since i have been in vegas i have earned income in the mid 30kish range with something
like a ratio of 21k poker 9k earned from job and some bitcoins monies. i'm using when I arrived here in oct as my calendar month so i have 2 months left to claw out a pretty average, high variance income with questionable sustainability. i moved into the meridian apartments a couple of months ago and its a pretty convenient location. but id say id attribute my savings rate mostly due to a lack of paying taxes. I drive a shitty car and I also feel skeptical of finding a woman of sufficient standard.
been playing poorly of late and I have had a bad session today. I have noticed that alot of people burn out nearing the completion of 1 year, and I am going to being my 11th month out here now. I mean even if I do everything right long term, what can I accomplish? I am starting to meet and talk to more regulars and also starting to see how the 10/20+ level winners operate here and they seem pretty beastly. It is also difficult meeting all of these rich tourists and rich locals at the wynn and not introspect upon myself and feel some sort of anger/drive/guilt/envy etc. I really would not like to be one of those grinders turned dealers despite it being rational in many ways. I love what's going on in downtown las vegas and I want to be a part of it but I wonder if I have the savvy and will have the financing from poker to accomplish something noteworthy in that arena. still got 30k but its distributed all over the place in multiple checking accounts, cash, ira, bitcoin, etc.
Why you should be prop betting!!!by Joeingram1, August 01
I was driving to the gym this morning and I got inspired to write about why prop betting is important and why more people should be doing it. I also said on twitter that if I failed to write this today I would be paying out 1kusd to some lucky retweeter. This is a prop bet (more freeroll) that I will not be losing
What is a prop bet? In the poker world it is considered anything you might side bet on doing against another person. For example, some of the prop bets I've done are playing 50k hands in a day, playing 600k hands in a month. The bets don't always have to be as extreme as those, they can be as simple as you betting another person on who plays more hours that week (I did a bet like this before with some poor soul who did not have a chance )
Why do people prop bet? Some people do it because they see a chance to make a large amount of money assuming they are wiling to take on a good amount of action against. Some people want to challenge themselves. Some people want to try to make a name for themselves.
Okay, now that we got the basics out of the way, lets talk about why prop betting in poker is important for you to consider doing. The number one reason I initially did my first prop bet is because I really enjoyed the challenging of trying to do something that no one else had ever done before. Every prop bet doesn't have to be as dramatic as this but trying to do something where you are actually going to have to bust your ass to do can be an incredibly positive long term choice. If you are able to win the bet, your confidence will be super high and in the future you will feel much better taking on anything. Even when you fail at winning the bet, assuming you worked you ass off and tried your best, you will have a better understanding of what hard work in poker is. The confidence I have gained myself is something that will probably stick with me forever.
The easiest way to get a prop bet started is to come up with an idea and ask your friends what they think about it and if they want to make a small/big wager against. It might be something that you can compete against each other and that way you both push each other. Another way to get action is to post on the poker forum that you frequent and see if anyone is interested in betting against you. You will need set in place rules, a reliable escrow to hold the money, and a judge(s) to handle any problems that might come up for most prop bets. I think coming up with challenges that you and your friends can do is one of the best sources of motivation that exist in poker (outside of someone saying you don't understand the game you frequently play).
If you are at the small/micro stakes level and want to get your name out there, doing something crazy is the best way to do it. I know some people don't play poker to get any sort of recognition and only play for the money but I think most people enjoy being recognized for something. It can be a great way for you to meet new people that might be following along or that play in the same games you do. I met my San Diego roommate (without him I never would have moved to California) during my first prop bet when we started chatting on twoplustwo and then on Skype when we found out we lived close by. Networking like this can be important for your growth as a poker player. It can also be stepping stones to having a podcast that people enjoy watching .
I don't think most of this will be new information for the mid/high stakes guys out there but for the recreational/micro/small stakes guys this should be something you seriously consider doing more of. I think even for the more established players, taking on something very challenging could be what you need to bring back the passion for the game you once had. If anyone has any questions about anything, it could be a prop bet you have in mind or you might need a judge for your prop bet. Feel free to message me here in the comments, private messages or on twitter @joeingram1 or on facebook.
I also have a standing prop bet offer to anyone in the world for any type of PLO volume competition on Pokerstars
By the time this script is published, the uploaded hands are not going to be listed by default so we can really use this extension without flooding our hands section.
Next Version (lolwut):
1. Adding some menu shit other than just saying hi to Benjamin1, having some settings on it.
2. Making it so that it will list the first hand, and add the rest of the hands into the first hand as a comment.
3. Suggestions welcome.
Well, the BR now stands at a somewhat acceptable 2030. I'm working my way through learning 25PLO. At some point recently things started to click as I made major changes and thought I'd figured it out. The last 3-4 days though I've seemed to lack the same strength of focus and maybe that's why it hasn't been clicking as consistently. I find the hardest challenge in learning to beat this game is figuring out what's actually working for me.
Spots I know I need to work on:
1. Paired Boards
2. 3-Bet pots - particularly as the caller, and absolutely need to 3-bet good hands more
3. Lots of rivers and turns where I need to continue with my betting to get the fold instead of giving up sheepishly
Goals for Next Month:
1. 60-80k hands
2. Think more deeply about spots where I'm leaking and plug those leaks
3. Continue to develop my ability to focus for 2-3 hours straight on my A-Game
4. Reach PLO50
5. Cross the 50k FPP barrier, sitting at 31.5k now
im up on carbon, but down on bovada. i fucking hate bovada, yet it's the one with zoom. i'd instantly quit them if carbon adopted the concept, but they don't seem to want to. maybe playing anon zoom isn't a good idea, even though im making the right moves more often than not. i just dont get it.
well, not exactly robin hood but whatever
some crazy variance going on, 2nd month in a row that im beating 80% of regs im playing and losing to random fishes
also, decided that I will sell all my stuff, break up with gf and move to southeast asia in October, prob Thailand, still not sure, so I'll backpack and see some countries and decide later, but will avoid the nerdhookergrinder lifestyle that most pokerplayers in Thailand have
Im getting old for this travel shit, I'm almost 28 now, have to travel the world while I still dont have kids
Saturday-that wedding.
Monday -shitfaced, talk about wedding, falied chat up bartender, home 4am
Tuesday - 2 beere, chill
Wednesday - 4pm go for one beer, 6am come home after heavy clubbing - pal got engaged
Saturday (today) - go for one beer, then to local club in my hometown. Got wrecked again. Home 7am
-plus managed 7 times gym in 7 days, one 2 phase day one rest day :D
Dunno where this productivity comes from
Prolly no fap for over a month+TI4 over+shitloads of low weight high rep gym+sprints+taking multi vit supps+BCAAs+meditate (esp when drunk, sooo much fun bitches poking into you+you ignoring them :D)but I'm this testosterone fuelled rage monster. I'm at 84kg, 103 when I got here 10 months ago fuck yeah :D
Loving it really
Chicks are fucking racist man, the moment you get fit suddenly so many want you out of nowhere. My childish charm was here all along...Hello... Why can't the fat race prevail? oO
Well...thanks for reading.
I mean
Week was crazy as fuck...decent volume too.
Prolly won't be able to keep it up tho :D
It's been 2 and a half years since my last blog post. I come to LP every now and then and check out some non-poker related threads, and it's awesome to see familiar names keeping the community going. I dropped a hint/some wishful thinking in one of my last blogs that I was quitting poker to pursue a career in software development (as in, mostly building web applications), hoping to end up as a junior in some startup in San Francisco somewhere.
Unlike some of the great players here, I never truly loved poker. I was too emotional and unstable to accept the swings, and that's not okay as a mid stakes 6max/hu player. I liked being good at poker, but I always knew I had to do something else, before I ended up like those old Armenian chain-smoking Commerce regulars who berate young internet pros, try to hit on cocktail waitresses, and live simply for the thrill of the bad beat jackpot.
A couple years later, I'm happy to say that I work as a software engineer for an amazing, fun, fast-growing (I joined around ~15 employees, we have 42 now) startup. My days start at 11 am, I get paid very well (zero variance!), I'm mentally engaged most of the time, I lift weights 3x a week, I have a fantastic girlfriend, and am only getting better at what I do each day. Two years ago I was just a college dropout who only knew how to play poker and not much of anything else.
I can't think of a time during my poker career where I could just post a brag like that and not have to post any beats. Back then, I never could say that life was great, but it is now. I hope everyone here finds something similar, whether it be in poker or not.
I still miss some of the poker thrill though - my buddy Aaron just placed 36th in this year's WSOP ME and it was really exciting sweating him all week. Right now, I live out my thrills through a 50nl home game with coworkers, a far cry from the thousand dollar pots I played for not too long ago. But I found that the boringness of a salary makes me much better with money - with poker money I just spent it partying and on dumb shit. With a salary I actually save and spend mindfully (feel free to ask me about this sort of stuff) - my hopeful goal is to be able to retire by 35 (I'm nearing 26).
I'd love to try and help anyone who is or was in a similar situation - trying to figure out what to do post-poker, etc. For starters, I wrote a Quora answer on part of how I went from being a loser dropout to getting a job in a field I had no prior experience in: http://qr.ae/FjeM5 - the gist is, good poker players have a work ethic unlike most people, even if you're lazy as hell and only put in 20k hands a month.
I think about time, about moments. I am drawn to moments and treat the present (passing) moment like a drug. Addicted to moments, I find it difficult to move forward. I will exhaust myself in a moment, chasing the short term memory loop. I find unfettered beauty when I give my consciousness the opportunity to filter out the noise of living. No thoughts of food, of breath, of reality. Beauty can be found in every event, in every tear-wrinkled-cry. No matter, the cruel betrayal of reality dances on beauty like unrelenting rain.
Reality can crush the soul, turning minds to fraught...actions attacking from wayward direction... overwhelmed, selfishness can overcome and project from the mind.
So I live in a sexy spot in ottawa, 1 block away from a huge ass grocery store. I was grinding some HU and was like god damn I am hungry and I don't have any food in the house, lets go grab some shit fast and get back to grinding. What happens? Fucking retards happened.
You know how grocery stores are gay now? No longer have the nice carry baskets? you have to roam half way across the store to find the single 1 left? You are only picking up like 12 things and fucking navigating a sea of middle-aged-to-near-death seniors with a cart is so beyond -ev time that it feels unbearable? Well fuck I guess that is life, so I manned up and took the closest cart I could find.
Pwning corners, old people, dumb children, insane tight squeezes at full-speed, I am finally done picking up bagel fulls, delissio pizzas, havarti cheese, sun-rype fruit+veg drink, etc. etc. and make way to the biggest gamble of the entire evening, Do I go for a random cashier-line packed with endless people OR the self-serve which is literally such a fucking gamble IDK what the fuck half the people are doing trying to check themselves out.
The entire pain of my existence, the fucking Self Checkout, is meant for people with too many items to go to the quickcashier 1-8 but just enough to fit into 2 bags--at most. ALSO a minimum IQ 100< . Why? Because retards fucking the entire self checkout system up. There is only 1 reason why self checkout is slow-- retards. No retards, no delay. I wish I knew what the fuck they are thinking but I realize these are the same fuckups that will drive in the left lane on a highway going under the speed limit, merge at an on ramp at 1/2 the speed limit and completely fuck you if you are trying to merge behind them and eventually drive you to insanity (pun not intended). These retards are just so clueless to how slow they are and how much everyone else wants to murder them. So what do I do?
I pray to god when I am counting the shit in my cart that is under 9> so I can gtfo of this place and go to the speedcashier. 1, 2,3...7...who the fuck am I kidding of course I have more than 8, how the fuck do you go to a big ass grocery store with a huge cart and not pick up more than 8 things. Then I ask, is it low enough to fake the speedcashier and smile when she scans the 12th item? ROFL I am too much of a pansy obviously why do I always bother thinking about this. Time to GAMBLEZ, selfcheck baby, 1 time.
Shit starts out easy, 2nd in line, 3 people scanning their shit and all of them are near the end of scanning. Looks like a slam dunk. Then out of nowhere variable A for asshole comes along. There is always 1 dumbfuck asshole who can't figure out where the end of the self-checkout line is and always try to jump ahead of everyone. No Bitch, gtfo behind me or go gamble the other selfcheckout line. Once that bullshit distraction is finished I look back to see the progress and wtf is all that comes to mind. I have been god-fucked again, I literally am witnessing 3 full-retards and they still are scanning the same shit. All 3 of them, middle-age, 1 short-stalky man, 1 ginormous whale and 1 random women. The man can't stop staring at the screen and then looking at the clerk, then back at the screen. The random women has vegetables which she wants but has no idea what the name is so she can't scan them and the fucking whale is being the fat lazy stupid ho that she obviously is. Lets forget about the first two since they are going to be a while, and focus on the whale.
The whale has completed all the packing of at least 8 full size eco bags (WTF you stupid cunt don't you know the rules?) and is at the pay screen, so why the FUCK aren't you paying? I will tell you why, because she just got a text on her blackberry. She looks down at her clip on phone, pulls it out, scrolls a fuck-ton, seems satisfied and puts the phone back in the clip. Ok bitch you are testing my patience but since you are 10x more likely to leave than the other 2 I will let it slide but don't do anything else stupid because the consequences will never be the same. So what does she do? Ok, this is asinine, this women is a troll, she HAS to be a troll, this bitch just sinned more than a priest does when alone with children. Out of her skin-tight cause-o-how-fat-she-is jeans comes a wad of mother fucking small bills. OMG HEAD EXPLODE
I’m a winning recreational player up to 25nl 6 max, but lost all motivation and stopped playing last year.
Poker is not my main source of income but it is one of my favourite hobbies, so my roll was just sitting there and I hardly ever cash out.
This year tho after not playing for so many months I decided to challenge myself, to beat the zoom games. Not in a mathematical view of xxbb/100 but in terms of how many buy ins I can win.
I have the same feeling of motivation at the moment for this game as I did when I first deposited my first $30 on PS and wanting to build.
Even tho I’m over rolled for 25nl, I started the challenge at 2nl zoom.
Goal: win 50 buy ins at each stake from 2nl up to 25nl zoom games 6 max. LETS GOOO BRAAHHS
Hero: checks
marcator93: bets $3.20
Hero: raises $9.07 to $12.27 and is all-in
marcator93: calls $4.97 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($4.10) returned to Hero
*** FIRST RIVER ***
*** SECOND RIVER ***
*** FIRST SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows (three of a kind, Nines)
marcator93: shows (two pair, Tens and Nines)
Hero collected $9.98 from pot
*** SECOND SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows (a full house, Nines full of Tens)
marcator93: shows (a full house, Tens full of Nines)
marcator93 collected $9.97 from pot
Summary Total pot $20.89 | Rake $0.94
Hand was run twice
Board
Board
Seat 1: tomasz0208 (button) folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 2: sawadabr (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: aspid_AA (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Anne Rafaely folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 5: Hero showed and won ($9.98) with three of a kind, Nines, and lost with a full house, Nines full of Tens
Seat 6: marcator93 showed and lost with two pair, Tens and Nines, and won ($9.97) with a full house, Tens full of Nines
Submitted by : jvilla777
File: HH20140721 Klinkenberg #2 - $0.05-$0.10 - USD No Limit Holdem.txt
PokerStars Zoom Hand #119061410444: Holdem No Limit ($0.05/$0.10) - 2014/07/22 5:58:50 AEST [2014/07/21 15:58:50 ET]
Table Klinkenberg 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: Hero ($11.95 in chips)
Seat 2: Igorsss3 ($10.93 in chips)
Seat 3: yufeic ($10 in chips)
Seat 4: EasyRyderrr ($13.81 in chips)
Seat 5: vpokerok ($10 in chips)
Seat 6: Hertzog88 ($5.38 in chips)
Igorsss3: posts small blind $0.05
yufeic: posts big blind $0.10
Holecards(Odds) Dealt to Hero
EasyRyderrr: folds
vpokerok: folds
Hertzog88: folds
Hero: raises $0.20 to $0.30
Igorsss3: raises $0.60 to $0.90
yufeic: calls $0.80
Hero: calls $0.60
yufeic: bets $3.20
Hero: raises $6.15 to $9.35 and is all-in
yufeic: calls $4.20 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($1.95) returned to Hero
*** FIRST RIVER ***
*** SECOND RIVER ***
*** FIRST SHOW DOWN ***
yufeic: shows (a pair of Queens)
Hero: shows (three of a kind, Fives)
Hero collected $9.98 from pot
*** SECOND SHOW DOWN ***
yufeic: shows (three of a kind, Queens)
Hero: shows (three of a kind, Fives)
yufeic collected $9.98 from pot
Summary Total pot $20.90 | Rake $0.94
Hand was run twice
Board
Board
Seat 1: Hero (button) showed and won ($9.98) with three of a kind, Fives, and lost with three of a kind, Fives
Seat 2: Igorsss3 (small blind) folded on the Flop
Seat 3: yufeic (big blind) showed and lost with a pair of Queens, and won ($9.98) with three of a kind, Queens
Seat 4: EasyRyderrr folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 5: vpokerok folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Seat 6: Hertzog88 folded before Flop (didnt bet)
Awwwwwww yeeaaahhhhh... for any of you tech geeks out there the new toy this week are android smart watches. While the term "smart watch" has been out for a couple of years thanks to other vendors, none of them could do it right without a major player like Google/Apple obviously. So Google released a new fork in their OS called Android Wear meant for smartwatches or anything similar in this ultra portable category. I saw some vids and talked myself into believing these things could actually be useful, plus I have been without a watch for a year since my battery died so I just said fuck it.
My first fears were that it would be some gaudy brick like monstrosity on my wrist screaming "NEERRRRDDD!" while making women's vaginas dry up like a.... like something that makes women's vaginas dry up.
Anyway I swung by my local Verizon store who had one on display without all the cumbersome security crap so I could actually wear the damn thing and get a good feel for it (which by the way I have the most amazing Verizon store in my neighborhood. They have a fucking bellhop at the door who's sole job is to just open the door for you and greet you, then they take your name and enter it on a tablet that uploads it to a sales rep who comes and somehow knows exactly who you are you without ever meeting you. They arent pushy at all, actually answer legit questions, bring out demo units from stock of anything you want. The whole store is just bustling with activity, lots of neat toys like drones and remote control devices that interface with your cellphone all on display and fully interactive for the customer to mess with. Gotta give Verizon credit here for creating this little tech mecca in their stores lately).
Oh yeah, so I try on the demo unit and I'm instantly sold. It's perfect. It's comfortable, it's snazzy, the band feels great (the band looks like a cheap piece of shit at first but it's actually incredibly soft and comfortable. I still want to upgrade to a black stainless steel one though), it's light weight, the watch face isnt some huge unsightly eyesore gathering attention and the corners dont stab me in the wrist bone. It's just a really nice feeling watch. I buy it on the spot, get it all set up and so far I'm in love with it. It does exactly what I wanted it to, and that is remove the necessity to check your cellphone every time it beeps at you.
What you have to wrap your mind around is what the watch is really for; the purpose is to serve as a notification delivery system for your phone. Sure there are apps and stuff you can interact with on the watch by itself, but the big deal is that it ties in with your phone and just relays information between the two. The watch is not a standalone device, and the sooner you come to terms with this the sooner you can enjoy it. You arent supposed to be constantly fucking with it like you would a full featured phone. All it does is display whatever notifications are in your notification bar on your phone. While this doesnt sound like much it really bridges the gap between making your phone this total seamless experience with your life. One of my major 1st world problems is the struggle of having to whip out a 5" phone from my pocket hundreds of times per day. Or leaving it on my desk in a cradle so I can observe active notifications. The 2-3 seconds it takes to do this are converted into about a fucking nanosecond when you have it on your wrist. The phone wrist vibrates, you look down and boom, you instantly have your phil ivey twitter update. 5 minutes later you get an email confirming payment for something, BAM you see that shit and disregard it. Then your girl texts you whining about dinner and KABLAMO you swipe that shit into the trash, or maybe reply if you're a good boyfriend using voice-to-text.
You think it's silly right now, but once you acclimate yourself to it and get into the groove you instantly feel like you have saved 5-10 minutes of your life every day by not having to reach for your phone ever again. It's almost relaxing in a way, because you are satiating your phone addiction by having instant gratification at all times. Think of having unlimited crack if you were a crackwhore. The pipe is always lit with the effervescent tinge of smoke swirling from its tip at all times. You want a hit? By god have one my man, this one's on me. There are still dozens of other direct watch-to-phone interactions you can conjure such as changing profile status (silent/vibrate/etc), placing phone calls while driving using Google search (just say "ok google, call Sushi Taro" even though they arent in your phone book since it uses google search to identify the business name and lookup the number for you). The list goes on.
So to any of you tech guys who have been on the rail about one of these things, you'll love it. The market is very new so there's going to be tons of competition with lots of new devices coming up. Everyone said "wait for the moto 360, wait for the HTC" blah fucking blah. Yeah I'm sure my LG watch is going to get smoked by a competitor in no time flat, but right now it's amazing and I'll just sell them on ebay and upgrade my way through as I see fit. Losing $50 in depreciated smart watches every 3 months is an acceptable sacrifice to stay bleeding edge for a guy like me until the hardware/software fully matures and you can keep stick with a device. To be honest though I see no reason why this one wont receive plenty of love from LG and the community.
Sean could have made bond the bald bad-ass super man but instead we had to wait 40 years for Jason Statham --
and he never became bond, instead, a none mainstream hipster-walking-muscle with a face
now bond has morphed into Hitler's super child: a blonde, blue eye, cyborg mind Terminator
wasn't there a group of LPers predicting massive hyper inflation in the US? financial crisis happened when 2007? 7 years later inflation isn't even 1%. i mean we've only been printing @ 90billion a month for almost a decade
i don't find david brooks to be super smart or insightful, but he seems genuinely concerned about what people, Americans as well as world citizens value in today's world. he talks about "resume bullet points" vs "eulogy bullet points". all in all i think a good read and a few insights although some of the stuff seems a bit over simplified (although it's bound to happen in such a short article which prob demanded 5 points in becoming DEEP)
interesting article albeit 90% anecdotal about the lagging reasoning part of our brain or the prefrontal cortex vs the amygdala or fear response and the potential misconceptions about our current cognitive therapy and its potential uselessness and along with anti-anxiety meds
joseph stiglitz tries to outline the "breakdown of capitalism" being more of a political issue rather than ideological one. how gains are privatized yet losses are subsidized by the american people. i think a really good job of voicing the concerns of the "occupy wallstreet" although that movement(?) has been gone for a long time.
Contact Users: 360 Active, 0 Logged in - Time: 20:19
)
(two pair, Tens and Nines)
(a pair of Queens)
