Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays (December Review)!

Hey everyone, happy holidays! I hope that everyone is relaxing and enjoying some time with the fam.

As I briefly stated in my last post, I wrapped up poker for 2011 on December 15th and have been on vaction ever since...or as my friends would say, doing the same thing that I was doing before. The reason that I stopped on the 15th was simply because I had cleared my last possible milestone bonus(500K) for the year and my Team Online salary as well right around that day. I could have continued to play and earn some more FPPs but without the added incentive of hitting a new milestone bonus combined with the memory of last year's hectic non-stop grind, I chose to chill out for once.

I'll jump right into the numbers for December (all 100nl):

December



$2,817 Table Winnings
$2,000 FPP Value
$3,200 Milestone Bonus
-------------------------------
$7,817 USD

My volume was pretty pinner once again but I felt alright about at least earning some positive table winnings for a change lol. The games seemed pretty good considering that I was expecting the typical December-regfest but 100nl seemed just fine.

Away from the tables, this month has been pretty sweet. Since the 15th, I've been able to fall into a routine that looks something like this:

-Wake up around 10am-12pm
-Whip up a good breakfast
-Lay some micro sports bets on Bwin
-Crush roommate in Madden
-Hit gym
-Sweat sports games at home or nearby bar

It's been tough.

I also met a girl at a Christmas party 1 or 2 weeks ago that I've seen a few times since. I'm not sure if anything long-lasting will transpire...she's like 4 yrs older than me and I'm leaving for a few weeks tomorrow but she seems pretty cool. We first hooked up at the Xmas party in real highschool fashion...first in the coatroom and then after too many people were coming into get their coats we moved to the bathroom...real PG-13 kinda stuff though, nothing serious.

As I just mentioned, I will be out of the country and on the move beginning tomorrow until Jan. 14th. First, I'm leaving on Boxing Day with three friends on what promises to be an epic roadtrip from Vancouver->San Jose->Anaheim->L.A. The premis of the trip is to follow the Vancouver Canucks roadtrip down the coast...we each got three tickets for each game (Sharks,Ducks,Kings) for $150 per person. To put that into perspective, one ticket to a Vancouver home game could cost $150 so watching hockey in the US can be a pretty sweet deal. Of course it's going to cost us $700 in gas to get there but hey, there's going to be a lot more to the roadtrip than just watching hockey. I'll also be in LA for New Year's Eve, so that should be exciting.

After the roadtrip, I'll immediately be jumping on a plane and will be flying down to the Bahamas for the PCA. I'm not going to be playing the Main Event but there's some Team Online promo stuff going on so I'll be around. Should be awesome.

All right, I'm about to head out for a big family Christmas dinner. I'll still be doing a big year in review blog post + my plans and goals for next year. I haven't figured everything out 100% but I know that next year will be a much more focused effort, which means that I'll likely be attempting to repeat SNE or something worthwhile. I'll keep you posted, take it easy.

gl at the tables!

10th Anniversary $10M Sunday Million

Hey guys, just a quick reminder about the special Sunday Million today that is awarding at least $2 million to first...should be pretty epic.



In other news, I've finished up with poker for the year (aside from a couple tournaments perhaps!) and am looking forward to relaxing for the holidays. I'll give an update on how December went (poker + life) and then get around to doing the full year in review shortly after.

gl to those playing tomorrow.

Book Review: "How I Made My First Million From Poker"-Tri Nguyen

Tri “Slowhabit” Nguyen’s latest book, “How I Made My First Million From Poker,” is centered around the topic of finding success in poker by emphasizing a balance between many different aspects of one’s life. The aim of the text is to show aspiring poker players that through living a balanced lifestyle and by working hard, one can gain the mental edge that is required for success and longevity in the poker world (as well as any future endeavours that one may have down the road). Whether one is just beginning their journey as a professional poker player or contemplating retirement, Tri offers valuable insight into how to approach poker throughout one’s career by drawing upon and referencing his own experiences.

The text itself is 253 pages long and is broken into 24 short chapters, each covering a different topic that helps contribute to the main theme of the book (the processes that allowed Tri to find success in poker). The book is very well written and easy to read if you’re accustomed to simple poker lingo. If words like “ranges,” “3-bet,” and “EV” are not part of your vocabulary, you may want to read some of the chapters with Google open on your laptop. Each chapter is very concise and it doesn’t feel like there is very much filler at all. Even when Tri is sharing a story about his personal experiences he always makes sure to make his point efficiently and without rushing. At the end of each chapter, Tri offers a couple of exercises for the reader to do in order to put the theories that were just talked about into practice. Even if you don’t bother doing the exercises, the presence of the workbook acts as reminder that Tri’s book is all about putting in your own work and that poker is not a game that can simply been spoon fed to someone.

I think that Tri does a great job of covering a vast array of topics that are all important to being successful in poker (from technical poker strategy to how to increase your overall happiness away from the tables). One thing to note though is that poker players that are already able to find some success in the profession may find some parts of the book to be a little redundant. That said, what I really found interesting about the book was that through sharing his poker career from the very start to where he is today, Tri makes it possible for almost everyone to learn something new-regardless of how seasoned a player may already be. For example, while I may already practice a balanced lifestyle and know how to avoid tilting, I may not know the best way to brand myself or how to approach coaching. Along the same lines, it’s nice to have the importance of things that I might already be aware of reinstated…such as setting up passive income to get my money working for me.

Overall, “How I Made My First Million From Poker” offers an interesting read and valuable insight into what it takes to succeed through poker. I really agreed with what Tri had to say in his book and it’s clearly no coincidence that he’s managed to find success in poker and life. I would recommend this book to anyone that is struggling with how to think about the game and how they should approach poker, or to those who simply have an interest in how the mind of a poker player often functions.

If you'd like to pick up a copy or read a couple of other reviews first, here's the link: http://www.dailyvariance.com/poker-books/my-first-million-from-poker/

fwiw, I'm not friends with Tri nor do I know the guy so this is a completely unbiased review. I simply got an email a few weeks ago asking me if I'd review the book and it looked interesting to me so I agreed.

gl at the tables.

Ego In Poker-Winrate vs. Rakeback

There is way too much ego in poker. People are always quick to boast about their Superior poker IQ at the tables, either by pointing out where you went wrong in a hand and berating your play or by posting their opinion as fact on the forums. I'm certainly guilty of all of the above and while I'm not proud about it, I also can't think of a single poker player that doesn't have an ego problem to some extent. The fact is that in order to be a successful poker player, you need to be confident in yourself and the line between confidence and arrogance is so thin that it's easily crossed.

I want to preface my argument with the most important part to take away from this post. I have learned that flaunting one's ego is mostly just a reflection of insecurity. I know this because when I first began playing poker (and even now, but to a lesser extent though), I would berate a play or factually tell someone that they're wrong to reassure myself that I knew what I was doing, even if I didn't. In poker, it makes sense for people to be delusional about their skill level or they probably wouldn't be playing the game in the first place. When there are no definitive right and wrong answers, no clear-cut yeses and noes, it can be tough to know if you're winning (or losing) because of your play or simply because of variance. As a result, I think that a lot of people are insecure about their game and as an attempt to reassure themselves in what they are doing, they pretend or imagine that they are brilliant at poker by talking down to others.

With that said, the point of this post is not to plea to you to leave your ego aside while playing poker. Instead, the point of the post is to recognize that ego certainly exists among almost all poker players and to make a case for us mass-multitablers out there that the "winrate" statistic is very trivial so long as you're focused on the bigger picture of making money. Why am I trying to prove that people should be less focused on winrate and not other statistics? Well, if there's one thing that drives ego-centered arguments-it's people's winrates!

This post is inspired from an incident that occurred during my session today where I butchered a hand pretty badly against a winning regular and out of frustration wrote "why do I always pay off the nits?" to no one in particular, after the hand. This started a brief banter back and forth about who was the better poker player (aka the standard toolbox E-Argument) and after a quick glance at his results I found out, as I suspected, that he had only won less than 1/3rd of what I had earned in the same time frame yet his winrate was more than double mine!

Comparing Results

Results are how we keep score in poker. It's not a perfect system but it's the best we got. It would make sense then when trying to determine who is the better poker player to simply compare everyone's results and we would have a clear-cut answer to end all arguments. However, basic complications quickly arise because players have each played a different number of hands in their lifetime so it would not be fair to compare two players unless they had the exact same number of hands under their belt. This is where the winrate statistic comes into play and why people put so much emphasis on it...by looking at someone's winrate, we can learn how much money per hand someone is earning and thereby have a consistent measurement to use among all players. Sounds like the perfect way to compare people's skill level then right? A lot of people think yes but some smarter people would say NO!

Not surprisingly, those with a good winrate will be quick to defend the stat, while others with breakeven or marginal winrates will downplay it's importance. In my mind, there are two main reasons why I don't care more than I have to about my winrate.

The Bottom Line

When it comes to playing poker professionally, it all comes down to winning the most money that I can. Obviously I want my winrate to be as high as it can be so I can maximize my profits but unless you're playing high-stakes cash games it's almost always going to be the case that you can make more money from rakeback + small winnings rather than large table winnings +small rakeback(of course there are exceptions). Using myself as an example, in 2 years I've won about 130K in table winnings but because I've played over 4 million hands in this time span my winrate is nothing amazing (bit less than 1). One of the most amazing winrates that I've seen is around 6.6 from a player at 100nl but guess what, he's only earned 80K in the same time frame. The arguments starts now because you could easily say "well if the player with the high winrate played as many hands as you then he'd have won WAYY more money!" Yeah, well guess what, he CAN'T play as many hands as I can or he WOULD HAVE DONE IT TOO. There's a skill within itself that's required to mass multi-table and I think that it's very undervalued. People that have great winrates have them for a reason-they pick good tables and can pay attention to every detail. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying they're not fantastic poker players...just that take away their table selection and throw them on 24 tables and we'll see what their winrate drops to.

The players that I consider truely elite are those that can mass multi-table and have solid winrates to boot. I don't put myself in that category but I don't feel as though I'm leagues off either. To name a few names, guys like Ronfar3, TimStone, gutter23, Vinivici9586 and a few others have been able to maintain great winrates while maximizing rakeback and have it all figured out in my opinion.


Sacrificing Attention

The main reason why I think that the winrate statistic should not be boasted in the face of any mass multi-tabler is because they are aware that they are not playing 100% optimally and ACCEPT that in order for more overall profits, as mentioned above. When you're flying through 24 tables, you accept that you are going to miss little things, misclick more, and probably most importantly, practice worse table selection because you're going to earn more money from rakeback than you would from winnings alone. I don't care if you have a winrate of 2.x when I feel that I could have a winrate of 4.x if I also bumhunted 8 juicy tables all of the time. Of course, I'll be reluctant to prove this because I know the value of my time and will be instead busy grinding out them VPPs :)

Sample Size/How One Is Running

One last point to use against those bragging about their awesome winrate is to say that their sample size is usually meaningless. For reasons that were mentioned above, usually players with good winrates will be playing few tables and as a result, have a relatively small number of hands under their lifetime belt. People that think they have it all figured out after playing only 1 million hands (especially 100K-500K, lol) have another thing coming. I can play 250K hands in 1 month and in that month I could win $10K at the tables only to lose a few grand the very next month. When your sample size is small, variance will play a much greater role in your results and you could easily be on a heater the whole time and not even realize it.

Should We Care About Winrates At All?

Sure, we should care about winrates. I'm not saying someone's winrate doesn't matter...just that it's importance should be downplayed when getting into ego wars. Apart from the obvious reason of maximizing profit as much as possible, winrates are also important for things such as coaching. Whether I like it or not, having a good winrate and respect often go hand in hand in the poker community and therefore is not something to ignore completely.

And that's that. I'd like to hear other people's thoughts about this...especially someone that wants to defend their 2.56 winrate lol!

Every Day Is Exactly The Same (November Review)

Bleh, chalk up November as the third lame month in a row for me now. While it's a bit frustrating, It's hard to get overly discouraged about how things went this month considering that I think my volume in November turned out to be the lowest of the year (besides January). Aside from the fact that I never really gave myself much of a chance to catch a heater or turn things around, the hands that I did manage to log also saw me run way below expectation. Anyways, the breakeven stretch continues, weeeeeeeee!



November

$227 Table Winnings
$2,000 FPP Value
---------------------------------
$2,227 USD

Obviously a very LOL total but I also made some decent money from my salary and I'm close enough to the 500K milestone that I coulda fudged the total if I really wanted to :) but I'll save it for December!

Away from the felt, November was a pretty social month with plenty of outings. My new roommate Mark and I went out quite a few nights and even managed to simultaneously bring home a couple of gals after enticing them with Delissio pizza (new pickup line added to teh arsenal if TV line fails). I'm pretty sure that judging by the quality of girls that I hit on when hammered the pizza line will sadly be much more effective LOL. It was great though, I first offered if the girls would like to split a cab with us and as they were hesitating Mark piped up about the pizza and BAM, they were sold. We returned home and Mark threw the pizza in the oven, which we ate a few minutes later after it came out black on the bottom. Nobody cared. I turned the TV on and sat next to my girl. The next thing I know, Mark's girl comes out of his room wearing his sweat pants and his hoodie. Mark comes out afterwards and hands her a brand new, UNOPENED tooth brush that he claims he just "had lying around." I'm not sure how the girl wasn't petrified or turned off by the fact that Mark appeared to have the one night sleepover down to a science but the next thing I know they're brushing their teeth side by side in our bathroom! Shortly thereafter, Mark grabs her hand, leads her to his bedroom, closes the door and I don't see him till morning. At this point, it's about 3:30 in the morning and I look over at my girl and see her sprawled out on the couch. She has a pretty decent body but has been a pretty big tease and seems to like playing games with me up to this point so I don't really know what's going through her head (example. At the club, for reasons that are still not clear to me, I walked up to her from behind and slapped her on the ass at one point. She really takes offense to this so I apologize but she is still fired up. I concede that I have screwed myself over here, apologize once again and then leave. 5 minutes later she sees that I'm actually not going to approach her again so she comes over and sits next to me and starts chatting again.lol.). I tell her that I'm really tired and that she should come sleep with me instead of on the couch. She says that she's not going to have sex with me, I say that's fine we should just cuddle...blah blah this goes on for a while until she seems unwilling to cave. Now I'm really tired and even though I figure she's still playing games am not going to force her to do anything obv so I give up, throw her a sleeping bag and jump in my bed and start to fall asleep. 30 seconds later she comes into my room and says it's "cold" out there and wants to sleep with me. lolz, crazy fkn girls. I'm actually more angry and tired with her at this point than in the mood for anything and pass out very quickly. I wake up in the morning cuddling her and am no longer tired and angry. She continues with her story that she doesn't sleep with guys she just meets and then decides to tease me for a couple hours, telling me all kinds of personal sexual secrets, showing me her panties etc. She then asks me if I have some paper and a pen to do her "morning diary." I tell her straight up that I think she's crazy but to knock herself out and that there's some paper on my desk. I ask her what she's writing about and she tells me that she's writing about all the things she wishes I would do to her! lol I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. I tell her to show me the list and I'll do my very best! Still no go. By now I see that things are pointless and can hear Mark banging around the kitchen so I get up for some breakfast. He's got a big stupid smile on his face, which adds to my frustration. The girls leave shortly after-we trade phone numbers because it seems to be the decent thing to do. My girl acts as though she doesn't want my number at all and has since been texting me regularly. lol, I'm pretty much over meeting girls in clubs + one night stands in general...time to take a spin class or something.

December's going to be an action packed month for the first 15 days. As it stands, my tentative plan is to earn just over 50K VPP's in this time frame, which will clear most of my salary for the year and overshoot the 500K milestone bonus by a bit. It will look like I will be ending the year with about 500K VPP's (half of my volume from last year) and 120K +salary in profits. In my mind, I'm already planning towards 2012 and will be looking to wrap up what has been a profitable but unstructured year by Dec. 15. After Dec. 15, I will turn my focus to some poker-related ideas that I have (will talk about more later, no point now as I only have ideas lol) and I will take some time off for the holidays!

Aside from completing my video series that I talked about earlier in my blog by Dec. 15, I will also be doing a short review of "How I Made My First Million From Poker," by Tri "Slowhabit" Nguyen:



To be honest, I don't think that I've ever read a single book about poker before...this isn't because I think that I don't need to or that I can't be bothered to do so, it's mostly because I don't think that there is very much good material that's catered to online play or the modern poker player. I could be wrong, as I haven't really done a whole lot of searching but from what I've seen there seem to be a lot of people that are better salesmen than poker players. Anyways, this book caught my interest so I'll let you know if I think it's worth if for you guys to pick up!

Hope you all had a good November and here's to a good December!

gl at the tables.

Movember

Just a quick shout out to everyone that's doing Movember this year. If you live under a rock and are not aware of what Movember is or why 80% of the male population suddenly has dirty 'staches on their faces you can get all of the details here:

http://ca.movember.com/

I'm not sure how many people actually go as far as collecting pledges for growing the mustache...hopefully a lot do, although I'm pretty sure for most guys Movember is just an excuse to see if they can in fact grow a mustache. Shamefully, I fall into this second category since I never even really planned on doing Movember this year and just made a late decision 1 week into the month to not shave and see what happens. I'm in a pool with a few guys for motivation...losers have to ship the winners 20 whole loonies. At the very least, I'd like to think that we're helping raise awareness for prostate cancer even though we're not raising any money. Only 1 person has quit thus far, so maybe he can just send the money to charity instead.

As it turns out, I cannot really grow much of a mustache. It's very thin and patchy and looks pretty greasy. Thankfully most of my friends aren't fairing much better than me either.

One guy said it best, "November is the best month of the year to pick up chics because our competition looks like that!" as he pointed to some dude with an ugly 'stache. I've been surprised that some girls have still talked to me out at bars and clubs...though it's more than likely that my mustache is invisible in poorly lit rooms.

Here are a couple of pics-just because you asked Rosh...try not to get too excited buddy ;/




Anyone else eagerly looking forward to Dec. 1 lol??

PokerSchoolOnline Videos

Hey guys, I'm currently in the process of making a 2-part video mini-series about full-ring cash games for PokerSchoolOnline...which kinda made me realise that I never really brought to attention the two videos that I've already contributed to the website. Maybe you've already found them by now anyways but if you haven't and are interested in viewing them, go ahead and take a look (I've also added the links to the sidebar on the blog):

http://www.pokerschoolonline.com/articles/Session-Videos-Frosty012

Both vids are strategy videos for 100nl full-ring cash. I used two different formats for each video...in the first, I'm speaking "live" in the sense that I recorded the audio and footage simultaneously. In the second video, I recorded a session and then went back to add the audio. The first video has around 2,000 views and the second about half of that (was released later). I actually like the second video much better than the first, probably because I could explain my thought process in a more drawn-out manner and there were several interesting spots that came up during play. Anyways, take a look at both of them and I'm sure you'll get something out of it. Also, there are several other videos posted at www.pokerschoolonline.com by other members of Team Online and PokerStars Pro to view as well and I think you only need like 150VPP's to see everything. Oh yeah, everything's free as well. I'm not trying to sell you something, lol.

I'll keep you posted about the release of my current project that I'm working on. The focus is going to be around "the essentials for mass multi-tabling full-ring cash games." I'm looking to have it finished before Dec.15 so I would assume it will be released shortly after that...

gl at the tables, let me know what you think about the vids!

Red Spade Open This Sunday!

The Red Spade Open is this Sunday, click on the above picture for the full details. The short of it is that the tourney is a $55 buy-in with a $1 million guaranteed prize pool as well as a $200,000 guarantee for first place. Additionally, there will be a $100 bounty on the head of all Team PokerStars Pro and Team Online members (including myself of course) so that's definitely some added value! It's going to be a lot of fun so hopefully some of you guys land on my table and we can win some money.

Poker has continued to go steady for me this month-steady in a bad way, that is. Still runnin' cold but have managed to keep my head afloat and stay in the black, although I've essentially been breaking even before rakeback. Graph of this month:



As you can see, I'm still running way below EV (almost all of this is 100nl) so I'm not too bothered by the results and I think that I'm playing pretty well within this breakeven stretch. Here are 3 hands from my session today that won't even be counted towards my EV discrepancy. All hands were against the same villain (random playing 41/22)...this fish was on fire.

1.Poker Stars $100.00 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players
MP2: $130.00
CO: $101.50
BTN: $100.00
SB: $45.25
Hero (BB): $158.65
UTG: $137.00
UTG+1: $152.00
MP1: $47.95

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with Q A
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $3, 3 folds, BTN calls $3, 1 fold, Hero raises to $13.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $10.50

Flop: ($30.50) A T Q (2 players)
Hero bets $20.00, BTN raises to $86.50, Hero calls $66.50

Turn: ($203.50) 2 (2 players)

River: ($203.50) 4 (2 players)

Final Pot: $203.50
BTN shows 4 3
Hero shows Q A
BTN wins $201.50
(Rake: $2.00)

2.Poker Stars $100.00 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
MP2: $130.00
CO: $100.00
BTN: $187.25
SB: $47.40
Hero (BB): $114.20
UTG: $137.00
UTG+1: $147.50
UTG+2: $55.70
MP1: $106.65

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with A K
1 fold, UTG+1 raises to $3, 4 folds, BTN raises to $7.50, 1 fold, Hero raises to $21, 1 fold, BTN calls $13.50

Flop: ($45.50) A J 8 (2 players)
Hero bets $28.50, BTN raises to $166.25, Hero calls $64.70 all in

Turn: ($231.90) 3 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($231.90) J (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $231.90
BTN shows T Q
Hero shows A K
BTN wins $229.90
(Rake: $2.00)

3.Poker Stars $100.00 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
UTG+1: $100.00
UTG+2: $100.00
MP1: $388.25
MP2: $117.50
Hero (CO): $100.00
BTN: $136.90
SB: $142.00
BB: $58.45
UTG: $118.30

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with 4 4
UTG raises to $3.50, 2 folds, MP1 calls $3.50, 1 fold, Hero calls $3.50, BTN calls $3.50, SB calls $3, BB calls $2.50

Flop: ($21.00) T 4 J (6 players)
SB checks, BB checks, UTG checks, MP1 checks, Hero bets $14.00, BTN folds, SB folds, BB calls $14, UTG folds, MP1 calls $14

Turn: ($63.00) 8 (3 players)
BB checks, MP1 checks, Hero bets $41.50, BB calls $40.95 all in, MP1 calls $41.50

River: ($186.95) 6 (3 players - 1 is all in)
MP1 bets $329.25, Hero calls $41 all in

Final Pot: $268.95
MP1 shows 7 5
Hero shows 4 4
BB shows K J
MP1 wins $183.85
(Rake: $2.00)

It didn't help my cause that this was at a Euro table too lol. The first two hands were kinda tilting because his pre-flop play is laughable...the last hand is mostly tilting because I was cheering when both villains called the turn and the river bricked a non-spade...of course he had the last laugh with his straight.

My volume has been ok this month...I've been playing a few hours everyday but my days have been cut short most of the time because my roommate and I have been going out a lot. We're both living very similar lifestyles right now (he's a pro athlete) so neither one of us feels bad about waking up at 11am and not having to be anywhere. We usually make some breakfast, play some Madden 12, then he goes off to the gym and I play poker for a few hours and meet up again later. I think we've come home at 3am on Tuesday and Wednesday this week so it's obviously quite an abnormal lifestyle compared to most of my peers. We haven't been going out and getting trashed or anything...just taking it easy actually. One of the nights we went to this hipster/jazz bar that I never knew existed but was pleasantly surprised. They had a live band and you could order some games to play with at the table...we had a couple other people with us so we ask for Jenga. They also had a life-sized Jenga game set up in this dungeon-like room in the back of the bar that we had access to. Mark had the genius idea that the loser had to take a shot of whatever the winners decided to give them...of course he ended up losing and had to take a prairie fire (tequila and Tabasco sauce) :)

I also went over to Victoria for Remembrance Day Long Weekend with my friends Ben and Iain. The voyage over there was pretty epic actually. We were trying to catch the 3pm ferry but upon arriving at the terminal we had a bunch of people waving us towards the exit yelling "everything's cancelled!" due to hurricane like winds. The wind was as crazy as I've ever seen it...sea water was actually blowing onto the highway coating Ben's car with salt. We didn't really know what to do at this point but decided to head into Tsawwassen and hang out at my friend Jarnael's house and waited to see if the wind died down at all. Iain was already there and around 4pm I called the ferry terminal and got word that a boat would likely sail at 5pm. Jarn offered to drive us down there again since there would be no way of getting on with a car (lineup was too backed up due to previous cancellations) so we headed down there to scope out the line. Upon arrival, we got stuck in a traffic line that was backed up about a mile away from the terminal and there was no way around it to the drop-off zone. Traffic was at a standstill so the three of us decided that our best move would be to jump out of the car and walk along the shoulder of the highway to the terminal. At first, this seemed like a genius idea as we started passing a lot of cars while speed walking towards the terminal. Unfortunately, the terminal was a lot further away than it looked lol and traffic started to move shortly after we exited the vehicle and soon enough every car that we walked by had passed us back. At this point, it was getting very close to 5pm so we started jogging to make the ferry. Ben had 2 bags, I had a small suitcase and Iain was in cowboy boots so together I'm sure the three of us were the laughing stock of the highway as we ran to make the boat. In dramatic fashion, we arrived right at 5 o'clock, printed out tickets and ran towards the docking bay. There was a huge herd gathered to get on the boat but we scraped on as the last few passengers and made it on board. The trip had all the makings of an epic weekend.

I had a great time, but the weekend turned out to be far from epic. On Friday, we watched the Canucks game and then met up with some more people to do a bit of a bar hop for the rest of the night. I don't know if it was the hour or the locations that we picked (or a combination of both) but there seemed to be an older crowd everywhere we went. We threw some shapes on the dance floor with some MILFs but then called it a night.

The crowd was much better on Saturday when we went to a club, although I was just with Ben and 2 chicks that I didn't really know. In my limited experience with clubbing in Victoria, the girls get aggressive! Last time I went clubbing there a girl asked me if "I was hers for the rest of the night" after dancing with her for 5 minutes and this time some wasted girl approached me, pushed her tits against me and told me to grab her ass. At first I thought that her friends must have put her up to something so I just kind of stood and didn't grab anything...the next thing I know she starts unbuttoning my shirt (well, Iain's shirt that I borrowed actually!) and asks me to grab her tits. At this point I'm thinking that this is ridiculous but she did have pretty nice tits so whatever, I grabbed them. Now she has my shirt completely off and is grinding my leg and I'm thinking to myself that I don't want to have sex with this walking STI so I did what any good friend would do and told her to go talk to my "millionaire" friend Ben and ran away. The rest of my time in the club was kind of spoiled after that point since Ben and I tried to avoid this train wreck the best that we could and eventually just left alone. Couple pics of Ben's place and Iain's shirt:




One last thing. If you haven't checked out Talonchick's short film yet, go take a look! It's a good video on how to balance a "real" job and still play poker for additional benefits. It's done by the same guys that made "I am Nanonoko" and my film as well (which should be released in the near future). Catch Talonchick's vid here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm7vbb0GwkE

Alright, I'm off to the gym and then heading downtown tonight. Hope you all have a good weekend. Take it easy!

gl at the tables!

$2000? Naw, take $200

So I've continued to run poorly this month but am somehow still in the black so it could be worse. I would be be beating the games at a pretty good rate if I ran at expected value (EV) but it is what it is and I'll continue to try and play well and not worry about what I can't control.

One thing that I want to make clear is that I've said many times in the past that the "EV" stat is not really a good indicator of how a player is "running" and I still believe that even when I vent about running below EV. I don't think that EV is at all an accurate way of measuring how a player is running due to the fact that it can't account for cooler situations or situations where most of the money is already in the middle before a big suckout occurs on a sequential street. For example, I may get it in with AA vs. KK in late position 4 times in 1 day and hold each time and think I'm the best player in the world when I'm obviously just running hot. Furthermore, I may get 90% of my money in the middle with AA vs. KK on a 224r flop and then have to get the last of it in on a K turn and my EV will tell me that I was supposed to lose. Because of these two factors I don't think that a player can claim to be running good or bad based on EV alone, although it definitely provides some kind of base to work off of. What EV will tell you is that regardless of how one thinks that they are running, EV will tell you how much money you SHOULD HAVE WON based on the mathematical percentages. All I'm getting at is that it's fair for me (or anyone) to be upset after running below EV because I should in fact have $1800 more in my account if I ran at expectation, although it's not fair for me to claim that I'm running bad based on this information alone. I make that claim based on what I feel is an honest assessment of my own situation after taking into account the aforementioned factors as well. Obviously it's just an opinion rather than fact.

With that said, here are a couple of not so fun hands from my session today:

Poker Stars $200.00 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players

MP1: $200.00
MP2: $310.45
CO: $105.95
BTN: $200.00
SB: $135.55
Hero (BB): $203.35
UTG: $636.35
UTG+1: $142.20
UTG+2: $235.50

Pre Flop: ($3.00) Hero is BB with A Q
4 folds, MP2 raises to $4, 1 fold, BTN calls $4, SB calls $3, Hero raises to $18, 2 folds, SB raises to $82, Hero raises to $203.35, SB calls $53.55 all in

Flop: ($279.10) 9 6 2 (2 players - 1 is all in)

Turn: ($279.10) 5 (2 players - 1 is all in)

River: ($279.10) T (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $279.10
SB shows T T
Hero shows A Q
SB wins $276.10
(Rake: $3.00)

This was probably the most tilting hand of the day only because I knew the villain can almost NEVER have me dominated here but it's going to be a flip nearly every time. Even though I have no fold equity, after putting in $18 plus all of the dead money out there it seems like folding shouldn't really even be considered. This is just a spot where I feel that I clearly played the hand better than the opponent and "deserved" to win the flip since that's the best that they can hope for lol.

Poker Stars $100.00 No Limit Hold'em - 7 players

UTG: $100.00
UTG+1: $127.85
MP: $91.50
Hero (CO): $100.00
BTN: $126.35
SB: $74.50
BB: $46.20

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is CO with A K
3 folds, Hero raises to $3, BTN raises to $9, 2 folds, Hero raises to $21, BTN raises to $61, Hero raises to $100, BTN calls $39

Flop: ($201.50) T 7 6 (2 players)

Turn: ($201.50) A (2 players)

River: ($201.50) 4 (2 players)

Final Pot: $201.50
Hero shows A K
BTN shows 7 6
BTN wins $198.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Scratch that, this hand was more tilting that the last. I don't really care if you want to be a playmaster (because if you look up the stats for people that playmaster, they are almost always losing players or break-even at best and this guy was no exception) but when you get caught it would be nice if the best hand could hold. Oh well.

Poker Stars $100.00 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players

MP1: $107.50
MP2: $142.00
CO: $122.40
BTN: $77.80
SB: $158.55
Hero (BB): $116.60
UTG: $114.55
UTG+1: $178.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with K A
UTG raises to $3, UTG+1 calls $3, 4 folds, SB raises to $14, Hero raises to $116.60, 2 folds, SB calls $102.60

Flop: ($239.20) 6 6 7 (2 players)

Turn: ($239.20) 3 (2 players)

River: ($239.20) 2 (2 players)

Final Pot: $239.20
SB shows J K
Hero shows K A
Hero wins $236.20
(Rake: $3.00)

Despite many tough beats, I still managed to turn a $400ish profit today due in big part to hands like these where I'm pretty much gifted some big pots from some unknowns.

In other news, I'm stoked to be going to Victoria for Remembrance Day Long Weekend! I'm going over on a ferry tomorrow afternoon with Ben and we're staying at his awesome apartment close to downtown. There's several other people that I know that will be over there, including Miles, so I'm sure we'll meet up at some point and party. Unfortunately, I've agreed to do Movember this year with a few people and am looking as unattractive as ever...it will be an epic challenge to woo an islander this weekend with my whiskers but we'll see what happens. It will be much tougher than last weekend, where I met a girl on Friday and before I could even use my TV line on her she used it on me lol. That almost never happens. Anyways, hope you all have a good weekend!

gl at the tables!