Thank you rama. Appreciate that post a lot

Thanks for the questions PKO.

1) I've always been an extreme BRM nit. I think there's a few factors you want to consider for BRM.

Are you a full time pro, a part time pro, or a recreational. If you're a full time pro I'd be very strict having at least 200x of my average buy-in and possibly more as the games get tougher.

If you're part time or a recreational and have income from other sources I would just play whatever makes me happy. Me personally that would be huge field tournaments like the Sunday Million and Sunday Storm.

As the fields get smaller such as on UK sites like Microgaming, you can be more aggressive and take some 50-100x buy-in shots for sure, especially if the games are soft.

2) Probably $109+ is where it starts to matter a lot. There's a ton of free content out there that is very helpful for formulating a baseline strategy. I've found that nobody really plays GTO. The $530's and $1k's come closest to approximating it though, which makes sense. The average $500 player is much more balanced in every spot than the average $33 player which is very noticeable when you're running bluffs and living that fast life.

3) Going to go with my 3 favorite Isle of Man restaurants in case anyone wants to go visit PokerStars or MicroGaming or GVC. I heard a story from a former co-worker who left the company that the managing team of a large Spin stable once flew to our building in suits to try to get a meeting when something happened to their accounts.

Victoria Grill Peri Peri- A lot of us ate here. I came to the Isle of Man as a complete noob to the ways of the UK but apparently English people love a few things. Brown sauce and Peri Peri are two things that Americans aren't super familiar with that I grew to love.

This place just did a variety of wraps with Peri Peri chicken and other such items. Very tasty!

Enzos- We had a team dinner after Sunday Million Take 2 was a success that will always have a lot of warm memories for me. The Isle of Man is a weird place. There aren't a lot of great fast casual dining options other than Peri Peri, Just Pizza, and a few other places. There are quite a few fine dining places and Enzos is my favorite of them all. I left a glowing Facebook review for them.

Just Pizza and Pasta- Incredible value! Portions are huge and the prices are super low for the Isle of Man. On the off chance anyone from this place reads this PG&C (lol). Raise your prices!

Honorable mention and shoutout to The Queens. This is pretty much the company pub and you can always find a lot of Stars crew especially on Fridays. I have a lot of good memories here and miss it quite a bit.

Love the UK and want to return one day. Hope Brexit pans out : /

I don't think the scope ability rating is accurate at all. I think it's too skewed/biased to high ABI players since they get a real boost to their score.

I'm not sure on fish. You know with fish when you see them in game so you don't need to confirm with Scope! I think a small winning reg will have something in the 80's range and a high ABI reg who is winning will have something in the high 80's due to rampant INFLATION.

Good regs will be 88-95 and the absolute crushers are always 96+ because they play quite high ABI as well. I just checked myself and I'm a 94. I remember back when I had a pretty Tony graph on Stars I always wondered why my score was in the low 90's and realized it's because Sharkscope openly and HATEFULLY discriminates against lower buy-in players.

---

Sunday Update

Had a slightly losing Sunday at $107 ABI. Ended up skipping the $2100 since that one feels like a too many marbles in one basket type situation (I malproped on purpose don't @me).

I was chipleading the $530 175K PKO and ran into two key hands that didn't go well for me that have led to some self reflection. Ended up getting 32nd for $2977 which is again pretty close to what some of the final tablists got.

Hand 1: Knowingly making a bad call

partypoker - 6000/12000 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 8 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BB: 263,323
Hero (UTG): 899,290
UTG+1: 353,333
MP: 254,755
MP+1: 171,532
CO: 227,092
BTN: 602,068
SB: 298,526

8 players post ante of 1,500, SB posts SB 6,000, BB posts BB 12,000

Pre Flop: (pot: 30,000) Hero has A J

Hero raises to 25,200, UTG+1 calls 25,200, fold, fold, fold, BTN calls 25,200, SB calls 19,200, BB calls 13,200

Flop: (138,000, 5 players) 2 Q 6
SB checks, BB checks, Hero checks, UTG+1 checks, BTN checks

Turn: (138,000, 5 players) 8
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets 69,000, fold, fold, SB raises to 271,826 and is all-in, fold, Hero calls 202,826

River: (681,652, 2 players) 3

Hero shows A J (High Card, Ace)
(Pre 7%, Flop 37%, Turn 20%)
SB shows A A (One Pair, Aces)
(Pre 93%, Flop 63%, Turn 80%)
SB wins 681,652

The turn line is a notorious scum line regulars like to take with value. At the time I estimated around 7-12 outs which isn't enough equity to call. The one complicating factor in my defense was he had a $940 bounty on him. In fairness to me this number is much bigger than what I'm used to because I'm not usually playing $530 PKO's and am usually processing $33-109's.

I've done some reflection on what triggered me to click call. There were a number of factors ranked in rough order:

1) Hot asian degen blood
2) Feeling of invicibility from crushing so many pots/ev and building such a nice stack
3) Disdain for the scum CR turn strong line
4) Wanting the loot to add to my beefy pile of $2K+ in bounties already

I can't promise to be able to fold in the same spot the next time but I would really like to be able to. One thing I've noticed about my game is trying to play a loose aggressive style while also running PKO math and ICM takes a toll on the brain. My game tends to degenerate and get quite punty when I play too many days in a week. This stuff all comes down to discipline and willpower. I need to think of my wife and kids more and where their food is coming from the next time I want to monkey around in these spots.

In an effort to build some discipline I'm going to be playing a mid stakes value grind all week to prepare for the return of Stars in 2 days.

Hand 2: Shrinking in the moment

partypoker - 7000/14000 NL (8 max) - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

UTG+1: 296,623
Hero (MP): 557,064
CO: 402,883
BTN: 294,564
SB: 188,592
BB: 522,368
UTG: 581,570

7 players post ante of 1,750, SB posts SB 7,000, BB posts BB 14,000

Pre Flop: (pot: 33,250) Hero has 6 6

fold, UTG+1 raises to 28,000, Hero raises to 84,000, fold, fold, fold, fold, UTG+1 calls 56,000

Flop: (201,250, 2 players) K 9 T
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

Turn: (201,250, 2 players) 8
UTG+1 checks, Hero checks

River: (201,250, 2 players) 7
UTG+1 checks, Hero bets 471,314 and is all-in, UTG+1 calls 210,873 and is all-in

UTG+1 shows J K (Straight, Jack High)
(Pre 50%, Flop 91%, Turn 95%)
Hero shows 6 6 (Straight, Ten High)
(Pre 50%, Flop 9%, Turn 5%)
Hero wins 260,441

I read a great article on the PokerStars blog about Free Solo and the poker mindset.
https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/f...r-179878.shtml

One of the key points in that article is "the only way you'll truly feel comfortable at the poker table is when you've done some mental homework." I find MTTs are all about controlling your fear by growing more and more comfortable with what you're supposed to do in a spot.

So here I know villain is a bit out of line pre. Not a huge sample but I have drawn a Bayesian inference after 42 hands that he's opening too much. I know my range here should be a mix of monkey shoves and NAI induces with 88 being the lowest pip on the wheel. I know 66 is theoretically not a good NAI 3b, like ever, but the combination of fold equity and just running it pre in a PKO is fine for me at the time.

This is a spot where the chess engines might suggest a call or a fold, put a ? next to 3b NAI, and put a ! to what I feel is the correct play (spoiler alert: it's always monkey shove)

Once I get to the flop I'm quite lost. I know this hand smacks his range. Turn he checks a hand he's not "supposed" to check. River he checks and I shove confidently not even expecting to see J's because I'm not super familiar with high level high stakes spots like this.

I've run the math in this spot pre. I play PKO's much differently from the average regular and I'm quite confident I'm doing a lot of things better than them and some things worse. But in my darker moments I do question myself.

One thing I find interesting about the MTT community is it is full of high achieving nerds so the high ends can get quite cliquey and elitist. I say this as a fellow nerd myself and as someone who has been stepping stoned by quite a few people on their way to elite success. Every group thinks they're the best because you need that confidence in the highest games.

side note: The people I have the most respect for are those who treat everyone the same regardless if they "make it" or not. Even in the corporate environment you have a lot of personality types that are just climbing to the next hot level. And often these people are wired and driven to be the most successful. Not my cup of tea though.

I remember making a 60bb reshove against pads 2.7x on button in a PKO, covering, with ATo because of PKO math and respecting his game tremendously. I remember thinking "I wonder what he thinks about this. Maybe he is loling at me in his silk pyjamas while sipping some Earl Grey"

I need to remember that oftentimes you should punt not out of spite and anger but out of love and admiration. When I monkey shove this spot with 66 it's out of love and admiration for a cagey HS villain. Shoving nets me a decent % of a small blind and then I cover everyone so you just throw in a ton of extra chips into the equation.

People might love the play, accept it but reject the edge, think it's terrible spew, or whatever else. That shouldn't matter to me. If I run the math and I'm confident then the play should be good in a $530 or a $55 or an $11 or a $0.25 buy-in home game PKO with grandma and her bridge club.

So I learned a few valuable lessons about myself in this tournament. While I can't confidently say I will fold the AsJx next time and have that discipline, I know it's something I need to work on. And I can confidently say that I won't be shook from a $530+ in the future. Even if I'm at a huge COOP end game, I need to make the plays I know are correct even if they subject me to ridicule. Maybe I'll use cal opening 82o and other delights at big final tables as an inspiration.

This speaks to me a lot Yugioh. It upsets me when I know deep down that I have no idea what I should be doing in a spot.

great update as well. Best of luck this week.

Lold at the pads part

Honestly I just think that if you are drawn to jamming 67bbs in a spot then it should just inspire you not to feel that heavily outclassed by the villain inspiring you to make this play rather than others you would make against players that you consider a pip or two worse and just work out why said player is better than you and improve yourself

Fk do I know tho I m a notorious nit

Good read I love the updates and hhs. I'm kinda in the same situation as you - played MTTs full time for a few years, then got a job in a big poker site 3 years ago and now considering going back to playing full time. I remember playing vs you on stars back in the day, was def good times. Anyway best of luck in life and poker, I hope it goes well for you!

I went over your thread. I dont visit 2+2 often anymore (only when I would like to annoy people) but your thread seems quite refreshing.. I read some of your posts here and there. It is a pleasant suprise how polite you are

I will state the obvious but most people hate pokerstars because what they did to their vip program. I understand that this is what they think is best for their company (and propably is shortterm and this is why I dont hate the platform) but rakeback is extremely low. I do think they might offer something better in the future. Fwiw I am getting some nice challenges lately

Since I started playing live, I met some people working in pokerstars and I had the fortune(?) to meet one in the airport. Some thoughts

1) People are always nice when speaking to players (but I always assume it is part of their job)
2) People working for Pokerstars always speak highly about their working environment which is nice
3) The people I met dont really know how poker works. I had a discussion about ev and a representative said you cant really know your ev. That was a discussion on sngs. Their argument was something along the lines of you go all in with AA he calls with KK. I explained that is why you need big samples in sngs and there are variance calculators to see what sample you need and how accurate they will be. Their argument was exactly : ''but who created those calculators'' Since I dont have tolerance to stupidity I left shortly after
4) I got some emails if I need anything from those people. I got around 5 different emails (which I didnt ask, they offered) I kinda spam the general support but I dropped only 2 emails in two different people which went unresponded
5) I dont understand why turbos and normal tournaments can have the same rake
6) Since I met people working for pokerstars I would love to work for the company but I still have too much love for the game. I personally cant see myself dropping poker for the next 5-10 years(i would be interested to work in security to help catching cheaters fwiw)




For your partypoker review. I dont like party at all. In every session I had at least 3 misclicks due to the software issues which cost me from 20 to 150bb. This was mainly from either disconnect issues or the table didnt popup(even though I use partycaption and I play tiled with overlapping) or the chips didnt appear clearly or there was another player in the pot but due to their software I missed him. Also I had two big disconnections on Sundays which I got refunded but they mess my pp results in sharkscope and it is very frustrating to have disconnections especially when you have a certain schedule to follow. Since I am in Thailand the last few months I kinda feel ''lucky'' that I cant play in pp even though I am planning to move again in order to have access (masochist)

That being said it is extremely good what they are doing for poker and their rise might force Pokerstars to offer better schedule/vip program. I just hope they will stop doing the shady things they are doing in their live events and I assume in online too. Also the software improvement is astonishing but I cant believe that in 2019 they cant build a software similar to stars which is 7+ years old

Fwiw even with so many issues I would grind more in pp if it was more famous. In a way that someone wins a scoop event everyone loses his mind. Someone binks a pp event noone even cares but this is my perspective. Same reason I dont grind in any other platforms and I attend only pokerstars live events which might change shortly

''Now I'm friends with many Supernova Elites and the decision to revoke the benefits was definitely out of line. However, I think it's important to remember that the person who ordered this change is no longer with the company and recently went on trial for insider trading. I'm not posting this as a defense of PokerStars. I actually think there have been many decisions since that point that I strongly disagreed with. And I think it's an indictment of the entire leadership structure of this company that David Baazov was at the very top. In terms of decision-making and influence in the company someone like Baazov is worth infinite Jaes or Lukes''

Why it is important to remember that? It is like you are trying to defend a bad decision. If it is important to remember that, it is important to also remember they can always give a better vip program

As for saying that poker community is toxic when it comes to suggestions I completely agree. I personally dont follow pp ps threads anymore because.....you said it. I think the best way is to have one representative and then 5-10 regulars that are making suggestions. Those regulars can get suggestions from other people. The final result is the representative will have to discuss only with a limited amount of people (but public can read everything) who will be highstakes reg than some random 7$ semi reg

I agree with you in general. Most of the heavy outclassing comes from being OOP here. And you're not that nitty :P Have much more heart than most MTT players!

Thanks Ido. You're Reshafim right? Remember you had some great results and was wondering if you were still around. I'm going to guess you work for 888 :P Do you still play on weekends and stuff?

Thanks a lot for this post belth. These are the kinds of posts I like to see in this thread. Your MTT PG&C thread was actually my favorite on all of 2+2 and I was sad to see you discontinue it. Going to respond to your points.

I can understand this. From a pure pricing perspective PokerStars is offering a much worse price on their games than the industry standard which has always been at least 20% rakeback through in house loyalty or affiliates. Some of this is mitigated by what PokerStars is doing that it doesn't get much credit for. Robust game security, development of new products, marketing to attract recreationals to the game, and such.

Different companies value their poker customers in different ways. Companies that are looking to grow market share such as Party, GG, and Unibet are different from companies that are trying to maintain or even leave the industry. In an ideal cost-benefit equation any kind of disregard for your core base should have consequences. I mean what would happen if Coke started charging $4 a bottle instead of $1.50 or whatever? But poker players in general have a specific combination of attributes that hurt them here: they are very independent (**** the man), generally unmotivated by pricing, self-interested (selfish some would say), and hard to mobilize.

Going to post a transcript of the Q4 Earnings Call with Rafi and provide a few quotes from him with my emphasis in bold.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/424...pt?part=single

"As expected, our success in casino has had an inevitable cannibalization impact on poker, with our customers spending more of their gambling wallet on our online casino now."

"So, maybe as an opening statement, poker for the international business is the main acquisition channel and the key driver for the other verticals. We've built through poker, in 2018, more than $0.5 billion businesses on sports and casino. So, poker has a meaningful contribution to the international business. Sometimes, it's been overlooked."

PM me who you met :P

1+2+3) People at PokerStars are great. The company seems to have a great hiring policy and my impression from working there is that most of the difficult people are eventually phased out. Moving to the IoM is also a big commitment so the company naturally filters for bright, motivated workers who feel invested.

While the company makes efforts to foster poker interest among its employees, it's true that many people don't know how poker works. I'm curious if this is the case at big video game companies as well. Are there people working at Riot who have never played a game of League of Legends? Not sure.

From reading Dan Goldman's blog http://www.smalltalkdan.com/ it used to be different. Isai seems to have hired mostly poker proficient people who built the greatest poker business the world has ever seen.

5) PartyPoker charges less rake for turbos and PKO's. You have to support stuff like this with your dollar (although I acknowledge your issues are severe). 888 occasionally runs rakeless promotions. I don't think regular speed pricing is an issue at all and I think players should stop pushing for this. I do think turbo/hyper/PKO rake can be an issue certainly. And you don't need to understand it rationally. It's just a financially driven business decision.

6) One of my friends at the company is now the head of Game Integrity. I think you know him. It's PokerStars Baard! Baard is one of the sharpest people I know and also very analytical. Game Integrity is definitely one of the strongest departments at Stars and I was super happy when Baard moved into that role.

I forgot about the software issue that Solidthought ranted about on Youtube when making the review. That one is definitely a problem and has cost me a timeout at least a few times. I've also occasionally had disconnect issues that weren't reimbursed in the past but very recently I had one issue I was given a ticket for.

This is one thing that Stars has always been great about. When I was playing in Korea I would constantly have this lobby bug where my tables wouldn't open when late registering. Stars refunded me so much money for this when they didn't have to.

I think you should give Party another chance. I think it's important to support their efforts to create a more sustainable environment for all poker players. I can understand the tilt though.

In terms of prestige and "fame" I don't really buy it. I'm more focused on the raw $ and nobody really seems to care about COOP champions. Do you really think people value those online titles that highly? And I don't think PokerStars live events are the most prestigious either. I think the WSOP is just the best by far and then all the other tours are grouped similarly. If Stars events did have that kind of prestige then they wouldn't be tanking the way they have in the past few years.

Sure I'll explain this statement. I can understand you calling it out. I think it's important to remember this in the context of moving forward to try to create a better relationship between Stars and its core base. The Supernova Elite decision was very damaging but the person who called for this is no longer at the company so the good people who are still there, who did not have ownership over this decision, should not constantly feel attacked or crucified for this result that hangs over everyone still.

For better or worse Stars will be around in the poker industry for a long time and I think it'll be better for everyone involved if both parties can engage together without toxicity. This is a bit hard to do if Stars isn't going to value its regulars at all but I hope this isn't the case.

You can disagree with this take. I think you were an SNE and very materially affected? But it's just my opinion trying to be fair to all sides

I agree. The problem right now is PokerStars is not interacting with its customers in a public setting at all and neither is PartyPoker. For Stars I know for a fact it contributes to a feeling that the company just doesn't care about the poker players that made it number one in the first place.

The main 2+2 reps for Stars and Party have been Luke, Baard, and Patrick. All 3 of these people are actually true 2+2ers and high level poker players who have lived that lifestyle. I think the fact that all 3 of these people gave up on their feedback threads says a lot about the toxicity.

I actually spoke with Luke and volunteered as a rep for the official MTT Thread. Having played Yu-Gi-Oh! in the past I'm quite used to out of line toxicity and wanted to help players with their questions. Who knows how long I would have lasted but I'm hoping for more dialogue and questions in this thread from people as the word gets out.

I know the HS regs are mobilizing right now to try to have more communication with Stars. We'll see where this goes.

I dont think Pokerstars should be attacked at all for their decision anymore. Come on man. Its been what? 3-4 years? And people still bitching for this. I was SNE and i got affected obviously. Most regs did a boycott but i was adamant from the beginning that i am not going to do this

Regarding rake i am not asking lower rake for normal mtts. I just think that as a company you cant value different speeds at same price. Well you can. I dont think its going to change neither i am bothered for rake. I never complained about the rake. From my perspective every room is offering what they think is the best for themselves and the customers are free to choose if they are going to use their service. Thats it

I wasnt applying for security job haha. I meant in case i ever dropped from poker, security department seems very appealing

I agree WSOP has the most prestige. I was comparing Pokerstars live events to other live events like PP, unibet etc. WSOP is our poker Mecca

I dont know what those HS regs are trying to do. I am not fitted to be involved as most people find me a bit....intense

Reshafim87 yeah. I hope ur guessing skills are as good when playing poker . Since stars closed in Israel I've been playing some live poker on weekends, the edge is insane cause the field is prolly the same lvl as a random $5 tournament online, but the slow pace/one tabling is killing me.

I think we're on the same page here and I'm glad we got in touch on Skype. In terms of pricing I think the liquidity is an additional layer of complexity. I actually think Stars has a right to charge a premium on liquidity. A tournament like the Storm is much more valuable than an $11 2.5K on IPoker and should be priced as such.

But I'll say this over and over again to everyone. Vote with your wallet. I will experience Stars and Stars.fr first hand and come back with an honest opinion of both. I think Stars has quite a polarized mix of some of the best bests in the industry and some of the worst as well.

Will send you a PM Glad you found the thread

---

Life Update:

Going to apologize in advance for this post in case you are a hardcore thug who wanted a hardcore blog about poker and such. I never intended for this blog to be a WordPress Baby Blog 2019 but sometimes things are just so heart warming and qt patootie that you need to share with the world. I don't even think I mentioned my baby in the OP so you can trust that my intentions to keep it baby-free/thuggy at the start were pure.

But my wife loves arranging expensive photoshoots for our baby as she approaches her first birthday (which is a huge deal in Korean culture) so here we are. I just got a photo album back from our baby's first photoshoot and thought I could use her facial expressions to capture some of my feelings at the poker table.

Starting a session. Fresh faced and ready to go.



Why did I just reshove 43bb with A3 offsuit?



Got that bluff through. These kids aren't ready for me today.



Aces in a PKO facing a 12bb shove and 40bb ISO. Damn this game is fun.



Flipping on the FT bubble. Please hold.



Made the final table. Competition looks tough. How will I do?!



Shipped it! Time to find wifey

Hahaha wp what a cutie

Great pics

Gl rest of this week boss <3

Thanks guys <3

Poker Update: My Way

I was in the car today coming home from another baby photoshoot (#whenwillitend) and Frank Sinatra's My Way came on the radio. It's an incredible song and a true classic. While listening to his line about regrets I thought a bit about how I've been approaching the weeks since my epic Sunday and my plan of approach going forward. This post will be my "grand unified theory" on making money from MTTs complete with wild conjecture and napkin math.

Some background: I was browsing around on PG&C and read DLuo's latest updates. He posted about FIRE and Mr. Money Mustache and this triggered a memory of a recommendation that bigbluffzinc had made to me a few years ago to read the Money Mustache site. I was at a toxic frame of mind at the time and wasn't fit enough to read it but I did take a look over the past few days. One of my strengths and weaknesses is that I'm very impressionable so I will do a lot of reading about subject matters that interest me and try to implement some of it. Examples of this in the past include The Secret, Deep Work, and The Art of Seduction.

I'm not going to recap his blog I'd recommend going there and checking out the Start Here section. He writes about the benefits of outrageous optimism and mentions the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of these habits he constantly mentions is to begin with an end goal in mind. Have a vision for the future and align your actions with this. In the spirit of this I think it will be productive for me to write what I envision for myself in this thread and implement a plan to get me there. WARNING: wall of text incoming
*******

YugiohPro MTT Plan 2019
Target Goal: $200,000 Profit from 12/16/2018 to 12/16/2019.

I'm generally not a fan of setting $ goals in PG&C but this is what I targeted when leaving my job and this is what I want to consider this year a success. I associate this round $200K number with the years I was successful with poker and it has a special meaning for me for this reason. I've realized that I've constantly been putting a wrong foot forward too quickly. Make the $200k yearly first, then focus on expanding to other ventures. I've made $81k so far so I've already given myself a head start. I need to make approximately $120k over the next 9 months to achieve this goal for myself.

Planning the Grind:

I've been looking over my grind habits which will be impacted significantly starting tomorrow with the return of PokerStars. Over a pretty sustained sample I'm running at almost 10 adjusted bb/100 with very strong short stack numbers (I use sub 40bb stacks as a cutoff), a high WWSF, and a positive red line. The metrics to me paint a picture of an "elite regular" and that gives me the freedom to sculpt a plan that suits me.

When I was in my worst pits 2015-2016 I imported my entire databases from 2012 and 2013 to track my EV on PokerStars during the years I was printing. I was around 7 adjusted bb/100 in these samples.

I haven't actually finalized a plan yet but I want to talk about the math of MTTs while I arrive at a solution for myself.

1. Different Strokes for Different Folks

So let's start with a disclaimer. My grind plan will incorporate my personal leans and desires. Different people are motivated by different things. One thing I found interesting about blakkman's postings is how he's more motivated by winning tournaments so he might actually prefer smaller field sizes. I have a very good friend, one of my best friends in poker, who has been an og HSMTTer for a very long time. He finds it very difficult to be motivated by tournaments like a $16.50 15K and prefers higher buy-ins and bigger prize pools. Me personally I tend to retract into a shell during downswings so I don't handle playing the biggest buy-ins very well. Whatever advice you get from anyone else, make sure it's tailored to what you want in life.

2. Large Field Sizes generate Higher ROI

This is a key fact of life for MTTers. In general you want to enter the biggest fields. If you're scared go to church or play SaGs/Cash instead. Donkamenteurs should be entering true donkaments. It's why PokerStars is still the best site for tournaments and will be for the foreseeable future.

3. Sustainable Pricing

pads mentioned in a public chat that his BitB guys often skip the Big 109 and the Hot Turbos these days. It's very true that turbos and hypers are likely overpriced on Stars or priced at a level that just passes the limits of sustainability. I have very large samples on high stakes turbos with the very best MTTers and the results are not pretty.

Plan Element 1: Remove Hypers and bigger buy in Turbos from the grind
Plan Element 2: Remove short-handed (6-Max and below) from the peak grind

I'm going to start by cutting Hypers on Stars first leaving a few exceptions (Supersonic, COOPS, Start or End of Session table count boosts). These tournaments have a different ante structure, less time banks, and very meh pricing. I will also cut short-handed formats which means most of Winamax (and possibly Stars.FRESH) are going.

I don't mind the pricing on PKO's as much because I think PKO's are a very beatable format. However, it's very true that you should probably not be late registering PKO tournaments. So I will try to avoid late registering PKO's and save that for $11-$22's only with a handful of $33's if table count is high.

4. Setting a Sweet Spot

I think it's good for MTTers to have an idea what their "sweet spot" is, a bread and butter buy-in that serves as the baseline for deciding what to register on time and late register and such. Mine will be either $33 or $55 depending on how this shakes out. Having a $55 as my default normal registration tournament gives me the justification to max late register every $11 and play pretty fast and loose with $22's since a $55 is 2.5x the size.

5. Effective ROIS and Me



This is a very big sample of results from a mystery regular. This incorporates the hot years when sun-running and the cold years when this player was playing terrible strategies. Check out that Ability Rating on $400+ games though. LOL. A lot of the $0-$11 games were late registered. Side note: I'm running at 118% av. ROI/125% Total ROI over 169 games at $53.65 ABI on IPoker despite late registering most of their $55's and $109's so you can see that even bigger buy-ins are fine to late register if the site is soft enough.

Buy-Ins: ROI
$0-11: 50%
$16.50-$27: 25%
$30-$55: 10%
$82-$109: 10%
$215-$320: 10%*

*These will be field selected for the biggest games and not played on a daily basis

One of the things I find interesting about the results is the low effective ROI at $30-55. I've actually checked a HS sample of regulars playing the Bigs and Hots in this range back in the day and the results weren't stellar either. I have a few theories for why this is:

1) Hots aren't beatable for much
2) These fields are filled with "solid" midstakes regulars which decreases everyone's edge
3) For a very long time, Stars did not run many premier large field $33-55's and had a lot of bowl comps like $33-55 turbos that just lowered everyone's numbers

I've set the $30-$55 % per game at 10% but hopefully I can beat that outlook. Even from March 2017 onward I've been around breakeven at $30-50. Part of this is due to me late registering a bunch.

Anyways the data here is interesting. This means I'm making $5 every time I have space to register an $11. Maybe less so for PKO's. This means that I can use a few key guidelines to set a grind schedule that is supported by the math. Keep in mind the amount of "good" $109+ you can play per day is severely limited. Let's talk about this.

6. Making Money

Once you establish a rough ROI per buy-in range it's like stacking legos together. A few $22's that make us $6 here, a few $109's that make us $10 here, and so on. However, it's very important to remember that the higher you go up the buy-in ladder the higher your chance of adding games that are actually losing you money. Let's flash back to the start of 2014:

YugiohPro, high on life and flush with BBZ Staking support, decides to fire every $215 Turbo, $530, and $1,050. True ROI on $530 is actually -2% and true ROI on $1,050 is -5%. This means I'm losing $10 per $530 I fire and $50 per $1050 I fire. With higher swings and more stress.

Plan Element 3: Remove any game I suspect has too thin of an edge, even when I think I'm one of the better regs in that pool

7. In Game Stuff

So the goal is to constantly mix and match an ideal set of games from $11-$215 during the day.

Plan Element 4: Try to manage Table Counts and additional Registrations on Break only
Plan Element 5: Continue trying to keep Table Count under control, especially when in an endgame!

8. Sundays and COOPS

This is the part where having the confidence to think I'm one of the better regulars comes in. During Sundays and COOPS I will be chasing the biggest prize pools and taking shots. I think having a responsible daily grind, and doing well at this, should allow me to treat myself during these days. I still want $200K+ prize pools on any $530 I enter and will only play the very best $1,050+.

I think this idea is one of the things that regs, including myself in the past, are doing most incorrectly. Don't fire the daily $1,050's if you're not one of the best regulars in the pool. Save those entries for when the $1k's are huge and guarantee 400K+ or something. Any regular in 2019 is capable of winning a tournament if they sunrun hot enough.

Plan Element 6: Remove Daily $530's and $1050's from the schedule until the $200k goal is reached, then re-evaluate
Plan Element 7: Take shots during Sundays and COOPS when you're up for it

9. Projecting a Schedule

Ok so let's put it all together. I seem to be averaging around 50-60 tournaments a day so far at approximately $90 ABI for the year. AV. ROI has been 37%, Total ROI has been 43%, but these are hot numbers.

55 tournaments * $90= $4950
$4950 * 5 days a week * 52 weeks= $1.287 million

Yearly Profit at X ROI:

10% ROI= $128,700
15% ROI= $193,050
20% ROI= $257,400

Daily Plan

My new plan is a bit different. It looks like during my Stars heyday I was getting in 110+ games in per day. Let's set a game target of 70 games a day for now and let's set the ABI target to $50.

70 games * $50 avg. stake * 4 days * 52 weeks= $728k

10%= $72.8k
15%= $109.2k
20%= $145.6k

Looking over my last set of Sunday games it looks like I played 58 games at $105 ABI. Let's target 60 games at $100.

60 games * $100 * 1 day * 52= $312k

10%= $31.2k
20%= $62.4k
30%= $93.6k

Plan Element 8: Stop loading withered tournaments at the end of the Sunday grind. You should be laser focused on the big runs and you're probably getting tired

10. Putting it All Together

My Goal: $200K in one year

Grind Plan: Daily value schedule of $11-$215 mostly max late registering the $11-$22 tournaments and trying to sit at $33 PKO's and $55+'s of all kinds at the very start. I will avoid tournaments that I suspect have a thin edge. Examples of this include the $109 10K on 888, the $109 10K Warmup on Party, etc. On Sundays I will take shots at everything I want to. During COOPS I will also take shots at everything I want to, assuming I feel confident, and will cut table count in the daily stuff to focus on the big stuff.

Plan Element 1: Remove Hypers and bigger buy in Turbos from the grind
Plan Element 2: Remove short-handed (6-Max and below) from the peak grind
Plan Element 3: Remove any game I suspect has too thin of an edge, even when I think I'm one of the better regs in that pool
Plan Element 4: Try to manage Table Counts and additional Registrations on Break only
Plan Element 5: Continue trying to keep Table Count under control, especially when in an endgame!
Plan Element 6: Remove Daily $530's and $1050's from the schedule until the $200k goal is reached, then re-evaluate
Plan Element 7: Take shots during Sundays and COOPS when you're up for it
Plan Element 8: Stop loading withered tournaments at the end of the Sunday grind. You should be laser focused on the big runs and you're probably getting tired

Hope writing this out has helped anyone else along the way. If you see flaws in my plan feel free to poke holes in it. Best of luck!

one of the best posts i have seen in MTT PGCs in ages solid stuff and gl converting

great pics

Best MTT post that I ever read in here, gl with your plans

Thanks guys

Poker Update: March 17th, Week 11

I'm back on Stars baby. I've promised my former colleagues a full report on Stars as a user and I'll share some of that here as well. I'm not impressed so far by its performance. I find I'm usually 4-5 tabling Stars at peak which is much too low for the largest poker site in the world by far.

Being on Stars has also had a few other ramifications. I've marked more spots on ICMIZER in the past two days than I have all year, and I mark a lot of spots on a regular basis. These hots get so shallow and tricky and I feel extremely rusty with a lot of my ICM based push/fold and stuff.

There'll be a lot more about Stars coming in the future. For now all I'll say is remember to play The Deal every 12 hours (is this still +ev?) and remember to opt in to the Stars Rewards! It pains me that there are players out there who have not opted in and are missing out on the sweet chest equity.

Speaking of chests, I earned 6 yesterday and pulled $3.50 worth of T$. Ching ching! I pulled 4 Silver chests today and made $4. I think the Chest interface is pretty cool and actually reminds me a lot of a few gatcha games I play on my IPhone. Let's keep a running tab of my praise and criticism for the Stars user experience.

It took me a while to get re-acclimated to the software yesterday but I felt pretty good today and warmed up to it. I'm using StarsHelper to convert everything to BB since I love that feature so much on Winamax and Party. I really hope Stars introduces it at some point because the StarsHelper interface has a few niggles that make it tough to immediately type the amount of BB into the Stars bet box. I also wish Stars software had one more option for sizing. I have 33%/50%/67%/100% but I'd really like to be able to quarter pot and overbet as well quickly.

I took Mon/Tue/Wed off to tend to some family things and have played Thurs/Fri/Sat consecutively leading up to Sunday. Results this week have been pretty miserable and it hasn't been fun. But not everything will be buttercups and rainbows week to week. Let's take a look.




ABI came in at $81. I've cut most $22's out of my grind so I expect the ABI to come in around $70+. My finish distributions this week have been absolutely brutal. Going down the list of the final two tables it looks like I have:

6/4/6/5/8/9/8
10/11/11/15/13/17/11 and a 19th for good measure.

I actually final tabled the Hot 55 and the Hot 109 today and got into a bunch of tricky ICM spots that I've marked. I'll post my two bust out hands below.

EV Analysis

Was having a poor week but bounced back a bit today with a strong session and good focus. I ran about 3 ev bb/100 below expectation this week, about 2M chips below. My sub 40bb (shallow stack) numbers were terrible at -9.13 adjusted over 6400 hands. Still at around 4 ev at those stack sizes for the year and I've sustained 5+ for a very long sample so it should turn around soon.

I need to manage the losing sessions and basically try to limit losses during bad times as much as possible. I still feel great about the future and am studying hard + grinding hard every day!

Key Hand

I busted all of my tables in pretty interesting spots and have a lot of hands to go over.

PokerStars - 7000/14000 Ante 1750 NL - Holdem - 7 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 178,713
Hero (SB): 104,413
BB: 583,558
UTG: 65,615
UTG+1: 125,948
MP: 173,979
CO: 412,774

7 players post ante of 1,750, Hero posts SB 7,000, BB posts BB 14,000

Pre Flop: (pot: 33,250) Hero has 9 9

UTG raises to 63,865 and is all-in, UTG+1 raises to 124,198 and is all-in, fold, fold, fold, Hero calls 95,663 and is all-in, fold

Flop: (295,441, 3 players) J 7 3

Turn: (295,441, 3 players) 2

River: (295,441, 3 players) 2

Hero shows 9 9 (Two Pair, Nines and Twos)

Main Pot [217,845]: (Pre 18%, Flop 2%, Turn 0%)
Side Pot#1 [77,596]: (Pre 18%, Flop 2%, Turn 0%)

UTG+1 shows J J (Full House, Jacks full of Twos)

Main Pot [217,845]: (Pre 44%, Flop 96%, Turn 100%)
Side Pot#1 [77,596]: (Pre 82%, Flop 98%, Turn 100%)

UTG shows A Q (One Pair, Twos)

Main Pot [217,845]: (Pre 39%, Flop 2%, Turn 0%)

UTG+1 wins 295,441

This was the Hot 109 bustout hand where I just went back and forth between getting it in or not and then just eventually rationalized it because I had 7.5BB pre. The stack sizes in these just get absurdly short and I lost multiple pretty huge flips near the end game that would have really put me in a position to cruise/punish/destroy.

This call is actually -0.62% versus the ICMIZER ranges which is a massive dust. Lesson learned. The only way to get better is to keep practicing!

Again I'm looking forward to a big Sunday. Will be interesting integrating Stars tables into the grind and I've learned quite a bit about my upper load limits based on the past two days.

You can use stars hotkeyes for more betsizes if thats not enough. For example Set Bet Amount to % of the pot or X Big Blinds.

it’s against the tos iirc

@yugi amazing post up there. u re living in s.korea? could u go deeper into Asia+mtt grind+having a life stuff? like some day to day insights about time management and organizational tips? thanks and gl w your goals, everything looks very realistic and achievable. agreed that goal setting is very important


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Stars hotkeys= built into stars software itself. Be pretty hard to be against TOS

Thanks for this PEPE. I've been playing with the Bet % of pot and I've noticed it doesn't work for preflop sometimes. Maybe I need to turn all dealer messages on or something. Wish list:

1) BB display instead of chips
2) Hotkey to set to 2.1x bb preflop instead of 28% or whatever
3) The existing feature to work consistently

I know I'm not using StarsHelper to the fullest so I will play around with it today a bit before starting. This MFing $215 Bounty Builder requires me to get up around this time, at least for Sunday.

Thanks malice. Yes I'm living in Korea and am planning on grinding Asia a bit on the live streets.

Very excited to play today on a glorious Sunday. See you next Sunday!

You can use starshelper to add a nother button that bets 25% thats how I do it.

Post Sunday Update:

Had a decent Sunday, getting 3rd in the Hotter $82 for 3.3k or so and winning an 888 $55 for nearly 3k. Bricked 3x entries into $530's and also in the Bounty Builder High Roller. Got in a massive 120bb pot with AA vs JTdd on Jx9d8d. Didn't think I was fading that one :P

I'm getting more and more comfortable with my Stars setup and barely had a hiccup on Sunday. The Hotter $82 was quite frustrating. I was chip leading for most of it and then an opponent got down to 1bb or something 4-handed and won literally 9 flips or worse in a row. By the end of it he ran 2.5m+ chips above EV at that FT alone and I got 3rd. Shoutout to AS Leshiy too, very tough regular who ended up getting wrecked by this sun runner as well.

I have a big rant coming up on Stars payouts and how awful an experience it is to players to see 1st get such a huge percentage of the prize pool. But I'll wait on that one a bit as I experience the Stars client more. The analogy I would make for the Stars payouts is they are propping up a rotting regime (the injustice of the payouts and how harsh they are to everyone but the winner) with a puppet leader for appearances (big first prize). Going to give it a week or so of serious grinding (2 Sundays) and then send over some reports to my former teammates.

I've noticed Party has been overlaying a lot lately which isn't a good sign. They need to stay competitive to keep Stars on their toes! I've opened up a Stars.ES account so this should complete my collection of screennames. Brief power rankings:

YugiohPro: 5/10 The original and was made with tongue in cheek since there is no money in Yu-Gi-Oh! Semi-whack wish I could change it
IMSOBOSSY: 2/10 Too aggressive and douchey. Based on the Jay-Z song when I was living fast in Korea. Wish I could change it
NEONTIGER: 6/10 The Killers have not aged well for me. This was also made when I was living fast in Korea. Maybe that's what all the caps are for. FAST LIFE
SirJae: 8/10 I like having the missus call me this in the bedroom and I made this while on the Isle you know? Feels right
Jae85: 8/10 Mad cute homage to Ben86.
NoWayJae: 7/10 Had to make a new IPoker SN and was just mashing at this point.
Frespt_oO_Jae: Score Pending This is the new one on Pokerstars.ES. Shoutout to Fresh_oO_D who I haven't seen around in a bit. Big fan of this one but we'll see how I feel in a few months.

Grind Update

Been a change of plan rip your old plan up - Mase

Mase might just be the greatest of all time don't @ me. Anyways, I've been unhappy for a while now with my Korea schedule. Initially I was supposed to wake up at 3 AM or 4 AM and grind some of the peak stuff and some of the off peak stuff. What ends up happening is I don't get enough sleep and wake up actually around midnight. Sleep has gotten very erratic as well and I'm not seeing much sunlight. Sometimes I'm whacking it in pitch darkness and wondering what's going on with my life. Just kidding.. or am I?

I don't like this at all for obvious reasons. However, my wife and baby are very comfortable here and I don't have anywhere else to move to. Ironically I would love to work in the UK but we just spent a decent bit moving all our stuff over! So as a result of this I've decided to switch my grind plan up. From now on the target is an 8PM bedtime with no alarm set for waking up. Ideally I'll wake up around 6AM. This is around the time the $55 bounty builder starts. Unfortunately this means I will miss a lot of the peak grind as the Europe facing sites like Party, Winamax, and 888 get reaaaaaaaaaal withered past 6AM JST. Though I might still be able to hop into the Winamax High Roller, fresh faced, along with many other decent birds. I'll be playing a lot of WPN and even some Chico. I'll wrap up a few hours after the Bounty Builder $162 which is a great flagship to structure my grind around along with some Late Editions and such.

On Sundays I'll play a full peak schedule but I think this new approach will be healthier and happier for me and my family. I see some Canadians already mopping up this schedule and I'll be dipping in as well. If I get really comfortable maybe I will stream or something too. Who knows? It's a real ocean of possibilities. See you on the flip side!

Highly recommend you to take Vitamin D with Magnesium (+calcium would be better)

I saw huge improvement of my body condition since I started to take those 2 years ago

Those will help you to sleep well and prevent Vitamin D deficiency (As we dont see much sunlight outside)

how did you like stars payouts?

GG!

Oh ****, these are all you? Man, I've been punting.

CG Player lurking... great Thread!

Why would u reveal all your screennames?