Update 12 - fun hands and frustrating finisheses

Since the last update I've played 3 sessions, focussing a lot on opening and 3-betting more. Sunday came and went; I regged for 15 hours and lost a little. Had another losing session on Tuesday and was starting to doubt myself a bit.

I then did some HH reviews and watched some more videos and felt a lot better going into today. Had a great session, with a tonne of interesting hands. I had a lot of stacks but frustratingly came up short, final-table bubbling the 22c, 25 hyper and a big 27tko. Made a questionable (read: spewy) play to bust the 22c, but apart from that I'm really happy with how I played. I pretty much used to 3-bet for value only (lol), so the transition to 3-betting 15% of hands is going to take some time, but I'm pleased with the progress I'm making.

I heard someone say this the other day and it really stuck with me:

"Not every session will be good, but there will be something good in every session".

That's the mindset I'm trying to maintain right now. I'm working hard on taking something from every session and improving in some way. I'm trying to be less afraid to make mistakes. Mistakes are great. You can learn a ****-load from them!

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Interesting hands

Had this one 3-handed in a $35/180. BTN is a reg who was trying to ICM-**** me. I didn't really want to shove pre as I think he r/c wide and flatting is the lower variance route. On the river, I think I call with 7x+ (as crazy as that might sound). I really doubt he shoves river with his strong hands (such as 89 or 2pair+), nor does he bomb Tx. I felt like he was on the level that he would bet smaller with his strong hands to get value form my hand (which looks a lot like Tx).


This one is from a 109t, first hand in vs a very good reg who would view me as a small winning player / bad reg. Pre-flop is a marginal defend (and quite possibly a fold), but as played I thought I could rep the flush really well and get him to fold a huge amount of his range. This is a run-out he 3-barrels a lot I think and I thought I could get him to fold all Kx, 2-pairs and sets.


He ended up owning my soul and calling anyway, but I'm happy with the play. I really think he should fold there vs me without history. I posted it in MSMTT with the roles reversed and everyone seemed to agree that 99 is a fold there:

$109t - pre-ante line check, set facing river shove

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Graph since last update



Summer graph to date



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Real life has been decent. Made some home-made pizzas the other day from scratch (including the base and the sauce). Here is mine with salami, cheese and capsicum:



Went to see "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" yesterday which was a great movie. Soccer tonight and then drinks with friends.

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Looking forward to the start of TCOOP tomorrow. I'll be aiming to play as many of the events as possible. The schedule looks great and the buy-ins are a really good fit for me in my current situation. Hoping to make a few runs and get me some of that #whitemeat.

Update 13 - TCOOP

Played two more sessions since the last update, including a fair few of the NL TCOOP events. Results haven't been great (in either MTTs or 180s) but what can you do. For the most part I've been happy with the way I've been playing. I'm still butchering the odd hand here and there, but I like to think that I'm able to recognise my mistakes most of the time and learn something from them.

This past week I was able to play 5 sessions, including full schedules for 3 days straight, which is really pleasing. I definitely feel as though I've optimised my routine and now it just comes down to repetition and trying to get better at playing it every day I show up to work.

So many times this week I've been sitting at my desk playing, music pumping, sun shining through the window and I've just thought "Yeah, if this is my job - life ain't so bad". I'm not sure if I'll ever make a career out of poker, but I feel as though it will always play some role in my life. I just enjoy it so much and for the time being, it's the best Summer job I could hope for.

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Graph since last update (weeeee)



Summer graph to date



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Took the day off today to do a few HH reviews and have lunch with some mates at a Belgian Bierhaus. I had baby squid with beer-battered frites:



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Really looking to the Sunday grind tomorrow. I'll probably be playing my biggest ever schedule with all the NL TCOOPs (including the 109c and 215 hyper).

gla

That pizza looks really good imo

just found your thread. very interesting read, keep it up!

gl, see u at the tables

Indeed

Thanks mate, you too.

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Update 14 - confirmation

Since the last update I've managed to play 5 full sessions. I bricked Sunday and had a couple of other losing sessions going into Friday. It's funny, you can keep saying "I'm playing well, it'll come" over and over, but until you actually start seeing some results, some hard evidence, it can be difficult to fully believe. That was me going into Friday. Feeling okay about my game, but definitely lacking a bit of swag and a bit of confidence.

On Friday, that all changed. I went deep in the $75t 500 cap for my biggest score yet, taking 3rd for $3.6k. The score itself wasn't huge in terms of monetary value, but a lot of other factors made it extremely significant for me. First off, it's a tough tourney, probably the 2nd toughest on my schedule (outside of the $55t 6-max 500 cap). Always a bunch of regs. Never too many spots at the table.

On the final two tables I had moorman and pessagno to my left which was a great experience. The final table was fairly tough as well with a number of good regs. To play well in such a stacked field definitely meant a lot to me.

The rest of the week went by without much to speak of. I had a couple more close calls, making the final two tables of the $8r 2x and a big $16t, but not much else of significance. I also had a HH review session on Saturday with my backer and was able to get some good feedback.

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Graph since last update



Summer graph to date



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Been having a great time off the tables this last week as well, watching a lot of the Australian Open tennis and Australia-India cricket. We had Australia Day here on Thursday, which is our national holiday and a great excuse to drink a lot of beer

I tested out my stove-top multi-tabling skills the other day and made spaghetti and meatballs with home-made tomato and cheese sauces:





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Super excited about Sunday this week. I'll be playing the $700 TCOOP main, along with the $215t, milly and supersonic, so it's going to be a very important day. I'm going to be starting with the early $109t TCOOP and regging through to the late-night turbos. I anticipate it will be a tough grind at times so I'll need to use my breaks effectively and be sure to maintain good emotional control.



Tunes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7C52UlwiNI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXrlyAc_Ij4

qj clear fold pre in the sb

gl today (or tomorrow?)!

Cheers, on review I definitely agree.

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Update 15 - January summary and how I almost saved the month

Sunday came and went all too quickly with me bricking all TCOOP's and ending down around $3k. I played my last session for the month today, focussing on some of the softer off-peak stuff and a bunch of turbos and had what I would describe as my most disappointing winning day ever.

I final tabled 3 MTT's, the $33 500 cap, the big $54tko and a $51 hyper and also made the final 2 tables of the $55 $10kg. I came into the cap final table 1/9, but busted here in 4th:


My backer is always telling me to ramp up the aggression late-game, which doesn't always come naturally to me. However, I managed to play 44/42 with 28% 3-bet on that final table, which I was relaly pleased with

The other two final tables didn't exactly go to plan, with me taking 8th in the $54 and 9th in the hyper for peanuts. It was a frustrating end to a frustrating month, but what can you do. I was happy with the way I played which is something I can take a lot from.

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January graph



January goals review

Overall, a pretty forgettable month results-wise. My volume was decent (but less than I had hoped), with a few too many days off and way too many < 100 game sessions. I made 7 MTT final tables in January with finishing positions of 1st, 4th, 6th, 3rd, 4th, 8th and 9th, with the one ship coming from the bottom of my buy-in range. If any of those other finishes is a 1st it's a $5k swing, so realistically I know that I'm getting close. I just need to keep grinding (and start closing too).

I am immensely happy with the improvements I've made to my MTT game this month. I'm starting to feel a lot more comfortable playing deep pre-ante and also ramping up the aggression during late-game / final table play.

Still a lot of room for improvement and a fair bit of work to do to get out of makeup and reach my $25k target, but I remain positive and I'm ready for a huge February.

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As far as my TLB bets went, I beat M1ghtyducks, but lost to What0ver9000 and theginger45, which means I broke even $-wise, but have to put up with an avatar of ginger's choosing for the duration of February. He hinted at something Ashes related... I hope it's not too bad

If anyone out there is playing a similar schedule to me and would like to make a friendly TLB bet for the month, let me know

Read thread, been interesting and has some of the better updates in this forum for sure . Just shared the "Think outside the box" and "Never give up" pics aswell


I play a similar schedule of 55fo's and 11r's during the week. No idea what I'm doing poker wise in Feb, could be from 500 to as many as 2k games on the month.

I'd be down for a little incentive TLB bet, $100 sound good? I'm backed by Zima so idm sending at end of month but if you want to escrow or w/e that's cool too


Best of luck for Feb!

Thanks. I can do up to $50, quote to book, no escrow needed.

Just PM'ed you my Skype.

such a boss..
Just read from start to finish loving it so far really loving the pics I think your going far mate.

GOOD LUCKK

Aussie aussie aussie

@Button_F1: I am considering our bet un-booked as I haven't heard back from you via PM or itt. gl this month

Thanks mate.

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Update 16 - mountain-climbing and my best day yet

Been a while since the last update, so I thought I'd fill y'all in. I've put in decent volume so far this month. I was briefly experimenting with playing off-peak, but I've again come to realise that my volume and expectation is lower and so I'm back to grinding a more standard schedule. I think it suits my lifestyle a lot better as well. I find it easier to get up and grind from 3am-2pm then grind through the night and into the early morning.

Results-wise, things were going pretty poorly; had a few breakeven days and lost a bunch on Sunday. Because of that I decided to take yesterday off and went hiking. It was great to get out, clear my head and just go exploring:







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All of which left me feeling pretty good coming into today. And what a day it was. Over the course of my 11 hour session I got:

2 2nds in $35/180s
4th in $16t for $2k
2nd in $22 FO for $3k
40th in big $109
11th in $22c
top 100 in $1r 3x

Was an awesome day. Could have been even better with deep runs in those 3 other MTT's, but I'll take it.

Right near the end of the day with 18 left in the $22c, I got a call from my university professor asking me about final year project topics. Halfway through our conversation I got all in with AJ vs QQ and binked an A on the river. All the time I'm just sitting there silently fist-pumping trying to hold my end of the discussion

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Someone in MTTc posted about a cool new Sharkscope feature the other day, which now tracks your % of winning and losing days. I think I had about 35% winning days (including when I used to just grind 180s), which was surprisingly low to me. A stat like that really emphasises the nature of tourneys and how strong you need to be mentally to survive. Losing money 2/3 times you play is pretty sick.

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Graph since last update



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Dinner with friends tonight and then back on the grizzy tomorrow morning. gla

Tunes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdO85Qf4Poc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tczH283SwkA

wtg bro!
and +1 on best time to play. been trying to get up more around 6am (4am aus ET) for my sessions.

gl tomorrow

this is brilliant

guess i just wouldve screamed "ACE FROM SPACE" in the phone or sth

Awesome read.....Been debating how to start my post black Fri grind back, and w/o the 'real' sites to play on I was afraid there was too little mtt/sng action to even clear bonuses..never mind work up a sufficient role. I can see from your thread, and others, that this line is likely no good....swings too much and too few games... Love keeping up and am rooting for ya....however I think I will stick to NL Rings and work my way back...at least until we straighten out this horrible government we have here and get Pstars back....otherwise I am moving there!

Thanks mate.

Yeah, if anything it gets me out of bed early and gives me the chance to do a lot in the day, which can't be a bad thing.

haha, I came close to blurting something like that out for sure.

Thanks man. I have heard decent things about Merge for SNG/MTT action. Do you play there at all? gl whatever you decide.

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Update 17 - the run-good continues

I've played 3 more times since the last update and although they were all winning sessions, my play varied a fair amount in quality which I am not too thrilled with.

On Thursday I played well and managed to ship a $35/180 for a winning day. I also had fun tilting some Russian fish deep in the $55t 6-max:

On Friday night I put in a relatively short off-peak session (as I was taking Saturday off to do some family stuff and go golfing). That went well too, with me final-tabling another couple of 180s and making a deep run in an $82 hyper.

Today's session was the one I really wasn't happy with. It started out alright, but after a couple of hours I found myself with a few too many tables up. I started to feel rushed, timed out a fair bit and made a couple of misclicks (including a costly one on the bubble of the $75t). When I'm playing 180s I can usually handle ~16 tables fairly comfortably, but I have been keeping that number down a bit since I've started to focus on MTT's. I neglected to do that today and paid the price. Until my comfort level improves with multi-tabling MTT's I'll need to keep that number closer to 12.

That was the main issue today, but in general my focus wasn't great at the tables. I got a bit distracted with some Skype convo's / 2+2 threads / music selection mid-session, which surely burnt a bit of $ev. It's something I'm normally fairly good with which is what was so disappointing. Tomorrow will be better.

But anyway, enough with all the negativity I was able to turn things around today and pushed myself to play out my full schedule. I managed to final table the late-night $44t after winning a couple of crucial flips vs 2+2er MadDogFerg with 2 tables left. After that, I really dominated the final table and ran well to ship it for $2.4k. It felt great not just to win, but to persevere and recover from what had been a poor session.

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February graph to date



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I'm going to do some HH reviews this afternoon for a couple of hours to try and iron out a few leaks. I'm pleased with my results lately, but I'm not completely satisfied with my overall performance. There's always room for improvement, especially for a fish like me.

After that I'm probably just going to chill and prepare for tomorrow's session. It's "Double Vision Sunday" on Stars this week which means two millys and supersonics for me. Pretty exciting! I'll be looking to keep my table count relatively low and focus on all the soft MTTs, with very few 180s.

gla

Update 18 - final thoughts

Haven't updated this in a while, so thought I would post here one more time to summarise results and collect my thoughts a bit.

I ended up having a winning month in February, although I came well short of both volume and profit goals. Throughout the last few weeks I've been telling myself "non semper erit aestas" or "Summer won't last forever", trying to put in lots of sessions and long hours while I still can.

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The reality is that in this thread, I came up short. Whilst I believe that my game improved out of sight this Summer, my main goal (of $25k profit) was not reached. The fact is that I didn't even come close. When exploring the reasons for that, a few things were apparent:

#1 I didn't put in enough volume or study. I played more (in terms of hours) than I ever have, but even still, it wasn't enough. I studied and did HH reviews but I could have done more. You can always do more.

#2 I had bad results from the games at the top of my buy-in range.

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I've studied statistics a bit and one of the first rules of stats is that you can basically come up with some kind of graph or stat to support any argument. With that being said, I will now present mine

Here's my Summer graph for buy-ins < $80



buy-ins > $80



Don't take this as a rant against variance by any means. The games at the top of my buy-in range had either tougher fields (82h, 109t, supersonic), or more runners (milly, TCOOPs), than the games from the smaller part of my schedule. These are things that would have reduced any edge I may have had, as well as increased my variance. All of which is compounded by the ridiculously small sample size of 200 games.

Although the second graph had a big impact on my overall results, I believe that due to the sample size, it is pretty much meaningless. I like to think I'd have the same outlook even if I binked something big along the way. The first graph has more meaning for me, but it's still a bunch of variance. I don't really consider even 3k MTTs to be a significant sample.

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With the Summer coming to a close I've been playing less and switching my focus to other aspects of my life, such as finishing school and improving my health ad fitness. It truly is a "grass is always greener" scenario. After a few days of grinding, I would start to miss the uni lifestyle and since starting back this week, I'm already missing the games. I suppose it's just a reminder that we always want what we don't have. It's hard not to and it can be difficult to overcome.

I haven't yet decided where poker fits in for me for the rest of the year. I'll still be playing occasionally, although not near as much. I'm in a small chuink of make-up, which I'd like to grind out and it would also be nice to make my backers some profit on top of that. I feel as though I owe them that. At the moment I'm unsure what kind of poker schedule I'll be able to maintain, but I guess it's something I will sort out eventually and something I will get better at as I learn to manage my time a bit better.

Thanks to all who followed this thread. It's been fun.

Enjoyed reading, how did you do TLB wise in Feb out of interest? I finished with 3.7k tlb on the month but hardly played online at all.

And where did you find the pictures at the end of some of your posts? Those were kool too

Cheers, I ended up with ~6.1k I think.

The pictures were just random ones I'd seen on 9GAG / fb / 2+2. No one site in particular.

Just found this thread and managed to read it all Seems like an exciting summer for you with the MTT swingaments. Have fun at Uni -life is short so make sure you do what you <3 more than what you have too If you're ever on Skype stop by and say hello. from Norway

Thanks mate, trying to remember that.

Will hit you up on Skype next time I'm on

nice thread ferry. too bad i just stumble upon it. ship pots!

Cheers Mike.

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Epilogue - it won't be Summer forever

Since the last update and the end of Summer, life has changed a lot. I'm back at uni, on campus 3-4 days a week for lectures and group meetings. It's a struggle at times, but it gets me out of the house, meeting new people and thinking about new things. I find I'm socialising more and my fitness, diet and sleep schedule are all improving too.

The one thing that's suffered is my poker volume. Between uni, soccer and going out, I haven't found myself with a lot of time to spare. I haven't had a chance to play a full schedule all month and I've been limited to the odd off-peak session, regging turbo MTTs and 180s for no more than 5 hours at a time.

The one silver lining to this is that when I have played, I've been really enjoying it. Coming off a 3 or 4-day break each time, I've been genuinely excited to play.

The really ironic thing (and the main reason I'm posting another update ) has been my results since the Summer ended. The sample-size is tiny and the graph is meaningless (just like the -$13k one I posted before), but it does make me laugh that the moment Summer ended, is the moment the real heat began.

In March so far, over 5 small sessions, I've managed to run as hot as I ever have before. I've had good results at the top of my buy-in range (chopping an 82h and taking 2nd in a 55ct) and just last night I chopped a 5r 2xt for $4k, clearing ever last cent of make-up in the process:



Statistically the results mean nothing, but with make-up gone, it feels great nonetheless

Nice hotrun man!

Sweet man, really great that your finding a way to balancing everything in your life.

Im on the exact same boat, im at university doing a great course, im 20 years old and should be going out and meeting people everyday, i want to keep up a good diet and fitness, and i am super passionate about poker and want to keep it up.

Im really struggling to balance all of this, and i keep putting poker first and other things off. Any tips/ advice you can give me for getting your priorities done first.