Last session fail - OBV.

ok, short post.

last session of the month of course failed miserably. Not really because of me even though I might have had better days but main reason is Mr. Sklansky. Tbh I cannot remember the last time I blew this massive amount in Sklansky BB out of the window. Furthermore considering that my biggest losing session this month was around -350ish tis is pretty massive. Meh whatever. But it's always interesting to see as soon as you have some VPP goal in mind which is pretty soon to be reached (in my case 50k VPP for the month in order to maintain SNE) Stars is happy to pull the trigger. The whole mess starts around 6 hours b4 midnight ET (Stars server time) while having around 1000 VPPs left to earn for 50k when some BE highstakes Reg decides to take my limp/raise (expert play created by myself) not too serious at around hand 1200. From that moment everything was pretty std until losing AA to QQ and 88 AI pre, losing AA to KK AI pre and losing AK to A4 AI pre in about 5 minutes...
I don't feel tilted at all so I'm gonna try to get something back now but obviously not the coolest "end of the month session" jajajaja

edit:

6 hours later:

tried to come back but wasn't working too well for the most part. Down 3k in EV. Definitely haven't experienced that kind of difference ever since I'm playing.

Whatever, show must go on...

Back to Basics / Everything Changes

It's been a while since my last entry but I was pretty busy working and partying so there wasn't much time to write. Furthermore I had to think about many things concerning my life so that I can now give a far better overview compared to one week ago.

But let's start with poker.
I run good, I play very decent, I make money. That's the short version. Tbh I don't know the last time I was that convinced about my game. Month is almost over and I guess I let the garph speak:

That's my whole month/year on Stars so far and after a slow beginning sky is the limit. Atm I have around 2.5PTBB all stakes and over 3PTBB alone at NL200 over 60kish hands. Pretty decent. Of course it is kind of the long awaited heater but I guess given the current state of games I should be able to maintain at least 2PTBB when I not start to massgrind (more than 7500 hands a day) again. Considering that I'm up 3k on Full Tilt as well and taking around 6k++ Rakeback into account it is a pretty nice month and a pretty awesome start in the year as well.

Very good news came from Pokerstars this week when they announced that they will eliminate the 20-50BB tables on the 10th of february and replace them with 20BB CAP tables. This should make games for fullstacks like me alot better (imo CAP will not be too popular). If I'm right in this case Stars will probably have 90++% of my volume again. If I am wrong and CAP gonna be very popular then I will split 50/50 between Stars and FT - no biggie.
But I'm definitely very excited to see how things go.


OK, that was the poker part.
You remember my last post when I told we are searching for a new flat. Well, I am still searching for a new flat but I'm not searching in London anymore. I just booked some flights and mid february I will fly to Malta with a good friend from Germany and we will take a look at some sweet properties in Sliema/St. Julians. So it is now official and confirmed. Tim Stone is going to come back to the rock latest April 1st at least for this summer.

Many people will wonder why, many people will not really understand that decision (3 month ago I wouldn't have understand it myself) but after now spending around 4 months in LONDON I'm quite convinced this is not my city and not the place where I want to live anymore.
It all starts with the pricing of this city. I make easily enough money to afford a pretty decent lifestyle for this city - that's not the problem. The question is more if I really wanna spent so much money for this city when I am able to work from anywhere in the world with an internet connection at whatever time I want. Do I want to spent around 2k Euro for a 14m² room in a 3 guys pokerflat share per month? Do I want to spent at least 12 Euro entrance fee for any fucking club even if that place suck balls? Do I want to spent 8 Euro for a pack of cigs? Do I want to spent 15 Euro for a solid mixed Vodka Redbull? I could go on like this for ages... I came to the result that I can answer these questions with a clear NO. Tbh I don't have a clue how long I will be able to make over 5 digits out of Poker monthly and therefore I think it is pretty reasonable to save as much as possible while still maintain a baller lifestyle. If you want to live like a baller in London you need 5 figures - per month!
The 2nd major point is the weather. I never imagined it would piss me off that much but when you lived for more than 1 year in a country with the world's best climate (according to internationalliving.com) it is not easy when it suddenly rains on more than every 2nd day during the year, when it is always cloudy, when it is always cold, when it is always dark.
The last major point and probably the most important for me is the freedom as an individual. And in this city it is barely existing. I mean, I'm german and Germany is pretty much regulated as it can be but when you compare it with London it is literally the land of the free. You can live a very safe and secure life here but you pay a high price for that - freedom.

Only to mention some examples:
When I drive with my car here there's a speed camera every fucking mile - EVERY FUCKING MILE!!! I have no problems with speed cams in general (obv me and teh Vette don't like them too much) but if you put such a thing every mile it gets really really annoying and you ask yourself why. It's not like you could drive fast here anyways with the million of speedbumpers and most roads in similar conditions to the ones in Malta...
When it comes down to parties you have to plan accordingly.
"Hey, I would say we go to XXX"
"Dude, we are 5 guys, we will not get in any nice clubs 2nite"
"Ok, then let's go in 2 groups - that should work!"
"It might work but what if the 2nd group doesn't get in?"
"Whatever, let's book a table!"
"How much is it?"
"At least 1k like always ldo"
"Man, I just spent over 300 pounds 4 days ago"
Some pretty similar conversation takes place every friday or saturday evening. I mean it's not like I'm not spending a shitload of money anyways when I go out and then have to bother with this crap as well. If I would  look like shit I would be fine with that but I don't... I'm still waiting for the day when you get some sort of card here which tells exactly how much money you own and then have to show it in front of the door instead of your ID card - probably only a matter of time.
When you smoke you get fucked massively as well. Don't know a country so far where I paid more for cigs but I already stated that in the money part. 50% of the clubs (even some pretty nice ones) don't provide smoking lounges inside, when you are are walking through an outside park you first have to look if it is allowed to smoke there, and so on. I got no problem when smoking is more or less forbidden but you can definitely overexaggerate the whole issue.

I think I've now given you some reasons why I need/want to leave. Don't get me wrong, London is definitely not a bad place to live. It just seems not to be a good place to live for me personally either.
In Malta I have the feeling I just get significantly more value for my money (the poker guys of you know that almost everything in life is about value :) ) and alot more freedom. At least what I view as freedom... I'm sure everybody has his own definition in this case.

So if everything works out I will back in Malta soonish for the summer and it is going to be a massive summer! My Vegas plans for august are still pretty actual and I'm also thinking about Thailand in winter even though nothing is confirmed yet in that case. But spending the whole year in Malta will be too boring anyways so I'm quite confident I will keep traveling.

That's it for now. Still 2 days left of january and I need 5k more VPPs to maintain SNE (which shouldn't be a big problem). So I'm working today and tomoro and then take it from there. I'm also getting a bunch of visitors the next weeks so that I prolly not be playing high volume in february either (just getting the 50k VPPs ldo)

Good luck in life and Good luck at teh tables,

best regards from London

Flat hunt starts again...

Weekend is over... was a pretty massive saturday night out - think i left the club at 8:30 which is pretty late/early considering my age. Think we spent 60 pounds alone on entry fees that night not considering drinks, cigs and cabs. But I haven't had a night out here I didn't spent at least 200GBP and that is prolly not gonna change in near future.
Now that I'm almost recovered it is time to get back to work and to focuss on another great project: finding a new flat.
We originally moved into the current one in october and paid up front for 6 months and in November my former roomie from Malta moved in as well so we are 3 atm and paying about 2.8k GBP total which is pretty fine for London and considering the flat is really big. However we more and more realize that this flat is not exactly what we want because we are just too far away from the city, too far away from the nightlife, too far away from nice restaurants, too far away from everything.
So we decided the last days to do the move and will be looking for a nice place more central (Mayfair, Knightsbridge, Soho, Marylebone, Chelsea, and so on).
The good thing is, once we find something we get what we want. The bad thing is, it is going to be very very very expensive.
All properties which we found so far are in the range of 5k-6.5k Euros per months which will mean roughly about 2k per person. I'm not sure if there is another city (if we leave Monte Carlo out) in Europe where you can/have to pay this kind of money for a 3 party flat share.
Whatever, I definitely think it's worth it because it will be a better lifestyle in general so if we are able to find something decent we will give it a shot. Maybe we realize later that it's not what we wanted but then we can move out after 6 months anyway and search for something new in London, England, Europe, the world or whatever.

always good to be flexible and open-minded... I'll keep you posted...

Monthly Half-Time / small overview

Half of january is over and so I gonna make a small post with the current (aids) garphs!

I'm not really satisfied so far but I can feel that it is getting better day by day and I win back confidence in my game. I run pretty good at 200NL like always (definitely playing my best game at this stake) but unfortunately I run pretty crap on everything above with 400NL rush being the exception. My volume this month has been 2/3s at Full Tilt and 1/3 at Stars. Probably going to finish 50/50ish (bc I need 50k VPP at Stars and atm I'm at 19k) this month and not really sure for the future. If Stars is doing good changes with the buyin structure most of my volume will be there again because even with the new FT Blackcard rakeback just isn't in the same league as Stars SNE Rakeback.

My goal this year is to maintain a 3digits hourly before rakeback and I have to admit that I'm miles away from that atm. Nevertheless after a solid friday night I'm up more than 4k without Rakeback (which should be another 2k++). That's not very good and nothing I'm too proud of but it is definitely better than december and november last year and it will be enough to buy some drinks in a nice club in London today. I'm probably taking today completely off and sunday it's very dependant on how hung-over I will be but no matter what happens sunday will not be much volume lol...

Now the promised graphs:

starting with Stars:

not hard to see that it is pretty much breakevensville after one very solid session in the beginning. Even though I'm beating 200NL with 2.7PTBB I'm loosing at 400 with the same rate... At 600 I'm up and I stopped playing 1k pretty early this month. But in the end it's not really a big sample but if you take the EV from hand 21k ongoing it goes certainly in the right direction.


things look a little better at FT:

Here I was playing alotta rush and a wild mix of 200-600. In the beginning I was even playing some Rush 100 but gave up because I can't take the money serious there and therefore I'm stacking off/calling down way too light. Furthermore not much Rakeback to be made at 100NL haha. Here the tendency is also positive but I certainly have to take in account that I had massive heater session at 400Rush today which will not happen too often.

Now that I can compare FT and Stars I have to say that both sides are pretty similar tough. FT is a little softer because of the better reg/fish ratio which is only because of the 16tables cap imo and regs are not as good as Stars regs in a vacuum (there are good regs no doubt but there are some guys who have no clue what they are doing pre and post which you will very rarely find at NL200 Stars and above). But given that rakeback is alot less compared to Stars both sites probably have the same value in case of a possible hourly...


besides Poker this week didn't happend too much. I finally opened a bank account which went pretty smooth and made the first transactions and on wednesday I started the GTL season at the Virgin Active gym where you will be able to find me quite often the next time :)

gl at teh tables,


peaze

edit: forgot to mention that I now officially shipped my 2010 "Who makes more" prob bet which were an additional 7.5k in winnings and 15k in cash (bc the bet was escrowed) so if you take it from this perspective the month is more than semi-decent :)

Slow start into teh month...

Haven't done much this week so far besides recovering from NY holidays, playing poker and organizing a new battery for my car. Story is kinda funny so I gonna share it. Came back from Bukarest on the 2nd and was going for the supermarket on the 3rd. Ofc my car didn't start bc the battery was empty after more than 3 weeks not driving. In order to get starting aid I subscribed to the AA which is something like the ADAC in germany. 30 minutes later a guy was there too charge my battery but it wasn't really working. Car was starting but battery wasn't loading and he told me I would need a new one asap. No biggie I thought and drove to HiQ Car centre which is something like the ATU in germany. They told me no problem, we don't have it here but somebody gonna deliver the battery. An hour later the battery was there but not fitting. Tomorrow we get the right one for your car they told me and I took a cab home. Next day at noon somebody of HiQ called me and explained that they tried 6 different batteries but none is working and they cannot do anything for me lol. So my last chance was the american car centre London. These guys told me atm there are like 3 batteries in whole UK which will fit in my Vette but they can get me one by tomorrow. "Done". So next day I had to pick up the battery at the american car centre in south-west London and get it to the HiQ car centre in north-east London. The cab costed my almost 100 pounds. Whatever. Battery was fine but this time I forgot my car keys at my flat which was another 15pounds for the taxi company. Not to mention that the battery and AA membership are not for free. Conclusion: Cars are expensive (especially cars which are rare bc it's a big hassle to get parts for them...)

Pokerwise I'm not too satisfied. I should be up but not much. Didn't checked all of my results so far. Funny thing is that until today I had not a single losing day on Stars this year but still was barely up money. Today I dropped a bunch at Stars but made almost 1.5k at FT.
Will probably stick to FT the next days because it's just insane what is happening on Stars. Every session is a nightmare. No matter if I play short sessions, long sessions, if I play 1k hands a day or 10k hands. I don't hit a single one. I played almost 5million hands since I'm a pro but what's happening the last 400k is disgusting. It all started with the EV thing but now I'm running on or even above so that's not the case anymore. It's just the simple fact that I don't hit and don't get value and for the very few occasions I hit big and get action I win maybe 50%. And running below EV or getting coolered sucks but it's not nearly as frustrating as what is happening atm.
But I don't wanna cry too much - I'm up and that is what counts and so I'm gonna try to ride the wave at FT the next days and see what happens.

There where exciting news on 2+2 today when SteveD one of the Pokerstars reps wrote that there will be an announcement until the end of january about changes of the buy in structures so I'll keep my fingers crossed that Stars finally gets rid of the talentless ratholing muppets who are playing with 20BBs for a 0.03PTTB WR...

Furthermore I look forward that FT introduces some sort of better Blackcard and increase Rakeback for massgrinders. But that's highly speculative...

peaze

Forecast 2011

Now that it is 2011 I can give a little forecast of my plans for this year.
I will cluster it again in the two big points poker and life.

Life:
As being said I'm in London atm and will stay here at least until may. Plan is to spent 2 months this summer in Malta again because summer in Malta is awesome. Good weather, lots of crazy people, hot chicks, cheap prices and spending the whole year in London would be pretty boring probably... Afterwards I wanna travel to Las Vegas for 3-6 weeks and get some baller place there with some other poker players. I mean I'm playing since more than 2 years for a living and never went to Vegas yet (never even went to teh US and A lol). But I definitely try to change that this year. September probably back to London and the last 3 months I really wanna go to Thailand (guess either on an island like phuket or Koh Samui) with some guys I got to know in Malta who are playing for a living as well. But nothing set in stone so far.
Malta is probably 90% safe if I don't bust the next 5months, Vegas I give a solid 75% and Thailand atm is a little bit more then fifty fifty I assume. We'll see what happens.
Besides that I have the feeling that I worked too much last year and therefore my life came a little bit short. Yes, money and work is important but it shouldn't be everything and last year it was almost everything. So plan for this year is to go out more, get to know new people, travel more, drink less, smoke less. I also want to focus more on fitness and nutrion (from march ongoing) again in order to show Joe Ingram who is the B0$$ in Vegas at the pool contest. Will be pretty hard work but when I don't work as much as last year I should have plenty of time in the meanwhile to get things done.

goals cliff:

[ ] live in 4 different countries in 2011 (at least one month in each)
[ ] live more, work less
[ ] get back to the body I had in 2008
[ ] drink less (def. very ambitious goal)

[ ] smoke less
[ ] beat Ingram at Vegas pool contest
[ ] meet alot new people


Poker:
Main goal for poker is obviously to make money money money make money money money. Even if I'm planning to not do my 3rd SNE run I'm still planning to play very decent amount of poker. I'm just about to get 50% of my action to Full Tilt Poker (played Pokerstars exclusively from the beginning and never any other site) and the rest of my volume will likely remain at Pokerstars (mainly because the rakeback I get as an SNE til end of september is much too lucrative to leave Stars completely). I'm still hoping that Stars eliminates 20BB poker asap but chances are not to good after they made one of the biggest shortstackers ever their teampro. But we'll see what happens and if you read this Stars, it's not to late for teh change and from the moment you make it you'll have my complete action at your side...
Even though many people asking me about live poker I have no plans to play live in any form this year. Maybe in Vegas, but only maybe. I'm definitely not attending any type of tournaments not matter if they cost me 200$ oder 10k$. Furthermore I will try to not play any more tournaments online (only freerolls) because they tilt the shit out of me and it is just a massive waste of time given the fact I'm not able to play my A-Game at the cash tables in the meanwhile...

goals cliff:

[ ] make money

[ ] work less
[ ] do not play live tournaments
[ ] do not play online tournaments
[ ] get used to Full Tilt and play 50% of my time there
[ ] reading a statement of pokerstars where they say all cashgame tables will be 35-100BBs


That's all for the moment.
My working year started yesterday with a 4 digit day which satisfied me alot. Today I have the first session in as well and some more will follow.
I'll keep you posted...


peaze

Retrospective 2010

2010 was a massive year for me.

Life:
I started the year in Malta where I was living in a massive penthouse with 3 other pokerplayers in Malta.
Malta definitely was a big experience for me. I got to know a shitload of awesome people and had a very very good time. But after living 14 months on the rock I felt somehow that it was time for me to move on. Yes, Malta is awesome in summer and has a very good legislation in case of taxes and poker, but as awesome as it is in summer as boring it is in winter and I pretty much said to myself that I'm not willing to spent another winter there. Another main reason for my goodbye was, that I purchased a Corvette

in february which arrived about 3 months later. Ok, now you ask why is that a reason to leave. Well, in Malta they have pretty crazy car registration laws. So you can bring in a car which is registered in another country to Malta but you have to register it after 6 months. Ok, no biggie... But unfortunately they tax that registration process and it is afaik dependend on the value of the car up to 40%. That means basically if I really wanted to stay I had to get the Vette registered to Malta for something between 12.000 and 15.000 Euro. Even though I made some serious money last year that was just too much and definitely a point in my decision of leaving the island.
So the plan was to leave Malta with destination London/UK with another german pro I got to know in Malta. End of summer we went to London in order to take a look at some properties in West Central/Central London. Renting prices were even more insane than I imagined and we didn't really manage to find something cool for us. Our price limit was about tree fiddy hundred pounds a month (around 1.75k GBP p.P) but even for that price (in Malta this is a 270sqm penthouse with hot-tub, 4 bedrooms and direct seaview) we did not find any properties in the center. Main problem always were the bedrooms which were to small to fit in our desks. So on our last day in London we managed to find a property in East London (which is still pretty central for London) Canary Wharf. Since october I live here, again with seaview (not as good as in Malta unfortunately). We even managed to find a very large property for a decent price (at least for London standards) which is fairly modern and has over 200sqm. That much space gave us the opportunity to have a spare room for one of my former roomies from Malta who is living with us atm.
I would really like to write some stories about London but since I'm here basically the only think I did was grinding with 3 or 4 nights out which were all pretty massive but 4 nights in 2.5months isn't too much for my standards...

Poker:
Pokerwise 2010 was my best year so far since I play for a living. I made about two fiddy and I'm pretty satisfied with that result.
I decided pretty early in the year to repeat my run for Supernova Elite (if you don't know about this it is explained in detail at www.FPPPro.com). I was grinding a bunch in the beginning of the year. Not so much in summer and a shitload from october ongoing in order to finish SNE as soon as possible and take the rest of the year off which worked fairly well (finished 15.12.2010). So the attached picture pretty much describes my life from early october until mid december (even though London have few sunny days obv) but I do this for a living and so I have to be ambitious and play a ton even if I don't always feel like playing.
In the end I can say that the games were alot better beginning 2010 compared to the end of it. This has many reasons. Biggest reason is probably that Stars changed their Buy-In structure for Ringgames mid April where they created 20-50BB tables in order to cater shortstacks. Because you pay more effective rake at these tables they cost almost all fullstacking regs and even many shortstacks money. So from mid April many Winrates (my own included) were decreasing. Another reason is obv that in the end of the year more and more regs start putting in massive volume to get SNE or a big milestone done and therefore games get pretty horrible.
So my conclusion given the current state of games at Stars is that I'm not going to do the hattrick and do SNE the 3rd time in a row but instead I'm going to get started at Full Tilt, mixing it with Stars and trying to focus more on getting better at this card game again.

peaze

It's been along time coming

Since I see more and more people (mainly other pro gamblers) starting blogs I think now that I settled in London it's about time to start a blog myself. Why? Because I think I live an awesome life many other people dream of and would like to give a little insight in my world, the world of poker, the world of money, the world of party and so on.
Furthermore this blog is a good thing for me to set goals and review how my life is developing. I gotta lot of plans and ambitious goals for this year and definitely need to stay focussed to reach them. I will keep this blog entirely in english in order to reach a bigger peer group but please keep in mind that I'm german and therefore no nativespeaker ;)

comments if positive or negative are always more than welcome...


let's get 2011 and this blog started!