Poker Blogs

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.

For my cousin, it is pharmaceuticals / marketing.


What's yours? Is it really poker?



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Especially when you've got press passes to the WCG Grand Finals.

Our club approached the WCG PR people as the USC student organization "USC e-Sports" and were successful in negotiating 5 press passes.

Here are some of the highlights of my day

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02336.jpg
Group picture with Jaedong

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02338.jpg
Picture with SF4 pro Justin Wong

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02341.jpg
Bumped into Jaedong again at lunch

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02343.jpg
Jaedong signs my mousepad

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02348.jpg
Picture with WC3 champion remind because why not

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02349.jpg
Group picture with flash, gotta do the thumbs down

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02364.jpg
Upgraded to staff passes, got into player's party dinner @ ESPNZONE

http://i143.photobucket.com/albums/r124/SpicyChicken626/DSC02371.jpg
free arcade, sup team Korea

Battery soon ran out

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.

RUN GOOOOOOOOOD


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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...

http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz329/k40cheddar/gettingbetter.png?1286263163

hopefully I can get out of this hell hole that is NL 10 in a couple of months. I've been stuck in this shit for over a year. Gl all!


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To be 4 BI under EV :D

New graph since I stopped playing rush and went back to 6-tabling NL10 6max

http://img137.imageshack.us/img137/1387/amountwonoverhandsplayep.png

Typical old graph from when I played rush

http://img843.imageshack.us/img843/3561/amountwonoverhandsplayef.png

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!

And for the finale....

http://www.fohguild.org/forums/attach...ge-random-pics-116716789133448318.jpg





































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was at 3.4k lost some at 1/2 6max then played $530 sngs lost 3 then lost the rest of my $300 at blackjack lol

I'll hold off playing on party/fulltilt till I can get like 20k on em I guess


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http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/7925cf2be547497a1b5dac7c6b512bd1.jpg


I think this is my biggest winning day so far this year. I've had multiple 2-3kish days but nothing this big.

here's to a few more 10 buyin days at 2/4+


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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.


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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.

hmmm


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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.

Busto countdown clock? Over-under is at 6 months


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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!


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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


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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.


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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.


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I'm drunk 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.


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all .25/.5 HU

http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/6316/octmonth.jpg


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MEH My joints are whack, my mousing wrist definitely has some kind of carpal tunnel going on. Thing is it disrupts me and "hurts most" when I'm grinding poker, and it bothers me less when I am playing a videogame. I don't click nearly as much when I'm playing poker as when I'm playing a video game (ie 600 hands/hour in poker vs 30-1hour games on hon at 100APM). I don't get it. Am I just more zoned into the videogame and I power through it more easily? I dunno, but it really disrupts my poker grind.. its legitimately very uncomfortable.. I really want to know what to do about it


Well in other news, I have seldom felt like myself for like 14 months now. I've just broken down a lot from where I used to be mentally and my ability to be comfortable and confident. My failure to move up at poker and my not giving myself any other outlets for improving myself has ground me down to a shell of what I ought to be. And honestly I feel like I should at least, physically, be in the best shape of my life, because these are my prime years where 30 years from now I want to be able to look back and be happy with what kind of mischief I was upto.

And it isn't that I'm unhappy with poker, really its not about poker exactly, its about having a balance in my life. And I feel like something that will really help me get my head right again, for everything, is to get physically active. I'm going to set up my gym membership and call a tennis coach on Tuesday (have stuff to do monday). I really need to change things up because I feel so damn numb and, far from my previous ambitious self, I haven't been able to work myself up to grind like I ought to, or even think of the future as having any hope. And that sucks.



My joints are seriously whack though.. :/


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3 Days into my 300k VPP for the month prop bet and I am right on pace with 30k vpp. Played a few short sessions today and ended up a bunch playing 1/2 and 2/4 plo. Ran just about about EV actually which surprised me since I figured I had to run pretty well to be up that much for the day. Probably will play some since Im trying to get on a sleep schedule that will allow me to be awake between 10-12pst because that is when 24+ games of what I am playing run, whereas overnight I have to mix in some 2/4 and even then there are not 24 tables running the whole time. I feel like I'm getting better at PLO (only took a 100k hands) so hopefully can continue on the winning ways. Only one losing session so far this month out of a bunch.



Here is graph/stats for the day




http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/139e8be852679030629a590eeef82d0e.jpg



VPP Count: 30,071

Year: 566,268



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I made my last blog for multiple reasons. After making it, I had alot of stuff going on and I wanted to start updating here to keep myself focused but I decided not to do this until I got situated better and so I turned that into a mini private goal. This ended up being a wise motivating move. My end of the month deadline was for quite a lot of things, both personal and business wise, and suffice to say with an awesome finish I passed with flying colors

I feel totally accomplished! The first huge step? I am finally out of debt!~~~!!!~!~! C O M P L E T E L Y~!#~!@
This is an amazing feeling really. After what feels like an eternity, I have finally set it up so that I am totally in the positive now. In fact it makes me so happy I'm writing the rest of this blog in green.

Not only are all my debts paid off but barring some big event, I have completed my move scenario for the time being and I think I have it setup so all my major bills should be paid off until the end of this year. You know what this means? This means the next 3 months are my best chance in a long time to actually get somewhere as far as a real poker bankroll. Time to get really motivated~

But before I go more indepth as to where I currently am and my future goals, I want to wrap up the gist of the past events. As I mentioned before, my computer died and so I've been on my laptop. This has actually been a pretty big learning event in itself as I've had to adapt and readjust in many little ways I didn't realize I was taking for granted. My laptop is far from gosu and so I've started a process of reformatting and wiping it every month or whenever it feels sluggish or slow in order to keep it rolling as efficiently as possible. I've already done it twice and I am saying this bit of info because I want to make the note here that I have not been saving any databases of handhistories and I doubt I will do so until I get a new desktop or a more powerful laptop.

Because of the last reformat, all I have of last month is the last week. I don't really want to spend much effort into explaining last month because if I start then it will take quite a bit of effort to make it come together so I will let pictures suffice instead

Sessions
http://www.imageshuffle.com/images/21sessions.jpg

Graphs
http://www.imageshuffle.com/images/59all.jpg


So where am I pokerwise?
I can not tell u how many times in my life I have had to start over in building a BR. I am aiming for this to really be my last time. I am actually starting off way better this time than most.

Stars+ Show Spoiler +

FTP+ Show Spoiler +

So where do I want to be pokerwise?
Well I am hoping to have til the end of the year to do this but I am going to break it down on a month per month basis. My goal for the month of October is to make a roll on both pokersites as well as make a live poker roll as well. Currently it goes as follows:

PokerStars goal = 1k
FTP goal = 1k
Live roll = 1k
This is totally doable imo tho the live roll may take a hit somewhat but I'll just have to see where the current takes me

I think that's a good enough starting update/blogpost for now
tc and gl all~
http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/16b37ba7d437dbb3970853e5a0d757a5.gif

Ugh. I watched SC2 until like 7 pm. Made dinner, went to town to grab some energy drinks cause it's gonna be a grind night.

Fucking crushed to start it, felt so good. Fucking EZ game.

http://imgur.com/0LGPe.jpg

This was my week:

http://imgur.com/TtLpT.jpg

Then I hopped on to keep going: + Show Spoiler +

I'm in the process of taking a break on the regrind. Current progress: + Show Spoiler +

Gonna go for probably another hour, then a couple hours of sleep, then back to the grind. gotta make the most of the weekends.


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