Houston, we have a problem

Hello everyone!

I'm warning you in advance, this post is gonna be full of graphs so brace yourselves! 

Today is Monday, which normally is the only day of the week that André and I take off, but last week we decided to take an extra day to play a Magic: The Gathering tournament. It was the perfect day: sleep until late, wake up without an alarm, have breakfast, go to play some Magic, then eat at our favorite burger place and finish the day with a nice movie at the cinema.

Too bad that today, which is the compensation day, I don't feel at all like working. Not a tiny bit. We came to the office late, and I took more time than usual grabbing our lunch at the mall. Basically I figured, since I'm here already, why not grab some other stuff that I wanted to buy? I'm going to Greece next week and wanted to get some small presents for my family. My dad recently discovered that he loves Ginja (traditional portuguese liquer), my mom can devour an entire bolo rei (traditional portuguese sweet) all by herself, my grandmother for some reason is convinced that portuguese soaps are better than the greek ones and so on... And of course, I had to do that shopping during my working time. While having lunch, I watched an episode of a greek soap opera instead of doing something useful. After lunch I decided to take André for a coffee and he accepted without much resistance cause he's in a similar mood today.

Of course, when we got back André got straight to work, while I had to procrastinate a bit more. I washed the dishes, sent some e-mails and took some time to read poker blogs, starting of course with André's latest post which, by the way, was very good! Also, I discovered that Team Online member Tzen1 has been in a similar state lately, so that's a bit of comfort! I'm not the only one running away from work obligations! Yeay! :P

Sometime after midnight I came to terms with the fact that I'm not working today and I decided to make a blog post so that there's at least one productive thing that I did today. As you can probably guess by my lack of enthusiasm for work, poker has not been going great lately. Far from it to be exact.

Keeping the tradition of having highs followed by lows and vice-versa, my amazing December was followed by my worst month ever. At least in terms of money. I'm not sure if it's my worst in terms of buy-ins but that's a mentally exhausting score to keep anyway. Here's the graph for January 2013:

Yep, that sucks big time! That's -123 buy-ins more or less. Not to mention about the other failure, the total of VPPs I got in January: 29.239. On pace for Supernova Elite? Um, no way! Of course one could argue that I didn't work the full month due to the trip to the Bahamas and coming down with the flu. My counter argument is this: remember my one-week experiment that would show if I can actually maintain a pace for Elite or not? May I remind you, the goal was 3,8k VPPs per day. Here's how it went:

• Day 1: 3479 VPPs
• Day 2: 2272 VPPs
• Day 3: 2693 VPPs
• Day 4: 829 VPPs
• Day 5: 857 VPPs
• Day 6: Oh wait, that's today! I didn't work today! So, zero VPPs for that!

As you can see, the VPPs dropped significantly after day 4 and on. Let me explain why.

As the end of the month was approaching, I had another losing day. I had made a habit out of those so not much surprise in that. At some point, the traffic at the highest stakes I was playing got bad, so instead of sitting with my hands crossed I decided to play some lower stakes. So instead of $37s-74s, I played $18s-$37s. Now, André says I'm over-analyzing the graph, but check this out:

Can you take a wild guess when I started playing lower? You probably got it right, around tourney #350. At some point, the traffic at the $74s impoved, so I started playing those again and I cut the $18s. That was around tourney #420. Then I felt bad for getting a 1k downswing (cause lately I'm totally freaking out and check my results every 5 seconds), so around tourney #500 I cut the $74s and added the $18s again. Surprise surprise, another upswing!

Of course, that could all be a big coincidence. But the truth is, as soon as I started playing the $18s the contrast of level with the $74s made a huge impact. The non-regular player at those is far less skilled than the non-regular at the $74s. Which kind of makes sense I guess. Not to mention the absence of a bunch of super good regulars at those games. 

This situation got me thinking, so after finishing my session I pulled up some lifetime graphs. Here's how my results stand today:

$18s

$37s

$55s

$74s

You can see that the further we move up in stakes, the less impressive my graphs get. I don't know what I was expecting to see, but I got a bit of a shock when I realized that I'm a losing player at the $74s. I definitely had trouble sleeping that night. This was more than just a downswing... This was me getting the results that my skill deserved and those results were bad. I could assume that I got crazy unlucky and I was running far worse than I should, but I knew better than that. It sucks to admit, but the players I'm up against at those stakes are simply better than me.

At first, I got really sad. I've really put a lot of effort into this poker thing, yet it seems that it's not enough to beat those levels. I thought it was time to kiss the $74s goodbye, and play only up to $37s. I decided to cut down on the $55s as well, cause up to that day my stats were break-even, so I thought "I'm probably losing at these too and just run a bit better than I should". After all, I should still make a living out of my profits at the $18s-$37s. I just wouldn't rely on an income from VPPs and milestones.

Then the next day, I started getting pissed at myself for having that loser attitude. So what, there's a bump on the road and I just quit and I should be happy with myself for getting that far? At the same time, I felt frustrated. Like what, those regulars at the $74s beat me cause they're smarter than me or something? Maybe some of them are, but still, what am I, stupid? Can't I at least try to get better?

When trying to think of a plan for the year playing only up to $37s, I realized that it wasn't feeling right. The truth is, I want to be playing higher stakes than that. It's not for bragging or anything of that kind, it's simply that I want to be on the fast track of the VPPs, even if I'm years away from reaching Supernova Elite. There are benefits along the way and they have nothing to do with your performance at the tables. If you make the points you get the money, it's as simple as that.

When playing higher, I used to get an average of 500 VPPs per hour. Playing the $18s, one day I realized that I only got 400 VPPs after playing two hours. That takes the milestones away from my reach and I don't want that to happen. So even though I'm losing at the higher stakes, I can't just shrug it off and play lower. It bothers me too much do that.

After I got all the this-is-the-end-of-my-poker-career and other negative thoughts out of my mind, I decided to spend some time studying. First, I spent some time reviewing marked hands. Then, I opened hands of an opponent that I consider to be one of the best I play against, and I tried to figure out how he plays. The hands I was reviewing all went to showdown so that I could get some conlusions. My technique was to write down a range of what I would do in his position, then move on with the hand to see what he did. I was agreeing with him 100% in all of his plays. There was only one that came up that I would have played in a different way, I pulled it up on ICMizer and it turned out that I was right. Now that may sound as a good thing that I got all the plays right, but it got me more frustrated cause I know that the player in question is better than me. So he has to do some things differently and I couldn't find them. I felt like I had wasted an entire day studying and learnt nothing. Not to mention feeling bad for not seeing the obvious, cause the differences are there, I know it, but I'm too blind to see them.

The next couple of days I went back to the tables, of course staying away from the $74s. Fortunately, February started pretty well which was really needed to boost my confidence a bit. Here's the graph so far:

I've also been talking with magictuga, a colleague of mine. I prefer the word colleague over opponent cause even though he beats me ruthlessly at the tables (and I'm happy to return the favor) , I actually met him way before I started playing poker and he's a really nice guy. Anyway, talking to him made me put things into perspective a bit and cool down all the drama. Also, he helped me fix some technical problems of my Holdem Manager and now I can see my EV adjusted winnings. The famous red line of Holdem Manager has brought a lot of controversy in my poker discussions in the past and I have come to the conclusion that it's not to be trusted (of course that's just my personal opinion), but I was interested to see what the program had to say about my luck at the $74s. Turns out, according to Holdem Manager I should have a -1,2% ROI instead of a -2,5%. Which still makes me a losing player, but at least it's not so bad. I do find some comfort in the thought that I may have been running a bit worse than expected.

If I said that I have the situation under control and I know what to do next, I'd be lying. I know for sure than I need to study and improve my game and I have a bunch of ideas on how to do it, but every time I sit down in front of the computer, it seems like such a big task that if feels impossible. For now I'll keep playing the $18s and up to the $55s. I haven't dared open any $74s this month, but I've decided not to hesitate if I see that the games are really good.

Another thing that I've decided I should do, mostly after my conversations with magictuga, is to study my opponents a bit more. I need to pay closer attention to their stats and any results that they may have in public. I may have underestimated some of them and overestimated some others which could possibly end up in me having a wrong picture about what games are good and what games are not. Time for some serious opponent spying/ sharkscoping! Hehe!

Let's see how February goes... I sure hope this month will be better!

See you all at the tables!

Plans for 2013

Hello!

It's been almost two weeks since we came back from the Bahamas... Last week was kind of tough because both me and André were battling with the flu and all that jazz, but by now we have fully recovered and are finally getting back to our normal rhythms of work.

That said, this week has been pretty bad work-wise. I've been downswinging like crazy. Here's my graph for this month so far:

As you can see it's not one of my best graphs. -$5380 so far and the worst part of it all is that it kind of all fell apart in the last three days of play (from hand 2000 and on). It's a bit too much for me to take in such a short period of time, especially coming from a super profitable December...

Last Wednesday I came to the office earlier than usual because of a TCOOP tournament. I thought I'd profit from the extra traffic during the two hours leading up to the tournament. I was definitely not prepared for a -35 buy-ins downswing. That was the last hit I could take cause I'd been losing for days. The great results of December seem to be distant past by now. I'm in one of those phases that I don't even remember what it feels like to be winning.

After less than two hours of work, I decided that playing was immediately suspended. You know you need to stop playing if you are consciously not playing your best. I caught myself folding in spots where I knew I shouldn't, just because I was playing scared. No reason to add poor skill to my bad luck so I turned the computer off.

I went to the mall, and had lunch. After that, I met with a friend for a coffee. That friend has nothing to do with poker so the game was not a topic of choice. Which was good and... refreshing. I really needed to take my mind off of it a bit, cause it's all I've been thinking lately.

Lunch time!

Then, I hit the stores. This was the first month that I got a poker salary. It was weird to be spending money that came entirely from poker. Good obviously, but kind of weird at the same time. We're still on the sales period and even though the best merchandise is long gone (you shouldn't really wait for the end of the sales to go shopping), I still managed to find some good stuff.

You can say all you want about shopping therapy and how we are brainwashed by modern society to buy things we don't really need. Some people say that they feel the urge to buy stuff, they enjoy the buying process and then they regret it all once they go home with their hands full but their wallets empty. My perspective is, I was emotionally low because of the downswing, I went on a shopping spree and I was feeling a lot better when I came back. Three days later, and I still don't regret it. I just set a limit of up to how much I was going to spend before going to the mall and stopped shopping once I reached that limit. I am very prudent with my bankroll in poker so it wouldn't make any sense to go bankroll crazy in real life!

Shopping goodies! As you can see, I'm going through a candle phase... Oh, and I bought another pair of fluffy socks (they have owls on them)! Plus some completely unnecessary nail polish! Yeay! :D

Some clothing items...

One super cute top! Not the kind of style I usually go for, but it was on discount so I couldn't resist!

But enough small talk already. Let's get to the subject of this post: my plans for the year!

Back in December, as soon as I realized in τhat it would be possible for me to make 50.000 VPPs in a month, I started thinking about all the possibilities (or as we say in greek πήραν τα μυαλά μου αέρα!). Obviously 2012 was close to an end, but what about 2013? I started making calculations to see if Supernova Elite is reachable. And the truth is, it IS reachable depending on how much you are willing to sacrifice. I did all the possible combinations I could think of: working 5 days a week 8 hours per day, working 6 days a week, working 7 days a week but less hours per day... Anything you can think of I've tried it.

The big catch here is to always keep your expectations realistic. I know for a fact, for example, that I cannot work 7 days a week. Maybe I could do it if my life depended on it, but otherwise I can't. I'm sure I'd snap somewhere along the way, if not the first month then the second or the third. It's just too much for me. Another limitation that I have is that I need to take at least a month off during the year. All my family is in Greece and I live in Portugal, so it's really important for me to go and see them from time to time. And since the journey is pretty long (there are no longer direct flights, so in general it takes a full day to get there) and the tickets are not exactly cheap, it's not worth it if you don't have at least one week to spend. So, realistically speaking, let's assume 3-4 weeks spent in Greece plus the 2 weeks spent at the Bahamas (1 week of travel + 1 week of recovery)... That's like 1,5 months that I count off from work for 2013.

I've been talking with some Supernova Elites or with Supernovas that are considering to take the extra step during this year. The overall feeling I get is that it's a lot of work, but also a lot of sacrifices. In some of the stories I've heard, people practically gave up on social interaction. No more going out with friends, no holidays, etc etc. I'm ok with not going out with friends and having less time for hobbies and stuff like that, but I draw the line where my family and my boyfriend are concerned. I need to travel to Greece and I need to have one day per week to spend with André. Period. That's not negotiable. Cause after all, I could make all the money in the world playing poker but what's the point if I'm feeling miserable in the process?

That said, I do want to push myself to work a lot harder than I did last year. Even harder than what I did in December. So the question is... Is it possible for me to reach Supernova Elite? And if yes, how do I do it?

At the Bahamas I had a very enlightening conversation with Kevin Thurman and his girlfriend Trish. You've probably heard of it already but a couple of years ago Kevin (WizardofAhhs at Pokerstars) went for the VPPs record. He wanted to reach more than 3 million (!) VPPs and he actually made it, so he's the best person to give advice on how to plan for your goals. The thing that made the biggest impact on me out of everything he said is that whatever goal you set in terms of VPPs, that's what you are getting. Not more not less. You see, up until talking with him my calculations were for around 800.000 VPPs and I was hoping to get the remaining 200k from the special months like the SCOOP etc. Kevin clearly put that out of the question.

So, taking that into consideration along with the fact that I need 1 day off per week and 1 month total to go to Greece, we reach the magic number of... 3.800 VPPs daily. That's how much I need to do in order to make Elite this year. Just to put this into perspective, in December my goal was 2.400 VPPs per day. As you can see that's quite a big difference.

Later on in the conversation where I was arguing that I have no idea if I can do it or not, Kevin and Trish had a great idea: to try it for a week, see how it goes and decide from there. Before talking to them, I thought that Elite could not be planned, you just put in as much volume as you could take and then see how it went from there. If towards the end of the year you thought it possible, then you pushed it a bit more (or a lot more) and that was the way to do it. Talking with Kevin completely changed my perspective. By the way, he and Trish are super cool people and it was great meeting them! If you want you can check out Kevin's blog here.

Also, I had a conversation with Caleb from Pokerstars staff while André was doing his iPad Heads-Up contest at the Players Lounge. I asked him how many female Supernova Elites there are and he said like five or six. I knew there wouldn't be many, but that number seems so low!

I left from the Bahamas super motivated. Of course when I came back I wasn't in great physical shape so that slowed me down by quite a bit. When I started playing again, I kept the number 3.800 VPPs in my head. Here's how many points I actually got:

- 17/01/13: 1200 VPPs

- 18/01/13: 2953 VPPs

- 19/01/13: 3754 VPPs

- 20/01/13: 1756 VPPs

- 22/01/13: 3007 VPPs

- 23/01/13: 709 VPPs, snapped with the downswing & gone shopping!

As you can see, there was only one day where I reached the goal (and even then I was 46 points short). Did I try my best? If I'm honest with myself, no, I didn't. To my defense, I'm not fully in working mode yet. But then again, that's my fault and no one else's. The swing obviously made things worse. I'm a lot more willing to put in the hours when I'm winning. On the contrary, when I lose I feel like doing everything else apart from playing. Last Sunday, after I arrived at the office I felt like I had to clean and organize everything around me before finally sitting in front the computer to play. There was literally nothing else to do in there. I take procrastinating to a whole new level!

After my slight tilt on Wednesday I felt more like studying and not so much like playing. Last time I seriously sat down to study was back in November, so a looooong time ago. Some things get rusty no matter how much you play. But starting the year losing money took its toll on me and I couldn't sleep fine. I ended up falling asleep at 7 o'clock in the morning so the next day, instead of studying I took a long afternoon nap. But enough with being disorganized. Starting tomorrow, I'll go for the week Kevin and Trish suggested. But this time I'll try my best. 

My plan is this: I'll wake up around 12 o'clock and try to be at the office around 15:00. I'll have lunch at the office and start playing at 16:00 at the latest. I'll make a two-hour session. Then at 18:00 I'll either go for a dance lesson or study. I'll resume playing around 21:00-21:30 and then keep playing until 2:00. I'm not sure if that's enough to make 3.800 VPPs and that's something that also depends on the traffic, but we'll see how it goes.

In terms of studying, I'm going to start marking hands while I play. Marking hands is an excellent option that I haven't been taking advantage of. I think it makes a lot more sense to review hands that I found problematic while I was playing than to review entire sessions. It should be much more efficient. Also, I followed André's idea and made a list with all the situations in game that I feel I'm uncomfortable with. During my studying sessions I'll review them one by one.

The big challenge here will be to actually keep calm when losing money. That I have no idea how to do. I seriously hope that I'll start winning a bit cause I'm not very good at controlling my emotions so far. I'm better than before, yes, but I don't handle it well yet. Anyway, I'll see how this week goes and then take it from there. Maybe I'll have to go down at stakes if I keep losing and running bad. And that would take me back in terms of VPPs. At this point, I think it's pretty far fetched to say that I'm going for Elite. My current goal is to do the best I can, keeping in mind the possibility of making Elite my goal later on during the year.

Moving on to a different subject, I want to thank every one that has been leaving me comments and supporting me! Some people asked if I give coaching. I am very honored that some of you would like to get coaching with me! However, as you can deduct from the schedule I described above, I have a very limited amount of free time (that's not enough for everything I want to do on my free day) and it's practically impossible to squeeze coaching in my working days. So for now, giving coaching is not something I'm considering but if I change my mind in the future I'll let you know in one of my posts!

As I mentioned in a previous post, back in October I got some health issues that were caused by the way I was sitting on my chair while working. Ever since I started being a lot more aware of how small things like that can affect my health and among other changes that I made, I decided to get a new chair. André and I went chair hunting and visited several stores before I could reach a final decision.

Fortunately I found the chair I was looking for. Unfortunately for me, I didn't find it in a store. I decided that the best chair is the one André was using back at the office. It's the Embody chair by Herman Miller. And that's a bad thing because the chair costs... 1700 euros!!! And that's the discounted price we paid! I know that to most people that may sound a crazy amount of money to pay for a chair. But the truth is, that health is priceless. Not to mention that if I'm not well like when I was getting the vertigo, I won't be able to work at all... If you've tried the chair, you could definitely tell the difference from all the other ones that are out in the market. Is it worth the money? Honestly, I don't know if you are paying for the materials the chair is made of that are better quality, the research they company put into making it, or the brand... What I do know is that it's the best chair out there so I'm willing to pay the 1700 euros for it.

It finally arrived yesterday!

Last news that I have for this week is that I've changed my address on Pokerstars. So now it's no longer katerina289 Greece, but katerina289 Portugal. To be honest, I feel a pinch of sadness that it doesn't say "Greece" next to my screen name anymore, it's like I'm severing ties with the place where I came from... But the truth is my life is in Portugal now so it made a lot more sense for practical reasons. Both countries feel like home to me anyway, so it's all good! :)

Anyway, that's all for today! I'll stop here cause this post is already humongous! Thank you all for your support and see you at the tables!

PCA 2013

Hello and Happy New year! :D

I know it's already the 16th of January so people are already done with wishing each other "Happy New Year", but this is the first post on my blog for 2013 so I thought it was appropriate!

And what better way to start a new year than taking some time off to go to the Bahamas? Well, that's sort of a lie, cause on January 2nd I was back at the tables and we only left for the Bahamas on the 5th, but whatever! I'll skip those couple days of work cause this post is all about vacation!

I was super excited for this trip. In case any of you are wondering I wasn't going to the Bahamas to play the main event of the PCA or any other event for that matter. André had his Team Online meeting there and he would spend a couple of days with work stuff, but other than that it would just be our week in paradise! We didn't go anywhere together in 2012 so I felt like those vacations were very much deserved.

To add to the excitement, on our way back we would have a one night stopover in New York. I think I was more happy about those 24 hours in NY than the week at the Bahamas to be honest, but anyway. Overall, it was a very promising week and I just couldn't wait for it to get started!

However, we got a pretty rough start when we boarded the plane in Lisbon and the captain announced that there was some problem with the 2nd engine. We waited in the plane for two hours before the problem was solved and then we had a 9 hours and 40 minutes flight ahead of us so... Loooots of time sitting around with not much to do. Eventually, we landed at Miami. We waited another half hour after it landed before they'd let us out. Just for the fun! Of course, since our flight was delayed and we still needed to clear through customs and all, we missed our flight to Nassau.

And that's when the downswing begins. To cut a long story short, Miami's airport is the most unorganized I've seen in my life. And I've been in quite a few. We were never able to find a transfer desk or anyone else to help us with rescheduling our flight. Eventually, we ended up playing some ping pong game between TAP (Portugal's airline company) and American Airlines. The game is fun, except when you are the ball. Oh, and I forgot to mention that American Airlines was on one end of the airport while TAP was on the far other side. Which was a 30 minutes walk. Maybe 20 if you're almost running. 

Somewhere in the long waiting lines, André grabbed coffee from Starbucks. I loooooooove my Starbucks and I don't get the chance to have it often in Lisbon. So, even though the situation was bad, we kept our spirits up and enjoyed our coffees. Highlight of the day? When we were walking/running to the next airline counter trying to see if we could still make it to Nassau when I tripped and fell flat on my face. I put one hand in front of me to cushion the fall and held the other one high to save the coffee. Talking about reflexes! I found the whole thing hilarious and just stayed there laughing on the floor of the airport. I got some tears in my eyes but I'm not sure if they were from laughing so hard or the pain in my hand. The important thing is both me and the coffee were fine so we kept on running!

Anyway, thanks to a nice lady from American Airlines that refused to help us and sent us over to TAP, we ended up missing the next flight to Nassau that day and were obligated to spend the night at a hotel in Miami, along with other misplaced passengers. I could go on and on about the troubles at the hotel, re-booking our flight or finding a way to get back to the airport, but that's more of the same so I'll fast forward a bit.

We got to the Bahamas with only 5 hours of sleep. I was obviously regretting my decision to not sleep on the night before our departure cause those 5 hours were all the sleep I'd gotten in two days. Yet surprisingly, we were finally at the Nassau airport. Guess what Pokerstars sent to pick us up...

...A limo! Nice touch, huh? Shorly after we arrived at Atlantis hotel and André was only like an hour late for his Team Online meeting. We checked in, he left for the meeting and I went to the room. We were staying at the Cove, one of Atlantis' most luxurious towers. The resort was great overall and the staff was very friendly. This was the second best hotel room I've stayed in, losing only to The Palms Place at Las Vegas (surprise, also booked by Pokerstars). Here are some photos of the room:

Complimentary bag to hit the beach!

View from the room

View from the room/ The Cove's private pools

Pretty awesome huh? The bed looked super inviting and since André was busy for the day I decided to take a nap. I woke up a bit before sunset and was feeling hungry. Since André wasn't back yet I decided to go get something to eat.

Later that night we met with other Team Online members for drinks and I got to meet most of them. I am now officially a Team Online fan! Those people are great! I could literally spend the entire night talking to them and I don't think I'd be bored for a second. Great personalities, hard working people and surprisingly down to earth. Too bad we couldn't stay until late cause André was exhausted! Then again if I was in his shoes, I wouldn't have the courage to even go out for drinks, I'd just go to bed after the meeting...

The next day we hit the swimming pools. Atlantis has a great water park with a lazy river, slides and other fun stuff! It was a nice day, but to be honest the weather didn't feel hot enough for us to be spending the entire day in and out of pools. Another thing is that during our entire stay the whole place was pretty windy. Not sure if that's a common thing or if it just happened during the week that we were there but... I didn't find the weather so great. Then again, that's the Greek in me speaking, if you ask a Canadian they would probably have a different opinion. 

The Cove swimming pool

Piña Colada

See, not so great weather, is it?

The beach was beautiful

Water Slides

Walking inside the shark tank

The had similar signs all over the resort, lol!

Anyway, the worst part of all was that outside the weather was hot and very humid while inside (casino, restaurants, hotel corridors, elevators etc.) it was very cold and dry because of the air conditioning. I honestly had to wear a jacket every time I was indoors. Of course, that's an excellent recipe to catch a cold. On day 3 of our stay I got a sore throat and it only got worse from that. Half of the people I knew around the resort were either very sick or had some sort of cold. I only went to the pool one more time and then every day I'd just wake up worse and worse until the last day of our stay I decided to not move from my room. 

Well, apart from breakfast that is. Breakfast at the Cove was by far the best one I've seen in a hotel. It had such a big variety that even after staying there several days I don't think I got to try everything at least once. Here are some photos:

My breakfast

André's breakfast

Atlantis had a lot of great restaurants but since we were mostly hanging out with Team Online we went to what the majority preferred. Unfortunately for me, 3 nights in a row it was Asian cuisine which I'm not a big fan of but oh well! The company was great so it totally made up for it!

Team Online cheering up for Adrienne (talonchick) at her final table

I think Adrienne's opponent got intimidated. Wouldn't you? :P

But I'm getting out of subject here... So as I was saying earlier, the last day I decided to stay in the room. André stayed with me to keep me company. As for food... We had to go with room service which didn't feel at all like a compromise:

Caesar's Salad

One thing that I forgot to mention but is very important is that I made my first withdrawal from my poker account! And boy, did I make it in style! :P I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but up until now I've always been focused on building my bankroll. I've never ever withdrawn money from my Pokerstars account. This however, is the first month where I start paying myself a salary. I heard that Pokerstars would have a bank in the Atlantis casino where players could withdraw from their online accounts. André and I decided to take advantage of that opportunity. When I went there and filled in the form, the guy at the cashier's gave me a chip. I was kind of surprised because when you go to a bank to make a withdrawal you expect to get money, right? For a moment I thought he was giving me a promotional chip or a card protector or something... Until I noticed that the value printed on it was the amount of money I had chosen to withdrawn. I took a side-glance at André who was at the next cashier in the process of receiving two chips so I thought everything was normal. I played it cool, got the chip, thanked the guy and left. Even though I'm  a poker player I've never actually held a casino chip in my hands so that was a strange way for me to withdraw money. Anyway, then we went to the casino's cashier to exchange the chip for money. The first withdrawal of many! :D

Last Saturday was finally time for us to leave. The plan was to go to New York, spend the night there and then leave for Lisbon on Sunday. We did get to NY just fine, although the tip from the airport to the hotel took longer than we had expected. We left our bags and went to get something to eat which I can't classify as lunch or dinner cause it was 18.00 and that was our first meal of the day after breakfast. Then we went for a walk around Times Square and 5th Avenue when André said that he was not feeling well so we headed back to the hotel. We didn't get much sleep that night cause guess what... Both of us got food poisoning! I'm not sure if it was from something we ate back at the Atlantis or from our meal in NY, but it was pretty bad. On Sunday we were both feeling trashed and it was the toughest trip back home I've ever had to make. I was completely dehydrated because my stomach would refuse to keep even a single sip of water or chamomile. The next time we ate again (with extreme precaution and only after taking anti-vomiting medication) was on Monday night.

Of course now I'm full of pills to fight not only the food poisoning (that's almost gone by now), but also the cold. I needed a couple of days to recover from this vacation but I think that I'll be heading to the office tomorrow. I have a lot of plans for 2013 and I won't let a cold ruin them!

Anyway, this year's PCA turned out to be an adventure alright even though not exactly what we had in mind... Now I just have to get back into my daily routine. My next post will be with my plans for this year, I hope I'll be able to put it up either towards the end of this week or the beginning of the next one.

Until then... See you all at the tables! :D

I'm Supernova!

Hello everyone!

I just finished my last poker session for 2012. I should normally go back home since it's already 2:00 a.m., but I couldn't wait to share the news: I'm Supernova!

I finally reached my goal of 100.000 yearly VPPs. As you probably remember, I was missing something like 47.000 VPPs in the beginning of December so it was a pretty ambitious goal to begin with. I practically had to make in a month as many points I made through the rest of the year. Well I did it, and now it's time to celebrate!

Not only did I do it slightly ahead of pace, but I also got great results. December was by far the best month I've ever had. I think there were a lot of factors that contributed to that. First of all, it's that part of the year where people want to spend time with their families and loved ones. So I guess there were quite a few good players that decided to take some time off. Secondly, some people (like me) where probably chasing the points and possibly had to play higher stakes than what they normally do even though they are not necessarily good at them. Adding to that were the extra tournaments that were running for the upcoming TCOOP which helped increase the traffic. And last but not least, I was running good. :D

But let's not waste more time, here's the graph for the month of December:

I'm so happy for these results like you can't imagine! I've always heard of people having crazy months but it always seemed distant, beyond my reach. I never thought it was possible for me to have results like this. It feels awesome that all the work I've put in until now is finally paying off.

Also, this puts things in a different perspective. Out of all the years I've been working in "traditional" jobs, there wasn't a single year when I earned this amount of money. To think that I made in a month more than I previously earned in a whole year is... I don't know how to explain it. It's beyond words I guess.

And of course I know that not all months are gonna be like this and that this was an exception. I sometimes have some bad thoughts creeping in like "What if I was running crazy good and these results were completely undeserved?" But the thing is, I know I worked hard for it so I'll gladly take any help luck can give me and try to block any negative thoughts.

December has been pretty crazy schedule-wise. The first week I woke up early (around 10 o'clock), and took my time to enjoy my morning coffee. Then I busied myself with the house chores and I'd have lunch with André. I'd only go to the office after lunch, study a bit and then start playing. The thing is, I was playing until later and later every day and as a result I would wake up later on the day after. Slowly, my schedule got converted to what it is today: I wake up around 16.00-17.00. For your reference that is sunset time. There were days where I literally saw no daylight. Vampire style full on! Then I'd have a morning (?) coffee, get ready and go to the office. On my way there I'd grab lunch and dinner that I would later eat whenever I felt hungry. I stayed at the office until 3.00 and sometimes even 5.00. Of course when I got back home I couldn't fall asleep right away, so there have been days when I'd only go to bed at 7.00. At least then I got to see the sun! :P As you can imagine, it's not the best schedule for a human being to have but the truth is all the good poker conditions aside, most of the time I was 3-6tabling. And that's a really really low number of tables if you're trying to reach 47k VPPs in a month. So the only way you can make up for it is to spend sh*tloads of hours in front of the computer. Pardon the expression! Not to mention that I rarely got to see André cause he was obviously living like a normal person so we would only spend like 10 minutes per day together. And we live in the same house!

Anyway, that's all over now. All I need to do is to somehow switch to daytime schedule and enjoy my 2 days left of 2012. Adding January 1rst, I have a total of 3 days to rest! Wow!

Ah, I almost forgot. One of these crazy days (or crazy nights to be more exact) I played another MTT. Did you know that they have a $109 tourney starting at 4:00 a.m.? I sure didn't! That's why I forgot to unregister and had to play it. These people at Pokerstars they really organize tournaments for every taste! Anyway, I was really pissed at myself cause I was finishing my session and was planning to go home when the MTT popped up in my face! And if it starts at 4.00 go figure what time it's gonna finish.... I seriously consider to ignore the $109, turn off the computer and leave. But I'm not that good at wasting money so I decided to play. Fortunately, it paid off cause I made another final table!

Towards the end we were getting short so the game was right up my alley. I called a shove from another player with my pocket Jacks and he showed AJs which puts me ahead but... Unfortunately he hit his flush. Whatever, I still played my best and another final table is something I'm quite happy with! :)

I'll try to not make a habit of playing MTTs all the time. I have a lot of margin to improve in this, but I think I'm getting better...

Before I go and since this is my last post for the year, I'd like to share with you my annual graph of 2012:

2012 was a very different year. Full of ups and downs, as most of them are, but I never expected back in January that I when working in the offices of a big company that I would end the year as a full time poker player. I'm very excited to see what 2013 has in store for us!

I wish you all to enjoy the rest of the holidays and have a great 2013! :D