Roundup and Fifa Challenge

So I have been a bit lazy with posting lately - and am sure my massive base of 5 readers are very disappointed! I thought I would just write a roundup of what’s been happening in my life lately

Poker:
November has been a pretty lousy month for me in poker terms. I had a bad end to cash games in October and really wasn't in the mood for playing much. I took a couple weeks off grinding the cash games and played some donkaments instead. As usual, this was quite frustrating! I proceeded to lose 80/20's and 70/30s at very pivotal times of tournaments and only had a handful of note-worthy cashes in November. I ran quite deep in the stars $100r twice with 12th being my best result for $2xxx. My bust-out from that tournament was quite dirty. I was just above average in chips and we were playing 6 handed on 2 tables. I was in the BB with QQ and the guy UTG who I had played with for most of the tournament opened. Now 99% of the time I would get mega excited at this point - but this guy had been an ultra nit all tournament. He was playing something like 6/5 for 150+ hands. I am obviously still not folding QQ for 30bb, as even this nit's range includes a heap of hands that I am dominating - especially short handed. He just so happened to turn over KK and I was out.

I also peddled a short stack for most of the $50 cubed on FT, to grind myself to the final table. I got pretty lucky on the final table. I accumulated chips pretty easily and people were knocking each other out left, right, and centre. I eventually got heads up against some dude who had a 3-1 chip lead on me. I won some of the early pots and he had me barely out-chipped, when I got AQ all in against his Ax, and lost the 70/30 to be out in 2nd for $4xxx

I ran real good in the Full Tilt Sunday Mulligan 2 weeks ago, and was chip leader with triple the average ($100k stack) with about 300 people left in the tournament. I then went on a pretty quiet run of cards and just made the odd steal. We got down to about 50 players and I was hovering around the average chip mark. Once we got down to around 15 players I went on a good run of steals and re-steals as well as knocking out a short stack...and got my stack up to around the $300k mark. I was about 4/15. I then attempted a steal with K8s from the CO with the blinds at $5k/10k, and was called by the Button. The flop was 7 4c 3c. I decided that most of his range for flatting me pre was mid pairs and decided to just check fold. I checked and he checked back. The turn was a repeater 7. I checked again and the opponent decided to bet. TBH I felt like his hand didn't make much sense at this point. I felt quite confident that he would of bet a flopped set as the board was quite drawy. I also felt he would of bet something like 88-TT on the flop. His bet made little sense to me, and I felt that his range here was more skewed to a bluff or a marginal hand. From memory, he made it $30k and I decided to raise to $80k. I know that my play here doesn’t make that much sense in itself, but I play tournaments under the general assumption that most of the players cannot hand read well, and that merging my ranges properly is not an important factor. He did however PWN my soul and insta shove on me, and I was forced to fold and leave myself a $200k stack. I then went card dead for the next couple of orbits and also had no opportunities to steal blinds. My stack whittled down to $150k. We were now down to 12 players, 6 handed on each table. I got dealt A9 in the BB, and it was folded around to the SB. He raised it up and I found myself in a pretty standard shove spot with 10bb. He snapped me off with the good old AJ, and I was out in 12th for $2xxx

I had my first session at cash again yesterday and ran pretty badly in terms of all-in EV. I kept flopping sets, and either not getting paid, or losing to gutshots. It was pretty sick. I was on a real good run of cards and flops and on another day could of found myself up 10 buyins, but was just hovering around down a bit to up a bit. I ended the session up 1 buyin. I am gonna try to grind through like 20k hands of cash before now and the start of APPT Sydney.


Other Stuff:
I have been through about 5 different mobiles in the last year, and had problems with almost all of them. I finally fell for the IPhone craze and got the 32gb 3GS. I have been pleasantly surprised with the phone in general. Quite easy to use and superior to most things on the market. There are certain aspects that do tilt me quite a bit though. The phone and iTunes are very restrictive on how you can access your music, and Apple won't even allow for custom ringtones unless you buy the song from the iTunes store! The funnier part of this is that Australians can purchase songs from the store, but are for some reason not allowed to set them as ringtones! So according to Apple you actually cannot have a custom ringtone if you are Australian! Why this is the case is beyond me - but I am thankful to the millions of software hackers and computer geeks out there who find ways to get it done!

I have been downloading and purchasing a lot more music lately. One artist I have really gotten into lately is Brother Ali - a white albino Muslim rapper. He is pretty much ridiculous. I recommend anyone who is remotely into Hip Hop to check out some of his albums. Props to Berky for sending me this youtube link which I hadn't seen before. You will have to endure Freeway's verse at the start (not that bad tbh but nothing compared to Ali's verse) - but def worth a look!




I also recently purchased Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Pretty sick game. The campaign mode is real good. It is not just running and shooting, you get to control heaps of different weapons and a variety of vehicles. Unfortunately it is pretty short, and I finished it in like 6-7 hours. There is also a Special Ops section which has a number of scenarios which can be played alone or in Co-op mode - which I think is pretty cool. The main drawcard for the game though is obviously its online Multiplayer mode. Unfortunately though, the PS3 servers for this have been down since I bought the game and I have not been able to try it out yet. Pretty tilting - but I am sure it will be worth the wait!


For those that know me well, I am also a bit of a Fifa connoisseur. I have been playing the series since the SNES. Since Fifa ’08 some of my friends somehow believed that they could beat me at the game. They are cute kids. They keep getting pummelled and coming back for more. My mates Paz and Ant0s game select against me pretty well. They will challenge me to games when I am on life tilt and have lost like 10 buyins at poker. They win a few games then think they are the shiznit! I inevitably end up crushing their souls and their pea-sized hearts and retain my position on top of the Fifa 10 mantle. The Ruler is BACK bitches

I am sending out an open invitation to any of you wannabe bitches to challenge me online at Fifa 10. My PS3 online ID is ThePuzz1e and am waiting for peasants! To make matters more interesting I am going to give away $25 for anyone who can beat me at a best of 3 game.

Thank you Edison, Tesla and all other geeks!

I was sitting in my room at 3am happily stealing cars and mugging old ladies on GTA IV when sudenly everything went black! I looked outside and realised the power in my whole street had gone out. I sat in darkness for a few minutes hoping it was the result of a possum cult that had decided to mass suicide, in which case the power would be back briefly. Three cigarettes. a redskin, and a trip to the toilet later... I realised my electronic friends would not be back for a while.

The obvious thing would be to sleep, but I am currently on a nocturnal sleep schedule cos of the Sunday majors. I just sat in darkness like a pleb, and proceeded to give thanks to all the physicians who have brought us to the days of 70 inch plasma tvs and lights that respond to your voice. What I would of done for a ball in a cup and a candle!

Emo Poetry

I've started typing this post like 5 times and ended up deleating it. It is basically one big 'I'm emo ATM so please hug me' type posts - and I was at odds about writing it. I have though decided to continue. Not so much for my desparation of emo love - but because...well I don't really have a concrete reason. I guess I feel that the 'poker life' is sometimes glorified and made to seem simple. The upsides are magnified and the downsides ignored. The truth of the matter is that variance is a mofo...and very few people truely understand its sickness.

Gone are the days of immense online edges and 50k hand sample sizes. Edge is still there - but you must fight through the variance to get it...and thats not so easy. No matter how long you have been playing for - the downswings still get to you. They have definately been getting to me lately!

Whenever I coach someone they almost always ask what the most important quality for an online player is. They always think I'm going to reply with some mystical secret skill that very few are aware of. I can almost hear their sighs of disappointment at my boring reply --> discipline. Without discipline you simply cannot succeed in the long run.

If I was ever to back somebody - I would rather take a marginal winner over a potentially huge winner who is ill disciplined. The knowledge required to beat $50NL and below is really not that much. I coach a guy called Grant who was basically an APL player who had learnt bad habits and had no thoeritcal knowledge. I taught him and his friend the exact same stuff in a relatively short period. They both grasped everything and were of relatively equal competance. A few months on and Grant has turned his bankroll into 5 or 6 fold - while his mate had bust his account within a few days.

Casinos only have a few % of edge in most games. The reason they are so succesful is that they have a system - a winning system - and they stick to the rules without emotion. They never faulter. Most good poker players can find larger edge than the Casino does in a game of blackjack - but emotional control and discipline is what separates the good from the best.

Making money at poker is a grind - almost robotic at times. You must spend countless hours in front of a screen dealing with common swings - and are meant to be immune to them all. The truth of the matter is that poker is stressful. Variance can affect our play even when we are winning. Discipline allows us to look at each play on its merits and to be honest with ourselves when we play bad.

Originally I was just going to bitch about how badly I was running at everything lately, and how I'm angry as I feel I may have played badly at some points. Somehow this post turned into a lesson about discipline which I guess I subconsciously gave myself. I'm pretty sure only about 4 people actually read this blog - but in the odd chance one of you just watched rounders and is dreaming of  'vegas and the fucking mirage' - just know what you are getting yourself into!