The Best In The Business

[Woodsey]

Reading the last couple of pages and not understanding half the HH stuff that is written makes me realise it's probably a good idea I don't play too much these days 

[Longines]

Same for me but I do enjoy reading Patrick's updates and insights, keep em coming please.

[celtic]

Everyone knows you're the BITB at the pokes. And you like to dabble in football management.

Have you got what it takes to be the BITB at LMS though?

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=66713.30

[Tractor]

Same for me but I do enjoy reading Patrick's updates and insights, keep em coming please.

[pleno1]

So last few months have been pretty nice in my life. Businesses working well, have been reading a lot, studying a lot about economics, business strategy, entrepreneurship, exercising more, eating healthier, but there has been something missing from the last 6-7 months, I knew I wasn't complete, I knew that there was something missing. I missed poker.

Whenever I played my sessions weren't high quality ones, I checked my stable stuff too much, checked social media, tried to fix money transfers, staking, Skype, unregging sessions early, I started my last 2 Sunday sessions at 10pm!! blah blah, I didnt play much, usually 1-2x a week. I remember around 18 months ago and 1 year ago, I was a huge grinder, played tonnes, crushed, loved having lots of tables, getting up early to play, thinking non stop about poker.

For the next 2 months I'm going to go gunk fucking ho. In my stable were doing a leaderboard, there is 4 teams of around 15 players and all players have points that become combined and there is biggish money for the winning team (freeroll obv)

This is the points system:


5 points Final tabling a tournament
10 points Top 3 of a tournament
25 points winning a tournament
50 points winning red mtt
10 points for every 200 games played
10 points for busting a coach from a tournament
5 points for bluffing coach on the river

I really want to be the top scorer in the competition, at the very least I want to put myself in a position to give it a go. Here are the goals I'm setting myself that I wrote to "Team Patricio" (my team for the month)


"Hey guys, I cannot wait for this month. I'm really pumped for it, I had a big session with Elliot Roe last week and I'm mentally prepared for 2 very tough months at the tables grinding a fucking tonne.

Last few months I've only played 1-2 days a week and been busy with either stable stuff, meetings, coachings and other business stuff outside of the stable. My mindset is really great now and I will go back to the grinder I was 12-18 months ago that played tonnes and sent many souls to the graveyard, there is still a lot of space left in my graveyard for these ****.

Will devote the next 2 months to crushing at the tables and playing as much volume as possible. My plan is to grind 40 tournamnets a day on average, 12 tabling at most and regging from around 4-5pm cet to around midnight.

The biggest problems I had this year was distractions, checking discord, checking skype, checking social media etc, when I play I'm going to be just focusing exclusively on my games until im down to my last 4 tables of the night and not regging anything else.

My goals are

1- 40 games/day when I play
2- Play 5-6 days/week
3- All quality sessions that I'm happy with afterwards
4- This should be around 800 games/month
I've set no profit goals at all, I'm confident that if I do everything well then I will do just fine."


I played my first full session on Saturday, I think I played really well, I didnt open any social media, concentrated really well and played as good as I could. I won a tournament (55 6max) which was really interesting. I've went over it and really happy how I played, final table especially is extremely interesting. I'm going to sell the raw hh for $10 if anybody wants to go over it, can send me 5 hands from it and I'll reply about them. Will be doing this somewhat frequently moving forward, maybe one/two times a week and only picking very good hand histories that are interesting. hmu here or twitter. Also have recorded 5-6 hours of review from my WCOOP $700 6max win which is my best ever score and probably most interesting hh. Not sure exactly how/if I'll sell that but lets see.

Anyway, this month I'm looking forward to it so much. I really, really am happy to be grinding a lot and being productive and battling again at the tables. I have self pride, self motivation, self critique. I deleted my pocket fives this/last week and left all my ego there, I want to make myself happy, myself proud and myself satisfied. I wont post what I won here on a daily basis or anything like that, maybe a review on the leaderboard and how many points I currently have is/compared to others is a fun way to update this. What do you think is an achievable goal to go for? Reminder of the points here:

5 points Final tabling a tournament
10 points Top 3 of a tournament
25 points winning a tournament
50 points winning red mtt
10 points for every 200 games played
10 points for busting a coach from a tournament
5 points for bluffing coach on the river

Have a fun new avatar on Stars now too



See you all at the tables

[pleno1]

Lol, funny day.

Chef brought food to a friend that I don't really see instead of to me. I met him for coffee and we spoke about some business plans, looking forward to launching something in next few months hopefully related to poker. Will be a "tinder-like" app but I think it will work great. He is good programmer and I get the business so it should be great (he plays poker full time too fwiw)

Started grinding and went so OTT, I was 25 tabling the most idiotic tournament, like $25 full tilt super stack and big 11 and bullshit. I at least learned that I shouldnt do that again, will be full quality sessions from now on out. Good news is I was very focused and played good, just ran bad but np at all.

I asked my assistant to buy me a calendar, a green pen and a red pen. Every day I wake up, eat, exercise, grind and go to bed early I'll mark the day green, if I fail in any of my goals I'll mark it red, the main goal is to have as many green days as possible.

Tomorrow is my first day off of the month! It was planned like this, the team I manage are playing. We have a big match tomorrow and big match on Wednesday, here is the table.

Click to see full-size image.

We're currently top, we lost one game, but it was peak time on a Sunday and I couldn't be there. Pretty sad as I think we would have likely won if I had been there and would likely win the league. The vikings are our main rivals and they are really good. We played an amazing match against them last year, will try to record it this year and post the video on here or something.

Tomorrow we play SASS, a team of young, skilful Spanish guys who are definitely a danger, will be important we bring our best team otherwise could be a banana slip up.

Will be studying before the game tomorrow and going through 3-4 hhs, I sent everybody hh who emailed me or emailed back if there was a problem. Interested to see feedback in the hh, its a night time turbo so not a wcoop 1000+ hand hand history but lots of interesting spots I think, the final table especially is fucking bonkers

Have currently got 5 points in the challenge (I didnt realise there is no points for cashing a tournament I figured there would be even though I wrote the rules and was making some hilariously tight folds at times! At least now its back to chasing the gold medal.) One tournament left where I'm itm and got 4.5x average, hopefully can get 25 points to add to the tally. I'm making a sidebet against European and he obviously won the 109r and had 2-3 other final tables lol, so its fun to chase him for the rest of the month.

Good night papis.

[pleno1]

Replied to everybody about the hh, if i haven't just message me again, thanks for the feedback.

So today was our big game in the league.. It was abandoned after 56 minutes for a huge brawl for the whole team, our goalkeeper and back up goalkeeper both received red cards and was a complete disaster.

Basically our team is all from South America and their team is all Spanish, there is huge aggro between Spanish and Brazilian guys apparently, calling each other mfkers and all sorts of very offensive stuff antagonised the problem, but when they scored and ran into our goalkeepers face and called him a monkey (most offensive thing to call a brazilian apparently) it absolutely kicked off.

I've tried to calm the situation and invite the team for a bar for free drinks with my team, they politely declined though. The match is abandoned and we will have to play them again, we will make sure we bring our shin pads and be prepared for war, I'm not sure Budapest is ready for this re-match

[Rexas]

Pm'd you.

[shipitgood]

Lots of Celtic supporters in Budapest then lol

Will Celtic be making a guest appearance for your team?
 
What  would your line up be for a blonde 7 aside team and why?

[Rexas]

Pm'd and sent

[pleno1]

Been a busy week, I've played a lot, perhaps one of my worst weeks ever in terms of results. I've played as good as I can and ran really bad, not moaning, not stressed about it yet, 5 more weeks to go. Have a lot of ridiculous bad beat stories, evbb vs bb/100 and generally feelings how bad things have been running, but promised at start of the month I wouldn't post anything about that this month, it didnt matter if I ran amazingly well or if I ran amazingly poor as long as I did the other stuff well.

Our stable has been doing amazing, we won b109 3 days in a row last week and just generally everybody stepped their games up and we been crushing. Theres a lot of competition in the stable, but a lot of support, thats great!

I think coaching has really helped my game over the last 3-4 months, after evaluating so many different people I see almost exactly how/what works and where it does/doesnt work. Evaluating guys with huge button win rates and seeing their exact stats and comparing with guys who are struggling, same for bb, same for c-betting, same for folding, same for 3betting, etc etc. It feels great to have a good understanding, or at least a good perceived understanding, but this time 1 year later with so much evidence and data to back it up rather than just feeling.

I feel so happy after each time I coach and motivated to do well and perform well, after speaking to those around me I decided I'm going to do some public coaching too, not sure exactly how much I will take on.

Here is spreadsheet with some more information:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YdokRDSKIh83tJ81y4OFw8kNcW63kpcCiqqj2lJ1HSA/edit#gid=0

I don't want to get you to try and buy 10-20 hours of coaching in me at a "discounted" price, the hourly I put I think is really fair and I will do a lot of stuff in-between sessions to make it a really good deal for anybody playing $30-$200abi.

I obviously have the right not to coach somebody if I don't want to, and obviously I'm not going to coach ALL the green appointments in the schedule, ideally, I would like to coach maybe 1-2 times a week. The email is on the sheet anyway, get in touch if you want to chat the pokers.

Outside of poker, played my first 90 minutes of competitive football in a lonnnnnng time on Saturday as all our players were either injured or suspended from the brawl I got into bed at 9pm on Saturday and got out at 4pm on Sunday, solid.

Will be grinding Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday this week. Really pushing on and hopefully turning things round. On Wednesday I'll go to a comedy night at a members club I just signed up to in Budapest. It has a lot of exhibitions, specialised nights etc, this is the place where Matt Damon was playing poker last year.



Budapest is actually one of the most popular places for big films to be shot. The Martian was the movie Damon was filming whilst he was here, it saves tens of millions filming here instead of LA. Penelope Cruz moved here on Monday for example.

Have never been to a comedy night before, so looking forward to that. Will give a trip report

[pleno1]

I'm going to officially put myself forward for São Paulo Metropolitans wild card in the GPL. To be honest initially I was really skeptical of the whole thing but then when reading more about it and thinking about it I think it's perfect for me. I love new kinds of strategies in poker, especially in tournament poker. For me the fame of being in the league isn't the major attraction, being part of another Brazilian team is just such an attractive thing for me.

When I first moved away from my parents I met one of my best friends in the world Luiz Meneses. I remember I was in my room one night and he was on our balcony, serenading a Polish girl with his guitar singing ballad after ballad. Over the next two years I was pretty dismissive with people who I wanted to socialize with, a lot of it was about self doubt and about not being able to communicate how I wanted to.  The one true thing that I was 100% comfortable with was poker. Over this and the other blogs I've created over the last few years I've had over 2 million views. I wrote a lot of the things that I was perhaps not confident enough to tell people face to face whilst growing up, I got a lot of stick in blogs, but in reality the blogs matured me, they helped me grow as a person and I was able to get the feedback from people of all ages, backgrounds and varying levels of life experience that I was perhaps afraid to reach out to in real life.

As I grew up and left Luis in Spain I moved to Hungary. One of my biggest passions was football, growing up I always felt comfortable in team sports and loved playing football. In Hungary I struggled to find the right people who I felt comfortable with being part of the same team. A lot of people were out for themselves, there was senseless politics and there was too much drama, then I found Mambo FC.

Our team is based around the Brazilian attitude that every single player matters and we all stick up for eachother and help eachother no matter what happens. Many of our players are Brazilian and I consider many of them as my very good friends, that not only do I identify myself with or I'm comfortable being myself with but that I know supports me as equally as I support them. That's the kind of team I want to be in.

Last year during a pretty depressing World Series I was staying by myself in a quiet apartment. I remember the day really well, it was the $10k 6max and we were playing in Pavillion. I arrived a little late and the final table of the previous day's event was on. There was Aakari standing there like a choir master orcherestating his choir to sign song after song, sometimes at poker tournament rails you feel like some people are anti railing their friends or almost embarrassed to be there watching like they are too big time for that and they should be playing Chinese poker or something. That day every single Brazilian was together willing for their hero to win the bracelet. Every bad beat made the fans look like they we're genuinely going to cry and every lucky 3 outer brought genuine joy to their faces. That's the kind of team I want to be in.

When I bought my bar in Budapest it was called Tuborg Csapolo. We worked with different people to think of different themes, sports bars, restaurant etc etc and then finally I agreed I wanted it to be called House Bar. I wanted the students of the city who usually share everywhere with different tourists every weekend to have a place they class as their second home, where they love to hang out after a tough day in the classes, where they start their night with beer pong, where they come to watch Neymar destroy defense after defense every week on the big TVs. At first lots of people were cynical, students from different nationalities thought we wanted to use them rather than help them, that was all except the Brazalians. The Brazilians embraced us and since then together we have had such an awesome experience. The only flag that will ever hang from my bars walls is the Brazilian flag. We have Brazilian djs, Brazilian music, Brazilian atmosphere but most important the Brazilian people. Whenever I go there I see people like my friend Andre, my friend Carolina, my friend Bruna or my friend Joao. I have never ever been greeted by any of them without a huge smile on their face, the positivity and general attitude is exactly why I want to be part of a team like this.

In my stable we have 60+ guys but more and more often were taking Brazilians on, I can say this with 100% sincerity that they are the funniest guys I've ever met. Big shout out to vincevegamfr who makes me cry on a daily basis with the stuff he comes out with. He is currently doing s profit prop bet with himself this month where he promises not to have sex with his wife for a month if he doesn't meet it! Let's hope he runs good!

I think personally I can give a lot back to the team. When I do this kind of stuff I don't do it for the money. There's two reasons why I do it

1) I love being part of a team and doing things collectively as a team. I remember when I was 16 I was running the 3000m where I was in the top5 in Northern England. After 3 laps I started considering exactly what I was doing, football made me happy, throwing myself into a tackle to support a friend made me happy, running around a track aimlessly with no real unique strategy all for self gain meant nothing to me. After the race I threw my running trainers in the bin and didn't run competitively again.

This team is really underrated. I personally have never met Darren Elias so won't try to fabricate some story how I went to carnival with him in Rio last year! I played on the same football team as Byron last year in Vegas. He is genuinely such s nice guy and despite all of his massive success he has time for everybody and always makes an effort. I met Decano in Dublin, we got on great and he seemed like a great guy, definitely one of the greatest Brazilian players and he will play with pride and with skill to make Brazil proud. Finally ineedmassari, one of the most underrated online regs, he plays a style that basically sums up Brazil. VAMOOOOO!! But he's smart, understand his image and constantly gets huge stack after huge stack and converts.

2) I love complex problem solving and I love poker. These formats will be very different to what people are used to. People can no longer use their live reads and stay patient, you're going to have to play hands, you're going to have to be busy and you're going to have to make tough decisions in pressured environments. I strive for hard and tough decisions and anybody that plays against me knows I put myself in very unorthodox situations and usually somehow manage to get myself out of it in the last second like a true Bond villain! If somebody asked me what I thought my best poker skill is I would say it's manipulating other people's perceptions of me to my advantage and understanding how others are trying to manipulate their own perceptions, especially in high risk, high pressure situations whilst still being mathematically sound and extremely tactical. For me that's what the league is all about. Forward thinkng, knowing what's going on and getting the job done.

In terms of doing the "other side" I obviously am completely fine with all aspects of all media responsibilities. Blogging, video blogging, twitching, social media, all that stuff is completely at home to me, many people find this a chore, I love it. One thing I will promise is that I won't lie to make others sound good, I won't make things sound better than they are, I'll be honest how I feel, I'll be honest about my highs and I'll be honest about my lows.

I want to be part of this amazing team and part of this amazing venture from the GPL. If São Paulo don't choose me as one of their wild cards that's totally fine. When the GPL properly sportily poker I'll be in my bar wearing my Brazilian short cheering on São Paulo Metropolitans telling my Brazilian friends "hey I know those guys".

[pleno1]

Interest declared!

https://twitter.com/plenopads/status/707053940374937600

Favs/rts greatly appreciated <3

[rfgqqabc]

How many hands do you need to judge ev bb/100? I feel like the sample needs to be reasonably big, but maybe not if your only looking at post ante play for example where there are less outlying hands such as the set over set or w.e. Really enjoyed reading the last couple of updates. HMU if you want to do some stuff next week. Dinner friday too?

Also, when you review do you do hands you vpip/hands you vpip+btn/sb/bb or just mix it up depending on who your working with? I think if its your own hh and its a solo review just going through fairly quickly with vpip makes the most sense and then with others you should expand a little bit more.

[pleno1]

Evbb/100 is a little bit misleading. The thing is in tournaments is that if you play great 99.9% of the time you can still be a losing player. Tournaments are about making money and you make money in the last two tables. A lot of guys, especially from cash game backgrounds have huge win rates but small expected $ win rates because deeper in tournaments they aren't "killers". Evbb100 as an all round indecision you would need around 100k+ hands.

Regarding studying, it depends. I'll usually look out for stuff and not hair randomly select a hh. Like if I know I played an ft very differently to normal I'll just check out every hand of the ft. If I thought pre ante I was lazy I'll just check first 1/3rd of tournament etc. I never really go blindly I to studying though, if I feel like there's something I need to work on I'd rather watch 10hhs with just that exact part of the tournament (maybe 15 to 9 players left) rather than just going aimlessly through 1/2 hand histories. I think studying is really important, but if done aimlessly it will likely not be that great.

With horses I usually find their leak and then work from there. For a random though going through their entire HH lets me find leaks from different stages of their games that perhaps they didn't realize they had so think especially for a first time stud bet going through the entire HH is best.

For sure see you soon in Budapest. Should join to this comedy night at Brody if not tomorrow then some other time soon!