Hi,

some brief info about myself:


- 30 years old half armenian/half german guy without a professional career
based in northwest germany
- playing/winning at poker ( mostly mtts on the internetz) part time since ~2009
- living in a relationship since 2013. GF and me live together since 2 years now.
- interests outside of poker: politics, travelling, football
- long time PGC lurker


What i try to accomplish with this blog:

* motivating myself to crush poker and life
* keeping track of poker-results
* sharing noteworthy moments
* getting some feedback/tips
* maybe posting some hands. not planning to post a lot of strat though.

2016 non poker-cliffs :

- started the year with 5 months backpacking through latin america, spent most
of the time in guatemala and colombia while going from cuba to brazil mostly overland.
was obv playing very sparingly that time had just tons of fun. #timeofmylife

- came back pretty much broke and immediately re-entered my office job in the family biz
(25-30hrs/week sitting at a reception desk and doing paperwork). the job is really dull
but it enables me to be part of the relatively brillant german public healthcare system and
pays some bucks which cover rent and basic expenses so i am grateful for this opportunity.

2016 poker-cliffs:

- applied for a stake at abarone68s psyduck stable in june, which was a great decision:
Aaron does a really good job managing and running his stable professionally.
Coachings with an ICM-expert are happening multiple times a week , also i got a private
1-on-1 coaching with a well-known HSMTTer pre-WCOOP.
Communication/Vibe within the Group couldnt be better.

- started at ~15$ ABI . As i started well i got moved up a bit pretty fast.
Right now, i basically click all red+blue regspeed Stars-MTTs up to 44$ /
Regular/red turbo MTTs up to 27$/ Sunday Million / some well-chosen soft off-peak stuff above 44$

- graph since entering the stable :

Hi,


poker-goals for 2017:
* studying poker 4 hrs/week
* playing 2 peak sessions and one off-peak session/week
* playing 3500 mtts and winning 10$/game
* adding at least 1 more site ( right now playing ps/888). Any Ideas ?
* by the beginning of 2018 i wanna have earned enough money to have a decent roll to go on my own without having to move down considerably and be able to travel a couple of months in 2018 again.



life goals for 2017:
- considering quitting the office job and having my gf convinced to relocate with me by the beginning of 2018.
- stop smoking entirely ( went from 1 pack/day to 10 cigs/week last months )
- improve my spanish and start learning another language ( preferrably one with different letters to explore new brain space)
- improving health by working out/doing sports regularly. when it comes to sports i am the laziest person ever.
everytime i plan to go swimming 1km at a public swimming pool with sauna i just end up hanging around in the sauna and having a couple of beers there.
went from 68kg to 85kg last 2 years ( 1.77m) and wanna get that down to 75kg again.
- improving quality of relationship . trying to spend quality time with the girl at least one night/week where i am fully dedicating myself to her. lol sounds cheesy i guess



Lmk if u have any ideas on improving this or any tips how to accomplish any of my goals


Cheers Patrick

Thread needs moar pics!

glgl

subbed, although that sunrunning graph almost threw me off ^^

GL fellow duckling

thx capo <3 . will try to deliver more than lobbyporn and graphs. need to have to start taking more photos first though


thx :P

thx mate! gl2u2



2017 so far:

gf and me started getting sick 2 days before NYE so we skipped joining friends for celebrations and cooked ourselves an amazing dinner instead.
i actually enjoyed passing NYE in that manner, she was a little depressed first at some point for missing out meeting her friends . me firing up some tourneys after dinner didnt help her a lot probably :P. next day she was quite happy though for skipping the hangover

poker-wise the year started with a losing sunday without a single interesting deep-run , same for monday.

tuesday is the day where i plan to grind an off-peak schedule constantly and i actually made my first 2 FTs of the year today. first one was a rather sad experience as i ended up getting 8th for 60$ in some PS 11turbo.

2nd one was some 22 deep at 888 that i actually managed to win for 560$



also got my winamax account set up yesterday and really looking forward to bink heaps at the series. going to take a deeper look into their schedule next days and potentially negotiate with the bosses a bit which tourneys are/arent worth clicking

It's easy, only click the ones you're going to bink.

clicked another session today. had a bunch of promising stacks , no luck in the end though. made it to the final-table of a 5$rebuy at 888,where i feel i messed up icm-wise.
sucks a lot as i started the FT 1/8 and finished 6th for 250$. stacks were super close at the beginning though but i def did not adapt optimally to the stack scenario at the FT.




Will take a day off tomorrow. Played last 4 days with rather bad results, also have to spend some hours in the Office.

Will click poker either Friday or Saturday, maybe both and obv Sunday.
Stable-Manager sent me the Schedule for the Winamax Series and theres basically every Event included i wanted to play. So no need to bargain
Rules are pretty simple anyway :

oi oi oi ;P

no need convincing her just lay down the law!

Tobacco is the worst, switch over to the green stuff ;p

i went straight off them, which is probably harder than weening yourself off them, but really worth it.

i could teach you how to speak Australian...

only one night a week?

i find mapping out small goals that lead into your bigger goals a way of achieving the end result easier, plan your weeks out, and stick to it, stay motivated and positive and remember the end result is what you are reaching for, not the short term annoyance of doing tasks needed to get there.

surround yourself with like minded people. you become who and what you surround yourself with, surround yourself with lazy unmotivated unhealthy people, more than likely you will become that too over time.

keep your chin up and keep pushing forward.

i see you skipped new years, below is a selfie from me drinking new years.



GLGL mate,

stay off my tables though! ;P

recap of the last days:

Month hasnt been great yet, as i am still waiting for the first somewhat meaningful bink of the year 2017. Overall i am pretty happy with quality of play and volume though. On Sunday i had like 2 hours where i felt i was playing too many tables. Feeling super good with 10 tables at this point and feel i start playing significantly worse at ~15ish. Maybe i just have to get used to that again. Actually i feel though that todays games just require more attention if you aiming for good winrates. Population started defending way more last 2 years, that leads to more postflop play and in order to be able to play well avoiding mass-tabling seems crucial, at least for me. Possibly i am just getting old

Yesterday i got 11th in the 50€ W-Series Event #27 for ~1k$. Handled losing the ~5k€-Flip pretty well. Still disappointed obv.
Today there is another day 2 in a 100€ event. Starting with about 20bbs so i first need to spin it up properly to finally make some magic happen. I do like the site alot btw. Compared to say 888 the software is just stunningly beautiful. Then for us people with 2 jobs all those 2 days events are super-convenient. Also this is one of the most interesting series for people who base themselves somewhere between low and midstakes.

2017 graph so far:





thanks for the feedback man! gl2u2!

Agreed, the WM replayer is gorgeous

Subbed. Fellow MTT player. Looking fiorward to lots of updates. Play well.

tyty <3

Glgl rotisseur, are you in a study group? I'm searching for mtt grinders to join/study with thx

Sent from my E5303 using Tapatalk

Sunday Recap:

dropped a bit yesterday , not a huge drama although running bad in the higher buyins sucks a lot: busted near money bubble in a winamax 100eur by getting in fd+gutshot vs tptk otf for 18bb each. SM 88<A7s for 27bb each.

Winamax Series wasnt successful so far. played at least 9 day 1s of the 10€ and 30€ colossus events and couldnt make a single day2. had some day1 mincashes though. at least i immediately made it to day2 in the 150€ winamax-million w ~30bbs. This Thing will be huuuuge so i better be in good mental and physical shape on Wednesday.

With the Series going on right now , i might skip tomorrows off-peak Session if i make day2 in todays 50€ 6max or decide to click some of the peak-time Series stuff.


future:
Our Stable-Manager sent me a sexy Schedule for the 888 XL-Series. Looking forward to that. Even if the Software will never be my favourite their Schedule is pretty cool.

Boss-Duck Aaron mentioned he possibly rents a House for SCOOP in Mexico to invite us over for the grind.

Would be awesome if that happens, could get me into some conflicts though as i also loosely planned to climb Mt.Elbrus in Russia that time with one of my best friends. Really love hiking and especially the challenge of climbing a Mountain is something that is really unique and super satisfying if you finally make it.



So i finish this post with a Picture of myself after climbing Volcano Acatenango in Guatemala last spring. The Thing behind me is the really active "El Fuego" that is currently erupting several times a day.

Epic volcano pic!

GL sir

Admittedly, it is way more easy to post, when there are some nice results to brag about. As there are none i have to come up with something else



piling up makeup and dealing with it (tldr):
So, this already indicates that my last weeks were rather bad. In fact, i havent had a winning session for a while now.

And there is really nothing to whine about, as this is the path i chose by opting for the high-variance/huge-fields/high-ROI Route. Surprisingly, this has absolutely no impact on my personal level of Happiness. Of course it feels bad to bust a Tourney on the bubble or close to the FT. And people might argue that it is easier to deal with swings when playing backed but in general i do disagree: If you are on your own, you can either sell %s or just move down and try to rebuild if you have the drive or you simply quit. There is no one you need to justify yourself to. When in Makeup though, you basically have to grind it out but it is not uncommon for people to lose Motivation during these Phases regardless. I have been to that point as well esp. in less-communicative staking environments.

So now, i really notice how important it is for me to be part of a group of players. Having a bunch of other geeks with the same dedication around that i could talk to about strat and/or other stuff means a lot to me. And obv there is always guys with similar skills that run a lot better/worse than you, which helps me to put my own results into perspective and just look forward to the next session to start crushing again.


For the first time in a long while i checked my bb/100 which is at



played liveament w girl:
Last Friday i came back home super-exhausted from a stressful day in the office so i decided to spend time with the girl. Gf likes livepoker. So she asks me to join her for a 100€ Live-tourney in a casino nearby. Was really disgusted by the idea first as i hate Casinos. Then decided it could be fun due to the crappy structure . Well it wasnt particularly funny. I got 7th with 5 paid. She chopped 3way though for 800€ and i had 50% of her, so at least it was profitable.



next week:

poker:
- will go for the off-peak grind tomorrow. planning to get up between 7 and 8am and start regging soon after. hope the smaller fields help to finally get me to post some lobby-screenshots again.

- 2 or 3 of the other days i am going to reg peak-time. most likely wednesday and sunday. might play saturday as well. not sure yet


irl:

- friday -> saturday going to get with the girl to some spa-hotel thing. was a x-mas gift for her.

- also winter-break in football is over and really looking forward to meet some of the mates at pubs/stadium soon to watch football while having a proper amount of beer


ty . was indeed of the coolest places i have ever seen so far.


Cheers!

cool update. think it's smart to play a couple of early sessions with smaller field size, esp when you have been losing for a while/want to regain some confidence

gl

January Wrap-Up:

January was the worst month in a long time,maybe my worst month ever results-wise!? Wasnt that unlikely this would happen though if taking into account that i participated in tons of Series-Events with infinite entrants and considerably higher ABI. EVbb-wise everything seems to be in order though and it will turn around at some point. At least i played more than 3times the volume that i am supposed to play. Guess that counts as a success!? Yesterday i played a nice little off-peak session and was actually really close to win a decent chunk of the january losses back before i ended up getting 13th in stars 82$ BB w aq<a9 pre and 14th in 888s 55$ typhoon by shoving 55 into A3s and being unable to improve on 542 . So i basically finished January in the same fashion i started. #pgc-heater notathingimo

[IMG][/IMG]


Future:
Most important plans for February include not reducing Volume and studying a lot and hopefully that will lead us to binking some yummy scores soon.


This weekend i am probably going to be in Skopje/Macedonia on my own. Booked a flight for 19€ roundtrip. Apparently it is pretty cold there right now, but have never been there and nothing keeps my mind more alive than getting to know new places/ getting out of my comfort-zone. Also i spent a lot of time with the gf lately and even if its nice to share an apartment and seeing each other frequently i do need some time and space for myself once in a while. Hope the hotel-internet will be decent enough for the sunday-grind. Also going to the Dentist next week and scared af.

sub, gl

You pussy,


i had one of them in october, followed by one of my best months of the year, you'll get through it. What helped me was going over most of my ranges and changing a few things, adopting a mixed strategy OOP, cutting back a couple tables, cutting out turbos, and game selecting hard, then started to put my games back in. Still play like a fish tho, but a better fish than previous.

whats your EV bb/100 when looking at the Big blind levels, at certain stack depths? even though overall may look good its still good to dig deeper and break it apart.


so the trip is to get away from the gf?
come to Australia i'll get you out of your comfort zone hahaha
yeah generally its unhealthy to spend 24/7 with someone, people do need space.


GLGL on the internet and the sunday grind..... what am i saying you don't need luck, you'll crush it

really not much to update about.

will def not maintain january volume as my brother a.k.a boss decided to go on holiday and backup-employee got ill. So i am going to be a lot more involved in his business than i want to be this month spent 50 hours this week behind the desk ( get paid for ~25) since monday morning. sleeping schedule is completely messed up for poker. so i plan to click an early session tomorrow and strongly consider to skip the sunday peak-time grind and just play the early stuff instead.

Nothing too interesting to report about.

Saturday i managed to make a tiny profit by FTing some 7.50 early morning pko thing on ps and went out for a birthday celebration the night after. I did drink more than i planned to, so i happened to sleep very long on Sunday. Therefore i decided to go for a huge peak-time grind and started by regging heaps of things. after 1 hr playing though i started feeling super dizzy and unfocused so i pulled the emergency brake, unregged everything and finished sunday by bricking like 10 mtts.its def a lack of discipline to get wasted the night before sunday and i somewhat regret it. better be prepared properly for the most important day of the week right?

Today i wasnt planning to click pokerz at all as i thought i´d have to be in the office early but then just after i got up i received a msg saying "stay at home bro" so i started regging things at like 8.15am cet. Super profitable time-slot, also cute field sizes and after the session started rather annoyingly by bubbling the b82( most expensive thing i click on non-sundays) i could still finish the session in profit

February wrap-up:

- was slacking really hard with volume as office was quite demanding. couldnt get as many hours in poker- and study-wise. finished with a breakeven sunday though which is pretty rare




yesterday first session of march and hit biggest score of the year so far. was a bit disappointed as i couldnt close it up but felt pretty exhausted last 2 tables plus had connection problems so this is probably as good as it gets.




also stable actively discussing potential locations for a SCOOP-House. most likely option at this point seems to be colombia. unfortunately i am not sure yet if i can join , as my brother already indicated that they might need me here possibly.
would be super wicked if i could make it there though as colombia is for sure in my top 3 of all favorite places. also wanna meet the crew so bad. well we´ll see

Recap of the month so far:

Played 4 sessions so far this month. Cut-down non stars volume bit lately and will probably keep it that way unless some special series starts. Multi-siting is def a lot more stressful for my brain than i thought.

Had stable-boss reviewing my b22 deep-run and appearently parts of the HH have been "concerning". Reason enough for me to put more work into my game off the table as well. And to make PGC-Folks participate in making me a great pokerplayer again i am looking to start posting a couple of HHs in future.

graph of month so far looks sexy, although still far away from a profit-chop yet:



short-term goals include playing 350 games this month, should be easy. also posting one discussion-worthy HH in every post from now on seems doable.

friday is going to be fun, friend somehow got hold of VIP-tickets of the local football team . not so balla as its only 3rd League beer4free though. Saturday morning brother and me going to visit our ~90yo granddad who lives like 2hours from here. have nothing but love for the man, still hope we somehow can dodge the good old 4hour war-stories

Recap of the last weeks:

Last Weeks haven´t been great poker-wise. I have ended up sort of getting used to the feeling of being in 5 figs deep in Makeup, so i tried to participate in as many group-coaching Sessions as i could and tried to work on my game a lot. Started talking Skype every now and then with another Guy from the Stable, bit strat and also the obligatory random banter. Finally managed to kill a good portion of that makeup last sunday just in time for SCOOP.

IRL was rather sad as it was gg grandpa. I was obv very sad and still am but the man lived a fullfilling life and last months were physically very painful for him. So that moment seemed decent enough to say goodbye for him at 89yrs.

Future:

SCOOP is around the Corner and spontaneously the mentioned stablemate and me decided to book a Grinding-House 10m from the Adriatic Sea in Croatia for the second half of the Series. Soon after releasing that Info in Stable-Chat, a croatian dude from the group decided to join us with another grinding mate. With 4 ppl that place seems to be fully occupied as it probably isn´t the most balla place ever judging by the pictures. Binked a 50€ Return Flight, Owner confirmed Internet should be reliable, Terrace has Seaview and the Place def seems to be in decent enough shape to be worth spending a week at grinding pokerz. Really looking forward to that and wouldnt it be wicked if we could celebrate some serious Binkings there?

Speaking of SCOOP, as most Low/Mid-Guys do, i am going to play a bit higher than usual during the Series and sold a Package at the MP to reduce makeup-variance a bit. Will also play most 55s-109s of the Inferno XL Series at 888.


Also, i am going to punish myself for being the lazy f**ker that i am when it comes to sports: have signed up for a 101km nonstop-hike for the Weekend after SCOOP. The Friday after SCOOP is a Holiday in Germany that is a major reason for People of all ages, mostly males between 20-40 just getting drunken together outdoors. This is going to happen without me as i will be busy torturing myself hiking through middle german Mountains.


Strat:
Announced last time that i would post some hands every now and then. Most painful hand last week was this one in the million. Comments on every street appreciated. Villain was a random without a winning record. We havent been together at the table for much more than one Orbit.

https://www.boomplayer.com/23600305_32E8F62AF1


Finally, some Screenshots