Name: (AUS) – Variance, Mental Game (Tilt) & Victory: My Poker Journey

Thursday Session

Well where the F*** do we begin with tonight, what a frustrating make you wanna go jump off a bridge sort of night.

I dont even know how to split this up, becasue its just so all over the shop. I guess the begin middle and end? Im not even sure?

The start of the MTT

Felt ready and raring to go, hoodie on lo fi music in time to grind, and well lads we were on A+ game in full swing, found it very easy to find value and get paid when we had it!
I noted every player at the table only one opp i never encountered and sticking to those notes and playing that strategy everything made sense. I made some big hands got paid double start stack over 100bb its finally our time right?

The DAMMO PUNT OF THE DAYYYYYYY!!!

So hand before - vs two limps look down at A9s - Squeeze to 5,5bb- BB cold calls, so do the limpers, T85 flop no back doors, I cant cbet in theory here so X through, Turn 9, We bet BB calls, river J x x - had has T3o - says in his blinds he cant fold..

So legit next hand over limp limp A5s- decide on limp- unknown players squeezes to 5bb- call call we obvs call.
flop is 345 one club- we have back doors, x through to orginal raiser and he snap doubles his bet, everyone folds and I think we have a clear continue.

Turn 6h - We dont have hearts but we have range adv- we have all the 7x we ar the only one that has 87 and only one that has any 2x (22 and A2s)
So we lead here from 2/3 pot- Why is this a punt, I thought my opp had 80+k behind, he had 31k jams, we have to mathmatical call every hand we bet now as its not even double our bet

Unknown player has K7s..................... - hand in theory he can sorta squeeze but like he has f____ all 7x here. So why is this a punt, if we take our notes and what our A game was it was to be over folding in these spots especially when marginal and when we had a stack.... We didnt got punsihed, Should of just squeezed again pre but the hand before made me adpat.

The bad and ugly

5min later its break, all i can think about is we were 2.5x start stack, now we just over start stack (by 20k still a fair bit and if offered me that pre MTT ill snap your hand off) but because of how it all happened im just annoyed tilted already know we are going to bust and I just wanna go home and never play again. Another big spot to dominate an MTT and we f**** it up again!!!

The comeback???

So after acting like a 5 year old who was denied getting a fizzy drink while mum does the weekly food shop at coles, we find AKs get value vs a whale, We raise KT board comes T high and get x jammed on for 15bb by middle pair and we hold... We are back to where we were is it happening??? are we going to A) make it past late rego without a rebuy? B) we actually finally going to crush a live mtt after a long stretch of not??

The answer to the above is no- because here comes the rollercoaster!!

1st major hand (and this ones important as it leads to later on)- 3x limps we find JJ on the btn and squeeze to 6bb it folds to the last limper in the HJ and he wacks 14bb- we snap
JJ vs 44- AA2 9 ..............4.............. - yep alright at least it wasnt a big stack, but would be nice and this river would end up costing me basically my mtt life..

We find a couple of spots to pick up chips and rego ends we are down to 20 people from 40 - this is a good spot with 40bb we are one of the larger stacks in the room, i have refound my zone ive got some good 3bets through and here we go...

in the SB and look down at A9o- UTG jams for 7bb mp flats who is a reg but not one that traps to often here, we squeeze to 22bb and he folds, We are up agains K6s- JJ6 flop and he holds,, annoying buts its okay its a small one....

Win a few pots again then the ending happens abruptly!

How it ended

19 left, the guy who doubled with his 44 vs my JJ has got a few jams through lost a couple and is down to 11bb- he limps late pos, we know he is getting in when he limps for what we have seen
we are on the BTN and see AhKH- Oh yess time to knock him out and have over 50bb- we squeeze to 6.5bb
Sb folds, BB who is the whale with T3o above, thinks for a bit before moving all in for 38bb
obvs the short stack limper calls off- What do we do? - easy call right its AKs and this guy is wild....
Some how this ****ing wizard decides to jam 33 vs the only opp that covers him when we both have a top 5 stack and ICM is increasing..
as you have guest it- QT5 7 4 - We lose to 33, the limp caller had K2s and was jamming vs our AK squeeze.........................

Yet again if the 44 doesn't find a 4 on the river 15mins earlier he is out the mtt this hand above never happens I'm still in the mtt and probably end up cashing the MTT.

We have 1.5bb - find Q9o before the BB jam win vs J8, find 22 utg jam get called by Q6s and hold to get back to 9bb- then in the SB find A7s, folds to btn who raises 2.5x
we obvs jam BB folds, he tank calls T8s (same suit).... Flop is KQ5 turn K river 8............. and GG - win this flip I go from 1,5bb to 5bb to 10bb to 18bb and im back in the mtt but no river always coming 8 or T when your all in vs DAMMO in 2025.

Was there any good out of this

- for the mental game no, my emotions ran pretty high throughout because i just want one f)***** live deep run this year and we keep having this Fd up spots every week.
- from a finding the A game and playing your best (regarding the above post) IT did work! Noting the table made my decisions clearer and my punt came against a guy i didn't know, and music wise I remained focused even if I vented and tilted at myself, the music kept me present and redrew me back to my somewhat A game, It allowed for me to make good decisions.

Conclusion

So moving forward, note taking players and music is a yes, is live for me moving forward?? I dont know I seem to run like donkey poop and players are just to much of wizards, the fact I had 4 people telling me you cant call AKs here you can only call QQ+ shows you how soft the game is... but if we cant beat the game why play it?? maybe im just a full time 18man myserty guy and thats alll my poker career is good for..

Peace out another bad day at the office, who knows maybe there isnt many more days at the office with how its going.

Friday Session

Look Mental game wise another very poor performance, again when push comes to shove and the going gets bad we decide on punting, which is not good but there is a little more to it than that.

[18man Battle

So we continued with the 18man grind and well it was one of those high variance days where nothing held and nothing went right.
We play 29 x $25 18mans, we final Tabled 15, so just over 50% rush stage clearance (tick for the goals!), however only managed 3x cashes all 2nds with no heads up win.......
This means ITM % was 10% (big under achievement) and our average FT finish position dipped from 4.6 to 4.75.......

So what was the cause of this, without sounding too much like a "oh we run the worst" etc., we lost multiple 80/20s (AK vs AQ or AK vs AJ) and when we did have a flip we lost them too. Hard to be profitable when you can’t hold in any spot. 2 of the 3 heads up we had the chip lead and in 1 we were one river away from winning ($250 bounty as well was pulled when i finished 2nd).
So on a different day with a few gold chests and maybe some normal variance we would have been profitable.

The bad- The PUNT

So I rage quit my stream which is never a good sign, I lost another of these spots and failed to make it to the FT stage 2x right at the end, so I rage quit.
Decided to fire a $20 dollar hyper turbo MTT to cool off, finished 11th for $36..... However 11 left AA utg for 6bb jam and CL calls of 22, 34K 5 ...... 6 just standard, this sent me into a rage
Another deep mtt spot another 80/20, another bad beat..... - I sound like a broken record and I hate it.

So we decided well this is it I’m done I’m going to play cash this afternoon on X-Poker and this is it......

So we sat 2/4 our normal stake and well, it was the sushi sb game (every hand is an ante by the sb and if you win a pot in the sb you win the ante) - we had a 40bb Ante, passive table.

Hero: J8s in sb 2x limps MP and CO, we squeeze to 8bb with J8s, 1st limper now re squeezes to 20bb and we are 140bb deep, Easy call.

Flop is QT4 one heart: x- Villian bets 1/3rd, we have a good x/r candidate, so we decide on the x/r to 2/3, - call. turn 5h - have a flush draw and a gushot, HERO decided to get tricky and X, I am hoping if he beats small we can jam for SPR 1 and villain fold as this line is super nutted, he cant really call beause he is so capped. If villian bets big, we have odds with the sb ante of 40bb to call and make our hand and if we miss we fold, VILLIAN BETS SMALLL....
so we X jam for 1.2x pot.... A tank and two-time banks later he Heros with ATo........- We brick............. We should of never of gotten called in theory and of course we brick the world (any heart any J and any 9).

So what do we do we go play 5/10 - We lose a sizeable one with AK, and then we punted off the rest of our 100bb with middle pair

So how much did 5/10 cost?

Not much?? - I reloaded for 300bb (my roll on x-poker) turned the music on, cancelled a meeting and was like this is it let’s crush.... there were 2x massive fish to target and we got both....
We found 33 and on T34 got it in for 110bb vs a fish who had a flush draw, turned a boat easy game,
Then found AA utg, one of the fishes just wanted to raise big pre every hand, so we limp, he raises to 8bb- we re raise to 24bb- he makes it 60bb we flat 150bb deep, 846 flops x he jams we snap he has AQo we hold...

Play for a bit longer ended up making $300 MYR on x-poker and lot of rake back as i have a good deal with my agent. Lucky variance swang but really it isn’t good we ended up here...

In conclusion

We were lucky today to not be done more, I thought I was over yesterday and I was until the run bad truly kicked in with the 18 man’s today.
We need to find a way to deal with losses better and how we can walk away from a bad day and come back another day...
What we did well, is when we said that it time to snap out of it, music back on fully locked into to play and we crushed.
We also in theory crushed all day on the 18mans but look you can’t win every hand you’re meant to and if we won half the hands we were today it was probably another very positive day on this site.

In future I’ll work on just ending the session, blogging as this really helps and then closing it down for the day, however it’s hard when I have no other hobbies and everyone I know is at work.

The joys of playing poker full time, at least I have a job. Thanks for reading!

MTT variance would be too much for me to grind, seems like you have to basically be ok with losing lots and often until you have a big score to even out all the losses.

have you played any of the cash games at stacked social, if so how are they and how much is the time charge?

Hey Quanny, I’ve played a few! - checking my br tracker- played 8hrs mainly before tournaments and up 5k (I’ll share the graph)- seems quite splashy but of course there are some great regs that will put you in some hard spots 5/10+

Highly recommend it for cash- by memory the seat charge is $20 an hour - get dinner included and drinks too I think!

Please note for the below graph the hands per hour is probably off- 4 sessions for 8hrs isn’t to much volume

Also hope you’re enjoying the blog! - and let me know if there is anything you would like me to write about or share! Thanks for reading

Sunday Session

Pre game work

Woke up at 7:30am - made a coffee and decided before starting the session to watch back the stream of a 18man SNG session where I think I played my best this week. I watched at 1.5x speed and got in half hour of viewing as pre-game study. I Evaluated my play, and it looked okay, some spots to tighten up on the FT to over fold but that's about it...
I don't think it is too bad to get it in really wide for multiple mystery bounties but could be a potential leak and costing me some ITM %.

The Session Notes

Was a good day today, after doing the above study felt ready to grind and get after the regs in the 18man streets. Off the bat found some run good and made a few deep runs and some small cashes with some bounties. Our session was dictated by 15mins of madness where I pulled 2x $250 bounties and won another 18man after this... - was a weird day result wise, I had one win however had 3 other cashes where the result was bigger than my win thanks to the bounties.

Stats wise today - 31 x $25 18mans, 18x Final tables (58% stage clear - this is over 50% which is a tick), 9x cashes with 1x win (ITM = 29% - 9/31 x 100 = 29.xx).
This is day where I hit every metric I’m tracking!

Small X-poker session last night

While I was out with friends watching the AFL, I put in a small 2/4 sushi session on my phone for half hour. I generally don’t like doing this however I wanted to grind with some friends watching, I Made 1x buyin and decided to call it a night which was a nice little bit of profit.

Relating To the goals

Live MTTs played: 4/50 (year)
Online MTTs Played: 7/16(month)
Cash Hours played: 7.5/20hrs (month)
Study Hours: 4.5/20hr (month)

18man goals (for the month)

Rush clearance: 53 non stage clearances - 123 played = 70 Final tables made- 70/123 x 100 = 56.9% (tick over goal of 50% and current over all is 49.85% goal is 50% overall).

ITM % (for the month): 27/123 x 100 = 21.95% (goal = 20% so tick!!)

Avg Pos (overall): 4.74/9 (goal 4.5/9)
*please note this is with all historical data I have on poker craft, its going to take a lot of results to get this to the 4.5avg target- thus this is a yearly goal.

Conclusion

So, it's a good month so far on the 18man SNG grind, I'm behind in study, cash game hrs played and online MTTs (non 18mans). If I had to priorities one of these it would be study!
Next week, I'll look to have a study heavy week and focus on the 18mans as well. I have a live series starting at the end of the week, and I think not playing live till then will help me be in the best condition to attack this live series!

Hopefully another good week to follow, also nice to report after todays session and mainly thanks to the 18man SNGs I am up for the month!!

Any questions sing out and let me know if your enjoying/following along.

Monday Session

Hey everyone, its start of another week, just want to say thanks for the support with the likes on posts or comments! Great source of motivation.
Going to split today into pre-game, in session and a post- game/conclusion.

Pre game study

My mental game book (All in on mindset) was due to arrive today - Somehow amazon despite my notes saying no weekend delivery tried to make a delivery on Sunday, meaning my mental game study of reading this book has to be delayed. (They are now trying to deliver it between 4 and 8pm- my office closes at 5:30 and I leave at 4pm everyday.....)! -
With this delay I decided once I was on top of my workload to use an hour to focus on SB vs BB defending.
I've been seeing more and more spots blind vs blind or vs late open defending and decided this could be a good use of time for study today. I am hoping with increased awareness I am able to build a decent stack easier in the live setting and can really help increase the win rate in the 18man SNG arena.

Once home decided on actually starting my session by writing the above out and then using that as a way to get my brain to switch focus from work and onto the task at hand, another good session of 18man SNG success.

In Session- 18man SNGs

Again I've decided to focus on the 18mans, I love the format, the strategy is fun and Tbh i have an okay win rate with limited study on the format.
Its also a great study tool for sub 30bb spots in the live arena so putting time and effort into this format is both fun and can be seen as extra study. Best of both worlds (ill not be counting these hours to study but sessions watched back I will).

The session its self-went as followed:

Wasn't a great session but did super well to not lose a lot of buy ins today. I lost just under 3 buyins which for the high variance of mystery bounty rush SNGs, that's a win in my book sometimes.
By the stats it wasn’t great, 27x $25 buy ins, 13 Final tables (so only a 48% rush clear today) - only 4 cashes for 14% itm however 3x wins out of those 4 saved the day.
No luck with any bounties our biggest being 1x $25 dollar bounty.
With the Variance of bounty pulls & these stats being low, to only lose 3x buy ins ($67usd) is a great result.

How did I achieve a decent day then?

Well two things, A) I found myself over thinking early in the session when it didn’t start well. I was over thinking about the BB/SB defending study I did today and thus over analysing every spot.
B) I also watched a short video on mystery bounty strategy and how wide holdem resource calc wants you to call in a mystery bounty mtt. This is good knowledge, but the bounties are pre-determined in a Mystery MTT and can be calculated and used in a solve. These 18mans mysteries are not pre-determined so the theory being shown in the video I watched isnt optimal for these 18mans. (long story short the vid was about how wide you should call vs 1-2-3 all ins and how basically you can have a 100% jam range with any two).

What I did well is I recognized this, said focus on the game you have been playing and slowly implement these small strategy improvements. After making this decision I won my next two SNGs and look poised for a great day, just unfortunate my next cash and win didn't come for over an hour after this.

Conclusion

Over moon to get in 1 hour of study today especially on an area I can keep improving in (SB vs BB etc.). Grateful I didn’t lose too much tonight in a session where I didn’t play my A game but at times found the correct plays. Has to be said I ran into it a bit today pre the final stage which hurt the stats as well.
If I can lose small and win big on days where the variance is on our side we can continue to meet the metrics to achieve our goals for these 18mans.

Looking forward to another couple of days of 18man SNGs before switching to focusing on the live series, Ill post what my goals are and what I’m playing during this series in the next few days.

Thanks for reading and give this post a comment or like! ��

P.S. - Amazon tried to deliver at 6:31 once everyone at my work had gone home Jeeezzz talk about IRL run bad haha!

Live series Goals & Schedule

Starting on Friday I have a Live Series starting at the Matchroom. Its the Adelaide Poker Showdown with a 100k gtd 1.5k main event.
Below are some goals for the series and the schedule I am going to play.

Goals for the series

- To focus on implementing a good live game process and being in the zone (A game for long periods) -
This is achieved via the lo fi music and table presence (body language).

- Avoid Big marginal spots and look to make tighter folds in spots where there aren't enough bluffs live due to lack of study.
This is achieved by overfolding in spots I am unsure off vs non regs.

- To help the above the goal I can look to note every player at every table we play at. Use these notes to aid with our decision making.
Achieved by continuing what I tried last live MTT by using my phone to note each seat.

- Vs Good Regs if possible, avoid big spots as we will find easier spots vs the fish in the live mtt arena.
Again, achieved by picking the correct spots and yes may lead to me being bluffed a touch more but over folding in spots vs regs to avoid blowing up a massive pot in a marginal spot.

- To finish top 10 in the player of the series - I never been a fan of saying "I'm going to finish 1st and grind every event etc"., Its not realistic for me anymore, I have a job, a GF etc. So if a day or 2 off is needed during a live series ill take it. Also a great way to remain fresh as burnout has been a thing in the past.
Achieved by sticking the below schedule and the last point on this list.

- Play as many of the sattys as possible to increase points to finish top 10 in the player of the series race. -
Achieved by planning to play the sattys before the event. The Matchroom includes all satty buy ins as 1x point, all sattys fts as more points and satty wins as even more points. This is to encouraging people to play sattys. So if I want to finish top 10 this is paramount in achieving the above goal. (plus a couple of deep runs will help finish top 10. I don't have a "result goal" but these process goals should all add up to help achieve some great results")

Events I Plan To Play

- Opening event $300 & the $50 Satty beforehand for the event. (Friday 28th)
- Mega Main Satty 3x seats gtd $250 MLR after hanging out with friends on (Saturday 29th) - could also be an off day depending
- Mini Main Flight B $400 (Sunday 30th) - can't play satty as at the AFL beforehand.
- Mega Sat 3x seats $250 (Monday 31th)
- Monster stack $350 and the $60 satty beforehand (Tuesday 1st)
- 2nd and 3rd are rest days however if im in the player of the series race I can look to move my GF catch up day to thursday and fire the wed plo for points.
- Main event flight 2 $1500 (Friday 4th) - if I havent got a ticket can look at the pre game satty.
- Main event Day 2 $1500 (Sunday 6th) - Either buy into day 2 or MLR and try to spin with half the field gone.

I haven't planned on anything post the main event as once a main event is done, I'm mentally done with the series. However, if I am in the player of the series race there are more events from the 7th - 9th and will fire if required to win/ top 3 player of the series.

Thanks for reading, I found the above helpful to know exactly what I am doing, now hopefully time to execute the above in a few days.

Phil Ivey might be playing the main.

Tuesday

Well what a day to recap and a couple of questions that I may ask for you to answer below. As always, we will go pre-game, in session and the post-game.

Pre Game

Study wise not to much today, again my mental book was delayed (and boy I need it with how much my head runs away from me in session).
I was able to watch the In the mind of a pro series by Winamax! Highly recommend for study content as Adrain Mateos is just a freak of a human and it's so informative to watch.

Got home and re implement the cold shower, Lo -fi music was on and felt ready to get underway and grind out a solid day.

The Session

Another Woeful day on the 18mans stat wise- making it two in a row that were quite bad. Unlike yesterday not even the small amount of cashes could save me from an over 10 buyin losing day.
I played 22 before I stopped the bleeding, got through to 13 final stages (59% which is good!) but....
2 cashes with only 1 win for a 9% ITM....
Dont know if this is just variance or showing how hard it actually is to meet the metrics I set out for myself.

So because it was early decided to fire some GG MTTs, I played 5 to end out the session.
I cashed 3x of them for 60% ITM and came 7th in the $32 speed racer for $208 to make some profit on the MTT side to slowly claw back the losing day to not to much ($200 AUD loss).

Post Session- So The questions that need to be asked

Where to from here for my poker? - Are mystery bounties 18man SNGs worth playing? and what do I do if they are not?

I think they are if you can grind the leaderboards and play 12-14hr sessions every day. Grind your small edges avg a 15% itm and 50% clearance, get on the leaderboard and earn a solid bankroll.
However the above I cant do, I have a full time job, A life outside of poker with a beautiful GF and TBH I'm to old to give up a day to job to grind a format that may not even be profitable after the above.

So I think that these are a waste of time unless your insanely good and meet the metrics I bang on about so you are profitable in your short sessions.

SO then online MTTs? - I don't know about them, because there are so many great regs battling it out in the low-mid stake buy ins- its hard to win- you need to be in the top 1% to be a consistent enough winner to grind a solid living. If not, you are earning about maybe $6 and hour and then you just have no point playing.

So is it cash for me? - I hate playing it, I hate streaming it, and im scared to sink time into it because all my bad results online have come from me tilting off and just giving money away playing cash after a session. So it doesn't make sense for me to play cash and increase this likely hood.

SO where to from my poker? Accept im a bad player that has gotten lucky once- and failed to convert 5 other main event final table spots?
Or is there a format out there that I can actually grind a solid win rate at? - Im starting to lean to im 29, my bankroll isnt over 500k, and if you dont know the answer to this youll never know
which means, im no good I got lucky and its time give up now and walk away now. No one likes the has been champion that overextended their stay in the sport. Maybe I'm that guy?

I don't want to do the above, but I honestly don't see a format I can consistently win at anymore. I will say maybe im just super harsh on myself as well.

Conclusion

Some good out of today, A) I think i played great, put myself in a lot of great spots in the 18mans and didn't convert. I put myself in some great MTT spots and didnt convert.
B) Some good recognition of strategy spots with icm or bounty hunting that we took and it didn't work out... I'm sure there were some mistakes but i felt i played close to an A game..

So you can make a case for if you continue to show up it will turn, but it hasn't turned for nearly a year now and all the great players (or really bad live regs) seem to go on massive heaters of winning multiple events and I can't seem to do this. I win one major event and then its. 2-5 years of dust for me until my next decent score.......

So yeah this is just another rage piece of how I'm bad and I'm no good etc..... I don't have a play book to win. I know what to do study more, play more, work your socks off till point you cant breathe and get the rewards, but I think im doing that and well I have nothing to show for it and likely tbh never will unless we someone how find this heater.

Hard to do this when you don't even know what to grind anymore because your head is so messed up due to a downswing.... .

So thanks for reading yay another I feel like crap post because I cant win...... sigh

Thursday Session

Okay Strap yourself in there will be some numbers in this blog! - We had an interesting day and im ready to share what was a losing day but maybe the turning of the tide in terms of tracking results etc.

Intro and Study

So finally the All in on mindset book came yesterday, I've read 25 pages and 2x exercises and wow. Some big things to take away.
The main reason I still play poker is because I actually do want to play full time still. The Why is down to financial freedom but not for money! Its to care for others (loved ones)! I am a big believer in giving to my loved ones and well it seems to be a massive driving factor in why I still play a large volume. The second part of the Why is the be your own boss freedom, so with this said I know my why and what to work towards. I'm 30 this year so I said when im 40 ill look to do this full time if I can!

The Book also helped pin point my motivation and a lot come down to negative emotion and belief. So like risk adverse due to the neg on the bankroll or what others may think etc...
So hopefully throughout more exercises we can move to a more positive motivation. Hopefully move away from seeking justification but motivation in playing correctly and making good choices.
THIS IS A MAJOR PART OF WHAT ILL DISCUSS NEXT SO YES I CAPS THIS!!!.

The Session The Stats and Good bye 18man SNGs

I started the day with the 18mans and like usual found a lot of final tables and didn't convert many, I have also now gone 2,5 days without a major gold chest (only 1 in this time for $37).
So I was annoyed and fed up with just grinding losses. SO I said that's it i need to know if I'm profitable.
I always had issues with PT4 (poker tracker 4) and getting the GG poker stats to load into their properly. Lucky with my insta community I was able to finally get this figured out.

For Mystery's I was at +15bb per 100 which sounds good, but Adjusted was at 3.25 BB per 100. This is due to hunting bounties wide getting lucky etc... 3.25BB is solid but in a field with high variance + the need for big bounties its not a strong enough win rate to withstand the game. As such they are -ev over time...

So now that I had PT4 working It was time to see how bad I was at the MTTs on gg, to my Suprise after downloading and importing the 32k hands (last 3 months of data - all the gg lets you download) these were my stats.

Wow +7.21 BB per 100 - All in Adjusted it goes up to 8.10bb per 100! - this is a great rate, Chat GPT says this about MTTs and BB per 100

So im now over the moon, a lot of my punt off on GG is cash game based after bad mtt days, however if I can create a goal that is surrounding improving my BB/100 adjusted all in ev, results will improve and begin to increase over time.

Conclusion

So its back to MTTs for me. The self doubt is still there because my ROI on GG is super low but overall including live is 28% (which is decent)!
A goal for the future is to improve this BB/100 Adjusted to 9bb and then to 10bb per 100. If I can do that I may still lose due to variance but in the long term it will = out and I will win again.

So studying the book is great, poker Tracker 4 is working and it says I can crush online MTTs if I don't punt of rolls playing cash! Hello motivation and what a great day
except the losing part of course. Hope you enjoyed some photos and some stats!

See you tomorrow after the opening event at my live event

I hate playing cash 2 but i think this is the only format long term ya can make profit from without trying to win the poker lotto of varience in mtts and actually earn a decent living for the year from mtts.

Friday Pre Live Event

Didnt plan on posting but I have more data to share regarding PT4 and I think it is a good way to highlight my findings. Big thanks to alot of friends who reached out to let me dive deep into the stats break down of my GG MTTs.

So I played A Session

Was MTT session while working from home, got crushed complained a lot, however had some friends get in chat really help with the below stats to actually help me understand what games I should be playing. As such the below of this post will be lot of photos, and outline what the data is saying.

The Graphs- The Data & The Numbers

So below will be some graphs relating to the 32k hands I have in PT4. What I will say is I love the numbers side of sport and immediately feel motivation to just improve these numbers and who cares about the $$.

So the above graph shows BB all in ev for $0-$11 dollar MTTS (no daily flip outs included).

So the above graph shows BB per 100 & All in Adjusted BB per 100 for GG tournaments from $0 - $11 (no daily flip outs included).

Whats the key take away? -
1st the BB all in ev - over the 741 MTTs I am under EV however mentally I thought it was a lot worse than it was, this was due to the big period around the 360-game mark where I ran 500bb above EV. SO I think I'm running -1100 BB in my head but actually it's not that bad just slight below at -300 BB.
2nd the BB per 100 over 23k hand shows a consistent high crushing win rate. This is proven by the BB adjusted EV graph which is just consistently going up and up and up.

The above two graphs are the same and are for $11-100000 Dollar MTTs.
Key Take aways here- I have a good set of stats for these games over a small sample size, However I have run below ev for the large % of this small sample size.
If we ignore the large spike up in a recent game the consistent trend is actually slight down in both EV and BB made. So I can win but not at a large rate atm.
I mentally think its a lot worse because of the variance that this graph shows.

Outliers and Errors

Tournaments that come under the "normal" filter seem to be bugged on PT4 and GG hand histories. This may be down to picking up different stages of MTTs under different times of the MTT,
the above data disagrees from the overall number and could be an error.

If we filter for all MTTs between 0-11 that do not include normal, I am winning at an extreme rate, I also believe that this could be error affected and thus the overall number could be alot closer but slightly increased for the above two graphs that relate to $0-$11 dollar MTTs.

So Where does my win rate come?

In short $0-$11 MTTs but specifically the below graph format.

0-$11 Turbos are a gold mine for me, I need to stop max late rego them and just fire from the start or early on and build my edge. There is a clear big win rate and a consistent upwards trend for the Chip EV graph as well.

Conclusion

So in conclusion, the lower stake MTTs on GG we can beat and well I'm modest but crush, I should go back to focusing on these for a long-term grind (like I was when I was doing my bankroll challenge).

This will allow me to play the games I'm most profitable at and improve my over all stats along the way. Great to see I am not as a bad that I mentally think. If you have any questions regarding the stats or any comments, please leave it below. Thanks for listening onto my live event later.

Friday live session

Im on my phone so no proper formatting

In short - satty I finished 8th so I got extra points for the player of the series race yay! - but soft bubbled a ticket (top 5)

The opening event we played really well
I was able to lock in by table noting and even jotted down a mistake I made in a hand

Unfortunately you can’t beat the live wizards
40left - top 16 itm had 12bb in the bb
Passive fish limps utg+1 folds to sb who calls
We jam A9s - fish tank calls 73s???!

223 flop K k oh well gg - pretty annoying after 5hrs of play to get dicked like that but it’s a 60/40 and was a good spot for my all in adjusted bb/100

Have a goodnight next update after Sunday!

Monday

It was Mini Main Day 2 day! and well lets find out how went, we came in 20/24 with 17bb and a dream! $14,000 for 1st

Day 2

Wasn't our day today- 1st orbit folded, 2nd orbit folded, 3 players busted in this time, we now are on the btn with 14bb and look at KQs
Raise to 2x, sb an okay reg bit tighter but okay, raises to 13bb to basically put us in (CL in the bb so guessing if CL jams he folds) - Anyhow KQs is an easy min raise call.
Unfortunately he has AKo and we do not find a lady or the gutty we turned.

So all the pre-game prep and motivational mantra for 10-15min appearance on day 2

A small online Session

Decided to not waste the pre game and when home fired 10x MTTs on GG. With poker tracker 4 working to import hands Ive restarted the Bankroll challenge on stream and one of my goals for next month is to improve my BB/100 at the low stake to over 9bb all in adjusted BB/100.

We came $15 in the $10 hyper for $40 and Final tabled a low stake zodiac finishing 4th for $57 so an okay day of $70+ profit for the account.

Conclusion

I mentally felt good about the grind today, the mini main wasn't our day but look it happens and when your sub 20bb it can be all over pretty quickly.
On lack of sleep due to the day 1 happy we grinded for so long and grateful for a couple of runs on GG, Hopefully more to come.

I usually break down my goals for the week etc but they are changing now due to PT4 working so Ill have to re clarify them for the upcoming month. We are also 100% moving away from the 18 man mystery SNGs and working on a solid couple of months of an ABI under $15 online to get this 1.2k BR up to 2-4k if possible (i went from $100 to 2.5k in a month in jan before punting it off in FEB).

Have a good one guys talk soon!.

what did you punt it of in?

Hey mate dont understand the question??

April Goals Post

So with PokerTracker 4 now working and showing us our stats, Ill be looking to move our focus from the below stats per month/year to a more statistical focus.

The Goals ATM:

Live MTTs played: 4/50 (year) - This we still will continue
Online MTTs Played: 7/16(month) - This will change drastically to accommodate the below PT4 stats.
Cash Hours played: 7.5/20hrs (month) - Going to move these stats to a very low volume due to PT4.
Study Hours: 4.5/20hr (month) - going to look to keep this the same.
Battle Royale 18man SNG Goals: No longer playing this format due to the PT4 data we have downloaded.

The New Goals and the WHY!

Live MTTs Played: 8/50 (yearly Goal) - I did have a goal regarding the Matchroom series, but without a deep run in the 1st two events and wanting a night off on wed, ill be only playing the main event from here, plenty of volume to come! Some other good series soon around the corner! hopefully will blow past this 50 mtt goal! The increased volume will allow us to realize our 28% ROI.

Online MTTs played (NEW GOAL): 0/500 - May sound like a lot- but with a solid schedule and work ethic I think this is achievable, I played 800 online MTTs in Jan playing most days, I do plan for a small break at some point this month, so hopefully we start the month strong and get to this goal. If I do I may take the rest of the month off.
The why is simple for this goal. Solid volume will allow for variance to become smaller as we will put in time to let it correct itself over the long term. If our goal is to improve BB/100 (goal below) then volume will allow for this to be a true reflection of the stats for this month.

BB/100: improve my all in adjusted to 9.00 overall. After 33,400 hands from 1/1/25 to 1/4/25 im currently at 8.14BB per 100 All in adjusted. This is a very high rate.
To improve this Ill A) lower my ABI to $2-$15 MTTs to support to the BR challenge and improve the edge i have in the field
B) Will allow me to focus on just trying to improve my A game and put in my best each session to improve this stat.
C) will also highlight areas of leaks to focus on in play- ATM the Big one is Calling 3bets at a 45% from EP- Massive leak as it should be closer to 20 and something Ill work on.

Study Hours: 0/20hr (month) - managed to get to roughly 8 last month. Ill start this month strong with trying to finish the mental game of poker book! hopefully with some increase study the rest will become great!

Conclusion

The above goals will allow me to focus on the correct volume, look to keep me accountable to improve my game and hopefully complete the below result oriented goals.
Results goals are usual monetary outcomes that we are taught to avoid. However the All in poker mindset loves a result goal if we have the right process goals in place (the above).

So Result goals

Get the BR from the 1300 to 1800 by the end of the month on GG

long term result goal to achieve a $4K BR on GG by August grinding an ABI of $2-$15 ($10 AVG) mtts before looking to move up in stake.

And hey if we fall just short that's okay as well! Thanks for reading these goals. Will be back with the post session review later today.

Tuesday Session

Long story short we punted off and we are just horrid at the game, we take another mental hit for us to store......

Pre Session

Ruined by time due to work and a meeting running over, I wasnt able to do exactly what I wanted, I wanted to walk the block eat then meditate and get on for a 12:30 start.
In the end walked for 5mins, tried to meditate before playing, this was interupted by work so in the end start the stream still trying to eat and not properly prepared.

Session its self

Just yeah one of these sessions. In short- Started of with the omen for the session, JJ 1st hand of the stream lose JJ vs Ak for 100bb,
We then bust 7 MTTs in 5 mins later in the stream, we then have a few fake runs of 20-30th places....
Then the hand that started the mental spiral

here is a photo but in short raise MP we flat to induce sb 3bet mp call we pile... YES ITS A FLIP I KNOW BUT DONT DO IT LIKE THIS!!!

Dont give me a flop thats basically 90% and then give the guy his one ****ing out!- at least let it be the J he has 2 outs.

The Mental game struggle

So this sent me off an edge, i kept saying thats it im done I wanna get off not point if im losing every flip or running into deep into an mtt or we get one outted again etcc......
Just stupid idoic victim behaviour. Hard to self regulate in session.

We try grinding through then this happens...... Get KK 1st hand of the MTT, do the good old rip 200bb because no beleives, get called by AQ we hold
400bb lets go, next hand AA oh lets do it, raise 2x calls we 3bet to like 16bb huge size- one call K63 flop bet big call Q turn x because he has KQ and QQ - fish bets we call
river J we lose to everything now- x wil the intention of folding less than spr 1 villian jams

easy ****ing fold and you have 300bb - nope tilted stupid me decided i guess we beat some Ak and random like k8s etc, and call, Lose to the random I call a 16bb 3bet with K6s bs.......

So this again sent me down the path of im done i want out im not good enough, if im making this mistake and cant fold whats the point im a fish etc (MISTAKE TILT)
two hands later talk myself into getting TT in for 200bb to punt off lose to AA as we should..

Bust another mtt in 14 where we jam KTo for 5bb in a turbo with a bb roll back - fish has 9bb and calls and loses is crippled- Q9o call........ 9high flop............. we go off the cliff again

I stop regging and in the $10 daily special which has 900 up top - we just start jamming any two to either get to 100bb or bust- we of course lose and we end the session..

Again mentally I decided thats it, I dont deserve to play because I am making a mistake a rookie would make. I dont desreve to play because Im **** and cant beat the game, I dont deserve to play because if this was live you would be out and on the way home so why continue this session.

Pure stupidity and idotic behaviour.

Conclusion

In short im a fish because my mental game is crap, there is a lot of injecting logic into this mess of a post that i could use to keep myself sane.
Instead here i am complaining because the BR went from 1309 to 1220. TBH i don't think i care about that, its more I've been one outted again, i lose so many flips
my PT4 stats says i should crush yet here i am putting in all this effort when will it be my time....

I think this all points to burnout we have put in over 600hrs of poker so far this year, maybe its time for an extended break, hard to do so when you have goals you want to accomplish

Tonight though Ill study a bit then catch up on the sleep i missed thanks to the mini main event day 1 which meant I only got 3 hours of sleep the other night, that could be a factor as well.

Only positive i really tired hard to have a pre game and even planned what mtts I was going to play ill do this for the future...

Ill try be better team but hard when I'm in my bubble on stream on the PC, maybe streaming is the issue too who knows.

Thursday

Well I just wrote this big post about my day, the pre game post of 2x sessions where i finished 2nd in the $8 turbo had a losing day $9 because I ran pretty poor,

The 2+2 severs crashed and I cant re submit the post i had.

So in short ill summaries the below.

Got 3 outed and 2 outed a lot today deep in mtts, bubbled a few where I was 5th of 27 with 23 remaining and I would bubble, e.g. $10 turbo KK vs ATo for piles A this type of stuff.
I mentally though thanks to my pre game routine and the meditation course i paid for on the calm app stayed pretty strong and kept firing. It really helped me today and I played over 60 MTTs!

Other thing that helped is knowing when I import the hands into PT4 from my sessions at the end of the week the graphs are going to look so funny. What could have been today with some run good!!

Below is a photo of our 2nd place, only found this score and $60 score in the $10 Powerhouse PKO series on GG (came 24th out of thousands).

And this summed up the day 26 left Daily $10 hyper 777 up top to get back to and avg stack after running AJ into 44 on AJ4 flop.

Last thing that was important in my actual post was this, Ive decided to not play the $1500 main at the Matchroom. I am going to reinvest this into either A) a sports psychologist or B) a Hypnotherapist to help with the tilt problems which stem from emotional regulation, anxiety and self pressure.

Odd to have a losing day get crushed by the deck run super under ev and feel normal. May just maybe I am finally growing?? Uncharted territory this, feels nice though!

Friday Session

Decided to work from home again today. Wanted to give myself no excuse to not study and have a pre-game before a session.
Also wanted to put in a large session in if possible so I can have the weekend off to watch sports, hang with my friends and enjoy my Girlfriends son's 1st soccer game.
So in today’s post as always will discuss the pre-game and what I've worked on study wise, the In session and lastly a conclusion. - Ill also highlight what the goals are for the month/year again and when I come back home on Sunday Ill update you with these goals.

Pre-Game / Study

Today was a great morning; I woke up feeling productive after feeling somewhat normal after a losing day yesterday. Still feel strange and quite refreshing to feel okay after so many spots didn’t go our way.

Decided on getting in as much study as possible before my 1st meeting of the work day. Put in over 3 hours of reading with the All in on mindset book and completing the exercises in the pages outlined.

I really feel this book is helping and giving me a blueprint to overcome my demons. The exercises were focus on emotional regulation and how the game itself is just got so much risk/unpredictable outcomes.
In terms of pre-game, I decided to make the below and stick it on my wall in my office room where I play. This isn’t part of the all in on mindset book however all these points are highlighted throughout the 121 pages I have read so far. I really think even if we aren’t winning on the felt we can really see the progress of us winning off the felt.
I completed the below today and was ready for my session where I planned to play my longest session to date- 4-6 tables of MTTs from 12:30-9pm roughly give or take.

In Session

Well this session tested the new mental feelings that’s for sure!

7hrs of mtts, only 2 ITMs of note, which were 2x final tables (3rd and a 5th) with 2x other min cashes! So in short it wasn’t our day today.
Again without sounding like the broken record we ran not great today but what I will say is after the above pregame routine I found it easier to just say to myself what decision did I make is it okay etc.. .

To finish off the session I was 3k pts. off a rake back spin, I decided on finally getting this done as I have 5 days to get it completed and I’m away for the next 3.
Decided on Spin n Gold’s, No good ran awful!

Switched to All in and fold, ran worse, according to the ev graph only meant to lose $12 lost 120odd. However, I was prepared for this to happen to get my spin.
Luckily for us we span the $250 Rake back option which was the 2nd highest! Giving us a small losing day and now the option to lock in 35% rake back (which I have taken because a the ABI I’m playing I’ll never get a fish buffet spin without punting in cash or spins).

Conclusion

So in conclusion a session that tested us and trial us a lot, I found I played well again and had a lot of close spots to go deep in big fields but never quite seem to hold the important spots. I’ll be interested to see the PT4 Data on Sunday night when I return.
Also I am quite happy with the pre and post-game routine and how that allowed me to play for 7hrs with only slight amounts of tilt. I’m sure moving forward more results will come and the BR will grow on GG. Below are the goals for Sunday! See you then!

Reminder of the Goals For Sunday

Live MTTs Played: 8/50 (yearly Goal)
Online MTTs played (NEW GOAL): 0/500
BB/100: improve my all in adjusted to 9.00 overall- (current 8.14 AJ/Actual = 7.10) xxx/9.00
Study Hours: 0/20hr (month)
GG BR xxxx/ $1,800 (month)
GG BR xxxx/ $4,000 (By August)

Watched one of your streams where u were banning someone and swearing.

Did ya enjoy? - it’s probably sally my mod who loves to be a troll 😂😂😂

Sunday Weekly Update

As promised in the previous post I'll be updating my goals for the month so far down below. Ill split it into each segment with some discovery info etc.
Before looking at the stats, I am keen to see how the BB/100 and all in adjusted BB/100 is for this week. Be good to see if its standard, or as bad as I think, or that I'm just super bias to the end result.

Live MTTs Played: 8/50 (yearly Goal)

Quick update on the Live MTTs played, I am up to 8 now after the mini main event run at the Matchroom. As previously mentioned, I've decided to skip the 1.5k main event to instead put that money towards mental game improvement. I still haven't decided on hypnotherapy or a Sport Psychologist but once I'll do, I'll let you all know. I still think this is the correct decision especially with so many other live events to come in the year. (Lex Live and the APL Millions).

Study Hours: 8/20hr (month)

99% of these 8 hrs have been reading the All In On Mindset book. I have been looking to set aside at least 1hr a day mon-fri to read the book and complete the exercises when they come up.
I did a 3-hour session (give or take may be slightly longer) before our Friday MTT session. I can honestly say I am starting to see some small steps forward. I'll be looking to re-read the book once it's completed to hopefully get the info to fully sink in before I move back to some more GTO/IN game study.

Online MTTs played (NEW GOAL): 118/500

Week 1 of the month down. We currently sit at 118 mtts played. We played on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. With this current volume we would fall just short at 472 MTTs played.
If it happens to go that way this is okay but was only a 3-day week for the month. So with more days available to play next week looking forward to reach this goal. If I can really apply myself and look passed the results, I am sure I can get in a 10-12hr session on one of my work from home days to increase volume.

BB/100: improve my all in adjusted to 9.00 overall- (current 8.14 AJ/Actual = 7.10) xxx/9.00

The one your all waiting for, the BB/100 data. Below is a screenshot of all the 33k hands we started with before the month data is loaded.

Well With the overall stats we took a massive hit, went from the above to the below here

Chip ev wise overall we a running about 500 BB under the ev which is slightly annoying

IF we look just at this weeks data we ran below but didnt play well either.

Some major outliers and errors??

We went looking into the data because I was Suprise to see such a drop in BB/100 over a very small 3 day sample, this really shouldn't be affecting this data that much as 33k hands compared to this small data is insufficient and really shouldn't see much of a change.

Below is what I believe the major error/outlier data error is.

Single Table Tournaments (which makes no sense as all mTTs are multi table) is showing a massive -368bb per 100????? - Which would by phsyically impossible as this worse than shoving any two.
So there has to be an error with this data. Over the sample from 1st - 6th of April the data shows the below (all single table tournaments hands) = -500 / -208.77bb
Again no mtt on gg starts this deep, so again for the few games I've pre Rego this data would be physically impossible.

I know that there is an error with GG and PT4 talking to each other with certain mtts splitting the early stage as a Single MTT and then the rest under MTTs, It also isn't just from final tables as I have had a look at the data base. One comes from a zodiac event where I got it in pretty horridly for 40bb with 20mins of late Rego left as the CL (so more than 3x tables in play) and it comes up under here. So my conclusion is the Single Table data is very heavily skewing the results due to an issue between PT4 and GG hand downloads. So ill be discounting these moving forward.

After figuring out how to filter out all Single Table Tournaments the below data shows this.

Overall BB/100 7.96 and the All in adjusted = 6.77BB/100 - So we took a small hit in the adjusted data and went down slightly in our overall data.

Played horrid last week with the STT errors filter out, will say small sample size and when your not cashing tournaments your losing so this data makes sense.

In the end I don't know if this data is correct Ill play around with PT4, I thought this data was very straight in plug and play after figuring out the errors with the flip data last time, but it seems not. If we cant get an accurate read of this over the next month Ill look to have someone help with the data or then not look to use it. It does highlight over the week we lost more than we should of but only by 2bb, so we were just under our all in ev, so yes we ran bad, but not by as much as I thought.

GG BR $1155/ $1,800 (month)
GG BR $1155/ $4,000 (By August)

As from the above data you can tell we didn't have the best week and lost money over all, early days for the above two goals and one good MTT run can change all of this.

Conclusion

In the end study and live we are tracking well overall. The BB/100 data may need some work with PT4 proving to be handful with the GG hand History data.
Overall We ran under ev in some spots but we also didn't play our best.
Onto next week and beyond!