Poker Blogs

>10 day forecast
>temps no lower than 50
>could get as high as 80 for a couple of days

other than that, i saved myself quite a bit of money at the tables tonight, jesus. omaha 1/3 - button, 5 limps i have qqjj double suited, i pot. 7 callers. flop comes out kxx two hearts, 4th to act pots, i end up folding cause no draws. him and another get it in. aaqq double suited v aakk double suited. still up a couple of buyins for the month with the low volume i have. next year, i want to hit up the wsop circuits in the south, though, i'd try to sell some action to some regs around town.

http://i.imgur.com/u2PPC7F.jpg


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Fuck. Smashed my car getting out of my parking lot.
Tried to be lazy and take a shortcut and baaaam fucken smashed it off a column.

Merry Xmas present for me.

http://i.imgur.com/4Z03kGD.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/EN6rrua.jpg


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About a month ago I got back into poker after playing a live game at a friends house (20$ buy in, 10$ rebuy). Didn't do as good as previous games and lost out at 6th out of 16. That game though made me realize how much I missed poker (fuck you black friday) but after searching found bovada.

I don't care for the anonymous tables because I never used that software and I had a lot of learning to do. Before black friday I was never really good, but I would play the poker stars 2.20 180 man sit n go's a lot and place top 3 about half the time (I see a lot of people think I am doing a subtle brag, I didn't play this very much lol 10-15 times at the most, placed top 3 in 6 of them iirc correctly). Looking back at it though I always knew I was bad, but with what I know now my god I was super terrible and I have no idea how I won those 180 man sng's at all.

I'm still bad and I know it. I am not playing Poker for a living just a mix of fun and maybe a little bit of a side income. I am watching streams (jcarver mainly), reading and all that fun stuff. I have invested 60$ into it and on Saturday I played a 2.20 1k guaranteed tournament and placed 2nd taking a nice 240$. The most I had ever won previous to this in 1 tournament/sng was 108$ for first on the 180 mans. The ending hand I had QC9S and he had K7o. Flop came with Q, 9, 2. We both had about the same amount of chips I had 1.3 million chips and he had 1.45 or something like that. I check, he shoves and I call. Looks great and I thought I had it won easy. Turn is a 7. Ok whatever odds of him hitting another 7 or K on the river is unlikely. Well he flops another 7 and takes me out.

I was sort of annoyed, but was more happy at my progress in poker lately in both cash and tournament poker. I am making a lot more deep runs and I played a 1$/50cent cash game and ended up going from 30$ to 90$ in about 30 minutes (Got AA, KK back to back and won each one for most of my profit).

Bankroll wise I shouldn't be playing that kind of cash game, but I don't care I do what I want . I don't have as much time to play poker during the week due to work, play for maybe 2 hours or more depending how I do in a tournament or if I am playing cash that. In general fun stuff and keep learning a lot and hoping to keep going up instead of down, but only time will tell .

Also going to be playing my first live poker tournament next month as I am going to Florida for a vacation with family. I googled and saw there are some poker places that run 55$ tournaments and my brother and I are going to play it just for fun. Going to try my best, but not expecting much considering I have never played live poker like that, but going to try and be as prepared as possible!


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lol

http://i840.photobucket.com/albums/zz329/k40cheddar/plosession_zps3781ac2f.png


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I have been meaning to write some things about the voids of existence that emerge. The pain. The realization that comes and goes and comes back again that we are but tiny specks of consciousness in an infinite universe of nothingness and chaos.

"Champagne for the pain"

The first time I heard this was Jay Z or Kanye West? Perhaps earlier but most prominently in a song that does not immediately pop into my head from their Watch the Throne album (which I am a huge fan). Jay Z: "Champagne for the pain... High for the low."

I lived by those words for a long time. With what I know now they have the potential to be a bit damaging and misleading at least for me. Basically, just writing a disclaimer on that advice that there are usually better, more healthy, more sustainable ways to heal "the pain" than drugs and alcohol.

Fastforward:

I actually went back and found the song:

"Welcome to the Jungle"

...

[Jay-Z]

"My uncle died, my daddy did too
Paralyzed by the pain, I can barely move
My nephew gone, my heart is torn
Sometimes I look to the sky, ask why I was born
My faith in God, every day is hard
Every night is worse, that's why I pray so hard

[Kanye West]

Why I pray so hard, this is crazy God
Just when I thought I had everything, I lost it all
So que sera', get a case of Syrah
Let it chase the pain, before it goes too far

[Jay-Z]

My dreams is big, reality set in
Let off a clip from an automatic weapon
Through shots in the door, it died in Vegas
Though it fought so hard, I knew it wouldn't make it
I'm a tortured soul, I live in disguise
Rest in peace to the leader of the Jackson 5
I dided in my sleep, I'm still Big Pimpin'
I ball at the mall, beginning of the ending
Where the fuck is the sun? It's been a while
Momma, look at ya son, what happened to my smile?
My tears is tatted, my rag in my pocket
I'm just looking for love, I know somebody got it
[bold]Champagne for the pain, weed for the low[/bold]
Goddamn I'm so high, where the fuck did I go
etc.

http://genius.com/Kanye-west-welcome-to-the-jungle-lyrics

I found it interesting on going back and listening to it my perception now is that Jay is actually speaking his truth on the fact that drugs and alcohol do not actually fill any voids or actually heal any pain and was just plainly speaking on where he was at at some lower points.

Putting my own spin on it that is where I am at. Champagne for the pain, weed for the low are occupations. They are a way to fill time and avoid pain but a lot of the time it is just delaying healing and development. Drugs and alcohol are simply occupations, drugs, medications with positives and negatives that should be used with personal best discretion. Buyer beware. etc.

Going back to Jay for a second though I am just a really huge fan. He talks about how his music is a Rorschach test. My original interpretation of the line in times where I abused alcohol and drugs it is easy to get caught up in the boastful, bravado, glamourous nature of the Watch the Throne album and glorify the champagne for the pain, weed for the low, YOLO nature of that album and pop culture in general but of course, Jay laces it with entendres and 2, 3, 4 sides to the story.

I would put his Reasonable Doubt and Blueprint Album up there with any existential poetry, literature, philosophy works in existence.

Earlier in that album on the first track Kanye finishes the song with:

When we die the money we can't keep
But we probably spend it all cause the pain ain't cheap: preach

http://genius.com/Kanye-west-no-church-in-the-wild-lyrics

Again, very true.

How do we live this life?

I would take it a step further in saying time and freedom is a more important asset than money but money is certainly up there and can buy time and freedom.

So, how do we spend our time, freedom, and money?

How do we fill the void and heal the pains of the world?

People have been asking these questions and searching for answers for years. I will just say that for me being part of a group, a community, a tribe and sharing my thoughts and learning from other people and engaging in discussion seems to work for me so that is one of the reasons I continue to post on LP. Thank You.

ps.

I will leave everyone with some quotes that I recently came across and found thought provoking and inspiring.

"All neurosis stems from mans' attempt to escape life's legitimate sufferings." - Carl Jung

"(one lost everything in the death camps except) the last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances" - Viktor Frankl (Austrian Holocaust survivor and psychologist)


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What's up men and women.

Anyone can do a new year's resolution. To end the year with a bang, and to start off 2015 with a huge confidence boost. I will be doing the following, THIS YEAR from now to the end of it:

1) No booze. Yeah no alcohol whatsoever. I will go out with friends, I will spend time with haters (AKA family). But I will not touch a drop of alcohol in the process.

2) Excercise Session 7x per week - A session means at least an hour of excercise. Gym, Jogging, Home workout, Street workout, Floorball - everything counts. I am allowed to do 2 phase per day, swap e.g. morning cardio evening gym to allow for rest days.

3) 6hours of poker per day on average - self explanatory. Today after 17:00when I started included my target is 120 hours of poker between now and december 31st 12:00. No table or stake limit really although I won't play less than 4. Cash games only, tournaments don't count towards this.

bonus: no dirty movies of any kind

All this while spending at least 3 days with family. It Might mean I won't go out on New Year's Eve if I'm a pussy and don't end reasonably early.
My gym is open literally every day over the holidays so it won't force me to run in the snow or anything

If I manage this, 2015 resolutions will actually have a substance behind them, as I will know I have the discipline to do anything.


NO nutrition goals because Christmas. But I will eat healthy pretty much porridge breakfasts, BCAAs, eggs, tuna, vegetables. will eat some pasta and rice for cheap carbs, if I eat crap and don't get proper sleep I pretty much have 0 chance of completing it. I am allowed caffeine during this time.

I will post a before pic later today

Thoughts? I have a cold now, lasting some 3 months so it'll make it a proper tough challenge

I'm giving you 1:1 fun bet odds on this, max bet $20 per person. shipped @Stars at the end of the challenge. Just to keep it fun
spreadsheet will be updated, you can ask for a screen at any time.
PT4 sessions will be shown at the end to show hours.
I will record workouts to spreadsheet - basically will have to go by trust? can't think of any hard evidence. why I take max $20 so I don't have incentives to cheat.
http://i.gyazo.com/791b6b2bfa7147a8e90ef994fd2c2f90.png



Action list:
Devon $20
Fujikura $10 freeroll


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I been out of poker almost since black friday. I use to be GuSWrX, MeaL or MeaLOwNz. I just came back the past month normal back to 50nl doing alright so far won a couple of low stakes tournaments for $425 and $800 which help me build my bankroll and been doing really good but sometimes i find flaws in my game that i will be correcting has i remind my self my old style of player of poker. But i am grateful to be back and looking forward to sharing hands and indepth dicussion of poker and other topics.


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Im too lazy to make updates but ill try: broke up with my gf after 3 years and now im living in bangkok since october 29

everything is cool, got some sick badrun in the first 2 weeks of november but now things are goin well

goodrun money ???
http://i.imgur.com/fBAOkaP.jpg


I believe 70%+ was vs regs, im feeling really confortable playing anyone lately, with the exception of a few 5k+ regs that also plays midstakes, but its really good to play them at 400 for learning purposes

I also feel like im learning so much lately and I'm improving much faster than anyone else at midstakes, maybe ill hit the highstakes soon =)

still cant find a decent coach, I know that theres lots of coach/staking teams at midstakes but their deals sucks, good thing is that ive been able to compete with people getting coach just by studying on my own

if anyone here is in thailand, give me a shout!

gl


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Just sent this to an Ex GF who I dumped (got bored?) a year ago - still love - but is with someone else and keeps messaging me from time to time. She doesn't seem willing to get back together though.

Editing...I am not sure I want Google bots spidering this thing.


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Hi guys.

So I was streaming for a while, watching dota streams alot (big SingSing fan), tendler's podcast, 2p2 pokercast. . . and also worked in Sales, and as you probably know I am pretty much an attention whore.

And an opportunity came up to do a podcast for Pokerstrategy. To make it easier the first episode was with Vonki, a fellow Microstakes player. Who happens to be a girl. It's a non-serious weekend show that's supposed to be fun, make the community more lively. I played SPin and goes in the first one and Pleno1/Pads, the guy who was a 1/2 reg and shot to 5/10 zoom and became one of the sickest MTTers within the last year joined for a while to talk about goals.

I got wasted the night before, using a focus group of my gf and couple friends to come up with ideas for the show, but I forgot that you also get hangover when you are drunk and I was affected quite a bit

Also didn't turn down Stars sounds enough so sorry if you will think action's on you if you grind while watching.

http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/36024/


I'd love any feedback you have, and don't be surprised if I invite one of you LPers at some point if the show gets renewed, it would be kinda cool to make the theme gaming and poker parallels :D


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>play PLO
>getting coolered every time i have a set, straight, flush, full house, or quads
>im getting coolered multiple times with quads
>just within typing this i get coolered with q flush v k flush

Cooler after cooler after cooler. I'm at the point where I have no idea if I was playing bad or playing good. I sit there, laugh my ass off that I'm about to get coolered again, but still have to play it the same way, and then wham, on the river, there's the cooler. I try to set traps, get coolered. I play and get it in good, get coolered. I even tried getting it in bad, and I still get coolered. (kt high v k9 high) (yes, they called with kt high on the river in PLO)


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Hey guys,

Been a while since i last blogged - but I love that I can still come here and know that there a still a fair few of you that will chime in and offer great advice.

My girlfriend and I plan on heading over to Europe around Aug-Sep in 2015 and plan to drive around a few countries over around 4-5 week period. So far the general idea seems to start on the West and work out way through from perhaps Spain, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Austria and then potential for a few others like Czech Republic. Whilst those are the core ones we have talked about so far I am definitely open to opinions you guys have on any of these areas

Which also brings me to my next point in that - that being a now "retired" poker player I would still love to check out a couple casinos and potentially jump into a couple of live games of NLHE up to 5/10 or PLO (but smaller games as I am pretty weak at it). Last time I was in Europe was in 2010 - since I didn't go to many of these countries and its been quite a while I have no idea what the games are like / what runs / or where could be good to go.

Looking forward to hearing some good ideas, hope everyone has been doing well both at and away from the tables
dryath


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Preface:
I wrote this up because some friends were interested in lucid dreaming and I figured I could share what I've learned.

Training to lucid dream is a lot of work, at least it was for me, but I think it's worth it. Dreaming is something everyone does almost daily for their entire lives and it unlocks a vast new aspect to your life.

I got into it more than 10 years ago, but I'd say it took a solid three years before I was able to do so consistently. Even now, I think there's still plenty of room for me to improve. When I first started learning I felt there were very few resources on the subject and I really had to experiment with a lot of strategies on my own to improve.

Step 1: Remembering your dreams
This is the starting point. If you don't remember your dreams, you won't even know if you've had lucid dreams or not. The best way I know of to start remembering your dreams is to write them down when you wake up. This is something extra to do in your daily routine and when you remember more and more details of your dreams it will take longer to do, so there is an immediate commitment involved.

My tip here is when you wake up, don't move a single muscle. Just recall your dreams the best you can and then sit up and write them down. You'll find that your ability to remember dreams more vividly increases quickly and soon you'll be able to remember more of your dreams. If you're sleeping 6-8 hours a night you're probably have 3-4 dreams. There are also non-REM dreams which are more auditory than visual but seem more difficult to remember unless you're waking up from them.

If for whatever reason you just can't seem to remember your dreams, an effective yet unpleasant technique is to be waken up when you're in the middle of REM sleep. You can have someone else do this, wear an EEG that's programmed to trigger your alarm during REM, or just randomly have an alarm go off about an hour after you've fallen asleep and hope you're in REM.

Step 2: Realize you're dreaming
This was the most difficult step for me and I utilized a number of tricks I had read about online to help with it. I think this took at least a year before I had this step working consistently, but over that time period it became more and more frequent.

I've since read that you can use external stimuli when you're in REM as your trigger. For example playing a song or a recording of your voice when the EEG you're wearing knows you've gone into REM. I have never used this, but I can certainly see it working since external stimuli definitely affect your dreams.

I set a number of triggers while I was awake to be used while I was sleeping. I wore a watch and looked at it very frequently throughout the day. Every time I did, I would pause for a moment and think, "Am I dreaming?" When taking a similar action in a dream, I would realize that I am in fact dreaming and would go lucid. I also would reread my dream log on occasion and try to find similar illogical patterns that occurred. Recognizing nonsense would trigger a lucid dream for me as well. There are illogical things that help give away you're in a dream pretty consistently such as looking at text, looking away, and back again with it being different. Same thing with clocks, textures, signs, etc.

Something else that works pretty well for me is if I'm sleep deprived I will immediately go into REM sleep, something called REM rebound. It's pretty easy for me to go right into a lucid dream if I make that my intent while falling asleep.

Step 3: Staying asleep
Every time I realized I was dreaming I would wake up right away. This is pretty awful, especially if it's in the middle of the night. One technique I remember reading about that worked pretty well was to start spinning. Just hold out your arms and start spinning around. The other thing that works for me is just freezing everything. I also have a particular place that I go to often when I first go lucid, but I'm not sure when I started using that. Something else that is pretty effective if you have some control of your environment is to generate a rope that's attached to the ground and just grab onto it. Someone once told me they put their hand in their pocket and grab onto a rope in there that is anchored to the world which is the same concept. Another technique I've read about is to rub your hands together, but I haven't tried it.

My tip on this step is just keep things simple. Don't start trying to build worlds, summon creatures, and fly around quite yet. Anything that was exhilirating and would increase my heartrate substantially increased the difficulty of staying asleep. For example trying to have sex is incredibly difficult to stay asleep through.

I would say even after I became pretty good at staying asleep, the actual lucid dreams don't seem to last very long. On average it feels like I'm lucid for approximately 5 minutes. Eventually it just kind of fades out while you shift out of REM and then when your next dream starts you're back to square one. I'm sure the actual time into the dream that you go lucid has a large impact on the time you have. Something that helps make dreams seem to last for many times longer is letting yourself fall back into the dream. Go lucid, set up your scenario, forget that you're dreaming, and then continue on. Sometime I will come into and out of lucidity a few times in the same dream when I feel the need to change the direction of events or redo something.

Step 4: Experiment
Fly, break physics, be in multiple places at once, try out synesthesia, go talk to yourself (this one is weird), try out some superpowers. Switch out body parts or body entirely. Build a house, city, world, solar system. Rewind time and do something different the second time. Visit places and events from earlier in your life. Make up a completely new life and set of places. Don't exist at all and just watch time unfold.

One of the most difficult barriers to get over with experimentation in a dream is the logic bounds you have on how the universe works. For example, breaking physics was very difficult for me. If I throw a ball or launch myself at high speed, just suddenly stopping mid-air is pretty difficult to do because your brain wants to take physics into account. Anything that would cause you physical pain in reality such as shooting yourself in the foot is extremely difficult to deal with in a dream and takes some effort to get over. If you really want to break the limits of what you can do in your dreams I think you can systematically break down most of these mental constraints.

Early on I was so excited about lucid dreaming that I would go to sleep with a plan on what I wanted to do. One of my early projects was to build and visit a memory castle. A place I could walk around in and place items in different rooms. Awake I have a memory of this place I visited and can envision the different rooms housing different items that are associated with things I want to remember. Later on I more often went to sleep without any plans and discovered that my sleeping self has different and more simplistic desires.

There are a couple examples of things I've done while lucid dreaming that my awake self would consider a waste of a dream. I spent one dream stacking tuna cans higher and higher and needing to fly to continue stacking them. I tried reading a book out loud which was ridiculously difficult. I messed up pronunciations and would stutter, also many of the words I read weren't real. I got half way down a page of a regular paperback-sized book before I woke up.


Just because you're lucid dreaming doesn't necessarily mean you have full control or complete understanding of what's going on. Your subconscious is still going to render the majority of your surrounding environment including people and places. For better or for worse people may still say or do things that surprise you. You may wind up in places or meet someone you weren't expecting to. There's a city I've been building out for many years that I can go to if I ever want to remove myself from a scenario. I think it's a good idea to have a safe and familiar place that you can always use as home base.



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http://i.imgur.com/6aiazYQ.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/6kMlJmB.jpg

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


http://i.imgur.com/zAAdvp1.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/N5N2tTK.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/n5I1Duc.jpg

whats a cool place to have sex at?


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Recently there has been this guy, must be late 20's or early 30's in age, that has been coming to my casino. Seen him like 4 or 5 times and he's literally the nut worst player I've ever seen, and he behaves in a way that might make you question whether he was mentally handicap or not. He would literally ask for help taking chips out of the rack, stacking up the chips, and needed to be told 3 or 4 times each time there was a bet and the action was on him. The way he was playing was limping every single hand, not folding to any raise, and then donk betting every street for some small amount. If you raised him at any point post flop he was 3 bet bluff raise another 100 almost every time and you can literally stack this guy with any top pair. He would has bet big quite often as a pure bluff.

Took so much money from this dude.

Thank the gods for live poker.


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(but really it's pretty neat imo)

disclaimer: only available to college/uni students. not sure how many uni students are on LP but i'm sure there's some who could take advantage of this and have a decent hourly doing so.

MindSumo.com is a site where companies like Microsoft, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Spotify, etc. post real world business-type problems and awards prizes to the best submissions. The prize/entry ratio is probably better than you'd think - a typical payout would be 5 x $150 first prizes and 5 x $50 second prizes for a problem that has a 40-entry cap. (so 25% of submissions make money)

One of the cool things about it is you can see all of the winning submissions for past problems. There's some thoughtful/clever ideas, but it's also pretty clear you don't have to be a genius - an ambitious 7th grader could be in the running for a lot of them.

1. register and they give you free* $30

2. paste this promo code: ER14E9AC when you sign up for another free* $5

3. there's some other crap where they show you how to make some more free* money like filling out your profile etc.

The two catches are:

1. *you need min. $100 in your account to cash out, after the initial free money the easiest way to do this is just place in one of the challenges.

2. you need a valid .edu e-mail to register (see disclaimer). if you go to a university somewhere that doesn't give you a .edu e-mail, you CAN still register but you have to contact them and they will manually verify you're a student.

+ Show Spoiler +

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So I've managed to find some kimchi and I quite like it, didn't expect beefy smell. It is sort of sizzling on my tongue sometimes is that normal? This one contains chinese leaf, spring onions, garlic, ginger, carrots, chillies.

Anyway my question is if there are some rules to when I'm supposed to eat it or just general kimchi advice.


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