really good and interesting posts from both OP and dank, keep going

gl battling the demons, it can be hard sometimes and punting (sportsbets) is always just around the corner when you're in the gambling world.

DankDaddy. Much love, always appreciate your input and I really appreciate the stuff that you take the time to write.

If I come Vegas for the $3k PLO and you're about please get in touch as I owe you several overdue beers.

End of Blog

I've decided I'm going to end the blog. As with the last one I just wanted this one to be a few months and to try and help me get back on my feet and to remain accountable for some of my actions.

I got many messages on here and privately with regards to improving my health and I can't thank those posters enough, a lot of what has been suggested I've tried or put into practice and it has been a great help.

It's come to light that a lot of regs and friends of mine have been reading this, mainly people I either play with day to day or week to week. I'm quite an open person and write in a tell all style and whilst many have complimented me for that I don't want this amount of personal information and thoughts being read by those I play and battle with daily. This is the main reason for me bringing this to a close.

May Recap

Taking a little break to end the month so feel I can wrap the month up now.

All in all was kinda happy with my play in May. Put in good volume at the end of the month after being on holiday for the start of it. Games have been bigger on average this month and so I've been swinging a little harder than I would hope. I might look at moving down for a month or two and try to decrease my stress and anxiety.



Felt like I could of had a better month if I'd table selected a little better and made some better professional quits but it's another month in the black so I can't complain.

Recap since the start of the thread

I'll post my stats from the start of the thread also. I have ran incredibly well. I started this thread with £4000 to dedicate towards live poker. I ran well online and ran very well taking some shots early on off £10kish in the live games after grinding low to start the year.



I ran well to start but I think overall my results are about par for the course for a good reg in the games. In general in London we playing £5/10/25 most sessions so it's not really much more that 30bi's. I think realitically I'd be better off just playing £5/10 everyday but it appears that the 25 straddle with remain a permanent feature for the rest of the year.

So that's that, my 2016 so far and hopefully it'll continue in a positive vein.

Stay happy, most importantly stay healthy. Poker isn't dead yet, it just requires more work than it used to. Good luck all. Big A.

I hope you're able to continue in the way you have been over this thread. I'll be dropping you a PM during the next decent live event for a meet! Gl with it all boss

gl!

GL Boss! Keep crushing

Decided as I've been laying in bed a ton lately with stomach cramps I'd get the old Mac out and write a little again..

Poker

Poker since I closed down the thread has been a little frustrating. I went on a £50k downswing through a mixture of playing 10/25 nearly everyday and a ton of later night 10/25/50. I think there were 3 sessions out of 20 where I played pretty poorly. Other than those 3 sessions though I think the rest of my play was actually my best of the year. One thing I've been happy with has been working a solid A game into the mix, as opposed to what I'd call my 'expansive A game'. Anyone who's ever played with me will probably have a good idea what the expansive one entails. I think through off the table studying that my game is sharper now that it's ever been. I used to find thinking over spots really tedious and boring and assumed no one really did it (I think a lot of live HS guys probably don't still though tbh). Nowadays I find it fascinating and love immersing myself into the equity numbers and so on, or thinking of really narrowing the best EV way to approach stuff in these so called 'standard spots'. Speaking of which we'll look at one now:

Hand

This hand is from a £2/5 game last night. I was sat deep (£2.2k) and the main villain in the hand has me covered. The game was playing extremely passive, probably less than 3-5% 3betting going on.

Early Limper, I make it £25 with QJJ8dd. Usually in most of my games i'm either limping behind or pitching this (pretty unlikely I do this unless some super awkward stack sizes differentials going on). In this game though with little limp raising or any pre flop aggression happening I didn't mind opening it up and building the pot a little pre. Btn flats, blinds flat and limper flats.

Flop is a decent QJ5r with one diamond. Checks to be I bet £100 (£125 probably better, would never go smaller here. Folds to SB (main villain) who flats. Lol, live stuff, but I picked up on the fact that he seems like he wanted to make some aggression with his hand, aka he liked his hand but he seemed to then rethink and decide calling was a better line. On a flop this dry and with stacks as deep as ours he probably doesn't have a raising range at all, considering no complete droolers in the pot. Now the limper, who is loose but reasonably passive jams for £425. He's gonna basically have a range of sets, wraps, QJ, and some random stuff like Q5 etc....

My default now said jam. I don't love it because I know villain in SB can have full wraps etc and can potentially have an eq advantage if other villain say holds QJ or 555 etc. That said with this £425 and other pre flop monies in there we're never folding our hand unless we could see villain had QQ. I think SB isn't QQ heavy here tho, he's a good reg and knows how passive flop play can be. He'll check QQ some % of the time as he know's i'll bet this board a good % given my isolation raise pre and it smashing my range. However, he'll also lead here a bunch and try and build his own pot, a higher % of the time. I thought before jamming that perhaps flatting might be a higher EV play here with us having position and bd diamonds. If we flat there is a chance SB jams say, QJxx, that said he's a very good reg and might sniff out this isn't wise. He certainly might jam 55xx. I he's got the wrap he'll flat unless he has say a QKT9 type hand which I would imagine he'd now jam suspecting he has excellent equity vs my wrap hands. The downside is perhaps just us jammin and him folding say some lower wrap stuff and then us being up against value hands that we dominate might be larder EV. That say flatting and then taking it to a turn against the SB villain and giving him an excellent price on his strong range hands he's flatted the 100 with. If we flat and he flats behind his range is face up and we don't make any mistakes on turn, ie incorrectly folding on 9x or 8x etc. I think the spot is very close, I think in general jamming would be hard to argue against but it got me thinking and thinking of all the other possibilities that happen in deep PLO.

Unfortunately given my luck lately SB had AKT9 and limper had AKT2. We ran it twice and the they both scooped me for a decent sized pot for 2/5, ah well, such is poker. The hand though is definitely someone interesting I think.

Future

One of the good ways this thread helped me at the start of the year was to help me see the life outside of poker and perhaps giving up always playing the biggest games in order to just grind it out and have a more balanced life. The truth is, as much as we all love poker on this forum the life outside of poker is far more interesting and vibrant. At least that's what I've come to believe. I've done a really good job of game selecting recently, the bigger games I've played in have had solid 7/10+ line ups. I've played a lot of a 2/5 which has been super soft in general. I even left a 2/5 the other day to sit in a 1/2 that I figured was way softer and would garner a higher hourly. Something like that might be second nature to many and many pro's but to me that's something I've never got the hang off and have been doing lately.

Health

As many who read at the start of the blog will know I struggled a bunch at the start of the year and, well, throughout the year really will some mental illness issues. My anxiety hasn't gone and it still rears it's head in my day to day life but I feel I control it a lot better now. This past weekend I was the best man at my best friends wedding in Holland. As the best man one of my tasks was to do a speech to everyone during dinner. I did this easily and if I dare say so myself I did it pretty darn well too. I think that was a big jump and shows the improvements I've made between now and the start of the year.

As one of the main blogs I read on here is Benabadbeat's I thought it poignant to mention mental therapy also, as I know this is something he's working in and towards. Since March I've seen a therapist every 1-2 weeks. It's £80 a session and I think it's always worth a try. People think there is a stigma behind it but realistically when you tell people you pay £80 to go and chill Frued styles and just yap away to someone about everything that's on your mind and to dig into why these things might be on your mind I have found that actually most people find it pretty cool if anything. I will say that it's not something that has instant results or any results in a way, it really depends on each case. I'm actually going to stop it as I think although it's nice to talk to someone I can get by without now. If I start feeling bad again though I won't hesitate to dive back in.

Hope all are well, gl to some of the boiii's I know left battling in the main, hope y'all get huge scores.

Big A.

Read the entire thread from start to finish, found it super inspiring how honest and explicit/candid you've been in each post. I hope to recreate some of that candidness in my own thread. Really glad you managed to spin it back up to the midstakes as you sound like a super-nice guy.

Its always interesting to hear from the midstakes end bosses while us LLSNL players try to grind it up in WOAT daytime £1/£2 games best of luck bud.

Haha thanks for the kind words. Still enjoy a little £1/2 jaunt myself tho! Read your thread too, glad to see the London grinders doing well

£1/2ds and £2/5 hourlies are really undervalued too. The hourlies there vs real world job hourlies are pretty massive, with the exception of top, top jobs. With many casino's offering the freerolls on top, good rolls can be built on those games with far less stress!

sshhh! ; )


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Lol sorry my bad 🙈

some people have said lately pokemon go has helped for their anxiety issues, might be more social anxiety but oh well, free to play

gotta catch em all

Yes some of my friends have been on this.

Not my bag I gotta say.

My anxiety is mainly a health based anxiety, so fortunately social sides of it effect me less.

That said, if poker goes any worse, I might have to replace it with Pokemon to fill the time!

Little Update

Mainly been playing a little lower lately, which has kinda been a shame. The big games have looked really amazing recently. I heard there were some 6figure pots played this past week, must have been a hell of a long time since that's happened at the Vic.

Obviously a game of that size and those swings is way out of my comfort zone right now. So i'll just have to sit on the sidelines and enjoy hearing the stories to be content.

Grinding lower has been a little up and down. I have a superiority complex when playing lower. This is true and I cannot deny it. I think that definitely leads to what Tendler refers to as entitlement tilt. Like I'm losing in some standard (standard for lol low stakes liveaments) and getting annoyed. For instance recently some jackass is tilting his brains off and I decided to roll in the QQ53ds pre against him for 200bb, I know the variance is high but we're playing lower and I'm happy to go after every little edge. He rolls over the K952 and that ends up being the winner. Annoying, but standard nonetheless. 62% equity favourite, I should be happy with the EV.

Losing Patience with the masses, so this K952 jackass starts being passively annoying and tilting. Stuff like making the game all about him, now tanking about every menial decision. Trying to appear jovial but really just being self serving. Eventually we get into some spot where he clicks pre and I pot and there is like 5 over caller. It comes back to him and he's in some spot where it's like 35 to call into like 200 or whatever. He starts doing this weird as *** math out loud, going on about 3to1 and all this sht. Anyway I crack and tell him to stop being a moron and to hurry the *** up. I guess quite aggressively. Not really the way to go about treating a fish in your games, regardless of the stakes.

So yeah I wasn't really happy with my attitude or conduct in that spot. I mean if I'm gonna grind lower, I should be doing exactly that; Grinding. Just appreciating the hourly that's there for what it is and holding myself in the same manner I would in a higher stakes games, i.e treating the fish well, having a good persona at all times etc.

Real Life Nonsense. My girlfriend is trying to persuade me to go to a yoga class tomorrow morning. Naturally to me giving up my Saturday morning to go and sweat away in weird position in a room full of randoms sounds horrendous. That said, I'm sure these are the normal life activities that are healthy to both the body and mind. During seeing my therapist he has on many occasions tried to persuade me to do something like group yoga, so I imagine it can only be a good thing.

Help Me Tournament Bosses

So this weekend I decided to fire the £170 SuperStack at the Vic. A few NL regs told me it was likely to get chunks up top and would obviously be mega soft being a low stakes live tourney.

Both these things came to fruition.

It ended up with £22k up top and the level of play was hilariously bad. Obviously in a bowl comp you're gonna get a lot of fish but everyone who I could tell thought they were 'good' were making huge, huge errors. My MTT experience is punting a few for a couple of wins online and watching some random Sam Greenwood videos on RIO. I found this was sufficient to give me a pretty massive edge in the field.

Didn't I ask for help though?

This is true. I do have a hand I would like some MTT'er responses to if I'm lucky enough. So I made day 2 with 190k, average was about 130k. My day started really well, my table was incredibly soft and I was able to chip up to about 450k in the first few levels with a mixture of aggression and being gifted chips.

There was one of these 'thinks he's good regs' moved to my table. He had been on my day1 table and was basically very loose and aggro with his pre flop strategy. In my opinion he was terrible. He came to the table and had gone from 350k to 205k playing pretty spewy...then this hand takes place.

He opens utg+1 to 12k with blinds 2000/4000(1k ante). Old passive man flats in mid off 140k with what is likely best hand AQo and worst hand QJo and all the small pairs. I have TT on the button. I 3b to 46.5k - basically my thought process was simple, i've got the best hand 98% of the time and the UTG+1 is gonna 4b 100%. Folds to UTG+1 and he 4b jams for 205k. Old man folds, I snap and lose to AJo to fall back to 250kish.

My question is, am I giving up too much here taking this higher variance line vs just calling on btn and keeping pots small? I mean I think he jams here as wide as any Ax, smaller pairs, suited and none suited broadways. If I win the pot I'm on 700k with tourney average at about 260k.

After that I was super card dead and grinded a 8-16bb stack for 3 hours mainly having to fold everything and I min cashed for £331. Brains.

I was super happy with my discipline however and think I played the whole tournament pretty well, applying a bunch of RIO stuff I'd learnt the night before. However, I can't help but wonder if I should play the TT different.

Seems like a good line to take specifically due to the passive old man flatting in MP.

If you're read on UTG+1 being a more LAG-ish reg is correct, then yeah he's going to 4-bet jam over your perceived 3-bet iso with a wide range so TT is very often ahead, and also MP is blocking his outs.

Understand that you may feel like this may be an unnecessary higher variance line to take considering your skill edge over the field but in my experience these kind of tournaments tend to get a bit shallower and crapshoot-y towards the end anyway so it's not so bad to take a shot at a huge stack here, especially in such a decently +EV situation.

very std, wp

Poker and My Future

I'm really struggling to keep motivated at poker at the moment. As a pro, this is probably the most professional I've ever been. After a bad downswing this summer me and my girlfriend sat down and I promised her I'd be a really good professional to lower swings and stress. Since then I've only played 1/2 mainly. My results have been solid if not spectacular. Half a really ridiculous rake (I don't want to make excuses though), half not really committing to an A game. I should note that it's partly just adjusting to a game where poker doesn't really get played. It's obviously very soft but it's a totally different skill set. My mind works in a way where I watch a lot of RIO, run simulations on tight spots and think about how to exploit live ranges. A lot of this isn't that important when playing lower stakes live. The game becomes more about playing hands at their relative strength and coolering/semi coolering players who are in the mix with hands that should be mucked pre. It's obviously soft and it's a very easy formula to beat, that said when you think about poker one way it's always going to take a little time to adjust.

Any Results Di*kwad?

I ended this week about +£1k, all in all I'd say with proper volume this is a average to good week from a results perspective. I had an ill disciplined last session that boned me a bit because otherwise it would have been a £1.8k week, highly above the mean.

What's the issue then?

The truth is I'm simply not that happy. I always thought that grinding poker at any stakes would > real world job. Especially with my mental health issues and lack of experience and qualifications probably limiting my options. However, I have found I really hit a low mood grinding out these long low stake sessions. I get upset at ridiculous things such as people playing a style that maximises the rake return per minute for the casino (this is probably scarily mental). I like poker because it forces you to think deeply , however at a level where people are playing the game as if it's whack-a-mole this isn't really the case. I find it's numbing my mind. I sit in my seat disengaged, looking up stuff like the effect sitting down has on the body. I can't imagine this is a healthy approach to any activity.

Anything positive

It's not all doom and gloom. I think my writing style has this effect where sometimes I make it sound like things are worse than they are. I live in a stunning flat in London, I have an awesome girlfriend and for all intense and purposes my physical health is good.

I guess I just wanted to get some words down, some will read it, others won't. If anyone has some advice or heart warming words feel free to jot them down, they're always appreciated.

BigA.

Ma man, stay strong.

Let me know if you ever want to convert to MTTs properly, I think you'd do great

Haha, scarily mental indeed.

Sounds like you're in a state of boredom, and why wouldn't you be - you're playing way lower than your used to, not having having to think in depth and ultimately not meeting your full intellectual capacity.

I think it would be a good idea to find alternative means that challenge your brain in different ways; for me, by reading and learning about other non-poker stuff its helped me to feel far more fulfilled day today and also easier to help justify the sometimes mind numbing grind.

Just my two cents. I'm sure you probably already do this to some extent!

Gl boss

Completely agree, as a WOAT LLSNL reg myself I can completely relate to having a low mood grinding these games.

Sometimes it can be very frustrating having to play such an ABC style in very loose games which see 4-5 players/flop. I find myself drifting off into tilt when I've been extremely card dead in these sorts of games, making loose opens and trying to get folds OTF and OTT.

Without going into too much detail really recommend:

1. Finding a fun enjoyable game on your phone to play, or even watching a movie to help you escape a tedious game for a while.

2. Really relish in developing extremely exploitative strategies in these games. Once you go through the GTO rabbit hole, its easy to look down on exploitative poker but I think if you see it as a challenge that will help keep you occupied and ultimately your mind happy.

3. Remember to take a break every 2 hours or so. Dont be afriad to change tables even from a decent one if youre not enjoying the atmosphere/players.

gl!




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I think I'd have a similar problem grinding that low as well. Is there no 2/5 or 5/5 plo? Maybe switch back to holdem? Idk if grinding that low on a long term basis full time can ever be worth it long run job wise. Glgl

It sounds like you are lacking purpose somewhat. What motivates you in life? Poker might be a good option monetarily but there are areas that it could be seriously lacking in such as fulfillment, self-development, teamwork etc. It is worth thinking about what you want out of life and what is the best path for you to achieve that.

Added skype bro. Could be persuaded to the dark side. I believe when I play live mtts that I'm in the 1-5% of people who are enjoying themselves.

Good advice as always pal! Yeah I've started my week out hunting down 10 books I really want to read so hopefully that'll be a good start.

If that doesn't work it's Pokemon Go....

Good advice mate! Responded to your pm too, sorry it took me a while!

Yeah it's tough, for me poker always had to have a layer of enjoyment to go alongside the monetary rewards. I've always known that this approach might not always be the most print though. I think i £2/5 gets up regularly and the games are good then reasonable hourlies are there. I agree £1/2 probably isn't enough to be a job. I often find the £1/2s play out much better than the 2/5s if you can get a straddle in the game, more gamble etc.

Great advice from thegreatone. I think getting some more off the table activities would help me with my boredom and my anxiety issues.

Poker Free Weekend

So on the back of some advice highlighted above I decided to switch my focus this weekend from playing poker to playing life. I think this is the first poker free Friday, Saturday and Sunday I've had since going on holiday to Greece in May.

I think Friday I just chilled, caught up on some shows and reading I hadn't done for a while. Saturday I was out at this thing called FoodStock in Battersea Park, which was pretty cool, essentially just a bunch of stands selling nice food and beer with some live music. I was there with my mate Oystein (BigbadbOSS) and Jonas (Liqqa), was a really good day.

Sunday I ended up feeling the pain of drinking for 10hours+ on Saturday, if I wasn't so hungover I might have fired some stars but alas I just couched it out and watched countless hours of PGA golf. My boy Day waited a damn long time to give us a sweat.

On the back of that I've started this week refreshed and ready to grind. I intend to stick to my recent strategies of buying in short (in PLO at least) and will be happy to see what EV that yields.