Things are looking up!

Hi everyone!

I told you that November would be a better month didn't I? And even though we're only at the beginning and therefore far from making any sort of overview, I'm very very happy with the way it's going so far!

On October 1rst and 3rd, André and I went to play some Magic: The Gathering tournaments. For those of you who are not familiar with the game and don't know what's going on in the magic world, Lisbon is hosting a Grand Prix in December. That's a major tournament gathering hundreds of players from all over the world. Since it's taking place near our house and we will have friends coming over from a lot of different countries, André and I are looking forward to it. We have been practicing quite a bit lately, and played some Grand Prix Trials. The trials give a first prize of 3 wins for the GP, which means that at the Grand Prix instead of starting playing at round 1 like everyone else, you start playing at round 4 having 3 wins behind you already!

The trial we played last Saturday went well both for André and me so we both made it into the top8. We were lucky enough to not get paired up against each other and we both kept winning so inevitably we met at the finals. André decided to concede so that I would get to win the trial and get the advantage of 3 wins at the GP. We had been playing the whole day and both of us making the finals was an awesome outcome, but I'm also very excited for starting the Grand Prix with 3 wins. Thanx André! :)

But let's move on to poker stuff, shall we? In between the magic tournaments, on October 2nd, I sat down in front of my computer to play. And guess what? I finally managed to break that losing streak! Here's the graph from that day:

Not anything far too exciting, I was only playing $3s and $7s that day and the profit was $86,38 so around 17 buy-ins, but I felt so relieved to have a winning day again!

And then there was Sunday... As we all know Sundays get extra traffic because of all the Sunday tournaments, so it's the best day for poker grinders to play. André told me to play higher stakes, up to the $37s which was  quite on the borderline for my bankroll, but there were a lot of people playing those so the games were too good to miss. Not only things went well, but I also have a new record of my best day ever! Here's the graph:

That's an amazing upswing of $1571 or to put it in perspective 53,5 buy-ins! My previous record was 52 buy-ins so I did not exceed it by far, but still it was my best day ever! Plus, the previous record was back when I was playing the $7s and the $18s so this Sunday was far better than any other day in terms of money!

And of course we should always think in terms of buy-ins and not money, but after the tremendous hits that my bankroll has taken recently, it just feels nice to see it going significantly up again... When I went back home André congratulated me for the day and rushed to remind me that it's not the result that's important but the learning process. That's his standard thing to say whether I'm having an upswing or a downswing and it's very true. A poker player should always brush off the results, good or bad, and focus on what they can control: playing well and improving. But can you blame me that I slept a lot better last night and finally woke up at the sound of my alarm buzzing, not before? ;)

That's all for now. I hope that November started just as well for you too!

Good luck and see you at the tables!

Going crazy + October overview

Hello!

Okay, I'll admit, it finally got to me. I've had a losing streak of 14 days in a row, which to me is a bit too much. I don't even remember if I've ever had a similar incident before in my poker career in terms of time, cause I'm sure that in terms of money it's a first. It's not just about the money lost (surprisingly that's not my biggest concern). It's mostly about the awful feeling of constantly losing. You have probably felt it too so until a certain degree I'm pretty sure you know what I'm talking about. It's exhausting! Who would say that losing is far more tiring than winning, right? I think I snapped around the last couple of days of October, which is pretty good considering I took over two weeks of losing until I came to this point.

What is this point like? Not very pretty I must say. My morale is way below zero and the only way to get it back up is to start winning some. Which unfortunately to me sounds as hard right now as the sky turning green. I've literally forgotten what if feels like to win. It seems like something I'm no longer capable of. And yes, of course I know and understand that what I'm saying doesn't make any sense and that I'm not going to keep losing for the rest of my life, but... I guess I've hit an emotional low. This is what losing does to people, in all its glory! It's like your brain is thinking in a logical way but your emotions are countering every logical thought that comes to you. It's the ultimate internal battle between me and myself, if that makes any sense, and it's totally tiring.

To make matters worse, the vertigo is back. Not as bad as the first time it appeared, but still there to remind me of its presence whenever I turn my head around a bit too much. According to my doctor the change of weather from autumn to winter has a lot to do with it, but I think stress also plays an important part. This time however it feels totally undeserved because I've been doing my exercise, sitting properly at my chair, eating healthy and sleeping well. Oh, talking of sleep, I think now we can kiss that goodbye too. Just to add to my overall frustration lately I've been waking up before the alarm goes off, which is unheard of. No matter how late I go to sleep, it seems like I have to wake up 1-2 hours earlier than what I planned on the night before when I went to bed. I suppose my mind these days is not fully at ease even when I'm sleeping and that's why this is happening. 

In terms of stakes and bankroll, I think it goes unsaid that I'm moving further and further down at stakes. Right now I'm at the point where the $37s are no longer allowed, so I'm playing a mix of $18s, $7s and $3.75s depending on the time of the day and the traffic. Okay, let's get this over with, here's my graph for the month of October (my ugliest graph ever so far!):

Total damage: -$4.880 and that's a wrap!

And after reading this, I suppose you think that the title of this post was referring to me going crazy. No, that was actually for André who decided earlier this week that I've had enough of 6-tabling and I should move to...9!!! Yeah, you read it right, that's a nice nine over there! I've never 9-tabled the hyper-turbos. Even back when I was playing the normal speed sngs, the highest number of tables I've ever reached was 12. So when I hear 9, I freaked out a little. That said, it's rare for me to go against André's opinion in poker, so I did what he asked anyway. The first session only lasted an hour, I was playing the $3s and it went bad, naturally. The second session was longer, close to two hours and even though it was a losing one, I was feeling like I could pay enough attention to all the tables so I actually managed. At this point I can't say I'm comfortable with 9-tabling, cause I'm obviously not, but at least I'm doing ok at it and only occasionally sit out.

Increasing the number of tables had two immediate benefits:

1) We suddenly got a lot more material to review during coaching time. Coaching throughout the month of October has not been very exiting, but now it got interesting all over again. André says he sees improvements in the way I play from one day to the next, so that's a good thing.

2) Okay, I've not been playing well during October but I've been getting a generous dose of negative variance. Increasing the volume of tournaments brings "the long run" a bit closer, so I have some hope to get out of the bad luck a bit sooner.

Coaching is now towards the end of the day after I play and we review the session from that day. That's really good because I have everything fresh in my mind so every correction sticks better in my memory. Also, it's comforting to hear an expert confirm that you are running bad. During our last coaching session two days ago, André went through 40 minutes of the video of me playing and was mostly quiet while he was watching it. Yeah, there were misplays and I did get a couple of notes of things I do wrong and need to try to improve in my next session, but it's always nice to have someone telling you that you did okay and it's not because of your awful way of playing that you lost 29 buy-ins. I think it's very important to find something positive to hold on to while being in a downswing. So yeah, I can 9-table and play ok while at it, so there was some kind of  improvement during last month after all.

Of course we wouldn't stop to 9 tables now, would we? André's initial idea was to let me 9-table all through this week and then have me increase to 12 during the next one. It seems like that is not going to happen because number 9 seems to be the borderline for me at this point, so 12-tabling has been postponed for the second week of November. Which is still not that far anyway so I am kind of dreading the moment it comes, but then again I was thinking the same way about 9-tabling and it turned out to be fine anyway. I guess I'll just have to wait and see how things go, like always!

Anyway, that's all for now. October is in the books and I have high hopes that November is going to be a much better month! 

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

Disaster mode

Hi everyone!

By the title of this post you can guess that things are not going great poker-wise. Unfortunately for me (fortunately for my opponents), yesterday I had my worst day in terms of money loss and a pretty bad one if you look at it from a buy-ins point of view. I lost around 35 buy-ins (calculating with the average stake cause I was mixing up $37s and $74s) which is better than my worst day ever (-60 buy-ins), but still... Pretty bad! Here's the graph:

The outcome? A devastating score of -$1942. Ouch and ouch again. In the past I think I've talked about how playing in dollars puts a bit of a distance between me and the money. And that's a good thing, really. Since the currency I've been using  most of my life is the euro (okay, I was also using greek drachmas before that but that's soooooo far back in the past!), dollars do not immediately translate into money in my head. I mean, I know it's money, but knowing that it's not the same amount in euros makes me see it more as chips that I can convert into euros and therefore money. Until that translation is made and specifically calculated down to the very last cent, I feel like I have a veil of protection around me that shields me from the truth. Since one euro is worth more than one dollar (at least right now it is!), when I see myself losing I always have the semi-comforting thought of "Ok, calm down, it's not as bad in euros as it seems". 

So yesterday, when I was playing and felt that I was losing quite a bit, I sharkscoped my results before finishing my session so that I know how big the damage was. And good thing I did that, cause I still had one more hour to go for that session and if I hadn't stopped things could have been far worse. I stopped opening tables and when I got the final result of -$1942 I felt an urge to convert it and see how much it is in euros. Stupid me, I know. With the current conversion rates, that's 1493 euros. And then it hit me. After I saw the number, the next couple of breaths were hard to take in. Have you heard of the expression "breathless"? That's exactly what I'm talking about! I don't know about you, but that is quite a bit more than what my monthly salary has ever been in any non-poker related job I've ever had. 

There's really no use in crying over spilt milk, so I tried to calm myself down and go on with my day. I informed André over the phone about my "accomplishment" and let him know that I wouldn't be playing the last hour of my session. Instead, I opened youtube and watched some of those time-spending and mostly pointless videos that do, however, make me feel good cause I don't think about my problems or my life in general. When the time came, I closed everything, locked the office and got into my car to drive to my school of dance. It's a 30 minute drive, during which I put the music louder than usual and forced myself to sing along even though I didn't particularly feel like singing. I also enjoy driving so that helped too. By the time I got to the school, I was feeling significantly better. I caught myself thinking about poker while dancing, which normally doesn't happen, but my thoughts were more like "Wow, I lost in one day more than I used to make per month and now I'm here dancing and being sort of cool about it. Is there something wrong with me?"

You see, part of me still thinks like my old self back to when I had only heard of poker but didn't even know how to play or have any notion of the money involved in it. To that part of me, it makes no sense to be losing  1,5k euros in a day and be cool about it. The logical reaction would be to freak out. And then there's the other part of me, that comprehends swings and plays and variance and skill (or the lack of it) and sees the loss of that amount of money as something not only acceptable, but a necessary part of the process. 

Last night, sleep didn't come as easily, I'm not gonna lie about it. But I woke up feeling fine today and most importantly I'm ready to go back to the tables immediately. For someone whose worst fear in poker is to not be able to deal with the emotional part it involves, I think I'm doing a pretty good job actually. If someone told me back in February that I was starting to play the hypers, that I would lose such an amount of money and be ok with it, I'd call them a liar and a pretty bad one. Today, I put it behind me and move on. So there's some sort of progress in it I suppose...

Anyway, moving on to what happens now... I obviously can't go on playing the $74s cause I am not rolled for them anymore, so... Bye-bye $74s for now and see you again soon (I hope)! I can play up to the $37s though, where apart from yesterday's bad day I have been doing ok. André says that I'm still not at the level I was before I left for Greece in September and since I haven't been able to 6-table much lately (oh, I miss the traffic of the WCOOP!), coaching has been progressing a looooot slower than usual. For today, the plan is to play $3s and $7s not because I can't or shouldn't play higher, but because there's more traffic at those stakes and I'll get more material to review after. André says that he has spotted what I do wrong, so let's see if he can help me get back to my A game soon.

Apart from that... After a couple of weeks of the schedule I described in my previous post, it became crystal clear that I cannot keep going on a regular basis with only one free day per week. Not because my weekdays were too busy, they were softer than what I'm used to overall, but because one free day per week is simply not enough. No, I'm not a party animal and I don't want all the free time of the world for myself. It's just that out of the two free days that most people have, I believe one goes to running errands, cleaning the house, going to the supermarket, and organizing your life (whether it's backing up the files on your computer or something else you need to do, the point is it's not necessarily a fun activity and you don't have time to do during the week). The other day is spent with family and friends. It doesn't have to be as linear and that, people obviously do the laundry and go out for a dinner in the same day, but everyone has some time attributed to both of those sort of things. So with one day only... What do I do? Spent some quality time with my boyfriend? Go out with some friends? Or tidy around the house? And then, every now and then, don't we all need a day were we do nothing at all?

No, no, two free days need to be a standard thing in my life no matter what. I talked with André about it, told him that if he couldn't figure out a way to improve my schedule I would probably go insane and being the great problem-solver that he is, he came up with a solution. It's as simple as not really having time for breakfast, but getting my breakfast while doing our morning coaching. Which, starts at 9:00 a.m. now. I have to wake up a bit earlier compared to my previous schedule, but whatever. It really doesn't bother me to wake up earlier and it makes a world of difference to get an extra day for me. So, I still work/study 40 hours per week, do my exercise and everyone's happy! :)

Oh, I have one last piece of news for you guys... André asks me from time to time to participate in his videos. My typical reply is "no" cause I'm not particularly fond of being in front of the cameras  (I get nervous) and he's the Pokerstars sponsored player and therefore the one that people want to see, not me. I broke the rule of participating in his videos only twice. The first one was when they were making a team Online video about him and they needed short interviews from friends. It doesn't make much sense for friends to appear in the video but the girlfriend that lives with him to be absent, so I went with it. Plus, they had a crew fly to Portugal all the way from the United States, so I felt bad playing it a diva (which I'm not) and refusing to participate.

The second occasion was during the Micro-Millions challenge that he did. I made a post about what I was going through during that time and he had the idea of me making a video of it. Again, I was not very keen on doing it and refused several times before agreeing (if you were watching the challenge you know that André was not in great physical shape back then due to lack of sleep so it was harder for me to keep saying no to him about anything).

When a couple of weeks ago he came to me saying that he had an idea about a video that would promote the new Pokerstars mobile application, my first reaction was "Forget it, enough is enough already!". He went straight to counterattack saying "There's a shopping budget for you involved". Not losing time to think I said "Okay, what's the plan and when do we start?" :D I am a girl after all, and the word "shopping" brings a sweet melody to my ears. Especially if he's the one offering to go shopping with me (I usually have to drag him along).

This video I actually kind of enjoyed doing. Yeah, there was the usual awkward nervousness in front of the camera, plus tons of people staring at us cause we were filming in some of the busiest streets of Lisbon, but apart from that it was fun. And more importantly, I brought back home some goodies:

The video is not uploaded yet, but it will be soon so look out for it. For those of you that will be feeling bad for André after you watch it, let me remind you what I've been through during the Micro-Millions and let's just call this payback time! Heheh! :P

See you guys at the tables!

WCOOP recap and plans for October

Hello again!

I know this post comes a bit late , but I haven't really said anything about my poker progress lately so I thought I'd update you guys.

As I wrote in my previous post, I only played the first two weeks of the WCOOP. But even those two weeks were enough to give a nice boost to my bankroll. Actually, I've never had that much money in my Pokerstars account before. Here is my graph for the month of September:

My total profit was $4,827 which makes September 2012 my best month so far. Somewhere along the way I think I also broke my record per day in terms of buy-ins but I was too busy playing at the tables to stop and make a post about it...

Now here comes the best part. In a previous post I talked about my current bankroll management. When the WCOOP started, I was playing the $7s and the $18s. However, since I was on a good run and improving I reached the next "step" of my bankroll plan pretty fast. And that included playing $35s. André let me mix in some $55s cause they seemed to get more traffic, but suddenly the $7s were history! I quickly made Platinum for the next month and got some of the VIP bonuses along the way. You just cannot beat free money, there's no deal better than that! 

Since the VPPs were flowing into my account a lot faster than before and my bankroll was continuing to grow (almost reaching the next step of my bankroll management), André put me playing some FPPs hypers that are equivalent to the $74s. Since you only pay with FPPs and not real money, those tournaments get less traffic than the regular ones. The good thing about them though is that they are also a lot softer than the regular $74s. I'll admit that the first time I started playing stakes that were so high, I was very intimidated. And I'm not just talking about the regular nervousness of moving up a level. I mean, I've always been a micro-stakes player so far. It's hard to put in my head that I went up to play the $74s...

Fortunately for me, things kept going well. Shortly, I was not only playing the 4.500 FPPS but the regular $74s as well. Winning money at the $74s was a huge confidence boost apart from everything else. At that point, I had my trip to Greece so I did not fully benefit from the extra traffic due to the WCOOP tourneys, but oh well! I'm very happy with how it went! The only misfortune was that what I had planned to be a 10 days trip ended up lasting until the end of the month because I got sick. That took me back quite a bit, not only because I lost one week where I could be playing, but because staying more time away from the tables made me forget certain things and be out of poker shape.

Now I'm back, batteries fully charged and feeling much better physically than when I left! Last weekend André and I attended some Magic: The Gathering tournaments and that was fun, but from Monday we got back to business. Since the doctor made it crystal-clear that staying in front of the computer more than two hours straight is a no-no, we had to readjust my schedule. The final version is something like this:

9.30-10.00: Wake up
10.00-11.00:  Breakfast/ Getting ready
11.00-13.00: Work
13.00-13.30: Lunch
13.30-15.00: Work
15.00-15.30: Break
16.00-18.00: Work
18.30-20.30: Dancing lessons
21.30: Dinner

What is mentioned as work refers to either playing or having coaching with André. It depends on where his and my schedule combine but the general idea is that I get 2-4 hours of coaching per day. You may think this is a rather soft schedule right? Hold on a bit cause there's a catch: I only get one free day per week. That's right. No more weekends (or in my case Friday-Saturdays cause I always had to play on a Sunday). From now one it's one day off only. I'm not crazy about that and I don't know for how long I can take it, but I couldn't come up with a better schedule that satisfies all of the following parameters: working around 40h/week, doing exercise on a daily basis, sleeping 8-9 hours, getting one hour of massage per week. Combining all the above and getting two days off on a weekly basis seems impossible. If you come up with a better idea, please let me know cause I couldn't think of anything. I just can't have it all and the only thing that I can afford to sacrifice right now is my time off. Not my work and definitely not my exercise that contributes a lot to my good health. Oh, I forgot to mention that Sundays deviate from this schedule, it's practically play two hours, have a half hour break, play two hours, have a half hour break... And so on until I've played 8-10 hours total.

I'm already following the new diet that my nutritionist gave me and today is the first day that I'll be going back to doing exercise. I'm not fully used to the change of lifestyle yet, but I think that will come with time. If only I could figure out a way to have 2 days off per week... My life would be perfect! :P

Anyway, as far as poker is concerned I'm doing ok although I'm still quite rusty. During the first week after I came back from Greece André put me playing the $3s and the $7s again. This week I moved back to my "normal" stakes, or at least the ones that my bankroll dictates that I should be playing... Which is from the $18s all the way up to the $74s. 

Now that it's not a SCOOP or WCOOP month, I'm working with the regular Pokerstars schedule. They have tons of tournaments, which on one hand is good cause there's almost always something that you can play but on the other hand... Planning a two-hour session can be a nightmare. Especially if you are playing multiple stakes. You basically need to keep track of when every tournament that you win entries to is starting so that you can unregister on time. Which is no easy task, you can take my word for it. So far I've been trying this out for 3 days and I already played 2 MTTs that I wasn't planning to... Not to mention my super blunder of registering to a $357 tournament! Yeah, you read that one right! Three digits tourney (not only that, but also the highest one you can play on a regular basis on Stars!). How did that happen? 

Let me explain this to you so you can learn from my mistake and not do the same. So, there I was in the middle of my session having disabled the $37.50s from TableNinja cause the tourney they were feeding was about to start. I unregistered from the MMT and a bit latter when I assumed that the tourney had already started, I wanted to check if there were more $37.50s running. So while TableNinja was running (attention, this is the key phrase here!), I typed the numbers 3 and 7 in the PokerStars filter. Surely, the first tourney that appeared containing those numbers was a $357 (and not the $37 that I had in mind). Good old TableNinja registered me to it and before I had time to blink, the tourney started and popped up in front of me. You see, not only was I ignorant enough to not fully understand how TableNinja works, but I was also unlucky enough to be the 6th and last person registering at the $357. Lesson learnt: TableNinja does not control what it registers you to, it only controls the filters. If you mess with the filters while it's running a session, then you will be registered to whatever appears first in the Pokerstars lobby. And good luck with that.

Fortunately, my luck was good for two reasons: Jorj95 was not playing (he's only the best player in the world at the hypers, duh!) and when I reached the bubble I was up against an opponent that I recognized from the $74s. After a lot of all-ins and tossing chips back and forth which, may I add, is not very good for your blood pressure, I ended up winning the thing. Which was great cause otherwise I don't know how I could forgive myself the stupidity of throwing $357 out the window. Really.

Anyway, all is well that ends well. Hm, ok, maybe it hasn't exactly ended cause I still haven't got the hang of it and I'm struggling a ton with what I play, what I don't play, where to unregister, what filters to disable, which ones to enable and so on... I think that I should make a written plan of what tourney starts when, otherwise I may keep struggling forever... But before I go, I want to show you guys the graph of the last three days that I've been playing the $18s+. Here it is:

I'm losing $462, which if you consider that my average buy-in is like $28 (always according to sharkscope) it's like 16 buy-ins negative. I just got to keep things in perspective cause $426 sounds like a lot of money to lose in 3 days and I don't want to go crazy! 16 buy-ins is fine, can't even be called a downswing and I know that I'm not playing as well as I was a month ago. So, for the rest of October I need to get used to my new schedule and work a lot on improving!

If you have any thoughts you would like to share with me or you can figure out a way for me to get 2 days off per week, I'll be glad to read it in the comments below! :)

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

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?