The last tourney comes through again to save the day!

Hey

Mental proceedings tonight. I really wasn't playing at my best and my results were showing this. I was getting very close to the big monies in the tournies up until i spazzed out and didn't quite receive the massive prizes. I really am too tired to explain everything that happened but it was truly eventful.

I had played for 13 hours non stop and eventually won a little over £500. I was £200ish down before my last tourney of the night, which from 9/10 i went on to complete another great escape.

I am worried that i have not been able to say once in my poker playing that i have ever had a faultless grind. This meaning that i did the best possible move in any given spot according to the info i had in front of me. I would say that i make on average 6 mistakes a night. These mistakes aren't tilt persay, this is normally a rarity, but instead a move that is marginal but is just the wrong thing to do. I have a habit of calling these spots acts of tilt by me when they aren't really its making marginally wrong decisions

Regardless i am going to grind again tonight and hopefully have another £500+ night. I am sitting out of playing on sunday to play in a five a side tournament as a mate was in need of a goalkeeper and to be honest any excuse not to feel the pressure of a big sunday was always going to be welcome!

The real test for me now will be to see what sort of monies i can hold down in a 40-60 hour week for a number of months. Just so i can get an idea of my rate to sort of normalise things and be able to tell people that want to know how much i really do make in the average hour as opposed to what i have done at one time, because any poker player could say yeh i go at £1000 an hour if they have had just one big win once!

Feeling happy at the moment and looking forward to the grind that will start again in about 12 hours. Man i love this shiz.

Ant

Quick Update

Hey

I still haven't completely settled on "the grind" to play but i have basically got it down to a certain amount of regular tournaments and i chop and change only a few now. It's been going well. Yesterday i made £460 but had some very near misses for much bigger scores. I have also had to deal with a £2000 downswing on one site as i push on in all the others i play on lol. It's painful to deal with that really just nothing going right when i play on it but not to bother if i am up overall.

I am yet to play a whole month or possibly even a week of a grind as if treating it like a job and am curious to see what i could make on average in a week/month over the course of 6 months to give me some sort of bearing to if i should do this as a career after uni. Would be great if i can. Also looking forward to uni in september!

Things look on the up i am nicely rolled for the games i want to be playing and am a nice winner at them and i really just need to push on now into the big time.

Ant

Knew this was coming

Hey

I had the session from hell on tuesday night. I got unlucky but also really just didn't play that well. It resulted in a $1300 loss and it was because i didn't listen to my own set guidelines of only playing when in a fit condition to. I started the grind because i had nothing else to do that day but i knew deep down i just weren't up for it. Would rather have been somewhere else but just played out of boredom.

I picked up an injury from a football match on sunday which prevented me going to the gym which would have probably have given me the motivation to be focussed and crush like i know how to but on tuesday i was just poor. Afterwards i was in relative shock. Wtf was that was my immediate reaction. It's never happening again. FACT. I will no longer play massive grinds when i am not in tip top shape to do so.

Regulation for doing a massive $1000+ nightly grind

I have to be buzzing. Now this can come about in so many different ways. It could be that one day you wake up and just think yeh i am in the mood to crush but a lot of the time you will just feel normal and eventually once one or two bad beats hit you you can be quick to fall off the tracks.

To defend against this i can have a daily preparation schedule to have me primed to win loads of money on a daily basis. I will be repeating myself now but it includes 1 hour of the gym and no shitty foods or caffeine. Let the endorphines kick around the body and it will also give me the stamina to play 12 hours if needs be.

This won't defend against short term variance but what i do know is that i only ever really lose money in this game when i let myself do this. It is sort of a constant battle with myself to maintain the steady temperament needed to deal with the horrid/amazingly beautiful swings of this game. It is like you are experiencing what it feels like to be bipolar on a nightly basis and if you haven't got the physicality and mentaily to deal with it you will lose the plot and your money.

In the past i most definately haven't prepared myself properly for playing poker. Tuesday being one of those days! However, it has served as a welcome reminder that for some players like me that know how to beat the game and are pretty comfortable with their knowledge and capacity to learn new stuff, the main battle about attaining poker profits is with yourself. If i get in a stonking good and healthy routine and i could well be a big dog in a year to come. However if i stay on the beaten track of being volatile and an on/off player i think i will get burnt out, i could well barely make a living in the game but it would be one hell of a depressing life.

This last week i have seen the results of having a great prep and a bad one and i know it is only on the short term evidence that i am basing a huge amount of my faith but the logic would suggest i am talking sense and i am genuinely intrigued about how well/bad things will get for me following a strict healthy lifestyle.

My prediction is after this post i won't be looking back.

Bring on the binkages imo.

Ant

Jeeeeez that was close!

Hey

Had a torrid time playing tourns yesterday. Should never have started because i wasn't feeling right. I nearly quite at around6.30 a couple hours into the grind to prevent more losses as i just weren't on it, but the gamble in me just couldn't let a big sunday go past.

So i proceeded to lose 800 quid over the course of the night playing like a complete fish. Like beyond belief, the nonchalence was amazing. I deserved to face the brunt of the pain of losing that much but i got saved by a 1.4k bink which had me up about 400 quid for the night.

So today i plan to start a routine that i will be able to maintain. It involves 1 1/2 hours in the gym and then whatever i want to do after. This just means i am in good physical and mental shape going into whatever i want to do. This is most important for poker of course and i think yesterday i missed the discipline to play well and just got plain old lucky. I know most days this won't happen so i just need to prepare better. Bring on the next grind!!

Ant

7500 dollars in 3 days

Hello

Well as the title says i have pretty much been killing tournies all over the shop. The 6000 prof includes a $3K package to Malta which includes a 5* hotel and 1100 euro entry into a main event. I believe its four days in all over there and it will be a nice break in late september, just before uni starts!

Erm not much really to say apart from how lucky i have been in a lot of fifty fifties late on in tournies and how i have did well to maintain a stack from 100 odd runners down to a final table. Been really improving my game by just obsessively self evaluating my plays and experimenting. The chancy plays i have been trying of late have shed sum light on how abc i have been playing over the years. ABC is fine if you a decent enough winning player because you can always live off that wedge however i believe the real money is in trying new stuff out and just dominating a table.

All of this would be pointless though if hands hadn't held up and all that jazz but from memory i am going to give you some of the results i have seen in the past few days. 1st in a 5K GTD, 1st in a 3k GTD, 1st in a 6k GTD, 1st in a 3k GTD, 2nd in a 5k gtd, 2nd in a 7k gtd, 2nd in a 10k gtd. However i had sum horrible form on one particular site that had me cancel out the true profits i should have been seeing!

This still remains a problem i still play too many tables! I think with the new style i am adopting i need to be playing a maximum of 9 tables. As i find it hard to keep track on 12 tables. Mainly because the tiling is too overlapping. I think i would like to get in another big 24' monitor to have beside the one i already have to see what 2x9 tables is like playing on. It may just be that i am fine with playing loads of tables, its just that it needs to appear on a certain way per screen.

If i do get comfortable like this on 18 tables then i can finally play a fuller grind without the annoyance of knowing i played too abc on a particular table. It could also mean a rapid rise in consistent winnings so i think a trial is necessary next week.

I'm loving the game right now and feel very comfortable in the knowledge i have for the tourney game. I think before i was very pessimistic and down on myself always overthinking hands and wondering if a play was bad or not. Now i just accept i can only play according to the info in front of me and my instincts. Throughout loads of hours of play the instincts will get better and through winning more and more i should get used to it and start to dominate poker and life in general.

I must have already lost about a stone in the Gym and the added fitness has helped with concetration. I have stopped drinking soft drinks with caffeine in it where possible. I tell you though they are hard to find. 7up free is the best, honestly. Although it may sound it i am not a health freak prick who has a go at people for eating "empty calories" or is constantly wary of what i eat, i just go with the flow and try to stick to a loose guideline. Mainly the mantra of eating when you are only hungry, not to over eat, and try to stay away from crisps and chocolate. Ewwww i am so gayy.

So there you have it i have a BR rivalling Fenix35's now which is great as it will spur us both on to try and out do eachother. We soon will be basically playing the same tournies as well so it will be interesting to see who will persevere over the coming weeks. I will not reveal my BR to you anymore in fear that i will be adding pressure on myself to keep telling you i have a higher one each time, so instead i will just tell you the general shiz and let you sort of work it out for yourselves.

I am going to let you go now.

Sorry for the length of this *That's what he said*

Ant

The secret to success with poker, well for me anyway!

Hello there

Well the title is already very alluring and i believe what i will next write is only setting you guys up for a fall. For starters this could well be written after a massive winning night where i met absolutely no variance and now i think i know it all. But regardless i will say what i will have to say :)

Today i managed to get up at a decent hour and get a good breakfast in before having a mad 2 hour session at the gym including a solid 60 mins on the cardio machines, the rest would be recovery and i walked to the gym aswell :). This had me buzzing walking out of the place. Decided to not rush into poker when i got back home though and just chill watching tv until i felt the time was right and i heard the feint sounds of my name getting called out my various poker rooms on my laptop.

Basically played 10 hours tonight and won a lot. The sorta victories that feel good, mostly it was a combination of a lot of final tables instead of one massive bink which can feel like you have cheated. Felt in control throughout apart from i would say two plays that i undoubtedly overthought at the time and didn't remember the guys i am coming up against may well be mentally not all there.

I lay my concetration levels to the gym sessions. Healthy body is a healthy mind and that. Also i would have to say that playing without music was great for the 12+ tables aswell. I could hear myself think and it was as if i was back at school again in a test room figuring out an answer and i just felt like a it was a whole new me. Yes that last line was intentionally supposed to sound gay and what im feeling good right now! The boredom u may think might be unbearable just playing poker for that long without music, but i enjoyed the games i was playing a lot more and felt more involved and excited by proceedings. Mainly because i felt like i was doing well on every table i played.

I also had 16 tables up at one point! This was mental. I wasn't opening as wide as i would have liked to just because i wouldn't have had enough time to play the flops on all the tables i would have to play. So was playing ridiculously abc for like a 2 hour stint, but oddly i found that i was doing well during this time. I may well have been saving myself from my stupidly loose plays!

Just thought i would put down the law and say going gym and not listening to music (perhaps classical though!) are a lot of help to play your A game. Tonight i pretty much did and am now basking in a gloat blog. Need to keep this all up now and for once continue some sort of dominance of online tournies!

Ant

binkety bink

Hey

I had a grind last night starting at around 4 and ending at about 1am so relatively mild for me and found that i was dancing around the edges of some big wins but it really didn't go my way.

One in particular was a 12k gtd 10r with the prize pool at about 15k where i was on the final table in about 4th with 14 bbs and i get AK opening in mid position. I obviously jam it all in and get called by a 40 bbs chip leader thinking im in for a race here i am screwed. Best case scenarion was obviously AQ but even that would have been a relatively loose call.

Cards get turned over and he has AJ. I'm shocked. I think everyone in the room was shocked. We're playing for $3k first place monies next out gets $200 and i take the latter as i am axed on the headpiece after a J10924 board.

the night was ending as a £60 loss up until one last tourney i played on a euro site. It came in and i won 1100 euros which was bloody fantastic. Big hand there HU was i had Q2 the other guy 10Q both had about 15 bbs. we both limped pre flop to see 2Q9 board, he checked to me i raised 3/4 pot he rr me i rr all in he calls and i take it down not long after that basically.

It just shows you the fragility of tourney poker that i was so close to being 60 quid down but am now actuall 1000£ up. I guess that is why its such a rush to play as well though. Bittersweet you might say.

Anyway i am playing tourns now that are few in runners and i have a high success rate on to keep my sanity and i am really enjoying playing. I am a little iffy on some plays but i think i will be fine tuning things shortly. Hopefully onwards and upwards from here hey!

cheers

Ant