MathrimC's poker journal

[Causality]

Nice work you should definitely put some more time into watching run it once videos they're high quality.

[Pucuri88]

GL with your december goals @MathrimC! :)

[MathrimC]

Here's my writeup of the Unibet Open in Bucharest. Overall I had a great time, meeting up with the familiar community faces and meeting some new ones like Whereisrivaldo, Uctionpoker, BroederTuck, Leo, Marco and Jeppe. Also, I don't think I ever had such a big hotel room, got plenty of free drinks throughout the week, and I think I only spent around €100, taxis included. Not bad for a 5 day trip. Also, the organisation and athmosphere at the tournament is excellent.

I arrived on Wednesday to play day 1a on Thursday. My day 1 went pretty well. I was happy to see that the level of play at my starting table was quite low. I got moved about 6 times during the day, and somehow always ended up on the table that got broken up next. I did have a migraine attack again, but my pills kicked into action and after a good hour or so the worst was over. I'm affraid that's something I'll have to cope with on every poker trip I'll do. At one point, I briefly had Kaarel Lepik at my table, winner of the UO in Copenhagen, but he was quite short and busted after a few hands. I got short myself somewhere halfway the day, and stayed in the 20bb region for the rest of the day. My last table of the night was insane, with two drunk guys doing 5x straddles, blind cbets, and basically raising on any flop. I didn't catch the right hands to play back though. I made it to day 2 with 52k.

During day 1b on Friday I had a walk around the city with two of the other Belgians including BroederTuck. Friday evening I went to the welcome drinks and participated in the hilarious blingo competition. Hip-hop themed bingo, with prizes like a Kanye-themed golden toilet seat, a suitcase full of money and a golden plated drill. Unfortunately I didn't win anything, but those prizes probably made for some pretty awkward airport security situations.

On Saturday it was time for day 2 of the main event, and I immediately got a rough time because of the big blind jumps. The big blind went from 2,4k on the end of day 1 to 3k at the start of day 2, and 4k in the second level of day 2. I was a bit unlucky that every time I had a mediocre shovable hand someone in early or middle position opened and ruined my shoving spot. It caused me to blind down all the way to 7bb, at which point my bustout hand happened with QT in the bb versus the A6 of a middle position opener. No cash, but I finished 91st out of 504 players, not bad for my first UO.

Saturday evening there was the players party. The venue wasn't really my thing, but I greatly enjoyed the free drinks and the drunk company. I enjoyed it a bit too much, giving me a huge hangover on Sunday. I checked out of my room 3 hours too late, and hung in a state of half-coma in a sofa in the lobby for at least 4 more hours before I was able to properly start my day. Sunday evening I wanted to jump into a cashgame but all seats were taken, and I ended up taking with the familiar faces in the lobby all night. I finally left for the airport at around 4am with two of the belgians who had the same flight, and arrived back home on Monday morning.

I really enjoyed my first UO experience but after 5 days of traveling I'm always looking forward to get back to the online grind. I had a winning session on Monday evening, taking down the Event Horizon, but lost all the profits yesterday and today by bricking everything. I'm skipping the UK Tour event in Manchester this weekend, to hopefully get my first winning online weekend since I started playing MTTs.

[4soul]

Bucharest is fine for a big event in poker!

 

[MathrimC]

I had a good session tonight. Finished 6th in the Milky Way for €180, 2nd in the Event Horizon for €150 and 9th in the Titan for €38,5. My bankroll crossed the 4,5k mark again, which means I can buy in to the Supernova tomorrow 😃

[BEoWulf]

Keep it up, MathrimC!

[igottwins]

Hey excellent results my friend :popeye:

I am going to start hitting the tourneys myself this week might bump into you there 😃

Good luck good luck

[MathrimC]

Yesterday I had my first profitable Sunday since I started to play MTTs. I got 8th in the Cosmic Rays for €175, 11th in the Nebula for €46, 7th in the Dwarf Star for €34 (+€11 in bounties) and I won an Odyssey qualifier and a Supernova qualifier. All combined the day was good for a net profit of €155 😃

[KrustyTheClown]

Some enjoyable streams this weekend and nice results 😃

[MathrimC]

It's been a mixed week so far, down €75 in the cash MTT grind, but managed to win 3 more supernova tickets. I'm slightly down in the UO qualifiers and slightly up in the UK Tour qualifiers. It will be up to the weekend grind to make or break my weekly result.

I'll start streaming at 18:30 CET tonight with the results of the sheepgame, followed by a poker stream with the Milky Way, the new UK Tour final, and the usual MTTs and qualifiers.

[Fiijibest]

keep the good work up :) :Thumbsup:

[igottwins]

Happy grinding 😃 hopefully bump into you at the final table of tomorrows supernova :haha:

[BroederTuck]

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@MathrimC wrote:

 

During day 1b on Friday I had a walk around the city with two of the other Belgians including BroederTuck.

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No need to be so modest. This would be better: "Thanks to me and my amazing guiding skills (and Wikipedia), BroederTuck knows everything about every dead Romanian (at least the ones that have a statue)."

[MathrimC]

Quick update before I'll be out of the loop for two days, hanging with the family. It's been a pretty bad week when it comes to results. The bankroll is down to €4067 and the UO and UK Tour ticket values are also declining. I bubbled the Titan on Wednesday and the Milky Way yesterday (https://clips.twitch.tv/ProtectiveAmorphousEggnogFailFish)

I'm probably going to skip the Supernova in the coming two weeks, but besides that I'll just keep playing all my usual games and hope things turn around. On the studying front, PokerSnowie now supports antes, so I'm planning on continuing my Snowie training. I'm only going to work 3 days between now and January 8th, so I should have some time to invest in studying and playing.

[MathrimC]

December was a difficult month results wise. The downswing continued, but my last two sessions made up a little bit by binking a UK Tour package and winning the Dwarf Star. Let's hope it's the start of a new upswing. I didn't reach my volume goal this month, mainly because I spent some nights gaming instead. But that's fine, I still got good volume in and since I play poker for fun I shouldn't let it stop me from doing other fun things. On the study front, I kept playing around with PokerSnowie and also studied some reshoving ranges. I almost didn't put any time into Run It Once, and I'm thinking of quitting my subscription there and putting the money into something else (a Snowie upgrade or other study material).

Evaluation of monthly goals: December 2017

• Play 200 MTTs, qualifiers and SNGs FAILED
  • My total MTT and qualifier volume was 158 this month.
• Study goals:
  • Play 1 hour a week versus PokerSnowie COMPLETED
  • Watch at least 2 Run It Once videos every week FAILED
  • Study 4-bet shoving and reacting to 4-bet shoves for under 40bb stacks FAILED
  • Study 3-bet shoving ranges COMPLETED

December bankroll evolution:

• Cash: €4363,96 -> €4158,44
• UK Tour tickets: €294 -> €125 (+ a second UK Tour package)
• UO tickets: €290 -> €150

New monthly goals: January 2018

• Play 200 MTTs, qualifiers and SNGs
• Study goals
  • Play 1 hour a week versus PokerSnowie 
  • Study 4-bet shoving and reacting to 4-bet shoves for under 40bb stacks
  • Figure out a study plan for 2018

The next post is going to be an evaluation of my past year in poker and setting my new yearly goals for 2018.

[MathrimC]

Review of my 2017 poker year

2017 has been an amazing poker year for me, and has taken me much further than I though it would at the start. I managed to become a regular at the UK Tour events, attended my first Unibet Open, and went from cashgames through SNGs to MTTs up to €100. The highlights were my final table in the UK Tour Nottingham, winning a Unibet Open package for Bucharest, and winning the Abyss twice in a week. My bankroll quintupled along the way, and most of all, I had great fun doing it and became a much better player. I also got my twitch channel started, thanks to everyone who hung out in chat to make the grind more fun.

Evaluation of yearly goals for 2017

• Make 25NL my regular game, and take some shots at 50NL. Or, in case I decide to switch games: make €10/€25 SNGs or MTTs my regular games COMPLETED
• Play at least 3 serious live events (at least €100 buy-in) COMPLETED
  • Crushed this one, played 4 UK Tour events, the Unibet Belgian Poker Championship and UO Bucharest.
• Play a live cashgame session at a casino FAILED
• Study goals:
  • Read two new poker books COMPLETED
  • Gather at least 10 pages of new notes in total from poker books, articles, forums, ... COMPLETED
    • I have collected over 50 pages of notes from books, videos and strategy discussions.
  • Record 5 gametapes throughout the year COMPLETED
    • Thanks to my twitch stream, I've got hours of material to analyse my game

Bankroll evolution in 2017: €897,86 -> €4410,91

 

New yearly goals for 2018

I still have a lot to learn, so I hope I'll be able to take my game further in 2018. This month I'll think about what direction I want to go with my studying (how to spend my studying time and what tools to buy). I also might start playing some cashgames again this year, since I think it helps greatly with improving as a player in combination with tools like PokerSnowie. I also hope I'll be able to attend some live events again.

• Play 2000 MTTs (including qualifiers)
• Play at least 4 live events (at least €200 buy-in)
• Play a live cashgame session at a casino
• Study goals
  • Play or evaluate 5000 hands in PokerSnowie
  • Gather at least 10 pages of new notes in total from poker books, articles, forums, ... 

[4soul]

how can you extract hands from Unibet to analyse in Pokersnowie?

[MathrimC]

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@4soul wrote:

how can you extract hands from Unibet to analyse in Pokersnowie?

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You can't. I take screenshots of interesting spots that I input in Snowie manually, but to get some volume I play sessions in Snowie against the bots, and play some microstakes cash on another site to have hands I can import.

[BEoWulf]

I saw that there are 3 different subscriptions for Snowie one for €35, one for €99.99 and a last one for € 250. What kind do you recommend? Is the € 35-one a good starter or does it have too many restrictions? Thx

[MathrimC]

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@BEoWulf wrote:

I saw that there are 3 different subscriptions for Snowie one for €35, one for €99.99 and a last one for € 250. What kind do you recommend? Is the € 35-one a good starter or does it have too many restrictions? Thx

---

The €35 subscription is definitely a great starter, and gives you great value for your money. It allows you to play an unlimited amount of hands against Snowie and let Snowie analyse them, point out mistakes, and give you advice on how to play, and it allows you to input 100 scenarios manually each month, which is much more than I actually do. It also allows you to import and analyse up to 500 hands/month in case you play on other sites with hand histories.

The main difference with the more expensive subscriptions is that those allow you to see range advice, so instead of only telling you how to play your specific hand in that spot, it also tells you how it would play other hands it can have in that spot. Given that balancing ranges and frequencies is a very importent aspect in Snowie's game, it can be quite useful to see how the entire range should be played instead of just your exact hand.

Even if you subscribe for the cheap version, or take the one week trial, there's a certain amount of free range advices you can do before it blocks the function, so you can check out what it's all about and judge for yourself.

Also, if you start of with Snowie, I can greatly recommend the book "No Limit Hold'em For Advanced Players" by Matthew Janda. It's a perfect guide for how to interpret the concepts behind Snowie's decisions.

[BEoWulf]

Ok, thx for your review, MathrimC.

I guess I start with the trial and make a decision after.

[WuDu]

@MathrimC

Can you give me a recommendation for a NLHE low stakes cash game book you read and liked? I feel like it's time for me to switch things up a little and to try something new.

Thanks

[MathrimC]

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@WuDu wrote:

@MathrimC

Can you give me a recommendation for a NLHE low stakes cash game book you read and liked? I feel like it's time for me to switch things up a little and to try something new.

Thanks

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"No Limit Hold'em For Advanced Players" by Matthew Janda is the best book available for online games in my opinion.

I also read "small stakes no-limit hold'em" by Miller, Mehta en Flynn when I was still quite new to the game. I liked it, but it's very basic and more applicable to live games and the loose-passive players you get in those.

[MathrimC]

Hi all,

I've been absent from this blog and the community for a while. I didn't spend much time playing poker the past few months because of some other projects, but I'm feeling the urge to come back to the tables.

The Unibet Belgian Poker Championship is back this year, so I'll be concentrating on those qualifiers, together with the UO qualifiers. I'll be attending the next UK Tour event in Glasgow at the end of June, but will probably stop grinding the UK Tour qualifiers so it might be my last UK Tour event for a while. On the study front, I'm going to concentrate on playing 30-50bb stacks, those are essential stacksizes for an MTT player and I've still got a lot of leaks in that area.

See you on Twitch, here in the community, or at the tables!

[fkingun]

Welcome back and good luck! 👍