It really sucks to be sick. It's more annoying than anything when you just have a cold. Started out with a really sore throat and has turned into just being all blocked up. It's pretty lame.

But anyways, I feel like I haven't been grinding at all lately and that my time is taken up with other things, this week will be no different. I played a session yesterday which was non-eventful even though I feel I played really well. It's always nice to play a focused session and come out the other end feeling good about your play regardless of results. I will probably only have the chance to put in one or two more sessions this week as I am about to head off to Sydney for a Foo Fighters concert tonight and won't be back home until sometime Friday afternoon.

I'm going to do a little shameless bragging now...



Pocket Fives is virtually regarded as the most comprehensive rankings system for online mtt players, and in this week's rankings I have broken the top 20 worldwide for the first time. I am ranked #7 for overall PLB score which is really amazing for me to look at. On top of the worldwide rankings I have managed to grab the #1 ranking in Australia for the 2nd time as well. This is more satisfying this time because pretty much all of the bigger named mtt grinders ffrom Australia are now included in the rankings again (last time I noted there were 5-6 guys who had blocked their P5s profiles). To be perfectly honest though, I still strongly believe that at least 5-6 of the guys below me in Australia alone are better than me, but I'm a box and somehow managed to peel off the #1 spot.



It is really satisfying for me, given that I have only been playing mtt's seriously for about 7 months now. As I have said in the past, I don't really think I am a top tier mtt player. I'm not claiming to be as good as the top guys or even a lot of the guys who are below me on the rankings. However, I do feel I have worked really hard and put in a pretty consistent grind to get to where I am.

I don't want to undermine the rankings system by saying all of this. But in reality it is hard to directly converge results with people's skill sets. There are so many different styles that work for different people, and therefore what is considered to be good by some is considered horrible by others. There is such thing as game theory optimal but the more exploitative strategies seem to be the better route in mtt's. When you start dealing with exploitative strategies there becomes a vast array of "schools of thought" I guess, and in turn this leads to people thinking one way sucks and others thinking the complete opposite.

Almost all serious players have learned to not be too results oriented, and all these rankings really are is a glorified list of results and performance. What I am trying to say is that I don't hold any false pretenses about my own ability or how I compare alongside the top mtt'ers.

That's not going to stop me from bragging though . Chasing little milestones like this is always fun and some small added incentive to keep improving and keep my volume up.

Last night (Wednesday 7th December, 6pm AEDT) I went on air in my new role as Co-Host of the Konvict Korner Radio program for it's soft launch. The program didn't go without problems as we had some technical difficulties and also have some work to do on our structure. We will be back next week with a proper launch which will hopefully go smoother. You can check it out on Quadjacks Poker Radio at 6pm Tuesday night AEDT (11pm PST in USA). It will be a weekly show and I'm really looking forward to improving the show and maintaining it as a regular thing.

Need to get it together now and get prepared to head off to Sydney. I hope you guys are all doing great!

Matt

Follow me on Twitter @mjw006