Escaping the Cubicle: A Poker Playing Pitcher

8.6k hands down $200

2012-01-26T17:12:00.003-05:00

going to dinner in an hour. relatively unsuccessful experiment since I took a long nap and the games were pretty terrible for most of the afternoon. Did clear some bonus though so it wasn't a total loss.

having fun debating someone in the SSFR forum on 2p2. I haven't done debate in a long long time, but I was pretty good at it and breaking down someone's argument point by point and blasting it away is something I take a little bit too much pleasure in. I guess it's my douchey side.

later

jim

3.7k hands in, things not going great

2012-01-25T23:56:00.002-05:00

Played a long session and got about 3.7k hands in. Down about $900, pretty much broke even in BBs but most of my losing came at 2/4 and my winning came at 1/2. I definitely think I made a lot of mistakes, but I also didn't run great. I managed to get all-in against AA probably 8 times preflop which always sucks. Especially with my image I just can't fold QQ, KK or AK for 100bb preflop to a shove against guys that I know have more than AA into their 4bet and 5bet range. oh well. I think JJ was the worst hand I shoved preflop into AA and it was a BTN vs BB situation at a FR table that had broken down to 5 handed. Also got set over set, and lost a huge pot where I shoved a big draw on the flop and ran into top set and my turned flush got boated on the river.

Going to take a couple hour break, eat some food, watch the Duke-Maryland game that I recorded, and then come back for a grind. I may have to play .5/1 at that point if the games are mostly dead, which they may be.

getting ready to start a 24 hour grind

2012-01-25T18:15:00.003-05:00

cleaning my work station and finishing up some chores around the house. have a work dinner with the wife tomorrow night in 24 hours. need to get in a bunch of hands to get to monthly hands goals. Going to try and stay up and grind the whole time. Got a half a pot of coffee and will probably brew another in 8 hours or so. Hoping to get in 15,000 hands in 3k increments, but 10,000 in 2.5k increments would also work.

Will try and update with progress every 3-4 hours. Hopefully making the public will keep me motivated.

Also other updates:

- took a job as an assistant baseball coach at a local D3 school. It doesn't really pay any money, but I was surprised they were going to be paying me at all. My good friend is the pitching coach so he was interested in me helping out and I was excited for the chance to add something to my plate.

- started outlining a movie script with a good buddy in town last night. It was his core idea for the script, but we tend to have good brainstorming sessions and as soon as he brought it up we started coming up with funny ideas and bouncing them back and forth. It's a romantic comedy in the vein of wedding crashers or 40 year old virgin.

- lastly if you read the MHFR FTP regs thread on 2p2 or Dfly's blog you'll get the reference: In a post-apocalyptic type scenario guns are your best investment. Better than gold, food, or your IRA. Fly makes a good point that a house could be valuable, but I'd suggest that the need to continually move and forage (assuming you don't have farm-able land) would actually hurt the value of the house. A house full of guns on farm-able land would certainly be a great investment. Just something for you young kids with lots of money who think the world's going to end to think about.

later

a libertarian advocates for socialized medicine...

2012-01-19T16:29:00.002-05:00

We've been discussing doctors, their salaries, and the health care system in the US in a thread on 2p2 and here is something I thought about posting there but decided to put in a blog:

if you really want to improve medical care and patient doctor relationships in this country start with the biggest criminals involved in the economy: 1) Insurance companies and HMOs and 2) lawyers/laws that take advantage of malpractice insurance to reap huge rewards due to to mistakes that doctors will inevitably make.

I've argued this many times before, but I'm very much a libertarian in most of my political philosophy, but I've come to believe strongly in the need health care to be publicly funded and directed assuming that you place any faith or value in society as means to improve the condition of the individuals that exist under it's social contract. The medical system as constructed in our country has far more problems than the education system, the mass transit system, our court system, etc. However instead of looking to the people who do the work because they love it and it's important to them we continually allow politicians to influence the laws and system who are essentially bought and sold by private corporate interests who are simply looking to make a profit. While I have no problem with profit or even the greed that leads to such actions, you can't deny that due to the middlemen in the system it is antithetical to doctors providing quality services to their patients. Certain systems simply don't function successfully in a free market system because the services being provided to the customer are too complex for the customer to accurately assess their worth or value. Simply put regular people (myself included) have no idea what doctor to go to if something is wrong or how much we should be paying.

Free markets function efficiently on the idea that people can successfully evaluate the products and services they are paying for and accurately assess their worth. Health care doesn't work this way because the science and technology that we use to diagnose and heal patients has outstripped our basic understanding of the human body as well as our ability to financially plan for disastrous events. We're able to prevent and heal ailments that we didn't even have names for in the past, but all of that has comes with a price that is a result of countless hours of research, training, and work. Making treatment both more expensive as well as more confusing.

I have a lot more thoughts on the subject (mostly that insurance companies are essentially profiting off of denying you the service they purportedly provide) but I want to play a session and get some stuff done before the duke game tonight.

I'll try to revisit this topic another time as I find it interesting, but I have to stop after awhile because it's so tilting seeing as I doubt any of this is going to change anytime soon.

Bet sizing in NLHE

2012-01-10T13:34:00.003-05:00

quick thought of the day based on this exchange on 2p2:

original post:

Stingers thoughts on value betting/bluffing released a gem of information, but i am having trouble processing it.
Can anyone provide some examples of what stinger was talking about with his thoughts here:

"If theres a spot where im going to be bluffing a lot, or at least my opponent perceives me to be bluffing a lot, you should be betting bigger. Thats why the over-bets are so good. Over-bets gives your opponent worse odds to call, which allows you to bluff more often, profitably...

...If its going to be a spot where you're going to be value betting often, and your opponent knows that, then you should be betting less to give your opponent better odds, tempt him into calling. The key there is all about what your opponent perceives. Its not about how much you are value betting or bluffing, Its how much your opponent expects you to be value betting or bluffing. You want them to be calling at a frequency that is profitable for you."

a response:

his reasoning is completely wrong, you could even say backwards, in both cases

a small bet should be made by a higher fraction of value hands than a big bet, yes. but that does not mean that you should bet big when you want to bluff a lot, or that you should bet small when you have a lot of value hands. not at all.

my response:

I agree that he hasn't full explained the concept but I wouldn't say he has it backwards. Basically there are 4 variables to consider:

1) your holding and it's relative strength to the board.
2) your opponents range and it's relative strength to the board.
3) your perceived range.
4) what you'd like your opponent to do with his hand.

If you know the answers to all of those questions (or can at least approximate them) then you can determine the best (or close to it) bet-size in relation to the pot to attempt to manipulate your opponent into the desired action.

I guess at it's heart it's basic theory and math of poker. But it is certainly always good to think about it and remember why we bet certain sizes in certain spots.

further thoughts:

When determining bet-sizing in NLHE first decide what you want your opponent to do (aka are you value betting or bluffing). Then determine what your perceived range on the board will likely be to your opponent (does he think you're likely to be bluffing often or do you have a very strong range that will nearly always be betting for value even if it's somewhat thin). Then size your betting appropriately to manipulate your opponent into the action you desire with your given holding on the board.

Example 1: You have the nuts on the river in a hand where your range is perceived as full of bluffs (aka it is a board you would frequently barrel). You want your opponent to call off as much money as possible. Size your river bet sufficiently large as your opponent will likely call on this river against your perceived range. If your opponent is particularly suspicious an overbet might have the most value.

Example 2: You have a weak holding on a board where your range contains mostly very strong holdings and your opponent's range is likely weaker than your perceived range. Something like you were the pfr in MP with 22 and your opponent CC in the SB and the flop came down AKKr. You'd like your opponent to fold and he likely will with the vast majority of his range. You should bet as small as possible to get the likely fold so that you'll save the most possible money the times he has a Kx or Ax hand and decides not to fold. If villain is the kind to call once and fold to future barrels you also create a situation where you are actually creating value by inducing single street calls planning on barreling most turns to get folds from his medium pair or QJ type hands.

I'm not going to edit the above and it certainly isn't a complete or exhaustive treatise on the subject. But I do think there is some value in what I wrote and if you're a new or struggling player I'd suggest reading it and digesting the thoughts and thinking of how it might apply in some further examples.

BCS championship game I have two words for you...

2012-01-09T23:42:00.003-05:00

shit sandwich.

I think this was actually worse than the NCAA Basketball championship game last year. And that game was truly atrocious and an insult to the sport.

GG Alabama, LSU, and most importantly the NCAA in continuing the tradition of terrible games coming a month too late in a system that everyone hates. College football has never been more lucrative and never been more disappointing. It's a cynical sports writers wet dream.

An Experiment in Taking Stuff Seriously

2011-11-17T01:12:00.003-05:00

So I've been really frustrated with my results and hours put in this month. And I realized after a coaching session the other day that the kind of clarity and focus I have when analyzing a students hand should be what I strive for when I play. But for whatever reason I haven't had that kind of mindset in the latter half of 2011. The kind of focused, thinking, grinding mentality that I used to make a lot of money over the last three years.

Part of my problem is that I think I spent a lot of time studying the game when I wasn't playing as much this summer, and while all of that information is valuable for improving my ceiling as a poker player you have to be very careful how you implement new information. I think for one thing I got very very fancy and over aggressive and just assumed that I could make certain moves against people or that they were trying to make similar moves against me. In the end to make money a good solid ABC strategy goes a long way in most hands. It's great to know when to take a different line, or get thin value or run a big bluff against a regular. But those things are successful simply because we don't do them so often that our opponents begin to expect it as our normal play.

I think one common mistake is to start flatting 3 and 4bets because you think people are trying to run you over, and then just ending up with weak hands in bad spots postflop. Another is seeing a flop and thinking that you can easily rep a nutted hand and starting to a run bluff. Such bluffs tend to work a decent amount of the time, but they work because you don't do it every time you think it might work. For the last few weeks every flop looked decent to donk or check raise, and every hand looked good to flat or 3bet. And that's when you need to find a way to change you're mindset.

All of this gets to the point of the blog. In order to make myself take a more workman-like approach to my sessions I've started treating it like work. I'm starting at a certain time everyday. I'm playing until a certain time everyday. And everyday after my morning breakfast and shower I'm getting dressed in a dress shirt, slacks, and a tie. Yeah I know it seems counter-intuitive to the point of being a professional poker player. Part of the fun is being able to sit in your shorts and grind a few hours a day when you feel like it. But this is a job for me. And I have bills to pay and things I'd like to do with the money I earn. And so if my mental game is getting distracted or weak it's time to get back to treating it like a job.

The idea for this stems from when my friends and I used to get dressed up for tests in college. We felt like we performed better if we felt good about ourselves, and I think dressing well helps focus you and creates confidence. We would get up for early exams and shower, shave, and get cleaned up and then head to the test looking sharp. I think it definitely can help you get out of a rut, and I think it certainly sharpens your focus.

So far so good. Two days of 8 hours of work in a tie behind me and I'm already feeling better about my focus and results. I also don't mind getting a little bit cleaned up as I've always liked wearing ties.

will update later in the month with the continued experiment in dressing for success.

Friday night journey

2011-11-12T00:21:00.001-05:00

iPhone just told me that if I want to take public transportation from my current location in Quincy center to my home in Fenway I'll need to go across the river into Cambridge and take a 1am bus from Cambridge to a stop near my apartment. This seems slightly absurd to me as I'd normally try to catch the green line subway after I got back into the city and take that to my stop. Or worst case scenario I'd walk. However something about this journey seems slightly intriguing. Maybe I'll just ride the subway to Cambridge and see what happens. Worst case scenario I have to walk across the river back to my place. Which isn't that bad considering I've done it in freezing rain before when I didn't even know where I was going. Let's see where the night takes me...

a star does the anthem justice

2011-10-24T12:50:00.003-04:00

no personal touches, no stretching it out, no wavering voice, nothing but the anthem the way it is meant to sound. It was a beautiful performance.

BOOOOOOOOOOOM!

2011-10-23T23:49:00.007-04:00

Just won a tourney for about $7k. Played 6 tournaments on Merge today with VIP points that I had saved up. Made two final tables, finishing 9th in the first and winning the second. The second tournament was a pretty tough final table with only a couple of players that weren't really solid. And those guys were simply playing very very tight and winning all of their shoves. So stacks got shallow pretty quick and the big stacks were definitely picking on people. Eventually though a good player busted, and then the nit. At that point I was 3rd in chips and relatively low. I had been stealing and restealing some, but I couldn't go crazy because I knew the nit would bust and waiting him out was worth about $700. So when he busted I was able to reship a Q8s from the SB and the BTN called with K9o and I won the race. After that I was successfully stealing and then busted him when he shipped into my BB and my A9o held over his K8o.

The HU match was pretty tough as this guy clearly knew what he was doing and was stealing and restealing and fighting for pots. I was borrowing from a HU strategy Dr Giggy wrote in his blog last year that he and Jon Duhamel settled on before last year's WSOP Main Event final table. It included limping a range of hands, and minraising a range of hands as long as we had over 30bb. When we got under 30bb I shifted to a minraise or shove strategy, although throughout I was restealing with both shoves and small 3bets. I was a little surprised that none of my 3bets got called or reshipped on, since this player had been very aggressive in restealing earlier in the tournament. I'm pretty sure I shipped over his first 3bet, and after that he made most of his 3bets a shove.

Anyway both of us are shipping chips back and forth but I finally get a little of a lead on him and then I run 99 into JJ and he's got the chiplead. A few hands after that I reship J8s for a little over 20bb and he snaps with A8o, but I bink a J on the turn to suckout and retake the chiplead. After that I was fairly successful in chipping away at him even though he was shipping enough to stay afloat. I did end up running one ill timed bluff when I floped the nut flush draw in an 8high flop, turned a gutter, and barreled a 9 river before getting c/shoved on. That briefly gave him back the chip lead, but again I was able to steal and resteal back into the chip lead. Eventually he shipped his BTN with T7o for about 13bb when I had 30bb and I called with 33, floped a set, and won the tournament.

that was that. A nice score that gives my bankroll a much needed boost. This will allow me to comfortably mix in more 2/4 and 3/6 games along with the 1/2 that I'm regularly grinding.

hope everyone had a nice weekend.

later

jim

Baby Steps

2011-10-20T22:05:00.004-04:00

When you're finally getting back into the grind and trying to work off some rust that is usually when the poker gods decide to smack you with the variance stick. Not that I have been playing my best lately, but the fact is I've played some pretty good poker to be losing money hand over fist this month.

But since I'm keeping considerably less online right now the losses seem to hurt even more. It's no fun to lose 7-8 BIs and drop half of your account balance. But that is precisely what has happened to me earlier in the week on a site I was playing PLO on. Similarly my NLHE efforts had mostly been a lot of running in place due to some runbad at 2/4 and 3/6 and some all-in EV not going my way.

But today after a coaching session and a little break I sat down and grinded out 3 hours of A game poker. I think I only made one bad decision where I shoved KK pf against a nit when I didn't realize we were 200bb deep. I should have just flatted his 3bet and played postflop IP. Other than that I think I played well. Graph is pretty much all NL200 with a couple tables of NL400 and a table of NL600. I lost at 3/6, won at 2/4, but did nearly all my work at 1/2.

I know it's not impressive like some of the big wins I've had in the past. Heck I didn't even win 10 BIs for the day. But I needed this kind of affirmation that I can still play the game properly. My confidence and mental approach have been sorely lacking lately, and I think it's resulted in a lot of spew and hopeful play (both pf and at the river). Hoping is not a good strategy when playing poker.

Here's hoping the poker gods decide to smile on me a little longer and I can keep it going through the weekend.

jim

plo is fun but ridiculous

2011-10-18T19:56:00.002-04:00

just played for 7 hours and ended up down 7BI. effing gross. I'm learning the game and actually feel like I played decent considering I finished with a W$SD figure of 37%. That means that I barely won a third of the hands that I showed down. Now I certainly made some bad calls and got some money in bad when I was overdrawn or one time when a maniac fish repped the nuts and I just didn't believe him. But when your EV for the session was to win a little over a BI and you ended up losing 7 there just isn't much you can do.

the upside of playing PLO is that I find it interesting and the games are unbelievably fishy. The downside is that I'm not very good yet and I'm running like dog shit. I think I'm going to stick to PLO at the beginning of the week and NLHE on the weekends. See if it keeps me grinding serious hours.

That's all for now. Hope other people are running and playing better than me.

later

jim

back and looking forward to the fall grind

2011-10-10T16:55:00.002-04:00

Back from a two week trip that was half vacation and half visit with family (with a wedding thrown in). Played two hours of PLO today and won a couple of BIs so that was a nice welcome back. Looking forward to getting my grind on this month to clear a lot of new bonuses I have on various sites.

Going to watch some baseball with the wife and some friends since it's her last day on vacation. Also need to get out in the 80F weather here since that is soon to change.

hope everyone has had a good start to the month. will be posting more often soon.

later

pizzle

Pics from trip

2011-10-03T10:45:00.001-04:00

did our one time come through?!?!?!?

2011-09-30T12:09:00.003-04:00

News: Full Tilt Poker and Groupe Bernard Tapie Sign Acquisition Agreement

playing tournaments today

2011-09-25T14:44:00.012-04:00

decided to use up a bunch of frequent player points for free tournament buy-ins and have a relaxing day of tournaments while football and baseball games are going on.

2:58 PM: first up is a $10 9-handed freezeout where my over-pair (QQ)lost to a set from a loose fish that limp called TT and hit top set. and I'm down to 15BB 45 min in. Will keep update with new tournaments and new results as the day goes on.

this could get boring, lol.

3:16 PM: busted from that one after building back to a starting stack by getting AK vs KK all-in for 25BB. Then I shoved a couple of times one a flip, and lost a flip and was out.

Now I'm in a $60 9handed $15k freezout. Have lost a few BB over the first level.

3:59 PM: In chiplead in $15k guaranteed freezout. 5bb over average in $4k 9handed freezeout. Just started the $25k guaranteed RB+addon and the $100k guarantee freezout.

4:18PM: the i'm an idiot update. busted the 100k trying to run a bluff on a moron after he misclicked pf and i knew it. shoved a turn where i should have had 30% equity worst case scenario instead I had 4% equity. I suck. still in the 25k, still chipleader in the 15k, and got a double stack in the 4k.

5:56PM: in 8th place in the 15k guaranteed about to hit the money (36 players). Have half of an average stack in the 25k RB (took one addon) with a little over half of the field still running. Half of an average stack in the $5.5k guarantee with a little less than a third of the field remaining, half of which will get money. 15th place in the $8k shorthanded at the first break with about 15% of the field eliminated.

and I'm supposed to go to dinner in 2 hours. If I'm about to final table any of the tournaments I'll probably send the wife ahead and take a cab or something. If I'm shortstacked I'll just start shoving every hand and see what happens.

6:11 PM: just busted the 8k after I ran AK into KK pf, then lost a pot bluffing a turned GS against a sticky CCing player. Then finally got all-in AQ against QJ and he jacked the river. got set over setted to get knocked out of the $5.5k 20 short of the money. still got a tiny stack in the $25k guaranteed rebuy. and in 3rd place in the $15K.

EDIT: just busted the $25k. only got the $15k going. 28 players left.

7:05 PM: busted in 12th for $240. weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Idiot chipleader (probably second worst player left in the tournament) opened for 3x when average stack was about 20bb (lol) I reshipped KTo and he tank called it off with Q8s. Hit his 8 on the river and that was all she wrote. Would have been a nice double up to put me in second place right before the final table. First place was $3.2k which would have been a nice score considering I spent the afternoon watching sports and sending emails while playing these stupid tournaments.

the only tourney I think I played bad all day was the $109 which was obviously the most expensive one. What can I say I'm and idiot. Overall I spent 28,000 carbon points to make about $210 so the exchange rate was only slightly worse than what I would get if I didn't have RB. not too bad.

one time?!?!?!

2011-09-22T01:10:00.001-04:00

Who knows what the odds of this happening are, but hey I might as well throw my 1-TIME on it.

French Investors Consider Purchasing FTP

Great Pic: legal SUCKER PUNCH

2011-09-20T00:09:00.002-04:00

doing a well in MHFR on 2p2

2011-09-19T01:35:00.001-04:00

check it out:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/117/medium-high-stakes-full-ring/5000th-post-wellcome-back-strat-forums-1100750/

update plus cool video

2011-09-18T20:11:00.002-04:00

Hands: 10,015
Results: -$1426

boooo

YAY! (watch in HD it's pretty fun)

maybe good news for my state in the future:

2011-09-18T13:44:00.002-04:00

Massachusetts to embrace online pohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifker.

would be nice to win at showdown...

2011-09-17T19:39:00.001-04:00

Hands: 8016
Results: -$1516

going to grab some dinner. Frustration ends the night early.

frustrating night

2011-09-17T02:00:00.003-04:00

Hands: 5685
Results: -$1283

Ran really bad for most of the sessions, then I think I tilted a little at the end and got a little speculative and passive. A few too many weak bluffs or optimistic calls. That being said I was certainly running into the top of people's ranges as at least 3 times I ran AA into a set in a 3bet pot beyond other attemps at thin value that ran straights into flushes, top pair into rivered flushes, and overpairs into rivered trips. In general I don't think I made too many horrendous plays, but I think I can play better.

I was down about -$2400 at one point, and decided to call it a session when I got it back to -$900. Then as I'm closing tables I flop middle set against a fishy and slowplay and he turns the gutter and stacks me for 150bb. yay.

oh well tomorrow is another day. Only 28% of the way to the goal so still plenty of time to pick up 4-5 buy-ins and get back to even.

huge win for the red sox. Was a great game to listen to while I played. Hope everyone had a good friday.

later

jim

update

2011-09-16T19:32:00.003-04:00

Hands: 1747
Profit: -$619.20

the night is young. overall feel pretty good about my play. made one loose 5bet shove that cost me $225 and one turn semi-bluff in a 3bet pot that cost me $300. Made a couple of call downs I didn't like, but in general most of my value bets and bluffs I felt were decent.

Going to grab some food and take about an hour break and then get back after it.

THE WEEKEND GOAL:

2011-09-16T12:31:00.002-04:00

20,000 hands by midnight on Sunday September 18th. I'll probably need to be playing about 80% of the time I'm awake and not eating.

Will update with progress.

let's gogogogogogogoooooooo!

the weekend

2011-09-16T00:57:00.001-04:00

got big plans for a lot of poker this weekend. will post goals on blog tomorrow. pumped to put in the hours.

also the sox need to figure some stuff out fast. Basically Lester and Beckett need to win two games apiece down the stretch and they need 3 other guys to step up and beat the Orioles. That will probably be enough to make it to the playoffs.

however, considering the importance on pitching in the postseason I can't feel too confident about their chances in October. In general it's easier to find a way to win playoff series with your pitching intact and a banged up lineup, than vice versa.

Had a great dinner with some friends and some folks I only slightly knew tonight. Everyone was a blast to hang out with, the birthday girl is one of those awesome people that you immediately like as soon as you meet her, and all of her friends were equally cool. The husband of the b-day girl picked up the tab like a pimp, so it quickly became the best free meal I've had in awhile.

here's to free meals!

also managed to lift about $300 off of a few people playing HU while reading the forums, so that was nice. Now time for a little Battlestar Galactica ***nerd alert*** and sleepy time.

word to your mom

piz

fun mix

2011-09-16T00:15:00.001-04:00

Filterglove Launch Mixtape by Jean Tonique

The Brothers of Chico Dusty

2011-09-03T16:54:00.000-04:00

The Brothers of Chico Dusty (Big Boi vs. The Black Keys) by Wick-it the Instigator

sick

epic bequest

2011-09-03T16:46:00.000-04:00

Slain British marine leaves friends $163,000 to party in Vegas

getting back to the grind

2011-09-01T13:52:00.001-04:00

August was the first month since Black Friday that my poker winnings were worth reporting:

For those keeping score at home that means I had nearly 4 months of potential income stolen by the DOJ and the various entities that sponsored and supported their attack on our game. I'm not going to get into the Full Tilt issues because, frankly, it's depressing and there is little I can do about it. I hope that the personal ethics and honor of the people that stole and mismanaged the player's money will eventually matter enough for them to find away to return our cash. Obviously there isn't a lot of hope for that at this point, but raging against those thieves and charlatans won't make me a happier person.

Referring to the graph: That is almost all 1/2 though I took several shots at 2/4 and got crushed. Without those 2/4 shot I might have made 5 figs with RB and bonuses. The important thing is that I've requested a cashout and expect that I should have the funds in hand in a few weeks.

I'm not totally happy with my results. In general I expect my redline to be better, and I think I played very very poorly during the big downswing on the graph. But part of the redline being BE for the month comes from playing against my opponents. In general the 1/2 players on this network are very very good, and most of them play a very aggressive pro-redline game. I think this creates situation where you need play some hands in different ways and counter their default aggressive mode. I'm not sure that fighting aggression with more aggression is always the most profitable course, especially when out of position.

Other updates include the fact that I've taken steps to start playing on other networks. I won't go into the details because 1) it's relatively boring and 2) I'd rather keep it private. But I believe I should be able to continue playing through this interim period until the US government legalizes and regulates online poker.

I also have some personal goals for the last 4 months of the year. I want to have another 6 figure year which means I need to make about $50k over the final 4 months of the year. This is a pretty significant challenge considering I'll be playing mostly 1/2 to build bankrolls over that period, hopefully eventually transitioning back to mid-stakes. But I think I can do it, and it gives me something to shoot for.

Having a 6 figure year would be a big deal to me considering I essentially lost 4 months of work figuring out stuff after BF. There also is the frustrating reality that despite that profit if I don't get the money back the money lost on Full Tilt equals about 65% of that profit. Which is really disgusting.

But I can't complain about life. My team had a good summer of baseball, my wife is doing well despite her serious work hours during her intern year of residency, and I have my health and plenty of cash for living expenses. I even have enough of a bankroll that I can continue playing the game I love for a living after getting screwed by my government and Full Tilt.

The weather is awesome and I feel like grinding some. Hope everyone is doing well.

later

piz

some pics from the summer

2011-08-10T23:35:00.000-04:00

Beer on the beach in Mexico:

Icing out a friend the night before his wedding:

Down by the harbor in Boston:

Sublime/311 concert:

All taken and edited on the iphone. It's not a bad camera. So far summer has been good. If we can find a way to win the Boston Park League championship it would be a fantastic finish. Just wanted to put out a fun positive post after my woe-is-me BS from the previous post.

realized after I made the last post...

2011-08-10T03:44:00.000-04:00

that maybe people were confused when I was talking about my thirty buy-in for 1/2 roll. I was not referring to my entire poker bankroll. That is simply my roll on Merge right now. My actual bankroll is still pretty healthy and large enough that I could play 1/2 with good 2/4 games and have very little risk of ruin.

that being said I don't like busting account balances, so when I refer to my roll on Merge I'm talking about the money I have on there to work with from my initial 1k deposit.

team clinched #2 spot in the playoffs with a nice win is some crappy weather tonight. Playoffs start on Thursday. Going to try and grind a bunch tomorrow.

g'night.

getting crushed lalalala

2011-08-09T16:57:00.000-04:00

So I've been getting my grind on seriously for the first time in awhile, putting in 22k hands already this month most at 1/2. And things started off well. I was up about 13 BIs and playing well and thought I had fixed a lot of leaks and was really feeling good about things.

In comes my last two sessions where I drop 7 and 11 buy-ins respectively and my month is back to being shit. It's tough to keep a level head when almost all of your roll is seemingly lost on FTP, you're waiting for time to get up setup so you can actually cashout your low stakes grindings in the near future. I only put $1k on merge after BF, and I'm just really disappointed with my results on the site. I've made money mostly through RB, bonus clearance, and PLO. But through 120k hands at the site I'm basically breaking even and actually down close to 2k because all of my run bad has come at small stakes (run good seems to come at .25/.50).

I'm trying to maintain confidence, and focus on the next hand and just grind. But when you continually get beat down both by good players, tough spots, and getting crushed by the deck it's very hard to have a feel for whether or not you are playing your A game. All of this would be a moot point if I had my tilt money in my bank account because I'd have no pressure to earn. But as that money seems gone for the near future I'd like to gain some traction in bankroll building on other networks.

Plus I've basically got one more tough session in me at 1/2 before I'm going to have to drop back down to .25/.50 (unless the BBJ gets above 220k or so in which case I can play .5/1 profitably). In general I stay away from .5/1 on merge unless the BBJ is really high because the rake is pretty tough to overcome.

Right now I'm basically playing 1/2 on a 30 BI roll (down from the high of a 47 BI roll for 1/2). I don't really feel comfortable playing much shorter than 25BI on the roll so I'll probably have to move down at that point.

not really sure if there is much reason to post hands or anything. this was mostly just a blow off some steam post. I haven't posted on 2p2 in weeks because I was saving my 5k post for something worth doing. But tbh I don't really see much of a point in doing that now. I haven't had meaningful results since Black Friday and unless I get my roll back from tilt is going to be awhile before I'm a full time midstakes grinder.

just gotta keep my head up.

don't make people into idols

2011-08-07T14:22:00.001-04:00

UPDATE: good cliffs thread here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/cliff-notes-portuguese-poker-prodigy-jose-girah-macedo-scam-1079792/. More info has come out, and it just gets worse and worse. The supposed prodigy is clearly nothing more than a scamming con artist, and the more information that comes out the worse that the people involved with him look. Just a really sordid affair.

read this thread if you are bored and want to see the kind of scummy stuff that supposed high stakes brilliant players will do for money:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/portuguese-poker-prodigy-jose-girah-macedo-scammed-hsnl-players-30-000-nvg-xpost-1079436/

Just a quick rant. I've never made a huge effort to engage in the rest of the poker community like most of my peers do. Part of the reason is that I think it creates huge imbalances in life styles, encourages an unhealthy disconnect with money and it's intrinsic value to your current happiness, and because I know that many people that play as "pros" probably are degens at heart and degens can't be trusted when they need their fix (in this case money or action).

I've gone on rants before about groups that have formed on twoplustwo to start private forums and specifically discuss strategy and how I thought it was ethically wrong (if not actually breaking TOS of the site) and I've avoided taking part in those discussions or joining those groups in the past. I know others do, and I know that certain players gain and edge by sharing information that I am losing out on. But I feel that I've earned my money honestly and have a clean reputation and that in my mind still means something when I go to sleep at night.

Everything about the story I linked above disgusts me. First that high stakes players would form these little private covens to discuss strategy of how they were going to fleece the fish and then try to set up games for each other. Not surprisingly the kind of people that don't see anything ethically wrong with this borderline collusion would then be willing to take it a step further and try to set each other up by sweating hole cards while feeding the information to a friend. It's abhorrent behavior on nearly all levels. Certain things have not been confirmed, but I think the evidence seems to point that several high stakes "crushers" were ghosting under the account of some 18 year old wunderkind that they essentially created with their own vouches and claims on various forums.

None of this is confirmed but it is my guess they used this player to gain access to sites and opponents that they wouldn't have been able to play otherwise. That they even discussed buying heavily losing accounts in order to play under them and get action is absolutely disgusting. And it is laughable that this 18 year old Portuguese player is a sponsored pro on a site despite having little to no long term history of success in poker.

I'm not trying to be self righteous here, because I don't think how I approach the game is vastly different than many other pros and most amateurs. But I'm sick of reading about players crossing ethical boundaries and then giving some sob story apology after they get caught. As far as I'm concerned this kid and his fellow conspirators should be banned from the sites they played, ostracized from the community, and all potentially ill gotten funds confiscated.

I may not ever make it to high stakes (less likely now that 80% of my roll is seemingly lost on FTP) but I can promise you I'll never cross those boundaries in the effort. I may be as much of an outsider as someone can be who has made half a million dollars in the poker world in the last three years. But as a result of keeping at least one foot firmly planted in the non-poker world I feel like I've avoided the trap that has snared many young poker pros. Money becomes god and the latest high stakes crusher is their idol. In the end they chase god, and want to become the next idol to get the fame and attention of their peers and followers. Ethics and codes of conduct eventually take a back seat, and chasing the money and attention becomes the consuming goal.

I'll stick to playing baseball in the summer and paying bills, and leave the legend creating to the forums.

my wife's answer to the hypothetical:

2011-08-03T12:29:00.001-04:00

Three million with the stipulation that I would not have a criminal record.

I actually thought this was a pretty low number considering her future economic prospects as a medical doctor. But she said she didn't think prison could be that much worse than 3rd year of med school or the intern year she is currently spending in the hospital. I don't know how much sarcasm was involved in that comment. I'm sure some, but probably less than you think.

What's your number?

hypothetical #1 and some updates

2011-08-02T14:31:00.000-04:00

Hypothetical question #1: (please answer with your response in the comments section I will probably blog my own thoughts along with your comments in the future)

You have the option to spend the next year of your life in jail (starting in 4 weeks) in exchange for a lump sum cash payment upon your release. Would you take this deal, and if so what is your price?

quick updates:

- played some awful golf for the park league tournament yesterday, had a blast.
- team went 10-3 in July and currently in second place with a playoff spot locked up. if we sweep the last two games of our schedule this week we'll likely finish in second place and start the playoffs on Monday.
- finally getting things going to start playing poker again seriously. Hoping to have everything done by the end of august so that I can put in 100k hands a month for the last few months of the year. Have plans to make a bank-roll building challenge that i update frequently with graphs and maybe even HHs and some strat. Basically I'm going to try and resurrect the blog as a personal motivational tool.
- also considering starting a blog segment called Second Tier where I review stuff that is good but not great. Movies, food, books, etc. Better writers and smarter people than me tackle the truly great things in the world, somebody has to talk about the rest.
- would like to get the podcast going again with my friend but he's going to be doing a lot of traveling in the near future so it doesn't look likely.

later

piz

some questions I was asked about baseball:

2011-07-14T03:50:00.001-04:00

a blog reader asked me a bunch of questions about baseball at the youth level and playing in college. Since the poker stuff is not totally interesting right now I figured I'd post this up for a change of pace. I haven't edited what I wrote so some of it may contain poor grammar or be redundant.

it's a lot of stuff but I tried to answer everything to the best of my ability and memory. I haven't proofread it so if anything doesn't make sense let me know. I might turn this into a blog post if you don't mind (obviously keeping all of the information about your son out of it as well as your email).

1. I assume you pitched for Duke, did you receive a scholarship(full,partial)(Baseball or academic)to play and go to school there? I did pitch for duke (removed link to my stats if anyone is interested you can PM on 2p2 and I can provide link). I went to Duke for academics and was an invited walk on for the baseball team. I was cut the first year for some frustrating reasons, but made the team as a sophomore and played 4 years, including 2006 when I was getting a Masters from Duke's Engineering Management Program. I received some scholarship help for academics (including a significant amount of aid for my Masters Program) and my coach for my first 3 years had planned on giving me some partial scholarship for my grad school work in 2006. However he was fired in the summer of 2005 and our new head coach chose not to provide me with any financial aid.

2. Did you choose duke because they offered you a scholarship or did you have offers from other schools? I received an offer to play at Youngstown State on a full academic scholarship, I had a full academic scholarship to Marshall and the coach told me I could walk on, and I a few other coaches in WV were interested in me as a walk on. However most coaches knew academics were my #1 priority and so they didn't recruit me heavily when they found out where I was applying and what my interests were. Also at most of the smaller schools, where my talent was potentially worth an athletic scholarship, I would have qualified for academic scholarships so the coaches knew they were better off saving their scholarships for other student-athletes.

3.If you had multiple offers did you choose Duke for baseball or academics? Duke was my #1 choice for academics. I would have gone there even if I had no chance to play baseball. I applied early decision in the fall of 2000 before I had ever spoken to the baseball coach about the chance to play for the team. I always wanted to play college baseball, and planned on trying where ever I went, but once I was accepted to Duke I knew that was where I was going to school. Academics always came first to me.

4. Were you a dominant pitcher in high school? I was a dominant pitcher from age 12 until age 18 for all but one year. I started pitching at 10, was a starter at 11, and was one of the best pitchers in the area during my years in Babe Ruth ball (13-15) and American Legion Baseball (17 and 18 y.o.). My 16 year old year I struggled to adapt to a growth spurt and lost my control of my pitches. I spent that year playing second base and shortstop and was the starting second baseman on my district all star team in Senior Little League. In high school I was actually cut from the team as a freshman (honestly it was bull shit politics) and my sophomore year I played JV and hardly got any playing time (our JV schedule was 10 games and our coach was a joke). My Junior year in high school I became our #3 starter about half way through the season. My senior year I was our #1 starter and went 9-3 with a sub 3 ERA and was responsible for almost half of our wins that year. I beat 5 top 10 teams in our state and was Honorable Mention All State. In my opinion I was the best pitcher in the district that year. But obviously I'm biased ;-)

5. Did you play travel ball? My American Legion team traveled to lots of tournaments when I was 17 and 18, but in general no. I had offers and occasionally did a little mercenary type weekend stints with AAU teams. But I played locally until age 16, and in general found my way on to all-star teams or the best local team that was recruiting. We played mostly other teams within 2 hours or so of my hometown. When I was 17 and 18 we typically played double headers every week night, usually playing 10 games a week when we didn't have a tournament. In general we'd play anyone that wanted to.

6. Did you play and practice year round? I played usually from March to August. Then I would take the rest of the year off until late November or early December when I would start practicing for the upcoming spring. Usually throwing a couple times a week with longer sessions the later it got in the winter. I didn't do much weightlifting until I was done growing at age 17, and I didn't take up running until I was 16. I built arm strength and velocity by throwing a lot. A lot of long toss, a lot of bullpens, and lot of games of catch.

7. Did you play other sports in High School? I played soccer all throughout high school (I had played since I was 5). I wasn't very good but I loved the sport and it was my first serious experience with conditioning (mostly a lot of sprinting and distance running which I was surprisingly good at). I played golf competitively when I was 12 and 13 but couldn't find the time for it because of baseball after that. I played basketball until I was 13, and afterwards coached a team of 8-10 year old with my father until I graduated from high school. Volunteering my time coaching was really rewarding and I think helped me learn a lot about being a leader and a teammate. Soccer was also humbling because I was always fighting for playing time amongst other players that frankly were assholes. It taught me how to treat fellow teammates when you're a better player on the team, and how to perservere when things weren't going your way. It helped a lot considering how hard I had to work to get the attention of my high school baseball coaches. There was a lot of politics on those teams, and in general they were not good coaches.

8. Did you ever get tired of baseball in college, was it ever too much? This is a tough question. I definitely had times where I hated having to go to practice, and especially hated weight lifting. But my college experience was different than most athletes. Academics was my top priority. I double majored in Civil Engineering and Political Science, I made the Engineering Honor Society, and made All ACC academic Honor Roll for 4 years. So I basically studied my ass off for 5 years (including getting my Masters). Some of my teammates worked hard in the classroom, but others came to school as much or more for baseball as academics. So often they majored in easier studies (History or Sociology) and they just wanted to graduate. My parents expected me to get good grades. They were not happy when I got a C in physics. I also needed to make money in college if I wanted to have any spending cash so I took a job delivering laundry for a student owned and operated company my freshman year (when I was not playing baseball). By my sophomore year I had been promoted to Daily Operations Manager of the company and was doing scheduling, payroll, customer service, and everything else that went into the day to day work of the company. I might have been the only student on campus getting paid $20/hour, but it cost me a lot of sleep. I'd say my sophomore and junior years on campus I averaged less than 4 hours of sleep a night. My senior year I decided the laundry company was too much work so I waited tables over the summer and for a few weeks in the fall, and stocked shelves in the bookstore on campus. As far as I know I was the only guy on the team that had a job as well as going to school. I also went to summer school twice so that I could graduate on time. My last year while getting my masters I was working an internship at GlaxoSmithKline as well as playing ball. Looking back on it I think I would have done better at athletics if I had put less effort into other things. But would I be better off for that as a person? probably not. My academic success is worth considerably more in the long run, and my time working jobs helped mold me into a better person. I think everyone should have to work different jobs at that age that they apply for and get on their own. Even if it is only over the summer. However considering that most college baseball programs require 30 hours a week or more of commitment from the players (including multiple days of 6 AM weightlifting and conditioning) I'm not sure that having jobs during the year was the best thing for my game. But I wanted the money, and I wouldn't ask my parents for it. So that is what I did. But I never regretted playing baseball in college even though I don't have the same carefree memories of college that a lot of folks do. College was serious work for me. I rarely got to relax or take time off. I busted my ass for 5 years. But I made my best friends (many of them through baseball) I had unbelievable experiences, and I learned so much about myself and the world. It wouldn't have been the same without baseball.

9. Are you a natural athlete or did you just put in the work? A little of both. My dad was an all state football and basketball player, and after his knees gave out on him when he was 18 he still had offers to play college golf from small schools in WV. He's 6'5" and just in general a big strong guy. I never saw him at his athletic best because he had arthritis in his knees and back 15 years before I was born. But by all accounts he was a great athlete. I was a decent athlete growing up, but probably benefitted as much from pratice and just hard effort as any natural skill. Throwing a baseball hard was really one of the few things that I did naturally well. But I kept growing all through high school and was 6'4" by the time I graduated. I was skinny and frankly didn't start putting on much muscle (despite a lot of weight lifting and eating like crazy) until I was 22. I started running seriously at age 16 by working out with some friends that ran cross country in the summer. I started lifting on my own (light weights high reps) at 17. I think a lot of my velocity came from having very long arms and being flexible (not having tight over developed muscles) along with a LOT of throwing. I full believe that long toss and practice develops arm strength and velocity. Weight lifting is a great cherry on the sundae when you get older and your body grows up. But as a kid you'll get more out of just throwing a baseball a long distance than you will out of any advanced training techniques. If I had to recommend something to a teen age pitcher I'd likely suggest running, squats, pushups, and yoga. Those are things that will develop a strong, lean, flexible frame with improved endurance.

10. How tall were you when schools started to look at you for college? How fast did you throw? I was 6'2" my junior year when a few coaches started to notice. As a righty you've got to put up terrific numbers or be over 6'4" to get noticed in high school. I topped out at 89 my senior year, I consistently threw 86 plus. The scale is much more flexible for lefties. Any lefty throwing over 82 with success in high school will get a look from at least some small schools. I'd also say any lefty over 6' is going to get some interest.

11. Did you have any pro teams looking at you? My 3rd year at Duke I had some scouts from the Braves, the Devil Rays, and one other team (can't remember) ask about me. In general the consensus was that if I had a strong 4th year I might be a late round pickup in 2006 or get a free agent signing. I shit the bed my 4th year (2006) when my new pitching coach decided to change most of my mechanics in the fall. In my opinion that is the worst thing that ever happened to me as a pitcher (even worse than the tears in my rotator cuff that happened in 2002 and 2009). By the time you get to that age if you're having success coaches shouldn't be breaking you down unless they've committed to you for 4 years and have a chance to work through the inevitable problems with you. I only had one year to go at Duke at that point, and I was mentally and physically lost for most of my last year on the mound. I figured things out myself in 2007 and in 2008 was invited to spring training by a couple teams in the CanAm league here in New England. I was cut by the Worcester Tornadoes on the last day of spring training (last pitcher cut out of 19 vying for 3 roster spots) and basically gave up on pro ball after that. I decided that trying to play in the MidWest or the West and spending all of that time away from my GF (now wife) just wasn't for me. I was making good money playing poker and just decided that at 25 I was too old to keep trying to play pro ball considering my ceiling.

12. What state did you go to H.S. in? West Virginia

13. Is the play better in some parts of the U.S. then others? I have been told that the best ball was played in California, Texas, and Florida do you find this to be true or is baseball-baseball no matter where you live? baseball is baseball no matter where you live, but the competition is definitely better in the south and california. you have better weather so the season starts earlier and lasts longer, and there are more teams, better training facilities, and more interest. But the fact of the matter is great players come from all over. I never went to any big recruiting camps, never played big time travel ball, and was never seriously scouted during high school. But I outplayed a some of the heavily recruited players in the ACC. I had as much talent as some of them, but outworked a lot of others. I was told I wasn't good enough to play at just about every level at some point, and I took a lot of pleasure in proving people wrong. I think a lot of big time players from those states get a little full of themselves when people talk about how great the competition is and they start ranking AAU teams and recruits and all that bull shit. At the end of the day you've got to get it done on the field under the lights. Doesn't matter how enamored some scout is of your heater in a bullpen at some camp.

14. Any general advice for my boy?
- Make the work fun. Learn to love the game and playing the game. If the way you practice and approach isn't making you smile figure a way that would be fun. if you don't like normal long toss setup a trash can and try to throw the balls into the trash can. If bullpens aren't fun try making some kind of a game out of it that keeps you interested. keep score so you have something to shoot for.
- Always keep your ears and eyes open. Try to learn and listen from everyone, but have confidence in what you do. Listen to people's advice, but if it doesn't work for you stick to what does. Watch pro ball and watch what those guys do well. Even if you aren't capable of throwing like that, learn how they think about approaching hitters and situations.
- Learn how to keep your composure and focus on the next pitch. always the next pitch. just execute the next pitch. you can never change the past, you can't prepare for every possible future, but you can focus on the present. have a short emotional memory but learn from experiences.
- Try to get a feel for your own body and how you throw. This is really really really hard for kids and teenagers. It's the reason that so many pitching coaches spend so much time teaching kids only to see them make the same mistake over and over again. In general most kids struggle to make adjustments and feel what they are doing right and wrong. That part of pitching doesnt come easy to people usually until they are 23 or older. But if you try it can't hurt. Being able to feel your own mistakes and recognize how changing parts of your delivery affects your results will help you understand how to pitch. especially when tired.
- Also school always has to come first. Academics have to come first. You can't even think about playing baseball in college if you can't get in to college, and playing ball is a lot easier if you can get it in on academic merit alone. All coaches want hard working good students on their teams. It makes their lives easier and sets a good example for the freshmen.

stats to date in the BPL:

Happy 4th!

2011-07-04T16:08:00.000-04:00

Going to try and get back to updating soon. Lots of crazy stuff going on in the poker world, but tbh it's probably not helpful for anyone for me to write some 1000 word recap. just head over to 2p2 and browse NVG and internet poker and you can figure it out if you're out of the loop.

Also if you happen to know any professional poker players living in Montreal that would be interested in making a little cash on the side by helping another player out let me know by leaving a comment in the blog with your email or a way to reach you. FWIW I'll need references or someone to vouch for you to know that you're reputable, but any help is appreciated.

Hope everyone in the northern hemisphere is having a good summer.

later

pizzle

Natural, new mixtape, first song, check it out...

2011-05-31T01:04:00.000-04:00

rain sucks. and 5000th 2p2 post?

2011-05-18T10:22:00.000-04:00

My baseball season was supposed to start last night but we got rained out. Unfortunately things don't look much better for a game tonight, and I'm not even sure it's going to clear up for tomorrow. Typical lousy Boston spring. We've only had 3 days above 70 degrees so far for the year.

On another note I'm quickly approaching my 5000th post on 2p2. I've been a member for almost 5 years, and I think I'm finally going to make a milestone post. I've always avoided it because I felt I didn't have much to add that others hadn't already covered. In general I don't feel like a brilliant poker mind or innovator, just a hard studier and a quick learner.

But I think there might be some away from table stuff that I could add that might be valuable to other pros. So I'm going to work on a draft, and if I feel like it's something worth posting I will. I'll probably post it in the blog as well.

later

jim

COACHING

2011-05-04T01:41:00.000-04:00

In the process of updating the layout of my blog I decided to update the coaching info. However the formatting became an issue, so I removed the text from the bottom of the blog. I decided to post it here until I find a way to affix it to the layout. I'm reconsidering coaching again after an extended hiatus do the free time I have since Black Friday. If you're interested post a comment on my blog and we can discuss.

COACHING INFO:

As many of you know I’ve been playing poker professionally for the past 3.5. I built my bankroll up over the course of 2 years grinding from the micro-stakes of NL25 and .25/.50 limit. I now am a solid winner in the 15/30 limit games and NL1000 games online. If you would like to read a little more into my poker story please check out the write up I did when I introduced my blog in Oct 2007.

Over the past seven years I have learned that it takes a lot of study and work to become a winning poker player. One of the best steps I took as a player was getting some outside assistance (in the form of video coaching) from pros that had also climbed the ladder from micro-stakes. It is very hard at poker to improve through self-analysis alone. We all struggle to identify weaknesses, and honestly assess our own game. But whether you are playing purely as a hobby, or looking at poker as a second income, serious coaching can be the first step towards taking your game to the next level.

Since turning pro I have done some hand history and session reviews for a few people, including a couple of players from www.chiptalk.net. I’ve received positive feedback from those I’ve worked with, and greatly enjoyed sharing my knowledge and experience. Because of that I’ve decided to offer coaching on a more serious basis.

MY EXPERIENCE

I have played over 4 million hands of cash game poker online in the past 3.5 years.
I’m an established winner at both full ring and shorthanded hold’em games at mid stakes (up to NL1000 and 15/30 limit).
I have read and reread almost every available poker book on limit and no limit HE.
I post and follow along in the latest strategy threads on multiple online forums.

TYPES OF INSTRUCTION INCLUED:

Analysis of your game (examples: strengths, leaks, dealing with tilt, game selection, etc)
Specific strategy discussion (examples: preflop play, playing the flop, bet-sizing, stealing and defending blinds, etc)
Live sweating (you sweat me or I sweat you and we discuss the hands as they are played)
Hand History review (you send me a set of hands and I write up a detailed hand-by-hand analysis of your play)
Video Review* (you provide video or a set of hands and I record analysis of your play at the tables)
PokerTracker stat reviews (you provide all of your relevant stats and I look for leaks in your play)

WHAT PEOPLE HAVE SAID ABOUT WORKING WITH ME

littlebu – "I had him do a HH review for a couple of 6-max limit sessions and what I got back was amazing. Very detailed analysis and very organized. If anyone is thinking about having HH reviews done you won't be disappointed."
Big Mike – "I had Jim review one of my HH. He did a very thorough job, and pointed out some profitable situations I was missing (including preflop, where I thought I was doing OK!) I would highly recommend him to anyone looking to take their game to the next level."
Savior17 -- "I just had a sweat session with Jim this past Saturday. Let me say that this was a very informative (perhaps too informative - a good thing) session. Jim immeidately made adjustments in my game from PF raising requirements to post flop betting and hand reading. He easily picked out weakness in the other payers that could be exploited profitably. He also turned my game into a more aggressive game, and I thought I was already somewhat aggressive. I saw immediate results by the end of our 2 hour session. For sure, I will have more coaching sessions with Jim in 2008. Thanks Jim!!!!"

Ace'sFull -- "I won MJ2K posting contest and I chose to have Jim sweat me during a session. I have to say without a doubt this is tsingle best thing that has happen to my game. Jim is a WONDERFUL coach. We ended up +$1 for the session (I play .05/.10) Lost a big pot to a suckout but won it back in a later confrontation. However the info that Jim gave me in the hour or so we spoke has made drastic improvements to my game and most imporantly my bankroll. I have played about 3K more hands sence our sweat and I have come real close to doubling my bankroll. So if you are thinking about a coaching session with Jim I will tell you with worth way more than he is charging. I will be back for more coaching..."

FORMAT AND RATES

Coaching, strategy discussion, and sweating can be reserved in 1-hour blocks.
Hand History review can be as many or as few hands as you like. Payment he is based on the amount of time it takes me to complete the review, minimum of half an hour charge. (100 hands of 6max limit typically equals 1.5 hour of review time)
PokerTracker stat review is based on amount of data you wish me to review.
Please contact me via email to discuss rates for each option.
Long term coaching plans are also available. PM and we can setup a plan and rate.

GUARANTEES

All coaching and discussion are completely confidential.
I have no trade secrets. Anything I have learned is fair game and will be shared.

If you are interested please put a comment on my blog. I will respond as soon as possible to discuss what I can do to improve your game. I have flexible hours so I am fine with any time zone, and most of the time should be able to work around your schedule.

playing PLO and really enjoying it

2011-05-04T00:47:00.000-04:00

for the first time I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of PLO a little. I actually feel comfortable playing more than 4 tables, although I notice that I play significantly better when only playing 4. I'm grinding small stakes PLO on carbon right now. I've won 11 BI so far, and when I win another 10 I plan on moving up in stakes. Because full tilt is no longer allowing for new US customers I'm replacing my full tilt banner adds raketherake banner adds. I'd suggest for guys looking to grind some small stakes in the US you can click on a link and sign up for rakeback at one of the merge sites. I'll get a little bonus for referring you, and you'll get rakeback, sign up bonus, and vip rewards from the best and most reliable rakeback site online. they also have freerolls and rake chases, so it really is a solid deal. I know there are others that are advertising under the table higher % RB deals, but without of the doubt in the market as is I'd prefer to have a highly reputable affiliate.

Other than that it is just usual stuff. Pitching, watching nba playoffs, working out, etc. Played 9 holes of golf on sunday and shot a 41 with only about 3 mulligans, and made it the whole 9 with the ball i started with. Considering I had not swung the clubs since last september, I was pretty happy with the results.

going to throw a pen now. hopefully we'll all hear something from FTP in the next week. Got all of my stars money back, but I had the majority of my online roll on FTP and had hoped to be able to withdraw it this week.

later

CNN article about online poker protest:

2011-04-28T14:51:00.000-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/04/27/online.poker.protest/

update on the list:

2011-04-28T11:39:00.001-04:00

adding a #7 which is learn PLO.

1. p90x workouts: 1xchest and back; 1x plyometrics; 1xshoulders & arms; 1x abs
2. 1x bullpen, getting ready to go throw another in an hour or so.
3. still need to clean my desk today
4. 4x lessons of coffee break spanish.
5. have a tire that needs patched on the car. if I get that done after baseball might consider the woods
6. fail.
7. watched ep. 1 of Hellomaha on DC. played 348 hands of 50PLO, lost $8. Still a lot for me to figure out in the game. Right now I think I've fixed some of my preflop leaks that I used to have that had me leaking non-SD money constantly. But I still have trouble folding bare two-pair hands when there is dead money in the pot. I think I'm overrating having set-blockers, which really don't matter that much because two pair without a redraw simply isn't that strong of a hand.

apparently the PPA said they have been talking to FTP reps about releasing a statement relating to cashouts, and they said the feedback was positive. So hopefully we'll hear something from them next week. I'm pretty disappointed with their support since the 15th, but I still have faith that I'll get my full account balance back eventually. As to the approximately $8,000 in VIP rewards I had earned, I have less faith.

later

jim

what I've gotten done, and an answer to a question

2011-04-27T04:10:00.000-04:00

a running tally of what i've accomplished on my list of things:

1. p90x workouts: 1xchest and back; 1x plyometrics
2. threw a bullpen today. felt pretty good and had decent pop and movement.
3. fail. need to clean my desk tomorrow.
4. listened to the first four episodes of coffee break spanish podcast. A reader suggested that I order Rosetta Stone, and now that I'll have my Stars money back within a few weeks (about 27% of my online roll) I might do that since I'll finally have enough in checking to not have to worry about budgeting for at least the rest of the year.
5. haven't been back down to foxwoods, but thinking of going on thursday night, not sure.
6. fail.

I'll likely continue to update this list as I think it will be motivational.

As to a question proposed in the comments section, I have noticed that several sites are still allowing US players. And after getting some solid info from another online pro and fellow blogger Doublefly (see his blog on left) I decided to make a small deposit on one of these sites and check the games out. I found the process relatively painless, and it kind of brought back fond memories of my early days online when I was first moving my roll from Party to Tilt and I was very concerned to make sure that everything got transferred successfully. Those were the days when I was clearing Tilt and Absolutes bonuses and feeling like it was raining free money. I might try and find some old posts from my Chiptalk days and see if they would make for an interesting blog retrospective.

I used my rakeback affiliate RakeTheRake to get rakeback and figured out what would be the best deposit bonus. If you're signing up for a rakeback account anywhere I highly recommend them, and you can click on the banner ads on my blog and I get a small referral bonus (won't affect your RB or promotions). I actually played some small stakes PLO today and enjoyed myself. The site works with my tracking software and HUD so it was almost like being able to grind in some small way.

The question now is do I try and grind small stakes on my tiny roll on the site, or do I try and learn small stakes PLO. I'm thinking PLO since at this point the money probably isn't really comparable either way, but learning PLO should be more fun. I think I'm going to start watching nothing but PLO videos at least for the next couple of weeks and I'm going to try and update on my thoughts and results. Until I get setup to grind on any major sites in the future I think I can take advantage of this time to try and learn other games and expand my poker repertoire.

that's all for now. Hope people were excited to be able to cashout of Pokerstars today, and if we're lucky this means that things will be in the works for full tilt. Although I'm not holding my breath that Tilt gets things figured out within a month. sigh...

what am I doing until I can play online poker again?

2011-04-25T09:51:00.000-04:00

well first let me say I'm hoping I can play online poker sooner rather than later, but I'll probably have to keep my updates on the subject to the minimum until something substantial happens with congress or the DOJ.

Regardless, for at least the time being (probably a month or so?) I have lots of free time. So what am I doing with all of those hours that I normally spend studying and playing poker? Here's the rundown:

1. get in shape. this is something I always try to do, but I have plenty of free time now so there is no excuse not to work out at least 5 days a week. I finished the first 3 weeks of p90x and then went on vacation and pretty much shot that work. so I'm just starting over now, although I might have to skip some of the arm workouts occasionally because of...

2. throw a lot of bullpens. Last season I had some rotator cuff issues that kept me from really preparing fully. When the season started I was not only dealing with pain but I was probably only about 40-50% ready. This year I haven't experienced similar pain, and I think I can get up to full speed before the season. I have some goals in prep, but in general I want to be ready to throw +5 innings at full strength, and have command at the beginning of the season. That is harder than people think coming off of an injury and then a year of closing, but there is no reason I can't accomplish that.

3. clean the apartment, and keep it that way. Yeah this sounds silly, and makes me seem like a house-husband, but honestly it just feels nice to wake up in a clean place. and it is much easier to get things done when the mess around you isn't constantly in your peripheral. In general our apartment is in decent shape right now. But a good hour a day is probably enough to turn a somewhat messy apartment into a really clean environment. If only I could get the wife on board with this.

4. learn spanish. I know I've been saying for years that I want to do this. But to sound cliched, there is no better time than now. Starting a free spanish podcast today. hopefully I can continue this.

5. play some live poker. I did this on Saturday. went down to the woods, and played for about 8 hours. I won about half a buy-in, but I was playing very low stakes since I haven't played much live poker in about 3 years. I think until I get playing online again I'll probably be making a couple of trips to Foxwoods each week. TBH the play is fairly boring and slow, mostly because you only encounter 1 to 2 interesting spots a day, but it gives me a feeling of getting some work done so it is satisfying mentally.

6. volunteer some of my time This is my final goal, but some would argue it's the first thing I should do. I haven't decided where or when to do this, but I think spending 1 day a week (monday?) volunteering 4-8 hours. The wife has suggested an animal shelter since it would put me in a great mood every time I did. Instead of providing favors at our wedding we made a small donation to a local animal shelter. So we already have a very brief relationship with them, and it would be easy for me to get in touch. Hopefully I'll have some positive followup about this soon.

That's all for now. Might update with my thoughts on low-stakes at Foxwoods, but I'm not sure if it's even interesting enough for a blog post. Also I'm going to try and continue to update about how to fight for legal online poker. Didn't get any feedback relating to my letters to the editor so I guess I whiffed on that attempt. But I'm going to stay after it and hopefully everyone else will and in the not too distant future (2012 plz) we might have legal online poker in the US.

hope everyone had a great easter.

later

jim

letter to the editor

2011-04-22T02:43:00.000-04:00

sending this to the boston papers tomorrow. hopefully one of them will run it:

On April 15th the Department of Justice indicted three providers of online poker. Ten million Americans play poker as a hobby. Some, including me, play professionally. We are now denied service. More importantly, this action is wasteful and reeks of hypocrisy. In this economy should our government really be focused on this? Regulation and taxation of online poker would make far more sense.

The DOJ’s actions are an enforcement of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, a bill passed in September 2006. Sponsored by Senators Frist and Kyl, the bill was attached to the unrelated port security bill and passed in clandestine fashion without serious debate in Congress.

While poker players are being denied the right to play, we have state lotteries and online horse betting. These games have no element of skill, yet they are legal because our government profits from them, and the horse-racing industry has greased the right palms. By contrast, poker is a game of skill in which players compete against each other, and skilled players win in the long run.

The sites being indicted have asked for years to be regulated and taxed. It's projected that online poker could generate $35 billion in tax revenue over 10 years. Regulations could safeguard against gambling addiction, underage play, and fraud. Given the current economic climate and budget deficits, it is logical to regulate online poker. Instead, we are wasting tax dollars and man-hours denying Americans a game we love.

As a professional poker player, this issue has a huge impact on me. Since 2008, I've help put my wife through medical school, paid off 80% of my student loans, established a retirement fund, and paid over $150,000 in taxes. My tax dollars are now being used to prosecute the same companies that provided me a way to earn that income.

Poker is a great American game, invented in our country. But now we can no longer play with the rest of the world online. Support legal online poker, and tell congress and the DOJ how you feel about their actions.

Sincerely,

if you need to explain what is going on to your non-poker friends this might help:

2011-04-21T01:47:00.001-04:00

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/20/after-black-friday-american-poker-faces-cloudy-future/

youtube from PPA board member about stuff

2011-04-20T16:44:00.000-04:00

if you don't like reading you can take a look at this and it helps inform people what they can do help fight for legal, regulated, online poker.

note: in the past (and even now) I haven't always agreed with everything the PPA has agreed with. That being said they are our best lobbying effort right now, and are generally interested in making the game available to all americans. I understand why they have aligned themselves with US corporate gaming interests. And while I'm frustrated that Harrahs and Caesars have supported the actions against Full Tilt and Pokerstars, I realize that the best hope for upcoming regulated US-based online poker probably lies with these corporations. It's sad that the same people that have fought against an open market for international companies in the short term may be our best hope for poker in the US in the future. But I'm a logical person and I understand you can't have it all.

The fight isn't over...

2011-04-20T14:09:00.001-04:00

but at least we're getting our money back:

UNITED STATES ENTERS DOMAIN-NAME USE AGREEMENTS
WITH TWO ONLINE POKER COMPANIES
As Part of Agreements, Use of Domain Names Pokerstars.com and
Fulltiltpoker.com Will Be Restored to Facilitate Return of U.S.
Player Funds

PREET BHARARA, the United States Attorney for the
Southern District of New York, announced today that the United
States entered into domain-name use agreements with PokerStars
and Full Tilt Poker, two of three online poker companies named as
defendants in an April 15 civil money laundering and forfeiture
Complaint (the "Civil Complaint"), alleging bank fraud, wire
fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling offenses. The
Complaint, a related Indictment, and a related Restraining Order
issued against multiple bank accounts utilized by the companies
and their payment processors do not prohibit the companies from
refunding players’ money. Nevertheless, this agreement will
facilitate the return of money so that players can register their
refund requests directly with Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker.

Manhattan U.S. Attorney PREET BHARARA said: "On April
15th, this Office and the FBI took specific legal action against
11 individuals who allegedly engaged not merely in the operation
of illegal gambling businesses, but in massive wire fraud, bank
fraud, and money laundering, despite repeated warnings and clear
notice that their conduct was illegal in the United States. No
individual player accounts were ever frozen or restrained, and
each implicated poker company has at all times been free to
reimburse any player's deposited funds. In fact, this Office
expects the companies to return the money that U.S. players
entrusted to them, and we will work with the poker companies to
facilitate the return of funds to players, as today’s agreements
with PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker demonstrate."

Under the terms of the agreements with PokerStars and
Full Tilt Poker, the companies agreed that they would not allow
for, facilitate, or provide the ability for players located in
the United States to engage in playing online poker for "real
money" or any other thing of value. The agreements allow for
PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to use the pokerstars.com and
fulltiltpoker.com domain names to facilitate the withdrawal of
U.S. players’ funds held in account with the companies. The
deposit of funds by U.S. players is expressly prohibited. In
addition, the agreements do not prohibit, and, in fact, expressly
allow for, PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to provide for, and
facilitate, players outside of the United States to engage in
playing online poker for real money. The agreements also require
the appointment of an independent Monitor to verify PokerStars’
and Full Tilt Poker’s compliance with the agreements. The
Government stands to enter the same agreement with Absolute Poker
if it so chooses.

This is the guy who lead the charge against online poker:

2011-04-19T21:59:00.000-04:00

Senator Bill Frist, in a nutshell:

The FEC (Federal Election Commission) found that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s 2000 Senate campaign committee, Frist 2000, Inc. violated federal campaign finance laws. "In June 2000, Senator Frist took $1 million of the money that had... been contributed to his 2000 Senate campaign and invested it in the stock market, where it promptly began losing money. In November 2000, Senator Frist sought to collect $1.2 million he had lent his 1994 Senate campaign committee. As a result of the stock market losses, however, Frist 2000, Inc. did not have enough money to repay the loan. Senator Frist solved this problem by having the 1994 and the 2000 campaign committees jointly take out a $1.44 million bank loan at a cost of $10,000 a month interest. Frist 2000, Inc. did not report this debt on its FEC disclosure forms."[29] In both 2005 and 2006, Senator Frist was named one of the "Most Corrupt Members of Congress" [30] by government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for ethics inquiries stemming from his troubles with the FEC and an investigation by the SEC for stock sales potentially based on inside information.[31]

Hypocrisy at it's Finest: Keeping Us Safe from Poker

2011-04-19T17:23:00.000-04:00

Article in Time about the hypocrisy of the current case against the Pokerstars and Full Tilt:

Keeping Us Safe from Poker

Current PPA action plan:

2011-04-19T13:21:00.001-04:00

http://theppa.org/takeaction/

ONLINE POKER AND OUR FREEDOM TO PLAY IS UNDER ATTACK!

2011-04-18T18:04:00.000-04:00

ONLINE POKER AND OUR FREEDOM TO PLAY IS UNDER ATTACK!
Corporate gaming interests in the US under the guise of religious right moral correctness have lobbied the federal government to spend our tax dollars to prosecute online poker sites. These same sites have asked for years for our government to legalize, regulate, and tax them so that they could more easily provide the freedom for US players to play OUR GAME.

Now the DOJ and the FBI are wasting valuable resources pursuing a case that no one cares about in the first place. And in the process are preventing an industry that could provide 35 billion or more in taxes in the near future from being legalized and regulated. Instead of using that money to provide health care or education for Americans we're going to allow it to leave the country in order to pave the way for big gaming (Harrahs, Caesars, Nevada Gaming Commission etc) to take over the industry. The United States has long stood for freedom and free market capitalism. But in this move the federal government is making it clear that those values only apply as long as big business supports them.

At the same time this case is leaving thousands of Americans without a source of entertainment and/or income. All of this is happening because Big Brother is here to tell us what is best while they take money under the table. Stop the hypocrisy, and fight for your right to play. Please go to the PPA website and contact your representatives, the president, and the DOJ to express your displeasure:

http://theppa.org/takeaction/

fucking rush poker

2011-04-06T04:07:00.001-04:00

it's so god damned addictive, but I think I might just suck at it. My lifetime win-rate at rush is worse than at regular tables, and significantly enough worse that I really shouldn't be wasting my time with it. But every once in awhile I just want to sit down and grind and be able to quit in 90 minutes if I'm losing focus and not feel like I wasted a session.

see when you're a +16 tabler at +2/4 it takes usually close to 30 minutes to get 16 tables fired up. I play both 6max and full ring, and I usually play HU on 3-4 tables to get games started when I start a session. But even considering all of that it takes awhile to finally get in 16 decent games. If there are any games at all to choose from I usually try to not to sit at an all reg table. Especially at FR where the action is just going to be boring and if I'm in a bad seat I'm pretty much effed (good regs behind me nits in front of me). So after you've done all of that work to get in some decent games and get things going you feel like you should put in at least 3 hours to make it worth your time and focus. So you really have to get your grind on.

But some days I'd just like to play 3 or 4 short sessions. Just fire up some rush and play for 60-90 minutes and then quit. And this would certainly be a good plan if I didn't find the game so fucking frustrating. TBH I think I just play too loose and splashy. It is for the most part a very nitty game, with mostly uncreative regulars (this doesn't mean bad fwiw just more typically tight aggressive). And the few regs that tend to get out of line tend to get way out of line, but it is hard to get a read on them because you don't build up meta and history since every hand goes down in different positions and with different stack sizes. I think part of the strength of my game is getting in opponents heads and either understanding how they think, or forcing them into playing my game by widening ranges and ramping up aggression in certain spots. but that just doesn't work against nitty regs at rush. in general they are playing strong tight ranges in a lot of spot, and my efforts to float or bluff them are just too thin and spewy. A lot of the 200 rush regs just have huge leaks in their game, and I can see them, but then I stupidly try to take advantage of them in every pot I possibly can with them. which is overkill and these guys are decent players and definitely smart and capable enough to realize when some guy is just trying to play-master them. But since every time I click the fold button I'm at a new table with a new lineup I just keep trying. It's like in my mind I feel like every new hand in rush is kind of a fresh spot and so I have a clean slate to try and run over people. But I don't have a clean slate because these guys have seen me spew for the last several thousand hands. sigh.

Plus I have a bad habit of seeing pretty hands and wanting to see a flop regardless of whether or not seeing that flop is a profitable decision. I just love seeing flops. Which is why I found PLO so much fun, but was even more spewy at that game. with 4 cards in my hand how could I not want to see a flop nearly always?

anyway the point of this was that I need to stop playing stupid rush. My hourly on it is not horrible, that is I could make a very good living playing rush. But compared to my hourly in regular midstakes games it's pretty bad. Plus the stakes are lower, the rake is higher, and I don't earn as many frequent player points.

so for now I'm going to try and stay away from rush. that and getting bored and trying to crush 200nl HU nit bumhunters. I sit at the their tables and they either cooler me or quit. if I win a BI I know the game is over, and the only way I'm going to get any action is if they are coolering me for a few hundred hands. it's honestly stupid to keep trying to get action. I just like HU.

oh, and I leave for Cancun in 7 hours. will update with some pics when I get there.

later

piz

updated some stuff on the blog

2011-04-04T14:46:00.000-04:00

I added blogger and poker pro zephendrix. zep is a very good mid-high stakes player, a ridiculous grinder, works a legit job, and goes to school. his latest post is about his work and poker setups and has some great pics. check it out.

I've also added a few features so people can subscribe more easily via google reader or email or whatever. I'm thinking about changing the theme to something else later this week. I liked this theme when I first started, but I think it's starting to get a little old.

time to get some stuff done around here. It's a chores, poker, workout type afternoon. It's raining and cold outside so that trip to cancun on wednesday is looking better and better.

later

New month, let's make some goals:

2011-04-03T15:42:00.000-04:00

Here's March, it's my first good month of the year so I want to pay homage to the poker gods by posting a graph and thanking them for all of their rungood.

I also was going to post a graph of last year but I can't find it. I'll sum up 2010 by saying that my hourly dropped a little from 2009, and I played a few less hours. So my total net for the year dropped by about 25%. if you want to get an estimate of what I made for the year just check out the graph I posted in january 2010 of 2009 and multiply by .75.

I'm also going on vacation leaving on Wednesday for a week with the wife. We're heading to Cancun to stay at a pretty nice hotel and just chill on the beach for a week. Should be great since neither of us have done a beach vacation in about 5 years. I've also decided to bring along some stuff to do and try to be productive on vacation. That may sound silly, but I have this habit of finding myself ready to go home like half way through a lot of vacations. And I think part of this is just becoming frustrated with a feeling of uselessness and laziness when I'm not accomplishing anything. However I feel like if I can play a little poker each day, workout each day, and get our wedding thank you notes finally finished I'll enjoy the scenery and the rest of the relaxing atmosphere all the more. That may sound silly to some people, but when I want to vacation I often just want a change of scenery and some nice weather, I'm not looking to just sit on my ass for a week.

So here are the goals for the month:

1. play 100k hands of poker. focus. play well. don't passively tilt. take breaks.
2. play at least 4-5 big tourneys. focus. play well. don't sweat it if you don't cash.
3. throw a bullpen 10 times. This is going to be hard to do with vacation, but I only have about a month and a half to get ready for the season and I really need to crank it up. I've been doing p90x for the last 3 weeks so my fitness is pretty good. I've gained weight and increased leg strength a lot. but pitching is a skill and needs to be practiced and I need to get after it.
4. write 20 blog posts. why not? even if it's just a post late at night with a list of things I need to get done the next day, that should still motivate me to keep me on task. also is helpful to clear my mind after sessions.
5. record a couple of podcasts. we haven't recorded an episode of the podcast in probably a month. I was enjoying the process, so need to get back to it.
6. work on my note taking. I should pick a regular after every session and break them down and take notes. I'm really really bad a note taking as I tend to try and focus on how people are playing that day since I think people's games are relatively dynamic from session to session. That being said everyone has tendencies and they have certain things they tend to default to. I should be looking for these tendencies to help me make decisions in the future.

that's all I can think of for now. I reserve the right to add more goals if I can think of them.

I'll wrap this up by posting a link to a blogger who is extensively covering the former UB/AP cheating scandal. It helped remind me why I happily withdrew my entire roll from those sites in 2008 and I'm glad I've never gone back. The whole thing is pretty sordid.

link: http://haleyspokerblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/just-conjecturin-volume-30-naming-names.html

later folks

NYT article about jungleman, and my thoughts on high stakes and why I haven't taken shots...

2011-03-28T17:48:00.000-04:00

article: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=3d94d90179cdc9144d808d788300fa21

quick caveat: The following email was something that I sent to a friend in response to our discussion of the article. In it I explain why I haven't tried to play high stakes and talk about some of the traits that I share with those players just not at their extremes. HOWEVER, I'm not suggesting that I am good enough or skilled enough to play with or beat nosebleed high stakes players. But it's fair for me to talk about it because I understand the mental transformation that takes place when you start gambling for serious sums of money. I also am skilled enough at NLHE where I would have a decent chance of making money if I tried to shot take at high stakes.

here is my email to my friend:

but I'll never get to that level because I don't have the disconnect with reality and money that those guys do. It's why I've never been comfortable playing higher than 5/10 or 10/20, and when I lose more than $5k I feel like shit. I think it's probably somewhat genetic, but also has to do with the environment I was raised in. It's why I had to wait so long to tell my parents about poker, and I could never have lost thousands learning the game. they would have killed me. Plus I've always put away money for retirement and paid off loans instead of taking shots at higher stakes despite having the bankroll a few times. I definitely have had about enough money in my accounts more than once and could have tried to grind 10/20-25/50 nl and have a few big 5-figure scores, but I've always chickened out, withdrawn a big chunk of it and stayed at midstakes.

i think the guys that are comfortable playing that high, and have that gamble in them are just a different psychological makeup. I kind of admire it, but at the same time I think it makes it tougher for them to connect with the rest of the world for whom money has a different meaning. I have trouble sometimes seeing money the way other people do, I can't imagine how different it would be if I was losing and winning like jungleman and durrrr are. Especially if the only people you have to discuss about it are online friends. (Which is an entirely different discussion about the mental health aspect of the guys who's social life is now mostly related to the internet and online relationships that they have developed through poker.) I try to not talk to online people about winning and losing because I hate showing weakness to my opponents. I don't want them to know if I feel weaknesses in my game or if I'm not playing confidently because of a downswing. However talking about it with my wife rarely works because as hard as she tries she doesn't really have a grasp of what making decisions for a couple of thousand dollars over cards feels like. Similarly to the fact that I don't understand what making decisions in the hospital for her is like.

It's just kind of weird how your stress, ego, and mindset are altered by the game both in the short term and long run. And it can be even weirder how winning and losing can you make you feel for short stretches. When I'm on a hot streak and owning guys and all of my decisions feel perfect I feel like some kind of genius aggro gambling beast. and when everything is going wrong you just feel like a total lost fool and everyone is just making fun of you while they rob you blind. you finish a session where you win +5k and you are just like "fuck! I can do anything I just made $5k in 3 hours". and you finish a night where you drop like +5k while grinding till the sun comes up and you just want to crawl under the covers and hope it was a nightmare. I start questioning whether the game has passed me by and if I should start looking for jobs. and eventually i just study and work harder and the variance swings the other way and I feel like a genius again.

it's very addicting if you have a competitive mindset. It provides mental stimulation that most regular jobs never approach. I don't mean addictive in a gambling addiction sense, but addictive in that you want to be better than your competition, you want to win and the struggle feels more real than other things. In a comparison of mental and emotional stimulation the many jobs I had from high school until I worked for an engineering firm were not even close. And it's kind of like a sport but in sports your body is a limitation and can let you down and you may never understand why. but in poker there is no limitation only your mind and work ethic, and if you make mistakes you can pinpoint them and there is noone to blame but yourself.

But the money is real enough to me at 5/10. at 50/100+ where those guys play the money would just be a nightmare and I'd probably have a heart attack and die in the middle of a session.

why I'm not bitter about the loss:

2011-03-25T17:31:00.000-04:00

(something I sent to a friend that was asking me how I was taking it today)

when your program has won 4 national championships in 20 years you realize that you can't get too greedy. even the best team each year only has about an 18% chance of winning it all. So to win 20% of the championships in a given 20 year period is pretty absurd. Even if we had the best team every year we wouldn't expect more than that, and clearly we haven't had the best team every year. And we were a couple bounces away from winning another 2-3, so being bitter and bitching would just be silly as a fan. There are lots of Duke fans that have mini-meltdowns after games like that and start ripping on K's recruiting, gameplan, or some of our guys that consistently make mistakes. And I think that is just silly. Being a Duke basketball fan is awesome, year in and year out. If our fans don't think we're lucky to have this team and this school to root for right now then they've just gotten spoiled. We always have good guys that play for our team, most of our players stick around and graduate, and we've never committed any major NCAA violations. We may be the mosted hated team in college sports, but that is because success breeds contempt. And I'm positive that given the opportunity to achieve what Duke basketball has in the last 20 years all of the haters would gladly trade programs.

I know that down the line Coach K is going to retire, and when he does we're likely to go through a dry spell much like UCLA did post-Wooden. I'll save my meltdowns for those years of potential futility. Or maybe we'll hire Brad Stevens from Butler and he'll keep us going (I love that guy and would love to see him coach my program).

I'm proud of our players and team. The had a great season and just picked a bad night to play Arizona. If Arizona plays like that the rest of the way noone is going to stop them, but I highly doubt they will. My only disappointment for the game is that our seniors didn't get to go out in more heroic fashion. After the great careers they had I'd have liked to see them lose in a way that was worthy of a memory.

back to the grind.

we lost, it sucks, not much else to say.

2011-03-25T00:44:00.000-04:00

great careers by our seniors. It's a shame they couldn't go out in more heroic fashion. I need to get back to updating. poker is going well this month after a couple of slow months to start the year. I'm ahead of the game in my prep for taxes, and I'm going on vacation to Cancun with the wife in two weeks.

so life could be worse.

Thanks for the great year Duke Basketball 2010-2011, good luck to the guys that are moving on, and here's to hoping the rest of the team and the new additions keep the proud legacy going.

later

jim

Wedding in Cali for the weekend, back to the grind tonight

2011-02-21T08:11:00.000-05:00

Haven't played a hand since Thursday morning because I flew 7 hours across country to go to a friends wedding nearly San Francisco. The weekend was awesome despite the lousy weather, and it was great to catch up with a bunch of good friends from college as well as some new friends that I've made through the groom.

I expect Duke to be no. 1 in the polls after the crazy week of college basketball, but really as long as we're in the top 3 I'm happy since we're setting ourselves up to get a 1 seed. Having a 1 seed is a huge advantage in the tournament and I think as long as Duke can go the rest of the regular season with only 1 more loss we should be able to pull one down.

Finally I dowloaded a pretty cool app for my iphone that has some very neat picture editing functions. Here is a photo I took with it yesterday when I was checking out the Golden Gate Bridge:

fwiw it's a definite must do tourist attraction if you're there. It's one of those heavily-hyped things that actually lives up to it's reputation. The views are amazing, the bridge is awesome, and it feels very authentic to the city.

I'm going to try and update more this week with my attempts to salvage a reasonable month.

later

Shellshocked, the podcast, vegas, duke basketball, and more...

2011-02-14T17:45:00.000-05:00

Lot of stuff to try and cover since the last serious update. I still need to post pictures of the honeymoon and wedding, but that stuff has gotten delayed because the wife is doing a medicine rotation right now which means I barely ever see her. Most days she works +12 hours, except for twice a week when she works more like 24-30. So it really sucks, especially to spend your first valentines day as a married couple apart. Not that I'm a huge fan of the holiday, but I'd still rather have her around for it. oh well.

I've had a lot of confidence issues relating to poker over the last few months. In general going back to last summer I've only had one really good month (November). I've made money most months, but my results haven't been great and I've yet to get on a strong run over the coure of a few days let alone a week. Relating to that I've been doing a lot of studying and thinking about my game. Because of that I've definitely made some stylistic and theoretical changes in how I view and play. I think they are positive changes, but as a result I'm finding myself often in spots I'm less familiar with as well as experiencing a lot of variance due to poor decisions on my part. I've actually had to fight tilt for the first time in a long time. The most recent example would be last week. I spent the first 3 days of the week grinding low stakes rush trying to get my confidence back. Even though I didn't post a lot of positive results I felt good about my play and was ready to get back into my games for the weekend. On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I posted reasonable wins, and for the first time in a long time I was feeling confident about my game and like I was making progress.

Then came saturday night, and the wheels came off. It started when I was planning to go to bed but then decided to put in a quick couple hour session because the games looked really good. I was right and there was a lot of action and loose recreational players playing. But right off the back nothing was working for me and I dropped $5,000 in about 45 min. The culminating hand was when I flopped top set a 5/10 FR table over 200bbs deep and end up betting 80% of pot on the turn instead of overbet shoving for %115 of pot. Doing that convinced the rec player in the hand to come along with his nut flush draw which he hit on the river shipping him the over $4k pot. The villain was definitely not getting correct odds to draw on the turn so I guess I make sklansky bucks, but there is no reason for me to not ship the turn there. The fact is that the pot is probably worth more than my equity if he calls it off with a flush+straight draw so I need to do everything I can to convince him to fold on the spot. as well as making sure that lower sets don't get away from the last $400 on the river if the flush or straight comes in and he gets scared.

It wasn't a huge mistake, and it shouldn't be a reason for tilt. But this year I can't win at 5/10 and 3/6 so far and it just set me off. I decided at some point I was just going to grind and win my money back. But nothing ever got going my way. I was definitely making mistakes and sitting in games where my edge wasn't huge enough to justify my time and frustration. I was trying to make fancy plays to win every pot, and making tilt calls when I should have been folding. To that effect I was also running horribly in every big pot. flopping trips when people flopped boats, turning straights when people turned full houses, flopping top pair+flush draws when people had sets. If I was playing my A game and focused I think I would have lost maybe $3k or a little more. Instead I lost $7k and was just totally devastated by it. I finally quit when I induced a 5bet bluff/call it off from an idiot rakeback grinder who had A6s against my QQ and he spiked the A and I had just had enough. I was really upset after that and just felt lost. My head was pounding, I took a cold shower and then just kind of rambled and bitched for about an hour to the wife. To her credit she listened to most of it and tried to be supportive. Lately she's been suggesting that I find an organization to volunteer for or a part time job just to get me away from poker for awhile. She thinks that I'm getting too wrapped up in my results and that the game is starting to make me unhappy. I think it's a fair point, but I'm not quite ready to give up a large portion of my grinding time unless it is something I'm really excited for. I am considering volunteering at the animal shelter that we donated to for our wedding so I'll update if that goes through.

To summarize poker has been a bitch. I'm definitely not playing my A game enough, and I'm finding myself frustrated often. At the same time I still think I have an edge in the games and I can recover by focusing and continuing to work on my game. I'm still up for the year and in the end I'm just an extremely lucky and blessed person to be able to make a very good living playing a game at home in my spare time. It's a lot of work and stress at times, but I really shouldn't complain when you consider the many other potential jobs or situations I could find myself in.

The second topic I wanted to bring up is the podcast that a friend and I have started recording. It is still in its infancy so we're not releasing it yet and probably won't be for a few months. We've tentatively titled it Superbox which is a reference to my friends superbowl party snackbox. (The snackbox is a cardboard box covered in foil filled with various junk food not limited to be but including cheetos, lucky charms, gummi bears, powdered donuts, doritos, pretzels, popcorn, and whatnot. It's both wonderful and slightly gross. Dip in the ladel, fill a bowl with random delicious crap and enjoy while watching the premiere american television event.) But back to the podcast. We're essentially trying to do humorous conversation and observation about topics in the news or in our lives. It's really rough around the edges right now and we're brainstorming for direction, topics, segments, and trying to figure out how to polish our on air chatting. My friend definitely has a leg up in the process as he did some radio and DJ'ing in high school and college and taught a high school class in radio. Hopefully things will progress and at somepoint in the next few months I'll link it to the blog.

A good friend from the duke baseball team is getting married this weekend in Cali. Two weeks ago he had a bachelor party in vegas. Most of the weekend was typical drunken festivities, but the highlight was definitely a big gambling run for the bachelor at the Bellagio. It started when about 6 of us decided to chip in and throw some cash on black at a roulette table hoping to double up and take the money to the craps table. If we lost we figured we'd just scrap the gambling for the afternoon. So we threw the cash down and started a might ducks style slow clap for good luck.

By the time the ball is about to drop we've probably got 30 people watching us all around the casino. We hit on black and erupt into a huge cheer. Everyone is hugging and high fiving random strangers. Immediately somebody yells to let it ride but we decide instead to take it to the craps table and see if we can go big. Most of the guys ended up losing for the afternoon (I broke even) but the bachelor kept hitting on random bets around the table. He was afraid he was going to eventually give it all back so every time he made a green chip he started giving it to me to pocket to cash out when he finally finished up. By the time we decided to quit he was up $650 for his most profitable afternoon of gambling ever, and I'm guessing that covered most of his cost for the weekend. Nice to see a bachelor hit the good variance at his own bachelor party.

Last topic of conversation is Duke basketball. I'll keep it brief but I'm starting to feel better and better about our team despite our two tough losses midseason. Everyone is starting to find their stride and adapt to their roles, and even though I doubt Irving is going to be back I think we're going to be a force in the tournament. Hopefully we can run the table and get a 1 seed and if we do I'll take our chances against anyone to win it all. The comeback win against UNC was huge, and hopefully we learned somethings from the first half that we can take advantage of in gameplanning for the rematch in Chapel Hill. I think that game is going to basically be a pick'em because that team just keeps getting better and they always play well in front of their home crowd.

That's all I got for now. I'm hoping that writing the blog will get me motivated to start a heavy grind night. Hopefully I can put in a bunch of hands and get things turned around for the month.

laters

good work poker players:

2011-01-27T22:19:00.000-05:00

8 inches of snow, what to do? Build an igloo!

2011-01-13T01:11:00.000-05:00

For some reason the blog posted them in reverse chronological order. So either scroll down and work your way up, or enjoy watching the clock tick back on my igloo building evening.

At one point we left to grab some dinner. Afterwards we came back to find that someone had tagged (grafitti) the inside of our igloo with red spray paint. We still put up another couple of levels while working on it for an hour before stopping for the night to take some pics. the Above pics are after we finished working.

updates

2011-01-03T16:48:00.000-05:00

kind of gave up the grind for the last 8 days of december so I could enjoy the holidays with family. the variance had been a bitch for over two months and mentally I just didn't want to ruin the holidays dealing with that.

my wife and her family got me a ton of awesome christmas presents which I've been enjoying the last few days including an iphone, a kindle, and a nintendo Wii. They've been fun distractions away from the table and I'm going to get a ton of use out of all of them. She really out did herself this year in getting me Christmas stuff, and it's just another reminder about how great she is.

I've got some goals and more importantly some plans for how to attack poker in 2011, but I haven't decided if I'm going to post them on here. As to 2010 it was a successful year, and it goes to show you how blessed I am that I was fairly disappointed in my results considering how they turned out.

I also have to get my taxes in line this weekend which is a pain. I'm hoping my mediocre 4th qtr results will keep me from having to ship out too much, and I think April 15th is not going to hurt nearly as much this year as it did last.

next post will include my 2011 results. Hope everyone had a great holiday season and here's to a happy and productive new year.

cheers

Jim

my thoughts on the PPA and the third draft of the Reid bill...

2010-12-16T12:19:00.001-05:00

posted in legislation forum on 2p2 in response to someone who is frustrated with people like m criticizing the PPA:

Originally Posted by mpethybridge
To those of you busting on the PPA, I will say two things:

1. I rarely see any of you posting in this forum.

2. Harrah's, MGM, et al, have money to burn, are well-entrenched interests and have a tame senator who happens to be the senate majority leader; if we have lost, they lost, too.

Please explain how the PPA was supposed to win a fight that major corporate interests who own one of the most powerful people in America couldn't win.

I really want to hear it; it should be good.

response:
1. what does posting on this forum usually have to do with whether or not our criticisms are valid now? (answer nothing)

2. I've never held it against the PPA that they didn't win the fight. my only complaints are about how they fought and whether or not they are who they have claimed to be while asking for my support and money (which I have contributed).

finally what you have to understand is that most of the people that have a problem with the PPA don't have a problem with their rate of success, we have a problem with their intentions and whether or not they are who they've portrayed themselves as. To be fair they have claimed they are an organization for the game and the players. But frequently during this fight it has seemed that they have thrown their support behind corporations that care nothing for the game and players. And while I understand this may have been a genuine attempt to win a battle by trying to align interests, when things start to go totally awry (as they have with the third draft of the Reid bill as well as the fact that Reid and Harrah's basically cut out the PPA from having any influence on the writing and drafting of the legislation) then they need to step in and be honest with us. If the PPA made a statement that things have gone wrong, the bill is not in our best interest, and the deals that Reid is making to get it passed are no longer supported by the organization then I would commend them for their honesty.

Basically they've lost the fight regardless of whether or not this bill passes, and our support (letters calls etc) and money were not difference makers this time around (not surprising). But we haven't lost the war, and this organization can still stand hold on to its integrity by stepping up and repping what they claimed to be since their inception. If Harrahs and MGM are running the show to the detriment of our online poker future than the PPA should say so. If Reid has lost all interest in what the PPA and players have asked him to support and is now just trying to serve the people that paid for his campaign by cutting them an insider deal with this bill, then say so.

stand up for the people that you claim matter to your organization. tell us where things went wrong, even if we can't fix them now. Admit to how much money you guys have taken or given to the various parties that now seem to not give a **** about the players.

Also understand that our complaints about the situation are not attacks on the people themselves. I don't know the PPA board members and have no idea about them personally. I would guess based on most of their reps and posts around here that they are good guys that mean well. Maybe they just got played in the political game (standard) and if so I'll gladly sympathize with them.

But the fact is that this bill is a disaster now, and was borderline a disaster from the beginning. And I thought their adament support of it seemed contrary to their stated goals, and as the drafts have gotten worse and worse I've yet to hear them speak up and say "sorry guys but this isn't what we wanted and we understand why you guys are opposed to this garbage version of the bill".

end of rant although I'm sure I've left stuff out.

I won a tournament

2010-12-15T22:08:00.000-05:00

only a $50 buy-in. I've been donking around in these things while playing cash games the last couple of weeks. made a couple of final tables but this is the first win in a long time. biggest tourney score as well fwiw (I know that is sad). The funny thing is a had a brutal awful day at the cash tables, but winning the tournament got me up $1k for the day. I'll take it.

If you have something bottled up in side of you go straight to the snake-shaker.

2010-12-15T12:08:00.001-05:00

updated cliff notes on reid bill (I'm really against this version even more so than previously)

2010-12-15T02:10:00.000-05:00

HERE IS A REVISED SET OF ANSWERS, BASED ON THE RELEASE OF A NEW DRAFT OF THE REID BILL YESTERDAY. REVISIONS ARE IN GREEN.

Note: These answers are based on the most recently publicly available draft of the Reid bill. The final bill may contain some differences.

When will this bill be voted on?

We don't know yet when, or even if, this bill will be up for a vote. Senator Reid has been expected to attach this bill to some other must-pass bill during the lame-duck session of Congress this month. It takes a lot of political maneuvering to accomplish this and it is unclear yet whether or not he will be able to do so. The three likely bills that might be used are the Bush tax-cut extensions, the omnibus spending and the defense budget bills. The attachment and vote is likely to take place in a very short period ot time, making it likely that we will have only hours warning, if any, to know the final wording of the bill before it is passed.

How will licensing work?

Many current state gaming regulatory bodies will be eligible to become a "Qualified Body" that is authorized to license and regulate US iPoker sites. Those that currently regulate 5% of the total US gaming revenue ($62B*5%=$3.1B) (NV & NJ) are automatically designated as a QB upon notice to the Secretary of Commerce of their intent to do so. Those that regulate at least 0.3% of total US gaming revenue ($62B*0.3%=$186M) (IN, IL, CT, MI, MO, MS, LA, CO, NY and IA, plus others) will be eligible to apply to become a QB once the federal regulations for iPoker are issued (6 months after enactment of the bill).

NV & NJ are the only QBs that will be authorized to license sites which offered iPoker in the US prior to enactment of this bill, or any site which buys such or uses such as a supplier of software, hardware or services.

Who is eligible to apply for and receive a license?

Initially, any US casino or racino that has at least 500 slot machines, any US horserace track that has handled at least $250M of wagering at live racing in 3 of the past 5 years, any cardroom that has 250 or more tables, and any slot machine manufacturer who supplied the qualified casinos or racinos are eligible to apply for an iPoker license. After two years, the Secretary of Commerce can open licensing to other appropriate companies, including foreign sites, subject to the normal regulation development process of public notice and comment.

When will the initial sites be issued a licensed?

The QBs are instructed to issue as many licenses as possible simultaneously 15 months after the bill is enacted. The intention is to make a simultaneous launch of licensed sites to create a multi-site competitive market to the benefit of consumers (the players). Sites can become operational for play-money games and advance promotions before the launch date. No licenses may be issued prior to the publication of final regulations by the Secretary of Commerce.

Who can provide the software, hardware and services for licensed sites?

Any provider, including current offshore sites and current play-money sites (like Zynga Poker), can apply for a Certificate of Suitability to become a vendor to licensed sites. Licensed sites are prohibited from purchasing any site that ever offered iPoker or iGambling in the US prior to enactment of this bill for 1 ½ years after the initial licensing of US sites. Licensed sites can obtain software, hardware and/or services from such sites, but cannot for the 1 ½ years use the trademarks, trade name or customer base of such sites.

What happens during the period prior to the launch?

Current sites must cease US operations within 30 days of enactment of the bill, or they will become ineligibile to ever receive a US iPoker license or Certificate of Suitability. The bill does not enact until 30 days after it is signed into law, so the sites effectively have 60 days total to cease their US operations. US player account balances will remain available for withdrawal for two years, after which the funds are placed into escrow in the US for safe-keeping and dispositon by the Secretary of Commerce.

Can US players play on offshore sites during this 14-month blackout period?

It will not be illegal for US players to play on such sites. It will be illegal under US law for such sites to offer play to US players. Since such sites will be ineligible to ever receive a US license, many of the current offshore sites will become unavailable to US players. Those that remain will have difficulties providing deposit and withdrawal methods to US players, probably more so than currently. But, some play will no doubt be available as long as there is a market for it.

Who will be able to play on US licensed sites?

Initially, anyone physically located anywhere in the US, except in an opt-out state (see below), will be able play on any US licensed site. After 3 years, the Secretary of Commerce may determine to open the iPoker market to additional foreign jurisdictions, including combined player pools at the sites, with the approval of Congress by a joint resolution proposed within 30 days of such determination. There will no doubt be much lobbying pressure from the sites and players to do so. The Secretary needs to ensure that such additions of foreign players takes place only in locations where it is legal for the foreign players and only if doing so does not endanger the consumer protections of the US iPoker regulations. Therefore, it is likely to include only jurisdictions where there is existing government licensing and regulation, under mutual agreement between the US and such governments (imo).

What states will opt out?

Initially, these states will automatically be opted in: California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. All other states will initially be opted out.

Until December 31st, 2011, any state may change their option status immediately by notice to the Secretary of Commerce. Such changes must be in accordance with state law, and cannot be determined by any state law that is already in existence prior to enactment of this bill. In most, if not all, states this means that a new law or public referendum must be passed to change the state's option status. After December 31st, 2011, changes to state option status work the same way except the change doesn't take effect until 60 days after notice to the Secretary or the date the new state law enacts, whichever is later.

There is much debate on which states will, in the end, be opt in states. Hopefully the easy revenue stream from licensed iPoker will encourage many states to be opt in, especially in these times of budget crises.

A state may adopt intrastate iPoker or iGambling and remain opted out of the federal iPoker program.

Can residents of opt-out states or foreign countries play in the US while traveling?

Yes. Play is only restricted by location of the player at the time of play, not by residence. In fact, there are no restrictions in the bill against opening accounts or making deposits or withdrawals based on either residence or location. US licensed sites can open accounts for, take deposits and send withdrawals to anyone anywhere in the world, including opt out states. The only thing these sites have to restrict is play based on location of the player at the time of play, which must be within the US and excluding opt-out states.

What is the government taxation under this bill?

Sites will be taxed at a rate of 16% of their gross gaming revenues (total rakes and fees). Current offshore sites consider this completely acceptable, and less costly than their current situation of high payment processing fees and funds seizures. With many licensed sites going live at the same time, open market competition is likely to keep rake low and player incentives high.

Of the 16%, 2% will go to the federal government, 9.8% will be distributed to the states according to the location of the players and the remaining 4.2% will go to the state where the site is licensed.

This tax is on the sites, not the players. States will not be allowed to levy any additional taxation on the licensed sites.

Will players have to pay income taxes?

Yes, players will be liable to pay income taxes on their winnings just as they are now. There is no additional income tax added by this bill, but sites will be reporting player gambling wins (and losses) at the end of the year. The sites do not have to do any tax withholding for US players as long as you provide them with a standard IRS W-9 Form, providing your Taxpayer ID Number and statement that you are not subject to tax backup withholding. Foreign players will be subject to 30% income tax withholding on winnings, unless exempted by tax treaty (and the player provides the site with the proper tax form).

Some states currently have income tax rules that don't allow players to deduct losses against their wins. Any such state that is an opt in will no doubt act to change this rule as they will want players to participate from their state. It will be self-defeating to state revenues from iPoker to be an opt-in state and keep such a tax rule.

What player aids, such as HUDs, will be allowed at licensed sites?

Any such software that is allowed according to the Terms of Service of the licensed site is fine. If it is prohibited by the TOS of the site, it will be against the law and anyone convicted of such cheating will be subject to fines and imprisonment, as well as permanently banned from iPoker at all licensed sites. Similarly, any cheating behaviour such as collusion which is against the TOS of the site will be a criminal offense under federal law. Bots will be against the law.

What is the age limit?

Players at licensed sites must be at least 21 years of age.

Are there any buy-in, stake or wagering limits?

No. The only such limits are those available for self-exclusion under protections for problem gaming. Any player can choose to impose such limits on their play, and to remove such self-imposed limits at any time.

What games are allowed to be offered by the licensed sites?

Any game of poker that is not house-banked is allowed. As long as the game is considered a poker game, and involves some application of skill, it is legal.

good cliff notes on the reid bill

2010-12-14T16:11:00.001-05:00

since I've thrown out a lot of my own opinions I thought it would be helpful if I put a the latest FAQ concerning the Reid bill that were posted on 2p2. The following was posted by PokerXanadu in this thread (link):

Note: These answers are based on the most recently publicly available draft of the Reid bill. The final bill may contain some differences.

When will this bill be voted on?

We don't know yet when, or even if, this bill will be up for a vote. Senator Reid has been expected to attach this bill to some other must-pass bill during the lame-duck session of Congress this month. It takes a lot of political maneuvering to accomplish this and it is unclear yet whether or not he will be able to do so. The three likely bills that might be used are the Bush tax-cut extensions, the omnibus spending and the defense budget bills. The attachment and vote is likely to take place in a very short period ot time, making it likely that we will have only hours warning, if any, to know the final wording of the bill before it is passed.

How will licensing work?

Many current state gaming regulatory bodies will be eligible to become a "Qualified Body" that is authorized to license and regulate US iPoker sites. Those that currently regulate 5% of the total US gaming revenue (NV & NJ) are automatically designated as a QB upon notice to the Secretary of Commerce of their intent to do so. Those that regulate at least 0.5% of total US gaming revenue (IN, IL, CT, MI, MO, MS, LA, CO, NY and IA, plus maybe some others I haven't noted) will be eligible to apply to become a QB once the federal regulations for iPoker are issued (6 months after enactment of the bill).

NV & NJ will be able to license and regulate iPoker sites whether or not the federal government issues iPoker regulations in a timely manner. They are also the only QBs that will be authorized to license sites which offered iPoker in the US prior to enactment of this bill, or any site which buys such or uses such as a supplier of software, hardware or services.

Who is eligible to apply for and receive a license?

Initially, any US casino or racino that has at least 500 slot machines, any US race track that has run at least 250 days of live racing over the past 5 years, and any slot machine manufacturer who supplied the qualified casinos or racinos are eligible to apply for an iPoker license. After two years, the Secretary of Commerce can open licensing to other appropriate companies, including foreign sites, subject to the normal regulation development process of public notice and comment.

When will the initial sites be issued a licensed?

The QBs are instructed to issue as many licenses as possible simultaneously 15 months after the bill is enacted. The intention is to make a simultaneous launch of licensed sites to create a multi-site competitive market to the benefit of consumers (the players). Sites can become operational for play-money games and advance promotions before the launch date.

Who can provide the software, hardware and services for licensed sites?

Any provider, including current offshore sites and current play-money sites (like Zynga Poker), can apply for a Certificate of Suitability to become a vendor to licensed sites. Licensed sites can also purchase such companies, or some of their assets, and remain licensed.

What happens during the period prior to the launch?

Current sites must cease US operations within 30 days of enactment of the bill, or they will become ineligibile to ever receive a US iPoker license or Certificate of Suitability. The bill does not enact until 30 days after it is signed into law, so the sites effectively have 60 days total to cease their US operations. US player account balances will remain available for withdrawal for two years, after which the funds are placed into escrow in the US for safe-keeping and dispositon by the Secretary of Commerce.

Can US players play on offshore sites during this 14-month blackout period?

It will not be illegal for US players to play on such sites. It will be illegal under US law for such sites to offer play to US players. Since such sites will be ineligible to ever receive a US license, many of the current offshore sites will become unavailable to US players. Those that remain will have difficulties providing deposit and withdrawal methods to US players, probably more so than currently. But, some play will no doubt be available as long as there is a market for it.

Who will be able to play on US licensed sites?

Initially, anyone physically located anywhere in the US, except in an opt-out state (see below), will be able play on any US licensed site. After 3 years, the Secretary of Commerce can open the market to additional foreign jurisdictions, including combined player pools at the sites. There will no doubt be much lobbying pressure from the sites and players to do so. The Secretary needs to ensure that such additions of foreign players takes place only in locations where it is legal for the foreign players and only if doing so does not endanger the consumer protections of the US iPoker regulations. Therefore, it is likely to include only jurisdictions where there is existing government licensing and regulation, under mutual agreement between the US and such governments (imo).

What states will opt out?

Initially, these states will automatically be opted in: California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. All other states will initially be opted out.

Until December 31st, 2011, any state may change their option status immediately by notice to the Secretary of Commerce. Such changes must be in accordance with state law, and cannot be determined by any state law that is already in existence prior to enactment of this bill. In most, if not all, states this means that a new law or public referendum must be passed to change the state's option status. After December 31st, 2011, changes to state option status work the same way except the change doesn't take effect until 60 days after notice to the Secretary or the date the new state law enacts, whichever is later.

Also, any state that enacts its own intrastate iPoker or iGambling legislation is automatically and immediately an opt-in state, with no further option to opt out.

There is much debate on which states will, in the end, be opt in states. Hopefully the easy revenue stream from licensed iPoker will encourage many states to be opt in, especially in these times of budget crises. Note that the only two choices any state will have is either to be opted in or to have a complete ban on all iGambling including intrastate (excepting interstate Horseracing wagering under the Interstate Horse Racing Act of 1978).

It is significant that any state that wants to offer any form of intrastate casino iGambling (like NJ is in the process of passing) must be an opt in to the federal iPoker system under the Reid bill. Any state with casinos are likely to receive pressure from these enterprises who do not want to miss this golden egg. Similarly, many state lotteries are looking to expand to iPoker and/or iGambling.

Can residents of opt-out states or foreign countries play in the US while traveling?

Yes. Play is only restricted by location of the player at the time of play, not by residence. In fact, there are no restrictions in the bill against opening accounts or making deposits or withdrawals based on either residence or location. US licensed sites can open accounts for, take deposits and send withdrawals to anyone anywhere in the world, including opt out states. The only thing these sites have to restrict is play based on location of the player at the time of play, which must be within the US and excluding opt-out states.

What is the government taxation under this bill?

Sites will be taxed at a rate of 20% of their gross gaming revenues (total rakes and fees). Current offshore sites consider this completely acceptable, and less costly than their current situation of high payment processing fees and funds seizures. With many licensed sites going live at the same time, open market competition is likely to keep rake low and player incentives high.

Of the 20%, 6% will go to the federal government, 9.8% will be distributed to the states according to the location of the players and the remaining 4.2% will go to the state where the site is licensed.

This tax is on the sites, not the players. States will not be allowed to levy any additional taxation on the licensed sites.

Will players have to pay income taxes?

Yes, players will be liable to pay income taxes on their winnings just as they are now. There is no additional income tax added by this bill, but sites will be reporting player gambling wins (and losses) at the end of the year. The sites do not have to do any tax withholding for US players as long as you provide them with a standard IRS W-9 Form, providing your Taxpayer ID Number and statement that you are not subject to tax backup withholding. Foreign players will be subject to 30% income tax withholding on winnings, unless exempted by tax treaty (and the player provides the site with the proper tax form).

Some states currently have income tax rules that don't allow players to deduct losses against their wins. Any such state that is an opt in will no doubt act to change this rule as they will want players to participate from their state. It will be self-defeating to state revenues from iPoker to be an opt-in state and keep such a tax rule.

What player aids, such as HUDs, will be allowed at licensed sites?

Any such software that is allowed according to the Terms of Service of the licensed site is fine. If it is prohibited by the TOS of the site, it will be against the law and anyone convicted of such cheating will be subject to fines and imprisonment, as well as permanently banned from iPoker at all licensed sites. Similarly, any cheating behaviour such as collusion which is against the TOS of the site will be a criminal offense under federal law. Bots will be against the law.

What is the age limit?

Players at licensed sites must be at least 21 years of age.

Are there any buy-in, stake or wagering limits?

No. The only such limits are those available for self-exclusion under protections for problem gaming. Any player can choose to impose such limits on their play, and to remove such self-imposed limits at any time.

What games are allowed to be offered by the licensed sites?

Any game of poker that is not house-banked is allowed. As long as the game is considered a poker game, and involves some application of skill, it is legal.

a comment I posted on doubleflys blog

2010-12-12T14:40:00.000-05:00

doublefly's blog is one of the best so if you don't read it you should (see link on the left). he recently posted that some people he knew were considering playing poker professionally because they were anticipating losing their jobs. He made some very well thought out and valuable comments relating to going pro that I agree with and hope these folks will read and consider. I decided to type a comment because I both agree with fly and think that his general optimistic disposition and writing style might be painting the stresses of playing professionally a little lighter than he intended (or I believe them to be). FWIW I think I'm extremely lucky and have a great job and lifestyle. I wouldn't trade it for just about anything. At the same time I do believe that I work hard, and I've earned my success. And I think that I was lucky to be born with the type of personality and disposition that has greatly aided in my success in the game. I'm not by any means trying to induce sympathy for pro poker players or make it seem like we have it tough. I am however trying to illuminate the realities of why more people don't play for a living, and why I would in general not recommend people give it a go.

here is my comment relating to his blog post:

if you're looking to play poker for a living because you are about to be laid off chances are you have zero chance of successfully pulling it off. the only reason you should be looking to play for a living is because you've been playing so much and for so long that you already could be playing for a living and are just considering a life style change. this isn't something you can just start, or even start taking seriously.

I played poker seriously (playing/studying/reading etc) for hours nearly every day for probably two years before I considered playing professionally. during that time I was finishing grad school and working as an engineer. It wasn't until I had already made enough playing poker to have a working bankroll, 3-4 months of expenses, and nearly half a million hands of experience under my belt that I considered playing professionally. And at that point I knew my risk of ruin was very very small and I pretty much understood what my hourly would likely be for the near future.

If you aren't in a similar situation you are courting personal disaster (especially if you have dependents) if you try to pursue playing professionally. Don't confuse the phrase "playing professionally" or the fact that it is a game with the idea that pros are merely playing. It is work. And very emotionally and mentally taxing work.

I find poker during work hours to be considerably more stressful than the half dozen jobs I had before I went pro. And you will also likely find your sleep schedule as well as your social life will face some adjustments. I have no complaints as it has all worked well for me, but certain people and personality types simply couldn't handle it. For example my wife is the most intelligent person I know (about to graduate from Harvard Med school fwiw), and has the right type of intelligence for poker (brilliant math mind and majored in psych in undergrad). BUT she would never make it as a poker pro. The monetary stress, the weird hours, the potential social barriers would all be too much for her. For me they are no big deal, but by the same token I could never have made it into (let alone through) med school. To each their own.

cliff notes: you probably don't have what it takes to be a poker pro. If you do you probably already know that you do, and it's just a question if you want to.

more on Reid bill

2010-12-09T17:52:00.000-05:00

Post on 2p2 from PPA board member Skalligrim:
There is not a single post of mine that I think can reasonably be called "cheerleading" this bill. I hate this F-ing bill.

But sometimes it is necessary to take something you hate in order to get something you really want.

And I have also always said that this bill is so fraught with pain that it is a close call. But overall I support it.

But I will also say this. This has been lots of talk of more horsetrading going on in DC that we are not privy too. If only one additional poison pill is added to this bill, I may change my close call.

My best analogy is this: suppose you go into an antique shop and see a very valuable item that you have always wanted. At first it seems fair priced and you try to negotiate buying it. But the owner of the store is a real jerk and once he sees how much you want it he raises the price, and then he raises the price again. At some point the price is higher than the pleasure I will get from owning the piece. The bill as last reported on Monday was pretty close to having too high a price, but, IMHO, not there yet.

IOW, it wouldn't take much change for the worse for me to join in opposing the bill.

Skallagrim

my thoughts on it:

post by skallagrim a PPA board member in a thread saying that the bill is not going on the tax cut bill. they still think they have a chance to get it on some other piece of legislation, but that it is somewhat unlikely because Sen Kyl (tard from AZ) is doing everything possible to block it and Reid and company aren't going to make this an important enough issue to run them over on it.

the reason I post though is that skall is a PPA board member and a seemingly smart guy but not a pro (as far as I know). and if he can barely stomach this bill, the bill that his organization has fought for and backed and thrown all of their support behind, then I don't see why I should support it. Basically he's saying it's crap, we're getting screwed, but maybe down the line things might work out. and since it's my job to try and get things to work out I'm going to roll the dice and get shat on. Well since my job is to try and make money playing poker I'm probably going to say no to getting shat on. So I'll continue to not support this bill.

maybe things will change in the future and we'll have a shot to get a reasonable piece of legislation through (PPA guys are claiming that the kind of legislation I'd like to see would be supported by gaming and Reid just not Kyl and the religious right repubs) but this just isn't it. I'm more afraid that this will result in a death sentence for online poker in the US than if we just leave it alone and hope that it remains a relatively unimportant issue for the DOJ. and hopefully down the line we can get some kind of positive legislation through.

just my 2 cents, and if I'm wrong wouldn't be the first or last time.

blog of my posts on 2p2 regarding Reid bill dealing with online poker

2010-12-08T12:04:00.000-05:00

I've been discussing and debating the Harry Reid bill relating to online poker in the FTP regs thread for the last day or so. Below are my thoughts on the subject including posts from other players that prompted my response. If you don't know about the bill check on the cliffs in the original post of this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/57/poker-legislation/reid-pushing-plan-legalize-u-s-online-gambling-summary-op-read-if-you-have-questions-930754/

harrahs wants anything that opens a market for them and shuts out as much competition as possible. a blackout, followed by state by state ratification gives them the best chance to become THE (maybe the only) player in the US online poker market. they already have the lobbying force putting money in every congressman's pockets. the blackout is fine by them, and they don't really care about the length of time since as of now they have no market share. they just want to make sure that when it is over everyone else is scrambling, the system is a mess, and their current power in the market and lobbying will set them up.

the more I read about this bill the more I am against it. frankly I don't understand how anyone that isn't a clueless casual player (or someone that derives their income from live games) would support this bill. the down sides of 15 months during which online poker could nearly disappear from the consciousness of the casual US player seems like way to great of a risk in order to get harrah's controlled online sites that only allow US players and may exclude a ton of states (if they choose not to opt in).

I'm really close to calling my senator and telling him I'm against this, but I think he's already against online poker because he's a religious right idiot.

Originally Posted by cheet
a PPA guy said harrahs and other b&m gaming interests will actively pursue a full internet poker ban if this doesn't pass, so they market is cleared for them when they can get a bill through so I'm supposed to take the poison because if a don't they are going to shoot me in the head? whatever I'll take my chances by not getting in bed with these slime.

frankly seems like a good time to start talking about boycotting the WSOP. Harrah's can go **** a duck as far as I'm concerned.

Quote:
Originally Posted by PenelopeCruz
Why do you place so much importance on a one year period when the end result is the long term sustainability of your profession? As it stands right now there is nothing but uncertainty, maybe the current system is sustainable but all logical reasoning suggests otherwise...

because the more I read about this bill the less confident I feel that anything resembling the status quo will return after this period. Plus I think that's enough time for the game to be forgotten or lose the luster that it has gained in the last decade. People didn't really talk about poker 15 years ago. Kill the biggest reminder of it in the consciousness for 15 months and who is to say it will come back with the same gusto?

plus why should I believe that the government getting more involved is in anyway I good thing for an industry like poker? they are going to view this industry the same way they view alcohol and tabacco. and unnecessary vice that they can tax or regulate as they please.

plus how many red states do you think are going to opt in when it returns? how long do think it is going to take before the government decides to let international players play? plus how do we know rake doesn't become as ****** as it is in live casinos?

tbh just too much potential negatives with this version of the bill. I'm not saying I don't support full legalization of fund transfers as well as potential regulation of the industry. but the reid bill is not written in the best interests of online players. it is written in the best interests of live casino interests and congressmen who want to get more cash (both in campaign contributions and tax dollars to allocate). I'm willing to hold out hope for something better instead of getting effed in the A now hoping that everything works out in two years.

oh and I don't know if you guys realize it, but they are planning on starting to take taxing poker seriously for recreational players as well. which is a big deal since they can't deduct losses like we do and will end up paying taxes on winnings and then deducting losses from the entire income. maybe the IRS and pokerrooms just ignore this and it doesn't change anything in live games, but they can easily keep track of it online since every online casino will have to be licensed and the IRS and DOJ can easily get all of their records.

how would you like it if every casual player suddenly had several thousand less dollars to play with every year because the government taxed them on their breakeven or losing play?

I'm just basing that on what I read in the leg forum thread, so I could be wrong. but as far as I know the bill changes nothing about how the IRS or states tax gambling wins and losses. which fwiw in most states is terrible for casual players. IE you can't deduct all losses, must pay on all wins, and if wins bump you into a higher tax bracket so be it. I mean most tax laws on gambling are really really bad for casual players. the reason that nobody addresses it is because casual players never pay taxes since they either lose and nobody pays attention, or they are dealing in cash at live casinos. If you put it online in a regulated online industry you can bet the government is going to get their chunk. how many casual players are going to keep playing when their losses are tallied up for them by the site (so they see in writing how bad they suck) at the end of the year and then shipped to them so that they can figure out how much tax they may have to pay on losing money online? my guess is this is more likely to push people away then encourage them to play.

Originally Posted by Reefypoopoo
your points about poker losing it's appeal after the period and opt out states are valid.

However, there is no way recreational players are going to F themselves in the A in regards to the IRS under the retarded system. People just don't do that. Consider the average Joe who makes $50K yr, gambles regularly for $50K wins and $45K losses yearly totals. You think they're gonna pay additional taxes on that 50K? I don't.

if they don't they are subject to audit and fines because they would be committing tax fraud assuming they don't file as a professional gambler. the irs or doj would have the power to request the records of any site and it might actually be written into the bill that these sites are going to be providing 1099 to customers basically prepping the information for the government.

maybe a vast majority of casual players refuse to pay and it goes to courts where the consider changing the absurd laws on gambling taxes in the US, OR maybe people just get scared and quit playing. I don't know. but either way it can't be a positive relating to taxes for casual gamblers in the US that the government is going to have access and information regarding their wins and losses under our current tax code.

Originally Posted by Ditch Digger
Just because 1 or 2 idiots are babbling about this in the legislation forum doesn't mean it's true. 90% of the people in that forum have no clue of how anything is going down so stop taking what they are saying as fact.

If you find a post from a reputable poster that has connections in Washington I'll gladly eat my words in the above paragraph.

I dont really know what youre talking about. all i did was make some logical inferences based on the knowledge of the reid bill that is being presented in the major cliffs in the leg forum. you really think if the IRS has information on every online poker players income and losses that they would move to get some of that money? and how long until the states have access to this information so that they can pursue their own taxing of it? my guess is not long once they realize the potential windfall.

you guys can be all optimistic, and I hope youre right. but understand that the bill that you guys are rooting for was not written by people who give a flying crap about professional poker players or their abillity to make money. it was written by people who want to get their hands on as much poker rake as possible. united states owned and operated casinos that can pay taxes and campaign contributions. aren't you at all concerned about this future licensing process? do you really think that harrahs and MGM are going to sit on the sideline and let FTP and Pstars get licenses when the people with the power have been recieving campain contributions from Harrahs and MGM for years?

I think I have good reason to be pessimistic. I'm just hoping that this bill fails and the next attempt by the PPA or whomever gives some credence to an open and fair market place for all players. basically I want a bill that is written as if it is trying to tax an already functioning industry, and regulate the payment processors that will step up to work with these sites. I'm not interested in a bill that acts as though this industry has never existed and it's passing creates the entire environment for which all future sites should function.

Originally Posted by Nick Rivers
The IRS is going to insist that people pay their fair share of taxes. Some of us already (begrudgingly) do that. Perhaps you are ideologically opposed to paying taxes, but that's neither here nor there with regards to this bill. The government is not overstepping its bounds when it insists on getting access to income records for its citizens so that they can be taxed appropriately. This goes for state revenue agencies as well.

It's a question of which you think is the lesser of two evils. On the one hand, you have the PPA, Caesars, and the MGM coming together to make a ****** bill that hands online poker over to a bunch of scumbags. On the other hand, you have the status quo. Or do you? IMO if you think the status quo is really the alternative to this bill, then I think you're the one guilty of being overly optimistic. And that's saying something, because the status quo isn't exactly all that great. The GOP is coming back into power. These are the clowns who brought you the UIGEA to begin with. Do you think they're just going to sit around and let the status quo continue, or do you think they're going to start in with even more meddling and nonsense? I'm guessing the latter. If this bill does not go through, then online poker is once again exposed to potential GOP corruption and idiocy in the future. CEC can, of course, bribe them as well, but any bill that comes from them would probably end up being even worse.

I don't really like either outcome. Both are fraught with pitfalls, and it's definitely the case that nobody is looking out for the players in any event (and you're out of your mind if you think the PPA will at any point in the future). It's possible this was inevitable and that we live under a pretty awful political regime, or maybe it's possible that we've just been complacent and haven't made any real moves to protect our niche industry. Whatever the case, I'm not an optimist about online poker no matter what happens with this bill. Either way, it looks like things are not going to be as good for us as they have been. If I had to make a gun to the head decision, i guess I would want the bill to pass; I'd rather take my chances with CEP and MGM and pray for a miracle than wait and see what the GOP does next to ruin an already dwindling online poker landscape.

the second part is just agree to disagree, but as to the bolded I am not here to argue whether the government is morally or ethically correct in taking all possible steps to obtain tax dollars and I understand that they have a legal claim to lots of money in the gambling world that they never see. I pay all of my taxes and I always have, but if losing casual poker players aren't paying taxes on their play because they deal in cash and/or don't make enough that the govt notices than I don't really give a crap as it is in my best interest. is that selfish? hell yeah, but I don't give a crap. there are lots of things that people can do everyday that illegal or not supported by our government, but people get away with it. does the US government have a right to prosecute people? sure, but I don't care.

whether or not the government has a legal right to something doesn't mean that I have agree with it on a selfish, moral, ethical, or whatever basis. If the government currently can't get their hands on tax dollars of most casual gamblers I don't give a ****.

cliff notes: I'm against it.

the universe is mindblowing.

2010-11-07T23:10:00.000-05:00

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/525347

playable model of the universe showing comparable sizes of objects. really really interesting.

el oh el (VERY NSFW)

2010-11-03T16:49:00.001-04:00

thought this was cool, honeymoon pics to come

2010-11-03T16:13:00.001-04:00

http://cache.abovethelaw.com/uploads/2010/09/student-loan-scheme-540x3212.jpg

I'm sad that the honeymoon is over and I'm back in Boston, but it's time to get back to work.

2010-10-31T11:44:00.001-04:00

just got back to boston. going to have all of the pics on the pc tonight and should have a blog post to follow.

happy halloween!

In Buenos Aires for first leg of honeymoon, pics to follow

2010-10-20T18:23:00.000-04:00

city is very cool, and the exchange rate is ridiculous. had a huge 3 course lunch with wine and coffe for $10 yesterday. Dinner was massive last night with coffee, the full dessert tasting menu, and a bottle of wine and it was only $55 for me and the wife. crazy.

the only downside to things so far is that they just ended a sanitation workers strike so there is piled garbage on almost every street corner. meh. but the rest of the city is great. The parks are beautiful, and originally I had planned on posting a bunch of pics I took today, but apparently the blogger image uploader is down for maintenance.

oh well I'll get back to it tomorrow. Staying at The Glu Hotel in Palermo. Really awesome place with cool rooms, fantastic breakfast, and a jacuzzi on the roof. I'm sitting on the balcony right now watching yankees rangers while drinking wine and typing this post as the sunsets. life is pretty good.

hope the grind is good for everybody at and away from the tables. see you guys soon.

piz

short update, more to follow

2010-10-11T16:09:00.000-04:00

just wanted to let you guys know that I'm still alive and almost out of the DS. The poker gods have finally started smiling on me again and I've just about recovered from the 50BI downswing that I went through.

Also I've been really busy with wedding stuff since the big day is only 5 days away. It should be an awesome time and I'm sure it will be a blast to have all the friends and family in town. Went to city hall to get a marriage license last friday, and I've been piecing together the final parts of my tux over the last week.

but that is just the tip of the iceberg of work we've had to do, and katy has been putting in a lot of time and hours. lots more stuff I should be covering but I'm pretty busy with wedding stuff. I'm going to end the post now and try to get some more written up later.

hope everything is going well for everyone at the tables.

later

the pizzle

PLO

2010-09-15T20:39:00.000-04:00

EZ Game

Full Tilt - $1 PL Hi RUSH (6 max) - Omaha - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 3: http://www.pokertracker.com

SB: $60.30
Hero (BB): $101.50
UTG: $97.80
MP: $269.55
CO: $42.20
BTN: $99.00

SB posts SB $0.50, Hero posts BB $1.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero has Qs Ah Ad Qc

UTG calls $1.00, MP raises to $4.50, fold, BTN calls $4.50, SB calls $4.00, Hero raises to $23.50, UTG calls $22.50, MP calls $19.00, BTN calls $19.00, SB raises to $42.50, Hero raises to $101.50 and is all-in, UTG calls $74.30 and is all-in, MP raises to $160.50, BTN calls $75.50 and is all-in, SB calls $17.80 and is all-in

Flop: ($460.10, 5 players) 2d 8h Tc

Turn: ($460.10, 5 players) As

River: ($460.10, 5 players) Kd

SB shows 9c 2c 7d 5d (One Pair, Twos)
Hero shows Qs Ah Ad Qc (Three of a Kind, Aces)
UTG shows 3h 2s 4s 5s (One Pair, Twos)
MP shows Ks Kh 6d 8c (Three of a Kind, Kings)
BTN shows 7c 4c 6s 7h (One Pair, Sevens)
Hero wins $457.10

fwiw I had 34% equity pf in a 5 way all-in, which in PLO is pretty sick.

watching scream (great underrated movie) featuring this awesome song by nick cave

2010-09-15T02:48:00.001-04:00

he wants your vote, and he is not going to apologize for his tone.

2010-09-13T03:19:00.001-04:00

staten island for supreme court

2010-09-10T23:24:00.000-04:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Staten Island Supreme Court Justice

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

downswing now at $20,000

2010-09-08T00:56:00.000-04:00

thats about 40BI considering it is all 2/4 and 3/6. I'm running about 15k under EV, but I can't complain. I run hot all the time, only fair that I run bad some too.

trying to stay focused and positive, but I'm definitely making some bad plays from time to time because of it. Mostly I'm frustrated because I keep running bluffs in what I believe are really good bluff spots and I think I'm getting looked up a lot because all the regs have noticed I never have a value hand. and the reason I never have a value hand is because for the last 50k hands or so I'm not really ever hitting anything. or I get sucked out on.

whatever.

wedding invitations went out. need to get the registry started. other than that I'm just working and trying to stay focused. I really wanted to post another big month before october, but at this point it is going to be difficult just to get back to even. I've only once before started this far in the hole for a month and I didn't make it back that time despite my best efforts.

more importantly this really hurts my chances of posting a year like last year. I didn't grind nearly enough in the spring due to various distractions (mostly family related as well as getting the flu). I thought I could make it up by posting up 5 solid months to end the year, but that is going to be tough if september keeps going down the crapper.

oh and I played really crappy golf yesterday. which is frustrating because I had been swinging really well the last few times I had been out.

enough bitching

laterz

sometimes you just play like crap

2010-08-25T23:38:00.001-04:00

that's what I've been doing lately. luckily I've pretty much broken even this week despite the fact that I'm stinking up the joint at the tables.

oh well, tomorrow is another day.

NSFW but hilarious

2010-08-24T17:02:00.001-04:00

good day

2010-08-19T21:45:00.000-04:00

decided to take a day off after logging +30 hours in the last 5 days. Played 9 holes of golf at 6am (shot a legit 40 my best 9 of the summer), then made espresso and brunch around 11am. Took a little nap until about 4pm. Woke up and showered and cleaned the kitchen. Then I browsed the forums, watched a little tv, and made some dinner. Dinner was a NY strip, baked potato, carrots and tomato, and a glass of red wine. I did a pretty awesome job on the steak and it was tasty despite not being a fantastic cut (a little bit of gristle in the middle was disappointing). I did manage to set off our smoke detector though because I was cooking it in a pan with butter and when I put the steak on I got a lot of smoke. oh well, hard to make a good meal without a little smoke.

now I'm drinking a glass of scotch, relaxing and getting ready for an early turn in. Looking forward to getting up tomorrow and either golfing or running before I get my friday pokering on. Saturday is a group trip for a late lobster lunch in Maine, so that should be fun.

poker has been a grind lately. I'm making money, but it's constantly up and down. Games aren't great so I'd say that has a lot to do with it. I do feel like I'm starting to finally be a competent HU player. we'll see if that holds.

laterz

write a blog post, get smacked down

2010-08-17T14:08:00.000-04:00

-10 BI night in 4 hours last night. games weren't good, I made some bad mistakes, and I was getting coolered quite a bit. Oh well still doing ok for the month and getting back into the grinding groove.

time to get some breakfast, coffee, and get on my grind.

bounced in ftops ME poker gods rewarded with cash-game beast-moding

2010-08-16T15:56:00.000-04:00

basically got bounced in the FTOPs when I reshoved 20bb effective on a BB restealer from the CO with 55 and he snapped AA. I effed this up because he was a new player at the table that had just sat, but my HUD hadn't updated and I didn't realize it because I had 16 tables of cash going at the same time. then I shoved my 9bb stack over a LAGs MP open with AJo and he snapped with 53s (ldo) and obviously binked the flop and rivered a straight. So that took about 2.5 hours, and I was up about 1k playing cash at that point. Which felt really good because I had started out dropping about 4BI in about 20 min with some close plays early in the session.

But the games were great, and I was in the groove so I kept grinding, and 3 hours later I was up about 5.5k and decided to call it a day. Basically everything was going my way, my reads were good, and I was playing my A game. The poker gods really helped me out, but it also make a huge difference when you've been playing a ton lately and actually feel like your game is sharp. this weekend is the most I've played in well over a month and the first time in a long time I can say I felt my game was really sharp and I was owning people.

that being said I had a few frustratingly weak river plays where I could have put in value raises, but I was scared of the nuts. This is pretty much a terrible mindset in 6max, and I almost never have that problem in shorthanded games. but these situations were FR, and most FR regs are so nitty that when I pop them on the river they rarely call without the nuts. so when I get to the river and I know my hand is ahead of their range because I've slowplayed or binked or whatever I don't always have a cut and dry raise. because their b/c'ing range is dramatically tighter than their b/f'ing range. So I kept getting frustrated because I had river spots where I'd want to shove and I'd start thinking about combos and just figured there were more combos of nuts that would call than worse value hands and I just called. I felt pretty weak, but I think they weren't huge mistakes if they were mistakes at all.

that's a lot of poker stuff, and sorry if you don't understand all of it, but the grinders will get it.

we got bounced in the first round of the baseball playoffs. it was especially frustrating because our entire team believed we were better than our opponents. we won the first game and then lost 3 straight. we didn't hit well for the last 3 games, and our pitching was decent but not great. mostly it was mental mistakes in the field both from our pitchers and fielders. in general I just look at it as bad variance. We were one of the best teams in the league, and when everything was going our way down the stretch we went 9-2 and captured first place in the regular season. But then things start going against you in the playoffs and suddenly you go from being the best team in the league to looking very mediocre.

overall the season was good. we bounced back well from last years catastrophe, and my arm finally started feeling normal towards the end of the year. I had to quit lifting weights, and I've lost over 10 lbs during the season because I couldn't lift. But my velocity got back to upper 80s (I think I popped 90 a few times), I gained control of my pitches, and I finally got my splitter looking nasty by the end of the season. I also worked a little on a cutter and am getting closer and closer to having my slider back. I think next year I can be the most dominant pitcher in the league if I put the work in, and I plan to.

other stuff, currently enjoying shopping at giltman.com every once in awhile. really nice clothes and stuff at great prices. plus they ship from MA so I get it in like a day, and their customer service and return policy are awesome. if you want to sign up for them hit me up in the comments and I'll send you a link and I get a free $25. don't know if you get anything, but hey reading this post has got to have been worth hooking me up, right? ;-)

currently reading:

just finished:

listening to:

and listening to:

and back to playing golf.

wedding planning is keeping me busy.

life is good.

peace

piz

friday night-saturday morning poker grind

2010-08-14T14:40:00.000-04:00

too tired to get back to blogging, but I'll post a graph. long long night...

not playing enough

2010-07-15T04:14:00.001-04:00

only got 30 hours so far this month. eff the days just fly by. good news is that the poker gods have blessed me with their run good. I couldn't do it without them, all hail be to the poker gods.

but seriously today is hilarious. I win like 12 buy-ins between 400 and 600 NL, and then sit down to play some tired buzzed rush while I watch and old episode of WSOP from last year and insta lose 5 buy-ins. The hilarious thing is that rush poker is only 200nl, so I'm still up about 5k on the day. thank god for running good at MSNL and running bad at stupid rush poker.

other news, team is in 4th place in my baseball league (link we're grossman marketing). we need to win 4 out of our last 7 games and I think we'll make the playoffs. going to be a tough stretch since we have 5 of those 7 games against the top 3 other teams in the league. I'm leading the league in saves, but not surprisingly closers don't get much notice for the all star game so I'm not playing this friday. not that I think I deserved to make the team, but the game should be a lot of fun and I'm really looking forward to going.

also working on planning our honeymoon in october. I think we're going to head to argentina for a couple of weeks. so if anyone has any advice on where to go and what to do in argentina post a comment and we'll get in touch.

that's all I got for now.

later

10 hours down

2010-07-04T05:44:00.001-04:00

been running very well, ty poker gods. played about 4 session so far for just under 10 hours. If I can get in about 2-3 hours on the 4th I'll be just slightly behind pace.

July = 120 Hours or Bust

2010-07-01T18:38:00.001-04:00

So June was disappointing in that I wanted to play 100 hours and I only made it to 80. The biggest reasons for my shortcoming would be the 5 days I was sick when I only played one session, and not getting any play the weekend we went to our friends wedding. All that being said I had more than enough opportunity to reach my goal, and I didn't. I still had a good month, and I'm definitely not complaining about my results. But if I really want to have another solid year like last year I need to start putting in more hours.

So I'm declaring the goal now and going to be updating my progress throughout the month. I want to play 120 hours this month. I think it's entirely reasonable that I get there. Assuming I play 24 days during the month that only requires 5 hours a day. Basically two sessions a day 5-6 days a week. It is going to be taxing, and it is going to require putting my nose to the grind, but I think I can do it. People really underestimate how taxing that much poker can be on you, but I've gone through tougher stretches of work when I was in college.

so today is day 1 and I'm already behind. I woke up late and I've got a baseball game I'm getting ready to go to. But hopefully I can get in 1 good session late night. and then get up early tomorrow and grind all day. going on a harbor-cruise/concert tomorrow night so that will take away some of my hours. But if I work hard during the day I can get back on track.

later

jim

got sick, didn't play much

2010-06-27T22:10:00.000-04:00

only got about 12 hours in this week, and that was mostly in two days of play. I got a cold from my weekend of revelry and travel and it kept me down for most of the week.

I did get in about 6k hands this afternoon while playing 5 different tourneys. Went 0-fer the tourneys so down $750 or so for that, but made about $2.5k playing cash so thats good. I'm getting good at running AK and KK into AA, but I coolered some regs so that's good.

would really like to get about 25 hours in before the end of the month, but thats in 3 days and I doubt it will happen. going to try to get up early and grind tomorrow. we shall see.

later

jim

another wedding down

2010-06-21T16:46:00.001-04:00

two good friends from college got married in Houston this weekend and it was like another college reunion. We had a great time and it was awesome to see everyone. They're a fantastic couple and wish them both the best.

now I've got 10 days to get in about 50 hours of poker to meet my monthly goals. I think I can do it if I adjust my sleep schedule back to normal hours and try to get my play in before baseball games. It is just really hard to play after being at the field for 3 hours especially when I catching guys in the pen and often warming up for potential relief appearances. My new plan is wake up in the morning. play from 12-5 or so in the afternoon. Then get a workout in after the game when I come home. I can eat a late dinner after the workout and pass out for the night. That would get me back to working out while still leaving plenty of time for poker. Hopefully I can put back on some of the weight I lost while I haven't been lifting over the last month.

that's about all to update from here. been watching a lot of WC, go USA beat algeria and get us into the elimination round. No comment on game 7 of the NBA finals.

later

jim

hell hath no fury like a woman scorned for sega

2010-06-14T03:22:00.001-04:00

mallrats just came on. my 3AM just got 73% better.

poker memories

2010-06-08T02:52:00.000-04:00

posted this up in a thread on 2p2 after someone linked the youtube of the ESPN WSOP broadcast below:

this was my favorite year of WSOP broadcasts and that might be my favorite one ever. That was back when I was in college and taking summer school classes and I'd come home from class, then waiting tables until 11PM or later, and grab a 6 pack of beers and watch the WSOP broadcast that I had recorded on my VCR. I used to record all of them back then and rewatch them all the time. Then if it was a real good night my friends would get a .10/.25 NL game going I'd get to wander over to one of their apartments and play poker until 2AM or so. we'd always play until there were just a couple of us left because noone really wanted to lose more than 10 dollars, and in the end there be 3 guys playing for everyone's money and we'd finally just quit because we were all scared to lose 20 bucks playing HU. But whoever got the best of it that night would by beers for the next.

I'm not sure I'll ever enjoy poker as much as I did then. it makes me wistful just thinking about it.

Let's get dumb, drink some rum. Make my teeth and gums feel real numb.

2010-06-06T02:37:00.000-04:00

I'm appropriately drunk tonight. Had a fantastic dinner with good friends and some new folks that I didn't know who were also very very cool. Then stayed late with the host after the WAGs went home, drank a lot more of the booze and wandered home with a good buddy while we discussed the finer details of life.

this is drinking at it's best. not blackout, not stupid, not driving, or any other retraded (inside joke) nonsense. Just enough to get social and fun and enjoy each others jokes and observations.

and let's go celtics. Win game two, punk the lakers, and let's get things rolling. I didn't ever really hate phil jackson until this year, but I'm tired of his BS. Somebody needs to end his streak, and who better than these celtics.

back

2010-06-03T05:55:00.001-04:00

quick hitters:

- I've been playing a lot of rush poker because it is 6max NLHE crack. people can't play, I get to start and stop whenever, and I can get in a ton of hands 4 tabling. I actually play it on the toilet sometimes. That should be the next FTP advertisement; Rush Poker! The Best Form of Poker When You're Taking a Dump!

- our team is off to a great start 5-1. I've only thrown 5 innings but so far so good even though my control is lousy. We have a really deep staff and all of the other guys have been throwing fantastic. I'm hoping my arm builds and builds into shape so that at the end of the season I'm approaching what I was at the beginning of last year. It is going to be tough though because my rotator cuff is not happy.

- went on the 5th anniversary cruise with my buddies from duke baseball. we had a blast with so many hilarious stories and moments. pic at end of blog is us being rahtards on the boat one night. I really love those cruises and could easily just go ship around on one of those boats for a couple months if they'd let me. The guys are hilarious, the weather is fantastic, and we eat like kings. It was honestly the most food I've eaten in the last couple of years. I've really changed my eating habits and improved my diet and nutrition, but the boat was just a total delicious binge. We're talking 5 course dinners with 2 entrees every night (prime rib and lobster yumm), 24 hour free room service (think 3 sandwiches at 4am), lunch buffet, burgers for afternoon snacks, the hits just keep coming.

I didn't really weigh myself so I don't know if I gained any weight, but I know the first few days back I was hungry nonstop. I had totally altered my bodies expectation for food and found myself wanting to eat huge amounts all the time. It took almost a week to get myself back on to a reasonable diet, but it made me think about why so many people in this country are obese. If you allow yourself to eat like that frequently it becomes a mental and physical expectation. Almost like an addiction. And changing your habits (ie diet and nutrition) takes mental will power and work. For me its about not keeping junk food in the apartment (haven't for close to 2 years). No potato chips, no candy, no regular soda, no fruit drink, no ice cream, etc. I think a good general rule is that if the food takes no time to prepare and isn't a fresh fruit or vegetable you should probably reconsider eating it. sure there are exceptions, but if you start there you're going to immediately see an impact on how you eat.

anyway enough of that, but post cruise that was an interesting realization to me. to wrap things up the cruise was awesome again and I can't wait for next year.

- wedding planning is going well. katy finally sold me on the merits of a DJ. we found someone that meets my standards, and I look forward to bombarding the guy with information about what I do and don't want to hear. luckily he's totally prepped and expecting that, and doesn't want the role of MC so that helps considerably. I'm sure we'll need him to announce a few things, but in general the thing I wanted was a guy that could get the music I wanted to play in a timely reasonable manner that would work with the crowd. I want to take stuff I like and get people into it. and this guy gets that and seems to do it well. should be fun.

- botched call on the perfect game tonight was a travesty. I really feel for the player, but I also feel for the ump. That is the kind of perfectly normal human mistake that can haunt a guy and I hope it doesn't. It sounds like he felt terrible about it and even though I had a head asplode moment when I first saw my final thought was "whaddayagonnado?"

- celts lakers tonight is going to be epic. besides all of the teams history I'm looking forward to jesus shuttlesworth (ray allen) shooting sneers at kobe bryant. I'm not a kobe fan and ray might be my favorite celtic so I hope he has a big series. btw ray also perfectly predicted the kobe-tantrum mid 2000s years before it happened (which also set off their feud):

After the Shaquille O'Neal was traded to Miami, Allen was asked about whether Kobe Bryant could lead the Lakers back to the Finals:

He feels like he needs to show the league, that he is better without Shaq, that he can win without Shaq. That he can still average 30 points and he can still carry the load on this team. The point production is not so much what people will look at, because (Tracy) McGrady did it in Orlando and Allen (Iverson) did it in Philly. But can you win championships? Can he make everybody better? He has the talent. But is his attitude going to sometimes allow him to take the backseat and let Lamar Odom shine and let Caron Butler have his nights and bring those big guys along? If Kobe thinks he needs 2-1/2 good players to be a legitimate playoff contender or win a championship in about a year or two he will be calling out to (Lakers owner) Jerry Buss that we need some help in here, or trade me. We'll all be saying we told you so when he says that.

laters

me and 3 of the cruise bros being idiots on the cruise:

quick hitters

2010-05-11T14:30:00.000-04:00

still running bad and it really started to get to me last week. I definitely started playing bad and threw up some hands on the forums to confirm basically most of the regs I respect disagreed with my lines in every hand I posted and they typically disagreed exactly how I would expect them to. In general I'm just making weird leveling decisions and doing stupid things at the tables that I wouldn't do when I have full confidence. Not surprising considering I was in the middle of one of my largest monetary downswings ever. because of that I pretty much stayed away from the blog and the tables this weekend. here are some quick updates.

- exciting weekend of sports in boston all though there wasn't a ton of success. I got to go to red sox-yankees on friday night with great seats down the first base line thanks to a good friend who sold me his tickets for face. much thanks to him and it was a fun game watching the sox finally get the bats going. also been able to see both bruins and celtics home playoff games in the last few weeks. So its been a good sports month and I'm hoping it continues.

- went to a friends wedding in Boston this weekend. It was a great time and they really did it right. Great food, open bar, bluegrass band at the reception, and I got to school some people at cornhole. They are a fantastic couple and katy put it best when she said that she was really really happy for them because as great as they are individually they both are even better together. nothing but the best to kim and brent and congratulations.

- my arm is messed up. I've got tendonitis in my rotator cuff and its made prepping for the season a huge pain. basically my arm really realy hurts at the beginning of every bullpen and its a struggle to find some kind of comfort on the mound. I'm working hard to get some control and really maintain velocity. and I still haven't settled into a comfortable spot with my off speed pitches. the only good news is that I'm starting to get my slider back although I'm not sure if it's game ready yet.

- I've been playing some Rush poker on FTP again. when I want to get in a quick 30 minute session while waiting for katy, or during half time of a game I'm just firing up 4 tables of rush and getting a quick grind in. I think it isn't inconcievable that my winrate is something like 5ptbb/100 at rush since the regs are not very good and there are a lot of fish (is 1/2 NL so the stakes are quite a bit lower than I'm used to) and considering the hands/hour I see I think it's a actually a pretty good way to make some money here and there. I wouldn't want to make it my primary game, but it is a nice change of pace.

thats about it for now. hopefully next update will have me running good again