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.

Ich habe fertig /ihazfinished

Allrighty, long time since my last update so here it comes.

That it took me that long to write something was mainly to a massive downer in August and i really don't feel like posting when shit hits teh fan.
From my last post u saw that July was quite mediocre and only due to some rungood in teh last week i managed to book 3k before rakeback for teh month. I thought thereafter thing can only get better but that was not exactly wat was happening, i fact it got way worse.
Before i continue here teh beauty of a garph:

Augustaments

I you can see i was able to drop 4.5k USD over teh course of teh month while my expected value was around zero. Put rakeback into teh whole equation and we have a zero dollar month. Obviously not something which amuses me given my lifestyle and teh resulting expenses. That being said there is not too much you can do about it besides continue grinding and not losing confidence. No matter how good somebody is these days and no matter how good teh games are he is playing this is eventually happening. It's just superstandard that you have those runbads every now and then.
I also was thinking alot about doing another SNE attempt next year maybe bc of that runbad and a guaranteed 10k in rakeback each month is a nice thing to even out variance. Anyways i came to teh conclusion that there are no games i will be profitable at where i can maintain some sort of social life in teh current ecosystem:

- i could grind 24tables 100+200 with good tableselection which will result in appr. 0.3VPP/hand and prolly a 2-3bb/100 winrate -> would mean i have to play over 3 mirrion hands a year, NO THANKS
- i could grind 200+ and cap my tables at 20 or something like that; prolly would avg about 0.4VPP/hand this way which is still 2.5mirrion hands a year and playing 20 tables midstakes (not that i even would get that many games going all teh time) is definitely not easy these days and alot of people will own u pretty hard
- i could switch to zoom but at 100 zoom which is mostly playable you get too few points and at 200 zoom there is only a very small timeframe of 4-5 hours during a day in which games are decent so no option either - at 500 zoom sne is a walk in teh park but games there are absolutely disgusting and i'm not planning to start aiming for breakeven poker in order to get teh black stars...

So all things considered there is just no "easy" way to do SNE so i will not pursue that thought any further...

Ok. Lets forget about stupid august and talk about september instead.
After every downswing there is an inevitable upswing coming (at least as long as u r still a winner on ur stakes and prolly even if you are not a winner anymoar.
I would be lying if those 8 weeks of badrun wouldn't have shattered my confidence a little bit so beginning this month i was still experimenting alot especially with 24tabling 100+200 which is pretty much teh long breakevenstretch in teh beginning:

Septembru

However i decided after a while that this is not teh answer to my questions and i just lose too much value in so many spots bc of 24tabling. The whole problem with 24tabling these days is that you just don't get teh value anymoar u got 3 years back. Back then you fired up 24 tables and teh vast majority of ur sets, flushes, Aces etc. will get paid so even if u lose some value bc u don't manage to bluff or valuebet thin it doesn't matter - in teh end you will print money consistently. However today where fish openfolding stuff like toptop once u raise teh turn it's quite obv that things have changed a little bit.
So i went back to playing less 100 and moar 200+ again and starting to cap my tables at around 15 which is working out fine so far. I get alot of good games, decent amount of hands per hour and still have time whether to bet a river in position or not where i would've just checked back playing 24 tables.
So after a while confidence came back that i even decided to mix in NL600 SH which i haven't played this year so far and i'm quite satisfied how it went til now. Feeling very good atm even at 400 tables and playing good poker so not much moar to ask for. Also managed to play 164k hands tis month which is prolly most i played this year in a single month. Disgusting though that this only equals 58k VPPs...
Furthermoar had one of my biggest 1k hands upswing sessions ever. If you don't play for a living teh numbers will not say too much but if you do u know tis was quite a sick run:

godrun

It also appears that games became alot better during teh last week which is prolly bc northern hemisphere summer is finally over and people start playing again instead of doing stuff outdoors.
Not sure how much playing i manage in october due too my move to Bali but we'll see wat happens.



But there moar important thing about poker so back to teh real life:

August was fairly meh basically bc if i run like shit at work i'm some sort of semidepressed all teh time thinking about lots of shit. I guess that's just one of teh minor disadvantages if you play for a living that u go from a state of depression to highly euphoric states all teh time where you are never really at zero like somebody who works a 9-5. But who wants to always be at zero anyways.
I still had alot of visitors over my last 2 months here that teh overall count of people who crashed at my place now is in teh 20s - speaking of i want to live alone for teh first time in ages haha. Still i had a great time with all those people but that being said i would handle things different in future and don't work for like one week each month and have moar people over at teh same time. In teh end it was just a bit too much and i was quite exausted especially in august. It's just a difference working if you are really on your own or if you have people around but i guess i learned my lesson.
While i was still out alot in august i managed to only go out 3times in september even though i planned to go out less but just wasn't able to skip teh closing parties. Last weekend i had my farewell for which we did a pubcrawl to teh Battle of Malta poker tournament party which was good fun. However i went home quite early wit a polish exit mainly due to teh fact that i woke up at 5am and started working that is was game over around 2:30am. Here a group picture of teh pubcrawl - not all participants are on teh picture, i think we were way over 20 in teh end:

pub crawling wit players and gaming industry people

Also got a farewell t-shirt from my former roomie for tis ocasion:

Another massive party to mention was teh champagne wars which took place in a massive villa close to teh nightlife area in Malta. Definitely a one of a kind event for maltese standards with lots of fun and champagne:

But enough about teh past and moar about teh future. My flight with destination Singapore/Bali starts tomoro at 9:25 and i'm sitting in a pretty much empty flat. Part of my stuff here is stored with a friend, my screens are sold and in one hour i will leave this one

Vette

with a dealer who will get it sold over teh next months. Definitely gonna be teh hardest good buy of all but in order to leave Malta for (hopefully) good i guess it was teh only way to get it done. Since alot of people asking me if i really never come back here once again my standard answer:I don't plan to spend as much time in Malta as before so i will not be living here teh majority of time during a year anymoar. That being said i always plan to visit in summer for a couple of weeks. I just have way too many good friends over here in order to not come back here every now and then. But since i'm turning 30 next year i have teh feeling that it's time for me to leave that little island behind and exchange it for a way bigger island and possibly a big city in future.
Regarding teh exact plan i fly to Munich tomoro morning and from then on it will be one of my favorite airlines aka Qatar which takes me to Singapore via Doha. I stay in Singapore for 2 days in a nice hotel in chinatown mainly to get my 6month visa for Bali sorted and while i'm there i plan to meet up with some fellow grinders from who might be able to show me around a bit friday evening. Saturday evening then my final flight takes place from Singapore to Bali where i meet with some other players who will be my roomates over teh next couple of weeks/months.
For teh start we sorted a 4bedroom villa in Seminyak for a week:

Villa for first week

During this week we want to search for some nice longterm villa for appr. 6 months. Given that we want to stay that long i'm not really keen to book something over teh net bc i want to see teh place (some villas are pretty run down there) and i need to check what internet we getting in teh place bc it highly differs even from one street to teh next. Already lined up some appointments and planning to meet some agents once we are there as well so i have no doubt we will end up with something nice. I hope though that one week is enough to find something but even if not you prolly can just longer teh villa above for a couple of days or move once again.
So this 6 months Bali are pretty fix and i'm prolly staying there even over christmas which will result in teh first christmas without family.
Thereafter really nothing is set in stone yet. For now i plan to go to Singapore mid april and see if i like it. It seems like a sick city which could work for me but teh big downside is that it's borderline expensive, especially renting is out of tis world with 1bedroom condos starting at 3.5kUSD in city center.
Thereafter i want to have a look at Bangkok which is ridiculously cheap compared to Singa and then make a decision where to stay for a while. Quite sure i will stay in Asia for at least one or two years but once again u never know wat happens. Also heard that spanish market might open up in future so one ibiza summer would be worth considering then and in teh back of my head is still Dubai but they first have to allow gambling which might take while so far now it is Asia.

Next update very likely to come a bit earlier, prolly once we found longterm villa in Bali.

That's it for now, see you on teh other side!!!