Yeah, I know a week late, so sue me. October ended up being a really good month for me winning about $17k. I was up $30k on the 29th or so, but that’s poker and I’m definitely not about to complain about my results for the month. I’ll post a graph and my desktop HEM results.
HEM desktop graph
HEM desktop stats
October ATMs, netted a little over $400 after expenses
I played a decent amount on my laptop and I can’t seem to get PT stud to collect all the hand histories correctly so the pictures are not the true results(which I have track by looking at BR #s from begin to end of month), but it’s the best I can do. I really wish HEM would hurry up and get stud and triple draw tracking as I really hate having inaccurate records. I think the main problem is HEM is taking the 8 game hand histories and moving them before PT stud can import them, but I’m not really sure how to fix it. I’m too dumb to figure it out, and I’d be more than willing to pay a premium for HEM stud tracking so if you’re listening HEM guys, hurry up so I can ship you your monies!
I logged on today to read the front page article on cardplayer.com saying how Ivey was the betting favorite to win the main event at 7/2 odds even though he only has 5% of the chips. I immediately thought this was insane and wanted to find out where I could put some money down laying 7/2 he would not win. First place I looked was Bodog.com and just wow. Consider this my PSA to the world to never place a bet at bodog.com and be very wary of placing bets with bookmakers that don’t offer both sides of a bet. They offer 7/2 odds all right, but you can only bet for Ivey to win. I ended up finding matchbook.com which I do recommend for your sports betting needs (for US customers that is, outside of US you may look into pinnaclesports.com). They currently offer 7/1 against and 6.2/1 for Ivey to win. In case you don’t realize how badly Bodog.com is raping their customers on their bet let me break this bet down for you mathematically.
Bodog is offering 7/2 odds Ivey will win. This means you can bet $100 to win $350. On matchbook.com you can bet $100 to win $620. Let’s suppose matchbook.com has the true line, this means Ivey will win 1/(1+(7+6.2)/2) or 1/7.6 times = 13.16% of the time. So bodog’s profit on each $100 bet is .1316*-250+(1-.1316)*100=$53.94 So your ROI on making this bet with bodog.com is -54%. Jesus Christ Bodog really!? I mean, I know you are a casino and just trying to make a profit, but this is why sports betting online should just be completely legalized in my opinion. Because if there were thousands of online sportsbooks available to the US consumer, like there are thousands of market makers in the US for the stock market (which is completely legalized gambling in my opinion) the few bookmakers with a virtual monopoly on the market wouldn’t be able to get away with such ridiculous price gouging.
PS Another way to calculate their profit on the bet is to assume they immediately hedge all bets for Ivey at 7/2 with matchbook’s 6.2/1 against. So if Ivey wins they pay out $250 and collect $520 for every $100 bet for a net profit of $270. If Ivey loses, they collect the $100 wagered. So their avg profit is .1316*270+(1-.1316)*100=$122.37 per $100 wagered. It’s kinda confusing that they can make more than is wagered, but basically if you win, they win even more than you do, and if you lose, they collect all the bets.
The first way calculates the bettor’s theoretical ROI, whereas the second calculates the book maker’s profit per $100 bet assuming they hedge elsewhere (which they don’t btw, they just offer really bad odds on all the runners in effect doing their own hedging and actually make WAY more than this per bet placed).
Anyways, after all my research I decided not to bet with the odds I could get. Laying Ivey at 14% odds chance to win is probably still a good bet in my opinion but just not good enough of a bet for me and I’m not really willing to risk the $1000 to win only $143 for what’s likely a 2-3% edge. With 5% of the chips in play he obviously has much better than a 5% chance to win because he’s
1) The best player in the world and
2) Definitely going for the win at all costs whereas some other players will probably be perfectly happy to move up the pay scale 2 or 3 people and then bust
I just kinda doubt these factors increase his chances of winning three times as much as the average player at the final table. Especially with all the coaching the final 9 will have received over the past couple of months.
Besides if I bet against him that means I can’t root for him to win! Go Phil!
This vid starts off kinda slow, but I PROMISE you it gets better!
After my September article was so hand history intensive I thought I’d make this month’s more qualitative in nature so what follows is my guide to shot taking or moving up.
1. Have a stop loss. This is by far the most important thing to come up with before you jump into a new game. When playing my normal game and limits I’m pretty good at not tilting. I know when I make mistakes and how to correct them. I know how much I’m likely to win or lose from session to session and when to quit when things aren’t going my way that day. However, when I play a new game I’m not used to the way hands play out or the bad beats or seeing myself make a lot of mistakes as a result of not knowing what the right play is. When I play a new, higher limit I am not used to the big swings and it’s only a matter of time of playing at that limit before I lose a larger amount of money than I am used to in a session. Both of these feelings are uncomfortable and at times can become very tilting. Over time as you gain more experience, your comfort level will increase and you will become much less prone to tilt as a result of these things.
In the mean time, playing tilted at a higher limit than you are used to is a sure fire way to lose a third (or more) of your bankroll in a single day and have to spend the next couple of months grinding it back. At a certain point you are going to tell yourself, “Oh what’s the difference I’m already down $x, what’s another $y, but if I get back to even I’ll be much happier!” This should set off alarm bells in your head that you are on tilt and you should quit immediately. Unfortunately, saying you are going to do something and actually doing it are two very different things. What I recommend is that you practice having losing sessions. Sound weird? No, I don’t mean purposely losing money obviously, I mean next time you sit down to play a session at your normal limits, set some sort of stoploss and make it your goal to quit when you reach it even if you are not on tilt. For example, set a stoploss of 1.5 or 2 buyins next time you play a session and quit immediately if you reach that mark. Do this a couple of times, and even if you only play a 10 minute session I think it will really help you next time you take a shot at a higher game from going off the deep end for a steep loss.
One quick thing to add is that in my normal games I don’t use a stoploss at all and don’t really see a need for one. I know myself well enough to know when I need a break and am not playing well and it’s quite obvious to me and easy for me to quit. However, when taking a shot at a bigger game I REALLY recommend using and implementing one as you will be out of your comfort zone and not know yourself as well and be much less able to gauge whether you are playing or A game or not.
2. Take a shot when there’s a fish in the game, not when you have $x bankroll. I’ve heard a number of very good players say this before, so I definitely don’t take credit for this but it’s definitely true. When people ask, “How many buyins should I have before moving up?” It’s really a bad question. You shouldn’t move up when you have $x amount of money, you should move up when you are going to make more money playing the bigger game than you would your normal game and aren’t at risk of going broke by doing so.
Take a look at the games you are trying to move up to. Are the people sitting at the table the exact same players at your normal slightly lower stakes? There’s a good chance they are. Do you have an edge on these players? Is there a big 90/10 fish in the game? I think if you spend a lot of time game selecting and only play when you have a big edge when shot taking you will actually find that the games are softer than your usual game. For example, if you usually just load up 6 random $1/$2 tables and play them without much regard for table selection, but when you play $2/$4 you always make sure there’s one big fish at the table that you have position on, you will find that the $2/$4 games are MUCH easier even if the 4 other regs at the table are twice as good.
3. Just because your shot went well does not mean you should never move back down. I read in an irockhoes post a couple weeks ago in response to the following:
Originally Posted by wtfbbqs
what do you guys do when shots go bad? not super bad, but i should have been up about 5k last night after about a 3hour session at 5/10. lost aa vs aq aipf for full stacks, qq vs ak aipf for full stacks, i only finished down 1.5k but its disheartening that if it wasn’t for run bads i would be on top of the world right now, i think im not going to play poker for a few days.
irockhoess Posted
You seem to be confused about the reason to take shots. Its not to make 5k and feel super. Its to slowly desensitize you to the higher stake while maintaining a cushion at your stake below so that in the long run you can get better by playing better competition and constantly be moving up.
It’s pretty good advice and I can’t really word it any better than him. I’ll just say that there should never be a moment where you say, okay I’m done with that level, never playing that again. I advise more of a fluid movement where you are playing a range of stakes. There are some days I’m just not feeling like playing my A game so I might play a stake or two lower than usual, or I just don’t feel like gambling and losing a huge sum of money to me that day. Then again, there are days I’m really feeling on and want to give myself a challenge, those days I play bigger. There’s also times where I spot a big fish and just load up whatever tables he’s on. Doesn’t matter what stakes. It’s all about finding the right stakes for you for that particular session to maximize your win and minimize your losses.
4. Most importantly, RUN GOOD!
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Alright time for some more Ivey vids! Seriously how can you not be a fanboy? He’s not only widely accepted as the best poker player in pretty much all the games, the dude just knows how to live. I hear a lot of online players say, “Oh I’m just going to play for a couple more years. Then I’m done and I can really start to enjoy life with all the money I’ve made.” Well Ivey doesn’t have or need to play anymore but he does anyways for the love of the game(and money of course). But he genuinely enjoys what he’s doing in life and I don’t think he’d trade it for anything.
I bet you can’t stop watching this vid halfway through! It’s like trying to only eat one potato chip!
Well it’s been about 18 months since my I’m a 50 thousandaire!! post (the images didn’t transfer over from my old blog in case you tried to check it out), but I finally broke the 100k mark in my bankroll today. To celebrate I took my gf out to Daniel’s Broiler steakhouse. Delicious stuff, haven’t had such a good steak in LONG time. Now I obviously have made more than 50k over this time, but paying off student loans, taxes, ATM funding, IRA, general expenses, etc have all taken their toll and this is the first time I’ve actually gotten my poker bankroll up this high. I’ve started playing in some $100/$200 mixed games more regularly and don’t find the competition THAT much tougher than the $40/$80 games to be honest. I do still have a bit of sticker shot at these stakes and it’s pretty huge for me when I get all in for a $10k pot, I think it will be awhile before I stop sweating those so hard!
I do my best to game select well though, when the mixed games look really tough, or aren’t running I have been 8 tabling some $1/$2 nl to clear a stars bonus or I’ll load up some $15/$30 or $30/$60 limit games. I just don’t understand the guys who sit down and play the world class players headsup for really high stakes. Today I saw Brian Townsend battling it out with Justin Smith (aka BoostedJ) on 3 headsup tables of $400/$800 7 game. I just don’t get that. I mean they should have at least been at 6max tables so a fish had the OPTION of joining the game. BoostedJ has definitely been playing mixed games longer, so I’d have to give him a bit of an edge in that match (I dunno how it finally ended up), but I mean why would either of them subject themselves to that? It’s definitely not like either of them has some huge edge and it’s much more likely luck will be the determining factor in their match. I dunno, just seems like an ego thing to me. Same thing with Patrik playing Ivey headsup last week or Durrrr playing Townsend in headsup PLO. Why would you do that? Why?
I’ve been working on all my games pretty hard this month, I got some coaching from Dan “Dr. Razz” Abrams from stoxpoker about a week ago. He answered a lot of questions I had and really helped me to understand why certain plays are good as opposed to just doing them because I see other players do them which is very, very important to figure out when learning a new game. It’s all about the thought process behind the plays instead of the plays themselves. I’ve also signed up for some “ceegee” stud hi coaching from DeucesCracked, I’ll let you know how that goes in a week or two. I recorded about 40 mins of stop and start video of me playing $40/$80 and $100/$200 stud games in the 7 game mix for a stoxpoker leakfinder vid. Chipsahoya said he’d be kind enough to review it, but don’t expect to see it out ’til November or December depending on their video schedule he says. I’ll be sure to update when it makes it’s debut.
I’ve thought about posting some hand histories but I’m not sure what ya’ll want to see. Would you rather me post the biggest hands I’ve played so far this month? The hands that gave me the most trouble? The most hilarious hand histories? Hands I played with poker celebs? Let me know what you want to see in the comments and I’ll start collecting them.
Check out: Chad Millman’s ESPN Insider article chronicling his Day at Phil Ivey’s house Can’t wait for the video to come out.
One of the craziest/stupidest things I’ve ever seen. Saw it on jackass while at the gym last week. Dude jumps out an airplane without a parachute.
So my dog turned two on Monday (sort of, it’s a one year anniversary since we picked him up from the pound so we just say that was his 1st birthday) and I thought I’d upload some pictures of him. My gf and I threw him a little party and got him some treats from a dog specialty store as well as his own party hat! He’s a pitbull/american bulldog mix, aka a mutt, and may look a bit threatening but I assure you he’s completely harmless. You can stick your hand in his mouth and he just gums it instead of actually biting down. I actually find that the smaller purse sized dogs are actually the most mean and aggressive breeds as they have owners who seem to unknowingly encourage that kind of behavior and pitbulls really just get a bad wrap. So, consider this my PSA to the world, they are actually very friendly and loyal dogs!
Opie’s birthday treats
Waiting patiently
Chowing down
Me and Opie
More snacks?
Also, if you haven’t checked out the recent Ivey interviews see his “The Poker Edge” podcast on 9/30 with Phil Gordon. The actual interview starts at about the 9 min mark.
Random interview from WSOP Europe. Always a bit annoying that he refuses to ever discuss any poker strategy whatsoever on camera, but you can definitely take something away from the interview.
September ended up being a pretty good month for me finishing up 13-14k or so including a couple of stars bonuses I redeemed. The majority of my play was at 7 or 8 game so I’ll go through each game Btown style.
HEM Graph
No Limit Hold’em
Definitely not stellar results by any means but I’m obviously still very comfortable playing and very confident of my edge during the nlh rounds.
Limit Holde’m
This is the game I improved the most in this month. I was stuck $9k in limit hold’em for the month a week or two ago almost all from the 20/40 and 40/80 mixed games and then I got some coaching and watched a couple vids to end the month positive. I’m currently on a $15k heater or something playing limit hold’em and plan on grinding a fair bit of it in the future.
Pot Limit Omaha
By far my best game relative to the other players in the mix. It also plays the biggest out of all the games, so if plo is your worst game I really don’t recommend learning it by playing 7 or 8 game.
Omaha 8
Not great but I’ll take it. Anything in the green for O8 is alright in my book.
Stud Hi
Definitely the easiest of the stud games to understand and play in my opinion. It’s much more intuitive than the other two and way easier to put people on a range.
Stud Hi/Lo
Clearly my biggest leak. I hired Eric “Chipsahoya” from stoxpoker for a two hour coaching session yesterday and he improved all of my stud games leaps and bounds. I really think I’m going to be a winner in the stud games next month because of him.
Razz
I’d like to say I run bad, but fact of the matter is I got some work to do when it comes to razz. It’s coming along though.
2-7 Triple Draw
I don’t track my results for 2-7 but I think it’s one of my better games and people play it atrociously. I wish fulltilt would include it in the mix as it’s definitely where I think I’ve made a decent amount of money.
ATMs
Didn’t quite clear $400 this month but close. Still restocking the machines about once a week and things are going pretty smoothly now. It will be about a year before I’m in the black at this pace.
I played a couple of 400nl sessions this month and encountered a number of mediocre regulars there. The difference between the 2/4 and 10/20 regs is really night and day. I thought I would make an article showcasing one regulars’ leaks I saw and how I exploited them.
I’ll start by posting my graph vs this particular villain. I usually don’t like looking at the EV, but I thought it would look kind of silly using these hands as examples and then saying “look, I’m up 25 big blinds on this player!” So as you can see EV wise I’m up 4 buyins on this winning regular (I tablerated him) over about 850 hands.
Graph vs Villain
Next I’ll post villains stats. The important ones are that he’s 29/23 with a very high cbet % (it was even higher before I started playing with him like 90%, but I think he lowered it a bit after playing with me) as well as a very high steal % like 60%+. Now before I go into how I went about exploiting him, take 5 mins and think about how you would take advantage of these leaks, and what seat at the table you would try and get vs this opponent.
Villain’s stats
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PREFLOP
Okay well clearly we want position on this opponent as he is playing too loosely preflop and we will punish him for this by either
a) 3 bet bluffing him more or
b) 3 betting him lighter for value than we would most “normal 21/18 regs” (think 77+ and AJo+)
We would do a) if we think he will fold too often to our 3 bets and b) if we thought he would call too often or try to rebluff us preflop too often. Since I don’t know which category he falls into yet trial and error is going to be the only way to find out.
I start off by 3 bet bluffing him lightly to see how he reacts. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724513 He immediately 4 bets me and I probably just ran into the top of his range here, but I can’t be too sure as it’s still early. Also realize that 4 bets from loose villains with a very wide steal % range should be given much less credit than tamer more tight opponents because he will have premium holdings much less frequently. For example, a typical going all in range of the top 3% of hands is JJ+, AKo, AKs. A 60% stealer will have this range 3/60=5% of the time after opening whereas a 40% stealer will have this range 3/40=7.5% of the time. So the tighter stealer is 50% more likely to hold a premium hand than the looser stealer.
Later I 3 bet him lightly for value with pocket sevens and see he is calling 3bets out of position with 34s. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724519
I defend my BB lightly and see that he is opening his sb into me extremely lightly and capable of barreling with air. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724524
As a result of the previous hand, villain’s aggressive image gets him paid by a light call down by me. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724530
POSTFLOP
Now at this point we’ve discussed his preflop leaks and how to take advantage of those however we haven’t yet discussed his high cbet % and how to exploit that. In a spot where it’s folded to him in the sb and he opens I know he has 60% of hands. Now, if he’s cbetting 90% of hands, that means that if I choose to just call and see a flop, he bets and action is to me I now know his range is .9*.6=54% of hands. That’s a HUGE range. It also means that in a spot where I flat in position preflop there’s going to be 10-12 big blinds in a pot (3bb pf from each of us plus his 4-5bb cbet, plus the blinds) where action is to me headsup vs a hand range of the top 54% of hands. This is a good spot for me and I can take advantage of it a couple different ways:
a)call down lightly
b)raise the flop lightly for value
c)call the flop as a bluff and float
d)raise the flop as a bluff
I would do a) and b) a lot if I thought he would barrel a lot of with air (bluff me too much and call down too much) and I would do c) and d) if I thought he would fold too much. Again, the only way to find out is through trial and error.
I know that villain is opening my BB from his SB extremely lightly (remember 8To?) and I attempt to bluff him. Turns out he flopped top pair weak kicker and doesn’t seem to like folding. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724537
Next round of blinds and the exact same situation. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724547 All is not lost though, the 50BB I lose in these two hands alone will pay massive dividends later because I’m sure he views me as pretty crazy at this point, will be unwilling to fold to me in the future, and by spending this 50BB early on I gain this info and can now adjust by completely stopping bluffing him at all and raising him more lightly for value.
The first hand I try this on I really do run into the very top of his range. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724552 Note that this is definitely not the standard way to play AJo here but with our history, his high steal %, his high cbet% and his low postflop fold % it will become standard in the future.
I continue to widen my 3 bet value range vs him by 3 betting him with AQo, most likely not folding to a 4 bet vs him at this point. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724563
Finally I flop good and get paid. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724566 This is what it’s all been building toward. I get him to put in 125BB with a gushot and overcard with me having greater than 85% equity on the flop and turn. Unfortunately, the river is not kind to me, but results are irrelevant.
I continue to 3 bet him lightly for value and my image and our history gets me paid. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724573
At this point a really interesting dynamic has come into play where I’m willing to put all my money in with top pair good kicker and he’s willing to put it in with even less. I get value from his midpair on the flop and am 75% but I catch a bad turn card and end up putting all my money in with only 20% equity. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724579
This hand is really standard, but since I’m including all the big hands in chronological order vs this villain I’ll include it. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724593
I flop a set vs him and get paid. For most people playing my cards this would be the first time they’d be willing to put all their money in and chances are good they would not have cultivated an aggressive enough image to get paid off here. http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724604
I’m going to skip a number of hands here, but realize that you don’t have to play a raise or fold game on the flop. We were playing deep at this point and we play a few 3 and 4 bet pots where I call lightly, brick the flop and fold or call a few streets with a draw and miss or something. The final big hand we played was the following http://www.pokerhand.org/?4724629 where our villain finally starts adjusting by check/calling the flop with a mid pair type hand to control the pot size. You can see how this dynamic will develop where in the future his cbetting range may be more polarized to hands he wants to get in with, or air. You will have to readjust accordingly, I will let you figure that one out yourself however. When he is check calling only midpair type hands and never strong hands however, its going to put him in really tough spots where he is stuck completely check/guessing and we can valuebet or bluff him at our mercy because of position.
Again, I’d just like to add that a lot of the above hands would be VERY spewy vs a lot of villains, but vs this particular regular I believe it’s optimal to be raising the flop extremely lightly for value and getting it in. It’s all about making adjustments while you play to maximize your earn. I hope you learned something.
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Bonus hand of the month: Observed hand of
kingsofcards vs omgclayaiken
37k eff stacks at 200/400nl
omg opens btn to 1200 koc flats
flop A95r koc checks, omg cbets 1600 into 2400, koc calls
turn is a rainbow ace, koc checks omg bets 3x pot (14.8k into 5.6k leaving 22k behind)
Pretty sick spot where omg knows the top of koc range here is usually going to be ATo and koc is kind of damned if he does call and damned if he doesn’t. It also leaves omg in a spot where he never has a tough river decision, if koc calls the turn it’s unlikely he’s folding the river imo so he could only value bet better (though I guess in a big leveling game if koc knew this he could call A7 on the turn and fold the river but that just seems kind of silly). Def an interesting hand nonetheless IMO.
Good luck at the tables.
So I was looking over my results for the month a couple of days ago and realized I was stuck about $9k in the limit hold’em rotation of the mixed games. Not good. Figured it was time for some studying. Well four or five “Bryce” vids off stoxpoker later and here’s my limited results two tabling straight minbet hold’em. Obv running super hot, but games are GOOOOOOOD. I definitely feel like I finally “get it” when it comes to this game.
Just finished a rough draft of my September article. Have some friends in town this weekend so it probably won’t be done til Monday or Tuesday. It’s a series of hand histories of how I adjusted vs a regular during a couple 400nl sessions I played this month. It’ll be decently long to get through all the hands, but worth a read IMO.
I recently bought and read the The 4-Hour Work Week
Same thing with checking my ATMs status online. I used to check them up to 10 times a day to see how they were doing. Guess what? Waste of time. I now check them once in the morning to see if they have enough money in them to make it through the day. If not I have to go to the bank and make a withdrawal to restock them that day. Otherwise, I don’t need to check them again tomorrow because even if I do find out that one machine is empty at 8pm at night for some reason, the bank is closed by that time and I have to wait til tomorrow do anything about it anyways.
With any activity there is a required setup and unsetup time. By batching activities you eliminate all of these extra and unecessary setup/unsetup times. So all extra the logons/logouts are eliminated, double reading/prep times are eliminated. I’m pretty sure if Timothy Ferriss could batch his showers and eating habits he would (taking seven showers on Monday for the week, or eating one giant meal instead of three every day) because it would save him loads of time.
He also talks a lot about the 80/20 rule. How 80% of the productive output is a result of 20% of the input. You can apply this to virtually anything, but applied to poker I would bet that 80% of your winings come from 20% of your sessions and 80% of your losses come from 20% sessions. I haven’t done a full analysis of HEM yet which I plan to do, but if I’m pretty sure that playing less, but more often on peak times like nights and weekends, and just quitting tough games is much better in the long run than trying to play six hours a day five days a week like I have strived for. See Jason’s blog post for further proof. Right now I just feel lazy, as I haven’t been playing when games aren’t good and have just been playing less in general, but I’m going to be doing a lot of thinking in the coming weeks on how I can tweak my schedule to work smarter instead of harder in this area.
One of his applications for the 80/20 rule was customers. The general accepted philosophy is that more customers is always better, right? Wrong. He found that 80% of his profit came from 20% of his customers and 80% of his headaches came from 20% of his customers. Guess what he did? He got rid of a lot of customers that were causing him headaches and not making him much money. Is he completely maximizing his earn? No, but he’s maximizing his hourly wage and increasing his happiness EV and that’s what it’s all about. Who cares if you squeeze that last two cents out of a customer if you have to jump though hoops to get it. Forget it.
Pokerwise this month has been a big rollercoaster. I’m currently up a few k, but was up like 7k at one point and down like 7k at one point. I had a brief limit hold’em coaching session with BigBadBabar listed on the 2+2 coaching page and he’s really helped me out and for cheap too. He was only $100/hr and after answering all my questions and watching me play for an hour I’ve turned around most of my $40/$80 limit hold’em losses into wins. I think my big problem was playing too passively in general and not checkraising midpairs, not cbetting enough, and not raising the turn often enough with top pair weak kicker. I think O8 is very similar to limit hold’em and I’m hoping that since I’ve improved in the former it will help with the latter as these two games were definitely my biggest losers in the 8 game thus far.
ATM machinewise I’m also doing well this month. It’s halfway through the month and I’m on pace to clear about $400 net profit which is excellent and if this keeps up, puts me on pace to have everything paid off in less than a year. I’ve been contacting a few places to get new spots for machines but no bites so far. Gonna keep trying. Wish me luck.
Bizarre news story of the day
Hopkins student kills intruder with samurai sword
For anyone who doesn’t know by now Aniuta/Jaconda78/my 6th vegas roommate who I lived with for a month this summer recently took her own life. You can learn more about the situation from her ex-boyfriend’s blog brystmar here. I am very saddened and shocked by the news. It came as a complete surprise as I had no idea she had feelings of depression or loneliness at all. My condolences go out to her family as well as Thomas. I hope they all fully recover from this as I know that the death of someone close to you can really scar you for life.
Aniuta, while a bit quirky(aren’t most pro poker players?), always seemed ready to have a good time, was seemingly addicted to live poker as she’d play ridiculously long 12 hour long live sessions regularly and showed great potential as a female poker player and it saddens me she chose to end her life so early. She finished 18th in the ladies event this summer, you can view her pokerpages.com page here one of only two events I believe she played.
I am reminded of one night this summer driving back from a party at Thomas’ house with two of my other roommates, Ben and Shayne, and we talked about her relationship with Thomas a bit. I expressed my feelings how it was clear to me that Thomas viewed their relationship as more of a fun fling hookup, whereas Aniuta thought their relationship was much more serious and viewed them as boyfriend/girlfriend. I thought it was a bit concerning at the time and maybe one of us should tell Aniuta to not take their relationship too seriously as I could see their breakup looming even then. Instead, I didn’t see that much of Aniuta as she was usually gone doing or own thing, or when she was around the house I didn’t bother to take the time to talk to her about it. Now I in no way feel responsible for her death, and neither should Thomas, she is solely responsible for her actions, and this type of relationship is fairly common for people in their early 20s but I can’t help but feel if I had talked to her then I might have increased the likelihood of her not ending her own life by a very small %. I can never know and I will live with the feeling for the rest of my life. All I can say is if you are privy to some knowledge you believe may help someone near you for the coming months of their lives, don’t stay quiet about it no matter how awkward or painful the conversation may be. It is worth the effort and you never know what you may regret.
August ended up turning out pretty well for me winning about $6.5. I’m pretty happy with this result considering I had my biggest losing session ever, -$20k on the 17th and was stuck $10k for the month at that point, which also is coincidentally why I didn’t have any personal updates for the latter half of the month. I didn’t think anyone wanted to hear me whine so I didn’t.
I learned a lot from that day and don’t really regret it other than wishing I would have quit earlier. It was all at 75/150 O8 and while the first $10-$12k was a lot of bad luck and what I thought was good play at the time I have since gone back and realized some leaks of mine. The remaining $7-9k really could have been avoided, but I’m confident in the future I will have the foresight and experience to quit earlier now. O8 is a funny game, the preflop equities run really close, the variance is much higher than I initially thought, and many different styles can win. I was making some adjustments to my game and I’m still not really sure what the correct plays are with a lot of hands and situations because the equities, edges, and decisions are all very close. Without a doubt there is good value if a 70%+ vpip guy is playing though. I can’t help but post this hand as proof the games can be good. Another factor that messes with your head when playing these games is that the games don’t run very often so if you get stuck while playing them you know another good game might not run for couple days so it’s really hard to make yourself quit. I imagine this is what happens to the nosebleed players all the time and you really just have to learn to deal with it and accept it. Here’s screenshot results for the month:
HEM stats
HEM graph
PT Stud
HEM is a bit misleading as I played a lot of 8 game which it can’t track. I lost $6k playing the stud games, $3k in sunday donkaments (the $150 rebuys add up quickly), and about $15k in O8. I won about $8k in hold’em and about $25k in plo. For the most part I’ve stopped playing the O8 only tables, and while I “only” lost 100 big bets in the 75/150 game this month which could easily be normal variance, $15k is a lot of money to me and I’ve just accepted that I may not want to deal with limit O8 grinding anymore. I feel very comfortable playing it in the 7 and 8 game mixes now and I think I will be able to transition much more easily into PLO8 if I want to in the future. It’s unreasonable for me to expect to immediately start winning in the stud and O8 games my first month playing them at nearly the highest stakes offered so I basically just paid for a lot of education this month IMO. Next month I’m really going to try to put more away from the table studying in and hopefully become at least breakeven in them.
August ATMs screenshot
ATM machine business wise I had a couple of issues that popped up at the beginning of the month. The phone lines at one location weren’t connected properly, I had to reprogram the ring counts on both machines, and at one point I had a note jam in one machine which I kinda just ripped the bill out of the machine and misaligned the belts. I had to call a technician and have him walk me through getting them re-aligned. I restocked the machines about once every 1.5 weeks and realized I needed to stock one of my machines with more cash than initially expected. I could change the max withdrawal to $100 which is what most people seem to do in the industry I’m finding which would make me more revenue and allow me to restock the machines less often, but I kinda feel like a scumbag doing that so I’ve left it at $200. The past two weeks have been pretty much smooth sailing though and I expect to make much more next month because my machines should be operational all 30 days (didn’t install them til August 4th and each one was down for about a week) and football season is starting which should really generate a lot of traffic at the sports bars on the weekends and Monday night.
After paying the bar their cut I netted $258 this month which while it isn’t amazing I think it’s a good start and it’s nice to be making some relatively risk free variance free money now. I was just told by my processor that Hyosung is having a sale for the ATMs in September so I may be getting another one this month, we’ll have to wait and see how things go.
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