The past few years I have gotten increasingly into fantasy football. This year has been by far the biggest jump for me in terms of committment, money wagered and time spent studying and researching. This is probably the last year of my preparation before I really delve into lots of big buyin leagues.
This offseason I spent probably around 100-150 hours studying, researching and running simulations in order to improve everything I could about my fantasy knowledge. I've done 10 of my 13 drafts so far this season and may add a couple last minute ones to do 15 leagues this year. They varied quite a bit.
some of the different types:
-10 team 1 qb/2rb/3wr/te/DST/K no PPR
-12 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/1 flex/te/DST .25 PPR
-12 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/2 flex/te/DST/K .25 PPR
-12 team auction keeper, $155 bankroll, 1 qb/2rb/2wr/1 flex/TE/DST/K .5 PPR
-12 team 1 qb/ 1 OP (offensive player, can include 2nd qb)/2 rb/3wr/flex/TE/DST/K 1 PPR
-14 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/flex/TE/DST/K/LB/DL/DB .5 ppr + other random scoring changes
-12 team national fantasy football championship: http://nffc.stats.com/football/home/nffc/index.asp
ive done a ton of work on all these drafts and everything worked out very well. Most of my work was on optimizing draft order by position round by round for each draft slot. I feel I have a much better grasp on this than almost anyone else and also a better idea of VBD (value based drafting) and dynamic value based drafting as well as player tiers and how to maximize value in them.
Since the season starts thursday and there are probably some last minute drafts going on and since everyone loves fantasy football thought id spread some wealth on what ive learned. ask me anything, but be specific with questions. i.e. dont ask what sleepers should i aim for, tell me the scoring system of your league, how many teams, what draft position you have, who you aim for, what goals you should have with each position etc.
Wedding, car and surgery.by napoleono, September 02
So it's been a while since my last update and there were plenty of things going on in the meanwhile.
Surgery
A couple of weeks before the weeding, just as I was planning how and when to ask for a holiday from work, I got terribly sick one Friday morning. I was aware I had some very little stones in my gallblader (sigh, my parents have it, my grandma had it as well) and was feeling pain some nights when I ate too much and too greasy, but didn't think it would hurt this much. So after a quick visit to the emergency of the hospital, it turned out that they weren't that small anymore. The ecographist said that this thing is no joke and even if it was removed yesterday, it would have been too late and I should consult a surgeon ASAP. Before I knew I was in the hospital again and couldn't leave. Monday came around and I had my gallblader removed without any complications. 2 days were pretty rough, cause I could barely move, but when Wednesday came around, as if magic happened, I was suddenly feeling pretty good. So after this I got 2 weeks off from work and all my planning was in vain.
Wedding
I was pretty weak after the surgery, but on the bright side we didn't have that much to prepare as we invited only the close family and some of our best friends - we were around 60 people. It all went smoothly, we had a great time. But due to my post-intervention weakness, we opted not to go on a honeymoon (the doctor advised me not to swim for a couple of weeks, in order not to risk an infection). We stayed with our parents a week, before returning to Bucharest to get back to work.
Car
So now that we are officially together, we thought we could use a car to be able to travel around the country (and to be able to go home whenever we want, as Bucharest is like 250 km away from our home town). My wife is only now getting her driving licence and we didn't want to invest too much money into a car (nor did we have infinite buget for one ). After more than a month of searching, I finally found a Volkswagen Bora which seemed to fill all our wishes. Nothing special though, it's over 10 years old, but it was only 3k, which is pretty decent for what it offers.
I went into August highly motivated and really enjoying playing poker and started the month well, putting in 8k VPPs in the first 4 days despite a couple of heavy nights out for someone's birthday and I thought August was going to be a high volume month. Sadly, in the end, August has been one of, if not the lowest volume months so far this year. It seems this time of year is when everyone's birthdays are and I was drunk probably 24 out of the 31 days in August.
When I wasn't drunk I was hungover or depressed and I just didn't feel like playing much poker for most of the month. Needless to say, I didn't do too well at cutting back on expenditure either considering how frequently I was going out, and I also blew some money on some Poker programs and subscriptions.
There's a bunch of birthday outings (Including my own) this month also and I can see this month going in much the same way as August which would suck because 400k VPPs should be easily attainable, but I might be making tough work for myself in the remaining 3 months if I end up putting in 20k VPPs again this month. I just don't feel motivated to play at all at the moment and wanna do anything but poker really. Hopefully this will change later in the month
Music You Should Hear Vol 5 + Car + Sweden + Dogby Svenman87, August 29
The other day I overheard someone talk about how life is often a rollercoaster, which is unfortunate for me since I've always feared them as death traps and would often refuse to ride them. I guess that person was right in a lot of ways; but I think it's about time I get over that fear and learn to enjoy the ride.
Rufus - Sundream
Holy Ghost! - Okay
Ejecta - Jeremiah
MsMr - Fantasy
Washed Out - Don't Give Up
Shearwater - I love the valley oh!
London Grammar - Interlude
Magic Man - Texas (you should really just listen to all of their music they have thus far... <3)
Tesla Boy - Spirit of the Night (if you like this one you should check out my blog about going back in time which I have more new retro music)
Nikola Sarcevic - IN Love with a fool
Fenech-Soler - Somebody
Anyways this collection is just the best of what I've been listening to as of late.
Car
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Ended up getting a 2009 Toyota Camry XLE with 80,000 miles. Bought it for 10,500 which I think was a decent deal. http://i.imgur.com/u6kiRy7.jpg
Dog
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Ended up having some eye issues this past week, they think he'll need entropian surgery (surgery where they cut off some of his eye lids)
Poor pup http://i.imgur.com/8FfWzri.jpg
Picture of him at my aunts work
Life
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I will be traveling to Sweden next midsommer! Visiting a longtime friend out there for about two weeks - really excited, I just broke up with my girlfriend and have wanted to take this trip for a long time, booked the ticket the day after we broke up and feel pretty pumped about the adventure I should probably bone up on my Swedish and Swedish culture.
Anyways take care LP
<3
Also if you like this Music You Should Hear - check out the other ones I've made in previous blogs as well ^_^
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.
Being poker players eventually a lot of us are looking for transition out of this grind into other grinds. I'm looking into investments as a possible venture out of poker. Anyone care to start up a discussion with me here on investments namely ETFs, stocks, and index funds?
I guess I'll start it off by saying I'm lookin into these kinds of funds to be as diverse as possible without having to invest huge amounts into many different individual stocks. Just looking to invest a few thousand as an experiment and potentially start to build my portfolio.
Heard from a buddy of mine he's feelin some nuclear ETFs anyone care to comment on this?
As for more generalized questions if you are currently investing, which sites offer the most competitive rates? I'm researching on my own now but getting different opinions and perspectives on things never hurts.
Check it! So I had to move to a new apartment this weekend that accepts month to month tenants while I wait for my new house to be constructed. I hired this moving crew to run the show since I'm lazy like that and prefer to sip mimosas on the patio while they do all the work. They finish up and I hop in my ride and take them to the new place. Next thing I know Holly pulls up next to me in the parking lot and says her cellphone is missing. Naturally first thing I do is try to dial it, but it goes straight to voicemail. The only time this happens is if the phone has been turned OFF. At this point I know it has to be theft since that points to a clear and deliberate attempt to prevent it from being rung.
I pull one of the boys aside privately and ask him if he saw anyone with it, which he of course denies. So I kinda let them unload all my shit before I finally call the cops, that way they cant get all pissy and just drive off without finishing the job. Cops interrogate them but they say nothing. Of course they get kinda offended at me and I hear one of them shouting over the phone with his boss about how "dis motha fucka din even axe us, he jus call da po-lice!" I make sure to strap my gat in case anything worse than shooting a bitch happens. I pay them and tell them to GTFO. One of them even asked for a tip which was especially awesome.
At this point I know one of these dumb mother fuckers will turn it back on in about 10 minutes to reap the rewards of his thievery. So I login to the Google Play Store and initiate an app install which will auto-download as soon as the phone comes online. It's some emergency GPS locator that silently starts reporting your phone's location over and over. Sure as fucking snot, suddenly I start getting messages about her phone. It sends Google Maps links so you can see where it is, and bam, there's her fucking phone about 30 miles up the road in the fucking ghetto.
I hop in my ride strapped, ready for anything, and have the cops meet me there. But then the fucking phone goes offline again. The culprit has turned it off! I call his supervisor and he agrees to stall the kid by telling him to meet up somewhere. I creep into the back of the parking lot and keep a beat on him while I update the police with his location. The kid walks into some grocery store and the cops pursue. 10 minutes later they come out with the bitch in handcuffs, phone in hand, and say he was hiding out in the bathroom.
They shake my hand and said it was fun since usually they fail to recover stolen phones due to lack of evidence. They were happy someone was able to leverage the power of tekmology for justice and return someone's shit back. I gotta say the cops were awesome throughout the entire event, in both cities in which I tracked it. Just very helpful, polite, quick, responsive, and good people. BUMP THE POLICE!
So the other day, I played a ton of sit n goes at pokerstars. Halfway through my session, the tournaments I am registering stop opening, and before I can notice, I've registered, and blinded out of ~30 turbo sit n goes. (I just assumed that TN malfunctioned and wasn't registering because sometimes it hits the tournament tab, and doesn't reg stuff, but it said "currently registered in 40 games".) After I saw this, I click "registered tournaments" and it says I'm in 40 games that are running... I still have ~13 tables up that I am playing with 0 error, completely connected to the internet, using skype, youtube, etc without a single problem. I email stars about the problem, and they say it is somehow my fault. Thoughts? http://www.liquidpoker.net/userpoll/draw.php?poll_id=1360
Poll: Should I get a refund?
(Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
(Vote): Nobody cares
Sorry if this wastes people's time, but I feel that stars support has been getting worse post Black Friday, at least for me. A lot of times before, they would be a lot friendlier and joke around, etc, and these days they seem to just be dicks with no sympathy for someone who lost ~30 buyins due to an unknown error or an "internet outage" even though I was connected the entire time, and even played games after the software glitch, or whatever it was.
HI LP! My name is Ryan Neilly - I've been trolling LP for 10 years, growing up and learned a ton from this site!
I grew up playing poker in back smokey card rooms, 50 cent big blind - was busto all the time, but i was just the best player ever, they just sucked out on me every time!! I saw this video by some awesome player - think he name was TUFF_FISH - a real 5/10 GRinder- he showed me the way!!!
JK - my coaches are woodbrave / jlost88 / baza88 / marshall28 / DoomerFD taught me FR/ Raszi Taught me HU, Andrewsong and I used to be pretty tight b4 he got super high stakes - I can NOT praise this guy enough. Hes amazing.
so I donked around like the donk I am for years learning to play - Hevad told me via MsN one day in like 2004 (You will learn to survive) and that I did.
The only poker book I have ever read is Barrys book on how to handle yourself lol.
so i grinded cg's nl2 - nl100 $20 - $3k - then dumped it when they caught on and i couldnt adjust heheh
so i moved to nl50-nl1k HU and played there for a year, i lost a year of my life but got lucky and beat frink for like 20bi so that was the stripper success! and that raidan game at 25/50 was so much fun in hindsight, i cant help but laugh
i moved to vegas in 09 and jlost88 and woodbrave got me MTTing! Things went great! My Roomie Quoc and Dee were awesome and up n comin, great atmosphere and knew this was for me for the rest of my life.
Then I had artanis and a ton of ballas put me into a ton of tournaments i was not ready for at all.
I went 45k in debt faster than a rock hits the ground from your hand to the street.
since then, I made yet another mistake - this is the one that stands out the most in my life and gets a label of "scammer" by my name - in 2010 I had a stake with Partimepoker.com - $8k stake - went to 15k - then had a 8-11k downswing. at this point i went super hardcore degen mode and lost the last 4k that was in there (hu cash my weakness - i had completely lost my mind at this point).
I vouched to pay it back in full for my mistake on the last 50% of the stake (and have paid off only 1.4k so far)
Its similar to when barbieman from LP staked me 3.5k and i degened it, and I Paid him back 100% back within 1-2 months.
I am TerrIble with $$$$ in hand. I am a HUGE pothead. I post rants, and had deep bad anger problems for years. I lived the most unbalanced, unhappy life of most grinders for soooooo long. It was my fault. It is what it is.
I let all these kids run me over on a forum for years after that mistake - trollin me to tilt daily, they loved it, and I understand 110% why.
I just takin it on the chin like Tyson from Holyfield, gettin ready to bite an ear off after it finally got to me.
So, then during a week of just being pissed at everything in the world, i spazzed shit on everyone and everything in the world, with the decision that lp was hurting me at the time - instead of when i joined and it was helping me etc. it was just negatively affecting my day by day mentality. I apologize for that, obviously just a neillystonednutsorant#
so i went to work for baza88 for a year and made some good monies and got to the highstakes circuit for a year, he took good care of me and I'm forever grateful for all the work we put in together and the shit he put up with me during my "growing pains"
After a crazy summer in Costa - I was renting a house off my dad and owned hero/carbon to acr - but just got sick of no stars. I was 40k in Makeup with brad 1 month into costa, after 3 months it was clear, during my stint in the states - it sucked w/out a MTT platform, and had to wait 3 months for m carbon $$ which sent me back to bustoland haha..
*prolly shoulda called Kanish*
Talked some with a few good friends, have a large investor group - but took 1 main investor on since we have been great friends for 4 years. Have backups if need be, but this guy is a true 10 in all areas of life and gives to charities etc, so def love working with him.
So the kid you guys "know" - has grown up a lot, learned cause and causality - accept the negative statements that were directed at me as I was doing the wrong thing the wrong way.
To be Frank, I should be debt free, Baza88 was giving me 3k a month to play for him and I was just blowing it and thinking (ill just pay off my debts when I get a nice 15k score) - terrible way of thinking. Also when I left Vancouver - I paid off 21k in debts and kept 7k - bought a truck - and totalled it - making my car insurance 3x higher. FML karma you are good.
So ya - i was getting really agitated of no good platform to grind on, Ottawa was a great choice because its just so close to home.
Getting into Canada was easy this time, just told em im comin up for poker and they let me right in.
been here a week, have had some real deep runs etc, 22nd big 162 etc, won a 109T, but down overall right now - been forcin things a lil bit - for the buy-ins its nothin tho - 1 win gets me to even heh (500 mtts played in about 7 days of play ~14 hrs a day)
so ya - that neilly guy you guys hated on forever smashin him down, to make your failed lives or egos feel better, has had a career in the game since 2009. Is still 15k in debt, but thats just a number. 1 win. That guy did deserve all the shit you guys gave him, he was a real prick, thought his shit didn't stink, and thought he could just do everything his way. Kid was a fuckin retard.
ah, last week - got top 35 in FTOPS - 1st was over 100k that woulda been sick, over 3k runners.
Anyways.
LP you own - Marshall / Jlost88 / Stroggoz / TalentedTom / Andrew / Hevad / Target / few others - all you guys are like the only ppl I seem to know on here anymore.
I am happier and (more) content in my life now, staying w/ a friend in Canada til 9/1, then getting a place. The greens $100/half for kush delivered, no politics, I need citizenship .
I wish you all the best of luck, Just wanted to send a message out to the LP - stoned morning rant, Hope you guys are all doing really well.
Bout 100 hours of play last 7 days - takin a day off to get a cpu chair and go out and do something. Been inside mostly the last 4-5 days.
First week in Ottawa, I got to see the Capital of Canada with my roomie, my god its beautiful, like that song - castles in the sky, there are castles everywhere. its so sick. and um, spearmint rhino can suck it compared to the clubs up here.
respect to you guys,
gl if u need it,
Ryan - that Neilly guy
So I've built my roll playing micro stakes cash to $200. I've always enjoyed tournament/sng play more then cash, but I think cash (at least for me) has helped me learn the basics of poker better then tournaments/sng's would have.
Anyway, so I really feel ready and want to transition to mttsng's and some mtt's. What kind of brm should I use for these games? I was thinking 100 buy ins minimum for mtt's, and 200 buy ins for sngs? So I'd play the $1 and $1.50 45/90 man sngs, with occasional $2.50 180 mans just trying to bink one. Also play mtt's no bigger then The Big $2.20 for ex, with occasional $3.30 and $4.40 shots.
I'd build the roll to to about $625 or so, and transition to just playing the $2.50 180 mans and tournaments no bigger then $5 with occasional shots at Sunday Storm for ex. Does this sound like an ok plan? Also, any advice for playing games would also be greatly appreciated.
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). After more than a month of searching, I finally found a Volkswagen Bora which seemed to fill all our wishes. Nothing special though, it's over 10 years old, but it was only 3k, which is pretty decent for what it offers.
(surgery where they cut off some of his eye lids)
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