I have 27k VPP left to collect until I’m Supernova. I hope I can accomplish this target until my holidays. Football WM is not my best friend in these days, I struggle to collect the points I need. Today i made a PLO 2k shot which ended up losing one stack because I hit zero and on my table where one loose fish and you can imagine that the action there was really loose aggressive. So i had no chance, although I tried to play looser Preflop.

I’m now looking forward to evening football match England vs Algeria. Gareth Barry is back in the team which should be the key to succes for the English team. So there is no Gerrad-Lampard in the central Midfield (Gerrad should be now lef-midfield) which is the best thing that could happen.

Germany today lost against Serbia and also lost his favorite position. Not a big suprise in my opinon because Serbia have normaly a very good Defence and a solid Offense. The key point off course was the yellow-red card for Klose. Badstuber had big problem with Krasic and I’m thrilled if he will play against Ghana or if Jansen get his chance. It wasn’t a bad match by Germany at all but Podolski wasted too many chances.

Slovenia vs USA was suprisingley a very good match. In general the second round at the World Cup is much better than the first round. The first round was really boring but now the matches are getting better. I hope this continue…

Like every time the last thing will be my Graph (1-15) . Good luck on the tables to all of our readers! :-)

After more than a half month later I would say there is a chance that I will potentially try it again but not soon. The Pound/Euro exchange rate is now horrible at the moment and my whole money that I have (also my BR) is in Euro. When I flew to England the exchange rate was 1/0,88 and now it is 1/0,828.

My my next England trip will be soon in mid July but just as holiday. I will tell you more about the vacation in one of my next blog entries :-).

The poker month may began very good but ended really bad. My first losing month this year and also the first month with a negative EV. At the end of the month my poker play was just bad, I tilted very soon in a session and my minset was also a problem. I felt really bad and had the feeling I couldn’t make one good session.

The consequence of that was that I moved down to 1/2 just to get a good feeling, to get my concentration back, to get self confidence back and to improve my play. I also have to add that I felt that I was very lazy in may with studying my game and watching videos. A big mistake in my opionon and maybe one of the reasons why this month become so bad (I should also add that I hadn’t had more setups in month than may). So I try to get June to a much better poker month than may. As usual the blog entry will end with a graph of the month (or half the month cause i played just from mid to end of may) and of course I wish you all good luck on the tables! :-)

The pounds exchange rate get worser and worser. Now it is 0,85, so it gets more and more expensive in UK (a day before i started it was 0,89). I’m not that much disappointed as you may expect me. Why was just happy after all that stress to be back in Austria although things went pretty horrible. The trip has cost me without the laptop i would say 700 pounds +-. So it wasn’t a huge disaster. My next plans are not fixed I just have some ideas what they could be (one keyword could be Malta).

I think i have written enough for today, I will now post some pictures of Birmingham and my april graph (I haven’t played poker since 27th april). Good luck guys at the tables! :-)

Yesterday I checked in at ryanair and printed my flight tickets. I also send four enquieres to real estate agencies for houses that I’m intrested in. The good thing is i have not much to do anymore before i go by plane. So my stress level is very low at the moment and should not increase much in the next days.

My poker results have been very good until now at the half of the month. I’m running very vey good over EV in these days. And i also made a new personal record. 17 days in a row without a loosing day. Nice one! Yesterday Poker Stars induced a new game structure which also effect in PLO Omaha. But until now I have been not very satisfied with that at all. The introduction of the shawllow tables with 24-50 bb was not a very good idea in my opinon and I hope Poker Stars will react so to the many complains after the changes.

As always in the end, I’m showing you the graph of this month and wish you luck on the tables (especially Tobi at the EPT in San Remo). Have an nice day! :-)

Yesterday I ordered a new trolley from Amazon because I need two suitcases for my Birmingham trip. For one week now I have done nearly everday a workout which I think helped me also a lot physically and mentally. I really need to be in good shape for my Birmingham journey because I have to carry a lot of luggage.

The journey day will obviously start in Linz. My mum will take me to the local airport by car and frome there (16:50) I will go by plane to London Stansted. When I will arrive there (17:45)  I have to take the London Stansted express to Tottenham Hale. From Tottenham Hale I will take the underground to the London Euston train station. The train from London Euston will go at 20:03 and will arrive at 21:25 in Birmingham New Street. The last way will be the taxi drive from Birmingham New Street to the Norwood hotel. I hope I will be at 21:45 at the hotel.

Expenses: flight 72 Euro, Stansted Express 16 pounds, Underground 4 pounds, train ticket 10 pounds, taxi drive 11-13 pounds (approximately)

Overall: ca. 120 Euro

Notice: a  flight to Birmingham from Linz or Salzburg (with 1 transfer in germany or Kopenhagen) is at least twice as expensive and would take also a longer time

Much information in one blog entry, so is now enough for now ;-)...but of course in the end you are going to see two graphs, one of march and one of this year since january. Good luck to all of our readers at the tables! :-)

The cashgame graph looks very unspectacular, not going to post it. I lack of one crucial skill for heads-up cash game: Leaving. It sounds dump but I simply am not able to do that. I think I can adjust fairly well, I love mind games and leveling wars but when I face a better opponent my desire to beat him is just too high and that’s fkn expensive. Leaks in character are the hardest to fix, but I’m confident sooner or later I will have fixed this as well.

I run hotter than the sun when I played SNGs on Stars.it, than changed to GD because they launched a 2x rake promotion and their new site. I wish I never made that decision. Basically I was tilting from the first minute on the new site, not because I run awfully bad, but because the site is full of bugs. I won’t get into details because I probably start tilting again. I did write the guys a message with what I think is bad and that’s it for me. They launched another awesome promotion for next month but honestly all the money I potentially make with these 2x and double leader board prices is not making up for the money I lose due to B-game and tilt.

I haven’t set any goals for March yet, probably end up grinding 8-9 hours a day, 5 day a week without any special goals. Not sure thought whether to grind cashgame or SNGs. Moneywise and because of my ambitions I’d have to grind SNGs but I dunno. I realized that what happens today, tomorrow or in 2 months is totally irrelevant (see my last post). I’m a pokerpro today, tomorrow, in 3 months and very likely the next couple of years. It’s not like I’m in a hurry. Ambitious goals are good, but from the past I learned that when they are too difficult to reach they can do serious harm.

All in all I’m between 5-6k€ up this month what is okay given the small volume I played. I wish I had a better run in the FTOPS but whatever :)

-tobi

When you live the life of a SNG/MTT player, your life is pretty much doomed. I don’t give a f*ck about variance, but mainly talking about workhours, mental effort and monotony. For me as a person, these few bucks more don’t compensate the headache of grinding SNGs.

Not going to post a lot next time, I’m focusing on cash-theorem till cashgames are introduced. Gotta do this anyways <_<

It wasn’t a easy decision. I’m so sick of having zero constant in my life due to my inability to make decisions and stand to them that I really wanted to pass up on this. Last time I wrote about me trying to advance me and now changing plans is exactly what I shouldn’t do. However, I think this time I have very good reasons to abandon the old plans.

First of all and the most important aspect, security! I’m not guaranteed to make Supernova Elite. There are three possible scenarios; I fail to achieve SNE and lose more than €20k (!); From now on to May I will have a miserable life and reach SNE; and the most unrealistic scenario is that I am going to reach SNE without any further problems and the traffic won’t collapse (or I do make enough VPPs with cash-game). Furthermore Stars.it does not have a concierge-service and probably does not offer one what is a huge downside. That does not only mean that I cannot buy in with FPPs into hotels and tournaments in Vegas, I also cannot get the 3.2m cash concierge reward for almost $54k. Using the standard cash bonus I lose way more than $10k. Given the fact that the government gets 33% of the rake I totally understand that they can’t afford it, but regardless, for me this is just not that highly profitable. I’m not saying making SNE is a stupid idea; it is just not worth the pain to do it in 5.5 months. What bugs me a little bit is the fact that I already made 50k VPPs. I was totally in pace and I could easily keep up with it. I felt really well doing this and yeah, believe me or not, I even had fun when I played 35tables up. Regarding to my Vegas-Summer-Plans, I am not sure if I can reach 70-80k€ so easily as with SNE (-1% w/ 1250k VPPs), but I will certainly not sit around and do nothing. And even if I do only make 50k than I’m not disappointed, I will skip a couple of donkaments and still go to Vegas. I even can imagin not to go there but than again I have no real goals in my life and I do not know what to life for and what to do. Whatsoever, I think adjusting goals downwards is no shame and we all know life and especially poker is very little plannable.

Anyways, I’ve already decided (fast as I am) what to do this remaining January. Giocodigitale has for this month their SNG ranking promotion doubled! And that is not enough, they also already had 5 days of 2x Rakepoints. That is great for me, because all the regs massively spammed games the last couple of days and their ROI obviously suffered (and thus their points in the ranking won’t be great). I’ll be playing no more than 12 tables and try to achieve a high ROI. I have no idea what a good ROI 12tabling 50-100s on this site is, I had 5-6% last year in April-May playing exactly 12 tables these stakes (and I started on this site with almost 50buyins down). The regs, even if they are still bad probably improved and I was told by someone how plays regularly on both sites that on Stars.it are more fishes. Honestly I have no idea what ROI is achievable but I hope with just 12 tables and my new A-Game (next paragraph) 5% is realistically on 50s and 100s combined. The fact that I abandon Stars for this month does not mean that I am not continuing playing my 8-11 hours a day. I’ll be definitely grinding tons of hours and I expect me to play about 3k SNGs what should net me about 11-12k profit with rakeback. Hopefully I’ll be running good and ship the €100 leader board for €8k. In case that does not work I’d like to win the small one for €4k. All joking aside, when I do run with about 5% I think I’ll be under the top10-15 and gives me a little bit extra money.

Talking about A-Game before, I already said last posting that I really feel good at the moment and that is not only visible in the results I had in the last past few days (I shipped also a EPT Deauville seat but sold it). I can focus really hard on something, after a couple of minutes I calm down and sometimes I even fall in kind of a rigor and I feel really light and free. Time seems to pass by very slowly and playing 40 tables at once is not really stressful at all. Well now I guess I’m even weirder for the standard reader but I feel like I have to write it down. Haven’t the right people to talk about this stuff but I feel good about it and I want to communicate that!

To conclude my Stars 3th-7thJanuary graph, 3k€ total wins (with rakeback and minus multis). 30-40 tabling, red line = A-I EV (<3 goodrun), green line = actual winnings, blue line = rakeback+reload bonus)

As always, stay tuned

-tobi

Supernova Elite and the 1250k VPPs till March: That was my goal but after some thoughts I realize that this is not possible due to the cash game introduction. Instead I aim “just” 1m VPPs for SNE till WSOP. I do not know when cash game starts and that leaves me pretty much fkd regarding planning’s. It could be February, it could be beginning of March or it could be end of March. It leaves me also fkd because I was fairly certain to launch a new prop bet, something with the maximum length of 5 weeks but instead of the average 11,5k VPPs 13k VPPs a day. That’s not an ego-thing, I think I should get tons of action and the bet would be highly +ev for me.

I feel so strong these days, I grind all day long without even losing focus for one second. I am pretty happy with my attitude and work ethic at the moment and I believe I can keep it up. I worked hard on my psyche last couple of weeks and it seems to pay off. I’m making every day at the same time a weird exercise to steel my discipline. I also regulated sleep, I go to bed no later than 3am and stand up at the latest at 10am.

However, with the introduction of cash game there are also a lot of benefits. First of all, I’m flexible! I can play whenever I want (as long there is traffic). That means that I’m no longer forced to grind till 3am, I can finally also stop mass-tabling and I can start again with learning some strategy, discussing hands ect. When you do mass-table SNGs you do not really care about fine-tuning, all you care about is volume. All the important poker aspects are totally unimportant and the only thing that counts is ICM. That’s finally a little bit more variety!

As far as I can plan, I want to grind really hard till cash game gets certified. That means my monthly goal of 250k VPPs with –1 to 0% ROI in January is still valid and for February I plan another 250k and I’ll pray to all spirits and gods that cash game won’t be introduced beginning-mid February. I reckon to grind 500k VPPs in the period of beginning March to mid May with high-stakes SNGs and mid-stakes cash-game will be really tough and I don’t want to think what happens if I manage to make only 400k VPPs till cash-game will be introduced. I probably end up playing from heads-up to full ring every €5-10 game and every €100+ SNG/MTT on Stars.it.

That’s it for the moment, stay tuned guys!

-tobias

35tabling, green line is actual winnings, blue line is rakeback, currency is €!