blonde poker forum

                                                                                                   INTRO

Hello UK forum. I've been a member of this place since August 2011 but have rarely popped in and had much of a read until last year really.

I have two blogs elsewhere online but they've pretty much become redundant and were mostly me venting a ton of abuse to whoever might read them, calling myself the unluckiest player in the world all the time. They were very much marmite blogs, had their own unique followers who loved the sarcasm, and anyone else I'm guessing would've hated them. I rarely posted much positive stuff, whenever I had a decent run, or should I say a run where I wasn't persistently losing heavily, I would remain quiet in fear of jinxing things by bragging or whatever, but would post pretty consistently when running bad. I don't intend on keeping them going any longer.

What I want to do is leave that style behind and keep things on a very neutral level, so that I update fairly regularly (hopefully every day but we all know everyone fails at this) whether I run bad or not and making sure to calm down well in advance of posting so as not to rant too much, even if it's just a line or two to say how much I made/lost for the day.

Also the fact this is a British based place draws me to blog here, as I will feel safer if I perhaps decide to divulge certain hands that I wouldn't want people in the european community (mostly German :D ) to see (ie pokerstrategy where one of my previous blogs was). I am aware that a certain sng rival in that of epitomised is a regular around here, but his early bird schedule rarely clashes with mine  ;D

                                                                                   BIO

So anyways my name is Dan, I'm 36 and live in sunny Essex for my sins. My pokerstars sn is RagztoRiches, always regretted not making the 't' a capital, especially when euros decide to call me 'ragzto' in chat  rotflmfao :dontask:

Actually stumbled on poker in 2004 but sadly didnt stumble on the info I should have that would've made me realise it was very easy to make a living from the game (especially way back then) and didn't actually make it to that stage until 08-09. Still think about that often, what could've/might've been if I was able to play my today game back in 2004! Pretty sure I'd be sitting in some major condo right now if so!!!

So I started out in the $16 9-man SnG's when first deciding to quit real jobs. Again more regrets to be had here because I'm now mostly an 18m reg but back in '08-'10 I would only dabble in 18's here and there, incorrectly thinking they were too reg infested. Well compared to these days they were certainly not!!! And way wayyyyyyyy better money makers than 9mans were. I've always seemed to be one step behind when it comes to the best games to play and by the time I find them every other bugger is right behind me jumping on the band wagon!! Regardless, I still had a better ROI in the $16/9's than masters such as sippin_criss and glitlr in all of 2010...so that was a nice achievement for me.

Eventually took 18's more seriously and found a much laggier style to play in late 2011 (thanks to a certain Norwegian), which I've kept playing ever since. It's a strange style that requires persistant bollocks to keep plugging away at, as being in infinitely more pots than most multi tabling regs can make it feel like variance stetches are longer. This is hugely debatable though as I actually feel it helps variance, in that things might actually be significantly worse playing the old nittier, more jam than raise-fold/raise-call style. I mean in the end, if one style has a higher long term ROI it SHOULD mean variance isn't as harsh as a lower ROI, but that bain't neccesarily so. However in my case I believe it is  ;dingdell; Complicated stuff  ;D

Anyways, thrown in with the STT's and two-table tournies has been a fair few 180's and turbo MTT's, most notable score to date was winning the Hot $55 this precise time last year. I would take that win again right about now as my MTT record since that day has been pretty dull. Here's my graph dating from October 2011 since my game improved significantly.

(http://i.imgur.com/kQO817M.jpg)


Non poker wise well, I've been kind of on a 2 year health project since I started getting sciatica problems in early 2012. It led me onto a whole bunch of pathways into everything from diet to conspiracies about how this world is run, most of which I probably won't talk about in here. But the health side I will. Started lifting weights early last year which I didn't keep to consistently enough and just as I got close to any kind of routine I fell ill in August, typically at the same time I'd entered a team 180m comp which forced me to drop volume a ton for that, which probably lost us the comp (we finished a close 2nd playing a 3rd the games as any other team LOL). So it was some virus, don't know what as GP's who know nothing about anything in reality don't interest me so I didn't visit one, I self medicated and it lasted around a month. I lost nearly 2 stone and was weakened considerably and haven't really done alot physically since then. I've gained some of the weight back however and these last few weeks my sciatica has flared up an absolute ton, and very weirdly switched to my right leg having only ever been the left leg the whole time I've had the problem. These problems led my into the world of juicing and blending so raw veg and fruit of all kinds is now very much a huge part of my diet. I haven't given up cooked food completely and never will, it's prob around 50-50. Was very interested to see the juicing thread some guy started up in here. Y'all should listen to him it's the way forward, don't be poisoned by the elite any longer. Damn and I said I wouldn't talk controversy!!  ;noflopshomer;

                                                                                       PLAN

Plans for 2014, to be honest I'm not entirely sure. Part of me wants to compete with all the 18m regs who think their 0-4% ROI with tons of rakeback is some kind of great achievement, to get near the top of the leaderboard playing like a 3rd the number of games they do and brag about it ;nanana; while the other part wants to still play 180's and a small number of turbo MTT's during peak hours, which would mean less chance of leaderboard battles, but I'd no doubt make more money. 180's were a big part of 2013's income, finishing just one spot shy of a gold star for the $35's from a very small number of games, and with $60's included: $30-60 180 Players 01/01/2013-01/05/2029    609   $25.69   $36.23   65.1%   $15,646     :D

Whatever I play, the most critical part of 2014 is to up my volume a shedload. Each year I say the same thing and never manage to average more than 20-25 hrs a week!! This needs to change as things are rapidly changing in the poker world. I doubt it will be much longer that we can bask in the luxury of poker winnings being tax free here, and who even knows how things will end up as one country bans gambling completely, while US states start to open up. That side of things is an absolute joke and yet more disgrace regarding the freedom of what people decide to do with their lives/money. I'm hoping, as I'm sure all of us are, that soon France, Italy and Spain can become pooled with us and I won't be too disheartened by some REASONABLE taxing system. Last I heard, here in the UK it shouldn't be any higher than 10% so we can't really complain about that considering how high it is in most other countries! Pokerfuse is the best site to keep up with the latest legislation headlines in europe, although sadly you have to subscribe to get some of the best  info and the price is ridiculous.

Actually after a quick scan this is the latest I've found on anything http://pokerfuse.com/features/special-feature/french-politicians-reject-shared-liquidity-19-12/  (http://pokerfuse.com/features/special-feature/french-politicians-reject-shared-liquidity-19-12/)
Sigh looks like that time is much further away than originally hoped for then!!! :'( :'( :'(

Waffling again! So yeah, MORE VOLUME. What I won't be doing is upping the amount of tables, especially not for 18's, a game where constant stack scanning for every single hand is required as there's alot more short handed play, compared with say 180's where you're going to get to the late stages in only a few games. Well I might up to maybe 18-20 tables for 180's, but keep to 10-12 for 18's. The biggest change I need to make is the number of hours!!

Anyways, think I've harped on enough. GL at the tables.

:hello: and welcome to blonde!

GL with the grind.

Many thankings ;D

Forgot to mention any live experience I might've had. Well it's not a great deal actually. Aside from a small weekly league at a local club a few years back, I've only been to one casino in that of the nearest one to me, Southend (Westcliff Genting). I played a £150 game I think was for an easter holiday or other. Story short the play was as bad as it can possibly get bar playing with a bunch of 3yr olds and vowed to go back as often as I could. Indeed went back the next day for a side event as I bust right near the end of day 1, and got unlucky
again in a hilarious pot. Since then I've not been back but my Norwegian bud wants me to meet him for Edinburgh UKIPT. As Southend is the furthest I've been and £150 the highest I've played it's pretty doubtful I'll go but will see nearer the time.

Plan to start the grind proper today anyhoo but first need to exercise and eat!

How will the language compare on this blog compare to your blogspot? :P

Glglglgl

Absolute sicko ITT! Glglgl!

Hoping to control the tourettes  :D


Ta muchly

Whereabouts in Essex are you?

Near braintree.

Lots on the plate, so to speak!

Best of luck with it all, Ragz!

I've been dabbling in the juicing myself over the last few months, but haven't been doing much over the last few weeks.

Might go and bash myself together a 'mean green' for lunch as it goes ;D

Thanks. Yh I've been adding alot of new stuff to them lately, chlorella, spirulina (both algaes but spirulina is fishy and tastes disgusting lol), maca powder, raw cacao. Last night I was completely pain free but when in bed my left buttock started playing up and actually had a pretty restless night. Went for 15min bike ride earlier and noticed my legs are so weak compared to last summer. Rode through a bit of pain and it's now eased up, am hoping simply getting fitter and stronger will solve sciatica problems!  ;pokergods;

Bout to grind up a ton of nuts and seeds and add warm milk and a weetabix with honey, awesome way of getting lods of nuts/seeds fats/proteins in you and tastes lush.

Well it's been a terrible first day, sigh. Started with some 18's for 2-3hrs then played a bunch of 180's with turbo MTT's. Of all the games I go deep in I end up 1 tabling a $2 for hours only to finish 37th from 8000, J7s crushed by that giant 89s. In total 56 bricks over nearly 7 hours. Half a grand lost.

Oh i'll post a few hands. FT'd one 180 which was looking good for an almost day save until this http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6778726_ADEA8F558A

This I guess is the lol hand of the day http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6773962_2A73A64985

Hi Ragz,

If "juicing" interests you, there is a lot of juicing chat on this thread.......


http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=61912.0

Yeah read it a while back. No updates lately though, wonder how he's getting on.

So I should really mimic yesterday's routine (bar running terrible). If there's something I've always been grossly bad at it's structure of any kind (except blind structures  :D, il get me coat), rarely can I keep much going for more than a few days. But no, NO! dagnammit I'm gonna do it. Yesterdays brief but relatively intense bike blast did seem to help with the leg pains. Lactic acid and blood pumping all the toxins away from the muscles soon had things settling down after a while but then I get chair problems. Got an ordinary softish office chair which is crap for posture, but recently started putting my foam roller at the base of the spine so I can relax and the spine won't curve that improper direction, commonly known as slouching. It's comfy for a fair old while but when I stand up there's still pain in the sacrum. Have contemplated getting an Aeron chair for years now but kinda thought I really don't see how they're any different to using some makeshift thing like I have to support the pelvis/lumber, especially for that price!! £500+. Will see if more fitness/diet structure sorts things first before spending that kinda money. gl

another great start lol http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6787610_2D7E406935

Well a winning day in the end but 40% below EV in 540 showdowns. 6hrs in total, first played some 18's which were mostly bricks again barring the single $100 I played. Got 2nd in that for $500.

Then another 180/MTT sesh and once again FT'd one $8 lol, won it this time. Finally I FT a $35 and soon came one of the comical hands of the day. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6797729_E0057F12E2

Then I screw up majorly and finish 7th with a big stack. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6797921_A4B4D13156
UTG limper had already limp folded twice so it was a fair jam but I should've sniffed it out really and not took the risk with the two micro stacks in. Kicking myself majorly!!!!!!

Ended up nearly $600 on the day.

SOME BEATS
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6787610_2D7E406935
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6790799_0A27A54FE3

SOME WTF's?????????
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6791069_7F3379EE3F
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6794713_D0769664D0
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6795034_BE8777F0AE (I mean seriously what the actual F????????)
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6795912_7284ADBC93

SOME PAYBACK
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6794601_3BF48EEC97
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6794814_A8C8EFC547

 ;applause;

interesting couple of zooms, you limped aces in one of them can i ask thoughts/ reasons behind it?

Where there's a whale there's a trap :p

haha fair enough, player dependant then!

For sure, there's wasn't one reg I knew at this FT which is what makes my 99 spew even worse. Will take a day or two to get over that  :'(

Horrible start again today but couple stupid hands.

This one is a reg I've 3b about 5x already during the session but have simply had great hands every time he's opened, he's folded every time bar this one. LOL http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6804846_C680B41C4C

And this is a reg I think from UK. I call because I've seen him triple bluff air before.  http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6805822_7B342E5FD6

Ended up down nearly $600 yesterday. Down $440 for the year. Did get in 72 games over 4.7 hrs but that's half because I went on monkey rage and loaded up tons more tables than I usually do.
Let's see what today brings :|

Thurday finished up $200 after a possible $500 loss day being on the cards but a $15/180 win saved the day. Had huge stacks in various $3r 180's too that tangled with other huge stacks and lost on the river each time. The $15 180 was done and dusted by bb3k which was an absolute miracle. I've been at 12 left at that stage on many an occasion.

No poker over the weekend, got back to it today, albeit it only 4.6 hours. No 18's this time straight into 180's. Two 3rd's in $8's, a 2nd and 7th in $3r's, and won a $15 for total of $860 profit on the day. Currently +$45 for the month/year lol.

Some stupid hands

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6896130_1C7AD999F5
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6896165_C1DBC89638
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6896442_940C701A80

what times do you play dont think ive seen your username much although its easy to miss when i have lots of tables open

Any time from 2pm til gone midnight really.

Can't quite get on the grind yet as my juicer should be arriving in the next hour. over $250  ;dingdell;

(http://www.bodywellgroup.co.uk/assets/Shop/Juicers/matstone-burgundy-1003.jpg)

Well juicer arrived within the hour slot the courier company predicted so that was the first miracle. Put it to the test immediately with 4 oranges. I haven't bought it for fruit at all, solely for veg as I'm still going to be blending most fruit, but it produced a full decent sized glass of juice from 4 medium-large suized oranges!!! Like quadruple what I used to get squeezing oranges manually!! :o

Then tested out some kale, spinach, cucumber, avocado, carrot and it tasted amazing. Nothing like I expected it's really quite sweet. Still horrid in comparison to egg n chips or chocolate but compared to the blended versions I was making, was way nicer than those! THen taking it apart and cleaning it is like some kinda mega quality meccano, so easy.

Onto the poker and it's been a funny old day. 180's again, started out the usual. Actually 11000% below EV after about an hour lol. Got two $60s in and stone FT bubbled one when was 2/25 at one point. Eventually was on 3 FT's at once with another 2 games with around 12-15 players left. Could I make it FIVE simultaneous FT's??????? Short answer, NO. Won one $15, 6th in another and 5th in an $8.

5hrs total +$450, up $511 on the month/year.

HAND OF THE DAY

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6920130_3C291B4627

Really don't know why I bother with 18mans. For two years now it's been the same, millions below EV in 18's, win it all abck in 180's. Round and round in circles. Waiting for the EV to start evening out but it appears it just isn't ever going to happen. Trouble is they're convenient, 180's are only really worth playing peak times so early mid afternoon is better for 18's and that's when I always wanna play. But this type of thing happens over and over and over.

(http://i.imgur.com/PHSQQ8C.jpg)

Think I'll resign already, go get some more greens and stick with 180's again.

Why does clicking on the image do nothing whatsoever?

So yesterday was same old, ran like death but no day savers came around, well a 3rd in a $15 180 took some of the edge off but an overall $600 loss  :'( Half way through the month and we're flat broke, well break even.

Feeling very odd today. Last night I used the juicer for the second time, using kale, avocado, apple, beetroot and celery. Not long after necking a full glass of that I felt short of breath and fatigued. Thought perhaps it's due to fairly poor sleep I've been getting lately which has caught up. So went to sleep and had 7hrs, but woke feeling exactly the same! Kinda short of breath and like I just wanna go back to sleep again. Today I've started out with a melon, coconut, strawberry, raspberry, pear, bunch of nuts/seeds smoothie but am currently still feeling pretty lethargic. Weird.

Lethargy soon wore off after smoothie.

Made a bit of progress poker wise today, in that I prob played the most games/hour than I've done in years LOL. Spent last few days really focusing on adding more tables, figuring out potential hourlys in different formats and whatnot. Couldn't get much better than 13 games/hr in 180's past few days so today decided I'd add 18's alongside them to get the number of tables up to max much faster...and it made a massive difference. Averaged 16 games/hr over 5.5hrs. Lost $250 in a 180m sesh which once again saw me FT one $15 for a potential saver then went out in 4th when I really shouldn't have done due to a bvb rig up. Just need to focus more on KEEPING that no. of tables close to peak instead of forgetting to keep regging once the going gets pacey and I might get upto 17-18/hr.  Made $500 however in 18's, so role reversal (one miraculous day when Moses parts an ocean or two I'll win in all formats for a day), and it all came from $60's, winning 3 out of 7 played. +$250.

HAND OF THE DAY

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/6945366_878DE607FE I nearly always jam river here so felt ultra cool that spidey senses were tip top for once.

Back grinding today, didn't do much yesterday as an unexpected date came up  :o :o :o :o

So anyways I made a big change yesterday, changed my avatar!! Had the Bruce Lee one for years now and I'd try something different, and who else but my favourite Jew Larry David. Insta sent an email to support asking for it to be verified asap and within ten minutes received this reply:

Hello Daniel,

Thank you for writing.

I reviewed your image, I have to say, it's pretty good. Pret-ty, pret-ty pret-ty good.

Approved now. Hope it brings you good luck!

Regards,

Leonard
PokerStars Support Team

PIC
http://i.imgur.com/rycRh2H.jpg

Today's been a bit of a blur grind wise, but somehow knocked out 66 games in 4.2hrs. A small sesh of 180's was extremely frustrating again but still got a win in one, albeit an $8. Then got 4th in another $8 which should have easily seen at least 2nd place but two big pots went the way of the 30% equity guy, sigh. Of all the $15's however I didn't get better than 80th LOL. $60's were on today yet I don't recall a single one going off so for some reason traffic is right down at the moment. Obviously that should rocket during TCOOP week.

On a brighter note a horse I took on in December is doing well in the $7 18's, with figures thus: $7 18 Players 28/12/2013-21/01/2029    817   $1.21   $6.45   17.3%   17.3%   $992   70  

Added another one to the mini stable Monday gone so let's see what I can make of these fishies  ;izimbra;

hilarious hand http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7035724_63712C4594

a 5% dog pre flop hand http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7043848_72318DB306

a wtf? hand http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7036775_481FE8D670

Not long fired up a session which I am having to quit through unimaginable trauma. Semi FT of a $35 180 I have my skype chat rival soulysoul (german) at my table. Due to our previous history I was able to induce him nicely here http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7054749_B3E474E1C0

But typically he comes back from half a BB about 30 times and we meet at the FT, and are looking in great shape to perhaps meet with 3 to 4 left or even HU. Til this happens!! http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7054505_E585C84C7F

2nd in chips I'm 2 to 1 over everyone else nevermind CL being 2 to 1 over me!! This makes the ICM pretty massive here and as he was a fish I didn't know from Adam I even contemplated the fold. Instead took the gamble that he was in fact trying to pwn retardedly and indeed he was. 5 on the turn is more pain than an Uzi in the brains I'm fairly certain.

Well, been a while since a post. Things pretty much carried on as normal, then recently I decided to mess around in TCOOP hyper sats. Mixed results- then run bad carried on so I switched over to ordinary hypers for a last minute not-run-so-bad. What's really frustrating is deviding my results into two halves over the month.

Everything <$30

http://gyazo.com/6678537835b1331f8af7f6e8cd83786f.png

Everything >$30

http://gyazo.com/11c84eb1eb46886413a163bd53a9a9a6.png

Nice hand for the chip lead in this TCOOP just before bubble this was. Ended up 300th odd for a few quid. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/7219069_76F8ABAE65

Haven't posted in a while and it's because it's just non stop misery and I really don't wanna keep just posting about that.

So far for February am a cracking 2 grand down at 70% below EV.

(http://gyazo.com/6c7bbe64797cd4e042e9df8a07fce623.png)

Well this didn't really get too far did it lol. I'm going to try and start it again though and try to post daily reports.

Quick rundown from since the last post (only 2 years then), about the time of last post I got a new gf, still with her now miraculously, but she's quite a nightmare and I do indeed blame this relationship for not grinding anywhere near enough for 2014 and indeed most of 2015. Not only that but the short number of games I did rack up I always felt I was running bad. '14 was ok for 180 mans iirc without trawling all through sharkscope, but since around October of that year has seen a massive dive in them. It's not a giant sample around 2k games or so which an exclusive 180 grinder will play in a month but still, it's knocked my lifetime ROI in them right down to what I consider to be unacceptable, despite that ROI probably still being well above average.

So anyways with most of my roll gone on living and faffing around with a volatile woman (lol), I've gotten pretty damn close to completely busto, with only a 2000 Audi S 3 and a 2010 Aprilia RSV4 for assets. I tried seelling the bike worth £8k last year but got nothing but pathetic offers due to it being a bit tatty in places showing signs of being round the track. This year I'm replacing a bunch of bits to try and hide any signs it was on the track (for all of 1k miles) and will take £6k for it (still the cheapest RSV4 for sale in the world at present by some margin) in order to pay my housemate/landlord nearly £3k in rent arrears. He's been good to me reagarding this, a lifelong friend. just hope when I'm paid up he doesn't boot me out  :o

So I started grinding seriously again around August last year but had to drop to like $4 abi, mostly $3-$7 18-45 mans, some 180's and MTT's mixed in here n there. Although winning generally better than most in those games, it just wasn't building a roll anywhere near fast enough so I sought out a stake. Applied to a few and some said no for various reasons, but thankfully found one who would allow me to play decent stakes again. Since the stake I'm looking like this (https://i.gyazo.com/8a554cc4f13d93669d99d205d103c886.png)

Ths is all SNG's >$10 excluding sats (losing a bit in those). Sadly $1k down in scheduleds, just can't catch a break in anything for a long time. I did get 3rd in the hot $11 back in November, that was gutting because I was CL 3 handed DESPERATELY needed the extra change, I would've been very happy with 2nd. As it was 3rd place was $3k or something so it couldn't cover too much of the rent owed. meh.

Qualified through a 4max shootout 36 man WTA shyper satellite for the 10th l'anniversaire Million on Suynday and cashed it too. Another gutting time really, as MTT's generally are.  5 hours to get in the money starting at 8200th spot. From that point until 3600th saw a rise of just $80 thru the payjumps. Was completely card frozen the entire game, literally don't even know htf I got as far as the top 3.8% of the 55,000 field. Had a lucky table I think, was really nitty with next to no post flop shenanigans whatsoever, all ABC from everyone and stayed at same table whole game making around 250 hands. All my desperation shoves near bubble and so on all got through uncalled, one was called just after bubble burst and I doubled A6s > AQo. But eventually 6bbs and 88 got coolered by JJ. Can't complain really, $500 or so.

Still haven't played any live, was meant to goto Southend for the Genting Poker Series leg there last weekend but never made it due to...yep, the gf!! lol. I wasn't going to play the £440 obv, spesh as their online client recently closed and sattying in wasn't possible online, but they did have a £150 side game on the Saturday I'd thought about. Instead settled on the thought that plenty of bustees might wanna tilt off on the cash tables so I considered jst short stacking £40 in the £1-£2 or somerthing (if buy-in that low is allowed), but as I said, didn't make it. What a joke! It must be incredibly soft there as the same players seem to be FTing nearly every year, well I know it's cray soft from my brief past experiences there, having my AKo rejams for 50bbs called off multi-way by 85s and QTo and so on  :D That's all well and good to have players like that around but you still need to stay lucky to progress. And I only realised recently there's actually a Grosvenor in Southend too with similar tourney schedules and cash tables. I'm guessing attendances are pretty poor though.

So my backing deal is I have to play a minimum of 2500 games a month (30 day period which rolls from around the 5th of the month) to get 60/40, otherwise it's 50/50. First month I had to rip a load of 6m hypers off to hit the target and will have to do so again this month due to spending first 10 days or so moving the gf house, having no internet and so on. Did ok in them thank flip, money badly needed.

(https://i.gyazo.com/26d9c387c9d73d3bb2adc1f3c69872c9.png)


So anyways am going to try to blog more, yesterday was horrifc, after a $700 profitable Sunday I dropped $1k in a ton of SnG bricks. Have like 14 days to get in 2k games, so 140ish a day. This could be managed in turbos alone if playing 8hrs every single day til then. But I know I'll need hypers to get there for sure, especially as internet where I live is playing up aswell as gf having notihng but a horrifically in and out 3G signal despite being bang in middle of a town!

GL ME

wow thats quite a comeback post after 26 months!

well done and thanks

lol thanks.

Just finished a sesh which was one of the most frustrating in some time. Moaning alot lately that I just cannot get deep in squadoosh 180's and if I do I'm lucky to get an 8th, I just ran deep in a whole bunch all at once. Three $8 FT's from 5 played for a smashing 9th, 6th, 6th. Two of those were legit, had crept to the FT with a few bbs and lost bvb. But one of them was this gem of an extremely common occurance http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/18418041_6E85C3756F


90% OTT (https://i.gyazo.com/3d7a7ff5bbcba9dd931aba890b7a52cb.png)

Then there was a $15 180 FT, gotten to sooooo many FT's of these in the past say 1000 games but gotten so many pathetic finishes. I'm used to finishing top 3 nearly all of the time when starting with at least average stack in these FT's. I started this FT as CL with 120k and ended up 3rd, thanks to yet another 90% river loss...
(https://i.gyazo.com/353936a10d36ad1e985641f69818bd6b.png)

...yes it came a 5. Then lost to same guy bvb, fortunately someon else had busted first.
(https://i.gyazo.com/d394cb502353d436db42c12ba33fc12a.png)



Well that 3 hours got back the grand I lost yesterday anyhoo. Dinner then start again.

shit's going off big time with Stars atm http://finance.yahoo.com/news/amaya-inc-investigated-potential-securities-150200321.html

(http://tiltbook.com/cached_images/e/9/5/5/6/e9556b10a152b18f76cc4d36f25eaa45c785692b.png?v=20)

and with tourney lobbies all frozen aswell...coincidence?

Well that all finally got sorted. Rake has increased today in the $3r 180's, making the rebuys themselves plus the add-on now raked. UGh! However they also raised rake in the $2 and $8 non rebuy versions, only it's been put back again to previous rake just as quickly. Maybe it's because it wasn't announced in any of the emails, I'm sure it'll rise again before long.

So since that day I've run pretty well (miraculously) in $15 6m hypers. Right up until today that is, where I've been brought smashing down to earth with a 40 buy-in downswing in about 2 hours. Lovely.

(https://i.gyazo.com/a7d57c3adce956004d14fd198eb82fd9.png)

Suppose I knew 12% ROI wasn't sustainable in STT's lol, so it's even worse when you KNOW the DS is coming any second, and you're proved right. Very VERY different to you being due an upswing for 10years, but still never get there lol.

 
Half of those games are all today, probably gonna turbo some later. Gotta get in 1300 games in roughly the next week or so, hence the hyper-dash!

Ended up sticking with hypers, most games in a day ever. Bulldung results.

(https://i.gyazo.com/265a3b28eff6932388a6f5a9ac3b7b60.png)

Another massively frustrating day today, again probably 3rd most games ever played in my history. Exactly the same as yesterday starting out on the up then crashing back down to zero and below, then swing it back some. Was totally card frozen the entire day, my usual 28/22 must have been something closer to 2/1 it felt like as the laptop continued to relentlessly burn my hands with frost bite. Haven't got my HEM with me either so looking forward to seeing how many thousands of % below EV I've ran for 500 games over two day. yada

cheeky mascot didn't do much for me today

(https://i.gyazo.com/7702637ea1d2764c45d0253f314277e1.png)
(https://i.gyazo.com/baee2bfe9b434339615bf82fb9333a21.png)

I got back to peak again the day after last post and then cashed out back to standard roll. Literally since that SECOND I've been on  a massive nose dive beyond the realms of possibility, as is always the case with my account. You can literally feel the switch flick and boshhhhhhh, card frozen for days, every situation is set up for u to be coolered, yada yada.

See if you can spot the bit where I cashed out.

(https://i.gyazo.com/82bc145da21895c8c0579d660ce4438f.png)

After a day of total hell today, this was the final game I had going, a possible day saver. A $3r 180, FT bubble 11 left. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/18561906_D130578D10

That would've seen me on 200k. I then MIRACULOUSLY win this http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/18561911_55AC042650

But with me on 200k he'd still have jammed and I'd now be on 350k pre FT.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/18561919_5744067D55

Now I should be nearly 500k pre FT, probably a world record. Although that would've made it FT time I think (and you can obv argue cards would've been different had previous hands busted). Get nothing the entire FT then this http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/18561936_9B7EC35879

All after a 200 game day of rig. Be warned this is the majority of how my account runs so...trying to stay positive somehow though.

Went to Genting in Southend last night, mainly cuz a couple mates have recently started loving the blackjack and roulette, sadly they're not very into poker. Time the 3 of us went a few months ago we all bought into a tourney but one hasn't a clue what he's doing and the other has a reasonable clue on starting hands and raising instead of limping but other than that isn't too comfortable with it. big shame really if they were into poker as much as me our lives would be completely different I'm sure. The latter of the two I mentioned is, however, fecking lucky in the gamble side of casinos. In blackjack in the side betting bet where u can bet on pairs, flushes etc he hit them THREE TIMES IN A ROW!! And turned 3 £5 bets into £1500!! ;karabiner;
Hilariously the staff then wanted to know his name address etc which to me is a downright insult! No he isn't an alien who became the first being ever to crack a casino, back the hell up already  ;tracet;

I could barely even concentrate on roulette or BJ myself for the amount of absolute stunners walking about the place!!   :o :o :o I spent most of the night with me jaw somewhere between me knees, really need to get out more!! It's funny there's often quite a few pairs, trios or groups of girls who seem to just aimlessly walk around as iif they're just waiting for a rich guy to pick them up, seems kinda fishy lol.

Anyways I wandered into the poker area where the Saturday tourney looked as though it had a good turnout,  but I couldn't play as I wouldn't be able to be there at silly o'clock were I able to last that long, so I considered sitting in the cash table for a bit. It was £1/£2 with £40 min buy-in which I thought might be an idea to just buy-in min and short stack (something pokerstars abolished the possibilty of doing some time ago) but the table was full. At least I thought it was full until someone else sat down on a seat I'd barely noticed due to how crammed it looked on the table. Looked as though they were straddling to £4 aswell, it would have just been a case of waiting for anything decent and lob it all in knowing that there's probably well over £10 already in most posts before the flop's even gotten there. I do tend to recognise the same faces even if I only go there 2-3x a year so it seems most of them are regs but yet splash the chips around as if they're all mostly 70/50 vpip/pfr or something. Maybe they just like to spunk all their wages at the weekend, it MUST be lucrative surely! Didn't end up playing but tempted to go back down tonight on me tod for the £60, I really need to break this live playing duck and get back into it to start feeling comfortable. You've got 21yr old brats like Charlie Carrel going round the world hammering every high roller going and moving his gf and best mate out to Vegas just for the lulz and there's me in my late 30's barely even sat down to a live 10/20p game !! bit of a joke really  ::)

Since last post:

(https://i.gyazo.com/61c04d37cb5606fe42c3452cd80ef750.png)

All week has been simply gross. That massive mountina slope was 4-5 cashes in nearly 100 hypers  ;applause; I honestly don't think one could cash so few if you were to jam every single hand of every single game. Today was sick becuz it's the the last day of the second 30 day period of my contract and had to complete the last few games to make the 2.5k game quota. So what happens? My pc crashes while 20 tabling and deep in all the highest stakes games, reboot only to find all my Stars settings and preferences (which is a fucking lot to set up manually) have been completely wiped. I've opened up the mess of a lobby and to a  horribly standard everthing, table themes, no hotkeys, sounds going off like mad, timing out all over the place, just a complete nightmare!!! ;technophobe; Get that sorted then it crashes AGAIN next time around!! Fortunately no wipeage of user ini this time. Been googling like hell to find the problem. cba going into the details unless someone reading is a pc techie.

So I'm not happy at all with the month obv, had to play mostly hypers as not had time or internet to play 2.5k turbos, which means a lower win rate before even mentioning the vile patternised number generating downswings of a virtual vertical nature. Despite a poor month overall my 18-mans alone still came to $2.62/game, keeping me to >$2 a game in them since the start of contract. Common sense says I should just stick with those but sod's law says if I do that I'll have a giant downswing in them, which is mostly why I play a wide range of formats at the same time, just to keep the variance monster guessing and unable to pin me down to one spot all the time. Keep the patternised algorithms confused by darting between formats.

For the next 30 day period I desperately need to get $2/game and get in more like 160hrs instead of 95, but for that I'lll need reliable computer and internet    ;pokergods;

Things are going pretty terribly at the moment. Reached 100 abi downswing and busted entire roll, have had to ask for a reload. Dunno how long that's gonna take. Today was epic once again in terms of obliterating all world records on the chip-leader-to-bubbling front with mahoosif stacks in nearly every $30 and $60 18man I played today. In fact today's "pattern" was quite the common one it uses. That in which it absolutely refuses to allow any bubble to burst under any circumstance, it's incredible the amount of blind levels passing at every bubble situation it really is. Often Ill make it to 10k chips have everyone dead by around bb300, then 500 shorty double ups later and at bb40,000, I bust.

Today's EV:(https://i.gyazo.com/2b97b53e71d382b7aa07ec06ac7ab7f8.png)

And $60's on the year:
(https://i.gyazo.com/13b577150724f123cc0961fcdf426ad5.png)

Past 5 days has been spent trying to sort my never ending crashing pc out, so haven't been brave enough to play much until today. And that's becuase I finally gave in and did a fresh install on one of my drives. It's fine so far. So then I knuckle down get the work attitude on to be smashed in the teeth by that horrific rig. U won't win motherfuckers I'm telling u that much

I've been reading the diary since you brought it back to life but wasn't sure whether to post as I didn't want to seem like I was having a dig when you seem to be struggling a little, can assure you I'm not but when I read your thread I always think this seems a really tough grind to try and make a living, no ?

Who's the biggest winner in each variant of SNG's that you are playing and what's there profit this year and from the last 12 months in those games ? I have a rough idea especially with 180s but maybe I'm a bit off.
I have no idea what ability level you are at but what do you think your profit for 2016 should be if you ran to expectation and what would that equate to $ p/hr when you include study time etc ?

It just seems like a really tough way to make a living when you are giving up 50% of your profits so I wondered what numbers you project to want to be doing it.

Nps if you don't want to answer the questions as maybe it's a bit personal, glgl with the grind.

Well I think we all agree on the whole that the poker grind is way tougher than it used to be. I don't put it solely down to opponents being better, I have my beliefs about online poker, beliefs that very few other people share so I don't usually like to harp on about them too much. That said there are plenty of regs making a living from SnG's, Brits included. Most of them are blocked on SS.

I know what ROI's all regs are achieving in different formats of course, I probably sharkscope more than your average player by some considerable distance. Watching ROI's gradually drop across the board doesn't necessarily convince me that higher isn't attainable. For 18man I believe the $15 ceiling is 14-15%. I'm around 12% since 2015. Not huge volume but EV figures line up over that distance of course. I believe double figures are more than attainable in the higher buyin 18's too, and infact across those and STT's you'll generally find ROI's go up the higher the stakes because nowadays soooooo many regs are at the lower/micros limits being taught by the stables responsible for it all. Fortunately most stables seem to (in my opinion) teach quite a lot of bollox which at least leaves room for the better players to still profit. I'm never going to go into too much detail on strat in a public forum, however.

Story short, $2/game is more than achievable at $15 abi it's just a matter of having to put more hours in to get less games than you could a few years ago because they run so much less off peak than ever before. That's something I've always struggled with and despite being motivated to improve that massively this year I've still been hampered of late with computer crashes, internet failures, house moves and so on.

At least $40/$50/hr is doable, £30/hr tax free isn't to be sniffed at. We will see what happens when I can settle into a proper routine, have no tech issues and so forth.

Today is already hilarious so far. Still no word on a reload after hours and hours, with $200 left I played $15 6m hypers again and this happened

(https://i.gyazo.com/4ef1c0be756a75fcce697e9eaddce463.png)

So for the afternoon went back to what is meant to be my bread n butter.

(https://i.gyazo.com/e82eb4855fdaaca2d93ea9c76ed8c20a.png)

 rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao

So my backer shipped me $1k over at 1am that night. He did apologise for his partner seemingly doing nothing about my messages to him, and I still had no courtesy response from him days later.

Similarly to when they first shipped me a roll, I insta binked some the following day (Weds) which sees me all back to BE again.

(https://i.gyazo.com/596799a4f73dc10c8768dfe9cceef9e7.png)


Not sure how the MU thing would work with this stable, like if you were to get a bit stuck if you would be allowed to take any kind of wage while paying bits off at a time. Well with SnG's I certainly don't intend to ever have to find out!  ;pokergods;

Things are slow as shit once again. Almost 2000 games break even again now. Today saw set up after set up in all my $30-$60 18m games that I ran deep in, but before that I managed to go 12 without even reaching the last 9 lol. That's not a stat I've ever looked into. I always remember my longest cashless streaks, which is around 70, with multiple 40-45 streaks too. But never considered lack of FT streaks. Well you wouldn't in a two table tournament! 12 sounds pretty hilarious. A bit like 30-40 cashless in 6max hypers sounding hilarious too. Oh but I've managed that on many an occasion.

Sattied into a $109 bounty builder plus the big $109, the hot 82, got completely coolered in those. Got 17th from 4600 players in the only games I ever win races in , yep the $2 ones, the Elite allow u to win those ;) I was 1/40 with 800k chips, $1300 up top, it soon went. $50 for the place LOL.

I wonder when the next 0.75 day spell of reasonably close to EVness will happen so I can get more 100 steps forward from the 99 back.  My highest stakes games are massively furstrating. With every single bubble situation (especially $60's) ending with constant gruesome set ups. if I could switch the outcome of just one hand per $30 and up game this year I'd be up another $5k I'm quite confident of that. But then I've said this my whole poker life. There's this constant waiting for when something good is going to happen, or rather when is something not good going to not happen. Players keep using the phrase "never lucky" these days. I couldn't care for that, it's not luck required in a game of skill that sees you in countless 80-20% situations that were they all bets in a bookies would've netted  you millions by now. No, my phrase is: "never not unlucky". Try again tomorrow I guess.

Gonna watch a few eps of Boardwalk Empire that I recently started watching. Yank gangster stuff from the 20's era, spanning 5 series since 2010. Huge fan of gangster related TV, obv did the Sopranos back to back in about a week  ;gobsmacked; but havne't watched anything series wise in about 3 years. Well I recently got talking to 18man rival ratataboom1 on skype and his avatar is Charlie Lucky Luciano. That got me into researching him which got me into Boardwalk. So some old poker rival who I used to berate endlessly in chat ends up being the cause of what I do to relax for the next few months of my life. Funny old world. Loads of reasonably graphic sex scenes in the first series  ;kev; second one's calmed it a bit tho. Destress time

A grand spunked today in 6 hours, 60 abi's. It takes all my power to not go mental in this blog, which is what I've used a blog for in the past, to vent when running bad. So hence there would be daily posts, as I run bad daily, for years, decades. I feel like going off on a tirade of describing the precise patterns that the Patternised Number Generator produces every day and which massively non subtle changes occur each day as it goes round in a circle repeating itself, but I'll refrain.

Did well in satties again getting into the Hot 82, 55 and a few others. Don't even recall them, was violently raped faster than it took to qualify. Another torrent of bricked 180's and 18man giant CL to bubble occurances and I was left with one possible day saver, a $15 180. Led the entire game and had 60k with 12 left. And then the usual pattern got under way. Every shortie doubling a million times, FT bubble lasting 35 levels, and eventually went out in 8th. An earlier $15 180 aswell saw me finish 10th when JJ obvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv ran into QQ bvb.

Ran into ratataboom1 in some 18's again and he demonstrated some horrendous play. This again proves how unlucky I'm am constantly as he has pretty much the highest consitent ROi in higest buy=in 18's and 50-50's, a really consistent $2+ a game if not more. And yet this is how he plays

PokerStars Hand #152247388353: Tournament #1545304818, $27.78+$2.22 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level II (15/30) - 2016/04/21 20:25:56 WET [2016/04/21 15:25:56 ET]
Table '1545304818 2' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: MaStR0_N1cK (1213 in chips)
Seat 2: Sooo Tilted (1474 in chips)
Seat 3: steveo412 (1424 in chips)
Seat 4: ratataboom1 (1648 in chips)
Seat 5: StarFromHell (1454 in chips)
Seat 6: Holod282 (2914 in chips)
Seat 7: RagztoRiches (1164 in chips)
Seat 9: fleischerjun (2209 in chips)
MaStR0_N1cK: posts the ante 4
Sooo Tilted: posts the ante 4
steveo412: posts the ante 4
ratataboom1: posts the ante 4
StarFromHell: posts the ante 4
Holod282: posts the ante 4
RagztoRiches: posts the ante 4
fleischerjun: posts the ante 4
RagztoRiches: posts small blind 15
fleischerjun: posts big blind 30
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RagztoRiches [9c 9h]
MaStR0_N1cK: folds
Sooo Tilted: folds
steveo412: folds
ratataboom1: raises 45 to 75
StarFromHell: folds
Holod282: folds
RagztoRiches: raises 105 to 180
fleischerjun: calls 150
ratataboom1: calls 105
*** FLOP *** [9d 8h Th]
RagztoRiches: bets 185
fleischerjun: raises 445 to 630
ratataboom1: raises 834 to 1464 and is all-in
RagztoRiches: calls 795 and is all-in
fleischerjun: calls 834
*** TURN *** [9d 8h Th] [Kh]
*** RIVER *** [9d 8h Th Kh]  Ahrt
*** SHOW DOWN ***
fleischerjun: shows [Jc Jh] (a flush, Ace high)
ratataboom1: shows [Ts Qd] (a pair of Tens)
fleischerjun collected 968 from side pot
RagztoRiches: shows [9c 9h] (a flush, Ace high - lower cards)
fleischerjun collected 3512 from main pot
ratataboom1 finished the tournament in 16th place
RagztoRiches finished the tournament in 17th place




Look at that action and he thinks tp is good?  rotflmfao He's good like never here basically. Never. IT would be a smidgeon more plausible if he had the Qh. Then later on he shoved A8o for a ridic amount which probably wasn't exactly -ev but still absolutely no way in relation to the ROI he gets while geniuses like me get incessantly killed day after day after day.

(https://i.gyazo.com/92ff64d95ab26d3c87df29a42cf6936b.png)

Pretty much 12 losing days from 15. fuck off already

Oh and just to add some EV proofs. 140% below over that period.

(https://i.gyazo.com/18b689f6b2981861a2fc5db7a3a999a4.png)

Glad that when I had downswings like that, there was no such thing as HEM to track it.

Hope it turns around for you soon, Ragz.

Glad there are no HEM trackers on bf either.  I had a similar month.  Literally lost 80% of days this month.  Every day 50% of dog favs seem to be winning and shitting up.  Just got to swing with it or get a job.    Some months you are supposed to lose otherwise you are not doing it properly to win long term.  Don't tell the results orientated TFT boys that though!  It's all about the results on there on small sample sizes.

Thanks. For sure losing months are totally unavoidable these days.

Well!! Not played all that much since last post, not considering I had every intention of grinding the entire weeked (like that ever goes to plan EVER!). I played around 5hrs Fri morning to afternoon and did ok then played 5hrs tonight just.

Soif I filter to just 18/45/180 mans upto to $30 I faired thus:

(https://i.gyazo.com/215709e95c4260cd3ed760909575cc8f.png)

However I did manage to brick 73 4max shootout sats, most of which I didn't even make the FT on  ;dingdell; I also just bricked 8 $60-18's in a row aswell, joined with the usual MTT bricks I barely broke even

(https://i.gyazo.com/8b78be83857dacfcfad4f1d63d5b7ab9.png)

 ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep;

The $30's were my saviour today putting me to about 10% ROI on the year in them (albeit 400 games, whatever) and I did reach two FT's out of the nine $3r 180's I played, this absolute cracker put paid to any chances of a bink however.

PokerStars Hand #152400976614: Tournament #1548123364, $3.30+$0.20 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXII (4000/8000) - 2016/04/24 23:25:20 WET [2016/04/24 18:25:20 ET]
Table '1548123364 7' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 2: Pedrozadota (134144 in chips)
Seat 4: Apofeoz V (154855 in chips)
Seat 5: tuttymito (94381 in chips)
Seat 6: Kuni88 (132471 in chips)
Seat 7: RagztoRiches (89834 in chips)
Seat 8: newmario (260815 in chips)
Pedrozadota: posts the ante 800
Apofeoz V: posts the ante 800
tuttymito: posts the ante 800
Kuni88: posts the ante 800
RagztoRiches: posts the ante 800
newmario: posts the ante 800
RagztoRiches: posts small blind 4000
newmario: posts big blind 8000
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RagztoRiches [Ks Kh]
Pedrozadota: folds
Apofeoz V: folds
tuttymito: folds
Kuni88: raises 8000 to 16000
RagztoRiches: calls 12000
newmario: raises 244015 to 260015 and is all-in
Kuni88: folds
RagztoRiches: calls 73034 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (170981) returned to newmario
*** FLOP *** [3s 7d 8c]
*** TURN *** [3s 7d 8c] [9s]
*** RIVER *** [3s 7d 8c 9s] [Tc]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
RagztoRiches: shows [Ks Kh] (a pair of Kings)
newmario: shows [6d Kd] (a straight, Six to Ten)
newmario collected 198868 from pot
RagztoRiches finished the tournament in 6th place and received $75.63.

In the other deep runner I was doing fine until these beauts stopped me getting on the Ft with anything but a measely 1bb lol.

(https://i.gyazo.com/6685b0910d273054a41cd8890210867b.png)
(https://i.gyazo.com/77617df6baf4cb30d0aa555b6b80e4ee.png)


I've demanded 40hrs of myself this week, as I do every week but fail miserably as the rig crushes my soul time after time. Today however I didn't feel too bad watching beat after beat come in so if I can maintain that level of couldn't care lessness I can hopefully do it for a change.

Going to sleep and waking up pretty miserable atm. The beats are relentless and having gone from roughly 10-15,000 games as good as break even over the course of a relatively long period of time pre 2016, I'm now covering 3500ish more games BE again, having had a bit of an upturn between the two since the day I got a stake. Now Stars have thrown a spanner into the works introducing a shitload of new games all over the place, hyper ko's and al sorts that's too much to go into detail in this quick check in post. I've messed about in every type of them but ultimately if I'm to get anywhere with all this I've got to stick with the games I'm mostly profitable in on the year and be damn disciplined with it! And that's 18/45 man and 180 rebuys only. But leaving out non rebuys will be tough, I don't think I can leave out those despite being 400bi's down in them because a $15 first for $750 is a damn good chunk.

Despite being soul crushed consistently, feeling that this is a massive waste of time I am STILL convinced my game is perfectly fine and better than most and that I suffer the worst kind of variance (rig) possible. Another 18-man reg I watch closely is still a pretty varianceless 11% abi $18 or so that keeps my faith alive too.

Off to the shop then gonna reg as long as I can stand it.

Do you grind full time? I used to play these formats pre black friday and they were definitely pretty good back then. I kinda assumed they'd be dead by now lol.

Enjoy reading this blog, it's nice and honest.

Thanks.

Man what I'd do to go back to pre BF jeeeeeeeeeeeeebus!! With this much effort back then $200k would be pretty easy at abi $40!!! The $27, $38 and $60 all running well day and night as far as I can remember, $12 180 aswell as $35, running like a tap. Am salivating at just the thought of it. I spent alot of time then playing the 90-mans on FTP, I had the 3rd highest ROI in the world for those aswell and I played much worse than I do now, I could've upped that to 50-55% probably. I remember shark365 or someone similar, made $100k year on year in just 90-mans alone. Hindsight's a massive piece of shit.

Thing's aren't quite exactly "dead" yet, but players are a bit trickier, I guess most of the fish must've decided to want to learn how to play. US stables jealous that they can't play anymore are mostly responsible for a giant portion of the increase in player "skill". I put speech marks around that word because alot of the stables are run by mediocre players who never had close to the top ROI's in the first place, but whilst they're not teaching optimal ways to play, it's still a profitable way thus bringing down profit everywhere else.

I've played full time since 2009 but have always played the laziest (I'm a Leo) hours imaginable and regret that massively now.  I did perfectly fine right up until late 2014. I hadn't played much on the year anyway due to gf taking up too much time, but September of that year I joined in a 2+2 180man team comp and we led start to finish, I made about $6k in that month. From that point on I've been on like a 12-15k game break even run give or take and I seriously don't put it down to tougher players whatsoever. As I said there's 2-3 players making the same ROI's in the games I play that most top players made in 2010 so I know it's still just as do-able, especially in 18-man. Those games have a special dynamic and ICM that makes it possible to hit a higher ROI than should be relative to it's higher or lower numbered SnG counterparts. Hard to explain what I mean by that. Let's just say there's lots more room to bully and dominate without risk of ruin than there is in STT or 180-man. But for 180-man check out malimisko. The guy never plays more than 8-10 tables which obviously has some contribution to his exceptional ROI, but that won't be the bigggest reason at all. He's 50% in his last 7kish 180-mans. There's no other reg out there on higher than HALF that. Does he run like god perma?

Today has been hell on earth once again. Started out ok for the first 5 hours, I got 2nd in a $3r 180 that had the highest prize I've seen in months. $540 for first which is really rare now since most regs single bullet as much as they can. This is the hand I lost to win it.

PokerStars Hand #152524077863: Tournament #1550554955, $3.30+$0.20 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XXVIII (20000/40000) - 2016/04/27 17:40:19 WET [2016/04/27 12:40:19 ET]
Table '1550554955 11' 9-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 2: carolbelotto (322544 in chips)
Seat 6: RagztoRiches (563456 in chips)
carolbelotto: posts the ante 4000
RagztoRiches: posts the ante 4000
carolbelotto: posts small blind 20000
RagztoRiches: posts big blind 40000
 HOLE CARDS
Dealt to RagztoRiches [Ac Jc]
carolbelotto: raises 278544 to 318544 and is all-in
RagztoRiches: calls 278544
 FLOP  [8c 2d Kd]
 TURN  [8c 2d Kd] [Qh]
 RIVER  [8c 2d Kd Qh] [3d]
 SHOW DOWN
RagztoRiches: shows [Ac Jc] (high card Ace)
carolbelotto: shows [6h 8s] (a pair of Eights)
carolbelotto collected 645088 from pot

Then tonight I've had the usual insane bullshit. Today's EV. Only 300% below EV, yet miraculously profited $120. 150 turbos, 8 hours.

(https://i.gyazo.com/d779fb7745e0fafe37d5e811cd51d404.png)

Oh forgot to mention one of these new $30 45-man hyper PSKO's went off and I'd regged. Got to the FT and this complete bubble-tard as I like to call them, lost his mind.

PokerStars Hand #152518689155: Tournament #1549497492, $14.30+$14.30+$1.40 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XIII (400/800) - 2016/04/27 15:27:22 WET [2016/04/27 10:27:22 ET]
Table '1549497492 4' 9-max Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: MariyaAl (26156 in chips)
Seat 2: pastis4020 (12196 in chips)
Seat 3: Tilt_Avenue (10185 in chips)
Seat 4: 2THEMAX69 (20195 in chips)
Seat 5: DeathcorePkr (5754 in chips)
Seat 6: Paulharvey3 (7343 in chips)
Seat 7: NKmyt (30739 in chips)
Seat 8: RagztoRiches (13636 in chips)
Seat 9: Alien-v300 (8796 in chips)
MariyaAl: posts the ante 200
pastis4020: posts the ante 200
Tilt_Avenue: posts the ante 200
2THEMAX69: posts the ante 200
DeathcorePkr: posts the ante 200
Paulharvey3: posts the ante 200
NKmyt: posts the ante 200
RagztoRiches: posts the ante 200
Alien-v300: posts the ante 200
2THEMAX69: posts small blind 400
DeathcorePkr: posts big blind 800
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RagztoRiches [Ac Qc]
Paulharvey3: folds
NKmyt: folds
RagztoRiches: raises 800 to 1600
Alien-v300: folds
MariyaAl: folds
pastis4020: folds
Tilt_Avenue: raises 8385 to 9985 and is all-in
2THEMAX69: folds
DeathcorePkr: folds
RagztoRiches: calls 8385
*** FLOP *** [5h Kc 8s]
*** TURN *** [5h Kc 8s] [4s]
*** RIVER *** [5h Kc 8s 4s] [8c]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
RagztoRiches: shows [Ac Qc] (a pair of Eights)
Tilt_Avenue: shows Td Qh(a pair of Eights - lower kicker)
RagztoRiches collected 22970 from pot
RagztoRiches wins $19.66 for eliminating Tilt_Avenue and their own bounty increases by $19.66 to $33.96
Tilt_Avenue finished the tournament in 9th place


This left me 1/8 and I finished 6th thanks to two massive coolers in a row. Think that was and still is the only one that's run and it was at 10:30am WUTTTTTT??????????????  ;dingdell;

Another day of absolute shite that I cant even be bothered going into detail about. Noticed I've played MORE THAN 40hrs in the past week which has to be an all time recrod for me, so that's one achievement I guess. Albeit it a 7 day week. $500ish down over that period. Check out this wonderful 18-man finishing position graph over that time:-

(https://i.gyazo.com/04bf8dd5adfa393cf9d2aabed3fe048c.png)

I can safely guess the vast majority of games I was chip leader in with 4 left. Changing just one hand from each game could be worth thousands. This is the sickness of the the rig that they disguise with the word called "variance". You know it's funny, if you get to see alot of player's sharkscope graphs like I do on a day to day basis, probably one of the biggest scopers in the game, you will notice one common thing in 98% of everyone. All graphs start to flatten off from around late 2014 onwards. Funny coincidence that this is when amaya took over. What, was there a sudden gigantic influx of skilled players at that time then? No, not at all.

This is what an 18-man finishing position thingy should look like:

(https://i.gyazo.com/5e9820547918bd596629219395083c49.png)

At the very least. But it's not been unknown to hit 8% 1st over large samples.

Patternised Number Generator showing little sign of relent. Every day the same, 40-60 bricks, maybe 1-2 min cashes in there at violent-vomit below EV, get to end of tether, scrape together one last sesh of the day and bosh it back to nearly break even. Bringing u back at the end of the day to keep u from going anywhere, or giving some back as the roll gets close to busto and $2.5k MU.

Summary of April is thus:

(https://i.gyazo.com/dc6b61f0ee2c78d7bba2f9b2887a6d23.png)

As crazy as that looks, however it's actually in profit for 18's at 6% ROI $1.22/game. STT's, 45's about break even, the losses come from 180's, MTT's and 16-man sats. If I filter 180's and MTT's but exclude rebuys cuz I won in the $3r 180's, this totally insane graph appears.

(https://i.gyazo.com/76b7d6f7796b6e189891ea0a2a1d06ef.png)


Shocked the life out of me at first!! 1500 starting stack non rebuy 180's I just do not know wtf is happening in them. That's over 200 straight bricks in non rebuy 180's alone, well a couple small cashes from that many games. Which amounts to these EV figures.

(https://i.gyazo.com/f9431a3b2ab0cba7b7a02bebc7c0860d.png)

And It's also 30% below EV for the past 13 months for non rebuy 180 all-in pre-flops. So as one can see, I have all the figures to prove I'm being continually raped in one format or another, whilst doing fine elsewhere. Keep plugging on I guess. Need a final £100 to MOT my RSV4 and get it up for sale, won't be taking less than £6,000 on it though...if anyone's interested  ;D
(https://i.gyazo.com/d1f17c1fcf4417f0b9151f2b7d2055c0.jpg)

So yesterday was insane. First have decided to play less MTT's, not that I play many anyway but they slowly mount up to huge losses over time and are in no way good for bank building. This is reinforced by the fact now that when I look at turbo MTT sched from like 7pm onards it looks fucking terrible...like where's everthing gone?? The Hot $82 is now at 11:15am as opposed to the usual 7:30pm  rotflmfao ;dingdell; and much more weirdness besides. Further reinforced by the fact that the millions of 4-max shootout SnG sats into tons of tourneys...completely gone. $82 hypers and turbos, $27's, $55's, nothing. WHAT??

But yh it's probably just done me a huge favour tbh, so I fired up the usual 18/45/180 bunch and noticed a $11 6-max hyper going off shortly, so had that as the ONE MTT I would play. So the usual shit went down, relentless beats, numerous chip leader to bubble/4ths in higher buy-in 18's, checked my bank after an hour; $200  :'( If I lose that then I'm in $2.5k MU meng!!

Then suddenly, as if a switch had been physically flicked, as if to say "hey boys, he's almost busto we gotta keep him in the game, hey Abraham, flick Ragz's account for a while or so, let him off the noose for a breather", I simply could not lose. TT+ every hand, river 2 outers every time my JJ had QQ waiting, flopping, turning, rivering everything couldn't lose a hand!!!! WTF???? Nothin consitent about this site, nothing runs average it's one gigantic extreme or the other, sadly "the other" is like two hours per quarter.

So it finished with a 1st and 2nd in two $15 180's, and a

(https://i.gyazo.com/515b1c4e19bc41ed1b970b4eb18da71c.png)

(https://i.gyazo.com/36b2b19c81db83813da138fe5bebe366.png)


However this still brings me to very small wage since March 31st. I'm tempted to ask if I can pay the MU back in installments and take a bigger cut for now but spose I'd better leave it for the sake of just another couple hundred bux. Communications with my stable are extremely slow but apparently we've just been appointed a new go between to add on skype who is meant to be dealing with all the cashouts and so on. Remains to be seen how smooth that will run. Catch 22's these situations cuz I'm extremely superstitious of the whole cashout-followed-by-massive-downswing syndrome but in the situation it's prob best to take the money while it's there!!

Congratulations man.

 ;thankyou;

Yeah, good to read a bit of a turnaround.

Well it's certainly been back to business as usual since that miraculous actual winning day. Done nothing but lose since, but any halfway close to expectation I have had has come in just MTT's. FT'd the Hot $82 this morning. With it now being at the weirdo time of 11:15 it only makes for a $2.5k first place, however first money spot was $250, the trade off being it was 25 players who took 2422565234523423 hands to burst it. Anyways I was in the top 3 from pretty much bb600 or something onwards the whole time. Briefly to my left was epitomised but he soon moved then I noticed he was like 2/10 on the other table, FT came and he was gone :dontask: :dontask: :dontask: :dontask: By then I'd lost 4-5 hands in a row to end up pretty much shafted for the FT, got a double to around 12bbs with TT then minned QQ into some Russian called hulinada's big blind. He was 60% defend and had already scuppered me at the semi FT defending T6o with 6bbs and flopping nine pairs vs my AQo. In this hand he time bank rejams A7s, hits quints and I'm gone.


Still can't catch a break in SnG's at all. EV since last post.

(https://i.gyazo.com/9f463a1c94dcc94fb899f9dc1963fb4d.png)

18.7 hrs @ 22.5 games/hr. Last two days I've done an actual proper 9-6 type run and only gotten 15games/hr abi $14.

I've always said it and last night rang true. Runnings and luck in MTT's at least build up, like form in any sport, only there's no control over this. You can have form at football, snooker whatever, but how can you have form at luck? Well I won that little one last week, then FT'd the Hot 82, felt it was building up. Last night I FT'd the Hot (former Hotter) $55. Wasn't happy to see pads and conorb1 there though, in fact whole table was regs bar one maybe. That didn't matter though, throughout the table I was at most of the game up until and then again at the FT, everyone was nitty as balls!!!!!! Hardly any defends, hardly any funny stuff, just plain old ABC from everyone it seemed. I was mostly card frozen and simply won the hands I was supposed to win. The biggest stroke of luck was my AQs beating another guy's AQo for a bit of an inflection point. He did only have 10bbs but at a late stage of the game that was huge to collect.

Pads was first to go at the FT which with all due respect was a big relief, just glad he wasn't stacked, and I got to CL and pretty much stayed there from 7-8 players and down. A few stacks <10bb so really easy to raise and avoid 2nd-3rd stacks getting involved. But there were two hands in a row where 2nd stack to my direct left 3bet me as I was prepared to call off the two short guys behind him. First time I had KTo and really wanted to 4b jam as he surely needs QQ+ to call. He then did it again the very next hand. I think he was testing to see if I knew my dominating position and to see what he can get away with. Were I not in such a desperate situation for living expenses and such right now I would've no question snap jammed 100% of my opens on his 3bets. Anyways he stopped doing it after those two so who knows maybe he had the tits both times!

We get three handed and I'm CL but not by huge amount. robinho raises button I'm in sb with TT. 3bet and he time bank 4bets. I snap jam into JJ. BRILLIANT. Left with 6-7bbs or something I rejam KQo on other guy's button open, he has KJ. Flop a straight. Turn chops it ffs. Then jam 89o bvb into 99. As negative as it seems I'm totally pissed not to get at least hu more than I'm stoked to win 9.3k. It only keeps my head above water especially as only 60% is mine! The win or even just 2nd would've made much bigger difference. Strangely my stable guy wished me luck the second I hit the FT. I'm like wtf? I'm not open in the Stars search. He wanted to chop it up the second I finshed lol. Fine by me, except for all the transfer restrictions. $3k transfer fund exchange limit (that's myself from $ to £. Could've just withdrawn as $ I guess but they probably rip u a massive exchange rate.

On top of that yesterday I also won a $30 45 PKO thingy. I won $144 in bounties then the $199 first place. That makes $357 yet sharkscope said I PROFITED $444 ????????? Odd. Also won a sat into SCOOP-05-M an $82 buy-in. Structure weird as, 4 minute levels to start, then upping to 6, then 8, 10, 12, 15. How long was this game gonna take? Starting at 10:00 prob would've gone to 6am even with turboy first levels. Just checked it finished 7am. So I unregged that in the end what with playing from the gf's bed. Was the only time she paid sharp attention to my poker funnily enough!! When I bust she asked if I'd "been voted out?"  rotflmfao

Month to date
(https://i.gyazo.com/b6d3d77d3fb12ee0ae46b026649a9ffa.png)




$0-$60 scheduleds excluding rebuys and sats since 2011
(https://i.gyazo.com/ff88b513fd947ae543cb9051bab0a91b.png)

Doesn't amount to alot of games over 5yrs for sure, however that downswing has felt like an eternity. For all the joy you get from binking one MTT in x amount of years, I would happily trade for just smooth runnings in my SnG's to lead a normal life! meh, waddayagunnadoy  ;hattip;

Second solid day now of sorting shit. Transfer fund conversion limits, arguing back n forht with Star about it, can't even get my fucking money!! And sorting Holdem Manager 2. Man is this the tilitest software ever made! Getting nowhere fast with it, support respond once a day, really furstrating ;frustrated; ;frustrated; ;frustrated; ;frustrated; ;frustrated;

Don't really wanna play til I've got my money or the 100% nailed on downswing I'm about to hit will take it all. Not pessimism, REALISM.

Still at it with the the HM2  rotflmfao Must've spent 24hrs on it by now. Totally given up with getting summaries imported into the damn thing now and focused on other things. The whole time I've been thinking HUD numbers aren't allowed to be the colour white becuase I'm sure I read somewhere something about it having to do with the terms and conditions of the site that was to do with the reason they banned HM1. So I played some today with the numbers being green..and some red. Just can't deal with it, screws my peripheral up and fries my bonce too much. Don't know what it is but I'm EXTREMELY fussy with how my table and stats are laid out. I can only use the hyper simple theme, anything else and I can't think straight, and stats have to be not in the way of anything like cards and so on  ;dingdell;   :blonde:   Some peoples layouts I've seen are like WTF HOW DO U EVEN KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING????????  Probably some kind of autist I am, whatever. Anyways I got quite happy again since I managed to customise the popups from stuff like this

(http://forums.holdemmanager.com/attachments/general-support/160969d1462918855-import-hm1-657886b3c3f9af09b1f447c17ce6e810.png)

and this

(http://forums.holdemmanager.com/attachments/general-support/160966d1462883750-import-hm1-8c9ce5554a09176f5d9b5303cdc4b272.png) 

and this

(https://i.gyazo.com/6a048587755798a75d95d468b7d6a3e9.png) ;tracet; ;tracet; ;tracet; ;tracet;

to stuff like this

(https://i.gyazo.com/adf9df54d380794a8b307148bc7540f4.png)

and this

(https://i.gyazo.com/68e84033c37dbed821a76ff5ad85ba25.png)

and this

(https://i.gyazo.com/7e59dde5b788591542dfca2309631236.png)

 ;ifm;  ;karabiner;

What I do like from the software if you look at that last popup, is the resteal v hero stat, which I heard of years ago but never thought any samples would be significant enough to differ from their usual resteal stat v anyone. See how wrong I am there!! haha shows what image I have

Mate, skim thread a couple of pages and you seem to be constantly tilted by bad beats, suggested online is rigged a couple of posts back, etc.... is it worth the stress? If it's making you feel like crap 90% of the days you play it's not for you.

Not criticism, just curious if you've considered if you'd be happier and wealthier by taking a different path.

Yes I'd defo be happier in a normal job but after living off decent money for years minimum wage simply isn't viable.

You'd be surprised. Being happier > having more money

Money buys happiness  :D

No I was doing some part time stuff with a mate who fits stoves and it was really lax stuff as he only needs help for like 10 mins of the whole day but it's required by law. It's what I was doing back in 08-09, 50-50 with poker and was the perfect set up, except of course for the early morning to late night swapover as playing later is better for poker. Sadly he rarely needs help anymore after switching to a slightly different line of work :(

SMALL UPDATE

I'm not at all proud of myself for my work ethic, but I've not really played much since my Hot £55 score, which is one month ago now. There's 2-3 reasons for this. Two of them are OUT AND OUT FEAR! First fear is of my woeful internet failing, as everytime I do log in to play some hypers, it will go down at some point. We are with Utility Warehouse here and over the course of the the 3 years I've been here I must've made 100+ calls about it. It often gets sorted for a short period but is usually buggered again within a week or two. I can't just up n leave them because I'm not the account holder and housemate doesn't want to move it. I am currently enquiring to have a second phone line installed to get fibre optic with Sky.

Second fear is, of course, the INEVITABLE... run hell. And indeed, every single log in since that day has been nothing but pure run hell.

(https://i.gyazo.com/c3bfde1154fd1c78833261320b74b744.png)

The third reason has been due to being busy getting my bike sorted and up for sale. After putting it on ebay, gumtree, multiple fb pages, encountering the biggest number of moronic timewasters you could ever wish to deal with, some guy swooped down from the North without even barely asking a question and took it off me for £6.5k. So not all doom n gloom.

Today has been my first proper grind in quite some time...$800 spunked.

Was kind of inspired recently by a certain reg doing really wel lin the 18m hyper games, and even more suprised by the fact after nearly 3 months of being on the scene there's STILL barely any regs in them. I know the reason for that, it's the 8% rake in a hyper. But who gives a shit how much rake they pay if they're getting twice as much from all the players being fish??

So this specific player made $10k from 5k games in the past two months playing the $25's only, no $10's, showing that volume is decent. Weirdly, the fact they are 10bb starting stacks compared to 25bb stacks in the 6-max versions actually means you can play way more an hour, even though it's 3x the field. I've been hovering from 6-10 tables at a time and getting 65/games an hour (nearly 400 games today)!!! However, that's made zero difference to anything as I've run so horrifically disgustingly that I wish I hadn't seen his graph now. The guy is a renowned sunrunner, bragging on tiltbook the first few months of the year of a revoltingly high ROI in 50-50's, so to be fair, considering the volatility of a 10bb starting stack hyper SUPER KNOCKOUT (the KO part meaning an even huger number of hands go to showdown) then even a 1000000000000000000000000000 game sample probably wouldn't mean jack shit. A 12-14% 18-man turbo ROI like myself has broken even for 10-15 nigh on 20k games, so realistically in these games two players of equal skill could see one becoming a millionaire while the other sleeps in the gutter....just from amaya's massively realistic PN... oh sorry, RNG.

As I'm so many games down on the contract, however, I'm just gonna stick with em and pray for a miraculous day of something remotely close to expectation.

This is my holecard distribution for the past 5 weeks
(https://i.gyazo.com/a1c92d22a3ba894df2462fa27ee6ab6f.png)

The first Ace comes in at 28th!

Well I wish I could post more often I really do, but the truth is poker is just such a landd of hell on earth right now that I've never anything positive to post about. It's literally groundhog day of starting out a trillion % below EV in every session I play, with one day in 10-14 offering a tiny bit of restbite...and then straight back to the bollocks again.

Since the May 9th significant win, I'm now 3 grand down from 4000 games. Granted 95% of that is hyper turbo format, break even in turbos, chuck off the scheduleds and it's +800, chuck of the sickeningly rapey 180's, so mostly 18-45man, and it's +2000 lol. What's funny about that is when I decide to drop all those games and say right, load ONLY 18-45s and those ONLY NOTHING ELSE (as I'm standing at around $2/game for them all year long) I then take an even bigger marrow from Mr JewEliteLeaderMan right up the rectum just for even thinking of game selecting more profitably.

There is nothing I can do absolutely nothing. Card distribution is beyond the imagination and that is simply that. dead

Another day of groundhog today, in fact nearly matched my record for most 18-man turbos uncashed in a row. Well I had 3 min cashes in 51 games. Tried to remember to boom all the ridiculous housebot hands but didn't get all of them.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/19989975_998CB80A99 This one was a classic .

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/19990440_922350097B This was for giant CL in a decent buy-in MTT.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/19990957_C806F9B761 3 left in a 45-man.

Tons I missed, shoved into AA well over 20 times, the usual. It's just the same pattern of every single 80% RFI reg having the top 5% in every single button v blinds, blind v blind , another v another situation, every defend with 98% is missed flop for me, spike for them, if I bluff anywhere they call down with bottom pair, if I trap check back top pairs or overpairs it matter not, by the time it's got to the river they'd already flopped a the nuts, with their 98% defends, it's just completely unfathomable...every hand.

This was an awesome end to the day, a bubble lasting over 40 hands. With me commentating in the chat box throughout explaining what is about to happen, and it happening bang on the letter. The short stacks all doubled multiple times with 20/80% equities before the flop, then these blinders go down.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/19991216_DEE465FE03 First this ICM suicide. But he's obv a housebot and knows what the board is gong to be already.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/19991217_0962ED741C Then anotehr 90%er OTT split which would've saved my lfe had I won (or prob not).

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/19991220_A70C0A9D4A Then a 93%er OTT  fucked over. Last few pence was A4 into 99. Fucking mind boggling hysterical shit...daily...since 2004.

Oh and last but not least

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/19988973_4A69C0F2E3 A royal to complete my 100% record of never having a winning day when making a royal. It totals about 17 or 18 lifetime for me, which is wayyy  more than expectancy. yet I've never won on any single day I've made one. Soul crippling, flop to the floor face down in a gutter of shit induclngly impossible. Can't WAIT to do it all again tomoz  ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark; ;yippee; ;sark; ;yippee; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;yippee; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark; ;sark;

amazing fucking month

(https://i.gyazo.com/1055c0409e3a129b82b4476e25760045.png)

Since last post I've had the biggest sciatica flare up of my entire life. For those who aren't familiar, it's a gigantic nerve (largest in bod) runs from the back down legs. I first had a left hand side issue in 2012, struggled a good 6 months with the odd day almost completely paralysed, then went long periods of okness (always a slight niggle there even at the best of times) and didn't suffer much at all from... I dunno, around late 2013 until about one year ago when another unexplained flare up came on. I've got to kind of thank it in a way becuz it sent me on what now seems to be a life long mission to find the truth about health, diet and so on.

Well that last flare up a yer ago lasted a short time then recently it started coming on again but this time on the RIGHT side of my bod, bang in the right buttock. Strange how it's swapped sides! From the weekend just gone I was getting worse so Monday I decided to go to a spa with about 5 different kinds of saunas, plunge pools, jacuzzis and so on and do the old hot to cold back n forth trick. Whilst in there the pain goes completely, when swimming it's fine, then that night in bed I suffered THE WORST EVERRRRRRRRRRRRRR agony, forcing me to take pain killers which I always try to avoid at all costs. Next morning it took me 20 minutes to get from bedroom to kitchen as each remotest tensing of EITHER leg was full on 100000000000 volts runnning through the entire body. I'd gone to kitchen to get an ice pack, gel ones I keep in freezer...and would u adam and eve it it seems to have done the trick!!! Well first necking 3 ibuprofen and two cocodomol sorts the pain enough to sleep. But upon waking when they've worn off I strapped an ice pack to the area in agony (ARSE) keeping it in place with a velcro back support thingy I also happen to have. The numbing actually began to work after about 20-30 mins and continuing on with it today it has almost completely sodded off!! A MIRACLE I TELL THEE A MIRACLE!!!!!!! The relief in finding something that works is indescribable. I know what I need to do to prevent and cure, it's purely a case of lazy-itus which makes it not happen.

So haven't played much poker, on Sunday I made about $100 and on Tuesday I stuck to $15 6m hypers, short games in case of any attacks coming on. The usual kinda thing happend, hadn't been in them for a while, coming over from MTT SnG's and so therefore ran okish and made another $300. So as negative as it may sound, I prefer to call it cynical, and cynicism is based on realism, I said to myself it's not even worth playing today as I'll lose the entire lot again in this constant game of cat and mouse 9999 steps foward, 9998 steps back. Sure enough that's precisely what has happend today. Started with 6m hypers, realised the half decent run had worn off so switched back to MTT SnG's, got killed in both. Then had the Hot $7.50 as my remaining game, with $3k up top this was for the virtual chip lead with 50 left

http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/20067483_C7B0389B4A

Sooooooooo many deep runs end like this, runs that were they on the accounts of such likes as FEDOR HOLZ or..... CHARLIE CARREL... a very very VERY diffferent scenario would be taking place. Sadly, for us UNCHOSEN ones, we must suffer in silence. I can bet the best poker players in the world are completely unheard of.

A delightful hand to end the post, I like to term these "housebot proof hands" http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/20048398_736696BF98

Love this diary, Ragz, though don't post on it often. As in, not at all.

Ugh @ the sciatica, it sounds horrendous. How long does it normally last, & does it tend to keep recurring? I can't begin to imagine what it is to be ill, or suffer from something like that. Even a bit of cramp now & then is more than enough for me. 

Now, poker.

Simply, do you really enjoy it? It all sounds as painful as sciatica.

I can't offer advice to someone with your poker abilities, but have you considered changing to a different (& maybe softer) format? There's still value spots out there, imo. Not sure NLH Hypers & the like are amongst them. Online, generally in my experience, a lot of folks play PLO really badly. Do you ever play PLO?

I'm certainly not dissing how you earn your living, but it almost sounds like a humdrum 9-5 job would be less painful.   

Thanks for your post.

Well I make these blogs really to do a little bit of venting (although on this forum I wanted to make it a little more about the good side of poker, hence posts being so few and far between), and to just track progress and make a record of the absolute madness that I have very little faith in being real. Everyone has their opinions, I certainly ain't looking to argue about them, bored stiff of that already!

I will never get a 9-5 as long as I can eek something out of this game, but what I do desperately need to do is get into the live scene way more. So many poker tours across Britain atm and with play in them being so horrific I should look to see if REAL cards actually do what they're supposed to, and consistently so. Have recently gotten the Grosvenor client to try and satty into some of their stuff. That said I do have a few mates trialling day trading apps, I've had a little look into but that would need full time attention to learn properly.

I couldn't play PLO to save my life, with so many possible combinations on board I get kinda poker blindness, watching Phil Galfond 4-6 table high stakes PLO HU is absolutely mind boggling to me, I have to stare at the board for a week to figure out what I've got and if I can be beat   ;carlocitrone; ;carlocitrone; ;carlocitrone; :dontask: :dontask: :dontask:

The sciatica will always reoccur until I'm disciplined enough to keep doing the core strengthening exercises and also get a better chair for posture, I want a Herman Miller chair with the old lumber support but I can't bring myself to part with the extortionate amount of cash for one.

Didn't play yesterday as I went to Newmarket Nights for me n a pal's joint birthdays which ended with an hour+ gig from Tears For Fears, their first outing in a 11yrs. IT was a good craic, but once again my terrible luck showed it's head. I'd studied form and shortlisted horses for all 7 evening races, then told me extremely lucky mate which ones to back, and subsequently went with slightly different and more value choices, obviously he won twice and I failed every race, then missed the last race where my would-be selection trotted up no probs  rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao Just couldn't write it. Was quite the experience though, jam packed it was, every 5 yards was a food stall of one kind or another and every single one of them was minimum 30 person queue...ALL NIGHT! £5 a pint, £3 a bottle of sprite, but coulnd't fault the £7.50 burger that was quality!

Consciously made the decision to grind non stop from today til 7th August (end of contract) and the usual has taken place on the felt. Incredible the amount of late position vs blinds set ups there are every hand, the amount of everything that I just can't be bothered repeating today.  Tailed off from regging atm, I'm either gonna start again or go to Westcliff Genting and play live.

Wrote that post with one game remaining, a $3r 180. Crackin exit http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20098659_CB15B843E0

 ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep;

Didn't end up playing live as I left it too late. So I thought I'd have yet another one of THE  most anger inducing infurrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrriating sessions of my entire life. It's hard to believe in my 12th year of playing I can still have worse and worser sessions. It's totally unfathomable. I boomed about a million hands so let's sieve through this utter fucking bullshit.

Oh first of all I took this screenshot of a Grosvenor satty I tried out.

(https://i.gyazo.com/8f048c51a0248d4eb95889e24ae2cb8e.png)

The reason I took it was because precisely as the game started one of my skype chat group buddies randomly, for no reason whatseover posted this

(https://i.gyazo.com/9f47c731405d71c0dba6ab91b770fa32.png)

So I was like WTF??? SURREAL!!!!!!!

Anyways that^ KK hand was hilarious. Guy raised to 100 in front of me I make it 300. BB cold call, OR calls. Flop 76Tr, BB checks, OR donks, I raise MASSIVE they BOTH call! Yup, welcome to England  rotflmfao ;dingdell; ;dingdell; Turn is a brick, I'm checked to and jam. They BOTH call. Oh well I'm screwed then I think, someone's got a set/straight here. Nope. BB's got 87o, OR's got 99. So they've got each other blocked basically. What was the river I hear you cry? A FUCKING 9!!! Jesus wept 2 hands into my first ever game on the site and royally fucked!!!

Here was my equity when it all went in (https://i.gyazo.com/b3b5bff0a4dcff6febb8d6d479df7329.png)

So back to integral and reliable old Stars then.

3rd level in the Hot $7.50 http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20102379_EAB5548B5B

Two hands in a row vs the exact same player, literally one hand after the next http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20102548_5F199D8C26
http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20102550_79DFAD2AA4  I kid you not when I called again I looked and said I bet he's got A7o. Amazing, just incredible, to be saying it to myself when usually I'd have too many games to notice.

For top ten chips in the last 40 http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20102716_7FD3E6D126

3 left $15/18 http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20102800_CFCF5C0BB9

For the massive chip leads at $8 180 FT bubble, would've been 7 left after http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20102923_362899591B Just too too too too too real.

Ended up getting 4th in it, here's another realistic board for the exit http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20103164_83B142D732

And then, right at the end I'd regged a few of those $7.10 6 max shootout Sunday Million sats and got heads up. It's WTA. This to make $215 from $7 in 5 minutes. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20103476_D052E7C47B

And I end up losing. Finally, the cashier halfway thru sesh.

(https://i.gyazo.com/cf3cb8013a9583320ee8dc8d3d142db9.png)

only 1.8million below EV this month.

(https://i.gyazo.com/cd0300eba48484a915763252c5d66585.png)

At the moment I'm feeling rather lost with the game. When every single hand I play I'm just royally stitched up to the max, you can only take so much before you're questioning your game totally, when really it HAS to purely be the runnings and card distribution that's responsible. But like I say after soooooooooo damn much of it to the point you're in total disblief that yet another sickest turn card possible has turned up in this post flop HU situation, and if not the turn card then always 100% of the time THE NUT WORST river card possible, it leads you to start believing you're just shit. I can literally call them almost every hand I'm in a post flop betting situation, and well all the aipf's too of course. But when playing cash it's usually post flop betting. I've opened a unibet account recently plus grosvenor, purely to try and satty into some live stuff. But I've been dabbling at cash on unibet and from the very first hand it's just horrific. Every hand I'm in they flop/turn or river the bollocks. There isn't a single dry board out there ever. Every AA or KK pre, all folds, anything else is pure aggressive 3betting thrown in my face, all flops raised or check raised, or turns, but with a very good hand, nothing, all folds. So you know it's purely the card distrib, but cuz it happens soooooooooooooooo damn much you're like JESUS U GOTTA BE FKN BLUFFIN MAN...nope. I'm talking years and years here, not just "oh be patient it can happen for a few days". Yh I do know what patience is in poker, haven't made $150k on not having patience.

So when card distribution is so awful you feel like man I gotta just play every pot and try to bluff my way to some money...nope, never works. 2d7h3cQdKd run out? Where u bet AQ and get raised turn? oh yh, they got 84dd every time, PERFECT RIVER GUARANTEED COMIN YOUR WAY.  How can you get away from this every hand? How long do you just ACCEPT that you're fucked every hand and fold with huge discipline waiting moooooooooonths for it to change? I ain't got that fcking long man!! I might just try and beg my way into the Fedor camp and see what I can learn all over again. I dunno, just really lost.

The sadistic part of me hopes you carry on playing, as it always puts me right if I have an annoying day at work, and think I could still be trying to grind it out playing MTTs :D

Given how anguished you come across in your posts, at what point do you ask yourself if the juice is worth the squeeze?

Surely being convinced that the game you're playing is rigged against you doesn't stand you in good stead, lol.

Best of luck anyway, I hope you manage an unrigged session soon.

hi

it seems like you really struggle with mental game, and don't even like playing a lot of the time. Temperamentally, is it the game for you? any session of any length is gonig to be full of bad beats after all.

have you read mental game of poker? thought about any mental game coaching?

People seem to think everyone else suffers excatly the same as me but just "handles it". I would happily challenge even Jared Tendler to deal with my account. 12 years isn't a "session of length"  :D :D :D :D :D

I've already looked into my old job title. It would involve a move across the other side of the country to make £24,000 doing a COMPULSORY 50hrs a week. And that was an extremely physical job involving lots of harmful chemicals too. f that. I'll need to be on the street before I go back to that anyway.

Thanks for the well wishes.

if you genuinely believe that you have a 100% rigged account, why on earth do you still play on it?

Ul on the bad run :(

I'd recommend taking some time off and also getting some coaching. I know you don't feel that's the cause of your run bad but it will do your confidence a lot of good if you can tweak a few things in your game for the next time you play.

Good luck. I agree if you've been playing for 12 years it's probably better to continue rather than snap get any random job at this stage. Should start thinking about a solid plan B though if you haven't already.

I know what you mean there, even if you think you're good enough some fresh ideas can often start off a decent run, even if the ideas are nothing to do with getting better results, it's a weird thing that! I think I've patched a few tiny leaks recently that may have crept in, I'm aware stuff can creep in there without you realising it but that can still be amplified 1000 fold by the revolting card distribution making you think "hang on, I must be doing something wrong here" when you're not.  

Well I suppose I'd better report the good aswell as the bad. August has been quite the upturn so far.

(https://i.gyazo.com/7dedfedcb035ab73596f881ed304fe42.png)
(https://i.gyazo.com/f2f346d133e55cd82b375f84fe8fc7bc.png)

Won a $16.50 6-max hyper, a $3r 180 with a decent prize of $520, a $15 180, a $8 180, almost as though after such a shit run in them the forces have given me an evenly distributed win in each one  :D Nice to win some HU's for a change.

What is also in there is an 8th in the Hot $5.50 where I lost bvb AIPF A9s < 89s with $2k up top,  plus 12th today in a $7.50 6m hyper MTT with $1k up top.

oh and I put rebuys to 1.5 as this month I've started copying someone who doesn't rebuy or add on whatsoever. Except I forgot I had my auto add-on box checked so if I did make it to the end of rebuy period it was making at least 1 rebuy per game. Add another .5 for when I rebuy in the bb30 period (nothing after that though).

So I finally played live tonight for the first time in 44 eons. Nothing major, just some mates wanted to mess about at Genting Southend so I thought I'd go n stalk the cash table just before first break of the £30 odd tourney in order to catch the addicted gamblers rushing over to get 15 mins of lose-as-much-as-possible at £1-£2. But on arrival the main man in the card room informs me there's a new cash table sat right in the thick of the main room where all the gambool tables are, just a 50p/£1 max buy-in £100 jobby. A dealer is sat on it all night waiting for it to get started, no one sits but when it finally does get going it is soon surrounded by tons of poker curious nubs and their fit birds. So you can sit at a whale infested table with a good view for bird watching as it's not stuck in the poker only room...WIN WIN. Bird watching helps prevent boredom, and there's some insane arses wandering around rather drunk.

I sit down with the max and there's only one other with as much while the rest keep buying in for the min £20. So 85% of my hands have the 2 of spades in,  No joke. Another 13% is 34o no joke. The other 2% is A8cc, JJ, TT, AQ, and virtually nothing in between all those. Quite incredible, but totally expected. I also received the same holding, including suits and order in which I'm dealt them two hands in a row...TWICE. Other insane happenings are that a local reg whom I've spoken to before, very friendly guy, seems very honest, often commentates his way through hands, virtually tells you what he has half the time, is chatting away with the next blond lady dealer who's about to take over from previous brunette polish dealer. It's obv he knows everyone who works there. Sits down and she insta flops him the nuts verus guy with the biggest stack and the second nuts. Within another ten minutes she's given him runner runner nuts vs two other guys all in by the river, just fucking insane the coincidential energies that go down.

So to my action hands. First I have JJ in the BB and seemingly the most savvy guy at the table makes it £3 from UTG. Hmm. I'll flat behind 3 other callers I guess. Dryest flop possible, 237r or something, he leads £9, rest fold, I eye his £40 odd remainder and fuck-it-jam. He has QQ. Meh, £40 left.

Later I have to call a £4 raise with Jh9h cuz the entire table is in and get a QhTx8H flop and win a few. Same happens with 97ss and it checks all round on T8X and along comes a J turn. Huge minnow opposite me leads and still 4-way I just jam, folded round to him he calls and of course no one turns their cards over on cash tables do they! Whatever the runout he just flashes me an Ace and mucks lol. The AQ hand, it's gone limpy all round and I pop it to £10, everyone insta folds as I've been a total nit, except chatty man who speeches me for a week before folding 88 face up lol. I revealed nada and he's convinced cuz of this I had bigger pair.

Another winning yet massively furstrating hand where I kicked off with the dealer. A8cc UTG make it £3. Each man and his mum calls, think some of the waitresses and chefs did too. K high flop two crubs. Thought I'd just check call the fd rather than face problems if betting... NO ONE BETS :-OOOOO Turn gives me nut flush and I bet £9, only dealer says "£5 bet." "What?!" I say. String bet she said. WHAT???? No love, I had all the chips in my hand crossed the line all together in one action and plonked them on the felt, then shoved them forward to make it easier for her to count, YA KNOW LIKE EVERY ONE DOES??? Nope, apparently placing the chips onto the felt despite them all being across the line at same time, and THEN shoving them forward to fall down IS A STRING BET!!  rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao See I'm so fucking unlucky then when I hit the nuts I still get royally screwed over by bullshit  :D :D Anyways one total station calls so  I obv DON'T want a fourth club to lose action as it's unlikey he's got the Q and anything less won't call a shove...probably. Sure enough fourth club comes, I put him in and he tank folds saying he has weak flush.

I'm back to near £100 by the time my driver mate comes along and says "come on it's 2am need to shift" so I say ok just one more hand. I instantly psychically imagine getting a massive hand, get dealt a Ten and automatically know another Ten is coming, it arrives. Someone's straddled £2 and guy to my right makes it £9 to go ffs! Call I guess. Everyone bails and he checks OOP on Q7Xr, so I stab a random £7. He calls, obv check calling Ax that much is 100%. Brick turn he checks so I ponder and he insta folds to my £15, which  put me on £30ish profit for the night but from a  £90-ish comeback.

This ain't no Vegas $25k HR blog but poker is poker at any level, from playmoney to HS anyone can rape anyone and I need lots of general live practice before I buy-in to anything reasonable. Felt very comfortable so I can feel more confident and less agoraphobic for next time lol. A min GPS is actually coming up next month so I may try to satty in, altho there's nothing online for Genting anymore, guy said there's one super sat going to be on a...... Monday?? K den 

btw I was the only guy at table not to show cards in non showdowns to remain as The mysterious one". I'm totally Phil Ivey now  8)

Had to pop in just to report this one game which was just simply beyond the absolute beyond.

I'd already managed to stone bubble a $215 satty into the $2.1k super tuesday having sattied into the $215 via a $27 game. In the $215 I was CL the entire game, was around 1/24 with 16 seats, zero money on the side for 17th. With 18 left guy jams bvb into me with about 6bbs and I have 2.5x his stack with A5o. I called and skype pals all said huge fold. LOL disagree. HE had Q9s I flop a 5 but the 100% turn and river were both 9's  rotflmfao Left me with 4bbs and I call same guys jam very next hand with 88, he has JT and binks thirteen 10's on the flop obviously.

So today in a $33 sat aiming for a $300 sat for the Thrill, I'm once again crushing to buggery and off it all starts again, the crazy totally random, nothing paternised about it whatsoever generator off on it's randomness.

For this game it's 2 seats and $200 for 3rd. First I take out jabracada and view his rejam as horrific but whatevs. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789625_75BA9537F5

5 left time to pressure. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789631_4EA1FFC7E9

Obvs, ofc, I mean no other possible outcome.

Very next hand miracle an Ace to get to stone bubble now. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789641_CF19F49F3C

So that must mean that the very next bvb hand sees him on AA right? Straight after KK. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789653_B954A5CDAA

OBVSS TOO REAL TOO REAL. I like to call it #treal.

Very next hand http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789657_105863326E

Few hands later, river card away from a $300 game. http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789663_75BD1E68FC

Then this classic and predictable set up which maybe I played wrong but whatevs http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789664_0E71391BA0

And just to spunk all over my face for the piece de resistance http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20789666_6D6084C8A8

a5 sounds like very easy fold, i would imagine ak would be snap fold too.

For 6bbs bvb 2.5x their stack? Tried to replicate it in icmizer but it doesn't seem to make sense

Satellites are totally different though. A whole new style of play needs to be used.

I know that, been sng wizzing them for approx 8 years. If i can be assed I'll try to get find the correct math on it.

Couple high/low/hilare-lights from tonight's sesh.

180man FT bubble 80% river buggered http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20795069_E2CF75BEBD

Then a housebot calls my mid game hyper MTT jam http://www.boomplayer.com/poker-hands/Boom/20795343_0A9AC2731B POsting for the lolfactor

Got 9th in another $27 6m hyper MTT with 3k up top.

Be interesting to see the maths behind it, I would be surprised if it was close to a call.

I don't know all the stack sizes obv but it seems likely you could just fold every hand and win a seat unless there is an unfortunate run of double ups for shorties. The most you can win is a 2k seat. With a5 there is no way you can be a big favourite so you are taking a big risk and there is a major downside and very little extra upside.it isn't your job to police the short stacks or push small equity edges. Just avoid showdowns.

Kinda curious as to how you were 1/24, had 2.5 x his stack and came out with four big blinds... but anyways....

I'm not loving calling A5 in a normal tourney depending on the small blind's stack to ours, but in a satellite where we have a seat locked this is the snappiest of snappy folds - timebank every hand (particularly if it's very short stacked as your 'left with 4 big blinds' indicates!) - we're playing for 16th or better, not to win. I'd suggest either an element or ego or an automatic process of calling such spots in normal tournies was involved here.

I'm no expert on ICM, but folding everything here is likely +EV considering you've bought in for $27 with a circa 75 x prize at stake.

Reviewing the other hands, the 6-8 diamonds jam against 10 BB effective bvb? I prefer a raise-fold to jam. Yes it'll work a lot but you don't need to take the risk with your stack, the BBs lost there could have snook you into a seat.

A5 hand - check from the turn? depending on his bet sizing on the turn-river re-assessing if to fold on river. When you shove, what's the purpose? Lots of hands we lose to and a few Ace high hands that will call (opponent dependent) basically.

Cuz by the time there was 18 left I wasn't CL anymore. There is NEVER EVER such a thing as guaranteed seat in a satty. And jamming ATC as CL in sat bubbles is massively +ev and critical. Not in all cases but definitely 86s bvb lol. I prob should have folded the A5 as it's most likely +++ev compared to just +ev.

For the A5 v K8s you're giving wayyyyyyy too much credit to players. Yes virtually every Ace calls and if he doesn't have one protection against the club draw is definitely needed. Agreed I could maybe have played it differently though. Given that I'm CL the best play is to prob rejam pre.

So every time I log in at the moment is just purely farcical. Reload is about needed once again. Motivating yourself to play in these conditions is next to impossible. right now I'd prob snap a gutter sweeping using tongue job offer's arm off. Cracking last hand for the day to complete around 70 bricks of late.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-hands/Boom/20866818_BFF013F00D

Ah, ok, your chip stack / position etc. changing obviously alters everything completely... although I would disagree, there certainly is such a thing as a guaranteed satty seat... you just have to teach yourself to fold Aces/Kings etc. when you're effectively locked up! 😆

That Aces / AJ hand is brutal 😡

Mate, seriously consider if doing this full time is good for your wellbeing - you might be pleasantly surprised at the relief / release from stress you get by getting back into a 9-5 with guaranteed wages. Dave it for the weekends and maybe you'll bink the Sunday million ... 🤗

Good luck either way, and just remember there's much more to life than poker.

You are so right bud, but the never say die within me just wants to fight through to the other side. We'll see how things are at the end of this 6 month period I guess.

So I got a reload the other day, a reload is roughly 100 abi's. I did almost the whole lot in 8hrs. This is my all in pre EV graph for October.

(https://i.gyazo.com/caafedb87af123e784286166e67215c4.png)

Hoping I don't have to get a 2nd reload meaning I'll have to make 3k just to break even. sigh. Might pop down to Genting on Monday when they have a super satellite for their leg of the GPS next week. Quite why they hold these important sats on a Monday is beyond me but whatevs, there's no online options to satty into Gentings anymore :( Maybe I can conquer the live rig if I can't the online.

It's a bad graph you're basically always going to run under ev in chips. Have a look again in bbs, it shouldn't look so brutal.

Well you can have positive evbb/100 with terrible chip EV and terrible evbb/100 with awesome chip ev, in either case you're doing horribly somewhere along the line. I can have a consistent 8+evbb/100 for months on end with zero winnings and plenty of losses that's a fact. Also I am literally the nut no 1 guy on Stars who is coolered to death in every bvb or btn v blinds situation possible which will have negative effect on EV figures. The amount of times sb regs shove on me, check their rfi from sb, 150% sweet, call and they have top 15% 100% of the time is just unfathomable.

Anyway, bored of whining now, may aswell try and get something useful out of what one can control.  What's your thoughts on river play here? Opener was wide enough, senseless 3bing in this spot iyam, although it is 30bbs eff, but 3b call seems excessive in the positions even with just 30bbs, and 3b/folding seems a big waste of AQs. Villain flatting behind was 4/2 over 50 hands. I barrel turn thinking that in this rare case where mulitple people are in the pot ahead of him, the 4/2 from 50 might not be an accurate assessment to use here and could still easily have Qxss or whatever. Turn bet is roughly 3rd pot.

PokerStars Hand #159649752212: Tournament #1683982638, $40+$4 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XIX (700/1400) - 2016/10/08 18:23:59 WET [2016/10/08 13:23:59 ET]
Table '1683982638 17' 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: Kaczmarol (40985 in chips)
Seat 2: RagztoRiches (55559 in chips)
Seat 3: Tankanza (41168 in chips)
Seat 4: Deeagie (24891 in chips)
Seat 5: claire nea (31279 in chips)
Seat 6: Mr. MusQus (23055 in chips)
Seat 7: boarrder (55895 in chips)
Seat 8: onel4play (67586 in chips)
Seat 9: Ivan999D (40564 in chips)
Kaczmarol: posts the ante 175
RagztoRiches: posts the ante 175
Tankanza: posts the ante 175
Deeagie: posts the ante 175
claire nea: posts the ante 175
Mr. MusQus: posts the ante 175
boarrder: posts the ante 175
onel4play: posts the ante 175
Ivan999D: posts the ante 175
boarrder: posts small blind 700
onel4play: posts big blind 1400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to RagztoRiches [Ad Qd]
Ivan999D: folds
Kaczmarol: raises 2030 to 3430
RagztoRiches: calls 3430
Tankanza: calls 3430
Deeagie: folds
claire nea: folds
Mr. MusQus: folds
boarrder: folds
onel4play: calls 2030
*** FLOP *** [8d Qs 6h]
onel4play: checks
Kaczmarol: checks
RagztoRiches: bets 4500
Tankanza: calls 4500
onel4play: folds
Kaczmarol: folds
*** TURN *** [8d Qs 6h] [Qc]
RagztoRiches: bets 8500
Tankanza: calls 8500
*** RIVER *** [8d Qs 6h Qc] [Jh]
RagztoRiches:

p.s. don't assume I lost   :P

If you really think

"Also I am literally the nut no 1 guy on Stars who is coolered to death in every bvb or btn v blinds situation possible which will have negative effect on EV figures. The amount of times sb regs shove on me, check their rfi from sb, 150% sweet, call and they have top 15% 100% of the time is just unfathomable."

Is true. You should hire Elliot Roe immediately. He's helped at least 100 people who were also 100% convinced they ran the worst on stars etc and has helped them turn their whole game/focus etc around. It's a small investment that can help you a lot.

Went to Genting's on Monday to play a £20 sat for a £220 seat, Southend's leg of GPS this week. 5 seats guaranteed from the off, it ended up 9 seats and £140 for 10th. Entertaining would be an understatement!

Got off to a decent start, at bb200 the usual suspects limping 80% or so, I make it 1k with QQ, two flatters, I'm sandwiched. AQ9cc (don't have a club) I opt for check raise and fortunately IP guy bets 2400 then old guy who hasn't shut up talking also flats leaving it all nicely for me to shove my 8-9k whatever I had. IP guy speeches how he knows what I've got but calls anyway, then OOP also calls making me convinced club and straight draws galore are gonna see me off early. They were actually as good as dead. AQ and AJ  :o :o and as it wasn't Stars the 9th Ace didn't come out.

Straight back to 94o every hand after that, literally didn't pick up suited anything the entire night, nothing even marginal to think of opening. Anything QT or JT looking was only ever UTG. Barely played a hand after first break then took down the very last hand then very first hand back after next break. A while later guy to my right opens button and I reshove 20bbs with A9o. He's opened a massive % whole game raising a whole table of limpers with stuff like T9o and K2s so A9 was obv the nuts here...and he snaps AKo. But I flop a 9  :o :o :o

Card dead again for a bit then open JTo into a guy in BB who'd come over with a fair old stack. He defends I check back QJx, he checks a brick turn, I bet he fold. Orbit or so later same scenario with same guy but this time I have Q8hh. Flop was J9xcc. check check, turn's a Q and he bets I call. River's a brick and he bets pretty big without much deliberation. Figured I'm no good unless he's valuetowning himself with KJ/AJ so just folded. Might've been an idea to raise his turn bet so I get a check river, still plenty he has which would call the raise and be losing.

From the very start there was a woman probably in her 50's to my very left, claimed she's never played and certainly had the table in...shall we call them, silenced private hysterics. In one hand she's limped or called a raise and two guys end up all in pre and she folds, stating a minute later she folded Aces. Mixture of lip biting and flat out eruption of laughter from some, I was a bit in between not wanting to offend her like, had a little chortle. Thinking ah she's just hustling, later on she proved she wasn't! Calling down 3 streets quite often on the most horrific boards with stuff like 55 (QTJQ6ccc) and eventually called herself out of the game calling all the way with ATo on QJxQJ lol. Poor ol girl, like to see her back tho  ;D

Get moved to another table finally and am faced with a UTG limp and MP shove for 24k at bb3k sitting on ATss btn. Had no clue on anyone's game in the slightest so opted to fold, UTG decided to call with QJss and shover had A7, ran out blank barring a Ten I would've hit. Prolly should've called but being a satty with 9 seats and assuming most of them are nits I didn't. That guy later went on to open tons of pots and limper went onto limp 100% so had I know that beforehand would've snapped.

Onto another table and down to 18 left I get one 8bb shove through otherwise card frozen as usual, eventually jam KTo bvb into a guy who snapped A9o and I flopped pretty much dead. Enjoyed the experience.
Could ask 3 mates if they wanna go quarters on the £220 game maybe... Shame no online sats are available any more.

(https://i.gyazo.com/d3567bdfd921f1242862af71369470b5.png)

Well 70% losing days since Sept 1st (as per rest of the year) now at 200 abi's screwed, probably means nothing in MTT's but this is 92% small-medium field SnG's. Can't afford to live now but have no choice but to work out of MU.  ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep;

(https://i.gyazo.com/d816735eb4c985f9976a5e06db2782f9.png)

Reasonable bb/100 means nothing. I wonder how long you can win well at bb/100 and lose bags of money? Probably for life using scamaya-invented-math.

I haven't played a huge amount since last post but when I have, it's been lose lose lose, pretty much. I did type out a huge post on the surreality of what I'm going through but found that just typing it out was therapeutic enough and cba to post it. So I won't harp on about perma=runhell.

But I had an eventful evening Sunday the 16th. I'd planned to go down to Westcliff while the final stages of the mini GPS was on with the hope of catching lots of tilted bustees at the cash tables. Spent all day procrastinating whether or not to go, and in the end had to force another side of my brain to kick my ass to go down. "You'll never amount to shit if you don't start getting more live in". I suppose it's the 50 minute drive that makes it harder to go through with. But am I glad I did!! Maybe it was that conscious forcing the angel on shoulder side of my brain to battle with the satan side that I got rewarded for.

Intending on getting there for 8pm, start of break for the £100 side game which would've started at 6, alas they weren't running any cash in the main card room. Got pointed towards the 50p/£1 game running in the main gambool area, though, so went and sat down to around 6 players, most of whom were bantering away knowingly to one another. It's funny listening to them, saying what they will/won't, would/wouldn't do in every hand, like they're best mates strategising at home. It does get borderline sometimes where I'm wondering is anything gonna get reported yet? One guy just got up and moved seats, I was like "EH?? Are u allowed to do that??" Sexy blond dealer just looks vacantly and offender says "yh u can here." wtf

So I sat down with £100 and walk off an hour later with £350, cheers lads. To start with, AK in the BB make it £8 with 4 limpers or so, 2 flat, horrific flop, check-don't bother. It's a nightmare working out what to do in such huge VPIP games with so many different stack sizes.

I get KK, again in the blinds. Limped round again I make it £7 and just the one guy calls, he's to my direct right and is VPIP 100%. Flop Q27hh, I bet £10 he calls. Turn Th, I check-call £10. River off suit King, I check-ponder £10. Had I known more about the guy I'd have probably just kept barreling but was paranoid of flush. He has 72o  rotflmfao Typical me style he obv flopped the world, but has zero aggression allowing me to get there.

Then get A8dd in MP, and am looking really shakey cuz two chips were stuck together and I was trying to shake them apart, one guy remarked I'm so excited I must have Aces. Didn't stop half the table calling my £4 raise. Flop A89r, I decide to check riase but no one bets. Turn 4, SB leads out £12 I call. River 8, nice. He checks now and I keep head down, hand covering cheek, deliberating, handle some chips for a few secs and throw out £30. He mutters "why so much if you've just go an Ace?" and all sorts of other gibberish, clearly I look nervous as hell which is prob what makes him call, no idea what he had. Prob a 9.

Then get AA and a new boy just sat opposite me flats and says "looks like it's just me n u." LOL ok teenager, bring your game. Horrible flop, QJTr, but he's mucking them before my cbet even gets in the middle. Dayum. I decide to show that one.

Then get AK in the BB again. UTG has made it £6 and there's like 4 callers, no way I'm gonna sit here working out everyone's stacks to decide some weird 3bet size, just call. QJTss, I have Ace spades. OP bets £12 I think it was and 3 call, so I just jam. OP folds, says after it's AQ, so do the rest leaving 100% drunken guy who actually tanked for 30 seconds with 89 lol. No showdown in cash though and turn pairs a Ten so I'm thinking great he boated up, but he showed his losing hand. nice.

Set out what I hoped to do, made a desperate wage for bread n water and went home.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyTQScIcQCc

LOL Kassouf's exit hand, part of me actually wanted the King as tilting as he is after seeing flush entity bawling about it

'Set out what I hoped to do, made a desperate wage for bread n water and went home.'

Your tone seems very negative lately, it sucks to be on a downswing (I really know what it's like from experience) but when the winning days also make you feel bad, like finally I won a crust, even though I should have won loads more, and il probably be back to bad luck again tomorrow, it's time for a break and change in attitude. Positive thinking really does breed success and even when the losing sessions happen it is easier to cope when you feel ok inside. It is entirely possible that you are the unluckiest player on the Internet, there has to be one after all, but it is MUCH more likely that you aren't playing your best and that is also contributing to your bad feels. Give the coach pleno suggested a try if you can, or youtube Louise Hay positive affirmations if paying for coaching isn't your thing. Have a couple of days off doing something fun and get back to it with the attitude of a winner and you will turn it all around!

Thanks for the opinion.

Things are going hysterically. Received another reload today, half of that is gone in a couple hours, so another 50bi's or so. Around $6k in MU now abi 17.

Lovely week so far.

(https://i.gyazo.com/8fc45fd02978d66b9eb57406b81e74be.png)

I remember a player called nineallday00, had your typical American graph, steadily up and up and up til end of 2010, then right down the other side of the mountain thereafter. Black Friday wasn't to blame as the descent started in the latter part of 2010. Unless he had some kinda stroke, there is literally no reason for it happening. A total of 1875 abi's before he quit. I always remember thinking he must be terrible, but now I know that might not necessarily have been the case. As I sit here daily watching regs I've always been several points up on now earning 3-5x more than I do while I watch their dreadful ICM mistakes and post flop spews and whatever else makes them, in my opinion, barely even of average skill, I realise that you can't truly measure anyone by their results whatsoever. Just go to a variance deviation calculator and see for yourself. Opinions on what is good poker are just that and nothing more, opinions. There is no yardstick to definitively say "yes that is optimal".

Nothing much one can do, I'm studying more than ever, marking nearly 100 hands a day to ICM check, and deciding now to go for every tiny edge regarding shoving more than I ever did before, which I think makes more sense these days as edges get thinner and thinner and fish more sparse. Have to take +0.04 edges now instead of sitting back on +0.2 and so on.

Analysing my stats constantly and trying to figure out this mess, I noticed my bb/100 is actually higher the past couple years than ever before, yet the ROI less than a 3rd lol. Maybe I should play cash? At least each bb/100 is money in the bank then. Wonder what number of bi's a cash requirement is these days. Never heard of anyone ever losing more than 50, not that I read too many cash blogs or anything. I asked some London live blogger the most he's ever lost and his answer was 4  rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao

Jesus Christ.

Yeh 50 in a day is pretty hard to do even these days.

Had a miraculous winning day on Tuesday. And then something big happened. On Weds Stars introduced what could be a giant game changer to the world of MTT SnG's. They've scrapped the $15 45 and 180's (which sucks a bit as the 45's was the only remaining game I ran ok in this year)
(https://i.gyazo.com/3ccb82de67b23fd89872e94a159e9c91.png)

..and have brought in $15 27-180man on-demands!! They're standard t1500 with a 25min late reg, game starts when 27 are regged and caps at 180 (although I don't think a single game has hit 180 yet), blind structure is that of a 180-man. The first day they were only rolling out another in the lobby once late reg had finished, but the next day they rolled out another one as soon as one kicked off and soon there was like 16+ games running!!

First thoughts were very exciting, but then you realise that basically what has been happening is that the 60-70 regs for every 180-man there was, are all facing each other in an endless amount of reg infested 60-90 mans!!! Then there's the issue of if you reg from the beginning you're huge % to be at a table full of just regs. So it's tough to say what is better, 18 games running of 95% reg packed 60-90 mans or 5-6 45/180's with more fish in them? I'm inclined to think the former really should be a better return, but who knows.

Also the payouts on the first day seemed a bit naff, but today I noticed they've changed them, however quite where Stars are gettting their feedback on this matter from I'm unsure as no rep is talking about it in any of the 2+2 threads, like they have done in the past. Oh and sharkscope isn't picking them at all either for some reason.

I've only played a handful as I've been making a few life changes. Today I bought a Herman Miller aeron chair, second hand, excellent condition off ebay for £270, they're nearly a grand brand new now. And have temporarily set up in the gf's spare room, positioning myself as best I can in accordance with my feng shiu kua number which is 5. Haven't got a solid connection yet as my wifi dongle is old and a bit iffy, so I've smaple 4-5 tabled some stuff, early signs are zero difference, still getting obliterated. yada, gfy to that

(https://i.gyazo.com/6a7f49575fd750bd69766534164d1ed9.png)

I thought you would be taller.

I'm 5,9.

I just received a bit of a shock. There I was grinding away when suddenly flops and boards were briefly blinded by...

(https://i.gyazo.com/36fd6d8c8b2efa8b78a6fa915c5152cb.png)

Eh????????  ;carlocitrone; ;carlocitrone; :dontask: ;dingdell; :)up

Wondering how this has happened when only a few weeks ago I'd been demoted to gold, then gotten back up to platinum, suddenly I'm past 100k veeps. I'm not sure how differently they allocate VPPs since the horrid changes (I think it's more per game since it's less rewarding now) but either way, there's no way if I was on course for 100k vpips should I be getting demoted a few weeks beforehand. Well it's a $500 bonus at least.

$500 is not to be sniffed at, a change of fortune perhaps?

Assuming you are going to stick at it, I really feel you need to take on board some of the advice on previous pages; number 1 is having the right mentality, approaching the game positively. Stop finding stats illustrating how badly you've ran - think about it, what does that actually achieve, asides from making you feel like crap? If you are going to analyse your game, focus on finding your weaknesses and strengths, then do less of one and more of the other. It has to be constructive, not 'I'm running 75% less than expected value' etc etc

Good luck 🙂

in accordance with my feng shiu kua number which is 5.


Deserves more love.

dont knock it till you have been there  mate

for ages i was convinced that my feng shiui kua number was 8.

then after thinking about it first thing every morning, examining it in great detail,worrying about it over months of sleepless nights,

i finally realised that it was all just a number 2

Ooh that was a bit silly billy getting your kua number wrong from a simple calculation  ;D

Looking at EV is a way to see luck is the reason I'm losing and not skill. Agreed, however, one should always keep ahead of their game, keep studying no matter what happens.

So since making a few changes in both surroundings and game play, things are looking a tad better.

(https://i.gyazo.com/3c20248b2701033ec8d21b64428a31ca.png)

Not included any $60's because they're a joke results wise and make up most of the amount I'm down overall, running terribly in those, or sats which are also a joke and mostly 4-max hypers.

I decided to cut down on the buy-in levels and amount of MTT's. Decided it's ok to be playing massively high variance if I've got the life roll behind me, but I haven't. Even on someone else's dime where you don't really need to fear ruin, it's still not a good idea to play games which you cannot volume a decent amount in order to maximise the chances of variance evening out. And as it just so happens, the small amount of $60+ games I've gotten in over quite a long period of time, are mostly responsible for my horrid losses. So I've cut out most of the hyper MTT's, the biggest reason for that, though, not being the variance, but the amount in which I was timing out in the feckers in critical late game spots. Have also cut down the $60 18's mostly cuz I haven't playing much mid/late night stuff which is the only time the run a tiny bit. But overall they just don't run enough. You could argue well if that's the case then the odd one here and there isn't going to ruin the profits in relation to the chance of cashing for 1,2,3 or $400. But when you look at it:
(https://i.gyazo.com/65f1989d906bccab85a92cba1298b166.png)

A 50bi downswing in them is pretty detrimental in the grand scheme of things...if they can't be volumed. So really it's only worth playing them if you're covered in life expenses. I need to stick to my bread and butter. You could argue that the $15 180's weren't bread and butter either cuz they also didn't run enough to even out variance faster. Maybe even the $8's didn't. 1000 of them (non-rebuys) played all year at 200 abi's down.

Well that should now change with the frequency in which these on-demands now run. Not sure what can be attained but during peak times I've seen as many as 18 running at once. I find it hard to imagine MTT only stables aren't having to handout subs or wages to players who are going months and months without winning. My stable asked for a portion of the MU back the other day, it's still another $3k or something to go til I'm back to break even, really can't see that being the case in the next couple weeks so I'll be having to ask to add more to the MU to live off.

The chair seems ok. Added padding to increase the lumbar support it gives. Not sure I'd say it's worth a grand brand new mind.

hey, what do you mean your stable asked for some of the mu back?

You sound like you work really hard and i'm glad to see you're tweaking things in your approach that is beginning to pay off. More stuff in this blog on things you've done to improve (and none on how bad you run :P) would be great!

Well after 3 reloads they're owed $4500 at least until I'm BE, so as I've made a few $ they've asked for bits back.

The blog will always have the bad times in it because it is my venting ground, not really a fairytale story, one thing I am is a realist.  Most of the posts are straight after a sesh when I'm pretty raging. I can put it down through the keyboard or take it out on the missus's face  ;nemesis; Nah it's better for my health.

Great post.

I love all the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Keep it coming.

For the final 20 working days until christmas, I told myself I'll do 10 hours a day in a massive bid to do something I've not come remotely close to doing before, and of course try to make back as much make-up as poss and hopefully be able to take some money for christmas presents and rent. Knowing there was probably 2% chance of me actually achieving that, I still thought it a good idea to say 10hrs and be unrealistic as it would at least maximise the amount of hours I actually do do. Monday gone I did 7 in one sitting, 10am til 5pm, was down almost a grand straight away and came back to -$150, Tuesday just 4hrs experiencing winner's tilt making $500, and yesterday 5.5 hours making $500. I was actually up $900 first sesh then started again and inevitably bricked a ton to knock half of it off. I've also been helping out the gf who's recently started a job debt collecting for Provident. The job looks potentially lucrative actually, I was offered one myself but probably wouldn't pass the credit check. Said I'd consider it. Interestingly I could probably do that and still get in 20+hrs of poker a week with huge effort. Hmmm

I've had a slight upturn in 180's, winning two $8's in a day then a third the next, first win in one of those since 1965 so I hit a run of them! However the trade off has come in the 18's, just huge lines of bricks in those, my overall ROI just looking pathetic and running consistently miles below day in day out. There is no evening out of anything, there never really has been, it's so fucking frustrating seeing the same bullshit red to green comparison every day.

The on-demands are deceptive, I feel I'm pwning the crap out of them, but along with 99% of all the other regs I've scoped, struggle to get even 10%. There's literally 2-3 regs from about 40 I've scoped who are doing well in them. Seems weird as 8-10% can be made in 14-16 reg 18-mans, so 20% should definitely be achievable in these 60-90-man jobs. Obviously still early days.

It does seem to be that repeating pattern, if fortune swings one way in a certain format, it'll plummet in the other, just cannot get a winning day across all formats, just an even, expected valuation of ness for a ness.

Monday, I think it was, I sattied into the Hot $82 which is quite early in the day and FT'd it. Funny thing was, I had like 1bb at bubble time of around 26 players, then went on one of those crazy winning three 5 way all-ins in a row streaks, always with the worst hand, then eventually bust with by far the best hand...in 9th. Winning this hand might've seen me $3k richer by this point in time https://www.boomplayer.com/21863662_AA7091F6C6 (https://www.boomplayer.com/21863662_AA7091F6C6)

Housebot evidence hand of the week https://www.boomplayer.com/21882981_FC9FE80B1F (https://www.boomplayer.com/21882981_FC9FE80B1F)

Sup Ragz,

Are you playing 180s mainly still and all other turbo SnGs?

Ive been encouraged to transition into MTTs recently this year from the stable I joined in June, I was reluctant at first thinking about the MU and months without cash but looking at the other players in the stable and how there printing money in MTTs especially the low stakes guys where I would be playing to start off made me change my mind and I went MTTs full time on November 5th, it was a relief playing MTTs with plenty of fish in the games compared to those reg on reg battles in turbo SnGs and every reg fighting over the odd rec player at the table.

I was even running them 180 team bets as well on 2+2 just to try make it fun again and give me motivation in them as I wasnt happy playing them.

My 1on1 coach who also used to play turbo 180 SnGs full time and now plays MTTs says "I think I was pretty depressed playing turbo SnGs day in day out the last few years playing them & now playing MTTs its much more fun again"

I totally agree with what he said there now im playing MTTs full time, although its only been like two months ive been in MTTs and I have not hit a DS/BE stretch yet I still think its the way forward knowing that the games are way more stable than turbo SnGs long term.

Do you not think the turbo format is crap these days too? everyone has push fold charts/calling charts/3b charts/defend charts/ICM charts/ ect ect, there is not a lot of edge anymore and there aint lots of post flop edge when your so short stacked late stage all the time and not seeing many flops ect, also the volume is not there anymore especially in the 180s.

With MTTs now im trying my best to play off peak with the small fields and softer players as its less variance but yeah this is still in progress trying to wake up early to play off peak morning games haha.

Anyways gl fella & nice blog btw ( I just stumbled upon it today while checking out this UK poker forum :P )

Cheers. Don't tell anyone in your team though will ya, don't want the Yanks finding us over here  :D :D :D

Well there's probably too many issues in everything you've said to cover really lol, but I still solidly feel $2/game is more than do-able in MTT SnG's, yet I seem to be taking a life time to achieve it on a consistent basis. This makes it hard to envisage MTT's being much better variance wise, not having much life roll to sit on anymore makes the thought of nothing for months (very possible in MTT's for anyone) too impractical.

That said it may be a line I have to end up going down but it will mean longer hours first of all, and secondly site combining. Hear lots of whines and moans still about the softwares of 888, party and so on and know it would be quite the task combining them all and others too. But it's something I'd be prepared to work on if I can't find happiness sooner or later.

But as I said, I'm convinced $2/game at least is still very doable in MTT SnG's. This is my garf since 10th November which was a date that I made a few changes to my game.

(https://i.gyazo.com/3b7690374bd2a15c8d0ece95bc0e105e.png)

It doesn't include $3r 180's as I'm unsure of the no. of rebuys covering that time as I've changed strategy on that recently. But needless to say; including the rebuys would increase the ROI slightly. And exlcuding horrid 4-max hyper sats as....just don't even go there.

I'm in no way putting it down to those changes though as it could be anything, simply running better due to my environment change (although it doesn't feel like I'm running any better whatsoever) or just plain coincidence....but I guess it's a pretty large % to say it could be down to said changes. Who knows.

The new On-Demand games have certainly seen old 180 volume increase dramatically, mostly due to smaller fields of all the 180 regs playing each other, but I still say >$2/game is achievable in those. If 8-10% is being reached in 14-17 reg 18-mans then certainly 20% should be doable in 70-100 mans. They're averaging around the 85 player mark I'd say.

(https://i.gyazo.com/c65e1a06fea336066adc82b159cb6828.png)

Better results than those ^ are definitely achievable though.

My problem is still volume at this time, two reasons for that. One, I've been ill with a stinking cough since November 26th when I went to Winter Wonderland, crammed into tubes sardine style all night, and since then this cough just will not shift. I never get coughs, like well over 10yrs since last one if not more, but since I've got one it just will not go. Six weeks now. It's the most irritating kind, where the spot of the lung that is aggravated I just can't hit it with the cough. This is causing excess straining and of course, headaches. Not easy to volume like this. I keep intending on eating as little as possible for as long as it takes, as fasting cures pretty much most stuff but that's also been real hard what with it being the season of CHOCOLATES EVERYWHERE ONE TURNS  ::) ::) ::) ::)

There's not really much to write home about as a 2016 summary, other than it was shit. 2017 goals are obviously to volume at least 2/3rds more than usual, preferably more than twice. And if I can progress well enough well then start playing more live, some of those 888 jobbies at Aspers and so forth. They  are obviously crushable to death playing nothing more than ABC poker, not even that just BC poker...just C poker would probably reap 50% ROi in small live stuff.

The usual 50% below for the year so far
(https://i.gyazo.com/b10f327e6a5529946abb45ee5c1b943b.png)

Gay hand from today https://www.boomplayer.com/22177217_783710917E

(https://i.gyazo.com/b1834ffbbf072a49a40b5a04c7317e2d.jpg)

My boy Rolo (miniature pinscher) in his funny sleeping position at the foot of the desk. He usually resides in a cage in the cold kitchen with an old biddy of a female (same breed) who's got a worse cough than me, so when he gets the chance to lay in the warm room and pester me for strokes he loves it  :D

It's funny when it comes to filtering stats. I will always look for filters to show I'm actually good, fighting to find a path through the runhell, and in other players' graphs I'll look for filters that make them look bad, to show they just run good  rotflmfao

Charlie Carrel just made YET ANOTHER million bucks coming 2nd in PCA $100k SHR. It sucked that neither stars blog or pokernews were reporting on hands, not sure why that was. I really wanted to see them as it was vs excellent players for a change, Dan Coleman and Jason Koon, secretly hoping Coleman would wipe the floor with my native sunrunner. Really hope it'll make tv.

So to boost my ego somewhat I'm gonna post this little number I filtered out. My last 1k $7-$30 18-man garf.

(https://i.gyazo.com/7718cc48598e9a72db34b924d2a110ce.png)

Sample schmample, but who cares. It's still an ROI I always believed is the achievable ceiling, but of course, even average 7%ers have at some time or other run even higher than this over a 1k sample, so it means very little. But I like to show off now and again  ;angel;

Results have been marred by typically terrible runnings in the On-demands, however. I can't get an accurate read of figures in them to post as both HM1 and 2 can't seem to sort out the different field sizes correctly.

98% loser of the day
(https://i.gyazo.com/16e00dca62d22b847d20c273c0eb566a.png)

Almost every single playing day so far this year has been absolutely identical!! 50 bricks til allowing me a cash, $500-$800 down in the first few hours, then come back to break even or a couple hundred up at the last. This is January's amaya patternisation. Another hugely noticable pattern has been immense domination nation. Every hand where I'm jamming extremely wide or rcing a shorty, and they're calling off beyond marginally, say with something like Q6s in a spot where it's debatably profitable, literally 100% of those have I've been dominated, so I'll have 96 in that spot. This is the algorithm pattern for the month. It will switch Feb 1st, it always does. Different game every month :D


So despite the usual constant bullshit...
(https://i.gyazo.com/84775efddf66336e22c7df5f8687c272.png)




...it's quite amazing that I'm up. Still not MTTing much, got deepish in Hot $22 yesterday but couldn't get the break. Tbh I think the turbo schedule for MTT's now is utterly appalling, only the Hots are worth playing. Not a huge fan of KO's cuz they require more attention being paid to notice when someone's short to compete for the KO with marginal holdings and such like. Wouldn't mind trying 888 and Party reg speed small field MTT's mixed in but don't relish the tables popping up along side Stars problems along with HUD issues too.

Checked out my local Genting schedule for the new year and it appears they've changed things somewhat. What used to be a £60 game every Sunday with a £100 on every 3rd one of the month, this has changed to a £300 £10k gtee every thrid Sunday!!  :o :o :o Find it hard to see they'll get the required 33 players to turn out every week but they're obviously confident they will. Tempted to ask my stable if they'd be interested backing me for them but I highly doubt they would, for whatever reasons. A Genting £300 would be similar to something like a $3 tourney on Stars I feel sur eof that lol. They've also introduced a third Friday of every month game too, however, with a more managable £75 buy-in. Interesting.

Well it's time for some barging.

Here I am just 30c/game off of my first ever diamond star  :o :o :o :o
(https://i.gyazo.com/2b5af81baa191c61033fcb0b16706c6c.png)

Also 4th richest in the country  rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao
(https://i.gyazo.com/aa5f125b17f3f54bd515de3b01195d1a.png)

That looks alot more glamourous than it actually is as it takes very little to be up there so early on in the year. But still, best start in four years let's hope it continues. glux

Keep it up mate

Thanks.

Well I knew I should've kept my bragmouth shut, as the inevitable happened yesterday. 50 bi's gone in 60 games lol. I could go more into detail but you know the old rigmarole by now. The main aim is to volume and if we can maintain at least $2/game then all should be well with the world...  :-X ;dingdell;

Stars personal rigmeister for my accont is now firmly back in the PNG seat following his extended hiatus over xmas, obviously prediciting I'd not get cracking quite so soon. Grand down since 18th.

AIPF's
(https://i.gyazo.com/aaff7aac56fb018701cf15a58de97bb8.png)

18's AIPF's over $10 for the year.
(https://i.gyazo.com/b982cbee0133c5f3abc9f164ed7b991a.png)

It gets altogether rather fucking boring tbh.

Thats it now Ragz you have took enough $$ out of SnGs over the years and now your account has been given a straight red card  :redcard: only new players can win in the SnGs to push you old Regs into MTTs   ::)

Funny you should say that about "new players" as there's THREE new sn's suddenly shown up multi tabling 18's and 18's ONLY, since January 1st that I've never heard from adam, who have both Stars search and sharkscope blocked. Either multi-accounters or housebots. Although why you would make a new account at the start of the year I don't know, as that is max suspicious looking.

Things haven't changed still, solid runterri non stop each day at the moment. More so in the 18's, and typically the highest buy-ins the $30's (gave up on the 60's can't volume them enough to even things out), I mean it's indescribable how often I'm running into AA literally everywhere! So I thought I'd do a bit of data digging to see just how often you're meant to run into it. HEM have a winning hand in the hand view columns so you can filter to see all times opponent has AA. Going back analysing sept, oct, nov and dec, I can conclude one goes to showdown and loses vs AA around once every 500 hands. That's how the last 4 or so months have averaged out. Since the 18th of Jan (start of latest PNG scandal) that has flown down to once every 333 hands, and the past two days alone across 7,000 hands has been once every 250 hands...DOUBLE the usual amount. So really it's quite amazing that I'm not down alot more. As it stands I'm actually just $300 off what was my peak. That would've been made up for had it not been for the following absolute spew off into...yep u guessed it... A fucking A.

I'd led throughout the FT of a $3r 180 with $480 up top and found myself in a huge dominating position right here.

(https://i.gyazo.com/7cc3aaac2125f0573ccd7d76cd3ce9a2.png)

joquanezz is a reg, and drunken.sp I don't know as a reg but is...Brazilian. That generally means wtf's ICM?? A few orbits see both are raising every button and every unopened sb, so they're not shy of a chip leader. Joquanezz's button stat from a decent sample is 65% open, so when I'm close to being overtaken for the chip lead, here it's imperative for that not to happen as these idiots will go on shoving atc for 500 bbs and me being of sound ICM knowledge will then be handcuffed, I can't allow that to happen.

(https://i.gyazo.com/767aea182e919ac84a9c1c3dfc60d2e4.png)

As you can see, 65% button raiser means AA only ever. Few hands later with 5bbs bvb, bang into KK.

Here's how you go from sitting pretty to bubbled in 500 18-mans in a row. Just insane how much this happens, I should be up another 10 grand in $30-$60's the past year MINIMUM.

https://www.boomplayer.com/22514909_673F9F073A

https://www.boomplayer.com/22514913_FC11342FD2

Nothing particularly positive to report, still running permanently crap in 18's, not so bad in the OD's, over all in those I have run decent it must be said. Currently suffering from my worst sciatica flare up in around 18 months as well, for absolutely no reason. Same chair all day same bed all night, diet is shite admittedly but it hasn't changed, not pulled anything, not over stretched. I cba going into the details of my entire run bad life tbh. Instead, enjoy how to get max value from K high.

https://www.boomplayer.com/22645991_2B24DA0459

Suppose it's been a fair old while.

How are things going? Well, as expected a mix of good n bad. Aside from the usual volume fails  ::) ::) ::) I'm doing ok in on demands and 180's, but the 18's are still excruciatingly frustrating. Running a consistent 10bb/100 yet still only 5-6% ROI.
(https://i.gyazo.com/d393b4a6bd31f4447a7acaed9e2a0c69.png)



10bb/100 does not equate to that ROI at all, and I still firmly believe I'm the best and should have a real ROI of 10+% in 18-mans, across any level. When I see the epic mistakes all players in the game with the highest current ROI's are making, I know I'm the epicest most bestest on the flat earth, factoid. Yh real arrogant...facts can often seem that way. I mean I've been on 5000 game 14-16% ROI runs in 18's with no more than 8bb/100. Here's the reason for gross results.

(https://i.gyazo.com/b7cd79f6f66aca2e704607a89ecd6c17.png)


Constantly unlucky at crucial BB levels, where most of the bubble stuff happens. This is no small sample though, as going back more than 3 years shows the exact same thing.

(https://i.gyazo.com/b1aa25e9eb7c91f365ea13528d5b5b08.png)




LOL 160% below EV at critical BB level over 90,000 hands. That's just over 10,000 games. My ROI over this sample is all of 5% at 9bb/100, again doesn't even comfuckingpute. If you want to make the lame argument that "well you must be getting lucky in the earlier blind levels and you wouldn't ordinarily have so many stacks at bubble stage so wouldn't change if it all evened out" garbage then go ahead and remain a bit unintelligent. It's pretty obvious that running good at an irrelvant stage that involves no making of money (only stack building) is gigantically outweighed by running like a totally jew controlled fraggle at critical stage, just a no brainer.

Still, when you break down EVness into the much smaller brackets of BB levels and number of players etc, you can see just how sick variance can be over a gigantic sample of games. Becuase all those samples broken down by level become alot smaller, so it's gonna take hundreds of thousands of games potentially to even out at each level.

Check this variance calculator. Using an average ROI of 8% (insulting myself there) over a 10,000 game sample of $15 18-mans, running 10,000 simulations.
(https://i.gyazo.com/e1dd308f1e7e9edbb9bc0945cfd7c9c7.png)



JFC!!!!!!!!!!  :o :o :o :o :o With an average 8% ROi we could be totally stone break even or at a whopping 16% ROI!!! If we up the sample to 50,000 games, it becomes 4% ROI the worst and 12% the best.
This info alone is almost enough to make a human simply give up on this bullshit system. As much as a variance calculator is supposed to accurately work probablities out, you can safely say that 95% of the time using REAL CARDS MADE OF PHYSICAL MATERIALS DEALT BY A HOPEFULLY NON RIGGING HUMAN the line will be pretty straight down the expected value road.


On a brighter note, it looks like some EV is finally being returned to me in the higher field SNG's.
(https://i.gyazo.com/2a28bde63d4600a00d7cd9c4d231430b.png)


Swings n roundabouts, or in Stars case, Saturn rings and blindfolded 20 mile deep bungee jumps.

In life news I recently acquired some CBD oil after months of researching this extremely complicated subject. Whilst it's the legal THCless kind, I have noticed a decent effect. Sleeping like a coma and feeling a little more....stabilised shall we say. Hopefully it kills all the bad health cells. I am hoping to delve deeper in to getting the stronger slightly less legal type at some point in the future. The real deal itself over here can be obtained for an extortionate £50 a gram...so making your own is the only real viable solution long term.

Also got the lil 125 on the road finally, still got some severe running issues though, 2-strokes are a real ahole to set up, need it ready for around 3 weeks in time for our jolly boys outing (no doubt slow trundle/breaking down adventure) to Yarmouth. Worth the lulz I guess.
(https://i.gyazo.com/8c26b345132181c1246c0172648df11e.png)
(https://i.gyazo.com/73f83fd861767f90202e81fcaa646deb.jpg)

Made no headway at all, rather skint atm, lots of rent owed. Another cracking month of aipfs in sng's...

(https://i.gyazo.com/88d8b92470e6950355e1e17f78b4b0cc.png)


Here's the whole year bb400-1200 in sng's

(https://i.gyazo.com/6f7e600ae50390d0597e3daecf031526.png)

Had our lads biker type holiday the weekend just gone. Was great fun on the ride up, despite horrific weather forecast, thankfully it was wrong as usual. But of course things were going just a little to well so as I started my bike on the morning of the last day, the forces decided to just cut my fucking spark off! Tested everything we could which seemed to point towards a buggered ignition box (random blowing of such things is rarer than winning a 90% favourite river on Stars) so I was left to sit around waiting to be recovered while the other 3 rode home in blissful sun.

(https://i.gyazo.com/f5cb5e6a8c47ad4289ab95516508ae55.jpg)


Went out in pedal karts which was funny.
(https://i.gyazo.com/e60b8c5189246bc3453a1e998e87300f.png)


(https://i.gyazo.com/9f5896f5ef5015cb5677dd1958683288.png)

Wish I knew which ***** alien I belong to so I could kick his face in.

(http://i1299.photobucket.com/albums/ag66/plainreddog/2017-05-18%2008.23.00_zpstuddf2zc.png) (http://s1299.photobucket.com/user/plainreddog/media/2017-05-18%2008.23.00_zpstuddf2zc.png.html)

Another stunning 8 hours.

(https://i.gyazo.com/c0df18c17c764e52457e0d9b065c63d9.png)


Had my first reload since October today, coming down from $2300, 160 abi's.

I recently discovered bencb789's website Rasieyouredge.com. I'd heard of him some time ago, saw off Fedor HU in that massive WCOOP HR or whatever it was and was HS hyper leader for however many years. What stuck in my mind was that no one knows his surname. A little digging found that quite easily, no Hendon Mob though, well just 3 small cashes from 2015 so obviously not as crazy about live as the other sunrunners.
On his site are some free vids so after watching and listening to them I became a fan, kind of the opposite of my opinion of Fedor and Carrel. This guy seems to have a clue. So ironically I found myself in a hand vs him today.

PokerStars Hand #170584726768: Tournament #1912022464, $40+$4 USD Hold'em No Limit - Level XI (150/300) - 2017/05/18 16:54:07 WET [2017/05/18 11:54:07 ET]
Table '1912022464 42' 9-max Seat #7 is the button
Seat 1: TakiToRivers (17789 in chips)
Seat 2: Quaelgeist (8512 in chips)
Seat 3: RagztoRiches (5666 in chips)
Seat 4: DSMaverick (7597 in chips)
Seat 5: Seiji Takeda (5706 in chips)
Seat 6: Fakemaks (6060 in chips)
Seat 7: mypokerf (19942 in chips)
Seat 8: lil-kull (4384 in chips)
Seat 9: bencb789 (11191 in chips)
TakiToRivers: posts the ante 40
Quaelgeist: posts the ante 40
RagztoRiches: posts the ante 40
DSMaverick: posts the ante 40
Seiji Takeda: posts the ante 40
Fakemaks: posts the ante 40
mypokerf: posts the ante 40
lil-kull: posts the ante 40
bencb789: posts the ante 40
lil-kull: posts small blind 150
bencb789: posts big blind 300
** HOLE CARDS **
Dealt to RagztoRiches [Qh Ad]
TakiToRivers: folds
Quaelgeist: folds
RagztoRiches: raises 300 to 600
DSMaverick: folds
Seiji Takeda: folds
Fakemaks: folds
mypokerf: folds
lil-kull: folds
bencb789: calls 300
** FLOP ** [Qs Aspades 4c]
bencb789: checks
RagztoRiches: checks
** TURN ** [Qs Aspades 4c] [6d]
bencb789: bets 1296
RagztoRiches: calls 1296
** RIVER ** [Qs Aspades 4c 6d] [7s]
bencb789: bets 4496
RagztoRiches: calls 3730 and is all-in
Uncalled bet (766) returned to bencb789
** SHOW DOWN **
bencb789: shows [Ac 4d] (two pair, Aces and Fours)
RagztoRiches: shows [Qh Ad] (two pair, Aces and Queens)
RagztoRiches collected 11762 from pot
** SUMMARY **
Total pot 11762 | Rake 0
Board [Qs Aspades 4c 6d 7s]
Seat 1: TakiToRivers folded before Flop (didn't


I obviously snap expect to see spades the way I'm running but no, miracles do happen. Soon bust a few hands later rejamming into a raise/call/call vs a 75% cutoff raiser with JJ+ only. The good old Stars/HoldemManager allegiance at work as usual there.

Some hands of humour.

https://www.boomplayer.com/23919747_A793D863E1
https://www.boomplayer.com/23919479_D5F73ADFF8
https://www.boomplayer.com/23881567_C6C94AD320

The last one had AhQh, not sure why it doesn't show it. 

WELL

After hearing of Pokerstars final word on rewarding hard working players of the site being a firm "hahahha go fuck yourselves idiots" my stable boss advised I give WPN netowrk a try, which is all about a rake race everyone battles for with the top 3-4 places on the leaderboard able to profit $1250 a week. Games primarily being 9man, reg and turbo, some hyper, some hyper and turbo 6max, and some On Demand MTT SnG's which go off when 10 players have regged and average around 21 players per field. There's 3 happy hours a day where points are doubled, and these are the times games go off enough to the point you can get up to 30 tables. Timebanks are much longer than Stars which make this alot more possible. But if you hit 32 tables at once, the softrware goes ape shit and you can't even rebootr the pc without dumping it at the switch. That's been the least of the issues though, having only done that once, I've been having to set up table tamer to make mass tabling possible, and there's been daily crashes mid flow which have probably lost me a good few quid along the way. But it's settling down now finally.

I did my research on sharkscope to find that 9mans are more than beatable, my stable boss himself making 10% in them lifetime (from 2016 basically), abi $18 or so. But for some odd reason, couldn't find anyone profitable in the on demands, which I found rather odd. Yes the rake is slightly higher than Stars, but only by about 2%, so realistically around 10% ROI after all rakes paid should be possible. However 90% of all the fields are always the same regs, who really do rather get right on your tits. Most of these regs are classic old style 12/10, 11/8 type stats, with lowish 3bets, however it's been utterly remarkable for me who's seen them defend 100%, 3bet 100%, bink every flop 100%, whilst every day I'm still reading these nitty huid stats thinking EHHHHHHHHH?????????? Something serioulsy not right here!! But no indeed, it's just the same old bullshit card distribution happening to me, like beyond belief.

The first two days of tinkering, crashing and burning 80 times, but getting in a few games, saw me win $500 in no time. Boards were running out almost as if a real deck of cards would, hardly any river rapes which was jolly encouraging. Alas just a few days in, ACR obviously phoned up Stars to ask them if they recognised my email and KERRBLAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!! it's been death ever since.

Made a few quid on the leaderboard but in order to reach top spot you need to be able to play the $50 turbos and praps some $80/$100 hypers which I'm not permitted to play. But the second tier on the rake race is $500, and this can be achieved in less than 40hrs. On top of that there's 27% rakeback which is about $100 a week at that volume. So if only making the $500, that's $600 a week profit if break even. However better than break even is possible as already stated. If we call it a stingy 50c/game that should be another $200 or so, so maybe $800 a week. That's the theory, take into account the rig and it's goodnight Vienna.

These are turbo 9mans so far, abi $18.50.
(https://i.gyazo.com/5afd2543d6eed710fb12049ba7b28d5d.png)



How fucking ironic once again that this is due to all bad luck being smack on the bubble.
(https://i.gyazo.com/bdc0f93b307df74b05a084bf17490c18.png)




When we compare the same thing with all the 6m hypers I have in HM2 for Stars, but 3 players being the bubble this time.... wow what a coincidence!!!
(https://i.gyazo.com/dca4b5abb4340d99015dd4eaa932abe9.png)


Still have one of the highest bb/100's out there for SnG's I believe yet still, stiiiiiiiiiiiiiiill can't make a bastard penny!


Let's check the on demands then. AIPF's.
(https://i.gyazo.com/08cfdd6fcd167d67145a0a2267f0d732.png)
 ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep; ;sleep;

All perfectly random though isn't it. I mean 15years of it, what more do you need? I saw the video that Lee Jones made about how the shuffle works for Stars only recently. It's from 2014 just after AMaya tookover, coincidentally  ::) ::) ::) ::) and I find it hilarious. He stands there telling us some words and they use a bit of CGI to back it up a little bit. Utter load of crap.

Still, the positives from this site. It's much more like having a boss forcing you to work. The happy hours are crucial to make the leaderboard so this is motivating me to be on almost 8hrs a day. In the UK the happy hours are 4-5pm, 8-9pm and 4-5am (weekdays only), I play all three. But aswell as playing the higher stakes, another critical thing to make the top is playing weekends, Sat and Sun nights specifially, as this is when the fish come out. But again being a site that allows Americans means it's like 4am peak times etc.

My stable boss says he does basically 40-50hrs from Sat til Tues night, can take the rest of the week off and make about 2 grand a week. YH MATE, I'LL TAKE JUST A PROFITABLE WEEK AND LOSE THIS 90% LOSING DAYS BULLSIT IM NOT GREEDY!!!  rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao rotflmfao

Hi

What site do you play on WPN? 

Can you just pay sterling or is it all dollars/bitcoin?   I want to try and minimise transaction fees.

I won't be treading on your shoes, just a lot of the O8 action has moved there.

FWIW diamond stars are way easier if you play mixed games.  Way easier than profit anyway.

ACR, I was transferred money from my backer so no idea.

Fraid it's come to the end of the line. Non stop bullying of my account has forced me to find a real job finally. I've a few half decent projects in the pipeline so maybe it's for the best.

This has been 4 weeks at WPN.
(https://i.gyazo.com/bf18f7232f5d61036c108750119be614.png)

Actual correct accurate manually entered into HM2 money graph. That $2000 difference is massive with $650 a week in rakeback/winnings on top of it. 46 hours and 600 games this week which is huge for me, for nothing.

See how similar the graphs are here from Stars to ACR for all in pre flops at critical stage BB levels for the respective sites.

Stars
(https://i.gyazo.com/435c62d65ee38566fa584add50baed83.png)




Just 4 weeks of ACR
(https://i.gyazo.com/ab03101955aa4a53b9b99a5909b0d30d.png)

There is physically nothing I can do, literally not one single shove in any late position ever ever gets through without top 5-8% hand waiting usually in the BB. Yeeeeeeeeeeears of it...but particularly impossible the past 3 months. If any logical thinking person thinks that bullshit is remotely random then I'd seriously question your thinking. Perhaps it doesn't happen for your account, perhaps it really is just me, and maybe a few others who haven't documented it or lasted the nigh on 15yrs I did to realise they were cyber raped.

Either way something's forcing me out, don't know what it is, but something is. Ta taa

Well I'm still here. Somehow.

I don't even dare look at my actual sharkscope graph for last year as I know it's horrific. Got up to at least 500 abi's down, that being around 300 SnG and 200 MTT.

(https://i.gyazo.com/5f41051179f27943cc5dfad9067fef9b.png)


So the above graph is chip ev for all of last year, pokerstars and then WPN came into the mix from 6th July. All SnG's except 180-mans, every game starting with maximum t1500. Worst poker year of my life, utterly soul destroying. Not many signs of anything different so far this year either.

What is different, however, is my effort, at least for the first 7 days so far  :D I reached 40hrs by Friday for actually the first time in my life, and proceeded to make it 61 hours by Sunday night, nigh on 1000 games for the week. Had also made a decent amount until the inevitable Sunday white wash, which saw me running into aipf AA no fewer than 30 times, I mean it was beyond hilarious to behold.

Anyway the main focus is on WPN, the rake race. I made a $500 leaderboard week like once the whole time in '17, so most weeks just hitting the $125...which is just a complete waste of time. You can't win on there, plain old poker wise, so it's pointless bothering unless you're getting at LEAST the $500. And with the amount of make-up I'm in, that's also pointless.

I've scoped the top boys who are up there most weeks and they range from about 2-3 actual winners at no more than 50c/game, to the worst types being around -$17k on the year. When you make the $1250 LB a week, which is basically 1st, 2nd or 3rd, you're also looking at anything from $500 to $1k ordinary rakeback on top of that, so if we say on average these regs are top 3 weeks out of 4, with $750 rb a week on top of the $1250 LB prize, you're looking at $72,000 a year, minus $20k losses if you're the absolute worst and run like a total c**t lifetime like I do, worst case is $50k. But I like to think I could break even long term, specially as I'm sussing more about these muvvers and tweaking stuff here and there, couple that with the miracle of actually running anywhere close to ev one day, should mean break even MINIMUM. The 2-3 guys winning long term, being rickybooby (Jason Kobe) and a guy called gcone53, well I can only imagine they're sunrunners, but it is interesting to note they are actually two of the nittiest of all the regs.

The hours are painful, 4pm, 8pm and 4am happy hours for double rake points. And weekends are absolute mandatory if you were to wanna go for the $1250. Problem is I can't play over $30, which i do strongly disgree with becuz all the regs are exactly same as they are in the $10, let alone the $30's!!! But backer insists one or two fellas achieve $1250 weeks not playing over $30. Man they must never leave the chair to do that!!

I'm mixing Stars inbetween it all and this week, start of a new year obv, I achieved my first ever >40hr week  (1000 games) :D :D :D So a successful resolution you could say. Funny thing is it wasn't just >40, it was 61!!!! What's even weirder is I've barely noticed that I've been in the chair 9hrs a day!! And I believe the reasons for this are due to a few factors. Vaping CBD products, drinking indian (ashwaghanda) and siberian ginseng, hydrogen peroxide drops in water, mixing this up through the week, my mental energy levels at least are way less lethargic. I'm not even tired after being up 16-18hrs, usually I'd be napping all friggin day!!

Still that doesn't help with motivation when it comes to bad runnings, and the daily monotonous pattern of my account which is basically; build me loads of stacks early just to fuck me over at bubble/min cash stage.  I am categorically, no question, the world record holder of chip leader to bubble c**t in every format of game I play. I would even go so far as to say anyone who volumes 100000000x more than me, I still crush all of u in that dept. I could twitch my days and am fairly certain I'd get an audience loving the comedy of watching the relentless beats one after the other and the hilarity of how I react on cam. Fairly sure I'd be come another youtube poop laughing stock sensation in no time. Don't think so  :D :D :D



Some humerous shit

https://www.boomplayer.com/26488733_F52B07D749 this wasn't a timeout, was a rec.

https://www.boomplayer.com/26458824_8EC0243D0A  wp twat, thought I was dead af, first hand at the table. Great instinct  ::)

https://www.boomplayer.com/26440878_43117757EF the higher the stake, the whalier the players.

https://www.boomplayer.com/26255902_2A3DE33450 kys

https://www.boomplayer.com/26211493_DBEDE930D4 change one 80% equity after the flop outcome per game in the past two years and I'm a bajllionaire.

https://www.boomplayer.com/26155720_C789B0D5EC miracle hold of the past fifteen years.

https://www.boomplayer.com/25966783_5BE7EA5FCF  Aspades Ks Qs Js Ts

https://www.boomplayer.com/25511852_CC480D19C9 no one has the  8h algorithm fail. Someone got sacked that day.

https://www.boomplayer.com/25441452_DB3E153A1A I smell dung.

GL for 2018 all  ;pokergods;

Surely just eating and drinking healthily is going to be way better than drinking hydrogen peroxide?   

Massively this. Sleeping well, eating well, exercising regularly and drinking water surely the nut combo?

Hydrogen peroxide? This stuff?

(https://4.bp.blogspot.com/_sXI8Dr0DFV0/RkkrqOywEJI/AAAAAAAAAIU/D6FtMVLCTZs/s320/ppitt298.jpg)

First I've heard of this. Sounds completely bonkers.

Is the idea that it'll generate more oxygen in your bloodstream, so making you feel more alert? Won't that also increase the risk of oxygen bubbles, clots and embolism?

Happy to apologise if there's a Lancet article! Just sounds incredible to me.

Some health-folk on this forum. Hopefully one of them has a more accurate view than my lay reactionaryism.

Glad to hear you're feeling well, tho. Good luck for the year ahead.

I'm surprised more people don't follow the dream to be your own boss and play poker for a living

The key to health is joe public testimonial, not white coat allopathic propaganda. cheer

Last time I'll mention the Dunning Kruger Effect, other than perhaps once on the politics thread. Can't let the Hydrogen Peroxide thing go by without it though. It is about the most perfect example you could think of. Have a look on Rational Wiki, it's a great article.

Even I'm thinking about sacking off my 40hrs as my old man's office lackey, so I can get back to those MTTs :D

Well if  you need more encouragment, allow me.

So in the 7 or so months I've played on wpn I've never dropped more than probably $400. Bearing in mind this is majority $20-$30 9 reg 9-mans, and 6 reg 6max, on a network in which you cannot win due to rake (but you obv make it all in rb and lb winnings), this is a surprising feat. Considering my 500bi downswing on Stars has come from much fisher games. I've seen people in the past say "I play better v regs than fish" and yes it is indeed laughable. But the fact remains, I've always made my money (distant memory now) in heavily reg packed games and been utterly obliterated on heavy fish days.

So this week I decided to go hell for leather and did the weekend grind, which is essential to set up a lead for the week's happy hours, then as long as you don't miss a happy, you can't be caught.  It started with the usual top 4 who play $100 hypers (which I can't play) and all sorts getting ahead, so it seems I'd be fecked from the off. But I had a great Friday night and after they topped the bank with previous week's LB winnngs of $500, I was sitting finally break even again for the first time since June.

Saturday, 3 of the top 4 regs didn't even bother to show, wow!! So I did a good 9hr grind, and got my way up to 3rd spot. But guess what, got massively crushed to death, dropped a grand. Went at it again Sunday and today, and guess what.

(https://i.gyazo.com/70fbb25acb0b4d23efc295a057b06d4c.png)


 :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D :D


Simply unfathomable distribution of cards beyond anyone's wildest imagination. 7 months never dropping an amount more than what I'll get back in rb, until the very day I go for top payouts and blaaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmm. Truly random I say. Back to square ***** all over again.

Great reading but why on earth do you put yourself through so much torture, go play golf (or anything else apart from poker) and enjoy life before it's too late.

Do you not think this is a clear case of tilt?

Once you were past the most you’d ever lost by 2x do you really think you were playing 100% optimum unless you were superhuman i’d say this was impossible.

Why would he want to work for a living?

Gotta be better for his general wellbeing.

Thought I was being sarcastic enough not to need an emoji :D

Lol, always need an emoji Marky,  :blonde:

I think most of us have asked the same question for a year or so  :D

Kind of what I was getting at.  All these alternative things you do supposedly make you feel better, but the writing doesn't suggest happiness.  I accept diagnosing off bulletin board posts when I am not a doctor, so could be way way wrong on this.

Hydrogen Peroxide tho. 

Hey Ragz.

about 5 years ago when I was playing online I ad a big stretch of significant $ under EV. This was basically run good in small samples at biggest stakes yadayadayada but man did it effect my mentality so so badly. Was chatting 1 day with Gavz who said he turned his ev off his hem for over a year and was best thing he ever did.

I did the same and honestly it was amazing I effectively just disregarded it as a metric for 14 months (eventually succumbed after a run good period at 25/50 wanted to see how + I was lol)

If it affects your mindset as bad as it did mine, and no offence but it certainly seems too, in all your posts it'mostly about how under EV you are, obviously you've not been lucky but you have spent a lot of time on the EV moan and I'm sure you could have spent  that time in a more profitable and effective way.

I propose this to You,

Pick a charity, I'll donate £500 if you go 3 whole months of decent volume without looking at the EV, but if you succumb you have to donate £50 every time you look.

Could be a game changer!

What a lovely offer Dave, you are a top man.

i agree, just hope his mrs doesnt see this then realise she got a package deal to benidorm for their honeymoon instead of 2 weeks in the maldives!

Can't stand golf.

(https://i.gyazo.com/430a2464ea78d8d23d0bfe9ee3fdce15.png)


Another 5 grand spunked for 250 abi's in not even hyper, but turbo and reg speed STT's. Just lollier each and every day. Yes I play optimally at all times, my elite evbb/100 tells me this. robot shoving is fucking easy, winning a 99/1 isn't.

Ragz your post this morning caused some problems, errors on the site and slow loading

I have split it off in case you wondered where it is

might be your use of 3,542 smilies in the post!

I am going to repost the content for you minus graph and "extras"

the post content was

"Just got 5th in the Bigger 55. Which was agonising, of course. Goes without saying right?

FT bubble, for the big chip lead. https://www.boomplayer.com/26867050_76D9FD9EA2

FT, vs the same guy who should no longer be there. I'm CL at this point https://www.boomplayer.com/26867126_8D4B177FCE

Then later on, after what felt like a 10hr 6 handed. EXACT SAME GUY, EXACT SAME POSITIONS. https://www.boomplayer.com/26867249_F57D923739

And yes, he was a reg, whole FT was full of regs, 3/4/5/6b folding all over the place, these are both extremely standard get ins. And for me, extremely standard outcomes."