Hello everyone, welcome to my blog.

Personal Background:
I am from Switzerland and used to play quite a lot of poker during my studies from 2011-2014. After that I got a job as an auditor in a big 4 company. After now 6 years I finally decided to quit and to look for new opportunities. Tbh i could have stayed longer and just get my monthly pay check and just go from there. I have passed the swiss CPA last year (2nd attempd) and my career path would have been quite straight forward if I had choosen to stay. Hovewer I just could not deal with it any longer. I had no intrinsic motivation for the job at all anymore, therefore it was rather a pain to go to work day by day and especially working those long hours that are normal in that area. I do still have to work around 3 month longer until i am "free". I am still not sure where I will end at, but I will for sure allow me some month of reavaluation.

Poker Background:
I am in love with omaha hi / lo aka. omaha 8.
I cant even remember how i found this game. I used to grind quity heavily the o8 SnG and some Mtts on Pokerstars from 2011-2014. Overall winnings on Pokerstars are around 46k pre RB.

Somehow I did not even play one game after my studies had finshed in 2014 and once I entered my new job.

Return to poker:
It was a day in May 2020 after I filled in my resignation, when I by accident found the twitch channel of Lex. He is a really entertaining guy and I just loved following his plays during SCOOP on pokerstars. I was thrilled again for Poker and wanted to give it a shot again. However the regulation in Switzerland is currently comparable to the US. Which means the big poker providers are not accessible for us. After some research I found the provider WPN and decided to deposit some money on ACR.

I had a deep run in a 55 dollar o8 tournament where managed to win it for 7k, which obviously boostet my bankroll and also my motivation heavily.

So what now?
I do have a girlfriend, who is living in Costa Rica. In my current state of mind I would love to switch there and live there with her while gaining my money from online poker.
As I still will have to work for the next 3 month in my current job I will try to play after work some hours to get a decent sample. Further I plan to not look for a new job and will keep playing online poker during october - december 2020. Depending on the covid XXX, I will probably also go back to costa rica and spend time with my girlfriend and test playing from there.

Poker plans:
My main game is o8. After I played my first hand again after 6-7 years off I felt the love again for that game. I almost felt like no day has passed since back then playing. After some weeks I decided to include also holdem demand SnG´s on ACR. Obviously my expected ROI is way lower and I know that i have to work on my leaks, however I think the 6 and 15 dollar one´s are easy beatable. The Sit & Crust leaderboard for SnG just has to much of vallue to miss it out. My current goal, while still working 100%, is to achieve at least the places that reward you 125 dollars and 55 tournament ticket on a weekly basis. To achieve that i will have to achieve at least around 600 points which is equivalent to around 400 6 dolar demand sng or 150 15dollar demnad sng. This should be achievable however the traffic hours for my time zone are extremely late. therefore i need to at least either on friday or saturdays a heavy seession.

Poker goals longterm:
As I said the Sit & Crush leaderboard has some insane value. The top price is 1250 bucks for which you need around 3k points, which equivalents to around 770 15 dollar deman SnGs. So yes, you can getmore than 100% rakeback in case you are playing demang sngs. However due to the platform and also the traffic hours it is not that easy to achieve the top places with such a low buyin. However still the 500 dollar on a weekly basis would somehow allow to secure my monthly expenses if I really decide to move to costa rica. Longterm I would love to focus on Mtts on different plattforms.

I just finished my session after around 5-6 hours. Actually I planned to play a longer session, but I did not feel too well and decided to call it a night. Unfortunately the o8 demand traffic was rather low today. As usual I also mixed in some o8 Mtts. I only manager to get in around 50 games which is a bit disappointing. Also I only got around 110 points for the Sit & Crust LB, which is equivalent to around 20 points per hour. I at least saved a place for 125 bucks plus tournament ticket for this week, which is good.

I am quite happy with my game and also noted parts where I will have to start my study with:

- Opening ranges, vs 3betting and calling ranges in early game
- 4-5 handed play just before the bubble and at the FT
- Heads-up, especially limp strategy

I might consider to look into the program of raiseyouredge, as I heard their stuff is quite nuts. Btw it is quite annoying that many HH are missing which makes the analysis of the games quite difficult and also adjusted CEV is impacted.

For tomorrow I will try to get in a longer session and also to play during peak times. I will probably also mix in some lower Mtts again.

Wooooow that was the worst session (result wise) i can remember. I think even in the old days playing o8 6 max hypers i did not loose so many buyins in such a short period. But i kept grinding and loosing today

I played from 7 pm to 5 am and got around 130 demand games in. I am down 400 bucks which is equivalent to 40 avg. buyins. However as it seems i was mainly running really bad in the 16.5 buyin level and good in the 6.6 buyins. Also i did not cash in the few Mtts I played today. At least I got almost 400 points in for the Sit & Crust Leaderboard. Overall i managed now to even be down at least 200 bucks over the 700 demand games played on ACR, but this does not bother me a lot as the sample is small.

What really bothers me right now is, that I cant analyze the busting hands as so many Handhistories did not got saved.

The freedom after quitting a time-demanding job is a great feeling, isnt it? After I went self-employed a few years ago it allowed me so much more time and flexibility for poker and life.

How did you meet your Costa Rican girlfriend? That's a great opportunity to live somewhere exotic.

I really love those long grinding sessions as on Saturday, but my sleep schedule gets really ****ed up. Yesterday I studied for some hours and especially focused on my open raises and steal ranges.

Today I played a short session again and focussed on qualitiy over quantity. I felt quite comfortable and will limit my tables on around 12-15 max going forward. I also marked around 40 hands that i will review later this week, some of them i will also share here. I missplayed some hands at the end of the session and did not manage to cash the few Mtts played, but i am very happy with todays sessions.

Hey thank you for dropping by. Well currently I still have to work 100% for the next months, however at least mostly from home due to Covid. But i am really looking forward to the 4th quarter of the year. I still have a long way to go to reach self-employment as you did

I was on holiday in Costa Rica a bit more than a year ago with a friend and luckily we met while partying. In the meantime i have been two more times in Costa Rica and she has been in Switzerland twice as well.

Oh boy, another rough session today, but no one cares anyway about badruns and setups. I played 35 games today, even managed to ship a 6.6 Mtt (fielt was around 100 people) and still managed to be down around 150 bucks I had a quite good start into the session, but was not focussed 100% in the middle of my sessions. It is what it is and as i am currently not depending on poker winnings it helps a lot to get not mentally affected.

I realized today that it is now pretty much one month that i returned to playing poker after a break of 6-7 years. Therefore i think it is time for a short recap:



Obviously my come back in the SnGs did not went that well as i would have wished. However the sample is small and i do not expect to be a huge winner after beeing off to poker for so many years (at least not for holdem games).



My Mtt graph obviously looks way better thanks to my ship of the 55 buck o8 tournament which was part of the Oss series on ACR.

Currently i am sitting on a bankroll of 6.3k. For the next weeks i will continue to grind o8 and nl holdem demand SnGs. In case my bankroll drops below 5k I will really have to rethink my whole situation.

Tomorrow i will take a day off from poker and grab a beer with some friends.

edit:
What i wanted to add is that currently my monthly volume while still working is probably capped at around 1k demand games a month (which is already the upper limit I guess), therefore assuming a 5-10% roi for holdem games i cant beat the variance. I think my roi in o8 should be 10% plus assuming that i play A game most of the time. This concerns me way more than my current assumed bad run. However to be honest if I cant beat demand holdem sng with an avg buyin of 10 bucks than i dont need event to consider playing mostly Mtts on different sites in the long run. Anyway I will allow myself time until the end of 2020 and will reevaluate my situation once i am there.

Yesterday i took a day off from playing and enjoyed the evening with friends. However i decided to purchase the tournament master class from raise your edge. I first watched some yt video of bencb and liked his "teaching style" and after reading various reviews I came to the conclusion that i should go for it to get my game on a new level.

Today i played a 5 hours session, the traffic was rather low in the beginning. I capped my max tables on 10-12 and felt always comfortable. Unfortunately I did run really bad once again. At least the all-in Ev looks good for today, however it is only a small indicator as not all Hands get tracked on ACR. I played a total of 37 games today and am down again 150 bucks as i only cashed 2 out of the 20 $16.5 buyins

I also marked again 15 Hands where I will do a detailed review in the next days. Overall I am happy with my game today. Unfortunately i am still a bit disappointed as it was another loosing day. My mind is still to too much result orientated.

Haha another lossing day incoming. All good.
I went to the office today after a long time being in home office. At like 8 pm I was at home and at 9 I started my session, eventhough i was a bit tired and drank already some bears. Usually i dont start a session with those preconditions, but I still felt good and wanted to get some Games in as I will probably not play on Saturday. Once again i did run really bad once near to the money. There is just nothing I can do about it. I was screaming and shouting a bit, haha, but it really did not impacted my game at all. I even felt way more relaxed about the suckouts and setups. It is fine. Variance has no memory it will turn around sometime.

I've never felt so helpless after a session. It was reallly ridiculous. My downsing is really getting huge now. If I look at my Sharkscope graph it looks like i am the biggest fish that was just lucky to bink something decent. Funfact of the small session played (1k hands) I was never dealt AA, once KK where I ran into AA at the exact bubble. Haha oh well.

But as I mentioned in another post no one cares about bad runs. I was quite happy with my game and maintained a high awareness. Looking at my stats I feel like I was quite tight today. But I think it was mainly because I had horrbile spots icm wise, where I just had do fold so many hands.

Well looking forward the turnaround has to come soon. I cant spend my evenings playing and donating into the orbit. I am now 50 buyins down in the 16.5 o8 demand SnGs and even 100 buyins down in the 16.5 holdem SnGs since "peak". Overall I have played around 400 demand SnGs with a buyin of 16.5 and am down almost 2k. Oh boy.

In the last days I continued reviewing my hands and worked with raiseyouredge. I am not sure when I will be able to play my next session (probably wednesday or thursday), besides those day my week is already planned with other things.

Hey man! It is nice to see that you are playing again, maybe you remember me, I started playing hyper6max o8 in stars when you were finishing, and played full 2014 and 2015. Now after 5 years I´m again playing on stars but the traffic is pretty bad (playing mostly 18man $1,5 and $3,5) and I was considering deposit in ACR to add some $ in my hourly rate. Your downswing looks very bad and I remember at Omaha you were pretty good, despite I was a fish that learnt copying the plays of winning regs so I couldn´t understand plenty the game at the beggining, I liked your aggro game

Did you check this thread? https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...24/index2.html

Maybe that´s the problem, I think Holdem sngs maybe are hard because there are many stables with staking and coaching,software to learn, but in O8 hi lo there is no way

And I´m glad that you decide to move to Costa Rica to live in the paradise with your girlfriend, that´s the most EV+ decision!!

Hey man
What was your SN on pokerstars? Probably I will not remember. Tbh I was even surprised that I played that many o8 hypers. I really felt that most of my games were those 18 man o8 SnGs back in the day, but sharkscope proved me wrong.

I am currently 50 buyins down with regards to the o8 16.5 SnGs, whereas i am up 150 Buyins in the 6.6 buyin level. This does not concern me at all. I think that the regulars are worse than the top regs I remember from Pokerstars and there are a lot of recreactionals. However I have to admit that I really have to focus when playing near to the bubble.

What i really have to admit is that the holdem games changed.
Regarding the holdem games, my current state of mind is that i played way to many tables in the begining and underestimated the numbers of regulars, especially with regards to the 16.5 buyin level.
I need to study way more regarding the holdem games. At the same time I also think the demand SnGs are a great format to improve my Mtt game.

I would love to only play o8 "for a living" however this does not seem possible even when taking all sites on the market. O8 Cashgame would be way more profitable, however I do not see this as an option for me currently.

Near Future
I will have to continue to work in my current Job until mid of September. The workload for me is currently really low. Therefore I theoretically would have enough time to improve my holdem game. However there are days like today, where I cant. I was tired the whole day and could not focus at all. It was not a motivational issue, but more my lifestyle that pulled me down.

High level speaking I want to improve my holdem game.
Due to the fact that no tournament summarys are saved by ACR it is quite a challenge. For me hand analysis with HRC and general ICM analysis are the most plus EV move i could do currently. But with incocmplete HH and no tournament summaries it is quite impossible. The only other option for me right now would be to play on Chico as well, however i really do not like the software. And I had issues with multitabling different poker sites in the past.

In the next day i will come with some concrete goals that should help me in the long run.


Midterm Future
As soon as I have fullfilled my duties with my current employer I plan to go to Costa Rica for a few month (if I even can due to COVID19). I am not sure yet in what direction 2021 will go, there are a lot of options still open. I know what my "dream" situation would look like, but i do not if it is achievable for me. So far I have not done enough to contribute to that dream to make it feasible.

Good posts so far. Keep going!

I'm also a fan of Lex, he's one of the few poker streamers/vloggers that I watch any more. Most of the other streamers have become boring but Lex is great and I enjoy supporting his channel with donations.

In case you didn't know this, Bradley Owens is a similar story to yours. Pretty sure he was also in the accounting/CPA world and left that to play professionally. Went busto, had to go back to CPA and now back to poker. Anyway, might be an interesting channel for you to also follow with your background.

I thought you would realize for my nick haha, but yes, it was long time ago. We were playing some days at 15 tables at the same time , JJJJ win

Well, if the field is soft, probably I would try soon to play those omaha sng on demand in ACR, a new reg boost the traffic.

I saw that on avg the field is 30/40 players, so 50 buy-in is ok. In holdem the avg field is 80/100, that is huge, so variance can be very high, and for that reason your badrun also std.

For you would be pretty easy to make a living playing only O8 in stars mixing MTT and the few sngs that are running, but I read that you can´t play right now while are you living in Switzerland, when you move to CR you will realize that.

Gl at the tables!

@ jj_win: Your SN seems kind of familiar but do not remember your in further details. Yes would be grate to have someone else on board to get those o8 demand SnGs started. It is quite interesting that most of the people late reg those. I think even regulars are often late registering the demand SnGs. Regarding the field sizes i do not agree, for o8 it is is usually between 20-40 and for holdem around 30-60. What especially increases variance is that there is quite a huge money jump from first to the other places, it is really top heavy.

Ok thank you for the information regarding the stars traffic. I only checked the SC statistic for 2020 for o8 games and the general traffic seems to have dropped further compared to the time I was playing on pokerstars. It sucks that i cant event check the Schedules and general traffic while being in Switzerland.

@GentlemanJack:
Hey, thank you for dropping by
I totally agree with you regarding lex. I will check out the story of Bradley Owens. I am propably not the stereotype of an auditor, but it will still be a fun read I guess. I cant imagine myself going back in the audit industry, at least not in the big 4 environment.


I actually wanted to do another session today but I was not feeling too well today. So i skiped it for today. Just hope i will not get sick the next days.

Audit can be a very rewarding career, both personally and financially. But, yes, who you work for makes a massive difference. But the good news is that there are *all kinds* of businesses that need audit people at any given time, you don't have to work Big 4.

I was pulling for a Bernie win not because I like him but because 8 years of "Feel the Bern" would be amazing for the audit industry

I agree with you it can be a really demaning but also rewarding (in many ways) with the right setup. In Switzerland we have to do regulatory (i.e. AML, and around 40 more areas) audits yearly for our clients as well, which makes it even more demanding (at least in theory). I think this is a huge difference compared to most other countries, esepcially for the the financial service sector.

Hah tbh had to google the Bernie quote, but it is definitely a funy one


Update:
I was finally able to at least access the Pokerstars lobby and other sites to look up the MTT Schedules. I put the daily schedule in an excel from the different sites (mainly Stars, Party and ACR) to get an overview and to put up a theoretical schedule. In the next days i will add informations like duration of late reg, number of players and playtime.
I think playing mainly o8 would benefit me a lot in different ways. First of all it is my main game and my edge is way higher compared to holdem. Further there is only very limited and basic strategy available. Back in the days one of my poker friends even constructed an ICM calculator for o8, which I think is uniqe or at least not publicly available. I will try to contact him, as this would be a great advantage and study tool for me.

I wrote the Pokerstars Support in the last day if I would be even available to play while I am in Costa Rica (lets say for 3 month end of the yer) and while still being swiss resident. So far I havent heard back from them.
Further I also noted that it is quite dificult to receive a permanent residence in Costa Rica, however there are ways to get around it.

Actually the whole residence thing is probably a bigger problem than I initally thought. I need to check the options in further detail tomorrow.

I contacted like an "agency" that did move poker players in similar positions before. So far I havent heard back from them, but that is fine, i am not in a rush.

The last days were rough. My dad had a seriously bad health condition, but seems to be get over it and is on a good way. Therefore my mind and time was not really focussed on poker.