It's been a long since I don't play online, I used to be a breakeven player, used to make around 700-1k/month with rb grinding micros-mid stakes, quit 2-3 yrs ago.
I think it is worth a mention poker has always been my 2nd income.
I kept playing live just because I really love the game, I've more success playing live, since September 2013 I started keeping track of my live sessions since I started to visit a casino at the US, so far I've been playing NL200 at Casino del Sol @ Tucson, Arizona. I live in the north of México, it's a 4 hours drive to get there and I usually stay there for 3-4 nights (I get free room for 5 hours @ poker daily)
So far I've done 7 visits and these are the results:
This is in $MXN, 1USD = 13MXN so it's around 6k usd which for 5 months of playing is almost 3x the std salary where I live for a 180hours/month job.
Gotta say the obvious, live is much easier than online as I can recall, I play much less hours and make more profit, games are pretty easy there, mostly play vs 50+ old pals which has no clue what they're doing, I just play ABC, value all my hands, make discipline folds and I never get out of line, I barely bluff, I've gained a lot of discipline which I lacked of in my online years.
I know nothing about live bankroll management but I have 5.2k in my bankroll and I just got a couple of nights very cheap @Vegas (22usd @hooters) next week, so instead of staying in Tucson I decided to give NL500 a shot, since there's only NL200 in Tucson, any recommendation would be great of where to play in Vegas.
I've been there 2 times and mostly played NL200@MGM in which I think games were pretty soft, but have 0 experience @NL500.
Anyway that's it so far, I will keep blogging to keep track of my thoughts/results about poker and hopefully I'll write more about my life since I think it's a good excercise, not for you but for me
PCA is pretty cool for LP since our own Ryan Daut won it so here you go some pics of the place for those who hasn't go there yet. The Atlantis Resort is a pretty amazing place, hope I can go there on vacation for sure.
I did not post update in my blog for 3 and half years (wow, how the time flies) but its interesting to read some of my older stuff. I was kinda desperate, living with my parents, just ended my bw career and was playing very low stakes of fullring. A lot of things have changed.
I grinded my way up to midstake, took some shots at 5-10, but played mostly 200nl 6max in my career. I also satellite in some tourneys and played PCA Main, WSOOP Main, EPT Prague Main, RED Dragon(Macau) Main. I did quite good and cashed a bit. It also allowed me to travel a bit. I visited Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, Macau, Thailand etc. I lost all of my poker drive mostly because I did not spend too much of my money, because I felt like I did not need anything. And when you don't spend your money, and you don't need any money, grinding seems kinda pointless. I still enjoy the big tourneys, because you get to travel and meet interesting people.
I always struggle with purpose in life(like all the semi intellectuals that got plenty of time on their hands). Never felt like I belong somewhere and figured out who I actually am. This is mostly due to loosing 10 years of my development years to Starcraft. But slowly I am working on myself. Figuring the things I like, what kind of people I like to be around, What are the social rules. You know its hard. But mostly I am learning to become grateful. Grateful for all the free time, poker, opportunities, health, my family, and this beautiful world around me.
Since Its after the new year and you should set yourself with some goals, mine go like this:
1. Figure out where I want to live and get myself a place of my own(I never had a place of my own for the last 3 years, just traveled and rented), its nice to have your own place(and stuff) you can come back to.
2. Get in shape! (this is VERY important for sooo many reasons)
3. Get some social circle running. (When you travel, Its hard to keep your friends)
4. Create, don't be just a consumer. This is a very big thing for our generation. We consume everything: Video games, Movies, TV Series, poker. We just watch and use, we don't create enough.
5. I still think I wont find a better income in next few years, that i can get from poker, that is why I will continue to work on my game.
Randomly took a break because I was away from my desktop due to holidays and moving (for job).
And this is prob the most passively effective I've ever been in my life (not even exaggerating).
1. I picked up french on android app "Duolingo" and have been putting 30 minute sessions a day usually while taking a shit or waiting on random stuff like restaurants or coffee.
2. Ran a half marathon after training 4 weeks. Took me 2 hours 18 minutes. Running's been kind of addicting for me, after at age 25 being diagnosed with worriesome blood pressure ~140 mg/90. The way the doctor explained it to me was, yea it's prob ok for now, but when your 50, you really will want to reach 75 so go ahead and start now. Everyone has around 1.8 billion beats in their hearts, and the harder it is for ur heart to pump, the more resistance (aka high blood pressure) the more beats it takes per day. multiply this over 20 years, and its easy to see why you wont make it to 70 when u should be living to 100. Also running has been addicting. I've never enjoyed running even after training for a triathlon. But lately I've been doing a set time vs a set amount of miles. This way it's lost time anyway, and I should look to leisurely run and build my endurance.
3. Started playing guitar, and picked up a lot of songs. Cry me a river, hallelujah, say something, hey jude were all surprisingly easy to play!
4. Reached 4.3k on bovada! Really soft tables, and as a matter of fact fish get bigger as u reach .5/1, this allowed me to buy a surface pro2 and macbook pro and a mac thunderbolt display (all through my brother's bestbuy discount!).
5. Pretty good video. I think it's honestly prob worth a few thousand dollars for the students who are currently interviewing/looking for jobs
6. Pretty good economics article on government owned vs privately owned.
I remember there was a thread where TT got flamed over some opinions and ppl kind of dog piled on him after he said something questionable about economics or something. i just wanted to say that I learned economics through school. And part of the beauty of it was a) how logical everything was and b) how wrong I was about a lot of common phenomenon. Economics can definitely be tricky and it's a different way of thinking then what we've learned growing up. Everyone's acting like they were fucking born knowing economics or were self taught. Well honestly congrats if u somehow did self teach urself economics and ur prob a freaking genius, honestly. but for those few who are interested here's what i consider a very reasonable article detailing one of the beauties of capitalism (how demand is met with socially efficient amount of supply, without anyone having to say a word)
7. finally finished infinite jest. when i first picked it up 1-2 years ago, it was so damn hard to read at first. but it's a book like no other. even if ur just looking at the way the book has been organized. i've read in interviews that dfw had a poster of some pyramid fractal, and thought "i wonder if i can write a book like that". well he basically did. the book jumps from here and there. and because of that you can actually read the book from any page. i prob read 75% of it, but because of the structure never really felt the need to finish it. but after being home with so much time i ended up reading the whole thing. think there's a time in most people's lives when reading this book would be meaningful.
8. ARCHERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
gl and keep productive lp!
i'll prob still check this site out once a week but not too sure about posting. most of my posts are pretty worthless and meaningless haha.
and i also want to randomly say/point out, for those of us where poker didn't work out i almost want to say we're the lucky ones. i think were forced to go back to reality and forced to grow and interact with it. i don't want this to come across as an anti-poker comment, but honestly, if you're a successful poker player, there is so much to be proud of. you're doing something successfully that less than 1% of the population can do. but at the same time, there is no doubt in my mind, that with those skills you could have accomplished something even greater. naturally this is pretty subjective and perhaps for some of you, given the countries your living in, poker was the best method possible. but when i see the posters on lp, there is some fucking talent and it's really easy for me to see the majority of you guys living full, kind, productive lives.
Joe recently talked about the importance of goals in poker, to which I added my only little take about how I set winstops as a goal to stay focused and positive. Most people dont advocate this, but I still wanted to talk about it just because it has been helping me a lot lately.
I always have the ugliest graphs because I'm never consistent with anything and just play in my spare time. What you see happening here though are a series of trends directly correlated to my goal oriented sessions vs my freeplay sessions. Basically, at each of the spots where you notice a downward trend are days where I completely ditched my goals and started playing with no particular purpose (other than to win money). For instance switching to HU, or PLO, or normal ring games, or higher stakes. What happened was that for no particular reasons I just said "lets try something new to day", most likely out of boredom I suppose. And on each of those days, I just started clicking buttons trying to learn the game. It's understandable I might fail at foreign game types like HU or PLO, but even the ring games where I had no winstop always ended in me losing several buyins.
Every time I would finish these losing sessions tilted wondering wtf happened. There was always some degree of self-imposed jackassery involved, coupled with tilt and just bad hand selection. But I never knew why I'd suddenly begin playing like this. I still dont honestly, without any goal to look forward to I just lose track of everything I'm doing and start doing stupid shit like fancy play and so on.
The converse being every time you see an upward trend is when I went back to setting winstops. I'd say "lets hit $100 tonight, that'd be nice, that sounds doable at NL25" and just proceed from there. By the simple act of having to watch my bankroll grow another $100 I'd do everything in my power to win. You know, stuff like proper hand selection, no hero calls, no big bluffs, etc. The real kicker is, no matter how those sessions ended, I'd always leave feeling good. Most of the time I'd actually hit my goal, which would serve as excellent motivation for the next day. The times I'd lose wouldnt even phase me. I'd just shrug it off and say "cant win em all, back at it tomorrow". I'd never lose more than 4 BI's at a time so I guess I had a stoploss as well. Now you might wonder why I dont just keep going after I hit $100 & renegotiate my goal. Well that wouldnt work because I'm so fucked up I'd know I was cheating and then start playing sloppy. I really need the feeling of success at the end of the night to stay motivated to play the next day, and to stay motivated to hit my goal. If I dont have a goal in sight then the motivation drops. But just like any sport, when you are so close to victory you find yourself trying extra hard to reach the finish line. In poker this translates to even stricter attention given at the tables.
Anyway I hope to condition myself with a series of winning sessions that result in a permanent positive attitude more or less, so that I can then remove this cap I have placed on myself and rely on my experience to just win win win with no end in sight.
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
Contact Users: 1036 Active, 0 Logged in - Time: 19:18
(a pair of Aces)
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