Random Poker Stuff

10NL:


20NL:

BR is sitting at healthy 700 right now and planning on moving up to 50NL at 1500 (wanna just to be safe and learn a bit more at the lower stakes this time around). Working very very hard on poker and the game is very fun for me. Not caring about winning but really just focusing on making the best fucking decisions whenever I play. I really hate myself for still spazzing around like a dumbass and I am going to try very hard to get rid of a lot of old habits and just play like a emotionless fucking robot and get those disciplined folds in.



Live Poker

Haven't played live for a long time, and my state is the worst to play at. We got casinos alright, but none of them are allowed to play NL. We play spread limit hold'em which you can only raise to a set amount (say if 3-20 spread, you can raise 20 on top, and re-raise is also max at 20 and there is a betting cap of 3 rounds iirc). Still soft as hell, so my bet sizing is super small (they do 1/3 so I would raise like 7 pre and add maybe 2 per limp). Not sure if I should play a bit more with pot odds since the bigger the pot gets the more odds you get for calling. Got myself into a very fishy habit of calling a lot when I play there.

I met some guys from my company at the card room and they invited me to a home game that they do. It is only 20NL but it is good and fun. People play super loose so I win some there from time to time.

The real NLHE I can play is MTT. There is a turbo MTT going twice a day in the cardroom I go to, but the field is a bit tougher than cash (lots of regs and some regs are pretty good, some kids like me here and there trying to be good and cool, you know how that goes). Binked one there once, with a 5-way chop ($55 buy-in and cashed $370). Don't want to get into that too much yet, but definitely will look into tournaments as I get better.

Today one of my poker buddy IRL is trying to get me to go play live. So I left work at 3pm and played till 10pm. Bought in for 200 for the 1/3-20 spread holdem game and just got played a couple of pots (some guy slowplayed QQ pre and slowplayed more when he flopped set and I got kinda fucked that hand since I wasn't thinking through at the river raise) and lost all of it.

Re-bought for 300 more and won 50 back. Bought in for the MTT for $40 and LOLDONKAMENT MODE ACTIVATE. Played very tight at the beginning, while trying to get my live HUD on. guy sitting on my left and right were not fish (guy on my left played till HU at the end) but everyone else seemed pretty fishy. Until this one hand when most of the people limped/folded to me and I decided to open 700 Ts9s (blinds 100/200 and everyone had 20k chips to start so pretty much lvl 1). My buddy called from the SB, so did rest of the limpers (kid on my left and guy on my right didn't call so coolio). Flop came 9h4h2s, my buddy donk bets for 2k chips. Folded to me and I was like, damn I know him pretty well and he loves his suited connectors. He definitely had 2 hearts. I was like, can't let him have it and didn't think about it too much. Shoved and got snap called by him. He showed QhJh. ugh.. Turn Jd River 2h LOL I was out. Thinking about it a little more I should have just folded (he had 15 outs so he was ahead), and would have probably just flatted/folded to an unknown. Well that goes my $40 for the night. Seems like I am the fish here LOL.

Well after finishing my dinner there, I went back into the cash action. They always had a 3/6 FLO8 table running with a kill (if you win both high pot and low pot you need to post for 6 and bets become 6/12). Going to give LO8 a shot because why not. Bought in for just $200 just for shits and gigs. While I was waiting for a seat, I did some quick readings on how LO8 works and it seems a bit easier than PLO (preflop determined a lot). And there is a new holdem table opened up so I sat down for an orbit and got couple of good hands vs a whole table of fish. Picked up 90-some in about 2 hands and I was up for FLO8, so let's go bitches.

My plan was just to play dumb and asked the dealer and other players like the rules and shit, and people helped me a lot. Then I just played like a nit. Fold pretty much all the shit hands and played only like 4 in a row, (A4)56 and like (AQ)A4. Limped in with hands like 6633 89TJ etc trying to hit something nice. Super patient overall and got paid off. Up about another 140 from FLO8 at the end (didn't get involved in a lot of hands so didn't win very very big). My buddy did pretty well at the MTT and got to FT, but busted around the bubble and didn't cash. Got him playing FLO8 for the 1st time as well (he doesn't play nearly as much poker as me so he is weak LAG at best) and he managed to lose a big chunk of cash. Oops.

Didn't wanna show the graph because I have like less than 10 sessions. But I am up about $260 live. Going to play more live if I can get a big enough roll from online for just live poker (I use my life roll for live so don't really wanna do it often as for now).


Life in General

Watched a lot of PokerStars videos on YouTube and the team online pro playlist catches me the most. Lots of good stories there. Enjoyed Baalim's video a lot. Really want to try to play poker for a living. I am still bad, very bad at this game.

I have a great job, not even going to be humble here (not bragging either tho), my job is fucking great. But I enjoy less and less about it. I love programming and I chose it as my major for college and as my job after college. But suddenly, when you get to program fucking 40-50 hours every week makes you lost in it, especially working at a big firm. For me I think I enjoy programming for myself the best. I wrote a hand history converter in no time so that I can use HEM2 HUD on the bitcoin website I play at (people even ask me to sell it to them bling bling$$$$$). It fucking sucks when you have a boss that gives you a lot of attention when your project is going well but gives 0 fucks to you when he moves onto another bigger project (and at the same time your project run into a little trouble here and there). I feel like software engineers are just fucking tools, expensive tools at these big tech firms. I don't like that. I would love small start-ups a lot better but I wouldn't be able to (I am Chinese coming overseas to work and I need a big enough of a company to sponsor me). I have a prototype game that I need people to draw good graphics for me and it is going to be very very fun to play. I couldn't find a designer and I sucked at drawing. If I finished my game and got some success I would probably quit my job and go for that. Maybe I am just fucking bitching here and I should be grateful about my current financial situations and use it as a resource to learn to play poker.

I have seen a lot of software engineers that are good at poker. Last year WSOP ME there was a Facebook engineer got featured for a lot of episodes for Day 3 and 4. This year there is another software engineer that binked an event (forgot which one though, but one of the 1500 NLHE events). Not sure if Daut is a software engineer but he seems to know lots of programming stuff .

In terms of effort, I am pretty sure I can put in enough effort for poker. I still remembered when I started playing my first RTS - SC2 (yeah I am fish at RTS). Spent 2 years to get from the 30 APM, bottom 5% of NA server, to top 5% of NA server (APM around 180-200 ish because the game is easier than BW LOL). Was still in college when I played the game and I dropped a class one semester trying to get more playing time in (fuck school man was gonna go pro SC2 gg). If I want to get good at something, I put a lot of fucking time into it. Poker is no exception here. I love the game, love the challenge, and I just want to get good at it.

I tried to express this to my mom (she is Chinese) and she was like wtf you are not quitting your job for poker. It is gambling bla bla bla. Even a lot of my good friends and my coworkers in real life don't understand it at all, even if they are tech-savvy, well-educated and I have explained the whole deal to them. Have not even tried to tell my girlfriend about this (she is going to flip as well I'm pretty sure - also Chinese). The more I think about this, it's like, for me, I just want to be my own boss. I feel like I would be happy to be a indie game dev or software dev writing apps for a living, or playing poker for a living. You are pretty independent and you don't have to listen to almost anyone about almost anything (I listen to all of you for advice and shit LOL). You tell yourself what to do and you are responsible for yourself (and your family of course).

The compromise I am trying to give myself now is that, put as much time as I can into poker, learn the shit out of it, get very good at it, and if I get good enough, I will eventually just do it. At the same time, see if I can find a chance to stay in the US while trying to work for a smaller company or something.

Alright enough for July 4 lol. Have a wonderful weekend LP. Need to pick up my gf in 2 hours at the airport (yep I am in a long-distance relationship and she is in Northeast of the State, 6 hour flights). Going to take a short break from poker for the weekend haha.

2 votes

congrats on the progress. keep playing, improving, and grinding out some extra cash as long as poker remains fun/stimulating; don't quit your job to play poker though, it's just not worthwhile at this point. there was a time when anyone who was reasonably smart and didn't tilt too much could make bank at poker - that time is over. there's still money to be made, but for someone just starting, even someone smart with a strong work ethic, making it a successful career is a huge long-shot. even disregarding the uncertainty of poker's legal future, the games at stakes where you can make the equivalent of a software engineer's salary are very tough and getting tougher. anyone who's capable of starting poker in 2014 and eventually making 6 figures/year is usually going to be capable of making more money in another sector.

not trying to chase you off, but when i saw you talking about how you'd like to become good at poker and quit your software engineering job at Amazon someday after winning a bit at 10nl i had to say something

btw i just started teaching myself Python this week (never done any programming before), not sure what i'm doing yet =] how long did it take you to get proficient at your first language?

On July 04 2014 12:39 bigredhoss wrote: congrats on the progress. keep playing, improving, and grinding out some extra cash as long as poker remains fun/stimulating; don't quit your job to play poker though, it's just not worthwhile at this point. there was a time when anyone who was reasonably smart and didn't tilt too much could make bank at poker - that time is over. there's still money to be made, but for someone just starting, even someone smart with a strong work ethic, making it a successful career is a huge long-shot. even disregarding the uncertainty of poker's legal future, the games at stakes where you can make the equivalent of a software engineer's salary are very tough and getting tougher. anyone who's capable of starting poker in 2014 and eventually making 6 figures/year is usually going to be capable of making more money in another sector. not trying to chase you off, but when i saw you talking about how you'd like to become good at poker and quit your software engineering job at Amazon someday after winning a bit at 10nl i had to say something btw i just started teaching myself Python this week (never done any programming before), not sure what i'm doing yet =] how long did it take you to get proficient at your first language?

Haha I totally get it. I am far far far away from where it needs to be. Will still play this game a lot and try to get better though.

I started with Visual Basic 6 when I was 11. I bought a ton of books back then (parents were supportive so they got me a ton of books back in early 2000s when there were not as many resources from the internet). I would even sit in the toilet and just read code snippets while I was taking a shit. That was how much time I spent on it. I knew ins-and-outs of that language and actually took a VB6 test at the age of 13. There were all adults taking the tests except for me lol. So I would say about 2 years of my hobby time (pretty comparable to the time I put into poker SC2 etc).

I learned python in the summer before I came to US for college. Built a web-app with my friend for a company as a small "internship". Python is still my strongest suit, and now I know so much about Python so I make almost everything in Python (for websites I started using Node.js but I used to use Python for a lot of weird web-apps myself). Whenever I need something fast at work I would write a Python script (not the best language to use at my company lol but who gives a fuck it is internal).

My advice for programming is to play with it a lot. Build something you want, just like playing LEGOs. I do suggest to start with a book, and actually type the code snippets in yourself and run it (no copy-pasta at the beginning). Then you mix and match all the snippets you know how to do and build a "super app" at the end. O'Reilly books are fine and I think after that you can start your adventure on websites like stackoverflow to search for specific stuff you need to accomplish.

Programming seems to be the bees knees man. I have seen a lot a lot of people getting jobs because they can code rather than what diploma they have (we hire electrical engineers for programming sometimes, as long as you know how to write code well you are in).

I agree with what hoss said, the amount of time you have to put in in order to make a living at poker could most definitely be put to better and more efficient use. That being said you can most likely cash out from bovada, there are a few states they wont take deposits from (I think the states that have legal online poker) but as far as I know there aren't any states that you cant deposit a check in.

On July 04 2014 02:29 lhr0909 wrote: Read through a couple of thinner books for micros. Finally read through the Ryan Fee book that Devon linked me, and I read the BlackRain97's book as well. (Also read Easy Game but I wouldn't count on that book oops).

Mind sharing the books ? Or why do you think easy game sucks ?

On July 06 2014 17:41 RaiZ wrote: Show nested quote + On July 04 2014 02:29 lhr0909 wrote: Read through a couple of thinner books for micros. Finally read through the Ryan Fee book that Devon linked me, and I read the BlackRain97's book as well. (Also read Easy Game but I wouldn't count on that book oops). Mind sharing the books ? Or why do you think easy game sucks ?

Ryan Fee book:
http://www.gamblingsystem.biz/books/2p2NL6max.pdf

I would look into purchasing blackrain's book. It is like $20 and I think it has a lot of updated relevant info for you to play in micros on stars. The guy has an absurd winrate at the micros and he still plays micros as of today.

I personally think the book is a bit too general for a complete new player. I would read into some other books before that.

On July 05 2014 13:15 tooker wrote: I agree with what hoss said, the amount of time you have to put in in order to make a living at poker could most definitely be put to better and more efficient use. That being said you can most likely cash out from bovada, there are a few states they wont take deposits from (I think the states that have legal online poker) but as far as I know there aren't any states that you cant deposit a check in.

Just requested a cashout from bovada and see how it turns out