Definitely worth a read, but the gist is that the dad couldn't afford to pay off a $190 poker debt 15 years ago, so instead he offered up his two year old daughter when she matured. Guess what, she's now 17 and the guy is coming to collect, and the authorities are allowing him.
Amazing...
I know my last entry was geared towards trying to see the other person's perspective, but this is a little ridiculous...
In poker as in life, it's very important to be able to see things through another person's eyes. Dissecting how they think, what their motivations are, and what makes them tick - no matter how right or wrong they are, what's important is being able to figure people out so that you can anticipate how they will react, and therefore you can be one step ahead.
You always hear the whole "looking into your soul" thing regarding poker, and something I've been reminded about lately is how important that can be in the real world. There are so many parallels that can be drawn between poker and life, and the one subject I'm writing about today isn't that new or earth shattering...but I think it's an important reminder.
So often conflicts arise and resolving these conflicts between people is often hard because emotional investments. Part of effectively handling disputs is using your poker skills to see the situation from the other side, similar to how chess students turn the board 180 degrees to see what their opponent sees, when analyzing a series of moves. Everyone knows it helps to see things from the other point of view, but the tough part is actually processing what you see and acting appropriately on it.
A great example of this is an interview of Barry Greenstein. He "gets it" and of course it's not too surprising he does. This interview is his take on the unlawful internet gambling and enforcement act:
If you can't see the embedded youtube vide, click here
Barry's assessment of the situation is excellent and spot on...and it shows what I'm talking about regarding seeing the situation through the other people's eyes.
So what's my point in posting all this stuff? Well basically what it all boils down to is that I've had some occurances in my life lately that have reminded me how important it is to think about other people. Many of us play poker very seriously, which involves a lot of introspection, self criticism, and self reflection. When you combine those qualities with the materialistic nature of poker, it's easy to lose sight of the important things in life.
Certainly I don't mean to pick on anyone in particular, but if you look at all the "balla" talk and "pwn"ing and "stupid donks" (I'm as guilty as anyone in using these terms), it can be hard to remember that there's nothing wrong with people playing poker to gamble, and the donks are people too and deserve respect. Again I'm being hypocritical because I'll be the first to complain, "that stupid fucking donkey just sucked out again", but I really think getting away from this attitude would be much more healthy.
Even away from poker though, it's important to keep things in perspective. Many of us often have thousands, or tens of thousands of dollars in play at any given time yet somehow have to balance that by keeping a real world view of what that money is worth. It's a balancing act and a mind game you have to play with yourself. Being willing to shove $1000 stack in the middle when you have a 51% edge, knowing that 49% of the time you're going to lose, yet simultaneously "keeping it real" when you're out shopping for a major purchase. Those on the fringe of the online poker world, who can see it both ways, are really in a funny spot. Take my fiancee for example, she watches me play 8 tables with a grand+ on each, hearing about -15k downswings and +40k months, yet in the next breath she listens to me complain about how outrageous it is to spend $2.99 for a gallon of milk. It seems so backwards, but at the same time it makes perfect sense. It's all about smart money management.
Some people though, both in and out of the poker world, are so wrapped up in the materialistic and self fulfilling aspects of life that they lose sight of the truly important things. I'm reminded of the saying "the best things in life are free" and it's really true... albeit, it's often much harder to realize this when you're just scraping by to make rent each month. But the point still remains, don't fall into the materialistic, self indulgent trap. Have respect for the people around you, whether or not they're 5 ptbb/100 winners or they're just another donkey lining your pockets. Have respect for the people who have raised you and the people that love you. They're the ones who were there in the beginning and will be there in the end. Don't be so quick to dismiss someone's opinion just because you have disagreed with them in the past. They might see things in a different light. And again, as mentioned earlier, try to play the other person's hand through their eyes. You might learn something about them, or you might learn something about yourself.
Well as the image to the left indicates this month is quite different from last. It's already the beginning of the 3rd week of february and I'm at a not-so-solid -5,000 or so. From my original downswing that dipped to about -15k, I made it back to even after about a week of marathon sessions. On the day following my triumphant return to the land of profitability, I went on a -14k run in a ridiculously small number of hands (something like less than 2k hands or so?). How is such a run possible? Good question I asked myself the same, so I went to poker tracker for help.
3 times I bluffed off my stack, one of those times was real bad, one was marginal, and one was perfectly fine the clown made a ridiculous call.
3 times I lost with sets, twice were to gutshots, once i think was a big draw (flush+straight draw or something).
I lost a 3-4 buyins playing some 3/6nl HU
There were a bunch of other setups and beats (top boat losing to quads, etc) but I won't list them all, the real surprising thing was through the 4 hours I played that day, I only won exactly ONE pot where I profited more than $500 (all those hands above were losses of 1k or more)... so after noticing that fact, it wasn't hard to see how a -14k day would materialize.
But despite that, I've made a little recovery to where I currently stand at -5k for the month. I think if I can turn this month into a +10,000 month by February 28th, it will be a nice accomplishment. Unfortunately not all months can be like January. I will say that I think having and recovering from two -14-15k downswings in one month is something to be proud of, however, I'd be up a nice amount if even one of those downswings didn't occur.
Ok onto more interesting and fun stuff. Valentine's day. Missy and I enjoyed a nice meal of some fancy chicken and rice dish she made, along with a bottle of wine given to us as a housewarming gift by her parents' neighbors. The meal and wine were both excellent. She also got me the best Valentine's day gift ever, this shirt:
Pretty awesome huh? I got her some red roses and that was that, another Valentine's day in the books.
Also another thing, listen to how awesome my future wife is... If I can qualify for the Main Event at the WSOP this year, she agreed that we can postpone our honeymoon (which previously was scheduled during the start of the Main Event) until a couple weeks after, so I can hopefully do what I've wanted to do for the past 3 years and experience the WSOP for myself. Also since our wedding is slated for June 30th, she agreed that I could spend a few weeks before the wedding out in Vegas to play some of the smaller events and the cash games. Pretty cool huh? I don't know many wives/fiancees who would be so cool. Here is a PDF with the WSOP 07 schedule
I'm not playing for the thrill of fucking victory here. I owe rent, alimony, child support. I play for money. My kids eat. I got stones enough not to chase cards, action...or fucking pipe dreams of winning the World Series on ESPN. ----------
Ok so the truth is I do have pipe dreams of winning the World Series on ESPN, but the point still remains, the bulk of the reason I play is for money. (Astute readers will notice that the movie scene to the left isn't the same one this quote comes from, but it was the best I could do)
As Worm would say, "I've had a few reversals" this month. Last month was the life of luxury, playing infrequently and banging down the bucks. This month has had a quite a different turn. I hit the worst downswing ever (doesn't it seem like each subsequent downswing is the worst ever?) right after coming off my biggest winning month. From talking to others, I've noticed this happens a lot -- Huge monetary accomplishments followed by a sharp downward turn. I'm not sure if it's a feeling of invincibilty or just the cards "evening out" (or some combo, undoubtedly) but it seems to be a common theme.
So as it was, my deepest deficit for the month was -$15k, and that was sometime on Monday. Since Monday I've played over 20,000 hands and cut the deficit to -$3.5k. Certainly this isn't turning into a good month so far but I've got plenty of time to make it up. You might notice that 20,000 hands in just 3 days is ridiculous. It is...I'm at 26,000 hands total for the month at the conclusion of the first week of Feb, I've played more than two thirds of the total number of hands I last month.
There are some positives in this mess though. The good news is that I've proven to myself that I can truly grind out the hands if I need to. I've got the work ethic to do it. I played 6-8 tables for literally 14 hours one day with just minimal breaks. It can be done. With continued determination and hopefully a mere average run of cards, I should be able to get this ship back on course.
So I just thought I'd throw an update to let everyone know that the life of a "poker pro" isn't all fun and games. It's a lot of sitting in front of the computer (of course so was my last job as a programmer) but the amount of focus and concentration required for playing so many tables for so many hours dwarfs any effort I ever put into writing Java code.
^^^ The only funny superbowl commerical this year, in my opinion :-(
Well I'd like to report that my steady incline has continued but unfortunately I hit my first downswing in a while tonight. I had been cruising along so far this month up around $5700 or so before Sunday began, however a night filled with a littany of beats, coolers, and horribly failed bluffs nipped that in the bud dropping my current month to only about +$800 after around 7300 hands. Boooo.
I expected a downswing to come soon but it still sucks that it had to happen already. I'm a bit behind on my pace for 60k hands this month but I plan on making it up this week with marathon sessions during the day and night.
I thought I might throw a hand or two up here where I played pretty well. This one is from a HU match in the MSNL HU Tourney. It's a $500 entry fee heads up tournament I entered that's being held in the mid stakes nl forum on 2+2. We schedule and play the matches on our own and report back with who wins. Each round is 2 weeks long, so I'm not yet sure who I play in the second round. Games are 5/10 blinds, 3000 chips freezeout style. Round 1, I faced a guy who coincidentily lives about 15 miles from me. He was playing fairly tight and somewhat straight forward. I had been playing aggressive pre and post flop when this hand came up:
Seat 1: Villain (2415 in chips) Seat 2: WiltOnTilt (3585 in chips) Villain : posts small blind 5 WiltOnTilt: posts big blind 10
Dealt to WiltOnTilt [2 K]
Villain: raises 25 to 35 WiltOnTilt: raises 65 to 100 Villain: calls 65
I pick up a very modest hand in K2o in the big blind. He had been raising quite a few hands on the button, and K high could easily be good here. Of course it's not a hand that plays very well after the flop, so even though it might be ahead, taking a raise or fold approach is far superior than trying to play postflop poker oop, so I decide to repop him to 100 after he makes a standard open. He calls, which I don't like much but I'll just have to outplay him after the flop.
Flop (200) 4 4 2
Good flop for me. It's hard to make a pair HU and I did. I likely have the best hand but just taking it down on the flop would be a fine result for me as playing the turn and river can be difficult. I make a standard continuation bet of $150 into a $200 pot. He calls. When he calls I figure his range of hands is still quite large. He can be calling with a small/medium pocket pair, A high, or some sort of monster, which would include JJ+ or a 4. His call is certainly a concern, but seeing how he reacts on the turn should give me a better indication of where I am. Also it should be mentioned that he can't expect this flop to have hit me very much being the reraiser preflop. Because of that he can float me (call flop to bluff turn) easily without expecting me to have much most of the time.
Turn (500) 8
Decent card for me, but since he called I'll check to keep the pot small and see if i can get to showdown.
When I check here he bets 250 into a 500 pot, a decent bet. My read is that he's betting here with mostly his monsters or his air. I think this player is more likely to check the turn for pot control with most of his hands that have showdown value but aren't monsters: small/medium pocket pairs, an 8, and A high too. If he called on the flop with A high, it's because he thinks it's good at some of the time, and if it's good checking behind the turn to get to showdown would be a standard way to play it. If he bets the turn with one of these non-monster showdown value hands and I do have something, there's a good chance i'm calling and he's beat and he'll be forced to either give up or bet the river again to get me off the marginal parts of my range. So once he bet, I figured it's mostly a "nuts or nothing" spot where he either has a 4 (it's hard to flop trips) or a big pair he slowplayed pre and on the flop (unlikely as he was playing straight forward so far). Because of this I think my hand is probably good more than 1 in 3 times, which is what i'd need to call a half pot bet (obv not exactly true since I'll improve sometimes but you get the picture).
River (1000) A
WiltOnTilt: checks Villain: bets 650
Sort of a scary card if he did decide to turn an A into a bluff on the turn, but 3-5 is the only draw that made it and the heart draw he could have been semibluffing on the turn also missed. He bets about 2/3 of the pot, a fairly sizable bet. Now he's never going to value bet any of his medium or big pairs here because with the ace showing, it "should" look like a scare card to me, and therefore he wouldnt bet the river with something like 99 here because he can't expect me to call with a worse hand. Some good, aggressive opponents would make a value bet here with something like 99 in a hyper aggro HU match, but this guy was playing more tight and straight forward, so if he had something with showdown value, he would gladly check to show it down. Which means now his bet is one of 3 things: an Ace, a 4, or total air.
Because of my reasoning on the turn, it's less likely he has an A here, so now again we're back down to a 4 or air. There's a lot more air out there than there are 4's, so i'm leaning towards a call. The next thing I looked at is our chip stacks. Remember this is a tournament not a cash game, so there are some extra considerations to be made. If I fold right now the chips stacks will be about dead even around 2900 (me) to 3100 (him). if I call here and I lose, i'd have about 2300 to his 3700, so a deficit, but certainly I'm not down and out. If I call here and I win, now I've really got him on the ropes as I'd be ahead about 4700 to 1300 in chips.
Independent of chip stacks, a call here does another thing. Whether he's got me beat or not, it sends him a message that I'm going to get to showdowns with very weak hands, which HAS to stick out in his mind. He's going to have to reduce his perceived fold equity from here on out, and a correct call in a spot like this with bottom pair can really rattle a guy. If he calls and wins he's going to look at it as "wow this donkey is never folding, i can't bluff him ever" and he should adjust to start value betting me with lesser holdings. In that case I can re-adjust to start checking stronger hands to him and letting him value bet me weak because "Wilt won't even fold bottom pair on 3 streets". So you can see some of the "out of the box" reasons why a call here can be good.
So that's what I did.
WiltOnTilt: calls 650 *** SHOW DOWN *** Villain: shows [T Q] (a pair of Fours) WiltOnTilt: shows [2 K] (two pair, Fours and Deuces) WiltOnTilt collected 2300 from pot Villain said, "sick call" *** SUMMARY *** Total pot 2300 | Rake 0 Board [4s 4h 2c 8h Ac] Seat 1: Villain (button) (small blind) showed [Ts Qd] and lost with a pair of Fours Seat 2: WiltOnTilt (big blind) showed [2d Kc] and won (2300) with two pair, Fours and Deuces
Ship it!
Hopefully my thought process here made sense. I'm going to start cramming in the hands this week and I hope to be able to report big earnings in the near future ;-)
January was my first month as a "poker pro" and it went off without a hitch. Despite being out of town a good chunk and running poorly early in the month, I managed to make a comeback and run about as hot as I ever have in my life.
I felt like I was playing ok (maybe even a bit weak/tight) but I was running extremely well. Draws were hitting, people were paying me off, and my hands were actually holding up for once. Basically I felt like I had been running like crap from the end of November through the beginning weeks of January, so I was pleased that it finally turned around. I hope I can keep this up as we've reached another point of online poker uncertainty. But before I get to that, here's the graph from Stars/FTP this month:
Besides playing PokerStars and Full Tilt, I spend a good chunk of time on two smaller sites that do not write hand histories to the hard drive and therefore cannot be tracked with PokerTracker. Since the hands can't get into PokerTracker, they aren't reflected in the above graph, so here's how it went. I estimate that I played roughly 10,000 hands on these two sites in January. In Mansion (now shut down to the US), I finished -$3,000 and the other site (no I'm not going to say which one, sorry) I killed it for +$26,197. So counting the above graph's +$17,419 and the other two sites net of +$23,197 my total for the month was +$40,616 in about 35,000 hands, which constitutes my best month ever.
I took two days off at the end of January to try and regain some strength and prepare to put in a shit ton of hands this February. As everyday passes the profitability of online poker deminishes. Right now it's very difficult to get fresh money into poker sites, therefore the ability to beat the other regular winning players becomes more important than ever before. I think online poker will survive, but we're going to be in a lull until some big e-wallets step up and decide they want to cash in on the millions of dollars in the business of transferring funds from US banks to gambling sites. The easier the better, so more casual players can come take their shot. When will it happen? Who knows... could be months, or more. I can't imagine setting up a new Neteller clone would be very easy.
Speaking of Neteller, fuck them. I had over $31,000 stuck in there because they were stopping all transactions with US customers. Rumors are swirling about the hows, whos and whys, but from what I understand the Dept of Justice is trying to do some investigations on them with regards to money laundering. Basically from what I understand the DOJ claims that neteller's whole business is money laundering... who knows WTF is going on... all I know is that I needed to get my money out of there.
I called up the Neteller VIP support to see what my options were. The rep said that if I transfer funds to a Canadian or European, they could withdraw the money to their bank account and send me a check... um ok, well i don't know anyone that well and that's a long process. He said if I transferred funds from my neteller to a euro's neteller, then the euro deposited to a gambling site, then the euro's account would be locked. So basically neteller doesn't want to be the pass through (which, by putting two and two together, tells me this is what the DOJ is pissed about).
Long story short, I got it worked out and I got my money safely in Pokerstars. Others are not so lucky. I still know of several people who have tens of thousands (and sometimes more) stuck in Neteller. They told us last week it would be 6-8 weeks to process check withdraws and all EFT withdraws are suspended...When I talked to Neteller yesterday, they said they had NO TIMELINE for processing cashout checks. Basically that's what prompted me to make a move and try to get my cash out of there, and with the help of a well respected 2+2'er I was able to do just that.
On another note, I got my first "official" student that I'll be coaching. His name is Matt and he plays 3/6 on Full Tilt. We had our first session on Wednesday and it was fun to sweat him while he played. While Matt isn't a novice to NL Hold'em, I feel I can provide him a good amount of advice and support to get him to the next level. I can't wait to see where it goes. To those of you who currently play 3/6nl on FTP, there will soon be a new sherrif in town!
So at the beginning of the month I said January will be my one month shot as a "poker pro". I decided that I'll give it another shot in February and we'll see where it goes. I don't have any delusions of repeating the month I had (in fact I'm probably due for a downswing and the good old "brag on my blog curse") but I'm going to try to play my ass off and get as many hands in as possible.
So here are my goals for February, short and simple:
-Play 60,000 hands wherever the games are best... 2/4 through 5/10. -Play my A game as much as possible. -Help Matt improve his game as much as possible.
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