It’s been over a year now since my first blog post, I had intended keeping up one per month but the last few months have been a little less eventful than previous although that is about to change as the busiest 3 months of my year are about to come up!
I can’t think of a better place in the world to be in January than Melbourne and it has kept me coming back the last 3 years, the city is buzzing and there is tons going on, lots of sporting events and weather is generally awesome. This time upon setting foot off of the plane I walked straight into a heat wave and the first 4 days there were all above 40C!
I arrived in Melbourne feeling pretty sluggish and out of shape which was always going to be pretty hard for me to avoid following the Christmas period along with a month of travelling. I was pretty keen to get out of this and my first two weeks where in an apartment in St Kilda right next to a Crossfit gym and a Muay Thai gym. Despite enjoying the broscience videos knocking it I decided to try something new and see what the crossfit craze was about. I had concerns going in about a lack of attention to form and attempting to do workouts with complex movements against the clock but over my short experience quite the opposite was true, the trainers emphasised some points I thought I was doing right but wasn’t and I left with improvement in my squat and deadlift. I found doing the exercises around other people gave me a little extra push to work harder and not get lazy with rest periods that happens too often when I go to the gym by myself.
Once February had come around it was time for some more live poker with the Aussie Millions, first up was the main event. I didn’t get much going and ran into quite a few hands early, my bustout hand was at 150/300, UTG opened 700, UTG+1 call, I (11400) 3bet AKo from the HJ to 2200, folded around to UTG+1 who then made it something like 5400, I shoved and he then took over a minute to call with AA. I don’t know where my mind wandered to after I shoved but I hadn’t considered he might fold the whole time and didn’t even occur to me that it was the first live slowroll I’d been served until I’d walked away from the table and a friend asked me about it. No punishment was served for him and that was that.
The 8 game tournament was fun and a larger and softer field from previous years with the smaller $2.5K buyin. Things were going well and I managed to make it through to the final 7 players from 50-60 entries with the top 6 paying. For some reason they decided to finish day 1 on the bubble which doesn’t make a lot of sense to me but no biggie. I came back 6th of the 7 in chips with maybe 9BB. I’ve never looked properly at ICM before playing a final table but the payout structure was unusual here, 6th got $7250 for nearly 3 buyins and the jumps after that were fairly small with the winner getting 18.8 buyins which makes for a pretty huge bubble jump and it was depressing realising how nitty I was supposed to play. ICM is a lot harder to model in limit games seeing as you’re not risking your whole stack with each bet. It is something I’d probably gain a good amount of EV looking more deeply into it but there won’t be many heavy bubbles at the WSOP and I do put some reasonable value on playing for the win and the bracelet, so I’ll probably just keep playing the same.
This time round I decided against folding any blinds in O8 that I probably should have and soon drifted into the being the short stack and ended up bubbling.
After that I played a PLO and a HORSE tournament without getting close to cashing. I tried a few times to get into the 400/800 mix game there without any success and had to settle for playing in the 25/50 PLO games while I was waiting, they were extremely good value and I think any full-time PLO grinder should very seriously consider making a trip to Aus just to play in those the whole festival.
A lot of my poker friends make fun of me for not putting in that many hours at the tables, this sparked a motivational bet with my friend over who could get the most VPPs over a 2 week period along with penalties of 1000VPP for each drink of alcohol and each cup of coffee. The winner got to pick any outfit the other one had to wear for the duration of a night out.
I foolishly underestimated the amount of VPPs he could get at low stakes PLO zoom compared to my higher stake HU limit games and I thought I had it locked up so even indulged in a night out capping the drink penalty at 10K VPP. I ended up getting a total of 23.2K vs his 22.8K for a heavy loss that could have been avoided!
This was my punishment…
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I felt pretty comfortable walking around the city in the costume and the jokes and attention that came with it, doing something outlandish or thats clearly a joke in public doesn’t embarrass me at all, not being able to do or communicate something that feel I should be able to is what does.
As for my online poker game in general, it was unfortunately a somewhat similar story to Vancouver, i put in more hours this time particularly over the VPP bet and the couple of weeks that followed probably averaging over 12 hours a day in playing and studying. My results were very good around the 100/200 level but not at 300/600 and above. This lead to leaving Melbourne with a nice profit but not feeling like I’m progressing quickly enough or to be confident in an edge against or any faster than the guys playing 400/800 and above regularly. I fully intend to continue working on my HU game for a while yet after WSOP but for now with that and SCOOP coming up its back to 6max and tournament mode.
At the end of January I decided I wanted to attempt being Vegan for some time period. I was pretty interested in it in an experimental way to see how my body felt and if I could actually do it. There’s a lot of conflicting studies and information on the different health effects so it’s hard for me to form any strong opinions but for the most part they seem positive without animal products. Eating less other creatures themselves feels right too on some ethical and environmental levels and indulging my taste buds if it has significantly reduced another animals quality of life doesn’t feel very reasonable.
My diet had been very heavy in animal products particularly dairy before, so it felt like a big jump to go straight in and so I stopped eating meat for the couple of months in Australia while continuing to eat fish and dairy. This was not difficult at all for me and the only time I was remotely tempted was reading a couple of restaurant menus. Once I arrived back in the UK just before April I stopped the fish and dairy and started being vegan. The first couple of things I found was that my pee was alarmingly green and my flatulence had a new aroma that no-one else seemed impressed by. Despite spending a good bit of time looking into my nutrient and calorific intake I still didn’t have a good feel of what the make-up of my meals and consumption should look like and over the first couple of weeks my energy levels felt lower although the other factors like jet lag from a 24 hour flight, lack of exercise and too much alcohol likely had a greater bearing on that. I wanted to keep my protein intake high and not have many grains or soy. My diet consisted largely of nuts and seeds or butters made from them as well as a pea and rice protein supplement mixed with in a range of vitamins close to most vitamin tablets. Things I had in regular but smaller quantities were chickpeas,oats, veg, (particularly sweet potato, avocado and broccoli) and a mix of beans. Over the second half of the month I got into a better routine, exercised more regularly and felt really good about my health all round.
I think trying it out will certainly help my diet in future, regardless of how many animal products it involves. I’ve discovered a few different types of food and meals that i will continue having more of, some favourites being lentil papadums, mixing dark veg. with different nut butters and mixing raw cacao with everything. One of my favourite things about the diet was never feeling bloated or that I needed to sit down and let my food settle for a while. At the same time this meant there was no quickly satisfying food for a hangover. I think this is a very positive thing for playing tournaments poker were you have short breaks and eating large meals of quickly digested foods adds more ups and downs to how your body and mind are feeling.
For May I’m going to be back eating a mix of everything to compare the difference. If it feels like the diet is healthier in some way I will continue that way although still eating less animal products than before. If there’s not much difference I can see myself going vegan long-term or at least much closer to it. One time I foresee being difficult is when travelling or being in less developed countries. I think getting a good range of nutrients is going to be a lot harder on this diet on the move or needing to go out of your way to get hold of decent produce.
The only gambling I did in April was following the bets from Neil Channing’s and www.bettingemporium.com/ for the Grand National and the Masters. Once again they came up trumps picking a couple of fairly longshot winners out including the winner of the National. The masters didn’t go so well and I bet biggest on Dufner to beat Furyk but still a good month after a couple of dry Aprils for me in previous years.
The rest of my April was spent seeing family and trying to find a house to get for my parents. After viewing plenty, we found one that suited them really well near the lake district and unless something disrupts things I’ll look forward to visiting them there after the WSOP. It was a good experience for me to go through the full process of buying a house without the pressure of it needed to be for me and what I wanted. Whenever the time comes where I’m ready to stay in the same place for 3 months I’ll be a lot more comfortable going ahead with it.
I’ve now returned to Vancouver to share a house with a few guys to enjoy SCOOP. It was hard for me to leave Liverpool with our best chance of a title since i started watching football. Being on the streets in the city after the Champions league in 2005 was one of the most memorable experiences I have and I can only imagine it will be even crazier this time around.
I’ve always enjoyed SCOOP but never played a full schedule. Like last year playing the tournaments isn’t likely to be the most astute short-term financial decision but like i said last year, I do think it will prepare me for the WSOP well and I think being in the house with everyone else playing events will be a lot fun rooting for each other.
After Vancouver I’ll be heading to the US East Coast for the first time to play in the WSOP national champs. It seems like it could be pretty good value with a ton of guys qualified in and with a bracelet up for grabs in a small field event I thought I’d make a trip out of it. After the tournament I’ll head up to New York for a few days and see if it lives up to the hype before flying to Vegas in time for the 2-7 triple draw event.
Right now I’m intending playing all the 10K+ events where you don’t get 2 cards(besides the main) and a few of the smaller ones I like the look of. It could be more or less depending how much I’m enjoying them and how good any of the cash games are, likely between 10-20 events. I’ll be missing between the 12th-22nd to go to Brazil for some of the World Cup group games, only the 10K Stud hi-lo out of the championship events will be missed along with the dealers choice event I’m a little sad to be missing.
I bought a few group games before the draw in locations I hadn’t been before and wanted to visit. I feel like I ran above average and got Uruguay vs Costa Rica, Germany vs Portugal and Cameroon vs Croatia. It would have been cool to get ticket in Rio or Sao Paulo but they were for very popular and I couldn’t get any. If I’d known the WSOP schedule beforehand and that they would bring forward the 50K I’d have probably tried harder to get some last 16 and quarter-final games and stay out longer but I’m looking forward to the tournaments and very excited with how the summer is shaping up.
Good luck to everyone in SCOOP.
Matt.
Matthew Ashton's blog 