I moved finally - almost 3 days without Internet boys and girls :O
Here are some pictures.
Just to recap
- $185 rent including all bills
- under 10 minutes everywhere (shops, public transport, family, sports hall where I train)
- All stuff like microwave, washing mashine, shower in the flat already
- share flat with 2ppl - professionals work in factories nearby, hardly in the flat during the day
- own storage space downstairs for bike, suitcases
- balcony's mine, not shared
- blinds in windows, asked landlord to remove drapes for a more office like feel
The Downside to Shot Takingby Joeingram1, October 03
Hello again... I think this makes the 2nd time I've blogged this year but I've probably written out about 20 blog posts over the year but always find a reason not to publish each of them. I did finish the rest of my story about my year spent raging and also wrote up a pretty epic trip report from my time living in Canada but talked myself out of putting those up for a few different reasons, mostly because on the surface it doesn't make me come off in the best way to the level 1 minds of the world who might not understand alternative viewpoints on why people choose to do things. Some might argue that why would you care what those types of people think or say about you but I've learnt over the last year in a few different times that what people think they know about you from what a sentence they may have read or a status update you might have posted can be communicated to someone that you would expect to be unaware about you at the most random times and cause some interesting drama in an otherwise boring life. When I write it out like that maybe I should just post all the stuff I have on deck because life is boring. I know many others feel that way, maybe making life .01 percent less boring for .01 percent of people I know may be my calling.
I've been living in the USA for the past few months so I am unable to post about my poker playing over that time I'm pretty sure I've put in a few hundred thousand hands over that time with pretty positive results but one thing has been really holding me back lately that I have gone back and forth on and that is the idea of shot taking. For the noobs that will read this from the fb/twitter world that don't play poker, shot taking is when you play a higher limit/stake than normal to you, higher in amount of money that you risk but also higher in relative skill level. IE. I play $2/4 with a 400 dollar buyin regularly and when I shot take I would be playing $10/20 with a 2000 dollar buy in or 10/10 (gives away a site I may sometimes play) or 25/50. Actually some nits probably think 3/6 would be shot taking if they play 2/4 but nits gonna nit.
Typically it seems like people shot take for a few different reasons. The obvious is that people love money, they want to make as much money as possible, playing higher stakes=making more money. Some people feel like they are bored with their current limit and want to challenge themselves more and shot take. A large majority of people these days will only shot take when a very -EV player is playing and they end up getting a good seat at that game. Sometimes people are just degens who want to be playing the high stakes and become famous and win all the money and be known as a boss. Other times its just the logical process that comes after you have had much success at your current stake and have built your bankroll up to the point where you can comfortably play higher stakes and if take a loss will not effect you to a large degree. In a perfect world everyone would take that last route but luckily for high stakes regs this is not a perfect world we live in and thus where the idea for me to write this blog post came from.
IF anyone has read my blog in the past or read my 2p2 posts/tweets I really never post anything strategic for the most part. That is another blog post in itself, but I suppose it might be time to actually say something someone might find a bit useful. I think the idea of shot taking for me has always been about the prestige of being successful at the higher stakes more than anything else. I think because of this during my first few years of playing poker it led me to put myself in a ridiculous amount of -EV situations playing for the sake of trying to "make it" or be the man or about that life or etc etc. In the early parts of my career I would grind hours and hours of 50cent/1dollar and 1/2 and shot take at 5/10 or 10/20. Sometimes I had short lived success, other times I failed right away, time and time again I would end up back at 50cent/1dollar grinding and grinding with the hope of taking another shot at higher stakes and having it be a success. I could have approached the whole idea of this in alot of different ways (not playing as high above normal stake, less tables, more table selection, etc...) but always found myself throwing any logical plan out the window. I think the biggest mental block that I have been unaware of until recently that I always fell back on was that I could always drop back down and make it all back with a little hard work. I probably have done this 150 times in my poker career, that seems crazy to make the same types of mistakes that many times in retrospect but this is what I've done in the past and still to this day do. In a way this actually justifies me shot taking all those times but it certainly does not justify the terrible approach I took along the way.
Without shot taking I would have never had my 500k upswing though. During this initial 6 month run I changed a few different way I approached things. I was coming off a ridiculous confidence boost by putting in a 500k hand plo month in December and managed to do way better than I thought during that time period. I padded my bankroll by winning prop bet/achieving Supernova Elite during that time and decided I was only going to play 4 tables max, actually pay attention to the hands (I had never done this before in about 5 million hands) and game select like a the nittest of nits. I've always said that I think the most important thing to moving up stakes or shot taking is that initial first few weeks. If you can run good and build up momentum and confidence you're set. Luckily for me I ran hotter than the sun and was working harder/more hours than I really had before and putting myself in ridiculously +EV situations all the time, mostly running hotter than the sun. During poker sessions for me in the past, I feel like I play 1 or 2 really big pots during that time that in a way save that session from being a disaster and help build back up momentum to end the session on a positive note. During this time period It felt like I had this happen soooo often. This sounds like I'm writing about the positives of shot taking, well in that magical perfect world this might have been the perfect scenario. Once PTR (pokertableratings) went down I really stopped caring about trying to put myself in those magical +++EV situations, which is another blog post entirely as well (one which I have actually wrote).
I think that story is pretty relevant to the reason why shot taking for myself now and for many others takes place. Most people always remember those epic runs they have had in the past where they made xxxxxx amount of money or that time someone they know or follow went on a ridiculous heater shot and that influences their decision to do it. I actually know 3 people who pretty much busto'd themselves shot taking during the time period I was and they told me the biggest reason they did it was because of my run at the time. Obviously this is a pretty extreme example and not really the angle that I am writing about here but I think that mindset still applies to a lesser degree. This is more geared towards the 100-200-400 regs out there. I think 100nl/plo is the first limit where you can really start to earn a good amount of money for yourself when you take into account bonuses and the first limit where I remember feeling that shot taking bug in me. I know there is a pretty large amount of people out there that grind these limits with less than 100 buyins in their bankroll and always worried about going on a bit of a downswing and putting themselves into this idea the "danger zone". I've personally always played with a variety of buyins for that limit but a majority of the time I shot took most would consider underrolled. I remember I used to play 10 tables of 5/10nl with like 25-30k online
I wish I realized this 3 years earlier instead of a few weeks ago but it was never really that obvious to me. Most of the time when I played higher stakes it was when I was on a bit of an upswing and my confidence was at a pretty good peak, I would then end up losing 5-10+ buyins at a higher limit which is pretty standard for PLO, whether it be by me running bad or playing bad or running bad/playing bad and be a bit crushed everytime about it and curse the poker gods for my bad luck and with my confidence shaken return back to the lower limits. Sometimes I've made the mistake of losing a bit more buyins than I should have allowed and have to drop back down to lower than my regular limits and grind it back up again. Obviously to the logical grinder's out their this seems really dumb but not many of us fall into that category which is good for you. The biggest downside that I've experienced without realizing it in the past but after looking over my data is that during that time I drop back down with shaken confidence, my play suffers a pretty sizable amount and sometimes it might take only a few days with a bunch of hours played or sometimes even longer to get back on track and back in the groove. During that time spent shot taking and returning to form I could have been in a pretty steady path at my regular stakes crushing away and gradually moving up being very over rolled and able to incur those losses without being to hurt emotionally or bankroll wise and do it a logical way but 150 times I have chosen not to do this. Although I did have that huuuuge upswing so perhaps with that occurring and the "potential" for something similar to happen again it is justified but I would argue having that happen to me was actually one of the worst possible things to happen. But I'm not sure I ever would have come to the realization I came to now without it.
One of the other big downsides to shot taking that I have heard more people talk about is that when you win a few buyin's shot taking the feeling is not as great as when you lose a few buyins during that same time. Everyone has a different approach to this happening but it seems that many of my friends I've had over time take the negative losses very bad and sometimes they end up just not playing for a period of time and essentially wasting a few weeks recovering from that while feeling terrible on their day to day activities in the process. I probably could expand a bit more on this and a few other ideas related to downsides I think occur but that writing sensation that comes over me about once or twice a month is fading away as I get more tired. I do have another blog post pertaining to goal setting and ways to plan to achieve them almost finished that I have been working on for the past month or two with some success that I think will be able to really help some people out there.
I should go back and read this before I post it but I'm semi sleeping at this point so I will say a small prayer that I logically wrote all this out and I didn't make too many grammatical errors along the way
It’s been awhile since I last blogged. I also decided to try and write up a proper blog rather than just random updates. Some of LPers(Marshall, Goldrush/Neilly, Dustyswede, DJforever) actually motivated me to write it up just like theirs.
I haven’t played poker for about 3 months now, because every time I tried to play I had mixed feelings about it. I felt like I was more forcing myself to sit down and play rather than actually wanting to play. I felt like I had no motivation in doing so, so then I decided I will give it a break. I still do love it and basically visit hands that’s being posted on here. I am currently still at 25nl basically starting from $30 and have never busted this roll. Basically I am rolled for 50nl but have learnt a boring nitty br management. I still do like to watch poker games on YouTube, and see hands unfold here on LP.
After this semester I will basically have 2 subjects left to do at UNI. I have told myself multiple times that I felt like I chose the wrong degree but only realized this halfway through my studies and could not turn back. I have no idea what the fuck I’m going to do when I finish, I’ve spoken with a uni students about this and people that have positions in organizations and have come up with my own conclusion that most businesses and organizations don’t really care about what you studied in university or what so ever, most want to see the experience you’ve gained while being at university. Yes the kind of degree that you did only shows an interest in the field you want to work in but does not necessarily give you a gold pass in getting a career. Therefore the degree that you have finished only shows these employers that you are capable of learning and have the ability to push yourself to learn so when they do employ you, they can provide you the essential training and experience you need to be able to work for them. Basically experience is what matters to most employers since I guess they prefer you do the job rather than train you first. And when they do decide to train you, the want to see that degree to show them you are willing to learn.
Also for the past 2 months my motivation turned to getting fit and healthy, I felt like I wanted to get out more and not stay in so much. I signed up to the gym and had no idea wtf I was doing. But I felt like we only get 1 chance in life to do stuff so why not try new things. The first few times I walked in to the gym I felt intimidated and never tried to make eye contacts with nobody. But the more I went there more confidence I gained, I kept doing my own research in regards to nutrition and which foods to eat. The more research that I did, the more I felt like wanted to go and work out. I could feel minor changes in my body and my sleeping pattern. I slept more and started to get a pattern of waking up early in the morning. This basically became the time that I went to the gym. I started by going about 4 times a week and then in the last two weeks I have been going every day.
I feel so much better and healthier and as I continued I felt more confident in myself and feel like I can do more things during the day. And now also I’m craving to play poker but I’m going to limit myself to only play for 2hrs max at any given day.
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?
Abysmal month in every respect. My birthday night out wasn't what I'd hoped, fitness and diet plans continue to be stuck on hold as I can't find the motivation to get back on it, I had to sell my M3 and downsize (To a 2012 MkIII Focus ST2) due to high running costs and continually high expenditure in general and to compound the problem I barely played any poker and when I did I couldn't win for shit.
I've now left myself 121,149.28 VPPs short of the 400k VPP milestone, so I need ~40k each of the 3 remaining months, an amount I've not achieved in quite a while. It would be stupid of me to get to 370k VPPs or something and leave myself just 50 hours short of the 400k VPP bonus, which I believe is $3.2k, or $64/hour extra JUST for the milestone not including the 100k ish FPPs (Another $1.6k bonus) that I'd make on top of that. Guess I gotta pull my finger out this month, especially as I'm gonna be in Ireland for 6 days late in the month and have another couple of weekends taken up by birthday parties and following day hangovers. Not gonna be easy.
In terms of actual winrates this month I didn't do too badly at all, just I tended to win at 100NL zoom and lose at 200NL zoom, a trend that seems all too commonplace in the last couple of months. I continue to experiment with my game and I've made a lot of changes to both my preflop and postflop game plans, and it seems to be going well mostly, I just need to get in more volume and stop running like dogshit at 200NL. If I get really short of time in which to make up VPPs I might have to look at jumping in to a few 500NL zoom or even 200PLO zoom games to catch up a bit, though I'm likely small dogs in both those games when they don't have especially weak lineups.
MTTs continued to go shite. WCOOP was a waste of effort. I got relatively deep in a few tournaments during WCOOP, but they were mainly some of the smaller tournaments I was playing alongside the WCOOP events which had small buyins and thus small returns, and none of them was deep enough to final table unfortunately. I almost bought in to the WCOOP main event with 100% of my own action just hoping to luck box but I had already been awake 12 hours by the time the tournament started, had been active all day and thus felt way too tired to commit to the ~12 hours or however long you have to play to make Day 2. One of these days I'll luckbox something though, I can't possibly be a dog in the lineup of virtually any MTT in existence.
Overall results:
VPPs: 13,771.60
Cash: -$224.99
MTT: -$1,091.21
Overall: -$1316.20 (Not including bonuses and FPPs)
October I really need to force myself to play a lot more. Hopefully a minimum of 40k VPPs and a decent winrate to go with it. Standard goals of spending less (yeah right..), getting back onto a reasonable diet and workout schedule and in general being healthier and more productive. As the weather gets colder I'll hopefully find more excuses to hermit and actually achieve these goals instead of going out and getting shitfaced every other day -_-
Trip to Toronto this weekend, tips on what to do?by Balzamon, September 30
Hey guys!
I did a blogpost in the beginning of the year asking for advice if I should take a semester abroad in London, Canada (NOT England). I thank everyone who said I should, I've now been here for a month and I'm very pleased with everything!
So this weekend me and some other exchange-students will go to Toronto (~2,5h drive) Friday-Sunday. Tips on what to do during this fairly short visit? Sadly there wont be any NHL-games during this time.. I guess we will do some basic tourist stuff like CN-tower, and what more?
I'm a big fan of asian food, so maybe a visit to the "chinatown" of Toronto, any solid restaurant recommendations (doesnt necessarily have to be asian, I heard about "little italy" as well) ?
And what clubs should we aim for during this weekend?
Really enjoying Canada! If some fellow LPers happen to be in Toronto/London during this time give me a PM!
On another note, when the finals exam are done here in mid December I dream of going to British Colombia or similar to snowboard until I go home 29 December. Havent really met anyone here that's also up for it so if you are planning a trip there/got experience of the area I would greatly appreciate any input.
Released some time in the early nineties during the height of Stallone's popularity, it turned out to be a cheesy campy action movie with no soul. For some reason hollywood felt possessed to recreate it, and for some reason I felt possessed to watch it now that it is on Netflix.
But I said God Damn! God Damn! This movie was actually really fuckin cool. The story is thin, nothing more than a vehicle to drive some of the most hyper gore shootouts I've ever seen. The catch is that they're all artistically filmed and awesome to watch. Think "Matrix" bullet-time stuff, but with the bullets actually penetrating meat. The new Dredd is the Doc from Star Trek ->
In fact, he never takes the mask off. Not once do you ever see his full face. Still, the movie has some sick original shootouts, some pretty extreme violence, and makes you completely forgot about the original 90's shit version and is totally worth your time to watch if you have Netflix.
My Paypal, Your PS ($50)by Santafairy, September 29
I'm too stupid to make a deposit on PS so I'm looking to transfer $55 via Paypal for a $50 transfer on Pokerstars. I'm pretty sure I can receive a transfer but we might want to try $0.01 first.
I know I have no reputation on LP, but my TL account is oBlade, so you can trust me. And if you can't trust me, I'll let the account be collateral. Hope someone can help me with this favor.
Got 8th in the monthly stars free roll for $1200.
Busted 77 v 88 with 3.5bb against 7bb LP shove
This is kinda lol since I am moving, spent money on deposit and ran super bad this month my BR was super low at around $600 and was looking at temp jobs today- jesus clearly wants me to gamble.
EDIT: Shouldn't rly whine tho, it's my fault since I played just30k hands and acted like I was on holiday. Well I was on holiday but it wasn't good anyway
Starting in October I am sharing a flat with 2 hardworking 30+y olds and all my life will be poker and floorball baby :D
Let's say you were given $1k to manage in a stock and you have a potential return of $113,000 if not more. How much would you ask for in return for a fee?
Epiphany thought processby LemOn[5thF], September 26
Wow how'd I miss this?
I've been very results oriented recently not feeling like I'm moving forward, always got tilted by bad beats and took plays v players so personally. And I was bored/frustrated.
Since my long break I forgot one totally fundamental part of my thought process. When I was at my best I was influenced by "where the buffalo roam" series and my thought process was very much like that. Basically I'd think about the spot and consider what I want to do here with all my range ignoring my holding (in that series they have cards covered completely) and when I decided the cards just fell into that range, and I could move on when I made the decision
I guess that's totally standard for you guys but I somehow forgot or got lazier and lazier until I stopped doing that completely and just played my hands, putting more thought process on the villain his range, dynamic and how to play it with these two cards.
=>CONSIDER WHAT RANGE YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH, not the hand. Hand just falls into that range.
The time flies by when I think like this. No
time to think about beating bastards, when I go all in I made my decision and it's nor good or bad when I lose. When I do this, when the spot comes but I have different cards, I have already thought about it before which takes a lot of pressure of my brain
The session is done, and I can be 10 byins down but I wouldn't know nor care, the time flies just like ages ago before that thing called normal life with jobs, girlfriends and career trouble took the joy out of the boyish grind that I loved so much during the heyday of my poker career.
I know this sounds like bullshit to you guys and it probably is but today poker was more fun than it has been since I first interrupted my career, because of a "career"
up like 28k or so, my backers account was literally hacked, saw all the proof, $9k was stolen, that was a big hit to the profits I made (every 10k I make I can move up a $100 limit (ie when i hit 20k i could play 215s etc) - was really stressed out the last couple days, but stars finally got back to him after a few days thank god.
have a nice chunk in the account anyways, was mostly gonna be fine, just not the optimal scenario to be in abroad imo.
Getting back OTG tomorrow, nothin to big lately, chopped a 11r for 6.7k last week and chopped the 55 60k turbo for 8.1k with 800k 3/4 stax were 425kish,800k(me),1.25k,2.1k - Was happy with the figures, I never look at lobby - ended up busting 4th too so that worked out well.
Hrm, been going out some, friends here are vv chill, have some good students on there way up....ne thing else, ah, wcoops are stressful i tell ya lol, they are good at numbing you for the 10-30k hits though, after playin for such high figures daily, the 10k hits seem like 2k hits, so thats kinda a great experience, this was my first year playing mostly any wcoop 500 or lower i wanted
those 109 2r1a i play for $209 (5k starting) and they are like 7-10k a night. I loooove em. Took down a $33 2r1a Sunday for 4.3k, but somehow I am 6.5k or so in makeup give or take 400. (I did just need to take a loan though, was on last $20 in wallet in Ottawa lol)
Lifes been pretty chill, feel like im workin for nothin kinda, but thankful and very happy to be working at same time. Have only paid off 2 debts and put a 22% or w/e chunk in a 5k debt im payin off so far, just hoping before end of year i can be free for 2014 one freakin time for real.
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I'm pretty sure I've put in a few hundred thousand hands over that time with pretty positive results but one thing has been really holding me back lately that I have gone back and forth on and that is the idea of shot taking. For the noobs that will read this from the fb/twitter world that don't play poker, shot taking is when you play a higher limit/stake than normal to you, higher in amount of money that you risk but also higher in relative skill level. IE. I play $2/4 with a 400 dollar buyin regularly and when I shot take I would be playing $10/20 with a 2000 dollar buy in or 10/10 (gives away a site I may sometimes play) or 25/50. Actually some nits probably think 3/6 would be shot taking if they play 2/4 but nits gonna nit. 
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