The Best In The Business

[marcro]

2016 brags :/

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Very well done!

All the best in achieving your goals in 2017.

[pleno1]

People considered me calling people "horses" derogatory.

Thus, from now on, we will call them "badgers" origin of the story here: https://www.bitb-staking.com/2016/11/28/the-legend-of-the-honey-badger/

[pleno1]

January review:

Soo... new tiers, new schedules, new years optimism! The goal of $5m is of course super ambitious, its unlikely, but I'd rather have ambitious goals that I make 1 in 5 times than nitty goals I barely struggle myself with and are an almost certainty to make.

We had the following coachings:

HealTheWorld: Bvb 30-50bb deep, pio solver + node locking max exploit
Graftekkel: Detailed hand history review
Bencb: Complex icm modelling
James Whittet: Table selection, ego and winners tilt
Dietrich Fast: Focusing on river play
Apotheosis: Exploiting cbets
Dietrich Fast: 3betting as the bb
Oxota: Strong hands analysis with pio/crev

Elmerixx and myself did 6 streams between us between 3-6 hours each, basically just live play 4-12 tables

Elmerixx and myself did 4 cool down sessions, going over all saved hands from our sessions and Romeopro/Graftekkel joined us.

Before the first big Sunday, I was pretty pumped and left the message for the guys in announcements:

"Big day tomorrow @everyone this is literally what we play poker for. All the hard work mon-sat in the lab, all the streams, all the coachings, all the hand analysis on forum, all the hours spent in bed visualizing hands and thinkng over spots is worthless unless we give it 100% on no days like tomorrow. a bunch of you are going to run deep in huge tournaments. I always find it a huge shame when I don't give everything 100%. Tomorrow I'm going to have no regrets, if I bust a tournament early through a bad beat that's fine, we have so many chances at glory tomorrow. Throughout the day just play your a game, focus and collect extra lives that you can trade in when you get unlucky for a part of your stack. It's an absolutely fact that majority of our opponents will crumble after running bad during periods tomorrow. Being able to visualize your focused self, not care about bad beats and being in the zone focusing only on winning every single hand (winning can mean folding) and then visualize the negative part of yourself, the guy playing his sloppy C game, make sure when young to sleep this time on Monday morning that you know you gave it everything, if you do I got no doubts each and every one of you have amazing chances of great individual success. Let's ****ing gooooooooooooooooooooooooo"


Overall, things went pretty well. When TCOOP comes around and everybody's buy ins are both higher and in turbo format things can go pretty south, but our guys grinded pretty hard outside of the series events and we started the year off on a good foot:

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[pleno1]

Did an interview with a Romanian site

Did an interview with a Romanian site. Will post English in here.

01. Hey Patrick, how’s it going?

Pretty bad! Terrible Sunday! I lost around $30k myself and horses dropped around $40k. When will it end!


02. First of all, how did you get into poker?

Just through friends at school. I went to a different school to all my friends at 16 to focus on sport. We were a little too young and broke to go clubbing at 16, a little bit too mature to hang around parks, so we ended up meeting at different friends houses to gamble. Really mature and a great choice for broke kids...

03. Tell me a bit about your progress through the stakes. At what point did you say: “hei, i can make a living out of this”?

I was always pretty good at poker but didn’t have the bankroll. I never really grinded properly for a long time, because without a bankroll its kinda tough to grind. I was always super envious of guys who were backed or that had the opportunity to register a lot of games. I remember the first 4 figure score I made when I was probably 17ish and though wow this is easy. I was working for like $5-$10/hour so this was huge. I “ran bad” depositing through student loans, but by the time I was around 19-20 I kinda knew that I was going to make it. I just loved the game so much that if I wasn’t successful with all the time and energy I put into it, then I wouldn’t be successful at anything else in my life either.

04. When did you get into staking? How was your first experience with staking - were you staked or did you stake someone?

I was first staked at around 17 on ipoker to play $30nl, I remember very vividly that I felt so fortunate to be able to play properly. There was a baller grind house from the backer (Jon Lundy) and I remember he had like 50 vitamin water in the fridge and I was like OMG WHAT A ****ING BALLER! After the bootcamp finished I went home and was grinding on my laptop, so so tired, but I just didn’t want this to stop, I eventually fell asleep, waking up from the alert sounds. My parents came in and were like wtf are you doing. In terms of staking others, I just bought pieces of people in tournaments. I would have a bankroll of $3000 and buy pieces if $100ish trying to just get lucky and have a sweat

05. Regarding both “being staked” and “staking” - did you have any bad experiences?

I was staked by some lazy backers previously who didn’t keep a tight leash on me and just didn’t keep motivated. In terms of the guys I’ve staked, I’ve been scammed a couple of times now, most recently by a well known guy in the UK community which was kinda sad. Degens gonna degen I guess.

06. How important is the communication between the backer and the one being backed.

The most important thing. If a horse has any problem at all, they should say it ASAP, theres nothing more destructive to a relationship than one side being silently unhappy, its impossible for the other side to improve and the relationship just deteriorates.


07. How did bitB staking start, why bitB and who did the logo, it’s pretty sick!

The brand bitB has always been mine since around 2009. I wanted to be the best in the business when it came to poker, I was playing $5 husngs with less than $200 to my name, but one day wanted  to be ranked number 1 in the world. In 2014 I finally got there on pocket fives and it fit the staking name pretty great. We want to be the best staking company in the world, I used the name before, people recognise it with me etc so it just works well.

08. On the website you have listed 3 investors - you, Samuel Vousden (€urop€an) and Tomi Brouk (elmerixx). Are you guys opened to any other investors?

Nope! We’re greedy bastards. Well, if somebody invested who would make a positive impact then sure, why not, but in general we’re happy to pay just by the hour!

09. Why is bitB different from the other staking companies?

We care a lot. A lot of the guys have become some of my good friends, when I go on holiday, its usually with the guys, we see the world together, have huge ups together, huge downs together. We speak all day, every day for 2 years now. When they win I don’t think even 1% about how much money I’ve made from the win, I just feel great and relieved for them. We treat things properly as a business, we invest 80+ hours/month to ensure everything is set up perfectly for the horses and they never have a problem.

10. What are the requirements to get accepted at bitB?

A proven record of winning, generally being pretty young, open to improving. Being able to hit good volume requirements and most importantly wanting to join us to improve rather than get a bigger bankroll to deign with.

11. bitB has a stellar line-up of coaches, Daniel Dvoress, Ben Heath and Dietrich Fast, just to name a few. Let’s say i apply to get into bitB and i get accepted. Do i pick the coach that i like or how does it work?

We have 10+ public coachings/month, 5+ streams/month and then each guy gets a private 1on1. We find out the horses weakness and partner them with a coach who is strong in that area. For example, if somebody is going to WSOP then we will give them a guy who is more suited to live play, like Ben Heath.

12. Tell me a bit about the players that you are currently working with - can you give me an example of a player that joined your stable and made a remarkable improvement?

We’re so lucky. Our guys are great, they are generally smart/hard working/young. We took in a guy called Zolta who previously played $30 HUSNGS, he started at low/micro stakes MTT’s and quickly moved through mid stakes and then to high stakes, playing EPT main events, all high rollers online and now coaches a bunch of our smaller stake guys.

13. bitB had a huge success during last years WCOOP. Do you guys have a special training schedule for the major online series?

We do pretty intensive coaching just before WCOOP. Sam/Tomi/I do sessions with all three of us being there, going over previous final tables. We go through dozens of regs, finding their weaknesses, looking at ways to exploit them etc.

14. What is your experience with romanian players when it comes to staking? Do you have any in bitB at the moment?

Romanian players aren’t easy because of regulation issues. We currently stake a few guys, one in particular has been doing really well. I’m not sure I can say who he is though unfortunately.

15. Last year you joined partypoker as an ambasador. How’s life as a sponsored pro. Do you feel more pressure in getting results?   

I enjoy it. It’s a lot easier because Party are so chill and so helpful. I’m currently in negotiations about joining for an extra year, I 100% wouldn’t join with another team right now, its not really my thing, but I think with Party I’m more willing to continue because of their effort of popularising poker.

16. Do you travel more since you’ve joined partypoker? What was your favourite stop from last year?

I travelled a lot last year, but I’m kinda over it. This year I want to maximise self development and the live poker tour isn’t a healthy place to improve yourself mentally or physically.

17. What can you tell us about partypoker Live? At what upcoming partypoker tournaments will people find you.

The tournaments are fun, very easy to qualify online, usually huge overlays and the events are pretty soft. A lot of guys (myself included!) like ti have a few beers, so its laid back and fun to be. I’ll be at the Millions event in Nottingham and Sochi (Russia)

18. You live right across the border from us. When did you make the move and how do you find life in Budapest?

I actually live in London now, I moved to Budapest with my girlfriend (she’s hungarian) after Spain made poker regulated 4 years ago.

19. How do you find Eastern Europe? Did you get to see any other countries?

People are actually not very welcoming. Guys in particular in Hungary were very cold a lot of the time. Customer service wasn’t great at all, the weather was cold. I really liked being somewhere where I could just be by myself, I’m a pretty big loner that doesn’t want to walk down the street and talk to 10 different people, or worry about looking around incase I see somebody I know. I like walking by myself, being by myself and being in a foreign city is nice for that.

20. What are your plans for 2017?

$5m profit for bitB players at the tables
Maximise personal self development


21. Any last words for our readers?

Balance is key for any ordinary person for success. The elite people in any industry give 100% in the thing they excel at and make sacrifices for balance. Don’t let people tell you that you MUST do x/y/z go with your gut feeling inside.


22. What can you tell me about bets with the swedes around WCOOP and TCOOP? I heard about bets around 100k.

We bet pretty big in WCOOP, we crushed them really hard, this time round they got max revenge. Lena900 absolutely crushed, yesterday for example he won both the big109 and Sunday Grand! We’re about even now, tiebreaker in SCOOP!

23. Do you think partypoker has what it takes to become bigger than Pokerstars?

Of course! Its a matter of when, not if.

[pleno1]

Somebody was asking what the difference in the main and development stable were and why we made them.

So the way we work the system and flow of information is we have two stables.

1- main stable
8 group coachings/ 1 1on1 coaching, main stable strategy chat, main stable forum, private coaching from elite coaches

2- development stable
Access to 8 main stable coachings, access to main stable forum/strategy chats, private coaching from main stable players, mini groups monitored by main stable players

The coaching to the main stable guys is extremely high quality. They are generally all very smart and able to filter this information clearly to the development stable. The flow of information works really well and for example if a $20 average buy in player is watching an oxota video and doesn't get a concer, instead of asking Infront of 30 high stakes bosses, he simply asks his mentor that he has a personal relationship with and he explains it to him.

Each development stable player is in a mini strategy/development group where they focus on specific things throughout the month and work every single day together.

Why it works well?

1 our higher stake guys who can get into bigger makeup player tougher games/higher stake games are able to get paid a consistent hourly amount meaning downswings aren't as painful and they have a consistent money flow and are able to play as high as possible without worrying about bills etc

2 the development stable guys are literally getting infinite coaching all day, every day and are being spoon fed poker strategy around the clock.

This means that the guys who have lowish yearly ev have the chances and opportunities to move up the stakes at a rapid pace.

Obviously this is small sample size, but we moved up 3 guys to the main stable last month who when joining us last year had lifetime profits of $50k. Last month they made $34k, $23k and $9k

[pleno1]

Asked this question..

6000 runners in last weeks Sunday million

How many:

Virgins
Murderers
People who think they are genuinely the best player in the tournament
People who think they are genuinely in top 100 in field
Haven't showered that day


Interested what Blonde thinks too!

[pleno1]

First week of Feb

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[pleno1]

Released a video of my WCOOP win for free to the public, feel free to watch and let me know what you think.

https://www.bitb-staking.com/2017/02/13/pads1161-wcoop-review/

[pleno1]

2 Sundays ago:

So Sunday went really well. I had bunch of deep runs and ended up final tabling all of the party poker high rollers on the same day. 1st/3rd/5th for around 45k profit. Monday I woke up a little ill, one meeting was cancelled, but did another one with the guys from bitB. After the emerging we released the first free video I made and it went down really well, people seemed to like it and a few areas of improvement for the next one.

Tomorrow my parents come for a week, but on Friday im going with Boris Becker, Trickett and a couple of others to Rodzadov for a charity tournament with some German celebrities which will be streamed and then possible some high stakes cash games. Never been before, will update throughout the weekend though.

[pleno1]

I've been looking into a bunch of different badger (people i stake) buy in break downs to see where their profit comes from, different rois at different levels etc. Thought I'd look at mine and see how it looked like. Brace yourself for the last graph :@ Generally, I am punting the low stuff very hard, last reg-ing last second, playing very far from optimal and the higher the stake level the more I will be concentrating and trying to lower the variance, except from probably the 215 levels where I will play (incorrectly!) a higher variance style.

Overall:

Should generally be winning,huge up and down swings isn't good and means bad table selection in general or most likely bad fundamentals, but get out of it due to being "good deep" or having good friends deep!

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0-49

Every player should be winning here, somewhat variance free. If losing/breakeven/unimpessive then probably some fundamental problems.

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50-99

Same as 0-49. This should be somewhat variance free.

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100-199

Starting to get a little bit reggier, could look bad if a lot of turbos, but in general, 109s should be pretty good for everybody. Either youre a low stakes guy and you don't play them much and the ones you do play are amazingly soft, or youre a higher stakes guy and should have a big edge.

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200-299

Lot of variance in this one as they are usually huge runner fields. How you perform in the million can really be a huge factor in overall profits. I have guys who grind out really solid and the million is their "big" tourney. They brick it for a year and its 1/3 of their profits gg.

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300-400

Very eggy stake, only really the $320 6m that runs, should be lots of ups and downs and reminds us why we should probably skip this tournament altogether.

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500-800

Very interesting stake level. Almost all 530s we play will have amazingly good structures because they come around in scoop/wcoop etc, Party 530 now lets us get some form of volume.

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1k+

The level we will basically never get close to a sample size. cross your fingers and hope to run good!

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When I saw my last graph, my eyeballs nearly dropped out I was like are you serrrrrrrrious Really shows why table/game selection is so important, whether that be 1ks for a $150abi guy or $109s for a $15abi guy. You can simply just run really poor in the level where your roi is going to naturally be the lowest and then it can massively impact your results. I'm pretty  "lucky' to have ran over expectation at lower stakes, but the guys who run at expectation at lower stakes and then like I have at high stakes are just absolutely ****ed lol

I would encourage you to look at your results from the different buy in levels and see if there is a consistency. We have a lot of guys who apply that have really random and erratic results. In general the graphs should always look better the lower the stakes you play, if they don't then there is probably a huge fundamental leak in your game, especially as the lower stakes will generally give you decent sample sizes.

[pleno1]

Last Sunday

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[pleno1]

YTD

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[pleno1]

Big shout out to one of the funniest guys, Apotheosis who let out some of his humour in this blog post after shipping the Super Tuesday last night for $70k.

https://www.bitb-staking.com/2017/02...right-for-you/

[pleno1]

I worked for PokerStrategy.com for 2+ years at the beginning of my poker career, in a full time 9-5 role. At the time, everybody was trying to make money from poker, but PS were literally makings tens and tens of millions, eventually they were sold for around $50m to iPoker.

I learned so much about the workplace at PokerStrategy. Basically the entire management team were German. But they were all young German, very smart, geeky, techy, new school German. Most either retired as multi millionaires or went to work in senior positions in massive companies like Google, and some started other new entrepreneurial ventures. What I realised mainly though from working in this company, is that there is no real secret about how to crush in business, most mistakes are just common sense mistakes, and if you have good rational and a good critical way of thinking whilst always being somewhat wary of people and always working out if something is +Ev or not rather than going on wild aimless goose chases then you're going to be ok. A little like poker really.

There was a lot of processes I learned there that I'll try to have in any company I use in the future. One is very simple, everything and anything was documented on an internal forum. Literally everything imaginable that went on in the company went onto the forum, everybody had different level rights and could only see a limited amount of info, the bosses being able to see everything.

Benefits of the forum:

- emailing is very inefficient and difficult to discuss and debate
- having meetings and then forgetting in 6 months exactly what happened is a disaster and waste of time
- you can take time to get back to each other on things once you think about the whole picture etc
- it stops meetings going on for 100-1000% longer than they should
- senior people don't need to be part of discussions and waste their very important time on trivial things
- everybody gets to be a stake holder of something

At bitB we have very similar thing that I put in basically from day 1.

Forums we have


 Investor Discussions
Basically everything important about the company thats extremely confidential gets discussed here and only management can see the board
- Investors decisions

  New Applications
When a new applicant comes, they have step 1, which is via our application manager, who declines/puts people to step 2 based on basic criteria we have. Once received, we will discussion in separate threads each guy and then if promising, ask for further info to look at. Only management and application manager can see this
- Applications received
- Rejected
- Stats or video to check
- Negotiating offer
- Accepted

 Main Stable player discussion
Each player has a thread that management/coaches discuss. When a player has a coaching, their coach writes their report here. If we have any huge positive or negative opinion on the player it goes there, when we have an issue in the future or want to decide to move up/down tiers, we will go back here rather than just "trying to remember" obviously the players cant see their own threads.
- Main stable

 Dev stable Management
Same thing, but for dev stable. Also a board about how we manage dev stable in general, promotions, forms of coaching, coaches info etc.
- Dev stable discussion
- Dev player discussion

 Main forum
Open to everybody
- Announcements
- Strategy chat
- Support/Help forum
- General chat

So generally everybody is very active in the boards they have access to. We discuss everything and 99% of the time we act professionally about stuff, its important that things are private though, because sometimes I may get a little out of line!

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[pleno1]

This hand was exactly 3 years ago today.

http://www.boomplayer.com/en/poker-h...667_6081FB2D0C

5th hand of the Sunday warm up. I had just lost AA v Ax deep in a live tournament and was telling my room mate I'm never ****ing playing tournies again (I was barely ever playing MTTs at this point ) I sleep in late on Sunday, wake up, my room mate in the hotel is grinding and it's that moment when you see somebody with 5+ tables and you're like **** it that looks fun. No food, I just launch the session and run so so good. I must have been playing pretty bad. I was just hyper lag I think and nobody knew who I was
And everybody folded.

In the hand ^ I think villain on the replayer had Jj, after the hand I stood up, tore my top off, threw it on the floor and said "nobody has he balls to do that,
Nobody!"

My flop size is obviously horrific, and even pre flop is a huge punt lol. Pretty funny looking back at how cringey it was, but that's tournament poker I guess, everybody (including me right now) think they are better than they are.