Poker Blogs

July started very promisingly. On the night of 30th June/1st July I was down to the last 2 tables of the Sunday Million. The field remaining was quite weak, with only 1 player whose game I really respected (EDWARDHOPPER). I was 2nd in chips at one point but eventually busted QQ v KK with ~13bb vs EDWARDHOPPER for 15th place. So close yet so far. Still, $5.1k profit was a good start and I expected to go on to having a good month. Sadly, it wasn't to be. I lost $1k in MTTs over the rest of the month and I barely won at cash. Still, barely winning is better than the previous month where I suffered a 40 buyin downswing and didn't win at all.

I've continued to experiment and make changes to my game, and largely I've been happy with the changes and my results. Mainly I've just tightened up opening ranges and done some work on my play vs shortstacks. Infact, until yesterday I was running at 4 EV bb/100 for the month which is no better than I was doing in the first 5 months of this year, but a lot better than in the last 2 months. Unfortunately I lost about $2.1k yesterday which was something like 15 buyins (More at 100 than 200) and that ruined the winrate for the month. Even still, my positional winrates are all higher than the year as a whole except for from the BB, and by a small margin in the CO. The Big Blind is the position where I've made the most adjustments in the past couple of months and it seems it's still not working for me. Currently I think one of my biggest problems there is a bit of situational run bad, but also I'm simply not 3betting enough from that position specifically. I aim to do better than -40bb/100 from the BB next month. I don't even really care too much about how I do from other positions because I'm quite happy with my opening ranges and 3bet ranges etc from those positions and results will improve with the more volume I put in, I feel that I really just need to fix the leak in the BB and I'll be winning at a good clip again as I was in the first few months of this year.

Life has been a bit depressing lately and it's definitely effecting my play. Tilt has set in on more than one occasion and I'm usually very good at resisting tilt. I'm already thinking about a future without poker and I'd really like to move on from it as soon as possible. If I won like $200k+ in an MTT I would probably play until the end of the year and then quit relying on poker for income, only playing a little when I felt like it. I have no better options for income at the moment and not enough money to quit so I'll continue until I do have enough money. I certainly need to cut back on expenditure. I estimate I've made $45~50k so far this year including rakeback/bonuses and I have no more money in my Stars account or bank account than I did at the start of the year. I don't even have any large mandatory expenses, I'm just spending too much on stuff I don't need. This has to change if I'm to make enough money to quit poker in the next 2-4 years (I REALLY don't want to have to play any longer than that). I have restarted dieting and working out lately and I expect that will help with regards to how I'm feeling in day to day life, so that's one positive going forward at least.

Volume wise I've put in about an average #of hands for the last 3 months, but given that I've tightened up preflop I'm making less VPP/hand. At the start of the year I wanted to go for SNE, which I gave up on by March, then I changed my goal to 500k VPPs. At this point that's an impossibility also unless I get back into $2.5/$5 Zoom full time, which I can't see happening as I'm not happy enough with my winrates at $1/$2 and $0.5/$1 Zoom or confident enough on not losing at $2.5/$5 unless the lineup is quite weak. 400k VPPs seems reasonable though, to do that I need just under 160k VPPs in the remaining 5 months so just under 32k VPPs a month which is around about the volume I've been putting in last few months anyway. I'd be happy enough with another $25-30k (Including rakeback/bonuses) for the rest of the year, and hopefully make cuts on spending so I'm actually increasing my bankroll, not just breaking even on my expenditure.

Anyway, screenshots:


Cash:
http://i.imgur.com/iMWBt19.jpg
(Couple of hands at 100NL Zoom FR and 2NL Zoom were simply misclicks in the lobby haha)

MTTs:
http://i.imgur.com/vs6WF4Y.jpg

Results:
VPPs: 26,673.12
Cash: +$946.32
MTTs: +$4,164.64
Overall: +$5,110.96 (Not including FPPs/bonuses)

Like I said, mainly just hoping to do better from the big blind, cut down on expenditure and make 30k+ VPPs next month. Feeling better IRL would be nice too.


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So I need a rest from playing poker. I've played more hours this month than any month in the last 4 or 5 years. Maybe as many as 120 which would be equal to 30 hours a week. I've had a lot of long sessions and it's been very tiring but also very profitable.


Haven't ever had a month like this before as I'm now up $79,600. I placed 193rd in the main event for $42,990 but I only had 30% of my own action there which totals $9897. The other 70k was pretty much all online cash games. Still trying to hit that $100k month, thought it might happen when I was up 87k 4 days ago but it doesn't look like that's in the cards now. Oh well, it's not like it really matters, it's just a stupid arbitrary number.


$34k playing mostly 5/10 and 10/20 plo and 35k playing 5/10 and 10/20NL. I have to assume that part of the reason for why I did this is because I was able to game select better than I had previously. Helps to always stay in higher stakes games. Sometimes there would be a few okay 5/10NL games running but some good 10/20 plo games running so obviously I can choose to play the PLO. Or sometimes there's only 2 10/20nl games but also some 10/20plo, then I don't really have to sit in the 5/10nl games.


Getting everything ready for my move to Rosarito at the end of next month. Yeah I know I said originally I was going to Vancouver, but this just makes a lot more sense to me. I'm going to keep a place here in San Diego so I don't have to uproot my entire life here. I'll probably travel back and forth between the two places once a week. Heading up to Mission Viejo tomorrow to pick up my new whip. 2013 Infiniti G37. I'll post some pictures once I have it my possession.


Going to have to do a lot of grinding this coming month as well. Trying to put as much money together as possible for when I move to play on Stars. I might have to just play 5/10 there for a bit until I can be sure I have a big enough roll that I won't go broke. What a disaster that would be if I changed everything in my life and moved to only go broke. Might need to take some extra precautions with regards to bankroll. I've began to study the HS games running on stars though. I can't really ever see myself playing in that 400/800 that's been running but eventually I'd like to sit in these 50/1 games I see running somewhat frequently. Gonna take some time but hopefully I can get there.


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Biphasic that is!

I'm going to attempt a biphasic sleep cycle to allow me to

A: Play the graveyard shift for poker of 10pm-5am
B: Be awake during the day with my family
C: Sleep less/more efficiently

For those of you who don't know what a biphasic sleep schedule is, there are some variations of it, but basically you sleep twice per 12 hour period for around 3 hours each time. I have just begun my foray into this practice (today will be my 2nd 24 hour cycle of biphasic sleep), but I have to say I am already impressed with how it feels. I'm going to keep a log of how I feel with this sleep schedule until it becomes routine for me. Probably a week or two and then update if I am still using this schedule in the future.

Day 1: 7/27.
After a 14 hour session of poker I arrived home at 5am and had something I had to be awake for at 9am so I set my alarm.

Day 1(b) first attempt: 7/28
Sleep cycle 1: 4hrs
Sleep cycle 2: 1hr45min
Total sleep: 5hr45min
After waking I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to attempt biphasic sleep. So I stayed awake until 5pm at which point I attempted to go back to sleep for 3 hours. My daughter didn't quite let me fall asleep at first, but eventually I fell asleep around 630pm and slept until 815pm. Upon awakening I was a little groggy because I didn't wake naturally but by my family jumping into bed to wake me up. After putting Allison to sleep I headed to work and started my session at 10pm. I played until 5am and felt great the whole time.

Day 3 7/29
Cycle 1: 3hrs50min
Cycle 2 (projected): 2hrs30min
Total sleep (projected): 6hr20min

When I got home at 530am I went to sleep until 920am. I awoke a little groggier than I was expecting, and laid in bed until 10am until finally getting up for breakfast. Now at 1pm though I feel great, and am going to try to go back to sleep from 6pm-9pm tonight.

Targets:
-Have an average sleep per 24 hour cycle of right around 6 hours.
-Not be cranky
-Crush people at the pokers
-Feel awesome and productive


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I've been trying to increase my focus throughout the day and the amount of time I can sustain that focus. I've been recording all the data I reasonably can that probably has a significant correlation for the past 80 days.


Sleep
I actually have about 5.5 years of sleep data, and with more in-depth detail with Zeo since Dec 2011.

My sleep is most efficient when I'm biphasic with a 3-hour cycle approximately every 12 hour period. For the past 9 months I've been on a monophasic sleep pattern and sleeping less efficiently than I used to up until the past couple months. The average amount of time I'm sleeping now (6h52m) per 24-hour period is at the higher end in duration in all the time I've tracked, but my efficiency is higher than it has ever been for that length. I'm measuring efficiency by the quantity of deep and REM sleep. So with the combined increased duration and increased efficiency, the amount of REM (avg. 133 minutes) and SWS (avg. 94 minutes) is at the highest range it has ever been.

The reason biphasic is so efficient is because the most effective sleep is in the first cycle and gradually becomes less efficient each additional cycle. Also, more frequent opportunities for the brain to defrag a bit after intense sets of work seems to help. Performance often dwindles the longer you go, whether you realize it or not. I remember dreams easier in a biphasic schedule as well; it's a lot easier to remember 1 or 2 dreams than 3 or 4. So naturally lucid dreaming is a lot better biphasic.

My best guesses as to why my body is sleeping more efficiently and for longer:
-The increased periods of concentration while I'm awake
-The drugs I'm taking to get that increased concentration
-I'm just getting old.

I fall asleep within 1 minute 62% of the time, less than 3 minutes 72% of the time, and less than 10 minutes 93%. 29% of the time I go into REM rebound which I usually associate with sleep deprivation. Overall, I'm pretty happy about my sleep although I'm sure I could still get better results on a biphasic schedule.


Exercise
My original plan was to exercise every other day. I've slacked a bit and ended up only doing it 37.5% of days. My preferred exercise would be swimming, but I don't have a pool right now so I've been jogging. I'm pretty much trying to elevate my heart rate to about 160 bpm for abut 10 minutes, slow pace until I'm down to 130 and then speed back up for the remainder of the workout. I spend 30 minutes total at this task, about 40 minutes if counting stretching before and after. I've also gradually had to increase the speed at which I run in order to do accomplish my heart rate requirements, so I suppose something is improving on that front.
I should start recording my resting heart rate every once in awhile and see if that's changing. I'm confident I have much room for improving in this category. I don't really know much about exercise and how to optimize towards greater brain efficiency.


Drugs
You can look at my last post to see what my original plan was, but I've deviated quite a bit away from it.
-I take either 200mg of modafinil or 75mg of armodafinil about 3 times a week. These both seem to perform the same function, but the modafinil takes 30-60 minutes to kick in without caffeine and lasts about 6-7 hours. Armodafinil can take 60+ minutes to kick in without caffeine but can last for 12 hours. Armodafinil can just kill my appetite for the first few hours whereas with modafinil I may not realize I'm hungry but I have no difficulty eating. This has been absolutely incredible for long periods of being "in the zone". The most noticeable side effect that could have an impact beyond me is greatly increased impatience. Waiting in a line or even having an unnecessary conversation about small talk can get aggravating quickly.
-I'm taking 80-100mg of caffeine 4-5 times a week. So you can deduce I have to be taking caffeine with modafinil at least sometimes and I'd say that combination hits pretty hard but is very effective. Also, after getting back my 23andme DNA analysis I discovered that my body metabolizes caffeine at a higher rate than average.
-I still do clean days at least once a week where I don't take anything.
-Nicotine I've taken in very small quantities infrequently. Even 0.5mg will make me feel a little light headed so I'm being careful with it. I also haven't noticed any mental performance benefits. It looks like once a week and usually when I'm starting to feel kind of tired.


Diet
I'm really terrible about my diet. I eat rather unhealthy and rather frequently (~5 meals a day). My BMI stays around 20, body fat is ~16%, visceral fat ~4%, and skeletal muscle around 42%. My diet has been something I've been really awful about my entire life and probably the most difficult aspect for me to change. I have ordered some Soylent and am hoping maybe that can kickstart my path towards eating a little better too.


Future
I'll see about using Soylent for meal subsitutes (my batch supposedly ships in September). Research more about exercise and try to optimize that. Start recording resting heart rate. I've also been looking at something called the Avacore CoreControl Glove. There are some schematics online to build something with the same functionality and patent diagrams by the inventors that provide enough understanding to be able to build something that will get the job done. It might be interesting for exercising, but I think it could have possible use in just getting over a mid-day slump when not on any drugs. I also took a deeper look at piracetam which I seemed to initially have the wrong idea about and will see about including that to the regiment. The only thing I'm worried about there is depleting acetylcholine because I seem to get very nauseous when taking acetylcholine boosters.


Thanks for reading! I'd appreciate any tips or feedback.


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done


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There are many hands in no limit Texas hold’em that can be defined as trouble hands for all sorts of reasons. In his great book “SuperSystem” the great Doyle Brunson once remarked on how hands like K-J and A-10 were “trouble” hands. Well it really all depends on how you play them I suppose but it is certainly true that they have to be played carefully. For example if a middle position player makes it 3.5bb to go and you have the Ac-10c on the button then you have a clear call even though your hand may be dominated.

If you flop an ace then it overtakes all hands like KK-JJ and you can easily get away from dominated situations if you are careful enough. It is often said that dominated Broadway hands are trouble hands but any hand can be a trouble hand if you play it badly enough. For example imagine a hand like A-A played at NL100 ring on Full Tilt Poker in the hands of a novice with a 200bb stack. They make it 3.5bb and get two callers both of which have position on them. There are now 12bb in the pot and the flop comes K-10-4 rainbow our hero makes a c-bet of 9bb and the first caller makes it 27bb with the next player folding.

Our hero calls because he has aces and now the pot is 66bb. The turn card comes and is the 5d and our hero checks. His opponent bets 35bb and now for the first time our hero is feeling a little less comfortable. However he still cannot let go of the aces just yet and so makes a call thus pumping the pot to 136bb. Any experienced player would already be feeling that their aces were beaten. You need to remember that a solid player will already know that you must have a decent hand to raise from position.

So this means that they can read your hand a lot easier than you can read theirs. This is the underlying problem with playing hands out of position. You can never know with certainty or enough certainty that your hand is losing. At least when you have position then you are in a better spot to know this because you will already have seen your opponent check or bet or even check-raise. There is a line that I often use to good effect that highlights even more when your opponent has a good hand.

This is called the delayed c-bet and is simply what the name implies, a c-bet that is made on the turn instead of the flop. This works well when your opponent has nothing and will be suspicious of your check. It also works well when you have almost no equity on the flop. For example if you raise a limper with the 10c-9c and the flop comes Kh-4s-3d then you have very poor equity. So you may decide to check and if the turn card comes and is the 8c and your opponent checks again then your fold equity has increased alarmingly.



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This is my goodbye to poker and LP.

I already quit 2 months ago and I just wanted to thank this community for playing a major roll in my 3 year professional poker career. In the process making me a nice chunk of money . I would be nowhere pokerwise without you guys <3.
For the last 18 months I've been bored whenever I've played, often feeling down even when I've ran OK/good. A really bad run of variance put me over the edge, and I'm thankful for it. Emotionally forcing me to chose another path. Which has literally unpaused my life, I've made up my mind to educate myself and hopefully I'll be able to eventually better this world and the life of the people living in it. Something that I've discovered to be the key for long lasting happiness, at least for me. Poker made me feel secluded and somewhat of a tangent in this world. Not a part of it, not contributing, merely existing in it. Life is short and happiness is the only thing that matters, wherever you find it. Being a part of humanity and bettering other peoples' life is what it's all about.

This is a simplified and compressed goodbye note but I still wanted to say thank you and goodbye to all of you guys. You've made all the difference to my poker life. Quitting poker and starting a new chapter in my life has made me feel better than I've felt in a long time. I wish for all the happiness for you guys. Whatever you do, I hope you lead a happy life and in the process can make other people happy and overall leave a positive imprint.

I've left €40 on my pstars acc to play if I feel like it, so some of you micro stakes guys might see me on the tables. I might even check in on LP now and then. See you later and gl, Liquid Poker! =)


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Nevermind


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http://mashable.com/2013/07/23/star-wars-game-of-thrones/


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Does anyone know where to find the old pokerstove? The new version isnt free anymore. There are some links on google but it's quite risky to download anything poker related from unknown places...


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Selling PTR4 (full holdem version) for 85$ (regular price is 99$, send me a PM if interested. Will accept stars money.


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Can you customize your opening sizes by position, what about tableninja 2?


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Should i consider stats at zoom 6max the same i consider them at 6max normal table?

I mean, for example what it is a hi/low stat, at 6max its not the same at a HU table.


If not, what adjustments should i make?


Thanks


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Mmmm just here incase I show up with a tapeworm symptoms in a few years

yummy sashimi, couldn't help myself!


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Hi allmighty people from lp.net

I have two questions that I haven't been able to answer by myself reading on the netteller site:

Can you make a deposit to you neteller account while being in the US?

Can you use neteller in the US?

and lastly, is there a way to get your bitcoins into neteller?


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There was once a pretty decent thread about dieting and good nutrition.

I remember someone recommended substituting low carb options, which I think is good solid advice. There were a bunch of ways he recommended and one of them was soda.

This isn't a HA YOUR WRONG kind of post, but for those of you who are still interested, it turns out Diet Drinks are just as bad as HFCS Drinks. At least statistically speaking of course.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/na...10/diet-soda-health-problems/2507219/


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