“Greatness is sifted through the grind, therefore don’t despise the hard work now for surely it will be worth it in the end.”
– Sanjo Jendayi
Contents
1. Where I’m at now
2. Since my last blog
-Poker
-Holidays, Breaks and Free time
3. 2016 Aims and Goals
4. Successes and Failures of 2015
5. Profit/Loss Graphs 2015
6. Upcoming Events
7. 3 Interesting hands analysed
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1. Where I’m at now…
I’m at a pretty big crossroads in my life at the moment; there’s a couple of pretty big questions that I need to answer as best I can. Is poker best as a primary focus, is it a feasible way to make a living long term, and is it the best thing I could be doing with my time at this stage of my life?
I’ve slowly started to realise that over the last 2 years, my life has essentially just been seeing Kelly, playing poker, gaming and pretty much doing whatever I want to do. I’ve had no academic or career achievements (other than my 5 shifts as a waiter) and it’s finally started to bother me. I would love to be able to live this way forever but at the same time I’m bored of it. Playing poker on its own just isn’t fulfilling enough for me at the moment. I just need to find some kind of new purpose or a way to get some prospects. I don’t think I’m ever going to stop playing poker but I need something else.
Since January of 2015 I’ve tracked basically all of my off stake poker results and it’s the best way for me to evaluate how sustainable poker is as a sole income for me. There’s a lot of ways to think about this question, I think the best way is to compare poker to whatever else I could be doing. So for me at the moment I think the most conventional other option I could potentially get is to get an entry level job which would be roughly £16-20k per year and 40 hours per week. I personally think the best option for me is to get a part time job for the mean time and go from there.
The Pros of getting a job:
• Consistent stable income – This is the key one, knowing my rent and bills will be paid is very important, especially in the extended future.
• Improved future prospects – I would gain more experience and potentially start career laddering.
• Conventional life structure – I think this one is often overlooked and is kind of a pro and con. Most of the world runs on 7am until 7pm instead of the 7pm until 7am I seem to run at. I’m going to find it extremely hard to change this.
•”Becoming a proper person” – This one is similar to the last one. The reality is you go to school then you either progress into education or you get a job. Life kind of dictates that this is what you have to do to get by. It’s always kind of depressed me that you just work indefinitely to eventually get a house, a car, a mortgage etc, but there isn’t much of a choice.
• “Life skills” – I guess this one is less important but still worth considering. Poker has definitely gave me a lot of life skills too though, some invaluable.
•Appreciate money more? – One thing poker definitely does is devalue money. It’s so easy to win or lose such huge amounts in such a short space of time.
The Cons of getting a job:
• Bad hours – This is the biggest issue for me. I think the hours that work best for me are getting up between 11am and 3pm then sleeping between 3am and 7am (ideal for poker). The standard hours for a good job will probably mean getting up around 7am and sleeping at around 11pm. I don’t mind doing things I don’t want to do, but sleep has always caused a lot of issues for me over the years. For some reason knowing I have to be up at X time always means I can’t sleep so the lack of alarms in my life at the moment really helps me out. The best way to counter this is to get a nights job, but most of these don’t have that much potential for the future.
• Not necessarily being happy at work – This one is a little moany as it’s something that you just have to deal with. If I was lucky I could find something I enjoy or could at least tolerate.
• Less free time – A full time job would take up at least 50 hours a week accounting for traveling. That is a lot of time to be committing of the 168 hours there are in the week.
• Less Freedom in general – I love being able to spontaneously go somewhere or do something, even if it’s a week or a day in advanced. Having a job means booking time off and planning my free time around working schedule.
The Pros of playing poker for a living:
• My time – I can play whenever I want. There’s always a tournament, a cash game or online. There’s no need to get up early (majority of the time) and it’s all in my terms.
• I enjoy playing – I always like playing poker and I never seem to get bored of it. I can’t imagine this changing because there’s always a new goal and a harder challenge to give myself.
• I’ve made a consistent profit over 2.5 years – Albeit not as much as a full time job could potentially get me it’s still a good telling sign for the future. Also given the comparative hours, enjoyment factor and lack of tax it’s arguably better than a job (I’ll elaborate on the details of this later in my stats).
• Lots of world traveling opportunities – There’s lots of big tournaments all over the world and no job commitments tying me down.
• You are your own boss – I decided what I want to do and when I do it.
• Not tied down to a location – I can “work” wherever I want. Theres always another casino or place with an Internet connection.
• Better potential? – Poker could give you the chance to win ridiculous amounts of money in very small spaces of time. It’s not too unrealistic that at one poker tournament I could win what I would expect to make in a year if I was working.
The Cons of playing poker for a living:
• Inconsistent income – Poker is about the long term. You have to be able to lose a few buy ins and sizeable tournaments sometimes knowing you did nothing wrong whatsoever. I don’t think there’s any similar jobs where you can be potentially perfect at it and still lose money, it’s a weird thing to sign up for. I really enjoy probability side of the game and I know it’s just about putting in the volume and making all the right decisions. Basically the downswings should fade out over time but the bad beats never will.
• No career progression – Whilst just playing poker I’m not actually getting any closer to a “good” job. Getting a job is hard though and the majority I can get won’t necessarily give me much progression for the long term.
• Losing feels worse than winning feels good? – Unfortunately I don’t have any big titles yet so maybe one day this will change but as a direct comparison it definitely feels worse to lose £500 than it feels good to win £500.
• No true life fulfilment? – A lot of people have said to me that playing poker for a living is bad because it has no purpose and doesn’t ‘help’ society. I can definitely see this argument as there’s no way I’m helping society in any conventional way, but I also think a lot of jobs have this problem. Also you can argue that any job I could be doing right now will be done by someone else if I don’t do it, being an accountant for someone isn’t going to change the world. However, I do feel like I have a lack of purpose sometimes because of my current way of life. I’m really hoping to work out what I really want to do this year.
• Time management – This mainly applies to playing online. It’s really easy to get into bad routines and procrastinate, if there’s not someone telling you to work it can be hard to find the motivation to do it.
• Unemployment Guilt – When you don’t work in a world where everyone around you does it can start to feel very daunting. Especially when I’m still awake at 5am when kelly is leaving for work and I’m asleep the entire time she’s there. Sometimes it makes me feel lazy which is never all that pleasant, but I’m taking a lot of new steps to be more active this year.
2. Since my last blog…
Poker
At the end of my last blog I was very close to being out of money and now I’m in an ok position with a half decent amount, poker has a habit of always getting me out of any money troubles I’m ever in. But it is always bad BRM and excessive spending that gets me there. Since August I’ve played a handful of tournaments, I tried to commit to online and started to put a lot of time into live cash games.
At the start of September was GPS Stoke. Now prior to this I had done pretty well at the GPS series having played 4 and cashed in 3 which included an FT bubble in the grand final, so I decided I wanted to play this even though my financial situation wasn’t the best at the time. Luckily I kept my risk minimal as I always try to do when I play and it went very well. I was feeling really good and playing my A game for pretty much all of the tournament but I ended up busting in 12th, it feels really good to make a day 3 but it’s brutal to come so close to these big payouts so many times and fall at the last hurdle.
Around this time I started putting in lots of time towards online (staked MTT’s on party poker) and live cash. Online was very off and on but I wasn’t really enjoying it as much as I do live poker, so as much as I wanted to make it work it was hard to put in the volume. I would play once or twice a week and that unfortunately just wasn’t enough. As for live cash I’ve decided to focus on it a lot more and make sure I’m constantly trying to improve. Since the end of September when I started to commit to cash I’ve played 130 hours at £1/1 and made £2789 (~£21.49 per hour). This is not a big enough sample size to use but it’s nice to see things going in the right direction. Cash is the most comparable to a real job as it should eventually give you an hourly wage, although a potentially negative one. I’m hoping to fit 40-50 hours a month (10-12 per week) into my new year schedule and play 500 hours for the year.
I didn’t actually play that many live tournaments over these last 4 months, next year I want to average at least 2 decent comps per month. As well as GPS Stoke there was the DTD Deepstack (£330) , WPT main (£2200), 25/25 Birmingham (£220), GPS Sheffield (£440) and DTD 6 Max (£165). The Deepstack was quite uneventful except that I won a 700bb pot in level 2 and didn’t make day 2. WPT Main was really good fun, the standard was generally similar to most DTD comps but with more pros. I managed to double through Michael Mizrachi at some point too which is always good.
For GPS Sheffield I sold a package and it was quite eventful. I managed to completely blow up and bust out first hand by doing something I couldn’t imagine doing in a million years. I was quite annoyed at myself but knew I was still going to be able to play well so I re entered and ended up being coolered. I played my first £2/5 game and that went very well so I decided to fire a third bullet for day 3 which played out pretty standard. After 3 bullets in the GPS I found a convenient lift for the £165 at DTD day 2, I really wanted to make everyone profit so this would now be the only way. Luckily for me I managed to get 4 handed with just less than a chip lead and ICM deal for more than 2nd place, I think dealing was a bad move overall because of one very “fun” player that was left but the prospect of making everyone profit and not having to play 20-25bb deep was too good.
Holidays, Breaks and Free time
For someone without any true commitments I do manage to keep myself very busy. Me and Kelly always like to do quite crazy and unusual things whenever possible which I’m sure will continue into the new year. We went to Stratford for Kelly’s birthday which was pleasant, it basically seems to be the place lots of posh old people go to happily die. We had an eventful Halloween dressed up as Mighty Boosh characters, it turns out green paint takes literally weeks to get off your fingernails. The 2 of us then found time to go to 2 different Comicon events and I concluded that dressing up definitely makes them 10x more fun even if I did look like a massive nerd. Finally we then ended the year with a pantomime and a ballet, i didn’t really get the latter as there was no talking so the story was told by music and dance, but kelly seemed to love it and that’s all that mattered. Next month we’re going to see Book of Moorman in February too so I’m making sure the adventures will never end.
3. Aims and Goals for 2016:
• Get a job by the end of January – Preferably 15-20 hours a week which would be 225-300 hours worked before Vegas and hopefully at least £6.50 an hour (£6.50*300 = £1462.50-1950 potentially made). Re evaluate position after Vegas then either get a new job or maintain old part time job, maybe even go full time.
• Live cash – Play 400-500 hours of live cash (mainly £1/1 with a lot of shot taking) aiming to make at least £6000. This would mean 35-40 hours per month making (hopefully) at least £500.
• Online cash – January – Play at least 15,000 hands of 25NL 6 Max Zoom on Pokerstars. Spend a lot of time studying and going over all hands too as well as getting some coaching asap. Will re evaluate stakes and how much I want to play after January.
• Vegas aims – Save a total of £5k for Vegas (£2k already saved) and sell up to 40% for a $7.5k package for Cash and tourns. Make everyone profit.
• Make (Net profit) at least £15k at poker overall for the entire year.
• Get a live poker title eg 25/25, GPS, DTD Deepstack. (Optimistic)
• Work at least 500 hours this year.
• At least 3 Holidays – Vegas, 1 other abroad and 1 other in England.
• Exercise 40 minutes a day or at least 5 hours per week.
• Eat better in general.
• Cook more often and learn to cook more things.
• Learn to drive and get a car.
• Publish a new blog every 2 months.
• Make and upload a new YouTube video every month.
•Have a new “adventure” with Kelly every month. By this I mean a new and unique experience.
4. Successes and Failures of the year:
Failures:
– Still no idea what I want to do with my life.
– I dropped out of University.
– 3 Months of the year not in profit.
– I didn’t get a job.
– I didn’t learn to drive or get a car.
– I blew up at GPS Sheffield – very annoyed about this but will make sure it’s a 1 off.
Successes:
– I got engaged.
– I made over £12k net profit over the year from playing poker.
– 9 Months of the year in profit, the last 6 months were all profitable.
– Live cash games have started to go very well.
– I did reasonably well in tournaments including a GPS day 3, a 25/25 FT, a UKIPT big side event FT, 2 DTD FT’s and a lot of cashes. I would really liked to have gotten a title but I definitely can’t complain with how I did overall.
– I had lots of new and awesome experiences and made sure to really enjoy my time over the last year.
– I was able to play a lot of the tournaments I wanted to such as WPT main, 2 UKIPT, 3 GPS and 2 UKPC.
– I’ve improved a lot over the last year and feel like I’m constantly improving more.
– I’ve got enough money to not have to worry about rent and other outgoings.
– Met a lot of new and great people, the poker community is generally really great and has a lot of interesting characters.
– 15 Driving lessons complete.
5. Profit Graphs 2015:
6. Upcoming events:
-25/25 Birmingham
-Cyprus $750 warm up – not 100% sure on this one yet
-UKPC DTD
– As many £100+ entry good structured tournaments as I can play
-Vegas – this ones far away but I’ll probably start selling for my package soon
7. 3 Interesting hands analysed
1. Hippodrome cash game
Hand: KKhx
Position: utg (btn bought)
Blinds: £1/2
Stack depth: 250bb
Action: I open to £7 a good player calls in EP and a fish calls in MP making the pot £24. Flop J75hhx I c bet £16 EP calls and MP folds, the pot is now £56. Turn 4x I bet £34 he calls making the pot £124. River 6h I check he bets £55 I raise to £185 and he shoves for £374 effective. I fold.
Evaluation: The river is the key part of this hand, everything prior is relatively standard. The river is basically completely for his range as he called twice and all draws have came in. He will have a lot of flushes, a lot of 2 pairs and a lot of straights so I should always be checking here. However, because EP is a good competent player I know he will be betting this card 100% of the time with every hand worse than kings which includes QQ AJ KJ QJ JT J9. He can also value bet this river with 2 pair +, straights, sets and flushes which is a very wide range so in theory this is a trivial check fold as my hand is just crushed by his river betting range. But then I started to think what hands do I get to the river with? That will be AJ+ and FD’s which will mainly include the NFD and Broadway FD’s given the runout. I have the Kh in my hand so this will discount him having KQhh KJhh KThh AKhh. So because of the fact he will bet this river 100% this means that the best way for me to play my value range would be to check raise and get max vs his range. By check raising the river I’m repping exclusively flushes as even 89 doesn’t seem strong enough to check raise here. His river bet sizing was kind of small which (right or wrong) made me think he was more likely to have 2 pair or a straight. So because he is good enough to follow this thought process I decided to raise and rep the top % of my river range, I sized it on the bigger side as I really wanted him to fold everything that isn’t a flush. He then 3 bet shoves for £374 effective, normally this would be a snap fold but the more I thought about it the more I thought he is repping too small. By shoving this river I think he cuts his value range down to around 2-5 exact hands. The price I’m getting is £189 to win £872 so I need to be right 21.67% of the time. I think it’s debatable what his value shoving range is here,I think realistically it will be Q flush+ And I figure he may have raised at some point with the nut flush draw AND I have the Kh so by shoving I think he can only rep one hand. The combos of this are QJhh (he may well raise flop with a pair + FD) QThh Q9hh (if he peels this pre) so by this logic I can only put him on very few definitive hands when he shoves. Most people are never bluffing when they 3 bet shove the river but I honestly knew he was capable and I had to really consider what I could be against. I think his most likely hand will contain the Ah or Qh as they’re ideal candidates to bluff here but them again he could have bet small on the river to induce and raise and was always going to shove with all bluffs. I think his is one of the most difficult spots I’ve ever been put in and I ended up folding being very unsure. He showed me the 9c so I think he must have had either 69cc or J9cc, I spoke to him about the hand and he said he bet small on the river as he would with his full range and it was to induce a raise so he could 3 bet shove.
2. GPS Stoke day 1
Hand: JJdx
Position: sb
Blinds: 100/200
Stack depth: 140bb
Action: UTG raises to 600 MP calls BTN calls I 3 bet to 2900 and just the BTN calls making the pot 7200. Flop 345ddx I c bet 3200 he calls making the pot 13.6k. Turn 2x we check. River 9x I bet 4.5k he raises to 9k I call and he mucks.
Evaluation: Pre seems standard, the flop I could check oop for pot control but JJ are quite vulnerable. On the river I decided to go for thin value vs 77/88/TT but I’m not sure how I feel about this. The only problem with checking is I kind of have to check fold really. It’s 4.5k to win a pot of 22.6k so I need to be right 20% of the time. I think the only value hands he will get here with will be 99 (this might flat river) AQdd (might 3 bet pre) and ATdd. If he has the ace and therefore a straight on the turn he may bet the turn too. I also assume he will bet 66 on the turn to go for 2 streets. So all this means he actually can’t have at many value hands but I just didn’t know what bluff he could have either. Maybe KTdd QTdd KQdd but that’s 3 combos and a min raise is usually indicative of never being a bluff. I’m not sure how I feel about my call here on this river but the line was so unorthodox I felt like I had to call. It makes sense for him to have 99 or Ax but he may go bigger with those hands. Luckily for me I’m a station and he was bluffing, I would love to know what he had.
GPS Stoke day 2
3.Hand: K8cc
Position: bb
Blinds: 4/8/1k
Stack depth: 50bb
Action: 6 handed Deadman opens mp to 17k I defend the bb making the pot 44k. Flop T52ccx we check. Turn 5x I check he bets 22k I raise to 59k he calls making the pot 162k. River Kh I bet 72k he tanks for about 6 minutes (we were hand for hand) and says I just don’t want to see Kx of clubs if I call and folds
Evaluation: Pre seems like a standard defend. When he checked back the flop I assume he will always have show showdown whether it be 1 pair or A high so I think if I bet I always have to barrel river and it’s hard to know if he will fold so I decided to check and reevaluate. He bet kind of big so it was very close if I was getting the right price vs AK and I could have some reverse implied odds so I decided to raise. This isn’t something I would usually do but calling felt bad and I thought because I don’t rep much he would think I had it for some reason. On the river I should have the best hand unless he has AK AA TT 55 22 which are quite unlikely so I have to value bet, i can’t bet too much as I need him to call with all his worse hands but at the same time I can’t bet too small as I don’t really rep anything and I wouldn’t want to give him a good price with my bluffs. It felt pretty good to put such a good player in such a horrible spot as he was repeatedly saying he didn’t know what to do. I did have to get there but maybe I win on some other rivers too. He said he had T8s.
Quest for awesome 