andr3w321 on July 9th, 2013

Follow me @andr3w321 I’ve been at it for a couple weeks now and it’s much less time consuming and easier to do at the table while I’m playing and doesn’t cut into sleeping or eating time.

I made day 2 of the main event with 28k in chips, play resumes tomorrow. I bricked every wsop tourny I played, but I did get four cashes in Carnivale events and am currently tied as the TLB leader here: http://www.wsop.com/players/2013.asp My housemate Matt Ashton has seriously one upped me however and is the current wsop player of the year leader! I’ll probably write a proper wsop wrapup at the end of the series, but for now I’m focused on playing and resting. Best of luck to anyone else still in the main!

andr3w321 on June 3rd, 2013

I made day 2 of the $2,500 8 game. My chips aren’t great, about half average at 8k, but I’m still in it. 40 get paid and 192 people are left. I had quite a bit of nerves for the first two hours of play or so since I haven’t played live in year, but after that they went away and after four hours of play I started really feeling comfortable and confident again.

My table draw was pretty tough. I had Daniel Negreanu, David Williams and four other fairly tough guys at my table. There was one live one, some russian guy obv, but he busted halfway through the day. People seemed to play alright, but some are horrible at O8 and Triple Draw. In triple draw, I saw people coldcall and draw 3, open 348 utg, stand pat with a Ten to start etc.

The most interesting hand I played was vs Negreanu. I came very close to busting Negreanu, but it was not meant to be. In PLO, the cutoff opened and I cold called AsKc8s3c on the button, Negreanu defended his big blind. Flop came down 974 with two spades and Negreanu leads out for 2/3 pot. Cutoff folds, and I ask Negreanu how much he has left. He was pretty toned down from what you see on TV for most of the day, but in this hand he really came alive.

“About 2100. You want to put me in? You can put me in if you want? Go ahead.”

I normally don’t get intimidated by pros, but this was still like level 4 or so and I haven’t played poker in awhile. He has a very big table presence when he wants to and he makes it hard to think, I almost did what he wanted and put it in right there. Instead, I end up calling. He starts bantering again,

“Now you’re going make me think. Why can’t you just put it in and make my life easy?”

The turn was an offsuit 8. He shoves and I think for a bit. He starts talking again,

“What do you have JT or something like that? You should probably call. Look at this guy. Probably doing math or something and just wants me to shutup.”

I reply “pretty much” Because I am doing math and trying to figure out pot odds and my equity. With my pair plus flush draw have equity to call if he just has 97, but I’m drawing pretty badly if he has a straight. I tank for a bit and end up calling, but his flopped 3 pair holds up and he doubles through me.

andr3w321 on June 2nd, 2013

I got here last night. The flight from Seattle to Vegas is super easy. Direct and only two hours. I’m happy to say my roommate Matt Ashton is already deep in the $2,500 Stud 8/Omaha 8 or better event. Wish him luck! There’s 19 left and he’s currently 9th in chips. I’m playing the 8 game event later today and just trying to relax and chill by the pool til then. Hopefully my poker skill aren’t TOO rusty or they come back to me quickly.

andr3w321 on May 24th, 2013

Title says it all. I’m heading out to Vegas next week for my annual wsop pilgrimage. I’ll try and blog about every event I play like I do every year so check back for updates! I’m planning on playing ten to fifteen events, more than I’ve ever played. Last year I only played seven including the main event.

I’ll be there for thirty days in June. Four of these days my fiancee will be visiting so I won’t play any during that time. I’m not rich/crazy enough to play two events in one day so if I busted out on day one of every event I played the max I could play is ~25 events. Add to this the fact that I won’t play anything over a $3k buyin, I’m sure I’ll spend some days drinking by the pool and I don’t really like the $1k events or PLO events(both have too shallow starting stacks IMO). I’ll probably end up playing ten to fifteen events. It seems like every other year you hear about a guy who never played PLO in his life ended up winning the $1.5k PLO. This is a pretty good indicator this event is more luck than skill in my opinion.

I figured I’d do some math so I could come in with realistic expectations for my results. Last year I cashed two out of my seven events and clearly ran better than expected. I figure a good cash % is around 15% and a good final table % is around 2.5%, but these are clearly just guesses. Based on these numbers, if I play ten events I can expect

To cash in 1-2 events (10*.15=1.5)
I have a 25% chance of final tabling a single event (10*.025=.25)
There is a 20% chance I don’t cash in any events (.85^10=.2)
On average I should expect to go about four events before my first cash (.85^4=.52)

If I play fifteen events, I can expect

To cash in 2 events (15*.15=2.25)
I have a 37.5% chance of final tabling a single event (15*.025=.375)
There is a 9% chance I don’t cash in any events (.85^15=.09)
On average I should still expect to go about four events before my first cash

I’d REALLY like to make my first final table this year, but clearly the odds are not in my favor. More volume definitely translates into a better expectations, but honestly if I go 0-10 I may call it quits. Losing $20k straight is never fun. I’ve been trying to work out regularly and doing my best to play some bitcoin poker and play money poker on pokerstars in preparation. I have no doubt I’m a shell of the player I once was a couple years ago, but I would like to think I have more experience and am wiser for it even if some of my raising/calling ranges aren’t as profitable as they once were. I still like my odds vs all the $1.5k wsop donks. Best of luck at the wsop. I’m certainly looking forward to it and hope you are too!

andr3w321 on April 12th, 2013

I’ve been following bitcoins pretty closely for the past ten days now and the market has been insanely volatile and highly entertaining. Here’s the chart

It’s gone from $50 to $260 all the way back to $60 in the past thirty days. I first heard about bitcoins a couple years ago back in 2011. I got a couple free ones from the bitcoin faucet and played around with them for a bit. I thought they were interesting, but ultimately useless unless they gained widespread adoption. Well lately, as a result of the crazy price increases they’ve been all over the news and some legitimate merchants have started accepting them. Some people think it’s a bubble, some call it a pyramid scheme, some think they’ll be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars one day. Whatever your opinion it’s been a wild ride lately. The TV news interviews you see about them are obviously done by people completely clueless about them, however, and they always have these two very basic questions so for you newbies out there I’ll go ahead and answer them for you.

What are bitcoins?
Bitcoins are basically just numbers stored in a database(blockchain) linked to a bitcoin address. Similarly, dollars are just numbers stored in a database linked to a bank account.

Can’t some hacker just create a bunch of bitcoins?
No. Creating bitcoins requires a tremendous amount of computing power. Just how no human can multiply two 100 digit numbers in their head, a single computer can’t just magically create a bunch of bitcoins.

Differences between dollars and bitcoins

1. Fixed supply
Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist. The number of US dollars that can ever exist is infinity.
2. Money supply over time
The numbers of both currencies is constantly changing, however, bitcoins follows a fixed predictable schedule. As of April 11, 2013 there are 11,022,500 bitcoins and something like 10 trillion US dollars. In 2014 there will be 11,812,500 bitcoins. In 2020 there will be 17,718,750 bitcoins. I have no idea how many US dollars will exist next year, or ten years from now. Nobody does. The federal reserve controls and manipulates the money supply daily. They increase or decrease the money supply by changing bank reserve requirements, buying or selling T-bills, or changing the discount rate.
3. Issuing authority
All dollars are ultimately created by the federal reserve. All bitcoins are created by thousands of individual bitcoin miners. No one miner is in control. Right now about 3600 new bitcoins are created a day. Miners do pool their resources into various mining pools, but no miner pool can ever reach 51% of the hash power or there will be problems.

Pros of bitcoins

1. 24/7 Speedy Service
Bitcoin transactions can happen anywhere, anytime and be confirmed within 10 minutes usually. Normal banks are open 9am-5pm Monday through Friday and transactions usually take 1-2 business days to become confirmed.

2. Low Transaction Fees
Bitcoins transaction fees are 0.0005 BTC per transaction(okay not exactly, but pretty much, click the link for more details). At $100 USD/BTC that’s equivalent to five cents. A normal credit card transaction will cost the merchant a 3% fee with a minimum fee of 25 cents. A typical wire transfer costs $25 send and sometimes a fee on the receiving end as well.

3. Everyone has a merchant account
If you want to start accepting bitcoins all you need is a bitcoin address. You don’t have to be approved by a credit card company and pay them fees once you are accepted. It’s as simple as pasting people your bank account number(bitcoin address) and you’re good to go.

4. Ease of transport
If you want to carry $20k in cash with you to Vegas it’s risky. You can lose it, someone can rob you, and authorities can confiscate it and there’s not much you can do about it. Just ask Viffer With bitcoins you just need to remember a password and that’s all you really need.

5. No Chargebacks
If you sell an item on ebay and accept paypal money, confirm the shipment, but the customer says they never received it, or lies and says it’s broken and paypal will issue a refund and you are out your money or item and there’s not much you can do about it. Bitcoins are one way transactions and irreversible(pretty much).

Cons of bitcoins

1. No Chargebacks
If someone steals your credit or debit card number you can call up your bank and get your fraudulent transactions reversed. If someone steals your bitcoin wallet there’s not much you can do. That’s why keeping your bitcoin private key secure and encrypting your wallet is so important.

2. You can delete bitcoins
Sure you can burn dollars too, but no one accidentally does that. If you lose your wallet your money is gone. Ever had a hardrive crash? Ever accidentally deleted a file you weren’t supposed to? Backups are important.

3. If your computer gets hacked you can lose all your money
If you visit the wrong website or open the wrong e-mail attachment you can lose all the money in your account. This is very scary stuff. Backups and security are your friend. Bank level security is wonderful and has had many, many years to mature. Bitcoins have existed for four years now. It’s going to take awhile(maybe never) for systems to emerge for the average joe to feel comfortable putting money into bitcoins.

4. Not many merchants accept bitcoins
This may change in the future, and new merchants sign up daily, but right now if you want to buy something with bitcoins you pretty much have to convert bitcoins to USD which makes the whole thing pretty pointless.

5. High volatility
Price stability is important for bitcoins to succeed in the long run. No one wants their money to be worth 50% of what it was worth yesterday. The US dollar fluctuates maybe 3% a year vs most other currencies. In the short run speculation will drive price, but bitcoin will need to eventually become lower volatility for it to ever work as a legitimate currency.

6. Hoarding
Due to the fixed supply of bitcoins they are susceptible to hoarding. If their coins are worth more tomorrow then they are today why would people spend them or invest them in other commodities? Well, US dollars used to be based on the gold standard and there is a fixed amount of gold on the planet. People still spent US dollars just fine. It’s all a matter of how much the value of BTC increase over time. A deflationary spiral is definitely possible and could create bubbles like we’re possibly seeing now, which could ultimately undermine confidence in bitcoins as a currency.

Links:

Bitcoin market watch:
Bitcoinity
Clark Moody

Bitcoin clients:
Lightweight client Electum
Full blockchain client Bitcoin-qt (Requires about 6 GB of space and won’t work til you download and sync with the full blockchain)

Buy bitcoins:
Warning: Don’t buy bitcoins unless you are prepared to lose all your money. They are highly volatile right now and you have to be very careful you don’t lose them or get hacked.
Largest online exchange MtGox.com
Smaller Online exchange BitStamp.net
Trade cash for bitcoins from locals LocalBitcoins.com

The easiest, quickest and cheapest method will vary depending on what site/method you use. For an online exchange the quickest and easiest is probably to do an international wire transfer directly to them. It will cost you ~$25 + receiving end fees. You can also try going through Bitinstant (Reviews are mixed) or Dwolla (takes awhile to get verified and link your account)

Create a secure offline bitcoin paper wallet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsyPfiENwQU
Warning: Before using a paper wallet read this

Bitcoin Poker:
Seals with Clubs

-EV casino gambling
Satoshi Dice

Bitcoin mining:
Don’t even bother

Donate to me: 18m2XtF55Yu5XZ14KakSS6ZrcdsVoSkHgb

andr3w321 on December 4th, 2012

Well it’s been a busy two weeks. Obviously I didn’t update throughout the weekend like I was hoping but here’s a rundown of what happened.

Friday: People pitched maybe 50 ideas. All the ideas were put up on the wall and then we voted on the best 20 or so and formed teams around them. We then all went home by 10pm as the building was closing.

Saturday: This was the major workday. I got there a bit before 9am and we worked for 12+ hours until the building closed again at 10pm. A few people never showed up for the next day and a couple teams went by the wayside. I guess this was inevitable, but it’s kind of oddly funny seeing the teams shrink over the weekend. We probably had one of the biggest teams. We started with around 10 and by Satuday it was down to 8. We also had a lot of developers. 6 of us wrote code and the guy whose idea it was and a microsoft PM on our team worked on the market research validation side. I certainly learned a lot as it was the first time I’d really coded in a group. The fact that we had so many devs was both a blessing and a curse in my opinion. We spent most of our time coding and actually got a working demo going where as most of the other teams just had mockups or non working html files with no backend, but I think we were weak on the presentation and market validation side of things.

Sunday: This was presentation day and most of our time was spent meeting with advisors, preparing the presentation and finishing up some coding. Unfortunately we didn’t win. That award went to corki a wine menu rating converter app. If you’re interested you can see the pitches here Our pitch was around the one hour mark.

Here’s a short highlight video of the event where I make a cameo around the 10 second mark.

The site is live right now tonightsplaylist.com It doesn’t look too different from the initial launch right now. Our team has met once since the event and made a bunch of backend code changes that you can’t see. Overall it was a great learning experience and I’d definitely do another one.

andr3w321 on November 17th, 2012

I signed up for http://seattle.startupweekend.org/ this weekend. The idea is you get a bunch of people together interested in starting a company(usually an app or website), everyone pitches their ideas, you vote on the best ones and form teams around them.

It’s only Friday, but it’s been fun so far. Everyone has been really friendly and I’ve met a lot of like minded people. I joined “Tonight’s Playlist” It’s basically pandora for local bands that are playing concerts in your town tonight/this weekend. We have a big group, maybe 10 or so in total. It will be interesting to see how this evolves and what we create. I’ll try to update over the weekend on our progress.

andr3w321 on September 12th, 2012

We’re still a long ways away from passing and amending this bill, but pokerfuse came out with a couple details of the Reid/Kyl bill today.

http://pokerfuse.com/news/law-and-regulation/the-reidkyl-bill-revealed/

It’s unclear whether this allows pokerstars or not, and we’re not sure how bad the rake will be with the 16% tax, but here’s hoping to something passing in the lame duck congress before year’s end.

andr3w321 on July 27th, 2012

A couple of sources are saying so. http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/content/full-tilt-pokerstars-negotiations-can-12310 Announcement on Monday I think. Let’s hope so.

I’m heading up to Vancouver tonight to play in a $1000+$100 poker tournament at http://www.blvdcasino.com/casino/tournaments/blvd_500.aspx Wish me luck. Hopefully I come back with all the monies.

David Sklansky, the head authority on logic has just come out with a new blog arguing baseball shouldn’t be in the Olympics because the best team doesn’t win often enough. Right… cause in other sports the best team ALWAYS wins and luck never plays a factor. Poker too. Phil Hellmuth always wins the main event.

On a more serious note I’d like to give my 2 cents on the Colorado shooting. This was a horrible tragedy and my heart goes out to everyone that was hurt by it, but why are we talking about the shooter 24/7 for a week now? This is why these shootings keep happening. We should not be giving these people the notoriety they desire. The way to stop these things from happening in the future is twofold.

1. Stop Talking about it. When was the last time you saw a streaker on TV? Could you imagine if every person that went streaking made it on TV and were talked about for a week straight? Loads of attention whores would do it. Do people still streak? Yeah. Will streakers always be a problem? Yeah, probably, but has streaking gone down since they stopped showing it on TV? I’d like to think so. There’s a reason the stations stopped showing it. They didn’t want to encourage that type of behavior. We should treat violent mass murderers the same way. I tried to find some statistics on streakers, both when they showed them on TV and after but couldn’t. Having the Colorado shooters face all over the news for a full week is exactly what he wanted.

2. Invest more resources in finding and helping these troubled young men before they go postal. How much resources to we spend trying to find the next Lebron James? On finding the next president? Billions. On finding the next mass murderer? Not much I’d guess. This is how you prevent future shootings. By reaching out and helping the troubled young kids before they turn to violence.

All this talk about gun control is nonsense. Do I think ordinary citizens should be able to buy body armor and assault rifles? Naw, not really. Do I think that banning them will prevent these shootings from happening in the future? Definitely not. Try googling how to make a bomb. I’m sure it’s not that hard. You’ll probably get put on some government watch list, but I’m just guessing it’s probably not that hard. How about poisoning a bunch of people? Okay, enough brainstorming on how to kill lots of people. It’s creepy. Needless to say, assault rifles are not the only way to do it.

Finally as many people have pointed out 12 people died and it’s a tragedy. Well the reason it’s news is because it’s a rare event. Over 6,000 people die in America per day. 43 are murdered every day. Why don’t we talk a lot more about how to make transportation safer before we worry about gun control. Take a look at these stats below.

Source: http://www.itsmywill.com/itsmylife/stats.html

On a lighter note its good to be back home in Seattle throwing TDs to my friends.

andr3w321 on July 13th, 2012

I lasted up until about an hour before dinner break on day 2. The day started off pretty well with me chipping up pretty slowly and people folding to my steals until I got up to my peak of 55k or so. I then lost a 30k pot where I flatted KQs in position and hit a Q on Q87 two spades flop. Utg bet the flop and turn, river was a spade and he overbet it a bit and I had to fold leaving me with 40k for my bustout hand.

Blinds were 400/800/100. I am utg+1 with KhQc and open it for 1800, utg+3 calls, button calls and the sb calls. Flop is KdQs7h. I bet 4500 into the nearly 9k pot and only utg+3 calls. Turn is the Js, I bet 9k and he quick calls again. River is an innocuous 6d and I shove my last 20k in the middle. He tanks for about 30 seconds before finally calling with 77. Absolutely nothing I could have done differently, just a massive cooler. It was the only time I was all in all tournament, and I managed to lose all three of the biggest pots I played all tournament. You’re just not going to win when that happens. Busting the main event is probably the saddest day of the year, but I’ll be back next year and at least I leave Vegas up five figures. Best of luck to anyone still in.