Hello everyone, sorry that I haven't updated lately. I've been pretty busy with school and stuff that I just haven't thought to update this thing.

I just got back from Vegas with thac and the rest of the BG crew yesterday and it was a fun but odd experience. It was obv fun because I was degening it up in Vegas for four days with my friends. The odd part was thinking that this could be the last time I am a "tourist" in Vegas, and thank god it was. I dropped wayyy too much money for my silly little four day vacation there. Originally I wasn't going to go on this trip because I feel like I just left Vegas, but I needed to check out some apartments before my move in January. Here's a link to one of the places I'm considering moving to.

http://www.move.com/apartmentsforren...?source=a12706

It was a pretty nice place and a reasonable price. Located like 10 min south of the strip like half mile from the South Point Casino. The other place I checked out was a newer complex called The Venue and it was located on the outskirts of Vegas almost into Henderson. Not sure which one I'm going to move to, but the guy told us to get back to him in December because prices would drop because apparently no one wants to move there in December.

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I'm stokeddd for the next two weekends. Myself, thac, my other roomie Leo, my friend DJ, and Zack will be going to the Horsehoe Hammond to play in some prelim WSOP circuit events. I played in a 330 and a 550 last year, and I lasted like 6hrds in each. I'm confident that my tournament game has improved immensely since then and that I can make a serious run in this year's events. I'm going to be playing the 550 on Saturday, the 550 the saturday after that, and the 330 the Sunday after that. I haven't played in a live tournament with a good structure in a while, so it should be a good time. If anyone care's I'll be updating my chip counts to those who have pieces of me on my twitter account http://twitter.com/mvpete96.

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I just got a new backer online because apparently earning over 19k in prizes for September wasn't good enough for my old backer. I was a little sad but whatever my new backer is a friend IRL so it'll be cool earning someone money who I have actually hung out with and talk to regularly. I haven't played online much at all this month, but it's all due to school/Vegas/WSOPC. I'll probably grind some MTTs in the hotel room if i bust out of the WSOPC events early.

I think that's about all I have for now, I'll update after my trip to Hammond. Best of luck to everyone at the tables and remember, never stop grinding.

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MVPete96

This is an open challenge to the world:

I challenge anyone to play me, heads up, on one television screen each, for 50,000 games of FIFA10 on the XBox 360 over XBox Live. At the conclusion of 50,000 games, if I am ahead by one game (or if necessary, one goal), I will win $500K. If you are ahead by the same rules, you will win $1.5M. In either case, the victor will also keep the winning stats of the 50,000 games. In addition to the money, the K Man Challenge is about bragging rights.

So today I got XBox live for the first time, pretty much primarily to play FIFA10, and it seems pretty fun. The only downside I can see is how tilted I am when people quit me midway through a game when I'm a few up, it's already happened twice in five games. One of them seemed to have counted for a win though but it was injury time, so I'm not sure of the rules but I guess they've thought it out.

Anyway, even if it's not to the lofty standards of the K Man Challenge, I am keen to get some action from the Leggo World. For complete transparency I'll tell you that while I have in the past crushed FIFA for a big amount vs the computer on legendary, I don't have much experience playing with real people. So I may actually be a dog vs guys who know exactly how to do sick off the ball runs, or at least adjust to the fact that I take every goal kick short.

Leave a comment here/PM me if you're keen to set up something (for either money or just for fun, but preferably there would be something on the line).

Till next time.

K_Man

I started the month with 87 hit a peak of 875 running hot at 50nl HU and 6 max, I lost it@ 6 max100 &HU 50& donkaments. Meh can i comeback using just my fpp....????
Thankfully i have some $$$ on full tilt. Well its time to win a donkament watch this space.... heres a pic that u never wanna see. at least i have rebusto play $$$

tedjam

So this is the first day I'm back playing after studying and establishing that i had a ego problem, and i am not studying enough.

Today i went out to asian food and got a fortune cookie that said " You will find something that you have been looking for today." And i feel like i have found my work ethic and ambition to move up.

I was proud of myself today... even though i won today i reviewed every hand in my session for 1-2 hours today. I found a few issues with my game that i am going to consciously work on for this week. First of all i think i wasn't considering all options with marginal value oop, so by not considering some things that leads to not always choosing the most +EV choice. And on my delay cbets in position i saw a leak where I wasn't properly mapping out the risk reward of their range splitting on the turn vs cbetting the flop and getting improved equity and "shutting them down". So i think this will make me a lot more deliberate and less random with my checking bet freq. Last general thing is i found a leak where i cbet even though giving up the initiative and c/r might be better.... I am going to explore textures where its more +EV to c/r with a balanced value range even with the cbet lead vs some players. Thats about it will be working hard all this week and hopefully all goes well.

glgl

Timoshi

title says it all.

Michigan was lots of fun. festivals, fancy restaurants, anniversary, big CF games. hangin with friends and family and my wife having lots of fun. shes from MI BTW.

ate alot while i was up there and gained a couple more pounds so i got this bet goin with a friend.
$2 dollars for every pound i lose up too 20 pounds. and we got 2 months. kinda like two months two million. xcept its forty bucks and it goes both ways if he loses 20 and i lose 10 i owe him 20 bucks. if i lose 20 and he loses none he owes me $40. hes lazy so ill pry make a little money.

so i havent been playin much poker lately working out + painting my bathroom + putting shelves up in my garage. i did play alot of nightly tourneys while i was up there. well one every night. any way i took 3rd in the 3.30 rebuy for 900$ so that helped my bankroll alot. if i was smart i would play tournaments all the time and say screw cash cuz i suck at it. but i want to get it figured out so ill keep bleeding away my winnings til i get it down. i think my biggest problem is when i lose, i cant handle it well enough.

movie time for me

peace

bigLEOser

So i haven't blogged in a while because recently i been just tilting so much that no matter how much theory or concepts i go over. It didnt matter I was going to break even. I would spew like 200$ every session on like random crazy shoves and i feel like I'm still not past that completely but I'm rereading things on tilt control and stuff.



So like what really pops out at me in this picture is that i won ev adjusted at 1ptbb for my most recent 6max sample. In terms of my ability while playing these hands I feel if i played my b+ game 90%+ of the time id have a 3ptbb win rate. And so i owned myself because i could have won 15k in ev and been +8k but instead i let it get to me and played like shit. What i been trying to do recently is not send hands to ppl that are bad beats. I do however talk about tilting in general. Thats more so because i'm trying to actively figure out a way to fix my underlying issues. So far only one thing has helped a lot and its just taking 10 seconds per decision regardless of whether i think its a simple choice. But i guess summary is i played 176 hours of 6max, got owned because i am a spewtard.

So i was in tilt rage mode for about a 1 month culminating in me playing matt hu and tc heads up where i played like total shit. Then i took a day off and reviewed it and realized I'm a complete moron. I PLAY LIKE SHIT nd i don't listen to myself/others. I analyzed my match vs tc for hours. Then challenged him hu again, i had a write up of how i thought he would start out the match based on our previous match. I fixed a lot of spots i made mistakes last time. Next i wrote down how I thought he would adjust to how i changed my game and then i just did a balanced strategy from there. I started off winning and i felt like playing super well when i ran out of preplanned adjustments he started chipping me away and i ended up 9$(I WON lol i like never win). I then looked over the match and tc said it best to me " i felt like today i was playing a completely different player. I'm really impressed." vs 2 days before (PG version) "Are you serious??? Your such a spewtard." This whole cycle showed me that i need to work harder on my game and execute during play like an anal accountant. I had a Laissez-faire attitude where i would make -ev plays because of "flow" and "what i felt like doing"(emotion). Which is terrible cuz playing like that just causes tilt. I think i got like that cuz i felt like i deserved to win because of ego and really i'm lucky to not have lost more in this downswing. In the end i won a little with rb and wasted 176 hours of my life...................


So getting back on track today i had 4 hours of poker lessons with 2 different ppl and reviewed each lesson for a few hours and played 3 hours today and won at rly good rate. Basically i just studied, played and ate sushi and slept. I am going to try to focus on maintaining a high ev win rate(5ptbb+) and ignoring everything else and just trying to make each 50k hands higher win rate than the last. So ill try to keep progress on my blog of my next 50k hands as i go... Thats about it ttyl and gllllllllllllllllllllll

Timoshi

This has been brewing for quite some time. The triggering moment was when I saw Jack in the Box advertising a "big" cheeseburger for $1. It sounds like a great deal, but if you really think about the situation in the US that enables a company to offer a cheeseburger to the general public for only one dollar, then you realize how backwards things are when it comes to our food policies. Let's assume that the margin of profit on fast food is 67cents on the dollar. That is probably very conservative, it is probably much more. (I know that they make a lot more profits on softdrinks and that is counter balanced by less profitable menu items, but just the point that they can make money on a $1 burger gets my point across, I think.) Think of all the disparate elements of a cheeseburger that have to come together, at a 33 cent cost. The meat is probably the most expensive, but let's not forget the bun, cheese, and condiments. Do you know what kind of scale this has to be carried out on to roll something out like this across the nation? Let's start with beef. How can you profitably raise cattle for hamburger and make a profit yourself when the retailer is paying less than 33cents per hamburger? First we need to have mass amounts of cattle, and we need to raise them and feed them in the cheapest manner possible. Cheap feed, and less square footage per cow. Probably as many square feet per cow as a cow takes up in fact. And we can use some of the offal after the slaughter to feed back to the cows. A factory of cows, penned in next to each other is best. Don't even bother to clean up after them, in fact, let them stand knee deep in their own waste, and let's just use oceans of antibotics and growth hormones, because that is definitely cheaper. They don't have to be happy right? And they just have to be healthy enough not to die on us before they reach a certain weight. And when we do do them in, we will do that like a factory, too. Let's hire the cheapest possible labor force, immigrants (don't check papers because they work for less that way), and subject them to inhumane, violent, body breaking conditions too (just like the cows). Since they don't stand up for their rights, we don't have to really give them out. The waste from these factories is probably more than a small town of humans. Thank god our waste disposal isn't regulated like a town or even a regular factory that deals in chemicals or steel or some other product. We will just dump it into the river out back. And if we call ourselves a "farm" then we are eligible for government funding, too. Sweet. Then we will ship all of this product across the U.S. and even the world, because that is cheap again. For a while gas was very expensive and it really cut into our profits, but just as people were changing their eating and driving habits, gas took a big dip in price (funny that...) and we are good again. (If we deal in chickens, we can go back to raising them in the U.S., killing them, and shipping them to China where they are processed and shipped back in pieces. It is that cheap.) Maybe we don't make a lot of money per pound of beef, but we deal in volume, and that keeps the price of our products low and so smaller companies just can't compete.

Imagine that mentality going into each and every part of a cheeseburger. And imagine how the U.S. subsidizes almost every step of the process. How? By farming subsidies going to these huge agricultural companies that farm millions of acres of corn and wheat. It is cheaper to buy corn than to grow it, and all that excess goes toward mass production of a variety of products. High fructose corn syrup finds it's way into everything, and we are making our diets less and less varied. Soda is so cheap, it is incredible. When the cheapest foods are full of crap, then that is what the lower class eats, and they reap all of the health problems, too. Diabetes, obesity, and malnutrition--sometimes all at once! Where will it end? Why is a pound of eggplant more expensive than a hamburger. And who knows what to do with eggplant anyway? Why cook when you can eat out at Applebees for roughly the same amount of money and supporting the same backwards system. What does that $1 hamburger really cost us as Americans? It costs $60,000 per year to treat someone with Diabetes, which is widely preventable (but not cureable) and our kids still have soda vending machines in the halls of their schools and tater tots in the cafeteria. You can't use food stamps at farmers markets. Agricultural subsidies are generally for mass production type farms, and not smaller, greener, farms that sell their products locally.

There is more, so much more to it as well. I am only really touching on some of the broader points. Maybe once preexisting conditions and the like are wiped off of the face of the health care industry, and these companies crunch some numbers, then they will realize how much profit they will make by preventing these types of diseases in Americans that they have to cover by law, and maybe they will throw their political and financial weight behind correcting the way Americans eat.

I do my best as a parent to introduce my kids to a wide variety of foods. They are five and two years old. They eat broccoli and edamame and lentils and asparagus. We can't stop them from picking and eating the tomatoes we grow in our back yard every summer. We raised chickens and ate fresh eggs several times per week. Once we are in a house we own, we plan on having an extensive garden and making the kids part of it. We go to farmers markets and try to buy organic. We want them to know where food comes from and how it grows. One of my proudest moments was when my daughter, overhearing a conversation two other adults were having, asked my wife what "McDonald's" was.

You can get more info on what I have mentioned above readily. A couple of books I read are "Fast Food Nation," and "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle." I would like to read "In Defense of Food," by Michael Pollan and "Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer," by Novella Carpenter. The second interests me a lot because it is supposed to be a very funny, intelligent book, and it takes place in Oakland where I lived until 3 months ago.

That's all for now. I have to get back to the tables.

preflopjitters

Hey all,

As you probably know I've been to the EPT in London. I apologize to my backers for not making money and not writing this up earlier, but I wanted to wait till I got all the pictures. I almost want to split this blogpost up in two parts because it's kind off long, but I'm not going to because Robin already did it. So skip to the picture part if you don't like reading EPT hands

The tournament did not go too well for me. I'm sure I got unlucky in 3 ways: I believe I had a very tough table for donkament standards, did not get cards, and when I did get something pretty I rarely ended up making the winning hand. But I think I played really really well and there's only one hand I think I could've played differently. Even though my table was strong for EPT standards there were def. still some weaker players. I am proud that I did not spazz out, and actually asked Craig what the best strategy was when I got a bit shorter and blinds were increasing. Onto the EPT!

I had 4 known players at the table: Elky, someone from the November Nine, Jesper Hougaard (a good pro I had never heard off) and a semi-good looking Asian chick. In the first two levels I grinded my stack up to about 36k doing nothing special. Before I played the hand I have some doubts about I lost a couple K valuebetting midpair twice and checking back river to find out he made 3out 2paired the river.

Here you can see me from the back. This was the only picture with a glimpse of the Asian chick. Elky's shirt was awful to look at.

I get KQdd couple hands later. Old dude in MP opens a little bit bigger than the usual raise size and I feel like he's got a big hand. I call on the CO and BTN flats too. Flop Qs6sTo. Old guy bets, I call and BTN folds. Turn a low spade and he checks. I decide that even though I have a strong hand I'm better off repping the flush just in case. So I bet about 2/3 pot on turn and river. He calls and shows a flush himself. Maybe I should've just checked down, but I thought my hand was no good and went with my read.

At this point I'm down to 23k. I raise things like AQ, it goes multiway and the flop comes 678ss, stuf like that. I go down to 16k. Then total carddeadness (2 hours long looking at T3o... Not even T5s which is easy 4b bluff hand.) and I drop to 12k. I then find Aces and double against Elky's JJ. The dealer doorcard was a Jack so I thought gg, but he managed to find an Ace too.

Back to 24k. 300-600. Elky raises to 1500 as he did a couple of times before and gets 3bet to ~3800, which had also happened a couple of times before. I find AK in the SB and decide to cold 4bet to ~8k. I thought I'd take the pot down without risk a ton of the time, so I opted for that instead of coldcalling the 3b and have it go 3way. So, I cold 4bet and it gets coldcalled by guy behind me. Flop is T42r and I just c/f because a shove is only good if he has exactly AK and I don't want to risk my tourney life in a spot where he may very well have AA 100% of the time.

I'm down to about 16k, when my bust out hand happens:
Just after dinnerbreak. Avg ~ 41k, 300-600 with antes. Elky basically minraised, gets 2 callers I find KJcc in the SB. I think that I'm just a bit too deep for a squeeze shove and decide take the flop. It comes Jx4c6c. Booya me thinks! I check, Elky bets, old dude calls and it comes to me and I shove. Elky calls my shove after a while probably with a hand I double dominate. Old dude overshoves, Elky folds. Old guy flips QQ over and I have to hit one of my million outs. Doesn't happen.


I walked back to the hotelroom planning to get drunk with Robin ' the picture blogger' Ripper. It happens that I know 2 persons living in London who I hadn't seen in a long while so it seemed like a good plan to meet up with them. At this point I was still a bit on sad tilt after busting out, but all was good again when I finally met up with them and had my alcohol.

We had a great time and actually saw Al Pacino there working as a bartender!



The next day my brother arrived and he and Robin went to see a play. (See Robin's Blog) I wanted to hang out with Sofie and we went to this awesome in- and outdoor market thing. It was stands with food, funny stuff, weird stuff, clothes and people performing all over the place. Had some drinks at several bars, all were really cool and gave you that ' home' feeling with red, worn out couches etc. It's also amazing how everyone in that part of London had his/her own style. It was like a fashionshow on the streets.




The next couple of days Robin, Andy (my brother), Sara, Sofie and me just hung out, went to some restaurants and bar and actually played tabletennis with each other in a bar.

Picadilly Circus:




On the last day I had breakfast with Sofie to say goodbye and I got back about 30 minutes later than we had originally planned. So Robin and I immediately got on one cab. My brother, as he was flying from a different airport, on another. After a couple of meters Robin, thank aejones, asked if I had my passport with me. Turns out my brother still had mine. Would've been something if he had flown back to Holland with my passport! Barely making the last calls, we safely got on our flight.

All in all it was a great experience. Right after I busted out of the tournament I felt like I got really unlucky. After all the nights out, the market and just being there in London I now realize how truly, truly lucky I am that I could have this London Adventure. And I will get my win someday.

-Denny

The_End

Winning tournaments is like trying to catch lightning in a bottle!
more on that later

Having a pretty bad week. Ive lost(spewed) 10 buy ins at 50nl (6 max and HU) . calling to often to 3 bets oop callin to often on the flop and seeing far to many SD and only winning around 34% at showdown, pretty disgraceful. I had to play 25nl tonight to get some confidence.

Ive cashed the last 3 tournys ive played, however ive spewed off all those stacks early ITM. generally cos i play at 11pm till 4 am im getting tired and impatient, therefore my work suffers and my poker suffers because im waking up late rushing and feeling tired at work, and then playing poker while stale.

twice ive decimated my stack by pushing Q9 from the BB against a late rasie with no fold equity. Not to mention I spewed 2 big stacks yesterday just b4 the bubble making -ev plays.
too much Fancy Play Syndrone....prehaps


Anyway I guess its back to accounting, ( im a self employed tax accountant) Im pretty busy at the moment, but its so unchallenging and im not really motivated by $$,. I guess the thrill with poker is that I started playing and thought it was just a luckbased game, to seeing that it is a highly skill based game then being a losing player and now booking some profits (cash & tournys) and although the $$ are small (few thousand) only a small percentage of us are winning players, and we are winning when the game has never been harder.

Maybe the hunger has dimmed, maybe im overrating my skill and im just running good (in tournys).

I guess my motivation is to do something no one in my Family or group of friends think is possible, that is to make $$$ from a gambling based activity. Although im an accountant im a bit of a liberal and im anti establishment and thats why I love poker. most ppl think we are degen gamblers, so to stick it up them is what drives me the most ( i know i shldnt care what anyone thinks). However winning a Tournament is an intangible 2 finger salute!

I know I will never be as good as aejones or seabeast. but the dream of catching lightning in a bottle is one I cant let go of..... not yet anyway

tedjam

I played the Sundays again this week, it went absolutely awfully until right at the end when I wound up winning a $13k Aussie Millions package on Cake after getting outplayed in the small pots headsup (1 seat) and getting it in bad preflop all three times and winning all of them, lol.....

Rest of the night went so badly that if I profited at all for the night it wasn't much though.

Went to see Slayer last night, was a bit weird being the whole huge stadium thing...

Maybe I was too wasted but it felt like they weren't even playing their instruments, was just so disconnected from it.

Ah well. Slayer fucking rule and it was just a couple of hours of my life, whatever.

In failing at life news my phoneline got disconnected today for the second time in a couple of months, this time over a $93 bill.

Good times - why wouldn't you disconnect my phoneline after a couple of weeks of nonpayment of a double digit bill?

I decided tonight to delete all the people on my facebook friends list that I don't know irl.

I have a bit of a duality going where I play donkaments and have a poker blog and post on various forums and stuff but I don't actually want that much attention, I like the thought of being respected especially by my peers but it's a bit weird having that blend in with your real life world via facebook.

So anyway this seems like as good a place as any to say sorry if I deleted you, not personal I just want to keep my worlds separate

In other news, how fucking good is the latest season of Curb Your Enthusiasm?

How can a show with such a simple premise keep getting better and better?

Amazing.

SEABEAST