Something Twitchy this way comes
When Beasts of Poker asked me to twitch some of my online action, I was hesitant. Believe it or not – I have put some semi serious effort into my PLO game, and I would not like to give it away for free. Not that I’m actually that concerned that a new coming player would totally crack up my gamebook, but it would definitely help some regs out that I play with daily. Twitching did seem like it could be good fun though. So, if not PLO what then? As I was pondering if I should do any of this fancy Twitch-stuff, or how to pull it off, a more immediate problem surfaced: Where had all my moneyz gone? For all these years I thought I was a winning player (albeit with some not-so-minor and obvious flaws), and for reasons not entirely known to me – I was on my last legs. I know I had been fucking around but still – I should definitely have considerably more money left. Where had it gone? Could I have just imagined my cash game winnings? Luckily, I had gathered some data from various online sites I’ve played during the last 18-months. A quick look told me that it hadn’t been all just a fragment of my imagination.

PC – don’t like the run

Laptop is the way to go. Only 18 months worth of hands really there anyway.
It became apparent that the cash game with 260k+$ EV, was not the problem (even though I should do a lot better win-rate wise). What was it then?
Sure, my irresponsible spending habits play a part. However, it couldn’t be all of it. I felt like it was more like a small piece of a larger picture. Big live games had been horrible for a year or so. Not much I can do about that, unfortunately. I play about 10 times a year live, so the variance plays a huge part, of course it would’ve been nice to take the run-good at the 10x regular stakes, but what the hell… It was fun and I knew the risks walking in.
What then? What about tournaments? I could not really remember the last significant cash, even if I tried to, so I decided to check my SharkScope:

Fuck me
Now, my attitude has always been that hobbies cost and that’s fine – and MTT’s had definitely been a hobby of mine. However, 60k+ for hobbies is a bit rich for my taste (especially when I thought I was, despite my care-free attitude, a winning player). It could be variance – sure. But what if it’s not? I should probably do something about it. Come to think of it: my standard pregame rep had been nonexistent and more often than not I have found myself just lying on my sofa pushing buttons that seem “fun” more than anything even close to rational decision-making. In other words: I had put absolutely zero effort in. This got me thinking: What if I did though? Could I be a winning player at semi/ high stakes NL tournaments? I think that I could. Of course, Isaac Newton believed that alchemy works. So clearly, men with far greater brain power than me have been wrong on far greater subjects before. But… It could be worth a try.
And so the “Make TheJudas great at NL again” was born. It seems like a perfect fit. I have no problem twitching NL MTT’s, quite the opposite, I feel great if you guys join me as I try to become a winning tournament player once again. In a perfect world you will enjoy Twitch and I will re-learn “the great game”. A win-win.
Just to be sure of my progress though, I also made quite a few calls to people who have been crushing it lately. They found the idea of turning a bit degenerate PLO player into a winning NL tournament player extremely entertaining and agreed to help me along the way.
We just might have some outs here.
My first Twitch ever starts tomorrow at 18:00 CET. I already went over some tournament hands with Mr.Jouhkimainen and bought a couple bottles of wine – hope to see you there as well.