Hey man I ve just found this thread and devoured the whole thing in one go. I love the write ups and the fact that you actually talk in depth about spots. Thank you for sharing. What i find impressive is how you can go from what i assume is a very high 6fig expectation in the Macau games especially given your ability to volume like a non human to enjoying mtts to the extent that you do. Inspiring to see people still can love the game for what it is. Really hope you keep blogging and I ll be adding input wherever appropriate going forward.

Fwiw I think both the TT and the AK are folds as described as I wouldn’t expect 88 or even 99 or to some extent TT to be in that range, same for AQo.

Best of luck going forward

Appreciate all the positive feedback guys, I'll do my best to keep updating regularly. And thanks blakkman, your blog is one of my regular reads so cool to see you in here, thanks for the feedback on the hands, I felt like they were pretty reasonable folds but I got shown 88/77 in that TT fold hand .

Since my last update I've played the 5k BB ante, 1500 Millionaire maker, 2620 Marathon, 3k 6 max, and 1600 6max at Venetian.

I cashed the millionaire maker (bullet 3) and the Marathon. I actually ran up a stack in the other events too (apart from the 3k 6max where I lasted 15 minutes) but couldn't go the distance. I'm particularly annoyed about the Millionaire Maker, which I think is a tournament that I am so suited to (playing for big money vs weaker players I think is an area I excel more than most) and I ****ed it up due to a simple mistake that I put down to tiredness mostly.

I've got a huge note of hands played, I definitely can't put them all up here so I guess I'll go with the most interesting/most important.

To start, the Millionaire Maker mistake:

I'm mostly annoyed about this hand because once you start running deep in an event like this it's such a great opportunity and the onus is really on you to now convert it, so making a mistake which costs you a comfortable stack is a pretty big deal in my opinion, as just playing well and not making a mistake can often result in you accumulating chips, it's not like you have to go out of your way to win in these big soft tournaments.

UTG is an inexperienced young guy who I can tell is just excited to be here and is not a pro. He opens UTG off 140k at 6k BB to 15k and he has open shoved a couple times before off same stack. Now MP reg flats and MP1 reg flats also. They have 300k and 600k respectively and I have 450k. I have KJo in SB and I decide that UTG is going to way way overfold to the squeeze here, I honestly think people like this fold JJ AQ in these spots because they're too invested in the run and don't want to bust on a marginal spot. I think the regs behind are pretty much always gonna 3 bet their nutted hands so I think they are gonna fold to the squeeze a lot. However, I'm tired, I'm running on 4-5 hours sleep for the last 4 days and I tailor my 3bet sizing to the openers stack, figuring I would make it like 42k vs him and then add on 15k for each flatter so I decide to squeeze to 72k and then downsize slightly to 69k. This is obviously too small as both regs have pretty huge incentive to flat me with any pocket pair/suited connector now. I didn't think about them enough and focused on the opener. To top that off, I misclicked and made it 64k. The first two players folded, the last player called, it came Q52, I had the J and I bet two streets somewhat smallish, got jammed on on the turn and was left with 200k left going into 8k bb where previously I had 450k.

It's not guaranteed that he would have folded to a proper sizing of 85-90k but I imagine my chances would have been much better, and there's not much point sizing the squeeze vs UTG when I'm going to have to call off vs him anyway. So that was a pretty annoying hand, it's a medium size mistake that I've been max punished for but I think I'm especially put out about it because it's such an easily avoidable mistake and I have failed to avoid it.

Some earlier hands from the Millionaire Maker:

Semi splashy guy who knows how to play poker, has obviously played a ton of poker, but isn't a pro as far as I know, opens UTG, he's in his 40s to 50s. I 3bet AJ to 12k vs 3500 open at 1600bb. My image is very active. He calls, flop is A76 he leads 15.5 into 28k pretty much immediately, I call. Turn K he checks I check back, river 4 and he bets 28.5k. I fold.

This hand was really weird, it's an odd flop lead that i don't think is that strong, after I check back turn I feel like my range looks quite Axs heavy, some QQ/JJ but mostly obviously pretty decent hands. So when he leads river 28.5k I think it's really hard to find bluffs here he has to have something really odd and is this really how anybody bluffs. I think I'm gonna see AQ, A7, A6, 66/77 fairly often so I just folded.

This hand is from the Marathon, fairly deep on day 2 but not so close to the bubble that it effects things too much.

I open AA UTG with a psychotic image to 4400 at 2k bb, this young winamax pro who has played okayish but made some pretty obviously incorrect bets in certain spots, mostly just random small bets that I know are not a thing in random spots post. He makes it 14.5k from CO, I have 105k and he covers. I think I want to 4bet and get more money in, I can 4b bluff sometimes and I think the chances of him spewing/peeling the 4b are reasonably high so I make it 31k, he calls.

Flop A92 I bet 9.2k into 68k he calls, turn Kc I ch he bets 14.8k I call river K i ch he ch back and I win.

This hand really annoyed me because I was certain I knew what was going on and I didn't act on it. There's a couple of talking points: firstly, the flop, I don't think any of my hands want to check this board at all apart from AA really and I don't want to make it obvious I have AA. So I figured I just go for a really tilting sizing of 15% pot which a top pro did to me one time and I was quite impressed by the annoyingness of it so I made a mental note to use it myself at some point. It's really hard not to float this, it's possible it induces and it guaranteed puts some money in vs any hand that can't fold flop (and all of them have basically 0 equity) so I kinda like it. It's also a cheap bluff with KQ, cheap protection style bet with QQ/KK (protection from getting bluffed) and stacks are such that I can bet any amount on flop and guaranteed get them in by river. On the King turn I think I have a fairly clear check, there's not enough hands out there to get value from, let him bluff some floats, go for a street on the river, etc. But when he bets this sizing, 14.8 into 85ish, which is absolutely not a thing, I think he's just trying to buy a cheap river. I think he may have Axss, AQ these sort of hands and doesn't want to face a large river bet. If we break down his range, he can have KK, AK, 99, A3s/A9s (maaybe) all of which I stack regardless of what I do, He can have some floats like JTs, QJs if he was feeling fruity, I really don't think he's going to put another bet in with those, or he can have something like AQ, A5s etc which is trying to buy a cheap showdown. I think that it's on me here to act upon what I think he's doing and actually try to punish him. You can't just bet 15% into an uncapped range in a 4bet pot and not get punished trying to go for a cheap showdown. I think what I should have done is just clicked him to 31k on the turn and made his life horrible with all his hands + if he turned a fd or gutshot I either deny equity or get more money in there now. So I was pretty annoyed to just take the standard line of check calling and then the river went instant check check and what I thought was going on was confirmed. The one thing is it's just impossible for me to be bluffing with this line isn't it, so the line i have taken is definitely the standard one, but I think I should have found an exploit here and maybe with my image, the price, and the weirdness of the spot I could have forced him to put more money in and make a mistake.

I'll just include my final hand as the Marathon bustout although it's fairly uninteresting. BTN who appears to be a fish or at least an inexperienced enthusiast opens to 9k at 4kbb, I've got 80k in SB with 68, I shove, BB overshoves AJo and I'm out.

I think fish way way overfold to reshoves so although this isn't a standard reshove I think it's a pretty nice spot. I'm expecting like A8o- A6s- QJs KJs all to fold and he probably opens BTN too much too, so I think the shove is printing. One thing to consider is that these fields are so soft, should I pass up on these spots in order to just keep min opening/limping/playing my BB completely unpressured due to weak opponents. I'm not entirely sure, I think this jam is definitely printing chips but I don't exactly know how conservative to play it in terms of just staying in and winning chips in lower variance situations.

Anyway thanks for reading guys, this was a kind of rushed post where I just posted a few hands that are on my mind as I've basically been in a routine of wake up--> gym--> shower--> poker tables--> Bag up (hopefully) --> Sleep, so I've really not had much spare time. I'm loving it though, it's nice to be in an actual routine for once and I'm feeling healthy and overall playing well.

About to head over to Venetian for their 5k 1M guarantee which I'm anticipating will be fairly tough but I'm looking forward to doing some battling after spending the last few days (enjoyably) playing against farmers, it'll be nice to spend a day or 2 trying to play more gto style. However, this weekend is the 1k DOUBLE STACK, at RIO, which will be more of the same unimaginably soft fields I expect, so I'll be back in there soon..!

Ayyyyy nice to hear crushers with million times my net worth read my ramblings too humbling things

As for them showing down the few combos of hands that would skew your hand from clear loser to Maßgabe marginal winner depending on how many people are left to act I wouldnt care too much about that but take a mental not for whoever doesn’t bust out of the two and have a read for later.

When I say he bets into an uncapped range, isn’t it fair to say he is uncapped too but you are the one with the higher frequency of ****ty aces (your AJo/A5s Type things ) while he should be pretty mergy and def uncapped including some KK and most AA combos? You did say you have a very fruity image so I imagine he ll tarp you pre tons and also not go fruity preflop (?????)

The Rejam seems perfectly fine especially if u re in the business of running across to the aria or Wynn and firing up again. If u re on a limited bankroll/ have tilt issues there might be sth to be said for preserving (which clearly makes taking thinner spots the line to take imo)

Also one thing that you might underestimate is how your actual size actually is perceived as much larger than it would be in cash, while I agree the size you made it is way too small I think sth like 75 would be plenty enough to achieve what you want. I think mtt players are very inelastic between 75 and 84 and the former gives u a bit more room post. Think 89 or whatever is massive overkill in timbey.

Best of luck till the next update vamuuuu

Time for an Update

So it's been a week since my last update. I had hoped to update a bit more frequently than that but man I'm really just dashing around from tournament to tournament. My routine is really settled of getting up a few hours before they start, gym, breakfast, tournaments until midnight and then sleep. There's not much room for relaxation and/or blog writing. And that definitely got to me a little bit around 4 days ago. I found myself once again at the Venetian (which is my destination after I dust off whatever WSOP stack I purchased that morning) and I made a few really awful river calls. River calling has always been the area where I can identify that I'm not playing my A game, I make calls I've taught myself don't win in the hopes of finding a bluff/seeing what he has. So I took a day off after that day and came back refreshed.

Despite the mildly negative tone I've set it's been going reasonably, I haven't had any proper deep runs but I've spun up stacks in most tournaments I've played and I've got a string of min cashes that don't amount to much money but I think they are testament to the fact that I've been able to at least get something going in a lot of tournaments.

I have made some fairly big mistakes and I definitely have had the feeling that I could have avoided my bustouts in a number of tournaments so that hasn't felt great. I'll go over a couple of the big ones and possibly chuck in a morale hand or two but I'm going to keep it somewhat brief as I'm a little over being on the computer, just spent a few hours punishing myself for a BB vs SB shove by copying down blind vs blind strategy for all stacksizes from the monker stuff I purchased. Definitely feel better now wrt my bvb preflop play but it was a pretty boring process.

BvB 20bb

I'll start with that once since I mentioned it. Earlier today in the 1k turbo WSOP I've got 13k, SB has 11k and bb is 500. He limps, I have 75dd and I shove. He calls 88 and a few hands later I'm eliminated.

I definitely think people overfold after limping but this is just such route one poker, it's not sophisticated and it's not correct. I thought we wanted to shove some mid-high equity hands to deny him and I thought 75s was kind of in that category + people limp/overfold. But having looked it up now we in fact do loads of 2.6x'ing and it's a much more polarised range. 75s is a very clear check and I think I need to change my mindset a little in regards to this spot. It's ok to just be appreciative that we get to realise our own equity when we have hands that really want to realise equity, rather than focus purely on denying our opponent. It's definitely not going to be the biggest mistake in the grand scheme of things but I should welcome any opportunity for correct preflop play to encourage things going postflop more as I'm going to outperform my opponents down the lines anyway, so avoiding unnecessary all ins seems good.

5k Postflop River bet/call

Next hand is from the 5k. This is just a meltdown of a hand where I misplay multiple streets and then compound the error by massively misplaying the river. I open AK UTG 8 handed to 8k at 4k bb playing 110k, BTN is a well known and famous SHR player, he calls playing 72k. Flop is JT5 I check he checks back. Turn A I bet 8k he calls. River T I bet 20.5k he shoves for 56.5k and I eventually call it off and lose to KQo.

So I'll go through the hand thoroughly but regarding the river call off, I make a mistake I see a lot of others make which is getting a bit starstruck by a player you don't know but that you know is very good and then assuming they're going to be able to find bluffs that other players won't when in fact although they will find appropriate bluffs they're not just going to conjure up millions of bluffs in every spot justifying calling them a lot. It's important to (mostly) treat them as any other player, and I definitely think with more experience playing live with top pros I won't be making mistakes like this. I play against the top cash guys all the time and I don't ever make call offs like this, I was really disappointed in myself for the river play and I came home to run the hand and see what I was supposed to do anyway.

In fact according to PIO we're supposed to just bet range on flop. I was really shocked by this, to me this board is great for our opponents range and we're out of position. I guess off these stacks just having more overpairs and a fairly strong UTG range means that we get to push equity.

Having played a check (and now departing from PIO) I like betting the turn as I will have some give ups, I have more AK AQ, and I think he can flat a lot of suited aces on the BTN off these stack sizes, monker certainly does. I thought his turn range would be all KQ, AA, a load of suited aces, some Q9s, K9hh, 98s, and maybe some Tx/Jx although I think these want to bet for protection and get it in mostly. I guess I should probably size up though as I'm kind of saying I've got a good ace or better or some occasional bluffs, not sure.

River I talked myself into value betting as I was like man there's so many suited aces that are gonna be in a rough spot and I have a K to reduce KQ, he shouldn't have that much Tx, I'm gonna target the Ax. I don't think this is terrible but if it results in me calling off the river it's awful. I thought for ages and eventually convinced myself he could have 98s, Q9s, K9s, QJ KJ, but I already took QJ KJ out on flop. Value wise I gave him KQ QTs, T9s and AA. I had given myself such a good price that I convinced myself I should call off because 'he's going to find all these bluffs'. I completely neglected to think about my own range, which has KQ, it has AA, JJ, TT, JTs, and AT. So I don't think I need to worry about overfolding by folding my worst value bet, and this was really a desparate and bad call.

1600 River Bluff

In this hand we are 340/2700 players, 40 off the money in a venetian 1600. I have just arrived at a new table with 450k at 5kbb.

I open JT LOJ to 10k, HIJ makes it 28k off 240k, he looks like an average american pro so I expect him to be meh. I call.
Flop T87 I check he checks back.
Turn 5 I check he bets 28k I call.
River K I check he bets 47k I shove for his 174k he calls AA

So preflop I think his 3bet is a bit too small so I make a pretty loose peel expecting that I will be better than him + I have some ICM pressure advantages in that it's quite a disaster for him to bust this 240k stack (average 180k) near to the bubble.

Flop & Turn I think are standard. I think american regs are worse at checking back appropriately than most so I take a few overpairs out when flop goes check check (keeping all air in on this board). I also think that turn sizing is pretty weak and a little less likely to be an overpair. Think player pool sizes up turn with overpairs a bit.

River I think he can have some AA, some AK that made a bad turn bet, some KQ, some AQ, AJ and some wheel aces that just bluff after seeing two checks. I don't think I have a call vs this range and I also think the sizing doesn't look like a flush although that is possible. I figured I win with this shove automatically vs AQ AJ wheel aces and then I also fold out AK KQ and AA when they don't have a heart. I also thought if he's bad he might just think this line is so scary got to fold, or if he's good he should think wow it's really hard to have an offsuit heart here given that I peeled a 3bet preflop (I expect most people to take JTo out preflop even though I am in there with it splashing around)

I don't hate my logic but I just don't think it's necessary and how you win in these 1600s. You win by preserving your stack and opening into people who defend 30% out of the big blind and defend 35% to cbet. It's just massive variance and requires a good fold from my opponent when he has AA AK no heart which is definitely not something you can assume will always happen. I think it might be winning chips, it may well be losing chips (especially if he just doesn't bet river unless he's got a heart to call it off with) but the main thing it does is massively increase variance. Also the additional chips I win from the bluff are worth less than the chips I lose so it needs to be much better than breakeven to justify. So I think it's pretty bad overall and it's a great way to waste a big stack. I'd be much happier if I did this in a tough 10k in europe or in a 25k where edges are thinner and you want to take spots you think are winning at the cost of high variance. This is just not the spot to do this and I regretted it 2 hours later as I walked off to collect my 6th mincash of the series, and my third really promising stack that I spunked off.

That's it for me, I've got a scheduled day off tomorrow, will be having my literal first drink of this entire Vegas trip (wild) and then it's back to the Monster stack on Sunday. I'm actually not that excited about any events really after monster stack until main, they're all not bad but not that exciting. It feels like there's a few less $1000-$2500 normal WSOP events (my favourite) but maybe I'm imagining it. Thanks for reading guys and good luck to anybody who's also out here!

very cool update as always, good luck with the rest of the series

Agreed with reasoning of taking low variance route, I used to take every little spot playing quite high variance like this JT river bluff and my results have been a lot better since I stopped doing that, could just be me suddenly being a lucksack but oh well I still like being more of a nit in these spots

I think the peel pre is a mistake btw even with antes, unless villain is a massive whale its going to be really damn hard to show profit and/or realize equity with JTo oop vs a 3b range

In the 5k hand. What's do we think the villains call range is? Like you, I would think this smashes his range off ~18bb. Mostly suited broadway/midpair hands right? You need t input the preflop part into PIO right, or does it solve preflop too? (Never used PIO).

Love the right up, get a bracelet, go crush.

Love these updates, even though I never play tournaments. Best PG&C thread atm. Although lacking a bit in updates I guess .

Buuuummmmpppp

booooooooo blakkman i thought there was an update

Haha hope OP takes these two posts as motivation to make one. Best of luck in the main!

Good luck in the rest of the series.
Very nice thread you have MossBoss, congrats for that.

For a micro online player like me, reading about live HS cash hands is very interesting and of course the MTT staff.
Obviously you know you hourly at cash games within some extend, but for MTTs (live and online) its very hard to do the math, even for months. I am pretty sure that after the series you will make a good recap of happen and what your next step will be. It is a good idea that depends on the day/week/month you can play MTTs and when there are a good live cash gamse to player there, because you are printing big money. You have to fine some nice balance.

Right now I have one question about that - how you dealing with women when you play HS for like 2/3 days strait? Like I read about some HS guy (idr his name) that he travels to Macau with his gf.

also interested in this, must be difficult to balance

Who tf rich enough to play hs in Macau needs a gf

well anybody who wants a genuine relationship... ldo

Hi Again

So that's another year in Vegas in the books, I'm back home in London now. As you can probably guess from my total lack of updates in a month, it didn't go particularly well. I ended up with 6 semi-min cashes for what was probably around 90k of buy ins so around -70k on the trip. I felt like for the most part I played somewhere from ok to well but I had a few key slip ups that I think affected a couple of my deeper runs. It didn't really feel like I ran especially bad, but I suppose it's very possible to play ~40 tournaments, play ok, run ok and only min cash 6.

It's a little frustrating as I was very confident in my game following WCOOP and the months of work I had done beforehand but the nature of the beast of live tournaments is that you can certainly play your best (and i didn't) and still mostly brick a series. I played pretty much every day up until the main event, and then after I bust the main event embarked on a pretty ****ing intense 3 weeks of partying.

This was always the plan so it's not like this was an upset reaction to my results or anything. We basically did 14 days straight of pool party--> nightclub-->afterparty-->sleep4h--> pool party and so on. It was absolutely one of the most fun 2-3 week periods of my life, but it was ludicrously expensive and absolutely terrible for health & fitness. Pretty solid for morale though. Definitely need some time off now though but I do go pretty big on the diet & fitness most of the time so I'm not hating myself too much for it all.

Regarding the poker, I'm not entirely sure what my plan is now. We're coming up to the point now where I've spent a year trying to get to grips with tournaments. I definitely feel I have made a lot of progress and have got plenty of stuff down and correct. However prior to this series I thought I was ready to start competing on the highest level and although 45 tournaments probably shouldn't affect your belief in your own abilities too much, I made too high a frequency of mistakes that other top players aren't making for me to realistically believe that I can just sit any 25k or 50k which was kind of my goal from the start. So it's a failure on that front, but I don't think it was a slamming defeat as I am happy with the amount of progress I did make and I felt that when I was working, I worked really hard, so I'm not livid with myself for a lack of trying. Becoming an actually elite tournament reg in a year with very little prior experience is a goal that in reality I was probably very likely to fail at. The top guys are great players and hard workers, it was always going to be tough to catch them in 12 months. I don't feel like I'm too far off so there's an element of success in my results and there's also the temptation to keep going at it to try and actually get there. On the positive sides, I really enjoyed improving at a new format, I think I learnt how to study effectively and I felt like this year I possibly made the most progress on myself as a person for as long as I can remember. I took much more time off than any of my last 5 years, enjoyed the world and I felt like I made big improvements on being more positive, more friendly and less judgemental.

However, it's been a pretty expensive year, I won when I played in Macau but didn't play much, I haven't made any money playing tournaments (haven't lost all that much either), crypto hasn't had the greatest 6 months and I've spent quite a lot. I'm the type of person that gets a pretty strong itch to be productive after I spend time enjoying myself/not making money. That itch is starting to get pretty strong, the EV difference between myself playing in Macau and playing tournaments is substantial and hard to ignore so I think I will spend autumn-spring mostly grinding hard in Macau until I'm satisfied with my work ethic for the second half of the year.

On the other hand, I do want to spend some time in London, I haven't seen much of my non-poker friends in the last year and those are relationships I really want to keep healthy as they add so much balance to my life and help to ground me. So assuming I do stay in London (it's definitely possible I itch myself off to Macau sooner as I hear the games are decent at the moment) I have around 2 and a half months to work with. I'm not just going to piss around in London so the most natural thing to do seems to be to keep working on the tournaments, putting in a few Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday sessions and hopefully build confidence and results a little. I can also use London as a base for a couple of live tournament stops, Barcelona and UK MILLIONS seem like inevitabilities and there are one or two others that I can definitely consider. Then on top of that there's the question of what I should do during WCOOP, should I grind it? Should I go somewhere to grind it? Should I just get on with my life and go to Macau? I'm not really sure.

Anyway I have an absolute **** ton of backlogged admin style jobs that I need to get done while I'm here so I've got at least 2 weeks to get my **** together, sort all the jobs I've neglected while away and figure out exactly what I want to do with myself. I definitely need to spend a little time thinking things through and deciding exactly what I want out of the next 12 months. I'm usually very confident and clear-minded with what it is my goals are and I think that without a clear idea of what you're trying to achieve and why it's very easy to lose your way, waste time and develop bad habits. After I left uni I had a very clear goal of making as much money as I could over 3 years so I basically lived in Macau the entire time. Once I finished that, after playing in Vegas and enjoying tournaments so much I settled on a goal of focusing on tournaments for a year + focusing on playing a bit less poker overall and enjoying life a bit more, both of which I definitely did.

But that brings me to now and I'm torn on what I want. I'm 26, I'm not sure I want to just arrive at 30 having spent the last 4 years living exclusively in Macau, leaving me with precisely one skillset, and likely a diminished social group back home. But I also want to make absolutely sure that I'm set for life from poker by then, which requires making a good amount more money, the main way I know of being Macau. So I'm at a bit of a crossroads and I'm a little lost. I'll spend some time thinking about it in the next couple of weeks and try to come up with a clearer roadmap.

Anyway, I will try to do a more poker focused post about Vegas. I still have a lot to talk about with regards to actual poker hands, making mistakes and my approach of playing every single available tournament within every waking moment.

Sorry for the stream of consciousness and lack of content, I had a lot on my mind and posting here can be a good way to straighten out my thoughts and get it off the chest.

Thanks for reading guys hopefully I will be back here soon with a poker focused write up!

This is one of the absolute best and most interesting threads on 2+2, apologize for nothing imo.

Also just curious: without getting too much into your specific financial situation, do you have an approximation on how much $ yearly a winning HS player sacrifices by remaining purely in the US or EU (but not both) and never visiting Asia / Macau to play poker?

Great update as always, no apologies needed! So pleased we managed to get that coffee and thanks for helping me out in Vegas, I really appreciate it. Good luck with whatevers next and hopefully we run into each other again at some point!

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

I relate to so much of what you're saying. I'm in a somewhat similar situation. Not playing nosebleeds like you, but fairly high stakes and its all I've been doing for the past few years (im a bit younger then you).

I have no clue what I want out of life or where I want to be, only that I know this is the best opportunity I'm likely going to get in life to make a lot of $ in a relatively short time-frame, so I've just been grinding, and will continue to grind for another couple of years until I have enough that I feel I can get out completely with a comfortable amount of money to either take it easy for a while or start investing -- basically, I just dont ever want to be forced to worry about money again.

It's been quite difficult balancing life and poker (money). Sometimes I wonder if it's worth sacrificing so much Life EV/happiness for monetary gain. I suppose its not incredibly different for any other aspiring young professional in fast paced environments, although poker is certainly much more inherently isolating/toxic in nature.

Anywho, I hope you find what it is youre looking for in life and in poker, gl bud. Enjoy your thread very much

always nice to read real decisions that poker players face. thanks for sharing. My advice is do what makes you happiest, life is too damn short!

Great update. A lot of good thoughts regarding poker and life balance. As they say in Rounders: "Always leave yourself outs" :-)

WSOP Write Up

I've been pretty productive here in London so far, tackling quite a few of the jobs I needed to do which means I've found a bit of time now to write up the poker side of the trip. I don't think this will be too long, but I will chuck in a few hands including my rapid main event demise and a couple of other highlighted ones. To be honest I didn't actually play that many fascinating hands so I'm a bit short of material but I know that these are usually pretty popular and I do have a couple to work with so I'll just slam em down.

First of all though I want to talk about playing tournaments in general.

I find tournaments extremely emotionally draining relative to cash games. This isn't a bad thing at all and it's the reason I love them so much, feeling exhilarated when things are going well and spending time replaying hands that you might have misplayed or that were interesting is really refreshing and brings me back to my first years playing poker when I was constantly thinking about the game and loving every second of it. However, it is very hard for me to continuously play my best and also find so much of my mental energy being poured into the game.

I've always been a pretty huge grinder in cash and am happy to fire in loads of hours when I'm playing. For this reason I wasn't daunted by waking up, hitting the rio, busting the rio, hitting the wynn, busting the wynn and then hitting the venetian. And that's what I did. For 30 days. I think this was the wrong approach and I think I failed to recognise that I'm not playing cash and that adjusting accordingly is probably appropriate. It's not that I played awfully when I played, but I definitely made some mistakes that were not me at my best. Some of those mistakes were down to me not being as accurate a poker player in tournaments due to my relative inexperience compared to cash but some of the mistakes were mistakes that I know and recognise and have learnt to not make any more. Old errors were rearing their heads and I think it's fair to attribute that to fatigue and playing too much. Obviously making slip ups happens to everybody but I know how often I usually make 'classic mistakes' and this was much more than I would if I had just played a month of Macau cash playing every day.

Going forward therefore I think I need to be more disciplined in taking days off and making sure that when I'm in there I'm absolutely at my best. This doesn't really suit me as I like to do my work in big blocks where I put in insane volume in one big go, and then treat myself to a few weeks off or a holiday at the end. In my own warped way, that's usually been how I achieve balance, and will continue to be with cash games anyway as it's been a winning formula so far. But recognising I'm not playing cash games, I intend to plan out my schedule a bit more accurately next year, skip some events, maybe late reg some others and give myself a little more time. Right now I'm thinking I might stay at Aria next year and try to play cash games at Bellagio and Aria as there were some pretty decent sized games this year ($200/$400 for a bit I think). Then I can fire the events I most want to play and also if the action seems a bit slow I can jet over and late reg $1500s or whatever. Anyway, it's a long way off but I just wanted to point out that there is, at least for me, quite a difference in fatigue between grinding tournaments and grinding cash, and I want to recognise that and adapt to it moving forward.

More imminently, WCOOP & Powerfest will go this September and I had similar feelings of playing my B and C games on occasion during SCOOP so I intend to learn from my mistakes and take some days off, socialise, relax and try to make sure that when I do play, I play ****ing well.

Maint Event Demise

After two incredible years at the main event where I ran deep in both of the only 2 years I've ever played it was time for it all to come crashing down I suppose. If you caught me after the right number of drinks in the last year it wouldn't be impossible to hear me saying 'I'm the greatest main event player of all time (lol)'. Mostly said in the spirit of fun but as with a lot of jokes, there was definitely an undercurrent of belief. My main reason for feeling I was so suited to main events (and this applies to all main events but especially the WSOP main event) is that I would do absolutely everything to avoid big confrontations and high variance spots because I felt i was printing so hard elsewhere. There were days in both ME runs where I pretty much avoided 3betting even Kings (not saying this was correct) because I didn't want to get them in pre lol. I felt that my postflop edge was so big and so likely to be realised that all preflop confrontations were disastrous.

I was therefore really disappointed in myself for completely departing from my own style that has been good to me in the past.

The Hand


My table is 7 recs, me and to my direct right a good pro who I know but don't have any history with until today. I've 3bet him around 4 or 5 times in the last 3-4 hours, so quite a lot. He opens BTN, and I pick up 88 in the SB. Obviously it can be a bit overwhelming when you look down at two snowmen in the flesh, garnished with coal, carrots, woollen scarfs and all the trimmings so I'm understandably excited. I know that this is a value 3bet here from monker and with the dynamic I'm like boom, loving 3betting thin value here. However, it's 150/300, I have 45k and he has 27k. After I 3bet it and he started tanking I immediately regretted my decision and was pretty furious at myself for not remembering how to play main events, avoiding big confrontations is so important and I feel like with a tinge of dynamic and these positions, I'm going to get 4 bet a hell of a lot and I'm then going to have to shove. This is kind of incorrect as I can (and probably should) just peel, but once he 4bet I did just shove, thinking he was going to be overbluffing and I would pick up a lot of dead money here. He had AK, he hit and suddenly I've got 15k left. It's such a disaster when you leave yourself vulnerable in this tournament as if you stay deep it does seem so easy to just chip up without playing any big pots due to all the weaker players everywhere so I was really angry with myself for making this mistake.

I bust out shortly after calling a 3bet from a player who had been going pretty mental with KQo CO vs SB, flop was Q high and I called off two streets with turn being all in against AA. Didn't really feel I could do much here but I shouldn't have got myself in the situation where I can get finished off by standard hands.

Moving Forward

On second thoughts, I won't just dump some hands down here. The hands I've highlighted as being usable really aren't that interesting and I feel like I would be forcing it by posting some meh hands and talking about them just for the sake of it. I'll be playing 2-3 sessions a week until WCOOP so I'm sure that will provide me with some new content. I also plan to pop down to the palm beach casino to play some £5/£10/£20 here and there. I play absolutely insane when I play this game as the lineup is often very soft, the stakes are medium enough that I don't mind leaking a bit pre and I feel like my postflop edge (at least a year ago) is big enough that I can get away with some stupid **** and not lose too much EV so hopefully we can expect some pretty lol hand histories in here from that.

I've decided to stay in London until mid-late September, it's good to see family and friends and I've neglected London life for the last year. London is absolutely one of my favourite cities in the world and the London summer when good is pretty much unrivalled for me, the city comes alive. I'm planning to play a good amount of poker whilst I'm here though, will be playing Sunday, Tuesday and occasionally Thursday sessions online as well as playing live when I don't have evening plans. It'll actually be quite interesting and nice to play poker in this fashion, more balanced and not just all poker or all partying as is usually my approach. After that I expect I'll be heading back to Macau and burying my head for 6 months trying to dig for some treasure.

Look forward to dropping some special hand histories in here soon from my favourite casino to play poker at. Home is where the heart is

As always thanks for reading guys.

Great update as always ! Thanks for sharing

Nice little welcome back to the online scene. Didn't represent too much profit after all the other buy ins (think I won around $5k) but good for the confidence to run well after a month of bricking in Vegas. It was also a day saver as I got killed at first and felt like I couldn't win a hand. I had this one + a couple of turbos left at 11pm and just felt completely exhausted so it was really nice to manage to get a result in this one.

I also played a ton of interesting hands which I'm gonna go through now while they're fresh. The only slight disappointment was that I had 70% of the chips in play 3 handed against a $30 abi and a reg who I'm not too familiar with so obviously I was hoping to get it done, plus being a PSKO the money was all up top so if I'd closed out I'd have been looking at around $25k I guess. Oh well, certainly can't complain when the 9pm party turbo high roller is your day saver

Hand 1



This is the hand that launched me into the final with a good stack. I'd been leading for much of the tournament but a couple of setbacks had had me go close to broke then back to 30bb here. My opponent has been mixing opening and shoving and made a wide shove in a similar position with a weak offsuit ace.

We are 11 left, the next ladder is at 9, there is one very short stack on the other table and as you can see we have 3 short stacks here. I think in a regular tournament there would be an argument for folding this due to ICM. However, in a PSKO, the payout for coming first dwarfs all other payouts so that means there is more incentive for me to play closer to cEV. On top of that, CO shoving range is going to be drastically different to what he would shove with no bounty incentives. In this spot actually, the bounties on my opponents weren't that substantial, I think BB had basically no bounty and BTN had won like 4 bounties so those two should only increase his shoving range by a little. However, I had $2.5k on my head (starting is $252) so he has a massive bonus against me when I call it off as he has a chance to eliminate me and win maybe ~500k chips worth of equity. I also thought that he would be unlikely to shove TT+ so my equity is better than it looks. I expect him to trap with TT+ AQs+ so I think I will actually dominate his range pretty hard. I'm only really worried about 88/99, I expect to see 22-66, all suited aces, a lot of offsuit aces and some other junk as he has some pretty strong incentives to shove given that I'm the only threatening stack and if he gets called by either of the shortstacks he stands to win their bounties while risking relatively little.

So I called off the 77 and ran into a fairly delightful combination of holdings to score me the elimination and a huge double up.

Hand 2



Next hand up was this one. Not too much to say about this. This was on the final, I think it's pretty terrible from my opponent. Whilst the ICM is less strong on a PSKO final with the money up top being big, there is still some ICM given the stack distributions and it affects him the most. I had just chipped up to be CL and have been playing quite a lot of hands but it's UTG MP, CL vs 3rd stack- rolling in the A4dd preflop seems a bit OOL to me. I wasn't especially loving it when he shoved as if he's playing well I think he should be pretty solid here but I'm never folding and this propelled me to almost half the chips in play, which was nice.

Hand 3



From that point I ran pretty damn good up to 3 handed where I was steamrolling, basically winning every pot, playing a lot of hands and mostly taking them down without showdown. So when this hand came up I felt that my image was good to go for thin value and given my terrible blockers I could get away bet folding this. My opponent's ABI was $30 and he had played straightforward up to now so I don't really think he's going to suddenly make some sick river bluff for min raise more on the end which made me think i could go for the vbet since I'm not worried about betting and now losing both my river bet + the pot that I otherwise could have won by just checking. I definitely would not bet this river vs a very strong opponent as the possibility of getting bluffed really destroys any ev the river bet might have.

That being said this may still be too thin. I think some 3x could slowplay flop although I imagine 3x raising flop most of the time. If he has 3x I think I'm always getting looked up. He can also have 45, A4, 2x and some mid pocket pairs as he has pretty strong incentive not to 3bet middling pairs for value given SB's 20bb stack. Whilst those hands should be folded, I think with how aggressive I've been there's a good chance of a frustration call or of a hero call against a perceived bully. I also think some FD will raise flop and some flushes will raise turn so it's not like he has every single flush in his range. Given the history of the table for the last 15 minutes and there being enough bluff catchers that it's possible to conjure up, I think this is fairly close, but it could definitely be too thin. I think the river fold is trivial and expect to get bluffed close to never given the player type I outlined. Interested if people agree with both statements.

Final Hand



This final hand is heads up against the same opponent from the 56 hand. There were a couple of decision points to talk about. Firstly flop cbet + call raise. Secondly obviously the river raise all in on the end.

I was close to checking back flop here as I have a hand that can always call a turn bet and evaluate river. However he wasn't defending that much preflop so I didn't think he could have many two pairs that leaned me towards betting, cleaning up some equity against hands like 78 and I felt that I could peel one off in position vs a raise and see what develops + possibly show down my A high on some runouts as he didn't seem particularly capable of a multi street barrel off with 67 say. I'm no longer anything resembling an expert at heads up play and I'm not sure how to approach the flop for sure. I'll run it later but there are explo reasons for betting too so not sure how much stock to put in the sim.

On the river, I was pretty sure he would use a bigger sizing with the Ace of spades, I also didn't think he would check raise that much Asx as it makes for a pretty reasonable check call and I felt like Axss would often 3bet or shove preflop. So I think I'm up against a range of bluffs like 67 64, some flushes that decided to slowplay turn, some sort of Qx with a spade and maybe just some totally random air badly played. With not that many hands that have an easy call, a large number of hands that I think just have automatic folds, and also some possibility of hands like Q8 8s betting and then folding river I decided to go for it. I like bluffs like this where they immediately win against a range of hands that were our opponent bluffing and then it just comes down to how often he takes this line with bluffs, how wide he bets river for value, whether he will ever fold his middling spades, and how often he actually shows up nutted here. I don't really know the answers to that, and 2AM me certainly didn't. This could definitely just be straight spew but I quite like the logic behind it against this guy.

Anyway, glad I was able to get some hands played that were worth posting, my vegas hand history notes felt like a barren wasteland when I was looking through them for material. Feels good to start online back off with a mini bang and I'm looking forward to another session tomorrow. First up though going to reacquaint myself with the palm beach casino this evening, gl all!

these bluff raises on 4 flush boards are rarely spew imo unless you overdo it, as long as you keep your frequencies in check it looks fine to me

nice score even if it feels like nothing compared to what you play in macau, keep it up!