I got injured and haven't trained hard for over 7 months which I went from a somewhat lean 221 pounds to looking fat and gross and a lot weaker =(
(I had been at my strongest right before I was injured - which tend to coincide haha I can list any weights I used for anyone who cares)
This is def the fattest I have ever been
Had an injured shoulder and some forearm/elbow problems so coulda done cardio and legs but opted to eat like shit and do nothing but play poker. Worked out well in the fact I did well and ended up buying a new house, but now its time to get back in shape. I thought of doing some before/after photos (as some of u know I once did a couple fitness model gigs lol and just looked at those pictures and compared them to now).
So today starts new diet and a workout program, not really excited to start, which is funny since I played sports and worked out all my life. Hard to get back into it now that I'm older and everything hurts haha. Doing more circuit style training combined with boxing shit for now until I can increase my strength and cardio. Diet is still pretty non-strict to ease into it and I still have a very fast metabolism (I was eating 4kish calories a day for a long time).
If anyone wants to talk diet or working out I am always down for that. Or wants to know some of the workouts in detail. I saw a few blog posts re: 300 workouts and that shit. Those workouts definitely will work if ur goal is to get into really good shape and be visually appealing. They don't work so well for an already muscular guy to get bigger.
AS for poker, I have been playing a ton (outside of moving) for the last 7 months as mentioned and done well, which is always good. I play on euro sites so hopefully nothing happens to them in the future. I haven't been coaching much in the 7 months. I had a few students but now with the PS/FTP thing with US players I have lots of room if anyone is interested in lessons. I changed my prices awhile back as I started doing lower stake lessons as well. so 100nl+ is $113 and under 50nl is $75 for anyone interested. I had to cash off most of my online BR to help pay for the house so went back to 1/2 but did real well right away which was nice and was up to 5/10 and 10/20 again. Dropped about 12k to start this month but back in the green now (after dropping 10/20 hehe). 10/20 is like my arch nemesis, yet I have a pretty good lifetime 5knl wr.
I'm not going to UFC this weekend, which is a surprise but having just bought a house it was tough to drop $1100 on a seat (I had a coupel lined up that were obv sick seats and a decent deal at that price sadly) so just gonna have people over to watch it. I think GSP will win and hope he really lets go standing so we can all be reminded of his sick kicks combined with his new boxing talents. I've seen SHields fight a few times and he didn't really look as good as his skills would indicate imo but he obv has super talent and its scary to think he could keep getting better if he puts it all together. Pierson is fighting and I went to uni with him. He was a Canadian champ wrestler and super tough so look for him and Ellenberger to have a beauty fight and I would think he has value at +180.
and yes....I still love Lesnar =)
GL to all!!! and hope u Americans have things sorted out for u soon so u can get back to playing
O tempora, o mores, what a day, what a day, right? This morning's tilt-a-whirl news conference, in which President Barack Obama decided to release his long form birth certificate, to satiate some pure-bred American nutters in thrall to the President's most disingenuous -- or paranoid -- opponents, was an event I never thought would come, because I just figured that the White House had the eminent good sense to know that conspiracists should not be negotiated with - just like terrorists.
But here we are today. The President of the United States has brandished documentation that only proved that there was never a compelling reason to brandish it in the first place, seeing as it only proved what he and every relevant official and the documents that were publicly available had already confirmed: that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii, a pure citizen of these United States.
Chances are it was a confluence of dumb events that brought the White House to this point. A nearly-enacted law in Arizona that wouldn't have been satisfied with the clear proof already available. A campaign season on the horizon. Ed Henry's idiotic questions, posed a day after his own network decided to actually debunk the nonsense once and for all. Franklin Graham's paranoid assertions going unchallenged on a Sunday Morning political show. I think I understand Obama's mindset when he said this:
"We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve...We are not going to be able to do it if we are distracted, we are not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other ... if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts, we are not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by side shows and carnival barkers.
Of course, lately, the biggest barker in this barmy carny show has been Donald Trump. Admittedly, he's been the gift that keeps on giving -- the guy who's been telling America that he's going to stick it to China, even while his clothing line is manufactured there. He literally doesn't say much of anything. He rarely even tries: his campaign rhetoric is typically confined to empty bromides and tautological assertions of his great value. But if there's an issue Trump had exerted effort to put into the public square, it's this idiotic birtherism. And today, he claims to be "honored" by the fact that the nation was dragged into this trench.
Well, turnabout is fair play. And if members of the press actually want to end the sideshow, they have a choice: they can be the audience member, or they can be the critic. They can treat the carny barker as an object of ridicule, or better yet, start treating him as if he were a serious candidate. Either way works for me. But they have to quit the circus. They have to stop dancing Trump's dance, and stop performing to his beck and call.
Greg Sargent suggests a great place to start:
George Stepanopoulos reminds us that he recently asked Trump in an interview if he'd release his tax returns if Obama released the birth certificate Trump has been demanding. Trump responded:
"Maybe I'm going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate. I may tie my tax returns. I'd love to give my tax returns. I may tie my tax returns into Obama's birth certificate."
Story continues below
I've asked a Trump spokesperson whether he will now release his tax returns in light of this morning's development
The question of whether Trump will follow through no this suggestion goes directly to the heart of whether Trump's presidential flirtation has been a big fraud all along. Those who say it's a ruse argue that Trump will never run for president, because he'd have to reveal that his net worth is far less than he's claimed. Trump, who bristles at this suggestion, sought to dispel such talk by suggesting to Stephanopoulos that he'd release his tax returns if Obama released his birth certificate -- apparently thinking he was secure in the knowledge that Obama would never do this. Now Trump's bluff has been called.
Show us the money, Donald. Show us your grades. Show us the invoices from your crack team of birthernaut investigators that haven't delivered proof, that Obama was born elsewhere or of their existence. Show me a guy from your old neighborhood who even remembers you were around.
And memo to Juli Weiner at Vanity Fair and Justin Elliott at Salon: put those media criticism doodles you got from Trump up on eBay. Let's see what the real world value of Donald Trump's opinion is.
I'll leave you with the thoughts of The Onion's Baratunde Thurston, who basically just went off today when he heard what was happening. Of Trump's birther binge, Thurston says, "It's embarrassing to the entire nation that we would sit and let this happen. We have all been debased by this incident. By this charlatan, by this con man, by this mere promoter of himself."
"No one has ever asked [Trump] to prove anything," Thurston points out. That should change!
I am completely brand new. I just learned the notes (high e, b, g, d, a, low e) and now am working on chords. If anyone has any advice or help they would like to offer please do so via whatever. Thanks.
that really huge spike was a 150$ mtt with like 50 ppl lol. took it down for 2.5k yesterday.
the rest was from the guy below who I saw regularly at the $30 6max sngs before black friday. He was up a couple $100 until he decided to play the 250$ husngs with me. he was hu4roll. http://imgur.com/J45jq.png
well since i shattered my ankle 2 weeks ago im going to be laid up in this bed for a few months without much to do.... im a US citizen and this cock sucking gvt of mine banned online gambowl. im very frustrated and quite bored. i do play starcraft2 but i can only play for an hour or 2 without getting extreamly bored of it.
i have a brokerage account set up and i have money in there. i was wondering if anyone here trades stocks and can point me in a good direction on how to get started.... i have no financial background at all, im an electrician. i have alot of time on my hands and i would love if someone dropped me a few links or something...
**notes**
1) my ankles all fucked up
2) i have a brokerage account with funds
3) i know nothing about this, i would like to be pointed in the right place
4) thanks LP
So I haven't made a blog post in quite some time now and just figured I write a little something here on LP. It's been so long I feel like I have to reintroduce myself.
So whenever I visit LP, I spend most of my time lurking in the ROFL thread. If you haven't checked the thread out before, you should take a look. it's usually on the first page of the General section here on LP. I've made a pretty decent amount of contributions to it and have been referred to as the ROFL Thread guy from members here on LP.
I'm roommates with acckerman and edzwoo. I'm president of the poker club at University of Illinois at UC although I do mostly the administrative work, edzwoo is the one who deals with most of the poker related issues.
I started playing FR on fulltilt about two years ago, made it up to nl100 before I quit six months ago.
I realize this might not be the best time to post something like this since Black Friday is still on everyone's mind but the majority of this post will be related to the business I run with edzwoo. If you guys have any questions regarding e-commerce or online retail in general, I can try my best to answer whatever you want to know.
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edzwoo and I have been doing e-commerce since freshman year of college. We started off selling SD cards and flash drives on eBay. By sophomore year edzwoo was playing poker pretty frequently and was talking about playing poker professionally. I played poker from time to time but was a lot more focused on eBay.
After the SD cards and flash drives, I began selling Kohl's coupons (a clothing department store). When you sign up for the Kohl's newsletter, Kohl's emails you a $5 off $5 coupon 7-10 days after you sign up (you can read more about it here). I first found out about this promotion after stumbling across some sellers who sold these coupons on eBay. I naturally wanted to sell these coupons myself as well. So after an hour or two of research, I set up a very basic system where I would sign up for the newsletter, harvest the coupons a week later, and then sell them in batches of five for $4 per batch. It took approximately 10 minutes from start to finish to obtain the five coupons and email them out. Soon after, I knew there was some serious money involved with this with very little work and almost zero investment involved.
As time passed, I started buying gmail accounts off blackhatworld 100k at a time. I then hired a programmer from Spain who created programs for me that would automatically sign up for the coupons using the gmail accounts I purchased, harvest the coupons and format them, then send them out to eBay buyers through a business gmail account. I eventually became the largest Kohl's coupon seller on eBay, at my peak I was making $300 a day. This did not go unnoticed though, a large number of new sellers entered the market driving prices down a considerable amount. My biggest competitor was a woman named Michelle. She never replied to any of my correspondences and the only time I ever had any form of communication with her was when Kohl's stopped sending out coupons for three weeks or so. I got an email from her asking if I was having the same problems she had, this is how I found out her name was Michelle.
Michelle eventually stopped selling the coupons, I didn't know why. But in her vacancy a bunch of new sellers arose who formed a sort of "coupon cartel". They wanted to limit the number of coupons supplied onto the eBay market in hopes of keeping prices high. Some of the members in this group were from the old days who were selling coupons long before I even knew about its existence. They were talking about how a batch of five coupons sold for $10-$15 back when the promotion first began.
I never ended up joining the group mainly because for a cartel to function, they must control resources that were not readily available. Since Kohl's coupons could be obtained by anyone with an email account and an internet connection, it was extremely easy to enter the market. I also ran some regressions with the numbers the group members proposed and I didn't think there was any point in reducing the supply when I was by far the largest supplier.
Naturally, the other sellers were displeased with my decision. I got several emails that were less than pleasant to read, some were threats from the group stating that they would sell their coupons at a loss just to undercut me and force me into joining. One seller actually started purchasing coupons from me just to leave me negative feedback. I would block his accounts but he would just make new ones. Eventually, the negatives stopped coming. I never found out why.
Towards the end of my coupon run prices had dropped to $0.99 for a batch of 20 coupons. I was also contacted by Kohl's department of claims and loss twice to stop what I was doing, although neither time was done officially through Kohls.com itself, always through eBay. Gmail implemented a ton of new security features and I couldn't buy any more of them. The ones I did manage to buy were deleted by Google in a few days. I ended up using a catchall email address for a while but that just didn't work as well.
Eventually, eBay suspended my account, although not just for the Kohl's coupons. I had a lot of policy violations that were very vague and not even shown on the eBay website (eBay is actually a terrible place for sellers, if you ever go on the eBay forums it's just always full of people complaining about their policies). eBay said if I sent in my driver's license along with some other information there was a chance I could get my account reinstated. After I sent the required documents in, I became permanently suspended.
In addition to the Kohl's coupons, I was also selling Proactiv coupons, JCPenney coupons, Lowe's coupons and Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons. I always wanted to sell Staples coupons but I could never figure out how to get my hands on them. I was also selling a lot of random goods I purchased off Slickdeals at low costs and then would resell at a little below retail price. I was selling everything from Oakley sunglasses to designer purses to DVDs to PS3s. The money I got from that, in addition to the money I made from the Kohl's coupons was how I was able to fund the business venture I started with edzwoo in April 2010.
Wow, sorry guys, I didn't know this post would be so long, I was actually planning on talking about the business I'm running right now but I ended up writing a lot about the history of how I started off. To keep it short, I'll cut if off here and write more about the current business next time.
The Contribution I Wanted to do after Black Fridayby HeroPoker-CEO, April 26
"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly." Robert F. Kennedy
So as of now, I've stopped posting at P5s. Not because they weren't such a great site/community, its just that they are very US facing and I really didn't know what I should be doing with them as they have a lot of partner sites. But of course, I think I'm more comfortable here at LP. It took me a long time to come over here from LP but it gets friendlier every day keke.
Being an Executive or CEO of a start-up
What really defines an executive, is one that make decisive decisions...the hard decisions that no one wants to make or are too scared to make. The real executive seems to the guy who steps in and is contrarian, when everyone is just trying to save their jobs. I thought really highly of myself as a world class executive cause I was aggressive, ballsy and usually was the only one to make a clear statement.
But being a CEO and running a start-up is so much freaking harder- just because, as an executive, what major decisions you make either make more or less profit or revenue. As the CEO of a start-up it seems that every decision you make forces the company to move one entire way or another. It doesn't matter about how much money you have to spend, its a matter of where and when do you commit your capital to get what you want; and that main objective is to simply establish your company.
Establishing the Company
What does that mean, establish your company? For me in this uber competitive environment, it means make it clear what the company offers, stands for, essentially the brand. And while a lot of marketing guys think they know what a brand is or for a lot of people it sounds superficial; I'll say this, making a true brand is all about sincerity.
There isn't a brand in the world that has a clear life of its own that isn't authentic or sincere. The brand may represent something you like or don't like, but whatever it represents, it is authentic and sincere-otherwise, its just a fake ass brand which requires a lot of marketing dollars and spin to continue to live. Its kind of like a guy who really has great friendships by being just himself or a guy who tries to always impress the people around him by being charming etc. Same difference. So for me, I put this in front of the revenue, etc, cause until I can say, hey, our company really does stand for...abc...then I will know we'll be alright.
For the Ideals of a Company
So, today I made one of those decisions, I committed a bit of funds, not towards marketing, but just to define our brand. I allocated the funds with a zero return on spend, meaning, I don't expect to make anything from the 'event'. But I feel good about it because I feel that it really is a defining moment for our company. Basically I set up tournament for players who have been at a disadvantage of late due to the events regarding 'black Friday'. If you're interested in participating cause you are a US citizen and you're really bummed out, then PM me and I'll get you under LP etc. I don't know if it will really make you feel better, but its my hope for some players it will.
I kinda feel as though this is the decision that will truly define our company, and it seems like such a small thing, but I think in the future if I am to look back at this time, it will be the most critical time where Hero Poker became a real poker company and not just another skin.
Sorry for the vagueness, just PM if you want details if you are US player and just really bummed out.
Cheers,
Dave
Summary
-executives make hard decisions
-CEO of start-ups make life or death decisions
-brand or company identity is probably the most important thing
-I think I've made one of those critical decisions for the company's identity but it doesn't help revenues
-But to me, this worth much more than revenue now, I think its a defining moment for the company
-If you are a US player and just really bummed out because your bankroll is still pending,
PM me, I don't know if what I can tell you really will help, but its something sincere from Hero.
So being that black friday hit and all my money is still frozen on stars, I have sit around long enough. I want to work out something with someone so I can go play some live poker. I have a place about 1hr away from where I live where I can play some 2/5. I feel very comfortable playing, and being that the place I would be playing is a cruise ship that goes into inter-coastal waters (so its legal to gamble) most of the players will be rich fish looking to have a good time. The cruise runs every night and I would be able to go a couple times a week if possible.
History- Im mainly a sng/mtt player online and can play up to 40 tables no probs. I have had past cash play (which is where i started before online hit the world and it was just more convenient to stay at home) and have played much 1/2 - 2/5. Im willing to work out a reasonable deal with anyone that would like to stake me live. The split would go in your favor of 60/40 as long as I was able to get the stake starting asap.
Hope to hear from someone soon. Im sure theres ppl that will back me as a good person, honest, and all if anyone needs anyone to vouch for me please let me know. Also feel free to PM me any questions or anything else you would like to know
I'm a reg on 52.is (the icelandic liquid poker).
And I'm trying to sell $ on full tilt, and since the black friday thingy there haven't been too many people trying to buy.. so I figured I'd just try this site too
I have 4k on full tilt that I wanna get rid of basicly..
thanks for reading and pm me if you're interested..
any pointers and tips would be cool too
So I've been grinding pretty much recently, started out with the regrind for about 12 days ago and been putting in 20k hands since then of which 10k are in the last 3 days.
looking for diamond/masters T/P/Z practice partners. i'm currently a masters level zerg but want to find practice partners to help me grind games as the other two races without worrying about dropping games on ladder. pm or post here thx~
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