2009- Year of The Fucking Finally

Awesome year comes to a close. . . I've been cobbling together income from small stakes poker games for years, always felt like I could succeed, yet I never was able to establish a real money making groove until this year.

My biggest accomplishment by far is finishing the year #1 on a Sharkscope leaderboard. . . now mind you there's a lot of categories to fight over. My category is

Most money won in 2009 in tournaments that started with between 4 and 6 tables, with a buy in between 16-$35. Any site.

To achieve this I played 2,285 $24+2 45 player sit and go's at a pretty spectacular %57 ROI for a total win of $33,772 in this category, which happened to be the most this year. There's a day left so perhaps I shouldn't be documenting this yet. . .

Add to that some nice wins in some other brackets, a recent slew of mtt successes (or near successes depending upon outlook) and 2009 completely outstripped my expectations and was an unequivocal success. For the first time since working in the casino's I earned a proffessionals living wage and I did it working my hours on my terms.

Pretty awesome.

What's on the horizon? I'm not sure. Cash games keep calling to me siren like just for the shear flexibility of the game. Being able to play as long as I like, whenever I like, for as little or as long as seems good. . . sounds awesome. I'm definitely going to work on improving my skills in that area, it's just a matter of figuring out which form I want to specialize in.

That's how I work. I specialize. If I'm going to play a game I study the hell out of it. I think this stems from my chess background and how much work needs to go into preparing your Openings. But it's true. Every poker format has it's own strategies and conditions. A friend of mine recently asked me for a book recommendation- specifically for NLHE cash games. Another friend present suggested Harringtons Tournament Series because it was an excellent book. . . and it is . . . but totally inappropriate for cash games! So many of the concepts just don't properly carry over.

Here's an example.

In a 45 man sng it can be appropriate to reraise, get all in with AK on the first hand.

In a traditional 9 man sng it pretty much never is.

In a cash game AK can be folded or played for less than all in preflop in many, many situations. Stack size and previous action play a large consideration and can lead to a variety of plays.

So about a year ago was when I finally decided to specialize in poker. I had seen some regular success in the 45 man sngs and wanted to see if I could get more, more often.

One of the problems was that I was only playing 2-6 tables a year ago, and I was often doing that in compromising situations, like while watching t.v..

Some of the biggest strides I've made in the last year have been in the realm of multi tabling. I now play 12 tables quite comfortably, and am now itching to get my second monitor working so that I can move to 16 without overlap.

Not only did multi tabling help me put in more volume, but it also helped me plug some leaks. In particular I'm a chronic sufferer of Fancy Play Syndrome, but in order to play 9, and later 12, games comfortably, I finally said good bye to a lot of the moves that I knew were marginal at best yet were difficult to play in even the best spots to account for the limited attention I could give particular hands playing 12 games at once. Basically, playing a bunch of tables at once forced me to finally play more or less correctly- which is pretty damn tight- at least in this format of poker.

There's a whole train of thought to come after this I'm sure, but it's a little late for that.

Happy New Year, Reader, Apologies for the rambling, it's been a sloppy, and happy holidays.

Good luck in 2010!

DUDE

Just had the most grueling night ever, except that I made $3500 on it! How could that be??

XXXXX <---- INSERT SHARKSCOPE GRAPH OF MY SUCKAGE HERE

Unfortunately the formatting on the sharkscope graph went to hell, and I'm too tired to fix it, but I busted out of everything I played tonight, or had to settle for penis cash, in almost every game but two. Agonizing soul crush after agonizing soul crush. . . except that in two games out of 40-whatever I actually went deep before being soul crushed. . . so made some nice coin.

In my big cashout, the 3rd place in the 25k guarantee- I had a rather dissapointing finish. After sparring with other final 3 players for almost 45 minutes (these rebuy tourneys have a ton of chips- they're awesome), both of them big winners, I raised 9To on the button to just over the minimum, the small blind flatted and the big blind folded. I very happily bet about 1/2 pot on the flop of QJ8- giving me the nuts! The bb called. He check called the turned King, and led on the river 3 for about half pot. I tanked and wound up shoving as the pot was so large I thought he'd be committed with many worse holdings. He snap called and showed AT for the turned nuts.

OUCH.

After shoving and winning a couple flips in the next two orbits I actually clawed my way back into contention for 2nd place but the blinds had gotten large and my 9x shove was called by the chip leader who was holding K4o which was more than enough to beat my 68s. GG. Both players at the final 3 were very competent so the third place didn't hurt as much as it might normally. . . but I'm definitely starting to get a little nervous about my short handed game as I haven't been able to clinch one of these in awhile.

The crazy, stupid fucked up thing about playing poker for a living is that even though I had a killer night at "work" it was absolutely dreadful to participate in! The wins came late in the night, and were a damn good turn of events for me since I was down $1000 in tournaments already- almost all of them $24-$50 buy ins and just getting fisted every single time I entered the pot until I was screaming at my monitor and pounding my computer mouse every ten minutes! I was livid, bent, frustrated, impatient, I think I went on tilt a dozen times tonight! Thank god for those 5 minute breaks I get to spend with my dogs. They really hook me up at times like that- the look of mortal concern in their eyes reminds me I'm being a total fucktard, and playing with them afterwards is great for the spirits. Dogs rule.

So yeah, the pleasure/pain ratio in poker is totally fucked. After having my mind ground to dust over 40 painful bust outs tonight I finally win some good money- but am STILL left to curse the HOWs of getting only 3rd place (the money for first and even second is much better, and good players take pride in being able to "close the deal"), and the actual money won. . . well it doesn't seem very real right now.

Fuggin lame. But I suppose there could be worse things. Some of my friends take orders, give orders and stand up for up to 16 hours a day. :P

I slept through another tournament

I really need to stop pre registering for tournaments. I just slept through miniftops 13, which only cost my $33 but still.

I've had very, very little motivation to play poker recently. I've just been feeling like there are other things I want to do. . . but I wind up just smoking weed and playing on my xbox or reading sci fi- (btw, The Player of Games by Ian M. Banks is excellent, addictive reading). I don't know if it's this dismal weather (grey, cold, often wet) or what but I have not been wanting to play poker!

Even though "my game" is clearly the 45 man sngs I've just felt really bored with them lately. Today I played almost all mtts, and started the session tonight by playing 4 tables of 1/2 6 max N/L w/ antes (always a mouthful!) According to pokertablratings.com I made 1200 on the cash session. . . not too shabby at all. . . especially considering I got a bit tilty (and shnockered) and lost $700 playing $15/30 Razz two nights ago. . .kinda gross no matter how you consider it!

sorry for all the bitching

3k downswings are going to be really routine now that I've amped up the stakes a bit, and I need to not start moaning every time I have one!

In better news I put in my first serious session of the month playing 40 games, and due to taking $7,200 for 2nd place in the $30 rebuy (I re bought 6 times I think?) I booked a very welcome and fun $8,200 win for the night.

That tourney was excruciating the whole way through- I got beat up a little bit early so that by the time the rebuy period came I was in it for $180 and had no stack to show for it. A series of miracles happened and I had a top ten stack with 130 left (459 started) but went absolutely card dead only finding a couple spots to pick up chips all the way down to about 3 players actually. I was seriously just hanging on by my fingernails for most of that time with a 8-22 bb stack the whole way. It was a really aggressive tourney and my opponents had ESP for the most part since I was getting no action on my decent hands and they were 3bet shoving on my mediocre ones. So I folded. Folded. Uh oh, time for a button shove. Sweet! THEY folded! Then I fold some more.

The final table was the same- I clung for dear life, had a lucky suck out or two just to stay afloat, had all my raises reraised so had to stop raising unless I wanted to shove, and my hands sucked so I just folded. . . pretty much not playing poker at all with the exception of knowing when and with what to go all in. Luckily, the table as a whole was almost maniacal and I watched as much bigger stacks than mine exploded and disappeared all around me.

Okay I'm rambling. Good job me, g'night.

Crazy good

I have been putting off posting because I've been winning non stop and didn't know what to say about that. Not sure what that says about me.

For some reason the reverse doesn't hold as I was fairly prolific during my last downswing before and after Vegas (which I have been successfully not thinking about).

From about July 1st I've been pretty steadily crushing, with a few smallish downswings in there but nothing more than 1.5k or so which happened when I was trying to mix in more of the 75$ 45 man tournaments. I've played about 250 of them and I'm down $3,800 at that stake level. It's a small sample size and I've felt generally unlucky. . . but I'm giving up. I just feel cursed at that stake size and I'm raking it in in the 26 format so am feeling no need to tortue myself.

My stats in the 45 mans for this month are just surreal. . . nobody is good enough to sustain this ROI- all I can hope is it lasts a while longer. In other awesome news, I won the 26$ 17k guarantee last night for a 4k score and am very close to my goal of making more than 10k this month before I go on vacation next week.

It's good to run good. In other news I sold my business today so will be looking for new ventures to become involved with. The future sounds fun, and right now all I can think about is the travelling I want to do this winter and what sort of laptop set up I want to put together to grind on the road.

Username	Games Played	Av. Profit	Av. Stake	Av. ROI	Total Profit	Form	Ability /100	Network	Filter
J4bberW0cky	199	$28	$24	106%	$5,507	-	N/A	FullTilt	9/1/2009 9/19/2009 E45-45 S20-35 SNG Only	x

Delusions of Grandeur

Following my nice rush in July I've kept the momentum strong in August putting in what is a lot of volume for me. I'm not much of a sucker for long hours doing much of anything, but I've really been forcing myself to play more and the results are freaking killer.

On the left you can see my Iron Man page for the month. . . I haven't had a lot of 1k points days but this month they are happening over and over again as I've taken to playing an early session more regularly. Whenever I happen to wake up and feel sufficiently awake I'll just start firing up sit and gos. I've been signing up for: $6.50 90 mans, 12+1 90 Mans, 24+2 90 mans, 24+2 45 mans, and lastly, a growing addition to the roster of games I'm playing regularly, the 69+6 45 mans.

That's a total of five games that I get registered for when I log on, and as soon as one opens I join the list for the next one of that type. My goal for the first hour is to have 12 tables open at the next break (there's a 5 minute break every hour on full tilt). My goal on one of these short sessions is to cram as many games in to the shortest time possible, and as these games never really last longer than 2 hours I know that I'll have finished up the session and can start the rest of the day, within about 2.45 hours.

Then I do whatever it is I have to do, and I start my evening session which is more of the same except I'll keep replenishing tables as long as I can imagine still wanting to play two hours into the future.

It's been going great. My one bummer is that I have yet to make progress in the 75$ 45 mans which is the "graduation" limit for the 45 man sngs on full tilt since there isn't a higher limit for that format. The tricky part is that it's nearly 3x the buy in for the next lowest limit so not only is it the biggest buy in game for the class, thus holding all the top players, but playing it involves at least 2x the variance that is possible in the 26$ games since the field is so much tougher on average and therefore the players edge is smaller.

My record on the 26$ games speaks for itself. There's still a lot I can learn and a lot of situations that I could play better, but really there aren't very many people beating that game as much as I am. I'm proud of the progress I've made with this format. . . but the style I use at the 26$ level doesn't seem to be working at the 75$ limit. Either players are playing better and I have yet to adjust, or I've been seriously unlucky in my limited sample size. As the first line in the pic above shows I'm down almost $2300 over the 158 times that I've played the limit, earning me the sharkscope fishbowl next to my name. I honestly feel like I've been unlucky when playing them, but there's a lot situations where I've been all in preflop with tens against aces, jacks against kings, and on. In the 26$ level I don't worry about these hands much since players are so loose that I think I'm more than fine just getting it all in preflop with these hands except under unusual circumstances. My fear is that at the $75 level players aren't stacking off as light in general (because there are still plenty of total donks in those games) but they are 3 betting light a ton which makes my job very tough and very swingy since I never quite know where I'm at.

Or maybe I've just been unlucky? So many of my games have ended the same way: I'm short stacked and I shove some hand in the sb against a similar stacked bb and the bb has aces. Or they have KTo to my A5s and catch a king on the river. Or I shove ten big blinds from the button with K8o and the small blind has AQ and the bb has AA. Over and over I've been in these situations where I say to myself "it's mathematically correct to shove here" and so I force myself to, yet they consistently have the 5% of hands that have me crushed.

It's a tough spot analysing poker situations because there are so many factors to consider. Do I need to tighten my play in certain situations? Or have I been getting unlucky and I should keep playing the game I know? The tough part is that if I tighten my game where it shouldn't be tightened I could become a losing player! It really is do or die. . .

Over all I've felt pretty unlucky the last few days, losing a lot of big hands as big favorites. The strangeness of variance never ceases to surprise though. A ton of agonizing losses are sometimes all made up with a couple of carefully timed suck outs and a won coin flip or two. I've been on an awesome rush the last couple weeks and can easily have a personally record breaking month if I can keep it up (which is hard to imagine since I am easily running well above expectation).

Finally cracked one of these bitches

August Contest

BadBeatsPoker.net regularly has contests in which different forum members wager a small sum to see who can score the highest ROI playing a minimum number of tournaments of a particular structure.

I entered their 45 man contest in June which I had high hopes for, but with the Vegas trip and some poor online results I never stood a chance. This month the contest revolves around the 90 man turbo knock-out sit and go's on Full Tilt. I've been playing these for awhile. . . the action is pretty chaotic with the fast blind structure but as a rule the play is just horrible in these things so it's well worth the agony of high variance slug fests. In general be prepared to lose many, many of these things, but when you hit the top spots it's really worth it, so gamble it up.

Anyway, I think I have a good grip on this format so I was happy to enter all three contest brackets- a $6 over 25 games bracket, 13$ over 50 games, and lastly the $26 over a 100 games.

There's a blogger/poker player I follow who has made it his stated objective to make more than 200k playing this exact game between last May and this coming December. I think that's amazing, so I'll say it again.

He plans to make 200k over a 8 month period playing $13 and $26 games. His strategy is to play a whole lot of them. If you average $6 in profit per game you play, you only need to play 333,334 sit and go's in a 8 month period and presto.

That's a lot of sit and go's. Makes you appreciate the job title "sit and go grinder."

As horrible as it sounds to slave away like that, sit and go after sit and go, 16 tables at a time, 12 hour stretches of just clicking and clicking and clicking. . . but still that's a lot of money, and you can have a lot of fun for 200k. . .

So, this month I thought I'd try my own heavy sit and go grinding experiment playing that very game. After all, my ROI is better than that players, but we'll have to see how I hold up and how many hands I botch trying to cram in as many as I can.

Today I played 54 of them for a profit of $637. Not bad, but I plan on doing better. These things are easy.

Here's my average finish position for today. . . not sure why I like this graph. The two firsts really help the bottom line as you can see how many non firsts there were.

Here's my graph for finish positions over the 527 games I've played in them total- gives you an idea of the variance in them, and also the importance of aggression near the bubble aiming for that first place prize:

The Jabber Wock Songs

I know of two songs that incorporate the lyrics to The Jabber Wock in some form or another. . . and here they are.

Luckily I love both bands and think both are great.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo-WlTbTCwA

Eh, on second look can't find the Aceyalone track on youtube. Will keep looking. . .

Here's some guys I've never heard of doing an entertaining version however. . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4PoGMofbMk

Also, July is looking better every day :)

Good Times

Been reading Tommy Angelos book Elements of Poker (scroll down the page, here's a review for you too) and was completely blown away by the end of the book, which is at the tail end of the last chapter (go figure) which discusses integrating a healthy lifestyle and meditation in order to profit more at the poker table. I really loved this bit and it sums up a lot of things I've been thinking about lately and so I decided to just type it out and share it. To give this author his due here's a link to his website which has many articles for free, and also gives access to his coaching services. Enjoy!

A Process of Illumination

During bad times, we get unhappy. Let’s say we wanted to be less unhappy during bad times. We could train ourselves to do it, if we were to use our bad times as opportunities to practice getting better at getting over bad times. The ideal arrangement would be if we had lots of bad times to practice on, so that we could get better even faster.

So, to help us accelerate the process of learning how to handle bad times, we decide to invent a new game. We call it: Bad Times. The purpose of Bad Times is to cause bad times for everyone. The more the better, and the worse the better.

We’d want our game to unleash waves of agony and anger, again and again, on every player. We would call our game a success if it caused depression, oppression, beguilement, defilement. Bad Times would follow us around and cause us grief, by souring our relationships, our disposition, and our grapes. We would design and refine our game to be seductive, and addictive, in multiple ways, so that its snares snag many, many times.

Our game would not be like chess. At chess, whoever plays the best wins. Where’s the agony in that? Our game must be viciously unjust: the better you play, the more exquisite will be your torture. To that end, we will employ a significant randomizing agent. Something like randomly selected pieces of paper with markings on them would work. We would attenuate the luck factor so that it causes the maximum amount of confusion, and delusion, and bad times, and very bad times.

Our game would not be like football or any other game that has teams. A team forms a supportive network that makes losing easier. We’ll have none of that in our game. Not only nobody and I mean nobody shares your pain, they will probably enjoy it.

Mountain climbing is painful, but Bad Times would not be anything like mountain climbing. A mountain climber is so busy at not freezing to death and not falling to death that his pain doesn’t really get a chance to cook properly. Our game would have gaps in the action, plenty of time for steaming, and simmering, and stewing, and boiling, plenty of time to allow the thinking mind to wander off and injure itself, so that we can practice healing it.

Let’s see. What else. Oh, I know. Proximity. We’ll sit in a circle as close as we can get without touching. That way the bad vibes of Bad Times can spread easily and quickly, spraying fertile spores of conflict. And let’s have comfortable chairs that stick to people who are stuck. And we’ll have dealers, ghastly beasts possessing wizardly powers, able to raise the frequency and pungency of the bad times.

What would be at stake? What could we put on the line that would pour on the pain? What could we lose that would amplify the anguish? Pride? Of course there would be that, but loss of pride is not nearly severe enough to do the damage we’re after here. Plus, everyone doesn’t have it, so everyone can’t lose it. We need something that is universally valuable. Something everyone has, and wants more of.

We decide that in our new game, the loser will pay, not only in pride, but also in cash. Money buys time, and food, and choices. Money is time, and food and choices. Money equals food. Food equals life. Money equals life. Broke equals death. In our society wagering money is as close as we can get to betting our lives. With so much at stake, our game is sure to cause desperation, and treachery, and man, this is truly a nasty game we are inventing here.. Do you think we’ll be able to get anybody to play?

We play our new game, and the bad times come, and we remember to follow our breathing. In, and out. In, and out. By doing so, we set aside our thoughts about what went wrong and step away from our thoughts about what might go wrong, and for that moment, when those thoughts are gone, so too is unhappiness. By eliminating the past, and eliminating the future, we give ourselves this present. We will practice this process of elimination, using our new game, and it will become for us a process of illumination. Let us play.

. . . .

In other news, this month is looking good :)

Monster session

I was aiming for 75 games today but only got 65 in. I plan on crushing this week before we head to some hippy madness out past Mt Hood this weekend.

I ran pretty hot tonight. . . but I think that's fair for a change of a pace!

Embarrasing HU session

I've always loved short handed poker though I've shied away from it recently online. Not sure why as I think it's a ton of fun since you get to play a ton of hands.

Last night I tried my hand at it again and felt truly blessed to have a true and complete donk to bash heads with.

In fact it was easy riding for the first hour playing where I busted him over and over again to increase my $100 starting stack to over $550. He was an awful player and at some point he began shoving in preflop over and over again. When someone shoves $110 into your $1 big blind you can afford to fold quite a few times as long as you win when you call.

The first time I called he flipped up 86o which luckily bricked out against my AJ. Several hands later I called him with A5s and he showed up with A7 to take the pot down and finally double up at which point he started playing somewhat more carefully. Perhaps surprisingly the call with A5s was probably not a great idea even though I think he was shoving at least %80 of his hands if not more. Fact is A5s is just a %57.8 favorite over his top %80 of hands (which includes 95o, 34s and up) which is more then enough edge in a vaccum, but for the purposes of this session it increased his stack to a size that could actually be a threat to mine and made for some very uncomfortable situations against this maniac.

The next hand he won I'm still scratching my head over. The problem was that I was busting him over and over again by slow playing my big hands and calling his inevitable shove. This made it really hard for me to make the lay down that I wish I had made here:

***** Hand History for Game 13404208520 ***** (Full Tilt)

$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Wednesday, July 15, 04:50:01 ET 2009

Table Crazy (heads up) (Real Money)

Seat 1 is the button

Seat 1: rrich508 ( $237.20 USD )

Seat 2: J4bberW0cky ( $507.80 USD )

rrich508 posts small blind [$0.50 USD].

J4bberW0cky posts big blind [$1.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to J4bberW0cky [ Jh Jc ]

rrich508 raises [$4.50 USD]

J4bberW0cky raises [$18.00 USD]

rrich508 calls [$14.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Jd, 9h, 9s ]

J4bberW0cky checks

rrich508 checks

** Dealing Turn ** [ Qd ]

J4bberW0cky checks

rrich508 checks

** Dealing River ** [ Qc ]

J4bberW0cky bets [$9.00 USD]

rrich508 raises [$218.20 USD]

J4bberW0cky calls [$209.20 USD]

rrich508 shows [Ac, Qs ]

rrich508 wins $473.90 USD from main pot

J4bberW0cky doesn't show [Jh, Jc ]

Eww is probably the best way to describe it. From there it just got worse as he proceeded to crack every big pair I got. This guy was so aggro I just couldn't find folds in any of these spots.

***** Hand History for Game 13404561680 ***** (Full Tilt)

$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Wednesday, July 15, 05:40:14 ET 2009

Table Crazy (heads up) (Real Money)

Seat 2 is the button

Seat 1: rrich508 ( $683.40 USD )

Seat 2: J4bberW0cky ( $105.00 USD )

J4bberW0cky posts small blind [$0.50 USD].

rrich508 posts big blind [$1.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to J4bberW0cky [ Kd Ks ]

J4bberW0cky raises [$2.50 USD]

rrich508 calls [$2.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 7c, Js, Td ]

rrich508 checks

J4bberW0cky bets [$5.00 USD]

rrich508 raises [$15.00 USD]

J4bberW0cky raises [$28.00 USD]

rrich508 raises [$665.40 USD]

J4bberW0cky calls [$69.00 USD]

rrich508 shows [Ts, 7s ]

J4bberW0cky shows [Kd, Ks ]

rrich508 wins $578.40 USD

** Dealing Turn ** [ 9d ]

** Dealing River ** [ Tc ]

rrich508 wins $209.50 USD from main pot

***** Hand History for Game 13404510542 ***** (Full Tilt)

$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Wednesday, July 15, 05:32:48 ET 2009

Table Crazy (heads up) (Real Money)

Seat 1 is the button

Seat 1: rrich508 ( $667.60 USD )

Seat 2: J4bberW0cky ( $116.70 USD )

rrich508 posts small blind [$0.50 USD].

J4bberW0cky posts big blind [$1.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to J4bberW0cky [ Kc Kd ]

rrich508 raises [$2.50 USD]

J4bberW0cky raises [$9.00 USD]

rrich508 calls [$7.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Qs, 3c, 6s ]

J4bberW0cky bets [$13.00 USD]

rrich508 calls [$13.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ Qc ]

J4bberW0cky checks

rrich508 checks

** Dealing River ** [ Ac ]

J4bberW0cky checks

rrich508 checks

J4bberW0cky shows [Kc, Kd ]

rrich508 shows [6h, Ah ]

rrich508 wins $45.50 USD from main pot

And so on and so on. Looking at HEM I can see right now that I:

Lost $155.55 with AA which I recieved once

Lost $143 with KK which I recieved three times, losing all three!

Lost $333.20 with JJ which I recieved twice, losing both!

Lost only $30 with QQ which I recieved once!

And so on. I think I lost with every pocket pair all said and done and it's just amazing! Maybe that's why I don't play more HU cash online!

Anyway, I'm going to give it another shot sanz beer. I'm really bummed about that because I've been really trying to approach the game in the best, most professional way possible but let my guard down for some reason. The think I hate most about the introduction of booze into my game is the doubt it creates after a loss. As in, was I playing as well as I thought I was? You just don't know until you dig through the hand histories, which can be really painful after a night like that. Considering the hand above with JJ where he runner runnered a bigger boat. . . I have to wonder if the influence of booze isn't painfully obvious. What booze is good at is extending the length and breadth of your emotions. . . and there is just no place in poker for emotion.

Yes.

Had a couple new, good days. I'm feeling very intellectually invigorated at the moment. I'm trying to not be results oriented at all, just that I'm very happy with my life right now. Winning a little money never hurts.

I'm also considering going for this on the percentage plan. It's sort of weird and awesome being staked. . . but you inherit obligations and only keep a fraction of what you would have otherwise.

I had a very interesting job years ago that involved huge packets of cash and doing my best to blend in inside of high stakes asian games in Northern California. This was some years ago. My buddy and I who I did this with wound up clocking many hours taking our wads of cash into the No Limit Holdem games which were just starting to pop up around this time. We crushed. I lost a lot of money for the company I worked for playing Pai Gow Tiles, but I always made money at poker. It can be such a liberating feeling playing staked. . . and playing poker on short money can feel like your soul is in a jail cell.

Staked you can make that "correct" bluff that you wouldn't dare make with your own money, because you can't help but get fixated on the groceries you could buy with that money that you're betting with nothing. . . It can really free up your game. You get to make the moves that you know are correct, but would be hesitant to do with your own money basically.

The other upside for me would be that I could withdraw the money I currently I have on Full Tilt and put it to use in my life. . .perhaps one of the dozen improvements I'd love to do for my poker league, Stumptown Poker. I could also buy some really nice scotch with that money. :)

But, you only keep a piece of your winnings, and with this deal it sounds like it would only be 40% or so. . . . so I better be winning a lot more money than I am now to make it a good idea financially. Can they help me that much? I honestly feel like I can do it on my own and that ultimately it's a losing proposition for me to sell myself at those odds if I'm willing to do a lot of work on my own. But at the same time there are a lot of profitable tournaments I'm not playing because of the variance to my bankroll that playing them would entail. . . so it's an interesting thing to consider, and I might just go for it.

New Plan

Long losing streaks are serious business. If allowed to go unchecked a bad run can take you right out of the game until suddenly you're thinking "Uh oh I need a freaking job again."

Well that's not allowed to happen obviously and to forestall this and get everything back on the right track I am hereby conducting a Life Over-Haul.

For starters I am going to start taking my spiritual practice more seriously. What practice is that you may ask? It's actually exactly whatever I feel like practicing, only I'm going to do MORE of it, specifically incorporating some vissapana meditation, which I will hereby refer to as "Bhavana" which is a more correct term. The word meditation has actually been twisted all over the place over the last 25 centuries and it's lead to quite a few mental roadblocks (for me at least). According to What The Buddha Taught the true meaning of Bhavana is more like "mental development" which, as it suggests, is actually work, not some Alan Watts-esque practice of blissed out free love fantasizing. I love Alan Watts and really appreciate much of his work, but in trying to sell meditation to a Western audience he has given us some really bad impressions about what meditation actually is, and whether that's his fault or my fault, I've never been able to integrate the practice into my life even though it sounds clearly beneficial for me. The books I'm reading now are really going to help me make some positive changes and I'm really excited to see what happens.

There are two other books I can highly reccomend though I have not finished them yet:

Mindfulness in Plain English

Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness

I'm feeling like this work is becoming increasingly crucial to my ability to. . . live, I guess. My roughly 5-6 week losing "streak" has been taking a real toll on me and that toll is revealed by increasing frustration and bitterness at, and away from, the poker table. That is not healthy for my life, bankroll, girlfriend. . . anything.

It wouldn't be a bad rule of thumb if you never ever played poker if you weren't perfectly happy and content inside. Competitive hunger is OK, but ultimately, on some level, you should be having fun. Not just for your games sake, but also for your own personal mental health.

I have been going crazy. Fortunately, I am not a stranger to crazy, so I am able to hang with the vagaries of this job in the long term, but it does behoove me to work to fix up my thinking so that I can operate from as clean and lucid a place as I can.

Some other changes-

I am going to give up marijuana for awhile. I've never been a steady smoker, never even really liked the drug all that much until I moved to Portland at which point it was good, relatively cheap, and seemed. . . appropriate. It's the Pacific Northwest after all. . . get stoned already! With all the hippy fun out here, great food and scenery how could you not be stoned regularly??

Lately however I've been loving it less and less. My memory has never been outstanding and now it has pretty much completely evaporated to the point that I sometimes feel like I'm just drifting in empty space with no past or future. . . . I actually don't think that's all too horrible a feeling to have, but it's not a very productive one for sure, and I've spent enough time there.

Drinking is also a recurring theme in my life. I love drinking. It's expensive as hell, reliably unhealthy and fat inducing, but god I love a good Belgium, a pinot, a glass of good scotch. . . I can seriously wax romantic over my favorite beverages as though they are each a member of my own private Harem. . . a drink for every occasion, and an occasion for every drink!

The problem for me is that I'm such a creature of habit that it's very easy for me to slide into a routine of steady night time drinking. It's entirely possible that I've had at least some alcohol every day for several months now. Many of those days I had quite a healthy portion I can assure you. I'm still far from guzzling Night Train in the back of alleyways. . . I actually really love the process of enjoying a great libation. Anyway, I am feeling strongly right now that I need to not be drinking on more than 2 days a week or so.

One problem is that I'm very indulgent with myself. I never save money because as soon as I have it my life program devolves into deliberate and constant debauchery. If I wake up with a hangover I'll go get sushi for those tasty Omega 3 laden slivers of raw salmon to rescusitate my aching brain. If I'm walking my dogs it's over to Amnesia Brewing on Mississippi. (Their winter specialty brew was a Belgium called Dubbel Whammy that had me going there nearly every day for over a month. Our dogs instintively try to walk in there now when I walk by, which I do more and more lately, because they don't have a beer I really love right now).

Here are some decisions I'm making, to sum up-

Some Bhavana every day.

No marijuana for some, as of yet, unspecified period of time.

Less drinking, smoking tobacco.

More excersize. I bought kettle bells for use on my 5 minute hourly breaks. I will use them more, and also grace the gym with my presence more often.
As always, I am considering yoga as well. For some reason I've been really attracted to the idea of yoga for a long time, but a certain part of me is horrified by all that stretching on command as well and all of the inevitable mindless hippy jargon that seems to follow right behind. I've got nothing against hippy jargon as a rule, but when it gets just straight dumb and new agey I start hating people.

I will also be trying to live more "mindfully." This is a big, complex deal that will require constant work and attention. If anything I think is interesting comes up related to that I'll share it. Part of me is thinking about starting a "Life" blog to contain all of the things "Not-Poker" but until that happens it's going here as long as it's relevant.

I'm still not sure just how strict I'll be with myself and some of these vices, but I am going to commit to Sunday being my holy day to detox. Sundays I will be vegetarian, I will not smoke or drink (tea is still okay. Nobody is taking my fucking tea away!), and I'll take some time to get spiritual, perhaps by attending a meditation group here in SE Portland that's actually reall cool. If you are interested in trying an excellent guided meditation, give this one, Mindfulness of Breathing, a shot. The guy who runs the Portland Insight Meditation Center, Robert Beatty, has really impressed me with his near guru-ness so far.

Peace out.

Brain pudding sloshing in my skull

Poker has been freaking agonizing this month. The blood letting started right before I left for Vegas and it hasn't let up except for a nice win two days ago which was completely wiped out (and then some) tonight.

I'm not really sure what to do. I've been focusing on keeping my head cool and playing the best cards I know how but it's getting very difficult. Luckily I excersize pretty decent bank roll management so I'm still able to play at full steam for now.

For weeks it was that my big hands haven't been holding up. . . that's still happening but with some new flavors of crushing dissapointment creeping in. Lately I've actually been accumulating nice stacks and winning pots early in these tourney only to crash head first into the nuts somewhere around final table time. I'm mostly confident still in my game. . . I think I'm playing well but I need to take a closer look possibly and see what I can tune up. There are all sorts of subtle ways for a winning player to get brow beaten and start playing like shit in some spots in an effort to try and hurry up and win some pots finally.

Sick, gross, boring stuff. I'm hoping I'll be able to turn this blog around soon with some good news, cuz man the bad news is getting really old. . .

First session back online. . .

20 minutes in I've had KKs cracked by JTo and A5o and AA cracked by AKs. . . oh boy.

. . .

About 7 hours later I've wrapped up the night with the dismal news that once again my game was cracked wider than. . . not sure right now, too burnt out, bleh.

In total I played just 23 Sngs (and 2 mtts which won't show up down there in the >12 hours graph). I'm fairly confident I played my A game minus a couple spazz outs. . . maybe that works out to a B game?? Anyway, I was finding lots of spots to accumulate chips and never got it in too bad. In return, I was fisted repeatedly. I did score a 5th in a $69 45 man but it really doesn't feel like much right now, and honestly it's not.

One of the hardest things when things are going bad is to maintain composure, inside and out. Some time ago I noticed that I was really being hard on myself taking everything seriously. I plan on playing tens of thousands of poker tournaments in my life. . . there are tournament players who play that many in 3 months! And the truth is that you're going to lose all but a hand full of those tournaments. Of course it depends on the size of the tourney, but the fact remains that I will spend most of my time losing poker tournaments as long as I continue to play this game! The wins are excellent of course, and make it all more than worthwhile (at least financially), but the fact remains that if I continue to get pissed at losing I'll be spending most of my life angry, bitter, and frustrated. And if that's the case, why the hell am I playing poker?

So I work at trying to have fun while I play poker. Seems so stupid to write that out, but I think that often goes over looked. The fact is it should be an enjoyable game to play, and THAT is why it is awesome to make money playing it. If it's really a dismal heart wrenching grind. . . maybe try a real job, right? Anyway, a stupid trick I play sometimes is to call out my opponents cards and cheer when they hit. I even like to type a hahahahaa into the chat box while laughing maniacally. I feel sort of crazy doing it, but it works. Tonight I didn't do that so much. . . I think I spent a lot of time rubbing my forehead and saying ohmygod and why over and over again.

I'm going to reread Almost There With Success and Failure and call it a night. I think it's an excellent read for just about anybody, and it sort of describes this increasing feeling I have that mastering poker is a truly Zen science.

Username	Games Played	Av. Profit	Av. Stake	Av. ROI	Total Profit	Form	Ability /100	Network	Filter
J4bberW0cky	23	-$24	$29	-89%	-$546	Super Tilt	55	FullTilt	<12hours>
J4bberW0cky	1,211	$6	$25	31%	$7,679	Super Tilt	79	FullTilt
J4bberW0cky	1,018	$9	$26	40%	$8,659	Super Tilt	79	FullTilt	SNG Only

Vegas Recap Part 1

Don't have the stamina to make the blog I oughtta, but here's a rundown for now.

I took 3k to Vegas but only 2.1k of that was earmarked for cash games, and the 2/5 game that I had planned on playing had a $500 buy-in. It was a very optimistic approach which basically banked on some early successes, which I never found due to a variety of factors. The main factor however was that I ran like shit throughout the trip, managing to book one small win early on, a good win a little later which was actually bigger than any of my losses individually. . . but I was basically demoralized and struggling with a drastically reduced bankroll for most of the trip following a total lack of success in the tourneys I played and several pretty fast, big losses at the cash tables.

Like I mentioned before- confidence and morale and bank roll are almost EVERYTHING when it comes to poker, with perhaps bankroll management being the key stone holding it all together. After all, it doesn't matter how you do in one particular session, week, or even month of full time play if your bank roll management is in order as you've planned ahead in such a way so that no matter what happens you won't be taken out of the game over any short term series of events.

When the money starts running out a deep panic sets in. . . money lost hurts a little more, the good, aggressive plays are harder to make (you wanna make a $300 bluff on the river with your LAST $300? Or maybe you'd rather spend it on a buffet, a few drinks, some gas money for home, or even, god forbid, put it back in your bank account and call it a day?)

Some other reasons for failure-

A growing sense of desperation and/or futility from repeated lousy card outcomes. You lose with JJ 1/2 a dozen times in a row until finally you make a bad stand in a lousy spot, refusing to believe. Fact is JJ will lose many times in a row occasionally- it's an incredibly vulnerable hand especially once all 5 cards are out. The chance of the hand going down in flames goes up dramatically as well depending on how many opponents are in the pot with you. This is all to say that it certainly shouldn't come as a surprise when it loses repeatedly in succession, and what the job of the professional is is to treat isolated results as nuetral, mathematical events. The only thing the pro needs to analyze is their play of the hands- ie did you maximize your chance of winning the hand? Did you lose as little money as possible when you were behind? Ultimately your own decision making process is the only thing you have control over yet it is so easy to become convinced that the cards are trying to tell you a story, and that story is that you're a fucking loser! (A quick calculation using poker stove shows that JJ is only a 77% favorite against any 2 cards- this means that if you go all in with JJ from the small blind and the big blind calls without even looking at their cards first they will win on average almost 1/4 times!)

Of course when I say "you," what I am really getting at is the fact that all these destructive, painful, counter productive thoughts were flowing willy nilly through my own sensitive anxiety ridden noggin, and I wound up playing far less poker than I would have liked and so my results are ultimately representative of a much smaller sample than I intended. . . and in any small statistical sample wild swings are possible, and even probable. A large source of anxiety amongst new players stems from a basic lack of understanding of what a significant sample size is to demonstrate your true edge. For instance with online tournaments sample sizes are widely recognized as insignificant until you've played over 1000 tournaments! That's actually quite a lot- can you imagine being a big money loser after 200 tournaments and having that be no solid indication of skill? Especially considering the many hours of play, focus, and dedication that goes into the process of trying to play 200 mtts profitably?

I'll try and edit/add later. I have a few hands I played that I really felt like I learned a lot from, so I'll try and go over them and discuss my mistakes. Today I'm not sure I'll get to the online pokers but this week I plan on putting together a mad session and really making a run for the top of the June leaderboard for the BBP contest I'm in. Wish me luck, I'm eager to make a crushing re entry into the game I know and love best at this point- online mtts and sit and go's where I am able to play a much bigger volume of games for my money and hopefully get into that elusive "long run" a lot faster than I can in live play.