Haven't posted a blog in a while but things have been going pretty well. Got my maths video series finished which I'm really happy about although, at the moment, I don't feel motivated to do much at the weekends besides browse forums and play a session or two. I'm playing 200nl at the moment but not getting in much volume at all. I have some ideas for stuff I want to do but it's all still at the planning stage and I'm procrastinating on it. I put a new sticky in the micro stakes forum for some poker book discussion and Matt is working on getting a micro stakes coaching forum set up. I'm really pleased with how good that forum is at the moment, there's not a huge amount of micro stakes content at leggo but at least the forum is super solid.

Work has been going really well. I moved over to the commodities desk around the beginning of February to trade commodity ETFs, I was on the equity ETF desk before that. I'm getting to do a lot more trading and really enjoying it. Mock (a trading game we play) has been going really well and I've been crushing it the last few weeks. One of the other assistant traders got to go to Philadelphia for class (what we call the 10 week training program to become a trader) around March. It's kinda good and bad news, it's a little disappointing that I didn't get to go but good that there's one less person to compete with for the next class. On balance it's definitely a good thing. I'm not sure when the next one will be, hearing rumours of July or September, fingers crossed and just have to keep pushing myself.

I got the first season of the wire and I'm almost finished it, snap buying the rest of the seasons obv. Aaron's been talking about a multi-part HU addition to the memoirs so I'm really excited about that, I almost wish he hadn't said anything because the waiting is a killer. Kinda cool that I still get excited about learning new stuff about poker though, you'd think you'd grow out of it.

It's that time of year again; the holidays are over, people are slowly awakening from their drunken stupor, children are bored with their Christmas presents already and the Leggo latest blog posts fill up with end of year reviews. So, of course, to keep up the tradition I realised I had better reflect on the past year as well.

Overall I feel 2009 saw the culmination of a lot of hard work. I became a Leggo Pro, graduated from college and got a job at one of the best trading firms in the world (to go along with working at the best video training site). All fantastic achievements that I'm very proud of. However, looking forward there's still so much more work to do; graduate as a trader, get more videos out (I'm working on it), get back to midstakes. There are some other ideas I've been playing around with but I keep on foreseeing problems and arguing with myself that I won't have the time or desire to finish them, that the benefits won't outweigh the effort, etc. I guess that type of process is probably a good thing on balance although jumping in head first would result in more being accomplished.

On the poker side I've gotten very, very few hands in this year, only 26k. That was most likely a combination of final year in college, loads of problems trying to produce videos and starting a 60 hour a week job. At least I ran well:




Hope everybody has a great 2010.

I had a great time in Philadelphia. The training course was o.k.; we had to be in for 8 but we wouldn't get started until 10. The morning consisted of having breakfast and then playing limit hold'em for play money and discussing every hand afterwards, thankfully I managed to avoid as much of it as possible, lol limit.

After that we'd correct the homework we were given the night before and then either have a class or play more poker. The homework was hit or miss, some nights it could be done in 15 minutes, other nights it would take several hours to get through. Then we'd have lunch and usually another class in the afternoon. Some days we'd also get a talk from one of the various departments and after that we'd play more poker until we could go home at 4. Bill Chen gave a poker talk for a couple hours which was really cool.

The company put on various things for us over the two weeks; there was a dinner in Chifa on Society Hill, it was a nice place but I wasn't a huge fan of the food. We went bowling as well, I suck at bowling but when I learned how to spin the ball it became a lot of fun, took some nice shots where the ball rolled right along the edge of the gutter and swung in just at the end. We also went to the Phillies vs. Atlanta Braves baseball game, had great seats but the game got rained out in the 8th inning.

The rain was really heavy, I could actually see the rain falling before it had gotten to us, I was out of my seat and into the aisle by the time it finally hit. In Ireland there's a lot of rain but it's mostly drizzle or light showers, in Philadelphia it was massive downpours or nothing at all. I also got a cheese steak from Tony Lukes which was excellent.

I went to see the Liberty Bell and the Rocky steps and I went out to the King of Prussia mall, it was pretty big although I'd kind of expected it to be bigger. Still managed to blow through a grand in 4 hours.

I lost about 5 pounds while I was over there, I've put on a lot of weight since I started this job, the long hours don't leave much time for exercising but I had a decent amount of free time to go to the hotel gym after class. On the plane back one of the other assistant traders showed me how to solve the rubiks cube, he can do it in under a minute, my best record so far is 2:03 which I'm pretty pleased about.

I also had my graduation on Wednesday, the ceremony dragged on a bit but it was nice seeing my friends again. I had gotten the parchment framed but it smashed in the suitcase on the way home.

Work has been going fine, a load of new assistant traders and interns have just started, there's 5 new assistant traders and 3 new interns so it's great having people around the same experience level to talk to. We started the mock training which is pretty tough, basically we're given a stock price and fair prices in a couple of options and have to make call and put markets in all the strikes around the stock price, then the guys teaching the class will act as brokers and put in bids and offers and it's up to us to trade with them and try to make money by arbitrage, hedging our position or just taking positions based on order flow.

The game is relatively simple, once you understand the relationships between the various options the game breaks down to simple algebra and arithmetic. The problem is that you're competing with 5+ other people who are trying to do exactly the same thing and it comes down to who can add and subtract the fastest, something that nobody's really done since they were like 8 years old. Then there's the problem of making sure you're doing the trades in the right direction and not costing yourself money, as well as getting all the terminology right. It should be a lot of fun once everybody's reasonably advanced, at the moment we're mostly still getting used to the relationships and all the mechanics.

Besides that I've mostly been doing coding, which I'm getting pretty good at now. Knowing lots of different things I can do makes it more enjoyable.

I'm going to the head office in Philadelphia with the other Assistant Traders for two weeks tomorrow for a training course. I've been hearing loads of great stuff about it so it should be a lot of fun. We don't start until 8.30 so I'll get to have a bit of a lie in as well . I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have while I'm there so don't feel insulted if it takes me a while to reply to comments/PMs/posts in the stats thread.

My graduation is on the Wednesday after I get back so I'm looking forward to that and seeing my college friends again.

I finished third in the freeroll tournament for €1,500. I ran a small bit bad towards the end but made a pretty big mistake in one hand. The tournament had to finish by 11.30 and, if it was still running by then, places would be decided by chip count. The structure threw up a lot of interesting situations towards the end and I'm not hugely familiar with tournament play, never mind this modified structure.

About 10 minutes to go it was 4 handed and I isolated the CO limper with A6o from the BTN. I don't really remember all the exact details but I'll do my best. Payouts were 5000, 2500, 1500 and 1000. Me and the SB had about 27,000 in chips. I had busted a few of the shortstacks and then abused the bubble pretty hard. He had been shortstacked but had been jamming over a few of my opens and had sucked out in a few all-in hands. He seemed pretty competent and better than most of the players in the tournament.

The BB had about 8,000, he had been playing reasonably straight forward and I don't really remember too much about him. The CO limper had about 14,000 and had come into the final table with a pretty big chip lead. He was playing aggressively towards the start of the final table, open min raising a lot and with trashy hands. He was playing terribly postflop, calling down with really weak hands. He would also call 3bets with crap and was definitely one of the weaker players in the tournament. He had tightened up around the bubble and I don't really remember him limping too much. The blinds were 300 - 600 I think. I assumed the limp was weakness and felt I would likely pick the pot up postflop with a cbet most of the time, I was expecting him to call preflop a decent amount. I made it somewhere around 1800-2000 and the BB shoved for 8000 so about 6000 back to me with A6 and 11,000 in the pot.

I felt the BB would probably be pretty light here, I had an aggressive image and would be isolating the CO's weakness pretty frequently. With 10 minutes to go and places decided by chip count it was in the shortstacks interest to be playing extremely aggressively. From a purely cEV perspective it was a snap call but obviously the structure changed things a huge amount. If I called and won it would put me on 36,000 and in a very comfortable position 3 handed. If I folded I had 25,000 left and would have to chip up to catch the SB although I'd be comfortable against the shorter stacks. If I called and lost then I'd be down to 19,000 and still pretty comfortable against the CO but would need to catch up against the SB.

I decided that the upside to calling and winning was a lot higher than the downside to losing. However, I forgot to account for what the BB's stack would be if he won, it would put him on 17,000 and a huge threat to take second place from me on 19,000. If I had noticed this I would have folded but I ended up calling. He showed QTo and a Q and T on the flop locked it up for him.

I hovered around 2nd to 3rd place for the rest of the tournament, in the last hand, the BB and CO got it all-in with the CO taking the pot for 2nd place.

I've just finished my second week of work and it's been going well. I'm an assistant trader on the ETF desk. I have to be in work for 7.15 to run morning updates before the markets open at 8 so I'm getting up pretty early now. The markets close at 5pm and afterwards we do training for an hour from Monday to Thursday. Tuesdays and Thursdays we play poker; either limit holdem, limit stud or limit Omaha 8 or better. I don't have much experience in those games but I've ordered a few books so it shouldn't take too long to get up to speed. Mondays and Wednesdays we do mock trading although that hasn't started yet. Once I've qualified as a trader the days will get shorter.

The work is fine, I'm learning how to do coding in excel, visual basic and access. I hated programming in college but that was probably because I didn't get into it enough to be good at it. I'm reading up on options theory for the mock trading, there's a lot of overlap with the stuff I did in college but it's a bit more practical. Having the theoretical background is pretty helpful though. Besides that I've just been talking to the traders and asking a lot of questions while they show me what they do.

We're settling into the new house, most of the stuff is unpacked but we're still waiting on people to finish off renovating the bathrooms, it's being ridiculously dragged out. My broadband was finally installed last Tuesday, they came to install it the second day we moved in but the signal was too weak so they had to wait for tech guys to come out and fix that first. Sky (satellite TV) should be installed this week. Lauren has made lots of friends and is able to go outside a lot more now, we used to live right next to a road and there were no kids around to play with so it's great that she's not stuck inside as much now.

I'm going to be an options trader with Susquehanna. They were holding a €10k freeroll poker tournament with a maximum of 40 players for anybody studying for, or who had recently gotten, a degree in a quantitative field like maths, physics, engineering, computer science, etc. To enter you had to send in a C.V. and cover letter and pass a phone interview with basic probability questions, pretty cool recruitment drive.

I applied and they offered me a place in the tournament as well as an interview for their assistant trader program. I did well in that and they offered me a job. They use poker in the training program so I ran a little bad when both of my interviewers didn't play poker, but I was still able to explain general concepts and show a lot of the game theory type stuff even if I couldn't really give specific examples. Bill Chen, who co-wrote mathematics of poker, works for Susquehanna as well.

I'm obviously really excited about it, I had applied for internships with them when I was in second and third year but didn't get a place and, with the current financial situation, I hadn't really bothered applying for any jobs as I wasn't expecting too many places to be hiring. Also, I was looking forward to having a break and being able to play poker full time as I've never really had a chance, besides last summer, to get a lot of hands in and take some meaningful money out of the game. There's not much chance of getting in a lot of hands now but at least I won't have to make cash outs all the time either.

I've been very busy the last week looking for a new house and filling out contracts, we're living in Cork at the moment and Susquehanna is in Dublin. We went up and found a place and we're going to be moving on Thursday, I should be able to start work on the Monday afterwards.

I'll be working 8 - 5 Monday to Friday and even longer some days during the training period. I'll still be producing videos for Leggo, they'll just be taking even longer than usual to get done. I'm still going to be coaching as well but only on the weekends from now on so it's going to take a while to get to people on the waiting list unfortunately.

I'm also in the middle of writing a series of articles on 3betting for RakebackFTW.com, I spent my free time during the last week coming up with some really cool game theory stuff for it so I'm looking forward to getting the series out.

I passed, ship it.

I got a second class honours, I'm not sure what system they use in America but it was an average of 65% so I'm very pleased about that. There was a close scare with measure theory and martingales, I got 30% which meant I passed by compensation. Over 40% is a pass but if your overall results are high enough then they'll compensate a result between 30% and 40% to bring it up to a pass. Below 30% is a fail.

I got 43% on my first exam, computational finance, which was the one I was most worried about. All the other exams went fine though.

Poker has been going o.k., I started off very well but seem to have plateaued recently which is frustrating. Meaningless sample size obviously. Other commitments have been piling up so it's possible I'm feeling stressed about those or maybe I'm just more tired in general which is causing the problem. It could be that I need to tone down my aggression, I'm playing very loose and it might be ego related that I think I can isolate calling stations with hands like 96o and expect to show profit.

I'll keep an eye on it, I might just be making something out of nothing. I haven't gotten a huge amount of hands in so far this month, Birthdays and Christenings have popped up to wipe days out and I've been taking days off to work on videos and articles.

On top of that my iPoker client wouldn't open for a while and then my Party client started lagging and disconnecting me all the time so I lost a few days because of that. It was weird, there was nothing wrong with my internet connection as I usually have youtube open while I'm playing, my computer system is a beast so I doubt there's any problems there. And the lagging would only occur on some tables at a time, I'd be playing away on one table and another one would be disconnected.

Most of my play is done on Party because the iPoker software is just ridiculously bad. However, Party only allow 4 disconnect protects per week before you have to contact support and ask for a reset. The first time I ran out was on a Sunday and I emailed support who said they wouldn't reset it for me but it would reset automatically on Monday anyway. It kept lagging and ran out again mid week so I've moved money over to Stars and I'm playing there instead for now. GFY Party customer service.

I've been getting to the gym three times a week this month which I'm delighted about, only missed one day so far. I've also started taking whey protein, it says to take it three times a day but I end up missing some of them, usually in the evening. It's not really a huge concern though, it's not like I'm in training for anything.

with my girlfriend Jennifer, our daughter Lauren and her cousin Louise.

And we saw monkeys



And a gorilla



And sealions



And a tiger



And rhinos



And we went on a bus around the park



And we sat on a bench



And we were walking



And we saw one of these things



And we saw penguins



And some birdies



And it was the best day ever.



The end.

My final exam went well. I had to pull an all-nighter again but I got a lot more work done this time. It's great to have that out of the way so I can concentrate on playing poker full-time.

I hadn't checked my balance for a while but a year of barely playing due to computer issues and final year college work, as well as needing to cash out, has left my roll pretty decimated. I'm only rolled for 50nl at the moment but, hopefully, it won't take too long to grind back up. Playing in a low stress game is probably a good way to get back into the swing of things anyway.

Pretty funny turning pro at 50nl though, if somebody else had said they were going to start playing poker full-time at 50nl I'd probably tell them it was a horrible idea. My immediate plan is to get a decent routine going and start going to the gym, it's been a few years since I went regularly, college kinda got in the way of it.

I just finished my 7th exam which was on business and corporate finance. It was the only 3 hour exam I had this year, the rest were 1.5 hours. The exam went pretty well, there were two sections, each three questions, do two, and I managed to get the 4 questions I needed done. There were a couple of small parts which I'm not positive if I got right and I may have missed a point or two in the theory sections. Overall I was pretty happy with it though.

The exam before that was on survival analysis which went very well, it was 4 questions do all of them and I got them all out very well so I'm confident with that. The study was kind of weird though, studying survival analysis kept on making me think about death and what would happen if I died or a loved one died. Not exactly pleasant things to be thinking about. However, there's more than enough emo crap on aejones and lwrunner's blogs to cover all the Leggo blogs (possibly the whole internet), so I won't elaborate on that.

Anyway, the main reason for the blog post is that I had a strategy segment on the 2+2 pokercast, it's at 1:18.

My last exam, on time series, is on Friday. I'm really looking forward to getting that finished and having time to play poker again and finish off the second part of my 200nl video.