PlauZee's HU SNG Poker Blog

I just played a winning(!) reg who 3bet every hand he played from BB, more than 30% in total. No clue how this strategy might be profitable against any part-time-thinking player – no need to say that I crushed him very hard. I still stick to turbo HUSNGs only, no hypers, no “taking shots” to $300+, just a steady grind at the “micros” as they appeared to my some weeks ago which works very well so far. Because of tilting dumb HEM2 which can’t handle 4mans properly the stats on the right are still not 100% same like SharkScope.

stats of $60-$200 HU SNGs

I decided to give more coachings in future, not only basic HU SNG strategy coachings, but those about mindset, adjusting life as poker pro etc. Live coaching is now lowered to $150/h with some possible discounts for a bunch of sessions. Let me know if you are interested or need to know any more details beside those which you can find at my coaching page.

The post about basic strategy how to beat fishies is coming soon, I’m already working on it.

Gl guys & take care!
Chris

After playing some more games at my new favorite stakes, $60s to $200s, I feel way more comfortable taking those sweet micros very serious. My stats are fkn awesome so far and I really hope I can continue crushing those games without any bigger swings. I was 2-3 tabling most of the time, got enough action and therefor played less than 10 hypers so far.

I’m using HoldEm Manager 2 even tho it’s still packed with bugs which don’t seem to get corrected by any of those annoying daily updates. If you are using HoldEm Manager 1 and you are thinking about upgrading – don’t do it. At least not within the next weeks. Afterwards it’s worth the new features, but definitely not yet. The Stats are those from HoldEm Manager 2 which seem to be mostly(!) correct ignoring the fact that it can’t handle 4mans. That’s probably the reason why it shows about 100 more games than I actually played and $1k more profit I actually made and Sharkscope tracked.
I’m collecting hand histories while grinding for several interesting situations and plan to do “Biggest Leaks against Fish”-series at $60 turbo HU SNGs which I’ll probably publish by end of the week. I will concentrate on small ball strategy and how to grind down fishies step by step without taking big risks.

My best – and only – Slovenian friend finally started blogging at www.mtvdeuem.com. He wasn’t able to write some English sentences yet and stays blogging in Slovenian, but he promised to take some English classes and to switch to English by New Year.

I recently started a Facebook “fan page” which you can “like” to stay updated about new blog updates, live and online tournament news and photos from my poker trips. I kicked about 300 “fans” from my Facebook profile a while ago for privacy reasons and think those pages are a great opportunity to inform others about specific topics, but none of those private things.

Skrill offers another 1% cashback promotion from 1st of December until 22nd of January like the last one which ran in summer. Let me know if you want to know more about the promo or other possibilities at Skrill.

Stay tuned!
Chris

I never read in any blog about poker players taking a step back and playing seriously lower, not just for the moment after running bad or anything, but for longer time. After I gave those crazy $100s & $200s hyperturbos a chance in my first part-time-pro-sessions I realized I didn’t enjoy those games at all.

recent gift by a friend

I took some more days off to think about my situation and what might fit best for my goals and me. As you probably read in my recent posts I don’t grind much anymore. Therefor I need a very clear mindset, not only to succeed in university, but also to take poker as serious as possible in fixed bounders – mainly speaking about time and commitment to the game.

I started mixing hyper and turbo games to get enough volume against fishies at $200s and $300s, but failed pretty hard when it came to master my mindset. At least I reached the 600k VPP milestone that way, but it was very hard to take those low buy-ins serious, play my best game and not to tilt because of dumb fish moves the same time. During my break I read some of my old posts and found those about the bet between mtvdeuem and a student of me playing $100 turbo HU-SNGs (post 1/ post 2). I wrote about the reason why I thought my student KnutFH had very good chances to beat mtvdeuem, even though he had way less practice and skill than mtv. The reason why I thought mtvdeuem would fail was the same why I failed so far, because it’s so hard to play $100s as serious as $1ks if you played that much higher regularly before. It’s easy to say not to think about different buy-ins, to play a-game, not to play more than 2tables and stay calm and patient to grind those micros for easy money without big swings. In the end, I think my mindset is finally well prepared to play where I did about 1.5 years ago. I grinded $100s mainly, $200s from time to time depending on the action, 2man and 4man whenever they were available, and played some $60s as well. And that’s where I want to stay. Not only for next days or weeks, but for longer time, maybe even until WSOP 2012 – juiciest time for HU SNGs grinders.

since Nov, 10th

I think, one of my biggest strengths in poker business is the ability of self-reflection of my skill level compared to other regs and fishies. I always knew I was not good enough to fight regs at 1ks or above, but I always found my niche to get enough action from fishies. Talking about my skill, which is definitely good enough to kick some regs asses at $200s, my given situation and my goals I’m very sure 2-3tabling $60s-$200s, with main focus for the $100s, are perfect to grind. Stats always were a great motivation for me playing my best and grinding games seriously, so I decided to reset and publish my Sharkscope stats in order to creat a great looking graph and decent ROI which you’ll find here as well in future.

To cut a long story short, you’ll find me grinding $60 to $200 turbo HU SNGs next months with a non-blocked sharkscope graph.

Gl guys & take care
Chris “PlauZee”

After a very great performance by Pius Heinz he played an epic HeadsUp battle as well and became the one and only German winner of WSOP ever. It was great to watch the show, even tho it was fkn late over here in Germany when “November Nine” continued with last three players remaining at 3am.
I don’t know Pius much personally, I just had some drinks and spoke with him for a while, but it’s so great to read popular German newspaper websites right know. I can’t remember they wrote about poker without any prejudice before and I really hope poker will become little more social accepted.
Grats Pius, there was no one at the final-table who deserved it more!

It’s been a while since a played a longer session, like 3h+, but today it seems perfect to go for a longer grinding session. Not only cuz I have enough time, have finally set up my PC-stuff to perfection again, but cuz I’m finally in the mood again to grind and grab some easy $$$ from fishies. This post will be the try to post some in-game stuff, like thoughts, maybe HHs, but music I’m listening to as well. Let’s start with….. Swedish House Mafia. 8)

I’m playing $100 hypers only right now. They are very soft and so easy to grind. 1-2 tabling is fun and allows me to control things like music easily without losing the focus for my opponents. I’m using last.fm as I did while ago, no more trance podcasts as I did last months. Maybe soon again, but not right now.

HoldEm Manager 2 sux hard! Not only cuz I can’t use my HUD without editing a lot, but there are still fkn many bugs in. Especially EV-calculation and wrong tournament-winnings sux a lot. Did they really didn’t recognize that wasn’t working properly in the beta when they released their official HoldEm Manager 2-version??

lol. I’m playing about 2h including some breaks now. I’m up like 8 buyins and there were two guys already who told me it was an honor to play me. Uh, yeah. I’m the greatest! lol… That’s why I’m back grinding those micros…
Still nice to have very gently chats with some kind of “fans” so often.
I’m very glad I was able to take the step back from highstakes to those “micro” games. It wasn’t that easy for my mindset since it’s way less fun and thrill, but it was definetely the perfect time and best I could have done. And – no, I haven’t lost big before I took that step. Please feel free to read my recent posts if you want to know more about it.

And another update for HM2. omg. there are like 2 per day, just because they released their beta as official product. that’s so annoying!

Just a very short shootout supporting Matt, mjw006, who seems to have decent chances to become PokerStars Team Pro member for Australia after he won TLB Leaderboard. Here’s a very new and free coaching video he made to increase his publicity. It’s easy to follow and I think especially great for those players who play low to mid-stakes. Follow him at his blog at HUSNG.com where he releases new coaching videos like this one regularly:

It’s my 2nd week in university after a break which I will never be able to explain to any possible employer – at least if he’s not a poker-player. I’m back again and I’m very glad the start went so well and even easier than I was hoping for. An increasing lack of motivation playing poker all day or semi-professional recently was not the only reason why I played less than ever before – at least less than I ever played within last two years. I was scared about myself being (still) addicted to the game and wouldn’t be able to master every day’s challenges as a student. I won’t go into too many personal details in this post, but I guess you know what I’m talking about if ever asked yourself being addicted to the game. Just as a side note and a hint why you should better keep dreaming instead of becoming one of those very rare high-stake winners: there’s NONE who isn’t addicted or at least was addicted if he made it that far and crushed the game over a decent period of time. I’ll probably write about my own experiences, problems, personal ups and downs soon, but if that’s going to be happen I’ll make it password protected as I planned to do when I re-opened my blog.

Back to my news… In October I played almost never. Considering the situation and some other things I wanted to get done it was definitely the right thing to do. I only made about 8k VPP, what is about two average day VPPs of my 2010 poker activity. I only played 100s and 200s hypers and turbos last weeks, but did pretty well talking about ROI and winnings. I was still way behind EV, but made a decent profit of 3k what should be enough to live as a student. I’m not sure if I’ll be back to 500s+ ever or if I ever will bumhunt at nosebleeds one day again as I did often, especially during WSOPs last years. It’s hard to deal with real swings if you don’t play that much poker. I didn’t have many problems with swings this year – not only because I made very decent winnings in 2011 already – but I couldn’t remember playing so little games as I did recently.
The less you play, the lower you should grind. Otherwise you won’t be able to deal with the swings, your winning expectations and your emotions. And it’s not only about very bad sessions, but about those in which you win a lot as well. Poker is a devil. It will never leave you alone if you can’t control your mindset.

My goals for rest of 2011 are to stay playing that low and to have planned sessions which fits to my daily schedule. Since I don’t have that high swings anymore, I’ll probably write about wins and losses more again as I did months ago.

Additionally to this post I want to quote a very good paragraph of my good friend Ankush, pistons87, which he recently wrote in his blog. Even tho he’s pokerwise way more successful than I’ll ever be, there are still a lot of aspects which fit 100% for me as well:

“There are very very few people in poker who are considered rich relative what most consider rich in everyday life.  Sure having a few hundred k saved up in the bank might be a lot relative to other 24 year old kids, but its certainly not enough to be set for life.  Most poker players don’t even have close to that much money.  

People outside looking in see my life as glamorous and sort of rock-star like, but they don’t really understand the dynamics of the day to day operations.  Yes flying to Italy last minute to play an international tournament where you win a million for first might sound amazing, but doing it over and over and being disappointed when you leave really takes a toll psychologically.  It’s really no way to live.  As a job poker is unbelievably stressful.  You can go to work and lose money, a lot of it, and its not pleasant.  The highs of winning do not compare to the lows of losing.  Poker has treated me so well over the past year and a half as a pro monetarily, but for some reason it always feels unfair and I cant really put it into words.  I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to travel the world and make money, but I think its time to shift my focus.  I don’t really think I’m the type of person cut out for poker long term and I’m kind of glad its like that.  I am emotionally attached to winning or losing and take it personal when things don’t go my way.  I always looked at poker as a stepping stone to get to where I want to be, and although I might have been consumed with it for a while, It has served an integral purpose in my career goals.  I don’t see myself ever quitting poker completely, but my goal is to make it my hobby and not my job.“