Deep TCOOP Run : $109 PLO8

So sometimes, when it comes to PLO8 MTTs, you can go months without any sort of interesting big buy-in tournament, and yet somehow I managed to play two in the space of three days! With the NLO8 offerings being a $82R and a $109 Hyper, this was the optimal O8 tournament of the series for me.

The day started perfectly. PokerStars set a brilliant satellite schedule with tons of $11 FOs and $5r's which were just beyond soft. I only managed to play 11 satellites in the afternoon as I was busy for most of the day but I still managed to ship four seats and truly free roll the event and start the week with a ton of T$.

In the actual event, much like the £220 PLO8, I managed to chip up a lot early on while the blinds were small and double my stack without having to play an all-in pot. The field was a lot more passive than expected from a mid-stake buy-in online tournament but sometimes that's what these xCOOPs are like and I was definitely thankful for that. I flopped well, ran good in all-in pots and and consistently managed to increase my stack over the first hour and a half.

The first problem I encountered was this hand. Like I said, I'd run really well in all-in pots beforehand and built up my stack nicely, but this guy took the biscuit, he was running like Usain Bolt. This pot was just before the bubble so it was a bit disheartening to watch but thankfully I had enough chips left to recover.

Because this pot was just before the bubble, it actually forced me to calm down, and stall a little bit unless the money, which thankfully meant I didn't punt off my stack which usually happens after spots like this. A min cash in this event would still be a decent chunk of money so taking a flip here would have been quite silly, especially with the pace at which people were busting and the average stack which was around 8BBs.

I made it into the money with around an average stack and got to work. I got a ton of steals through and used my above average knowledge of pre-flop equities to get into favorable situations and build my stack. In tournaments like these, fold equity is everything, so sometimes it's worth passing up on a near flip when being shoved into in order to preserve a large enough stack size to win blinds uncontested. It's a concept well documented in NLHE turbo tournaments but is definitely under utilized in PLO8.

I carried on chipping up and up until there were only nine players left. I was definitely getting nervous and a little excited about possibly final tabling a major tournament. Then came this hand.

It was definitely a spot to get it in, even if I were deeper than 6BBs. I was pretty happy with the flop and still quietly confident on the turn but the river was truly gut wrenching, needless to say, a few things on my desk took flight. I wouldn't call it a bad beat considering the equities pre-flop, near enough 50/50, so although it's a bit disappointing to miss out on the big money, I can't be too upset.

It's my biggest score in O8 and even though it's tough to be only 8 players away from $24k, I'm still very happy with a $2k score and TCOOP isn't even over yet, I still may have a shot at a big one! I'm planning to take a long weekend off poker so I don't get burnt out and thankfully this bink affords me some room to do that, however I'll be back on the grind next week, ready to make even bigger and better scores! I hope I'll have more posts like this for you guys in the future, but until next then I wish you all good luck at the tables and speak to you all soon!

P.S. Big shout outs to some of the O8 heroes having great TCOOP scores! Congrats to bokkie87, trelskig and Giffordonian who all had big five-figure scores in the past week! Good job lads!

Trip Report: UK Omaha Series £220 PLO8

So this past Sunday I made the short trip up to Edgware Road for the £220 PLO8 at the Grosvenor Victoria Casino. I use the term "short" loosely as London traffic decided that getting to tournaments early is uncool and thus I should spend an hour on a bus rather than the usual 20 minutes, and also that it should terminate 3 stops early. Running bad before I even step in the door, great sign of things to come!

The structure of the tournament allowed for a decent amount of play early on. We started with 15k chips and starting blinds of 25/50 and 30-minute levels normally after which the blinds doubled. The table was what I expected from a live PLO8 tournament, mostly older live players with a lot of NLHE experience but close to none when it came to mixed games. Everyone was very friendly and the atmosphere at the table was pretty jovial, they all seemed to enjoy having a splash around at a game many of them barely played. Only one player at the table seemed to be completely useless and he managed to bust within ten minutes. After a casual limp pre-flop, he called the full pot raise from the BTN and proceeded to get it in on the J86ss flop with a bare J6xx hand, no ace, no low draw. The BTN flipped over AA2Kss and scooped the lot after the 3s turn and blank river. Those of us actually playing attention to the hand shot everyone else a look and smirk but no one said a word, never berate the fish they say, especially when there's the possibility of a re-entry.

So with literally hundreds of BBs, it was time to get to work. As you'd assume, there was a lot of limping and generally passive play, so isolating wasn't really the way to go. I raised up my premium hands as per normal and limped along with any semblance of a decent drawing hand. Again, the passive play made it easy for me to take away pots on flops and turns so I kept up the aggression, my red line would have been sexy. I got to the first break with just under 30k so I'd near enough managed to double my stack without needing to play a big pot. I hoped more was to come.

After the break the table started playing back at me, or so it seemed that way. I got 3-bet two or three times and played back a little on a few flops so my stack dipped a little over the next two levels until the table eventually broke. The new table seemed to be a lot more competent, the average age was a little younger and everyone was actually focused on the game rather than reading their iPad or breakfast. Yes, I said breakfast, at 7pm, yes. It was here that I got into my first big pot of the tournament. I flopped trips on a JJ3r board with AJ45 and improve to a boat on the 5x turn. I didn't manage to get any flop action but on the turn I managed to get most of my stack in check/raising the quite loose passive BTN. I wasn't too thrilled about the 8x river as I thought A2xx may be a decent part of his range but with at least half the pot locked up there was no reason not to get the final third of my stack in but somehow the BTN found a fold. I literally have no idea what kind of hand folds the river after getting the majority of effective stacks in already but I wasn't going to complain.

After that hand things got a bit dull, at least from my point of view. I lost a semi-decent pot raising AAxx pre and bet/folding the flop to fairly loose player who later on told me he'd flopped two pair. Then there was a lot of folding, or raising it up, flopping air and getting full potted into, not a lot to be done. Then finally, my bust out hand. So a little back story, the LAG opener had managed to amass a huge stack, close to 100k, mostly before I'd got to the table. He lost a small flip to a short stack, maybe only a 30k pot, and then  somehow managed to bet/stack off on a J224 board with AJK6 against a truly terrible player's AJJ3 in a huge pot, close to around 100k. The terrible player was a much older gentleman who clearly didn't know the rules of Omaha, let alone Hi/Lo and half slowrolled the LAG by only showing the AJJ after they got it in, it was left to the dealer to reveal that even the LAG's low draw was no good. This was the hand immediately before my bust out hand.

The LAG pot opens UTG with blinds at 600/1200, the newly crowned table chip leader folds while stacking his chips and I look down at A35Ks with my stack around the 25k mark. Previously, this player had only min-opened and after the previous few hands I thought it quite possible that the player was on tilt and would happily get in a less than premium hand. I also thought that 20BBs was probably not a large enough stack for me to assert my skill edge over the table given how loose/passive the game was pre-flop. I discerned that this was definitely a great spot to take a shot at doubling up, probably as a favourite but not by much. I pot raised, it folded around to the LAG who was all too happy to get it in with me and revealed A2K9s, having me pretty much dominated. The flop came K29r drawing me all but dead to a chop and the Tx turn and 8x river sent me home in 19th out of 33 runners.

Looking back at the hand now I'm still fairly happy that I got it in there. If I stayed short for too long I wouldn't have been able to play a good loose-aggressive game and use my experience and skill edge to my advantage so taking a gamble was the right choice. The tournament was very well run and everyone seemed to enjoy it so I hope this encourages Grosvenor to run similar tournaments in the future and I'd like to thank them for putting this one on. I'm sorry this wasn't a brag post complete with winners picture but there you go, we'll get 'em next time! I'm back on the online grind now which as you know comes complete with regular blog updates so expect to read some more soon including a deep TCOOP run summary! Good luck at the tables everybody and speak to you all soon!

I did it again!

OK, this is going to be a little bit of a brag post, but for the second time in four days, I shipped the morning $16.50 PLO8 Omania! The score again was just under $1k so for the second time in under a week, I came within a whisker of hitting one of my January goals of making some four figure scores, but the month still has over a week left so hopefully there will be some more shots at it.

Like I mentioned in posts before, the Omania's do get really shallow in the end stages so I won't pretend that I didn't run exceedingly hot. I managed to scoop almost all of the important all-in flips that you inevitably encounter and heads up I managed to hit a fair few important cards when short. I actually made it to heads up with a large chip disadvantage against a decent opponent so again I got lucky to win two or three flips to get back to even and from then on could use my edge to grind him down. Eventually I managed to induce him into shoving his weak flush into my flopped quads and ship the tournament.

And luckily for you guys I remembered to take screenshots this time so enjoy!

It hasn't all been roses this week though. Apart from this major score it's actually gone pretty badly, but this is only talking about the last two days so as they say on 2p2, "[  ] sample size".

Just want to take the chance to again remind all you Omaha grinders about the UK Omaha Series starting tomorrow at the Vic in London so make sure you at least get down to one event! And also be sure to follow me on Twitter for live updates. Until next time, good luck at the tables and speak to you all soon!

The Red Label Roller Coaster!

Wow what a week it has been! There's been success, there's been heartbreak, it's had it all. Overall I managed to put in a ton of volume and showed a pretty decent ROI so all in all it's been a great week results wise but how it could have been so much better!

So we start our roller coaster of a story on Wednesday for my first grind session of the week, thank you very much real life, with the $5.50 PLO Omania. I'd flipped like a hero for the whole tournament and from the final four or five tables down I'd played very aggressively and managed to take the chip lead. From there I may have taken a few spewy lines and looking back I may have reigned in the aggression a little bit. Going into the final two tables I was 2nd but the blinds were high and I only had a 25BB stack. I then got myself into a few awkward situations where I had to raise/call off the short stacks given correct pot odds and got short myself. Eventually I ran AQQ2ds into AAxx and busted in 15th. I was furious with myself because I definitely could have been a lot more discerning with my spots to get aggressive and easily made the final table. $25 was not much of a consolation for getting that deep. But we battled on.

We then move onto Friday. During the day I'm normally busy running errands and completingy job applications but I like to load up the $16.50 PLO8 Omania and the $13.50 PLO8 KO on the side to keep me entertained. I regularly make deep runs in this Omania because the start time is so early that almost no regs like to play it. I managed to ninja stack my way to the final two tables but once could not finish the job, finally busting in 14th shoving 3BBs UTG. Like the $5 PLO, the stacks get very shallow towards the end of the tournament so running well is very important.

Moving on to Saturday, now this was one hell of a day. I made the decision to grind the whole day as I wouldn't be able to play Sunday and I needed to take advantage of the weekend MTT softness while I could. Again I started out with my usual PLO8 tournaments and again I made a deep run in the Omania. I built a pretty huge chip lead with around 40 remaining and wielded my stack like a weapon all the way to the final table.  With only 8 left between myself and victory I could only see one player who I could see causing me any issues. He played the final table very well and eventually we went into heads up with around even chip stacks. I think I may have had an edge heads up but with fairly shallow stacks and a fair amount of money on the line, making a deal seemed like the best play. He actually asked to look at the numbers with three left but I felt the odd man out was so much weaker than us that dealing then would be throwing away too much equity. We chopped for aroun $1k each. A fantastic start to the day and it wasn't even 4pm!

And sure enough, Saturday didn't end there. I then went on a very deep run in the Hot 16.50! Turbos have been truly heartbreaking for me in the past but the bink potential is just so huge that I can never pass them up. Of course, I ran amazingly well to get deep but I just couldn't keep it going. I ended up 15th out of almost 5k runners after my 9BB shove from MP with AQo lost a flip against 99. I even flopped trip Aces but my opponent went runner runner for the four card flush. The $300 was a little more of a consolation than the PLO but with over $10k up top, I just can't help thinking of what could have been! Thinking about it now, even a final table spot would have put me in a great position to move up in stakes and cash out a fair chunk for the live roll that I'm building, but there's no use crying over spilled milk. There will always be other turbo runs.

So there's my exciting week. I finished up posting a solid four figure win and putting myself well on track for achieving my January goals. I don't have any shifts lined up for the next week so hopefully I can put in a huge amount of volume and really push the profit for this month. Remember to follow me on Twitter (@Grimiscool) for the live updates on how my grind is going and definitely watch it on Sunday as I attend the £220 PLO8 at the Vic! I will posting chip counts, interesting hands and maybe even some pics with some of the UK regs I hope to meet there! If any of you guys are reading this then be sure to give me a shout and maybe we can go grab a drink after! Until next time everybody, have a great week and good luck at the tables!

Back on the Grind!

Hey everybody! As you probably guessed from the lack of blog posts over the last week or so I haven't been around much. Real life kind of took over in the form of temporary work and visiting my "in laws" (quotes used as I'm not actually married). Even though it was nice to get out from behind my computer screen and see the outside world for a little bit I am back at it now and raring to go!

Poker went very well either side of the break. Just before I left on Friday I shipped the $11 NLO 6m for around $280 and the yesterday, the first day back grinding, I took down the $8.80 PLO 6m for $340. Not huge scores but it keeps the scoreboard ticking over nicely and profit is good no matter how much. Also it's really good for my confidence levels to actually have won these tournaments outright. I obviously ran well in both tournaments but I did feel like I was playing my A game and making the correct plays. Especially in yesterday's PLO, I really stepped up the aggression on the final table when possibly in previous months I would have sat back a little more and picked my spots, maybe costing me the tournament win.

I'm also showing good results with my higher buy in shots, in fact my highest ROIs are in the games with buy ins of $11+. I've been slowly increasing my average buy in over the last couple of weeks and it's now creeping up to around the $15 range. I'm hoping within a few months this rise further and buy the end of the year it can be closer to the $30 mark. It may mean having to diversify my games over different sites but I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it. Currently PokerStars offers more than enough games at my buy in level, but more couldn't hurt!

I haven't got anything pressing to do until Sunday so hopefully that means a solid few days of grinding with a ton of volume and great results. With a bit of luck and run good I can start cashing out enough by the end of the month to comfortably afford the vast majority of my action in the £220 PLO8 at the Vic at the end of the month. I don't particularly want to completely raid the small live roll I've started to put aside in the first month of 2014 but if I can pad it a little before that time then I'll feel a little more comfortable. I'll be sure to keep you all updated with how the week goes, and if you want more current updates then be sure to follow me on Twitter (@Grimiscool). Good luck at the tables everybody and I'll speak to you all soon!

Ask and you shall receive! UK Omaha Series 2014 confirmed!

So literally hours after I published my post yesterday, the Victoria Casino finally confirmed their UK Omaha Series 2014 later this month! Far be in from me to question the PR department at Grosvenor Casinos only advertising a tournament series two weeks in advance of it's kick off event but nevertheless here it is. Here are the highlights:

Thursday 23rd - 7.45pm - £100+10 - PLO - 1 re-entry - 10k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Friday 24th - 7.45pm - £150+15 - PLO 4/5/6 - 1 level of each - 15k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Saturday 25th - 4.00pm - £250+25 - PLO - 1 re-entry - 20k Starting Stack - 40 minute levels

Saturday 25th - 7.45pm - £100+10 - ROE - 1 re-entry - 10k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Sunday 26th - 4.00pm - £200+20 - PLO8 - 1 re-entry - 15k Starting Stack - 30 minute levels

Needless to say, I will be doing my utmost to attend the PLO8 event, work and real life commitments being the only excuses, and I really want to encourage anyone and everyone who reads this blog to attend as many events as you can. With a nice spread of buyins there should be an affordable tournament for any bankroll. Even if a £100 is a bit outside of your normal buyin, consider it a once in a while treat. I will try to get down there for as many events as possible and expect a trip report for the PLO8. Thank you to the Victoria Casino and Grosvenor Casinos for putting on this series and hopefully we can get enough numbers out to convince them to run these kind of events more often.

Link to full schedule here.

Live O8 Events, or lack there of.

I'm a big advocate of trying to get as many live O8 MTTs scheduled as possible, especially ones that I could possibly attend! Over in the States, PLO8 is spread pretty wide which is understandable given how many more card rooms and live players they have. However, over here in Europe the game is pretty much bound to the big festivals and recently, we haven't even being seeing those!

Around two/three years ago when the Fox Poker Club opened here in London, they a schedule that included a monthly £45 PLO8 event. Personally, I couldn't have been more thrilled and I tried to get down to as many of these tournaments as I could. Unfortunately, over the months numbers dwindled compared to their NLHE counterparts and it was changed to a bi-monthly event. Eventually it was dropped all together. In the UK, nothing has even come close to this since. 

I created a thread on the TwoPlusTwo O8 forum about the lack of O8 events at EPT Festivals and it caught the eye of NeilJ, the PokerStars representative for live events. He was actually quite keen to spread the game and at a few stops, most notably EPT Prague in seasons 9 and 10, an NLO8 event was added which proved to be a success. Prior to the recent EPT London, two O8 events were scheduled but unfortunately one of those was changed to a PLO event shortly before. The EPT Deauville schedule was released recently and zero O8 events would be taking place and, even more worringly, at the PCA currently ongoing in the Bahamas, which is supposedly the biggest poker festival outside of the WSOP, there is only one event which is a Big "O", a discipline the O8 community generally dislikes. I don't want to just single out PokerStars, they just happen to run the biggest festivals, the GUKPT, SPT, APAT etc all don't seem to want to give O8 events a chance. 

I know I come from a greatly biased standpoint but I can't see why O8 couldn't be a success in the live arena. If we take the example from online, the game is narrowly 3rd in popularity behind PLO and, of course, NLHE. There are three Red Label events per day, all of which garner huge numbers and three other Weekly Red Labels of differing stakes, which we very much thank PokerStars for. All online sites spread some form of O8 games and, in general, see good numbers. The game creates action, encourages a looser style preflop, which is good for the recreational player, and is very fun to play. 

Anyone reading this from the TwoPlusTwo Forum will know that I bring up the topic fairly often and probably am sounding like a broken record at the moment but I really want to see as much live O8 as a possibly can and will support the game whenever I can. Supposedly the Vic in London is running another Omaha Series as they did last year concluding with a £220 PLO8 event so if that is the case I will definitely be heading down to that. Aside from that I will keep campaigning for events at EPT festivals and other major tours and hopefully by the time EPT London comes around in October we could see multiple events, both PLO8 and NLO8. I urge the regs reading this to continue supporting the game, show the game to your friends and should there be a live event near you, to make your best efforts to play them. 

Thanks for reading my little rant guys, for those interested I will post the PCA and Deauville schedules below and should the Vic PLO8 event be going ahead I'll advertise it here. Til next time, good luck at the tables!

PCA

EPT Deauville

January Goals

What's up everybody! I hope you all enjoyed reading my 2014 goals post. If you haven't yet had a look then you can find it here! A lot of my monthly goals this year will relate to those yearly goals so be sure to check it out should anything I say here be a little confusing! So without further ado, let's get stuck in!

1, $2.5k Profit

Hoping to get 2014 off to a good start. Around $500 per week I think is a very attainable target given my stakes, volume and ROI. If I play smart and grind hard I should hit this no problem. Recently I've had a few deep turbo runs only to falter towards the end so I hope to put those near misses behind me, learn from them and finally take one down sometime this month.

2. Two Red Label Final Tables

I'm using this goal to refocus my efforts on the Red Label tournaments. Recently I've been busting these too cheaply in my opinion, either by getting it in on a flip way to early or wasting away a decent chip stack towards the bubble or soon after. I usually play 6 of these a day and with the Omania's only having small fields, I believe a solid player should be making the Final Tables of these fairly regularly.

3. At least one four-figure score

This definitely ties in with the points I made above about deep turbo runs and Red Label final tables. Although I've had some great results in the past few months, I've had no scores over $1k. The closest I came was a $950 score in the PLO8 $16t 2x Chance. I play so many tournaments a day where four-figure scores are available so if I can ride the variance and play well, a $1k+ score shouldn't be too far away. I'd say my best chances for this would be said $16t, the morning PLO8 Omania or possible a random micro stake turbo.

4. Have developed an organised system of what to do with tips

I pick up a couple of waiter shifts during the week and normally I make about the same from tips as I do from my wage. Unfortunately, while my wages go straight into my account, my tips normally stay in my pocket ready to be spent on whatever I fancy walking home. Even today, I've counted out the exact change to order some Chinese as soon as it opens! Goal starts tomorrow lol.

5. Have a full clean out of my flat and throw away as much as possible

I had my boiler fixed today and the plumber needed the closet completely cleared out so he could get to it. I have far too much junk. Correction, my girlfriend has far too much junk! I actually hate having too much stuff. I moved to London with just a backpack, that's genuinely all I needed. I need to spend one day this month having a total clean out of all the excess in this flat and actually make it look nice again.



So there you have it. A couple of Poker goals and a couple of Non-Poker related goals too! Who said Tales of a PLO8 Grinder had to be solely about PLO8 grinding! Let's make sure 2014 gets off to a great start! Hope January goes equally well for all of you too! Til next time, later y'all.

2014 Goals - Wish me luck!

So first of all I'd like to apologize for this post being slightly late. I know goals posts and threads are usually put up before the year has started but I really wanted to get these right as I fully intend on maintaining and achieving everything I set out this year. So far in my poker career, barring my initial miracle bink the first time I played, my results have improved year on year and despite having a very good 2013, I fully intend on continuing this run into 2014. So without further ado, here are my goals for the year!

Poker:

1. $30,000 online profit as recorded on Official Poker Rankings

Last year I unofficially set myself an approximate goal of $25k total profit. I ended up making just under $20k which I was actually very happy with. This year I feel I'm a much better player, I have a much better schedule and I am altogether much more focused on poker and thus $30k genuinely should be attainable

2. £5,000 live profit

Up until now I haven't really ventured too much into the live arena but recently the Hippodrome here in London announced a weekly £100 PLO tournament at their Pokerstars Poker Room so I'm hoping this will be a springboard into a better live poker career. I hope soon to separate some living funds to create a live bankroll which should also allow me to track my results better too.

3. To become a regular at the $55 level

I've always mentioned that I want to move up the levels and eventually become a mid-stakes MTT reg and this is the next step up. There's only one PLO8 and one PLO $55 that run during the schedule (two on Saturdays) but I'd like to play up to these games and show a profit on them long term.

4. Take 15 "shots" at Weekly Majors

This includes the Sunday Million, Weekly PLO8, Weekly PLO and possibly the Weekly NLO8. The satellite schedule for weeklies aren't great but there are still soft enough $3r's and maybe if I continue to progress through the levels then weekly shot taking could become part of my stake package. I know the games are tough and it's a long shot to become a long term winner in these but these tournament's have huge prize pools so bink potential is there.

5. Play one live "Main Event"

Building upon my earlier goal, I feel a good way to progress with my live career would be to play a tour main event. Obviously a £5k EPT Main is a little far fetched but the UKIPT run £700-£1ks, the GUKPT run £1ks. There's also the other small tours like the SPT which have £200-300s, APATs have £100-200s and other one's pop up continuously. I'll keep an eye out for events near to me and take appropriate shots based on the "live" bankroll.

Non Poker:

1. Maintain a running average of 100 readers per day

This might be a low number but on the days that I don't write a post or mention the blog on the forums or Twitter, the readership is actually very small. Granted this is a personal blog and the subject matter is a little niche but I still hope to increase the readership and hopefully make many more contacts within the poker community.

2. Have an actual grind setup

Currently I'm grinding on my 17" laptop, using the touch pad because my mouse is broken and sitting in a chair which if described as "uncomfortable" would be a great compliment. I don't particularly want an office to grind in as I'd never want to be completely shut off from my girlfriend in the apartment but I'd like to have a space for maybe a little desk with a purpose made grind PC. It wouldn't need to be spectacular or to cost very much but I really think it would help my game, especially multi-tabling.

3. Organise and structure my time more efficiently

I've never been much of an organised person, I've gotten a little better as I've aged and I'm far and away more organised than all of my Uni friends but compared to the rest of the planet, I'm pretty bad. My normal schedule is to wake up "whenever", shower "whenever", eat "whenever" and start grinding at 3.30, ish. Obviously sleep schedules have to be a little fluid when you play poker but I'd like to at least try to wake up before 9am every day and actually plan out days. Hopefully a little routine will improve my mental game.

4. Improve my writing skills

As many of you have probably guessed, I'm not much of a writer. I always took Maths and Science based subjects and throughout my time at Uni I only wrote 2 full papers, and even then, scientific writing is a completely different kettle of fish. Hopefully just writing here often will do a lot but I'd like to be a little more proactive about it, maybe read a few books and watch some videos.

5. Start "saving"

So after all the profit goals I've set out I should have some money floating about. As I'm getting older, I've become a little less frivolous with cash and I don't go out quite as often. That means I should have a little spare money to put away. I haven't got anything in particular on the horizon that I think I need to save for me if the few months after Uni without a job taught me anything it's that having a little extra cash tucked away can be a great help.

So there's my goals for the next year ahead. I hope reading these will inspire some of you guys to think about your own goals and I wish you all the best with them. There has to be a huge N.B. with this list though. I am still on the hunt for a full time career and should I begin one with absurd hours then poker will have to come second and I won't be able to put in my full time and effort. All the best for 2014 and feel free to leave a comment with your goals or even what you think about mine! Later everyone!

2013 - Year in Review!

Well what a year it's been! Honestly I can't believe how fast it's gone by, it only feels like yesterday that I was sat in my old flat frantically studying for the exam that I was about to have on January 6th and counting the seconds until I could get back to a serious grind. 2013 started pretty much as abysmally as it possibly could have been since then things have mainly gone well as far as general life has been concerned, but poker-wise I've gone from strength to strength and thankfully the year was my most profitable yet!

So this time last year I was pretty miserable. My apartment had been broken into and my laptop stolen so I wasn't able to play poker. I was just about to taken my first set of exams for a course that I hated and generally things weren't so great. In fact, after looking over an old 2p2 thread about people setting goals for 2013, my old goal was "To get a computer and play poker again". Well, I succeeded!

As far as results have been concerned, I'm pretty happy with the year. I made by far my biggest score in poker, chopping the Hotter 11 in April for $11k, I diversified into more games, most notably becoming a winner in PLO MTTs, and I had my biggest winning year so far, almost $20k profit according to OPR at a solid 50% ROI across at games.

What I'm most happy about is the great improvement to my mental game. In previous years and months I had been very prone to tilt and negative thoughts, so much so that I genuinely believed that I was going to have a losing session even before I'd loaded up a single table, and obviously the prediction would more often than not come true. I went on a pretty long downswing after my Hotter 11 score and there were times that I never thought I'd come out of it, that maybe my Poker career was over. But thankfully, I managed to snap out of it. I started talking to many more grinders and their success and drive encouraged me to refocus and work on my game. I changed the games I was playing, stuck to a solid schedule and cut out a lot of outside distractions while grinding. It paid off so much and I now feel really confident going into 2014.

I'm also excited about expanding into PLO MTTs. Although I love PLO8 MTTs and I'll never stop playing them, the game definitely has a shelf life, and the tournaments will never get to the kind of sizes we see all the time in NLHE. PLO, on the other hand, genuinely has the ability to become as popular and thus getting a head start on the rest of the field and becoming adept at the game is a must. There is a ton of value in the game currently and I know that it's popularity will only increase with time.

The finishing touches are being put on my 2014 goals post and it should be posted very soon. I keep meaning to publish it but almost every day I manage to think of something else I want to add to the list. The January goals post will be out soon too, hopefully I lot earlier than I managed with the December post. It is a bit of a wonder how I managed to turn in every single one of my university assignments on time for 5 years! Until then, I hope 2013 was equally great for all of you and that 2014 brings you everything you hope for! Good luck all!