Chatting with the pros

Pud's Poker Progress / Matthew Pitt / 21 October 2008 / 4

After being woken up at 0400 by a Step Pud that would only go back to sleep in my bed and who then spent the next three hours doing a great Spinning Dervish impression, forcing me onto the bed frame with elbows, knees and toes in my ribs, I had an earlier start to my day than usual.

Having sorted Step Pud out with some breakfast and myself a huge mug of coffee, well I say coffee loosely as the Mrs bought that Mellowbirds crap and I need four spoonfuls to actually taste it or get a caffeine hit, I logged onto MSN to see if anyone else was online at the ungodly hour of 0700! One such person was my old mate Amatay.

Amatay quit his job a few months ago to become a professional poker fish. When he turned pro, he was a cash game player but I think grinding out the full ring games made him hate poker and he needed a change of pace so started playing MTT's. After a $17k winning month, he decided to stick with MTT's as his bread and butter and seems to be doing quite well so far.

I asked him why he was awake this early on a morning and if he'd had some deep runs in tournaments and he informed me that he simply could not sleep so was just surfing the net to tire himself out! During our chat, he was asking if I had played and what my bankroll was etc and we got talking about future plans for our games.

Mr Jones has always had faith in my game and always tells me that I am playing far too low for the poker skills I have. As we chatted I told him I have to set myself goals but I always get transfixed with the money side of things and then get really narked off when I fail to reach these goals and I start another daft challenge.

One thing he said to me was obvious and I do not know why I have not incorporated it before. We were talking about variance and how playing loads of volume is key to being successful as it equals everything out over time and Amatay suggested that I stop setting goals involving money and simply aim to play a certain amount of hours / hands / sit and goes within a timescale.

Setting goals related to money is stupid as you can find yourself stuck at the beginning of a challenge not to mention that we have no control over how much we win as we can play perfect poker and still lose. By aiming to play a certain amount of hands etc and play each one as good as the last is the best thing to do as I will still have something to aim for to keep me focussed and I am the one in control of whether I reach the goals or not.

Therefore, from now until midnight Sunday, I have set yet another goal and that is to play 60 HUSnG and play each of them to the highest standard I possibly can. I am simply bored to death of cash and every time I sit at the tables I seem to lose where with HU games I am always involved in a hand so do not become bored. It also helps that HUSnG have one of the lowest forms of variance as you only need to win 55% of your games to break even so the swings are not as insane as other forms of tournament poker. I will be playing a mixture of the $10 and $20 games and fingers crossed I will run like God from the off!

I hope that I will have some interesting hands for you at my next update and also have completed my first challenge ever, hahahah!

Until next time, thanks for reading and best of luck at the tables!

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Cell 1919 | 23 October 2008

Have you tried the Double or Nothing SnG?

A bit more interesting than heads up, and you simply have to end up in the top half out of ten. Similar rake considerations to HU mean you have to cash in 55% or so to break even.

A decent player like you should be able to average a top half finish if you put in the volume and if you're canny you can often simply wait for other people to knock each other out.
LuckyStraights | 23 October 2008

Best of luck with the HU's, will you be playing solely NL or a some FL, I remember you pondering a change back to FL?
Rosie | 24 October 2008

Frustrating though the whirling dervish routine is at 4am, I still think its cute!

I would suggest double or nothing sngs too actually. Not that I don't think you have what it takes at all, but although these sngs are tedious (and they are) they're a lot easier to multitable in and take a lot less mental energy than the very high variance HU.
Amatay | 30 October 2008

That Amatay fella is a donk who knows nothing imo :-)