We All Float On

It's been since September 2009 since I've legitimately considered the possibility of not playing online poker for a living.  But with the insane delay on the delivery of the Full Tilt money, the disappearance of the UB money, and the arid wasteland that is the available US online poker scene, my concern has returned.  I just booked my hotel in Vegas for the summer and only plan on playing the main event and a few days of cash games.  I sold 10% already at 1.4 mark up and might sell a few more small chunks at that rate if anyone is interested.  I'm going to keep a majority of my action though.  Not really sure what the future holds in store.

A Graph of My Career the Past 18 Months

Caught

Has it taken any other poker players 9 years to realize that the more you value bet the more you can bluff?  Also twitter is the nuts during WSOP, I miss it.

In household orders my venus flytrap finally caught its first prey:

Science

I've been doing my research and the results are in:

Honeydew > Cantaloupe

   Is all the riffraff gone?  great...


My life is in an unexpected place at the moment. Income from poker is nearly non existent and I am currently in a happy and healthy relationship with an amazing lady. I have a bit hesitant to blog lately because although I have no qualms with unveiling my deepest thoughts and personal difficulties on the Internet, it becomes a whole different bag when someone else's life is closely knit to yours.  Also the bad moon's blog has been intimidatingly good lately.  

for those board game geeks out there like me I highly recommend checking this one out

It is deceivingly complicated to organize people into social outings. I know I am getting good at a game when I close my eyes at night before bed and all I can see is new strategies developing and I am countering possible outcomes in my subconscious. I woke up this morning calling the turn with bottom boat in PLO.  They say when high level competitors are completely in the zone the illusion of time will drift away and hours melt into seconds. It's not super common, but I have experienced such while playing online poker.

if you play scramble with friends you have to use freeze for both power-ups

I started keeping a journal, but only wrote in it two times this year. I am not sure if I am doing it right.

I think all standardized multiple choice tests should have the option to fill in multiple possible answers for partial credit. It doesn't really make any sense that if you narrow down a question to two possible answers but they are equally likely you are forced to take this coin flip for full or zero credit. All tests should give you the option to answer both and get half credit if such is the case. Let's get rid of unnecessary variance in life ///

I also had an idea to improve survivor. I believe all individual immunities should be allowed to be given to anyone you want after the vote. The ability to bluff people that you are going give it up can create leveling and wasted votes. You could convince everyone to vote for once person and then give them the immunity. You could also convince people you are giving it up and then keep it to create more wasted votes. This would just allow for better game dynamics.

It's a bit of a dream of mine to get on the show.

I was day dreaming in the shower the other day and my body wash was down to the last bits. I had a new one, but still decided to try and get one last wash from the old bottle before moving on to the one besides it. I ended up spending 20 seconds scrapping together one last serving. While lathering up I decided to do some quick math and realized that my 6 dollar body wash has about 200 servings. So I saved about 3 cents for 20 seconds of my time. I quickly regretted scrapping soap out of a bottle for $5.40/hr.

Throwback

I love that the main character of Breaking Bad drives this:

Rant

It's kind of shocking how strong the correlation between the health of one's regular life directly influences one's ability to play high level poker. Sometimes it feels as if focusing on physical and mental fitness is more beneficial than reviewing hand histories and crunching math on particular situations. Obviously the ultimate situation is some balanced mix. I constantly find myself pushing limits needlessly only to continually conclude that moderation is optimal. I spend a lot of time lately thinking about Nash Equilibria. I find it a bit peculiar that I've been such a gamer and math nerd for so long and it wasn't until my twenty eighth year on this planet that I stumbled upon such an interesting tool. I probably should read more books.

Collision

Some Pics from the Big Night

NYE 2011/2012

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.