So, it's been a week since Doomsday and it feels like things are looking better overall. For one, we are guaranteed our money is safe which is obviously great and makes me feel much more comfortable. I still can't play on Stars but on Monday I will be sending all the information they need as proof I am living in Malta and I am hoping that by Friday next week I will be able to play again.
One thing that has changed completely for me now is my mindset. This whole ordeal really opened my eyes to a real problem I have which has led me to believe I have to change some things in my life. Up until now I have saved absolutely no money. IF Stars had been unable to give me my money back I would be broke almost and need to take loans in order to play/keep up this lifestyle. This was definitively not a good feeling. After spending something like 4-5 days in a state of shock unsure what was going to happen, I find myself with a new motivation I have never had before. I want to grind, a lot! I never want to feel like I can get in a shitty situation because I can no longer play poker. By the end of this year I want to have enough money on the side to feel comfortable enough to know that if something goes wrong in the poker world I should still be fine and have options.
So, while i am still blocked on Stars, I have been playing on PartyPoker last few days. As expected action at 300s+ is dead. It's impossible to be a mid/high stakes reg without playing on other sites. Because I expect to be playing on Stars again soon though I am not going to go out of my way to play multiple sites and am jsut sticking to some low stakes games on Party with some occasional higher stakes action for now and sitting some regs when it's really dead. I've been doing pretty well so far. Up a little over 3k over the last few days, hopefully I can keep grinding hard and keep the profits coming in.
It's really tough to have this new grinding motivation while in Malta. My roommates have friends over from Spain and have been going out every night for the past week and it's hard to say no and try to stick to going out 2-3 times a week. It's also hard to save money with the lifestyle we have here so I am considering whether I should stay all summer here or just half of it or something. The truth is Malta will be here next year and the year after that but poker is very unpredictable and I want to make sure I don't regret not taking full advantage of it, a few years from now. I can't give any definite answers yet as I have yet to see if maybe it is possible to be a sicko grinder here. Only time will tell.
Anyways I hope you guys are doing well and finding a way to keep busy if you're in the States.
Good Luck to all!
TYF
Friday, April 22, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Decisions, decisions
So everyone is now aware and suffering the consequences (still mostly unknown)of the DOJ's attack on the 3 biggest poker sites operating in the United STates. Everyone is affected by this differently. I have a lot of decisions to make now but won't get into too much detail on them for now as they will largely depend on whether I get access to my Pokerstars account balance soon or not.
I have never hated myself more for being lazy. If I had sent all the paperwork to change my location on Pokerstars a week, a month or 2 months ago i would be at least able to play and to withdraw as well. Now, I have sent all my proof of residence in Malta to 4 different emails. Two answers I got stated it was not possible to change locations now and am waiting for two more answers. I have enough money off the sites for the next 2 months or so, the rest is online though.
I deposited a little money on Party Poker tonight and am going to be grinding some 100s/200s there until my account hopefully gets unfrozen on stars. I have some really big decisions to make. Up until now I have saved basically no money from poker and have been kind of loose when it comes to Bankroll Management. It was all ok until now but I feel in light of what has happened I should start taking things more seriously. I have decided that staying in my penthouse in Malta until end of August is probably not the best idea and I am going to be looking to move somewhere where I will spend less, go out less and thus grind more and save money. I am not trying to become one of those guys that never leave their houses and never see daylight. I still plan to go out 1/2 nights a week and work out, have hobbies, etc. but the thing about Malta is that summer here is basically like spring break in Cancun everyday for 3 months. I know, you're probably like: "Why the fuck would you leave???!!", but the truth is Malta will still be there next year, and many years after. As for when I'd leave and where, again I can not give an answer before I know what is going to happen to my balance on Stars.
From what we saw friday, there is lots of uncertainty in online poker and anyone thinking that friday's events won't make it harder to make as much money as before, at least for a while, doesn't realize what this really means. I really don't want to go back to a normal life, so I'm going to do my best to have enough money on the side to have other means to live by in the future, other then getting a 9 to 5 and working for The Man. And of course, worst case scenario, I would like to have enough money to go back to school or something.
To all my american friends, hang in there!
To my euro friends: MBN!
Gl at the tables (if you can play)
TYF
I have never hated myself more for being lazy. If I had sent all the paperwork to change my location on Pokerstars a week, a month or 2 months ago i would be at least able to play and to withdraw as well. Now, I have sent all my proof of residence in Malta to 4 different emails. Two answers I got stated it was not possible to change locations now and am waiting for two more answers. I have enough money off the sites for the next 2 months or so, the rest is online though.
I deposited a little money on Party Poker tonight and am going to be grinding some 100s/200s there until my account hopefully gets unfrozen on stars. I have some really big decisions to make. Up until now I have saved basically no money from poker and have been kind of loose when it comes to Bankroll Management. It was all ok until now but I feel in light of what has happened I should start taking things more seriously. I have decided that staying in my penthouse in Malta until end of August is probably not the best idea and I am going to be looking to move somewhere where I will spend less, go out less and thus grind more and save money. I am not trying to become one of those guys that never leave their houses and never see daylight. I still plan to go out 1/2 nights a week and work out, have hobbies, etc. but the thing about Malta is that summer here is basically like spring break in Cancun everyday for 3 months. I know, you're probably like: "Why the fuck would you leave???!!", but the truth is Malta will still be there next year, and many years after. As for when I'd leave and where, again I can not give an answer before I know what is going to happen to my balance on Stars.
From what we saw friday, there is lots of uncertainty in online poker and anyone thinking that friday's events won't make it harder to make as much money as before, at least for a while, doesn't realize what this really means. I really don't want to go back to a normal life, so I'm going to do my best to have enough money on the side to have other means to live by in the future, other then getting a 9 to 5 and working for The Man. And of course, worst case scenario, I would like to have enough money to go back to school or something.
To all my american friends, hang in there!
To my euro friends: MBN!
Gl at the tables (if you can play)
TYF
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Bad Run/Good Life
So, it's proving to be much harder to blog from Malta then I was expecting.. Weather is getting very nice, tourists and English students are coming in greater numbers each week and well every time I start a new post, by the time I find time to finish it too much has changed. Anyways, I will do my best to do a better job in the future possibly with smaller posts and will just give you guys a quick update on my poker/life over the past few weeks for now.
Basically it's like the title says, I am running bad in poker. My downswing hasn't ended although I have had a few winning days finally. Most of the bad run is due to bad luck at the higher stakes I've been taking shots at (1ks/2ks) and well my horrible run at ftp super turbos which I have decided to not play as I am attempting to remain a somewhat sane person. Of course i would love to say my bad run is all bad luck but there has been a decent amount of tilt since my last post. Mostly in the form of openshoving 570s and 520s. I am happy that it is not as bad as it used to be but still somewhat disappointed.
I've made a few changes to my approach to poker over the past few weeks that definitively have helped me play better although variance does not want me to see $$ results just yet. My friend Pistons convinced me to stop crying over my allin ev graph and uninstall Holdem manager. I thought this was a great idea since EV graphs only make you feel like you have an excuse to lose and you shouldn't. If you're losing you should work harder and EV graphs just make you think you're fine as you are. Of course, I am not saying that is never true, in fact it is likely that I was to some extent fine the way I was. But without that excuse(the ev graph) I have much more motivation to work harder on my game which is something I have definitively not done enough since I arrived in Malta.
The other good thing is I no longer use a HUD. I have been using a HUD heads up for most of my poker career and I believe it was NOT beneficial. I think HUDs hurt your growth and awareness as a poker player. In HUsngs at higher levels, players' strategies change way too much at different stack sizes and if you can't stay focused and are solely dependent on your HUD it will hurt you and make you very lazy. I do believe though, that a person that has played most of their career without a hud will benefit from using one. Also, in my experience huds are much more useful in superturbos, deepstacks and pokerstars regspeeds then in turbos which are now my main game.
Anyways, because I no longer use HEM I can't give any updated EV graphs which I know you guys love but I hope you will just be happy with one of the graphs I saved before I stopped using it.
Unfortunately I have no clue which of my graphs this is. If I had to guess it is my lifetime turbo graph or 200 to 500 graph or something but it's the one I have saved on my PC that has the most games in it so probably the best one to post. I should start naming these things when I save them ^^.
Some people asked for more pics of my flat so here's an ok one. My camera is out of battery atm and I'm too lazy to charge it to take more pics of other rooms just now but I can do that in another post if people are interested:
Living room/dining room/kitchen area:
I am enjoying life in Malta more and more. It is very different to wake up after a downswing to go to class then to wake up to an ocean view, good weather and a sick flat. One thing that happened in the last weeks that definitively affected me pretty badly psychologically and confidence-wise though was that my poker results affected my life plans. Poker is an extremely stressful job, and for me, one of the few things that makes up for it is the freedom it gives you. You can work anywhere at any time and that just made all the variance in the world worth it. Recently though, my downswing got so bad that I decided to cancel a planned trip to Berlin during the EPT to focus on playing. This really hurt me because it feels like I lost the one thing I love most about poker as a job. I plan to focus as much as I can now on playing well and making constant money so that hopefully this does not happen again.
Good luck at the Tables!
TYF
Basically it's like the title says, I am running bad in poker. My downswing hasn't ended although I have had a few winning days finally. Most of the bad run is due to bad luck at the higher stakes I've been taking shots at (1ks/2ks) and well my horrible run at ftp super turbos which I have decided to not play as I am attempting to remain a somewhat sane person. Of course i would love to say my bad run is all bad luck but there has been a decent amount of tilt since my last post. Mostly in the form of openshoving 570s and 520s. I am happy that it is not as bad as it used to be but still somewhat disappointed.
I've made a few changes to my approach to poker over the past few weeks that definitively have helped me play better although variance does not want me to see $$ results just yet. My friend Pistons convinced me to stop crying over my allin ev graph and uninstall Holdem manager. I thought this was a great idea since EV graphs only make you feel like you have an excuse to lose and you shouldn't. If you're losing you should work harder and EV graphs just make you think you're fine as you are. Of course, I am not saying that is never true, in fact it is likely that I was to some extent fine the way I was. But without that excuse(the ev graph) I have much more motivation to work harder on my game which is something I have definitively not done enough since I arrived in Malta.
The other good thing is I no longer use a HUD. I have been using a HUD heads up for most of my poker career and I believe it was NOT beneficial. I think HUDs hurt your growth and awareness as a poker player. In HUsngs at higher levels, players' strategies change way too much at different stack sizes and if you can't stay focused and are solely dependent on your HUD it will hurt you and make you very lazy. I do believe though, that a person that has played most of their career without a hud will benefit from using one. Also, in my experience huds are much more useful in superturbos, deepstacks and pokerstars regspeeds then in turbos which are now my main game.
Anyways, because I no longer use HEM I can't give any updated EV graphs which I know you guys love but I hope you will just be happy with one of the graphs I saved before I stopped using it.
Unfortunately I have no clue which of my graphs this is. If I had to guess it is my lifetime turbo graph or 200 to 500 graph or something but it's the one I have saved on my PC that has the most games in it so probably the best one to post. I should start naming these things when I save them ^^.
Some people asked for more pics of my flat so here's an ok one. My camera is out of battery atm and I'm too lazy to charge it to take more pics of other rooms just now but I can do that in another post if people are interested:
Living room/dining room/kitchen area:
I am enjoying life in Malta more and more. It is very different to wake up after a downswing to go to class then to wake up to an ocean view, good weather and a sick flat. One thing that happened in the last weeks that definitively affected me pretty badly psychologically and confidence-wise though was that my poker results affected my life plans. Poker is an extremely stressful job, and for me, one of the few things that makes up for it is the freedom it gives you. You can work anywhere at any time and that just made all the variance in the world worth it. Recently though, my downswing got so bad that I decided to cancel a planned trip to Berlin during the EPT to focus on playing. This really hurt me because it feels like I lost the one thing I love most about poker as a job. I plan to focus as much as I can now on playing well and making constant money so that hopefully this does not happen again.
Good luck at the Tables!
TYF
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