Courageous people feel the same fear everyone else does, they just decide not to live like they're afraid anymore - Bob Goff
Intro
Me and a friend had a conversation once under psychadelic circumstances and as we sat there takeing in our surroundings he turned to me and asked:
We all know whats right and wrong, and we all know what we should do to be happy and take care of ourself and others, why arent we doing that?
This is something ive kinda thought about for most of my life and more so since he layed it out to me that straight up. Its something i think everyone
is familiar with as a human being. The constant struggle between hope and fear where fear is holding us back. Many philosophical characters claims that
all fear roots back to the fear of death, more or less. Sam harris has a really good lecture on this.
On the other side of the spectrum tho, you know that ”fighting spirit” type feeling u sometimes feel inside when ur about to give up but decides not to?
That feeling that feeds the knowing of: FUCK, i can fucking do this, if I really wanted to. So why arent I doing this again?
I started ranting/brainstorming many hours ago now in a textdocument wich i do from time to time and i got into reviewing big turning points in my life
and after a while i felt like i wanted to continue the rant in a blogpost since im in a writeing type of mood today. Also i had intentions in makeing a
blogpost about my upcomeing plans for the future so why not mixx the two of them together. They kinda go hand in hand in a sense afterall.
Turning points of my life
I spent 3 hours writing on this subject earlier today (and im still going strong lol) and im gonna try to sum it up more so in this text. Something ive
realised about all of this, and there is many good podcasts and lectures and books on this subject, when it comes to pushing urself outside of your
comfortzone to grow as a person. Today i thought about all the big turning points in my life.
* Like most kids i was haveing a really insecure childhood growing up in a small town enviorment trying to be someone i wasnt. Drinking moonshine
every weekend from the age of 13 and trying to be a ”badass” to fit in to the redneckhillbillystereotypical-type people that i went to school with.
At that point my biggest secret in the whole world was that i liked to play guitar, and that i was good at starcraft, good enough actually to play in the
swedish nationalteam. Alltho back then i would rather have committed suicide then telling any other kid that i was actually good at a computer game,
what a massive fucking nerd to actually be good at something u love, right. Fucking retarded kids. When i was 16 i moved out from my parents house and got a
job and a supersmall cheap appartment and started takeing care of myself in another city to study music/theater/photgraphy on my own at this ”hippie”type school
while all my old friends stayed. -> still live in that town and thank god i did what i did when i was 16.
* When i was 19-20 i quit my job and moved in under the stairs (literally under the stairs, harry potter! high five bro!) with 5 other guys in the
appartment for a rent of 70$/month since i wanted to persue poker, wich was what i really loved and what i wanted to do while everyone thought i was fucking
insane, alot of you can probably relate to this . I lived there and it took me about 1-2 years of hard work to really become good enough at poker to make
enough money to really live comforably on my own and move out from under the stairs as i eventually leveled up through the stakes.
* I wasnt fat when i was growing up, but i got really fucking fat 2011 for some reason, mostly due to a semidepression and well, just playing poker all day
I decided later that year to go to thailand to train and lose weight, and me and my friend spent 2 superstrict months training/eating healthy in patong. For you who know
where patong is in thailand, its the true core of hookers drugs and partying in phuket, but we stayed clean of everything since we got an appartment there + was motivated to succeed.
2 months later, i'd lost 25 kg (~55pounds). Sure im still a bit overweight today and have been in periods after that but im never gonna get that big again and since then ive
lived a pretty healthy life overall Especially this year.
Before/afterpicks from that time during the late ~2011 trip: + Show Spoiler +
I stole the afterpic from raiderns LP interview he did with me, its from ~ that time, im not a big pictureperson
Ive for sure been blogging about that earlier, sorry to the blogfollowing readers for the repitition.
So? who cares..
So why am i bringing all of these ”big” events from my life up in this blog? Am i trying to brag about how i overcome some demons and managed to attain some success in life/poker?
What i came to realise as i was brainstorming in my bubble earlier this day was that all of those things that has shaped my life into something better
came from massive fucking action and pushing myself out of my comfortzone. Its so eye opening when u put it like that.
Another thing that has led me to success many times is hitting rock bottom, feeling fucking miserable over a broken heart, overweight, just being busto
at poker etc, and finding that fighting spirit, FUCK things needs to change. Ive done this multiple times in my pokercareer to get better at poker.
Again end of 2012-2013 was such a period for me, i was heartbroken from a girl, i was busto degening away 100s of thousands of dollars like a maniac and i was staked with big depts.
I struggled with panic anxiety and other stuff for the first time in my life, I was gaining weight again and i was really really fucking scared for a period of time there.
What about it? Time went on, a year or so passed and I got my shit together, I realised, wtf am i doing? Am i just gonna give up? The kid that wanted to be the best in the world first in
starcraft, then in poker? Are you fucking kidding me? I started working out again, i got my pokershit together i worked in flopzilla, CREV, HEM and i worked hard again and what happened?
I started winning again (duh?!), i attained SNE and i payed back my depts. To tie this rant up, it was that fighting spirit that got me back on track. Like it has been time and time again.
Its more then okey to fail guys, but never fucking give up.
Moveing on..
Future? BJJ around the world!
Onwards to the bigger news that i wanted to blog about in the first place. Here it comes
Today i booked a one way ticket to Australia, a chain reaction from many things through my life, but lately breaking up with my gf earlier this year
due to not being ready yet. Simple as that, i wanna do these things im gonna do now before settleing down. Im sure i will come to realise in the future
that it is just settleing down, haveing kids and giveing nothing but love to your family is what life is all about and what i want to persue, but at
this point. I dont know it yet, i have to realise that first.
This is it. I hate it when people complain or come with excuses to why they arent doing something but something i hate more is when i catch myself doing it and
since im a person i assure you, it happends alot . This travel the world on my own thing is something ive had in my mind for many years now and
now its fucking time. Ive kind of felt like i wanted to become the pokerplayer first, and that all my time has to go into poker for me to achieve anything close
to that before doing this, wich is kind of a stupid mentality overall imo ”im gonna do what i want, after im done with this thing first, and then theres this other
thing after that, and then this other thing, THEN im gonna do it for sure”
My plan is to have no plan, basically. Im a pretty introverted humble person IRL, believe it or not, that rarely takes alot of space in social
situations and i want to force myself to get better at this, therefor im gonna start this quest traveling on my own for the true first time. I
also want to keep getting in better shape aswell as getting better at BJJ.
My goal is to start the ”adventure” without a laptop and to stay at hostels to really push myself to talk to random people and not fall back on the grind or internet. Im gonna train BJJ in sydney, i found some interesting gym near bondibeach wich im gonna start with. Do that for a few weeks to later meet up
with a friend whos traveling in australia atm, she asked me if i wanted to go snorkling in the great barrier reef with them in december and i figured it can be a good milestonegoal to have on my timeline.
After that i want to travel around australia for a few months and train BJJ at different gyms, buy some cheap small laptop and combine some grind with
the backpacking lifestyle.
Why blog?
Im really nervous. Ive never backpacked or traveled alone really before and its a bit scary. Im not stacked on money and i suck at PLO so my weak laazy
comfortzone half tells me that alot of things can go wrong, will they tho? Do i have much to lose? Whats the worst thing that can happen?
Im pretty sure i will learn some stuff atleast and hopefully i can add this trip to my next "brainstorming-over-past-turning-points-session"
I plan on committing to a BJJ around the world type thing and ill try to blog alot about life, traveling, BJJ and poker as i go on this adventure. Ive
been going back and fourth on blogging about it thinking in the terms of ”why do i need to make this public, am i so insecure that i want people to know
that im going for it?” and then i think, why the fuck not. It might motivate me, committ me and push me. Maybe it will keep me company at some times when
im alone for days and it can surely help me keep in contact with people at home, pokerfriends and such that will be reading my blog. Maybe i can inspire some
people as im a believer of not haveing everything figured out. My brother was almost murdered recently and me, and my family kinda realised
(wich we all know deep inside) that anything can happen, at any time. U think the variance in PLO is sick? Variance in life is even sicker and there is nothing
holding us back really from pushing it.
I do have plans, but i dont wanna plan everything to much for my future with where i wanna travel and with poker and such. Things can happen realisations can
be made and im just gonna start with the one way ticket to australia and see where that take me, with intentions of advanceing from my whitebelt status in
BJJ and to travel around alot, meet alot of people, see and experience alot of things.
Cliffs
Yolo
U all know im a rogan fan, and i know many of you are aswell.
If u read the entire thing, thanks for reading, please leave some comments/PMs with anything on your mind, insight/tips/questions what ever. let me know if
ur in australia the upcomeing months or if u have any tips on where to go or where to train BJJ etc.
Im gonna try to keep this update short, but knowing myself it will prolly end up in some huge ranty sea of text. Ive mostly been "blogging" on this swedish forum pokerforum.nu, u can find my blog (its more like a mixx of a well+blog+thread) there (in swedish), its called "longple". And i thought its about time to make an update over here on whats been up in longplelife the past time
SNE 2013
So i made SNE 2013, and tryed to make it again 2014, but found myself ~mid2014 around june or so very fucking tired and unmotivated with NL, despite haveing a pretty good ~recent year 18-24 tableing midstakes NL on stars.
These arent completely accurate tho, its taken from the swedish forum, where i scrapped together the different databases i could get a hold on (hands from november/december 2013 til august 2014 somewhere), but theres alot of hands missing from other sites and higher stakes.
I def lost alot on 5/10 ring wich isnt there, aswell as some 10/20 and 25/50 shots that backfired.
On another note ive won in somewhat big games on the swedish site, wich isnt added in this sample either. So im not entirely sure of how my results are this year, but they are probably somewhat accurate, def not up more then 100k at the tables tho.
What ever, moveing on.
Quitting SNE / NLrant
So in july or so i just woke up, tryed to get my 4 hours of 18+ grind on, 1/2 fine, 500+400 fine, what ever was running i just wanted to get on the fucking waitlists and get done with the VPPs so i could do something else and had no passion wanting to move up or doing anything else then getting my safe hourly in.
And i realised how fucking miserable i felt about poker, and what type of player i had become compared to the type of player i used to be. The motivated hard working shottakeing dreamer of a pokerplayer that would sit up all night 3 tableing with some regs hu/3 handed/4 handed w/e just for the competition and the love for the game with goals of being the best in the world.
Wtf happened, Im not even that good at the game anymore.
Honestly i feel like 50% of the regs playing 5/10 today on stars, probably are better players then i am. And i dont see how i could find enough motivation to break into the 10/20+ starsgames anymore, every reg is fucking seatscripting GTO-yogis nowadays and they are really fucking good.
No one battles anyone and theres just so little room for a 26 year old dude who isnt that passionated about the game anymore to ever break into that enviorment.
Basically i gave up, and that has scared me a long time unconsciously i think. Thats where my spirit and success has always rooted from as a pokerplayer. The mentality of IF U CAN I FUCKING I CAN TO, AND I WILL SUCCEED.
Realiseing that i just didnt see any future in NL.
So i decided to drop SNE 50% in, and try something new.
PLOOOOOO
Ok, ive wanted/and tryed to move over to PLO for many years, but i always shamefully came back to NL again and again to make money. But now is the fucking time for the real change.
In the beginning of august i started playing 1/2$ PLO and have been doing so pretty much most sessions since then.
As ive said in my swedish "diaryblogg" many times, poker is fucking fun again. People are battleing, people play different, people suck and theres no fucking seatscripts (atleast on the stakes im playing now)
PLO is the shit, the fact that the game is soooo much bigger then NL makes it alot more interesting imo. Theres no clearcut answers in this game and people are all over the place, i mean, NL has 1300 combos, and theres fucking 7000 combos of AAxx in PLO. GG
PLO results so far?
Who cares? Being a noob of the game, and being a student of the game, improveing every day i dont really care about the results as much as ive done in NL. Its just fun to play and i just want to get good, and i dont really have any expectations of winning anything in this game for some time, atleast not in 2014. My real goals are to set myself up for 2015 and just play as much as i want to play, wich so far has been quite alot of hours.
Its fun to drop down playing 2-6 tables again instead of 18+ every session. Its fun to have things to think about, and find out stuff along the way. And people fucking battle in this game, all the time. Its so much easier to start games and get into these oldschool battles that i used to be in NL a few years ago.
anyways, heres the plograph so far
Special shoutout to Joeingram
I gotta thank Joey alot for his podcast, it defenetely helped me to get more inspired and motivated to play PLO, and i think its great for PLO and poker that ur doing what ur doing joey. I must admit i was kinda annoyed by u and made some judgements about u when u first came around with ur Vlogs and popbets and ur blog over here on LP. But with time, hands down i think ur awesome, GW AND KEEP IT UP!
Im excited for the future. I think i can get good at this game, maybe its a breeze of hope, who knows but i feel overall alot more motivated about playing poker and talking poker. PLO has set me back in time. The game is alot softer relative to NL, i can tell u that much right from the getgo. The spectrum of players is alot bigger and i just like the PLOworld more overall and its given me hope when it comes to my motivation.
If ur bored with NL, and find my story similair. Just switch, give it a few months like ive done and see if u can get as excited as i am.
Here are the last 2 podcasts I did with HSPLOer Odd_oddsen and WSOP Main champ Greg Merson. Odds was much funnier than I expected him to be. Crashwhips from 2p2 wrote up a good summary of the episode. I will be recording this week with the WCOOP Main Event winner CrownUpGuy and long time HSNL/PLOer Alexiemartov/Magic Ninja
Highlights:
-He owns 2 houses, a house he paid 1.5million usd that he lives in, and another house he rents out apts in
-He said after realizing he was "set for life" from poker, he decided it was a bad idea to risk a downswing at nosebleed stakes, so he is now staked for 25/50+
-Skjervoy was visiting him last year + while hammered, had an accident in a sauna w/ vodka and the flames heating the sauna, and set himself on fire
-~1:05 Funny Gus Hansen / Phil Ivey Vegas story
-He is mad at Lefort I guess bc Lefort spoke so highly of Oddsen's game on an earlier CJ podcast. He says he thinks that's a big reason he stopped getting shorthanded action at high stakes + thinks it cost him 200-300k in ev. He goes on to say Lefort is very good + def top 5 in the world at hu plo
I also did one with Greg Merson who won the 2012 WSOP Main Event and is a long time reg on Pokerstars. Feedback on this one has been really great and some people commented it was a bit more serious of a tone as compared to most.
I've suddenly found myself feeling inspired lately and this lead me to get inspired to write about finding inspiration Make sense??
I think I have underestimated how important it is for me personally to feed off of inspiration I get from other people. This realization came to me very recently when I started hanging out more with my friend who is really into fashion, smelling good, looking good. Everyone is into smelling good and looking good for the most part right? I know I used to be this way for a good period of time but for whatever reason I have not put as much stock into it as I once did. I think the line between wanting to look/feel good and being obsessed with how you look is interesting. I know that when people used to meet me they would say that they thought I was obsessed with how I looked, saying it with a negative connotation. I think after hearing it so many times I started believing that maybe it was a negative thing to want to really look GOOD when it comes to being in shape, how you dress, tan, etc... Now I think I've come to the realization that if you have interest in attracting a higher quality of person in a potential partner (one who cares about these things for themselves) then you should should also. I'm not really sure how you can do this without almost becoming obsessed about it but I think as I get older, it becomes a bit more manageable of an emotion.
After thinking more about it, I made a facebook status update thanking 4 people who I felt like really inspired me over the last years of my life. I've always tried to take away inspiration when I meet people who have some qualities that I really admire, I try to think about how I can possibly be more that way. I'm not sure if this is how most people do it. I think the biggest initial inspiration I can remember is when I met my friend Asher while I was living in San Diego. I was into hair and how I dressed a bit up until that point of my life but after meeting him I realized how fun fashion could be, how much better you could look because of it and that I could style my hair a different way then sorta short/bit spikyish on the top. I also really admired the way he handled himself around a group of people. Up to that point I was a pretty big noob at this and really had no idea (debatably still don't) but seeing the way someone could be in a situation like that really opened my eyes that I didn't have to be such an asshole in a lot of spots. I could talk about the way the other 3 specific people I tagged impacted me if there is enough interest in reading about it.
I'm not sure if this post is more like a "hey you guys should try this" or "hey does anyone else find this happens to them." I think it is a combo of both of those ideas. I think I really forgot just how much other people could impact my own life and got away from it entirely for about a year now. I'm hoping from this point on that I can start finding it again in other people and possibly change the way I am for the better.
I was driving to the gym this morning and I got inspired to write about why prop betting is important and why more people should be doing it. I also said on twitter that if I failed to write this today I would be paying out 1kusd to some lucky retweeter. This is a prop bet (more freeroll) that I will not be losing
What is a prop bet? In the poker world it is considered anything you might side bet on doing against another person. For example, some of the prop bets I've done are playing 50k hands in a day, playing 600k hands in a month. The bets don't always have to be as extreme as those, they can be as simple as you betting another person on who plays more hours that week (I did a bet like this before with some poor soul who did not have a chance )
Why do people prop bet? Some people do it because they see a chance to make a large amount of money assuming they are wiling to take on a good amount of action against. Some people want to challenge themselves. Some people want to try to make a name for themselves.
Okay, now that we got the basics out of the way, lets talk about why prop betting in poker is important for you to consider doing. The number one reason I initially did my first prop bet is because I really enjoyed the challenging of trying to do something that no one else had ever done before. Every prop bet doesn't have to be as dramatic as this but trying to do something where you are actually going to have to bust your ass to do can be an incredibly positive long term choice. If you are able to win the bet, your confidence will be super high and in the future you will feel much better taking on anything. Even when you fail at winning the bet, assuming you worked you ass off and tried your best, you will have a better understanding of what hard work in poker is. The confidence I have gained myself is something that will probably stick with me forever.
The easiest way to get a prop bet started is to come up with an idea and ask your friends what they think about it and if they want to make a small/big wager against. It might be something that you can compete against each other and that way you both push each other. Another way to get action is to post on the poker forum that you frequent and see if anyone is interested in betting against you. You will need set in place rules, a reliable escrow to hold the money, and a judge(s) to handle any problems that might come up for most prop bets. I think coming up with challenges that you and your friends can do is one of the best sources of motivation that exist in poker (outside of someone saying you don't understand the game you frequently play).
If you are at the small/micro stakes level and want to get your name out there, doing something crazy is the best way to do it. I know some people don't play poker to get any sort of recognition and only play for the money but I think most people enjoy being recognized for something. It can be a great way for you to meet new people that might be following along or that play in the same games you do. I met my San Diego roommate (without him I never would have moved to California) during my first prop bet when we started chatting on twoplustwo and then on Skype when we found out we lived close by. Networking like this can be important for your growth as a poker player. It can also be stepping stones to having a podcast that people enjoy watching .
I don't think most of this will be new information for the mid/high stakes guys out there but for the recreational/micro/small stakes guys this should be something you seriously consider doing more of. I think even for the more established players, taking on something very challenging could be what you need to bring back the passion for the game you once had. If anyone has any questions about anything, it could be a prop bet you have in mind or you might need a judge for your prop bet. Feel free to message me here in the comments, private messages or on twitter @joeingram1 or on facebook.
I also have a standing prop bet offer to anyone in the world for any type of PLO volume competition on Pokerstars
I was watching a video yesterday and a person mentioned how most people that start a business only focus on the short term roi and completely neglect long term roi (return on investment). I've never really said it in that way but I talk about this idea in a different way often with my girlfriend. I talk about how if I work really really really hard now, it will pay off huge in the long term. I can say this confidently now because this is the exact approach I took when I started playing poker about 6 years ago. People who are friends with me on facebook or follow me on twitter saw a point in time where I constantly talked about partying or raging non stop. I had spent the previous 4 years playing poker 8-10 hours/day and thinking about poker 24 hours/day with the idea that if I worked hard enough now, eventually I would be in an extremely comfortable place and be able to take a break and live life. I probably went out to really drink less than 10 times in my life before this point of my life. I lived out the stage of my life that most people experience when they are 18-23 but I was able to do it all around the world and do whatever I wanted to do.
I may have taken it a bit overboard but the lesson I indirectly taught myself is something I am able to apply again now to my life. The idea that if you work extremely hard, harder than anyone else around you, right now....you will put yourself in a position to have an extreme level of success. Doing this does require sacrifice and that is something most people do not know how to do. I've had many poker friends over the years who only looked at the short term who are now unable to play anymore, wishing they worked harder when they had the chance. I think its hard for most people to have that outlook who haven't achieved any success with what they are going for. Most people tend to not have the self-confidence and belief that it can be done. I've started applying this to learning basketball, how to dance, and playing instruments in the past months but I probably wouldn't have been able to had I not had the success with poker. The confidence you get from knowing you can do something if you really put in the work is real. I wish I knew how I was able to instill this into others that I talk about it with but all I can advise to people is that if you have the belief in yourself, put in the time and you give yourself a greater chance success will come.
You can apply this to poker and you can also apply this to anything you are doing with life
I think I meant for this to be longer but I don't get motivated to write much like this so I wanted to take the opportunity to put something down while I did
Thanks for the feedback I received on my last blog post talking about the 300 buyins in 31 days prop bet . A couple people had some really good ideas that I had previously thought about a bit and started thinking more about after. I do have an approach in my mind I would take but it would probably not be smart to post about it in regards to possibly getting action. I have a few different prop bet ideas I am thinking about trying but the first step is to officially get out of the country, my lease here in the states is up at the end of August and I need to decide in a couple weeks what I will be doing.
I've blogged on here about a couple of my podcasts and this time I wanted to write more about my latest podcast I did with the airport scammer Michael Borovetz. His story intially came to light on a 2p2 post http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/...-mccarran-airport-6-22-14-a-1454252/. The cliffs note version of it all is, he tries to scam someone at the airport for money with a sob story, he has apparently done this in the past many many times and it is posted about on the internet. He comes into the thread and tells his epic life story. Graduation from Penn State, developing a full blown gambling addiction, begging for money in casinos, living on the streets, losing multiple jobs, multiple felonies, scamming at the airport and a bunch of other fun things. At some point the sports website Deadspin http://deadspin.com/poker-addict-and-...mmer-spills-his-life-story-1598124425 linked to his story and the thread on 2p2 and it exploded even further with people giving there opinions on both sides of the spectrum.
I had been following the story a bit and was intrigued/entertained by it all. It seemed like people had a lot of questions and wanted to know more about this guy and I thought it was unlikely anyone else would try to have him on for a podcast/interview. I decided it would be a good idea if I tried to get him on a Poker Life podcast. This is certainly not the usual type of person I would have on any of my podcasts so far but I thought it would be a good opportunity to branch out a bit and try something new. Normally I bring a pretty high energy and joking attitude but I think this situation was better served with me being a bit more mellow and letting him dominate the discussion while trying to maintain a serious tone.
Overall I think it went pretty well and the feedback I received in the thread on 2p2 was positive. Someone mentioned I said "you know" and "obviously" a million times. It tilted me so hard as I was editing every time I said either one but I kept it in. The subject we were speaking about is something I am not super familiar with and I think when I get a bit nervous or am not 100 percent confident in what I am saying I start trying to validate it with "you know". Will try to improve on that in the future.
As for the episode, Part 1 is Mike explaining his life story that was posted in the thread. I think the ridiculousness of the story is one of the reasons the thread took on a life of its own. I was following along with the story in the thread while he retold it and mentioned if this was something he had memorized and used in the past because word for word it was the same. About half way through I decided to start leading the story by saying, "so then you were homeless" "then you went to vegas" etc...
In part 2 I asked him some questions people posted in the thread and we had some pretty good back and forth about what the future holds and how to escape this life he has known for so long. If you only listen to one of these I would suggest part 2.
I was coming on here to reply to comments left on my last blog where I said Hello but after reading Defrag's comment I was inspired to write something. I've said a few different times over the years that I would like to start blogging more but inevitably it never actually ends up happening I am going to try this again as I am going to get started on a new project which will require me to start writing much much more
I was just at the gym working on my basketball game while listening to one of my fave podcast series by James Altucher. I can't quite pinpoint what was said by a guest he had on but it inspired me to write about a prop bet I have mentioned a couple times on the forums and briefly on twitter.
The prop bet I was thinking of trying was trying to make either 300 or 400 buyins at either 50plo or 100plo on Pokerstars in a 31 day time period. Those that are not familiar with online PLO will have no idea if this is hard or how hard it actually is but to my knowledge no one has ever had this amount of buyins at these limits before. One of the reasons for this is because anyone that could ever make that much at these stakes would surely move up before the end of the month. Everyone I have talked to about doing this says with the rake I have absolutely no chance of succeeding at it. Another of the reasons is that the rake bb/100 at these limits is so high that it really makes it hard for anyone to win pre-rake. I do believe that this plays a pretty large part in the success of people playing these limits but I also think its very over blown in the SSPLO community on 2p2 just how big of a factor rake at low stakes plays. I think it is in everyone's best nature to continue to argue this point on the forums in hopes that at some point the poker sites might actually do something about it and lower the rake but I also think that many people will read all this doom & gloom being posted and get turned off to the idea of even trying to make it at the game. Yes the rake does suck at these limits compared to NL but its very very beatable and with some hard work it can be done. I think attempting this prop bet might show people to stop reading all the negative things people repeat nonstop but instead see what I was able to do and know that it is very possible to make money at these stakes while getting better and moving up the ranks at some point.
I've thought about the actual chances of being able to do this and to be honest I really have no idea if I could actually do it. In every prop bet I've tried I had no idea if I could do it going into it. I am pretty confident I could get some action at this bet at 3-1 but I am not really sure if I want to gamble it up that much with the most likely outcome being that I don't succeed and in the process costing me money that I would otherwise make grinding my normal stakes and hours.
My question I have for you guys is if you were going to try to make 300-400 buyins in 31 days at 50PLO, what would be your strategy to do it? Assuming it is all normal tables (no zoom or HU tables) but you could play deep games and also start tables. Would you try to maximize your hands/hr and play many many hands in that month while going for a lower winrate? Would you split up your sessions into different ones or would you try to grind out one big one/build up big stacks on tables? Assuming you COULD play 24 tables at once competently, would you do that for many hr/s per day, set a goal of xxx,xxx thousands of hands for the month and then adjust depending on how the results were going? Would you want to do it at 50plo or 100plo?? It is a pretty simple task but there are so many ways you could attack it from a strategic stand point. If only Urubu would have had 1 strategy going into his prop bet maybe he wouldn't have given up
Posting this here for 2 reasons. First as a brag, thought it was pretty cool that I came across a problem with some real world applications and was able to improve on the solution for the simplest case. And second cause there are some really smart mathematicians here (catyoul for instance and others) who may want to run with my algorithm and apply it to the more general cases or come up with even better algorithms than I have.
Was doing my normal web surfing last week and came across the secretary problem, something I had never heard of before.
" imagine an administrator willing to hire the best secretary out of n rankable applicants for a position. The applicants are interviewed one-by-one in random order. A decision about each particular applicant is to be made immediately after the interview. Once rejected, an applicant cannot be recalled. During the interview, the administrator can rank the applicant among all applicants interviewed so far, but is unaware of the quality of yet unseen applicants. The question is about the optimal strategy (stopping rule) to maximize the probability of selecting the best applicant. If the decision can be deferred to the end, this can be solved by the simple maximum selection algorithm of tracking the running maximum (and who achieved it), and selecting the overall maximum at the end. The difficulty is that the decision must be made immediately."
When I read the solution I was at first impressed by it's mathematical beauty: Reject the first n/e applicants, choose the next best applicant after that or choose the last one. this gives a probability of 1/e of delivering the best applicant.
But on second thought it seemed rather risky. When the best applicant occurs in the first n/e spots, the last applicant is always the one chosen. Which means ~36.8% of the time you get a random choice between the worst and 2nd best applicant. It's likely that the applicants are normally distributed about an average number, and while the best applicant may be a standard deviation above the 2nd best or next group of best applicants, the worst applicant might be just as far on the other side of the spectrum or worse. This could be really disastrous.
For example, the most likely real world application of this problem is in dating. Sure you dont know exactly what N will be, but you date a certain number of girls and then eventually you choose one to settle down with. If you wait a while and refuse to settle for someone worse than your first set of applicants, you may end up getting stuck with a real shitty girl at an older age.
I thought I could immediately improve the solution to this problem. My solution was fairly simple: iterate this same process. Go through first n/e applicants, write down max, reject those. now there are n - n/e applicants. look through next (n-n/e)/e applicants, if you find a better one in there you choose it, if not you write down the max from that group, etc. iterated on to the end where you just go 1 at a time.
I programmed a simple version of both in python. I ranked secretaries 0-99, randomized their order and used each method to test the % choosing best applicant, the median applicant chosen and the average applicant chosen.
#Original secretary problem solution based on 100 secretaries and just on the ranking of secretaries from 1-100
#want to figure out both average ranking chosen and how often the best candidate is chosen
#function which sorts a list
def sortedRankings(sec):
x=0
while x <99:
import random
from random import randint
a = random.randint(x,99)
temp = sec[x]
sec[x] = sec[a]
sec[a] = temp
x = x+1
return sec
#function which returns a secretary based on original algorithm
def chooseSecretary(sec):
max=sec[0]
x=1
while x<36:
if (sec[x] > max):
max = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<99:
if (sec[x] > max):
return sec[x]
x=x+1
#sort winners
a=0
while a<1000:
b=a
min=100
minLocation=-1
while b<1000:
if(min > winners[b]):
min = winners[b]
minLocation=b
b=b+1
temp=winners[a]
winners[a]=winners[minLocation]
winners[minLocation]=temp
a=a+1
print winners
print winners[499]
results: Ran the simulation 1000 times. The best secretary was chosen 375 times. The median secretary chosen was the 2nd best. The average choice was the 18th best. And roughly 3.5% of the time a bottom 10 secretary was chosen.
#function which sorts a list
def sortedRankings(sec):
x=0
while x <99:
import random
from random import randint
a = random.randint(x,99)
temp = sec[x]
sec[x] = sec[a]
sec[a] = temp
x = x+1
return sec
#function which returns a secretary based on original algorithm
def chooseSecretary(sec):
max=sec[0]
max2=0
max3=0
max4=0
max5=0
max6=0
max7=0
max8=0
max9=0
max10=0
x=1
while x<36:
if (sec[x] > max):
max = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<60:
if (sec[x] > max):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max2):
max2 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<74:
if (sec[x] > max2):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max3):
max3 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<84:
if (sec[x] > max3):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max4):
max4 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<90:
if (sec[x] > max4):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max5):
max5 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<93:
if (sec[x] > max5):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max6):
max6 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<95:
if (sec[x] > max6):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max7):
max7 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<97:
if (sec[x] > max7):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max8):
max8 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<98:
if (sec[x] > max8):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max9):
max9 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<99:
if (sec[x] > max9):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max10):
max10 = sec[x]
x=x+1
#sort winners
a=0
while a<1000:
b=a
min=100
minLocation=-1
while b<1000:
if(min > winners[b]):
min = winners[b]
minLocation=b
b=b+1
temp=winners[a]
winners[a]=winners[minLocation]
winners[minLocation]=temp
a=a+1
print winners
print winners[499]
Results: ran 1000 times. best chosen 263. 3rd best was median choice. average: 4th best. worst chosen: 50th best.
this seems much much better. of course i didnt program it for random values in a normal distribution, nor did i program it for the more likely real world scenario of an unknown N. but this clearly seems like a much better solution despite the fact that the original solution chooses the best secretary ~10% more often.
So, if you guys would like, run with this in the more general forms or try and come up with an even better solution.
Posting this here for 2 reasons. First as a brag, thought it was pretty cool that I came across a problem with some real world applications and was able to improve on the solution for the simplest case. And second cause there are some really smart mathematicians here (catyoul for instance and others) who may want to run with my algorithm and apply it to the more general cases or come up with even better algorithms than I have.
Was doing my normal web surfing last week and came across the secretary problem, something I had never heard of before.
" imagine an administrator willing to hire the best secretary out of n rankable applicants for a position. The applicants are interviewed one-by-one in random order. A decision about each particular applicant is to be made immediately after the interview. Once rejected, an applicant cannot be recalled. During the interview, the administrator can rank the applicant among all applicants interviewed so far, but is unaware of the quality of yet unseen applicants. The question is about the optimal strategy (stopping rule) to maximize the probability of selecting the best applicant. If the decision can be deferred to the end, this can be solved by the simple maximum selection algorithm of tracking the running maximum (and who achieved it), and selecting the overall maximum at the end. The difficulty is that the decision must be made immediately."
When I read the solution I was at first impressed by it's mathematical beauty: Reject the first n/e applicants, choose the next best applicant after that or choose the last one. this gives a probability of 1/e of delivering the best applicant.
But on second thought it seemed rather risky. When the best applicant occurs in the first n/e spots, the last applicant is always the one chosen. Which means ~36.8% of the time you get a random choice between the worst and 2nd best applicant. It's likely that the applicants are normally distributed about an average number, and while the best applicant may be a standard deviation above the 2nd best or next group of best applicants, the worst applicant might be just as far on the other side of the spectrum or worse. This could be really disastrous.
For example, the most likely real world application of this problem is in dating. Sure you dont know exactly what N will be, but you date a certain number of girls and then eventually you choose one to settle down with. If you wait a while and refuse to settle for someone worse than your first set of applicants, you may end up getting stuck with a real shitty girl at an older age.
I thought I could immediately improve the solution to this problem. My solution was fairly simple: iterate this same process. Go through first n/e applicants, write down max, reject those. now there are n - n/e applicants. look through next (n-n/e)/e applicants, if you find a better one in there you choose it, if not you write down the max from that group, etc. iterated on to the end where you just go 1 at a time.
I programmed a simple version of both in python. I ranked secretaries 0-99, randomized their order and used each method to test the % choosing best applicant, the median applicant chosen and the average applicant chosen.
#Original secretary problem solution based on 100 secretaries and just on the ranking of secretaries from 1-100
#want to figure out both average ranking chosen and how often the best candidate is chosen
#function which sorts a list
def sortedRankings(sec):
x=0
while x <99:
import random
from random import randint
a = random.randint(x,99)
temp = sec[x]
sec[x] = sec[a]
sec[a] = temp
x = x+1
return sec
#function which returns a secretary based on original algorithm
def chooseSecretary(sec):
max=sec[0]
x=1
while x<36:
if (sec[x] > max):
max = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<99:
if (sec[x] > max):
return sec[x]
x=x+1
#sort winners
a=0
while a<1000:
b=a
min=100
minLocation=-1
while b<1000:
if(min > winners[b]):
min = winners[b]
minLocation=b
b=b+1
temp=winners[a]
winners[a]=winners[minLocation]
winners[minLocation]=temp
a=a+1
print winners
print winners[499]
results: Ran the simulation 1000 times. The best secretary was chosen 375 times. The median secretary chosen was the 2nd best. The average choice was the 18th best. And roughly 3.5% of the time a bottom 10 secretary was chosen.
#function which sorts a list
def sortedRankings(sec):
x=0
while x <99:
import random
from random import randint
a = random.randint(x,99)
temp = sec[x]
sec[x] = sec[a]
sec[a] = temp
x = x+1
return sec
#function which returns a secretary based on original algorithm
def chooseSecretary(sec):
max=sec[0]
max2=0
max3=0
max4=0
max5=0
max6=0
max7=0
max8=0
max9=0
max10=0
x=1
while x<36:
if (sec[x] > max):
max = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<60:
if (sec[x] > max):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max2):
max2 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<74:
if (sec[x] > max2):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max3):
max3 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<84:
if (sec[x] > max3):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max4):
max4 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<90:
if (sec[x] > max4):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max5):
max5 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<93:
if (sec[x] > max5):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max6):
max6 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<95:
if (sec[x] > max6):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max7):
max7 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<97:
if (sec[x] > max7):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max8):
max8 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<98:
if (sec[x] > max8):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max9):
max9 = sec[x]
x=x+1
while x<99:
if (sec[x] > max9):
return sec[x]
if (sec[x] > max10):
max10 = sec[x]
x=x+1
#sort winners
a=0
while a<1000:
b=a
min=100
minLocation=-1
while b<1000:
if(min > winners[b]):
min = winners[b]
minLocation=b
b=b+1
temp=winners[a]
winners[a]=winners[minLocation]
winners[minLocation]=temp
a=a+1
print winners
print winners[499]
Results: ran 1000 times. best chosen 263. 3rd best was median choice. average: 4th best. worst chosen: 50th best.
this seems much much better. of course i didnt program it for random values in a normal distribution, nor did i program it for the more likely real world scenario of an unknown N. but this clearly seems like a much better solution despite the fact that the original solution chooses the best secretary ~10% more often.
So, if you guys would like, run with this in the more general forms or try and come up with an even better solution.
When I was a teenager, I had basically three interests:
1) Starcraft (ever since I was 12-13)
2) Poker (since I was 17)
3) MMA (since I was 14-15, trained first time when I was 16).
Anyway, after I quit playing Sc2 professionally, I quickly found myself missing some kind of competitive outlet. A new MMA gym had opened up near me like 2-3 months prior, and I'd been going on and off... but around July last year I decided to get a lot more serious.
I'd been out with an injury for like 1-2 months and at the time I was about 90kg, 180~ cm. So I started training 5 days a week, 3~ hours a day... And yesterday I had my first fight, weighing in at around 77 kg.
I blunk
The event is hosted by Top FC which is Korea's second biggest MMA organization behind Road FC (who also has their own amateur divsion, called Central League I think), and uses the moniker "Top FC Khan Amateur League". This was its 4th iteration.
The rules are quite friendly:
- 2x 3 minute rounds
- Headgear, 14 oz gloves*, shinguards
- No heelhooks, no knees or elbows to the head but OK to the body.
Rest is the same as pro mma, but referees try to stop fights much faster if a submission is on, to avoid serious injuries in an amateur event.
* They told us last minute that from now on we'd be able to opt for MMA gloves if we wanted to but I dont think anyone did since it was a last minute change and everyone had been sparring with bigger gloves.
ONE MORE REP YOU CAN DO IT... More seriously, rules meeting
The gameplan
When I first came to this gym, I had a little bit of grappling skill, but my striking was HORRIBLE. I'm still not a really competent striker (but I'd say I'm one of the best 3 or so regular students in terms of ground grappling --- then there's obviously the coaches and a couple of higher level guys who are a bunch better too), but I've made improvements. My cardio is also excellent since I train for so long every day and I run in addition to that.
So to summarize: striking relatively poor, grappling relatively good, cardio good. I also don't have much power in my strikes, which I need to work on.
I've got really long arms and legs for my size, and since my most glaring weakness striking wise is exchanges in the pocket, the gameplan my coaches made for me was as follows:
- Stay on the outside, use a lot of circling, use your jab and kicks to maintain distance.
- When he closes, clinch!
Oh and I've got a bit of a tendency to be too timid when sparring, and walk back too much, so I've been trying to work on that, alongside a gameplan that can work around that.
The opponent
Before the fight I didn't know much about him, except that he's a striker. Oh and that he looks a lot like Reis :D
After the fight I talked to him tho and found out he's 32 (I thiiiiink, maybe 31? cant remember), been training for a similiar time to me (a little less in mma, but he's done some boxing before), and funnily enough the dude is friends with one of the guys that trains where I train (neither of us had any idea about this until we talked tho).
The Fight
The Aftermath
In case you want to watch the fight before you read this, I'll spoiler it. + Show Spoiler +
So I lost, but I'm actually pretty happy with how I did. Before the fight I wasnt at all sure if I would want to do this again, whereas now I'm 100% sure I do.
The biggest thing I take away from this is a newfound appreciation for gameplans - watching the fight back I can really tell where I followed the gameplan and did well, and where I strayed and did worse.
Here's some things that went right/wrong:
Right:
- Clinch was good, he didn't know how to shoulder out of the thai plum. I should have tried for it a bit more probably.
- I kept distance... decently, not as well as in practice but decently. Front kick worked well.
Wrong:
- My coach has been trying to get me to take smaller steps when I punch, and I think I fell back into stepping too far with my jab, and stranding my back leg a little.
- I completely forgot to even try the main takedown I practiced from the clinch :D Instead I went for a silly un-practiced trip.
- Didn't jab enough!
- I think I tensed my shoulders a bit, because my arms gassed really hard in round 2, which I've never had happen before.
- Forgot to slow down my breathing when on the outside.
- When backstepping I only single stepped too much! I actually worked hard on making sure I always 2 stepped when I was training since there's a huge difference between backstep-circle and backstep, backstep, circle.
- The first low kick I throw, you can see it lands really slow. It's because when I stepped forward for my jab, I didn't follow it with my right leg properly.
Things I learned:
- I've never trained in a ring before, our gym has a cage! In round 2 when we are at the ropes, and I'm defending the takedown... I kind of froze because I had no idea how much pressure I could put on the ropes without falling haha. Also arms were so tired.
- When you are on your back and wearing headgear, the nose-guard blocks your downward vision, I couldnt see his legs haha. I wanted to do a situp sweep but I couldn't tell where the fuck his legs were. I definitely didn't roll enough with headgear.
- Too compartmentalized sparring. Because my standup is weak, I think I did a bit too much pure striking sparring... I think this is maybe why my arms got so tired. Next time I'll work more full MMA sparring.
- Nutshots are very painful.
I'm also gonna add some muscle for next time, I've been cutting for a long time just to get rid of all the fat, now its time to build up a bit
Oh and I guess you could put lack of combination punching in there somewhere, but it was actually part of the gameplan to not do that, since it necessitates remaining in the pocket a bit and we wanted to avoid that as much as possible. But in terms of training its definitely on the to do list hehe
Ah and headmovement! It's something I definitely want to work a lot on. I only really used any headmovement once in the fight haha
Various other things:
- One guy broke or separated his knee, didnt see how it happened but he had to be carried out on a stretcher. Looked reallly painful
- One of my team mates (the guy just above me in the pic below) is a beast. He looks like he's asleep in there then BOOM cracking thunder, boom submission. So relaxed haha.
Hey guys, I haven't blogged yet about the PLO podcasts that I have been doing for a couple of months now. I wanted to talk a bit more about the idea I originally had, the process so far, feedback I've gotten and what I hope to do with them in the future.
I wrote about the website idea I had a couple months back and with that I have been wanting to do some type of podcast for a long time now. I had wanted it to be focused on PLO because there isn't anything else out there that PLO players can listen to that is specific for the game. I'm not one to get in depth about poker strategy, as I have written about on my blog before. I decided that I would try to do a podcast focused around high stakes hands posted on 2plus2 in the NVG high stakes thread and would sometimes take hands posted in the PLO specific forums. I started doing the first one and went for a bit of strategy talk, level 1 type of stuff, and focus more on trying to make it entertaining. As I have alot of experiences with almost every player I had some good and bad things to say about almost every player in the hands I choose to post. I was hoping to put together something that high stakes regs could enjoy watching but also something that small stakes regs and casual fans of PLO/poker in general would be able to enjoy. I think finding that balance could have been a difficult thing but I think so far I have been able to do that. I had hoped that people would start listening to it and then become interested in playing more PLO themselves. It has turned out this is what has been happening as I have gotten many messages on all my social media platforms from people asking questions, telling me about there experiences with the game so far, and more. The feedback overall has been really good and its encouraging moving forward with doing podcasts. I think some of them have been a bit long for people but my thinking is that if you want to watch it all you can, if you want to stop after 25 minutes you can do that also.
My initial intent was that I wanted everyone in the world to be playing PLO, its such a fun game.... who wouldn't want to play . I've been posting my videos on my youtube channel and they have been getting linked in both PLO forums on 2p2 and also there was a thread in NVG made where new episodes have been posted. I've tried to communicate with everyone who has given me feedback good or bad. I wanted to try to be as interactive with people that are taking the time to listen to these because thats how I have wanted people to be to me that I might be a fan of. The pokertube guys have been putting them up on there website as well and it has gotten some extra views. Overall I am very pleased with the number of views on youtube that I have been able to get with these. For the first couple of podcasts some websites wrote up articles about them and linked to them but I figured that would happen initially and then would not keep happening with future episodes. The goal moving forward is to continue putting out quality content and also be able to put more people onto the fact that they even exist. I haven't done the greatest job so far in terms staying on a consistent schedule and blogging about my experience so far with it which I need to work harder at.
I'm going to start doing podcasts with people outside of PLO and the WCG podcasts in hopes that I can ultimately attract new listeners to my PLOcasts. I'm actually recording my first podcast today with Bart Hanson. His longtime NL podcasts were something I listened to every single week for years when I was coming up in the poker world and with his live poker training site I think I will have alot good things to talk about with him that will make for a great conversation. My hope with this new series is that I can talk more with people who I find interesting and would like to know more about but also that fans of that person will want to hear more about. Hopefully those fans can enjoy my content and become fans of mine and the listeners to my podcasts will become fans of theirs. I actually have no idea if this is sound logic when it comes to this type of thing but we shall see. My main focus right now is still putting in 4-8 hours/day playing poker and with the results I've been having, I don't need to worry about trying to monetize any of this. That also has lead to me becoming pretty lackadaisical with putting out new episodes. I've been spending some weeks playing poker and basketball all day and never even thinking about doing podcasts. I think moving forward that if I want to have the most success possible with this I will need to nail down a better schedule and put in more effort staying on that.
That also leads to the question, what kind of success does this even lead to? What is the point of doing these? I have asked myself that a couple of times and I'm not even sure what it means to be a success in poker podcasting. Hoping that I can get as many people as possible into playing the game I intend to play for a long time to come is what I think about the most. I think that some good networking possibilities could come from it but that remains to be seen. I really enjoy doing them so far as I think most of the poker content being put out right now is pretty boring and I am hoping I can provide a bit of entertainment in other poker players lives, even if its only for an hour/week. I think I went more in depth on this whole subject than I initially intended to
Here is a link to the first high stakes PLO podcast I did. I started having a guest with my last podcast which featured krmont22. If you watch the first couple episodes, I tried to do a good job on building up some players more than others. The last episode with Krmont I started live streaming for people that wanted to listen to things unedited and people have really seemed to enjoy that. I fucked up on capturing the audio doing this (still noob at editing) so it ended up being a veryyyyyy long live stream version but for the people that can make it through it all, i think its really entertaing. In the future I hope to do many more with guests because I enjoy that format much more. I like getting to know my peers better and being able to showcase them a bit.
Hola LP world, I haven't written about any of my podcasts as of yet. I wanted to let you guys know about my 2nd podcast I have begun doing with WCGRider (link at bottom) and a bit of behind the scene idea's, thoughts, etc... that I have been having about the poker podcast world. I've already done a few episodes of a PLO podcast that I will be going a bit more in detail about soon on here but I am going to focus more on the WCG pod right now.
A couple of months back I had an idea to start doing podcasts, one forming around PLO hands, one around conversation style pertaining to the poker lifestyle/mindset/etc... and one where me/wcg rider do a 2 man podcast. We have known each other for about 6-7 years. Doug initially messaged me on 2p2 and asked me if I would be interested in being staked by him so that I would be able to move up a limit and also get some coaching. I had been posting some really sick 50nl and 100nl full ring graphs in the BBV forum and he looked for winning players that might be interested in playing a higher limit. I of course accepted and our poker relationship was born from that moment. We have stayed in touch over the years and hung out at different random times in different cities. He was in Chicago in December with his girlfriend and we did a double date while discussing this idea further. I think he is one of the most talked about people in the NL world right now but I think most of the talk that goes on is "i hate this mother fucker, he is a dbag." With some of the public comments he has made about being the best I can understand why many people might feel a certain type of way. I think a large percentage of the poker following population is also unaware of anything he did in poker/life before he started battling at high stakes HU which is also to be expected. By doing this podcast, I thought it would be a really great way for people out there to get to know more about him and also to get a better understanding of the poker journey to the top and that he isn't a complete asshole.
We decided to make it official and record our first podcast together a couple weeks ago. I started out with an outline of about 20 different potential talking points but I quickly realized we really wouldn't need any talking points because everything flowed out really well. I know that Doug is going to be the far more interesting person and the one that most people listening are going to want to hear so I decided to take a more interviewish approach to it but also including some ideas of my own on different topics. I noob'd it up in a couple different places over the first one but overall I really enjoyed that angle of things and I am really excited to start doing more with different people in poker. I'm hoping to stay away from the traditional "what is your poker story" angle and try to focus more on a bit more exciting things about the poker life.
I released this podcast last Thursday and overall the reception has been really good. I hope you guys enjoy the first episode and feedback good and bad is much appreciated. So far I think I've done a really good job on taking all feedback in and thinking about ways I can improve on my podcasting all around.
**I actually thought I would go more in-depth into my whole podcast mindset with things but I realized most of that is more relevant to the PLO write up , what happened to youtube videos automatically embedding in the posts??
I took my first BJJ lessons in the summer of 2008 with nazgul, mig, ket, tjbentham and a few other poker players. We only did 2 or 3 sessions but I really enjoyed it and decided to keep up with the sport after I left vegas. From that summer til probably about 6 months ago I continued training but at a very irregular pace. I would go 10x one month, suffer a small injury, take a few weeks off, then start traveling and somehow miss 8 months. Since then I have lived in new jersey, arizona, california, vancouver canada and spent a lot of time in vegas so it was hard to really get into a rhythm training wise. I would estimate over the 5 year period from september 2008 - september 2013 I probably only took about 200 classes. And since I took so many breaks and had so many months where id show up only 2-3x, I wasnt really getting any better. But the good thing was that I never really regressed.
A few months back I realized that where i live (southern california, specifically irvine in orange county) is basically the mecca for BJJ in the world. Most of the top guys are here and there are tons of great schools everywhere. I dont know how long I will be in california and I am not on the road as much as I once was so why not concentrate and try to put a lot of time and effort into the sport as I can while im in the best place in the world to study it? Especially since I have all the free time Id ever want. So I decided that any week where I was healthy id go in as much as I can.
this past week i finally got to put away my white belt for good.
Blue belt is probably the belt with the largest skill disparities between top to bottom (ignoring complete novice white belts). Some schools promote guys to blue belt super fast. For example, when I was up in vancouver I took a few classes at gracie barra vancouver, and they like to start guys out with quick promotions, so most people get their blue belt after 80 classes in order to keep newer practitioners excited about the sport. Consequently, when I was a 3 stripe white belt I was about equal to most of the 1 stripe blue belts there. Whereas some other schools refuse to promote and try to get their guys to world champion levels before giving them the next belt (mega sandbaggers)
Additionally, blue belt is by far the longest belt. Nobody gets a purple in less than 2 years and most guys need more than 3. So even though I am starting out a higher skill level than most new blue belts, there are 4 stripe blue belts who have 2-3 extra years experience on me and are much better. So now that I am starting to take it more seriously, there is still a large roadblock to competing at the blue belt level.
this week was the Pan American Championships, one of the bigger jiu jitsu gi tournaments in the world, and it was basically down the street from me. I had 3 teammates (one blue, 2 purple) and my professor (black) competing this year so I went out for the last 3 days and had a blast. My professor finished 3rd in the lightweight (168 and under) 29-34 year old black belt division which was pretty awesome to watch and the 2 purple belts did pretty well.
Even watching a teammate lose in the first round was a blast. So next year I am going to compete. The pan ams is the perfect tournament to do it. I am 29 right now (turning 30 next month) so ill be in a division with only 29-34 year olds, which means I likely wont be going up against some beast future world champion or ex college wrestler that just switched to BJJ and ill have a full year of blue belt to catch up in skill to the more advanced blues (and the top guys will be purple by then). Also its a big tournament so even though its a pretty small subdivision of the sport (29-34 year old, 169-181 pound blue belts) it still got 29 competitors this year.
Ill probably do a few smaller tournaments beforehand just to get the nerves of competing out of the way and to practice really going at full speed against someone of a similar skill level, but this will be the first tournament I really care about. 12 months to prepare, starting off the training right:
some pictures and videos of the guys from my academy:
round 1 match of my teammate jimmy (bearded guy), he ended up making it to the 3rd round/quarterfinals of the 29-34 168 pound purple division: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10106134351896514
round 2 match of my teammate chris, tough match against a guy whose strategy throughout was to get a sweep then basically stall out and it got him to at least a top 3 finish: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10106136535775004
a few pictures:
my professor is 2nd from the right:
I took my first BJJ lessons in the summer of 2008 with nazgul, mig, ket, tjbentham and a few other poker players. We only did 2 or 3 sessions but I really enjoyed it and decided to keep up with the sport after I left vegas. From that summer til probably about 6 months ago I continued training but at a very irregular pace. I would go 10x one month, suffer a small injury, take a few weeks off, then start traveling and somehow miss 8 months. Since then I have lived in new jersey, arizona, california, vancouver canada and spent a lot of time in vegas so it was hard to really get into a rhythm training wise. I would estimate over the 5 year period from september 2008 - september 2013 I probably only took about 200 classes. And since I took so many breaks and had so many months where id show up only 2-3x, I wasnt really getting any better. But the good thing was that I never really regressed.
A few months back I realized that where i live (southern california, specifically irvine in orange county) is basically the mecca for BJJ in the world. Most of the top guys are here and there are tons of great schools everywhere. I dont know how long I will be in california and I am not on the road as much as I once was so why not concentrate and try to put a lot of time and effort into the sport as I can while im in the best place in the world to study it? Especially since I have all the free time Id ever want. So I decided that any week where I was healthy id go in as much as I can.
this past week i finally got to put away my white belt for good.
Blue belt is probably the belt with the largest skill disparities between top to bottom (ignoring complete novice white belts). Some schools promote guys to blue belt super fast. For example, when I was up in vancouver I took a few classes at gracie barra vancouver, and they like to start guys out with quick promotions, so most people get their blue belt after 80 classes in order to keep newer practitioners excited about the sport. Consequently, when I was a 3 stripe white belt I was about equal to most of the 1 stripe blue belts there. Whereas some other schools refuse to promote and try to get their guys to world champion levels before giving them the next belt (mega sandbaggers)
Additionally, blue belt is by far the longest belt. Nobody gets a purple in less than 2 years and most guys need more than 3. So even though I am starting out a higher skill level than most new blue belts, there are 4 stripe blue belts who have 2-3 extra years experience on me and are much better. So now that I am starting to take it more seriously, there is still a large roadblock to competing at the blue belt level.
this week was the Pan American Championships, one of the bigger jiu jitsu gi tournaments in the world, and it was basically down the street from me. I had 3 teammates (one blue, 2 purple) and my professor (black) competing this year so I went out for the last 3 days and had a blast. My professor finished 3rd in the lightweight (168 and under) 29-34 year old black belt division which was pretty awesome to watch and the 2 purple belts did pretty well.
Even watching a teammate lose in the first round was a blast. So next year I am going to compete. The pan ams is the perfect tournament to do it. I am 29 right now (turning 30 next month) so ill be in a division with only 29-34 year olds, which means I likely wont be going up against some beast future world champion or ex college wrestler that just switched to BJJ and ill have a full year of blue belt to catch up in skill to the more advanced blues (and the top guys will be purple by then). Also its a big tournament so even though its a pretty small subdivision of the sport (29-34 year old, 169-181 pound blue belts) it still got 29 competitors this year.
Ill probably do a few smaller tournaments beforehand just to get the nerves of competing out of the way and to practice really going at full speed against someone of a similar skill level, but this will be the first tournament I really care about. 12 months to prepare, starting off the training right:
some pictures and videos of the guys from my academy:
round 1 match of my teammate jimmy (bearded guy), he ended up making it to the 3rd round/quarterfinals of the 29-34 168 pound purple division: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10106134351896514
round 2 match of my teammate chris, tough match against a guy whose strategy throughout was to get a sweep then basically stall out and it got him to at least a top 3 finish: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10106136535775004
a few pictures:
my professor is 2nd from the right:
. I lived there and it took me about 1-2 years of hard work to really become good enough at poker to make 
Especially this year.
. A couple people had some really good ideas that I had previously thought about a bit and started thinking more about after. I do have an approach in my mind I would take but it would probably not be smart to post about it in regards to possibly getting action. I have a few different prop bet ideas I am thinking about trying but the first step is to officially get out of the country, my lease here in the states is up at the end of August and I need to decide in a couple weeks what I will be doing. 
I am going to try this again as I am going to get started on a new project which will require me to start writing much much more 
. I've been posting my videos on my youtube channel and they have been getting linked in both PLO forums on 2p2 and also there was a thread in NVG made where new episodes have been posted. I've tried to communicate with everyone who has given me feedback good or bad. I wanted to try to be as interactive with people that are taking the time to listen to these because thats how I have wanted people to be to me that I might be a fan of. The pokertube guys have been putting them up on there website as well and it has gotten some extra views. Overall I am very pleased with the number of views on youtube that I have been able to get with these. For the first couple of podcasts some websites wrote up articles about them and linked to them but I figured that would happen initially and then would not keep happening with future episodes. The goal moving forward is to continue putting out quality content and also be able to put more people onto the fact that they even exist. I haven't done the greatest job so far in terms staying on a consistent schedule and blogging about my experience so far with it which I need to work harder at.
