WPT is over. Financially not the best thing that ever happened to me (down to 52%) but being locked in a room full of sickos for a week was definitely inspiring (and heaps fun^^)

These last 6 weeks of "Fullmetal Berserk-Mode" have taken it's toll. Got home yesterday and slept for 11 hours straight. Go out for a bit to look for a new appartment, come back, sleep another 7h. Alarm rings but my brain is still fried and I have to take the day off to be fresh for sunday.. Play videogames for 2h and fall asleep again for 3h.. I was just a little tired..

Despite the occasional punt and sizing error these last days due to sleeping <6h a day I think the effort I've put in is fairly respectable.

I sure as hell played some half-assed sessions this passed year by simply not being present and just clicking away..
April/August/November were complete fails pokerwise and I still beat myself up for it but what can you do..

I think December was the first month ever since I deposited 50$ on ftp ~9 years ago, where I logged in more hours live then online.
I am going to stay until march at least and up until then have to evaluate if having the accessibility to play live is worth it (10% rake makes it a lot less appealing) and compensates for staying in this godforsaken city. Weirdly this was the term that came to mind when I was wandering around "Baclaran".. A bit ironic given this might be the most religious country in the world outside of the Vatican..

Tough patch friend, it seems like the live pokerz variance has not been in your favor... Bummer If you were to go back at the beginning of this challenge and imagine yourself being at 52% at this point in time, would it of been over expectations, decent, or disappointing?

If you plan on staying a long time in Manila and need a getaway weekend, I would suggest going to White Beach in Mindoro : it is a nice quiet town with some hilarious entertainment in the evening (AKA, LBs putting on some shows ).

Loved the daily report of yours, especially the Mike Mcdonald angles, levels and trolls You had me l0ling and made me look up Mcdonald and found an interesting article of his :

http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/Time...o-go-from-here

And some Q & A :

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/commen...er_player_ask/

peace

I don't talk to many people in poker so can't really confirm or deny the quantity of people who don't realize this. However I was the only person in the field Colman asked to swap with and Fedor and I swapped too so at minimum there are 2 players not realizing this insane skill gap

Tehehehehe, was gonna say Timex is good lurker and expect a post

Hope my $$$ was well spent in Hotter $16.50 yesterday

What else do you expect of someone who needs to spend 300k (?) on a car to boost his self-esteem?
Someone who is that insecure googles his own-name thrice a day (Tîmex probably while nitting it up in SHRs waiting for 99+, AQs+) to know what random buttonclicker 35$ abi regs think of him.
I've spent 0$ on cars in my life and still I've always managed to be punctual and be reasonably successfull with women. ASK ANYONE... Lambo idiot!

Also lol, if Steve O'Dwyer had run like Tîmex in Highrollers he would've shipped 6 of these things by now. Of course Fedor/Colman are gonna swap with him if he's running 4kk above EV and they both run ridiculously above EV themselves (quite the coincidence huh?).
Not so hidden brag btw Sunrunner lambo nit idiot!

Next time I bump into Dan Coleman I'm a make sure to show him your 2/5 ZOOM graph..

If you don't want people to unfairly criticize you on the internet you compliment them back when they go out of their way to compliment you!
For example, you can say something nice about their hair! (I have really nice hair)

Anyway, I feel dumb arguing w/ you!

[x] Get more people to stop liking Mike McDonald
[x] Be less Canadian then Mike McDonald

2 out of 8. Only 6 more to go!

Nah, I never win these when they matter (KK<AA for ~1k effective a couple days ago.. yawn)

wrt epic Tîmex feud:
I thought the homage I paid to "NVG" wrt my language made it obvious that I was trolling (shocker!) but I recieved some pm's from a Tîmex fanboy who takes life very serious so thought I should make things clear for those who unlike me, don't spend an unhealthy amount of time on 2+2..


A couple days ago I woke up, turn on my computer, open up 2+2 and saw that I got a pm. It was from.. Tîmex!
I laughed really, really hard for a good 5 minutes holding my belly before reading a single word.
I then read the first few sentences and laughed even harder..
Because I enjoy a good privacy I'm not going to spoil what he wrote (the whole context is hilarious though) but it was heartwarming and I just want to s**k his dick even more now..

/feud over (need new archenemy)

Fu matteo

You need to try harder bro. I like you way too much right now!

Sigh I tried

TCOOP = BOUNCECOOP?

Renewed the ICMIZER subscription to get ready for TCOOP.
Definitely eager to play even if it's only ~20-23 events I'm looking forward to.
(Ty Stars)

Full Ring Turbo/Hyper MTTs are the only formats where I can keep up with the bosses.. (esp. if Moorman keeps on openjamming ATo for 15bb from utg)

Created this chart a while ago to keep track of my reviews.
Putting some work into them reshove and r/c spots now..

I say BRING IT!!

how we should feel when a well known mtt pro seats next to us at the TCOOP tables



turbos for life my friend! even beyond its death

good luck

^Haha. Was already considering adding something along the lines of:



in that post above!

Thx bro! May we both bink!

Built some momentum these last days. Lots of runs when i bother to play online in 1k+ fields including a 33rd in TCOOP-04 yesterday and bb/100 is looking healthy again (>5bb) for the last 2 months which is a bit comforting. Unfortunately Stars keeps me on life tilt with putting ultra progressive turbo knockouts in the TCOOP schedule (srsly ead stars^^) which I ended up skipping last minute because i don't want to be a part of this bulls**it.

Cash results are picking up as well. Booked a nice +2.6k session tonight where literally everything I did seemed to work.
Don't know how you guys feel about HH's but I generally find them pretty boring to read if Sauce or Ike is not involved in the hand. There was a pretty interesting spot vs a fellow 2+2er where I 3bet/c in a good squeeze spot ~275bb deep bb vs his co iso (saw him iso J9s from early/mid position twice deep vs fun players) while having a 3bet dynamic and me VPIP'ing >35% that session. x/c JsJx twice on 642ssKx and turn it into a bluff on Ts river. Like ~$700 into ~1350. He tanks forever, stares me down and eventually folds. Noticed ingame how I don't have (need) a x/c call range otr and there's a not so low % he jams river with worse. Live-Regs just don't 4bet wide enough for value in these spots from my experience so think x/c turn is not thaaat debatable when he is as unbalanced pre as i thought he'd be. If he ended up folding Aces there I'm obv golden. If he'd snap me w/ AK i ragequit poker obv.

I srsly need to stop randomly pointing at things that look edible when I order food..

I've had pig heart in Cambodia served by that same sadistic Khmer friend that got me eating dog, got served chicken heart in Vietnam (luckily easy to figure out) and now cow heart in the Philippines and it took me way too long to notice.. like 1/3 too long to notice..

Feeling like:


MatteoBounce Targaryen ITT

chicken heart is delicious. rest, be glad u got to try it imo

I don't have enough heart (for heart)
But doesn't come as a surprise that you like chicken.. *cough*.. blakk.. *cough*.. man!


hmmm.. booked a cheap flight to Macau cause you need proof of an onward flight to get to the Phils, knowingly that there's a <33% I'd go.. but now I'm curious and kinda want to take a peak for a couple of weeks and check out the 25/50hkd at the Wynn.
I keep hearing that the games have dried up outside of the nosebleeds and the private games but the word of a live-reg is not to be taken that serious as they have a completely different understanding of what a "good game" looks like.. The other day this Italian reg leaves me his seat at the 200/400 game telling me that he doesn't think it's all that good/tough or w/e. I look around see two known recreational players, 3 or 4 of the nitregs and 2 people I haven't seen before and tell him I think this is juuuuuuust fine! ^-^

Macau is crazy, crazy expensive though and looking at past results I seem to always get destroyed when I'm getting my feet wet in new games until I finally make the right adjustments.. which takes me wayyyyy to long and is a huge leak of mine.
cliffs of past year:

-drooped 2k in the 1/2 game in Sihanoukville before i started winning/ended up crushing
-dropped 4k in the underground games in Phnom Penh before I started crushing. Ended up 2k in the green and the games were terrific..but then I left because I don't like money..
-dropped 3k in Manila punting, punting, punting, started to break even in the games, then slowly grinding it up for minimum wages and now maybe not crushing yet but beating it very solidly (def more then anyone else, which is obv not a brag or anything)

If that pattern continues I'm gonna lose the lots in Macau right before I start winning but have to catch a plane and gtfo and bye bye Hong Kong dollars etc. etc.

Goodbye stupid pussy ass downswing!
Up 6.1k in the last 3 sessions of live cashamentz (25hours)
Running absurdly well live is so fun. Pretty challenging to keep a straight face when you just keep on flopping it all the time, get AA-KK-AA back2back2back etc.
It's weird I only went to play on days where the TCOOP schedule didn't look like much value and to prevent burning out by skipping some days.
Only wanted to stay a couple of hours but of I'm course not gonna hit&run and be a douche.. the "live-RNG" just didn't let me leave!

I guess Macau will still be around in 3 months^^...
maybe not..

^make that 7.3k in 32hours

This is getting ridiculous now

So.. This dude sits down at the table and has this red 5 peso chip amongst other chips of all kinds of numerations in his stack. That's a 10 cent chip! Awesome I thought. Gotta have one I thought. So went to the cashier and got my 5 peso chip in exchange for 5 pesos!



Now, here's a picture of the 5 peso chip rungood monies:



6/6 winning sessions
408k pesos (8.7k usd)
43.5 hours

legit 5 peso chip!

is this all from ~1/2 or do you play ~2/4 there?

anyway nice results

Sweet run good, keep it up

I take it you are storing those monies at the casino? Never easy to be a live player in a foreign land, especially when you travel around to different countries... (then again, what else are socks for in a tropical country, right ).

Thought about this for a while and it made me revaluate my approach to results and expectations. I broadly remember a goat "SEABEAST" post from ages ago where he described how he only ever checks the cashier to know if he has enough money to be able to play game x without risking to go bust.
He didn't care about the $ at all. It was all about moving up and beating the next level. I think a lot of the high stakes endbosses, Isildur being the prime example, have this kind of "gamer-heart" whereas most players care almost exclusively about money.

While I, like most other players have been thinking about my EV from time to time, I didnt' have any monetary expectations from the beginning of this challenge.
As I will always be willing to put in the necessary effort to stay profitable in whatever I choose to play, setting aside 200k with poker will be one of the easier things that I plan on doing and just be a matter of time. But, while I could easily see myself living like this for another decade, for various reasons I feel pressured doing it at a much faster rate and am aware that I could've done a much better job and didn't give poker enough of my heart.
At the time when I wrote the OP I really, really loved the idea to just quit poker for good as soon as I achieved what I wanted to achieve.
I mean it would be huge to leave it behind after being such a big part of my life for such a long period.. The problem is that this skewed my approach to the game and I began to see it more and more as a means to an end. I think this is one of the main reasons I have struggled to stay passionate about it at times and didn't spent as many hours in the "lab".
I could've done much better/worse resultswise and would feel exactly the same.

The other and even much more significant reason is, what I touched on about 4 months ago when I found myself deep in this "crisis of identity" (meh that's not the right term) which I am still confronted with and takes away most of my effort and energy, often times just subconciously.
Merely thinking about it and reading Dostoyevsky didn't seem to help, so that's when the "3 measures" came into play.

2nd measure: Face your Fear



At the beginning of march I will tour around the Philippines for 2-4 weeks and likely spent >1k on renting out gear and compressed air to look for sharks.
It would already be done by now if the Vietnamese wouldn't just eat them all and the Thailand-trip didn't get canceled.
Now I have to do it here instead, alongside of sting-rays, highly venomous water snakes, stone fish & jellyfish and some of the biggest salt-water crocodiles on earth... Although those should be easy to avoid (I think?).
Srsly if I die it's on you Lukas!

2 years ago there was a good chance that no person on earth was as affraid of sharks as I was. I remember having talks with friends about being confronted with sharks, wether it would be above or under the surface, might be the most nerve-wracking and terrifying experience you could possibly make (given that Japanese ghosts don't really exist?)
There's much more to it then their appearance and their expressionless stare.
I mean, just the suspense that comes with it would've killed me. The fact your at the mercy of the shark. They adjusted to the ocean for a gazillion years while you can not even breathe underwater..

I believe it all stems from a childhood experience in a theme park. Where, while sitting on this "boat", floating on the river being completely immersed watching Mexican figurines singing and dancing, having a great time all of a sudden this f**king (fake?) shark jumps out of the water.. I was horrified.. Put a fuc**ng PG-13 on that bitch.. Now I have to go dive with sharks because of you idiots!

good read man, swimming with sharks sounds pretty baws, I've only ever done it online mostly on Sundays

Haha yeah socks ftw or use an empty pack of pringles, put monies inside and leave a couple of chips on top.. Genius!

It's all stored in a shoebox which can't be good.
Have to deposit it at the casino, finally.

Mostly 100/200php, so yeah ~2$/4$. Some nights it turns into a forced straddle or there's 1 table of 200/400 but sadly not often.
The last 2 days there was a 1k/2k/4k revolving around Paul Phua and some Chinese big shots. Richard Yong stopped by at some point.
I kinda want to hug him and kiss him on his forehead everytime I see him. He reminds me of "Hans Moleman" from the Simpsons..


I wonder how he would react/what would happen if I would go for it..

Last night Jungleman showed up for the first time.
Seemingly bored playing such low stakes as they are usually playing 1 house/2 house upstairs.