Weekend Update - Last Week of September - #The Final Sprint

Weekend Update - Last Week of September - #The Final Sprint

My graph is contrary to popular belief that weekends are the softest of the week. Unlike the expected 20-30bi upswing most people would like to believe ''actually happened'' quite the opposite.

With the influx of recreational players doing the most odd and peculiar thing, it was also the most tilting period of the week. Being unable to justify or reason why a player made a horrific play and beat you is very mentally distraught. All though I ran much below ev as the graph suggests

I'm not for one putting blame on just run bad; and in all honesty have played absolutely horrific in several sessions where I spewed uncontrollably. Sunday was particularly bad for me, the coveted "Red-Line" at Small Stakes Cash games is almost 100% due to me: bluffing much too frequently, value betting way too large, not having any of my big value bets called down.


One more week left in September.

Let's Review our September Goals! 


Volume Goals [x]
Tilt [ ]
Time Management [ ]
Profits [x]

For the remainder of this week I'm hoping to play as much A/B- Game as possible and keep spews and tilt to a minimum.

A particular thing to remember I think is, A-Game's tend to be a little more high variance than B-Game; due to the pushing of small edges. It is also worthwhile to note that as a grinder it's quite important to not only improve your A-Game as much as possible but also to improve your autopiloting-B-Game and minimize if not eliminate your C-Game.

With that in mind, later on in my sessions it'd be very beneficial to stray away from high variance plays that may be marginally profitable in the long run.

Good luck to everyone else ! =)

Time for another Downswing- September 18th Update

September 18th the day started off more of a run-bad and variance stricken period where I was unable to win a single pot over 50bb.

Nearing 2/3 of the way through the day I started playing very poorly being much too overly aggressive with marginal holdings and spewing a ton of buy ins to fish and other regs.

Nonetheless I think it is very important for oneself to keep in mind "Where the Money is Coming From" and how some of the very marginal spots may not exactly be the most profitable in the long run. I also think it is quite beneficial to sacrifice some ''marginal ev spots'' as the cost of having a lower variance game overall.

Anytime when volume is a high priority, having high variance can usually result in shaky play and confusing ranges to oneself. Undoubtedly this itself can create excessive mental strain and tilt that is detrimental to my overall game;

Simply put. Spending too much energy chasing the pennies, instead of pitching a large net for the gold.

Hopefully today will be much better off~

September 17th Update

After coming back home from the gym today and having some lunch I decided to put in a short session.  As you can clearly see on the left I was running ridiculously awesome, the set-ups were great, I was winning flips, holding up QQ v KK all that good stuff. .

Half way through the day my second session began my mental game began to slowly deteriorate. . . This session began with an immediate drop  6 bi's.

Almost 100% attributed to make fish fold and looking up fish too lightly with over pairs. Seems like some voice in the back of my head was nagging me on that fish always get it in with TP or TPTK on the flop irregardless. . . apparently not so.

Not too bad of a day overall; very standard 8 hours worth of sessions. I do tend to split my sessions apart so probably 1-2 2 hour sessions, and the remaining 60-90 minute sessions as I figure later on in the day I tend to become more and more tired and so forth.



Hand of the Day 

Will be heading to bed relatively early today ~ 1 am and hope to catch and early grind tomorrow after the gym as well.

Daily Check-up
[ ] played A- Game throughout
[ ] did not spew
[ ] did not tilt
[x] VPPs for the day
 

#Endless Upswing - Monday Sept 16th

As far as game play goes; I could have easily prevented tons of money from being lost had I been a little more careful nearing the middle of the day after my 2nd or so session.

Note to self; taking mandatory breaks before every 2 hours; preferably 60-95 mins will definitely help my mindset afterwards.

I think for the last 2 days I've played a much more aggressive style running at 20/16 for my fr-Zoom games and about 26/22 for my 6-max zoom games. As well as opening my ranges a lot more pre-flop I've also added a little bit of aggression to my game play.

I've always been fascinated by the red-line graphs that occurs in a lot of high-stakes and MSNL players. Several times in the past I believe I attempted to emulate a style that yielded a red-line graph but instead of improving my game and letting the profits show it frequently increased my red-line at a huge cost of my blue line and profits overall.

Upswings are rare~ but when they come they do feel absolutely fantastic. As previously mentioned for the past several days I've been left with very erratic sleep schedules and will be intending to go to sleep much earlier today so I fix my rhythm.

[x] Ran above Ev
[x] Had a 10bi downswing
[x] 5600 VPPs.
[ ] Tons and tons of 200bb+ spews.



T'was a good day.

Mid Month Update #September #Pace to $10,000+ month

Mid Month Update #September

Half Month Graph #September

For the last couple of days I had a 20 bi downswing that occurred in the span of only 4 hours. After thoroughly reviewing over same hand histories I have realized that I have to take the blame fully. 

This month has been quite well for me and the majority of my huge downswings occurred when I was playing very poorly. I'm quite positive if that I don't engage in massive pots super frequently this will help lower the deviation and variance in my game overall. It has become 

The Chase #mistakes

16 hour Grind Session

Last Thursday I decided to myself to put in a little bit extra volume than usual, and that it would behoove me to have some leeway while the year comes to a close and the holidays come around. So instead of a usual 8 hour grind; I ended up putting in 14-16 hours on that unfortunate day.
As you can clearly see after approximately 8-10h sweet spot of my mental game(hand 18k).

Then without a notice between hands 24k-27k (3000 hands) I dropped 16-17 bi's back to back, as a result of calling down much too lightly and bluffing much to frequently. Although chasing Supernova Elite has its' perks and definitely worth going for; there is something to be said about balancing and managing time well.

I can definitely understand how people that are going for SNE the first-time underestimate the difficulty and end up putting in excessive volume as they fall behind only to see they pay for it on the tables. At the same time I think the biggest mistake for me is understanding at what point during my session is my mental game just going down the drain; and the answer for that personally is around the 10h mark.

The Review

50nl too hard; no money in micros

After spending both July and August almost 50k VPP behind pace (per month) it became quite clear to me that the only way to achieve this standing is to play both a mixture of the Full-Ring and 6-Max tables if I were to achieve this goal at 100nl.

This month in that sense was a testing period to see whether or not I could conjure up a winning game for 6-max 100nl - zoom.

 Being as previously I have not have great success with 6-max zoom I was rather reluctant to attempt, but after thorough consideration that this would be the only way to hit SNE this year this attempt was made.

After the downswing from mid last month leading towards this month I decided to jump into 50nl to regain confidence. *Regain Confidence not Losses*.  Hopefully I can maintain similar win rates throughout the remainder of the year.

Notes to Keep in Mind

• Avoid playing extended days. This applies especially if there's a lack of sleep involved in this process
• Avoid playing a very high variance game even if it means sacrificing marginal +ev spots
• Keep to a healthy diet
• Workout 5-6x a week 

[  ] 200k more hands for month 

[  ] Hit that 700k Milestone

[  ] Some table profits 

Recovery- Pace to $10,000 Month - 30bi Downswing- 123k BreakEven Stretch-

The Downswing

After the last little bit of upswing that occurred on Saturday, Sunday and Monday leading to Tuesday midnight(morning) were followed by back to back relentless downswings. At around hand 22k mark to hand 26k mark things started to start looking bright again until the continuous strings of losing flips and 60/40 as well as 80/20's. By the end of this 37k stretch of pain and death I was completely overwhelmed with wreck.

Luckily for me the following day was a create relief as we finally experienced some upswing. Decided to not skimp out on exercise and went back to the gym before this session that continued. Also mainly due to my internet being down for the majority of the day I was unable to start my grind for Tuesday until around 9pm-Pst. 

Taking advantage of the small pool size for FR-Zoom that ran all night I was able to win a few pots here and there.

After yesterday's grind that lasted from 9pm until 7am; my sleep schedule was unfortunately tampered. Due to that, my grind for Wednesday started around 8pm and led onward until about 5am of the next-day.  

Today was quite hectic for me as the Full-Ring Zoom tables were not running and in return I was to play a mixture of 6-max Zoom Tables as well as Full-Ring reg-speed tables. I believe for the majority of my grind today it was a 4-zoom -6max, 2-3 tables of Heads-Up, and 9-10 tables of Full-ring Reg Speed. The heads-up tables were mainly a result of attempting to start games at Full-Ring but due grinding during the less peaked hours of Poker Stars the tables did not start as fast as usual. 

I was curious to find that my combination of playing 6-Max Zoom and Full-Ring Regular Speed tables was a lot less VPP's / Hour than my preferred mix of 6-8 tables of zoom 100nl. I don't really prefer one combination over another, however I do prefer to get a higher rate of VPP/Hour as it'll allow me to reach my goal of SNE with much less strain.
[ x ] 1200$ below ev
[ x ]  146k Hands
[ x ]  35.7k VPPs
[ x ] Just shy of half a month.





For the remainder of the month, I will be very intent on having a good schedule for grinding as well as a solid exercise and diet regime.

As for the numbers go I think it's very discouraging to make a monetary goal especially in the short-term sense. I do hope to :

Average out another 13-15k hands per day for the remainder of the month.
Lift weights 4-5x a week, try and increase/maintain big compound lifts (Deadlift, Squat, Military Press, Db Press)
Keep a Clean Diet
Lose about 0.75-1.25lbs a week lower body fat.

*~ On a Side Note, as WCOOP is in town, I'm curious as to see how the state of the games would be affected by the additional influx of recreational players. I'm rather leaning towards thinking that WCOOP would make the games much more profitable (Promotional Wise) as opposed to the previously despised Happy Hours. 

September - Week 1 - pace to 14,000$ month -

Somewhere around hand 50k mark I started 8-tabling zoom 6max and fullring both 100nl.

When the full-ring zoom dies out, I start mixing in the full-ring regular tables alongside of my 6-max tables.



Things went well so far as long as I'm not spewing too frequently or preferably "at all" hoping for a record high month. The biggest things I think to watch out for myself is the mental game, but more specifically in terms of game play wise is pot-control and 3betting. I've noticed that it's quite easy for me to get carried away with 3betting an unnecessary amount and after a certain point it not only makes my overall strategy much more difficult  but also increases likelihood of me spewing a ton of money.

As for pot-control, I think at 100nl there's something to be said about not attempting to bluff-raise too thinly on all the turns and rivers. Although there might be a marginal ev of perhaps 1.5bb/hand that I bluff-raised on the river/turn the tilt that it can induce due to high variance may not be +ev for my overall game.

For the following week I will definitely work on trying to get my volume in and managing my time well enough as to get in the hours when I'm fresh rather than the last couple hours of my day.

August End Review - In the Red

August End Review 

The month started off pretty well as usual, unfortunately around 2 weeks in I had met a huge 40bi downswing. This was definitely a mixture of playing poorly, running bad, and playing way too many tables with short-handed and heads-up against regs. 

After dropping down stakes to 50nl for a couple days and throwing back in 100nl I decided to mix a bit of 6 max in the game as well.  Being more or less break even for the latter half of the month was not a fun period of time to be in do to massive swings and such.

Some things however I did notice was that when I turned off skype and other distractions from my sessions the winnings were in the positive and vice-versa for when it became late at night. This phenomenon may come across as blatantly obvious however, needless to say sometimes we all get a little bored and want some side entertainment while working. 

The month ended for me behind in both volume as well as table profits. Luckily for PokerStars VIP program I alloted 49,624.88 vpp's were earned in this period of time, as well as hitting my 600k VPP milestone nearing the beginning of September this year, this made up a huge chunk of profits in the aftermath for me. 

Goals For September 

• Put in a little bit more volume and keep on pace with SNE
• Make table profits Pre-Rakeback 
• Workout 5-6x a week
• Mix in 6-Max games along with my grind sessions 
• Update more regularly