Decision Time

I have made a decision. It wasn't an easy one to make, mostly because of that thing that drives many people, pride. I have decided to play exclusively Rush Poker.

I know many people who I associate with in the poker world will look at this and think this is a bad or weak decision. It took me a while to make this decision, because I had certain goals in poker I wanted to achieve, mainly being a solid MSNL regular. Doing the Rush Poker instead does feel a tiny bit like giving up and admitting defeat, which I despise more than anything. People who know me well know that I am an extremely competitive person, with as much desire to succeed as anyone else. I poured myself into poker, studying on my lunches at work and studying and playing while home. And tbh, I had the roll to play 400nl before I switched over to heads up, so maybe if I had just stayed on with 6max and never played HU I would be playing 400nl regularly right now. I don't regret the decision though, as it taught me a lot of things about poker and how to think differently about the game. But yeah, a part of me feels like I should not stop my quest for being a solid MSNL reg. But I also know that baby #2 is going to be here soon, which will essentially kill all chances at having the required time to be a MSNL reg, so ...

That being said, the numbers just cannot be denied. I do feel that playing 50nl 6max I can achieve a winrate of 5 ptbb/100. I did the timing on this and I can get in 60 hours of play in a month easily for the time being, maybe even in the future when baby #2 comes, who knows. This can be done easily with the bulk of the time being played on the weekend and would actually give me more available time per month to do things with my family and get in shape. 60 hours may seem like a lot, but I don't go out like I used to with friends anyways, and the wife and Jacob as is are usually asleep by 10 and 8:30 respectively. This gives me a fair amount of time in the evenings on the weekend to get hands in and I can do it some during the day as well. 4 hours a day Fri-Sun means getting just 3 hours in during the week, which seems very reasonable. It would also give me more days completely off of poker. The math works out to being about 1,000 hands per hour. That means 5 ptbb/100 plus rakeback calculated out to being approximately $3,600 per month. Even a modest 3 ptbb/100 with rakeback is about $2,400 per month of essentially variance free money. I do think 5 ptbb/100 is quite reasonable though.

Another benefit of doing this is that I have always struggled with my mental game. Hard as I try, I still sometimes in bad ruts see $ and not bbs. Does this qualify me as a poor player? Maybe so. But it is what it is and I still saw losing 3 flips as $600 and it sometimes was frustrating. It will never be that way with $150. Yet another good thing is the fact that I never have to table select, which takes time of course. So basically other than pride, I can't think of a single reason why I should not give this a try. The beautiful thing about poker is that if things change somehow, I can always go back to regular 6max games, nothing is blocking my options long term.

...

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Poker Sites, Give Up The Booty Please

After waiting for a total of about 5 weeks, I got my refund for my withdrawal the other day from FTP. They screw up everything and their customer service took forever to respond to me, quite frustrating. As a result a while back I cashed out money from Stars and it is taking forever too. This does NOT make me happy. At some point in the near future, I plan on opening a new checking account. I will do this at the local credit union to be used as my personal money account and using it to make withdrawals directly to my account instead of waiting for a paper check. Since I plan on doing this at a bank that is not the same bank as my where all my primary accounts are, it will only be an extremely minor convenience if they close my account a la Noel and others on 2+2.

I may have a new plan for poker, as I have such limited time anymore. We'll see how it goes, I may blog about it, I may not. But it allows me to make decent coin I believe while actually increasing my time outside of poker, which should be pretty cool.

I keep seeing NFL mock drafts where the Lions take Gerald McCoy out of Oklahoma. The draft every April is a Lion's fan Super Bowl tbh. I wish we had won just one more game and drafted like 4th, as I could see Detroit selecting Eric Berry, my boy from Tennessee. Berry is easily the best DB I have ever seen play. The comparisons to Ed Reed aren't really accurate as he is so much better than Reed. I have never seen a safety basically become a shutdown safety. But that is what he is. He is a playmaker, but I see teams just not throwing in his direction of the field, it insane. Despite that, he still nearly broke the record for most INT returns yards in a career, despite leaving as a junior. He is amazing, I am still praying he goes to Detroit, though it is highly unlikely as they have a good SS and need line help (amongst many other things). He hits like John Lynch in his prime, ball hawks like Ed Reed, and can double as a shutdown corner type player, similar to 1997 Charles Woodson. He is a sicko. For anyone wanting to know just how valuable an elite safety is, check out how Pittsburgh's defense performed this year without Polamalu.

Steadily improving with respect to playing the guitar. My fingers on my left hand are starting to toughen up, like all good little boys who practice get. Been listening to loads of Dinosaur Jr. lately, they were always so underrated.

Computer Fixed

Yesterday I was trying to resolve my computer woes and I managed to solve the problem. I saw a cool wesbite that ahd video tutorials on how to remove virus issues from computers two nights ago before giving up and going to bed and was going to try that and then if that did not work, Ian was cool enough to send me a few links I was going to look at.

There was a piece of software that was suppose to be great for handling the virus I had (worm.win32.netsky) that I used the first day of attacking the issue. I tried it and it failed. I tried it again and the virus rendered the software useless and brought up some fake security called Internet Security 2010. For some reason it disappeared when I rebooted my machine in safe mode to try to use a tutorial to solve the issue. I decided to run malware bytes and then restart the machine again in safe mode and try to use a flash drive to install and run the software I found online to remove this virus. Well not only did it not bring up the problems like it did before, but it eliminated my issues with the virus after finding a few cases! I am not sure why it worked after the other time it did not work, but I am not going to question it, just being grateful I am no longer affected.

JamesMa or Grindcore on tap for the lunch video of the day, not sure which I will watch. Most likely the JamesMa video.

Virus - fml

I got a virus this morning on my desktop from www.nfl.com. Shocking as A) this is not a shady site, B) I have software to prevent this shit from happening, C) this filthy fuck of a virus is from 2004, so why this got beyond my antivirus protection is beyond me, and D) I was using Google Chrome, the supposed nuts in antivirus and adware and spyware resistence. Less than 24 hours after using Google Chrome, I get hit. >.<

I spent about 8 hours on this problem tonight and have made exactly no progress. I sit here typing this from my laptop, so at least I am not without internet connection, which will be a basic requirement to solve this problem. This is definitely a frustrating problem, hopefully I can find the answer in the next few days and not have to shell out loads of money or lose everything on my computer's hard drive in order to fix this problem.

I was supposed to talk to a friend tonight about some coaching stuff, I sure am glad I gave him the heads up that I had this problem and was unsure when it would be fixed. So to you I say, I am still in virus limbo and am unsure when I will get this solved, we can either talk later or just drop me an email if you like.

Burgleflickle.

Another Week in the Books

Another week is in the books and this was a tough one. I really had a bad day on Saturday, the worst of my playing so far, dropping 10 BIs. I went over most hands with Rasputin, who was kind enough to offer some advice. There were only a few hands that were debatable in his opinion and I then took those hands to baz last night and he said one of the hands was standard and the other I should have shoved instead of check/calling it off on the river, but the end result was the same. Of course, the play I made still sucked, but it is nice to learn from a mistake and not have it cost you any money, as either way I lose the stack.

• Mental Game: C. It was good for most of the week, but how I felt after Saturday was not good. I do feel I played fairly well until the very end of the last session and stayed focused. I took frequent breaks throughout the day and felt like I was playing well. I should have stopped earlier though, despite having limited time to play, because losing 10 BIs made me feel like I forgot how to play poker. At least it was nice to know when reviewing hands the next day that I still agreed with almost every play I made. It isn't easy to win when you lose with flopped flushes, sets, and you lose with boats on once paired boards, but the negative mindframe caused by a big losing day can lead to poor play and it is important to do what you can to always be in a good mind frame. The only reason I get a C here and not a worse grade is because of the good work I did earlier in the week in this area.
• Studying: B. I watched a couple of videos, posted hands and responded to hands on the leggo forums, and did a sweat with Jason. (Side note: The rude and sarcastic replies to hands on leggo are making me feel like it is 2+2. Maybe it is just me being old, but I grow tired of the disrespectful young players that compromise most people in these forums.). I feel like I am making strides in my game, but still have loads to improve upon. I also am starting to agree with baz's thoughts on videos. I watched the latest 100nl video from Clayton on Leggo this weekend and really felt I gained absolutely nothing from the video. HH videos are the nuts and I never see them on Leggo and don't see them often on DC. I know Jason has moved a HM database before from one machine to another. Dude, how did you do that without removing all the hands from the database? If anyone else knows how to do this, please tell me in the comments box (which is fixed now I believe). I think going over hands and lines from myself and other regs will really do well to improve my game. That would be a good route to pursue and see if that aids in my development.
• Technical Play: A-. Thought a lot more about various plays and bet sizes this week. I got some people to make some pretty poor plays based on inducing with my bet sizing, which was really cool. I made a much better effort to make notes and use them to my advantage. And hands I thought were potentially poorly played by me were deemed not so by some good players, so that gives me some confidence.
• Focus: A-. My focus was really good this week, despite the poor grade in the mental game area. I buckled down and made good notes and observations, I also did very well in thinking about the optimal plays against people as well. I hopeto continue this and build upon it too.

One thing that really helped me as well was a good point made to me by Rasputin. One of the reasons my swings seem to last so long is the low volume I obtain relative to other players who play for a living. Many people get in the same amount of hands in one month that I do in three, so if they have alosing month, it is the same as my having 3 losing months. It makes a lot of sense and I never thought of it that way, which is interesting.

Overall, it was a good week in that it opened my eyes up to some better ways to improve potentially. I am going to talk to whiteheatsyd sometime this week as well about some stuff that he thinks could help me improve, which is good news and something I am excited about. I will improve my play and seek any method I can to do so. I am thinking of getting coaching again as well. It can be a bit difficult to find a good coach who operates on my time schedule, but the reality is that I do need coaching and have to just search hard to find a good one. I am not sure when I will get it though. I want a good coach to really solidify me as a good winner at 200nl. I am playing 100nl now due to roll constraints from a bad stretch and withdrawing a lot of money. Getting a 100nl coach will be primarily a waste of my time I think, I need someone who thinks about the game at a higher level. As much as I question myself in bad stretches, I really do know deep down inside that I am a good enough player to beat 200nl, just not at the clip I would like. Most likely I will be waiting abotu a month to restore some of my roll and then hiring someone along the lines of jk3a. I have always enjoyed his videos and thinks he really communicates his thoughts better than almost any other coach I have seen in videos yet.

Worst Poker Day Ever

I dropped 10 BIs today playing a mix of 100nl and 50nl. I have had worse days as far as money lost, but not bbs lost. It was pretty brutal. I feel I was not playing poorly or tilting until the last session that caused me to be pretty frustrated. It was just brutal beat after brutal beat. I reviewed the hands with Rasputin and he agreed that most of them were just bad luck. There were a few spots where we agreed a different play could have been used, but even in those spots, it almost always still lead to a stack off. I took frequent breaks through the day as well, played a total of 4 sessions, and all of them were brutal. I feel okay as of the time I am writing this about poker. I am doing everything I can to improve, that is all I can control.

On another brutal beat note, my internet is fucking up on my desktop so I am writing this from my laptop. This is not cool. Everything else works on my desktop which is a blessing, but I don't know what the problem is. I tried a virus sweep, nothing. I used Malware Bytes, no help. I reinstalled IE8, no help. I downloaded Firefox on my laptop and instaled it on my desktop. Firefox won't load. fml