Getting My Thoughts Straight

Over the last three months, I have watched my coach's game evolve from a solid SNG grinder, into a phenomenal poker player; unfortunately I had spent most of the time having trouble discerning how it happened. It wasn't until just two days ago, while I was ghosting him, that it clicked. For over a year, my brain has been hit with the constant golden rules of SNGs: "Never raise fold less than 10bbs," "Always raise, never limp," "Follow ICM," and the list goes on... As my game evolved, I learned more and more that I could stretch these rules, and that exceptions to the rules occurred. It wasn't until I watched a few key plays during some $38 and $60 18 mans that I finally came to the conclusion: It doesn't matter what the rules are, all that matters is I outplay every single opponent I find, regardless of the methods.

I really have to thank Bigbluffzinc for all of this.I know that his style of play is a culmination of all the styles of the absolute best SNG players in the world, and with a combination of his thought process and creativity, I don't see anybody beating him any time soon. 

If any of you are interested in coaching by him, it is 100% worth it: http://www.bluffzthenutz.com/

I have been euphoric about my poker game for the last two days, not just because I am finally winning again, but because I am outplaying every player at my table. I am finally playing poker. I am finally looking forward to playing full time again, which has been an absolute relief in itself.

I have already established two things about next year: 1) I will obtain Supernova status, and 2) I will be one of the elite turbo SNG players by Dec. 31, 2011.While I say this with an understanding of its arrogance, I only say it with the complete knowledge of my mental capacity and drive to succeed-- And for anyone who knows me personally, this is by far no stretch of the imagination.

I still have a mountain of work, studying, and learning to do, but it is by no means insurmountable. All I know is that if I keep playing poker instead of just grinding, I will be on top.

Kind of an interesting statement for someone who has under $2,000 in personal profit from poker? Definitely. An interesting statement for anyone that knows my game? Definitely not.

-Baka

Finally getting back around to this stuff...

It's been a while, so I figured it was time for a status update :)

I've been completely swamped lately with work and life in general, and unfortunately that has placed poker on a bit of a back burner for the time being. Between working non stop as an Americorps VISTA, entering cooking competitions, coaching, getting school set up again, and having somewhat of a social life, poker hasn't been much more than an afterthought. Fortunately I'll be heading back to Wisconsin to finish out my degree in January, and even though I was guaranteed readmission after my sabbatical, it was definitely a relief to see that it all went off without a hitch.

As of this past Saturday, I am now the Texas State Veggie Fair Deep Fried Foods Champion. I was able to scramble together to make a reuben sandwich vegan, batter it in panko, and deep fry it. Turns out that it was good enough to be the best tasting sandwich, and even beat out some entries by cooks at local restaurants. My piece is the one on the bottom left w/ the pickle, and the guy's submission that won most creative is on the top. The judges included some local chefs/cooks (one being a 5 star restaurants executive chef -brag) and a few other local foodies. In the end I took home $100 and this years title which was pretty sweet.

As for poker, I'm finally starting to pull out of this ridiculous downswing I've been in. I shipped a small MTT on Sunday for about $500 on Absolute which felt amazing. I don't play many MTTs, and had never won one prior to that, so I was definitely happy about that. Plus I fixed a few leaks that developed during the downswing thanks to some help from BigBluffz, and even picked up a few new tricks while I was at it. I finally had a nice session tonight, and even though I was short on time and could only play 20, I finished up about $100--My first positive session in two weeks. Even though I have about another $600 to get back to where I was two months ago, it's definitely a nice start, and a nice light at the end of the very long dark tunnel. 

 

Even though it's three months away, I'm definitely starting to look at how I will go about playing full time next year. I'm hoping that I can finally get some real volume in (~2-3k games/month) and pick up supernova by the middle of the year some time. With financial aide and the money I'll be making from coaching I could honestly live off the rakeback, but obviously I plan on crushing a bit and taking vacations with my spare winnings. 

No stats updates this time, with the gross downswing I'm actually slightly embarrassed by them, they're not really super bad, it's just depressing to look at them at the moment so I don't. Not to mention my volume hasn't been the best to counteract the variance, so they aren't really too much of an accurate reflection at this point in time. 

 

I'm hoping to start posting in here at least once a week, so hopefully I'll have some new updates by next Thursday!