K40Cheddar

first kinda big online tourney win. Yay.

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Comments (7)

Good day liquidpoker,

This week I've been on a trip to Vegas and have been enjoying myself thoroughly so far. I planned the trip not only to get away from the stress of everyday life but to see what it would be like to grind a ton of poker for a week with no restrictions on time or place. While I have enjoyed playing at many of the venues down here, I haven't been super successful. I regularly play 1/2 around the Chicago area and have had no problems there, though I feel people are slightly better down here in Vegas. The fact that you get so few hands per hour really eats at me. I feel like I'm getting a pretty small sample size as to how i'm doing and when I think about my sessions I find it difficult to pinpoint spots to improve. I don't know if it's just running bad or I just suck or maybe a little of both. I'm not going to go on about specifics with bad beats either because nobody gives a shit and understands its part of the game. I find it extremely tilting though when you play great for 5-6 hours and lose a massive pot later due to some random bullshit that is poker.

Anyone that plays live professionally is nuts in my opinion. Out of curiosity to any live pros out there, what are some things you do to keep yourself together mentally? Any activities or things you engage in that keep you motivated and inspired to grind? I find it difficult to pull out motivation.

Do you regularly log your sessions and review each one critically? How do you know when to stop while ahead or keep going? Do you set stop limits/earning limits on your sessions?

I am only asking this things out of interest from people who choose to do this as a profession. From my simple experience, it seems a lot more stressful and difficult than I imagined and I can only believe the difficulty probably escalates when you play stakes like 5/10 or 10/20.

Let me know if you guys have any thoughts.

Thanks!

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Comments (5)

Hello LP,

I've been meaning to get around to writing a blog post for awhile but have been too lazy to do so. Many things have been happening in my life and I feel I am at a point where things are starting to come together. I wanted to share this with people, partially for me to get some things off my chest and partially to just let others know more about me.

Recent Graduation

Last May I graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a double major in statistics and economics. As one of the top schools in the midwest United States, I was very happy to attend and had a great four years there. I am proud of my degree and had the opportunity to meet many new friends for life. I would have never got into poker if I hadn't met some select few people there as well who introduced me to this site a long time ago (jas0n, edzwoo). I also had the opportunity to play in the Big Ten Marching band down there, the Marching Illini. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life and I'll never forget the thrill of playing on the football field in front of tens of thousands of fans. While I loved the independence and freedom that college gave me there are some things I won't miss. While the atmosphere was exciting and young, I personally tend to live a more reserved life. Constant parties and screaming throughout the night got to me after awhile. It's not that I never liked going out, but I do appreciate my time alone and prefer social contact less often than others. I'm sure there are many LPers who feel that same way sometimes.


Marching Illini highlighting the United States with Illinois in the middle

Photo of me on the field

photo of the quad where I spend most of my class time. Will miss this school a lot.

Job Searching and New Opportunity

Probably the hardest part for me the last few months has been finding a solid job. Even with the double major I possessed, as well as two actuarial exam credentials, the job market in the U.S. has been very poor. One thing I never did in college was obtain an internship. It's not that I didn't try but I pursued the opportunities too late and did not succeed in any interviews I had. I pretty much have been feeling like this most of the time.



For anyone still in school, I would HIGHLY RECOMMEND you pursue internship possibilities for your career AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I was under the belief that yes I'm a smart person with basic actuarial credentials and a job would just fall right into place. Wrong thought process. You have to want it and you have to go out and get it. Don't wait till it's too late.

So basically ever since fall I have been job searching and even throughout the summer for the last two months I have been religiously applying for positions daily. The thing that makes me the most upset is that I know I have the ability to succeed and I know I have the basic credentials, but when you walk into an interview room with 30 people applying for the job and they only take 1 you better be the best damn one there. It has been very frustrating.

Luckily, I have not given up and just recently I received a very solid entry-level job offer to work in downtown Chicago as an assistant options trader. I was extremely surprised to get the job, as the interview process was very competitive and they only ended up taking one person out of around 15. I was invited last Monday to go see a baseball game with the firm and got to meet many of the other employees, all who seem like pretty cool, highly intelligent, confident people, with the desire to be the best. I start next week and am looking forward to the challenge ahead. Since I will be partially working on the options floor, I'm a little nervous but luckily the firm offers full training and mentoring for years so I hope I can adjust and learn well.

The new world I will be living in. The excitement!





Maybe one day I'll get to be like this guy



Other life things

I am lucky to have a very supportive family throughout this process. I have an older sister who is about 5 years older than me and is getting married this weekend. I'm very excited and things have been hectic. She's one of those really hardcore type A personality people so if things don't go perfect the family is going to have some serious emotions running all of the place lol. I really like my future brother in law and go to go to Vegas a few weeks ago with a bunch of his friends and a cousin of mine. Solid trip but that is for another time.

I'm am a competitive chess player and just recently I have taken a strong interest back into the game. I took some brief time off a few years ago but somehow got the motivation to get back to improving and studying. Since most players don't reach their peak until their late 20s, I still have plenty of time to improve. Right now I am a USCF expert, top 2% nationally, and have made it my goal to reach 2200 and become at least a United States master. While I may never achieve a full world title, I feel that I am perfectly capable of reaching this goal over the next few years.


Me at a tournament pretending like I'm thinking for a photo.

The thrill of competition

poker

It's sad to think how good I could have been had Black Friday never happened. I can only dwell on the days when I was grinding daily, about to enter midstakes for the first time, and getting slapped in the face with a big GG. I'm not a huge believer in the everything happens for a reason stuff but perhaps staying away from the game has been more positive, as many of you are fully aware of the emotional changes you experience and develop while playing. I just wish the government wasn't retarded and would get this straight. I have no desire to be a professional but I do enjoy regularly playing and improving and I do want to learn as much as I can and be a strong amateur player. I've tried playing live a lot a local casinos around Chicago but live poker makes me tilt so hard. It's so slow and I know everyone is bad but when your hand sample size is that low you can't sit with the fish long enough to know you'll get it all back. + Gas and travel costs add up. Still hoping one day the U.S. gets all this stuff figured out. These days you can sometimes find me donking it up on the NL 4 tables on carbon when I'm bored. I do however have a strong desire to play in the World Series of Poker and next year and I will do my best to try to get into an event there. I have also made it one of my life goals to eventually play the main event.

Well this post was pretty long. Just want to thank all the members of this site for making it entertaining. I'll give you the cliffs here for you lazy people.

TL;DR
-graduated in May
-love things about college, don't love things about college
-get work experience or your gonna have a bad time
-got a new job as assistant options trader in Chicago
-sister getting married
-gonna be a chess master one day
-want to play poker again, life WSOP goals

Gl everyone. Thanks for reading.

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Comments (18)

Hello everybody,

Just started a fresh account on lock poker and played a bit this week for fun. Most of the players seem pretty bad and haven't had that many problems. Missed the challenge and logic of poker and wanted to get back into it again. So I was looking over my HEM stats and then I noticed this.



Wtf is this. 8 BI of rake in 6.3k hands? That's less than losing a buy-in to rake per 1000 hands. Unreal.

Not that I care that much about the money, but losing that much to rake makes me feel like you have to be a seriously rock solid and good player if you want any chance to be beating this in the long run. It's not like I even have to be slightly better than everyone else. It's almost as if I have to be at 100% all the time and be making 0 mistakes in order to profit.

Immediately went around looking for a rakeback deal on this. Found a deal at raketherake for like 36% dealt rakeback and a 10% point conversion into cash exchange. If I could get even a piece of what I've been losing back I'd be happy.

Anyone know what stake levels the rake starts becoming semi reasonable? (if at all?)

TL;DR

-Got account on lock poker
-playing again for the fun/challenge
-people suck
-rake is huge
-looked around for rakeback
-does it get better?

Thanks for reading.

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Comments (13)

I felt that after this sample I was confident enough that I can comfortably beat NL 4 and am moving up to NL 10 today. 8.64 bb/100 winrate ain't too shabby even if it's against some really terrible players.

Graph since April 16 when I decided to start playing again:


Gonna play some NL 10 right now. We'll see how it goes.

GL liquidpoker.

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Comments (5)

Hello liquidpoker,

I've been wanting to blog for some time now but never really got around to it as soon as I wanted to. As a frequent lurker and crappy ROFL thread poster, I've enjoyed the liquidpoker community greatly. I remember back to the days of FTP where I was playing NL 50, posting hands all over the place, learning the game, and enjoying my results. It was a great feeling (assuming you can deal with criticism) to get feedback on your play and improve as a player. Ever since black friday, I felt that a part of me was missing. I needed the thrill of risk. I needed the competition. I needed the mental tests of variance. I needed to push myself to the limit. I spent most of my time reverting back to my studies and various other video games ever since. Recently, I had seen some inspirational graphs in various posts both here and on 2+2. Surely, one does not become a high stakes pro overnight. What motivated me from these graphs and posts was the challenge of succeeding against variance through proper play, volume, and mental resilience. Therefore, I have decided to get back in poker for personal goals and satisfaction.

A little about myself

I am a 21 year old student at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). Currently I'm double majoring in Statistics and Economics. My long term goal as a career is to potentially work as an actuary. For those who are unaware, an actuary is a person that works with risk based mathematical management. For instance, an insurance company would be an example of a place where actuaries would work, performing risk analysis to optimally price insurance costs. Other examples include retirement and pension fund planners. I've also been looking into financial career possibilities and things such as investment banking and trading. These are long term goals but of course we never truly know where life will take us.

I'm a competitor. I like to win. I've been playing video games since being a kid and nowadays with the e-sports scene growing I play almost any competitive game I can pick up, although I'm far from being pro level at any specific game. I used to play competitive chess and hold a USCF (United States Chess Federation) rating of 2070. For people that don't know what this means, it means that I rank in the top 5% of chess players in the United States. I stopped playing as often once I hit college, partially due to poker, but also because of a lack of motivation and increased difficulty with schoolwork. I've been playing the trombone for 12 years and currently play in the Marching Illini and various university concert bands. I not a huge athlete anymore but I did high school gymnastics for 4 years and still occasionally perform backflips off of stuff for fun.

I tend to be optimistic. Good things just naturally seem to happen to me. When things go bad, something always turns up to make things better even in situations that seem stressful. Ironically, I enjoy helping other people out and see other people succeed. I find this funny because poker is the exact opposite, as you in no way want to help out your opponents nor do you want to watch them succeed. If I had one goal for myself it would be to reach my absolute potential at everything I do.

Poker

As mentioned in the title and early intro, I have decided that I'm going to go back and give online poker a serious shot. I dabbed around trolling for awhile but the plan now is to put the volume in and get stuff done. Currently, I play on Hero Poker right now. I'm starting from the beginning, back to the pitiful roots of the lowest micros. Here are a few reasons why I decided to do this.

- Although I used to play up to NL 50, I don't know if I can play at that level again after a year.
- Don't want to deposit a large amount upfront for a large bankroll
- Want to beat the stakes one at a time to see if I can still do it
- Don't really care about the money. I care about success.

Anyway BACK TO THE BEGINNING. Here's since I started playing again.



TL;DR

-missed poker. Wanted to come back.
-background on myself
-some brags
-graph since I started playing again

Anyway, thanks for bearing with me. Wanted to get a lot of this stuff off my chest.

GL liquidpoker.

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Comments (9)

Greetings k40cheddar,

Certain in-Game activity on your account has been found to be in violation of the Summoner’s Code by the Tribunal.

The most common cause for this warning is either harassment or disruption of gameplay (intentional feeding, etc.). Bear in mind that the definition of harassment can range from direct, overt verbal harassment, to intentionally creating an unpleasant gameplay environment.

This is a friendly warning to encourage you to respect the Summoner's Code and contribute to the community in a positive light.

Thanks for your understanding, and best of luck on the Fields of Justice!


Maybe if people ACTUALLY FUCKING COMMUNICATED and didn't FEED EVERY FUCKING GAME it would be easier to be nice. I get reported one game cause early game I "took someone's farm". No it doesn't fucking matter that I go 10/2/8 and single handedly wield my team to a win I GUESS I JUST CAN'T TAKE FARM FROM PEOPLE WHO CAN'T LAST HIT FOR SHIT ANYWAY. WTF MAN this game is so addicting as fuck but everyone is just A HUGE RETARD and can't do anything OMFG. Play draft pick and get 4 fucking retards THAT ALL GET FUCKING SQUISHY ASS AD HEROES WTF. LEARN HOW TO BUILD A TEAM COMP HOLY SHIT. Enter the fucking game and all like "yo guys I kinda wanna play mid anyone got a problem with that?" As usual, NOBODY FUCKING REPLIES. I'm all like "ok I guess thats cool". Pick my mid hero. Get a dude on the team that picks a hero. FUCKING TAKES MY FUCKING LANE AT THE START OF THE GAME AND IS ALL LIKE "YO MAN I WANNA MID". WELL FUCK WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY ANYTHING YOU DUMB FUCKING SHIT. Solo top like a boss. Get a dude weak. Ask jungle "Yo man can i get a gank? DOESN'T FUCKING COME THE ENTIRE GAME AND BLAMES YOU FOR LOSING WHEN THE OTHER TWO LANES GET FUCKED IN THE ASS AND I HOLD MY OWN LANE AND EVERYONE ELSE FEEDS LIKE A MOTHER. WTF BOOM MAN.

/end rant

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Comments (11)

Sup LP. Ever since the DOJ stuff has happened I've been extremely sad and haven't blogged since April because I haven't had any poker related things to talk about. Well that all changed last weekend.

edzwoo, jas0n, hneaz and I all decided to go on a casino trip to the Horseshoe Casino in Hammond, Indiana. Since we're all based in Champaign/Urbana Illinois the trip took a little under two hours. I was preparing for my first ever trip to a casino since I turned 21 in August and I was super pumped. It was going to be the first time I had played real money poker since April and I just couldn't wait.

We get there around 11:00 P.M and the place is super packed. We headed straight to the poker tables to play some 1/2 holdem. At first, I felt like a complete noob cause I had never been to a casino before and had no idea where to go or what to do. Luckily for me edzwoo and jas0n were pretty helpful at getting me settled in and avoiding ways not to be "that guy" at the table.

So I sit down at a random table and immediately love the atmosphere. I decided to go with just a normal jacket and hat look rather than bringing in the sunglasses and headphones like a tool. I wasn't that worried about keeping my cool. The first hand I play Q8s in the BB and hit a flush on the turn. My heart rate immediately jumped. I have never felt that feeling playing online but in person its just a huge thrill. Unfortunately, I got a little nervous betting and was fumbling chips a bit. I probably could have gotten some more value on the river but I got jittery putting chips in and a couple guys commented on it. After about 30 minutes to and hour though, the nerves wore off.

I had always heard that live poker players suck balls and that was pretty apparent have like 3 hands. This tool sitting on my right who thinks he's really boss (acting like "that guy") 3 bets some guy pre. Some ghetto fish who keeps talking about how its his birthday calls. Flop comes K55. 3betting tool cbets normally and the other guy jams all in. Tool is like "aw shit man I think you got me here I gotta fold". He folds and flips up AA. He already committed like 1/2-2/3 his stack too. You could tell everyone at the table is like "wtf are you doing". That guy continued to talk a lot of strategy (really bad strategy) the whole time and make fun of people for playing hands they shouldn't play. I just went along with everything he said and agreed with him even though everything he said was pretty much incorrect. My goal was just to have a good time and be agreeable with people so when I win it's not a big deal.

I played for about 6 hours. Surprisingly, the table was full most of the time and when it got low more people came in to sit down quickly. The next result was a +$290 profit which really made me feel good for the first time playing live poker in a casino. I preceded to chill with edzwoo and hneaz at the penny slots. Not gonna lie, those slots are some of the most fun things I've ever played in my entire life even though I know it's completely -EV. Here's a video of the experience. I think it should work but it might not. I'm the guy with the hat on the right, edzwoo is on the left, and hneaz is talking.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=1674821187578

Overall, it was a pretty sick trip. I came out ahead and hneaz made a slight profit. I don't remember how jas0n did. Edzwoo was the biggest loser of the bunch, although he claims that he "ran really bad". I'll let you ask him how much he lost.

TL;DR ???

-went to Horseshoe casino in Hammond Indiana
-Made $290 playing 1/2 NL holdem
-Played penny slots for awhile had a blast
-Got back at 9 AM super tired and slept all day


I'm looking forward to going again. I just loved the atmosphere and experience so much.

Thanks for reading!

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Comments (15)

Just picked it up at the store! Since I can't play poker anymore I need something to fill in my available free time. I've been playing Call of Duty and Halo Reach a lot but Call of Duty is just way too easy and has a terrible matchmaking system, while Halo pretty much requires an arranged team of 4 to play at higher levels and I don't have 3 friends to consistently play with. I'm a big Warcraft III player and have never touched Starcraft but after hearing about it for awhile and seeing some friends play it I decided I would give it a shot.

Since I have never played Starcraft in my life I will probably be a complete and utter noob at this game for awhile. I got better at WC3 watching some replays to learn builds and strats and stuff. Anyone got some good links to SC2 replay sites that might help me get a good starting idea? Obviously can't learn without practicing either, I'm just looking for some additional resources.

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Comments (10)

Goals achieved in March

- Played around 35000 hands. Good volume for me personally since I only play a couple hours a day.
- Hit the 1K milestone mark
- Successfully raped the shit out of NL 25
- Moved up to NL 50 and have a solid and consistent roll to be staying here for a while.

Goals for April

- same amount of volume or more
- 1K profit
- hit 2.5K bankroll milestone
- Get ready to start easing into NL 100 or be at NL 100 by the end of the month

graph


around 18000 or so is when I moved up to NL 50. It's been a little swingy and I'm running a little under EV. I'm still taking full responsibility for some of these losses and I don't want to use EV as an excuse because I know I make occasional mistakes. I feel like my biggest weakness is not folding enough in marginal spots. I've gotten better at extracting value with my good hands, now I just need to get better at not giving away value to other people. My mentality lately has been "you win what you don't lose". Whenever I look over my sessions there are always 3-5 hands that I could have folded and made almost a BI more in the session from preventing losses.

Anyway thats my story. Good luck in April to everyone else.

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Comments (4)