Lazza's 45 man SnG/MTT Blog

New Orange fish in town!

Congrats and well deserved for all your hard work over the years. To think that someone I trained a little over a year ago is now the King of the castle and well deserved King of the castle I might add makes me very happy smile

Keep up the good work!

Thanx Gary. I have no doubt that without your continued advice and guidance I would probably be sporting a Silver or Bronze badge by now, or even worse..... no badge

Congrats man.

Thanx Jim ♠_thumbsup:

This song makes me think back to the good times in my younger years!!
And very nice badge sir!!

Thanx man. I suspect there would be a few guys here who have never even heard or R.E.M., let alone know they were one of the biggest bands in the world between the mid 80s and mid 90s.

Hmph. Wet behind the ears noobs.

congrats on your new title MR :-)

Hey guys,

Time to get this old blog moving again.

2014 was a bit of a wishy washy year for me. I started the year still clueless about what I wanted to concentrate on pokerwise. My first love has always been MTTs but I have been unwilling or unable to invest the time necessary for deep runs. I had grown fond of the 45 man MTSnGs on PokerStars and have pretty good results from .25c -$1.50s.

So I decided at the start of the year to try and force myself to play regular sessions of 45 manners. This was a mistake as I knew deep down that I didn't want to be a regular daily grinder. I knew that for me, I had to actually WANT to play. So I didn't play. I didn't stress about it. I was comfortable with the fact that I will play when I want to.

So throughout the year, I played sporadically but I was happy. I had found my balance. I knew exactly when I wanted to play, but not what. Pokerwise I had 3 huge AHA moments during the year (all provided by PokerStrategists) and now I know exactly what I want to play.

AHA Moment 1

Pleno1 started his 2014 off with a plan to grind NL200/500 (I think) zoom to try to achieve SNE. Those plans went awry when he went on a massive MTT heater In the space of a few short months, he went from being one of the best online cash players to being one of the best MTT players in the world including a P5s triple crown and top rated UK MTT player. Having access to Patrick through skype during these deep runs was sick. He could be playing up to 12 MTTs but he is so calm and methodical, almost detached emotionally from the game. He is a total inspiration and the sickest player I have ever seen.

AHA Moment 2

Shortly after came AHA moment 2 which was provided by my good friend, UPAY4DINNER. Like myself, Gary had been struggling to find his regular poker home. That changed when he finished 2nd in a MM event for more than 5k. He then had a few high finishes and another FT. Then came a bad downswing. This proved to me how volatile an MTT career can be. The highest peaks can be followed by the lowest troughs. This can happen to any player, regardless of their skill level.

AHA Moment 3

This was provided by thazar's 2nd place in the Sunday Warmup for 75k a few months later. He copped so many bad runouts, being rivered etc, but he found a way to stay alive. Was the short stack with 7 left, stayed calm and picked his spots well to end up with a much bigger score. Survival is so important in the late stages of MTTs. Picking the right spots is something I am getting better at when I'm trying to keep my head above water, so to speak.

I don't really have any major goals in 2015 apart from:

Enjoy life.
Continue being part of the best poker community on the planet.
Enjoy poker on my terms.

I will be the tree that bows in the wind and never breaks, I will be the trampled flower that rises from the dead at the first ray of sunlight. I will bounce back from every disappointment.

GL all in 2015

Laz

P.S. Shall post details of my first MTT session later (including a bink ♠_cool: )

Best of luck Lazza!

Great goals Laz - clean, simple and full of enjoyment!

Looking forward to details of first session.

Here here

Hey guys,

My first MTT session of the year contained a bink. I played a small session on Netbet (4 MTTs) and managed to ship a €1 rebuy for €93.15.

There were a couple of hands I would have liked to have posted, but I had some internet problems and can't find them in PT4.

REVIEW

EARLY (5/10) As usual I started somewhat rusty. Missed some obvious spots, folded some hands I should play, and played some hands I shouldn't. I was lucky that there was plenty of worse play and I was able to build a stack regardless. This meant I didn't need to rebuy although I did addon.

MIDDLE (8.5/10)

Was extremely card dead. Found myself on an aggressive table and had very few spots to steal or resteal. Then disaster. From a healthy stack (around 50BBs+), I was reduced to around 15BBs (and a bottom 5 stack) when I had AA cracked twice in short succession. 46/50 with 27 paid meant good decisions were now required. As the bubble neared, i was able to steal on average twice every rotation, so I was chipping up without having to showdown or fold to 3Bets.

LATE (9.5/10)

Could have given myself 10 here. When the bubble burst a 27, I was 22nd. Got a huge double when I correctly read that villain's river donk shove was a missed draw so I called of with 2nd pair (Hero call?). This gave me a top ten stack and there was no looking back from there. When another big stack decided to bluff shove at the 3rd spade on the board, he didn't reckon on me having A9ss ♠_biggrin: . All of a sudden I was chip leader and from then on I dominated. Small stacks got no peace from me. I opened everything. They just kept folding.

GL at the tables

Laz

Adda boy Lazza!

Many more to come this year I hope. At your own pace

Congrats on a great start!

Hey guys,

iPoPs Micro series is on so I've cleared my busy RL schedule to play as many events as possible. This of course may not happen due to time zones. There are three events a day starting between 6am-7am my time. I have no problem getting up at that time. In the past I have made special efforts to get up to play MTTs in the wee small hours only to not play because I don't feel like it (Maybe it takes me several hours to wake up ).

Not much to report from the first three events. Spent much of the morning card dead and running big hands into bigger hands i.e. JJ>AK, QQ>AK, AK>JJ, KK>AA and disturbingly AK>A7o with a lovely board runout of x8J/T (he couldn't hit the str8 surely) 9. (ffs xD).

I really can't rate my play from this morning because I never had a great many decisions to make. So No quads, only 1 FH with 2 pair on board, 2 flushes : nut got no action and my small flush, action was killed by the 4th heart on board (I had 98 and he called my turn bet when the flush hit, so I was concerned that he had a bare high heart).

Just a tough session overall but if I was to give myself a tilt rating, it would be 0/10 . It is really enjoyable to be able to play knowing no matter what, I will walk away from my session with a smile.

May as well finish with a nice old song which pretty much sums up what I needed.

Happy Grinding

Laz.

Hey guys,

I'm back with my update from day 2 of iPoPs Micro series. Today was much better from a card distribution point of view as well as my standard of play. Yesterday was the first time I had played in 7 weeks and I felt uncomfortable, unsettled and distracted.

Today I was a lot clearer in my thoughts and a lot more positive and aggressive in my play, although I still like to flat into multi-way pots with speculative hands rather than squeezing. I now have a lot more belief in my post flop game and my judgement to make good decisions.

So today I played Event 4 €3 Rebuy, Event 5 €5 Freezeout and Event 6 €0.50 Rebuy and managed to cash in 4 and 6.

Updated results in spoiler.

I have played very little fast fold poker apart from some Rush Freerolls pre Black Friday but I started to feel more comfortable in the format. Can I become a "Speed King". ♠_biggrin:

Happy Grinding

Laz

awesome blog man i think its g....:appl: