Life of a Grinder

Last Post Addendum

2009-02-15T20:37:00.001-08:00

Here is a strategy article I wrote that never got picked up by anyone. I'll post it here for you guys as a last thank you for support and reading my blog : )

The Most Important Top Secret Strategy Article You’ll Ever Read (For Players of All Levels)

When I first graduated college, the first thing I did was light my diploma on fire and get a job for a poker magazine. It was 2005, poker was glamorous, and I was crushing the biggest online games that Party Poker play money had to offer.

One of my first assignments was covering a huge thousand-player plus WSOP tournament. I got to sweat the cards of some of the great ones, and I immediately went to go seek out my favorite player, Mike Matusow. I tried to understand some of his plays, but they were just too advanced for me. Raising in middle position with 92o? Shoving all-in on gutshots on the flop? What was the method behind this guy’s madness? He busted towards the end of day 1 and I asked him for a little insight into some of his decisions.

“Kid, I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Matusow told me. “You don’t gotta be a great player to beat the %#&(*@ idiot donks at this game. You just,” he paused, “You just plain can’t blow up.”

At the time, I thought Matusow was just trying to weasel his way out of giving away his secrets. I have been playing poker professionally in Las Vegas for a year and a half now and given up writing almost totally, but only now have I realized how powerful his advice truly is and bothered to write it down.

If you are a competent player at whatever form of poker you enjoy, you have the capacity to be a winning player. You do not have to be good, or even average. I see players who most local pros agree play slightly poorly but are bigger winners in the year than some of the best players at the Bellagio.

Poker is much more psychological than people give the game credit for, and reducing strategy articles to mathematical formulas or dictums only serves to distract from the real game at hand. Poker is an amorphous game, and the most important thing you need to know is to recognize when changes are taking place, notably when others are starting to steam and when you are beginning to steam.

Manipulating others’ steam:

When players focus on their sessions, they tend to only focus on big hands, and coolers on that note. Coolers are a silly part of the game, when both players play their hands perfectly but one wins a big pot and one loses a big one. This will most certainly effect if you win or lose a session, but truly it should be forgotten about. The other source of big pots is when a player loses a cooler and begins to steam.

When my friends tell me about their sessions, they tell me, “Yeah, I lost blah blah and a steamed off a little after that, but if I just hadn’t had that cooler, I would have walked away with a big profit.” Well, sorry to break it to you friends, but coolers will happen and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s what you do after it that you can control.

If a player starts audibly complaining, this is a gold mine. If you are sitting at a table in a poker room and a player’s friend comes from another table to tell him the bad beat he just took, change tables now and go to that man’s table! If you notice a player has just lost his significant profit, play more speculative hands against that player. He will get his stack in sometime in the next few orbits, I promise you.

If you are playing at a casino, chat it up and see who has a set deadline for leaving. If a player gets stuck and they only have a little bit longer to play, you can bet that they will be playing a lot faster trying to find any excuse get their money into the pot.

Keep an eye on people’s stacks and make an extra effort to play more hands against people who are losing, especially losing big. If you are playing hold’em and you see 9 7 offsuit in the cutoff and you normally fold, give it a go if a losing player is in the pot. Conversely, play less hands against people who are winning – they will make less mistakes.

If you are playing online, check how many tables your opponents are playing. If they are playing 10+ tables, they probably will not even notice a bad beat and won’t steam much. If they are playing 3 or 4, open up a few of them and check to see when they take beats on other tables. If you’re playing sit and gos, check their sharkscope graphs and see if they’re in the midst of a downswing. Players who have been losing will always play worse than if they were winning. These are the guys you want to target and play.

Manipulating Your Steam:

The second part of the equation is learning how to recognize when you are steaming and prevent it.

Even the best players all steam, and we all play universally terrible when we steam. The top players all know how to play almost flawlessly. However, the games are still profitable because occasionally, they will still steam and not bring their total A game to the table.

On a recent episode of Poker After Dark, for example, a bunch of players including Phil Ivey and Daniel Negreanu all put up $100,000 before play started and did a coinflip to see who would win all the money. While this seems like silly gambling at first, it is actually a great litmus test as to who the great players are. You better believe that the weaker players were playing faster to try to get that $100k back.

To learn how to control your tilt, you need to immediately recognize when it begins. My friend taught me a technique where every time you are under the gun, you ask yourself honestly how you are feeling. If you are frustrated, it is time to take a short break before the blind gets to you and sit out an orbit. Doing this every orbit will allow you to regulate and recognize your emotions.

Even if you are not feeling frustrated, you should be taking short breaks every few hours. It is a bad thing to become too invested in the game you are in, and if you feel like you cannot take a five minute break every few hours, this is when it is most important to do so. You have lost all sense of perspective and need to regain it immediately before you lose respect for your money and start playing recklessly.

The most important time to control steam is after you have lost a big cooler. If you even have the slightest doubt though that you may tilt off your money, go take a break.

Another strategy to control your own steam is to remember all the previous times you steamed, all the disastrous results that followed, and how terrible you felt afterwards. Do you really want to do that to yourself again? You must drill into your head how important it is not to steam! It is the most important, top-secret weapon you have to destroy your opponent. If you can control yourself at this moment, you cannot be beaten in the long run.

The most important thing, though, is confidence and lack of fear. New players have trouble not steaming because they are heartbroken. They have been losing and they feel dread at knowing that this is going to be another losing session. They lack the ability to control the weapon that you now have, and they start playing faster to get unstuck and try to eke out a small win or get buried in a huge loss.

If you have confidence that you will make back the money you lost through maintaining your mental control, you will make it back. Maybe not this session, but eventually. If you know you won’t steam, then you won’t steam. If you do not fear having a losing session, then it will make you stronger because you won’t bury yourself in a huge loss. There is nothing wrong with having a losing session – it happens to everyone. There is something very wrong with having a monster 5-buyin loss. If you can accept losses knowing that you played great and did not steam, then you cannot be beaten in the long run.

Many people will disregard this article and try to find some secret technical method while ignoring the psychological aspects of poker. This is good for me and you. If they don’t realize how important the secret weapon I just gave you is, you will still beat them. Remember, you don’t gotta be great to win. You just can’t plain blow up.

Final Post

2009-02-15T20:18:00.000-08:00

This is probably going to be the last post I'm making in this blog.

Last month, after having my first breakeven month in three years, I decided to leave Vegas and become a student again. I had a great year playing pro poker financially and lived a lifestyle of extreme comfort; sleeping whenever I wanted, working an average of 28 hours/week, and making more money than basically anyone else around my age that I know (with the exception of one crazy wall street guy). It was also a pretty nutty environment in terms of living the "balla" lifestyle, getting $600 bottles at clubs, getting VIP at strip clubs, etc. etc. (read: colossal waste of money)

The reason I decided to quit was just because poker is so empty. I have gotten to a level where I think I have a really strong mastery of full ring cash no limit hold'em and it is a completely trivial accomplishment. If I continue down this path, I will probably be grinding $10/20 NLHE live within the next year, but I will feel like total shit doing it.

Not only is poker completely devoid of any joy for me any more, but it makes me feel like I'm just absolutely wasting my time. It is very difficult to reconcile the idea as a professional poker player that you are living by basically siphoning off people's wealth and causing them misery. You are doing a service to no one - the world would probably be a better place if you were not in it. Additionally, you are basically crippling your future, leaving vast amounts of empty space in your work history and ensuring that you will not be able to get the job you probably deserve that is in line with your skill set, but rather a much more menial job that can afford to take a risk on you.

You have to really LOVE this game, I mean LOVE it in order to succeed as a pro. I really liked playing poker; I probably thought about poker 90% of the day, listened to poker podcasts, watched videos, read 2+2, read every poker book in my library then every poker book in my bookstore for six years. I didn't love this game enough.

I don't know a single professional poker player that has been playing for 3+ years and is truly in a place where he/she feels happy with life. That is a telling sign; I am talking about a pool of over a thousand players I've met. It's awesome short-term, but it completely wears on you. In all fairness though, these are people that are mid-stakes grinders, making like $30k-100k/year. Maybe when you get really good and are making like $150k+ life gets better (?)

Poker has taught me a lot though and I certainly appreciate it still in certain aspects. I probably never have to worry about getting fired from a job. I have financial security and a safety blanket in that I can always go back to it and make good money. I make better decisions in my life generally by being able to think about situations analytically and weigh the expected value of my decisions.

I am going back to school now to finish up my premed classes and apply to med school. I am really enjoying my classes and being back in an academic environment. I was always very comfortable in school and it feels great to be rewarded for putting in hard work (not the case many times in poker). I'm still playing part-time to cover bills, probably like 15 hours/week or something.

Don't make the same mistake I did. If you love playing poker, harness that joy and just play part-time as a hobby. You can still make serious cash and be a really great player while having the comfort and security of a regular job. It's a completely different life just making your existence about poker. You will keep the love of the game too, which is really the most important thing.

I will still be maintaining my other "life" blog at http://www.xanga.com/anonymousliar if you would like to keep up.

I would love to help people if they are struggling with the game too. If you want to talk poker, shoot me an email at FullTiltAznCutie@gmail.com

Octubre Results

2008-11-02T02:58:00.001-08:00

Had a pretty terrible month. Not going to include stats any more because I don't want to create an electronic record in case Mr. IRS comes a knockin', but it was bad and I ran ice-cold, losing 4 figures in flips on flop color in the process.

I am now 0-10 lifetime in $100+ flips, which really pisses me off. How is that even possible?

Highlights/Lowlights of the month:

-Busto player/friend asking me to "invest" $10k in marijuana farm to prevent him from getting beat up (declined offer)
-Losing 3 $1000+ pots AI on the flop when I was 98%+ to win
-Accidentally mucking a $1k winning hand on the river when I made a move w/ 92o against AA on the flop and hit two pair on the river
-Playing $10/25 HU NLHE and winning $1k while paying a nice $400 in rake in 2 1/2 hours
-Winning two pots calling $100+ river bets with Q-10 high and A-J high
-Having to drag a friend away from Jean Robert Bellande in the parking lot of the Wynn after friend drunkenly called him a douchebag
-Listening to Joe Cassidy tell Jean Robert Bellande that the three girls that were "so into him" were definitely hookers

strip clubbaments

2008-10-26T16:28:00.001-07:00

Went to the Spearmint Rhino last night with some poker players. I kind of hate going there as I find it to be a huge waste of money and also somewhat depressing, but I decided to tag along anyway.

The guys I were with were pretty ballin', so they decided to get a table and bottle service at the club. Sitting in the VIP section of the Rhino, the girls come to you in droves assuming you are looking to throw a couple thousand down the tubes. If you've ever been in the Rhino at all, you know that the girls kind of don't leave you alone and are pretty aggressive at times, to the point of being really annoying. They are also completely transparent about trying to get the most money out of you as is humanly possible, which makes me usually huddle in a ball and act like the poor crazy homeless guy that somehow wandered in.

After sitting in our booth for a while, one of the guys named Ben told me "Hey, let's play a game."

Being kind of bored, extremely drunk, and competitive, I agreed. "What's the rules?"

"Think of the most fucked up hilarious thing you can say to a stripper, then say it."

"Sounds good to me."

A few minutes later with the game on, a young White girl in a string bikini came up to me and whispered, "Hey, you look pretty cute. Wanna party?"

I looked at her, paused, and asked "Actually, do you think I can just look into your eyes for a minute?"

She rolled her eyes, probably used to guys trying to pick her up. "Haha, sure babe," she chuckled.

A moment of silence passed, as I gazed deeply into her eyes. She began giggling nervously and fidgeting with her hips, eager to start dancing and end the awkward silence. I leaned over to her ear and whispered, "You know what?"

"What's that babe?"

"You look exactly like my mom. That's so hot. Can I have a dance, mom?"

"What the fuck? What are you, some kind of weirdo," she laughed as she started to walk away.

"Will you at least tell me you're proud of me?" I yelled as she left.

Ben was howling, rolled up in the corner of our booth. "OK, you win, I don't think I can top that," as he paid me the wager of our bet - one dollar.

I then proceeded to drunkenly shove the entire dollar in my mouth and begin chewing for no apparent reason. It was at this point while straining to think of what to compare the taste of a dollar bill to that I realized, "Hey, it's probably time to go home."

The answer I came up in the cab was sand, in case you were wondering.

props and profiling

2008-10-17T15:46:00.001-07:00

I was playing in a game yesterday with 4 Scandinavian players that are all 5/10 6max regs on stars. It was 6 in the morning and our 2/5 was the only nlhe game going, so they all sat down together and proceeded to 3bet almost every pot preflop. The local rocks were petrified stiff and one tried to get all four of them kicked out by asking the floor to check their IDs.

These guys were all very talented online players, but it was really obvious they had very little experience playing live. They were really clumsy with their chips and one had a very obvious physical tell in which he would swallow after about 15 seconds when he bet and was weak. I played in a decent amount of pots with him since I had position on him, and on one noteworthy hand, I flatted his $20 raise in EP with AhJx, called $30 flop bet, called $65 on the turn, and called $150 on the river on a final board of Qh 5h 6x 2h Kx, giving me the nut nonpair. I took about 3 minutes on the end since it was a pretty hero/idiot call, but I was sure he was just 3barrelling with total air and just prayed he didn't accidental valuebet with 22 or something like that.

Afterwards, he told me that I was one of the best postflop players he had seen in his trip to Vegas and one of the absolute worst preflop players, which is probably very accurate on the second count.

As a bleeding heart liberal, I find it kind of fucked up, but I definitely profiled him in making this decision. Whenever I see a scandi, I know that he is going to be ridiculously aggressive and love to gambol. French guys are almost universally terrible and calling stations. Likewise Armenians.

Of course, young Asian guys are crazy tough with huge egos to boot : )

September

2008-10-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

Hah! A month that was so good followed by a month that was so bad. That's the way this game goes.

Everything that went right for me last month turned around this month. It was kind of weird too because all of my friends were running horribly this month as well. Saw a couple of my buddies lose $2k+ on craps, which is a lot when you're making $50-100k/year. Luckily I don't like the table games. This was easily my worst month ever expectation-wise and I ran well below what I should have, but I ran above what I should have last month and have probably been above expectation for the year.

I went on vacation this month for 10 days to go back to Chicago and see if I wanted to go back to work in the nonprofit sector. Ultimately, the lucrative $14k salary just wasn't enticing enough. I realized that getting up at 3pm, dressing in whatever you want, and never having any responsibility is pretty nice, although the stress from running bad caused me to have a pit in my stomach all week.

I think I'm going to start posting more in 2+2 and spending more time in general studying the game. Right now I feel like I'm not learning any more, which is the death knell for any poker player.

Thinking of budgeting on $14k though made me really realize how much $$ I am wasting. Also, reading this guy's blog (VeganMav on 2+2, of whom there is a famous thread) is pretty inspiring. He's a high stakes LHE pro that just tries to save as much as possible to give to people less fortunate than him. Eats out of dumpsters to save every penny. He is pretty much my hero.

Hours: 92.5
Total Earnings: $2,374
Hourly: $25.66
YTD: $42,144

August

2008-09-01T04:10:00.000-07:00

A weird month. I was thinking back to when I first started seriously playing this crazy game, and it's kind of nuts to see where I am today. I started playing "professionally" a little less than a year ago in November, just grinding $1/2 and being thrilled with a $150 day. This month I won $3500 in one day playing $5/10 and didn't even really feel anything.

I also had $2500 stolen from me by a pickpocket, which was a kind of sick feeling. I've had many $2000+ losing days, but it felt pretty unfair that I didn't even get to put my money in play before I had it just up and taken like that. It's pretty unfortunate, but a lot of times I have $3k+ in my wallet just because I want to have flexibility and be able to jump in a good game if I see one. Had to take two days off after that one, just sitting in my apartment feeling sorry for myself.

Anyway, this was the month where I finally kind of broke through the $5/10 barrier and had some moderate success. I won about $4500 in roughly 28 hours, giving me a fatty winrate of $160.71/hr. This was pretty nice considering that prior to this month, I was a $3400 loser in the game. Most of this was just due to running extremely bad, so hopefully this will be the start of something big.

If I can break through and be a consistent winner in the $5/10 game, I should be able to average somewhere around $75/hr and pull in $100k+ with a little bit of work. It's looking like I'm going to be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $50-65k, $42/hr at the end of this year, as a comparison.

So here are the numbers ($2500 pickpocket loss not included)*

Hours: 120.5
Total Earnings: $9,818
Hourly: $81.48
YTD: $39,770

After pickpocketing factored in:

Total Earnings: $7,318
Hourly: $60.73
YTD: $37,270

*Note: These numbers are not sustainable. I didn't really feel like I ran that hot this month, but I must have been above expectation to have such a good month.

July Results

2008-08-01T16:35:00.001-07:00

The games have been pretty bad the last half of this month. Additionally, I really don't feel like playing ever any more. Poker is just not really fun to me right now and I kind of wish I could be doing something more productive with my time.

Yesterday I played with Crazy Mike, this regular in the $100/200+ LHE games at Bellagio (goes by MrGatorade on 2+2). He bought in for $5k at a $1/2 nl game and was just pushing blind every hand, bragging about how the money was nothing to him because he was the best LHE player in the world.

He started yelling about how he would play anyone in the room/world in a LHE freezeout for $10k. Then he picked up and left because the floor tried to fill a seat next to him and he didn't like people sitting next to him.

The table offered the new player $70 to pick up and leave to keep Crazy Mike in the game and the player took it and ran, but CM left anyway. This got me to thinking a couple things:

1. I make no money comparatively to what I could be making
2. It is sad that I have to take the excess money that Crazy Mike doesn't care about to live off of

Hours: 103
Total Earnings: $5,133
Hourly: $49.83
YTD: $30,602

Negative EV Hours

2008-07-20T16:55:00.001-07:00

I listen to all of Bart Hanson's Cash Plays podcasts on pokerroad (most are pretty good - check out the Samoleous interview if you haven't), and one of the shows had him discussing the idea of negative EV hours with a psychologist.

The basic gist of the idea was that a lot of poker players focus on logging hours no matter the circumstances, when oftentimes playing when you're in a bad mood or when there are no good games going is giving you diminishing returns to the point where you would actually make more money by just not playing.

After the WSOP left, the games here have been shit. Just total, absolute, utter shit. The Bellagio, Venetian, Wynn, and Caesar's all had 10+ 2/5 games and 4+ 5/10 games going during the series on a weekday and maybe 1.5x that on a weekend. Now, there are 3 tables going on Friday night at the Wynn, which I have never seen in the 6 months I have been living here.

A lot of local grinders are leaving town to take a little vacation post-WSOP. I'm starting to think that might be a good idea. Fuck the hours.

God Bless the WSOP (June Results)

2008-07-01T01:21:00.000-07:00

I ran really hot this month - This, combined with the atrocious play of a crazy influx of donkament tourist players led to a great month.

The WSOP is such easy money - this is sadly my first winning WSOP out of three years, but before I think I had such tremendous leaks in my game that I really didn't give myself a chance to win.

I have seen crazy shit here on a daily basis that just makes me go "wow." I can't believe players are this bad still.

I have also seen a lot of the internet grinders come out here and try to grind $2/5 and $5/10. Some do okay and some fail miserably not because they don't know the game, but they play way too fast and lack discipline/patience. If they were to play seriously for a few months though, it would be easy for them to make the necessary adjustments I'm sure.

So on to the results:

Hours: 112
Total Earnings: $6,141
Hourly: $54.83

July may be a big month; I am playing in a $100k freeroll tomorrow at the Wynn, top 10 get $10k, probably will be 200-500 entrants. I have played less than 5 live tourneys in my life and easily less than 50 MTTs online, but I have read HoH and have a basic understanding of M,Q, inflection points etc. so we'll see how I do. Structure is fast so I am just hoping I can hit a draw while I still have chips to get my money AI to gamboool. We'll see how that works out.

May (is it May already?)

2008-06-01T03:27:00.001-07:00

This month went by in a haze. Most days I woke up and didn't know if it was Tuesday or Saturday. I played a shit ton of hours this month, mainly because my numbers were horrid.

A lot of this was due to losing in flips, which was kind of funny in a wow I lost $1000 to a millionaire kind of way. I also took four shots at $5/10 NL, maxbought at $1000, and promptly busted out of the game within 4 hours in three of those four times, always either ahead, supercoolered, or getting a great price on a draw and missing. Live poker is a bitch in that a single hand can make or break your month. If I hit my flush in the $5/10 where I stuck it all in with the nut draw on the flop, I make an extra $4000 this month. Instead, I lose $1000 in the hand.

I am sick of the variance of live poker. I have played about 600 hours up to this point, which is probably good for roughly 24,000 hands, a paltry sum. Maybe I should start playing some 100NL online...

Hours: 136.5
Total Earnings: $2,208.00
Hourly: $16.18

I made about as much as a Starbucks Barista this month.

The games at the World Series are fantastic right now. I am going to make an optimistic prediction for June and say $7k FTW!!!

April Summary - Was the Money Really Worth Stress Taking a Year off my Life?

2008-05-01T02:17:00.000-07:00

April was an incredibly stressful month for me. After running great in the previous month, I had high expectations and planned to take some shots in the $5/10 game. I had also turned down a real job in the real world partly because my profits were coming in so nicely from poker.

Big Expectations + Pressure + Overconfidence = Bad Results

I tried to run over people, thinking I was the greatest in the beginning of the month. I had losing sessions of $985 and $800, respectively, in the first week of the month, primarily as a result of playing poorly. It took me a solid week to get in the black, which is unusual because I book wins in 71% of my sessions and I am usually pretty good about keeping my losses small.

Once I finally did get in the black, I promptly blew another $750 playing terrible at the Bellagio, trying to make up for lost time by booking a big win. Instead, I gamboooled too much, put my money in terrible, and lost a big number.

I finally made a vow to just play my normal game and stop worrying about the numbers. After making a nice $922 today, I made an incredible recovery to post very solid numbers for the month. Not Joe the Pro numbers, but good numbers for me and great considering the demoralizing start. I really wanted to just shut it down for the month after the first couple of weeks but I stuck it out and am proud of the miraculous comebackI made. It is nice to run like God once in a while.

Hours: 116
Total Earnings: $4,433.00
Hourly: $38.22

A Great March!

2008-03-30T22:44:00.000-07:00

Part of the problems I had from February stemmed from playing a bit too fast and creative. I tried to slow down and play a little bit more solid in March, and had good results doing so. I can really build up some big stacks though playing fast, the problem is I sometimes get so juiced up that I can't slow down once my opponents adjust.

So here are my March numbers:

Hours: 127.5
Total Earnings: $6,049.00
Hourly: $47.44

I think I really turned a corner this month in terms of becoming more comfortable with a style of play that works here in Vegas. I still make a lot of moves, but I am getting more familiar with when to pull the reigns back a little bit.

The games should be getting better and better as we get closer to the WSOP. The side games here are usually sick, especially the $2/5 at the Rio.

A Terrible February

2008-03-01T19:54:00.000-08:00

Gah, what a bad month. My results are horrible - granted, I took a week off this week to go snowboarding, but my numbers are still ridiculously low. Part of the reason is that I took a shot at $5/10 and lost a big number when a rich tilting tourist who had raised the last 5 hands in a row blind called my AI 4-bet with KQo to my JJ and flopped KQ. There goes $1500 (yes he called off $1000 w/ KQo!)

Anyway, here are the #s:

Hours: 102.5
Total Earnings: $1,642
Hourly: $16.02

These figures have actually dropped since I moved to Vegas from Chicago, which is surprising considering Vegas' reputation for soft games filled with tourists. This has been true to an extent, I guess, but there are definitely a lot of skilled grinders that are in the games with me - for the most part we lay off each other but there are really only usually 2 or 3 soft spots in my 9-handed games, about the same as Chicago.

January Results (Warning: Brag Post)

2008-01-25T23:23:00.000-08:00

With January coming to a close, it looks like I am headed to have my best month ever. I was very lazy this month. I took the first week off for New Year's stuff, got sick for a week, plus my fucking alternator died out on my fucking car today (read post here in my blog that I spend a lot more time on and is actually readable most of the time), so my live month is done.

I am current sitting on a robusto $477 in my Full Tilt account. I'm going to try multitabling some .50/1 and see if I can build this up a little bit, or go busto. I am not much of an online player at all; In fact, I really dislike playing online, but I figure that this will be a nice challenge and will ultimately make me a better player. Let's see if I can't turn that into a grand by next month.

So, here it is from my best month where I simultaneously recorded my best session (+$1687 after 10 hours) and worst session (-$560 after 1.5 hours).

This Week:
Earnings: $95
Hours: 13
Hourly: $7.31

Yearly:
Earnings: $4901
Hours: 86.5
Hourly: $56.66

Year end roundup; Results

2008-01-10T00:04:00.000-08:00

Well, with 2007 finally over, here is a summary of how I did:

Hours: 328
Total Earnings: $7,795
Hourly: $23.77/hr

If you extrapolate these numbers, which are a pretty decent sample size, to playing 40 hours/week for 45 weeks, you get a very nice $42,786/year salary, tax-free (?) with a 7-week vacation thrown in there somewhere.

A more accurate number would be determined by extrapolating how I've been doing since I started playing full-time in November, since I have been playing in theoretically tougher games during the week. Here is how those numbers break down:

Hours: 147.5
Total Earnings: $4,243
Hourly: $28.77

This extrapolates to $51,786/year. Just for fun, let's see how I did playing $1/2 vs. $2/5 since I started playing full-time:

1/2:
Hours: 104.5
Total Earnings: $1902
Hourly: $18.20
Expected Yearly: $32,760

2/5:
Hours: 43
Total Earnings: $2,341
Hourly: $54.44
Expected Yearly: $97,992

The 2/5 figure is skewed because I have only been playing in $2/5 when I see the game is particularly good; However, I will start playing $2/5 more as my bankroll grows. I expect to earn somewhere in the neighborhood of $30-45 once I start playing $2/5 exclusively. That would put me at a nice goal of $54,000-$81,000 for the year. I am pretty lazy though, so I probably won't play enough hours to meet that goal.

Also, I have started writing for a poker blog, pokersift.com. Find me under Azn_Cutie.

Results 12/-17-12/23

2007-12-24T17:53:00.000-08:00

I found a bit of a leak in my game that has been costing me a lot of money. It was always exploited but it was even moreso this week to the point where I really put some thought into it and I think I've found a solution.

I am definitely losing money on KK and am only a slight winner with AA. The problem is that I build these big pots pre and then bet the flop to protect, allowing my opponents to take the pot away from me on later streets, as I am usually not going to go AI on just an overpair if someone pushes on the turn/river for a bigger-than-pot bet.

To counteract, I am going to start checking the turn. This will allow my opponents to catch up once in a while, but I think it will be a nice play because it will induce bluff money on the river or increase my chances of having a decent-sized value bet called on the river. It's a strategy I use with hands like AQ when I flop top pair; bet flop, check turn, bet river. It looks very weak and I feel like it maximizes value on strong but not monster pots while still keeping some pot control.

I had a terrible week this week; part of it was running bad, but I also got bluffed out of about $500 in $2/5 with AA and KK when people check-raised or pushed on the turn on my continuation bets all in for gross amounts. It is really tough to call with AA on a nondescript board when someone raises your $100 bet by $500. Anyway, it is a good time to take a break, enjoy the holidays, and get my head back in shape. One bad thing about playing every day is you have very little time to reflect on hands and tune up your game.

This Week:
Earnings: -$325
Hours: 31
Hourly: -$10.48

Yearly:
YTD Earnings: $7619
YTD Hours: 322.5
YTD Hourly: $23.62

Results 12/9-12/15

2007-12-14T11:14:00.000-08:00

Ran okay this week. This should be closer to expectation. Still have yet to run good for a week, it will be scary when I do. Once again, am not going to be able to work on my main earning days, Saturday and Sunday, because of part-time job requirements, which I am strongly considering quitting.

This Week:
Earnings: $1059
Hours: 34
Hourly: $31.15

Yearly:
YTD Earnings: $7790
YTD Hours: 305.5
YTD Hourly: $25.50

What do Chip Tells Mean?

2007-12-11T22:38:00.000-08:00

It took me a solid 3 years to figure out what chip tells really mean. I had heard/read countless times before about how most pros find chip tells rather than facial or other body tells the most reliable. They study the manner in which players put their chips out when they're weak vs. when they're strong and by detecting a pattern, they can pick up a tell on their opponents.

Sounds easy in theory, but it took me forever to figure out what this really entails. One day, I was talking about it with a pretty good player and it just hit me. It is very true and incredibly accurate that if you look at the way a player releases his chips, it is a consistent tell about hand strength.

What is usually the case is that if a player puts his/her chips out very shakily, knocks over chips, or declares a bet while still in the middle of putting out chips (in other words, just looks very unsure and unconfident while putting out chips), he/she is bluffing. To give an example of the last statement, I was playing with a guy who had maybe $75 in chips in his hand and cut out two stacks of $20 very slowly before just saying, "I make it $150." He was bluffing and I caught him.

Conversely, when a player cuts his/her chips very smoothly and calmly, it implies a big hand. Also, the most obvious and common tell people talk about, shaky hands, implies a monster.

I wish I could put out video of this stuff, because while it sounds easy to pick up, it is actually pretty difficult to explain but such a vital tool in live play.

This concept also took me a long time because I started as a limit player, and I don't think this type of tell has any bearing in limit since people are only putting out 6 chips max per bet.

Here is a crystal clear example of how this tell is so important in live cash games and provides a huge edge over online play. I was playing in a $2/5 NLHE today, about $800 deep in a very aggressive game, and I had AdKd UTG. I limped in with the intention of reraising and a bunch of players called. A guy who was in the BB, a very weak player who with luck had ran his $500 stack into about $1400, raised to $25. He had been doing this shit consistently and I had been consistently popping him in the mouth to get him to stop. I raise to $75 and he just glares at me. I can tell he's fed up and he asks me why I keep doing that. I tell him, "Because I know you don't have a hand, you just love raising preflop." The table folds around back to him and he says, "You know what, I'm gonna call you, you're not doing this again this time." He makes the call and the flop comes down 5c-6c-7d. He immediately pushed $150 in the pot very very shakily when the door card of the 5c came out. He didn't even see the other two cards.

Now there is no hand here he can really represent since he should be scared of me having a big pocket pair here and he probably would have checked a set to me since I will always continuation bet here. It just seemed like such a bizarre bluff-type bet. The bet was big though, so I was in a real shitty position.

Then this guy starts talking. He says, "No matter what you do, if you raise I am going to call no matter how big it is." Strike one.

He then gets up and starts pretending to shout about the Bulls game on TV. He is just all over the place with energy, totally ignoring the hand. Strike two.

Combined with the crazy ass way he put his chips out, all shaky and stuff but not the same type of shaky hands that come with a big hand, I was just so sure this guy was bluffing, maybe he had pocket 8's or 4's but his hand couldn't stand up to a raise. I very very rarely make plays when I play low limit NLHE since the percentage of times you get called is so high and the players are so bad that you can pick better spots when you're like for sure an 80-20 favorite, but this seemed like such a good spot. I just knew this guy was super-weak and bluffing into me. I popped it to $400, telling him if his set cracked my aces he had me, and he insta-called! Uh oh, sometimes your read is wrong I guess.

We checked the turn and the river, though, and lo and behold, he flips up Kc 10c for no pair, just a draw! Sick! My AK high no pair no draw takes down over a $1000 pot! This was mostly because of chip tells and trusting my reads, things that I just could not do online. The $400 raise and talk of aces also froze him so he couldn't bluff on the turn or river.

I would always have to make this fold and give the guy credit online, but in live play this was a very easy raise.

An interesting hand

2007-12-10T09:58:00.000-08:00

I hate posting hand histories, I think they're boring but I'll make an exception. Yesterday, I was playing in the $1/2, and I played this hand that had a lot of forethought into it.

I had j-8 in the big blind and the flop came a dream for me, one of the best possible for my hand, 6-7-9 rainbow, giving me an open-ended straight draw (OESD) to the nuts. My opponent was deep stacked and first to act. He took the lead, betting about 1/2 pot on the flop/turn. The river came a beautiful 10 and with no flushes, I held the stone cold nuts. He bet and I insta-raised AI, grossly overbetting the pot. Pot had maybe like $150 and I pushed $300 more. This is kind of a weird play, but this is where hold'em really becomes an art and why I prefer live to online play sooooooooo much.

I was Hollywooding this whole hand, making it very obvious that i was pretending to think about every call even though it was a clear call for me, basically telling this dude that I was on the open-ender.

How am I doing this?

I was holding the chips necessary for the call in my hand as soon as he made the bets and just staring as hard as I could right at his face, then after I took a few seconds to call, I grabbed a huge stack of chips in my hand before he bet the next street. These are all extremely obvious tells of weakness, which I am aware of and I am praying to god he is aware of too (I've played w/ him before and he is a player that at least understands the basics of the game).

Why am I doing this?

I know this guy will bet the open-ended straight in this fashion and I also know he knows I am capable of making a move. I am hoping he holds an 8 in his hand, giving him the 6-7-8-9 OESD. If that ten comes competing the straight, I want to stack him and make him think we are chopping and I'm just trying to steal at the end, even though I would hold the 7-8-9-10-J to his 6-7-8-9-10. The overbet AI is exactly what this looks like when the 10 falls. Unfortunately, he didn't have the open ended draw I put him on and he folded a set of 9's face up to my rather ridiculous raise, screaming at how I was such a fish for the next 5 minutes. I took it in stride, but eventually had to call the floor when he made bodily threats at me.

Even though I lost money by not making a normal-sized raise here that he would have called with his set of 9's, I definitely make lots of money with this play in the long run.

My thought process for this hand was pretty intricate too. When I saw the j-8 preflop, I was thinking, what is the best flop that can come down for me and what are dangerous flops that I need to use pot control on. I don't want the flop that will give me the nuts, like jjj or something. I want the flop that will make the most money for me by hitting other players too. This is what I thought:

Good Flops:
j-8-x
6-7-9
8-8-x
a-k-10
a-q-10

Note: against bad players (which all $1/2 and about half of $2/5 players are), the bottom two of these will make you soooooo much money in the long run, especially in deep-stack games where you can peel a card off against someone who can't get away from two pair.

Dangerous flops where I could go broke and need to play cautiously:
j-j-x
j-8-9/10/q/k/a

It gets very easy to get away from these types of flops/know when you're good when you get some experience under your belt. You will never be a good live player unless you can fold a big hand.

I included this HH for beginner players just to show you the type of thought analysis that should go into your hands. Hope you find this interesting.

Results for the week of 12/2 - 12/8

2007-12-07T21:14:00.001-08:00

God what a rough week! I got coolered/bad beat a bunch of times and just ran so bad in general. Part of being a winning poker player is being brutally honest with yourself and recognizing the difference between running/playing bad, but I can pretty much say I ran terrible this week, accounting for most of my poor results. Last week, I played very poorly one day which attributes to the lower than expectation earnings for that time frame.

I am starting a part-time job as an ACT tutor so I will not be able to play at all Saturday or Sunday, my big earning days grrr. This week is therefore done, and without further ado:

IRS quick look that way!

This Week:
Earnings: $492
Hours: 32
Hourly: $15.38/hr

Yearly:
YTD Earnings: $6925
YTD Hours: 276.5
YTD Hourly: $25.05/hr

Remembering Chip Reese

2007-12-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

I only had the pleasure of meeting Chip Reese one time, but it was a memorable one. I was in my first year working for PokerNews covering the final table of the first inaugural $50,000 H.O.R.S.E tournament.

The table was an impressive one to say the least, composed of Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Andy Bloch, Dewey Tomko, Patrik Antonius, David Singer, TJ Cloutier, Jim Bechtel, and Reese. Chip was definitely one of the most well-respected players amongst his peers - as big name after big name went bust, narrowing the field, almost all of the players I interviewed told me they were rooting for Reese. I remember Doyle Brunson telling me that Chip Reese was due, that it would be fitting for such a great and classy player to win one of poker’s most prestigious tournaments and finally get some validation in the public eye.

I was sitting next to Chip’s kid for a large duration of the tournament, and although poker tournaments oftentimes aren’t the most exciting things to watch, he was devotedly sweating Chip and leading the cheering section each time his dad won a hand.

The tournament was a memorable one because of its length; it was the longest heads up match in WSOP history. After a 9 ½ hour final table and a 7 hour heads up match, Andy Bloch and Chip Reese were the only players left standing. The final hand came around 8 in the morning when Reese finally bested Bloch. The room at the Rio, which had at the beginning of the day held thousands of people, was down to less than a dozen reporters, Andy Bloch’s fiancé, Reese’s family, and the cleaning crews. People could barely keep their eyes opened and Reese seemed more relieved than happy that the tournament was over.

While it would be more than understandable for Reese to want to go home and get some sleep, he stuck around and gave interviews to ESPN, myself, and anyone else that was still around, going above and beyond what was expected of his time. He was incredibly gracious in winning, complimenting Andy Bloch numerous times and modestly noting that he was lucky to win.

Poker is a community that is oftentimes criticized for a lack of class. Players screaming, drug problems, borrowing and going broke, and criminal activity all give poker a big black eye. Chip Reese was the antithesis of all of these things – calm and steady, polite, and regarded as untiltable. Poker today lost a great influence on the game, a great player, and a great person.

Watching for Mistakes

2007-12-03T10:27:00.000-08:00

When I sit down at a no limit table, the amount of mistakes I see is oftentimes staggering. It is 100% true that poker is situational and there are many different ways to play a hand correctly, however on the flip side, there are also many ways that are totally incorrect and have no justifiable explanation. These plays will lose you money pretty much every time you do them (-EV) - Joe Sebok and Barry Greenstein refer to them as "zero plays" because they will work 0% of the time.

Most of the mistakes that people make too are so simple to correct - I want to just shake them by the shoulders sometimes and tell them, "What are you thinking? If you just do it this way, you'll make so much more. Here's why!"

If you are a losing player at these levels, it is not variance - low limit games are definitely beatable, and complaining about getting sucked out on, running bad, etc. is simply not a viable excuse. Right now, I am showing a profit in 74% of my sessions, which is ridiculously high. Most pros show a profit in maybe 60% of sessions tops.

When I sit down, on average, I can spot the winning and losing players within about an hour. I would say at the average 10-handed table, there might be one other winning player, a couple of players that make mistakes but are probably break-even, and maybe 4-5 players that just have no clue.

If you want to be a winning player, there are so many options available to you. The forums (twoplustwo.com, fullcontactpoker.com, pocketfives.com, neverwinpoker.com) are a great way to get advice. Emailing people works too. If you have any questions, especially about how you played a hand, you can email me as well: fulltiltazncutie@gmail.com

The Importance of Good Record-Keeping/Status Update

2007-12-01T10:32:00.000-08:00

It has been said ad-nauseum in the poker world, but record keeping is the first step to being a winning player. I'm going to post results in here occasionally for my friends to keep track of my status, but also I want to show what kind of records you should be taking. Here is a screenshot of my excel records page, which is the bare-minimum of note-taking. I should really take more detailed notes:
Note there are columns for win/loss, time and date, hours, locale, notes, etc.

So, IRS quick look that way!

This Week:
Earnings: $523
Hours: 28.5
Hourly: $18.35/hr

Yearly:
YTD Earnings: $6433
YTD Hours: 244.5
YTD Hourly: $26.31/hr

A bad week - I played extremely poorly one day and ran bad another day.

I am a Professional Poker Player

2007-11-30T11:33:00.000-08:00

I used to love saying that back when I played full-time in 2006. When I made the decision to play full-time and move out to Vegas, I remember the excitement that followed and the feeling that I had to tell the world.

I still remember my first day as a pro. Sitting down at the table, I felt like I owned the place - this was going to be my worksite for the next year and I wanted everyone to know.

"I am a professional poker player," I said breezily while sitting down at my first table as a full-time player. I waited expectantly for the adulation, fear, and awe that my comment would arouse.

"That's nice. I'm a doctor. I save people's lives," my table-mate commented.

"Oh." That was kind of a downer. The rest of the table seemed disinterested. Something must have been wrong! People were supposed to be worshiping me, oohing and aahing. I must not have said it loudly enough!

"Hey guys! Pro here, sitting down!" I said, waving my arms. Still nothing. Eh, what do these guys at $1/2 know anyway?

I proceeded to sit down and play pretty tight for the next couple hours, mentioning that I was a pro no less than 20 times until I got sick of being check-raised and told to shut up. My stack dwindling, I got into a big pot for the rest of my chips. I had ace-high, and I was facing a huge overbet on the river that reeked of busted flush draw bluff.

"I am a pro and we can make these calls! I call!" I announced.

"Full house," my opponent responded, raking in his chips.

"Wait....but...but... I am a pro! Those are supposed to be my chips!"

--------------------------
After taking a year hiatus, I am back again and this time, older and wiser, I've checked my ego at the door. I only tell people I'm a pro four or five times a session now.