Honestly, I'm pretty tired of hearing people say how dead the game is and how it's dying so quickly. Not because it's necessarily untrue, but because it's just not helpful to focus on. It's easy to be discouraged by the realization that fish are not just fewer in numbers but also much better players now than they were in the past. It's just a fact. But what poker players don't often remember (and at least I didn't for a while) is that professional poker players are also MUCH better players than they were in years past. Their rate of improvement has also skyrocketed, a fact which is easy to forget.

This doesn't mean those forces equal out. It's obvious that there's a complex, fluid ecosystem of fish and pros of all degrees of skill level along that spectrum that make up the overall player pool. That's not the point. The point is toughness of games are relative to your own skill and the future of the games will be relative to how fast you continue to improve.

Does that put the future profitability of SNGs (or any other form of poker) in your complete control? No. But in poker and life, it's always best to identify what you have control over and to put all your efforts into that. Focusing on a weakened poker economy, segregated player pools, and unprecedented low barrier of entry for fish wanting to learn to play better poker is about as useful as focusing on every board runout, every coinflip, and every suckout. It's literally a waste of time (and often worse).

What isn't a waste of time is focusing on what you do control. In this case that would include studying, finding the newer better study tools like ICMizer, and putting in volume.

Disclaimer: this is meant as a speech to myself more than anything else...

Faarcyde and I are starting a new SNG stable for players of all types. This will include private coaching on a limited monthly basis.

SNGs for staking include:

HU (all speeds), 6max, 9man, 18man, and 45man

Sites for staking to occur on include:

Stars, new FTP (coming shortly)

This is a flexible staking program with some private lessons included from myself and Faarcyde.
Minimum numbers of games will be set based on which game format you will be playing. These will most often turn out to be 25-30 hours a week of grinding.

What I'm looking for is the following:

- sample of ~2000+ games at 1 game, any stakes
- good references from other coaches/stakers
- commitment to improving through hard work and practice

In order to apply for staking, please email braminc@sngexperts.com with the following:

1) Real name
2) Age, Location
3) All names on all sites
4) Amount of games willing to play per month
5) Your poker history
6) Why you need a stake
7) Do you have HEM/PokerTracker and SNG Wiz/ICMizer?
8) Your Skype handle
9) References (reputable people that have staked you before, transferred money too, been coached by, etc).
10) 2+2 name

**Then post in the comments stating your email has been sent and your screenname for confirmation of receipt.

Thanks!

Instead of showering you in another graph of my previous month's lousy volume and luke warm results like every other month, I'm gonna switch gears and go back to some real world blogging for a bit.

I've been lucky to have been able to travel extensively over the past ~10 years thanks to the freedom/profitability of poker as well as being born into an American passport. Embarrassingly, I was unaware what a luxury it is to be born in America or several other well to do countries until I visited Lebanon a few years ago (2008). In many poor or war torn countries, being granted a visa for travel to Europe or the United States can be extremely difficult. Lebanon is no exception. The only place Lebanese citizens are granted automatic visas is Turkey.

Anyways, so the point I was trying to work toward is that I've been super lucky in lots of different ways to have traveled to so many places around the world. However, I had never been to Spain, and my girlfriend really wanted to go somewhere--ANYWHERE-- as did i. Sooooo, in mid September I took a little airplane ride with the Misses to Barcelona to spend a week basking in overpriced tourist activities.

We did all the obvious fun stuff like visiting the Sagrada Familia, accidentally walking by Casa Batllo on our way to dinner, climbing up and down Park Guell, hittin up thenude beach, eating at some of the finest Spanish cafes around, carefully inspecting from a castletop view Barcelona's garbage procedure for compliance with international environmental ethics, making important business calls on our new cell phone covers, and letting a stranger draw pictures of us while other strangers creepily watched, BUT... and I do mean but... what we really enjoyed was the La Merce festival that just so happened to be going on during our stay.

Barcelona knows how to throw a mother-effin city-wide festival! With free concerts day and night (some of which involve fireworks being sprayed through the center of the crowd), ample supplies of radical tent shopping, and an amazing light show over the Sagrada Familia (among many other things). There was literally TOO much stuff to do. We couldn't do it all or even half of it. One of the coolest things I didn't take enough advantage of was all the illegal immigrants who walk around selling single beers on the streets for 1 euro. It's a shockingly convenient service when at a concert or doing some window/tent shopping. Some of them even sell coke, hash and ecstasy! What more could you ask for??

Crossposted from SNGexperts.com

So August is over. I fell slightly short of my goal of Platinum star, but I made some very baby steps towards becoming a real grinder again.

I think it's the first month I've run significantly over the red line in years. Very weird feeling. Very mixed feelings. Still below red line in every game I've ever grinded since HEM1 came out (partly or largley due to the fact I don't grind enough). Here's my HU hypers on stars (sadly amounts to 6 months of play):

September goals are to pump out 1500 games. Sounds too easy I know, but I'm also spending 1 week in Barcelona with the misses with no poker. Sadly, it will definitely be a challenge for me! :D

Ok so mayyyybe it was more like ~$800 and mayyyyybe it was like 14 minutes, but does anyone really think that would've been a good blog title?

Me neither. :D

Anyway, as many poker bloggers do, I'm going to say "yea I don't like complaining about bad beats" and then I'm IMMEDIATELY going to complain about a string of bad beats.

Click here for the lovely pic you're all waiting for..

I managed to pump up the volume a bit last week reaching 500 games in 1 week for the first time... in years? Yikes. I guess that's a testament to my undisciplined work habits rather than much of an achievement. Still, you gotta start somewhere, and I'm attempting to slowly increase my grind stamina week by week. Here's a graph of the week:

Click here to see graph and complete posting :)

I still am the worst grinder ever. I came back in July, played less than 500 games (these are hyper turbos im talking about!). In my defense, my parents were visiting Lebanon for a couple weeks resulting in very frequent family get togethers. My mother also went to the emergency room one day, although thankfully it turned out to be nothing serious. We had a national internet outage for ~2-3 days in the early part of the month. And to top it all off the electricity has been cutting off 5-6 hours a day instead of the usual 3 pre-planned, scheduled hours. This is apparently because in the summer everyone is blasting so much AC that the country's already insufficient supply of electricity becomes even more over-extended.

The thing is I always have SOME excuse for not grinding. Sometimes I'm coaching a lot, making videos and feeling productive in non poker ventures. Other times its the problems mentioned above. I HAVE to start eliminating all excuses and really build myself a solid foundation of a grind routine. I've tried tricking myself into grinding more tons of different ways, but none seem to stick. I'm not giving up, however. Eventually I'm gonna gain my mojo back!

This month I have decided it's imperative that I make Platinum star on stars.

There is some good news. I have begun waking up much earlier since my return from America (thanks in large part to my jet lag). I purchased a big-ass battery for my modem/router so that when electricity cuts off I don't lose WiFi and don't even have to switch to backup internet. I have read blogs on self-discipline, read the entire book of "Treat your poker like a business", and resumed reading The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler. The only thing left to do is just GRIND.

Ok I'm going to grind NOW and report back with a graph and mini report on the experience. Brb.

Ok first I had to poo. Now im going to grind, i swear!

Ok, here's my graph! Not a bad start for the day I guess

Does that sound like a play on 'cat fights'? I can't decide if I want it to or not...

Anyway, I was googling my poker name a while back,something I admit to doing bi-anually (but i deny all other allegations!!), and came across this amazingness. Now I have to say I was a bit terrified when reading the OP. Had I done something horribly wrong? Was I about to get fired from Pokerstrategy? Was I totally out of line??

I was relieved to see that most of the posters responding didn't think so.

My own response to the matter is just that I don't believe anything said on the internet in a chat box should ever be taken seriously. We missed that boat long ago as an internet community. In an environment where one regularly sees prepubescent teenagers unloading "jokes" about our moms and/or aids acquisition as forms of poker justice, I fail to understand how anyone can truly feel offended by what they read.

In the interest of keeping politics out of it (I do believe my comment was a political, not racial statement) I won't delve into my personal feelings and perceptions about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon. I will say if anyone is truly interested in understanding why the middle east as a whole "hates" Israel and America, the answer appears not to be religious or racial but almost entirely political, and there are lots of very interesting material on the subject mostly dating back to World War II (and some contextual history hundreds of years back).

With all of that said, I find "chat wars" to range from being relatively entertaining to extremely pathetic. Here is a fun example of the latter:

I same time sat a player who has decent winning stats at the $30 hypers. This happens a lot since the games load so fast. More often than not you have no choice who you are going to play. The good news is everyone sucks at the lower limits, so it's really not a big deal. I don't accept chops as a rule because the stakes are quite low, I like to practice against non-fish some % of the time, and because I don't know who I can and can't trust out of the random pool of regs I might face.

This player asks me to chop and I politely decline. At the end of match, he snap accepts rematch which I found curious. I don't like regwars a lot, but this guy seemed to play pretty bad so far so I thought for a few seconds and accepted as well. Immediately he started questioning why on earth I just "sat him". Despite him snap accepting, he viewed my acceptance as a major insult and a testament to me overblown ego and delluded perceptions. Over the course of our forthcoming 40 game match, the conversation went exactly like this (im about to dig through my HHs to copypaste exact wording... fml):

Anyways, the chat isn't all that exciting now that i've reread it so I'll stop there. But here is the result of our match

I only won like ~5 buyins after rake, but such a sweet redline esp after his comment about getting it in bad constantly.

Ok enough gloating, just enjoyed this match too much not to share. And to remind everyone and myself not to be a douche in chat

So my dad has a weekly poker game at the country club near his house in Memphis every Wednesday night. It's a pretty juicy game with $200 entry (10k chips) and $100 rebuys (5k chips each) and sometimes includes an add-on as well for another $100-$200 (5k and 10k options). I've heard stories about this game for years. How my dad crushes, stories of standard bad beats, and other typical poker stuff. I went with him a couple years ago and nothing interesting came of it. Only having 8 days worth of time in Memphis and not being able to grind online the whole month of June, I was excited to go play in it again just to add some hours to my limited Vegas grind time.

I had heard a story or two from my dad about how Moneymaker came to their game and how they're BFFs now. I figured this was classic dad exaggeration and at MOST he had come to their home game once or so. I ended up going twice to this game this month, cashing both times. Moneymaker was indeed there both times. First week I was at different tables from him and it was a small turnout overall. Second week (just this past Wed), we had 20 strong with ridiculous amount of rebuys thanks in large part to Moneymaker's maniac aggression during rebuy period.

The guys in this game have the most fowl mouths of any group of "friends" I've ever seen. For their age group (40-60) I found it an uncomfortable combination of disturbing and amusing. There are a few Jews and Arabs pitted directly against each other with no qualms about attacking each other. Nothing is off limits in this two thousand+ year rivalry.

Anyways I played about 3 hands in the first 2 hours. I literally was dealt 92o and 73o about 12 times each. Meanwhile almost 80% of the hands being dealt were allins like JT vs A2 vs 55 or whatever. Chips flew and I just chilled on my initial buyin and used no rebuys. After my initial 10k stack dwindled to 8k at the end of rebuys, I did get the max addon for 10k more chips, putting me up to 18k.

After rebuys I still didn't get many hands for a while. I eventually was able to pick AK and double through AJ his button to my SB. A few minutes later, holding QJcc on J63cc 7c turn and blank river I was able to get Mr. 100VPIP (Moneymakers rival of the night) to bluff it all on the river. Suddenly I had a huge pile of chips (around 60k out of 420ish) and had only played 5 hands in 2 hours.

We consolidated to a "final table" 10 handed with payouts being announced for the final 4. 4k, 2k, 1200, 800! Not bad for a weakly home game!! I had immediate position on Moneymaker after redrawing seats. This was probably the best seat in the house. He continued raising 40+% of hands and putting himself in incredibly tough spots over and over. I used my supernit image against him to float and bluff turn a couple times successfully. He was getting antsy (he had to be somewhere else as well) when he raised T9s in the Sb and I picked up KK. I decided to 3b small to like 25k with only 30k behind. He didn't notice my stack size and he doubled me up real good.

I went on to chop 3 handed for 2k bringing my ROI lifetime in this homegame up to 170%. No offense to Moneymaker or any of the other players, but this is the juiciest games I've ever seen being played for these meaningful stakes at least since 2004-2005.

Some classic quotes that were made by various players that night were "well why don't we chop...what's that thing called, INM? ICM?" After offering a retarded chop favoring the short stacks at about 3x their actual value, the same guy says "well with ICM the short stacks are actually worth more than the big stacks". There were other classics involving 50 year olds try to talk about ranges without really having a clue what they were saying. It was cute though.

Anyway, in actuality Moneymaker is a really nice guy. He had a funny remark the first week when we were at opposite tables. My dad was sitting to my right and taking lots of heat with everyone calling him the LUCKIEST PLAYER EVER. Moneymaker chimed in from across the other table saying "HEY! What about me??" :D Classy and humble imo.

Hey guys, as you may have noticed, I've returned to CR and I'm happy to be back! I also have a site where I host my blog at www.sngexperts.com. I'm hoping to add more sng experts to the site in some time. For now it's just a fun little project. I'll crosspost blogs here from time to time as well. Here's my latest:

Vegas 2012:

This was the first year I decided not to play a substantial schedule of WSOP events since ~2007. I've been going year after year without any success other than 2 small cashes. It can obviously be extremely frustrating to "run bad" in live MTTs that are essentially out of your bankroll's guidelines. This year I figured I'd skip Vegas entirely since I was in Lebanon and my bankroll hasn't recovered enough since Black Friday. However, a good college friend of mine decided to get married this June, and I decided to fly to the US to watch it all go down.

My dad is a big poker enthusiast (he helped me get into in the first place). He's not the most technically, fundamentally, or mathematically sound player..., but as a psychiatrist he understands the psychology of people as well or better than anyone else and uses it in his game as a major weapon. He took down a tournament in Mississippi this year for $60k, has a bunch of small cashes in WSOP and other events around the country, and this year he made a huge run at the WSOP Seniors event. After chip leading Day1, and 2nd in chips Day 2, he finished 13th out of 4128entries. Not bad dad!

Anywho, needless to say he convinced me to go with him for a week and a half to Vegas. I decided I'd just grind Sit n Gos and some small cash games. I wanted to limit myself to a 3k roll for SNGs, so I played mainly $275 and $325a€²s. I've noticed the $1ks and even $500s get harder each year, so I was happy to be playing with mostly fishes anyways. Unfortunately I bricked game after game after game. I was 0/4 on day 1 and had busted the 1st hand of day 2a€²s 1st SNG. My SNG roll was half gone. I wasn't worried, I was just frustrated. I was looking at what games were available next and I saw a $525. An Asian guy next to me asked if I wanna buy sell tourney chips to him. I said no thanks, I can't win anything to get even 1 tourney chip. (These are satellites so if you win they give you increments of $500 tourney chips, NOT cash). He said "you win dis one, don wurry". I laughed and grabbed a $525 card. Better to run bad at low buyins and time your move ups at the right time. Right?

I proceeded to run hotter than hell knocking each of the first 4 of the first 5 players out. I had just over half the chips 5 handed. Effective stacks were around 15bbs at this point so I slowed down the aggression as it would be pretty hard to bully a bunch of shortstacks. I wasn't getting any shovable hands. We got to 3 handed and I had the same chips with other 2 guys about doubling up each once. I got into a ridiculous blind versus blind hand with KT allin vs AA on KJ3cc flop and lost. 1 hand later I lost AQ to a 44 button shove. That was all she wrote.

Yikes, I decided enough SNGs for now and started playing 1/3 nl for a while. I won ~ $500 at that and was relieved to play some lower variance poker for a bit. Me and my pops went to SF in the middle of our Vegas trip to visit my brother and sis. Those were good times.

When we returned to Vegas on Thursday, I played mostly cash games. Saturday was my birthday so I HAD to play the WSOP $1500 that day. I busted about 2 hours in with AK vs 45o in a 4bet pot with him calling river shove with 4high flush. That was interesting!

Sunday was my dad's birthday (yes back to back days..). We did some shopping, eating, played a little cash together, then went back to the Rio. We decided to each play 1 last SNG. Both $525s. He sat coincidentally at my friend PrimordialAA's table. Always good to run into that guy, probably one of the nicest guys in poker who is also an amazing player. I sat down at my table which was FULL of internet kids. They all seemed to know each other and were joking "ah yea just like our $500 stars SNGs back in the day...". I'm like GREAT, this will be a soft field...

I went on to double 99 vs QQ, A2 vs AQ, and K6 vs A2 all for LARGE pots, earning myself 8600 chips (out of 20k) and convincing other guy to 50/50 chop. It didn't take much convincing, he didn't want to play a "crapshoot" for 5k. It was a nice save for the trip. Put me up overall a couple hundred instead of being down a few k.

I'm back in Memphis now for 4 more days until i fly back to Lebanon. I can't believe I've almost made it through this insane month of travel. It's been 12 flights and 2 roadtrips in 30 days. Beirut to Austin 3 days. Drive to Dallas stay 3 days. Fly from there to Philadelphia for wedding weekend, 3days. Fly back to Dallas for 1 day. Drive 8 hours to Memphis, 2 days. Fly to Vegas 3 days. Fly to San Fran, 3 days. Back to Vegas 3 days. Back to Memphis, 5 days. Then finally back to Beirut. I'm exhausted!!

Upcoming blogs:

- Online Chat wars

- Life in Lebanon

- New regimented grinding schedule