NOTE: This blog was written September 23, 2010, but I didn’t have time to post it until today (the 25th).

Gonna divide this into school, life, and poker sections so people can skip what they do not want to read.

SCHOOL

School is going well. As previously mentioned, I started in mid-July. The trimester comes to an end exactly one month from today. Motivation has come and gone multiple times. That said, I believe I have an A or high B in all my classes. There are a lot of academic fish in my class. Many of them are not going to make it, especially through next trimester. Nice people, just not smart enough to pass. There are currently about 130 kids in our trimester, but the number declines down to around 70 or 80 by the time graduation rolls around 3 years from now. I have hung out with a core group of about 8 people during class and on the weekends. It's an interesting bunch and generally we have a lot of fun. I've made quite a few other acquaintances as well and am looking to expand socially next trimester. I should meet even more people via forced lab groups. I have my schedule for next trimester. I have one class on Friday morning and that's it, so I'm pretty excited about the implications.



LIFE

I moved in to a new place in mid-August after being unsatisfied with my previous place. It is a brand-new 2 BR apartment within walking distance of school and downtown. My previous place was crappy and was too far away to walk to either school or downtown. This new apartment is rather expensive compared to my previous place, but I get a lot of value out of having a nice place that allows me to walk to and fro.

Financially, I'm on a HUUUUUGE life downswing. A lot of bills hit me at once including car license, car insurance, new apartment deposit, and furnishing my new place. I had depended on other people for furnishings my entire life. It feels good to own some stuff of my own, but man it was quite the unplanned expense. Quarterly taxes were also due in September and kind of forgot about them until the end of August. And of course, the taxes are for June through August and I immediately lost 4k to start September which is really bad timing. The burden of not making much money combined with my life expenses led me to start questioning if I should be in school. It took me a lot of pondering, but I have decided to stay in school. I just needed a reminder as to why I came back to school in the first place. My personality does not mesh well with poker. I’m fairly confident if I continued full-time I would have cardiovascular problems in the future.


POKER

Poker has been stressful to say the least. Since returning to school I've been getting in about 50 hrs/month.

July

July was great as I made about $5,500. In retrospect, July sucked. I started school July 12th and was up about $3,600. Until recently, I was like, “Hey I made $5k during my first month of school.” This wasn’t true as I was only up $1,900 in July during school. Analyzing my game brought this revelation upon me.

August

I ended up making $2,400. I made money yet again, but nowhere nearly my normal hourly. A combination of running awful at 2/4 and playing poorly as a result burned my hourly into the ground. I believe in late August I started playing no higher than 1/2 unlimited hold them.

September

I started out September doing very well. I didn’t have a ton of free time because of family obligations Labor Day weekend and Iowa football tailgating on the 4th and 11th. When I did play between Sept 1st-8th things were good. We did not have class Friday Sept 10th or Monday Sept 13th due to upperclassmen taking national board exams. I figured this would be a great opportunity to grind out some hands and sat down to play Thursday night the 9th. Things were going okay, but I took a run of bad cards and proceeded to tilt away upwards of $4,000 at NL200. Of course, I ran a little bad while tilting, but this was totally unacceptable. Here it was September 9th, 2010 and I had basically made $0 from poker since returning to school. Variance is a bitch, but I was making it worse. Every session I played had tons of things going wrong whether it was emotions, misclicks, misreading the board, etc. Some thing found a way to make every session up to that point worse. I decided to just dabble in some Rush NL50 and NL100 especially with Full Tilt’s bonus offer I knew my hourly was going to be decent. That went well for the most part. I still had a few emotionally weak moments, but felt I was playing B+ or maybe even A- game.

I returned to the tables on Friday Sept 18th late in the evening. This was the first weekend I had been at my place in 3 or 4 weeks, so I had a ton of errands, cleaning, and relaxing to do. I was grinding NL50 Rush lost about four buyins and finally said, “fuck this” and got back in the HU tables and made about $1200. Having a good session felt good and I made another $350 the next morning. A $1500 upswing felt good (obviously), but I also had 3 exams Mon/Tues/Wed looming over my head.

I intended to put in a nice study session Saturday afternoon, but managed to be productive for about 1.5 hours while sitting with my books for probably 6 hours. When you have the need to study and can’t, that is a tough feeling. Sunday was also not as productive in regards to school as I had hoped, but I did accomplish some studying. Around this time I seriously considered dropping out of school to pursue poker again and then venture into investing in the market/rental properties. Dropping out for a few years and returning was also an option as I have the freedom to do so. Sunday and Monday I was pretty much in the dumps and was constantly on the fence if I should continue school. As I mentioned earlier, I talked myself out of quitting on Tuesday. A group study session with a few other people from my class on Monday night for Tuesday’s exam helped me decide to stay in school. Opening up about poker to a fellow classmate on Wednesday evening was also therapeutic. At first she didn’t quite understandMy exams went extremely well as could be especially considering how little I studied. Monday was 95%, Tuesday 79% (probably the hardest test we’ll take this trimester), and Wednesday 93%. I’m sitting well in all of my classes and won’t have to stress much during finals in a few weeks since GPA doesn’t matter.

While trying to make an educated decision regarding dropping out and staying in school, I needed to analyze my poker play. In particular, why am I not making money while I’m in school?

Analysis of My Poker Game

I knew emotions were costing me a lot of money. Running bad had led me to push harder and harder to win every pot and every little edge. Pushing every little edge you can find is obviously good for the most part, although at HU I argue against this at times. With pushing the action so hard, of course, variance skyrocketed. I’m also pretty sure a bunch of edge pushing resulted in negative expectation plays, especially in my HU game.

I also had to look at all-in EV. I knew I was running like shit in general, but especially when all-in. Total damage was $5,000 below EV to the tune of about 20 buyins. Combined with never winning at 2/4 (actually down at 2/4 since returning to school) when I obviously have a huge edge at HU was killing me monetarily and emotionally. I woke up and realized this is VARIANCE at its worst. Returning to school and running the worst you have in 1.25 million hands is a bad combination. I believe this directly lead to the emotional mishaps, misclicks, and frustration. I’m still responsible for my own actions including tilt, but combining school and bad run was just the thing my tilt needed to creep back into my game.

I’ve decided to stop being a little pussy and suck it up. I am going to be sitting at 2/4 from now on. Shielding myself from playing 2/4 HU was probably the weakest thing I’ve ever done. I know I have a large edge, why the hell am I burning money by not exploiting the edge? Because I’m being a pussy! I’ve decided to regain my swagger in regards to slaying fish at the tables. No more self-destructive habits like tilt or shielding myself from swings. I have the money to handle the swings and this is a long-term game. I’ve never been so excited to play poker. I have a relatively light week ahead (exam Monday which won’t be too terrible and exam Wednesday which will require some steady study grind this weekend and all Mon/Tues night.

Plans on How to Be Successful from This Point Forward

1) I’ve got to be more confident, especially at the tables, but also in life and school. I’ve been pretty confident in regards to academics at school, but socially I haven’t expanded quite as far as I had hoped.
2) Exercise. This has been a huge leak of mine for the last month and I need to stop with the fucking excuses. I am going to put gym clothes in my bag every day or leave them in my locker at the gym. Immediately after class obligations are finished for the day, go workout. I want to focus on cardio right now. Planning on hitting the gym 5 out of 5 days next week. I’ve been coming home from class and taking a nap every day which is ridiculous.
3) Decrease caffeine consumption. I’ve already started doing this within the last week or two and it has been going well. I’m not sure what, but caffeine does something to fuck me up.
4) Eat healthier. Lean meat, veggies, and fruits. Om nom nom that is good for you too!
5) Spend more weekends playing poker, hanging out with friends, and studying. It was really bad timing having to be at home Labor Day, home Iowa football games 2 weekends in a row, etc. This will be much easier after football season. Thankfully, I’m on end of trimester break for 2 of Iowa’s home games (Wisconsin and Michigan St.).
6) Restrict playing during the week unless not going to be home on the weekend. HU during the week is impossible with my schedule, so I’m just going to focus on making a little money at Rush. This is a decrease in EV for me, but as I said, HU during the week with my schedule is EV of $0. Any EV > $0 = good. For the most part though, I do not want to be playing except on the weekends. I was in a really good groove early in the trimester focusing on school during the week, raping poker/life/books (when necessary) on the weekend.
7) Control the emotions and grind it out. Variance is a bitch, but allowing it to get to me made it so much worse. It’s uncalled for that I get upset. I’ve been playing this game for 5 years. The confidence/swagger at the tables will also help. Especially at HU, a guy has to have an attitude, but it has to be beneficial, not destructive.

This took a long time, but this post and analyzing my game is going to make me so much money in the long run.

Epic Graph

up $8,300 in non-showndown, down $6,00 at showdown WTF BBQ tilt monkey/run bad

All-in EV $6700, so $4400 below EV as if it matters

Smooth parts are where I was playing Rush