http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHDbCC0Ongs

I wasn't able to embed the video, but I'd highly recommend giving it a click before reading on. Eliot Smith speaks to me at the moment.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5539929

***** Hand History for Game 46238064583 ***** (Poker Stars)
$400.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Thursday, July 01, 10:00:07 ET 2010
Table Monoceros (Real Money)
Seat 5 is the button
Seat 1: FGBR ( $898.50 USD )
Seat 2: CrabClaws ( $742.00 USD )
Seat 3: LSP16 ( $634.15 USD )
Seat 4: umychipcaddy ( $850.70 USD )
Seat 5: LK_Revolt ( $1060.60 USD )
FGBR posts small blind [$2.00 USD].
CrabClaws posts big blind [$4.00 USD].
FGBR posts ante of [$0.80 USD].
CrabClaws posts ante of [$0.80 USD].
LSP16 posts ante of [$0.80 USD].
umychipcaddy posts ante of [$0.80 USD].
LK_Revolt posts ante of [$0.80 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to CrabClaws [ Kc Ts ]
LSP16 folds
umychipcaddy raises [$11.80 USD]
LK_Revolt folds
FGBR calls [$9.00 USD]
CrabClaws calls [$7.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ Ac, Qc, Jc ]
FGBR checks
CrabClaws bets [$24.00 USD]
umychipcaddy raises [$56.00 USD]
FGBR folds
CrabClaws raises [$148.00 USD]
umychipcaddy raises [$782.90 USD]
CrabClaws calls [$558.20 USD]
umychipcaddy wins $108.70 USD
** Dealing Turn ** [ Qd ]
** Dealing River ** [ Qs ]
CrabClaws shows [Kc, Ts ]
umychipcaddy shows [Ah, Jh ]
umychipcaddy wins $1495.40 USD from main pot
umychipcaddy wins $0.80 USD from main pot

I am 'retiring' from professional poker. I've had so many last straw type moments and I've decided to throw in the towel. I think that a month of rungood, final tabling an MTT, hell even winning a 400 bb pot at nl400 could have imparted enough momentum for me to keep on fighting the good fight. But sadly none of those things have occurred in the last six months.

I truly can't take the pressure, constant frustration and heartbreak of the game any more. It isn't through any lack of effort or laziness that I'm making this decision. In fact, the most successful poker player I have ever met (and had the pleasure of rooming with in Vegas over the last couple of weeks told me I was actually trying too hard. Hopefully with some elbow grease I can come by success in whatever comes next. Suffice it to say these last months haven't been the most optimistic ones of my life, but c'est la vie.

As a final nod to the community, I would like to thank everyone that has helped me along the way. It has been appreciated more than I can express.

I hope you dreamers accomplish the goals you set. Sincerely, good luck.

Brandon

Leggo peoples,

I apologize for being so out of the scene, I've been busy and my mind has been preoccupied. As I sit here I'm reflecting on the last year. I'm trying to put it all into context; the good, the bad and the fugly (I am unashamed to say I hooked up with a few of each this year) In any case, I'm at this intense crossroads. After graduating college last spring and spending last year in Flip-Flip-Phlipadelphia I have decided to spend the next few months with my family in Chapel Hill, NC. Poker has been a big part of my life for the last few years, and I can honestly say that it has empowered me to do great things and taught me a lot that goes well beyond the game, itself. It's taken me to Jamaica, Russia and Israel among other places. It bought me my most prized possession, my carbon fiber giant TCR one racing bike and it let me enjoy the collegesque life for an extra year at U Penn. But I have not been able to realize the poker goals that I made for myself at this time a year ago.

It is not without some sadness that I make an ultimatum. If I don't make $15,000 in the next three months I will cease to refer to myself as a professional poker player and will diligently begin looking for career opportunities and/or academic possibilities. Generally, I would scorn the results oriented thinking that such a personal prop belies. But in this case, I just can't justify continuing to dedicate myself to a pursuit that I can't very well put on a resume, and that has been a tremendous source of frustration of late. It's just not good enough to be making the minimum that I need to live on the bottom end range of the ballin life. There are too many other ways to accomplish such and too much else out there to risk ignoring.

What brought me to the Golden Gate (suicide) bridge of poker you ask? Well if we talk on a daily basis I've been complaining about it to you with more gusto and enthusiasm than I have mustered up for any of my other pursuits... My apologies to my friends for that.

For the edification of the rest, this was how May went:



For those of you counting, that's about 5.2k under EV or around 2150 big blinds. The stakes involved were primarily nl200 with approximately equal parts of nl100/400.

Unfortunately a lot of the year has been like this. Besides two huge months and a smattering of really big days/weeks that have kept me going financially and mentally, my year has consisted of what I perceive as an absolute shit ton of AIDS-style runbad. So while I have just an iota of poker enthusiasm remaining in the good poker vibes bank, I'm gonna give the next three months the fucking absolute best I can muster. I'm starting a new graph in order to try to imagine a fresh start. Wish me luck fellow masochists!

P.S. for all my students, I will fulfill the terms of any agreements we made. Despite my lackluster results lately, I'm oddly feeling more secure than ever about my overall understanding of the game. So I'm going to try harder than ever to help you succeed.

This month:

Yes, I admit it. I feel a bit cheated by this game. I have worked hard, I've tried to get my emotions under control, I've kept my karma up... I guess the only consolation is that these things have been good for me generally even if I think there should be another 10k in my bank account. I talk a lot about how I don't need much and I think that money is mostly ruinous in effect. Looks like God decided she thought this would be funny. I haven't given up hope yet, but lets just say I'll be grinding some GRE test prep books alongside poker this summer (especially post-UIGEA, oh the stressaments!).

To compound matters, my computer is now only what I might generously call... limited in function. For whatever reason (it costed $300?!) the mouse freezes just about every 8 seconds and that's made playing poker a bit difficult. If nothing else it's contributed to a bit of tilt and that's just that absolute last fucking thing I need. I would donate it, but since it's borderline worthless I'll be releasing some stress via baseball bat in a week or so. Why won't I need it? Luckily, I just bought a megaupgraded Sony Vaio. It ran me $1800, but I think I'm gonna have this computer for the next 5 years. I'll blog about it separately when I start grinding it.

Additionally, I really really want to get my 30'' monitor set up. Who knows, maybe I'm in for a tech boomswitch. I'll be moving from Philly at the end of the week back home to North Carolina (where the laptop is waiting for me) and I'm really gonna refocus my efforts in a serious way.

All this being said, I'm still very committed to the progress of my students, and I hope they are able to bear with me until I can get back on the megagrind.

In conclusion, fuck you May. Fuck you long, and painfully.


This Year:

After a victorious few days, I've successfully managed to drop 2k today. Even during my white hot fire session, I was bothered by how insanely high variance this game is, but it's easier to stomach when winning than losing obviously. The 200 games basically just hooked me up with lots of preflop coolers and boards where the flop made my hand marginal, the turn made it worse and the river said, LOL GL REDLINE just fold and start sucking dick for BB's instead!

The nl400 games were juicy so I decided to load up a few since I'm feeling very confident that I'm +EV in them and I promptly lost KJdd v 89dd on T7xdd AKs v QQ and KQ v K8 versus some donk HU on K85cc.

In conclusion, I'm gonna go shoot stray kittens and accept that the universe won't let me back into midstakes any time soon, apparently.

I was really starting to lose my faith in this game. I think that my emotions are under so much more balanced (vis a vis poker) than they were even a few months ago, but you can only get KK AIPF versus AA so many times before you start to wonder why the midget inside the pokerstars magic number generator box hates you so much. I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but after yesterday, I'm hoping that my cold, dark breakeven is over.

I literally ran the hottest that I can ever remember running in the last few years that I've played this insanely high variance game. I was flopping sets everywhere, flopping nut flush draws and getting there with most of them and generally just owning souls. All of my hands were holding, and the whole thing sort of took on a dream-state quality where I wasn't exactly sure I was in the same poker universe as I had been for the last two months. I am thankful for yesterday as I've been working hard, making Gbux (if not real bux) and forcing myself to play nl200 while I get back on the horse and rebuild confidence. Pictorially represented, yesterday (All nl200) looked as such:



Also, I thought I'd share a pretty cool hand versus a relative unknown:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5392858

The villain is 17/19/7.0 over 100 hands or so and hadn't really made a real impression on me. This hand played out in such an atypical way that I thought it was worth a post and maybe some discussion. I am particularly interested in whether people think that the river overbet is better than betting 2/3 PSB. I have some thoughts on that matter after discussing it with a friend but I'll save discussion for the end.

Whats up Leggotes,

I've been out the game for awhile now. About two and half weeks. In the poker world I'd say this converts to about three months of real people time. So I got a lot to talk about.

The vacation that I went on was basically exactly what I expected. Personally, I think cruises blow but my mom sort of spontaneously decided that she wanted to take a family trip and she found a good deal for a cabin. I got to spend a shitload of family time which was definitely nice. Unfortunately, my brother couldn't make the trip because he couldn't afford to miss a week of school (he's a premed at UNC-CH) but it was fun hanging out with my sis caroline as she's almost 16 (i.e. NOT 18) and we are getting a lot closer to peer status than we were even a year ago. Anyway, here's a picture from Cozumel, Mexico.



Otherwise, the trip just consisted of drinking, not hanging out with girls (the population was pretyt polarized between 14 year olds and 80 year olds, neither of which are really my cup of tea) and eating my face off. I thought about trying to get some greens on the ship, but I re-decided that I'm not that curious about exploring Honduran jails. The excursions were cool, but fuck man, I kept meeting cool people and wishing that I had more than 6 fucking hours in countries that I've never been to. The nightlife on the cruise was pretty hilariously awful. I just played some nl200 in the casino and hung out in this shitty club called the crow's nest. The poker game had a $100 buy in and was literally the worst poker I have ever seen in my life. People were limping AA with like three people limped and shit. It was outrageous. I managed to only lose about $150 somehow due to running like pure AIDS, but it was worth it to just play and not give a fuck and EL O EL at everyone in my mind and sometimes outloud.

This one woman called a 3b preflop with 66 and binked the 569dd flop. I bet, she calls, the turn is another 9 I jam for like the $75 I had left in my stack and we flip our cards. The river is the 3rd 9 and I shit you not, she's gets up and starts doing some kind of dance that I can only describe as the bastard borne of funky chicken x electric slide parentage. She was wasted, it was hilarious, and only got funnier when it was explained to her how you make a hand in Unlimited Texas Hold 'thems.

Is the previous story made funnier by the fact that the night before she sat down next to me in the 'club' (still on what turned out to be a weeklong bender) and said, 'I have a question for you'. The following dialogue when something like this:

Me: Alright ma'am (i.e. ya nasty old bitch), hit me.
NOB: You know what I'm going to ask.
Me: well if I knew that I'd be a psychic and I'd own this boat instead of riding on it.
NOB: some bullshit blather blather *her purpose is made clear* which team do you play for?
Me: Jesus lady, that's a bit forward isn't it?...

So I guess if I had wanted to bang a wrinkly old pussy, that could have been in the cards as it were. I decided I'll save relations with women of that age until I'm about 85 or something. She then proceeded to tell me, unabridged, the story of her life. I wasn't able to relate to her a bit, but I was strangely fascinated by her narration (think horrific car crash type curiosity)

I also did a ton of reading which was awesome. I'm reading both Nietzsche's Anti-Christ and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Both are dirty as can be and I'll discuss them in a later post when I've finished both.

Poker:

Poker's been weird. I am running pretty horrifically, as I have been for the last couple months, and yet it's not really emotionally affecting me. The time I took off of poker was crucial. A discussion I had with the poker ANIMAL Nicolak was even more invaluable. Basically, he said that a la Boywonder, a big part of his success has come down to his emotional stability and the ability to weather the storms calm and collected. Unlike Boywonder, he talked about how difficult this is for many people and I suggested that, indeed, it may be impossible for some to overcome.

That being said, I feel as though a switch has been flipped. It's very strange as I think these kinds of fundamental changes are pretty fucking difficult to actually internalize, and I'm still skeptical of whether I'll be able to maintain my zenlike balance, but I'm thrilled at the moment.

I think it's a combination of good guidance, a nice long break, dropping down to mostly nl200 for a bit and having a fucking ball coaching my small stakes students. The coaching has been fantastic, I think the 4 students that I've begun working with are instantly improving their game and I think that the perspective that I have been afforded has been tremendously helpful to me. I'm really looking forward to seeing where these people end up. I have about 3 more students with whom I'll start working with next week and I'm excited for that too.

Here are the results for almost 100k hands of play:




It sucks to be running so far under EV, and it sucks to be losing so many hands that are just completely set up, but like I said, the last 5k hands simply haven't affected me as in times past. Hopefully a heater is just around the corner. In the meantime, I'll be grinding to get better+better.

Good luck friends,
B-don

The good; My first lessons went pretty great I think. Four students went for the 5-pack lessons and I think they are all bright dudes with as good of poker prospects as any. I did some sweats and some student video review, and I think I managed to find some big leaks and suggest some pretty cutting edge stuff. I also just am having fun with it, which is such a welcome change of pace given how poker things have been going otherwise. So far I think everyone has been really happy and I'd be pretty shocked if all my students don't realize a higher winrate and potentially climb stakes by the time their lessons are done.

The bad; playing poker has been absolutely miserable for the past two weeks. It's just one of those stretches where nothing goes right. I still find myself making some questionably credible bluffs that just don't fold out enough to be profitable, and I think this is probably my biggest leak since that can burn 100bb+ in a single play. I'm losing to a lot of two outers, my preflop value range is getting notched all day (i.e. KK v AA, JJ v QQ), I'm running about 2.6k below ev (7-10 buy ins at the stakes represented in the sample) not making hands; I guess it happens to everyone so we all know the song and dance, but it just makes life pretty miserable and it's difficult to keep poker unhappiness insulated from general sense of wellbeing and excitement about life. At least for me.

On a more constructive note, I'm trying out a strategy to address one of my other leaks which I think is working really well. I've had this bad habit of just never believing people which I think is a byproduct of the switch I made from TAG to LAG. Lag kind of reinforced this idea that it's hard to make a hand in poker, and caused me to start calling A LOT more. However, there is a balance, and there are times when just because somebody only reps a couple hands for value, it doesn't mean that they have a bluff range to go along with it. It sounds simple, but in the game time situation, I see regs making absurd call downs versus fish and eachother all the time. So I'm trying to play a game where I try to find at least one or two tough folds per session actively instead of passively if that makes sense. A hide and seek of sorts. It might cause me to fold the best hand a bit, but I think it's also encouraged me to be more honest about ranges in marginal EV situations. I'm always looking for ways to decrease variance and obviously increase winrate, and I think that this is going to be a good habit for me to get into.

Otherwise, all is well. I'm at home in Chapel Hill and hanging out with the family. I'll be leaving for a cruise to Mexico/Central America soon which should be fun. Cruises are just about my least preferred mode of travel and I have some issues with the way they are run (environmental impact, racial caste of employees, etc) but I'm going to try to turn off the 'deconstruct-everything' switch that you get as an English major and just enjoy some poker free R & R. Pics soon.

peace,
B

I got a really great response to the coaching offer I made a couple of days ago. It's gratifying to put an offer out there and for people to demonstrate so much interest. Makes me feel all fuzzy, etc. A few people have committed to blocks of lessons and I am really confident that they won't be disappointed. I'll try to post my new students progress as we really get into it, so look out small stakes, you're about to get your shit rocked.

UPDATE: For prospective students, I now have the sample video that I promised ready for download. So if you are interested in some lessons, inquire within!

Hey Leggotes,
There has been so much discussion of coaching lately, I thought I'd go ahead and enter the fray. I think that everyone that says that the smaller stakes players can't afford the big name coaches are... ABSOLUTELY RIGHT! However, I think the conclusion of those people (that the elite coaches' rates are 'unfair') is patently wrong for a number of reasons. I don't really want to state them explicitly because I think it's already been done, and can be easily understood by familiarizing oneself to the concepts of "supply:demand" and "opportunity cost". Rather than dropping half of your bankroll in return for information you probably aren't ready for anyway, why not pay a fraction of the cost and seal up your biggest leaks? OK, hold on, back to that in a moment.

I have been working with Reid 'Shootaa' for more than a year now. I think he's an excellent teacher and I've recommended him to others on a half dozen other occasions. I can't tell you how much I've learned since then. I've gone from winning 1 bb/100 at nl200 to winning at least 4 times that at nl400 on Pokerstars 6 max. Of course, part of the credit must go to the poker peers that have been invaluable in allowing me to actualize poker knowledge on the table. But I'm not satisfied. I am hungry to achieve 8 bb/100, a figure that I believe represents a benchmark in personal poker development. I'm working as hard as I can to improve my game. I watch videos regularly, I experiment with poker stove, I occasionally 1 table (you really can't follow EVERY action from every player otherwise) I receive coaching on a semi-regular basis and I have a solid group of peers beating nl100-nl1k who I talk to on a daily basis. I'd like to think the information I have at my disposal is pretty darn up to date.

Basically, the reason that I'm making this post is that I'd like to pull some small stakers on up the ladder in the process. I think it would keep me thinking about the game from all kinds of perspectives, and keep me accountable to others in what is otherwise a relatively solitary sport. And for what its worth, I think my mind is considerably better off the table than it is while I'm in the heat of playing.

**** The important part****

For the time being, I'm going to ask for only $60/hour of private coaching (considerably less than my hourly during the hand sample represented by the below graph). I will also offer a set of five lessons for $250. This will include everything you get from an elite coach including my aim screen name and other contact info that you might need. I would encourage regular questions as I think this is how you can best drive home recently incorporated information while avoiding misapplication of concepts to the greatest extent possible. And yes, if somebody demonstrates in enough confidence in me that they are willing to pay for coaching, then I damn sure want to see that person improve as much as possible. If you need references, I would be happy to oblige, and I am also going to offer up a 'Leggo' style video of me playing and narrating my thoughts so interested parties can decide whether my skillz are worth your billz. I feel like I should rap this up with "FOR ONLY ONE EASY PAYMENT OF 19.95" or "BUT WAIT, IF YOU ACT NOW", but I'm going for honesty and equity! I am new to the coaching, so if there are questions or you are interested, ship me a message!

Paz y Amor,
Brandon

Brag: So I just bought this ballin 30 inch screen open box off of newegg for about 1k. It's a thing of beauty and inspires awe. I wish that they would put a baby in the picture for scale or something.

Beat: my desktop is a $350 dell inspiron that doesn't have the right connection (I believe it's called a DVI port). Even with an adapter, my graphics card, which I believe is about as technologically advanced as the colorful thing inside a kaleidescope wouldn't support a screen that big anyway.

Variance: Now I need to buy another fucking computer. I think that I should buy a laptop and just connect it to the screen and forego the desktop altogether so I can travel with the same machine I use to grind from my home spot. But I've been out the tech game for awhile, and I didn't know much about it to begin with as Wake Forest generously provided us with Lenovo powered Thinkpads that have just a bit more computing power than an abacus. What would people recommend? I think my price range is gonna be $1200-1800 give or take a bit maybe. Thoughts are appreciated!