Philly poker players rule

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

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

-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

-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

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?

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!

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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

-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!

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.