Not a poker post

If anyone still reads this and would be interested in donating some $$$ for a great cause, would be great appreciated.

On Sunday, October 16, the CHOC Walk in the Park will take place at Disneyland® Park and Disney’s California Adventure Park®. Over 14,000 men, women and children of all ages will join together, each with their own “reasons to walk” for CHOC Children’s and CHOC Children's at Mission Hospital.

Teams play a critical role in the Walk and I encourage you to get involved by joining my team and making this the biggest and best CHOC Walk ever.

Please join our team and the community as we make every step count for kids at the 21st Annual CHOC Walk in the Park.

Follow This Link to visit my personal web page and help me in my efforts to support Children's Hospital of Orange County

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Erik

One Month Later (still in limbo)

My life since Black Friday (from the 2+2 thread):


Basically I've just been a stay-at-home dad since all of this went down- taking care of the kids, getting stuff done around the house, etc. I haven't really played poker, aside from a couple home game and some micro limit stuff on Cake, but I have been doing some reading and HH analysis to try to tune up my game. Whatever I decide to do long-term poker-wise, it's unlikely that it will involve the extreme multi-tabling I'd been doing in my SNE chase, so it will be in my best interest to focus on my table profits rather than rakeback. I'm also planning hit up the local casinos over the next month (Commerce and potentially the shit-hole, rigged tent casino known as Hawaiian Gardens) to get as much live practice as possible prior to the WSOP. I've got a backer for at least the $1,500, but would like to plat the $5k as well assuming I can find a couple more backers. If you're interested in taking a piece, just leave a comment on this post.

No big decisions yet on how to move forward long-term. Black Friday essentially killed my plans for the next few years, so I'm taking some time to figure out my next move rather than make any quick decisions. At this point, there's a very good chance I'll go to Canada for at least few months (without the family) to determine whether a move would be worth it given the changes to the online poker scene since BF. As far as a permanent move out of the country, it's a tough decision- I own a house here, my wife has a career, all of our family and friends are here, etc. Commuting back and forth a few months at a time is an option, although that has plenty of drawbacks and, with the associated costs, may not even make sense financially compared to sucking it up and re-entering the workforce. I'm still hoping that some amazing acceptable legislation will go through to allow me to continue making a good living at poker from my home, but it's not looking to0 likely that that will happen any time in the near future.

On another note, I'm incredibly impressed with Stars' customer service throughout this entire mess. They've proven yet again how superior they are to any of the other poker sites and most companies in general (fraud and money laundering allegations or not). Timeline of events following Black Friday:

• April 15th- Shit hit the fan/no more poker/FML
• April 16th- Call from Stars filling me in on the situation and confirming my money was safe
• April 20th- DOJ press release on domain name use agreement with Stars and FTP to facilitate refunding players
• April 28th- US cash outs available
• April 30th- Submitted cash out request (couldn't bring myself to do it immediately- I've been playing on Stars for 7 years and spent a long time building that roll)
  
• May 3rd- Money in my account (ship it!)
• May 6th- Stars credits account for partial progress towards my next Milestone Bonus

I hope everyone else out there who played poker for income is hanging in there and getting through this okay. Some of the stories in the PPA "post your story" thread made my situation look like nothing.

Well on to new things

Looks like the future online poker is gonna be up in the air, so maybe it's time to go back into the real world. Fortunately, I have some leads to get a job somewhere so I'll do that (and could always apply to Business school in fall because I got a decent score on the GMAT). Unfortunately, I have a significant sum online so who knows whats going to happen to that. Hopefully something can resolved in the next two - four weeks or so and I can get a better understanding of what can be done.

Time for a beer or two.

Grinding VPPs is still better than the alternative

The shit show in the previous post reminded me of how much "real" jobs suck. I might be grinding VPPs all day, but this job is still a hell of a lot better than any corporate job I've had.

1. I don't have to work for assholes or morons (except for myself obviously).
2. No commute (except the 10 feet from my bedroom to my office).
3. My work attire consists of a t-shirt and boxers. I can count on one hand the number of times I've put on anything nicer than jeans in the past year.
4. Lunch breaks typically consist of either : 1) watching Justified, Lights Out, the Borgias, and/or Shameless or 2) video games (I'm waiting for the game LA Noire to come out end of May).
5. Any money I lose or make is on me. I don't have to bust my ass making money for a cheap bastard who *might* give me a 7% raise if he's feeling generous at the end of the year.
6. My schedule is up to me. Obviously chasing SNE at low limits means more hours of poker that most people would like to play, but at least I can put in the hours when I want to.
7. At least a month off per year.

Obviously there are some downsides, such as:
1. No guarantee that I'll make money every week, month, or even year. That being said, I manage my bankroll very conservatively and cash out at least a minimum amount every week regardless of how much I make or lose.
2. Taxes suck.
3. Uncertain future of online poker. If shit hits the fan and online poker is temporarily or (unlikely) permanently banned, I won't exactly have solid career experience to put on my resume. That being said, I can always become a trader and supplement lose my income grinding busto stakes on my nights and weekends.
4. No health insurance/401k/other company-provided benefits. Fortunately, my wife works just enough hours to qualify for benefits, so it's not an issue as long as she doesn't quit her job any time soon.
5. My son got up on the pool table. When I told him to get down, he told me "Fuck You". Guess I should watch my mouth.

Granted, my perspective might be a little skewed since the 2 jobs I've had since I graduated college involved working for 2 of the worst bosses you can imagine:

Boss #1- corporate equivalent of the biggest assholes at the tables. Berated his employees and anyone else he came into contact with all day long. One time, be backed out of his driveway full speed without looking, straight into a truck belonging to a repairman working on his house. He then proceeded to berate the repairman and blame him for the accident, stating that it was his fault for blocking the driveway.

Boss #2- worse bankroll management than Lucas.

And for anyone who cares, here's this week's graph. Overall I'm pretty happy with my play recently. Still tilting some, but doing better than I was a couple months ago. I'm happy to be playing 3/6 again and getting more VPPs.

One Time!

So I just finished up my session with an email from Pokerstars:

Hello iiimJEEESUS,

We have received a complaint regarding your use of inappropriate language at our tables. After reviewing the chat log (see below), it was decided to suspend your chat privileges for a period of one month. Your language was highly offensive and completely unacceptable.

Our goal at PokerStars is to be a fun place to play, where everyone can feel comfortable. Foul language and abuse of other players takes away from everyone's enjoyment, and therefore will not be permitted.

Please note that you may not be the only one receiving a message such as this. When we receive a chat complaint, we review the entire chat of all players at the table. If any other players at the table were in violation of PokerStars' chat rules, they were also warned or had their chat suspended.

Your chat privileges will be automatically reinstated in one month.

Regards,

PokerStars Support Team
---
899676956 iiimJEEESUS nice hand you piece of garbage fed 1 4/4/2011 7:54:17 PM

So I sent them a quick response:

To Whom It May Concern,

This latest chat ban is ridiculous. Fedigan has insulted races, sexuality, gender, and everything else known to man. I beat him in a pot and I simply called him what he has referred to me several times as, which is "a piece of garbage". When I reported Fedigan for similar acts, I was told by your Pokerstars support team that I could simply "turn off my chat if i was offended". Therefore, I was under the impression referring to someone as "a piece of garbage" was allowed. I now know that such language is unacceptable and am asking for a smaller chat ban (1 week or so) or to have my chat reinstated immediately.

Please note, I am on pace for supernova elite this year (240,000 vpps) and have paid approximately $40,000 in rake so far, and as such, I deserve special consideration.

Thank you.

First Quarter Progress

Well 1st quarter is pretty much over and I'm slightly behind pace at 222,174 VPPs for the year. I'm going to pick up the pace in April (not lying this time). I don't really have a choice since May-July is gonna be really busy (lots of weddings and, more importantly, bachelor parties and, even more importantly, WSOP).

April needs to be a 6-figure VPP month. My goal is 108k VPPs- an average of 4,300/day on weekdays and 2,500 per weekend.

In other news, I've started full-stacking again and am considering upping my limits. The VPP rate at .5/1 and 1/2 is shit compared to 2/4. I've definitely got the roll- just need to not run like shit and/or play like shit. I also put in a marathon day yesterday/today in hopes of hitting a milestone hand (obviously failed at that).

Some stats:

• Hands played this year: 615,415 (on my desktop- not counting the day or so I've put in on my laptop)
  
• VPPs/hand: 0.36
• Hours played: 520

If I can start mixing in some 2/4 and 3/6 again and get that VPP rate up to even 0.5/hand, that would be huge.

Great Day

Ran 1k under EV today, about 8 days behind SNE pace, got fucked in the $5 PL rebuy 3 times for chip lead stacks (finished 8th for a shitty $150 payday as opposed to $1.25k for 1st). The jackass's in that tournament were ridiculous. It was like they were all finger banging themselves with horseshoes and then proceeded to win / split every all in vs me.

Need to take night off, regroup and get back to the grind tomorrow. Just did 12 hour self ban so that will help.

MTT's going well

In order to get ready for SCOOP and the WSOP this summer, I've been playing between two to four MTT's a day (five days a week) to get some practice in. The usual tourneys that I play are the $5 PL and NL rebuy, $22 PL, and another other tourney that I see. I've final tabled the $5 NL rebuy 3 days in a row (2nd, 7th, and 9th, respectively) so that has definitely helped the bankroll slightly, in addition to providing a nice change of pace from grinding 24 tables of cash all day.

Cash games have also improved. The no limit games have been very swingy with 20 BBs, and I got my ass handed to me a .25/.5 PL today- played bad, ran worse. But my EV and profit have both been good this month, so I can't complain.

I'm at 196k VPPs and change for the year. I'll be clearing the 200k VPP bonus tomorrow for $2,600. Goal is SNE by 12/1.

Sorry about the Delay

Sorry about the lack of blogging. Been busy lately, but still no excuse why I can't take five minutes out to blog. I'm currently at 177k VPP's ( which is slightly behind SNE pace, but I'm catching up to the SNE pace real quickly).

I've come to realization that getting SNE playing my current limits (.25/.50 - 1/2, mostly full ring with some 6 max mixed in) is definitely possible, getting 1.25 million VPP's would be downright suicidal, unless of course I decide to move back up in limits real soon.

My current goal is to average 24,000 VPP's week. I want to get 4,300 VPP's Monday - Friday and 2,500 VPP's over the weekend. If I stick to this schedule I should be able to get to SNE by November and have a relaxing last 5 - 6 weeks of the year.

On the poker front, things are going well. I've been short-stacking (20 bb's) at the NL tables the last two weeks and I've been plus ev as well as being plus money so that's all good. In addition, my goal is to play between five to ten tournaments a week to get in shape for the SCOOP Hi Lo MTT's and obviously the the WSOP PL Hi Lo events ($1,500 and $5,000). Hopefully with good enough results in the SCOOP, I can sell some of my action for the WSOP events.

The bankroll is almost getting back to where it was at the beginning of the year. This Friday I'm going to have enough FPP's (250,000) to purchase the $4,000 bonus and early next week I will pass the 200,000 VPP mark, meaning I can purchase the $2,6000 bonus for 1 FPP. Last year I didn't pass the 200,000 VPP mark til August 2nd (I ended the year with 500,000 VPP's).

I'll try to keep this thing updated at least twice a week from now til when I get SNE.

Good Day (Finally)

I've played this tourney the past 3 days but was only in for $46.50 total, so I can't complain about my ROI.

Some of the big hands:

I'm pretty lucky

This helped

Great play

Weeeeeee

Cash games have been shitty this week (points wise) but profitable for once. Well, not that profitable... but I haven't been losing my ass for a change.

Progress meter is updated for you, Strikr.

I'm emo

Ok, I'm emo.

I'm back on the SNE chase.

Wife was able to block omaha manager from me so that's good news (I don't use HUD so it's all good).

Games have been slow, lately but trying to at least grind at 2,750 vpps a day until they pick up again.

Chase is over

Looks like its time to give up the chase for supernova elite. I have lost over 30% of my roll this year and have run significantly under ev. I am definitely not playing my best this month (right around break-even poker), but I am down $5,000 and the month is barely 10 days old. My goal to get supernova elite definitely cost me a ton of money and killed my desire to play poker.

When I started the year, I enjoyed grinding out the 5k VPP or more days, but now I dont even want to grind out 2k VPP days. If this is my attitude 10% of the way to SNE, I think its safe to say I don't have the mindset to make it all the way.

I will spend the extra time I have now looking at getting a real job and / or applying to graduate school.

Week 5 Recap / Week 6 Goals

Week 5 Recap

• Total VPPs Earned: 24,678.74
• Hours Played: 52.15
  
• Hands Played: 65,650
  
• VPPs/Hour: 473.2
• VPPs/Hand: 0.376
• VPPs Earned YTD: 101,896.12

I hate poker this year. I don't expect to win every flip, but it would be nice to win hands like this and this occasionally.

I hit 100k VPPs this week and secured my Supernova status through February 2012. That's not much of an accomplishment though. I'm pretty sure I could teach a monkey to get Supernova. Maybe I'll make that my hobby if I continue to run like shit and bust my roll.


Week 6 Goals

• 27k VPPs
  
• Win a hand against AngryFish. That's going to be a lot harder than the 27k VPPs.
  
• Break even, which means I'll need an EV of at least $3k the way I've been running.

Down and back

Well, no tilt goal = fail for the week. I started off the week by running like shit on Monday. By the end of the day my EV wasn't good but my losses were far worse. I considered just doing a 180-day ban, cashing out the roll, and playing video games for 6 months while looking for a shit job, but obviously got over that idea quickly and am back to grinding. Since then I've made back the losses and then some.

I made an agreement with MrClkClkDirk that anytime one of us whines at the tables we owe the person who catches us $5, the exception being that we can berate each other. So, be sure to call us out when you see us bitching or watch our tables all day waiting for one of us to crack if you're really desperate to boost your roll.

I've been bad about playing nights again this week, and don't think I'm gonna improve on that tonight since I'm going out to watch the UCLA game.

Week 4 Recap / Week 5 Goals

Week 4 Recap

• Total VPPs Earned: 30,254.65
• Hours Played: 61.64
  
• Hands Played: 77,181
  
• VPPs/Hour: 490.8
• VPPs/Hand: 0.392
• VPPs Earned YTD: 77,217.38

I did pretty well catching up on my points this week (back on pace for SNE), but didn't played well. I tilted some/cut my days short because I was pissed off and/or the games sucked mid-week. January has actually been my worst month of losses since I started played full-time. The roll has taken a bit of a hit with my cashouts and losses, but I'm still fine. I should clear $11k in bonuses next month which will bring me back to where I like to be, assuming I can stop playing/running badly.

Week 5 Goals:

• VPP Goal: 30k
  
• I need to focus more on the tables and not mess around on the internet. 24 tables plus ESPN and AIM is probably not the smartest plan.
• I need to stick to my schedule. I haven't felt like playing at night lately, but
  I need to suck it up, invest in some 5 hour energy, and push through.
• Stop tilting. No excuses.
  

You Win 6922

Things improved somewhat after I changed my picture:


Still playing pretty shitty, but at least I'm getting points.

Gotta Love PokerStars Support

Fuck Poker

Week 3 Recap / Week 4 Goals

A little late, but here are my results from Week 3:

Week 3 Recap

• Total VPPs Earned: 5,927.93
• Hours Played: 16.33
  
• Hands Played: 16,772
  
• VPPs/Hour: 363.01
• VPPs/Hand: 0.353
• VPPs Earned YTD: 46,962.73

Well, I'm back to being behind pace for SNE due to being sick as shit last week (severe tonsillitis). Due to that and other stuff I had going I barely played. My VPPs/hour is pretty low due to short sessions where I wasn't 24 tabling.

I succeeded at about 1.5/3 goals last week. I kept my chat and played fine (but not amazing), but obviously failed at my VPP goal.

Week 4 Goals:

• 35k VPPs. That's about it, since I've pretty much determined that I'm gonna lose money whether I play winning poker or losing poker.

If I don't run better soon, it might be time for a new picture. Anyone have suggestions?

Not much to report

I've barely played so far this week. I'm only at 10% of my weekly goal, and most likely won't be getting much poker in tomorrow either. It looks like I'll be playing full days every day for the rest of the month starting Friday to keep on pace. Gg.

I've been running at EV for the 8 or so hours I have put in this week, which is a nice change. Up around $400 or so.

I did get caught up on some video games today, and I'm going to the Clippers game to watch Blake Griffin be huge tonight, so the week isn't a total loss.

Week 2 Recap / Week 3 Goals

Results from this week:

• Total VPPs Earned: 28,566.19
• Hours Played: 59.35
  
• Hands Played: 77,732
• VPPs/Hour: 481
• VPPs/Hand: 0.367
• VPPs Earned YTD: 41,034.8

Rather than focusing on the obvious bad part of the week (ran $3k under EV), here are some positives:

• I'm back on pace to get SNE this year. I still have a way to go to be on track to hit SNE by 9/1, but I'm catching up.
• I didn't quite reach my goal of 30k VPPs for the week, but came fairly close at 28.6k.
• I cleared the $4k 250k FPP bonus.
  
• EV for the week was about $900 which, while not my best poker, is at least winning poker and would be a nice addition to rakeback (if I ever ran at EV).

Most of my losses this week were at 3/6 and 2/4, as I ran $1200 under EV at 3/6 and $500 under EV at 2/4. Hopefully taking a break from these will make for a less frustrating next week. Since I didn't even earn that many VPPs at these limits (818 at 3/6 and 697 at 2/4, aka approximately $1/VPP given my losses), I think avoiding these games will limit my swings and keep my head clear without really affecting my hourly VPP rate.

My goals for Week 3 are:

• Earn 25k VPPs. I'm going for a lower goal this week given that's it's gonna be a busy week
  
• Play the best I can. Limit tilt.
• I get my chat back tomorrow night, so I guess keeping it for a week would be an appropriate goal.
  

Taking a step down

Well, it's been another shitty week- nothing particularly unusual, but I've been on the shit end of standard 2/4 and 3/6 swings.



As a result, I'm temporarily banning myself from 2/4 and 3/6. Given my fairly (or ridiculously depending who you ask (hp612)) conservative bankroll management, I don't feel that I'm rolled to handle the swings well. Between losses and cashouts, I've blown almost 20% of my roll this year. I'm going to work it out at .25/.5 through 1/2 for a while until I get to $40k online, at which point I'll get back into it. It could be another 1-2 months until that happens, given the amount I cash out every week, but who knows.

I'm about to clear the $4k 250k FPP bonus, which should compensate for my losses and only leave me a couple grand in the hole for the month after cashouts.

More of the same

Grinding along. Best news of the day is that Brock Lesnar is fighting Junior Dos Santos in June. I'm hoping UFC makes the right decision and holds the fight in Vegas.

Also more entertaining than my shitty play today:

Good Monday

The games have been great today. I've earned almost 5,200 VPPs in a little over 8 hours of play. I played over 14,000 straight hands, and actually felt like I was playing pretty well, despite running $450 under EV.



Best beats of the day:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5903291

http://www.pokerhand.org/?5902638


I cancelled golf tonight to watch the national championship game. After the game I'm gonna grind for a little while longer to try to hit 6k VPPs for the day.

Week 1 Recap / Week 2 Goals

A quick recap of last week:

• Total VPPs Earned: 12,468.61
• Hours Played: 25.91
• Hands Played: 33,189
• VPPs/Hour: 481
• VPPs/Hand: 0.376
  

The games were decent overall last week. I was able to avoid .25/5 for the most part and maintain 24 tables of .5/1 through 2/4. I'm obviously still behind pace, but earning a decent rate of VPPs/hour at least.

I ended up running about $2,300 under EV for the week.

My goals for this week are:

• Earn 30k VPPs. I need to ramp it up this week to get back on pace for the year.
• Play winning poker. I did this last week, but obviously need to continue doing so and avoid tilting when I run like shit.
  
• Clear $4k 250k FPP bonus. I've got a little over 168k FPPs right now, so this should happen Friday or Saturday.
  

Still running like shit...

Decided to change my picture to turn my luck. I had a good run with kuhns, but I think this face beats his:


Hopefully this picture will bring me a little luck.

Great Fucking Start

Well, if I continue losing at this rate, this will be a short SNE run.



Played alright the last couple days- not my best, but should have been slightly profitable. I definitely tilted some towards the end of today. Oh well... onward and (hopefully) upward.

I've got around 11k VPPs so far, and should hit 12k tonight.

Here Goes

Well, I figured I might as well document my progress toward my goal of SNE this year. Ideally I'd like to hit 1.25M VPPs as it's worth about $30k more t
hat just SNE. That being said, I'm gonna see how it goes since I could potentially lose a lot more than $30k if I get burned out trying for it.

Already behind pace after taking a few days off to chill in Tahoe before starting for the year.




It was probably good that I took a break, since I was playing like shit at the end of last year. But, I did hit my goal of 500k VPPs despite being over 120k behind pace as of November 1st, so it worked out. Definitely learned my lesson about waiting til the last minute though- not making that mistake again as the games in December were tighter than normal and therefore the VPPs per hand sucked (average of 0.35 VPPs/hand for the month).

Here's the schedule for 2011 as it currently stands. If I stick to it I should remain ahead of pace and will only need to work 41.5 weeks to hit 1.25M.

Monday/Friday

8 AM - 12 PM: Poker
12 PM - 12:30 PM: Lunch
12:30 PM - 4:30 PM: Poker
4:30 PM -8:30 PM: Family Time
8:30 PM - 9:30 PM: Golf
9:45 PM - 12:30 AM: Poker
12:30 AM - 12:31 AM: Sex
12:31 AM - 6:31 AM: Sleep

Tuesday/Thursday

8 AM - 12 PM: Poker
12 PM - 12:30 PM: Lunch
12:30 PM - 4:30 PM: Poker
4:30 PM - 6:30 PM: Gym
6:30 PM -8:30 PM: Family Time
8:30 PM - 12:30 AM: Poker
12:30 AM - 12:31 AM: Sex
12:31 AM - 6:31 AM: Sleep

Wednesday

8 AM - 12 PM: Poker
12 PM - 12:30 PM: Lunch
12:30 PM - 6:30 PM: Poker
6:30 PM - 9:30 PM: Family Time
9:30 PM - 10:30 PM: Poker
10:30 PM - 12:30 AM: Chill
12:30 AM - 12:31 AM: Sex
12:31 AM - 6:31 AM: Sleep

Saturday

7 AM - 9 AM: Poker
9 AM - 11 AM: Gym
11 AM - 8 PM: Chill/Family Time
8 PM - 10 PM: Poker
10 PM - 2 AM: Drink


Sunday

OFF