My day (2 separate sessions). It's amazing how well things can go when flips are really 50/50 and overpairs actually hold 80%+ of the time. This was also hilarious too, and I guess this had to happen in my favor eventually. Last time I was involved with something like this it was AA vs AA and I obviously lost .
Submitted by : PanoRaMa
FullTiltPoker Game #5295249704: Table Gateway (6 max) - $2/$4 - No Limit Hold'em - 17:30:20 ET - 2008/02/17
Seat 1: AttackYouStack ($974.40)
Seat 2: RecessRampage ($780.20)
Seat 3: Jhys1010 ($410.80)
Seat 4: pnyffe ($404)
Seat 5: balleklorin ($790)
Seat 6: Girlsgonewild69 ($400)
pnyffe posts the small blind of $2
balleklorin posts the big blind of $4
The button is in seat #3
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to AttackYouStack
Girlsgonewild69 raises to $14
AttackYouStack raises to $48
RecessRampage folds
Jhys1010 folds
pnyffe folds
balleklorin folds
Girlsgonewild69 raises to $150
balleklorin is sitting out
AttackYouStack raises to $974.40, and is all in
Girlsgonewild69 calls $250, and is all in
AttackYouStack shows
Girlsgonewild69 shows
Uncalled bet of $574.40 returned to AttackYouStack
AttackYouStack shows a flush, Ace high
Girlsgonewild69 shows a pair of Sevens
AttackYouStack wins the pot ($803) with a flush, Ace high
Girlsgonewild69 is sitting out
Summary Total pot $806 | Rake $3
Board:
Seat 1: AttackYouStack showed and won ($803) with a flush, Ace high
Seat 2: RecessRampage didn't bet (folded)
Seat 3: Jhys1010 (button) didn't bet (folded)
Seat 4: pnyffe (small blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 5: balleklorin (big blind) folded before the Flop
Seat 6: Girlsgonewild69 showed and lost with a pair of Sevens
My essay today will be about my relative perception of "happiness" and what it means for the rising poker player. It is extremely relative in that people have vastly different ideas of what real happiness is, so what I'm writing isn't the end all for everybody, but what holds true for me.
This is my happiness meter. Yours may differ tremendously. On one hand I have the fish who are just regular people who may (or may not) play poker for fun and donk around. On the other side of the spectrum exists Cole "thuglife" South (I'm pretty sure that's what the T stands for) who I imagine to be the happiest person on earth. Your range may vary, but no matter what we all (inevitably) have a meter of our own.
The basis of this entry dwells on my belief that Money does buy happiness, but a material happiness and not an immaterial one. I think immaterial happiness refers to the genuine pleasure of doing things we absolutely love, being with people we love, and overall living a fulfilled life style. Material happiness is the happiness derived from spending money outside of what is necessary. I feel that immaterial happiness is superior, but as poker players we succumb to material happiness and our end goal (to be like cts) is to acquire both.
When we begin to start making serious money (anywhere between 100-400nl), we make a trade off between these two forms of happiness. Jurollo from the 2p2 forums said in regards to true happiness, "I think the job of online poker alone makes a lot of us unhappy. Its isolationist in its very essence and cuts us off from the outside world to an extent which contributes to [feelings of unhappiness]." btw anyone willing to pursue the topic further should really check that thread out: http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=8966677
So the main issue when it comes to SSNL/MSNL and higher grinders is that we neglect fundamental aspects of our lives (social interaction, priority of values, etc.) for the pursuit of money which we think will make us happy in the longrun. If anyone has played WoW (and you haven't, just bear with me), you'll know that as you go through the level 1-59 grind, you anticipate the lavish joys of being a level 60 and doing all the "fun end-game stuff" (btw this is an analogy only suitable for pre-TBC expansion WoW). But once you get there you realize holy shit, I still have to grind so much more just so I can get to a point where I can be satisfied with my character. The point of this analogy is that we set goals for ourselves, which at one moment we think we'd be satisfied at, but when we finally achieve it, we yearn for more. Poker players are inherently greedy, and so by definition we could never be satisfied. When I grinded out 25nl I just thought "man if I could get to 100nl, I'd be sooo happy with 1k/month". What a jokebook that turned out to be.
So the MSNL player leads an unhappy life. We definitely make enough to sit back and enjoy our lives, but we're also at that critical point of "well I'm making $X now, but I just need to get this much better and then I can finally start playing 1knl and making $Y..". In other words, The MSNL player is frustrated because we're really at that breaking point between someone who can make good money from poker, and someone who can make an extraordinary amount of money from poker. Therefore we keep grinding, we keep devoting time to improving ourselves, and the sad part is many of us end up committing ourselves to permanently staying at 200 and 400nl because the extra stride is just too much (which results in increased unhappiness - to fall short of your goals).
On the other sides of the spectrum are the fish and cts. I believe the fish are happy because they only have one concern, money. Contrast to msnl players who have more concerns: money (because what we make is not "enough" ), and particularly meaningful social interaction (back to "immaterial happiness" ). We feel that we lack in both forms of happiness simply because material happiness isn't good enough for us - whereas the fish have the immaterial happiness, and would simply like some material happiness.
CTS on the other hand has officially won life and, ideally, has both. Of course in reality he probably has his own issues and whatnot, but my perception of someone like cts is that he has enough money to not care about being mediocre, and that allows him to set aside time to really cultivate his immaterial happiness. Just look at his blog and those pictures of Thailand, my god, what a gangster. I think I'm in love.
Well that's it for this topic so far. It's a hugely extensive topic that I could go on forever about, but I think I was able to convey the crucial parts of my thought process (lol) without being overly extravagant. Like I mentioned before, if you're interested in the subject of "true happiness", refer to the thread above where a lot of high stakes ballers chime in.
Was on a particularly juicy table and completely dismantled some fish who was calling any two on the flop. Eventually took 1.4k from him, but got thrashed on other tables and ended down 1.3k. I guess that kind of means I suck at poker, but at least I'm better than that one guy? Unfortunate session to have after recovering from a fever, especially since I won't be able to play much this weekend and all. February has still been overall pretty bad, so I'm hoping in this latter half I'm able to make some huge strides (which probably requires I play at least 25k hands or something).
Fun hands:
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/385786
This was pretty much the only big pot I actually won all day, against said fish. I later developed the read that he only check/raises flops with monster hands so in hindsight I don't know if I would've called, but this was earlier in the session so I called here (basically he's never raising a draw here imo).
And the losers:
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/385787
typical set over set, dude was 22/13 or whatever and was actually a pretty huge fish (limps AA utg and never puts any money into the pot postflop). Played 300 hands on this table and after this hand I just got up and left, standard.
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/385788
I really don't know about this hand, I think you could argue for a river fold against the c/r because I don't think he's checkraising here with worse unless he has 86s and that's a stretch. I doubt even AK plays this way too. w/e nice play by him
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/385789
Standard spot where you try to mix it up and end up stacking yourself because of it. I slowplay AA preflop because villain's range is pretty wide at this point but I also think I lose too much if I just 4bet and scare off parts of his range like TT+, AK (which he actually might be inclined to shove). On many flops I have pretty decent manueverability, and I thought this would be a very good spot for me to try to end up repping my hand as like 88 or something.
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/385791
This guy is apparently one of the top razz players on FTP. Regardless he plays this hand pretty awful and somehow gets paid anyway. 4bet pots are ridiculously uncool :[
http://www.liquidpoker.net/h/385792
Well, I hate to say it but this might be the first time in SSNL/MSNL that I've been owned pretty badly. I think I recognize this guy's name from a while ago, so presumably he moved up to higher stakes and just came back down for whatever reason. In any case I was completely outplayed and I have to give credit where it's due. I don't particularly hate my play because almost nobody at ftp 400nl is conceivably capable of doing this without some sick history (which we didn't really have).
Sorry for lack of posts, got sick today (Valentines Day too fdsofmdsf), and just have been busy overall. Wanted to write another essay or whatever but not right now since I'm on the verge of dying. So instead, I wanted to get some suggestions for the license plate that my upcoming car will have. California allows 7 characters max, any combo of letters or numbers and some stars or hearts or w/e too.
The ones I like so far are:
JEAAAAA
ROBUSTO
IRUNBAD
LOLG35S
Last one is a bit cocky and its only if I do get a g37, but I also don't like it because what if there's a new G model out eventually, I'll look like a fool :[. Any suggestions?
edit: Forgot to mention there's a 5/10 ftp player at my school who has "SHIPPIT" on a g35 and he's cool w/ me so I don't want to disrespect him by also getting a derivative form of ship it .
Had one of my idiot friends ss this for me so some stuff is cut off. My atsb was 75 according to my stats on pt2 but its 45 on his pt3 so I don't know.
Anyways this session I decided to 4 table and focus and also open a huge range on CO+ and also 3bet relentlessly given how some people are adjusting to my image. I have some decent experience with lag play, played mostly 25/22 at 1/2 over 100k hands (if 25/22 is considered lag), but nothing this outrageous. Made some bad plays and leaked a lot in the small pots, especially against calling station fish since I could never move them off a pair and at the same time I wasn't making high pairs myself. Anyway I thought this would be a fun exercise and hopefully un-nittify myself in my normal game since I'm like 22/19 or something ridiculously tight like that.
Also, had to get my friend to ss for me because for some reason I can't ss myself. Either i'll get an error message in paint saying "error getting clipboard data" or something, or it'll work but everything will be mostly pitch black. I have an nvidia geforce 6600 gt (i think) and two 24" syncmasters. This was only a problem ever since I got my 2 monitors, any ideas?
Posted the video above because it's semi relevant, and also because it's really awesome. This blog post, along with future ones of this vein, may appear to be written with an air of arrogance. While I can't say that I'm an ethical, pure-hearted person, the one thing I'll be consistent with is being true to myself. This means I can easily say to myself "I'm being an arrogant mother fucker". So feel free to give me shit about this, I definitely have it coming.
With that said, I'm gonna talk about one of the "traps" of online poker. It's not that it's addicting, or that we can lose too much of our money.. ironically it's that we can make too much money. Of course this is what we all hope for, and well shit I love that I can make so much (relatively speaking) money at this game. It comes at a cost though.
I briefly mentioned it in my previous entry, that this game really transforms us, specifically in regards to how we view money. I remember my high school days where I saved up a lot to buy my retarded ex girlfriend a hundred dollar necklace. The days where buying a 5 dollar ice cream was ridiculous, and meals over 10 dollars a person should only be reserved for anniversaries and birthdays only. What I'm discussing now is the crux of issues that are involved in a larger realm of things, but I'll keep it simple for now. So I can stop beating around the bush, what I'm trying to say is that as we earn more money that surpasses "realistic" standards, the more our perceptions of money and the value thereof changes - which usually results in more frivolous spending as a derivative of a newfound "baller mentality".
I realize I'm still a small stakes chump to a lot of people on this forum, but I write about this because 200 and 400nl is pretty much that point where we start to exceed the expectations of those around us, and ourselves. I shouldn't really be comparing myself with other people, but as a sophomore in college, those around me make 10 dollars an hour, probably with tips. On extremely bad months, I'm making at the very least 60 with an additional 20+ from rakeback. On good months, I'll make over 200. In the larger scope of things, this is still chump change, but not for a 19 year old with a skewed perception of the world and the value of money.
What this leads to is the bottomless pit. As we spend more and more, our expectations for ourselves and our standards of living increase. The clothes I wear everyday easily surpass the thousand dollar mark in terms of combined value, and everyday I make fun of one of my friends (and semi-poker student) for wearing the same 2 dollar hoodie everyday. Everyday I eat out at expensive places, ensuring the food I eat is not particularly harmful to my body and of great quality (will later write an "essay" on a supposed "higher" standard of living), whereas I know people that cook instant noodles everyday. In a nutshell, as the quality of my life increases, the hole I'm digging deepens. I'm digging a hole for myself that I don't see I can ever comfortably jump out of.. if everything were to go wrong tomorrow, how would I revert back to a life of eating fast food, being frugal on 10 dollar expenses, etc.?
For those still at the micro stakes with great aspirations, I write this as a warning for what can come about. I know some people here are heavily disciplined when it comes to saving and investing, and are also not greedy delinquents like I am when it comes to this sort of thing. But for the guys still new, you probably think "yeah there's no way I'm going to mindlessly spew money when I make it", I had the exact same mentality.
So this is a bottomless pit once our hole deepens to a specific point, and it is the reason why we must absolutely not fail at poker. The concept is actually a bit depressing - it turns poker into a chore and not something I can do for leisure, simply because my future satisfaction depends on my success now. It's depressing also because, as someone with these types of greedy, arrogant characteristics, I can never be satiated by any amount of money I make (up to I don't know, millions I guess?), and therefore not only must I continue winning, but I also must keep improving my winrate (which means moving up in limits). Like I said earlier, this is just a crux of much larger ramifications, which will lead into a future "essay" like this one which ties into the money we make, and our overall happiness (or lack thereof) as a result.
P.S. If you like that/are intrigued by the Birdman video up top, visit www.5starstunna.com for more videos where he elaborates on his ballerdom.
P.P.S. If you have any suggestions on things I should include or write about, feel free to leave a comment. I figure if people are willing to read my spew I should return the favor by giving you guys more relevant stuff. I'll eventually stray away from these sorts of off-the-table stuff and include poker strat stuff but I just wanted to keep a collection of my thoughts regarding this kinda stuff first, so bear with me . Thanks for reading.
Here are my january results. Not posting them for any reason other than to start this post off with a neat picture so people can bear with me through this next block of text:
I haven't written on this for a while, and fact of the matter is I probably don't think I have the 20 minutes every other day to devote to keeping a cool blog.
Regardless, I've changed tremendously since my last post. Aside from the obvious that I've moved up in limits (currently playing 400nl at full tilt), I think I've also surpassed a transparent window that isn't known to people until after they've crossed over as well. There may be more ceilings, but this is definitely the first big one. I think it's the separation from playing this game for chump change and playing this game and realizing you can actually win a lot from it. When we consider the amount of time and devotion we pour into this game and improving, we ourselves inevitably change at this point - for better, and for worse.
So I've decided to start my blog again to keep track of these sorts of things. Also because lately I've been struggling, and although I swear to everyone on my aim buddy list that I'm doomed forever in poker, I know that's not true and I just need to keep playing well until FTP starts to like me again. Primary themes of this blog will be things that are ballin out of control, the mindset of a hopeful MSNL player in regards to poker, and the mindset of a MSNL player in regards to the real world. I actually think this will be a cool thing for a lot of people, since there are a bunch of ex-starcraft micro limit players on this site and it's stuff I really never thought or read about prior to winning any decent sum of money.
So as to leave my thoughts for another time, probably tomorrow or even tonight, I'll end this the way I started it, with a picture. I will be most likely be leasing this car in about a month or so, the Infiniti G37.
I'm proud to say that, after being invigorated with a new sense of urgency, motivation, and passion to win, I am now almost break even .
I started my new revival on 8/09 and since then I've played 26k hands (when prior to this I only averaged only 20k hands/month LOL), at 100nl (to rebuild my roll to a respectable level) and 200nl only. There were many times where I almost lost hope, in my ability to succeed, and in my future as a poker player. As you can see, after the tilt session there were numerous sessions where I'd lose more or just go back to my starting point all over again.
However, I stuck through it and now I'm back . Additionally, I made a stake bet with my teacher that with the 1k he gave me, I either had to turn it into a 5000 dollar profit (RB and stake money not included obv) or I'd have to ship back 1500 (otherwise I get to keep 200 of the stake rofl what a shitty stake bet). I think I was a bit delusional when I made that bet, but I'm only 700 away from making it now and about 11 days ahead of schedule . ANDDDD I finally got enough points to get an 80gig ipod (80k ftpoints). It's deducted from my MGR of course, but it's still nice to just have it appear in the mail for me. For those interested, the calculations (if I did them right) come out to me getting the ipod for only like 108 dollars, as opposed to the 250 dollar retail or w/e.
Congrats to me, and thanks for the people that had replied to my hand threads on the right sidebar throughout my numerous rollercoaster sessions.
Variance: At beginning of summer, was planning on being at 400nl by the start of Fall Quarter. Doesn't look that way anymore, but I'm still fine with that
Haven't made a blog post in a while, hopefully this one will be enjoyable.
I was running well/playing well (or so i think?) at 200nl, was running like 7ptbb/100 over 20k hands at one point. I had already begun taking very very small shots at 2/4 and 3/6 when there was a fishy table, etc. Very very confident in my game and my ability to win moneys.
But yesterday, I snapped :[. Something I thought I had under control since leaving 100nl - tilt. The downswings at ssnl are brutal it seems (well..anywhere, but still losing 4 figures isnt cool), so I made sure to maintain myself. I started off running pretty bad/making some bad bluffs at 200nl, and everything just went downhill from there. After losing roughly 2k, I spotted a juicy 3/6 table and joined it. Immediately I plunged myself into an even more painful anal violation.
Prior to the session, I had cashed out 4k, which left me with roughly 4k to play with (for 200nl mutlitabling, standard, etc.). By the end of the night, I found myself with a little less than 1000. Feeling distraught, I began talking to my poker coach/teacher. He crushes msnl up to 2knl on ftp, but for some reason I do very well vs him hu (a week ago I had a losing day, challenged him to some hu out of frustration, ended up +2k on him at one point on 3 tables of 200nl hu, ended with +800). Needless to say, in my condition, and some random bullshit he bustos me (lol so much for a teacher ).
So that was me, yesterday. Obviously here are some graphs. The HU session is not included.
(That's -160ptbb/100 for 600nl btw)
I got a 1k stake (my own money, basically) from my teacher, under the conditions that I will earn 5000 by September, otherwise I have to ship him 1500 back. If I succeed, I only have to ship 800 back. It's not that great of a stake, I'm really unsure in the time I have left I can get 5k without running hot again, and even if I succeed it's only a 200 dollar bonus to me. Regardless, my account was busto, and I needed money, so I took it.
My first day (4k hands in one day, 4-5 tabling only roflll) after the catastrophe looks like this: Apparently I'm like doomswitched for life in 200nl. I found the 100nl games incredibly soft for some reason, and I couldn't really take the stakes seriously so it kinda allowed me to open my game up and play 25/20 when I usually play much tighter than that.
So I'm off to a pretty decent start I guess. I would LOVE to say that I've finally learned my tilt lesson and whatnot, but really, you never know. Like I said, I thought I had understood the effects of tilt and how to control it long ago, turns out I was wrong and now I'm faced with being set back about 3 weeks in terms of income. Meh, oh well, here's hoping I get earn 5k (not counting stake money + rakeback) by september!
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