LP was down for over a month. I randomly checked again and it was back up.
As for me, work has been going well, but MMA betting in 2026 hasn't been treating me well (seems to be the case for many MMA bettors for some reason...).
Once again, I'll be traveling abroad for the entire summer (June and July), so I won't be posting much until I return in early August.
This time, I will be traveling to the Philippines and will visit as many islands as I can. That being said, aside from my first two weeks in the Philippines, I plan to do everything week-by-week, so that it feels like I am on a real vacation and so that I don't have to stick to a scheduled plan that is often tiring.
My plan is to island hop, go to sleep whenever I want, wake up whenever I want, eat and drink whatever I want, go to the gym often to keep up with the food intake, go clubbing whenever I want, etc. Some of the islands I already planned to visit are Cebu, Coron (in Palawan), and Malapascua.
This won't be my first trip to the Philippines, but it will be my first time staying in the Philippines for more than 1 week at a time. Prior to 2024, I was in Belarus for summer 2021/2022/2023, and South Korea in summer 2018/2019.
I'll try to post update blogs during my trip when I can, but if I can't, then I'll definitely post a complete blog when I return to California.
I was in Las Vegas last weekend to bet on a UFC event. I ended up losing -$600 on UFC bets, but later that night, I was headed to my hotel room and I saw that row of massive slot machines that the casino puts in place in order to milk people a bit more right before they go to sleep.
I saw one of my two favorite slot machines and put in $200 and played 3 hands at $10 per spin. On my third spin, I hit a "10" in the first reel and bricked the other two reels. A 10, 0, and 00 turn the machine red and trigger a second spin, so the machine gave me an extra spin and the second reel showed a "0" while still spinning the last reel -- a couple seconds later, the third reel landed on "00" for a $10k grand jackpot.
Considering I just won $10k, I sat there in an oversized slot machine seat while I checked Twitter for UFC updates and waited for the slot machine attendants to come over and ask me for the usual identification card and "is this the first jackpot you've won with us?" (I've won several handpays before. I won $2400 last year, but $10k is my largest thus far.). Since the machine was so big, everyone who walked by was talking to me and asking me if I was the one who won the jackpot -- I said yeah. The people next to me were more excited about the win than I was. $10k is a lot of money, but it's not life changing, and I know that I'll have to pay 24% in taxes ($2400) when the time comes. I sent the video to my boss and jokingly told him that if it had an extra "0" at the end, I would've called out sick that next week.
I'll be going back to Vegas this weekend for UFC Noche, but it's only for a day trip and to bet a few specific fights. Hopefully I can get lucky on slots again, but I doubt it, so I'll play my usual amount and focus mainly on sports betting like I usually do.
I don't have much to post from my summer 2023 trip, as I went to the same countries and did similar stuff as last year.
My girlfriend and I ended up breaking up a couple weeks after I arrived in Belarus because I wasn't ready to marry her like I thought I was, and she didn't want to spend another year in a long distance relationship. We're still friends and we still talk online, but we felt it was better to separate and focus on our own lives.
After I left Belarus, I decided to skip my trip to Cyprus and go to the Philippines instead. While in the Philippines, I had fun on Day 1, then had diarrhea on Day 2, then felt good on Day 3. On Day 4, I felt bad again and ended up getting a serious viral infection that forced me to stay in my apartment for a few days before I booked an early flight home so I could go to the Emergency Room. I was able to mostly recover 10 days after that in time to go back to work.
After I returned to work, my stomach hurt for an entire week and I was crazy constipated, but I am luckily back to normal now as of today.
I will be going to Las Vegas this coming Friday so I can have a short vacation and bet on UFC 292, so I'm excited about that.
Overall, summer 2023 had some okay moments, but it was probably one of the worst summers I've had in a long time, both mentally and physically. I am healthy again and I am currently in my second week back to work. I don't have any plans to travel outside of America until 2024, but as of now, I don't have countries I'm excited to visit, and I don't want to travel internationally again until I get excited about traveling abroad again.
sup fellas? Tomorrow, I leave to Europe for my usual 1.5 month summer vacation, and I'll return on July 26.
I've noticed that once I started traveling a lot in summer 2018, we've lost a lot of active people every summer since then. While we don't have a lot of active people left, I hope that LP doesn't fully die before I return.
I'll be in Belarus for one month with my girlfriend, and then we'll go to Cyprus for two weeks. We might get married this summer, so that's interesting... As of now, we just talked about signing the paperwork and having a ceremony at a later date. I'll keep you guys updated with how that goes.
I'll of course post another blog with pics and information after I get back.
Hey guys. I little more than a year ago I made an update here about becoming a father.
My son is now almost 2 years old and is the most amazing kid:
I also passed the public service exam to become a Federal Auditor for the Federal Court of Accounts here in Brazil (equivalent to the GAO in the US or the National Audit Office in the UK). In 2021 I had passed the exam to become a Federal Agent for the Brazilian Federal Police, but when they called me for the job (it takes a few months between the exam and when they actually call for Police Academy Training), I refused to go and decided to keep studying to become a Federal Auditor. It worked out and now I'm waiting to start this new job.
I also started selling online courses teaching people how to pass exams for public service jobs here in Brazil, which is going great for me.
Currently living in a big farm, country side, in the northeast region of Brazil, at the feet of some beatiful mountains, surrounded by nature. Working from home.
It's safe to safe I've never been happier in my life.
During the entirety of June and July 2022, I was traveling around various parts of Italy and Belarus. I returned to America on August 1, and I have been working ever since.
In June, I traveled around Italy with a girl who I met in Belarus in 2021. We flew from our home countries and met in Rome, where we did some touristic stuff for a few days, and then traveled to a small city on the top of a mountain called Perugia. While small, Perugia has a lot of life to it, great views, decent food, nice people, and free wifi in the city center. After two days in Perugia, we went to the eastern coast of the country to a beach town called Rimini, where we ate and relaxed for 5 days. While in Rimini, we did visit a nearby micro country called San Marino, which is a country within a country, and has preserved its old style for a long time. After we left Rimini, we found ourselves on the western side of the country in Florence. Florence seemed like a chill city that focused mostly on museums (it's the city with the most museums in the world), which wasn't my thing, but my girl enjoyed it. After 4-5 days in Florence, we decided that we didn't feel like traveling to a nearby country, and instead took a train to the north and visited Milan for 5 days. Milan has a lot of life in it, both from the restaurant scene, nice people, and it's the fashion capital of the world. After Milan, we took a flight to Vilnius, Lithuania.
While in Vilnius, we walked around and saw the sights while eating whatever we could. This was just a one day trip, as we flew here in order to take a bus from Vilnius to Minsk, which was the cheapest way for us to enter Belarus.
Once we arrived in Minsk, I felt like I was at home again, as I was previously in Minsk for one month in July 2021. It's difficult to explain, but Minsk is a great place to live if you're a foreigner, as it's a large city by size, but only has 2 million people in it. Minsk still has a small town feel, in that it's very safe and many people know each other, but it's also very advanced, and it reminds me of young Seoul, South Korea, in terms of how much potential it has for partying, restaurants, and overall growth (I used to live in Seoul in 2008 and 2009 when I worked in the Starcraft scene, and the city was still finding itself at the time, and seeing foreigners was far less common when compared to today). While in Minsk, I did everything from go to the gym 3 days a week to maintain my slim-fit physique, clubbing a few days a week, eating at a lot of good restaurants, visiting a few smaller cities and villages in western Belarus, and was blacklisted from my favorite casino from winning too much (I didn't win a ton of money, but it was probably that I went in there 15 times or so and only had 1 losing day -- luckily there are many casinos in Minsk). The good/interesting news is, there is a good chance that I will be buying an apartment in Minsk between now and summer 2023 -- I won't move there right away, but the price for apartments right now is really good, which is mostly due to the Pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine that has ruined tourism and other things in Belarus, which in turn has lowered the asking price for homes. After my time in Minsk came to an end, I returned to California and started working the very next day.
In regard to UFC/MMA, I still watch and bet on UFC every weekend, and have been doing well for the past 5 months or so, with a few hiccups in-between, but that's to be expected.
Due to me focusing on real life stuff, work, and my hobbies (gym + UFC betting), I have found it extremely difficult to devote any time to updating the main page of LP.net like I originally thought I was going to have. I will force myself to update the main page at some point, but as you can see with the Sports and Betting section, I don't put much effort into even updating that area. That being said, I plan to start contacting some of the remaining LP.net people to do some interviews as a way to bring some interest back to the website.
I’ve been recovering at home from covid for past couple weeks not doing too much, mainly bored. In the downtime I started getting some nostalgia feels of the poker golden days good times.
LP was started in Sept or Oct 2005 and I believe I probably checked this site daily from day 1 until 2013 or so when I quit poker. Those were some great times, I remember fondly and am super grateful for some of the good times I had with a lot of old LPers as we went on this adventure together. For the broodwar generation it was incredibly good fortune to be ~early 20s, right time & right place (here) when the ESPN/moneymaker/internet boom happened.
Going to just keyboard mash out some shout outs and memories, I think in roughly chronological order of when our paths crossed,
TwistedEcho (Jon), my starcraft bff (Clan VdP 4lyfe) who got me into poker with a $30 loan and told me in a 3 min MSN messenger convo how to beat SnGs and limit holdthem (all that was needed at the time). Later became a MTT herobluff+herocall monster that also liked to party more than almost all nerdy poker players. Biggest weakness in his otherwise beastly game was credit card roulette. Pictured below with Myth shortly after losing cc roulette in a LP dinner attended by quite a lot more people than in this photo, lol.
Tom (teej1985), my uni housemate. We dropped out to play poker together (actually Tom was 1st a few months ahead, and his mother blamed me for corrupting him, go figure?). My brother from another mother, we lived breathed sleeped the game together for the golden years, shared a house and battled common enemies in the stars 10/20 25/50 games. His poker career was nearly over before it began, taking degen big MTT shots with his roll. Down to last $5 in a $5 MTT and either won or came 2nd for a 4 figure score to get his start. Went on to crush very high stakes for very long. Beast
Rekrul – if you were a fan of broodwar and poker in this era there is no way Rekrul was not the top cat and you weren’t a fanboy. From TL.net grim reaper to being one of the forerunners of the bw->poker transition. If back in the day we were paper chasers just livin’ our life then it’s safe to say Rekrul paved the way for us cats to get paid pre-uigea (sorry I’ll try to stop this turning into shit). He may not have been so pleased about this, here’s an old chatlog:
Nonetheless it was a delight to witness some rekrul ownage personally beasting people on the Wynn $10/20 cash tables (some crazy games back then, people buying in $50k deep and running outrageous bluffs). Other memory highlights include railing Rekrul beast Vanessa Selbst for a bracelet in WSOP $10k hu with a bunch of LPers (including the lovable degen Raidan who beat me for a surprising amount at $100 a throw rock-paper-scissors while we were waiting for the action to start).
TOTMidiaN – my boy the best british starcraft player by a ludicrous margin. Proud to have ‘paid it forward’ what Echo did for me by loaning him some $ to get him started in poker. Another guy come to kill Dan’s EV. Lived the good life for a good nr of years in Korea and became fluent in Korean.
RiKD – good to see you still around here man. Good times in 2006 sharing Vegas rooms. I was a 21yo total life fish, I guess we all were. Bad sleep schedules, grinding online in the room, and getting up too late to go somewhere nice for dinner and settling on the default All American Bar and Grill in Rio for multiple nights in a row which was the only convenient thing open at midnight. Ugh! But funny. More good stories coming to mind I probably don’t want to share publically!
RainKhan – hilarious chap. I just cannot even think of a single good Khan story that it would be reasonable to publically repeat here.
MezmerizePlz (vvvvvvvQ) and his boy Alex – I can remember one great steak dinner we had in Dublin where we were abs pissing ourselves over one the aforementioned RainKhan stories that won’t be shared publically. Many more good times in Vegas on top.
Nazgul – super calm and smart persona in real life – though used to do 40 hour sessions to get unstuck, think he had one where he only stopped playing after coming back from some ungodly number of buyins down at 10/20stars; berated me for having a ‘spineless’ habit of quitting when I was losing and stopped playing well (or as “well” as anyone played in like 2008 – take this comment on a relative basis, this was pre-solver street poker we were playing here back in the day ????)
Daut – had many good chats (including about our favourite 3/6 stars player SOROS). Pleasure to watch his PCA win and owning Ike HU at the end with a high reliability live tell.
Mig – MTT beast, kept crushing me in sidebets. Good laughs had together in Vegas houses. Shortly after winning his bracelet, with his laid back ‘nothing special just another day in the office’ demeanor:
RaSZi – legend but basically on tilt all the time for one reason or another from what I remember of the times. Remember a particularly awkward incident when a bunch of us were housing together for Vegas in some ridiculous mansion, Lex was outside the house life tilting very hard trying to calm down with a cigarette, and Echo had the idea of lightening the mood by pranking Raszi with a water balloon to the face…… That one, it turns out, did not have the intended effect and actually went down very poorly… LOLOL
Myth – true gentleman and good guy. Introduced me to scotch, general jovial bonvivant. I am rofling myself currently at an amazing pic of him I have here at the end of a Vegas night out, that is probably again not for public sharing.
PoorUser – master of winning with ludicrous J high calldowns where it’s not even likely he beats bluffs at showdown but manages to pull it off somehow.
MiPwnYa – Ultimate bonvivant French. Moved to London near the tail-end of my poker career, we were living not too far off each other and had many great squash/badminton battles, dinners and drinks. Got some excellent life advice from my brother Quentin at the time which changed the course of my life subsequently.
locoo (small L, two Os) – winning at life in Lima, beautiful family, thanks for your hospitality when I was travelling in South America. Hope you stayed away from those crooked local live games (or found they weren’t crooked and crushed them!)
straate – had many a stars battle with this legend at the tables. Probably only LPer I’ve met for a dinner (that I wasn’t already friends with outside LP prior) after transitioning out of poker, on a business trip to SF few years back. Guy’s made his own good transition out of poker and was doing interesting stuff
longple – epic grinder, one of the guys that was becoming the new generation of beast just as I was quitting the game, had a great dinner with him in London and was very happy to see him having deserved success at the time for his hard work
Liquid`Meat (made TL & LP websites, guy was ridiculously Dutch and loves his beer)[/b],
DustySwedeDude - guy was the most social/least nerdy I’ve ever seen an LPer at a live MTT table, was smashing the red wine at some semilarge euro main event donkament and being the table entertainer,
F4zi - flashiest LPer, knew how to enjoy his life,
Xervean - OG LP Degen taking high stakes shots for rolls back in the day. I understand through social media the man has cleaned up his act and crushes chess/responsible stakes poker now?
Cutssss – Insane Frenchie doing ridic stuff and crushing the games on weird euro sites.
And LPers I don’t think I ever met but who I chatted with online a lot or just enjoyed the posts of: Baal (great guy, lots of life wisdom and lots of car wisdom)
Ggplz – actually ha we did meet but before poker, at WCG UK! Good guy
Arya – more well known as a TL.net mod (just not by me because I can’t remember his name or more well known ID anymore, just went by Arya on LP). Introduced me to GoT books in 2006 way before there was any murmur of a HBO show. Has a great story of taking a degen underrolled partypoker 10/20nl shot. Played 1 orbit. Limps utg with AA. Hsnl proto-crusher loloTRICKEDu isolate raises, Arya limp-reraises ALLIN FOR 100BB. Gets timebank-called by AK or something, wins $2k, sits out next hand, never plays a hand of 10/20 again. 10000bb/100 lifetime winrate lol.
Other names of posters I liked that come to mind- Loco, byrnesam, SakiSaki, Tomson, Rhaegar.
I almost don’t want to even press the post button at this point because I’m scared I’m forgetting people here. Pls don’t take it personally and kindly post your own stories of our shared good times if you see this!
Would always love to reconnect with old LP friends at some point in life, send me a PM if any of you guys are ever in London and want to get a dinner or drink. Am assuming many of you check this site from once every two years to never, so even if you’re reading this a few years down the line offer stands ????. Actually just reach out to reconnect anyway, would love to know what you guys are up to now etc. Let me know where in the world you are (incase I’m travelling there anytime soon like with work or something.. likely in US + Toronto few times a year now that travel is a thing again)
As for me I quit poker in 2013 and rejoined the zz traditional route. Got married, started a family (my daughter is 7 now), got a finance job looking at stocks.
"This, I submit, is the freedom of a real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted. You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't. You get to decide what to worship.
Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.
They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.
And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self. Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom. The freedom all to be lords of our tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the centre of all creation. This kind of freedom has much to recommend it. But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talk about much in the great outside world of wanting and achieving.... The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.
That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default setting, the rat race, the constant gnawing sense of having had, and lost, some infinite thing.
I know that this stuff probably doesn't sound fun and breezy or grandly inspirational the way a commencement speech is supposed to sound. What it is, as far as I can see, is the capital-T Truth, with a whole lot of rhetorical niceties stripped away. You are, of course, free to think of it whatever you wish. But please don't just dismiss it as just some finger-wagging Dr Laura sermon. None of this stuff is really about morality or religion or dogma or big fancy questions of life after death.
The capital-T Truth is about life BEFORE death.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
"This is water."
"This is water."
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really IS the job of a lifetime. And it commences: now.
I wish you way more than luck."
— David Foster Wallace (This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life)
"That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual life beyond the grave; that all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the débris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built."
any1 following this? its popcorn.jpg for sure. never thought id root for a trump hater so much in my life lol. what a cunty this amber heard is. I "Heard" about this divorce awhile ago and I immediately thought she was a cunty probably but the trial just magnifies the extent to which she is a cunty so much.
The thing that I am very glad about is how much public support is lopsidedly supporting johnny depp. ive seen polls where like only 1% support amber heard. the thing is even if she doesnt end up having to pay a shitton of money, my faith in humanity is sort of restored by the amount of public support depp is getting. if heard has a minimal fine but depp gets back his roles in hollywood while she gets cancelled that is still a moral victory imo.
meanwhile techlead releases this video
idk how a sane man in 2022 decides to get married or have children unless u have a fuckton of money like elon who has cucked loco by impregnating his crush grimes.
so in starsnj there is the reg that is a communist. i found this out because one day i was browsing twitter and randomly i thought i saw a screenname that was familiar and it turns out its the 100nl/200nl reg i play with. also i didnt go stalk him or anyhting weird like that because his twitter handle is his poker screen name with an "X" in between so TheDumbxLoco, for example...so its not like it shows up in searches.
anyway i click on his twitter profile and he is a full blown communist, he has like...the soviet symbol on his handle and everything lol. he actually looks a bit like stroggoz has similar vibe lol.
anyway i asked about it in chatbox one day telling him i found his twitter lol. ...at some point it seemed to annoy him and he doesnt respond to my comments anymore lol. i do the patented hieMS sweet talk 2 this poor guy loco will kno
anyway today started with a hand where he 3bet from button vs my ep or mp raise...i had AKo standard 4bet and he folds. I needle him and say "1 for capitalism" lol. ..no response
then I 4bet AAwith ace of diamonds vs his button 3bet he snap calls preflop with TT flop comes like K32 or something with 2 diamonds. I for some reason check and he checks. Diamond turn. c-c. forget the river. I make block bet he calls.
then later sb vs bb I 4bet TT and he jams AQo and I dont love it but call and i hold for 120bb. (quite alot for Tens so not sure about this).
later fish limps I 3.5x TT IP he 3bets rather large from blinds with AJsuited or something flop comes like TT8 2 spades he bets large side I call with quads obv....spr is about 1 at this point. turn and river make 3 flush spades and he hits a broadway straight on river and jams and I SNAPPPP THE COMMUNIST OFF WITH QUADS!!!
shoulda have slow rolled but I was stuck so couldnt afford to like...disconnect or anything from the pot LOL...the last 2 hands happen like back to back just outta nowhere devastatingly lose 2 stacks LOL what a communist!!
I've been watching these "15 minutes movie recap" channels on YouTube and they r amazing.
These channels basically summarize the movie scene by scene in 15 min. They do a really good job and alot of times they make a bad movie watchable and obv its alot easier to watch than an actual movie or TV show. Also they have movies from diff countries u might have never scene. Its almost a life hack except they r addicting so u waste time because u can't stop.
i recently ate at the american chain restaraunt "caracker barrel" for first time.
i was trying to get a to-go order because I did not want to pay the tip. to me, getting a to-go order is a way to avoid this...thats the whole point of a to-go order.
well the weird thing about this restaraunt is that when u say "I want a to-go order" they say OK the server will be right with you....then the server takes ur order and you pay at the cashier.
to me this is a bizarre thing. most other restaraunts u just take the order at the register and they bring u the food. with this particular system they kind of expect u to tip the server. to me this is kind of crazy. a did this a few times and one time the server did seem upset about no tip.
i looked it up on quora and there are actually ppl that say "oh well when I am at cracker barrel I do leave a small tip, (maybe like $1) because of the way they do it".
whatever the case I dont want to leave even $1. am I wrojng for thinkin this way?
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