sir, your inbox is full .. good job on the binks : )

Deleted a few things, should be some room in there now.

Just finished today's grind, FT bubbled the $530 Builder and while KK vs AA is never fun, it's less fun when this is the runout.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-h...059_AB95A26D1C

Will be back at it tomorrow because I can't start shipping without regging.

Yikes

Sickoooooo

damn aaron you have changed, an MTT reg now ;P

gonza such a crusher, being that deep in MU having the composure to pull out of it, man 1 word sums it up



glgl in the MTTS

This is going to be a fairly long post, so here are the cliffs:
- No binks yet, variance, fun times in the poker house
- Traveled to Taipei, ate lots of food (Pics below)
- Afterward, went to California, stayed by the beach (Pics below)
- Back home now in Vancouver, ready to grind

It hurt, but to quote the great Rafiki...





Thanks!

Being a MTT reg kinda sucks. Obviously there's a handful of incredible days where you bink a big score (in theory :P), but the vast majority of days end in frustration. I'm still amazed/impressed by the guys who have chosen this format and been able to do is successfully (while maintaining their sanity) for several years.

Lots to catch up on since I last posted:

February Recap
Travel (Taiwan, California/San Francisco)

1) February Recap

Profit: $5900
Volume: 2299 games



**Graph isn't completely accurate but I included it anyways.**

Reached the volume goal I set for myself and finished in profit, so both of those are good things. The actual amount of profit is disappointing and I'm walking that tightrope many of us go through, where I'm fairly condifent in my game/ability but aware that not every downswing is because of variance. Basically, I'm reviewing a lot of hands, questioning 'standard' spots, and trying to earn as many Sklansky bucks as possible.

Did notice an interesting thing while filtering through my results -- I'm absolutely crushing games with smaller player pools and getting crushed in those with bigger ones (216+ players). Pretty sure that underscores the high variance of large field MTTs and while I'll be trying to play more smaller fields to decrease variance, I'm now in a fantastic time zone for peak hours so that might be difficult.

Non poker wise, February was a blast. Was in Bangkok for nearly the entire month and got to hang out with two of my horses when they weren't out meeting up with random Thai girls. We lived/grinded together in the penthouse and those two days were probably my favorite -- Just got to chill, cheer each other on, talk about spots, talk about life, etc. Or maybe my favorite time was when I took them to Soi Cowboy and they got to experience some "nightlife" in Bangkok.

Definitely want to meet up with more of my horses, each time has been a lot of fun, and I've got tentative plans to get a place somewhere in South America this year to do just that.

2) Travel Part I (Taiwan)

GF and I took a somewhat impromptu trip to Taipei. We had planned to be in California for my Mom's birthday but the flights from YVR-SFO were only $200 cheaper than the same flight with a layover in Taipei. So, uhh, we chose that.

For us, the main attraction was the food and more specifically, the night markets. Street food is apparently a huge part of Taiwanese culinary culture and we love snacking late at night, so this seemed like a perfect fit. And it would have been if our trip was a tad shorter. For the first few days, it was great -- We sought out some of the more notable spots and I liked nearly all of the stuff I got to try. Here are some of my favorites:

Fried Shrimp Balls -- I don't like "fish balls" or "shrimp balls" or any other sort of minced seafood but these were different. It was chunks of shrimp mixed with cabbage and other vegetables, hand rolled in front of us and then breaded/fried. Delicious.


Scallion Pancakes -- Was skeptical at first because I couldn't wrap my head around how green onions would work in pancakes, but these aren't western breakfast panckes, they're like crispy, soft, fluffy, onion-y, savory naan bread.


Somehow I don't have pics of the two things I liked best. First, the amazing Milk Tea, which actually had no tea at all. It's just fresh milk and caramelized "bubbles." Simple but holy moley, that was good. Also missing on the Black Pepper Bun from Rahoe Street Market but thankfully I found a stock photo. It's filled with green onion and black peppered minced pork. If you find yourself there, there are TWO black pepper bun food stalls, but the best one has a red velvet rope because the line is so long.



But by day three, I was kinda over it. Taiwanese food, or at least the stuff I had, was rather sweet and eventually, I wanted more savory/less carb heavy food. I'd still recommend visiting Taipei -- I'm hungry right now and thinking about the Black Pepper Bun, Milk-less Milk Tea and Fried Shrimp Balls has me wishing I was back there. Plus, there were a few cool spots we visited in between meals, such as the Houtong Cat Village and Maokong Village.

Houtong Cat Village: Weren't as many cats as I would like (Was hoping for it to be overran by them, like a zombie apocalypse but with cats) but was still a neat place to stop.







Shifuen Old Street: We had talked about lighting lanterns for a few years, but this was the first time we were able to actually do it. For one of the sides, we decided to draw each other. Thoughts on our artwork?



Maokong Village: Known for it's tranditional tea, we took the Gondola up to the top of the mountain. Could see all of Taipei from the top, but don't ask my GF because her eyes were closed the entire time.





Also, they had a photobooth.



I have two of these pics, so if anyone wants one, just shoot me a PM. Will clear my inbox because I'm sure it will be in such high demand.

3) Travel Part II (California)

Arrived on the 12th and successfully avoided jetlag. Go me. Spent half of the time in my hometown and the other half at a beach house near Bodega Bay. For those who haven't been to California -- beaches on the northern part of the state are fairly cold but that doesn't mean the views aren't as impressive.

Welcome to California. Some great travel pics. Good luck at the tables.

All of your threads are some of the best threads ever on 2+2. Love the work ethic alongside seeing so many new places, and of course who doesn't love food pics. Keep up the great work, you're an inspiration man.

ps its extra impressive seeing you changing games and still getting the results you do. Hard work and good mindset pays off!

Just found this thread and love it, wish i knew you earlier so i can show you around Taipei, there are some good place here you haven't visit, gl with the grind

I've been low on positivity/optimism for the past few days so it warms my heart to read the last three posts.

I don't want to rehash the 'woe is me, MTT variance is rough" so I'll leave it at that. Aside from the results, the hours/schedule required to play MTTs has been difficult to manage. On most nights I'm finishing up around 8 PM and that doesn't leave much time to spend with my GF, as she goes to bed around 930 when she has work the following morning. I've started cutting sessions early, but to make up the EV I'll have to start earlier (ewwww) or mix in other formats. As I said at the start of this thread, playing other gametypes is something I'm rather open to, especially after 60 days of MTT downswinging.



PokerStars' recently "price adjusted" <$20 MTTs, which made it a bit easier to clear some table space and I plan on filling it with a variety of SNGs, Spins, and even cash. Perhaps it's a bit ambitious to learn multiple game types at once, but I'm willing to put in the work. Let's hope it pays off!

Cool, honest Update.

Keeping an eye open for other Variants seems to be the right Conclusion when noticing that relying solely on MTTs game-wise provides less Happiness than those Games you played before did. Also the Happiness provided by a Heater in MTTs, will never make up for the discomfort of just feeling slightly unable to cope with the Life beyond Poker. As long as you still play MTTs mainly , just stick as rigidly to your Day-Offs as you stick to your Marathon-Sessions.

or you can add mtt in other clients.
we gl

Only honest updates from me!

In the past, it was fairly easy to be a "specialist" in one game type, study the finer details of that format, and just grind the heck out of it. Unfortunately, the changes in ecosystem/pricing and introduction of new games/failure to properly protect them has made it much harder to be successful one-trick pony.

My advice to anyone trying to make it in poker would be to focus on less on finding game types that fit your skillset and more toward improving that skillset/bettering yourself as a poker player. That way, if your niche format dies or a different one becomes popular, you'll be better able to adapt and crush that new game.

Took a much needed day off on Tuesday and was able to restore a bit of that optimism today.



Would have been nice to ship but this 2nd place cash is actually my biggest one for the year.



Oh I've def been doing that, depending on the day I've got games from several different clients (888, Winamax, ACR, Party, etc). Biggest problem right now tho is my computer simply can't handle all of it running at once so I'll have to go buy a new one that can.

For the majority of my career, I've grinded on bottom-of-the-line laptops and it's worked out fine. But now it appears that era is over and I'll have to rely on someone other than the random dude from Best Buy Geek Squad to give me advice. I imagine some people who sub/lurk/stumble upon this thread might have some insight, any recommendations?

I just bought a pc and i was searching the best option for what it seems forever.
You get to have it with zero effort

Also keep in mind


Chears

I don´t understand this comment since I get them impression you talk about your own experience moving from Sping&Go to MTT. Spins aren´t dead, people put up consistent top results still. Also I guess the games are so hard nowadays that just being an all around player would hurt vs all the specialists, no matter what format.

It's not that I think Spins are unbeatable; as you said, there's definitely a handful of guys who continue to put up impressive results. I personally still had ~50 cEV over my last few months and I wouldn't even put myself in that "top" category.

But the format itself isn't exactly thriving -- Games were getting considerably worse for a variety of reasons and one of those reasons was rampant cheating that went largely unpunished. Don't want to turn this into a 'shots fired' sort of thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of the biggest winners were somehow in violation of the terms of service. Seems like I can't go a week without hearing a story about a current/former Spin reg who did just that.

Regardless, it's a niche format and won't be around forever, so my point is that it's important to focus on improvement if you have ambitions of sticking around in poker for the long term. By all means, if you find something that works, print in it as long as you can -- I spent most of my career mass-tabling low stakes 9-max SNGs because making $50/hour was more than enough for my lifestyle and enjoyed the relatively low variance of the grind. But if I had dedicated more of my time to improving instead of grinding, I'd likely not only be a better poker player now, but a richer one as well.

I guess all I'm saying is continuing to work on your game will make the next landing spot a bit softer.

Now your point makes perfect sense.

Realised it will be super fun to see your graph by the end of the year, since it will likely be one of the best insights in terms of expected ROI in MTTs as you are one of the few guys that puts in insane volume.. Feels like we live in a world where known EV of MTTs is a bigger mystery than the holy grail

Yeesh, that's some extra pressure. Most guys get to blame the bad results on variance!

Almost had an epic score last night. With ~25 left in the Sun Mil, I was 1/25 and my horse was 3/25. And then some bad poker stuff happened (coolered in two spots) and I was out 21st. Thankfully he went on to get 5th for $42k but the 'sting' of being so close/not winning hasn't left me just yet. It'll pass, just might take another day or so.

Taking today off to help GF with her 'Easter Dinner,' will try to snap some pics of the food.

I ve been following this thread with great enthusiasm and i am very glad to see u posting regularly.

Best of luck in April sir!!

I didn't let the disapointing finish affect my grind, but a week later I did birefly consider not flicking the SM. I thought about how empty it would feel to run deep again and not ship; ultimately I did play the Sun Mil in large part because one of my horses gave me a little pep talk. I know as the backer I'm supposed to be the one giving those pep talks, but it's really nice to get them in return when I'm struggling with the mental side of things.

Thanks man!

Made a few minor adjustments the past week in regards to schedule/table count by cutting out a few games and it seems to be working well. Made several deep runs the past few days and while that hasn't translated into any massive binks, at least I'm in the black for the month.

April MTTs:

unreg whole sched pre (given the schedule you grind + the players you stake) if you're not going to play the milball

gl rest of april brah

Haha, not all of us have the mental strength of a Jdawg.

In my defense, I did play it tho! Built up a big stack early, was CL with like 1700 left and somehow didn't cash. JJ < T7 on 876 for massive CL and then QQ < AA vs the same guy. But unlike last week where I was hesitant to flick it, I'm now eager for Sunday to come around.

how many hours / month of playing do u average usually ?

Psyduck avatar at the ft of 10kk milly, congrats if hi is playing for you.

Nice threads you have/had and I am reading all of them. Soon will catch with this.
Gl HF grinding MTTs

When I started diving into MTTs, I was playing 6-7 days a week and studying in my downtime. Already felt comfortable with most spots because of my familiarity with cEV formats, but still picked up a few things during my review sessions.

Since getting back to Canada, I'm playing less (4-5 days a week) and studying more. In addition to the frequent HH reviews for myself/stable and the group coaching, I have a friend here who plays shallow and deepstacked cash. He and I go through hands from both of our databases and talk through spots to help us find more optimal lines. Those sessions are rather spur of the moment, but I'd guess we spend 6-8 hours a week doing it.

Thanks!

Unfortunately, I didn't have any horses at the FT of the Special Sunday Million, the guy in question just happened to enjoy Psyduck as much as any regular human should.

I did, however, have a horse ship the Sunday Storm for $27k. Obv super happy for him, he plays a lower ABI so that game is effectively his Sunday Mil and he was able to take it down.