The Eighteen Kay

Holy shit it has been a long time since I posted about some success in poker but things seem to finally turning around. More importantly I'm understanding why things have happened the way it did, and why I'm starting to get results. My game is more complete and I have a better understanding of what to do, and what happens when you make certain plays. Going through this whole process will hopefully be beneficial to me in the overall scheme of things.

One of the biggest challenges I've found is mentally handling the losses, and not getting results that I want despite the fact that I feel that I've been improving as a player. This is something that every poker player has to come to terms with, the fact that you will always get that bad beat, and lose to a worse player... poker has that element of luck in it that gives everybody a chance to win. Without this, poker would only have skilled players and the edge would be minimal and probably not worth it.

Since switching to my new coach/staker we've worked hard at going back to basics and working on getting my game fundamentally strong. I think its interesting that I've come full circle liking certain "weird off the wall" plays, and now incorporating more of a KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) style. On top of that, I've added more of a aggressive style with a lot more rejamming, which is something that wasn't in my game enough.

Below are some graphs/stats of my results since Feb when I got my staking deal;

Its been a struggle but BOOMSWITCH ftwwwwwwwww!!!

Another thing that is cool is that I'm a lot more happy with the distribution. Coaching and talking to many players has really confirmed that I'm moving in the right direction and it's helped with my confidence a lot.

This is my distribution graph for 180ms, I'm happy that I'm getting a lot more 1sts then anything else which is the way it should be. In fact I'm also getting more 1sts then anything else in my STTs as well, although my overall percentage itm is a bit low (should be around 37%)

Eurocultured

I've been rather busy with a visiting friend and a festival with breakdancing competition going on. Which is why I haven't been able to play much poker these days. I took part in a breakdance comp as part of Eurocultured Festival in Manchester, which was fun. Despite the rain, I had a really good time and was really glad that my friend visited during this time, as I got to show off the best of Manchester.

Its one of the really cool things I love about this city is the fact that there's always stuff going on, and everyone is really up for it in this city!



This is a trailer from 2011, 2012 was mad rainy!!



Goodbye House MD

One of my favourite shows finished recently, and I'm sad to see it go. I've never really had much of an interest in medicine but since watching this show its given new life to it. I would say to a person that has never watched it before, its a cross between CSI and ER, where the focus is on solving the mystery and the drama that happens to the characters, of which Dr House is a very logical, smart guy, but on the other hand personality wise he is a pessimistic, miserable git! The fact that he is always right and treats every personal situation into a logical one makes for some funny situations.

Its such a super addictive show! I remember watching one episode, then the rest of that season [3], then downloaded seasons 1 and 2 and literally spent 3 days going through them all!

One of my major critisms of the show tho, was its inability to allow any permanent changes to the main character. But none the less, its really good and if I was to recommend one show to anyone it'd be this one.







One Year On...

Its been a little over exactly one year since moving to Manchester. The choice for me to move outta home as soon as I could afford it was made easier from my experiences of living independently in London for University and a year or so after that as well.

I can say that it has been a great learning experience and I don't regret my decision at all. I have a really good group of friends here, there is a good breakdancing scene, and I love the city. Things haven't been easy, but from my experience that's totally expected. How you react in those situations is the only thing you can control and get on with.

I have been totally lucky that I got to work with Glitlr on SNGProtege, for one thing it has taken a lot of the pressure of needing to win at poker. As shown above it has been a long break even stretch, making it more of a mental challenge more then anything else. Hacking it at this game gets easier in terms of learning what to do in more spots, but as time goes on it becomes harder to mentally take the strain of losing when you know that you are the better player.

Strangely enough I feel that Manchester is somewhere I'm happy to call home, even though I have spent many-a-more years in my hometown Milton Keynes, and my birthtown London. What a strange feeling!

See you guys at the tables, and GLHF (Good Luck, Have Fun) as they would say in Starcraft!

Just SooImba

Sup y'all hope everyone is enjoying the beginnings of what is to be great summer! Well, here in UK we've just had our wettest April and its not gonna stop apparently... so not sure when officially summer is actually coming, but hey... that's UK for ya!

I'm happy to announce that I am making some progress in the Silver League at Starcraft 2! 4th in Silver, pretty happy with that, and quite confident with my build now.

As you can see, I'm "sooimba" but I also notice the 6th place guy "TerranImba" which I thought was kinda funny... coincidence? Totally.

I basically watched a series with this guy;




...and it helped me a lot.

Basically he advocates the "Special Tactic" of.... wait for it....

...Getting more stuff then the other guy!

Wow, such amazing strategy! Nearly as good as such favourites "Score more goals then the other team" or "Score more points in the basket then your opponents". Duuuh

But basically it does show how having literally no real strategy but building a lot of stuff can get you really far. Ever since I've adopted this build I've managed to win a lot more, and learn to adjust to a lot of things. Having specific builds vs certain race match ups is good, but isn't really as relevant until you get to the higher levels.

I'm interested to see how far I can get with just doing this. I am pretty good at doing multi-pronged attacks, as well as multi drops and just being all over the place, which is the kinda style that I wanna use.

I'll be streaming regularly so if your around come by and say hi at twitch.tv/puyanwei


The Imbalanced Argument


So in this game there's a lot of talk about balance. Balance basically is about making the game as fair as possible, by making each race (terran, protoss, and zerg) as evenly matched as possible. But the continuous arguments for/against certain aspects of the game are so overly complained about, it made me use the name "sooimba".

In my opinion the game is as balanced as it can be. There can and will be tweaks here and there, but I honestly think that the general backbone of the game is flexible enough for players to be able to solve certain problems in creative and intuitive ways. After all, don't we play games for the challenge?

Without this balance, the game would never have been as popular as it is today. What's more, the fact that the 3 races are being chosen quite evenly shows that there is no clear better race to use. Even at the highest level when watching the pro's play, we see a pretty good distribution between them. There are advantages and disadvantages to using each race.

I do complain a lot about balance but in actuality I'm only really kidding around lol. I really do <3 this game and will keep playing for a long time I think. There is something really interesting about how there are so many different strategys as well as the fact that they always keep evolving over time, meaning that your not always doing the same thing over and over again.


I guess the fact that I'm just a high silver I don't have the perspective of a high level master league player... but I guess this would be fun to look back on when/if I get there!

Back to the Future

Marty!! Its time... to go back to the future!! 

Well actually... more like back to the past! I've been playing the $15 STTs (Single Table Tournaments) again thanks to my VPP collection scheme, and I have to say I'm not doing badly at all for once wow. Small sample atm of course, but not bad considering I'm not table selecting and 20 tabling a mix of $7s and $15s.

One thing that is interesting is how my game is so much better then before. I understand a ton of new concepts and lines to take, and my heads up play has improved considerably, of which it shows since it's got the highest distribution. 

Another thing is that with this "new" found knowledge... the games are kinda like, new games to me! Its interesting going back to this old game that I used to play a ton with this new mindset, and see things in different ways. I can really see the mistakes that I used to do, and understand why I had the breakeven stretch that I did. Anyways, hopefully it will continue, and with it comes my confidence and hopefully more money!

Hooooold!

Barcelonaaaaaaaa

I have been neglecting my travelling this year, and I feel bad for it. So when the opportunity came to go to Barcelona for a breakdance jam, I pounced on it. December last year I went to Rome, so it seemed like a good time to go to sunny Spain!

However, it didn't turn out that way. We brought the British rain with us, and it was cold as shit =(

Still, I had a good time, tried some Spanish Paella, and checked out the Gaudi Church which was one of the most interesting buildings architectually, I've ever seen! 

Gaudi's most famous building "Sagrada Familia"

View from Outdoor Restaurant. Mmmm Paella!! 

I really do miss travelling, but I think that my days of doing the long ass month stays are over. Maybe 1 or 2 weeks max now. I guess I *could* bring my laptop to play poker, but it would be without all the poker software and stuff... which to be honest I wouldn't mind too much. Its just the fact that I'd like to have my away time from the online felt.. and I'd probably miss my Starcraft too much lolz.