Diary of a MTT Grinder Wannabe

[jackinbeat]

Sik, unlucky mate, sounds like you need to run better deep, nothing else.

[Ant040689]

Tyty, just have to keep on knocking on the door, will keep bad beat stories to a minimum, but this was more a brag on my voyage through valuetown.

[Ant040689]

Had a very solid last two days of poker.

Had been playing the day shift, non pokerstars, slowie tourns with the avg buyin probably around $40, playing most of the biggest tourns available and finding my feet well.

Played only a max of say 12 tables and was looking to just get a vibe for each site I was playing and will probably continue with the smaller amount of tables until I get very comfortable.

I have a figure in my head that I would like to achieve in the year, and if I follow the games I know I am good in, then it should be attainable, with solid work and 50 hour weeks. However, I haven't put in a solid shift for ages now, always doing enough to keep me going.

Will be changing as I have decided that I should play every time I haven't got anything on in that day, and if my plans change from one day to the next, with being available one day at night to play but the next day only during the day, I can have alternate schedules ready to ease into.

So even if I have missed the main rush from 17.00-23.00, I can still enjoy a decent schedule at any time. Stops me from worrying about schedule conflict and that ease will lead to better poker play, so will try that.

Will be playing the 180 mans turbos on stars a lot more too, as schedule fillers if I am struggling for tourns, and have had alright success in them too. Would say I am just a little off with certain shoving spots, but I think it is nothing that won't come with more exposure to the game.



Off to watch Dulwich Hamlet FC tonight too, who are playing at home to a team in the league above, Kingstonian, in a semi final cup game. Hamlet are flying high in second with two games in hand and only three points behind the team in first, in the Ryman 1st divison south. Havent seen them play in well over a year and I do enjoy the vibe from non league games. They get a solid 100-200 turnout each game which I think rises to 400 for Saturday home games.

Might get some pictures in as well hopefully to post up tonight. I think the stadium is pretty nice, and played there a few times myself when I played for their youth team. There is something about the night games at non league grounds that get my juices going, always has me up for playing a game of football.

[Ant040689]

Forgot about this. The match above was a very good one, I believe it ended 5-2. Duliwch have a midfield maestro that should definitely not be in the Ryman league and nearly certainly will be playing league football shortly. He was incredible.

He reminded me of Johnny Williams for Palace, only 5'2, but had the best touch I have seen, his passing was very good, and he did a Zidane turn on one guy that I nearly fell off my seat when I saw. Was incredible.

Erhun Aksel Oztumer is his name and here he is:



Onto the Poker front I believe I will just list the amount of tourns i think i have played on the night and tell you of the profit/loss too.

Don't have tracking software so won't know for sure, but will know the balances before and after, so should make it a little interesting.

Tonight: 15 tournaments (mainly slowies) - $334 profit.

Won a $22f and was close in a $109f and another rebuy, but very happy to have taken a tourn down, with such little output.

Was watching, and still am, the WSOPE final table hand for hand, and am still at three players after watching it for about 4 hours. Found the play incredible and not quite sure how Hellmuth is doing it with some of his plays, but it is a great watch.
  

[Ant040689]

Have had my monitor all of a sudden not work, meaning I am left with two now, and can only effectively grind on 12 tables a time until i get a replacement or a remedy.

Probably leaves me with the chance to get some pokertube action on the side as well to keep the interest high.

Would assume I am getting through about 30 tourns tonight as i am looking to stop regging at 02.00 and late reg starting from 22.00 (10 mins ago).

[Ant040689]

Played about 30 tourns, got very close in a lot of them, as most nights I do, because I don't play tourns with too many runners and was down $580.

A bit of a non event of a night really. Two final tables of relative note, that had a sizeable amount up top but i didn't convert.

I think my 40-20 bbs game suffered tonight, as i think i was listening to music and vibing a bit too much and didnt have as good a grasp as i should have on all the tables. Still was doing well, don't get me wrong, as i was still knocking on the door to winning these things. But i could have made the job easier by making more moves to keep my stack afloat through non showdown moves with my 20+ bbs stack, but instead I played way too abc, and let myself blind away much more than i should have.

Going to have a break away from playing actually.

And I am going to revise the game a little more and in particular i am going to watch, tonight, different types of tourns at different stages and multi table that. I want to pick up reads on generic successful lines people take, without needing to get to showdown, and i just want to pick up on how best to try and stay afloat and what moves are best in line for your bbs, and so on and so forth.

I think it may be best too to rail some well known awesome players and just see how they generally operate themselves.

I do think that when i play more than 6 tables i have a habit of auto piloting a little, so i need to lock in what techniques i should be using at every stage of a tourn with each different type of possible bbs, and let loose on 12+ tables, being relentless, and never ever blinding away as i think i may have allowed a bit too much tonight.

Could be interesting really, as i may have played optimally tonight but just didn't have the right spots to do anything and such is life. But I think i need to find this out by watching as many other people play as possible, and preferably the better players, and see how similarly they play and what moves i should incorporate into my own game.

I may realise that I won't learn anything as I won't often be able to see the cards or know if it is just a card rush or some great stealing, but I am just going to see if i can get learning.

Going to subscribe to a few training sites as well, and i am interested to see how heavily reliant some of those that do videos, are of notes and HUD, as I play most tourns completely cold of these and can only go off short term memory and flow of how people are playing on the table to react myself to it.

Just think I should be exposing myself to as much aides as possible to ease my worries and doubts about my game, so i can know fairly certainly whether or not i am playing as close to optimally as possible. As it is that doubt that is really bothering me and actually is probably creating even more bad variance in my game with hesitation. 

Funnily enough generally i am winning nicely overall and have been doing so for years. But its always annoying to be missing out on some value by being sloppy in certain areas, and basically i have to find out if i am being so.

[Ant040689]

****Cliffs at the bottom******

Haven't done the above yet, nor have I played. I have been finishing up on all the seasons of the US sitcom, Parks and Recreation and must say aside from the first 4 episodes of season one which were slow, it has been a treat. It comes to the UK in the summer on BBC4, but really surprised it will be taking so long to get to our general knowledge really because it beats the US office for me and even though it isn't completely and utterly terrific, I think it just shades it as my favourite US sitcom of all time.

However, I haven't watched through, Arrested development properly yet (though I think it tries way too hard to be funny at times) and also Larry David's sitcom, which i found funny, but a little samey, it is always him against the world and I found it a little tiresome.

Obv you may find Parks and Rec tiresome as well, but i just found it a much better show, but know that is wildly up for debate.

Click to see full-size image.

On the poker front I have searched every poker name that I have had for every site on sharkscope, and did out the real ROI on each of the names rather than the average ROI listed. Which I must say is heavily misleading. I believe the avg ROI posted on Sharkscope takes all the different buy in levels you played on that site and then averages your ROI based on that, rather than the average stake multiplied by the number of games and then the profit divided by the answer to the previous sum. (edit: then multiply that by 100)

What I found was a little surprising and I have seen that I have been getting remarkable results on some sites, which I had never rated as highly before, had been ok winners on others, which I may have been giving too much time to. Had been a surprising break even player on some and then a real big loser on others. Obv I had unwittingly played more on the sites I had been crushing for morale and for monies, but still thinking the sites i was doing only ok on were as effective as the sites I was crushing which was inaccurate.

A real eye opener, and I am adjusting accordingly to still obviously treat to my game as I have always tried to, to try and improve but give extra tlc to the lower winning ROI's and breakevens and even the losers. I know variance takes its toll on the validity of these ROI's anyway, but aside from the $26k win on party, which i have taken into account, I think all of these are probably a fair reflection of my worth to that site.

Obv too it is clever to break it down further and read into what tourns you perform well on on each site and using the favourite games tab and it just showed an annoying amount of ignorance on my part with game selection.

There was some idiocy of the 1k and 2k hyper turbo shots i was making about 6 months ago, which skews my stars profits terribly. I was playing them in tilt really. As I was under pressure with the finals of my Uni and i remember spunking off a lot of money around that time. University on that front was terrible for me. I should never have gone, and it only meant i fucked up two things in my life at the time rather than excelling in one or the other. This wasn't poker's fault. It was I went into uni with no idea why I was there and no motivation from 18 onwards, when poker wasnt a big deal at all to me. I should have stalled on it, saved the tuition fees, and pursued poker. If I had poker to concentrate on fully for the past 5 years, there is no doubt I would be much better off than I am now. However, I have done well regardless, and those tough experiences have made me a more solid player, so you need to learn from these things and move on.





Sorry, that diverted. Back to the games, and i saw that i had a bad tilt spell which coincided with uni finals, which explains a lot. But aside from that there was a lot of mismatching going on with the game selection.

I would choose games that did not gel well at all in the same grinds. I would have 20f - 50f - 100f turbos all on the same grind which was ridiculous. As i would be taken advantage of in the bigger games, for not fully concentrating and needing to adapt my games to each intricate situation which was vastly different in these games.

What happened then was that in the high end turbos i generally did very well as i was concentrating fully on them, on all sites, but the middling turbos of 20-60f accounts for my biggest losses across most of the sites. Especially Pokerstars, where I lost an embarrassing amount in them. As you can easily not rate them as highly as the bigger buy in tourns on the same site, and i must have been playing terribly in these. The $35f 180 mans was a big culprit in these as well.

I had been losing a lot in the 109f slowies across a lot of sites too. I think this is as I don't think i rated them as highly as i should have in terms of monetary significance, and thought too that they were easy pickings to just fold down, pick my spots, and i should be fine with a push fold game. But i just ended up losing badly in these, while i was concentrating on the turbos a bit more as i enjoyed them a lot more generally.



Of the huge buy ins ($215+) i did well, as i took these with the care they deserved as i should have been treating the $109fs! Great results on party and pokerstars for these.

Also too a mention for a late night 99f on party i still play. Which i had solid results for and i think i treated this so much better as this tourn was always being played on 12 or less tables so had my full concentration and i too enjoyed how well i was playing in them, so always made sure i was really in the zone here.

Of the $109's even though across a lot of sites i was bad, i did very well on Ongame. On Party even though that one 99f was good to me, i had lost $6000 in 350 games of 109 and 55f, which needs to be sorted.

So generally, i have a habit of choosing games that vary too much in structure, which has me glossing over the finer details of how each tournament should be played. As say I only played $109's slowies for the rest of my days I would be fairly sure I would be a good winner in these if these were all i had to concentrate on. However, this is the tourn that most suffers when i involve other buy ins and turbos and super turbos and whatnot. Seeing this as a leak has really helped me as i see that my ROI has been terribly affected by quite an easy problem to resolve. So will be interesting, with how careful I will be in the future, how well i get on generally.

In the super turbos I do well. I do play these unlike a lot of people and despite the outrageous variance, of which i must have had the good side of, i would say of the small edges you can get i do exploit them very well. Essentially it is to get big, and just open shove all the time and have the 15-7 bbs stack having to call off to beat you. Too, you can just re raise all in ott of min raises from mid pos if they are doing so from 17 bbs stacks, with a weak holding yourself, but the fold equity is there to see the fold, or if the call happens, still to have decent equity. Its about moving and shaking in a manic manner and i find the games enthralling.

The 6 max hyper tourns I have played 228 $82f and won $11k I am down on the full ring $51s, however, recently I have been doing very well in them, and found an adjustment which is working very well for me, so think that leak is now fixed. On Ongame, where the turbos are effectively super turbos I am up $5k in about 300 games.

My game of choice though and the ones where for some reason I seem to be joke good are the rebuy turbos.

On stars they have the $5r/3r/8r and I have played 200 games for a return of $20k.



Now I play these, exceptionally different to how I play all else, and with the results I have been getting in them I can be forgiven to concentrating more on these over other tourns. So if I have 6 $109fs running at the same time as two of these, the $109's are bound to suffer, and I am so happy I see that tonight.

I do well too on the slowie rebuy tourns too, and feel that the extra chips really engage my excitement more as you get smaller stacks thinking they still have a lot of chips to play with, so will fold down to aggression when they should be playing back and the fact there are more chips on the table normally means more action, so the fish get more involved, and I love it when I can try to exploit them.

Playing rebuys in line with standard 3000 chips start tournies, is a tough thing to do now when I think about it. They play differently and in the standards you can play a much more tight aggressive game and pick your spots a lot better. In the antes section later on, as it is not a rebuy, there is less maneuverability, as there are less chips, but if you play these alongside a rebuy tourn with antes in the shoving ranges and reshove ranges can be so much wider. So it can be easy to skew what you should be doing in what one at a certain time.

So what I need to do is play less tables initially and see what tourns i can play side by side, but still maintain really good comfort and control on each table. Knowing I am playing each one how that type of tourn should be played. When I lock down a style I know to work (which I will always look to improve as the game gets more advanced), I can assign it to that type of tourn and play many more tables knowing how I should be playing in each.

This should probably involve grouping similar tourns on the same part of the screen or whatnot, but I am excited by what I have seen tonight from my stats. As it reads that negligence rather than lack of potential is inhibiting my profitability and hopefully with some small coy changes I can find a much more enjoyable, more relaxing and more profitable grind.



CLIFFS: Recommend watching Parks and Recreation
           Calculated true ROI on my poker names on sites
           Looked at what tourns I excelled/did terribly in
           Mention the changes I am looking to make
           Concluded that I feel very good about my chances and play.
           The proper start of more pictures to break up particularly long posts.
        

[MC]

Good post mate, good to see you analysing in such detail.

I think you're a bit naive about sample sizes though. I mean 200 games in 6-max hypers and turbo rebuys means diddly squat.

The annoying thing about deciding which games to mix and how many tables etc is that it's all guess work/feel, as you are never going to accumulate any kind of sample to draw comparison from.

I have a lot of filler games that I maybe shouldn't play because they potentially take attention from my main games, it would be really nice to have a definite answer about whether I make more money playing them or skipping them.

Perhaps do a couple of different experimental sessions and go for the one that "felt" best / most enjoyable. Of course the problem with that is the more profitable day is likely to feel the best, which is another problem in these decisions, fooled by randomness!

Gl at the tables mate.

[Ant040689]

Good post mate, good to see you analysing in such detail.

I think you're a bit naive about sample sizes though. I mean 200 games in 6-max hypers and turbo rebuys means diddly squat.

The annoying thing about deciding which games to mix and how many tables etc is that it's all guess work/feel, as you are never going to accumulate any kind of sample to draw comparison from.

I have a lot of filler games that I maybe shouldn't play because they potentially take attention from my main games, it would be really nice to have a definite answer about whether I make more money playing them or skipping them.

Perhaps do a couple of different experimental sessions and go for the one that "felt" best / most enjoyable. Of course the problem with that is the more profitable day is likely to feel the best, which is another problem in these decisions, fooled by randomness!

Gl at the tables mate.

Yup, i should have mentioned that the sample size is low and that it can never bee seen as gospel because if it. In a lot of earlier posts I do mention that it is tough to find out your true ROI as you would need a huge amount of games.

However, I would say, certainly in my case as i feel i often play so on and off, that the stats serve as an indication of what games I am playing well in. Especially in the case of the 100fs. A lot of the time I play in tourns for these that are less than 200 runners, and i think i had a lot bigger sample saying i was losing but it made no sense to me that i was.

When i am on the comedown after the slog of say 24 tables at around 8pm, say at around midnight when i may be only on 6 tables, I find the 100fs generally very playable and enjoy my edge in them. But to see I am a big loser in them basically says to me definitely, that even though it may be negative variance, my play in them has probably been generally pathetic.

Only reason for that would be not concentrating enough.

As you quite rightly said it is murder trying to figure out what grind is best for you. But I think if i go forward with limiting the amount of tables i play, increasing them only when i feel in control of every table, then i won't have any monumental mishaps again.

I think it is important to say too, that for the amount of time i have been playing, my sample size for ps, party, ftp, ps.fr, ipoker, boss, microgaming and whatnot is very low. As i had spent nearly all my time full time grinding the now defunct IGT network that Devilfish gaming were on. They had nightly 10r 2ks and other tourns that had no antes and really put off the better players from playing. They only had less than 100 runners for most of their tourns and i cleaned up on there for a long time. Got into their top ten one year with the moniker DntCryUfish, not to mention the outrageous bonus plan I had on there too. It was remarkable. That died a horrible death recently though.

So too did Cryptologic, which I spent my first two years playing nearly solely on, through William Hill. If it wasn't for their closure, I don't think I would have ever expanded out across more sites and really make a shot at becoming a pro. But that is the way really, you can become affectionate to one site only especially if that was the site that brought you to the game in the first place.

Like I would imagine now that many people have the same family feel when playing on certain 888 games because of the relatively low runners on there for tourns, the webcam games, and it generally attracting the recreational player. I enjoyed that feeling and really enjoyed the games on the old crypto because everyone sort of knew everyone and you knew too that 'Ultgamb' was one of the men to beat. He had an outrageous tourney leader board points score and was a great player. Still is and was nice to meet up with him in Miami.

Oh yeh, winning a $10k package through Crypto also helped to get me a little hooked onto the game i had basically only just turned 18 lol.

But yeh back to the point, I know now to be very wary of what grinds i play and i can never again feel that sense of unease that i am not fully in control of my grind which crept in way too often in the recent past. As soon as that feeling sets in you are way off your A game and would imagine that happens, or has happened to a lot of grinders out there at one point or another.

[Donk23]

Tom Haverford and Jean Rafael are my heroes

[Ant040689]

Tom Haverford and Jean Rafael are my heroes

You know it makes sense!

[dreenie]

Ant, where have u been, still grinding?, How's it all going?

[Ant040689]

No real news Dreenie, came third in the big slicks live poker club £100fo on thursday for £1200, got shafted as CL 3 handed with £2750 up top. Like to play the occasional live tourn to know I am still playing decent live poker and found the game to be there for the taking which is really encouraging. Helped a lot that I got a huge chip up early on. I do love Big Slicks, always good banter there and just no real reason to bring any headphones as there is normally a good convo going on.

Just got my head down playing low stakes tourns $22f-$55f-$11r online. Had a big downswing recently playing higher, and re assessed some of the leaks that were the cause, aside from the general bad luck, I came to the conclusion I was playing too many tourns at a time (16-24) without being fully comfortable on all of them. And the main thing that I wasn't doing was 3 betting enough with a 20-40 bbs stack, instead playing too tight until I had to play shove poker. Sort of in a way waiting for a diminished stack so it was easier to multitable, subconsciously. Which obviously is outrageous. But I just started to realise I was getting into that terrible habit, so playing a max of 9 tables, 12 for possible overflow and really think about every decision.

Emphasis is on comfort rather than a stressed and hectic grind with the view of developing a better medium sized stack game, multitabling, and then adding as many tables as I can comfortably fit. My game, I would say is good when I am 6 tabling or so, but I was really fishing it up on 16+ because of the less time to act. So the attempt here is to play as well as i do on 6 tables on up to 24, if indeed it is possible. I am trying to find out. All about trying to get the right formula to maximise profits!

I actually busted my second monitor when I knocked the bastard onto the floor, which forced me to play less tables until I get it fixed. So maybe a message from the poker gods?

Took a knock to my confidence with the downswing I was having until I made the changes aforementioned. Had 3 grinds since and have felt great, played great and made nice profits. So instead of trying to self sabotage, I am going to just stay on this track for a while.

[Ant040689]

Had a terrible session last night. I was irritable and not prepared for the grind at all, but foolishly went on with it, I did a break even day after two of my last comps were final tabled. But today I am going to the gym, working out a viable eating plan and allotting time for poker study too. Have a deuces cracked membership going to waste and will be having a look at what they have to offer.

Aside from the playing too many tables problem I mentioned in the previous post, I am finding it tougher and tougher to stay amused with the poker while playing for 10 hour stretches. I find that Spotify actually makes me play worse as I can concentrate so much easier without music, but then I find myself completely bored. So lose lose here. I am one of those people that plays worse poker with headphones in. May still play a winning game with them but I think they need to go for my poker progression.

So the theory here is that I need to go to the gym, get fitter and healthier and my concentration levels will improve, my mood will probably be lifted too from the healthier lifestyle and I will start to enjoy the grind much more on its own merits, without the need to scroll this forum or listen to music mid grind. So I basically need to become a robotic beast while I play poker and then enjoy the 5 mins break every hour to maybe listen to a song, go outside for a bit and chill.

Need to separate poker grinding from chilling. I can't be concentrating on anything other than the pokerplaying while I am pokerplaying. So many other players I know do this and they probably deal with it so much better than me. They can be on facebook, skype, blonde and other distractions while they are mass multitabling. Even having a little window space up on the screen for a bit of tv as well. I mean I do this and think it isn't affecting my game, but it is only when I am at the business end of a tournament do I really tune into a tourn, play so much better and realise that before that point I wasn't locked into this tourn as much as I should have been. Mainly because I had my head partially elsewhere.

When I go to work, I need to treat it like my job. I put the shift in, of which I will learn to enjoy properly again on its own pure merits, and then afterwards I do whatever the fuck I want and chill. 9-5ers need to treat life like this for the most part I don't see why I can get by being half assed.

Going to come back on later tonight to actually confirm the above things were done, rather than keep to my form of repeating my goals, and doing none of them.

I am hoping that I keep on noticing leaks, mentioning them on here, and then talk about my progression in mending them.

[Ant040689]

Hadn't been to the gym in about 6 months and noticed properly how much weight I had put on and it wasn't the best feeling.

However I ironed out a solid 2 hours session and I honestly am still feeling great 5 hours later. I am going to the gym everyday if it is going to have me buzzing like this. Even if I am dead, I am just going to make sure I go 5 times a week, and if I can't do much just do some low intensity shizzle.

Think this should be the answer to my prayers and get me knuckling down on the virtual felt.