thewh00sel!

nm taken care of

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sorry I forgot to cross-post. There are some links and pictures and stuff in one of them so I'm just going to post the links to each one instead of re-linking each photo. I know I'm lazy. Here you go:

http://www.variancediary.com/home/the-effects-of-thinking
http://www.variancediary.com/home/game-one-excessive-heat-warning

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I started a blog/website here: www.variancediary.com

Not sure how often I'll blog, given my history of...not blogging, but I'll cross-post to here when I do. Been getting into writing a bit, despite very little time to do so. In any event, BLOG:

It’s been a long morning, and I’m tired from playing with my youngest daughter all day. The house is a mess, and I’m not really sure how all of the pots from the kitchen ended up in the living room. But here we are. I haven’t thought about poker all day, in fact I haven’t thought about much of anything. The decision between a wooden spoon and a plastic spatula as my drumstick of choice is the toughest one I’ve made all day. I know, not exactly the fantasy life of a high stakes poker player you had in mind.

It’s half past noon and I’m just about finished with the modest meal I’ve prepared for the family. My wife and oldest child arrive home from school, and I’ve been awake since 630, and am teetering on the edge of taking the day off and spending it at home with the family. After the meal I check the phone to see what games are running today. “If there’s nothing above 5/10 running I’m staying home,” I tell the family, secretly hoping that will be the case. To my surprise I see an unfamiliar site on the Bravo app, two 25/50’s running. “Must be a whale in town, I gotta go.” I say to my wife as I kiss everyone and head out the door.

Still tired, but filled with hope, I put the old Honda into gear and back out of the driveway. In twenty minutes I’ll have to be ready to duel with an assortment of characters; some familiar and others not yet known. There’s something about that drive to the casino that always gives me some energy. The Vegas strip quickly comes into view and my heart beats louder with the anticipation of the fight to come. “Welcome to the Bellagio,” says the Valet ready to take my keys and park my car for me. “Thanks” I say as I give him a couple dollars for the trouble.

Walking in, my pace becomes quicker and more electric. I might as well be running at this point as I approach the high limit podium of the poker room. “One seat left” the floor man tells me. Perfect. I head to the cage and place two flags on the counter, a minute later I’m in my seat with $10k in front of me. I survey the table, and to my disappointment the game looks pretty tough. Normally, when a 25/50 breaks out it’s for a reason, and today is no different, I am just a bit late to the party.

The game I sat in is a must-move game, which feeds the main game to keep it full. Normally the must-move game is juicier than the main game because the fish have a hard time making it through to the main game without busting. Not only that, but fish don’t usually play as long as the regulars do. When a whale comes to town, however, things change. The main game is usually 7-8 regs and the whale, and a must-move is filled with other regs waiting to get their shot at the whale who might drop 50k in one sitting. These must-move games are usually low on action as it feels like a waiting game to see who gets up from the main game. I decide that I’ll give the must-move a chance, because you never know who’s tilted and ready to dust it off.

The first hand I play is on the button. A good player opens the pot to 150 and a player in mid position flats, I’m dealt two sixes so I come along as well. Both of my opponents have me covered. The flop comes down 9d 6d 5s. Beautiful, a draw heavy board versus two aggressive opponents who I have some history of playing big pots with small hands against. The opener checks and the flatter bets 350. I raise it up to 1100 as I would with some flush draws and other inferior hands, he quickly calls. The turn is the Ace of clubs. He checks to me and I bet 1600 into the pot of 2,725. He thinks for a bit before sliding in the call. I am trying to imagine the hands he’s calling me down with. The Ace high flush draw (now top pair), 89, 88, 77, TT and JJ are all in his wheel-house. Even the nuts are a good possibility as this player is capable of check-raising all in on the river with his entire range. The river is an off-suit 3 and he checks. I’ve put $2,850 into this $5,900 pot, which leaves me with about 7k on the river. Should have sized my turn bet bigger so I could shove. Oh well. I could still shove, but I decide that even if the chances are low, I’ve seen this player check raise all in with very little fold equity as a bluff, so I had to give him even the tiniest bit of rope. I bet 3800, leaving myself with 3200 behind, probably the size I’d go for if I were bluffing too. He thinks for a few minutes before tossing in the call, followed by his cards quickly into the muck. Good start, I think to myself, as I proceed to cooler another player with AA vs QQ for $15k, and just never lose any significant pot.

An hour into my session, the whale quits before I get a chance to play with him. I look down at my chips and realize I’m up $25,000. Not a bad hourly, and I feel a yawn coming on...I rack up my chips and head to the window. Who needs whales anyways? Shark meat will do in a pinch.

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Spent $64k on MTT buy-ins and buying pieces of people this summer
Sold $28k worth of action in MTTs

Cashed twice for a total of $22,867
Returned $13,428 of total cashes to backers

NET: -$26,561

Pretty shitty results for this WSOP, but one close call in my second to last event (got 21st in the little one drop for 20k) saved me from a really bad summer. I have to say I had a lot of fun playing the series this year despite a lack of results. I think I played 23 events which is probably the most I've ever played. This was completely opposite of my goal of playing LESS events and focusing on cash for the summer. Oh well, I guess I have the MTT itch again, didn't think that would ever come back. I plan on playing more tourneys this year than in years past; some highlights on the schedule are: Borgata WPT $3,500 in September, maybe the $5k 10mill gtd in florida, and hopefully PCA or Aussie millions (I've never been to either).

Haven't blogged in a while, but WSOP kind of kills all other endeavors. Looking forward to normalizing my schedule again now that poker season has ended. I put in 180 hours in June and already 90 hours in July. That will likely return to my average of about 140 hours per month in short order.

Expenses have been quite high as of late, and I expect it to remain that way if I do decide to travel for some poker tournaments and continue to pay down debt. I'm still teetering on the edge of a 10/20NL bankroll thanks to an awful May (-35k) and a breakeven summer (-5k or so net) so I have to be careful in paying off loans. Having a roll for 10/20 is much more important than paying something down that I can't get the cash back for if I downswing (student loans). One big upswing and I can pay everything off in 6 months versus rebuilding at 5/10 and still having minimum payments to worry about. I plan on charting out everything, but I estimate that if everything continues steadily (does it ever?) I'll be rid of student loan debt (~50k) and vehicle debt (~10k) in about 2.5 years and have only a mortgage (~240k) to deal with. Seems insurmountable looking the numbers in the face, but it wasn't long ago that vehicle debt was 20k and student loans were 60k. Progress!

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Feb Goal Progress Pay off auto loans of ~16k 8% complete

25% complete: 12k left @ 4.3%

Put a dent in student loans of ~60k 0.8% paid off

6.6% complete: 56k left @6.8%

Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures. 0% complete

Invested about 15k into various index funds and 2k into part ownership of two bitcoin miners
~50% complete

Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one) n/a

1800 hours of cash games 7.78% complete

21% complete: 387 hours. Slacking here and definitely off pace.

Added Goal 65% Saving rate for the year Average Savings Rate: 77%

Average savings rate: 80%

So I'm exceeding most goals due to running well for the first part of the year. Should have put that as one of my goals as well, heh.

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Title says it all. Since the turn of the new year, I've played 10/20 almost exclusively. So far it's paid off. I ran quite hot at the beginning of the year, and got into some very good spots against big whales. This boost in bankroll provided a boost in confidence that translated well to my poker game. Not confidence like bluff every hand like a hero, but allowing myself to play my "A" game sitting deepstacked against all opponents.




My average hours played has suffered a bit, but that's due in part to us pulling our daughter out of school and me spending more time with her and the baby at home. She was picking up some bad habits, and it just wasn't worth the cost because I had to stay home with the baby either way, so driving her up to school and coming back home is a waste of time and money. And I still take her to the park and other events for socialization and learning so I'm happy with the exchange.

In other exciting news, my wife will be taking next year off of work to stay home with the girls. She'll be doing the preschooling for our oldest. We are also going to make a big decision with regard to schooling of our oldest after this year. I am heavily leaning toward "unschooling." If you haven't heard of it, it's the act of raising your kids without public education, and simply teaching them whatever they want to learn about at any time. It's a legal form of homeschooling in the United States, and has shown some promising results in kids that are going through it or have gone through it. (wiki link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling)

PEACE

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January was a very productive month. As far as hours go I managed to put in 140 hours over 20 sessions for an average session length of 7 hours. A bit under my 2013 average of 150 hours per month, but given the new baby and taking a couple extra days off here and there I'm satisfied with the work I put in.

As far as the net worth update goes, I'll put it this way:
Liabilities (debt) were reduced by 0.36%, while assets under management (bankroll/liquid cash + invested funds) increased in value by 30.05%.

Our expenses were high this month as we purchased some new furniture and paid our estimated taxes, but because of the high income, we still managed a savings rate of 77%.

I'm estimating that February's hours played will be much lower than January as my wife is returning to the work force, and I'll pretty much be a stay at home dad Mon-Wed for the forseeable future. I'll be working on an efficient schedule to get in as many hours as possible, but for now I think it'll pretty much be a clusterfuck with nothing really set in stone so I won't try to predict what my schedule will look like.

Goal Progress
Pay off auto loans of ~16k
8% complete

Put a dent in student loans of ~60k
0.8% paid off

Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures.
0% complete

Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one)
n/a

1800 hours of cash games
7.78% complete

Added Goal
65% Saving rate for the year

Average Savings Rate: 77%

Ski Trip!

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Welcome 2014!

Something odd happened in 2013; odd for a poker player anyways...It was eerily consistent with 2012. I made approximately the same amount of money, and played about the same amount of hours.

2012 Hours played: 1734
2013 Hours played: 1808

2012 Income from cash games: 137.5k
2013 Income from cash games: 153.5k

2012 tourney results: 33 played, -33k
2013 tourney results: 43 played, -64k (although in reality only about 40k of this is money I spent, the rest was selling action, still an annoying loss of roughly 30% of my income on MTTs)

I am now playing 10/20NL about half of the time, and hopefully will be playing it full time by the WSOP. Had a couple REALLY sick sessions last week that I may or may not blog about, but basically it was just me running well and other people going insane. Matched up well for me. Ended up being two sessions of 10/20, one 7.5 hours long and one 5 hours long; total profit: 41k. Yep, 2,050 big blinds in 12.5 hours of poker. Sick life.

I'm not sure how much time I'll have to play poker now with the new baby here and her mom going back to work in a week or two so I've been thinking about other avenues of income that I can do from home while still watching two kids. Online poker seems possible but not likely since it requires me paying too much attention. Things I've been considering:

-Day trading. Been dabbling a little bit in day-trading bitcoin with mixed success. Mostly just been buying on Margin and when it goes up selling and using the profits to buy real BTC, but don't completely know what I'm doing yet. I'd like to get into real day trading in the markets as I have a friend who does it and says there are some spots where retail traders can have an edge over institutions since they have certain restrictions and things they can't dabble in. So I'm going to get into that a bit I think.

-Sports betting. Been dabbling in this already by getting picks from people and what not. I was thinking about doing my own handicapping, but I think it's far easier to find people who give out free picks and just basically grind free info from local sharks who bet for a living since I live in Vegas. For instance, I knew someone who had a huge 200k bet on the 49ers to beat carolina so I tagged along a unit on that bet and it came through. Have a futures bet on the patriots to win the superbowl at 8 to 1 and I bet it again when it was 10 to 1, so I got a sweat there when they play the broncos this week.

Those two things seem like something I can do while watching young kids at home and potentially develop an edge. Beats grinding forums all day long.

2014 goals:

Pay off auto loans of ~16k

Put a dent in student loans of ~60k

Invest ~25-30k outside of any day-trading or sports betting ventures.

Play a few less tournaments during the WSOP (and win one)

1800 hours of cash games

Save up enough of a down payment to consider buying a rental property in Vegas in 2015 if the opportunity arises

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I forgot to blog about this but:

At 17:53 on 12/24/2013, 7lbs 4oz, 19" long, welcome to the world Avery Noelle Parmann

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Been sweating this number a very long time but finally hit it. Lifetime profit graph HOLLA



And yes, end Oct 2009 through Dec 2012 was fun (not)

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