+EV Poker: December 2006

Thursday, December 28, 2006

sandeep Strikes Again!

I just got another email from sandeep, it's the exact same letter he sent below. (check it out first if you haven't read it).

I decided that I needed to write him back, so here's what I sent. Throughout my years I've become adept in speaking broken english.

---------------
Hi sandeep

H r u 2 d

This is Aaron from my hizzle

This is an query regarding immediate job opportunity u got for position of the Web sphere portal Developer.

The following r details of my query.

I have been Websphere Portal developers 4 5+ years.

I have a Number of Resources # 3 and am able 2 commence ASAP (1st Jan2007) 4 this projeckt

I r contain Good communication skills are a must.

My needs r 4 100k 4 dollars 4 payment 4 work. r that is OK ?

Please advice. Kind regards,

Aaron
---------------

i r teh funny,
Aaron

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Uncle sandeep wants YOU!

I get emails similar to this every day. What gets into these clowns and what makes them think I'm going to take a job from a recruiter who on one line writes of good communication skills and on the other writes this garbage...

Below is a copy/paste from a recent email from sandeep. sandeep sends me at least one email per week with some similar garbage as this... enjoy.

If you'd like to send sandeep a hello or "H r u" back, you can email him here: Neeraja_Rao@satyam.com

I think it's about time to start fucking with sandeep the next time I get one of these emails... any ideas welcome.

Aaron.

Hi

H r u

This is sandeep from Satyam computer

This is an immediate job opportunity u got for the position of Web sphere portal Developer

The following r the details of the position.

TITLE OF THE POSITION Websphere Portal developers
Exact Location (City\State) SFO- California
Duration of assignment ( Months ) 12 months Full Time
Number of Resources # 3
Start Date ASAP (1st Jan2007)
Position Title, e.g. System Admin, PM, PL etc. Portal Developer
US Visa / Citizenship requirement H1B / GC / US Citizen
Experience 5+ Yrs
Annual Salary if on full time : 80-85K

Primary or Mandatory Skills

Expert level knowledge and experience in J2EE application design and development
Experience in portal application development on IBM Websphere Portal Server (WPS)
Experience in J2EE application development on Websphere Application Server (WAS)
Experience in using the Rational Toolset, preferably Rational Application Developer
Expertise in creating and interpreting UML based design models
Expertise in working with Rational XDE/Rose for modeling
Knowledge of Use Cases and their relationship to Design Models
Ability to interpret and understand design documents
Knowledge of Architecture and Design patterns and their use in designing applications
Ability to design, code, test, debug and document complex J2EE web applications
Experience in creating and using build scripts with good understanding of associated tools and techniques
Good understanding of all aspects of software quality including design/coding standards, code reviews, unit testing and profiling
Good documentation skills and command over the English language
Good communication skills are a must.
Experience with a profiling tool for J2EE applications
Knowledge of third party frameworks like iBatis, Hibernate, Spring etc.
Experience using Clearcase for configuration management.
Ability to lead a team of developers

The programmer should perform tasks allocated in the iDesk Re-engineering project.
The major tasks are the following (but not limited to):

Secondary or Optional Skills Software development (Presentation and Business )
Unit and Integration Testing
Participation in code reviews
Profiling of code

We are looking forward for your updated resume

PS: Satyam don't process green card and don't do C2C

Regards
Sandeep p
Satyam computer services
HR Department

'Tis the season

Another Christmas season has come and gone. Here are some highlights from this year:

-Our first Christmas in the new house for Missy and myself. We're about 95% unpacked and settled.

-Had her family over to watch the Chiefs game. Missy loaded us up with some good gametime snacks including a double batch of Mom's sausage dip...which we're still trying to finish off... lol

-Ate tons of good food, exchanged gifts, and celebrated Christmas with her family.

Lowlights:

-Didn't get to see my family at all :-(

-Still can't seem to win at poker this month.

So that pretty much sums up Christmas this year. I'm mostly looking forward to January for a new year and a new beginning. Should be lots of fun stuff going on such as:

Heading down to Mobile, Alabama on January 4th to see my family and watch dad's team play in the GMAC Bowl. Go Southern Miss!

Check out the game on Sunday, Jan 7th on ESPN or ESPN2. Look for me in the stands!

"Going Pro" -- at least for a little while. The my results as of late haven't exactly been stellar, but I feel if I have to I can always drop down to 2/4 or 3/6 for a while. I was checking out my lifetime 5/10nl stats and winrate this weekend. It's not that great but I only have 77k hands so far at 5/10 and I've run horribly for at least half of those hands. I've still made decent money overall but I could definitely improve.

I took a failed shot at 25/50nl on Christmas Eve. There was a huge fish there, so a buddy of mine offered to take 1/2 my action. Unfortunately I made a questionable turn semibluff CRAI with the nut flush and got called by trips no kicker and I couldn't suck out. The fish later busted by getting AI PF w/ KJs vs QQ and the queens held up "one time".

I figure I'll play poker for at least the month of January and re-evaluate after that. If it's too much stress or if I'm not satisfied with the money I'm making then I'll go find another programming contract and just work for the man. Basically if I'm not consistantly making double what I would being a programmer, than I'll go back to the work and poker gameplan. Ideally I want to make 25k per month playing full time, which would be $300k per year. The assumption is that I'll have more time to focus on poker and get more hands in to attain that goal. We'll see. Thankfully my job situation (doing independent consulting) makes it real easy to go from "poker pro" to "working stiff." A lot of people don't have that freedom, so for that I'm thankful. No one in my line of work would bat an eye at a 6 month "hole" in the resume.

Going to buy myself a new laptop for portable ballin' ;-)

If anyone has any suggestions on good laptops, I'm all ears. My basic criteria is this: Needs a good enough video card for high resolution (minimum 1600x1200) and something that can play video games well. I like the 'glossy' looking screens, the bigger the better. Fast processor and at least 2 gb ram. Please send me an email or something if you have any good suggestions.

I'll post a year end review coming up soon.

Aaron

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Down to Business... Serious Business

Serious business indeed, Georgey.

I am officially back on the Internets from our new house. It took a few days and a few bumps in the road to get myself back onto interweb but I'm back for good now. Thankfully my Ali-like return to online poker went fairly well despite one crappy setup hand early in the session. I played less than a thousand hands and made a couple buyins. I'm happy to report that I'm back in the green for the month and I'm going to make a mad dash to the finish line and try to earn a few bucks before year's end.

Christmas is upon us and of course I haven't bought anything for anyone. My folks are tough to shop for and I know what I want to get for my sister but the Nintendo Wiis are nowhere to be found. If anyone has found a hot deal on them, let me know.

If you're clueless about the online poker world, then chances are you haven't heard of the Brandi Hawbaker drama on 2+2. At the time of this blog entry, the Brandi thread has nearly 4200 replies and 117,000+ views.

The rumors George is hearing are likely from the Brandi thread, which will undoubtedly go down in online poker history as one of the wildest rollercoaster rides ever composed on a poker message board. It has everything you could ask for in a thread. Reading it will invoke laugher, compassion, anger, and there are even some naked pictures of the crazy bitch herself.

I won't go into too much detail about the contents of the thread because any attempt would be futile at best, but here's the 50,000 ft view. Basically this female, Brandi Hawbaker burts onto the poker scene and cashes in a couple tournaments. Since she's a female poker player, isn't ugly, and has a flirty personality, she naturally gets loads of attention from the poker world (composed mostly of old fat guys and internet nerds...so it's not tough to imagine why she's the latest sensation). The story of the thread starts off as her claiming she's been victimized in a few different ways and throughout the winding stories and the super sluething done by 2+2's finest, the "truth" (or some version of it) comes to light and a myriad of insults, wild claims, photoshopped pictures, naked Brandi, and everything in between gets thrown into this trainwreck of a thread.

If you've got hours to burn it really is a sight to see. And if you aren't familiar with this thread, you'll surely be out of the loop (and who doesn't want to stay 'in the know' in online poker circles?).

For those of you that don't have hours to burn, here's a much shorter version of the Brandi thread where someone managed to compile all the highlights into one place.

Here's the second installment of a condensed version of the latest updates to the thread.

Pretty funny stuff.

Later,
Aaron

Monday, December 18, 2006

Chip Movin, Home Movin

Such a wild weekend. So Friday night after I got home from work I decided to take a nap because I wanted to be fully rested for my final session before the big move to our new house (since I wouldn't be able to put any more hands in until Wednesday when we get TV, Internet, and phone set up).

Staying true to form with for this month, it was another terrible session. I'm sure it's hard for some of you to understand how a "winning player" can go for "this long" without profiting, but I guess it comes back to a phrase that I've read a few times by long time players on 2+2 that goes something like this:

"At some point you'll run worse than you ever thought was possible."

-- it's true. This could very easily be the first losing month I've ever had as a poker player.

On Friday I fell asleep around 5:30pm for my nap and Missy called which woke me up around 10:30pm. I still had a lot of packing up to do before the movers got there at 9:30am Saturday but I knew I had to get a long session in. I fired up some FTP and PS 5/10nl tables and the games were looking good, so I decided to hop on 8 tables to try to maximize my hands per hour. I played and played and never could get anything going. As the hours passed... 1am, 2am, 4am... at some point throughout that I was down 7k. What the heck? Twice I lost with over-fulls where I was deep with a donkey so that was about 3k of it. I can't even remember where the rest of it came from. Even if I did I'm not going to paste the hand histories. I might have 3-barrel bluffed off one stack, or maybe two. I'm told when these maneuvers fail it's good for the image and I'll easily recoup from getting paid off... well that didn't happen. heh.

So before I know it, my alarm is ringing in my ear at 6am and I'm still 7-9 tabling 5/10nl. Around 6:30am Missy calls to make sure I'm awake. When she hears the all-too-familiar "beep beep click click" in the background, she asks if I've been to bed yet. When I tell her "Nope" she knows better than to ask what the damage is hahaha... Smart cookie.

So I decide to give myself 1 more hour to try to make some sort of recovery before I have to finish packing up my shit. Nothing really changes within that hour. My eyes are getting blurry and I'm not concentrating very well, although I'm not spewing or anything. If anything I'm in more of a weak/tight mode. Finally 7:30am roll around, I've lost a couple more big pots to suckouts, and it's time to suck it up and quit.

Final tally: 10 hours, ~6,200 hands, VPIP: 21.5, PFR: 17, -$4,500

For the month I'm at around -$3,000.

So I see this as a test of my resolve. The poker gods can't break me. I don't care how badly I've ran. If I have to drop down limits, fine. I can/have still made some nice coin by playing 3/6nl. I'm still planning on staying at 5/10nl for a bit though. Despite the results of these last couple weeks, I'm confident that I'm one of the better players at these stakes and I'm not going to let all the set under sets or full house under full house or flush draws cracking my sets get to me. I refuse to let the variance break me. I won't be able to get back at them until Wednesday when we get the DSL set up (writing this at work now)... but after that I'm going to be churning out the hands and printing some money...then I'll be "Shippin' It Crucial".

Saturday we got lucky with some awesome weather to move into our new house. Our house is totally balla, if I do say so myself :-). I'm going to put up some pics after we get settled. It took me and the 3 movers I hired about 6 hours total to get all our stuff (from 3 different locations) to our new house. We spent all weekend unpacking and we still have more to go. Missy's parents were a huge help doing all sorts of different tasks.

fo sho,

Aaron

Friday, December 15, 2006

They finally caught me

Look at these clowns admiring me as I hang upside down. F them. Enjoy your picture little girl.

Blah blah Aaron is still running bad this month. Blah blah bad beat city, I'm the mayor, blah blah you don't care.

Basically break even so far during the month. I've had extra long sessions with jkrantz (and 2+2'er jalexand has sweat me playing) this month just to make sure I don't tilt or otherwise play poorly. Despite any of those hopes, I still can't seem to put a solid session together. Pretty crappy.

Here's a screen shot of my PT stats just from last night's session:

Here's the related graph to the PT numbers above:

Not much else to say on this front except that my original goal of 30k this month is teh LOL. I'll be lucky to hit 5 figures. Heh. Can't stress enough to my non-online-poker readers how awful that is for playing 5/10nl. I honestly feel like I'm playing the best poker of my life this month but it doesn't matter.

So here's the plan for the next couple days... Missy and I officially closed on our house so we're going to move everything in on Saturday and Sunday. I won't have internet set up until Wednesday night... so after a long session tonight, no online poker or AIM, etc until then (contributing a bit more to my awful month). It'll be nice to get moved in though. After we get settled I'm going to cram as many hands in as I can and try to turn this month into something respectable. After that, it wont be much longer til January when I'll be playing full time (for at least a month).

My pledge for the rest of the month:
-No more IM'ing bad beats to my buddies (unless they ask)
-Continue playing my A game as much as possible
-Get as many hands in as I can after we get settled in the house

Run well,
Aaron

Monday, December 11, 2006

Ghostface Killahs

So after a littany of beats and ridiculous hands (I'm not running very well lately, if you can't tell) I decided to check out a link that a buddy of mine sent me a couple nights back. Something about a poker song someone created. Assuming it was some sort of joke, I decided to check it out.

Two things surprised me: 1) it wasn't a joke, it's a song by a real rap group, and 2) it was actually funny.

Take a listen for yourself:

If your browser doesn't show an embedded audio player, just click here

Apparently it's composed by a real rap group called Ghostface Killah's. I think by hosting it on my site I might be breaking a law or something, but I'm giving them some free advertisement so buy their album. Or something.

I had never heard of them before and I honestly can't believe the song is for real. It's pretty funny in and of itself, but knowing it's a real rap song by a real rap group (as opposed to some net nerds) is the icing on the cake. The thought of some hard gangstas somewhere rollin' on dubs while bumpin these dope beats at the same time I'm double clicking my miz-ouse while listening warms my heart. It's like I'm part of the crew.

Play on Playa

Anyway, if it wasn't for being 2 outed in a $2700 pot and 3 outed in a $1700 pot and 3 outed to a split in a $3000 pot, I think I might have had a monster session... (did I just post bad beats again? man I'm really breaking policy bad this month). Just as a quick side note, I'm only up $4000 now this month after 12,000 hands of 5/10. puke.

I've got to be up in like 4 hours. Someone remind me that I'm a programmer first and poker player second.

hasta,
Aaron

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

Grills, Ballin', WHAT IT DO

Maybe someday I'll be balla enough to get a grill like Nelly... Maybe not.

I've never understood the draw of a "grill" (other than my george forman or weber) but some people can pull them off. I'm not trying to sound racist here, but I sincerely hope that "grills" don't catch on in the white community. I don't think there's anything wrong with them per say, I just think most of us whiteys are not nearly cool enough to pull it off without looking completely ridiculous. I have a similar feeling regarding the "fist-bump". In my opinion, the only time a white person should be allowed to fist bump is if they're a professional athlete. That's it. And while we're on the topic, if you're white and use the phrase "how I roll" PLEASE STOP. I might be able to make an exception for fist-bumping if you're mark mcguire and just broke the home run record, maybe, but most of us aren't even in the same ballpark...so to speak.

Sorry to offend any of my caucasian brothers for that border-line racist rant, but similar to how african americans call each other the 'N' word, I feel I owe it to my pastey white crew to let them know when they are being out of line. If you're fist-bumping and regularly expressing how you roll, stop immediately.

Here's a graph of my current month. I think the graphing tool I use is confused because it's showing the last stretch of last month at the beginning of this month. Probably from some hands I played after midnight. Whatever. Anyway I think the real graph of this month not included in my Nov recap starts around hand 1600.

So assuming the graph really starts at hand 1600 or whatever, I'm ahead of pace for my monetary goal. I'm still way behind my # of hands goal but I'm sure the next session I play where I'm running badly, the number of hands will drastically increase as I try to recoup.

Gotta jet. Heading over to our new house to meet with the inspectors. We're closing 1 week from today (woot!) assuming the inspection is fine. I've learned a lot in this whole process of buying a home. I'm sure I'll have more to say on that later, especially with how ridiculous compound interest is. Grrrr...

Saturday, December 02, 2006

November Recap

Finished out November with a winning session, although it was a paltry +$1700 victory after a week long stint of setups and beats. I just noticed from my highest to lowest point, I had a $16k downswing. Fun stuff.

The final tally for the month was +$11,648.10 in the green. Decent in real life terms but shit in poker terms considering the stakes I'm playing. I'm not very satisfied at all with my month, especially when you consider that $5k of that was the retard who challenged me to 10/20nl HU. I think it would be higher EV for me to play lower stakes, like 2/4 and 3/6 with less variance and stress but at this point I'm more worried about increasing my skills than my bottom line. I wonder at what stakes that will change?

As you can see by the graph, I was in the mid-20's again this month at one point but my post thanksgiving doomswitching took care of that right quick.

Here's my final graph for the month of November: (click to enlarge)

Goals for December:
1) 40,000 hands at 5/10. Maybe some other hands at lower stakes if the need strikes.
2) Play some sessions 7-8 tabling focusing on good TAG play. Play some other sessions with 3 tables maximum and focus on hand reading, my image, and opponent's images.
3) Win $30,000
4) Move Missy and I into our new house (we close on the 14th of December!)
5) Finish out my current programming contract and get ready for January, my self allotted 1 month of being a poker "pro".