thewh00sel!

Spent $64k on MTT buy-ins and buying pieces of people this summer
Sold $28k worth of action in MTTs

Cashed twice for a total of $22,867
Returned $13,428 of total cashes to backers

NET: -$26,561

Pretty shitty results for this WSOP, but one close call in my second to last event (got 21st in the little one drop for 20k) saved me from a really bad summer. I have to say I had a lot of fun playing the series this year despite a lack of results. I think I played 23 events which is probably the most I've ever played. This was completely opposite of my goal of playing LESS events and focusing on cash for the summer. Oh well, I guess I have the MTT itch again, didn't think that would ever come back. I plan on playing more tourneys this year than in years past; some highlights on the schedule are: Borgata WPT $3,500 in September, maybe the $5k 10mill gtd in florida, and hopefully PCA or Aussie millions (I've never been to either).

Haven't blogged in a while, but WSOP kind of kills all other endeavors. Looking forward to normalizing my schedule again now that poker season has ended. I put in 180 hours in June and already 90 hours in July. That will likely return to my average of about 140 hours per month in short order.

Expenses have been quite high as of late, and I expect it to remain that way if I do decide to travel for some poker tournaments and continue to pay down debt. I'm still teetering on the edge of a 10/20NL bankroll thanks to an awful May (-35k) and a breakeven summer (-5k or so net) so I have to be careful in paying off loans. Having a roll for 10/20 is much more important than paying something down that I can't get the cash back for if I downswing (student loans). One big upswing and I can pay everything off in 6 months versus rebuilding at 5/10 and still having minimum payments to worry about. I plan on charting out everything, but I estimate that if everything continues steadily (does it ever?) I'll be rid of student loan debt (~50k) and vehicle debt (~10k) in about 2.5 years and have only a mortgage (~240k) to deal with. Seems insurmountable looking the numbers in the face, but it wasn't long ago that vehicle debt was 20k and student loans were 60k. Progress!

0 votes

Comments (11)

Feb Goal Progress Pay off auto loans of ~16k 8% complete

25% complete: 12k left @ 4.3%

Put a dent in student loans of ~60k 0.8% paid off

6.6% complete: 56k left @6.8%

Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures. 0% complete

Invested about 15k into various index funds and 2k into part ownership of two bitcoin miners
~50% complete

Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one) n/a

1800 hours of cash games 7.78% complete

21% complete: 387 hours. Slacking here and definitely off pace.

Added Goal 65% Saving rate for the year Average Savings Rate: 77%

Average savings rate: 80%

So I'm exceeding most goals due to running well for the first part of the year. Should have put that as one of my goals as well, heh.

0 votes

Comments (10)

Title says it all. Since the turn of the new year, I've played 10/20 almost exclusively. So far it's paid off. I ran quite hot at the beginning of the year, and got into some very good spots against big whales. This boost in bankroll provided a boost in confidence that translated well to my poker game. Not confidence like bluff every hand like a hero, but allowing myself to play my "A" game sitting deepstacked against all opponents.




My average hours played has suffered a bit, but that's due in part to us pulling our daughter out of school and me spending more time with her and the baby at home. She was picking up some bad habits, and it just wasn't worth the cost because I had to stay home with the baby either way, so driving her up to school and coming back home is a waste of time and money. And I still take her to the park and other events for socialization and learning so I'm happy with the exchange.

In other exciting news, my wife will be taking next year off of work to stay home with the girls. She'll be doing the preschooling for our oldest. We are also going to make a big decision with regard to schooling of our oldest after this year. I am heavily leaning toward "unschooling." If you haven't heard of it, it's the act of raising your kids without public education, and simply teaching them whatever they want to learn about at any time. It's a legal form of homeschooling in the United States, and has shown some promising results in kids that are going through it or have gone through it. (wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling)

PEACE

0 votes

Comments (25)

January was a very productive month. As far as hours go I managed to put in 140 hours over 20 sessions for an average session length of 7 hours. A bit under my 2013 average of 150 hours per month, but given the new baby and taking a couple extra days off here and there I'm satisfied with the work I put in.

As far as the net worth update goes, I'll put it this way:
Liabilities (debt) were reduced by 0.36%, while assets under management (bankroll/liquid cash + invested funds) increased in value by 30.05%.

Our expenses were high this month as we purchased some new furniture and paid our estimated taxes, but because of the high income, we still managed a savings rate of 77%.

I'm estimating that February's hours played will be much lower than January as my wife is returning to the work force, and I'll pretty much be a stay at home dad Mon-Wed for the forseeable future. I'll be working on an efficient schedule to get in as many hours as possible, but for now I think it'll pretty much be a clusterfuck with nothing really set in stone so I won't try to predict what my schedule will look like.

Goal Progress
Pay off auto loans of ~16k
8% complete

Put a dent in student loans of ~60k
0.8% paid off

Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures.
0% complete

Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one)
n/a

1800 hours of cash games
7.78% complete

Added Goal
65% Saving rate for the year

Average Savings Rate: 77%

Ski Trip!

0 votes

Comments (16)

Welcome 2014!

Something odd happened in 2013; odd for a poker player anyways...It was eerily consistent with 2012. I made approximately the same amount of money, and played about the same amount of hours.

2012 Hours played: 1734
2013 Hours played: 1808

2012 Income from cash games: 137.5k
2013 Income from cash games: 153.5k

2012 tourney results: 33 played, -33k
2013 tourney results: 43 played, -64k (although in reality only about 40k of this is money I spent, the rest was selling action, still an annoying loss of roughly 30% of my income on MTTs)

I am now playing 10/20NL about half of the time, and hopefully will be playing it full time by the WSOP. Had a couple REALLY sick sessions last week that I may or may not blog about, but basically it was just me running well and other people going insane. Matched up well for me. Ended up being two sessions of 10/20, one 7.5 hours long and one 5 hours long; total profit: 41k. Yep, 2,050 big blinds in 12.5 hours of poker. Sick life.

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play poker now with the new baby here and her mom going back to work in a week or two so I've been thinking about other avenues of income that I can do from home while still watching two kids. Online poker seems possible but not likely since it requires me paying too much attention. Things I've been considering:

-Day trading. Been dabbling a little bit in day-trading bitcoin with mixed success. Mostly just been buying on Margin and when it goes up selling and using the profits to buy real BTC, but don't completely know what I'm doing yet. I'd like to get into real day trading in the markets as I have a friend who does it and says there are some spots where retail traders can have an edge over institutions since they have certain restrictions and things they can't dabble in. So I'm going to get into that a bit I think.

-Sports betting. Been dabbling in this already by getting picks from people and what not. I was thinking about doing my own handicapping, but I think it's far easier to find people who give out free picks and just basically grind free info from local sharks who bet for a living since I live in Vegas. For instance, I knew someone who had a huge 200k bet on the 49ers to beat carolina so I tagged along a unit on that bet and it came through. Have a futures bet on the patriots to win the superbowl at 8 to 1 and I bet it again when it was 10 to 1, so I got a sweat there when they play the broncos this week.

Those two things seem like something I can do while watching young kids at home and potentially develop an edge. Beats grinding forums all day long.

2014 goals:

Pay off auto loans of ~16k

Put a dent in student loans of ~60k

Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures.

Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one)

1800 hours of cash games

Save up enough of a down payment to consider buying a rental property in Vegas in 2015 if the opportunity arises

0 votes

Comments (15)

I forgot to blog about this but:

At 17:53 on 12/24/2013, 7lbs 4oz, 19" long, welcome to the world Avery Noelle Parmann

0 votes

Comments (16)

Been sweating this number a very long time but finally hit it. Lifetime profit graph HOLLA



And yes, end Oct 2009 through Dec 2012 was fun (not)

1 votes

Comments (31)

As usual, my dedication to updating this blog is pretty well synced up with my desire for cleaning the house. Both are useful and similar, as I can organize my things and thoughts; but the motivation to do either is often out of my grasp. Ah, procrastination, you made up word that makes me feel less guilty about my laziness...

On to the content. Since my last update, I have dabbled in sports betting a bit with no success at first. Then with stricter guidelines on bet-sizing and more research I've upswung and wiped out all of my losses. I've made 235 bets so for a total profit of 3 units. Nothing to be proud of really, but considering I was down about 50 units and recovered I'm pretty happy with how things have progressed.

In poker, I've recovered from the downswing I blogged about in August, and have been taking occasional shots at 10/20 in good games. Sunday was such a day.

I played 13 hours at 10/20 in a great game. Unfortunately, being in a great game never guarantees victory, and I was taking the worst of it. I was in for 10k after a few 3k buyins and had worked my stack up to 7500 and was grinding away. I took a short break and was chatting up a friend when I returned to the table and posted in the cutoff. The whale at the table limps in under the gun, and it folds to me. I look down at two red kings and raise it up to 120. A button-clicking regular makes it 380 in the big blind and the whale cold calls. Both players have me covered, and I can't afford to take a flop 3 handed. Also, with the whale calling, my hand will look much weaker if I put in a raise, potentially attempting to get HU with the whale or just take down the dead money.

"1300" I announce as I slide 12 more black chips into the pot. Button clicker sizes up my stack and nonchalantly tosses two yellow chips and a purple chip into the pot.

"$2,880" the dealer says as the whale pretends to go all-in; his three of hearts flashes as he throws his cards toward the muck. I announce all-in despite that fear in the back of my mind that he has me dead to rights. But....



We agree to run it twice. The first board comes down Qd 3c Qh Js As. I can't imagine winning on that board unless he has the other two kings...The next board comes down Qs 8h Ac Ad 4d and I reluctantly flip my hand over as my mind races to think of some combination of a hand he could have that involves me getting at least half the pot. I hear a quiet chuckle from my opponent as he flips over the Ks, and what seemed like five minutes later, the Ah.

Steam.

And with that, I left, and sent myself back to the coal mines to grind out that 10k loss at 5/10 the rest of this month.

Results:
Year to Date
Net
$80,710.54
Days Played
227
Hours played-Cash
1714:44:00
Hourly (total)
$47.07
Hourly (cash only)
$77.02
MTTs played
43
% win rate for cash 54.19%
ITM rate for MTTs 16.28%
Cash Net Winnings 124,393
MTT Net Winnings (64,547.70) (this is the total, including money given to me for selling pieces)

Looking forward to finishing this year off strong with a lot of hours before the baby comes. I'll try to post an end-of-year update in early January.

0 votes

Comments (19)

So, I've been thinking for a while how inefficient it is to have a huge chunk of cash just sitting around (bankroll) doing nothing for me other than being a security blanket for running bad in poker. I'd like to have that money working for me. I've always been intrigued by sports betting but have only dipped toes in the water so-to-speak. I know practically nothing about any sports other than knowing some of the known players and whatnot. I have no bias to any teams and am not a fan or anything because, tbh, I think sports and watching them is a huge waste of time.

Now that I have all you sports fans on my side, how many of you place a large amount of wagers each week? How much time do you spend handicapping the games? Line shopping? Do you focus on specific sports or do you bet everything? How much time per bet would you say sports betting takes for you on average? What websites do you visit to get all of your stats/info/etc that you feel gives you an edge? (especially interested in that) If you bet a lot and were to give advice to a beginner, what would you say/where would you send them to learn the ropes?

Thanks!

0 votes

Comments (11)

So I didn't exactly keep a log of my sleep as I had planned, but I'll give you a brief summary of how my biphasic sleep cycle went. I felt great even after many days in a row of sleeping twice per day for 3-3.5 hours. A problem arose, however, in trying to get enough hours in playing poker. As I suspected a little in the beginning, games would break early, or it would be difficult to get into a game at 9-10pm. Also, when 5am rolled around and I was in a great game I would have to quit to be home to get to sleep in order to wake up with my family at 9am. I found that my average hours of play while biphasic was only around 5 hours. It was a little annoying, but I'm happy that my body and mind dealt with biphasic sleep without a problem, and if I see a situation in which it could be useful, I will be able to implement it.

In poker news, it's been a rough go of it ever since mid-May. I lost about 5k in May after a 15k peak. I followed that up with spending ~30k of my own money on WSOP events with a couple small cashes and cash games keeping me from losing a ton (only dropped like 5-6k in June). It was a gamble I was willing to take as I could still comfortably grind 5/10NL if I completely bricked out of events, and the upside potential of a big score would affect my life much more positively than bricking out would affect it negatively.

After an annoying summer I haven't really had any good results in cash since then; breaking even in July and dropping 11k taking a 10/20 shot today after being even all month. Add it all up and I haven't made money since April and have a 15k hole to climb out of over that timespan. Add in expenses and you could have a lot of stress if you let it worry you. Luckily I'm a grizzled veteran, and I will continue to battle the Variance beast into the darkness until I saddle the bitch and ride it into the sunrise.

Speaking of which, I have a trip coming up to Atlantic City for the WPT $3,500 at Borgata. If I don't win, hopefully the cash games will be ripe with tourney donks and Jersey assholes to give me all their cheese.

Bye!

ps-
It's another girl coming to a Hospital near you! New Year's 2014

0 votes

Comments (15)