So in a nutshell looking for already solid or somewhat good players whom I turn into monsters like myself.

you can send ur applications to piratosbeat(@)gmail.com
please include details as who u are,background,poker gms, and anything that u feel i shud know.

Thanks and gl

Piratos

Anyways just posting here that I recently agreed to break down my backing deal for sne chase and higher stakes. It was something I had been thinking already for some days that its not really my thing to grind insane amounts with huge pressure trying to get the vpps day in day out. So once my backer told hes guna step back from poker world and told I could quit the stake I was smiling inside

And this is where the story really begins (again). I think its a mandatory thing to be almost busto atleast once a year. Especially if ur too lazy to do anything bout it. But oh well.. Its all going to change now, back to what it was. So once we ended stake I got to keep my 40k fpps which equals bout 500$ in money. I was thinking alot of diffrent options how to spend it most +ev way. Eventually I found myself grinding the fpp hypers and managed to make fpps into 710$. Then I decided to grind some 18mans at 7-15$ stakes and won some (obv). Took a shot at 45-180s upto 15$ won some more (super obv) and then took a mtt shot playing just 10$ and few rebuys. And won some more making a 4way deal on 10r 70k for 7.5 and also 3rd on 15r 17,5k same nite for 2k so almost 10k day and none of it was staked so def my best nite so far online. After that Ive been taking more time to get fit for the upcoming football season. Even tho its just 5th division, I wanna be fit to crush.

In few days I” be leaving for the new Igame Open series in Tallinn and then lil over week after that its time to Gsop Salzburg. I didnt play any real live mtt last year after the 2010 when I crushed that one event at malta. But hopefully I’ll be able to get to a good start early this year and continue making a name on the live felts.
AFter all, thrive to be the best is my main motivation.

Okay have a good one guys. Good luck on 2012 and may the luck be with u and remember..

ps. the real song starts at 3:10ish. lately all these vids have long intros.

With or without feeling.

Everyone has experienced some kind of tilting while playing poker. Others have got better dealing with it as others.. well its a sad story.
Tilting or in other words letting our emotions take control of our action is something thats quite common in poker. After all we’re used to show our feelings in everyday life. Tilting can make you lose alot of money or even worse.
Depending how bad it gets. But no worries I’ll share a few key thoughts on how to better deal with emotions in poker.

Negative thoughts are the worst. You shoudn’t ever think negative in poker. Because it will only get worse like the snowball effect. I Read about it somewhere can’t remember the context exactly but it’s quite self explanatory, if you’re always negative about everything you will feel bad and depressed, always fearing the worst possible outcome. So dont worry be happy

Second thing I’d like to point out. Whether or not poker is your only source of income or you’re just a casual player playing for fun or because of the love of game. Keep in mind there’s always a regular 9-5 job out there(atleast often). If poker goes bad, or you’re going busto (aka lose all your money). Having a backup plan or even just knowing you could get a regular job from a grocery store or a building site or anything with a regular paycheck, will help you with the pressures of making a steady income. Which poker, no matter what form, will not always be. So always finish your education and have a backup plan incase you aren’t making money anymore from poker.

Then I’d like to issue the difference between “average joe” (nothing personal to all Joe’s out there) and an experienced poker player who rarely tilts. Let’s take for example the feeling when you’re driving on highway and someone passes you and cuts back on the road just infront of you instead going little further before getting back on the normal lane. You all can imagine the feeling or anger it makes or on the other hand if you dont own a car, then lets imagine our bicycle tyre goes flat. Anyways the feeling can be compared in poker world for example. Let’s say you’re allin with one other guy preflop with Aces vs Pocket deuces. And board runs something and river is a deuce. You’re furious, you had the best possible hand in nlhe poker and you lost it because some idiot got it in preflop with pocket deuces.
What you should be doing instead of getting mad. Is to not use your feelings at all. But instead focus on the stuff you’d normally be doing when playing your A-game (at your best). Something like this. “hmm okay, the player just went allin from early position with a shortstack. Lets see , WEEE, I have pocket aces. Im crushing his shoving range there so I insta call him. PERIOD. Thats really all the thinking you will do on the hand. The rest that happens isnt in your hands and theres no way you can affect how the board will run out. But you can take a note of what the early position allin guy had. Like if he was lighter than you had thought he’d be , or if he was tighter. You can’t really be sure of the latter until a bigger sample size but if he’s too loose you’ll notice it and can call him lighter aswell.

We can take another poker hand example. I’m sure you all loving the hand stories Lets say we have the mighty american airlines (aces) again. And we open it and get called by one guy. again (preferably a donk) and flop comes jack,ten,8 rainbow (JT8r) and “average joe” would be like OMG. WTF. He’s got me beat again if not at the moment he’ll definitely outdraw me on later streets. See what you’re doing wrong. Youre thinking negative. And the feeling is just going to grow street by street and on the river, guy shows up with a straight holding eight,seven offsuit (87o) and river had been a 9. You’re so furious, even more furious than if someone had passed you on highway. But why ? Because you started with negative thoughts and made more of them as the board got worse and because when you just think negative, you will remember all the bad stuff. Because lets face it you only focus on them, cause your’re Ned the Negative. So once the river comes you’ve remembered all those times you’ve lost with aces and even if thats just like a couple times and you’ve won more timesthan lost. You won’t remember the wins because you just focus on losing the hand and getting outdrawn.
What we should be doing, is ” Hmm we have aces nice, I make it 4x preflop.” Flop is dealt. ” Hmm theres JT8r rainbow,the flop hits well our opponent range so we will get lots of value from his draws while we beat alot of Jx,Tx and 8x. How much should we bet so that he dont fold but also that he will call with most of his range.” Turn is dealt. ” That didnt bring any new draws and didnt affect the flop range at all, so how much shud we bet.” River is dealt. ” River definitely brings all draws there and we might be bluffed out of the pot, I shall check it to him and see what he does” Guy checks behind and shows a straight. (cause he was weak nit scared of KQ) “Hmm so he will call with a low end of gutshot on flop and chase it all the way, good to know. Noted.”
See what we did there again. We didnt use feelings at all, we based everything on the facts we knew and got from past experiences with the guy etc..

Fourth thing, I’d like to state, is that you should always make sure you do all the important stuff before you start playing poker. For example, take the dog out, pay your bills(pills), go to grocery, take a shower, go to bathroom, eat etc.. So that when you start your session you will be able to shutdown everything from your mind and just focus on the facts and information on the poker tables and taking notes when you see something that can be used to your advantage in the future.

I had one more great (read:bad) example how “average joe” thinks compared to experienced poker player. So Joe looks at his bank account and realises he dont have much gas left on tank. And starts to feel depressed. Elsewhere a poker player looks his poker site account balance and sees he don’t have much money left there. He instantly knows what to do. Because hes been told so etc. He knows he have to move down in stakes and thus his feelings will be still neutral instead of feeling depressed that he will go broke soon if he doesn’t win something big.

example 2 the tyre goes flat. “average joe” would be pissed and poker player would take it more calmly. He knows he can get a new tyre and some spots from the store. And wont feel bad.

I think we covered some of the more important concepts here. But again, in a nutshell, shutting down everything when playing poker is one of the key things in becoming tilt-free. You don’t have any feelings when youre playing youre A-game, you have the facts and info which you guna use for getting the money from worse players. You don’t think or feel anything more than necessary. Like once you call a preflop allin you know that you did the best you can with the available information. And adjust/take notes if you were wrong.PERIOD.

Im not saying you shoudnt feel anything while playing poker. Same as in sports you wanna be able to enjoy what you doing and not be too critique of yourself.
If you play good, bluffed your opponent, made a good laydown etc, be happy bout it. and know you did the best option you could. But dont beat up yourself too much.

So until next time, enjoy the new year tilt-free after all Rome wasnt built in a day. Everything takes time and lot of practice. In poker too.

Looking back on the year. Im not completely happy with few things. Firstly not happy with the volume I played which turns into profits 2nd not happy I didnt get that much healthier than past yrs 3rd that I spend way too much for my earnings and then for some happy things. Ive made decent amount from poker, mostly coz of my sick staking run at the start of yr. turned less than 5k into 30k profits having 7-8 horses at most. Well ever since I stopped that in late April and early May its not been that great. My own profits been about the same as my staking profits. So it didnt turn out to another 6fig year. Also didnt play any live series this year either.

Some goals for next year is to stick to a schedule. Which shud mean more $$ since Ill be working more hrs. Will update my other goals later.

Heres the song for the month. Gl on the tables

Well I been switching back and forth with my playing. At the end of last few months I wanted to play hu cash and I did actually play it for few weeks but it felt like alot of work and I wasnt really ready for it. But it was a great experience tho and learned so much from it. Anyways so then I was back on mtts and mtt-sngs. And lately I been trying to figure out my options for going SNE at pokerstars.fr which seems like possible but with lot of commitment which Im not quite sure if thats for me. Id have to grind something around 50k gms for 2012 to get +1M vpps. Since whats the point of making just 1M when u can make much more. But yeah I been trying to grind some 6m and 9m sngs there. To get a feel of avg gms and also to the pace of grinding many tables. Since this year Ive just played enuf tables so that Im not bored. Which is like anything upto 25 sometimes 30. And last year i did +30 upto 50. But playing sick amount of tables is just guna wear u off much faster. And gotta think whats best for longterm.

So my goals for next year mite be the SNE chase and if not succeed atleast I get to play soft gms and get some volume. Smthing I kinda miss from the past.
Anyways few weeks ago I was at London railing my friend who got deep in EPT London Main Event being 20ish or so after busting A3s vs KJo in a bvb situation. I had just 5% of him so got some nice pocket money from it, also I was very lucky with a US mtt-sng grinder shipping a 345$ mtt for 14.5k with even 3way chop and obv had alot from it, 25%
So its alll going great and I was saying I got to meet some dutch sng grinders on my trip since we shared the same hotel. And overall was a fun trip, I went to the Arsenal stadium tour and there was this former Arsenal player Perry Groves hosting the tour and it was fun to hear all the history and what they do there. And why everything is as it was.

I shud get to bed soon, but I think I need to get into a little bit later sleep rhythm coz of the site Ive chosen so mite actually watch Nikita season 1 since its supposed to be a good series. Ive watched alot of great movies too but Ill talk about them on a later time. Now its time to go watch some agent bashaments and wish u all gl at the tables.

Shipiiitt!! (L)

ps. Oh and martjin if ur reading this Im going to own u next time in chinese

Heres some good music for everyone.

Overall cant come up with alot this early in the morning (5 am), I was so tired yest after seeing those apartments. That slept like 11hrs. Poker wise last months not been so profitable. But its all going good. Got some new guys to coach and once Ive rebuild my staking bankroll. I mite get a few solid guys to make them monsters.

Good luck on the tables

Dont really have much to say atm. Packing up my things (yet again) and heading to cabin with my family tmw.

So good luck to tables and cya in few weeks.

Heres a good song from Tinie’s newest album.

So yeah, results wise this month got to breakevenish, i hope Thats coz I havent scoped my results since theres no need to. Its not guna make me play better and have complete focus on tables. I had some thoughts in mind few days ago. Cant remember them atm. My horses have all quit or put the deal on break during the holidays. And thats what Im going to do aswell. I’ll be spending the next month at our cabin focusing everything non poker while obv playing little plo here and there. But dont think Ill be able to put in much grind. So have to say gg to Supernova status. Not that I lose too much not having it for few months.

Also I been looking a new apartment for some time now. Still unsure if I’ll stay at my current city or move to my home town or what. Few fellow grinders who live in Tampere been saying to start a “office” so you wudnt have to just sit at home and grind alone. The idea itself sounds fun ,but its guna need lots of discipline and the right persons for it to work out imo. So Wsop started yet again. Still not going there. Think I shud start making bets when will I go there.

But yeah, overall im starting to get better And my stakes crushed for me. I will prolly look to take on few sng grinders in august. Def going to pick up semi established and reliable players. Ive had enough of 20ish smthing poker wannabe’s who got everything messed up and cant even play. Being balanced is afterall one of the most important skills in poker or in any profession. But guess this is enough rambling tonite. I’ll try to remember what I was going to say.

Also as a side note theres some Summer special’s running at Grinderschool. I’ll be picking a winner each week for next 3 weeks, getting diffrent prizes, from coaching to reviews etc. So be active on the forums and you mite get coaching from the one and only, Finnish Trickster

HOX! Just had an idea of playing atleast on 4 live events after summer. Theres guna be Emop Dublin 28-31st Jul, Gsop Manchester 2-7th Aug and then Emop Barcelona 29 Sep-02 Oct and Gsop Greece 11th-16th Oct. So it would be double trips from one to another and then done. If anyone is interested to join or planning on playing any of the events. You could pm me on skype or leave a msg thru my site via the contact form. This is just at planning phase.

Here’s this months songs. Tbh Id have so many picks but these will have to do. I dont expect you to like both but enjoy

My stable has been crushing, whats news tho Still keeping few guys and have ended the deal with couple of guys. Not going to be too much involved in few months since again couple guys been rolling me. Its just so annoying when you give them everything and thats how they show their respects. Anyways thats just monies too. Life goes on.
Watching the icehockey champs atm at home. This is guna be just a random post how its going.

Heres a nice song I heard while ago. Theres most of the british rappers on same track.
Im guna be playing it when Im at the Scoop finaltables