What's funny is some high stakes MTT guys literally are "multi-tablet-ing" these days, along with their normal "monitor grind", b/c the Chinese poker clubs they're playing on only work on tablet (and they might be playing one tablet per club/tourney, etc.).

So you might onto something with your tablet-grind Steve.

I just find it less isolating and restrictive. I can hang out with wife and play, go to the bathroom, watch the kids, make something to eat, etc. Lot different than being locked in my office was.

New month, no posting in a week? Step up your game!

Global update, ~$1400, never ending bad beats, just waiting for it to end. Been playing $50nl when I can't stand sng's anymore. Poker is fun, right?

I finally cracked $300 (still playing NL10) and then lost 5 buyins in about 25 hands. At $264 now.

I've given up on the challenge, mainly because with a 9-month old leaving me only enough time to play one Sunday a month or so I don't have the patience to not fire the 30r and 218 MTTs just because there's under 1k in the account.

Gramps, what kind of action is on these Chinese club sites? Is that Chinese as in located there or as in type of poker being played? I'm so far removed from poker these days I have no clue what the poker world/climate even is out there.

Just like Global Poker tries to use some legal creativity to get around UIGEA, etc., in China it's like that as well. Except it seems over there to be more fractionalized/word-of-mouth with lots of different clubs. And even *actual* play money gambling sites have to be more careful there.

Home games+ gone digital or something. Like a lot of US sports bookies using apps, etc.

So Gramps, how does pokerstars compare to back in the days I played on it? If we ever actually get around to sailing and leave the country is it still viable? After the whole global grind I've decided I haven't forgotten how to play.

Confidence is a funny thing. I really did have my doubts.

My 2 cents FWIW...

I'm not sure how the SNGs play because I would rather stick a pencil in my eye, but the micro cash games on global are like circa 2007/8 on Stars. I'm going to guess current play on Stars is much tougher than Global.

Even the lower stakes are way more competitive than back in the day. You can most certainly grind it out - it's the type of thing you have to be committed to improving YoY (more like quarter-on-quarter). Not just the poker part, but everything in your life/state-of-mind/being, etc.

So much more info/tools out there (legitimate & not-so-much), and so many Eastern Euro, etc. grinders for whom $5-10/hour is a good wage that keeps people grinding. And rakeback is mostly a thing of the past, that changes the model quite a bit.

Can still make decent-enough $$ at it - just better to have a lower bar and be very smart/disciplined about where/what spots you're picking. More like live poker now - much better as a supplement to anything saved, vs. a "win-or-else" setup. (the loss of the huge RB cushion really changes it more this way imo)

Yeah, I know they got rid of SNE, but have no idea what they replaced it with. Did they really just eliminate it and say the 100k we gave back of the 200k+ you gave us is gone, but we still expect the 200k+. Seems like most of the players would have stopped the grind, explored other options. I would have.

Stars & 888 are giving ~5% rakeback. Party you can earn 40-50%+, but not many SNGs run and they have a lot of bot issues in other games (SNGs too, but at least the bots there suck (if they're not colluding)).

If they cut to 5%, did they reduce the rake? I'm just trying to wrap my head around how they could just eliminate the rakeback, keep the rake the same, and the games not get much easier. I would have never played 20+ tables if SNE wasn't there. Its the only reason it made sense. If all the good players stopped the mass grind for rakeback didn't the games get easier? If I was playing just for in-game profit I would play 6 or so tables that I focussed on, probably at a higher buy-in. I'm still taking up lots less seats as a good player though.

I probably should have paid a little more attention since I stopped but I was pretty disgusted with the whole situation (not being able to play anymore) at the time.

What gave Stars the opportunity is that other providers had done the same ahead of time. Plus the move towards getting depositors to gamble in other games. It's logical in a sense - at some point you turn your attention to the ~33% share the winning players are taking from deposits and competing more against us for that share of $$.

Plus the move (by Amaya) to try and pay down debt/make their numbers look good by doing every short-term thing possible, probably hurting their long-run ecosystems a bit. It was a shady outfit that (somehow) borrowed $4 billion to (over) pay for a plateau'd asset. Their plan appears to have been to cut-and-flip after a few years, and it hasn't worked out so well in that regard. (Other than the cutting )

Hopefully more sites like Global keep popping up, b/c having 5-6 niche ecosystems to choose from and move between is what's going to keep a grind nicely profitable for years to come. (Just not for the old "big money")

Then there's all the GTO/AI/3rd party tools that will keep getting better at the top levels (and leach-down some to lower levels as well). Us old folk have to stay nimble, stick-and-move, etc...

It's great to see everyone in here doing so well.
Gl lacky. Run it up!
I'm working non-stop these days. I don't have time for the pokers. I get to play once every couple of weeks. It feels weird to have played for so long and to now all but walk away.
Here's to a great 2018.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

Madsci, I know what you mean. I went from 70 to 80 hours a week in Canada in December 2011 (thanks Gramps) to maybe a yearly family home game for 5.5 years before starting playing some last summer. I was honestly worried I wouldn't remember how.

Funny story from the family game. I was coaching my younger brothers girlfriend (now wife with kid), he shoved from sb into her bb, everyone fairly short. She was debating a call with 2 high cards. I said "you should definitely call, he could have anything, he probably has like 96o". She calls and he flips over 96o and bitches about playing poker with me. It was a nice moment.

(she lost the hand, of course)

Global update. Finally broke the 2k mark, felt like it took forever. Mostly $10 to $30 sngs and $50nl.

Congrats Steve Playing more poker than me now!

You still doing the poker reporting thing?

Hi guys! I'm still keeping up with this thread.

If I'm sick of playing on PokerStars, where would be my next best option for SNGs if I live in Canada? Thanks!

Party, but they don't have close to the sng traffic Stars get but at least you get decent rakeback and worse opponents.

phew barely made it on the 1st page, in for another year!

gl everyone

Global update, sitting a little under $1800, after a high of $2300 and a low under $1300. My dad is talking day trading again (we did it some pre-poker) so that has me distracted. I've spent more time studying the markets than playing poker the last couple weeks.

For those that will ask...first time we started with $20k (the requirement for short selling at the time) and worked it up to $45k then hit a downswing to $25k (completely normal according to all my modeling) and quit ahead. If I had played poker first and learned to handle swings we wouldn't have quit.

No idea why the old man decided to take it up in retirement, but he has lots more money than me and honestly needs my help (in my opinion) if it's going to go well. I'm still on the fence about it, but paper trading and feeling it out.

I gotta imagine the day trading difficulty curve has increased even sharper than the online poker curve. Mad Sci would have much better insight than me.

One of my close friends is in IT at a company that does trading. I don't know if it counts as day trading or not, but I'm pretty sure the day trader's competition is a bunch of mathematicians developing algorithms and computer experts making it all happen in microseconds.