Friday, April 22, 2011

New Plans

Well as everybody knows online poker is shut down temporarily, as charges from the DOJ has seized their domain names and bank accounts. This event was called black Friday as it happened on Friday, April 15th. Well what do I do in the meantime, since this was the way I was making a living? Back to the casinos I go then I guess, one tabling for the win. Until this gets worked out in court and some new laws get passed, then I have to make the switch.


There is a reason why I left the live casinos for the online world. The first reason is the travel cost of going back and forth to the casino sucks. Gas is pretty high and the nearest casino is about 45 minutes away. Also the cost on wear and tear on your vehicle, which will drives up maintenance cost. This has to be figured into your travel cost. There also the fact of game selection, and waiting list. There is nowhere near the amount of game selection in a casino then there is online. Some cash games formats can’t be found outside of an online poker room and sit and go’s tournaments pretty much don’t exist outside of special event qualifiers like WSOP and WPT. Tournaments are also not as readily available since they may run only a few times a day, and the chances of finding $5, $10, $20 tournaments outside of and online poker room is next to impossible.


Even with all this it either grind Live or give up on poker. So like so many Americans who have suffered due to this countries poor handling by our politicians and government, I have to make the best out of a screwed up situation. I still have some hurdles to get through to make this happen. First hurdle is most of my money is tied up online and I can’t get to it yet. I am sure my money is safe but not being able to access it sucks and means I have to use what money I have on hand to get this going. I have to make sure my bills are covered and I am scheduled to move, so I need money for that which does not leave much for a live grind. So I will be doing this under rolled due to the limit cash on hand and game selection. Second the travel cost has to be work out since I have to leave my state in order to reach a casino. I know of a bus service that picks up casino guest from my area and shuttle them back and forth. The bus stays eight hours before returning back to drop of the guest, so gives me enough time to play. The set back is the bus picks up and leaves at a specific time, so trying to make scheduled tournaments might not be possible. I another thing to consider is if I want to leave or stay I can’t, so if I am losing or winning I have to stay on the bus schedule. The good thing is that it only cost about $5 to $10 so it really saves on the travel cost.


This is going to take a while to adjust to this and I am not putting all my eggs in one basket which is what got me in a pickle this time. I am also looking into employment in a few fields and I am working with a good friend who owns a business to see about working for him. I know online poker will return to the U.S. and I can’t wait to it does but in the meantime I have to make due with what I have and move on. Good luck everyone and have faith in yourselves that we will all get through this.

Friday, April 1, 2011

March Update

Well March pretty much sucked, I did not meet my goals as far as games played since I missed a week due to computer problems, which by the way Rob from PTP did a hell of a job on my PC. If you have PC problems I highly recommend this guy he really knows his shit

http://forum.parttimepoker.com/ptp-classifieds/683304-remote-computer-repair-services-support-hem-poker-tracker-anything.html

I am not going to really going to have any drastic changes in my game but will set a few goals this month to try making it worthwhile.

1. Play 150+ games a day 4,000 to 4500 games total – I will most likely play more than this since on most days I play two sessions. But volume is one of the few things you can control in poker. SO I need to make sure I am putting in enough of it.

2. At least 4 coaching sessions this month – that is like once a week of course this depends on my coach’s schedule, but it is a goal to try for.

3. Study at least 3 HHs before a session – This always helps me focus and sometimes I get impatient and only do one, but I need to up that it will only take about 45 mins to do at least three.

Of course I don’t do profit goals since so much is out of your control when it comes to making a profit.


Outside of that not much really going on at home. I am planning on moving at the end of the month and I am still working on my Vegas trip. I have not secured a flight yet but all my funds are going towards moving and buying new furniture, so it looks like early May to book the flight at the least. I hope to do good in April but I am sure these goals will help bring some positive results

Monday, March 21, 2011

....SIGH

So got my new power supply unit in today and installed it and was hoping it fixed the problem…..NOPE. My computer is still not acting right; my CPU usage is through the roof even when doing normal things like watching YouTube videos or opening up Google Chrome. So I decided to get Rob to take a look at it. Rob is the computer Tech guy who advertises on PTP



He come very highly recommended and I hope he can fix my computer problems or at least point me in the right direction. It just sucks to have computer issue and I am way behind schedule as far as the grind goes. But taking care and having my computer working right, while I got $352 invested on the tables is very important in avoiding tilt issue.

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

March Update

Time for an update, so far this month I have done pretty good. I am up after 1765 games, and feel I am improving in my over all game. Some changes in my wife work schedule are forcing me to build my own poker office. She works from home, and up to about three weeks ago worked overnight. Now she has a new position and is transitioning to days shift. I also work from home and during the time she was sleep, I did my work and grinded away during the day.


We were sharing the one desk in the house, but of course now that won’t work since I refuse to start working at night. I tried it a few days and had so-so results. I feel grinding in the morning works best for me. So I had to buy my own desk. I am cool with that set my out of pocket expenses at $600, and decided to upgrade my desktop while I was at it. I got a new chair for $234 and a new Desk for $135, nothing fancy just wanted them both to be comfortable. I installed some more RAM and upgraded the graphics cards. I upgraded the graphics card because I want dual monitor set up. I had been using an adapter to support a dual monitor set up, which allowed me to hook an extra monitor up using a USB port. Also wanted to buy a new mouse, saw one for about $100 a little pricey, but it fit like a glove. I need to buy a new monitor since the second monitor I was using belongs to my wife computer she uses for work.

I almost got everything set up just need to get a new monitor and the mouse. I had enough to get started grinding again and fired up a session. Once I got to 22 games my computer started to freeze, I did not know what was wrong, but I started to time out in every game because it was lagging and freezing so bad. Now I always had a little lag when I had more then 20+ games in a session but nothing like this. I decided to end the session and figure out what was wrong. After doing some searching in my computer making sure all the settings were correct, I fired up another session. My computer stilled started to lag and freeze after about 16+ games and I started to get these weird distortions on my tables.





Now I am pretty tilted and ended the session again. I started a thread on asking what was wrong with the software, I was using. To make a long story short it turns out the graphic card I installed was using too much power starving my CPU and causing my CPU usage to max out. So I have to buy and install a new power supply unit. If I would have read the system requirements when I bought the card it said I need a 300w or more PSU and I only have a 250w PSU. Oh well it will take a few days for it to get here, so I will just have to play 8 tables or take a break until it does…..Sigh.

Sunday, February 13, 2011

1st!!!!!!!



Like I said in my previous post the beast is out of his cage. Thanks to a lot of hard work and some run good, I was able to take first in the Battle of the Planet - Venus Division. First place is a $500 bonus and ticket to the BOP free roll. I have to admit you have to run pretty good to get first, but I also feel that I played very well. I’m starting to feel very comfortable playing in the turbo format and I don’t feel like this will be the last time binking something in the BOP leader board. I never knew how uncomfortable I was playing in a turbo format, until I started to get coached. Now that it’s starting to all come together it’s going to be pretty sick to see the results. Now I plan on continuing to working with my coach and on my own to take my game to the next level. The next step is to start moving up in stakes, can’t wait to see how that goes.


Oh and Upswings are fun : )

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Beast out of his cage

Starting at the end of last month, I became a member of pocarr.com. But today was the first time something clicked in my head. I been running kind of ruff since I started and it’s been getting under my skin. I am not a turbo player by trade, but I don’t think I’m a break even or worse player in this format but it’s been real gross. What clicked in my head is I'm in the perfect position to grow........... I no longer feel caged.





Before joining pocarr.com I was a winning player in the games I played. I studied my ass off grinded my ass off and had some pretty good results. I been a member of most training sites you can think of that is worth joining. I have been active in forums reading and researching the game. I paid for a few coaching lessons and have played most formats from cash to SNGs. I would have to say I'm very well rounded poker player.

Now if you add all that training and success with an unlimited bankroll and coaching and you get a beast out of his cage.






It’s time to crush and its gona be pretty sick, I no longer need to worry about my bankroll which allows me to take my mind off of money and focus on my game. This is gona be sooooo sick; it’s like a weight off my back. My coach is very good and best of all he works as hard as me to improve my game. I have done at least two sessions a week with him and my game is already changing for the better. With a clear mind and focus, it’s only a matter of time, before I’m crushing again.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

I love my wife

My wife had a surprise birthday party for me with a poker theme. She did a wonderful job decorating and cooking and I had no clue what was going on. I must count myself lucky to have a wife who understands me. I can’t imagine its easy dealing with a husband who wants to play a game for a living, but she supports me in everything I do. If I did not have her support, even attempting this would be impossible. She invited a few friends over to play poker but I decided to play spades, since none of them knew how to play poker. We had a good time and like I said before I am very lucky to be married to her.

I should be finishing up the details on my coaching situation. I am very excited to be working on my game and learning how to properly crush SNGs.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

January Update

It’s been awhile since I posted anything on my blog, it’s about time for an update and how I have been doing so far in 2011. First of all I like to list my goals for 2011. As stated previously, I want to set healthy goals, so here are my goals of 2011.


1) Make Super Nova – I am not setting a time table for this I just need to make Super Nova before the end of the year.

2) Find a coach – I am working on this goal right now and have reached out to a few quality coaches and coaching sites, so hope to have this taken care of soon.

3) Play a WSOP event –I have gone to Vegas the last two years during the WSOP and have not played an event. I generally grind the smaller games being held during that time.

4) Increase my volume online – this kind of go along with the Super Nova goal, but I want to increase my hourly rate.

5) Study at least 3 hours a week – this is a goal that I know needs improving on.


I am not setting any profit goals since it’s hard to hit these goals ( I said hard not impossible) but there are too many factors that happen that effect your profit that is out of your control. I believe by achieving these goals set above, being profitable will take care of itself


As far as how January goes it’s been an up and down month. I started off with $1200 downswing playing $12 45man and $6.50, 45man turbo’s. I decided I need to be coached in order to improve my edge in these games. So I twitched back to MTTs and regular sngs and was able to erase my down swing and I’m doing pretty well. I been getting deep in MTTs and if not for being on the bad end of a flip in which I was ahead, I would of made some very decent scores (this is why I have not set a profit goal). I hope to find where I will be receiving my coaching from and hope to start a coaching session in the beginning of February.

My wife posted this Video on Facebook and it gets me hype eveytime I watch it.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

Day 1

So I been reading some of these guys post on 2+2 about their pursuit of super nova elite and there first day total for VPP’s are about as much as I have been getting in a month lol. I spent the day studying on SNG Wizard and Nash trying to tighten up my SNG game. Of course I took breaks to watch a few bowl games and a movie with the wife. I wanted to relax while everybody hit the year hot and heavy trying to reach their 2011 goals. I figure most will get burned out in a few months and I remember looking in at the tournament lobbies and cash tables and seeing all the REGs grinding there little harts out. I mean all the players in the top 25 on shark scope were all grinding today. I figure I take this first day of the year off, I have a feeling this is going to be a marathon and not a race for me. Plus I wanted to take the extra time to get my head right and focused.


I had a conversation with my boy who is also looking to make Super Nova this year in an effort to increase his volume; we talked about our goals and game selection. He is grinding the $12 180’s and $6.50 45 mans on stars. He said he is going to stay away from the $12 45 mans because they are so Reg infested and the payout does not warrant the effort to put in a decent grind in them. My first thought was you play $12 180’s you can’t really get more REG infested then those and you also grind the $6.50 man, so why would the payout structure bother you? I assume he is think along the lines that why pay $12 to play a 45 man SNG, when you can play in a $12 180 for the same price and make more money. I was thinking along the lines that the 180’s had a higher variance do to the structure and number of players and REGs.

He is going to be my wing man on this journey, he has the drive and the work ethic to study the game and put the time in to reach his goals. I need people like him in this aspect of my life, to help push me and bounce ideas off of. The Forums will also give me access to player trying to reach this goal and reading the post of player who have already reach this goal and of player like me trying to go for it for the first time will really improve my chances of doing so. Well the grind begins tomorrow for me I hope to reach these volume goals and to be profitable doing so.