Something odd happened in 2013; odd for a poker player anyways...It was eerily consistent with 2012. I made approximately the same amount of money, and played about the same amount of hours.
2012 Hours played: 1734
2013 Hours played: 1808
2012 Income from cash games: 137.5k
2013 Income from cash games: 153.5k
2012 tourney results: 33 played, -33k
2013 tourney results: 43 played, -64k (although in reality only about 40k of this is money I spent, the rest was selling action, still an annoying loss of roughly 30% of my income on MTTs)
I am now playing 10/20NL about half of the time, and hopefully will be playing it full time by the WSOP. Had a couple REALLY sick sessions last week that I may or may not blog about, but basically it was just me running well and other people going insane. Matched up well for me. Ended up being two sessions of 10/20, one 7.5 hours long and one 5 hours long; total profit: 41k. Yep, 2,050 big blinds in 12.5 hours of poker. Sick life.
I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play poker now with the new baby here and her mom going back to work in a week or two so I've been thinking about other avenues of income that I can do from home while still watching two kids. Online poker seems possible but not likely since it requires me paying too much attention. Things I've been considering:
-Day trading. Been dabbling a little bit in day-trading bitcoin with mixed success. Mostly just been buying on Margin and when it goes up selling and using the profits to buy real BTC, but don't completely know what I'm doing yet. I'd like to get into real day trading in the markets as I have a friend who does it and says there are some spots where retail traders can have an edge over institutions since they have certain restrictions and things they can't dabble in. So I'm going to get into that a bit I think.
-Sports betting. Been dabbling in this already by getting picks from people and what not. I was thinking about doing my own handicapping, but I think it's far easier to find people who give out free picks and just basically grind free info from local sharks who bet for a living since I live in Vegas. For instance, I knew someone who had a huge 200k bet on the 49ers to beat carolina so I tagged along a unit on that bet and it came through. Have a futures bet on the patriots to win the superbowl at 8 to 1 and I bet it again when it was 10 to 1, so I got a sweat there when they play the broncos this week.
Those two things seem like something I can do while watching young kids at home and potentially develop an edge. Beats grinding forums all day long.
2014 goals:
Pay off auto loans of ~16k
Put a dent in student loans of ~60k
Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures.
Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one)
1800 hours of cash games
Save up enough of a down payment to consider buying a rental property in Vegas in 2015 if the opportunity arises
After this I flopped 2 overs+SD, but didnt get it in for some reason (im dumb) and ofc didnt hit any of my outs and he got ahead. Then got in my last 7 bbs with QJs into QQ. Oh well, there it goes a 50$ SNG. Had like an insane amount of final 2 tables on 888 the last couple of days, hopefully will start to ship some asap.
Oh, and another MTT on stars, got 35th or so for another 3x,xx$. It was an 11$ which i misregged cause the list does not update, you have to scroll up and down.
I never realized how huge impact your diet can have.
For the past 6weeks my landlord was redoing the bathroom and kitchen so I was without fridge, microwave and freezer and couldn't cook much cause there were always builders and dust in the kitchen.
My diet consisted of
- pasta with ketchup/eggs sometimes just pasta
- sausages
- instant mash potatoes, instant soups
- ham, cereal bread
- protein powder
- plain porridge
- meals with family (christmas etc.)
My bowel movements were all over the place, energy levels down i felt heavy a lot cause I ate close to no light food and had trouble sleeping.
I'm so freaking relieved and when I found out last night that my fridge works and kitchen can be used again I had to go refill on normal stuff.
I was never excited about shopping like I have been today, felt a little gay but it felt so good to buy food I like again.
I don't go full paleo, and I don't count calories. Poker diet is all about being practical, carbohydrates help with production of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that is responsible for balanced mood and self-control and steady levels should be a priority. Only wholewheat pasta and porridge for carbs is brutal tho hard on the stomach as I found last 6 weeks, I'll still use them moderately but last 6 weeks showed me the importance of easily digestible fibre containing carbs tat veg and fruit have - you just feel a lot lighter. Got bananas, oranges and some added fibre cereal bars for snacking - need to keep that carb intake balanced and not load 30 minutes before bed as I've been doing last few weeks with pasta (lead to shitty sleep)
Got my chicken breasts, canned tuna, 10%fat pork meat, dried soy meat and eggs for my brotein, they are rly good for recovery if you lift and help you feel fuller for longer. Proteins also help with production of dopamine, the neurotransmitter that regulates motivation an
Monosaturated fat helps with production of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine that is critical for learning and memory. It does keep you full as well I hear so got my extra virgin olive (gigitty) oil, peanut butter, pumpkin seeds and some fish for that.
I don't count calories, don't have an eating schedule since I workout randomly sometimes come home 23pm. Most food lasts long - frozen chicken, vegetables, canned fish, cucumbers, i buy bananas that are greenish. Basically it's all about simplicity. I don't have strict rules or anything for me it's more about eating the right stuff and getting into a habit of doing so and having fun in the process. I'll still keep protein shakes for after workouts and b6 b12 supp they seem to up my energy without the negative effects of caffeine.
Well let me guys know what you think, and how you go about creating a diet.
I've been playing off a hand chart lately to tighten up my game and have nailed down 24/18/6 stats which seems to be working well for me the last few thousand hands. Pretty much any flop I hit I smash so I like this hand range. But on a few occasions I've had direct position on a 100% vpip drooler and feel like I should be opening up my game a little, but not sure quite how much. Should I just proportionally scale up my range to around 30%? More? Or just keep doing what works, miss out on all the small/medium pots, and hope he pays me off big when I finally hit.
Was about to make a deal when we were down to HU, i had 2M he 1M, he declined after all, then he doubled through me w/ 44 vs my 99 pfai but then I got incredibly lucky lol.. like literally.. but u know.. my username meeh ;P
Full Tilt Poker Game #33736187886: Super Stack $5K Guarantee (263166799), Table 50 - NL Hold'em - 12000/24000 Ante 3000 - 02:08:52 CET - 2014/01/08 20:08:52 ET - 2014/01/07
Seat 1: Hero (916,921)
Seat 4: furcyAS (2,193,079)
Hero antes 3,000
furcyAS antes 3,000
furcyAS posts the small blind of 12,000
Hero posts the big blind of 24,000
The button is in seat #4
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to Hero
furcyAS raises to 48,000
Hero raises to 112,000
furcyAS raises to 2,190,079, and is all in
Hero calls 801,921, and is all in
furcyAS shows
Hero shows
Uncalled bet of 1,276,158 returned to furcyAS
furcyAS shows a pair of Jacks
Hero shows a pair of Aces
Hero wins the pot (1,833,842) with a pair of Aces
Summary Total pot 1,833,842 | Rake 0
Board:
Seat 1: Hero (big blind) showed and won (1,833,842) with a pair of Aces
Seat 4: furcyAS (small blind) showed and lost with a pair of Jacks
Full Tilt Poker Game #33736195731: Super Stack $5K Guarantee (263166799), Table 50 - NL Hold'em - 14000/28000 Ante 3500 - 02:11:27 CET - 2014/01/08 20:11:27 ET - 2014/01/07
Seat 1: Hero (1,921,842)
Seat 4: furcyAS (1,188,158)
Hero antes 3,500
furcyAS antes 3,500
furcyAS posts the small blind of 14,000
Hero posts the big blind of 28,000
The button is in seat #4
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to Hero
furcyAS raises to 56,000
Hero raises to 114,000
furcyAS has 15 seconds left to act
furcyAS raises to 238,000
Hero has 15 seconds left to act
Hero raises to 1,918,342, and is all in
furcyAS calls 946,658, and is all in
Hero shows
furcyAS shows
Uncalled bet of 733,684 returned to Hero
Hero shows a full house, Jacks full of Tens
furcyAS shows two pair, Aces and Tens
Hero wins the pot (2,376,316) with a full house, Jacks full of Tens
Summary Total pot 2,376,316 | Rake 0
Board:
Seat 1: Hero (big blind) showed and won (2,376,316) with a full house, Jacks full of Tens
Seat 4: furcyAS (small blind) showed and lost with two pair, Aces and Tens
Since I dont have the time to play a lot or at least can't tell yet i wont set any goals for the year nor did for 2013 pokerwise
still yesterday i played the million on ps.fr since i won a ticket, busted early but also opened upthe 3$R on ps.eu, since thats the most profitable tournament of my life lol (like 5 final tables, shipped once for 6k$)
Was a good decision to borrow 10 bucks from a friend to at least play this one tourney on eu: + Show Spoiler +
Submitted by : Luckb0xx
PokerStars Hand #109672222324: Tournament #840209824, $3.00+$0.30 USD Holdem No Limit - Level XLI (90000/180000) - 2014/01/06 5:47:33 CET [2014/01/05 23:47:33 ET]
Table 840209824 20 9-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: Hero (1628076 in chips)
Seat 2: dzosepas (17890380 in chips)
Seat 6: Adam4_Condor (11003544 in chips)
Hero: posts the ante 30000
dzosepas: posts the ante 30000
Adam4_Condor: posts the ante 30000
Hero: posts small blind 90000
dzosepas: posts big blind 180000
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to Hero
Adam4_Condor: folds
Hero: raises 1418076 to 1598076 and is all-in
dzosepas: calls 1418076
Showdown Hero: shows (a pair of Tens)
dzosepas: shows (a pair of Aces)
dzosepas collected 3286152 from pot
Hero finished the tournament in 3rd place and received $3052.41.
Summary Total pot 3286152 | Rake 0
Board
Seat 1: Hero (small blind) showed and lost with a pair of Tens
Seat 2: dzosepas (big blind) showed and won (3286152) with a pair of Aces
Seat 6: Adam4_Condor (button) folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Had a lot of fun this year, travelled a lot, exercised much more and just had a healthier lifestyle overall, also gf moved in which was cool.
Poker-wise, a lot of mixed feelings, worst results since 2010. For the SNGs I learned sooo much and got 100x better mostly for spending the whole year battling regs instead of playing fish so much. But even then the results are kinda poor for the amount of games played, less than 1% ROI before rakeback, didn't run that much under EV so just have to believe in the crappy card distribution...
And then I failed the 500k VPP goal and made 445k... could have shipped some extra dollars with some better planning for it.
Can't complain about the MTT results, but I still feel a little bit disappointed since I had an incredible amount of FT bubbles paying 30k+ 1st. Overall I ran pretty well though.
The worst part of it is how boring playing poker everyday gets, but I assume anything you do for a long time gets boring. I'll probably be the guy with 1 million SNGs played in a decade I guess. As long as I don't let upcoming noobs beat me, and I think I'm doing a great job at stomping them back to $30 games.
So 2013 was kind of a shit year. Was up 150k halfway and lost most of it back the other half. Also down a bunch in stocks and overall I lost a fair bit of money due to some spending issues. I did take some good things with me though:
1. First Live final table, cashed for like 10k or whatever in Unibet Open Copenhagen.
2. Won a little bit in live cash games.
3. Had some decent runs in Sunday tournaments.
4. Got my HSDB-page in the green.
5. Got a little bit better at this PLO-thing.
Bad things included the following:
1. Did not play as many live tournaments as I would've liked.
2. Did not make as much money as I would've liked.
3. Messed up various crap for various reasons.
During 2014 I want the following:
1. Get SNE by the end of October or mid November.
2. Play a lot of sunday donkaments.
3. Maintain some kind of reasonable win rate over a million hands or whatever number I end up playing.
4. Lower variance over time by stricter bankroll-managment and fewer months with less then 70k hands or something played. Aiming at doing at least 100k hands per month when not travelling or otherwise engaged .
So far this year I've played just over 25k hands of 1/2-3/6 and I'm up like 11.5k + rakeback, which is a very nice start of the year. Wish me luck to keep it up
good month, the brag is that I put a lot of hours, made 150 hours in the month which is my record, was aiming for 200h and I made 100hours in the first 14 days but the holidays fucked me up
feels really good to run over EV/not run like shit as I was
At the start of 2013, it has been only a couple of months since I moved to the capital of Romania, Bucharest, to be employed for the first time and do a masters programme. Had 3 months of experience and the auditing season just begun. Its been some of the hardest months of my life till now, working 55-60 hours/week (I think I've even blogged about it at one point), then taking courses in the weekend and having exams every 3 weeks. Everything went okayish in the end and managed to get a decent average at uni, top 3 out of 35, so this year I don't have to pay tuition (yay 1.5k euros saved). Then summer came around and we've been preparing for the wedding, while working semi-light - I was content at how things were going at this point of the year. However, the nasty surgery intervened, so I had some stress just a couple days before the wedding. Looking back at it, it was the perfect moment to get it out, as I hadn't had any problems ever since, I can eat, drink anything without having to worry about feeling super sick and not being able to sleep at night.
Autumn came around and having more free time, got me back into poker again - but this time I've started playing MTTs and studying quite some. I can finally say I had my first year of poker where I ended up in the green. Have played quite a lot, but the lack of a big score cut back my motivation, but I still play every now and then. I figure I should learn much more and hopefully I can put more effort into this in the new year.
I have some cash played at PS and FTP as well, up around 50-80 bucks. I've played whenever a spotted a huge spewer at the MTTs and followed him to cash tables (bumhunting, I guess?). I also luckboxed a huge 900 bb pot against a PS pro in a zoom promo, which brought me 130$. All in all a pretty good year. I started with a 15$ deposit in October and grinded it up to 1100 at max, atm sitting around 920 - for the last month it's been quite a rollercoaster ride, ups and downs, but still fun.
Also I've been to my first ever LAN event, dreamhack bucharest - so much more fun than expected!
Too bad for these 2 pals in the pic, but the other were so goddamn busy all the time - too much awesomeness for 1 pic though (Grubby and Day9): http://i41.tinypic.com/1qlm4y.jpg
Marriage is effing awesome - its just a whole another level when you find THAT girl. I hope all of you can experience this feeling one day.
My goals for 2014 is to have an even better year than this one - it will be REAL hard as some of my coworkers left the company, so we are less people for almost the same amount of work, also I'm finishing my masters degree so I have to prepare a graduation paper till July, but hopefully all will be OK and will get over it. As for poker, I will have less time in the first half of the year because of the above mentioned reasons, but I really hope I'll manage to skill-up my play and finally ship that 1k+ tourney.
Thanks guys for being awesome, I feel like during 2013, I've managed to somewhat become a part of this community, even if it's not a numerous one, but still with mostly awesome people, whose success gives me motivation to try harder. Special mention goes to Mortensen for staking me for some tourneys above my bankroll, hopefully we will be back even stronger in 2014!
Oct-Dec & End of year round-upby ToT)MidiaN(, December 31
During October I completely lost my interest in this game. I had attained my 300k VPP milestone on PokerStars and withdrew all my bankroll. As far as I was concerned I was done with PokerStars for the year. I didn't blog my results as I had stopped caring and felt that it was pointless. Early in November I made a very small deposit on iPoker and intended to just grind a few tables there for not many hours, but expected that due to weaker games and increased focus due to 4 regular tables vs the usual 8 zoom tables I've been playing this year that I'd still make a decent amount of money just through having a much better winrate. I couldn't always even find 4 tables running so I barely played there at all and moved back to PokerStars mid-late November. At this point I decided that if I'm going to play on PokerStars I mayaswell make an effort to hit the 400k VPP milestone target. I needed to make about 100k VPPs in ~45 days which, playing 8 tables split between 100NL zoom and 200NL zoom would take me a little over 3 hours a day. This seemed doable. I am unbelievably lazy and struggle immensely to find motivation though, so as time went on the amount I needed to play just kept getting higher and higher due to me falling behind a seemingly "easy to maintain" pace. With just a few days left this year I needed to be playing 6 hours a day, and knowing that I would be going out tonight to get smashed, I would have to get above that and only leave myself with a small amount of time left on New Year's Eve. I actually did it, but even maintaining 6+ hours a day for 4 days has already caused a lot of stress haha. Mad respect to people who make SNE, seriously. Anyway, I've finally hit my 400k VPP milestone just now and here are my Oct-Dec results aswell as my end of year results (Screenshot intensive obv):
Obv some run good in terms of winnings vs EV at 500NL zoom and to some degree at 200NL zoom, though I think my EV is underestimating my winrates as both of those stakes. I had a ~300k breakeven stretch at 200NL zoom with lots of run bad at D game play due to tilt. I would be amazed if I'm <2 EV bb/100 there over 1mill+ hands and would be surprised if I was <0 EV bb/100 over 1mill hands of 500NL zoom, where I feel I had an unreal bad run in terms of situations over those 100k hands. I feel far short of the monetary goals I had for myself, but $65k is about £40k and that's a lot better than I'd be doing if I wasn't playing poker so I can't grumble too much.
2014 goals are to decrease # of cash tables to 4 zoom or 6 regular aswell as decreasing hours. I hope mainly that this will increase enjoyment and lower stress. I want to feel more involved in the game than I do at the moment where I'm just robot moding 8 tables at my B-D game seemingly just to make rakeback. I would like to improve my MTT game, and probably aim to put more hours into MTTs than Cash next year, just hoping to luckbox a big MTT so I can quit poker and move on. I think my long term future in poker is probably going to be based on playing some live MTTs while working some other job or studying some course so I really wanna get better at them so I can both profit and enjoy them. I'm going to start working out and dieting again in a hope to feel better mentally and physically on a day to day basis. Cutting down on alcohol will help this also. And lastly I'd like to start making some active progress towards my next step after I'm done with poker, even if this just means deciding on a course to start in 2015, as long as I get to the end of 2014 with a solid idea of what I want to do I will feel one step closer to ending the misery that is being an online poker professional hah. That's pretty much it for this year. I don't think I'm going to keep this blog going next year. I really only made it this year to keep track of my progress and use it as a way to motivate myself into playing better and playing more. But I don't think it's had any such effect, really all it has done has wasted me however many hours I've spent on typing these posts out.
It was my 7th year in Scotland, first after I broke up with my ex-gf of 4years. She was kinda the reason why I stayed in Edinburgh in the first place - our common language was English.
Job I rly liked stop paying us, wasn't enough work and the entire office is now gone.
I was burnt out, felt rly bad because of that, was eating rly badly and fell completely out of shape.
It was even worse than this + Show Spoiler +
October year before I decided I'm gonna grind some poker on the side for funzies from $50 and now I had to pay bills with it. So when my manager/flatmate decided to move to London I knew I'd move on from Edinburgh. I had some job offers for 26keur/y+comission from Ireland, and with a good degree and 2+y experience in sales/finance I'd get easily get a decently paying job and could continue the grind in the UK.
But I knew if I do that I'd stick at it and would hardly get the chance to do something that was originally planned to happen after 2 semesters in Scotland - move back to Czech Republic, at least for a few months.
So in August I just threw all my stuff had away (my russian neighbours took all my stuff like 5 minutes after I put it next to garbage outside xD), bought an airplane ticket and without savings moved to Czech Republic and stayed with my sister for a few months. I made enough to cover expenses with part time pokering while catching up with friends, starting floorball again at a local team and after looking at the local job market and rents decided - what the hell I can actually do it and it;s pretty much the only option that allows me to try playing sports on a high level again and stay in mu home town - Ima play poker fulltime :D
It took me October to get set up in my new $200/mo flat and since November I've been playing poker fulltime. Since them I dropped some 10kg, got under 90kg for the first time in some 4years + Show Spoiler +
Things I have improved poker wise
- Started thinking in ranges again when playing A game
- I still tilt, but my C game is WAY better than it used to be. I used to have 10-15BI money spew sessions, and now even in drawn out full retard sessions the mistakes I make are so much less frequent than when I played nearly fulltime as a student. The job in sales helped heaps in that aspect, its was pretty much the same -hard way to make an easy living as some 80people would reject you every day and you sign up 2-4 for good moneyz.
- started my strategy thread where I write down what I learned including hand reviews. I think working too much on theory is harmful and I tried to avoid that and work on my own game instead, and record only quality resources that I can review afterwards.
- improved mindset. I listened to this: this and it rly helped in terms of being okay with what I am. I'm comfortable with myself as a person and I must say compared to other people I'm like Jesus Christ :D. I simply decided that I take enough negatives at work in terms of lost pots (read my blog on attitude) that I'm not gonna be negative outside poker. Normal people don't get this but but I got closer to the mindset of "if you don't like something in your life, change it and if you can't or unwilling to do so, just learn to accept it"
- and probably the greatest and hardest accomplishment ever - Deleted dota and didn't touch it in over 2 months. This probably mad the biggest difference in my life as it freed up so much time it's incredible.
2012 graphs:
pre-purge hobby play next to work etc, from $50: + Show Spoiler +
+ made 40 bucks at NL100 (have PT4 small stakes only ;p)
+ got some $200 from $90 at microgaming. Sunk way too much time into 10Euro blaze poker I must say :D
+ rakeback, and around $1200 profit from tourneys.
Arbitrary things I want to work on in 2014. I am looking into proper goal setting in scholarly research but it's not finalized yet and it might take a couple months.
1) Thought process - plan range based not 2 card based. This is entirely in my sub-concious and my mind evaluates every spot in terms of their range and my range then uses my 2 cards.
I can play both pure exploitative or pure near gto in any spot.
2) Time management. I only spend time productively, when not playing or studying or talking about poker I read/hang with friends/excercise/walk/spend time with family and when I play poker, I only focus on poker.
3) I eat regularly and have strong healthy eating habits
4) I am fit enough to match or better any other goalkeeper in the highest Czech floorball division physically.
5) I have friends or coaches in the poker community with which I set goals and challenges every month, and I push myself to my maximum every day.
6) I know I work harder than any regular who I sit with at the tables.
7) My game is strong from the top bottom but also from the bottom up.
I continue to keep record of my C game and every month I summarize previosu month and take actions improve my c game as shown in my spew thread
Lifestyle of a poker playerby Nitewin, December 31
If you could make 5-10k from online poker every month, what would your life be like? I'm 26, living with my parents, and have little life experience. What's my most +EV move? I feel like your job is a huge part of your lifestyle. Being on the computer at home doesn't exactly help me improve as a person. What are things I can do to improve myself/better my life?
Related thoughts:
I own my own car and house. It's being rent out where rental income > mortgage.
I just got my BA in finance last spring. Have not had job yet.
Give me ideas. I want to improve myself in every aspect as well as do things that would make me happy.
Contact Users: 904 Active, 0 Logged in - Time: 04:08
(a pair of Aces)
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