Ridiculous volume one ridiculous winters given volume mad props

Didn't mean to ignore this, but only had enough energy for the recap post. Now since it's my last day in CM and I've got an hour to wait until I can check-out of my apartment, seems like the perfect time to reply.

So it's obviously a matter of personal preference, but I find Chiang Mai to be one of my favorite cities in the world and it fits my personality extremely well. For starters, the cost of living remains incredibly low -- it's a tad more expensive than it was 2-3 years ago, but I can still live like a king for ~$1200 USD per month, including rent. And if I was interested in being more cost conscious, I could get buy on $500 total.

The air quality has gotten worse but it's still miles better than Bangkok for 11 months out of the year. Would look to avoid CM in March during the burning season although I've been through it once and still thought the air quality here wasn't as bad as Hong Kong.

CM is very green, in a literal sense. Reminds me a lot of northern California with foliage always within eyesight, except the climate is warmer. It's just another thing that I prefer over Bangkok, which is too industrial for my taste. People/locals in Chiang Mai are super friendly, and globalization/the digital nomad influx has lead to a greater 'acceptance' of foreigners. It's not that the Thais treated foreigners worse before (In fact I've always felt very welcomed, more so here than anywhere in Asia), but now the locals are more likely to be proficient in English, there's an increased number of restaurants specializing in non Thai cuisine, and I get fewer 'OMG he is so white' stares.

All that said, Chiang Mai isn't perfect. When I was previously single and living here, I found that the nightlife wasn't great and dating options were rather limited, but that might have changed -- I wasn't grinding the bar scene/looking for dates this time around. Few other issues aren't really Chiang Mai's fault, they're my own:

For one, the time zone difference (from PST) can be cumbersome, as it's sometimes hard to find a time to talk to my family/GF back home that works for both parties.

But my biggest gripe is my own inability to learn/master the language and without that, I'll always feel like an outsider. I can't pronounce the tones correctly (Same problem with my Vietnamese, which is abysmal) so I'm drawing dead. Admittedly my Spanish isn't incredible but I can butcher my way through most interactions and there's just a feeling of inclusion/personal connection that I get from that which I can't replicate here.

Alright, that's probably enough text/rambling, I'll elaborate even further if you want.

Well, a handful (300 or so) games are MTT SNGs. Still almost double my original goal.

It helps that I used to 35-table SNGs, so that allows me to play a higher table count than most regulars.

Fun side note, I used to work for Daniel Negraneu's PokerVT and one time a group of the coaches were invited to his house. We were drinking, hanging out, playing video games and he brought up the fact that I could mass table. Strongly encouraged me to grind a session on his desktop and while I was hesitant, I did eventually agreed. Loaded games, he grabbed a chair and watched over my shoulder. Was super interested for the first five minutes and then he got incredibly bored of me clicking around/not getting to see turns and rivers and left to go back to the party, while I had to sit in the office and for another hour of SNG grind.

Anyways, I'm super long-winded today. Let's get back to the re: How is it possible to get this much volume.

In addition to the high table count, I definitely played a lot of hours this month. Probably somewhere between 240 and 260. And it wasn't particularly difficult because I had the time (GF is back in Vancouver) and I enjoyed the grind. Being in a massive downer probably isn't the best time to preach to the MTT community, but I do think that most grinders are incredibly lazy and don't treat poker enough like a job. Perhaps it's because the game used to be 'easy money' and people weren't used to actually having to work, but in today's ecosystem of smaller edges, that's no longer the case. January's results weren't good, but I know that if I put in a ton of volume and am able to maintain my edge/winrate, I'm going to be printing money long-term and that drives me to wake up each morning (Or at night, depending on my time-zone) and load a session.

Try to cap my table count around 20, but will try for even fewer if I'm playing multiple sites. It's admittedly hard sometimes for me to not flick in an extra game because I see them all as value/adding to the hourly but at some point, my focus get stretched too thin and I'll miss spots. Had that happen a handful of times last month, but the culprit was almost always because I had loaded some games on ACR and the software eats up too much of my computer's processing power.

If I'm putting in a full day's work, I'll usually register regular speed games for the first 5-6 hours. It depends a lot on how I feel and how the games are progressing -- if I've got a big stack in a regular/slow speed game with ~200 left, I'm aware that I could easily be playing it for another 3-4 hours so I'll load more regular speeds. But if I don't have a game/stack like that, I'll stop adding regular speed games but continue to add turbos. In total, my peak hour sessions go for about 10-12 hours and the offpeak for about 8-10.

subbed

Any tips (or exercises) to increase tables in spins? I'm comfortably playing 2 of them now and 3 when I'm focused but really want to increase to 4-6 in the near future. No idea how to accomplish that tho.

skype keeps being the gayest, so finally going to just post here

glad to hear you're okay broski, scary stuff for sure.

gl in feb, you making it down to Cali at all this year (w a potential mexico (i mean ollies ldo ) run included? )

Why did u switch to MTT abarone ? any big reason ? gl with mtts and goals!

I'd like more info on Chiang Mai. I'm thinking of relocating there in Jan/Feb 2019 myself.

Welcome!

Just takes time. There's no magic formula other than time/practice, but after a while you'll get comfortable and be able to try adding another table.

You *could* try the 'donut' approach -- Back when I played baseball, there was this circular metal piece of equipment called a donut that slid on to the bat which made it a few pounds heavier. Hitters would warm up by swinging that so when they got to the batters box, the bat felt much lighter/their bat speed supposedly improved. So, if you want to try to play 4-6 tables, try a session with 8-10 games at a considerably lower ABI. Not sure if it'll work -- It'll probably go poorly results wise, but afterward I'm guessing playing 4-6 should feel like a breeze.

Hola!

Thanks man, definitely not the most fun experience I've ever had but I'm back to full strength and there shouldn't be any lingering issues. About to crush a cheeseburger actually so clearly I'm not worried about it.

I'll be in California for week in mid March but unfortunately won't be able to make it down to Rosa. Best chance for that is in November as I'm trying to figure out where to spend next Winter and it's almost assuredly going to be somewhere Spanish speaking.

Thanks!

Was concerned with current state of Spins and the future of the games. MTTs should have a much longer shelf life and if I wanted, would allow me to more easily transition to the live format. Highly doubt there will be live Spins in the future, but perhaps if Stars opens up a brick and mortar casino, I'll have to eat my words.

Been in Malaysia for the past two days and it's been nice to take a break from the grind. Didn't have much planned for here aside from eating as much food as possible and walking around the city but those two activities have kept me rather busy.


View from the hotel's infinity pool


Outside Kuala Lumpur's famous 'Central Market'


Spotted this during a walk and boy do I enjoy pop culture references involving food

Picked out quite a few restaurants I wanted to try and the food hasn't disappointed. On the first night, one of my horses and I stumbled into a random Chinese fusion place on the street and everything was fantastic. I took some pics only because we are both terrible at documenting our gastronomical adventures and made it a point to do it for my first meal in Kuala Lumpur. Some of the highlights included:


Kung Pao Frog -- A bit difficult to eat with a knife and fork, so I decided to treat them like chicken wings and use my hands. Happy with that decision, the frog was super tender and very flavorful. Waiter had told us initially that we got to pick our frog, but the language barrier/our excitement proved to be too much for him as he just left and picked it out for us. Oh well.


Sizzling Prawn -- Was in some sort of spicy curry like sauce and I couldn't get enough of it. Kept spooning the extra sauce onto my plate to mix with the rice.

For lunch today I went to Village Park, which is apparently famous for it's Nasi Aram (Fried Chicken). It came with extra fried bits of batter to mix in with the coconut rice and a side of spicy sambal.



Really good stuff. I had heard the sweet potato donuts often ran out around the lunch rush, but was lucky to snag the last one (top right). Probably my favorite thing I've eaten so far in Malaysia but that could change quickly as I'm off to a burger place now. I know, a burger place? Really? Well it's the #1 ranked restaurant in Kuala Lumpur and people are raving about it being the best burger they've ever eaten, so I must investigate.

Will be back in Bangkok tomorrow and most likely resuming the grind, so good luck to all the guys playing tonight because I'm going to do my best to take that equity in 24 hours.

gl at the tables, tough challenge tho, hope you achieve it

I hope so too!

Behind pace for volume this month, but that's because I missed four days of grinding -- two at the beginning of the month while relocating to Bangkok and two while in Kuala Lumpur.

Last two days have been solid, tons of deeps and while I didn't ship any of them, the websites thankfully do give several buy-ins for 2nds, 3rds, and 4ths. Had a point during the session where I was ~21 tabling including 3-handed play in the B162 and the other two guys wanted to deal. I didn't -- but told them I'd take an even chop, which lead to this amusing exchange.



Sure, it was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but...also kinda true. We were all 50+ BBs deep at the time so I felt pretty good about playing it out. Unfortunately I got in AK vs JJ HU for the gold and didn't win the flip. Clearly should have chopped!

Big grind tonight, going to try to FT the B162 for the third day in a row. Yesterday ended in heartbreak (Got in 87 on T96 for the CL 4-handed, didn't hold) but I'll save the rungood for today because Sunday prizepools >>>> Saturday prizepools.

nice pics Aaron and i live the b162 chat, you have to say that really, it is true!

tell us about the burger soon, the sweet potato doughnuts? yummmmmmm

I mean, I wouldn't agree with the people who said it was the best burger of all-time, but it was definitely really good (and probably gets a higher rating because SE Asia isn't known for great burgers). Been on a bit of a burger kick the last few days and tried out a few places here in Bangkok -- that's the one thing I do appreciate about BKK: the abundance of delicious non Thai food. This week I've had Italian, Vietnamese, Lebanese, and Mexican. Come to think of it, I haven't had Thai food since I got to Bangkok. Well that'll have to change soon!

Planned on playing a full session tonight and then about halfway thru, my apartment went completely dark. Other apartments/lobby had electricity so it was some circuit breaker issue in my individual unit and it took the 'security guard' 30 mins to solve the problem. Super frustrating to go from lots of stacks/deep runs to fewer tables and a lot less equity. Did manage to run up a stack in the $530 Builder which was nice, but that just ended painfully when QQ < AQ for a top 3 stack (120 BBs) with ~55 left.

I'm obviously rather annoyed with that result but when the electricity died, I told myself I'd be happy to break even for the day and thanks to my massive bounty, I think I've done that.

Was going to take tomorrow off completely, but since today was a bit of a fail, I might flick some games.

Well, wasn't entirely a fail.

Horse of mine had been buried in MU for about 8 months and to his credit, he continued to dedicate just as much (if not more) time to grinding and studying. Both of us decided that we would put in the maximum effort to get him back to crushing ASAP, and that meant a lot of reviews and strat talk. For a good period of time, we were exchanging 1-2 HHs a day. It would have been easy for him to quit with such a huge MU number, or at least cut back on the volume, stop loading the smaller stuff, etc, but he didn't. He continued to grind the high edge games even if they weren't 'sexy' in addition to his higher stake tournaments and as of the first of February, was able to get himself out of the downer.



Was super happy for him considering all the work he put in and then, yesterday, it got even better when he shipped the €250 Main Event on .ES for ~€144k.



Congrats Gonzar!!!







In other news, I'm off to Chiang Mai tomorrow to visit a friend for the day, so I won't be grinding until Friday at the earliest. Even then there's a decent chance I don't load games that night because while I used to have only one horse living near me in Bangkok, but I'm about to have two as another one arrives tomorrow. We obviously need to have a proper night out on the town since neither of them have ever had that experience. And as the great lyricist Rebecca Black once said, 'Friday, Friday...You gotta get down on Friday.'



God that song is so terrible. Sorry everyone.

Gonzar became such a boss and it was only because of hard work and big effort. Both of you have been very inspirational and I'm really grateful for that.

GG guys!!

hey





and yea congrats to that mr.gonzaR and you , of course

That's all it takes! Well, that and a two outer when heads-up.

Couldn't have been wearing a better shirt.

So I had mentioned previously about the sustainability of this lifestyle, and by that I mean the total number of hours I've been grinding as well as the time zone I'm doing it in. Playing this much volume hasn't been 'easy' but the harder part has been playing the graveyard shift. I'm often missing out on most of the sunlight and there have been a handful of days where I barely have time to eat a proper, sit-down meal before starting my session. Thankfully, I don't have to sustain this forever -- Only for two more weeks, as then I'm taking a short vacation and by the time I'm back on the grind, it'll be from Vancouver where the peak hours are 8 AM to 4 PM.

One other thing I wanted to address -- I rarely offer individual coaching hours these days, but recently I agreed to sell a package to a student. Before we started, I'd guess that in my entire 'career,' I had missed a total of one session. And somehow, in the last month I missed three. Sure, I could shift the blame (imperfect health, some internet issues) but the fact of the matter is I've been so consumed with my own grind/this schedule that everything else took a backseat. Felt pretty bad about that, issued a refund for the remaining hours and I won't be taking on more students for individual hours until I can guarantee I'll be able to put in the time/effort that they deserve.

Getting back on the grind now, promise that the next update will be less text and more graphs/gifs!

Hi.

Despite missing a few days in February, volume is coming along nicely. Will save the full in depth breakdown for the end of the month but I should eclipse the 2000 game mark today or tomorrow.



Not stoked about the profits, but I'm going to bite my tongue because I'm about to start a Sunday session and I could easily drop most of it back in the next few hours. So for now, I'm happy that there ARE profits.

So as I had said before, I'm living in Bangkok at the moment. Originally the plan for February was to get a grind house with a few players in my group (Similar to what I did in Bucharest), but at the moment each of us are living alone in one bedroom places. We all like our own space, I guess.



Well, that's too damn bad. I booked a penthouse in the center of Bangkok and we're going to spend three days there, starting on Tuesday. I'm obv taking that sweet office for myself.









If it isn't evident yet, it's clear now -- Joining my staking group means that you'll probably get to spend time with me in a penthouse apartment in a major world city. I'd consider that a perk, although I'm sure not everyone is in agreement.



Alright, enough forum stuff for me. I'm pretty pumped about that penthouse but first I've got to get thru a Sunday grind. Good luck all!

Sick apartment dude, and nice thread. Subbed.
How much to you pay for the apartment a month?

Gl with the sunday grind, Turbo Series must be like stealing candy from children for you

Yea, really nice apartment. Happy to see you're February has went well.

Sick apartment. Grinding in that office I would feel like a legit boss.

Good luck with the Sunday grind.

I love your rented crib :3 How much a day is it?

Solid grinder. Keep it up bro

I would love to stay at that place. Well maybe next time.

Awesome to read things like this. Congratz to that guy

Appreciate that, and still got some time left to improve those numbers!

Yeah, you highlighted the main reason why I booked it.

Only have it for two nights, price is $300/day. Obviously going to try to make that back in profits.

Oh, you aren't coming? Alright. Looks like there's a room available now, anyone interested?

Obviously it helps when I have a piece, but regardless I get so much pleasure in seeing hard work/effort pay off.

Because of the sheer variance involved in tournament poker, realizing your true equity can be a long, painful process. Was going to save this for my monthly recap, but I spoke with another grinder recently about the frustration involved when your output (results, profit) doesn't match your input (study, volume). I've dealt with that a bit myself since moving over to MTTs, I assumed that with this sort of volume I could somewhat avoid the variance that plagues most of the community, and that hasn't been the case. But based on the success of others, I'm very aware that the answer is simply to keep my head down, stay focused, and the binks will come.