2013 recap

My (poker)year 2013 comes to an end with 1 or 2 sessions left tonight.
In a couple of hours i'm going to take a plan to Bangkok to spend NYE there and meet with some friends, not going to take my laptop with me so that's it.
But first december. Was a fairly mediocre month in teh end. For teh vast majority of teh time i was running ok at best which resulted in another long breakevenstretch with a bunch under EV (wat rarely happens). All in all was satisfied with my game and the games i played but i feel that i had significantly higher than usual amount of sessions where just nothing goes right, u don't hit any hands, never get any value, etc. Thankfully over teh last days games got insanely good around christmas and in started to finally run hot and win some money:

December

Really wanted to make moar than 5grand this month pre rakeback but in teh end it is poker and i'm certainly thankful that i made some money afterall.
On average i played higher than all year which means that even 1k fullring i'm back playing on a daily basis and i feel quite well doing so which makes me pumped for 2014. Even though it doesn't run two often there are 2-3 fish atm who seem to like this limit and also seem to have infinite money which is always nice :)
As you can see last couple of days around christmas i made around 8k due to teh fact that games where supersick and i was running sick as well. Even had one 6max table with 5 complete fish. I haven't seen this in ages haha :)

But enough about december and let's recap 2013:
Overall definitely my "worst" year up to date as a professional. That being said i still made a 6figure sum so i will not start to complain how bad life is.
Why my worst year? Well, first i guess this year travelling definitely costed me a nice chunk of EV. I was living 3 month in OZ, one in Bali, 5 in Malta and another 3 in Bali. If you are permanently on teh run you don't always feel like playing and even if you do it is sometimes far away from anything considered as A-Game. I also neglected my setup during teh first 4 months only playing on my laptop in combination with a tiny usb screen and terrible chairs. Granted that i will not make this mistake again no matter where I go. Having a comfy setup is so important, even if you only stay at a place for as little as a month...
Secondly this was teh first year where i experienced two sick downers after which i was not able to finish teh month in teh black. If you end up having two losing months out of 12 it is not hard to see that your overall results will go down alot if you look at teh whole year. But yeah, it's poker, it's fucking 2013, there is variance and every mistake will be punished - lesson learned (hopefully).
The last point which probably effected teh year as well is that i experimented and changed a bit too much gamewise in 2013. I started playing only 100 and 200 until april because i didn't wanted to have huge swings while travelling - fuck that, it's poker there are swings. If i'm +EV at 400 and 600 why should i not play those games for 4 months??? Talking about wasting money... Then i switched back and forth between ringgames and ZOOM whenever a bigger downswing hit me. Another epic fail.I'm beating teh games i'm playing for years, why should that change all of a sudden and why should i even bother with teh raketrap called ZOOM? Again, lesson learned, hopefully...
Alot of people these days complaining about quality of games and that it gets tougher each day etc. Obviously it is not as easy as in 2009 anymoar but imo it is still fucking easy to make decent cash if you put in teh work and teh hours. Even for 2014 i could imagine to have an EV of a quartermirrion if i would absolutely focus on poker and poker only so it cannot be that bad. However i'm not getting younger and there is still alot to see in this world that i'm for sure not aiming for this...
Here teh BB and EV graph for teh year:

Big Blind garph for 2013

Don't really have any sick goals for 2014. I guess one of teh main ones is to not question my game as much as i did this year, not play a single hand of ZOOM and really quit sessions earlier when i don't feel like it and play longer when i'm in teh zone or running hot.


But enough about poker.
Lifewise was pretty decent year i would say.
- lived in 3 different countries for at least 3 months (Australia, Malta, Bali (Indonesia)
- visited another 5 countries of which i haven't been to 3 before (Qatar, United Arabic Emirates, Singapore)
I started of in Australia where i found out pretty quickly that this is nothing for me because way too expensive and absolute lack of any personal freedom, then there was Malta where i spent european summer but realized that after 4 years there my days are counted and then there was Bali by which i was stunned in teh beginning but then realized even though it is nice for a while it is nothing i could imagine to settle and stay longterm.
Obviously met alot of cool new people, been to alot of nice places and so on.
I will now stay in teh villa in Bali until april and then most likely move to BKK (let's see how teh testrun over teh next days goes) and possibly do a couple of weeks in Singapore before.

Life in Bali atm is fairly meh. It's like peak wetseason and it is raining shitloads. Still warm and stuff but fairly depressing after a while. On teh other hand for me it doesn't matter too much because if there is bad weather you can really focus on work bc once there is bad weather here there is literally nothing you can do, nothing...
So for teh most part this month i was doing nothing besides playing and hitting teh gym. One weekend though i went to Singapore again with a couple of guys for teh ZOUK OUT which is supposed to be one of teh if not teh biggest electronic music festival in Asia. Didn't like it too much tbh - for some reason Singapore laws and electronic music festival don't work very well together. Had 2 cool days thereafter though where we visited one of teh highest bars in teh world in CBD Singapore and also went to teh quite new Singapore gardens.

After teh week in Bangkok i will really try to keep a low profile partywise and grind alot and for once start teh year strong. Getting a little tired of drinking here lately anyways mainly because there are not really any clubs i really enjoy so far and i have teh feeling i've seen most of it so far. My body also will be quite happy about that i think.

Allrighty, almost 2am here and i want to grind a couple of more sessions of teh sick christmas games until my flight to BKK leaves at noon. Probably going to do a specific Bangkok post after i'm back beginning next year.

Merry christmas and happy NY everybody and some pictures and bigger poker hands in teh end,

good luck for 2014, be safe!

Hand1

Hand2

Hand3

Hand4

Hand5

Grinding Skygarden

New avatar

Singapore Gardens

On top of superhigh Bar in Singy

Afrojack at Velvet

Singy Gardens

Taking a nap

M Hotel Singapore club room

Mascot of Singapore

Marina Bay

Wet season 1

Wet season 2

November in Bali, teh offseason started

Another month down on teh island of gods and lotta stuff to write about.

It's sunday afternoon so i'm sitting here with a slight hangover in front of my desk. Yesterday was supposed to be Jimabarave - a massive beachrave with Paul Oakenfold as a headliner on a sick beach. Sounds good, no? Well, after 2 hours on teh road we got aware that teh event was canceld bc teh police shut it down. Such things don't even happen in Malta so i guess it's an only in Bali kinda situation. However we were early and managed to go to partycentral Kuta thereafter where we tried a new club which i liked teh most from everything i've seen so far. We were pretty much the only farangs in the entire place and was good fun but still party here for me is way too civilized. They played insanely good music but people here seem to drink was less and since there are zero drugs people just don't move. So u literally standing in a club with sick soundsystem. top notch electro and nobody besides yourself really moves.Really weird and prolly needs some time to get used to.
But first to poker. I wasn't to happy with my play lately and still had SNE for next year in teh back of my head so i decided to test what happens if i go back to 24tabling fullring 100-600 and did that for teh first 12 days of teh month. It wasn't going exactly like i hoped it would be. Basically from the moment i started massgrinding i was under EV all teh time and my volume went to 70% NL100. I hate NL100 and after a couple of days i came to the conclusion that this cannot be the answer. VPP rate bc of that also went to something like 0.28per hand which means 3.5mirrion hands for SNE - no thank you. Was also hard to even get 24 fullringtables during off peak and when u only play peak here you don't see any daylight for teh most part.
I canceld this experiment mid november and went back to playing 6max and also removed some stakes where my results where questionable like NL200SH deep for example. Over the next days i also removed the last NL100 stakes i were playing (euro tables) so that i was back to NL200+. Over the next days i added 600 6max and 1k FR and things going great so far. Granted to say i'm experiencing a nice upswing atm for a change but i was running like garbage alot this year so sooner or later it had to get better at one point.
Feeling quite good atm, have a good mindset and alot of momentum came back. I'm not looking at all at how many hands i get per hour or how many hours i want to play my session. It just doesn't matter if u don't go for SNE. So sometimes i play 3hours in a row and sometimes i quit my session after 30mins bc i don't feel it or whatever and this plan seems to work out so far..

Here's teh garph for teh moment which looks very similar to last months one:

November

Goal for december is to continue with what i am doing atm and see what happens. I'm not going home for christmas this year for teh first time and still haven't 100% decided how i split my time during christmas between work/party/travelling but i guess i know moar once i've seen how much i made or lost in teh first 2 weeks of december.

Not moar to say about poker so switching to teh good life. We started teh month with 4 guys and atm we are 5 living in teh villa and one next door. Also had two visitors who were here a couple of weeks so that it never became boring. Seems like testing restaurants is one of our main occupation atm bc we litereally eating out and testing new restaurants like each night. 90% of them are really really good and range from affordable to insanely cheap.
It's also noteworthy that rainy season started which means that you get some rain but mostly at night. You also have alot of nice days but not as frequently as i remembered it from april. For us though it's not really a problem bc when it rains we just work and when it's sunny we do some moar interesting stuff.

Mid of teh month we went for a mountainbike tour and drove up some spots in teh north/east of Bali, here are some pictures:

On the tour we visitied cafe next to mount Batur, took a look at a coffee plantage where teh famous kopi luwak is made, saw how teh traditional balinese are living, walked around some ricefields and ended in a restaurant before going back home. Was a little bit bad that i didn't slept teh night before but alot of kopi kept me awake somehow over teh day. During teh tour we also had teh most rain we saw so far which was quite unpleasant surprise but what doesn't kill u makes you stronger.


Last weekend 3 of us decided to escape teh Bali hassle and get a boat to teh Gilis which is like a small island group directly in front of Lombok and close to Bali. The most interesting thing is prolly that even though teh islands itselves are muslim and belong to Indonesia drugs are allowed or better said absolutely tolerated there compared to anywhere else in Indonesia where you will face jail time and possibly death penalty even for very small amounts. So no surprise that you find alot of reggea bars on that island with local rastas smoking all day...There is no motorized traffic on those islands so that teh only way besides walking is to rent a bicycle or a horse taxi.But honstly you don't really need those bc the islands are so small that you prolly can walk around teh biggest one in like 90minutes. Was definitely a nice relaxed weekend but there was not too many going on bc of offseason. Even there are shitloads of places to drink only like 1 or 2 went busy during teh nights but we still had a good time. Every decent looking girl however seemed to be there with her boyfriend and most of teh single girls seemed to not have heard of teh words gym or diet to often in their lifes. Honestly it's quite ridic to see that 90% of backpacking girls there seem to be chubby or moar while they travelling on a budget... how can this happen?

Since my pizza should arrive any moment i'm not going to write moar for now but hope to have an update ready before christmas this time. Best rgds from Bali and enjoy teh cold in europe ;)

Villa Kintamani

first dinner in full force

October wrap up, halloween update

This time i'm able to update a bit earlier than in general. It's Halloween today and i'm basically done for the month so here what happend.

Finished teh month with making 6.35k$ before rakeback that i can count it as minimum goal of 10k$ achieved if you put rakeback into teh equation. Doesn't exactly makes my pants wet but doesn't give me suicidal thoughts either. Given that it was fairly busy month lifewise with teh move to Bali i guess i take it.
Wasn't really able to play any sort of volume for teh first 30% of teh months, mostly due to extensive search for a longterm villa and a crappy setup in teh place we stayed. I just cannot be bothered to put in alot of time when my ass starts hurting massively after 30mins sitting on one of those wooden chairs.
Once we moved in the new villa and bought chairs and desks it was alot better but still i needed time to adapt my schedule to bali which resulted in being tired very often and not playing too much either. However i seem to have adapted to timedifference and climate finally so that i was playing a bunch last week and finally managed to catch a heater while teh entire month before was quite meh aka breakevenish. Basically my schedule atm is something like waking up between 3 and 4pm, having a protein shake for breakfast, catching some sun, driving to teh gym or restaurant on restdays, have dinner afterwards, be back at teh flat around 8pm and start grinding, go to bed between 6 and 8am. I know it's not teh optimal lifeschedule but it's good schedule to catch some good games and make some cash.

october

The guys with whom I'm staying left to Macau last saturday to play live there but since my month wasn't working out very well i decided fairly quickly not to join them and enjoy teh villa for myself with lot of time to grind. As you can see it worked out - when graph is starting to look sexy was pretty much exactly when they left.
I somwhat have a good feeling for november now but since it's poker basically anything from -10 to +20k can happen.
So far i'm staying at around 450k vpps for teh year and contemplating doing teh 600k milestone but if you take into account that my max vpps in a single month this year were in teh 60k+x range and that i new need to full 75k vpp months it is prolly not going to happen. Obviously i could just fuck it, lock myself in for teh reamaining year, increase volume massively and hit teh 600k but that would also mean a decrease in winrate unless i catch a sick heater (which from my experience you never do in such situation). And for only around 4000$ value of that milestone i don't see much sense behind this especially since we want to do some island and city trips during teh next two months. If i would be something like 200k vpp short of SNE by all means i would lock myself in for a potential value of over 50k$ over teh next year but yeah, i'm far away from thinking about Supernovaelite these days...

Directly when i moved into teh villa i also ordered a 27" screen (largest screen i had in teh last 3 years). After around a week it arrived from Korea and after paying another 50$ import tax it was mine. Unfortuantely teh fucker was not working because teh adapter seemed not strong enough to connect it to my Alienware. After a couple of hours searching for a suitable adapter in Bali with not success i had to order another one via amazon. Was only 100Euros for a fucking adapter haha, but at least teh screen was cheap. Problem in Bali is if you order stuff from abroad you always pay a bunch of taxes and you have to track teh package 3 times a day in order to be able to give them a call once they screw up somthing which they always do. DHL wrote me several times they couldn't locate my adress (while every food delivery service has absolutely no problem finding it...) so that i basically had to guide them via phone in teh end. Anyways, long story short, adapter arrived and my 27" with teh 2560*1440 max resolution is running in full force. So much moar fun to play on teh thing that i'm already quite happy i bought it even though i'm not even tiling my tables.


Lifewise there are not too many news after last update. So far Bali has been a great detox. Only went drinking 3 times teh entire month and one of those was in Singy. I still like it alot but in order to consider staying for longterm nightlife seems awfully quiet and generic as already mentioned in another poast. But maybe i just haven't seen it all yet.
Also have a fairly strong gym schedule atm which is mon, tue, thu, fri; wednesday off and weekend off.

I have teh villa for myself for another couple of days until teh guys come back and tonight i will try to catch some drinks at one of teh local halloween parties...
Plans for immediate future are a Jakarta trip mid november and a Singapore trip beginning december but nothing set in stone yet.
In november also 3 other players will come to Bali for 2-6 weeks which will result in a bigger group to go out and do stuff with - definitely looking forward. Not much moar to say, fingers crossed for a good november :)


couple of bigger hands:

QQ at 600

Str8

Set

another set

vs retarded reg

beachcafe

finally 27"

sunset at teh villa

Welcome to Bali

Hello folks, wanted to update couple of days earlier but well...

I'm finally moar or less sorted now here in Bali that i have a decent chair and desk, a nice villa and a sweet bicycle, only things missing is a 27" screen i ordered and a coffee machine but those two things should arrive teh next days.

But let's go a little back in time. I finally left teh rock on october 2nd and after wat i've seen so far in only 21 days i'm sure it was for good. I hopped on a plane to munich and from there went with air qatar via Doha to Singapore to get my longterm visa sorted for Bali (which was moar or less a fail bc it's a one entry and i'm not planning to stay only in Bali for next 6months but w/e). Arrived quite exausted in Singapore on thursday afternoon oct 3rd - flying economy is just not much fun but flying business is just a waste of money...
Checked into my hotel close to CBD in Chinatown and worked 2 hours before going to bed bc next day i needed to be up early to meet with teh visa agent and since Singapore was/is a city on my "want to live for a while list" i wanted to discover a bit moar of it and take some pictures.
Well, this city did not let me down. As i've seen quite a bit of teh world so far by now i can pretty much instantly say after leaving teh airport in teh first 15minutes if a city is for me or if it isn't and this feeling was as usual spot on. I jumped onto one of teh touri busses with my cam and took a city tour. Teh main difference compared to any other city big city i travelled to was that it doesn't really feel like u r in a city. It's moar like a giant park and they built some massive skyscrapers into that park. There is green every fucking where no matter where you look and it is clean like shit. Haters will argue that it is superficial and to clean but wtf do i care, it just looks and feels fucking nice. I went off teh bus at teh Singapore flight which is a giant observation wheel to take some pictures of teh skyline. Definitely breathtaking and teh tallest building in Australia i visited beginning this year seemed like a joke compared to all this. Afterwards i wanted to check out teh marina bay sands which is prolly one of teh sickest looking hotels in teh world. I knew there was a Kudeta on teh rooftop and since i learned to love that place in Bali i decided to have some lunch there. Food was definitely amazing but once u paid 50euro for a pretty small lunch you realize this place is not for teh poor.
Went home afterwards to have a nap and then go out with 2 polish poker dudes i wrote with on 2+2 in order to get some moar info and see how teh nightlife is. I can say if teh other clubs are only half as good as teh one we went to it is for sure quite sick. In front of teh club you found 3 supercars and even though cars cost appr. 4times as much as in europe (a vw golf goes for 80k euro) you see lambo's, ferraris and stuff pretty much at each street corner. Club was supermodern and prolly have never seen so much money in a single club even compared to Dubai. There were not teh usual 2-3 bottles at each table, there were 10-15 and not teh cheap stuff, moar like Ace and Cristal kinda stuff. I decided to get a bottle of belvedere with teh polish kids which wasn't teh best idea bc teh next day and my flight were not too much fun.
Anyways, after seeing all this i can for sure say that i need to do some time in Singy but especially renting and going out are insanely expensive while food or taxis for example are quite reasonable. I still believe it makes alot moar sense for me to choose BKK over Singy and have a 4bedroom penthouse over there for half teh price i need to pay for a 1br apt in Singy but for a couple of months it is definitely worth considering it.

Ok, so next day i went to Changi airport completely hungover and took my flight to Bali which was only 2.5hours thankfully. I arrived at teh shortterm villa quite late and all other friends with whom i'm spending teh next months already arrived in teh afternoon.
From now on teh week was alotta stress mainly due to teh villa hunt. We had teh shortterm place for 7days with teh option to stay 2 days longer but we had to come up with something. I already made a couple of appointments with agents teh following days that we had some stuff to look at. Well, it definitely wasn't going to good. Either teh places were not modern, too expensive, not in teh right area, etc. I was convinced that i wanted to stay in Seminyak but somehow this was not really happening so we decided to look a little moar north of Seminyak as well. We then managed to find some decent options in Canggu and in teh end i would take this district over Seminyak all day. It's just so much moar relaxed, quieter, teh food is alot cheaper compared to touristy Seminyak as well, etc. Makes sense that most expats and people who want to stay for longer decide to stay in this area. Another big plus is Canngu Club which is Bali's only member club with state of teh art gym, pool, restaurants, spa, football court, beachvolley, etc. And best thing is teh membership is already included in teh villa price. If we still want to go to a beachclub in Seminyak or nightlife in Seminyak/Kuta it's only 10-20mins drive (if you don't chose rushhour) so imo where we are atm is basically teh absolute nutlocation - even to teh beach it's only 600m.

Here is teh villa we finally opted for:

http://www.villakintamani.com/

Most likely teh sickest place i lived in so far but also not teh cheapest. I have to say in general that renting here was/is alot moar expensive than i ever would have imagined but since everything else is cheap as shit i guess it's ok. For now we are 4 people and will be 5 from november til christmas. Teh place is 7.5k$ a month but comes with an all inclusive package basically - best internet available, 2 maids, private driver, security, gardener, gymmembership etc. Definitely not cheap but once u are sharing it's somewat ok. All in all we have around 8 different people working for us who are all quite cool and chill, place is always clean and i'm supersatisfied so far. The group of players we have now is quite cool as well, all very cool kids and we having a good time and no arguments whatsoever so far. We rented and paid teh place for 6months and afterwards i have to see what happens but i guess i'm moving on to one of 3 cities with clear preference towards BKK so far (Jakarta and Singy being teh alternatives).

So far we love it here, especially teh food is amazing and ultracheap everywhere. In most restaurants you can eat a main dish for 3-4euro. Once u left Malta u also realize how bad service and quality in teh majority of restaurants really is but fortunately i don't have to put up with that anymoar.

Only downside so far is that nightlife seems pretty mediocre. We checked a couple of places so far but i haven't found anything i really liked so far. Either teh music is insanely bad, too many australian meatheads are there, place is too tiny, etc. But i guess sooner or later we might come up with something we like. On teh other hand it's not too bad bc place here is insanely good to put in some decent volume at teh office and make some cash and if i only go out 3 times/month so be it - would definitely save alot of cash haha...

Regarding poker i haven't played much during teh first days while searching for teh villa and i'm slowly getting into speed. I guess it will get better though once my big screen arrived and now that i sorted pretty much everything else i needed i'm ready to play some moar.
Cannot provide any graphs bc i haven't checked results this month but it's not too bad so far. Definitely up a bit but nothing crazy.

That's it for now, enjoy eurowinter and kind rgds from Bali

50 euro lunch in kudata, those two drinks were 15euro alone

View from teh observation wheel

rent a ferrari or lambo for a spin

homeoffice in bali

Singapore F1 track

Pool area of our shortterm villa in Bali

Office space of teh other players

In Pyramid club

Car of one of our travelguys/drivers

Picture of me which is not really me

Gardens in Singy

Random view from restaurant in Canggu, Chicken Schnitzel is 3.50euro

Potatoe Head beachclub view

Pool area of our longterm villa in Bali, 2000m² landsize

Ricefields in teh background

On teh way to Marina Bay Sands in Singy with a sick sick rooftop

Seminyak Beach

Cartlon City Hotel room in Singy

Observation Wheel

Nighttime poolview

Another villa we were consider renting

Me and infamous AlexanderT.