The Ebb and Flow of Variance

WSOP Trip Report

2010-06-23T10:53:00.001-07:00

Just got back from a 3 week trip in Las Vegas and as a whole the trip was amazing! I'll try and hit on the highs and lows in here and try and give a glimpse into them.

I first arrived and immediately began texting my work-aholic dealer friend to see if he wanted to goto In-and-Out. After about 2 hours of getting checked into the luxurious Imperial Palace (more on this later) and getting all the rental car stuff done I ended up driving there alone and chubby nerded it up animal style!

After devouring my double double I made my way over to the Rio and got to meet up with Vers, Cardlo69, and Reasons14. I consider all these names a brag...but while I'm listing people I mind as well list all the others:

Whoopsy_Dazy
Draqq
Manhatonite
Milesaway
Eljay42
Curt23x
GrandPrixGT
Hartlin
PowellJam

I met some randomly and had maybe one conversation with them and had dinner etc with others. All in all it was great to meet everyone and fun humiliating myself bowling or just in conversation.

So I stayed at the Imperial Palace which in itself is an experience. I wouldn't recommend it really but it was absurdly cheap and in a good location so it has that. The joke that I told while I was staying there was that I'd set the line at 10 and take the over on the number of STDs in my room. The 3rd day I was there I was pulled aside by a guy who had irises the size of the moon who proceeded to offer me to by a myriad of drugs including coke. This is actually a dream of mine so that life goal was checked off. After convincing the guy that I was ok without and denying many free sample offers I got away unscathed.

As for poker I played ~50 sng sats ranging from 175s to 525s. I joked about having more receipts than hundred dollar bills by the end of it but I ended up making ~15k with about 9k in buyins spent so it was fun and profitable. The play was silly 3bbs had fold equity, around 50% of the field overbet pot on each street and people bet/folded leaving ~1.5 bbs behind in almost every sng. I want to take an aside here and rant a bit though...

I went out to Vegas with a deal made privately for backing. For this rant we'll say that the deal was to play at X buyins or less and would be Y/Z in my favor. I was excited about it and overextended a bit to make myself comfortable in Vegas because I knew I could rely on this for basically all my poker playing besides cash and I don't play much cash as it is. When I got in I said hi and got all the meet in irl things out of the way. My backer was short on cash and it didn't bother me too much as he insisted that in the next few days he would have cash and it would be fine. So I played a few sngs did well but was intimidated by buying in for so much. I ended up basically losing all my winning and in a couple days I asked my backer if he'd gotten the money he was waiting for. At this point he was 0 for whatever in sngs and stuck a bit in borrowed money...after getting money I asked him again...are you gonna put me in these or what? He then asks me X/2 Y-20/Z+20 ? In my opinion this is awful douchey and pretty much an angelshoot preying on my nittiness. I end up agreeing to X/2 Y-10/Z+10 which basically negated the majority of the fun I was gonna have the next couple days. I'm a pretty timid person and can be pretty nonconfrontational but I have way more punk rock in me than whats on the outside. This basically has turned me off of doing business with this person in the future. I think chasing %s among friends in anyway is douchey and I saw a lot of it happening when I was there. I'm sure it was driven by a function of him being stuck but I he just shit on his implied odds and I don't think that he accounted for that. It might just be a lack of respect for my game which I can deal with but I think he's wrong on that as well.
/End Rant

Outside of that I had a lot of fun in Vegas. I drank daqari out of a boot. I had orange glazed habenero crusted meats served off a sword(Rumjungle in Mandalay Bay). I went on a waterslide through a shark tank. I won 200$ playing Pai Gow drunk. I played with Bond18, Umberto Brenis, Eskimo Clark and Maria Ho. I bowled a 70. I went to a backyard BBQ. I lost with AA on a 77KA7 board. Kitty Glitter took 20$s from me. I had a Lamb Tandoori Burger. I had a spiked milkshake. I tipped a guy 40%. I drove a Yaris. like I said, all in all, it was a good time.

In Between Post

2010-05-08T22:14:00.000-07:00

Just a quick in between post to fill me with some satisfaction about not neglecting this.

Accomplishments:
1. Not backed / chopping profits anymore
2. Interested in my own ideas about tournament equity

I was gonna talk a ton about these three subjects Lost Fold Equity, Slowed BvB Play and ATC Shoves(when accounting for future ranges needed) but I realized that I really didn't enjoy talking boastfully about something that could easily be based on false knowledge or a skewed outlook on things. And barring some miracle that my opponents read this I don't want to dictate my exact line of thinking for them.

Also I feel clunky just talking about my stats or complaining endlessly using the reader as a sad cry for help. Soooo, yeah.

I am, really excited about Vegas and think that I will hopefully be able to get to a point where I can point at something tangible and say this is what I've done with my brain. Highlights of that excitement are based on: 1) My 3 week stay at a harrah's hotel for 600$ 2) My baller Hyundai accent i'm renting and 3) potentially shooting a ~120 with some baller friends.

Outside of that I've been hooked on some enjoyable older movies mostly because of the speed you can get dvdrips of these movies and the recommendations of my friends. I first re-watched Naked Lunch and although I felt compelled to suck down some mind altering bug spray I just lol'd and posted vague references on my FB hoping that I would get some street cred.

After that I watched a documentary about the Dune movie that made me get a weird nerd boner for David Lynch. I immediately went to Eraserhead which if you haven't watched it I would recommend it. During this movie I laughed a lot at scenes that I don't think serious movie goers would. I loved the clunkiness of the conversations and felt at home in them. Again I went on FB hoping to lash out in a vague act of coolness posting my mind blown brain bits on there.

I got a reply from a friend of mine who has always enjoyed movies and happens to be a dealer in Vegas ( sick tie together adam). After him name dropping movie titles that were were cool I felt inadequate but excepted my fate, much like poker. From there I went to Barton Fink which in turn made me find Babe starring John Goodman terrifying. gg John Turtoro and the girl on the beach.

Side: I can't express how much I love the internet and the next level it is on vs. general society. The number of people that I've met there that can crush me with witty remarks and continually jab at things that are above my head in funniness is insane.

Good times all around I hope you all fade, unless it's against me.

Next Level Blues

2010-03-31T21:29:00.000-07:00

Poker mindsets can lead to a skewed understanding of what your trying to do in terms of the hand your immediately playing or it's relevance to the game/tournament or an overall approach to poker in general. What I mean by this is expectations and perceptions delude thinking. I reached a point where I was all expectations for myself and only playing against perceived ranges instead of thinking through my decisions with all the information I was provided.

I listened to a podcast not too long ago that basically identified players with high expectations that believe they don't deserve to lose which was spot on for me. I continually was making moves in SNGs that were based on my opponents having X knowledge and if they don't have that information I run a gauntlet of variance that is getting it in with 7 high on the bubble for half my stack etc.

Anyways... the poker psychologist person basically said that a player that fits this mold just needs to buckle down and keep studying the game. To be honest regardless of being surrounded by good coaches I really needed to come to some conclusions on my own for a myriad of reasons.

So... Thats what I've set out to do. I've reformed my plan for SNGs slightly and it's mostly because I've slowed down my approach lately. So as an incentive for me to write more in the blog I'm going to try and post my opinions of these concepts and try and explain why I came to the conclusions I have now.

In my next posts I'm going to try and hit on my approach to Lost Fold Equity, Slowed BvB Play and ATC Shoves(when accounting for future ranges needed).

Good Times!

Month Update:

Just about 4k with RB but lol volume because I've moved to sets while I'm studying.

Focus!

2010-02-17T21:36:00.000-08:00

I haven't updated the blog which is kind of a good thing because I felt like I was using it as a way to just complain about beats or the runbads. Speaking of run bads here is my January graph:

Yeh 2.5k games and -900$s. This all after having some of the most consistent results amongst students over at sngmentors. Coming right out of that I had my best week ever in the first week of February.

Qeloton7 402 $6 $10 55% $2,508 Hot N/A PokerStars 2/1/2010 2/7/2010 SNG Only x

Makes me bragging about a 5k month seems silly. Alot of the reasoning for the roi boost was me playing a fairly good amount of 45mans where I was getting way too many folds just for metagame reasons of me not being in the games for such a long time.

Other poker news I've been making it a goal to play more turbo mtts just because the play is very similar to sngs outside of the few random plateaus in the structure. I made the final table of a 40$ hyper which was fun and had a few deep runs in some of the daily turbos.

Outside of poker I'm really excited to sweat my friend Ryan who is playing on the magic pro tour this weekend.

My roomates are gonna hit up an indoor water park in Ohio soon as well and have been planning a few random road trips. I'm in the process of talking them into not immediately renewing our lease here and going on a tour de waterparks/casinos this summer. I think if I hit any kind of score over 10k i'd finance it :D

Other than that I'm just trying to stay humble and stick to the volume instead of just assuming I should be getting x $s a week. I need to find some way to extract value from my knowledge of sngs either through coaching or something else that way i can cash in the way many of my friends are.

Good times.

Just Put In My Submission

2010-01-20T10:36:00.001-08:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 722068

2010-01-05T21:30:00.000-08:00

So my last post didn't have much to do with poker and there had been a pretty long stretch without any content so I figured I'd write up my New Year's resolutions as they pertain to my poker life and my personal life.

Poker:
1. Play 40000 18mans 16+
2. 400k vpps
3. 100k profit
4. 2k staked out for 6months of the year
5. Learn a new game HU cash/PLO/180s/mtts
6. Only play when my mind is at atleast 90%

Personal:
1. Lose 20 lbs by Vegas
2. Be proud of what I do for a living
3. Stay positive
4. Drink more beer

Those are copied and pasted from when I posted them on a private forum on new years eve. I was apparently psyching myself up for a night of drinking and put a blatant contradiction in there...but their are both goals I guess. I guess I can go through each goal explain my reasoning for the bar to be set there and my mindset going into it.

1. Play 40000 18man sngs 16+

This seems staggering to most people but it's calculated. If you haven't played 18mans seriously you might not know that you can average around 25 games per hour and that is only 20 tabling leaving a lot of room for thought so you could do this at any level in my opinion. Either way I intend on taking weekends off so thats 104 days of the year I won't be working so 261 days I will be working. Which works out to ~153 sngs a day which is by my hourly calculation 6 hours of work per day. So not even full time! I think this is clearly obtainable and leads me to some pretty gross delusions of grandeur because I instantly see my 2$ per game average being 80k for the year now which is pretty nice.

2. 400k VPPs

This one is a bit of a stretch and I've contemplating learning cash to play 1 day a week because I think the hourly vpps are a bit better. But, if I were to get to this purely on sngs I have to do some estimations on my rake paid per game. Normally this would be pretty easy it'd be 5.5 x 40k...but I'm playing a mix of 16-38s lately and that makes a mean rake of 2$s or 11 vpps. Which would put me right on the money for 400k vpps for the year just with my normal "work" week. This is pretty exciting too because this milestone is worth ~32k pending finishing deep in a 1 mil freeroll. So that is an exciting base pay.

3. 100k Profit

So my projected income from sngs should be 80k and my rakeback would in theory be 32k. That leaves us with 112k for the year which I think is room enough for huge swings not to hinder me from getting to this goal.

4. 2k staked out for 6 months of the year

This is just something that I would like to be doing with some of the extra capital I'll have "lying around." I feel like I understand the game enough and I'm a big enough nit where I could get a better return on investment that buying CDs from the bank or something. I may try and take on 2-3 students that would be using this entire roll mid year as well I just don't know if I would be attractive enough with my stats to people playing professionally.

5. Learn a new game HU cash/PLO/180s/mtts

This is just to kind of keep the spark alive as far as enjoying poker goes. I play HU cash for fun when I'm board and it actually gets my adrenaline going along with some of the MTTs that I cashed in last year got me excited. So, I feel like getting into these on the side profitably would be a good idea.

6. Only play when my mind is at atleast 90%

This has a lot to do with me giving my day to day structure. I don't want to roll out of bed and play x hours in my pajamas and then chug some red bull and do it again. I've been looking into tea, and just exercise in general to just raise my energy level that way I don't feel groggy while playing which will definitely effect my play.

Personal:

1. Lose 20 lbs by Vegas

This is just something I need to do. After getting laid off and finding poker I've really just let go of a lot of things in terms of exercise. So I figure this will help a lot of the other bullet points in my goals.

2. Be proud of what I do for a living

This is a big one for me. I don't get any pressure from my mom or other family members about what I do...but, I feel like at times I shy away from admitting to not having a legitimate job. I think with my projected income and my explanations of what I do really are gonna help this. I actually was introduced to a friends mother and she asked what I did for a living. I told her that I played poker...after the initial shock of it I explained my calculated decisions and basically told her that I do real time equity trading and/or played in chess tournaments with honkies. There is a NOFX lyric that talks about how he measures success by not having to work...and I think I'm right at the beginning of being successful.

3. Stay Positive

This is a big one for me because I generally want to be positive about things but the majority of my gut reactions are pessimistic. Which is weird considering all the bands I've ever played in deliberately delivered a posi punk rock message. Either way I want to stay focused on being positive. I'm a huge fan of Andrew WK and his stance on life. There is a pretty profound interview with him from a magazine put on by Juliard students that I can't find right now but he boils happiness down to every word he says in any given moment and it's pretty amazing. I also just watched this lecture by a professor at Carnegie Mellon that kind of stirred some ambition and made me want to attack life. Here's the link that I'm stealing from another poker player's blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo

4. Drink more beer

I think this one is pretty self explanatory. No matter the hindrance to #1 I really just want to drink more beer...and I think this boils down to me wanting to maximize the amount of fun times with my close friends. I recently was at a German restaraunt drinking liters of draft German beers eating weiner schitzel. This was right before we played Whirly Ball. My friends = the nuts.

Kind of wordy but I hope you enjoy it.

My 2009 graph:

Science, Life, Selfishness

2010-01-02T10:03:00.000-08:00

So...the combination of watching an interview with Richard Dawkins and a 40 minute long shower full of internal debate made me want to write and I figured I'd do it on the forum that I'd been neglecting...erhm, you blog.

So the question that I was asking myself was if I was so proud of humanity for it's progress in science why am I not spending any of the time I have and resources on progressing science.

I came to the conclusion that I was not smart enough.

Mostly because of a lack of education on the subjects that I'd want to influence (all of them). I figured that was a poor excuse because I'm not dumb and don't doubt that I could help scientists in some way. I assumed I could at least use my body for physical things they might need (wink). Manual labor, etc. I had delusions of grandeur of me walking 4 miles down the LHC in Cern with a box full of wires on my shoulder. It was either that or clap when they find something new. Be a science cheerleader or something.

Thinking through all this stuff I realized I have horrible time management and I can normally barely fit in enough time in the day to eat 3 times and get enough work done where I'm satisfied. So I would either need to force myself to a strict schedule and hopefully get bored enough in the extra time that I'd start doing something...or cut my current hobbies and just hobby in science(cheerleading).

One thing that I've realized about myself after I kind of let go of the thought of life after death and deities is that almost all of my decisions and emotions have lacked all communal value. I think selfishly about my immediate happiness in almost all my decisions. I'm not sure if that is a bad thing though I think it just may be a hindrance to my ambition to spend time doing things to contribute to the scientific community. I think what I need to do is be conscious of my own efforts and maybe report them to well me, which is basically writing them in this blog. Either that or I'm gonna become one bad ass remote control helicopter operator.

So goals:
1. Find a venue of science ( preferably one that I would feel proud to contributing to)
2. Somehow qualify myself in their eyes for at least being able to volunteer to carry their wires / cheer them on
3. PROFIT

Road Trip - Month Wrapup

2009-11-09T20:05:00.000-08:00

I just got back from an insane road trip out to the east coast that didn't really have much of an agenda. We ended up seeing Mastodon and Dethklok in Charlotte, NC then heading out to Virginia Beach the next day.....in November. After that we met up with a friend of my roommates in Richmond, VA and I don't remember much of that besides the fact that I told my roommates that the keyword so that I could remember what happened that night was "Adam's 10" dick!"

We stayed in a really shady hotel out there that I'm pretty sure had a blood stain on one of the box springs. After that we headed out to Atlantic City which was a first for me. We stayed a Ceasers where my roommate took the penny slots for 100$+ which is like winning the lottery imo. I played about 3 hours for about +500 at 1/2 with a couple of hilarious hands with the people there who were horrible.

The first was just for the lols. I'm in the big with Q6o, flop comes QQ2, I check/call the five way pot. QQ23, I lead about half and get called. QQ235, bet the river about half and my opponents says "You don't have a queen do you?" I personally don't know a line that screams q more than mine. Either way a player outside of the hand calls time....to the floor....and gets a count down on the guy debating a call and folds. I was pretty upset.

Second Hand: I had QTo, sb. J83, checks around. J839, I lead 6 into 10...5-way pot. get raised to 15 and then the button flats that raise. I assume they are both pretty big so I raise but miss grab a stack and end up raising about 90 more...into about a 45. The first guy who I figured could have a set flats and the button folds...river bricks no flushes or anything and I bet out ~100 that I have left and he folds...I lol'd pretty hard at his line.

Don't know how readable those were but they were fun.

The month was meh, but I did go through 2 50-buyin downswings so if I break even across those I make ~1600 more which would be a win. I'm on pace for SN which is great because I did some bonus calculation with my expected games per month and I can hit ~20k a year in bonuses just at the 16s which is pretty great...especially when my bad months are 1$ per game months. If I can hold for double digit roi for the year it's close to 70k which is pretty satisfying.

I'm pretty sure I came back with some AC plague/sars so I've been sleeping a lot but I hope to get alot of volume in and kill November.

Pitty Party Over

2009-10-20T17:48:00.000-07:00

Just reread through my last post and realized how much cry baby was in it.

I think that I was in a new low going through a 50 buyin swing. I've now successfully gone on back to back 50 buyin swings and came out ahead in each of the weeks. I've been using SNGWiz to plug leaks and feel good about what I've found out about some of my missed shoves and essentially my run bad.

Outside of poker I just spent ~1k on a bed/comforter thing for my room and I'm pretty happy how it looks. I murdered it out with some black sheets so I'm amused with it atm.

I might employ my mother who is studying for an extra bachelors in art to paint me a picture of me sitting in a high back red chair with Jett sitting on my lap. I'm pretty sure I'd have to be in a sailing jacket and be wearing an ascot for that to really work. When that happens I'll post a pic for sure.

I guess I'll leave with some Imogen Heap for tilt release and another pic from my wall generously contributed by one of my roommates.

The Realization that Life is Shit

2009-10-06T16:37:00.000-07:00

Just lost a lot of money in poker realized in the middle of that that my happiness and concept of self worth is directly tied to this game and not much outside of that.

Essentially I'm working toward a monetary goal that's only utility really is just to keep me alive. Which I guess everyone has to do to some extent I just think it's sad that poker is pretty much my only outlet.

Being a poker player I started thinking about the things that I fill my day with and the expected value that I will have in the value of my life day to day. Also while thinking about this I wondered if self employed prostitutes sob while evaluating the value of their body as they put up their $/hr rate on craigslist. That is a tangent though. So wtf if I can see that I'm not doing anything for gain day to day then why be alive. I think the only reason really is that I'm afraid to die.

Fwiw I think my body, now that my lower back has somehow merged with my ass in a sea of Gyros and Beer, to be worth around 5$.

Fuck. My. Life. I hope I make more money tomorrow so that I can distract myself from this shit.

September Wrapup

2009-10-04T21:42:00.000-07:00

Best month to date and it really feels good. For the first time in my poker "career" that I'm making more than I was as an engineer. It's pretty gratifying that knowing that I've put in all this time to get to a point where at least I've fiscally bettered myself.

Qeloton7 2,501 $2 $15 13% $4,990 Tilt N/A PokerStars 9/1/2009 9/30/2009 SNG Only x

Those are my stats for the month at around 30 hours a week giving me ~41$s an hour. After my sngmentors cut I'm right at where I was while working. Check out my graph to see the monstrous 50 buyin swing that I went through during it all.

I've been trying to do a lot to stay focused and positive across my sessions. Consistent eating schedules, how I sit in my chair and my sweet stay positive pic has been keeping me going. See pic here:

Outside of poker I've been just grinding out life. We had a party or two at the apartment that were all successes. The last being topped off by me essentially making a joke about masturbating while thinking of my friends wife....while she was sitting next to me. Sometimes I do awful things for a laugh. Thankfully her husband contained his drunk strength and I muscled through the night not looking her in the eye.

Lately musically I've fallen in love with Dethklok which is kind of awkward as they are the "fake" band behind Metalocalypse. Their new CD is basically the pinnacle of epic death metal in my opinion. My opinion on the subject ranges through about 10 bands though so don't put too much weight in that.

Punted a game at the Zendikar pre-release for about a 50$ swing in magic over the weekend....erhm ladies ;)

So cliff notes, stay positive, win money, offend friends.

My goals for next month are:

1. 2500 games (2k needed to stay on pace for SN)
2. 2$s a game
3. Pass TH to settle behind Manhat on the 5-15 leaderboard

This video really made me happy. Pretty much thinking of the world existentially does in general although it makes me not want to spend my days playing poker so I don't know what that means.

Autopilot

2009-09-21T20:10:00.000-07:00

For a long time I've been searching for something to pull me up to the level of a consistent winner in the 16$ 18mans. After having my best week ever and my second best week back to back I'm feeling more and more confident. I was telling my roommates about my success and they asked "What are you doing differently?" It took me a second to realize that I didn't initially know so I took a while to think about it and came to this conclusion. Autopilot. I wasn't focusing on my game during the moment. I wasn't prepared mentally and physically before each session. And importantly I was going on autopilot during my sessions.

I think the things that I've been doing lately just can't be evaluated when I'm watching a tv series or have an aim message box up. Basically I've adjusted my calling ranges and have had tons of sick K2o lookups and gross Ax lookups that have turned a lot of neglected stacks into viable stacks. I feel like I'm on a level where I'm thinking 3 hands ahead on the bubble and my shoving and calling ranges are great.

So on that positive note... I dumped 20ish buyins today in the 16s. And I'm strangely ok with it. I feel like my game is alright but I'm just getting looked up light in some spots and not holding. I think the next level for me right now is to know when to slow down bvb with deeper stacks against regs, slow down a little on my CO shoves with A8o etc with better stacks, and remain off autopilot.

My day to day life is good as well. I'm getting up at a consistent time and tend to be putting in a days work regularly. The best thing with my big winning weeks has been that I've been more able to just say "I'm taking today off." That has been a big help.

We had a party over the weekend which was pretty epic. There was essentially a race to 100oz of beer that ended a little over an hour. So...fun was had. More coloring was done and I will post a bunch in my monthly wrappup.

Outside of poker my Magic team shipped a win-a-box tournament locally which is essentially the equivalent of shipping a 2$ 180 man that we all played in. It was fun especially because it was at a store we don't play at so it got us a little more credit in playing ability in town than we've been given lately.

Also I just picked the new MMO Aion which I'm probably gonna be far behind in because I've been putting in ~6 hours of poker in a day....but it's fun and should be good times.

All around good times for sure. Will post in a week with hopefully and even better week!

*Also I just broke the top 10 on Sharkscope for 2-3 table 5-15$ sngs...IN THE WORLD :d*

-Qeloton7

Best Week To Date!

2009-09-13T21:25:00.000-07:00

Just had the best week I've ever had in poker. This of course stirred delusions of grandeur and a want to make ~104k a year. That being said I finally feel like the 16s are as easy as the 6s and I'm hoping that that isn't just from the boost on Labor day. I made ~2k this week and I'm feeling really good going into next week. Check out the graph!

I got Jett my black pug moved down to the apartment in Carmel and I'm really stoked to have him around. He pretty much likes to party all the time and is really good at keeping my spirits up and getting them higher when I'm feeling good. Here's a pic of him enjoying a stray Red Bull box:

When I came home this weekend I had the pleasure of coming home, closing the door to my room and seeing this duct taped to my door:

I lol'd pretty hard.

Also it's become a tradition at our apt to make anyone that comes over to our house color a Hello Kitty picture. Which in itself seems really lame but they just degenerate to us abusing Hello Kitty's cuteness for some awful vulgar joke. Here is one of the pictures:

Yes that is tacked on my wall.

Good times.

F the Bet / Sick Platinum Grind

2009-08-31T19:31:00.000-07:00

October was lazy this month. I played just over half of what I played last month. This was mostly because of my lack of a set living area. Now I'm stable in Indianapolis and am gonna get a good grind in day to day. Here are some stats:

Qeloton7 1,514 $0.94 $15 6% $1,429 Tilt N/A PokerStars 8/1/2009 8/31/2009 SNG Only x

My month ended on a positive note though. I had to grind ~900 VPPs to be able to keep Platinum for next month so I set out at ~1pm to get the ~180 games in. I ended up expanding my SFSO range to where I was during my heavy 6s grind back pre-16s and tortured my stomach with multiple Red Bulls. I made it though and with good money made as well. I really feel good about most of my shoves etc.

Brag:
Qeloton7 195 $2.7 $14 20% $527 Tilt N/A PokerStars 8/31/2009 8/31/2009 SNG Only x

That is with a ~200$ loss in my last 30 games :(

I want to grind September really hard. I think I'll post some goals for the month that way I have something to address in next month's wrap up. So...

Goals:

1. 3k Games Played
2. 4.5k Profit atleast
3. 10k Min VPPs ( to be on pace for Supernova )

As for the psuedo bet with myself that I posted on last week. I ended up doing some seriously quality of life calculations and figured that the money I saved would not out way the immediate happiness from some serious etoufee action day to day. So essentially I'm a dood that likes food too much and has an addictive and analytical mind that will keep me on that path.

I'm gonna leave you with some music because I'm so excited about getting my tickets for their show in Chicago in October. Should be good times..

Q

5 Dollars For One Week!

2009-08-26T17:04:00.000-07:00

Poker has been going well. I'm grinding the 16s without too many problems. I don't think I have the consistency of the 6s but hopefully I can keep my dollar per game ratio around 3$ and make some good money day to day.

I'm finally waking up in the same house day to day so the past two days I've kept myself to a pretty good schedule for poker. Getting two good sessions in yesterday and getting close to a full 8 hours worth of work today.

Outside of that I'm still pretty bored with poker and tend to drag my feet to play my next session every time. I'm hoping that the money alone will keep me motivated right now which isn't really happening. I am thinking more and more about my opponents actions and how they dictate his hand range while walking though the hand in my head though..which is helping me stay focused atleast.

Like most poker players I have an addictive personality and have found that I'm more addicted to food than anything else. I actually spend gross amounts on food either meal to meal or out with friends. So...I decided to bet myself to live off of 5$s worth of food for an entire week. This is gonna be insanely hard for me as I tend to spend twice that in red bulls alone.

Essentially I got:

1 Box of Instant Rice
1 Can of Black Beans
1 Can of Corn
1 Loaf of bread

I'm already tired of the food I have...but I think it's a good test of my will.

I have to play at least 100 games a day for the next 6 to retain platinum so I'm gonna buckle down and get there...make money etc

Good times...

Something Clicked!

2009-08-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

Bad week for poker but I feel like something clicked as far as the games goes in general. Basically it clicked by talking through a hand with a friend of mine. The hand plays as follows:

He is in the CO and has TT.

There is a 3x raise ahead of him.

Essentially they are playing with starting stacks. Fairly deep where raise/folding is still an option, but he hasn't won any pots so he really can't make too many moves post flop.

My friend elects to flat and then there are 2 calls behind him.

Flop 433 rainbow.

Action: check, Bet, Friend(call), fold, call.

turn: Q, Bet, call, ship...call,fold.

Seems like he played it really bad...and I completely think he did.

But the thing that clicked for me when talking about the hand is what a 3 bet does preflop. Essentially it makes it so you can continue confidently on all boards J high or worse which is alot of board combinations. Also because of the stack sizes you can just fold to a 4bet because you will be against a range of around AK+ JJ+. This also limits the amount of options on the flop so all the action should go down there and make it so your decision is the best one you can make in that scenario.

This might be old news for most people...and not applicable to most sng scenarios but it really made me realize that if I could be thinking on this level in the moment that I could really erase alot of the doubt in my plays post flop and go into hands with a plan more often.

As for my bad week I ended up playing around 400 games which is definitely below my expectation. I ended the week stuck ~150$s which definitely isnt bad but any week where I'm not gettin a return realy hurts me.

School started today and I've procrastinated enough to the point where
I'm not registered for any classes. I have so much senioritis that it
doesnt really phase me. Someday I'll have something to prove to people
socially that I am intelligent.

Late last night I watched Nova. It was about the mandelbraut's set I was completely mesmerized. It was kindof a revelation on how many people have used their lives to really contribute something new to science and the world. Even though I was really happy watching the show I ended up feeling really depressed because I realized that I've basically passed the time where I could put in enough effort to do something that great.

So much for staying positive...

Good times,

Q

Post Gencon - Gut Rot and Battle Spirits

2009-08-17T22:26:00.000-07:00

Wow Gencon...

There is something rewarding about going to Gencon. Mostly it's the realization that no matter how nerdy I may think I am...I'm not this nerdy.

Yeh. You could just go there to people watch and you would have enough laughs to fill the 4 days.

I'm so proud to be in my nerd crew. We essentially drank ourselves into a stupor, and then wondered through gaming events making masturbation jokes. Bros for life.

Some highlights were:

1. Me playing an overweight woman as a character and making sad tug job motions all within the mist of a D&D game called "The Chalice of Love."

2. Breaking the lock of the True Dungeon at the last minute and having a 3 way high five while shouting TEAM BEE HAMMER!

3. Discovering Battle Spirits! Which is essentially a very simplified TCG that has some of the most interesting and fun mechanics that I've ever encountered. The sad thing is is that it's associated with some lame Japanese animation, but I'm looking forward to playing it competitively in my home town. I actually played in a 1k tournament for about 6$s while I was there and played 2 of the best players in the tournament in the first round. So I sadly lost :(

4. Drunkenness, more drunkenness more drunkenness...

"What beer do pirates drink? PBRRRRRRRRR"

As far as poker goes I'm feeling really good about my game. I've had a few hundred games in a row that have had consistent returns. I had my first two sessions after being back and I feel like the gap in time of playing has really helped. I actually felt like I was thinking about the game and the context of my plays a lot more after having a ton of fun thought out games with my friends.

Small brag:

Qeloton7 63 $4.57 $15 29% $288 Tilt N/A PokerStars 8/17/2009 8/17/2009 SNG Only x

Thanks Battle Spirits! And that is with maybe only 1 win in the last 32 games!

I hope to get on a more strict schedule and hammer down, get my volume up, and make some monies asap.

Good times...

Stay Positive! - Short Week + Gencon

2009-08-11T00:43:00.000-07:00

This past week I finally came to the realization that I constantly want to be positive but am the polar opposite of it outwardly. Poker drug me down pretty low to the point where I was using math to prove a point out to my backers that it would be better for me not to take on the challenge of moving up a level. After swinging back and having an hourly rate that actually gets my blood flowing I have a bit more confidence in my game, my level and myself in general.

I recognized during the week that I was almost giddy when having a winning day which is good as long as I can manage the stress of swinging down and feeling awful all day. All in all I'm happy with my play lately and am glad that I was able to notice a few things and get back up a bit. I should be back on the Sharkscope leader board for the 5-15 2-3 tables by tomorrow.

This past week my Mom turned 50. It was pretty surreal. I think it made both of us feel old. She got her AARP card in the mail to top it off. I got her tickets to see a local rendition of The Producers by Mel Brooks. She is big into drama and I was really happy to be able to provide chorus lines in front of glitter covered swastika and a gay Hitler. If you haven't seen at least the movie version of The Producers you should.

School starts soon and I mapped it out to where I have exactly 9 classes left for my B.S. in Computer Science. 6 of which are 400+ CS courses that remind me of the Holocaust. I have a pretty important life decision to make as to whether I want to lighten my load and move to Indianapolis or take on a full schedule and get my degree asap. It pretty much comes down to immediate quality of life because I would be moving in with my friends who are like blood brothers to me or staying at home/getting my own apartment. From a poker standpoint I don't see as much of an expected value in my degree as I had prior to playing professionally, but I guess there are some implied odds there and some metagame stuff solely in the fact that I wouldn't have to tell everyone I was a college dropout. Either way, I plan on getting my degree, it's just a matter of when.

Gonna be a short week for poker upcoming because I'm headed to Gencon with the above blood brothers. Gencon is way above my normal dork level, but it is an excessive good time. Last year I got to meet Bud (David Faustino - Married with Children), Chewbacca ( the real actor), and Kid Rock all while slinging a growler of microbrew local beer. Hopefully we will top it this year!

I'm writing this mostly out of insomnia as the air conditioning in my strategically homeless mooched couch is off and I can't sleep.

Hopefully have more winning poker updates soon.

Good times...

July Wrap-up

2009-08-04T06:28:00.001-07:00

July was a good month in terms of monies. I ended up getting a silver star for a bit of it on SS and that was satisfying. My backers/coaches want me to move up a level and I can already feel the stress of the swings. Either way I'm excited about getting ahead and knowing that I can wreck the 6s at like 22% for 2k games whenever it's needed.

I haven't been able to start on my perscribed schedule as I'm technically homeless right now. I'm still deciding whether or not I want to take a semester off and/or take some online classes and live with some friends in Indy. If I stay in Fort Wayne I'll most likely be staying with my mother which in itself reminds me of pergatory.

So... goals for August:

1. Have an ROI in the teens for the 16$ 18mans.

2. FT something for my turbo BAP

3. Hold to as regular a schedule as I can

4. Get atleast 4 coaching sessions

5. Post atleast 4 HHs

Other than that stay positive, force feed myself Andrew W.K. if I have to, and never let poker get to me.

Good times...

Stay Focused!

2009-07-30T20:44:00.000-07:00

First post...

After realizing that my day to day is scattered with my made up job, horrible eating habits, and tasteless humor I've decided to start with a little structure by writing this day to day.

First, the title. Another revalation that came to me recently besides my enjoyment of incomplete sentences was the recognition that my happiness and overall mental health is directly related to the ebb and flow of my daily grind in sngs.

My made up job is internet poker. I grind sngs. Primarily 18mans in the 6-16$ range.

So... This will follow my attempt regulate my work, food, and sleep.

Tenative new life/work schedule:

Mon-Fri: 10-12 work

12:00-12:30 eat

1-3 work

1/2 break

4-7 work

My last 8 hour day resulted in ~215ish games. So in theory this will result in 1075 games. At my current expectation that is 1800 a week ( lol dillusions of granduer).

Right now my living situation is up in the air so I don't think I'll be able to start this schedule until a few weeks into August. But sooner the better!