In the words of the great Stephen Fry...Good Evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening, good evening... If you don't watch Qi it is one of the greatest shows ever, comedy/interesting facts makes excellent tv.

I'm in the midst of my worst downswing in MTT's, SNG's and combined it's sitting at about 9.5k atm most of that from MTT's. My SNG downswing at one stage was about 5k, but I've all but pulled out of that now, but I haven't managed to stop bleeding in MTT's since my score back in March.

It's just so hard to be sad about life though, I have the time and freedom to do most anything I want, I wake up listen to music and play a computer game most days, I know so many people who that would be their ideal life. Adding University has created an extra level and provides me with those mandatory reasons to get out of the house instead of just to go out and drink.

Poker has been tough, but I've been putting in really good volume lately and I think I've found a routine that works for me now.

It's been a while since I've been blown away by an album, so I've been going through some old gem's predominantly Childish Gambino. I had the opportunity to hang out with his publicist at Sundance as he also represents my sister & I heard nothing but positive things about the guy. I love his stand up and obviously his show community as well. I've had a burl of Tenacious D, AC>DC, Lily Allen, Depeche Mode...pretty random in retrospect but my tastes are pretty eclectic.

I'm hoping for a turn around soon, but either way it wont get me down. Have a good one.

G'day

Been a bit over a month since, i've posted an update, as usual it's a result of running bad. I'm in the middle of the worst downswing I've experienced being down about 10k over the past 6 weeks. This has been compounded by the fact that I haven't been able to get in that many sessions, because of moving house and university work piling up.

To be fair, I've had a lot of time that I've wasted and I have spent a lot of time looking at my fantasy football, watching games, partying 3 nights a week ect. I'm going to limit the time I spend out for the next month so I can try and pull myself out of this downswing.

A large portion of the downswing can be attributed to the $60/180 man turbo's and the fact I have moved up in stakes and was playing a lot of larger buyin tournaments in the $100+ range. I've been running bad and the motivation to continue improving has been waning as I just want to grind as much as possible to get out of the downswing. I'm going to re-focus myself today and look at improving across all aspects of life.

Trying to balance a social life, poker (work), university & health. Has always been difficult for me, usually if one is going well or improving the others suffer. Most noticeably is my social life, I think I need to be more selective in what activities I choose to engage in. I'm not just going to go out on a Friday night, simply because it's Friday anymore.

Nothing beats the feeling of achieving your goals, I hope if your reading this you get there with yours.

Ryot

I'll make it quick because I've been procastinating for 2 days now and I have a Uni assignment due.

Had a shociking day on Sunday lost about 3k again. Probably had an average buyin of close to $75 so it's easily possible but was hoping for run good to continue.

I've been procastinating I need to stop I'm going to have a shower, then do my uni work.

I lost like $1,400 in table games over the weekend wsan't the best or worst thing I've ever done but oh well. It's only a bit of money, i just don't get the enjoyment in it anymore. Things are going great though and I'm really happy at the moment.

Just wanted to put in a quick update. Peace all hope your well.

Wow.

The last two weeks have been intense I started University, moved house and played a little bit of poker including my best and worst days ever.

After my last blog post I was feeling a little down, but fortunately I have a lot of awesome people in my life who are there for me and they really made me feel awesome last week. This weekend again I had a really good night saturday ending up just chilling back at my place with some of my best mates having a blast.

A quick recap of University, I've attended most classes it's weird being older than the majority of the students and it's hard to relate to 18 year old's about much especially when they are approaching business from such a 'textbook' perspective. It's like if someone studied the theory of poker for 10 years before ever playing it. I'm enjoying it though and have started off with an acceptable work ethic, I want to do alot of work tomorrow but I think i should be good.

Now onto poker, I woke up early to grind last Sunday (Monday AEST) and was really excited as I had missed the previous sunday with birthday celebrations and I was really looking forward to playing the new $60 180 man turbo's. Cliffs, I got destroyed all day, big stacks got turned into mincashes and I busted all of my high buy-in events rather quickly. Just one of those days but it was my worst day ever losing about 3.8k. I was really surprised with how I handled it though, I kept my composure for the most part and was really happy with the majority of my play. Due to uni work I only had 2 more smallish sessions last week which I clawed back about $1k to only be down approx $2.9k on the week.

I talked a lot with friends how I felt that I was getting much better at controlling my emotions, despite the fact that I used to think I didn't tilt all that much. The truth is my definition was tilt was wrong, I though tilt meant angry however as I expanded my definition to include becoming timid or distracted or overawed by the situation (like in the million 3 weeks ago). I begun noticing more sub-optimal mindsets and by noticing them I could address them. Resulting in...

My best day ever. Today I made about 15k with the majority of my profits coming from coming 6th/2415 players in the Bigger $162 for $14,490. I was really happy with my play throughout the majority of this tournament, I made one resteal for 22bb's w'A7o vs a LP raiser from the BB which I think was too loose, I ran into KK and binked an A for a fairly large pot with about 10% of the field left. Long story short, I came into the final table 4/9 with a good amount of chips, I got ai pre with QQ vs A9s for a pot worth more than the average stack at the time and lost. I was crippled but then I nuresed my 15bb stack to 6th earning myself about 10k more. It was tough to take that beat but at the same time can I really complain with winning 15k on a Sunday?

Anyway thanks for reading, I'm going to try and get in a few more sessions this month and hopefully turn this month into a new best ever :)

Wow it's so hard to describe how I'm feeling. My emotions are the proof of quantam theory at the moment simultaneously in every direction at once.


Let's start off with the good stuff;
1. I played a lot my 2nd best month in terms of volume ever and my best in terms of RB.
2. I made a lot I won about $13,500-$14,000 this month which is my best ever month, beating Febuary 2010 by about $1,500
3. I worked realy hard on my game and started feeling increasingly comfortable in the $100+ tournaments.
4. I Enrolled in University and have my first day tomorrow. I'm not overly well prepared but I'm ready and just have a few lectures this week before tutorials start next week.
5. I have a new place to live in which will be closer to Uni, for the next month while I search for something more permanent.

Moving along to the not so great stuff;
1. I missed my volume goal only putting in about %65 of my planned volume. Considering I started on the 3rd (getting back from LA on the 2nd) and I had mine and other friends birthdays/fantasy football starting/concerts/2 day shorter month in general it probably wasn't a great idea to try and break my previous best month by 40% but i wanted to push myself.
2. I haven't finished the "The Mental Game of Poker" yet, and I intended on doing so.
3. I just got into a very large fight with one of my siblings and my mother over what i do. My mother doesn't approve of what i do and frequently offers words of encouragement such as "I wish you'd lose all your money so you'd be forced to get a real job, you won't succeed at anything whilst your being a degenerate gambler, you won't focus at uni and will fail" all the lovely supportive things you'd hope for 2 days after your birthday and the day before you start at a new school.

My mother and father divorced a long time ago and I always had a better relationship with my Dad than her and she resented me and him for it. He likes to gamble as well but as has never had any form of gambling problem and taught me the importance of responsible gambling.

This fight with my mother is something that saddens me so much, it's so difficult trying to improve and to be proud of your commitment and effort when you have people around you trying to tear you down. If I didn't have my Dad I don't know what i'd do, I'm going to spend some time apart from my mother for the foreseeable future and moving into a new place tomorrow should help that.

It's not the end of the world, it's difficult to deal with but in the end we have to accept that some people especially older people have a very hard time incorporating new ideas and positions into their consciousness. With something like poker it is easy to see how they reach their positions, I just hoped that family would have enough faith in me to deliver. I hope anyone else has to deal with this has the support network in atleast some of their family and definately their friends to fall back on like I have.

All the best.

Hi Guys,

I wanted to try and pin down how I'm feeling at the moment considering a few hours I was the deepest I had ever been in the million and to bust out what was essentially 20-25k in equity was pretty heartbraking.

First things first what I did well;
- I played patiently in this tournament and a number of others for about 8 hours.
- During that time my 3betting/4betting was well reasoned
- I was patient when it was required and aggressive when I could get away with it
- Dealt with lots of bad beats and cooler spots and generally getting owned in everyother tourney.

Then I was down to my last 4 games the million and some weird 5r mtt's, some friends on skype were aware of how deep I was in the million and a few were sweating me. At this stage there was about 200 people left in the even and I had been in the top 20 chips for the past hour and I was feeling really confident despite being down a bit over 2k at the time. However I started to look at the lobby, look at the first prize and feel the validation of what winning that would give me. I started getting nervous and I left my optimal state of play, I was a little card dead at spots but i pushed the action a bit too much as well as spewing off a 3/4 of my chips in a really bad spot that I should have gotten away from pre.

I was looking at the lobby looking for when i'd hit breakeven for the day and eventually that number came and passed (90th) and I was now in the black but I couldn't shake the feeling, I kept looking at the lobby at the payouts rather than focusing on trying to play my best. I ended up 3betting off my 22bb stack w'A7o vs utg's KK and not getting there. I'm trying to focus on the positives but missing out on the best chance to win a Sunday Major i've ever had is really tough. The fact that i won $700 ish today does little to soothe that. I also busted the 100k guaranteed in 14th the other day which had a 23k first prize in a really bad spot. Continuing to get nervous in these deep runs is something I plan on working on and is a skill that i think can always be improved.

I understand your mental game is like a muscle, I hope with practice I can get better at it and fully utilise my skill edge. I really feel comfortable in the early and midstages of these tournies hopefully I can bink one of them and this will help me in the future.

Best of luck at the tables.

Good Evening CR,

I was on my way to Uni enrollment this morning and I was browsing the 180 reg forum on 2+2, the MTTc is the only forum i visit close to daily. Since returning to the games I've been fairly active in the regs forum, usually i like to stay out of the dick swinging but everynow and again people like to bring up ROI's and insult other people's methods and it's such a good (if cheap) way of asserting your position.

The argument started when I criticised someone when they posted about a 500BI downswing at $2/180's. I made the comment that if your having a significant sample at the 2's (this player had played 20,000 180's with a $6 avg buyin. with a 20% ROI) that your not putting in enough effort in improving your game and you likely have major leaks that stem from playing too many tables.

The comments get thrown back at me that I'm running good as I only have a 5,000 game sample at the 180's however I've played an additional 18,000 45 man sng's which I also beat for a very good rate. This I feel should add weight to my opinion, whilst 5,000 games is still a statistically small sample I think it's still fine to get an idea of how your playing.

It seems to be the consensus that a good winrate is a $1 per game yet people just seem to accept that other players are better than them and say I can't get to that level and giveup. I feel this is a sign of poor effort on their behalf and not enough effort on improvement.

The main post I will quote here:
"Considering I'm beating the games for $4 per game with a $13ABI. I'm obviously very happy with how i'm going, sure I haven't had a huge downswing but if I use my ABI it's 230 BI's rather than the guessed $20 when I wrote that on my iphone earlier. I have also had an over 2k breakeven stretch. I'm not immune to variance, however my response to it is to drop the number of tables that I play make sure I'm playing well by doing study and working on my ranges. Others have the opinion that just doing mass volume will get them out of it, it will but you will suffer long term for it and it's emotionally more taxing. Secondly the smaller your statistical edge the greater the deviation from the mean can be.
Grinders here seem to be of the opinion that a $1/game at these stakes is good, I disagree. As stated before I 24-30 table I make detailed notes on everyone, I tile and watch all of my tables alot more closely than others do. I don't let myself get distracted by TV, forums, fb or skype. I feel this gives me a significant edge on the games today, especially vs other regs and I feel like I've worked hard to attain that edge.
The reason I do this is the reason anyone grinds SNG's because I think it provides me with the best $/per hour out there and also allows for me to improve as fast as possible."

You can read the posts here should you choose http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61/mtt-community/official-180-man-regs-thread-nsfw-1009032/index69.html#post31568521

I feel my hourly is higher than alot of these guys and it's more motivation to make February the best month yet.

I need to get 1,800 more games in to hit my volume goals I think it's doable. Wish me luck.

Sup,

So I'm about 3 hours removed from the end of Double Vision Sunday now. Overall I'd rate my performance today about a 7/10 today. I think i got a little bit impatient in both the Sunday millions and I might have spewed them off by trying to push the action too much pf. I wasn't making much traction in either of them and I ended up 3betting with speculative hands IP and semibluffed my chips off. I managed to build up a good stack in the first of the Warmups and when I lost an above average chip stack to a pretty standard flip vs a reg QQ
I think I started off the session playing really well however, i made a few mistakes after my bust out of the WU (~4.5hrs in) and that seems to be one of the the triggers that can still really get to me tilt wise. Making mistakes is something that I need to become more comfortable, reading Jared Tendler's book is helping but I haven't finished yet. I never really seemed to recapture my A game after that hour where I proceeded to bust the 2xmillions, big 109, big 162 and some other bigger tournies. Hopefully by making myself aware of these issues and thinking about them away from the table will help me return to my A game faster. I wasn't playing horribly, I was just giving up a bit too easy postflop and playing pretty ABC in the bigger tournies, where you can really get away with a LAG style.

Overall I still finished the session up about $900. Which was nice largely due to some excellent run good in the 180's I won and went deep in several including binking a $35/180 early for $1,700 which got my session of to a great start.

Because of the volume I'm doing, and the some of the 1,000+ player fields that I'm playing I have a shot of doing well in the TLB leaderboards, I'm sitting about 40th this month so far and hopefully I can break into the top 20 or 10 by the end of the month I think that would be really cool and a non monetary type goal.

I hope Double Vision treated you well,

Peace

Hey CR,

Just thought i'd share the continued run good and put up the pics from yesterday (now that photobucket decides to work again). Also a bonus pic of me and my sister at Sundance.

I doubt the snake picture needs that much explanation, i was at a bar on tueday night and there was a snake handler, i took the opportunity.




This is my graph for the year so far, considering I was away from the 5th-2nd of Febuary i've only played about 10 sessions so i'm very happy.



Lastly me and my sis on the eve of the premier of Bachelorette in Park City, Utah for Sundance.

Good evening CR, this is my first full day off poker since returning to Sydney last Thursday.

I have pretty much played between 6-13hrs everyday since then and the combined commitment towards volume and improvement have really been paying off.

I'm up about $3,800 i think (Sharkscope graph seems a little off). I'm trying to upload an image to photobucket however it keeps stalling grrr.

It's great to have good results after putting in better effort, poker can be cruel sometimes in not rewarding good behaviour or play.

The continued effort into improving my game also give me other things to focus on than just winning which is making maintaining emotional control much better.

This week i watched Chuck Bass new video which I loved, I really like the way he identifies spots to abuse the regs and the logic he brings to his hand reading. I also just watched Daut series on taking down the WCOOP, learning to tone down the aggression and his reactions to weaker more aggressive players was really interesting and I think my final table play will benefit greatly from it.

I went to the Australian Museum last night, as on tuedays they turn it into a bar of sorts and there's all kinds of entertainment such as live bands and interactive exhibits. Somehow I ended up with a large python coiled around my neck (that is not a euphemism :P ) it was a great night. Hopefully photobucket starts working again soon so I can upload the photo.

Good luck at the tables