Caught the Tourney Bug Again
I haven't been able to play every day but lately I've really been back in the mood to grind online tournaments, and with ECOOP (European Championships of Online Poker on iPoker network) going I've had a good excuse to do exactly that. On Wednesday I played all day, Friday I put in a solid afternoon session, and today I just finished a 13 hour Sunday grind session. I've definitely been running pretty hot at tournaments lately and I'm sure that's a big part of why I've been enjoying it so much.
On Wednesday I had a successful day making two final tables and adding two more close calls where I busted with two tables left. I didn't run well at the final tables though and finished 6th and 7th respectively in the Stars $100 rebuy and UB/AP $1K for ~11.5K combined. On Friday I didn't have as much luck, though I did make a deep run in the ECOOP event that day. It was a $100 rebuy PLO8 tourney and I finished 19th. Today I played my usual Sunday schedule starting at 2pm est. It was what has kind of become a common Sunday routine for me. Early on in the day I didn't do well at all and I thought I might even post another blank slate. Then I had a close call in the new AP/UB $500 6-max tourney but busted 9th, and I added another min-cash somewhere. Basically the last tournament on my schedule, the Stars $200r, was again the one I had the most luck in. I feel like I've cashed this tournament around 50% of the time I've played it in the last year or something ridiculous like that. So many Sundays I can recall getting killed all day and thinking "well at least the day is almost over" before making a deep run in this tournament and playing another 3-4 hours. It makes for a very long day, but when you turn a big red number into a pretty green number on the day you don't complain about that. Today I was able to actually close the tournament for the win and just over $37k.
As for Vancouver I had no luck in the tournaments there but I did have a ton of fun hanging out with friends. I really looked at that trip as more of a social visit with a few poker tournaments thrown in anyways so I definitely still consider it a success. OK I feel like my brain is tired from grinding all day and putting together coherent sentences is proving more difficult than it should. No talk about balancing poker and life or what poker teaches us about life or whatever it is I normally ramble on about in this space I'm just going to leave this as essentially a shameless brag post. ECOOP $2500 high roller event this afternoon, I'll be on my grind.
Mike
Online Update and BCPC!
Hey guys, I'm here in Vancouver staying at the River Rock this week for the BC Poker Classic. I played the $1100 event yesterday and busted in the 5th or 6th level. The good news is the tournament easily sold out with 605 runners so I expect the main event to be big as well. It's *only* a $2700 buy-in but I believe it got 7-800 runners last year. I'm not sure if it's capped at 600 again for the main event but hopefully it draws at least that. The main reason I am so excited about this trip is to visit friends in the city that I haven't seen in a while.
This isn't technically my first trip to Vancouver as I was here for maybe a week once when I was 13 or 14 for a chess tournament, but effectively it feels like it is. Everyone always says great things about the city and I feel like if I knew more people out this way there's a good chance I might have ended up living here instead of in Toronto. So far the fact that it's scheduled to rain every single day of my trip isn't endearing the city to me though =P. Once you get past this weather everything I've heard about the city makes me think I'm going to really
enjoy it here, and visiting friends I know it's going to be a good time regardless.
So, back to poker. With FTOPS running again I got back on my online tourney grind this past week and it's been going really well. In the 8 day stretch from two Fridays ago to last Friday (playing only a handful of Sunday tourneys) I hit four 5-figure scores, book-ended by winning the Stars $100 1R1A turbo tournament on both Fridays for $30K combined. I don't know what it is about turbo tournaments but I seem to run exceptionally well in them. They are also my favourite to play, I mean what's better than the degeneracy of short stacked play jamming it all-in and gambling it up, every hand can make
or break or you poker? In normal tournaments it feels like I put up
with the first 3-5 hours just so I can get to that point, but turbos cut right to the chase. No investing half your day for nothing, just 2 hours of pushbotting, sucking out on people with terrible hands, and rarely any tough decisions to agonize over. So if anyone from the online sites is reading this, more turbos with big guarantees please! Now with that sidebar out of the way when I actually go look at tournament results of the last couple months online I've actually done exceptionally well considering I've played very little volume, which is always a good feeling and confidence booster.
As for PokerSavvy, I see that some people want me to do a PLO video, but I really haven't been playing any PLO lately. The 25/50 games seem pretty tough for the most part and I haven't bothered playing. Maybe I'll get around to doing a 5/10 video again at some point but I have a lot of good tournament stuff recorded from the last 2 weeks that I'll probably be looking to do first. Next week when I get back from Vancouver is ECOOP on the iPoker network so I'll probably continue grinding a fair bit.
That's all I've got to talk at you about for now, wish me luck in the main event Thursday!
Mike
Success, Motivation, and a Balanced Life
I haven't written on here in quite a while, for the simple reason that I haven't really felt like it. A part of that is I haven't been playing much poker so I haven't had a whole lot to write about. This is compounded by the fact that writing about Sunday online tournaments or whatever no longer really qualifies as worth writing about in my mind unless I happen to win something big. I do tweet about them occasionally. There is a noticeable trend in the careers of many very successful young poker players. In the beginning we are obsessed with poker. We devote all our free time to learning and playing the game. We neglect other aspects of our lives to some extent at least to try to excel at poker. I'm not saying that's the ideal way to go about learning the game or this obsession is entirely a virtue in the grand scheme of the things, but it's a statement of fact of how most good players I know were when we learned this game. It definitely describes me.
I'm not saying this obsession is a bad thing either, just that things aren't black and white. It's a personality trait that helps us excel at things we really like. I certainly wouldn't trade it, poker has clearly had a massively net positive affect on my life, but there is some trade-off with other aspects of life that are important to your overall happiness. There are now a growing number of young players who have been lucky enough to achieve most of their goals in poker. At some point they stop and ask themselves, "what now?". The answer is usually realizing the things you have neglected, cutting back on poker to some extent, and moving towards a more balanced life. Given the sedentary and solitary nature of playing online poker this typically involves some combination of living a more healthy lifestyle and getting out more and meeting people/seeing the world. David Benefield (raptor) is the example that first comes to mind as he wrote extensively about this on his blog (for those who don't know his story he was a very successful young online high stakes cash game player). He definitely
took it to more an extreme than most, with strict diets and workout regimens. He even took it so far as to retire from poker for the time being and return to school with the hopes of achieving bigger and better things, or at least something he'll find more personally satisfying.
So what is the point of all this? No, I'm not quitting poker. I don't think I'll do this forever but I really can't think of a better/more enjoyable job for me right now. The point is that my motivation to play poker 24/7 just isn't there right now. The great thing about the poker lifestyle is I have the freedom to do what I want. For a while I was doing my normal poker routine just out of habit and realizing once I got started playing that I didn't really want to be playing. So now before I play I always ask myself "Do you really feel like playing poker right now?". If the answer is no, then I don't. Seems pretty obvious right? But it took me a while to figure that out. Though for the longest time when I learning the game the answer to that question would always have been yes anyways.
So, I've been focused more on other things. I bought myself a great condo in downtown Toronto. I moved in and began the process of decorating said condo. I started working out more and eating a little healthier. Don't worry I'm nowhere near raptor levels on these but I'm making some improvements that work for me. I've been catching up with a lot of friends and making some new ones. And of course, I've been relaxing and being generally lazy as always. That one would be really hard to change. I still read and think about poker a lot. I'm staying pretty sharp, but with a lot less actual hands played. The main practical issue for me from a poker point of view is this is greatly hindering my ability to learn and master new games, but I'm ok with that for now.
So my little break from poker has been productive (by my lazy standards) and positive overall. But, I'm starting to get the itch to travel again. To play big tournaments and go after another big score! Unfortunately there aren't many good live tournaments that I'm interested in left in this calendar year. I'm planning to do the BCPC in Vancouver mid-November, though I'm treating that as more of a social
trip than a serious poker trip, and probably the 5 diamond WPT at Bellagio in December. In January I will definitely be doing PCA and my annual trip to Australia for Aussie Millions and to visit all my friends down there.
I intend to get back into writing here more during these trips as there will definitely be tons of fun stories to tell, poker-related and otherwise. The idea of trying to write here at least once weekly is probably a thing of the past though.
Mike