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Quasi-legalese: The above is a paid review that this blogger received compensation for.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Exhibit A: Online Poker Can Still Be Profitable Even Amongst a Slew of Training Sites and Software Aids
Scene: $50 90 man turbo KO SnG on Full Tilt.
Characters:
UTG: 110,000 chips
SB: 159,100 chips
Hero, in the BB: 900 chips
Blinds are 2K/4k
Backstory: SB and Hero tangled in the previous hand. On a J 9 4 rainbow flop, SB led out and called Hero's shove. SB held the mighty A4o for third pair and Hero held J9 for top two. An A of course binks on the turn and SB wins the hand, knocking Hero down to just 900 chips. Hero is all-in on his BB the next hand.
1st pays $1,152, 2nd pays $702, and 3rd pays $504. Each KO bounty is worth $8.
Action: UTG open shoves for 110,000. SB thinks for 0.3 seconds and calls. Hero is all-in already for his last 900 chips.
UTG tables A2o, SB shows A7o, and Hero has KQo. Q on the flop and amazingly no A on the turn or river knocks UTG out in 3rd. Hero laughs and laughs and laughs.
Characters:
UTG: 110,000 chips
SB: 159,100 chips
Hero, in the BB: 900 chips
Blinds are 2K/4k
Backstory: SB and Hero tangled in the previous hand. On a J 9 4 rainbow flop, SB led out and called Hero's shove. SB held the mighty A4o for third pair and Hero held J9 for top two. An A of course binks on the turn and SB wins the hand, knocking Hero down to just 900 chips. Hero is all-in on his BB the next hand.
1st pays $1,152, 2nd pays $702, and 3rd pays $504. Each KO bounty is worth $8.
Action: UTG open shoves for 110,000. SB thinks for 0.3 seconds and calls. Hero is all-in already for his last 900 chips.
UTG tables A2o, SB shows A7o, and Hero has KQo. Q on the flop and amazingly no A on the turn or river knocks UTG out in 3rd. Hero laughs and laughs and laughs.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
He's blogging! About poker!
How I used to post here daily, I do not know, but one advantage of going months and months without posting is I at least have a things to say, finally, that are actually about poker.
I've been playing more the last 3-4 months than I have in years and years, with pretty solid results. Pretty much strictly MTTs and 90 man SnGs these days, usually in the $25-$100 buy-in range. Right before I went to Vegas for the WSOP I went on a pretty sick run at Cake, final-tabling the same nightly $27K rebuy tourney three nights in a row (finishing 1st, 2nd, and 5th), which brought me some bankroll breathing room for the first time since the Great Cashout when the UIGEA hit the fan.
I've even managed a few consecutive nice months at my old nemesis FT, with a couple of wins in smaller $24+$2 tourneys like the $30K guaranteed, $12.5K KO, etc., and finishing 2nd in one of the crack fiend $55 Super Turbo KOs (prevented from winning it by AA < QQ and KK < 10 8o in consecutive hands). I'm still running the opposite of good in the big Sunday tourneys, but it's nice to string together some pretty profitable months, as getting in a lot of volume has helped I think.
I've been taking poker more seriously of late as a source of income, and to some extent the improved results bear that out I think. Despite being able to take shots in the bigger guaranteed tournaments I've mainly stuck to grinding away, which I had a hard time doing when I was playing less volume. Its easy for my monkey brain to connect the dots when grinding away and making money, as far as that being a good thing to stick to, but easy to stray in the past when I'd go weeks without playing then jump into a $100 rebuy for no good reason, donk off money, get frustrated, not play for a few weeks, rinse and repeat.
The WSOP working trip this year was a good one, especially as compared to last year. No drama or distractions at all on the corporate employer side of things, and we were pretty much completely left alone to do our blogging gig. Run good was also in full effect on the poker side, as I made it to Day 2 in the Venetian Deep Stacks tourney I played in (finishing around 30th for like $950, which was pretty disappointing given the payout structure and the fact I had an average stack coming back for Day 2), finished 2nd in a Planet Hollywood tourney my wife and I entered on a whim, and had decent cash game sessions the three times I played.
The Deep Stacks tourney I played was amusing in a lot of ways, as I'm not sure I've ever been that card dead in a live tourney before, yet somehow managed to scrape my way through to day 2 without ever being dealt anything better than 10 10 the entire tournament (which I flopped quads with when I was all-in pre-flop near the bubble and up against AQo). Plus I got my first ever penalty in a live tournament, and come as close to mad monkey tilt as I ever have.
The "penalty" still chaps my ass a bit, despite the fact that I'm the first to admit that I was at fault. We were about 4 hours into play and I limped UTG with A10s and like 6 people came along, including the BB. A little bit of necessary backstory about BB is that he was one of those people that while outwardly chatty and likeable enough insta-tilts me, as he couldn't sit in his seat for more than 30 seconds at a time. He was forever jumping and walking around after folding, always scanning the room for the cocktail waitress to get another pina colada, and would jump up and disappear for fifteen minute stretches at a time, playing maybe 3 or 4 hands per orbit. Plus when he was in a hand he'd completely cover his cards with both hands, so you never knew if he had cards. (Cue ominous foreshadowing music).
So I've limped with A10 spades in a pot with a million players and the flop is rags, with two spades. I check, planning on check-raising, but it checks around. Turn is a blank that isn't a spade. I check, not really wanting to lead into the field at that point, and it checks around. River is another blank, but it's a spade, and I have the mortal nuts.
I dwell and Hollywood awhile, brow furrowed, then bet three times the pot, thinking the only way I'd get paid at that point is via the stupid overbet route. The next guy to act pauses for just a second and quickly calls, and it quickly folds around to me. I feel bad about Hollywooding in spots like that so I usually very quickly table my hand.
At which point Pina Colada Guy starts squawking and I think to myself "Fuuuuuuuck me" as he still had cards, and was, as usual, sitting with them completely underneath his hands. To be honest it was also my fault as well, as I'd just been trying my best to mentally ignore him so as not to get tilted by his behavior. It also didn't help there were a million people in the hand to begin with, either, as it was easy to think the avalanche of folds on the river was everyone.
So my hand is clearly exposed and tabled, the floor is called, and Pina Colada is given the chance to call if he wants (ha), he mucks, the other guy in the hand mucks, and I get the pot. Plus an orbit penalty for exposing my cards while there was still action.
The floor is nice enough about it at that point, and expresses sympathy for my situation but says that prematurely exposing cards has been a real problem and that regular players hate it so that's why they take a hard stance these days and dole out penalties for exposing your cards, intentionally or not. And I said that I understood that, but with some many recreational players and tourists, it seemed harsh to penalize people on their first offense, and not give them a warning first.
At which point he said that no, I'd been warned. And I really was perplexed then, because I obviously hadn't done that before or been warned. He went on to explain that everyone gets their first warning during the initial tourney announcement of the rules, etc., and that it's a blanket warning to all players. So I got my first warning then, and prematurely tabling my hand was considered my second offense.
That's when I started getting tilty. I'm like, "Okay, I get that I'm being penalized and I understand why, but your policy is clearly to hand out the penalty without a warning first. Just say that's your policy. I know it doesn't change anything but it's dishonest to claim that you're player-friendly on the issue and give a warning first". Which he wouldn't agree with, insisting they gave all players a warning first before any penalties. Obviously a lost cause to continue arguing (and especially be a smart ass about it), but I'd gone from being annoyed with myself to annoyed on general principle against blanket dumbassery like what I was being told. I asked him what if I registered late, or what if I was deaf and couldn't hear the warning; would I be penalized then the first time I accidentally tabled my hand?
And things degenerated from there and he started threatening to make me sit out two orbits so I finally gave up and just went to the video poker bar about ten feet away (the Deep Stack events were so popular the Venetian added tables on the casino floor outside the normal tournament room, and I was at one of those tables), stuck $20 in a video poker machine and got a beer. At some point I looked over my shoulder to see where the button was and the same floor guy was watching me like a hawk, and came over and told me that I couldn't be within sight of the table while I was being penalized.
I'm pretty much the nicest, quietest, non-confrontational person in the world, but that's one of the few times I've just absolutely seen red and wanted to spew obscenities into someone's face. I finally just said that I was fucking drinking a beer and fucking gambling at a fucking video poker machine in the fucking casino that employed him, and that I as going to continue to do that until I could go back and play in the fucking poker tournament I fucking paid hundreds of dollars to play in, and just turned around and ignored him until he finally walked away.
Moral of story? Don't expose cards prematurely in a Venetian tournament. You've been warned.
The other funny poker story was when I was playing $1/2 NL and saw what's pretty much the worst fold I've ever seen in my life. A mid-fiftyish guy came over with steam pouring out of his ears on a table change and slammed down some chips, pulling out cash to top up. The dealer and another player knew him and commiserated with him a bit about idiots who don't know what they're doing, so he was a regular/local of some sort.
I stacked him within abut 30 seconds of him sitting down, as it folded to me on the button with A10o, I raised to $8, SB folds, and he min-raised to $16 from the BB. I obviously have no clue what that means but yeah, I'm calling $8 more based solely on the steam coming out of his ears.
Flop is A 10 4, with two clubs. We get all the money in and he has Ac Kc but the board bricks out and more steam is coming out of his ears as he rebuys and just stares at me going on and on and on about idiots that call re-raises with hands like A 10 o, how he'd be a millionaire if he didn't have such bad luck, etc. he finally settles down and plays for an hour or so and, to be fair, isn't terrible and has a clue what he's doing.
Which makes his final hand all the stranger. I can't remember the exact details, but he's down to like $125 in his stack, and he and a solid younger guy go back and forth with three or four raise/re-raise small/re-re-raise small/re-re-re-reraise small bets on the flop, and his last raise is a weird one that just leaves him exactly $4 behind. The young guy has him covered, but he just calls the last raise, with around $250 in the pot.
The flop is K 8 4, rainbow, and the action is on the younger guy, who flips out $5. And Steamy Ears proudly instamucks JJ face up instead of calling for his last $4 into a $250 pot, and the guy next to me looks at me like "WTF?" and Steamy Ears says "Let's see your aces or kings" and his opponent pauses for a long time, almost doesn't show, then turns over pocket tens. And Steamy Ears just bolts from the table so quickly it was like he was ejected from his seat, with his four $1 chips clutched tightly in his hand.
I've been playing more the last 3-4 months than I have in years and years, with pretty solid results. Pretty much strictly MTTs and 90 man SnGs these days, usually in the $25-$100 buy-in range. Right before I went to Vegas for the WSOP I went on a pretty sick run at Cake, final-tabling the same nightly $27K rebuy tourney three nights in a row (finishing 1st, 2nd, and 5th), which brought me some bankroll breathing room for the first time since the Great Cashout when the UIGEA hit the fan.
I've even managed a few consecutive nice months at my old nemesis FT, with a couple of wins in smaller $24+$2 tourneys like the $30K guaranteed, $12.5K KO, etc., and finishing 2nd in one of the crack fiend $55 Super Turbo KOs (prevented from winning it by AA < QQ and KK < 10 8o in consecutive hands). I'm still running the opposite of good in the big Sunday tourneys, but it's nice to string together some pretty profitable months, as getting in a lot of volume has helped I think.
I've been taking poker more seriously of late as a source of income, and to some extent the improved results bear that out I think. Despite being able to take shots in the bigger guaranteed tournaments I've mainly stuck to grinding away, which I had a hard time doing when I was playing less volume. Its easy for my monkey brain to connect the dots when grinding away and making money, as far as that being a good thing to stick to, but easy to stray in the past when I'd go weeks without playing then jump into a $100 rebuy for no good reason, donk off money, get frustrated, not play for a few weeks, rinse and repeat.
The WSOP working trip this year was a good one, especially as compared to last year. No drama or distractions at all on the corporate employer side of things, and we were pretty much completely left alone to do our blogging gig. Run good was also in full effect on the poker side, as I made it to Day 2 in the Venetian Deep Stacks tourney I played in (finishing around 30th for like $950, which was pretty disappointing given the payout structure and the fact I had an average stack coming back for Day 2), finished 2nd in a Planet Hollywood tourney my wife and I entered on a whim, and had decent cash game sessions the three times I played.
The Deep Stacks tourney I played was amusing in a lot of ways, as I'm not sure I've ever been that card dead in a live tourney before, yet somehow managed to scrape my way through to day 2 without ever being dealt anything better than 10 10 the entire tournament (which I flopped quads with when I was all-in pre-flop near the bubble and up against AQo). Plus I got my first ever penalty in a live tournament, and come as close to mad monkey tilt as I ever have.
The "penalty" still chaps my ass a bit, despite the fact that I'm the first to admit that I was at fault. We were about 4 hours into play and I limped UTG with A10s and like 6 people came along, including the BB. A little bit of necessary backstory about BB is that he was one of those people that while outwardly chatty and likeable enough insta-tilts me, as he couldn't sit in his seat for more than 30 seconds at a time. He was forever jumping and walking around after folding, always scanning the room for the cocktail waitress to get another pina colada, and would jump up and disappear for fifteen minute stretches at a time, playing maybe 3 or 4 hands per orbit. Plus when he was in a hand he'd completely cover his cards with both hands, so you never knew if he had cards. (Cue ominous foreshadowing music).
So I've limped with A10 spades in a pot with a million players and the flop is rags, with two spades. I check, planning on check-raising, but it checks around. Turn is a blank that isn't a spade. I check, not really wanting to lead into the field at that point, and it checks around. River is another blank, but it's a spade, and I have the mortal nuts.
I dwell and Hollywood awhile, brow furrowed, then bet three times the pot, thinking the only way I'd get paid at that point is via the stupid overbet route. The next guy to act pauses for just a second and quickly calls, and it quickly folds around to me. I feel bad about Hollywooding in spots like that so I usually very quickly table my hand.
At which point Pina Colada Guy starts squawking and I think to myself "Fuuuuuuuck me" as he still had cards, and was, as usual, sitting with them completely underneath his hands. To be honest it was also my fault as well, as I'd just been trying my best to mentally ignore him so as not to get tilted by his behavior. It also didn't help there were a million people in the hand to begin with, either, as it was easy to think the avalanche of folds on the river was everyone.
So my hand is clearly exposed and tabled, the floor is called, and Pina Colada is given the chance to call if he wants (ha), he mucks, the other guy in the hand mucks, and I get the pot. Plus an orbit penalty for exposing my cards while there was still action.
The floor is nice enough about it at that point, and expresses sympathy for my situation but says that prematurely exposing cards has been a real problem and that regular players hate it so that's why they take a hard stance these days and dole out penalties for exposing your cards, intentionally or not. And I said that I understood that, but with some many recreational players and tourists, it seemed harsh to penalize people on their first offense, and not give them a warning first.
At which point he said that no, I'd been warned. And I really was perplexed then, because I obviously hadn't done that before or been warned. He went on to explain that everyone gets their first warning during the initial tourney announcement of the rules, etc., and that it's a blanket warning to all players. So I got my first warning then, and prematurely tabling my hand was considered my second offense.
That's when I started getting tilty. I'm like, "Okay, I get that I'm being penalized and I understand why, but your policy is clearly to hand out the penalty without a warning first. Just say that's your policy. I know it doesn't change anything but it's dishonest to claim that you're player-friendly on the issue and give a warning first". Which he wouldn't agree with, insisting they gave all players a warning first before any penalties. Obviously a lost cause to continue arguing (and especially be a smart ass about it), but I'd gone from being annoyed with myself to annoyed on general principle against blanket dumbassery like what I was being told. I asked him what if I registered late, or what if I was deaf and couldn't hear the warning; would I be penalized then the first time I accidentally tabled my hand?
And things degenerated from there and he started threatening to make me sit out two orbits so I finally gave up and just went to the video poker bar about ten feet away (the Deep Stack events were so popular the Venetian added tables on the casino floor outside the normal tournament room, and I was at one of those tables), stuck $20 in a video poker machine and got a beer. At some point I looked over my shoulder to see where the button was and the same floor guy was watching me like a hawk, and came over and told me that I couldn't be within sight of the table while I was being penalized.
I'm pretty much the nicest, quietest, non-confrontational person in the world, but that's one of the few times I've just absolutely seen red and wanted to spew obscenities into someone's face. I finally just said that I was fucking drinking a beer and fucking gambling at a fucking video poker machine in the fucking casino that employed him, and that I as going to continue to do that until I could go back and play in the fucking poker tournament I fucking paid hundreds of dollars to play in, and just turned around and ignored him until he finally walked away.
Moral of story? Don't expose cards prematurely in a Venetian tournament. You've been warned.
The other funny poker story was when I was playing $1/2 NL and saw what's pretty much the worst fold I've ever seen in my life. A mid-fiftyish guy came over with steam pouring out of his ears on a table change and slammed down some chips, pulling out cash to top up. The dealer and another player knew him and commiserated with him a bit about idiots who don't know what they're doing, so he was a regular/local of some sort.
I stacked him within abut 30 seconds of him sitting down, as it folded to me on the button with A10o, I raised to $8, SB folds, and he min-raised to $16 from the BB. I obviously have no clue what that means but yeah, I'm calling $8 more based solely on the steam coming out of his ears.
Flop is A 10 4, with two clubs. We get all the money in and he has Ac Kc but the board bricks out and more steam is coming out of his ears as he rebuys and just stares at me going on and on and on about idiots that call re-raises with hands like A 10 o, how he'd be a millionaire if he didn't have such bad luck, etc. he finally settles down and plays for an hour or so and, to be fair, isn't terrible and has a clue what he's doing.
Which makes his final hand all the stranger. I can't remember the exact details, but he's down to like $125 in his stack, and he and a solid younger guy go back and forth with three or four raise/re-raise small/re-re-raise small/re-re-re-reraise small bets on the flop, and his last raise is a weird one that just leaves him exactly $4 behind. The young guy has him covered, but he just calls the last raise, with around $250 in the pot.
The flop is K 8 4, rainbow, and the action is on the younger guy, who flips out $5. And Steamy Ears proudly instamucks JJ face up instead of calling for his last $4 into a $250 pot, and the guy next to me looks at me like "WTF?" and Steamy Ears says "Let's see your aces or kings" and his opponent pauses for a long time, almost doesn't show, then turns over pocket tens. And Steamy Ears just bolts from the table so quickly it was like he was ejected from his seat, with his four $1 chips clutched tightly in his hand.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
'Cause Bullet Points are All the Rage
* Still alive. Still very busy.
* I'll be heading out to Vegas again this year for the Main Event, scribbling scribblings for the 2009 WSOP blog at the bwin Poker Blog. I'm actually fairly psyched to go this year, except for the house I'm remodeling that must get done before I leave on June 30th, which is increasingly becoming doubtful.
* Still plugging away at the real estate grind. If real estate is an easy way to get rich quick, I'm apparently doing something wrong.
* Still at the day job. Sweet mother of Jebus.
* Thanks to Al for all his work with the BBT series. I played a handful of events in the latest series, which usually consisted of signing up, getting seated, and immediately thinking "It's late and I'm tired, why the hell did I sign up for this?" and finding some way to donk off my chips so I could go to bed. I did check out the ToC action, as I was playing some other tournies at the same time, and I have to say the finish was about as awesome a finish as could be hoped for. GG actyper, and try not to donk out of the Main Event as quickly as last year.
* Still play a decent amount of the online pokers, mostly at Cake. Final tabled two of their WSOP finals but no love. Did have two nice scores in their bigger Sunday tournies, and a 2nd in a rebuy tourney in the last month.
* Free investing advice o' the day: commodities, ftw!
* I'll be heading out to Vegas again this year for the Main Event, scribbling scribblings for the 2009 WSOP blog at the bwin Poker Blog. I'm actually fairly psyched to go this year, except for the house I'm remodeling that must get done before I leave on June 30th, which is increasingly becoming doubtful.
* Still plugging away at the real estate grind. If real estate is an easy way to get rich quick, I'm apparently doing something wrong.
* Still at the day job. Sweet mother of Jebus.
* Thanks to Al for all his work with the BBT series. I played a handful of events in the latest series, which usually consisted of signing up, getting seated, and immediately thinking "It's late and I'm tired, why the hell did I sign up for this?" and finding some way to donk off my chips so I could go to bed. I did check out the ToC action, as I was playing some other tournies at the same time, and I have to say the finish was about as awesome a finish as could be hoped for. GG actyper, and try not to donk out of the Main Event as quickly as last year.
* Still play a decent amount of the online pokers, mostly at Cake. Final tabled two of their WSOP finals but no love. Did have two nice scores in their bigger Sunday tournies, and a 2nd in a rebuy tourney in the last month.
* Free investing advice o' the day: commodities, ftw!
Best Rakeback
Best Rakeback is yet another player on the poker rakeback scene, offering various rakeback deals (including Absolute rakeback and Cake Poker rakeback) to many of the top online poker sites.
Rakeback deals have grown in popularity and prominence in recent years, and for good reason. Like death and taxes, rake is inevitable no matter what poker room you play at, and can add up to a very sizable amount if you're a high volume player. If you play a lot of poker, even at lower stakes you may very well be generating thousands of dollars a month in rake, money which in the past has typically all gone into the pocket of the online poker site you're playing at.
With a rakeback deal, though, a percentage of that money (usually 20-35%) comes back to you, as sites such as Best Rakeback have emerged that work out deals with the online poker sites to return a set percentage of rake back to members who are players at that site. Instead of losing all the money you play in rake, a chunk of it goes back into your bankroll, which can definitely help to pad your account balance.
Best Rakeback offers rakeback deals at most of the major sites that allow rakeback (including Full Tilt, Cake Poker, Carbon Poker, and others) and members get access to ananimated rakeback graphing system that shows them exactly how much rakeback they've earned at any given point in time. Users can cash out their rakeback direct to certain poker rooms or request payment by check, bank wire, or other payment methods. Best Rakeback also provides members with support staff and a ticketing system to ensure that any concerns or problems they have are quickly addressed.
Rakeback deals have grown in popularity and prominence in recent years, and for good reason. Like death and taxes, rake is inevitable no matter what poker room you play at, and can add up to a very sizable amount if you're a high volume player. If you play a lot of poker, even at lower stakes you may very well be generating thousands of dollars a month in rake, money which in the past has typically all gone into the pocket of the online poker site you're playing at.
With a rakeback deal, though, a percentage of that money (usually 20-35%) comes back to you, as sites such as Best Rakeback have emerged that work out deals with the online poker sites to return a set percentage of rake back to members who are players at that site. Instead of losing all the money you play in rake, a chunk of it goes back into your bankroll, which can definitely help to pad your account balance.
Best Rakeback offers rakeback deals at most of the major sites that allow rakeback (including Full Tilt, Cake Poker, Carbon Poker, and others) and members get access to ananimated rakeback graphing system that shows them exactly how much rakeback they've earned at any given point in time. Users can cash out their rakeback direct to certain poker rooms or request payment by check, bank wire, or other payment methods. Best Rakeback also provides members with support staff and a ticketing system to ensure that any concerns or problems they have are quickly addressed.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Dude, This Place is Dusty
I've obviously been a bad blogger of late, with nearly two months passing since my last post. Dang.
The waxing and waning of the desire to type into various blogging boxes has always interested me, mainly because of the waxing and waning. Some days the idea of chronicling things that are occuring in real life via pixels and keystrokes seems like the most absolute ludicrous, wasteful activity in the world; other days I miss it and am glad I've done as much of it as I have, as far as a record or journal of some sort of where my head was at during various times of my life.
Needless to say, I've been in a waning state of late, especially in regards to this poor blog in particular. A bit ironic in that I've actually been hitting the poker tables pretty hard the last few months, raping and pillaging the mid stakes ($25-$100 buy-ins) double or nothing SnGs and 6 max SnGs on Cake. It's far from exciting poker but I'm sitting at about 12% ROI over 2,000 or so SnGs, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially with rakeback and bonus cash from rake races thrown in.
Nearing the finish line with the little house I bought at the end of December and am renovating, which has gone pretty much according to plan. Already have a tenant lined up for it, so it's just a matter of getting it done, then moving on to the next project. Which is looking like it may be the house next door, as the abandoned house next to is going to auction at the county courthouse next Tuesday for failure ot pay taxes, and hopefully I'll be able to pick it up for the whopping minimum bid of $6,770.
The economy still seems to be swirling down the drain since my last post, or I suppose trickling might be a better word choice. Sluicing maybe, something between swirling and trickling. I usually am my own worst enemy when it comes to investing but I did manage a few things right during the last six months or so, catching a big piece of the swoon last fall via ETFs such as SDS and SKF, then taking biggish positions in SLW and SLV in early December, and plunked some money into GLD shortly after.
I've been tempted to take profits on the commodity-related positions as I think we're still in for one last big final plunge down to 650 or so on the S&P 500, and until the last few weeks gold and silver had been getting hit as well on big down down for equities. Lately, though, they seem to be bucking that trend, acting more like safe havens when more junk-kicking economic news takes equities to the woodshed.
Who knows, though, really. Not this dumb monkey. Part of me is very tempted to take profits and just let everything set in cash, as taking a position of any sort on either side of any trade becomes more and more like playing blackjack each and every day, with the only winner being the brokerage that keeps collecting their commission rake on each and every pot.
Still have the pleasure of going to the day job, and somehow or other we haven't announced mass layoffs, despite being a publicly-traded company in the financial services/risk management/credit risk sector.
We did have two new additions to the family since my last update. With no further ado, Socrates and Marley:
The waxing and waning of the desire to type into various blogging boxes has always interested me, mainly because of the waxing and waning. Some days the idea of chronicling things that are occuring in real life via pixels and keystrokes seems like the most absolute ludicrous, wasteful activity in the world; other days I miss it and am glad I've done as much of it as I have, as far as a record or journal of some sort of where my head was at during various times of my life.
Needless to say, I've been in a waning state of late, especially in regards to this poor blog in particular. A bit ironic in that I've actually been hitting the poker tables pretty hard the last few months, raping and pillaging the mid stakes ($25-$100 buy-ins) double or nothing SnGs and 6 max SnGs on Cake. It's far from exciting poker but I'm sitting at about 12% ROI over 2,000 or so SnGs, which is nothing to sneeze at, especially with rakeback and bonus cash from rake races thrown in.
Nearing the finish line with the little house I bought at the end of December and am renovating, which has gone pretty much according to plan. Already have a tenant lined up for it, so it's just a matter of getting it done, then moving on to the next project. Which is looking like it may be the house next door, as the abandoned house next to is going to auction at the county courthouse next Tuesday for failure ot pay taxes, and hopefully I'll be able to pick it up for the whopping minimum bid of $6,770.
The economy still seems to be swirling down the drain since my last post, or I suppose trickling might be a better word choice. Sluicing maybe, something between swirling and trickling. I usually am my own worst enemy when it comes to investing but I did manage a few things right during the last six months or so, catching a big piece of the swoon last fall via ETFs such as SDS and SKF, then taking biggish positions in SLW and SLV in early December, and plunked some money into GLD shortly after.
I've been tempted to take profits on the commodity-related positions as I think we're still in for one last big final plunge down to 650 or so on the S&P 500, and until the last few weeks gold and silver had been getting hit as well on big down down for equities. Lately, though, they seem to be bucking that trend, acting more like safe havens when more junk-kicking economic news takes equities to the woodshed.
Who knows, though, really. Not this dumb monkey. Part of me is very tempted to take profits and just let everything set in cash, as taking a position of any sort on either side of any trade becomes more and more like playing blackjack each and every day, with the only winner being the brokerage that keeps collecting their commission rake on each and every pot.
Still have the pleasure of going to the day job, and somehow or other we haven't announced mass layoffs, despite being a publicly-traded company in the financial services/risk management/credit risk sector.
We did have two new additions to the family since my last update. With no further ado, Socrates and Marley:
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Egos, Entitlement, and Poker
Playing a ton of LHE of late has been interesting on various fronts, as it's the first time I've strayed from NL in years, despite getting started back in the day at the LHE tables like so many people. I've been spending a lot of time watching CardRunner LHE videos, as there not only was a lot of rust to knock off my LHE game but I'm coming to realize that I was in general playing pretty far from optimal to begin with, as far as blind defense, undervaluing combo/backdoor draws, etc.
As mentioned yesterday, the LHE games at Cake can be surprisingly good at times, especially on weekend nights. There are some catastrophically bad players who, week after week, scrape together the money to buy into a 3/6 LHE game for $60 and proceed to call 3 bets cold with 35o, because, you know, if they get lucky they'll win a big pot, and then call any number of bets to the river on a flop of A A 3, because they caught a piece of it and someone might always be bluffing.
So it's not a struggle to find juicy tables, with a little game selection. But what I am struggling with, more than I'd have thought, is tilt control, when faced with the inevitable times in LHE when players like the above get hot and take you to the cleaners, over and over and over. That's an adjustment from NL that's a bit surprising for me, as I've gotten to the point where I'm relatively tilt-free in NL games. Yeah, the mouse may take some abuse when I finally get the resident table luckbox all-in with set over set (in a good way) and he spiked his one outer for quads on the river, but it takes a good bit to get my off my game when playing NL.
Not so much with LHE, at least at the moment, and it's dragging down my overall results. I've even found myself going off on people in chat, which I haven't done in years, and is terrible all the way around, especially when it's a live one that bleeds chips on a regular basis. I'm not sure why the lemur in the above hand catching a 2 on the turn and a 4 on the river for a straight to take down my AK is so much more galling and monkey-tilt inducing to me, but it is.
Which is all the more damaging in LHE, as it's too easy to get tilty and start donking off a big bet here, two more over there, calling down with A high hands too much against the wrong opponents, yada yada yada.
It's part of the bigger entitlement issue, too, and what you expect from the game, what your capabilities are, and how you carry yourself. I'm still toying with the idea of quitting the day job and relying on my various small streams of income to tide me over until I can build them up into larger streams of income, being able to dedicate myself to it full-time. Poker could be a key part of that if I can consistently pull out a decent chunk of money from the games, thus some of the rationale behind my putting more time in at the tables of late.
While 2008 has been solidly in the black, poker-wise, I haven't quite gotten over the hump where I feel like I'm consistently beating the game. I still have the occasional black hole downswong where I undo a week of steady, consistent work in the span of half a day of tilty play, triggered by the above. Much of it is simple monkey tilt but some of it is also petty frustration, as I've been playing this stupid damn game for a long time now, and still not where I want to be, despite a lot of time and effort and cogitation.
It's a bit of the chicken/egg conundrum, but the biggest thing I want to work on next year poker-wise is the emotional side of things, losing the pettiness and misguided sense of entitlement. One thing I've noticed on the live events I've been on with PokerRoom/bwin is that, without fail, the biggest, most consistent winners of the players on the trips are almost always the ones you'd never expect. There's actually a pretty clear relationship between the players who talk about beating the games the most (usually actually not at all, when you look at their stats) and those who never even bring up their results at all, unless you pry it out of them.
Those are the 2008 results for one of the quiet types mentioned above. Not too shabby at all, and he's got similar stats for his play on Full Tilt, as the graphic just shows Ongame results. You'd never guess it, though, if you met him, as he's as average as can be, still works part-time as he's involved in a strange niche industry and doesn't want to quit and leave his boss in a bind, as replacing him would be hard. Getting him to talk poker is easy, as far as strategy, playing hands, etc., but getting him to talk about his own success is next to impossible. He's suffered some of the worst beats I've seen in $10,000 buy-in events and was hardly fazed, only remarking that he's just grateful that poker still affords him the chance to get his money in so good against such bad players.
And on the other side of the fence we have this:
Unlike the solid, winning player above, it's almost impossible for this player to take a breath without mentioning this or that big tournament win of theirs. And they have had some big wins, as evidenced by the MTT profits. But they've bled it all back (plus some) in other formats, unable to stick to what works, playing in increasingly bigger games and increasingly losing more money. Any success they've had completely hamstrings them, as they feel entitled to more but can't back it up with results. When success doesn't come, it's always someone else's fault, a bad beat or suckout that crippled them late in a big tournament.
As much as I'd like to be the first player, I'm likely slightly more in the second player's camp, as much as it disappoints me to admit that. Well, minus the braggadocio. I need to get out of the trap on focusing only on what's taken from me at the tables instead of being grateful for all the donations, as only doom lies down that road. The only thing you should be entitled to is what you can earn from playing each and every street of each and every hand, to the best of your ability, at that moment in time. If you can outplay your opponents, you'll profit. If you can't, you won't. There's really not much more to it than that.
As mentioned yesterday, the LHE games at Cake can be surprisingly good at times, especially on weekend nights. There are some catastrophically bad players who, week after week, scrape together the money to buy into a 3/6 LHE game for $60 and proceed to call 3 bets cold with 35o, because, you know, if they get lucky they'll win a big pot, and then call any number of bets to the river on a flop of A A 3, because they caught a piece of it and someone might always be bluffing.
So it's not a struggle to find juicy tables, with a little game selection. But what I am struggling with, more than I'd have thought, is tilt control, when faced with the inevitable times in LHE when players like the above get hot and take you to the cleaners, over and over and over. That's an adjustment from NL that's a bit surprising for me, as I've gotten to the point where I'm relatively tilt-free in NL games. Yeah, the mouse may take some abuse when I finally get the resident table luckbox all-in with set over set (in a good way) and he spiked his one outer for quads on the river, but it takes a good bit to get my off my game when playing NL.
Not so much with LHE, at least at the moment, and it's dragging down my overall results. I've even found myself going off on people in chat, which I haven't done in years, and is terrible all the way around, especially when it's a live one that bleeds chips on a regular basis. I'm not sure why the lemur in the above hand catching a 2 on the turn and a 4 on the river for a straight to take down my AK is so much more galling and monkey-tilt inducing to me, but it is.
Which is all the more damaging in LHE, as it's too easy to get tilty and start donking off a big bet here, two more over there, calling down with A high hands too much against the wrong opponents, yada yada yada.
It's part of the bigger entitlement issue, too, and what you expect from the game, what your capabilities are, and how you carry yourself. I'm still toying with the idea of quitting the day job and relying on my various small streams of income to tide me over until I can build them up into larger streams of income, being able to dedicate myself to it full-time. Poker could be a key part of that if I can consistently pull out a decent chunk of money from the games, thus some of the rationale behind my putting more time in at the tables of late.
While 2008 has been solidly in the black, poker-wise, I haven't quite gotten over the hump where I feel like I'm consistently beating the game. I still have the occasional black hole downswong where I undo a week of steady, consistent work in the span of half a day of tilty play, triggered by the above. Much of it is simple monkey tilt but some of it is also petty frustration, as I've been playing this stupid damn game for a long time now, and still not where I want to be, despite a lot of time and effort and cogitation.
It's a bit of the chicken/egg conundrum, but the biggest thing I want to work on next year poker-wise is the emotional side of things, losing the pettiness and misguided sense of entitlement. One thing I've noticed on the live events I've been on with PokerRoom/bwin is that, without fail, the biggest, most consistent winners of the players on the trips are almost always the ones you'd never expect. There's actually a pretty clear relationship between the players who talk about beating the games the most (usually actually not at all, when you look at their stats) and those who never even bring up their results at all, unless you pry it out of them.
Those are the 2008 results for one of the quiet types mentioned above. Not too shabby at all, and he's got similar stats for his play on Full Tilt, as the graphic just shows Ongame results. You'd never guess it, though, if you met him, as he's as average as can be, still works part-time as he's involved in a strange niche industry and doesn't want to quit and leave his boss in a bind, as replacing him would be hard. Getting him to talk poker is easy, as far as strategy, playing hands, etc., but getting him to talk about his own success is next to impossible. He's suffered some of the worst beats I've seen in $10,000 buy-in events and was hardly fazed, only remarking that he's just grateful that poker still affords him the chance to get his money in so good against such bad players.
And on the other side of the fence we have this:
Unlike the solid, winning player above, it's almost impossible for this player to take a breath without mentioning this or that big tournament win of theirs. And they have had some big wins, as evidenced by the MTT profits. But they've bled it all back (plus some) in other formats, unable to stick to what works, playing in increasingly bigger games and increasingly losing more money. Any success they've had completely hamstrings them, as they feel entitled to more but can't back it up with results. When success doesn't come, it's always someone else's fault, a bad beat or suckout that crippled them late in a big tournament.
As much as I'd like to be the first player, I'm likely slightly more in the second player's camp, as much as it disappoints me to admit that. Well, minus the braggadocio. I need to get out of the trap on focusing only on what's taken from me at the tables instead of being grateful for all the donations, as only doom lies down that road. The only thing you should be entitled to is what you can earn from playing each and every street of each and every hand, to the best of your ability, at that moment in time. If you can outplay your opponents, you'll profit. If you can't, you won't. There's really not much more to it than that.
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
ZOMG Online Poker is Illegal I'm Going to Jail
Indeed, I'm still alive. And it's pretty much more of the same, staying busy of late with a fair amount of poker, Fallout 3, and buying another investment property (well, not until December 22nd, when we officially close).
Here's the beaut of a 504 sq. ft. house that I'm buying, which runs you all of $8,500 in my neck of the woods:
It's actually not quite as bad as it looks, as the basic structure is in good shape and the interior has already been gutted in preparation of remodeling. With an addition on the back it'll be a decent little 2-1, about 650 sq. ft which should cashflow $250/$300 each month as a rental. One bright side of our economy swirling down the drain is that while trying to flip a house is increasingly difficult, finding potentially profitable rentals gets easier every day, especially if you're willing to tackle properties like the one above that obviously need a lot of work before they're livable. Which isn't a path to quick riches (boo), but a nice way to pick up rentals that immediately cash flow and have some equity in them, if you can pick them up cheaply enough and are smart with the renovations.
As far as poker goes, somehow or other I've found myself going full-circle and playing lots of LHE the last few weeks. 3/6 is the biggest LHE game that regularly runs on Cake with multiple tables, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's just 3/6, so the upside is limited, but on the other hand it's like everyone just skips 1/2 and 2/4, so you get some crazy bad play at 3/6. Like Party Poker of ye olden times bad play, which even a lemur like myself can manage to profit from. Rakeback also piles up quickly when multi-tabling 4+ 6 max games, leading to a pretty damn juicy month in November at the tables. Traffic is also low enough at Cake that I actually won a decent sum of money in the November Cake rake race on RaketheRake, somthing impossible to do at FT or other high volume sites when competing against the insane grinders that play nine million hands a day.
Call me stupid, but I didn't think the 60 Minutes piece on UB/Absolute was all that bad, either from a reporting standpoint or as far as implications for the future of online poker. Yeah, sure, I kept yelling at the tv everytime they breezily mentioned online poker being illegal, but they got the basic facts right and could have cast things in a much more shady light than they did. At a certain point it's silly to claim that any of us involved with online poker are part of a misunderstood, socially uplifting activity. It isn't. We aren't. It's kind of shady and dodgy, as evidenced by the whole Kahnawakee regulatory situation and other similar things. It just is. That's the reality.
I also agree, of course, that it shouldn't be that way, and that a lot of the shadiness is a result of the US' ham-handed attempts to stamp out the unstampable, instead of embracing it, profiting from it, and making it legitimate. But that's just not where we are at the moment. Given where we are, lurking on the fringes, the 60 Minutes piece could have been so much worse. Because the UB/Absolute story was just about the worst thing that could have surfaced at just about the worst time, as far as online poker and legislation is involved. If this is the worst we suffer from that debacle, as far as inaccurate references to online poker being illegal and Dan Druff being kind of a dumbass when he should know better, well, I think we got off pretty light, all things considered.
Here's the beaut of a 504 sq. ft. house that I'm buying, which runs you all of $8,500 in my neck of the woods:
It's actually not quite as bad as it looks, as the basic structure is in good shape and the interior has already been gutted in preparation of remodeling. With an addition on the back it'll be a decent little 2-1, about 650 sq. ft which should cashflow $250/$300 each month as a rental. One bright side of our economy swirling down the drain is that while trying to flip a house is increasingly difficult, finding potentially profitable rentals gets easier every day, especially if you're willing to tackle properties like the one above that obviously need a lot of work before they're livable. Which isn't a path to quick riches (boo), but a nice way to pick up rentals that immediately cash flow and have some equity in them, if you can pick them up cheaply enough and are smart with the renovations.
As far as poker goes, somehow or other I've found myself going full-circle and playing lots of LHE the last few weeks. 3/6 is the biggest LHE game that regularly runs on Cake with multiple tables, which is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's just 3/6, so the upside is limited, but on the other hand it's like everyone just skips 1/2 and 2/4, so you get some crazy bad play at 3/6. Like Party Poker of ye olden times bad play, which even a lemur like myself can manage to profit from. Rakeback also piles up quickly when multi-tabling 4+ 6 max games, leading to a pretty damn juicy month in November at the tables. Traffic is also low enough at Cake that I actually won a decent sum of money in the November Cake rake race on RaketheRake, somthing impossible to do at FT or other high volume sites when competing against the insane grinders that play nine million hands a day.
Call me stupid, but I didn't think the 60 Minutes piece on UB/Absolute was all that bad, either from a reporting standpoint or as far as implications for the future of online poker. Yeah, sure, I kept yelling at the tv everytime they breezily mentioned online poker being illegal, but they got the basic facts right and could have cast things in a much more shady light than they did. At a certain point it's silly to claim that any of us involved with online poker are part of a misunderstood, socially uplifting activity. It isn't. We aren't. It's kind of shady and dodgy, as evidenced by the whole Kahnawakee regulatory situation and other similar things. It just is. That's the reality.
I also agree, of course, that it shouldn't be that way, and that a lot of the shadiness is a result of the US' ham-handed attempts to stamp out the unstampable, instead of embracing it, profiting from it, and making it legitimate. But that's just not where we are at the moment. Given where we are, lurking on the fringes, the 60 Minutes piece could have been so much worse. Because the UB/Absolute story was just about the worst thing that could have surfaced at just about the worst time, as far as online poker and legislation is involved. If this is the worst we suffer from that debacle, as far as inaccurate references to online poker being illegal and Dan Druff being kind of a dumbass when he should know better, well, I think we got off pretty light, all things considered.
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