I grew up in philly and have always been an sports fan, so I was excited that the phils had a chance of winning the first championship for any of the major teams since 1983 (76ers) when I was 7, and the first World series since I was 4.

But I didn't realize that I actually cared a lot, until the 9th inning last night, how great it felt watching the last 3 outs. I swear I have been in $40,000 pots with one card to come, and didn't have nearly the butterflies in my stomach, and the rush of every pitch, and I didn't even have any money on the game.

I know it makes absolutely no sense to care about professional sports this much, but for the time being I don't care. I was on chained 3 way calling with my parents, my brother, my kids, and talked to nearly everyone else in my family and friends I grew up with. What a rush.

.. is like running a race with a bunch of one legged people across a firing range.

Oh and in completely unrelated news, an online friend of mine, Brian Moran or still here on leggopoker. Just chopped a borgotta tourny for 100K. So congrats to him!

I'm starting to play again after a long break. I'm going to be playing lower than I have in several years just to get my game back, and also because I am pretty broke do to family stuff going on, and I want to play on my money for the time being.

The cool thing is that I really genuinely like playing poker, and am loving playing every day for a few hours again.

As such I will be posting in the low stakes forum here at leggo.

Also, If anyone is interested, I have decided to take on a couple students for a limited time at a very low rate. I think I would be very uniquely suited for most .5/1 and 1/2 NL players because i have been playing against lots of them and understand their leaks and the games they are playing in much better than I could have when I was playing higher all the time. That said, I am a winner at every level from .25/.50NL - 25/50NL and can provide pokertracker screenshots over a ton of hands (most of my hands are at 5/10 and 10/20).

Contact me through leggo if you are interested.

He was spewy to begin with, and most certainly on tilt. I think my sale price on the turn was too good to resist.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?2533268

I guess since I wrote that title I should start off talking about pot limit omaha. I think the biggest reason I have such a history of tilting plo, is its hard to get used to the swings. It is just way more turbulent the playing NLHE, and its a real gambler's game (which is one of the reasons I like playing it so much). However, you need to expect to go up and down. A LOT. REALLY REALLY FAST. For instance, in 10/20 NLHE, even 6 tabling, its rare for me drop or win more than 5K in any 30 minute period, and its really stressful to lose like 8K (I usually would just quit if that happens). Meanwhile playing 10/20 PLO its common to be up or down $10K before you blink.

It used to be really hard for me to deal with this, and maybe I was playing too high at plo simply for the tilt factor. So on thursday night through friday morning I played a marathon 11 hour session of 2/4 and 3/6 plo, in which I was down 3K in the first hour, then hovered there for a couple hours, at about 2AM I was even, by 2:45 I was up $1620, by 3:20 I was down $800, and by 5AM up $5500. I had several more $2-3k swings til 7AM when I finished I was +$3473.

The main reason I am so happy (besides making my monthly withdraws right after the session), was that although I lost focus a few times, I didn't tilt the entire night, and I think I was playing very well the whole time.

Today, I'm having a really nice day with the fam. After Tony's gymnastics this morning we went shopping with the kids. Tony wanted a Lakers jersey for "Jersey Day" at school next week, and Elena picked up a "Los Lakers" jersey which she likes reppin' the LA Latinos. It was a big enough draw that she decided to buy a Kobe Jersey as it was the only one they had left. If you missed it, they wore them for "Latin Night" on easter sunday:


Speaking of this I'm watching the game right now, but am paying more attention to the nfl drat right now, as the lakers.

We also got cool family pictures taken dressed up in the old school english fashions. Actually, given my hat, it looks like I am in the 40s and about to order a hit after posing for the picture.

In other news, I think I have gotten fatter than I ever did before. I'm looking for some motivation as I am now married and do not need to attract partners for adult diversion . So if you are interested in making any sort of weight loss related prop bet with me over the next couple of months, get in touch with me. I was thinking on the order of $10K would provide sufficient motivation for me, and it would be fun to see me in vegas for much of the series actually tring to drop weight considering that I don't sleep when good games are going and generally eat like crap during the WSOP.

Oh, I almost forgot, I made a graph of my monster PLO session:

On the bright side, I've made $1400/hour this week, and on the brigher side, it has been only 2 hours of work so far

The last few days have been great, and trying, and then ok, then crappy, then great, then annoying, and ended up pretty good. That last sentence sums up poker in general pretty well also.

Besides, the money and how the cards fell, there were also swings in how I was handling things. At my worst, on monday afternoon, I was super sick with a nasty cough and a bit of the flu, and I lost a big hand just as Elena was coming home early to take care of me. I lost it, I yelled, stomped, and basically threw a temper tantrum.
On the other end of the spectrum, this morning I played a challenging heads up match at 5/10 against hibatchi41 on stars. I felt like I had an edge, but he is definitely a good player. I was up over 2 buyins, then he wound up coming back and being up a buyin, then I came back, with the aid of one suck out, to finish up +3 buyins. I think my biggest edge was that when things went bad for me, I just sucked it up and played well, and when he lost a big pot, he had a noticible decline in his play.

At 5/10 you can usually find better games than this, but occasionally I like to play a match like this, because higher up, how my mentally control yourself, is the primary difference between beating the game or not.

Anyhow, here is the graph of my last few days:

Holdem:


plo:

As you can see, my issue with being able to take a win are doing a little better .



I also just got $600 of rakeback in my busto fulltilt account, so I am going to celebrate this week by trying to gamble that into a reasonable roll on there. So I will probably start by playing 5/10 HU and moving up aggressively. My own little tournament. I will quit when I am bust or have 10K. FUN FUN FUN!!!

I don't know how many times I've heard, since I've started playing poker seriously, that if you are a poker pro, you will eventually get broke at some point. However since the advent of the latest poker boom, there have been lots of internet players claiming that that is completely due to bad bankroll management, and that there is no reason to ever go broke. I have seen this time and time again, usually from people who have been playing poker professionally less than three years.

The fact is that there are very very few players out there who can mentally be strong enough to never go broke. Its just tough. Whether you like it or not, you are gambling for a living. That doesn't mean you don't have an edge, and can't make a reliable living doing this, but what it does mean is that it is hard to not fall off your A game for months at a time due to the psychological aspects of gambling. And when it happens, not matter how good your bankroll management strategy is, you will need to be incredibly disciplined and have very few "life leaks" (over spending when times are good, drugs, alcohol, etc) to not go broke during the bad times.

It is not that hard to be a winning poker player over a fairly short period of time, but it is much more difficult to always be a winning player and to always have an edge. Even when the games are really good.
Anyhow, maybe I'm just making excuses for the last few months, but seriously, I don't think I even ran that bad during this time period. I put most of the blame squarely on my shoulders.

That said, its nice to be winning again

Last night my kids were all over me in bed, and I couldn't sleep at all.

So, I got up at 5AM and played a short session.

I guess I can't complain: