Plowing the field

Nearly two months has passed since my last post and it may seem like a short lapse of time to many but when you work as hard as I do on my game, put in countless +10hrs session on a daily bases and spend half or more of your free time discussing poker with other decent players and studying your game, it does seem like a really long time and guess what? Hard work pays off, no matter you're an athlete preparing for the Olympics, an underground musician trying to make it happen or a poker player like me, trying to make a living out of your passion, hard work always pays off!!

Rising from deep within...(Part 1)

As what I was thinking what to name this post, a scene came to my mind, which brought the word "Rising" to the picture...

Rising as in the sun that enlightens my apartment and wakes me up, more often than not, in a refreshed and pumped mood, rising as in my poker abilities and the way I perceive the game that I love and  am so passionate about, rising  as in the obstacles facing me in the challenges that I set up for myself  in the short term and long term but let us focus on the short term side.

September was what I'm sure a countless number of people playing poker for a living would just like to erase from their memories, a brutal month in every definition of the word, I spent the 1st week with my gf in Bali which was nice, fun and relaxing then once I was back, I ran so bad it was disgusting, from the Punta Cana main event satellite where I got knocked out with set over set on the flop to the cruel set versus my Aces to send me to the rail out of the Sunday 100K 34th out 661....

It took a while for me to adjust back to my normal game but the thing is, I wasn't satisfied with it anymore, I want to be better, more skillful at extracting the maximum value, making the correct folds and/or adjustments, get better at hand reading, situation exploiting and all this while keeping an extremely focused and zen like mind.

Tournament Poker and the art of being a grinder

To win in tournament poker, there's so many skills and adjustments that you need to work on, on a constant basis so when people say that I make a living the easy way, they truly have no idea what goes on behind the curtains of an MTT grinder so I will use this post to shed some light on both its ups and downs.

Earlier on this month, I flew to Bali for some personal business, relaxation and of course, the usual, grinding, I went on a cold streak during the entire trip, once back, kept on playing the 2nd season of the Micro Millions and on the first night, had a super deep run in Event 47 which was a NL Hold'em $1 Rebuy 3x Turbo, out of a massive field of 12554 runners, I managed to lose a key coin flip with 55s against China's "Keqiwong" big slick and hit the rail 14th for a $233 cash instead the $10.6K 13 places away, it came with a huge disappointment,  a draining feeling that I don't wish on most people but here's some more...

Moved and almost settled..

First post since I landed back in Taipei, it's been 3 weeks, so what have I been up to? Seeing old friends, eating good meals, lots of socializing, swimming/spa/gym sessions and of course, playing lots of poker.

Haven't set up my new Bodog account as I'm still dealing with some banking paperwork so I've been mainly playing live cash and online on PS, so far, 2 out of 2 winning sessions in Live cash, here's a photo of my stack in a home game (That's around 300$ usd give or take)

Endings and Fresh Beginnings

When you're reading an intriguing book, you feel great after finishing each chapter but already very eager to start the next one, that somehow sums up the chapter of my life as I'm writing this, but about 100 times more exciting as I'm ending the chapter of my life where I lived in China and pretty much everything was a hassle as I expected it to be but very happy and excited to be moving back to Taiwan, I miss my friends, the good mix of international food, parties are great and it's damn convenient..really can't wait, 9 days left, I'm in the process of packing my things, the search for a decent apartment and eager to get my life back on track because during the past 9 months spent in China, it was anything but that.

"May" I ship a big one?

May is here and this would be my last month in China, I'm preparing to move back to Taipei and quite excited about it.

In the past 2 weeks, I managed to take down the $3 1K Gtd coming into the ft as the shortest stack and working my way out to the chip lead which I lost again when down to 3 handed, had 6bbs at some points but with some good push fold game and a bit of luck, came back and snatched the title!

A bit of sunshine never hurts!

After months of cold/unstable weather, both literally and poker wise, the sunshine finally showed up and with it some nice scores, although I haven't been running good for the past weeks at Pokerstars, things picked up in my other account at Bodog, I've had several deep runs in mtts, many 10/20$ don cashes and ended up taking 8th place in 11$ 2K GTD and taking down the 2$ rebuy, screenshots below:

 

I'm hoping that this will spread onto my ps account so I can finish the month in beauty, fingers crossed, tables popping up like cherries in spring and finger ready on the trigger (mouse), later folks!