Mittwoch, 29. Oktober 2014

It's been a while - september and october recap, tl;dr

Sup guys,

alot of people asked me where teh fucking update is and well, here it is. I know i know, one month late but given how i butchered september i didn't felt too much like writing about it at that
time so now that i have a bit of distance towards it i feel i can give a better review.
Normally we start with poker but i gonna structure it different this time that we start of with real life past and presence, then how teh pokerz is going and finally future midterm plans. Could
possibly get a longer poast this time so be aware of this b4 you continue!
Allright, last update was end august and since then quite a bit have happend.
Beginning september a good friend of mine visited who lives and works in Hongkong (works in banking and makes quite a bit of cash as well). Since Bangkok nightlife was still pretty quiet at that
time we decided to go to Pattaya at least for one day on the weekend to have a solid all nighter and make it rain because things in Pattaya run a bit different.
Essentially it's a city 2 hours away by taxi from Bangkok (taxi is like 50-60$), it's directly at teh coast so there are some beaches, alot of tourists and a shitloads of hookers. People told me
upfront that 70% of all women there were sexworkers which is a bit hard to believe but since i've seen it now with my own eyes i would say that number should be somewhat accurate. People who know me a bit better know i'm not much into that paying for sex thing but nevertehless it's interesting to see and also to see what kind of people such a city attracts. Basically me and my friend felt
like we were moar or less teh only normal guys in that front court to hell and we are far from normal as well. Watched some shows there, had some drinks in different venues and ended up in a huge club called insomnia where we stayed for teh rest of teh night. In contradiction to Bangkok where clubs were closing at 2am in Pattaya everything had open til forever so our plan of having a solid allnighter worked out fairly well.
We decided we had seen enough when we woke up next day and took a taxi back to my condo in Bangkok.
Another day i finally managed to see some of teh Bangkok sights, mainly due to my friend bc my sightseeing game is not too strong. Here some shots of that couple of days:

rooftop

word!

#selfieaments

and another one

going wild

on teh way to sin city

Pattaya hotel

hotel view

90usd/night - pure value

my Pattaya buddy

Pattaya city


rdy for teh night


beertowerments to get started

one of teh sickest streets foso

da is das Ding!

sightseeing oddysea





mini ankawat




wit teh huge golden buddha





Besides that visit in teh beginning of september it was moastly poker for me that month.
Didn't went out much, maybe 2 times or so but that's about it. Really felt like grinding alot
and since clubs still seemed to be closing at 2am there was no real point in hitting teh streets
because i hate going out early.
Originally i planned to potentially go to Pattaya for a couple of weeks until teh situation in 
Bangkok is better together with a friend and i looked for properties but didn't really came up
with something i would've wanted to stay a couple of weeks so decided to stay in Bangkok and rather
play and keep a low profile especially since teh year is going mediocre at best pokerwise.
However teh friend i planned to go with to Patty moved into my place beginning october so that after
a while i have a fixed roommate again which plays my games a little bit lower stakes though but
it's still moar than nice to have somebody to discuss poker and life with instead of being alone for 
teh moast part. We both have been grinding pretty hard lately besides teh occasional night out. On the
brightside it seems that moar and moar clubs stay open again after 2am so that things seems to be
going back to how they used to be when i originally arrived in teh city of angels.
After one club night my tuk tuk also got stopped by police and i got raided for drugs next to teh 
street but since i'm a nice kid i could go my way after 2 minutes. Police were surprisingly friendly
so that teh experience wasn't really as bad as it sounds...

October wasn't really alot of party either and alot of poker instead. Alot moar satisfied with this month compared to fucking september but moar about that later. Currently i'm chilling in Bali with a good friend who was visiting me in BKK a while ago and is living now in Taipeh for "studying" 6 months. All teh stuff he tells about this city makes me quite curious since it seems like a pretty nutty place to live in SEA as well (and i heard that from a bunch of people by now). Also it seems like i really will be playing zero poker this week and recharging my batteries instead for teh end of teh year grind which is good as well.
Teh main reason i'm in Bali is that my visa expired and i needed to go for a visarun because of this. Since i'm staying at least til end of april in Bangkok teh longer visa i get teh better and Indonesia is one of teh very few countries in south east asia that is issuing 9months tourist visa for Thailand (triple entries) so that teh decision was easy. Currently really just chilling and having alot of amazing food - there is really not that many places i've been to where food is that good. Also teh weather is quite sick still (wet season starts very soon) so that i even manage to get my tan back while here. On friday we go to Jakarta for teh weekend where teh main goal is to rage compared to here where teh main goal is to do nothing :P Fortunately i have a lovely contact in Jakarta so that we know where to go and where not to which always helps if you grind a (big) city for teh first time. Here's teh pictures i've gathered so far from Bali and some other october shenenigans and teh rest of this trip will follow in teh next update:

good morning in bkk


still no leg day

rain season 1, caught in resto

pre night out

drinks and fun

grinding levels :)

chill

rain season 2 - caught at starbucks


vape and read

huge thai immigration building where i went for visa extention


ultra bangkok


raging hu sng player b4 black out :)

goosaments

afterhours

my roomate in action

#nohomo

arrived in teh villa in bali

small but cozy

nice little coffee shop

Seminyak beach

Potatoe Head

#nohomo2

kopiluwak time

on tour






group shot

me and my beloved driver and personal assistant in Bali, love this kid


Tannah Lot water temple


surf weather

karma points while lunch

another villa shot



Ok, now time for some pokerz. First and foremoast those 2 months were quite hard but for moast of that i have to blame myself. I started fairly decent in september and month was going well until i really felt like i did not get enough volume teh way i was grinding so i figured it's a good idea to get started in PLO.

dirty september



Prolly not very hard to spot when i started playing PLO. First 2 days even went somewhat fine but teh one day was prolly in teh 35buyin range which is hard to do even at PLO if you somewhat have a clue what u are doing,

this is a recent picture of me playing pot limit omaha

It's a fairly interesting game but that being said will take long time to get to a similar level of current
100 or 200 regs and rake is not your friend either. So for now i'm moastly cured from teh PLO virus even though it was a somewhat expensive lesson.
Since Pokerstars introduced their retarded Spin and Go's cash game traffic suffered a bit as well and i decided to reallly start playing 6max again no matter what from october ongoing and therefore put quite a bit of database research and studying in to make this happen smoothly. So far i run around 4bb-ish at 6max 200 which is good but 50k hands is not teh biggest sample to draw any conclusions from but it's at least a good start. I think the main thing which helped was comparing my game with teh game of teh biggest winners at that stake which made me aware of quite alot of leaks which are somewhat really easy to fix though and i think i did a good job so far in doing this and really looking forward to teh future.

october - couldve been really good but wasnt supposed to


This month started fairly slow and i caught a fairly decent heater in teh middle but a very bad run in teh end. Was really like 10 days going supersmooth and then all of a sudden don't hit a single hand for 10days straight.
Haven't changed a single thing of my game or stakes or whatever during that time so that can be contrinuted almoast entirely to card distribution and variance.

I also had teh feeling that i was running quite poorly overall over teh entire year or at least during teh last 3 months and couldn't really figure out what was wrong. EV was somewhat ok almoast always, i felt i was playing at least decent almoast always, my tableselection was topnotch as usual etc. So i digged a bit through PT4 and had a look for stuff which shows you how u run in different spots and i came up with a thing called teh luck bell curve. This tool essentially shows you how often you flop sets and turn or river flushes when you have teh opportunity and than displays on a scale how lucky or unlucky you are.

Here is it:

a bit difficult to find sets but i think you manage

no surprise here after seeing teh prior garph
Now it would be quite easy but also insanely stupid to blame 3 mediocre months on a single issue which is sets but nevertehless i believe this is a major contibutor atm which accounts for me making not as much money as i would like to make. This is quite a sick sample of at least 300k hands and while normally you should flop a set around 11.7% longterm i manage 8.3ish% over teh last 3 months. While this sounds not like a big deal for teh casual reader if you play for a living you know this is huge and especially for my game where teh biggest moneymaker against funplayers are definitely sets it explains quite a bit.

I return back to Bangkok on teh 2nd of november and have pretty much to do another 100k VPP for teh last 2 months of teh year which will keep me busy so that i finish teh year with 600k VPP and almoast exactly 50kUSD rakeback (with 45-50% rakeback equivalent).

Goal for teh last 2 months is to play only 200-600 prolly a mix of 50% ring and 50% 6max obviously somewhat dependant on what games run and what seats i get. Maybe i can at least finish teh year as strong as i started it - teh motivation i have for sure...


Enuff for poker and a bit moar about future plans and current life observations. I'm in South East Asia now for a bit over a year and lately teh timezone really starts to get teh best out of me. It is litereally by far teh worst timezone to live if you play onlinepoker for a living and want to make teh moast money you can for different reasons. The main reason is simply that once you play somewat meaningful stakes (which for me means 200+) you cannot play teh same volume all around teh clock and you have similar timewindows each day where teh moast action and teh moast +EV games run and where you will be able to play alot of tables without too much effort. This time in Bangkok goes from around midnight until 9 in teh morning for sure, sometimes a bit longer. The main issue for me is once i play this schedule reallife begins to suck and after a while you naturally will get depressed in one way or teh other bc you maybe see one third of daylight other people see. Don't get me wrong, i love playing at night, grinding it up til 3,4 or 5 i don't mind but i hate grinding it up til 10 in teh morning... From my personal feeling going to bed at 4 and waking up at 11 feels 250% better than going to bed at 10 and wake up at 5pm where it's almoast dark again. The first option also gives you a somewhat decent lifestyle comparable with a lazy student while teh 2nd one basically makes you a fucking degenerate zombie who moast of teh time doesn't even know which weekday it is... I think it's no problem doing this for a couple of weeks or even months but when you do that several years straight i think it's not very healthy in teh grand scheme of things also. Don't get me wrong here though - i love it here, love teh people, teh girls, teh fact that cash is king, teh weather, etc. but all this still not makes up for a completely fucked up lifeschedule IMO. So long story short after living over one year in Asia and another 6months ahead of me i think i call it a day in april and probably move back to a timezone which is better suited for poker. Not sure where i will end up but Vienna sounds like a nice city which can offer a good lifestyle and since i know alot of other people there i would have a social circle from day one which is better than building everything from zero. But yeah, nothing is set in stone and since i change my mind alot i might end up somewhere completely different in teh end but currently i think Vienna is teh moast likely and moast reasonable outcome. Having my base there would give me a better connection to teh stars server and moar stability and speed in regards of internet which is very beneficial these days, I would have a somewhat normal life schedule while not permanently working crazy hours, i could finally get a sick sports car again finally, would be close to alot of euro friends i've rarely seen over teh last years and i still have to option to go abroad in winter when it gets cold and travel a bit and get some variety. But all in all it just sounds moar reasonable to me to have my base set up somewhere in europe compared to somewhere in Asia. 
Anyways, my lease in Bangkok still goes for another 6 months and i have no plans to leave early so i will keep you posted over teh next months what is finally happening.


Last but not least my immediate plans until end of teh year. Poker i already pointed out earlier so what am i doing besides playing poker:
Current plan is to go to Japan or better said Tokyo for about a week in end november to see what is all teh fuss about. Since i might be leaving Asia sooner or later i really want to make sure i've seen alot of stuff i wanted to see before. Another thing which is definitely on my list is visiting my boy in Hongkong and spend a weekend there and do some party. Definitely gonna stay in Bangkok over Christmas and not fly back to Germany but try to rape some christmas funplayers instead. New Years i'm moast likely not staying in Bangkok since i was here last year and i never do NYE in teh same city twice  anyways (life is short...) so current plan is to have a look at Taipeh and prolly go there for 4-8 days.

As you can see alot of things lined up fot teh future so it's unlikely i end up wit a boreout anytime soon. I hope this poast wasn't too long but since it's been 2months since last update i had to write a bit moar to get up to date.

peaze out!