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 - I played pre-Black Friday but I was I had no idea what I was doing so I did not reap many of the rewards of the open poker market.

 

 - I knew it would be someone here :) It was a standard call IMO, I only had 4-5 BB and you had lots and lots. I'll get my revenge one day, one day!! 

Have you read my blog HERE... It's long isn't it :)
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10/09/2016 - The Saturday session

It's now Monday morning so I don't remember a lot about things that happened on Saturday. I know I loaded up 2 PLO cash tables to grind some UO slot spins and timed out at one point. I know I lost money playing after reloading 3 tables to finish the flop requirements and I know the spins I did get were not worth the time or money 😠

I played 6 MTTs, most of which were funded by tickets so not cashing a single one didn't feel so bad. Closest I got was a 17th in a €4 deepstack which probably paid 12. If i'm honest I was probably focusing on tables on another site and the Saturday afternoon schedule is not that exciting so volume was low and so was attention span.

I did play a little cash NLHE as I needed to play 3 days in a row to complete one of the monthly missions.. I made 8 cents 🆒

IRL, I had an excellent pre-gig nap and an equally excellent gig. DJing my favourite hobby (sorry poker:lovekiss:) and getting paid to do it makes it all the more fun. I wish I had pulled the finger out when I was starting out so I could have made more of a career of it 😞 

 

11/09/16 - The Sunday grind

Woke up with no hangover.. always a good start to a Sunday! After a shower and a lovely bacon filled bagel it was time to get the poker clients open and settle in for a big ol' day of watching virtual chips/cards fly. 

Off site, Mini-WCOOP continues to roll on with obscene player fields and prize pools. First stop, the $2 6-max PLO PKO. I think I lasted about 2 hours before my basic PLO skills failed me and I was knocked out. Next up, $2 NLHE (Deep Payouts). If you've read any of the PS stuff on 2+2 you'll know that many players are already annoyed at the recent payout changes they have made so that more people get in the money per MTT so paying out even more for a COOP does seem a little strange. That being said 18000+ players didn't seem to mind :laugh:. Cue 7 and a half hours of solid B-grade poker to make the payouts and then one stupid, crippling, failed bluff attempt to basically ruin all my hard work. I won $3.90 or something stupid like that. I don't know why I keep punishing myself playing these COOP events. I know they last hours/days and the chances of me making a final table are minuscule but I just like the idea of being able to say I did it. I get a strange satisfaction knowing I outlasted sixteen thousand other players. I'm probably slightly unhinged :laugh:

My Unibet session started as it always does now, 4 tables of PLO to clear the UO slots. I'm not doing it again, it's just not worth it. I'm not a very good cash player and since I started trying to complete the flop quota daily I've lost every day. If I can get the bankroll back in the green I'll maybe go back to it but after Sunday's session I'm done with it for just now. I've got a day left of the 'reach a showdown in NLHE' so I'll get that out of the way tonight and then I'll leave cash well alone... hopefully.

The rest of the close to 11 hours I played was filled with me torching most of the tickets I have and sighing as I lost the ability to claim more than a single bounty in any tourney I played in. Sunday marks the biggest losing day since I started recording every result and blogging about it. It certainly isn't my biggest losing day, not by a long shot, so this self induced downswing is not something I've overly concerned about. I prefer it wasn't happening though :) Everyone likes to be winning and it makes this blog slightly less interesting if it's just me moaning about going all in with AQ vs AJ and the board going XXQJJ (That happened on Sunday). Mondays are always good for me so hopefully today will be the beginning of the turnaround.

One thing I noticed on Sunday was how few people enter the Sunday Entitled flip tourney. There is usually only 1 ticket up for grabs so you're anywhere from 6-20/1 to get a ticket but you only need to win once in every 22 entries for it to be a profitable move. I think i've entered it maybe 10 times and I've won tickets twice. Definitely worth a punt if you have €4 lying around your account.

Spent most of the evening watching the two Jasons (Mercier and Somerville) stream the $102K super high roller on PS. It's incredible to see someone plum up 102K, or in Mercier's case 204K (Spoiler alert, he re-entered), and be so relaxed about it. He was just there sitting with J Somerville and his dog chatting away like it was no big thing. They had in excess of 30k viewers on twitch alone (it was also streaming on Youtube and Facebook) which is incredible numbers for a poker stream. It's worlds apart from me tilting over a loss in a €1 MTT :laugh:  

 

Another short post by my standards. No analysis either :( Need to get into a better routine of using two screens and having stuff ready for notes and screengrabs so I can recall what I was doing a bit better. The blog is 100% still a work in progress so I'll get there eventually. I know, having read some of the posts back, they are terribly structured and borderline confusing at points. Written English was never one of my strong points in school so that might take slightly longer to improve :) I also don't think I've achieved any of my goals yet other than being nice to pecalbear but he doesn't appear to be on the forums much so that's been easy 🆒. I'll try and complete at least one of them by the end of the year.

Anyway, that's it from me, I'll see you in the Butler League streets tonight 🆒

 

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 I'm hooked on your Blog Mate. Don't worry that you think there wasn't good reading cause you had a bad day. It still makes for good reading cause your honest. You wrote this... " The blog is 100% still a work in progress so I'll get there eventually. I know, having read some of the posts back, they are terribly structured and borderline confusing at points. Written English was never one of my strong points in school so that might take slightly longer to improve.. " I can honestly say that I can see your Written English improving as you writing & the comprehension & flow is getting better as well. The more you do it the better it will become... & its not to shabby now. If It wasn't good reading I would of given up after the second paragraph. Hang in there and blog away Mate... we all enjoying it. I can't wait for the next installment. Thanx for the read !  👍

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12/09/2016 - Every dog (or monkey) has his day

Ahhh.. Monday. Easily my favourite day to play on Unibet. I've talked about it on multiple occasions but here I go again :geek:. Things like the Butler League and the Jackpot Hold'em tourneys just make playing MTTs more interesting. They reward consistency, which is something we all strive for as poker players. Anyone can win a single poker tournament with a good run of cards but being able to final table multiple events on the same night really is the dream. That potential extra €100 (or €2K in the Jackpot MTTs case) just makes it worth doing.

, if you're reading this 😉, why are the two Jackpot tourneys different buyins? I did ask before but never got an answer. The €1 one always gets more entrants so it seems some people just don't know about the promo. Also, has anyone ever won the promo?

Anyway, back on topic.. lets explain todays title :) The first alias I ever made on Unibet was MoreTBC and I used that happy monkey as an avatar. I'll keep this alias as long as I play and will only ever change the avatar it if I manage to get a custom one somehow. What that means is if you ever see that alias kicking about on the tables you'll know it's me and that it's ok to give me all your chips ;) There is a thread somewhere about how people got their usernames (which I can't find) so here's a recap of the story about how I created mine.

Basically there is a trend amongst promoters/clubs here in UK that they like to get their flyers/posters out as soon as they've booked a big name DJ/act to drum up interest and sell tickets. What they normally don't bother sorting out until the last minute is the support acts so they just put 'more acts TBC' or something similar on the adverts.  I was in this situation one time where Rudimental were going to be doing a DJ set in the club I was a resident in so I was asked to warm up for them. No problem I say, it'll look good on any future stuff I do that I can say I supported a group with multiple UK number 1s. The Club has two rooms, the main one and a small one which is basically a holding bar. When the club started the promotion on Facebook, Rudimental were on the event page/promo, the guy working in the small room was on the promo and I wasn't :speechless:. They did however put 'More TBC' on the event page. How am I supposed to tell my Gran I'm an international superstar DJ with that? Cue me renaming my DJ page on Facebook, my Soundcloud page and my MixCloud page so I became known as 'More TBC'. Childish I know :) Since then it's become an inside joke with club managers/promoters I know that whenever they use 'More TBC' on a flyer or poster I'll post on their wall saying it's false advertising and that I'm not attending :laugh:. I use it all the time now because it's a nice, short, username for things that's easy to say. Nobody wants to be typing 0267hugs88xx every time they log in or having to say that on a twitch stream do they? 🤣

That's enough real world nonsense, let's talk poker. I'll start at the begining.. The first hand of the first tournament I played on Monday..

68217129_FirstHandEdit.png.5a0a27769d16d4b39cab5790a13d843f.png

All in pre-flop, blinds were 60/120. I had 2000 chips (16BB) and shoved over an initial raise from our villain. Pretty ominous start to the session :( Things didn't get much better in the next batch of tourneys. I can't confirm this because for some reason my client is only showing me the histoy from 5 events on Monday but I'm pretty sure I go knocked out in at least 3 tourneys by Ax vs Ax all in where my opponent hit runner runner for a straight. I did take notes of one of these instances so this is what it looked like:-

Butler League 1, I have A♠️ T♥️, villain has A♣️ J♠️, we're all in pre-flop. (I'm aware I should lose this hand as I'm the 28%-72% underdog, but not like this :waterfall:)

Flop is A♦️ 8♠️ T♠️ - Top two and a backdoor nut flush draw, exciting!. At this point I'm 81%-19% for the unlikely win.

Turn is a Q♣️ - Flush draw down the pan and now the opponent has 8 outs instead of :(

River is  a K♦️ - The pain :( Out in 16th and minimal league points gained.

I think I had this happen again in another tourney AJ < AQ with basically the same run out and then once when I was ahead preflop and hit top 2 pair and still got nailed by the straight. The run bad was real :waterfall:

Don't worry though folks, it wasn't all doom and gloom on Monday. I finished 3rd in the last Butler league game of the night! Amazingly I made the final table with no bounties and then only managed one on the final table. The bounty drought is really hitting me hard :( 's calculator was broken so on Tuesday I thought I got nothing but checking again this morning (I'm doing one of those write half of the blog one day, complete it the next day things) turns out I'm €10 richer :cash:

Also final tabled a Turbo Bounty PLO... with no bounties! 5th place was worth €5.33 giving me a whopping €1.33 profit :( I don't know why I can't win a bounty just now but it sure does make hitting a final table less exciting. I like tournament PLO so I think I'll play a few more of these in future. Once the rebuys are in the client I can see some PLO tourneys getting decent prize pools with some of the maniacs that play 🆒

While I was battling on the final table in the Butler League round 3 I had one other table open, the dreaded Daily 4. Remember way, way back in post one I talked about it being a goal of mine to cash this tourney because I have never managed in the months of being on Unibet? Well on Monday night I completed that goal, in style 🆒

I actually don't remember a lot about what happened in the early, or even middle part of the tourney. I'm not sure how I accumulated chips or if I had any lucky breaks (I'm sure I did). The first thing I remember was the extra long bubble. I think top 18 paid and when I noticed things were going well we were at 24. It felt like at least a hour we were sitting 6-7 handed waiting for short stacks to drop off. I think I busted the Butler game during the hand for hand in the Daily 4 which was great timing as I only had one table now and could focus on not messing up.

Once the bubble burst the usual carnage began where people start trying to get as many chips as possible, as quickly as possible. I don't really remember anything special happening but it wasn't long before we hit the final table. I was sitting with a top 3 stack when we got to the final 9 and there was one player (with a big stack) sitting out two to my left so I had great position to gain some free blinds. I played the big stack bully, scooping up blinds and antes where I could and not getting into trouble when players called or shoved. Next thing I know we're down to 4 players 🆒. I had 100K+ in chips, 2nd and 3rd (the sit out) were around 50K and 4th had 35Kish. We traded blinds for 5-10 minutes and then it all got very interesting.

Short stack shoves under the gun for his 30Kish chips (I have no idea what the blinds are at this point but it can't be more than 20BB), next to act then reshoves for his 55Kish (He's been more aggro of the players)  and I look at a pair of 10s. My girlfriend is sitting next me and instantly says "Fold! Don't be stupid" to which I casually reply "We're basically 3 handed, I have to call. I'm pretty sure I have the best hand". 🆒 *Click*

Short stack has KJ offsuit, reshover has AQ of spades. I'm already dreading the flop. I did the simulation after I finished the tourney and it turns out I was just behind the AQ suited and ahead of KJ but we were all basically between 30-39% preflop. It's a flip.

Flop is [insert 3 random low cards, make 2 of them diamonds as well] - Good start. Don't think anyone has diamonds so that rules out getting flushed.

Turn is a [insert low card here, like a 7 or something]

River is a [insert low card here, 5? Yeah, that'll do]

:cash: :cash: :cash: 🆒

final2edit.png.3db9c92e85180775a761fdbf7c630026.png

This screenshot does a terrible job of showing it but I'm now heads up with a player that is sitting out. Props to joe333 for not playing a single hand on the final table and still finishing second though, I bet he didn't expect that when he finally got his internet working or fixed whatever issue he had. It only took two forced all ins before I won a flip and that was that, ship me the trophy! €151 is a well needed bankroll booster and is an excellent example of the swings you can expect playing MTT poker. It was just after 11pm local time so that was the last action for the day. What a way to end it eh?

I did actualy play a tiny amount of NLHE cash during the session to complete the first mission for September so that added an extra €0.08 and a €2 SnG to the balance too. Finally a good profit day :cash:

 

Better update those goals I talked about at the start of the month :-

Goals

  • Don't hit €0 and have to deposit again/Win all the mulah :Thumbsup:.
  • Make a UO or UOUK event starting at the lowest satellite buy-in level only (I'll accept doing it from a ticket starting at a higher level as well)
  • Cash the Sunday Entitled/Daily €4. (For some reason I just can't do it just now /html/images/emoticons/Asset30.png):Thumbsup:
  • Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community.
  • Don't be mean to pecalbear :Thumbsup:

Not bad for less than a month. Posting has been consistant-ish, bankroll is in the green, I've finally defeated the Daily 4 and pecalbear has disappeared so I've been a nice forum member for the whole of September :) Live events is now the main focus. got to make one before the end of the year.

All of the shiny new green cells that represent winnings can be found HERE. I don't know if anyone looks at them other than me but it'll be helpful at the end of the month for making graphs and other fancy stats. I'm not sure if my ROI% calculations are right either so if anyone's a maths boffin they can let me know if it makes sense :)

I'll be back tonight for a few random tourneys and the Community League.. gotta make the Wednesday games count! See ya there :)

 

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14/09/2016 - Technical Difficulties

I took Tuesday off after all the Daily 4 excitement and didn't really plan on playing much on Wednesday either. Started off with a little cash to complete the "Win 5 hands from the button" part of the second monthly mission. I also loaded up the two early evening Bounty MTTs and a €2 SnG to use my ticket I got from completing the first round of missions. I managed to finish 2nd in the SnG and then my internet died. I can count on one hand the times my broadband has died so it was not something I expected. The outage only lasted 20 minutes but when I got back the cash table had closed and I was short in both the bounties. Not much you can do in these situations, just one of the perils of playing online poker.

Jumped into the Community league and some PLO MTTs after the reconnection and did not too bad 🆒. Finat table in the league for some healthy points and final table in one of the 2 PLO with 4 bounties. The drought might finally be over. Played a little more cash to clear the mission and then very late regged the Daily 4 and bombed miserably. No back to back for this guy 😞

Mr Grafton seems to be back to his Wednesday streaming schedule now so I joined the Squid Spectacular. I was playing well and then ended up on a star studded 'TV' table 🆒. Sam was there, bookthewin was there, radge was there, nightshopper was there.. it really was a who's who of the Community/Twitch. I had Sam on my direct left and then bookthewin after that sporting his lovely Yoshi themed avatar. With the buyin only being €2 Sam's bounty of €25 is actually worth more than the 1st place prize so I was in the worst position to try and claim it. My other issue was whenever we got blind vs blind he always had better cards so I rarely won any chips. We sat like this during all of the last two tables and most of the final table. Sam going knocked out in an Ax vs Ax where he was out kicked and I ended up 3rd. The cash streak continues :) I did get asked why I wasn't using 'MoreTBC' in the Twitch chat and basicaly it's so you can't read the Community leaague thread and know how well I'm doing :) I need to save the drama for here.  

For anyone that hasn't looked at the backroll results I'm about €65 for the first half of the month which is great as far as I'm concerned considering I was down €95 at one point :wow:. I'm gonna take Thursday and Friday off to do real life things and then it'll be the usual Sat/Sunday action inc. another Community freeroll I think 🆒.

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Regarding the Jackpot tournaments, it is one of the older ongoing promotions that was there before I joined :)

Back then we had €1 or €4 buy-in tournaments, nothing in between, and I believe therefore we had one of both to make it accessible to our players that play the lowest games.

From experience, I know that even when you have two of the same buy-ins, it doesn't mean players will automatically play both. There are players that just play one game at a time, register for one and see how it goes during late registration before they enter the other or players that just don't want to add more games at some point during a session. Not all the players are in them for the jackpot per se, however the jackpot as an addition surely helps to boost entrants. 

We manually check every week whether a player meets the jackpot criteria and once in a while we have a winning player. The last time, not that long ago, we had two winners on the same Monday. Both finishing top 3 in both tournaments 🆗. Accidentily we didn't notice it at first because we had already spotted a winner and didn't expect to look out for another one - but sorted it out when we realized it:) So players really win these jackpots now and then.


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Thanks for the reply Robin :)

 *****************************************************************

I'm toying with the idea of recording a session/tourney and then uploading it as some sort of review type thing. The idea is to record me playing a UO final (if I ever make one) or SE or something on the big side from start to inevitable bust, then cut out all the boring bits like folding and waiting for hands to complete, then rewatch it and talk over what I was thinking/doing at the time. I'll stick some random music on in the background too in case I forget to talk. Then upload it and stick it here so people can tell me all the mistakes I've made or agree with my amazing lay downs/hero calls :Cool:

Question is, would anyone want to watch something like that? If so, how long would you want it to be? I know guys like Jamie Staples and Kevin Martin have 'highlight' videos on Youtube but they are normally just 'big' hands instead of "what would you do?" type stuff. They normally cram an entire session into 15 minutes so I would imagine 30 minutes is probably the max anyone is going to keep it on for unless it's at the side while you grind.

Anyway, let me know one way or the other if you could :)

 

 

 

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@MoreTBC wrote:

Thanks for the reply Robin :)

 *****************************************************************

I'm toying with the idea of recording a session/tourney and then uploading it as some sort of review type thing. The idea is to record me playing a UO final (if I ever make one) or SE or something on the big side from start to inevitable bust, then cut out all the boring bits like folding and waiting for hands to complete, then rewatch it and talk over what I was thinking/doing at the time. I'll stick some random music on in the background too in case I forget to talk. Then upload it and stick it here so people can tell me all the mistakes I've made or agree with my amazing lay downs/hero calls 🆒

Question is, would anyone want to watch something like that? If so, how long would you want it to be? I know guys like Jamie Staples and Kevin Martin have 'highlight' videos on Youtube but they are normally just 'big' hands instead of "what would you do?" type stuff. They normally cram an entire session into 15 minutes so I would imagine 30 minutes is probably the max anyone is going to keep it on for unless it's at the side while you grind.

Anyway, let me know one way or the other if you could :) 


Agree with @GotWhatItTakes. Think you should start out with like 10-15 minutes :)

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 I love the Idea & would watch for sure. I think time wise you should go with what you got. First do all the recording & get to a Final Table. Then review & see what kind of game you had ( was it a game where you played a lot of hands, or one of those where you only played a couple... but made them count, in which case it will be a short vid with space for a intro & all LOL) There is a lot of knowledge to be gained from reviewing & positive critique from peers, in any sport. I say go for it !  👍

Always remember... You can be... do... or have anything your heart desires !
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15 to 17/09/16 - Minimum play, minimum results

Off site action took precedence at the end of the week so I hardly played anything on Unibet. I had to play a SnG for 3 days in a row so I got that out the way. It gave me a PLO4 ticket which I played through for a bit on Saturday and because I had a rare Saturday night off I took a stab at the Saturday Stack flip which I of course lost :)

On 'the other site' Mini-WCOOP is stil going so I got involved in the $3.30 8-max NLHE on Thursday and made Day 2. 7205 players with a prize pool of $21615 :wow:. Unfortunately like all my other day 2s, it started at 3PM so I was still at work. I ended up 297th for $12. Definitely nothing to write home about but there is a sense of achievement in making day 2 and surviving through that number of players. I hope Unibet 2.0 has some sort of phase tournament model in it because I think it's a great thing to have in MTTs. Being able to run multiple Day 1's to a big final Day 2 would be great for generating a big prize pool or even as an alternate to the UO qualifying structure. I've made a mental note to annoy the powers that be about at my earliest convenience 🆒

On the same night I also played the 'Big $1.10'. It started at 6pm my time and I thought it would be done about midnight. I could handle that as I knew the $3.30 would play to that time and I don't generally sleep before midnight anyway. When I finally busted out it was 01:40 :(. Over 7 and a half hours of play for 17th place and $16.64. Part of me was happy I'd survived another 4000+ player field to get in the top 20, part of me was miserable at the thought of my hourly rate being just under $2 and that I'd be knackered for work the next day. If I was constantly earning 16x my buyin for every MTT I played I could handle the 7 hours but when you're not doing it very often you question if it's worth it at all. I guess it's one of the things I like about Unibet. The fields are a lot smaller so you can get that final table excitement in half the time and with the payout structure the way it is you feel like you're getting more for your time if you min-cash. I'll go into this a little more later on but I think the satisfaction of beating people is more of a bug for me than the financial reward at the end.

I carried on my mini heater during Saturday on PS cashing a $1.10 PKO with 5 bounties ($3ish), a $3.30 I satted into for $0.55 ($10.57) and finishing another $1.10 PKO in 26th with 12 bounties ($6.65 + $11.08). In true degen fashion I then punted most of it off playing the $11 Badugi and $11 Ultra deep Mini-WCOOP events :) BRM, what's that? 🤣

 

18/09/16 - AK, the bogey hand.

Started off the Sunday grind playing the PLO4 ticket I had got from one of the September missions. Turns out the playthrough for these tickets is 300+ flops.. I ain't got time for that! I made the conscious decisions to go big or go ho.. well to €1.99. If you can't buy in for the minimum amount at the table your ticket just gets converted to cash so I figured I'll try and run it up to a huge number or if things went wrong just leave the table at €1.99 or under and just take the cash. I was on the 4rd step of the missions so I played a little NLHE to complete the 'Join any Omaha cash game table and reach the flop 10 times. Then do the same in Hold’em the next day' part, made a new Alias 'DeathTBC' and played a Sunday Entitled (SE) qualifer. Mission complete and an SE quali ticket was mine. Part 5 had two more cash game playthrough parts so I just left the tables open and completed them pretty quickly. Played a SnG, which I sucked out in (QQ < A4s), to start the 'play a SnG 3 days in a row' part of the mission and that was all the admin for the day done. now onto the fun stuff, tourneys :)

Started off with a couple of bounty tourneys, one of each game type, which I didn't do well in. Hopped into one of the 'Step-it-up' tourneys as I quite like them. They play almost like a satellite in the sense that it doesn't matter if you finish in the first payout place or the last, you're getting the same reward. Unfortunately I bubbled the €20 payout when my AK did not hold against pre-flop shoves to 10 6 and A6 in the space of 3 hands. Sunday really wasn't a good day for AK. 

From playing through the PLO ticket I got a UO spin, which gave me a freeroll ticket, so I played that next. It didn't take me long to get AK and have it lose to QJ in a pre-flop shove.

Next up was the SE last chance €5 qualifier as I had got a ticket from completing the missions earlier in the day. They're a bit of a crap shoot but somehow I managed to finish 2nd and get a ticket to the big one. This was a small miracle considering I commited ICM suicide by calling an all in from the second biggest stack when we were 3 handed. I really didn't need to and I don't know why I did it (I think I just wanted to get it over with to be honest) and I paid for it by losing AQ < AK. Luckily I survived after that and the short stack busted. Slapped wrist for me.

With the SE starting I decided to limit my tables to 2 so I could focus on playing the best I could. I played 5 other tourneys during the night but really wasn't paying attention to them and didn't do very well in them. I didn't mind, all the focus was on the SE.

At this point I'd like to thank everyone that replied to my question about recording a session for review. I'm gonna give it a bash at some point this week, probably Wednesday, and see if I can control my cringe glands as I hear myself talking on the mic. I REALLY wish I had pulled my finger out and recorded the SE as there are so many spots that would have been great for discussion but as I didn't really expect to get into it and the last chance finishing about 15 minutes before the main event I didn't really have time to get everything set up. I'll probably not make another one for months now and have nothing to record now :waterfall:

Things started off well with an early almost double up where I rivered an Ace high flush vs a set vs Top pair with A kicker. Then we had some more fun with AK where in two separate occasions I came up against KK. One time I lost, one time I caught a straight. From that point on I think I played well, choosing good spots to pick up blinds and not doing anything silly. I stayed in the top 10 chip stacks for the majority of the tourney and made the final table in 7th out of 9 I think. Again, I wish I was recorded this so much because there were lots of spots on the last two tables where I was making mistakes and not being aggressive enough and also on the final table that would have been good to discuss.

At the final table I was paying attention but I wasn't remembering things so I don't really remember a lot about it. I know the short stacks busted pretty quickly and when we got down to 5 players there was a point where everyone was in the 30-40 BB range and things were quite even. I think I tried to make a move blind vs blind that didn't work and was down to about 20 BB when I got that hand again AK. It was suited this time and I was in the BB. It folded round to the SB who made a min-raise (I think we were at 2k/4k at this point) to 8k so I re-raised to 22K. SB took a little time and then went all in. I figured I was in 5th at this point, we're 5 handed and it's blind on blind.. we're going to be flipping. I hit call and see a pair of 10's.

[insert standard Sunday, AK ruining, run out here] :waterfall:

The SB had been pretty aggressive the whole time we were at the same table so I don't really see any way I'm ever folding. I don't know if that's the right mentality to have in that situation and it's 45%-55% so strictly speaking it's a losing play but there are plenty of Ax combos or even KQ he would jam over the 3-bet with though right? Either way it's €396 of pure profit as I was basically freerolling from the ticket 🆒.

After I busted I remember feeling disappointed. Really disappointed 😞. Winning the money was cool and all that, as I've now basically tripled my BR, but I really wanted that virtual gold trophy for 1st place. I touched on this before but I'm at that point in my poker playing life where the achievements outweigh the financial gain. Don't get me wrong, I had already spend the 1st place prize for winning the SE in my head but I'd have valued beating all the other players over the € reward for doing that. You may disagree but I think that probably helps my mindset when playing. I'm not playing with scared money and don't have the pressure of needing the win, I just want it :) On the flip side it also means I'm probably not always making the most profitable decisions all the time because I'll just go 'F*** it, it's only a €' and call people when I shouldn't. It's a fine balance but I think I'm starting to get on top of it and focus on getting those shiny trophies :cash:

Late call to work tonight so I'll probably just play a single SnG today and tomorrow to finish my missions and then hopefully a full schedule on Wednesday with a test session recording 🆒

 

 

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Live by the AK die by the AK. 

Anyway, you did the right thing. Not being reliant of the money is a good attitude. It's more important that you make the right decisions and in the long-run you will be rewarded with those shiny trophies as well as with the bigger moneyzz. :D

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Just a quick one this time..

 

22/09/16 - The heater continues/lazy bones

I'm officially on holiday! 🆒 No work now until the 3rd of October so I'm gonna have plenty of poker time. Was only really interested in playing the Community league so the schedule was a lot lighter than I expected. I had also planned to record my screen to put here for review but when I got home I just could not be bothered setting it up :( As you would expect that meant I got the gold trophy in the second MTT of the day, the deepstack bounty, and didn't record it :( Only thing I really remember about the win was playing heads up and my opponent calling off a million BB with A3o against my AJ and me holding. It was all over a few hands later. The win and the 8 bounties I collected gave me a healthy €70 Excellent start to the session :cash:

Finished just outside the payouts in a €10 UO sat which is always annoying, bombed both the Squid events and also failed miserably in the Community League. I won't be getting a custom Avatar this month :(

I was feeling flush after the early win so I decided to play the €10 bounty. I played quite a few of these during the Bounty promo a few months back and they are wild! You will see plays during these that make freeroll action look normal. I managed to dodge all the craziness and variance and hit my second final table of the day. another perfect candidate for the screen capture I didn't bother setting up :( I managed to get 4 bounties before eventually getting knocked out in 5th. No back to back but final tabling 20% of the MTTs you play would be a great result for any player (if you can do it consistently).Another €25 or so profit and a good end to good day. 

 

If you ignore the Saturday I just played the flip tourney I'm on a 7 session winning streak 🆒. I'm due a bad day for sure but it's not going to be for a while because I can't pay a decent session for a few days. Got a friend up from Glasgow today so he'll be taking up today/Friday. I expect to be hungover on Saturday so it'll probably be a small session and it's a local holiday here on Monday so I'm drinking and DJing a terrace party on Sunday 🆒. Should be good to take a few days off and recharge before a big week of button clicking.

I completely forgot to do this in the last post but it's probably time to update the goals...

Old Goals

  • Don't hit €0 and have to deposit again/Win all the mulah. 👍
  • Make a UO or UOUK event starting at the lowest satellite buy-in level only (I'll accept doing it from a ticket starting at a higher level as well) 😠
  • Cash the Sunday Entitled/Daily €4. (For some reason I just can't do it just now /html/images/emoticons/Asset30.png👍
  • Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community. :speechless:
  • Don't be mean to pecalbear 👍

New Goals

  • Don't hit €0 and have to deposit again/Win all the mulah
  • Make a UO or UOUK event
  • Win the Sunday Entitled
  • Finish top 3 in both Jackpot Hold'em tourneys
  • Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community.
  • Reach somewhere between €800 and €1000 and cash out some money for a better chair

The first one is a fairly standard poker player goal and will always be there You want all the money out there and you don't want to lose all the money you have. That's fairly straight forward and is more of a reminder to me to not be a degen.

I've edited the UO one slightly as the BR is at a point where I don't need to start at the bottom and the less steps I have to go through the better. I do like the idea of making it there from the smallest satellite, as it represents the best value, but if I realistically want to make an event before the end of the year I'll probably skip the lowest level.

Now that the Daily 4 trophy is in the cabinet the SE seems like the next logical step. If the BR continues to increase then I'll maybe add the daily €25 to this as well. I like ticking off tourneys and being able to say 'I've won that before'

The Jackpot goal is more of a brag than for the money to be honest. It seems like an achievement to complete along the lines of the 'won that tourney' but I think it will be the one that stays on the goals list the longest.

I'm happy with the post frequency but not with the content. I said this before but if I keep reminding myself maybe it'll stick on day 🤣. Session recording and hand analysis need to be more frequent. Next week should be a good one for it because I'll have all day every day to sort things out and there should be long sessions. Hopefully :)

The chair one I need your help with :) I need a new chair and I'm looking for suggestions. The chair must adhere to the following criteria:-

  • Not be one of the god awful racing chairs
  • Have arm rests
  • Be comfy for my bum

If you have any suggestions, let me know :)

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24/09/16 - The streak..

I remember pretty much nothing about playing on Saturday so this is all based on the results sheet I've been keeping. I started off with a little € boost from some live betting on Thursday night when I was out with my mate. We have a history of making bets when we're out if there is a game on because normally it's a game we don't care about and it makes it more interesting to watch. Luckily the game on Thursday was the local team so it was already interesting for me :)

Saturday started terribly according to the results page :waterfall:. I'm pretty sure the first two tourneys I played I busted first hand. Not what you want at all. They were AQo < KJo preflop in a Bounty MTT and AA < JQo in a UO Sat after a JQx flop. Not much you can do in either situation so I wasn't feeling too bad about things. Gotta think long term.

Next up was a €4 Turbo. Got a gold trophy for that one 🆒. Can't remember what happened or basically anything about the tourney so it must have happened pretty quickly. The hot streak continues..

Played 2x Saturday Stack Sats (Probably the only tourney on Unibet I've not played), got my buyin back in a €5 one and won €20 in a €25 one. The reason I played a €25 one was because I was feeling flush that day after the 1st in the turbo and I guess because I then got a 2nd in a €4 Bounty :cash:. Two €40 wins in one day... HEATER!. Looks like the rest of the day was pretty good too. Cashed the Daily 4 and a €10 bounty so the day ended on a positive. 

 

25/09/16 - Don't play drunk

Went out on Sunday and DJ'd at a terrace party with one of my best mates so the drinks were flowing from about 1pm. Monday was a local holiday here so there were a lot of people out so by the time I got back home it was around 6pm and I was feeling 'cheery'. I continued to drink the rest of the night with my girlfriend and for some reason decided it would be a good idea to try and play poker too. Obviously I remember none of what I did that night so all I can really say is don't do it! I got lucky, really lucky, and only managed to lose a few € by the end of the day but I'm sure if I tried it 100 times I'd only get one time where I didn't lose big. Poker requires concentration and I had none of it so I was basically torching money for most of the night. It's not big, it's not clever, and you regret it 

That being said I somehow managed to get a 2nd in the €10 bounty and collected 8 bounties for a €80+ win 🆒. I bricked pretty much everything else I played, including a BRM busting €25 deepstack, so ended up €3 down or something silly. Cue a hangover.

 

26/09/16 - All good things come to an end.

The heater is over :waterfall:. I don't remember much about Monday either but the results page say I only had one min cash and I won a €10 UO ticket in a Sat. It was a -€30 day :(. I did get a €2 UO ticket from the Community league and won a €10 MTT ticket in a Butler Stream giveaway so I suppose it wasn't all bad but there wasn't even any close to the bubble results. It looks like I just didn't play well.

 

I've spend the last day or two sorting out stuff on my laptop to allow me to stream on Twitch. I did this for two reasons. First reason is there is an option to just record, not stream, so I can use that if I ever want to record a final table or a deep run and upload it here for you uys to see. The second reason is that if I'm streaming I'm 100% more likely to take the games seriously and not donk off my money :) It's taken a little while to get everything in order but I think I now have a setup where I can bounce between 4 tables with ease. The only issue I have is that I'm still using good ol' ADSL so my upload speed is not the best and I think there may be some buffering issues. If I restrict it to 480p the tables look really grainy so I'm going to try 720p and see what happens. First stream will hopefully be tonight and I'll definitely Stream on Sunday for the Community freeroll since I've got a bounty on my head 👼 If it' running tonight you should find me at  https://www.twitch.tv/moretbc

I still have a few days off work so I'm going to try and get good sessions in for the next 4 days with some decent content on here. It's almost the end of the month so I'll try and do an end of month special on Sunday with graphs and other bits and pieces so there is something worth reading for a change :) I've not started the new chair hunt yet so I'll maybe do that too and give you guys the choice.. maybe ;)

EDIT by Stubbe-Unibet: Fixed link to Twitch

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End of month review (September)

I was going to do some fancy graphs and things but to be honest the results page HERE says everything a shiny graph could. If you've not had a look at it before or just can't be bothered here are the highlights..

  • +/- for the month: +€625.18 :Cash::Cash:
  • Days Played: 24
  • Losing Days: 10 (Biggest single day loss: -€30.92)
  • Winning/Break even days: 14 (Biggest single day win: +€351.00)
  • ROIs - Cash: -21.33%, SNG: -30%, MTT: 102.74%
  • MTT ITM: 36.3% (157 played, 57 cashed)

The results are somewhat skewed due to your bankroll on Unibet being universal and not gamble/game specific. I won on the only sporting bet I made this month and I've been running really well whenever I've randomly decided to play some slots so it's not all pure poker profit. Having said that, I'm extremely happy with the month :Veryhappy:. This is easily the best month I've ever had playing poker as far as consistency is concerned. If I could reel in my complete disregard for BRM then the profit would have been a little higher but other than that it's been a really solid month. The ITM stat is probably wrong because I only did a count of where my ROI was positive so there may be instances were I min cashed for less than the buyin or earned enough bounties for it to be a positive result without making it ITM in the official sense. Let's be honest though, nobody really cares other than me about the accuracy of the results :Geek:

I forgot to screenshot my challenge points but I think I crept over the 25k mark which is fine for me. I don't play cash so the points are pretty meaningless and I don't expect I'll ever make reach much more than that in any 3 month period. Hopefully the points store will make things a little better reward-wise when it gets released.

Quick R.I.P to my welcome bonus :Teardrop:. I've had it extended twice already so I think that's the limit. I was halfway though the 2nd €30 chunk of 5 as I got Andrew to split the €150 into chunks to give me a chance to clear some of it in the 90 days. If you're not playing cash all day, every day it's borderline impossible to complete at NL4/PLO4. I suppose it's wasted value but I think I'll make more from playing MTTs than trying to complete the bonus so it's not the biggest loss. I probably got close to €100 out of it so I can't complain.

Having this space to record what's been happening while I play has really helped my game I think. I'm not one for watching training videos and 'studying', I just like to play. By doing the blog I'm going back to hands and difficult spots and reviewing them without it feeling like work, it just feels like jogging my memory for the post. Subconsciously I'm now remembering these situations because I've written about them and I'm able to use the analysis of what I did the first time round to improve my decisions making in the future :Geek:

In a roundabout way I'm basically thanking anyone that has ever liked any of the posts so far, you're making me a better poker player :Lovekiss:. Knowing that someone, somewhere, is reading and/or enjoying the blog makes it a whole lot easier to type, which in turn means I'm kinda working on my game. Ta for that :Thumbsup:

I'm back at work today so I should probably go do some but I'll be back later on with a roundup of Sundays action, including the Community Bounty Freeroll, and my adventures on Twitch :Cool:

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625€ win sounds like a very good month of winnings :)   grats on the results 👍

It seems you hsould only play tournmanets as it is clearly your stronger game :)

About your twitch stream, it would be nice if the sound is coming out louder and clearer, it was difficult to hear what you were saying and it made the stream less attractive.  Also, some more comments are nice too :)

Good luck for the next month for your results :)

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Sunday 02/01/2016 - Back to business/Twitch, it's not for everyone.

I've made some changes to the results page. I've removed the 'Hands played/flops seen' column because it's basically pointless and replaced it 'places paid'. It's probably a useless stat too but it'll make ITM % a little more accurate. It also lets me highlight bubble stories when I write posts :)

Even us forum junkie get it wrong sometimes :wow:. When I started my Sunday session the first thing I did was open up a cash PLO table and and cash NLHE table. The Moving on up promo is easily achieveable for a non-cash player like me and I need to play 3 days of NLHE to complete the first step of the mission. Sat there for about 30 minutes wondering if there would be a popup to tell me I'd played enough hands but nothing happened. Then it dawned on me, the promo doesn't start till Monday.. Doh! (It also turns out I forgot to play cash NLHE on Monday so I missed my third day in a row to complete the missions so I'll have to start that again :()

The goal on Sunday was to qualify for the Sunday Entitled. I figured it would be a great tourney to stream along with the Community freeroll and it's 'the big one' so why not. I got close, really close, but could not get the job done. I played the €5 and €10 last chance sats and ended up 3rd in the €10 one. I had AQ and shoved pre-flop, big stack called with A3, flop came A33. I got €9 back which softened the blow ever so slightly but it always sucks to be that close and not hold.

I played a €4 Step-it-up tourney and finished 5th which gave me my buy-in back as a ticket so I used that to enter the bounty deepstack. That provided another min cash and 2 bounties so I was about even for the day and feeling good :)

Time for another batch of good run I think. 4th in a €4 Bounty for €26, scooped poor 's bounty in the freeroll for €7, 4 bounties in the late €10 turbo bounty for almost €5 profit and then 3rd in the Daily 4 for €62. A nice little Sunday haul 🆒. The Daily 4 ended in the same sort of way as the SE sat earlier in the day. KJs vs Q8s all in pre flop with QQx on the flop. There is just nothing you can do in these situations, you make the profitable decision and sometimes it just doesn't go your way. I definitely feel comfortable when situations like this happen now because I know in the long term I'm going to be profitable.  

I attempted my first stream on Sunday (well proper one, not just testing stuff). It's not as easy as people make it look. I definitely struggled with having things to say all the time and constantly having to check the chat, OBS to see what table I was showing and actually playing at the same time. I think until you have a decent core of followers you are stuck in a limbo where you don't have anyone to interact with while streaming to keep you talking so you forget. The other issue is always going to be when to stream. With the official Unibet account being live Monday to Friday nights it only really leaves Saturday/Sunday as viable nights. That doesn't really help with building followers as everyone here is already watching that stream instead. I think I'll start doing something every Sunday and see how it goes. I'm getting fibre broadband in a week or two so I can stream at a much higher quality without drops which will also help and based on feedback I'll find some way to tape my mic closer to me so everyone can hear my ramblings.

I don't know about anyone else but I find the Unibet streams quite hard to follow. I think all the streamers are great but any more than 2 tables on screen becomes hard to read. This is probably a discussion for another thread but I wanted to touch on it now I know what's ivolved in setting up a stream. Uhlen has nailed it since he started with the 2 screen layout and just swapping tables in and out. It seems like the best way to do it besides a single table setup with the Unibet software because of the limitations regarding resizing. Hopefully this is something the other streamers will adopt if they have not already and 2.0 will make it easier to follow as well.

I played on Monday and bombed everything I played bar one BR saving €4 Bounty where I finished 3rd and basically wiped out all my losses for the day. Tuesday I only played cash to complete the 'Movin' on up' promo and the first part of the missions so I lost a few € but nothing major.

I don't plan on playing a lot this week other than to complete the active promos/missions and play the Community league. It's a combination of being a little burnt out from playing so much over the last week ago and just needing to fill my evenings with real world things. I've cracked the €800 mark so the new computer chair hunt is the main focus this week, there are so many options!

Anyway, it's taken me 2 days to write this on and off so I'm outta here!

 

Have you read my blog HERE... It's long isn't it :)
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