I've got tons of coaching scheduled for this week, pretty much everyday I'm booked solid in the afternoons and I'm starting with 3 new students this week which is always fun.

I really enjoy coaching and have built up quite a social network of people across the globe with different non-poker talents and interests and it really makes problem solving easy as if I have a question about something I can usually find someone that has real world experience with the answer. My friend Kyle in KC knows this as he has a similar social network at the brick and mortar casino.

This is the first month since I started focusing on heads up NLHE where I'm happy about my results. I started focusing on heads up towards the end of January with sort of crappy results as I was still getting my feet wet a little, but in March I really played well and managed to put together some nice wins at 3/6 and 5/10nl hu. At 10/20nl I pretty much got wrecked, but the funny thing is over half of my 10/20 losses came when I had the HU master himself watching over my shoulder (that's krantz for those of you guys who don't know), so of course I can't feel too bad about that. Also with only 5k hands at HU 10/20nl it's such a small sample size that absolutely anything could happen in that time frame.

I'm still definitely doing some things wrong heads up but I'm feeling very confident in my game these days, especially at 2/4 - 5/10nl. I'm losing money in non-showdown pots which is somewhat disconcerting. I have a few hunches as to why that might be (mostly because I'm game selecting so hard that I'm only playing donks) and I think one of my biggest strengths is bet sizing and inducing action in big pots. Because of that I have to (choose to?) give up a lot in the smaller and medium pots....partially to set up the false sense that they can bully me but also partially because most of the idiots I play against can't fold anything for one or two streets. Either way against most of the people I play against, I feel like my edge comes from them making a critical mistake in a big pot where I am making much better decisions, and that's where my edge comes from.

I plan to work on my small/medium pot game until I feel like I can gain an edge there, especially when playing against better players. I feel I can hold my own and am +EV vs most of the MSNL HU regulars, however once I get a bit better feel for the small/medium pot game I will have an even bigger edge.

Here's my graph from 2/4 to 5/10 heads up results this month:



Unfortunately, here's my 10/20 and 10/25 heads up results this month:



The sick part is I actually range above expectation in terms of "all in ev" at 10/20 (gogo krantz sweating luckbox) but I got coolered a bunch of times and had to fold a lot in big pots (huge non-showdown loss at these stakes) so obviously that's a problem.

Put the graphs together and I ended up about +22k for the month from playing.

Overall a fairly small HU sample this month so I can't get toooo excited about my results as there's a lot of variance HU, but I feel like if I continue to improve and continue to be very selective about who I play against I think I can make some decent money at this form of poker.

Also in April, I'll start KRANTZ's heads up program so I'm very excited about that. If there's anyone that can get me over the hump it's him.

That's all for now...

Aaron

Was reading this thread on 2+2 about how a couple of well respected posters have suggested raising 100% of buttons in a HU NLHE match is profitable in a vacuum. I don't really have an opinion to give (I haven't looked at the math in detail, and honestly i'm not sure it's really applicable anyway) but perhaps someday I will. In any case, I think the best part of that thread was this picture:



It makes me chuckle everytime I see it, so I figured I'd let you guys enjoy too. It's so simple yet oh-so-true for those of us that spend a great deal of time on internet forums or listening to idiots argue at the poker table :-)

Aaron

Such a busy bee lately... every day it seems like I put on about 5 different hats for the different stuff I'm doing.

Like today for instance, I wake up and put my coaching hat on and do a couple sessions, then I get my poker pro hat (well, i guess more like a hoodie to be specific) and put that on. Not much later it's time for the programmer hat where me and my Uncle Jason have been working hard to get our high class fashion site e-commerce site up and going. I think it's really coming along nicely and we're looking to hit the marketing hard in the near future. More on that as we get nearer to our marketing push.

If any of you guys have any good or bad experiences with Google AdWords, please shoot me an email I'd be really interested to talk to you about it (I'm not good enough as an internet marketer to warrant a 'hat' yet ;-). Getting into the Pay-Per-Click game is somewhat intimidating. We've been reading up on it and some strategies to gain an edge in this space but being a n00b I'm sure it'll be somewhat of a trial by fire. There are definitely some psychological edges that can be gained in considering non-standard search criteria that we're going to explore, but beyond that it'll take quite a bit of experimentation as well as split-testing different strategies to weed out the under performing adwords and let the cream rise to the top. We'll see what happens.

Now that I'm taking a break for the night on the programming, I've put on my writers hat doing my blog and working on article #2 that will be submitted to the TwoPlusTwo.com Magazine. I'm going to do a 3 part series of articles loosely based on my first video series Mathematics of NL Hold'em on DeucesCracked.com to hopefully drive some interest and give people a taste of what my video series is about.

Guess that's about it for now... time to put on my proverbial poker player's hoodie on again and play some more heads up NLHE. The donks bit me hard earlier so I'm hungry for revenge.

Aaron

As usual I didn't blog as much as I planned on...

We (Missy, Father in law, and me... oh ya and the dog) drove back from Crossnore, NC to Kansas City yesterday all freaking day. ugh. it took us a bit over 14 hours to make it all the way back home. We had two cars, and 3 drivers so Missy bounced between both cars on the way back home. It was a looooong haul. It really sucks there's no reasonable way to fly. The closest reasonable option is flying into Charlotte and then driving 2.5 hours or something lame.

My mountain poker results ended up basically break even over 9000 hands where i destroyed 3/6nl, basically lost/broke even at 5/10 and 10/20. Standard run well at lower stakes and awful at higher stakes scenario. Obviously in 9000 hands anything can happen, but overall I'm pretty happy with how I played. For the most part I generally just quit people when I thought they were mostly competent at HU, even if I felt like I might have had a small edge. I think for now it's more important to me to just play complete droolers heads up at 5/10 and 10/20 and play the decent regs at lower stakes. I think I read once where CTS mentioned it took him a couple hundred thousand hands before he really felt immune to losing a buyin or two in HU matches (in terms of tilt control) so if it takes him that long then I probably need to be extra diligent in terms of game selection. I think in the last week or two I've been doing a good job of that.

Here are a couple pics of me doing a coaching session on the side of Missy's family's mountain house. You can see Grandfather mountain here and then the two pics of me on my laptop. Poker is much more enjoyable when you can breathe the mountain air and glance up at the mountain tops as opposed to being couped up in my house in KC 6 days a week lol...







I'm considering expanding +EV Poker.com to become a site offering rakeback. I need to sign up at a few more affiliate programs and get set up but I think with the number of hits I'm getting and a few other ideas I have to drive some more traffic, it could be a good addition. I'd like to do a site rewrite soon and make the look and feel a bit better as well as add a coaching section that details a bit more about me and how my coaching program works, as well as some articles on the software needed.

As for what's next with DeucesCracked, Krantz and I still need to finish up the last 3 episodes of pr1nnyraiding, our ssnl HU series. I also plan on making a 2 tabling 2/4nl 6max video for the Ghost series of stand alone sit down and play videos that many people are craving. I'll try to get that done this week but I have no idea when it'll be up on the site. Also JoeTall asked me to write an introductory math article to potentially be submitted to the 2+2 magazine, so I need to spend some time doing that. I'll probably base most of it off my first few epsiodes of my DC video series: Mathematics of NL Hold'em that came out in season 1.

After yesterday was nuked driving today I'm feeling pretty worthless as well since I've been watching tv and sleeping all day. That's the worst part about traveling (especially driving) that you almost need a vacation from the vacation - although I did work coaching/playing the whole time I was there lol...

alright time for dinner...

Aaron

So far my travels has been an exercise in extremes. On one hand, we've had a very low key trip, doing virtually nothing besides some mountain walking, eating, and just hanging out in the living room together. On the other hand, it's been a fucking crazy poker ride. The goal was to come to the mountains, get de-tilted, get some fresh air, and make a graph that steadily inclines like good ol' grandfather mountain. Instead what I've got is the valley of death.

Before I get to the poker though, I'll rewind back to last monday and tuesday, which were crazy days of all day playing and coaching. I coached like 5 hours on tuesday, as I've received an influx of students in the last 2 weeks and everyone wants to get started. I've even got 3 more students that I'll be starting with this week, so that will keep me plenty busy. Everyone wanted to get a session in before I left for my trip where I'd have unknown-internet status. Thankfully we got the high speed internet and wireless set up so that hasn't been a problem here in our mountain house.

So after all my coaching and playing on Mon/Tues, Wednesday I went for my weekly volunteering and then got home to run a ridiculous amount of errands (including submitting my taxes to the CPA, big relief there... now just waiting for the dreaded bill to see how much i owe... ugh), among other tasks such as packing up and loading the SUV for our ride out. Our first stop on our 16 hour drive from KC was going to be in memphis, tennessee where I had my final doctor's appointment at St Jude Children's Research Hospital.

It's been a little over 11 years since I was diagnosed with cancer (Hodgkin's Lymphoma to be exact) and since I was a teenager when it happened, I was treated with chemotherapy and radiation through the St Jude program. It's an amazing program (all treatment, travel, lodging, meals provided for kids/family through donations), and my doctor is literally the world's expert on the disease (her publications are basically the "industry standard" on hodgkin's disease). Her name is Dr. Melissa Hudson and she saved my life and hundreds of other kids with varying other forms of cancer.

It was a bittersweet final visit as I had been off treatment for over 10 years, but as part of the program I still had to go back each year for a health checkup. I'm mostly free of any sort of side effects from the treatment (slightly underactive thyroid gland is all) and there are no signs of cancer which is always a good thing. Definitely ran hot in terms of cancer treatment :-)



I'd encourage all of you to donate to this wonderful cause,
specially if you're making a bunch of money at poker.
Click the image or here to donate.

Once the final tests were done and I met with the doctor for the last time, it was time to hit the road again to head to Crossnore, NC where we'd spend a week. It took another 8 hours to drive and Missy did a good chunk of the driving so that helped. Since we got here we haven't done much except eat, sleep, play poker, and just enjoy the mountain air.

Here's Roscoe trying to help me get de-tilted.



Here's one view of the living room in our mountain house. Out the window on the right you can see Grandfather Mountain (during the daytime).



Here's another view of the living room. You can see Roscoe chillin' and my designated poker chair with the laptop fired up.



So after all the pokering I've done, it's been a pretty wild ride. I still can't seem to break through and run well at 10/20 like evarrrr... I'm down like 20k at 10/20nl hu. At least I'm doing OK at the other stakes which makes me about even on the month right now. Here's a graph of my results since I got to North Carolina. Where's the new internet boomswitch when i need it?

Honestly I never thought I'd see a dime of this money again... gogogogo pokerstars!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jason, thank you so much for your diligent help in this matter. Your work and dedication to helping recover my funds is extremely, extremely appreciated. I'll be posting about this both on the 2+2 forums and my blog to brag about how incredibly helpful you and PokerStars.com has been with this situation.

I'm hugely impressed with how you managed to quickly resolve this situation and retrieve the majority of my funds.

Because of this, I will certainly be putting in more time playing on PokerStars.com.

Thanks again,
Aaron
WiltOnTilt

-----Original Message-----
From: security@pokerstars.com [mailto:security@pokerstars.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 11, 2008 12:35 AM
To: WiltOnTilt
Subject: Your Account

Hello Aaron,

Just to confirm that we have now completed the review of
account 'alcapone126'. I am pleased to say that although we did not
recover the whole balance of the transfer we did recover a large portion
of this. I have transferred $2,323.45 back to your account from
account 'alcapone126' who is now barred.

I thank you for your support, your cooperation, assistance and patience
and hope that you will continue to enjoy playing at PokerStars.


Regards,

Jason
PokerStars Security Team

I pretty much cant get it to stop. It's been going for a couple days. I figured it had something to do with my recent sleep schedule which goes something like try to fall asleep around 6am, get up between 8-11am sometime, work on whatever it is i have to do, nap for a couple hours between 9-12pm or so, then start over again. It's getting really old but I can't seem to get out of this habit.

So I assumed that had something to do with my eye twitching... then I figured why not do a quick google search and see what comes up. I found this: Causes of Eye Twitching which lists the following potential causes:

* Stress
* Fatigue
* Lack of sleep
* Prolonged staring at a computer screen or television
* Nervous system disorders

So far I only qualify for the first four but the more heads up I play the more the nervous system disorders might start showing themselves lol...


We're going to north carolina to stay at Missy's family's shared house in the mountains in a few days. We have to swing through memphis for a doctor's appointment of mine on Thursday, then when that's done we'll head on through to NC. It's a tiny town called Crossnore. I posted some pics last year around this time about our trip. It will take us like 14-15 hours worth of driving in total... (from Kansas City to Crossnore, NC) it's such a po-dunk (sp?) town that there's really no airport anywhere close so driving tends to be the best way, especially considering we have to make a stop in memphis anyway. I'm looking forward greatly to the trip. A change of scenery will be nice and I'll have some mountains to stare at when I start to tilt from playing too much HU NLHE. I think the calm serenity of relaxing and staring at Grandfather Mountain.

I want to start blogging more and at the end of each session pulling out one hand where I got owned and one hand where I owned someone. I might start doing that this week sometime hopefully.

That's it for now
Aaron

Hard to believe it's been over a week since I've updated. Man I'm lazy at blogging.

Some interesting stuff has happened within the last week. KRANTZ came out to visit for a few days so we could work on our latest DeucesCracked.com series: pr1nnyraiding. We got about half the series done while he was out here and played a bunch of HU poker and did other random DC stuff too. It was a good time. I got to watch the HU master himself wreck some fools at 25/50nl HU and make a bunch of cash as well as degen it up a bit at nosebleed plo. I keep telling him he barely knows how to play plo but he doesnt care hahah ;-)

But beyond that some really interesting things developed. I actually got scammed out of some money doing a FTP to PS trade with a guy who was impersonating a trustworthy friend of mine. Because of the font on full tilt poker, there is no discernable difference between a capital i and a lowercase L. Because of that, and a twisted series of events, he was able to scam some money out of me.

You can read more about it here: my 2+2 post as well as a snippet here: on KRANTZ's blog.

It was a pretty fucked up deal... but live and learn. It looks like I'll be able to get at least some of the money back, but it's unclear how much at this point. Pokerstars and FTP have been real cool and helpful with the entire deal. I must admit I'm somewhat surprised. If PS can get most of my money back then I'll definitely give them some more action as I recently dropped my Supernova status there.

As most criminals are, the scammer was/is pretty dumb and didn't cover his tracks well at all. I found his name, phone number, picture, and based on that I can track down his address if I wanted. It's pretty amazing the level people will stoop to. He should have chosen a less internet-savvy victim.

Here's a snippet of our final AIM conversation:
--------------------------------------
[15:39] ME: seriously how do you sleep at night? taking advantage of people trying to scam them
[15:39] ME: i dont think i could do it
[15:39] ME: i think my conscience would eat me alive
[15:39] xotremeox: well i really am i good guy
[15:40] xotremeox: if you want
[15:40] xotremeox: i can grind the rest of the funds i have in there
[15:40] xotremeox: and send you back your doe

snip snip

15:50] scammer: im not a criminal
[15:50] scammer: you sent me the money like i said
[15:51] ME: there's no reasoning with you obviously, so i'm not going to try
[15:51] ME: i just hope that someday you see the error of your ways
[15:51] ME: i'm not sure if armenians believe in karma or not
[15:51] ME: i dont wish anything bad on you
[15:51] ME: honeslty i just pity you
[15:51] ME: 2500 to me is nothing
[15:52] ME: its more on principle
[15:52] scammer: look bro
[15:52] scammer: honestly
[15:52] scammer: im really a good guy man
[15:52] scammer: i wanted to double your 2500
[15:52] scammer: and send you your 2500 back
[15:52] scammer: but
[15:52] scammer: i was busy doing a couple stuff
[15:52] scammer: so i couldnt even play
[15:53] ME: how dumb do you think i am man ?

snip snip

[15:59] xotremeox: look bro
[15:59] xotremeox: i will strictly play 1 2 nl
[15:59] xotremeox: 6 man
[15:59] xotremeox: and grind it out for like 5 hrs a day
[15:59] xotremeox: 2 tables
[15:59] xotremeox: trust me i will make money bro
[15:59] ME: "trust me" lol
[15:59] ME: listen you might as well save your keystrokes
[16:00] ME: i'm going to get back whatever money i'm able to
[16:00] ME: if you feel like you want to make things right feel free to get a job at mcdonalds and save your monies and redeposit and transfer the rest back
[16:00] xotremeox: alright
--------------------------------------

It's just pretty amazing how awful, self serving, and flat out conniving people are. I'm trying hard to turn the other cheek, be the bigger person, etc but it's hard to do. It's pretty obvious though this guy's life must be shit in order to have to resort to things like this. So while I might be the "victim" here, I feel much worse for him as the long run implications of living a life like that are far worse than losing a few bucks. This guy is obviously the scum of the earth, so I can't get too mad about losing some cash considering how fortunate/blessed my life is.

Still fucking pisses me off though ;-)

Aaron