In last month at least three times I was starting to write my first PGC thread I hope this one will see the world.

I am professional athlete who decided to pause or maybe even stop my career to play online mtts for living (I'm planing to dedicate a post about this). Yes, I do know that situation in online poker isn't the best atm, garantees are lowered every day, bots are here to get us etc, etc.
But i love the game and decided to give it a try.

So my goals are:

- go full pro mtt online

- make some name in the community

- create some good read for those lost souls who missclecked their way to this thread (sorry for the beggining btw, I just couldn't contain myself to start off with some cheap mysticism)

- go over 100k in online mtt profits (currently ~70k mark) on sharkscope (don't have an exact time date for when I want to acoplish this one as soon as posible I guess )

Few more things before I kick off my Sunday grind.
I have had fairly successful sport and poker careers through out my life. I have traveled the world for many years, had some pretty epic binks. Last year was crazy I traveled all international and national events and still grinded online mtt wherever and whenever I could.

Recently I rezlized that traveling for the sake of traveling with my team isn't as fun and meaningfull as it used to be. So I decided to go all in on poker and we will see how it plays out.

GL to everyone grinding today!

subbed and gl

Just finished my session busting last 100 in big11. Pobably should remind myself that if some hand is a profitable shove it doesn't mean I am obliged to shove it with 100% frequency esp. in a tournament where there is tones of +EV spots (like b11).... or maybe I should who knows...

My current abi is around 20$ and I today I grinded ps and party.

I would like to post graph of todays session but for some reason sharscope only higlights me playing 27 games today which is probably half of what I played.

All in all session was kind of meh where it feels like whatever I would do it wasn't meant to be. I had few nice stacks but lost them in superstandart flips. Mtt stuff, you know...

So not many ineteresting hands come to mind from todays session so I decided to post my bustout and from last week SM.

Villain was going really ham esp. preflop having like 25% 3bet with 100+ hands.
Deffinitely should have gone for a raise/4b gii vs him not a limp but w/e as played
So my logic otr was something like "he's very agro so I call".
Though the more I looked into it the more I was strugling to find that many natural bluffs except ThX and 9hX which he might be very well flatting otf.

https://www.weaktight.com/r/5dc8b8d8d39043795a8b47c9

offtopic



Chapter 1. Preparation.

Let's rewind a bit.
It's the end of August.
I have made a decision. Talked on the phone with a team manager and told him I will be missing at least first part of the season.

I am currently in Spain with my loved ones. Enjoying a vacation of my life.
We are travelling country and everything is great.
But I just can't relax. I am with my laptop and I am studying for at least an hour or two every single day. Reviewing HHs, grinding HRC and equilab. I also bought a Veaa's training pack in Simple GTO trainer.


I have never played an entire COOP series before due to always having some other obligations and I was very excited to crush this WCOOP.
*Kanye and Jay-Z - Who gonn stop me? playing on the background*

It wasn't about me thinking I will win 100k in a month. It was something in the lines "yes, I know I can downswing but there's is nothing in poker that will catch me off guard".

No one knows what will happen. All we can do is try and see what happens. Good Luck dude.

There's a levels to it you and I know. Sit down, *****. Be Humble.
(c) Pulitzer prize winner.

Right of the bat I started my WCOOP + KO Series and GGseries grind with major internet connection lags.
Before some updates GG had this thing where if connection lags the room shuts down completely and I had to restart it all over again.
While trying to navigate on other rooms where tables would freeze and then pop out of nowhere with no timebanks whatsoever
I still remember folding those overpairs and sets in 3bet pots because of timeouts and it still somewhat stings.

I had two sessions like that before I sorted this thing out. That was only a begginning.

d
I definnetly could have cut my losses if I played less table count, smarter abi and game selection but I didn't. I made some bad decisions during the series.

The worst thing about downstreak isn't losing money it's losing any belief that you can win money at all. You get to a point where it feels like everything you have done in a past was just luckery all along and now isn't working and will never work again.


I had some deepruns to turn it around like finishing two fnal tables at 55$ 8max WCOOP event, top 100 in 22$ phase2 and one FT at GG where I busted 9th (ofc I had a nice stack and bustout was very unfortunate )

The best thing about downsteaks is that it really makes think about the game and spots that you thought you had figured out before.
I feel like the amount of work you put during you downsteaks = amount of money you will make when sunrunning again.

So let's see how much money I will make in next few months

September and October graph

https://pasteboard.co/IGcvtI2.png

Subbed. Good luck getting to 100k, i will be following.

Sorry if you mentioned it and i missed it, but what sport are/were you a professional in?

Thanks! I really appreciate!

No, I haven't mentioned that yet because I want to dedicate a next post about it.

Had a short session yesterday. In the midst of it my dad called me and asked to help him out with some stuff in the morning so I stopped reging like 2 hours in which was probably quite fortunate because on the field I just got butchered really quickly and efectively.

I listened to Bencb's podcast with elmerix whlile driving in the morning and it was very-very good. Probably mostly because elmerix verbalized lots of things that were brewing in my mind for some time now.
If you feel like it go check it out!


I was never a big fan of constantly checking my results and never actually did it. (F.E. I didn't even now how much I was making though out the year or what my sharkscope looks like recently.)

But now since I'm bloging it's seems like a thing to do at least with some frequency.
November:
226 games (I had my laptop getting fixed so missed few days of play)
+700$

Going to start off my session right now (I usually play early schedule on weekdays)!

How I stopped taking fencing seriously or I blame Bencb

I started fencing in 2001 and I am in love with it ever since.

Fencing is for a reason unpopular sport (it's hard to understand if you haven't done it yourself) which like any other combat sport is a blend beetween technics, strategy and physicality but much more forgiving.
I mean you don't get hit in the head, choked or your ears broken. There is no not that many things that compare to outworking someone who is smarter than you or outsmarter an more technical opponent and actually winning a tough tournament. (you see where I'm heading?)
Like probably any other combat sport there are people who call it physical chess or smthg in the lines which is corny but not that far from true.


First time I made national team in 2006 and since then always have been on international circuit. Looking back my results were very solid. I have multiple medals from world cups and one of each continental and world championships.

My highest world rank was 15th. and everyhing was going great before I got injured and missed the whole season. I came back and had some success but never became what I used to be.

I went through something like winners tilt where everybody was waiting for me to bee good again and telling me how really talented and great I was of a fencer but I felt something was wrong.

That's when I got the Bencb's mtt course. It was eyeopening.
Not because of his monotone german accent that made me fall a sleep everytime nor because I started binking mtts left and right

It was much more than that. It was suddenly realizing how proffesional work can look like. The whole scheme was very clear and transparent.

On the other side of a spectrum I was still training and competing and it was so clear how in a field were I suppose to be professional I wasn't doing any of this. We as a national team were just banging against a wall with no minor changes from one competition to another, from one season to the next one.

This is a part were I really want to blame others in what is initailly my personal failure. To make things short I was just fed up and with doing things that (at least imo) had little to zero EV. Pretending to work towards some goals while wathcing how everyone around is getting better and you are not.

To clear things up. I was still good on national level and enough to make team for probably few more years to come.

This weekend the first world cup of the season took place in Germany. It's funny feeling knowing that I could have went and make few bucks (you get paid some food money often more than you actually need to eat for a day) but instead I was grinding and dropped like -400$ or smthng.
But i know it's my decision and there noone to blame for my results now.

Slight winning session today. Had few runs to turn it into profitable day but nothing spectacular happened. Busted B16.50 on two final tables.
I really wonder what is should be V calling range in this spot as I'm clueless how to calculate prefinal table ICM spots.



Ofc AQo is snap but I wonder if the AJo is? as my range shouldn't be too crazy and there should be some minor ICM implications for him too.

Recently I think a lot about how delusional you can be about pretty much everything in poker. Your skill, how you run, what qualifies as good/ bad play etc.
IMHO reason is that you can make a -EV decision for n amount of times and it can be printing you money.
f.e. I feel like I'm running bad over past few months but it's completely possible I'm just grinding my EV.

I just finished my session. Played every day since Sunday and have no scores whatsoever. Busted like 6-7 FT bubbles or near that here and there. Feels like have I've been running like shite.

It has been a recent trend of mine to value bet myself vs "shy" (or probably just bad) opponents. Just can get my head around that someone can go with such a small hands with what is probably top 5% of their range.

https://www.weaktight.com/r/5dcd78b6d390434c778b4764

this second one was probably a bit punty on ft bubble. His sizing was screamin Qx to me. I considered cheking most of the rivers and then convinced myself to go with something that might look "bluffy" for more value.

https://www.weaktight.com/r/5dcd7c1fd39043b72b8b478a

Yesterday shipped 7$ sng to cut some losses. I sometimes reg into few of those by the end of the session to keep the table count and to keep myself out distractions.
While playing I scoped few regs who I see in the games all the time and was pretty shocked how little money they make out of these (I filtered results for 2019 only)

I'm sure they play much more than that but still it was a surprise for me. I looked into 4-5 regs and only one was over 1k$ profit for a year.


Most likely I'll be skipping tommorow and will go super hard on studying and rewieving hands.

Subbed.

Thanks and gl on ur grind!

Надіслано від мого Redmi Note 5, використовуючи Tapatalk

Dunno how I missed your message. Thanks dude! GL to you too!

The line about how much I can win within next few month was much more for selfmotivation to study more rather than feeling granted some resuts if I study hard.

The river decisions.

I will post few hands were I did burn some timebanks otr. I think there are lots of spots where I'm way to call happy than probably should be.
I noticed a trend of mine where whenever in a pot my mindset was "how can I win this" which sometimes lead to very cool lines and some very epic spews.

Recently I tried to shift to more "what the best play should be with my hand/range". Let's see how I conqeur this.

1. https://www.weaktight.com/r/5dcea1bdd390435a7b8b4659
hand that bothers me the most. I'm a kind of guy that can go
for days thinking about a certain spot twitching my mind all the time and for me this is one of those.

pre open seems stanrard. V is a very good reg.

flop I went for a 25% instead of 33% I remember having reasoning for this in the game. I thought that with this hand I want to x-call most turns and if so I want to keep his range as wide as possible and probably vs this bet he's not folding anything.

Don't know how V percieves my smaller cbet but I can definitly have all the AQ and AA there with some low suited As.

turn What I learned with simple gto is that there are certain type of hands where whatever line you take the EV difference is pretty much nonexistent and I felt like mid pair + fd might be one of those (might be not).
Went for a x/c. I thought about x/jamming too.

river Looks like a great pretty good card for us for obvious reasons. Yet still v insta fires which can mean anything in given scenario ( if he has something like K9s and decided to go bananas ott he might really not care what river is ). If the card is bad for bluffing and we both know it suddenly becomes pretty good for bluffing.

It took me whole timebank and I decided to make a call but was a bit too late with my decision. My reasoning was that it's much better to have Q9 here rather than KQ or QJ.




2. https://www.weaktight.com/r/5dce9836d3904364578b47c6

-PRE V seemed to me as nitty rec so the whole hand was based on that perception which was probably biggest mistake. Iso was an option as he wouldn't limp/shove as much.

-flop i don't feel too thrilled but obviously never folding.

-turn after V x I feel good about my hand again. I would think he's slowplaying his value <20% with this spr. Felt very strange about sizing and decided to go with somewhat a freeze play and didn't mind keeping gutshots

-river V snapshoves river which isn't soomething passive recs do to often but than again I might be somewhat off with his image.

Now after running through some ranges feel like should call here even against somone whe I percieve as not that bluff heavy. Because all this doesn't make much sense and i really can't think of a hand that wants to take this line.
Maaaaaybe some boats that don't want me to x behind my Qx on this rvr but once again didn't feel like he would do to much slowplaying.

https://www.weaktight.com/r/5dcef7f2549aa2525a8b4629

V is a rec.
from what I see everyday people massively overbluff theses spots with sometimes near any two ott and otr they proceed. for me feels very close.

if V valuebets 2p+ I feel like I have around 36% eq w/ A5s and need like 25% but maybe I'm just being optimistic.

I'm here for a quick reminder for myself not to be salty in the midst of the session.

It takes so much will power to loose all the highest buyins right away and still be 100% focused and don't let annoyance get to you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxABpwGCbBg

GL to all Saturday grinders!

Really harsh session. Many high equity beats and one in particular were I felt like I'm gonna throw up (literally) huge eq, for top stack, 2 tables left and etc.

The focus for now is to play a solid game tomorrow.

P.S. I had this thought on Thursday that I didn't tilt for quite some time now which I was glad off.
Since then I snaped twice which I'll try to avoid.
So tomorrow I have to do 5 pushups for every curse/ whine or pathetic mumbling (have to do them on the spot); and go all in on push ups if I hit/slam something (or even the thought of something like this arises).

Sunday

I had what probably is perfect prepration: meditated, had a short run and excersise, reviewed some spots and precceded to play 10 hour session.

Ended up breaking even and again had few stacks to make $$ but busted in somewhat tilting manner. It's also a trend of mine to bust all the higher buyins right away.

Made like 150+ pushups which is on one hand a good thing.
I noticed that 5 pushups penalty is really not enough to get me out of mumbling/feeling sorry for myself so had to go all in on very fast reps not trying to timeout.


Week recap

Results:
https://ibb.co/p0BQFGJ

Biggest cash this week - 170$ which kind of speaks for itself. No FTs or solid deepruns just frustrating alltogether. Lowered my abi too and had skipped lots of fun tourneys too.

Played +18bb/100 EV adjusted(I really like to look at this stat when loosing money but tbh feel like it means verry little); and -22bb/100 in blinds >2499 which is partially due to the fact I've been running into aces a lot lately (will do my best do avoid this next week)


My play: optimistic B-

I feel like one of sighns of a downer is having lots of tough spots which have been coming left and right, lots of questinable folds and missed shoves.
Sometimes I have to make a legit effort to make myself shove some bottom of the range hands that are supposed to go in(even if a ran that spot day before) and it doesn't help the case that yesterday I busted feels like every time I did shove those.


Proffesionalism C- (at best just so I can pass to another week)

Haven't studied as much as should've/ wanted to. My schedule was a wreck.
3/6 sessions I stopped regging earlier than planned to and very unhappy with how lots of things went.

This week schedule

Monday: recover

Tuesday: review some spots / play

Wednesday: study at least 1h/play

Thursday: play

Friday/Saturday: I will commit on of these days for studying ~3-4 hours and another to play a forgiving session

Sunday - crush.

Had few more FT bubbles last few days, played almost 11hour session on Wednesday where on a bbl of one of he biggest gtds of early schedule I went from 2/12 to busting in few orbits. Most tlting was the fact the the table I was sitting had 0 regs nor aggresive players and I just got straight away coolered in 4 spots.

Had 10th place finish in hot27 aswell. Pretty annoyed about yesterday where I loaded waaaaay to many tables while being really exhausted and not recovered. Punted off few, missplayed few more.
One being calling off like 60 bbs ott only because I missread the board.

Just a quick hand to keep this thread live. Seems punty and afterwards I was thinking what hands make more sense to do it with ( mb small pp?) anyways not a spot I get too often. Partially did it because villain I valuetowned villain (rec) few orbits ago in a very simmiliar spot so him folding and trips here wasn't out of the question (he did tank for quite some time)

https://www.weaktight.com/r/5dd81402d3904369648b4623

Hard work myth

It's been a trend of recent years that anywhere you look for motivation or advice you hear about dedication and working day in day out towards your goal. I'm not trying to deny any of that but much more important than that is right work.

I have seen so many people who failed while outworking everybody around by miles but couldn't perform where it mattered or more often all they did was training inefectivelly (but, boy, they tried hard).

How many guys ot there running sims with preflop ranges that are way-way off? aplly wrong strategies in game, etc?


I strongly feel like I have to change my studying routine. I have been studying for two days now (prob ~5 hours + few hours of 1-3 tables of sng and hu sng games to think out every decision) and I feel like I'm unable to find that many of those "eurica - now-i-get-it" moments lately.

What's your studying routine? How is it structured?

You're absolutely right that many people are spending too much effort on the wrong stuff (i.e. becoming a GTO wizard at micro stakes) or blinded by their own biases when reviewing hands. Still, I've found HH/database review to be the most efficient method of leak finding and subsequently, improvement.

For the most part I note all the hands that I find hard/confusing/interesting during the session or hands that some others regs played which I don't get.
Afterwards just run the spots through suiting programs and note some of my conclussions/results.
I do some HH reviews of the mtts I played and used to look into some off my friends HHs but not so much anymore.

Also I watch lots of FTs replays on YT I find them trully fascinating sometimes.I've always been a fan of VODs in videogames and chess. I just trully enjoy watching people do something (pretty much anything) on the highest level.



The Sunday grind can be described by any of my previous posts: had runs, nothing played out so won't bother going into more details than that.

ATM Listening YugiohPro calling everybody a slurper and one tabling 3$ micromillions event which I wasn't even planning to play at the first place but was seduced with a big prize pool; let's make it worth!