Likey's Blog

My motivation and passion for the game is back which is great however I seem to be coming to a crossroads lately with what to do.

On one hand I have a burning desire to improve in cash games mainly because I see it as a consistent way to make money and even more when moving up the levels (hopefully), I would be very content to be beating the top end of SSNL and if I could beat the game at even the bottom end of MSNL for a decent winrate of ~2BB/100 over a large sample each year I’d be a very happy man! I’m a long way from that so I won’t worry too much about that for now.

On the other hand I would like to get back into the tournament scene again, it was how I’ve grown my bankroll and it seems to be where the value is at the moment since the cash games have dried up somewhat. Don’t get me wrong, there is still money to be made in cash games but it takes a lot more work than tournaments I think. I sort of regret not pursuing the tournament path when it was all going well for me in 2009 but I did learn a lot from going down the ring game path too, which I am grateful for despite not winning from it.

For the foreseeable future I have decided to ban myself from watching TV shows, it may seem extreme but so is watching an entire season over a weekend! So enough of the TV show binge, it’s time to use that time for more productive activities like grinding, studying and regular visits to the gym. As a treat, I could watch a movie or two but definitely won’t be watching TV shows for a while.

My router at home seem to have fried recently so whilst waiting for a replacement router I think I’ll be spending more time doing some studies this weekend, I’m out most of Saturday but will try cram some study time when I get home in the evening. What I will also do is just not go on the Internet on certain days or have blocks of time in the evening where I will remain off-line to study so I don’t have distractions. Time seems to go really quickly when I have my Internet browser open and it’s worrying as I don’t feel I’ve done anything productive!

Another thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I don’t take downswings very well, in fact it’s so bad that it completely stops me from wanting to play hence why I stopped for over half a year! I need to work out how to combat this and push on – at the end of the day Time is Money and I need to stop wasting it!

Big oops for 2010 – I planned a big productive year and had high hopes but that didn’t go according to plan. In essence this is what happened…

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, each year I played poker I made more than the previous year in winnings so was hoping that would be the case again for 2010. One of my biggest aims was to grind 300,000 VPPs on Stars starting from May and if it went well do like 600,000 VPPs in 2011 and go for SNE in 2012 (very ambitious I know!). I created a spreadsheet to see how I would do depending on my winrate and was expecting to play at least a million hands this year, even at a modest winrate it was worthwhile.

To help me with this I was debating whether or not to hire a life coach. I was speaking with Wazz about life coaches and he recommended a good one to me so I got in contact and met the guy, the chat went really well but I hadn’t made a decision yet (bankroll nit alert) and said I’d get back to him after my honeymoon. The reason for the life coach was to help with motivation and to keep me on track throughout the year, I’ve always had problems with completing projects that I start so figured this would be a great investment. If I could be cured of this then surely I’d be successful in anything I wanted to pursue providing I put in the hard work and followed it through. He asked me what 3 mini goals I’d like to have for the year and I mentioned poker, keeping fit and studying for IT exams which I think is a good balance as the goals themselves complement each other well.

At the time, I maintained Supernova status but lost that whilst on my honeymoon in the Maldives back in April. I ran good due to the volcanic ash cloud in Iceland as all flights were grounded which meant I got an extra week’s holiday all paid for by British Airways. However, it also meant I lost Supernova so I emailed SteveD whilst I was out there and negotiated a deal to get me back on track for when I got back in the UK. I tried but couldn’t meet the target he proposed so ended up giving up on the mega grind, mainly because I lost Supernova but also because I wasn’t even winning at the tables so felt like I was just being a rakeback pro for the year. So in short – I gave up before I even started.

I took a massive long break of around 7 months where I didn’t play cash, in-between that time I decided to play a few live tournaments at International Club and just chilled, watched loads of TV shows/movies , browsed websites or caught up with friends. Getting away from the Supernova grind definitely felt good as it was like a big weight lifted from my shoulders, the same sort of feeling when you’ve passed all your exams and it’s the end of the semester or something. So for now, I’M A FREE BITCH, BABY!

In hindsight, I should walk before I run because I feel all this grinding has ruined my learning curve as I was essentially being impatient by playing more tables and moving up to stakes that I couldn’t handle. Recently I got the motivation to start playing again and this time I’m looking to work a lot harder on my game than before. You can check out my new journey on EMS forum: Likey 2.0

To conclude, I want to mention that BlackShuck has successfully reached Supernova Elite status for 2010 and this has been an amazing achievement and shows what hard work can do for you. He is a big inspiration to me and his fellow EMSers, hopefully he’ll continue to guide us to where we want to be because he is our biggest hero!

Happy New Year everyone! All the best to all you people who have set goals and challenges for yourselves.