Health, Energy + Tournaments

Lately, I had to have another one of my forced breaks due to health and sleep problems. I start off with the best of intentions and have to give up again for a little while. It has been a fairly frustrating process but I have kept my foot in the door and played very casually along the way.

So during this forced downtime, I have had a look at my blog from the beginning and I can see that what I am doing just is not working for me. I had a goal of playing 6-max cash to grind up the limits and see where it takes me. It hasnt really worked out, but looking at the whole thing I think I have worked out why and how to fix it.

I feel like I have to explain a couple of things about my illness for this to make any sense, so bare with me! It is actually M.E awareness week this week, so its not bad timing anyway.

Recent studies in M.E have been exploring something called the mitochondria cell, which is basically the place where our energy is released from. With patients that have M.E/ CFS these cells dont refill in the same way that they do with a regular person. This happens with M.E. because having your immune system working itself eternally has some effects on you, including nutrients from food not being absorbed properly, irregular sleep patterns not giving the body a chance to recover and stress and raised heartbeat. All of this contributes to the energy cell not having a chance to refill, the remaining energy left in the cell is all used on basic functions like running your organs. This leaves it difficult to concentrate on day to day things, many strong, random pains and feeling like you have the worst flu, all the time.

So with all this in mind im not really surprised as to why im struggling with poker right now! But im not going to give up, poker gives me some kind of extra purpose and with some determination and clever planning I can find a way around this. Cash games for me, for some reason, makes my heart race faster. Im not sure whether its because you have a stack of money of the table that can go at any moment or its just something about me as a person. It just doesnt seem to matter how many thousands of hands I have done or how bored I am of the game at the time, my heartbeat still goes up. This gives me an hour at the most before I go beyond the point of exhaustion and start making mistakes. I have been stubbornly following this pattern, as my blog shows, for quite some time.

During some of the downtime I have been forced into, I have played some tournaments and found that I do not get the same reaction. My heartbeat is steady, I am calmer and more comfortable. Even though the sessions are longer, I myself can last alot longer, and basically get more done. I have better results to go along with it and made a final table and a few near misses in the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately the final table happened to be the 888 First Depositor Freeroll so i came away with a whopping $15. If only it was one of my other games. Was still good practice though :coolface:.
Im not exactly sure why I can relax easier in MTTs, maybe I am more confident than in cash or something. It is what I truly enjoy the most. I just thought the most stable, sensible option available long term would be cash games, but it just doesnt work for me while I am in this state. Maybe one day I will return to the old cash game grind, when my health improves, but from now on I will have a MTT blog.

I got a bit of cash for my birthday this week, and some TaF money came in (thank you pokerstrategy! =D) so I have topped up a little bit in pokerstars and used the TAF money to start a little bankroll on 888. Between the two rooms, I will have a nice tournament schedule to live in, concentrating on regular speed tourneys. I realize the huge variance in MTTs but I will give it my best try and do 10min-15min blind structures as much as possible. I have 206 BIs for my average buy in. I will opt out of the bankroll challenge today and opt back in tomorrow for a fresh start. (If thats ok?)

So this will be abit of a large post today because, hopefully, its going to look alot different in here soon. I need structure in my future posting. Im aiming to use this blog as a tool for me to help organize many aspects of my life because I have alot of life changes coming up.
For many years living with M.E, there has not been much information or many things to try to cure it, its just been about managing the symptoms. In the past couple of years though, more money has been put into research in America and new things have come up. I have been in touch with a doctor with a high success rate with actually curing it, or at least getting rid of 90% of the symptoms. Soon I will be going through a program which includes a complete diet change, no tea or coffee, smoking or pain medication. I basically have to behave myself in every way and be strict. I will be doing this maybe forever and will continue to get different kinds of help with this new doctor.

I will be keeping a score of how im doing alongside my poker results in here, as for me, it goes hand in hand. Besides, a healthier lifestyle should help my poker game too. I will be watching as many LuckyLukePS videos as I can during this time. I will include them to be part of my blog when possible, as writing things down helps me remember them alot better.

Originally posted by Jakkosh
Heya Harrier,

Im beginning to think your psychic, I dont write in my blog for ages and each time i think about getting back to it I go and have a look and you have popped in to say hello ♦

Im doing ok, got a big update incoming. How about you, hows things?

Well, if I do indeed have psychic abilities, it certainly doesn't show at the poker tables.

I'm doing good so far, but I see you already found my new blog, so you probably already know how things are going over here.

Best of luck for your new start! I can imagine that the going can be quite tough at times, but remember that we all have your back.

I believe you already played some MTSNGs in the past, are these games still an option or do you prefer scheduled MTTs now? And what do you think about other kinds of SNGs (single table, DoN, hyper-turbo, heads-up etc.)?

Also, how much experience with tournament poker do you have already, and what kind of training material did you use so far apart from the LuckyLukePS videos you mentioned? I may be able to give you some pointers.

Heya,

Thanks Harrier for your reply and support. Yeah I used to play the scheduled nano caps that used to be on pokerstars, mixed in with 180 mans. I didnt do too badly, managed to get first a few times and few more final tables. When I first discovered poker I played SnGs on PKR, mostly DoNs but I grew out of that when I found out more about other formats. I have played MTTs casually since then, and have probably lost a fair chunk of money, very gradually, in micros spread out over years, but its just been for fun so I dont mind.

Now, I do prefer the scheduled MTTs, they do have the most variance of course but at the moment I have decided to concentrate on what I find the most enjoyable / relaxing, go through my health program and maybe I can go back to to cash when im feeling abit better.

I think my current game is that I am fairly confident in being a rock / TAG and can sometimes get quite far, I have made the final table quite a few times, mostly in the scheduled $1.10s. In the past week I have got to the last three tables a few times in the large field tourneys on stars, but to be quite honest, I begin to get outplayed. This is the area which I definitely need to work on, I am perhaps too tight in this stage. I need to learn to loosen up overall, playing the rocky style is good and can work, but I quite often go card dead and dont want to just rely on getting good spots. I certainly still have a lot to learn.

When i first joined Pokerstrategy I read alot of the articles and some watched some MTT videos but since then I got into the bad habit of not learning much else to work on my MTT game apart from playing. So I think starting from the beginning again, learning wise, would be a good idea.
Today though, I woke up and found I was gold status, and im not sure why! Perhaps it is because I made my first deposit on 888 this month and I am tracked?
So either way, thank you so much! This means I can watch as many gold videos as I can before the end of month, which is a huge help as there is alot of interesting gold MTT videos out there, so im quite excited to get into those. So today im going to have a look at Transitioning from TAG to LAG, and take my last shot at SCOOP.

I have a couple of weeks before I start my health program, so I am going to start organizing my time and plans with poker to coincide with that. I will opt back into the bankroll challenge at that time. So any suggestions with any learning material is welcome. Like I said I did learn some stuff when I first came here, but that was a long time ago and I feel like I should start from beginning. I need to brush up on the mathematical side of things again for sure.

I will make an update in the next few days.

Just a small update today, as im feeling a little under the weather. My last update I was taking my last shot at SCOOP. The game went kind of terrible, variance wise, but one of my side games went very well. I made 4th out of 365 entrants in an 888 $3 game for $78.60, which increased my 888 bankroll by almost 50%. I went out with 8 big blinds with 99 vs A8o. I made a couple of mistakes early on in the game, but I crept back up from 6bb. I didnt make any big mistakes on the final table so im fairly pleased with myself! I folded AKo quite early on in the FT because a TAG pushed all in for 30bbs, I had played quite a few hands with this villain and I dont think he/she would of pushed with things like AQ or worse and I didnt feel like flipping that early on and getting 9th place.

So in the past ten days a have made a final table twice, the first one being just a freeroll 6th/945 for $16. Also made the last 2-3 tables a few more times. Not too bad considering the tiny volume I have been putting in lately.

These is my graph while I have been in casual practice mode. Not much to really boast about of course but hopefully future graphs will look better now that im putting some learning time in. I think I have a higher ITM than normal because lately I have only been playing 2-4 tables at a time, and it is also just a tiny sample that cant really convey that much.

So I have a lot of work ahead of me. My health is still very up and down at the moment so I will update when I can. Next update I will try and focus on a lesson and include it in my post to stamp it into memory.

Good luck at the tables

He there, any cashes in the last week of Scoop? I guess yes, because being absent from here could just mean that you are too busy with celebrating :-)
Please spare a minute for the BR challenge - we all want to know how it is going for all of us: https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=326222&goto=firstnew

CU,SvenBe

Hi Sven,
Sadly no major cashes, but a few not bad ones! I actually opted out of the bankroll challenge two weeks ago in the reporting thread. Maybe I should of done that in the opt in thread instead? Am going to re-enter next week with my new bankroll and new plans if thats ok.

I feel like a fresh start will be good for me. Thanks and see you all very soon ♠_thumbsup:

Hey all, not much to report on results wise. Just started my new bankroll challenge, only played one day before I had to report so a fairly boring result this week. Yesterday seemed to be bubble day for me, I just about managed to min-cash in one my games but not much to say other than that.

I planned on writing up my first lesson in this post but I have gotten sunburnt from being in the garden too long today and am feeling abit woozy lol. Am not used to it being so hot here in the UK! Will make that update on wednesday and maybe make that a regular feature.

haha,too hot in UK? ...let's wait a week...

Agree Sven lol, well actually it has already returned to the land of grey skies before you even got to reply. Ah well, we live in hope...

Seeing as I am at the start of MTT journey it seems only right that I begin with Climbing the MTT Mountain, which is =en&language[1]=en"]LuckyLukePS' first video. Im just going to go through the main points of the video and how they apply to me, this way I can drill it to my memory and look back on it if I need too. I am going to use it as a base to learn from and concentrate on mastering the fundamentals.

As far as where my game is now, I have learned some things from experience, but I am going to start from the beginning with a learning regime. Something I have struggled with is figuring out which content to start working with first.
One of the main things I get from this video is help with that, some kind of learning structure to start off with. I will not be playing too many tables at a time while am I doing this so I can focus on putting lessons into practice. So my goals for now will be study goals, rather than volume. I can concentrate more on volume when I have a better skill level and a good routine going. Another goal of mine is to post hands and seek feedback more often, I have always been a bit of lurker around here so I will set out to change that.

Balancing poker and life can be a struggle with longer tournaments and a lot of the time you just have to go with the flow. Lately I have been trying to be more organized in my day before I log on and have been trying to get a grind/study rhythm going, which can only be a good thing.
I wont be focusing much on $/hr, roi per game or immediate outcomes at this stage. I need to focus on learning and changing my game as a priority.
Getting into a good rhythm is going to be especially important for me. Soon I will be changing alot to hopefully improve my health and getting into a solid routine will certainly be needed. This should improve my poker game too so it should all fit in together nicely.

This slide is the main reason for me going over this video here in my blog. I am going to unpack each of these things in depth, in order to get a solid foundation and kick off the learning process for me. It is quite easy for me to slip into the habit of volume over study, especially when I cant always feel up to playing or concentrating for too long. So going over all these things should be a great way to start changing bad habits.
I must start using tools like Equilab more often and maybe think about taking free trials on some tools I havnt explored yet. I will also go over some of my old hands to see what needs improving on the most.

Changing to MTTs I will have to try and get used to higher variance and not focus on short-term results. I have a 300 average buy in bankroll, which should be enough(?) I play some smaller field tournaments on 888 too which should help balance out the big fields on pokerstars and I rarely take shots. Hopefully the variance wont be too harsh on me but I will do my best to not let it affect me. I can burn out quickly so I will have to focus on finding a good balance. Being able to control tilt better, which is a skill on its own, should help with that. So thats another thing for me to work on.

Being on the micro limits you often get players that dont read lines or really think much about what you have. Something I have worked on is not to over compensate and stick to solid lines with certain types of villain. Taking as many notes as possible has helped alot.

I would recommend this video to anyone starting out in MTTs, but also for people who have some experience too. There are a lot of topics covered which help with mindset and planning. This will be a good place for me to build from and has helped me kick start my way into figuring out a solid routine.

Good luck on the tables