I haven't really touched poker since black friday and I want to start trying to make some money again. Anyone know a good place for low stakes (1/2 or 2/3) in the San Diego area that I can start grinding again? I know there's the palomar but apparently its raked $5 per flop which seems like it would be pretty awful for 2/3. Any info appreciated!
Hey LP,
My pokerstory is nothing special.
The only format I've been succesfull in is 9man SnG's up to $11.
Cashgames are where I lost my money, by being to arrogant to start at 2NL and played 25NL-50NL.
Bought "the poker blueprint" but was to lazy to actually read it.
Then I lost my roll at FT and pretty much gave up on poker.
Till 2 months ago I logged in at stars and deposited $10. Played $10NL for a bit.
Was actually down to $3.70 but still ran it up to $30. Altough it was fun, I didn't have time to play.
Needed to travel alot by train, so printed "the poker blueprint" and did read it.
Alot of it made real sense to me. Started playing 2NL Zoom at 1 table and played/ran well.
Now I'm at $88 and only need 24 VPP for the first milestone bonus ($10).
Looking forward to see where I'm at on July 1st.
Sounds stupid, but it really feels good to be actually knowing what I'm doing most of the time/ sometimes.
At least I'm doing most/some things for a reason (not always the right thing for the right reason..)
Thinking about ranges, floptexture, why I bet, bet-fold etc.. The dynamic is great.
Goals:
- My plan is to play at least 50k more hands on 2NL before moving up.
- Thinking about the game and plays that might work.
- Play to enjoy learning real poker I guess.
Well I'm pretty low key usually so you might not realise I was gone or remember who I am, which is fine. I've been a part of this community since the very beginning and it has now been 6 years since I've played poker professionally. It sounds insane when I put it into words like that, that's the majority of my adult life! In the earlier years my life was really unbalanced and all about poker, which was fine for a time until it inevitably stopped being fine. Probably in the past couple of years I've felt that isn't the best way to live life, and especially in the last ~14 months made an effort to change it up. I don't wanna ramble on too much about that cause I don't want this to turn into some emoblog, so the main cliffnotes I guess are I put travel and exercise as higher priorities than poker, and tried to make constant effort to change and break old habits that involve spending a ton of time on the computer closed off from the world outside ones immediate bubble. I can't say I'm a completely different person or have completely fixed all the bad habits possible but at least have made a lot of progress and hope to continue (it's a pretty slow long process I think). I have a feeling a lot of you guys are like me - being from very similar backgrounds we are bound to be similar in a lot of ways and have had very similar experiences, so I'm guessing you'll understand what I'm saying.
The cliff notes are it was a great experience and a wild ride, I visited 8 countries, did some adventurous stuff and met some amazing people. Also I stopped being so out of shape which is very +life ev. Some people can just live homeless and travel forever or for an extremely long time but after all that I was craving some stability, to stay in the same place a while and build a good balanced life there with a good circle of people close to you, lots of things to do and lots of time and freedom to work on your goals (poker, exercise, reading, etc). So a couple of months ago I moved to central London which might have been the best thing I could've done, as it has everything. Life expenses here are insane but that's just more motivation to play better and work harder Now I'm 2 months into the swing of things. I'm motivated to work hard at poker, going to the best gym I've ever heard of (gyms like this don't exist in normal places), playing a ton of badminton (addicted, really fun sport), got a really fun circle of friends who are always up for doing stuff, in a city with loads of amazing and varied food/experiences and also there's a special girl involved (not gonna put pics u creepos, although byrnesam would likely approve).
Cliffs: Took some time off poker, but playing again now, life is good
Playing hu plo across more than 1 site, generally playing anyone that will join unless I already have action and trying to have quick stoplosses against good regs. Things went my way
Decided to invest the time that winning buys you into learning 6max plo (something I've played very little of lifetime, I was always a hu specialist since July 2010 when I decided to quit nlhe and focus 100% on learning plo) and played mainly on stars. Things did not go my way.
Well this is probably the least phased I've been after such a trainwreck of a month and I guess having life balance is to thank for that. Ofcourse there are feelings of extreme stress and frustration immediately after repeated losing sessions but that's something we all have to deal with, just part of the territory. Luckily for me it goes away the next day. I know I'm pretty terrible right now compared to how good some players are and how good I believe I can be, but in this moment I really like that humbling feeling of making mistakes, failing, losing and being human. It gives you a goal to aim to. I really like the idea of continual self improvement and doing a little every day to become better. Ofcourse it's impossible to keep that up literally every single day, sometimes you just need a break, but if you're moving forward in general I think it feels better than if you're not. Guess I'll just hope June goes better^^
By the way while I'm happy to and want to share this stuff with the LP community, I feel kind of uncomfortable about the fact that anyone from outside is able to google and find this sort of info about me and so I'd like to ask mods not to "feature" any blog I make on the lp front page, and probably will ask to have this deleted in a few months/years. I do wanna share it with you guys though and enjoy when a lot of you share what you're up to as well. Quick shoutout to a couple LPers I've met and/or begun talking to a lot this year - David (locoo20) is an epic gentleman and talented player in poker and life. Thanks for showing me around in Lima mate! And Quentin (mipwnya) likewise is the man.
Access to FTP through Carbon Poker?by exalted, June 01
I have NOT tried this yet, but those with balances on FTP; please try and report!
This was posted on a TL thread:
On June 01 2012 02:17 liberal wrote:
Sorry if this is not thread worthy, but I know there's a lot of poker players on TL and I thought they would want to hear this since those of us at full tilt lost our money. had our money frozen in accounts we couldn't access.
Today LockPoker switched out of the Merge Gaming network and into Cake. My old account on Lock/Merge was apparently deleted. I loaded up Carbon poker to see if I could log in to my Lock account under that skin.
I entered my old email address, which incidentally is the same address I used when I created my old full tilt account. I entered the password, and it logged me right into my full tilt account. I checked cashier, and the funds from my old full tilt account were in it.
So I didnt write about Day 4 since that was sight-seeing day. Wh00sel mapped out a sick route through the suburbs of vegas to give an idea of what actually living outside of the strip in a normal area might be like. Once again I have to give major thanks for this, because it was quite refreshing after hanging out on the strip for too long. So is Vegas lifestyle for me? I think it might be. Holy fucking shit did it get hot out there, and it hasnt even reached its peak yet. But I came across plenty of nice neighborhoods with normal looking shopping districts and so forth so that as a human being you can escape the energy of Vegas and feel like a normal person living in a normal city. It was nice.
Day 5 concluded with me playing a mix of PLO and NLHE from 1/3 to 2/5. There were terrible waiting lists for everything so I kinda hopped around out of boredom since I had already checked out of my room and was basically stranded at the casino until my midnight flight home. I watched Galfond's PLO starter thats floating around on this forum somewhere and basically just hoped not to make any huge mistakes. Everyone was sitting with at least $1000, and most had $2k-$3k at a 2/5 game. It was clear they were the Aria "PLO regs" and they all seemed to know each other. Regardless I didnt see anything that really intimidated me much as there was lots of unnecessary flipping going on. At least it seemed unnecessary to me. Someone limps utg, it gets re-potted twice, and then the original limper 5bet pots like 468T single suited. I mean I dont know much about PLO but this cant be good. Players basically stacking off for 100+ BB's with KK73r on any flop etc. So I just kinda sat back and felt I could pretty easily just wait for a good flop, the few times I could actually see one, and get paid off. My high point was about $1200 before the table broke up and we started playing 5 handed. Between the stations and maniacs I felt what little edge I had nut-peddling was being diminished in repeated attempts to see a flop so I left.
It's funny how easy and natural NLHE feels after playing PLO for awhile. It's like suddenly my eyes are opened to a whole bunch of spots to play hands, and spots to GTFO. I guess PLO just forces you to think most deeply about hands and NLHE seems so shallow in comparison to it. This all turned out for the best as I finished that session +600 too, all in one day.
Anyway it felt really good to just hang out at the Aria/City Center all day, and once again had me yearning to just live there forever. The cash games are excellent, tons of players, good limits for small/midstakes grinders, decent comp system (got my room reduced to the "poker rate" and some free meals), and is just a blast to hang out in. I still dont understand how such a place was even conceived, let alone built. There is just so much attention to detail in every area of this place. How in the world it is profitable to build such a sprawling complex is beyond me.
Since I basically freerolled my entire trip on poker profit, I'm planning my next trip out immediately.
P.S. Mipwnya: Aria does not rake pots at PLO. Instead they just charge $6 every 30 minutes to play. And if the action drops to 6 players they drop the fee to $3.
Dont really have full graphs since using two different laptops one without hem so ill post from sharkscope.
Two straight lossing mtt sng's is pretty bad and the worst run I ever had in a year and a half as a pro.
Nice luck shipped two 1 or 2$ huge fields 4k+, two 1k caps 2$ and 5$. Chopped a 5$ 2rebuy 1 addon three way as chip leader for 3.5k. On that same night I also got counterfietted on the river in one of the bigs with a 7k+ field after I 3 bet bluffed and spiked two pair ending up in 7th for 700$ instead of first for 11k =[. 400%+ roi 20$ a game
Still not even a great hourly 40 tabling these the last two months need to step it up in hours played and effort.
Hey I'm on my way to vegas at the moment and will be there all of june. Anyone wanna meet up there for some drinks/parties/chillin whatever.
Reply here and maybe we can get something going...gogogo
Just finished up my last session for the month and so I'm done for may. My goals were 35k hands and €1k profit. I played about 34k hands and made about €810. I'm kinda disappointed because tbh these swedish fish are insanely bad and I should be able to win even more against them. Still I just have to keep grinding and I know it will turn for the better. Graph and stats:
http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/528/13969798.jpg
(it's SEK, not $)
EV line is kinda fucked up for boss network but still I feel like I've been running pretty poorly. I could have a bigger winrate and I can put in a lot more hands. I shouldn't whine. If I want to be successfull i just have to put in more hands and then the luck thing will solve itself. Tomorrow I have my last exam for this semester in school, so after that I'll be ready for some grinding. Just gotta hit an awesome hot streak, build a bigger roll, have some patience, smoke some weed, climb stakes, fuck bitches and then get money and then everything will be awesome.
Things to accomplish/do in June:
- Get ripped.
- Play 40k hands.
- Make a profit of €1,5k (15,000 sek).
- Have an awesome summer.
- Not watch porn/masturbate.
- Go to Greece for 10 days.
As you may have noted on the last one, I joined up the no-masturbation thingie, though I have a girlfriend so it might not be that hard, even though sometimes I get the fap urge but then I just try to do something else. It's good cuz you save time and stuff.
To close off, some awesome soul music by Tower of Power. Big band funk and soul a la Earth wind & fire/isley brothers. This cut is from their 1973 album (called Tower of Power) and imho it's easily their best song. Enjoy and cu around:
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Now I'm 2 months into the swing of things. I'm motivated to work hard at poker, going to the best gym I've ever heard of (gyms like this don't exist in normal places), playing a ton of badminton (addicted, really fun sport), got a really fun circle of friends who are always up for doing stuff, in a city with loads of amazing and varied food/experiences and also there's a special girl involved
