Vertigo

I know, I know. It's been one month since I last wrote a post and considering that September was the month of the WCOOP it's rather strange that I gave you guys no news. But I have a good excuse this time.

It all started around three weeks ago, on September 12th. The WCOOP had been going awesome until that point, much better than I could have hoped for. I wouldn't be playing until the end of the WCOOP because I had a trip planned to Greece on the 13th, but I was very satisfied with my progress that far.

I woke up that Wednesday having everything planned. I had to run some errands and make some final preparations before my trip, write a blog post about my progress at the WCOOP and then I'd be ready to leave the next day! Greece, here I come!

Lisbon view from above!

However, sometimes things go in a different way than what we had planned. As soon as I got my feet on the floor to get off the bed, I realized that the whole room around me was spinning. I don't know if you guys have ever experienced vertigo, but for me that was definitely a first. Unlike what some people think, vertigo is not the same as being dizzy. Dizziness is something very common and I'm pretty sure all of us know what it feels like. My best description would be the feeling you have after being on a merry-go-round. You feel a bit disoriented, but that's it and it goes away fast. Vertigo has nothing to do with that. Later on I found out that there are different kinds of vertigo, but the one I was experiencing was the one where you feel like your body is perfectly still and everything else is moving fast around you. You try to look straight ahead and focus on something but it's impossible. Naturally, you lose your balance and walking or standing suddenly gets hard.

To help stop the vertigo I closed my eyes (they could not focus on a single object anyway), and then put both of my hands over them. Complete darkness seemed to be making things better and after some seconds the vertigo went away. Unfortunately, my adventures were far from being over. Simple things like going to the kitchen or sitting on a chair would trigger a vertigo. André, who woke up the same time as me told me to just lay down until I felt a bit better. Even that was no easy task, because when I switched from one side to the other, the whole room came spinning after me. André has had some similar issues in the past (only a couple of times though), and it always seemed to go away after a day. I cancelled everything I had to do that day and decided that I'd stay in bed in order to get better.

The next day I woke up really early. André was still asleep. Momentarily, and since I wasn't fully awake, I forgot about my condition and tried to get out of bed. Vertigo again. When I realized that it was the second day that was happening and there was no improvement whatsoever, I started panicking. I slowly got out of bed and went to the guest room. I found some books to keep myself busy, laid on the sofa being perfectly still and waited for André to wake up. When I heard him going to the kitchen, I stood up to go meet him but I lost my balance and had to hold on to the wall to not fall on the floor. I remember that moment very vividly and I was very very scared cause I had no idea what was wrong with me.

André took me to the nearest hospital. There after seeing a general doctor, I was sent to an otolaryngologist (ENT for short). He barely examined me and then decided that the problem was with my inner ear, which is the part of our bodies that controls balance and hearing. He said it was nothing to worry about and it's not anything serious (as in life-threatening), it only has impact on the everyday life of the person. What was that supposed to mean? That I would have to put up with vertigo forever? Apart from all the rest, I was worried about getting on a plane. What if it triggered the vertigo and I had no control over it since it wouldn't be up to me to stay still? The doctor assured me that there was no problem and gave me two pills to take before going on board. He also gave me another set of pills to control the vertigo, that I was supposed to take every 8 hours during my entire stay in Greece. And last, but not least, he gave me a list of exams that I was supposed to do immediately after coming back.

Needless to say, I left the hospital feeling more confused than when I went in. I took all the pills like I was told to, and eventually I got on the plane even though I was scared sh**less of what might happen. Fortunately all went well and I arrived in Athens without any more episodes. By that time, I was more familiar with my condition so I was moving more slowly and avoiding any abrupt moves of the head that could cause vertigo.

I was supposed to stay in Athens for little over a week. More than half of that time I spent visiting doctors, doing medical exams or staying in my house cause I couldn't really go out. Apart from the vertigo that was very persistent and still there a week after it first appeared, my psychology was, uum, let's just say not great.

If there's one thing I can't complain about, that's lack of medication.

To cut a long story short, the ENT (the new one I visited in Greece), the ophthalmologist, the orthopedist, and all my exams were pointing to the same direction: my problem was my neck! What caused it? The simplest thing you can imagine: bad position when sitting on a chair for many hours. Basically, if your spine is not at the optimal position for a long time, things start going bad. What happened to me specifically was that the muscles located at the back of my neck and my upper back started being sore and developed an inflammation. Somewhere among all that, the blood vessels could not transfer blood to the brain the same way they do under normal conditions, so my inner ear was not getting enough oxygen, started malfunctioning and caused the vertigo. At least that's the explanation that doctors gave me. 

My medication got changed to muscle relaxants and I slowly (but steadily) started improving. The orthopedist also gave me stretching exercises that I need to do 1-2 minutes per day or when I sit in front of a computer and feel like I need to move. I extended my stay in Greece for one more week. I had barely spent any quality time with my family and I was not going to get back to work if I went back to Portugal anyway. The follow-up visit to my ENT went well and when I finally got that plane to come back last Saturday I was almost completely cured. I think Sunday was my first day without a vertigo episode. Overall, it lasted 2,5 weeks. Now I'm feeling great. I only get slightly dizzy when I tilt my head back, but I'm pretty sure that will also go away until the end of the week. My doctor said that I can go back to doing physical exercise after October 10th, so things are finally going back to normal.

What is most interesting about this story is that I never felt any pain. My neck and muscles (that were the source of the problem) felt completely normal and did not hurt at all. I had no headaches of any kind, no dizziness, nothing that would indicate that something was wrong. I went to bed feeling perfectly fine on one day and woke up a mess on the next. I never saw it coming.

This experience was a wake up call. Working hard is fine as long as it does not endanger our health. I know for a fact that lately I have been working so much on improving at poker, that 8-10 hours in front of the computer seemed like a natural thing to me. It's not. I had to learn the hard way that even if your brain is resting when you stop opening tables and go to facebook or send some mails, your body is not. And now it's time for changes.

The first thing to change is my chair. The one I was using was not cheap and André got into a lot of trouble to get it for me. I had been using it at my previous job that involved a lot of typing and found it comfortable. Turns out, if you are playing poker and mostly use the mouse you tend to get a more relaxed position on the chair and the one I had is simply not good for that. After all that happened, I'm never going to place my butt on that chair again. I'm currently trying out one of André's old chairs, but I'm also on the hunt for a new one. If you have any suggestions, I'll be very happy to hear them.

As you can see, we take chair-testing very seriously... Let me introduce you from left to right: Chair I'm currently testing, chair that caused the vertigo, ok-ish chair, André's current chair.

Secondly, I need to change my schedule. According to the doctors, more than one or two consecutive hours in front of the computer is not acceptable. End of story. There's no excuse for anyone, not MTT players who get a 5 minute break every hour, let alone for SNG grinders who can stop opening tables whenever they feel like it. The ideal thing is to have 2-hour sessions with 30 minutes break in between. Half an hour may sound like a lot to some of you, but considering what happened, I'd rather be generous with time for my breaks. Also, I need to include exercise in my life. Last year, I was going to the gym. Guess what, I hate the gym. I find it extremely boring, which is why I ended up not going most of the time. I cancelled my subscription last month. Last Easter I found a nice dancing school to which I registered, but with poker and all I never really had time to go even though it's something I enjoy doing. When you spend 8-10 hours playing poker, you don't really have the strength to go dancing on top of it, right? Well, I obviously need a change of attitude. André made a schedule for me where I work 6 hours per day and then have time for some physical activity. That sounds nice, but the catch is that I work 6 days per week and only get 1 free day. I'm trying to figure out a way to change that, so that I have 2 free days like most people do, while including physical exercise in my everyday routine. Once I have it figured out, I'll make a post about it.

And lastly, I will start including massages in my weekly schedule. If you think the same way I was a month ago, you probably find this a luxury. I assure you it's not. I had a massage yesterday and unlike what you might imagine, there was little relaxing and a lot of shouting involved. Today though, I woke up feeling a lot better! I also have an appointment with my nutritionist tomorrow. It's been months since the last time I paid her a visit, and since I started getting my health back on track I might as well go all the way, right?

That's all for now... I'll be back soon to let you know about my progress in September and how October is going.

Good luck at the tables!

August overview & SilverStar in a day!

Hi everyone!

So, August is already in the books and it's been a pretty good month for me poker-wise. Actually, it's been the best month I've had so far. Here's my graph for the month of August:

My total profit was $2.2k which still seems kind of surreal to me. André says I shouldn't be results-oriented but hey, I think it's only natural that I get a little happy with a graph like that one... I'm obviously on a good run but that said, I believe that all those studying hours and coaching above all have paid off. 

Also, I made it to GoldStar somehow. As you know during most of the month I spent more time away from the tables (studying) than I actually spent playing. Towards the end of the month I was slightly past the SilverStar status, but then I started playing the $18s and increased the number of hours I was playing. I randomly realized that I was really close to making GoldStar, so I made an extra effort on August 31rst to get it. It would be kind of silly to lose it for 50 VPPs or so! There's not much more to say about August since I covered most of it in my previous post, so I'll move on to  what has happened in September so far.

September 1rst was a Saturday, so André and I took the day off. September 2nd though was a Sunday and therefore one of the busiest days of the week for poker people. I went to the office around 11.00 o'clock and was surprised at how many games were running. Of course the beginning of the WCOOP had a lot to do with it... The following equation says it all:

September = WCOOP month = Happy times!

With August's good run, my bankroll had hit the $3k line which according to my bankroll management board meant that I should stop playing the $7s and move up to the $35s. Because of all the WCOOP tournaments and special satellites I got many different buy-ins around the $35 stake: there were $28s, $37.50s and $40s which André said were also ok to play. I mixed some $18s (but not many) in all that and played all day long.

The first observation I have to make is that playing above the $18s feels like you are on fast forward. In terms of money, it comes and goes a lot faster simply because you are playing with higher amounts. At the $3s your buy-in is the cost of a pack of chewing-gum. Yeah it adds up, but still... When you think of it independently, $3 simply doesn't sound like a lot of money. $40 though... That's a little bit of something. 

Since the buy-ins were higher, the VPPs per tournament should be more as well, right? I didn't really check how many VPPs each one of the different buy-ins was giving, I hit the VIP status button instead. Imagine my surprise when I saw... that I had made SilverStar in a day. Okay, this may not sound very surprising to some of you especially if you are used to playing higher stakes. But to me, SilverStar is quite a lot of effort. Getting it in a day almost felt like cheating! I was doing some calculations, and at that rate GoldStar should be like 3 days' work while Platinum a bit over a week! I've only made Platinum twice since I started playing poker and both of the times it took me a full month and was extremely hard.

I bet you are wondering about what the results were... Well, it was not anything very interesting, I finished the day break even. But take a look at the graph:

This graph is unreal! As you can see, most of the day went pretty well. Unfortunately, during my last session for the day (that lasted around an hour) I had a $500 downswing. I took the video back to André cause I was really interested to see if it was my fault that I got that downswing or if I was playing fine but getting unlucky. There were quite a few mistakes in there and André asked me if I was playing tired which I guess I was a bit, but I think that there was quite a bit of bad luck involved...

Wanna know how I got myself grounded? Yeah, I'm grounded, you heard me right! While we were reviewing the session I was continuously complaining about a certain player. I think that that particular person sucks out on me very often. We're also talking about a good player here so it's not exactly easy competition. According to André's perspective I should stop tilting and focus on the decisions I make, because after I make them I have no control over what happens. That is completely true and I totally agree, but in this case the person does not make me tilt. Yeah, I'm a bit of a whiner afterwards but at that particular moment I don't start making bad decisions because I tilt. I define tilt as not playing your best because you are angry which is not the case here. I may have made mistakes during that session, that I admit, but they were either cause I was tired or because I didn't think about the play enough, not because I was angry. And it definitely had nothing to do with one player in particular.

Anyway, another thing I kept repeating over and over during yesterday's coaching was "I can't believe I lost $500 in an hour". In terms of buy-ins that's really not a big deal and not anything that hasn't happened to me before in poker. It's like what, a 20 to 25 buy-ins downswing? Big deal! And in a day, I've even lost more than $500 playing much lower stakes. It's just the -$500 in an hour that bothers me. This is not chewing-gum level anymore and I just can't forget that and put a distance between me and the money. It is a significant amount of money (at least to me) and losing that much in an hour simply messes with my head.

I think it was those two points that lead André to his decision of forbidding me to play above the $18s for the rest of the week. I'm not emotionally ready yet. Which I'm ok with, but I don't know if there will be an improvement by the end of this week. Emotions are not something you can control 100%. You can learn how to manage them, but it takes time.

Anyway, I'm really excited about September. The WCOOP should make things more interesting overall. I hope this month is as good as the last one, or even better! :D

Good luck to you all and see you at the tables!

And the beat goes on...

...Or in this case, it's the coaching that goes on! For those of you who didn't read my previous post, I have been having coaching with André since the beginning of the month. Until recently I was having 2 hours of coaching per day, I was studying 4 hours by myself and playing 2 hours. I was playing the $7.49 hypers and it was going pretty well. 

That schedule was recently changed to 6 hours of playing plus 4 hours of coaching. Even though now it's a total of 10 hours per day, I prefer this program over the previous one as I find it a lot more interesting. Not to mention how lucky I feel that André decides to give me 4 hours of his working time on a daily basis. That's a lot of time.

Now to the next topic. Back in July André made me a bankroll management guide. Here it is:

So based on what my bankroll is, I can check the table and see what are the stakes that I'm "allowed" to play. Before you start arguing about whether the current bankroll management is good or bad, let me tell you that it was specifically made for my case and what I'm trying to achieve this year. It may or may not apply to other people, I don't know. What I'm trying to say is, I'm not presenting this as the "golden rule" of managing your roll or anything, it's just what I'm currently using as a guide. As you can see, the $74s are the end game for this year and I'm not going to play higher than that even if my bankroll allows me to. That said, I do feel a million miles away from the $74s not only in terms of bankroll but also in terms of game play. 

But let's move on to why I started talking about bankrolls... In the beginning of August and almost throughout the entire month I was playing the $3s and the $7s. Coaching has helped a lot and I have been running good, so my bankroll kept going up and up... Until it hit the point where I was supposed to move up in stakes and mix in the 18s... That's when I started getting cold sweat and even though I had the bankroll, I didn't move up for a couple of days... Basically because I was traumatized by the last time I played those games back in May. If you don't remember my huge downswing and you'd like to see a graph, click here.

When I eventually did start playing the 18s the impact of the first day was kind of hard, because up to the $7s there are plenty of occasional players whose names you don't recognize and you see lots of bronze/silver/gold stars. Suddenly, you move up to the $18s and it's mostly supernovas and above or people that you know for a fact are regulars... I must admit it's kind of intimidating. Not to mention the obvious, people simply play better. And you feel it right away. I remember I went home that night and I bombed André with questions and told him about stuff that I hadn't seen people do at the lower buy-ins.

That said, the poker gods do seem to favor me lately and I'm on a good run again. That's awesome, cause I don't know if I could take another downswing right after moving up like last time. Here's my graph at the $18s since the beginning of the month:

And since I started with the graphs, here is my graph for the lower stakes (it includes mostly $7s but also some $3s): 

I'm obviously on the good side of variance, but I think coaching has a lot to do with these results. Speaking of which, we've had some very heated discussions with my coach.

The other day, a pretty interesting hand came up. Now, I only have this in a video and I guess I could pause it and take a printscreen but I don't want to expose the names of my opponents or the stats I have on them so we'll have to do it the good old fashioned way with pen and paper. Here's the situation: 

So here's what we know: Players 1 and 4 are good regulars. Player 3 we don't know much about, except that he is probably tight. Player 2 is not much of an issue because he is on the big blind, extremely short and is obligatorily all-in (hence the side pot already created in the middle of the table). The blinds level is 50-100 with an ante of 20. Player 3 shoves and Player 4 shoves over the top. I'm sitting comfortably on the button with my 1448 chips and it would be an easy thing to walk away from the hand, only I've been dealt pocket Queens. What is the correct play here?

André was saying that it's a fold. His reasoning was the following: I'm the chip leader at the moment, Player 2 is practically dead (he only had 12 chips when the hand begun so even if he wins this hand he is still most likely to bust soon). We don't know what Player 3 is shoving with, but since he is short and will be getting the big blind on the next hand we can't put him on the tightest range. Now Player 4 didn't just call, he shoved over the top risking a possible elimination from me if I decide to go with the hand as well. So his hand must be good and on a tight range. If I decide to fold, Player 1 may also call cause he is also very short. That would be a 4-way all in which is very good for me since I would be the only one that folded and with the chip lead. If Player 1 folds and Player 4 wins the hand, then we would be playing the bubble where I would have an extremely good position with the chip lead and a player with less than 2 blinds left. If Player 3 wins and doubles up, then I'm still at a good spot because at the next hand everyone will be much shorter than me and I can "bully" them around with my big stack.

So what did I do? I called. Simply because my hand was QQ and it has plenty of value by itself. If I lose, I'm still in a good position having more chips than player 1 and possibly player 3, while if I win I practically also win the tournament. And there comes the guessing part, cause when you put the hand in any ICM calculator you need to guess the ranges of each opponent. Unfortunately, this was the first time that our beloved ICMizer would not cooperate. It seems that the fact that the player on the big blind was so short was messing with the program's parameters and as a result it was saying that the hand was not valid to be analyzed (same as when you put all players folding for example). And it's not like we could give a few more chips to player 2 cause him being obligatorily all in was crucial for the decision of how to play the hand.

But anyway, André did not completely dismiss my opinion and admitted that it also made sense and could possibly be the optimal play. That alone for me is a victory. There were more controversial hands like that that we discussed. I remember an ATo on the bubble which André was insisting it was a shove and I was insisting that it was a fold. That one we managed to put in ICMizer and... I was right! No matter how much André would mess slightly with the opponents' ranges here and there, it was always an indisputable fold. I tried to find the hand to include it in the post but I couldn't (I have hours and hours of footage so unless I remember the exact date and time of a hand it's almost impossible to find)... While André kept looking at the screen trying to accept his defeat, I went to the kitchen to get a bottle of... chocolate milk to celebrate (I figured champagne would not be a good option cause the coaching was not over yet). 

Then yesterday, when we did our usual quiz of "what would be the range to call in this situation", I got my first 100% correct guess. At some other point André paused the video and asked me "Why did you do this here? It's not correct". I justified my play with so many different arguments that in the end he had to go with it and move on.

Towards the end of the session, we were reviewing a bubble play. It was a spot where I was on the SB and I shoved against the BB. He told me that folding would be a better option in that particular case and explained why. Then he said "That's what makes the difference between a good player and a great one". I nodded, still thinking about the hand. The short conversation that followed is kind of funny.

André: I just gave you a compliment.

Me: Are you kidding me? You just said that the best thing would be to fold. I shoved, so how's that a compliment?

Andé: I just called you a good player.

Me: ...   : P

We just sat there laughing for a while. Then we decided to call it a day cause we were both tired. For all I know I may not even be a winning player at the $18s, but it was nice to receive a compliment from a hyper-turbo specialist. This past month alone I feel like I've progressed more than all the past months I've been playing the hypers all together. Which makes me wonder... Why did we lose so much time and we didn't try this coaching thing earlier? I don't really have a reply to that. I've had coaching sessions with André before, but I didn't like them or learn nearly as much as I do now. I guess it's not only the student that's evolving through the learning process, it's also the teacher.

Anyway, for the first time plays and numbers and cards actually start to somehow... make sense. Could I really be going from zero ....to poker?

August schedule and Coaching

Hello!

So, we're halfway through August already! July went by very fast and I didn't pressure myself at all when it came to FPPs and points and all that. As a result, I'm currently only Silverstar but I don't care much about that. As you probably know, I've been trying to work on my game.

After struggling by myself through the whole month of July, André finally decided to take the situation in his hands and make the following schedule for me:

10.00: Wake up

11.00: Working time

13.00: Lunch

15.00: Working time

20.00: Coaching

22.00: Dinner

Ok, you may think it's nothing exciting, and it's not like I cannot make my own schedule anyway. What's cool about this schedule in particular is that it's compatible with André's schedule and I get two hours of coaching with him. EVERY. DAY.

Do you remember a couple of months back where I almost had to beg him to coach me? I mean, yeah he was always there to guide me and give me some advice here and there, but actually sit with me at the computer and review hands? That was pretty rare. So you can imagine how excited I am that he is going to spend two hours with me on a daily basis. He said he is going to keep doing it at least until the end of the month.

What we do during those two hours? Well, earlier in the day I record my sessions. Then I take the recording to André and we review it together. I've already had some coaching sessions with him and I'm totally loving it. The first day though, we only managed to review around 30 minutes of my session in those two hours. Just by that you can see we had a lot to talk about. I don't know if André suddenly got better at coaching or if I am in a better position now to hear/understand what he has to say, but it's the first time since I started messing with the hyper-turbos that I feel I'm learning so much.

The rest of my "working time" consists of 2 hours of playing and 4 hours of studying by myself. These days, since I've only been playing for two hours per day, I play the $7.49s. Here is my graph since the beginning of the month:

Towards the end of the graph you can see that I had a bit of a downswing. On the worst day of August so far, I lost around 21 buy-ins. It's not a big deal anyway, but what's interesting is that when I took the recording of that particular day back to André, it was when he found the less mistakes than ever before. Bad variance will come sooner or later no matter how well you play, so I was happy that I was playing fine. That is the only thing I can control anyway. 

I really enjoy the coaching so far and I often find myself looking forward to that part of the day. I also think 2 hours of coaching with André makes me improve as a player much more than the 4 hours I spend studying by myself. Not to mention it's far more interesting.

Of course there are those times during the coaching sessions that we disagree about a play. I think the play is fine while André thinks it's not. Then we put the hand in an ICM calculator to find out who is right. There are two possible outcomes: either André is right or André is right. How does that happen? It's quite simple, here's an example:

Outcome #1: The ICM calculator says that my play was bad, giving away -0.05% equity. Since I lost equity, André is obviously right. Doesn't matter that my play was just slightly bad.

Outcome #2: The ICM calculator says that my play was good cause it earned me +0.10% equity. BUT André has some extra arguments there like "ICM calculators do not take into consideration what happens in the next hand", "I know it says it's good but I would still fold there because of this and that and blah blah blah" (this last one is evoking his super-powers as a pro) and so bottom line, Andre is right again.

Even though our conversations do get heated up sometimes, I have to admit that I've also been able to witness to the full extend how good he is at the hypers. When there is an ambiguous situation, he puts all the variables in the calculator and then before hitting the "calculate" button he asks me what I think the ranges will be. Most of the times I just raise my shoulders and say "I don't know" or I say what I think the range is more or less, but I never know what to say when it comes to those borderline hands. Then, he tells me his opinion. Imagine my surprise when we see the results and he gets everything almost completely right. There was one occasion where he got it 100% correct and I was staring at him like he was an alien or something. I asked him how he did that and he said "Tons of practice". Hm. I guess I have a long way to go...

I obviously have lots of things to learn, but since we starting the intensive coaching I feel that the way I play just keeps getting better and my perception of the game becomes clearer. I still have to be careful with what André calls "the fancy play syndrome", I'm learning a lot of new things in a short period of time and sometimes I tend to overdo it when I'm playing but oh well! I'm really enjoying this new approach overall!

If there's anything more you want to know about my coaching, please leave it in the comments below.

Until next time... See you at the tables!

Studying the Hyper-Turbos

Hello!

Ok, I know it's been a while since my last post but you know... Summertime, nice weather, it's hard enough to be studying when you'd rather go to the nearest beach! But, as promised, it is time to make a post about how to study the Hyper-Turbos.

I want to clear out that I am not by any means an expert on the subject. This is just a presentation of what I did during the month of July which I dedicated to studying. So let's get started:

1. Make spreadsheets

Spreadsheets are very important because they help you have a clear vision of how to play. Yes, AA is a clear shove and 32 is a clear fold overall, but what do you do with the in between hands that are neither great nor awful? I know making spreadsheets is a huge headache and there is no clear answer on how to do them, but it's a crucial step. If you already have spreadsheets, review them and look for ways to make them better.

2. Study your opponents

You probably have an idea who your most frequent opponents are. Set a filter on Holdem Manager to find all the people that you have a lot of hands on and take a look at their statistics. Play around with the filters and the different options offered by the program. Try to figure out how they play, if they are loose, tight etc. and what their ranges are. Then, go to the notes of PokerStars client that appear while you are playing against them and insert any usefull information that can help you in game.

3. Study the bubble

Okay, so you have your basic game figured out and you know when to shove or call in the early stages of the tournament. Since hyper-turbians rarely play flops, the situations you come up with do not vary that much (comparing with regular tournaments that is). But what happens when you reach the bubble? There are bubbles where the chipleader has 2k+ chips and the other two players are struggling with what's left while in other cases the chipleader is only a slight favorite with 1.1k chips. You can be the short on the bubble with 2BBs, you can also be the short with 10BBs. And so on... How do you react in each case? I know some people have spreadsheets for the bubble as well, but I find that suddenly the possibilities of different situations become so many that it's hard to use that kind of spreadsheets. Making spreadsheets specifically for the bubble is good, studying them is good because you get a good idea about ranges, but using them while playing  at least for me, is very hard. I think the best option is to pull up all bubble hands that you have and review them, taking your time to think about each play seperately. After all, the bubble is the defining moment of the tournament that separates the winners from the losers so you should give it extra attention.

4. Get your notes organized

If you have no notes, I suggest you start keeping some. There's a lot of information out there, and there is no way our minds can keep it all. Whether it's a piece of advice from a friend, something you read on the Internet or an observation or a thought you had while you were playing, write it down. There are no hyper-turbo manuals out there (at least not as far as I know), so make your own. If you keep reviewing information that you think is useful, it will obligate you to think about certain stuff. If you have some golden rules, writing them down will help you keeping them clear and not forget about them as your style of play changes and evolves. You may also be more observant of some changes you make by comparing earlier notes with more recent ones. And since sometimes it's not enough to talk in general, make notes of specific situations. I find it easier to visualise if I have everything gathered up on paper so I came up with this: 

That is an improvised 6-max table that I made with Windows paint. I print several mini tables on a A4 page and then I take notes of plays where I am not sure what to do. Then, I pull them up on SitnGo Wizard (or any other similar program) and write down what the correct play is. Not only you clear out any doubts you have about that situation, but you gather up information that you can quickly review later. I know there is an option to "mark" some hands in PokerStars, but I never managed to figure out how it works. Oh well, I'm a pen and paper kind of person anyway...

5. Play less tables

This may be obvious to some of you, but I think it's important enough to include here. If you are studying your game and looking for leaks or ways to improve, it's not just about what you do away from the tables when you are pulling up ranges in your favourite programs. It's also about making what you learn part of your normal game. And that takes time and a lot of focus. When you play your maximum number of tables, whether that's 2 or 20, you need to be playing a bit like a robot. Some decisions need to be made automatically, with almost no thought. Which is the exact contrary of what we are trying to achieve here. You need to think about the plays before you do them and make sure you don't fall back to your previous way of playing. So play less tables. I would suggest cutting what you usually play by 50% but that is something personal and you know what's best for you better than anyone else. Personally, I normally play 9 tables. Now that I'm studying I play 6. I know it's not half, but if I play less I get extremely bored and lose focus anyway. Plus, with 6 tables I rarely get to complicated situations in more than 3 tables at a time and that I can perfectly manage.

6. Talk with other Hyper Turbo players

I know this something not everyone can do, but it's very helpful. I was lucky enough to get in touch with another hyper-turbian to discuss our strategies. In the beginning the idea was to exchange thoughts on the game and help each other improve but that person was more advanced and turned out to not need my help as much after all, so it was a one-way thing. We are talking about someone that not only plays higher stakes than me, but has a completely different approach to the game. The whole conversation was very mind-opening, cause I never thought that someone could play the game in such a different way than mine. That player also made some suggestions about how to use certain stuff of Holdem Manager that I didn't even know existed :P It was very interesting to talk about the hypers to someone other than André. Sometimes I agree so much with what André says it feels like I'm talking to myself. Or I know what he will say before he says it. Anyway, I know that unless you personally know someone that plays your type of games, it's rather difficult to find someone willing to openly discuss their strategies. Read other people's blogs, write your own blog and share your thoughts on poker chat rooms, that's probably the next best thing.

7. Explore the poker programs

If you are like me, then you probably consider poker study something relatively boring (unless it includes a well-written book) and you would much rather be playing. But let's face the ugly truth: all those poker programs need to become your friends eventually. Play around with them and use them to exploit your opponents and fix your leaks. Don't limit yourself to programs you have been using since you started playing poker, try out new stuff! Two new cool things that I discovered last month are the Icmizer (which I loooooooooove) and the HoldemResources Calculator (which is still in Beta version but works fine for me). The only thing that bugs me with poker programs though and I cannot for the life of me understand why they do it, is that they ask you to put the full stack of each player before posting blinds and antes. Like, if a player has 397 chips behind after posting the blind of 200 and the ante of 40 chips, you need to put 637 as the player's stack. Since we always specify the blinds level and the beloved program knows that it's the 100/200/a40 level, why can't we put 397 as the player's stack and we need to do the boring math of 397+200+40=637?!?!? Not that it's complicated, but it's annoying and takes a significant amount of time if you consider that you need to do it for all the stacks around the table and about a million times in the day because you are studying. It's just not practical. If there is some kind of reasonable explanation that I am missing, please let me know cause this "little math" is driving me crazy. And do not tell me "because the player might have less than the ante or the blind". That is not the norm, so they could put a tick or something where we would manually put the stack. Whatever! :P

8. Get coaching

Who gives hyper-turbo coaching? I have no idea. But if you can find someone to coach you and your bankroll can take it, I strongly suggest you go for it. I've been bugging André to give me coaching for quite some time now, but I never really got much more than the occasional advice. He had a change of heart in the beginning of August though (between us, I think he's just feeling guilty for that Micromillions challenge, haha!). I'll write more about it in my next post.

I hope you found this at least a bit helpful and it gave you some ideas. If you have other studying methods /ideas that I didn't think of, please feel free to leave a comment!

See you at the tables! :)

July & Micromillions Challenge

Hello everyone!

I know that in my last post I wrote I would be studying in June and that there would be a post related to that, but since it's taking longer than expected I thought I'd just make a quick post to update you.

Basically, June flew by without me noticing! During the first week, I was trying to recover from my super intensive last days of May where I was chasing Platinum. Then, I went to Greece where I stayed for another two weeks. Here are some pics:

Flisvos bay, one of my favourite places to get a coffee back home.

Greek summer: Beach, sun and frappé coffee!

Beach in Athens

Fun way to pass the time at the beach: board games!

The plan was to come back to Portugal and study during the last week of June, but it backfired when I caught a cold and was feeling too tired to play or think. Imagine, I was even turning down invites from André and other friends to play Diablo 3!

Anyway, not only July is here, but half of it is gone already! What have I done since its beginning... Well, when it comes to playing, not much. I've been playing the Micromillions Satellites, but not many at a time. What I've mostly been doing this month is studying . And let me tell you, it is more chaotic than it sounds. I've dropped the number of tables I play to 4, so that I have more time to think about what I'm doing before I do it. Also, I've been messing around with Holdem Manager quite a bit. I've discovered some new interesting things.

This whole reviewing the way I play thing, has confused me more than it has helped me so far. I'm actually considering to put aside all the spreadsheets André gave me and make new ones on my own... Not that I want to question the hyper-turbo master, but... Maybe that specific way of playing is not what's best suited for me. My hesitation has to do with the fact that creating new spreadsheets is very time-consuming and I may be waisting my time for nothing if I find that it's not working out and go back to my previous way of playing.

Also, since I didn't play at all in June, I'm back to Bronze star. It stung a bit that I didn't get to play at all with my Platinum status, but oh well. I'm not setting any points goals for now, cause I don't want to be chasing after a status instead of studying.

As hinted in the title, I have some things to say about a certain Micromillions challenge. It's not a challenge I'm doing, it's one of André's ideas. You can learn more about it here. Basically, he decided to play ALL  100 Micromillions Events. Why is that a challenge? Because during 11 days, the Micromillions will be running pretty much non-stop. Events can start at anytime of the day, doesn't matter if it's 15:00 p.m. or 3:00 a.m. You can see the full schedule here. In theory, this means that during 11 days he could get absolutely no sleep. In practice, he gets to sleep 1 hour here 2 hours there everytime he busts early from a tournament and until the next event starts. Some of them also have late registration available, which adds a couple of hours of sleep. As I'm writing this, it is day 8 of the Micromillions series and the challenge. You cannot imagine how much I'm looking forward for it to end. Let me tell you what living with a Micromillions challenger is like from the perspective of the girlfriend...

From day 1 it became obvious that André and I could not be sleeping in the same room. There is no way I can sleep if his alarm goes off at random times and all throughout the night. Also, I cannot risk waking him up with my alarm in the morning if he happens to be taking a one hour nap when I wake up. Therefore, I was immediately self-exiled to the guest room. When it comes to meals, he mostly cooks by himself cause it is somehow part of the challenge, but I still prepare some of his meals. The worst part of it though, is the mess he leaves in the kitchen (and in the house overall). I spent around 4 hours clearing just the kitchen yesterday. You can imagine how bad it was. And I can't really say anything cause he's pushing himself to the limits as it is, we can't expect him to clean on top of it all, can we?

As if playing while being sleep deprived is not enough, he also needs to do videos about it. And guess who serves as a cameraman whenever one is needed? Yeap, you guessed right! You may think it's not such a big deal (he films most of his video blogs by himself anyway), but you'd be amazed at how many times you have to re-film a 2 minutes scene when the person you are filming is so exhausted they cannot think straight.

And then there are the accidents. Yesterday, around 5 a.m. I hear a loud BAM! followed by the sound of glass breaking. It's not the first time I hear things falling and rush to the other room to see if André is ok, but this one was worse because of the glass. I get to the computer room and what do I see? André's improvised lightning which consisted of a ladder, a huge pile of books and a lamp on top of it all, was on the floor. If you are wondering what the structure initially looked like, you can see it in this video. It was basically a wonder how it lasted so many days and didn't come down anytime sooner. And to make things worse, André was standing in the middle of the mess of books and broken glass barefooted. I told him to not move and brought the vacuum cleaner. Just my favourite thing to do at 5:00 in the morning.

Today, I woke up and went to check up on him. He was in front of the computer, as usual, and had just started explaining how he missplayed a hand due to his exhaustion the during the night, when he knocked over a glass full of water he had next to him. The water spread to his laptop which I rushed to pick up and then fell on the UPSes and the computer cables. Shortly after, the computer turned off. Oh, and there was more broken glass on the floor, of course. First we wiped the water off the laptop, then André turned it on and continued playing his tournament while I was cleaning up the mess. Again. And all that before I had a chance to get a sip of my morning coffee, may I add.

I won't bore you any further with the errands I need to run (super market, buying lamps etc.) or with the comments "You are nuts" I get when performing mundane tasks such as putting the knives and forks from the washing machine into the drawer or walking fast around the house. Or the complete lack of conversation during the past week. It feels like living with a zombie.

I'll just leave you with my favourite incident from this challenge:

A couple of days ago, I was putting the laundry out to dry. As I'm standing in the balcony, I see André coming towards the kitchen. He didn't enter however, he just stood there in the hallway, staring at the floor. I followed his gaze and saw that he was looking at a small slice of onion. I had been cooking that day, and I guess I dropped it without noticing and then the wind must have carried it into the hallway.

André stares at the onion.

The onion stares back.

André keeps staring.

A couple of minutes (!) later, he snaps out of it, goes into the kitchen and notices me out in the balcony. "There's a slice of onion on the floor there", he says matter-of-factly. "I know", I replied, "Why don't you pick it up?". He thinks a bit and then says "Cause if I bend down to pick it up off the floor I think I'll get very dizzy and may not be able to get up again!". That sould give you an idea of what it's been like in this house these past days.

In conclusion, I think poker players should consult their girlfriends/wives before launching themselves into extreme challenges like this one. After all, no one asked me if I wanted to participate in this challenge. I'm trying to be supportive and all, but it's tough work. I told him that I deserved a lunch or dinner at that nice Mexican restaurant that I've been wanting to go for ages but we never seem to have time for it. I think I should add a full day at the beach to my rewards. I've earned it, don't you think?

Ok, three more days to go. I can do this. Wish me luck!!!

May Overview and Plans for June

May is officially over (what a relief!) and since it's June 6th today, I guess you already have a hint that I was not looking forward to making a post about how the previous month went. To be honest, I dreaded the time I would have to sit in front of my computer and write this. You'll soon discover why.

To pick up from where I left you at my previous post, even though the SCOOP went pretty awesome for me, I still had a significant amount of points missing to reach my goal for the month, Platinum. I pretty much had a week before the month was over and I knew I would not be able to play all days since I had some things scheduled months in advance:

1) André was invited to speak at a SPIE UP event that took place at the University of Porto. It was cool and I enjoyed it (and since the Q&A part at the end lasted more than an hour I'm guessing that other people enjoyed it too), but it meant spending a day to go and come back.

2) Then, we had our tickets to Rock in Rio. Limp Bizkit, Offspring, Linkin Park and Smashing Pumkins. Need I say more? I think the pictures speak for themselves.

The line to go inside

Waiting in line

One of the many side shows

The stage

The audience. Believe it or not, it was even more crowded than that when Linkin Park came out.

3) This was my first music festival and I had never been to anything like it, but you don't have to be psychic to be able to forsee than on the next day you will be in no condition to play poker... All of your body hurting from standing/jumping during so many hours on the night before, ears still ringing and a nice headache make the perfect recipe for disaster if you decide to take it to the tables. Better take the day off and rest at home...

Taking all the above into account and since the $18s are not running all day long anymore, I knew it would be tight to make Platinum. Little did I know it would be the hardest thing I've been through in poker. 

After the SCOOP, my bankroll was boosted enough to allow me to go up at stakes. Instead of the $9s, I found myself playing the $18s. I should have studied quite a bit before moving up but with the days counting down and the VPPs still missing there was no time, so I just went for it. To sum it up, day after day after day I watched my bankroll disappear. One of the issues I have when moving up, is adjusting to the idea of dealing with more money at a given time. If I lose 30 buy-ins at the $9s that's $270. If I lose 30 buy-ins at the $18s that's $540. Even though in both cases I lose the same in terms of buy-ins, the difference in terms of bankroll is big. And even though it sounds pretty simple to understand (and it is), it is definitely not easy to take. Suddenly, losing the same feels like losing more. If that makes any sense!

And so I watched my bankroll taking hits of $300-$500 per day. Not that I could take lots of those hits, but I had to keep playing to make it to 7.500 VPPs. Of course it started to really bother me so I put more pressure on André to spend some time coaching me. He had given me some spreadsheets to study back in the beginning of the month but it goes unsaid that I found no time to do more than take a glimpse at them. Coaching was interesting since we talked about my biggest issue, the bubble, but do you think I really had time to think about what we discussed and implement it in my game? Of course not! I was running after the points.

My life during that week basically resumed into: waking up around lunch time, having a coffee for breakfast and then lunch immediately after, playing from 15:00 to 20:00, making an obligatory break until midnight and then playing more until 2:30. Then I went back home around 3.00 and fell asleep around 4:00. You may think that between 20:00 and midnight there's a nice gap to study, right? I assure you that my brain was so fried from that vampiric schedule that I could barely think... So for me those 4 hours were necessary to shut my brain down and have dinner (I tried to take naps but I couldn't).

On May 30th, with only one day left and still a lot of points missing, I was forced to move down on stakes. Which would happen eventually but I was hoping to make it to Platinum first. Unfortunately, I had to drop down to the $7s on the last day of the month. What's even worse, those run during only 2 hours per day, so in order to gather the points I had to play a lot of $3.74s. I made the calculations on the night before to prepare myself and counted that I needed around 10 hours. Which is far more than what I normally play, and far less possible when I'm tired. At that point, I really reached my limits. 

On the next day, I decided to stick to the plan. I played and played and played and at the rate of 0.43 VPPs that I was getting per game, it seemed to be a neverending task. Oh, I forgot to say that while doing the calculations, André threw in 12 tables at a time. Dunno if you remember, but normally I'm 8tabling, 9tabling at most when I'm well rested and felling 100%. That day was horrible and I couldn't wait for it to end. 12tabling meant that I would definitely not play the best I could. Since on top of that I was physically exhausted I wasn't even playing my B game. I would classify it more around E or F if I had to. I was just sticking to the absolute basics that by now are so intuitive that I don't even have to think. Any decisions that required some thought on my behalf, I probably messed up. The funny part is that I ended up with a $11 profit for the day, breaking the losing streak.

The results of the month:

It's very noticeable when I started playing the $18s, don't you think? I don't believe that the downswing had anything to do with bad luck. In my opinion it happened for 3 reasons:

1) If you go up at stakes without studying your game first, you are very likely to get your *** kicked. Especially if the jump is big in terms of money (as in my case, from the $9s to the $18s which is the double).

2) As a fellow hyper-turbian put it, the $18s in the afternoon are a regfest. Not that all regulars are unbeatable or winning players, but there are less occasional players so you'd better be prepared. And that takes us back to point #1, study, or else...!

3) I cannot function in vampire mode. In case you are unfamiliar with the term, vampire mode is when you turn the day into night and vice-versa, for many days in a row (staying up late for just one or two nights obviously does not qualify). I know some people can handle it and it doesn't make a difference to them, but I cannot take it. And it's not something I can simply decide to control, my body reacts to it. For me, sleeping from midnight to 8:00 is not the same as sleeping from 5:00 to 13:00. It's a total of 8 hours on both cases, I know, but in the first case I'll wake up feeling fine whereas in the second case my physical state will be similar to that of a bad hangover. Since I was forced by the schedule to go into vampire mode for the last week of May, I strongly believe it had an impact on my results.

You may think that what I did was stupid and that since I was losing and did not have the conditions to play I should have given up sooner, before trimming my bankroll. I see it like this: after a certain point (basically after the SCOOP was over and the games that were available reduced) I only had two choices: save my bankroll and give up on my goal to reach Platinum OR go for Platinum at the possible expense of my bankroll. It was one or the other and it soon became obvious that I could not both get the status and keep my bankroll high enough to play the $18s during June.

Maybe you would have made a different choice. But I would rather drop on stakes and have a small failure there (which in poker is very likely to happen anyway, even to the best players) than fail to achieve a goal I set for myself. If you ask me was it worth the benefits that Platinum gives you, no it was not. I mean, I lost $397 to get there and I will definitely not get as much in return, especially since I won't be renewing that status in June. But if you ask me that question, you're missing the real point anyway. Choosing to forget about the goal would be the easy way out. I tend to not go so easy on myself.

Anyway, May is over and it obviously took its toll on me since I haven't played a single game so far this month. Also, I'm going to Greece for two weeks which doesn't leave me with much time. What time I do have for poker, however will be used for studying purposes. I will be playing, but less tables than usual to have more time to see how new things are working out. I'll probably will go back to Bronze for July, but I don't really care. What matters to me now is improving my game, and studying is something that I haven't seriously done in months.

If you were one of those lucky ones to have me at your tournaments during that week that I was spreading money at the tables, I hope you enjoyed it. But be prepared. You will soon start paying it back. With interest.

See you at the tables!