losing in SNG's will not change my approach. I know the price of SNE and what it takes to get there. Well I don't know all of it yet, but I have some idea and it is not pretty.

Also just want to say I know 6m hyper players who are way better than me at poker who have downswings that just make this a nursery daycare naptime session. I'm just posting this to perk my morale up since it's been a rough few days since Sunday (down near 10k in two sessions).

Gogogo in April!

Best of luck in April bro!!

Best of luck coming into this month.

I wouldn't pay too much attention to your Cev in HEM, it can just be a massive brain ****, especially for 18s. When there is 27k in play, your Cev is going to swing alot. I guess for eg, you could lose an 80/20 HU with even stacks and you should be gaining 10.8k chips, however you've lost 13.5k, thats a 24.3k difference right there and you're only playing HU for around 1.8 buy ins.

Flip this the other way and say you're 5 handed with following stacks with blinds at t600

6k (you)
1k
1k
4k
15k

Now if you get it in vs the 17k stack in a 50/50 and lose, you've run 4k chips under, however the equity is HUGE for that pot. So much more than the 80/20 example HU when you account for Fev in that stack set up.

I guess what i'm trying to show is that chips account for different $value in so many different spots because ICM is so so heavy in 18s. Its just so so skewed. You could have easily ran above $ev in the sample you showed.



Thats my chips for a random month from this year. I had a fair amount of profit pre-rb that month, so just go's to show how you cant rely on chips to show how good/bad you are running.

Good luck in the future.

Adam

Yeah Adam, I tend to favor looking at cev more for more than 4-handed because like you said HU cev is the biggest jump and not very significant to winrate. I was actually going to go back and post my filtered #'s but it's just too much moaning at that point. I am -120k >3-9 players, -104k >4-9 players, and -60k >5-9 players (extrapolating further I guess it means I'm down 60k of cev from 3-4 players) which I think are all significant to some extent. I think in these cases (filtered for 5-9 players) the CEV is actually very correlated with $ev but that's just my unresearched opinion.

I would say after seeing a graph like yours it makes me curious if HEM is miscalculating cev or something (not everyone can be 200k down right) but then I pull up a lot of regulars I've been playing with and yeah they're up 50k+ over the sample. They are also losing players lifetime but winning during the stretch so I think it's correlated for sure. And I lean on it more as a crutch when I start losing apparently! It helps ease the blues

Today is gonna be a pretty chill day just 10 tabling the big tournies at this hour (320, 55, etc) and some SNGs. Few signs point to me throttling back. One I'm getting dusted, down almost 10k in just two sessions (Sunday and Tuesday). Two I've been grinding way too much so I had weakness in my hands and also a really sore tailbone/booty area (har har). So good spot to regroup mentally and physically. Also have been neglecting my studies. Maybe I'll post some interesting studies I make today.

So I will just chill for a bit and go in on Thursday, take Friday off if I get hosed again, and this wraps up my cool story, bros.

Going through a rough stretch now. Was up about 9k after the first reset, have dropped 14611 in 5 sessions (Sunday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Sunday) and running really bad. Going to try to cut down table count during the week and focus on focusing more. Had some conversations with my coach which blew my mind and I'm trying to implement them. I felt like I played pretty well today so I'm happy with today's session.

Overall I'm a bit bummed out. Had a lot of momentum after the win in the 320 and thought I could ride it to a nice stretch of padding profits. Going from a 9k cushion to a 5k hole is gross. However, it wasn't that long ago that I was over 20k in the hole so I guess everything is a blessing in some way.

Sometimes I wonder why winning consistently is so hard now compared to 2012 and 2013. Possible reasons:
1) I ran hot
2) I'm running bad
3) My buyins are much bigger now
4) Everyone has gotten better

I'll focus on what I can control (#4) and keep working on my game. Have APPT Seoul coming up in a few days going to focus on some live poker.

Yeah this is the ****ty part about the job. No matter how good you are you're inevitably going to go through downswings which affect your confidence which only hurts your game further.

I've known you for a decent while and you've had major successes in whatever you've put your mind to. Best thing you can do (and what's helped me the most through downswings) is to put in some work off the table, learn some new things, and most of all don't let it get to your head. You've had years of success and this is just a bump in the road in the grand scheme of things.

keep your head up brotha, you got this

The thing that makes Cev most worthless for 18m is how HEM cant differentiate 5h with 9-11 left and 5h on the bubble. Given that the ICM tax in the two situations is slightly different...

You can filter by blind level

pretty sick sweat today already shipped the 8r 2x for 5.6k

let's hope we don't FT bubble

Glgl ship em all

gg mate! 8+R 2x probably one of the most valuable tours imho.

Lol ^

He's right tho, most valuable tournaments are the ones you ship

Subed this looks awsome btw love your vids on DC

Update after APPT Seoul and Thangz

Leading up to APPT Seoul I was on a big downer after shipping the Wednesday $320 and clearing makeup. I went from 9k in profits to maybe 5k in losses in about two Sundays. Decided to take some time off and didn't play Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday leading up to APPT Seoul on 4/9.

Through good fortune my coach got me in contact with another friend of his, an amazing player in his own right. Both of them are kind of low key and not attention seekers so I don't want to name names. But both of them have really helped so much in terms of reshaping my game and teaching me how to play good poker.

I was in a pretty bad state of mind. Falling behind Elite pace, not winning, and not wanting to pile up 20k makeup again. APPT Seoul actually ended up pretty much changing my life. If I find myself with immense success in the future, it's very possible that this trip is what changed everything.

In terms of in my personal life, I stayed at the W hotel with my girlfriend Nina. We fought constantly, partly due to me being in a negative frame of mind, partly due to stress, and mostly due to just not understanding each other. When we got home from the trip, we had a good long talk and came to a mutual understanding of everything. The relationship just got much better and healthier after talking through the issues.

I also had the chance to meet a lot of cool poker players. Most important to me was meeting ModzillaPL and imluckbox. Both are really good players and former members of BBZ Staking. I had a bit of drama with Modzilla in the stable due to my immaturity (which I now regret) so I was very grateful to have the chance to get in contact with him and meet him in person. I never really network with poker players since I live in Seoul and grind from like 1 AM to 10 AM every day. Plus there aren't that many MTTers in Korea. But I had the chance to meet so many guys and also saw that a lot of them brought their girlfriends and then went to other countries as well, almost like a vacation with a loved one.

Seeing how happy they all seemed to be (I swear I met like 10 couples) really showed me how much I was taking poker for granted. It made me so happy to be a poker player. I don't know too many other jobs where you can set your own hours and travel to exotic lands with wifey and make love with no protection in front of a great view at a five star hotel. I have other life skills but basically for the past 7 years I've put most of all my effort into learning poker. I've had a lot of success the past few years but recently the road has gotten rocker. I never wanted to just quit and go out like a chump as soon as the going got rough though.

So Actual Poker Stuff:

But it was some other stuff that really might have changed the trajectory of this year and maybe my career. Prior to leaving for Seoul I talked to my coach and he suggested cutting down tables and not mega-tabling so much. I said I would try it when I got back. I was looking forward to live to implement what I was learning and also to be able to think and focus.

Wow! Poker is actually fun when you're not making a decision every few seconds and you actually have the time to think and be creative! The main event didn't go well but all throughout the High Roller I was talking to my coach on day one and then my coach's friend on day two. Both players are conservatively probably in the top 50 of poker skill in the world I'm guessing.

So as I played each spot, I was able to pick the brains of these players. Even better, there was another sick HU cash player two to my left deep in the high roller that kept putting me in nasty spots. Playing like this and chatting with my coaches really opened my eyes to how much I was missing by mega-tabling. So I ended up losing JJ vs TT and bubbling the high roller. First was 123k and I got 8th for no money. Was a bit unfortunate but I got to the final table with around 30bb and just couldn't play a hand as the blinds went up and I lost my stack.

When I got back to the online grind, I was looking forward to it so much. I've now played three days with way less tables. The first day I final tabled the 22 prog KO 6m and the 11R for a profitable day. The second day I got 11th in the Big 109, won the 8r 2x, 4th in the 8c, and 7th or something in the 22 freezeout. Today I was down about 5k and just saying oh brother. Then I won the 55r and got 2nd in the 88 4-max turbo and closed with a slight win. I'm not even running that great in my sessions, but I'm focusing much better than I did before and getting better.

I now realize really how lucky I am to be able to have an amazing coach and then an amazing mentor too. They help me out with so many questions and if I put in the work there's no reason I can't be a very strong MTT player. One of the things I realize grinding day in and day out is that when your power level increases, the game becomes less about variance. There are a certain set of regulars that I really admire and suspect are far ahead of the curve (crownup, pads, fresh, romeo, some others I forget). They really just crush and don't really have massive swings. A lot of players have these graphs where they just win like 200k and then swing straight down until another bink but it's harder to maintain a great graph without having huge 6 figure scores all the time.

Anyways I used to feel like I was ahead as well. Here's hoping I can get there. I'm really encouraged by my start so far. ZeeJustin was sitting at my Big 162 and I searched him. He was four-tabling the B109, a 700 satellite, the B162, and the Thrill. I notice a lot of the best players ust don't play *that* many tables. In retrospect it was pretty arrogant/stupid of me to think I could bang with the best while 20 tabling stacked.

I've been drinking again before making a post (honestly barely post or even read 2p2 during the day as everyone is a massive ****ing dolt in nearly every single regard so I tend to only post after drinking), so hopefully it won't come off badly....how have you been a successful mid-hs player for so long and yet still let this game seemingly really get to you mentally and emotionally on a day to day basis? The fact you let your poker results carry over to your personal life makes me think you still have massive mental game leaks/something like this.

Quite literally, I can't remember the last time I was mad or sad or anything else at the end of a day. It's probably been since early 2012, or some time before that even. I just grind and focus on improving every single day, and that's all there is to it in my book. I was at a bar last night with Rusemandingo watching my Blackhawks play game 1 vs Nashville and some local, Captain Ron, was beakin at me and apparently I was brushing him off as he said '****, you must have had a bad day at work with how quiet you are!' My response....'Ah **** I'm sorry, just really into this game since I'm from Chicago area, I actually won $22,500 today.' Similarly, when I was in 250k of makeup, ppl never could tell. I'm always my happy, jovial self off the tables, usually quick with a (bad) joke or whatever, whether I'm winning all the money or getting my face kicked in.

Anyway, I hope I don't come off as a douche. Kinda cut this post off as I got OI (this probably one of the longest posts I've made outside of my pg&c threads/marketplace threads in a veryyyy long time!). I just really think you shouldn't let this game affect you as much as it seemingly does based on your posts and feel you could be so much happier or 'balanced' if you just didn't let it affect you. There is obviously a massive difference between always trying to improve, talking over spots with ppl at dinner or whatever it might be, and being bummed IRL bc of poker results. I do the former, pretty much always, and never the latter, and I feel like I have just about the lowest stress lvl possible for the $ swings I have on a week to week base.

Glgl this weekend, much <3 obv