Blog: How to be really good at being average..

[whereisrivaldo]

Yea cooking and grinding is very annoying (unless you're Davitsche and make a show out of it). You miss the action at the tables, and the constantly beeping laptop makes the cooking very slow operation. Sounds like you should be preparing your meals ready on the day-offs or in the morning etc. when you have time. 

I really don't like playing poker with an empty stomach. And actually now my biggest meal of the day is right before the evening MTTs. I know some live pros advice against big meals before/during tournaments, but I haven't seen a problem with that. On the second or third break of the session I get a bowl of mixed nuts and a fruit or two and eat them while playing. These usually get me through the session, but I still sometimes get hungry towards the end of a long session. Then I just suffer till the end and have a big late night snack afterwards. 

If I have a big Sunday MTT session I always prepare a huge bowl of chicken salad to feed me every two or three breaks. There's also nuts in the salad, gotta get those good fats for your brain! 😉

 

[MoreTBC]

Some top tips there @whereisrivaldo, Thanks :)

I don't get up early enough to have breakfast before work, let alone prepare evening meals so I don't think that's ever going to be an option 🤣. I do like the sound of having salad prepared though as that's fairly easy to do in a few minutes and you can come and go from it. Fruit and nuts seem like good choices for mid session snacks too, will need to get more involved in both.

I normally eat before a weekend session so it's not so bad then. It's just the long sessions that span over two meal times that get me but I think whipping up something quick shouldn't be too hard. 

 

 

The Daily 4.. or maybe the Daily 12?

The Daily 4 is my kryptonite. I don't know what it is about that tournament but no matter what cards I get I always get crushed. Dealt aces, I'm losing to K5 suited AIPF, AK never hits.. the list goes on. I've cashed a handful of times but in general I just end up finishing somewhere in the 40-60th place region.

I'm a loose goose, I'll be the first to admit it. I like seeing flops and structures like the one in the Daily 4 just don't lend themselves to that. When I played on PS I could curb this approach when playing in things like satellites by changing the table felt to a different colour so I'd remember to play tighter but there is no such luxury on Unibet. The obvious thing to do is play tighter but when all the other tables you have open are bounty ones (which lend themselves to being on the looser side) it's hard to remember which one I should be all ABC on.

This got me thinking about alternative ways I could possible reach the money me often. *Spoiler alert* After last nights inevitable bust out I left the lobby open to see how things progressed as the reached the end of late reg. The Daily 4 has quite a unique buy-in option in that you can buy multiple stacks when you enter. Cue a voice in my head saying the following...

"What if you just late reg with a minute to go with 3 or 4 starting stacks"

The theory behind this is pretty simple. After the 90 minutes or whatever the late reg period is roughly half the field is gone so you only have 40 or 50 or so players to get through, the min cash for the Daily 4 is normally around €10-16 so a cash is making your money back and hopefully you've missed the majority of the maniacs as variance eventually hits them in the face. You're going to be pretty short when you join, 15-20BB, but you're going to be in the middle of the pack based on my HUGE one tourney sample :) That's one double up away from comfort and probably your money back as a minimum.

The question is, do you think it'll work?

I've not tried it yet and I thought I'd ask the crowd to see if I'm just losing the plot or if it's a viable option. I'm going to keep an eye on stack sizes at the end of late reg and the corresponding min cash values to see if it makes any sense at all to try it and then if someone doesn't come in with a concrete reason why it's a stupid idea I'll give it a bash next week :)

 

Normal blogging will resume tomorrow, just had some random thoughts I'd throw out as something different to read :)

[VikingsAF]

I think it could be a viable option. Ofcourse, any mis step means your end, but any double up (or just a few Bb's) can get you back in the game. 

If you say you'd start in the middle of the pack, and you dare to play aggressive with a low stack, then I think you certainly should give it a try :) (but it also depends on the payout structure, because investing 12 euro for a maximum win of 100 with 50 players left, is maybe not the best of the best :)) 

[MoreTBC]

I think the Daily 4 normally has somewhere between €140-170 for first. Also it normally pays 18 I think so you only have to get through 30 or so to get your money back.

[psrquack]

I think the daily 4 is playable even with 1 buyin too (if you do not late reg) but 3-4 buyins can make you very confident. Btw what about spending that €12 for the daily 4 qualifiers? The strenght of the field is the same and maybe you can make from €12 more buyins than 4.

[MoreTBC]

I've never really thought about the sat route @psrquack. could be something to look at. I've always looked at the lobby and figured if I have the BR to enter the tourney direct I'll do that and save myself the time and screen space over the satellite route.  Don't really want to be ina  situation where I fire 2 or 3 sats, not win any and then buy in regardless and end up paying more than the buy-in.

I've never played the Daily 4 sats though so depending on how soft they are they could be a good way to build up tickets. If you're cashing 50% then it's profit I guess :)

[psrquack]

I think in this special case playing  4 satellites is more efficient than playing a main event with 1 bullet.

[MoreTBC]

Monday 06/02/17

The start of a month on Monday night gigs meant I did not have time to get anything substancial in volume wise. Sunday Rugby bets and Superbowl bets got put on Mondays results so profit too an instant hit but poker wise I won a €4 HU SNG and broke even in cash completing missions and then min cashed the €4 Turbo to win €4 and a few league points.

Profit for the day: -€8.85

 

Tuesday 07/02/17

Half day Tuesday at work meant I could squeeze in a few MTTs before starting. I decided that I missed playing €10 MTTs so fired up the Turbo Deepstack and Turbo Bounty. Bombed the Deepstack and cashed the Bounty making a total of €5 profit :)

Played 5 out of the 6 €4 MTT league games at night and did not cash anything, disappointing night.

Profit for the day: -€14.03

 

Wednesday 08/02/17

Managed to get all the €4 league qualifiers in on Wednesday with mixed results. Made enough bounties in the Deepstack for it to be a profitable tourney even though I finished 105th or something :). Cashed in the early bounty for a small amount with no bounties and the rest were duds. Got 3rd in the Community League as well to hopefully cement my spot at the top this month. I'm very keen for some custom avatar glory :)

Profit for the day: -€5.89

 

Thursday 09/02/17

DJing at night so only had time for the €4 Turbo, it didn't last long :(

Profit for the day: -€4.00

[MoreTBC]

Friday 10/02/17

Friday was a strange one. There were some server issues at Relax so everyone was unable to get online in the evening. It was after 8pm before I could get logged in so the only league qualifer was the Deepstack Turbo so I jumped into that. Felt like a bumper field (140 entrants) I guess because everyone wanted to play something when the server started working again. Played pretty well and ened up on the final table but could not finish and got knocked out in 6th.

Profit for the day: €23.72

 

Saturday 11/02/17

Woke up far too early on Saturday and didn't feel great all day. Played 7 MTTs and only cashed one, an early €10 bounty. I finished 8th with 6 getting paid but I got 3 decent bounties so it was a profitable tourney. Everythign else was a bust including me misclick regging a €10 turbo by accident :( Lost on the rugby too, the bet last weekend was a one off fluke it seems 🤣

No league action as I was working so I'm slowly slipping down the leaderboard. 

Profit for the day: -€53.86

 

Sunday 12/02/17

I was pretty hungover on Sunday to be honest and spend most of my day sitting in bed watching Twitch and two tabling. Started the day with a final table which is always good but unfortuantely it was in a rather quiet 'Four for Noon' where only the top 3 got paid. I finished 6th :(

I only cashed 1 MTT out of 11 on Sunday and it was a new one for me I think, the €4 daily deepstack. I never play this one during the week as it starts too early for me but I like to hop in it at the weekends. I don't remember ever doing wel in it but Sunday changed all that. For large potions of it I was chip leader and at one point I sat out for 30 min+, went and had a bath and came back only 2 places down on when I left 🤣. I lost a few flips when we were down to the final two tables so when the final table hit I was in the middle of the pack. Things went pretty quickly and before I knew it we were down to 3. It was pretty swingy 3 handed and I had less that 10BB at one point but eventually I got heads up.

My opponent went into the heads up with a 2-1 chip lead and well.. they crushed me :( They just had it every time we went to showdown. HU did not take very long and I took home the silver medal after 5 hours of play.

Profit for the day: €28.08

 

At the almost halfway point in the month I think I can safely say that I won't be beating my MTT league position this month :( I just don't have enough playing days left to make any kind of dent in the points deficit unless I go on some sun level heater. Realistically I have at most 6 days to play the full schedule and 3 where I can squeeze the first Turbo in before DJing so it's just not going to be enough. I'm still going to keep playnig them because I think the entrant/prizepool boosts are good value finishing top ten is no longer a goal for the month.

The new goal now is to get anothe final table in the Community League and try and secure that. Not sure how that's going to pan out with the missed one on Friday but I should have at least the two remaining Wednesdays to get some more points. As always, I'll keep you all updated :) 

[MoreTBC]

I've started adding graphs to the results page. Any 'interesting' charts anyone wants to see? Not really sure what data I really need to collate that would be usefull.

[MathrimC]

MTT and SNG ROI would be interesting.

And if you keep track of days of the week and hour during the day, ROI comparison per day of the week, and per time of the day would be interesting. I'm planning on doing that for my SNGs, to see if there is a big difference between weekdays and evenings and weekends.

[MoreTBC]

---

@MathrimC wrote:

MTT and SNG ROI would be interesting.

And if you keep track of days of the week and hour during the day, ROI comparison per day of the week, and per time of the day would be interesting. I'm planning on doing that for my SNGs, to see if there is a big difference between weekdays and evenings and weekends.

---

@MathrimC, I have ROI % in the end of month reports as a value. The problem with SNGs for me is that I rarely actually buy in for cash so it can make the number seem a little strange. I'm not even sure the formula is right but it makes sense I think that if I use a ticket (0 investment) and win a €2 HU SNG my ROI is 394% :) 

I track daily but only by date, not day. Could maybe add a day colum to filter out more. 

I should be able to do a finishing place chart for HU and 5max SNG and was thinking about doing a top 20% finish pie or something like that. 

[FeelsBadMan]

Just track EVERYTHING as buying in with cash, and calculate based on that ... then you can deduct tickets at the end of the day to see your actual profits :P 

[MoreTBC]

@FeelsBadMan, That makes perfect sense. I will implement that from March. Thanks.

 

Monday 13/02/17

Working again on Monday night so I only had time for the €4 turbo. Finished in 30th :(

Profit for the day: -€4.00

 

Tuesday 14/02/17

Wasn't really in the mood to play on Tuesday but I knew I was running out of points scoring opportunities so plowed on. Bubbled the Bounty Deepstack by two places and then after that really could not be bothered with it. Bricked the other MTT's I played and actually closed the client while still in the Deepstack Turbo so I don't even know what place I finished 🤣

Profit for the day: -€18.65

 

Wednesday 15/02/17

Went into Wednesday's session ready and focused. I'd been out for a meal with the gf before I started so I had a full belly before I started and set myself the goal to win some UO London fun coupons so I could go do some things in the non-poker times next week.

I've never been able to actively try and win money when it comes to poker. I know that sounds silly on the face of it but I've always had the mentality that winning money isn't something I can control and making good decisions is something I can. I can't sit down and say "I want to win x amount of money" because I just don't think that works, especially in tournaments. I just go into each session trying to play my best and hoping the gods of variance are on my side. 

Things did not start well. Poor finishes in all the low league qualifiers and the Community league meant I was heading for another losing day. I took a stab at the €10 daily deepstack and was quickly punished as some maniac called my 30BB reshove with AKs with 74 and hit a 7. You just don't expect stuff like that at the €10 level but it appears it happens and it was rather tilting 😠.

Having not won a single cent in the session I decided to throw BRM out the window and go back to my old faithfuls, the €10 bounties. Many a Euro has been won in these tournaments and Wednesday was no different. The turbo bounty added another gold trophy to the cabinet after a very up and down final table. I had 5BB at one point and didn't get a bounty until we were down to the final 5 but a good run heads up lead to the victory. Couldn't quite close out the reg speed bounty and finished 4th in that for a total of €130ish profit.

It has been a long time since I felt that focused playing poker. I was thinking about every decision, playing tighter and making ever chip count. It was very rewarding for that focus to pay off with some cold hard cash and the satisfaction of a 1st place 🆒. I also cleared a bonus step by playing the €10 MTTs so it covered the days earlier losses too.

Profit for the day: €133.44

 

Thursday 16/02/17

Working again, no play.

 

The BR has just crept over the €500 mark so I've done what any sensible human would do and withdrawn nearly all of it 🤣. Don't worry, I'm not leaving :) Just using it to cover gf's flights and travel expenses for London until she gets paid and then I'll redeposit. I'll probably put half of it back in and mark this as the start of me chipping away at the deficit. 

This time next week I'll have busted a live UO Main Event sat and be wandering around London looking at things, it's all very exciting :)  

 

 

 

[MoreTBC]

An idiots guide to finding leaks in your game when you don't know what you're doing or looking for by me, an idiot :) (Part 1)

I've not played a lot of poker over the last few days (withdrawing nearly all your BR can do that) so I've been looking into finding holes in my game via hands I've tracked on another site I've been playing on recently. Obviously you can't track anything on Unibet easily so it's going to be harder to find leaks sometimes but I think by going through it using data I've collected somewhere else that information can still be applied here.

I've not had Holdem Manager 2 for long and it terrifies me. It's a wall of numbers and abbreviations I don't understand so when I decided I was going to use it to fix my terrible plays (and write this hopefully useful post) I did what any person would do.. Google how it all works. Specifically I searched for how to find leaks in my games using HM2 and found this: http://www.pokerlistings.com/strategy/leak-finding-using-holdem-manager. This post is basically me going through this link step by step and seeing just how bad I am :)

Things did not start well. The post suggests I should have 300k hands of data to be able to accurately find issues in my play. I have a 1/10th of that to work with :) It's ok though, we'll plod on and see what's happening with my preflop play.

Preflop

"In the main filter tab click early position. This will filter to all hands played under the gun and under the gun +1. First and foremost look at your VPIP and PFR.  They should be almost half of your overall VPIP. You should be playing very tight from early position."

VPIP/PFR (Total): 17.6%/11.6%

VPIP/PFR (EP only): 12.3%/11.3%

That's not too bad is it? :) I might be wrong here but I think the PFR stat doesn't need to be half the total value. You're never really limping from early position so the amount of time you put money in the pot in EP and the amount of times your raise preflop should be pretty close right? There doesn't appear to be an official 'best VPIP/PFR total' as it's always situational but 15-25% seems to be in the realms of where you want to be based on a quick google :)

 

"Filter your UTG results further in the hole cards tab and see how you do with the bottom of your UTG range. Let's say the bottom of your UTG range is something like ATo , Axs, and T9s. Look at each one independently and see if you're turning a profit. You may surprised to learn the results."

I don't have a "UTG range", I'm not clever enough for that. I see cards, they look pretty, I play them. I chose the above as a rough example just to see what it spat out. 

Well it's thrown up some interesting information. The first thing that sticks out is that 66/44/33/22 are winners. I'm pretty confident that this is down to the small sample size and some run good. I've checked the 22 hands and can confirm this is the case. The most I've lost with 22 is around 7k chips and the most I've won is over 50k and that was a 5BB shove that was called and the board bricked for the villain. When I checked 99 I only have 36 hands as a sample so you really can't tell if it's going to be a winning hand at this point. 

Even with the small sample I think there are hand combinations that I should be folding in EP that I just don't. I looked at pocket pairs first and did an additional filter to only see hands when I was 50BB or more deep. This is the kinda level when I get my head torch on and go set mining. It pretty much looks like the chart above, I'm losing at everything up to TT. It feels horrible to fold a pair at any time but the stats don't lie, they're costing me chips. There are a couple others I'll probably make a conscious decision to not play as well (ATo and KQo) especially when there are no antes.

 

"Next, you want to look at how you're playing against raises."

Unfortunately the post doesn't say what to look for specifically so we're just going to have to make up some stuff here :) Actually, I don't really know where to begin with this one because there are too many options based on positions and actions etc.. The base stats are that I'm -9BB/100 total when facing one raiser so there is something going wrong somewhere. I'll come back to this one once I've done a little more digging to work out a) what I'm looking for and b) examples of it :)

 

"Next we have in the blinds vs late position steal."

I ferociously defend my big blind so this should be a good one :) 

Woohoo!. I appear to be doing something right (I think) :Cool:. The hand sample is just too small to get into it on a 'per hand' basis as most of the combos have <5 results. There are no doubt areas where I'm torching money by defending but it's just too early to tell. One thing I did notice is that AA is the only pocket pair I've not called with when coming up against a steal. I thought this was strange so I checked my KK hands and there has only been one but I called an all in so it's different from defending as far as I'm concerned. It's something I'd need to play about with in the filters to narrow down but my gut feeling is that I'm not doing as well at the stats say if you remove calls against all ins and there is some post flop play.

 

That's enough numbers for one day I think. HM2 is a gift and a curse because it gives you so many stats and ways to break down the data that it can help you find things you're doing wrong and make you think you're doing things wrong when you're not. If I remember I'll revisit this post near the end of the year and re-run everything to see what's changed and what hasn't. Obviously you can't do any of the reporting on Unibet hands but there are some simple processes you can apply based on what's above. With a spreadsheet you could track results of pocket pairs in various positions fairly easily for example to see if you're winning or losing. Chips won/lost isn't really important so it would just be a column for win and one for lose for each position along the top and the pairs down the side and just tally them up. 

If I've made any mistakes about what the stats mean or how to interpret them please tell me, I need to learn, and if you have any questions let me know, I'll google the answer :)

 

[MathrimC]

---

Allow me to dig up a question from a while ago:

@MoreTBC wrote:

 

I don't really know a good way around it all so I'm looking for some tips from the daily grinders on here :) How do you survive 4+ hours of play and eating?

---

Have you ever heard of Soylent? (or Joylent in Europe) It's a meal replacement. It was originally developed as a hobby project by a software engineer who was tired of wasting time cooking, eating and doing dishes. It's a powder that contains all necessary nutrients. You have to mix 4 spoons of powder with 1/2 liters of water to have a shake that contains at least 33% of all essential nutrients. Very quick, quite thick so it really fills you up, and it's healthier than most fastfood wich does not at all contain all nutrients.

The reason I dig this up today is because my first Joylent order just arrived today, and I drank my first shake to replace my dinner this evening. Took me 1 minute to prepare, and filled me up nicely 😃

[MoreTBC]

The big ol' Unibet London recap (Part 1, probably)

Wednesday 22nd February

Always best to start at the beginning with these things :) I'm sure most of you know by know that my UO London experience did not start off particularly well. I finished my day job at 17:30 on Wednesday, all excited about packing and getting ready for a hopefully fun adventure in London, and at 17:33 received a text message from British Airways to tell me my flight on Thursday morning was cancelled. WTF?! :Veryangry:. I got 3 minutes of excitement before something went wrong. Turns out there was a storm named Doris on the way and she was about to cause some havoc. The BA website refused to let me change my flight for about an hour and a half which added to the stress and ruined my plans for the evening. I only had three things to do on Wednesday night, pack my bag, collect my girlfriends bag from her house and play the Community League. I ended up doing all three at the same time :(. I started the league game, played for about 20 minutes, sat out, drove to the gf's and back and then had my laptop on my bed trying to play while I packed. I didn't play well obviously as I wasn't really paying attention and busted in some low scoring position. I'm going to be writing a strongly worded letter to BA this week about how they probably cost me a cool in-game avatar with they're flight cancelling nonsense :Angry: 

Got packed and began to chill out a bit so obviously the next thing to do was to fire up the stream and watch the eSports/Ambassadors SnG's :). I'll admit I was mostly watching the eSports one to see if any of my bets came in :) I was convinced that the stream would hit over 12.5k viewers and put that in almost every one of my bets so I didn't do very well :Waterfall:. I think they peaked at just over 10k views which is huge for a poker stream so congrats to the guys for surviving the carnage that was the chat box that night. The Ambassador SnG ran pretty late and I ended up falling asleep around 1am when they were down to 3 so I missed Charlotte's win.

 

Thursday 23rd February

The Re-booked flight was set to depart at 12:20 so I woke up blurry eyed at 9am ready for a day of travelling. Doris was still kicking up a weather fuss so I checked to see if the flight was still running.. it was, but it was delayed :(. By the time we reached the airport the fight was due to take off at 13:55, well over an hour and a half late. Aberdeen airport is not a fun to be when there are delays. It's got three shops and one bar so it was a loooooong wait. 

Once we finally got in the air things didn't get much better. The high winds in London meant planes had to approach slower which in turn slowed how many planes landed per hour and caused more delays. Circling London in 40 mph winds does absolutely nothing for a guy that gets motion sickness so when we finally landed I was feeling worse for wear. Things didn't improve as we chose rear facing seats in the express train from the terminal so by the time I finally got to the hotel I was ready for a lie down.

The Unibet welcome desk was nice and easy to find, it was on the way to the lifts for the rooms. This is where I met the immaculately dressed Jarle. He was looking after the UK (and another country that has slipped my mind) players and it only took two minutes to get my players badge and find out about the Welcome drinks being hosted in the bar across the road from the hotel. Everything was very relaxed and it was good to know as soon as you arrived that there was a point of contact if you had any issues.

Then it was time to hit the room. It was like any other room in a hotel to be honest, bed, TV, bathroom etc. The one good thing about it was that it was on the 21st floor. The view was amazing. I stupidly forgot to take a photo of it but you could see things like the London Eye and it was over an hour away on foot. I'm hoping Andrei took a photo as we found out on the last day that we were two doors away from each other the whole weekend and never crossed paths :Veryhappy:.

Grabbed a quick sandwich and then it was off to the casino for the first time. I'll be honest, it was a little daunting. I've been in casinos before and my local casino is under the same brand so I didn't need to register or any of that because I already had a players card but walking into the room and not knowing where to go and who to look for was a little confusing. There were lots of people with Unibet passes on but you didn't really know who to ask first. I think this may have been a community members only issue as there was a Welcome booth as you came in but I think it was for the main event players and late reg ended at 5pm and I turned up at half 7 so nobody was there. I took a quick walk around and found what looked a bit like a registration desk. Turned out it was and after a quick ID check I was handed a bit of paper with a table and seat number. I think if I was going to have to pull out a 'room for improvement' comment it would have been the first 5-10 minutes in the poker room. For the first time/new player that has maybe never registered for a live tourney it would have been good to be walked through the process and shown about a bit.

It's a gripe that lasted until I turned around from the registration desk as I was met by Stubbe and Marco. Meeting people you only know from the Internet is always going to be a strange experience but I had the bonus of knowing what Stubbe looked like from the 'Road to Unibet' video and he had watched one of my two very brief streams so knew what I looked like. We exchanged some travel stories and updates on other community guys that had/had not arrived and then it was 8pm. Time to try and qualify for the main event.

Most of the tables for the satellite were in the main room and there was also a smaller side room with 4 tables in it, I was there. Let's say the temperature in the room was inconsistent during my time there and some of the other players were quite vocal about about their unhappiness. I however was just excited to play some more live cards. It felt like a new game playing live with all the fun of chips and cards and that. I found myself constantly counting my chips to work out how much I had and trying to count chips in pots when other people were playing. You'll see the guys with headphones on, watching videos on their phones and that, they're missing out! There is always something going on and it was great fun just watching it all unfold.

I had planned to take notes on my phone of hands I played not realising Stubbe would pop his head in every half an hour or so to see what my stack was like and get a quick update. I think this confused a lot of the players all weekend really as the combination of players badge and intermittent rail made them think I was a bigger deal than I really was :Rofl:. I had a pretty active table so I just sat there and let them rumble with each other. I do remember getting pocket tens pretty early and folding to a three bet because I didn't want to bust quickly and felt the guy was playing a little snug. If I could go back I would have called, bust and then got a pint :)

You've probably already read the live updates thread so you'l know I was sitting in the 2-10bb range for at least 2 hours. This was mostly caused by me being completely card dead (The 10's and an AQo being my highlights) which there really isn't anything I could do about. Live play is much looser and players are calling a lot wider so I figured I'd just wait until I had the cards/position to shove and then cross my fingers. Luckily I survived every time and by the time I hit Vongrundal's table I was sitting with a 'comfortable' 10bb. Two double ups in 3 hands and I was now in the strange position of having lots of chips. It didn't last long as BadBeatPeete (BBP) hit a set on the turn during a hand to take a decent chunk of my chips and put me back into the sub 10bb zone.

At the last hand before the second break I had 2.5bb and a rather unhappy girlfriend who wanted to go out for a drink. I'd been telling her I was going to be out 'soon' for the last few hours and the poker gods kept deciding otherwise. I put all the chips in, got the expected call, and flipped over A10. It held and I entered the break with a stack I might be able to survive with.

I've just read the live updates again and I think Stubbe got it wrong in his reporting :Wow:. Down to 16 players and 2 tables we had a little community corner set up with myself in seat 7, BBP in seat 8 and vongrundal/Christian in seat 9. Everyone was trying to survive as the average stack was around the 10bb mark. In the hand that crippled me the updates say vongrundal shoved and I called but I think it was the other way around because poor Christian had to give me the 'I've gotta call' speech which I would have done if it was the other way round against a community player. The saying goes that there are no friends in poker but I could tell he wasn't really happy about calling and that he was going to have a big hand. The cards went on their backs and it was KK for me vs AK for vongrundal. It was the first time I thought I'd be good in a race.. but I forgot about the KK curse :( I've always thought he hit an A on the flop or turn but looking at the picture from the night he turned a straight and I couldn't find an A on the river for a chop.

Strangely I wasn't that bothered at the time. I was at the point after a full day of travel and nearly 6 hours in a chair that the thought of getting up for 11am the next day for potentially play another 12 hours of poker wasn't really what I wanted. I wanted some sleep. I also had a lot of fun busting. That might sound strange but I had developed a little rail of supporters that were making noise during the action. It felt a little bit like my own final table and I really enjoyed it :). A big thanks to Andrei, XpresX/Hugo, RemK_95/Remko and Stubbe/Marco for handing around and making bubbling a £1K payout from a freeroll a very pleasant experience.

I hung around to see vongrundal just miss out on a Main Event seat and then walked back to the hotel with Remko, who gave me a glowing review of my blog :Cool:. Smoothed things over with my very unhappy girlfriend, who strangely could not be persuaded to go out for a drink at 2am, and then went to bed.

 

Friday 24th February

I set my alarm every morning for 10am in order to try and make breakfast but I never did (except Monday when we left). With vongrundal missing out on a seat in the main it left BBP as the lone community player for the day and there was only the high roller and the deepstack running so I morphed into full tourist mode and went to see the sights. Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, The London Eye.. all that good stuff. Being from a city that isn't known for it's tourism you quickly realise just how big a deal all these things are on an international level. For example, people were queueing up to get their photo taken next to a red telephone box, which was strange to me as I'd grown up with them on most streets. I'm one of those guys that's a bit 'I've seen it on TV' about landmarks and wasn't really fussed but I really would recommend the London Dungeon if you visit. It was a very entertaining hour and a half of stories about the history of London with the odd scare here and there. We went round Madame Tussauds (again, I was a bit 'meh' about it), had a look down the big shopping streets and then headed back to the hotel for some food.

After dinner I headed down to the casino with my girlfriend for a drink or two and ended up meeting all the community guys and now VikingsAF, who arrived late. I have to thank the guys for being so welcoming to my girlfirend and making her feel right at home in a group of degenerate gamblers. From Andrei trying to get Facebook details of her friends to Stubbe giving giving me 2x drinks tokens instead of one each time it really helped integrate her into the evening and she ended up have more fun and attention than me:Rofl:.  'A few drinks' became lots and lots and we spent a good few hours in the casino chatting and laughing about various things. I had my first conversations with David Van Der [insert dutch ending here] and Marc Convey which was good, both were very approachable and open to answering questions about the stream and Unibet in general. We also witnessed this. From the video thumbnail you can just about see Andrei talking to my girlfriend on the far left. It was quite a surreal thing to watch but was clearly set up as the camera guys were waiting for Kassouf for a few minutes before he turned up. Griffin had been drinking most of the night and at one point appeared at our table while talking to Laura (who does all the interviews during the UO). We ended up having a quick conversation and then he disappeared out the casino to find a more lively spot to carry on his night. 

I'd be lying if I could tell you what time we left the casino but I do know why we did leave :). Someone (Stubbe) decided we should play a SnG in the hotel. Seemed like a good idea at the time:Rofl:. We had poker sets with chips the size of fingernails and several drunk players all with a different idea of how the blinds should work. It was chaos.. but fun chaos. I left the guys after being beaten by Andrei in some horrible runner runner hand after flopping trip 10's. Spoke to Espen/Uhlen for the first time too briefly, not that he remembered (more on that in part two), before heading to the lift and bed.

 

In part two we'll cover the community side event, the players party and all the action from Sunday :). It's taken me 3 days on and off to finish this part so expect part two next week or something :Laugh:.

Rather than tag mid-post I'm just going to mass tag at the bottom of the posts if you're in there somewhere :)

@testuser1, @MarcoV, @Andrew, @AndreiBN, @vongrundal, @VikingsAF, @YpresX, @BBP, @DaVitsche, @Hymn2Ninkasi.. am I missing anyone?

 

[MathrimC]

Nice post, makes me jealous I wasn't there.

[whereisrivaldo]

---

@MoreTBC wrote:

I had 2.5bb and a rather unhappy girlfriend who wanted to go out for a drink. I'd been telling her I was going to be out 'soon' for the last few hours and the poker gods kept deciding otherwise.

---

:Laugh::Laugh:

Awesome trip report so far, waiting for the second part!

[vongrundal]

Nice post! Reading it was like experiencing everything again - maybe that's why I will read it one more time now :D

Looking forward to the next one! Say hi to Shannon!

[MoreTBC]

@shazzab, you're internet famous now 🤣

[shazzab]

Wish we could re live the experience again met some lovely people a holiday I shall never forgot for sure

[MoreTBC]

Hello blog fans :)

I've not even started part two of the London trip yet and I'm nearly finished part two of me rambling about stats in HM2 and not knowing what they mean but I'm not here to talk about them just now, I'm here to ask for your help. I played a hand last night and it's been annoying me ever since and I'd like the ICM bosses and/or the Push/Fold wizards to tell me what I should have done.

The set-up

It's the Sunday Entitled, there are 12 players left, 9 get paid. It's a farly tight table and nobody is really getting out of line. Stack sizes are as follow :-

Seat 1: 17904 (11bb)

Seat 2 : 64289 (40bb)

Seat 3 : 23906 (15bb)

Seat 4: 21404 (13bb) (me)

Seat 5: 49048.50 (30bb)

Seat 6: 62397.50 (39bb)

Stack sizes are after posting the 200 ante and blinds are at 800/1600. I am 11 of 12 at this point. I get dealt QTo in the small blind and it folds round to me with seat 5 in the big blind. Is shoving the correct play or should I have waited? I've never done any ICM calculations but I ran it through this and I think it's suggesting I should shove Q8o+ against the BB?

Seat 5 had AA and obviously crushed me. What is it with me finishing 3 off the money in Unibet tourneys? :Teardrop: That makes the live sat to the main, the live freezeout and now this!

After the hand all I could think about was that I had 13bb, I could have waited and found a better spot. Did I just get unlucky or was waiting the correct play? ICM gods, assemble!

 

[MathrimC]

Shoving QT is definitely better than folding, as your calculation indicates.

I know the feeling you get when you shove into a monster and go out quicker than you would have with more passive play, but with high blinds and antes, you can't pass up on a good steal opportunity. You don't always get it folded to you in late position when you have a stealworthy hand, so if you let those opportunities pass you'll be blinded out in no time. Letting yourself blind down is much worse than pushing small edges.

However, push/fold charts compare only two options, there are two other options you could evaluate:

Raising small and folding to a reraise: I think you're too shallow for this and it is bad versus good aggresive opponents. With all the money in the pot, a reshove becomes really attractive for him. You want to be the one making the shove, putting the ICM pressure on them instead of allowing them to shove on you.

Limping and making a small cbet on the flop: whether this is good depends on the opponent: this works well with opponents who tighten up and play fit or fold postflop when blinds get high. Vs good aggressive opponents this can get tricky and gives him the chance to steal a part of your stack.

So you made a good play and were just unlucky.

[MoreTBC]

Thanks @MathrimC.

I didn't put much consideration into a limp or raise because I felt the villain knew what they were doing and would shove over either so it would have been a waste of chips.

I guess I just got "dealt a game over" as Jcarver would say :)