I like starting out everyone of my recent blog posts with the same line: It's been a while since my last blog post. But this time I can't really attribute that to laziness. Been hard on the live poker grind ever since Black Friday! Games are good! Still trying to figure out ways to play online thou. Most of my online poker grind time at home has been replaced by Starcraft 2 / Heroes of Newerth. Like many other poker players I know, I've also been looking elsewhere for new sources of income. I guess they call it "diversifying your portfolio". Started staking some good friends in some of the live games, which is nice because when I come home from a soft game it still feels like I'm grinding the game. Also, putting a lot of time and effort into a website that will be launching later this year. More on that at a later time
In the meantime, check out how good I'm getting at golf...
Golfing at Night!
Golfing during the Day!
Here is 4th of July from our deck in San Diego:
On a side note, I sold out and signed-up for Twitter so follow me @pokercosmo
I like starting out everyone of my recent blog posts with the same line: It's been a while since my last blog post. But this time I can't really attribute that to laziness. Been hard on the live poker grind ever since Black Friday! Games are good! Still trying to figure out ways to play online thou. Most of my online poker grind time at home has been replaced by Starcraft 2 / Heroes of Newerth. Like many other poker players I know, I've also been looking elsewhere for new sources of income. I guess they call it "diversifying your portfolio". Started staking some good friends in some of the live games, which is nice because when I come home from a soft game it still feels like I'm grinding the game. Also, putting a lot of time and effort into a website that will be launching later this year. More on that at a later time
In the meantime, check out how good I'm getting at golf...
Golfing at Night!
Golfing during the Day!
Here is 4th of July from our deck in San Diego:
On a side note, I sold out and signed-up for Twitter so follow me @pokercosmo
Hey guys, I'm starting a group conversation on Skype where we can hopefully always have 10-50 people online. (6max and MTT grinders plz)
We can talk about hands and have multiple perspectives etc, teach each other and grow as players.
We can also shadow each other and help each other in other ways. (blowjobs, junglemaning, u get the jist, etc)
I recently started taking 6max seriously again, am loving it, and realize I have a long, long way to go, this is just another step that hopefully does pan out well;
so ya, if ur grinding merge in the states like so many of us, and want to talk about hands n stuff, send me a PM and i'll get you in our skype convo.
Stars players are all welcome too, and MTT'ers are welcome as well.
I tend to share screens and teach ppl mtting free often, and love to go over hand histories of mtts as well. so def get in there if your an mtter too.
Link to my video online - removed from my website - [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/20935198[/vimeo]
liltle charlie was sitting in his chair watching the math class when mary throws a little papper ball in his head. chalie looks back at mary and she says: "headshot"
charlie dicided to get back at her so he took a book and threw it in her face shouting: "facebook"
Hey everyone, had my 2nd day on NL25 today, after a really busy day.
Had a couple hands that gave me some trouble, QQ vs a 4.5% 3better, i folded to a 4bet with 6.5 in the pot, not sure if i should be stacking off here or not.
other than that, had some really solid hands and some AKs hold vs AQ etc
Vengeance graph - Day 2 - tried to play same amt of hands;
Should have a lot of time for MTTing tomorrow, gonna watch Team America n kick it for the rest of the night;
Oh, a great movie you guys should definitely check out. Hubble 3d. This is one of the most intersting movies I've ever seen and well, def 10/10.
Check it out if you like space at all, or like to learn. Heres a link;
Hey guys, been grinding a ton of mtt's on hero lately, ft'd the 3r and $11 5k gntd to build up a nice bankroll. Didn't finish either of them off, kind of a shame, but just getting back in the groove so its acceptable I guess...
Gonna keep MTT'ing there a ton and building this roll up, although the payjumps for the FT's are ridiculous. Def needs to be worked on but w/e, happy w/ whats there;
MTTs so far at merge, started with $100 and had to cashout a couple times, so not the biggest wins yet, hopefully some to come though :-)
So after tonight's MTT session, I was bored, felt like gambling, using what I've been learning, played a pretty epic session.
Started out losing a few AK vs AA and QQ vs AQ, then bounced back pretty good. When I was down 150, made a stop loss for 175, buckled down n fckin owned. I know its only nl25, but its a start and a big confidence builder, looking forward to more nl25 sessions in the future and playing nl50 sometime soon again.
(just told myself, inch back dolla by dolla) n did it ;-)
Been pretty busy in life, spending a lot of time with my family etc, planning on moving 9/1, so having lots of fun in my hometown til I go;
Made a pokerstars.net home game, have 6 people in there, looking to add more people. Its actually a lot of fun, the 1/2 is 400 cap and well, nobody likes to lose, so we get some good games goin there. msg me if u wanna join us, we need more for 6max games etc (mostly usa players plz, and have skype)
So not a bad last couple days, hopefully I can keep improving and have a better week this week then the last few;
my skin is almost always perfect, but it has been a week that a huge internal pimple grew in my fucking left cheek, making the left side of my face look all swollen.
I already had to refuse a job last friday because of this, and today I had to refuse another one *!(*&@¨#*&!#*&!@#)!
this fucking shit already cost me almost 2K WTF
I went to the doctor and he said the only thing I can do is to keep a hot compress on my face to help is speed the cure process, but this shit wont come out
First of all, thanks a lot to everyone who voted for me in the kitesurfing contest.
back to poker, it all started in the last year of my high school, and it all goes back to my knee injury that made me unable to walk for almost 2 months straight. Since that was right before my final maturity exams that were to decided if Im going to get to good college, I had more then enough time to waste beside studying. Low on cash, never worked, I decided to drop my professional wc3 career as a pro player ( I was privately sponsored by german brach of Razer, so it was decent money for me at that age ) when I found out about newly launched www.tlpoker.pl and poker itself.
Having a solid gaming background as mentioned, I got my first 50$ from no deposit promo at partypoker from tlpoker and started playing. Two weeks passed and my hard grinder bankroll from 50$ was up to 80$, when I lost all my profit wihin 2h and decided to shortstack nl100 for half a buy-in. There, 15 minutes have passed and it was first time I busto'ed.
I knew there was a lot of money in poker at that point, so I went throu every educational material I could find at that time, then registered for second $50 no deposit on my brothers data and it went all easy from there.
My first month ever playing poker ( that was at PokerStars, stayed there up to nl100 ) went really decent, I still have the graph:
I was moving fast, from the $50 I got I was shooting nl50 with 30 buy-ins 1,5 month later. I was putting insane volume for me, as being in my A form from playing a ton of video games + still training table tennis 4-5 times a week I was in a good physical condition. It was all adding up and improving my play.
At this point I was jumping around rooms ( FTP, PS, Party ), until I decided to settle back on PartyPoker, grinded and here came my first problem, when moving on up to nl400 less then a year after I started. I found it was the biggest jump in the skill level out of all the stakes I've passed so far, and within some bad luck I was shooting at nl400 around 5 times, even trying once at PokerStars ( thank God I played before pokertableratings era ), but it finally went throu.
At this point I was already working as a newsposter for tlpoker.pl and making spare money to pay for my college tuition, so I didint have to cash out anything and was pretty free of being results oriented.
Then I stayed at nl400 for the majority of my poker career, playing a ton ( I reduced to 4-6 tables from 14 I was playing normally ) and winning for almost 4BB/100 lifetime at the stakes. I moved to nl600, but stayed there really short, and then shooted nl1000 at different poker room ( 1,5 year after I got my initial $50 ) which went really well:
I was pretty happy, since when I started my plan was to get to nl1,000 so I felt the mission was completed, I started playing less since I lost some motivation and kept on mixing nl400-nl600-nl1000 tables with decent results.
Of course I also had worse months, weeks and days ( my worst day being at - $12,000 , best at around +$8,500 ), but who likes to mention those ;D As I said, the most problematic was moving up to nl400, as I had ton of problems with it.
At this point I was getting really tired ( I was playing a ton in the week, drinking a lot in the weekends and still being single ), and here came the perfect timing to get a break from poker after all this time: I had to undergo a knee surgery ( ACL reconstruction + menicus removal ) and I met my girlfriend ( which Im still with after all this time ).
Old photo, from new year even 2009 I think
At this point I stopped playing around December 2009, and pretty much never got back into poker seriously.
That was due to few problems, first of all I had more then enough cash to supply myself and all my needs at this point ( so I felt no need to play poker ), I was enjoying life a ton without the stress of bad beats, minus the fact that for the 2-3 months after the surgery I had problems with leg to the point I was taking insanely heavy painkillers after the blood flooding to my leg. I went throu lot of pain and it was all fine, up until June where I damaged my menicus again ,leaving me for another surgery. Zero poker for almost 8 months (besides coaching some people), I didint even play a single hand .
After the break in July I also started a small poker challenge ( trying to get back into poker + put some value into tlpoker.pl to get visitors ) called $100->$10,000 in 4 months ( it was from July to end of the year ), following Bankroll management.
This is how it started:
In the meantime I also luckboxed a live tournament entry ( $330 entry, I won it in a $8 satellite ), then came second ( live players are really terrible, I was destroying the final table as I pleased ) for ~$4,000 + another $1,500 entry to super EPT satellite, however I came ~20th out of 75 players with 12 seats to EPT.
Anyway, I failed the challenge by a short margin ( I managed to get up to ~$8,400 ), since I had to stop playing in December ( another knee surgery 6.12.2009 ) due to being on heavy painkillers and not being in mood to play at all. At this point I was already working as a general manager for TLPoker.pl, taking over the previous guy and advancing first from local newposter, then to general newsposter for network and to running tlpoker. All was going awesome, what can I say, if not counting my health problems.
Mid February this year I got promoted by Meat and Nazgul to pretty much taking care of lp.net network, but I already mentioned that in the entry where I wrote report from LiquidPoker Admin meet-up earlier this year ( link here: Liquid Snow 2011 ) ).
This gets to last month, where everything in my life was going better then I could have expected - I was doing a lot of training so I wont have any problems with my leg again ( ~800km on bike in June ), I was in a good financial condition, passed all my exams for the year going to the last year in the uni as well, finally had the opportunity to ski and try kitesurfing ( which I love as much as skiing ).
I also started playing back poker, since without having to worry about cash at all I could take the sport up again, as I think the games are not that much harder , you just have to exploit your opponents in another way. Everyone got hand histories now, everyone has HUD, if you know how to exploit their thinking looking at your own stats, then its not that much harder then it was 3-4 years ago.
Yeah, the learning curve is much faster for new players now, but its same for us, old players - games are dynamic enough so that even constant winners for last 5 years have to adapt every year. Also, I love the fact that there is a ton of mindless grinding players that do exactly what Krantz or anyone else told them to do while watching their poker videos, but they dont understand WHY.
Games are way more aggressive as well, so even if you play awesome now, it just takes slower to climb up, since variances dumbs down the edge of good players a lot in my opinion.
Anyway, I decided that playing 6 max again isn't that much fun, plus I would like to have more time freedom then bumhunting tables and staying for longer sessions, since my own play depends HEAVILY on game flow dynamics. Hence, I decided to start over and learn heads-up
Why? Cash and competition mostly, as mentioned I'm REALLY ok with my $ atm, but getting my own house or flat at some point would be nice and I wont lie, I pretty much wasted all the money I made from playing 2 years ago.
So far I've played around 10k hands in last 2 weeks with decent results, minus one session where I gave away almost entire profit from the rest of my game :D I decided to start really low, at nl50 with just 2 tables, since the game is really different, however as Im already grasping first concepts I think Im going to deposit and just start at nl100 and go easily from there. Im sitting down against weak regs, rather then bumhunting, which makes me learn faster, while still making profit.
And there it comes, last week I had a small accident again, and Im still waiting for results of my knees MRI. I already know I didint tore off my ACL implants ( that would be horrific and devastating for me ), neither my menicus is destroyed, so even if it ends up being a surgery, it will only be a minor one.
All cool but the god damn knee brace which I need for water sports and skiing costs ~$1,500 ( custom made, I can get cheaper one for 1,1k$ but I think there is no point saving $ here if it's for few years, especially considering level of my problems ), which is pretty much what I had prepared for my kiteboard + kite :D I will manage anyway, but I dont like bad surprises like that.
What now? Well, I will play again, so expect to see me at tables, Im also putting a ton of time to this site, and I hope you guys can see already some small improvements from the start of the year.
Originally I thought it's quite bad I stopped playing and now I dropped so low, but after looking at everything, how it turned out and how its looking for the future - Im happy. I only wish I wasnt so dumb and spent so much money on stupid crap :D but bah, you only live once.
Hey guys, I went through a big 18 month killin streak in mtts and had built my ego up so big it was pathetic.
it took months off of poker to realize how pathetic i was acting, to humble down and to re-learn cashgames. with the help of a great coach and LP, I am so happy you guys are responding and helping my games as well.
I just wanted to say thank you, and thanks for bearing with me when i went into an ego-maniac. Theres reasons, yet they are mute. You guys are a great community that has made me the player I am.
Really...I just didnt know how to handle success in MTTs and constanlty being owned in cash, it was this sick confliction in me, my competetive spirit and ego was causing so much confliction that I couldnt handle at those times, sadly.
SO yeah, Thank you very much for being there for me, I'll be posting a ton, and hope you guys can have time to give me a hand.
Just runnin 150 up on Hero in cashgames all month n see where I end up
Last night, my coach told me to play pure value poker. I played 18/14/2.5 and biggest lost pot was like .80. I'm going to continue to play like this for a good bit, adding in some stuff to own fish etc :-)
just day one, and just wanted to say ty, i know i've been a dick, a stoner who bashed ppl for fun, this was mostly my bitterness, for that i apologize.
GL LP and TY!
Ryan
I'm going to work on getting some mental overhauls to make sure i'm always happy
hey guys, if theres any good nl100+ 6max regs that would like to learn mtt's, we can swap a couple lessons and i have around 30 videos you can have too
let me know if anyones interested, looking on taking my 6max game to the next level. starting to understand some things i hadn't ever understood, i want to keep having eurekas and become sick solid at 6max.
Really, anyone thats been a solid winner over the last 12 months~!
Mtts are high variance and my br isn't large enough to sustain the swings, i like cashgames as building br for mtts, and to play on days i don't have a lot of time. I'd like to learn to beat up to 1/2 itlr....im a career winner up til nl50 in 6m. nl100+ has given me problems in the past, although my last 2 nl100 shots went well, i still consider nl50 my ceiling
I'm a decent 6max player, I currently play 31/25/8.63b fold to 3b 73%
I tend to overvalue some top pairish hands sometimes and have some leaks that i am 100% sure i am unaware of. - maybe many more than i even realize..
Also, alot of blind on blind situations like AJss hands, i tend to trap myself into losing like 60bb pretty often
I need a coach for like 2-3 sessions atleast.....
Hope someone is willing to trade, I know a ton about MTT's and many cashgame players are new to MTT's and I could help them dramatically on teacing them all the different nuances and explaining in detail
ok thats it, kind of a troll post, but its important to me and i hope to be able to make a sustainable winrate in the nl100-nl200 6max games, and play mtts at nighttime. been wanting this for a long time now, but kept trying on my own and i just fail on my own or something idk
Self employed and very busy my work ranges from being very intense and stressful to being very challenging and rewarding. I usually go through phases of being stressed whereby everything seems to just mound up on my shoulders - i decided upon coming home from work i'd take some hash to 'reset' myself. On my way home i stopped at the store and purchased some natural yogurt, i arrived home and took out my stash, putting some olive oil into a large spoon i dropped a marble sized amount of hash into the oil on the spoon - using a candle i melted it all up and stirred the cooled mixture into the yogurt. I knocked it all back by washing it back with some water and waited for the effects to kick
Where I live there's a wood nearby so i decided to take a trip there and walk around by myself until the effects started to take hold. I brought some headphones with me.. About T+0.40 i started to feel the first effects, feeling very deep and relaxed i danced through the wood until finally finding a nice place to sit down and enjoy nature. Staring at the trees the forrest floor seemed to liquify into what was waves of the ocean. I headed back to my house at T+1.00 and could now feel the effects coming on quite strongly.. I got a huge bag a potatoe chips and headed back ot the forrest and ate them *ALL* at this stage the music in my headphones was beginning to sound incredibly 3d, it was the most amazingly sounding music i have ever put my ears to. Everything seemed to merge into a perfect synergy, i felt completely relaxed and unthreatened by anything or anyone, i felt at one with nature. It was a wonderful feeling.
It began to get dark so i decided to follow an animal trial back to my house as opposed to the normal path. I pranced and jumped through the forrest until reaching my house. I decided to take my laptop and sit on my bed as to avoid any contact with my family members who would not be happy to find out i was spaced to the nines! The effects came on stronger and stronger - i could feel waves from the music i was listening, different music gave off different waves of energy and i could feel it actually effect me in a conscious level.. something i truely believe effects us without us knowing. I think the pot allowed me to really feel what i was feeling at an unconscious level. i switched the music on my headphones to leftfield.. what a fantastic choice of music to listen to whilst stoned! I became extremely high at this point and some intruments in the music began to startle me.. noises coming into the tune i thought were buzzing in my head! this was not an unpleasent feeling but rather wonderful!
I also went through a stage of giggles at approx T+3.00, i spent almost 1 hour laughing solid at the simplist things - it was great. I could not wipe the smile from my face.
I became very sleepy at approx T+5.00 and found i could stay awake whilst on the very verge of falling asleep. When i yawned it could make the yawns last which what seemed to be 5 minutes at a go and each yawn felt absolutely wonderful. I began flipping between what seemed a TV/OBE view of myself. It was like jumping out of my body - a wonderful experience.
I woke the next day feeling completely refreshed and on my way to work was extremely happy to be alive and appreciated things i would not normally notice or care about.
There won't be poker in this blog post, this will be about my other passion, rally. In particular about the first rally I raced this year, Rally Sierra del Tigre in Guadalajara, México.
This was one of the two gravel rallies of the year, the others are on tarmac. My race car is a Renault Clio RS modified for rally on suspension, engine, roll cage and many other things. It's a very light and fast car, unfortunately it's very frail and it gets easily damaged on rough terrains as gravel which makes it relatively likely to not finish a gravel rally successfully.
Everyone in the ceremonial start one day before
I'll try to briefly explain how a rally works: First the rally is split in various "SS" (Special Stages), the times of the cars are measured from point A to B, and the one who has the least total time in all the SS wins, cars start 2 minutes apart from each other to try to avoid that they catch up to each other. (but it still happens very often). There's also transit stages, which are not timed. For these races, you just have to cross them to get to the next starting point of the SS. Those exist to travel through towns and parts where the race can't be held.
Before the race, the driver and co-driver pass the stages taking notes of the roads. Every corner is written down so the co-driver will dictate those notes to me as I drive and act as my eyes on the rally, this is called 'recce'.
In this rally, Sierra del Tigre, while doing the recce, we realized that the road was in terrible conditions, full of holes, bumps, cattle grids, big rocks and in general a very rough terrain. We knew it was going to be very challenging for the car, and we didn't want to go back home with the car damaged in the trailer, but we had no choice at that point, we had to race!
The next day as we were just starting the first SS, we see a rally car damaged at the side of the road. Just as we are about to pass him, something breaks on the clutch. My co-driver is quite a resourceful mechanic, so he managed to fix it quickly, but we already lost around six minutes. Six minutes is huge and normally, there would be no hopes of catching up. With such a destructive course however, we knew we still had a chance/hope that others would have problems too, so we decided to continue full throttle and have some fun.
The clutch problem continued and every few minutes we had to stop and fix it quickly. As we progressed in the stages of the race, we started to see more and more cars by the side of the road, either crashed or with mechanical problems. At this point, we knew that we might get a decent place in the race despite being so far behind in time.
A little bit ahead, my co-driver made an uncharacteristic mistake and he skipped a note that almost made me crash into some police and their trucks who were blocking a closed road. I was furious and cursed at him a couple of times since he knows he can't make those mistakes since one wrong note and you could fly into a canyon.
After finishing the third of six stages, we went into service (pit stop), and it was there we realized that there were only 3 Clio cars remaining of the 6 or 7 that started the rally. We were only behind the Clio in 2nd place by a few seconds, so we fixed the clutch again properly this time and chose to drive the next 3 stages carefully and get our third place finish. Of course, this is easier said than done.
Arriving at service
We kept going and we saw yet another Clio abandoning the race, which was great news. Now we just had to cross the finish to get second, but lady luck wouldn't let us cruise through that easily. Out of nowhere, our car just wouldn't turn. I thought we had a puncture, my co-driver got out to see what was going on, but everything seemed fine. I kept driving but the problem got worse, the car was barely able to turn. We weren't sure why, but we had no time to find out since there is a rule in rallying that says: if you don't reach the next control in time you are disqualified.
Usually that time is never even considered by us since on normal conditions we arrive several minutes before that time expires. This time however, we were forced to a crawling speed and facing the elimination, time was the only thing that mattered. It was a dangerous ride on a damaged car that wouldn't turn, along with a brutally rough terrain.
Hooooold, one time!
Finally we finished the last Special Stage, and to finished the rally, we just had to go through the last transit on asphalt to cross the finish line. As I said before, this is usually done at regular cruising speed, but we were way behind pace. We had to push it to the limit on the open road, going over 112 MPH on a 2 way road, passing cars with upcoming traffic. I remember hearing my co-driver say: We are about 2 kilometers away, and we have 50 seconds before we are disqualified. I went full throttle and managed to reach the finish line seconds before being disqualified. YES!
Happiness at the finish line
On the finish line, we saw that only 13 of the 34 starting cars managed to finish the rally and we finished in 2nd place. After a few obligatory celebration beers as the night was approaching, one guy says to me, "Hey, have you looked at your car?" So I walked around the car and I saw that the right tire was totally bent. One of two screws that holds the tire in place had broke, which explained why the car didn't turn properly. The tire was "dancing" all over the place and that little screw held like a champion doing the work of two, and it was the only thing keeping our tire from flying away in the asphalt road at 112 MPH... scary. I guess we got a little bit of luck after all the bad luck we had.
Damaged right tire suspension
So now the car went back home to be repaired for the next rally. I hope you enjoyed the read. Here are a couple of videos you might like.
This is the mistake of my co-driver who skipped the pace note, it doesn't look that fast but believe me, in-car cameras totally kill any sense of speed, this was far scarier than it looks.
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