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