My story + HU SNGs + the future

I managed to put in about 100 hours that I set out for in March. Basically, it didn’t go s’well… I started off continuing my $60 turbos grind with a few $30 hypers filling in the gaps. I had a very swingy first week unable to get anything going. I hung tough however and grinded my way straight into a significant downswing. I spent a good bit of time studying my hands, asking friends questions, and watching lots of videos to make sure I was playing well and continuing to learn to play better. Everytime I started to pull myself outta the downswing, fate said “no, oh no you don’t Samer”. I said “ok. asshole.”

Overall graph for the month:

About midway through the month, I was having a little review sesh with my friend huxjoeflow and randomly started to disect my graphs by different games and months. A few clicks later I isolated all hypers since returning to Pokerstars (late last year) and saw this:

In the beginning of 2011 I played $100 hypers on FTP, ran it up real quick and moved to the $200s as I had the roll for it, but instantly hit 50 buyin downswing in those. That previously ended my hyper career (as i switched to turbos). When I saw the above graph I got a boner and said “fuck this shit” and decided to just switch to hypers. I’ve been avoiding them for a few obvious reasons, wanting to avoid variance being the primary one. Since I was already downswinging and feeling stuck inside of it, I couldn’t justify “wanting to avoid variance” at that point. There really is no avoiding it anyway in poker. Plus I needed SOMETHING to give me some confidence back, and this redline could be just the thing I was looking for. At least I could just get my nose to the grindstone and pump out EV and not feel like I’m wasting time.
Anywho, I didn’t exactly manage to win any real $ from that point on in March, and my hyper red line unsurprisingly dipped from the 6% quoted above, but still looks kinda solid after just under 2k games:

It’s not hard to see what people mean about crazy swings in hypers. I’m ~ 80 buyins below ev. But at the same time this is a relatively small sample. I could easily play more games than this in 1 mth. And all things considered, it’s just a breakeven stretch (with some profit of rakeback) that will surely be overcome.
Anywho. That’s it for this month. I won’t be blogging as little as this month. I certainly got bogged down with some non poker stuff and with trying to cram in 100 hours of HEM hours (hard for me to do!!). Much love.

That's a lot of BIs under EV in such a small sample..

In an effort to provide the best coaching deal in the SNG world, I’ve lowered my prices to $80/hour and $400 for 6 hours. Not sure how long this will last, but I’m going to try it out for 1 month and go from there. ♦

Originally posted by braminc
In an effort to provide the best coaching deal in the SNG world, I’ve lowered my prices to $80/hour and $400 for 6 hours. Not sure how long this will last, but I’m going to try it out for 1 month and go from there. ♦

^^
♠_thumbsup:

Good to have your blog here, too.

So the 5-1 odds against me hitting 2200 games in April was probably too good of a line . I took almost the entire remainder of the month off for a few reasons…

The first dagger into my grind was my internet connection. My ping has started jumping up into the 500ms with infuriating regularity. I called the ISP tech support many times, but they are absolute morons here in Lebanon. They tell me that my connection is fine and run tests on Lebanese servers to prove it. Only problem is, THERE ARE NO WEBSITES IN THIS FACKING COUNTRY. All my web activity (and 99% of other Lebanese) is on international servers. They tell me speedtest.net is “not accurate”, “not reliable”, and “just an application… not a server.” I became torn between laughing and YELLING at the top of my lungs at the idiocy. Anywho, this has been a big ongoing problem. It’s extremely hard to sit lobbies when it takes 3-5 seconds to register. Even worse is when the table opens so slowly that I’m sitting out the first 1-2 hands.

The absolute nail in my grinding coffin came when my “new” iPad arrived. I ordered it to my gf’s cousin’s house in America since she was visiting soon. Let’s just say I haven’t played a single poker game since getting the iPad (27th April) and I haven’t slept before 5am on any of those nights either. This is problem. I’m also unable to download the Pokerstars App. I think it’s because I’m logged in and regged into the American Itunes store, but I’m not 100% sure. It may not be available to the Lebanese market in general…

With that said here is my final April graph:

My Year to date graph:

Pretty awful volume all around. The first 1500 games were mostly turbos and small MTTs. The rest are hypers. I seem to have 1 month of good volume followed by 1 month of hardcore laziness. That makes May another “good volume” month. I’m gonna have to find a way to get the iPad outta my hands first!

Yo

Resize the window man

Nice blog ♦

I think it should be possible to download the stars app everywhere, but it'll not let you log in except from the allowed countries.

To date it is only the UK + Pokerstars.eu countries who're allowed to play.

Yea how do i resize those pics? Can i do it here in forum or i have to do it on backend where i hosted it?

It seems they are expanding access to Pokerstars App as time passes. So hopefully it'll be more like you're suggesting relatively soon!

2 new vids up this week for MTT sngs. Check em out! Feel free to ask questions here as well in vid comments

Hey thanks for the comments. The video quality issues of part 2a are sort of an anomaly to me. It seems to get much better after a minute or two and I resent versions that should fix the problem entirely. It shouldn't happen again.

If you are referring to quality of CONTENT, then I have to admit each video series is a bit of a gamble. It's hard to decide what people want to see and how good a certain concept will turn out. I do spend a lot of time preparing the vids, planning content, and executing my audio commentary. Ive already spent 6 hours just preparing the content for my next video and I haven't begun recording yet! So if it sucks, then shoot me in the face, I dont know what to say

This was the first year I decided not to play a substantial schedule of WSOP events since ~2007. I’ve been going year after year without any success other than 2 small cashes. It can obviously be extremely frustrating to “run bad” in live MTTs that are essentially out of your bankroll’s guidelines. This year I figured I’d skip Vegas entirely since I was in Lebanon and my bankroll hasn’t recovered enough since Black Friday. However, a good college friend of mine decided to get married this June, and I decided to fly to the US to watch it all go down.

My dad is a big poker enthusiast (he helped me get into in the first place). He’s not the most technically, fundamentally, or mathematically sound player…, but as a psychiatrist he understands the psychology of people as well or better than anyone else and uses it in his game as a major weapon. He took down a tournament in Mississippi this year for $60k, has a bunch of small cashes in WSOP and other events around the country, and this year he made a huge run at the WSOP Seniors event. After chip leading Day1, and 2nd in chips Day 2, he finished 13th out of 4128 entries. Not bad dad!

Anywho, needless to say he convinced me to go with him for a week and a half to Vegas. I decided I’d just grind Sit n Gos and some small cash games. I wanted to limit myself to a 3k roll for SNGs, so I played mainly $275 and $325′s. I’ve noticed the $1ks and even $500s get harder each year, so I was happy to be playing with mostly fishes anyways. Unfortunately I bricked game after game after game. I was 0/4 on day 1 and had busted the 1st hand of day 2′s 1st SNG. My SNG roll was half gone. I wasn’t worried, I was just frustrated. I was looking at what games were available next and I saw a $525. An Asian guy next to me asked if I wanna buy sell tourney chips to him. I said no thanks, I can’t win anything to get even 1 tourney chip. (These are satellites so if you win they give you increments of $500 tourney chips, NOT cash). He said “you win dis one, don wurry”. I laughed and grabbed a $525 card. Better to run bad at low buyins and time your move ups at the right time. Right?

I proceeded to run hotter than hell knocking each of the first 4 of the first 5 players out. I had just over half the chips 5 handed. Effective stacks were around 15bbs at this point so I slowed down the aggression as it would be pretty hard to bully a bunch of shortstacks. I wasn’t getting any shovable hands. We got to 3 handed and I had the same chips with other 2 guys about doubling up each once. I got into a ridiculous blind versus blind hand with KT allin vs AA on KJ3cc flop and lost. 1 hand later I lost AQ to a 44 button shove. That was all she wrote.

Yikes, I decided enough SNGs for now and started playing 1/3 nl for a while. I won ~ $500 at that and was relieved to play some lower variance poker for a bit. Me and my pops went to SF in the middle of our Vegas trip to visit my brother and sis. Those were good times.

When we returned to Vegas on Thursday, I played mostly cash games. Saturday was my birthday so I HAD to play the WSOP $1500 that day. I busted about 2 hours in with AK vs 45o in a 4bet pot with him calling river shove with 4high flush. That was interesting!

Sunday was my dad’s birthday (yes back to back days..). We did some shopping, eating, played a little cash together, then went back to the Rio. We decided to each play 1 last SNG. Both $525s. He sat coincidentally at my friend PrimordialAA’s table. Always good to run into that guy, probably one of the nicest guys in poker who is also an amazing player. I sat down at my table which was FULL of internet kids. They all seemed to know each other and were joking “ah yea just like our $500 stars SNGs back in the day…”. I’m like GREAT, this will be a soft field…

I went on to double 99 vs QQ, A2 vs AQ, and K6 vs A2 all for LARGE pots, earning myself 8600 chips (out of 20k) and convincing other guy to 50/50 chop. It didn’t take much convincing, he didn’t want to play a “crapshoot” for 5k. It was a nice save for the trip. Put me up overall a couple hundred instead of being down a few k.

I’m back in Memphis now for 4 more days until i fly back to Lebanon. I can’t believe I’ve almost made it through this insane month of travel. It’s been 12 flights and 2 roadtrips in 30 days. Beirut to Austin 3 days. Drive to Dallas stay 3 days. Fly from there to Philadelphia for wedding weekend, 3days. Fly back to Dallas for 1 day. Drive 8 hours to Memphis, 2 days. Fly to Vegas 3 days. Fly to San Fran, 3 days. Back to Vegas 3 days. Back to Memphis, 5 days. Then finally back to Beirut. I’m exhausted!!

Upcoming blogs:
- Online Chat wars
- Life in Lebanon
- New regimented grinding schedule

Thank you for yet another update!

I love reading your blogposts, they're always well written and actionpacked!

Regards,
Richard

My dad has a weekly poker game at the country club near his house in Memphis every Wednesday night. It's a pretty juicy game with $200 entry (10k chips) and $100 rebuys (5k chips each) and sometimes includes an add-on as well for another $100-$200 (5k and 10k options). I've heard stories about this game for years. How my dad crushes, stories of standard bad beats, and other typical poker stuff. I went with him a couple years ago and nothing interesting came of it. Only having 8 days worth of time in Memphis and not being able to grind online the whole month of June, I was excited to go play in it again just to add some hours to my limited Vegas grind time.

I had heard a story or two from my dad about how Moneymaker came to their game and how they're BFFs now. I figured this was classic dad exaggeration and at MOST he had come to their home game once or so. I ended up going twice to this game this month, cashing both times. Moneymaker was indeed there both times. First week I was at different tables from him and it was a small turnout overall. Second week (just this past Wed), we had 20 strong with ridiculous amount of rebuys thanks in large part to Moneymaker's maniac aggression during rebuy period.

The guys in this game have the most fowl mouths of any group of "friends" I've ever seen. For their age group (40-60) I found it an uncomfortable combination of disturbing and amusing. There are a few Jews and Arabs pitted directly against each other with no qualms about attacking each other. Nothing is off limits in this two thousand+ year rivalry.

Anyways I played about 3 hands in the first 2 hours. I literally was dealt 92o and 73o about 12 times each. Meanwhile almost 80% of the hands being dealt were allins like JT vs A2 vs 55 or whatever. Chips flew and I just chilled on my initial buyin and used no rebuys. After my initial 10k stack dwindled to 8k at the end of rebuys, I did get the max addon for 10k more chips, putting me up to 18k.

After rebuys I still didn't get many hands for a while. I eventually was able to pick AK and double through AJ his button to my SB. A few minutes later, holding QJcc on J63cc 7c turn and blank river I was able to get Mr. 100VPIP (Moneymakers rival of the night) to bluff it all on the river. Suddenly I had a huge pile of chips (around 60k out of 420ish) and had only played 5 hands in 2 hours.

We consolidated to a "final table" 10 handed with payouts being announced for the final 4. 4k, 2k, 1200, 800! Not bad for a weakly home game!! I had immediate position on Moneymaker after redrawing seats. This was probably the best seat in the house. He continued raising 40+% of hands and putting himself in incredibly tough spots over and over. I used my supernit image against him to float and bluff turn a couple times successfully. He was getting antsy (he had to be somewhere else as well) when he raised T9s in the Sb and I picked up KK. I decided to 3b small to like 25k with only 30k behind. He didn't notice my stack size and he doubled me up real good.

I went on to chop 3 handed for 2k bringing my ROI lifetime in this homegame up to 170%. No offense to Moneymaker or any of the other players, but this is the juiciest games I've ever seen being played for these meaningful stakes at least since 2004-2005.

Some classic quotes that were made by various players that night were "well why don't we chop...what's that thing called, INM? ICM?" After offering a retarded chop favoring the short stacks at about 3x their actual value, the same guy says "well with ICM the short stacks are actually worth more than the big stacks". There were other classics involving 50 year olds try to talk about ranges without really having a clue what they were saying. It was cute though.

Anyway, in actuality Moneymaker is a really nice guy. He had a funny remark the first week when we were at opposite tables. My dad was sitting to my right and taking lots of heat with everyone calling him the LUCKIEST PLAYER EVER. Moneymaker chimed in from across the other table saying "HEY! What about me??" ♦ Classy and humble imo.

Update asap

♦

What games r u playn now ?

Good luck

Does that sound like a play on ‘cat fights’? I can’t decide if I want it to or not…

Anyway, I was googling my poker name a while back,something I admit to doing bi-anually (but i deny all other allegations!!), and came across this amazingness. Now I have to say I was a bit terrified when reading the OP. Had I done something horribly wrong? Was I about to get fired from Pokerstrategy? Was I totally out of line??

I was relieved to see that most of the posters responding didn’t think so.
My own response to the matter is just that I don’t believe anything said on the internet in a chat box should ever be taken seriously. We missed that boat long ago as an internet community. In an environment where one regularly sees prepubescent teenagers unloading “jokes” about our moms and/or aids acquisition as forms of poker justice, I fail to understand how anyone can truly feel offended by what they read.

In the interest of keeping politics out of it (I do believe my comment was a political, not racial statement) I won’t delve into my personal feelings and perceptions about the ongoing conflict between Israel and Lebanon. I will say if anyone is truly interested in understanding why the middle east as a whole “hates” Israel and America, the answer appears not to be religious or racial but almost entirely political, and there are lots of very interesting material on the subject mostly dating back to World War II (and some contextual history hundreds of years back).

With all of that said, I find “chat wars” to range from being relatively entertaining to extremely pathetic.
Here is a fun example of the latter:
I same time sat a player who has decent winning stats at the $30 hypers. This happens a lot since the games load so fast. More often than not you have no choice who you are going to play. The good news is everyone sucks at the lower limits, so it’s really not a big deal. I don’t accept chops as a rule because the stakes are quite low, I like to practice against non-fish some % of the time, and because I don’t know who I can and can’t trust out of the random pool of regs I might face.

This player asks me to chop and I politely decline. At the end of match, he snap accepts rematch which I found curious. I don’t like regwars a lot, but this guy seemed to play pretty bad so far so I thought for a few seconds and accepted as well. Immediately he started questioning why on earth I just “sat him”. Despite him snap accepting, he viewed my acceptance as a major insult and a testament to me overblown ego and delluded perceptions. Over the course of our forthcoming 40 game match, the conversation went exactly like this (im about to dig through my HHs to copypaste exact wording… fml):

TimmyOx said, "chop?"

braminc said, "eh its easier to just play imo"
braminc said, "if thats ok"
braminc said, "saw the twitter shoutout last week "
braminc said, "hehe"

1 hr later, we sit again and then have our first rematch:

TimmyOx said, "why are you sitting me?"

braminc said, "same time"
braminc said, "and u rematched so i thought id humor you"

TimmyOx said, "you are not better than me though"
TimmyOx said, "that's the logic fail"

braminc said, "ok"

TimmyOx said, "i rematch everyone because i'm better than 98% of them"

braminc said, "then whats the problem"

TimmyOx said, "no problem"
TimmyOx said, "i was asking why you were sitting me?"

braminc said, "i didnt sit you"

TimmyOx said, "(rematch)"
TimmyOx said, "rematching is sitting someone"
TimmyOx said, "in essence"

braminc said, "cause u hit it first"
braminc said, "i didnt wanna be rude"

TimmyOx said, "lol"
TimmyOx said, "i play 4 tables"
TimmyOx said, "i have to act quickly"

braminc said, "so it was a misclick?"

TimmyOx said, "your hubris is only cutting down your hourly. just trying to be helpful"
TimmyOx said, "why not play fish?"
TimmyOx said, "std?"
TimmyOx said, "lol"
TimmyOx said, "wp guy" (in reference to my KJ beating his A5 aipf 16bb deep......)
TimmyOx said, "i forgot you play garbage" (on another standard hand)

braminc said, "dont forget"
braminc said, "thats a leak"

TimmyOx said, "have you noticed that 90% of the all-ins, you've been behind?"

braminc said, "thats good math there"

TimmyOx said, "what did i do?"

braminc said, "turned into the biggest douche outta nowhere"
TimmyOx said, "i simply asked one question"
TimmyOx said, "why are you rematching me?"

braminc said, "yea which is slightly douchey to begin with"

TimmyOx said, "it was question?"
TimmyOx said, "no its not"

braminc said, "then you went on a tirade ther est of our match"
braminc said, "to me it is"

TimmyOx said, "because it's obviously not profitable for two regs to sit each other"

Anyways, the chat isn’t all that exciting now that i’ve reread it so I’ll stop there. But here is the result of our match

I only won like ~5 buyins after rake, but such a sweet redline esp after his comment about getting it in bad constantly.

Ok enough gloating, just enjoyed this match too much not to share. And to remind everyone and myself not to be a douche in chat

I managed to pump up the volume a bit last week reaching 500 games in 1 week for the first time… in years? Yikes. I guess that’s a testament to my undisciplined work habits rather than much of an achievement. Still, you gotta start somewhere, and I’m attempting to slowly increase my grind stamina week by week. Here’s a graph of the week:

I certainly ran good in allin situations, but I also strongly suspect that I ran into big hands far more often than usual. Can’t complain overall though. I just gotta get back out there this week and do it again!

It appears I only need 337 more games to achieve Platinum star this month. God help me if I can’t accomplish that!

.

not sure where to get it if DL links are dead. If you add me on skype I could probably send it to ya

thanks man, let me know if you got questions about that bubble factor stuff.

I have been thinking of lots of things to write about pertaining to Lebanon, so maybe i will go ahead and post those soonish

Ok so mayyyybe it was more like ~$800 and mayyyyybe it was like 14 minutes, but does anyone really think that would’ve been a good blog title?
Me neither. ♦

Anyway, as many poker bloggers do, I’m going to say “yea I don’t like complaining about bad beats” and then I’m IMMEDIATELY going to complain about a string of bad beats.

Here's the lovely link to the pic you're all dyyying to see

How the hell did I miss this blog so far?

Really nice read, and good luck with the hypers