Just took off from Munich (layover from Greece—>USA trip). Hello from up above!

Sweet graphs. Keep it going!

I really like MTTs. So much more exciting than cash. Sadly cash is all I’ve been playing lately. I’m just worried I’ll go on a downswing and lose every buy in. There’s more luck in MTTs, no?

Okay okay, the truth: My session was terribly boring, I was card-dead, missed 99 % of the flops, so I was reading, cashed twice and now I have A GREAT EXCUSE to do something else

Both are variance heavy and in both when you get unlucky your money goes quicker than you think BUT: It´s all about good BRM! BRM is everything! With a serious BRM you cannot loose much. If you´re afraid of loosing, just DON´T LOOK at your BR.

Just play! Don´t look!

I cannot see my BR, I have hidden balance. I don´t look. I take a look like every 3 months, because we wanna concentrate on the long run and not focus on some short-term results which doesn´t mean anything.

Can´t grind today. Will be exercising after work. This summer I´m really "lucky": Caught the most difficult clients and not only a couple of, no! At the moment all are difficult, sending me the wrong stuff, sending stuff WAY too late, expecting me to perform miracles, treating me like a servant..... one thing you have to learn and be able to do as ghostwriter is to stand up for yourself! Otherwise some clients will exploit you and take advantage of you. One thing my work and poker have in common: do not let let them exploit me and standing up for myself, at and away from the tables.

Always know your value! Never let them bring you down! Let them know that you´re good and that you gonna crush them if they start playing games with you!! But all those discussions with clients to explain them, that some things just aren´t possible and even good ghostwriters cannot perform miracles is pretty annoying sometimes. I have to say, most clients are really very nice and appreciate what I do (financially and psychologically) but anyways, there are some "rotten eggs" like everywhere and this summer I just caught exactly those!

The mental game of ghostwriting: Stay calm, stay friendly and explain them the hard facts in a friendly, nice and diplomatic way. Can be applied at the tables: stay friendly, stay calm, even though fishes luck their runner-runner-whatever-miracle-cards and start writing some arrogant stuff and insults in the chat. Just don´t answer, stay calm and think about the long-run results.

Wow, I must be the "luckiest" girl alive: get injured in training and additionally a little sunstoke! Ouch, that sucks!

:S gogo girl, gl grinding today (if you can grind today xD), I went to play some mtt today, I guess that collecting a little karma here should be + ev

Hahahaha! Guess couldn´t even play a 25 cent MTT today, my head seems to explode! Was so stupid to forget my cap when I went to tennis training, it was 32°C (86 F) yesterday, the sun was burning down and I totally underestimated it because it´s September. Here we go! Hello, sunstroke!

Hand analysis and a cheese cake

That´s exactly my plan for today. Will do hand analysis and afterwards I gotta bake a cheese-cake for tomorrow. Decided not to compete tomorrow with my injured arm but help with the organization and provide a nice cheese cake. I think I won´t be able to play tennis for the next two weeks but I can at least go cycling.

Oh my head! Yesterday was the last competition of the season, I could play anyway and afterwards we had a great season-end party with friends!

Maybe I should rename my blog into "Bipolar disorder- so what? I hit the bottle anyway"?

Yeah, had maybe one tiny little glass too much

Alright, after I "reached my drinking goals" for this season, now I can concentrate on my poker goals in the upcoming off-season but yesterday we had such a nice season-end party with friends and I had maybe a tiny tiny little glass too much

Drinking is no big problem with my meds, the hangover next morning is just worse than it normally would be

So! Finally I could hit the tables. Played mostly SNGs and DONs don´t have the whole afternoon/evening to spend with MTTs. Played two PKOs where I didn´t get ITM but took K.O. bounties. Haven´t played SnG for a while and had to get into it first, but afterwards I managed it to remember the ranges and stuff, meanwhile I noticed that this was not even necessary in some SnGs and DONs. The first ones I played were pretty reggish but suddenly the DONs were full of fishes and calling stations, even in the 5.50 $ there were donks who had no clue how to play DON. In some SnGs (9max) I still was thinking about the right jam-or-fold ranges when I found myself ITM. Should really play more SnGs and DONs, noticed that the traffic got way better on Partypoker.

Last time I played STTs the traffic was very poor so I played more MTTs but great to see that traffic increased also in the STTs. Could be probably because of the Powerfest and Monsterseries events. Party has way more fishes now.

Ran pretty break even today but saw that I must have made already some money in September, I don´t exactly remember my BR but somehow my graph looks like I made winnings in September

Will take a look at my BR probably at the end of September or October.

Besides: What really gets a bit on my nerves is that Partypoker always changes the names of their MTTs! A couple of weeks ago there were the "Power Turbos" how they renamed them into "Bounty Hunter" and "Daily Rebuy" or whatever.... They rename them all the time and you can search again for your favourite MTTs. They also change their MTT schedule pretty often which is annoying.

But what is very positive is that not all the MTTs have such a long late reg period anymore. On Party there are MTTs with 3 hours late reg. That really sucks. Played those MTTs and they really take forever.

My biggest mental challenges this summer

Well, actually one of my biggest challenges this summer was a long and very annoying downswing. Nothing worked. I didn´t hit a single f... flop, 99 % junk hands, lost almost every flip, lost against almost every 3-outer, got suck out after suck out.

Another point was, that I caught only the difficult spoiled-brat-clients who think they could treat a ghostwriter like a servant or a slave. So costed me a lot of energy to stand up for me self and tell them politely that I´M NOT THEIR F..... SERVANT!!!! At least got well payed

Another point was this long and hot summer here. I´m not made for warm climate and not for hot weather and not for strong sun. I was constantly tired this summer and in a stinky mood.

But everything is gonna be over soon: On Friday autumn starts and I just finished all the projects for the spoiled brats . Looking forward to work with nice clients. Most of them are very nice, but ....well ...there´s this 1%.

Sorry for this complaining, but I´m so relieved now!!!!

So! NOW ENOUGH COMPLAINING!!!!!!!


Have training afterwards and plan my next grind for tomorrow.

And now I´m gonna MOVE MY BUM BUM!!!

So! 2 K hands session! Pretty break-even SnG-session.

Gotta figure out how to post hands here....... somehow the converter doesn´t work...

Both hem2 and pt4 have option for forum converter
Gogo, less drink more grind xd

Really cool thread!
gl!

Vaaaamooo

Thank you, guys!

Slava, yes, definitely less drinking, more grinding!

GTO, GTO, GTO: or the art of the mental game

So, now: My todays STT session put my mental game on the test. Played about 2.5 K hands. At the beginning my session didn´t go well at all. I just lost every flip, every all-in no matter what I held. So this was the time, where I was put on the test and this was the time to prove that my work on the mental game was successful. And it was! I almost tilted but could catch the tilt up by just focussing on GTO and reminding myself that it´s the long run which counts. Alright, I kept on playing and just told myself: GTO, GTO, GTO, ICM, ICM, ICM, scr*w variance! My luck turned and I could win a couple of 9-max SnGs, some 6-max SnGs and take some 2nd places and some 3rds. Could win also a couple of DONs and at the end I came out with a probably nice winning. I noticed that my game improved, I play aggressive and get better at pre- and postflop play.

I noticed that playing DONs really improves my pre-flop play for the endgame of MTTs and playing MTTs improved my SNG play by playing nice aggressive poker when it´s necessary. Depends on Villains how laggy you can play, a table full of aggro-fishes is not the perfect situation for LAG of course, but in order to get the volume I want/need I have to register in some 1.10 $ and 2.20 $ SnGs/DONs, there are not enough 5.50 $ (which are still pretty fishy on Party).

Yeah, this is actually an MTT blog and I´m mainly MTT player but I have some chores to do afterwards, so cannot sit 6-8 hours at the tables, too bad, but some things just have to be done, right?

Hey guys, what´s up? Got again some good news and some bad news. The good news first: STTs on Party are a gold mine and traffic increased tremendously! Weee!

And here´s the bad news: Unfortunately busted out pretty early from my MTTs, somehow nothing worked out there. But got "comforted" by my Sit and Go results, even though I would have loved to cash in an MTT, especially Powerfest but it wasn´t ment to be today.

Okay, busted out of the Powerfest events on Party, could only make it ITM in one of the MTTs I played, freerolled the 3.30 $ Bounty Hunter by collecting K.O money, the rest went pretty unspectacular. Fishy tables, so couldn´t play that aggressive poker I used to play, but a good grinder adjusts and that´s it. Many unlucky hands, coolers or got outdrawn on turn and/or river, many lost flips but could do good preflop work which helped me a lot. I took it pretty easy today, don´t know why but I was fully concentrated on putting in volume and was focussed on the games themselves. Besides the MTTs I played tons of SnGs and DONs, could play 3 K hands today, at the end of my session I got tired and the GTO-mistakes came. Horribly scr.... up two hands at the end, so after finishing those tourneys I quit my session because I wasn´t playing my A-game anymore but more or less my D-game . Makes no sense to continue grinding like that.

As I mentioned, the tables were fishy and in some SnGs I suddenly found myself ITM . Villains committed ICM suicide, made huge kamikaze-jams and calls so I had to adjust my range as well and played most of the SnG TAG and thightened up my push-ranges as well. When you look at ICMizer you won´t believe how tight your jamming range has to be when Villains are total aggro-maniac-fishes. Further, some bluffs didn´t work out, I bluffed a bit too loose, against regs those cool bluffs would mostly work, but of course not against calling stations who cannot let go of their hands as soon as they hit something. I noticed I didn´t adjust enough.

Anyways, at the end I played about 6 hours and ended up break-even. But what I won is experience and practice.

Don´t think I played this hand well.

partypoker - 0/0 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

UTG+1: 79.73 BB (VPIP: 24.39, PFR: 17.50, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 42)
MP: 54.58 BB (VPIP: 23.08, PFR: 15.38, 3Bet Preflop: 10.53, Hands: 52)
CO: 55.83 BB (VPIP: 25.81, PFR: 16.13, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 31)
Hero (BTN): 85.58 BB
SB: 17.42 BB (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 33.33, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 3)
BB: 91.63 BB (VPIP: 25.64, PFR: 8.55, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 117)
UTG: 27.83 BB (VPIP: 27.59, PFR: 21.43, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 29)

7 players post ante of 0 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.39 BB) Hero has :Qd: :Js:
fold, UTG+1 raises to 2.2 BB, fold, fold, Hero raises to 8.1 BB, fold, fold, UTG+1 calls 5.9 BB

Flop : (18.59 BB, 2 players) :4h :Qs: :Jc:
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets 7.44 BB, UTG+1 calls 7.44 BB

Turn : (33.46 BB, 2 players) :Kh:
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets 23.42 BB, UTG+1 raises to 64.06 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 40.64 BB

River : (161.59 BB, 2 players) :5c:

Hero shows :Qd: :Js: (Two Pair, Queens and Jacks)
(Pre 25%, Flop 84%, Turn 5%)

UTG+1 shows :Kd: :Jd: (Two Pair, Kings and Jacks)
(Pre 75%, Flop 16%, Turn 95%)

UTG+1 wins 161.59 BB

why?



<3

I thought that I could do pot control on the turn, but discussed this hand with coach and he said it was played well. We block the QQ, JJ -set combos, we block the J-x combos like (JT, KJ, J9), we just don´t block the str8 draw and we unblock the K-combos like AK, KT and that was my idea to get value on the turn from them, it´s a 3.30 $ MTT and there are plenty of fishes there who are willing to overplay KT, AK or any K-x combo. KK is blocked as well, there are 3 combos of them, so what can beat us is AT, KJ, and KK while the latter two are pretty much blocked. So it was right.

Just back luck at this moment.

Hero call with blocker

partypoker - 0/0 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

SB: 60.39 BB (VPIP: 83.33, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: 50.00, Hands: 6)
BB: 200.64 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 6)
UTG: 247 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
Hero (UTG+1): 41.53 BB
MP: 165.04 BB (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 6)
MP+1: 136.61 BB (VPIP: 83.33, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
CO: 40.23 BB (VPIP: 17.65, PFR: 8.82, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 34)
BTN: 112.92 BB (VPIP: 33.33, PFR: 16.67, 3Bet Preflop: -, Hands: 6)

8 players post ante of 0 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.42 BB) Hero has 4 4

fold, Hero raises to 2 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold, SB calls 1.5 BB, BB calls 1 BB

Flop: (6.92 BB, 3 players) 4 5 A
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 2.77 BB, SB calls 2.77 BB, BB calls 2.77 BB

Turn: (15.21 BB, 3 players) 9
SB bets 55.5 BB and is all-in, fold, Hero calls 36.65 BB and is all-in

River: (88.51 BB, 2 players) K

SB shows A 7 (One Pair, Aces)
(Pre 45%, Flop 6%, Turn 0%)
Hero shows 4 4 (Three of a Kind, Fours)
(Pre 55%, Flop 94%, Turn 100%)
SB wins 18.86 BB
Hero wins 88.51 BB