So today I'm trying that new strategy of not checking HEM at all, and I've also removed the VPP Progress Bar. It'll be interesting to see whether goals and targets can also act as an artificial constraint, not only a motivational tool.

I think they can work both ways, but since I have a good idea of what kinda hours I need to put in, and on which games, the benefits of constantly monitoring VPP rate is less.

I believe one important trigger of stress is having multiple tasks demanded of the brain with limited resources available for them. This creates stress since they cannot all be fulfilled and need to be prioritized etc. Imagine this scenario when grinding. One demand is playing, and playing as well as possible. If you add to this the demand of having good results, and then another demand of having good VPPs, suddenly you are artificially creating a stressful environment. Whilst the last two things are requirements whether you monitor them or not, by consciously monitoring them you only increasing the workload, both physically and mentally. Monitoring is both a physical and mental function. So to get rid of this should reduce emotional stress basically

Inb4 I fall 5 days behind pace without realizing it and busto!

Sigh just typed a really long post about today's play and accidentally pressed back on my mouse, lost it! :@

So cliff notes for everything I wrote will have to do!

Plan worked, managed to play non stop until games died down, unfortunately I was pretty shocked to see I had one of my worst losing days, dropping ~$6k before rb. Had a much higher average buy-in than usual which partly explains the extremity of the loss.

Mixture of bad costly plays, running $2500 below EV, and running into aces a lot in 50/50s. Overall though, I played losing poker today, for example within the first 10 mins of my second sesh I'd already stacked off twice drawing dead playing atrocious bluff lines in two $200 games, $400 lost right off the bat.

Gameplan to move forward with: I've nicely managed to get around a day ahead of pace, so I can afford to grind VPPs at a slightly slower pace. I'll cut out the most reggy games and compensate by trying to grind a bit longer each day. This is pretty similar to the plan I made before the month started, ah well! Probably will lead to a lower number of tables too which should help.

Will continue hiding VPP progress bar and HEM for the whole day, worked well today :P

sigh, gl tomorrow

Tyty man, gotta just see it like any other day at the office, I made $3500 after rb the day before and lost $4800 or so yday after rb so not calamitous.

Enjoyed the edit would love to concur but have to admit the problem has been on my end not respecting their raises like I should!!! Time to sit on the naughty step

sicko

hope ur enjoying life after poker!!

Big pattern shift, going to bed early tonight to make most of my grind throughout the daytime. Just feel way healthier that way and the games are less regfested too. Main downside is that traffic is much worse so VPPs will be harder to come by. Gonna just try and maximize all the time I have and see where I end up each day, worst case scenario I'll just smash a few Sundays etc and gain back some pace there.

So today I only played 2.2k VPP putting me back to "on pace" only. 13 days left tad over 9k/day required, lets bring 'er home.

In the sessions I did play today, dropped the number of tables a fair bit and skipped a few of the most stacked games. Played great and generated very good equity, shame I ran like poo but tbh all I care about is playing good winning poker. Job done

sick volume sir i hate seing u in my games (rare but happens).

Love this thread, GL OP, what is your plan for next year? would you share your ROI for each form of poker you play? do you win at the 50fifty pre bonuses?

Tyty, the volume is getting painful but has to be done (for a little longer)! Which games do you play in, will look out for ya

Thx man. Plan for next year will be to make maximum use of SNE and maintain SNE or perhaps a larger target depending on how things are going. I'll be able to cut right back on my number of tables and play good games when I feel like it, so I really think profit before rakeback could be a cool aim, in stark contrast to the path this year. Also planning to travel through Europe and maybe combine some EPT circuit events with it, there's a nice discount for SNEs who buy-in with FPPs which makes it very tempting.

ROI for each game I play, hmm that's kinda difficult to evaluate as before this chase I had combined SNG profits of >$100k before rakeback, whereas by the end of this chase they'll have been largely erased (hopefully only temporarily).

There's always a tendency to over-estimate your own ability/win rate, but I'd hope for say 2% before rakeback long-term profit on the 6-max hypers next year, as close to break-even as possible on 9-mans, as near to 10% as possible on 18-mans. 6-max turbo I'm not sure what my winrate could be, as I've had very mixed/high variance ups and downs playing them.

As far as the 50/50s go, with the grind plan I've been doing, I was really aiming for them to be my huge VPP earner, and if I could break even on them after rb that would be great. This is because the $100/200 50/50s are seriously tough, and I've been playing ~40 tables at a time, which isn't ideal. With that said though, I have been slightly negative EV after rakeback on them, which over enough games adds up quite a bit. Until I can prove I'm even a winner on them, I can't say I am, but hopefully when playing say 15-25 tables, only one game format and targeting a lot of the $30-60 range, I am hopeful I can be decent winner.

It's soooo important to have a reality check though, and this will bring me on nicely to my daily update in the next post

So the new playing schedule felt great. I was able to go to bed at a decent time last night and slept like a baby, woke up fresh as a daisy and ready to roll (any more crappy figures of speech?). Only problem was, I cannot properly earn 9K VPPs/day on this grind plan. I managed to get to >5k VPPs by evening, which is pretty good, some of the 10K+ days I had were only at 2k vpps by this time of the day. However, I've realized I simply cannot play a session I consider +$EV with the evening grind plan I was doing. Simply too many difficult games, too many tables and too many game types. This really puts me in a slightly awkward position, either I'm gonna keep being behind pace each day maximizing the other games which I think I can play +EV sessions in, or I'm going to most likely bleed a lot of equity and earn the VPPs reasonably comfortably.

Quite simply to hit the SNE target for Nov 28th, the only option is the crappy option. I need to try and maximize as many hours as possible before evening playing the grind that I feel good in, and minimize the bad grind. I'll also need to force myself to cut sleep by about an hour each day, which for lots of people would be a piece of cake but for some reason <7 hours sleep and I find it hard to function!

Today was pretty much exactly that. During the day I played well, grinded hard and generated a ton of equity. As soon as I had to VPP whore, I bled a lot of equity, and ran awful again In the 4 $300 6-maxs I played I generated neutral equity and bricked all 4, pretty standard but a quick way to pain!

So basically, gotta suck it up and keep grinding hard. It's quite uncomfortable to accept I might need to lose some money to finish off this chase, especially as I was hoping to show great results for the chase which hasn't happened. But in terms of the bigger picture, as long as I'm not throwing away loads, it's really a short-term investment for the longer-term. There's a pretty decent safety net of profit made on this chase even though the pre-rakeback loss is enormous, so almost regardless of how bad this final stretch is (unless it turns out to be REALLY bad), there shouldn't be any harm of ending the chase with a bad result.

110k VPP left...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/17...2012-a-937451/
Mainly 180s & 45s but some 50/50s tho 30s/60s not 200s atm.

Glad to see you're settling into new sched and next year aiming for profit before rakeback

ILS what's your opinion of the highstakes 6max turbo games? I'm interested in them because they seem to run the highest of all the SNGs and you could make SNE 8-10 tabling them with a decent schedule. How's the difficulty on them? Do you think it would be difficult to show a 1-2% profit in them pre rb playing 8-10 tables?

Wow what a fantastic PG&C thread, definitely going to keep up to date with how you're gettin on, best of luck to you! Loving the life balance and creative goals with charity payouts for missing them, awesome idea!

I think the HS 6-max games are some of the most difficult SNGs around. You do get soft ones loading from time to time, but a lot of the time they are complete regfests. I think games full of regs can still be beatable, but you have some real cream of the crop type guys enjoying those as their playground. It really has to do with just how strong you feel your game is, otherwise I'd say without game selection the chances of profiting before rakeback is very slim. There are two things of note to mention on this topic:

1) Many of the big winner guys in those games make their large sums of money from SNE rakeback and BOP etc, but before rakeback are significant losers/break evenish.

2) Doing some quick sharkscope searches and looking up some of the very best of these guys for 2011, 6-max turbo, you can see a very definite trend, especially post-black friday. I have only found one of them (I only searched about half a dozen that came to mind) who shows a positive trend after black friday. The #2 player in the world for them this year has a 1% average ROI before rakeback. So the typical ROI figure for the very best players is in the -2% to 0% range, maybe some worse than that. Bare in mind the potential deviation from true winrate for any of these guys, it appears the range of ROIs for the best players in them is -2 to +2%. Spacegravy is just a complete beast with an ROI a complete outlier from the rest of the pack, a complete statistical anomaly.


So to cut to the chase, they are absolutely fantastic games for VPPs, but the $ swings and winrate potential in them is pretty damn sick.



My game has become better and better the further u look along the graph, variance has pretty much torn me to pieces. When I was winning hard, I was playing pretty horrible

how do you even deal with these swings? how big of a roll do you got?

Today was brutal, ended ~ -$5700, and ran $4500 below EV. On top of that a lot of the negative equity was jamming lower pair into higher pair B vs B and coming into aces. From afternoon onwards, it really was some of the best poker I've played on this chase, I played really well for most part and couldn't have asked for anything more.

The $200-300 games are just really sick $ variance, so this can easily happen. Problem is I've been running bad for a long time now and with over 100k VPP before I unlock the big bonus etc, I really can't afford to keep losing so hard. With today being a coaching day, and just feeling pretty exhausted and needing bed soon, I ended the day over 2k VPP below pace. I can definitely make up these extra few k VPPs on the two Sundays before the chase ends, but cannot consistently fall behind pace otherwise I'll become too far in arrears.

It's certainly a pretty stressful situation when doomswinging, but got to stay focused and relaxed, and take it one step at a time. I hope to refresh and in the morning be ready to fight hard. Need to log some very big hours if I'm to cut out any of the high variance action, but like I said in my last post it's pretty much necessary to get the VPPs. Anyway, there's always hope for a boomswitch to replace the doomswitch, which would make everything come into place nicely for the finale! Wishful thinking, but gotta stay positive no matter what!!

Tomorrow will always be a better day [than the one prior which now ceases to exist, but in our memory].

I can answer the first question! I have a beautiful wife, a wonderful family and some great friends. Life's pretty much complete regardless of anything that happens at the tables, provided I leave us enough financial security in savings at all times so that we will never be put in a difficult situation. Everything else is notional in value. For the things that really matter and can never be replaced/earned, I'm coming up in trumps. Whenever I even contemplate feeling sorry for how bad I run or whatever, I take a reality check at what is really the definition of something bad, a family member being diagnosed with cancer, being stuck in the middle of a war zone etc. So a great way to overcome the emotional strain of swings is to deliberately consider these things and watch some of it on the news, then realize that we have not a single worry in the world. Obviously some of us that do have any number of serious real life issues occurring do, and for those in that situation can definitely relate to true pain and loss.

In terms of bankroll, I always have comfortably enough to practice correct BRM. If I'm feeling a bit concerned about my BR in relation to the games I'm playing/losses I'm incurring (e.g. currently on the $200-300 6-max, and the $200 50/50s), I make sure to try edit my grind plan so I'm comfortably within BR requirements. It's very hard to know what good BRM even is when you play such a variety of buy-in levels, but one thing I always think about is 200 buy-ins for my highest buy-in. This could be as much as 2000 buy-ins at my lowest buy in. A big mistake I think people make is looking at their average buy-in and multiplying this number by "x". If you run atrocious on the high stakes games, you're gonna end way deeper in the hole than your ABI would lead you to believe.

+1. I really like your attitude and that's a great way of looking at things

Nice thread.

I used to really hate you ingame for ****ing up all the lobbies (as that tilts me as ****) and not gameselecting, since october no-one really cares about gameslection anymore it seems, so just have to deal with that haha. But seeing a real person behind it, is maybe gonna slow me down from steaming on the tables lol!! Gl with your challenge, looks like you really sorted things out well!

10% in 18man is not possible with how you play (mixed games, lot of table, long grind,..) not even the best players make 10% at your average stake of 18man except a very very few. I see you are at 4% right now and thats not at all bad given your circumstances.

Im going for SNE next year on 18man along with 5050 mixed in and would be very much OK with 4% pre rakeback even though im at 9% right now at the 25+ sngs.

What do you think about 5050, ur barely be after sne rakeback, they are very reginfested right? im trying to learn them but im not sure if its worth it, what do you think? will you keep playing these?

gl with the chase

Anything I can do to dissuade you from doing this ? Think I might see quite a lot of you next year

Enjoying the thread ILS, am impressed how you deal with the swongs.

Interested in seeing a HEM chart with your EV line for this year,any chance?

Good luck ,seems like your close now to getting there.Next year should be more fun for you I hope

Haha thx man, yeah I think we all see regs we play against constantly who for one reason or another can be pretty tilting. Game selection is soooo important and the only reason I'm mass reg'ing all the games is to keep up with the 3 million VPP pace that was required since the start of the chase. It's especially hard when using games which aren't traditionally considered paths to SNE (unless you're Simakos ) let alone 3*SNE pace. But next year this will obviously change completely. What's your Stars name btw?

Thanks, yeah the "as near as 10%" aim is for next year where I certainly will be having a completely different grind requirement to now, with the luxury of even just playing 18-mans on their own at times, and certainly halving the number of tables I need to have up. As near as seemed more prudent than 10% itself, since the games are become very reggy and edges must be much harder to come by than prior to black friday which will slightly distort the stats of the top regs for the year overall.

50/50s are indeed very regfesty, the advice I'd give is very similar to that I suggested yesterday regarding high stakes 6max. at $100/200 level next year I'd be surprised to see anyone making any real profit prior to rakeback.

What name do you play under on Stars?

Cheers, more out of necessity than choice! :P

Tyty, I recognize you as a top 6-max super turbo reg so I'll put up my years' EV for them which might be of interest. My EV stats for all games 2011 is pretty much impossible to know, since I've played hundreds of Steps which get counted as $0, and also for the 6-max hypers and 18-mans there were issues with generating an EV number for them prior to downloading a newer version of HEM only a couple months ago. Afaik unless I re-import hand every hand history prior to gettin the update, the update will not retroactively correct the EV figure for those.



No prizes for guessing where on the graph the SNE chase started! Despite pretty much flat-lining from that point, since I've been churning out ridiculous mass-tabling on them (up to 32 tabling once I think, completely stupid), the rakeback hourly has been ~$78/hr when only grinding them. So not all bad news, plus I imagine the games have gotten tougher making expected edge lower. But really, I got to the point where the VPPs required and the #tables that was coming to, I was misclicking constantly and it really wasn't a fruitful endeavour. But like everything else, looking forward to 2012

Quick update for the day, managed to make 9.1k VPPs which was really satisfying, so require 94k in 10 days to reach the target. Unfortunately ran another $2300 below EV, making that $11k below EV in the last 5 days!

Tbh other than if it causes BR concerns, it doesn't actually bother me that much if my equity is good. Today I managed to generate good equity and am confident I can churn out the remaining VPPs generating good value in the process. I spent a number of hours taking a step back, evaluating and then delving deep into a number of areas which I think have and will make a significant difference from here forward.

Tomorrow I have family engagements for much of the day so expecting to lose quite a bit of pace, but the final 9 days I can really smash it and pretty much only leave the house to hit the gym and let off some steam! Lets finish this!!