Yo guys, so October in the books.

Overall though I'm not really happy with this month. Got into some bad habits eating wise, spent way too much time aimlessly scrolling social media, and fitness wise didn't do much. Been getting a bit annoyed too about not having close to a permanent living situation really and not sure this is going to be resolved in the mid term. Also played way too much b game volume with too many tables, even semi tilting at a couple of points. Next month the focus will definitely be taken off volume a bit and more about just living a bit better, less social media, more exercise and time with friends. I want to make a 1k shot stick soonish but with how I approached poker this month I just don't feel great about playing higher games again.

Also completely lost my mind in chat at points at the beginning of the month, not a tilted guy in general but self banned from chat now and apologies to anyone who got some snide remarks.

On the positive side had fun in Budapest at the bitB tourney meet up, met some awesome people, climbed a mountain in Scotland, and wrist has been cleared for climbing again next month.

Totally monthly results, missing ~$7.8k extra from untracked site, and probably another 2kish in rb, so cannot complain with a 20k month:





Bonus pictures from a mountain I climbed with d7, dontmarchrun, and Scott another bitb student:




Thread saver - dontmarchruns dog:

Good stuff m8

Crushing! wp!

gg!

wp, probably getting bored of those 20k months already

good stuff m8

Cheers guys

Yeah mental how the brain works I guess, just constant reframing of what's normal, always wants you to focus on the next rung on the ladder.

Guess it's really important to take a step back and remember that at the start of the year a 20k month was fairly inconceivable for me. (and basically still is at my current stakes more of an example of heat than anything else)

Still, I spent way too long in poker being happy with grinding out 200nl so hopefully can make up for lost time a bit by aiming to play higher, see what happens in the longer term. Healthy to be surrounded by crushers who raise the bar on what you perceive to be possible.
Probably not playing 1k in November again anyway, got a fairly fragmented month and a lot of bitB stuff, need to get a few more students in.

In other news, have been playing a lot of chess last few days, enjoying it but I am very bad. Can anyone recommend good beginner training videos?

Anything from Chessnetwork really. Especially Beginner to chess master playlist ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...uF8GuWkI1EJ8Zp )

About chess, I wouldn´t necessarily look for videos as I think books are way better (IMHO). Anyway I´d start with tactical skills, from the simple stuff like seeing forks, discovered attacks and other basic themes, all the way to combinations, mate in # stuff etc. Developing your pattern recognition skills imo is the first thing you should do to stop being very bad like you said

In my own case, back in the day, I did it by repetition, same stuff over and over before adding new, more complicated exercises, then more repetition...

Even after mastering this, and if you´re serious enough to go and start studying endgames, opening, middle game positional concepts etc, keep training tactics.

Cheers

I really enjoy watching GMBenjaminFinegold in youtube or twich - he is really funny and very good chess player.

Cheers guys, will check them all out, started on your playlist already Seta (and good to have a 200z legend ITT )

I am still very bad, have a habit of just yolo jumping into games and doing no study at all, but it's kind of nice figuring a game out as we go without the pressure to play well etc that poker has.

In unrelated news, had a few people say they enjoyed the podcast on the tables recently. Definitely appreciated and we should have some big ones coming soon too, just can't reply due to my self chat ban

Poker month has started terribly, but lifewise been great.

Had one of my all time top days in the mountains on Friday.

Out of the blue on Thursday a friend from Canada messaged me saying he had a day off work and wanted to do this route tomorrow. I was a bit wary as it is grade 3 scrambling and I'd seen snow on the webcams of the area, but he convinced me to go along and we can check it out and do an alternative if necessary.

So alarm set for 5 am (good when I woke up at 12 the day before), and he comes to meet me in Edinburgh and we drive the two hours or so to Glencoe. Unbelievable day, bright sun, no clouds, and no wind forecast, but the snow line is kind of low so we assess it a bit. My friend has more mountaineering experience than me and he has a rope and harness so if we get to a real tough section he can put me on belay, and this is basically enough to convince me to crack on.

First half below the snow line is a breeze, some big drops and a bit of ice but hand holds were very good and we made quick progress, views already opening up to become unreal. We meet another couple doing it un roped which reassures me a bit, and get stuck behind them once the snow hits.
The first few moves with snow underfoot were a bit scary, just hard to trust your feet holds when they are sliding a bit, but I found the handholds so firm and juggy that I could mostly get past them. The couple stops to rope up and we power on, views by this point completely outrageous and adrenalin pumping a bit. One move kind of freaked me out, feet on a downward sloping snow covered ledge with 50m or so drop more or less below, and next handhold quite far to the right off centre. Eventually just took a few deep breaths, committed to putting my weight through the handhold (which was good), and moving feet up to the next high foothold. Such an easy move but just the exposure and snow made it a bit scary at the time.

Very soon we had done the majority of the climbing and into the gully (green in the picture). This was supposed to be a path but snow so deep we had to use our hands a bit still, scraping every step too to make sure no ice underfoot before we put weight through it. By now the views were completely outrageous, and we made the summit approx 2hrs after leaving the carpark, and had lunch before taking the tourist path back down.

Such a good day and again made me realise how sick this area of the world is, the snow contrasting with the sun gave a whole different element to it. I think risk was all pretty tolerable but crampons would have made the last path bit a bit better, but by that point exposure was below the death level anyway

Pretty exciting news that we have Phil Galfond coming on the podcast with FourSixFour and I tomorrow at approx 5pm London time.

Planning on talking a lot about RIO, wider cash game ecosystems, rake, game selection, huds, scripts, anon games

If anyone has anything they particularly want to hear us discuss, drop me a pm or post in here.

Nice, will def tune in.

Not to put him on the spot, but maybe you can ask him if he's able to filter out the toxicity from the RIO's 2p2 thread and take some feedback from it? Mainly if its making him reevaluate his stance on anon policy since it seems that would make some ppl give riop a(nother) shot.

I think I remember him saying at one point that having aliases would make prohibiting HUDs impossible. But GGpoker/nat8 seem to be doing just that? Does he think there must be people using illegal huds there?

that drone footy is

will tune in for the pod

Cheers kyle, and @Blitz will definitely try to ask all those questions.

Anon is a big topic I want to discuss too.

Will definitely tune in!

Podcast here, was a lot of fun and covered some interesting stuff. Definitely the best stuff towards the end imo, at first was a bit tough to adjust/ get comfortable since the only ones we have done so far have been with friends really and Phil is obviously a huge name. I still remember watching him on highstakes poker all the time when I was 16 trying to learn to beat my friends in homegames!

Enjoyed it a lot, really hoping the traffic at RIO improves.

Nice podcast

Not sure if it would be better to give a list of topics to the guest beforehand. It seemed that Phil struggled quite a bit to maintain clarity on his answers at times.

Thanks mate - yeah we did do this but sometimes think it's very hard to think and be eloquent on the spot.

-------------------------------------------------

Looking for soemone who can make HEM2 notecaddy stats, would pay a small amount for stats which should be pretty simple for anyone capable, pm if interested

Are you doing anything similar this December?

hi subbed

Time for me to wrap up and review my year.

For anyone who wasn't aware, I quit after 6 months in a full time consulting job in November 2018 to return to poker full time. due to a combination of being disillusioned by corporate culture and having good 200z results playing on the side.

I immediately had a losing November, and made 1.6k in December, so was feeling a bit of pressure to succeed going forward.

It's tough for me to think about what success would have looked like for me at the beginning of the year. I remember going on a walk with D7 in the Pentlands ~March when my year really wasn't going great, and saying ~50k from playing would be a success. I then proceeded to run like a god for 6 months straight, and was up almost 100k at the end of October.

Since then, things really have cooled off again, losing in both Novemeber and December despite playing in some insane games. Combined with seeing the yearly results from some of my sick sick friends, and eventually moving back home having failed to find a longer term living situation in Edinburgh, I've actuallly been pretty down about the way things have gone at times.

It's quite mental how our monkey brains can work, always looking at the next rung on the ladder, always finding the problems with our situation. Escaping this labyrinth is something I want to work on a lot going forward, playing enjoying it, executing the habits I know will bring me longer term success and hope will also bring me happiness too.

So, results for the year:





Including rakeback, I just missed the 100k mark which I have to honestly say I'd have snapped your hand off at the beginning of the year. I also sold a bit of my disastrous 1k shots (sorry danny), so things were a bit better overall than reflected.

I did very well with tourney swaps and staking this year too, and including the insane above EV run in cash I guess it amounts to some kind of top 1% run overall, which I have to be aware of going into the next year as I set my expectations.

------------------------------------------------------

Things I've Learnt This Year:


1) Naturally, I am not a great poker player. It takes me a long time to grasp concepts, and executing in the heat of the moment, particularly at higher stakes has always been an issue for me. This is fine, and just means that maybe I'll never be able to execute at the standard of my sickest friends (shout out foursixfour, makboifin, ishter, Linus I guess). Fortunately, there is still a lot of money to be made at the lowest levels.

Coming to terms with this I think will help a lot with ego problems etc I've had in the past and still don't deal with well at times, to anyone who I've blown up at in chat this year I apologies (specifically MBR402 who was probably the target of the most spectacular one of all ). I've decided that just not having chat is the best solution here and removing that outlet, even if it costs me a bb here and there.

2) I genuinely enjoy studying and coaching. I guess in light of 1), this is pretty good :slight_smile: I also realised that specifically speaking to people helps a lot, I remember things extremely well if I talk them through with people on calls etc rather than typing or watching videos. I guess this is just the way I learn.

To harness this, I want to continue my work with bitB cash and tourney. At times it's 100% lower hourly than playing, but diversifying and improving at the same time definitely makes it worthwhile venture, without even considering the people you meet, which builds onto 3)

3) People matter. It sounds kind of obvious, but all the best times I've had this year have been with others. I'm super grateful to the people I've met over the year, and honestly had some of the best times, bitB budapest, Barcelona, Austria with Darrel and Psek, and the various ski trips/ hiking trips throughout the year with d7 and others. I forget sometimes that I gotta remember to optimise for happiness in the end, and this is where the happiness comes from ultimately, not generating an extra $2k ev by playing instead for a week, or skirping on rent to live somewhere cheaper but with a worse social life.

4) Exercise + Diet + Sleep trumps all. Particularly exercise. The EV of exercising every day is just sooooo much higher than I could ever have thought. The difference between playing on a day I workout to not is night and day in how easy it is to control emotions. Despite my conscious self knowing this, my monkey brain again and again convinces me to browse twoplustwo, twitter, discord, instead of getting out for a run or to the gym. Another battle I'd like to win more next year.

5) Playing Tired doesn't make up for game quality. See image below. Again and again I've tried to stay up later to play more in better games, but I just don't think it's worth it for me personally. Keeping the monkey brain in check and feeling satisifed with a good session is just that much harder when I'm tired, probably going to aim to finish at ~10 much more often in 2020



6) Variance is so much sicker than I previously thought. Not going to bother going into depth on this because the Mobius blog on runitonce does it so much better. I previously thought a 1% run over 50k hands was quite unlikely. I now know that a 50k hand sample starts every hand, so you will see some sick **** over the course of a year. Glad to realise this.

7) Timbeys. I have spent a LOT of time in the timbey lab this year, despite barely playing any myself. I still remember sitting in a taxi with Tomi and European and seeing them exchange a look when I told them what I thought my yearly EV was playing cash, and I've seen some graphs I cannot unsee this year too. On the flipside, I appreciate much more now that the things I am good at just don't matter that much in the context of overall tourney EV, so the jury is still out here really on whether I'll play more of them next year. bitB tourney really is one of the sickest organisations in poker though, and if it wasn't for Pads very reasonable chance I wouldn't still be playing poker now, so I owe them a lot.

8) Zoom. It's hard, I should try not to play it above 200nl. :slight_smile:


Going forward, I'm not sure on my goals for next year. This has been a long post, so maybe I'll write them up over the next few days.

I'm going to try and post less on twoplustwo and log on less in general next year, just because time is something I feel short of and I'm not sure my random toxic 2+2/ twitter posting is the optimal way to use it

For now though and the next few days, I'm happy to answer any questions if anyone is interested in what I've learnt over the year getting back into poker and with bitB cash, feel free to post here or via pm.

Postsaver, edit I made of some good times in 2019:

Really insightful update as usual man! Totally agree with irl stuff and was surprised at how humble you are even with those results.

Gl this year!

Vaaaaamooooo