BE LIKE PATRIK

Former cheesesteak addict

2009-03-27T00:00:00.008-04:00

I hired a personal trainer today at my gym in Pittsburgh. Ive signed up for 6 sessions. While I know a lot of the basic exercises for each major muscle group, I feel that a personal trainer will help me get down excellent form, as well as set an exact regiment. Also, I know that he works at my gym 7 days a week, so he will always be there to peer pressure me (and for me to ask questions to) long after our sessions are up. +EV for sure.

My diet is 2500-3000 calories/day, ~300g carbs, 60g fat, and 200g protein. I'm closely monitoring everything I eat for a week or so in order to give myself a better perspective on what I need to be eating in order to keep up with those guidelines. This may not sound too difficult, but when you re strictly eating quality calories, it isn't easy and can be quite time-consuming. I actually find the whole nutrition aspect of fitness to be extremely interesting.

I promise not to turn this blog into a clone of Raptor's blog, but here's a log of what I ate today:

8:30 AM = 1.25 cup Kashi cereal, 1.25 cup skim milk; 1 hard-boiled egg, 0.5 cup blueberries
11:00 AM (pre-WO) = 1 container yogurt, 0.25 cup unsalted peanuts
12:30 PM (post-WO) = 1 scoop whey protein, 1 cup skim milk, 0.5 cup orange juice, 1 cup berries
2:00 PM = 1 can tuna, 2 slices whole wheat bread
6:30 PM = 1 cup turkey chili; 1 scoop whey protein, 1 cup skim milk
9:30 PM = Stir fry (6 oz chicken breast, 1 cup broccoli, 0.5 cup whole-grain rice, 1 tbsp olive oil, red onion)

PuddlePirate and I are going to make a diet+exercise bet. The idea was inspired by a similar bet made between Blitzkrieg and Btimm. Turning it into a competition should help keep me strongly motivated for a long period of time. The real hurdle comes in a couple weeks when my inflated enthusiasm for this naturally begins to lessen. However, I recognize now that this needs to become a long-term life change for me. My ultimate goal is to be the 70 year old grandfather who is completely "with it" mentally and physically. Too many Americans wake up one day, realize they're 40 years old, rely on caffeine to keep them going throughout the day, have a huge beer gut, and have already crept down the path towards heart disease.

I have a revelation that many poker players will understand easily: Life is a game! It is an incredibly complex game with an infinite number of parameters, but it is simply a game. Some people play it better than others. You need to understand how the system works and then devise the best way to benefit from it. This applies to everything: general social acceptance, career accomplishments, money, successfully raising a family, physical health, etc. Thinking about it like this makes me happy every day to wake up and figure how I can better myself to make most of this game.

Trips with poker players = ++EV

2009-03-17T22:06:00.022-04:00

I recently returned from spending a week in Jamaica with John (PuddlePirate/urmyatm44 on Full Tilt) for spring break. The experience was great and I definitely have the traveling bug now. We stayed at a 4 star resort in Negril, the spring break capital of Jamaica. Our resort had virtually no college students at it, but it was gorgeous and featured unlimited food and alcohol. We actually had a fairly tame time and spent much of it doing outdoors stuff. Scuba diving, snorkeling, and jumping off a 50 foot into the ocean (subsequently resulting in a bruised tailbone for myself) to name some of the activities. I'll post pictures when John uploads them.

The biggest upside from the vacation was a renewed enthusiasm for poker. John's passion for the game is contagious. We discussed theory, the online poker economy, and even played an insane 2/4 deep session against each other one night. By the time I returned home, my enthusiasm for the game was the highest it had been in several months. I played 3400 hands in the first two days back home. The argument could easily be made that this in itself pays for the trip in full.

****************************************************

I have come to terms with the state of HU poker. Games are extremely dried up on weekdays, but are still decent on weekends. It is now crucial for me to grind a lot on weekends, even if it means sacrificing some other things on Friday through Sunday. My general goal indefinitely is to play ~3K hands each weekend, and concentrate my other priorities during weekdays. This is the only way I can still realistically get 20K hands a month in without having to play the better regs, or learning 6 max or PLO. However, I will strongly consider adding the latter options to my repertoire after graduation.

****************************************************

I have some bad habits with blogging. Topics will often pop into my head that I am enthusiastic to write about, but then I put it off. As the number of topics continues to build in my head, collectively they become convoluted. As a result, I wind up making entries that are simply bland updates about my life. All of my favorite blogs to read are updated at sporadic, inconsistent time intervals and about a wide variety of topics. I need to impulsively type up my thoughts on any interesting topic, even if it results in more frequent 1-2 paragraph entries. Too much planning is a problem!

Much respect to skinny yoga girls!

2009-03-01T20:04:00.006-05:00

February was mediocre at best. HU economy has been extremely slow, and now my results rely largely on how much I can play (and how well) on weekends. Even so, I did not put in nearly enough hands. My confidence in my game has slowly been increasing again compared to a few weeks ago, so here's to a successful March.

I took power yoga for the first time last week. It takes place in a 90 degree room, resulting in the most intense 75 minute workout that I have ever experienced. You do not just drip sweat, you drizzle sweat for the entire session. I had to do some dumbed down versions of the yoga poses due to limited flexibility, and my endurance was completely giving out well before the end. The strength, flexibility and endurance that many of the women in the class had was extremely impressive. It's an awesome workout. I'm going to take some basic classes to get the fundamentals down well. Once I get back from spring break, my workout regiment will be compromised of yoga 2x a week and lifting 3x a week. Should be a great way to get in shape.

My 22nd birthday took place on Friday. My roommate and I decided to throw a house party to celebrate, especially since this is the first time my birthday has fallen on a weekend in several years. About 25-30 people attended and everything went really well. I have developed a close group of friends here at Pitt, and it's something I've had nothing like in my entire life before. I do not take college for granted and will definitely make the most of these last months we have together.

I am now leaning towards renting out my Pittsburgh apartment for another year. I'd use 2009-2010 as a transition period where I figure out where I want to live and what I want to do with my life. My rent is relatively cheap compared to the other options. This would allow me to do a ton of traveling and not feel like I'm throwing a lot of money away on housing costs. If I go this route, I would likely visit Spain/Italy, San Fran, LA, Austin TX, and possibly southeast Asia. As long as I have broadband internet, the world is my oyster!

Still don't believe in karma, but...

2009-02-24T12:00:00.006-05:00

Full Tilt just banned my chat privileges for 3 months. I mentioned in a blog entry months ago about my tendency to cross the line in chat. When frustrated in a match online (particularly against competent players), I have berated my opponent.

Here's the email. Yes, part of the reason I'm posting it is for humor, but also as a form of public humiliation for myself. It's hard to believe that any adult would talk like this to other people, let alone a professional poker player. I very rarely talk like this against complete fish, but that does not make it any more acceptable.

The chat ban has definitely been punishment, and it's costing me a lot of money.
-If I need to go to the bathroom, I can't tell my opponent this. My 2 options are to either hold it in, or just sit out and pray that they will still be sitting when I return. The latter rarely works.
-People get alienated when they ask me a question during a match and subsequently think I'm ignoring them.
-If I have played a fish in the past and discover them sitting in a different game, I cannot ask them if they want to play heads-up NL again.

****************************************************

If you guys don't read Raptor's blog by now, you absolutely should. I believe he has the best blog of any poker player. It covers all aspects of life, and has been great motivation for me in terms of diet & exercise. I have begun to learn a lot about nutrition and my overall diet is excellent at this point. My work ethic with exercise is inconsistent, but lately I have been back on the ball. I'm not shooting for bulking OR cutting, but just to be overall more fit. I'm roughly 5'8", 145 pounds, 15% body fat right now. My goal is to get to 150 pounds and 10% body fat over the next couple months.

A specific aspect of Raptor's blog that fascinates me is how he has taken up Jiu Jitsu. I have not played an organized sport since middle school, and jiu jitsu seems like the ultimate sport. It involves strength, endurance, reflexes, and reading your opponent. I've found a gym that does group jiu jitsu in Pittsburgh, and will likely try it out after spring break. In the mean time, I need to continue lifting in the gym and doing cardio in order to increase my overall fitness level before I even attempt jiu jitsu.

Stephen Bennett, professor

2009-02-17T18:35:00.015-05:00

This week I am lecturing a class called "General Poker Theory". My friend Danny is the instructor and wanted me to guest speak. He created the class (1 credit course) at his school, Carnegie Mellon, which is probably the best overall university in Pittsburgh. The class has 2 sections that meet on Monday and Wednesday evening. I chose to lecture about turn & river play. Some of the concepts include double/triple barreling and value betting thin.

Only about 15 students showed up for Monday's class, but they were very enthusiastic and assaulted me with questions. The lecture would have only lasted about 20 minutes if people didn't participate (I don't think I made the Powerpoint long enough). However, the class lasted 45 minutes with the high level of student involvement. It is very gratifying to be able to teach a large group of people, and know they have the confidence in your knowledge on the subject. Wednesday's class should be 30-40 students and I'm definitely looking forward to it.

****************************************************

In other news, I am going to Jamaica with John/PuddlePirate for spring break. We booked a stay at a 4 star resort in the city of Negril. I haven't experienced spring break yet, nor gone anywhere international in many years. Even though it is only the two of us going, we are outgoing guys... I expect to have no trouble making friends. I wanted to go to the Caribbean and not Mexico/Florida. I'd like a spring break that is slightly more diverse than 7 straight days of being shit-faced in a huge sea of college students. This way, we will party but also get to try scuba diving, riding dolphins, get pampered by the resort, etc.

Here to stay, ladies and gents

2009-02-09T22:54:00.011-05:00

January was strange. I had two $5K days and basically broke even for the rest of the month. I know it sounds bizarre to complain when I won almost $1/hand, but my confidence in poker has not been great lately. The state of the HU poker economy has really stung me. I have to wait so long for games, and the wait itself frustrates me and can take me off my A-game before a match even begins.

My poker game has been completely complacent the last 6 months. I had great months in October and November, solidifying the incorrect belief that my game needs zero work. My confidence has begun to break down lately and it's time for change. I finally gave in and purchased Hold 'Em Manager a week ago. I have been using PokerTracker 2 for the longest time. Watching poker instructional videos is another must. I have not watched one in probably 4 months... quite alarming given that I pay for 2 subscriptions. Most other online winners are watch videos regularly. If I continue to neglect this, I will fall behind the rest of the pack.

In the non-poker world, I went out more in January 2009 than any other month of my life to date. My passion lately has been on improving my overall social skills, in particular with women. I've become a voracious reader on the topics of social dynamics and body language. On a related note, my wardrobe has also improved greatly over the past month or two. I'm finally graduating to my own style of fashion and leaving the American Eagle's of the world.

P.S. You guys fully have the right to hassle me if I go too long without blogging.

Okay so, 2008 was pretty badass

2009-01-01T12:14:00.009-05:00

I can honestly say that 2008 was the best year of my life to date. I had a solid results at poker, lived in Vegas for a month, made some close friends, moved out of the ghetto, and I'm sure other highlights I forgot while writing this. Most of all, I came to realize how much freedom my life has and appreciate that. We are all very fortunate to have even found poker in the first place. No one should complain about running badly without first taking a step back. We all run extremely above EV at life in comparison to the Earth's population as a whole.

My December was really dismal poker-wise, winning $2K over 10K hands. I had no desire to play for most of the month. When I did play, it was half-assed and I was often doing other things. I also came to the realization that I have not fully watched a poker video in months, nor discussed general theory with anyone. Complacency FTW! Thus I blame the results mostly on myself. That being said, December was the worst month ever in terms of the HU poker economy. Everyone seems to be playing heads-up now and wait times have become ridiculous. It is disheartening, but I still believe that my best bet is to focus on HU cash.

I got dinner with IHaveAStrong9, odub, and Fees the other day. We went to Del Frisco's, an upper tier steakhouse near downtown Philadelphia. The dinner was amazing (albeit incredibly decadent). Fees ordered a $200 bottle of wine and 5 pounds of lobster and just assumed we'd all approve of it. We hung out back at IHaveAStrong9's frat house at UPenn afterwards. All three of those guys are awesome, and give extra incentive for me to consider moving to Philly after graduation. (Actually Fees is moving to LA unfortunately.) I grew up in the Philly suburbs, but now I'm considering moving in the heart of the city.

From left to right: Myself, IHaveAStrong9, odub, Fees

2009 New Years resolutions:
-Exercise with improved consistency and effort. Decrease body fat from current 16-17% down to 11%.
-Make $250K+ over $250K hands.
-Go out much more often; have more success with women than ever before.
-Travel to 2+ places internationally.

Poker? What's that?

2008-12-14T17:03:00.006-05:00

After the most stressful week of my life in over 2 years, final exams are finally completed. This semester was disappointing academically. I came away with a measly 2.75, which could have easily been higher with an extra couple hours a week dedicated to school work outside of class. My cumulative GPA is now something like a 2.97. The only reason I have any motivation to get good grades is pride. Hopefully pride will be enough incentive to put the effort in next semester to pull back to a 3.0+.

In more positive news, I took the plunge and purchased a Breitling watch. I did a lot of research on it and found a good deal on the exact model I wanted most. A $4K watch generally has no astonishing features that a $250 watch lacks, but I really love the look and reputation of Breitling. I understand that it will do very little to attract women (unfortunately!), but for me it symbolizes a sense of accomplishment. In case you are curious, I got the Avenger Skyland:

Being busy with academics up until recently, I have not had much time to play. However, in the couple of attempts to sit in tables and boot a session, the heads-up action on Full Tilt seems quite dead lately. This is disturbing and I hope things change quick. I have noticed (both first hand and from friends' comments) that you can be sitting at 4 total empty tables at mid-stakes and not have a single person attempt to sit in for over an hour. Alarming, to say the least.

November results, crazy week

2008-12-01T23:57:00.023-05:00

In spite of this being my best month to date, it did not go as smoothly as you'd assume. I lost $7K in a single HU match, then went on a mini-downswing the second half of the month. (Yes I realize that it is minuscule enough to not even bother mentioning.) Regardless, I am very proud of how the results turned out. I should be able to crank out this many hands playing HU on most months.

****************************************************

My past few days have been dramatic. One of my tires randomly blew out on I-95 at 1:30 AM on Friday. My dad came out to the highway (right next to the exit of a rough neighborhood) and helped put a donut on my car since I had no experience doing so. Consequently, I had to get new tires the following day. I found out the hard way that the parts for nicer cars have RIDICULOUSLY inflated prices. Then on Sunday I got in a car accident. The weather was 35 degrees and pouring rain. I was going just 55 MPH in a 65 MPH zone on a major highway. The left lane came to an immediate halt, and my car had too much momentum for me to stop in time. I rear-ended the Ford Focus in front of me, and it caused a domino effect that created a 4 car accident.

The old Notorious B.I.G. adage holds a lot of weight: "More money, more problems". To be specific... the more material possessions you own, the more complex and stressful everyday life becomes. it ties down your feeling of independence, freedom, and forces you to place highly priority on material objects than they deserve. Also, everything loses its luster. Millionaires don't enthusiastically jump out of bed every morning just because they have a Porsche and a 6,000 square foot home. A happy life is fulfilled through being content with what you have, and happiness is derived from making the most of your interpersonal relationships with friends and family. I often desire nice things, and want to be a homeowner soon, but also need to exert self-control on buying unnecessary things.

The world has to learn that the actual pleasure derived from material things is of rather low quality on the whole and less even in quantity than it looks to those who have not tried it.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

I am extremely occupied with academics for the next week-and-change, so I doubt I will be blogging or playing much poker in the near future. In the meantime, I sincerely hope everyone who reads my blog runs well at both poker and life. :)

-Stephen

Life is full of 180s

2008-11-24T01:17:00.005-05:00

Poker has been rough the last 4 days. Things have definitely cooled down. In my opinion, the recent struggle has largely been my fault. I have become complacent AND impatient with poker. After being on a heater, I have begun going into every match thinking I can play sloppily and still come out a big winner. I have begun making very unjustifiable call-downs, FPS plays, and other -EV plays. The full realization of this came to me today, and I decided to voluntarily freeze my Full Tilt account for 2 days. I could definitely use the breather.

Abruptly stressing over academics hasn't helped the situation either. Back in August, I made a blog entry that set a goal of getting a 4.0 GPA this semester. Well, I completely aborted that plan by September. My attendance rate is slightly improved this semester (still well below the student average), but I spend almost zero time doing work outside of class. Courses have become more difficult in senior year, and it's showing. Today, reality hit me: I am way behind in most of my classes. This has caused me to stress quite a lot now that I realize final exams are right around the corner. I'm trying to combat this by setting a To-Do List for each class, and prioritizing what I need to do in order to salvage my GPA for the semester.

At least Thanksgiving break is coming up. It's a well-timed break since I could use some relaxation, and a change of scenery.

Stephen grind? lolololol

2008-11-21T10:15:00.008-05:00

Something strange has happened, and I don't like it. If anyone here can help me cure this solution, I would greatly appreciate it. The problem: I've actually had motivation to grind! I'm on pace to play over 25K hands this month. This may not sound like much to a lot of you guys... but for a HU player who is in school full time, it isn't easy. Anyway, I've actually been grinding while having good results, which is even more surprising. Usually if I'm grinding it's because I'm trying to get unstuck. This seems to hold true with many other players.

Many of those who read this blog don't actually have a Facebook (what is WRONG with you people?!)... but to those that do, I have an interesting question. I have been contemplating deleting some people who have friended me on facebook over the 4 years I've had it. There is something very unnatural about how Facebook permanentely glues you to every random acquaintence, girl you went on a date with, etc. The natural process in life is for people to slowly fall out of your life. Problem is, it's considered rude (and even malicious, to some) to unfriend someone without ample reasoning. Anyone have thoughts on this?

I am going on vacation with John/PuddlePirate and Ryan/WOWURBAD next month. I haven't traveled nearly as much as I would like to, so this should be a good start. I made a $100 cross-bet with John on getting all our passport stuff mailed out for rush order by today (Friday). The bet seemed to be very beneficial since it stopped us from procrastinating. We have not decided where we want to go yet, but I think we are leaning towards somewhere in the Caribbean or South America for a week. We want to go somewhere warm with young people and things to do. Suggestions are more than welcome, as none of us seem to be terribly knowledge on locations. There seem to be dozens of choices just within the Caribbean.

The sickness continues

2008-11-16T11:54:00.005-05:00

This week has been an emotional rollercoaster, to say the least. I had the worst single session on Monday, losing $7K at 5/10 NL to a guy who is a mediocre reg at best. I ended up bouncing back from that two days later and having my first ever $10K day, followed by a $4.5K win the next day. You would think Im playing larger than just 2/4 - 5/10 based on the swings I've been having lately. Overall, I'm still on a ridiculous heater that I don't expect to last. My winrate over the last few months is not representative of what someone can win over the long run. That being said, I feel like I'm extremely well-adept to the games I play. One trick pony perhaps, but who cares? If some day it gets to the point that I need to become proficient at other forms of poker, I am confident I will be able to make the switch. In the mean time, I love the form of poker I specialize in. It would be difficult to make the argument that any of the time I dedicate to poker should be spent becoming a more "well-rounded" player.

Last night, my roommate Evan and I threw a house party. At University of Pittsburgh, most people live in the section of the city that the campus is located (Oakland). I moved to the section next to it so I didn't have to live in the ghetto anymore, but getting friends to visit my current place can be difficult. We managed to get 20-25 people here and the party went really well. I've come to appreciate my college years more as time goes on, and these really have been the best years of my life. I remember during adolesence that many people would seemingly exaggerate about how great college is. Well, it's been everything it was cracked up to be for me. Now I'm just afraid that life gets much more boring after graduation.

October results

2008-11-03T14:45:00.010-05:00

Okay so if you can't tell, I ran like god in October. My work ethic was awful, yet I got rewarded. I used to tease my friend IHaveAStrong9 for having months like this, and now it would be hypocritical. In spite of the fact that this was my best month to date, it is still pretty sad how few hands I logged in. I spend too much time talking on AIM, railing high stakes games, browsing mindless forum discussion, and doing other unproductive activities. A big leak I have is mentally set a rough monetary goal for each month. Once I hit that plateau, I become unmotivated to grind.

Probably the biggest highlight of the month was one of my final matches. On October 31st, I played Huck Seed at about 11 AM eastern time. He spewed like a completely monkey and essentially handed me $3K. Once I reflected on the session, I realized it was very early on the west coast and he was likely drunk from the night before. Regardless, it still feels good to beat up on a red pro who has been on TV many times, and is even touted by his peers for supposedly being a very good heads-up player.

On a lighter note... this was the first year that I fully experienced Halloween since childhood. Halloween is incredibly fun while in college, but I didn't take advantage of it until now. I went to a couple haunted houses, rented horror movies, and spent a good bit of time brainstorming my costume (I was a rapper). My close friends had a big Halloween party on Friday. It was going really well until the Pittsburgh police broke up the party. I would say 90%+ of the people there were of legal drinking age. No one was arrested fortunately, but it was still incredibly frustrating to have a good party ruined.

Best day ever in cash games

2008-10-20T20:44:00.007-04:00

I kicked ass and took names yesterday, winning $7.5K over 1.5K hands. This is the most I've ever won in a single day (in cash games) to date. Just like any time period where you run really hot, I both outplayed people and got lucky. I was lucky to land fish at all stakes. Most of them had more than a measly 40 big blinds to lose. Heaters definitely make you feel on top of the world, even if you logically understand you're experiencing the good side of variance. Here are a couple of the most interesting hands from yesterday:

Hand 1: I looove hero calling.
This is the opponent I won the most from yesterday. He was solid for the most part but made a few spewy plays postflop that made him quite +EV to play. Timing tells played a big part here, but my gut also told me he wouldn't over-bet shove a king here.

Hand 2: Where do I find these people?
I had a couple hands yesterday where my opponents literally just gave me 100BB+ on a silver platter. Not that this would be a fold against most people anyway, but this is the biggest snap call ever given how maniacal he was playing.

Hand 3: Awkward spot with OESD in 3 bet pot.
I asked a couple friends about this hand already. My opponent had been pretty snug, but at the same time I had little/no grasp on how he played postflop, especially in 3 bet pots. It was hard to imagine that he would raise the flop with Qx, especially given the fact that I had been pushing him around during the match. In spots like this, I expect my opponent to just call down with a TP-type hand. Given he has little money left after his raise, it seems apparent I have little fold equity. Regardless, I thought a shove seemed right (and still like it) given my equity versus his range.

Hand 4: Suckouts are inevitable on your biggest day ever.
This looks pretty gross for multiple reasons. My double barrel versus this opponent is questionable since I'm going to get little credit given how draw-heavy the board is. I also apparently suck at poker math, because I'm not getting the 4.1-to-1 needed to call when he shoves the turn. I can imagine he was throwing stuff.

****************************************************

Last night I also went to a Belgian restaurant with a couple friends. They had a large beer selection with many hard-to-find imports, and great food all around. Their specialty is an appetizer with a pound of mussels in a white wine sauce, served with a side of pomme frites (french fries) that you dip in mayonnaise. Probably the best appetizer I've ever had. A female friend of mine has agreed to do a tour of different restaurants throughout Pittsburgh this year. In recent years, I've greatly expanded what foods I'm willing to try, so it will be interesting to experience the exotic dining hidden throughout the city.

Should be doing one of 17 other things

2008-10-15T14:40:00.010-04:00

For the first time in my life, I feel like my plate is completely full. I have enough activities and obligations that I need to actually develop good time management to get everything accomplished. That being said, I'm doing a shitty job at time management thus far. I've played an embarrassingly amount of hands so far this month, and I'm not getting consistent piano practice in. Anyone have advice on how to manage my time better?

By the way... I don't know about you guys, but I still love to rail the high stakes games. I doubt these 500/1K NL games are going to run for a long time, so I try to stay updated on what has been happening in the games lately. The supposed NL fish (David Benyamine, Ziigmund, Gus Hansen) have been running really well in the games, which adds a huge twist. Patrik being the biggest loser is probably even more shocking. We've all had pre-conceived opinions about who the best NL hold em players in the world before these games ran, and these beliefs are being questioned for essentially the first time in a long time. Nosebleed NL has not run regularly since summer 2007.

Relaxing back home

2008-10-12T16:53:00.012-04:00

I have been back home in the Philadelphia area since Friday. University of Pittsburgh gave students a short fall break (1 day off, to be exact) for the first time. Usually I only drive back home during academic breaks, so it was nice to get to see my family before Thanksgiving. My mom (whose house is my primary residence while home from school) lives in a fairly rural setting. Being here reminds me of how much I love nature, and would like to be a homeowner with a large yard. Home also reminds me of how much I want to have a dog (or two). My mom has a golden retriever and a chocolate lab, while my dad has a yellow lab. Big dogs are awesome, and I believe having pets is a great compliment for being a professional poker player.

Lately, I have an increasing appreciation for poker as a profession. Many of us young poker players are quick to complain about any possible negative aspect. We take for granted that this is one of the only things that you can easily make 6 digits as a young person with little/no assets, as well as the copious amount of freedom poker provides. Yes, the amount of human interaction is limited. It forces poker players to either be happy with ample time to themselves (which does not apply to me), or work harder to maintain an active social life. Fortunately, college has helped me have an easily-accessible social network. This does makes me scared about how life will change after graduation next year.

I met with my new accountant for the first time today. We had a long consultation where I outlined what being a poker professional is like. He advised what I should be doing to prepare for the upcoming tax season. He also commented at the end of the consultation that I was one of the most unique clients that he has met in a while. I strongly, strongly advise any US poker professional to talk extensively with an accountant about how to file. We are in an incredibly unique situation, and with that comes extra responsibility to file as accurately and thriftily as possible.

Weekend happenings

2008-10-05T22:45:00.021-04:00

On Friday night, I participated in a drinking competition. I am honestly not much of a drinker... I do it socially about once a week, and rarely get hammered. However, I decided to be captain and form a team when a friend informed me of the event. Teams comprised of 8 people. Each had to drink the following: 12 bottles of beer, a fifth of vodka, and one box of wine. Somehow, a team completed the competition in merely 16 minutes. I suspected that whoever was responsible for the boxed wine would suffer the most. My friend Ben (who, of course, chugged the boxed wine) ended up blacking out, and we had to carry him home. Needless to say - it was a fun experience, but competitive drinking is extremely illogical from a health perspective.

****************************************************

I have taken 3 piano lessons so far, and enjoy it a lot. My teacher has a background in classical music and is focusing on me building strong fundamentals. If I don't mind going through music-reading and finger-strengthening exercises, then it will be awesome once I begin learning actual songs. It is disappointing that I have a very poor singing voice, though. I'm considering getting a vocal teacher sometime in the next few months so I can at least improve from an awful singer to a mediocre singer, and combine that with my newly-learned piano skills. I definitely get a satisfying feeling from getting back into music for the first time since I was 14 years old. It is a great way to challenge myself, use my creativity, and express myself. If you're like me and feel that life needs to feel more fulfilling, I strongly recommend doing something musical.

****************************************************

I'm very objective about the poker economy, and constantly analyze the bigger picture. As I've said before, it is undeniable that poker is a negative sum game. Rake, taxes, and cashouts (especially by professionals to cover their expenses) mean that the poker economy is constantly shrinking. The only way to balance this depletion is for new blood to be constantly depositing money into the economy. This simply is not occurring at a large enough rate to offset the factors mentioned. As a result, the poker economy is drying up. It is not strongly related to the state of the US economy. It is also NOT strongly related to the legislation passed about online gaming in 2006. Online poker does not even resemble what it did two years ago, and conditions are unlikely to improve. That being said, I will continue to play poker for as long as I can comfortably make 6 figures doing so. I'm already starting to consider my other options for what to do after poker, because I don't realistically envision this being my main source of income 5 years from now.

September Results

2008-10-02T11:13:00.013-04:00

September ended well and was NOT my worst month after all, but it was the most challenging. I went through my biggest downswing ever ($13.5K, or roughly 17 buy-ins). On a positive note, I did not let the downswing affect my overall outlook on life. I have a tendency to get depressed during downswings, allowing it to affect my entire life. 2008 has been a mostly joyful year with few bumps in the road. I had a conversation with a friend about this, and we agree that good HU players at mid-stakes NL rarely go through big downswings. Rather, they do endure breakeven stretches. Thus, it is a testament to my mental toughness that I stayed strong during this downswing, in spite of it being my first big downswing in a long time.

My confidence in my poker game is higher now than it was 30 days ago (surprisingly). Now my work ethic is what needs improvement. Playing 15-18K hands a month is not sufficient. Granted, I do lead a more balanced life now. I have other hobbies, difficult classes, and make a stronger effort to socialize on weekends. However, I should still be able to log about 100 hours a month (which comes to 25-30K hands of heads up). Do you guys do anything specific to push yourself to play poker during times when you aren't busy, but don't have a strong drive to play?

I'm going to make more of an effort to discuss my private life from now on. I find that the most interesting poker blogs are ones in which the blogger updates about their personal life. Writing is very therapeutic for me, and my blog would likely be more interesting if I include aspects of my personal life. I'm a very extroverted person by nature, and enjoy expressing things to others. Besides... I'd like to think that my life is somewhat interesting enough. ;)

Goals for October:
-Play 20 to 30K hands
-Ease back into playing 5/10 NL heads up
-Play live a couple times
-Begin playing tennis regularly
-Continue practicing piano for 5+ hours a week

Not as emo lately

2008-09-20T16:59:00.003-04:00

Poker has been going better lately. I was stuck $7K for the month around the time of the last entry, and decided to finally take it easy for a few days. I began playing again recently, and as of right now I'm only stuck $1K. This month is most frustrating because I'm killing 2/4, but getting murdered at 3/6 and 5/10. I remember Dodgyken blogged about the same problem months ago, but couldn't relate to him at the time. It sucks. I can't even imagine what it's like to be OMGClayAiken and kill 25/50 (which is a very difficult game), but then run bad at 200/400.

I have been watching the presidential election pretty closely for the past year. I consider myself a Libertarian because I generally advocate having smaller government and more individual responsibility, but don't affiliate with any political party. While my views differ quite drastically from both of the two main candidates, I generally have sympathized more with Barack Obama. I feel like he is much more of an intellectual, and more charismatic than John McCain. However, lately Obama has really begun to turn me off. He has the most liberal voting record in the Senate, and always seems to believe government intervention is the best policy with any issue. Lately I've gotten the impression he is basically a soft socialist, which really scares the shit out of me. On the other hand, I'm not exactly an advocate of McCain's foreign policy. I'll probably be voting for a 3rd party candidate in November.

Tomorrow I begin piano lessons. My life needs more balance, and doing something musical definitely seems like a step in the right direction. I played alto saxophone for about 4 years during adolescence, and would say that overall I love music, but haven't played anything since. I decided not to take up guitar because it seems so cliche. If the lessons go well, I'll probably purchase a keyboard in order to practice at my apartment. One more activity that is definitely missing in my life is organized sports. About two months ago I talked about playing tennis regularly, but have been lazy about doing so since returning to Pittsburgh. I should set a goal to be able to play intramural tennis (or something similar) by next year so I start getting out and playing much more often.

Big hill to climb now

2008-09-12T13:22:00.008-04:00

Three days ago I had another large loss in a HU match, this time -$5K at 5/10. I realized that I was in the worst downswing of my poker career. I was also off to the worst start ever for a month. I decided after this that it was time to take a break from 5/10 for now. I'm now on a mission to grind my results for the month back to even before I play anymore 5/10. I'm still an overall winner at these stakes and feel like my play has been fine. However, the losses at those stakes affect my psyche a little too much still.

I do believe that my game has gone astray the past month or two. I have made -EV calldowns and suicide bluff attempts. It's as if I have become the most impatient poker player in the world. Now that I've finally begun to realize this problem, I am working hard to correct it. I'm beginning to discuss hands with friends again, and occasionally watch instructional videos. It's not as if I have forgotten how to play poker, it is just that my game needs to be detailed or something.

I hope poker is going well for everyone. It seems as if many of my poker friends are losing an interest in poker (or at least losing an interest in blogging about it). I guess this is not surprising because poker resembles a hobby more than a job, and passion for hobbies often fades.

I made someone very happy

2008-09-07T12:28:00.006-04:00

I lost $5800 to one guy yesterday at 3/6 NL heads up. I was actually stuck 12 buy-ins at the peak of the match. This seems unfathomable because I have never been stuck more than 5 buy-ins versus one opponent. Most fish do not give the opportunity to lose more than a few buy-ins. They are notorious for playing short matches, especially when they are up.

He (who will go unnamed in case I can ever get my money back) was clearly a fish that had exploitable tendencies. I misplayed a couple hands early in the match that doubled him up a few times. It is common to lose some money to even the worst players early in the match. Styles of opponents can be miscalculated early on. Unfortunately, as he got a larger stack and more confidence, he started becoming LAG. He was still taking a lot of poor lines and I had a good read on him, but his aggressive style created a very high-variance environment. I lost a lot of coolers, and had some of the sickest deep spots. Regardless of these incredibly frustrating elements, I felt that I was at least playing well enough to still have an edge.

The match overall lasted 5 hours and 750 hands, my longest single match to this date. By halfway through, I decided that it would be best if I had a poker friend sweating me. This would keep me more level-headed, and reassure me that I am making good decisions. My friends Ryan and John watched and discussed the match with me for about an hour each. This was a great experience, and is something I should do more often. Being able to talk out hands really helped me solidify my read, and make excellent decisions. It's also more difficult to tilt when you have the peer pressure of not wanting to make tilty plays in front of friends.

The ironic thing is, I am actually more confident about my poker game right now than I was 24 hours ago. I also have more of an enthusiasm to play poker, which I was really afraid I had lost over the past month or two. I really want to prove I am as good of a player as I think I am now.

School's back in session

2008-09-01T00:45:00.006-04:00

I can't show a screenshot for my August results since the stats are on two computers still, but I finished +$8K over 13K hands. Considering the long break-even stretch I endured for the majority of the month, I cannot complain about these results. The stretch hurt my interest in poker and made me not play during days I had ample free time. This is my worst month since February, but the key is to simply get back on the horse. It is very beneficial that poker players measure success in months, because it allows one to mentally reset at the beginning of each month.

Classes started up last week. Strangely enough, I'm somewhat excited about academics for this semester. It has hit me that college is a big stage of my life that is about to end. I should make the most of what is left. I also want to prove I can get a respectable GPA if I apply myself. Since an adolescent, I've essentially done the minimum in school to get by.

We live in a society where we make the most of what we feel we're best at. Specialization. There are many, many areas of life in which I do not excel. I should be utilizing my strengths to the maximum. But have I? My 3.0 GPA in college certainly does not reflect that. It might be too late to completely reshape my academic accomplishments. However, it is not too late to turn around my work ethic in life.

I recently opened a Netflix subscription. I love movies, but realized recently that there are many highly-acclaimed films that I have never seen. I started out with renting Vanilla Sky, The Departed, and The Prestige. All three of them are excellent films that are intellectually challenging, and now I'm craving more. If you have any movies you'd like to recommend based on my taste in these three, let me know.

Absent-mindedness

2008-08-24T13:51:00.003-04:00

I had an incredibly interesting day this past Thursday. Quick back story: I own an Infiniti G35 that has a built-in GPS navigation system. However, I own an external Garmin GPS that was used in my previous car. The Garmin was being stored in the center console of my Infiniti. I got my car detailed on Thursday. When it was returned to me a few hours later, the Garmin was missing. I instantly started freaking out. I quickly checked around my apartment and could not find it, so I called the owner of the Detail Shop. I told him about the situation and asked for a refund and said I would file a police report if I did not get one. He said he checked the shop and even his employee’s own car, and found nothing. The last time I had seen the GPS was in my car a few days earlier, but my memory about the GPS since then was fuzzy. I still felt confident my GPS was stolen.

Later that day, I went to a nearby track to run laps with 2 of my close friends. About 15 minutes after leaving the track, I realized that my cell phone was missing. Luckily, a guy walking his dog at the track found it and answered it. We got it from him shortly thereafter. This development made me severely question my judgment about the GPS. If I am this absent-minded, should I really be throwing around theft accusations? I have not called back the Detail Shop owner since then. I am completely baffled as to what the best decision is in this situation.

I’m in a breakeven stretch over the past 2-3 weeks. I haven’t struggled like this since February. I had started taking for granted the fact that I was always cranking out low variance results (in spite of only averaging about 20K hands a month). This stretch has been a harsh wake-up. I tend to get a little depressed when poker is going badly. The way I’ve tried combating depression this time around is to make an extra effort to do other things in life I enjoy. Going out, playing video games, watching movies I’ve been meaning to see for a while.

Time management

2008-08-17T13:22:00.005-04:00

I have a huge problem with time management. I've create lists of the tasks I need to accomplish in the near future, but struggle to completely them in an efficient and timely manner. Hours of each day are wasted doing things that bring little benefit to my life. I need to start pushing out these wasteful periods of my day. The first step I've made is blocking myself from being able to access Facebook indefinitely. I should also halt myself from using AIM, as I feel that I waste way too much time making small talk on it.

I have come to the realization that so much of your time during the day is spent with simple maintenance. Hygiene, eating, cleaning your house, buying groceries, making basic income. These activities are simply done in order to maintain a basic condition and rhythm. They don't enhance your life from what it was in the recent past. Most of the things we do in life are not with intentions of progress, but just maintenance. The struggle becomes trying to maximize time spent making progression in life. I tell myself I care so much about self-improvement within various areas of my life. However, this requires hard work that allows little time to relax.

I have been running bad at 5/10 in particular the past week or so, and it is extremely frustrating. I have decided to buy out of both bets I made for poker results this month (one with WOW UR BAD, and one with Jethro). I have not been this frustrated about poker in over 6 months, even though I am still up a couple thousand on the month. There is nothing worse for an online cash player to run well at their lower stakes (2/4 and 3/6 for me), but run badly at their higher games.

Yes, I'm still alive

2008-08-12T13:18:00.005-04:00

-I'm going to stop apologizing for my lack of blog updates. I was starting to feel guilty for it, but I now realize that blogging will only be enjoyable for me if I don't look at it as a chore or duty. I really enjoy expressing myself, but I don't wanna force myself to make half-assed entries with little substance. I used to criticize my friends who became lazy with blogging, but I realize it is not my place to do so.

-I'm sure a lot of you have been reading Raptor's blog lately. For those who don't, he is a top internet player who has kind of transformed himself lately. He has started a sudden focus on dieting, exercising a lot, trying new activities such as yoga. While I don't strongly associate myself with him, the changes he is trying to go through resemble my own. The past year or so, I've become very interested in self-improvement. I constantly try to find out what I don't like about myself, and figure out how I can change it. I also try to make a consistent effort to try new things, everything from learning the basics of Buddhism to keeping an open mind about new sports. Right now, it has been about trying to life a "healthy" lifestyle where I'm pursuing goals that reflect what I believe everyone needs to maximize happiness. Exercising, eating well, getting consistent sleep, etc. I believe that there is a good life equilibrium that we are still trying to figure out, but I'm trying my best to move closer to it.

-I defended my FTOPS HU title on Sunday. There were 1300+ entrants, a large increase from the 512 from last year. Full Tilt decided to allow byes this time, which is really lame. I ended up having to play a first round match, while the majority of entrants received a bye. I ended up winning my first 3 matches, but going down in the 4th round. I had a lot of fun and believe that the format is perfect for me. It is the one tournament that I get really excited about. I probably put more effort into the FTOPS HU event than any other single day of poker. In related news, my custom gold football jersey came in the mail for my FTOPS win. It is an authentic-style jersey. I plan on getting it custom framed and hanging it up in my apartment, as its a really cool way of displaying one of my big poker accomplishments.

-My trash talking in chat boxes needs to come to a halt. I am very courteous to fish, but against competent players I am often a dick. I don't know why I do it, must be some kind of insecurity issue. I had a friend of mine call me classless the other day, and it was a bit of a wake-up call. I've also come to the realization that my trash talking is probably -EV. It does occasionally put people on tilt, but the more common result is that it makes me focus more on the chat than the actual match. It also makes me steam a lot. If you catch me talking shit from now on during the middle of an actual match and show me proof, I will transfer you $10.

-My results in poker have continued to be very solid. I ran really well at 5/10 heads-up to start, but have come a little bit back down to earth. I definitely feel comfortable making 5/10 one of my regular games now. It has been necessary to do this. There has been a large influx of regs at mid-stakes HU lately, making it more difficult to get soft games. Attached are my results for July... better to post them later than never. In the mean time, I have quite a lot of hands I need to grind for the rest of August to qualify for our August $$$ bet. GOGOGOGOGO

Live pokers, and getting back on the horse

2008-07-23T19:45:00.007-04:00

Yet again, sorry for the lack of updates.

Last weekend, I made a trip to the Atlantic City area to scope out the beach and play some poker at Borgata. My live winning streak is finally over, as I lost $1350 over 9 hours of play. In spite of being stuck, I was enjoying myself during the sessions. I'm very happy to know that I can supplement my online play with live poker, and actually enjoy doing it. Many online players seem to be miserable about live poker. Anyway, here is one hand where I totally owned someone:

First orbit at the table, I limp AJs UTG. (I have no idea what is standard here, if anything.) The guy behind me also limps, and the player after him raises to $50. It folded back around me, and I decided to call. The limper behind me also called. The flop comes J73 rainbow. Check, check, the PFR bets out $80 into a $150 pot. I decide that he likely has a small pair here and see no point in raising, so I call. The other limper folds. The turn comes a 5. I check, the PFR bets $80 again. This seems like obvious weakness to me. I'm trying to figure out how to extract the most value, and I decide to flat and donk the river. I call, and the pot is now $470. I donk $250 on the river just to milk him a little. To my extreme surprise, he pretty quickly raises it to $650. I have no idea what to think here... rivered two pair/set is the only thing that makes sense at all. I take about 3-4 minutes just sitting there, completely borderline on what to do. Suddenly, the guy offers to show one card. I say sure, and he flips up the top card, a 7. Three seconds later, I announce call, flip my hand up, and he mucks. I don't normally make live reads like this, but I felt very confident that him showing a 7 was a sign of weakness. Who said that online donks can't make live reads?

As for online, I've finally started grinding again. I took about a week off, which is probably my longest hiatus from poker in about 2 years. I think that being around poker players 24/7 in Vegas burned me out a little bit, but I've found my groove again. I've played 4K hands in the past 2 days. I'm running pretty badly at 3/6 NL, but hot at my occasional 5/10 shots, so I cant complain.

I have a bet set up already with my friend WOW UR BAD for next month. We're making a bet on who can make the most money at 2/4+ NL next month. The qualifier is you have to play at least 30K hands in order to win the bet. We believe that this bet is +EV for both of us, since we're both generally lazy about putting hands in. He probably has a slight edge since his results at MSNL HU are ungodly, but I plan to put up a good fight.

Reflection

2008-07-12T15:25:00.005-04:00

I'm now back home. I've been doing a lot of reflecting on the past month that I spent living in Las Vegas.

Going into Vegas, I was concerned about "making the most" of the trip. I made lists of activities I wanted to accomplish. In hindsight, I am glad I did this. Seeing progress in my life is important to me. Right now, I believe there are so many things in this world I've yet to experience. Setting black-and-white goals helps me to clearly see progress. I didn't end up doing every single activity I brainstormed, but I did most of it, and I feel satisfied. The trip has made me very enthusiastic about experiencing new places. Most of my housemates had a lot more traveling experience than me, and I now want to change that about myself. I see myself going to make different locations over the next few years.

During my second week in Vegas, I wished that my housemates had more of an enthusiasm to go out and "experience" Vegas, rather than relax around the house. By the final few days, however, Jethro and cntgetmedown were likely wishing the same of me. I had grown homesick during the tail end of the trip. Vegas is so fast, and it's hard for many people to take in large doses.

On my flight home, I realized that I missed my housemates already. Corny, I know. It was great to have a group of friends in which we all have a common interest, and helped us to bond easily. I feel that we executed the entire plan of the house well. I really hope I get to see these guys again, even if not in the same setting next time.

Now that I'm back home, I'm going to finally play through Metal Gear Solid 4. I love the MGS series because it challenges me intellectually. This aspect obviously does not exist in many video games. Woven into the plot of each game are important philosophical topics. The ongoing evolution of our species; the purpose (if any) of our lives; the best government system and how one can truly measure what that is. The creator of the series is a complete genius. Each time the next installment in the series is released, I become enthralled in a video game for the first time in years.

Leaving Vegas in style

2008-07-10T08:47:00.006-04:00

Sorry for the lack of updates, been super lazy about anything that involves effort out here. I've done a lot of various stuff the past few days that deserves mention:

On Monday, a group of 9 of us (my house, AceCR9, PrincessDonk, and Brystmar) went to Tao restaurant in the Venetian. It's an upscale Asian restaurant that turns into a nightclub at later hours. We ordered everything family style and I got to try a lot of new asian dishes that were really enjoyable. The most memorable dish was the Kobe steak, which was extremely tender but $16 per ounce, which is ridiculous. filet mignon is almost as enjoyable to eat, and about 1/5th the price. We racked up a $1200 bill that everyone wimped out of doing CC roulette over.

After dinner, the house went and saw another Cirque du Soleil show, called O. It was at the Bellagio and this was mostly a water show. It involved a lot of the same acrobatics as Mystere. Overall the two Cirque shows I've seen were very similar in quality, but I would recommend Mystere to anyone who has yet to see a Cirque show. It was a very balanced show with good variety. I'm really amazed at how much the entire Cirque franchise has taken over Vegas. There are advertisements everywhere, and seeing a show has become a must-do for anyone visiting vegas nowadays.

Tuesday, we went to a gun range with Bazclef and IAmSnow. We got to shoot four different machine guns - Uzi and Swedish-K are the only names I remember. It was my first time ever even holding a gun, let alone shooting fully automatic weapons. It was extremely fun to just unload an entire clip in about 3 seconds. Once we finished trying out the four machine guns, we had a "challenge" of sorts. Each person in our group got to fire 2 shots with a Desert Eagle, which has to be the most powerful handgun in the world. It has a ton of kickback and I was pretty nervous about firing it. Dodgyken ended up firing the most accurate shots, and won a token redneck hat as the prize.
(Side note: Bazclef does an awesome job blogging about his Vegas trip, so I recommend checking out his blog for activities and details I've likely left out.)

I've been to Spearmint Rhino twice recently. It is arguably the most famous strip club in the world. The girls are gorgeous, but they are the biggest hustlers ever. When you enter the club, you are the fish. Without going into too many details, I've gotten private dances from two girls. The first was okay-looking, but was a great dancer and had a fun attitude. The second girl was extremely beautiful, but had a horrible attitude. The latter just spent the entire time bitching for tips while she was supposed to be dancing. The former was much more worth the money. Strip clubs really aren't that amazing of an experience once you're used to it, so I doubt I'll be hooked on strip club visits ever.

I'll write a recap of my trip and after-thoughts when I get home. I have very mixed feelings about the fact that I leave in a day.

Recap from California

2008-07-04T03:00:00.004-04:00

I'm blogging from California, about an hour southeast of the Bay area. I'm in the middle of a 3 day excursion to visit my mom's side of the family. I haven't blogged in a week, so let's back-track:

Jeff (Jethro87) arrived into Vegas last Friday. We decided to go check out the Wynn, which I would put in the top tier of overall casino quality with others such as Bellagio and Venetian. It's a plus that the main poker rooms in Vegas are in the nicest casinos, and makes commuting to live poker more enjoyable. Jeff and I sat at the same 5/10 NL table. The first observed hand involved a creepy middle-aged guy with bulging eyeballs. He was using semi-abusive table talk during a big hand with someone. I found out later he was Alan Boston, a sports bettor who was on Poker After Dark recently. He came off as a miserable old man, something stereotypical of a classless and jaded live player.

Anyway, my most interesting hand of the session came in the first orbit: a guy in MP opens to $40, the cutoff calls, and I call from the big blind with KQs. The flop comes KTT rainbow. I check, the PFR checks, and the cutoff bets ~$80. I make an extremely obvious call, and the PFR folds. The turn comes a 4 of hearts, giving me a backdoor flush draw. I check again and the CO bets ~$220 without too much hesitation. At this point I think he may very well have a ten, since he didn't seem scared that I might have a ten, and competent live players generally don't slowplay. I think I would have made a pretty nitty fold here if I didn't have the FD, but it's another pretty obvious call with it. The river comes a 6 of hearts, completing my flush. I checked since I expect him to bet-call any ten, and this give him some shot to bet air. Also, a river lead by me basically announces my hand and never gets raised. He bet ~$350 and I made a very easy shove less than double that, and he called quickly. I flipped up my flush, and he showed a ten and mucked. I've had a lot of fortunate spots like this in my live sessions thus far, and I definitely believed I've been running hot overall. I booked a $1300 win and Jeff booked a $800 win, which must have seemed like a solid start to his stay.

Cntgetmedown arrived on Saturday. Jethro, him and I quickly hit it off. The three of us have been talking regularly online since June 2007, and our personalities mesh really well. It's funny because I was confident it would be this way. Simply talking to someone online can still be a great indicator of how you will get along in person. This is not to mean that I don't get along with any of my current (or past) housemates. I definitely wouldn't take back living with any of the guys I have, and I'm very thankful that the entire Vegas house has lived up to all my expectations.

I went and got my first lay-down massage on Sunday. I was recommended by my Uncle to get a deep tissue massage. Some of it was painful, particularly the upper back massage in the beginning. I felt great afterwards though, and definitely plan to get massages monthly from now on. Sitting with a computer about 30-40 hours a week isn't exactly ideal for the human frame, so massaging out tension seems to be a great supplement.

I finished June at +$10K online (I'll post a screenshot in the next entry) and +$5.5K live. Considering I had my largest downswing ever, I'm satisfied with this result. I am only disappointed in the fact that I played 16K hands, which is way less than my goal of 25-30K. I seem to always have a different excuse every month for why I didn't play as many hands as I originally shot for.

Bottle service = baller

2008-06-28T17:12:00.010-04:00

Thursday was my friend Kyle's 22nd birthday, so a group of us went out to Tao to celebrate. Tao is one of the trendier nightclubs in Vegas, located in the Venetian. We decided to call ahead and get bottle service. This is more expensive than paying a cover charge and buying individual drinks, but it allows you to skip the line and get your own table. We were told the stipulation was that we had to get at least one bottle for every two guys. We ended up getting Grey Goose and Jack Daniels (it was four of us) which totaled about $700 before tip. I had red bull and vodka, my favorite mixed drink.

We told one of the butler-type assistants to go find us women. He came through and brought a few girls to our table. By this point I was very drunk so I don't remember details well, but I spoke with a girl who had moved to Vegas from Canada. We ended up dancing for a bit and then parted ways. By this point, I was feeling sick. I eventually threw up in the bathroom. Apparently clubs like this will often kick people out if they get sick, but they let me off with a basic warning. I ended up leaving shortly there-after and grabbing a cab home.

When I woke up at 9:30 AM the next morning, I was still hammered. I have never been drunk from the previous night like this before. I still don't feel quite right, as if I'm going through a multiple-day hangover. I'm usually a very responsible drinker and I definitely drink less than the average 21 year old, but sometimes when I have mixed drinks it is difficult to track how much alcohol I've consumed. If I had paced myself a little more, I could have gone to Spearmint Rhino with the guys afterwards. Oh well... guess I saved money?

Jethro and cntgetmedown arrive this weekend, which I'm pretty excited about. I've been talking to them a lot over the past year, and the three of us were the brains behind the vegas house.

Here are some pictures of us playing a home game, as well as my adventure skydiving:

Yes, Im playing poker in vegas

2008-06-24T13:39:00.007-04:00

It is now Day 11 of 27 in Las Vegas. The guys in the house haven't been doing a whole lot lately, aside from playing poker. I have played about 20 hours of live poker so far, and I'm up about $4500. I managed to find better tables this past weekend. As tough as it can be, the reality is that just playing pretty ABC tight-aggressive is what takes down the money in these games. I'm trying to make occassional double barrels and such, but really trying not to get out-of-line. I honestly don't mind live poker nearly as much as many other online players do. Full ring is the only thing that bothers me. Regardless, I'll continue to compliment my online play with live while I'm here, and definitely try to get 50+ total hours in. It seems that $100/hr is a realistic winrate in the 5/10 NL games here.

I introduced Dodgyken to Chipotle Mexican Grill (one of my favorite places) out here, and now it seems like our house has been addicted. Eating burritos multiple times, on top of eating out at restaurants, has hampered my attempt to eat healthy while in Vegas. We bought a bunch of groceries on the first day here that have mostly not been consumed. I need to stop being lazy about cooking, and stop craving unhealthy food.

My results online have been pretty mediocre since I got here. I find that I enjoy playing in the quiet setting back home more, where it is much easier to focus. In theory it is very cool to have a bunch of guys grinding online poker together, but in practice it is just stressful. This is not meant to be a knock on my housemates, I assume I would feel the same with any other poker players.

Being here has made me realize even more how important table selection is. I watch the guys around me who are great players, but consistently put themselves in matches where they have little (or often no) edge. I don't care how good you are at poker, it's all relative to who you're playing. And to pass up on a ridiculous amount of expected money just by having poor table selection amazes me. A couple months ago, I pretty much measured how good a poker player is by what their A-game is. Now, I honestly weigh that with table selection and tilt control just as much when rating a player.

And finally, I've made a list of the things I want to accomplish before I leave Vegas:

-see Comedy Stop at the Tropicana
-see a Cirque show: Mystere or O
-visit "old" Las Vegas
-go to 2 or 3 nightclubs
-go to Spearmint Rhino
-get a full body massage
-learn how to play craps and baccarat
-Try out some all-you-can-eat buffets
-Ride rollercoaster at NY/NY
-Go on the three rides at the Stratosphere

JUSTICE MUAHAHAHAHA

2008-06-19T22:39:00.011-04:00

I checked out the Bellagio for the first time on Tuesday. Dodgyken, famousanus and I all ended up playing at the same 5/10 NL table. Like my first live session in Vegas, the table ended up being very disappointing. It seemed like most of the other players at the table were live grinders. As for interesting hands: one hand there were 3 limpers, I isolated on the button with AKs to $60, and when it folded back around to the orignal limper, he reraised to $160. I over-bet shoved for $900 and ran into aces. I was pretty down on myself, but the poker gods must have felt bad, because I got even in a relatively ugly fashion. I flopped the nut flush versus famousanus's second nuts. Pretty gross, though it was humorous to tell the rest of the table that he is a good friend of mine (as he is storming out of the poker room). I ended -$31 on the session, and not feeling too excited about live poker. My first two sessions did not have soft tables at all.

I went skydiving yesterday with Andrew, Jared, and Brystmar. It was one of the top things on my to-do list for Vegas, and was an awesome experience. There is about a 5 second period after they open the door of the plane where you are completely hanging out of the plane, but the tandem instructor attached to you hasn't left the plane. I wasn't scared at all, but it was a huge adrenaline rush. Now that I've got my first thrill activity out of the way, I'm contemplating the idea of bungee jumping while I'm out here. Might as well make the most of my trip, amirite? I don't have pictures yet, but I ordered a picture CD that should be in the mail eventually.

We had our first big group dinner at The Palm Restaurant in Caesar's. Everyone in the house went, plus three friends from another house. It was a great meal, but a large part of the time was spent sweatin the credit card roulette bill that was to ensue. I was probably most worried about it (read below), while Dodgyken was so confident. He has been bragging the entire week about how lucky he is. After everyone ordered steaks, sides and desserts, the bill (after tip) was $930. My card got picked first, and I legitimately screamed in joy. I think people were rooting for me to lose because I am such a pessimist about CC roulette. Anyway, it got down to 4 cards, and people were discussing the idea of a chop/deal. This infuriated Dodgyken, and he said he would PUT HIS CARD BACK IN IF PEOPLE AGREED TO NOT CHOP. Now keep in mind, this is the mathematical equivalent of him lighting $200 on fire. The people agreed, and of course, Dodgyken ended up losing the bill. It was the most hilarious conclusion to a great dinner.

I'm running pretty bad at credit card roulette so far. I've lost 3 out of 5 bills. I’m fortunate to have dodged the big bill yesterday, but hoping not to run hundreds under expectation when the trip is said-and-done.

VEGAS

2008-06-16T02:40:00.004-04:00

Hey guys. I'm pretty beat right now, but I promised myself that I would blog before I went to bed tonight, so hopefully this entry doesn't come out too garbled.

I arrived in Vegas yesterday afternoon. Flight went smoothly, and then got my rental car in a timely fashion. I met Dodgyken and Andr3w for the first time (in person, obviously) when we checked into the house. They are both about what I expected since I have been speaking to them regularly for a while. We get along very well and I'm looking forward to living with them for the entire next 4 weeks. As far as the house goes, it is everything I was hoping and expecting. It's large and works perfectly for accomodating a group of young guys looking to have a fun time. Anyway, my friend Mike (a friend from college who is staying at the house for one week) flew into Vegas a few hours later, and the four of us drove down to the Rio to check out the poker scene.

I was in amazement of seeing the big-name poker players last night. The four of us just railed various WSOP events, smiling as we got to watch people we have idolized for years. Guys like Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, Allen Cunningham, Tom Dwan, and others simply have a larger-than-life presence. We were content not even playing poker last night, and just railing these guys. The $5K PLO w/ rebuys event had brought out many great players and condensed them into a few tables.

Today, I headed back to the Rio and played my first live session. I played a short session of 5/10 NL. There were five tables of 5/10 NL running when I got there in the late afternoon, and I must have been seated at the worst table. I quickly found out most of the guys at my table played online poker. I would have left the table but I got lazy because there was a waiting list for 5/10. I got very few cards preflop and just ended up playing pretty snug. I 3-bet light a couple times after I realized I had a pretty tight image at the table, but otherwise I came into zero interesting spots and basically broke even at +$330. My next live session I will probably be going to the Bellagio, as I heard the action for these stakes is pretty good there lately.

I am still on the fence about playing the $2500 six handed event tomorrow. I feel like I played a little hesitant in the cash game today, and that makes me wonder if I will not apply the right amount of aggression tomorrow. I know once I get comfortable with the overall live setting in Vegas that I will be fine, but there is still some kind of mild intimidation factor for me. If I feel this way, I probably should just skip on the event tomorrow. It's honestly 50/50 right now for me, and I believe for Dodgyken as well. I'll just wake up tomorrow morning and see how I feel about it.

Worst day ever

2008-06-12T09:03:00.006-04:00

My blog has lately always been about how well I'm running, so some of you will be delighted by the change. Yesterday was by far my worst day ever, losing $5700 at 2/4 and 3/6 heads-up. It is not even quite fathomable right now since my worst day previous was roughly -$3K. I'm not going to bicker about how bad I ran, but I will say this... with equity adjusted I ran about even. How sick is that for one day at these stakes?

I lost $4100 of the $5700 to one TAGfish regular who 3 bets and C/Rs flops liberally, but he has no idea how to do anything else. In 800 hands, I did not win a single pot larger than $512 off him, and he won TEN POTS LARGER THAN THAT. The one thing I'm not proud of is that I should have quit earlier than I did since i had zero momentum. Regardless... of the ten pots I lost, only two of them did I play badly (and two of them he got his money in behind). Here are the biggest HHs with no explanations, you guys can come to conclusions on your own:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2746677
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2746681
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2746689
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2746691
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2746695

This debacle is probably going to stop me from playing the WSOP $2500 six handed event on Monday. While I'm kinda in shock, my spirit hasn't been broken yet. I'll just take it easy until I get to Vegas. This will be my last entry before I arrive in Vegas on two days. I'm extremely antsy about going, and I will probably blog more often for those four weeks. I have a lot of stuff I want to accomplish there.

On a lighter note, I've been working on the theoretical part of my game lately. I've spent most of the year just using my skill set to beat up on donks, but now I want to improve my A-game. I recorded a video of a match against a very aggro opponent a few days ago. It was great practice in practicing hand reading. I've also set up a list of heads-up videos to watch (I've watched almost no instructional videos the past few months). I get the most out of a video when I try to imagine how I would have normally played a situation in the video, and if it differs from the video creator, then I'll figure out why and learn from it. When I'm really studious I take notes to really hammer home the concepts I've picked up. Under normal circumstances I am too lazy to do this, but this week I have really wanted to take my best game to the next level. I might as well take advantage of this renewed enthusiasm while it lasts.

Moving forward in poker

2008-06-08T11:48:00.013-04:00

I had my first ever $5K day grinding online cash yesterday, over 2K hands of heads-up. It isn't miles ahead of some of my other best days, but still feels very cool to reach that plateau for the first time.

I also played a $300+22 six handed tourney yesterday with Andr3w. There were 310 entrants, and I was chip leader with 80 people left. However, I made a few spewy plays and didn't switch into a slower gear when I should have, and wound up not cashing. Andrew also hit a tough wall and was the bubble boy. Those results aren't the most uplifting for two people looking to hit the tourney scene, but I am still ready to play some satellites for the WSOP main event. The first one is a $650 super satellite on Pokerstars today, which has a very slow structure that I will be focusing on this evening.

****************************************************

My stepdad has been closely following my poker progress since I got home from school. Last night, he asked me "so what is the next step?". It shocked me, because I had no idea how to answer the question. Until he asked that question, I was content with the idea of simply grinding my current stakes. Consistently making 6 digits with (relatively) low stress is an awesome opportunity, so I didn't think twice about veering from that path. However, with that question posed, I realized that I need to keep making new goals in poker.

I will never have the gamble (nor skill set) that the top players in poker do. They have amazing instincts in all facets of poker, but more importantly, they have the gamble to risk large portions of their bankroll when the time is right. I love poker for this competitive aspect, and I tell myself I wanna be the best, yet I am so conservative about moving up the ladder. Partially, my hesitancy is due to the fact that I am realistic about the online poker economy, and observe that 5/10+ NL games online are largely drying up. So many people have developed great NL hold em fundamentals, and its a constant fight to sit with fish. However, I should not allow this observation to completely halt me from rising up the poker hierarchy.

So, here are some basic goals to help steer me forward in these upcoming months:

-Regularly sit at 5/10 NL heads up (in addition to 2/4 and 3/6)
-Look into other sites that provide heads-up games at 3/6 NL and above. This is the more logical decision to move up and make better money at my best game (heads-up cash) than just battling regulars on Full Tilt.
-Become competent in other games, particularly Pot limit omaha. I need to be more well-rounded so that when I inevitably get burned out from NL hold em, I have other options of games I am competent enough at to make a living.
-Continue to build a live roll, and loosen up my risk tolerance so I can allow myself to play soft big games live. I think the main test for myself is to build up the courage to sit in a 10/20 NL (or higher) live game at some point while I am in Vegas.

Vegas is approaching!

2008-06-06T14:17:00.008-04:00

-I have decided to play the three big online WSOP satellite tournies: $650 and $370 on Pokerstars, and $530 on Full Tilt. I expect these fields to be pretty soft, and the structures (especially the two Pokerstars events) are very good. I am fine with risking $1550 to get into the main event, especially when my ROI if I focus on each tournament has to be at least 100%. Should be a fun experience. I'll start giving updates after I play the $650 one this Sunday.

-Nerdy gamer alert: I am really excited about the upcoming release of Metal Gear Solid 4 on Playstation 3. I've been a huge fan of the series for almost a decade now. From seeing the previews of this game, this may end up being the best Action-Adventure game ever. The gameplay seems awesome, with a Middle Eastern war setting that reminds me of Black Hawk Down. I have become a much more casual gamer since I took up poker, but this is the first game I have really been anticipating in years. The only problem for me is that the game is released on June 12th, two days before I leave for Vegas. I have to either go on a complete binge and play the game for two straight days, or have to wait out an entire month before I touch it.

-Does anyone have random tidbits on what one should bring for a long trip to Las Vegas? I have a feeling I am going to forget something important. I'm going to call up Avis early next week and get a price quote for renting a car as a 21 year old. I also need to wire money to the Rio. It is finally starting to hit me that Vegas is very soon, and I'm getting quite antsy.

May Results

2008-06-01T15:57:00.005-04:00

May went down as my best month to-date, even excluding the big tournament score. I am really happy that I backed up the MTT win with a great month in cash games. I feel like a lot of people, both poker players and non-poker people, have given me undeserved respect for getting lucky in one tournament. For me, this helps validate the new-found respect I've gotten. It also shows me that I am still hungry to play, regardless of whether I am winning or losing lately.

Goals for June:
-30K hands online
-Play 50+ hours of live cash games in Vegas
-Play $2500 6 handed WSOP event; possibly $5000 6 handed event; use $1-2K in satellite buy-ins to try to qualify for main event
-Attempt to interact with the female race
-Begin learning PLO
-Keep working out while in Vegas

I also booked my first big live win last week. There is a small stakes home game near me that I've attended periodically for the past two years. There is one other player there who makes good money grinding online, he is a young LHE player who plays everything from 15/30 to 50/100 limit. I decided to challenge him to a 5/10 NL heads-up match, knowing he probably wouldn't decline, even though he never plays heads-up NL. We each brought $3K with us to the match. He played very aggressive, but was too loose on all streets and I was able to take advantage. A few coolers and 2 hours later, the match was already over and I won all the money. It feels great to book a nice win live. It also helps a lot to have a decent-sized live roll to bring to Vegas now.

Philly poker players rule

2008-05-28T18:02:00.002-04:00

Yesterday, I met 4 successful online poker players, all from the Philadelphia area. They are Fees, UMD Tennis, Annabella Maria (he's a guy), and odub. They play everything from 2/4 to 25/50 NL. They were all friends with each other before this, but I guess I'm "in" now too. We went to Sullivan's Steakhouse, a nice restaurant in the mid-upper price range that definitely qualifies as a nice place, but doesn't have a stuck-up atmosphere. We ran up a $300 bill and then played credit card roulette for the first time in my life. I suggested it because I always read about the sweats other people get from playing CCR with big bills. We had the waitress take our 5 cards and slowly pull them out of her apron one at a time. Mine was 2nd-to-last, which gave me as genuine of a sweat as I had hoped for. Apparently, I had a look of terror on my face when only 2 cards were left.

After dinner, we headed to Fee's house and grinded a bit. I took what is overall my most obnoxious beat in my history of playing poker. Everyone has personalities that mesh will, and I had an awesome time overall last night. I have a feeling I won't get along this well with every single poker player I hang out with in Vegas, but times like last night still get me extremely pumped about the Vegas trip.

I wanna say specifically that what odub does is awesome. He is 29 years old, and makes great money working at a law firm. He is also married, yet he successfully beats up 2/4 to 10/20 NL heads-up while juggling those other priorities. He also plays more hands than anyone else in the group. Talk about inspiration. Sick props, odub.

State of the poker economy

2008-05-23T00:37:00.004-04:00

2004 to 2006 was the best time for poker. A large percent of the US population was watching poker on TV, starting their own home games, and depositing money in online poker. However, it wasn't until 2006 and 2007 that people started fully comprehending the money that can be made playing seriously online. People started to take advantage of the information on the internet more efficiently. This was all happening as the poker fad (yes, poker was a fad from 2004-06, and anyone who doesn't believe that is completely delusional) had already begun to cool off. Obviously something has got to give, and it's giving. There are too many good poker players now, and the shrinking poker economy is certainly not big enough to sustain them all.

It is depressing to see that nosebleed NL games (100/200 NL and higher) are basically completely dead. 25/50 NL games run in small quantity. Nowadays, an awesome 25/50 NL game is where one mediocre player is sitting. The recent change we've seen is that 10/20 NL games are even thinning out. There is often only one or two 10/20 NL games running on Full Tilt, even during peak hours! Yes, the NL heads-up games at my stakes are very good... but the implications of what is happening at higher stakes is frightening. With the speed at which online poker happens, Darwinism is in hyper-drive. It is almost guaranteed that the poker economy (unlike the full US economy) is not in a temporary recession, and is not going to make a rebound. It is, inevitably, only going to get worse.

I know this all sounds pessimistic, and I admit it is probably a negative spin on the poker economy. However that doesn't mean it's wrong.

One thing I'm going to do while in Vegas is try to actually grind live poker. I don't mean it is going to take up all my time, but just that I'll try to have a week or more where I play many long sessions. I want to see how I fare mentally. If I want to play poker professionally for a long time, live poker is a more guaranteed thing than online poker is. I'm not saying I'll ever be strictly a live poker grinder. However, the possibility of moving closer to a major live poker area (likely Atlantic City) so live poker can compliment my online play could be a very real possibility.

Honesty in poker

2008-05-21T00:00:00.005-04:00

-I'm having a really difficult time watching instructional poker videos the past few months. Massive ADD sets-in within the first 5 minutes of starting any video. Anyone else experiencing this? I have a feeling that this isn't unique to me, and that certainly doesn't bode well for Cardrunners, etc. I seriously doubt these businesses will thrive for too long.

-As most of you know, being honest with yourself is incredibly important in poker. I am making more money in poker than I ever have before, and my confidence is at an all-time high. However, I realize that I am largely becoming a one-trick pony. I'm just good at what I do. I stick to heads-up cash games, and consistently use good table selection. I see some of my poker friends go through sick swings and really struggle, and I honestly believe some of them have better A-games than I do. So who is the "better" player, a friend who has a better A-game than I do, or someone like me who game selects well, and sticks to what he's good at? I don't know the answer to the question.

Another thing that is keeping my ego in check is new friends. I've begun talking to "WOW UR BAD", one of the best MSNL HU regs on Full Tilt. He has a 10+ PTBB/100 winrate at these stakes over 200K hands, which is absolutely sick. I have a winrate of 7.5 over 100K hands, which I thought was solid, but seems completely dwarfed now. Realizing people like him are out there is very good motivation for me. It helps me understand that I can be better than I am, and subsequently try harder. Complacency is an ugly thing, and often creeps up on you, so doing whatever it takes to keep it in-check is important.

-Today, my mom (a real estate agent) took me to see 4 homes, all in an area of the Philadelphia suburbs I'd like to live someday. I've thought a lot lately about the idea of buying my first home next year. I really want to be a home owner, and would take great pride in owning and maintaining a beautiful home. Ideally, I'll own a really nice 4 bedroom home, and rent out 2 rooms to poker friends. The idea of living by myself is really undesirable for me, and living with successful poker players who also become good friends would be an awesome way to live out my early 20's.

Making enemies

2008-05-17T12:17:00.020-04:00

-For the first time, I have an arch-nemesis in poker. He's not what you would expect. His name is Doug, although I call him "Phil" for mildly resembling Phil Galfond. We played a couple of NL live cash games recently, and he played very tough versus me. Although they were small stakes, stacks were often deep, and Doug and myself played a lot of big pots. Then, the other night while I was grinding online, a very aggro player sat at 2/4 against me. I was pretty frustrated by his style, and adjusted poorly. He won $400 off me, but it should have been $1000 if it wasn't for a suckout I had. Immediately when the match ended, I got an IM and it was revealed that the player was indeed Doug. I've never felt so owned as I did at that exact moment. Doug, the gauntlet has been thrown: I will play any time you want. As long as we play anything 1/2 or larger, I will cater to the date and time you want to play. You seem to think you have my number, but I want you to back it up by playing me for more than 130 hands.

-I got my first speeding ticket last night. In all honesty, I can be a reckless driver, so I was expecting to get a ticket eventually. However, getting a $118 ticket for going 65 mph on a 55 mph empty highway is a joke. I really would like to know what kind of algorithm cops use to determine ticket amounts.

T = 30 + [MPH*5] + [20,000/(age^2] + [1,000,000/PCV] - FD

Key: T= Ticket amount in dollars, MPH= Miles per hour over the speed limit; PCV = Perceived car value; FD = female driver desirability

-I've been itching to make a trip to the Jersey shore, so I can chill at the beach and play some 5/10 NL live. Unfortunately, the weather has been poor every weekend since I arrived home from school. I'm supposed to drive down with my friend Chris (cdw1323), and he can only go on weekends. Hopefully one of the next two weekends clears up.

-I'm playing the FTOPS main event tomorrow ($500 buy-in, $1.5 million guaranteed), partly because its a very deep structure, and partly because I feel obliged to at least play the main event since I won an earlier FTOPS event. Then next Saturday, I have a Tournament of Champions freeroll. About 65-70 people battling for a WSOP seat. It's only $150 in expectation... but the brag of winning the TOC, and the excitement that comes with locking up a WSOP seat are enough reasons to give a solid effort.

FTOPS HU Champion

2008-05-12T09:45:00.008-04:00

I found out less than a week ago that Full Tilt was running a $500 HU tournament on Mother's Day. I really wanted to play (I RARELY get this urge for any tourney), but assumed I couldn't because of Mother's Day plans. We ended up going to breakfast, so I was able to get back and register for the 2 PM tournament. I played 4 quick $100 HU SNGs beforehand to prepare myself.

I was frustrated when I found out my 1st round opponent was a very good MTT player: RandALLIN. He ended up being good, but as the tournament progressed, I realized that having a match against MTT players wasn't a bad thing. I faced four "big-name" MTT pros, but the other three were not good at HU. They tried 3 betting way too much and keeping the entire match preflop, even though we often had 75BB stacks or more. They also clearly didn't know how to play postflop... I guess that's not shocking, though.

I had a ton of fun. My stepdad sat next to me for every match. I analyzed the hands and the flow of each match out loud, and it greatly helped assure I stayed on my A-game. One match I was making quick decisions and not thinking methodicially in the beginning, and my stepdad told me I was losing focus. It was great to have him as a reality check, and I quickly reset back to my better game.

I understand that I am very, very fortunate to win the event. I won 4 major coinflips over the course of the tournament, and put a few coolers on people. I didn't suck out in any large pot, though, and take some pride in that. With 512 entrants, even with the good structure, I win this event MAYBE 1 in 200 times. That being said, I don't feel I was a dog in any match I played. There were lots of high stakes cash game players in the field, but I didn't draw any of them.

I don't have any exciting plans for the money. I'm going to wire a big chunk of money off Full Tilt and begin investing. I'm going to become a partner in my stepdad's real estate investment company, which has been making great returns, even in a shitty market. As for poker, I am just going to continue to play 2/4 to 5/10 NL. It is really important I continue to grind, and treat this score as strictly a bonus. I remember when SamH (the 25/50 NL grinder) won a WCOOP event and immediately just went back to grinding cash games, and I respected him a lot for having that great work ethic.

Ballers play 5/10 NL, amirite?

2008-05-10T13:24:00.009-04:00

Finally something poker related - I played two sessions of 5/10 NL heads-up last night. My friend TheSouthAfrican (a MSNL HU specialist) was playing two soft opponents but about to end his session, so he let me sit. Luckily, both players stayed when I sat. One had a $600 stack that I busted almost immediately.

The other stack was sitting with about $1500 to start. I'll take you through my match with him because it was really interesting. Going into the match, TheSouthAfrican told me that this opponent was relatively aggressive, but had a huge leak of checking-calling down almost any pair for 2 or even 3 streets. I was obviously drooling at this prospect. And off we go:

Hand 1: I listen very well, apparently.

My river bet here looks pretty stupid given the read that was handed to me on a silver plate before the mach. Every draw in the world whiffed the turn and river. I don't hate my turn bet since he could have floated the flop with tons of draws that missed and would just fold the turn, plus I have a ton of equity versus a pair
of 8s type hand. This was like the 5th hand in the match, but in retrospect I would never bluff this river versus this guy.

Hand 2: Cooler that I could have gotten away from, sigh.

Everything here looks standard except me calling his shove. In real time I just took it as "I have a flush, oh well I call" without even thinking too much. That is a leak of mine that I need to fix - rushing through some decisions in big pots. If I thought it out I would have realized that the opponent I'm playing is not maniacal to shove for value with anything less with a flush. I also think he bluffs less than 10% of the time here. Thus, I basically can't beat anything when he shoves the river. I will say that I didn't have a read yet on whether he C/Rs flush draws on the flops, so that can somewhat justify a call. Oh well. After this hand, he has all the momentum and I'm stuck a lot. It was at this point that I did develop a general read that he isn't bluffing when he pots the river.

Hand 3: This entire situation just sucks.

I had built up a tiny comeback at this point, so we were semi-deep. He had turned up the heat with 3 betting a lot. He was also very aggressive postflop in 3 bet pots. It was really hard to combat because I was playing somewhat passively, and definitely playing a careful style. I was affected by the fact that it was deep at 5/10 NL. Still, I think I played this hand is okay. Raising the flop or turn is just really bad with stack sizes, I think. 100BB deep I wouldn't mind raising the flop and getting it in. As played, I feel fine about my river fold. It seems pretty obvious that I have an ace.

Hand 4: My first big pot, but wow this is depressing.

Obviously a dream situation, but I blew it on the river. At the time, I just wanted to extract whatever I could. I threw a tiny bet out, thinking maybe there was some chance if he had spades that he would raise the river. I should have realized that even an aggro player like him wouldn't bluff raise this river. I should also have realized that I could certainly extract more from ANY ace, and possibly a king. The pot was $1340 on the river. I definitely believe the best bet size in this situation is in the neighborhood of $800. Depressing for sure, but at least I have some momentum now.

Hand 5: Wow, maybe I've been giving him too much credit.

He has been 3 betting me A TON and I haven't adjusted well. By this point it has chopped me down a lot. I decided to see a flop with 54o, though it is very speculative, even $1900 deep. I decided that the river was a call because I wouldn't get called by less too often, and I expected to see aces up a decent amount of the time here. When he showed 88, I suddenly felt really embarrassed. I felt like that was the confirmation that he has been trying to run me over, and I've had to rely on monster hands to beat him.

Hand 6: Chasing hands = winnar!

I actually won a $2400 pot like five hands before this, where I flopped trips on a TT3 flop, C/Red the flop and got 3 streets of value versus QQ. On this hand, I expected to get floated by any weak draw, but also expected him to bet 60-80% of his entire range on the flop. I honestly don't like ANY line on the flop, but just betting it is probably better. I called because I thought I had decent equity versus his range. On the turn, he hadn't bet too large so I thought I had good implied odds. On the river, I went for a C/R AI because it would guarantee any queen goes broke, and I wanted to allow him to bluff. He timed his ENTIRE TIME BANK (80 seconds) down, claimed he had a Q and folded. Considering he was getting about 4-to-1 on the river shove, I highly doubt he folded a queen even IF he correctly suspected I had AQ.

I busted his last $500 a few hands later when we got TT vs AK in preflop and I won the flip. Overall, I had a stressful session, but managed to net $1900 from the two opponents. Thank you, TheSouthAfrican!

****************************************************

In other news, I made two bets with my friend Pete (famousanus) about the Flyers/Penguins series. One bet is Flyers winning the series at 2-1 odds: my $200 versus Pete's $400. The other bet states the Penguins must win the series in 4 or 5 games for Pete to win $200; a Penguins win in 6 is a push; and a Penguins win in 7 games OR Flyers winning the series ships me $200. After the Flyers' pathetic showing in Game 1 last night, I was willing to buy out of the bet for $100. Pete declined.

Random updates

2008-05-08T20:16:00.005-04:00

-Something great happened the other night. I went and played a .25/.50 NL live game with friends and a couple others. I had a blast. It was a fresh reminder that I love poker. I was so focused and trying really hard to outplay people, and building reads on people was enjoyable. Nights like that are a good affirmation that I play poker because I enjoy it, not just because of the money to be made.

-My Uncle asked what the "Whitewash" name was all about. I've never explained it on here before, so I will now. Whitewash is a song by Buckethead, an amazing guitarist. It's a relaxing song that I used to listen to while grnding. When I looked the word up on Dictionary.com I found these cool definitions:

2. anything, as deceptive words or actions, used to cover up or gloss over faults, errors, or wrongdoings, or absolve a wrongdoer from blame.
3. Sports Informal. a defeat in which the loser fails to score.

I thought the combination of those 3 reasons made it a cool nickname. It was my name on PartyPoker and is still my name on the 2+2 forums.

-Lately I haven't been using PAHUD because there is an error with refreshing. (I think it's a problem with Vista... if anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know.) This has actually done me some good because it forces me to pay better attention, and build stronger reads as a result. This negative side effect of PAHUD is even more detrimental at 6 max, so I imagine lots of mediocre regs have a huge problem of autopiloting due to PAHUD.

-Poker is going well so far. I've only logged 7K hands at the time of writing this (summer laziness is kicking in, noooooo). I vowed to play 30K hands this month. Considering I have done pretty much nothing aside from working out, poker, and occassionally seeing friends, I definitely need to get a better work ethic. I figured if I keep posting my hand progress on here, it'll make me feel more guilty. Regardless, poker is going well so far this month.

-Off topic: Don't talk to ex-girlfriends. Nothing good comes from it. When the relationship is over, it is over. Do as I say, not as I do.

Ship the whip!

2008-05-01T12:11:00.008-04:00

On Wednesday, I bought a 2006 Infiniti G35 coupe.

I basically spent the past 4+ months wanting a G35. For a while I was looking at sedans, but I'm very glad that I went with a coupe. The sedans are a little more practical, but the coupe is much sexier looking. The car has 290 horsepower, which is a big upgrade from the 180 I had with my Chevy Impala before. The car accelerates fast as hell and the pipes sound awesome. The interior is beige leather and the car has almost every single accessory available (built-in navigation, moonroof, Bose sound system, 19" wheels, etc). The car helps me feel more accomplished, and visually shows my family that I must be doing something right.

In other news, I went to the Flyers-Canadiens NHL playoff game yesterday. I got luxury box seats with two friends from high school. The tickets were expensive, but it was definitely worth it. I have a renewed enthusiasm about watching hockey again, which is a very good sign. I want to have a balanced life, where many different things make me happy.

Here are my cash game results for April:

I've observed some of my poker friends having a really rough time the past 2 months or so. This has put into perspective for me that winning does not come automatically, and I always need to be doing everything possible to stay on top. Avoiding tilt, being very attentive of all opponents, and many other factors are easy to preach about but difficult to consistently follow. If I want to keep having good results, I need to remind myself this. I want to prove to myself that I can play poker professionally for the next few years.

Chillin back home

2008-04-28T17:40:00.006-04:00

I finished up my last final exam on Thursday, and drove home (4.5 hour drive from Pittsburgh to the Philadelphia area) on Friday. I rarely go on droughts like this, but lately I've simply desired other things. I've been getting good workouts in, watching the NHL playoffs, and playing Playstation 3 on my dad's new HDTV. I've been playing lots of Rock Band. I really enjoy playing drums. CTS wrote in one of his blog entries that he is a beast playing drums in the game, so that is motivating me to at least own the game on Hard difficulty.

I have to make a day trip down to the Washington DC area tomorrow for some business... but once I'm back from that, I will switch back into grindcore mode. Most of my days in May will consist of working out around 11 AM, and then playing online periodically all throughout the afternoon and evening. I'm going to log at least 30K hands. I will be continuing to focus on heads-up, but I plan to phase 6 max back into my arsenal. I want to get the rust off at 6 max before Vegas, since I'll be living with a bunch of 6 max grinders.

My next entry should (hopefully) be the coolest entry I've written thus far. Stay tuned. In the mean time, I hope everyone is doing well in poker lately.

Summer checklist, and Hilldawg

2008-04-23T22:20:00.010-04:00

This is just a list I came up with in about 2 minutes, so I'm sure it doesn't include some miscellaneous things. This is basically focused on what I want to accomplish before I go to Las Vegas in 7 weeks:

-lift 3 times a week; do cardio 5-6 times a week
-do significant "spring cleaning" of bedroom at my mom's house
-whiten teeth
-get tan
-make 2+ weekend trips to Atlantic City
-make 1 trip to Pittsburgh in May (when its not 90 degrees out)
-get my two dogs in shape
-cook a new (healthy) meal at least once a week
-minimize porn usage
-go skydiving
-take a yoga class

Political rant: I am an independent voter when it comes to party registration AND ideology. However, I particularly have negative feelings toward Hillary Clinton (in spite of not advocating the other candidates anyway). I believe it has become increasingly obvious that Hillary does not give a damn about the well-being of her party. Barack Obama has had a sizeable lead against her in the popular vote, states won, AND number of delegates for many weeks now. Hillary won my state Pennsylvania by a crushing 10% lead yesterday, and yet she still has very little chance of winning the nomination at this point.

Hillary does not care about doing what is best for her party, or she would have bowed out several weeks ago. She has now created tons of negative attention towards her party's primary, and jeopardized their chances of beating McCain. After closely watching her speeches and her voting history in the Senate, it is very apparent to me that Hillary simply just does whatever it takes to personally win. She does not care about her party winning if it means she can't win. She has launched many negative political ads trying to drag Obama's name through the mud. She also has no real ideological base... her voting history and stance on issues are largely incongruent. The term "slimeball" comes to mind when I think of how to describe Hillary.

I would lay 1.5-to-1 on McCain winning the general election this fall, regardless of who his opponent is. And that is largely due to the disaster Hillary has caused.

Random thoughts during finals week

2008-04-20T19:36:00.004-04:00

-I find it strange that even successful online players say things like "I see myself playing professionally for maybe another few years". There is a negative undertone about poker as a profession, even among successful players. I can feel nothing but gratitude about the situation I am in. I do something I enjoy, I work less hours than most "conventional" jobs, I make more money than most jobs, and I'm afforded so many freedoms that poker players take for granted. Yes, there are some downsides, like emotional swings and difficulty in getting loans. However, poker is definitely one of the best professions that I would be able to attain with the resources I have in this lifetime. I love what I do, and more other winning players should also. I guess not everyone is fit to stick around in poker for a long period of time. Just look at sbrugby.

-I buzzed my hair yesterday. It's shorter than I imagined it would turn out, but I don't mind it. My plan for this summer is to keep my hair buzzed, work out, diet, and get as tan as my fair-skinned complexion allows. Sound like anyone you (we) know?

-Home in less than 6 days. Ship it. This is finals week at University of Pittsburgh. I'm fortunate enough to only have two finals, and they don't start until Wednesday.

-Poker has been going decently. It's amazing what basic game selection at HU does. I deny action to probably 30-50% of the people that try to sit with me. The downside of doing so is minimal, as I still manage to log a lot of hands as long as I put the hours in. I see the merits of taking on the challenge of very good players (for your level) occasionally to keep your A-game improving, but doing it as often as many people do at HU is unnecessary.

Apocalypse Bet

2008-04-16T19:47:00.014-04:00

I have a pretty funny bet that was just placed with my roommate Zack. We were watching a show on the History channel about how the Aztec calendar states that the world ends in 2012. I think it is completely ridiculous, but my roommate Zack is fascinated by it, so we decided to make a bet on it. I was more reasonable than simply dictating "the world ends" for him to win, but I still believe I have an obvious edge. Regardless, I'm looking forward to how this humorous bet plays out in four years.

Apocalypse Bet
Zack is being laid 10-to-1, his $100 versus my $1,000. ANY of the following events have to occur in the calendar year 2012 in order for Zack to win the bet:

a) At least one billion people decease globally
b) A meteor with a diameter of at least 2 miles hits the Earth (water OR land)
c) Any 3+ of these countries declare war on each other: United States, Russia, China, United Kingdom, France, Germany, India, and Japan.
d) A major solar flare takes place, causing major communications (radio, internet, phones, etc) to cease to function for at least a month on a global level.*

*If this happens, a panel of 5 of our current housemates decide if the event is "significant" enough for Zack to win the bet

Getting unstuck via donkaments

2008-04-11T23:31:00.019-04:00

Today was another rollercoaster day. I got stuck $2500 pretty early. I felt pretty tilted, but decided to play 2 tournaments as a last-ditch effort. I ended up final tabling both, and won one of them for just over $7,000. This is my larger donkament score ever. (I don't play a lot of them... maybe 20 total MTTs in the last year.) Being stuck so much earlier today, coupled with the fact that cntgetmedown had a larger score recently, partially killed the aura of winning so much in one sitting.

It is really exciting to get deep in a tournament, but that doesn't change my overall outlook on tournaments. I don't enjoy playing them regularly. The edge one has is diminished, and variance is exponentially larger. I also observe my peers, and realize that tournaments are like crack for many people. So many players go deep in one tournament, and suddenly they're hooked. It rarely ends up being pretty over a longer time span for them. Tournaments are frustrating as hell, and results can be very deceiving.

All that aside, I'm still very happy to have won. I can finally say that I have a positive ROI in Full Tilt MTTs. :P

Summer break is approaching!

2008-04-08T01:06:00.011-04:00

Here are some various snippets about my life lately:

-I applied for a somewhat large auto loan today. I have a good credit score, but it is difficult for me to prove my income, and having "professional poker player" as a listed profession doesn't help. If I do get approved (I'll know by tomorrow), then I'll visit the dealership when I'm back home at the end of the month. The Infiniti G35 I want is a pretty big financial burden, but as my friend Luke says - "yolo". You only live once. I love cars, and this is what I want to reward myself with.

-I've started to eat healthier. I wouldn't call it a "diet", but I'm following some general guidelines. I'm avoiding simple carbohydrates, eating more fruit and vegetables, salmon and lean protein that I make myself, etc. I'm basically following this as a guideline for everything I eat. I think that fad diets are incredibly stupid. No one stays on them permanently, so they are strictly for short term result. They also put a toll on your mind and your body, because it's such a sudden and massive shift. I just want to lead an overall healthier life, and feel better day-in and day-out.

-I'm only 2.5 weeks away from summer break, which I'm incredibly excited about. May is the best month of the year for me. My life will consist of playing poker, working out, spending time outside in the beautiful weather, playing PS3, trips down to the Jersey shore, and occasionally hanging out with friends from high school. May just equates to a very relaxing lifestyle during absolutely beautiful weather for me.

-I had the craziest 2 day stretch ever just recently. I won $3600 playing 2/4 and 3/6 NL the first day, and then lost $3700 the next. Luckily I had the awesome day first, otherwise that losing day would have probably driven me insane. Heads-up is a game where I have quite a big edge when I table select, but the swings are still big. Emotional control is always important in poker, but it is magnified when playing HU.

-When it comes to academics, I am the biggest procrastinator in the world. I know a lot of people claim this, but I have stories so sad that I can't even share them with people.

March results

2008-04-01T11:18:00.003-04:00

March was a fun month. I ran $5K below expectation in all-in pots, but still had pretty solid results.

My break-even stretch came to an abrupt halt 2 weeks ago, and I pretty much coasted the second half of March. The only bump came yesterday, when I lost 4 buy-ins at 3/6 NL to an okay French player. I played him before and thought he was fishy, but he's not bad enough for me to waste my time chasing anymore. Anyway, here ya go:

I've started testing the water with 3/6 NL heads-up. Even though I got pulverized yesterday, it has gone well overall. I'm going to be pretty strict about table selecting 3/6 NL for now. I always talked the past few months about wanting to feel comfortable playing 2/4 to 5/10 NL based on where the good games are, so I'm finally following through with that. There is some serious money to be made being a really good HU player at this range of stakes.

Now offering HU coaching

2008-03-29T11:18:00.009-04:00

Last night, I played my friend cntgetmedown in a late-night HU match. Luckily, it was only at 100NL. We 2-tabled for about 500 hands, and I lost 5.5 buy-ins. I overplayed a few hands, but it was mostly cooler situations. That's usually the case when someone loses so much money in a short period. Daniell plays pretty LAG, so he had a great image to get paid off with the many strong hands he had.

The NCAA tournament is occurring now, and it has reminded me how much I've fallen out of love with watching sports. Back in junior and senior year of high school, watching sports was my #1 hobby. I followed the NFL, NHL, and college basketball (in that order) really closely. Two factors have really diminished my enthusiasm: poker, and college. Poker (not limited to just playing) has replaced many of my previous hobbies, because it consumes a lot of my time and energy. Also, moving to Pittsburgh for college has made it difficult for me to closely follow the Philadelphia Eagles and Flyers as much as I used to. It's a bit depressing, but I have a feeling that I will have a reunion with my teams once I move back to the Philadelphia area after college.

One more thing - I am now offering heads-up coaching. HU is by far my strongest game now, and my results have been solid enough to justify coaching. Since coaching is a new thing for me, I am going to start off with a low rate ($80/hr) while I gain experience coaching. I can only take up to 2 students for now, since I also have to allot time to grinding and academics. If you are interested, contact me on AIM (ShadyBreakfast) or 2+2 (Whitewash). Here is a screenshot of my lifetime results at 2/4 NL heads-up, which started last fall:

Tweaking my HU game

2008-03-25T01:18:00.005-04:00

I'm on a heater the past week, which feels great. A break-even month has turned into a really solid month suddenly. I'm playing well, and I've tweaked a few aspects of my HU game. I'm c-betting more. I checked behind on the flop way too much, and it wasn't working for me. I am also making more laydowns than I was incapable of during my recent break-even stretch.

I am still very enthusiastic about poker. When I win a big pot, I still often fist pump or say "yes!". While these things are certainly not vital to being a good player (and you could argue a winning player should be less emotional about results), I am happy that it illustrates how much I still enjoy playing poker. 2.5 years of playing poker seriously, with the typical rough patches that poker players go through, and I still love this game. Given the fact that I've gone through fads my whole life, this is definitely a good sign that I'm still alive-and-kicking with poker.

A little off-topic: Do you guys know anything about female online poker grinders? I'm just curious as to whether they're out there. I know Vanessa Selbst use to beat high stakes, but she doesn't play much anymore (as far as I know). Online poker is way way dominated by males, but it would definitely be cool to hear of women who are grinding 400NL or higher online.

I <33 my neighborhood

2008-03-20T18:37:00.006-04:00

This morning, I found out that someone smashed the driver's side window of my car, and stole my GPS. My car was parked right outside of my house at school. We live in a beat-up part of Pittsburgh, but until now I wasn't so suspicious that I felt it necessary to hide my GPS every time I park.

Here is the scariest part - 15 minutes after I find out, I went back inside my house for a minute, and when I went back outside there was a guy rummaging through my car. WHAT THE FUCK. I screamed at him and told him the police were already on their way. He had my watch (I use it for running, its only worth like $30) in his hand, but gave it back, apologized and then left.

It's amazing how so many people are criticizing me because my GPS wasn't hidden. I just spent the entire afternoon filing a police report, filing a claim with my insurance company, cleaning up the shattered glass, and now I have to pay about $350 to deal with this whole mess. The only feedback some important people in my life give me is "your GPS shouldn't have been easily seen". Thanks for the consolation, everyone. I forgot that I'm supposed to assume the absolute worst outcome in every scenario in my life, and plan accordingly. To criticize me for this is like criticizing someone when they break their arm playing baseball. It's ridiculous.

---------------------------

On a lighter note, for the first time in over a month, I feel like I'm pulling out of my poker slump. I'm up $4K the past 3 days, and I'm really motivated to grind lately.

lol job and swongaments

2008-03-18T01:20:00.006-04:00

I'm on a 35K hand break-even stretch now. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but this started literally the day that I broke up with Allison in late January.

As I've gone through this BE period, I'm starting to hate academics more than I ever have. I was never enthusiastic about college, but it's sharply declining. A large reason for that is because now that I'm struggling with poker lately, it's making me have to think about the possibility of going job hunting after college. I fucking refuse to do that. I am not going to go bust my balls in hopes of getting a $40,000 job. Right now, part of me wants to just drop out of school, get a cheap apartment in vegas, and grind out a living at live 5/10 NL. I'd rather grind depressing live poker than the former option.

EDIT: I am the swing master. At about 3 AM this morning, I was down $2800 for the day. I've regained it all, making this my new Biggest Swont day ever (the record previously held by a day I was down like $2100 on Absolute, then won $3K off one guy HU).

March results thus far
Hands: 16K
Actual winnings: +$2100
Equity adjusted: +$5900

Really fun HU matches

2008-03-13T12:40:00.004-04:00

I went to NYC on Tuesday and Wednesday with my dad. We stayed in a hotel less than 2 blocks from Times Square, which was a very convenient location. We saw the Broadway show Spamalot, which is based on Monty Python. It was really hilarious, with Clay Aiken actually playing one of the lead roles. Overall, I can enjoy the hustle and bustle of NYC, but I couldn't see myself living in such a hectic setting for any real length of time.

After arriving home last night, I logged some long poker sessions. I two tabled HU versus 2 different opponents. One player was Jaywks, an online friend of mine. He has been known to tilt bad, and I remembered him having crappy HU results... so I felt it was worthwhile to play him. I had really interesting hands against COOCHED (my other opponent), but I'll just post my hands against jaywks since I have too many hands versus him to discuss. All you need to know about my match versus COOCHED: I lost an $800 pot with 80% equity, and then lost a $1200 pot with set-over-set on the flop.

****************************************************

Hand 1: Never underestimate the power of fastplaying.

At the beginning of the match, jaywks was 3 betting me with a high frequency. I decided to start taking flops in position with a wider range such as JT. The flop is a standard call. When he checked to me on the turn, I felt like the best way I would get paid would be to make a large bet on the turn and try to get him to jam an ace or flush draw. I think that he thinks I would check behind most aces on the turn for pot control. The hand worked exactly as I had envisioned.

Hand 2: Looks crazy, I know.

My flop shove was completely experimental. I watched a Leggo poker HU video where a player shoved over a c-bet on a Kxx twotone flop with QQ for value and he got looked up by TT. In this spot, players expect you to have a really polarized range. I don't want to be results-oriented and say this was definitely a great play because it worked. I would have rather done it on a twotone flop where my opponent could put me on a flush draw. Regardless, I feel like I timed it at the right point of the match where jaywks was a bit tilted and willing to make a super light call.

Hand 3: If it looks like a bluff, it is a bluff?

I thought about checking behind the turn to induce bluffs by hands that floated my flop c-bet. I decided that it would be a bad time to get too passive, and would just go for 3 streets of value. The turn feels like a pretty obvious call since his range is quite polarized with his line, and since I have the nut flush draw anyway. I knew that jaywks would usually C/R good aces and most flush draws on the flop, so the hand didn't make a lot of sense. I honestly felt like his line looks SO weird that by the time he bets the river, he probably had it (since he would be aware that his line doesn't make sense). After the match, he showed me the HH and he indeed had air.

Hand 4: Pretty standard hand... or is it?

This hand looks kinda standard given our history, but I'm still not 100% sure if my flop raise is the best. He had toned down the 3 betting my this point of the match, so I can reasonably put him on an ace a lot here. No one ever flats AK when someone 3 bets, so I figured he would not put me on AK when I raise the flop. I'm guessing that my flop raise is pretty optimal given our history, but I definitely want anyone's opinions on the best line to take.

Hand 5: Sickest value bet anyone has ever done on me.

I feel completely owned in this hand, in spite of having a really good read on jaywks. He was c-betting every hand he opened on the BTN -EXCEPT- many ace highs, so I could reasonably take ace high out of his range on the flop, heavily leaning his range towards air. I ALSO knew that he loved to double barrel scary turns, so I actually felt like the flop and turn were pretty easy calls versus him. It was a little upsetting to see him bet $105 into a $160 pot on the river (as you can read from my chat in the HH), but I went with my read and called anyway. He said later that he put me on a PP, which basically has the same value as my K-high anyway. It was quite a sick value bet. I feel like this is what poker is all about - two players both having a read on each other, and constant exploitation and re-exploitation.

Hand 6: The final hand

I was unsure about what size to make my flop raise. I decided to make it a little under 3x, which in retrospect might have been best since it gets him to shove more draws. I don't hate his play, but I definitely am curious as to anyone's thoughts on both of our plays. I was pretty fortunate to get it in having him dominated "9 ways to Sunday".

****************************************************

Poker has still been rough for me, as I'm about even for March thus far. However, I feel like I played my best HU session ever last night. I felt really confident in my read of both players, and I was very focused. I'm really itching to play poker in general right now, which is nice because I have the next 3 days to focus on playing.

Off-topic: I purchased a mountain bike yesterday. I haven't had a bike in literally 8-10 years, but I want a form of exercise that I would enjoy doing. Running is really unenjoyable for me, and biking around my house seems really appealing.

Fun happenings during spring break

2008-03-10T19:23:00.005-04:00

I've had a pretty fun past few days, so I'll keep you guys updated on whats been happening.

I drove home on Friday, since spring break takes place now for University of Pittsburgh. To celebrate my 21st birthday, 5 of us went to Borgata in Atlantic City and partied. We went to two venues within Borgata: Gypsy Bar, and Mixx. Gypsy Bar is a really chill atmosphere that had good cover bands, lots of people standing around and socializing, and a little bit of dancing. Mixx, on the other hand, was a really loud and exhilirating club atmosphere. It was hard to socialize with people since it is so loud, but the environment was really fun for dancing and just enjoying the music. They had a DJ playing really awesome remixes of hit songs, along with a drummer whose energy was nothing like I had ever seen. Mixx is an ideal place to go with your friends and/or girlfriend and dance, while Gypsy Bar was a good place to relax and socialize. I had a lot of fun at both.

Yesterday and today, I hung out with Tim, known as IHaveAStrong9 on 2+2 and Full Tilt. He has extremely impressive results playing 5/10 and 10/20 NL heads-up on Full Tilt. We've been talking online for a few months after I saw he's from the same area as me (Philadelphia suburbs), thanks to 2+2. He stayed at my home, and we discussed lots of poker theory. It was extremely fun to discuss advanced poker with someone face-to-face. We then decided to play a live HU match, both playing our A-game. There were some really interesting spots, and I probably learned more from the match than I have from any previous live session. Hanging out with Tim was really cool, and I'm hoping we can find more successful players from the Philadelphia area to network with. I've done a good job of becoming friends with virtually all of the good poker players in Pittsburgh, but I know I'm leaving Pittsburgh once I complete college.

Tomorrrow I'm heading up to New York City with my dad, where we'll be visiting for the next two days. Should be pretty fun, as I haven't been there in about 3 years. If I stay in NYC too long, I end up getting burnt out from the crowded feeling... but being in Manhattan is a blast for a few days. I probably won't go clubbing with my dad, but should be fun nonetheless.

Keep ur head-up, son

2008-03-05T10:40:00.003-05:00

I was having a good start to the month, but in a poor decision I decided to 2-table versus a good HU regular last night, and I lost 4 buy-ins to him. It's amazing how many times in the past few months I've allowed myself to just dump money to the 2/4 NL HU regulars.

My HU game isn't as flawless as I used to believe it is. I ran hot and won like 8 PTBB/100 over 50K hands, but I think my results are coming back down to earth now. I definitely want to work hard on my game though, I really enjoy HU and know I have lots of room for improvement.

By the way - I definitely need some lifestyle changes, particularly with working out. I get zero exercise at school, and it is definitely affecting every aspect of my life. I get a good 8-9 hours of sleep a night and I'm still tired all the time, I don't have good concentration during poker or classes, and I have a lot of tension built up that comes out (negatively) through my poker game. I think I'm actually gonna go for a run right now.

February Results

2008-03-01T23:29:00.008-05:00

Well this month sucked. I should count my blessings for not having a losing month, but it is extremely unsatisfying to fluctuate between even and +$4K for an entire month. This is my worst month since May 2007 (a point where I was simply a small winner at 100NL).

To be honest, I did not play very well in February. Until just recently, I believed I could crank out wins without a strong effort. I was RARELY deliberate about decisions in big pots, and I did little to improve my game outside of just playing. I decided now to buy my first poker books in about 2+ years, purchasing Tommy Angelo and Bill Chen's books after getting recommendations on both. I also have become a member of Leggo Poker, which I think will help my game out a lot. The Leggo instructors seem awesome for mid-stakes NL.

I'm gonna shoot for 30-35K hands this month, which should be doable since spring break is coming up, and I dropped the most difficult class I had this semester. I'm going to be visiting Atlantic City, and then NYC during spring break, so this month should be fun.

Honestly, I just want the harsh Pittsburgh winter to end. Nothing makes me happier than driving down the country roads (back home... not in Pittsburgh obviously) with my windows down when it's May, 70 degrees and sunny out.

21st birthday - reflecting, instead of bar hopping

2008-02-27T00:19:00.012-05:00

Well, it's my 21st birthday and I've decided that now is a good time to reflect on my life. I don't talk about my life outside of poker enough on here, so this will be a nice start.

For those who don't know, I'm in my junior year of college. I live a pretty typical college lifestyle, with 5 roommates who share one bathroom in our house. While I am moving out into a nicer apartment this fall, I will never forget how fun it was to live here. My roommates are all awesome friends, and junior year has shaped up to be the best time I've had at college. Even if I never use that piece of paper I'll receive at graduation, I'm extremely happy that I went to school here at University of Pittsburgh.

As for poker - It is awesome that I'm making money doing something I love. Poker fits really well into my personality - I'm a really competitive person who was never athletic, so sports never helped satisfy that part of me. I also love how poker is mental warfare, and constantly challenging my logical reasoning skills. Poker is also a very pure game, in spite of the swings. Poker doesn't judge you. The best players win the money in the end, regardless of overrated aspects such as reputation and tenure in the profession. Those who work the hardest and have the truly best skills inevitably have better results. (In cash games, at least...haha.)

I'm pretty much fully transitioned into adulthood now. It is a bit scary, but now my slate is for myself to write. It is awesome to know that I can paint a life for myself as however I see fit. I have so much stuff to look forward to. As far as the foreseeable future goes, spending Vegas with poker players who I feel a strong bond with should be awesome. I then get to finish off school with a bang, and figure out where the hell to move to after that. I also get to evaluate whether poker is something I'm going to stick with right out of school.

I'll finish off the entry with a few pictures of my life..

Speeding up hair loss

2008-02-24T23:09:00.007-05:00

I can't put into words how frustrating this month is, so I'll just show the graph to explain:

Random thoughts:

-I have had several days where I am up 4-5+ BI at one point, and then blow all or most of it by the conclusion of that same day.
-Whenever a fish sits HU and wins a big pot early, they always hit-and-run this month. Every single time.
-I literally tried ripping my hair out 5 minutes ago.
-I feel like I'm playing well, but it's hard to keep having confidence in that belief when the results have been this way.
-I can't even claim that my PokerEV graph proves I'm running shitty. I'm running at about EV for all-in pots on Full Tilt this month.
-I find myself getting more emotional about poker now than in the recent past. This even started last month, when I was winning. I have thrown water bottles at the wall after losing a tough pot, screamed expletives, and other things that should be completely uncharacteristic of a professional player.

Worst session ever; really frustrating month

2008-02-18T19:06:00.004-05:00

I just logged my single worst session ever, losing 7 buy-ins on Absolute 6 max. It was a typical catastrophic session: starting with coolers and other things out of my control, then evolving to me playing my D-game toward the end of the session.

I believe these all to be complete coolers (or hands that I played fine but got fucked), but would like input from anyone if you agree or disagree on any of them:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124951
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124958
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124980
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124984
http://www.pokerhand.org/?2124985

The end of the session got really ugly. One hand, I c-bet $422 into a $28 pot (meant to bet $22) with air and got shoved on. In another hand, I raised OOP w/ KK, then check-called 3 streets on an A high board (got shown two pair). I was just careless and really aggravated toward the end of the session. I wouldn't say I was on monkey tilt, but all the stars aligned for my sub-pair game to really hurt my session results.

I want to start grinding like crazy for the rest of the month, but now my results for the month (I'm +$200 through a measly 9K hands) are making me wonder if I'm doing something wrong and it's getting to my head. The last thing I want is to have a disaster month where I'm blowing away buy-in after buy-in playing tilted poker.

Dolla dolla bill, ya'll

2008-02-10T11:10:00.000-05:00

I did some math and realized that I am going to be spending a TON of money over the next 6 months. I have my Vegas trip, I want to get furniture and a HDTV for my new apartment, Playstation 3, I want a new car (that I am going to force myself to put $5K down on), AND I have to pay taxes.

While this won't do much, I have decided that I am going to try to spend as little as possible in March or April. It'll be a sort of competition against myself to see how much I can penny pinch. My roommates at college are the masters of budgeting when they have to be, so I figure I can just follow what they do. I have about $325/month in fixed costs, but other than that I think I can keep the number very low. The one thing I won't settle on is getting the cheap toilet paper that feels like notebook paper.

Screw you, school

2008-02-06T01:36:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, I have two papers due on Monday, as well as a difficult exam next week. It appears that academics are going to get the most attention in my life for the time-being. This means I'm going to go very light on poker for the next week or so. This is frustrating because I set lofty goals for poker lately. I am going to make sure I get 25K quality hands in this month.

A recommendation to anyone who enjoys watching good TV poker: You need to watch the television shows "PartyPoker.com Scandinavian Poker Masters: The Game" and "Million Dollar Cash Game". Both shows were recorded in Europe last fall, and both have been great to watch for serious poker players. The Scandinavian show is a 6 handed cash game that has lots of intelligent, aggressive players. It plays just like an internet cash game, and actually makes for great television. You should be able to find both shows on Pokertube, as well as various torrents.

TEAM POKER GOGOGOGOGO

2008-02-01T14:25:00.001-05:00

I would just like to say that collectively, the 6 people who will be living in our Vegas house this summer made $120,000 in January alone. This includes me, and the 5 people whose blogs are listed on the bottom right column of my blog.

That is pretty sick for a bunch of online grinders who don't really take big shots.

January Results

2008-01-30T23:01:00.000-05:00

I know that there's another 24 hours or so in the month, but I had a really rough day yesterday, so I'm just declaring myself done for January. This may be the last time I post my results here (any accountant would advise against doing so), so make sure you appreciate them this time:

This is the best month I've ever had, but I am not very satisfied. I under-preformed at 6 handed, and I had plenty of times in general where I wasn't playing my A-game. I had a rough end to the month. The mixture of variance and life tilt (I need to deal with relationship issues better than I do) almost made a recipe for disaster.

One thing I need to drastically work on is not letting my pride get in the way. During HU matches, I find myself getting stuck versus competent players and not wanting to quit. I need to set some kind of stop-loss, especially when I'm playing someone I feel I have a small edge against anyway.

I'm going to set a general goal of playing at least 10K hands HU, and 15K hands at six max each month this semester. It's reasonable, and a good way to balance out what I'm doing so I don't get complacent when I play.

Shitty time right now

2008-01-24T11:35:00.001-05:00

I'm still up 5 digits on the month, but Im currently on a 9 buy-in downswing. A lot of it has to do with abruptly breaking up with Allison. I'm definitely playing shitty right now.

Time to take a few days off. If you see me playing, please punch me.

Gotta keep my foot on the pedal, now

2008-01-19T12:44:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I was grinding pretty hard up until the past 3 days or so, I've finally slowed down a little bit. I need to get back to grinding since I feel like I'm playing well.

I've played 22K hands so far this month, and it's shaping up to be far-and-away my best month ever. I'm killing 2/4 NL heads up some more, it's now at the point that I'm running 10 PTBB/100 over a large sample. I'm actually almost breakeven at 6 max, which is really disappointing because I feel like I'm massively under-preforming in the Absolute games.

Also, I'm really excited to say that we have booked my Vegas house, from June 14th to July 11th. You can find more information on our whole setup on this page. We are actually looking for people interested in living in the house the first 2 weeks we're there. If you think you'd be a good fit and are interested, feel free to shoot me an IM, my screen name is ShadyBreakfast.

Swingiest day ever

2008-01-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

The past several months, Ive had a pretty low variance playing style. I see some of my friends with 10K one month then break even another month, while I've kinda cruised along the entire time. This month, I've had really good results so far but with lots of swings along the way. Yesterday. I went from a $2500 deficit (my biggest for one day ever) to a $1100 profit by the time I went to bed at 3:30 AM.

I took some sick coolers on Absolute and won most of my money back playing HU on Full Tilt. In a sick turn of events, I found an opponent who just went apeshit when I started getting up on him. I'm pretty sure that he was not implementing a stop-loss in this match. I was in for a grand total of $280:

Grinding like crazy, and it's paying off

2008-01-03T22:36:00.001-05:00

It's strange to say, but I have had a fire ignited under my ass. I'm hell bent on killing poker right now. By the conclusion of tomorrow, I will have played 9K hands in the first four days of 2008. For someone who is often lazy and never plays more than 4 tables, this is an enormous amount of hands.

I've set myself pretty lofty goals for this year, and I want to accomplish them. I do think I can attribute my renewed enthusiasm for poker to a couple different things:
-I want to be the best. I want to be the best poker player in Pittsburgh. I want to be the best poker player in my Vegas house this summer. I want to be the best poker player on the site I'm now focusing on.
-The new year brings a psychologically feeling of a "clean slate". I can look at any previous results in poker as being in the rear view mirror now.
-I desire to live a lifestyle now that means I need to be making good money. I'm going to likely spend 5K on my Vegas trip, I want a new car, I want nice furniture in my new apartment this fall, and I want to be able to save for a prosperous life in the years to come.

I go back to school on Saturday, but I will continue to work hard at poker even when I return and begin classes again. This feels good.

An optimistic look at 2008

2008-01-01T19:08:00.000-05:00

2007 is in the books. I would say that in poker and life, it went well very well.

I have now been playing online poker for 2.5 years. I did not start playing NL cash games until September 2006, and did not start seeing significant winnings until June/July 2007. I had a big head when it came to poker before then, but the reality was that I was just a small winner at small stakes until recently.

I feel like I can accomplish a lot in poker. I have a lot of serious competition in this day-and-age in online poker, and there is a lot of information out there for people to become really good players. I have to compete with these people by having a good work ethic, and always looking for ways to get better. I feel like a lot of the good NL players online built out of the 2+2 and Cardrunners mindset (which is a great base to have) are still too close-minded. They only know the fundamentals these communities taught them, but don't think for themselves.

I would like to make 6 figures in 2008 while balancing my life with academics and my social life. I will spend a month in Vegas for not only pure leisure, but to also make connections and expand my mind in the poker world.

Downswing

2007-12-27T12:40:00.000-05:00

I'm officially on my biggest downswing ever, 9 buy-ins at 2/4. Im supposed to head down to Atlantic City this afternoon, but I really should just take a big break from poker right now.

I have no excuses. I'm playing badly, flat out.

All great things have to end eventually

2007-12-25T18:42:00.000-05:00

Last Friday was a particularly interesting day. My friend Chris from high school, who plays 50NL and 100NL, came over to my house and we planned to grind together. I got stuck $1700 and decided to go sit at 5/10 NL heads up on Full Tilt. A complete idiot sat with $400 against me and built his stack up to 2K at one point. While I should have never sat at these stakes in the first place, I felt it was the right decision to continue playing because he was so bad. I came back and stacked him, but I am still a little upset at myself for playing higher stacks in the wrong frame of mind. I usually have much better self-control than that.

I'm currently on a mini-downswing, particularly at 2/4 NL on Absolute. Im specifically down $2,250 over my last 1K hands there. Ive run into some tough coolers, but I've also made a couple bad decisions in big pots. I'm going to post some of the hands that I'm questioning my play in. You guys can feel free to comment on any of them... the more feedback, the better. I actually need to begin posting hands on forums again.

Hand 1: Learn to fold hands, dude

This is the most obviously butchered hand of any, in my opinion. Villain is roughly 20/15 at this point in the session, which are very solid numbers for the crazy players at Absolute. I think that the turn is an incredibly obvious check/fold spot. He won't have AA/KK often at all here, but at the same time TT is the only hand I can beat... and I feel that TT will check behind here a lot here. I lost $300 here that was completely unnecessary.

Hand 2: Freaking overpairs again

I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Villain is unknown at this point. I think it looks fine, but comments on all streets would be appreciated. I mix up 4 betting and just calling preflop in this spot, and was in the air about what to do on the flop. I also wonder what I should have done if he lead out on the turn. I had planned to probably fold if he made any sizable bet on the turn. Agree or disagree with this plan versus an unknown?

Hand 3: Villain seems strong, should I still jam?

Semi-bluffing is always a big part of my arsenal, but it gets questionable when you feel like your opponent has a strong made hand. When the hand was happening, I didn't have stats on the villain, but his small 3 bet and healthy-sized flop bet seemed very strong to me at the time. Do you guys ever just call in spots like this when you feel like JJ+ makes up a very large portion of your opponent's range? I should probably pokerstove this hand, but I feel like it's very marginal whether to call or raise, especially when we were slightly deep.

Hand 4: When to give up versus someone you have history against

This is what poker is all about. Villain is a pain-in-the-ass regular, running about 25/21 over a couple hundred hands. We have been 3 betting each other preflop, and I can sense that he doesn't want to give me much credit in any pots we're involved. The board texture makes a call-down more complicated because I feel like he could be semi-bluffing OR putting me on a draw. I feel like he can put me on a queen by the time I call the turn, but does that mean I have to fold the river? I don't know. I guess I have to tip my hat to him once he bets $340 on the river? Does anyone jam the turn?

By the way: Happy holidays, everyone.

So far, so good

2007-12-20T23:27:00.000-05:00

2/4 NL on Absolute is going really well so far. Variance has been a good friend to me, as I have run my initial 2K on the site up to 7K already.

I'll show you the most interesting hand I've played on Absolute so far: This is going to surprise you. You may argue that it looks like I'm squeezing here (and thus someone might 4 bet me without a complete monster), but with an UTG raise I feel like the big blind is SCREAMING strength. I had him running at 20/13, he really wasn't getting out of line. With us sitting deep-stacked, this was a really shitty spot where I felt like I had to shove. If I shove, I feel like only aces are calling. This is a really rare fold for me, but I honestly feel good about this decision.

I will only log roughly 15K hands in for December because of finals earlier and the fact that I spend days straight with my girlfriend. However... as long as I don't run bad to end the month, I should have really good results. Let's keep our fingers crossed that good things keep happening.

I'm going to finally play some live poker again after Christmas. My friend Mike has a beach house 10 minutes from the casinos in Atlantic City. It looks like my friend Pete (famousanus) and his friend Jared are also gonna head down, so it should be fun to have us wreck some of the live games at Borgata. I'll probably just play 2/5 NL to start, but if Im feeling comfortable in the live setting I'll probably jump to 5/10 NL. For a lot of online poker pros, live poker is just a hobby that they often donk around in. I want to actually win at live poker, though, just to prove to myself that I can beat any poker game I choose to sit down in.

I run good at life

2007-12-19T01:45:00.000-05:00

To put it simply: My life has been awesome lately. I got a 3.8 GPA for this past semester, which is a huge leap over any previous semester and helps out my cumulative GPA greatly. I've also fallen in love with my girlfriend. We have awesome chemistry and meeting each other's parents last week went really well.

I'm running well and playing well on Absolute. I've taught myself to stop bluffing the unbluffable players on Absolute. Patience is a big virtue versus these guys. I had a big score tonight, winning 7 buy-ins. I now feel like it's time to move up to 2/4 NL on the site. Even if 2/4 NL is only moderately more difficult than 1/2, I will still make a killing in these games.

One way that I'm actually motivating myself to work in poker is by setting goals of things to purchase. Specifically, I want to get an Infiniti G35 at the end of spring semester. I have decided that if I make a certain amount in the first 4 months of 2008, I will get one. This goal has really gotten me excited about poker overall.

Finally trying out new sites

2007-12-10T20:29:00.001-05:00

It has been over a year since I played cash games on any site besides Full Tilt (PartyPoker being the last, lol). I love Full Tilt's software, but the games are so tough that I am basically burning money to not play on smaller sites. I moved 2K onto Absolute this week. I'm currently playing 200NL on there to get comfortable with the software and build my account up a bit. After that, Ill start grinding 2/4 NL on there and see how it goes. So far, the games seem good.

In non-poker news, I'm already done with my final exams and it's only December 10th, so that feels great. I had a relatively easy semester, and should get a higher GPA than I have any previous semester. The truth is that I'll be content with just having a 3.0 GPA when I graduate. It is basically a pride thing since I probably won't use my degree directly anyway. Anyway, now that I'm done school, I have over 3 weeks to focus on poker. I'm expecting big things from myself.

First real heads-up battle

2007-12-07T11:30:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, I played my longest HU match against someone. Though I have played a lot of heads-up the past month or two, I typically have short sessions against weak players. If a session lasts longer than 200-300 hands, it is abnormally long. This system has produced great results for me, but I also want to find ways to improve my HU game against better players.

My session yesterday was against someone I believed I had an edge against. He seemed competent, but was playing too tight preflop and seemed to have exploitable leaks postflop. I asked him if he wanted to start up a 2nd table (which I don't normally ask opponents), and he said yes. We proceeded to log a 820 hand session, which is pretty long for HU.

I can honestly say this was the most fun I've had playing poker in a while. As the session progressed, I realized he was a smart player and adjusting to my style. It became a grueling mental battle. I don't have much experience playing more than 1 HU table, but I realized that there are even more head games when you're playing multiple tables versus the same opponent.

When all was said and done, we played for stacks several times, took bad beats on both ends, and had a mutual respect for each other. I lost roughly $600. I talked to him on MSN messenger after the session, and learned that he normally plays 5/10 NL 6 max. I doubt we'll have a rematch because my edge is either microscopic or non-existent. I just hope to have learned from the experience. Here are a few hands from the session:

****************************************************

Hand 1: Having an image helps Heads-up

I had been taking stabs at pots on the river versus him early on, and he had been looking me up. That helped greatly to get paid off in this spot. I remember when Phil Ivey said that it is never that bad to get caught bluffing - and he couldn't be more right.

Hand 2: See, I can mix it up too!

By this point in the match, there has been a lot of 3 betting by both parties preflop. I began floating his 3 bets in position with marginally good hands, so I thought this was a good spot to mix it up and just call his 3 bet with a monster. I just called on the flop to disguise the strength of my hand, because I felt like it would smell like a bluff when I go to bet the turn. The plan followed through greatly and I managed to get my money in with 75% equity.

Hand 3: Meta-game sure makes you stack lightly

This was at the tail end of our session. We had crazy meta-game going on. Since I had been C/Ring his continuation bets a lot, I figured it may actually be smart to do it here with TP no kicker. I expected there to be a chance of him floating me with nothing. When the turn came, I realized I had to stack off with my hand. I actually love his cold call of my C/R since I have air so often there. I believe the hand played itself when the way the board was on the turn.

November = Bad work ethic, good results

2007-12-01T09:09:00.000-05:00

November is over, and it brings mixed feelings for me:

I should be happy with my results for little amount of time I played, but only playing for 36 hours over the entire month is pretty pathetic. I should be able to play at least double the hours and not feel like it is a "grind". I need a better work ethic even if I am going to accomplish my goals in poker. That also includes being able to balance poker with academics, my social life, my girlfriend, and some exercise too.

I think I made a lot of strides in my heads-up game the past 2 months. I have run VERY hot heads-up over a 15-20K sample since August, but I feel like I am playing well also. My hand reading skills and my overall fundamentals in NL hold em continue to improve, in spite of not putting the hours in. The problem is I haven't had the desire to play 6 max lately, but I'm sure the desire will come back soon.

I filled out an application to be the protégé of Cardrunners owner Taylor Caby. He is going to select one regular CR member to take under his wing next year. I spent a decent amount of time making sure I answered the interview questions well. It would be awesome to become Taylor's student. He is an amazing NL player that I could learn a lot from, and I know I would make the most of it. Unfortunately, I will be competing with about 1,000 other applicants for the spot. If one of my friends gets selected, I will be just as excited for them (albeit jealous, as well).

Please don't yell at me...

2007-11-23T20:03:00.000-05:00

Okay, so the truth is that I am playing less poker this month than I have in a loooong time. When I have been playing, though, I have been playing mostly heads-up. I feel like HU is refreshing right now, because I don't have to fire up a bunch of programs to log a session. The session also ends whenever I feel the right time is to quit; whereas with 6 max, I feel like I have to force myself to play at least 2 hours. I will eventually get back into the swing of playing 6 max, but in the mean time, HU is improving my ability to adjust to opponents' styles.

Things with my girlfriend are starting out really well. We have good chemistry, and seem to have the same goals in our relationship. Unfortunately, I have been home for Thanksgiving break and haven't been able to see her lately. I'm heading back on Sunday, and we'll probably try to spend a lot of time together over the near future.

School is going well, given the fact that I have never put much of an effort into college. It's also going well outside of academics because living with 5 other guys gets me socializing a lot. The only area I am really lacking in (outside of being lazy with poker) is that I am getting close to no exercise. I want my energy level to be a lot higher than it has been, and just being overall fit makes anyone happier overall. Now, if only I could light a fire under my ass...

HAUPT! Two three four...

2007-11-14T17:43:00.001-05:00

I played heads-up against my friend Haupt yesterday online. He is a very good 6 max player (solid winner at 2/4 to 5/10), but has little HU experience. We agreed to play small stakes, but to take it seriously. I played him because we could discuss hands together in real time. Playing each other is -EV for both of us (if we're not learning from it).

I beat Haupt up, winning a little less than 5 buy-ins. I got a nice run of cards, but he also overplayed a couple hands. Regardless of any results, it was a fun experience. I would do it again as long as we are playing for productive reasons. Here are some of the more interesting hands from the session:

****************************************************

Hand 1: The very first hand. Nice one, sir.

I had a feeling that Haupt might be very aggressive in the beginning of the match, but I had no idea he'd go apeshit on the very first hand. The fact that I know Haupt plays me aggressively was the reason I kind of close my eyes and called his shove. I was getting about 2-to-1 and figured it was a marginal decision. I also didn't want to set a precedent of being run over. I was shocked when I saw his 64o. I really don't like his shove. I'm just going to shrug, and then call his shove a lot (with the range I am 4 betting). I have to be 4 betting lightly in order for him to induce a fold.

Hand 2: Nice river for me...maybe?

Haupt was already down a lot at this point. He was still playing quite aggressive. The J on the turn was a decent card for him to 2nd barrel without having improved, so this actually made me slightly more apt to call. When the river spiked a ten, I was contemplating a check-raise, but figured he would give up too often. I lead out, he thought for a bit, and then min raised. I had no idea what to think; a better ten was the only hand that made sense. It seemed very believable in my eyes that I had trip tens myself. With the really good odds I was getting, I shrugged and called (again). I was really surprised to see air. I don't really like Haupt's raise because if he had a strong hand like an overpair, he would usually just call the river. I also think it's more likely that I have a ten than a missed draw here (though I know my game better than he does).

Hand 3: Did you put me on air again, Haupt?

This is a really shitty spot vs any good, aggressive player. 99 is a tweener hand preflop; I'm not sure whether to call or 4 bet. I decided to just call, knowing the flop would come with overcards often and it'd be a really tough spot once he c-bets. For this reason, I decided I had to peel one card. I saw little point in betting the turn, since I could see him checking better hands on the turn (for pot control, OR for deception). I hit gin on the river, and was pretty surprised I got paid off. I doubt I am going to value bet a hand less than his on the river, so he is basically hoping I have complete air there.

Hand 4: Sick bluff, Haupt. I like it.

I have to check/raise the flop with air occassionally, in order to protect myself from being exploited too much. When Haupt called, the board was so dry that I figured I should just give up. When he checked behind the turn, I put him on a K, or a middle pocket pair. His bet on the river looked like an obvious value bet, so I instantly folded. When he showed air, I was shocked. I actually like the line he took a lot. The fact that he delayed his bluff until the river made it very convincing that he didn't float me.

****************************************************

Haupt has great hand reading skills and fundamentals. Once he logs more hands at heads up, he will be a very strong HU player. I definitely think he's the better 6 max player between the two of us.

Thinking about life

2007-11-11T16:16:00.000-05:00

I am already getting antsy about renting a house in Vegas next summer. It's an opportunity to get away from school and the sometimes depressing atmosphere of Pittsburgh, PA. It's also my chance to see what it is like to live with several other poker players my age. I actually have visions of buying my first house right out of college (in spring 2009), and having a couple poker playing friends live with me. As of right now, odds are I'm just going to play poker for the time-being after I graduate. I love the freedom that playing poker allows me. Ideally, I'll live someplace sunny with 2-3 others in a nice house.

I need that external factor of having poker friends in order to keep me motivated. If I had no one to talk to about poker, I would almost never have the drive to play. Part of what motivates me is being able to move up the ladder in the poker world, and to share my success with people who can relate. I also enjoy analyzing poker hands and general theory with people.

-----

My life is in a unique situation right now. Lots of my friends are stressing over school now that we're in junior year of college. That has taken high priority in their lives. For me, I am content to just get by and receive my degree. I'd like to have a 3.0 GPA when I graduate, but that's the extent of my academic worries. I'm not stressing over finding internships or extra curricular activities. I'm also not strapped financially, so that's another worry that doesn't exist for me. Lately, I've been just doing a lot of thinking about where my life is heading. I want to find happiness. I feel like I have a lot of good friends here at Pitt and I am having a good college experience, but something is missing.

Part of it is that I feel much happier when I have a partner to share my experiences with. Having a girlfriend raises my confidence and makes me enjoy the little things in life much more. I've started seeing a girl I met at Pitt recently, and we've hit it off well. I like her a lot and hope it works out. This whole experience is making me quickly feel invested in her. I'm already relying on the situation to be a piece of the puzzle to make me happy in life, which I probably shouldn't be doing.

Ron Paul cured my apathy

2007-11-05T11:26:00.000-05:00

I feel like it's my duty to tell you guys about presidential candidate Ron Paul (if you don't already know him). Ron Paul is a strong advocate of social AND economic freedom. He reflects the views of many poker players. He's also the first of his kind with a REAL chance to win the election.

I donated $100 to him today. It was the first time I've ever donated money to a political campaign. The past couple years, I was apathetic to world issues and our government, because I figured nothing would change in the right direction. Our country has been heading towards bigger government: more spending, more bureaucracy, and less of the ideals our founding fathers sought. Here are some of the key views Ron Paul advocates:

1.) Elimination of the IRS and the income tax. Revenue from income taxes only represents a third of all government spending. If we cut spending levels to what it was at the beginning of the 21st century, we wouldn't even need the money from income taxes anymore. The income tax didn't even exist until last century, and is completely unnecessary.

2.) No longer being the world's police force. Ron Paul has recognized for the past 3 decades that the US trying to police the world has only created negative effects. A large reason for animosity towards America is because we have been trying to tell other countries how to run themselves. We do not need to police the world in order to achieve free trade, and happy relationships with other nations.

3.) Elimination of social security. Everyone knows that the SS system in this country is quickly going broke. We are pouring billions of dollars into a system that won't be able to support older Americans anyway. Ron Paul supports privatizing social security, which is the only logical path to take in order to fix this mess created.

Even if you "don't care about politics", there is still a lot to be gained from supporting Ron Paul. I strongly recommend everyone do some basic research on him (he has a ton of videos on Youtube), and donate if you feel that he represents where America should be heading.

-----

November is off to a good start poker-wise. I hate to set monetary goals, since they are hard to achieve in a swingy game.... but if I make less than 8K this month, I will be disappointed.

Review of October

2007-11-01T15:32:00.000-04:00

Sorry I haven't been blogging lately. I haven't played much poker at all lately. School, women, etc are taking up a bit more energy than I was expecting. Here are my results for October:

I am not happy about the amount of laziness I had this month. I fell 6K hands short of what I said I'd play at 2/4 NL 6 max. This was my first month playing almost completely at 2/4. It went okay, with a pretty small winrate at 6 max. I had some very swingy sessions. I do feel like I am game selecting well, it's just a matter of putting in a higher volume.

I also need to do more with my poker game (outside of playing). I have not been discussing hands with friends, or watching videos as much as in the past. I strongly believe my game improved most rapidly around July of this summer. At that time, I was constantly treating myself as a serious student of the game. Lately, I've kinda been mechanically playing hands in a standard way. I need to think about the game more if I want to keep improving.

For November, I'm not going to set any real goals. I expect to have my best month ever ($$$-wise) as long as I play enough hands, table select, and keep studying the game. I do wonder how many hands I'm going to put in. I have a guest coming over for 3 days, and it's also likely I'll have more involvement with women (or one in particular) than I have in a while. Women are definitely -EV if you are trying to maximize in the poker world. :P

Yucky session, sir

2007-10-19T18:10:00.001-04:00

I had a really rough session today. Lost $1800 over 500 hands. It was basically just 4 all-in pots, in which it was a really standard hand. That's poker, though it really sucks to lose 4.5 buy-ins when it's not even in my control.

Not to toot my own horn, but I definitely complain less than 95% of poker players. I've spent the past 2+ years listening to most other players bitch about bad beats, coolers, etc and it's made me realize I never want to sound like them. If I'm going to actually play poker for the long haul, I'm going to have to take the losing times like a man. At the end of today's session, I reviewed the session with an open mind. I asked people about a few hands where I felt I played it fine, but wanted to make sure unbiased sources agreed with me. You have to keep an open mind, and always be looking for lessons to learn from your hands.

I got my hardest mid-term coming up on Monday, which sucks because I'm finally in the mood to grind right now. Oh well, time to hit the books.

UPSWONGS LOL

2007-10-16T21:15:00.000-04:00

I am on an upswing the past week or so, and October is shaping up to be a good month now. As long as I table select, I feel very confident playing 2/4 NL on Full Tilt. The only thing that could hold me back from having a very strong end to 2007 is laziness. I do need to branch out to other sites, though. Full Tilt has, bar none, the toughest cash games online. It is stupid of me to not want to play vs easier competition. My friend Pete plays 3/6 and 5/10 NL on a smaller site, and admits the competition he faces is much easier than I do at 2/4 NL on Full Tilt.

Pokertracker has been acting up for me for the past several days, and it's very aggravating. Luckily, the PT support is very quick and helpful, so hopefully this will get fixed soon. I've been data mining a LOT at 2/4 NL on Full Tilt lately, which has bloated the size of my database. That is likely the reason behind the errors I am getting lately.

Side note: I never get tired of watching poker on TV (High Stakes Poker in particular). I have amazing recall of hands televised. It's fun to see how bad some of the "TV pros" play on the show. I truly respect only a few of the players on HSP. Antonio Esfandiari is perhaps the only top NL player who is on every season. If you want to see some great TV, watch Season 2 when Antonio, Phil Laak, Sammy, Negreanu, drunk Jen Harman, and Minh Ly are on. Some of the best television, period.

Well, that was easy

2007-10-10T14:50:00.001-04:00

Last night, I went to log a session 4 tabling. At a 1/2 NL table, a spewy fish was sitting with a big stack. He was running about 52/27 on the session, and had $800 in front of him when I first sat. He talked trash in the chat box after winning/losing a big hand, which combined with his lagtard play was aggravating me. I decided to challenge him to heads-up in the same "test of manhood" that I seem to do every week. I loaded up a 2/4 NL heads up table, and surprisingly he bought in for full.

I then went on to give him a pretty bad beating. He was willing to stack very lightly, and I could see that it would be very easy to outplay him. He was not content on letting me win any big pots. He called every reraise preflop, and called or raised every c-bet in RRed pots. I knew I'd have to gamble in this match.

The main pots:
-Close your eyes and call. He loved to both bluff the river, and value bet very thinly. He would have raised the turn with an ace most of the time, so I felt this was an easy call vs him.
-Sadly, this is a cooler. By this point in the match, I thought my hand was a monster. Even when he 3 bet the flop, I felt great about the situation. It was unfortunate, but comes with the territory of playing a very aggressive HU match.
-The final hand. This is my 2nd biggest pot ever. I'm fortunate to get in a spot like this, but it's still amazing he stacks off 2 buy-ins with bottom two.

One hour later, I was $1400 richer.

"Jesus christ, 4 bet him!"

2007-10-09T10:05:00.000-04:00

Last night I played a session at the library where I won $800. I have done well taking my laptop to the library and grinding in the past, probably because I have zero distractions there. My friend Pete, who goes to Pitt and plays 3/6 NL online, watched over me this session. It was pretty funny because he would yell at me about some of my plays right in the middle of the library. I'm sure people were upset with us, since most people were trying to study.

2/4 games have been really shitty lately (all aggro regulars, few non-regulars). I'm trying to actually practice some basic form of table selection. I played two tables of 1/2 NL and two of 2/4 NL last night to compensate for the shitty games, and it worked out well. Even though I am trying to move completely to 2/4 NL right now, I do feel that playing lower when the games are bad is a smart decision. I'd rather get more hands in, and play against soft competition, than play versus a bunch of good 2/4 NL regulars where I have little edge.

I have mid-terms over the course of the next 2 weeks, but I am going to try to grind. I have played about 4.5K hands through 8 days in October, which is embarrassing. I have very poor time management sometimes. I'm gonna make the promise right now to play 7K hands over the next 6 days. Please hold me accountable, and yell at me if I'm ever online but not grinding.

October rulz

2007-10-07T18:56:00.000-04:00

...okay, not really. I'm down 5 buy-ins at 2/4 NL 6 max. It hasn't hurt me psychologically, but it still makes me less enthusiastic to grind a lot. I've made various errors, and run badly as well.

I went home this weekend to relax and get a break from the city. It was pretty refreshing. I had planned to get some sessions in while home, but only got one HU session in this morning. I found a loose-passive fish sitting with a deep stack at 1/2 NL and took 2 buy-ins off him. He then left with $350 still in front of him. I would have postponed by drive back to Pittsburgh if he sat long enough. I felt that my edge was that large.

In other news, plans are coming together already for next summer. I'm organizing plans to rent a house in Las Vegas. It will be me and 4-5 other online players who I'm friends with. I found a 5 bedroom place very close to the strip that I'm very interested in, and I've already contacted the owner. The idea behind the house is that we will all be mid-stakes NL grinders, so we'll all have a bond that should make for a lot of fun over the course of a month.

Review of September

2007-09-30T21:40:00.000-04:00

I had a bizarre final two days for September, losing 1.2K on Saturday and winning 1.7K today. I was up 2.4K at one point today and pounding my chest, but lost a cooler as my final hand for the month that stung. Oh well. It still is very psychologically satisfying to dig myself out of the hole I was in yesterday.

Overall, September was a mediocre month, and the reoccuring theme was that I didn't push myself enough. I played about 7K hands less than I said I would, and didn't finally dive into 2/4 NL until the end of the month. I do feel like I played well when I did play, but I didn't play nearly enough if I want to keep progressing. I'm hell bent on having a $10K month before the end of 2007 without having to have played more than 25-30K hands any single month. I'm also hell bent on being one of the best mid-stakes players on Full Tilt by the end of the year.

Goals for October:
-Play at least 20K hands at 2/4 NL 6 max
-Play at least 6 sessions of 5/5 NL live
-Take notes on most CardRunners videos (unless it's a video from Andrew)
-Post at least 5 hands per week on CR forums

The harsh reality of online poker

2007-09-27T21:39:00.000-04:00

Cardrunners released its new site layout today, and CTS/Muckemsayuhh is the newest Cardrunners pro. He is a very respected high stakes NL and PLO player. He's also only 20 years old, but you would never peg him as being so young because of the amount of respect he has in the online poker community.

Lots of the online winners, most of which are in my 20-25 age range, say that they aren't worried about the future of online poker. I am trying to be a realist. The main problem lies in the fact that poker (unlike the real economy) is a negative sum game. Rake takes tens of millions of dollars out of the online poker economy every year, and the winners obviously take money out of the economy when they cash out. Thus, the only way for the online poker economy to maintain itself requires a LOT of new blood and new money to continually enter it.

The amount of information at anyone's disposal is amazing. The learning curve is so quick that one could go from novice, to winning HS player in less than a year if they push themselves. The amount of people in my age range who are rapidly becoming stronger and stronger NL players is insane. With CTS's new video, that much more information is being consumed by thousands of players.

It has gotten to the point that the shark-to-fish ratio is getting very sour. So many people are excellent players, while fish are more reluctant to part with money now (in comparison to the golden PartyPoker days). In the high stakes games, “fish” don’t really exist anymore. The high stakes games online are so incredibly dry that it’s a bunch of excellent regulars battling it out with little edge over each other.

What all this means, I don’t know. Online poker may just be a complete niche in a few years, where the games are so tough that there is little money to be won. In the mean time, I need to do everything I can to stay with the pack as games keep getting tougher. I’ll start right now by taking notes on CTS’s video, which is extremely insightful.

Guys love to sweat me

2007-09-26T02:25:00.000-04:00

I did a sweat session tonight with a poker friend, jaywks. The session was very bizarre. I ended down, in spite of getting more JJ-AA than I ever have, but the session was very productive. Having poker friends is extremely important, and doing sweat sessions are the best way to collaborate with another serious poker player. I've done sweat sessions with 2-3 other guys as well, and they are a great way to improve your game.

I finished down 7.5 buy-ins, or $1500 during that horrible day I blogged about last week. While losing that much in one day is pretty atrocious, I didn't get down on myself. I went to bed, woke up and it was a new day. I've gotten much better at coping with tough times in poker lately. I recovered those losses and a bit more since then, in spite of not playing very much.

Time to hit the sack. I got a bunch of schoolwork tomorrow and then I'm gonna go play some 2/5 NL live tomorrow night. Good luck at the tables, everyone. My next entry I'd like to discuss High Stakes Poker, a show that I have a love-hate relationship with.

Playing very badly

2007-09-18T18:47:00.001-04:00

As of the time I'm writing this post (7 PM EST), I am down almost 6 buy-ins on the day. Unless I start winning some of that back tonight, this is the worst day I've ever had for poker (in terms of BIs). This really sucks because it means I need to work on my fundamentals again, and this whole fiasco is going to delay me from permanently moving up to 2/4 NL.

I think that I have been playing badly the past few days, but I've been lucky to break even the couple sessions previous. It has finally caught up today in a big way. My opponents are catching a lot of hands, and I'm just closing my eyes and throwing money into the pot.

Some of my perceived holes of late:
1.) I am not c-betting the flop enough (I check behind ace high or pairs too much)
2.) I am stacking off WAY too light vs solid regulars
3.) I am firing multiple barrels vs opponents who I shouldn't be bluffing
4.) I am making hero calls on the turn and river when I can only beat air

This list doesn't even have a lot in common, other than the fact that I'm certainly a.) rushing myself, and b.) not playing patient poker. Once I'm in a pot, I have to win the pot. It is reminiscent of how I was playing before this summer. I need to figure out how to switch myself back, and do it quick.

But you gotta make the money, yo!

2007-09-14T20:58:00.000-04:00

I just busted out of the Pokerstars WCOOP #1 event ($200+15 NL 6 handed). I finished 556/4610, just 22 spots out of the money. It is frustrating, but I was playing to win the tournament. I got extremely aggressive in the last half hour before I busted. I probably was spewy, but I'd rather play to give myself a chance for first. So many of the people in this tournament were trying so hard just to make the money, which is a recipe for never getting really deep.

I gave this tournament my all, which I can't say for most tournaments I entered this year. I'd make a horrible professional tournament player, but it can be enjoyable to play 1-2 a month. I just need to ensure I'm going to try my hardest if I enter one, otherwise I am wasting my time and my money. I don't regret playing this tournament, though. It was a good structure, and just the right buy-in. I wasn't taking a big shot, yet it's enough money to make me feel invested enough to focus.

Anyway... this past week, I've played less poker than any other week in about 4 months. I've been busy with school, and just doing other things. I am going to get back on the grind now, though. I'm gonna log a few thousand hands at 200NL to get the rust off, and then grind 400NL seriously. I still have big expectations for September, and I'm going to follow through with them.

Let's step it up, man

2007-09-06T23:13:00.001-04:00

I did well in a live session yesterday. I was on the fence about playing because live is boring (and less profitable), but I can't complain since I booked a nice win. However, I'm most glad about playing because I met a dealer who knows a lot about the bigger games running in in the area. He give me information on all of the 5/5 NL (and larger) games in the city.

I am going home this weekend to get my car (it was in the shop). A primary reason I'm bringing it out to school is for the poker games in the city and suburbs. I realize that playing live can be very slow, and I am not learning a lot when I play live versus online, but there is still a lot of money to be made. The 5/5 NL games here are full of complete idiots sitting with 1K+ stacks... lots of middle aged people looking to blow off some money.

I also played a session of 2/4 NL today, which was very swingy and ended with me breaking even. I butchered a hand worse than any hand in a while. I have no history with villain, so this is probably a fold... but even if we're not folding, my 5 bet is absolutely horrible.

Starting next week, I'd like to begin logging a lot more hands than I have been lately. I need to follow through with my goals, and start beating 2/4 NL. I'm at the point mentally where I don't feel on track with accomplishing my goals if I'm not having 10K+ months soon.

I question my intelligence sometimes

2007-09-03T21:34:00.001-04:00

I just lost $43 pushing all in blind at $3 cap NL. Throwing away money is always fun (especially when it makes you tilty, thus stopping you from playing actual poker afterwards). Please punch me in the face if you ever catch me doing something stupid like this anymore.

In other news, I'm off to a good start for August. My winrate for 200NL is very pretty (6.5 PTBB/100 over 50K hands). I have proven I can beat 1/2 NL for a pretty solid rate, and I'm rolled for 400NL... so basically I need to stop being a pussy and start grinding 2/4.

Review of August

2007-09-01T10:25:00.000-04:00

August has come to an unfortunate end, signaling the beginning of the academic year. I had a decent month for poker...

I feel dissatisfied though, because the second half of the month was very swingy, and I always feel like I am capable of more. The shots I have taken at 400NL and 600NL were against very favorable opponents, but I ran badly (ever since the AA vs AA hand). I'll stay away from 3/6 for a bit, but I definitely think I am capable of beating 2/4 NL. I'm just going to pull myself fully out of my current downswing before I move back up. I would like to see myself playing 2/4 NL as my main game by the end of the month.

Goals for September:
-Play at least 20K hands at NL 6 max, 5K hands at NL heads up
-Play WCOOP #1 on Pokerstars ($200+16 NL 6 max), put my full effort in
-Go back to 2/4 NL after recouping a few thousand

I'm not going to set a monetary goal, but I would like to have a 10K month soon. Winning 10K is very realistic for someone grinding 2/4 NL. All I have to do is believe I can do it. On 2+2, a screenshot was posted of someone who made 50K in one month at these stakes (over 53K hands).

The real test of a poker player

2007-08-27T16:53:00.000-04:00

The past week has been rough for me, both in life and poker. I felt really frustrated about my living situation at school, and felt like nothing has gone right in poker lately. Life tilt, mixed with the bad side of variance, can be a recipe for disaster. I am currently on a $2500 downswing (about 9 BI at 1/2 to 3/6 NL), which is my largest ever. Summer break was completely smooth sailing for me, so to hit a brick wall now has been tough. I have taken shots at 2/4 and 3/6 games that were definitely profitable, and they have not worked in my favor.

When I spoke with my mom on the phone this afternoon, she gave me a pep talk that I was in badly need of. She told me that everyone needs to battle through tough times, and that I need to persevere. The things she told me are ideas that I would have said I already know, but actually hearing my mom tell me it gives a much more powerful meaning. After speaking to her, I feel rejuvenated (in comparison to the feeling of helplessness that I had last night).

Class started back up today, so that will take up a lot of my time... but I feel the energy and desire to continue my journey to be the most successful poker player I can be. I know that I have to fight through the downswing and just play my A-game, not letting short term results get to my head. Someone can be the best technical player in the world when they're winning, but if they can't fight through the rough times, they will have no staying power in poker.

Finally experiencing the opposite side of variance

2007-08-22T17:35:00.000-04:00

Having my first rough day in a while. I had a few tough pots at 200NL 6 max, and was down 2 buy-ins. I challenged an over-aggro donk (who stacked me in a coin flip) to a heads up match. He said 2/4 and I was more than happy to oblige, I felt just by spending a half hour at one table with him that I had an edge. Challenging people to HU is fun - it's the way dorky internet players (and I am one) challenge each other's manhood.

Anyway, we got down to business. He is very aggressive, and C/Red my continuation bet at a ridiculously high frequency. We were about even, when this pot happened. We played for another half hour or so after that, and then he quit on me, still up a buy-in. I'm down $815 so far today. According to my equity in all-in pots today, I should only be down $92. Oh well. That's poker... the same poker that has awarded me many pots that I didn't deserve in sessions past.

In the past, during sessions like today, I'd either get depressed, or just get angry and continue to play on tilt. I felt like I maintained my composure today, though... which makes me happy. Being able to quit when you're starting to tilt is very important, but even more important is to maintain emotional stability (so the tilt never happens in the first place).

Gonna try to log a long session or two tonight, after I eat dinner and get some light exercise.

Back at school

2007-08-20T11:06:00.001-04:00

I moved back into college at Pittsburgh on Saturday. There can be a lot of distractions that take away from poker here. I live in a 6 person off-campus apartment. Roommates trying to get you to hangout, plus noise distractions, etc could really take away from me putting solid hours in playing poker this fall. It makes me miss home because I had an incredibly relaxed setting with more/healthier food at my disposal. I'll have to make due though - gonna try to log at least 2K hands today now that I've finally settled in.

I bought an inexpensive poker table on eBay so I can try to run some cash games in our basement here. It'll give me the opportunity to play some live poker without having to drive anywhere, or have to deal with ridiculously large rake. I'll still try to play 5/5 NL a few times a month, but it'll be nice to just play 6 handed 1/2 NL games (with friends) right in the comfort of my own place.