Hello all,

I'm going to divide this blog into sections since it will be long

SCHOOL AND STUDY ABROAD
I'm happy to announce the busiest semester ever is very close to over; I have just one final remaining. My grades have been incredible this semester (yay no poker). I've also kept a very consistent workout grind going and have remained lean while gaining muscle. I'm excited to keep making gains there. I had never realized before how great lifting is. I always thought people did it 100% to look better to get more girls/guys. I didn't realize how fun the competition (against yourself) was. Besides this, endorphins are a helluva drug and working out boosts confidence and generally makes you feel better. I now get it, and am very happy I do.

I anticipate next semester (well, actually two trimesters) will be even more busy, but I won't really know until they are underway. As I've talked about before, I will be studying abroad next semester and I decided to study at Oxford University in the UK. If anyone that reads this goes there, feel free to send me a PM! I hear the workload is rigorous but then again I expect that at an institution like Oxford. The good news is that since I will be in Europe for 6 months, I will be able to play online poker again. I will arrive in the UK on January 5th. Due to this earlier than normal start date, I will not be able to play PCA or Aussie Millions this year, so that's a bummer. The following day (the 6th) is my long-awaited 21st birthday so I'm very excited for both that and the general experience of a semester abroad.

My first trimester ends on March 13th and the next one doesn't start until April 15th. That means I have over a month to travel through Europe or do whatever else I want. I will likely try to visit cities throughout Europe and from talking to friends the list of places I will probably go to looks something like:

Paris, Barcelona, Ibiza, Stockholm, Budapest.

I'll be in London often since it's so close and I know a lot of people there, both poker players and other students studying abroad at Kings College or University College London. I am interested in hearing about which European cities are the most fun in the comments section, so don't hesitate to make a suggestion of where to visit. I haven't decided on or booked anything yet except my flight to London of course.

I really wanted to bring the blog back not only to update on poker, but to document my travels and post photos and such.

Live Poker Hand Session/Hand Analysis
As far as poker goes, I haven't played with the exception of a live session at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, FL. There was a nutty 50/100NL and 25/50PLO mix going but unfortunately I could not get a seat as the waitlist was 5 deep when I arrived. I witnessed a really nutty PLO hand from the game where two guys got in 23k (460bb) each pre with AJJ7ssxx and AJT2dddx. It came like 6x6dQdJxXx and the guy getting in jacks in Omaha scoops a big one.

I played 5/10 while on the waitlists for the 10/25 and the big game. After a couple hours I finally got into a 10/25 that was just starting 3 handed. There was one decentish tight livereg and one mid 20s mega loose-passive station fish. I made a nice river overbet for value against him with a straight when the flush had hit the turn and got looked up by his turned top pair, then got 3 streets of value vs. him with JJ on J58xxs4s3s and got looked up by just an 8.

I folded a set vs. him after he c/r AQJ barrel T barrel blank river. He showed KT so I'm happy with how I played that one. I hero called him on a 4 straight board with top pair after he c/c c/c donked, knowing he had missed his flush draw based on two previous hands I saw him play. He was the kind of fish who was just very obvious and very easy to beat, and played super loose pre so it wasn't hard to get involved in pots with him, especially 3 handed. I ended up winning only $400 but was a decent amount below EV. The biggest pot I played was actually in the 5/10 and demonstrates how soft the game was.

A mid 40s fish who I'd estimate played about 75/15 full ring limps, 2 limps behind (this was common, as I was literally the only player at the table with PFR divided by VPIP > .5.) I'm SB with QJo and BB is short ($600) and fairly loose-passive, the cally type. I complete as I'm never taking it down with 3 limpers and the cally BB still to act. I also have a table captain image where I am raising and 3betting a lot, especially against straddles. My redline is absurdly high just from taking down straddled pots preflop and one time I 3bet and 2barreled and took it down when I had top two. BB checks. Flop is Ts9s8x. I check (planning to raise of course), BB checks, 75/15 megadonk bets 50 into 50, 2 limpers behind fold. I raise to 150, BB cold calls and megadonk calls. About half the deck is bad for me either killing action with 4 straight or the flush coming in, but I drill a red 2 on the turn. Pot is 500, SB has 465 and megadonk has 1750 (I cover). I bet 400, SB calls with only $65 behind and megadonk INSTA jams. I call quickly and SB of course calls too. He asks to run it twice and I'd normally decline here but given he was a big fish I wanted to be accommodating. SB mucks so pot is ~4600; river 1 is a red 3, river 2 is a 2. He shows TT and takes half It was pretty cool I got 200bb in by the turn in a limped pot with the stone cold nuts though.

Overall, I feel like I did everything right. I was loose-aggro and taking down a lot of pots but aware of my image. My reads were dead on in every spot, and this was after having months of no playing. This was very encouraging and I feel good about my game. I will need to shake the rust off playing some midstakes NL and PLO online, but look forward to building up to high stakes again in preparation for this summer, my first WSOP. Since I don't return from UK until June 25th, I will only be able to catch an event or two including the Main Event. I may go right to Vegas and play some cash and just the Main Event, but I haven't made any final decisions on that.


ONLINE POKER
Of course I haven't been able to play any recently, but I have been following it through PTR occasionally. Some things I've noticed:
-the traditional nosebleeding warriors haven't been involved in the huge games on Stars recently (Sauce, nutsinho, jungleman, urnotindanger). Some are playing elsewhere or smaller. These have always been the guys I've looked up to as a poker player, even when sitting across from them. With them gone, I find myself really admiring (in no particular order) 0Human0, Ben86, takechip, and Kanu7. These have been players I've had a lot of respect for for a long time, of course. But now I have respekt for them.

Isildur is a fun one. It's just great how consistently he can run it up and then come crashing down. I always find myself rooting for him, but it seems he just doesn't learn his lesson. He is incredibly talented though, and his dissociation from money is almost psychopathic.

I'm really excited to get back online come January. I've been missing playing poker. I don't know how much time I will have to play-- probably not very much. As part of being at...

For reasons I'm not going to comment on, I have decided to stop blogging at LeggoPoker.com. This will be my final entry.

Anyone that wants to contact me for coaching or anything else, feel free to send me a PM, as I will still check them and respond. Sorry to anyone who has PM'd me that I never got back to. It's not personal and more out of laziness. As far as coaching, it is fairly unlikely I will do much. My hourly playing is just too high, and there are enough "geniuses" out there teaching hoards of aspiring players how to beat the game (many of whom just teach because they can't actually beat it themselves, unless their opponent is a drooler), but feel free to inquire with information about yourself and I will quote you a price.

I'd also like to apologize to all of those who enjoyed reading my posts, seeing my graphs, learned from the hands I posted, or learned more about being a poker professional from my insight on downswings or anything else. These things won't be possible anymore, so I hope people enjoyed it while it lasted.

So long, and I wish the best of luck to all the good people out there.

Signing out,
Evan

Hello Leggoians,

I will be leaving for Toronto in about 6 hours. I will be playing on FTP/Stars again probably on Saturday. If not, definitely on Sunday. I'm gunna play my normal HU/6m/rare FR NLHE and PLO games as well as Sunday tournies this weekend. I will be tweeting about my sessions and general thoughts on post Black Friday games. I will also be opening some accounts on Euro sites and commenting on them too.

Follow me on Twitter

As always, anyone who sees this and lives in Toronto, feel free to PM me.

I will be doing a small amount of coaching. Inquire by PM.


Swanky apartment pics

http://imageshack.us/g/217/24hrgym.jpg/

I am pretty excited to get back in the online game. I played some live and it just doesn't do it for me the way online does. I love the comfort of my own home/apartment, multitabling, changing my avatar emotion when I'm about to call the river jam with the nuts, etc. My car is packed (no striped sheets, sorry Jones but I have weekly maid service!) and I am ready to go. I took an Ambien 2.5 hours ago and it has had absolutely no effect so far, hmmm. Take 2 next time?

WORD

Hey Leggo,

I decided I will be temporarily moving to Toronto on June 3rd. I'm living in a nice apartment building called "Element" just off of King Street W on Blue Jays Way. It seems to be about 2 miles from the University of Toronto. I'm really excited and def send me a PM or post a comment if you're currently living or planning on living in the same general area or have anything else helpful to add about the area or whatever.

Evan

I played some live. It went well.



Not this well though.

#GoodLegislationOneTime?

Hey Leggo and other noble blog readers,

So some time has elapsed and things have seriously started to sink in. Of course, we don't know what the near future holds for us. However, I do know what is going on NOW and that is what I will talk about in this entry.

Rewind almost 2 years. I was an up-and-coming player taking my first shots at mid-stakes NLHE. A lot of people get to this level, but I was determined I'd not be another that remains there in mediocrity. I grinded MSNL throughout the summer after graduating from high school, and had great success. I had also decided just a few days earlier I'd be attending college at Washington University in St. Louis. I had a lot of ambition and a lot to be proud of.

Enter college. My regular game is 5/10, and I've been playing this game for about 9 months. I started at The Deuce. One cent two cent NLHE, the very base of online poker; a level that is cringe-worthy even to a casual donk. By the end of my first year of college, I was regularly playing in 10/20 and 25/50 games, and still playing a sizable amount of 5/10. I had a very good year in poker; I had started 17 months earlier in the lowliest of games, and came out as being a mid-high stakes regular. It didn't come without sacrifice. I put a lot of time into getting good at poker, and it showed in my schoolwork. I had never gotten a B in my life, but I was okay with it all of a sudden. I had poker; that shit didn't matter because top-notch entry level jobs pay less than I made in my first year playing poker having started at The Deuce. I also got mononucleosis in my 2nd semester, which is like the ultimate "Fuck you" from God for a college student/poker player. It is unbelievably hard to get anything done when you feel completely languid 24 hours a day for 6 weeks of a 14 weeks semester. My results suffered in poker and school, but I came up on the other side breathing.

I relaxed a lot in the summer, and didn't get the kind of volume I wanted. I also failed on other goals. Basically, I wasted a ton of time basically doing nothing. I had wanted to be productive. That didn't mean grinding till my eyes bled, but I did want to make money and improve, I did want to have a good time with my friends from home, and I did want to do other things to find meaning and improve my life as a whole. It wasn't a complete failure but I look back on it as a huge opportunity wasted. I don't get that kind of free time, and I just let it pass me by. I felt like I was just settling in, and all of a sudden I was packing for school.

First semester of sophomore year was the year it all changed. This was by far my best semester in poker, and was also my best academically. Sounds like a success, right? I wouldn't describe it that way. I had a falling out with someone important to me, made up, only to eventually have a worse falling out. I suppressed my thoughts about this, and used poker as a distraction. Life didn't go the way I wanted, but in poker I [largely] controlled my own destiny. Don't get me wrong, I've run a shit-fuck-ton under EV, but I've also done extremely well in spite of that. If you work hard and have a certain skill set, you will get somewhere in this game. I believed that and I still do. I put all I had into poker. I tried to get my schoolwork done as fast as possible, and then it would just be grind grind grind. Review hands. Sweat HSNL contacts. Talk poker with someone smarter than me. At this point it wasn't a burning desire to break through at high stakes. I truly needed it because I put so much into it. I couldn't take that kind of discouragement.

And the results came. I cleaned up the games. Tough table? Who cares. I would win because I knew the small things these people did wrong, and I knew how to exploit them. There was a period of almost 5 months where I hardly lost. I had double digit downswings above 50k and some above 100k, but I was often playing big and that's just how it goes. I'd recover instantly because I was playing my A game in games I had a nice edge. The semester ends and winter break starts. I have 25 days with nothing on my plate. And the girl from before sent me a message saying how sorry she was about everything that happened, and hoped we could see each other soon.

And so I grind some more. Games were very good. I made about $300,000 in under 4 weeks and under 50,000 hands. Life couldn't be better. Things had been looking up poker-wise and personal life wise. I crushed the games for 2 more months at a similar rate. I was on an absolute tear.

I'm nearing the end of my sophomore year, and things really take a turn for the worse. In early March the 2nd fallout happens, and I'm very distracted. It shows in my poker game, mainly through my frustration. Every beat gets to me. Every time someone plays bad and wins I just go off. I let my emotions into the game, something I thought I had completely escaped. I went on a downswing, which was put on hold my *gasp* Black Friday. I am happy for the break from poker, as I wasn't doing well and have never in my life had so much to do for school. The last two weeks, I have been just a student, and I have to say, it will never be the same. Once you've ridden the roller coaster of high stakes poker, working for 10 hours straight on an empirical original research international trade paper just doesn't do it for you. I put so much into getting to the top, and sacrificed being on top academically, only to have poker completely cut out from under me by this fine country of ours. For some people, this is their livelihood. Others, their passion. For me, it's just gone. Everything I did is gone. Now I'm just a college student. I'm 99.9% not dropping out. I realized I can't play poker and be a great student. It just isn't feasible. To [mis?]quote a great man,"To be the best at poker, you have to be poker." The game evolves so fast that you can't just be a casual player. The true poker player is haunted by the game. It is impossible to keep it from drifting up the iceberg into your conscience.

I have to decide if I am a poker player. Since I said I'm 99.9% not dropping out, I guess that means I'm not. But maybe not. Maybe I think the expected utility of staying in school and only playing poker in the summers is greater than that of dropping out, moving out of the country, and becoming a poker pro. Let's go with that. I never wanted to be a poker player forever; I only wanted it through college or maybe a few years after. Deep down, my goal has always been to work in financial services on Wall Street. I want to work towards that goal; being a poker professional would never be satisfying because it is too stigmatized. Few actually respect a pro poker player, and while that may not matter to a lot of you, it does to me. The bottom line is I couldn't do it forever and from now on will just be a summer player. I'm getting a job when I graduate and I'm getting stellar grades from now on. No more distractions. April 15th, 2011 is a day I will never forget. It is a day I went from a poker player to a student who had his time in poker. I feel like it was premature and I had more to do in the game, but I can still see myself reading HSNL posts on 2+2 as a micro stakes player. That me would be very, very proud of where I am. The current...

Probably have a place lined up to lease from mid May to mid August. Cost is 6k/month to be divided 3 ways (the place is very nice). Looking for sociable people looking to play online a bunch, get better, and generally have a fun summer. Mainly appeals to people not going to WSOP or just going for ME or something, due to recent events. Inquire further by PM or comments.

I'm also open to going somewhere else outside the United States so feel free to contact me!

Evan

Hey everyone-

Until now I've only really wanted to coach 1-3 students at a time, but some time has opened up obviously. I need people who can pay me on PayPal or through Bank of America. I'm not going to say too much other than I'd be very helpful for HUNL, 6m NL, and HUPLO. I've posted some more specifics in previous entries. My general rate is 750/hr, but as time has opened up, simple supply and demand dictates my price will go down. Please inquire by PM and I would be happy to discuss specifics on coaching style and rates on an individual basis.

Thanks,
Evan

I am interested to hear opinions on this. If the government is taking the position that playing online poker is illegal from the states, that would make our income illegal and subject to seizure. This is not good. I know I'll put all my money in a bag, throw it over, and dive in after it and never come back.

Evan

http://twitter.com/#!/TheRealTwoSHAE

gogoGoGoGOOO! Interview with www.dailyvariance.com should be published within a week or two.

Evan