2018: Tasty Food/Trip Reports/Tournaments
Hi, I'm Aaron, a 32-year old professional poker player who has been grinding a variety of formats for nearly a decade. Currently living in Chiang Mai, Thailand but my main residence is in Vancouver, BC.
For those who wish to read through hundreds of pages, my history is well chronicled on 2+2.
For those who wish to read a much more condensed version:
- Started playing professionally in 2009, solely 9-max Turbo SNGs
- Originally from the US, moved to Vancouver after Black Friday and my main game became 9-max Hyper SNGs (with a brief two month foray into 180-mans)
- Poker has afforded me the opportunity to work abroad (Sorta forced, I suppose) and among other places, I have lived in Chiang Mai, Vancouver, Playa del Carmen, Rosarito, and Puerto Vallarta
- 2x SNE (2014, 2015) and mixed in all 9-max formats/18-mans/Spins as SNG traffic slowly died
- Fully transitioned to Spins in 2016, somehow was able to shed my push/fold life and became a solid reg at the (previously) highest stakes. Made ~$350k in them in the past 2.5 years.
Spins continued to be my primary focus in 2017, but several factors have made me sour on them. I've seen my edge decrease slightly in the last half of the year, surely part of that has to do with the rise of bots/multi accounters but in all honesty, I also believe the reg pool has improved and the reg:fish ratio has worsened. Furthermore, I found myself more frustrated on a daily basis with the Spin grind -- a combination of dealing with the cEV swings, the real $ wings, playing HU vs competent opponents, etc.
Was looking for a change, for something different and for the last month, I've been dabbling in MTTs. Currently own/operate Psyduck Staking and I've always said that MTTs are the softest format, so I decided to put my money where my mouth is.
Rather encouraged by the lolsample, it's mostly offpeak and EV BB is ~20/100. Took off the past two weeks to spend time with family, travel to Bali, and deal with a nasty bacterial infection (i.e. intense food poisoning bug) so that's basically half a month's worth of volume. I think ~1500 games per month is doable and will go for that in January.
Here are a few random pics from the Bali vacation, I'll spare you the ones from my bacterial infection.
Healing waters of Titra Empil
GF admiring the view in Nusa Pineda
Here's a better pic of said view
Broken Beach
If MTTs don't work out, there's a job waiting for me at the Rice Paddy fields. Hopefully I'll earn enough to buy sunscreen.
Gorgeous two-story villa in Seminyak that came with our own private pool and waterfall
Even though I'm changing formats, my goals remain centered around volume/effort. I'm still relatively new to the MTT grind, so I'm not quite sure what will be attainable, so this is more of a wish-list than a goal-list.
2018 Goals
- Adjust to MTT life; it's harder to find that balance between business and pleasure because of the time-commitments required to play MTTs, so I need to be more vigilant about spending time on myself (Fitness, nutrition) and with others (GF, friends, family)
- Play 12,000 MTTs; Might seem like a lot, but I'm getting in 50+ a day fairly easily when I do grind. 50 per day, 5 days a week, 4 weeks a month = 1000 games.
- $250,000+ Profit; too optimistic? Maybe. Does seem a bit premature to set profit goals when I'm uncertain of my ROI/long-term edge in these games, but I'm willing to put in the work/volume. Besides, hitting a quarter of a mil sounds pretty cool so that's what I'm shooting for.
- Stay hungry and keep my options open: While I start 2018 with aspirations of acclimating to MTTs, I'm willing to change course if the ecoystem dictates it. So perhaps I mix in SNGs, short-handed cash on smaller sites, or even go back to flicking the occasional Spin -- I need to keep my eyes peeled for all possible edges and adjust if the wind blows in that direction.
Good luck all, and let's go.
2 Replies
Little late on replying to this, but just crossed the $1M profit mark in MTTs and made a longer post about it on Twitter/X. Reposting it here.
https://twitter.com/abarone68/status/177...
How I made $1M+ playing MTTs (A thread)
Given the volatility of multi-table tournaments because of their large fields and top heavy payout structures, even successful grinders can have wonky looking graphs. Often looks something like: Bink a big score, lose a bunch back, bink another score, lose some more back, etc. In addition to being a somewhat miserable experience, it's quite common for the binks to account for the bulk of one's profits. In some cases, the binks eclipse the total profit itself. But I don't think it has to be this way.
My Top Five Scores:
3rd @PokerStars $530 8-Max Bounty Builder $59,957
1st @GGPoker $525 Bounty Hunters HR $41,876
6th @GGPoker $1050 GG Masters HR $35,626
2nd @GGPoker Ho Chi Minh City Cup $31,961
3rd @PokerStars $530 Bounty Builder HR $31,714
No individual score represents more than 6% ($60k) of my total profit and combined, accounts for 20% ($200k). It's an incredibly small percentage and I believe speaks to other factors that have helped me succeed in this game, including volume, game selection, and edge.
#1 Volume: Before I moved to MTTs, I played SNGs. And from 2010-2015, I played appropriately 242,000 of them. Early on, I figured out that how much money I made at the game came down to a simple math problem.
Profit = $/per game x games played
It's more difficult to accurately determine your winrate in MTTs, but I've continued to follow the SNG mindset -- If I want to make more $ at this game, I need to put in more volume. We can only control so much in this game, but how often we play is certainly one of them.
#2 Game Selection: In my mind, game selection refers to both buy-in and format.
My ABI is $110 and I'm often asked 'Why don't you play higher?' It's not because I don't think I could beat the games. But I ask myself, how much do I want to push those edges? How much variance do I want to potentially deal with? Your edges will be the thinnest at the top of your buy-in range, and to be quite honest, there are many incredible end bosses looming in the higher stakes. Got check-raised out of my shoes by @padspoker
the other day and I thought welp, just got owned, gotta spend some more time in the lab. Doesn't mean I won't flick in a few of the higher stuff, but I'm a lot more careful when it comes to which games to play. For me, simply 'beating' the game isn't enough. Have to consider the potential variance/risk of ruin.
Example:
1% in a $1000 = $10
10% in a $109 = $10
If it's possible to make the same amount of money per game and play lower, I'd much rather play lower. Less risk, same potential reward. Seems like a no-brainer to me, but people seem to get caught up in hunting big scores, glory, and e-high fives from other regs stumbling down the same bumpy road.
Re: Format, approximately 75% of my MTTs are PKOs (Progressive Knockouts). I know a lot of people hate this format and believe there's more variance associated with it, but I'm on the opposite side of the fence. When played optimally, PKOs have less variance than non PKOs. Earning money in non PKOs requires you to outlast 70%-80% of the field, which means you'll have to survive more all-in confrontations. In PKOs, you can turn a profit at any time in the tournament, regardless of how many players are left, simply by KO'ing the right player.
#3 Edge: There was a time where my parents came to visit me in Vancouver and asked about my plans for the day. When I told them I had to study some poker spots, they were visibly confused. "You've been playing poker for so long, don't you know enough already?"
Sadly, no. I'll never know "enough." Optimal gameplay is constantly evolving, strategies that were once standard quickly become obsolete and eventually scoffed at. You need to continue working on your game because someone else out there certainly is. That doesn't necessarily mean memorizing seven different postflop bet sizes along with their exact frequencies across a bajillion different board textures.
Along with volume and game selection, your edge is the final 'controllable.' Aside from a few 'Rainman' types, the best players in the world are very often the hardest workers. If you want that level of success, emulate their level of dedication. People obsess about solver inputs and outputs, yet fail to realize the most important input of all: work ethic. While the poker world is certainly not 'fair' and lesser players might bink more than you will, the more effort you put into poker, the more likely you'll succeed.
So ask questions. Mark hands you're unsure about. Don't be too hard on yourself when you **** up, because trust me, you will. We all do. Just give it your best shot and try to get a little bit better each day. That's the approach I took to get to the $1M mark and will continue use as I look to make the next million.
Congratulations on the milestone and best of luck for the rest of the year.
