Poker Blogs

Once again, a lot of deep runs, cashed for $6609.29 this time around, thats good for another weekend.

Dunno if I will play next sunday cause there is a live MTT im going, if I bust day 1 I will, or else I'll play the other weekend.

Bound to run good one time and stop bubbling FTs I guess

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/c...dGpyalZxNllheUViM2YyamZkM194TlE#gid=0

btw, this hand was bullshit, why does this have to happen everytime on the more expensive ones for me, wtf:

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Don't worry I'm not busto ROFL!

I just watched the video of Brad Booth talking about how he has a gambling problem and is in a huge amount of debt to countless backers. He also admitted to straight up stealing money from WCGRIDER. He was crying and looked like he was at rock bottom.

It got me thinking and I decided to share some of my experiences.

I definitely used to have a horrible gambling problem and was in denial for many years. I have never played a pit game in my entire life but I used to constantly play high stakes cash games while on tilt and under rolled. However I only did this with my own money, and never on the money of other people. If I had people feeding me an endless stream of cash I never would have learned anything. I was only staked one time for 3k back in early 2007, and it went really well and my backer was paid back 6k and I profited the original 3k. Unfortunately when I was back on my own money the next day I tilted it playing 5/10 and was broke again. My backer, Ket, told me that he was cutting me off for my own good because I would never learn anything if I continued down this path. He told me I need to learn the value of money and that I should grind 1$ sngs until my fingers bleed. I knew he was right and that advice stuck with me even though I didn't follow it for a long time because my addiction was so powerful.

I eventually got to the point in late 2008 where I was completely broke and I had no way to get in action. I was at total rock bottom. My credit cards were all maxed out, I had 2-3 bank loans of like 2-3k each, and lots of school loans. I had too much pride to start messaging my poker friends begging them for staking money. I talked to my parents and they agreed that it was time for me to grow up and get a real job. I went and got a job and for 9 months I lived with my parents and 85% of my income went into paying back debts. The road to recovery was long and hard. I had a lot of time on my hands and read countless books and spent many hours working out. I started practicing meditation and spent many hours analyzing myself and trying to understand my addiction and its triggers. Yomer from LP gave me 200$ to play 10nl on and I doubled his money and paid him back. From that point on I never went broke again, even though I did have a few relapses where I would lose 40-50% of my bankroll I never put myself in the position where I had everything on the line. As time went on my tilt control started to get better and better. I started meditating more and more and had a few really huge breakthroughs and realizations. The first time I read the book Siddhartha it was essentially a religious experience for me. It opened my eyes to so many things, and I no longer view the world in the same way. I finally made the decision to quit trying to move up in stakes and to just grind the small stakes games and be happy with what I had. This gave me a lot of peace, and I was finally able to release much of my ego.

Post black Friday I worked two jobs to save up for a live poker bankroll. When I had enough money saved up I continued working 7 days a week and when I would get off work I would go grind at the casino. I got about 3-4 hours of sleep a night. This continued for about 3-4 months and I had a huge run where I didn't lose for 5 weeks. I completely paid off all of my credit card debt and school loans. I'm now completely debt free and am looking to potentially buy a house or condo soon. I quit my second job about 3 months ago and am very well bankrolled for 2/5NL cash games live. I still work a full-time job that I really enjoy, and I just play poker for the intellectual challenge and enjoyment.

I'm a huge bankroll nit and take absolutely zero chances with my money. I will continue working on my game and trying to improve because I really do enjoy playing. I have no desire to play poker for a living, and have no delusions of trying to become rich from it. At this point it is just a nice source of income that I can get from doing something that I enjoy. I no longer feel the gambling sickness inside of me, and when I lose I just accept it instead of feeling the sense of "desperation" that I used to.

I was certainly lucky in the sense that I had parents who allowed me to stay with them while I got back on my feet. I was also able to discover Buddhism and use my time training my mind instead of coming up with schemes to get back in action. I would say that I am probably in the minority of people who are able to overcome the sickness. I think that in the case of many people they would be much better off giving up the game completely.

I am extremely happy with my life now and to be honest I have no regrets. Without my experiences I wouldn't be the strong person that I am today.


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Ryan


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songs i'm listening too. obv. sh..faced drunk.
















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Had one of the easiest sessions of my life yesterday, and all for one very simple reason, people loved showing me their cards. I meant to blog about this when playing at the Aria, but goddamn does it pay off to be on everyone's good side at the table. I'm no Daniel Negreanu, but I do like to talk at the table a lot in a casual friendly manner, and be overall supportive of players' actions. I quickly came to realize that when people like you, they want to do you favors. From Vegas to the homegames, you can get a lot of free info when people are eager to show you they werent bluffing you, because nobody wants to take their friends' money right?

I was able to get out of two big hands last night when villains showed me their cards IN THE HAND lol. I folded AQ on a QT8ss flop after villain swore up and down he had J9, and I said "if you show me that hand I'll fold" and so he turns it over, wtf lol. I gave him a hearty pat on the back and let it go. And another spot with another villain when I had something like KT on a 89Jss flop and he showed me QTo. I didnt even know these guys' names.

It's amazing how nice people can be when you're friendly with them. Just thought I'd share, always try to be jovial at the tables, you can end up saving a lot of money.


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Nothing is what it seems to be
All of this is an illusion
All you think you know
All you experience
All you fear
All is none
And it is all connected
Once you see it
Infinite Love
Seek the truth
Do or do not, there is no try
But I'm just crazy



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It's 3:30 AM and I have to work in a few hours but goddammit I'm finishing this story.

On Changing Your Life


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pokerz


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Can't wait for this!!



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Finally reached supernova played all day to get it.
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I remember thinking when I was at 5plo that if I ever reached midstakes that I would have no problem being motivated even if I just broke even and working to get sne. Just need to get to 20k so I can play 200plo and go for sne next year.
I still have a bunch of leaks none of my bluffs seem to work and my red line is plummeting need to study more.
My plan is that my edge is going to come from my health and diet which brought me to this and I am starting from now on, I know there is another poster on this forum (cant remember name) who does this caveman diet anyway pretty good listen.
The dangers of wheat:
http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2012/04/RIR-120429.php


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Hey guys, I'm 10/20 heading to today. Ivey to my left whole tourney. I need that LP support. Lets bring home a bracelet


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dododododooooooooooooo


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I just finished playing a session at the 10NL deepstack tables. I play at most 2 tables, try to focus and be give myself strict stop-losses. The last part's necessary because I'm usually not practicing great BR management when I do it, but I think ultimately it's not bad because A) If I lose at most 2 buyins I drop down and get it back from 5NL fishies, B) The player quality is significantly higher (although not too high) so I think and learn more as I play, and C) It's way more fun and some of these people just giving away $25 every once in a while.

It's super likely that I'm getting cocky after a run of positive variance (I think I went from low $200s to $300 today; and this session I ran at 100bb/100). I posted a blog about tilting (not really worth reading in case you're considering) - it definitely affects my game - and I think I'll have to be careful that I don't tilt from this hot streak. One thing I'm worried about is getting too comfortable at the tables. It happens to me if I've been winning and it leads to terrible play. Because of that I'm not sure if I should stay at the 10NLDS tables or not. I think I'll put 2bi to it and reevaluate if I lose those.

I'm going to post some hands in spoilers below in case anyone is interested. I've included commentary/questions/context at the top of each spoiler. If you do check some out and have the time I always appreciate comments on my hands


Horrible Spew:
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Bluffing in 3b pot
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3b pot river bluff
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Thin value on riv with KK
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A treat
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Bluff at a multiway pot
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I think I'll summarise by saying that I definitely ran super godly well over these few hundred hands. I'm trying to work aggression into my game at these tables as well. Not too aggressive (I'm not looking to try to 4b light pf), but it seems that the players fold (a bit) more than at 5NL.



-e- PS I ran into this video and it's very cool




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I originally posted this in my CR blog, but figured since I've started posting a bit more in this one that I should just post the same messages in both....

So since I started to take my life a little bit more seriously. I mean, considering it's very obvious that my ceiling is clearly not as high as I originally believed it might be regarding how much money I could potentially be able to make in the future as a poker pro, this is what I've come up with....

Here are my estimated monthly expenses:
HEALTH INSURANCE - 125/mo
CAR INSURANCE - 155/mo
STORAGE - 180/mo
RENT - 1000/mo
MEDICATION - 540/mo
FOOD/ALCOHOL - 700/mo
MISC - 1000/mo= 3700/mo

3700x6 months = $22,200

22k? If I'm just keeping that locked up, what am I supposed to use for a bankroll? Sometimes I play 5/10nl with less than this in my bankroll. Geez, all I need to do is double my hours weekly and I would be flush. I'm pushing 10-15 hours a week lately which is even worse than the previous few months, even after I said I need to up the hours I put in each week. Kinda sad to see I haven't made any progress, but such is life. I think it's mostly a matter of motivation. Hopefully being around another poker player with a much better work ethic than myself will push me to want to play more and earn more money. Being at the Rio today and watching Brian Hastings win the 10k HU shootout for 370k definitely helped to make me feel like I should put more effort into my poker. I'm really tired of seeing people who aren't as good as me making way more money--not saying this about Brian haha, he's >>>>>>>>>>>>me--I just am speaking in generalities.

I've been doing this for pretty much 6 years now for a living and I've never kept this kind of money as a backup. Sometimes my bankroll is less than that amount. And this is also with the consideration that I've played somewhere between 2.5-3 million hands (3/4 of that being at 400nl+). Nobody can know for sure at this point though because I've lost a lot of databases along the way, but ~600k hands a year my first 3 years and probably ~300k hands a year the following 3. This is the most accurate I can be, I mean, give or take 500k hands. Since January 08 I haven't been anywhere near close to bust.

If you play a super high variance style (or just PLO for that matter), I could see this being necessary, but even when I used to do that, I still never came close to needing this much money just sitting waiting in case something bad happened. If you watch my videos nowadays, you see I play a pretty low variance style, and I feel comfortable with just 5k as a backup.

If your lowest level as a regular isn't 400nl, then I think things might change a bit for you because, me, personally, if I for whatever reason just randomly lost 80% of everything I had, I could just get a loan from a friend for like 5k and grind .5/1nl and 1/2nl and come out and just rebuild everything I needed to live. If your highest game is lower than 400nl as a regular, then you would have a bigger problem, because you (likely) wouldn't be able to get as large enough of a loan, and you would have to start at much lower stakes to rebuild your bankroll (and your life), which will take a lot more time and probably force a lot more pressure.

What I'm deciding is that I need to probably keep somewhere between 5000-7500 for emergency expenses (obviously I can cut down on medications and alcohol expenses if it's a matter of living in the streets versus earning a wage), and now I need to start thinking about how I want to manage my online bankroll versus my live bankroll. Seems like a pretty good time to give my old coach Tommy Angelo a call and ask him his opinion regarding how I divy it up.

Never in the past have I even considered keeping both a live and an online bankroll since, well, for one I never have planned on playing live games for a living, and two, I always felt like any cash I had that was outside of an online poker website wasn't to be used for anything other than spending cash.

Times are changing and I have to adapt. I've been adapting in one form or another the past 6 years regarding online poker and if you've watched my videos you'd know just as much. This type of adaptation is a bit different, but it's obviously something I'm going to figure out. I always figure things out, despite all my terrible habits and self-destructiveness. But this whole idea of starting to play live as well as online is forcing me to re-think the way I've done things in the past. One thing I'm realizing is that I never really prepared myself to play live before since all I would do is withdraw a certain amount from my online roll and play way higher live than the amount I withdrew could handle. I don't want to do that anymore, so I need to make some changes.

I did attempt to make a change when I went to Arizona to coach that HS basketball team. And I actually had some pretty good success. I was pushing 210 pounds and ended up dropping down to 175 by the time I left. 35 pounds isn't something most people could let go of in 3 months, so I know when I put my mind to something I can come out with strong results. When I head up to NorCal, I want to drop another 15 pounds and get to my target body weight 160LB while also putting on some muscle this time. I don't really wanna be a beefcake dude or anything like that, but if I can get a little toned it'd definitely do nothing but increase my self-esteem. I guess that will be my goal when I head up there since my roommate and I are going to be hiring a trainer on full time to work with us in the gym and on our diet by preparing our food for us. It'll be expensive but I'm willing to work a little harder because of the potential benefits I see. He won't be able to do anything to stop my drinking, but when I was working out so much in Arizona my drinking actually receded considerably, so I do expect that to happen again. Only good things I see in the future. As long as I don't choose to be a bum.

I've never been one to state blatant lies or agree to something then go back on it, so I think I have a pretty good chance, and either way, I won't be lying about how well or how poorly I'm doing. So I guess it's just time to wait and see what happens.


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Since they updated today has anyone else experienced this?


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I got a pm from a LPer a while ago who was asking about switching from msnl to plo. I thought I'd share the Q&A

Hey Ket, Just had a few random PLO questions, hope you don't mind, tell me to bugger off if you like I'm a 2/4+ NL reg atm, and have forever been considering a switch to PLO. How are today's games compared to NL? How do you think the future games will be? I'm still looking to be playing poker at least 3+ more years, do you think learning PLO would be worth it? Any general advice on switching is much appreciated, it sure as hell is alot more fun! Cheers,

Really quick cliff notes:
- people play plo much worse than people play nlhe today
- the above is not necessarily good news, because actually plo is much harder to get good at and quite a bit more complicated than nlhe
- imo there's more potential for money to be made at plo than nlhe and this will most likely remain the case for the foreseeable future (tho really cant speculate on future too well, lots of unforeseen stuff can happen).. but on the flipside it's ofcourse also harder
- nlhe skills dont translate well into plo skills. i personally found plo really frustrating to learn for a long time while i was still playing nlhe on the side, and only really started making progress after i decided to quit nlhe completely and focus 100% on learning plo. it was a risky step to abandon a game i can already make a living at for a game i'm bad at, and probably shouldn't be considered unless you've accumulated enough and are overrolled enough that you can afford to have a fruitless few months at least, and have the strength to keep trying
- i dont need to tell you this as you should already know from having gotten to 2/4nl, but learning a new game to a level where you can make good money won't be easy. not everyone can do it.
- if you invest time learning, playing more than 4 tables is probably the stupidest thing to do. one might even argue 4 is too many when learning. you need to question and think about literally every decision
- you've probably heard things about the variance already. be prepared for long periods of pain and dont fall into the trap of blaming variance and aiev on why you're doing poorly. you could always do work to improve your edge, and a player with a big edge will have 50bi downswings way way way less often than a player with a small edge (i.e. most midstakes regs that play a shitload of tables, go for sne and cry about big variance)


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do you really wanna live forever, forever, n ever?

long time would be nice


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I'm raising money for Starlight by taking part in 2012 Royal Parks Foundation Half Marathon. Please sponsor me at http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/faz


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i gotta quit smoking cigarettes soon.


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