It's really sick how series make you either the happiest or saddest grinder based purely on how well you run in that weeks.

At the start you are always like "ah, there will be tomorrow, so much more to play" but as the days tick down you allow yourself to get dragged into delusion that you're the most unluckiest player in the world, you see those same regs attempting to put their stacks on fire but just managing somehow to get there.

For me this week I really felt abit down, I had had those good runs in the last 5-7 days that just got ended short for whatever. I started to look into my results a little bit deeper.

$0-$900 I run at a pretty solid $140 abi with 72% roi, over $1m in profit and more or less no dramas.

https://gyazo.com/acfd16bc4aa38b806cc40b8a21db7943

At $1000+ I've only managed to play 400 games, but I'm around -$250k D:

https://gyazo.com/b5415ce52d7c9bcfa1bb571305b1fd28

It's kind of interesting how this makes you/me feel. It makes me question things at first, "am I really just a 0-900 player, is that the games I should be playing" then you have to snap yourself out of it, tell yourself its 500 ****ing games and the games you play at 0-900 are probably tougher than the WCOOP/SCOOP 1ks etc with better structures and whatever else.

The thing is that $1533 (LOL) abi is really absurd, if I was playing 100th of the stake (15abi) the downswing would be $2.5k (this seems so wrong and I've double and triple checked but seems right?!) which just really shows the whole thing. How many horses have I had that have lost $2.5k at some time at $15 abi? Every single one of them!

So it just goes to show that these high stakes tournaments, WCOOPs, SCOOPs with large fields are really just a joke. Sure the best guys will have less downswings than the guys they are better than etc, but at the amount of games we will get in over the next few years theres just no way for us to control it.

So the question is where to go from here, or what should you do if you're playing mid stakes and starting to play higher stakes?

At this point, I feel OK bankroll to just keep unlimitedly firing all of these kind of events, but at the point where I perhaps do lose a lot of my bankroll, or I invest it or keep it less liquid etc its EXTREMELY important to practice BRM at the higher stake games you play.

There is nobody in the world who is good enough to play aggressive BRM at an ABI that is 10x the amount of their normal games. If you are staked by a company and youre playing $20 abi normally, if it comes to WCOOP/SCOOP time and you get to the point where you really want to play high and "battle" just understand the variance of that amount of games. Make sure you do things to decrease your variance, don't reg with less than xbbs, make sure to swap with other guys of similar ability etc.

For guys who are coming up and wanting to play hihger stakes, I would say that the very important thing is to not let high stakes control your whole year. Once you are starting to play $2k abi during WCOOP/SCOOP its very tough to then go and grind all of those softer days, thats why I have the most respect for Lena, Darwin and Graftekkel. They are the kind of guys who will show up 3-4 days a week, every week. If you allow yourself to get into some backing deal with is centred around glory, i.e live stops, WCOOP and SCOOP then I would seriously recommend just getting as far out as possible.

At one point if I had chosen to get staked for that part of my career I would have been in something like $350+k of makeup, maybe I should have done it!

I've also spoken about this before, but its so important not to get bitter to your friends when they run good over samples you run bad. Lets say youre in a stable and one guy wins the sunday million twice whilst you brick it every single week as your top end buy in, that shouldnt make you angry, his win should be your win almost, what you guys have studied together actually worked and watching him in those final 2 tables doing the things your coach coached you together should be motivating, it works and your day may never come, but at least all the time and effort your putting into this means something. Same as if its somebody you studied with, if you both learn $55 mtts and then he goes on a sick run, plays an ept that you cant afford to because you ran really bad at mid stakes and then wins, you should be really happy about that. I really struggled for a long time accepting this kind of thing and was sad to see people I was close with succeeding in times when I failed, but if you're reading this and think that you think the same sometimes, from speaking with players its apparently very common and you shouldn't think you're the worst person in the world, I kind of quietly thought I was worst person in world, but when I started to confront the issue it was actually really easy to get over and I really don't get that at all anymore. I'm really lucky that I'm in a great support group, people like European and Elmerixx will always be rooting hard for me and on the rail when I'm deep in stuff which is great, hard to root again those kind of guys no matter how they run in comparison to you.

I think the key ingredients to succeeding are:

1- Dedication
2- Find a good support group
3- Don't try and play higher than you should, stick at a level and crush it and build competence and confidence through improved fundamentals
4- Understand the variance of higher stake games and leave all ego out of it. If you are on a great path, very happy and fluid then starting to change that path is extremely dangerous. I've seen horses that were CRUSHING $30abi so so hard and just wanted to accelerate their growth, sometimes I forced that growth and then at a quick rise in stakes they weren't used to losing these kind of $ amounts and then were in a big makeup back at $30abi with no confidence at all, sometimes 1 step forward will very heavily end up being 3 steps back.

Anyway, busted 1st 25k bullet before I wrote this, going to jump in again now.

THE TRUE MOAN IN.

I btw, wasn't saying at all I was running bad, this is VERY standard, obviously running good/bad live is on an even smaller, uncontrollable level, which is even scarier.

Being a live mtt reg, must literally be the easiest yet toughest thing in the world lol

Oh, and the biggest thing, when somebody is crushing and you see them do 2-3 really bad things, dont just think omg this guy is such a runreg, look into it more.

So many people saying vea is **** and overrated etc, I watched him a lot recently and I actually think he is very good. There is certain parts of peoples games you may not want to implement, but that doesn't mean there isn't really effective and successful things they do.

From a mixed game veteran's perspective, I think this is a weird way to look at things. We have to use aggressive BRM at the high buyins because there just aren't that many of them. You can talk about having 400 tournaments in the $1k+ bracket, but I'm pretty sure in my thirteen years of playing there haven't been more than 100 $1k+ tournaments total in the games I play, counting the WSOP. It would be pretty ludicrous to need a 200+ buyin bankroll to play them.

I think shot-taking is shot-taking for NLHE players too, it's just you get used to being able to blow up volume and maybe you don't have to get as systematic about it. But if you're going to play above where there's volume, it's important to have the aggressive bankroll strategy ready.

finished 3/18 in day one of the 25k. 17 get paid, $60k mincash, $750k for first. Big day tomorrow!

GL tomorrow boss. top4 would put your $1k+ graph in the green

Nice work man, good luck tomorrow. Enjoyed reading your other posts too today.

good luck in the 25k, what a field feels good to hang in there with the best huh ?

always have lurked this thread but wanted to say that last post was great. I watched a ton of the 25k today and watching that field is awesome. Good luck Pads take it down tomorrow

GL GL


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Great post and just a great diary mate. Been following you for a while now. Rail you occasionally. Inspiring stuff. Good luck tonight

Great post, gl today !

great realistic post. i think it's somewhat natural to feel jealousy and injustice when someone in your peer group/ability level is achieving top percentile results and you are in the lower echelon of run good. very important to focus on being happy and rooting for them/learning from them (even though it's difficult sometimes).

best of luck in 25k

good luck pads, going to be insane FT, especially if u make it!

raising to 55.555 with the 555
gl

FT of the 25k, glgl!

I don't know what the **** that hand was, but gg dude

the runout of the last hand ... gg

Jesus that's nasty, gg

Dirty runout, gg good score.

5 left in 25k.. did not end well

Thanks for all of the nice words and support, its really nice to have.

I'll be honest, when I lost the 75 on the 986 last week I took it really terribly, I thought it was me against the world, me running the worst, everybody else running the best, I tried to carry on but then losing the A8 to KQ on A82 with 5 left in the 5k I was really thinking negatively, nobody runs worse than me and lots of bull****.

Tonight when he hit, I don't want to say I expected it or something moany like that, but afterwards I just smiled, I really just smiled and instantly started sending money to people who bought, wasn't really effected 0.1% negatively which is super weird considering with 30 left in the 2k I was swearing and shouting lol.

Not sure what it is, I told a friend that running bad last week is probably the best thing that could ever have happened to me, it numbed me for this run bad, it made me just numb of all negative feelings and thats something I've never been able to control previously. This time last year I would have been soooooo tilted, would have spite railed against friends, made enemies in poker, made villains different colour tags, but really just super neutral and zen now, that to me is way bigger achievement than being 98% to 3/4 in the toughest tournament of the year playing for $750k.

I'll take tomorrow off and then come back on Sunday with a good minset and try my best to get another score.

BTW, I updated on instagram story (bitb staking) all day today, how I prepared for session, what I think is lucky (lol) and stuff, check it out!

gg, ig stories are lit.

Was sweating the FT on twitch and when I saw your bust out I assumed there would be at least some tilt on IG stories but you were seemingly super composed, nice run!

Yeah, you'll get used to beats. It's really not great thing since you easily start expecting the worst at every occasion, but at least your computer mouses are bit more safe.

Good plan to take a day off before big day. GL at the highroller events.