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boinggg

I first came out here basically because I had nothing better to do having very little experience with actually playing poker for a living, and any sort of plans despite having been really interested in poker as a hobby. I actually started off playing 1-2 1-3 out here but switched to playing 2/5 per the advice of people and have done at okish at that for a while. I mostly play softer games at Bellagio, MGM Grand, and Venetian, have avoided the 1500 deep at Wynn, and dislike the lighting at Aria as it intimidates/throws me off my natural comfort zone. Right now I have around mid 40k to my name and am trying really hard to get better at managing my expenses, improve at poker, and get better at other aspects of life.

So I've been reading the old Matt Moore thread on twoplustwo a bit and I suppose he is a paragon of recent success in the livepoker scene out in Vegas. Since I am not a twoplustwo guy and I am a liquidpoker guy, I'm going to try and use my blog here to put myself out there by writing more, and take bettering and challenging myself to a new level. With the wsop coming around in a few weeks I think it is a great time to start. I am going to focus mainly on poker, but I'll try to actively blog about anything else interesting or noteworthy that I am doing, so nothing really is out of play.

WSOP 2015:

First order of business I guess, since it is one of the biggest events in poker of the year. I don't really have much to say about it actually and am planning to just do alot of really boring shit. For the WSOP I intend on playing strictly cash games and zero tournaments. So that means no Colossal, no Aria event, no millionaire maker, etc. I just don't see much of a reason to just punt away buy-ins when my tournament game isn't great and my hourly would probably be higher in cash games. I've been playing mostly cap 500NL but I think I'll venture a bit this series, try my best to zone in and my plan to start the series is to play the Venetian 2/5 1000cap and go from there. If I run good I'll play the Wynn 2/5 or Bellagio 5/10, and if there happens to be a great game I might hop into the Venetian 5/10. I'll also play a bit on wsop.com probably just 50NL and 100NL during the daytime.

Personal finance, Budgeting, Bankroll Building.

I guess this is boring stuff, but really its the way to keep score in poker and ultimately a big part of the reason we play and the ultimate way of keeping score.

Its simple really, save more than you spend. Right now I'm trying to reduce food expense from $600 to around $250. For just myself $600 is way too much. I also switched to a 49cc scooter a few months back which saves me alot on gas/insurance and I recently installed a trunk on that so I should be able to buy groceries and stop eating out. I might just chronicle this on a monthly basis, but I am not sure how great revealing income and expense information with 100% transparency will be from a legal perspective. I would however like to have a great deal of transparency in this regard and not just with my revenue but also spending. Rent is high for vegas at $1100+utilities but the location and facilities are just what I need (great location, no-roommates, nice/clean/secure, good community, no roaches or anything like that). I think right now total expenses I think if I am entirely GTO with my current set-up I can leave expenses at somewhere in the range of <$1,800 which I think is pretty reasonable.

Considering More Options:

Traveling for live poker.

-bay101, Commerce, MarylandLive! Florida, Parx/Sands, Borgata, Foxwoods, Winstar, etc
Not only is this a good idea to see the country, would be great for improving my game, meeting new people, and getting better at game selecting so as long as you can manage to keep expenses low. I do however think Vegas is probably the best home base overall if you are playing live poker. I would also like to venture somewhere like Playa del Carmen or Rosarito or just Latin America in general. Latin America offers low-cost of living that places like Vancouver simply does not imo. Also helps that women are probably a lot lower maintenance. I'd be going to just get better at poker probably and be able to play more varied game selection but long-term and overall the money in live poker is a lot easier for most people. Still think with traveling that its important to keep expenses low.

Fun Stuff

For the most part I kept things about "business" stuff only. Just happened to be that way I guess but I'll try to blog about more varied things as they occur while I am out here. Here's a pic of what I look like and my scooter thing for fun/in case you run into me somewhere.

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gonna post dumb live hands in my blog to blow off steam you don't have to read them

UTG $300
UTG+1 $80
UTG+2 $80
MP $340
ME (button)$300

UTG puts out a blind kill which is a 4 dollar blind that gives him last action preflop

UTG+1 opens 8, UTG+2 calls, MP calls, LP call, I call with 99, UTG raises to 30, everybody calls but LP

Flop 9c5h2d (pot $148)

UTG bets 45, UTG+1 calls all in, UTG+2 calls all in, Mp raises to 90, I call, UTG folds

Turn 9c5h2d3h (pot $363)

Mp leads 40, I shove, Mp calls with 98hh

River 9c5h2d3h7h (pot $743)

My top set no longer good MP scoops the pot with a 9 high flush and the 2 shortstacks muck some trash that had no equity. Not long after MP got in 200bbs pre calling off a huge overbet shove with K9o. He cracked AK with his K9 shipping a huge pot with a pair of 9s. Not long after the game broke when he left and I got moved to another table. At the 2nd orbit at this new table I faced an interesting hand that I also posted here tonight.

http://www.liquidpoker.net/poker-forum/1126836/Live_1-2_river_play.html

Game is 7 or 8 handed live 1-1-2 NL holden

Button $200
BB $240
Me (UTG +1) $280

I open to 7 UTG+1 with K10ss. button calls, Bb calls

Flop 5s8sQd (pot $18 after rake I believe- max drop any flop in California :/ lol)

BB checks, I bet 14, both call

Turn 5s8sQd9c (pot $60)

Everybody checks

River 5s8sQd9c3s (pot $60)

BB leads 30, I?

Neither player seems to be a drooler, my game recently broke and I just got moved here, 2nd orbit. Both young - 30s white men but not online players I don't think.

I've been watching a lot of the Claudico bot lately and I think it would definitely choose all in as its play because of GTO or whatever. Do you think a smaller raise is better to get wider calls out of a human or is there more value in getting bigger bets called less frequently (or at the same rate).

What do you guys do here.

Yes I could 3barrel this and that may be best but I believe the line I took is certainly viable especially vs the players in this hand.


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Cliffs:
-You dont need so much volume to see if regular spin n go suits your interest
-You may never hit the Spin n go 1M and you wont compensate that glory with all the wasted rake


Unlike MTTs where you have to win to realize your ROI at spin n go you need to play well your most frequent multipliers (usually the first 3 to 5) and look at your chip ev to see if you have some pontential. At usual spin n go with buy in $15 or more, lets say you never see other than the x2 multiplier. Then your rake will be 33%. Now, lets say you never see the x6+ multiplier but you see the x2 with usual frequency and the x4 instead of the other ones, then your rake as shown in the table (1) below will be 13.6%.

Obviously with enough volume you'll be able to hit the higher multipliers, but can I live with that? Lets say I want to play 20000 spins this year, what's my chance of not playing the top multiplier? Simply (1-0.00001)^20000 = 0.82, but almost 0 that I wont hit the x25+. So if I can beat a 7% rake I can do well during the year. Also I know its a matter of few years before I hit the top prize if Im patient enough

Now, lets go to the 1M spin n go. Lets say they never end this promotion. The chance of not hitting the 1M game based on table 2: (1-0.0000003)^20000 = 0.994. Chance of not hitting after 50 years: last result ^ 50 = 0.74. So, you can possibly never hit it and win. There's also the fact of being a millionaire not as valuable as loosing that much rake and time if you consider some prospect theory.


TABLE (1)

$15+ 100000 fq rake with max multiplier
2 70518 0,70518 -0,333333333
4 21366 0,21366 -0,136786667
6 7500 0,075 -0,08268
10 500 0,005 -0,074466667
25 100 0,001 -0,068666667
120 10 0,0001 -0,0636
240 5 0,00005 -0,0612
3600 1 0,00001 -0,05

141036
85464
45000
5000
2500
1200
1200
3600

285000 total prize
300000 total $ collected
0,95
0,05 rake


TABLE (2)

M 10000000 fq rake with max multiplier
2 7585694 0,7585694 -0,333333333
4 1704653 0,1704653 -0,17
6 660000 0,066 -0,1250694
10 40000 0,004 -0,118449
25 8000 0,0008 -0,1136225
120 1250 0,000125 -0,108388
1200 400 0,00004 -0,09388
240000 3 0,0000003 -0,07

15171388 0,543777348
6818612 0,244394695
3960000 0,141935484
400000 0,014336918
200000 0,007168459
150000 0,005376344
480000 0,017204301
720000 0,025806452

27900000 total prize
30000000 total $ collected
0,93
0,07 rake



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5th and 9th, some bad runs at end of MTT Sunday

not bad FT 2/2 MTT's though, fired a 3rd up but busted 10 mins in so i say 2/2! 2/3 not bad tho

GL,
Ryan
http://www.twitch.tv/neilly447


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for cheating on you?





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think i made one of the biggest mistakes of my life

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Hello, what do you guys think about sites like runitonce/cardrunners/deucescracked? Worth it/not worth it? those are the ones I know of atm.

Currently im playing 6max (zoom) NL50, looking to move up to NL100 and beyond. There are a lot of theoretical questions that I dont have answers to atm, that maybe id be able to figure out more easily with some up to date info on how the best players are playing now, rather than testing and guessing myself

I dont know, honestly. My bday is coming up and I thought I might ask for a gift subscription if nothing else

Im pretty in the dark about the online poker "pro" scene or whatever. Like I heard sauce123 is really good, but also that he sucks at 6max? so maybe I shouldnt study from his play lol. Whos really crushing NLHE 6max?

On TL I could just check out the TLPD and see like "oh shit looks like bisu is #1 ranked protoss by far, ill watch some of his recent games and see what he does vs situations I have trouble against, and then see if I can understand his thought process and adjust my system accordingly", but I havent found that for poker :S


Anyway, gl at the tables every1. I appreciate you guys commenting on all the hands I post


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http://www.twitch.tv/yomerpunting

watch my pretty face writhe in pain when i punt my guy


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Well, it certainly has been a while since I've posted here...

Hello everyone. Many of you probably don't remind as I was never a high stakes(or mid for that matter) online poker player, but I was fairly active here about 2-3 years ago. How's everyone been? Probably much better since I'm assuming almost all of us have received our FTP rolls finally.

Anyway. I have recently ventured into the world of forming a niche in the fantasy football and real life NFL football community. After just playing and performing well in several different fantasy avenues for some time(long term season-long profitable, slightly above break even in DFS last year due to early strategy inefficiencies), I decided to take a real shot at getting involved in the professional side of football. I have recently begun writing for a site named Rotoviz(http://rotoviz.com/author/hkrueger/ if you would like to check out any of my articles) and have enrolled in an NFL scouting academy that will take place this summer.

The reason I am here today is about a site called myfantasyleague(http://www.myfantasyleague.com/). This is a special kind of site as it mostly deals in a format called a "best ball" league. In this format, there is no mid-season management. You draft 20 players, and the scoring is determined by whoever scored best at the position in a week(ex. If you have 3 QBs, it counts the best score of the 3). There are currently two buy-in types: $10 and $25. The $10 is the most popular option at the moment, with a 10x return on 1st place and a buy-in return for 2nd. There are 12 participants per league, meaning to break even you have to win 1/10(I'm a math wiz right?).

The reason I am here today is to garner interest towards attempting to turn a decent profit from competing in these leagues. I think the real opportunity to turn a profit from these leagues comes up after the NFL draft. For those of you unfamiliar, this is the event where college football players are chosen and placed on NFL teams before OTAs and training camp begins. There is always value to be had at this time because the fantasy football crowd begins to come back after the past 3 months of little significant news in the league. They tend to jump right into these leagues and treat them much as a mock draft for their upcoming season long leagues. I feel I have a significant advantage currently in these leagues(even when compared to that of my FF writing peers) as many understand football, but lack basic understanding of game mechanics, the difference between these leagues and their season-long counterparts, and understanding of the current coaching/personnel situations in the NFL(ex. Dallas RB is going to be highly valuable no matter who it is).

At this moment, I have finished drafting 18 leagues of my own, which you can check out here(http://football20.myfantasyleague.com/2015/public?O=13&USER_ID=136). If you would like to see the current equity of my selections, go here(http://rotoviz.com/best-ball-adp/) and type in the name @HeithK. If any of you are interested in such a venture(which I understand may go unnoticed as many of you are unfamiliar with me), feel free to comment here or contact me on twitter @HeithK. Thanks guys!


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Hey guys, happy Black Friday anniversary, I know how different and the life changes everyone had to make has been pretty good. I'd love to hear about what you guys are up to a few years after

(americans obv but feel free to chime in from other countries)

Got back from Vancouver pretty unhealthy, had lost about 25-30 lbs. Got back home and been grinding out my rent on acr for a while.

I want to say a big THANK YOU TO LP.

You guys pushed for me to move to Bovada.

I finally did. A big THANK YOU. games are night and day compared to ACR with so much more action, ACR only kept me there cuz that 345debit, not worth playin vs regs non stop all day tho

On this end, since BF I've spent about 6 months a year in the states and have traveled to Vancouver 2 times, had a solid 50k month up there, 3 months in Costa Rica where i moved into 109rs 162s etc and did very well, but as most of you guys know, Iwas always staked. I did Ottawa for 6 months as well, was in "Hunt Club" and had a great group of friends, was killing it. then I moved downtown and just got slaughtered everyday, friends were to far and was a huge learning experience, that trip was really bad for me. I did ok that trip, think i only went home with a few grand though. made some great friends and relations there though. Its really beautiful, castles everywhere, ppl are in general very nice, and the weathers very similar to my hometown (near buffalo) ++ big lesson learned was keeping good friends around and making sure I stay healthy, and don't be insanely high 24/7 just cuz the greens so cheap up there. Its like I live in some sort of fear or something when I'm not surrounded by friends, gotta keep em close during these trips. Traveling alone on those trips or living alone when I relocate kinda sucks. Costa Rica is the exception cuz its just amazing 24/7.

Costa Rica was insane, I'd like to do it all over again since I was doing drugs and other bad stuff back then, not to say I don't smoke green or anything, but the lifes been ship shaped up hard, seems like a great place for me now. Not so much in my 20s tho.

Van City is amazing, and amazingly expensive.
Live poker in Vancouver is very loose and ppl even think at lower stakes like 1/2, everyones deep, ppl stack off quite light its a very solid game. vegas is better but vancouvers 1/2 runs like vegas 2/5 which was cool for my br since most 1/2 is ugh, bingo.

I've spent some time making up bankroll guidelines that I personally need to follow, and got on Bovada. After playing vs some recreational players and fish on tons of tables, I am now entirely convinced Bovada is the best software by far. Thank you everyone for pushing me to move my action there.

Next step : 5/1 - Have a room waiting for me in NJ with a poker student and his friend, they are doing really well and I can help them progress, quite new players that are makin a few grand a month, taught them some of the keys to the kingdom already.

after that : 6/1-6/15 - Las Vegas, Grind out Cashgames non stop all day everyday, do 1-3 MTTs a week as well.

Build up there, then prolly bounce out to Cali or Florida, I hear the games are best there, or maybe just stay in LV or move back to NJ.

Wasted months of my time on ACR but thankful to be off there, theres my 2015, I made a 5 year plan and im following through with it. Seems a lot more calm and relaxed.

What kinda stuff you guys been doing?
Transitioning to live?
How many of you guys are still grinding online?
Where you guys playing?
What kinda jobs did you guys get that opted out?

Finally feeling pretty good again,
Hope LP is doing well,
you guys are awesome even the trolls help me learn so much.

Love Maturing with you guys and learning non stop. Never stop. Bless ya all.

I may go up to Hunt Club OTtawa to grind a lil this summer, maybe even in May, but as it looks, I think NJ is the best option by far (lease is up so timing is good)

GL everyone,
Ryan


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Introduction to Spin&Go tournaments(skip that if you know how they work)
When Spin&Go tournaments were introduced there was an enormous migration of recreational players from normal Sit&go tournaments to Spin&go format - it's a perfect format to attract that kind of players.
If you don't know how they work - each tournament is 3-max, winner-take-all, hyper turbo Sit&go with a random prize pool. Buy-ins range from $1 to $60, and each tournament has a randomly drawn prize pool that will award between two and 3,000 times your buy-in. The highest multiplies are obviously super rare (1 of 100,000 for the 3,000xbuy-in, even the 240x multiplier have a chance of just 5 out of 100,000).

The games are insanely fast, give a thrill of emotion through the random prize pool and that's what recreational players were looking for. Jackpot was hit by PokerStars.

The migration of fish
With the introduction of Spin&Go most of the recreational players moved to the format - nobody who plays for fun cares if the rake is a bit higher.
However, that had serious impact: killed some of the less popular formats (and made the most popular WAY less profitable) for regular players.

Of course, there was a ton of complaining due to two facts:
1. Spin&Go were considered unbeatable and unprofitable by almost every reg in the world
2. They were heavily marketed by PokerStars

Math behind Spin&Go'es
The rake is as following:

7% exact at the 1$ Spin&Go
6% for $3 and $7 Spin&Go
5% for $15, $30 and $60 buy-in

However, this accounts for the overall numbers and an INSANELY long-term play. Yes, you will be paying 5% rake at $60 Sping&Go, but 70,518 of 100,000 tournamnets will have $120 prize pool, which is literally one buy-in gone in the space.

What does that mean in reality?
Top payout levels (which are obviously the best, no need for explanation) are going to happen around 1 in 1000 games (0.1%). But also, in that 0.1%, due to payout structures, the total of 4.2% of all the money in the structure is distributed here. The absolute highest level is as following: 0.005% chance to hit it, while 2.1% of the money is distributed here. See where the problem lies? The rake doesn't seem INSANELY high, but the variance is - you can go for YEARS without hitting (yet alone winning) the highest multiplier game and that effectively increases how much you have to win regularly to even make money.

So, if you think you can get at least 5% ROI, then I guess you could expect results. However, if you are a marginal winner you can go for a year or longer and not make money if you don't hit the highest rolls on the prize pools.

Bighusla and his prop-bet
While every reg though spins are not beatable, there was one that took a prop-bet and showed some new light on the facts.
Bighusla started the propbet with the intention to (1) play 5,000 $30 Spin and Go's in a month, and (2) maintain a chip expected value ("cEV") of 8.5%. In the end he played 5,054 spin&go'es and ended up with a cEV of 8.8% (profit of almost $11,000).

His graph:
http://www.liquidpoker.net/staff/Defrag/bighuslawon.png

That got regs interested in the format.

The transition to Spin&Go
Let's be clear here: the format has INSANE variance and if you would like to play it professionally - expect to put an enormous amount of volume into the game. However, with all the rake calculations, one thing wasn't accounted for: the fish in the sea.
Basically, the games are hilariously easy, to the point where professional Hyper HU sng players are comparing them to post-Moneymaker level of cash games.

There are also players who are showing quite good results:
Image 1 (click on the spoiler tag) :
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Image 2 (click on the spoiler tag) :
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Image 3(click on the spoiler tag) :
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Image 4(click on the spoiler tag) :
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So, are the games beatable or not? For the moment, I would say yes, as shown by multiple sources all over the web.

However, I would say it's still too early to make decisive calls - the format is so young and the professionals are switching to play it as we speak. Like I said, it was considered for the format to be not-profitable for regulars in long-term and that view changed just recently. It might turn out that in 6 months the level of the games will rise so drastically they will no longer be any good (or will be marginally profitable) for long-term grinders and will serve the main purpose they were designed for.

I'm curious to see your point of view - I'm pretty sure there are some players learning the format with the intentions of making bank.



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Taking a look at swcpoker. Lobby seems empty all the time. Tried to start some deuce games and everyone is decent at 4/8 level (1K chips = 1BTC). Dont seem fishier than PS. Also, expect to larn some Badeucey as well.


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Previous blogs of my Poker Journey
Part 2: http://www.liquidpoker.net/blog/viewblog.php?id=1123363
Part 1: http://www.liquidpoker.net/poker-foru...25/The_Poker_Life,_a_new_chapter.html

It's been awhile since my last blog! To be honest I wanted to make a blog when I am in the positive, but to that hasn't happened yet. Luckily I am down less than $100 over about 90,000 hands. Since my last blog I feel my skill in poker has increased by a ridiculous amount, and I am slowly graduating from the "beginner" stage of poker. Despite my results I feel more confident in my poker game than ever, and believe I can beat 5NL on Pokerstars. I did a lot of reading, video watching, stream watching, hand review, and sending hands to friends. Now a days more often then not when I watch a video/stream I find myself making very similar decisions to the broadcaster, and a lot of beginner content focused on the micros is beginning to feel more internalized in my play/brain.

The resources I found most useful while improving was nanonoko's 10NL video series on youtube, komododragonjesus's twitch stream, my friend Spencer's feedback/hand reviews, and of course playing lots of hands. Nanonoko did a wonderful job explaining how to play poker on the lower stakes, and komododragonjesus's stream is just so dam chill. It feels like he is un-tilt-able! I certainly look up to players like these as my poker role models. Big shout out to my buddy Spencer in Korea as well, he has looked over my hands more then any other person by far.

As for things outside the poker world, I've met a lot of great people in Toronto and will be moving closer to the downtown area at the end of April. I also plan to do a bit of Dota 2 broadcasting for some local tournaments. It's great that I can use my old skill set occasionally and prevent it from getting too rusty.

Unfortunately one of my roommates will be departing back to America at the end of the month as me and my other roommate Raddick move near the downtown area. He has not been doing too good in poker and had issues with bankroll management. He will most likely continue to play poker, but more casually in America. I suppose it is better that he recognized this was not for him sooner rather than later, and he didn't lose a lot more money as a result.

I have been experimenting with not playing on zoom tables, and trying out other game types such as spin and go's. Spin and go's are a lot of fun, but they certainly don't feel like a stable way to build a bankroll. I really do enjoy the heads up mind games though! As you will see in my graph, zoom games are where I've lost the majority of my money and indeed they feel a lot harder then normal tables. There definitely seems to be less fish in them as well. I decided recently that I was going to not play zoom tables and focus on standard 6max tables instead. Currently I feel that I can do OK at zoom tables, but I don't anticipate I'll make a lot of money from them.

As for things I want to improve on in poker, I feel that my greatest challenge currently is putting in the proper volume of hands in each day. This is something I'd like to make into a career, but it is rare for me to get in something like 3k hands in one day. I find its even harder when I don't use zoom tables and play 6-8 standard tables, I will only average at best 600-750~hands an hour. I believe in the end it will come down to discipline/work ethic more then anything else if I'm going to succeed in poker. I also seem to do better the less tables I have open, but I think that goes without saying. I will have to find the proper balance of tables/time over the next few months. I think I will start to take some real shots at 10NL once I get out of the negative, and possibly some very tiny ones before that. I'd also like to try and figure out more ways to exploit/play against fish, I'm sure there are a few cool techniques/tricks that could be added into my game. Probably the last thing I'd like to improve on is overall hand reading and putting my opponents on a more accurate range when they call flop/turn, and when it is a good idea to bluff/shove the river.

Here is my current graph and how I've done in the stakes I've played up to this point. Thanks for reading and I will try to post my next blog sooner than later ... now it's back to the tables!

http://i.imgur.com/ZUE8RoN.jpg


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Shitty month with worst BB downswing in my limit poker history (2-7 Triple draw), but saved the month the last days
VPPs: 14K
This year: 40K
Almost completed to play all regs HU, so nothing new to do until I want to battle some guys at 30/60 which I doubt is gonna happen soon. So, here's the graphs:

http://i.imgur.com/N41rqDB.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/VOHmmHV.jpg

Probabbly mostly atributed to a stupid stomach flu I had during the first week where I lost 3 Kgs to go from 55 to 52 (1.73 m tall). So after being cured at the end of 2nd week I went to a nutritionist at the end of 3rd week becouse I did not recovered any weight at all, so after being prescribed some vitamins and a diet I came back to 54 in a week!. So, lets see if I can do it to 60 which was one of my yearly goals (I think vitamins and lot of avena+yogurt was the big plus)


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http://i.imgur.com/5Y6Lsvz.jpg

-1.2k in bets
-1.5k in a small site that prob went busto

going to stick with pokerstars from now on
currently taking shots at 1k, current goal is to be a 5k reg until the end of the year, Im confident ill get it if I stop spewing money in life
probably spent close to 6k this month so my BR is probably even this month


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http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/01/16/nlp-10-ways-protect-mind-control/

Stop watching the idiot box


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https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/3530354/TUF_1_Cast.jpg.0.jpeg


In Search of Strange Brew... by Chuck Mindenhall


Ten years after the original Ultimate Fighter television show put the UFC on the map, one of its cast members fell off. So … whatever happened to Jason Thacker, the quirky Canadian that trained out of the old abandoned truck stop?

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I’ve long been fascinated with Jason Thacker. It’s very possible I’m the only one. Why? It’s sort of complicated. I suspect it stems from overthinking a word like "belonging." In the short history of the UFC, he was a person that ended up in the exact wrong place at the exact right time. Or maybe it was the right place at the wrong time. Whatever it was, man did he catch a lot of hell just for being there. And back then, being there meant something. Remember that?

The original Ultimate Fighter began airing in January 2005, and has long since been accepted as the jolt the UFC needed to break through. If Stephan Bonnar and Forrest Griffin hadn’t had that rapturous, go-for-broke brawl on April 9 in the finale, there might not be a UFC today. That fight hit the broader living room like a magic potion. It was the culmination of something, but it doubled as a real-time epiphany — suddenly mixed martial arts was being translated for people who didn’t speak the language. All at once, it was as if light broke over the taboo.

People got it. Dana White later called it Zuffa’s "Trojan Horse."


Full article here: http://www.mmafighting.com/2015/3/24/8259545/in-search-of-strange-brew

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This is a great piece of MMA related content that took a long time to write. It's worth reading the entire thing, imo.


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Hello

I have noticed that threads here related to transitioning from playing poker as a primary means of income have garnered a lot of interest. I thought some may find it useful if I weigh in and share my own experiences and thoughts, and at the very least I'll benefit myself from organising my thoughts on the subject when I reflect and try to write them here.

Quick backstory
I dropped out of uni to play poker during the mid~2000 boom years. Did well at online hsnl and later hsplo, and managed to save a decent amt of what I earned such that I have ample financial breathing room. Quit poker in 2013 to restart uni from square one (undergrad economics). Targeting a career in investment management - fairly competitive and hard to get into so im not guaranteed anything, but my odds are looking ok currently having secured a relevant front-office internship at a major asset manager. Also got married and started a family.


Poker vs traditional careers
As we all know playing poker rewards luck and skill, and anyone can get into playing and will be guaranteed on average an equal share of luck in the long run, making skill the primary determining factor of expected outcomes. By contrast getting good jobs and working within an organisation may involve not just how well you can do the job but many other factors like how well your managers think you can do the job, your network and relationships, etc. Not to mention some barriers to entry: just getting the job in the first place is a job in itself, with interviews, assessments and competition from other applicants.

It's very easy to think of the situation with poker as better or fairer, especially when it's the situation that happens to favour you more (i.e. when you're playing poker). If we ignore these normative constraints and think only in terms of what gives you the best outcomes, I would argue it's not bad to have the other stuff.


Barriers to entry
It's an economic reality that a field with no barriers to entry and potential to profit will become crazy competitive over time such that profits get competed away (see: perfect competition model in econ 101, and a previous blogpost of mine where I look at the consequences applied to poker). Try winning at online nlhe cash today. Try trading goods on ebay. Try being a coder for hire on quora. Sure you can make some money doing all these things, but your economic profit (net of 'economic costs' which include the effort you put in and what this effort would have yielded if it was instead put into your second best use of time: your opportunity cost) is going to be very low because of the competition. Unless you manage to find some underproduced niche in these things, you are one of many commodity producers and your market price is going to get bid down to or below your economic cost.

A field with barriers to entry protects you from competition and lets you make more profit than one without - this is as true in the labour market as it is in business. Barriers to entry are no good for people outside those barriers, but are great for people inside them. Some barriers can be crossed with a lot of effort others may be unwilling or unable to put in. For initial entry into the job market, barriers to entering a good job may be your academics, extracurriculars, and quality of your educational institution. Later on in a career those barriers may be the unique and unreplicable skills, experience, relationships, credibility and reputation you've built up through your career. I want to highlight one 'barrier' that I personally underestimated or didn't know the importance of, but now think is a huge determinant of outcomes:


Social capital
Since the 'cognitive revolution' 75,000 years ago humans started to get bigger brains and use them for increasingly complex communication, coordination and innovation, allowing us to go from somewhere in the middle of the food chain to right at the very top, driving tons of much bigger, stronger, faster and scarier species to extinction. With the agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago the size of our communities and extent of our co-dependence took on another dimension. We are built to be social animals that gain from cooperation with community.

(online) Poker is probably one of the few ways to make a living that don't require any social skills and in my experience, just like with muscles and lifting, it can be a case with social skills of 'use it or lose it'. Unless you're a naturally social and likeable guy (like my good friend Quentin/mipwnya, who by the way is a beautiful man) it's possible that years of not having to use many social skills leads to atrophy in this area. Compounding the problem is the fact poker seems to disproportionately attract people who were slightly uncomfortable or awkward in social situations in the first place.

It turns out that in working for organisations, it's one of the most important skills you can have. An organisation is a large-scale coordination of many people with many different skillsets to produce profitable things that no single person could possibly do. Social capital is a vital part of performance within an organisation, and building networks relationships, reputation, trust and credibility is vital to even getting opportunities for interesting, well-paid work within good organisations. It also serves as a very strong barrier to entry in the market for good jobs, which is very very good for the people inside that barrier. If a natural conclusion of all this is that getting inside barriers to entry is a better idea than being a competitive commodity producer, building social capital might be an important thing to not overlook.


Closing thoughts on poker: Barriers to exit
I found as you get years deeper into a poker career, your (real as well as perceived) barriers to entry into other occupations increase. Your CV gap becomes bigger. You may not like returning to square one at an older age. Your social skills may atrophy more and it may become more and more out of your comfort zone to leave poker. You can get in a situation where as your set of alternative opportunities starts to close, you feel increasingly poker is one of the few only options. This creates (probably mostly perceived) barriers to exit from poker. While in reality you do have an alternative opportunity set you'd be comfortable with (many seem to be turning to coding, or have ideas of 'starting a business of some kind'), if we take the view to an extreme that poker/gambling is going to be your only lifetime income, then the associated observations should be pretty scary. If you are reliant on a source of income to sustain you for life that may not even be viable in 10 years, you need to be making, saving and investing very large income today to not run out of money in the future. Poker profitability trends are already not very much in your favour, from what I can see. I don't want to open a can of worms that iirc has been discussed to death in other threads, but continuing to play poker might not be a wise idea for long if you're not making a lot of money and it might be making transition more difficult the longer you stay in the game.


Closing thoughts on programming: putting the ideas together
I'll end with this as programming seems to be a popular transition choice judging from some comments. I suspect this is in part because it shares some characteristics of poker that may be appealing: no barriers-to-entry, performance more easily judged on what you can build so you might not have to get out of your comfort zone with this uncomfortable business of building social capital, and potentially an immediately gratifying feeling of solving puzzles. It can be a great road to go down, or a terrible one. Coding skills are very much in demand and will continue to be so indefinitely. However you’ll do much better if you create barriers to entry for yourself within coding than if you don’t. I’ll start with a story and extract generalisations:

Last summer I did an internship in equity research for a small independent boutique. They do proprietary quantitative investment analysis on global stocks and sell it to buy-side institutions who manage money on behalf of households, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, etc, who pay pretty generously for the research. The subscriber section of the website (the main way clients interact with the product, unless they’re big clients in which case they get a more tailored service) is impressively coded and connects up to our data backend (result of analysis) to display results and lay everything out well. All of the coding and tech grunt-work is outsourced, mostly to various groups on quora at minimum cost relative to revenues. Those Indians, Brazilians and eastern-Europeans do a fine job building hard stuff (when told exactly what’s required of them and nothing is left to their ‘initiative’) that’s vital to the end-product, but receive a minimal share of compensation the research firm makes. The founder gets the lion share. Prior to starting the company he was a senior manager at a major American ‘bulge-bracket’ bank and so not only knows quite a lot about investment research but also has a large amount of credibility and contacts. This is why clients value his product highly and wouldn’t buy something put together by people they didn’t know or who didn’t have the same credibility/background.

While working with the founder I was able to deliver a pretty decent project that involved coding (in VBA/excel) which people on quora could not. I learned VBA/coding in a few weeks prior to beginning so my level is nothing like actual experienced programmers. However I added value where coders on quora couldn’t by combining a basic level of coding with a basic knowledge of finance/investing, social capital and initiative. Whereas hard-core coders on quora are useless without a very unambiguous specification of what the code needs to do, I could have lunches with the founder and talk (read: mostly learn from listening to him talk) investing, what he’s trying to do with the analysis and why. Then I’d implement it without needing to be told exactly with the code needs to do as I know in high-level terms what’s needed and can come up with my own ways to attack the problem. Here I also met another friend of the founder who used to work for a major bank but now just does VBA/excel solutions for a living. From his perspective it’s easy work and easy money that pays well, and people hire him over people they don’t know who could easily do the job because his networks and past experience in traditional jobs gives him credibility and contacts.

Generalisations: if you have social capital and can communicate effectively and build relationships with the organisation and people paying you to work, you’ll deliver better results and be more likely to be hired again than someone who doesn’t. If you can combine coding with another field, and view coding as just a tool you must learn to implement solutions that help deliver useful results in that other field, you’ll be much more useful and hireable than someone who is purely just a coder. Both of these are potentially profitable barriers to entry.

Closing thoughts on ‘starting a business of some kind’
For reasons mostly covered my gut feeling is this is a great idea at some point in life, but much more so after having been in traditional work for a good while first, and built experience, skills, social capital, networks and credibility. This will expand your opportunity set of potentially businesses to enter and allow you to find more profitable niches with larger barriers to entry. The opportunity set of potential businesses available to someone who has just quit poker and insists on remaining their own boss is much narrower and consists much more of things with no barriers to entry (with associated lower expected outcomes).


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