= +2.4k month. Didn't feel like playing at all after quitting SNE, so I didn't put in any hours, and when I did I ran as bad as its possible to run within 1k sngs. Keep in mind the field is 100 times softer than before (black friday), and I broke even pretty much. wtf. Won @ live tho woot!
I'm pumped for SCOOP tho, I'm doing a kind of stake that is very common in Brazil, where ppl buy pieces, and get 60% of the profit. So I sell all action (or most) and keep 40% (if dont profit return all $ scores to stakers). So if anyone is interested, this is the SCOOP schedule, should be about $13.5k in SCOOP buy ins and some regular mtts for $20k total, so selling 100 pieces of $200:
I am "decent" TAG. I put it in speech marks because mainly my game is solid with thing to work on. I won't discuss tilt here because i work on my psyche alot and i am very very good motivated, self-confident and i have good approach to this part of the game.
After 88,000 hands that i played last 4 months (now i play 6-7 hours a day so this is going to be much much more) i am breaking even. I will not concentrate on making excuces or justify why is how it is.
Hello You :-) First few words about me, then how i want this blog to look like.
My name is Paul, i am 24 years old. I'm Polish and i live with my wife and son. I started living from poker earnings half year ago. I am reg at 25NL and looking to go back at NL50. My main goal is to erase all main leaks such as cbeting not enought, spots to double barrel, make my 3bet game better etc. I will write more in topic about game.
Now i do this because i now that a lot of people here is generous and willing to help younger players to get better, because they remember the times when they struggled.
I will start by describing my game using HEM stats as well as some leakbuster filters that i see helpfull. I will also post everyday hand histories with ALL SORT OF questions about any thing i find difficult to me.
Ok so i already thank you for the time spent reading this and i encourage you to give your knowledge and feedback.
Fortune favours the bold...by HeroPoker-CEO, May 04
THE BEST OF THE BEST
I get asked, a lot, why did I leave my regional director's position at Stars. Even with all the craziness that has been the last two weeks, Stars is still the best poker company out there hands down. If there was any doubt, just look at the fact that Stars is doing the US cash outs and they even brought up the issue of the FPPs with the DOJ. Truth be told, I was concerned for the company when 'it' all happened, but once they were able to secure their dot com name again, I knew they had made it through.
BECOMING GOOD
Before I was at Stars I was with PricewaterhouseCoopers as a senior consultant and also with a Korean gov't agency as senior analyst. I have always been on the strategy side of things and while I moonlighted as a fashion brand license negotiator, my own enjoyment of working on competitive strategy is just euphoric for me. But the problem with all 'strategy guys' is that they are never held accountable to execute the strategy. Sure, they know who they need and what roles, but could they themselves really do what they state 'needs to happen'. While, there is a divide between strategy and operations at a middle manager or analyst level, at the executive board level, there isn't. You must be a proven operator and strategist or else you won't have the real chops to compete with the big boys, cause while the pimple faced stock analysts think they know what are the key success factors, they ain't no way they could ever lead or direct a company into a market leader.
What my point is, when I got into Stars, I was an exceptionally hard worker, but besides strategy, my hands were relatively soft for operations. But when I was an immigrant kid, I worked regularly in my father's variety store, and I freaking hated it. I hated the mindlessness of it all, the fake smiles when the customer tells you off because your candy bars are five cents more expensive than the store 3 blocks away or when the stock comes in during the busiest time and you're watching out for shoplifters on top of that. And trying to study or do anything productive is just impossible as you keep reading the same 2 times 10 times over cause of random nature of the transactions. I hated it, but I did it cause my family needed me to work there because my older brother refused, my younger brother wasn't the multi-tasking type and my parents knew I took whatever I did very seriously, cause I wanted to make things better always. I felt, 'hell, if I'm gonna be here, then I'm gonna do it right.' From how to pack the bags quicker, to prepping coffee filters or making friends with the caught shoplifters and getting them to monitor the store while I gave them free cigarettes, I ensured that my parents chained me to that damn variety store for all my high school existence. But it was never my forte, I would be exhausted from trying to apply everything I thought should be right, I was born a strategy guy who just wants to see thing work out.
HAVE TO GIVE RESPECT
So when I was at Stars, I didn't start entirely as a strategy guy, I started with my main profession as a business negotiator. Now I won't get much into it, but of course, understanding strategy plays a major in negotiating because if you really want to score a big partnership, it's not a joint venture made through bargaining, but creating a competitive value between the two companies that can give them an edge that they couldn't have otherwise. That seems straightforward enough, but usually its not the case as usually its more like, 'you have this that I want, and I can give you this that you may want and if it makes sense as a fair exchange, then lets do it.' Now in Asia, you go in with just trying to make a fair exchange or try to pull a fast one, you're in for a rude awakening, cause this ain't the 1970's anymore and the people you want to do business with Asia aren't hurting for anyone's business, especially in gaming. But after closing out some tough contracts and making some hard executive decisions that worked out for the company, I got my shot at being regional director. It was gracious of them to give me that chance, was I the most qualified for it? Yes, but with or without me or the success of the Asia market, Stars is still Stars, made on the hard work and fortitude of those who founded it.
IT'S ALWAY BEEN ABOUT BEING A BOUTIQUE
It's one thing working for a market leader and its an entirely different thing in starting and growing a company into a market leader. And unfortunately my experience with poker is a bit strange. I was introduced to poker by Elky as we lived together and most of the players I know are either pros or online grinding machines. Also, when working in Asia and introducing poker to players for the first time, I was always dealing with convincing baccarat players that while there are two cards, it wasn't about luck but skill or new players who wanted to learn in a classroom like setting. But for me, the average poker player was a Pro, online 18 table grinder or a newly converted high stakes baccarat player who loves to shove all-in in any position preflop if he liked the cards. But when I officially joined Stars in 2007, I can remember the obsession of Elky when Super Nova was announced the year or so before and he decided he was going to go for it and be the first one and he just killed it. By 2010, Super Nova had evolved to into additional tiers and now there was a class called 'Super Nova Elite'. At first this was such a small handful of players and for good reason, it's a hardcore commitment of focus and time. But soon this group of SNE became a significant part of Stars and are a really valued member of Stars and I probably have had a disproportionate amount of exposure to them.
Thing is, whether it was the card room in Macau, the tournaments across Asia or these SNE, I think my player interaction at Stars was always to see every player as high value. I mean you have a satellite qualifier coming to Seoul or Macau for the first time and they may have never had a passport even previous to the trip, its a big deal to show them a good time and provide that experience that will last a life time. In that respect, I think at the higher echelon of players, Stars really does act as a boutique site. I never really thought about as much as I do now as Stars has started the payouts to the US players and show what kind of company they really are. Simply the best out there, regardless how you may think they can improve, relative to the market, I think it's a fact.
SNE FOR ALL
In many respects, what I decided when I took on this role was to do the exact opposite, but I'm finding myself doing the same thing except for me, every player on my site is a high valued player, regardless if they play micro stakes or grind 1/2. I put myself out there so that I can know as many players that sign up and I will continue to do so because it really is the only thing I can directly control. You have no idea how much more critical I am than the players who point out all the short comings of the client and service. But just like Merge agreed to take on Hero, Hero agreed to represent Merge because we both see the potential of each other. In Merge's team I see a more socially nerdy version of what was at Stars. When SC2 just came out, and I was visiting their offices, the CTO organized a lan event for me after work as they were interested in playing an average Korean SC2 player, and even though I rocked their world and crushed their hope to live (sick brag!), it was uber comfortable to know them on that level. What people don't realize about real money poker software is that there are two major issues that create a great level of complexity, security and scalability which is further compounded by multi-tabling and the main focus is simply 1 thing, 'smooth stability and consistency' in the context of meeting the conditions of security and scalability and it's is an extreme rough job when the client is live. That being said, I have 100% confidence in Merge, and I'm saying that as former Stars executive; they have everything it takes to be great and it isn't a coincidence that its Merge that is growing over others at this point.
ONE TIME FOR ALL TIME
When I left Stars, I wanted another challenge and I was burned out. Stars graciously offered me time to recover and come back to the role, but I thought, 'I'm in my mid-30's now, and do I want to settle now and rest on my laurels? I mean the next few years will be the years when I can still do something really great in business, where I have that optimal balance of energy/stamina/experience. And whether foolish or not, I decided to move on without 100% securing my next position. I'd say there absolutely no one who I spoke with that said I was doing the right thing, most responses were a blank look of 'why?'. And now I'm here, while its been a rough road to get here, I do things exactly as my mind sees them and I reckon/think and I think I've become 3 times the business professional that I was in just a year.
THE BOLD WANT IT
May 2011 marks the start of our promotions at Hero, it's where I all the planning and preparation comes to bear and where I take of the kids gloves and start playing for real. The events of April have forced me to consider many more issues that I thought were far into the future. But fortune favours the bold, not because the bold are foolish and reckless, but because the bold reach out and clearly say, they want this, they will have it.
I want this with all my heart, devotion, mind, focus and passion that Hero can be a site among sites as the truest boutique site for all our players. I hope you can be bold with me and that we can go all the way together, as we will never be Stars, but what we'll do, we'll do as Heroes. We will do it.
Sincere Regards,
David
Hero Poker CEO
SUMMARY:
-Stars is the best hands down
-While I came into Stars with a good strategic background, I learned really about what VIP service is all about more than anything else
-In that respect, I've always seen Stars as a boutique VIP service
-But for Hero, it's not about being Super Nova Elite, its a boutique site for all our players from direct assess to me to our valuing of each player as a VIP
-Merge as a network is very good, I say that with no bs and I say that back with my own professional experience, and we are good for each other Hero and Merge.
-It wanted a real challenge and now I have it with Hero
-I hope you will share this with me, while we will never be Stars, we can be F-ing Heroes.
Tom won some pickets for the executive suite (best suite in the Rogers Centre) for the latest UFC fight. Awesome night! The Polish Experiement Krzysztof Soszynski was at our suite for the whole 6 hours. Nicest guy in the world , I must of talked to him over an hour. There was 4 of us, Tom, myself, my gf and one of my good brown friends. Never been to a UFC fight, so it was amazing. Some pics below, enjoy
A friend of mine is currently in San Diego for 1 month since he wants to go pro with his MMA career
He Trains at Dean Listers Gym for 1 month and so far he says everyone is friendly and super nice to him.
Today he messaged me that he had a sparring session with probably the sickest guy he ever sparred.
This guy had such a sick preassure boxing style that my friend could not achieve anything but try to survive
After the session he asked Peter Sobotta who is there with him if that guy who owned so hard is anyone notable or just a very good amateur.
Big Smile occoured on the faces of people listening -> they told him it was the guy u see here in the left http://www.groundandpound.de/uploads/pics/001_66.jpg
It was EliteXCs champ and Strikeforce titel Contender
-KJ Noons-
This kinda reminded me when i had a BJJ session like 1 year ago in Nurnberg where i trained with this one sick muscled motherfucker who owned me like i was a 2 year old girl
Later on i realized it was Yoel Romero a Silver medalist at olympic wrestling Sydney 2000 and 2005 2nd place World Cup finisher,
Those are always nice moments.
Just felt like posting this in my blog cause it makes me happy
Sorry for lack of updates and for going inactive on Skype and MSN in the last few months. I have summoned so much power to finish uni and had several 24hr study session and had to recoved in the past 2 weeks.
Luckily this was easy with the awesome weather in Edinburgh in the past couple weeks (Yay global Warming?) so me and my GF behaved like proper tourists in our own city and went to discover the city a bit and relax at the same time.
When in a downswing, don't you worry my friend, as everything is going to be alright. If the old building says so it must be true right? http://imgur.com/8D01q.jpg
The most awesomest, bestest looking shoes I have ever seen. Sadly I was not allowed to buy them because apparently some people can't see the awesomeness in them?
I will mourn the day I left them in the store forever.
I went into my bank account and saw more monies! Unfortunately I still have some money left on AP. I have no idea when we can get it out. I wish I never deposited money there. It was a dumb decision. I never got to get the cash bonus from pokersource.com and I only had 30 days to grind the bonus(I was only 1/3 away from getting it).
On the other note, I have been job hunting like crazy and I got so many rejections. I am so broke right now that i want to sell everything I own, especially my guitars and take the money and play 1/2 at a local casino cuz I seriously dont even know if I will get the job for the summer. I am graduating next semester and have no clue if I can afford to go to grad school.
Sorry for the rant, I was so tilted after today's interview for a full time job. Apparently my interviewer was a retarded squirrel who thought CS and Stats majors are the same and said that I was a weaker candidate compared to others cuz I didn know C++, Java, and php (no shit, Im a stats major, we use SAS and R only for analytics!). At the end, I was like fuck this shit, I am not interested and the recruiter said we might consider you for other positions, and I was like whatever and hung up on the phone. The sad thing was that after applying to 30 over jobs, this was the only interview I had and I never applied to it...
Anyway, i got 1458 FPPs in my stars account. What should I do with it? I am looking for items to sell online for a good price.
Recently i have wasted a bunch of time playing computer games and watching Comedy-television series
And by a bunch of times i mean ~50h in 1 week ( 7h day)
Will i ever grow up and behave like an adult ?
Thor and then some, plus some updatesby whamm!, May 03
Thor was just ok, sadly it could have been soooo much better. Too much focus on Thor when there's just loads of interesting characters in Norse Mythology/Thor comics. Still enough to keep you interested and feel you just didn't waste time and money on a movie. Heimdall was the shit man, practically upstaged Thor the whole movie with just 9 minutes of screen appearance - that's how cool that guy was. To compare :
Ok for those of you who haven't watched these three films you are seriously missing out! It's gritty realism is nothing I've ever seen in a movie and the actors are just so fucking honest and true it makes you believe that the whole thing is a documentary. Watch "City of GOd" first then tropa 1 and 2 to make the whole experience unique, I did not watch it in that order and it seemed to ruin city of god a bit for me. Have newfound respect for brazilian ass and movie makers now. I'm telling you both will make you jizz lol
2 Solid chick flicks you can actually relate to and enjoy
hey im doing you guys a favor here haha
After having the opportunity to watch the Tsunami first hand from so many people with their live recording and such, now how much information is gleamed and useful from Bin Laden's operation, it makes you appreciate just how fucking amazing life is at this moment. Internet has been my favorite thing for years and now all the mainstream noobs are finally starting to see just how powerful the internet is.
Why are they never blue? Do casinos like it when I lose money because I think my diamonds are blue and consider all my red cards hearts?
I don't understand.
lol right after I rip on Obama for failing on medical marijuana, he comes back and takes out osama bin laden. nicely done.
Obama Succeeded Where Bush Failed: Osama Bin Laden Rhetoric And Reality
WASHINGTON -- As he announced the death of infamous terrorist Osama bin Laden on Sunday night, President Barack Obama struck an extraordinary contrast with his predecessor, George W. Bush.
That was to some degree unavoidable. Bush’s consistent failure to respond appropriately to bin Laden -- as a potential threat, as a fugitive, or as a public enemy no. 1 -- represents one of the greatest shortcomings of his presidency.
Obama has now succeeded where Bush failed. And it was impossible to hear Obama declare that "justice has been done" without thinking about how long it went undone.
But Obama also went out of his way to draw distinctions between how he approached the problem and how Bush did.
For instance, as the months and years went by after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- and Bush’s initial bluster about capturing the al Qaeda leader “dead or alive” became a source of embarrassment -- Bush began to insist that bin Laden himself wasn’t so very important.
"I truly am not that concerned about him," Bush said at a White House press conference on March 13, 2002. And of course the following March, he shifted America’s focus to Iraq, which proved to be a gigantic diversion.
Obama took a different tack.
"Shortly after taking office," the president explain Sunday night, "I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network."
Obama's comments on Sunday night were clearly directed not just to the American public but to the world, evoking images of the horror of 9/11 in an effort to dampen any possible al Qaeda propaganda value from bin Laden’s death.
By contrast, the tactics and the rhetoric of Bush’s “war on terror” -- most notably his decision to invade Iraq and the torture of Muslims in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere had served as al Qaeda’s most potent recruiting tools.
And to a nation of people who, nearly ten years after the terrorist attacks in America, are overwhelmingly despondent about both of the wars launched by Bush, Obama was at long last able to deliver something that, at least for a moment, seemed like victory: "The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda,” he said.
Ironically, Obama’s announcement came eight years to the day after Bush famously and prematurely declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq after landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier.
And if all that weren’t clear enough, Obama made an explicit appeal to set the clock back to those days of national and international unity right after Sept. 11 -- before Bush took the nation to war in Iraq, subverted historical prohibitions against torture and domestic surveillance, and used fear of terror to achieve partisan goals.
"[T]onight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11,” Obama said. "I know that it has, at times, frayed."
As Obama noted, the U.S. was virtually a different country then.
"On September 11, 2001, in our time of grief, the American people came together," the president reminded the nation on Sunday night. "We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country. On that day, no matter where we came from, what God we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.”
The Bush record on bin Laden, of course, starts with him failing to prevent the attacks in the first place. As has been exhaustively documented by now, during the summer of 2001, his White House waved off repeated warnings of an imminent attack from former counterterrorism director Richard A. Clarke and then-CIA director George Tenet.
Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, were said to be more focused on their pet issue, missile defense, and the hunt for a reason to attack Iraq. Bush, according to Bob Woodward, said he wasn't interested in "swatting flies."
The unsuccessful attempts to engage Bush culminated in a briefing he got while vacationing on his Texas ranch. As investigative reporter Ron Suskind reported in his book, "The One Percent Doctrine," an unnamed CIA operative flew to Crawford to call the president's attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S."
"All right," Suskind reported Bush saying after hearing out the operative. "You've covered your ass, now."
Former President Bill Clinton in 2006 notably complained that he came close to killing bin Laden in a 1998 missile strike, while Bush and the "right wingers ... had eight months to try [before 9/11]. They did not try. I tried. So I tried and failed. When I failed, I left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy and the best guy in the country, Dick Clarke, who got demoted."
Bush’s post-9/11 swagger may go down as one of history’s worst examples of false bravado. After the invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban government quickly fell and al Qaeda retreated into the hills. But in December 2001, when bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora, Bush didn’t pull the trigger.
Then for more than three years, Bush treated bin Laden a lot like the wizards in the Harry Potter books treat He Who Must Not Be Named.
In the summer of 2005, Bush started invoking bin Laden again -- but this time, to win support for his Iraq policy, which was very much on the ropes.
"Hear the words of Osama bin Laden," Bush said, "'This Third World War is raging' in Iraq."
By 2006, on the stump for his fellow Republicans, Bush was citing bin Laden extensively. The president cast bin Laden as the oracular leader of a global movement, and warned of the possibility of an Islamic caliphate "stretching from Europe to North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia" -- an unsubstantiated fantasy with only one thing going for it: It served the political agendas of both men.
Meanwhile, in an Oval Office session that same month, Bush told to a group of conservative columnists that focusing on bin Laden didn’t fit with his military plans. Putting "100,000 of our special forces stomping through Pakistan in order to find bin Laden is just simply not the strategy that will work," he explained.
Yet, in his attempts to persuade the voting public of the dangers it faced, Bush gave bin Laden exactly the attention he seemed to crave.
After the 2008 presidential election, during which politicians from both parties publicly renounced him, Bush finally admitted some regret in an ABC News interview.
"Do I wish we had brought Osama bin Laden to justice? Sure," Bush said. "But he's not leading a lot of parades these days."
Bush stalwarts are now trying to make the case that their president deserves some, if not most, of the credit for dispatching bin Laden.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Sunday night called bin Laden’s death "a victory for the United States and a tremendous achievement for the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission." As for Obama’s role? "I commend President Obama who has followed the vigilance of President Bush in bringing Bin Laden to justice," Cantor said in a statement.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney similarly credited "the military and intelligence professionals who carried out this important mission,” citing their "tireless work since 9/11." It was those years of effort, the majority of which were during the Bush administration, that "made this achievement possible, and enabled us to capture or kill thousands of al Qaeda terrorists and many of their leaders,” Cheney said in a press release.
A small group of young fans gathered outside Bush's house in Dallas Sunday night with a sign that read, "President Obama forgot to say... THANK YOU PRESIDENT BUSH."
Bush himself issued a brief statement congratulating Obama and declaring, "[t]he fight against terror goes on, but tonight America has sent an unmistakable message: No matter how long it takes, justice will be done."
*************************
Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for The Huffington Post. You can send him an email, bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get email alerts when he writes.
Looking for a place to find some new movies where i can just click and stream it. Dont wanna go thru all the hassle of torrent files and all. Anyone know any good ones?
Contact Users: 432 Active, 0 Logged in - Time: 02:22
, I must of talked to him over an hour. There was 4 of us, Tom, myself, my gf and one of my good brown friends. Never been to a UFC fight, so it was amazing. Some pics below, enjoy 
