Finished day 1 with 12k in chips, will be starting saturday at 250/500/50. Had zeejustin on my direct right and dipthrong(good hsmtt reg) on my direct left, then another scandi internet dude 2 to my left, and i think another internet guy who was weaker 3 to my left, and all the fish across the table, Seemed like a bad table draw to me, but thats the way it goes. Ran good in all ins, and ran bad in getting any hands to play, so many fucking 94o, Q5o etc. Plus after losing a pretty dumb hand that put me at 30bbs for like the whole day, i had to play somewhat tighter than usual with dipthrong on my left and my stack being what it was. I think I played my stack pretty well though after i got short

25bbs heading into day 2 is obviously worse than what I hoped for, but with the way most of these guys play, if I get a decent seat/table draw, I should have a ton of +EV opening/reshoving spots on day 2, so heres to hoping I get something going. Also my back is fucking killing me, live poker is hard on the body!

Edit: All sold out

Heres my 2p2 market place thread

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/16.../#post19846212

I hate complaining about things, especially poker related or run bad related because fact is Im lucky just to be in the life position I am in now. Like really really lucky. Nonetheless I could use some sympathy right now. Had a look at my lifetime graph yesterday and although I knew I was missing some ev I didnt realize it had become this much. Kind of depressing, and also uplifting at the same time




One of my problems is I never had a good enough work ethic to put in a lot of hands, so this 550k hands encompasses like 3 years(also played a few hundred mtts also, but still not a lot). This month is actually only my second month getting atleast 30k hands, the other being October 2008 where I barely got above 30k hands. This month is alread at 30k+, and Im hoping to get 50k hands, and improve upon that for the rest of the year

Anyways, Ive gotten 6-7 staking applications, not as many as I was hoping for at this point, so please send an app in if you interested. Link here http://www.leggopoker.com/blogs/d2th...50nl-8229.html

Staking for FTP and Stars ONLY ***

Ok guys, anybody who would like to be staked for up to 50nl HU/6max/Fullring on FTP or Stars needs to fill this application out in entirety, and send it to d2staking@gmail.com

If you have any questions about any of the questions on this app feel free to PM me or email me. If you cant take the time to fully answer all of the questions below, you are not the type of person I’ll be staking. Also, I am not offering coaching along with these stakes, these are play-only stakes. I will be available to discuss individual hands and such over aim though with any stake in my free time. Thanks

-Stakes will generally be a standard 50/50 split with make up* with the backer(me) taking all losses. Further details will be unique to each stake

*For those that arent familiar, make up means if you lose, you must make the money back before you see any profit. Example: I stake you for 25nl, and you lose 5 BI to start the stake. You dont make any profit from the stake until you first make back those 5 BI and get into the green overall. Make up also carries over from stake to stake. So if we agree that you will play X amount of hands, and you lose some amount over those hands, if I choose to stake you again, you must make that same amount back until we start splitting 50/50. In a situation like this where it is a 2nd+ stake, we may work out a deal where you get a 80/20 split or similar until you are out of make up.

Application

1. Full Name:

2. Occupation:

3. Poker Experience (just write a brief history of your playing experience, no more than 5-6 sentences please)

4. Poker Sites you play on or have played on and your screennames

5. Do you have Rakeback? If you play on stars, what VIP level are you?

6. Why are you looking for a stake?

7. List 2-5 references in the poker community that I can contact that will vouch for you

8. Have you ever been coached, if so by whom?

9. List any and all poker training sites that you subscribe to

10. Stake Level you want to be staked for


Disclaimer:
If you send in an application and I contact you about staking, I will eventually need a bit more personal info about yourself. It wont be anything that anybody should have a problem with, just some real life information.


Ok, anybody who is interested send in a FULLY completed application to d2staking@gmail.com, Thanks!

One thing that I think is fairly under appreciated in speculative markets like poker, finance, etc is how important the time spent evaluating one's position is. In poker this amounts to several activities including game selection, studying/reviewing hands away from the table and self reflection. Self reflection is a bit ambiguous but I think about it as being able to evaluate oneself in relation to opponents, as well as evaluate your state of mind and its effect on your gameplay. In finance, hours upon hours must be spent reading, researching, and reviewing before a buy or a sell is made(atleast for an 'active' investor, as opposed to a passive investor who might just index). Likewise, in sports betting time must be spent shopping lines, evaluating risk, and handicapping games. In staking, work must be done to evaluate how much can be risked, what return is necessary to justify the investment, and of course ample research into potential stakee's to minimize risk

One aspect of my personality that tends to fail me from time to time is patience. When things seem easy at the table, I usually have plenty of patience. In particular I am patient enough to wait for players worse than me, able to make good folds on the river when I am never good but want to call anyway, and able to quit a session because I feel myself starting to lose focus. In particular I generally feel a need to gamble on -EV decisions when I am stuck.

I feel like the improvement I can make in these areas is vastly more important than improvements I can make on the technical aspects of poker(theory, math, etc). My reasoning behind this is that in theory it should be much easier to make huge strides in the non technical aspects of poker and other speculative markets than to greatly improve on the technical sides. Changes can be made immediately, all that is needed is a combination of will, work ethic, and self awareness. For the technical stuff the marginal gains for each minute/hour spent seem to pail in comparison given the amount of good action available to me, and the amount of action I can actually handle(I've come to realize my play quickly deteriorates at >300h/hr at HU).

-----

I'm not sure how to introduce this next topic, but basically I hope to slow down my life a bit. Things are so fast paced in general today, and theres so much emphasis put on speed in just about everything, besides sex I guess. This is probably a bad thing overall for society as it gradually shortens our attention spans to the point where its difficult to concentrate on something for a meaningful amount of time. I guess, Id just like to reverse this process within me a bit, slowing down, enjoying and experiencing things for better or worse at a slower pace. Taking time to read books instead of browsing the internet or watching a bad tv show, or taking time alone to just be alone with your thoughts for an hour or so can be really gratifying. I find it is hardly my first thought at any given time that my next hour should be spent reading, or taking a drive or bike ride, yet after doing so I usually feel completely refreshed and enthusiastic. This whole paragraph is a bit off topic from the rest of the blog but I felt compelled to write it down somewhere regardless.

*Cross posting this on leggo/cr

Hey everyone! I've decided to start blogging again, and am going to be cross posting the blog on leggo and cardrunners(I had a blog on cr back in '07, and blogged at leggo during my brief stint as a video producer last year)

Theres been a lot of changes to my life and day to day since I last blogged about 10 months ago. In september I graduated with a degree in history from UCLA, and about a month ago I moved to South Lake Tahoe with another 2p2er.

Not having school has been awesome, although I have actually been reading more books in the last few months than I ever did in college, trying to learn more about both finance and sportsbetting.

Ive had a rough few months poker wise. I wasnt playing particularly well, and wasnt game selecting well, and was putting in poor volume which amounted to several months of breakeven poker.

Last month right before I was moving to Tahoe, I decided to sit down and analyze what I needed to do to be more successful. In May I game selected better, although not perfectly, and put in a tiny bit more volume than I had been and did pretty good.

Self analysis is crucial in a profession like poker, or finance or any speculative market with a lot of variance. I realized several things upon doing some self analysis:

*Non HU poker offers much less immediate profit as well as growth potential for me specifically for several reasons. Firstly, HU poker although mathematically simpler to solve than 3+ handed poker evolves at a much slower pace in the online poker world because less cumulative hands are played by all the players. Yes HU poker is information saturated but I think this is more than overcome by the fact that much less hands are being logged at HU tables than 6/9 handed tables. Secondly, HU poker offers a much easier avenue for game selection, as approximating your winrate at a table of 6 players can be quite complex. Lastly, Ive always had an inclination towards HU poker, and I enjoy it much more than any other form. Thus I decided to concentrate as much as possible on HU poker

*I am proficient enough at NL, PLO and also LHE to game select HU at comfortable stakes for my bankroll. Some time ago I put in some effort to learn HU LHE(the basics+ a few tricks), and recently a fair amount of time to learn about PLO, yet in the previous few months I wasnt really utilizing these skills correctly. Instead of banging my head against the wall against decent to good NLHE players or I should have been using my somewhat diverse skill set to game select more and wait for higher return/lower risk scenarios. Although not immediately necessary, its likely in the future I'll want to put time into learning further games as well as good action becomes less available

* Something Ive been thinking about more just today and yesterday was diversification. During the last few months my only income source was playing poker. When that stagnated my finances stagnated obviously. I had already been doing a lot of reading on finance and sports betting, but this also prompted me to think of other ways to diversify. Staking came to mind, and once I have time to give it more thought, and can also raise some more capital, I'll likely be implementing some staking into my overall business plan. Likewise, coaching might be an option at some point as well, although I am not sure if thered be any substantial interest in my services anyways. Something to examine down the road

I'll finish up by updating that I am still in fairly horrific physical shape. Probably about ~40-50lbs over what I consider an optimal weight, as well as 15-20 lbs of LBM away from healthy composition. I am committed to eating healthily- mostly fresh fruits and veges, lean meats and water for the most part. I am also fairly close to buying a mountain bike for some of the trails here in tahoe. Ive rented a bike a couple times now, and have a fairly good idea of what I should buy, so that should happen either this week or the next

The New FTP update is the absolute nuts. Evidence of this :

Had a good day today! Won 8.5 BI at 3/6 off a reg and dropped a bit at 2/4 and 10/20lhe. If not for PLO id be up a good amount this month!



Be good

Whats up guys

My new video is up. Hopefully all the micro guys out there get a lot out of it. Its a live play video, which was fun to make




Thats my "lifetime" at HU LHE mostly 5/10 and 10/20(and nothing above). Goddamn have I run hot, but at the same time check out that red line! The players are really terrible. I wouldnt be surprised if a really good p-layer could get 1$/hand at 10/20 easily, maybe not even multitabling


Thats it for now, got nothing else to really say except I am over halfway done with Fooled by Randomness and I am liking it more and more. I also finished the intelligent investor. Ill probably read it many more times, but it was a really enjoyable read for an aspiring investor like me

Im out