Life with Possum: The Bobby Possum Poker Blog

After reading a few of these I feel like I left some things out.

About me:

I'm 30, I've been playing for a long time. Full/part time as an income for about 5 years. I've played $4/$8-$5/$10 FLHE with $1/$2-$2/$5 NL live cash but mostly all online stuff. Online I play mostly MTTs now but have been 45/90/180 grinder in the past. I play everything online ($25 ABI), from $1r-$215 (occasional $550 and I have played a couple $1K majors in the past) 12-20 tables at a time. I would really like to get better at cash, especially mixed game cash.

Poker Goals:

Profit 100K by the end of this year and 200K by the time I head to Vegas next summer

Win a Sunday Major

Review more and study the game more

Be more patient, I am agro overall but I need to control it better sometimes

Start a stable maybe?

Get Pleno1's autograph and rub it on my titties

Put Queens at the top!

Hi there BobbyPossum, welcome, it's nice to have you blogging sir!

I have informed the relevant authorities and they should be along soon to fix your blog into your signature for you.

I have no idea whether pleno1 would appreciate being rubbed on one's titties or not, but you never know do you!? ♦

I think your blog will be entertaining so I'll subscribe for sure.

Best regards and have fun,

Mal.

Since I forgot to post Friday night after my session so I wanted to make sure I posted at least once today, being Sunday and all. I had a pretty awful session Friday, played about 12 hours and probably about 40-50 MTTs to brick almost every for the first 8 hours and barely break even for the rest of the session and finished down about $700. I ran poorly but in all honestly I def didn't give a great effort or put forth my "A" game, which always tilts me more than anything. Part of being a day to day grinder is putting your best effort towards whatever you're playing, being able to shed that gross feeling of disappointment and shame of punting stacks should be easier with more experience. But I still struggle with it which just compounds the issue and then I get tilted even more and the vicious cycle continues. Anyways, I am trying to improve on "making peace with variance" a bit more but in all fairness it's something I will probably always have an issue with.

It's Sunday though, and dreams are made on Sunday. My girlfriend is in her new place, so that is nice. I loved having here but we're both independent people so we both like our own space. The weather is gorgeous and there is no construction on the hotel next to me so I have peace and quiet with a lake side view today I feel good overall, a bit tired but I usually play better when I'm under active like this. I'm not condoning to not be fully rested when going into a session but I've spent my whole life kind of tired so it works for me.

I've got a few stacks here early that could help freeroll my session early, which I obv feel is such a nutty feeling. Obv we all have to have a certain disregard for money when we play poker but it's like a breath of fresh air knowing you have regged for your whole session and are in profit 4 hours in. Like I said, it's Sunday, and Sundays are the stone cold nuts for me. I know some people hate them because you can lose so much more than on the normal weekday schedule, which I get. But if you don't love Sundays and get gitty like a little school girl for them, then I don't know what to tell you homeboy because you probably don't truly enjoy mtt's. But hey, that's just mho.

Glgl to everyone today. I was lazy yesterday and forgot to hit the market so my food situation is not what I'd like it to be. But that's why we have coffee and Redbull #caffeineaddictandimokwithit #yoloswag

Live the dream, win lots of money, nh, wp etc.

-Bobby Possum

Mondays.....pretty much hated by everyone with a 9-5 and usually a day off for most grinders. It makes sense, you play all week and then after the let downs that Sundays can bring you don't want to wake up and reg again. I personally think it's one of the more profitable days to play as most regs take it off and field sizes tend to be smaller and thus easier to win. It can be a hard adjustment after being on a long grind and bink hunt the day before to more of a bankroll builder mentality. I find it rather encouraging like playing sets for 45/90man SNG's. You always tend to be deep in something and if you bust you're making a run in something else, but in return the prizepools are obviously not as big.

My Sunday run was pretty demoralizing for 90% of my session. I know most of you will say that's pretty standard for a Sunday but that is not usually the case for me. I had said I had a couple stacks early in my last post but that didn't last very long and my morning runs fell apart quickly. I had a long stretch where I couldn't keep more than 6 tables up and I think for a couple hours I was 3 tabling. A horrible downside for me to mass tabling is that I tend to get bored with fewer tables unless I'm making runs. Unfortunately yesterday I couldn't even get in the middle stages of a tourney so I found myself being bored and then distracted for a large part of the day. Finding motivation can be laborious when there is nothing stimulating on my screen.

I did manage about a $600 profit in the end losing HU in a $109 PLO8 MTT that was essentially a 60 man SNG and another like $400 for coming like 25th in another $109 MTT. Profiting on Sundays is never bad especially with how I felt a ran and for a bit played so I'm not too crestfallen about the session.

As for life outside of poker my roommate got some great news today. He had an interview for a job he got which he really wanted and I'm so happy and proud for him. Better job and it's like 5 blocks from where we live downtown so he doesn't have to drive anymore and it keeps him downtown which he really wanted. I had breakfast with him and my girlfriend this morning and she was more excited for him than either one of us were. It was a great way to enjoy the day, sitting outside with my roommate being ecstatic about the new job and my girlfriend and I getting so share it with him. Life is good today

Grinding today for sure and then off tomorrow and back at it Wednesday. GLGL.

Hello from Madison!

-Bobby Possum

Nice blog Bobby and a great insight into the life of a serious MTT grinder.

Will defo follow.

Originally posted by BobbyPossum

Get Pleno1's autograph and rub it on my titties

Subscribing just because of this ♠_evil:

Wiiiiiiiiii

Stick with this and it will get very popular.

I'm subbed!

HI BobbyPossum,

If you would like to put your blog title at the bottom of your posts go to this link:

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/usercp.php

You can untick the boxes in 'Options', enter the blog title or whatever text you would like and click save. This will give you a nice shiny signature for your blog.
Just an idea since I can see this blog getting busy with visitors.

Regards,

Mal.

Tyty Mal.

Interesting blog will keep an eye on it. So I take it you're a full time player, and want to ask: where do you see yourself in a few years time? Do you think you will still be playing poker, or pursuing career in something else and playing on the side?

Hopefully you bink that Sunday major soon mate.

Still not sure how I'm going to work this, I want to force myself to enter something after a session. That just seems like a bad idea though as I'm usually pretty tired and grumpy right after a session. I want to win everything so even great session still can put me on edge, I rationalize it as me just being a competitive person but it's probably board line OCD. I tend to never be satisfied, which is good but also very bad. I'll just be life result oriented and say it's working for me for right now, that just makes life easier.

Had the day off yesterday, weather was amazing and I got to spend most of it with the girlfriend so I couldn't really miss. Slept in a bit late, took the dog to the dog park, did some laundry, did some grocery shopping, tried to fit in some Home Depot but there just want's enough time. Laid around after, made dinner and went to get get ice cream then chatted with my roommate when he got off work. I know it sounds lame but a day of being semi productive with my girlfriend is about as good of a day as I could ask for. I think any successful pro will tell you that finding happiness outside of poker is crucial to your overall well being. We are so fortunate we get to play a game for a living, it's also so important to enjoy the freedom that comes with that.

Speaking of freedom and poker, sick transition obv. I got some interesting new today of the degenerate nature. I have a good friend I've talked to online for like 5-6 years and but never met until this summer when I picked him up with my mother to drive cross country out to Vegas where him and I would be living for about 7 weeks. He lives about 6 hours south of me and it was good to meet him and were headed out to live with some other guys whom I had talked to online for a bit, but never met. That's another story though, back to the original one. Towards the end of the stay he told me his friend was getting out of the service early and wanted to come live with him as my friend was staying out in Vegas while I drove back home. My friend said sure, and the plan was both he and I were going to back this guy with hopes of maybe testing the waters of putting a small stable together.

He arrived into town and we immediately get him a roll online and he starts grinding. About a week before I'm about to leave it turns out that our horse has burned the roll playing blackjack online. Now, being that this is a good friend of my friend it's a very touchy area. It wasn't anything much, maybe like $500, but still it's the principal of it all. I'm not sure how much any of you know about staking but you're usually allowed to borrow against the stake as a horse to pay for things like rent and what not. You then have to win double back as you have to clear the make up and make the profit back but it's still pretty common. Obv with this horse being a close friend we were allowing him to borrow against the stake, handing him a chance to do nothing but play online. So when we find out he's spending our money trying to degen, it's a slap in the face. Long story short, we had a chat and we told him we'd give him another shot. Fast forward to earlier this afternoon.

My friend, who's never on Skype, sends me a PM. Telling me we have another issue, now mind you these two are from the same hometown and have known each other for years. They both stayed out there and got a two bedroom condo with the plan to get a bigger place with another friend of theirs. Obv the message says the same thing has happened but this time the roll was at $1500 and he was doing it 10 feet way from my friend while he was grinding. Now I'm put in a position where I have to be the bad guy, as he's not my good friend. The whole situation is a mess and I understand more why people don't like to get into backing, especially with friends. I personally have been backed most of my serious poker career, it's just been the right life choice for me. I have always respected the agreement and other than one incident other than this I have no issues.

I talked with my mates in Vegas about this as a guy we all knew was in a tough spot. It's the horse's job to make sure he is working as hard possible to win money on the stake just as funds should be available at anytime from the backer. It's a two way street but I feel like most horses tend to take time off when they are crushing or down swinging. If you're crushing then you should be playing more volume with the A+ game and if you're down swinging you should be putting in more volume as well as long as you're not spewing. Sitting in make up and not putting in volume is just bad etiquette and shouldn't be tolerated. It's a job and and business and to be successful you really need to treat it as both. If making a living at poker were easy than more people would be doing it.

I'm getting off topic, sorry. It's been a taxing morning and I am just kind of venting. My last session was ok, I played well but didn't really get deep in much and ended down maybe like $250. Bricking all $60's, $109's and the $215 I played was rough but to come out of with minimal damage is kind of a silver lining. The girlfriend was a bit homesick so she will be gone until the middle of next week. She never a distraction but not having her around means nothing but grinding hopefully. My roommate is off of work a couple days though so maybe I will go out a night or two and get some cocktails. Beauty of being a poker player is that if you wake up and don't want to work, well you don't have to. Downside being that is probably why most people fail, too much freedom is a burden for some people. Either way I will be putting in a lot of volume with her gone, hopefully build some momentum into the weekend and get a bink here soon. I'm a grinder so making small profits are fine but binks are obv what MTT grinders live for.

Sorry for the long winded post today, sometimes it's just got to happen. I'd like to give a shout out to a couple of my friends, Duffer and Edmund. One guy is crushing online, won the PS $11r twice in the same week and 5th in the Deuce. The other got 8th in the SM and is now crushing live PLO cash 25/50. Guys have me jelly like a donut but I am still happy and proud of them. GLGL as always, hope you enjoyed the read.

-Bobby Possum

Originally posted by ains21
Interesting blog will keep an eye on it. So I take it you're a full time player, and want to ask: where do you see yourself in a few years time? Do you think you will still be playing poker, or pursuing career in something else and playing on the side?

Hopefully you bink that Sunday major soon mate.

Yes I'm a full time grinder and I will always play poker. Do I want to be grinding day in and out for my life, no. In three years I hope to be at the top of my game and hopefully at the top of THE game. I would love to make enough money to invest it and make my money work for me. Creating something from the ground up is always something I've wanted to do and I think that may come in the form of a bar or restaurant. I've spent most of my life in the industry and other than poker and my girlfriend it's another passion I have.

I think of poker as my career now, but in the end I think I would like to make a mark just as much as a business person. Traveling the world is a big thing for me too so I would like to travel and network, set up little businesses here and there and see what happens. My girlfriend just got her Masters and is now a PHD candidate where we live. She has to be here for two more years then she can travel wherever and do research. She has lived in a few places in Europe and I think wants to live there for a bit doing her research. That enables me to play any site I want and network outside of the states so I would love that.

So right now the plan is the find a more exact plan and take poker as far as it will take me. I love my life right now, I'm not trying to brag but I do. I live in an amazing city, I have a gorgeous, intelligent and just overall awesome girlfriend and I get to turn clicking buttons into money. I'm just taking it step by step and seeing where this whole thing takes me. Not sure if that's the answer you were looking for but it's the only one I have right now.

Thanks for the question though, I am more than happy to answer most of anything you'll ask.

My post yesterday had a negative tone to it and I don't like that but sometimes it's unavoidable. Life can't be all cupcakes and sunshine as much as we all want it to be but I think we all just try to get past most of it and try to find some joy in life. I'm still not sure what to say to our horse, we're keeping him on but I have yet to personally message him. It's probably best I didn't message him yesterday and even more so that I get some coffee in my system before messaging him today. I want to be firm and get my point across but it's delicate because I don't want to mount anymore tension between the two living together. In the end I guess you can't make an omelet without breaking a couple eggs so we'll see how that all goes.

Luckily enough that whole mess didn't really affect my play. I ended up about $1K and change but overall I had a chance to break off some real money. I ran deep in about 8 MTT's, got 10th-14th in 4 of them and only FT'd one of them. Nights like that are so fun to play, I was crushing the fields and getting deep in everything. Then, as sessions tend to do, everything went to shit quickly and I had tables flying off my screen. I did manage to get HU in a small $33 MTT with like $800 up top. It was a deepstack so the battle went on for over an hour, which is fun but can also be a big distraction with other tables up.

I feel pretty comfortable with my heads up game but I feel like I lose way too often vs weaker players. I can not begin to tell you how much that puts me on life tilt, even if it's a $1r it just heats me up. This particular one lasted well over an hour and it was in a deepstack so we were both over 100bss deep. One of these battles where I would chip him down and then he would give up and suck out or win a race and we'd be back to square one. I find that I go on tilt quicker HU, probably because so many hands get dealt so quickly that I can slam buttons at a quicker rate. I almost let myself lose control a few times and get out of grinding him down to just trying to serve a death blow. Eventually I untangled my panties and got him down to an 11:1 cl and we got A3s into AK but only for 12bbs effective and obv we suck out FTW. I don't care if it's a $1r or a major, winning puts me in a better mood overall. I made runs after that like a I said but FT'd one tourney and I think only took like 5th in that.

As for life, I got into a bit of a tiff with the girlfriend this morning. Nothing gets a guy going like Skype fighting with your girlfriend over money, in particular spending habits. She's a professional student/teacher so she doesn't make much. I am fortunate enough to make a bit more so I spend more. She's a saver and as we get more serious she gets worried about me spending too much and so on. I love that she's thinking about the future I just wish she wouldn't worry as much she does and just trust that I will be able to provide. She stresses over money so much, maybe it's because she has to budget and is very strict about or maybe it's because her family aren't really spenders, who knows. What I do know is that I spend my money on the things I wants and save what I can. I really don't spend too much so I don't worry all that much, I should care more but right now I don't. Having different opinions on these things is very difficult and then we get into these discussions that are about as fun as rinsing your mouth with bleach. But she's incredible and pretty hot on top of it all, plus I really would love a future with her so I deal with her being her awesome self.

I will probably end this session a bit early as I have to go back to my mom's and let my dog out and do a few other things before the weekend grind. I am going to try to put some hands together and maybe try to incorporate a review post or two for anyone reading.

GLGL as always.

-Bobby Possum

Two things,

Blog link fixed and now awesome! ♠_cool:

Me and the mrs have been together for over 9 years and we have a rule, we never, ever argue about money. I've seen too many people doing it in public, mostly those who have little of it and it ends relationships. Yeauch.

Absolutely a cracking read. I really think you should consider writing a (small) book. Something like "A Month in the life of a serious and successful MTT grinder". Or a timeline showing your progress from your early playing days to now.

So many players would be interested in reading that "book", with myself at the top of the list.

As there is no book (yet?), I will satisfy myself by following your blog.

Great work. Keep it up.

Originally posted by gadget51
Two things,

Blog link fixed and now awesome! ♠_cool:

Me and the mrs have been together for over 9 years and we have a rule, we never, ever argue about money. I've seen too many people doing it in public, mostly those who have little of it and it ends relationships. Yeauch.

Tyty for the blog link fix.

As for not arguing about money, how do you and her discuss finances? I feel like an open line of communication is key to any partnership so I'm just curious how you two make it work. I do agree that too many couples let it step in the way of being happy with one another. It's very hard not to with where the economy is and just the overall life weight that money brings. You couple that with the added stress that relationships can bring and people crack, just mho though.

Originally posted by Lazza61
Absolutely a cracking read. I really think you should consider writing a (small) book. Something like "A Month in the life of a serious and successful MTT grinder". Or a timeline showing your progress from your early playing days to now.

So many players would be interested in reading that "book", with myself at the top of the list.

As there is no book (yet?), I will satisfy myself by following your blog.

Great work. Keep it up.

I appreciate the interest and compliments mate. As for a book, no I don't think I will be doing that anytime soon. Maybe someday I could show you graphs of my results. I'm a bit of a volume bot so I think totaled I might have like 20,000 tourneys. Let me know if you want those and I can post them. Thanks for the follow and I hope to keep up mosting as much as I have been.

Yesterday I was talking about a conversation that was going on with my girlfriend. That conversation lasted well into the afternoon and become a very long chat. Now the smart thing to do would've been to video chat or get her on the phone. The only thing about that is, I despise talking on the phone. I just have never got how someone wants to listen to me talk and then even more why they want me to listen to them ramble on about non sense. Seriously, text me, e-mail me, video chat so at least whatever is going on in the background can distract me while you talk about pish I don't care about for the most part, even send me a letter. Anything, ANYTHING that keeps me from having to talk on the phone. Unless you're family or someone that is old enough to get away with still using their phone as a phone, you get sent the voice mail. And not just silenced, straight up one ring, maybe two and BAM talk to the recorded message. Speaking of which, I find it hilarious when people ask me if I checked my voice mail. Unless I actually use my voice to text app and I can read them, they get auto erased because my inbox fills up, sorry I'm not sorry!

Sorry for the tangent but I go on rants, it'll happen. I maybe should be one of those people that apologizes for coming off like an asshole except I pretty much am an asshole. Don't get me wrong I'm a very nice guy but I can come off like an asshole because, again, I am probably an asshole. Rewind back to the chat I was having with my girlfriend, I think it ended well. I get where she's coming from and hopefully I can get her to take it easy a bit. At the root of it all is a bit of an identity crisis that she's going through right now, small town girl trying not to lose touch of her roots while living in a bigger city kind of thing. She feels so pressured from her family to not let the city go to her head and I think she feels I want her to adjust to the city more. I like that she talks to her parents nightly and tries to make sure she doesn't forget where she came from. I find that endearing and rare these days, everyone is always trying to be someone else that it's hard to ever know who anyone really is. I don't have any of that kind of pressure so I try to be supportive and I just want to make her happy.

As happy as I am to chat with her about the future, it took a toll on my session. I was going to play a smaller session anyways but it ended up being about 1/3 of what I normally run. I FT'd the same $33 tourney I did yesterday and came in with the cl but couldn't win a race and took 3rd to pretty much break even. Things could be worse obv. Back on the grind today through Sunday. I'll take it a bit easy tomorrow just try to not play too late so can unwind and get everything set for Sunday. I have a little bit of momentum going so I'd like to continue that and get the confidence at 100% going into Sunday. Fridays and Saturdays are satty heavy days for me, I think they are such overlooked value always but near the weekends they are massively +EV. I will touch on that tomorrow so hopefully that's something to look forward to.

Sorry for the non poker related stuff but I wanted to make sure this blog was about the entire package of my life. Poker is a huge part of my life but not the only part and I wanted to show that you can have a fun and outgoing lifestyle while balancing poker at the same time. I just hope it's not too boring for any of you.

GLGL

-Bobby Possum

We don't discuss finances much except for what we might buy with the little extra we sometimes have. She has some mild learning difficulties; nothing serious, but let's just say I need to do the sums. She earns the money working and I run the house/shopping/bills etc. and mostly spend the rest on her.

As for the phone, I rarely answer it, there's usually someone on the other end trying to sell me something again...answer machine if it's important. I have a mobile but I think I've used it maybe four times in two years. My mrs on the other hand...