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June 7, 2012
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I'm a real decision point right now…come Feb 1 2013 do i take my smallest of 5 figure roll(unless I bink something in the meantime) and have a go at it FT online?
I think Yes…..wow…I have some planning to do…I've been quiet on this forum since i joined but expect more crappy questions, paragraphs on me levelling myself and other degen nonsical stories.
Good problem to have
Sam
Upswing potential is huge
TPE Management
April 6, 2010
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ive always been a big believer in chasning the dream! Plan it out, be smart about it (set aside living expenses, etc) and GO FOR IT!
May 31, 2012
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almost in the same situation.
go for it! what's the worst that can happen? you might be looking for a new job in a couple months .. so what? It's not really a big risk to take.
June 1, 2012
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Best of luck man.
On a sensible note, just try and make sure you pay rent/bills etc.
On a non sensible note, start off by playing the super tuesday!! 🙂
TPE Management
April 6, 2010
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mcgcanwin2 said:
Best of luck man.
On a sensible note, just try and make sure you pay rent/bills etc.
On a non sensible note, start off by playing the super tuesday!! 🙂
June 7, 2012
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mcgcanwin2 said:
On a non sensible note, start off by playing the super tuesday!! 🙂
Whats this?
Upswing potential is huge
July 10, 2012
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The Super Tuesday is a tournament on Pokerstars. The buy in is 1k 🙂
October 6, 2010
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June 7, 2012
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Ok…been an interesting couple weeks for me. Have decided to plan now to play full time from around Feb 1 2013.
One of things offered by my work is a directioneering live coaching piece to help the 500 odd employees get employment elsewhere or even start their own business etc. Think resumes, Linkedin profiles, business plans for start ups etc. Now…the look on my personal consultants face when he asked…”So Sam, where do you see your next challenge”? epic lol face one time. Should have had a camera with me
In all seriousness, i actually decided to give this guy a shot (cost the company like 15K per person) and we're working together on a tweaked business plan to suit and its framing up quite nicely. I'm close to locking down what my schedule would look like, I also sorted myself a really exciting coaching program and now spending time planning the units of time that will sit around poker….from a moral compass/good for the soul type perspective when i'm NOT playing poker I will be spending time doing charity, volunteer, mowing lawns for friends and friends of friends and shit like that…really looking forward to have the opportunity to accomplish all of this
Poker recently has been weird mentally with chunks of my C game showing up. Been working on keeping my headspace in A game mode and also starting a process to activate this on command via neurological triggers…an exciting concept that the directioneering guy suggested and bedding it in now….rationalising A game mode and switching it on on command…way beyond saying….ok Sam…time to play your best lol. I suspect it will take at least 6 months to bed in.
So yea….2013 bay be we're on like donkey kong. I have a massive step goal of getting enough roll or luckboxing a Satty for 2013 WSOP ME….that’s what its all about ay!
Benny – Are you going to APL Main Event again in Feb? TPE AU Meet up?
Upswing potential is huge
October 6, 2010
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not sure i can make it this time mate, going to be a bit time poor next year. trying to save up my leave days and cash for a europe holiday later next year.
but am hoping to make a quick trip across for the aussie millions event 1
December 7, 2012
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Best of luck with this Sam. I’m not quite ready to give up work yet, but I’m working towards a goal of supplementing my income by $10k next year, then more the year after, etc..
Just curious about which games you are looking to grind as your “bread & butter”?
Obv it would be nice to bink a big MTT score, but I’m interested in what stakes/games you’re looking at.
Best of luck with it, and make sure you keep all of us wannabe grinders updated.
June 7, 2012
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Shutup Dorn said:
Best of luck with this Sam. I'm not quite ready to give up work yet, but I'm working towards a goal of supplementing my income by $10k next year, then more the year after, etc..
Just curious about which games you are looking to grind as your “bread & butter”?
Obv it would be nice to bink a big MTT score, but I'm interested in what stakes/games you're looking at.Best of luck with it, and make sure you keep all of us wannabe grinders updated.
Thanks for the support bra. My bread and butter will most likely be small/mid stakes MTT's…everything from the push/fold 3.30 rebuy 180 man on stars to the Big 33.
Will also spend a bunch of time on sattelites to Aussie Millions/WSOP APAC 2013 and WSOP 2013 Vegas. I love live poker and will be really looking for an oppurtinity to travel to major live events throughout the year for cheap
Upswing potential is huge
June 7, 2012
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ok…freaking out a bit now. Around 4 weeks till i leave my cushy 9-5 (been more like 10-3 lately if you know what i mean) and now busy preparing for the online grind full time! Been busy prepping technology stuff like skype headsets, parallels/office for my mac as well as padding out the other non poker activties like gym memberships and locking down some regular charity work for moral bank balance stuff. Uber exciting!
I put in a ton of volume over thjeChristmas break but no big scores…i was like 20% ITM but zero final tables so meh…tilted me for a week but over it now. I won a 3.50 rebuy on stars last month and immediatty assumed i knew how to push fold lol but jsut found myself spewing consistently in mid stages of all the Stars Bigs tourney's. Assumed fold equity…I sorta got addicted to shoving 9/10 suited to any raiser when i had <22BB's…didnt reallty work out. Live also cost me a ton in the last month as a shot a few bullets at teh Sydney Summer series and surrounding cash tables.
Anyway…more detail and degen stories to come next month when we get down to business. Hopefully i make it to Vegas this year for WSOP!
Sammy K
Upswing potential is huge
May 31, 2012
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updates?
June 7, 2012
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Waddup TPE hood nation!
Well…what an interesting couple of months it has been for me, where do i start…
Not sure if i mentioned before but as soon as i started playing full time also started the coaching/padawan program with Daryl Jace…3 mins with this guy and it dawned on me on how much I didnt know about poker, humbling, scary and exciting all at the same time.
The worst thing happened in my first week of full time grind..i got like 7th or something in the 221R1A for like 2K at a reg heavy final table so confidence was super high,so over the coarse of the following 6 weeks I basically just plowed/spewed my way through so many MTT's and before I knew it my 2K net was gone and then some. I assumeed that my already established auto pilot game was profitable at mid stakes when in reality, it wasnt. Took me till like April to figure that out, sigh.
I went to the WSOP APAC in Melbourne and played the opening accumalator. On my table day 1 table was Daniel “Shippityship” Nielson, Mike Leah (Ivey pro now?) and Tollgate. There was also an aussie TPE memeber in seat 1 but cant remember his name (Jason?)..my bad…Anyway, I was shitting myself and grinning all at the same time. With Nielson to my left I knew that I just had to have it so I just played solid TAG. I river hero called a local Aussie player (toothpick tony) with A4d on a Q high four card heart board in like level 3 for value so from then on in really wasnt picked on and my 3 bets were respected by the table which is good. One suck out and one flopped book with AA late in day 1 meant I made it into day 2 with 16K, 25BB's. Watching these powerhouse players all day was an awesome lesson in poker for me primarily around rangeing and bet sizing. Anyway even though i managed to build my stack my playing solid TAG on day 1 the spewy sicko in me came out on day 2 and eneded up reshoving my 12BB stack from SB with J9o into a Helmuth button raise and off course he had it…6 spots off the money too which is kinda upsetting. My first bracelet event, and i pissed it away on a reshove spot when in reality i dont know anything about reshoves except from watching Casey do it in vids. Sigh.
Spending 1.5-3 hours a week with Daryl has been great..my game has changed dramatically and we both feel now that i have a foundation for long term profit…I'm in that awesome conciously semi-competent stage of learning and all i want to do is build volume on it and cement my newly learned thought processes, approach and overallall strategy.
Dont have the bankroll to go to Vegas this year unfortunately, but playing Australia Poker League WSOP satty (Pro Open) this weekend to try and bink. This particular satty is held once a month, 500 runners, winner take all WSOP ME package. Out of the last 18 times this even has run I have final tabled it 4 times and got 2nd twice fml…its a fun tournament as its basically just 6 hours of bubble abuse which suits my super agg spew game.
Anyway, taking the day off to study MTT math so better get back to it..sorry for the late reply/update…will be more vigilant going forward.
Upswing potential is huge
TPE Management
April 6, 2010
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good update, thanks for sharing!
June 7, 2012
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After an ok May run which finally put me back into the green, June has been awesome…..a perfect combination of plyaing good, running good and softer fields thanks to a bunch of regs in vegas for WSOP. Within a week I got a 1st and a 3rd in the Big 27 on Stars and a 5th in the Big 4.40 plus a bunch of other cashes and on track for a 10K+ month. Super excited!!!
Tigheting up calling ranges and having a process for 3 betting thats far more developed than my previous Jedi feel strategy has contributed heaps over the last month. Still gutted i'm not in vegas this year but now setting goals of getting to PCA 2014 as well as WSOP 2014 APAC and Vegas
The last couple days has been pretty shit though…after having such a massive week last week, it appears my mental hunger dropped over the last couple days…you know that relaxed feeling when you know that your not gonna be playing your case tourney buy in anytime soon…pretty pissed off at this one but working through it, real world problems
Also stoked that i reached one of my 2013 goals already and cracked the top 100 in Australian rankings on P5's….my follow up goal is to crack the top 10 by the end of 2014, pretty tough goal as the top ten is filled out by outstanding players such as Brendan Rubie, Matt Wakemen (mjw006), Onthemac, dong etc.
Catch ya later guys, any questions lemme know
Sam (runlikeyum on all sites)
Upswing potential is huge
June 7, 2012
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Just realised I forgot to update here….I'm back to a day job guys…for now. Below is my facebook rant to family and friends from late August this year
*********************************
19th August 2013;
Was it worth it? Have i failed? Is this the end? Sooo many questions rolling around my head as the harsh truth slowly dawned on me over the last month that my bankroll has not developed into something that Teenz and I can comfortably live off for an extended period of time.
Here are the numbers…1295 tournaments (Pokerstars, Full Tilt,Party Poker), 140K hands, 192 cashes, 47 final tables which included 5 wins, the biggest being 1st place in the Big 27 on Stars for just under 5.7K. After all that time my total net profit is $0.50…yep fifty cents. Attached is my Pokertracker graph for those interested.
Whilst the feeling of dejection surrounds me right now and I'm actually feeling quite bi-polar…for the longest time in my life i firmly believe that failure is a choice. This sounds cheesy but when I watched the Bruce Willis end of the world epic flick Armageddon at the movies when i was a kid in 99, one of the final lines delivered by sissy boy Ben wanker Affleck just before Bruce Willis blew up that evil asteroid to bits was this….Harry will do it, I know he will…HE DOESNT KNOW HOW TO FAIL. This ridiculous line from this ridiculous movie cemented a personal value that I base my life on today. I've spent my life trying to be that guy…the guy that doesn't fail, but I am struggling to feel overwhelmed with a feeling of success when the reality is, I need to get back to a “normal” job now to pay da bills, a key measure of success that I just can't ignore.
Positives….I actually genuinely feel like I now have enough knowledge to play poker for profit. This is a never ending journey off course as the game evolves. Over the past 6 months i have spent 3 hours of coaching per week with online pro Daryl Jace . We spent the first two months just on short stack shoving ranges and calling ranges based on Nash and just general experience of peoples calling ranges. We then spent a bunch of time on 3 betting, calling 3 bets in and out of position, who to 3 bet, who to 4 bet etc and then moved onto C betting, big blind defends and the importance of A or K blockers and how to use them. Without this knowledge I would have got murdered online and with this knowledge i feel like I can murder live poker given some run good. When i sat down at the Cas for the Wednesday night tourney in May after only playing online for 4 months my edge over the various tables i played at was huge…really surprised me. Live poker is so freakin soft. Also I didn't go broke…i started with 5K and now I have 5K and fifty cents….I'm feeling ok about this considering I spent over 20K in buys ins
Where did i go wrong? At the top of the list was my average field size. I never payed much attention to it before but after running a few reports i realised that my average field size I was playing was close to 4K entrants per tournament. To cut a profit with sizes this big you have to expect to go through 3-6 month downswings….winning 40 flips in one tournament is obv extremely difficult and is the one thing i regret over the last 6 months. My focus should have been only on tournaments with <1000 runners and then take my shots at the giant 10K+ runner tournaments on Sunday/Monday majors grind. Every day i went for the largest fields in micro and midstakes trying to post a bunch of epic 30K plus days…a good strategy if you have 1-2 years of time and bankroll up your sleeve but not suitable for me. I had like 6 shots at 30K wins over the last 6 months but either lost a flip or got sucked out on somewhere between 11th and 30th place every time, not a bad beat story…just the usual lack of running like God when it counted. I also occasionally struggled with bad habits creeping in at tense times as nervousness reintroduced my pre Daryl Jace game as all my new knowledge and wisdom learnt was and probably is still in that awesome stage of learning called Consciously Competent. A great stage to be in as long as you remain logical and rational…i'm not too upset with this one as there were MORE times where i stayed logical…there were only 4 times where i did something stupid at a crucial point for crucial money, but I can't just dismiss it….with the amount of variance in poker, you just can't afford to make any mistakes.
Recommendations for anyone looking at this line of work…work your ****ing asse off. I had to spend 30 mins every day before each session reviewing my short stack hands from the day before. the <15 big blind area is like a 3 foot putt in golf…it needs to be worked on every day to stay sharp. Get some coaching or a close network of good thinkers…realise that you suck at poker and do something about it. Don't ever think any situation in poker as “standard”…once you have a good grasp on the fundamentals, treat each poker hand as unique…coz in reality it actually is with almost infinite combinations of stack sizes, position, villain tendencies, ICM, image and table dynamics. Theres a reason why you see the best players in the world still take 1-2 mins to make a decision when its their turn…its not hollywood, TV time or scare tactics…there's a shit ton to think about in poker and thats what they're doing….thinking of all there variables and applying strategies that drip in risk management.
The most rewarding thing for me over the last 7 months wasn't any of my wins or various deep runs…it has actually been mentoring and coaching my wife Teenz in poker. I basically took Teenz through the same journey as Daryl did with me in parallel. For those in the APL scene I'm sure you have noticed the extra time and multiple results Teenz has put in over the last 6 months…she's a great student and feels me with pride hows she's been crushing the APL with multiple weekly wins, venue wins and cashes in 3/7 Pro Opens…one of then being a 2nd place! (Kennedy curse). I also tried to develop a coaching/learning plan with my mate Nima but due to a lack of time on my part, we could never get the ball rolling effectively. I would also like to thank Michael Kanaan and Aaron Benton for taking the time to talk with me multiple times over the last 6 months around the life on an Aussie Poker Pro. You guys crystallised a reality for me which is often blurred by pipe dreams that all pro's are millionaire ballers…reality is its a fucken grind and you need to love it to do it…and a bit of degen can help and hurt
So for now poker is stopped..paused..watever. My online accounts have been cleared to cover next months living expenses and over the next couple days I will develop a new plan. My previous trade is a Project Manager so obviously I will be creating a project plan for myself to execute on the next stage of my life/career…I need to agree on what my genuine requirements are with clear measures of success, i just haven't landed on what that is yet..perhaps its this very public declaration of mini-failure is the catalyst to enlightenment…I dunno, will let you know.
Thanks for taking the time to read this…time is the only true currency worth a damn in this world, don't waste it, go for your dreams…even if the only thing you have to show at the end is fifty cents…
…totally worth it
YumYum
Upswing potential is huge
June 7, 2012
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So two months later I am now working full time at Apple which is pretty sweet. The job is pretty cruisy and the people are great. I've been playing live MTT's every night and crushing…live is so soft…so soft.
Gonna spend a bunch of time on WSOP satties soon to get myself over to Vegas next year…cant wait
Upswing potential is huge
September 24, 2013
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An enjoyable read over your journey and certainly some good advice for those of us who are grinding away trying to improve day by day with the resources we have available to us; and I certainly liked your analogy with a <15 bb stack being like a 3ft putt in golf… Yes you certainly need to put in the time to remain confident in you stroke and with out a doubt confidence is a big driver in the game of poker.
GL, no doubt you will make another run and be so much wiser for the experience you have been through…
TPE Management
April 6, 2010
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runlikeyum said:
So two months later I am now working full time at Apple which is pretty sweet. The job is pretty cruisy and the people are great. I've been playing live MTT's every night and crushing…live is so soft…so soft.
Gonna spend a bunch of time on WSOP satties soon to get myself over to Vegas next year…cant wait
Good luck and hope to see you in Vegas!!
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