Happy New Year too

Had a couple short sessions which went decently, and now recovered most of the losses I had from the single -$4k session so that feels good
Really annoyed at the moment because halfway through my session my computer crashed and when I got back my entire Stars notes file was missing and I have no notes on anyone at the moment... I have a file on my laptop which is pretty out of date (I mark regs/fish etc almost daily, and have like 95%+ of 500NL players tagged for example) but it'll have to do.. The actual notes themselves aren't that important but the tags are helpful as I can quickly see how many regs or fish etc are behind on the table, or recognize players who aren't playing that often etc.

It's just an inconvenience but not the end of the world. I e-mailed Stars but doubt they will be able to help me get the file back, so I guess from now on I'll try remember to back up my notes file more often... You guys should do the same!

Only played 2 hours because of the notes file debacle but here are some hands where fish play like fish!

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $5(BB) Replayer
SB ($515)
BB ($394)
UTG ($522)
Hero ($1,378)
CO ($735)
BTN ($455)

Dealt to Hero A J

fold, Hero raises to $11.05, fold, fold, fold, BB raises to $17.10, Hero calls $6.05

FLOP ($36.70) 4 T 2

BB checks, Hero checks

TURN ($36.70) 4 T 2 A

BB checks, Hero bets $25, BB raises to $50, Hero calls $25

RIVER ($136) 4 T 2 A Q

BB checks, Hero bets $350, BB calls $327 (AI)

BB shows A Q
(Pre 70%, Flop 52.7%, Turn 72.7%)

Hero shows A J
(Pre 30%, Flop 47.3%, Turn 27.3%)

Hero wins $788

He is pretty strong on the turn in general but we obviously can't fold, I just shove river because most fish aren't capable of folding hands they perceive to be strong, and even if he folds hands like AK sometimes, it's still more +EV unless he is folding AK a huge % of the time.

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $5(BB) Replayer
SB ($262)
Hero ($1,910)
UTG ($552)
UTG+1 ($943)
CO ($507)
BTN ($267)

Dealt to Hero K T

fold, fold, fold, fold, SB raises to $20, Hero calls $15

FLOP ($40) 6 4 T

SB bets $37.50, Hero raises to $75, SB calls $37.50

TURN ($190) 6 4 T J

SB checks, Hero checks

RIVER ($190) 6 4 T J 3

SB checks, Hero bets $167, SB calls $167 (AI)

SB shows A 2
(Pre 55%, Flop 7.5%, Turn 0.0%)

Hero shows K T
(Pre 45%, Flop 92.5%, Turn 100.0%)

Hero wins $522

We can obviously just call flop, but decided to raise this time. I would often 3-bet this hand cause it plays well vs. the range of a fish which is usually too wide, so basically for clear value. When he 4xed I decided to just call (I often would just call anyway though).

Turn is w/e but checking back induces some random spazz which spite called the flop, and there isn't too many action killers in general vs. most of his range, and he probably feels pot committed with a lot of his range anyway.

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $5(BB) Replayer
SB ($536)
BB ($253)
UTG ($880)
Hero ($600)
CO ($573)
BTN ($1,195)

Dealt to Hero T T

fold, Hero raises to $11.05, fold, fold, fold, BB calls $6.05

FLOP ($24.60) T 6 6

BB checks, Hero checks

TURN ($24.60) T 6 6 5

BB checks, Hero bets $15, BB calls $15

RIVER ($54.60) T 6 6 5 3

BB checks, Hero bets $574 (AI), BB calls $227 (AI)

BB shows 6 4
(Pre 17%, Flop 4.3%, Turn 2.3%)

Hero shows T T
(Pre 83%, Flop 95.7%, Turn 97.7%)

Hero wins $506

Would usually bet flop, especially against regs since I'm perceived to bet quite wide here, but I don't mind checking back sometimes against fish to let them catch some overcards etc. On the river I think he has a flush a decent % and doesn't always raise it, and also if he has 6x I expect him to just flat that to a big bet too sometimes. There isn't much that calls 2/3 pot that doesn't call a shove anyway so I'm all in, give me your money pls.


Year to date.

Slightly delayed my trip to London by about a week, leaving on the 4th now.. Mostly so I can make the 50K VPPs I need (or should get) this month without being in the air for a day lol. Also cause accommodation is expensive and missing the first tourney I was gonna play isn't a big deal I guess.

Hope everything is going well for all you guys, glgl!

do you raise to 2.2x bvb?

I just have table ninja do a standardized sizing in all positions. If it were possible I might consider setting it up to be a bit bigger BVB or UTG etc compared to BTN, but it's not a huge deal.

Sounds like a feature request waiting to happen. Although I don't support the table ninja developers. The product itself is pretty great but I bought it when it was still in the early stages and after a little while (less than a year) I think they were bought and cut my updates to the product and basically forced me to buy it again if I wanted it to be usable. Who treats their customers like that, especially early adopters. Hopefully stars will implement hot keys on full tilt as well.

Been talking a bit more to some other players about strategy and hands in general, so feeling pretty good about that. Last few days have gone very well, and I've run pretty nicely overall. I have run well in terms of races all-in pre-flop and possibly "coolers" but in general people have also been donating stacks to me with really terrible plays too lol. Every now and then a fish will just call off, or make some ridiculous bluff etc..

For example

NL Holdem $2(BB) Replayer
SB ($534)
Hero ($216)
UTG ($1,001)
UTG+1 ($227)
CO ($200)
BTN ($73.34)

Dealt to Hero K K

UTG raises to $4, UTG+1 calls $4, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $20, UTG raises to $44, fold, Hero raises to $90, UTG calls $46

FLOP ($185) 7 8 8

Hero checks, UTG bets $911 (AI), Hero calls $126 (AI)

TURN ($437) 7 8 8 A

RIVER ($437) 7 8 8 A Q

Hero shows K K
(Pre 86%, Flop 96.2%, Turn 100.0%)

UTG shows T Q
(Pre 14%, Flop 3.8%, Turn 0.0%)

Hero wins $435

Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $2(BB) Replayer
Hero ($488)
BB ($289)
UTG ($97.25)
UTG+1 ($388)
CO ($444)
BTN ($258)

Dealt to Hero A K

fold, UTG+1 raises to $6, fold, fold, Hero raises to $20, fold, UTG+1 calls $14

FLOP ($42) 9 8 Q

Hero bets $22.08, UTG+1 calls $22.08

TURN ($86.16) 9 8 Q 6

Hero bets $85, UTG+1 raises to $170, Hero raises to $446 (AI), UTG+1 calls $176 (AI)

RIVER ($778) 9 8 Q 6 5

Hero shows A K
(Pre 46%, Flop 50.1%, Turn 100.0%)

UTG+1 shows T T
(Pre 54%, Flop 49.9%, Turn 0.0%)

Hero wins $775

I also played a few hypers today, felt kinda weird playing 20 tables of them after 2 months without having played them at all, but was fairly comfortable and the games I played mostly seemed quite soft. Was mixing most 60, 100 and 200 that ran. Ended up about +2.8K over 85 games so that was nice, then played a few hrs of cash and won there too..

Year to date:



49439.60VPP so far this year.

Sorry for the un-creative and boring updates so far! Will hopefully have more interesting stuff in March.

Continuing to go pretty well although I lost like 3K today. Was up about 6K in hypers over like 5 hours of play, so that's nice lol.. I'm likely gonna play a lot of hypers in March to get a large amount of VPP in a short amount of time.


Cash year to date

How's everything going. Did you make it to London? Any updated/news.

not a chance that ur +EV 20tabling hypers if u dont play them on the reg man, i think u might have delussionalsyndrome

Lurker looking for updates here, gl in everything

updates plz?

Oh sorry guys, been busy travelling a lot, went to Iceland, now in Norway. Probably not playing poker for the next week or so but will try update soon! Cliffs I bricked everything in London, haven't run very good in the last couple weeks in general but am travelling a lot and having a tonne of fun, have some nice pics to share including the Northern Lights, Whale watching etc. Will do a nice comprehensive update soon!

Pre-rakeback this is probably true but I really don't think I am losing at 200s and under (especially 100s and 60s) if I'm 20 (or even a little more) tabling with SNE rakeback. It's not that my ego is so high, but having a true roi of like 0.3 or worse (70% SNE rakeback 2nd time) is pretty unlikely because I have a huge edge on fish and I think a small edge (at worst break even) against a LOT of the regs even who play regularly.. Obviously against the best regs, they will have a reasonable edge on me but there's not many of those guys and the games seem decent lately. I mean I wasn't losing pre-rb (results and EV wise) in the November/December games which were way tougher. Obviously the sample isn't amazing (10-15K or something) but whatever. Anyway if it goes poorly I will for sure slow down a bit and take it easy, I don't think you can get 20+ 100/200s these days anyway (although you can if you include 60s I guess).. If I started playing them a lot, it would be to get a lot of VPPs in which case I would pretty soon be "regularly" playing them anyway.

Hey guys sorry again for the lack of updates. After the last update I didn't play much online at all, I went to London for UKIPT/EPT London quite early on and stayed there for about 2 weeks. I stayed with pvas2, an English MTT reg for most of the time, a few days at his place just outside of London then we shared a hotel room at the Landmark in London. The hotel was really, really nice, super large and just luxurious. At the ridiculous price of 280 pounds a night, it better be! We paid significantly less and fortunately got a discount though

The actual tournies I played went pretty poorly, bricked literally everything including the main which was 5250 pounds, a bunch of 2k and 1k (pounds) side events and basically a pretty disappointing result. Not a big deal and pretty standard for MTTs but a little brutal regardless.. Didn't have any nice runs either, had a nice stack in one of the 2K freezeouts (with a good structure) until some fish stacked my AA with JJ after flatting a 4-bet pre with super shallow stacks, lol.
Was still pretty fun and met up with a lot of friends which was great, and met a few new ones which is nice too!



The Full Tilt vs PokerStars challenge thing was held in London too, so I briefly saw a couple of the matches live which was cool. Being a player who is playing primarily online, I actually found watching them play online, live, way cooler than watching them play live, live. That might partly be because you see them playing live on TV etc all the time whereas you almost never get to watch them play online though.


Ike Haxton vs. Durrr

My friend lissi stinkt final tabled EPT London's Main Event, so that was really sick! I had a small 2.5% piece too, so a nice sweat, but unfortunately hero busted in 6th or 7th when the eventual winner made a questionable 4b jam for 45BB or so over hero's 3-bet with AKo, and 99 won to bust him. Still got like 2.8K pounds which paid for some of my flight/accommodation/tourney losses
We went to the famous Harrod's shopping centre in London and got some pretty sick steak quite late in his run, maybe day 3 or 4.. Was pretty good, and the place was really cool to have a look around.. Pretty elegant and expensive.


I played a little online and crushed it over a tiny sample, then one day had a brutal -8K~ session at NL1K Zoom which just recently came out which sucks. I was upswinging quite hard before that, so it's not a big deal but just feels lamer to upswing heaps lose it all than to just break-even the whole time I guess. I played kinda bad but mostly just ran poor, all-in wise was slightly below (1.5-2K?) EV, and was just running bad in terms of set ups. NL1K is pretty tough, definitely tougher than 500. I think it does depend on the line up as occasionally NL1K will have a bunch of bad regs and a few fish, whereas 500 is generally almost always playable (so not great, but I would be at worst break-even pre RB). Whereas sometimes NL1K is like 1 or 2 fish, then 10 sickos 4-tabling and maybe 2 bad/meh regs 4-tabling - that's a terrible ratio.

After that and bricking everything in London, I wasn't feeling too great about poker in general (not like depressed, just not super happy), so wasn't feeling amazing to play ANZPT Sydney. I booked my flight anyway and missed it.. So I was like fk it, I'm gonna go to Iceland. Lol, seriously that's what happened.. So I ended up in Reykjavik the next day and skipped ANZPT Sydney. I had a great time and saw some beautiful sights, had some nice food etc so don't regret my decision at all although missing a lol_soft tourney where 90% of the people who ran deep are bad is kinda lame too. Woulda had a super massive edge obviously.

Wtffff at these Google Map instructions!! I don't speak or read Icelandic well, that was a tiny bit confusing



Typical scenery during a bus ride



Random frozen pool we stopped at during a tour




A couple sceneries around Reykjavik, Iceland.



One of the min streets in the city of Rejkjavik.

I also went to see the Northern Lights (or Aurora Borealis), first attempt was a fail (it doesn't always show up), second was amazing! If you ever get the chance to see it I would really highly recommend it, they are really beautiful and pictures (especially mine taken without a tri-pod) don't do them justice at all! They dance and move around etc. Super romantic imo, bring a girl if you can!!






Seafood skewers (prawn, scallop, some fish) at "Sea Baron". Was very good! Also tried whale whilst I was there, didn't really wanna post a photo of it since it's obviously pretty controversial. Surprisingly I felt quite guilty whilst eating it but it is pretty nice.


The girls who were working there. The middle one is obviously very cute but the one on the left was also a lot hotter in person imo, accent/voice was probably part of it though.

Then.. I went whale-watching, which was really cool. We saw a few whales and at one point even two together! They just come slightly above the surface to breath every now and then so you don't really "see that much" but it's still really cool. I met two Norwegian sisters, we talked a bit and then got a late lunch. During which I told them about why I even randomly went to Iceland and made it pretty obvious my travel schedule is fairly flexible.. Then one of them said "Here's an idea, why don't you come with us tomorrow when our flight is back to Oslo with us!".. I thought for like two minutes and accepted, lol, so I ended up in Oslo and am currently staying at one of their homes. Already went horse-riding (she owns a horse) and gonna go snowboarding in the next day or two! Explored the city a little in the last few days too and it was pretty nice. There isn't that much to see or do here, and it is INSANELY expensive (seriously!!) so I wouldn't really recommend coming here as a tourist in general. A bottle of coke at a convenience store is 4USD+, for example.


Sisters and I in Iceland


Whale



View of Oslo from the sky/plane


One of (or THE?) main streets of Oslo, Norway


Horse-riding.

Horse-riding was pretty fun, quite bumpy (especially when going fast).. Can definitely see why some girls have an extra good time...

Sorry there hasn't been much poker content in this post! Hopefully you guys will enjoy some of the pictures anyway.

Gonna fly back home to see my friends for a couple days before going to WSOP Asia-Pacific in the start of April! Really looking forward to that, should be a great event with good value and a nice chance to ship some gold. Also already booked a flight to Berlin for EPT Berlin so it's a busy schedule.. Dunno wtf I'm gonna do about online, I have 70K VPP to date :/
Hypers for the win (or the lose..) I guess!

This post took ages and it's getting late so I'll make this quick (also why a lot of the above is written in "bullet point" form rather than proper sentences).. But playing poker is just so awesome in terms of the flexibility it offers. Being able to play as much or little as I want, whenever I want and virtually where ever (ignoring legislation exceptions) is so awesome, especially for someone like me who enjoys travelling. I don't wanna over kill the travel because obviously the opportunity to make so much money may not be around for much longer but yeah I'm having a great time

Edit: Oh and how could I forget.. I think the stereo types sometimes exaggerate the reality slightly, in the sense that there aren't as many of them as people say and obviously there are non hot girls too but the girls in Northern Europe are so pretty/hot/beautiful/whatever. There are the typical blonde hair, blue eyed girls but also a lot of fairly unique looking girls who are awesome.. I am a fan of white girls so take that fwiw but yea there are some beauts in Iceland, Norway, Sweden etc (and I've heard Denmark and Finland are like that too). lol

Sweet updates, bravo and gl mate!

great update

really enjoyed the update/tr, what a life

+1 to good update.

You dont post a lot but when you do its always a good one.

but did u score?

Thanks guys appreciate the nice words, glad you enjoyed it!

Lol nah, sisters were both a bit older and one has a long time bf, iceland nightlife is supposed to be sick but most places are 20+ heh. Next time eh

Cash games online this year so far. Rakeback is probably a little more because this is on my laptop where it thinks my rakeback is 60%, and SNE 2nd time is 72%, but who knows I might not make it in which case 60 is about right heh. Pretty happy with how it's going over the small sample, hopefully I will log a tonne of volume later in the year though..

Up a decent clip in hypers, maybe about 7K, but down like 8K in MTTs online this year obviously.. (Maybe even more like 10K including FTP stuff, had one Sunday where I lost like 7K or something ridiculous.. lol MTTs).
But obviously up a decent amount in live MTTs heh.

Thought I should just post a quick update about poker results since the last update didn't really have any. Will probably post a Sharkscope graph in the next update or something but the sample is so small so it's not very interesting.

gg sir!
seems like 2013 is a good year for you

Sick update bro. Keep crushing.

Hey guys, still haven't been grinding much online but that should change after this month, I really want to maintain SNE this year so that means 1M VPPs at least for the year and 50K a month every month at minimum. I have 81K or so at the moment so we are a little behind..

I played all 3 days of the opening event in the WSOP Asia-Pacific which was called an accumulator, which basically means multi-entry as after the first day all your stacks get combined into one stack. Cool format, but unfortunately I went busto all 3 days. Had one decent run with over 22k (starting stack is 3K) but ended up getting it in on the turn in a close/gross spot with TT on KT59hhhx and not getting there vs. A8hh.
Played with a few heros during the event including WhiteRabbito, PMahoney22 and a bunch of other regs you guys will know some/most of like Jake Ballsiger, Brendon Rubie/Brendoor1717, Joseph Cheong etc. Also had Daniel Negreanu and Phil Hellmuth on my table at some point, that was kinda cool/interesting, they are both exactly like they are on TV, telling you that he puts you on certain hands and talking all sorts of crap respectively haha.

I'm staying in the Crown Metropol hotel with QuadVQuadMe and another friend from NZ during the series and it's a really nice hotel, it's discounted a bit so the price is decent since there are 3 of us sharing. The hotel is very nice and in a great location which is very, very close to the casino. The entire complex is quite sick, it has a lot of shops/stores, a lot of nice restaurants, a decent food court, a casino obviously, cinema and even a night club. The hotel itself has some great facilities, the standard gym/spa/swimming pool but they are quite nice with a great view on the 27th~ floor:




After a particularly early bust out hand yesterday, I went to Melbourne central (main shopping mall) with a friend and bought a couple things like a SIM Card, wallet and some shampoos, body/face wash Not ashamed to admit I'm quite girly when it comes to that sort of stuff, love it!!
Oh and I did something I'd probably normally never do, was talking to a nice Latina girl at a store and decided to invite her for some drinks/etc sometime, ended up getting her number so might be an update in the future about that hopefully.. It's kinda hard/rare to do that in a random day-time setting especially when there's colleagues and stuff around.



Lol_sample size of hypers this year so far excluding rakeback

Online MTTs (even better sample size..)


Cash so far this year with rakeback

I'm such a mental game fish.. Have this obsession with "booking a winning session", it's really bad because it means I end up playing way shorter sessions than I should, sometimes if I win some at the start of the session I'll quit, and it's also bad because if I lose I play longer than I should when I'm probably playing a little tilted.
I'm not that bad in terms of tilt, but it still is noticeable and in games like 500NL where edges are kinda thin already a small difference is pretty significant.

Every now and then when I feel like "relaxing" I just jump into 50 or 100NL randomly for a very short session, there I feel super comfortable and feel I have an edge on almost everyone whereas at 500 it's not like that at all and I have to concentrate/think more when I'm playing. In other words 50-100 is kind of my "recreational/fun" level..
Unfortunately if I get stuck a little bit (especially if it's from stupid hands, suck outs or hands where the other guy did obviously terrible mistakes and won the hand somehow) I end up martingaling all the way up to 500 :/ It's actually not too bad because I'm actually +EV at every stake up to and including 500 so unlike roulette it's actually quite hard for me to have a massive loss in general. Lol, something I should work on anyway.

I mean look at all of my shortest sessions..



I have 62/76 of my sessions this year winning (although winning could be +0.01)

Dude I feel the exact same way