The Best In The Business

[baldock92]

Any updates Pads?

[pleno1]

So I made a decision a while ago that whenever I was really frustrated about how I was running I just wouldn't post in here. I used to treat it as a diary when I posted my emotions on a daily basis, but I realise that it could be so annoying for 99% of the readership for me to write about me saying "fml running bad" I'm very happy with my all round game though. Have been looking into some very unique spots for MTTs at around 5-30bbs this year and trying to tweak a few things. One of the best things about running the stable is that we have to be very stats based meaning I'm checking my own stats on very regular basis and previously where I didn't quite know what needed to be what in terms of %s I'm pretty sure right now exactly what %s I should be aiming for. For example Cut off rfi, Cut off evbb/100, cut off fold to 3bet, cut off cbet, cut off turn cbet, cut off river cbet, cut off raise flop etc etc. So overall, it is really helping my game being in the stable.

This month has been really good. We chopped the Sunday Million for our biggest ever score, had our 2nd ever biggest score winning a huge Galactic event and have won a bunch of other stuff for around $320k profit so far this month. Going into the year we thought our expectation was around $1-$1.5m profit on the tables, so we're really happy about the start of the year and shifting the goalposts a little bit. Running a stable is actually a lot more difficult than you'd imagine, especially if you're doing a lot of coaching. For example, if you're coaching 3 or 4 times in a week, usually midweek then the times are usually around 4pm-6pm it means that you usually have to be in the house at 3pm and usually won't leave the house till after 7pm, thats a bit chunk of the day that means the day is often "lost" because of it. Especially if I try to play tournaments myself then playing a late session the night before then waking up early, being productive, going to the gym and playing another session that night of tournaments whilst coaching in the middle is very, very tough to manage. Often it becomes simply wake up 10 minutes before coaching, do coaching, shower, eat, start grinding, finish, check on all horses, rail bit, prepare for coaching next day, try to sleep. Its a lot less glamorous at least than most would imagine, a big grind for sure and big commitment. Don't get me wrong I really enjoy it and its fun, and being part of a team of people that are so positive and so happy for each other to do well is great.

Personally I've had some nice runs this year, I'm playing a lot more on winamax (anonymously) and had 2 big final tables, unfortunately finished 5th both times when there was $80k+ ftw, but thats fine. I think I made some slight mistakes in the second one. I'll share a hh actually.


6 handed

Stacks are

button 1.5m
sb 1.4m
me 1.4m
utg 350k
utg1 700k
co 450k

blinds 12.5k/25k 30 minute clock, every level.

payouts something like

15k
xk
xk
xk
xk
85k

Button is hyper lag and opens to 55.5k, I flat QQ. (Number 1)

Flop is 872ssx he bets 71k into 150k, we call. (Number 2)

Turn is 8729ssxx he bets 175k into 284k after around 3-4 seconds of thought, we fold (Number 3)


1- I think having no 3bet range here is OK. I'm unsure exactly. I think 3betting is fine too, in game I decided to just flat everything though. Villain had shown signs of incredible aggression thus far so potentially inducing some kind of 6b fold is possible, but I'm too old for that **** now.

2- I think flop is clear call, don't really want to have raising range here

3- Turn is incredible tough. On the flop he bet around 47%, on the turn he INCREASES his turn sizing to 61%. The way his range is constructed I think is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT in his decision to increase the % OF THE POT that he bets on the turn. I think the timing is also massively important. This is the biggest post flop pot of the tournament so far (POTENTIALLY ) and this is a very important turn size for him, his turn bet is very COMFORTABLE in his mind and he doesn't have any problems increasing the sizing. We need 27% to make a breakeven call, the problem is here, with the way the stacks are distributed, I don't want to make a breakeven call here, I'm fine passing up a breakeven spot here to allow my stack to be somewhat consolidated and far away from the other stacks. Laddering on final tables is really important. My in game analysis was when he bets 47%-62% its very likely the trend of bet sizes would increases and that he would bet somewhere between 80-120% on the river, so with this line of thought from him I constructed his range to be draws + value hands (value hands being 2 pair+) unfortunately QQ blocks QJ/QT here for some natural bluffs, so his most likely bluffs here are going to be flush/combo draws like txss, 5xss, axss etc. For me to call the turn here I think he needs to be betting around 20% of his 9x combos, in game I figured with all the information I had that this was probably a little bit too ambitious and made a pretty tough fold.

No idea if it was a correct fold, I hate the train of thought of "you flat pre so you have to call down" that is just such an incredibly flawed logic in my opinion. Sure I would call a bunch of run outs, but poker is an information game, we have to put all the pieces of the jigsaw together and create a picture to make correct decisions, I felt he was the kind of player to be opening all the 2 pair combos and of course has all sets/straights etc etc. QQ here on 8729 is a really ugly bluff catcher. It is also not like I will be massively overflowing the turn I don't think. I think calling turn with a hand like T8 could be significantly better than QQ, we block 82, 87, 98, TJ, T6 and still have the opportunity of improving against a bunch of hands and implied odds of him blasting off when we improve too. QQ is relatively static here imo. Anyway, let me know what you guys think, I took a bit of stick from friends on this hand, so has been on my mind somewhat!

Next trip is Dublin, I wasn't going to go, but Stars won't let me change because I won seats to UKIPT and the Main. Going with a few guys from the stable, so that will be fun too. Going to be playing everything, really looking forward to that.

Fitness wise is kind of interesting. I have ate a lot better this year. No chocolate, no fizzy drinks, no sweets, no fries AT ALL (anybody who knows me knows this is huge ) today is first day with a new chef/nutritionist, she will be bringing 3 meals /day 6 days a week and have it tailored to exactly how much carbs/protein/calories I want. Gym wise I have been going around 2x/week, this will gradually increase. Today I'm playing football at 11am with 12 Hungarian poker players. Last year was basically be waking up at 4pm every day and heading down to KFC, eating it around 4x/week and generally eating and drinking a bunch of trash food and drink. I'm glad how January has gone so far. February will help rectify my sleeping patterns a little bit as I will be in Dublin for over 10 days where I'll need to be up early.

Football season starts in March after this extended winter break, who knows maybe I'll even be fit enough to bring my boots!

Very big Tuesday today, so many great tournaments, $1.5k on 888, $1k STU, lots of stuff. Lets hope for a deep run in something.

Vamos and gl all

[pleno1]

Curious as to what you think about some of the HR guys and their % in tournaments, have read before you said many play for less than 10% but don't think you mentioned anyone.

For example, Igor just fired 5x bullets in a 30-40 entrant Aussie Mills 100k with first being 1.6m. What is the absoltee most % you can see him having here. Am I crazy to think it's like 5-15%?

I know that there was a couple of the guys who used to play for between 1-5% free rolls in all these tournaments. So I guess they would play $100k and a $50, have 3% free roll of their action and lets say 10% roi, so they would have around $300k in buy ins (be generous) 5% free roll (generous) and 10% roi (generous) the most they would be making would be around $1.5k, lets even say they made $3k. They are flying around the world spending tonnes of money on hotels/flights/keeping up with high roller life, it sounds bit **** right? But then again lets look at the green grass over there, they are travelling to the best places in the world, playing and socialising with some of the smartest guys out there and learning poker from the best in the world, its hardly a **** life huh?

I know that Igor sells, my friends have bought action from him, I don't know and wouldn't say exactly how much he sells/what markups etc, but if I had to guess, I would say he had around 20-25% of all the bullets, however I imagine he has action in a bunch of others in the field too.

I'm actually often very intrigued about who is buying in who in these high rollers. I know that some of the American guys have very rich businessmen who put them in everything and just enjoy the sweat. If you run well for a few tournaments then it probably secures you staking for this stuff for significant period of times.

Previously when stars used to give free hotels for the stay people would pay and literally sell 95% and at markup and then when you take into account the free roll of hotels (Monaco is ****ing expensive!) then they basically play a tournament with a 5% free roll, also stars used to give FPPs for live tournaments too, so it worked out a very nice deal for those shrewd guys!

Obviously there is a German "fund" that is buying action in a lot of guys. I won't go too much into that although the guy who runs it is a very, very nice guy (my ex backer actually!) and very popular in the community.

If a guy starts randomly selling action publicly I'm always a little skeptical. It means that the people who were buying in him don't want to anymore, or they feel the markups he charges are too high, they probably have a good understanding of the high roller field better than I do so it puts me off wanting to invest. I think generally buying action in people who sell publicly in high rollers is not going to be a wise move. I could be totally wrong about this though, just my strategy.

I think the real value is in the one day turbos. The guys who do all the live stuff really well, stare downs, psychological stuff, play well deep, have cash game backgrounds or whatever else perform poorly in these 1 day turbos imo. Playing 5-30bbs is just so different to "normal poker" you can't just "wait it out" or "wait for people to punt" its a turbo. I've heard of some ridiculous hands that people wouldn't believe from these one day turbos. People will be way too tight in certain spots and way too loose in certain spots. Also the live stuff doesn't really work, if I'm running a 3 street 100bb bluff vs Timex then I very possibly am going to be ****ting myself and he can make a call vs a smell he gets from under the table, in a turbo I'm going to simply be shoving, knowing its good and not really sweating it that hard. I'll just envisage the holdem resources calculator telling me I should be making 1.76bb this hand and loving life.

Unfortunately, most of these one day turbos happen on day1b of EPTs where Day1a is a Sunday meaning that I have to skip a Sunday session to play it, and I'm not going to do that. Feel happy investing money in others in them though.

I'll take tonka/connorb and those guys in those fields very happily, also those kinda guys not in the hr scene will very likely be charging less/no markups which is attractive.


In general my opinion about these highrolers is simply

lolvariance
loldonkaments
lolego
lolpeoplethinkingsomebodyisgoatbecausetheywontwo45mansngs
lolpeoplethinkingtheyaregoatbecausetheywontwo45mansngs
lol
lol
lol

He'd probably have a better knowledge of Fedor, who fired 4 bullets

I have no idea how much Fedor had, I think he had around 20% of the Manilla score, so take of that what you will.

[Tal]

How many people in the world (not just in poker) can say this?

"...for around $320k profit so far this month."

Good to see this diary back.

[pleno1]

Very weird week.

Played quite a few sessions. Came 20th in 888s $1500 was in full beast bode and played great. Lost AKs to AA vs this new guy Large Coffee who is new reg on all sites and is absurd aggro. He had 2x average before the hand cut off vs button. Nevermind.

Managed a 4th in Party 50k, pretty sad not to close this one out, again played very good last two tables and lost AKs v A7o to bust

Today I was really looking forward to. I had huge hopes and it was one of the biggest Sunday's in a while. I woke up earlier than I had hoped but that was out of my control. Started the session somewhat tired and lost first 12 or 13 flips and was starting to get pretty frustrated. Over the last 4 months I've unregged a lot more sessions than I should have done and likely cost myself a bunch of money. I went to the bathroom in the break, put my face under the cold tap and got myself more livelier. I'd love to say this was the reason that I ended up winning/chopping the 200 turbo for 20k but it was simply just running good. Previously this year I've had 10 finishes between 4-9th. For a Probabky combined 40k or so and some of those had big 1st position scores (80k+ etc) I'd played really well then and fell because of the rng, this time I managed to get the gold medal but I didn't do anything special or grear, just ran well when it mattered. I lost ak v a9 3 handed after kt2r flop for all the chips but I wasn't really effected about it that much I realized that I had God modes the entire tournament to get to this phase.

So in the first half of my session when I was losing flip after flip I'd say I had played around 9/10, the second half of the session I got a bunch of stacks, 100k+ winamax high roller (didn't cash) 300k Party high roller (didn't cash) pure bubbled Monaco sest, 4x average 12 left 200r (came 6th) but I didn't do anything great at all to get these stacks I just ran well and won important flips. I could moan how I finished 46th (45th being the first cash position) inn the Party major at v at all in on ttx but that would be a fraud thing to do, I'd won j8 v 66, kq v aq and many other fortunate hands prior. I could moan about busting in TCOOP high roller a6 v a5 aip but then again I won qq v aa in tcoop main to lock up a cash. I could moan about running bad for the last 6 months but I won a WCOOP and final tabled another 2 just before then. I could moan about not cashing EPTs when I get it in really good but then again I final tabled two WPT back to back for over $150k.

Around 3 months ago a friend asked me if I wanted to study some piosolver range building and I told him that I didn't care about doing anything like that. Tournaments are easy enough without complicating it.

Around a month later I got my drive back. I'm still relatively new to MTTs, I've only played 10-15k of them lifetime. I'm starting to kind of "get them" a little better now. Yes I will run bad over short stretches, yes I will run bad over long stretches, awful players run good over short periods and awful players run good over longer periods. To have a sick session with loads of amazing stacks doesn't mean that I played my A game and played like a sicko. To have an awful session when I don't cash any tournaments doesn't mean that I played my C game and punted stacks left right and centre. I will get stacks from running good and lose stacks from running bad. The win rates we have are long term and uncontrollable to is. I simply just have to make my expected returns as high as possible and hey if I run bad I run bad who gives a fuck.

This month was probably the most I ever did in terms of strategy content. I locked myself away in my room and did a lot of hours of study. I have high hopes about the future, I want to do well Ofc but I also completely understand that there's a good chance I won't win for x amount of time. I've said it before but variance SHOULD be he best thing involved in poker for me. I should love that there is variance. If my game doesn't change whe I lose but my opponents games deteriorate then that is such a huge plus for me. If I still register the turbos at the end of my session and r/f ato for 13bbs utg instead of jamming in the hot44 when I've lost 5k that day whilst my opponent rofls it in that is an amazing thing for me. Bring on the variance.

For those who weren't awake I made a bet of essentially $10k that I would be in the best physcial shape of my life by the time of the WSOP. This month was always going to be the hardest. I would say in 2015 I averaged around 4 KFCs a week and around 10+ chocolate bars and perhaps 10 fizzy drinks. I would say I are fries around 10x a week. For the first phase in my cleaning out I basically wanted to test my resistance and see how determined I actually was to do this. I didn't smash the gym 3/4x a week but that sandy really the big goal for this month. I didn't eat any chocolate, sweets, fries, any fast food, fizzy drinks and drank 0 liters of beer. I'm pretty proud of that. I've done on average exercise 2x a week which I'm OK with. The major downside is my sleeping schedule, it's completely fucked. I guess I'll try to improve that in March. I go to Dublin for 1/3rd of this month and will attempt to continue the healthy eating, although it's incredibly tough with hotels and playing all day every day. Let's see how it goes anyway. I will make an effort for Feb 1st - Feb 10th to go to the gym or do sport 3x and between 21-28 to do the same. Between the 10-20th whilst I'm away I'm not going to set targets, but I'll take my gym shoes to Dublin and hopefully remove them from my suitcase!

Real life stuff will be very interesting I have 3 big potential business opportunities. I won't be able to speak about at least 2 of them on the blog just yet. Will be busy busy busy though. Stable stuff is hopefully going to continue to go well although we've left some leeway for ourselves in case of a quiet month. Big shout out to one of my favorite horses Zolta. We took him on after he was playing $30 husngs. He just seemed like a really clever kid who thought about the game well. He started off at smaller stakes and now he's playing amongst the higher stakes in the team after only being with us for a few months. Last night he shipped an XL event for $15k and his biggest score. So big shout out to him.

Last but definitely not least big shout out to Party Poker. My prediction is that this year they will claw a tonne of traffic back from PokerStars and will fight for being market leader. If they listen to their players like they are currently doing and continue in the way of a few things happening behind the scene then I think they will be a huge success. More to come about this in near future... Definitely a company I would love to represent though!

[pleno1]

Any tips for a long weekend over there?

Of course, how degen would you like to be?

If you had to compre the highrollers to stars mtts which ones have similar player strenghts?

Hey, its tough to say, if I had to though.. I'd go with:


10k Highroller = Trex on a Sunday
5k EPT Main = Super Tuesday

Hey Pads!

First, v nice thread. Really enjoy reading it and its prolly the only thread that makes me check 2p2 on daily basis.

I persoanlly think that sleeping well is absolute key to living a healthy and balanced life. (cannot belive im talking about life balancing like mine is balanced at all, but sitll). You absolutely cannot pass on that and thats prolly the main thing you should be working on. (really funny that everytime I woke up and check the chat, I see you posting in something like 8-9am and i am like "wtf? ".

Eating healty is def v important as well because we are what we eat after all, but at the end of the day calories are calories. You can be eating healthy and still get fat as **** just like you can be eating only choclete all day long and be losing fat. Its all the matter of how many calories we consume on a daily basis and how many do we actually need. As long as you consume the right amount of calories eating choclete you will be losing weight if thats your goal. Are you going to feel like **** if you eat only choclete and junk food all day long? Absolutely! But you will be going in the right direction if you goal is to clean and lose weight.

I think we, as a human beings, SHOULD NOT restrict ourselfs from thing we love because, first, that is v hard to do mentally and, second, its prolly not good at all. After all we have our needs. There are times where our bodies want to ****ing eat that whole choclete so bad and its prolly not a good idea to mentally fight that need and resist eating some choclete when we want. Its all the matter of balance and how we do it. "Cheating" from time to time does not mean that you are going to **** up your 8pack progress or anything like that.

So, IMO, sleep is as important as eathing healthy or even more and absolutely nothing cant replace the night time sleep. Its v hard to do it as MTT players but it is doable for sure!

Gl with that! Keep updating on the progress. Will be v interested to see how its going.

Ma man, I agree with all you say. Personally, sleep is my biggest issue for sure. I think for online MTT players its one of the most difficult things to handle, not just because of playing, but also because of their living arrangements. If you live with other people, even if they are MTT players themselves, you will never be on a perfect sleeping schedule, you will always be woken up when you need to have a long sleep and recharge the batteries and it will be a hectic lifestyle. Maybe you need 8 hours sleep but get woken up after 5-6 hours, you then are up, you try and stay up in the day, but you're sleepy, groggy and can't perform well, you're game is generally effected and you sometimes need to take a nap, if you take a nap you will generally be sleepy again for your session or not in the best frame of mind and then you will end up being awake until 8-9am and the cycle starts again. With MTT players they are usually the last guys up and the last guys asleep so its really tough for them. I've always been a long sleeper, I like to sleep 8-10 hours in general to feel "peak" for the next day. I perform pretty poorly in poker if I sleep poorly, thats for sure. Biggest tip in general is that if you're tired or didn't sleep well, just take the day off and don't burn money. I've done that way too much.

Hey Patrick , your blog is a nice read as always , following it from a while but I rarely post on forums

I think it's really nice to talk about the variance in general and how you perceive it ; since it's something so ambiguous not many ppl understand it fully .  It's nice another solid opinion on it , more over one that comes from a very reliable source    

Overall nice to hear about the downswindes and the upsides of it

Lots of luck man ! ! !

ma man, thanks a lot <3

I wrote a lot about this just now before it deleted, but will try again. I was basically trying to say that variance is the most evil thing in poker, but its evil because we fail to tackle it. Personally, last year before SCOOP/MONACO/WSOP, I thought I was the best MTT online player in the world. I was studying a tonne, I was playing a tonne, I was surrounded by very good players, I was coaching 3x/week so was actively engaging every day in MTT's, I generally just thought that I "got" it. This wasn't enough for me though, I wanted everybody else to think I was the best too, I wanted to have a huge SCOOP, a huge WSOP, a huge Monaco, but I didn't want to do it so I could make money, I wanted to be recognised. It was a pretty big mental flaw I had. Yesterday I won a tournament, last year I would have posted in this very blog minutes afterwards how I was now "triple crown hunting" the next day maybe I would have checked my pocket fives wall to see how many people "liked" my post or checked how far up it took me in the pocket fives rankings. Yesterday, I shut down my computer, my house mate grinding next to me didn't even know I was on the final table, I didn't blog and instead I deleted my pocket fives account. I realised that negative variance impacted me because I didn't want to fail. I realised that I didn't want to fail because I didn't want people to start doubting me. Ohhhhh look at pads SCOOP, he got crushed, he's on a 60k downswing, maybe he just ran good. Those kind of thoughts really haunted me! They were my worst nightmare, I wanted to be recognised and I wanted people to think I was the GOAT. I didn't care that I was on a 3 month downswing in terms of financial pressure or worrying about if I could feed my dogs, I was scared about stuff that in the grand scheme of things meant absolutely nothing, or should have meant absolutely nothing... It sounds really ****ing stupid, but its true, and in the end it was ironically my biggest leak.

If I win the Sunday 530 this week people will say in Skype groups, or at dinners, or at their hotel rooms in EPT Dublin, wow pads is such a sicko, he won the Sunday 530. But winning the Sunday 530 means absolutely nothing. It doesn't mean that I studied a lot this month, it doesn't mean that I put a tonne of volume in this month, it simply means I won a tournament. Terrible players win tournaments every single day. Lazy players win tournaments every single day. In 2016, I am by biggest fan and by biggest critic. I don't care who thinks I'm the best anymore and I certainly don't care who thinks I am the worst. I am going to constantly challenge myself and critique myself, as long as I answer myself, then negative variance won't impact me.

So I think its very important if you think you have a problem with variance to ask yourselves...

1- Ask yourself, WHY is variance a negative thing to you?
2- Ask yourself, WHY is this negative thing a negative thing?
3- Ask yourself, is this negative thing ACTUALLY a negative thing?

1- Variance was a negative thing to me because I was wanted to win.
2- I wanted to win because I wanted others to think I was as good as I thought I was
3- This is not important.

My top tip for players who are playing less than $50 abi MTT's (most people) is simply to really understand how much you should be studying and what you should be studying. I see so many players ineffectively studying. If you're playing small stakes MTT's you don't need to worry about how to build GTO ranges playing 100bb deep pre ante, you don't need to worry about how Sauce would play Heads Up again IKE, you don't need to worry about how many exact combos your bluffing frequency should have against an opponent at $2knl 6max deep ante cash games. The best high stakes tournament players in the world (WITH THEIR CURRENT SKILL SETS) would not be able to win at $2knl, in fact they would be a huge mark, they would have a green label around their avatar and their would be a waiting list full of sharks waiting to take their money. This isn't a bad thing, in fact its a compliment. However, if you want to play MTT's for the next few years and you want to move up stakes and you want to improve your tournament game then its very important you effectively study. Phil Galfond may hate me for this, so sorry Phil! But many people think runitonce is one of the biggest things hurting the game, I think in tournaments its not true at all, if anything its the opposite. So many guys are spending all their studying hours watching videos there that aren't applicable to their game type, making notes, rewatching and trying to deeply understand all of the deep theoretical stuff in super detail. I promise you with everything that I know about poker and tournament poker in general, that isn't close to the best way to learn how to win at poker tournaments. If this, and don't get me wrong, it is amazing content, wasn't released then maybe players would have been more effective in their studying and worked out what they needed to work on and tried to emulate the top players in their game rather.

Had a funny conversation yesterday where I assumed a reg was berating me. He wrote in chat " you can tell pads uses piosolver a lot" I was really intrigued, so found his Skype.

[02/02/2016, 22:52:01] Patrick Leonard: hey what did you mean?
[02/02/2016, 22:52:07] xxgoodregxx: Pads!
[02/02/2016, 22:52:14] Patrick Leonard: because i called off when he was v strong?
[02/02/2016, 22:52:18] xxgoodregxx: you clearly use PIo alot
[02/02/2016, 22:52:28] xxgoodregxx: No regardless of that hand
[02/02/2016, 22:52:34] xxgoodregxx: genral statement
[02/02/2016, 22:53:01] Patrick Leonard: why do you think that though? :d
[02/02/2016, 22:53:12] Dando (Fold Machiii): Cus you play like PIo says
[02/02/2016, 22:53:14] Patrick Leonard: like in what ways do i?
[02/02/2016, 22:53:15] xxgoodregxx: Its a good thing
[02/02/2016, 22:53:39] xxgoodregxx: Not gunna give you my reads now am i.
[02/02/2016, 22:54:04] xxgoodregxx: you obvi study with it a lot. its good right?
[02/02/2016, 22:54:07] Patrick Leonard: because i 3bet instead of jamming off 20bbs?
[02/02/2016, 22:54:11] xxgoodregxx: No
[02/02/2016, 22:54:14] xxgoodregxx: Not atall.
[02/02/2016, 22:54:18] Patrick Leonard: ive never used it before
[02/02/2016, 22:54:23] Patrick Leonard: but i have no idea why you think this
[02/02/2016, 22:54:38] xxgoodregxx: you serious?
[02/02/2016, 22:54:56] Patrick Leonard: serious
[02/02/2016, 22:55:01] Dando (Fold Machiii): Hahaha
[02/02/2016, 22:55:07] Dando (Fold Machiii): another great read by me.
[02/02/2016, 22:55:27] Dando (Fold Machiii): your just lucky then
[02/02/2016, 22:55:45] Patrick Leonard: i know stuff it suggests
[02/02/2016, 22:55:50] Patrick Leonard: but have no idea why you’d think that :d
[02/02/2016, 22:55:58] Patrick Leonard: come on I’m intrigued
[02/02/2016, 22:56:06] xxgoodregxx: your sizing's basically.

Pretty ironic

My 2nd top tip would be volume. If you're playing $50abi or less and playing less than 500 tournaments/month you're simply doing it wrong. Volume is absolutely key in this game, without volume you're capping two very important things.

1) The amount of money you can make. Sure you can bink the Sunday Million one week, but at the end of the day its very simple maths. You currently play X abi, you currently play Y volume and your ROI is currently Z giving you a final figure of W. You're goal should generally be to increase W as much as possible. Sure studying is important, sure a balanced lifestyle is important, but if "Y" is gone then their is no W.

2) Poker tournaments are ALL about population tendencies and seeing what other people are doing. This is what its all about. He who does not play, can not see.


I would love to start coaching again right now, I think I have a very winning orientated logic towards approaching tournaments right now and "get" what it takes to really win at most stakes. Previously I struggled a little bit at not knowing the key differences between low-mid-high stakes tournaments, but with coaching these 50 guys in the stable for the last year or so and looking particularly at statistical evidence over really big sample size, I think that the "winning strategy" is actually pretty different to how most people would perceive it to be. Its really tough because I'm very busy with stable/poker/anonymous alleged businesses! but maybe in the future I will try to make time for some motivated guys that have a lot of potential.


Also have some really nice news for bitB Staking. We are adding 4 new coaches to our team, doubling our current coaching team. All are complete sickos and can't wait to announce it publicly.

[Simon Galloway]

What random people on the interwebs think of you is none of your business!

[UgotNuts]

Last few posts have been excellent I must say. Interesting and educational.

[pleno1]

Got down to two heads up tables tonight, $160 Crocodile and $320 6max on stars, Crocodile would complete my first every triple crown and $7.5k, $320 6max wouldn't because I won the $215 turbo on Sunday but was $8.5k for first. Friend messages me and says "money or glory" I told him "I deleted my pocket fives, I told you its all about the money now"

I won the $320 and came 2nd in the Crocodile, hopefully I'm still OK with that in the morning!

[Ragz]

Can I ask, do you personally yourself coach the people in your stable? Everyone might be "sickos" but it's you who's FTing ten HS buy-ins a day, are you personlaly teaching them how to 9bet A2o from BB to an UTG raise and jam QQ on King high turns etc?

[Ragz]

Just to make myself clear I wasn't mocking anything haha, you're reasonings are far more successful than my own lol, what I meant was when it comes to coaching are u including EVERY trick in the book or just the fundamentals?

[pleno1]

Hi, yes I coach the guys. I have done around 60-70 sessions (between 150-200 hours) of coaching which is recorded and available to new horses and no I don;t just talk about fundamentals. The players are playing with my money, its in my interests for them to do as well as possible.

[Ragz]

sweet, thanks for response.

[lucky_scrote]

2) Poker tournaments are ALL about population tendencies and seeing what other people are doing. This is what its all about. He who does not play, can not see.

I've never really sat down and thought about this much, but this is soooooo true. If I were to relate any of my success in the past 9 months it would be my constant observations of the MTT world. What is popular at the moment? It helps that my ABI is higher now too since population tenancies shift at the higher ABI's first. If you play the Big 22 you will still see people min raising which was the trend a couple of years ago (and could be again soon). I've always tried to come up with new things and particularly once (as it happens, you) someone said to me "If someone better than me does something I don't understand, I make myself understand".

Playing live is a bit different though, you will be playing with people who might never play online and have their own tenancies from their local casino. Some people might quickly copy whatever the other people are doing at the table. Your gut and raw knowledge counts for a lot more live. They will forever be different mindsets I believe.

[pleno1]

so much content! will try soon to post, lots happening

- deep run in main
- big bluff to bust main
- room mate on ft of main
- busted 2k hr
- 1 very interesting hand vs emil patel
- played with kitty kuo
- best night out I've ever had in my life in dublin
- considering relocating to dublin
- not going to play the main tomorrow
- direct buy in day 2
- good online session today
- should have played the 25k
- really looking forward to 10k hr
- ate many many pizzas
- no gym

Deep Run in main

So the main event (UKIPT) was great, first starting table was full of really good banter, no tanking, lots of laughing, lots of drinking. I got moved to second table with mement mori and was really nice speaking to him, he seems a good guy. I finished the day on 80k, which was grand moving into day 2.

Day 2 I started off really aggressively and chipped up to 125k pretty early. Lost a pretty unfortunate pot where I 3bet QJss oop vs gratitude and then c/c, c/c, c/check Q92css 5cssc Q925A and lost to KQ.

For the next 7 hours I really played ultra ultra tight. I was around 5-20bbs and never got more and think I played my stack really good, I've been studying a lot of shallow stack stuff so it was really ok with me, wasn't frustrated at all and actually enjoyed every decision, working out how many bbs I would make with each hand and then deciding if the variance was worth it.

Eventually I doubled then chipped up more and with 50 left was in a great spot. I had ultra nitty image I think, there was one huge whale flatting v wide pre (43o sb vs utg etc) i open KQhc to 25k off around 470k at 12kbb, he flats and we go 3 way.

Flop (pot 75k) (stacks 450k effective) T42hhc..  in reflection I think c/jamming is really sexy. Anyway I cbet 40k, he calls. He is very loose goose guy.

Turn (pot 155k) (stacks 410k) T428hhcc .. i double barrel to 100k, he calls

River (pot 355k) (stacks 310k) T4289hhccc .. I go all in quickly, he has 88.

I think my play is actually good, he has 650k left on the river, i think he gets here really wide, probably flatting t6s+ pre and Jto pre, i think he has every single axfd combo that will fold, lots of 8xfd that folds, 9xfd, 65dd etc.

His calling range is probably, 22, 44, 88, 99, TT, T8s, T9s, QJhh 76hh theres a chance he raises sets somewhere, he could also have other stubborn hands like 77,66 etc.

Anyway, I was very OK with the bluff, perhaps a little needless but I thought that to exploit this guy bet, bet, jamming certain board textures would work really well with my image. For the first 1 and half days I played very interesting strategy that I think works really well. I was basically min betting with and without initiative as my standard bet size and then varying turns. I think it can work pretty well. Its definitely possible that vs high cbettors in live poker leading 1bb 3 way on J74 with QT will be the best play. It also allows me to attack perceived capped ranges (expecting recs to raise strong top pairs) and some other really cool stuff, I really enjoyed using it and it worked pretty well and some people punted vs it and others played way too passively to it. People don't know how to play against really different and unique strategies.

Room mate made final of main

Everybody knows European finaled the main, was nice to see him go deep, I spoke about sometimes wanting friends to lose flips previously in spots, but nothing like that here, we get on very good and really wanted him to take it down.

UKIPT HR + Interesting hand vs Whitelime

Next day was the UKIPT HR, pretty interesting tournament, I was on same table as Emil Patel, Kitty Kuo, Stato and couple others. I'm not moaning here, but throughout the main the day before and in this tournament I really had no strong hands at all. One very interesting hand which involves me with a very weak hand was the following..

Bad reg opens to 1200 MP (17k) , Emil flats CO (30k)

I ask reg how much he has and he shows his very unconfidently his stack and then he rechecks his cards holding them up really high and not protecting it, i looked at him again and he started to check his phone and look behind him, I had such a bad hand, but he was a bad reg and was sure Emil would 3bet him with linnear range. I had J2o (lol) and decided to 3bet to 4200, I thought Emil would likely fold pairs like 22-99 if he flat them pre and was unsure about suited broadways, but obviously he may call them, it was pretty big though.

He calls.

Flop (10.5 pot, effective stacks 14) T42r, I have 14k left and decide to check. I think betting very very small with my entire range is the best play here, although he does potentially have a bunch of Tens and I probably have very few.  He checks back.

Turn (10.5 pot, effective stacks 14) T423fd, I decide to bet 2.6k, I think its pretty close between both, but wanted to protect against AQo, AQs, AJs  specifically but also against a bunch of KQs type of hands that have between 15-40%. He calls

River (15.7 effective stacks 12.5) T4239, fd bricks. I decide to check, he asks me how much I have, looking at my stack and then jams. I tank and fold.

Very interesting spot. Pot is 15.7+12.5+12.5= 40.7 and its 12.5 to call. I'm getting 3.2/1 to call, so need roughly 25% to call. Assuming he is only value jamming Tx+ lets give him full combos for now of

JTs (3)
QTs (3)
KTs (3)
ATs (3)
T9s (2)
TT (3)
AA (6)
99 (3)

26 full combos. Out of those I would say that guesstimating he would 3bet pre or fold pre or bet flop or raise turn around 20% of the time so lets reduce those 12 combos to 9. TT I think jams pre or 3bets pre or bets flop or raises turn 33% of the time, so will reduce that to 1 combo. AA I think will 3bet this guy often or potentially play different vs me so lets give him 50%. 99 will reduce 33% of combos.


So thats

Tx hands = 12 combos  (from 15)
AA or pre flop traps = 3 combos (from 6)
TT/99 = 4 combos (from 6)

= 21 combos of perceived range for villain


Seems realistic

Lets try to find realistic bluffing combos

QJ missed fd
KQ missed fd
AJ missed fd (i don't block)
KJ missed fd (i don't block)
AQ missed fd)
AQo

If he's bluffing 3 combos of AQ I should definitely clearly call imo. Having jack at the time I thought was actually an ok card, but when looking at his missed flush draws. I was uncertain at the time, but not blocking Qx felt like pretty good hand to call with. Getting here on the river with AK/AQ/J2, j2 seems pretty good bluff catcher, obviously Tx becomes snap on the river, but think I should probably call here too, what do you think? Pre flop I'm not doing this stupid stuff, I have been paying a lot of attention in hands, I think first guy folding 99%, give him 1% for best hollywood skills.

I had one other interesting hand vs kitty kuo. Hand before I limped (4 very 3bet heavy regs on left around button (my probably 4th limp so far in 2 orbits) 2 people limp behind and emil is on button, kitty looks at him with smile like he will raise button, when he flats this seems to surprise her. She seems very aggro and I know online she is very loose. She has around 24bbs and 3.5x the button (we are hu) I decide to jam. I think its good and expect her to iso a lot of hands vs limp behind because she probably thinks I'm fishy passive reg who is just limping about.


Anyyyywaaayyy, we went out for a big night out, really had such a great night, probably my best ever night out I've had. The bars here have such amazing atmosphere, everybody is in great spirits, we were in this live music bar and it was absolutely rammed, but I loved every minute of it, I drank more than I've ever drank before (around 15-20 bottles?) but felt really fine the next day, not sure how/why.

Have loved Dublin, the locals are really nice, super friendly, can play winamax and .fr, everything is just great, sure its expensive, but if I'm somewhere I'm really happy I'm sure I'll make enough money to survive! Lets see developments here..

Really happy with decision to skip the main event and reg day 2, I'm extremely comfortable with these stack sizes and its great structure. EPT clock and 30k chips at 400/800? Grand.

I really regret not making more of an effort to play the 25k. The tournament seemed really good value and I really think theres a lot of extremely weak regs in these fields. Hope that doesn't sound arrogant, there are many who are way stronger than me. I don't think I'd be making the most money in the tournament but I would definitely be making money.

Last tournament of the trip will be the $10k, going to make sure I'm super prepared for that too. Really just loving and enjoying poker again, in a very, very happy mental state about it all.

One big downside is I've been extremely unhealthy all trip. Ate terrible, no gym, really sad but its really tough when you're stuck in a hotel etc. Definitely the bad part of playing live poker without a doubt for me.

I played Sunday session too, played 8-12 tournaments in the whole day but had some sweats, 30th in WU, cashed few others etc.

Big day tomorrow anyway, lfg.