well cant afford ,cant justify sadly. really want to be there .its been one of my more successful years as a poker grinder this year but as a lot of my money has been invested into horses and stocks i really don't have the $$$ to get out to the wsop .


watching the updates come in from poker news and really feel as if i want to be there.

this time last year i didn't care for the world series with all the shameful full tilt poker scandal going on.


hopefully i can get out for a prolonged trip to america later in the year when some ventures away from poker pay off. i have been trying to sell a property for about 6months with no avail.

I've been drinking a lot more water of late and been replacing my soda intake this seams to be having a positive impact . i find planning meals ahead lowers my garbage intake of rubbish foods.

I'm finding having horses is very time consuming and makes me want to rail more then play. this is something i need to really to stop doing. i can rail for upto 12 hours on a sunday and play for less then 2hours.

its now 9.20 local time and I've been awake nearly 20 hours I'm starting to feel really tired but have soccer at 1 so going to try stay awake.

good luck to sebastien saffari in the money of the heads up nl and plo today 64remain. swop event 3

ermm not sure there has been too much else to report.

Im mega poor at the minute but I'm as stretched as things can be and hopefully my horses can keep winning me money to relieve me of my poorness . there is always a decent outlay when you take a horse on because its very rare they bink from the start .
they need money to fuel there accounts so you have to basically send them a chunk and see it as an outlay your probably not going to get back anytime soon. (the original stake is kinda always going to be sat in there account until they score enough to go on there own or you have to find them more money because they have bust it)
so after underestimating what i needed for 4 horses and myself to play the games i want to play.
i have had to freeze a horse out of action until i can get enough money to give him some more money. i sent him money then put him in the ukipt then basically run out of money when he dropped money:/ so had to fuck it off until i can afford to reload him(not ideal having a horse in chunk of make up and not being able to keep him in the game)
since then i have been trying to get £££ together to send him but with a load of live costs and life getting in the way i havnt been able to send him more money. one of my longest serving horses is kinda deep so if he gets out a little i should be ok. its actually a juggling act having a stable and I'm learning how to manage 5 bankrolls. the rewards are there if i can do it successfully and I'm as confident in there ability to make money as i am myself.
to be honest they don't really need staking but i think they really like the fact that I'm on hand to talk about hands and help them think about the game in a more direct profitable way. my time i give to them is worth the cut they give me in there eyes.

at one point i was trying to add to my stable with some low stakes recruits but i haven't had the time and the few i did look at via 2p2 were piss poor to say the least. its hard finding the staff :P

anyways congrats to james atkins who i saw at dtd the other month on his supersonic bink the other week 52bags the lucky fuck. this guy has a decent blog and talks about the poker world and is an informative kinda guy .
i love the super sonic tourney and 215 dollars a week is the most fun you can have . I've probably dumped thousands into this comp now but its so addictive. what i love about this comp is its over in less then two hours. no emotional attachment whats so ever

anyways gl anyone at the wsop and il be trying to buy up little pieces of action here or there funds depending . gl at the tables.

salfi123

For some reason I have been having trouble getting my own mortality off of my mind. I try to imagine what it will be like to cease to exist, but (obviously) its impossible. Then I think about if I did somehow manage to not die, the idea of living for infinity despairs me just as much as dying. Why do I have to waste my time contemplating the unknowable? If I could just Matrix blue pill this bullshit I would in a heartbeat.

I have found a way to temporarily escape this mental hangnail: pokers. I have been grinding with almost all of my free time. I took a few days off to hit Macau, but besides that I have been on the tables 8+ hours/day.


At least I can win at poker O_o

amurophil

x-posted @ http://www.vincewille.com

I was recently listening to an entrepreneurship podcast entitled PreneurCast, which discussed the concept of the 7 Levers of Business. Basically, the idea of the 7 Levers of Business is that a company's profitability can be broken down into 7 components which affect it. These components include Traffic (people in your store/on your website) Opt-In Rate (people who try on clothes, test-drive car, sign up for e-letter), Conversions (percentage of people who purchase a product after Opting-In), Average Sale Value (how much an average person spends), Average Transaction Per Customer, and Profit Margin.

This is pretty simple, and intuitive, but one thing that they talked about, which struck me as particularly interesting is that, you will see more results lifting all levers by x percentage rather than one lever by 7*x percentage. Furthermore, it is almost always much easier to lift all levers by that small percentage (say 10) than to increase your traffic 70 percent or your profit margin 70 percent. You can see the numbers work using their calculator here: http://www.7leverscalculator.com/

Beginner poker players often have the misconception that the best player wins the most money or that if you just "work on your game" as much as possible, then it will lead to the highest amount of winnings. This isn't really the case, and I think it's well explained in a model I have constructed, which I call the 7 levers of successful poker. These levers aren't as as arithmetic (i.e. don't work together) as much as the 7 levers of business, but 5 of the 7 are going to be very similar to what you find in the 7 levers of business, and the other 2, I think, are too important to leave out. It's actually interesting that some of my variables are parallels to the levers in business (winrate = profit margin, number of hands = traffic, stake = average sale value).

Thus my formula is:

PROFIT= RWR*TLT*GS*STK*HNDS +CCH +SWP

Variables explained (on per month basis):

RWR (real winrate)

This variable represents your poker knowledge. It's going to be you vs. the poker community when you are at your best. It's represented in bb/100 hands.

TLT (tilt)

This variable is a coefficient that represents how often you play your A-game, i.e. at your real winrate. It's a number between 0 and 1 (this assumes people can either play 100 percent their A-game down towards a point where they are no longer winning)

GS (game selection)

This variable represents how good are the games you are playing. It's represented from 1 through infinity, but almost always will be in the 1 to 1.5 range for an online player (just too easy to click sit as opposed to live where there are some incredible invite-only games). Basically, since RWR is represented as you vs the poker community (in general), even if you have bad game selection, you still will have a coefficient of 1 because you are still up against the community in general. However, people with good game selection will have sometimes 1.25, 1.5, or 2x as many opportunities to make money in easy spots.

STK (average stake)

Self-Explanatory. Will tell you what your bb/100 means in terms of dollars.

HNDS (hands)

How many hands do you play in a month. Obviously this changes based on how many tables you can play, and how quickly you act on them. This is told in /100 hands to balance out the winrate.

CCH (coaching)

A significant portion of income for some.

SWP (swapping/staking/selling/buying action)

Also Self-Explanatory. You could probably also include prop betting here.

How do my numbers look for a month? I'll offer some estimates

RWR: 6 bb

TLT: .8

I don't tilt, but I play too many tables to be playing my "a-game".

GS: 1.5

I have excellent game selection.

STK: 1.50 (150nl)

HNDS: 2,000 hundred (i.e. 200k)

What do my real numbers look like?

so according to my estimates, i should have ~7.2bb winrate, and should be winning close to 14,400bb a month $21,600, or 480bb per day for $720 dollars.

in truth, i'm 7.29bb on the trip, up 34,400bb in 87 days (400bb per day) for $58,400 (670 dollars).

And what can I conclude?

I'm not playing as many tables as I used to. Games are very finicky (incredible during some parts of Saturdays, non-existent during some parts of weekdays). I'm also playing shorter sessions than I used to (having to prepare food for myself, an do lots of errands that I didn't have to in Florida).

In the future, I'll hopefully set up systems to help increase my Hands/Hour, and as always I will be looking to slightly improve my game, table selection, and hopefully, gradually move up.

vinivici9586

It's still slightly uncomfortable, but i can finally type w/ two hands again! I figured I'd celebrate by doing a written blog. It's weird how even just moving my fingers or my wrist I still feel it in my shoulder. It's been nearly 3 months since I've typed properly, but I still seem to go at a decent speed.... beats one hand anyway .

My work ethic seems to be much better lately. Since I forced myself to play poker again, I've slowly been improving. I did take yesterday off, which I allow once/week. I got kind of sick from some food I ordered, and figured I'd rest up before the weekend grind.

I moved up to 10nl today, after an afternoon session of 4nl (hardly any 10nl 6max was going.) I ended up tilting in my 4nl session. I went to go eat something, clear my head, watched a video, and I was good to go. It resulted in winning over 4bi's at 10nl to give me a +$36 for the day. I ran pretty well, but I'm still happy w/ the way I played, and obv with the result.

Tomorrow I plan on playing 2-3hrs again, and probably Sunday as well. I think my goal will be to put in higher volume during the weekend, and take Wednesday or Thursday off to relax. I feel like watching a video really gets my brain thinking about poker, so I'm going to try and do that every day.

Other than poker there's not much to update on. I don't really go out anymore. I don't have too many friends here now, which was hard at first. Now that I'm playing poker again though, it's a little easier. I have enough that if I really wanted to go out, I could round up a crowd. I pretty much wake up, watch a lil tv, go eat, watch a poker vid, play poker, eat, play another session, and then wrap up the night by watching tv or talking to my U.S friends.

That's about it, I think I'll be able to drive in another week or two. My shoulder seems to be able to move lil bit more every day. I've been doing exercises i've found on youtube, since the docs here didn't tell me about any therapy or whatevs. I think i'll do a mix of written and video blogs from here on out. pz out

robbyd86

Anyone need Lock Poker? I'm trying to get out $350.. Lemme know..

WhySoSerious

There is a new upstart in the poker tracking business hoping to offer an alternative to Holdem Manger and Poker Tracker, and it lives in the cloud. With cloud based services becoming all the rage nowadays , it makes sense that the poker tracking industry would come along. It makes sense too. Between training site forums, 2+2, peer-to-peer sweat sessions, players want to be able to access, review, and share their hands and graphs from anywhere at anytime. The saturation of smartphones and tablets also makes the move a proactive one that recognizes this technological shift.

Pokeit hopes to fill this void by building your poker database in the cloud from the beginning, and allows you to access it from any browser. There is still a small client (for both Windows and OSX) that enables your hand histories to be uploaded to the cloud from your poker clients saved hand histories folder or from the processed hand folder in Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker. After these hands are uploaded (either manually or automatically while playing) to Pokeit, everything is accessed from your browser.

Lets take a look at the offerings in the browser

Pokeit Dashboard



After you sign up, this is the home screen of Pokeit. It has your graph, summary of recent sessions, and tabs that allow you to get you where you want to go. I really like the layout and presentation of the Dashboard (and Pokeit overall). Its simple, clean, and clear.

There are 3 main tabs that you can access from the dashboard: Hand Browser, Report Builder, and Smart Graphs.

Hand Browser



Here's where you can review and filter individual hands. There are several filter options based on Stakes, Position, Session, Site, Date, etc. You can also custom tag individual hands and filter by those as well. Sharing can be done in various formats including forum (2+2, Leggo, etc), Facebook, Twitter, email, etc.

Report Builder



This is where you build reports...obviously. You can do this by Position, Players, Session, Hands, Game Type, Date, etc. Useful when your looking for which hands, position, player is giving you trouble.

Smart Graphs



With the Smart Graphs tab you can customize your graph based on Money Won, Dates, BBs, Sessions, etc. The small bar graphs at the bottom of the graph represent hands played on a particular date. You can also zoom in on any range you select in the graph to get a closer look at a particular upswing (or downswing...sigh).

According to its website, Pokeit supports most US and Non-US facing poker sites and supports games ranging from Holdem to 2-7 Triple Draw. As a standalone product for a recreational Badugi player, Pokeit could be a no brainer. For a 6Max NL grinder, it is probably at best a supplemental product since it has no live HUD (though one is in development).

The product is free up to 50k hands in your database and is only $5 a month for up to a million hands in your Pokeit database.

You can check them out at Pokeit.co and take it for a spin yourself.

yurk23

hey leggo! been a while cuz ive not really been playing poker that much at all. ~20K hands this year? I'd check pt but cba opening it . hope you're all still crushing and running the streets and all that jazz! Gotten heavily into snowboarding recently and I can't pick between these 2 boards, soo... which looks nicer leggo land?

http://cdn1.static.mporatrons.com/si...-2011-2012.jpg (the blue one, imagine with white bindings)

http://www.nucleus-online.com/produc...011-p54352.php


im basically going on how it looks between these 2. for those who know about snowboarding the blue one is a bit better for flying down mountains and the orange a bit better for park riding, but not as much as the adverts suggest. I'm a beginner as well so won't make too much diff, just want a nice all round board and I like the idea of having yes written on it

Unknown Soldier

During any poker session, most of our profit and loss comes from our decisions to fold, check, call, bet, or raise. This blog post is going to deal with the other decisions that impact how much money we make. I started writing all this down just for myself, as a reminder to my future self, but it seemed like a nice thing to share. Some of them are kind of specifically just for me and will apply less to some people, but I think in general they might be helpful. If anyone wants to add anything to the list, please leave it in the comments.

Sleep!!



Sleep is the most crucial thing for me.
Sleep contributes so many important things to a playing session
-Alertness (not auto piloting)
-ability to think critically in short amounts of times
-mood/tiltiness or proneness to tilt

I've gone through periods where I tried to wake up to an alarm or limit my sleep in some way so that I wasnt sleeping 9-10 hours. I think that has definitely negatively affected my poker playing for that day. I generally play much better when I just allow myself to sleep in as long as I want. Obviously if you are getting to the point where you sleep 12+hours a day, something is probably wrong. But I dont worry so much about the days where I go to bed at 2am and sleep until noon. I try to just let my body regulate its sleep schedule as it sees fit with no interference from my conscious mind.

If I don't feel rested when I wake up, then I either shouldn't play that day, or try to take a nap(s) until I do feel rested. Otherwise, I try to take advantage of my time by doing other productive activities that day that don't involve me risking thousands of dollars on a day when I don't feel alert. I might use my time to do extra analysis on my poker game, get an extra workout in during the day (this might help you sleep better the next night), read a book I've been meaning to get to, do errands that I normally do another day, etc. You can usually make good use of a day off.




addendum to sleep:
General Mood:



If you can recognize before you load up tables that you have been having a shitty day or are in a shitty mood, for whatever reason it may be, don't play until that legitimately changes. Sometimes for me, I can be in a shitty mood for almost no reason, although I think it correlates highly to not getting enough sleep, another reason to get more sleep.




Food:



I’ve found that playing on both an empty stomach that wants to eat, or a stomach that just overstuffed itself are both suboptimal for my playing sessions. The best situation is to make sure to eat meals that are not too large, and have just a bit of spacing in between when you finish eating and when you start playing your session. Obviously meals stuffed with fruits, veges, lean meats, whole grains are great for you. I am aware of some studies that say that eating sugar is also good for you in terms of allowing your brain to work at a higher level during intense decision making, but personally, I view sugar as basically poison to my body and limit it at all costs (nobody is perfect obviously though). I also remember watching mynameisgreg's fitness video way back when and he mentioned that drinking water during sessions is important because it has positive effects on your ability to think well. I always try to keep some water at my desk during the day. Only downside is you might have to pee during the middle of a session which sucks whether you decide to hold it or get up and go to the bathroom (Sorry I cant imagine pissing in a bottle at my desk, although I do admire the dedication)





Scheduling:



Ive tried sticking to a preset schedule for both my day and for my play. For whatever reason I just absolutely detest it. About the most scheduling I can put up with is a schedule for coaching, which may require 2 or 3 1-2 hour blocks set during the week. I’ve found that for me its best to keep my daily schedule completely flexible to allow me to engage in activities at the optimal time. If I don't really feel like playing poker after I worked out, then I do something else. During the times that I do feel like playing poker, I try to maximize my use of that time. Attitude and mental outlook when I start a session is very important to how well I play and concentrate during my session, so I cant have the feeling that I am forcing myself to play when I don't actually want to. (same could apply to any other activity really)





Time of Day:



If I plan on being awake 15-17 hours each day, I’ve found that playing poker during the first 3-4 hours or the last 3-4 hours of the day isnt optimal for me. During both these periods of the day I think my brain isnt working quite as fast as I would like. I think trying to use these times to do things like analyzing your game or game situations (probably better in the morning to get your brain warmed up), working on other activites (for me this would be stuff like reading economic blogs, or reading up on value investing), or relaxing/leisure/working out. I find when I play mostly during the middle part of my day I do a lot better. That will shorten my time period for playing considerably, but I think it works out ok. If I take advantage of the early morning to do stuff like analyzing my game and/or working out, assuming I got a good nights sleep, that usually motivates me to start playing, either because I want to put something to use that I just learned or because I was dreading another minute doing ev calcs!




Hours per day:



For me, I find that its important to hit a sweet spot for hours I play per day, and I would say this is 3-5 hours for me. If I play less than 3 hours, I feel unproductive on the day. I also think playing atleast 3 hours keeps your poker mind/decisions sharp, where as if you have a few days in a row where you play 0-2 hours, my decisions usually start getting a bit more sloppy. On the other hand, I also find that playing more than about 5 hours in a day usually causes me to play less or worse the next day. I find that after about 5 hours my brain starts to feel fried a bit the next day causing me to either sit out from playing, or not play as well. Obviously, playing your 6th or 7th hour may be +EV, but is it +EV to do it day after day? For me I have decided that it is not. Continual overload of my brain day after day eventually leads to me playing poorly. Finding the sweet spot is really important for me.





Session Length:


For me I also want to find...

d2themfi

I am amused by the title of this blog rhyming with the blog two entries below.

When I got to Toronto around the first week of May I started playing two things: Zoom and SCOOP. I did not play any online cash games besides Zoom, a home game with Leggo members, and less than a hundred hands of Zoom PLO. I did not really anticipate doing this, but I two things probably contributed to me playing Zoom vs me playing anything else: 1. I did not have to deal with the politics of starting tables, people sitting out against me, and bumhunters and 2. I started winning.. immediately, and quite a bit. I was making $1/hand at Zoom, how is that even possible? Inevitably, some combination of me putting out a video and the regulars adjusting to me incurred a downswing where I didn't play very well. It was short. The downswing actually started in the middle of a day. I was +8k at Zoom through a few thousand hands and then I lost back 7k of it, all in the same day. I think this was primarily because I started focusing on volume: "Hey, I'm making $X a hand, I'm printing money, why not print more?" My quality of play deteriorated.

I kicked it back into gear, primarily by making a few videos actually [1]. I think I play better on video. Accountability is good. I flip the Camtasia switch and all of a sudden I realize: "Fuck, I'm going to have to explain to everyone why I'm doing this. Why I'm doing this. I can't explain this."

So I spent most of the last two and a half or three weeks oscillating between my A and C- game, never quite reaching the depths of my D game and probably never reaching the full enlightenment of my A+ game. Overall, I played well. I was also very lucky. This combination of things led me to be the biggest winner at Zoom in the month of May [2].

I've spoken and written about this time and time again, but it's difficult to evolve your poker game through the ages. I've been around for over 7 years now, a lifetime in poker years, and I've been left behind whenever I decided not to roll with the punches. In some ways, you lose when you cannot accept defeat [3]. I am in some ways proud of myself that I still consider myself a top NLHE cash game player for 2-4 to 10-20, but equally disappointed by the fact that I am not so much more. I'm still pretty average at PLO, haven't bothered learning mixed games, and am for some reason afraid to keep playing higher stakes. I never thought it was in me to be a bankroll nit, but lately I just enjoy winning much less than I hate losing-- it's a terrible mindset to be in when you're trying not to lose. Really unacceptable. My lack of motivation pisses me off [4].

I have no idea how I started ranting about things, but I like Zoom. That is all I was going to write in this blog initially. I hope they bring Zoom to HSNL. If/When I come back to Toronto [5], I hope to be playing 5-10 or 10-20 Zoom. Make it happen!







[1] To be released over the next 6 weeks or so, they're very good, imo... even by my incredible standards. I think the two coming out in June are probably the best.

[2] Probably not... maybe though.

[3] This makes absolutely no sense. When I first typed it, it was crystal clear. I read it a few more times and I still cannot recreate the magical clarity with which I had briefly solved all of mankind's problems. I now have no idea what it means.

[4] This is what every one of my shitty blogs winds up talking about.

[5] Tune in to the Leggocast, out in the next few days, about our time in Toronto-- one of the hot spots for poker players after Black Friday.

aejones

one week since i stopped being super lazy, i talk about the results so far.

http://youtu.be/_lUZ7mQnCjg

robbyd86