Originally posted by mbml
8k VPPs to go!!! I'm glad this SNE chase is going to be over soon.
GZ! Tackle it ~
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and it's done. Final 3k grind was pretty tiring. I have not slept well in a long time since I was always sleeping at 0630 and I had problems sleeping well for 6h+ or more (usually waking up at 11 and taking 2 naps in the afternoon and evening).
I'll switch back my schedule to normal hours. As for results, I did a lot worse compared to last year. A huge part of this was having multiple huge losing streaks. I ended up with a December high of +78k (and another 20k RB), which makes this pretty close to my first 6 figure month.
RB: 125k
Winnings: 30k+
Congratulations, mbml! That's pretty nice numbers to have in your profit at the end of the year 
@enjoythis: Thanks, pretty decent but not good enough I guess. Always feel like I have to do better and better or else it feels like taking a step backwards and making no progress.
To Do List for the next 1-2 weeks:
-Finish watching all the RIO videos that I didn't bother watching during Dec (my sub is expiring in a few days)
-Start coaching Daniel more. He's not making much progress since I haven't really coached him much.
-Think about whether I want to go ahead with my plans to run a coaching for profits program.
-Work on more theory videos for my own site. I'll probably sell them on my site on a per video/series basis like what Internet is doing with his Pokermarket site.
-Exercise more. I have always wanted to spend more time on this but as I found myself getting stuck grinding for SNE I always gave up somehow. I feel like my health is deteriorating these few months (calves and back feel sore, minor headaches). Really considering just forking out the money for a personal trainer which will force me to maintain my consistency in going to the gym.
no graph for now since my computer SSD ran out of space and I was forced to purge hands. Requesting for hand histories for 2014 and I'll re-import
I lost 65k in Nov
Congratulations... Still nice results I guess. I mean close to 150k in one year + reached your VPP goal 
happy new year and keep going
@rauche: thanks , have a great year ahead!
Poker is probably the softest on New Year's Day. All the regs are taking a break. NL500 has never been so soft.
Pads is pretty hardcore, grinding right away on the first day of the year
Congrats on another SNE. In I guess probably the hardest games running. (I'm so jealous whenever I see people playing on those US sites) It must have been pretty brutal having a horrible November and knowing you still have to grind out a mentally and physically tough December. Great persistence and nice to be rewarded with a fantastic following month. ♠_thumbsup:
Planning to give it another shot again this year? Do you think it would be more profitable to be a little more selective and play in some softer games/sites? Or to add some mtt's in at least on weekends. I've been playing some the last month or so. Seems to be some value there. There's also that ever diminishing VIP rewards.
How do you think spending so much time playing as opposed to working off the table effects you? I think I improve far more from off the table work than playing and when I play a lot instead of studying, really start to feel like I'm slipping. But everyones different.
Exercising more sounds like a great idea. If a PT helps to make it a habbit then definitely worth doing. Should help with your mental game too.
I've been getting back to running more and have been going daily for the last couple of months. Just feel and sleep so much better all the time. The starting up was pretty hard to just get out the door, but now I'm looking forward to it daily. ♦
It's also a nice stress release to go for a run after grinding a mtt for 7 fucking hours and just missing a final table due to losing some stupid 80% flip.
i would definitely prefer to spread my volume throughout the year and study consistently. Poker feels more mentally challenging and interesting this way too. But old habits stick too much.
I'll try to be more selective this year in terms of table selection and also play at 2 more additional sites. It really sucks that I lost close to 10k at the new site, after having bought hand converters for HM2 and spending time getting used to the software.
I really want to play more live tourneys (surely they are soft as shit) and some nosebleeds cash. I heard from some friends that you get like 70% white guys in the macau 100/200+ HKD games (meaning that they are reg infested) and that they could achieve winrates of close to 300 USD per hour. Sounds pretty attractive to me. But I have a big losing record at Macau so I'll work on my live game (being tighter from EP, learning to read physical tells, get used to counting chip stacks)
As for online MTTs, I'm not too sure about that. Thing is that I hate being forced to grind for 8 hours straight. I usually play not more than 4 hours and play multiple sessions in a single day.
Physical Poker Tells
I've been working on some new strategy content for my own site today and I have been doing some research myself. Stumbled upon Zachary Elwood's site (I think his book was featured on PS news before). Thought this post was pretty interesting. I'm trying to purchase the ebooks.
http://www.readingpokertells.com/2014/08/scott-seivers-verbal-behavior-in-one-drop/
I'll probably try to read the 2 books and prepare myself for some nice Macau live action.
The games are really super soft at the moment. As much as I wanted to take a nice 2week long break (like every other SNE reg), I figured that it makes no sense to miss out on the most profitable time of the year.
Managed to play around 5-6 hours this year and did pretty well for myself. I'll put my studying on hold for a while
would do profit for coaching if i stayed with you in singapore over for a week and a contract for x amount of hands?
Originally posted by Phgrinder
would do profit for coaching if i stayed with you in singapore over for a week and a contract for x amount of hands?
i stay with parents, so this is definitely not possible
Originally posted by mbml
Originally posted by Phgrinder
would do profit for coaching if i stayed with you in singapore over for a week and a contract for x amount of hands?i stay with parents, so this is definitely not possible
Are you in the same time zone with Manila?
yup, GMT+8.
I've been watching AdmiralBulldog's Twitch TV Stream quite a lot recently. I'm very amazed at how much he makes an hour.
http://www.liquiddota.com/stream/AdmiralBulldog
On average, he receives 2-3 donations of 3 USD per min, which means that he is making ~300-500 USD per hour whenever he streams. People just donate a lot because of the text-to-speech bot.
Hi,
I saw this blog recently, and it was a really good read.
Congrats on achieving SNE and 4k MMR 
As a fellow Dota 2 player I am also really surprised to see how much the successful streamers make there...
And other than donations they also receive money from ads right? Makes up for a pretty good living.
If you don't mind me asking could you give a SNG player an advice as to what cash videos are good for
improving my postflop play 40-75bb deep(that's what i need for SNG's).
Good luck with your 2k15 goals
@Gavron23: I have not watched any videos on midstack play recently. I know that Oxota (Daniel Dxxxx whatever his name is) is a good coach/video producer and cap games are his specialty (but that's only 20bb). I also know that YourDoom has a midstack course. I have not watched it but I am hesitant to recommend it, based on my biased opinion that he is teaching a lot of "duh" stuff, but you can check it out if you're interested.
Today was a really long day. I probably spent like 17 hours outside and I'm completely drained of my energy.
1. Bought a Nakamichi My-Maiku microphone and a Wacom Tablet for course/video production. The microphone failed to work and I had to get a refund.
2. The computer store allowed me to exchange the mike for something else instead so I bought a random Armaggeddon Kai-9 Sentinel keyboard for $60. Not very necessary but it has colourful lights which i like (look at my HUD in my videos ♦) and a nice semi-mechanical feel when I type.
3. Produced 2 videos on how to build a HUD and popups on HM2, and how to use Pokerstrategy Equilab.
4. One of my friends wanted to trade a large amount of HKD for SGD since I'm going to Macau in a week's time. We met for dinner and ended up heading down to the poker Resorts World Sentosa after one of his fellow regs informed him that a VIP was playing at 10/20 and that there was a really good chance that the 25/50 game would run.
5. Arrived at RWS at 2230. There was a single slot available at the 10/20 game so my friend took it. Had to spend 3-4 hours playing at the 5/10 game and I dropped 1200.
6. Switched over to the 10/20 game at 0200 and dropped another 6500 in a span of 4 hours
7. Fortunately for me, and unfortunately for my friend, we had an agreement to split the action 50/50. I lost 7k+ and he lost 50.
It's 0720 right now and I want to pen down my thoughts on how I played today before I forget everything when I wake up.
This is basically going to be a huge wall of text. Writing this down mostly for reflective purposes, and the hand histories are for discussion with fellow peers. Read at the risk of boring yourself.
Some trends I am noticing
-Mostly winning in local home games, and casinos in big cities (London, Amsterdam, Berlin)
>Home games ranged from NL25 to NL500, Casinos mostly 1/2 pound/eur
-Lost twice at RWS, and 80-90% of my sessions during my 2 trips to Macau in 2011 and 2012
>I played 10/20 SGD at RWS both times, and mostly 50/100 HKD in Macau
I remember playing pretty solid in the European Casinos, especially in Amsterdam (Aug 2014). I also remembered spewing a lot of money during my first trip to Macau in 2011. I have taken some precaution in terms of limping from UTG and raising a much tighter range but I highly suspect that I am still too loose and I am making a good number of mistakes. Pretty common for me to raise to 4BB, get 3 callers or more and I am forced to give up on the pot like 80% of the time.
Some thoughts about strategy
-I have to be much tighter with the whale on my direct left. Today's whale played like 80/40, and I was probably playing 30/15. Every other reg was playing 10-15 VPIP.
-A UTG limp for me sucks pretty badly because the whale will almost always limp along and the regs behind us love to put in a huge iso-raise. When that happens, I am forced to fold really often. I cannot pull off a limp-reraise bluff because the VIP whale will probably call the 3bet anyway with his Q2s trash.
-I wonder if there's room for a hybrid raise size. I was limping a lot, and raising huge a lot (4-5BB) but a pot-sweetener min-raise might be the best option to see the flop cheaply with a speculative hand from UTG. There were many times when I raised stuff like 98s or 77 from UTG to 5BB and I would still get like 2-3 callers. In such situations, I would very much prefer to keep the pot smaller with the weaker hands, given how often I have to give up when I miss. The regs also don't 3bet light at all and I don't think they will squeeze too often even against a 2BB open raise.
The amount of bumhunting was pretty insane. When the VIP moved, everyone moved along with him. In fact when I first joined the 10/20 table, there was an open seat on the left of the "Jesus seat". It got quickly snatched up by a nit reg and I had to play the entire 3.5 hours on the VIP's right which was SO bad for me.
The VIP dude was likely to be a businessman from mainland China, and he obviously knew that the game formed around him, and that he was the mark at the game. He was saying stuff like, "I know this game will break instantly if I leave the game."
I generally avoid talking to others most of the time but today I made an effort to say stupid shit to the VIP to keep him entertained (and splash around some money with him). He liked me so much that he offered to switch seats with me when I was about to leave. And I ended up staying for another 30 min.
I also practiced on my live tell skills. I bought the 2 Zachary Elwood books a few days ago and I read a few chapters. It kind of worked on the VIP - i noticed that he was trying to feign confidence by placing some chips near the center and pretending to prepare himself to push the chips into the middle. He ended up folding both times.
Originally posted by mbml
This is basically going to be a huge wall of text. Writing this down mostly for reflective purposes, and the hand histories are for discussion with fellow peers. Read at the risk of boring yourself.Some trends I am noticing
-Mostly winning in local home games, and casinos in big cities (London, Amsterdam, Berlin)
>Home games ranged from NL25 to NL500, Casinos mostly 1/2 pound/eur
-Lost twice at RWS, and 80-90% of my sessions during my 2 trips to Macau in 2011 and 2012
>I played 10/20 SGD at RWS both times, and mostly 50/100 HKD in MacauI remember playing pretty solid in the European Casinos, especially in Amsterdam (Aug 2014). I also remembered spewing a lot of money during my first trip to Macau in 2011. I have taken some precaution in terms of limping from UTG and raising a much tighter range but I highly suspect that I am still too loose and I am making a good number of mistakes. Pretty common for me to raise to 4BB, get 3 callers or more and I am forced to give up on the pot like 80% of the time.
Some thoughts about strategy
-I have to be much tighter with the whale on my direct left. Today's whale played like 80/40, and I was probably playing 30/15. Every other reg was playing 10-15 VPIP.
-A UTG limp for me sucks pretty badly because the whale will almost always limp along and the regs behind us love to put in a huge iso-raise. When that happens, I am forced to fold really often. I cannot pull off a limp-reraise bluff because the VIP whale will probably call the 3bet anyway with his Q2s trash.
-I wonder if there's room for a hybrid raise size. I was limping a lot, and raising huge a lot (4-5BB) but a pot-sweetener min-raise might be the best option to see the flop cheaply with a speculative hand from UTG. There were many times when I raised stuff like 98s or 77 from UTG to 5BB and I would still get like 2-3 callers. In such situations, I would very much prefer to keep the pot smaller with the weaker hands, given how often I have to give up when I miss. The regs also don't 3bet light at all and I don't think they will squeeze too often even against a 2BB open raise.The amount of bumhunting was pretty insane. When the VIP moved, everyone moved along with him. In fact when I first joined the 10/20 table, there was an open seat on the left of the "Jesus seat". It got quickly snatched up by a nit reg and I had to play the entire 3.5 hours on the VIP's right which was SO bad for me.
The VIP dude was likely to be a businessman from mainland China, and he obviously knew that the game formed around him, and that he was the mark at the game. He was saying stuff like, "I know this game will break instantly if I leave the game."
I generally avoid talking to others most of the time but today I made an effort to say stupid shit to the VIP to keep him entertained (and splash around some money with him). He liked me so much that he offered to switch seats with me when I was about to leave. And I ended up staying for another 30 min.
I also practiced on my live tell skills. I bought the 2 Zachary Elwood books a few days ago and I read a few chapters. It kind of worked on the VIP - i noticed that he was trying to feign confidence by placing some chips near the center and pretending to prepare himself to push the chips into the middle. He ended up folding both times.
This was actually very interesting to read.
Wouldn't mind more brainstorming like this!
About the raise sizes.
I agree 5BB is too much to lose with speculative hands, and also unnecessary to build up the pot given the fact that so many people call you anyway.
But why going to the opposite extreme?
There's a reason 3/4BB is the standard, no?
Sometimes when you play vs basic players, you've got to return to basics yourself! ♦