My Top 3 Scores

As a little celebration of hitting my $100k badge on PocketFives, I thought I'd take a trip down memory lane and share with you guys my best scores online. All three tournaments were a fair while ago so I may have forgotten a few of the small details but in general I think I can remember the interesting points as, with good reason, all three were pretty big moments in my poker career. I'd love to hear some of your reactions in the comments below as I know some readers who aren't tournament grinders may think that these numbers are huge and others who have been around the block may laugh at me being proud of these modest scores. So without further ado, let's get to it.

1. $11,586 - 3rd Hotter 11 NLHE Turbo

So by far and away my biggest score ever was this Hotter 11 score just over one year ago. I actually chopped the tournament three-handed as the chip leader but soon after I 3-bet jammed over the BTNs min open with A5s and called off with TT and held to cripple me. The next hand I got in whatever random two cards I had and busted.

Obviously I ran absurdly well to make it through the almost 10,000 runner field and nothing summed the run up better than a hand on the final table bubble. As you do in turbos, I ran a little card dead with about 18 left and by the time we were down to 10 players, I only had about 6-7BBs. I picked up QJo in the small blind which is normally an any two shove so I was very happy to pick up a real hand. I was less happy though when the big blind snap called and tabled AQs. I bricked the flop and turn but binked the beautiful Jack on the river. That pot gave me a solid stack for the final table which I managed to ride all the way to the final three.

I remember sitting in my front room on the sofa next to my girlfriend, one-tabling the tournament as I'd become uber focused and nervous about the possibility of this big cash. Every time I played a pot I practically held my breath until the hand was over. When I finally busted after we made the deal I just sat back in shock and disbelief. My girlfriend, who'd been railing the whole time, asked me over and over if I was sure that I'd just won real money!

It was a truly great moment in my poker career and I really will have to go some to eclipse that feeling in the future, but I definitely hope I get the chance to.

2. $3,977 - 1st $11 NLHE Turbo 


Unlike the Hotter 11 which I one-tabled for hours and really did sweat, this score sort of came by surprise. Most Euro grinders will be very aware of the late night $11 $18k GTD turbo which comes near the end of most peoples schedules. It does tend to be a bit reg heavy, or at least heavier than the average turbo, but there's still more than enough recreational players to make it profitable.

On this particular night I remember having a pretty miserable evening's grind and my table count was pretty low by the time the tournament actually started. About an hour into the tournament I'd busted everything else and I didn't actually have a big stack so I took the laptop to bed and watched a bit of TV. If I'm brutally honest with myself I'd say I definitely didn't pay full attention to the tournament until we were down to about the final 100. 

I caught a wonderful heater and rode it all the way to heads up. Normally in a tournament like this I'd be begging for a deal but for some reason this time I just carried on playing without thinking about it. Maybe I was a bit tired or possibly I'd focused so much on not letting the money get to me that I'd completely forgotten about it. Afterwards I noticed that the difference between first and second was over $1k so I'm definitely glad I managed to take it down. A few grinders railed the final table and pointed out a few mistakes I made, including the final hand which I didn't particularly play well, but my opponent played worse. It involved me three-betting the flop with top pair weak kicker and the villain calling down with second pair. I was happy nonetheless.


3. $3,296 - 1st $5 NLHE 2R1A 

Now this tournament was memorable in two ways. Firstly, it was a big score in a non-turbo NLHE tournament, which traditionally aren't my forte, even though I do actually do a lot of work to improve in them. Secondly. I didn't actually want to play it!

The tournament started pretty late on in the schedule and by the end of the rebuy period, the average stack was somewhere near 200BBs, so I knew that going deep would require a LONG night. Thus I decided to go big or go home. I played near enough every hand, making wild three-bets and overbet jamming flops left and right, in an attempt to either build a huge stack or bust. Fortunately for me, it turned out to be the former. My stack rarely dipped under 100BBs for the whole tournament, even at the final table. I tightened up a bit towards the late stages but once I still tried to maintain the hyper-aggressive tactics that had got me that far.

The tournament eventually finished at around 5am, so even though usually I can't sleep after a big score, or even anything exciting poker-wise, I fell right to sleep and celebrated the next afternoon.

So there was a little fun post for you guys. I've been told that the "Top x" lists I've done in the past were pretty interesting and the reader numbers seem to back that up, and most of all I quite like writing them, so it's a win all round. It's been fun to take a trip down memory lane but I think now it's time to get back to the grind and start adding to the next "Top 3 Scores" list, and with SCOOP just about to begin, I'll have many chances to do just that. Good luck to all my fellow grinders for the next few weeks and I hope not too many bankrolls are destroyed. Speak to you all soon!

Top 5 things I KNOW I'm doing wrong!

I read a blog post on PartyPoker's site recently where numerous UK Online Pros gave their thoughts on the best tips they could give on how to be a successful online player. These weren't strategy tips i.e. 3-bet more in position etc, but more on the poker lifestyle and mindset and how to prepare yourself to win at the game. It got me thinking not only about which of their tips I was already doing but about those I was not as well as many others. So without further ado, here are the top 5 things I KNOW I'm doing wrong.

1. Playing Tired

Over the past couple of months I have worked really hard on getting a routine in place and organising an actual schedule of when I play poker.  It's helped me to treat poker more like a job and to take it more seriously, however, it does have it downsides. Much like a real job, if you feel tired or ill, you feel compelled to still play, especially as you feel that you miss value by not playing. Unfortunately, this isn't the case. Again, much like real life, you performance is greatly hampered by feeling tired and the usual win rate just doesn't exist. As a poker player, I am blessed that if I am tired, I am not forced to play and I think I should take that one day off to recover and feel fresh, rather than continuing on and maybe playing 3-4 days straight tired.

2. Chasing Losses

I think every poker player out there has felt this at some point. You have maybe two or three losing days in a row and then suddenly you're not thinking fully about winning the tournament you're playing, what you're actually thinking is where in the tournament you need to finish in order to get back to even. It's a truly terrible mindset to be in. The focus of every tournament I play should be to win, end of. I spend a lot of time working on my mindset and this is just the next hurdle to overcome.

3. Holding onto small stacks

This is a lesson that I've taken off some of the well known NLHE grinders. There comes a stage when the tables start to build up and it's hard to focus equally on each one. It's at this point that I start to build up 10BB and less stacks on some of the smaller tournaments approaching the late stages. It's in situations like this where I should be getting aggressive and attempting to shove and reshove my chips in order to build a decent stack, after all, I'm aiming for first, not a min cash. I know that keeping my eye out for spots like this will get me to more final tables and increase my ROI, even if I bubble tournaments a little more often.

4. Not paying full attention

Again, a problem I'm sure other grinders out there experience. I have a pretty short attention span at the best of times, so grinding for hours on end gets somewhat monotonous after a while and I tend to resort to watching TV as well or sometimes even playing other games. Needless to say this is diverting my attention away from the tables and directly affecting my bottom line. To combat this I've recently bought a pair of high quality, noise cancelling headphones and put together a super long grinding playlist that should keep my focus on the tables. I'm always for looking for new tunes to add by the way so feel free to suggest your favourites!
5. Autopiloting

This is somewhat different to not paying attention. Even when I am focused on the tables, I tend to get into a stretch where I genuinely am just clicking buttons. It's a mindset that's easier to get into with Omaha games which is a lot more dependent on showdowns and making the nuts. I definitely can tell when I've been doing it for a while, at which point I snap out of it and start thinking about each hand again but I'm still not entirely certain how to eliminate it all together. Hopefully some of you other grinders have experienced similar and can give me some advice!

As you can still see, I'm working on trying to eradicate these issues from my game but it's a long old slog. At least the first stage of identifying the issues is out the way, so I can work on techniques to focus more and improve my bottom line. Hopefully this helps some of you who feel that you're doing the same thing. That's it for now, so good luck at the tables and I'll speak to you all soon!

January Goals Review

It's that time of the month! Hmm, maybe that wasn't the best choice of words for the intro..... Anyway, it's time to review my January goals. No point in messing around, let's just get into it!

1, $2.5k Profit

In a nutshell, this goal got crushed! Not only did I hit the $2.5k goal that I set myself, but I almost doubled it. Even without the TCOOP score which in itself was almost enough to make the goal, I would have hit it, just through solid grinding. That in itself is a great mental boost as it tells me that it wasn't just by luck that I managed to surpass my profit target for the month.

2. Two Red Label Final Tables

Huge success, solely due to the morning $16.50 PLO8 Omania. In total this month I final tabled the tournament three times, one outright win, one chop and a ninth. I think the Omania is the softest tournament on PokerStars right now due to it's start time and, obviously, the fact that it's a game very little of the field have experience with. It plays relatively deep in the early and middle stages which gives me the opportunity to apply pressure to weaker players and consistently build large stacks to take into the shallower late stages. Hopefully I can continue my great run in this tournament in February.

3. At least one four-figure score

Another success! I wrote a post a few days ago about my deep run in the TCOOP PLO8 event on the blog so I won't go into too much detail on it. If you'd like to read about the run you can find my post here. The score was for $2,163, which definitely qualifies as a four-figure score. The two Omania ships just managed to scrape under the four-figure threshold, both scores were for around $990 so if I didn't make the TCOOP run then this paragraph would probably be trying to convince you that they count!

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

I'm not sure whether to quantify this as a success or not. I keep tips and spare cash in a pot on my window sill, and although I don't simply dip in whenever I fancy a drink or something, I have tended to use it every time I need to top up my Oyster Card when I'm going somewhere. So although it's not an organised system, I'm counting "used as emergency on-hand" cash as an acceptable use. Recently the pot has never had more than about £20 in it but should it build up the goal may have to be revisited.

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

Well, not everything can't go to plan, this was a massive bust. As I write this I'm staring at a pile of empty suitcases which we had pulled out because we went away for the weekend, and now I have no idea where they're going to go. Why would two people need seven suitcases? It's a  wonder. I definitely need to get around to achieving this goal in the next few days.


So there you have it, a pretty successful January wrapped up in a nutshell. Just putting the finishing touches on February's goals so they should be up, probably by tomorrow. I've also got a fair bit of travelling to do in the next few days so chances are I'll use the opportunity to write a few posts. Until then, good luck and the tables and I'll 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!

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!

December Mini Goals - Round Up!

It's that time of the month folks, and no I'm not in a bad mood! For those of you who haven't yet read my December goals post you'll be able to find it here! This months goals post was a mini edition because I was a little busy for the first week or so, but nevertheless, they gave me something to work towards. So without further ado, here's how I got on!

1. 2.5k Profit

Well I slightly missed with this one. A few things got in the way, like Christmas and falling ill for the last week of the month as well, but I still managed to put up slightly under $2k profit for the month, however it's still the 31st so you never know, there could be one last 2013 bink to be had! I felt like I wasn't playing too well in certain places but thankfully after reviewing the offending hands, I know exactly what the faults were and so hopefully I've learnt my lessons and will put it right.

2. Ship either the $5r PLO8 or the $3r PLO

Success! This past Sunday I chopped the $5r for a touch under $700. Actually on the same day I had a deep run in the $3r as well but came agonizingly close to the final table after my Aces couldn't hold in a pretty big pot to finish in 9th spot. I actually had the chip in in the PLO with 2 tables left but took the bum end of a few set ups to lose a chunk of chips. I ran pretty well in a couple of key spots in the PLO8 but otherwise I really felt in the zone and thought I made some great reads and plays. These two tournaments really are the softest on my evening schedule and every time I load up either, I feel like I'm going to win it. I feel very comfortable in the chip accumulation stages regardless of whether I'm picking up hands or not so believe I'm putting myself in some great spots to take them down should I run well. I also had 2 other final table finishes in the $5r this month so overall my ROI in these tournaments have been incredible this month, let's hope it continues.

3. Satellite into a Weekend Major

Another success! Also this past Sunday, yes I had a very good day, I managed to satellite into the Sunday Million from the regular $11 turbo Mega Satellite that Stars run just prior to the start. I've started to play a few more satellites this month and I'm really learning some interesting strategies, especially in the turbos. Normally in the turbo games, I try to take all the +cEV spots I can take while only making ICM considerations at the final table or just before. In these, I'm having to completely rethink my process and continually adjust based on whether I think I'll make it in or not. Regularly the average stack when the bubble bursts is close to 2BBs or lower, so survival becomes everything. If you believe you have enough blinds and antes to make it in based on a quick prediction then you literally should be playing 0 hands. It may sound pretty obvious but this lesson cost me a few dollars to learn. I didn't manage to cash the Sunday Million this time unfortunately, I ran QQ into AA BB vs BTN, but hopefully I'll be able to satellite into some more events next year and make a go of it then. In fact TCOOP is just around the corner.

So overall, 2 out of 3 goals isn't bad and I didn't actually miss the first one by much so I'm actually very happy with how the month went. Every day I play I can feel my game improving and having these goals to work towards actively encourages me to work that much harder. January's goals will be written up shortly but, more importantly, my 2014 set of goals has been finalized and I hope to be uploading them very soon. I've been pretty ambitious with what I've set for the forthcoming year but I suppose that's the whole point! I hope December went equally well for everybody else and I hope to see many of you at the tables in January!

$11 180 man PKOs - The Goldmine

As promised, I'm just going to give you guys some of my thoughts about these new SnGs now spread on PokerStars. I won't go too deep into strategy because I'm still not too sure myself about what works the best, I'm still testing out push/folding ranges.

First off all, for those of you who haven't played a PKO yet, this is how it goes. The buy-in is split into the regular prize pool and a bounty, much like in regular bounty tournaments. In the case of the $11s, $5 goes toward the prize pool and $5 towards the bounty, and of course, $1 as rake. Now here comes the tricky part. When you knock a player out, you receive half their bounty value while the other half is added to your bounty. For example, if you were to knock a player out on the first hand, you would receive $2.50 straight into your account, and your own bounty will increase to $7.50. SkyPoker have actually used this system for a while for their own bounty tournaments.

The main reason why these tournaments are so profitable at the moment is because the regs seem to be avoiding them, but I can't understand why. As soon as you introduce the word "bounty" into a tournament, the fish just flock to it. And it's because of these fish that are so narrow minded and solely focused on taking bounties that their calling ranges are so well defined. Basically, if the fish has you covered, you can shove pretty much any marginally strong hand and expect to be called by near enough any 2 cards. In the past week I've seen over 50BB shoves snap called by hands such as Q2o, 65s and much much worse. You can tell who this kind of fish are within around 10 hands at the table, and better yet if you have HEM, you don't even have to pay attention, it'll flag them up for you.

Then all of a sudden the situation is completely reversed when the fish get short, they become absurdly passive. Especially around the bubble, the fish decide to call 80/90% of hands pre-flop only to play fit or fold poker on the flop, it makes for very each chip accumulation.

It's a combination of these two factors that have got me thinking that a loose aggressive small ball strategy, if that makes sense, is best. Even with a short stack, I believe that min-raises pre with a very wide range followed by 1/3rd pot flop c-bets are the best way to go around these tournaments. A decent push/fold game can still work but it needs to be altered to take into account the serious drop in fold equity, e.g. 98s and similar hands become less valuable when shoving but are worth opening, even with less than 15BB stacks.

Well there's a few of my thoughts on the games, it maybe wasn't the most structured post in the world but hopefully it gave you guys a little insight into what I'm thinking at the moment, which is kind of the point of a blog! But that's enough writing for now, it's time to jump in and crush the games. Good luck to all you grinders and I'll speak to you all soon!