First of all obviously, Rajmaster, hu4rollz? (you burnt the next 2hrs of my life with your flippant bullshit so I will not go easy).

I don't normally do serious or long blog posts because I find them either too boring/time consuming or too personal, or both. Unfortunately when someone calls in to question your ability at your profession you are called in to the line of duty to defend youself. Such accusations not only take a shot at your reputation but the reputation of the people around you, in this case guys I happen to have a lot of time for. By questioning my ability you are basically calling the recruiters, the top guys at leggo, the "name pros" incompetent, and this is unacceptable. So in response Il give a brief account of my history at leggo and my successes failures at different levels at different times.

I joined leggo early in 2008 after my good friend akmaert had discovered the site and realised that it owned. Being the astute intelligent young man that I am, I quickly realised that it owned and watched videos daily/posted in forums and moved my blog here. I 6-9 tabled 2/4NL and beat the game pretty handily (I think a little over 3ptbb) through the first half of the year over ~70k hands. I don't have my db from then since it is on my old and very broken laptop so you will just have to take my word on that. In November 08 leggo had a video member contest where 1st place would be offered a position as a leggo coach. I decided to record 1/2hr of 4 tables of live 2/4NL. There were a lot of great videos from serious winning players so for some of the top poker minds in the world to pick my video was a great feeling, and I was very excited to work as a coach here and work alongside the best. A quick note on the recruiting process also. I did not just make a video and they said ok hop on board. Sometimes I don't think poker players realise that coaching sites are businesses that are run by some highly intelligent young guys. These guys realise that the quality of the coaching IS the business and as such the recruiting process is taken extremely seriously. As such, all the top video makers were interviewed extensively and asked to send dbs of winrates over significant sample sizes. Like I say I don't have my db from early 08 to hand but you can still watch the video and post on it in the forums. Watch it and tell me if you still think I was a rakeback pro back then.

In 2009 I had finished university and was going to live the dream of becoming a hardcore grinder that crushed day in day out. Like every msnler, I wanted to be nanonoko. I bought a 30" monitor upped my tables from 9 to 12. Here were the results from January 09.



Not exactly earth shattering, but I was just about winning. It might be a little misleading since I was up 3200 at 2/4 over 83k hands and just under 20k at 5/10 in 13k hands. I believe my 2/4 results were pretty true to my actual ability 12 tabling 2/4nl at that time. A little better than breakeven. At the time I was really dissapointed with the results but looking back I think it was a solid start to serious grinding given I was getting used to playing more tables and more hours. On the negative side I was really burnt out from playing so much and could see poker taking over every aspect of my life. I gave up on SNE midway through february and took a few weeks off.

I played sporadic 5/10 through spring and did pretty well. I definitely wasn't cut out to be a 12 tabling monster but every time I played lower I would always play a ton of tables to try and get better at it. I would realise mistakes I was making throughout the session 2 minutes after I'd do it and it would piss me off no end. I was pretty much on a mild form of constant tilt when playing so many tables and it showed in my results. Here was my 2/4 in 09.



So yes, I would agree that this is pretty rakeback proish. You'd think I'd get the picture that this wasn't the best approach after ~50k hands but I'm pretty stubborn when I get an idea in my head. Contrast this with my 5/10. This is 40k hands 6max and 10k hu.




and



Despite winning at 5/10 I was still finding it tough. It was tough in the sense that studying away from the table became more and more important and I knew from my experience trying to be a grinder that I simply had to play 6 tables or less and be in the right frame of my mind to be my best every single time I played. I had been dabbling with PLO all the while, never really sticking to one game in particular. I have terrible bankroll management and tilt control and would usually play underolled at high stakes trying to get unstuck. As an example, I spun 10k up to 250k in a little over a month on ftp playing the deep ante games, only to lose it back at nosebleeds. I don't normally talk about this since it is embarrassing. And no, I'm not going to type my ftp name but if you played those games you can probably work out who I was.

After that I went back to stars and have played the majority of my hands 2/4-25-50 PLO on there. I still mix in some 4 tabling 5-10nl to try and keep my holdem game sharp. I have studied aarons memoirs (it's very good) and watch videos across all the coaching sites on a regular basis from people I believe are on a similar level to/better than me at poker. That has been going well, but I realise I can't really be a huge winner in todays games when I'm not playing and studying them them day in day out. One thing I will say though is that learning PLO has definitely improved my holdem game, whether it be actually improving me technically or the reduced NL volume just making me more switched on when I do play. Probably a little bit of both. The last bit of NL coaching I did was in spring of this year, and I have had a fair few requests after that. I decline these since I would not feel right coaching a game that is not my main game. I agree with everything boywonder and aaron have said on this topic and have been and will be doing a lot of thinking over the next few weeks re my position at leggo. There are a good number of coaches charging less than me that I think might be more suitable for a player when they tell me a little about their poker history. I always tell them what I would do in their shoes. Fwiw it is ridiculous that anyone thinks they have the right to question somebodies coaching rates and if you don't know why you are an idiot. And, as much of an idiot I might seem with some of my blog posts I am a student of the game, respect and study it intensely and do my absolute best to help anyone out that ever pms me for help.

I didn't bother posting my December graph but since somebody called me a "rakeback pro" I suppose I'd better.



That is all, I have to go rail PTR now.