The Challenge: Day #1

So it's been the first day of the challenge I've described in the previous post and the result is so far frankly positive. I had friends in the house today so I wasn't able to play much but I still found time to put in 5 SnGs today:

5 Tournaments played
409 Hands played
0.80 Buy-ins won/tournament
$2.69 won/tournament
$13.45 Total winnings
83% ROI
60% ITM

Promising, but in all honesty it's just another day which happens to be both the first and a positive one. I'm expecting a lot of variance so there'll be plenty of days in the red, for sure.

The Challenge

Seems like every online poker player these days has some kind of challenge going on, usually going from $0 to several millions in a pre-determined amount of time or whatever. Personally I'm a much more humble kind of player and I figured that in my case, a concrete challenge would help me focus my online game. I've been all over the place, playing from MTTs to all kinds of SNGs with no really bankroll management for quite some time and that kinda sucks.

However, playing a little bit of everything seems to have shown which games I'm stronger in and I have no doubt that my best game right now is the $3.25 6-Max Turbo SnG over at PokerStars. So here's the plan:

• I will exclusively play $3.25 6-max turbo sit'n'go for an undetermined amount of time, starting now.
• I will start with a rather meagre $30.42 bankroll and try to work my way up from there. I'm perfectly aware that I'm underrolled for this buy-in so I run the risk of going bankrupt quite easily. But that just spices the challenge up.
• I will try to move up levels, that is to say buy-ins in this kind of SnG. For the first three levels ($3.25, $6.50 and $13) I will move up whenever I get to 20 buy-ins. 40 buy-ins would be safer and is generally recommended by most bankroll management guides I've found, but I've already had the experience of playing $6.50 for a while and the field isn't really any different from $3.25 and I imagine from $13, with slight improvements in overall quality of the players. If I get to $13, then I will bump the margin up to 30 buy-ins.
• I will force myself to move down a level if a downswing brings me back to 10 buy-ins or less for the current level I'm at. Call it bankruptcy protection.

And that's it. I will post progress here from now on. I'll be playing exclusively one table at a time and will try hard to be absolutely focused on each sit so as to maximize my win rate.

GG!

Phil Ivey in his Own Words

Just came across an excellent interview with one of my very favorite players, Phil Ivey:

http://www.cardplayer.com/cardplayer-magazines/65549-17-24/articles/14359-the-art-of-winning-a-conversation-with-phil-ivey

Reboot

I started playing poker about eight months ago. I had contact with the game from a very young age, because my father has played synthetic poker a long time ago, but I had never really played back then. From those days, my idea of poker was strictly what I now know as cash games, and therefore it was an ominous idea. Poker can ruin you. You can only play poker if you got a lot of money, something I obviously have not. It attracted me, though.

About a year ago, I learned that a lot of people that I had semi-daily contact with here where I studied and live, were gathering every Sunday night to play poker. The idea intrigued me as I had always been fond of cards and poker in particular so I inquired the guy who was organizing the thing, asking how much were the stakes. It was only then that I learned about tournament poker and how in this case, the most you could burn through in one night was a mere 15 euros, and that was the worst case (I quickly learned what rebuys and add-ons were).

Well, if that was so, why not give it a try. I showed up and got instantly hooked. I soon realized that I really didn't know or apply any strategy to this game, but shockingly won one of my first tournaments, surpassing over 20 players on this 3-table MTT. As with everything else in my life, I kinda get OC about it, so the more I played the more my interest escalated. And this meant actually learning the game, devouring literature both online and on physical books, watching videos, reading forums and playing. Jumping to online poker was just a short step ahead. I quickly got aware of concepts like playing with position, bet sizing, pre-flop raising, starting hand selection and so on. After a while trying to apply this basic theory to the game, it was no problem to get ahead of the majority of my adversaries, who simply played for the fun of it and don't apply much of their time improving their game. Later on, it was only half surprise for me to have won another of these MTTs.

The next step would be trying bigger nationwide tournaments and those soon called for me. My first tournament was held at Figueira da Foz and it was a Knockout type tournament. The buy-in was gigantic for what I was used to do, but I saw this as fun weekend, rewarding myself for having finished my masters thesis. It was fun alright, but it got even more fun as much to my surprise I found myself in the final table and finishing 5th out of a field of 209 players. What seemed like a waste of 165 EUR buying in to the tournament, actually turned into a nice 1300 EUR profit. Making an effort to separate personal money from poker money, this rather large sum was kept precisely as poker money, which would allow me to play more of these big tournaments in the future.

So this brings us back to two weeks ago, when the seed for this blog seems to have been planted. Back in the start of this month, I played the Solverde Season Stage #6, one of the oldest poker tournaments in Portugal, sponsored by PokerStars. This would run Saturday and Sunday, but in every Solverde weekend, Friday nights are reserved for satellite tournaments so I decided to buy in to the super-satellite to the Solverde Main Event, a huge end-of-season tournament, with a 1100 EUR buy-in to be held in December. Another 90 or so players bought into this and after a few hours of playing what I felt was my A-game, I found myself again on a major final table, battling for one of the 6 entries avaliable. And again to my surprise, I did win one of those, albeit getting to the final table a bit short-stacked.

At this point, it's difficult not to feel like you got something special in you when it comes to this game. You don't necessarily feel like a great poker player, but you feel that maybe you have it in you to go far in it. Getting back to earth only two a few hours as the next day's regular event was a huge disaster. One misplayed JJ hand against a top Portuguese pro player opened the Pandora's box to all kinds of bad luck and suckouts which in turn induced a major tilt in me. Until then, I had never experienced tilt on a major tournament. This time I did, I was maybe the second guy going out even before the add-on break. It sucked royally, it made me feel bad for all kinds of reasons, but at the same time it was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me. Maybe I have a tiny little gift for the game, given my factual results in just a few months, but the harsh truth is that I know nothing about Poker. And the more I put myself among the best players, the more it shows.

That same evening I bought into a 10-man sit'n'go which would give 2 entries to the Closing Event on Sunday. I played well again, on a somewhat soft table it should be said, and won the entry. That probably pumped me again to dangerous heights, at least in my subconscious, because on Sunday I played absolute crap once again, and once again found myself one of the first to hit the rail.

It was time to admit that a lot of common sense, basic notions and a sure dose of lucky hands are what got me the short-lived success I achieved. There's no doubt in my mind that I have to take my understanding of the game to the next level if I don't want to end up as a one-hit wonder, a total fluke.

Since then I've been trying to get my game going online, trying to become a profitable player but failing miserably. Here and there I've found many reasons for that, none of which I seem to be consciously thinking about, none of which I seem to be consciously acting upon. I'm sure my obsession with this game is one hand part of what makes a great player (meaning without it I will hardly ever get anywhere) but on the other hand is making me mess up a lot of things, most of all mixing up poker, work, relationships and all kinds of real life. So far, I seem to be unable to put each thing in a different compartment and the truth of the matter is that equally hurts every sector of my life. It's a textbook case of trying to do everything at once and failing miserably on each one. To add to the problem, poker usually wins over everything else, and that's just not healthy. Not only that, it's absolutely unnecessary to happen that way, and I know it.

Reasons? In every aspect of my life, in everything I've tried to do, I'm utterly fascinated by those who are best in the field, by those who excel at what they do. In a way that's great, because we all need to feel inspired, but it also hurts me as I get easily frustrated for seeming unable to get some high place blindingly fast. If they can do it, why can't I? I fail to understand that those guys have been progressively working at their craft for a million hours. I fail to understand, most of all, that all I know about them is their success. I never hear about their failures, at least not loudly. Failure is silent. Success has a whole lot of flash. But they do fail. A lot. I have to strive for success, but allow myself room for failure. It's an unavoidable part of the road to success and the sooner I actually interiorize that notion, the better.

So this blog is born for a whole lot of different reasons. First as a sort of stream of consciousness device, in case you haven't noticed yet. Often writing to yourself - and whoever wants to read it - helps you state obvious truths that you simply are ignoring by not putting them down, hard and fast. This hopefully will allow me to confide in myself the trouble I run into while trying to become an above average poker player and in general log the steps I take on this path.

Just saw this come up on my Twitter account:

"No matter how hard the past, you can always begin again." ~Buddha

Nice.

I know my behavior not always matches this line of thinking, but I do believe we are one, body and mind, and that to excel at whatever we do, we absolutely need to be balanced. I absolutely cannot be the poker player I intend to be if I'm not physically and mentally well. It's easy to see that if I improve my well being towards this goal, I'm also bound to become a better, healthier person, someone who's more likable, someone who is nice to have around and generally I'll feel happier, more accomplished, more confident. Poker is not the most important thing in life and shouldn't be the only reason to get better in general. But it is something I love to do, and if it drives me to a better place, then so be it.

Stating what's wrong seemed like a good first step. I feel better already.