The long and awaited ambient music #8 has arrived. If you don't enjoy it, then fuck you because this is my blog (not meaning to be rude. Anyways here we go!!!
After have been on a long poker break I started over again from scratch the other day. I was doing my routine check to see if I had left any money in my poker accounts, realizing that I had a lot of VIP points on Entraction. With these I could play 30 €5.50 sit and go tournaments, which I managed to turn into €264.50 and I then had a new little bankroll to play with. Realizing the games were soft and that I could get a pretty sweet deal at this site I decided to give poker a try again.
I've been spending a lot of time in Japan the last three years but it was now almost a year since I got back from my last trip. With a friend of mine heading there on a three months trip this fall I've been wanting to go back more than ever. However, since I haven't been playing poker, instead dedicating most of my time playing SC2 and hanging out with my bros, I won't really be able to afford going back to Japan. Time to hit the grind again.
I'll be playing €5.50 shorthanded turbo sit and go's for a month. My goal for October is to play at least 100 games a day and hopefully keep my ROI on at least 5%, which will give me a profit of about €2,000 this month. With that I'll be looking for booking my flight to Japan then keep on grinding until around the third week of November when I'll be leaving for Tokyo.
My stats so far this month:
1/10 - 49 games +€49
2/10 - 132 games +€34
3/10 - 100 games -€60
4/10 - 100 games +€130
5/10 - 100 games +€40 (2 MTT's -€16.50)
Got some web access at my new place now. Fired up a couple donkaments. Busted in all of 'em, but took 13th in the $11 rebuy for $500. 1st was more than 14k.
that would have been fun.
Oh I also played a few hour session last night vs this total retard head up. He ran well, and at the beginning I couldn't get value from two pairs because the board ran out bad everytime. He took like 10 stacks off me, but I eventually got it all back and squeezed out a 4 buyin profit.
I think he called me down one time with an open ender on the river.
-losing weight and stopped heavy smoking which is the only thing good lately
-getting tired of learning, relearning shit, unlearning it again
-not doing too great atm, but kept losses to minimum since last month over -500 only haha
-playing a ton of cs: source and bw to avoid thinking it's rigged and shit lol
-have 80kvpp left before 200kmilesone , worst volume in my life this year, winnings are small too
-next year hopefully i can move to another site and stick with it (other sites seem to suck so much with software, games not too different too at lowstakes)
-my blogposts from now on will be cliffs mode , too lazy even to construct a story
this means i am a bit behind pace atm but considering i run absolute apeshit except for my last 10 sngs where i made +75$ ^^
i think i am on a good way.
Goal is to grind out 900sngs this month and profit ~ 900$ while getting Goldstar.
I also used stars responsible gambling for table buy in limit
One of my biggest leaks has always been the greed to move up
Let's talk long term life EV.
Let's forget about the non-monetary factors like free-time and stresslessness for now (undoubtedly huge factors in one's decision making, of course)
What's your best bet?
Is it poker?
Is it law?
Is it engineering?
Is it a start up?
Is it finance?
Is it day trading?
Is it in sales?
In my case, I'm fairly confident I could make 100k/year at poker if I truly put my mind into it and I had to depend on it by grinding the hell out of PLO100.
However, my other options have so much more potential that it seems foolish (note: in my case) to devote myself to poker beyond mild entertainment purposes.
Top Lawyers can charge $600/hour. So can independent business consultants. Executives at tech companies with 500 employees are compensated at roughly $300k-$500k per annum. A graduate of a top MBA program makes $100k-$150k his/her first year out of school. Learning how to minimize your tax exposure can often net you a greater hourly rate than actually grinding poker.
Our +EV choices will be different.
For me, it entails investment, business and marketing.
For my friend, it is music.
For another friend, it is finance / futures trading.
The event was absolutely amazing. After the closing ceremony, there was a huge raffle for some pretty sick prizes. I won a HORI Real Arcade Pro.Ex Tekken 6 design joystick :D.
Haven't blogged in ages since I've been so busy with school. Been getting some awesome coaching/advice from acckerman, jas0n, and edzwoo. It's really helping me fix some huge leaks in my game. Isolating limpers has been a massive improvement for me, as I used to always be scared to isolate without a premium hand. I've opened up my range a lot more (playing around 15/13.5 full ring) but have been very disciplined in giving up at the right moments and double barreling when necessary. It's nice to be running well and playing a lot better than I was. I feel like my hand reading is improving and can continue to improve as well.
Results since some sweat sessions with these guys...
The biggest change has to simply be the hand analysis that is in my play now, rather than having to determine what type of player they are on the fly with limited info. I can observe, take advantage of other players weaknesses appropriately, and my decisions can be much more thought out and tailored to my opponent.
I really hope I am not getting my hopes up with my improved play to just come crashing down, but this time I think I have finally found the monster leak I had playing online. I could run bad for a while(lets not hope though) and be content with my play. As long as I know I should be winning, I am content
P.S. Thinking about switching to UB for a little bit once my full tilt bonus clears, anyone have any experience there on the amount/quality of games there are at NL10? Advice plx!
So I'm in this live single table tournament with 9 people last night. It's about half-half with people who know what they're doing and people who don't have any idea what's going on. There's one Korean guy who is actually a pretty good player, he's cashed for a couple grand in stars tournaments playing like 5-10 dollar buyins.
Anyway if you read my last blog, there's this retarded donk that tilts me like no other, so I've been devising countermeasures for him. I started wearing a hooded jacket and listening to an ipod so I don't have to listen to him talk. I try not to look at him and just stare at the felt with my hood on, occasionally smoking a cigarette.
In response to this, he's devised another way to tilt me: he's invited his friend. His friend is a Korean businessman in his late 50s who can't speak English very well and has no fucking idea what he's doing at the table. Everything we say to him has to be translated, so we're constantly telling donk #1 to tell his friend to fucking post the blinds or how to deal the flop or that it's his turn to act and the blinds are 200/400 because they go up every 20 minutes.
So we're playing last night and this girl who plays with us (a terrible luckbox who calls everything and always hits while mixing in the occasional 4x pot raise) is heads-up with the dude who has no idea what he's doing in like the third hand of the tournament. He raises preflop, she donk reraises from the big blind, he calls. The flop is 779 rainbow. She raises, he calls, turn is a blank and they both shove their chips in. She flips aces and he flips pocket 9s for a full house. Good hand, well played, whatever, get on with it, the blinds are halfway to going up and we've played 3 hands. I'm concerned that this idiot has a shit ton of chips because I act before him and the one good player is between us.
Anyway next hand he ends up getting all-in again on a board that's like 23K48. The dude to his left is drunk off his ass and shows K9 for a pair of kings. He flips an A2o and waits for someone to tell him if he's won. We explain to him that he has a pair of 2s and it loses to a pair of kings and I click the safety off my gun and check the chamber for the bullet I want to shoot myself with.
A bit later in the tournament, the dude who doubled up off of the idiot is dealing, still drunk off his ass, taking 5 seconds to respond to anything while his brain registers it and generally just being retarded. I've got T9s in the hijack and I raise it to 3x the blinds. 2 callers to the flop, one of them drunkass, and the flop comes JT7 rainbow. The first guy checks, I cbet 2/3 the pot, dude asks me how much it is and calls after he figures out how to make that amount with his chips. ("Two pinks and a yellow. No, one more pink. Okay but put back that white. Yes. Okay.")
So we get to the turn and another jack hits. I don't think he's got a jack or a ten because he's been bluffing everyone off of pots all night with shit like K4o and I figure if I bet 4k, a little less than a third of the pot, I can take it down or get him to call with a worse hand like one overcard with no draw.
Anyway, I bet the 4k and we look over to him. The donk that tilts me is like HAY U MIXED UR CARDS INTO THE BURN CARDS to the drunk dude. A bunch of havoc ensues and after a good deal of yelling while I listen to "Ackrite" on my ipod I get fed up and tell drunkass to tell tilt-donk his hand and have him search the muck for it. Whatever, I don't care. So tilt-donk goes over, drunkass whispers in his ear, and tilt-donk reaches over and lifts the muck up, peering down the table at it. Drunkass is peering right beside him. I start berating these idiots:
"Dude what the hell are you doing? Don't show him the fucking cards."
"I'm only showing him the top two."
"That's exactly my fucking point, what if the top two weren't his cards? Jesus christ why did we have him tell you his hand in the first place if he was just going to search the entire burn for it?"
"It's okay, he told me his hand."
I'm steaming fucking mad at this point. I just want to get this hand over with. The dude with no idea what's going on is speaking to me in Korean and I don't make any effort to understand it, tilt-donk is acting like I'm making a big deal out of nothing and drunkass in the meantime throws three 5k chips into the pot, which is more than my stack thanks to Ace-deuce, who's still talking to me in Korean.
"ALRIGHT, that puts me all-in. Whatever I call."
Sure enough, he flips pocket jacks for four of a kind and I just say "good game" and leave.
i think i'm becoming more risk averse, as it is messing with my poker play and i'm becoming spewy.
still at career highs, had a 2k month last month and played like 10k hands but I really need to start working on my game. PM me if you guys wanna talk about poker
today's sesh was just bad. I spewed off a little, and then lost KK vs JJ and then just stopped playing because I just didn't feel like it anymore. Maybe it's time to grow up.
This past 12 months has been very frustrating. Here's a peak into what it looks like.
Oct 09: The death month -$38,492
Lost every time I played this month, online tourneys, live cash, live tourneys, you name it. It was awful and turned what looked like was going to be a monster year (it was still good) into a fight to improve on the previous year.
Nov 09: Don't call it a comeback +$28,609
Looked like a smooth recovery, won the stars saturday 320 for 30k and was back in business.
Dec 09: Not-so-Boring breakevenness -$6,584
Was stuck 22k with 3 days left in the month, played one session of 25-50 and won 15k to end up losing 6k so I was happy but still annoyed with how the first part of the month had gone.
Jan 10: -$2,309
Won live, lost online
Feb 10: Super Bowl Wonday +$99
Had a 3rd place on superbowl sunday in the 50r for 20k and lost every other day of the month
March 10: The beginning of the end -$26,401
Just awful results online, did not put up a winning day, Live cash was breakeven
April 10: Broke/Break +$3,262
Played not much online MTT's, cashed out what i had left online, sucked up the pride and got a backing deal for the volatility of MTT poker.
May 10: Backed and busted -$6,600
Lost in live cash and was kind of depressed for all of scoop so it wasn't that fun.
June 10: WSOPlease! +$24,249
Won 17k @ live poker and had a 4th place in WSOP event to settle up for a whopping $7k profit on MTTs for 2.5 months work.
July 10: Stringing something together??? +$8,756
Turned a small profit playing low volume of live cash
August 10: Nevermind -$9,385
Only played a little bit but didnt win when I did.
September 10: Same shit -$3,382
Oct 10: So far so good +$3,720
I'll let you know lol
Grand total for my last 12 months: -$24,457...minus much more on expenses, plus a bunch of makeup since I am really good at bubbling stuff. Lesson is if you don't put in the volume, variance can be a bitch. It can also be a bitch without warning in general; every day I'm getting better, and showdowns are getting harder to win if the money goes in before the river.
UB for PS or FTP Come on you know you want to :)by XoXthajmanXoX, October 04
looking to xfer to either I would like to get some funds on PS or FTP to start playing on there again. Looking for 4-800 for either site. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
I could only deposit 1k as thats the limit so I'm gonna try to run it up at 2.3k now playing 1/2 HU 4 tabled some guy hope he plays me again tomorrow I need to build my roll
Health - The Right Focus?by LemOn[5thF], October 04
I have been playing poker for some 15 months now. I have seen 70+ learning videos, have 5k posts here, always challenged my game and was finding ways to improve myself. But when I look at my poker career and evaluate why am I such a huge failure the underlying reasons are not lack of knowledge, dedication or level of thinking.
Last 13.5 months I have been losing /break even with huge swings as I had literally 0 mental energy left after work, which was only 7 hours/day. But even now when I don't work the number of hours when I mentally 100% sharp are between 2 and 3. I am just under obesity line at the moment, and picked up some horrible over eating habits at my stressful job which are hard to get rid of. I am constantly tired, and my emotional state can have swings throughout the day. I have added exercise, and I swim/go to gym/sauna for 40 minutes on average every day, but health is so bad that this basically knocks me out and I can hardly be focused for very long after a session.
So far in 1 month being a pro I had a total of one (1) session where I was able to sit down at my computer grind for 7 hours with 5-10 minute breathing brakes every 30-80 minutes with alert mind , taking 5-10s to think about every spot and do what I agreed in my head.
And then I have read this from Tom Holford's 10 Secrets to 100% Health:
Imagine if a fairy grandmother of health had waved her magic wan and you were now 100% healthy. How would you know? How would you feel? One person described their new found health as 'being blissfully unaware of my body - no aches, no pains, indigestion, PMS or dry skin, colds or infections. That's certainly a large part of it. But health isn't just an absence of illness, its also a positive state - an abundance of vitality or well being. Apart from lack of pains, here are the most commonly reported benefits that people following [Halford's 100%]health principles report:
-Waking up alert
-Loads of energy
-Sharp Mind
-Balanced Mood
-Good motivation
-Skin looks good
-Effortless weight loss
The introductory chapter explains what it is to be 100% healthy, and does not mean not having any illness that must be cured by painkillers and drugs. That is the last instance, which he calls Horizontally ill. But there is also type of illness that is not treated by Health Services. Vertical Illness -Constant tiredness
-drained -low concentration -mood swings
-exhausted by exercise
-unfit
-run down frequently ill -easily overwhelmed
-flabby -dissatisfaction
The funny thing is that the 'health service' has no interest in getting people 100% healthy. They need them in the 'middle', just on the tip of the balance between vertically and horizontally ill, as when your health levels are drained, you are much more likely to be horizontally ill and need drugs/antibiotics which the $600Bn industry is based on. Modern medicine is much more about disease management than getting people healthy. Health->Poker
Reading these lines and the symptoms of vertical illness and 100% healthy goal, I have basically identified the vital sources of my lack of success in poker. I have highlighted symptoms in red which I believe are vital for a poker player and that DIRECTLY AFFECT WINR ATE
After such a long time at micros it is clear that focus on strategy and exploring new concepts and betting patterns will have much lower return than working on the highlighted factors.
10 Secrets to 100% Health
1) Perfect your digestion - Discover your best and worst foods
2) Balance your blood sugar - the key to gaining energy and losing weight
3) Get connected - sharpen your mind, improve your mood and keep your body chemistry in tune.
4) Increase anti- aging antioxidants
5) Eat essential fats - keep your body and mind well oiled
6) Keep yourself hydrated - water is your most vital nutritient.
7) Keep fit, strong and supple
8) Generate vital energy - the Chi factor
9) Get your past of your present - let go and learn from the past
10) Finding your purpose - becoming clear on the bigger picture.
As you can see focus is not only on the obvious (hydration + nutrition + exercise), but more scientific like anti oxidants or the process of methylation in your brain(point 3), and more abstract like meditation, and balancing emotion (8-10).
To record significant change does not take years, but months as the body replenishes itself incredibly fast (e.g your 'inner skin' changes every 4 days, and you around half your body is completely replaced every 7 months by what your body digests). Goal
The above will become my priority in my learning time away from the tables and university in the next month. Please let me know in comments if you have similar issues, and if posting a blog for each of the 10 secrets, how do I rank and how you can improve them would be any useful.
I'm looking for coaching, if u coach 6max NL25 or if u coach in MTT's shoot me a PM or post here. If u ask 150 dollar/ hour dont even bother. Will be able to respond in about 6 hours, got class now.
NL50 live, bad bead whine blog. KK w < Q9o on T85sss, I have king spade, he has Queen spade. Runner runner 2 pair suckout entire stack.
Reload.
Im in BB with K4o, utg limps. Flop K43. Allin for entire stack on flop. Turn 5, river 5, i lose to K6o. I'm like -4000 across live/online to this shit. Fish are so awesome, I always want them at my table, so much profit here always losing to suckouts. This is how high stakes players make their living, playing vs calling stations. every NL1k player's bottom line comes from this, make their millions vs fish, not vs regs whom they can read and outplay, but to fish, yea sure.