Wow! What a month! As the April series approached I was very excited for the series that would be running. It’s a joy to play in tournaments that can make your year and this month featured a ton of them. With that came the need to play almost daily and it wasn’t until the month finished I recognized the effect the past month of play had had on my body until that last tournament finished.
Immediately I fell into a 12-hour sleep followed by a lethargic day and another 12 hours of sleep. Sleeps always a chore for me, with my body stubbornly waking with the sunrise or earlier regardless of what time my last tournament finished.
Partway through the series, I realized I couldn’t fight this and I just had to find a way to make it work for me. It wasn’t a perfect system but I just woke up at 6 or 7 am and got on with things until the need for a nap kicked in (normally by 1 pm). By not worrying about the specifics of that daily routine, I built more efficiency in each day as a whole. About halfway through the series I also packed in my Weightlifting Programming. I couldn’t dedicate the focus and time to it, so I moved to a less intensive mobility-focused shorter workout routine until the series finished.
The hardest thing is realizing in this game you can’t control so much. (I guess many would argue this holds true for life) So much of playing the game well involves leveraging the element of luck in the game. And when you have the biggest online series on you can bet the variance is going to be dramatically higher as the field sizes grew.
Alas, I was not able to compete in the SCOOP Series due to Pokerstars currently having my account under investigation for affordability for the past 8 months. This will be a much larger topic of conversation because if the financial situation I am lucky enough to be in doesn’t grant me affordability then I fail to see how the average person will be able to take a punt in Poker. Even worse it makes me concerned about how we bring new blood into the game. <<< To Be continued…
Takeaways:
But anyway Back to the Month Of grinding, I learned a lot this month and realised how important it is to me that Poker is left in a better way than we found it. Its clear Poker was boosted by the Pandemic situation but that fanfare won’t last unless we do more to have Poker seen more amicably by mainstream society. For now, I will just post these points but might dig into them in full posts further down the line
Poker has an image problem … changing this for the long-term and moving away from the Casino element seems necessary for the industry to thrive… But luck won’t leave Poker so working on its image is very necessary.
Multi-Day 1 Online events … it’s a tough balance for operators. They need to provide large prize pools while still leaving the perception everyone has an equal chance. But for the most part, Multi-Day 1 online events do exactly the opposite and provide more opportunity for the professional player to have multiple attempts at the same prize pool. There are many variations and I think PartyPoker have it right by limiting the entries on any given day. I would also like to see a variant where the bullet you are on is displayed on the table.
Streaming – Streamers are great for the game and bring more people in and I think have the chance to actually make Poker an entertaining sport to watch. Watching 1 live table of poker is boring however you spin it. But watching a streamer playing multiple tables, engaging in 1 to 1 battle or doing fan challenges as Heads Up duels is fucking awesome and exactly what poker is all about. I don’t think its for me but I would love to see a creator/team of creators swoop in and act as an NFL Red Zone for the top players/streamers… this is a long way off but cool to think about
Promotions- The PartyPoker Daily Legends Promotion is top-notch, but they miss the mark on marketing this. All that happens is you receive a ticket into your account. I imagine some casual players might even be unaware if they won a ticket through this promotion. either way, the addition of free tickets to winning a tournament or a close finish is always a nice bonus and obviously advantageous for the operator
Wives, Girlfriends, Boyfriends, Roommates and even neighbours, You guys are da Real MVPs! As I took my dog out for a walk last night I realised my wife had handled everything in our house from 4 pm onwards each day that month and I could not have excelled so well without this support. I am so grateful to have a partner that supports my dreams and aspirations
Tracking – I think this past month has opened my eyes finally to the importance of tracking so that when reviewing you can more accurately see what has led to a positive effect. To further clarify I think Quantitative tracking is a given but actually, the gains can be found in the Qualitative measurements…. mood, sleep quality, anxiety levels etc.
Variance is the number one killer for a poker player, and I think it can be tough for me to recognise this during a tournament. I found this far easier to appreciate during the off-time between multi-day events. Before I kicked off Day 3 of the $109 Party Main event I understood the hard work had been done in the lab and there wasn’t much I could do to control the outcome of that day 3 due to the nature of variance in any individual tournament.
I am itching for some live poker!!! And it certainly seems like the next 12 to 18 months for Poker are going to be a lot of fun. WSOP 2021 in October is pencilled in already!
Results!
I think the biggest accomplishment was making the final table and ultimately finishing 6th in the $109 Mini Main Event on PartyPoker taking place over 3 days. I was really proud of my play over such a long period and even more motivated than ever after coming so close to what I would consider a Major Online Title to continue working towards winning a major online event!
The biggest Cash of the month was 3rd place in the $525 Opener on 888Poker!
Final Series Numbers:
Number of Tournaments Played: 620
Buyins: $35,500
Winnings: $52,800
Profit: $17,300
Hours Logged: 252
Mindfulness Minutes: 150
Number of Takeaways: 8
What’s Next?
-We exchanged on our house last week so the next month I will just be playing 1 or 2 days a week, probably just Sunday with a focus on reviewing my play as well as making some changes to my processes and set up in order to increase my edges further.
-I use a HUD but rarely make use of it which I would like to do more of. My plan is to target a few specific stats I can use to make exploits from. If anyone has any resources in this regard please give me a shout
-I want to create some sort of overview page for staking purposes for Poker. Starting this venture I did not want to sell action or be staked in any way so I could focus on my play. This will be helpful for reducing the variance particularly if I can look for some similar players to swap pieces in moving forward.
-Depending on if I can make room for it I am pretty set on picking up PLO cash in the next year or two. I think working on my cash game will be fun as I look to get back to live cash around tournament stops in the future
If you made it this far thanks for reading! If you want to get in touch just give reach out on Twitter!