Decided to give myself a raise

So I’ve been 8-tabling 5/10 recently with pretty good results. I kinda got the idea after I heard the leatherass9 interview on pokerroad I don’t think too highly of him and figured if he could do it I could too. At first I thought my play would deteriorate quite a bit, but I can still play my usual laggy style and maintain reads as well as float/bluff a decent amount. While I think my game has kinda peaked I realized I could still improve in terms of hourly rate by increasing # of tables. If this had gone poorly I was going to go back to my original plan of developing my PLO game but luckily it hasn’t. It’s amazing how many hands you can get in in so short a period of time 8 tabling. I’ve played 6500 hands in the past 2 days and it feels like nothing. I should be able to churn thru 10k hands every 3 days doing this I think and it should reduce my overall variance a ton(ie won’t bitch about pokerEV so much because I should be able to play alot more hands in a month and see longterm results quicker).

I’ve been getting more organized recently and have been keeping better records. I made a poker expenses spreadsheet which contains two sheets, one to keep track of withdrawals and one to keep track of expenses. I have it uploaded on my http://docs.google.com so I can update it from anywhere in the world. If you pay taxes on your poker winnings I highly recommend using this or something like it as it will save you a ton of time come tax time next year! Hope it’s useful to someone.

People probably gonna think I’m gay for posting but I think its a good song.

Not, lol. I didn’t even think I was gonna play much today and look what happened. Played like 1000 hands headsup and 1000 hands 6max. It’s amazing how much variance there is in headsup. I def tilted a bit in middle but managed to recover well I think. PokerEv says I ran $8.3k below expectation so I’m pretty damn proud I managed to breakeven. Prob do it again tomorrow hopefully w/ better luck!

stole it from g2k’s blog, but the clip is comedy gold

In the red that is. -$13.5k, new record! Yesterday was my first day back and I started the day off playing some 2/4 and after I felt comfortable with my game again progressed to some 5/10 and 10/20 later in the day. By late night/early morning I was playing Gaucho heads up at 10/20 and he ran pretty hot imo at the beginning which got me a little tilted and at the end I ended up spewing like 2 more buyins to him. This hand also put me on tilt for awhile when I realized what I had done. For some retarded reason I thought an overpair beat me… cost me $5k. Gonna be awhile before I get over that one. I know you’re probably thinking “why would you play gaucho headsup?” but I really feel like I had an edge on him(when I wasn’t tilting) and I think he has some pretty big leaks – not gonna say exactly what but… for example, http://weaktight.com/213435

I don’t regret having taken a shot by any means and I’d do it again. In fact I’m sure I will do it again. The one thing that bothers me is that I did not quit earlier. I’m usually very good at quitting when down and very rarely tilt, but yesterday was def one of them. Def gonna try to work on this in the future to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Anyways, for now I’m gonna grind out 5/10 & lower for awhile to build back(won like $8k today, yay!). Losing alot always motivates me and gets me grinding hard. In the past two days I’ve played like 16-17 hours and 6000+ hands. I’m actually starting to get carpel tunnel in my arm I think and it’s been very painful today. Didn’t stop me from playing though, just had to switch to using the mouse w/ the left hand, kinda awkward but it works. I’ve mostly been playing 1 table HU and 3-4 tables 6max which is very fun & enjoyable. That’s about it for poker updates. As far as the my website goes my main contact at the Indian company is on leave for the past couple of days and the site has not been changed for like 8 days now. Kinda frustrating, but I feel like it will come together eventually.

I think he Can Dance – Watch more free videos

So I’m leaving town again tomorrow to visit some family back in Michigan for a couple of days so I figured I’d write up a post before I left. I’m not very thrilled with having to take so many days away from the tables again. I really hate it. I don’t mind taking a day or two off or only playing like 500 hands in a day, but if I take 6 days completely off like I’m about to, I tend to forget how to play poker. When I came back from the beach last week I did NOT play well. Lost maybe $8k or so (using a really buggy PT3 during this time didn’t help imo) but after I got back into the groove and went back to PT2 I’ve recovered and then some from that.

Here’s a hand I played recently that I thought was interesting. It’s a bluff that worked so obv its a good play, had I lost I’d prob be sitting here complaining how dumb I am, but that’s another story altogether.

Preflop all I’m gonna say is that flatting things like A9s here is going to increase your variance a ton and get you in tricky spots like these and I don’t mind a fold tbh but I thought I had good reads on villains here. Plus, its nice to be drawing to the nuts when you are this deep.

Flop villain was cbetting 100% of hands like 8/8 at this point so I decide to bluffraise with my gutter and backdoor draw. After he calls I thought his most likely holding was some sort of overpair.

Turn this is where it starts to get interesting. I think a lot of people would auto checkraise all in here cuz afterall we are drawing to the nuts and have lots of outs if we’re behind. The thing is, it’s pretty transparent I don’t have a set when I check the turn and if villain decides to bet the turn here he should be stacking to any sort of raise so really fold equity is not that high. 100bb deep I prob just bet/call a lot of the time and hope he believes I have a set. Here, with him only betting 1/2 pot I think we can draw cheaply with our ~35% equity and 150bb behind, had he bet bigger I would be more inclined to CRAI or just fold. The point I’m trying to make is it’s a spot where I don’t premeditate what I’m going to do before he bets and I let his betsizing determine my action.

River I don’t hit any of my outs but I do hit the ones I’m repping so I shove it in. I would play A9s the same way. I don’t usually try to bluff people off overpairs in what could potentially be 400bb pots but I thought this was a good spot. During the hand I didn’t consider what I would do if a spade out, but in the future I think it’s good to plan this out ahead of time so you are more prepared for it.

I just got done listening to a pokerroad interview with Brian Townsend and thought it was quite good (same show that had samo on last week). Something Btown mentioned was that he recommends moving up or at least shot taking at 15-20 buyins. This got me thinking and kinda makes me feel like a pussy for having ~$60k or so bankroll and not taking more shots at 10/20. He got me to stretch my comfort zone today and I played a bit of 10/20. I managed to hit & run after a very short span of hands and winning a little less than a buyin(the mega fish to my immediate left was replaced by Samh and I was like f that). I don’t want to become complacent but at the same time I don’t want to go on a major downswing either. I guess its more of how much calculated risk are you willing to take?

Recently, the 5/10 games haven’t been that great (my old coach nutedawg was playing in them today) and I didn’t feel like trying to take his monies so I have been playing a little 3/6 NLH and 2/4 PLO. Its been nice to have the option of playing PLO lately when the games aren’t that great. Yesterday I tilted a bit playing PLO and tried bluffing people and needless to say it didn’t go so well. I finally realized how light people will call you down in those games and I just played much more solidly today and booked a nice win. Interesting note: Earlier today on FTP there was exactly one 6max NLH game running above 5/10 (it was a 10/20 game) yet there were 4, yes 4, tables of 200/400 PLO 6max running. Learn PLO! It will pay you dividends later if you intend to make it to the highest limits. Trust me. GL & be good.

andr3w321

edit: forgot to add I was talking to nute today about how much $$ to bring to vegas, etc. and the following hilarious quote ensued. Enjoy!

Me: i dunno about carrying 10k around w/ me tho
nutedawg(aka baller): will make you feel like a man

Just 24 days ’til Vegas!

This post has been a long time coming and its been something I’ve thought about quite a bit. A lot of people makes posts or comments like “x guy sucks, or y guy is so easy to read, etc” Here I’m going to go through the several metrics that people use to determine who is the best poker player in the world and make some general comments about them at the end.

Best heads up player – This is the person who has the highest theoretical BB/100 vs anyone they play heads up.
Problem: They may be the best at HU NLH but they may not have the highest hourly rate, because they play so few tables or they may have tons of variance, both of which I think people would be willing to sacrifice some BB/100 for. They also may be really good at beating x player but fail to be able to adjust to y player, etc.

Best 6max or 9max player – This is the player with the highest theoretical BB/100 in their respective game.
Problem: This person is inevitably going to be a different person than the best heads up player. Some people have a hard time adjusting to more or fewer players. Also if you are maximizing your BB/100 you are likely sacrificing bottom line profit by not playing enough tables.

Highest hourly rate – This is the player that has the highest hourly rate when they play.
Problem: This is likely someone like leatherass9 who 12 tables 5/10 and 10/20. We will never know if they are good enough to 1 table phil ivey heads up at 100k NL because they have no interest in it. They make good money doing what they do and don’t care about the respect someone gets from playing nosebleeds.

Toughest to play – This is the player that is relentless in position, 3betting you a ton, checkraising your riverbets with balanced ranges and really putting the pressure on putting you to the test. This is someone play prahlad or H@llingol.
Problem: Toughest opponent does not necessarily correlate to the best player in my opinion. Someone may be able to put me to really tough decisions at the table, but they may not necessarily be making the most +EV decisions that maximize profit.

Best overall poker player – Some of the old timers argue that the new age poker players aren’t great poker players at all because all they know how to play is one game, usually no limit hold’em. They argue that the best player is the favorite in a big mixed HORSE game and who is very good at all the games.
Problem: In order to become really good at all the games you are going to have to sacrifice a lot of money in opportunity cost. For example say someone like Tay wants to learn the rest of the games, well he’s going to have to start at very low limits and grind tons of hours of these games when instead he could just be grinding high stakes NLH and making tons of $$. It’s not necessarily worth it for a lot of players.

Player who has won the most money playing poker – Pretty self explanatory.
Problem: Someone who grinds 12 hours a day and eeks out a small BB/100 in the stakes they play but ends up with the most money at the end of the year may not be that great of a poker player, just a really dedicated grinder. There’s also something to be said for happiness EV and time away from the tables etc.

Player who won the wsop main event – Lots of people who don’t play poker very seriously believe that the main event winner determines who’s the best because, geez they won $8 mil or whatever how could they not be and its the world series for god’s sake.
Problem: It’s one tournament. Anyone can get lucky enough to win and I think any serious poker player will agree a lot of the previous main event winners have simple flaws in concepts of how they think about the game (ie Jamie Gold’s desire to “be the best bluffer” wtf?)

Tilt, BR management, ability to grind, etc – There are tons of other factors that really go into who becomes a great successful poker player. The best player in the world may be able to make the correct decisions 100% of the time until he takes a bad beat in which case he tilts like crazy or he may only be capable of grinding for like 30mins at a time before his game starts to deteriorate in which case, lesser players are going to have better long term success than him.

Conclusions: Who cares who the best is imo. It’s not really worth worrying about and the answer is impossible to determine. It’s better to just play the best poker you can, make as much $$ you can and enjoy your life not worrying about stupid things like this. Even these 10k hand HU grudge matches that happen on 2+2 don’t really definitively determine who is better imo. Only if you could play the 10k hands from both perspectives can you accurately determine who the better player is IMO and that’s obviously impossible.

I hope this was at least entertaining. PS for all the haters my hot streak has def cooled down a little bit. A four day break from poker is never good for me and I’ve been finding myself making very stupid mistakes when I play lately.

So I’ve obv started May off running super hot which is nice. No doubt after I post this doomswitch is inevitable but whatever. I hope I don’t lose it all back like I did last month and can end up with that monster month I’ve been waiting awhile for. My site is really coming along, took a look at the homepage they put together and it looks very professional so far. On Monday I should be picking out a logo.

I’m headed off to the outer banks for the next couple of days with my gf’s extended family so no poker. I’ll try to have as much fun as I can w/ nonrelatives 30+ yrs older than me lol. When I get back, I’m really going to try to grind out some solid hands and book a 40k+ hand month if I can manage to not get bored to death w/ poker before month’s end. Good luck to ya’ll – gotta go pack now!

So the Indian company wants me to design the homepage GUI for my site and tell them what tabs/features etc I want so I will be working on that a good amount today. It would be really nice to send this to a fellow poker player for some constructive criticism and feedback later today so if you:

1. Are interested in helping me out
2. Feel like you have some good ideas to contribute
3. Can keep quite about my site til it comes out in like 4-6 weeks

I’d really appreciate it. I’ll try to be on AIM most of today if you’d care to msg me.

If you haven’t watched FWF 20k NL video on deucescracked yet you should really check it out. It’s one of the best vids I’ve seen in awhile. It’s not very often these days where I watch NLH vids and feel like I really learned much but this one is definitely worth checking out, plus it has entertainment value it’s 20k NL for god’s sake. Some interesting concepts that he talks about which I haven’t thought about/implemented in my game too much are overbetting, 4 bet shoving, and checking back weak made drawing hands.

Conan dog from way back in the day

part II

Here’s a cool hand I saw whilst railbirding recently. Enjoy!

FullTiltPoker Game #6298068258: Table Even (heads up) – $25/$50 – No Limit Hold’em – 14:20:38 ET – 2008/05/05
Seat 1: Cole South ($9,671)
Seat 2: mastrblastr ($7,624)
mastrblastr posts the small blind of $25
Cole South posts the big blind of $50
The button is in seat #2
*** HOLE CARDS ***
mastrblastr raises to $150
Cole South calls $100
*** FLOP *** [5c 8c Ts]
Cole South checks
mastrblastr checks
*** TURN *** [5c 8c Ts] [Ah]
Cole South bets $300
mastrblastr calls $300
*** RIVER *** [5c 8c Ts Ah] [Jc]
Cole South bets $775
mastrblastr calls $775
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Cole South shows [Jh Qs] a pair of Jacks
mastrblastr mucks
Cole South wins the pot ($2,449.50) with a pair of Jacks
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $2,450 | Rake $0.50
Board: [5c 8c Ts Ah Jc]
Seat 1: Cole South (big blind) collected ($2,449.50)
Seat 2: mastrblastr (small blind) mucked

Also, to dodgy ty for the offer but I found out today if I only pay minimum on cc bill it’s only like $40 fee so not a big deal. Still causes unnecessary stress in my life that I can’t cashout tho which is a big deal to me!

I played almost 3000 hands today and managed to end up +$8k for one of my biggest days ever. Most of my play was 5/10 6max but I did 2 table hypnoto4d at 3/6 HU for a bit which was pretty fun. Lately I’ve been playing a lot on my laptop while watching tv and I think it’s allowed me to play longer hours without getting bored. In the past I used to almost exclusively play on my desktop and listen to music while playing but I just get really bored with that after an hour or so. The recent nba games and movies I’ve watched have definitely helped me to play longer hours I think. I’ve also made a point to not look at the cashier until I’m done with my session which I think is good for my stamina as well. Here’s my fav hand of the day vs a 1 tabling donk.

One thing that’s really been annoying me lately is fulltilt’s slowass customer service responses and their bank transfers taking FOREVER! On their site they advertise 24/7 customer service but as far as I know there is no phone # you can call and in my experience it takes them at least 2 days to respond to any email you send them so… seems like 5 day a week, 8 hours a day customer service to me. Anyways I have like $7500 in limbo waiting to hit my bank account, my earliest I requested on April 14th and still haven’t hit my bank account. I have like 1k to my name offline cuz I just paid taxes and I have like a $4k credit card bill due thursday(gotta pay the indian company) so this slow cashout processing is really life tilting me atm. If someone’s willing to bank transfer me or paypal transfer me like $5k before Thurs I’d be willing to ship you a marginal fee.

My goals for May are to just grind a lot of 5/10. I’m starting to realize this is the last month I can really grind before vegas so I want to pad my BR as much as possible before vegas prob eats a good chunk in a month or so. I’m really starting to get excited for it though. Gonna be fun living with a bunch of degens for a month!

solid collegehumor vid