It's become a routine to look at some interesting hands from the previous night in Holdem Resources Calculator. Here's what it says about my exit hand, because it's kind of interesting. More interesting than "I jammed A4o and that was a huge mistake" anyway. No screenshots today because I'm supposed to be doing school work and this needs to be quick. Good news: it's not that bad!
Here's the full HH:
Player
Action
Cards
Amount
Pot
Balance
joeyboy
Small blind
800.00
800.00
28888.75
Telmison74
Big blind
1600.00
2400.00
149090.56
Your hole cards
A
8
CHECK2YOU2
Fold
faudes2012
Fold
Stick66
Call
1600.00
4000.00
125750.00
NOSTRI
Raise
4800.00
8800.00
31577.00
joeyboy
Fold
Telmison74
Raise
15200.00
24000.00
133890.56
Stick66
Fold
NOSTRI
Call
12000.00
36000.00
19577.00
Flop
A
3
2
Telmison74
All-in
133890.56
169890.56
0.00
NOSTRI
All-in
19577.00
189467.56
0.00
Telmison74
Unmatched bet
114313.56
75154.00
114313.56
Telmison74
Show
Q
A
NOSTRI
Show
A
8
Turn
3
River
10
Telmison74
Win
Two Pairs, Aces and 3s
75154.00
189467.56
Unsurprisingly, the CO should have a 0% limping range. They can do this profitably with some of the top of their range but those hands are obviously better to just open and try to get value and I can't imagine a good player ever doing it. Maybe as a trap when there are small stacks in the blinds, but the BB here has about 94bb (miscounted this last night).
Against the "correct" limping range, A8s is obviously not a great raise but it seems more than reasonable to assume CO is limping much wider than just his premiums. I would expect to see some offsuit broadways like KJ, QT, some small pairs, and maybe some bigger pairs as traps. Against that range, A8s is obviously fine.
The BB's 3-bet range here is pretty much what I'd expect. When everyone is playing well, I'm supposed to raise with a tight-ish range and he should only do this with JJ or better. When we're all using our heads and assuming CO is a loose-passive fish, and I can be raising wider against a perceived weak range, he can 3-bet with a lot more hands. AQo is well within that range. So far so good.
I'm surprised at how wide I can call this 3-bet profitably. I can call with any ace, any pocket pair, all my broadways, and even a bunch of suited connectors. I suppose it's primarily a function of pot odds since I'm getting 3:1 and only need 33% equity to call. I'm also closing the action, so no need to worry about 4-bets. I'm still never calling quite that wide but A8s is fine since my top pairs are going to be good a fair chunk of the time and I can also flop flush equity. There's clearly no point 4-betting all in since almost everything he 3-bets me with can call a shove. So it's call or fold and folding is boring.
There's obviously nothing I can do on the flop when I flop top pair and a flush draw. The only thing I could do differently is snap-call even faster. Just got unlucky with the runout there.
Ok, back to school. First coaching session this evening so I'm expecting to book a win tonight. Seems reasonable.
First coaching session with Sir @chicknMelt yesterday. Something funny that I didn't tell him: I had him tagged as a bad player for a long time. Not sure why, can't remember, but I'm choosing to take that as a sign of how far I've come. Good reminder that we shouldn't reach hasty conclusions about someone's skill level and strategy based off a few hands -- especially when they're one of Sky's most profitable players -- because that's going to lead to bad decisions later.
We went over some hands from one of my UKOPS outings and it was time very well spent. It was a nice confidence boost to find out that I'm doing a lot of things right and we identified a more than a few areas where I could be trying different things and improving my thought process. Not going to be digging into that today as I have other commitments but I expect I'll write a bit about what I'm learning here and there.
Sadly it did not translate to immediate big scores on the tables. My only UKOPS entry last night was the Mini and it was basically a disaster. Two bullets down the toilet and no cash. Made a little back from other entries but this was ultimately my first losing session of UKOPS. Just going to have to let that one go since I don't have time today to dig into it and see what went wrong. I think it's reasonable to expect to be making some mistakes so soon after getting coaching since I'm going to be trying new things without necessarily picking the best spots, so I'm not going to let it knock my confidence.
Taking the night off tonight to finish up some university work then planning to put as much volume as I can for the remainder of UKOPS.
Was feeling spicy so I took a punt on one of the £22 entries after bricking a satellite. Way above my usual ABI but as the saying goes: ""You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott." It wasn't a total disaster is about the best thing I can say about that. I let my nerves get the better of me at the beginning, stuck on a table with a number of this forum's most well-known winners, and played far too tight. But I settled in nicely after that and punted my stack off with great confidence. I would like to offer some details about how it all went wrong but Sky's hand history viewer is garbage and won't let me go back that far. Never mind.
Yet another good run in the Mini without a significant finish, ultimately finishing 50-something for about £43. I was lucky enough to start with an incredibly soft table and did very well in the early-mid stages. Once the bubble passed, one of those fabled "good regs" joined my table and promptly doubled up through me. I flopped two pair and he turned a flush. But I recovered nicely and kept myself around the middle of the field.
There was a point where I sent @chicknMelt a message asking if he had any advice on effectively navigating this part of the tournament but before he had a chance to reply I went busto in the hand posted below. Classic slapstick comedy. Don't think there's much I could have done about it but I'll be taking a closer look at some of my hands from that later today.
Here's my UKOPS record so far. Nothing too awe-inspiring but I'm surprised and impressed that I'm not massively in the hole even after taking shots at higher buy-ins and bricking a bunch of satellites. Tonight's Mini is a rebuy/addon, so that could be a blood bath.
Some good results in other tournaments meant I actually had a pretty good session despite disappointing UKOPS results, so that's nice.
Thought I was off to a good start yesterday winning two UKOPS satellites on my first try and some decent cashes in non-UKOPS MTTs. I got off to a good start in all my entries but didn't cash any of the three. I'm now just under breakeven overall for UKOPS.
Taking it on the chin though. With so many people playing you have to expect variance to be much higher than I'm used to. I think I'm doing well to be breaking even in these tournaments that are 2-4x my average buy-in, some with 500+ runners.
Let's go back to my old friend the tournament variance calculator and run a few simulations to confirm this. Assuming an £11 buy-in, 15% of the field paid, at 100 runners and 500 runners, with my 23% ROI. Simulating that 100 times my probability of loss jumps from 30% to 43% in the bigger fields. Of course, I'm not playing 100 of these. (We would really need well over 1,000 trials to get a realistic projection but I'm just looking at short term swings in this case.) If I simulate it a more realistic 20 times, my probability of loss is around 64%. So I'm actually beating the odds to be roughly break-even right now.
I take little comfort from that since I would like to win some money during UKOPS but there's still a few days to turn things around. It's at least nice to not be massively in the hole when I'm taking such relatively big shots.
I've actually been surprised at how comfortable I've felt in these tournaments. I've certainly donated a lot of chips to some of the regs but overall I feel I've been holding my own reasonably well.
Something else worth talking about is how tiring poker is.
Most of the time I'm not playing more than three tables simultaneously, with a few buy-ins early in the day and a few more in the evening. I'm typically sitting at my desk with my feet up having a relatively relaxing evening. But I've been playing £11s and £22s this week and found myself with 4+ tables for hours on end at times. I was trying to navigate five simultaneously for a few hours last night and considering a sixth. It's hectic and mentally draining and I'm sure mistakes were made. I was absolutely shattered when I fell into bed last night and I have nothing but respect for people who are able to maintain a solid winrate mass multi-tabling.
Long-term I think it's going to be important to get comfortable with that. Volume is the key to bigger profits and I think I'm going to start playing £11s more often after UKOPS so my average table count is going to go up. We'll see how that goes.
Booked 17th in UKOPS 52 for about 80 quid and walked away from the Mini break-even after bounties. Will update the almighty spreadsheets tomorrow but should be showing a teeny, tiny bit of profit for UKOPS now. Happy with that after struggling to get much more than a min-cash all week.
The real highlight of the evening was an £11 Bounty Hunter. Only started playing these this week and it's mostly been a fun way to burn money. But I managed to to FT one tonight while I was draining chips in the Mini and took 2nd in the end. Really happy with how I played up until it went heads up and then it all went upside down. Started with a 2:1 chip advantage and punted it off upsettingly fast. I keep telling myself I'll study heads up play some more but it always feels like there are more important things to work on when getting HU is such a rare occurrence.
Few other half decent results here and there meant my best night for who knows how long. Happy days.
The spikes are so much prettier when you've spent the past 2 months breaking even. I think this chart would look much nicer with a big UKOPS cash on the end though. Two days left to sort that out.
As far as UKOPS goes, I've spent £238 to win £53. Not exactly awe-inspiring but preferable to being down £238.
Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates that sort of thing. Just an excuse to eat chocolate for me, not that I need one.
Going to cap off today's update with an interesting hand from the £11 BH I FT'd last night.
Here's the spot. There were 7 people left at this point, so we're on the FT bubble and well into the money and I'm second overall.
I would snap this off at any point not ITM. I have a sizeable chip lead over the other three, there are sizeable bounties to win, and I'm probably going to be in great shape versus a 10bb jam and rejam most of the time. But with ICM? No idea. I decided to fold and hang on to my chip advantage but my instinct was that it's probably fine to call off. But I folded, the BB jammed behind, and it went three-ways. I was way ahead of the BB and CO, as expected, but the BTN showed up with KK.
I would have been disgusted if I had called: I'd have flopped a full house but the BTN flopped quads. Would have been a small side-pot off the BB plus his bounty, though. (I think I might have got the CO bounty too. I think the biggest stack gets the bounties? Not sure.)
Chucked it in HRC this morning and it turns out it wasn't even close. I'm making almost a tenner on average when I bang this in and I should actually be jamming a full 33% of my range.
I'm actually amazed at how wide I'm supposed to call this off and I'm not sure why that is. I suppose it's a combination of my sizeable chip lead and advantge I'll have if I win, the short stacks having wide ranges, the chunky bounties, and the top-heavy payout structure. But I'm just guessing. ICM remains a bit of a mystery to me.
Would love to know what more knowledgable people would have done in this spot.
Thanks for all the encouragement from the new faces commenting here. I'm mostly using this thread as a way of getting my own thoughts in order but I'm glad other people are getting something out of it too.
Re-ran the ICM calc for the hand above in ICMIZER and it returned with a much more sensible 88+,AQ+, not accouting for bounty equity. So definitely an auto-call. Never mind.
You have so many chips behind so doubt it can ever be an ICM disaster. Going for 2 chunky bounties, a side pot bounty and chance to knock out 2 players and probably take the chip lead, seems a dream spot.
If you call as BTN beats you and CO and covers CO, he gets that bounty.
Nope, nope, nope, nope. Absolute disaster tonight. Down £120, didn't play well, didn't run well, didn't win a thing.
Since I'm still without a significant UKOPS score, here's the plan for tonight: I'm only playing UKOPS entries until/unless it gets down to one table. Giving them 100% of my attention and hopefully getting something nice at the final hurdle. Let's get this done.
Played the Main and the Mini. Two bullets in the Mini, never got anything going. Two bullets in the Main. Was well into a smashing run until I got on the wrong end of KK vs AA and went out 150th with only two bounties to my name.
With that, I kiss goodbye to any profits I accrued during UKOPS.
But. I'm happy with how I played tonight and throughout the series and it'll be back to normal service in good spirits and feeling pretty confident about things.
UKOPS can go to ****. Back to the normal schedule with a modest bang today. More of a party popper than a firework.
Played the Mini. Up and down all over the place, ultimately got out in 19th for £17.
Won a sat into the Main. Nursed a decent stack all the way to 39th for a min-cash and a nice pile of bounties adding up to £108. GG when I ran 88 into @MattBates with his signature hand, KK.
Got into the £2k Mega Stack BH too but it was rubbish. Can't have it all.
Icing on the cake: got to the FT of a Party Poker Powerfest MTT and finished in 6th. It was the first and last MTT I played today and took just over 9 hours, which is insane.
I would like to say the weekend was a rollercoaster but rollercoasters have ups as well as downs. It's been more like bungee jumping, where you plummet towards the ground and then get pulled back up at the last second.
First of all, I won an £11 Bounty Hunter on Friday, that was worth about £250. Very nice.
Saturday was a complete washout. Played many satellites, lost them all. Stone bubbled the £10k Big Weekend Semi, which was unbelievably annoying, but the £88 booby prize helped me get back to even.
Last night was almost an absolute disaster. I dropped just over £200 in buy-ins in total and right up until the end had nothing to show for it.
First of all: the Major. Got in on a semi sat. It was a frustrating process of draining down to less than 15bb, doubling back up to starting stack, draining back down, doubling up again, and so on. I had a pretty tough table with two good regs and one rando who seemed pretty solid and had a massive stack. Then I went on a bit of a heater and for a brief, glorious moment I was in 4th place overall with 100-odd left. And then I proceeded to give all of my chips away to one player over the course of three hands. It was unbelievably tilting. I don't really remember the hands and I don't want to but I don't think they were that bad. We'll go with "unavoidable." Why not.
The Mini Major was a disaster. Busted that nice and early. Shortly after I found myself one-tabling the Major and decided to have a punt on the £22 Mega Stack Bounty Hunter. It was a slog but I finally pulled something out of the bag and came third. Normally I would be ecstatic with such a result but the payout was just barely enough to pull me back to breakeven so it was more relief than glory.
Now a general programming note, because I've decided to switch gears with this "challenge." I'm not incredibly worried about specifically getting results in the main events anymore. Since I've started coaching with Sir Melt I'm playing quite a lot of buy-ins between £11 and £33 and winning a £5 event is, frankly, not incredibly exciting as a goal anymore. I busted a £33 last night and hardly blinked. I'm a mad man.
The old goals were always a bit results-oriented anyway. It was one thing when the Mini Main was my biggest buy-in of the week but I spent over £500 on buy-ins last week (and won over £850, bang bang) and final-tabled at least three £11+ tournaments, so it's a bit of a **** in the wind next to everything else.
Now that I'm getting coaching from Melty and regularly playing bigger buy-ins, my aims have shifted to trying to play technically sound poker and maintaining or improving my overall ROI.
I don't know how this thread will serve that purpose. Perhaps it won't. For now, I'll continue to document how things are going periodically and get into a bit of hand analysis here and there. If you have any thoughts about how I should continue to document this process, let me know.
As a goal, I'm going to push myself and aim for £5k profit this year. I'm currently close to £1k and if things continue to go as they have been, it should be fairly achievable. Never thought I'd be saying that at the beginning of the year.
Here's the chart as things currently stand. The red line is approximately when I started coaching. I'd say it's been paying off quite handsomely.
Comments
Here's the full HH:
Against the "correct" limping range, A8s is obviously not a great raise but it seems more than reasonable to assume CO is limping much wider than just his premiums. I would expect to see some offsuit broadways like KJ, QT, some small pairs, and maybe some bigger pairs as traps. Against that range, A8s is obviously fine.
The BB's 3-bet range here is pretty much what I'd expect. When everyone is playing well, I'm supposed to raise with a tight-ish range and he should only do this with JJ or better. When we're all using our heads and assuming CO is a loose-passive fish, and I can be raising wider against a perceived weak range, he can 3-bet with a lot more hands. AQo is well within that range. So far so good.
I'm surprised at how wide I can call this 3-bet profitably. I can call with any ace, any pocket pair, all my broadways, and even a bunch of suited connectors. I suppose it's primarily a function of pot odds since I'm getting 3:1 and only need 33% equity to call. I'm also closing the action, so no need to worry about 4-bets. I'm still never calling quite that wide but A8s is fine since my top pairs are going to be good a fair chunk of the time and I can also flop flush equity. There's clearly no point 4-betting all in since almost everything he 3-bets me with can call a shove. So it's call or fold and folding is boring.
There's obviously nothing I can do on the flop when I flop top pair and a flush draw. The only thing I could do differently is snap-call even faster. Just got unlucky with the runout there.
Ok, back to school. First coaching session this evening so I'm expecting to book a win tonight. Seems reasonable.
We went over some hands from one of my UKOPS outings and it was time very well spent. It was a nice confidence boost to find out that I'm doing a lot of things right and we identified a more than a few areas where I could be trying different things and improving my thought process. Not going to be digging into that today as I have other commitments but I expect I'll write a bit about what I'm learning here and there.
Sadly it did not translate to immediate big scores on the tables. My only UKOPS entry last night was the Mini and it was basically a disaster. Two bullets down the toilet and no cash. Made a little back from other entries but this was ultimately my first losing session of UKOPS. Just going to have to let that one go since I don't have time today to dig into it and see what went wrong. I think it's reasonable to expect to be making some mistakes so soon after getting coaching since I'm going to be trying new things without necessarily picking the best spots, so I'm not going to let it knock my confidence.
Taking the night off tonight to finish up some university work then planning to put as much volume as I can for the remainder of UKOPS.
Was feeling spicy so I took a punt on one of the £22 entries after bricking a satellite. Way above my usual ABI but as the saying goes: ""You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky" - Michael Scott." It wasn't a total disaster is about the best thing I can say about that. I let my nerves get the better of me at the beginning, stuck on a table with a number of this forum's most well-known winners, and played far too tight. But I settled in nicely after that and punted my stack off with great confidence. I would like to offer some details about how it all went wrong but Sky's hand history viewer is garbage and won't let me go back that far. Never mind.
Yet another good run in the Mini without a significant finish, ultimately finishing 50-something for about £43. I was lucky enough to start with an incredibly soft table and did very well in the early-mid stages. Once the bubble passed, one of those fabled "good regs" joined my table and promptly doubled up through me. I flopped two pair and he turned a flush. But I recovered nicely and kept myself around the middle of the field.
There was a point where I sent @chicknMelt a message asking if he had any advice on effectively navigating this part of the tournament but before he had a chance to reply I went busto in the hand posted below. Classic slapstick comedy. Don't think there's much I could have done about it but I'll be taking a closer look at some of my hands from that later today.
Here's my UKOPS record so far. Nothing too awe-inspiring but I'm surprised and impressed that I'm not massively in the hole even after taking shots at higher buy-ins and bricking a bunch of satellites. Tonight's Mini is a rebuy/addon, so that could be a blood bath.
Some good results in other tournaments meant I actually had a pretty good session despite disappointing UKOPS results, so that's nice.
Another terrific read. You do articulate your thoughts so well.
Thought I was off to a good start yesterday winning two UKOPS satellites on my first try and some decent cashes in non-UKOPS MTTs. I got off to a good start in all my entries but didn't cash any of the three. I'm now just under breakeven overall for UKOPS.
Taking it on the chin though. With so many people playing you have to expect variance to be much higher than I'm used to. I think I'm doing well to be breaking even in these tournaments that are 2-4x my average buy-in, some with 500+ runners.
Let's go back to my old friend the tournament variance calculator and run a few simulations to confirm this. Assuming an £11 buy-in, 15% of the field paid, at 100 runners and 500 runners, with my 23% ROI. Simulating that 100 times my probability of loss jumps from 30% to 43% in the bigger fields. Of course, I'm not playing 100 of these. (We would really need well over 1,000 trials to get a realistic projection but I'm just looking at short term swings in this case.) If I simulate it a more realistic 20 times, my probability of loss is around 64%. So I'm actually beating the odds to be roughly break-even right now.
I take little comfort from that since I would like to win some money during UKOPS but there's still a few days to turn things around. It's at least nice to not be massively in the hole when I'm taking such relatively big shots.
I've actually been surprised at how comfortable I've felt in these tournaments. I've certainly donated a lot of chips to some of the regs but overall I feel I've been holding my own reasonably well.
Something else worth talking about is how tiring poker is.
Most of the time I'm not playing more than three tables simultaneously, with a few buy-ins early in the day and a few more in the evening. I'm typically sitting at my desk with my feet up having a relatively relaxing evening. But I've been playing £11s and £22s this week and found myself with 4+ tables for hours on end at times. I was trying to navigate five simultaneously for a few hours last night and considering a sixth. It's hectic and mentally draining and I'm sure mistakes were made. I was absolutely shattered when I fell into bed last night and I have nothing but respect for people who are able to maintain a solid winrate mass multi-tabling.
Long-term I think it's going to be important to get comfortable with that. Volume is the key to bigger profits and I think I'm going to start playing £11s more often after UKOPS so my average table count is going to go up. We'll see how that goes.
Booked 17th in UKOPS 52 for about 80 quid and walked away from the Mini break-even after bounties. Will update the almighty spreadsheets tomorrow but should be showing a teeny, tiny bit of profit for UKOPS now. Happy with that after struggling to get much more than a min-cash all week.
The real highlight of the evening was an £11 Bounty Hunter. Only started playing these this week and it's mostly been a fun way to burn money. But I managed to to FT one tonight while I was draining chips in the Mini and took 2nd in the end. Really happy with how I played up until it went heads up and then it all went upside down. Started with a 2:1 chip advantage and punted it off upsettingly fast. I keep telling myself I'll study heads up play some more but it always feels like there are more important things to work on when getting HU is such a rare occurrence.
Few other half decent results here and there meant my best night for who knows how long. Happy days.
Well done @NOSTRI. I fancy there will be plenty more binks going your way.
"I keep telling myself I'll study heads up play"
Best way to do that - imo - is to play a bunch of cheapo HU SNG's then work your way up the buy-ins.
The spikes are so much prettier when you've spent the past 2 months breaking even. I think this chart would look much nicer with a big UKOPS cash on the end though. Two days left to sort that out.
As far as UKOPS goes, I've spent £238 to win £53. Not exactly awe-inspiring but preferable to being down £238.
Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates that sort of thing. Just an excuse to eat chocolate for me, not that I need one.
Here's the spot. There were 7 people left at this point, so we're on the FT bubble and well into the money and I'm second overall.
I would snap this off at any point not ITM. I have a sizeable chip lead over the other three, there are sizeable bounties to win, and I'm probably going to be in great shape versus a 10bb jam and rejam most of the time. But with ICM? No idea. I decided to fold and hang on to my chip advantage but my instinct was that it's probably fine to call off. But I folded, the BB jammed behind, and it went three-ways. I was way ahead of the BB and CO, as expected, but the BTN showed up with KK.
I would have been disgusted if I had called: I'd have flopped a full house but the BTN flopped quads. Would have been a small side-pot off the BB plus his bounty, though. (I think I might have got the CO bounty too. I think the biggest stack gets the bounties? Not sure.)
Chucked it in HRC this morning and it turns out it wasn't even close. I'm making almost a tenner on average when I bang this in and I should actually be jamming a full 33% of my range.
I'm actually amazed at how wide I'm supposed to call this off and I'm not sure why that is. I suppose it's a combination of my sizeable chip lead and advantge I'll have if I win, the short stacks having wide ranges, the chunky bounties, and the top-heavy payout structure. But I'm just guessing. ICM remains a bit of a mystery to me.
Would love to know what more knowledgable people would have done in this spot.
Re-ran the ICM calc for the hand above in ICMIZER and it returned with a much more sensible 88+,AQ+, not accouting for bounty equity. So definitely an auto-call. Never mind.
If you call as BTN beats you and CO and covers CO, he gets that bounty.
Since I'm still without a significant UKOPS score, here's the plan for tonight: I'm only playing UKOPS entries until/unless it gets down to one table. Giving them 100% of my attention and hopefully getting something nice at the final hurdle. Let's get this done.
Played the Main and the Mini. Two bullets in the Mini, never got anything going. Two bullets in the Main. Was well into a smashing run until I got on the wrong end of KK vs AA and went out 150th with only two bounties to my name.
With that, I kiss goodbye to any profits I accrued during UKOPS.
But. I'm happy with how I played tonight and throughout the series and it'll be back to normal service in good spirits and feeling pretty confident about things.
Played the Mini. Up and down all over the place, ultimately got out in 19th for £17.
Won a sat into the Main. Nursed a decent stack all the way to 39th for a min-cash and a nice pile of bounties adding up to £108. GG when I ran 88 into @MattBates with his signature hand, KK.
Got into the £2k Mega Stack BH too but it was rubbish. Can't have it all.
Icing on the cake: got to the FT of a Party Poker Powerfest MTT and finished in 6th. It was the first and last MTT I played today and took just over 9 hours, which is insane.
Good poker day.
First of all, I won an £11 Bounty Hunter on Friday, that was worth about £250. Very nice.
Saturday was a complete washout. Played many satellites, lost them all. Stone bubbled the £10k Big Weekend Semi, which was unbelievably annoying, but the £88 booby prize helped me get back to even.
Last night was almost an absolute disaster. I dropped just over £200 in buy-ins in total and right up until the end had nothing to show for it.
First of all: the Major. Got in on a semi sat. It was a frustrating process of draining down to less than 15bb, doubling back up to starting stack, draining back down, doubling up again, and so on. I had a pretty tough table with two good regs and one rando who seemed pretty solid and had a massive stack. Then I went on a bit of a heater and for a brief, glorious moment I was in 4th place overall with 100-odd left. And then I proceeded to give all of my chips away to one player over the course of three hands. It was unbelievably tilting. I don't really remember the hands and I don't want to but I don't think they were that bad. We'll go with "unavoidable." Why not.
The Mini Major was a disaster. Busted that nice and early. Shortly after I found myself one-tabling the Major and decided to have a punt on the £22 Mega Stack Bounty Hunter. It was a slog but I finally pulled something out of the bag and came third. Normally I would be ecstatic with such a result but the payout was just barely enough to pull me back to breakeven so it was more relief than glory.
The old goals were always a bit results-oriented anyway. It was one thing when the Mini Main was my biggest buy-in of the week but I spent over £500 on buy-ins last week (and won over £850, bang bang) and final-tabled at least three £11+ tournaments, so it's a bit of a **** in the wind next to everything else.
Now that I'm getting coaching from Melty and regularly playing bigger buy-ins, my aims have shifted to trying to play technically sound poker and maintaining or improving my overall ROI.
I don't know how this thread will serve that purpose. Perhaps it won't. For now, I'll continue to document how things are going periodically and get into a bit of hand analysis here and there. If you have any thoughts about how I should continue to document this process, let me know.
As a goal, I'm going to push myself and aim for £5k profit this year. I'm currently close to £1k and if things continue to go as they have been, it should be fairly achievable. Never thought I'd be saying that at the beginning of the year.
Here's the chart as things currently stand. The red line is approximately when I started coaching. I'd say it's been paying off quite handsomely.
@NOSTRI
"If you have any thoughts about how I should continue to document this process, let me know."
Don't change a thing.