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@cris1285 wrote:

Nice result, and great blog.  👍  But i miss the hand analysing you did before (why you called, what was your thought, and more), that way we all can learn from it, and i really liked your approach of the play. 


Thanks! :)

Hand analysis is coming back, I've just been lazy.

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@MoreTBC wrote:

Spolier Alert: I remembered to record a final table! Does anyone know a good .flv editor?


Spoiler Alert 2: The edited video is uploading but I'm probably going to upload the full unedited one too as I tend to talk for a while after the hand about what I was thinking and that get's cut off when you edit it down to just the action. The ful video also has great moments like me getting a phone call mid record and my internet dying on the last hand before a break :geek:. The full video is about an hour and a half, the cut down one is around 40 minutes.

Should be available in a post late this afternoon :)

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Monday 3rd to Wednesday 5th October - Clicking buttons and shopping

It's been more than a week since all this happened so this part will be nice and short as I remember very little. (Not remembering things is fast becoming the main theme of this blog 🤣)

Monday - Busted nearly everything I played in glorious fashion but somehow managed to be only €5 down for the day thanks to a 3rd place finish in a €4 bounty.

Tuesday - Hardly played anything as I wanted a night off so just did the minimum to complete the moving on up promo. was pretty much break even on the poker and then won €11 playing some slots. I also ordered my new chair from Ikea, he's called Markus. We have a weird Ikea here in Aberdeen as it's just a 'Order and Collect' Point. Basically it's a showroom with lots of touch screens that you can use to pick what you want and order it (Think Argos UK people). The only difference is that they don't actually hold the stock on site and basically ship it up from Edinburgh after you order it.. and then charge you for the privilege! Admittedly it's not as expensive as ordering it online and getting it delivered to my flat but I was basically charged £7.50 to go pick up my order from their shop. Seemed harsh but the chair came highly recommended on several forums when you google 'best office chair' :Geek: 

Wednesday - I didn't play a lot on Wednesday either and everything I did play I busted fantastically again. I also withdrew money to cover the cost of the chair and placed a sports bet to take part in the 'Close but no cigar' promo running on the forum. Of course I didn't look at the dates of the games and actually bet on games happening this weekend :Smirk:. All in all it was a -€200 day which sounds terrible but is obviously skewed by the cashout.

 

Thursday 06/10/16 - Recording the run (Part 1)

I built Markus on Thursday while watching DaVitsche's stream. Everyone wants to seem some more IRL stuff so here it is :)

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Here he is all wrapped up nice and snug ready for me to assemble.

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 This was the first thing I saw when when I looked at the instructions. Get a friend to help it says, 'Pah!' I say, I'll do it on my own! (..and my girlfriend had gone out for the night so I was riding solo by default). How hard could it be?

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Not very hard it seems. The photo timestamps say the build took less than 30 minutes, job well done. A vast improvement on his little brother in the back (which I still need to dismantle). Time to take it for a road test and settle in for a little session.

Well before that actually, I made another withdrawl. I needed a new mobile phone as my HTC One MK1 was starting to play up and was generally just annoying me. I barely use my phone for anything other than listening to music, sending messages and checking social media so I went for the Wileyfox Swift. 'The what?!' I here you cry. Wileyfox are a UK company run by the former GM of Motarola and someone else who was high in Microsoft for a while. I picked the Swift for two reasons:

1) Price. It's £120.

2) It's dual SIM so I can stick my work one in it and only carry one phone instead of two.  

So far it's been doing the job just fine and I have no major complaints :) Anyway, back to the poker..

Things started off as they had done every other day in the week, with multiple early bustouts. Having had to collect the chair and build it I didn't really get into the session until around 8PM UK time so I didn't want to get into anything too deep and be up for hours. I late regged a couple of tourneys like the Daily 4 and the PLO bounty but couldn't get anything going. Played some cash to complete Moving on up, lost a little. I did manage to win a €10 UO ticket, jump into a running €10 sat and then bubble the next ticket level payout and get my €10 ticket back which was ok but not very exciting. Then it hit 9PM.

There are two €10 bounties that run at 9 and 9:30 my time that I have grown to love playing. BRM wise, bad idea, but I tend to do well in them so I think they are worth the risk. I did rubbish in the 9:30 Turbo so we'll skip that and talk about the 9pm regular speed one.

I made a deep run :). I also recorded it like I said I would. Yes, that's right, from the final two tables down to whenever I finished (no spoilers but I did name the youtube videos 'Final table..' so you can assume I didn't finish in the 10th-18th range) you can watch every hand (or highlights) and listen to my ramblings about various topics. I talk about this in the video a bit but organising the recording was the most stressful bit of the night. Having tried streaming before I know I needed to move my mic but had no good way of doing it.. so I came up with this.

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Yep, two screws :Cool:. Now you know the level I'm working on here are the two videos. A cut down 'highlight' video and the full unedited ramblefest.

Highlight Video

Raw and Uncut

If you don't want to watch either of them that's fine, I'm going to discuss a few hands here and see what you guys think about them. Let's start with the very first hand of the recording.

What would you do? - Episode 3

As always, let's set the scene. You're down to 18 players in a €10 Bounty. You've just frantically tried to wedge a microphone to your desk so you can record your play and have bodged together a scene in OBS so it looks ok. You're not sure if the mic is going to pick up your voice and you're dealt Jack Jack :Wink:

Under the gun with J:Clubs: J:Hearts: and somewhere in the 25+ BB region. Blinds are 300/600 so insert a standard for me open for 2.2x. UTG +2 calls as does the small and big blind. Pot is just short of 6k, we have 16k left.

Flop comes J:Clubs: 6:Diamonds: 6:Spades:, we've flopped the virtual nuts (bar quad 6's)

Question 1, do you C-Bet?

I do not know what the right play is/was here to be honest. There are merits in betting out and getting a flush draw or any hand with a 6 or even a J to come along as the players in the blinds could have anything. I chose to check and hope that someone had a piece of it and bet and got lucky that UTG +2 bet roughly half pot.

Turn is the K:Hearts:

River is the 5:Diamonds:. The flush has now completed

Question 2, do you bet out on the river?

I chose to bet out. I figured if they had bet on the flop then there was a good chance it was with a flush draw and that if I kept it small enough I might even get a Jx hand to call. It didn't work :(

Couple of things for you to mull over :) I'm glad I managed to record this one because it's a situation that you can't just look up and find the right play for so it's a good one to get he discussion going :)

I'm not going to post any of the other hands for discussion until after everyone has a chance to watch either of the videos so we're kinda spoiler free and because this post is long enough already. I'll continue tomorrow with part two and what silliness I've got up to since then. It's quite a story :)

 

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Thursday 06/10/16 - Recording the run (Part 2)

It's now well over a week since I recorded the final table (or as you've now seen glorious win🆒) so I've forgotten most of what happened but I knew there was at least one more hand I wanted to review with you guys and get your thoughts on.

What would you do? - Episode 4

The scene.. down to 4 players in the €10 Bounty, stacks are fairly even (20-40BB kinda level). This hand is at about 24 mins in on the edited video if you want to see exact numbers. We're dealt J ♦️ Q ♦️ in the small blind. UTG calls for 2k, next player folds and I complete for an extra 1k. Big blind checks and we're off to the flop.

♠️ 10 ♥️♠️ (Pot is 7000)

I check, big blind bets 3400 and UTG raises to 12800! Is this the time to fold? Probably, but I called. Big blind folds. I have top pair with a decent kicker and a gutshot. You would have expected a raise from KQ or AQ preflop right?

Turn is ♠️ (Pot is 36000)

I check and UTG bets 14000. I talk about this in the video that I felt the flop raise could have been from a flush draw which would have now completed. Looking back at it now I'm even more convinced it's a flush because of the bet sizing. Having been so aggressive on the flop and then putting in just over a third pot on the turn suggests to me that he has the nuts and is hoping I have a piece of it and will call so he can shove on the river. Am I right? If the turn wasn't a ♠️ are we going all the way? Should I have just folded on the flop? Do we need to take payouts/ICM into account when making the decision? Help me out! :)

In the end we picked up the shiny gold trophy and my first final table recording couldn't have gone better. When I watched back the uncut version I quickly realised that if I wasn't recording I would have not made the final table, let alone won. Twice at least I said that if I wasn't recording I would have called and both times, had I called, I would have lost. It's definitely an element of my game I need to work on. Looking players up or not believing them is a big leak in my game.

Rounded off the session with a quick SnG and some Banzai to complete missions and then off to bed.

 

Friday 07/10/16 - A tale of drunkeness, disgusting degeneracy and realisation

It was one of my best mates birthdays on Friday so we went out for drinks.. lots of them. By the time the clubs closed at 3am we were a little worse for wear so we headed to the local casino for breakfast, a staple of any night out we have. Unfortunately my friend did not make breakfast as he spent 10 minutes in the toilet throwing up before returning to the table and informing me he 'needed some air'. That then turned into me basically dragging him back to my flat down the street while my girlfriend sat with three plates of food at the table we had. Of course in a situation like this my phone battery died so I couldn't tell her what was happening so she was less than amused :speechless:. Gave my phone the quick charge when I was back at the flat and smoothed things over before jogging panting back to the casino to eat my breakfast in a sweaty, out of breathe, heap. 

I don't know what it is about live casinos but I just seem to walk in and have a 'go hard or go home' approach to any gambling I do. I had a few hundred ££ ready to spend but after the friend/breakfast debacle I decided on one quick burst of neighbours bets on roulette would be enough for the night. It's a £25 minimum in the local casino for that type of bet so I said to myself 2 bets per spin and £100 maximum, so basically 2 spins and you're out of there becuase you'll probably lose. I played for more than two spins :geek:

Luckily it was because I hit one of the bets on each spin :cash:. I carried on doing pretty well, sliding £100 to my gf every time I won and after about 10 minutes had £500. Amazingly, I left the table and cashed out. A miracle! 👼 Time to head home and see if my friend was still alive.

I'm not sure what happened next but somehow back home I ended up on my laptop playing slots and things got bad, real bad. I was up to £10 a spin at one point and torched my entire bankroll. Yep, the whole thing. All that beautiful profit from September wiped out in Raging Rhino enduced spewfest. Without even thinking about it I deposited £200 (probably justifying it with the live win) and started firing through that as well. At this point the gambling gods should have probably taught me a valuable lesson and bankrupted me but for some reason they were feeling kind.. cue £2200+ win spin :wow:. An absolute lifesaver! I instantly withdrew the £200 I had just put in and then like the complete moron that I am punted off £1k thinking I would get another win :teardrop: Easily the biggest sum of money I've ever lost in a single sitting. I think at the time I was fairly cool about because in my drunken state I justified it as 'I'm still up for the day' and went to bed but in the morning I felt really stupid. A £2k bankroll would have made €25 MTTs playable with decent BRM and UO qualification much easier. Even now typing this I feel like a complete idiot and completely regret not just closing Chrome and going to sleep :sad:

The realisation set in the next day that I look at my bankroll as completely disposable and I shouldn't. I enjoy playing poker a lot and the money in my BR is the thing that allows me to do that. I really shouldn't be so frivolous with it. I'd be lying if I said I was never going to spin a slot machine again but what I did definitely realised is that every time I do I'm reducing my ability to do the thing I enjoy the most, play poker. I got very lucky that night and managed to get away with my degeneracy, I doubt I'd be so lucky next time so I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it doesn't happen again. Can you get a breathalyser lock for your laptop? 😏

On a slightly happier note, I bought a lava lamp when I was drunk 🆒. Don't know why and I'm not even sure how much it cost, I've never looked back at the order 🤣

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Not that any of you don't already know but it's not all plain sailing in the world of being really good at being average. BRM might be boring but it maximises your ability to do what you enjoy, I learned that the hardish way over the weekend.

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow/Sunday with a quick roundup of last Sunday and this weeks antics and maybe some comments on the hands so you guys can make me play better 😉

 

 

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They should just legalize marijuana everyhwere and make the consumption of alcohol illegal.

This just gave me ideas for my 2030 campaign.

MAKE ALCOHOL ILLEGAL AGAIN!

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I debate
Should I smile like everything's good and pretend that life is great
Or should I let the world see the real me and not hide this pain
I tried to be like the rest of y'all, sorry I just can't
I'ma probably die this way
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@Magicadil wrote:

They should just legalize marijuana everyhwere and make the consumption of alcohol illegal.

This just gave me ideas for my 2030 campaign.

MAKE ALCOHOL ILLEGAL AGAIN!


Pretty sure that didnt go to well last time round :happy:

 

It did make for one of my favourite tv shows though Boardwalk Empire.

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You can exchange UO tickets again all is unicorns and rainbows in Unibet land.
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I've just noticed the copy/paste I did murdered the formating on the post :wow:

 

I got the chair, I was just saying that goal was complete. The formatting ruined it. I'll get my edit on now.

 

Edit: I'm too late, I can't :(

 

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I can't do it, the lack of formatting is too tilting. If one of the mods could delete the original version that woud be great.

 

I am sooo far behind, let's do some catching up shall we..

Sunday 09/10/16

I have no idea what happened, I'm going to be completely honest. I took Saturday off to nurse my hangover and £1K punt shame and then got back to it on Sunday. The results sheet says I had a good day with multiple cashes and a final table or two. I played a €10 Turbo with a ticket I don't remember getting.. it may have been from a stream giveaway but I'm not sure. It led to a min cash of €40! for 3rd. Those early day tourneys can be great and a 4x buy-in min cash is a great thing to have. Busted all my UO and SE sat attempts as per usual and then cashed a deep bounty. More busts and then a double cash in the two €10 bounties I love so much :) That plus a little more sloots (They're sloots from now on, not slots) action made for another decent profit of €200.


Monday 10/10/16
Played the bare minimum, just the Butler league and the Jackpot ones, busted them all and only managed two bounties. Nothing but negatives on the results, although €10 doesn't feel like a big loss considering the swings we have been seeing.

Wednesday 12/10/16

A night of bubbles :( Stone bubbled the Community League, Stone bubbled the PLO Bounty. Deep runs in both the €4 Bounties but not enough to cash, a €1 HU SNG to complete a mission and then won playing 2 tables of Cash PLO :wow:

Saturday 15/10/16
I played quite a bit on Saturday, completed more PLO hands for the promo and final tabled a €10 bounty, finishing 3rd in the afternoon. Was working at night so couldn't play any of the good tourneys but I must have been feeling flush and registered a €10 PLO. I'm a huge dog at PLO so if anyone was at my table during it I'm sorry for being rubbish. I'm not sorry for taking the gold trophy home though 🆒. I like PLO a lot. It's a bit more swingy than NLHE in terms of how a hand can go but it's fun.
Then I played sloots and torched a few hundred and went to 'work'. 😠

I drank at work while DJing

I came home and torched my entire bankroll on that stupid Rhino :teardrop:

I then deposited everything I considered 'disposable income' for the month and torched pretty much all of that as well. I don't know what the euro value is because I deposit in £ but for transparency and my own therapy it was £900. I'm calling it €1K on the results because I don't know the conversion rate at the time and I'll just do the adjustment if/when I run it back up and withdraw the deposit. I've already given Jonny permission to wave a banner in my face with 'I told you so' written on it if we meet at a live event. It was a grade A donk move. I went to bed with just over €50 in my account :waterfall:

At this point I'd like to commend the Unibet staff for being so proactive about responsible gaming. After my last post I received a PM from one of the team here with suggestions about ways to protect the bankroll I had built up and not risk it in the way I had last week. Unfortunately it was the day after I torched everything but even if I hadn't it shows they're reading everything and looking for any signs of potential problems in order to protect the players. I had already excluded myself from slots before going to sleep (and bingo because I think it's stupid and just doesn't deserve my money, not that I play it 🤣) but it was good to talk it out with someone who had dealt with that kind of thing before. I'm fully aware what I did was stupid and that I basically ignored my own and Jonny's advice and ruined all my hard work building up my bankroll. It's been a good few days now since it happened and I'm comfortable with it. Don't get me wrong, it's a painful amount of money to lose, but I'm more annoyed at myself for wasting all the time and energy I spent playing poker on something I don't even particularly like. I probably jinxed myself in my last post by saying I 'wouldn't be so lucky next time' because it turns out I wasn't. Lesson now learned in teh hardest possible way and the correct restrictions are now in place. Time to move on and rebuild, so that's what I plan to do.

Old 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 👍

New Goals

  • Get out the hole and start playing with profit again
  • Make a UO or UOUK event - This is off the list until I can claw back some of the deposit money. As the system is locked there really isn't any profit in it unless you win a seat and I'm running terribly in them so qualification dreams are on hiatus.
  • Win the Sunday Entitled - Same as above, until we can get the BR up it's on hold.
  • Finish top 3 in both Jackpot Hold'em tourneys - €5 a week to potentially win 2-3k? seems like a solid investment
  • Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community.

 

Sunday 16/10/16 - Starting from the bottom
Had a good day on the Sunday. Although completely against any kind of BRM I had to play the Sunday Countdown because there is just so much value in it. Luckily it paid off and I finished 11th for close to €60 profit. The rest of the day was just little wins and little losses but I ended being €50 for the day. A good start to rebuilding the roll. :)

Monday 17/10/16
Monday is fast becoming my bogey day. Only one SNG and one MTT cash and they were both the minimum and a bounty in each €10 to minimize the losses for the day. I forgot that you feel the losses a lot more when there is less in your BR.

Tuesday 18/10/16
Another short session as I got in late from day work. I can never remember how to spell Charlottes last name so we'll call them the CVB tourneys. I played #1 and #2 for €4 each. I think any of the streamers tourneys are good to play because they offer the extra bounty value. €25 is a top 3 payout (ish) in a €4 MTT so why would you play a regular one when you give yourself the opportunity to get that extra value without even final tabling. Anyway, final tabled and min cashed one, donked the other. Cashed a €1 SNG and completed the last level of the missions so I've now got some €2 MTT tickets to use.

I've been playing through a PLO4 ticket over the last few days as well and it's been going quite well. I think it's at €15 as of today and has less that 30 flops left on it so I should get that completed to boost the roll/get the next level up ticket.

So there you go, we're all up to date. Vodafone have botched my fibre order so it'll be a few weeks before I get that in so streaming is on the back burner till then. I have everything ready now to just record a final table if it happens so I'll continue to do that whenever possible :) The grind back to black has begun!


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Got to admire your resilience and attitude! 👍

I'm currently hanging my head in shame from a similar, although much smaller, loss on slots :teardrop:

Good luck with bring your bankroll back to its former glory 😃

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Wednesday 19/10/16 - Bounty Bubblin'

The small session poker continued on Wednesday with mixed results. Finished 5th in the Squid Spectacular using a €2 MTT ticket for some pure profit, finished my PLO4 ticket for €15 and then cashed the Squid freeroll for a whopping €0.70!! 🆒

Managed to stone bubble both €10 bounties including a rubbish 99 < 55 moment a few hands before I busted one of them. Those kind of beats hurt a little more when you're putting up 10% of your BR on the tourney. Still a profitable day overall.

 

Thurs/Fri 20-21/10/16 - Movin' on nowhere

Just played cash PLO to complete the promo, one day + and one day - less than a Euro. Nothing to write about.

 

Saturday 22/10/16 - Consistency is key

Only played 5 MTTs on Saturday (I think because I was nursing a hangover) but I'm pleased with the results. One final table, one Min cash, one stone bubble and a top 20% finish out of 5 attempts is great news. Consistently finishing that high up can only be good in the long term. It's a tiny sample size I know but I'm actually +%ROI in all game types this months so despite the crippilg 4 digit deficit I'm actually playing profitable poker. Hopefully the trend can continue.

 

Sunday 23/10/16 - Know when to stop

The trend did continue :) Out of the first 4 MTTs I managed a 2nd and 3rd and and in multiple disciplines. PLO cashes always feel a little more special because I'm a donkey :)

Had another 4 final tables during the afternoon and early evening but never managed to get the gold trophy and the glory in any of them. The most heartbreaking one was the Sunday Entitled €5 last chance where I came 2nd and just got my buy-in back. I think if one more player had entered there would have been a second ticket available and I would have been in the big one :(

Fatigue set in later in the evening and I should have just stopped regging MTTs but you just can't get away from the juicy value in the Sunday Countdown. No big score in that this week though although I did min cash the Daily 4 so swings and roundabouts :)

My PLO10 ticket also died on Sunday in a standard AAxx vs slightly connected two suit hand that hit a flush on the river. I'm looking forward to the same thing happening next week at PLO25 :)

5 out of the last 6 days are showing as +€ days (and I think the 6th is only down due to sports bets) so things are looking good. It's going to be a long road to get the BR back in the positive but I'm confident a big gold trophey will be on it's way soon. Fibre is now due to go live next Wednesday so hopefully will get the Streaming back up and running after that. Working tonight so no Butler action this week but I've also been running terribly in it so deffo +ev to DJ instead :)

I don't expect much volume other than completing Movin' on up this week so I'll probably update again Friday and maybe get another episode of everyones 'least participated in' gameshow 'What Would You Do?' 🆒

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's the end of the month already? What a roller coaster it's been :happy:. time to catch up on the action and then do a little end of month review.

 

Tues/Wed 25-26/10/16 - Promo Grinding

I was working on Monday night so played nothing and then did the bare minimum on Tuesday to cover Moving on Up. I always try to play the community league on a Wednesday so I did that and one other tourney and then just the Moving on Up again. It's probably the only cash promo that gets me to play cash, other than missions, so it's doing it's job :)

Thursday 27/10/16 - Another one for the cabinet 

Another relatively short session by my standards but a good one :) Was +€ in both PLO cash tables I played and then scooped up a shiny gold trophy in a €4 Turbo Deep for just over €40. Much needed boost to the BR. It was almost a week ago so I remember nothing about what happened. I think I did get lucky on several occasions though :Angel:

Saturday 29/10/16 - Moving on Up 

I've got in my results that I cleared my PLO 25 ticket on Saturday but I'm not sure how :) I didn't play on Friday so maybe I just did a power session on Saturday to clear it but either way it yielded €71.95. An excellent haul in a level I'm 100% a fish at. I was probably helped by a number of other players that don't normally play PLO25 being there but I'm not going to complain. I did have the ticket over €100 at one point and then dusted off a buy-in in a AAxx vs double suited random cards type hand where the flush came on the river. I had those types of things swing both ways during my time playing so you can't get too mad about it when it doesn't flop your way.

I finished just out the money in the community freeroll (I'm begining to think winning the first one was a curse!) and then played terribly in the superuser Illuminati upper echelon elite freeroll and donked off all my chips to the eventual winner  in a 88 < QQ blowup. I think he had won a big hand just before I made the call so I thought he was betting a little lighter with all the chips. I was wrong. I was punished. :Teardrop:

Sunday 30/10/16 - Know your station

One thing I learned playing the PLO25 ticket was that generating challenge points is a lot easier at the higher stakes. I'm currently at 12k points and I think 4k at least of that came from playing PLO25. With that in mind and the idea that there would still be easier players on the PLO25 streets I hoped back in for a session with my winnings. I burned about €30 and then left :Teardrop:. The streets were mean again and I don't think I'll be back :Rofl:

What's the best way to bounce back from a beating at PLO25, finishing 3rd in the early €10 Bounty MTT :) 5 bounties and a bronze star meant we were just into the profit for the day. The early bounty has always been a good one for me and it starts about lunchtime in the UK so it's a nice way to get into a session.

Cue a day of near misses and donks after that. Only one final table for 5th in a PLO tourney and several almost cashes meant Sunday was a big loss. I was down close to €80 for the day. With the BR the way it is that was quite a big hit but sometimes Sunday's go like that. All the big events are on a Sunday so you can have weeks were you do really well and weeks where you do really bad. Obviously this happens all the time but you just notice it on Sunday because it's historically been the big day for tourneys, regardless of where you play.

Monday 31/10/16

Played the butler league and the DAily 4, busted the lot. Standard Monday. I wasn't really in the mood to play either.

 

End of Month Review

  • +/- for the month: -€1683.35 :Veryangry:
  • Days played: 23
  • Losing days: 10
  • Winning days: 13 :Thumbsup:
  • ROIs - Cash: 38.21%, SNGs: 104.2%, MTTs: 31.98% :Thumbsup:

** Results page **

Well... it's been a wild one! It's very hard to judge the results this month based on the figures. Obviously the +/- is a disaster but on the bright side it's not from poker :) All the other stats would suggest I've been running at decent ROIs at all games (The SNG is weird because I normally only play tickets so I'm not actually investing money). The big losing day was actually a winning day in poker terms so the numbers are telling a degen story and a consistent winning poker story at the same time.

I'll admit, it's been much more of a grind post slots blowup and my enthusiasm has dropped slightly. It's had to look at a €11 1st prize in a €1 MTT when you've been playing €10s the month before comfortably :Wonder: Feel no sadness for me though, it's my own fault and I'm an idiot for battling the Ragin' Rhino. If at least one person reads this blog and decided to close the slots (or any other gambling vice for that matter) for fear of doing the same thing as me then it'll make my hopeful rise from the ashes a little sweeter :) 

 

Goals for November

  • Get out the hole and start playing with profit again
  • Finish top 3 in both Jackpot Hold'em tourneys (Live the dream)
  • Blog regularly and post hands for discussion and analysis that will be helpful to the community.

Goals remain unchanged for November. I've been slacking on the posts due to short sessions and general lack of motivation but I'm going in hard in November :Fist:. MTT league promo will mean I should be on the grind a lot more and aiming for all those lovely gold trophies. There is also another month of missions to complete, I won one of 's Tennis comps so I have some tickets to use, I got a betting freeroll ticket when I tried to complete the Halloween promo and someone at Unibet did a missclick and gave me a €100 playthrough bonus so I have that as well :) I did try to give it back but Stubbe said no, as they always do with mistakes. You wouldn't see PS do that ;) 

There are still two Illuminati freerolls left and luckily I'm not DJing this Saturday so I can play them both. I plan on recording the Thursday one and live streaming the Saturday one. I'll chop up the Thursday one to only show the highlights and then talk over the chopped video so it all makes sense. There should currently be a BT engineer fiddling about in a green cabinet outside my flat hooking me up to some superfast fibre so I'll have all the bandwidth to stream in glorious HD for you all at the weekend :Cool:.

Time to get out the hole.. :Popeye:

 

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@GotWhatItTakes wrote:

Will you play all 3 levels of the MTT league (low, medium & high)? 

Or some kind of mix?

I wish you the best of luck at tables, thats for sure! :popeye:


I'll definitely skip the high. I've never really played the €25s and with the BR the way it is I don't plan on starting now 🤣. I may not even do the Mid unless I can get some good wins in the low to pad the BR. With there being a best 30 results cap it allows for some late bursts on €10s if things go well.

@testuser1, I knew someone would do something like that 😛. I would also class it as cheating if you're at work. Has to be a home connection if you're going to show off 😏

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Wednesday 02/11/16 - Start as you mean to go on.

Day one of my quest to top the low leader board in the MTT league IV is on! I just don't have the BR to compete at the higher levels so I'm going to focus on the low and then, results pending, try and get some extra monetary value out of the €10 events as people try and win points late in the month.

I managed to play 8 of the 10 events that qualify for points and to be honest it got quite hectic at one point. Between trying to update the results page and having, at one point, 7 tables open made for some pretty ABC poker playing from me. One of the good thing about recording results is that I always record the total entrants (or at least entrants up until I bust) so I can get a good idea of what events I could possibly skip to save on opening as many tables. Now that I've had a proper look at the schedule and points formula I expect all the €4 are going to be must plays purely on the fact that the buy in is used as a multiple for calculating points so getting the early bounties in is essential. I, of course, didn't know that last night and missed the first one 🤣

Early bust outs in one of the €4 bounties (event 1) and the Community League mean the session did not start well although I may have scraped a point in the promo league. The €1 Deepstack was another bust but we cleared top 50% so that should be another point. I read on another thread on 2+2 that the eventual winner (Hi Krusty :)) played for nearly 6hrs! That's PS level playing time. I think it'll definitely be one I skip this month. Although the field was over 200 I don't think the points return is worth the screen space. I'll maybe run some numbers and let you know about that.. or maybe I'll keep it to myself :)

Event 2 for me was the PLO bounty which brought the first final table of the day. 6th place and 3 bounties netting a cool €3 profit but more importantly some more league points. Early bust in the Daily 4 and top 50% in the turbo PLO bounty finished up event 3 and 4 for the day.

Event 5, the €2 Deep Crazy Bounty.. some title for an MTT 🤣. Last night it was very fitting as this screen shot will show..

Capture.PNG.f1641727e8a4e38438de6f34a909d361.PNG

I'm PartyPanda, we're at 20k/40k blinds with a 5k ante and I've just folded to leave me with 5% of a big blind left. I think we're in the money at this point which is why I folded.

Capture.PNG.84cc388f024d795cf903ecd1469c956e.PNG

This is 9 hands later 🤣. I kid you not, from less than a single BB to gold trophy holder in 9 hands 🆒. 5 Bounties, plus my own, and the 1st place money meant a healthy €28 profit and of course, big league points. Get's a trophy on day 1 is the best possible start you could ask for. Just need to get another 29 and we're in with a shot :)

Another top 50% and a quick bust concluded events 7 and 8 and we're done for the league. I'm sitting in the mid 30's somewhere so that seems like a good base to work from. Very pleased.

I was watching 'The Squid' Sam Grafton on the Unibet stream and decided to play the Squid Spectacular, I did terribly. I did however win a €25 something in the stream :cash:. Instead of the usual raffle spam Sam asked us to say what our favourite film was and reason for it. My favourite film is Die Hard. It's not the best film in the world by a long shot but it's I film I've watched countless times and brings back lots of different memories. The first time I watched it I was probably in my teens (we're talking close to 20 years ago :wow:) and it was in a time where TV channels in the UK would censor films by either dubbing over swear words with similar sounding words said by someone else or just cutting sections of the film out entirely. This was also during the time everyone used to record things on to VHS tapes. I watched that tape of Die Hard for several years blissfully unaware I was missing out on probably 10 minutes of the film and with a script that did not have a single F bomb in it. It wasn't until the delightful invention of the DVD and Amazon, or some other online retailer, having the Die Hard boxset on promo that I watched the *full* film. It was an eye opener 🤣. Anyway, nostalgia over.. I'm €25 richer. Yippie Kiyay MotherFunker ;)

Last MTT of the day was a €1 Deep turbo I thought counted for the league but didn't :wonder:. Finished 8th out 144 players, €2.79 profit 🤣. I can see why the €1 grind is so tough. Quick session of PLO cash and a SNG that I busted in classic bad beat fashion to complete the November missions and we're done for the day. I have a screen shot of the SNG hand but forgot to open dropbox to upload it, doh! I'll put it in the next post :)

As I'm sure you're all aware, I'm the King of the community for October 🆒. I now have a plethora of tickets to use up so I think Saturday will be my day for that. I got the mods to pick the tickets so I have some MTT, some SNG and a PLO cash ticket to play through, a nice mixed bag.

The Illuminati freeroll and the betting freeroll are both tonight so it should be a full schedule this evening and I still plan on recording the Superuser one for analysis at some point over the weekend. Can't wait to watch myself crash and burn again 🤣

 

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Thursday 03/11/16 - Points, Points, Points

I have to start with a few little confessions 👼. I didn't record the Illuminati freeroll table. OBS was being difficult and I just didn't have the patience to sort it. I also will not be streaming on Saturday. I forgot that I had promised the GF that we could go see the local fireworks display so it's happening slap bang in the middle of the evening. It also means playing the last Illuminati freeroll is going to be very difficult. Luckily, I have a plan! 

The freeroll starts at 7:30pm my time, the fireworks start at 8:00pm. The fireworks last 20 minutes. Assuming the late reg period is 1 hour, like it was last night, I plan to late reg at 8:25 from my phone on the walk back, lose a few blinds sitting out and still have a playable stack when I get in. Will it work? Who knows 🤣

 

Capture.PNG.9279907af9597efbc490d47a97e52e59.PNG

I've done some analysis on what low tourneys to play for the league promo and this is what I've come up with.. Just play the €4 ones :laugh:. The entrant numbers above are actual ones I've played in over the last two days so it's a good indication of whats up for grabs in each event points wise. As you can see even playing the €4 Deep Turbo at the end of the day is going to give you more points for 1st than sitting for 5+ hours in the €1 deepstack. Although not on the list, the only other qualifying €1 event had 99 runners when I played it on Wednesday so you're probably looking at less than 20 points for a first in that too.

There are only 2 small €2 events so they're off the playable list which just leave all the €4 ones. I don't have any numbers for the first Turbo as I never get in from work in time to play it but the rest of them are up there (Actually, I missed the PLO bounty.. It has about 50 runners :geek:). It's a no brainer that these are the ones to concentrate on so that's what I plan to do :)

With all the above in mind I sat down last night and auto regged all the €4 qualifiers and the Illuminati freeroll. The Bounty deepstack was a complete bust, no points. Great start :(.

The early bounty went much better. Final table (6th) and 5 bounties for €20 profit and a decent chunk of points (18 I think). Omaha Bounty, another final table (2nd) and 2 bounties for just under €25 and possibly 19 points.

Busts in the Daily 4 and Deep turbo meant no more points but I've now moved up to 19th on the leader board after only two days of play. The leader is well over 100 points ahead at the moment but the spreadsheet shows that you only need 1 1st place trophy to make that up and if I can consistently reach final tables like I have been so far this month then I should be in with a really good shout for a top spot. 

I'm also up just short of €50 for the month so things are going really well on the BR comeback. I have 13 or so tickets to play through (and the €25 one when it arrives) so there are plenty of 'free' opportunities to try and get the balance back in the black. November is feeling like a good month 🆒

The Illuminati freeroll went so-so. The 10 minutes levels allowed for a lot more play which made for a better tourney IMO. I'm not really sure how I made the final table but I do know I was pretty card dead and under average stack for the whole thing. Being card dead also has the knock on effect of making you look tight to all the other players so whenever I did shove everyone snap folded. In the 2 hours or so I was playing I got aces once, jacks once, and AK twice. The rest of the time I was just scraping for dead blinds and antes. There was a lot of aggressive play early on as well, you could not get a cheap bet in preflop or a C-bet through post flop. It's something I'll be adjusting to on Saturday.   

DJing tonight so I think I'll just play a single SNG to complete the last day of the mission and then it's the final spin of the wheel to get to Bucharest tomorrow :)

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Friday 04/11/16 - Mission Man

Friday was all about completing missions. 2x SNG to start the day, one 5 max to complete the 3rd day in a row of that mission and one HU to complete the 1st day of any SNG for 3 days. Came 2nd in the 5-max and just went all in every hand on the €1 HU to get it out the way... it didn't work this time around.

Next up was a little NLHE cash to complete the 'Blackjack' mission. It didn't take very long and I won a few €'s so that was a pleasant surprise :) Had to play a MTT with 'Qualifier' in it so I went for a SE one. Managed to get AK twice in about 5 hands and lose both times to small pairs. No ticket.

As I was working at night the only other thing I played was the first turbo that qualifies for the MTT League. I figured I might be able to get a few points before I went to work at 9. Finished 6th for €10 profit and some tasty points. For anyone keeping score I've now final tabled a MTT 3 days in a row. I don't think I've ever done that before 🆒 It also makes the 3rd consecutive wining day in November, 3 for 3 :cash:

 

Saturday 05/11/16 - Dealers Choice

Being 'Member of the month' for October meant I got €50 wirth of poker tickets to play with. I thought it would be fun to let the mods choose how they were made up and then just play a day with the tickets to see what we could get out of them. The tickets I received were as follows :-

€10 PLO10
MTTs: a €10, 3x €4 and a €2 
SNGs: 3x €4 and 2x €2

Quick confession, I played the PLO ticket on Friday afternoon when I was bored at work. It lasted 34 flops and I ended up with €3 or so cashed out as money.

Started off with SNG as I still had 2 days left to complete on a mission. Used a €4 ticket and finished 3rd in a A8 < Q7 cooler. I never really take SNGs serious so I can't say it was a big worry for the day. Next ticket on the chopping block was a €2 MTT one that went on a Turbo. Finished 15th, close to the money but not quite enough. 

For some reason I decided to play PLO25. I think my idea was to play super tight and complete a minor challenge I had that would push me over the 15k points mark. I know in my last post I said I wouldn't play it again but that turned out to be a complete lie it seems.. and I'm glad it was. I played for a few hours, saw 59 flops and ended up sitting out with €100. I was running really well, I'm not gonna sugarcoat it. All of my AAxx hands held when in big pots and I got lucky from time to time. It was an excellent boost to the bankroll and I did clear the 15k mark to net another €5. An excellent hit and run at the mid stakes :Angel:

Back on the MTT front I donked off the €10 ticket in a deepstack turbo and used my last €2 on a UO sat that I did terribly in. I don't know what it is but I just can't win those things at any stake. Next dealers choice was a €4 turbo and thankful things got back on track. A shiny gold trophy for the virtual cabinet and €46 for the BR. 4 days in a row for final tables too which is the most pleasing aspect as far as I'm concerned. I'm playing well at the €4 level and it's paying off.

Having said that I then donked the next ticket in a bounty but redeemed myself with another final table in the afternoon deepstack to pick up another €12. Played another €4 SNG and, of course, finished 3rd as I always do and that was that for the dealers choice. I still have a SNG ticket or two left but as I had the mission to complete I kept one back for that. It's not the best return on €50 but being +€ at the end is nothing to complete about.

The rest of the day was spent torching the winnings from the afternoon. Other than a 3rd in the PLO turbo bounty for just over €20 all the League MTT's were no cashes. The closest I got was a 12th in the first turbo with 9 paying. No good for the league but another profitable day and plenty of green on the results sheet.

The local fireworks display was rained off (as you would expect in Scotland :)) so I played the superuser freeroll for the start. Completely ignoring my own advice I tried to get cheap bets/c bets through and got punished every time. I sat in the bottom half on listing for most of the tourney but still made the final 9. Then I made the final 6.. then I made the final 3. To my left was VoteHilary (who we now know as gillvs77) and he was a pain in the ass all tournament :Veryangry:. He always had more chips than me and always used them to apply maximum pressure. I managed to use his aggression against him a couple of times and at one point was leading but ultimately I got frustrated and attempted a 3 barrel bluff that didn't get through. Had I been thinking clearly I would have never attempted it because I had seen him call me down with 2nd or 3rd pair previously but I'm not very clever.. and paid the price :( It was great fun playing with guys that were also in the twitch chat and having some banter with them, it's the one time I missed having in-game chat.

I have to thank the Unibet team for putting on the tourneys as well. For simply being active on a forum it's incredible value to be given the opportunity to play basically a 18-man SNG for a UO trip with no investment other than time (and moaning in my case). I've been incredibly lucky with the amount of value I've received from being here in the community in the few months it's been active. I've probably received about €500 if you include things like winning the first Community freeroll and the tickets from the blog and post/member awards. I don't know another poker site that would give you that without it being through rakeback or in-game actions. Even if I never win another promotion again for the lifetime of the community I would happily log in here every day and try and contribute. Being able to directly help create a better playing experience for everyone through discussions with the people that actually make the changes makes this experience so much more rewarding. You can look on posts for other sites on places like 2+2 and see how frustrated players get when they can't get involved in shaping their own gaming experience if team members don't get involved. The kind of access you get here is something rare and should not be taken for granted.

There has been some negativity recently about response times to things like the Community League and I don't think it's warranted. I can understand if you have a small BR and think you're in line for a big payout you'd rather know sooner than later but you only have to look at the PS MTT thread on 2+2 to realise a 1 week response time is lightning fast compared to some other sites. I'd also put my neck on the line and say I'd expect Unibet will do something to compensate players for the delay in a response about the league. If they don't, it doesn't matter. These things happen, people are sick, jobs are missed. Nobody is losing any money, it's just taking a little longer than normal for it to be dished out. Poker is about patience, and not just on the felt.

Anyway this is all getting a bit preachy and/or emosh and I've typed far too much for one day :) I'll be back in the next few days to wrap up the week and continue the race for Low League gold! 

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