For Sake of Simplicity8

Canada: Trip in Review

2012-02-06T11:24:00.000-08:00

I accomplished my personal goal of earning 50k+ at SNGs for the trip. I had a few bumps and turns on the way, but I got there and that's what counts. I put in 775 hours of playing time which puts my hourly at $66. I don't think I could have expected much more than that playing the games I did. This is especially true considering I put in <20 hours of study time for the whole trip. I'd consider this the equivalent of getting straight A's without doing any homework or studying for exams.

Unfortunately the trip wasn't without its shortcomings. I ran awful at sportsbetting, staking, MTTs, and Razz. All of which are investments I consider to have positive expectations at. My most recent endeavor was taking a shot at playing higher stakes Razz last night. I'm not going to sit here and beat myself up over it. For the most part I've played it safe in my 4 years as a poker professional. A little too safe at times, so I do believe I deserve to be able to take shots at games I feel that I'm profitable at.

This recent descent has me thinking about what's possibly next after poker which is a scary thought. There might not be a scenario where this comes up, but with online poker being non-existent in the US as well as new legislature being talked about in Europe it's definitely a possibility. If that were the case I'm not sure what I would do. I would probably either go back to school or find some job in investing which really is a much bigger gamble than poker is.

I also have to figure out what I'm going to do after my time here in Canada is up. I'm not a person who likes to make plans in advance. I like to be able to go wherever the tide takes me. This is one of the main reasons why I enjoy playing poker for a living. I have the freedom to do what I want, when I want, wherever I want to be.

I planned on writing the majority of this post about my recent shot-take at Razz, but my mind got sidetracked. I don't plan on playing much more poker for the rest of my time here in Canada. I'm going to use my free time to continue investing in new players as well as think about what I would to do with my life.

I'm really glad I came to Canada. You could even say that I wish I could stay here longer. I met some pretty amazing people, which is lot more than I can say about living in Vegas. Everyone here seems to be some cool character out of book. It really has been a surreal experience.

I hope everyone is having an awesome 2012 so far. Best of luck in February!

2011 Year in Review

2012-01-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

I was suppose to do a December Review, but I thought it would be better to converge it with this post. First I would like to go over the goals I set for myself this year:

[ ] Eat healthier, work out more, take better care of myself

It feels like I've failed here. I was eating healthier throughout the year. I eliminated most sugary beverages from my diet and replaced them with water/juice. I have even been cooking more meals for myself. I haven't been exercising much lately though. I probably gained 20-25 pounds on my weight since the start of the year.

[x] Travel to more places

Well I relocated to Canada so I guess that counts as a checkmark. Other than that I haven't really seen any other places which is disappointing. I should have done this with my time off from Black Friday (BF).

[ ] Maintain SNE through October, 1.25M VPPs, 50-100k profit pre-rb

Well I did maintain SNE through October, but I failed on the others. BF did prevent me from completing this goal though.

[ ] Continue staking, 100k profit

Another goal which BF prevented me from achieving. I was scammed an awful lot this year because of BF. I may have even occurred a loss on the year.

[ ] Improve relationships with family and friends

I feel like I have failed on this one as well. I've grown farther apart from some of my friends since moving to Vegas and now to Canada.

2011 was a tale of two different periods for me. Pre-BF and Post-BF:

I started off the year playing $27 to $114 18, 45, 180mans with some 9mans mixed in there. The plan was to make SNE by October 1st while playing games with a higher winrate than what I played last year. Unfortunately I hit a devastating downswing in February which crushed my motivation to grind. Whether it was negative variance and/or bad play I don't remember.

My play drastically decreased in March/April. I even strayed away from the plan and played some $16/9man sets here and there when I felt like playing. Then Black Friday hit and put a stop to my play for 4 and a half months. This was a pretty rough time for me. For a short period the majority of my money was stuck on both PokerStars and Full Tilt. I had also been staking throughout the year and BF caused some of my players to steal money from me. Even guys who had been trustworthy for several months.

I had to cease staking and decided to try and take up live poker for awhile. I played mostly 2/5 (1k max) at Red Rock for a few months. This was definitely a good learning experience for me, but playing live poker for a living felt miserable. The commute, smoky atmosphere, and being around degens all day made it rather depressing. Eventually I decided to move up to Canada at the end of August with 3 other guys so I could continue playing on PokerStars.

September came around and I was ready to play again. I couldn't decide what I wanted to play so I was all over the place playing sessions of 9s, 18s, 45s, 180s, heads up, and even 6max hypers. I finally settled down and decided that I would play mainly 180s with some 45mans in October. This was such a great decision for me as it allowed me to set a routine schedule every day. Structure is definitely a high priority for me as a poker player, without it I would have never put in the volume I did.

I was able to maintain SNE through November, but unfortunately I lost it on December 1st. It's extremely difficult to achieve 50k VPP months with just an average buy-in of $14. I put in 188 hours of playing time in December. I don't feel like going over an audit to find the actual profit for the month, but based off of sharkscope my hourly was around $41.5. For the record I just put the rakeback at a number that accurately showed my overall profit for the year, so each month may be off a little due to receiving different rakeback rates throughout the year.

Anyways, the only goal I cleared in December was hitting the 300k VPP Milestone. I lost a lot of motivation in December. I didn't mind playing, but towards the end of the month my hours decreased since I was waking up later. My attitude towards my play wasn't the greatest. At times I didn't care as much if I played my A game. I'm not sure how much this effected my bottom line, but it's obviously a terrible habit.

Overall 2011 was a huge disappointment for me. I made slightly less profit this year than I did in 2008 (my first year as a professional). If it weren't for the 25k in bonuses I received for achieving SNE last year as well as my sportsbetting profits from January this year would have been horrible. I did learn an awful lot through my struggles though and am a better player because of them. All I can do now is move forward and plan for 2012. I'll have another post with my goals and aspirations soon.

November Review

2011-12-01T16:04:00.000-08:00

Overall I am very satisfied with my results in November. I ran well at 45mans to make up for my 180man winrate decreasing this month. I played 155.1 hours in November giving me an hourly of $75.5 which is about as good as it can get in these games.

I'm not as satisfied with my work ethic. I ended up taking ten days off. Four for Thanksgiving and two for internet problems leaving four extra days off. My hours also dropped off slightly towards the end of the month. I only put in an average of 7.8 hours/day on the days I did play compared to a 8.4 rate last month. I also haven't been studying as much as I should.

I finally lost my Supernova Elite status having only put in <26k VPPs in November. This comes as a bit of a shock to me as I've had the privilege of seeing 6 black stars for such a long time. Not attaining the extra 1.5x FPPs is going hurt my profit a tad as well as make it harder to clear bonuses. I don't have plans of getting it back in 2012. Switching to 180mans has been one of the best poker decisions I've made in my professional career.

Moving forward, I've listed my December goals on the right panel as to not bog down this blog with an endless list of goals. I am expecting to play a short month (25 days) again due to Christmas, but I've increased my goal expectations in hopes that it pushes me harder. I don't plan to change much in Decemeber. I may add more turbo MTTs to my grind after seeing chilindude's pretty graph. Although I'm sure there is some positive variance there and I really dread the thought of MTTs ruining my month.

Good luck in December everyone! Below is a review of my list of goals from November:

[ ] Play at least 160 hours

I came close to this goal, but again I only played 155.1 hours in November.

[ ] Study at least 15 hours

I didn't keep track of my hours, but I would estimate them to be 5-10. I still need to implement studying into my daily routine.

[ ] Earn at least $12,000 profit (including rakeback)

Another close one as I made $11,705 on the month. I am very satisfied with this considering the low hours I played this month.

[x] Improve my game as a player

I believe I have improved over the course of playing, studying, and chatting with other players. There's always room for more improvement though.

[x] Focus more and eliminate distractions

This naturally happened when I decided to lower my tables. I've been doing a good job of not checking results during play as well as not chatting as much.

[x] Become more efficient at using my playing time optimally

I'm not sure how much more I can improve in this area. My current routine is to stop loading 3r/180s about 25 minutes before 45s/180s. Sometimes I end up with a stray table, but that's usually because I busted the rest.

[ ] Wake up earlier to gain an extra hour of playing time

I can't say that I put in a good effort to do this as my hours/day have decreased. This is something I definitely need to work on in December.

[ ] Finish reading "The Mental Game of Poker"

I only read 40 pages this month. I have trouble finding free time to do this, but I'll eventually finish reading the book.

[ ] Write at least 6 blog posts

I failed miserably! Again I have trouble finding free time to do much else besides play poker and relax at night.

Back 2 Basics

2011-11-18T09:44:00.000-08:00

I haven't had much free time to post a new blog. I've been playing 8+ hour days and by the end of my session I don't want anything to do with poker. I'll try to get up a few more blog posts before the end of the month.

I tend to use my time spent at the $16 9mans as a comparison to whatever I'm playing currently. This was my starting point in turning professional and one of my happier times playing poker. When I first started out I was making 11-12% ROI which is ~$2 a game with very little variance. My daily routine was to play sets of 20-24 games and after each session I would review spots in SNG Wiz. I had a really good balance between study and play back then. My only flaw was not putting in enough volume.

Recently I have turned away from playing optimal poker in favor of playing more tables. I'm not exactly sure when the transition started, but I would have to say that my SNE run didn't help. I played as many tables as I could in order to achieve a high VPP/hr rate. My play suffered and I became immune to losing money. This also caused me to develop some bad habits, one of which is the creation of an auto-pilot mode. Having an auto-pilot mode is necessary when playing 35+ tables as there is very little time to decide things. However, sometimes this mode is left on even when I'm down to 25 tables where there is a lot more time for a decision to be made.

Lately I've been playing anywhere between 25-35 tables mixing a couple gametypes together. I'm struggling to find a healthy balance between optimal play and adding more tables to achieve a higher hourly. If I were to keep my tables low I could focus more, achieve a higher ROI, decrease variance, and also increase my improvement as a player. If I were to mass multi-table I could possible achieve a higher hourly in the short term, but at the cost of stunting my growth as a player, lowering my ROI, and increasing variance.

It doesn't help that I only have about 3 months left on my lease here in Canada so the short term weighs heavily on my mind. However, I would like to go back to being a thinking player. I'm going to try to keep my tables low and look for spots where I can improve. The one thing that made playing $16 9mans enjoyable was that I was very comfortable in almost every scenario presented. This isn't the case yet in 180mans, but I hope it becomes so.

For the most part November has gone smoothly. I'm on pace to achieve my hour and profit goals. There hasn't been as much urgency this month as there was in October. I wouldn't say that my motivation has dropped as I still push myself to play every day. I just don't push myself as much. I've been waking up when I want and play for however long I want. I don't mind it too much as I'm well rested and not burnt out.

October Review

2011-11-01T17:26:00.000-07:00

I started a day-to-day blog in the PGC forum on 2p2. If you'd like to read here's the link: Simplicity8: The Poutine Grind

The chart above are my October results taken from a Stars Audit so the numbers should be exact. I played 253 hours on the month which puts my hourly at $52. I'm satisfied with the month, but I know I can do better. I didn't go about things optimally whether it be not playing my A game, being distracted, not loading optimally, and etc. There's lots of room for improvement which makes me feel optimistic moving forward. I'd like to get my hourly closer to $75 if possible.

October was a good step forward from September and I hope to take another step forward in November. I plan on playing less MTTs or possibly getting staked for them. I came to Canada with one goal in mind: build my bank account. While MTTs may offer a higher $/hr the variance involved doesn't accomplish that goal. I also plan on studying more, preferably an hour before each session. There were some days I wasn't confident in my game and just an hour of review could have helped greatly.

There's a 180man competition organized for November, but I don't think I'm going to play since I have to leave Canada by the 22nd. When entering Canada they told me I was only allow me to stay for 3 months. They never mentioned that I wouldn't be allowed to re-enter so hopefully I'll be able to cross back over in a few days. Dealing with that is so ridiculous. I don't see why it has to be so difficult.

Sportsbetting was awful this year. I lost about half my bankroll I set aside for it which happens to be about what I won last year. I'm down to about $300 online and I don't plan on depositing any more. I'll gamble with the $300, but effectively I'm giving up on it until I put in the time to figure out how to be profitable at it.

Now it's time to review my goals for last month:

[xx] Play at least 200 hours (240 hours) - I played 253 hours.
[xx] Play at least 6,000 games (7,500 games) - I played 8,081 games.
[ ] Study at least 20 hours - I don't keep track, but I know it's under 10 hours.
[?] Make at least $15,000 profit including FPPs ($20,000 profit) - I made 13k overall, but for SNG Only I made 16.3k.
[x] Make fewer mistakes/misclicks while playing - I've improved here, but there's more to work on.
[ ] Finish reading "The Mental Game of Poker" - Didn't read a page.

And now new goals for November (based on a short month, red are higher goals):

Play at least 160 hours (200 hours)
Study at least 15 hours (20 hours)
Earn at least $12,000 profit including rakeback ($15,000 profit)
Improve my game as a player
Focus more and eliminate distractions
Become more efficient at using my playing time optimally
Wake up earlier to gain an extra hour of playing time
Finish reading "The Mental Game of Poker"
Write at least 6 (8) blog posts

Staking/Coaching Update

2011-10-26T01:00:00.000-07:00

I've been receiving e-mails from people inquiring about coaching and/or staking from me. I apologize for any e-mails I haven't answered in a timely fashion. Unfortunately with my current situation I am too occupied with playing poker full-time+ to be able to offer coaching services at a reasonable rate.

Also, I would rather not start any new staking arrangements until some stability returns as I am currently playing from Canada and would like to avoid any foreseeable predicaments. The only exceptions would be if I have staked you in the past or if you have a really pretty sharkscope graph.

Coaching and Staking may be available in the future, but for now I must put it on hold.

Mid-Month Review

2011-10-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

These are my results so far this month. They are sharkscope approximations with FPP equity included because when you are SNE you always include rakeback! I cleared the 200k VPP Milestone this month as well for a $1530 bonus (received partial compensation for it during Black Friday). I'm obviously very pleased with my 180man results, but disappointed in the others. My 18man and 45man samples are small, but I feel like I need to keep an eye on them. Their graphs don't look pretty and it could be that I'm not focusing on them as much as 180mans causing my winrate to drop significantly.

I said I was going to limit my MTT buyin to $44, but I've gone over that several times playing up to $215s. It's a struggle to decide if I'd like to limit variance or maiximize profit. It feels like if I pass up a MTT I'm passing up profit, but it pains me to see my SNG profit being lost to high variance games. I'm going to continue to try to lower my average buyin.

My results so far line up with my goals and I also have added some higher goals (in red) to aim for:

Play at least 200 hours (240 hours) - I've played 123 hours so far and am on pace for 238.

Play at least 6,000 games (7,500 games) - On pace for 7,600 games.

Study at least 20 hours - I haven't kept tracked, but I would say I put in about 5 hours.

Make at least $15,000 profit including FPPs ($20,000 profit) - I'm on pace for 13k profit, but going by SNG Only I'm on pace for 19.5k.

Make fewer mistakes/misclicks while playing - I've been working on this, but with all the lag and limited screen space it feels impossible to have a day without a misclick.

Finish reading "The Mental Game of Poker"- I haven't read any pages since the start of the month :(

That's all for now as I need to get my session started. I should have at least a couple more blog posts this month talking about turning 26 and why I feel SNE wasn't worth it for me.

September Review

2011-10-01T00:10:00.000-07:00

Those are my results via Sharkscope (including FPPs). Somehow Sharkscope is off as my cashier is shows me up $6,900 for the month. I ended the month by playing the $30 6max hypers in order to maintain Supernova Elite. Unfortunately I dropped $1,800 in doing so while my redline shows me at a profit of $108. It's really frustrating to have a decent month end with a big losing day. Obviously it shouldn't matter what day it happens on though.

I am really disappointed in how September turned out. I played for a total of 212 hours which puts my hourly at $32.5. I also lost $6,300 at sportsbetting which I'm sure my Dad will voice his concern about. Add in expenses for relocating and I'm pretty close to breakeven. I need to try to look on the bright side though. It's not as bad as it seems when you factor in that I started off on a limited roll, didn't know what I was going to play, and ran bad at sports/hypers. A new month is coming up and with that I have an artificial reset to my results. My goals for October are the following:

Play at least 200 hours
Study at least 20 hours
Make at least $15,000 profit (including FPPs)
Make fewer mistakes/misclicks while playing
Finish reading "The Mental Game of Poker"

I'm sure there's more that I can't think of, but I'll add them in later. I plan on playing mostly 180mans ($35 and lower) with some MTTs ($44 and lower), 45mans ($30 and lower), and 18mans ($30 and lower) when I need to fill in tables. I've been a little frustrated with variance so I'm going to try to stay away from $60 18mans and $109 turbo MTTs even though there is definitely some value there.

On a tangent, SteveD from PokerStars e-mailed me back about my request to extend my Supernova Elite chase until February 15th which would give me a full 9 months like other SNEs are given. He declined and his main reason for doing so is because I could have had that extra time if I relocated earlier in the year. I can see what he's getting at, but man have some compassion for a customer who went out of his way to relocate to another country leaving behind family and friends as well as who earned you thousands upon thousands of revenue. I really appreciate what PokerStars has done in the past for me, but it feels like they are dropping the ball here. I could have even waited to relocate in January and kept my SNE status for the full 9 months, which doesn't make any sense.

Unfortunately with the gametypes I'm choosing to play I estimate that I will only be attaining about 23k VPPs a month. This calculation was done with just 180mans so it may be a tad more. Anyways, this means I will forfeit my SNE status when October is over. I have a lot of pride being one of the few players to have earned SNE so it's going to hurt to see myself get demoted a star (and the badass color!). All in all I feel as if earning SNE wasn't worth it in the end. I'll explain why in my next blog!

PokerStars Dinner

2011-09-25T01:21:00.000-07:00

PokerStars invited me along with my roommate to dinner. Apparently they are doing this in major cities where other players live as my friend in Toronto was invited to one as well. My roommate decided it would be a good idea to e-mail Stars and ask for monetary compensation instead of the dinner, which obviously failed!

Anyways, I got to meet PokerStars Rep Rich Corbin along with four players including sippin_criss himself! I used to idolize sippin when I was first starting out at the 16/9s so it was cool to be able to shake his hand. Table talk tended to revolve around poker which is blah, but what can you expect from a bunch of poker players. The meal itself was delicious! Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures. I definitely need to get in the habit of taking them more often.

As dinner was winding down the guy next to me didn't realize everything was being paid for by Stars. Once he did my roommate easily convinced him to order a $700 bottle of wine with him. The waitress comes over and my roommate puts in the order, in shock she turns to the other guy who is wearing his yoga clothes (white shirt and shorts) and says "are you serious?". The wine gets to the table and Rich hears the bad news. You could tell he wasn't too pleased about it. I have to say that the wine tasted amazing and I generally dislike wine.

As far as poker goes I am up around $6,300 (including fpps) after 165 hours played which is a little disappointing, but not too bad considering I had to start on a limited bankroll while I waited for my wire to clear. I've been bouncing around games having played everything from heads to 180mans and now more recently $30+ 18mans. As always I am struggling to decide which game to focus on. The two apparent choices are to either play 180mans and mass profit or to play higher stake 18mans and rely on VPPs to supplement profit.

My buddy thought it would be a good idea for me to write a pros and cons list so I made one up quickly to help me decide. Basically it looks like I'm choosing between more profit or an easier life. Unfortunately Stars isn't extending my ability to chase Supernova Elite, which might help sway me in favor of 18mans. So yeah, no idea which I'm going to eventually choose, but for now I've been playing 18mans in order to maintain the 5x FPP multiplier which I don't want to risk losing if I do choose to go the high VPP path.

Other than poker, life is going alright. I have to admit going from living alone to living with 3 other guys is quite an adjustment. Grinding with other guys playing is definitely a plus for motivation, but at times it can be distracting and when no one is playing I tend to end my sessions earlier just to see what everyone is up to.

I've been drinking more often which has caused my sleep schedule to be off. I've been staying up late and waking up early which leaves me tired during the day. I am usually forced to take a nap during the day just to recharge. I plan to drink less often and focus more on poker which is the primary reason I'm here. My roommates probably won't like hearing that! I also plan to work on getting a routine set up involving exercising, eating, studying, and playing. We'll see how it goes.

Canada: The Endeavor (tl;dr)

2011-09-08T23:08:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I've updated my blog. I plan on doing more frequent write-ups though. I finally decided to relocate to Canada. The decision came back in late July after discussing it with Greg (gerggar) and Stanski (nineallday00) for months. We decided to relocate to Victoria on August 22nd which we would later regret as September 1st would be the earliest we could move in.

The 22nd came and I was off to the airport. Unfortunately I ended up being late only by a few minutes. I was able to look up another flight on my phone and booked it with the airline. They made me purchase a $1,800 return ticket, fortunately it's refundable. My flight ended up being delayed, which caused me to miss my connecting flight. They told me since I missed my first flight that I would have to pay a $75 standby fee even though I had purchased a new ticket in full!

Anyways, my flight was about 7 hours away and I hadn't gotten any sleep so I decided to stay at a discounted hotel for only 3 hour just to get some rest. I get back to the airport and on the plane. We land a couple hours later. Next comes the fun part, customs! I had been preparing for every little detail of this ordeal, but none of that really mattered.

I walk up to the customs lady who's an average looking white female in her late 20s, so I figured I was running good for a change. She goes through a couple routine questions and gets to the part where I filled out how long I would be staying, 180 days. She says to me "6 months, that's a long time, what will you be doing there for 6 months". This was my first mistake, I was advised to put down 180 days because they were going to stamp me in for however long I wrote down. After a long talk in the back room she finally decided to let me stay for 3 months. I definitely could have handled the situation much better by putting everything on the table instead of dancing around the issue that I was a poker player.

So I pass through customs and head towards baggage claim to pick up my bags. Afterwards I meet Stanski. I've been chatting with Stanski for years online about poker, life, and everything in between, but I have never actually met him in person. It was nice to finally put a face in place of a screen name. We walk down to his car where I meet his friend and future housemate, Jon (jcseelbach).

We rearrange some stuff in the car to get my bags to fit and drive off to our hotel. As we're driving we hear a car honking at us and driving by us to get our attention. A few seconds later I hear a loud bang and see that something had fallen. Apparently we had left a box on top of the car! We get to the hotel and to our room where I meet Greg which completes the group of guys. Everyone seems to get along thus far and I couldn't really ask for a better set of guys. It's nice to not have to worry about a bad housemate.

The next day we go to see this house, which turns out to be the only house we were able to look at. Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket! We drive down to the house and meet the landlord who is this older lady that Stanski and I both think is foxy! The house is amazing and has exactly what we were looking for with the added bonus of an outdoor hot tub, amazing views, a lake right there, and even some deer walking up to our door. We discussed everything with her concerning what we would need for PokerStars. She told us that she had a couple over other interested parties, but we were at the top of her list. She was definitely playing the game with us.

We couldn't get in contact with another house, so we were stuck in a hotel until the landlord made her decision. We found things to keep us busy while we waited such as walking around town, going to restaurants, seeing this amazing park, and of course drinking among other things. I ran pretty good at CCR. I believe I only lost once the whole time I've been here, which shocked me as this had been my only defeat in CCR lifetime.

Finally, we get the okay from the landlord and sign the necessary papers to move in on the 1st which we literally moved in at midnight as we were sick of staying in a hotel. That night I wrote an e-mail to Stars informing them I had relocated and they quickly called me, asked me a few questions, and told me I was on my way to being approved. It took a couple days to get me approved, but I was actually please with how little time it took compared to other stories I've heard.

So here I am in Canada, playing poker!

Main Event Shares

2011-07-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

I'm selling WSOP Main Event shares @ 1.2 markup ($120 for $100). If you're interested please e-mail me @ simplicity318@gmail.com

Private Coaching

2011-07-02T14:57:00.000-07:00

I am lowering my coaching rate from $150/hr to $65/hr. I have a bunch of time available to me and looking to fill up slots quickly. I don't know how long I will be offering the reduced rate so get it while it lasts!

I specialize in 9/18/45/180 man SNGs and offering coaching in a variety of methods some of which being live sweat sessions, hand history reviews, specific hand/spot/situation coaching, and etc. all via voice chat. If you have another coaching method you would be interested in I would willing to personalize our session to meet your needs. I am also offering cheaper option of HH reviews via e-mail. E-mail me for details.

If you are interested in receiving coaching please e-mail me @ simplicity318@gmail.com

The Aftermath

2011-05-28T11:41:00.000-07:00

The day before Black Friday, I went out to meet my buddy Josh and a couple of his roommates at Margaritaville. We had a good time, shared some poker stories, and etc. Afterwards I went to go play poker across the street at Caesar's losing about $200 while gambling around and having some fun. I was so blissfully unaware what would happen the next day on Black Friday.

Every poker player has at some point believed Black Friday was a possibility or even an imminent occurrence. I had even thought about what my backup plan would be several times if online poker ceased to exist. I could move to a different country, I could grind live poker, I could go back to school, and etc. However, I don't think anyone thought it would occur so abruptly. It seemed like there was no warning, but there probably were some subtle hints at the impending doomsday that I shrugged off and overlooked so naively.

Since Black Friday I haven't really been doing much. Initially a group of my poker buddies decided that we would move to the Bahamas. Everyone was 90%+ the first day we talked about it, but we decided to wait to see what would happen with Stars accepting relocation and eventually everyone backed out.

I made a deposit on Carbon Poker to check out what the Merge Network had to offer. I applied for rakeback through tennepenne who graciously sent me cupcakes for doing so. Unfortunately the post office took forever to deliver them, but she went the extra step for me and next day'ed a batch of cookie that were absolutely delicious!

I decided to try grinding out cash games on there since they seemed to be the only viable option in terms of volume. Thus far I haven't done so well and haven't enjoyed playing on Merge so much. I've also tried grinding live several times mostly at 2/5 (1000 max) and again haven't done so well. Both of my sample sizes are small, but there is a big hump I need to get over in terms of patience and discipline. I don't think either Merge or grinding live are going to be viable options for me.

I've lost my sole source of income in poker through playing and staking. Losing the ability to stake players is just as devastating (if not more so) than playing. I had been building a solid business as well as several friendships with my players only to have it all taken away. I am still in the process of receiving all my funds I had tied of in my players. It's no fun spending hours trying to contact everyone to let them know that they owe you money, but unfortunately it's something that has to be done.

Right now, I am pretty miserable. I haven't been doing much with this abundance of free time on my hands. I know I should be treating this time somewhat like a vacation, but it's hard to think of it that way. The only option I see having available to me is to move to Canada to be able to grind on PokerStars again. This option seemed more appealing before they made a billion changes to the SNG lobby and their buy-in, rake, and blind structures which looks to have decreased profitability at low to mid stake games.

I plan on playing in the WSOP this year and signing a 3 month lease which will keep me in Vegas until the end of August. After that I have no idea what I am going to do, like always.

The Stressed Out Update

2011-03-28T01:03:00.000-07:00

That's a pretty crappy picture, my walls are actually white! I finally got my dream setup. Well the computer/monitors at least. I still need to find a nice desk that ties it all together. I do wish the 30" was black like the other 2 20"s, but oh well.

I am satisfied with the computer I bought from CyberPower. As I mentioned in a previous post, there was an overheating problem so I had to send the computer back to get the CPU fan replaced. It was handled very quickly and I received the computer back within a week. It's pretty typical for me to get riled up over something small that goes wrong. The only regret I have is that I wish I upgraded to a 120gb SSD. I didn't realize how much space Windows would take up, but I can always upgrade later down the road.

I haven't been playing much poker at all. I'm only at 11k VPPs for the month. In order to maintain Supernova Elite you need to attain 50k VPPs each month without missing more than one month. So I'll be using my one and only grace month. Right now it's hard for me to stick to a schedule and playing the same games consistently day in and day out. When this happens I become confused about what I should be playing and I tend to become lazy because of that.

Originally the plan was to make SNE off of beatable games such as 18s and 45s. I had a pretty rough start to the year and became discouraged quickly. There's this one guy who I believe had the same goal as me, epitomised. He's crushing 18mans this year while attaining VPPs. His results so far are an inspiration to me. That is something I would like to accomplish throughout the year.

As for whether or not I'll be able to do it, I don't know. I've been spending a lot of time recently on staking. Each day I become more and more of a professional staker than a poker player. That's not a bad thing at all as I enjoy staking for the most part. I feel as if I contribute something to the poker community by providing this service. However, I do want to be a successful poker player and reach my full potential earning power.

All of this has been stressing me out lately. Last year I quintupled what I made in 2008, but I was a much happier person in 2008. I think a lot of it has to do with the fear that poker may not be nearly as profitable as it is today. I don't really have a backup plan so my mindset is that I need to make as much money as possible today to prepare for an uncertain tomorrow.

I also think some of it has to do with a lack of balance in my life. My days are revolved around making money. The first thing I think of when I wake up is that I need to update my spreadsheets and read any business messages I may have received. It's almost like I've forgotten how to relax and have a good time. This is definitely something I need to work on and I need to start taking more time off from work to blow off some steam.

Looking to hire SNG Coaches for Simple Staking

2011-03-26T19:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the lack of updates guys. Life has been somewhat busy and I've taken a break from poker. I should be back soon and I'll have a legitimate blog post for you guys.

I am currently working on redesigning a website, creating a new logo, and establishing a training video library for my players. This is an exciting time for me as a backer and a pretty fun stable to be a part of!

To help expand our training resources, player base, and willingness to accept more entry level players I am looking to hire coaches who specialize in a specific game format. These would include Stars/FTP 9, 18, 45, 90, 180man SNGs as well as other game formats. If you are interested please e-mail a brief application to simplestaking@gmail.com.

Rough Week

2011-03-10T09:38:00.000-08:00

No, not poker wise. I've been doing alright in that department so far despite low volume. It's everything else that seems to be going downhill.

It's a really boring story so I'm just going to give cliffs to everything.

- I purchase a PC from CyberPowerPC paying extra for 1DAY shipping and 1DAY delivery ($150).
- I purchase 2 20" 2007fp monitors from a 3rd party paying $100 extra for 3DAY shipping to get here a day after the PC.
- I used wrong bank information on monitors to pay from a bank with a low balance, but seller assures me that the transaction wouldn't go through. I do a new transaction this time with the correct bank info.
- CyberPowerPC calls me informing the SSD has been backordered and they will downgrade me to 5DAY shipping. They refund me the difference. I can't downgrade my shipping for the monitors.
- CyberPowerPC calls me informing me that the CPU is overheating and they will downgrade me to 5-10DAY shipping to be able to fix it. They didn't refund me the difference.
- The monitor transaction tried to go through, but bounced and I was charged a overdraw fee. I call paypal/bank to make sure this wouldn't happen again and they both assure me it wouldn't.
- I receive the PC and get it all set up to run. I turn it on and within 20 seconds I get an "overclocking failure!" warning and a "CPU temperature overheat" warning before it shuts off.
- I call CyberPowerPC and they tell me to take off overclocking which they will refund me for. I go ahead and do that, but it still overheats.
- They ask me to see if I can see the CPU fan moving. I tell them that I can't even see the fan, but I can feel cool air coming from it. They tell me the CPU fan is failing. So I decide to send back the PC.
- They will only pay for standard shipping so I asked for the refund on the $150 I paid for 1DAY shipping, but they won't refund me.
- Today, I check my old bank account for the balance and see that payment has gone through again and that I was charged another fee. I called in and was told that they payment would keep trying to go through so I decided to pay it off and hopefully be refunded by the seller.

So that's where I stand now. The one thing I hate more than anything (besides sunburns) is being lied to. I still have to ship back the PC today and wait for it to return which will be who knows when. I run so bad when it comes to computers, it's ridiculous. I would have been much better off overpaying for a PC from HP or Dell. Oh well.

I think I am going to continue taking a break from poker until all of this resolves. There's been other minor issues to deal with this week as well and I've become overwhelmed from everything so I'm going to take some time off to enjoy life.

February Review

2011-03-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

2/1/2011 2/28/2011 Rakeback70

February was a disaster! There isn't too much to review as I've complained about my downswing all month in my blog, but I'll go over some quick things. I couldn't win at a single game format and my ROI after 70% rakeback in HEM is -6.66% (maybe it was destined to be).

I played 16 days on the month, 3531 games, and logged in 81.1 hours. Of those 16 days of play I had only 3 winning days. There was a stretch from the 9th until the 23rd (10 days of play) in which I didn't have one winning session. In the past I would have considered 80 hours to be healthy amount of volume, but by my standards today it's lacking. I need to be playing 120-160 hours a month.

I haven't played since the 23rd. I needed another break from poker and to catch up on some staking work. It's extremely hard to find balance in my day to day life. I'm going to try to stick to a schedule of playing 6+ hours a day, reviewing 1+ hours a day, and taking Monday. I find that using a schedule helps me stay focused on using my time efficiently.

My plans for March are to lower my tables, lower my average buyin, and to play primarily $27-$60 18 & 45mans. I may consider adding in some 180mans to gain some more profit. It's really hard to balance attaining VPPs while maintaining profit. I'm currently at 121,328 VPPs so I need about 88k VPPs a month from here on out to achieve SNE again.

Here's to a new month! G'luck everyone!

March Goals

100,000 VPPs
140+ hours of play
20+ hours of review

I failed to mention azntracker's record breaking feat of reaching Supernova Elite in just two months! That is beyond amazing! I always have people telling me about how I am able to achieve what they do in a whole year in just on month. Now add on that azntracker was able to do what I plan to do in a year, in just 2 months!

I've always looked up to him as a player that set a benchmark of what I could possibly achieve, but now he has even surpassed that! There is no way in my mind I would ever be able to come close to achieving something like that. Much props to you sir!

Pull the Trigger

2011-02-27T23:40:00.000-08:00

So I finally pulled the trigger (see what I did there?) tonight and purchased a computer that I have been agonizing over for a while now. Recently my primarily laptop was a recipient of a SMART hard drive failure warning. I was told that SMART was extremely accurate and that I should take immediate measures to backup my data. So I did just that and moved everything to my backup laptop which had been fully replaced by Dell last year due to a bad motherboard or something. As you can tell I find it extremely difficult to find a working computer.

So fed up with my computer troubles I decided to go all out and buy this:

* CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-960 3.20 GHz 8M Intel Smart Cache LGA1366

* MEMORY: 12GB (2GBx6) DDR3/1600MHz Triple Channel Memory Module

* VIDEO: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card
* VIDEO2: NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1GB 16X PCIe Video Card

* HDD: 60GB Corsair Force 60 Gaming MLC Solid State Disk

* HDD2: 2TB (2TBx1) SATA-III 6.0Gb/s 64MB Cache 7200RPM HDD

* OS: Microsoft® Windows® 7 Home Premium (64-bit Edition)

The total for all the computer components came to $2,050 and with some extras, care options, and rush delivery it comes to $2,480. It's a pretty big price to pay and I probably went overboard on a few components, but I just couldn't wait any longer than I already have.

A bought this computer on CyberPowerPC so it probably costs a bit more than if I would have built it myself, but the price I would pay to avoid the hassle of doing so probably outweighs the difference. I have to thank Kyle Million, ebawnix, and WR2 for helping me decide what components to choose.

I currently have a 30" Dell 3008WFP monitor that I use off my laptop so it only has a 1920x1200 resolution. So just having a 2560x1600 resolution is going to be a HUGE step up. I plan to add a couple more 20" monitors in portrait view in the future. I definitely could use the extra screen space.

Feb Update: Disconnect / Record Day

2011-02-20T02:35:00.000-08:00

I just can't seem to catch a break this month. Let me tell you what went down the last couple days since I updated.

So yesterday I wake up early and get ready to start my session for the day. This usually consists of a few things such as preparing a meal, checking my player's rails, updating my staking spreadsheet, and possibly crossing off a couple items from my to do list if I have some extra time. This morning was a little different though. I couldn't find my phone and I always like to have it near me in case of emergencies. I thought it wouldn't be a big deal and started registering.

A few hours into my session I lost internet connection. I thought to myself "no problem, it will be back up in a moment". Well unfortunately it didn't happen and guess what? My backup internet is my phone! Not only couldn't I use it for internet, I couldn't even call someone to unregister me from my games. So I started frantically looking for my phone. It took me awhile, but eventually I found it in a pair of shorts I had worn the previous night. I go to turn it on and saw that there was no battery, ugh!. I go plug it in and try turning it on again, but it needed to be charged up more before it can be turned on, ugh!. Meanwhile I am blinding out of my games as well as still loading games I had registered for ahead of time and blinding out of those as well! Finally I was able to get back online where I decided to unregister from everything and access the damage. I lost ~$2,500 on the day.

So moving on, I was too aggravated from that whole ordeal to go and start another session so I decided to catch up on some things and put in some time reviewing hands. I studied for 3-4 hours which helped me out a lot. I noticed that I was WAY too tight in some spots which is somewhat expected as that naturally occurs when you experience a prolonged downswing.

I also spotted a couple 114s that I sat out through and got back a $228 refund from Stars. However, I feel like I played it wrong by only sending them a couple games instead of waiting to gather and send all of them. They me sent back a response saying that this would be a one time deal thing and they couldn't afford to keep refunding me for batches of games every time I disconnect (which is extremely rare). Hopefully it won't make a difference when I send them the rest.

So the next day (today) I was pretty motivated to start playing again after reviewing the previous day. I was so motivated that it led me to break a few of my personal records (thus the broken record pic lol). Here they are:

Most games played in a day: 506 (no hypers played!)
Most hours played in a day / longest session: 9.6 hours
Most VPPs earned in a day: 11,357.34

I was able to achieve all of this without feeling like I was forcing myself to play. I thought I played well for the most part besides a few poor decisions in a couple MTTs as well as a couple bubble spots. Unfortunately I lost ~$2,600 on the day which extends my losing streak to 9 consecutive days. It's getting beyond sick at this point. In the last 9 days in which I've played I lost ~18k (not including rebuys) in 2075 games with an ROI of -18.3% and an average buyin of $48. HEM shows this as a -342 buyin downswing!

Right now, I feel like the Cleveland Cavaliers (sorry Jesse!). It's hard to be that bad if I tried. It feels like I just can't win no matter what I do. While there may be some variance going on, I don't think a rough stretch like this can be blamed solely on variance. I still need to figure out what to do and how to approach this as well continue to put in some time reviewing hands.

Feb Update: Downswinging :(

2011-02-16T17:53:00.000-08:00

"The knowledge gets the money and the money gets the knowledge."

I heard this quote from David "Viffer" Peat on Poker After Dark after he made a check/call on the river with Ace-High against a small bet from Howard Lederer. The quote felt somewhat fitting to my week, except I haven't gained much knowledge from the money I've lost this week.

Filter: 2/9/2011 2/16/2011 Rakeback70

This week, no wait scratch that. This year has been pretty rough so far. January was okay as I broke even for the month and made a reasonable amount off of rakeback. However, February has been a disaster so far. I'm down over 14k on the month, 12k of which has come in the last week.

I've been really worried about my VPP/hr rate. So yesterday I actually broke my normal routine and decided to do a test trial playing mostly $60-$114 9-18mans like I did last year. I ended up breaking even at them, but unfortunately I lost about 4k at the other games I played. I did get a whopping 1600vpp/hr from my grind yesterday, which is definitely an improvement over the 850ish I normally get.

My motivation for doing the test trial yesterday is that I am worried about maintaining SNE come October 1st. When I put down my goal of getting SNE by October 1st I miscategorized it. It's not just a goal to me, it's a requirement! By failing to reach that mark I am leaving some equity on the table by forfeiting the 5x FPP multiplier until I do achieve SNE.

After discussing my dilemma with some friends and doing some research on it I have decided to stay the course and continue playing mostly $27-$60 18-45mans. Getting SNE by Oct 1st is going to be pretty tight doing this, but I am going to try to put it out of my mind and just grind as much as I can as well as I can. I really have to thank (in no particular order) gangip, BagClip, Glitlr, and simpledude for putting up with all my talk this week about my downswing and what I should be playing.

I feel like a broken record talking about this over and over. I wish I had more to blog about, but nothing too exciting has happened this week.

Feb Update - DONs be gone!

2011-02-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

The Packers made me a nice $3500 on Sunday by beating the Steelers 31-25. Which is funny because I was considering hedging my future on them, but instead I added $1250 more on the spread and $250 on the team total. Other than having a decent bit of money on the line, the Superbowl wasn't too spectacular. It was a pretty good game, but not as great as I expected it to be. I definitely think Aaron Rodgers deserves top 3 quarterback talk after how well he played in the playoffs.

So my sportsbetting will somewhat come to a stop until next CFB/NFL season. I may place some NBA bets here and there during the season and more regularly during the playoffs, but other than that I don't really have an intereste in betting CBB or MLB. Overall my sportsbetting year has been a profitable one, but I don't really know the exactly amount. If I had to guess it would be about 9k, most of which came from the Superbowl which is obviously not the right way to go about things. I'll probably bet CFB/NFL again next year, but mostly just following a handicapper since I can't really put in any time finding soft spots which also isn't the best way to go about things.

Filter: 2/1/2011 2/8/2011 Rakeback72 SNG Only

I made the graph a sky blue since the white always makes my eyes bleed! That's my first week of February. I am satisfied with my volume. I was expecting to get in about 1250 games, but I cut Sunday short because of the Superbowl. Profit wise my year has been disappointing so far before rakeback. Obviously rakeback plays a big role in my profit, but I didn't expect to be a breakeven player. I would be fine with being a breakeven player and earn 130k+ in rakeback from SNE, but there is still some hope for me to be profitable. I do need to start reviewing regularly, which is one of the most undervalued assets to a player.

I am continuing to noticed that my projections for 2011 (which I lowballed) are still going to come short. Right now, it looks like I am on pace for 885k by Oct 1st if I continue the way I'm going. I've been averaging a little over 5k VPPs a day, which means I would I would have to play an extra 13 days to get there. Instead of adding another day to poker (and making it a 6-day work week) I'm going to add another hour to my session in the morning and make it 7 hours long. The thought of adding another playing day to my week is more deterrent than an extra hour each day. This should increase my VPP/day to about 6k and should actually give me about a 25 day cushion.

PokerStars will no longer offer Double or Nothing Sit & Go’s, Effective February 15th, 2011

So PokerStars has finally decided to ax the Double or Nothing format. This was originally evident when they started adding the Fifty50 format slowly into the mix. As a player who doesn't play DONs and plays other SNG formats I love this change. This will hopefully bring more fish and volume to those other formats. Steve also mentions that PokerStars is considering lowering the SNG rake structure. I've heard this before where they mentioned that the rake would be lowered in the first quarter of 2010, but nothing haven't. So this may be a same song, same dance scenario, but hopefully they go through with it.

I personally think that no SNG format should have rake higher than 5%. I did a quick calc that if they halved the current rake structure and I was able to achieve half my VPPs that would put me at the same profit (rakeback wise) than if they were to leave it untouched. I doubt they will halve it though. One thing that comes to mind is that SNE is going to be much tougher for SNG grinders if they lower the rake, but obviously I would prefer lower rake over SNE and it may actually push me to play more to get SNE. I do think that they should have gone about this on Dec 15th of last year and not Feb 15th, so players could have actually prepared for this in 2011.

Well, I need to start my session, so I won't be able to edit or add to this post. I just wanted to get something up before I started today.

January Review / February Goals

2011-02-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

1/1/2011 1/31/2011 Rakeback72

There's my graph for January. It seems to be missing about $700 in profit so I think it may have missed my 2nd place in the 33 euro or something. Anyways, it felt like a pretty swingy month. Thankfully I ran really well at the 36/180s to make me consider it a successful month.

I decided to take off most of January after grinding every day to finish out 2010. It was a well deserved rest. I was still able to achieve the 50k VPP requirement this month doing so with only a couple hours to spare! It's a pretty silly requirement to begin with if you ask me. I believe I earned the right to be Supernova Elite for the hours I put in 2010. Why should it matter when I make my 1,000,000 VPPs? As long as I get them by October 1st, I should be in the clear. I also think the October 1st requirement is silly as well, but whatever. It does motivate me to get SNE by then and to go for the 1.25MM milestone by the end of the year.

For the most part January went as expected. I didn't really have a solid plan to start the month, but eventually came up with one deciding to focus on playing mainly $27+ 18s, 45s, 180s, with a few mtt turbos added to my session each day. My VPP/hr rate has been extremely low thus far at only 740. Compare that to the 1100+ I was achieving in 2010 and you can see my disappointment in it. This is because I've been playing less tables at a time as well as a lower average buy-in.

Back around January 24th I was only at ~25k VPPs and I finished reading this book called "Treat poker like a business". I saw that Kyle Million mentioned this in his blog so I decided to give it a read. I finished it within a couple days, but it really wasn't that great. It seems written for amateur players, which is fine if that's what the author's intended audience was. I didn't enjoy all the bragging and self-ass kissing the author gave himself as well. However, it did motivate me to work on a few things some of which I will put down below so I suppose it was worth the read.

Things to work on for February:

Set a schedule - Whenever I say I need to do something, it never really gets done unless I actually plan for it. I am reserving 10am to 4pm on Wednesday through Sunday for playing poker. I still need to schedule some more things that occur frequently in my day to day life.
Eliminate Distractions - No more chatting on PokerStars, AIM, or Skype. In fact I'm going to keep AIM/Skype off when I'm playing. I would also like to refrain from checking HEM frequently. Ideally, I would like to go a month without knowing my results, but I would settle for by the end of the session. Baby steps!
Exercise and Eat/Drink Healthy - I've started working on this, but not really. All I really drink now is water and Naked Juice (which I don't know how healthy these are, but they sound it). I need to start exercising more and learn more about what I should be eating and taking for supplements.
Simple Staking - I would like to continue to search for new players to add to our team as well as get the website up and running to help out with this. I want to add additional bonuses and incentives for my players to help keep them motivated and satisfied with me as their backer. I would like to put up a few training videos for my players as well as possibly add a coach or two to the staff.

February Goals:

100,000 VPPs
120 hours of playing time
15 hours of personal review

There may be more things I wanted to add to these, but I lost my train of thought. Oh well, I may add them later. G'luck everyone in February.

January Update

2011-01-18T15:12:00.000-08:00

That's my HEM graph so far for all games played in 2011. It's really nice to have HEM accurate for a change. I've stuck to playing mainly $27-$114 18 and 45mans and it's been going alright for the most part. Although I'm running bad (as usual) at the $114/18mans.

My volume is obviously lacking though. During my SNE chase last year I couldn't go a day without playing poker, it just felt weird not to play, but now I can't seem to get in the mood to play. I guess I have a "back against the wall" mentality where I am only motivated to play when I absolutely need to. I've always been a last minute guy whether it be handing in homework, paying bills, renewing my lease, and etc. I'm currently sitting at about 15k VPPs and I plan to reach at least 50k VPPs by the end of the month so I don't waste my one grace month that I want to save in case of an emergency. This means that I'll have to do 120k VPP months the rest of the way in order to reach SNE by October. It's doable, but I better get started soon!

I'm having a pretty good staking month so far. One of my stakes won the $16.50 turbo for about $6.6k with a field of 2800 players. Winning a tournament with that big of a field size is always a great accomplishment and something I wish to achieve someday. I've picked up some more players over this week who I think have good potential. This brings my total to around 15 players, but I would like to get back in the 25-40 range so if you are interested in being staked by me please send me an application.

I've finally decided to pull the trigger and create a brand for my staking business. As you can see I named it Simple Staking. The website is still being put together, but when it's ready you'll be able to view it at simplestaking.com. Right now it just redirects to my private forum, but it should be up soon. I also started a Poker Club for my stakes and I to play in which should be fun.

I've been running pretty hot lately in sportsbetting. I've been following a handicapper who's helped me go 7-1 so far in the NFL Playoffs. I also have all four of my futures left involving the Jets and Packers:

Green Bay Packers to WIN NFC +700 ($250 to win $1750)
Green Bay Packers to WIN SUPER BOWL +1600 ($125 to win $2000)
New York Jets to WIN AFC +1550 ($125 to win $1937.50)
New York Jets to WIN SUPER BOWL +3000 ($60 to win $1800)

It's looking good for at least one of the futures to pull through, but who knows. Stranger things have happened. I do wish I wasn't a nit and put more money down on these, but hindsight is 20/20 and I dislike playing futures anyways. I personally think that the Packers will win it all though.

2011 Plans and Goals

2011-01-08T10:17:00.000-08:00

So I've played just 1 set of $16 9mans in 2011 so far. I didn't know what to play so I just decided to load up what I know and love. Yes, I love playing $16 9mans! It may be the only form of poker I still enjoy. Anyways, my lack of play so far this year is primarily due to being ill prepared for 2011. I was able to plan months in advance for 2010, which isn't the case for 2011. I was so focused on attaining SNE that I wasn't able to thoroughly think out 2011. What have I been doing in the meantime? Just relaxing and taking a break from the grind. I've enjoyed my time off, but now it's time to get back to work. So without further ado I'm going to make some plans up on the whim. Hey, it's better than no plan at all!

What am I going to play? That picture is suppose to depict plans, but anyways this is the big question. I've been telling people that I want to mainly play $38+ 18mans as well as 45mans and if necessary play some $27-$38 9mans, $27 18mans, and $27 45mans. I was also planning on adding some $3.30 rebuy 180mans as well just because they are so juicy. However, I'm just not sure about this. It seems like a hell of a grind. I've calculated it to take 5050 games a month with an average of $4 rake a game in order to attain SNE by October. All I know is that I wanted to take it easy in 2011 while maintaining SNE as well as stay away from what I did last year. I thought if I was able to grind out 500k VPPs in 2.5 months then grinding out 1 million in 9 months should be a cinch, but it looks as if I'm mistaken.

I've also thought about playing some high stake STTs. I've heard that you can make $30-$50k on just the BOP prizes alone. I don't think they would be too much different from $114s as it's still the same game we are playing, just different players. However, all of this is speculation on my part from what I've heard and assume. I think I would have to stick in some 6max games into my sessions and I'm not too fond of that idea. Not to mention the variance I would have to endure played $300+ games is just not something I want to deal with. So playing high stake games doesn't seem attractive to me.

I'm pretty limited on ways I can attain SNE being primarily a SNG player so unless I am able to convert to being a cash player it looks as if I am going to have to stick with Plan A.

How am I going to play it? Again, I definitely don't want to make the same mistakes I did last year and just mass multi-table my way to SNE while losing tens of thousands. I'm going to try and start out by 32 tabling, which is a massive step down from the 48 tabling I was doing in 2010. If I find out that that may be too many tables to play somewhat optimally I wouldn't mind dropping down to even "just" 24 tables (I'm a sucker for multiples of 4). The goal this year is to put myself in a position to make as much money possible while being able to attain SNE in the shortest amount of time.

I'm also planning on studying and reviewing a bunch more this year. In 2010 I barely had any time for reviewing, which is fine because that's what I needed to do in order to achieve SNE. However, this year I want to become a better player, not just a better grinder. To me there is a huge difference in those two labels. A proficient grinder is someone who is able to put in massive amounts of volume in order to earn a substantial amount of income. A great player is someone who is able to play more efficiently than a grinder and is able to make good money without having to put in a massive amount of volume. I would like to strive to become a hybrid of both.

Yeah I know, that's a pretty corny pic, but it does fit my situation of not knowing what to do. I'm not really a big fan of goals or New Year's Resolutions, but I do think they have their place as long as they are achievable and mean something to you. So anyways, here's my list of goals for 2011:

Health - I would like to become healthier by eating right, working out more, and taking better care of myself.
Travel - This is always something I've always wanted to do and silly not to do now that I have the freedom of being able to work whenever I want as well as being financial stable. So I would like to travel to more places and see more things this year whether it be going to poker events or not.
Poker - I would like to attain SNE by October 1st and 1.25 million VPPs by the end of the year. I would also like to make 100k+ from profits before rakeback although I admit this may be shooting for the stars. I think I would be satisfied with 50k in profit before rakeback.
Staking - I would like to continue staking and picking up new clients to work with. I've enjoyed doing this as it sort of feels like I'm actually contributing to the community. It also adds a social aspect to my job that poker usually lacks. I've met some great guys while staking and would like to continue to do so. I would like to shoot for a 100k year in staking, which doesn't seem too unrealistic as I came pretty close last year.
Family/Friends - I would like to continue to improve relationships and friendships that I have with my family and friends. There are times during the year that I became overwhelmed whether it be from poker or just life in general and I sometimes distance myself from people which I end up feeling even more awful about so I would like to change this. I truly do believe that part of the purpose of life is to make the world a better place for those you care about.

Anyways, that's all I can think of for right now. I'm sure there are others that I will be adding to the list as the year goes on.

2010 Results - The year of Supernova Elite

2011-01-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

Filter: Year2010 Rakeback79

Well that's my 2010 sharkscope graph which doesn't include the $7,200 refund I received from PokerStars for the Chinese DON Scandal. It may look pretty ugly, but I was able to make more than I did last year in a tougher environment as well as achieve my one of my ultimate goals as a player, Supernova Elite. So although I am a little disappointed with how my year went, I am still very satisfied at how it ended up.

One of the things that helps with my satisfaction is how well I did with staking. This was my first year staking players and I consider it a successful one. I did have an enormous amount of struggles in the beginning as well as numerous amount of scammers I encountered, but I learned a lot along the way and I'm pretty excited to continue staking and restock my stable in 2011.

Sportsbetting didn't go as well as I thought it would. I tried to learn as much as I could, but I just couldn't figure out how to find enough profitable edges to make it worthwhile enough for me to pursue. I'm sure this will make my father ecstatic as he has always been against me sportsbetting, but supports as a poker player. After awhile I became lazy and stopped keeping records (always a sign of a loser, although my records in poker/staking are pretty awful as well), but it looks as though I won around 15u in CFB.

So that's my 2010 in three short paragraphs. The tl;dr version would go:

Poker - good
Staking - good
Sports - bad

Now I would like to talk about what actually happened during the year.

I am really disappointed in the path I took to achieve Supernova Elite this year. I first set out to get SNE in January by playing $52-$108 DONs. I wasn't too familiar with the game format and I wasn't ready for the toll of how much the grind would actually be. Looking back on it I feel as if I overestimated my ability to maintain a positive ROI as well as to get in the necessary volume while dealing with variance. I got burnt out by mid-February from the volume and not winning as much as I thought I should be so I decided to give up the chase. As it turns out there was a group of Chinese players that were colluding in the games and later in the year PokerStars reimbursed me $7,200 for the damages done to my equity.

So after I quit DONs in mid-February I decided to start playing MTSNGs (45mans and 180mans) where I consider myself to be proficient at. After winning 5k in the beginning of the month I soon after went on a 5k downswing to lose it all back. I was really sick of the swings that came along with the games I was playing as well as the long hours I had to put in to make sessions worthwhile so I decided to come up with a new plan for April.

In April I decided to go back to my bread and butter and just grind 16/9s while I figured out what I wanted to do. I ran about 7% ROI at these with 9% Adjusted ROI in my HEM, which I was pretty satisfied with as I hadn't played 9mans in several months and the games had gotten much tougher than they were in 2008-2009. This is also the time when I started staking players and devoted most of my time to that.

Then on August 4th I received a 200k VPP compensation from PokerStars for the Chinese DON Scandal. I quickly came up with a plan to play $38-$60 9-18mans to make 600k VPPs by the end of the year. I actually ran very well at these games for 10% ROI, but on the flip side I ran like utter shit whenever I decided to take shots at 114s+. By early September I became burnt out again and took the rest of September as well as the first half of October off. Looking back I really have no idea as to why I did this other than that I am pretty lazy.

The actual grind! On October 19th I was able to again motivate myself to resume my Supernova Elite chase for one final try. I was "only" 480k VPPs away and decided to grind the same games and try to do 400 games a day which was about 8-9 hours worth of playing. I actually tried to put up a prop bet to play 10k games in 25 days while earning 5k profit from these games, but for whatever reason I got no action. It actually turned out to be a blessing as I probably would have put 10k down and there is no way I would have been able to make profit on this grind.

In Decemeber I again became a burnt out from playing the long hours so I decided to start adding in 114/9s as well as 220/hypers into my grind to be able to help speed things up and reduce the amount of playing time needed. Again for whatever reason I ran like shit at 114+ SNGs. I lost about 46k in about 20k games during this time, but when filtered down to my main games ($38-$60 9-18mans) I "only" lost 18k in about 15k games. So I feel as if my "laziness" cost me a lot in equity, but at the time I really just wanted to get the chase over with.

I was able to play over 20,000 games, 97% of the days, and average 297.7 games a day during this time. I don't mean to sound arrogant, but I am actually astonished I was able to accomplish this, especially with Thanksgiving and Christmas. Supernova Elite is truly a great achievement to me and is something I am very proud of for accomplishing. I have always thought of it as the top achievement any grinder could possibly have.

I was going to continue to write about the pros and cons of getting SNE as well as my plans in 2011, but this post has already gotten extremely lengthy so they'll just have to wait .. again! Instead I would like to take the time to thank everyone who has helped me out over the years. So here they are in no particular order, I would like to thank:

all my followers on blogspot, twitter, and 2p2. Thanks for spending the time to read my shenanigans. I really appreciate it!
gangip, ixmike, stanski, bhup, and all the guys I talk to on a daily basis for giving me advice, listening to my bitching and moaning about variance, and just being cool guys to talk to.
my girlfriend who I met at the end portion of my chase. It may seem as if a girl may hinder my ability to grind, but she was very helpful as I felt an urgency to play sooner so that I could be able to see her later in the day. She also helped make me forget about the stress and frustration of the constant losing I had to deal with by just being around.
all my past and current stakes. I have had the pleasure of dealing with some awesome guys. I felt bad about how limited my time was with them at times because of my chase.
my family for supporting me as a poker player and understanding the importance of my grind. I wasn't able to fly over for Xmas until the 29th because I was afraid of what the volume might be like post-Xmas which I felt awful about.
Glitlr and BagClip for the extra review time they put in with me as well as being cool guys to talk to. These guys are truly geniuses at SNGs. Their outside the box thought process they implement in their play is absolutely stunning. If you haven't checked out their site (sngprotege.com), although they are technically a competitor of mine.
my DotA crew of Slate, Kwakko, and Jeff. They definitely helped me relieve some stress by letting me tag along and play some "I don't give a shit" DotA.
and everybody else that I left out, there's just too many to name. I wouldn't be where I am without 2p2 and it's posters. The muchacha who helped me with some staking work and is also a good friend. Basically all my friends, you know who you are.

G'luck in 2011 !!!

Supernova Elite !!!

2010-12-28T16:16:00.001-08:00

SNE Update / 2011 Plans

2010-12-11T11:58:00.000-08:00

December has been going alright so far. I can't really complain about practically breaking even over 3,000+ games while playing 40-50 tables at once. If I can manage to keep this up I'll be able to make $61,600 in equity (according to fpppro.com) for December. I played a couple MTTs yesterday. The 33euro which I got 3rd in for about $800. This was a little disappointing since I had a overwhelming chip lead for the majority of the final table until I started losing flip after flip. I also got 15th in the $215 2x for about $950. I ended up losing 99 to AQo for a big CL stack. This one was really disappointing as first felt within reach and was 10k.

I'm currently at 873,722.49 VPPs so that means I need about 126k more to finish the year up. I've self-imposed a pace of 8,000 VPPs a day for December, so I'm about 6k behind schedule. The last few days have felt pretty brutal, but it's nothing really out of the ordinary. It's just demoralizing sometimes when I string together a few losing days. I've mentioned this before, but when I get down I tend to look at sharkscope filters to cheer myself up as well as remind myself how profitable I actually am at this game (after rakeback). However, this time I took a look at a bunch of other regulars as well:

10/19/2010 12/31/2010 Spd=NoSuperTurbos SNG Only

Forgive the color scheme as I rushed making this chart. I wasn't sure if I should post it in the first place, but I figured if I made the regs' names anonymous it would be fine. The data is accessible to anyone with a sharkscope subscription anyways, but if any reg on the chart objects I will remove them no questions asked.

I have become -4.23% at 60/9mans and about -2.43% in SNGs overall since October 19th so I was wondering how other regs were doing. I simply just searched for anyone I played at least 20k hands with from October to December and HEM spit out 15 players including myself. The results are pretty astonishing to me. I think the chart shows how tough games have actually gotten down the stretch.

There are a few things that stand out to me. Player B has played mostly $38-$60 18mans which have a higher attainable ROI. Player F is a beast as shown by his high average buy-in. There is going to be some variance obviously, but with 15 players over that many games I think it gives an accurate picture of what the climate is like today. Although the players that tend to have the highest volume also tend to have lower ROIs due to their decision making abilities being decayed from all that volume.

I also think it's pretty cool that I have the most volume on the chart out of anyone, but to be fair I did pick the exact day I started grinding hard. I'm sure there are a couple players out there that have done more that I just haven't gotten much hands with. Since October 19th I've played 96% of days (4 days off) and have averaged 311 games a day. That is pretty sick!

I was going to write about my plans for 2011 since it's been on my mind a lot lately, but this has already gotten to the point of tl;dr so I'll save for my next post. I put up a couple pics of me over on the bottom right below everything. They are a bit old, about 3 years if I had to guess. They are the only pics I could find of me playing poker, but I thought it would be pretty cool for you guys to have a face behind the name.

Nov Results / Dec Goals

2010-12-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

November was my worst month ever profit-wise in my lifetime. The consistency of losing day after day has really taken a toll on me. However, after FPPs and bonuses are factored in I'm actually up $1629.45 on the month. So it's not as bad as it appears.

November Goals:

10,000 games (8214 games)
250,000 VPPs (191,114 VPPs)
20 hours of the review (just a few hours)

When making my goals for November I didn't factor in the break I would need for Thanksgiving, so I'm not too disappointed with how my volume ended up. Although I am disappointed in my results. I feel like I should be much better than what they show. Sometimes I dwell on them thinking about how I should have been playing better, but dwelling on the past is useless. All I can do from this point forward is to play as optimal as I can and to improve as a player.

Going forward I currently have 197,555 VPPs left. I do have a shot at completing Supernova Elite before Xmas break, but realistically I think I'll be needing to play after the break. Right now, it looks like the bare minimum I can get away with is 7055 VPPs/day, but I'll be looking to play more than this to give myself a cushion.

I've recently began to add in the Sunday Mil hypers to the start and end of my sessions to help boost my vpp/hr rate. I feel pretty comfortable in them as I've played them before in the past, but I am sure that my ICM and game theory needs some brushing up on.

As for goals for December, I have one:

SNE Update / PokerStars Improvements

2010-11-17T09:49:00.000-08:00

November hasn't gone according to plan thus far. I can't seem to make much headway on getting out of this downswing. When I have a solid day of profit the next day is there to drop me back down. With the amount of volume I play I may have to accept being a fpp pro for the duration of the year as the games will only be getting tougher down the stretch. I'm going to keep at it though, there is no way I'm quitting now!

This week's volume hasn't been so great. 300 game days have become more frequent and I only put in 100 games on Sunday which is embarrassing to me. I've been getting these migraines that are really irritating which has slowed me down. My friend suggested that it might be because my contact prescription is outdated causing strain on my eyes and I think she might be right. I'm down to my emergency pairs which are a few years old. My previous eye doctor won't give my prescription to 1-800-contacts so I'll have to get an eye exam. For now though I should be fine wearing glasses.

I've also become increasingly lazy, although it's hard to say that 4k games in two weeks is lazy. My energy has been lacking and I've needed to take naps during the day just to recharge. I bought some B-Complex which Mr. needbeer suggested as well as some 5 hour energy drinks to help keep me from becoming sluggish. Although I'm not sure how safe it is to mix the two.

PokerStars Software Improvements

Stars introduced some amazing improvements to their software last week. I know I am a bit late on this as I'm sure everyone and their mothers have blogged about it, but I'd like to share my thoughts on the updates I am excited about.

Visual Representation of Time to Act
This update feels long overdue. It was really annoying to have lost your timebank in a tournament and not know how much actual time you have left to act causing you to rush decisions. The SNG grinder consensus seems to not enjoy this new feature, but I love it! I don't feel as rushed with decisions when the timebank pops up until I start to see the bar turn red allowing me to take some extra time to analyze the hand.

Tournament Summaries Saved to Hard Drive
You don't know how long I've been waiting for this feature. Countless times I have tried to put together an accurate database of my results and have fallen short because of the time it takes to get these files. This feature also allows me to see an accurate redline (all-in luck adjusted equity) in HEM now that summaries are instantly added to my database.

Filter Improvements
The SNG Filter is a tad more useful. Before I had no idea how to filter out 18mans with allowing both 45mans and 180mans to show up in the lobby. Now you can just use the min/max entrants inputs. I still think this needs some work and some SNGs need retitling (not to mention restructuring). You can also see that they may be working on a new gametype called "Fifty50". It appears as if it will be a DON, but awarding payouts to chip counts as well. This may be an attempt to hinder colluders' equity.

November Goals:

10,000 games (4735 on the month, on pace for ~8900)
250,000 VPPs (113k on the month, on pace for ~212k)
20 hours of the review (0 hours of personal review, but I've been reviewing with my stakes)

@ 724,262 VPPs

SNE Update / Downswing Analysis

2010-11-09T10:14:00.000-08:00

I've been downswinging pretty hard recently, most of which is coming from MTTs and 18mans:

On the left we got 114/18s and on the right 60/18s. I've since decided to stop playing MTTs and 114s again to help limit the variance which will also help me keep my sanity. There isn't really one defining reason as to why I think I'm struggling as of late, but here's a list of what could be contributing factors:

Negative Variance
Greater Reg to Fish ratio from bonus chasers like myself
Newly developed leaks as a result of negative variance
Decay in my decision making as a result of increased daily volume

In times when I become a little disheartened from a downswing I like to look at my past results to help cheer me up, motivate me, and remind me that I'm a profitable poker player:

So yeah, that is my analysis of my situation. I didn't really mean to make this into a sharkscope post, but putting that all down helps me recognize what's going on. I don't want to become one of those -2% grinders who make a living off of VPPs. There's nothing wrong with that, but I believe I have a lot more potential than that.

Anyways, I'm at 675k VPPs right now and on pace to finish by December 21st. I do need to step it up to be able to take some days off for the holidays and have a bigger cushion. I'd like to be finished with SNE before I celebrate Christmas so that I can take off the rest of the year and plan for 2011.

I've been doing okay with my volume this week, getting in 400+ games 5 out 7 days and 300+ on the other two. I think that if I am able to go 6 straight days with 400+ games I will either take the 7th day off or make it a half-day and only have to play 200 games.

November Goals:

10,000 games (2545 on the month, on pace for 9500+)
250,000 VPPs (63.6k on the month, on pace for 240k)
20 hours of the review (0 hours of personal review, but I've been reviewing with my stakes)

Oct Results / Nov Goals

2010-11-04T10:19:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know it's already the 4th and I should have done this post back on the 1st. It's hard to find time in the day to grind 9 hours, keep track of my horses, coach my horses, do reviews for myself, blog, socialize, exercise, and have time to relax. So naturally some things get prioritized and others pushed aside for the day. I actually should be playing right now, but I felt the need to update my blog.

Anyways, it's been an up and down month, but rakeback makes everything prettier! I am actually getting frustrated with how long this breakeven/downswing stretch is lasting. I'm still making a lot of money just from being a small losing player with rakeback, but I would like to be beating these games for a decent clip and I feel as if I have the potential to do so.

I know it's a little late in the month to establish goals, but here are a few I would like to accomplish:

10,000 games
250,000 VPPs
20 hours of review

Short and simple! All of these goals are very doable for a change. I'm usually setting asinine goals that I have no chance at accomplishing. Notice I don't put down any profit as a goal. It's not that I don't think I can make a profit (I certainly do), it's just not something I have control over especially since variance is an extremely influencing force in the games I now play.

I want to give a shoutout to a player who I've had a great deal of respect for over the years playing poker. This dude named "morhpeus". This guy is THE nicest poker player in the world, a rarity among regs. He always makes friendly chat with everyone in his games while multitabling and if you go on to bust him he will continue to rail you to victory! He is a rare specimen and I wish there were more regs like him instead of the tools who berate recreational players. And to all those tools at there, you immediately get put on my spite list!

Anyways, I just wanted to put up a quick update before I started my morning session. If you want to follow my day to day chase you can check out my twoplustwo blog thread. I also created a twitter account. Although I'm not sure how often I'll be updating it.

Good luck in November!

SNE Update / 90% Rakeback?!?

2010-10-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

8/4/2010 12/31/2010 E9-45 S20-80 Spd=T Rakeback90

Being breakeven doesn't look so bad when you add 90% rakeback to it! "But Simplicity8, how do you get 90% rakeback, I thought SNE was only worth 65%?" Well that's an excellent question my friend, let me explain. On August 4th I had 400k VPPs when I started playing these games, so I am only looking at what the last 600k VPPs are worth to me. Here's the breakdown:

Tournies is the packages PokerStars let's you choose. I did the bare minimum using 10k, 10k, and 5k. I didn't include the rake portion of the buyin because I don't consider that part of my equity. The Future FPPs is what really bumps it up. These are the extra FPPs I will gain from being SNE next year instead of just Supernova. The BOP estimate is also very conservative. I expect to make way more off BOP and the freerolls as I still have >18,000 games to play.

There are a couple flaws with my calculations. First, I started playing DONs earlier in the year to attempt achieving SNE and made calculations on my rakeback for the whole year and not just the first 400k VPPs. The only reason I can give is that if I had chosen to not go for SNE from 400k VPPs on I would have given up the 90% rakeback on my remaining 600k VPPs. The second flaw is thinking that Future FPPs are part of my equity now. Again my reasoning is that if I don't go for SNE then this equity will have been lost. Although next year I shouldn't include the $24,000 in my calculations or I will be overestimating my total rakeback.

Anyways, that's today's math lesson! I'm going to cross 600k VPPs today and pick up a juicy $4,400 bonus. I only played 200 games yesterday as I wasn't in the mood to play much. With 64 days left in the year I am going to need to average 6270 VPPs a day or about 285 games a day. My goal is to play 400 games a day, but will expect to see some 300 game days. I'd like to get far enough ahead of the pace so that I can take off enough days to celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. Instead of playing whenever I feel like it I have come up with a schedule that I think will help mindset:

I think having a set schedule will help me keep focused on what I need to accomplish. I do need to work in time for socializing, exercising, and working out. My buddy simpledude puts me at about 15% to achieve SNE and he says that's giving me some credit! I hope to prove him wrong and possibly be done by Mid-December.

SNE Update / New Toy

2010-10-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

10/19/2010 12/31/2010 Rakeback31

I'm back on the horse! It's been a nice couple of days profit wise, but my volume has fallen off a bit. I "only" got in 250 games yesterday and 300 the day before. This is mostly attributed to having my sessions starting later in the day and come night time the volume at my regular games dwindles. I have to play lower stakes and I'm not able to keep up as many tables as I normally would with ease. My motivation to play well and longer sessions drops because of this. The easy solution would just be to play earlier in the day.

I'm still working on improving my overall play. I've gotten better, but I still make some mistakes, misclicks, and spews because of the number of tables I've been playing. I've been eliminating distractions while I am playing most of which being AIM/Skype and my phone being in the same room. I've dropped my table count down to the 33-36 range (was 40 before) to help feel not as rushed with decisions. I also turned off the auto-click timebank hotkey to save some precious seconds for when I do start to use time with meaningless hands during early game. It's helped me feel a lot more relaxed so far which makes longer sessions more bearable.

I've revamped my note taking system to help with game selection for when I am able to. The second column is roi%. The filter I use is <1year $27-$60 9-18mans 100% rakeback. The reason I use 100% rakeback is because you need to know how a player effects your winrate before the rake comes into play. A lot of people don't understand this principle. They often berate a player with a -2% roi inciting that they improve their winrate when in fact they destroy it. The system isn't perfect, but it's better than nothing for now. I think that it is important to have some sort of system in place to help with game selection otherwise you are just registering games in the dark and may play in some games where you are going to lose in the longrun.

I got the droid 2 delivered to me yesterday. I've been talking about getting a new phone for about a year now and finally did it. What sent me over the fence was that there was a storm here in Vegas last week and I stopped a couple of sessions because I wanted to be cautious. I found out that the droid has a hotspot I can use as backup internet so I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. I am absolutely astonished with what this thing can do. Technology is pretty amazing. I've been in the dark ages for a while now with only having purchased two phones in the last 5 years, the last of which being a crappy nokia. This was a much needed upgrade. I can now stay in touch with my players while I am traveling without worrying about where I am going to get internet and when will I next be able to get online.

SNE Pace / Prop Bet

2010-10-25T02:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a pretty swingy week thus far, but I am pretty satisfied with my volume. I don't remember ever playing this many hours in a week before. I resumed my chase on October 19th needing 480635 VPPs to attain SNE. I have since accumulated 48356 VPPs which is 10% of the goal in 8.1% of the time remaining. I'd say that's a pretty good start.

I posted a prop bet on 2p2. If you are too lazy to read it, here are the basics:

- 10,000 games played in 25 days
- Only $27-60 9-18mans allowed to be played
- I must make at least $5,000 profit
- Odds are 3.5 to 1

If you are interested in betting then go ahead and reserve your action in the thread. It's funny how I talk about not wanting to do a prop bet one week and then deciding to post it the next. Hopefully I'll get enough action to get started right away and not have to postpone it until after thanksgiving.

I had another awful week sportsbetting. I am not really affected emotionally from it, I'm just a little annoyed that I keep losing. After the CFB season ends I will probably withdrawl my funds and discontinue betting. It's not because I am losing (although it doesn't help) it's just that with all the time and reading I've been doing I haven't really found a way to be profitable. It seems like I will have to put a lot more time and effort into it before I start to see some positive results which isn't something I am willing to do for now.

Team Online applications have popped up again this year. I was really disappointed that I didn't even bother to send in an application last year. I should have at least gave it a shot. I've been thinking about what would set me apart from the other applicants that PokerStars would be able to market. I have a few ideas so far, but unfortunately I probably shouldn't discuss them here until after I have been chosen.

New Avatar

2010-10-19T08:44:00.000-07:00

I changed my avatar about a month ago to this one. My buddy Gliltr inspired me one night to change it when I was complaining to him about getting 3bet a bunch at the 16/9s. The great thing about this avatar is that it's so true! Spite calling is what I do best, I just can't help myself! It's not even spite calling to me, it's just that I really hate folding hands in general, especially pretty ones. I haven't noticed much of a difference in the regs' shoving/calling ranges, but I don't pay close enough attention to every table to have been able to. My intention isn't to piss off regs, but just to have a little fun with poker. Although it's pretty funny to see them try and spite/pwn me when I'm a nitty shover.

It seems like there has been a large amount of prop bets floating around in twoplustwo lately. I missed out on a couple that I know I should have bet on because I was too slow in preparing the math and having the confidence to bet on it. I've been thinking about doing a prop bet of my own including the games I am currently playing just to have some extra motivation to grind full-time. However, when I thought more about it the money that I would earn just from grinding full-time should be more than enough to motivate me to play. I also still have a shot at SNE if I average about 6.4 hours a day for the rest of year which is worth about ~75k more to me. There's my prop bet. I don't even have to have some extra risk on the side to entice me and more importantly I don't have to lock myself into playing everyday if I don't want to.

8/4/2010 12/31/2010 E9-45 S20-80 Rakeback31 SNG Only

I've hit some variance over the last few sessions which was bound to happen after running insanely hot for 1k games. I had a few nice saves turning a -1k session into -300 and a -1.5k into only a -200 loss. I still need to cut down on some obvious mistakes and misclicks, but I am getting a lot better at it. I am pretty happy with my play overall. I've been catching some unique spots to exploit that I haven't really thought too much about before. Just doing a simple logic exercise of asking myself "why is he doing what he is doing" or "what is he trying to accomplish" has really helped me out a lot.

I finally had a winning week of sportsbetting and staking has been going fairly well. A couple guys had some nice scores and a lot of makeup has been recovered so far this month. My stable was getting low and I was having trouble finding new players to replace the old ones who moved on to better things, but I found a few promising guys this week and have more pending applications that I need to get to.

So the plan is to get back to the SNE grind soon. I'm not sure how possible it will be and I really doubt that I will be successful, but it would be pretty epic if I pull it off. I would put myself at a 9:1 dog, but hopefully by the end of 2010 I can show you guys some black stars! It would mean a lot to me to hold the title of

25

2010-10-13T22:53:00.000-07:00

I got back home yesterday from visiting my parents in California over the weekend. I flew over there to spend some time and celebrate my birthday with them. I can't believe that I am already 25, that is unfathomable to me. I can almost remember being in high school like it was yesterday. 25 feels somewhat like a milestone to me that confirms that I am now in my mid 20's. It doesn't really change how I plan to continue going about my life, but it is a somewhat scary thought of how old I have actually become. One of my greatest fears (besides the obvious death scenarios) in life is becoming old and regretting how I used my time, but I can't really dwell on that too much as I should be just living in the moment.

Anyways, I've been running hotter than the sun lately and I was lucky enough to pull together a $2,000+ profit day today. I feel like I've been doing everything right and playing pretty well despite some obvious mistakes I've made. I do still misclick fold a lot, but the frequency has come down a lot since I started 30-40 tabling. Here's a graph of what I've been playing lately:

8/4/2010 12/31/2010 E9-45 S20-80 Rakeback31 SNG Only

It should be noted that this doesn't include my massive downswing at the 114+ buyins, which I have actually restricted myself from playing with PokerStars' Responsible Gambling feature. It's not that I think I can't beat those games, I just rather focus on $38s-$60s and not worry about the short-term volume at $114s. I'm also considering dropping 45mans (I've already dropped $60/45s) as well to help smooth out some day to day variance.

That's all I really want to post for now. I plan to my updates more often, at least weekly.

October

2010-10-02T03:22:00.000-07:00

I took most of September off just to take a break away from poker. I'm not sure if I really needed a break, but my energy level has been really low causing me to be more lazy than normal. Some days I would plan to play poker, but I just wouldn't get around to doing it. I stayed up one night until like 6am and screwed up my sleep schedule for the rest of the month. I tried not sleeping one and staying up until a normal sleeping time, but that's easier said than done and I passed out around noon. I ordered some "Nature Made" sleeping aids that I saw on TV.

Yeah, I give free plugs in my blog! Hopefully these will help. I've taken melatonin before which worked out, but it seems like my body has built up tolerance for it or something as it doesn't seem to work as well. When I've taken melatonin I've had some pretty crazy dreams too!

I've hit what is probably the biggest downswing of my life despite not playing much. It's not just a poker downswing, but a life downswing involving expenses, sportsbetting, poker, and staking. Nothing is really out of the usual besides taking a degen shot at 100/200 against what appeared to be a reg amounting to a 7k loss. The total downswing amounts to ~26k. I'm not too worked up about. I was pretty pissed about myself for playing razz, but I got over that quickly. 26k doesn't really change my life at all and I'll be fine once I start playing poker again full-time and earning some income.

I started 40-tabling 16/9s when I got back to playing, but after discussing what I should play with a friend and taking a look at my hourly playing those games I decided that it would be foolish not to play $38-$60 9-45mans again as the hourly is significantly higher.

I'm not sure how much I can make out of that graph or how accurately HEM has been tracking games for me, but it does look promising. That's mostly 30-40 tabling as well! Anyways I feel the pill kicking in, here's to a rungood October!

Burnt Out?

2010-09-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

So yeah I've been feeling burnt out lately, but I haven't even played much poker lately. I only remember playing 5 sessions this month. Maybe I just needed a break from poker, but I feel like I've wasted time by not playing. I lost some ambition and money doesn't really motivate me as much as it used to. Don't get me wrong, I want to be richer than I can imagine, but poker is a grind and it feels like I'm wasting time by playing instead of enjoying life. What a dilemma huh? I'm wasting time by playing and not by playing. Hopefully I can figure out a healthy balance.

I've been trying to learn as much as I can about sportsbetting. I've read a couple books and an endless number of threads on some forums. I'm starting to understand more about the math behind certain types of bets and what's +EV and what's not. However, it seems like I'm getting in this too late in the game. I wish I would have gotten into this much sooner as it feels similiar to the poker timeline where pre-UIGEA games were really soft compared to today. If I started playing SNGs in 2010 instead of 2008 I doubt I would have made it as a professional.

I thought I would be able to just find rogue lines and make lots of money that way, but it's hard to find these. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places. I'm up a small amount, but that's mostly attributed to freeplays. I'm obviously being results-oriented on a small sample as usual as I'm sure I can be profitable doing this, but it's not going to be as lucrative as I first thought.

There's not really anything new going on in my life. Obviously football has started so that has been filling most of my time on weekends/nights. I plan to start playing some live cash (mtts really bore me until late-game) just to try and make poker enjoyable again.

Cracked Tooth

2010-08-29T10:53:00.000-07:00

I cracked my tooth the other day on crispy rice at a Thai restaurant. I didn't even notice it until I was done eating. I swiped my tongue over my teeth to make sure there wasn't any food on them and I noticed something sharp on my wisdom tooth. So I thought there was some food in there, but I realized that about half my tooth was broken off! It didn't bleed at all and there was no pain whatsoever, but I guess I should go to the dentist sometime this week.

I haven't played any games in the last few days. I've been playing some DotA (-EV) and my family is in town so I've decided to just put poker on hold for now. I'll plan to start up playing again either today or tomorrow. Nothing else to talk about so just a quick update today.

The Ant Problem

2010-08-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

Thats my $60 and under graph. I chose that graph because it looks pretty and it's what I plan on playing from now on. Add in 114s to the graph and it starts to get ugly! Here are my overall numbers for the chase:

My volume has been really low so far. I just put in sessions here and there whenever I'm in the mood to play. I'm considering just going for 800k and relaxing more during the day. I feel like I can easily do this and it will give me more time to focus on my players as well as sportsbetting. However, the rakeback equivalent between 800k and 1M is >100% and that seems too enticing to pass up. I'm probably going to continuing playing like I have been thus far and if I find myself at 800k before December I'll give SNE a shot as it would be worth the effort for the 35-50k in equity as well as the extra 24k in FPPs if I decide to go for it again next year.

I've had a few problems with staking recently. There's always going to be a few bad apples in the bunch, but there have been a few too many the last couple weeks. I'm not talking about players who are in makeup as I am fine with that and will continue to stake them. I'm talking more about players who are really hard to stay in contact with and even worse those who break agreements. I'm going to try and be a lot more careful in my selections now that I have experienced more than my fair share of problems.

Even though there are always going to be problems, there is a pretty good upside to staking. I've had a few players hit the final tables of multiple MTTs during the week with one of them placing 3rd in the DNG (I'm starting to like that tourney!). My buddy has been running hot on MTT staking as well. It almost feels like some friendly competition as to whose stake will final that day!

Even I was able to run good and win the 33 euro for about 1k in monopoly money! I know it's a pretty small field at only 152 entrants, but I've been running god awful at the 36/180s my entire career so it was nice to finally win a 180man-esque tournament. I made a couple of mistakes on the final table, but besides those I was pretty happy with my play and how I was able to pwn 4 handed like I normally do in a standard STT.

I've had an ant problem this week on 3 separate days. When I first noticed them I thought there were a few rogue ants looking for some food so I decided to clean up my kitchen and throw out a bunch of trash. I get to the door and I see them pouring in. So I did some damage control and killed hundreds of those suckers and stuffed the door with the only thing I had to combat them, isopropyl sheets. This didn't work so well as they kept pouring in, but it was midnight and there was nothing else I could. I wake up the next morning and they are gone, crisis averted or so I thought?

Later that day I go to the kitchen to get a drink and I spot ants again, but this time there was a whole trail of them from my kitchen counters, to the walls around the cabinets, behind the refidgerator, down through another set of cabinets, around more walls, and finally to my door. So I decide to go walk to Walgreens and get some Raid. I start spraying indoors on their trail thinking to myself "well I hope this is safe to do". I was pretty amazed at how it worked immediately and they were gone within seconds.

So I feel like I'm in the clear again. I haven't seen them in a couple days. Again I walk to my kitchen where I had left out a sandwich and there they were again! I thought "oh well I trapped some leftover ants here" and walked back to my desk. I go back to the kitchen again and I see more of them. So I begin looking for a trail and that's exactly what I find except this time they took a whole new route! They were on the ceiling! I'm thinking to myself "damn these fuckers are smart". So I get out the can of Raid and start spraying the trail again, but this time I decide to spray inside my kitchen because I really have had it with them. I even pulled out the refrigerator to spray behind there, creating a few scrapes in the floor that I am sure I'll have to pay for when I move out. With one last straw, I start heavily spraying the cracks in my door which I should have done in the first place. I haven't seen them in a few days so hopefully that's the last of them.

58 tabling?!?

2010-08-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

Those are my results so far for my SNE Chase. I really need to stay away from 100+/9mans. It's obviously some runbad, but the play does seem to get significantly tougher at the $114 level. Other than that I am happy with my results and my play for the most part. I do need to work on cutting out misclicks which usually happen to be folds when I am in a folding rhythm. I've been extremely lazy this week only getting in 2 hour sessions each day and a couple days of not playing at all.

Yesterday I was able to play 3 short sessions which resulted in 283 games played. I had to load non-turbos and $27s during my night session to make sure I would have 30+ games up to keep up my VPP/hr. On one of the tables I noticed someone saying that I was 58 tabling, so I look over at my hjalper display and there it was something like 56 tables with more loading. I didn't realize how fast games were loading and just mass registered them so I wouldn't be bothered doing it later in my session. I didn't time out once, but I did lose ~$1600 on the session. Again that may be runbad since I lost all 4 $200+/9mans, but I don't plan on 58 tabling ever again.

I renewed my apt lease for another 6 months. I'm not too thrilled about staying in Vegas longer especially since it's not WSOP season anymore. I kind of feel trapped here with no where else to go, now that I've committed to paying rent for another 6 months. Hopefully I'll be able to earn a bunch of money during that time and finally purchase a house to live in.

I'm so pumped that football is just around the corner. I already did a fantasy draft with some guys from back home. I'm not too happy with my picks, but its a free draft and I don't really plan to take it too seriously. I just want to have some fun managing a team this year. I am really excited to start sportsbetting again, mainly college football. I'm already getting the relentless calls from sportsbooks asking me to deposit like a fish. My goal this year is to earn a 40u season while maintaining sound bankroll management.

3k profit day!

2010-08-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was officially my biggest profit in SNGs for a day (according to sharkscope). It feels really good to get some breathing room again. I was starting to worry about going on a 10k downswing and possibly having to give up the chase to make sure I have more than enough funds to reload my players. But with this day along with $7400 in bonuses this week, I have plenty of room to sustain a large potential downswing.

I feel really good about my play lately. I'm starting to develop solid reads on some of the regs. There were some really nitty ones that when they shoved I was calling them way too wide so that was an easy leak fix. My volume is still a little low for my liking, but I'm warming myself up.. I was playing hour long sets at 16/9s before the chase so it'll take awhile until I have the stamina to go for longer sessions. I've been playing 4-5 hour days for the most part, but I would like to see this number up to 6-8 hour days. I usually quit when I'm bored, hungry, or just don't want to play poker anymore.

FOOD! I'm starving already, but I just brushed my teeth. I hate when that happens! It's Pizza Hut 50c Wing Wednesday! I get excited about the smallest things, but I love bbq wings and the allure of a discount (no matter how petty it is) gets me excited. Free plug to Pizza Hut, but this has been on my mind since I woke up!

SNE Attempt #3 ?!?!

2010-08-09T11:48:00.001-07:00

I've been putting off making this post for awhile now. I've started writing a couple times and just never finished, but here we go!

I've decided to once again go for SNE. I started the chase on August 4th at around 400k VPPs so I'll need to be doing 120k VPP months (4k VPP days). It's doable and I've averaged 4400 VPPs/day so far with about 1000 VPPs/hour. However, things haven't gone too well so far:

The rakeback is set at 77% (84k/109.1k). This is what the rakeback equivalent would be for starting at 400k VPPs and ending at 1M. While the rakeback is nice, I'd like to also profit some on my own. I've been playing buyins $38-$225 at 9mans all the way up to turbo MTTs. I've been getting crushed at the 114 and 225 9mans so I have decided to take those out of my sessions to lower variance.

I am satisfied with my play so far. I've noticed a couple spew plays, but I can easily take those out of my game. I actually think they may have helped me gain a fish image for regs to call my KK+ spots with wide ranges. I've done reviews daily so far and I hope that keeps up. It's amazing how just an hour of reviewing your game can help you out. I want to thank my buddy BagClip for doing a couple reviews with me. It's helped me out a bunch to see another solid player's perspective on how to play certain spots.

I've been thinking about hiring a personal assistant to help me out with some of my work as well as some day to day things. Staking has been going extremely well, but has started to cut into my poker time. With an assistant it would take away some of the lesser important work while freeing up some time in my day and keeping a personal feel with my players. I planned to start poker today around 10-11 AM and it's now already past noon. So it's definitely something I'm considering. For now I've decided that from now on 9am to 5pm is going to be strictly poker time.

I still haven't signed a new lease on my apartment, but it looks like I'll be staying in Vegas for another 3-6 months. My #1 goal right now is earning enough money to buy a house that I desire. Unfortunately when I look at houses I only like really big ones. This would be fine if I had a need for 4-5 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms, but I obviously don't. I have this vision of a big house with a pool/jacuzzi and basketball court in the backyard. It would also have a really nice office for me to work in, a theatre room to watch movies in, and game setup in the basement like a poker table and pool table etc. I'm pretty far away from being able to afford a house like that so I'll probably be in apartments for a while.

August - 300 game day!

2010-08-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

It wasn't too pretty, but I got there! The big downswing in the beginning was me getting crushed at 27s-114s while playing 16s. I found it hard to recognize all the regs spread through those levels so I decided to just play 16s afterwards.

I was feeling good up to game #220 or so then I just couldn't win for a while. While that's not the biggest downswing I've had at the 16s, it has to be the nastiest. I could never imagine losing 30+ buyins in 53 games.

I plan to again play 200 games a day at the 16/9s. I have a little more optimism about making this goal since I have increased the number of tables I'll be playing, but we'll see at the end of the month.

I read this book awhile ago and wanted to recommend it in my blog, but never got around to it:

While the book rarely talked about poker, I believe I learned alot from it. It has helped me think way outside the box as well as taking into account equity more often in problem solving situations. I would definitely recommend reading it. It was well worth the $25 or whatever it cost.

End of July

2010-07-30T09:45:00.000-07:00

It feels like I have never ran this bad in 16/9s before and I honestly don't really care. The money just seems so meaningless to me. I'm not saying that I'm too good for it, but it just doesn't really matter. I guess it's a good thing in some ways that I've become so desensitized to these stakes that winning or losing doesn't really bother me.

I don't really have a plan in mind for August. I just want to grind something and be successful. I have been really lazy this year and it disgusts me. I need to find a way to get motivated again and put in some volume. My main motivation right now is to buy a house and then put together an office space with a sick computer setup. Something like this which I found on James Atkin's blog:

I have picked up a bunch of new players to stake this month and they have been doing very well. This brings my spirits up since July was a disappointment both volume and result wise. I now have over 20 players on my own (30+ if you count LB horses as well). I am very happy with my selections and feel a bit lucky with how well it's going. I don't plan on picking up many more players in August since I would like to keep the personal feel with my current players.

Lots of Staking, Don Refund, and UB Night

2010-07-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

My volume has died down tremendously and the redline is still kicking my ass. Some things have come up over the past week that have caused my volume to drop severely. One of which was discussing with Peter/Stanski what we were planning on doing with LB Staking. We've decided to keep the group running, but not to take on any new players. I had a little anxiety about discussing it because I didn't want anyone to become upset. It's always hard doing business with friends.

So with LB Staking not taking on new players, this frees me up to sign players on my own which I am excited about. I've spent a lot of my time looking for stakes, reading applications, and discussing details with new players. I am very happy with my new selections and looking forward to more. I've dabbled in a little more MTT staking with my players and have had some success right off the bat. One of my players was lucky enough to win the DNG the first day I started staking him! More like I was lucky enough to sign him the day of winning it!

My gunnars came yesterday so I have completed my transformation from human to a mindless online poker robot. Nah, they are pretty decent for their purpose despite making me look a tad dorky. If you don't know already, they basically protect eyes from being harmed by your monitor. Your eyes tend to get dry while on the computer because you blink a lot less than normal so you're basically staring into a monitor. Do that for a couple hours and you'll get some nasty headaches like me. Hopefully, these will help out. I'm already sensing some benefits from wearing them.

My 2nd installment of the DON Collusion Refund finally came today for ~$4800:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=20351355&postcount=3686

I expected about that much, but it was on the very bottom end of my expectations ($4800-$6000). This brings the total refund amount to ~$7200 (+ ~$400 random refunds). I think I am satisfied with the game equity portion of the reimbursement. Hopefully Stars will do the right thing and reimburse me for the VPP equity part I lost as well. I asked for 200k VPPs and gave them a well thought out explanation as to why I deserve it. Looking back on it, I feel like I should have asked for 300k, but I hate playing the lowball game. If I do get the 200k VPPs I will start planning for another SNE run, which will obviously benefit Stars so another reason to give me the VPPs!

I was looking at other sites to play last night (partly because of this stupid mi_turtle stuff). I decided to deposit on UB and get the $1100 bonus. Yeah, I know what you are thinking; "oh my god, how can you support a site like that!". Anyways, I ended up losing the 1k ("serves you right!) I deposited within an hour or so. I played a couple $381 HU Hypers, got it in pretty good and came out pretty bad. It seems like whenever I don't take something seriously I always end up losing no matter how well I play. Obviously I had very poor bankroll management there, but I consider this a 1k lesson on taking my job more seriously. Cliffs = Less Gamboool, More Grind.

I'm heading back home (well not my actual home, but my hometown area) in a couple days. It's not for the best reasons, but I'll get to see my family again and possibly some old friends. I'm itching to play some basketball.

Week 1, 1000 games, No More Lebron Talk (I hope?)

2010-07-09T11:23:00.000-07:00

So a week has passed and I've gotten in over 1000 games. I'm a tad disappointed with my volume as well as my results. I am pretty confident in my game right and satisfied with how well I've been playing lately. My redline is at 8.0% ROI which gives me some additional confidence that this is just a lengthy bad run.

There are just so many regs in the 16/9s nowadays. Even with some game selection it is impossible to avoid having some sets with 3-5 regs in them. I don't mind when breakeven regs come and hop in my sets because they are idiots and will never change their ways, but when a 8% ROI reg decides to hop in as the 5th reg it baffles me.

I have noticed a drop in volume in how many games run at STTs. With that and the increase in regs out there, it has made me think about adding 6max to my arsenal of games I can play. If I have a greater pool of games to choose from I believe I will be more efficient as a poker player. I've also thought about playing plo8 9mans as regs are able to attain insanely high ROIs at them. However, it would take a lot of learning to become familiar with preflop hand equities as well as postflop. I really enjoy playing 9mans, but we'll see what I end up doing.

PokerStars finally stepped up and delivered compensation for the Chinese DON Collusion that seems fair to me:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=20093072&postcount=3138

I was really disappointed in PokerStars' original offer of ~587k and couldn't believe they would lowball us like that. I've always been loyal to PokerStars and have had the utmost respect for how they handle things, but if they left it at that my view of PokerStars would have been shaken. It does look like they have done the right thing and I hope I'll be satisfied with the refund they send me. It still appears collusion is going on in the DONs so my trust in their security is lacking. I would like to see them get rid of the DON format (as well as KO STTs), but that is more for my selfish reasons. I'm just glad I'm done playing them.

My friend turned me on to this pretty cool post by Bond18:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=20034710&postcount=1

It's pretty TL;DR. It didn't really blow me away or anything, but I enjoyed reading it. Cliffs = Hard Work > Natural Talent.

So Lebron has decided to go to Miami and create the mega trio with Bosh and Wade. Honestly, I was hoping he would go to the Knicks so we would have more parity in the league. You would have Rose/Boozer with the Bulls, James/Stoudemire with the Knicks, Bosh/Wade with the Heat, then the Celtics, and the Magic all competing for the title. That would make for a pretty exciting season. I actually think Chicago would have been a better fit for Lebron with all the role players they have in place. In Miami the trio is going to have to take paycuts to be able to even fill a team and if they do win the championship it will seem tainted to me.

July Goals, Poker, Lebron FA!!!

2010-07-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

Well, July didn't start off how I would have liked it to, but it's no biggie. It feels good playing my first full day of poker (8 hours 200 games) in a long time. I was really frustrated throughout the day mostly because of my mistakes, but also because there were so many regs in my games. It's just impossible to avoid them, but I created a chart to help with game selecting:

I usually just start up a fresh set and let whoever joins join, but if it does get crazy and like 5 regs jump on top of me I'll opt out. I also assume that for every 3 slots available that another 3.5% ROI reg is going to jump on top of me. It obviously isn't a perfect system, but it works out fine.

I only really have 3 goals for July:
1) 6000 games
2) $10,000 profit
3) 10% ROI

These are ludicrous goals as always, but I like to aim high. I have never completed a set of my goals or even just one of my goals, but if I am able to that would just make it even more sweeter. I'm really shooting for a 20k month as I $3,400 and $4,000 bonus that will clear by the end of the month. Hopefully, my stakes can step it up and fill in for the remaining $2,600.

That's really all I have to talk about. G'luck everyone in July!!!

Bahamas, July, No Poker

2010-06-28T05:29:00.000-07:00

Damn it's been awhile since I have actually grinded. To recap everything that's gone, I went to Mass for 9 days to spend some time with my family and got to play ball with some old friends. Then I went to the bahamas for a couple weeks and had a pretty awesome time over there. Then back to Vegas where my dad and brother were in town for the week as my dad planned to play in some WSOP events, so I got to see them again.

So now I need to get back on the grind. I really haven't played much since I grinded DONs going for SNE. Speaking of which, I received a $2400 "ADMIN CREDIT" for the huge collusion scandal. The amount seems like a lot of money, but I am really disappointed with so little compensation. I honestly feel that I am entitled to much more than this. It makes me feel under appreciated as a regular on PokerStars and I wish I could stop playing there, but they are the only site suitable for my needs.

Anyways, I plan on continuing to play the $16 9mans in July and hopefully getting a ton of volume in. I am open to any and all July prop bets whether they be head to head or involve me hitting a profit milestone. My goal for the month will be to hit 10k profit (including 31% rakeback). I always aim so high and miss, but hopefully this time I can get my act together.

My apartment lease ends at the end of August and I have to give notice of my intentions in a couple weeks. I always leave this stuff to the last minute and whenever I do think about it I put it off thinking I'll get back to it. I'll probably end up renewing again, but for how long I don't know. I've thought about moving closer to the strip, but I don't want to deal with the hassle of moving all my stuff to a new place.

I've thought about moving to another city like NYC, Boston, or Chicago, but it would take a lot of time to search for a new apartment and become familiar with the area. Maybe I should just stick to what I've been saying and move to wherever Lebron goes.

I just watched the new episode of Entourage. I'm so glad that show is back. If you haven't seen you don't know what you are missing out on! Shows like that and Cribz really motivate me to play and earn some income. I would like to be able to buy nice things and travel to new places without having to worry about money. I think that's the ultimate freedom you can have.

5000 games

2010-04-27T19:30:00.000-07:00

So I am in the middle of a pretty long breakeven span at the 16/9s and I've been a little disappointed with my play. Usually when I'm feeling a bit down from poker I go look up my results on sharkscope. This usually helps lift my spirits and motivates me to keep grinding. This time however it sort of dampened my morale.

So over my last 5000 games I'm about 6% ROI with a little less than $1/game. While 6% is certainly respectable, for me it's a huge disappointment. I didn't expect to be back in my 12% form or even 10% like my overall results show since I am obviously a bit rusty. However, I thought 8% would be cake as I have gotten a lot better as a player maturing and gaining experience along the way. The 5000 game sample isn't all that recent as I have only gotten in ~1000 games this year, so it may be meaningless to use a gauge for my true ROI.

So I have decided to put in another 5000 game sample at the 16/9s before I go on vacation to be able to help accurately determine my true ROI. Obviously it won't be exact as 5000 games still allows for some variance and game conditions are changing constantly. I will try to keep this sample as clean and unaffected by a multitude of variables as possible by playing the same number of tables (25) throughout the sample, keeping my playing times similiar, and using a general game selecting method.

Luckbox Staking

2010-04-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

It's been a long week. My family was in town earlier this week so I got to have some fun hanging out with them for a few days. Hadn't seen them since New Years so I'm glad they came. I played a 1/2 300max game with my Dad @ Planet Hollywood. The rake was pretty brutal. It was 10% rake with $5max, a $1 jackpot rake (you get $100 if you make quads or better), and the obligatory $1 tip. The game was obviously soft and I'm sure you could profit even with the insane rake, but I was there more for fun and I lost ~$150.

That was my first live experience in awhile. Yeah, I know I live in Vegas, but live poker isn't a priority to me. I plan on playing more live in May/June to get prepared for the WSOP. I plan on taking a couple shots at a few 1k/1.5k events this year.

I haven't really been playing much with my family in town and me focusing on other things. I've been playing 16/9s for the most part as they fit very well into my schedule with them being 1 hour sessions. The hourly isn't horrible either, obviously better than any job I could get my hands on. They are enjoyable for the most part, but losing always sucks whether it be $100 or $10,000.

I've put a lot of money into staking recently so my playing roll has been reduced some. My horses haven't been doing too well lately, but I hope that turns around. A couple buddies and I decided to form a staking group called "Luckbox Staking" where we will pool funds and stake players together. It's a pretty cool idea which allows me to stake a bunch more players than I would on my own roll and it levels out some of the variance.

Sportsbetting has been awful lately. Luckily, I've caught my downswing at a time where I have drastically reduced my unit size since I have allocated a lot of money into staking. I've started betting MLB some, but still need to learn some of the math involved. I'm still a sportsbetting newbie, but I hope to make a decent chunk of income from it this year.

I've been pretty lost in life this year. I'm not sure where I want to be literally and figuratively. With June 1st rolling around I am a little frightened about online poker. Supposedly this new legislation or whatever will only effect deposits and not withdrawls. I don't really have a backup plan when it comes to making a living, but I guess the worst case scenario is that I would go play live. I've been thinking about buying a house in Vegas and possibly living in an apartment in a different country. I kinda wish they would make some regulation to tax our profits and make poker legal again. America, Land of the Fascists.

End of the Quarter

2010-04-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well that's my 45-180man graph for March. What goes up must come down I suppose. It's been a really disappointing year for me thus far. I originally started out playing DONS trying to go for SNE and have since switched to MTT SNGS. I have doubts everyday about what I should be playing, but for April I am going to pick something and lock it down.

I am a pretty greedy person, always calculating where I'll make the most money if I play optimally. Right now I am trying to decide between Stars SNGs and FTP SNGs. It appears I could make a lot more on FTP than on Stars. However, I don't like FTP's software and hotkey functionality. Their support is certainly inferior to Stars too. I also think that I may have cashout problems in the future with them as I have heard about numerous delays with their checks.

I've started staking players heavily the past couple weeks. I should have gotten into this a long time ago, but it takes a lot of work to get deals done and track horses properly. Hopefully, this will add a good chunk of income that I could certainly use this year. I also plan on starting coaching soon. I'm going to take it slow and only book a couple of students a week as I want to focus on playing poker myself.

Sportsbetting has been going well and I now have officially made more money betting sports in my free time than I have grinding poker. I still have a lot of work to do to get better. I've been lazy and just flat betting the last couple of weeks. I still need to get more money on books.

Life has been alright despite struggling with poker this year. I've noticed some unhealthy patterns and have been trying to fix them. I have been eating/drinking a lot healthier than in the past and have started exercising more. I still need to work on my sleep schedule as it's pretty sporadic. I want to use my time much more efficiently whether it be for business or pleasure.

As for April Goals, I don't really have any. I just want to use the time I have available as efficient as possible. I plan to put in a lot of volume this month and to do some studying as well. I still haven't decided where/what to play, but that will happen in the next few hours and when it does I'm sticking to it.

Big Fonts

2010-03-30T13:27:00.001-07:00

Lazy Wednesday

2010-03-24T11:56:00.000-07:00

Well that's my March so far. It' getting pretty gross. To combat variance I've decided to drop playing 60/45s and 36/180s until I am super confident about my game again.

It's a shame since I seem to crush them. Obviously there is some variance involved as 22% is no where near possible for 38-60/45s. I'm not sure why I am so low at the 27s. Again, there is going to be variance involved until I hit 3-5k games. It's just really weird. So I'm going to be playing 27-38/45s now as well as 12/180s. I will probably have to add in a bunch of 12/45s to fill in my set.

I've only bet 3 NBA games since last week, which netted me $500. I've decided to get back into staking and coaching. I want to be more connected in the poker community if that makes any sense. It's been slow going so far, but hopefully it picks up pace soon.

I've been eating/drinking a lot healthier over the past couple weeks. I found out that I'm pretty addicted to sugar and that it may effect my mood. I used to drink about 4 20oz bottles of Vitamin Water/Sobe Lifewater a day and those are packed with sugar. I've been drinking just water now and some NakedJuice, but the lack of sugar makes me crave a popsicle every 2 hours.

My life has become pretty unbalanced and it feels like I am a workaholic which is the opposite of what a poker player should be. Don't get me wrong, I am still a lazy person as just doing simple chores like laundry (which is actually in my unit) gets put off. I am even thinking about poker when I'm going to sleep which is definitely a sign that things need to change. I've decided to go out a bunch more during the day since I hardly get to see sunlight nowadays only going out at night/weekends. I also want to start exercising a bunch more and have done so a little going on 3 mile walks, if you call that exercise, when it got warmer (yes, Vegas gets cold!).

Mid March Review

2010-03-14T22:51:00.001-07:00

Well I finally got back to playing poker semi-routinely. I've been putting in half days work of mttsngs for a little over a week. I hit a major heater and made about 7k on 850 games this week.

I've been mostly playing Stars 45s and 180s. I've been trying to mix in FTP, but I keep failing to do so. There is a lot of value in their 45s/90s, but it's extremely hard to put in volumes since the structure is so slow. I might just give up trying to mix in FTP and put in more volume at Stars.

I bought a new 30" this week and have been enjoying. It's given me more motivation to grind and now makes this 18" laptop look pretty dinky. So I'd say that the purchase was well worth it. I've been playing with TOI and a 3x2 setup with an additional overlapping row on the bottom. I'm still on 1920x1200 as the adapter that I was told would be able to get 2560x1600 resolution doesn't and my only option really is a dvi connection.

Sportsbetting NBA has been somewhat swingy and I'm considering slowing down before playoffs. The only place I currently bet at is 2p2 high stakes forum and min bets there are $500 so it's a little more than I want to invest each game. The low stakes forum is hard to deal with and for the most part I've found that it isn't worth taking time out of my to try to book bets there. I don't really have much planned for betting on March Madness, which is disappointing, but it'll still be fun to relax and watch the games.

That's really it for this blog, same boring stuff. I hope to up my volume and be able to play close to 200 games a day (8 hours) on Stars. I need to work on not making moves and calling light in some obvious spots. I feel like I gave up a lot of equity in tournies this week, but it's still been a pretty good week. I've been gettign an insane amount of 2nds in heads up which is gross. Could have easily been a 10k week if I ran 50/50 heads up, but I'm not going to complain about a 7k week.

Beginning of March

2010-03-03T22:35:00.000-08:00

Well, it's a few days into March and I missed posting my February review. I basically took off the second half of February to think over things. I think (lacking confidence obviously) I have decided to play MT sngs, mainly focusing on 12+/45s. Hopefully I can stick to them. Lately I have no motivation to play. Even when I was losing while playing DONs I had some urge to play seeing my VPPs going up. Now just plain old profit doesn't excite me for some reason, especially when there is none on a session.

I still consider myself somewhat lost, but I hope to figure it as soon as possible so I can end this lazy streak. My profit on the year is awful, but at least sportsbetting is showing some promise. Below is my breakdown of the year:

It's been a long week off..

2010-02-25T04:56:00.001-08:00

I've just received my third collusion credit within 4 days and I haven't played a single DON this week. That makes my 6th credit of ~7000 games. It doesn't look that bad to have 12 players colluding once every 1k games, but you know there is more than that going on. I always knew there was collusion in these games, but seeing it confirmed this often is scary. It's hard to beat regs/rake alone without having to deal with collusion.

I am in the midst of a 10k+ downswing and have been seriously rethinking what I want to play for a living. My head has been bouncing between 104/dons and 16/9s for the last week, which is partly why I haven't played.

There are so many forms of poker to make a decent living at that it makes it a little bit overwhelming to choose. Without going into full detail there is PLO Cash, NLH Cash, LHE Cash, MTTs, MTTSNGs, STTs, DONs, and I have recently been looking into MTT satellite grinding. My gut tells me to go with what I know and build upon that, but there really isn't that high of a ceilling in STTs. If you make 100k you are the elite of the elite, but that's not true in other forms.

Poker has a sick way of always making you want more. Unless you win the maximum amount possible you can never really be satisfied. I see these guys winning 100k-1M MTTs or having a 300k year at cash and a part of me wants that. It's not really for the money, but for the freedom that comes along with it. The ability to ride out 200bi downswings or play a bunch of 5k+ live events without having to sweat it.

I'm not really sure where I see myself ending up. If I say one way or another I see myself switching just as fast. What I do know is that I want to stick to one area of poker and master it. The faster I am able to figure this out the better.

I have been doing a lot of research on sportsbetting lately and I still feel so lost. I am no where near close to understanding how to build a database/system/model to successfully handicap. I've learned about finding mathematical edges in different lines and how to properly use kelly betting, but it seems like it's a rarity to find such edges just by lineshopping.

End of Week 2 - Review

2010-02-15T11:57:00.001-08:00

The above graph is just my DONs from February. After my recent downswing I decided to 20-table for awhile. So far this month/year have been a disappointment. I didn't think I would have this much trouble being a winning player. My DON graph definitely doesn't look like one of a winning player.

I've lost a lot of money in MTTs/SNGs and I don't like it cutting into my profits. I hate sounding redundant, but I really need to cut MTTs out of my play or at least significantly reduce my avg buyin. I am on a 200+ buyin downswing in them and I lack the discipline to play optimally in them. I'll probably play the Sunday 4 Million since I can't turn down a shot at a million dollar first place for only $215.

I still feel like I am learning a lot so there is room for me to become a consistent winning player. I've been using TOI recently and I kinda like it. It does make my tables smaller than I would normally like to have them, but the extra attention on postflop has helped. I've been thinking about buying a 30" monitor for awhile and might do so later this week.

I really need to step up my volume. I have yet to have a constant sleep schedule alternating from waking up at 8:30 to 11-2:00. Things to talk about are decreasing so I'm going to start posting bi-monthly as well as posts in between when I feel the need.

Mid-Week Rant

2010-02-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

Simplicity8 562 -$12 $98 -13% -$6,820 Super Tilt N/A PokerStars 2/8/2010 2/11/2010 x

It hasn't been a good week so far and last night it really got to me. I was in a state of bewilderment not only with my play, but if I should continue the path I'm on. After some discussion with friends of varying opinions and some consideration of my own I decided to lower my tables considerably.

It is obvious that the goal of SNE+ got into my head when I made it clear to myself to start 2010 that shouldn't be the main goal. For now I am going to step back and 16-table for two 4 hour sessions daily and take it from there. I haven't been studying much at all so far this year and I still feel lost in many spots during play. So I am going to try to make a better effort to study and get better before I add more tables. I will also try to post on 2p2 don threads.

I am "only" down $5120 from dons this week, the rest coming from MTTs, 60/9mans, and a couple hypers. I'm not sure if I want to cut out MTTs completely, but I would like to stay focused on the 104 dons. I will also be making an effort to not have AIM up, not browse 2p2, and to not check HEM/cashier during my session. Anything that distracts me from focusing is obviously -EV.

Theses swings should be expected, but I am so far from being a solid player at these games. I haven't really had a strong routine in awhile, maybe not since playing 16/9s in 2008. So I am going to get a daily schedule going that I can stick to.

So just a bunch of thoughts I had from last night until now written in a random order. Here's my lifetime 104 graph to tie it all together:

End of Week 1 - Review

2010-02-07T20:38:00.001-08:00

Played some STTs this week to help bolster my VPP/hr, so the graph above includes them. I put in low volume during the week with only 764 games and 23 hours played. Part of the reason for this is that I've been loading 104s by themselves instead of with other DONs, which has cut down on my MT ratio a lot. I did try a couple sessions with STTs when not many 104s were being loaded, but I wasn't able to balance my sets correctly ended up finishing them early.

I took off Saturday and Sunday this week. After the Quarterly Freeroll I was pretty frustrated with my play that soured the whole day for me so I felt like a break was much needed. I tend to make stupid choices even though in my gut I know they are wrong. It's hard for me to stop my thinking process (which I call "I don't give a fuck" mode) in time for me to not click the blatantly wrong button. I realize dwelling on mistakes is counter-productive since all I have control over is the decisions I make in the future. I have made strides in correcting this as I have become less fearful over folding the best hand at times, but I still need to improve in this area.

I'm pretty pumped about the Saints just winning the superbowl. I made a lot of money off the game and it almost feels deserved after the brutal Vikings loss two weeks ago. I lost a small amount betting on props, but they are mostly for fun anyways so I'm not going to sweat it. Now that the superbowl is over there isn't much for me to bet on. I may get into NBA/NHL, but I am much more familiar with betting on football.

There isn't really much else to blog about this week. I hope to continue to improve in DONs and perhaps get back into playing some STTs to help increase my volume. I wasn't sure if I should start from scratch on my spreadsheet each month or keep a running total, but I decided to do the latter and possibly do a separate one for the end of the month.

End of January - Review

2010-02-01T12:10:00.001-08:00

So January is over and I am a tad bit disappointed with my volume towards the second half of the month. I finally recovered from my previous downswing running good along the way, but I am currently working on another one. Overall I am satisfied with the develop of my play over the course of the month. Looking back on the start of the year makes me astonished at how little I knew about DONs.

I ended up overall for the month in DONs and at the 104s I was able to achieve 1.3% roi over the course of 3800+ games. However, I am getting crushed at every other level.

I suppose this could be attributed to variance (small sample sizes), an increased multi-table ratio, not recognizing/predicting other regs properly, or to a lesser care for lower stakes. Don't really think the third is relevant as I tend not to notice the buy-in. I do think that the non-turbo rake of 8% is a huge hurdle to overcome no matter how soft the games are. It really confuses me why normal STTs have similiar rake % at non-turbos and turbos (9/105 = 8.6% vs. 9/100 = 9%) when DONs are just doubled. Makes me wonder if PokerStars actually thinks these things through.

I am pleased with how January turned out as a sum. I had the third best month of my career profit-wise, but it was a frustrating one. I am well on pace with 105,277.98 VPPs and have exceeded last year's try at SNE. I am still looking at 1.5MM as my yearly VPP goal, but will be balancing volume with profitability.

Goals for February are:

~ 5,000 games played
~ 100,000 VPPs
~ Control my emotions better
~ Find some joy in poker
~ Play very little to no MTTs

My apartment lease ends at the end of February and it took me all of January to decide to renew again. I couldn't find a reason to move elsewhere so I thought it would be best to stay here and not go through all the trouble of moving again. At worst I'll just move somewhere else if I want to and have two apartment leases, which wouldn't be as bad as it sounds.

End of Week 3 - Review

2010-01-23T18:09:00.000-08:00

So again that's my DON graph. I am still recovering from my downswing, but I seem to be getting the hang of things. I actually feel like I am a winning player at them, but that may be the effects of actually seeing profit.

I have found myself changing my pre-session routine alot throughout 2010. Whether it be a change in tables (I have played sessions anywhere between 8-36 tabling this year) or my table layout which I recently switched from my vertical cascades to a stacking technique. I have even cut out non-turbos from my sessions recently since I haven't been doing well in them and at times I consider only playing 104s as opposed to adding 52s to higher my games/hr.

As of right now I have 82,456 VPPs. I've slowed down pace as I have taken a couple days off this week. I also haven't been playing as many tables as last week (36). I changed to stacking and for some reason that actually slows down my decision making so I have set my maximum number of tables to 30. I am enjoying the switch though. I feel like I can focus more on individual tables that I pull out of the stack come bubble time.

I am still down on the year overall at DONs, but I am actually +0.7% at 104s which feels good. I have cleared a $1500 bonus (which I bought because of the January Sale) and I'm currently working on clearing a $4000 bonus which will help with my monthly profit.

Sportsbetting is going fine. Not too much action since I currently only bet football and we've only got a few games going each week. Got some money riding on the Vikings tomorrow as well as to win the Superbowl.

Going to be looking to finish out January strong. Goals for next week will be to continue improving at DONs and to focus more on what the regulars are trying to accomplish with their raises. I want to put in some pretty good volume next week and possibly get on SteveD's coveted VPP list. That's it for now.

End of Week 2 - Review

2010-01-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

There's my DON graph for the year. The blue line in the graph is just my Supernova FPPs, which is 30.8% (5.5*3.5*0.016). I figured I'd add that since it's likely that most of my profits will come from some form of rakeback.

HEM has me as a -0.9% roi player, which I think is a fair assessment as 3,000 games is a decent sized sample for DONs and I don't quite feel like a winning player yet. Probably wasn't such a great idea to jump straight into the highest buyin level of DONs, but I'm here. I have studied some more this week and feel pretty confident in my bubble play now. Been working more on 7-handed play as well. I feel a lot of my growth as a DON player will come from experience.

I spent a few days of 36 tabling and it may seem as a result of it I had that nasty 91bi downswing in the middle of my graph. I think bad play, variance, and slight tilt all played factors in the downswing. Since then I dropped down to 30 tables and my graph has seen a slight upward trend, but that's only 700 games and can be attributed to variance as well. 30 tabling seems so much slower than 36 table and I am pretty comfortable at it so I will continue to do so for this week.

I'm at 62,254.50 VPPs for the year, which is ~50% above pace for SNE. I really feel naive going for VPPs right now, but for some reason it feels right. At a -1% roi pace to 1.5M VPPs I would lose ~$71,000, but will gain ~$164,000 from the VIP program for a net total of ~$93,000. I really hope I can 1-2% these, but if I at least breakeven it wouldn't be the end of the world.

My plan for next week is to continue to put in volume while 30 tabling and to see if I'm a dumbass for going for VPPs as opposed to straight profit.

End of Week 1 - Review

2010-01-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

So the first week of 2010 is over already and as you can see above I didn't fair too well to end the week. Although it could just be standard variance, it seems like I have a lot more to learn at the DONs. I feel like I still have a lot of glaring leaks to plug up. I may also be playing too many tables as I set my limit at 34, but towards the end of the week I dropped that to around 24. I feel like I can play 26-28 pretty comfortably, but I may step back and play 16-20 to try and learn some new things.

Other than the actual results, the week wasn't that bad. I earned 27,065.50 VPPs along the way. Which is about 25% ahead of the SNE pace. It's pretty easy to put in 5,000 VPP days, but again I may drop down in tables to focus more. I may also start playing some other sngs to mix things up. I feel like I can be a profitable player in any sng/mtt that I play.

Not a bad week in sportsbetting, but it could have been better. The CFB capper I've been following had a pretty horrible bowl season only ending up 2 units. I've been having trouble booking bets as I no longer have money on any sites, so I've been using 2p2 for the most part as well as a friend helping my place bets. I learned something about betting the ML instead of taking the points as an underdog that was interesting and will continue to test it out.

I don't really have any solid goals for next week. I just want to start cutting back on mistakes I'm making and try to stay chill while I'm playing. It's just money and I enjoy what I do.

Poker
+$ 48.00 226 52s
+$ 84.00 4 54s
-$2384.00 996 104s
+$ 752.00 56 108s
-$ 271.00 2 MTTs
+$ 150.00 Reload Bonus
+$ 300.00 Stellar Bonus
+$ 0.79 T$ Trade
==================
-$1320.21 Total

Sportsbetting
+$ 250.00 Penn St +1 (+100)
-$ 50.00 West Virg +2.5 (+100)
+$ 500.00 Ohio St +4 (+100)
+$ 100.00 FL/CIN o57 (+100)
-$ 400.00 TCU -7 (-110)
+$ 462.50 Iowa ML (+185)
-$ 400.00 Texas ML (+175)
========================
+$ 462.50 Total

Wooooo Profit

2010-01-05T11:45:00.000-08:00

Got in some volume yesterday. 261 games $1548 profit in 7.6hrs. I've been averaging 750vpp/hr so SNE should be a breeze (if i choose to go for it). Should be able to get 1.25M vpps as well.

I found out how to make notes go around the ring of an image instead of the dinky sticky note. So much prettier! Now I just got to take some notes.

Sportsbetting
-$400 TCU -7 -110

Poker
83 52s +$184
2 54s +$92
170 104s +$920
6 108s +$352
Stellar Rewards +$50
================

Total +$1198

Oh no!

2010-01-04T09:14:00.000-08:00

Not the best of days as I dropped $1016 in 144 games. Wasn't able to play a 2nd session on the day either.

Poker
134 $104s -$1136
10 $108s +$120
================
Total - -$1016

OMG Pocers

2010-01-03T10:32:00.000-08:00

Finally played some poker yesterday. Played a 3.5hr session followed by a 3.8hr session for a total of 248 games and $316 profit. I hadn't played poker since the 21st. It's amazing how I can get so rusty after only two weeks. It felt like I was relearning how to play. I saw some major glaring leaks while playing the first session. The kind I instantly recognize after making an awful decision. I also made a big game theory adjustment in the middle of my second session. Towards the end of my second session I felt so tired and drained. It wasn't a sleepy tired, but more of a mentally burnt out feeling.

I cleared 5687 VPPs yesterday which is a pretty big chunk, so I might be able to make a run for SNE afterall. Also cleared the $150 Reload Bonus and $100 in Stellar Bonuses which are pretty annoying to buy, but it's free money.

Poker
15 $52s -$180
215 $104s +$40
18 $108s +$456
Stellar Bonuses +$100
Reload Bonus +$150
================
Total +$566

New Year

2010-01-02T04:07:00.000-08:00

Well it's the start of a new year and I've decided to try and keep a blog throughout the year about my poker/gambling/investment career or whatever you want to call it.

I didn't actually play anything today since my mom/bro stayed overnight after their flight and I had a girl over later that night (slight brag). I did book some sports bets today and crushed it for $800. I just follow some dude's picks that a friend lead me on to. Been having trouble getting money online so I've been using 2p2 to get whatever I can.

As for poker in 2010, I don't really see myself sticking to a plan. I've drawn up several (most involving SNE), but feel like it's in my best interest to just play what I want to play. I've been telling people who ask me if I'm going for SNE that I'm going to make the most profit possible in the most efficient way. I'll be playing the 52-108 DONs tomorrow (today) and go from there.

Sports Betting
+$250 Penn St +1 +100
-$50 West Virginia +2.5 +100
+$500 Ohio St +4 +100
+$100 FL/CIN o57 +100
======================
Total +$800