Blog Archives
Wake up call
Giabest
A lot has happened since my last blog in terms of poker. I got off to a good start to the year profiting around 8k in the first two weeks and was feeling extremely positive and motivated during this time. I was running well in all forms of poker and was in profit for 6 max hyper SNGs, MTTs and heads up SNGs. However bad variance kicked in and I started playing all the wrong games. I was playing big MTTs and a lot of 6 max hyper turbo SNGs and didn’t really focus on giving commitment to heads up.
I was also playing players that really weren’t worth playing at the stakes. Rather than waiting to play fish, I played games against good regular players.
My thinking at the time was to get as many games in as possible to get to get my money back when in reality it would have been better to just wait for the best possible games. I also lost money to a player where I broke a personal rule in which I previously had of loosing no more than 4 buy-ins to anyone in a single session. However it was really difficult for me to stick to this rule when one particular player was two tabling me that I didn’t recognise and he was calling all ins full stack with hands like 5 2 so I couldn’t bring myself to press decline when I was loosing buy-ins to him.
To cut a long story short, I lost 27/30 games to him before he declined me. Here was my next 3 weeks to the year after the good start:
I felt defeated after this and took a much-needed break from poker. I also had thoughts about quitting poker and getting a job but no real substantial thought or plan went into getting a job. It was just a tilted thought and statement to show my anger for the game with no real substance to the statement.
I then got introduced to a hypnotherapist called Elliot Roe by my brother Rocmar87. Here’s a brief introduction from him on what he does. ” I’m Elliot Roe, a hypnotherapist based in Las Vegas who specialises in working with Poker players and MMA fighters to help them improve performance. I used hypnotherapy to help clients understand and resolve the root causes of any irrational behaviour that is effecting their game. This irrational behaviour could be tilt, anxiety, motivation issues, ego wars or a number of other issues effecting optimal performance at the table. For more information, watch my introduction to hypnotherapy and poker video http://www.pokervip.com/poker-coaching/videos/view/157 and on my testimonials page http://www.poker-hypnosis.co.uk/testimonials/“Elliot has specially designed a heads up warm up MP3 now out on HUSNG.com. He also sells other MP3s, including a post session warm down, prep for live sessions and prep for online sessions. You can view more info on the packages, as well as a free sample, here: http://www.husng.com/content/mindset-pregame-warmup-heads-up-poker.
Usually I’m very negative towards this sort of thing but there are so many players who have benefited from his hypnotherapy and don’t tilt anymore as a result.
He has taught them to become emotionally detached from the games they play and as a result, their results have been extremely consistent so I thought it was certainly worth a try.
He charges $150 an hour or you can get a discounted price at $550 dollars for 5 hours. I certainly recommend it to any poker player because we’re only human and none of us like loosing so naturally emotions can take over. After a few of these sessions with Elliot I now feel above the game and take care with every decision with a much more logical, professional outlook on what is actually happening and not the usual negativity and thinking “I’m running way worse than I actually am” attitude of before.
In this time since working with Elliot Roe, I’ve improved my attitude towards poker so much and feel so emotionally uninvolved. The only MTTs I have played is the heads up hyper turbo knockout which is what I’m grinding anyway. I’ve been a lot more logical in situations and am starting to treat poker more like a job rather than just playing for the sake of playing at any given opportunity despite not being in the correct mindset or correct environment to grind. I was also feeling satisfied when I was winning and feeling frustrated when I was loosing. Now every time before I play , I listen to a mp3 from Elliot Roe that gets me in the zone so I’m so much more focused now when in a game and my mind is on the game only. When I’m starting to feel tilted or frustrated, or feel like I’m going into auto pilot mode, I realise it straight away. I take a short break and come back focused again. Since this time I’ve made money and instead of having the attitude of :
“I’ve dropped a lot of money. I want it back quickly to reach my peak again. Let me try bink something so I can get out of the hole sooner rather than later.”
As a result of this thought process, I then play bigger stakes and the hole gets deeper very quickly with MTTs. This is most probably the attitude of most gamblers and I would expect it’s emotionally very challenging.
However, now I take it one game at a time. All I can do is control what I am doing. More than likely, the result will be that I will come out on top. It’s only money and it’s important to keep poker and social time separate and have a clear perspective of the bigger picture and what’s really important.
I’m also going to get my fitness up because it was abysmal. I’ve bought a bicycle, play badminton once a week and play football competitively (using the term very widely) twice a week. Anyway I’m going to leave you with a few random pictures and a song my brother introduced to me to.
Healthy eating. Trying to have 5 pieces of fruit and veg a day. (mainly fruit though. hate veg)
Fun way of getting fit. Good workout.
On the grind.
Start of weekend away in Nottingham.
two brothers and marge.
Giabest on start to the year.
We are now halfway through the first month of whynotgrind but unfortunately as a group, it hasn’t been the start we were hoping for on our journey to making 1 million in 2013. There is however many positives to take from our start!
Moca choca89 is running way under ev at the moment so all he has to do is keep doing what he’s doing and it’s more than likely he will have a nice upswing coming his way as he currently plays the biggest games in the group with an average stake of $816.
Millz_uk and Rocmar87 have put in the most volume from the group and are on track for supernova elite. Both got off to great starts but have run into some bad variance. Despite this Millz_uk is 17th on the leader board 36-100 dollar level and has actually put together the “best 100 game streak average profit” this year and Rocmar87 is 12th on the leader board 36-100 dollar level.
Flippetyflop has an average stake of $405 and has an roi of 2.7% so it’s a good start from him considering he took the first week off poker to recharge his batteries after his insane late supernova elite surge last year.
From a personal perspective it has been a decent start to the year, although it could of been a great one!
I went up to Nottingham with Flippetyflop and a friend to play the 300 pound, £150,000 pound guarantee, two day event. It got 787 runners and to cut a long story short, I made day two as a short stack, eventually finding myself with a stack of 1.1 million chips @ 20k/40k with 22 players remaining
With 50k for first prize I unfortunately lost over half my stack as I got outran by aq when I was holding 10 10 with a short stack was also allin with a8. The pot would of put me in contention as I would of had around 2 million chips and I never recovered from that eventually coming out in 21st place.
Despite this disappointment I had to move on and I have grinded a lot since then and I’ve done decent with a few highlights. I’ve come 2nd in a $25 dollar 6 max hyper mtt, also coming 4th the next day in the same mtt, with the lowlight of the past week losing 16 heads ups in a row. My graph will give you a clearer indication of my year so far.
