Look mate... I know sometimes when you have free entry to a big event, in the right romantic setting, with Lady Allan gazing fondly at you across a candlelit table, jamming K3 for 200bb can seem like a great plan.
But sometimes when you have free entry to a big event, it's nice to play it at home with no trousers and a turkey sandwich, folding K3 to 3bets.
Played a bunch on Saturday in lieu of playing on Sunday. In the end I also played literally 3 tournaments on Sunday and somehow binked the Christmas Cracker prize draw to the UKOPS Main Event! Talk about rungood - odds on that must be astronomical! Cheers!
@Tikay10 Massively grateful and wouldn't wish to look a gift horse in the mouth...
However, over New Year I'm away with friends in some cottage in the back end of nowhere - no wifi and I'm not sure if there will be mobile signal.
I will 100% be playing UKOPS on 27th and 28th, is there any way at all I could play the Main on one of those days instead please? Not to worry if not, thanks for the gift!
After a long absence from updates, honest post incoming!
Not been able to play too much so far this year due to being really busy with work, but hoping to be able to make time to play more in the next few weeks/months!
Having built up a reasonable roll previously in this thread for mid-high stakes MTTs the natural swings of such games were starting to make poker not feel too fun anymore. Working in music is great but you still have a lot of mundane tedious things to do on top of the performing side and Monday is my main day for mundane things. Playing really big Sundays and then waking up completely nackered on Monday morning for a long day where you've either won or lost x times what you're going to work for that day wasn't the best way to start every week! Note the winning aspect as well - I guess a lot of people would assume that it would just be the losing that would be tough on the brain sometimes but also winning more than you're going to work for I think is equally demotivating. I'm sure there are people who can manage it though and if they want to tell me their secret I'm all for it!
Still really love playing poker and particularly MTTs so I decided to move my roll into real life and start poker again from the beginning and try to build up. Seeing that exponential growth of taking a small roll and trying to build it up has always been one of the most enjoyable things for me. This time, a combination of things didn't go in my favour: 1) The amount of work I had on meant I could play very very low volume even for me. 2) I know I know, everyone runs bad yadayadayada and maybe I just ran absurdly well for the whole of 2018 but 2019 has been brutal on the variance front. Also not been able to put in the volume to ride through it either. 3) Not sticking to proper BRM because I know that I can beat higher games Entirely my fault this one, and just need some discipline - more to follow on this!
Fast forward to last week and struggling for motivation...
Have always heard the savage rumours that cash game players are better than tournament players and that if you put a cash player in tournaments they would do far better than a tournament guy would in cash games.
Wanting to find this out for myself and fight the battle for team MTT-ers I decided to start a cash game challenge! Occasionally dabbled with cash before but not really and any vaguely deep thought process on stack sizes over 40bb makes my head hurt! This also coincided with the Vegas rake race happening which I've never done anything like before and thought it would be fun to try.
Started with £200 roll last week and started playing properly Thurs/Fri at 10nl. So far so good and managed to donk my way through 10nl up to shots at 20nl. For the early levels I'm going to take shots with 20BI and move back down if lose 4BI. Well aware that as stakes get higher stricter BRM will be required though.
No idea how far I can go but will stick to BRM and see what happens. Honestly 10nl was a bit of a slog and dare I say it, even a little boring at times (sorry guys I like the sweaty excitement of final tables!) but I'm happy that I stuck to it and was disciplined enough to not just go straight back to MTTs. Played one small 20nl session today and coolered someone straight away so nice start
Will be back playing tournaments for UKOPS but will stick to this challenge and keep money for both separate.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
Making the graph just after each 'session'. My stamina is non-existent atm so playing lots of really short sessions. Graph looks far smoother than reality as you only see the end session result rather than the swings within the session.
Roll: £420 plus some rakeback plus hopefully some rake race bonus!
"Have always heard the savage rumours that cash game players are better than tournament players and that if you put a cash player in tournaments they would do far better than a tournament guy would in cash games."
That's probably the wisest thing you've ever posted on this forum
Great to see the diary revived and good luck with the new challenge. Someone best tell @alancarr12 that there's a new sheriff in town .
Impressive start Good luck with this fresh challenge Angmar. I've been mixing in a little 20nl myself recently but haven't been back since getting my bottom smacked a few nights ago... can confirm the cash game players rumour is true glgl
Impressive start Good luck with this fresh challenge Angmar. I've been mixing in a little 20nl myself recently but haven't been back since getting my bottom smacked a few nights ago... can confirm the cash game players rumour is true glgl
Thanks bud, hope you're well! Hope to not see you at the tables then
20nl did not go well! A lot of runbad - getting it in on the turn with 80%+ equity and losing over and over again, probably playing bad as well though!
Dropped down to 10nl and got hammered for 5 buy ins in one session ha!
Got annoyed so played some small stakes MTTs and won it all back:
Got £10 rakeback and £20 from the Vegas promotion too but I'd like to stick to profit from the cash tables for this challenge. May play some this week, may leave it until after UKOPS. UKOPS last November I had around £1.5k in buy ins ( managed to turn a healthy profit too ) so 10nl is a little bit hard to focus on in comparison at this point in time. A true grinder would just put aside the monetary value and get the job done I'm sure though!
Keep at it Angmar. A downswing of that size is very standard/inconsequential for even the biggest of cash game crushers, although I'm sure you already know that.
Also, I'd recommend adding all rakeback and promo money into the cash roll. It's all part of the net rake equation which impacts directly on your overall winrate and so shouldn't be viewed or kept in isolation in my opinion.
I can see why you are saying about results on the tables but RB and promo money all helps and I think it should be counted. Some promos can be great for overall win rates but if you aren't including promo or RB then you would probably swerve those games.
Getting a disconnect between the money involved when playing and real life can be pretty hard. I think you need to do that from both sides of the coin. Being able to make correct decisions when you have big amounts of money on the line is critical. Also you need to respect real life money. I think the more you play and experience the swings the easier it gets. I think it would become hard if you were thinking of giving up work as your attitude may struggle after big wins. I think keeping perspective and realising you need your job and that poker is making an extra income is the key but it can be easier said that done. It can also be important when its your last MTT and smallest buy in and playing optimally in it can be hard.
With the swings, poker is easy when it all goes your way when it doesn't and when volume is low it makes swings seem so much worse. I remember posting on someone's diary on here (cant remember who it was now) but they were experiencing a long downswing time wise but with my volume it was say a bad 3 week spell. 3 months when its playing on your mind is a lot harder than 3 weeks which you may hardly notice but you could be looking at same number of MTTs based on different players volumes.
Also, make sure you do what you find most fun (obviously within reason, not saying play $5k MTTs because they are fun!). Some people love the battle of playing the best, others love being the best in the field. Some love a diary style challenge.
There's something beautifully calming and reassuring in reading a Matt Bates pearl of wisdom. I'm starting to think of him as the Yoda of the Sky Poker Forum, only shorter.
There's something beautifully calming and reassuring in reading a Matt Bates pearl of wisdom. I'm starting to think of him as the Yoda of the Sky Poker Forum, only shorter.
Yes, and what a pearl of wisdom this was when discussing downswings
"...3 months when its playing on your mind is a lot harder than 3 weeks which you may hardly notice but you could be looking at same number of MTTs based on different players volumes...."
I can see why you are saying about results on the tables but RB and promo money all helps and I think it should be counted. Some promos can be great for overall win rates but if you aren't including promo or RB then you would probably swerve those games.
Getting a disconnect between the money involved when playing and real life can be pretty hard. I think you need to do that from both sides of the coin. Being able to make correct decisions when you have big amounts of money on the line is critical. Also you need to respect real life money. I think the more you play and experience the swings the easier it gets. I think it would become hard if you were thinking of giving up work as your attitude may struggle after big wins. I think keeping perspective and realising you need your job and that poker is making an extra income is the key but it can be easier said that done. It can also be important when its your last MTT and smallest buy in and playing optimally in it can be hard.
With the swings, poker is easy when it all goes your way when it doesn't and when volume is low it makes swings seem so much worse. I remember posting on someone's diary on here (cant remember who it was now) but they were experiencing a long downswing time wise but with my volume it was say a bad 3 week spell. 3 months when its playing on your mind is a lot harder than 3 weeks which you may hardly notice but you could be looking at same number of MTTs based on different players volumes.
Also, make sure you do what you find most fun (obviously within reason, not saying play $5k MTTs because they are fun!). Some people love the battle of playing the best, others love being the best in the field. Some love a diary style challenge.
Best of luck
Thanks Matt, great post. Can particularly relate to the last tournament of the session scenario, especially if shipping the tournament will still result in a losing session.
MTTs most fun format for me and not even close. Cash can feel a bit of a chore at times, though already I'm starting to see some improvements to the way I approach postflop so I think this challenge will be worthwhile. Definitely still a tournament donk at the end of the day though!
Hey guys, haven't posted in two and a half months - must improve at consistency with posting!
Managed to build back some reasonable profit in the cash game challenge and then burned some off bum-hunting @Duesenberg for the lolz
When people talk about which game type to play, the most common advice is always 'pick which format you enjoy the most' which really resonates with me now. Each to their own of course, but the monotony of cash games I found unbelievably dull. Granted this was mostly at 10nl and I'm sure it's much more fascinating and chess-like at higher levels when you really get into the off the table analysis, but for me playing a cash session of longer than an hour felt like such a grind and really not enjoyable at all.
With that in mind at the end of April/start of May I decided to start from scratch at MTTs, the format that I bloomin' love, and straight away rediscovered a lot of enthusiasm for the game!
I started with a £100 roll and played mostly the morning games on Sky. With my work schedule I tend to be free in the mornings and every weekday for about a month I'd get up and play the same 7 microstakes MTTs on Sky, and just plough away to increase the bankroll. Once at £500 I took a couple of shots at the Friday Mini for two consecutive weeks and got 11th and 4th which really helped things! Roll is up above 1k now so it's better for me to play a higher ABI on other sites but those 9am-12 games on Sky are absolutely where I'd recommend anyone looking to build up a roll. I still only play on Sky if I can play an evening session - lots of great games there too for building a roll!
Will continue the challenge and try to get to 10k again like last year
Been pretty strict with BRM so far - only allowing occasional 50BI shots each week and mostly sticking to 100BI or more. It honestly works wonders and IMO is the best thing anyone who is beating the game but struggling mentally could do. Losing really doesn't matter so much when you're properly rolled for the games you're playing. The most stressful point so far in the challenge was right at the start playing the morning games with a £100 roll including some very small field £5.50s. Would be sweating away during deep runs in those and genuinely jumping up and air-boxing for a £10 pay jump! Fun times!
Bankroll Challenges definitely do-able with hard work and sticking at it!
Comments
NIT!
Leave it with me @Angmar2626, I will have a word.
@Angmar2626
With thanks to Charlotte in the Office, you are now in UKOPS 13 on December 28th.
https://www.skypoker.com/secure/poker/sky_lobby?action=go_tnmt_lobby&game_id=33180203&guid=bf88a9da-2f4a-4af7-a1e8-e39d6cb793db
Good luck, TID with the MOF.
After a long absence from updates, honest post incoming!
Not been able to play too much so far this year due to being really busy with work, but hoping to be able to make time to play more in the next few weeks/months!
Having built up a reasonable roll previously in this thread for mid-high stakes MTTs the natural swings of such games were starting to make poker not feel too fun anymore. Working in music is great but you still have a lot of mundane tedious things to do on top of the performing side and Monday is my main day for mundane things. Playing really big Sundays and then waking up completely nackered on Monday morning for a long day where you've either won or lost x times what you're going to work for that day wasn't the best way to start every week! Note the winning aspect as well - I guess a lot of people would assume that it would just be the losing that would be tough on the brain sometimes but also winning more than you're going to work for I think is equally demotivating. I'm sure there are people who can manage it though and if they want to tell me their secret I'm all for it!
Still really love playing poker and particularly MTTs so I decided to move my roll into real life and start poker again from the beginning and try to build up. Seeing that exponential growth of taking a small roll and trying to build it up has always been one of the most enjoyable things for me. This time, a combination of things didn't go in my favour:
1) The amount of work I had on meant I could play very very low volume even for me.
2) I know I know, everyone runs bad yadayadayada and maybe I just ran absurdly well for the whole of 2018 but 2019 has been brutal on the variance front. Also not been able to put in the volume to ride through it either.
3) Not sticking to proper BRM because I know that I can beat higher games
YTD MTTs:
Have always heard the savage rumours that cash game players are better than tournament players and that if you put a cash player in tournaments they would do far better than a tournament guy would in cash games.
Wanting to find this out for myself and fight the battle for team MTT-ers I decided to start a cash game challenge! Occasionally dabbled with cash before but not really and any vaguely deep thought process on stack sizes over 40bb makes my head hurt!
Started with £200 roll last week and started playing properly Thurs/Fri at 10nl. So far so good and managed to donk my way through 10nl up to shots at 20nl. For the early levels I'm going to take shots with 20BI and move back down if lose 4BI. Well aware that as stakes get higher stricter BRM will be required though.
No idea how far I can go but will stick to BRM and see what happens. Honestly 10nl was a bit of a slog and dare I say it, even a little boring at times (sorry guys I like the sweaty excitement of final tables!) but I'm happy that I stuck to it and was disciplined enough to not just go straight back to MTTs. Played one small 20nl session today and coolered someone straight away so nice start
Will be back playing tournaments for UKOPS but will stick to this challenge and keep money for both separate.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far!
Making the graph just after each 'session'. My stamina is non-existent atm so playing lots of really short sessions. Graph looks far smoother than reality as you only see the end session result rather than the swings within the session.
Roll: £420 plus some rakeback plus hopefully some rake race bonus!
Fabulous stuff & a great start.
As the kids say, "subscribed".
Good luck.
That's probably the wisest thing you've ever posted on this forum
Great to see the diary revived and good luck with the new challenge. Someone best tell @alancarr12 that there's a new sheriff in town
Good luck with this fresh challenge Angmar.
I've been mixing in a little 20nl myself recently but haven't been back since getting my bottom smacked a few nights ago... can confirm the cash game players rumour is true
glgl
Hope to not see you at the tables then
20nl did not go well!
Dropped down to 10nl and got hammered for 5 buy ins in one session ha!
Got annoyed so played some small stakes MTTs and won it all back:
Got £10 rakeback and £20 from the Vegas promotion too but I'd like to stick to profit from the cash tables for this challenge. May play some this week, may leave it until after UKOPS. UKOPS last November I had around £1.5k in buy ins ( managed to turn a healthy profit too
Also, I'd recommend adding all rakeback and promo money into the cash roll. It's all part of the net rake equation which impacts directly on your overall winrate and so shouldn't be viewed or kept in isolation in my opinion.
Good luck!
Getting a disconnect between the money involved when playing and real life can be pretty hard. I think you need to do that from both sides of the coin. Being able to make correct decisions when you have big amounts of money on the line is critical. Also you need to respect real life money. I think the more you play and experience the swings the easier it gets. I think it would become hard if you were thinking of giving up work as your attitude may struggle after big wins. I think keeping perspective and realising you need your job and that poker is making an extra income is the key but it can be easier said that done. It can also be important when its your last MTT and smallest buy in and playing optimally in it can be hard.
With the swings, poker is easy when it all goes your way when it doesn't and when volume is low it makes swings seem so much worse. I remember posting on someone's diary on here (cant remember who it was now) but they were experiencing a long downswing time wise but with my volume it was say a bad 3 week spell. 3 months when its playing on your mind is a lot harder than 3 weeks which you may hardly notice but you could be looking at same number of MTTs based on different players volumes.
Also, make sure you do what you find most fun (obviously within reason, not saying play $5k MTTs because they are fun!). Some people love the battle of playing the best, others love being the best in the field. Some love a diary style challenge.
Best of luck
Great post.
There's something beautifully calming and reassuring in reading a Matt Bates pearl of wisdom. I'm starting to think of him as the Yoda of the Sky Poker Forum, only shorter.
"...3 months when its playing on your mind is a lot harder than 3 weeks which you may hardly notice but you could be looking at same number of MTTs based on different players volumes...."
MTTs most fun format for me and not even close. Cash can feel a bit of a chore at times, though already I'm starting to see some improvements to the way I approach postflop so I think this challenge will be worthwhile. Definitely still a tournament donk at the end of the day though!
Will add RB to the graph.
Managed to build back some reasonable profit in the cash game challenge and then burned some off bum-hunting @Duesenberg for the lolz
When people talk about which game type to play, the most common advice is always 'pick which format you enjoy the most' which really resonates with me now. Each to their own of course, but the monotony of cash games I found unbelievably dull. Granted this was mostly at 10nl and I'm sure it's much more fascinating and chess-like at higher levels when you really get into the off the table analysis, but for me playing a cash session of longer than an hour felt like such a grind and really not enjoyable at all.
With that in mind at the end of April/start of May I decided to start from scratch at MTTs, the format that I bloomin' love, and straight away rediscovered a lot of enthusiasm for the game!
I started with a £100 roll and played mostly the morning games on Sky. With my work schedule I tend to be free in the mornings and every weekday for about a month I'd get up and play the same 7 microstakes MTTs on Sky, and just plough away to increase the bankroll. Once at £500 I took a couple of shots at the Friday Mini for two consecutive weeks and got 11th and 4th which really helped things! Roll is up above 1k now so it's better for me to play a higher ABI on other sites but those 9am-12 games on Sky are absolutely where I'd recommend anyone looking to build up a roll. I still only play on Sky if I can play an evening session - lots of great games there too for building a roll!
Will continue the challenge and try to get to 10k again like last year
Been pretty strict with BRM so far - only allowing occasional 50BI shots each week and mostly sticking to 100BI or more. It honestly works wonders and IMO is the best thing anyone who is beating the game but struggling mentally could do. Losing really doesn't matter so much when you're properly rolled for the games you're playing. The most stressful point so far in the challenge was right at the start playing the morning games with a £100 roll including some very small field £5.50s. Would be sweating away during deep runs in those and genuinely jumping up and air-boxing for a £10 pay jump! Fun times!
Bankroll Challenges definitely do-able with hard work and sticking at it!
Challenge so far: