Hi everybody, this blog will follow my progress as I attempt to learn MTTs to a high level in a relatively short period of time.

About Me

I've spent the last 3 years grinding the big games in Macau, having moved there in September 2014 after graduating from uni. Fortunately those years went well and I've chosen to spend this year taking a step back from the hardcore Macau grind. I decided to do this because I'm 25 years old, my non-poker friends are still young, mostly single and having fun living in London. I wanted to make sure I didn't completely miss out on this, so this year I have rented a flat in London and whilst I plan to do some short trips out to Macau when games are good, I will be mostly based at home, where the majority of my friends live.

Poker

My poker career has pretty much always revolved around cash games. I started with HU cash online, migrated to live high stakes (London & Macau) in 2011, then went to uni and transitioned back over to FTP rush400 before finally moving back out to Macau again in 2014 after I finished my degree.

I've always had a great passion for poker but 3 years of live full ring full time with brutal hours definitely degraded that passion even if it did help in the bankroll department. I've played a few tournaments here and there over the years and in the last year I've really discovered a passion for them, I've been enjoying them so much and it's reignited an enjoyment of poker I thought I had lost for good.

Consequently I'm quite excited to put some effort into my currently fairly weak tournament game and am enjoying being put in unfamiliar spots (eg anything with less than 200bb.....)

That being said, my results so far have left much to be desired, here they are since starting in ~August, WCOOP certainly did some damage

Edit: Can't figure out how to Embed :/ Just left it as links


https://ibb.co/gqDB3w


https://ibb.co/kzrnbG
http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=172626

Blog Going Forward

So, my plan is to track my progress in here and hopefully use it as a source of motivation. I will be focusing on getting more tournament hands under my belt as a lot of my short stack game is being refined by learning approximate reshove ranges and then trying to implement them in game. On top of that I have been ploughing through video content, I am getting to grips with PIO, ICMizer, HRC and I have been getting some coaching too.

I will also be doing multiple trips for live tournaments so I'll be able to blog about those too.

Hopefully it makes for an enjoyable read and the results don't continue to be a pure trainwreck for the entire year.

Subbed. Good luck and enjoy the journey.

Will you be discussing strategy and learning objectives here? Or is this more of a journey as you move forward?

Would love to see a mix.

Thanks man.

Both. I'm happy to discuss strategy in here, my game needs a ton of work so I'm sure plenty of people's input would be very useful to me.

Right now I am focused on getting my RFI ranges (readless) refined for most stack size ranges and not slipping up on those- I have a tendency to open too wide off shorter stacks.

Also trying not to make reshove mistakes- mostly I have been reshoving too wide. My coach has given me some sheets I guess I can't really share but I will be using HRC to check on any reshoves I'm unsure about.

Upswing and RIO both have some great discussion on rfi ranges, 3b ranges and 3b defends. Worth doing that research and compare your notes.

GL man! Can't wait for updates

I've been thinking same thing too of learning NLH MTT's mainly a cash game player, but it seems like learning a whole new game i figure and idk what to begin to work/study on when delving into it.

subbed gl

Hey Moss, ha, long time since the Slider hu staking days. Glad to hear you're still doing well, gl with the challenge, i will be following.

Good luck, will follow!

Which stakes did you play in Macao and how were the games, if I may ask?

nice good luck, would be interested to hear more about your macau life/poker. I know that is old news and your looking forward, but would be fun to know some stuff. good luck

Matt Moss the legend!

Is it possible if you can briefly talk about your 50k/100k hkd HU match with the Chinese whale? Maybe post a couple fun hands from that session? Totally understandable if u can't...

Anyway good luck and subbed! This blog will be epic!

thanks man, will do

Yeah, I think it is especially overwhelming at first as each different stack depth feels like a different world but after playing a few you start to get accustomed to some of the more obvious adjustments of playing off different stack sizes and then it's a matter of reviewing the elements you're having more difficulty with from there. My approach for getting over the first hurdle of what do I even do was to just watch a bunch of RIO MTT videos- especially liked Apotheosis, and play daily to just get used to the spots I was less familiar with. Now, at least, I have specific areas I'm aware of that I want to work on, and am slightly more comfortable at stuff I was previously totally new to.

Ha hey man, yeah, feels like a world away, thanks, look forward to hearing from you.

Thanks, I play whatever runs really. That works at as an average game of $100/$200 US I would say. To be honest these are in my opinion the toughest live games in the world, you play with either online beasts or extremely successful live pros on a daily basis so you need to be very sharp. On top of that you have to grind absolutely insane hours in order to get even a little action with VIPs. However, occasionally these guys are able to lose really sick amounts of money so that's the end goal, just have to hope you can get your hands on it before it's shipped off to a competitor...

Macau life basically consists of: wake up- list for games, wait for text to get seat, play 9 handed with a seat reserved for a casino 'VIP'. Play 8-15 hours with all pretty good pros and some sick good pros and then eventually play 4-15 hours with a VIP depending on how much the man decides he wants to lose tonight. It can definitely be pretty tough from a poker perspective and a lifestyle perspective but can work out well too.

Haha, well it was in a public casino so I guess I can mention a bit. I got completely crushed at the start which was definitely the most stressful experience of my life, the guy would turn up, play every single hand, donk lead every hand, call me down relentlessly and I never had anything + was playing too big to follow through on some bluffs + hadn't played HU for like 6 years. I was really questioning my ability to beat the guy and I think if he'd beaten me for 3-4 more buy ins I would have been forced to quit him. However eventually managed to turn it around and got into the black and after I had a couple of nice results the game has since petered off.

One big pot off the top of my head is fairly boring. I 3b KK to 15bb vs 3bb open he calls flop is 874ccx I ch he bets like 12bb which I was pretty sure caps him pretty hard so I made it 40bb, he called turn is 2h bdfd i bet 60bb he shoves for 125bb I call he has JT no fd I hold and win which was pretty nice.

subbed. good luck dude!

will this blog just be about poker, i think people would also like to hear about the social side of living in london as a massive baller, the cars, the clubs, the girls etc

lol, nice to see you fred, always a pleasure

Rate these 3 things in importance to crushing MTTs:

1) Having an engine in 5aSide?

2) Having decent mass?

3) Curling 12s?

4) Being an enormous legend?

Today


Pretty productive day overall, although nothing to show for it results wise.

Started out by getting a bunch of stuff for my new place- some stuff just for living and then also ordered a desk, monitor etc as my current setup is atrocious. Afterwards I spent 2 hours going through the opening ranges I've been sent, screenshotting them all so I can get them up while playing and also made a bunch of notes on what elements of the opening ranges I found surprising or of note (eg opening 47s in CO when deep/skew towards Axo when shallower)

Then I started regging at around 4PM and stopped regging reg speeds at 10PM. I capped myself to 7 tables and was forcing myself to double check any open I thought was at all borderline by pulling up the image which helped to get those ranges cemented in. Ended up playing 37 tournaments in all and cashed 3 of them.

Was pretty happy with my play, one thing I was doing far too much of last month was trying to autocbet too many boards. There are a load of boards I'm aware IP vs BB cbet 100% small sizing is a great strategy but I think last month I lazily tried to extend that wherever possible, misapplied it and ended up cbetting almost 70% with extremely unbalanced checking ranges. Today I was more focused and on the whole I would say my postflop play was good.

I made a very big mistake not noticing how close I was to the bubble in one tournament which resulted in me busting a mid-stack where I should basically always have made it if I'd noticed. So that was disappointing, although that's something I was doing all the time a month ago, so I've at least made some progress towards checking the info tab...

Unfortunately I got an 8th in a $22 and a 10th in a 109 which ended up being a -$2k day but such is the MTT life.

Few hands:



Annoying one deep in a party 109, not too enjoyable playing 3bet pots BB vs UTG as I feel people put you on a really specific range postflop. That said I think it's pretty hard to find bluffs here so I think the fold is ok.







This one is against an unknown villain but I assumed fish from flop xr size off this stack depth. I think my life is made a bit easier thanks to this river + overbet as I think most random villains are way underbluffing this brick off runout so I think it's just flopped gin or specifically Qxcc going for greedy value here. That said I think I will be folding almost my whole range here, since I may well want to ram in more money on the flop with my nutted hands vs a perceived fish, so I'm not sure if the river fold is at all problematic. I think I'm in a pretty horrible spot on a ton of rivers if villain sizes fairly large, not sure what I'm supposed to do on offsuit T river, I guess probably call vs all non overbets. Spot felt ugly once he fired turn.







Much simpler one here, just posting it to show the sort of short stack stuff which I'm unclear on at the moment. I think the open is good and I definitely call vs SB & BB and fold vs BTN & CO but not entirely sure of this vs MP readless. I'll check this tomorrow when not exhausted. It is a hyper so the antes are pretty enormous.

Weekend Plans


I made day 2 of a £1100 in Nottingham (day 1 online) with starting stack (cost me 3 bullets tho) so will be going to that on Saturday. Won't be playing tomorrow although I will do some more study work. So next session will be on Sunday, looking forward to it.

KK hand imo should be a v high freq x on the flop given positions and how wide he will defend BB

gonna follow this, wanna see how the transition is going to be as far as enjoyment goes, I sometimes thought about switching to MTTs mostly but it feels like I would be miserable

best of luck

gl gl!

Always wondered what those Macau games are like. Sounds very demanding as a kind of poker marathon that tests many skills.

Pretty fun day with a bitter ending as is the par for any tourney you don't win.

My new desk + monitors arrived today so I couldn't resist jumping in for a session to check it out.

Binked a 109hyper for 3700 with an incredible final table, people folding down to their last 2bb all over the place.

Then finalled big 22 with chiplead, chipped up, lost a flip, then played a hand so unbelievably poorly I'm ashamed to post it. But good to punish yourself for these mistakes so as to ensure you recognise them for what they are.








This is just pure stubbornness wanting to find a way to win a big pot and win the tournament with no patience. I feel like the big flop sizing from a reg in the $22s is usually on the lighter side, but I don't think people are barreling nearly enough on a big final table for the buy in level, especially at a buy in level where regs are hugely underbluffing anyway. So i think the turn call with second pair and an awful second card blocking his bluffs is already terrible. When I then look at the river bet and try to find a call based on 'he would shove if he was bluffing, he wants to make a cheap bluff' it gets to a completely abysmal level of play. I've got far too eager to win the tournament and suspended any level of rational poker, which I'm pretty disappointed in myself for doing.

On top of that, I think I then committed ICM suicide making another greedy shove. Stack distribution was 9M, 1.8M, 900k, 900k and my 980k or whatever it was.

Payouts
6.6k
4.5
3.1
2.1
1.4











So it's a 35 buy in jump and any progress I make really doesn't increase my chances of winning the tournament much given the chip leaders enormous stack. I think I'm supposed to play super tight and wait for mistakes from the field who I've already seen make plenty of ICM mistakes. So I'm pretty sure this shove is atrocious and will double check tomorrow.

Obviously nice to have a winning day and make some headway but a pretty terribly played ending to it.

Anyways driving up to Nottingham tomorrow at 8AM and then back for sundays. Gl all

Thanks that's interesting. My approach to mix this has usually been to check back overpairs with a club and always check back aces since these are most robust. Do you think this is not enough checking?

thanks, yeah, I think 99% of cash players I know would hate what I'm doing but I'm just loving the format for some reason so here I am.

That is a very good description

Interesting thread will defs follow, how do you not zone out / get bored playing online donkaments for what seems like one big blind in live cash games you've played (or less)?

Definitely a small struggle and I can find myself, particularly earlier in the tournaments making some poor calls/bluffs because the game is a little small. But on the whole I'm treating it as a video game where I'm trying to become the best player, so I'm mostly thinking in buy ins and in performance rather than in $ amounts and making myself take it seriously.

On top of that, I just love it for some reason. Like in that big 22 final, I genuinely let the excitement of a final table get to my head and it affected my play, even though first place money is not too significant so clearly I am still very excited by it for some... weird... reason.

nice thread - def follow this!!

GL GL

plz dont forget to post some photos here and there

Interesting thread. Question tho, will you be exclusively playing MTTs for the year or are you still mixing HS cash? And if you are still playing HS cash will that be part of this thread?
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Nice thread mate. Played with you a bit at the beginning of the day yesterday at DTD. How did you get on in the end? Any interesting hands?