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luvr
That's right, after a couple weeks of training I passed the dealer test and I'm officially a poker dealer! And to make it even better I start my first shift tonight and I'm "shadow shifting" with my BFF! So happy, anxious, a bit nervous etc.  WHOOOHOOO!
P.S. I dealt the trainer aces during my table test 
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Hey all, it's been a busy month so far. I was gettin the grind on to start the month but the last week or so we've been getting ready to move and now we're visiting family. I've been spending the weekend at my boyfriend's Grandma's place with his grandparents, his mom and his 6 (almost 7) year old little girl (not mine). They live far from town on a lake, the whole area is very private and sheltered by wilderness, not too many neighbors and mostly everyone has a boat. Today I got 54 hands in before I was called to the 4-Wheeler by the 6 year old who loves to go fast. Yesterday I taught her poker (after her Dad said it was OK and encouraged it) and then got playfully spanked by Grandma when she came down the stairs and the little girl said, "Great Nan! I just flopped a straight!" (She flopped a wheel no joke the kid runs good) I started by teaching her nothing about betting/checking/counting chips etc. and just went for how hands play out and hand values. In the car driving into town we played out a bunch of hands, first to win 10 hands won the game just to get her looking at the different hand strengths. It was actually pretty amusing, she got dealt aces in the car and I told her how awesome the hand was and that I was in trouble with my 10-2o...until I flopped 2 pair and turned a boat. In the end she won (first to win 10 hands played out) and the last couple hands were only slightly rigged for her
View from the deck:
For poker the month has been good, I've had to drop down for a bit due to IRL money issues/withdrawing/moving. The good news is I'm finally over bubbling the trip to Monte Carlo and I'm repairing the damage that was done. Bubbling it and the 2 months of tilting downswing left me with some bad habits I've had to recognize and work on but I finally have the positive attitude back and know that if I play good, I'll get to travel somewhere for poker eventually (Read: I'm winning the Ladies Event next year ). The biggest poker news for me has been this thread started by our very own Nutsinho who is looking for a live-in personal assistant to coach:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...tudent-854393/
I don't go on 2+2 much but 2 people messaged me and told me to respond to this thread and obviously I did so hopefully that works out. Would be a dream come true for me to travel and learn from one of the best.
I'm now on my 3rd attempt to sit down and write this. There's now more people visiting than I care to count and I'm not sure how but I was volunteered to take the 5, 6, 8 year old paddleboating on the lake and then they tried to get me to take them swimming but I forgot my bathing suit. Then we had BBQ and now they're down here to play Hide N Seek ....brb gtg find some kids....omg kids keep you busy...one of them was like, "Can I call you Angel?"..."Uhh OK" lol
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Damn I hate it when you write a blog and then lose it before saving.
This is the story of how $4 grew into something more. (And I lost another chance to win a trip via satellite)
Long story short since I lost what I had written: iPoker makes me angry and I'm going back to Betfair where I belong. Not only do I have a sick rakeback deal there but they've just upgraded their software and joined the OnGame network and have a bunch of bonuses going. And they sent me Christmas presents last winter. Anyway, I can't withdraw from iPoker to moneybookers unless I've already made a deposit from moneybookers and since I haven't and my moneybookers was empty I had to think of something. While waiting to see if a friend had $5 in their moneybookers account I logged into my UB account. I know. Bad. But a friend convinced me to try them awhile ago, long before the recent security issue. I found a lonely $4. Quickly and without hesitation that $4 made some friends and grew into $60. I withdrew $50 (leaving 10 to play in lowbie tournies) and sent $5 to iPoker. While waiting for iPoker to let me withdraw my money, I sent the $45 to Betfair to get started. In the last 48 hours I've made 3 final tables in little tourneys. 2 were freerolls, one freeroll had over 2000 entrants.Today I final tabled a 454 person field in a $2, 1k GTD tourney and came 3rd for $97. I also won some BIs at 10nl. My little $4 has grown into over $150.
I had been watching a lot of tourney vids lately with the intention of winning a trip to EPO:
At the end of July I found out I was involved in a site only rake race. If you got over 30k player points you won a seat into a tourney for a chance to win a $6300 package to London to play the English Poker Open. If you got in the top 25 you won a seat in another tourney for the same prize. I had 2 chances to go to the EPO for free.
Both tourneys were 5k starting stacks, 15 min blinds.
First one had 14 people in it. I was slowing chipping up, playing nitty in the beginning and staying around 5-6th for chips. Then someone set over setted me in this hand that I posted on our forums:
http://www.leggopoker.com/forums/mul...way-12215.html
I still had some stack left but wasn't able to catch a double up and eventually got it with AK or something decent and lost anyway.
In the 2nd I was playing nitty again in the beginning then a hand happened were there was a raise and a call and I had QQ so I 3bet. The opener folded and the caller shoves allin for his last half of the starting stack. I call and lose to AKo.
I'm down to about 1/2 the starting stack and still feeling OK, it's still deep. A play a couple more small pots with AK and AA with no real action. Then there's a raise and a call and a 3bet from an aggressive player and I have QQ in the SB. I shove. Opener and caller fold, 3bettor calls with 99 and binks a 9 on the flop and I'm out. GG and so much for London.
Even though I got the luck in micro tourneys instead of a trip to London I'm still kind of glad I learned a bit more about tourneys in the process.
Well that's it for now, good luck Leggo with all your pokerings.
P.S. Not sure why but I hit record when the final table started. I might post it on here later since a couple people said they wouldn't mind seeing it. I feel like playing now though, I'll update this entry again later with it.
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Lots has already been said and most everyone here is a guy so I'll keep this short.
For anyone who didn't know a bunch of guys entered the Ladies Only event at the WSOP and drama ensued. Enough has been said so I won't talk about the specifics but the upset brought up issues regarding whether or not the event should even exist. Some guys say they should be able to enter it because it's not legally against the rules, it's "good equity", they want to sit at tables full of women, that bracelet only events should be open to everyone etc. Even some female players like Annie Duke won't play it and say any serious female poker player should take it as an insult, that we shouldn't need our own event because we're equal to the men etc.
A good article was written by Dr. Pauly at his Tao of Poker website on the subject.
My Thoughts:
Not all bracelet events are created equal to begin with. No one is going to look at the Ladies Event champ like they won the Main so that's not much of an argument and we should clearly be able to have it.
Why do we want it? Because women at a poker table are not ever treated the same as men. The ladies get disrespected and are never given credit for skills. Recently after Liv Boeree won her tournament I read some comments and someone said, "Good, now she can get back to the kitchen", among many other comments. *sigh* Often it's all fun and games but it doesn't change that women are rarely respected as serious players in the poker world. Or they get hit on at the table. I liked what Kristy Arnett said in her blog, guys will say things like:
"“Come on honey, smile once.” — No, I don’t feel like smiling! Should I be smiling because I’m a girl? Are you going to tell the 200 pound dude next to you to smile? NO. ME = feeling less like smiling"
The Ladies Only event is the only time we get to sit around and play poker with the girls and that's the point! I couldn't get a bunch of girls together for a game if I tried. Even if I could find enough girls that actually had enough interest to play, I would have to spend hours teaching them basics just to make the game half entertaining.
Think of how you enjoy getting a bunch of guys together for a casual game to drink some beers and have some laughs? Would you be pissed if the girlfriends decided to crash your home game?
The Ladies only event has a special atmosphere that we enjoy. Apparently one table got up and went to the washroom together - are you going to see that in any other tournament?
The Ladies Event doesn't hurt anyone and it helps get more ladies get comfortable in the poker world. Please be kind and adhere to the "No cock and balls rule" at the Ladies Only events. 
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Hi all, thanks for visiting the blog
This month has been going pretty good so far even though I'm still working on getting in more volume. Playing for hours and hours on end doesn't come that naturally to me, wouldn't hurt me to be a bit more degen
June so far:
When I came to Leggo in November I realized that if I ever wanted to be a coach this would be the site I'd like to be a part of. I love the community and I have a lot of respect for many of the coaches here. So in response to Probability's blog post back in May (better late than never right?) I emailed him about interest in being a Leggo coach since we could use some more micros coaches and I have a decent winrate and lots of time on my hands BUT I need more experience sweating / coaching before that could ever happen. Sooooo ... with that said, if anyone wants some helps in the micros, 25nl and below, let me know, we can do sweats, HH reviews, etc
Here's all my hands for 25nl, 20nl, and 10nl...Note I played 25nl when I was noobier than 20nl that's why the VPIP/PFR is a bit odd.
P.S.
I got PMed today by a person whom I haven't talked to in awhile and naturally I started talking about poker and asked if they played. They said they play live, something-or-other about online cheating/not safe/blah blah blah so I sent them that pic of this month's sessions and their comment was ...."That -$73 hurt" 
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Ohhhh so I don't know where to start. It's been awhile since I've updated the blog. I think this is gonna be a long one:
Cliff Notes:
My Brief Poker History
Post-Monte Carlo Bubble
Confidence and The Poker Mindset
Restoration / Quest for Vegas
For anyone who has talked to me or previously read my blog, we all know I bubbled a $5k trip to Monte Carlo. Well it REALLY messed me up, more than I thought possible and here's why from what I can tell, based on all the introspective thinking I've been doing. First, my brief poker history:
My Brief Poker History
I started online poker in winter of 2009. I deposited $75ish on PKR and started playing 4nl. I figured that since I like poker I might as well give it a shot like the guys on TV. I never went busto and went from 4nl to 10nl to 25nl on PKR before realizing it was terrible for getting any kind of volume but I was shy to move to a new site, after all I didn't use HEM or anything either. In November 09 a friend shipped me $200 saying "I bet you'd do good on Betfair, try that, gimme a share of the profits". I cashed out PKR, joined Leggo and switched to Betfair. A month later I started using HEM. Shortly after starting on Betfair I tripled the stake playing 20nl on Betfair so I sent him back $400 and kept $200 to play with. I grinded November and December, trying to build up a 1k bankroll to shoot at 50nl but I am a student and I do withdraw money so my bankroll has never been a ton of BIs. At the very end of December I took my shot at 50nl and it was awesome. In January I only played 60 hours but I averaged $22/hour from poker or $27/hour if you count the rakeback and bonuses I was getting. That's good for a broke student with no job. So I must have gotten a little cocky.
In February I basically took a bit of a break, didn't log much volume and ran bad when I did. When that happens I revert back to watching videos, reading books etc.
In March I bubbled Monte Carlo. I got $700 for the bubble but I didn't care, it hurt.
Post Monte Carlo Bubble - Lost Confidence/The Poker Mindset
The whole point of that history is to show how I went from free rolling to caring about the money I was winning and losing and counting it as income with real value. And of course we know how you're not supposed to think of it as real money, especially if the amount matters to you. After the Monte Carlo bubble I hit my first real bad downswing. Previously I didn't have problems with tilt because I was focused on the proper thing - making the correct decisions. After the bubble I should have taken a couple days off because I was definitely NOT focused on anything good. I know I ran bad but I'm sure I made it soooooo much worse for myself by not playing my A game...ever. And this compounded everytime I played.
March was heartbreaking. By April I had lost confidence in poker, in myself and had my final exams to stress over. In May I took some "me" time...I went home to visit my parents and my friends and their new places and babies. I've been making it a point to get more exercise too. I bought a nice dress and came back to my own city for a girlfriend's wedding - the first I had ever experienced.
PKR was having a 100% reload bonus with a side chance to win a Porsche so I moved back to playing 25nl on PKR to build my confidence again. Towards the end of May/beginning of June Probability was nice enough to pick me to get some of that free coaching he advertised in the forums. I was poorly prepared for it, especially since I hadn't even been playing much on iPoker/50nl. I had been wasting my time on PKR. None-the-less the coaching helped. Not only by improving my game but by helping my mindset.
Talking to redargoe and Matt woke me up big time (and I'd like to thank them again). I realized that if I want to go for this crazy dream of being a pro poker player that I need to get over the bullshit and focus on the important things - not beats and tilt but instead correct decisions and volume.
Here's my results (iPoker only) since talking to those two:
Today was especially special, one of my problems post MC bubble was running bad and tilting if I had a bad start to a session and quitting, scared to make it worse. Today I dropped 3 and then 4 BIs relatively quickly but I stuck with it and ended up almost 4 BIs in the black. Pre-bubble I didn't have tilt problems so hopefully that's finally fixed.
Quest for Vegas
I love traveling and seeing new sights and meeting new people. In January if you had asked me I would have said that I was going to do my best to keep up the results and get to Vegas this summer. I guess Monte Carlo distracted me from the main goal - being a poker player not just gambling for traveling money. After talking to Probability and Redargoe I realized that I was running out of time to make the money to get there and that it means more to me than Monte Carlo (*gasp!*) because it's more in line with the main goal and Leggo Party > Vanessa Rousso bootcamp IMO. And even though I'm a pretty bad forum troll sometimes and I don't post as much as I would like to, I have made some pretty good Leggo friends to chat with on Skype that I would love to meet. I have never been to Vegas, I haven't even been on a plane since grade 8. It has always been something to fantasize about though, I'm one of those people that would love the atmosphere, the excitement, the sights and sounds of Vegas and be totally amazed at all the pros that would be around. Also because I am generally a broke student and don't travel much, I didn't think to look at the cost of a trip to Vegas back in January...I assumed the cost would be huge and serious grinding and run good (and probably a jump to 100nl?) would be needed. I basically assumed that since I ran bad/played bad and wouldn't be moving to 100nl as soon as planned that Vegas was out of the question. As it turns out I can find 75+ deals (Expedia.ca) between $900-1100 to get to Vegas and back for anywhere from 7-11 days at any number of hotels on and around the Strip. Wish I had noticed that a month ago. I could book the MONTE CARLO hotel and casino for $1200...wouldn't that be the dream?lol Apparently they have a lot of pools and I love water and swimming and it's time for a new bikini! Anyway....I don't really even care if I get to play much while I'm there, I mostly want the experience of going. So the time for the grind is on, although my results so far this month are decent it won't be easy, my bankroll is still really sketchy and split between iPoker and PKR (almost done clearing the bonus) and I still have real life things to pay for. But don't count me out yet, I'll do my best to get to that party
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Yesterday I decided to give some tiltbuster.com table mods a try...
...hoping it would change my luck in the Monte Carlo satellites... and it worked (more or less). I came 2nd yesterday after a final table that seemed to last forever. Technically there was only 1 seat to the final awarded since the ladies are all nits and there weren't enough rebuys in the REBUY donkament. But 2nd was a healthy €205 and the buy-in to the final is €215 so that's close enough imo. Now there's hope of going to Monte Carlo again
Card mod link
Table mod link
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Well I guess it's time to cave and start my first ever blog. At least I'm not on twitter yet 
Little intro: I'm a 22 year old university student in small city, Canada. I  poker. Yes I am actually a girl. I want to be pro so I can travel and meet people and have fun.
Earlier this week I won a €22 satellite to a €215 final to win a trip to play the Ladies Event in Monte Carlo:
The prize package is worth €3,500 and includes €1,100 Ladies tournament buy-in, five nights accommodation worth €1,300, €700 in cash for travel expenses, and entry to Vanessa Rousso’s Ladies Bootcamp (worth €300). You’ll also receive a ladies goodie bag which contains PokerStars women’s apparel and an exclusive party invite. You’ll also get the opportunity to watch the The 7th Grand Prix de Monaco Historique which runs May 1-2.
I was so excessively excited for this because I had a really good feeling about the whole thing. I've been trying sats to random locations a couple times now and I keep winning the $22 ones then doing better and better in the finals. And it's a ladies event, in Monte Carlo. I was dreaming about the win and everything. So yesterday finally rolls around, I can't close the tournament window for 2 hours before it starts hoping enough girls join so that at least 2 seats will be awarded. 2 seats were awarded. I came 3rd.
Traumatized! I'm a 50nl grinder so a €3,500 ($5k) package to Monte Carlo is the nuts for me. I REALLY want to travel and play poker somewhere live. Grrrr I was sooo ready to represent the ladies of Leggo in Monte Carlo! (lol) I also ended up going deep in some other low BI tourneys, I have no idea what the results were though. I was so focused on the only table that mattered.
There's a bit of good news: 3rd was worth €530 and there's still 4 more weeks to try. So I made like $750-800 yesterday with all my tourneys, which is a pretty good day for 50nl....so why am I so heartbroken?
I'm determined to keep trying. This is the 3rd time I've won a $22 tourney into a final to go somewhere. Vienna (24th in the final), Tallinn (9th), Monte Carlo (3rd). Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo! I figure I should win a trip somewhere eventually? It would probably help if I was better at tourneys.
...I just told my Dad about this: "Remember the Monte Carlo trip thingy?" "Yea" "I needed to come 2nd.... I came 3rd" I could literally hear the "Ohhhhh shit" in his voice and he didn't even swear...I you Dad. Happy Birthday |
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