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im up on carbon, but down on bovada. i fucking hate bovada, yet it's the one with zoom. i'd instantly quit them if carbon adopted the concept, but they don't seem to want to. maybe playing anon zoom isn't a good idea, even though im making the right moves more often than not. i just dont get it.


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well, not exactly robin hood but whatever
some crazy variance going on, 2nd month in a row that im beating 80% of regs im playing and losing to random fishes

also, decided that I will sell all my stuff, break up with gf and move to southeast asia in October, prob Thailand, still not sure, so I'll backpack and see some countries and decide later, but will avoid the nerdhookergrinder lifestyle that most pokerplayers in Thailand have

Im getting old for this travel shit, I'm almost 28 now, have to travel the world while I still dont have kids

gl


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What a week men.

Saturday-that wedding.
Monday -shitfaced, talk about wedding, falied chat up bartender, home 4am
Tuesday - 2 beere, chill
Wednesday - 4pm go for one beer, 6am come home after heavy clubbing - pal got engaged
Saturday (today) - go for one beer, then to local club in my hometown. Got wrecked again. Home 7am

last 8 days graph (NL25 mostly):
+ Show Spoiler +

-plus managed 7 times gym in 7 days, one 2 phase day one rest day :D

Dunno where this productivity comes from
Prolly no fap for over a month+TI4 over+shitloads of low weight high rep gym+sprints+taking multi vit supps+BCAAs+meditate (esp when drunk, sooo much fun bitches poking into you+you ignoring them :D)but I'm this testosterone fuelled rage monster. I'm at 84kg, 103 when I got here 10 months ago fuck yeah :D
Loving it really

Chicks are fucking racist man, the moment you get fit suddenly so many want you out of nowhere. My childish charm was here all along...Hello... Why can't the fat race prevail? oO

Well...thanks for reading.
I mean
Week was crazy as fuck...decent volume too.
Prolly won't be able to keep it up tho :D



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It's been 2 and a half years since my last blog post. I come to LP every now and then and check out some non-poker related threads, and it's awesome to see familiar names keeping the community going. I dropped a hint/some wishful thinking in one of my last blogs that I was quitting poker to pursue a career in software development (as in, mostly building web applications), hoping to end up as a junior in some startup in San Francisco somewhere.

Unlike some of the great players here, I never truly loved poker. I was too emotional and unstable to accept the swings, and that's not okay as a mid stakes 6max/hu player. I liked being good at poker, but I always knew I had to do something else, before I ended up like those old Armenian chain-smoking Commerce regulars who berate young internet pros, try to hit on cocktail waitresses, and live simply for the thrill of the bad beat jackpot.

A couple years later, I'm happy to say that I work as a software engineer for an amazing, fun, fast-growing (I joined around ~15 employees, we have 42 now) startup. My days start at 11 am, I get paid very well (zero variance!), I'm mentally engaged most of the time, I lift weights 3x a week, I have a fantastic girlfriend, and am only getting better at what I do each day. Two years ago I was just a college dropout who only knew how to play poker and not much of anything else.

I can't think of a time during my poker career where I could just post a brag like that and not have to post any beats. Back then, I never could say that life was great, but it is now. I hope everyone here finds something similar, whether it be in poker or not.

I still miss some of the poker thrill though - my buddy Aaron just placed 36th in this year's WSOP ME and it was really exciting sweating him all week. Right now, I live out my thrills through a 50nl home game with coworkers, a far cry from the thousand dollar pots I played for not too long ago. But I found that the boringness of a salary makes me much better with money - with poker money I just spent it partying and on dumb shit. With a salary I actually save and spend mindfully (feel free to ask me about this sort of stuff) - my hopeful goal is to be able to retire by 35 (I'm nearing 26).

I'd love to try and help anyone who is or was in a similar situation - trying to figure out what to do post-poker, etc. For starters, I wrote a Quora answer on part of how I went from being a loser dropout to getting a job in a field I had no prior experience in: http://qr.ae/FjeM5 - the gist is, good poker players have a work ethic unlike most people, even if you're lazy as hell and only put in 20k hands a month.

Cheers


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I think about time, about moments. I am drawn to moments and treat the present (passing) moment like a drug. Addicted to moments, I find it difficult to move forward. I will exhaust myself in a moment, chasing the short term memory loop. I find unfettered beauty when I give my consciousness the opportunity to filter out the noise of living. No thoughts of food, of breath, of reality. Beauty can be found in every event, in every tear-wrinkled-cry. No matter, the cruel betrayal of reality dances on beauty like unrelenting rain.

Reality can crush the soul, turning minds to fraught...actions attacking from wayward direction... overwhelmed, selfishness can overcome and project from the mind.


+ Show Spoiler +

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tldr post

I’m a winning recreational player up to 25nl 6 max, but lost all motivation and stopped playing last year.

Poker is not my main source of income but it is one of my favourite hobbies, so my roll was just sitting there and I hardly ever cash out.

This year tho after not playing for so many months I decided to challenge myself, to beat the zoom games. Not in a mathematical view of xxbb/100 but in terms of how many buy ins I can win.

I have the same feeling of motivation at the moment for this game as I did when I first deposited my first $30 on PS and wanting to build.

Even tho I’m over rolled for 25nl, I started the challenge at 2nl zoom.

Goal: win 50 buy ins at each stake from 2nl up to 25nl zoom games 6 max. LETS GOOO BRAAHHS

(2nl graph)

http://i.imgur.com/mTlKUwh.png


(5nl graph)

http://i.imgur.com/ojFabkv.png

(Current 10nl graph)

http://i.imgur.com/nZXpfkt.png


Some cool hands last session

Submitted by : jvilla777

File: HH20140721 Klinkenberg #8 - $0.05-$0.10 - USD No Limit Holdem.txt
PokerStars Zoom Hand #119055161561: Holdem No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2014/07/22 3:57:35 AEST [2014/07/21 13:57:35 ET]
Table Klinkenberg 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: tomasz0208 ($10 in chips)
Seat 2: sawadabr ($24.02 in chips)
Seat 3: aspid_AA ($11.24 in chips)
Seat 4: Anne Rafaely ($9.84 in chips)
Seat 5: Hero ($14.47 in chips)
Seat 6: marcator93 ($10.37 in chips)
sawadabr: posts small blind $0.05
aspid_AA: posts big blind $0.10

Holecards(Odds)
Dealt to Hero
Anne Rafaely: folds
Hero: raises $0.20 to $0.30
marcator93: raises $0.60 to $0.90
tomasz0208: folds
sawadabr: folds
aspid_AA: folds
Hero: calls $0.60

Flop(Odds) (Pot : $1.95)

   
Hero: checks
marcator93: bets $1.30
Hero: calls $1.30

Turn(Odds) (Pot : $4.55)

   
Hero: checks
marcator93: bets $3.20
Hero: raises $9.07 to $12.27 and is all-in
marcator93: calls $4.97 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($4.10) returned to Hero
*** FIRST RIVER ***
*** SECOND RIVER ***
*** FIRST SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows (three of a kind, Nines)
marcator93: shows (two pair, Tens and Nines)
Hero collected $9.98 from pot
*** SECOND SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows (a full house, Nines full of Tens)
marcator93: shows (a full house, Tens full of Nines)
marcator93 collected $9.97 from pot

Summary
Total pot $20.89 | Rake $0.94
Hand was run twice
Board  
Board  
Seat 1: tomasz0208 (button) folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 2: sawadabr (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: aspid_AA (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Anne Rafaely folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 5: Hero showed and won ($9.98) with three of a kind, Nines, and lost with a full house, Nines full of Tens
Seat 6: marcator93 showed and lost with two pair, Tens and Nines, and won ($9.97) with a full house, Tens full of Nines

File: HH20140721 Klinkenberg #2 - $0.05-$0.10 - USD No Limit Holdem.txt
PokerStars Zoom Hand #119061410444: Holdem No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2014/07/22 5:58:50 AEST [2014/07/21 15:58:50 ET]
Table Klinkenberg 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Hero ($11.95 in chips)
Seat 2: Igorsss3 ($10.93 in chips)
Seat 3: yufeic ($10 in chips)
Seat 4: EasyRyderrr ($13.81 in chips)
Seat 5: vpokerok ($10 in chips)
Seat 6: Hertzog88 ($5.38 in chips)
Igorsss3: posts small blind $0.05
yufeic: posts big blind $0.10

Holecards(Odds)
Dealt to Hero
EasyRyderrr: folds
vpokerok: folds
Hertzog88: folds
Hero: raises $0.20 to $0.30
Igorsss3: raises $0.60 to $0.90
yufeic: calls $0.80
Hero: calls $0.60

Flop(Odds) (Pot : $2.70)

   
Igorsss3: checks
yufeic: bets $1.70
Hero: calls $1.70
Igorsss3: folds

Turn(Odds) (Pot : $6.10)

   
yufeic: bets $3.20
Hero: raises $6.15 to $9.35 and is all-in
yufeic: calls $4.20 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($1.95) returned to Hero
*** FIRST RIVER ***
*** SECOND RIVER ***
*** FIRST SHOW DOWN ***
yufeic: shows (a pair of Queens)
Hero: shows (three of a kind, Fives)
Hero collected $9.98 from pot
*** SECOND SHOW DOWN ***
yufeic: shows (three of a kind, Queens)
Hero: shows (three of a kind, Fives)
yufeic collected $9.98 from pot

Summary
Total pot $20.90 | Rake $0.94
Hand was run twice
Board  
Board  
Seat 1: Hero (button) showed and won ($9.98) with three of a kind, Fives, and lost with three of a kind, Fives
Seat 2: Igorsss3 (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 3: yufeic (big blind) showed and lost with a pair of Queens, and won ($9.98) with three of a kind, Queens
Seat 4: EasyRyderrr folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 5: vpokerok folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 6: Hertzog88 folded before Flop (didnt bet)

such a bad month, still folding flopped two pairs cause i lose to straights 100% of the time i flop two fucking pair


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Awwwwwww yeeaaahhhhh... for any of you tech geeks out there the new toy this week are android smart watches. While the term "smart watch" has been out for a couple of years thanks to other vendors, none of them could do it right without a major player like Google/Apple obviously. So Google released a new fork in their OS called Android Wear meant for smartwatches or anything similar in this ultra portable category. I saw some vids and talked myself into believing these things could actually be useful, plus I have been without a watch for a year since my battery died so I just said fuck it.

I just bought this lil guy in black

http://static.androidnext.de/2014/06/lg-g-watch-cover-11.jpg

My first fears were that it would be some gaudy brick like monstrosity on my wrist screaming "NEERRRRDDD!" while making women's vaginas dry up like a.... like something that makes women's vaginas dry up.

Anyway I swung by my local Verizon store who had one on display without all the cumbersome security crap so I could actually wear the damn thing and get a good feel for it (which by the way I have the most amazing Verizon store in my neighborhood. They have a fucking bellhop at the door who's sole job is to just open the door for you and greet you, then they take your name and enter it on a tablet that uploads it to a sales rep who comes and somehow knows exactly who you are you without ever meeting you. They arent pushy at all, actually answer legit questions, bring out demo units from stock of anything you want. The whole store is just bustling with activity, lots of neat toys like drones and remote control devices that interface with your cellphone all on display and fully interactive for the customer to mess with. Gotta give Verizon credit here for creating this little tech mecca in their stores lately).

Oh yeah, so I try on the demo unit and I'm instantly sold. It's perfect. It's comfortable, it's snazzy, the band feels great (the band looks like a cheap piece of shit at first but it's actually incredibly soft and comfortable. I still want to upgrade to a black stainless steel one though), it's light weight, the watch face isnt some huge unsightly eyesore gathering attention and the corners dont stab me in the wrist bone. It's just a really nice feeling watch. I buy it on the spot, get it all set up and so far I'm in love with it. It does exactly what I wanted it to, and that is remove the necessity to check your cellphone every time it beeps at you.

What you have to wrap your mind around is what the watch is really for; the purpose is to serve as a notification delivery system for your phone. Sure there are apps and stuff you can interact with on the watch by itself, but the big deal is that it ties in with your phone and just relays information between the two. The watch is not a standalone device, and the sooner you come to terms with this the sooner you can enjoy it. You arent supposed to be constantly fucking with it like you would a full featured phone. All it does is display whatever notifications are in your notification bar on your phone. While this doesnt sound like much it really bridges the gap between making your phone this total seamless experience with your life. One of my major 1st world problems is the struggle of having to whip out a 5" phone from my pocket hundreds of times per day. Or leaving it on my desk in a cradle so I can observe active notifications. The 2-3 seconds it takes to do this are converted into about a fucking nanosecond when you have it on your wrist. The phone wrist vibrates, you look down and boom, you instantly have your phil ivey twitter update. 5 minutes later you get an email confirming payment for something, BAM you see that shit and disregard it. Then your girl texts you whining about dinner and KABLAMO you swipe that shit into the trash, or maybe reply if you're a good boyfriend using voice-to-text.

You think it's silly right now, but once you acclimate yourself to it and get into the groove you instantly feel like you have saved 5-10 minutes of your life every day by not having to reach for your phone ever again. It's almost relaxing in a way, because you are satiating your phone addiction by having instant gratification at all times. Think of having unlimited crack if you were a crackwhore. The pipe is always lit with the effervescent tinge of smoke swirling from its tip at all times. You want a hit? By god have one my man, this one's on me. There are still dozens of other direct watch-to-phone interactions you can conjure such as changing profile status (silent/vibrate/etc), placing phone calls while driving using Google search (just say "ok google, call Sushi Taro" even though they arent in your phone book since it uses google search to identify the business name and lookup the number for you). The list goes on.

So to any of you tech guys who have been on the rail about one of these things, you'll love it. The market is very new so there's going to be tons of competition with lots of new devices coming up. Everyone said "wait for the moto 360, wait for the HTC" blah fucking blah. Yeah I'm sure my LG watch is going to get smoked by a competitor in no time flat, but right now it's amazing and I'll just sell them on ebay and upgrade my way through as I see fit. Losing $50 in depreciated smart watches every 3 months is an acceptable sacrifice to stay bleeding edge for a guy like me until the hardware/software fully matures and you can keep stick with a device. To be honest though I see no reason why this one wont receive plenty of love from LG and the community.


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it is a lie

all the lie

the bond films

Sean Connery wore a toupee

all the lie has been used

Sean could have made bond the bald bad-ass super man but instead we had to wait 40 years for Jason Statham --
and he never became bond, instead, a none mainstream hipster-walking-muscle with a face

now bond has morphed into Hitler's super child: a blonde, blue eye, cyborg mind Terminator

the simulacrum of Man





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http://i.imgur.com/lNbfkLM.png


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wasn't there a group of LPers predicting massive hyper inflation in the US? financial crisis happened when 2007? 7 years later inflation isn't even 1%. i mean we've only been printing @ 90billion a month for almost a decade



anyways some food for thought

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/a...ks-5-step-guide-to-being-deep/373699/

i don't find david brooks to be super smart or insightful, but he seems genuinely concerned about what people, Americans as well as world citizens value in today's world. he talks about "resume bullet points" vs "eulogy bullet points". all in all i think a good read and a few insights although some of the stuff seems a bit over simplified (although it's bound to happen in such a short article which prob demanded 5 points in becoming DEEP)

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/29/opi...74e7dbad428c5a4cb1&ts=1404231320&_r=0

interesting article albeit 90% anecdotal about the lagging reasoning part of our brain or the prefrontal cortex vs the amygdala or fear response and the potential misconceptions about our current cognitive therapy and its potential uselessness and along with anti-anxiety meds

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/...33354d7e2b6e8581b71c6a0&ts=1404231320

joseph stiglitz tries to outline the "breakdown of capitalism" being more of a political issue rather than ideological one. how gains are privatized yet losses are subsidized by the american people. i think a really good job of voicing the concerns of the "occupy wallstreet" although that movement(?) has been gone for a long time.


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anyone else play? new HH file type so trackers aren't working. apparently they don't give out vpp's anymore, just "bonus points" for only clearing the bonuses, and ive read on 2+2 that certain players are restricted from cashing out at all.

aside from the first part, anyone else experiencing any shit with carbon? should i try to get rakeback if at all possible if this "bonus points" thing is for real? i thought about just using the points to take shots at mtt's but idk...

might be time to jump back over to bovada...


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Can anybody help me out? Have 2k... Any smaller amounts welcome obv :D HELP!!!


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Spent $64k on MTT buy-ins and buying pieces of people this summer
Sold $28k worth of action in MTTs

Cashed twice for a total of $22,867
Returned $13,428 of total cashes to backers

NET: -$26,561

Pretty shitty results for this WSOP, but one close call in my second to last event (got 21st in the little one drop for 20k) saved me from a really bad summer. I have to say I had a lot of fun playing the series this year despite a lack of results. I think I played 23 events which is probably the most I've ever played. This was completely opposite of my goal of playing LESS events and focusing on cash for the summer. Oh well, I guess I have the MTT itch again, didn't think that would ever come back. I plan on playing more tourneys this year than in years past; some highlights on the schedule are: Borgata WPT $3,500 in September, maybe the $5k 10mill gtd in florida, and hopefully PCA or Aussie millions (I've never been to either).

Haven't blogged in a while, but WSOP kind of kills all other endeavors. Looking forward to normalizing my schedule again now that poker season has ended. I put in 180 hours in June and already 90 hours in July. That will likely return to my average of about 140 hours per month in short order.

Expenses have been quite high as of late, and I expect it to remain that way if I do decide to travel for some poker tournaments and continue to pay down debt. I'm still teetering on the edge of a 10/20NL bankroll thanks to an awful May (-35k) and a breakeven summer (-5k or so net) so I have to be careful in paying off loans. Having a roll for 10/20 is much more important than paying something down that I can't get the cash back for if I downswing (student loans). One big upswing and I can pay everything off in 6 months versus rebuilding at 5/10 and still having minimum payments to worry about. I plan on charting out everything, but I estimate that if everything continues steadily (does it ever?) I'll be rid of student loan debt (~50k) and vehicle debt (~10k) in about 2.5 years and have only a mortgage (~240k) to deal with. Seems insurmountable looking the numbers in the face, but it wasn't long ago that vehicle debt was 20k and student loans were 60k. Progress!

https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/h...71286020672_6366045881467286599_n.jpg
https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/h...88787858452_7572369212829760811_n.jpg
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.ne...4412_9ccc99ff6ae38cdcca532b993aaf3e6c


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http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/...line-poker-without-state-legalization

An Indian Nation in California has opened there own site to play on throughout the state, you must be 18 years old and in Cali (maybe a citizen, not sure yet)

www.privatetable.com

GL if you live in Cali.
Let us know how it is.


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-


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You are probably well aware of politicians to outright PR firms who specialize in "disinformation campaigns" to help push a certain agenda. But how often did you think regular Joe Nobody engages in this activity? Some people suspect a lot of "Joe Nobody's" are really plants by the aforementioned groups meant to blend in with the general public, but all too often such suspects have extensive online histories on a given forum that it's hard to imagine they suddenly converted to the dark side.

Today I was arguing with someone about the efficacy of EV cars and started to notice a trend in their posts. What I observed was a certain speech pattern, i.e. they went from speaking in a very casual forum sense to extremely well written grammatically punctuated responses. I got suspicious that someone else was doing the writing and did some string searches for their responses, and came up mostly empty handed. So then I decided to do a more broad keyword search and after clicking through a few links I hit jackpot. I positively identified the source of their statements coming from another author discussing the same topic. The disgusting part was that the user I was dealing with had made obvious efforts to manipulate the wording so his plagiarism would be obscured, but it was all there.

Besides manipulating the sentence structure ever so slightly to avoid detection, they also manipulated the context of everything by sourcing their information from sites that actually conflicted with their own point of view! For instance, this certain poser used an article that was actually supportive of EV's but cherry picked some of the short-comings they mentioned to paint an overall picture of why EV's are so bad. It would be like if I tried to convince you that sunlight is entirely bad for your health because it contains gamma rays. I'm failing to mention the benefits of sunlight and thus leaving you with the impression that it is all bad. I finally caught what was bugging me so much about this user; they were completely full of shit, and so heavily invested in such that they would do anything to misrepresent the facts to fulfill their agenda. They were on their own little personal disinformation campaign volunteering information nobody was even arguing about.

I'm still bugged by this because I cant imagine why someone would do it. It also bugs me because the efforts were so subtle that I'm sure this person poses for a normal every day walking guy in real life, which means he blends in with the public, which means his words can do damage because people will not have an immediate distrust for him. Why should they afterall? What does he have to gain? It's sick, when people volunteer themselves for evil for no purpose whatsoever. I guess he feels he has some kind of vested interest to "do his part" to sway history.


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Well, PLO25 continues to roar along. I've played 15k hands this month which is half decent for me. Trying to step it up so that I can play at minimum 60k hands a month whilst working for the government & continuing to push through my Master's degree. Things are starting to come along in my game. Right now I'm just focused on picking apart all the different spots and learning to use my HUD more effectively. For a long time I played without one at all just to get a feel for the game. I feel like at times I'll do this especially when moving up to new stakes so I don't completely bias myself with the information. Maybe that's not necessary but it feels right.

EV doesn't really mean much, but it seems like my game is getting on the right track. Basically breaking even until things start to line up a little more. Still need to fight harder on that redline and figure out the spots where I'm bleeding coin more and more. Day by day the game seems to be coming along as I get more comfortable. I've built up 20k FPP's and it'll be a wonderful day when I reach Supernova and get that first 100K FPP bonus.

Obligatory graph. An almost zero redline over 15k hands is approaching not terrible. Hopefully I can send it above the zero mark in the future.

http://i.imgur.com/WlhBCsv.png



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Nice, anyone live close to Hague?


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