Sunday was ok, for the first time ever? I missed the warm up and 109r, I went for a nice dinner with a friend and then slept for 3 hours and started with the big162. Pure bubble ept package, lost a flip for PCA package too but won EPT package in the end for profitable Sunday. Played 7.5/10 I think.
It's kind of weird, at one point in this year I was so focused on being the best MTT player in the world, but it wasn't necessarily for myself, I wanted others to think so. Now I lost a lot of that motivation. I set myself a goal at the start of the year (maybe last December) that this year I would play the 50k in Prague. Definitely not going to play it now, not even going for the Estrellas 1k. Will go from 8-17th and play the main, 10k etc. I'm not playing as much poker now, but I think it really helps my game, playing my A game more often etc.
Had some pretty fun hands this week, shame boom isn't working, would be close to some personal bests on there! A8 v AA in 4bet pot (I 4bet, he called!) on 882A4, when he c/j the river I didn't even think it was possible I could be beat. Lots of hilarious hands last few days, but not going to go into a moan. It is what it is
Really happy with how I'm playing which is the main thing. Cash games especially helping me in tournaments. Allows me to just play well for longer periods of time I think.
Football season has finished now, we go for a winter break and we won our last game 7-3 against a somewhat rival team. Our team was a joke, played very good. We start the second half of the season in March, we're going to start training at the end of January and play a lot of friendlies in February against some really good teams in Hungary, we will find out how good we actually are then and how serious we're going to take it.
Had a somewhat a-ha moment yesterday. We are overwhelmed with attacking players and its hard to fit them in. Most of them are fast and strong, yesterday I decided to put them both wingers and full backs meaning when one was tired after 5-10 minutes he would sit back and defend and get a breather and then after 10 minutes or so would change again. It resulted in lots of overlaps/attacking runs with full intensity and in general, especially in amateur league it can be really effective strategy. The result kind of speaks for that, we scored 7 goals, but let in 3.
Going to go on strike from tomorrow with everybody else, its nice to see everybody uniting as a community, feels pretty good I think.
I'm really most unhappy because of how PokerStars strategise their marketing and all round plan.
Everything they do is spent now on recreational players, I think this is completely fine, attracting new players to the game is very important.
So they do the following main marketing stuff
1- Spend 10s of millions on sports stars
2- Get all pros to stream playing on twitch
3- Invest in the biggest twitch pros
4- Shark cage
All of these are amazingly good marketing plans and they will do a great job of bringing new players into the game.
The problem is they changed the rake structure at the micro stakes (and they didnt tell the recreational players, they ironically posted on 2p2) this means that when people sign up with the famous $50 deposit bonus they are playing in games that are basically unbeatable. They have been attracted to poker because of watching nanonoko on twitch, or shark cage with guys who have made millions from poker. They want to do this too, of course it was always unlikely, but not its basically impossible. I guess 99.9% of them get stuck in the micros, their $50 deposits churning rake over and over again with little success. Negreanu says that peoples $50's last 20% less than they did X time ago, well with higher rake and unbeatable games of course they are not going to last as long.
HUD's and seating scripts are not a problem for 99% of recreational players, they actually hurt regular players, just like training sites do, but nobody complains about training sites because its a level playing field.
I feel very strong about how much recreational players are getting fucked here and would love to help a campaign to just show them exactly what is happening, how unlikely it is they are going to win, how tough it would be for Phil Ivey to win, how much he would actually win in their games etc.
Stars are going to take all of the money from supernovas/supernova elites next year, bring in loads of new players as they promise then put them in unbeatable games and churn their rake. Fucking geniuses! Seriously, its a really, really great idea for them, but we can't let them get away with it.
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