How do you measure productivity as a poker player?
Joeingram1, March 05
I've been thinking about this so much these past couple months but I can't really come up with a good answer that makes me happy about it. The idea of what should we be doing to consider ourselves being productive as a poker player. I think for a long time in my early poker years, I measured this only by did I play alot of hours/hands today, hopefully I won some money. As time went on that started to shift over to have I been winning money which gradually turned into have I been playing well/winning money.
In the past couple months I've been having really great results playing but I feel like I have been not very productive. In the months before that I felt like I was being really productive in terms of putting in the hours but with not so good results. So if you are playing 8-10 hours/day and making a small amount or playing 1-3 hours a day and making a large amount, is one more productive than the other? The only thing that matters for results in poker is making money....I haven't been able to justify working on other things/doing absolutely nothing with my time just because I am having big winning months. I think I feel more happy with myself and feel a better sense of achievement if I struggle for 8-10 hours a day playing. You could then argue, well why don't you just play 8-10 hours a day if you are winning but that is a completely different argument which is much much easier in theory than actuality.
I think you can also take into account how much time you spend working with PPT (poker equity program), reviewing hand histories, watching poker videos, talking poker with friends to decide if you are being productive but the less hours I play in a day the less hours I will work on any of this.
I've been able to be extremely productive outside of poker which could be argued has actually helped me be more productive in a shorter time at poker. There are really so many hours in the day you can spend playing basketball, working out, cooking, doing yoga, practicing dance, playing guitar/piano, stretching. I'm pretty sure I still spend hours and hours a day browsing random things on the internet but I'm not sure I should have expectations on myself to be working on something every minute I am awake. Maybe some mindless browsing is good each day.
If I was a professional live poker player and was trying to figure all of this out I would get sad. For most live players that go to the casino 5-7 times a week for 6+ hours a day... I can't imagine they feel much productivity with any part of there life. Even trying to think about having to do this makes me feel a certain type of way. You could argue that comparing a live poker player profession to many other professions where you get a similar type of feeling and make less money would even be worse. I would agree
This whole idea of productivity is something I never really have given much thought to but I know there are plenty of other poker players out there who probably have and can answer this question much better than I can. Hopefully I'll be able to take away something from someone else out there that I can incorporate into my own mindset.
This morning I went on a long twitter rant about how party poker had screwed its customers over in 2013 (shameless plug to my twitter https://twitter.com/rcdaut ) 140 characters at a time isnt enough to describe what party poker has done to its customers in the past 12 months. I've made short rants about them before, but I wanted to go into more detail here so people could get a better idea of what has happened.
CLIFFS:
imagine if stars got rid of supernova elite on short notice, removed every bonus above the 100k VPP level, changed the $1600 for 100k fpp bonus to $8k for 500k FPP and gave it a long play through requirement, segregated their player base and started charging a 3% flat fee on cashouts using the most popular cashout method. That is what party did in an 8 month period.
Decreased bonuses and made them harder to clear with very little notice
I started grinding party in December 2012. I was having a pretty rough month on stars and decided to try party out looking for better games. The first thing I did after depositing was study the VIP system party had. It was all based on their version of frequent player points. Every dollar paid in rake gets you 2 party points. Accumulating a certain number of party points in either a month or 3 month period put you into VIP levels. In order to reach the highest level of Palladium Elite, a player would have to earn 20,000 points in a 3 month period which equates to $10,000 paid in rake. The second highest level was Palladium which could be reached with 9,000 points in a 3 month period ($4500 rake).
Being in the higher VIP levels had advantages, particularly being able to purchase bonuses that returned a higher percentage of rake. Their top bonus was a 300,000 point bonus worth $75k. This equates to 50% rakeback since it takes $150k rake paid to accumulate 300k points. I dont remember the exact details on how long it took to clear old bonuses, but I believe they were released in 5 installments of $X for X points. i.e. for each $15k installment of the $75k bonus, a player would have to accumulate 15k points ($7500 rake paid). This bonus takes a long time to reach: about 83.33% of the volume of reaching Supernova Elite on stars to buy the bonus, and another $37500 in rake paid to fully clear the bonus.
If you didnt want to wait that long to clear a bonus, they had smaller bonus options that you could clear more often at a lower rate. You could also buy bonuses that didnt require any points to clear at a lower rate. I used the way back machine to find their old bonuses:
As you can see, there were lots of options to receive 30%+ rakeback, and the 30% option took $10k rake paid to buy and (i believe) another $1500 rake paid to clear.
Early in 2013, with very little notice, Party announced it was doing away with all bonuses that gave greater than 30% rakeback out. As a new customer this didnt affect me as I had very points accumulated at that time, but there were players who were working towards the larger bonuses and were sufficiently far away that they would not be able to reach it before the bonus was removed from the point store.
Really gotta feel for the party grinders who were halfway to reaching those big bonuses and had to settle for 10-20% less rakeback than they were working towards.
Fast forward to today, the bonuses are significantly worse. To buy a 30% bonus now you have to pay 100k points for a $15k bonus which takes 90k points to fully clear in 2 installments. So lets compare the old 30% rakeback bonuses to today's side by side:
old bonus: 20k points to purchase 3k bonus, five installments of $600 cleared after $300 rake paid for each installment. Under this system it takes $10300 rake paid to start seeing money back. current bonus: 100k points to purchase 15k bonus, two installments of $7500 after $22500 rake paid for each installment. So it takes $72500 rake paid to see any money with this new system. Under the old system you could have purchased a 40% rakeback bonus and received YOUR ENTIRE $20k BONUS quicker than you would receive your first $7500 under the new system for a 30% rakeback bonus.
Removed Monthy Promotions
This part isnt really a shady management decision, its their prerogative on what promotions they will offer their customers, but its definitely made it much less enticing to put volume in on party. The first month I was on party, they were running a promotion called Advent Calender.
I dont remember the exact details of it, but basically you would receive little gifts after a certain number of points accumulated. So if you were the lowest VIP level, you would receive a very small gift every say 25 points cleared. These gifts would be something like entry to a freeroll or a $1 bonus. If you were the next VIP level you would receive those gifts AND a slightly better gift (sometimes $3 bonuses or 5 free points) every 50 points for your level. This went up all the levels, so if you were palladium elite you were receiving all these gifts all month long. I only reached the 3rd highest VIP level that month, but I think I ended up receiving over $250 extra back in points and bonuses for maybe $3k paid in rake that month. An extra 10% rakeback was really nice.
The following months they ran a few other really nice promotions.
World domination: http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/partypo...ves-world-domination-promotion-23226/
This one was really great. Sure it was pretty much impossible to get certain cities, but even clearing a country or continent gave nice extra bonuses. I paid >$250 in rake almost every day i was able to play that month trying to get new cities.
Fast Forward Promotion:
fast forward is party's version of zoom/rush poker. They didnt run PLO or bigger than .25/.5 NL, but you could earn up to $100 extra a week in this promotion.
Since WSOP I dont remember party running any worthwhile promotions. They give away tickets to freerolls, but thats about it.
Player Segregation
Not gonna go too into detail on this because apparently it was eventually reversed in November, but basically if you were a high winrate player they made certain games with fish invisible to you. Proof of it happening:
Instituted 3% flat cashout fee to skrill/neteller and other e-wallet sites WITHOUT NOTICE
This was a big one. One day party just started charging 3% on all cashouts to skrill and other sites like neteller and webmoney. I had no other withdrawal options. I dont have player transfers on party, RBC closed my canadian bank account for being a poker player, and the same happened in other banks to other players, and I no longer have an apartment in Canada. After initially moving there for 6 months to get set up on sites, I just travel to Canada to grind online and rent places on airbnb. Skrill was my only option, and instituting this effectively stole 3% of the money I had on the site.
All in all Party is no longer a place I wish to grind due to all of these changes which is sad because for the first few months last year it was my favorite site to play on. The first few months on the site I was probably averaging about 50k hands, 6k profit, 6k rake paid. Basically I was making 6k + 2k rakeback = 8k a month + an extra $250-500 in their nice promotions. Assuming the same winrate, that would now decrease to 6k profit + 1200 rakeback (i bought the 20% bonus to clear my points and get off the site) = 7200*.97 = 6984, a decrease of ~1250-1500 for the same amount of volume. For higher limit players that made more money or guys that put in significantly more volume than me, this was definitely much much worse.
Releasing new software and in exchange wrecking the bonus system, no longer offering good promotions and taking 3% of every cashout is not a fair trade. I realize party will never offer the bonuses they used to, but in order to make right with customers they should cease charging the 3% cashout fee, start offering better monthly promotions than virtually worthless freerolls and to give reward bonuses to customers who put in lots of volume last year while they were busy screwing everyone over.
Note: This has nothing to do with party poker NJ. All of these changes were put into place before party was even up and running in NJ.
This morning I went on a long twitter rant about how party poker had screwed its customers over in 2013 (shameless plug to my twitter https://twitter.com/rcdaut ) 140 characters at a time isnt enough to describe what party poker has done to its customers in the past 12 months. I've made short rants about them before, but I wanted to go into more detail here so people could get a better idea of what has happened.
CLIFFS:
imagine if stars got rid of supernova elite on short notice, removed every bonus above the 100k VPP level, changed the $1600 for 100k fpp bonus to $8k for 500k FPP and gave it a long play through requirement, segregated their player base and started charging a 3% flat fee on cashouts using the most popular cashout method. That is what party did in an 8 month period.
Decreased bonuses and made them harder to clear with very little notice
I started grinding party in December 2012. I was having a pretty rough month on stars and decided to try party out looking for better games. The first thing I did after depositing was study the VIP system party had. It was all based on their version of frequent player points. Every dollar paid in rake gets you 2 party points. Accumulating a certain number of party points in either a month or 3 month period put you into VIP levels. In order to reach the highest level of Palladium Elite, a player would have to earn 20,000 points in a 3 month period which equates to $10,000 paid in rake. The second highest level was Palladium which could be reached with 9,000 points in a 3 month period ($4500 rake).
Being in the higher VIP levels had advantages, particularly being able to purchase bonuses that returned a higher percentage of rake. Their top bonus was a 300,000 point bonus worth $75k. This equates to 50% rakeback since it takes $150k rake paid to accumulate 300k points. I dont remember the exact details on how long it took to clear old bonuses, but I believe they were released in 5 installments of $X for X points. i.e. for each $15k installment of the $75k bonus, a player would have to accumulate 15k points ($7500 rake paid). This bonus takes a long time to reach: about 83.33% of the volume of reaching Supernova Elite on stars to buy the bonus, and another $37500 in rake paid to fully clear the bonus.
If you didnt want to wait that long to clear a bonus, they had smaller bonus options that you could clear more often at a lower rate. You could also buy bonuses that didnt require any points to clear at a lower rate. I used the way back machine to find their old bonuses:
As you can see, there were lots of options to receive 30%+ rakeback, and the 30% option took $10k rake paid to buy and (i believe) another $1500 rake paid to clear.
Early in 2013, with very little notice, Party announced it was doing away with all bonuses that gave greater than 30% rakeback out. As a new customer this didnt affect me as I had very points accumulated at that time, but there were players who were working towards the larger bonuses and were sufficiently far away that they would not be able to reach it before the bonus was removed from the point store.
Really gotta feel for the party grinders who were halfway to reaching those big bonuses and had to settle for 10-20% less rakeback than they were working towards.
Fast forward to today, the bonuses are significantly worse. To buy a 30% bonus now you have to pay 100k points for a $15k bonus which takes 90k points to fully clear in 2 installments. So lets compare the old 30% rakeback bonuses to today's side by side:
old bonus: 20k points to purchase 3k bonus, five installments of $600 cleared after $300 rake paid for each installment. Under this system it takes $10300 rake paid to start seeing money back. current bonus: 100k points to purchase 15k bonus, two installments of $7500 after $22500 rake paid for each installment. So it takes $72500 rake paid to see any money with this new system. Under the old system you could have purchased a 40% rakeback bonus and received YOUR ENTIRE $20k BONUS quicker than you would receive your first $7500 under the new system for a 30% rakeback bonus.
Removed Monthy Promotions
This part isnt really a shady management decision, its their prerogative on what promotions they will offer their customers, but its definitely made it much less enticing to put volume in on party. The first month I was on party, they were running a promotion called Advent Calender.
I dont remember the exact details of it, but basically you would receive little gifts after a certain number of points accumulated. So if you were the lowest VIP level, you would receive a very small gift every say 25 points cleared. These gifts would be something like entry to a freeroll or a $1 bonus. If you were the next VIP level you would receive those gifts AND a slightly better gift (sometimes $3 bonuses or 5 free points) every 50 points for your level. This went up all the levels, so if you were palladium elite you were receiving all these gifts all month long. I only reached the 3rd highest VIP level that month, but I think I ended up receiving over $250 extra back in points and bonuses for maybe $3k paid in rake that month. An extra 10% rakeback was really nice.
The following months they ran a few other really nice promotions.
World domination: http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/partypo...ves-world-domination-promotion-23226/
This one was really great. Sure it was pretty much impossible to get certain cities, but even clearing a country or continent gave nice extra bonuses. I paid >$250 in rake almost every day i was able to play that month trying to get new cities.
Fast Forward Promotion:
fast forward is party's version of zoom/rush poker. They didnt run PLO or bigger than .25/.5 NL, but you could earn up to $100 extra a week in this promotion.
Since WSOP I dont remember party running any worthwhile promotions. They give away tickets to freerolls, but thats about it.
Player Segregation
Not gonna go too into detail on this because apparently it was eventually reversed in November, but basically if you were a high winrate player they made certain games with fish invisible to you. Proof of it happening:
Instituted 3% flat cashout fee to skrill/neteller and other e-wallet sites WITHOUT NOTICE
This was a big one. One day party just started charging 3% on all cashouts to skrill and other sites like neteller and webmoney. I had no other withdrawal options. I dont have player transfers on party, RBC closed my canadian bank account for being a poker player, and the same happened in other banks to other players, and I no longer have an apartment in Canada. After initially moving there for 6 months to get set up on sites, I just travel to Canada to grind online and rent places on airbnb. Skrill was my only option, and instituting this effectively stole 3% of the money I had on the site.
All in all Party is no longer a place I wish to grind due to all of these changes which is sad because for the first few months last year it was my favorite site to play on. The first few months on the site I was probably averaging about 50k hands, 6k profit, 6k rake paid. Basically I was making 6k + 2k rakeback = 8k a month + an extra $250-500 in their nice promotions. Assuming the same winrate, that would now decrease to 6k profit + 1200 rakeback (i bought the 20% bonus to clear my points and get off the site) = 7200*.97 = 6984, a decrease of ~1250-1500 for the same amount of volume. For higher limit players that made more money or guys that put in significantly more volume than me, this was definitely much much worse.
Releasing new software and in exchange wrecking the bonus system, no longer offering good promotions and taking 3% of every cashout is not a fair trade. I realize party will never offer the bonuses they used to, but in order to make right with customers they should cease charging the 3% cashout fee, start offering better monthly promotions than virtually worthless freerolls and to give reward bonuses to customers who put in lots of volume last year while they were busy screwing everyone over.
Note: This has nothing to do with party poker NJ. All of these changes were put into place before party was even up and running in NJ.
Wanted to write a little liquid poker psa that it took me about 6 years to figure out. I never knew how to do this for the longest time and I would end up commenting on something and forgetting what I commented on and then never reply or engage in any sort of conversation. Last week I discovered if you go to My Blog and then My Posts, the posts you commented on all come up and it tells you who had the last response and takes you right there. Really wish I knew about this a long time ago.
Also for PLO Hand Histories being posted on here. I've been posting on some HH's lately but the guy who posts the hand never comes back to it, which is a problem I used to have because I never knew how to track if something got commented on or if a new comment was posted. I'm more than happy to comment on PLO HH's that are posted but pleaseeeeee reply back lol, my last comments on hands were 3 questions just to see if anyone ever came back to check what they posted
I went on a mini twitter rant yesterday about doing strategy videos on PLO and I wanted to write more about the idea of giving away poker strategy in 2014. People have been putting out strategy/training videos for years now, this isn't new. People putting out more and more PLO specific strategy videos is more of a new idea and something I was hoping would take as long as possible to actually start to take place. With RIO training site, I could see how it would make sense for the end game bosses like Phil and Odds to put out training videos while actually dicussing good, in depth strategy. The more action they get and the more people that could make it to playing 25/50+, the better for their overall bottom line, which is very debatable if that is actually true/false. What made me write those tweets yesterday is when I saw a PLO 200zoom video being put out by a new video maker. I watched a bit of it and then I became very confused as to why this guy would decide its ever a good idea to make a 1/2 zoom video that is his main game with the intention of making people better at playing zoom. I can't imagine this guy is getting paid anything close to the point where it makes any sense at all. I don't think many of the players who were around to watch as the NL games get progressively tougher years ago are the ones making PLO stuff now because they realize how fucking dumb it is. Maybe the reason is similar to what Marshall said in a post on here as to why he is making videos now. They are looking for respect from there peers and want to help others get better at the game. I think all video makers should watch videos from one of the guys that play on the Barcode account on Pokerstars (Hac Dang). The team of people that play on the account handled video making pretty perfectly. They attached there name on the site when it first launched to help there friend out and get more people to the site while putting out a couple vids each where they basically talked about nothing.
In isildroon last video he mentioned something about how more regulars are playing alot better now and the growth of other players game was going much quicker. It sounded like he was not sure as to why this might be happening but you never can be sure with accents. When one of the better regs in the games is putting out 2 videos a month playing a bunch of deep tables and going in depth into different things, what do you expect to happen to the games over a 6 month period??? It is seriously mind blowing that some of these guys on different sites are continuing to put content out there as they watch the games they play in get tougher and tougher directly because of them. I know as PLO continues to grow/become more popular and the regs are getting more and more experience the games difficulty will continue to increase faster but all of this makes that happen much much much faster.
I can see a bit more merit for some of the small stakes guys to put out videos but not too much more. The amount of money they might be making from doing these videos might actually be a big percentage of their overall bottom line and with the player pool being so large at the stakes they normall play, they don't have to worry as much about directly impacting the games they play in on a daily basis. Also the people that tend to watch these videos are usually of lower skill level so they will end up misapplying different concepts to their own game often enough. If I was a 100 or 200plo regular and poker wasn't my full time thing or in my near future, I would be tempted to put out videos on a regular basis as well if I could.
I think the obvious live poker equivalent for this is when people don't shut the fuck up about talking strategy/over hands at the table while the bad players are sitting there confused and the meh regs who breakeven/lose a bit might get encouraged to actually work harder at there game because of something you said and end up turning into winning regs. I read something that Alec Torelli wrote about it that I really agreed with and is basically saying the similar things I've been saying in this post http://www.alectorelli.com/blog/sharing-information-at-the-table/
As I wrote a bit about in a few previous blog posts, I've been working on writing up different things for my website. The problem I've run into is that I've always been pretty anti-giving away strategy (read my 12k posts on 2p2 to confirm this) and many of the things I intend to write about are actually strategical type of things. None of it is really game specific strategy but as I was writing up something about how to set better poker goals for yourself and actually make a plan to achieve them I started thinking why the fuck I want to try to help people that make there money from playing poker (like I do) set better goals and work more efficient. I do have the desire to help people out but I just can't convince myself it is very smart to put out content that is going to help my direct competition or future direct competition be more effective in what we both do for a living. As I mentioned before, there is the chance that things I might suggest is completely wrong/bad and/or people are going to misapply the ideas completely, but I don't think it outweighs the times it helps take a breakeven small stakes player to a winning midstakes player. Instead I was thinking about writing up strategy that pertains to life, love, and happiness but even with that I think I might end up having too much of a positive impact. I do think I am overestimating the impact but if it is > 0 that is probably too much.
I guess it comes down to what type of person you want to be and what kind of impact do you want to try to have on others around you. Can you live with and accept that you might be making a certain area of your own life harder while potentially bettering others in many different ways beyond that specific area of your own life that you might be making harder. Poker is such a unique world to be in that anytime you help the people you are closest with your potentially hurting yourself. There is a bunch of merit to the idea that writing about these ideas and getting feedback will potentially having a bigger positive impact on myself than could be measured but I'm not entirely sure I believe that yet. I think I will end up focusing more on entertaining content with some life strategy and less on trying to make others more successful poker players.
During October I completely lost my interest in this game. I had attained my 300k VPP milestone on PokerStars and withdrew all my bankroll. As far as I was concerned I was done with PokerStars for the year. I didn't blog my results as I had stopped caring and felt that it was pointless. Early in November I made a very small deposit on iPoker and intended to just grind a few tables there for not many hours, but expected that due to weaker games and increased focus due to 4 regular tables vs the usual 8 zoom tables I've been playing this year that I'd still make a decent amount of money just through having a much better winrate. I couldn't always even find 4 tables running so I barely played there at all and moved back to PokerStars mid-late November. At this point I decided that if I'm going to play on PokerStars I mayaswell make an effort to hit the 400k VPP milestone target. I needed to make about 100k VPPs in ~45 days which, playing 8 tables split between 100NL zoom and 200NL zoom would take me a little over 3 hours a day. This seemed doable. I am unbelievably lazy and struggle immensely to find motivation though, so as time went on the amount I needed to play just kept getting higher and higher due to me falling behind a seemingly "easy to maintain" pace. With just a few days left this year I needed to be playing 6 hours a day, and knowing that I would be going out tonight to get smashed, I would have to get above that and only leave myself with a small amount of time left on New Year's Eve. I actually did it, but even maintaining 6+ hours a day for 4 days has already caused a lot of stress haha. Mad respect to people who make SNE, seriously. Anyway, I've finally hit my 400k VPP milestone just now and here are my Oct-Dec results aswell as my end of year results (Screenshot intensive obv):
October Cash:
October MTT:
October Results:
Cash: +$1,547.85
MTT: -$74.80
Overall: +$1,473.05
November Cash:
November MTT:
November Results:
Cash: +$2,908.90
MTT: -$1,209.44
Overall: +$1,699.46
December Cash:
December MTT:
December Results:
Cash: +$8,633.43
MTT: +$323.09
Results: +$8,956.52
Obv some run good in terms of winnings vs EV at 500NL zoom and to some degree at 200NL zoom, though I think my EV is underestimating my winrates as both of those stakes. I had a ~300k breakeven stretch at 200NL zoom with lots of run bad at D game play due to tilt. I would be amazed if I'm <2 EV bb/100 there over 1mill+ hands and would be surprised if I was <0 EV bb/100 over 1mill hands of 500NL zoom, where I feel I had an unreal bad run in terms of situations over those 100k hands. I feel far short of the monetary goals I had for myself, but $65k is about £40k and that's a lot better than I'd be doing if I wasn't playing poker so I can't grumble too much.
2014 goals are to decrease # of cash tables to 4 zoom or 6 regular aswell as decreasing hours. I hope mainly that this will increase enjoyment and lower stress. I want to feel more involved in the game than I do at the moment where I'm just robot moding 8 tables at my B-D game seemingly just to make rakeback. I would like to improve my MTT game, and probably aim to put more hours into MTTs than Cash next year, just hoping to luckbox a big MTT so I can quit poker and move on. I think my long term future in poker is probably going to be based on playing some live MTTs while working some other job or studying some course so I really wanna get better at them so I can both profit and enjoy them. I'm going to start working out and dieting again in a hope to feel better mentally and physically on a day to day basis. Cutting down on alcohol will help this also. And lastly I'd like to start making some active progress towards my next step after I'm done with poker, even if this just means deciding on a course to start in 2015, as long as I get to the end of 2014 with a solid idea of what I want to do I will feel one step closer to ending the misery that is being an online poker professional hah. That's pretty much it for this year. I don't think I'm going to keep this blog going next year. I really only made it this year to keep track of my progress and use it as a way to motivate myself into playing better and playing more. But I don't think it's had any such effect, really all it has done has wasted me however many hours I've spent on typing these posts out.
Forcing myself to write that last blog post turned out to be a really really good idea and the writing spirit has been flowing through me again. I've been able to put together a few really good articles that I want to launch my site with and have recorded one podcast. I have some youtube stuff I want to put together that I think will be fairly entertaining for people that enjoy PLO and big pots.
Poker over the last few months has been going extremely well. Grinding in the anonymous shadows hasn't been as fun as grinding for glory but it has been going well. I wish I had adopted the approach to goal setting and away from the table studying that I have begun doing long long ago. When I used to play poker I really didn't have any goal beyond get Supernova elite, make a million dollars on my graph, play a zillion hands, try to have a sick ptr...... Now I have been able to set more short term goals that keep me focused but also control the degen side of me much better. I still get the itch to play the highest stakes running but I have found peace with the idea of not. Playing on websites like Bovoda, some American and sites where you have to vpn is a change and also forces you to keep less money online and usually play less games because the sites don't allow you to play more or the software is pretty bad. As it turns out this is actually a really good thing because what I failed to keep in mind during my big upswing is that playing less tables is really really really really good for you and playing alot of tables is really really really bad for you in terms of ev. I made a prop bet with a friend that I wouldn't post any graphs on social media or my blog for 6 months and I think this has actually hurt my motivation to make alot of money. That seems very very dumb but I have always been in it for the "glory". I do wish it was smart to post more PLO strategy out there or talk about it more openly on the blog or poker forums but anything beyond basic stuff has always seemed like a bad idea. With my website I have been trying to figure out a way to balance my dislike for talking strategy and my desire to help people out. But at this point in my life doing something beyond sitting around on the computer playing poker and mindlessly reading social media while living in the suburbs where I see my girlfriend each day is going to be a really really good thing for me and make me enjoy my life much more. If that means I have to help people become better poker players or happier at life, then why not. I've actually become 2000x better at improving myself with non-poker related things like working out, yoga, cooking, dieting, cleaning, basketball, fashion, piano, guitar and I guess a whole bunch of random different things I've tried to improve upon. I think that has impacted poker as well but I think I'm just being lazy using it as an excuse as to why I'm not working harder.
I feel like the whole glamorous side of poker that once existed has slowly eroded over time into a wasteland of terrible things. Maybe there is no glamorous side of poker and maybe the state of online poker is going to slowly deteriorate until it doesn't exist but as someone who's life has become something I never could have imagined from poker, I think there is inspiration to be shared, stories to be told and hopefully motivation to be given to someone out there hoping to make it at poker and change their life for the better. This is one of the visions I have in my head for what I can come up with for a website and I have no doubt it will be that on some level.
The whole idea for my website came to me when I woke up and did my usual go on twoplustwo and do nothing for 15 minutes in the morning. I was just confused why there aren't more poker related sites that I go to. I love poker, i love following poker, reading about it, being entertained through poker related things but it just seems like everything that exists out there is the same. The interviews are all the same general style and no one is really trying anything new. I think alot of this is to be expected as the American market declines and less people are playing poker online. I figured if there is no website that exists that I am looking for and no one is doing podcasts that would interest me then I would figure out a way to do it myself. I think another big reason, which I talked about a bit before, is my life living in the states in the suburbs with a girlfriend has become pretty boring. I love my girlfriend and love being around her but without raging and cold weather, I really don't end up doing too much. Diving into something like this and seeing what happens has to be better and more fun.
-competitive league with poker friends: lots of sharks in here and 2-3 complete fish. overall tough league, finished 1st/12. buyin 400, cashed for 2k
-7 yahoo pro leagues: these are 10 man public leagues with buyins of either 20, 100, or 250. i ran 1x20, 2x100, 4x250. Won the 20, won a 100, and finished 3rd in 2x250. buyins 1220, cashed for 1100
-league with friends from home: they are pretty bad, 14 man league, won total points for season and finished 3rd on year. buyin 50, cashed for 100
-league with college friends: finished 4th, buyin 100
-league with friends from home: finished 4th, buyin 150+$2 transaction fee * 32 transactions = 214, cashed for 95
-auction league, co owned with roothlus. didnt make playoffs, buyin i believe was 500
-national fantasy football championship league, buyin 350, won individual league for 1500, finished 26/1800 in overall standings for additional payout of 500.
total buyins: 2834
total cashes: 5295
Feel like year went pretty well and i could feel my edge in every league. also learned a lot and will be a bit stronger next year.
Daily Fantasy
As the year progressed, I started getting more and more into daily fantasy sports. At the beginning of the year there was a nice guaranteed tournament over on draftkings (www.draftkings.com, has some poker crossover, their VIP manager is Jon Aguiar aka fatalerror and they have a partnership with the WPT) and a deposit bonus, so i threw 1200 on, fired 6 lineups in the $200, think i had one small cash, fired most of it away and had like 38 bucks left in the account. Let it sit there for most of the season, but a bunch of my friends had been getting into daily stuff so I decided to start firing.
didnt feel like redepositing but i wanted to make as many lineups as i could each week to try and learn as much as possible for next season. so first week i made 19 lineups and entered them in the $2 tournament, got back $49. the following week i fired in 1 $11 lineup and 19 $2 lineups, did well, got back $113. then fired in 2 $11 lineups and 45 $2 lineups, did very well in a few with 4 top 30 finishes out of 8500 and cashed for $240. first place was 3500 and i was pretty close to that so it was a little frustrating to have so many entries do so well and cash for so little but a good sign that im getting a much better grasp of things. this past week there was a bigger $150 guaranteed tournament, and since it was week 16 i fired in a lineup and put in around 40 smaller lineups, did bad in the large one and only got back $40 which is ok cause week 17 is so unpredictable with resting starters to prevent injury. most of the games do matter this weekend but a lot of teams that are eliminated just throw in the towel and some of the later game players know their fate by then and the games become meaningless.
but now having entered a few hundred lineups the past 4 weeks i feel good about my daily fantasy game and think ill put in a lot of work over the next 8 months and plan on going hard in it next year cause it feels like there is more money to be made here than in year long stuff, albeit with smaller edges and more variance. will probably deposit 10-20k next year and work out a year long plan for grinding it out. hopefully it goes well! if you dont play daily, i suggest you look into it, its really going to explode in the next year and its big for NBA/MLB/NFL.
-competitive league with poker friends: lots of sharks in here and 2-3 complete fish. overall tough league, finished 1st/12. buyin 400, cashed for 2k
-7 yahoo pro leagues: these are 10 man public leagues with buyins of either 20, 100, or 250. i ran 1x20, 2x100, 4x250. Won the 20, won a 100, and finished 3rd in 2x250. buyins 1220, cashed for 1100
-league with friends from home: they are pretty bad, 14 man league, won total points for season and finished 3rd on year. buyin 50, cashed for 100
-league with college friends: finished 4th, buyin 100
-league with friends from home: finished 4th, buyin 150+$2 transaction fee * 32 transactions = 214, cashed for 95
-auction league, co owned with roothlus. didnt make playoffs, buyin i believe was 500
-national fantasy football championship league, buyin 350, won individual league for 1500, finished 26/1800 in overall standings for additional payout of 500.
total buyins: 2834
total cashes: 5295
Feel like year went pretty well and i could feel my edge in every league. also learned a lot and will be a bit stronger next year.
Daily Fantasy
As the year progressed, I started getting more and more into daily fantasy sports. At the beginning of the year there was a nice guaranteed tournament over on draftkings (www.draftkings.com, has some poker crossover, their VIP manager is Jon Aguiar aka fatalerror and they have a partnership with the WPT) and a deposit bonus, so i threw 1200 on, fired 6 lineups in the $200, think i had one small cash, fired most of it away and had like 38 bucks left in the account. Let it sit there for most of the season, but a bunch of my friends had been getting into daily stuff so I decided to start firing.
didnt feel like redepositing but i wanted to make as many lineups as i could each week to try and learn as much as possible for next season. so first week i made 19 lineups and entered them in the $2 tournament, got back $49. the following week i fired in 1 $11 lineup and 19 $2 lineups, did well, got back $113. then fired in 2 $11 lineups and 45 $2 lineups, did very well in a few with 4 top 30 finishes out of 8500 and cashed for $240. first place was 3500 and i was pretty close to that so it was a little frustrating to have so many entries do so well and cash for so little but a good sign that im getting a much better grasp of things. this past week there was a bigger $150 guaranteed tournament, and since it was week 16 i fired in a lineup and put in around 40 smaller lineups, did bad in the large one and only got back $40 which is ok cause week 17 is so unpredictable with resting starters to prevent injury. most of the games do matter this weekend but a lot of teams that are eliminated just throw in the towel and some of the later game players know their fate by then and the games become meaningless.
but now having entered a few hundred lineups the past 4 weeks i feel good about my daily fantasy game and think ill put in a lot of work over the next 8 months and plan on going hard in it next year cause it feels like there is more money to be made here than in year long stuff, albeit with smaller edges and more variance. will probably deposit 10-20k next year and work out a year long plan for grinding it out. hopefully it goes well! if you dont play daily, i suggest you look into it, its really going to explode in the next year and its big for NBA/MLB/NFL.
What's going on guys, I am having an impossible time actually writing anything for the past few weeks so I am making myself write about the project/idea/website thats been in my head for the last bunch of months. After I started writing about drug experiences and shot taking and about my time spent in Vancouver I thought I could figure out a better way to write about all this degen stuff I've spent the last 6 years of my poker career doing.
I was listening to a podcast interview a few days later and realized I never listen to anything poker related on podcasts anymore and for the most part most of the content out there, strategy or of a more entertaining nature is not very interesting. I think this is to be expected as poker in america isn't what it used to be when poker road, poker after dark, hsp, etc was going on and alot of different people were talking poker all the time.
I thought about it a bit more and realized I love love poker and its basically been my life for along time now and the only poker site I really ever go to anymore is twoplustwo which is basically a place you go when you want to talk about nothing of any substance. Through some type magic I then came up with the idea to build a site that poker players would be able to go that could have entertaining interviews, poker (PLOOO) strategy podcast, an in depth view into what its like to be a high stakes poker player who travels the world and randomly decides to go on week long benders (rage). From that point the wheels started going crazy in my head and I started brainstorming on the type of things I could write about, youtube videos I could make, things I could talk about on podcasts, and then I started working on building the website.
When I started using wordpress I was a bit annoyed that I couldn't do some things I wanted to do with basic themes so naturally I decided that I would study html, css, and some php and build my own theme and be able to customize everything exactly how I wanted. I also thought that learning more about programming and getting started down that path could help me eventually get into learning how to build my own programs for poker. At this point I realized how much I was neglecting actually playing poker so I went back to 10 hour days for about a month and kinda forgot about the idea.
Learning all this new language for programming I wouldn't classify as difficult but rather very time consuming. Friends have asked me why I don't just pay someone to do all this and play poker instead but all of this is really interesting to me and something I want to learn. I've never been the best with balancing 2 really big things at the same time and it seems like when I am working on this, I'm not really playing poker at all. Right now all I really need to get the website launched is this little thing known as content. I haven't been able to write anything at all or even get into the zone to write anything and when this whole idea is generated from the things in my head, it is problem.
This is all a pretty basic introduction to it and with that said I will make myself write another blog post explaining the website a bit more
I havent been blogging at all this year, nor posting too many hands as of late, i appologize for that but i have just been focusing hardcore on the grind and my game, ull understand why if u keep on reading.
With alot of people asking for updates about how im doing etc lately i figured its time as the year is comeing to its end soon(ish) to blog a bit, since i right now feel kinda hyped up and strong mentally.
Ok here we go.
Abit of Ket drama and Naz/daut/mig/smuft stake
As many of you know i lost and busted my roll last year, 400k$. I got a stake by ket pretty fast after going busto and played under him for a few months. We didnt make a solid agreement and everything was kinda badly done from both my and kets end. Long story short i lost some money on the stake, and we got some misscommunication where i thought our stake was over after that since he didnt want to shoot in more money, he was traveling alot during that period and we didnt keep the most active contact. With me not playing for an entire month i had no idea that his plans were that we were gonna continue the stake and clear some makeup and stuff before we were done with eachother.
I didnt even have an idea of what makeup was back then since ive never been or staked any1 before. As i went public and wrote a blogpost about getting a new stake things got really messy. Nazgul Daut Mig and Smuft took me under their wings almost instantly as i posted that stakerequest blog. The problem being me thinking mine and Kets deal was over and Ket thinking it wasnt over. Naz and the guys helped out tons with reviewing skypehistory between me and Ket etc to find out "who was right" and it was all very unclear and things got really rough for me and i had a sick breakdown where everything just felt so fucked up. I had some personal issues during that time with a deep relationship comeing to an end and with the big busting of roll, fearing being in depts aswell as playing on a stake was to much for me and i ended up crying for the first time in years infront of my computer with all the skypewindows up with investigation from Naz and the team aswell as Ket talking to both me and the team.
After a while discussing if i should or shouldnt owe ket money we didnt get any smarter and i really didnt wanna go judge judy on the situation. So instead i talked to Ket as a friend and he responded as a friend and i really felt shitty about everything and i felt like it didnt matter who was right or wrong, it was just a honest misscommunication error. As a friend i wanted to pay him back. Ket and i came to an agreement keeping our problem outside the new Naz-team stake. Ket was very supportive and we agreed of meeting somewhere inbetween with me oweing him a dept of a set amount of $ somewhere inbetween 0 and what i was oweing him in makeup instead or if i wanted to comeback play for him after my new stake was over that was fine too without any timeframe and i felt very relieved that we setteled and came to an agreement as friends. Ket is awesome and i appricieate his understanding of the type of pressure i was under during that time.
So Ket, i havent forgotten about us, im going to pay you before the end of this year no doubt, thats a promise.
Naz-team 5/10$ stake and BJJ in Thailand
As mine and Kets missunderstanding was cleared out i was ready to start grinding again for my new masters and things started out really well. After the first 2 months on stake or so i was up almost 60k$ on 5/10 stars and things felt great, in early 2013 i flyed down to Thailand and grinded from there and started doing BJJ and i started to feel stronger and stronger mentally.
It was the first time i tryed BJJ (ive only done some boxing and muaythai) and all i have to say about that is that BJJ is fucking awesome. I trained for about 2 months on Phuket Top team (link to their homepage here: http://www.phukettopteam.com/). Our BJJ coach there was a 3rd degree blackbelt from brazil and he was no doubt the best coach ive trained under. Im pretty sure im gonna go back there to attend more of his classes in the future.
Here is a clip from one of our trainingsessions:
U can see me in the background around the 57sec mark in yellow and a purple cap (was injured when the video was recorded, i was only there that session to watch and learn)
I hurt my back when a guy took it and choked me out and i wasnt able to train for the last couple weeks of my time there. Therefor as my visa was expiering during the 2nd month in thailand i flew home again to rest up and grind more. I ended up haveing backproblems for aobut 3 months or so wich was sad, i lost the spark a bit. I now train alittlebit home here in sweden. Hopefully i can go at it more actively since BJJ as stated earlier is fucking awesome. imo.
More about poker and qutting the stake
After thailand my heater was clearly over and i started to struggle alot. I was breaking even/slowly loseing over 4-500k hands mostly 5/10$ and i felt like shit again pokerwise. I didnt feel like the best player at the table or even close to it very often and i lost alot of confidence during this period, but that only motivated me to get more into pokertheory and study harder. The games have gotten really though and i think pretty much 50% of the 5/10+ Reg field on pokerstars are as good or superior to me. This was very new for me and Ive learnt alot this year and the entire experience has been good overall for my ego and getting a better grasp of what im capable of and my overall pokerskill. Ive felt like pretty much the best player on 5/10 10/20 for years prior to 2013 and clearly thats not the case anymore and it took some time for that to sink in. But like i said earlier, that lit a big fire under my ass and ive been working harder then ever before with adding more and more offtable study since this summer and ive improved tons and im really starting to the see results of that aswell as just feeling like a much better player now then i was when this year started.
As of August the 1st me and the staketeam talked things over and with probably 600k hands played on stake, being breakeven we made the decision to quit the stake while still being in the green, i was close to supernova elite phase, and i wanted to go after it and move down stakes and continue on my own, the team was very supportive of my plan and we all agreed on going seperatly with my backers only makeing a small profit. Wich feels alittlebit bad, i wouldnt mind makeing more money for them as they have been nothing else but supportive and very good to me.
Thanks to Ket Naz Daut Mig and Smuft Pinball and Dusty for everything u guys have done for me during this rough time, i really appriciate it.
Unfortunatly i dont have all the hands from the stake on my computer, i only have from april-july on this computer on stake, and the thailandhands i got on my laptop, but i felt like instead of getting those graphs posted here i can just tell my results instead, they arent very good. all together its pretty much a 600k hand graph going up 60k in the first 100k hands, and then pendeling between 0$ and 45k$ up and down up and down for the next 500k hands.
Moveing down in stakes for the first time in years, results and graphs
August 1st, i was finally playing on my own again for the first time in a loooong time. i deposited 15k$ of my own money on stars and started off alittlebit behind SNEphase 24 tableing 1/2.
I was alittle scared to be honest about how the skill level would be on 1/2 and if i could be able to masstable it profitably but after starting off with a 25 buy in day the first day as my own boss the pressure was instantly gone as i felt like i defenetely had nothing to fear down there without judgeing to much from the good first payday but more on the level of the regulars in those games compared to the 5/10 level (no offence to all of u LP 1/2 regs out there)
1/2 graph:
After buying acouple of FPP bonuses together with the profit i made on 1/2 i decided to take a 2/4 shot after only 2 weeks of grinding 1/2 (yes, i played 110k hands in 2 weeks ) once i hit 75 buy ins for it and change things up to 12-16 tables instead since i felt like i didnt do toooo well 24 tableing 1/2 as it often got very stressful. I hit a big heater on 2/4 and i felt really strong as i put in tons of hours in CRev and doing theorywork on my ranges during these months my game felt stronger then ever and takeing a step back was defenetely good for me accepting that i wasnt crushing 5/10 anymore. I feel right now that i took 2 steps forward with this movedown in stakes together with all the time and effort i put in off the tables.
2/4 graph:
12-16 tableing was defenetely my sweetspot, running insanely good helped out tons too obviously. As i bulldozed through 2/4 i started playing 500zoom as i hit 75 buyins for that.
500zoom graph:
Poker feels easy again and i even took some 3/6 and 5/10 shots wich didnt go to well
3/6 and 5/10 shots so far:
Where does all of this fit in on a timeline?
Well, since i started playing 1/2 August the 1st this year ive only played about 2.5 months now on my own and im currently putting in most of my hours on 500zoom and have been doing so for about 1.5 month together with 2/4 and alittlebit of 3/6 + the small 5/10 shot i did one day wich ended badly.
Oh, i recently also deposited a littlebit on my bread and butter swedish site Svenskaspel, these are my results the past days (godmode activated)
Cant really complain about those 4.5k hands
The games are still extremely soft for the stakes ive been playing there, wich is mostly 25/50 sek aka 4/8$ but today i even took a 8/16$ shot wich ended up more then well for me.
Small sample over there but i really noticed how much my game really with capital R have improved this year. Playing with the swedish regs on that site puts things in perspective, it feels like im Neo in the matrix.
Supernovaelite
Today as i was playing 4 tables of 500 zoom together with 2-3 tables on the swedish site i got over the 800k VPP mark and SNE starts to become a reality now, im getting really close and im about 30k VPP above phase. Spotting that 20000$ number today floating beside the milestonebar felt really good. SOOOOOON
The future for longple, rant
What are my plans for the future? Well, first off im gonna finish this brutally tought SNE grind and give SNE the finger. I can with confidence say, never again.
It has been a tough year, very tough year, breaking even and getting my ego and confidence crushed during the first 6 months of the year aswell as putting in all of these hours into poker, both playing and studying i cant really say ive had much of a life this year. But it has been a very good ride. I have forced myself to improve my game and get a better understanding of pokertheory, math and the "GTO" approach. Wich is all new for me, being what i would concider a prior washed up explo lagtard that have gotten destroyed by the new rooster of really tough good hardworking highstakesregulars. And im happy to say that i feel like ive catched up to them and i look forward to trying to get my ass back up on highstakes, WITHOUT supernovaelite. I dont think im capable of playing on that level on that many tables/hours that is needed for SNE, its insanely challaging and theres been alot of B and even C game volume, but atleast now my B and C game have improved to probably my old B+ game in quality. However i dont think i can do this again, unless i want to settle on midstakes, wich isnt really what i want to do, i still have great ambitions to become a feared highstakesreg again, and im pretty sure i will get there, with playing fewer tables and higher quality volume + continue working on my game outside the tables, i have all the tools, now its just up to me how i want to spend my pokertime.
Im looking forward to playing fewer tables next year, play fewer hours aswell as hopefully playing higher stakes without cutting out my new offtable workethic im sure i will get there. Im also looking forward to enjoy life more off the computer and get back into BJJ more again aswell as spend alot more time with my friends.
Thats all for now, ill make another update at the end of the year, hopefully i can continue and finish the year as strong as i have been the last months.
Hello again... I think this makes the 2nd time I've blogged this year but I've probably written out about 20 blog posts over the year but always find a reason not to publish each of them. I did finish the rest of my story about my year spent raging and also wrote up a pretty epic trip report from my time living in Canada but talked myself out of putting those up for a few different reasons, mostly because on the surface it doesn't make me come off in the best way to the level 1 minds of the world who might not understand alternative viewpoints on why people choose to do things. Some might argue that why would you care what those types of people think or say about you but I've learnt over the last year in a few different times that what people think they know about you from what a sentence they may have read or a status update you might have posted can be communicated to someone that you would expect to be unaware about you at the most random times and cause some interesting drama in an otherwise boring life. When I write it out like that maybe I should just post all the stuff I have on deck because life is boring. I know many others feel that way, maybe making life .01 percent less boring for .01 percent of people I know may be my calling.
I've been living in the USA for the past few months so I am unable to post about my poker playing over that time I'm pretty sure I've put in a few hundred thousand hands over that time with pretty positive results but one thing has been really holding me back lately that I have gone back and forth on and that is the idea of shot taking. For the noobs that will read this from the fb/twitter world that don't play poker, shot taking is when you play a higher limit/stake than normal to you, higher in amount of money that you risk but also higher in relative skill level. IE. I play $2/4 with a 400 dollar buyin regularly and when I shot take I would be playing $10/20 with a 2000 dollar buy in or 10/10 (gives away a site I may sometimes play) or 25/50. Actually some nits probably think 3/6 would be shot taking if they play 2/4 but nits gonna nit.
Typically it seems like people shot take for a few different reasons. The obvious is that people love money, they want to make as much money as possible, playing higher stakes=making more money. Some people feel like they are bored with their current limit and want to challenge themselves more and shot take. A large majority of people these days will only shot take when a very -EV player is playing and they end up getting a good seat at that game. Sometimes people are just degens who want to be playing the high stakes and become famous and win all the money and be known as a boss. Other times its just the logical process that comes after you have had much success at your current stake and have built your bankroll up to the point where you can comfortably play higher stakes and if take a loss will not effect you to a large degree. In a perfect world everyone would take that last route but luckily for high stakes regs this is not a perfect world we live in and thus where the idea for me to write this blog post came from.
IF anyone has read my blog in the past or read my 2p2 posts/tweets I really never post anything strategic for the most part. That is another blog post in itself, but I suppose it might be time to actually say something someone might find a bit useful. I think the idea of shot taking for me has always been about the prestige of being successful at the higher stakes more than anything else. I think because of this during my first few years of playing poker it led me to put myself in a ridiculous amount of -EV situations playing for the sake of trying to "make it" or be the man or about that life or etc etc. In the early parts of my career I would grind hours and hours of 50cent/1dollar and 1/2 and shot take at 5/10 or 10/20. Sometimes I had short lived success, other times I failed right away, time and time again I would end up back at 50cent/1dollar grinding and grinding with the hope of taking another shot at higher stakes and having it be a success. I could have approached the whole idea of this in alot of different ways (not playing as high above normal stake, less tables, more table selection, etc...) but always found myself throwing any logical plan out the window. I think the biggest mental block that I have been unaware of until recently that I always fell back on was that I could always drop back down and make it all back with a little hard work. I probably have done this 150 times in my poker career, that seems crazy to make the same types of mistakes that many times in retrospect but this is what I've done in the past and still to this day do. In a way this actually justifies me shot taking all those times but it certainly does not justify the terrible approach I took along the way.
Without shot taking I would have never had my 500k upswing though. During this initial 6 month run I changed a few different way I approached things. I was coming off a ridiculous confidence boost by putting in a 500k hand plo month in December and managed to do way better than I thought during that time period. I padded my bankroll by winning prop bet/achieving Supernova Elite during that time and decided I was only going to play 4 tables max, actually pay attention to the hands (I had never done this before in about 5 million hands) and game select like a the nittest of nits. I've always said that I think the most important thing to moving up stakes or shot taking is that initial first few weeks. If you can run good and build up momentum and confidence you're set. Luckily for me I ran hotter than the sun and was working harder/more hours than I really had before and putting myself in ridiculously +EV situations all the time, mostly running hotter than the sun. During poker sessions for me in the past, I feel like I play 1 or 2 really big pots during that time that in a way save that session from being a disaster and help build back up momentum to end the session on a positive note. During this time period It felt like I had this happen soooo often. This sounds like I'm writing about the positives of shot taking, well in that magical perfect world this might have been the perfect scenario. Once PTR (pokertableratings) went down I really stopped caring about trying to put myself in those magical +++EV situations, which is another blog post entirely as well (one which I have actually wrote).
I think that story is pretty relevant to the reason why shot taking for myself now and for many others takes place. Most people always remember those epic runs they have had in the past where they made xxxxxx amount of money or that time someone they know or follow went on a ridiculous heater shot and that influences their decision to do it. I actually know 3 people who pretty much busto'd themselves shot taking during the time period I was and they told me the biggest reason they did it was because of my run at the time. Obviously this is a pretty extreme example and not really the angle that I am writing about here but I think that mindset still applies to a lesser degree. This is more geared towards the 100-200-400 regs out there. I think 100nl/plo is the first limit where you can really start to earn a good amount of money for yourself when you take into account bonuses and the first limit where I remember feeling that shot taking bug in me. I know there is a pretty large amount of people out there that grind these limits with less than 100 buyins in their bankroll and always worried about going on a bit of a downswing and putting themselves into this idea the "danger zone". I've personally always played with a variety of buyins for that limit but a majority of the time I shot took most would consider underrolled. I remember I used to play 10 tables of 5/10nl with like 25-30k online
I wish I realized this 3 years earlier instead of a few weeks ago but it was never really that obvious to me. Most of the time when I played higher stakes it was when I was on a bit of an upswing and my confidence was at a pretty good peak, I would then end up losing 5-10+ buyins at a higher limit which is pretty standard for PLO, whether it be by me running bad or playing bad or running bad/playing bad and be a bit crushed everytime about it and curse the poker gods for my bad luck and with my confidence shaken return back to the lower limits. Sometimes I've made the mistake of losing a bit more buyins than I should have allowed and have to drop back down to lower than my regular limits and grind it back up again. Obviously to the logical grinder's out their this seems really dumb but not many of us fall into that category which is good for you. The biggest downside that I've experienced without realizing it in the past but after looking over my data is that during that time I drop back down with shaken confidence, my play suffers a pretty sizable amount and sometimes it might take only a few days with a bunch of hours played or sometimes even longer to get back on track and back in the groove. During that time spent shot taking and returning to form I could have been in a pretty steady path at my regular stakes crushing away and gradually moving up being very over rolled and able to incur those losses without being to hurt emotionally or bankroll wise and do it a logical way but 150 times I have chosen not to do this. Although I did have that huuuuge upswing so perhaps with that occurring and the "potential" for something similar to happen again it is justified but I would argue having that happen to me was actually one of the worst possible things to happen. But I'm not sure I ever would have come to the realization I came to now without it.
One of the other big downsides to shot taking that I have heard more people talk about is that when you win a few buyin's shot taking the feeling is not as great as when you lose a few buyins during that same time. Everyone has a different approach to this happening but it seems that many of my friends I've had over time take the negative losses very bad and sometimes they end up just not playing for a period of time and essentially wasting a few weeks recovering from that while feeling terrible on their day to day activities in the process. I probably could expand a bit more on this and a few other ideas related to downsides I think occur but that writing sensation that comes over me about once or twice a month is fading away as I get more tired. I do have another blog post pertaining to goal setting and ways to plan to achieve them almost finished that I have been working on for the past month or two with some success that I think will be able to really help some people out there.
I should go back and read this before I post it but I'm semi sleeping at this point so I will say a small prayer that I logically wrote all this out and I didn't make too many grammatical errors along the way
Abysmal month in every respect. My birthday night out wasn't what I'd hoped, fitness and diet plans continue to be stuck on hold as I can't find the motivation to get back on it, I had to sell my M3 and downsize (To a 2012 MkIII Focus ST2) due to high running costs and continually high expenditure in general and to compound the problem I barely played any poker and when I did I couldn't win for shit.
I've now left myself 121,149.28 VPPs short of the 400k VPP milestone, so I need ~40k each of the 3 remaining months, an amount I've not achieved in quite a while. It would be stupid of me to get to 370k VPPs or something and leave myself just 50 hours short of the 400k VPP bonus, which I believe is $3.2k, or $64/hour extra JUST for the milestone not including the 100k ish FPPs (Another $1.6k bonus) that I'd make on top of that. Guess I gotta pull my finger out this month, especially as I'm gonna be in Ireland for 6 days late in the month and have another couple of weekends taken up by birthday parties and following day hangovers. Not gonna be easy.
In terms of actual winrates this month I didn't do too badly at all, just I tended to win at 100NL zoom and lose at 200NL zoom, a trend that seems all too commonplace in the last couple of months. I continue to experiment with my game and I've made a lot of changes to both my preflop and postflop game plans, and it seems to be going well mostly, I just need to get in more volume and stop running like dogshit at 200NL. If I get really short of time in which to make up VPPs I might have to look at jumping in to a few 500NL zoom or even 200PLO zoom games to catch up a bit, though I'm likely small dogs in both those games when they don't have especially weak lineups.
MTTs continued to go shite. WCOOP was a waste of effort. I got relatively deep in a few tournaments during WCOOP, but they were mainly some of the smaller tournaments I was playing alongside the WCOOP events which had small buyins and thus small returns, and none of them was deep enough to final table unfortunately. I almost bought in to the WCOOP main event with 100% of my own action just hoping to luck box but I had already been awake 12 hours by the time the tournament started, had been active all day and thus felt way too tired to commit to the ~12 hours or however long you have to play to make Day 2. One of these days I'll luckbox something though, I can't possibly be a dog in the lineup of virtually any MTT in existence.
Anyway; Screenshots:
Cash:
MTT:
New Car Pics:
Overall results:
VPPs: 13,771.60
Cash: -$224.99
MTT: -$1,091.21
Overall: -$1316.20 (Not including bonuses and FPPs)
October I really need to force myself to play a lot more. Hopefully a minimum of 40k VPPs and a decent winrate to go with it. Standard goals of spending less (yeah right..), getting back onto a reasonable diet and workout schedule and in general being healthier and more productive. As the weather gets colder I'll hopefully find more excuses to hermit and actually achieve these goals instead of going out and getting shitfaced every other day -_-
I wrote these 4 years ago (you feeling old?) when I had a job that had a lot of 'spare time' - Its spoof pokernews.
Found them in my drafts from my email. There were some others that have been lost in cyberspace, like a story about Phil Hellmuths hall of fame picture falling off the wall under the weight of its own ego.
Some are better than others...
Busto frat boy claims “Doyle is bad for the poker economy”
James Scott, a freshman at Florida State University has claimed that Doyle Brunson is bad for the poker economy and is taking money out of the game.
Mr Scott said yesterday “I was watching Doyle on High Stakes Poker, he was playing really tight, nitting it up, winning a few blinds and then it hit me” he said “Doyle is old, he cant have long left – when he goes the money Doyle has accumulated over his lifetime playing poker will be divided up by his estate. Only a small percentage of this will be put back in by his son Todd”
Angered at this thought Mr Scott took his revelation to the internet message boards to rally support in an attempt to get Doyle to return his poker winnings to the poker economy and get him banned from high stakes cash games and any tournament with a buy-in greater than $12.
His enthusiasm wasn’t met with the support he had hoped and he quickly found himself on the back foot arguing against forum posters who found his comments disrespectful to the poker hall of famer.
“They’re all fan-boys” James said, “But think about it this way, if Doyle divided up his fortune among the lower stakes players, everyone could move up. I currently play NL10 but all these donkeys keep going all in with 56 suited and busting my AA so its impossible to get a bankroll started”
Mr Scott claims that he and many others could benefit from a windfall from Doyle and he could move up stakes “to a level where they respect my raises”. He also added “the UIGEA has affected us all, before I had almost $187 in tournament winnings on Full Tilt, but post legislation I am now -$97 and struggling to break even”
“By my estimations a bankroll of about $50,000 would put me in reach of my poker goals of being a regular at the 5/10 and a Breitling watch”
Mr Scott says his next step is to attend the World Series of Poker with patches and badges which he is hoping other “young guns” will wear and give his cause some media coverage.
“I won’t be giving up on this, I know I‘m right”
James is planning on dropping out of university next semester to pursue a career as a poker professional.
------------------------------------------
*This is in regards to the following video, at the 2 minute mark:
Media Intern Dies after receiving “Ivey Death Stare”
The Media intern who jumped in Ivey’s path shortly after he busted from the Main Event final table has died 3 days after she received Phil Ivey’s trademark “death stare”
Video footage shows young media intern Maria Martinez throwing herself in front of Ivey as he was departing the Rio on November 9th. “She grabbed him around the waist and tired to turn him towards the camera so the interview could commence” said eye witness Howard Lederer.
“He said ‘whoa’ to try and warn her, but it was too late, there wasn’t enough time for her to get out of the way”
It was at this moment when Ivey’s eyes unleashed a wrath of power synonymous with the high stake player. “This time it was more intense, like he actually seized her soul” Lederer added.
Two days later she was admitted to hospital with fever, cold sweats and uncontrollable diarrhoea.
On November 12th she was pronounced dead. The cause of death is unknown but having reviewed the footage doctors say that Phil Ivey’s eyes were the most probable cause. “Each year around the time of the World Series of Poker we see patients admitted with similar symptoms” said Dr Suman Prakash “The one constant in all these cases is that they were usually seated at the same table as Phil Ivey.” He said “This is the first case where a patient has died, but having reviewed the footage it’s clear that in this instance the eyes were radiating a much higher level of soul-reading”
Dr Prakash advised poker players not to look directly into the eyes of Phil Ivey. “If you must then the player must use a pin-hole viewer – similar to the ones you would use to look a solar eclipse”
Howard Lederer made a statement to the media on behalf of Phil Ivey and Team Full Tilt. He said “We are deeply saddened that Phil’s eyes have caused the death of a young member of the media. Our condolences are sent out to the family.” Howard also added “I had talked to her only moments before she made the fatal error. She was a freak and a very weird girl. She was also quite young; I think she should have stayed away.”
Phil was unreachable for comment as his chat was turned off at Ivey Thunder dome.
Local man wins home game high hand jackpot with 5 of a kind
Derek Whites, a local of Carlston, South Carolina entered his weekly home game tournament the same as he had been doing for the past few years. However this week, his fortunes changed, and after what he claims to be “one of the worst downswings in worldwide poker history” his big score finally came in.
“It was just another night. My pal Greg runs a tournament in his basement every Wednesday night, it’s a $20 buy-in winner takes all. We usually have about 6 – 12 entrants. It’s a tough game, but after a few beers the action starts to get wild” said Derek.
“Id made it down to heads-up when I was dealt pocket 5’s” I went all in and had my opponent covered” he said “He called and the board was dealt. The flop came 2 of clubs, 5 of clubs, King of spades” My opponent flipped his hand, stood up and shouted “CLUB ONE TIME!!” as he threw 7 clubs 3 clubs on the felt”
“The prize pool that week was $160, and my truck needed a new back tire, so I was praying like hell for him not to get there”
The dealer burned and turned “A 5 of clubs hit the turn, my heart sank – I was devastated – his flush had got there and I needed to pair the board to win”
The dealer dealt the river and the 5 of hearts was flipped from the deck onto the table “I just exploded with joy – greatest feeling in the world – Id been watching Chris Moneymaker’s World Series win earlier that day, and I thought that feeling of taking down a major tournament would always remain a dream for me”
It wasn’t until the chips were being counted down that John Gregory, who was dealing the game, noticed that Greg had made 5 of a kind.
“At first I thought it was the beer” said John “I was pretty hammered at the time, so it took a few moments to sink in. I alerted the table that there was an extra 5 in the deck, in fact the back extra 5 was a different colour to the rest of the deck, and I don’t know how we missed it first time round”
Derek’s opponent and runner-up Shaun Long was asked if he wanted to run the board out again. He declined saying “That’s poker folks”
The weekly high-hand jackpot of $15 and a 6 pack of Budweiser were awarded to Derek. He has since replaced the tire on his truck.
-----------------------------------------
Jeffery Pollack Introduces ‘Wild Cards’ to the World Series of Poker.
Commissioner of the World Series of Poker, Jeffery Pollack, is aiming to introduce a new “Wild Card” to the standard 52 card deck.
The new card, similar to a joker, will be able to be used by a player to be any other card of the deck.
“Imagine the excitement of Pocket Aces vs. Wild Cards” said Jeffery “We’ve all seen Aces vs. Kings at the tables, and its losing its excitement, we know the odds, Aces is 80% favourite to win – but 2 Aces vs. 2 Wild Cards? Who knows which hand is a favourite in that scenario!?!?”
“I’m once again going to improve the game of poker and make it more exciting for the viewing public”
The new cards, which will be named after the creator, will be designed to look as exciting as possible “Id like to see any player keep his or her poker face when they’re dealt ‘Pocket Pollack’s’ under the gun during a world series event” said Jeffery.
“We’ve done a lot of research into what the design of the card should be. We wanted it to look exciting. So we went with a bright colour scheme, dollar signs with a gold trim”
“Its going to shake the game right up” Said Jeffery “Im throwing out the rule book, quite literally, and replacing it with a better more exciting one – All these math wiz kids are going to have to get their calculator out if they hope to master the changes in probability with the introduction of my new cards”
If the new cards are successful, Mr Pollack aims to replace all other forms of poker with No Limit Texas Holdem by the 2012 World Series “They say it’s the only true form of poker ‘The Cadillac of poker” said Jeffery “That’s a line from the new Matt Damon movie ‘Rounder’s’ which was just released”
Paul Magriel’s Tongue Allowed To Enter Poker Tournament.
World Poker Tour officials declared Paul Magriel’s tongue eligible to enter WPT events as a separate entrant from Paul himself.
After reviewing footage of Paul from previous televised events he has played, it was decided that the tongue could be considered a separate entity from Paul himself.
“It appears to move on its own accord, have a conscience and be able to make decisions independently from the host body.” Said WPT Spokes-woman, Jane Wirral.
It was unanimously agreed that Pauls tongue – nicknamed “X-Twenty-Tongue” would be allowed to enter tournaments on its own accord.
Allowances will be made so that both the tongue and Paul can play in the same tournament and neither player would have to miss a hand.
“Paul will be required to close his eyes when the tongue is playing its hand, officials will be on hand to ensure this, to avoid any advantage that Paul could gain from knowing the tongues hole cards”
The past few years I have gotten increasingly into fantasy football. This year has been by far the biggest jump for me in terms of committment, money wagered and time spent studying and researching. This is probably the last year of my preparation before I really delve into lots of big buyin leagues.
This offseason I spent probably around 100-150 hours studying, researching and running simulations in order to improve everything I could about my fantasy knowledge. I've done 10 of my 13 drafts so far this season and may add a couple last minute ones to do 15 leagues this year. They varied quite a bit.
some of the different types:
-10 team 1 qb/2rb/3wr/te/DST/K no PPR
-12 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/1 flex/te/DST .25 PPR
-12 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/2 flex/te/DST/K .25 PPR
-12 team auction keeper, $155 bankroll, 1 qb/2rb/2wr/1 flex/TE/DST/K .5 PPR
-12 team 1 qb/ 1 OP (offensive player, can include 2nd qb)/2 rb/3wr/flex/TE/DST/K 1 PPR
-14 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/flex/TE/DST/K/LB/DL/DB .5 ppr + other random scoring changes
-12 team national fantasy football championship: http://nffc.stats.com/football/home/nffc/index.asp
ive done a ton of work on all these drafts and everything worked out very well. Most of my work was on optimizing draft order by position round by round for each draft slot. I feel I have a much better grasp on this than almost anyone else and also a better idea of VBD (value based drafting) and dynamic value based drafting as well as player tiers and how to maximize value in them.
Since the season starts thursday and there are probably some last minute drafts going on and since everyone loves fantasy football thought id spread some wealth on what ive learned. ask me anything, but be specific with questions. i.e. dont ask what sleepers should i aim for, tell me the scoring system of your league, how many teams, what draft position you have, who you aim for, what goals you should have with each position etc.
The past few years I have gotten increasingly into fantasy football. This year has been by far the biggest jump for me in terms of committment, money wagered and time spent studying and researching. This is probably the last year of my preparation before I really delve into lots of big buyin leagues.
This offseason I spent probably around 100-150 hours studying, researching and running simulations in order to improve everything I could about my fantasy knowledge. I've done 10 of my 13 drafts so far this season and may add a couple last minute ones to do 15 leagues this year. They varied quite a bit.
some of the different types:
-10 team 1 qb/2rb/3wr/te/DST/K no PPR
-12 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/1 flex/te/DST .25 PPR
-12 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/2 flex/te/DST/K .25 PPR
-12 team auction keeper, $155 bankroll, 1 qb/2rb/2wr/1 flex/TE/DST/K .5 PPR
-12 team 1 qb/ 1 OP (offensive player, can include 2nd qb)/2 rb/3wr/flex/TE/DST/K 1 PPR
-14 team 1 qb/2 rb/2wr/flex/TE/DST/K/LB/DL/DB .5 ppr + other random scoring changes
-12 team national fantasy football championship: http://nffc.stats.com/football/home/nffc/index.asp
ive done a ton of work on all these drafts and everything worked out very well. Most of my work was on optimizing draft order by position round by round for each draft slot. I feel I have a much better grasp on this than almost anyone else and also a better idea of VBD (value based drafting) and dynamic value based drafting as well as player tiers and how to maximize value in them.
Since the season starts thursday and there are probably some last minute drafts going on and since everyone loves fantasy football thought id spread some wealth on what ive learned. ask me anything, but be specific with questions. i.e. dont ask what sleepers should i aim for, tell me the scoring system of your league, how many teams, what draft position you have, who you aim for, what goals you should have with each position etc.
I went into August highly motivated and really enjoying playing poker and started the month well, putting in 8k VPPs in the first 4 days despite a couple of heavy nights out for someone's birthday and I thought August was going to be a high volume month. Sadly, in the end, August has been one of, if not the lowest volume months so far this year. It seems this time of year is when everyone's birthdays are and I was drunk probably 24 out of the 31 days in August.
When I wasn't drunk I was hungover or depressed and I just didn't feel like playing much poker for most of the month. Needless to say, I didn't do too well at cutting back on expenditure either considering how frequently I was going out, and I also blew some money on some Poker programs and subscriptions.
There's a bunch of birthday outings (Including my own) this month also and I can see this month going in much the same way as August which would suck because 400k VPPs should be easily attainable, but I might be making tough work for myself in the remaining 3 months if I end up putting in 20k VPPs again this month. I just don't feel motivated to play at all at the moment and wanna do anything but poker really. Hopefully this will change later in the month
July started very promisingly. On the night of 30th June/1st July I was down to the last 2 tables of the Sunday Million. The field remaining was quite weak, with only 1 player whose game I really respected (EDWARDHOPPER). I was 2nd in chips at one point but eventually busted QQ v KK with ~13bb vs EDWARDHOPPER for 15th place. So close yet so far. Still, $5.1k profit was a good start and I expected to go on to having a good month. Sadly, it wasn't to be. I lost $1k in MTTs over the rest of the month and I barely won at cash. Still, barely winning is better than the previous month where I suffered a 40 buyin downswing and didn't win at all.
I've continued to experiment and make changes to my game, and largely I've been happy with the changes and my results. Mainly I've just tightened up opening ranges and done some work on my play vs shortstacks. Infact, until yesterday I was running at 4 EV bb/100 for the month which is no better than I was doing in the first 5 months of this year, but a lot better than in the last 2 months. Unfortunately I lost about $2.1k yesterday which was something like 15 buyins (More at 100 than 200) and that ruined the winrate for the month. Even still, my positional winrates are all higher than the year as a whole except for from the BB, and by a small margin in the CO. The Big Blind is the position where I've made the most adjustments in the past couple of months and it seems it's still not working for me. Currently I think one of my biggest problems there is a bit of situational run bad, but also I'm simply not 3betting enough from that position specifically. I aim to do better than -40bb/100 from the BB next month. I don't even really care too much about how I do from other positions because I'm quite happy with my opening ranges and 3bet ranges etc from those positions and results will improve with the more volume I put in, I feel that I really just need to fix the leak in the BB and I'll be winning at a good clip again as I was in the first few months of this year.
Life has been a bit depressing lately and it's definitely effecting my play. Tilt has set in on more than one occasion and I'm usually very good at resisting tilt. I'm already thinking about a future without poker and I'd really like to move on from it as soon as possible. If I won like $200k+ in an MTT I would probably play until the end of the year and then quit relying on poker for income, only playing a little when I felt like it. I have no better options for income at the moment and not enough money to quit so I'll continue until I do have enough money. I certainly need to cut back on expenditure. I estimate I've made $45~50k so far this year including rakeback/bonuses and I have no more money in my Stars account or bank account than I did at the start of the year. I don't even have any large mandatory expenses, I'm just spending too much on stuff I don't need. This has to change if I'm to make enough money to quit poker in the next 2-4 years (I REALLY don't want to have to play any longer than that). I have restarted dieting and working out lately and I expect that will help with regards to how I'm feeling in day to day life, so that's one positive going forward at least.
Volume wise I've put in about an average #of hands for the last 3 months, but given that I've tightened up preflop I'm making less VPP/hand. At the start of the year I wanted to go for SNE, which I gave up on by March, then I changed my goal to 500k VPPs. At this point that's an impossibility also unless I get back into $2.5/$5 Zoom full time, which I can't see happening as I'm not happy enough with my winrates at $1/$2 and $0.5/$1 Zoom or confident enough on not losing at $2.5/$5 unless the lineup is quite weak. 400k VPPs seems reasonable though, to do that I need just under 160k VPPs in the remaining 5 months so just under 32k VPPs a month which is around about the volume I've been putting in last few months anyway. I'd be happy enough with another $25-30k (Including rakeback/bonuses) for the rest of the year, and hopefully make cuts on spending so I'm actually increasing my bankroll, not just breaking even on my expenditure.
Anyway, screenshots:
Cash:
(Couple of hands at 100NL Zoom FR and 2NL Zoom were simply misclicks in the lobby haha)
Like I said, mainly just hoping to do better from the big blind, cut down on expenditure and make 30k+ VPPs next month. Feeling better IRL would be nice too.
Terrible month. Didn't play at all first half of the month as I withdrew the majority of my bankroll to pay for my new car which you can see here:
It's a 2008 E92 BMW M3 Coupe. 4L V8 with 420hp and 295lb ft. I love the thing. Don't love the 19.3mpg I'm getting so much, but I guess you know what you're signing up for when you buy one of these.
I did spend a decent amount of time watching/reading some game theory videos while I was unable to play so when I got money back online I started implementing what I had studied and started playing considerably different both pre flop and post flop to how I have been doing previously. As you can see below, it didn't work and I've ended up encountering a lot more variance which has ultimately resulted in my largest downswing ever in terms of buyins lost while playing 6max NLHE after 7.5 years playing (42 buyin downswing in EV). The main changes I've made involve blind vs steal position play, I'm defending a lot wider and I've made some pretty major changes to my 3betting and 4betting ranges too. Unfortunately my winrates from both blinds have declined significantly when compared to the previous months, so I'm probably just screwing up postflop way too often, as well as running very poorly in those spots. I started to recover a little in the last few days of the month, but wasn't close to rescuing the situation.
I will continue this pre flop experiment in July. Even if I have another bad month, putting myself in these marginal spots can only help me progress as a player long term, and hopefully eventually my winrates from the blinds will be an improvement over what it was in the first 5 months of this year. Relative to other regulars I suck from the blinds so I do want to keep trying hard to improve in those spots and don't mind putting myself in tough situations in order to improve in those spots.
Results for the month:
VPPs: 35,210.02
Cash: -$4,506.43
MTTs: -$15
Overall: -$4,521.43
Life wasn't good this month either and as a result of some high school style drama I will be seeing a lot less of one of my best friends, so it's almost certain that I shall be putting in a lot more volume in July and will hopefully get back to winning ways.
Forcing myself to write that last blog post turned out to be a really really good idea and the writing spirit has been flowing through me again. I've been able to put together a few really good articles that I want to launch my site with and have recorded one podcast. I have some youtube stuff I want to put together that I think will be fairly entertaining for people that enjoy PLO and big pots. 
