Never played professionally, I'm just an avid and passionate lover of the game. Well, most of the time at least.

Railed the EPT Monte Carlo a bit last week and saw a guy lose QQ<KJs pfai on the FT bubble for infinite BBs and was thinking how I wouldn't be ready to deal with such a beat (in terms of $equity). Didn't expect to actually get a somewhat similar experience only a couple of days later, and can confirm it sucks. Bigtime.
OTOH I have to admit I ran quite well earlier on day 2, getting there with AJ vs AK in a very thin cold4b-spot (AQ would be a snap-gii and AT a snapfold), and winning a huge flip AK>JJ. Played very well throughout the tournament though, and didn't punt or get impatient at all.

xCOOPs are all great series, but when you can't really put in a full schedule it's also somewhat masochistic to play the highest stakes, as you won't really get into high $-equity spots often enough for variance to (somewhat) even out, so it's basically hoping to run good the handful of times you do get there, and to cry and think of 'what could've been' when you don't.
This is now the second time I take 17th in a 2k, losing high 5-digit 'flips' in both of them, so I can only hope there will be a third time soon enough, and that I'll win those flips then. With the low amount of high buyins I play, it's not a given or even expected that there'll be a third time though, and that sucks.

That said, I now feel ready to enter the arena again, to play to the best of my abilities again, and to hopefully get a new chance to close off a deep run.

Vamos!

Wow, that's pretty impressive.
Keep it up and GL for rest of SCOOP.

nice1 gl

Nice rallying, well done on the deep run, always a good sign

So much potential, so little results

Yesterday's session started great and then the following hand happened close to the bubble in the $265 KO, which tilted me way more than it should, even though it's beyond standard:



I mean it's a decent amount of equity that I lose here on a flip, but if this stuff gets to me I prolly shouldn't even be regging MTTs in the first place.

The rest of the session I played mostly 'OK' (never great though) but made a couple of significant mistakes:

#1 Thursday Thrill - no matter what I tell myself here, he's gonna have 5x way too often compared to the few hearts or gutshot combos he does decide to barrel off with. That was a quick end to the Thrill. Just a really, really bad calldown.



#2 100r - the initial preflop decision is already fairly interesting, but the opener is a reg capable of still having a somewhat wide r/f range here (which I do OK against), which means flatting seemed the least bad option, and I can make good decisions vs squeezes (depending on villain/stack).
This 25BB squeeze is ~never light here due to the stack of the opener and the position I flatted from, but I figured calling it off here can't ever be really bad with all the dead money. Oh man how wrong I was! I need 42% to call it off and have like 35% vs his range. Another huge mistake.



#3 100r - did manage to squeeze into the money with a decent stack until the following hand happened. I can do other things on all 3 streets before the river, but once I get to the river like this, valuebetting it is fine, but I should just make a disciplined fold vs the raise. He's rarely (never?) bluffing, and even if he is, I have more than enough Ad combos in my range to protect me against being bluffed here too often.



After that I got down to 12BB which I lost 99 < AJo pfai, ending my run in 31st.

Next to that I got deep in the $215 turbo (16th) in which ~nothing interesting happened. I also FTed the $8r 2x-turbo, coming in 1/9 but ending up 6th after A9o<AQo BvsB and rejamming KTss into AJ (flop came Q9xss for a decent but in the end disappointing sweat - too many outs ldo).

After that my tables winded down and I started semi-punting and just not completely focusing anymore. Played like a dumbass in the $82 4-max even though my table was soft as hell and in the end I only had the $22c left in which I had a decent stack on F2T till the following hand happened with 14 left:



It's an OKish spot for him to be light given the opener had the stack to be opening liberally and he can put pressure on my stack. Next to that he had 50% 3b over the signifant sample of 8 complete hands (lol) and I just made my decision based on that (basically already fistpumping when he squeezed).
The absurdity of his sizing didn't even occur to me before this review and I should've read more into it. Also why bother checking out those 8 hands I did see him play when you're one-tabling, right?!

Given the runout of the board I probably still lose most/all of my stack if I had flatted, but that's just results oriented thinking and flatting is gonna be so much better here in the long run.

Probably my worst session in more than a month in terms of the quality of my play, and I blew a decent amount of potential because of it. Will play less tables tonight with a high amount of focus.

That, and patience. Patience.

Nice update, gl today

Thanks! Big day today; gl to u to!

Was gonna take yesterday off, but got home earlier than expected so regged some stuff, including the variable level SCOOP. Luckily I didn't have to regret it: I won a seat to the 10k mean (binkkkkk) and sunrunned my way to a 3rd in a $27 hyper for 2k.

I also had a decent stack in the $700 SCOOP until the following hand happened, reasonably close to the bubble:



Turn is pretty good for his bluffing range (he gained equity with KJ/KT/spades + Qx if he decides that barreling is better than trying to show it down). Then this seemed like a clean river, he can put pressure on my stack due to the bubble being close, I'm reasonably high up my range and he might even be valuebetting worse some of the time (AK) so I think making an annoyed call here is fine. Was wrong though and busted two hands later, not ITM.

Next to that I had some hope in the Big $162 (busto 12th TT<KK for 1.5k) and a deepish run in the medium SCOOP. In that one I had heaps until I got short after a bad bet/call with a strong flush on a paired board where we both can have all boats, and the random villain is never bluffing. Just lazy poker really. Lost TT<55 and 99<A7o pfai after that to bust 58th, which was annoying, but I should focus on what's in my own hand (the bad bet/call) and not on the stars RNG.

So yeah, a very good session but if I'm being completely honest: still not good enough. Gotta keep my performance up throughout the entire session an don't get lazy or impatient. That'll be for tonight I guess

GL man! Didn't see this thread till now

gl in 23hi tonight!

Just a quick question, I'm kind of looking into getting coached, but I don't want to play on a stake at all. What's your hourly and would you consider coaching someone for like a fixed % of their profit that month or something?

Not quite sure how strange of a question that is, but I'm really looking to get as good as possible, as fast as possible and I just don't see myself spending $200/hr for coaching

OP with another day2 PGC sweat. GL today

Thanks for the GL wishes, lets hope I can improve on my 17th finish from last week.

Really happy with how I played yesterday, didn't get many deep runs going (apart from the 2k) but that's irrelevant, I made correct decisions most of the time so felt really happy and in the zone throughout the session.

Most tilting hand of the session was the following, with 37 left in a satellite that awarded 14 or so 10k seats:



Not that winning this hand would mean I'd have the seat locked or anything, but regardless that beat is still worth a couple of k in equity.

I don't have time to moan though, time to hit the shower and get ready to crush!

PM sent

gl sir

And another crushed dream in the books.

The very first hand I open ATo from MP, call a 16BB BTN jam and win vs 66; was a pretty close spot that is around BE or slightly profitable depending on his exact range, so I felt I had to take it in this field. Also he knows I have a highish RFI generally so that means he probably jams looser rather than tighter. Another (very minor) consideration is that I think it's better for my future EV at this table to have my first hand be a loose'ish r/c than to have an MP open that folds to a 16BB jam.

A bit later I make the following call; it's only vs me that his jam is 28BB effective (due to the shorter stacks in the blinds) so he's surely loose enough (and almost surely capped) that this call is profitable.



Idk, if he's bad enough to have an open-jam range here, it might be better to fold this and 'wait for a better spot', but meh. Most often he has a hand that doesn't want to r/c or r/f vs the shorties (22-66, A9-AJ, some broadways?) so there's no way this call isn't +cEV.

After losing that hand I chipped up a bit again, busting a shortstack with TT>A8o pfai until this happened:



Nothing particularly interesting, just annoying when it happens deep in one of the few 2k's I play. If I win either the AJo flip or the QQ holds, I'm 10/35 or so and who knows what happens after that.

In the end I can’t complain about my performance and results at high stakes, and I just have to keep hoping I’ll close one of these deep runs sooner rather than later.

I’m back at work this week so unfortunately I’ll have to skip a few days now (may degen reg the ST and deal with the consequences later should I run deep), but there’s still a big weekend coming up so it can’t be bad to get some rest for a couple of days.
It’s been hard enough trying to combine long nights at the table with regular ‘family’ life. I’m averaging 3-4 hours of sleep per night, and walking around like a zombie during daytime so SCOOP hasn’t been great in terms of work-life balance to say the least

Yesterday I left work very pumped to grind hard and crush souls. So I got home, had a good and healthy meal, spent some family time, loaded some tables, and … ****. Complete, utter, indefensible ****. I basically starting punting from hand #1. It’s probably fatigue due to the lack of sleep (on average 5am to 9am last week and 1am to 7am this week), but I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such a drop-off in performance due to that.
The damage isn’t too big, because I ran somewhat OK in satellites and had the discipline to stop regging after the Hot $75. After I had busted everything else, I deliberately punted the SCOOP-L, which was the best part of the entire session.

I’m still feeling tired now but I was planning to take tonight off anyway, so it’s all good. Plan is to relax a bit, to enjoy a good meal with some friends, and probably reg the late night zoom event to hopefully make a quick buck. Saturday is still in the open and then hopefully on the last Sunday I can make another deep run and close it off this time.

Having pretty mixed feelings right now. I’ve never grinded a series this hard, and for the most part I feel I have played really, really well. It looks like this big score is just around the corner.
OTOH SCOOP has definitely been a burden on my personal life, and the reality is that I don’t really have much to show for it yet.

Cliffs: LOLDONKAMENTS

Played a pretty big schedule during the final weekend of SCOOP, didn’t really get anywhere, bubbled a couple of 10k/2k seats, and suddenly SCOOP turns out to be a net loser instead of the moderate success it had been so far.
Nothing too major but pretty disappointing in the end. I’m especially disappointed because my level of play dropped off significantly throughout the 2 weeks. I’d probably still lose money during the last weekend if I played like during the first weekend of SCOOP, but it would’ve been a lot less.

What’s done is done though, and OTOH if I win 1 or 2 key hands I’m not making this post but rolling around in all my cash so bleh.
I do think I’m a bit naïve in thinking I can comfortably beat these elite fields though. Most of the players in 1k’s and up have way more experience than me, work way harder than me (I do ~zero work off the table these days), and are usually pretty talented/gifted themselves, so I just cannot expect to outsmart them on a consistent basis. I do think I’m capable of being +EV in those fields, if I’m really playing my A-game, but that may not be the case often enough.

Obviously I will play a lot less volume in June, but I’ll still try to pick up some of the ‘easier’ WSOP money.

Long time no update because I haven’t really been grinding since SCOOP. Yesterday I felt like grinding again but the laptop was unavailable so I just installed myself in the couch and regged a couple of tourneys and some thrill sats on my phone. Couple of hours later I was HU in the big $109 and deepish in the thrill so I didn’t regret my decision

Ran pretty pure in both tourneys and played well overall, although I did station pretty badly in a huge pot in the thrill.
Good reg with heaps opened MP and I defended BB with AKdd, having a pretty big stack myself and ~3.5k bounty (he covered). Due to the stacks and my bounty I want to 3bet pretty tightly in this spot, it’s debatable if AKs should still sometimes / most of the time / always be in my 3b range in this spot, but decided to flat this time.
Flop TT4ddx, check/c-bet/call, turn offsuit K, check/bet/call, river offsuit 4. I check and he bets 54k into a 40k pot. Before he bet I was telling myself I basically always have to snapcall river vs someone good, as they might valuebet worse (KQ-), be looking to fold out chops when they have Ax or simply have a hand they decided to 3barrel with (QJ for example, or diamonds).
Of course that all goes out of the window when he overbets (he’s never vb’ing worse now); he might not have that many Ahigh hands to begin with (could check flop or turn), and with bluffs he probably sizes smaller as well. Also it’s pretty fkn dumb to call when I block most diamond combos.
I did call though, and he obv showed KT and I busted shortly after. In hindsight it’s pretty ridiculous that I didn’t even bother checking his c-betting tendencies (when 2-tabling to boot), which could’ve helped me determine if he can have a lot of bluffs left by the river.

After that I lost the HU in the $109 K4s<QTo pfai so had to settle for 12k in that, which still felt great obv. Helps a lot in putting my disastrous final SCOOP weekend behind me.

Then some other news: one of the main reasons for not grinding much lately is that I’m about to make some significant changes in my life. The one thing that currently makes me unhappy and leaves me unsatisfied is my job, although admittedly I don’t have a very 100% solid idea of what I do want to do instead. I love learning new things, and solving problems, but I hate most of the bull**** around it when working in a company.
I decided to apply for an MBA at a highly rated Belgian business school and last week I got the news that I got admitted! As I said I don’t have a 100% clear vision on what direction to head into afterwards, but I’m convinced that this will help guide me, be very interesting (I do think business / economics / finance / … is fascinating in itself), and hopefully bring me into contact with some interesting people.
It’s a pretty big step with a huge impact on my life, but obviously I’m very pumped for this. The impact on my poker life is still to be determined, but it will be pretty intense so odds are that I won’t be grinding very much during the program. Playing a handful of half decent session per month and binking the big $109 every once in a while would work though

WP, congrats and good luck man! I'm guessing whatever you ultimately decide to do it'll work out great

Gl man !

Hi Pablito,

Very nice Thursday session. Love seeing a part time (for now) poker player crush so well. I actually railed a bit of the b109 as it’s often the FT when I’m winding down my games so I sometimes watch).

There was one key hand on the FT where (details may not be 100%) you opened from HJ, and the SB resteal jammed 25ish BB’s AIPF with AThh, you made what seemed like an easy call for you with AQs (based on speed of call), and won a much needed pot.

My gut reaction at the table was that the ATs seems a bit spewy/unneccessary, especially for 25BB effective. I had no feel for the gameflow obv and how active you’d been.

I wondered if you could share your take on the play by villain?

It’s doubtful you’re opening “too wide” to call off effectively if you can call down to AQ+, maybe wider” at a guess. Does his play rely on you folding AQ to work?

As I’m no expert and very possibly wrong here I found it pretty interesting. And it’s very possible that my judgement of his call is results oriented to some level.

Thanks for the nice words, although I'm not even close to crushing at the moment; still down a bit for 2015 I think.

Details for the hand were a bit off; I opened from 20ish BBs, villain covered and there were 2 shorter stacks than me.



In the situation you described (25BB effective) it's pretty likely there are better alternatives for villain, the hand above is completely fine though imo: he can put ICM-pressure on me, especially with the shorter stacks, and he can expect me to be opening wide enough so that he has enough FE to compensate for the times he gets called and has like 35% equity.

Thinking back about it now I had 2 30%+ vpip guys to my left, which, in combination with the stack distribution, led me to opening (a lot) tighter than one might expect based on my overall stats and my initial range might be tight enough where he loses money on this jam but I'm sure it's at least close.

Yesterday had some promise as well:
* 100th or so in the million. Made one fine/annoying fold where bigstack opened, I flatted 99 40BB effective, 14BB BTN squeezed and opener jammed. This might be close or even a snap in some tough HSMTTs / vs certain villains but in the million there are better spots than ~flipping this big a stack. I would've held vs AK and AK for a ~100BB stack so seeing that board run out was pretty gross. After that I just grinded a ~20ish BB stack till I busted AJ<AQ.

* Sunrunned the b109 (88>KK pfai before the money, 77>88 and 99 pfai and KK>AA pfai postbubble) until @8/1.6k I lost this hand:



Turn is interesting I think, both of us almost never have a 6 and I have a weak range, weighted towards 1 pair, where I have few sets and flushes after pre/flop.

I could check and call most river bets but I think he x/c's a decent amount of worse hands (pair + club mostly, maybe offsuit overpairs) OTT so decided to bet an amount that would look weakish / not setting up a river jam.
I didn't really have a plan for when he'd raise as I didn't expect it to happen often, but I don't think it's a line he'd take with a made flush (which I have a blocker too) or like AxA very often. So I decided to call, congratulate myself, and cry.

* FTd an $8 turbo (5th) and had a deep run in a $100 turbo.

Just took 2nd in the thrill, will try to post a bit more later cause there were some interesting hands for sure :-)

GG. Can you post the hand where you 3bet pre hu, x/c 478 annd lead 5 turn iirc?

That was pure btn clicking, red AJ. Given what I know now I hate it even more. At the time I thought we both didn't have many 6x, but given my high 3b and low c-bet I figured I could still have quite a bit and him hardly any.

Very interesting couple of days. Last week I was following the whole Brian Hastings story, and on Thursday I was completely shocked by the replies he posted in the thread; just ridiculously arrogant and entitled. I was really physically angry about this, even though it didn’t even directly impact me (although I did play a grand total of 26 hands with the noelhayes account during SCOOP).
Later that night bakes then posted Brian’s PM, and somehow that was even worse. During the first hours of my session I was more busy refreshing the thread then focussing on my tables, that’s how engrossed I was by the whole thing.

As much as I absolutely love love love this game, I really hate the whole ‘industry’ and everything around it. It’s somehow understandable that an industry that has a ‘get rich quick and easy’ vibe attracts shady people with bad intentions, but it looks like the amount of cheating / multiaccounting / overall scumminess is even bigger than I thought.
Back when I started playing poker, to me the gambling world was this sort of perfect parallel universe where a word meant everything, where 6-digit bets were made on the shake of a hand, where ivey the über-gambler had the decency to pay off his debt to Chip Reese after he passed away, … Obviously I was very naïve back then, and a gazillion scandals and scams later those ideas are long gone.

So yeah, on Thursday I was really oi the poker world and everything around it, but I still felt like playing and ended up taking 2nd in the Thursday Thrill, losing HU to the legend that is NSB.
I doubled up early getting it in with 100% equity (AKcc vs KxQc on JT9x with 3 clubs), had a rather uneventful next couple of hours doubling 1 more time (JJ>QJs of NSB on QJx) and got to the bubble with 25ish BB. Right before the bubble I jammed over a BTN open of a 19BB stack with 22 and got there vs QQ to give me a biggish stack again (and a second bounty).
The rest was just standard grinding, until I lost this hand with 17 left for a big stack and a chunky 6k bounty. After that I was crippled but somehow managed to survive and rebuild, and came to the FT around 6/9.

At the final table I jammed KQo over an NSB 3bet when stacks were such that he should be 3b’ing a lot, and 3-barreled all-in with air on AJx Q T blind vs blind, getting a tankfold. Those helped me maintain my stack, and I got a nice double 3b/c’ing JJ vs Ax. Then with 5 or so left I got it in for heaps with QQ vs AK and was dead in the water after a dry Axx flop, but somehow the river was a Q and I was back in the thick of it.

In the meantime NSB kept busting people left and right (either by getting good hands or by getting there with bad hands ), and suddenly we were HU with my 600k vs his 1.4k, him having 25k in bounties vs my 3k (lol). First was 41k and second 30k, but with the bounties this meant 69k vs 30k, which is obv a huge difference.

We discussed a deal for a bit, but with bounties it seemed complex (although in hindsight doing a ‘normal’ chipchop with 69k/30k as payouts should work I think, assuming we trust each other as stars won’t incorporate the bounties in their deal number I think?) so in the end we decided to play.
I grinded back to even and even a slight lead, amongst other thanks to that meh bluff that anon referenced: I 3bet red AJo, x/call black 478 twotone (should just fold really), lead offsuit 5 and jam a blank river. My thinking was that he doesn’t have many 6s after calling my 3bet, while I could have a couple and based on how I was playing (low c-bet) it was conceivable that I x/called flop with them. He tankfolded K8cc (flopped fd) but given that it turns out he peels 3bets with K5o he can have way more 6s than I thought, which makes the bluff pretty terrible. Also red AJo is just such a completely random hand to do this with lol.

Once I had the lead, he decided to completely own me in the pot of the tournament though :



We discussed the hand quite a bit, and I can now get behind his call, and bluffing too many Ks combos surely makes my bluffing range too big compared to my value range (flushes only).

So after that I was back to ~350k, which was still playable at 4.5/9k, but we got it in AJo vs his 77 and he held.

Thinking about it now I don’t think I completely realised how big the HU match was. I was very tired and a bit ‘decompressed’ after getting HU (while being close to dead a couple of moments earlier in that QQ vs AK hand), so I think I made too many mistakes. Dealing would’ve been nice and almost surely the smart thing to do. Still happy though

Yesterday I had some hope in the supersonic that didn’t materialize (65th after losing K9<54s pfai for a 23BB pot vs the guy who ends up winning), but I also won a 5k WCOOP seat so decent Sunday regardless.

Will also go to Estrellas Barcelona and maybe EPT if I can make it work schedule-wise, so Summer’s looking good

Nice thread, wp in the thrill. In the k5 hand against nsb is the river bet not really weird from him in the first place like is he bluffing and then when you jam thinks you are polarised so decides to call? Fun hand regardless