So go to Malta on Monday, one thing I've always done poorly is booking things and not going to them, or booking extra flights home etc. This time round I left things to the very last minute and ended up costing a lot more, one of expectations of 2016 will be to ensure I don't just randomly needlessly spewing money away.
So Malta, I remember Malta last year, it was the first time I played a "super high roller" playing the $25k event. I remember after the event I spoke to the guy that bought a piece in my and some of the SHR regs had told him that they thought I hadn't played well for something. I was pretty defensive about it at the time, since then I've realised four things.
1- I must always aim to improve every month, not just "ok I feel better" but clear, transitions in my game that I have really gone after, identified and improved. At that time my evbb/100 was 6bb which is a pretty good win rate, the highest I knew of was 9 from one of the best players I knew, so my goal was to get it as high as that. I was speaking to a friend about what "clever" means, I posted it in here the other day. Its very hard to agree on exactly what "clever" means.. Is it somebody who is book smart? Somebody that is naturally good at something? I agreed with myself that I think somebody is clever who notices something I didn't even think about. A lot of the time, this happens in training videos, Sauce speaks about only needing 25% equity to defend the big blind and we're getting 5/1 and then everybody starts completely changing their big blind defence rate. Between the Malta time and before Vegas, I wasn't working that hard, my game was perhaps going through the motions. Since Vegas I think I've identified ways of improvement asides from watching videos or speaking to friends. Trying things out, working on things and trying to be the "clever" poker player that advances his game quicker than others is definitely one of my goals moving forward. In the last 9 months my evbb/100 is 12 and in reg speeds its 14. I used to go over hand histories and cringe about stuff that was needless, but recently I've been proud to go over them. I've been very reluctant to post these figures for a few obvious reasons, but this is kind of a bigger summary post and I'm really proud about them.
2- The good players aren't THAT good. There is one level of player which is trueteller, fish2013, otbredbaron, sauce, kanu etc who are miles ahead of everybody. There is then a 3rd category of players, who are way too lazy, play completely exploitable styles and are very bad regs. The second category where I think I belong is forever changing, Naza may have been at the top 1 year ago, now its Fedor, maybe one month ago it was somebody else. People have goals of being the best player in the world etc, its sometimes just impossible, the guys in tier 1 are just way smarter (clever
) than I am, will see things way quicker than I will be able to and will be able to process information in game a lot clearer than I will. I don't want to be a tier 1 top reg, but its super important my goal is to be the top reg of tier 2. The other guys in this list are either 1- too rich! to super care about poker and continue at the top, 2- too old, have families or some commitments or motivation issues about being at the top of the competition
3- Game selection is very important. I will continue playing super high rollers when I feel the tournament is good, but I won't just mindlessly register every one of them. I won't register EPT Malta 25k, but very likely will play one in say Barcelona, or Prague or France/Italy/Spain etc. We have processed literally hundreds of applications for my stable over the last few months and so many regs have the same problems. They win 100k at $0-100 and just lose it back at $109+. Why the hell would you play a $109 staked with a 5% roi, when you can play a $25 tournament on your own money with 40% roi? You make DOUBLE THE MONEY!!! Most of these guys have gone broke playing too high stakes and just want to keep trying and have too much ego to step down. Often we would love to stake these guys for small stakes, but the fact is if their ego was high enough to play this far above their head then its likely that they are a "chaser" rather than a grinder. This is such an important lesson for me, I need to take shots in tournaments where my roi is very big and skip events where I'm going to be closer to breakeven. Moving forward I will be more aggro with EPT's and soft WSOP events, but a little nittier with other games that will be tougher.
4- Swapping can be expensive! Its very unlikely that you have 6-7 guys who will have very close ROI to yours that you can swap with no problems. Making -ev swaps can be very expensive in general, and its fine to just say "no ty" over the last 18 months I've lost around $100k for swapping. I've had some good scores too though, but moving forward will be more brave in asking people if they want to swap.
I think the "talk" I had with the guy after this event gave me so much motivation to succeed and be that tier 2 top reg. It was a concern for him that I may be more suited to online than live, but I really feel comfortable playing live poker, I feel like I'm socially suited to playing live poker and the live leaks that many have during these trips I seem to do well with. A lot of my goals for 2016 will be revolved around live poker, lets do some goals and expectations for the Malta trip.
Expectations:
Try to do some form of exercise or massage before every event
Very thorough decisions in every hand, nothing rushed, everything logical and decided
Choose the right times to play exploitative and the right times to play "gto"
Continue the good live skills I displayed in Vegas
If we get very unlucky take it really good
No being on phone
Goals:
1 final table
If any blonder is in Malta for the festival then hola
Author