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