WCOOP is finally over (except the main that got re-scheduled) and so is my Grindhouse 3 experience. Being in the house was great! I had a blast and can't wait for youtube content to be realised. Episode 1 should be up later this week. 

I will very likely do a much longer post about the whole experience and take-aways and about my WCOOP, but for now you can watch the seminar I did this Monday with Fabi on 'Our main take-aways from GH3'. It's available to watch for our seminar subscribers, but also (as all videos are) available to purchase for $15. There is a lot of golden nuggets in there, so I'd totally recommend. 

Speaking of seminars...

As mentioned already, we give you a chance to purchase single videos now for $15 per video. You can find the list of all seminars in #full-month-seminars on my Discord. 

Additionally, I'd like to remind you that the WCOOP promotion is still going and will end on October 1st. You still have 3 days left to sub to our seminars for $100. If you do that, you will be paying $100 until the end of 2022 as our current subscribers are. If you sub from October, you will be charged $125. 

By the way, depending on what day Episode 1 is realised, we may or may not have a 'watch party' on Discord open for everyone. The idea is to watch it together and have a chat as well. I will update you on this later this week.

I will also summarise my WCOOP/GH3 in next blog post in couple days when I'm done re-scheduling my week and building 3-6-12 month plan for myself. There is a lot that I'd like to change and a lot to blog about.

​Stay tuned! 

Hello guys!

Last month have been packed with coaching and studying my game a lot to be max prepared for WCOOP grind and Grindhouse 3. I've identified many leaks in my thought processes and did in depth DB analysis to filter out my leaks that I will be focusing on plugging in next couple weeks. Biggest one being pretty low probe bet % still, which is quite surprising as I thought I play those spots quite ok. 

Main findings from studies were how sensitive I should be to bet sizings and also I feel like I have better understanding in which spots we should be overfolding and against which positions and on what runouts we need to be hero calling like there is no tomorrow. It comes down to value to bluff ratios that people have pretty poor understanding off in certain situations imo.

On top of that I decided to spend some time during Grindhouse 3 and after on building and simplifying preflop strategies as well as build a database of sims from the scratch. I would like to have access to solutions with sizings that I am using in game and with some limitations in gametree for my opponents as well. 

Not many games played, but I'm still happy with my volume:study ratio. I also added ACR to the schedule. Their tournaments have very good structure as you are playing pretty deep, but the games also take forever with 5 hour long re-entry period. Not great for us Europeans. 

The goal for series is to take it slow this time. Will play 8-12 tables max, focusing on quality over quantity. I would like to improve as much as I can while playing and see if I enjoy the process of grinding more than normal. There will be a lot of hours played in next couple weeks mostly because of Grindhouse, so going for 12-20 tabling when we need to play every day can result in decision-making fatigue that leads to burnout. 

Speaking of Grindhouse, I really liked the 'homework' Fedor gave us that was about drilling spots in GTOW. It was meant to prepare us a little and we were asked to screenshot every mistake and save it in google doc for him. I guess we will see what this was for while in the house. I definitely learnt a lot while doing those drills and realized how poor my strategy is in 3-bet pots OOP. This and all OOP spots in general are on priority list to study the most often right now. 

I'm very excited for the Grindhouse! Flying to Vienna tomorrow already. We will grab dinner on Thursday and Friday and on Saturday morning we are already leaving to the house. Road trip time with Pokercode crew! :)

Best of luck to everyone during series!  

Hello guys! 
Couple announcements for you. 
- WCOOP sale and Mammoth Seminars changes
- Pokercode Back 2 School sale
​- Free seminar
- DTO affiliate program

MAMMOTH SEMINARS WCOOP SALE
Let me start with our seminars. If you haven't seen the post I did 2 days ago, there it is:

Let me know if you have any questions. Also, don't forget to get your free trial if you would like to have a peek at our work! More on that later in this post. 

POKERCODE: BACK 2 SCHOOL SALE
Pokercode is also running a Back 2 School promotion for a limited time

MAMMOTH SEMINARS: FREE SEMINAR
​If you are uncertain and can't decide if joining Mammoth Seminars is a good idea, we are still offering a free session for you guys. If you haven't taken a free trial yet, now is the time! 

A lot of value in this offer as you can select from tons of sessions done in the past or join us live to get max experience!

DTO PROMO CODE
Most of you should be aware of this one already, but as this post is about sales and promotions I decided to give you a reminder.

Big value if you are a subscriber to Mammoth Seminars, as you can get DTO 3-way for FREE. It's the only 3-way trainer out there that I am familiar with. Totally recommend!

Last couple months have been all about Pokercode. More on that later in this post. 

• summer = good weather = no playing or very little playing

Very little grinding for me in the last 2 months. I was at a music festival for a week, and most summer days I've been enjoying being outside, hanging out with friends. I also had a lot of things piled up on the to-do list, and the list got so long that I needed to spend a couple days on those tasks.

• study

I'm really happy with my study routines these days. I designed a very good system for studying / analyzing hands and building sims for review. It's a mix of getting things done, reviewing alone and with a friend but also about outsourcing. There are multiple collaborations that I have going currently, and the way they work together is very powerful in my opinion. Without mentioning names and getting into details about the collaboration, it looks as follows:

a) Exchanging hand histories with 1 person - we review each others' HH from recent tournaments and make a printscreen of hands that we would've played differently and schedule a call to discuss those spots.

b) Comparing 2 databases with a player playing slightly higher stakes, but has a similar approach in terms of studying - a lot of solverwork - and finding leaks in our frequencies. Building a plan of what to work on in order to fix those leaks. We schedule a review session 1-2 times per week together - review hands that we played in this particular spot and discuss ideas.

c) Multiway 3-way spots - working closely with couple friends on multiway spots. Running 3-way sims, scheduling review sessions and solving complex gametrees on the server together. We are currently trying to study turns and rivers more often, as it feels like we have a decent understanding of flops mechanics already. I was doing a bunch of work on my own for 3-way, but I feel that working in a group is a bit better, because population deviates so much that in order to get good answers and build strategies, we have to brainstorm what playerpool is doing differently and how to adjust to it. 

d) Outsourcing - PKO spots to solve - I have a friend that I collab with and he solves PKO spots that I tagged for me.

e) Outsourcing - FT spots to solve - similar to PKO spots, he solves FT spots in HRC beta / GTO+ postflop ICM adjusted. Sometimes goes through the entire FT and tags hands to discuss with me on a later day. 

f) Deep work on my leaks which I do alone - working hard on my vs bet game currently, as I am not sure if I am playing vs turn and rivers bets correctly. So far, if I compare my calldowns to equilibrium I am mostly doing a good job, however some people say that it's still too much calling, as playerpool plays differently. I went deep in a rabbit hole in terms of how the population is playing on aggressive nodes last night and discovered quite a bit, that I can't share publicly unfortunately. What I can say though is that it's always important to question your assumptions, look at data, nodelock sims to see if and how you should be deviating. Our brains are tricky and our memory is rather selective one. Also, it's always important to verify everything, even if a lot of people say the same thing. Just to make sure you know.

g) Having a lot of fun drilling spots vs GTO. I use both GTOW and DTO, it really depends on how 'complex' the game I want to play is. Training vs solution is something that can discourage you from playing if you are not great theoretically, and something that can give you a massive confidence boost if you know what you are doing. I was playing very simple spots that show up often, like BVB, BB vs IP and IP vs BB and SB 3bet. The more you play the more addicted you are, so be careful. 

h) Preparing sessions for 1 on 1 coachings and for seminars. This can also count as a study routine, more like re-capping of what I already worked on in the past to be able to present this knowledge for a student or a group on zoom call. This game is so complex that you always discover something new!

g) Beer and review sessions - those are spontaneous evening/night sessions as I usually review my tagged hands alone, but sometimes we go through them in a group setting. I think it's very powerful to get opinions of others as I can be biased and also can misinterpret solver outputs on occasion.  

• ​seminars 

We are continuing with this project of course and I don't think we will stop at any point in the near future. We did some small improvements and changes lately in terms of handling admin and in terms of website/discord design.  The biggest change and cool news that I can share is that we hired a new coach - Empirical700, and he will be focusing on PKO content. He already did multiple sessions as a guest coach and community feedback was great, so we decided to let him do his sessions alone, as they are pure gold. I've been working with him for some time now and I really like his approach to poker and studying.  Welcome Sven!

• Pokercode community coach

I did a bunch of sessions as a guest coach with Simon and Curtis in the past as a community member. On top of that I did 2 trial sessions on my own in May and feedback was amazing. Because of good feedback and new content and value I can provide to the Pokercode team, I officially joined them in June as community coach. I'm very proud of that achievement, especially because I didn't apply for a position but was selected by representatives. More on that here: www.pokercode.com/blog/meet-mammoththegr8-pokercodes-newest-coach I will be doing 2 sessions per month for now and the main focus will be PKO and 3-way strategy in tournaments.

• Pokercode Grindhouse 3

I also got accepted for Grindhouse 3. I will be in the house in September and stay there for 10 days. Super excited of course! Fabi also got a seat, so LFG #teammammoth! If you are unfamiliar with Grindhouse project from Pokercode you can watch previous seasons on youtube. 
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-eP6yArJKCa9FQXw9LabZUdG2HpNiTJO
​www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-eP6yArJKCar7M9QCtN4X-_zR2gC-YKM
​Grindhouse 3 will probably be on youtube mid / late September 2022.
I will be in Vienna on 8 September, so if you would like to grab lunch or beer let me know.

Peace, 
​Mammoth
​

​

Hello! I wasn't posting for a while, so let me fix that with a big announcement.

We are running pre-scoop promotion for seminars:

If you would like to have more information or have any questions regarding seminars and our promotion, please drop me DM on Discord. 

• Seminars

Let's start this update with couple words about seminars that I'm head coach of. We've been working as a team since January and after 3 months of working together I can say that I'm very happy about how things are going. I had so many doubts if this is going to work and I can say after a while, that I wasn't expecting this project to work as well as it is working currently. This is mostly because of awesome people I do this with, so big, big shout out to Fabi, Ole and Wenzel! 

Feedback that we got from community was very positive so far as well which makes me super happy. I have massive trust in this project and we will continue doing this for quite some time for sure. Good job team!

• Twitch 

Recently, I decided to do free coaching sessions on Twitch with Deckflow, Praaap and Eddie. I'm enjoying the experience so far and will do that most weeks. You can tune in on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. Times may vary, so keep an eye on #events in my Discord server. I always post when we go live. 

• Study

As always, a lot of that. I'm using a leak finder spreadsheet currently to identify my leaks, and realised that I have so many. They are frequency leaks. My frequencies were off compared to optimal in spots that I wasn't even aware I am leaking. Big one was that I wasn't floating enough on turns (bet vs missed turn c-bet) but also I do miss some probe bets from BB. Some frequency leaks are clearly wrong frequencies vs optimal, but I'm fine with those based on my current understanding of pool tendencies as well as exploits that I try to implement after nodelocking many spots. 

• Things happening in the world currently 

Very sad times in Ukraine. I got very emotionally involved, especially at the beginning of the war and also got involved in volunteering. ​I hope this ends soon, I hope it never started and I hope it ends well for Ukraine. This situation definitely had an impact on my mood, motivation and things around that. 

• Mindset & motivation

Because of what I just mentioned, as well as recent downswing, playing some cashgames to try new format as well as focusing a lot on coaching, my motivation for playing was very low, hence low volume and poor results. I'm playing way better game when I'm playing often and stick to my routines, which I wasn't doing first 3 months of a year.

• Pokercode

Two or so months ago I had a privilege to be a co-host of Simon Ronow session for Pokercode about preflop exploits. Simon (IgorKarkarof) liked how I work and liked my math/solver based approach which resulted in me being invited to co-host a session and that was very very cool experience. I really enjoyed time spent on zoom calls and preparing material / discussing spots. For all of you that are in Pokercode, you can re-watch it on the platform. Let me know what you think! Also, stay tuned, as we are already preparing second session. This time, we will discuss postflop exploits (one of my favourite topics). The session will be on 6th April 2022.  

• Results and volume

Not much to say here. Low volume, poor results and the biggest downswing of my career, but I'm feeling positive as we are recovering slowly. Also, I'm pretty hesitant to call it a 'downswing' because of small samplesize of games and also mixing some 200s and 300s in December/January + not cashing highest buy-ins. This resulted in being down around 20k, which was about 250 buy-ins (mid December - mid March)
​

• ​Plan for next quarter of the year

​With SCOOP coming up, I will definitely focus on playing more and studying harder prior to the championships. Wenzel had a great idea of doing a 'prep week' when we study hard for 7 days or so do be in the best shape and be ready for long grind for couple of weeks. We will see if we do it or not, but it's pretty cool concept overall. 

Best of luck to all of you!

Let's start with quick summary of December 2021. 

The biggest loosing month in terms of money lost in my career, but if we look (as we should) at buy-ins lost, it's not that bad. Also, one of the lowest volume months by far. This is because of taking days off for Christmas and taking it easy in December as well as playing 8-10 tables for the most part. I definitely understand that loosing/winning more and more dollars is just the way it is when you are moving up. I'm happy with the progress I made and that my winrate didn't drop as I moved up again. Felt pretty confident in most situations. Realised how important it is to get a good table draw on high stakes, as in $200+ you can get pretty stacked table often times, and those guys put you into less comfortable spots. This is great, I really enjoyed playing pots with players that I consider to be one of the best mid/high stakes players out there, when I was grinding evenings in December. It was for sure very solid lesson and I gained ton of experience and proved to myself that I can battle and hang on. Many people feel like they are pushed around by stronger players, and it wasn't what I felt. This is most likely the nature of my play style, that is rather aggressive and rather call-happy at times. Most times actually. 

average buy-in: $101
money lost: $8.7k
buy-ins lost: 86

Summary of 2021

This was very busy year for sure. A lot of work done off tables. A lot of coaching sessions done, group sessions, seminars, 1on1s. A bunch of 80 hour+ work weeks in the books as well. Great feedback received, exciting projects started and great people met. I'm super grateful. 

Locking myself in the room and dating all the solvers for couple hours per day made me dream of EV and solver charts sometimes. It made me stronger fundamentally. I would totally recommend spending time like this to anyone. Try this out for a month, quarter of a year. The rate of improvement is just insane. Definitely the best decision I made during pandemic that I can think of. 

Working pretty hard and spending tons of hours on poker made me realise one, very important thing. This game is so complex and everyone sucks at it. Hence our future is pretty safe I would say. People say that increase in access to solvers and other tools will kill the game. It won't. Not even close. Why? Because you need to put in time and effort to study it, and most people are too lazy for that. 

It also made me realise how hard I need to work in the 2022, because I know nothing about the game. There is so many spots in which my confidence level is strong 1.4 out of 10. Poker is too complex to master it. I also understand and admire even more then before players that put in time. Players that show up everyday and make less and less mistakes on tables, because of sick work ethics off tables. This is just crazy to me how hard some players work. Massive kudos to that small group of high stakes players. I hope that someday, somehow, I would be able to do that as well.

Highlights of 2021:

- biggest highlight is by far starting my own seminars. Feedback was incredible and it makes me work even harder to deliver better content. I learn along with all the guys that trusted me and are showing up on sessions. I'm super happy receiving all the positive messages and success stories. DMs about how much it helped and how much stronger a player became because of my sessions. I just want to say big, big, big thank you for all the kind words, but at the end of the day, you did it yourself guys! 

'But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it.'
Morpheus, The Matrix

- another highlight is definitely finally meeting the guys that I was working with and got help from for so long. Meeting 2 of the German machines in Vienna and going together to Pokercode Festival in Bratislava. 

- pokercode festival in Bratislava. Was super cool to meet most of the guys and see real faces behind screennames as well as pokercode coaches and staff. I know that you have plans to repeat it and please do so, as it was super fun.

- increasing my average buy-in from $30 in January to $100 in December. 

- maintaining reasonable winrate bb/100 of 8-9bb on higher stakes.

- getting involved in staking and helping players that I trust and believe in. You guys are on the path to something great, and you shouldn't be stopping just because of small bumps on the road to success. 

- on the personal level, I feel like I had very good connection with my parents this year and I'm really happy about it. It's been a harsh ride with poker and their understanding of the fact that this is what I want to be doing. It felt like they are happy about my choice now and they are big supporters. We had some emotional moments with that topic over Christmas. 

- getting more self aware and grateful about many things. I don't know if it has to do with me getting more interested in topics like ufos (uaps) and cautiousness. Maybe, maybe not. Most likely it does. How long till the full disclosure??? Doesn't seem like it's gonna happen.

- valueing my time and prioritising tasks better. Biggest improvement started at the end of the year, but quickly became numero uno on the list for 2022. 

I think that's most of it. I'm sure I forget plenty, but I value my time more now and don't want to spend an hour writing this post :)

Goals for 2022? 

- be happy
- make others happy
- pay attention to health and well-being
- keep working hard
- keep providing value to other players
- increase average buy in 

No monetary goals, no no-coffee days, no cold showers, no 1000 push-ups per day. That's it. 

Peace yall and happy new year!

Novermber 2021 was very good results-wise. I am slowly moving up stakes, and my average buyin is constantly increasing. I play the highest stakes possible in the morning during the week and on Sunday I play up to $300 currently. Last Sunday I had good runs in $250 Fifty Stack on GGpoker, finished 4th and also final tabled €250 High Roller on PS.es and finished 3rd. It hurts not to win at least one of them, but it is what it is. 

We started working a bunch with HRC beta and scripting and with population data. Idea is to create very good preflop strategies vs playerpool and use PF frequencies for GTO+ sims as well. It will take a while, but it's definitely worth spending tons of time on. 

Unfortunately they cancelled EPT Prague due to covid restrictions. I guess the global lockdown number 3 is just around the corner. 

I like how Standard Backing is changing slowly. There is more activity in group sessions and more and more people attend sessions. This made me come back to providing 2 group sessions per week for them. They also hired mindset coach. I haven't watched the content yet, so nothing I can say about it.  I also enjoy interactive community sessions in Pokercode. They let us unmute now during reviews, which is way more efficient than typing into chats. Love the idea and interaction with coaches. 

For group seminars that I do, this month is very likely be the last one, as I promised this to be 12 weeks long program. However, I enjoy doing it and will definitely continue in 2022, but with slightly different format. There is even more value to come, so stay tuned!

I gotta say, I'm pretty excited for next 2 months, there is a lot of cool stuff going on right now and I think you will enjoy changes for seminars as well. 

​Best of luck everyone!

By the I didn't play much this month. I got sick in the middle of the month as well as I took couple days off playing to prepare content for seminars. Overall, I am very happy with where we are heading, despite poor results. My average buy-in is increasing and my ev bb/100 is also going up, which is definitely great news considering (one would've thought, tougher fields). 

I am super pumped with discoveries I made about the player pool and topics I already covered as well as what I have in store for next month. Playerpool DB analysis + PF nodelocks + postflop sims is very powerful combination.

We are back on track with running sims on server. Additionally, I got more familiar with Simple Preflop and nodelocking takes way less time now. 

On top of that, feedback about seminars was great so far. This always helps to create even better content and stay motivated to provide value. 

That's all I have to say about October. Pretty boring month. I will increase my volume in November, as the winter is coming and all mammoths stay in their caves. 

By the way, I am trying to qualify to EPT Prague. If someone is also going, DM me please. 

​GL everyone! 

'Time for an update, I guess. 

On Monday 2021-09-06 I arrived to Vienna after no sleep as I got 2 flights to get there and needed to be at the airport at 4:30 am, which was a little painful. I slept a bit on the second flight and took a nap after arriving to the hotel in Vienna. In the evening I went to Fabi's place as guys were playing couple WCOOP day2s. We had beers and I humiliated myself loosing 2 bets playing 'live poker' (which I still have to do btw, or at least find a replacement for those bets). We played a version of life pineapple poker and the game that is called 'bluff' but not sure if it's correct naming. Anyways, I had double digit score in beers and was back in the hotel around 6 in the morning. It was nice meeting the guys and proving that not all poker players are nerds and they can have some fun as well. 

Day after, we went for a trip to the city centre. Unfortunately I had limited time sightseeing in Vienna, but I enjoyed what I saw. It seems to be pretty cool place, but I prefer something less 'historic' and more chilled, preferably with the sea breeze and cocktails on the beach. That being said, I can totally understand why poker players, especially Germans are re-locating to Vienna. I definitely want to be back there to see more and hang out with the crew a little longer. In the evening we took beers and went to the park to chill and talk. There was some interesting conversations going for sure. At that time I was already thinking about being relatively ready for live grind so I said 'fold' to going to the club and I got a bunch of shit because of it. I think it was smart decision anyways, considering that they closed the place 30mins after we started talking about the idea. Meanwhile, guys decided to book a room and stay for a night in Bratislava on the festival. Fabi had a wedding to go to on Saturday, so he couldn't stay and Ole is the opposite of a fan of life poker, so I was happy that they are staying at least for a day.

On Wednesday, we went to Wiener Prater and had scary time on many roller coaster rides. It was good day as the place wasn't crowded at all, so we took advantage of most rides without waiting in the queue. I went back to the hotel early, because I wanted to get good sleep before travelling to Bratislava and also cure my hangover after 2 days of eating very little and drinking a lot of beer. 

Oh, I forgot to mention, we also went for Schnitzel obviously, just can't remember which evening was it. It very nice place, one of the most popular venues in Vienna, which you can feel straight from the start. We were slightly under-dressed, but noone gave a shit about it. We are tourists/pokerplayers, so not wearing a suit is part of a game. Food was very good and also expensive, but I really think that spending more money on experiences is good, rather then buying nonsense things just to impress others. I was always like that, and I think it's good approach overall. 

There was a shuttle bus taking us from Vienna international bus station to Bratislava on Thursday morning. It was booked by Pokercode, so only community members were in there. We blundered a bit in DTO during a drive. We arrived in Bratislava around 1pm or 2pm, and the Main Event day 1A was already in late reg. I decided to play shortly after getting a room and taking a shower. 

Playing live poker after such a long break from it was very challenging at the beginning. I'm very picky and very methodological when it comes to poker, so I was a little bit tilted about lack of ability to know exactly the pot size at any point in a hand, effective stack size and all that. So first bullet was gone after 2 hour of play, mainly because I decided it's a good idea to bluff older Slovakian gentelman in the 4 way limped pot, which resulted in me loosing half of the stack.  It went limp HJ (villain), BTN overlimp, I complete SB w 98cc and BB checks. Flop was AK2cc, pot is 3200, villain decided to bet pot, folded to me, I call, BB folds, HU to the turn. Turn was Jx, and he bets 3400. Facing this turn downbet, I went for a raise, as mostly they bet their hand strength, which they will fold vs river aggression unless they improve to 2 pair, so I think that 2betting that street outperform calling OOP. I got snap called and the river was a Qx, so the board is AK2JQ and I'm repping 2 pair+ on the turn, and straight on the river, so I thought that 2/3 psb will force folds from all 1pair hands and mostly 2 pair hands from him on this runout. I was wrong as he turns over K6o after taking 3-5 seconds to make a decision. I departed the pretty cool table shortly after re-jamming AJo SBvsBTN and running into AK. I had 2 Pokercode members on the table, Sebarino and Pferdinho, and we had a nice chat with each other. After talking with Fabi and Ole about the structure, level of play and all that, I decided to fire 2nd bullet. If I qualify today, I don't need to play day 1B tomorrow, so I can have a day-off and see a little bit of Bratislava, so I decided to jump again on ~40bbs. That went relatively OK, and we bagged 18bbs for day 2, which was taking place on Saturday. Not a great stack, but a stack indeed. By the way, in the middle of the grind, I needed to get back to the hotel upstairs and change, as my mammoth hoodie suffered a beer attack. Unfortunately the casino waitress unintentionally of course, poured out a tray of beers on my back. All good, but it was on the turn in checkraised pot, which slightly affected my ability to make good decision and also affected my mood. It happens, we move on. I was a bit tilted, because just before a trip I ordered 3 hoodies, new one for me (as the one I have is a bit washed-out already) and 2 for the guys, and now I can't really wear it as it has a big beer stain at the back. Ole was wearing it and some people confused him with myself, which was funny. Especially when 1 player approached him and started talking in Polish to him. In the evening, we stayed in the casino hanging out and meeting all community members and coaches and of course drinking beers. It was good talking to all members, twitch streamers and of course coaches. I was a little bit star-struck at the beginning, but after starting a conversation I realised that all those high rollers are just normal people that worked harder then the rest in the past, so they are where they are. Talking about poker with others helped me to understand that what we are currently doing with the team is very good. We need to stick to our routines and work even harder and more and we will get there. We will get to the high stakes, I have no doubts. It was very good evening and eye-opening too. It made me realise that I was underestimating what we are doing and how good it is. 

Guys needed to check-out on Friday before noon, so they did and left luggage in my room and we went to explore Bratislava for a while. It's very beautiful and 'relaxed' city, especially the riverside. Very cheap as well. I can totally recommend, but again, I haven't seen much. They left to Vienna around 3pm and I stayed in the hotel lobby with Curtis, Mathias, Simon and couple community members and we analysed some hands in ODIN. Unfortunately ODIN doesn't have 4 way limped pots in there, so I couldn't see if my play was fine (joking obv). It was cool to talk hands live and discuss it with coaches. Way better setup for that compared to typing in zoom chats. There was pub quiz in the evening, that I decided to skip, because I wanted to be 100% for day2 and get good night sleep. As I bagged 18bbs, I looked at 20bb RFI, re-jamming, BVB spots in Preflop Academy and played around 200 hands in DTO on 20bbs. 

After good breakfast and a shower, I went to the casino to pick up my chips and saw that I have Mario and Curtis on my table which wasn't optimal, but they were also quite short if I remember correctly. I ended up busting both by just having better hands preflop in pretty standard preflop all-in spots. After that, I started accumulating a decent stack by picking my spots wisely and applying aggression. Few double barrel spots with good blockers and some light check-raises vs Slovakian recs helped me build 40bb stack around the bubble. 3 off the money, I was forced to fold a combo draw on the turn after calling a flop check-raise, because BB shoved the turn for infinite. I had 15-20bbs on the bubble and was chilling, waiting for someone to get coolered or punt. I can't remember who busted and how, but after 1 hour long bubble we were in the money with 10bbs or so. Shortly after the bubble burst, I open jammed 77 and Seb calls ATs on the BB and we lost a flip for a mincash. GG

There was PKO running upstairs, but I decided to skip it as I would've only 20bbs if I reg it, so it's -EV reg imo. There was 5k HR running as well, and they were live streaming it, so I went to my room and watched it till the end, so I was slightly late for a players' party. It was a good night, I talked and met so many cool people there. It's very good community and I will be joining more events in the future.

I checked-out just after breakfast on Sunday, didn't go for football tournament that they organised and took a flix bus back to Vienna. While in Vienna, I went for 3 hour walk to the city and had a nice meal. 

On Monday, I checked out and went for another walk to see more. My flight was in the evening, so I still had some time to kill. Flights went smooth and I was home around 11pm. 

I had a lot of fun and can totally recommend being a part of a community to anyone. It's very important to surround yourself with like-minded people and people that want to achieve more then average. It gave me a massive confidence boost, as I realised that all high rollers are just normal guys, and some are just hilarious (Simon and Steffen) :) It was great hanging out with Ole and Fabi and I think events like that are strengthening us as a group. It's always nice to see who's behind the screen, even though we already saw each other on a zoom call once with Matthias. I will be back in Austria for sure. Very soon. I hope you enjoy your hoodies, and they will bring some rungood. 

For all of you that are interested in seeing more, Pokercode uploaded couple a coverage of the festival on youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm1NyDcVEgQ&list=PL-eP6yArJKCaAiZ05qo2ZH22RRcfjLCCD

mammoth hoodies: https://store.waitbutwhy.com/collections/sweatshirts

This blog update is about my time on Pokercode Festival, but I as I always do, I will also update results since last post. Because of travelling and creating content for seminars, I didn't have much time for grinding. 

Thanks for reading and thanks for showing interest in this blog. Thanks to all that asked me for an update :)

​GL on the Sunday!

WCOOP and WSOP online is almost over for myself and I won't lie – I'm happy that it is. It's been a pain in the ass.

I started August pretty strong, collecting couple trophies in the beginning of the month in Bounty Hunters $126, Daily Monster Stack $55 and Hot $109. It gave me some 'cushion' and peace of mind for upcoming WCOOP.

I changed my sleeping schedule a week before series started, just to make sure I'm in good rhythm and I'm prepared. Beginning of the series went as expected, loosing almost 8k$. I had pretty sick equity spot in $22 7max WCOOP, but finished 10th for 2k$. After that, it was a bloodbath for the most part. Some 3rd place finishes in Big $109 and Daily Marathon $55 decreased the overall downswing, but it hurts not to close at least one of them. After that, I finished 9th in Bounty Builder $44 for 1.3k$ with $9k up top, which would definitely save my WCOOP.

Overall experience was tragic. I feel like I played well, and bb/100 confirms that, but evening variance is just massive. I also don't like playing evenings and sleeping during the day. Fields are pretty soft I think, but it could be because of the series.

Overall, during WCOOP and WSOP my average buy-in was $70 and I played 308 games + 55 re-entries. We had 9 final tables, but only 1 win. 11 loosing days and 4 winning days. The downswing was 7.2k$.

Things that I've learnt:

• My winrate is the highest on stack size that I have material to study (mostly postflop sims), that is 0 to 60bb. When I reg early and I play 200bb or 100bb deep I feel pretty lost and my winrate is lower. Because of that, I will adjust in the future and late reg all games on 50-70bb unless it's PSKO.
  
• Morning schedule has significantly lower variance and is more enjoyable for myself.
  
• I should take more care about my health and overall well-being. I was putting too much time lately with no days-off. This has to change.
  
• Because I was playing long hours, I had less time to study, which lowered my confidence overall. Study is super important.
  
• I feel very confident playing my aggressive line vs almost everyone, but I struggle to react vs hyper aggression postflop from strong opponents.
  
• Playerpool massively underbluff postflop and preflop.
  
• Playerpool is unaware of geometric progression and optimal bet sizings.
  
• I play too aggressively in early levels and target wrong player profiles while overbluffing most lines, which results in pretty high early finishes especially in $200+ buy-in range.
  
• I struggle playing vs massive whales, as I don't know how to react vs very weird lines that shouldn't happen ever.
  
• Strong players make mistakes also. Pretty big ones and pretty often.
  
• I identified many leaks in my game, mostly playing in spots when our EV is low and we should be focusing on minimazing the damage. That is OOP spots, mostly as PFC in 3bet pots as well as OOP BVB.   

As I already mentioned, WCOOP is almost over, but I might play couple tournaments on my laptop while travelling.
Tomorrow early morning, I fly to Vienna to hang out for couple of days with Fabi and Ole before we go to Pokercode Festival in Bratislava. We will do some tourist nonsense in Vienna and spend a day in Prater to have some fun. On Thursday, we either take a bus with Pokercode members or Fabi is driving to Slovakia. We haven't decided yet. In Bratislava, I will play the main event and bounty tournament as well as drink plenty of beers with the crew and splash around in cash games. I'm taking this trip as a social event rather than very high EV spot for poker or anything like that. I really want to have fun on, which feels like, well deserved break. If someone is in Vienna and wants to hang out, drop me PM. Also, if you are interested in joining the Festival, here's more info: https://www.pokercode.com/festival

GL in the rest of the series!

Pre-WCOOP

WCOOP

1 August - 04 September

Overall

Stack size up to 60bb

Stack size over 60bb