Blog

I got this blog deleted by an admin about 2 months ago for a few reasons, part of which was due to the fact that my interest in poker continues to wane, but mainly because of something that Ket told me that reminded me of how I used to be, and how I would still like to be. This all came to me when we were talking about poker and how it changes people, and I was thinking to myself that poker hasn't really changed me, but then Ket started talking about tjbentham and mig, who were 2 of the biggest, if not the 2 biggest winners from the liquidpoker community in 2008. He was telling me how, despite the fact that they win so much, they never post about it, they simply keep themselves to themselves and just play. That's how I used to be in life, and in older video games like Diablo2 and StarCraft and various other things in real life life that I was good or bad at, but never really bragged or whined about. I enjoyed people not knowing anything about me, I enjoyed my own time and space and learning about other people, but not letting anybody know anything about me. I think this started to change when I first caught online "fame", which is when I moved to the ToT clan in StarCraft in 2004 or so. Up until that point I was fairly unknown playing as iD.MidiaN, just doing my thing staying under the spotlight, enjoying the game and being really pretty good at it without anybody really knowing that much about me, those who did know about me knew that I was severely underrated by the community as a whole and that's what I liked. I enjoy being unknown and also enjoy being the underdog, however when I joined ToT people started messaging me all the time, there was random talk about me on TeamLiquid and gosugamers etc and I was beginning to gain "fame". For the first week I answered everyone who messaged me, every person who asked for a game, responded to most posts on forums, but I got frustrated by it all very quickly. My response was to start banning people from Op ToT) who continued to harrass me, not taking losses aswell as I used to, defending myself against people and on forums, where in the past I never did because it didn't bother me what people thought. I don't think I was ever really horrible in that respect, infact, I was probably one of the lesser arrogant and bad mannered top non Korean StarCraft gamer, but even so, it bothered me that I changed at all, and it still bothers me that for the last 4 years I've changed as a person just because of a little bit of attention I got from people over the "skill" I had in StarCraft. This in itself may sound arrogant, but in actual fact I don't think I was ever better than top 3 zerg outside of Korea and about top 10-15 overall outside of Korea and I think that's pretty realistic so I don't mean to sound arrogant, but there was definitely a lot more attention once I joined ToT and it definitely did effect the way I reacted to people.

Anyway this all leads back to the conversation I had with Ket and why I deleted my blog. My blog used to be almost exclusively poker brags and beats with a tidbit of real life happenings here and there, and I realised this is not how I want to be anyway, it's not how I used to be and I never even enjoyed talking too much about myself or bragging or whining etc, I never have. This is why I got my blog deleted, so that I could stay under the spotlight, play poker or whatever and just do my own thing like I used to, however I realise now, after all this time it's not that simple. The fact that I'm even here writing this blog shows me that I'm never going to be the way I used to be, I'm never going to be the same patient, quiet, utterly humble guy that I think I used to be. It cannot be that way when you become part of a community, when you make a lot of friends, when you have people who rely on you and so on and so forth, you simply cannot just keep yourself to yourself. You have to put yourself out there, and although I kinda miss that, I have plenty enough time and space to do that with where I am physically and emotionally in life right now, so I can keep a nice balance between my own space and time to do what I want by myself and not have to talk to people at all, and still be able to keep up to date with friends and the communities that I'm integrated into. By the way I'm not totally saying that mig or tjbentham are the way that I'm portraying how I used to be, I realilse that what I'm effectively saying is that I used to be a complete loner who didn't speak, good or ill of people, and who did't care for how people perceived me to be at all and I also realise I'm saying I wish I was more like that now, so I guess I appear quite a sad individual right now, but over the years as I have began to understand people, life and "who I am" more and more, I have become a lot more open to people and even have started enjoying it in doses.

Obviously that rant is not really the reason why I posted this blog, it was just a few thoughts in my mind that I didn't write out or explain them as clearly as they are in my mind, but I guess I just wanted to write about the importance of modesty, good manners, patience and various other virtues that I believe I have lost to some degree over the last 4 or 5 years. With all that said, the actual reason I posted this blog was because I finally got around to making the video that I've been talking about making for a few weeks, so alas, here it is...

It's really hard to talk effectively about ranges and stuff while playing since you don't have much time. For instance in the last hand of the video I basically just said his value raising range on the flop is 2 pair, set or combo draw, but there are probably few 2 pairs and few draw combo draws in his range since he probably doesn't call with A8s, A9s, 75s and a few other hands that make combo draws like many 8xs hands also I completed excluced pure bluffs in his range, and you can never completely exclude that. The fact of the matter is, on the flop there's very few hands in his range for value, cause it's essentially 98s 88 99 JcTc QcJc 7c6c 8c7c, I dunno how many bluffs there are in there so constructing a range when typing is 10x easier than in video. I just wanted to explain more thoroughly that I was never considering folding, was just trying to talk about his range and why c/r is worse than c/c and I think c/c is the best play because it's impossible for him to call me with worse unless he rivered a straight, but he'll vbet that himself anyway, and i get the chance to induce bluffs by c/c whereas I don't by betting.