Around Town

For some reason this mural struck a chord with me today:

HH

Seat 3 is the button

Seat 2: a5sassin ( $1024.50 USD )

Seat 3: AndreVillasBoas ( $1383.41 USD )

Seat 5: gamblegambel ( $3727.09 USD )

Seat 6: allinBigUnit4 ( $1000.00 USD )

gamblegambel posts small blind [$5.00 USD].

a5sassin posts big blind [$10.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to gamblegambel [ Tc 8c ]

AndreVillasBoas raises [$20.00 USD]

gamblegambel raises [$65.00 USD]

a5sassin raises [$166.66 USD]

AndreVillasBoas folds

gamblegambel calls [$106.66 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 5s, Kh, 8d ]

gamblegambel checks

a5sassin bets [$186.66 USD]

gamblegambel calls [$186.66 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 6h ]

gamblegambel checks

a5sassin bets [$661.18 USD]

gamblegambel calls [$661.18 USD]

a5sassin shows [Jh, Ac ]

gamblegambel shows [Tc, 8c ]

** Dealing River ** [ 2c ]

gamblegambel wins $2068.00 USD from main pot

I Hate My Job Comic Strip

Wise Words from Beavis

"If you're not a cartoon, stove gas will kill you."

To Fire or Not to Fire

Seat 1: gamblegambel ( $4111.04 USD )

Seat 3: bigguylegend22 ( $2773.33 USD )

Seat 4: taongo ( $6014.50 USD )

Seat 5: leptitfayth ( $2000.00 USD )

Seat 6: rohass ( $1033.00 USD )

bigguylegend22 posts small blind [$10.00 USD].

taongo posts big blind [$20.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to gamblegambel [ 9c Kd ]

leptitfayth folds

rohass folds

gamblegambel raises [$40.00 USD]

bigguylegend22 folds

taongo calls [$20.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ Qc, 6h, 4s ]

taongo checks

gamblegambel bets [$60.00 USD]

taongo calls [$60.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ Js ]

taongo checks

gamblegambel bets [$150.00 USD]

taongo calls [$150.00 USD]

** Dealing River ** [ 2h ]

So this is a very common situation that arises in many different forms in poker; an opponent has called two bets oop on a dry board and the river bricks. So math and game theory would tell us that the proportion in which one should bluff here should be directly relative to your bet size. To put it most simply, it you bet pot on the river here you should be bluffing 33% of the time to be perfectly balanced. That in itself can be a tricky thing to obtain precisely. But the beautiful thing about poker is that there are many other variables that shift this natural Nash Equilibrium all over the map: psychology, history, player tendencies, timing, current emotional states etc. As an avid gamer there is almost nothing more mentally stimulating than discussing and analyzing the endless possibilities.

Wise Words from Beavis

“I was thinking, they're going to make Sex and the City 3. So why not make it good?”

Analogous

The end of the republican primary is just like the end of a game of a Catan game. You want to be near the lead, but you don't actually want to be barely in first place with your head on the chopping block.

In Case You Were Wondering

24 Sides for Me

At first I thought there were purely correlated, but the more time I gave it there might actually be some causality in there.

Trying to Sort Things Out

I have a funny propensity to get overly passionate about things way too quickly while at the same time keeping 99% of these feelings hidden. This suppression seems to be a product of overcompensating for what appears to be a personal deviation from the overall accepted norm. For example, I had a dream last night that my new years eve party was going on and silly things were going wrong etc. It's only a party. I get way too involved to the point where it is all I wrap my brain around and what I think about all day. This pattern seems to repeat itself with video games, art projects, women etc. Ironically, I also have an amazing ability to drop things cold turkey and not blink an eye as well. I wonder if this stems from some sort of uncommon detachment. One would imagine that such an addictive and singularly consuming personality would lead towards intense withdrawal, but somehow I didn't get dealt that card. I think I need to shy away from rearranging my hand and really begin to focus on playing it optimally.

Bright Note

I finally settled on the spot for new years eve. I am super excited:

Failure

I don't know how to initiate a first kiss with a girl, it's pathetic. During my 28 years on this planet I have kissed 6 women. 2 of those were initiated by the other sex. 1 was the result of countless hours of anxiety over my first kiss. And the other three were heavily induced by alcohol. It really makes me feel like a worthless man. It's strange how extremely difficult the first one can be and then the next thousand can be so effortlessly beautiful and naturally expressive. I need help.

NYE

I have been scouting some locations for new years eve with my buddy. We are leaning towards throwing a warehouse party. Here are a couple of the spots we were thinking about:

A Week or So Later

I have been having some interesting results; probably past the line of blogable content. I need to take some time to think about what I should publish. I have also been discussing new tactics for life with good friends, which is always a pleasure. On a lighter note, this seems to be a strange position by dog likes to chill in.

Experimentation

Lately I have been really into trying out some interesting techniques for furthering myself. I have already mentioned the 10k steps a day and sit up/push up routine I have been doing. Which, by the way, has been having satisfactory results thus far. I have also recently been researching testosterone levels and enunciation betterment lately. I found a few studies that found this common peculiar trend among males. Apparently if you abstain from masturbation your testosterone levels will have a huge peak on day 6 and day 7 and then slowly return to normal:

So now I have put myself on a once a week masturbation schedule. It requires quite a bit of self discipline. Also I have been doing an enunciation exercise every night where I read two pages of my book out loud whilst holding a marker with my front teeth. It strengthens the tongue and jaw muscles and helps prevent mumbling, which I am quite susceptible too. I'll let you know how these two new experiments pan out.

Honestly for a genius like me life is too easy, so I have to get piss drunk as often as possible so I can relate to the plight of the common man.

Me Me You Me

I suck at falling asleep. I have insanely vivid memories of being a child of 8 or 9 and my parents giving me in depth coaching on how to go to bed at night. They would make me do jumping jacks and push ups right before bed. And once in bed then would try to give me exercises to help turn my brain off. It didn't work then and it doesn't work now. I've tried it all. I've read before bed. I've watched TV to fall asleep. I've done yoga and meditation and mind clearing exercises. It really is a sick curse. The average person falls asleep in 7 minutes. I would guess it takes me on average 53 minutes from eyes closed and head on the pillow before being asleep. Sometimes I can fall asleep in less than ten minutes. But more commonly it is a night like this in which it can take me hours to fall asleep. I think I am hyper sensitive to many things that would typically roll off most peoples' shoulders. It seems in direct contradiction to my typically existential personality. It's one of those peculiarly destructive tendencies that everyone has some advice on, but ultimately I think it just comes down to a simple realization that some of us are just flawed beings.

7 Million

Wise Words from Cartman

"This country was founded by some of the smartest thinkers the world has ever seen. And they knew one thing: that a truly great country can go to war, and at the same time, act like it doesn't want to. You people who are for the war, you need the protesters. Because they make the country look like it's made of sane, caring individuals. And you people who are anti-war, you need these flag-wavers, because, if our whole country was made up of nothing but soft pussy protesters, we'd get taken down in a second. That's why the founding fathers decided we should have both. It's called "having your cake and eating it too."

Flow Chart

Graph

I have a disease and they don't know what to call it.

In Short

I love movies. Believe it or not I had never stayed to see two movies back to back in a theater until last week when I saw Contagion and Drive. It was such a pleasant experience that I went for another DF this evening and caught Moneyball and 50/50. I am such a crybaby when it comes to sad movies. I was a virtual WW for the SH of the latter movie. I was wondering today what is it about someones personality that makes them a MCB. They say a dog accurately mimics the PTO, and I guess that makes sense since my dog is a mush. I'd bet most people wouldn't describe me as a TS, but I mostly blame that on my ND and EW I tend to put up. I've actually been in really HS ATW. I give credit to my new WP, DL, and OTF. So far I have taken 10,348 steps today. Typically BR crave depressed and sympathetic material in their daily reads, but since this site is typically full of such, I'd imagine y'all might appreciate the FBA.

I am a firm believe that more is less. My life in high school could be categorized into two sessions: football season and off season . I don't know how many people who read this are familiar with just how time consuming Georgia high school football is. We would have to go to school an hour early for work outs and stay for at least three hours after school for practice. When all was said and done I usually had less than ninety minutes to do any homework on most nights. The ironic thing was because I was so restricted I was extremely efficient with my spare time. When the season was over and I had all the time in the world I would do half the schoolwork I did previously. It was completely counter intuitive. Currently I have more free time than I have ever had in my life up until this point. It is attempting to drive me completely crazy. Recently I just instated some personal goals to retain some regiment. I am pretty fascinated with the Herschel Walker workout plan of just sit ups and push ups. I've adapted it into my own version. I will not let a day pass where I don't accomplish either 1000 push ups, 1500 sit ups, or 300 pull ups. I've also forced myself to take at least 10,000 steps everyday minimum [tracked via pedometer]. I've grown a little frumpy as of late so hopefully this will take care of that. I am kind of fascinated with the malleability of the human body. It's been exactly a months since I have played a hand of poker. Hopefully I will be ready to head to Canada by January.

Turmoil (The Maternal Sort)

My mother has always been reservedly negative about my career choice. But since I've recently explained my plans for moving to Vancouver, she has expressed to me just how much she really hates what I've done with my life. She revealed how she felt poker has made me depressed, drink too much, lose all my girlfriends and now move away from my family*. It's one of the hardest things I've had to do as a son. Seeing the look of disappointment in your mother's eyes is rather soul crushing. I've had a countless number of people criticize me for playing poker for a living, but as an independent confident spirit it never really phased me. It's such a beautiful game and I love every minute I am fortunate enough to play it. But when your mother really thinks you are wasting your life it sucks. I still don't feel like I have much of a grasp on how a career really defines a person and to what degree. It's funny how often we fight our parents' wisdom and advice only to look back years later and see how wrong we really were. I am just not sure this is one of those spots.

*footnote: I was really only super down and out in early 2008 and it mostly stemmed from being single for 7 years and an internal turmoil resulting from such complete early independence in my adult life [just partially resulting from poker]. I've always loved alcohol since I had my first drink long before poker. It's in my blood. Going out and drinking with friends is one of my favorite social activities. I never turn to alcohol as a result of feeling depressed. I am aware of the dangers of it getting out of hand and spend considerable efforts maintaining it at a moderate level [45 drinks a month]. The relationship deal is tricky. It's pretty tough to pinpoint exactly the reasons my last two fell apart. Long story short I'd blame poker about 8%. I will not argue though that poker does tend to keep many ladies at bay. Sometimes for the better, but mostly to a disadvantage. My mother was right about poker being the direct cause of me moving away from my family, but jobs require this all the time. It is kind of unfair to blame such a flexible job for what will most likely be a short term leave.

Do Something

So I have been pretty unhappy with the sedentary pace my life has been going the past few months. I was originally going to wait until the end of the year to move out of the country, but at this point the idea of leaving is very exciting. I am 95% sure I will be trying to move to Vancouver very soon. The only obstacle is if I can feasibly bring my dog really. Hopefully I can find someone to take care of him here for a while or get a pet friendly apt in Canada and drive up there. All the research I did pointed at having to do a 6 month tourist visa. After that I'll either have to manage a work visa somehow or marry someone up there. Also the likelihood of playing in US ought to be clearer by then. I can't wait to start making some money again and move on with my life.

Last One

I am going to take a music and starcraft hiatus. I hope you like this last song I will be posting (Shafer did the beat):

Just Making Music These Days

Two Other Songs I Have Been Working on

An Original Tune

Some Jazz Flute I Put Together

Things change. The adaptability of humans as people is so understated that sometimes we hardly realize how inconsistent our surroundings really are. I can remember back in 2006 when I was crushing Party Poker. My father would tell me about how I had such a good thing going and should play as much as possible. I would just laugh, play my 1.5 hours a day and shrug off his subtle wisdom. I sometimes daydream about some solar panel company coming to recruit me to help develop more efficient power cells. I'd like to think I am naturally talented at figuring things out, but ultimately I think it is more weighted towards an unhealthy addictive obsession. In college I remember feeling very unguided. I yearned for some higher up to just tell me what I needed to do and what to focus on. When the universe lacks any clear channel to flow down I get quite sidetracked with the trivial aspects of life. Last year when I was doing online dating I would skim over profiles of women and place high value on promising and valued professions. Lately whenever I am on there I get excited when I see unemployed, still finding my purpose in the world and other drifting feelings. Never finding a girl I can spend the rest of my life with is slowing replacing knee surgery as my number one fear. I feel my social skills are getting better. I used to sometimes joke how I was socially retard, primarily as a method of fishing for complements of proficiency. Luckily those days are in the rear view mirror. I have a few friends that have recently found long term relationships come to a close. Somehow I feel as if I have a deeper wisdom of life in those times. I really enjoy talking with those of broken heart and helping them focus on the positives whist remaining completely realistic. It seems like people are always moving back home, leaving for new experiences or jobs, traveling for unrequited love or finding solace on the open road. I manage to stay put. Uncomfortable settled in my home. I keep just doing what I enjoy. But things still keep changing.

About 9 Weeks of Mail

More gambling junk mail than you can shake a stick at

Math on a Prop Bet

So with my recent influx of even more free time lately I have been spending some evenings at a local 2/5 game. Some of the regulars there like to run a prop where you each just pick one or two cards and you just pay if they hit the flop with according bonuses for hitting multiples of your card(s). I always knew because of card removal (people are more likely to play a hand with an ace in it rather than a deuce) that taking low cards would be some sort of edge [the other players are not so keen on this], but never really had a hard figure in mind. I decided to crunch the actual numbers:

The odds an ace will come out if you flip over 3 random cards is 1 - (48/52 * 47/51 * 46/50), which is around 21.7%

Now since it is nearly impossible to prove what an average flop is in poker I will just have to use my database as a best guess. My full tilt db has 215k hands, so I figured that variance would be pretty low there. Of those hands 60,346 saw a flop. So if things ran true there should be around 13,118 flops with an ace. The actual number of ace high boards was 12,697. So the difference is 421 flops short of where it should be. That equates to a 3.21% shortage of aces on the flop. So if you can take a deuce and get the other person to take an ace the advantage is probably close to double that.

Conclusion:

If you are playing this prop with the deuce vs. ace your edge is around 6% every time one of those cards come. If you are seeing around 35 hands an hour, I would guess 25 go to a flop in a live game. I'd guess you see an average of 4 cards per flop. So you will see about 100 cards an hour. Of those about 15 will be an ace or deuce. So if you are betting 10 dollars a card your edge will be around 9 dollars an hour.

Link

My first online interview was released this week on the Poker Phenoms website. It came out OK I guess. If the mood strikes you it can be seen in its entirety here:

http://www.pokerphenoms.com/poker-tv/

45 Days in Vegas

Before I left for Vegas this year I had a game plan unlike any previous years (mostly added pressure on myself, seeing how things have changed since black Friday). I had a few goals in mind:

• play tons of 5/10nl or tournaments or sit and goes or whatever I thought would be the most profitable hourly rate with reasonable bankroll management coming with somewhat limited cash
• make X amount of dollars

I haven't done any of that really.

The trip can really be divided into two halves. The first half I spent most of my time playing 5/10/25 PLO cash games. Full ring live PLO isn't all that exciting. I figured I would have a decent hourly rate there, but never really realized all too much profit. I played 25/50/100 once and hit an ran for a nice 5k profit. I even played a 100/200 game one time where I chopped action and played a 20k pot with around 78% equity and chopped (it was against Ben Lamb, so I am surprised I got anything back). The game broke shortly after. I also played about 10 tournaments with one cash. Broke about even there. Pretty boring stuff.

The second half of my trip has revolved around blackjack. I am not sure how I am only getting into this game just now. It involves gambling and arithmetic and taking money from evil corporations and comes with freed drinks and cigars. This blog post has enough words already so I will break it down by the numbers:

Casinos that will no longer let me play blackjack: 20 (MGM owns a lot)

Hours played: ~42

Highest count seen on a double deck: 23 (resulted in taking insurance on the dealer's ace up for 7k in bets... she had blackjack)

Profits: ~27k

Batting average for taking insurance: 1.000

Equity in a perfect shoe: +20.00%

I ran the math below:

So as things stand now I am going to have to make the 10,250 chips I have left in the Main Event dance for me on Day 2 to hit my goal and finally shave my playoff beard:

PiMaster Supreme

Vegas

So I've been in Vegas for about a week now and things are pretty bleh. I am down a buy in in the cash games. I played a 1k and fizzled. I am catching a cold. Our house is a lemon. I have been getting to play a fair amount of golf, tennis and basketball though. Luckily there is plenty of time to turn things around. I could be playing better.

Online Dating

I thought reeling in the ladies with the opener: "I play online poker for a living" was tough before April 15th. Forget about it now...

My Vegetable Garden

Online Poker by the Numbers

Odds the money on PS and FT is safe: 125:1 favorite

Odds the money on UB is safe: 45:1 favorite

Over/Under until you can cash out online: 208 days

Odds you can play a hand of poker on FT in the next year in the US: 60:1 dog

Odds UB will be the largest online poker site in a year: 3:2 dog

Over/Under online poker is legalized and regulated (if not nationally, at least in 5 states): 16 months

Odds I will ever see a tree fall down and knock over a telephone poll and take out the power for a neighborhood on its way down to the middle of the street whilst blockading me at a friends house to play board games by candlelight during a wild thunderstorm on the exact day the tree biggest poker sites are indited AGAIN: 1,000,000,000,000,000:1

Week

• My mom is in the hospital
• My girlfriend just dumped me
• Poker is going poorly
• My car is falling apart
• My life is falling apart

PTR Jacket

Funny HH

SlapAndSniff posts small blind [$5.00 USD].

profpanik posts big blind [$10.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to gamblegambel [ Th 9d ]

BAHl0LLIKA folds

Ajuvaba folds

radar2016 folds

gamblegambel raises [$20.00 USD]

SlapAndSniff calls [$15.00 USD]

profpanik folds

** Dealing Flop ** [ 5h, Qs, 4d ]

SlapAndSniff checks

gamblegambel bets [$31.00 USD]

SlapAndSniff calls [$31.00 USD]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 2d ]

SlapAndSniff checks

gamblegambel bets [$76.00 USD]

SlapAndSniff calls [$76.00 USD]

** Dealing River ** [ 9c ]

SlapAndSniff checks

gamblegambel bets [$10.00 USD]

SlapAndSniff calls [$10.00 USD]

gamblegambel shows [Th, 9d ]

gamblegambel wins $281.00 USD from main pot

SlapAndSniff doesn't show [7s, 6s ]

Mario 3 in the Hallway

Yesterday by the Numbers

Minutes of poker played: 697.8

Vpip: 30.2%

Rake: $1885.44

Hands: 7302

Biggest pot: $23,299

Annual salary if I did this everyday breaking even and just lived off rake back: $185,810.11 (plus points)

Wizzrobe

8-Bit Art

A post-it note image of Link I made in my condo.

Life News

I recently joined the Poker News strategy team. It's a pretty strong lineup of some very talented poker minds. This week I made two training videos at ten cent twenty five cent PLO shallow that will be up on the site soon. You can check it out here: http://strategy.pokernews.com/

Roller Coaster

I noticed a slight pattern in the my past couple of relationships. It seems like my girlfriend feels and expresses extreme highs and lows while my perception of the emotional level of the relationship is rather even keel. I wonder sometimes if my emotional spectrum is horribly miscalibrated. Yesterday was the biggest come back in my poker career. I was playing 25/50 shallow PLO all day and at one point was stuck over 76k and managed to pull a profit for the day. I am finally back in black for the year. This was the biggest hand:

carter8080 posts small blind [$25.00 USD].

davin77 posts big blind [$50.00 USD].

** Dealing down cards **

Dealt to gamblegambel [ 4h Kd 3h Kc ]

ByTheBy folds

gamblegambel raises [$100.00 USD]

trex313 folds

Doorbread folds

carter8080 calls [$75.00 USD]

davin77 raises [$350.00 USD]

gamblegambel raises [$1200.00 USD]

carter8080 folds

davin77 calls [$900.00 USD]

** Dealing Flop ** [ 7h, 4s, 9h ]

davin77 checks

gamblegambel bets [$1755.00 USD]

davin77 raises [$7965.00 USD]

gamblegambel raises [$6338.35 USD]

davin77 calls [$128.35 USD]

gamblegambel shows [4h, Kd 3h Kc ]

davin77 shows [9d, 5c 7d 6s ]

** Dealing Turn ** [ 5s ]

** Dealing River ** [ 9c ]

davin77 wins $18883.70 USD from main pot

Wise Words from Jon Benjamin

Graph