Poker Blogs

it's been a while. and i think some interviews would be cool. just a thought.

tt, dusty, panorama, baal, loco, maynard, player, mipwnyah, etc


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hey guys, happy New years, hope you all had an amazing time and have your minds right for 2011 =)

I managed to net 70-100k in MTT's this year, although staked for some, around 60kish profit there which isn't too bad. 2 wsops, 1 i busted early cuz i bought in really late and just meh, 2nd one i get very deep and got in 777 vs Q8hh on a 7TJhh flop (he riv straight), 400th of 1700 or so in this one (1500 nlhe 6max)

mtts are really wearing on me, they are so time consuming (spend most weeks playing 40-90 hours, sometimes more)r

I started watching DuecesCracked and Pokerstrategy.com videos to find out my leaks int he 6max arena, after many videos of nanononooko, balugawhale, ansky and others, i started hitting the 6max felt again

after doing so, i started playing 6max, so far i have 50,800 hands played after relearning 6max for 2738.66 (running about $150 below ev)
(my ptr was always terrible, but i've always been b/e / winner at 6max)

Going to play 40+ hrs of 6max weekly for now on, really enjoy the 40 an hour and can get up and do whatever i want whenever i want

with those 40 hrs of play, i'll gain my 41,500 FPP for 3 sunday Majors and invest 1-10% of my bankroll along with the 3 majors. I'll also MTT on random nights that I'm bored etc

Pretty good year all in all, learned a lot on the felt and off the felt, and looking forward to my first $150,000 year in 2011.

I wish you all the best and Happy Holidays,
Ryan




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Hey LP!

I am considering whether or not to try and go for SNE this year and in case I decide to go for it I would like to get some sidebet action on it.

I know many people did it already and its nothing special for a lot of people, but I have never been a big grinder, so its quite a challenge for me. Last year I made about 200k VPPs (didnt play exclusively at PS though), so I will need to put a lot lot lot more hands in to make it.

I am thinking of the standard 1:1 bet on whether or not I make SNE in 2011 as the main bet, but if someone has other interesting related sidebets in mind just post it in comments. Like for example some profit and/or vpps race or something.

Let me know asap if you are interested.


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Got off to a nice start today.

http://imgur.com/zXFr5.jpg

Yeah its not alot, but its nice to get a FT, after running pretty terrible last month since getting back into the swing of MTT grinding. Frustrating to loose in HU, and went out in a weird hand where he over bet the flop and i had 2nd pair and he was 2:1 chip lead. Yeah I was confused. But nvm.

2011 and onwards?

Well just gonna grind as many MTTs as I can especially these next few weeks. For my real job I am freelance, and right now its really quiet for me. A couple of dates in Jan but thats it, so lots of time to work hard at improving my game. My wife is also away during the weeks of Jan, for her work, so really I have no excuses ! ( she is back at weekends though)

I have an account on DC but I am looking to signing up to PokerXfactor. I had a fellow LPer in the past let me use his account for a few days, as he quit Poker or something and was feeling generous. He only had a few days left on his account. It was like a year ago, but was very kind of him. I cant remember who it was now, which is very bad of me. If you know who you are, let me know, so I can remember!

Anyway, I did like the content on PokerXFactor. My only concern is, the website still looks like it was made in 2004. Is this irrelevant? Anyone who is a regular there, do you find the content is still worth it? Also the hand replayer seems to be very good, and I had the pleasure of being shown it in a recent coaching session. Very good for going over hands especially with other people on Skype/Team Viewer etc.

Anyway, just want to say congratz to all them sick pups that grinded SNE last year. Great achievement! Hope it was worth it.

For everyone else, happy gaming and work hard on and off the tables !

Thanks


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Been a crazy year. Just gonna be a rant/reflection blog which is mostly for myself but I'll post picture/graphs to keep it somewhat entertaining for the folks who actually read this.

Started off year with fairly simple goals at NL50/100. To play a million hands and get out of some big debts. I undoubtedly failed at the volume goal but exceeded my financial goals for the year. about + ~75k including rakeback and bonuses, averaging around ~$105 an hr. Not bad considering I started out at NL100.
I feel extremely fortunate that things worked out my way. I stll remember back around ~march I took an NL200 shot was down 4 buyins (5 was my limit before i dropped down) and I get massively coolered 77 vs 99 on a 279 rainbow board and bink the one outer for the 4 buyin pot. After that I never looked back and continued on to crush NL200 for 4 ptbb/100 for little under 150k hands. Funny how luck works out to be a very big factor in all facets of life.

Hell, most of us on that visit this website are luckyass mofos. It wasn't how great we are that we lucked out and was born into a first world country, with good parents (or at least ones that'll put food on the table and clothes on your back), friends, and all the opportunities that a girl in say north korea or a boy in central african republic could ever dream of. I'm not ashamed to admit, I am one lucky son of a bitch.

I really worked on my work ethic and discipline as it was the weakest part of my game and just life in general. I feel I made leaps and bounds in this area but I still have a long way to go. I really feel I need to reach my volume goals this year. In terms of improvement on my actual game I feel I have a pretty big edge over the rest of the competition since I learned poker without a HUD and long before card runners ever existed. That creativity and ability to think really critically about my game allows me to think up adjustments easier than most I feel. I still have yet to get a membership to a training site which I should get since there will be valuable information there. Especially since a lot of the regs use the concepts and ideas outlined in those videos and directly incorporate them into their games.

Well anyway that was a long poker rant. Pix or it didn't happen.
http://imgur.com/Bcai2.jpg

http://imgur.com/f2SyC.jpg


In life it's been pretty busy as well. My little bro graduated from the University of Penn in may this year and our family is very proud of him.

Pride of our family!

http://imgur.com/FQ6QA.jpg


Last but not least another big event happened for our family and that was the death of my grandmother. She died at the age of 87 and was well treated/loved by the family before she went.

She was widowed at a fairly young age with nothing left except a degenerate husband who gambled away the family fortune and died of cancer at an early age. And left grandma with nothing but 4 kids to feed in the post korean war era of South Korea. It was the 3rd poorest economy at that time so times were pretty brutal during that period. You can imagine just how rough they had it. But she persevered through that kinda hardship and raised up 4 very great kids. 1 of them grew up to be a top financial adviser in Korea as well as the president of Busan international bank. Her life story is quite inspirational.

Our family visited her in Korea. When grandma heard news of us coming she couldn't sleep for 5 days. It was a shock when I finally saw her for the last time. Seeing someone in their last stretch is pretty shocking. Nothing but a bag of bones and the empty shell of a person who was so strong willed and full of life. We visited her for a week. In the 2nd part of the week she started to vomit bile violently and constantly. It was so bad they had to get a hose to pump the bile out 24/7. My mom basically begged grandma to just let go and rest in peace as it was obvious to everyone she was in a lot of pain.

shortly after we left korea she passed away. It seemed as if she just gave up once we left as she finally saw the last of her family. I was close to my grandma as she raised me, and took care of me when I was a child. It was quite painful to watch someone close to you suffering like that and finally going.

RIP you'll be sorely missed.

http://imgur.com/e18UK.jpg


On a positive side note I got to try quite a bit of great food this year from Pat's Philly cheese steaks to delicious legit Korean food and even Dog

thx for reading.


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I've been losing since summer of this year, so I'm down to NL50 at the moment. It's okay though, since I got back from my Vegas trip I've been watching a lot of videos and I've been really inspired to play better. I came to the conclusion that I was playing formerly a break-even or very marginal losing/winning style mass tabling, and I want to fix it. I messed around with that idea that I may not be cut out for poker but blamed it on variance, but I'm ready to accept that I suck and that's the first step in order to become better. I've started by cutting down from 16 tabling to 9-12, which gives me plenty of time to think without that much down time. I feel like at 9 tables I'm able to be on my A game without sacrificing too many hands per hour, and at 12 I can play pretty close to my A game.

For 2011 I'm going to attempt to split my play between FTP and PS. I'm currently in my 12th or 13th month of Iron Man, and I'm clearing the $350 end of the year bonus and another $300 bonus that FTP accidentally gave me (I bought a $300 Iron Man bonus and I got shipped two of them).

On PS, I'm nothing. I want to try and get at least Supernova this year, just in case next year I climb up enough stakes to take a shot at Supernova Elite, this would be a good starter.

For NL50, I plan to try and play around 1500 hands a day at each site while 9-12 tabling. I believe that this will put me slightly ahead of pace for the Black Card and Supernova programs, which will be good. Best of luck everyone in 2011. I no longer want to be a rakeback pro. Fuck the past, here's a start to my future.

Also a shout out to Jolin@LP for his first attempt at SNE this year. Good luck bro, glad you've been able to take poker so far since our days donking it up at the penny tables.


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Summary:
Heater my way up to PLO400, get wtfpwned, move down, and year ends with massive doomswitch.

Best of luck to everyone in 2011

http://imgur.com/ogP2p.jpg

http://imgur.com/Kn08C.jpg


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just ended on a five figure session. feels good.

this was a really crazy year for me. feel like i really defined myself with regard to my profession. about to head to a party in my old neighborhood.

the end of the year was pretty devastating with regard to my personal life but i believe this was the best year profit wise at the tables of my entire life, albeit not by much. despite such a tough end of year on the personal level i'm feeling really optimistic going into 2012.

i'm not a fan of year end graphs or anything like that but you all can figure out how it went more or less anyways. bubbling the WPT Borg final table and sorta failing in WSOP was trying but I feel good about how I handled myself at all times in the live games.

i sincerely wish you all the best in 2011, best of health and may the wind be at your back.

peace


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To wake up everyday at 10am during january, then re evaluate.


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Hi guys, I'm selling my Warcraft 3 battlechest cdkey for $20 on stars so that I can start playing poker this year. Thnx and Happy New Year.


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http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/1031/huhuhuw.jpg

The last 1,300 in winnings came from the last 24 hours lol

My goal in 2011 is to run better than I did in 2010 also to play more
1/2 NL HU(right now its 20%-.25/.5 75%-.50/1 5%-1/2) but on Ub its kinda scary since the initial bi is 200 BBs deep for any HU table


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So 2010 was my best year so far both in poker and in life overall by far. 2011 will be even better. I'm wiser, sexier and richer then a year ago and in addition to that I've got a plan which will turn me into a even better human being. I killed my old Swedish blogg because it took too much energy so I might post some rants here from time to time.

Anyway, happy new year! May your sets fill up on the river and the girls you encounter be of questionable moral!


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So it's been an interesting couple of days for me. Yesterday after not sleeping well for 5 or 6 days I just had enough and the pain I was in was just getting unbearable so I went to the hospital. I couldn't take another day of it. Well turns out I had a fever of 102 and I was dehydrated which makes sense because I've been sweating profusely ever since I stopped taking the Zoloft. They put me on an IV and took some chest x-rays and did some blood work. Of course I came back completely healthy (what always happens, no matter how much pain I'm in) but I was there for like 7 hours while they did all that. When I left my temperature had dropped to 99 and I was feeling slightly better and I managed to sleep when I finally got back home.

I was feeling better yesterday but not up to poker so I watched some videos and played a little League of Legends. Also studied a few different articles on psychology, mostly concerned with ADD. It was nice to not spend the day bed ridden and racked with pain though. Mostly just sweating my ass off for no particular reason.

It's becoming apparent to me that if I do get a degree in psychology it will just be so people listen to me and I have some credibility, because I feel the field is incredibly lacking. For one thing, they seem overly concerned with symptoms. What chemical imbalances exist? What vitamin deficiencies? What are the symptoms of ADD and how do you diagnose it?

As far as effective cures, or discovering what might actually cause the various symptoms associated with a disease, there is not much available. The status quo is to find some sort of drug (usually a powerful mind altering one like meth aka adderall or cocaine aka ritalin) to calm down whatever symptoms are associated with the disease and then hopefully with therapy the patient can learn to not need the drug by developing specific behaviors and ways of coping with their symptoms. Still though, not much is said about WHY someone might have said symptoms. Not to mention it is very disturbing and downright horrifying to read about peoples experiences with the side effects of such powerful mind altering drugs and the fact that these are prescribed to young children.

Imagine your child has a broken bone that is protruding for the world to see, yet the only thing doctors tell you to do is to either have the leg removed or to be given a drug that takes your mind off the pain but you will have to take it for the rest of your life in most cases and you will never be 100%. I think most people would be outraged at these circumstances, yet that's exactly what goes on in the field of psychology today. A percentage of people recover and return to living normal lives, most don't and are forever doomed to a life of prescription drugs and the side effects associated with them. Often people end up even worse than before. It's as if the field of mental health is still in the dark ages compared to the rest of society.

Well having spent the bulk of my life with symptoms classified as manic depressive, OCD, ADHD, bi-polar, NPD, you name it, I have been in a constant and habitual search of my mind for answers. That was part of the problem of course, but I'd like to talk about my own insights on the subject.

First off, one element that is sorely lacking in psychology is the concept of responsibility. In fact, the very definition of insanity is that someone is not responsible for their own actions. To be not responsible for your actions is to be doomed to live life as an animal in a constant state of stimulus response survival. You are no more than a dog trying to get a bone. A sack of chemicals that wanders around waiting for your environment to dictate your actions. The truth is it is very easy to fall into this state. When you are in a situation where your fight or flight response mechanism kicks in, your logical and reasoning side shuts down and your mind and body take over. It's true a person could be said to be not responsible for their actions in this state. For the neurotic they are stuck in this state on certain subjects. For the psychotic they are stuck in this state nearly 100% of the time and often to a debilitating level that doesn't let them function, never knowing true peace or relaxation or love having completely lost touch with their humanity.

So what makes us human then? What can someone really be responsible for? Do we define ourselves by our actions? Some would say so. But if someone is a murderer and completely changes their life and never murders again, when do they stop being a murderer? Of course the answer is when he decides to, and no amount of prison or punishment can force someone to do that. In fact I think it's clear that trying to define a person and label them by their actions is completely cruel and unfair, and our prison systems are a testament to that, that's another subject though. All that should matter is that they learn from their mistakes.

My opinion is that the only thing that defines a person is the very thing which makes us human and not animals. That part of ourselves we call our soul, our conscious - that part of us that is aware of being aware, the observer, whatever you want to call it. The part of you that is pure awareness and creativity, the operator pressing the buttons of this amazing computer called the mind. That part of you that is certainty, that recognizes what is real and what isn't. That part of you that can tell the difference between vivid dreams or mental wanderings and reality. It's what brought us out of mere subsistence survival and separated us from just being an animal.

So what is the mind then? Separate from the conscious part of ourselves is the mind which is basically just a collection of tools at our disposal that are meant to better our chances at survival. They are meant to be useful which is a key distinction. Any habitual tendency you have you have it because you find some use out of it. As children we are quite free with our minds and have fun just going from one thing to the next playing with this awesome toy. One second we are playing the evil guy, the next the saintly knight, the next dinosaurs are attacking and we are cavemen. We don't take it personally, we know it's not real, we just have fun. Over time our habitual tendencies become ingrained in ourselves and in a lot of cases begin to take over forming literal neural trunk lines in our brains. We begin to get lazy as the observer or the conscious and just let our minds take over. Everyone does this.

There is nothing wrong with any of this of course, and no one could get anything done if this system wasn't set in place. The problem lies when traumatic and painful incidents occur where our life is perceived to be threatened in some way. During these moments our survival mechanisms kick in, our fight or flight response takes over and the observer is sort of kicked out of the picture. We are no longer being human, we are responding as if an animal would when you put a hot poker to them. Ever have a bad case of food poisoning and then never want to eat that food again? You might even still think of the food as tasting good, but the thought of eating it just makes you ill. The emotional impact of the event is such that you can no longer be responsible, the mind shuts you out and takes over. It has recorded anything unique to the event and if you put yourself in a situation with similar circumstances it is going to hit you with some pain to make sure you get out of there. Like I said everything in your mind is there because it's considered useful.

The truly devastating thing though is when we are told that we CANNOT CHANGE. That we ARE those habitual patterns in our mind. It's like being handed the keys to a ferrari with no brakes and we are cruising around at 180 mph all the time. Eventually we give up trying to stop and forget there was ever anything else besides driving this dumb car around, and we lose ourselves and believe WE ARE the ferrari! What else is there to life after all? It's funny if you think about it. It's clear with things such as NLP that this is simply not true, any of our habitual patterns in our minds can be replaced with new more effective ones. When we are told we cannot change, when we are told we cannot be responsible for ourselves, our humanity is ripped away from us. All of us instinctively fight against this, and I think that is why psychology is still looked down upon and it's a sort of stigma if you admit to having needed therapy.

Well, I could go write a book about all this if I wanted to (maybe I should). My plans for now are to get my degree and then start practicing my own form of therapy. I plan to use marijuana extensively, having smoked it myself I found it to be extremely therapeutic and beneficial when combined with the right guidance. It allowed me to separate from my mind, to see the habitual and subconscious thoughts swirling around in my head and to regain control of them and replace them with new ones. It allowed me to get back to myself which is the only place true healing can begin. Zoloft did similar things, and maybe in some extreme cases harder drugs like that could be used, but I feel like I never needed it in the first place. It did basically the same thing marijuana did, just with way worse side effects and a ridiculous withdrawal.

I hope some day I can make a huge change in peoples lives across the planet. This is something that applicable to all of us, not just the ones that are so obviously crippled that they have to be put on medication. All of us are a little crazy, anything that you couldn't change your mind on easily and quickly you are somewhat crazy on. Think about that for a second and the far reaching effects it would have on society if everyone was fully conscious, aware, and free minded. Governments would not be necessary, you couldn't control people through mental manipulation and advertising, the poker economy would die lol. I think poker is proof that people just do not have control of their minds, so many times just "shutting off" and going on auto pilot and not understanding why. It really does anger me how many people have suffered needlessly with minds that were out of control and debilitating.

Worse than that is how people with mental conditions are looked down upon by those who don't. I say "don't" loosely, they just appear more sane by societies standards. All of us have the capability to become a serial killer, a murderer, a rapist. Whatever evil humanity is capable of we all have within ourselves but most people don't want to admit that. They read about someone like the godmother of cocaine Griselda Blanco who was responsible for the murders of 100's of people and look down in disgust and contempt.

I prefer to take pity at just how far people can fall from their humanity, understanding that if I was raised in their situations I might very well have become the same. For Griselda Blanco, death and murder and violence were just an ordinary part of her childhood, she had committed her first murder at the age of 11. That could be you if you were in her shoes. There are so many poor lost souls out there and we just torture them even further or lock them away so we don't have to think about them because we don't understand them. They highlight our own worst fears and things we don't want to look at in ourselves.

Well, if I can effect any change in my life in regards to all of this I will die a happy man. Of course there are many people in positions of power who are hopelessly lost and have a vested interest in keeping everyone at the state of chemically addicted animal. They are so afraid of not being in control their worst fear is a society of sane free-willed individuals. I'm sure I'll be flying right into the teeth of them. Hope I don't end up dead. If I do at least I'll be a martyr and hopefully it will make people take notice, we all have to die at some point after all.


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I have been around LP for about a year now.

and I finally made my account today.

gratz me!!!

btw

I play .1/.2 and those coaching sessions are pretty expensive for my stakes.

so I am thinking about forming a study group of 4.

on certain time, we meet online through mikogo and talk about hands for an hour or two.

there is, of course, no qualification, but players who play similar stakes are preferred.

for those who are interested, leave a message or PM me.

thanks y'all


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I dont usually post results but since lotta people here have had such a shitty month Ive gotta show a shiny one like mine.
Some runbad but mostly my fault for playing 10/20 and 25/50 with little to no table selection because "I wanted to challenge myself" or some stupid shit like that, at the end there I started to mount a little comeback at lower stakes but it was too little too late.

http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/8725/decembery.jpg


happy new year :D


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tourneys thats it, it's gotta be tourneys from now on. Just cant play cash. I guess I'm of that "other" type of player that people talk about. Although gotta post some tourney results to know lol.


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Ive been fcking around poker for couple of years now, and im pretty aggrivated by the fact that i cant structure my game or bankroll management.

Its probably been 100 threads about diffrent individuals but i dont care about that, since this time its regarding me and
every case differs from person to person. What i am looking for is a small time stake or a poker coach (if no one wants to
put up the money, since i could not be legit, i could get it my self.)

What i need is motivation and tips for getting a structure in my game, and how to get the right mindset,
Im really tired of beeing a degen and wasteing the little i win from time to time.

Now this is obv free for you to reply or take interest in so please dont flame.

If someone would stake me (but i really think coaching is whats important, since im beginning new job in 2 weeks, i could get the money then.) i would apreciate it deeply. I would be willing to make a deal like Giving x amount % of whatever i win like every 3 month or 6th month for maybe something like 2 years. Which would make this an income over time for whoever is willing. If i get the right mindset i can play poker for sick amount of time and a lot of hands. But lateley ive been struggling to find the right mindset and structure. So remember im not mainly asking for a stake but a coach, thats willing to teach and train me for % of my winnings over time.

Might sound silly but its kind of new years resolution i want to fix a couple of things in my life and make a fresh start
on sevral aspects in my life including poker.

I dont have much hope that anyone would bother, But if someone out there wants to discuss this with me i would really apreciate it.

Feel free to ask anything from me or give me suggestions.

Thnx again LP for listening and Wish you all a good new year, and lots of fortune in the year to come


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Designer kinda made it worse so i ended up doing the just the basic theme and editing colors myself lols. I'll soon put in a link to LP in the poker and gambling board coz this site has been good to me . help me by making an account (just use smurf emails etc) to increase the memberlist lol, so far it only has like 7 members and im planning to promote it(meaning throw poker money at it)im planning on making it a hobby and put ads and small membership fees in my city to help me from poker boredom/misery and pay some small bills. i also have my vpp program there lol. talking with some people and renting out an ad billboard next week so i guess that might help the members since i only finalized the site the other day. the design is super plain but heh its jst a local davao city ebay clone so whatever
going back to poker real soon though (4 month hiatus) so good luck to all.
www.classifads.net


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looking to trade my 2K on PS for your 2K on FTP. reputable only.


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