Hope for online poker and moving again!

Okay so last time I talked about that I divided into some new games and the last 2 weeks I got in some hands and poker really became fun again with learning some new stuff from scratch. It also went well! I started out suffering a lot in triple draw though but now I did some reading and just by a couple of hours I feel I got some very good guidelines. It is very true that having a good basic understanding of general poker theory allows you to do well in all games, it is amazing to me that so many specialists make so many shitty plays in other games. I mean, when someone obviously just have high potential in stud8 and you show a low board with very likely highpotential as well such as like 3457.

I have also been playing in some specialist games and letting people play in their best game seems just to be a pretty bad idea right now. Like even if I have a huge winning sample at FLHE then the spots feels just extra marginal when you see someone draw 3+3+2 in tripledraw off the blinds..

Anyways with my FPPs i grinded up to a $215 ticket recently and placed pretty high in a mixed game tournament. It was a nice addition.



So now I moved back to Spain again and played some recently. Of course I get 439€ behind EV the first session in PLO on 10c25c while FLSH went ok. 439€, thats fucking insane, almost 20 buyins in one day? Lost 2 of 2 run it twice all ins with AA67ds vs another AAshit and a all in turn with 79% vs a flushdraw twice and some other freaking shit. Oh well, I should play even lower with these results really so if I play next I will go embarrassingly low 5c/10c.

I am kinda tempted playing some FLSH and perhaps even to try to get some action at any of the mixed games since I must be crushing any spaniard. The problem is obviously action but also the fact that a lot of the games change so much if you are shorthanded. FLHE, NLHE and PLO does too of course but its still the same game. Stud8 though changes just by insane measures. I guess my basic understanding of triple draw would also be kinda fucked up headsup but it might be fun to try it out. Razz and stud hi works fine.'

We will see, school starts soon and even though I intend to play some, its gonna be somewhat like last years o study with just 3-5k hands per month I think and the next few weeks are gonna be busy. I kinda want to go from "OK" to "Excellent" this year in Spanish and that means I really have to step it up. Parts of me are somewhat tempted to go to Casino Gran Madrid but naah, this year of just struggle kinda makes me pretty risk-shy.

Return to poker :D?

Tssup readers? This summer I have went through some ups and downs in poker in terms of psychology. I started out just loosing shitloads in PLO and was disgusted with the results of like -33 bb/100 for 20k hands even though I been on the upside of variance as early as this christmas with same stats but +30 bb/100. Decided that since I only can play 3ish months per year I need something more stable. I then switched back to FLSH which I have a proven trackrecord of 1m+ hands with profit. The doomswitch continued and I lost a large part of my remainding roll. I was fed up.

I mentally retired from poker, instead of these swings I would so much prefer to get a job, having people to talk to at work and learn something new and right now until I finish my current degree in 3 years, I dont mind getting 3-4k$/month (without any swings :D), thats enough for me. I started the withdrawalprocess and registered on a few sites/companies that lets you work 2weeks there, 2 weeks there for people generally without education. I do however have education but after reading ads etc and job descriptions I just felt a bit grim and unattractive. I sent out 3-4 online applications and its just been 2-3 days but I dunno, it kinda dawned upon me that the job world is a lot more difficult. So it made me rethink on poker again.

I left a small sum online and I switched to a new game and so far it has gone well! I am up 700$ atm after losing 400$ yesterday but I wasnt playing that great. I hope that will work well and poker is almost fun again, changing games is cool!

Mentally switch perspective from a job to a slightly profitable recreation.

But I move to Spain soon and what happens to poker then? This game is not played, I can only play NLHE, FLHE and PLO in Spain. I did some calculations and it is not realistic that I will sustain a decent hourly at any game without tapping into saving to refund the BR, and I think I am not prepared to do that. What I think I will do is that I will leave 500e online, play 5c/10c on a 50 buyin-br around 6h per week. If I loose that then its game over. That would prob give me an hourly of laaame 10$/h which is just terrible and like 8 out of the 9 years ive played I had the mindset that I wouldnt play a hand of poker if I didnt win anything from $100 down to $30 depending on my success level. I guess what changed my mind was the fact that I find it quite relaxing (and stressful at the same time!) firing up a few table. Also, if I just put the 6h/week at these low stakes the loosing days would not be mentally straining, I dont have to break the mental barrier of reaching into previous years winnings, poker wouldnt take over my life, I wouldnt have to take long breaks because loosing thousands of dollars set me in a bad mood= better more consistent volume but also it would mean that I can very realistically play 10c/25c within one year and then the hourly would be pretty good actually. So I think I am not quitting, at least not until I lose my 500. If I lose that then a break would probably be good, I really do think putting this much time into poker have deterred me from investing time and energy into other cool things and who knows, if I had this kind of shitty streak 2-3 years a bit back and more actively pursued other things, I could have made a lot more than I did these 2-3 years in poker. Okay, I am getting a bit longwinded. Ciao

PS: Btw, I would like to say that I truly believe I could sell some stocks, put a couple of thousand dollars into FLHE 2/4 to 5/10 and grind away for a pretty good hourly but after playing very little this year and having the first loosing year ever, I have become much much much more riskaverse. Another factor obviously is that I can only do that 3 months per year, if I was in Sweden or which ever country I could grind with good rakeback on, I might think differently.

Laaaast chance of hope!

As I was withdrawing all the cash, I started thinking about if there were not another type of poker I could focus on that would be profitable too but perhaps less swings and like, something new and exciting. I decided to check out some Cardrunners and just grind away with only 250$ with and if I lose it, then it is truly over. The good thing is that I have won 5 of 5 days so far, its up to 850$ Im gonna continue to take this slow, keeping in mind that if I bust poker is out and we will see, it is extremly possible I am just running good.

The reason I am not mentioning the game is that it has a small pool and I dont want to get any more grinders if it turns out I am crushing it early on. I bet there is a lot of goldmines out there that people are not aware of. I would imagine like headsup flhe sit and gos would be great since recreational players seems to like SNGs and they might mistakenly register for FLHE instead of NLHE or whatever. The problem with that one though is the time-consuming-part, I guess it has to be $100-sngs or something like that for it to be worth the time.

Also played some MTTs for my free tokens on different sites and yesterday I was doing well. Of 850 people I was 4th with 17 to go. Looked down at AA on the big blind, utg chipleader raised 3x and sb calls, I do like 15x and chippy ships it. It shows KK and obviously flop goes KQ2 and J on turn to give me a little hope but something raggy comes on river and I am out :(. If that is not a tell that the pokergods want me to quit then I dont know what is!

The end - at least for a year +

Hello! After my return to Sweden and the online grind, I just lost and lost and lost. It was not that many hands (20kish) and the loss was "only" around $3000 but it just kinda reminded me about the ps and downs in poker, how bad I have felt at times and how ungrateful it could be. This year I played mostly PLO, a new and swingy game for me and even though I prob could grind FLSH for a decent salary, it too has variance. After loosing 8 or 9 straight playing days (I took a few days off etc) I was just done. I told myself that I would grind out the rake I needed for some bonuses and then just cash the shit out.

This is kinda what I did yesterday, soon I wont have a single dollar at a online poker site. This kinda makes the future a bit different. If i decde to fully stop playing poker then I guess I would have to find other income when I am not studying. I have 3 years left btw at university and basically I could just spend the 3 months per year I have free doing nothing but with the cost of uni etc, that would just feel awful.

Anyhow, I think ill take the rest of the summer to work on a few new projects that actually is uncharted territory for me and learn something new, maybe some of them will generate the income and that could possibly be the end of poker. If that doesnt pan out I might consider a return to poker next summer. I have some cash from poker winnings that I put into mutual funds and its possible that I could put the profit from that into a second try. Of course I could put it but it is just the mental/moral aspect, right now I do not want to take any "real money" to put into poker again.

Poker in retrospect
All in all I have to be decently happy about my poker career so far even though I would have wished to make more money (I know there are a lot more that made a lot more). 9 years of playing has allowed me to purchase a nice apartment, travel to 30+ countries, visit Vegas a few times and all that while studying fulltime at university for 8 of those years (making me TOO educated, haha). The later years has been a battle uphill. 2013 was decent, but 2012 was a waste of time, 2014 the first losing year after 40-50k hands and 2011 wasnt that impressive either. There is a lot of things I could have done differently to have a lot more stable results (why the fuck did I have to play 100/200 once and 50/100 a lot (30k hands at least) , even if I only played higher if major fish was there (60 vpip+) and like one year I made "only" 40k$ since I lost like 80k$ on 50/100 or something like that. Also some year I played a bit too much HU while multitabling. I have done well playing FLHE HU historically but the variance can be quite brutal there if you do not hit. One year I lost like 15k$ at FLHE HU with stats like wtsd 45% won sd 40% (insane!), if I had just stuck to 3 handed+ I would have done better. The same thing early one when my PLO-game wasnt too great, I freaking played PLO 5/10$ at times, loosing i think 30k$.  Anyways, all the gambles I did at higher games was soooo +EV since I always played with huge fish but I was very unfortunate that they almost never worked. I guess I have a few hundred thousands of sklanskyBucks to cash out at the imaginery bank. Those would have been nice to have gathered!

Ohh well, could'da would'a should'a! It kinda is tempting to actually continue somehow, perhaps trying out the 8games or something but even though I am sure I could use the lessons I have learnt and turn out an okay profit for august with time, you have to weigh it against the shitty sides and its prob +lifeEV for me right now to stop and at least take a break, perhaps for 6 months, 1 year or forever. I realize how I am seemingly put in way too much effort into this post, writing all high almighty but it is kinda difficult to realize that you are about to remove a big part of your life. I am quite happy putting this time and energy on other stuff I have neglected in the past. I hope I will actually pursue those things and not replace them by something less productive, like watching tvshows. Or 8game!? Ahh I am tempted....  Gaah!! Very tempted..

Return to FLSH, then we will see!

Yo! I more or less decided to quit online poker after losing like 2700$ at 10c/25c PLO in 4-5 days. Felt good that it was time to end poker and looked forward to new challenges. Then I started to think differently. Its PLO that went crappy this year. Fixed always goes okay/well.  And the projects I am doing atm need some permissions and enquiries before proceeding so I will have ample time to do other shit. Anyways, so I decided to just play FLSH these 5 weeks now. I guess that means I will play weekends and some evenings given the action online. I did check the rake stats and checked my winrate on sites etc and did this hourly calculator to motivate me. What it does is that it is a spreadsheet and 1 table of 2/4€ on stars will historically give, lets say 5$. Then if I write 2 it becomes 10$. If I add an ipoker table at 1/2 it perhaps adds 7$ since the cashback might be  better. Anyways, so I log in, check the tables and if I get over x hourly ill grind. Its cool.

I also got some deals set up and shit, poker feels ok again. Just lost 160$ first day, no biggie though. Gonna grind 1/2 to 3/6.

FLSH action is very much declining but the last few days of checking then I realize there are a few games running, a good 10/20$ is quite nice and yeah, I might just grind FLSH, hope to get a lot of hands in and if I win, I could feel brave enough to tackle PLO again.

Starting the summer-grind!

Yo!
Now I have been back to Sweden for a couple of days. I am not that tired but I certainly feel the 9h time difference in my body. Luckily, it kinda coincided with good games on some loose games, the games around 3-6 AM has been great. The idea I had about playing half flhe and half plo has kinda failed but not because of me. Even though I have cash on 4-5 networks now, the games are still on life support. 1/2$ is running at times and occasionally 2/4 and 3/6 (i am waiting a little with 5-10 atm) but usually on the sites with shitty cashback and the rake is so severe so, yeah 4tabling FLHE is difficult. Again, I hope to create a big BR so I can play anywhere from FLHE 2/4 to 15/30 and that would make it easier but that is not where I am atm. So I have to put all my faith in PLO.

I checked out the yearly stats so far and I am down about 4000$ for the year in 25000 hands. Most of it was from january playing a bit higher where I lost 3k$.

Anyways, I got 4 real grinding days in.

11 july -377$ - Rake= 470$
12 july +130$ - Rake 409$
13 july -673$ - Rake 472$
14 july +190$ - Rake 308$
16 july +359$
Update: 17 july= -1200$ after 2,5h ooouch. 650$ under all in EV.

Fuck, that one hurt. Not sure how to consider things for the summer. Should I continue to put time into this grind or should I put my time elsewhere? The thing is that, sure I won 65k PLO hands last year but that is not a lot. I am not down a sick amount either and it has been kinda rigged, a lot of second sets and yeah of 1200$ lost in 5 days, about 1000$ of that is all in ev.

Grinding break - Need to enjoy the sun!

Dancing in the carribean

How is it going? With me its soso, the grind started out quite well and I did well. Then recently the run bad just hit me like a slap in the face and lost a small sum of 250$ on 25c/50c, then again and today I lost 450$, thats about 1000$ so about 13 buyins. Nothing big but the way I lost it wasnt fun. Guess it happened to thousands of PLO-players so its just to plow through it. Anyways, adding to the misery is the fucking internet, hence why I am writing. I just disconnected for like the 4th time today and even though it works for a long while here I probably have been disconnected while playing 15 times and thats probably 200$ right there. Thats obviously a huge blow but the frustration is worse!!

I still have like 5 days of cardrunners and I am very happy that they allow downloads for people like me that sometimes find myself with poor connections. Streaming here would be a nightmare and its cool to just have to sign in. Anyways, enough about that.

So i have been watching some mindcirkus videos to brush up. To be honest, I think the biggest thing for me is just to make sure to focus a huge percentage of my game, I slack off sometimes and it costs me great. Actually, today when I lost those many buyins (26th june) there were a number of very icky sticky situations and making a video of that would be amazingly helpful because there were a lot of spots where I wasnt sure what to do. So I brought forward my newly bough mic, connected it to my computer, installed camtasia again and then noticed that it doesnt seem to pickup any sound no matter what I do.

So in 2 weeks ive went from 0$ to +2000$ to about +450$ or so, I guess any profit is good right? Lost a couple of hundred in PLO after all and played less FLHE and crushed there. It kinda reminded me that you dont need to play tons of table to make a profit. Maybe it is okay to play very few tables once in a while, the screen just feels a bit incomplete playing like 2x2/4€ FLHE.

Okay so in regards to PLO:

14345 hands played, EV BB/100 = -0,01 but that unfortunatly must be tainted by a site that doesnt show mucked hands. Removing nickname brings it to -7,21 BB/100 ev which kinda sucks. That cool though, there was a lot of coolers but also some bad play.

If we check out the multitable ratio then it averages out at 5,13. 5 tables might be just fine but if we put in like the 10 minutes it takes to get all the tables then I would say I did too many.

Hmm lets do what I always do when trying to motivate myself to play less tables, do some calcs on hourly rates!

After checking out my history, I rake the following

25c/50c EURO - 10,7€ per 100 hands.

25c/50c USD - 11,34$ per 100 hands

10c/25c EURO - 6,32€ per 100 hands.

Colonial look!

I did my calculations in SEK to show what a breakeven player would make per hour depending on stakes and how many hours but i guess it doesnt make any sense for you guys but the yeah the consensus is

1) PLO is just insaaaanely raked at lower stakes, just wow

2) You can make more than most jobs playing 5 tables of breakeven 10c/25c as long as you have a good rakeback deal. Obviously we all strive to maximize our BB/100 and not just RB but it is a nice baseline.