Strange Week
I don’t exactly know why it was strange. It felt strange. I think also it was a weird slot for Europeans on Twitch because of the charity marathon. The stream house of Jaime Staples, Matt Staples, Kevin Martin and Jeff Gross have been doing a 168 hour marathon stream for Michael Phelps charity foundation for kids. Great initiative and it was good to see them put together something like that.
Monday and Tuesday were not so great. I keep saying this but I really feel like Holdem is about to explode for me. I’m running very very poorly, but I’m not even losing that much. I feel like I’m very bounty aware and my ICM decisions are improving. This is intuitively cause I have no fucking clue how to calculate a specific situation, but just being aware and trying to think along the concept is already a great win. I think if all those top 20 finishes are going to evolve into closers massive shit will happen. Poker can be a funny process. Play, emotions, adrenaline culminating in euphoria or deflation and then day is over. Then reflection kind of starts. I’m always thinking during dinner about certain decisions or stuff I should improve and try to give it some thought. Hardcore studying is very hard to do alongside streaming, but I feel I’m improving at a nice pace still because I’m new to tournaments, so I have lots to learn. Once I start plateauing a bit is when I should really plan Saturday study sessions.
Wednesday was a typical streamday. PLO saved the day, big time. Absolutely crazy run and went back to back to back FT’s in the $22 Lex Veldhuis Open, the $27 Turbo and $11 PKO. The tourneys will be on YouTube and I won’t spoil the results for people who might have not seen it. Also shout out to Amok303 who chopped it 3ways and hu this week. He almost got there on Friday to make it the amok303 open. I hope he has the time to try this weekend, I’m really rooting for him to make it happen. Would be a cool challenge to try and take it away from him. A lot of people have been trying and are talking about it on the tables.
Thursday I had some shit happening in my personal life. Some stressful situations made it so that I wasn’t really in it with the poker. I might have seemed calm but this is not the way I want to approach poker. It just doesn’t work for me that way. I want the feels in there. I like to scream like a grill when I win a pot and chew a piece out of my desk when I don’t get a bounty. The investment is what makes me want to improve. I still streamed for about 3 hours and then called it a day. An hour later I was called by my dad’s girlfriend. He had an infection and that made his temperature rise to 39.6. Really high fever. The fever brings hallucinations with it. For normal people this sucks, but combined with my dad’s Parkinson it gets really nuts. He had to be admitted to the hospital cause they couldn’t get the fever down. Myrthe and me spent 3 hours there trying to get him chill and ready to sleep. He was in good hands and needed sleep so we left after a while. I went to go see King King here in Vlissingen. A blues/rock band. Was a really great show. I posted some stuff about it on snapchat.
Friday morning I went to visit my dad. His fever was down and he seemed better, albeit still very confused. He seemed to be improving though and that was good to see. I couldn’t wait for Blowup Friday. A weird week with some rough things happening. LFG. I think we broke the record for most tournaments busted in an hour on PokerStars. I really wanted to play for a while but shit hit the fan big time. I even lost a few buyins on 200 PLO in shit spots. The $25 18-man hyper KO tournaments brought a lot of fun in it for me again. I crushed the first one so hard with a win and TWELVE!! KOs. I kept playing them alongside the Big $16,50. Just like last week the last tournament saved the day. I ended up getting 4th for $960. So happy to close the week with that result and book another win on Friday. I had a blast yesterday and I’m so happy you guys like the concept and give me a lot of room to be an idiot.
Today I’m gonna visit my dad for a few hours and then go to Liquid Nazgul’s again to have some beers and catch up. It’s been really busy times for him as well with the Golden State Warriors buying a piece in TeamLiquid. Absolutely crazy to see those two worlds connecting. He works really hard and has so much passion for gaming, so I’m glad to see something like that happen for him. I really can’t say if I’ll be streaming tomorrow. On the way home I’ll visit my dad again. Whenever he is not doing well or confused seeing me seems to be calming him down. I want to be there for him. If he is doing really well or completely better I might put out a stream. It’s been in my head a lot to stream in the weekend and I will figure something out!
Special thanks to you guys. Seeing how big the core viewership is really motivates me to keep delivering. Even with marathons going on and other streamers we will still always get to 600-700 people. That’s insane. I really want to get moving on upgrading PC and stuff. I think it’s a very smart decision to try and get a sponsor for that. Stream seems big enough and it would be a cool connecting I think. If I have a new beast I can stream some easy-to-follow new games that require a lot of power.
Long list of things that are in the running or I’m working on. Every door you open shows another door, but in the meantime the product gets better. It would be boring anyway if there wasn’t anything more to do.
Have a great weekend!