So I've run a blog on a private staking forum which some people enjoyed so I thought I'd start/continue it on here.

Instead of just copy and pasting my posts I thought for my first post on this thread I'd just chuck in some cliffs about myself and we can go from there. I haven't set a posting schedule either, sometimes I may post everyday other times every week. I'll do my best to reply to any questions you have.

Here we go then I guess.

- I'm 19 and live in the UK
- Start an engineering degree in september
- Began poker as a 16 year old on FTP.
- Ran it up without a deposit to like 300 dollars
- Played a 200 dollar FTOPS event, remember going out on the stone bubble (wasn't even a must push).
- At least I got the FTOPS player badge, had the rush badge too, and silver edge (maybe this is a flashback to some of you guys, maybe not).
- Degen'd the roll on FTP.
- Watched a lot of YouTube poker (kind of a waste of time but always did and still do enjoy a good Hellmuth blow up).
- Turned 18, got on stars. Was awful.
- Improved a bit, thought I was good, still awful.
- Improved a bit more, thought I was better, still awful.
- Binked some micro MTT, thought I was good, still awful.
- A year went by, still awful.

I'm just gonna cut into the cliff. I guess this ability assessment is completely relative and that poker (alongside any skill game) just has these ongoing epiphany's and "Aha" moments where you realise what you were doing wrong for so long. Like one day I could become a respected reg and Doug Polk (wouldn't be surprised if Polk thinks he legitamately ****s out diamonds) is still going to call me a fish.

- Streamed on twitch for a bit, had a lot of fun, was still pretty bad.
- Downswung for a while, started to get a decent sample at micros, did okay.
- Switched to zoom for a while, had okayish results, felt I learnt a lot more in that space of time then I would from MTTs, mainly from chatting to other players more often. (Shoutout to the two Lukes, you guys are GTO).
- Quit zoom to go back to MTTs, no matter what I've really done I've always come crawling back to MTTs, not even in a degeny way I've just always loved the depth you can go into when analysing stuff like rejam ranges and all the meta that goes on with certain spots (BvB 20bb+ jams in PKO's, c/r on paired boards etc).
- Currently think I beat the micros and am reviewing my HH's consistently I feel I'm improving at a decent rate.
- Beating the games I play for around 8bbev/100 over 160k+ hands, I'm not even sure if that's good. I feel any person who know's what they're doing at micros can get pretty big WRs at micro's given how genuinely bad a decent amount of the field are.
- Still on a downswing.
- Recently got a backing deal for anything up to 4.40 on stars.
- Just bricked SCOOP (didn't play much of a sample but still )
- As of right now thinking about how tough 180s are and how bad they're going to get over the next year or two. The good regs are so well seasoned in that format and I'm there just like "I guess this is a jam with 8 left".

Well that's it for now. Expect some posting of hands, my general views on things poker, my mindset towards life and some funny live poker experiences (is it me or are most people at poker rooms in london pure degens).

Any questions fire away.

Oh, and the compulsory thread saver.









That's right twoplustwo, I'm going to attempt to save my sanity (well hopefully hold onto it) whilst trawling through the salt infested pits of various threads on the site. Wish me luck.




Couldn't resist. By the way, shoutout to all the people that photoshop Emma Watson onto other women (more commonly in a porn setting). For years you guys have done a terrible job and I kind of respect the drive and determination you have for being able to keep going for years and years doing a shoddy job in a field where you get next to no recognition.

Good luck on your journey!

subbed, gl

Thanks, enjoyed your podcasts with Papi. Especially the parts where you spoke about MTTs/MTT players. Pretty GTO tweeting at the moment also

Thanks

So I'm a pretty cynical guy, I even have a notes section of my iPhone where I list everything I hate. Things like people who walk on crutches, Facebook mums, sub one year anniversarries, anything black forrest related are featured on there.

But you know what I hate just as much if not more then all of those things.

The general attitude of a lot of people that play MTTs.

Now before I get on this tirade I just want to chuck something out there which I probably should of said in my initial post. I'm not a member of any highstakes community, I'm not a crusher, I'm just a kid. I'm not here to butter anyone up, in this blog alongside pretty much everything I do in life, I just want to speak my mind. If you think I'm an idiot for what I'm about to say then fine, I may lose some of you over this but I'm not here for "GLGLGL INNNNN", I'm here to share my honest views on things.

This may be a bit long winded but I'll try and make it a bit cliffy so it becomes easier to digest.

Here we go:

"Watch out Tom (I'm called Tom btw, feel free to call me that) this guy's good"
"What makes him good"
"He won EPT Snowfest (this was actually a stop lol) back in season 6, watch out".

This whole idea that because someone won something they automatically qualify as a good player is absurd. The fact that a decent amount of these previous "champions" (cringe) are now broke or have fallen way behind the curve just highlights the variance of MTTs.

On the online side I think it was last SCOOP or WCOOP they may of interviewed some of the winners. I just dislike that a lot of the community treats people who binked something as Greek Gods of the poker world.

On the losing side you have people on twitter and likely on some threads here about how they run so bad because they didn't cash in their first 15 SCOOP events (that's right boys and girls a 15 GAME SAMPLE).

I'm just in shock that in 2016, the community obsesses about how people run over stupidly short samples. I don't even want to begin to think about how much of a sample you need on stars to get an idea about where you're at. I'm sure we've all seen countless examples of people who run extremely well for crazy samples (5k-10k games/maybe even their life) and convince themselves that it's always going to be like this and then start throwing their toys out of the pram when they go on a 1k game downswing and keep on mentioning about how they deserve or score, or how they're due something.

I just feel like shouting, it doesn't matter how SCOOP, or the World Series went. You're looking at tiny samples. This whole idea of people's main goal of a series is to win has to be a leak.

If those people spent a fraction of the time they spent obsessing about a bracelet on making their goals working out a sleeping schedule, getting meal plans ready and thinking about spots/reviewing hands they'd be making a lot more money.

Another bad trait of this whole "vamos kid, come to Nobu with me next weekend you crusher <3 xx" mindset is that it breeds overconfidence.

"Oh look I binked, I guess I am good, party time".

This has to just cloud your overall perspective and stunt your progress. Where's the emotional balance? That's what makes all the difference at the top right? And yes, I know I'm generalising but I wish more were like

"Sorry man, no Nobu for me, I have to keep grinding, I'm reviewing the FT right now, some super interesting spots, wanna come on skype and talk about the spots with me"

^ attitude more people should have

"Not cool bro, I'd join you, but me and this Thai girl I met on tinder are gonna light up a fat doobie whilst she plays some 100 spins for me, has to be plus ev right!"

^ attitude of a average reg currently who will be broke and fall behind in a couple years

I'm going to predict some responses.

"We're not robots, we need time to let off steam, why do you even care about what we do in our free time away from the table".

Agreed this optimal mindset and idea of emotional balance (not caring if we win or lose) is hard to achieve, but there are still more plus ev things to be doing in your free time, rock climbing is GTO apparently? That 500 bar bill at Monte Carlo which only consisted of a bottle of vodka and a couple beers is costing you arguably more in ev. In regards to the why do I care, I don't care, I'm just saying it I find it rather surprising that a decent amount of people are still partaking in pretty big off table leaks given the state of where poker is right now.

Personally looking at my spot, I'm pretty happy. I recently got a backing deal and I'm so relieved that my backer said to me, it doesn't matter what results you get over the next weeks/months, you're obviously a good player and we both understand the variance which is out there.

This is great for me, currently I'm not that fussed about if I bink or brick, I'm more focused on looking into interesting spots and have deep thoughts about how to exploit the general population. I just want to get as good at poker as I can, continue to go running, continue to play chess and have a generally positive outlook on life (whilst still being a bit cynical at heart).

hehe enjoyed that post. quite some wisdom for a 19y old

Glad you enjoyed the post.

Was in a hyper today and some guy at my table said he read my thread and enjoyed reading it. Happy that some of you are getting pleasure out of it whether it be from a general or more comedic aspect.

I plan to stream this evening on twitch if any of you would like to join me I'll post the link below to save you from asking.

twitch.tv/labaxpoker

Expect some live poker story or another rant about something soon!

following!

Have a strange feeling that your gonna make it op. You have the right attitude. I really wanna see you getting up to playing $11-$33 mtts/sngs. It's just so hard to grind out anything decent playing at your current stakes. GL

Thanks!

Thanks for the kind words. Sadly I think I'll need like a 50k sample to know if I've made it . And I'm not currently trying to slowly grind out profit. Most of my time is spent thinking about how to exploit the general explanation and playing the best I can whilst trying to optimize session prepartion and have balance off the felt. I may get into more detail with those thoughts in the future.

So last night I streamed for a fair bit and played some MTTs. I had a good time, had a cool group of people in the chat but you guys don't really care about that and I think it would be pretty boring to go into any detail on, so let's talk about a tournament I played.

I played the $11 Payday Phase thing, previously just called The 11 Phase 100k gtd which I remember having one of the worst formats to ever grace PokerStars. Something like the top 10% get through and then they rescale the blinds at phase 2 but the blind levels could heavily fluctuate at the end of the first phase based on entrants/time of day etc.

Anyway they've fixed that now and have just made it so that it ends after 15 levels.

I've always been interested in these formats and how reg infested they are. I can imagine a lot of regs grinding them out trying to take the biggest stack to phase 2 taking high variance spots and the fish being against playing them because why does a fish want to generally play a two day tournament (can see SCOOP and WCOOP as exceptions), they'd rather play some hot turbo or something.

So I was looking at the lobbies and one of the phase 1s seemed decentish. Some good regs but a decent amount of people I had tagged as fish so I jumped in.

What a cluster ****, this has to be one of the strangest tournaments I've played in regards to field variation. Some decent/good regs at my table especially for the last few levels, pretty much everyone at my table was a reg or a maybe reg towards the end. However some of the stuff I saw, people getting in QTo pre for 50bbs effective because they lost a 10bb pot AJ<JT the previous hand. One spot I remember jamming nines getting one caller and an overcall from the small blind who had 42o. I think the main phrase I'd sum up the phase with would be "what even is this".

I don't really think I plan to do any kind of MTT updates for what happens to me, there's enough of that around here and I find it really boring to read.

"So I had a pretty good seat with position on a fish and about 40 minutes in after chipping away I got AQs in the CO 17bbs deep. I open and the SB jams and he has ATo and you never gu-"

^ Already so bored I couldn't even finish typing (I wouldn't even recount a hand like this but you get the point)... I'm not even sure if I'll play the Phase One next week. There just has to be better value 11s out there.

I often see a lot of people who grind cash and some mtts/sngs around the low stakes (maybe breaking into midstakes level, I'm not even talking about the twitch streamers who set money on fire playing tourneys they have no edge in). You know what I think you really need to do if you want to succeed at poker and rise to the top and not slowly deteriorate when you're in this spot. You need to leave your ego at the ****ing door.

So many people carry around this aura "Yeah, people just donate left and right to me man it's crazy". They tend to overlook a lot of the player pool and brand a lot of people as idiots which leads them to live in this fairy tale world where everything revolves around them and causes them in turn to give up a **** ton of ev.

I feel this happens a fair bit in MTTs too. "Yeah I had my first 10k month so I think I'm gonna take the next few days off and chill".

****kkk, how about you review some hand histories and start having some respect for variance and not overlook the fact that you imploded and donked off your stack with 7 left but managed to get there. People over react to big scores way too much in the low/mid?/high?? stakes community. It's a similar attitude to the Thai tinder girl scenario which I made a post or two back, that attitude will lead you to being broke. You know what an underrated quality in poker is? Honesty. Honesty in regards to how you are with other people but also being honest about your own ability and your results. Again living in this fantasy world that everything is going to be like it was last year and "The Big 11 is my tournament, I final tabled it 6 times last year" attitude is just burning money.

So this post will likely be a bit off tempo (for a bit) compared to my previous ones but I feel it would be fun to mention some experiences whilst playing live and then talk about my views towards live poker in general.

So let me set the scene...

Hero is wearing a green T-Shirt and black hoodie and walks in calml-

Yeah I'm just messing around, you wont have to read through any of that bs don't worry.

It's a Friday afternoon/nightish and I'm at Aspers, in Stratford. I just took the tube there after grabbing some Dim Sum with some friends in China Town (shoutout to Rob, Maria and Tod(d?), you guys alongside the two Lukes who I mentioned earlier, are also GTO/the nuts/insert positive poker related comment here).

I walk into the poker room and echo's of "I'll give you a spin", "it's a minibet" and "I deal for a living" are hovering around the air. For those of you that don't know Aspers run a Friday tournament which has the usual amazing live structure of starting off 5000 big blinds deep and within 60 minutes becoming a hyper turbo and within the next 30 becoming a crack head turbo. Anyway the rake was only 10 percent and it was Friday night in London, why not enter.

So I sit down, usual array of people from all different walks of life. Couple business guys, the occasional girl who you naturally assume plays tight, guy who looks too young to be playing (me perhaps), guy who talks about his Vegas trip last summer even though it's January and the randoms.

Wait a second Tom, what do you mean by "the randoms"?

You know the usual poker casino degens, you don't really know what they do but they're always there, extremely results orientated, bitch fairly regularly, often found saying "i'll give you a spin". A random is often found engaging in conversation with another random about how they busted that MTT at the Vic or how they got two outered on the stone bubble of a Rd 1 UKIPT Sat a month ago. "so sick" right?

I get asked a few questions when I'm at the table after around an hour of playing.

The occasional girl asks me "do you play online?".

I think from now on my usual answer to this is going to be "what's online?" just because I think it would be hilarious on the off chance of one the degens going off and being like..

"Chris chris, come 'ere. This kid doesn't know what online is! What a mug haha!"

Oh the irony, one time can this happen to me.

I was honest with her and said I played a fair bit, nothing much really came from that conversation.

I found out she dealt for a living, mainly in private games as she said there tended to me more money for her in them.

By the looks of her it looked like she also dealt herself decent sized portions at mea-

^ Too harsh to continue I apoligise, she did seem like a generally nice person, I didn't catch her name but I think she plays fairly regularly there.

Just a disclaimer, I hate bad beat stories, I don't care if you lost a flip in the Sunday Million with 60 left, I don't care that you're due something. The main point of the story I'm about to say is just from the reactions of the table villain.

So I'm in MP with Kings and I shov-

"Hang on Tom aren't you going to tell us the action before you"

My bad, it's live, whatelse happens in a £50 tournament, limp, limp, limp, limp.

So after 4, 5 who knows maybe even 90 limps I have kings in middle position and I jam for 17 big blinds. The guy to my direct left who's been fairly tight, cold calls me when he's around 50bbs deep.

Other people at the table are already making "oh **** bro" sounds, I had a bit of a sigh feeling as people quickly folded.

"The ultimate cooler" I jokingly say to him.

He replies "Well I'm in the lead". The table laughs a bit, the word sick is said around 300 times too many and I bust, pick up my rucksack, leave the table and consider what next.

It's still relatively early in the evening and I thought I'd play some 1/1. Guy at the cage who you're kind of surprised is wearing an earring but you'd never say "nice earring" to him hands me some betting disks and I get taken to a seat.

I sit down at a table, few people stare at me, before I can look around I hear a dealer blurt out

"all in".

I thought the tournaments only happened on the other side of the room not here, well that's my bad, I only played here on a couple of occasions, I can't know everyth-

"all in 176"

To my disbeleif some russian guy at my table just jammed all in, blind.

Some guy calls him, the russian tables T4o, loses and a couple hands later loses again and walks off.

One guy at the table does the classic fish catering "You're a very good player, very good player indeed". I don't know how this kind of crap convinces some random drunk russian that he should come back but maybe I'm wrong, worth a shot right?

The guy who buttered up the fish as he left now leaves the table abruptly which I actually found pretty funny.

It was like he was a pure bumhunter, only sitting at tables where people shove all in blind. I just thought to myself, does this guy really think he doesn't have an edge vs a 1/1 table at aspers on a friday night. I wouldn't really want to be in his spot if that's the case.

Table is not disimilar to the kind of people at my tournament table earlier in the evening. Only real difference is there's this one middle aged eastern european woman who's had aces four times in the last 30 minutes and not got action once. She was raging the whole time, pretty entertaining to witness.

Nothing else that interesting character wise happened but I left reassured that if worst came to worst, I might be able to make money and survive by playing live poker at aspers.

And this is where I'm going to lead onto my general thoughts on live.

Online is getting a lot tougher, there's no question in that. An idea I've had for a while is that when I eventually get a decent enough roll I may attempt to grind out cash whilst I'm at university in London.

There are some issue's with this from my perspective.

There's a lot of fish catering, can't talk strat at the tables. Basically as a reg I'd just have to fake a personality in order to make players comfortable with me in order to take their money. If I just sit there with a hoodie and headphones on people are not going to want to play pots with me (generally speaking, maybe they tilt and be like I wanna bust this online kid but you get my point).

I'm fine engaging in coversation I just don't really want to be someone I'm not in order to increase my hourly. That's what a lot of people do in life but idk, I've never been about that. The whole "what's online" comment would be the only real thing and that's just because of the expected troll value if some degen goes off against me.

Another reason is that casino's are a bit, well, demoralizing. Pretty much everyone I saw playing they're was either just having a bit of fun or just a pure degen. There was one person the whole weekend whilst I played at Aspers who seemed to have an idea of how to play. And of course this is good for me as a player it's just the whole hanging around degens, depressed environment etc. Maybe some of you grinding live cash who are reading this could give me some input/advice/what you do to stay motivated/alive. I mean in my breif experience (Warning, expect generalisations) even the decent live regs seem annoying to deal with.

You always have those live cash pro's in the US in somewhere like Florida where their Twitter Bio is like.

"Poker player, Dolphins fan, all around good guy"

Just butting in here but you see this "all around swell guy" bs on twitter from all these random (likely lonely) live pros. I just feel that anyone who lables themself as a "good guy" has a pretty low chance of being an actual good guy. Chances are they've been rejected by a few girls over the years and they've said the usual excuses of "you're too nice to me, I need you as a friend" so they feel they've now earned that "title" for their twitter bio.

Rant over, if any (legitimate) live pro's are reading this some thoughts from you/advice would be great, preferably in the UK, US could help too.

So I read the PG&C sticky last night (shoot me for not reading it before ik) and thought I'd sum up what the main kind of focus/objective/direction of this thread is.

As the title "The MTT Journey - An Assessment" states this thread is basically going to tell the story of what's it's like for myself being in the current MTT climate and what my thoughts on certain things (whether it be the players or certain changes) are.

Going along with those thoughts I thought I'd make todays post in light of the stars MTT changes which were made on the 28th of March and the new schedule which came out recently. I feel like I may have to say this a fair bit, I'm not a highstakes crusher, I'm just a kid.

But I actually think I'm a kid who in this topic, has done a lot of listening and thinking and taken a lot of people opinions into account, so before you all roll your eyes. Give me a chance.

1) They raked rebuys

This is pretty horrendous. Essentially killing the format. I'm not a rebuy GTO expert but I've be told my a lot of decent players that you should just looking to play them as normal FO and then add on if you make it to that period. I don't think I've rebuyed in tournament since the change was made, I don't plan on playing rebuying any time soon.This is just a change where pretty much no player benefits, only stars win.

2) Hyper-Turbo Rake going from 2-5%

I mean they've tried to justify this by making them have a lot more play at the start. Late reg is 30 mins and you have around 10BBs at that point but it still goes pretty fast. I doubt it's enough of a chance to justify a 3% rake increase. I'm not sure on the exact finish times of hypers pre and post change for the same amount of entrants/buyin but I doubt it's that different. I'm mainly viewing this from a low stakes perspective but I for one thought that the fact that stars had 2% rake for so long in stuff like the 5.10 Hypers was pretty great. This whole, they're a crapshoot there's no edge to be made isn't true in the slightest. When on the bubble and in spots with heavy ICM people are making a bunch of mistakes with calling/jamming/rejamming ranges which is where you can make a lot of money. That's a spot where if you're good, an edge can be formed which in my opinion could make you still be able to beat the games by a decent amount. Who wins here? Well no one really but it could of been a lot worse imo.

3) New pay table.

Long story short they're getting a lot flatter. More people are getting paid a bigger amount then before (in regards to min cashes), jumps at the final tables are going to be less then they were previously and there's going to be less money at the final table. Who does this hurt, regs. Who does this benefit, the recreational players, they'll "win" more often and might play more tournaments as a result, which does a fair bit for field sizes and GTDs.

So all in all I feel the changes above are pretty bad for the regs out there (surprise surprise). Not much we can do about them now though, just have to adjust.

So in regards to other recent changes stars introduced a new MTT schedule with some structure changes. Just from the new tournament side of things, maybe I have a bit of a degeny streak in me for this comment but I like the fact that things were switched up a bit, was a refreshing change from playing the same schedule every night for x weeks/months.

Obviously they chucked the structures in the bin, reg speeds are now pretty much turbos. Everythings faster, average stacks when at the final few tables in big, non turbo tournaments are shallow. I'm not a fan of this. The fact that SCOOP just completely smashed the GTDs shows that there is still demand for well structured big field online tournaments. Yes I know it's SCOOP but let's be honest, I don't think many expected to see the numbers we actually saw.

What would I implement. Well for a start with those Mini-Million and Mini-Kickoff tournaments, what a great idea, gives people with a smaller roll a chance to take part in a good value, (relatively) well structured tournament. I remember the first week they introduced these they had the Mini-Rebuy (not that relevant anymore lol) and the Mini-Warmup. Why don't they have these now, they would still be extremely popular and get a lot of runners. Maybe they want those people to just try and sat the regular warmup instead to risk not having an overlay (can't see how the warmup could ever overlay). Anyway, they need tournaments with a good overall structure and decent fields for a low(er) buy in. They've started doing stuff like the mini thrill but they can do even more which I'm sure the regs and recreationals would appreciate.

Now, one thing I do like about the schedule changes is they made a lot more things signature tournaments. What do I mean by this, well they've introduced a lot more stuff which is viewed in a similar light as a red letter. I'm sure a lot of fish would pick the Hot 7.50 20k GTD over the 7.50 Turbo 7k GTD. I feel what stars have been able to do at a lot of stakes is improve the fish:reg ratio by hyping up the tournaments besides just the hot and bigs a lot more then they used to previously. This makes them generally softer and can counteract some of the -ev regs have been dealt due to the payout changes.

I'm just going to cut in breifly and bring up a point which I don't think a lot of low/mid average regs are thinking about.

On stars generally the larger fields are soft and have a lot of fish and the small (<1k entrant GTDs) are more reg infested. I think a lot of people would agree with this statement, all you have to do is search around some of the low stakes lobbies. 7.50 turbo 7k gtd vs hot 7.50 is a prime example of this (started 30 mins apart).

However, what people fail to take into account is the fact that there is a serious amount of value on sites such as 888/party/winamax for similar buy ins.

Whilst that 3k field on stars is going to be better value then that 500 field of the same buy in on stars. That 500 field on 888/party/win is going to be softer and better value then the 3k on stars. What should more average regs who are kind of working hard on their game be doing. Game selecting and hopping around sites to pick the best value games. Not just playing every big field on stars and crossing your fingers.

Summing up I'm not too happy about the changes, stars are always going to make things harder for the regs but I feel they could fix the structures a bit (I'm aware they've made some changes). If you're going to make the Bigs as bad as they are I feel you need to compensate by adding some better structured weekday tournaments.

Let me know what you guys think, maybe I'm just an idiot who has no idea what he's talking about.

Enjoying your writing style. Good luck!

Thanks for the kind words. Glad to see my B in GCSE English Language is holding strong.

So I'm aware that this thread has been all over the place. Each of my posts has pretty much been about a different view I have on something.

For this post we're going to continue in that fashion.

I almost feel the direction of this thread is somewhat uncontrollable, I often write here when reflecting on my general thoughts about pretty much anything to do with my life and poker (inb4 "this is a blog" and gets closed, pls no). I guess my passion towards a certain viewpoint gets the better of me and I end up splatting down some stuff on here (at least I use paragraphs right?).

I'm not editing this bit (I'm writing right at this moment) after I post this, so before I think about exactly what I'm going to write I'm going to predict I'll need some advice..

"2p2 for advice, gl with that kiddo"

Well it's worth a shot, a lot of you reading this are probably just lurkers and have likely not read all of my other posts, which is totally fine, no one is forcing you to and in all honesty, I don't care if you do or don't, it's your time.

Going mildly against that train of thought I'd appreciate if you guys and girls gave me some feedback and life advice on what my following thoughts are, a lot of you are likely older than me and had a lot more life experience than me and it would be awesome to hear your thoughts.

Talking about thoughts, gg solidthought (2015-2015). The sun run was good while it lasted.

^ for those of you that have read one of my other posts you know why I'm taking a shot. I'm just kidding around and I genuinely wish him all the best in his endeavours.......to improve his mental game.

"Seriously now, cut the crap, just gtf on to what you want to talk about".

So I'm 19, I literally have no idea what I want from life.

Trust me, I can already feel the eye rolls but again (one time?) try and bare with me.

I'm almost at a crossroads in poker. I've invested a fair amount of time into it and would like to think I'm okay at it. Of course in reality I'm just a bad reg like most of the people here are (maybe some of them don't want to admit it but w/e that doesn't matter).

What I'm toying with is just where do I even go, especially with MTTs. Is it worth my while to invest more time into MTTs given I'm 19, about to start a degree.

Poker in 2016 is hard, it seems like everyone who got a head start early on in the boom and has experienced it all have adviced a lot of new players away from becoming pro's.

I'm not going to chuck out the usual mouthbreather response...

"Those statements make me work even harder on my game because I want to show it can be done starting out in 2016"

^ Those same mouthbreathers are going to take that so far past literally and explain an example about some guy who flew through the stakes. Btw CeeGee doesn't count

So here I am, sitting in my bed, thinking about how far I take poker. Do I just stop taking it seriously now and quit? Do I just jump on unibet and grind out 10nl so I get a freeroll on the weekly kabab? Do I just play for fun and eventually turn into a live degen who wears Hawaiian shirts in October?

I don't know anymore. I don't think it's a viable career path for me at all. Anyone who has this BS, I love the freedom it gives you and I want to live my own life and not be tied down by whoever.

If you wanna make it in 2016, gl with freedom, you'll likely be stuck in a room grinding midstakes (if you ever get there) too afraid to take a holiday since you may fall behind the curve. (I'm cynical btw, but I'm sure you all get the general sentiment).

If for whatever reason I made poker a job I'd likely turn towards live since online is eventually going to seriously tough. Hanging around degens doesn't seem that fun for me though. I've already mentioned the whole buttering people up thing in a previous post.

I was at a BBQ with a friend of mine in London and I was chatting to a few of his mutual friends who were in poker. One of them suggested that I could always just play soft games online to supplement an income. That's what he did.

The more I think about this the more I kind of feel it's a good idea, yes of course I'd fall behind the curve and milk places like sky/unibet whilst I still can.

This would mean switching to cash most likely, lol at supplementing an income at university with MTTs...

I still like poker and still find it interesting and feel I likely have an edge playing micro cash on soft sites so there's always income there I guess.

Maybe I should just turn it into a hobby where I can hopefully still use it to buy a few things on the side a few times a year.

The issue I have is I know I won't be able to take poker as far as I could if I want life balance. And I do want life balance, I want to play in a squash league again, I want to run another marathon, I want to continue to play the guitar more and learn the piano, I want to do well in my degree and enjoy it. By locking myself in a room trying to stay ahead of the curve I'd have to pass up on those things.

I just think it's better life ev for me to say screw it, stop MTTs, bumhunt cash and try and enjoy other things in life.

I may of answered my own question but I just don't know what to do.

Are you guys in a similar spot, what would you do in mine if you were my age etc.

Well whatever happens, I can still look back at my average bb/100 graph.

I've actually gotten into cooking a lot this year and enjoy making a bunch of different things.

One thing I really enjoy making is a cooked breakfast. I do it a tiny bit differently and leave out a few elements and add in an extra one. Some of you are going to hate me for that.

"No beans, unsubbed"



Still playing a fair bit of poker.

More updates on something soon!

So a lot of stuff has happened over the past few days. Somethings I never thought that would happen. I'm going to be chucking a lot of thoughts out first but I'll try and cliff it all out so it's easier to digest.

I'm sure a lot of you have lurked for a while and have no plans on commenting but if you have any words of wisdom or thoughts, it would be great to here your opinion. As I said from the start I'm not here for "GLGLLLLLL INNNNNN" it would just be cool to hear your opinions on where I'm at right now.

So first off a little general viewpoint/outlook I have on something that I wish I'd see more people adopting.

Why can't it just be okay to not be sure?

"Dafuq?"

Let me go into a bit more detail, it just seems that everyone in the world feels that they have to have an opinion on pretty much everything.

Maybe it's fashionable to, maybe it's just pressure but one thing I do know is that it leads to a lot of people adopting viewpoints with no idea why they believe that certain thing. It's like they just read one article or were just simply told what to think.

"Yeah **** trump/hillary" (insert either one, don't want to stir up a melting pot, I'm treading ice with this example but I really don't want this thread to be about politics)

"Why do you hate trump/hillary?"

"trump/hillary is just an idiot"

Then you enquire more and find out they have next to know grounding in why they believe that, they'll quote some random story the heard in the news and not know anything else about the situation or the individual.

I'll chuck another thing out there, the whole Moskow scenario.

You had people on both sides of the fence chucking in their support on twitter..

With no ****ing idea about anything that happened.

Their reasoning being something based on whether they have a penis or vagina or if they met them breifly before.

Whoever does this kind of **** before actually waiting for the details to be released and then making an informed decision based on the evidence is an idiot, I don't care how much you made playing poker, you're still an idiot.

Same goes for picking sides on a rape accusation when you have no clue about what happened. It pisses me off in the UK that the media take stances and plasters the names of those "accused" (still innocent at this stage) people through the newspaper before any verdict has been made. This leads to people reading a news article and making some bs opinion.

**** I'm going to give another example because this is tilting me so much.

I remember a few years ago back at school the Pistorius thing happened and it was all over the news.

Within 24 hours of it happening I was asked multiple times..

"Tom, what do you think about Pistorius"

How the **** am I meant to know anything past the fact that he shot someone?

It's like these mouthbreathers expect me to say some leading statement like..

"I think he's guilty, I always thought he could snap"

I don't know anything about the situation and what I wish more people in life would do is.......

*drum roll*

Actually listen and take both sides into account and then make a decision about something. Put yourself in that persons shoe's too before playing the white knight card also, you're not that perfect.

It just seems that in life recently I've had to deal with a lot of people (including family members) who have strong views on things with literally no substance beyond them saying "I hate xyz".

Please just think guys.

Maybe next time someone asks you what you think about something you reply with a simple, I don't know much about that yet so I can't comment. it seems that very few people are doing this. As I said earlier it's almost fashionable.

"You just gotta have an opinion man you just gotta have one, brb that thai girl from tinder who I'm still with just rolled a 10x on a 100, come smoke a joint with us bro"

"I'm good thanks"

In other, more personally relevant news something happened earlier tonight which I didn't think would ever happen to someone like me.

So I was planning on sharing this new information over the weekend giving you guys some general updates. I'm aware this may potentially come back at me in the future but as I've said I'm being honest from the start. I've made rash generalisations and taken shots at people so it's only fair to have a swing at myself.

So on the side around a week ago I decided to start grinding up a cash roll on a site other than stars.

I did some research and picked the iPoker skin William Hill. I deposited £30 of my own money. I got all the promotional stuff, grinding the bonuses, playing pretty well, getting decent volume got up to around 100ish euros. I was grinding away and organising my tables and decided to move the client and accidently (legit accidently, you can look at the client layout) on the blackjack button.

"Oh god, another degen, this thread was promising man but you blew it"

If you've read this far down the post you've likely read what I made at the start of this post. With that in mind, listen to my full side of the story.

I've never been addicted to any kind of gambling in the past, I think the last time I played blackjack was on the stars client way back with a friend (shoutout to carmen, still wearing the hat btw) and that was mainly betting pretty small and only because I got a free $5 bonus from stars and also to laugh at the live dealers together.

Anyway for whatever reason with literally no prior motives (I wasn't chasing anything, I was grinding pretty well) I just placed a bet, lost, lost a couple more and before I knew it that was it.

This is the point where I already know you're minds are jumping to conclusions, mine would be to but hear me out.

Now I'm just writing this with no idea about pretty much anything.

**** anology incoming which isn't even an anology (likely sounds better in my head)

Imagine you sit down at a restaurant on your own, you get handed a menu.

There's nothing on the menu, it's blank but you haven't acknowledged that yet, you're in this limbo period where you're almost not thinking about anything, on the bridge before thinking about what you want to eat.

^Gl if you can relate to that because I don't even know if I can fully.

Do I have a desire to play blackjack ever again?

None whatsoever, I've never been a chasing loses kind of guy, I've never tracked my br daily. I didn't even enjoy the experience even with the couple hands I won. Idk the whole thing is pretty weird and I doubt i'd ever do it again.

I don't think I'm a degenerate in any shape or form it just happened, I guess that means it could happen again but personally I have no desire or have ever had any desire to gamble on games like that.

The plan is just to move on, it's a £30 deposit and I'm not going to dwell on what I could of spent it on or whatever.

I'm not even tilting over it right now it's just something I know isn't for me and I don't see myself doing anything like that again. i just feel weird right now... Like it's something I've never been attracted to and still don't feel attracted to.

I've sent 3-4 figures to people I don't know that well at all before with no second thoughts, I'm not trying to spin something up or gamble something away or scam people, that's never been what I'm about and that's why I feel weird.

Thoughts, advice?

There may be some trolls which is fine but if you can relate to anything I've said in this thread fire away.

Plan for the weekend is to fire a lot of MTTs for my backer.

oh goody advice time

my honest advice is to find better people to be around to the extent that you can. I promise you that there are many people in the world that don't do the **** you describe, or do it in a more developed way with more meaning and wisdom than you'd imagine.

i don't know you, but absent further context your posts here indicate you've got a horseshoe up your ass. A great portion of exhausting bull**** in life emerges from people not being able to countenance that they have a horseshoe up their ass in some way or another. From what I can see, this corrupts the soul in time.

tl;dr: if the people you're around are ****ty and unpleasant, find better people, but try to wash the stink of the prior people off you, 'cause better people will smell it. I promise this is all substantially harder than it sounds.

This basically sounds like an example of an 'actual life' thing that you're not used to having to relate to.

This sort of process or emotional cycle sounds like what normal, non-poker-nerds do. Heck, it's a massive portion of your gross income as a grinder.

The idea that you're different from a degen because you're not trapped in an addictive cycle smells. Unless I'm missing something, you still did the thing for impulsive sorts of reasons.

It's certainly possible you'll never do this sort of -EV crap again. You might have a self-concept as a rational sort of person that makes it much less likely that you'll ever be a fully developed degen. But... you still, apparently without coercion, did the thing when the option was presented to you.

And if I were looking back on myself having written a post like yours, i'd be cringing about how in denial i was about my embarrassment, pridefulness, elitism? and misplaced faith in my analytical thinking. (ymmw, such may not be true for you)

Don't mistake the analytical avoidance of temptation with the strength to resist temptation when it is experienced.

As a random note, I estimate that the latter is more relevant to poker success than the former for most people.

~*~

Thanks for getting back to me.

I just want to start off my saying something I legitimately meant to add to my previous post.

I'm not some kind of golden boy either, there have been many occasions where I've made rash statements without knowing the full story. I think I've got better but we can always improve ourselves. I'm far from perfect and the post was more of a general rant.

I actually wasn't venting the "why can't we just not be sure" through experiences with friends. I feel throughout my school years I've been pretty selective with who I'm friends with and they are the kind of people who are fine not being sure.

It was more of a general vent towards what I tend to see a fair amount through general observation. I'm sure a lot of people are fine in admitting that they don't know the full picture but it wouldn't hurt to have more people with that viewpoint.

I can see how the initial start of the post could come across as pretty elitist without calrification.

It was more of just a general tilty, why are some people like this kind of thing.

I'm not sure of what dictates if I have a horse shoe up my ass or not but generally I'm pretty cynical sometimes, I guess this can make me look like a big ******* without context.

Yeah I mean I completely agree I could be a degen, I just don't feel like one currently because I don't possess some of the tendencies a fair amount of them have.

I'm not going to sit here and say there was no impulse because there must of been somewhere for me to even do that.

I wasn't even thinking much, was mainly pretty tired. There was no real urge for me to play it just kind of happened. I didn't feel the urge to want to try and make lots of money, at the time I didn't even feel the urge to gamble. After reflecting for a few hours I think tiredness had a decent part to play, might be some other underlying stuff though.

In regards to the denial statement, I am embarrassed, it's something I normally wouldn't share but felt it would good to post an assessment of how I was feeling at the time. It was money which could of been spent on a host of other things and I'm ashamed that I degen'd it off.

In regards to the pride and elitism, like I'm happy admitting I'm not perfect, I'm 19 and **** up all the time. I can see how the post came across that way though (again I did mean to chuck in the "I'm not on a higher level then these people" point because genuinely, I'm not.)

Can you go into further detail about hte misplaced faith in analytical thinking point?

You're welcome.

OK. Better here than at the metaphorical table.


The short answer would be for me to tell you to read david foster wallace, specifically http://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf as a start

A slightly longer answer would be:

A theme I see through both the rant and your satire of the average reg is basically that they do **** that's, to use a word, 'irrational'. You're taking people to task because they don't follow BRM, they don't wait for the evidence to be in, whatever.

It seems to imply (intentionally or not) that you think you're somehow above that kind of existence.

If you try to measure people through their skill at being computers, they will fail miserably. Following rational guidelines like BRM or not reacting to news that causes visceral reactions until 'all the facts are in' (which lol never happens) isn't actually especially possible for people most of the time.

This includes you. And the winning pros grinding 20-30 tables.

Affecting a pose of neutrality about, say, politics doesn't actually make you politically or ethically neutral. It's a pose of neutrality that sells/appeals to people who have a particular view of things or a particular relationship to a shared zeitgeist.

Basically, being 'cynical' and ranting about donks wasting life-EV or whatever is the opposite approach to what you would be recommended as an aspiring poker pro, and likely the opposite of what whatever people you admire in terms of their compassion and ethical/moral living would recommend you. Cynical contempt (or whatever) is a profound barrier to understanding, whether that understanding is for dealing with bull**** or for better exploiting your opponent. Your having the analytical talent for serious online pokering and the pride in said talent to actually pursue pokering when having other options would be enough information for me to conclude that 'get out of your head and don't be a dick to people who act 'unreasonably' ' is probably good advice for you.

Labax,

I enjoy your post and writing style
will follow,

Thanks for going into more detail.

In regards to the satire/ranting of the average reg it wasn't meant to come across as me being above these people. I have some off table leaks for sure. It was more of a "I'm surprised a lot of people are engaging in this kind of stuff in 2016".

But you are right, I'm trying to judge these people about how good they are at being computers, we're all humans at the end of the day and as you said, we look pretty bad when compared to computers.

Yeah I agree it's likely not possible for people to wait till all the news is in. I realise I was being overly rash with stuff like "just listen".

In regards to the neutrality topic, I agree, it's a pose of neutrality. Just to clarify I didn't say the whole "don't mention politics" with the analogy example because I wanted to come across as neutral, I just didn't want this thread to derail into something about politics.

Yeah, being cynical and ranting about donks wasting life-ev is also life-ev for me. It was merely just a self centred vent. It doesn't make me any better then them it was more of just a vent over me being surprised about how a lot of the community are doing certain things, but again, they're human, ofc they're going to have leaks and ofc I'm going to have leaks.

I think the main reason why I posted something similar to that was because I spend a lot of my time analysing how to exploit the general population and what are they doing wrong (on and off table) which I can learn from, so I don't make the same mistakes.

I mean me being cynical combined with satire can make me look like a seriously big *******.

There's one thing I don't entirely understand so if you could go into more detail that would be cool!

"Your having the analytical talent for serious online pokering and the pride in said talent to actually pursue pokering when having other options would be enough information for me to conclude that 'get out of your head and don't be a dick to people who act 'unreasonably' ' is probably good advice for you"

Maybe it's just the grammar at the start which threw me off but hopefully you can break it down for me.

I'm not even sure if I have the analytical talent for online poker and in regards to pursuing poker when having other options. Like I'm not committing to poker full time or anything, I'm going to university where my volume will go down, I'm still trying to maintain other hobbies as well as poker. I just like thinking about the theory of poker more then anything, which is why I think I'm still playing.

I think it would be good for me to stop just jabbing at everything people in poker do which annoys me, it's not life+ev for me.

But then again thinking and looking at the mistakes of others is a valuable thing to do. Learning from those who have made mistakes so you don't make the same ones could save you a lot of ev. Maybe I should just not verbalise it in a thread in a cynical and satirical way. Although I only really verbalised it because I wanted to just share what I'm thinking about currently in regards to poker and life, not even as an ego "I'm above these people". I just think it would be an interesting thing for me personally to look back on and for others to know what some people are thinking about in poker. Hearing other people's opinions on things can't be that bad.

Basically - if serious +EV pokering is something you're capable of without too much effort, then you likely have the analytical talent for something like engineering or finance careers. If those fields are accessible to you, as I'm sure you've seen people say, they're a better direction to go in for most people for a host of reasons. So, assuming that your interest in poker is not entirely intellectual, you enjoy the sensation of outplaying/being better at poker than most people. You like winning, and you're trying to win in a context where you will eventually fully lose if you're not a winning player - you're not playing Candy Land. That's the pride in your talent piece.

I'm also focused on how self-selecting it is to make posts/threads on 2p2. That's a pretty tiny fraction of the poker playing population, much less people in general. I think it's very likely that you have the analytical talent to be at least a midstakes grinder if you're really good at everything else that it takes to be successful at poker - most people here probably do.

You're also from a financially and emotionally secure enough life situation for responsibly gambling for fun and profit to be appealing, which is more than many can say.

In short, I can make a population read on 2p2 posters that they probably live in their heads too much, are less in touch with your feelings than most people, and have gotten pretty lucky in terms of the birth lottery. So any given 2p2 poster being told to get out of their head and don't be an ******* to fish or 'dumbasses' is probably good advice.

Agree entirely. I need to stop being an ******* and have a greater perspective on things.

@fletch11 has some interesting thoughts.

Your interest in poker is definitely not purely intellectual nor is any of ours who are interested in grinding away. While we can all appreciate the intellectual aspect in the theory of poker, which is one of the reasons why we can win in some manner, we also have the competitive drive that is needed to sustain the grind. While poker is intellectually interesting, there really are more interesting intellectual challenges that we could all pursue. However, our competitive drive keeps us in this game.

Anyway, I like this thread and will be keeping track of it. Labax, I used to be quite cynical myself in the way that you are - I do not think it is a good thing. While it is good to see the other side of the coin, cynicism is useless. It may seem cheesy, especially to a cynical person, but a positive mindset can do wonders. I only recently realized this through a lot of self-reflection and some recreational activities, but the change in mind set can do wonders for you.

Looking forward to your future posts, good luck.

I agree that it's not purely intellectual, I like outplaying people and feeling that I can learn more and more to get even better and win more.

Yeah I'm really seeing being cynical has next to no positives. It just leaves me bitter and doesn't add value to my or anyone elses life. Part of it I think was likely down to being in a bit of a rut due to deaths in the family recently which left me pretty gloomy and in this limbo.

I just need to be positive and have more general outlets to blow off steam and not attack a person for every minor flaw they have, we're human, we all have flaws.

Thanks for posting, I really appreciate you taking time over a matter like this.


In other news my laptop is in a ****ing weird spot.

Here's what happened (yes you're allowed to laugh).

I'm taking baths currently because my shower at home is getting done and all I can use is a bath.

I like listening to music whilst showering/bathing etc.

I wake up, realised I didn't charge my phone.

"ggwp vn vn tom"

"hmmm I guess I could use my laptop"

I bring it in set it down, load up itunes and play some songs.

I get in the bath and after a while the music stops.

"Let me just select another song"

I dry my hands a bit but you can imagine hard to get completely dry.

As I pick the song I couple drops of water land on the trackpad and a key, not a big deal, I dry it a bit with a towel and think nothing of it.

I get out, get changed, drive to the shops to get more shampoo and some other stuff. (I bought some bitter lemon, what a GTO drink, let me know if you like it and what you have it with)

All is good, I come back turn on the computer, I notice the screen has the tiniest bit of water on when I open it but no big deal.

20 minutes of surfing later and suddenly blip

completely off no warning or popups just blip

"such a sick spot man, no idea what I'd do, just trust your gut"

Well my gut was like **** me, with everything going on now this happens, fml fml fml.

So I turn the laptop on again, crash, on again, crash, on again, crash.

"****"

Over the next couple of hours I learnt more about computers then I have done in my entire life. Originally I thought it was completely ****ed but it really wasn't that much water.

With that in mind I get all the dust out of it, take it all apart and put back together.

It turns on, everything is fine except every time I type f "fk" comes out without fail. An i also caused a backspace.

**** the water, it must of done this, well everything else is fine, I can use a tempoary keyb-

It turns off. It won't even restart, the power button doesn't work..

Over the next 90 minutes I learnt even more about computers then I have done in my entire life.

I notice the mother board has a bit of oxidation, the tiniest bit, I try my best to clean it off but it's not completely fixed.

I sigh and put everything back and restart the computer.

Everything is working fine and somehow the keyboard is fixed.

I don't know if I'm smart, lucky, a moron or all three combined...