Here we are, at the end of July, and I just got a call from Rodney McKay telling me that he finally figured out how to dial the 9th Chevron - apparently some kind of a power source is all that's missing.  If everything works out fine, I will be back on Destiny soon ...

The last 10 weeks, I have been playing poker almost full time, being a student of Mersenneary's Fast Track program.  Some of you may now ask me whether the program was a success for me.  Well, that depends on how you see it.

Money-wise, certainly not.  After paying for all the coaching and stuff, my BR is now at about the point where it was at the beginning - except that I'm now SuperNova and have 180k FPP's (planning to save them up till I 250k for that $4k bonus), so that's worth something.

Skill-wise.  Definitely !  This was by far the single most profitable investment I've ever made in my entire poker career.  It's really amazing to look back at where I've been when I started in late May and where I am right now.  Mersenneary is such a great teacher and he has also been such a great mentor to me to help me through this difficult time.

When I started in late May, I was more or less a recreational player.  Sure, I spent a lot of time with this game and I've also won some money in the past, but never really taken it serious or developed anything I could build upon.

Turbo Success

I quickly had a lot of success playing $60 Turbo's, moved up to playing $100's and 100 EUR's, then took a few shots at $200.  My graph also didn't look that bad - except that I was running above EV a lot.  Well, I think I can safely say that I definitely have the skills to beat $100 Turbos now.

Hyper Failure

Then came July, Full Tilt shut down and Stars introduced Hypers.

And here, things started to turn really ugly.

From one moment to the next, action at $100 dropped significantly – it simply felt like all fish had just disappeared from the face of the earth and gone into this new format. The next couple of days, if often took half an hour or even longer to even get a lobby, then another 15 minutes to get a game. Sure, sometimes I got lucky and some huge fish rematched me over and over and over again – but this was really rare. 

So I had to make a tough decision – should I stick to the game that I had learned and where I was a decent winner, hoping that fish would eventually come back, while playing other regs in the meantime – or learn the new format. These first couple of days, I talked to a few other regs and a lot of them felt just like me, that this new format was absolutely killing the games and destroying their only source of income. Well, now it’s three weeks later and it pretty much looks like the normal Turbos are still running and it’s still possible to get at least some action in them.

However, with all these great ressources that were available in Fast Track, I thought I could learn this new format quickly in really crush these games within a few weeks - just like I was used from normal Turbos.

A terrible mistake.

To prepare myself for this adventure, I watched all the Super Turbo videos that were available at the site, then read Mersenneary's Fast Track articles, where he explains all the math parts of the game.  And also read the other Super Turbo student's threads to get a feel for this game.

After that, I thought I was ready to jump into the waters ... and got eaten alive by the biggest fish on the planet !

A Mental Game Fish

As you can see, it ended in a total disaster.  And here comes what I really learned in Fast Track - because without Mers and Hookie, I wouldn't be here anymore, most likely I would have thrown this laptop out of the window and quit poker for life.

After making a few tilt posts in my thread, Mers spent a ton of time talking to me on Skype and helped me to look at and analyze some things in PT3.  And Hokie, I think I'll never forget what you wrote in my thread, "pressure exposes weakness, it does not create it" and "there is no such thing as failure until you stop trying".

After reading Jared Tendler's book, I quickly realized that I was a huge mental game fish.  It was really such a shocking discovery that I basically made every single mistake that Jared described in his book - at least that's what it felt like when I read it the first time.

For instance, I quickly auto-labeled people as fish then stopped paying attention about what they were doing since I kinda assumed I was "entitled to win simply because I'm better" - I think that's how Jared would describe it.

Another very important thing I had to learn is propper work ethic.  While I did watch all these videos and did read all the articles and threads before that failed experiment, I never actually studied them.  I basically wanted these videos like I would watch a movie, sitting totally relaxed in my armchair instead of actually taking notes and asking questions.  And I read over most of these article from start to finish, then assumed I knew everything about it.

Coming from this background of only playing poker for fun, I simply wasn't used to this concept of actually having to study things.  I also had no idea how to do certain things, like analyze my sessions, looking for leaks or anything like that. And I never actually talked to any other, good players about my game, apart from ocasionally posting stuff on 2+2.

But there's such a huge difference between answering newbie questions on 2+2 and actually understanding all the important concepts well enough to also apply them in practice - and especially still apply them well while being under extreme pressure.

I was never exposed to such pressure before - when things didn't go as expected, or I felt like I'm tilting, anything like that - then I simply quit poker for a few days, sometimes even weeks and came back when I was feeling better.  But trying to do this professionally, I had to at least try to fight my way through this, even when things didn't turn out as expected.

And then, when things turned really ugly, Mers was there for me, patiently listened to all my tilt talk, then helped me look at and analyze some spots in PT3, and we quickly found a lot of leaks, especially in my <25bb play.

Two Weeks Later

And this is how things are looking now - two weeks later.

Of course, I still don't crush $60 Hypers with a huge ROI, but I never would have expected that anyways.  But my results already look a lot better than before.

That's about 15 buy-ins below equity - and the last ~4k hands were from this week, where I wasn't feeling very well and couldn't really focus on the game.

I already fixed this huge leak of bleeding chips in no showdown pots - and actually found what it was.  After Mers sent me back my last HH review, it was full of things like "open" or "don't fold this".  And the real reason for this was that I never really studied and understood his articles about how to play ~12bb on the button.  I basically played minraise or fold - and when my opponents started to play back at me by 3betting me more often, I tightened up a lot, folding too many hands - and even minraise/folded hands that are minraise/calls.  Never considered limping a viable strategy.

And I already found my next leak: as you can see in my recent graph, I'm now losing a ton of money at showdown.

Well, I think I know the reason for this.  I'm ~85% sure this was me not really paying attention to my opponents and calling too many 3bet-jams for > 20bb with middling Ax type hands.  In spots where I should have made a note that the guy is not 3betting very much. And I also need to look for river spots where it's better to check/call to bluff-catch rather than bet.

It's still a long way for me till I can actually crush these games really hard - but I think I'm on the right path.

Most importantly, I know that I still have leaks - I have a good idea about how to actually spot them, and then work on getting them fixed.

The Future

The last minutes of July are running down ... and I'm already looking forward to an exciting and challenging August.

There will be some changes in my personal life - if everything works out fine, then I'll have a normal job again in a few weeks and only play poker on the weekends.

However, I learned so much in these last couple of weeks that I'm not too scared about the future anymore.

And I think some of the things that I learned here can also become very useful in my future business life - for instance having a more balanced and rational look at things, especially when things don't go as expected.  Not tilting anymore about bad beats also translates into the non-poker world.

Not auto-labeling someone as fish, but rationally looking at what he's doing and figuring out how to exploit him - that can translate into the buisness world as well: listen and pay attention to a customer's needs, then decide how to best suit that customer's needs.

Another very important thing I learned in Fast Track is work ethic: not just blindly assuming I'm good at something, but actually putting in the hard work that's required to actually become as good as I want to be.

Poker-wise, I'm definitely signing up for August's Fast Track again and if everything works out well, then I'll also attend Hokie's Bootcamp in Barcelona.  Really excited and looking forward to this, though I need to sort out some things first.

Thank you so much Mers and Hookie for this great and unique experience that Fast Track has been so far for me, and looking forward to a great August.