Hello Two Plus Two,

Been a while, a real long while...

My name is Dom Olivo, and I played as INNOVATlON on PokerStars and DOlivo1987 on most other sites: https://www.pocketfives.com/profiles/innovatlon/

Despite being thirty years old, I have only begun to grow up and take responsibility for my actions over the past few months. I formed many friendships with great people in the poker community over the last six years and invariably destroyed them through various acts of degeneracy or neglect. I am sorry for all of these actions and will forever regret them.

Needless to say, some people have lost a lot of money staking me in poker. I am no doubt near the top of the list for the total amount of forgiven make-up in the online poker world. The dates/years may be off, but the numbers in the list that follows are correct:

T.D. (2013) = $10,000 USD
J.F. (2014) = $20,000 USD
G.K. (2015-2016) = $152,250 USD
M.T. (2016) = $35,000 CAD

I have had some recent luck outside of poker (mostly speculating on cryptocurrency) and am now returning to the game. My plan is to start with micro-stakes MTTs to both assess my skill level and truly begin at the bottom in order to build the largest amount of self-confidence that I can.

My goal, of course, is to one day pay back the people who have allowed me to learn many life lessons (through poker) with my winnings and to also earn back my self-respect.

I am making all of this up as I go, but wanted to create this thread to act as the seed of accountability and (hopefully) motivate myself to achieve success.

Thanks for reading and good luck!

Good luck, mate. What cryptos did you make money from if you don't mind me asking?

Thanks! I actually made most of my profit from Bitcoin futures contracts; by getting very, very, very lucky selling near the top in mid-December. After learning from that experience, I now (mostly) just use futures to hedge my Bitcoin/Ethereum holdings.

Week of February 4-10:

I didn't set any goals for last week; I just wanted to play as much tournament poker as possible without sacrificing anything from my personal life. I didn't want to miss a friend or family get together or put my other interests on hold in any way. I think that the week was a success because I managed to easily play five sessions:



This week, I'm looking to add a some structure and set up my social life in advance. I plan to play Monday to Wednesday and Friday to Saturday for a total of five sessions.

I think that I both played and game selected among the micro-stakes fairly well, but observed a few things throughout the week that I can fix up going forward.





I never went above twelve tables, a mistake that I would routinely make in the past--not wanting to miss a 'Big' or 'Hot' or 'good-value' game on a site other than PokerStars. How silly that was, especially considering that if you don't have the table space at that point in your 'schedule' it's because you're already going deep somewhere. That's clearly that's where the focus should be!

I think that a negative 'red line' is probably a solid strategy at the micro-stakes, where most of the profit is coming from relentlessly value betting in position. That said, I think a good goal is to endlessly strive to increase the slope of that red line. Just because most people call way too much before the flop doesn't mean that they don't fold way too much after the flop, especially on later streets. It felt like opponents never checked back a value hand on the flop IP and conversely, always check-raised a value hand on the flop or turn OOP.

I played on PokerStars, 888 poker, party poker, and Titanpoker and found it increasingly difficult to load a turbo MTT given a fixed table count and the large number of good structured games to choose from. I expect this trend to continue, especially once I get WPN and Microgaming into the mix of sites.

Overall, it was a solid confidence building week. I'd like to repeat this a couple of time before I start playing MTTs $10 or above. I think this week I will add in $5 games, and look to add in $7-8 games the week after, hopefully making it up to $10 games for March.

Regarding repayment of my debts, my first goal is to generate $10k USD of profits when I will cut that in half and distribute it to everyone. That seems like a reasonable process to rinse and repeat until everyone is paid back. After the principle is taken care of, I can figure out what else is owed for the time value of money.

See everyone next week, and good luck on the tables!

February 11-15:

I'm posting in the middle of the week because I am very upset about the session that I played yesterday, and don't want to carry these feelings into the weekend.

The week started off great; Monday was my best played session of poker that I can remember in a long time. Everything was clicking: I was focused, disciplined, playing well, and running well. I only played thirteen games and had three final tables, with one win. Really, just as good as it gets in MTT land.

Tuesday, I had some random errands come up and already had social plans in the evening, so I decided to take the day off. I'm not sure if I felt like I could have done more with the day or maybe that I shouldn't have taken the day off to begin with, but I woke up on Wednesday with this horrible sense of urgency (on top of the standard amount of desire) to hit the tables. Rather than waiting until the hour that I think is best for me to register, I skipped my morning workout and started playing a few hours early. To make matters worse, I was also playing very poorly: just flinging chips in every direction. I also had too many games going at once. Genuine tilt I'd say. Once I regained control of my mind, things began to turn for the better and I was able to pilot myself to a few deep runs and one win.

I ended up losing a small amount on the day, but my anger wasn't over the money; it was that I wasted my day. Skipping my morning workout, eating poorly by grazing on five minute breaks rather than having something prepared or eating before the session as usual, and displaying a total lack of focus and discipline for the first half of the day. It's amazing how far the ripple effects of just a few hours of degenning can reach; and also how the negative emotions seem to trump positive ones, which is probably why this is the case.

Ah well, I feel a lot better now. I'm happy that I forced myself to get manual closure from the poor session rather than just sweep it under the rug and let it disappear into the 'long run' results. The plan for today is to pursue my non-poker interests, and visit some friends. Friday will be similar, and I will play all day Saturday.

Good luck everyone!

Obligatory results update:

Good luck! I'm in a similar spot to yours, and it will be interesting to see who takes responsibility for his own life faster. It's surely the highest priority that will give lasting benefits

By any chance, are you a follower of Jordan B. Peterson? The title of the thread sounds like his teachings: he likes to invoke the Pinocchio metaphor quite often

Good luck to you too!

I haven't heard of Jordan B. Peterson, but sounds like a worthwhile Google to me. I'm a big Disney fan: Pinocchio wanting to be a real boy, Mickey Mouse becoming a sorcerer, Ariel longing to walk on land, people wanting to become something more than what they are. I think it's really easy to find inspiration there, and feed your own imagination.

I played all day Saturday; no love, but generated a good number of runs. I will be hitting the tables again tomorrow, planning to lower my table count to the 8-10 range while mixing in more $5 games to slightly increase my average buy-in. Skipping the result pictures this time around (having only played one session since my last post) but will update mid-week after another session or two.

Happy hunting everyone!

Now me and j.f both have mad equity in the 2.2 million Calgary final table with 6 left so that deficit could be gone in one weekend. And I did get dom to get me back a couple grand in the Ontario overlay bananza A couple months back. What I remember is I didn't really know you had side deals untill it was too late but j.f did and that felt kinda scummy. I shoulda dropped alot sooner but I was going through some things and in lala land.

IN FOR THE SUNRUN! KEEP YOUR HEAD UP. MTT‘S WILL TEST YOUR SOUL!
GL