I haven't touched this thing in awhile, but I'm thinking about starting to blog more often. And, once I think about it enough, I might start to consider it, and once I consider it enough, it just might happen.

I remember watching the first season of yo momma back in college and thinking it blew chunks (my next door neighbor, for those of you who don't know) -- except for this guy "Harp," who was the most hilarious thing to come out of Dorkville since Urkel. I never trust my memories though, because I thought Ace Ventura was the best movie of all time til I saw it a few years ago. Let's just say I don't talk with my ass cheeks anymore.

Anyway, I finally got a hold of season 1 of yo momma, and it turns out Harp is fucking HILARIOUS. I have never laughed so hard in my life. And now that I see the light, I felt strongly that I should find some way to preserve his memory. I considered doing a "Never Forget" campaign, but several failures in this department deterred me:








Of all the pictures, the one most likely to be doctored is, in fact, not. That's right, ese: Lou Diamond Phillips is still alive AND receiving film roles. I mean, I don't love LDP, but he's been in some good things. SO... HEY COLUMBIA, how about the next time paul blart walks into your office, you remember LDP is still making movies? Just think about it, please? Suicide rates will plummet. At least at the zoo they will.

Anyway, I decided to go the more traditional route and upload a compilation to youtube. It's long, but worth it. Enjoy!

1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9McfAutaGc
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaMNRft7NQo
3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhqT8OEeQYA

I haven't blogged in awhile, so I figured I would x-post some facebook rambling here. I think I ramble surprisingly eloquently, but if you don't want to read it, the gist of it is these poker changes are affecting me on very deep levels. I am calling into question not only the surface choices I have made regarding poker but how I interact with the world -- psychologically, emotionally, in every possible way, really.

At the very least, I am talking about things passionately again. Welcome back old friend.

I must speak, and I must speak a lot. It is boiling inside of me and I can't hold it in anymore. Based on what I know about other people I think that I have always experienced things more strongly than most people do. It goes both ways, it has its goods and its bads -- I have been known to be very depressed about things. There are things I think about that make me well up with tears. But there are things that make me inexplicably happy. There are songs I listen to or things that I think about that make me tear up with joy (e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6gUK7niVFg). I like that I experience things so strongly. For me life wouldn't be worth living otherwise.

Everything I know and love was recently fucked in the ass by the DOJ. Every major poker site has been brought under indictment and is no longer servicing US customers, ergo I have no way to make money for the foreseeable future. This has extremely far-reaching effects for me.

Sure, it's partly about the money. And at first I thought that's all this would be about. I hate that I haven't secured my finances like I could. I know people that I talk poker with and play with that are secured for years and years. I never applied myself to get to that point, and I hate that.

More significantly, though, what this has done for me is that it has immediately called into question the last 6 years of my life. I am not religious, but poker has been my religion. It has been in my life implicitly for every second of every day of every week and every year for a very very long time. And now, immediately, without warning, that part of me is dead.

I know that it's bad for me to beat myself up over spilt milk, but I can't help it. That's how I am. I am extremely hard on myself and have always been. The thing that hurts the most is not the lost money. What I hate is the things I could have experienced but did not. I hate that I could have competed at an extremely high level. I hate that I could have had incredible battles for incredible amounts of money and did not. When I read stories about durrrr and jungleman playing heads-up for millions all I can think is "I can't wait to get there." It's that fucking EXPERIENCE. The experience of doing something exceptional. The experience of competing at a high level. The experience of doing something that stretches my limits and tests me and lets me know who I am. Federer-nadal. Bird-magic. These are the kinds of rivalries that push the human spirit farther than it has ever gone before. 13 billion years of chaos and entropy has led us to moments like these, and that's what makes them so exceptional. And I could have been a part of that. I could have pushed myself, I could have tested myself. I could have asked questions and stepped outside my comfort zone. I am reminded of the oblique strategy: "Go outside. Shut the door." I was terrified to even go outside, never mind any door talk.

And here is where the questions and the self-flagellation begin. I love competition. I love challenge. I love testing the limits of my will and my ability. And yet I have done none of that. For 6 years. It has always just been a thought in the back of my mind. Every day I wake up and say "tomorrow I can do it." And I never do. Never, ever, ever. Christ.

I realize now that this has been a driving force for me for a very long time. It's hard for me to put it into words. It's like, if I were religious and something went wrong I would be like "well it's OK, I can always just pray later." This thought, this idea, this concept of me one day succeeding at poker has suffused everything. For example, if I fail out of school (which I have been known to do) then that's OK because I have poker and I can really make it happen. If I need to buy something, it's ok because I will one day make plenty of money at poker. If I say I'm going to do something and then give up at it, then that's ok because I'm going to make poker happen. Almost every single thought I have had for the past 6 years has had that asterisk.

And now a massive part of myself that I have used as a crutch for so long has been utterly destroyed. For the first time in a long time, I feel fearful. Not anxious, and not scared, because to me those are just words that describe a pocket of our lives, some specific situation. What I'm feeling right now is completely expansive. I can't experience anything without thinking about it.

Like I said, I experience things more strongly than most people do, and most poker players I talk to aren't taking this as bad as I am, so I'm sure this is just a phase for me that I will work out eventually. For now, though, I feel horribly vulnerable.

I just thought of this. I think it encapsulates part of what I'm feeling: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hW6Dm_m5t4. A video from richard alpert/ram dass talking about an acid trip where he sees all his "games" flying away. He has all t...he concepts about himself that he identifies with. Richard alpert the professor, richard alpert the intellectual, etc. etc., and during the trip they all get obliterated and he goes into a panic because he is afraid that he will cease to exist if all his games (i.e. identities) are destroyed.

Exactly how I feel right now. A huge part of how I viewed myself and how I interacted with the world is now dead. The concept of "drew the poker player" is gone, which is scary because that's been a comforting concept for so long now. It's even more scary because if that concept dies, then what's stopping every other concept I have about myself from dying? like alpert said, if they all die will I just cease to exist? What will be left?

So my volume in january was atrocious; however I was playing out of my mind and ran really well on top of that, so I ended up having a pretty good month.

All 1/2:



I feel like I'm playing some of the best poker of my life right now. I think part of the reason for this is I've never really been accountable to myself, so it has always been pretty easy to just sit back and auto-pilot, or spew off a buy-in here and there just because I've never been able to answer to myself. Now that I'm working for leggo (woohoo!) all of a sudden I feel I have this huge influx of external accountability, so if I feel like doing something spewy or playing lazy I take it much more seriously now since I'll have more to answer for. This has long been my favorite training site so I really want to be on my A game at all times to fully represent the ownage that is leggo.

Keeping in line with this theme of external accountability, and reading student caine's awesome blog post on setting goals, I've set up a small goals group with a couple of friends where we'll each outline our weekly/monthly goals and what it will take to get there on a daily basis. Ideally if one of us shirks he'll get his shit pushed in by the rest of the group. I'm trying to find a good balance between school and poker, so for now I'm only aiming at 20 hours of poker a week, though I could easily see moving that up to 25, or possssibly even 30, depending on how busy this semester ends up being. Also going to keep going to the gym and hopefully start SS by the end of the month.

In other news, my roommate recently bought a 55 inch hdtv and a ps3, which is a pretty ridiculous upgrade from our previous 22 inch quasar and super nintendo (snes still the greatest system ever though), so I've been playing a lot of mass effect 2 recently. The game is fun as fuck. The story is really engaging, the graphics are unbelievable, and I'm a huge sucker for the rpg/leveling up aspect of it. Highly recommend.

Time to go pump some Fe! Light weight!

I often find myself in veg mode. Veg mode includes, but is not limited to, watching pawn stars or seinfeld reruns, playing video games for a very long time (long after I find them fun or challenging), surfing the internet with no specific aim, traversing the endless maze that is youtube's "see related" function. Now, none of these are in and of themselves bad, but extremely often they discourage active involvement, which, for me, leads to this sort of void. In this void I am incredibly lethargic. I don't feel like moving or doing much of anything because nothing is interesting enough to command my attention. I am not depressed while in this void, I am simply "meh." Interestingly enough, I often avoid sleep while in this void, even though one of the more logical things to do would be to go to sleep so I can wake up with more energy and get things accomplished.

I think most working people find themselves in this void when they get off work. Their days will consist of: work, veg, sleep, rinse, repeat. If they don't like their work, then the only satisfaction they get is on the weekends. This is a disaster. Even people who enjoy their jobs, and even people with a lot of free time to do productive things (see: poker players) probably find themselves in this void a lot. I don't think I'm alone.

However, I think there are people who are consistently able to skirt the void (I was about to say avoid the void or even just a-void but that sounds weird and contrived). Even though I hate the guy with a passion, I think donald trump is probably like this. He's slept like 4 hours a night his entire life and is still incredibly energetic and focused in his work. How the fuck do you achieve that?

Some other examples that come to mind:

1. Voltaire. In will durant's "the story of philosophy" (great book btw) he relays a quote from j.m. robertson about voltaire: "sheer intelligence transmuting anger into fun, fire into light... a creature of air and flame, the most excitable that ever lived, composed of more ethereal and more throbbing atoms than those of other men; there is none whose mental machinery is more delicate, nor whose equilibrium is at the same time more shifting and more exact." I find the last part a bit indulgent, but you get the picture.

Voltaire himself said "not to be occupied, and not to exist, amount to the same thing." Later he is described as the most alive intellectual ever. I think that's the antonym to the void I've been looking for: aliveness.

2. The part about aliveness reminds me of meryl streep's character in adaptation talking about john laroche: "Most people yearn for something exceptional, something so inspiring that they'd want to risk everything for that passion, but few would act on it. It was very powerful and intoxicating to be around someone so alive."

3. I was listening to a brian tracy tape the other night and he analyzed the following hypothetical scenario (paraphrasing heavily):

You have a business proposal and are looking for backers. You go to several interviews, but every single person tells you that the idea is too outlandish and that you're asking for too much money and that it will never work. This happens over and over again. You go home completely dejected and with no energy.

You phone home to talk to your parents, and they say, "It's ok, cheer up! We just won the lottery!" Physically and mentally, how would you respond? You'd be imbued with vitality and giddiness! You'd be ready to take on the world again. You'd go out the next day to more interviews not caring at all that you keep getting turned down, and land a backer.

The next day you call your parents, and, to your dismay, they inform you that they actually haven't won the lottery and that they were just saying that to cheer you up.

Now, even though the premises behind it were fabricated, was your state of mind real? Did you actually not feel all the energy in the world coursing through your veins? The answer, tracy says, is that you will find the state of mind was real, even if the premises behind it were not. He goes on to say that successful people constantly manufacture this state of mind.

I am not so concerned with tracy's definition of success here as I've always hated defining that term, but I think his parable still has some merit - namely, that this state of mind is attainable regardless of external circumstances. What this implies, then, is that the state is entirely self-generated and has nothing whatsoever to do with what is going on outside of your mind.

I dislike his use of the term "manufacture" (though this is paraphrased I am sure I got that part right) because it implies some degree of self-deception, and I think for this state of mind to really take, there can be no doubt about what you are believing. For instance, I do not believe in God, but I do know that there are certain circumstances where an unquestionable belief in God would enable me to handle things easier. However, because I object to the existence god from a logical standpoint there is no way I can or should believe in god simply to manufacture a more desirable state of mind - if anything this is tantamount to psychosis and is most definitely not desirable.

What is extremely desirable for me is finding a way to be more intensely alive. I've felt it before, but it seems like often it's dependent on external circumstances or just happens by chance. I've felt it when going on vacations with some of my best friends. I've felt it when B♭, F, G, E enter in shine on you crazy diamond. I've felt it watching the psychedelic sequence at the end of 2001. I've felt it watching race for the prize performed live. But it's more than experiencing some pleasurable sensory stimuli - they're just a catalyst for bringing out something deeper, some tucked-away thoughts, forgotten philosophies, some profound appreciation for life that constantly threatens to recede.

How to proceed from here? How do I work it so this feeling doesn't only come about by happenstance?

I'm sure this is all a bit disorganized and hair-brained and I probably sound like I just smoked a doobie, but that's definitely not the case. I just had a lot of random thoughts flying around and needed to put them down. I'm a bit exhausted now so will have to tackle the solution to the problem later. But I did just get "flow" by mikhaly czsclihias5jb in the mail, which seems like it might be addressing some of what I'm talking about. Hopefully that sheds light on some things.

1. Poker Stars, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

SB: $134
Hero (BB): $304.70
UTG: $136
MP: $202.70
CO: $200
BTN: $239

Pre-Flop: 6 4 dealt to Hero (BB)
3 folds, BTN raises to $5, SB calls $4, Hero calls $3

Flop: ($15) 8 3 7 (3 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets $12, BTN folds, SB calls $12

Turn: ($39) Q (2 Players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($39) A (2 Players)
SB bets $30, Hero raises to $168, SB folds

Results: $99 Pot
Hero showed 6 4 and WON $234 (+$189 NET)

My opponent here is a huge fish, 44/8. I opted not to bet the turn because I felt that he would call again with any pair, any open-ender, and potentially J9/JT, all of which beat me. It would also suck to get jammed on, but I doubt that happens very often versus this player. Given how wide I think his calling range is on the turn, the correct play here is probably to bet turn and bet a lot of rivers - hell, maybe any river? does he check-call A8 all-in on a jack river? I don't know.

Anyway, I wanted to go over the math of my river shove. I'm risking $87 to win $69, so my bet has to work roughly 56% of the time. His range probably looks something like this:

Bluffs (91 combos) -
1. missed straight draws: {9T, JT, J9, 56, 45, 46, 96s} (84 combos)
2. missed heart draws: {KJ, KT, K9, K6, K5, K4, K2} (7 combos) - I am unsure what else to include here as I don't know if J2s/94s/25s stuff are in his range preflop. They probably are some of the time but I'll leave it where it's at for a conservative estimate. It probably won't make much of a difference anyway since that's only a handful of combos.

Value hands (72combos) -
1. Axhh {AJ, AT, A9, A6, A5, A4, A2} (7 combos)
2. slowplayed flop hands {87, 88, 77, 33} - let's say he slowplays half the time, leaving 18/2 = 9 combos.
3. turned/rivered two pair {Q8, Q7, Q3s, AQ, A8, A7, A3} (56 combos)

Now, I went into this assuming that I would be doing math to justify my shove since I have this horrible thing where I always assume I'm right, but already it's pretty clear my shove is -EV. If he bluffs the river 100% of the time my shove is basically break-even:

91 / (91+72) ~= 56%

And obviously we can't assume he's going to bluff the river 100% of the time or anything close to it. I think the moral of the story here is that when you're talking about a fish who plays tons of unpaired cards, while those missed straight draws comprise a ton of combos, so do two pair combos (assuming they are feasible given flop/turn actions). Intuitively I would've expected his value range to be something like half the # of combos it actually is because I rarely do calcs like this (obviously much to my detriment).

2. Poker Stars, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BTN: $200
SB: $286.65
Hero (BB): $203
UTG: $208
MP: $75.65
CO: $251.30

Pre-Flop: 8 T dealt to Hero (BB)
3 folds, BTN raises to $5, SB folds, Hero raises to $20, BTN calls $15

Flop: ($41) 7 2 7 (2 Players)
Hero bets $20, BTN raises to $45, Hero raises to $77, BTN raises to $180 and is All-In, Hero folds

Results: $195 Pot
BTN showed and WON $295 (+$198 NET)

I find a spot like this is super hard to analyze. Obviously quite a bit of leveling goes on here and no conclusive answer can be reached w/o very precise reads on his frequencies, but at the very least I'd like to do a little math to at least get a feel for what % he would have to be bluffraising here to make my 3bet profitable.

First, His UO PFR% on the button is 50%, and his fold to 3bet is 75%, meaning he continues with a range of 12.5% of hands. Since this is normalized across all opponents I expect this range to be wider against an aggressive 3bettor like myself, but I think his primary adjustment here is going to be 4bet bluffing more and perhaps calling slightly wider. I'm unsure what his 4bet value range is, but I know he doesn't 4bet super light for value, so let's just say AA-JJ and AK for the time being (even though in reality TT and AQ will be in there some % of the time as well). So the range of hands he calls with PF is probably something like {TT-77,AQs-A9s,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s,AQo-AJo,KJo+}, which is 8.7% of hands, or roughly .087*1326 = 115 combos of hands. However, I have blockers to TT and 88, so he'll have 105 combos total. Of these, I believe he is going to raise/get in 88-TT (12 combos) and all his flush draws (10 combos), for 22 combos total. I don't think any of the bare ace highs would ever raise the flop since that doesn't make any sense, so that takes out 35 combos of hands, which leaves us with 48 combos out of 105 that he could choose to bluff with, compared to 22 combos of value hands.

Now, I'm risking 57 to win 106, so my raise has to work about 35% of the time. Therefore if he chooses to bluffraise 8 combos of hands (or, raises his air 8/48 = 17% of the time) my raise will show a profit. This isn't very often at all, so I feel like my 3bet will generally show a profit here, specifically because he's not going to have that many hands he's comfortable raise/getting it in and I get such a good price on my bluff. T8 is one of the better hands to bluff with here since it blocks some of his pocket pair combos. Th8x would be the absolute nut hand to 3bet bluff since it also blocks some FD combos as well. Though, I mean, it isn't going to affect those percentages that much.

3. Poker Stars, $1/$2 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LeggoPoker.com - Hand History Converter

BB: $200
UTG: $234.70
MP: $365
Hero (CO): $410.15
BTN: $210.50
SB: $206.15

Pre-Flop: A 2 dealt to Hero (CO)
2 folds, Hero raises to $6, BTN calls $6, SB calls $5, BB folds

Flop: ($20) 2 3 A (3 Players)
SB checks, Hero bets...

I have never dealt with failure well. When I wasn't doing well in high school, I became fanatical about studying and jumped 60 spots in rankings in a semester. When I start out playing a new computer game I absolutely hate the idea that someone else is doing better than me, and I completely kill myself to become the best. I don't even enjoy the process, and I rarely enjoy the spoils of being "successful" - I just hate failure that much more. I think this is all a very unhealthy way to approach things, but I'll have to deal with that later. What's more important to me right now is exploring the differences between poker (which I haven't been successful at) and the other things in my life I would say I've been successful at.

I think the main frustration for me with playing poker is the inability to easily quantify success in the short-term. Every other endeavor I've had in life up to this point has been easy to approach in the short-term. When you study, you get a good grade. This is a very simple, closed system where short-term success is clearly defined. The same is true with video games. I played an absolute asston of diablo 2. When we'd do baal runs, I knew for certain that every baal run we did brought us one step closer to our goal of being #1. It was easy for me to stay focused then. The sensation of progress and confidence in knowing every step was right kept me constantly encouraged.

None of this is true for poker. You take 3 steps back and 4 forward. You deal with the sensation of failure on a daily basis. You deal with the frustration of not knowing if what you are doing is right (this is a HUGE problem for me). It's also been very hard for me to deal with the idea that I can no longer brute-force things; everything is much murkier and I have to rely on my judgment to navigate them and, inevitably, I will make mistakes. In this way, it's much like life. I'd say everyone's goal in life is to be happy. But how do you get there? Do you follow this belief system or that belief system? Which school do you go to? What do you study? Do you take this job or that job? How can you possibly weigh all the little nuances that will have immense, reverberating effects on the rest of your life? Nothing is defined, nothing is standard. You no longer have the comfort of a system where success is well-defined.

Of course in the long-term success in poker is well-defined: whoever makes the most money is the most successful. To do this, you must make the best decisions in the short-term. But the open-endedness and ambiguity of the short-term is absolutely infuriating to me.