Crazy Weekend

In some people's vocabularies, "crazy weekend" would mean lots of partying, fun, drinks and possibly a hangover. For online poker players though that spend the biggest part of their weekend in front of their computer screens, "crazy weekend" probably refers to poker action. With a lot more recreational players at the tables and all the special Sunday tournaments, there's a lot of reasons why we like to play on a weekend.

But before I go on about my weekend, let me tell you about what I've been up to lately. Until the end of 2013 I was playing the $12 hypers. With the beginning of 2014 (new year, new me, blah blah blah), I decided to take some more drastic actions, study more and move up in stakes. So I've been playing $18s and $37s (mostly) and occasionally $56s and $74s if the traffic is good and they're not full of good regulars.

January was a pretty good month for me. Here's the graph from last month:

A total of 2.1K games and $2.8K in winnings. Not bad at all considering I had just moved up in stakes! Plus, a good part of the month I was at the PCA so it's even better considering I didn't even play the whole month.

And that brings us to February. Things had been going pretty smoothly this month, until last weekend happened. Let's start with Saturday.

Almost 600 tournaments played in one day and an awesome profit of $1.7K. Why can't all days be like that? Also, to put things in perspective, my winnings on Saturday were around 47 buy-ins. Which is as sweet as it sounds! I went to sleep pretty happy that night. I'd charge my batteries and wake up prepared for and even bigger grind on Sunday!

Then of course reality happened. I woke up on Sunday feeling good an prepared for a long grind since it's the day of the week where I play the most hours. At this point I'd like to remind you that the graph above and the graph you will see below are only separated by a day, or to be more accurate, a good night's sleep. Here's my graph for Sunday:

Yep, that's as tragic as it looks. 738 tournaments which is a very good volume for my standards, but a devastating -$3.3K result. This day was my worstest day ever, which unfortunately beats my previous record of being in the red. And yes, I know that "worstest" is not proper English but I'm in distress so I think I'm allowed to invent words that best describe my situation. So, not only was that the biggest amount of money I've ever lost in a day, it was also the biggest amount of buy-ins.

When you start playing hypers you hear those urban legends about people swinging100 buy-ins or more in a day, usually followed by a comment in the lines of "variance in those games is brutal, man!". And most of the times, you only half believe what those people are telling you cause winning or losing 100 buy-ins in a day is pretty crazy, right? Unfortunately, it was my turn to prove that urban legend to be true. If we divide the losses by what Sharkscope says was my average buy-in for the day, we get... The outstanding number of 108 buy-ins. In case you don't remember, my previous lowest of the low was -60 buy-ins and that was not a record I was looking forward to breaking. At least that was back in May 2012, so these things don't happen that often.

I don't think I was playing badly, even though I'm sure I made some mistakes. I also had a couple of problems with my internet connection during the day, but nothing major to justify the outrageous result. I don't think I was tired while playing either. After all, you can see that the steepest downswing was towards the beginning of my session where theoretically I was more rested than towards the end of it. Which brings us to the only logical explanation... Variance. I'd say variance is a b****, but I'd like to have her on my side today so I'll just say she's a lady with crazy mood swings. Around tourney #550 I decided to cut down on the higher stakes and stick to the $18s. When I hit a new low for the day, I decided to stop. It was getting close to midnight anyway.

So yeah, can't say that I'm very happy about how this weekend went by. Right now I'm $1.2K down for the month, which will be hard to recover although not impossible. After all, we've seen what variance can do. I just need a bit of good luck coming my way.

Today I've decided to take it slow. Even if I wanted to play right now I couldn't, cause my computer is being torn to pieces. It has been freezing quite a bit lately which is not good, especially if you're playing the hypers that have a tiny time bank. The other day I folded QQ preflop, then I folded another hand when I was on the big blind and the blinds were so high that I only had 40 chips behind, and I folded AK at a very profitable spot in the Guiness world record attempt yesterday (we didn't break the record btw, where were you guys?!?). So yeah, my computer definitely needed to be fixed so I got my personal technician to work on it. I'm also getting a new disk installed, which should improve the computer's speed.

PC technician at work. Doubles as a poker coach/boyfriend.

By the way, I don't understand a thing about computer hardware, but duct tape? What's up with that? Anyway, I hope that my computer will be working soon so that I can get back to work. My plan for the rest of the week is pretty much the same it has been since the beginning of the year: play 6 hours, study 2. For now since my workstation has been taken over I'll busy myself with different activities, such as preparing lunch. So yeah, that's all for now. I hope this week will be better than the previous one. Wish me luck cause I'll definitely need it!

New Year!

Hello and happy new year!

I'll admit that I have neglected my blog for the past couple of months. The last time I made a post was halfway through November (two months ago) and it wasn't even poker-related. The truth is that I haven't been playing much poker lately, so I didn't really have a lot to write about...

What have I been busy with? Well, after our trip to the Isle of Man, I got back to the grind. Unfortunately, I only managed to play two or three days before I got sick. You see, I have this master plan of catching every seasonal cold that's out there. As a result, I had to spend almost a week in bed with fever and even when the fever went away, my head still didn't feel clear enough to process poker.

When I was feeling alright again I had already lost ten days of work and had to leave for Greece, a trip that I had planned since September. I stayed in Greece until early December, spending some time with my family and friends. 

I came back to Portugal just in time for André's challenge frenzy. With less than a month left to finish the challenge, and around $60k in his account it was very interesting to watch the progress closely and see if he could make it. He finished the year with slightly less than $70k which is huge, but what is more interesting is how close it was to the $100k. I know that $30k sounds like a lot of money (and it really is), but in reality it was only a couple of poker tables away. Take for example the WCOOP Challenge Main Event: he finished at 29th place when he needed 8th or better to finish the challenge right then and there! What he did wasn't easy at all, but still he dedicated a full year of his life to it and he is donating all the money to a good cause. Not to mention, he proved that you can go very far with just $100! So regardless of the outcome I'm very, VERY proud of him!

But I'm deviating from my point. Which is, that during December I found the challenge so interesting that I caught myself staying up late in front of the computer following André's tables most often than not. And of course, if you go to sleep at 3, 4, 5 o'clock in the morning then you are guaranteed to not wake up at 9.00 a.m. to play poker. So I didn't end up playing much in December either. It became clear to me however, that André and I need to have more or less the same schedule. It's very difficult to be living in the same house with someone that wakes up when you go to sleep and vice versa. 

Towards the end of the month it was nearly impossible to get any work done... We went out of town to spend Christmas with André's family and then they came over for New Year's eve. And before I realized it... Pouf! 2013 was gone!

This year I'm going to try to keep my posts smaller and post more often. Come back soon for an update!

Isle of Man Trip Report

Hi everyone!

Last month André got invited to attend the UKIPT at the Isle of Man. He accepted the invitation and I was more than happy to follow him for some mini-holidays. I didn't really know what to expect going to the Isle of Man, so I was rather skeptical. I had never been to the UK before, and the Isle of Man is a rather special case since it's not entirely part of the UK. Located in the Irish sea, it has its own government, its own currency and is somewhat independent.

When packing for a poker trip, I always make sure to take some books with me so that I can keep myself busy for many hours in a row while André is working. After my preliminary investigation on the Isle of Man, I found out it was a pretty small place with a population of 85k people and not a ton of stuff to do, so I packed some extra books just to be sure. Let me tell you, I didn't read a single page.

Day 0 - The arrival

We arrived on the 29th of October and were received by a very friendly taxi driver that took us to our hotel. On our way there, he told us a few things about the island. The thing that I found the most interesting was the low (almost nonexistent) criminality. People would leave their cars unlocked, wouldn't worry if their kids stayed out of the house until late and if someone left their bag on a restaurant table while they went to the bathroom the bag would still be there (with all its contents) when they came back. I grew up in a city of five million people so all that sounds quite unreal to me.

Sefton Hotel

After a short drive we arrived at Sefton hotel. It looked quite cozy and the staff was very friendly. We got settled in our room and soon afterwards we went down to the lobby to meet Chris (Team Online's manager) and Alex Millar (Team Online member). We walked to Chris' place and ordered Thai food. Coming from Portugal, which is a country that hasn't really embraced the idea of food delivery, I really enjoyed the luxury of ordering, plus, the food was very good! The company was great, I really like both Chris and his wife. Alex seemed to be cool too and easy to talk to. I knew nothing about him apart from the fact that he was the latest addition to Team Online, so I was astonished when the conversation turned to poker and he mentioned what he was playing and the amount of money he dealt with on a daily basis! I played it cool though, so no one at the table noticed! :P I guess I didn't expect someone as successful as him to be so down to earth. One more person that I added to my favorite Team Onliners list!

Day 1 - Office Tour & VIP Party

André and I went to have breakfast and soon we were joined by Alex and Dale Philip, another Team Online member that I had never met before. Up until that point I thought my level of English was pretty good and my accent pretty understandable. Apparently, it's not the case. Dale's simple question "So what did you guys do last night?" fired up a big misunderstanding. I tried to tell him that we went to have dinner with Chris. At first, he was staring at me saying nothing. I repeated my answer, but the blank stare continued. "You went to Greece?", he asked. Eventually, I had to spell it out for him C-R-H-I-S. "Oh, you mean Chr/ɛ/s", he said with a Scottish accent. During the week we were at the IOM I laughed a lot with Dale's struggle to understand my Greek version of English (and André's Portuguese version of it)! By the end of our stay I think he could understand me pretty well, but I still couldn't imitate his accent no matter how hard I tried... Too bad, cause I think it's cool!

Anyway, the four of us stayed talking long after the breakfast was over and the room was closed. Pretty amazing how sometimes you get along with people you just met. After that André, Alex and I got a cab and went to Pokerstars' offices. Chris was waiting for us to give us a private tour! At the entrance they had the most amazing coffee machine. It had a touch screen, you didn't have to pay and the coffee was delicious. If anyone offered it to me I would gladly install it in my living room! <3

So many options...

We went upstairs to have lunch at the company's restaurant and then we went through all the different departments. It was interesting to see how everything is organised and learn a bit about what each department does. I wanted to take some pictures to show you guys, but at the same time I felt a bit like I was intruding so I didn't even ask. :P But all in all, it is a very pleasant place to work in!

Headquarters!

Later that night, we went to the VIP Club Live party, which was held at Salt restaurant. Food and drinks were free which was nice! There were a lot of Team Online members there. Also, there was a magician that would go from one group to the other and perform tricks! I was staring open-mouthed at everything he did, I'm the best audience for that kind of stuff, I fall for everything! André on the other hand, would understand how some of the tricks worked and he would whisper in my ear, ruining the magic! Lol!

Anyone can attend those events as long as they get an invitation through the VIP store. Even though I could get in as André's +1, I got an invite of my own online. At some point, I noticed that all the people around me were wearing badges with their names saying "Pokerstars Staff", "Pokerstars Supernova" or "Pokerstars VIP". Since we were one of the first ones to arrive, nobody was at the door to check us in so I didn't have a badge. I thought it was cool, so I went to the door and asked the guy behind the table if I could have a one. He said "of course" and picked up one of the "Pokerstars VIP" badges to give me. At that exact moment, André showed up behind me, all patched up with the Team Online logo and said "No, no, give her the Supenova". Kindly enough, the guy put the "VIP" back and gave me the "Supernova" one instead. I'm 100% sure he did it as a favor to André and not because he truly believed I was Supernova. Cause I mean... Girl. Supernova. At the Isle of Man. Yeah, right!

Caleb from the VIP Club was in Halloween mode

Day 2 - Exploring the island

The next day started with another Team Online breakfast. As on cue, everyone showed up 15-30 minutes before the buffet closed. That day we also met Felix Schneiders that joined the team earlier this year. I won't go on and on about what a nice guy he is. By now you have probably figured it out, if you're not cool then you don't make it to Team Online! Anyway, it was the first day of the UKIPT and André was playing. Since I had the day to myself, I took the electric tramway with Dale and we had a little tour of the island. We went to Ramsey, which was one hour and a half away from Douglas where we were staying. Unfortunately Dale had some commitments in the afternoon, so we could only afford to spend 15 minutes in Ramsey. Not a big deal anyway, since the most interesting thing was seeing the landscape while on the train. We grabbed some sandwiches from Ramsey and had lunch on our way back. The island is beautiful, but don't take my word for it, just look at the pictures below...

Stop in Douglas

Baldrine station

Another tram in Laxey

Laxey wheel

Inside the tram

When I got back to the hotel I found a big group gathered in front of the reception desk: Daniel Negreanu, Liv Boeree, Jason Mercier, Vanessa Russo, Barry Greenstein, David Williams and Fatima Moreira de Melo along with more poker players and some familiar faces from Pokerstars staff. I mean, I already knew we were all staying at the same hotel, but to see so many poker celebrities in such a small space was almost intimidating! I resisted the temptation of asking them for a photo, maybe next time I'll indulge! :P

Unfortunately, André got eliminated from the main event on Day 1. The cute fox that you saw in the picture above cruelly took all of his chips! After all the poker business of the day was over, we all gathered again at Chris' place for dinner! I was playing it cool on the outside, but mentally I was jumping around clapping my hands for another delivery night. This time it was a delicious pizza! Apart from your usual group of suspects, there were VIP Events manager Dylan, Isaac Haxton and his wife Zoe. Obviously that night was a lot of fun as well! Oh, and we got to watch Isaac's Team Online short video before it was released! Hehe!

Day 3 - Time off and another Pokerstars Party

André didn't have any work obligations during the day so we could just relax. After breakfast he was feeling tired so he went back to sleep. Since it was sunny (a rare thing on the Isle of Man), I decided to go for a walk around the hotel and found a street full of stores. Shopping frenzy! Around lunchtime, I took André to a cozy restaurant that I discovered. As it turned out, apart from a nice decoration it also had really good food!

André ordered salmon, always eating healthy!

I couldn't resist the profiteroles on a cake

At night, we had another Pokerstars party to attend. This time it was at Tahiko club and not at a restaurant. Louder music, but again, free drinks! They also had a costume competition but most of the people attending chose not to dress up. Still, we all got to hang out together so it was fun! Isaac, Zoe, André and I left the club around 1 or 2 a.m. Since we had all skipped dinner, we went to a kebab place and took some food back to the hotel. We all ate together, spent some time chatting and around 4 a.m. Isaac and Zoe went back to their room. So far so good. 

What was not so much fun, was what came after the party and the dinner. At 6 a.m., just when everyone was getting into a deeper sleep, the fire alarm went off. I'm talking about the loudest, most annoying fire alarm on the planet. Seriously. Since it didn't seem like it would be turned off, we took it as a sign that we needed to evacuate the hotel.

We joined the rest of the hotel guests outside, they were all gathered next to a fire truck. Poker players going out of the building, firemen going in. What was interesting is that almost everyone was dressed in clothes. André and I of course were among the few that chose to go out in pajamas :P I think the award for weirdest after-night appearance was between us two and Mickey Petersen, who was fully dressed except that he was bare footed. I'm talking no shoes, no socks, no slippers. And then of course you had people that remembered to bring their phones or iPads but it didn't dawn on them to grab a jacket. November, nighttime in England. Freezing cold, just saying! Apparently there was no fire, so after half an hour or so, we all went back to our beds.

Day 4 - Magic day

Most of us followed the ritual of going to have breakfast 10 minutes before it closed. Only this time, we were feeling so hangover (from the fire alarm, not the drinks!) that we just went back to sleep afterwards. When we woke up it was around lunchtime and we got invited by Quentin (Play money and social media manager) for a cube draft. David Williams had brought his cube with him... I know this is a poker blog so I don't want to bore you with Magic: The Gathering details, but for those of you that do play the game I want to share this epic picture:

Going through cube draft cards only to randomly find... a Black Lotus!

This was my first time playing this format and I though it was awesome, even though I wasn't good at it... Towards the end, we ordered Thai food again (delivery heaven!).

Drafting! Good thing that a lot of poker players have a MTG background!

We ended the night getting drinks at a local bar. Another great day!

Day 5 - Girls' time

In the morning all Team Onliners had a meeting, so I got to hang out with Zoe. I thought it would be nice to go back to that nice little restaurant for lunch since it was my last day on the island and Zoe hadn't been there. Since it was a Sunday, most poker players gathered up at the Villa Marina where the UKIPT was held. You see, the internet there was better than the one at the hotel and nobody wanted to miss the Sunday grind. I just spent the entire day with Zoe which was nice. I finally found someone who fully understands what living with a poker pro player means, so we had a lot of things to talk about!

If you ever go to the Isle of Man, do not miss this one!

Delicious onion soup

Day 6 - The departure

We had an early flight to catch, so we didn't see anyone that day. We went to have breakfast right after it opened at 7 a.m. Too early for the poker people! Overall it was a great trip, probably the one I've had the most fun at out of our poker related destinations. I hope you enjoyed reading this trip report! I'll leave you with some more pictures from the Isle of Man...

Douglas Bay at night

Tea time!

Manx triskelion

The view from our hotel room

The Tower of Refuge at sunrise

September Recap + MTT Surprise

Hello!

September is already over and I have to say it wasn't a very exciting month poker-wise. I got super lazy and didn't put in a lot of volume. I was playing far less hours than I'm supposed to each day and then halfway through the month André decided to take a week off. That is totally understandable since he was working 10+ hours per day and was feeling burnt out. The bad thing is that I ended up pretty much taking that week off as well, even though I should be working more than normal to cover up for lost time. But when you are feeling lazy and you have your significant other sleeping until noon, watching TV or inviting you to go out it's very hard to resist and not tag along!

After André's week off was over, I got back to work but had some downswings that affected my mood and resulted in me procrastinating for a couple more days. The graph I have to show for September is not very pretty:

Yup. Final result: 4.6k games and -$118. Which is awful, not because of the break-even result but cause of the lack of volume. But what's done is done and there's no need to cry over spilled milk. I can just try my best to avoid this situation in October.

That said, the boring month of September decided to make a big exit. Yesterday was my last day playing for the month. I forced myself to wake up early to get the opportunity to play more games. You see, I was still missing some points for the 6.500 VPPs Supernova threshold. So there I was playing, when at 11:00 an MTT popped up. I found it really strange cause every other day of the week the satellites that I play in the morning feed tournaments that start 11:30. I should have another half hour, right? I checked it out and of course, the Bigger $33 starts at 11:00 on Sundays. Way to go girl!

When the tournament started, there were around 450 players registered but they kept coming. I checked the lobby, it said that late registration would be open for two hours. Geeeee, this is gonna take forever! When the registration closed there were 1852 total entrants. The top 234 that got paid seemed to be faaar far away so the chances of me getting my buy-in back were slim. I thought okay, calm down, instead of taking a two hour break until the $12 hyper satellites come back, you're just gonna play this one. I was basically ignoring the tournament, playing extremely tight while facebooking and youtubing. What do I know about playing with 100+ blinds anyway?

But two hours later, I was still alive at the MTT and the blinds had gone up quite a bit, bringing most people to around 10-20 BBs. My kind of game. Excellent! Since I had an idea about how to play and it had gotten more interesting, I decided to give it my full attention and not open any satellites on the side. Things kept going well, and before I realized what was happening we were close to the money. I had a decent sized stack and just had to not go crazy in order to be alive when the bubble burst. After it did, I was counting down in tens. Okay, let's make it to the top 100. Okay, now let's try to make it to the top 90. Now top 80... And so on.

When it was down to 4 tables, I started eyeing the 7th prize: $1.5k. Since this was a break-even month for me, I would have to cash in some of my FPPs to get the $1.6k bonus in order to pay the bills while leaving my banrkoll untouched. That 7th prize would solve the problem and let me keep my points for later. That's why it looked so yummy!

The wait to get to the final table was excruciating. I had a very good stack and just had to wait for one of the shorties to bust. It took some time but we finally got there! I was around 4th to 6th in chips most of the time and it didn't take long before 2 players were eliminated! When I realized that I was guaranteed to get at least the 7th prize I was over the moon! Grinning to myself, I took a sip of my coffee and watched as a player that had more chips than me got all-in against the chip leader. He got eliminated, taking us one step higher in the paying ladder. I'm telling you, those were the easiest 500 bucks I've ever made. Staring at my computer screen while drinking coffee.

I finished the tournament in 4th place, cashing in $3.6k. Awesome! I got a bit unlucky at the last hand where I got all-in preflop with 55 against ATs. It's a coin flip slightly tipped in my favor and for a moment there I thought I'd get it, until an ace hit on the river (it always has to be the damn river, right?). You can see the full hand here.

I felt a slight disappointment for losing that hand but it was momentary. I was too busy being happy about the $3.6k that literally came out of nowhere to save the day! :D And if I'm not mistaken, this is my best score at MTTs, my second best being a $3k finish last December at a $109 NL tourney.

After the MTT finished around 20:00, I was still missing something like 50 VPPs for the Supernova threshold. The $12 being long gone, I could either play higher or lower. I decided I didn't want to challenge my luck at the higher buy-ins so I loaded up some $3.75s to make the missing points. You know I love to share unusual graphs, so here's mine from yesterday:

Haha! Cool or what? Anyway, I hope I'll be more focused during October. It's going to be a challenging month because André has decided to do the vampire schedule which means he'll be waking up around 14.00 everyday. I want to keep my morning routine, ideally waking up at 7.30-8.00 which is gonna be tough because we'll be living in the same house without seeing each other much. I'm not entirely sure how this is going to work out. From past experience, I know that us having opposite schedules does not work very well. One of us always ends up following the other's schedule. Only this time it will be really tough because I have better games in the morning while André has better games at night. We'll see how this goes...

Until my next post, see you guys at the tables! :)

August, my daily routine and 16tabling

Hello!

The first week of September is almost gone, so I thought I should hurry up and upload a post with my overview of the past month. Results-wise, it was not quite as great as July, but it was still a pretty good month. Here's the graph for the month of August:

I played a total of 9.684 games, which is more comparing to the 6k I did in July. However, if you take into consideration that those 9,6k games where spread over the period of a whole month, then the volume is not so satisfying (I played 6k games in a matter of two weeks back in July). I do blame the weather (partially) for that. August is the hottest month of the year and let's be honest, even if you decide that you're not taking any time off you still don't get super excited over working. Looking at the beautiful weather outside while you are stuck in front of your computer screen is not very motivational. Personally I'd rather be outside in the sunshine enjoying an ice-cream instead!

I've also been practicing a new schedule this past month and a half. As you probably know, most of my time as a poker player has been spent on the vampire shift or at the best case scenario gravitating towards working in the afternoon. Nowadays I wake up around 7.00 a.m. (8.00 a.m. tops). I'm the kind of person that cannot get out of bed right away, so I need to snooze at least 10 minutes. Once I'm out of the bed, I need a coffee asap. I used to spend around an hour drinking my coffee and having breakfast which is a huge waste of time, yet it's essential to get me up and going. I used to spend that time checking random stuff on the Internet (like Facebook and other time-consuming, useless yet enjoyable things) cause I could not focus on anything that requires me to use too much of my brain right after waking up. These days however, I make my coffee and go straight to open Pokerstars lobby. There aren't many games running that early, which is actually the perfect warm-up to start my day. At least it's more useful than facebooking and since it's only a few tables and most of the decisions are automatic, I don't need to sweat thinking about every hand. It usually takes about an hour for the games to get busier and by the time they do, I'm fully awake and ready for some serious grinding. I've been thinking of switching that warm-up session with an hour of studying, but I don't know if I can focus on studying that early.

I play until 11.00 which is when the Big $33 starts. Then I go to the super market or the grocery store, come back home and prepare lunch. I know this probably sounds mundane to you since most of my readers are male, but I am the woman of the house and I have to take care of that kind of stuff. Plus, since André is busy playing the MTTs and only gets a 5-minute break every hour, he couldn't really cook anything for lunch even if he wanted to. We used to eat out a lot more before, but eventually I got sick of eating out all the time and found myself longing for some home-made cooking. We eat around 13.00-13.30. Sometimes I eat in front of the computer while playing, sometimes I eat first and then go back to the tables. Either way, the plan is to play util 17.00. 

And that's where it gets messy. Theoretically, after five is the time that I have attributed for studying or physical exercise. But I've done very little studying during August and I haven't been exercising as much as I should. Most of the days I either go take a nap, or take the rest of the day off. I seriously need to work on that during September. I hope that the weather getting colder will help. I'm much more of a winter person.

Anyway, I've been mostly grinding the $12s. Sometimes I play a little lower, depending on what games are available but I never play lower than $6. As for the higher stakes... I gave some $38s a try cause they were super soft thanks to the upcoming WCOOP but they didn't go very well so I had to give up on them.

I do understand that 164 games is nothing with a capital "N" in terms of volume and that the variance is so high that this graph really says nothing, but I couldn't keep playing them for bankroll reasons. I actually think I had a pretty good edge at those games cause I was table-selecting them like crazy but I run bad so I had to take a step back. If there's one thing I'm very strict about that's bankroll management and even though it's a debatable subject as to what is optimal and what's not, I think we should all stick to whatever plan we make for ourselves and not deviate. Maybe if I run good at the $12s I'll be able to take another chance at the $37s-$38s before the WCOOP is over. Let's see...

Another novelty of the past month was 16-tabling. I've been writing this blog since I first started playing poker pretty much, so I have documented how I moved from one table to two, and then to three and so on. My general guideline was "if you get bored with the number of tables you are playing, then add one more". And that seemed to be working fine, until I reached 12. I've been 12-tabling since November 2012 if I'm not mistaken. That's almost a full year with no progress. Whenever I would have a 13th table accidentally popping up cause I did something wrong with the Table-Ninja settings, I would go crazy. So for a long period of time I thought that 12-tabling was the limit of my comfort zone. I thought I had reached the end of the line. 

Yet during August, I found myself opening facebook on the side screen while 12-tabling. I didn't have time to type or anything like that, but I would scroll down the home page and look around. I remember talking about that with André and he told me to try out 16-tabling. Of course the logical thing would be to go from 12 to 13, not 16 but I was really curious to see if I could actually do it. So one day after I finished my regular session of $12s I opened up some lower stakes. Not sure if it was $6s, it may have been $3.75s just for the occasion, after all I didn't want to blow up too much money in case the experiment went wrong.

I play in tile, which means that I see all tables I'm at at all times. In order for me to have 16 tables where there used to be 12, each table would have to be a lot smaller. The first impression was actually shocking. Everything seemed to be too small for me to see clearly. I literally had to stand up and move my face closer to the screen in order to see what was going on. I was sliding my face across the screen following the action of the mouse and probably looked like an idiot. That bad. André did not really get why I was acting so crazy or why I was laughing to myself about it afterwards. But then again, André's vision is at 100% while I use glasses. I have a small degree of hyperopia, which is not a big deal and I don't need to wear glasses when I'm outside or driving or anything like that. They really do make a difference when I'm in front of screens or reading though. If I play poker without my glasses on, my eyes get tired super fast. And 16-tabling... This was the first time I was challenged from a vision-point-of-view while playing poker.

Eventually I did get used to the size of these new, smaller tables. Now the only thing that I worry about is playing fast enough. Surprisingly, my first attempt went pretty well. I did sitout a couple of times, but I don't think I missplayed that much. Unfortunately during the hours I play and considering I don't have such a big variety of buy-ins, I don't get to 16-table all the time, so that slows down my practice a bit. I haven't gotten the hang of it yet, but at least I'm not horrible at it and I feel like it's possible. I didn't think it was possible for me one month ago, so that's an improvement!

Overall I really enjoy the morning schedule. I feel like it's a lot... healthier! I just need to be a bit more disciplined about how I spent my time in the afternoons and I think it will be fine. That's all for now... See you guys at the tables!

An Ode To Sore Losers

If you google the term "sore loser" you'll find explanations such as:

"someone who loses in a fair competition but whines about it on a constant basis, blaming everyone around them for their loss except themselves. Fun to taunt, but no fun to play with", 

or

"someone who can't simply be honorable, by accepting defeat and/or trying again. On the contrary, said individual or group engages in childish pissing and moaning". 

Lack of sportsmanship is, unfortunately, something that we often encounter in all types of sports and games, in every situation where there is some sort of competition. Poker being a game, and a highly competitive one, could not escape the rule. So poker gets to have its fair share of sore losers.

If you play poker, professionally or as a recreation, you must have encountered at least a few people that fall into that category. If you have encountered a lot of them, you may have gained the ability to tolerate them or grown a thicker skin and remain completely unaffected by their comments. They are both at live and online tables, but online sore losers have a tendency to express themselves more freely due to the convenience of hiding behind a screen name.

Personally, when I first started playing poker this was one of the things that bothered me the most. As if losing weren't enough, I had to endure nasty comments about the way I played which, as you can imagine, only made the learning process more difficult and the game less fun. After keeping my chat turned off for quite some time, I finally learned to ignore those types of comments. Nowadays, they can't touch me. I hardly bother to reply to those people and when I do, it's mostly out of curiosity towards their specimen. We work in entirely different ways and sometimes I feel an interest to understand why they act the way they do.

An observation that I made is that as you move higher up in stakes, the less likely it is to encounter players of that kind. I guess that's easily explainable by the fact that a player who plays higher stakes has probably got a deeper understanding of the game and therefore is not so emotional when losing. Not that this is a golden rule or anything, of course it's possible to find someone whining at any stake or format. However, it's way more likely to happen at lower stakes where people don't necessarily play that well, don't care that much about the game and they see poker as a way to blow steam off. And there's nothing wrong with that, as long as you respect the others at the table with you.

The more sore losers I encountered, the more I noticed that they actually have some patterns. I think their reactions can be organized in categories. In this post, I'll try to identify and analyze the types of sore losers that I have encountered so far. So here we go.

- Mr. Happy: This guy is actually not that bad. Whenever he takes a bad beat or loses a hand that he feels he shouldn't, he writes stuff like "Lol", "Lolololololol", "LOOOOOOOOOL", "Hahaha!", "Ahahahahaha!!!!". Since these things are actually easy to type, when you have "Mr. Happy" at your table you'll often find it hard to read the dealer messages cause your chat box will be filled with lines of "lols". Then again, it's not really that offensive, only a bit annoying and if it makes those people happy then what can I say?

- Mr. Speedy: This guy does not necessarily play fast but he expects all of his opponents to do so. From this type of guy you'll get comments like "Are you seriously thinking about it?", "What are you waiting for?" or the good old-fashioned "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz". I especially like it when they start with capitals and finish with lower case "ZZZZZZzzzzzzzzz" as if to tell you that you are taking so long that they are really dozing off and cannot even type anymore. Needless to say, Mr. Speedy often plays one single table and it is beyond his imagination that other people may be playing more. Even if he plays more than one, the fact that he is getting bored is indicative that maybe he should be playing more. Now why he chooses to waste his energies bugging other people instead of opening more tables, that I don't know. Trying to reason with Mr. Speedy will not work, so you'd better avoid replies like "If you're sleepy you probably shouldn't be playing poker" or "Time bank exists for a reason". Most of the times replying something like "30tabling" will do the job!

- Mr. Frustrated: Not only is he bothered when he loses, but he will also be indignant when other people take bad beats. This guy is tilting so badly and is so frustrated that he will often comment at the misfortunes of his opponents. He sees 23s cracking a pair of Aces and goes "Sure why not", "Yeah ok", "Whatever!", "OMG" etc. Frequently, after a certain point this guy will get so frustrated that he will not even be able to type, so you'll get stuff like "a;lsdkajfds;lkfjas;d" and "S:;alij;AOESIoiuhEQP3845". Talking about tilting! Not the worst type of a sore loser, but still pretty annoying since they don't lose an opportunity to make a comment.

- Mr. Nice: This guy is actually not very nice. It's the player that will shower you with all the nasty words they have in their vocabulary (which out of respect to my readers I will not reproduce here, but you get the picture). They will keep ranting and calling you names for taking their chips, then after a while when they calm down they will... apologize! Mr. Nice guy is pretty rare so you won't encounter him often. However, I did find one at the tables the other day... It was a player that had been calling me names for some time at the tables, then one day he asks if I'm Andre Coimbra's girlfriend. I say yes, and he said he was sorry for all the stuff that he had said to me, that it was under the pressure of losing... And then went on about how he was a big fan of André's and liked his work! I do appreciate when someone sincerely says they're sorry, but it got me thinking, if I weren't André's girlfriend then I wouldn't be worthy of his apology? As if one thing has something to do with the other? Oh whatever, the bottom line is that he did apologize which is more than most people do anyway... Go go Mr. Nice!

- The Stalker: He will do what every well-respected stalker does: follow you from one table to the other and bash you. Nothing really interesting about this case of sore loser and he is usually on such a tilt that there's nothing you can say that will calm him down. Still, it's pretty funny when you get seated at a new table, you're waiting for the tournament to start, not a single hand has been played yet and there's a guy pissed at you writing things like "A7o? Really? You call me with A7o? Well done, you played it really well!". Plus a couple of insults of course!

- Mr. Jokerstars: This type is exclusive at Pokerstars, you will not find them playing at any other site! It's the guy that every time he gets a bad beat or loses a hand will type "Jokerstars!" in the chat. This guy is easily identified by the lack of use of other words. At the best case scenario you'll get something "Jokerstars again" or "F***ing Jokerstars". Joke +  Pokerstars = Jokerstars. Okay, I get it. According to you, Pokerstars is a joke. But this one is getting old, so find something else to say!

- Mr. Anti-Supernova: This is another exclusivity of Pokerstars. They're sworn enemies not only of Supernovas, but also Supernova Elites. Unlike other people that lose, Mr. Anti-Supernova blames it all on the VIP status. Of course, Mr. Anti-Supernova is always from Platinum level and below. And he thinks, that among the known privileges of Supernova+ levels such as a higher FPP multiplier or Milestone cash bonuses, we also get a secret button on our screen that says "Bad beat" and we give other players brutal bad beats whenever we feel like it. My only question is why these people don't try to make it to Supernova to enjoy this special benefit... Go figure!

- The Professor: This player wants to educate you. They'll lose a hand then go on explaining why you played it in the worst possible way. And they don't always do it respectfully, so you can expect them to throw in some insults along with the explanation. I used to find this kind of sore loser pretty intimidating, cause when you are a new player and don't trust your plays, the Professor will make you doubt yourself and what you did. Of course, most of the time these guys have no idea what they're talking about but they make it sound as if they know everything there is to know about poker. I just can't understand why with all that knowledge instead of playing the nose-bleeds they're stuck down here with the rest of us... And come on, even if we assume that they do know what they're talking about, why would they really want to teach their opponents?!?

- Mr. Boring: This guy is what the title suggests. Boring. He'll get pissed alright, but you'll only get comments like "Idiot", "Stupid", "So lucky", "Donk" etc. Enough said about this one, I'm already getting bored...

- Mr. Original: Unlike Mr. Boring, Mr. Original will find new things to say. Most likely, you have never been insulted the same way before. Sometimes his comments will not exactly sound like an insult, but Mr. Original is pretty pissed, so you should take it as one. To give you an example, someone once wrote to me "You stupid banana float". See? I had never been called a banana float before, let alone a stupid one! I'm not even sure what that means... In any case, I don't really mind having a Mr. Original at my tables. At least they spice it up a bit! :P

-Mr. Traditional: This guy could also fit under the classification of Mr. Boring cause he is pretty boring to tell you the truth, but he earned himself a separate category because he blames it all on the most common reason for losing: "This site is rigged!". This comment is such a big cliché that I can only call this sore loser "Mr. Traditional". I won't go into details analyzing why it would be a bad move to operate a site that's rigged. I think that's obvious, especially for a company like Pokerstars who invests so much on integrity and keeping the site clean. But let's assume Mr. Traditional, just for the sake of arguing, that you are actually right and the site is indeed rigged. Question number one: What does the site have against you in particular? I mean, yeah, it's rigged, sure, but why is it rigged so that you lose and everyone else wins? Did you do something to piss them off maybe? Could it be that they don't like your face? (Which they have never seen, but I'm just guessing here!) Why is it that they chose to target you out of all the players? I'd really want to know. And question number two: If you truly, wholeheartedly believe that the site is rigged, then why do you keep playing in it? Cause I'll tell you, saying that the site is rigged and playing in it day after day after day says something about your intelligence and it's not a good thing at all! I've actually tried asking that question once to a Mr. Traditional. I told him "why do you keep playing if you think it's rigged?". The result was that I never saw that player again. It could be just coincidence, maybe we didn't happen to play at the same tables again or it could be that he really stopped playing. In any case, asking stuff like that only hurts my EV on the long run so I've come to the conclusion that the best course of action in this case is... Complete and total silence.

Finally, I'd like to talk about one common misunderstanding. Very often at my tables, people say "I had the best hand and I lost" or "I lost 5 consecutive times with the best hand". I don't know if those people didn't get the memo, but in Poker the best hand ALWAYS wins. Always as in 100% of the times. If you have the best hand, you are guaranteed to have the chips coming your way. Now if what those people mean is that they had the best hand preflop or that they had the best two hole cards and they didn't win, yeah okay that sucks, but you need to be able to tell the difference. After all, if it was as simple as the best hole cards always winning then none of us would be playing poker now, would we?

I'm not saying that losing is easy. I've often complained here on my blog about downswinging and bad beats that I've taken. It's hard, it's frustrating, it pisses us all off (we are, after all, humans!), it makes us doubt ourselves. To sum it all up, it sucks big time! There are entire forums dedicated to bad beat talk, where people don't look for confirmation as to whether they played a hand well or not, they just want to blow steam off. They want to hear other people say "Oh, what a bad beat!" or "Wow, that was insanely unlucky!" And I think that's important and even necessary for poker players. But there's a thin line that separates people that just get something off of their chest in a healthy way and others that do so by harassing others. Losing is something that happens to all of us without exception. In the end, it's how we react to it that separates us. And only you can choose what side of that line you want to be on.

I'd like to hear what you guys think about this subject. I felt like writing this post as an indirect reply (with a dose of humor) to all sore losers that have tried to bother me in the past (plus the ones that will try to do so in the future). This one is dedicated to everyone that chooses to not reply to their comments. If you think that I've omitted a sore loser category, please feel free to add it in the comments below!

See you at the tables! 

Back to the hypers: July overview

Hello!

First of all, I want to thank everyone that sent me messages after my last post. Your support has been great! I decided to stick to the hypers and not try another format just yet.

As soon as I got back to business and opened Pokerstars lobby again, I found myself facing a big problem: my Supernova status was expiring at the end of July. In case you are not familiar with it, Pokerstars extends your Supernova status on a month-to-month basis, considering you win 6.500 VPPs per month. You are allowed to miss that accrual for two months, but after the third month of not getting enough VPPs, you lose Supernova and you are dropped down to whatever status corresponds to the amount of VPPs you earned that month. Not great.

The first month I missed the accrual was April, after a downswing. Then, I got back to playing in May, but I had an even worst downswing. I got the VPPs in May, but I was feeling so bad that I didn't play a single game in June. So June was the second month I missed. When I decided to play again on July 11th, I had to somehow get 6.500 VPPs. To some that may sound as an insignificant amount. I would consider it easy to achieve some months ago. The problem was, that after being away from the tables for two whole months my game was very rusty. I didn't remember how to play that well, I could definitely not 12table at that point and my bankroll did not allow me to play the same games I was playing before.

So I had to play lower, and less tables. I started with 4tabling. The good thing about all this is that July is the Micromillions month and that helped increase the traffic at the lower stakes. There were some $7,50 satellites for the Micromillions main event that were running pretty much all day long, all month long. Most of the time I was grinding those and the $12s. Those games give around 1 VPP each. Sometimes when there wasn't enough traffic, I would open $3,75s. Those give 0.39 VPPs but I really needed even that small fraction. Fortunately, I was running good so when I boosted my bankroll a bit, I played a few $18s. Funny how back in May the $18s were the lowest stake I'd play while now it's the highest. More sad than funny actually... Anyways, the $18s did not go so well so I stopped playing them.

I managed to renew my status just in the nick of time, having played a total of 6.323 games. Now, considering that during the whole year up to that point I had only played around 15k games, that I had lost the first 10 days of July and that I had been away from the virtual felt for two months, let me tell you it was pretty hard to achieve. The good news is I did make it, with a profit and by the end of the month I was back at playing my regular 12 tables.

Here's the graph for July:

Having some space to breathe, I was a lot more optimistic in the beginning of August. I started running bad, and reached a -1k point but then I was able to turn it around. Right now I'm break even for the month, but we're only halfway so things can get better (or worse, but I try not to think about that!). Also, from a VPP point of view I'm only missing 700 points or so for this month's accrual. And I'm at 83k VPPs for the year so I'm hoping that soon I'll renew my Supernova status for the rest of 2013 and I will have one less thing putting pressure on me.

Now that I feel like I got the hang of it again and I have more time, it's time to study. Frankly, I should have started studying in the beginning of the month, but I've been lazy. Which is not good at all. My current goal is to move up in stakes, cause with the WCOOP coming up I want to be able to play the $37s. I'm not there yet bankroll-wise and studying is the only way I can make it happen. I also need to work on my mental game, but August is the worst possible month for work. No wonder people take time off in August... Even here in the city I just feel like going out for a coffee or doing nothing at all. The weather is so nice! Let's see if I can concentrate in order to put in some volume...

Good luck to everyone at the tables and enjoy your holidays to those of you that are by the beach! :)