The Best In The Business

[DMorgan]

Toon Ante

[bagel]

who gives a buck

[bagel]

bowl$toroll$

[edgascoigne]

Stake Roll

[KingPush]

Stakin chips

[Oxford_HRV]

Burn1Turn1

[bagel]

youkippers.com

[Tractor]

thetideiswithus.com

[rfgqqabc]

What do you need a team name for? GIQ.

[Eso Kral]

GIQ.com

[pleno1]

What do you need a team name for? GIQ.

It's a super competitive business. There's about 6 really good competitors out there and we want to be the best. Need a website better than them, a business model better than theme, coaches better than them and overall a brand better than them to make it into a really successful company. We can ofc just stake and coach guys over skype but that's super lazy/unimaginative and would mean we would really struggle to maximise our potential.

Take pocarr for example if they didn't have a website/name you'd know nothing about them. Let's take zimas stable now who may be a direct competition for is, players will choose to apply to one or the other, we need to make sure we stand our better than they do in all aspects.

Having a company name seems super standard and suggesting to giq doesn't make any sense to me.

In terms of business have really enjoyed working with the bar, the way that we work is separated into 4 ways (there is 4 of us)

One guy is very hands on in the bar, helping all operational things, literally working/managaing in the bar and generally working one on one with the staff and finding issues from previous management and trying to optimise them

The second guy is working on contracts, a lot of the big companies have ran out of budgets but they get fresh budgets in January. He is setting up meetings with the companies and getting new liquor/good deals

My role is very hands off, I'm giving full freedom for the creative side of things and am the "ideas" guy behind new concepts and ideas for the bar. Bars in Hungaru are generally very old school, people go to drink and there's not much else going on, every day I think of one or two little things and send them to the guys then at the end of the week we all meet up and discuss the ideas. Just very little things can make a big difference in the long term.

One thing that I actually got from dtd is sighting in through facebook when they connect to our internet. It's a really clever way and I'm actually thinking of branching out to the top 5 hostels and paying their internet for 1 year. Basically we pay 20x5 a month so 1200/year and we supply the Internet for the 5 biggest hostels around Bidapest (budapest is a hugely dominated hostel city) their guests will log on via facebook and "check in" not only does it strongly help them choose to come to our bar a drink, it gives us good relationship with the hostels as they have every bar in budapest wanting their business (although most are not proactive at all) and thirdly if people always see friends mentioning the bar then next time they are in budapest maybe they think about coming too. For example this week if everybody was checking into a bar in pragei if I was going for a drink of likely at least think about it. For 1200 euros its a great experiment anyway for us. Of its successful maybe we branch out even further with restaurants close by etc.

We're in the process of coming up with a new concept for the whole bar. We have 3 floors and a vip room (sounds a lot/big but it's not so big) and we have to decide which route we will go down, perhaps the sports route, perhaps the Irish route, perhaps a different concept on each floor blending in so we don't exclude anybody, it's all really exciting.

You can probably tell by the way I'm writong I'm really enjoying the whole thing. Working very hands off for 5 days a week and then coming for meetings 2 days a week works really well for me. The fourth guy in the venture is basically the guy who oversees everything and understands where we are going wrong, when ideas are too ambitious, when things are costing too much etc he's a really experienced businessman and will teach me a lot over the next year.

Will probably update monthly or so on the progress.

[rfgqqabc]

Its not like there are 100s of horses applying for backing every day that you actually desire. Afaik your model is basically the complete opposite of Pocarrr's who seem to largely back small stakes players and need a huge amount of volume to work as a business whereas your focusing much more on higher stake players and improving them. These guys are few in number and probably on the decline now, so spending x on branding and a site etc in order to get applicants (I presume this is what the brand is for) isn't as important as having a good reputation within the community. Everyone in the community has the standard jokes about insta marking pocarr unknowns as fish, and they made it even easier for me by making their good players use pocarr elite avatars. Establishing some sort of team name/stable name is good for morale but putting so much effort into trying to get x number of applicants seems silly. You'll know the figures better than me but if you got 100 applicants and took on 10, how many do you think out of the next 1000 applicants will you want to choose, bearing in mind most of the guys you will want are either a) already backed or b) winning players anyway. If I wanted to get staked I'd be ask around and see what my friends had to say about the various groups, rather than looking at the websites. A shit website would be a turn off but if that stable provided the best service in regards to the financial/coaching/mentoring side than this would be the most important thing, fk how shiny it all is. I also imagine most people looking for backing email as many groups as possible, so I don't see how having a better "brand" than x stable gives you a USP, just higher costs.

GIQ was more me cringing at a bunch of MedSteakRare avvys going about the high stakes world. Which seems awful for business too btw.

[pleno1]

We need to have the website because that's where everything will be stored/managed. All coaching sessions we ever do will be recorded and put on the site, we will make private videos and put them on the site, players will make videos and put them on the site, we will have a forum that will be active between us etc. I've been staked before and basically other people have 1 session a week which you try to turn upto. Very difficultir player progression having a skype chat and then a weekly session which you can't rewatch

We will have (in our opinion) the best training videos for poker because of who will be making them and that we don't mind giving stuff out that other people will hold back on in runitonce etc


So the whole business model is we want to have a very good functioning website, as not only does it give is an advantage over other stables in terms of what we offer but it also massively helps our player development. Additionally it helps us manage it all as a business, a proper little business that we can slowly expand rather than 99.9% of staking groups that run everything through skype and Google docs and really struggle to maximise their potential. We want this to turn into a very successful business very quickly.

So the website is made so it needs some form of name, it would seem silly to just put a Donald's name on without thinking of it, we all drew a blank when trying to think of a name so asked for input, hopefully we get a good name and worst comes to worst we get to talk about our business and gain extra interest.

The whole pocarr thing is wildly inaccurate too, I'm not sure if they have that tag, I know lissi mentioned it and of pride to the top super high stakes regs pocarr players will be inferior but they have very good coaches and their guys are absolutely printing, pocarr I'm sure would be happy to match up their guys vs most small stakes regs. The best thing about pocarr is they keep everything low caroance, dojt want their guys playing high stakes and I think in the future it's very likely there will be some kind of cooperation between the two stables, perhaps pocarr elite players graduate into our team and applicants who play a little too low we refer to pocarr or something. There's less than a 1% chance we will be as close to being as successful to pocarr and one of the main reasons why they are number 1 stable is their website which I'm not affraid to say like other parts of their busienss model we would look to copy/slightly improve.

I'm big pocarr fan.

[pleno1]

I've been hiding behind insecurities over the last 12 months. I know I have mental game problems by because I've done well in other areas it hasn't been such a huge problem. I want to truly eradicate them all and for 2015 play as close to my a game as possible.

I'm going to write down what I can think off the top of my head I do wrong that I know I do wrong but still choose to do it. I feel like just writing that I do it will bring it closer to my attention Than knowing it's there and trying to change it.

1- showing my cards in live poker

I have this thing of whenever I make a fold that I know is big or I know is probably exploitatively very good I have to show the whole table. It's almspt as if to say omg look how fucking good this fold is. It's obviously bad to do and after listening to a podcast with jabracadabra he said he loves to look like a killer at the table. Game face on, not giving anything away being the guy people just want to avoid. And I totally agree. For 2015 in the live arena I really want to stop this whole showig my cards in big pots. Another example is if lets say I have 88 on a98q and then on the river a queen comes, he gets, I call and he has aq. I feel super compelled to show the whole table how unlucky I was. There really is no reason to do this but I do it every time. Maybe some of you have a similar problem? I know this is not a huge thing but it's definitely a mental leak

2- raging in chat

Raging is definitely an overstatement. But over the last 2 months or so I've been a little bit of a dick in the chat box. I don't donit vs fish or even in tournaments like the big 109 but if I'm in the 320 6max or the 109r or a 215 turbo/215r or something I see myself typing "clever" one liners to people. I can't really think of an example now but again being the stone faced guy behind his computer who gives nothing away is obviously a way better way to be. Showing that side in chat is definitely a weak thing to do and something I'll really try to change in 2015. Again it's really not a big issue at all, I'm doing it rarely, but never is better than rarely

3- acting irrationally quick

Don't get me wrong I dislike fake tanking a lot and it spoils the game but I'm the opposite of that. I act way way too quick. If somebody 3bets me to an insanely small size I just snap call because I'm not folding. When I'm the guy 3betting if somebody takes a long time to call, takes a few seconds to check the flop, takes a little while before making a decision on the turn etc it just feels a little bit different. Obviously I'm far from the complete player too so acting wuickly doesn't allow me to think over all potential options.

4- trying to play big pots

I think a lot of my early success this year was to play a lot more cautiously and small ball whilst not getting too deep into it recently I've been upping the aggression in certain spots and always trying to play chip lead pots and really going for it. I think I prefer the approach I was going with previously. I feel like between 3pm-11pm on a Sunday I play similar to most other regs but between 11pm-6am I really play my A game when others get tired:tilted etc. Last week in the Sunday 530 I was 1/200 all the way down to the final 2 tables. There was a player I'm not really fond of who raised, I called 77 and the bb called. The flop was tt5 they checked I bet, original raiser called and I decided to bet the queen turn, he raised, I called and then called his river jam on a blank. Basically all my mental errors came to the surface here. I called the turn and river so fast I really didn't put much thought into it. I knew inside I was going to call anyway so taking time to me was almost like nit rolling, when I bet the turn like always I had a plan but I still acting irresponsibly quick. I was playing a fucking hige chip lead pot with 77 on tt5q3 sure I still probably thjnk it was the best play giving everything but 3 months ago I was passing up on marginal spots and my record deep in tournaments was the best on stars this year.

I can't think of more right now, but just wanted to get all that kind of off my head and jto writing as I thjnk it will make it easier for me to eradicate them and help me improve as a player. Next year I really want to maximise my potential and cutting out all the negatives is so important in a game where others are constantly improving.

may come back and add to that list soon, if anybody has some similar stuff or perhaps the same stuff as I have is obviously like to hear about it too.

[Rexas]

Have you read the mental game of poker? I now it sounds really silly, but it's a fantastic book.

I think a lot of people on blonde will attest to my mental game problems. I developed a bit of a reputation for it, it's all over my blog, and it has cost me some friendships and some potential backing in the past. Even though I have improved an awful lot on that front this year, I still relapse reasonably regularly, and as a result I've started to get very interested in breaking down what the fuck is going on in my head to make me behave in the way I do. I don't know if any of this will help you, obviously you're a far superior player to me and will be speaking to people with way more experience in every aspect of the game, but I'll try and go through the work I'm currently doing and how it applies to me, and maybe it can help a little.

I feel one of the first ways to approach any problem is trying to find it's route cause. For me, it was the years I spent playing rugby. Basically, the defining years of my early life (like 11-16, when your personality properly developed), I spent 3/4 days a week being taught that if I made a mistake, I should get increasingly aggressive and take out any frustration on the other team. Needless to say, I got sent off a few times in my rugby career, and that mindset became very heavily ingrained into my competitive personality. This has affected my ability to perform in other sports, like golf and bowling, where relaxation and mental balance are vital. If I throw a bad shot in bowling, my instant reaction is one of (sometimes intense) anger.

The same thing happens in poker. If I make a bad decision, my instant natural reaction is anger. If I am losing consistently in a certain area, then the same feeling arises, because I have an annoying habit of convincing myself it's completely my fault and I must be doing something horrifically wrong, which causes me to believe I'm making bad decisions, which causes an angry reaction, which prohibits my ability to improve. I was often told that I have to cut that out entirely. That I have to be emotionless at the table, and remain totally level. For me, this just isn't possible. I think I'm always going to have that instant reaction, but what I do now is get over it ridiculously fast, and the reaction itself is considerably smaller. I work through the feeling in my head, find the route cause, and invariably end up laughing at how completely illogical and counter-productive my reaction was. Now I know this is mostly to do with tilt, but the same principal applies here. The first little success is always ridiculously rewarding too. I imagine the next time you go to type something into the chatbox and then snap delete it you'll feel pretty good about yourself.

One of the things I learnt through "The Mental Game of Poker" was to break down each individual feeling in a more scientific way, and I've ended up applying this approach to basically everything I do. For example (and this is all totally presumptuous, obvs I've never met you and don't have a clue about your mental approach to things), the showing your cards thing probably comes from one of two feelings. The first would be a desire to prove yourself, that showing a sick fold gets you their respect, and their reactions fuel your own confidence and their appreciation of your success validates all the work you have done to be able to make that fold. The other would be more of an alpha male thing, to be a boss and show everyone that you never make a mistake. The two are kinda similar, but the second is more to do with showing people either you've just owned someone or that they've just got very lucky, so they don't feel like they've owned you. Because I don't know you, I might be completely wrong and it may stem from something else entirely, but I guess what I'm trying to pick out is that line "There really is no reason to do this but I do it every time". Psychologically, there is always a reason why we do these things. At the time, it has to make complete sense and seem like the best thing to do, else we wouldn't do it. The key, imo, to starting to solve these problems is discovering the reasoning behind them.