nightshopper

GL on your challenge! And also in the new community games 😄

I'm gonna be honest, I feel like a complete idiot. Last time I wrote the €3000 mark wasn't far away. I guess in my head I was already there, which for me is the most stupid thing to do. So last Sunday I totally lost it. I started playing SNG's, hoping to reach that €3000 mark. That didn't go well and I started playing higher SNG's and HU's. I ran bad, I played bad, it was awful. Damage: €188,29. The poker gods decided not to punish me for my stupid behaviour though. That same evening I got 2nd in the Gargle Blaster for a €173,69 profit, so eventually it was a very small losing session. But how is it possible that I got carried once again, just cause I wanted to reach that €3000 mark as soon as possible? I mean, this challenge is going great, way better than I had expected, but still I can't say my mental game is on point. Monday I started playing and I immediately felt I was playing good poker, with enough focus and patience. That's why I decided to play the Mercury Blue Bounty with my €50 ticket and the Abyss with my €25 ticket. I also qualified for Ian Simpson's homegame. No cashes in that one and the Abyss, but my first Mercury adventure is one I'll never forget. I got a middle stack pretty early in the game, so I felt quite comfortable. It starts with long blind levels (4 X 15min and 4 X 12min), which felt really nice. I collected a few bounties so I was already in a nice profit, since I played it with a ticket. When we were approaching the money spots my stack had decreased quite a bit so I was in surviving mode for a long time. I managed to get ITM as a shortstack, but still with enough chips to play my patient laddering game. I didn't have the stack to get bounties so laddering was the way to go, especially since I know I often have more patience than other players in these stages. So I laddered and I laddered some more and suddenly we were heads up. The pay day was sweet anyway but I wanted to win this soooooo hard. I was the short stack for about 90% of the time, but I knew I had to keep my patience. I folded a lot to their shoves, waiting for the right spot. And this time it worked! I binked my first €50 game ever! 🥳🥳🥳 Conclusion: I feel proud and silly at the same time. On Sunday I was playing like a fool so I could reach the €3000 bankroll as fast as possible, while on Monday the bankroll was almost at €3500... I wanna scream to myself: stop being so obsessed with your BR! You're doing great, you'll be fine, there's no need to be in a hurry! I hope one day I listen to myself... Starting BR: €2915,69 (22/4) Profit: €551,79 New BR: €3467,48 (27/4) Ticket BR: €32,00

It hasn't been a long time since I reached the €2500 mark, but the €3000 mark isn't far away already. This week there was a 4th place in @IanSimpson's homegame, 3rd place in the Gargle Blaster, 3rd in the Leaderboard Low Bounty and I got my second €200 Sirius Banzai Bounty trophy. The plan was to play some more satties and so I did. For the Supermoon I now have two €2 tickets and two €10 tickets, for the UO I have three €4 tickets and I have a €50 and a €25 generic ticket. Not sure which €50 MTT I'll play. I like the structure of the Comet, but I might give the Mercury Blue Bounty a first try. Playing a bounty game with a big ticket means good value, so that one might be interesting. I just checked that one in the lobby and apparently the duration of the blind levels decreases. I guess that means I should play more tight in the first one and a half hour, but of course it's still a bounty game. I'm curious about the dynamics in this particular game. I think it's the only MTT on Unibet with decreasing duration of the blind levels? If I feel good I might play it tomorrow evening, so we'll see how it goes 😄 Starting BR: €2759,93 (16/4 ) Profit: €155,76 New BR: €2915,69 (22/4 ) Ticket BR: €111,00

It has been a good week so far! Especially last Monday I had some great runs: 3rd in the Abyss, 4th in @IanSimpson 's home game and final tables of the Dark Matter and the 5€ Falling Star Bounty. Yesterday my best result was a 4th place in the €25 Leaderboard High Re-enter, which was an upgraded Gargle Blaster. I played some UO qualifiers, but not many. I didn't have to work last week so I was able to play some later games than usual and I didn't really feel like playing many satties. I might play more of them when I do some shorter poker sessions. I collected 6 satty tickets for the Supermoon by regging the flips, so I should start that grind too. Trying to qualify for these bigger events is a nice motivation, since my experience of playing the UOS UK Tour Online was a great one 😃 Starting BR: €2548,80 (11/4 ) Profit: €210,59 New BR: €2759,93 (16/4 ) Ticket BR: €10,4

Calm and... what was the other thing? 🤣 Very funny how you wrote it and of course very recognizable. It sounds like a mantra, which actually is a good idea. I'm gonna think of a mantra of my own 😀

Thanks a lot, guys! This support really means a lot to me. It's still a mental battle so all the support is welcome 😃 @JBKH89 I'm from Belgium and unfortunately we don't get any rakeback or bonuses anymore. It's the same for Swedish, Danish and German players. Of course that makes it even harder to grind the way up but at the same time it gives me an extra feeling of pride!

No binks the last week, but still going up! I had some tough evenings that started as a disaster, but I managed to make some nice come backs. My best MTT result was a 2nd in the Asteroid and I made some small money in the Fireball, 5€ Shooting Star Bounty and 5€ Multiverse. But the most winnings came from the SNG's. I've reached the €2500 mark, so technically I can play €25 MTT's. I've put some in the mix already, but not too many cause I don't wanna go crazy with the BR. I'm thinking of doing more qualifiers, but there don't seem to be many satties to €25 tickets. I can try to bink some €50 tickets instead and I definitely should try to get a Supernova or a Supermoon ticket. Those tourneys aren't the best for my sleeping schedule, but a good run in of those would make up for that 😛 That's all for now, let's keep on grinding! Starting BR: €2365,3 ( 3 / 4 ) Profit: €183,5 New BR: €2548,8 (11/4 ) Ticket BR: €1,2

I don't know your whole story, but that sounds as some great self knowledge and discipline!

Interesting blog, looking forward to read more. GL on the tables and see you on Twitch of course :atisfied:

Fun challenge! Keep going strong :happy:

@fest_student NIce blog, keep up the good results. I play mainly MTT's myself, but I also play €4 and €10 SNG's so we've probably met at the tables 😃 I have a blog here myself about my results, but also about my attempts to keep the discipline. Anyway, GLGL on the tables!

@OmahGAWD Thanks! Yeah it's weird and I think it shows I still have a lot to learn when it comes to bounty play. I've read half of Dara O'Kearny's PKO book, I still have to finish it. I think it's about finding the right balance between going for the bounties and valueing your tournament life. Once that I'm in a position of being the low stack at a bounty table I think it's difficult to find the right shoving spot. I don't remember everything, but I know I had a low stack for a long time. So when we got close to the money I probably didn't come in a good spot to get a bounty and then I just try to get ITM and take it from there. But yeah, I think I still have a lot to learn in the PKO area 😃

The past few days were amazing! Friday I shipped the €25 Shooting Star Bounty. It wasn't the best bounty tournament I played though, since the only bounty I won was the last one in the heads up :happyshy: Pretty sure I didn't always make the right decisions when it comes to the bounties playing, but in this case I can live with that. Yesterday also was pretty good: got 2nd in Bestie's PKO game, 6th in the €5 Sputnik but most of all I binked the Gorsky! It was a tough final table with some good regs, so had to be patient and pick the right moments. And get lucky of course :atisfied: I'm very happy with this win, cause it's one of those tournaments I liked since I started playing it more often and I always thought the structure suited me. The next three days I won't be playing much and that's a good thing, cause I wanna avoid getting too obsessed again. Tonight I might just play some qualifiers, since my ticket roll has disappeared completely. Anyway, happy with my play, my results and my max bankroll. Now let's keep the discipline! Starting BR: €2011,52 ( 27/3 ) Profit: €189,8 New BR: €2365,3 ( 3/4 ) Ticket BR: €0

So nice! Can I have a ticket please?

Thanks very very much for the fast and nice service!

I received bonus points for all of my UK tour satty tickets, but as a Belgian I don't think I can use bonus points. Is it possible to get satty tickets for the new tournament maybe? This is gonna be an issue for every player from Belgium, Sweden, Denmark and Germany I guess?

The last few weeks I haven't been feeling great in general. As a result of that I did terrible on the mental part of poker, which resulted in a few evenings of chasing losses. The low point was last Saturday. I'm gonna be honest about it. Some time ago I had another of those evil evenings where I started playing SNG's and HU's outside the BR. I don't remember how much I lost with that, I think around €80. But I didn't subtract that number from my BR, instead I made a side note in my excel sheet. So I used my 'life roll' instead of my poker bankroll. The same happened last Saturday and again I made a side note, so I chose to fool myself again. The good thing is that I decided to not play poker for a few days. I also withdrew some money and treated myself to a tablet and a new headphone. Today my head feels clear again. I decided to take my 'side losses' into account, which means my BR has dropped to around €2000. Totally no disaster, it's just a shame it happened the way it did. But I feel kinda relieved I'm honest to myself now, that way I can move on. Another thing I did is make a week scheme, not only for poker. I will play four evenings a week instead of almost every evening. In Corona times there isn't much to do in the evenings, so poker and Twitch is an easy way to be entertained. Another consequence of Corona times is that I've been drinking beer way more evenings, as a substitute to pub visits. The problem is that it became a habit: playing poker and having some beers. Often it made me feel bad the day after and it influenced my mood in a bad way. So I decided to take control again, in terms of poker but also alcohol. Tonight I will be playing again and I'm glad to say I'm gonna do so with a clear head, which hadn't been the case for some time now. Starting BR: €2142,88 ( 20/3 ) Loss: €131,36 New BR: €2011,52 ( 27/3 ) Ticket BR: €38

Very nice challenge, very nice overview! What I recognize is that if you play with strict bankroll management, sometimes it gets kinda boring. Certainly when your BR doesn't go up or down much, it feels like nothing's happening and you feel the need to play higher. I've made that mistake so many times, it's human but most times it's bad for the BR and for the mental state of mind. One thing I can recommend is to learn how to play satellites, cause imo they are the safest way to take shots. In your case it would be nice to have some €5 and €10 tickets in your account. The best way to learn seems reading Poker Satellite Strategy by Dara O'Kearny and Barry Carter. To be honest I've bought it and still haven't read it, but according to many people this book is the best way to learn about qualifiers. GL with the challenge, I'm looking forward to your next posts!

My best results the last weeks were a €41,67 profit in a €25 Bestie's homegame I played with a ticket, a €46,54 profit in the €5 Sputnik, a €45,2 profit in the UOS Sirius Banzai Bounty Low and a €58,87 profit for my 2nd place in the €5 Shooting Star Bounty. I've had some bad evenings when it comes to discipline, I must admit. The thing is that I really should plan my poker evenings better. If I don't plan it very well, I start regging stuff I shouldn't play cause I should get to bed earlier. That way I don't get enough sleep, which makes me tired the day after, which makes me play worse poker in the evening, and so on... So yeah, the discipline starts with planning my poker evenings and with sticking to it of course. Next period I will try to focus on that leak. These are the MTT's I should restrict myself to on most evenings (apart from qualifiers) 19:00 €2 Singularity 19:00 €10 Dark Matter 19:45 5€ Falling Star Bounty 20:00 €2 Zenith 20:15 €10 R/A Sputnik Omaha (haven't been playing it much but it only takes 3h15 on average so it fits my schedule) between 20:30 and 21:30 Bestie's homegame (different buy-ins every day) 21:15 €5 Ante Solar 22:30 €2 Sirius Banzai Bounty On Saturday I add 19:30 €5 Stratosphere 20:00 €1 MotherShip Poker Main Event On Sunday I add 19:00 €5 R/A Nebula On some weekend evenings (mostly Fridays) I can add a few games that start/last later: 20:30 €5 R/A Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky 21:00 €5 R/A Sputnik 21:30 €2 R/A Galaxy 21:45 €10 Omaha Falling Star Bounty 22:15 €10 R/A Unidentified Object 22:45 €5 Shooting Star Bounty (unless I have to get up too early) 23:00 €10 Asteroid And then there are some €25 games I can play if I have a ticket 20:00 Abyss 20:45 Dwarf Star Bounty I have added this schedule to my spreadsheet, so I hope it will help me with my game selection. A better game selection should lead to more discipline when it comes to getting enough sleep. Not sleeping enough is a big poker leak, but even more important it's a very big life leak of mine. Starting BR: €2064,78 ( 8/3 ) Profit: €78,10 New BR: €2142,88 ( 20/3 ) Ticket BR: €189

Hey @Toums, thanks for reading this thread and for reacting! Very nice to read you found a way to increase your bankroll, you seem to have some nice results. You say you find it difficult to keep on playing the same tournaments and the same stakes over and over again and that's very recognizable. At the moment you have almost €300, so I guess you grind the €1 and €2 MTT's and maybe still some nano events? Do you play satties? Cause that's the healthy way to take shots :happy: With your bankroll I'd play some qualifiers to €5 and €10 MTT's, at least if you feel confident enough about your satty play. And if you don't, I'd suggest reading Dara O'Kearny's book on this subject. Of course there is the less healthy way too: you can take some shots from time to time, but I find it hard to do that in a disciplined way. Grinding with discipline can be tough. Right now I'm in a period where my bankroll hasn't changed much for a few weeks, which feels kinda boring. It makes me wanna take shots, so that's why it's important I have several tickets in my account for tournaments that are out of my bankroll. Recently I made an overview of my biggest scores in this challenge and obviously many of them came from bigger MTT's I played with tickets. I would certainly recommend starting a thread on your own micro stakes adventures. It helped me a lot to keep me motivated. As you might have read that doesn't mean I have kept discipline all the time, but after every misstep I wrote about it. The reactions from people of this community really help me with my mental game. I would certainly follow your thread! Some last advice: try to find the games you're good at. There's a lot of choice nowadays: 9-handed or 6-max, fast or slow blind structure, the size of the field, rebuy/addon games, bounty games,... Which ones do you prefer? Oh and if you wanna take a shot at the next UOS UK Tour: reg the UK flips every day, until you get enough €1 satty tickets and try to qualify. It's a cheap way to try and play a big one :atisfied:

I think it's a good thing not to have your whole bankroll on your Unibet account, but maybe it's an idea to decide how much your virtual bankroll is. For instance: you have 9 buy-ins on your Unibet account and when you go 'broke' you can deposit again, but you put a limit to that. This may also be a way to protect yourself.

Well done on the profit and GL finding your A-game for the remaining part of the UOS 😃

Unfortunately I busted the UK Tour Sunday evening in 51st place, 16 spots from the money. The good news is that it was a good experience: I was very focussed, I took notes and I had a good idea of how my opponents were playing. Which gives me mixed feelings: I'm gonna be honest, in general I don't pay enough attention to other players. It's hard to do it when playing four tables, combined with chatting and making music requests on Twitch stream. The 'problem' is that I make money playing the way I do, so there doesn't seem to be a reason to change it 😃 Of course I realize that if I'd focus more, I'd probably have even better results. Also, every time that I focus this way and I make good decisions because of that, it gives me such a great feeling. That's why I came up with this plan: I have one €50 and seven €25 tickets left, so when I play one of those that will be my main table and I will 'extra focus' on that one. I will play two smaller tables on the side, so I will three table instead of four table. It's exactly what I did during the UK Tour. I must admit I didn't play my best poker on the other two tables and did too many yolo moves, so that's why I think it's best to play €2 or €5 games on the side. Starting BR: €2082,46 ( 3/3 ) Loss: €17,68 New BR: €2064,78 ( 8/3 ) Ticket BR: €234

It's an attitude or mental state that I try to have in daily life too. The more you expect, the more you can get disappointed, frustrated, angry,... Not expecting much isn't the same as not hoping, not being ambitious or not dreaming about stuff you want, like I said it's a way of protecting yourself. It may sound easy, but in poker I still have too many moments where the game gets to me cause of expectations. Since this is a big tourney for me, I've been focussing on this state of mind for days now, whereas on normal poker days I'm not always focussing on my mental state of mind that much 😃

@SkilfulPoker Thanks man! I'm hyped, I'm excited, I'm ready :happy: At the same time, in my head I'm already busted. It's a mental exercise that I do to protect myself from being too disappointed of course. Which doesn't mean I won't be disappointed if I bust, but if I get my hopes up too high it gets too painful 😃 Of course it will also depend on the way I bust. I hope it won't be in a way that I get mad at myself for making a stupid mistake, that would be worse than a bad beat. Anyway, it's also just another tournament and I will play my game!