Hey all! This is going to be a megathread of sorts where I recap my career here in the OP and from there, post #1 will be my 2018 review and 2019 short goals. After that, I plan to just use this blog from now on and will have important year end reviews and the like edited into the OP.
Introduction
For those who don't know me, my name is Joshua Hoesel and I play as slayerv1fan on Pokerstars. I specialize in all formats of hyper turbos, my best formats being the 6max single table hyper sats and the 16man double shootout hyper sats, followed by 6m 25bb hyper turbos and 6m 25bb SKO hyper turbos.
I am a 27 year old US born player that is originally from north of Chicago, Illinois. As of November 2011, post Black Friday, I relocated to and have since lived in Rosarito, Mexico. Rosarito is located about 45 mins south of San Diego and 30 mins south of Tijuana.
During the SNE era, I achieved SNE+ every year from 2012 until the end of the SNE program in 2015. I am #5 on the all time VPP list, behind only jorj95, poker_in_pb, scossett and shabalinvlad. I believe I'm the only player in the top 10 or 15 that is still in their 20s.
Nowadays, with high stake volume having dropped off significantly, you can find me playing as low as $10 games on Stars. I do however still play up to the highest stake SNGs offered.
In terms of lifetime profit, I don't have an exact figure, but I've made about $1.5million in RB on Stars alone and am up $2-$2.5 million lifetime. Besides Stars, I'm up 6figs on Merge and mid 5 figures on each of Party, WPN and Bovada/Ignition.
I place a lot of pride in my SNG graph since Spin&Gos were released in November, 2014. At that point, many players really saw the light at the end of the tunnel and it was certainly the beginning of the end for many SNG grinders. This is also nearing the end of the SNE era, as we had slightly reduced rewards in 2015 and it was the last year the program was offered. Due to this, it's the main 'long term' graph that I post, especially since the results are recent enough to still be relevant, unlike many players that are relying on results from 2013 and before in order to sell action, find stakes, etc.
Poker Setup/Condo/Etc
My setup
-ABS Vortex Desktop: Upgraded to 64GB ram, upgraded video card, upgraded HD that it came with
-40" 4k Curved main monitor
-30" Dell 2nd monitor
-Geekdesk sit/stand desk
-Herman Miller chair
I live in a 3bedroom, 2 bathroom condo that I rent here just south of Rosarito. I own land here in Rosarito and am planning to buy more in the near future, but I do not own the condo I live in. I pay $1100 USD a month in rent
The amenities here are pretty great
-2 outdoor pools + jacuzzis
-Jacuzzis in the lobby of my tower
-Gym in each tower, tower 3 gym being nice
-Small movie theater in tower 3
-Clubhouse down front by the water with billiards, pingpong, bar + tvs etc
-Outdoor dog park
-Private beach
Some pictures around the grounds of Calafia, my condo itself and then some sunset pics...we get insanely good sunsets down here!
Tour of my place from when Bfizz11, GF and their 2 pitbulls were staying with me in the summer of 2018
Career Recap: I link the correlating PGC thread in each situation starting post BF
Through Black Friday:
-I had some PGCs throughout this time that I played for a living up until BF happened. I had just turned 20 when BF hit and I was actually living in Vegas with slayerv1 (where my SN comes from) and playing 180s+MTTs and managing the SNG/MTT portion of FluxStable. I was awful at poker, pretty immature in my own dealings although I was already considered very good at the SNG/MTT manager job at the age of 19 where we had something like 25-40 horses at a time.
-I moved home to Chicagoland from Vegas and wasn't quite sure what to do. I ended up grinding in a lot of homegames and some charity games in 1/2, 1/3 and some 2/5 games and did okay, enough to get me out of debt and back afloat. But I wanted to get back on the online grind
-I attempted to move to Canada but was actually rejected at the Canadian border after a ****show of an evening heh. I end up moving back home and find the 6max super turbos on Merge
-Grinding out Merge 6m Super Turbos. Won the LB my first full month grinding them while playing a $4 abi or something ridiculous like that. $2k for winning the LB + my already having ~100% RB on there led to my effective total RB % being about 140% on the month.
-Got a backing deal for the higher stake Merge 6m SNGs during this time which would translate over to PS after I relocated. Saved up enough money to have 6 months expenses for Mexico and ended up finding a roommate in 2p2er Starting gun/PS sn live@pompeii. We both flew to San Diego and met up on the evening of October 31st and made our way to Mexico together on the morning of Nov 1st! Shoutout to him, he very successfully grinded SNE from 2012-2014 or 2015 (IDR which) and then moved back to the US, finished school and is doing very well these days!
-2012 was an up and down year for me. I got quite out of hand in Mexico and did a lot of partying and stupid ****. But I also have a ton of fun memories from those days.
-I ended up abandoning the idea of getting SNE and actually returned to grinding Merge, smashing the games there once again.
-In around August or September 2012, I made my return to PS and made a mad dash to finish SNE, which I did by the time Xmas 2012 rolled around. I won pre RB on Stars on my way to finishing SNE and also finished something like +30k on Merge in that time as well
-$300 and $500 hypers were released and I made the idiotic decision to battle in the HS's over grinding $30-$100s and play soft $200s and $300s on my own dime. I fell behind the curve and didn't even deserve to win much in those games post RB, but unfortunately ran terribly on top of it. I did still profit something like 6figures IIRC...my spending was out of control and I easily had money to support the $6k+ I was spending each month heh
-Started my downward spiral with Adderall, Xanax and other substances
-I remember having a massive losing January, something like $70k+ IIRC. Not the best way to start a year!
-Ended up switching my main game to hyper sats for a while before switching around my grind many times throughout the year due to personal issues, a short term increase in hyper sat rake, the release of spin&gos, etc. Wound up being a midstake+ MTT pro for a while and filling in with all the $60+ 18mans, 9m turbos, 9m hypers that ran Mon-Sat and doing an all out MTT grind on Sunday across 9ish sites.
-Had my worst personal moments this year with the xanax problems, some health problems and the like. By the end of the year though I was basically recovered and was ready to make 2015 really count
-Started 2015 grinding MTTs but very quickly switched back to SNGs. Played hyper sats as my main game and started smashing the games. 2015 and on is where I've really absolutely smashed the games. Did fine in the past but really found what works for me starting in the spring of 2015.
-Got into a pretty good groove IRL during this time as well. Down to my only substance being alcohol and some white stuff once in a while, which I've since completely quit since seeing the cardiologist earlier in 2018.
-Started the year with 27% RB which got reduced after chests were dropped to the dismal RB % I now have. Absolutely smashed $500 and under stakes, profiting something like $275k IIRC.
-Decided I wanted to really go for it in 2018 and show people that low-mid stakes were still able to be crushed! Came up with the 300k game Challenge
And that takes us to 2018, which will be recapped below in post #1! Thanks so much to everyone who has followed me over the years. You all know I love the interaction ITT and will genuinely try to give good, honest to answers to almost anything asked ITT. Hope everyone has a great 2019 and will see you out there on the tables!
So, 2018 was quite the year! Unfortunately I did not complete the 300k game challenge, but I'm still very happy with what I accomplished .
Since I've already posted some graphs and other info in my 2018 PGC, I'm going to just get right into the year end wrap up
Challenge Graph: $100 and under SNGs in 2018
Rake Paid: $233,911 (1,286,510.50 VPPs in the old SNE system, would be the lowest total I've finished a year with since 2012)
The RB Breakdown
Stars coins: $2000 cashed in
45,000 leftover=$450
Cash+$Ts: 4368.5
Tourney Tix: 1993.4
.com 500 chest: 500
.es 500 chest: 614
football chests: 51
party poker 215 + 55 ticket: 270
sng tix week ending jan 21: 2570
collectibles ending jan 21: 27
sng tix week end jan 28: 770
collectibles end jan 28: 12
sng tix week end feb 4: 400
collectibles end feb 4: 9
collectbles end feb 11: 50
=$14084.9
14,084.90/233911=6.02% RB before PS refunds for banned players
+$4485 in refunds from Stars
=7.93% Overall RB Related Equity
Now let's jump right into some graphs! Very happy with my results for the year although I still would love to have better HU #'s against the other regs and would like to improve a bit at the CEV table of the 16mans. Definitely can't complain though, I table so hard that I am constantly misclicking, misreading stacks etc.
$74 and under 6max hyper sat results
$181+ 6max hyper sat results (not part of challenge)
HS 25bb hyper turbo results (not part of challenge)
16man CEV Results as there are no working EV lines for them of course
2-2 Handed
3-4 Handed
2019 Goals
-My main goal is to dedicate 2000+ hours to poker this year. I'm always someone that believes that if I put the volume in, the results will come
-Hopefully I am able to successfully transfer over to grinding 25bb hypers and 25bb SKO hypers for a better hourly/higher EV than grinding hyper sats. If that becomes true, I'll play 25bb Mon-Sat and then full hyper sat sessions on Sunday and then of course continuing to grind sats during each and every series that runs.
-Finish my truck project. Am now done with the Durango besides getting new tires + rims (will post pics after I get them), but we still have a good chunk to finish up with on the big red truck. Would love to take it to the Baja 500 in May this year, but we're going to have to get going for that to be a possibility. Going to be super sick to drive in the end, should be pumping out ~1000 HP
-Set aside money for and find more land to buy. Will require spending some time with my lawyer looking at developments and whatnot, but this should be a pretty easy goal to accomplish
-Focus more on health and fitness level. This too should be an easy one to accomplish and will definitely be so if I am able to switch to grinding 25bb Mon-Sat where I can take breaks throughout the day and not be stuck grinding 6-14 hour sessions without any break
That should do it. I don't really ever focus on monetary goals anymore as I don't think it's that wise. Really just want to grind quite a lot again this year while having a bit better life balance than I had at some points in 2018. I do however want to get my lifetime $100 and under stake graph to +$1million at some point. Hoping by the end of 2020 I can complete that!
For those who have been following along, here are my $50 and $100 SKO graphs along with the $30-$100 25bb since the end of October when I started focusing on them. Now that the Winter Series has wrapped up, I will restart that grind either later today or tomorrow. I studied ~100 spots last night so am feeling decent about my 25bb game, but I bet a lot of today-thursday will be study and I'll ramp up the volume starting on Friday
Thanks for all the <3 boys. I'll get back to everything later on, about to be out the door!
Quote:
Originally Posted by blakkman08
too long did not read but INNNNNNNN vamouéééé
will read later obvs, in for trucks and ladyfriends
Hahah just because of your post I had to post this
My newest chica I encountered about a month back just arrived back to Tijuana a few hours ago and is about to arrive to my place. Seeing her before she returns to work in the club. Not sure how long she's going to stay, prob just a day or 2
Gotta love the chicas from Sinaloa, by far the hottest girls in Mexico on average. Though as you guys have seen, I've found hotties from many states over my years here
Do you ever worry that you might be timing out on tables?
At the moment I am stacking 14 tables and am having success with it, but I am worried that I am timing out sometimes and that I am being folded without even realising it.