Played some random live tournaments and had Longple over for a day or two last week. For some reason he is kind of a celebrity in the local casino, to the point that it was kind of funny.
Also talked a bit to MangeJao and SammeJao who I think posts/posted here a while back. Had a lot of fun but ended up busting quite early in the big on and only min cash in some smallish PLO-tournament.
Did play a bunch of weird hands though.
Blinds 250/500k, 50 ante. I minraise UTG 9 handed with QTo, friendly local young guy min3bets me on the button. I don't think he's a pro poker player, but he has some idea about how to play even though he makes a lot of live-weirdo-plays like limping UTG with a wideish range etc. I call his 3bet, and we have about 30k effective behind. I've been running over the table a bit and have a big stack.
Flop comes 9d8d3x and I c/c a little more then half pot, I have no diamnod. Turn is a offsuit king and it goes check/check. River is a offsuit 6 that completes a weird straight or two, I bet 12k into ~ 4.5k hoping that he folds range.
Blinds probably like 0.5/1k or a little bit less, I have ~65k and raise UTG with JJ, loose/passive calling station who looks like a out-of-shape Josh Barnett calls, young guy 3bets with maybe a 30k stack from mid pos, I call and Josh calls. Josh has been looking a lot at me and I've been asking him if he looks at me "already" because he wants to play a big pot. Flop 662r, checks around, turn 8c that brings a club flush draw. I bet 8k into ~12k wanting to get Josh along and fold out whatever random high cards the kid has. Turn 2c. I'm to drunk to notice the flush, I try to valuebet 15k into a little less then 30 on 622c8c6c. Josh tanks, talks a bit weird about how I can't have 2x and calls with a KcQc.
Also did a bunch of weird "must bluff"-bluffs and random "standardish" herocalls that was somewhat fun but not enough so that I wanted to post then.
Then I got TT in vs the A9o of some aggro norweigian guy 2 hours later and lost to A9 and later busted my last 8bb with K2ss from CO vs AJ on the B. Promtly ended up playing some live PLO and loose a 1000bb pot first thing I do and then I fold for 30 min and the casino closed lol.
In the PLO donkament the day before I played like crap. With a biggish stack like 8 from the money I raise/called a 3bet UTG oop vs "Mangejao" with KQhhQ9. I assumed the guy was out to get me but probably wanted to have a decent hand to do it. Flop KJTdd, I c/c flop, turn blank and I c/c again thinking that I'll call anything but a diamond hoping that the uses his AA blockers a lot. Turn 3d and he ships, I fold and he shows AdAx8x8x for all the blockers in the world. I think it's probably a call given some sizeing issues but w/e.
I also managed to get it in with ~8 outs for my tournament life 2 times and suck out both just before the bubble.
Was fun hanging out with Longple, had some fun at the poker tables and overall it was a fairly decent week. Mr Longple is a nice guy to hang out with. Also noticed that they probably don't do the safe warm up in Umeå as in other places when it comes to BJJ. Never seen a guy who done more then 6 months of that go for overhooks when he hugs.
So I went to Vegas as planned, first two days I played 200NL at MGM and I won $700, so I decided to walk to the Wynn to get higher action and somehow I ended up @Aria playing 1/3, table was tough, full of regs only 1 fish at the table, everyone was pretty deep so I bought 300, lot of PF action 3bets 4bets, not what I'm used to at 200NL lol, I didn't want to play scared money so I just went there and try to play my game which didn't result well, I got caught bluffing (I still think was a good bluff, reg tanked for about 4 mins and made a cry call with babyflush on a paired board) then I lost another buyin I got it allin on the turn with ases up on a 3bet pot (A7 on A754 board, A8 made the call, 6 on the river, gg) so I dropped 2 buyins and I ended up almost even lol, I usually dont drink while play but @Vegas I just couldn't help it so I dont know if it affected my game but meh, I fell in love with Stella Artois lol, so I just got a 24. + Show Spoiler +
http://i.imgur.com/a9uPGQF.jpg
I just came back from Tucson where I usually play and did well, after 250 hours I finally got a high hand, I made a straight flush with 6c4c which got me an extra $200 :D
200NL + Show Spoiler +
My goal for this year (September 2013-2014) is to hit $215,000mxn = 16.5Kusd so I'm in good pace to reach it since I'm planning to do one more visit in February to Tucson.
Thanks for reading, GL all.
Refreshing Thursday off (not) and I'm back to the daily fantasy grind. Wednesday was an interesting night. I did well, think I had an ROI of about 55-60%. I learned a couple of things as well. My DWade pick did not pan out like I hoped, but Griff dropped a bomb on MIA. Also, a couple of games that looked like they were going to blowouts ended up being close and that worked out for me. I was nowhere near some of the biggest totals of the night, but I still felt good after looking at those lineups because my projections underperformed while theirs massively overperformed (fuck you jeff green). Basically, it wasn't something I could have accurately predicted given my current analytical style so I'm glad to come out with a solid profit on a night like that.
There were some Thur+Fri leagues available, but I skipped cuz Thur's 2 games looked like a DFSer's nightmare. TOnight's a big night though. Gonna keep it quick and dirty:
Guards:
Think Wall is a great pick tonight. Cleveland sucks vs PGs and he's been on a tear. Only fear is that Kyrie is a gametime decision. If he doesn't play, it could turn into a blowout.
On the subject of WAS v CLE, I fit Jarrett Jack into most of my lineups tonight. He's already starting at SG tonight and if Kyrie is sick/out, then his value jumps. WAS has some solid options as well: I expect both John Wall and Brad Beal to have good-to-amazing nights.
Rondo is officially out for tonight. I read on ESPN that Bradley's ankle is iffy and makes him a GTD so I considered fitting Pressey or Bayless in as a cheap PG option. Probably will go with Pressey if I do this since he seems to be getting minutes priority over Bayless (though I think Bayless is the better player overall).
Terrence Ross and DeMar DeRozan are good SG options. I think I prefer Ross for the price and the fact that he dropped 51 pts on the Clips last time they clashed.
Jamal Crawford is another option for me as I think he will carry more offensive responsibility tonight against a Toronto defense that stifles PFs.
Forwards:
Lots of juicy pickups at the SF position in the LAL v PHI game. RKelly, WJohnson, ETurner are a few of my favorites. I fully expect those two teams to unleash the frustrations of their respectively shitty seasons on each other. It helps that each team's defense is about as protective as a see-through negligee.
KD's price tag is still too high for my taste, though I think he drops another 50+ FPs here against Orlando.
Many viable PFs on the menu tonight, though not necessarily the expensive ones. I'm probably getting at least one stud for this slot and another for PG, then filling up the rest with midtier value picks. Melo looks good against a Denver defense that has suffered against PFs all season. Blake has proven himself essentially matchup proof in my eyes, but still I think there are better spots to draft him. LaMarcus against the Indiana interior is something I will look forward to watching on TV but not on my DFS site screen. I am stacking KLove and Davis together in one of my cash lineups. I think they will go to town on each other without really stopping each other in what should be a close game. Nene and TYoung are very reasonably priced and I have them in most of my lineups.
I won't be paying up for centers tonight and will be settling for Hawes and Sacre to fill up my lineups with maybe Varejao or Drummond thrown into 1 or 2 lineups here and there. I expect both Sacre and Hawes to make value and that's good enough for me.
Trying to sublet my apartmentby MARSHALL28, February 07
Figured I might as well put this up here too just in case...
I'm trying to sublet my current apartment. Not that there's anything wrong with this one, it's actually super nice. I just found one that's not so expensive yet still fits all my needs.
Even if you wanted to just stay for a month or two that would be cool, I just desperately need to get someone in here because rent is very high. Rent is $2900. Here's some pictures and the ad:
The landlord is also a great guy who is understanding and always willing to help to make sure you are happy in your rental so I very much regret the fact that I must move. Once you get here, you'll probably never want to leave.
Hey guys, I've been grinding live poker and DFS(Daily Fantasy Sports) for the past 2 weeks just about non stop. I'm tossing around the idea of living cheaply off of these 2 sources of income. I wouldn't make that decision until the start of NFL next year because I only play NFL and NBA DFS, but I'm wondering how some of you guys have made the transition to living off of poker. Here is my current situation:
I'm a computer engineer. I graduated college last year and have been working for about 7 months at my first job out of college. I make 75k a year, ~6k a month, and have expenses of about 2k per month, which I would try to reduce to around 1500 if I ever went through with this. Keep in mind that I could probably find another job fairly easily if I needed to.
Ideally about 80% of my income would come from DFS and 20% from poker. I have a DFS bankroll of 8k and a poker bankroll of 4k, I also have 13k in savings and 7k in retirement accounts.
So by the time next September rolls around I would have maybe 20k for DFS and 8k for live poker. I would be playing mostly $200nl live, with some smaller tournaments mixed in. In 4 months of DFS so far I have a 4000% return on my initial investment. That is with no large scores or anything, just grinding daily h2h games. I have quite a large edge, my only concern is that when I start relying on the money, I may have some sort of big downswing. I'm not sure how to calculate my risk or ruin or anything, maybe someone could help me with that? It seems quite low to me, because my biggest downswing to date has been about 15-20% of my BR.
I know the general advice seems to be "finish school", and "don't quit your job", but I think my situation is unique since I have a pretty decent amount of savings, no debt, and a degree in a field that is fairly easy to find work in. Let me know what you think guys.
I'm really bad at writing and I probably left out a ton of details, let me know if anything needs clarifying.
It's going, going, goingby GameOverNoob, February 06
Is it out the park, will I get the job? I'll soon see.
Business has changed so much since the inception of zee internet that i have more knowledge of marketing then many of the people interviewing me. And it shined through like a strobe light. And on top of that, the guy running the business was cool. Instead of getting paid to just stand on my feet and show people where shit is, like most people in retail do, i'll be maintaining a website, rampaging through social media, staging products, and creating marketing initiatives. Right up my alley.
This makes up for the pot I lost last night when I was all in with KhKd vs Qs10s on a Qh9h5h flop!
Was gonna wait for Gadget's blogpost, but I figured I'd just go ahead and start. Seems like there's a growing interest in DFS here on LP so hopefully some of you find my thoughts on tonight's games useful. I'm pretty newb myself so please feel free to jump in if you disagree or want to discuss something further.
Wednesdays are huge nights for Daily NBA Fantasy. 12 games on schedule for tonight with a lot of minefields, hot prospects, and value picks to be found.
On a night like this, having a dependable idea of lineups is huge. Lot of fantasy sites out there have lineup projections, but I like to cross-check these with official injury reports from the teams themselves (Twitter is often the best source for these). For example, the Lakers have had some huge roster turmoil over the past day with the 2 Steves coming back and Meeks getting injured last night (ARGHHHH MY GPPPPPPS). Also, just because a player back doesn't mean I will pick him. I don't like to pick players on their first night back because they are usually on a minutes restriction anyway.
Keep in mind I play primarily on Fanduel with some action on DK. FD values assists slightly less than
Lineups for the night:
Felton
Calathes
DeRozan
Wade
Batum
Wesley Johnson
Jared Sullinger
Carmelo
Varejao
Rondo
Calathes
DeRozan
Wade
Wesley Johnson
JR Smith
B. Bass
Blake Griffin
DeMarcus Cousins
General reasoning behind lineups:
There are some choice PG picks tonight. Lowry has proven himself a monster and he has a juicy matchup against Sacramento. Kyrie playing on home turf (+10 FP differential) against a discombobulated Lakers roster? Both are solid PG picks IMO.
HOWEVER, I chose to spend most of my money in other areas so I went for cheaper PGs who I believe have high upsides. I've avoided Rondo for a while as I usually do with recently returned players, but I decided tonight was the night to invest in him because 1) his price was still relatively cheap due to the market being scared, 2) he has just as high of an upside as more expensive PGs on the board (35-45 FPs), and 3) they have consistently played him for 27-30 minutes and he has passed the screening tests. With a day of rest and a 19P/6R/10A perf under his belt, he should kill it tonight. I wanted to save my money so I used Calathes as the discount 2nd PG. No chance of Conley coming back so Calathes should see a full complement of minutes against Calderon who is not known for defense.
SG was one area where I did not want to pinch pennies, mainly because the usual stable of midtier dependable SGs just weren't there tonight. Players like Meeks, Oladipo, Tyreke, Martin, who come in around 5-6k all had bad matchups or bad ceilings tonight. DeRozan was a nobrainer - Sac is notoriously shitty against guards and DeRozan's style is perfect against them. I went with Wade because he's had a full day of rest and when he plays, LBJ tends to hook him up. Also, check Heat's other game this year against LAC. Most importantly, both SGs here were significantly cheaper than the other S-class studs on schedule, but have similar high upside.
SFs were tough. You either emptied your pockets for Durant or LBJ (even Gay is expensive nowadays) or you tried to find value where you could. I dipped into the CLE-LAL matchup and chose Wesley Johnson for several reasons: 1) He is starting at SF tonight and there really is no one else to take that spot from him, 2) he filled up the scoreboard quite nicely last time against CLE, 2)CLE is 3rd worst in the league against SFs in the last 15 games (keep trying Deng). I considered Deng as an option here, but I thought WJ could provide similar value for cheaper. Also, in the event of a blowout, Deng will sit sooner than WJ. Batum and JR are just solid cashgame plays who should be able to make their value (esp Batum who had a great game against the Knicks last time and faces an easier matchup against Prigioni). JR I'm less sure about, but that's what you have to deal with when you avoid the studs at SF.
PF picks were straight-forward. One stud + one value combo. Blake should do well vs MIA, he's really their main scoring option, and MIA has always struggled with aggressive post guys. Same for Carmelo against Portland, he's going to be shooting the ball a lot, and he dropped like 37 on them last time so it was an easy bet for me. I think the more interesting picks at PF were my value picks. I was searching for the perfect forward from the BOS-PHI matchup and I settled on Jared Sullinger. PHI has no PFs I'd like to spend money on so I looked to Boston. Boston's front court is one of those annoying ones where everyone gets around 20-25 minutes per game in a vacuum and you kinda have to be able to pick out whoever's getting hot that week. JS is hot right now, he's won himself 30+ minutes over the past 2 games, and one of those games was against PHI where he dropped 24P/17R. Bass was the cheaper option b/c he is the current option over Humphries and I think he can scramble up a bottom-of-the-barrel double double tonight against PHI (~10/12), which is all he needs to make value.
Just want to go on record and say that I am a huge Boogie fan and because of this emotional weakness, I do tend to pick him when I can over equivalent candidates (obv not when I think he's weaker). Luckily for me, his price has gone down a bit on FD, what with fears over his ankle injury and such. I gave him space on his first game back and, well, you can check the stats. I think he has a great matchup tonight against Valanciunas. The spread is +/-1 and it's predicted to be a high-scoring game. As for Varejao, he should have a field day against the Lakers' Gasol-less interior. Good thing about Centers is that even if they are not the scoring option (Kyrie is in this case), they can easily make value through boards given the right matchup. This was the right matchup IMO.
So there you have my breakdown for tonight. I rarely follow the roto sites' "suggested plays" these days, except for some double-checking and such, so I realize my picks may be a little unconventional. I see a lot of Wall, Beal, Deng, Vucey and other people being touted about. I'm interested to see how this night goes b/c it's probably my most deviant lineup from the popular columns.
I know the games already started so my bad. Meant to post this sooner. Will try to do that next time if people want.
The Sniper Professional Poker Systemby The Dean, February 05
I would now like to announce a project that I have been working on for quite some time in connection with Poker Pro Europe and Online Poker Pro magazines that I currently write for. This is “Project Poker Pro” or in other words, a coaching program that is designed by me to try and bring as many players as possible into being winning poker players using the very same system that I use and have used for many years…….a system that I affectionately call “The Sniper”.
Hopefully some of the students will be so successful that they become fully fledged poker pros’ and the ones that do well will be featured in either of these two widespread and widely read poker magazines. There will be an initial sign-up fee and that is both for my time and for access to the Sniper program and course lessons. Also I am available 24/7 to answer questions on the course and also to provide back up for any poker related questions full stop.
This in my opinion makes the sign-up fee almost irrelevant as I wish that I would have had the advantage of working with a professional poker player years ago back in 2000-2002 instead of buying countless books and going down numerous blind alleys. So the initial sign up to come on board with Project Poker Pro gets you access to the program and being able to work with me, access to the 130k word Sniper documents which will give you the entire blueprint for no limit hold’em cash games including my unique FERN system.
Also the student gets 24/7 back up while all the time being coached to a level where I will then stake them when the correct stage is reached. The staking will go up to a maximum of $2000 for the players that show the most maturity and the most talent. However these two requirements are not just what I am looking for. I am looking for commitment and the desire to not only play poker but to immerse yourself within the game totally.
These are the types of players that I want to work with and we then enter a new phase where players are playing on my money and I get a percentage split of the winnings. So you can see that I have total confidence in my methods and system and I am prepared to put my money where my mouth is and who can argue with that? However I only have so much time in any one day and I work on my own and so I cannot take on loads of students at any one time.
So now can you see that I am looking for people to be committed into not just playing poker but also studying and wanting to better themselves as players? I also understand that many peoples’ lives simply do not allow for such things and so anyone that merely wants to purchase Sniper and the coaching but without wanting the commitment of the staking afterwards then I am cool with that.
It is a totally flexible operation but if I am going to tie up $2000 of my money in somebody then that somebody needs to be playing poker with that money and for at least 15 hours per week. That should be plain to understand but anyone that wants further details then simply e-mail me at deano1043@yahoo.co.ukdeano1043@yahoo.co.uk in the first instance to express an interest in either the Sniper professional poker system and or the combined system/coaching and staking on Project Poker Pro. Look forward to hearing from you.
Carl "The Dean" Sampson is a professional poker player at 888.com
1st 10K, Thank You Liquid Poker!by HungarianGOD, February 05
Greetings all,
I finally hit the 10k profits mark a couple of days ago in live play, so thought it was time to make a blog just saying 'thanks'.
I finished clearing a backing agreement (a friend was backing me 1/3) to play $2/5, and had won about 2k the month before this graph, so there's the 10K. This includes $20/session for transportation costs, so if that's added back I'm actually up an additional 1200 or so.
http://i.imgur.com/hMLra81.png
(Blue Line is session result, Orange is Cumulative Result, the dotted lines are trend lines)
Every data entry is a session, ranging from 4 to 12 hours (7 is probably my average)
I won't get too much into my background atm, as I doubt people really have an interest in that anyway. I've done a ton of study/work compared to how much I've played in the last 2 years, lots of theoretical stuff; as such my learning of the game has been quite irregular. There are many advanced concepts I'm comfortable with, but lots of holes in my knowledge and experience throughout. I've actually studied it harder after black-friday than before, and as such most of my studies have been tied to a GTO approach than an exploitative approach (because there was nobody for me to practice against to try to exploit).
Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for all the help LP! There have been a lot of insightful posts and comments here from so many of you, it has helped my thinking and approach to learning the game immensely. I know some of my posts and questions are pretty noobish, so I appreciate you guys putting up with them. I would like to think I could add some interesting or insightful comments of my own every once in a while, though I feel that most of the active posters are better than me at 90% of the aspects of the game. Perhaps I can take a crack at giving help, and then when I say something retarded one of you guys who can actually play the game can come in and put me in my place.
Thanks again, and Cheers.
~Nathan
It's true. The man that basically say's nothing is aspiring to communicate with the masses. Will have to start blogging frantically until my fingers bleed.
Might as well start here.
Decided I was going to stop being a loser and waste anymore of my time, replace the job I left over a year ago, and start grinding. And by grinding I don't just mean poker.
1. Work. I used to think things were below me. My ego was in my way. I'm excited to take any retail sales job and work my ass off.
2. Poker. I'm stoked cause i know when I get out there, i'll crush it.
3. Buying gold. You've seen those bandit signs and commercials advertising "we buy gold!" Yeah, i'll be doing that too.
4. Real estate law class at the famous McGill university. Not as prestigious as you think, it's an individual class for like 20 hours a week. Allows me to learn about REI which i'm also turned on by.
5. Blogging. Not for the sake of generating income (tho it would be sweet if I could make 80k a year like Gary Veynerchuck says) but for everything else that having a pool of many people from your market allows you do do, like market research, which is why i'm doing it.
The job front has been kinda weak. The places I've applied to, while being pleasant and sounding interested, haven't followed up with me. Kind of tilted in that if I would have started looking anytime in the last 4 0 0 d a y s i'd be a much better and happier guy right now.
Holding back on poker until then. Haven't been perfect about it though. A friend offered to buy my action in one of his games. Played alright, and lost a 500bb pot with AA vs a gs+fd OTF. It was one of those games that you could limp raise AA 30x pre and get 4 callers. Karma, eh?
Played a TCOOP and got murckkked. Ridiculous shove by my opponent. PLO mtt short handed, i pot from SB with AA45ddhh vs his OTB limp with 13bb. He calls, and jams my pot bet with a gut shot and two overs. Lost to a backdoor two pair! Also just played an hour on 1 table PLOZOOM 10 won something silly like 300bb.
January was a very productive month. As far as hours go I managed to put in 140 hours over 20 sessions for an average session length of 7 hours. A bit under my 2013 average of 150 hours per month, but given the new baby and taking a couple extra days off here and there I'm satisfied with the work I put in.
As far as the net worth update goes, I'll put it this way:
Liabilities (debt) were reduced by 0.36%, while assets under management (bankroll/liquid cash + invested funds) increased in value by 30.05%.
Our expenses were high this month as we purchased some new furniture and paid our estimated taxes, but because of the high income, we still managed a savings rate of 77%.
I'm estimating that February's hours played will be much lower than January as my wife is returning to the work force, and I'll pretty much be a stay at home dad Mon-Wed for the forseeable future. I'll be working on an efficient schedule to get in as many hours as possible, but for now I think it'll pretty much be a clusterfuck with nothing really set in stone so I won't try to predict what my schedule will look like.
Goal Progress
Pay off auto loans of ~16k 8% complete
Put a dent in student loans of ~60k 0.8% paid off
Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures. 0% complete
Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one) n/a
If you're into grappling, you'll probably enjoy the videos that are released on BJJ Scout's YouTube page. The majority of the videos on the page are just BJJ videos, but it looks like the channel will start doing MMA breakdowns too.
I've been fairly involved in the crypto-currency and Bitcoin space ever since the discussion of a decentralized online poker room that was held here years ago (still think it's a great idea).
I've also done some mining on and off over the years. With a $3k investment in May I've been doing casual GPU mining on altcoins and have managed to make about $16k profit. I actually lost out on well over $10k in value because I didn't maintain the miner, let it get too hot and then didn't repair for 1.5 months when the fans warped. After undervolting, applying arctic silver, and replacing the fans it was running cooler and faster than ever before while using less electricity.
Thinking out about summer coming and how much higher the electricity costs become with cooling and energy bills I've considered managed colocation so I don't have the same issues that I suffered last summer. I've also just recently built an additional miner. I have friends with miners that face the same issues.
So one of these friends is now actually going to offer some of these colocation services since it's so difficult to find a datacenter that will take miners. He'll offer the services of uptime, redundant internet, cooling, expertise on optimizing hash rate, pool selection, upgrading miners, building miners, etc. He's starting off with an 8,000 sq ft industrial facility that can handle the cooling, electricity needs, and security requirements. It's on the same grid as hospital and fire station next door and located in Las Vegas (a safe-zone from natural disasters in the US) and redundant internet providers.
It'll start off with hosting miners from our immediate circle of friends, but should publicly be offering its services starting in Spring when everyone starts getting nervous about what they're going to do by summer. I'm posting this here because I know there are many who already mine or have an interest in mining.
If any of the above services that I have mentioned interest you and you would to sign up early then send me the following information to be put on the list and have early pricing estimates sent over:
-Email address
-ASIC, FGPA, or GPU?
-How many units of what model? (ASIC or Video card model and how many of them)
-Power supply used? (Goal is to find out wattage and efficiency of PSU)
-Dimensions? (Is it in a computer case, a milk crate, custom design)
-Difficulty to package and ship to the facility?
Value from 1-5 in the following services:
-SLA for uptime (Electricity and internet).
-On-site techs that can offer quick repair and maintenance when needed.
-On-site backup hardware for quickly getting back to hashing when something goes wrong (power supplies, processors, motherboards, risers, fans)
-Year round stable cooling.
-Hash rate optimization services (cgminer/sgminer custom configuration)
-Hardware optimization services (upgraded thermal paste, fans, undervolting, cooling)
-Build a miner services
Any questions/concerns you would first like to be addressed.
finally making some progress at nl2 low stakesby punix, February 02
Sup guys,
After creating this thread how much tactic do you need in nl2? u know that I already burned 3 bankrolls for nl2. I was very frustrated and like some ppl stated in this thread if I can not make profit at nl2, I definetly should consider quitting poker. So I evacuated the rest of my roll (which was something like $20 from my intitial $40 roll) and thought about quitting poker and leaving it behind (as I stated in the thread).
But there were several things that kept me hanging on and thinking about:
First off, I really like and enjoy poker (but of course i dont like burning away money for nothing). I like the competition and what I like even more is the fact that Poker is soo much more about you against yourself and its such a nice, balanced "solo" game. In fact poker trains you also some very useful skills like patience, endurance, willingness and dedication. As Iam lacking patience in "rl", I thought that playing poker is also a nice challenge for myself to gain more skills in patience and keeping calm. Therefore, I could not just leave Poker behind but obviously I needed help and could not go on like I did before (eventhough my VPIP/PFR/3b were kinda okay I was loosing way too fast).
I searched around on 2p2 and found a thread about "Crushing the Microstakes" from blackrain and purchased his "book" which also gives you access to his "private forum". I read the book in 1day: It was nothing special tactic wise but it opened my eyes a little that I have to keep more track of my opponent type, intiative and things like this. I really liked the book and it highly motivated me and Iam definetly recommending it to any new player that wants to play nl2. Also blackrain seems to be quite a nice guy that trys to help out alot with his huge microstake xp in his forums. So once again I reloaded a $40 roll to my PS acc and tryed to beat NL2.
Through Crushing the Microstakes, I switched from 6max to FR. Of course I can not go from busto to robusto in 1day by just reading 1book that did not even teach me soo many new things but I kept improving and reread the book several times and added more microstake books.
It started off quite well but I had some tilt issues where i kept burning away all the buyins that I won over 3-5k hands in just 100hands. I also noticed that my WTSD value is way too high and therefore my W$aSD was too low. I worked hard on fixing tilts and nitting up more PF that I don't get too often into too marginal situation and folded more and more on flop, turn. Iam still not quite there but my very last sessions had the WTSD and W$aSD values that I wanted to achieve.
My winnings improved and Iam getting more confident. I want to work on my game to improve it everyday. I guess I should also start posting hands here!
I played mostly zoom FR which seems to fit me much more than 6max games, eventhough I definetly want to work on my 6max game aswell. I noticed that I feel a little bit overrun in 6max since there is just more action going on with 3b/4b, cb.
Why am I writing now a blog about this (since it mostly will not really interest anyone of the mid-high stakes players)? The answer is simple. Every now and then some new players arrive here as well that want to start at 2nl and are struggling like I did before and then you also just hear everybody saying "uhh todays game got tough so you have to dedicate a lot to it". New players can easily get frustrated and get the feeling that they can not make it. But of course at 2NL there are soo many dumb players pretty much anyone can win at this stake but even at 2nl you have to work on your game and attitude towards the game. But it can pay off! Crushing the Microstakes really helped me out getting into the right mindset and watching out for the right stuff, so if there are people out there struggling at these lolomicrostakes you should read this book!
I hope in the longrun I can move up and improve and post some hands here! So I hope you will still hear something from me every now and then.
Won tcoop 36 made a deal 3 handed when I had least chips of course regret now. I only learnt the game yesterday watched a vid on cardrunners epic run good I assume. Pretty fun game overall now I guess I have to play high roller since I said that to myself if I get a final table but was hoping for a bigger tourney.. not sure I will.
Not poker related at all, but the Knox guilty verdict is of interest to me, and maybe you. Didn't think it was worth it's own thread.
I've been following this case casually since the beginning pretty much, and I think it's a lot more interesting than many people may realize at first. I won't be talking as much about the case specifically here, but if you are interested at all (warning: huge time sink potential) then there's a guy on 2p2 who's pretty well known that lays out a lot of the case from a pro-guilt perspective in this thread. He gets into a pretty long winded debate with a guy named "239", and although he generally sticks to discussing case specifics, at one point Henry and a few other people sort of snapped and accused him of astroturfing.
From there, I came across blogs/posts/etc. where people claim to have been paid by the PR firm to turn over their social media accounts on most of the top 100 visited online forums (boybuilding.com, 2p2, reddit, etc. etc). It appears to be a new tactic where people try to buy relatively (1 year+) old social media accounts solely for the purpose of expressing biased opinions, or in the case of sites like Reddit perhaps to manipulate the voting system so certain things don't appear on the front pages.
After the guilty verdict, this thread on reddit seems to have took off. I couldn't help thinking there may be heavy astroturfing going on simply based on the numerous ludicrous opinions being shared that extraditing Knox would be a violation of the constitution, and constant references to Double Jeopardy when there was never a 2nd trial - not to mention that Knox was found guilty initially before the judge forced what is effectively a retrial. (I don't want to get into the specifics of the Italian justice system here, but essentially a guilty verdict isn't 100% final, and although Knox was found guilty, a judge ruled that the jury came to that conclusion incorrectly and so there was more or less a forced retrial)
Anyways, I must admit my own bias in that I initially was of the opinion Knox was likely innocent, however as I read more and more non-U.S. sources my opinion began to sway. In the end I think she did play some hand in the murder but should not be found guilty due to a lack of real evidence.
All that being said, I think there is clear evidence of an organized PR campaign being run through social media and internet forums attempting to sway the general U.S. public into feeling as though Knox being extradited or imprisoned would be a gross miscarriage of justice, probably in hopes that the U.S. gov't will be swayed in the same direction. At the very least, I think it's fair to say that the current general perception of the case would make the U.S. extraditing Knox a PR failure on their end, and probably something that is met with huge backlash stateside.
The whole concept of Astroturfing and social media manipulation as it is alleged to have occurred here is pretty wild. The practice is a little unsettling but if there is an astroturfing campaign among major media outlets, it appears to be a success.
Pretty rambly here, but I had nowhere else to put any of my thoughts on this. As I said I've really only done casual research into the whole thing but I'm always open to other peoples opinions or thoughts on social media manipulation in high profile criminal cases.
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One of my favorite actors
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