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!!

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)

New Diet!

Well here it is:

Just kidding but as an online poker grinder, we do need our fair share of energy drinks, juices and snacks ready for a quick bite during breaks and I'm sure most won't disagree with this.

It's been more than half year since my last post and here I am again,  near the end of last year, I started coaching a colleague of mine and it got me back playing seriously, reading a lot of poker related stuff and working on my focus which translated in a great 1st month of January 2012 come back taking it from the basics, slowly but surely, the way it should be done.

Here are the stats for my January sessions:

ITM: 33/175
IMT %: 19%
1-3 Finishes: 17
Finished Late: 13%
Prizes: 132$
Average BI: 0.51$
ROI%: 47%
Profit: 42$

Goals for Feb:

1. Move up to 1.5$ 45/90 man
2. Try to get a seat to APPT Seoul
3. Make the top 10 at least once in the weekly Asian Poker League

That's it for now, wish me luck and good luck on the tables!

Rollercoaster week

Great start in December, during the first 5 days or so, wasn't running bad and was doing some great play, final tabled a lot of $3.25 45 man, final tabled a $4.40 Mtt field was 1298 and was the first one out in 9th place with my AJs brutalized by a set on the flop, the next day, went pretty deep in a $4.40 180 man, once in the many I switched gears and built up a big stack and then....and then this donk came in my way, I doubled him up with my A9 against his A7 allin preflop, he flops 977, I reraise him all in later on with my 66s, he snaps with K9o and strikes a 9 on the river and my last hand would be AQs on the btn 6 handed (We were 12 left), I raise 2.5x and he calls, flop 356 with 2 hearts, he donkbet into me, here I'm putting him on a draw, either a flush or a straight, so I go on an call, turn is 10, a blank, so I go ahead and shove the rest of my stack, he calls with K4 and hit a 4 on the river....I was amazed on how lucky that donk is but anyways, yesterday and today, the variance hit me in the $3.25 and I barely cashed, whenever I'm dealt KK, I lose to some Ax and when I'm dealt AK/AQ some dude wakes with AA/KK...pretty disgusting.

Today though, I went deep in a $2.20 4K guaranteed, 2572 people entered raising the prizepool to 5kish, had a steady climb in chips before the bubble as well as in the money, then I had a crazy rollercoaster, where I was 2nd in chiplead with like 175 people left, then my stack got brutalized going from 216K down to 20K then grinded it back up to 230Kish with around 90 people left, lost a coinflip worth 100K and comes the golden hand, got dealt KKs in early position and what will follow is a 3bet then a 4bet by villain who was on a heater already (I should've known better) and finally a 5bet allin by me and he snaps with the rockets, good bye me in 72nd place....

What a week!

That might be just enough to describe it, I've been putting a lot of time into studying and analyzing my game and it's a feeling like no other when you can see some of the fruits of your hard work, translation, I had a great week grinding the $3.25/$6.50 45 man, I went deep in a couple of Mtts including a 4th finish out of 2285 in a $4.40 regular with a prizepool of 9K and a 9th place finish in a $2.20 turbo on stars as well, the field was huge, 9365 entrants forming a total prizepool of almost 19K, although I was a bit disappointed with the way I finished since with the 3rd biggest stack in the final table, I certainly could've looked for a better spot to jam all of my stack and have a better finish/cash but that's ok, It's by learning from your mistakes that you improve and that's the golden rule in life as well as in Poker.