Originally Posted by SportsTrader2k
I'm not entirely sure what the hell is going on in this post, and I don't even know if I'm supposed to defend myself or defend Clanty! Some of you are wondering why I would want coaching from him and some are questioning me or my graphs lol. So here comes a few paragraphs of endless brag to make me look like the pompous pr1ck I am :-)
I've played poker for over 10 years, and every year apart from 2017 I've played around 2mill hands or more and made loads of money every year. 250k hands in a month isn't a big deal at all, also, I played 300k in November, not 250... 4 years ago I played 450k hands in a month of nl200-nl2k when zoom wasn't even a thing. If I was playing now and rakeback still existed 400k hands at breakeven or better playing zoom would've been easy. I even limited myself to not playing too much in November since I skipped playing when I didn't feel good to maintain a decent winrate since it's pointless now w/o RB.
I dunno if I played z25 last year, but I definitely played z25 even in October of this year, but I fail to see why this matters anything? I played nl1k pound/euro on eurosites in August, and I was up around $80k for the first 6 months of the year.. If my goal was to make 6 digits $ a year and not care at all about trying to get to the next echelon I would've just kept playing nl200-nl1k on random sites where even the best reg would struggle to be z50 end boss. I decided I want to get very good in this game (again), and I love the convenience of zoom, so I switched to Stars and started grinding my way through the limits. I had 10bb/100 on z25 in 200k hands, z50 was harder as I started playing vs a few players that had actually seen a coaching video or spent a minute studying for the last 5 years (which I hadn't...), but I still had 4bb/100 over 170k hands there. I moved to z100 where I actually started facing opponents I felt uncomfortable against, but that also made me change my game, and I improved infinitely just by playing vs better players. I didn't crush right off the bat, but I was winning at a decent clip after a little while.
I realized that I would actually have to get a coach as starting to study on my own was less than 1% chance of happening, so I started looking around for someone that is strong on what I'm weak at, and having heard the word PIO I wanted to start working with that, etc., and whatever it took to get me crushing z500 asap. Clanty is very strong with PIO and does all the math I'm way too lazy to do myself in the theoretical part of the game, so his skills combined with my (I like to think; natutal high poker IQ and 20mill++ hands of experience) was a good combination. I don't know why him having played a lot less poker than me makes him a bad coach. Since starting on z100/z200 I've maintained >5bb/100 on both stakes over more than half a million hands with huge volume. Oh, and I had $125 on my Pokerstars account the 26th of October, winning more than $30k in a month without making a single deposit.
I might make a lot more money playing poker than Clanty, but he is a million times better coach than I would be, despite me consistently making 6 digits a year. I know he doesn't need defending in his coaching abilities, especially not since he's not looking to make more money by coaching now, but since you got me replying again I might as well address it. Making $100k in a year isn't a goal that gets me remotely excited anymore, which was why I started playing zoom, and now Clanty has given me the tools to probably make $200k next year (5bb/100 over 2mill z200 hands). I'm probably not good enough for 5bb/100 over that volume yet, but that, or beating z500 for a decent clip at a lot less volume to get to $200k is the goal.
Maybe we can just put the discussion to rest on whether my graphs are just bogus, if Clanty paid me for publicity, whether he is a bad coach or whatever. Even if it mattered, everything got blown way out of proportions, and I don't see the point. I think wellfvcku's post was the best I've seen...
Pontylad: I'm sure if you read Clanty's response you'll understand why I did what I did. It wasn't the money, and I appreciate Clanty's coaching immensely and it had nothing to do with that.
PS. I play more than 1000 hands an hour when I 4 table zoom, so 300k hands in a month is only 10 hours a day. A lot of professions require you to work 60-80 hours a week every week of every month for the entire year. I did it for a month. It's not even hard.. Volume is all about practice, and it's almost the same as consistently going to the gym. If I go running/gym 5 times a week consistently it's super easy, and I'm looking forward to it since it's a break in the grind. If I get drunk for a week straight and eat unhealthy for that week, it's a ****ing nightmare to get back to go running again. It's the same with grinding. Right now I've been moving and stressing a lot and I don't feel like sitting down and just grind for 10 hours, but when I'm in the zone I enjoy it, and I just wake up every morning, get some caffeine, play 5k +/- hands before breakfast, eat a small meal, play 2k more hands then do my workout. Then I'll play anything from 3-8k hands more afterwards.
I might be lucky that I can maintain almost the same concentration after 12 hours as in the first hour, but I think you can practice these skills to a huge degree, and I just think all poker players are lazy and complacent thinking they don't have to or shouldn't work the minimum of 40 hours a week at least that everyone else in the world does, just because they can make a decent living working less. I think that's the completely wrong mentality, and if you look in the "real world" everyone that works 40 hours are in the dead end jobs that gives you the least amount of money, while the ones working 60-100 hours a week like surgeons and lawyers make a helluva lot more per hour, but they still work more. I would rather be a surgeon than a UPS guy just playing poker because I can and I can get by with 10 hours a week. That's not to say I haven't done it, and in fact this year from January-July I didn't play 100 hours a single month and I went out and got drunk every night just because my hourly was so high I really didn't care. I don't want to do that again, and if my hourly is high that's not a reason to play less, I think it's a reason to play more.
