Thanks for the well wishes. Back home now, and like I thought, getting up at 4am has been a breeze with jet lag – just have to stay in this routine now 

Had some horrific run-bad the last few days. Busted out deep in so many tourneys it's not funny, and always in spots where I have no option but to get it in (I shove A10 in SB and BB wakes up with AK or button shoves 12BB and I call with AJ in BB and his 9s hold up). And if it's not the coolers and losing flips, its getting my aces cracked by 57o on the bubble of a $35 180 sng… 

Haven't started tilting yet in the traditional sense, but I'm starting to really tighten up my game as a result which is bad. I know it will turn around, but it's never fun.

I'm still playing on a laptop without a HUD, as my brother and his family are staying with us at the moment and I can't use the room where my PC is. I normally 16-20 table, and am limited to 8 tables tiled on the laptop. I started trying to play stacked, and I honestly don't know how people do it. So hard to get a sense of game-flow, and without a HUD it's almost impossible to get reads, so this probably has a lot to do with my lack of results.

So today I went back to playing only 8 tables tiled and it was more of the same run-bad. When I got down to my final 2 tables (a $15 and $8 turbo) I said to myself “I'm going to win one of these no matter what!”. Really concentrated on playing my best, got deep in both and binked the $8. Not losing every single flip helped, but I also think there must be leaks in my game when I'm auto-piloting that I have to work on. Will go through all my games tonight and see if I can spot anything obvious.

Overall, I'm down around $800 since starting. I play $30 hypers when I don't have long to play to keep my push/fold game sharp, and am up a few hundred in those, but I'm not including them in this challenge, so I'm probably down around $1000 in mtts. I'm dropping my ABI down to around $20 until I get out of this down-swing. Will get everything in HEM this weekend so I can post some more accurate results.

Funny you should mention HEM2, as I've been using PT until now. Bought HEM2 recently but had probs with it on the laptop, so waiting to try it on my PC. Have to agree that all the new features look amazing, so can't wait to have a play.

Did my first evening session this year last night, and wow, the games are so different at this time! Tables full of my countrymen all calling each other fish and playing terribad   I swear, the standard in $2.50 180s is higher than in these. Got itm in three tourneys ($109, $75 and $33 6 max turbos), but couldn't close any of them. Looking at my bust out hands today, I think the $109 and $75 are standard, but not sure about the $33. I was in the SB with 8BB and the button shoved his 8BB stack. I had JTo and figured it was slightly ahead of his range (pretty much any 2). I probably should have passed it up as I could survive another round, but I don't think it was a huge mistake as we were still 30 places out so no ICM considerations really.

Marginally profitable session overall, but still no big score to put me back on track. I feel it's coming, especially if I play another evening session, so will just hang in there.

Finally back on my desktop and able to use my HUD again! Can't get HEM2 to run for more than 30 mins without crashing, so have gone back to PT3, which does the job nicely anyway. I bought HEM2 cos it seems like everyone is using it nowadays, but HEM2 is such a flaky bit of software that it's completely unusable for a serious player atm. I think they rushed it out early to pre-empt PT4, but might have done themselves a lot of damage in the process.

Anyway, I promise not to whine about running bad again, (even though I have been ). Did a big session yesterday analysing my games and found a few leaks that are pretty bad:

– getting suckered by inducers a lot. People are inducing with a wider range now (used to be only AA/KK, but now more people are inducing with 10s+/AQ+), but even so, I gotta stop jamming AT/AJ over these guys.

– Shoving K7/A6 from too early position

– Calling late position shoves with A rag is def -ev against most regs shoving ranges

– Trying to own fish too much post flop. I think this stems from not using a HUD so I can pick up on who the staions are. A couple of times I was 2/3 barelling against stations which I'd never do if I had a read.

So I then did a big session after that, and I realised how much I rely on my HUD (especially playing 8+ tables). Made a lot of decisions much easier, although I still made some bad mistakes, which I immediately regretted. Got deep in a $75 turbo, and was doing great on a really soft table. Then I got AA and QQ on consecutive hands and couldn't get anyone to pay me off, which really annoyed me as they were doing rediculous things and I was sure I'd get paid… so next hand out of frustration I called off the biggest donk's shove with A8… god I'm an idiot!!!!!

Played well in my other games, but lost lots of flips late. Ended up going really deep in a $3r with 1000 runners and actually ran well deep! Key hand was a triple up with QQ on the FT. Ended up getting 2nd for 1.8K which pretty much puts me back to breakeven for the year:

Downswing was way more than I would have liked, but hopefully I'll be back on track now that I've got my HUD going.

Been having some great fun playing the TCOOPs. I've been cutting my tables right down so I can concentrate on them more, and have been really happy with my play. I've been ranging people really well, and making good folds (layed down AQ a couple of times and turned out to be right). I won a satty into the $82 big antes, and was going really well despite no great hands and then got crippled with AQ<A8 and busted soon after.

Today I played the $11r and had a really soft table so managed to get a nice big stack by the end of the rebuy period. Was only showing down premiums so image was great and things were looking good… and then I got swapped to a table full of regs with even bigger stacks than me :/ No easy steals here, but managed to stay level. Was approaching the money and then in close succession lost AJ<A8 and AK<A9 to bust out 20 from the money Ashamed to say I got really tilted and started shoving random hands in my other tourneys… and won a bunch of 60/40s 🙂 Got abused of course, but made me level headed again, so ended up going really deep in all of them, but only managed small cashes.

Got 2nd in a $25hyper yesterday to give my graph another bump, but still waiting for that biggish score to give me some momentum. Anyway, here's the graph so far:

Playing the $33 TCOOP today, so here's hoping for a deep run…

EDIT: This is getting ridiculous – really deep in a $44 turbo, and bust out with AK<A6 and then AT<A3

hang in there man.

Thanks guys, really apprecicate it. Yeh it's one thing understanding the variance in mtts, but dealing with it mentally is really hard to say the least. It starts to weigh down on you and really saps your motivation. I've had so many deep runs lately with no big scores, always losing that big flip late to bust out just in the money.

Funny story from yesterday:

I was on the exact bubble of a $75 turbo. Had JJ in the CO with an average stack. Guys behind me had the same size stack so wouldn't be calling my shove with anything except a monster. BB wakes up with AA 🙂 I was down to 500 chips, with one other guy in the tourney with 450, so it was a matter of who got the blinds first. Luckily he did and busted so I at least min-cashed. Down to 120 chips, but doubled and tripled and quadrupled my way back to 2K. Got dealt Aces, shoved, and got called by AQ and AK! If I win this I'm back to average stack again and looking at one of the biggest comebacks in history! But alas WhiteRabbito, who is an awesome player but also one of the luckiest guys I've seen, flops a flush and I'm out 🙁

After that, I decided to have a change of pace and play some regular speed tourneys as my wife's away this weekend so I could afford to play all day. Was such a nice change from the push/shove world of turbos, and I could actually put into practice some of the post-flop stuff I've picked up on TPE. Played 3 of them and cashed in 2 (got 19th in the nightly 30k), so I really wish I could play more regular speed stuff.

So I'm down about 2.5k in mtts this month, but up about 1k in sngs, so things aren't quite as bad as they look. Been playing a lot of the satellites to the TCOOPS which are quite profitable.

Had a big upheaval at work this week as well which may affect my ability to see the volume part of this challenge through. Basically my boss quit this week, and the CEO has asked me to take over his role. Would mean having to spend a lot more time at work and I really don't think I could do that and put in 3hrs a day of poker. I haven't decided whether I will take on the role yet, as I always vowed I'd never go into management, but seeing as I hate my job anyway, changing roles for a big payrise seems to make sense…

January Summary

Will post a graph later, but it's not pretty. Down around 3k in mtts in one month (although up about 1.1K in sngs and vpp bonuses), and my worst month ever I think. Only upside I guess is that it's forced me to take a good hard look at my game, especially around bubble time as that's where I've been exiting tournaments I get deep into. A couple of times I'm reshoving too light, as people with 12bbs rarely raise-fold on the bubble and always have it, but apart from that it looks like I've just been unlucky in these spots. I seem to have always been getting bad beats, coolered or losing flips deep.

Despite this I had to question why I'm always ending up around 10bbs towards the bubble, and not closer to 20, and I went back further in these tourneys and realised that I'm passing up a lot of reshove spots into bigger stacks that I used to take without even thinking last year, probably because I've lost a lot of confidence. If I have a 20bb stack on the bubble I can afford to lose a flip late, but with 10bbs you're out if you lose. So February resolution is to regain my confidence and make correct decisions 100% of the time.

Volume wise, I came pretty close to hitting my goal of 700 tourneys in the month (played 636). It was tough, and I'm not sure I'll be able to maintain that pace, so perhaps I'll have to revise my monthly target down to 500. Was hoping to be able to hit Platinum on stars, but doesn't look I'll be able to at that rate.

Late last month I started playing some large field regular speed tourneys and absolutely loved them. I think the only time I'll be able to play them is weekends, but intend to keep going with these. I came really close to final tabling the $55 30k last weekend, but tightened up too much late and blinded down to 10bb before busting out in 19th.

As far as my ABI goes, I'm going to lower that to about $15, and will take very few shots above $50. Once I'm back to breakeven I'll go back to my previous brm strat.

I'm going to have a lot happening irl in February, so will be even harder to hit my volume target. Apart from big upheavals at work, I'm also moving house next weekend, so might be without internet for a few days which will suck.

Ok start to Feb so far, but nothing huge. Thought I was destined to make a big score today in the $11 turbo (2nd deep run in this recently for me). Was in 5th place with 25 left and had a really soft table except for a maniac to my right who was doing ridiculous stuff like calling off with JTo. He shoved 15bb from EP and I wake up with AK in the SB. Win the pot and I'm massive chip leader, but alas his QTo gets there and he goes on to take 2nd .  5k up top, so definitely the one that got away…

it is great looking at your thread for I am a micro stakes player trying to work with variance in my own little way. Last night, I did the same thing and just took a shot for the Monster on merge and ran meh, ok. I played well. I usually play during the day. You are correct, it does seem like more regs play during the day in the week on Merge. It is fun to play in the evenings and if you are taking shots, it's best to do it then for there are more fish in the sea.

Anyways…Important to note. Variance is there. It will be always there. It sucks to be sucked out with 73o against your AJo and the board runs 3 3 on the flop with an A. If you stay inside of your zone BRM,,, those spots shouldn't bother us too much. Anyways, keep it up. I would suggest when a big shot is taken, spend a couple days down in the lower part of your BRM range and then take some more juicy spots at times to keep the mojo up.

Poker is supposed to be fun and not dredgery. Relax and have fun. Also remember….”The nuts isn't until the river is dealt”. Thanks man for continuing to update us.

Moved house last weekend, and still waiting for the phone to be connected. Have to wait for a technician to come out and check the line next Tuesday, and then wait for the ADSL to be hooked up after that, so could be another week or so before I get internet 🙁

Having an enforced break is kinda good, as I'm having time to reflect on things and devote more time to study. I've been re-watching some of the epic video series on TPE and it's amazing how rewarding it is to watch these more than once.

I might go over to my parent's place this weekend for a session, but not too likely as there's still a lot of unpacking to do, but I may be able to slip the leash after everything's sorted 🙂

Borrowed a wireless modem from work and managed to put in a session yesterday. Don't know whether it's the new house, but I had an amazing day and ended up over $4k! I'm not superstitious at all, but I changed my avatar at the start of the year, and the thought crossed my mind more than once that it's brought me nothing but bad luck. I also started thinking about how maybe my fortunes will change moving house, all very stupid stuff of course, but you can't help thinking like that when things seem to go wrong for so long.

Anyway, it's amazing how you can suffer for 6 weeks on a horrific downswing and then just one day can turn it all around. It started off with a win in a $15 turbo for $700, and I decided to take a few shots after that. Got 13th in the $50 turbo 2nd chance for $400 and then the big one was 2nd in a $109 turbo for 3k. I really should have won it, having a 5-1 chip-lead heads up, but the other guy just went on a heater and there was nothing I could do (I've been over the HH twice, and I'm not sure how I could have played it differently). Earlier on there was a spot with about 15 left where I got it in with AK against AQ, and I was just praying for it to hold up. A queen hit on the river and I was getting ready to smash the monitor when I realised that it made me a straight (the other guy even had the nerve to call me a luck-box!). These are the spots where I've been busting recently, and it was so nice to not get shat on by variance for a change.

So I'm pretty much back to breakeven for the year in mtts, but psychologically it feels like a huge burden has been lifted. Here's hoping I can keep the momentum going in the right direction!

I'll put in a few more sessions this week, but nothing too serious, as the wireless modem is a bit dodgy, and hopefully will have ADSL by the end of the week.