Never been to rio/brazil so wondering what exactly made you feel so unsafe then? Also, were you staying in rio itself and how does that work out with 35 guys? ‘Bitb’ just rented one giant appartment or something?

Often heard about people being robbed at gun point in broad daylight in popular places such as on the beach front, one of the poker players there his girlfriend almost got abducted by 5 blokes in a van, stories about sketchy taxi drivers going through favelas then getting robbed etc. etc. just had to have your wits about you at all times.

Was staying in Rio probably a 3 minute walk from the beach front/from the hotel where all the poker was taking place. We were all in the same hotel which had loads of rooms, in the past they've rented a large villa/appartment I believe but imagine this was difficult to do in such a highly populated place.

Got any plans for WSOP?

Missed this until now but just caught up. In, I know one of the guys in your stable from uni but semi out of touch now. Looks like you all had a great time in Brazil judging from social media etc.

An overdue update - I previously stopped posting on here given I had setup a blog within the BitB Discord server, but that has come to an end...

After 5 and a half years within BitB along with multiple stints of being a coach for the stable, I have been released. I've left on really good terms with the guys, unfortunately my results have been poor, at least in the higher end of my buyin range. I've been slaving away in the lab, posting lots of hands fro discussion, interactinginthe strategy chat in the forum solidly for probably the last year or so but unfortunately I struggled to turn it around. Realistically I think they were left with the option of either drop my stakes to games I should be doing well in, or drop me - the problem with dropping stakes is that a 50k MU figure is really difficult to clear when playing a lower ABI. I was slowly approaching a point where I may need loans moving forward which obviously becomes a problem should I be playing low, buried in MU with no immediate way out.

Obviously at first I was pretty upset, the communtity is truely second to none - it feels like a family and everyone is super supportive, I will undoubtedly miss that sense of community.

HOWEVER now being makeup free and out of a stable gives me a number of options - I've had advice from multiple people, everyone seems to suggest a different path. 2 weeks after been released honestly I'm not totally sure which route to take. My options seem to be as follows:

1). Find a job.
I've looked into potentially working for Party Poker, unfortunately it is London based which is a costly daily trip both in terms of time and money, would essentially be killing myself for a reasonable monthly salary.

2). Play for myself, sell packages.
Unfortunately my bankroll wouldn't be too big and I would have to start very low, I've considered playing regularly and selling pieces at a markup, could be an option.

3). Rejoin a stable, look to play lower.
Ensure I play games that I'm crushing - my best winrates seem to come from PKO's with a BI range of 22-109. Having my ABI take a hit seems like a necessity should I continue to play otherwise I can end up in the same situation I was in at BitB.

4). Look to do coaching.
Bonus of this is that I can do this alongside either options 2 or 3 should I be able to find people interested in being coached by me, which I feel should be somewhat realistic given how long I've been in BitB receiving regular coaching along with being trusted by the investors at BitB to coach and improve the games of newer players.

I continue to think about what my best approach is, any advice is more than welcome, here's to a new chapter

Sorry to hear that. It sounds like ultimately you will probably be better off tbh as long as you game select properly to your skill set going forward. I'm sure it doesn't feel good to get dropped and be out of a community you've been in so long though. Are you happy playing poker/what are your non poker job options if you were to look for other work? If you have the bankroll to at least play low/midstakes on your own money it seems like playing that and coaching some low stakes players on the side would prob be your best ev option in the short term. Depending on what your other job options are outside poker it most likely would be the higher ev long term decision but may not be the best decision when you factor in happiness. I'd be shocked if you couldn't bring good value to low/mid stakes mtt grinders, so that seems like a decent bit of possible guaranteed income once you find the students. Best of luck going forward, hope you succeed in whatever path you end up choosing!

I am sorry to hear that honestly. 50k mu doesnt seem that big to be honest when you have abi around 100$ May i ask what is your ev bb at 55+?

Do you consider other formats? cash or spins?

It seems weird that you got dropped. I assume the main reason is you are running low financially in real life or other factors are involved? If you want to discuss further i would be happy to chat. I hope you turn it around

Sorry to hear you got dropped, that sucks man.

If you still feel good playing poker then I would say you have to try and give it a shot on your own before you look for other stables.

So...

Depending on your rent situation then you might need to get a job. You can always work part time. Doesn't have to be a career just something to earn money 2/3 days a week in the short term to make sure the rent is covered. Obv not working Sundays and Monday morning will be important!

Having played for one of the top (or THE top) stable I would say you would be in a strong position to get into another good one if that's what you wanted. Either right now or down the line.

Wishing you all the best.

Hi, how much do you charge for coaching per hour?

Damn sorry to hear you got dropped dude but guess it's kinda bittersweet that you get a spot for a fresh beginning now. Was faced with similar options to you around this time last year. All seem like viable options. From my experience selling packages/building a network of regular buyers helps with motivation and mitigating variance+you maintain the freedom of being able to game select for yourself etc and can make some variance free $ on the side from markup. (a little bit of markup helps mitigate variance a tonne if you are selling decent chunks...just dont become a markup shill selling 1k thrill @ 1.5 )

I'm just a random villager so take what I say with a pinch of salt but might advise against getting backed again for a lot of reasons. (especially if your head isn't 100% into getting backed).

Respect whatever you choose to do and let us know what you decide <3

It's been a while guys...

Just want to say big thankyou to all of you who reached out to me, whether it be on Twitter or on here or wherever else offering me advice. After getting dropped I took roughly a month off just to try and chill out a bit and get my head into a place where I could makea well informed decision, asking round people in different situations to get their opinions on where I should have gone from here. Also special shout out to Belthazorr, when I saw your name I was convinced you were going to **** on me given I don't think we've ever been pleasant to one another and simply thrown insult back and forth over the years but the message made me smile, appreciate it.

Funnily enough my main thoughts were not to get involved in a stable again given I had been at the best one in the game and from what I understood the feel of community in other stables isn't known to be as good, along with the fact that it wouldn't have really felt right to move to a main competitor of BITB's.

My original plan was to potentially play for myself and sell parts, perhaps looking to get setup on a site like StakeKings whilst doing coaching on the side. However I had someone from PokerWinners reach out to me (a relatively small predominantly UK based stable) ask about whether I had considered going with them, I wasn't convinced as I had started to tell myself a stable wasn't the way to go but agreed to a call regardless.

Having spoken to the guys at PokerWinners I was a big fan of everything they were building and their vision. It has a differing approach to BITB in ways, they focus on player schedules revising them almost daily, ensuring people are on the right track with game selection and look to spread across the softest sites they can find such as micro/ipoker/sky etc. There was definitely a personal feel to their approach and a strong sense of community, especially since alot of the guys are from the UK and they seemed keen to get more guys involved in live games, something I had wanted to do more so for the past couple of years or so and they also wanted to have me on board as a potential mentor/coach - again somethign I was really keen to do.

So late October I had decided to move to PokerWinners, certainly a change in approach required to what I had been used to for a good number of years. I had been used to a "volume is king" approach whereas their philosophy is less is better so to speak - I moved from big field high variance games to small field bread and butter games on obscure sites, and since joining despite previously playing 9 tables at pretty much all times I now only play 6 tables at any one time and it definitely helps me maintain my A-game over playing my B-game for large portions of my grind.

Previously I was used to losing say 6 out of 7 days and that 1 day making up for the rest due to the nature of the field sizes, however having sunrun super strong since joining PW it feels like it's been more like 4 out of 7 days are winning ones, certainly helped by the fact fields are much smaller than I'm used to. Also really enjoying it, given on average final 2 tables are paid it means there are many situations where ICM is involved, probably one of the stronger areas of my game (relative to other players) which has been fun. Also seeing the difference I'm helping to create in other players games is super rewarding, the community has welcomed me quickly and helped me feel part of the family very quickly, for this I am thankful.

In all honesty I wasn't convinced these games would be big enough to make a living from, hence why I wanted to make sure I was doing a considerable amount of coaching on the side to offlay that, but early signs are I may have been wrong. It feels like a much more consistent grind and my graph (from a very small sample) looks like something I've been attempting to achieve all my career.

Graph since joining PW:

Gilllllieeeeeeeee <3 love to see you doing well mate, gl at the tables and hope to see fast Auba red card today, fingers crossed.

Nice one dude! Good to see you crushing it!

what games/timeslot do u play? ur description sounds like off peak but u aint in there ever

good to see u on the comeback bud

I start at 3pm UK time so peak time, but play alot of my volume on iPoker/Micro gaming, along with probably 50% of my volume coming from 888.

I only open Stars on Sundays (gotta go glory hunting in the milly obv) and play like 3 tournaments a day on Party, very much off peak sites but not off peak hours

Thought I would share my approach to SCOOP this series, given it's totally different to at least 99% of the regs out there.

I'm most likely going to be playing 0 SCOOP events and won't even the Stars lobbies. Yes there is life changing money available, but the downside to that is the variance can become extremely cruel, even if you are absolutely crushing these games, and whilst life changing sums of money are nice, my focus for now is on securing profit as regularly as often in smaller games.

This isn't the main reason I'm avoiding SCOOP however - the main reason is it's the dream of pretty much all regs to crush this series and make big wins, so as good as all regs are moving all their volume away from the smaller sites and really focussing on Stars & Party throughout May (Party due to the great WPT games on offer). That means the soft, smaller sites are getting even softer as the amount of recreationals tend to stay about the same as they have brand loyalty to certain platforms, whilst the regs move elsewhere in the hope of big paydays.

This doesn't necesarrily mean I will only play bowls, if there are big games on these sites then I'm willing to take the shots. For instance the GUKPT Main Event happened last weekend (£1k buyin) and I luckboxed my way to a £18k payday finishing third, obv running ridic good in one of the few shots I will be looking to take this year.

Graph to year (note it excludes some sites and some of the Grosvenor only events, meaning roughly £25k of profit is missed out from these sites):

Nice approach, is what I been doing for the past couple years and Im loving it. As you said, the excitement of binking 500k is gone, but even playing series events the bink may never come or take a lifetime to arrive, and get there after years of emotional and mental struggle that end up taking a toll on your body/overall happiness.

I know is (kinda) selfish but behind every cry and whine from a good reg after busting the Hot $11 or the Bounty Builder $7.5 on a sunday on the final table bubble, I cant help but thinking how good of a decision was to move away from the spotlight into steady, anonymous profit

glgl

This is they key to it to me - I guess it's different given I could be playing smaller buyins on Stars and continuing the big field grind but the latter days of trying to beat fields I was barely winning in, along with the fields being vast meant variance was a hell of a ride and whilst I had some huge opportunities for life changing money, the sacrifice I was making simply wasn't worth it. BitB were obviously capable of taking the swings with the financial power behind them, but as an individual I wasn't - I had just about reached breaking point whilst doing everything I could to turn things around.

I'm happy to lock up profit on a regular basis (ran poorly last month on FTs but managed to continue the streak of having a profitable month throughout the year) if it means I don't have these shots, just having to be scrutinising my game selection on a daily basis and things will continue to go in the desired direction

glgl rama

Can always throw in a high ev big field punt here and there too without it having a major effect on your smooth grind. Def think this is the way way smarter way to go if you're a full time mtt grinder (and not already super rich).