PocketFives - Blogs

Mercy, Mercy Me...

Cre8ive — Sat, 18 May 2013 21:35:31 GMT

A break from Rosarito ; Ending thoughts

Appst08 — Wed, 15 May 2013 15:27:09 GMT

Five months since I first arrived in Rosarito Beach, Mexico. This place has taught me so much and enhanced my passion for traveling the world to see places, people, and culture you don't always get living in Southwest North Carolina. I have been through many up and many downs on my first experience living out of the country. There were times where we could laugh and drink all night and times were we would just throw our head down on the table and stare at the floor over an Ace on the river. I've met people from all over the country, from different aspects of the world. I've been introduced to Avocado for the first time, seen civilian military, as well as a fair share of shake downs by the Mexican Police.

I will miss my plain bedroom with two pictures of the Rosarito Mountains in the back. I will miss the times with friends I have met from Las Vegas, Philadelphia, Wisconsin, Alabama, Ohio, California, and a whole lot more. The ATV rides through the Mountains, the beach days, and the nights were we all just sat around talking about life. These people have made an impact on my life and made me realize that I'm not alone. These People don't laugh at your vision for life here or say that you are crazy for not heading to work at Wells Fargo or Bank Of America. We all are coming from the same place and trying to accomplish one thing. Wake up tomorrow because we know tomorrow's isn't guaranteed.

I have accomplished here what I set out to do!

There are many that would believe the previous statement is about monetary value. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Money makes the world go round but what really makes me feel alive is knowing, it's all on me. I make my schedule, I decide when I should be done for the day, and then when I feel that I have worked hard enough, I work harder. This isn't a joyride. You have to work your butt off to get better every single day or, I promise you, you will get left behind. The pros will always out-weigh the cons in self-employment. I didn't realize this for a while but it struck me last year, around this same time, my father asked me to go out to brunch with my Aunt. I had to turn this down because I was working for a company that I couldn't take off. How is this right? We stress importance of family and spending time with your loved ones, but we never have the opportunity to do this because somebody is controlling us and telling us when and where to go.

Now, you might think that I had to move to Mexico and still can't spend time with my family or eat brunch with my Father and Aunt, but Poker is a means to an end for me. I don't care about the missed brunches this year, I want to have brunches for the next 10 years. There are many different reasons that make my fellow Poker Players choose to do this for a living, but it all comes back to the simple statement of "freedom". It's a rare thing these days to have freedom to do what you please. If we charged 4 hours of freedom per gallon of gas instead of $4 per gallon, how amazing would this world be?

I will be embarking on a new adventure to Las Vegas this summer. I can't wait for the endless possibilities that lie ahead.

"If people aren't laughing at your goals, then your goals are too small".

Only 3 weeks

cracker9ball — Tue, 14 May 2013 23:09:15 GMT

It's only been 3 weeks since I did any blogging, meh. I was in Durant in April and had a less than amazing 0-12 MTT series and about break-even at cash. Hey, cant win them all, but it was a disappointing series. Nevertheless I came back to Tulsa planning to take a couple days off then get back to grinding, but I got a nasty head cold and was completely out of it for two weeks. I don't get sick often, but it seems when I do, I get really sick. So I grinded out a cold watching a bazillion movies and emptying my DVR, and finally got to feeling better. Unluckily we are having some of that odd Oklahoma weather and I am still running into a ton of hot/cold situations so I hope to keep the cold away.

This last week I have played a few sessions of cash, a freeroll, and a weekly tournament. The freeroll was a bust, the tournament was a bust, but I did have a couple decent cash sessions to make a profit. I will probably be mostly playing some cash trying to increase my WSOP bankroll, but I will be playing the Main event of a series in Siloam Springs this weekend. It's a $350 20k that usually has a decent turnout. Other than that my next couple weeks will mostly be full of cash games and preparation for WSOP. I fly out the 29th and plan on staying for the whole series. I am still ironing out all the details but I am excited for another WSOP.

I went to the WSOP in 2011 for 32 days and thoroughly enjoyed it. My trip was planned for 2 weeks there, one week back, and then I planned to fly back for the main for a week. Once I was there I couldn't leave with all that action so I changed some flights and stayed. Last year I was forced to miss the WSOP and hated every minute of it. The WSOP is just one of the things a poker player should try not to miss, the action is everywhere and amazing. This year my plan is to go for the whole thing and I hope to have some break out moments.

Good luck to all the grinders out there and I hope most of you get to experience the WSOP, even if just for a week or a weekend.

If you are interested in taking poker lessons or would like any information visit http://variance101.com/# or email me at variance101@gmail.com. #TeamVariance101

Just some stuff i read somewhere

ASAAL — Sat, 11 May 2013 10:05:09 GMT

Ask yourself: What is the goal of me playing Poker? To make money, to gamble, for fun and entertainment, just to do something else apart from daily routine? i think our goal sets the stage for how we play Poker: loose, tight, aggressive, passive, a combination. To conclude: many players deposit a few bucks every week taken from their salaries and plays Poker as entertainment, like going to the movies. For some it is a living!

Some great quotes
“Gaming is a principle inherent in human nature.”
Edmund Burke 1729 – 1797 British politician

“If we do what is necessary, all the odds are in our favor.”
Charles Buxton 1823 – 1871 English politician

“It is in games that many men discover their paradise.”
Robert Lynd 1879 – 1949 Irish writer

“The guy who invented poker was bright, but the guy who invented the chip was a genius.”
Unknown

“Friendship is essentially a partnership.”
Aristotle

Change ans growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
- Herbert Otto

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere.
- La Rochefoucauld

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
- Patrick Henry

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.
- Miquel de Cervantes

Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary.
Julius Rosenwald

Source of self-confidence
Professor Raj Persaud posits that true self confidence comes from an attitude where you:
“Promise yourself, no matter how difficult the problem life throws at you, that you will try as hard as you can to help yourself. You acknowledge that sometimes your efforts to help yourself may not result in success, as often being properly rewarded is not in your control."

Some People
Personal, complex, quiet, and a misunderstood genius.

Live to Win
Be brave, take risks and allow the unexpected.

Freeroll

Ronnie Brito — Sat, 11 May 2013 03:53:50 GMT

Outlast five thousand players and win twenty bucks...exciting right. Well fortunately I'm not talking about that kind of freeroll. The thing that has been on my mind lately is that in many ways life is a freeroll. I have a healthy body, a loving fiancée, an unbelievably supportive family, and a core group of loyal friends. Anything more than that is just icing on the cake.

Inspite all of these blessing it can be easy to get caught up in complaining about small everyday things. I am trying to always remind myself that everything in life is nothing but a bonus. As long as I'm alive and breathing the rest is a gift. I hope to always remember that I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain in life. I mean we are all so lucky to have the lives we have yet somehow we manage to whine about somehing so trivial as a hand of poker that didn't go our way.

My goal is to get better at appreciating the good things in life and being thankful for all that I already have. Ultimately, in the game of life, as long as you stay alive the rest is one big freeroll. At times you may get down and think the prize is not worth your time, but remembering that you paid nothing to be here can help alter your perspective.

No April Showers on my Bankroll

dtools22 — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:11:34 GMT

As I mentioned in my results blog from March, the third month of 2013 was to date my most profitable month. With overall results more than triple my average monthly income in 2012 things started to look a little brighter. One month does not make a trend though, making April exceedingly important to keep the upward trend rolling. Sadly I wasn’t able to just copy and paste my March results into April and March remains my most profitable month by a wide margin. I’ll have to settle for this past April being the second most profitable month of my 15 month career.

I fell a little short of 200 hours in April so the results below also include the first two sessions of May.

Days played: 25
Total hours played: 201
Average session length: Approximately 8 hours 3 minutes
Number of winning sessions: 19
Number of losing sessions: 6
Longest winning streak: 6
Longest losing streak: 2
Biggest winning session: $507 playing 1/2NL at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, CT
Biggest losing session: -$200 playing 1/2NL at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, CT
Overall results: +$3,398
Hourly win rate: $16.91

Let’s get the good news out of the way first. My upward trend has continued for another month. I managed to cross the first item off of the to-do list as well by setting aside a month of bills and building my bankroll up to $4,000. My hourly rate dropped down a little bit but not enough to be concerned with. I played exclusively at Foxwoods for this 200 hour stretch, which has a smaller blind structure than the NL games over at the Bicycle Casino. Rule of thumb logic would be that the game in Foxwoods has a lower potential hourly rate (assuming hourly rate is between 5x and 10x the bb, Foxwoods has a range between $10 and $20 while The Bike has a range between $15 and $30). So far the games seem very comparable.

There really isn’t a whole lot of bad from the past 200 hours to talk about. The one sticking point to me right now is that it took 4 more sessions to log approximately the same number of hours. I had a lot of sessions during April that fell short of 8 hours, mostly just from me leaving at the 6 or 7 hour mark rather than plugging away for the final handful of orbits. I did still get to 200 hours relatively easily, and I think that might be the sweet spot for monthly hours. I don’t really mind spreading the hours across a few more trips to the casino, just another way of doing things.

These next 200 hours are big. If the success continues, I’m going to start mixing in the 2/5NL games at Foxwoods. Since I started playing for a living again that has been the Holy Grail to chase after, moving up in stakes makes everything just a little bit easier (obviously assuming the same statistical success after jumping up). Money starts coming in faster and lets me build a solid foundation to build off of in 2014. The sooner I get to the 2/5NL game, the sooner I can actually start doing something in this business. I’m slumming in the small stakes stuff now, but hopefully not for much longer.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dtools22
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/dtools22

Running Hot!

TripleFo — Mon, 06 May 2013 04:13:10 GMT

These past two weeks have been awesome for me! I made three final tables on America's DonkRoom, one live final table, and turned 300 into 1500 in the juiciest cash game that I've ever been a part of.

I will continue to study the game, work on my leaks, and make more +EV decisions to continue this success.

Good luck everyone! Positive thoughts to all!

Diary of a Low Volume Grinder part-5(SHIP-IT)(FU-Tmobile)May SmallerHoTrunner!

willmccoy — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:47:01 GMT

And so we have two more days before heading to May; And The SmallerHoTrunner has been quite a learning experience for me. This makes month #3 since i started playing online again, after taking a few months off from poker. This past Sunday morning was pretty much like winning the Sunday Million for me; When at last i shipped a tracked MTT on Merge for Pocketfives.

April was a major success for me learning wise; But i still have so many things yet to grasp. Along the way i have been lucky enough to run it with several players i respect; And it helps a ton when you can ask for advice and then apply it to your game in real time. I would like to give a special thanks to STEVE LEWIS also known as ArzCardzfan who is a long time friend here and in real life. Steve is the very reason i even attempted to play MTT poker. Steve was my favorite player over 8 years ago; And will continue to be so until the day that i die. If not for him i would be dead or in jail by now; As poker and God of course steered me away from a very dangerous life that i once lived!

Sunday- Tmobile was nice enough to sit me out of the $33.00 $25,000 with 43bb's and 4.5hrs in or so! Could have been 5 hours but im not really sure; But i was also deep in another MTT as well. Anyway once i got re-connected i had 12bb's with KK in the BB. MP opens with around 30bb's and c/o calls! I tank jam and MP tanks calls A4s and c/o folds and the turn is the Ace and my night/day was over! So FUCK YOU TMOBILE THE CABLE MAN IS ON HIS WAY NEXT WEEK!

http://www.pocketfives.com/f10016/of...warded-678738/ Hope to see more entries this month in the May Hot Runner for the USA Friendly players!

CURRENT STANDINGS OF APRIL COMP-(2 DAYS REMAIN)

http://www.pocketfives.com/contests/...apr-1-30-2013/
And with about 30 hours left from the time of me writing this entry. It still seems pretty tight between #1 and #2
Good luck to Donkiam and Wesss and Icurazedmybb!

http://www.officialpokerrankings.com...B-04CF8E923567 it's strange how i can look at my roi from month to month. All losing roi's but slowly headed to the +ev

Well it's 3pm here and time to update my work logs, which is a pain in the ass!

Personally Financed Part 1

dtools22 — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:38:21 GMT

I’ve been looking hard at my non-poker money of late. I’ve spent a great deal of time focusing on building a bankroll to play cards with, the number of buy ins I have, how deep each buy in is, pushing to move up in stakes, driving to increase my hourly win rate and so on. All that planning and effort has gone into my operating budget without any real strategy for my personal finances. I don’t feel that a single minute of my bankroll planning has been wasted. Every new plan has produced results and adjustments that have improved my overall approach and led to the next iteration of tactics. Now that some secure footing has been reached, it’s time to take the same approach with my personal finances.

There is a lot more to think about when you’re self-employed. There is no 401K plan and there are no health care benefits included. There is no safety net. Your future is entirely in your own hands. So far, my future has been put on the back burner. I’ve been entirely focused on my career numbers first. Being a 25 year old single male, my personal finances are less of an issue than they are for most. If I need to eat Ramen noodles for a few weeks because I don’t have enough money for food then so be it. What would be a major problem for some people is a minor annoyance for me. I can easily and readily make personal sacrifices to keep my dreams alive, and I’m very fortunate for that to be the case. I’m not interested in living this starving artist’s life forever. I’d rather retire from this game and go get a real job than live my entire life as bare bones as I can.

Taking a good look at my personal finances and spending habits, I’ve come up with a breakdown for what I need each month.

Student Loans: $420
Rent: $250
Gas: $250
Credit Cards: $155
Groceries: $100

Some of these expenses will vary month to month so I’m just going to round up and say everything costs a total of $1200. That’s a pretty bare bones existence, but for a low stakes grinder it’s a life that can be easily supported. This is the minimum I can spend without significantly compromising my quality of life.

There is one big piece missing from this equation, savings. I do have a savings account and I regularly put money away. It has been dipped into a few times to keep me afloat during the lean months of my career. I’ve been using it as more of a rainy day fund than a real savings account. That will hopefully change moving forward. I have a system in place to put away money each week. Every Monday I do my banking. After a positive week of grinding I need to get my books in order, pay rent, that sort of thing. I put cash in the bank for bill money if needed, put bankroll money I don’t immediately need into my poker checking account, and lately I’ve been putting money away in savings. That money is coming from “extra” money in my bankroll. Usually when I cash out after a session I end up with small bills, $1s and $5s. Those smaller bills are kind of a pain to walk around with in the casino, particularly when you’re using them for buy ins. So when I head to the bank I take all the small bills and put them into my savings account. Each week so far it’s been between $25 and $45. That’s not retirement money, but it’s a start and it builds the habit of putting money away.

Since this is already getting long I’m going to stop here for now. The next post is going to be about increases in expenses coming soon as well as why my goal for 6 months of living expenses is so high and how I intend to get there ($3000 per month). Ideally, I’m trying to create a blueprint with these next few blogs for life bankrolls much like there is countless literature out there for poker bankrolls. Here’s hoping.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/dtools22
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dtools22

damnt

tap69out69 — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 18:44:05 GMT

wtf bovada!! is everyone shut out too??

Weekly Goal

TripleFo — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 05:20:44 GMT

I am going to turn $100 into $200 within one week by grinding $5 PLO, $1.50 and $3 ST SNGs, $5 DoN SNGs, and $5 MTTs on America's Cardroom. BRM is something that I haven't really practiced correctly during my poker career, so I am going to strictly stick with these terms in order to reach my goal. And yes, I know playing $5 (or even $3 for that matter tourneys/cash games isn't proper BRM, but ACR is so soft, that I'm confident in my ability to build a nice BR there.

I will reach my goal, run good, and will be tilt proof! Good luck everyone, and see you at the tables!

Variance

cracker9ball — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 21:08:48 GMT

Meanwhile, I have been running up against it. It is Thursday and I have been in Durant, OK since last Thursday. I am 0-11 in MTTs and I am down $103 at cash. Sounds like a great trip so far, ay? Lol, luckily for me I understand variance and poker and I am not sweating it. I have built decent stacks in several MTTs but was unable to capitalize and get to the end. There is still 2 MTTs left for me a $350 50k tomorrow and then a $1100 300k on Saturday. It only takes one, and I plan on doing what I can to play my best.

On the cash front I have only played 4 sessions. I won a nickel the first day I played at 2/5, then lost half a buy-in at 1/2 in 10 min the next day and got invited to dinner so hopped, and then I didn't play for a couple days. My next session was 2/5 and I lost 1k my first hand with AA verse KJ, good times. I did grind my way back to $100 winner than night though. And my last session I lost AK
Poker has streaks, sometimes we run good and sometimes bad, its all about understanding it and handling it better than the other grinders. The last couple days I just went to the room and relaxed after busting the MTT. Sometimes not pushing it is good, sometimes pushing it and grinding is the way to go. You will find me doing both. Tonight I am going to go grind cash and try to play my best, that is truly all I can do. I am ready to book a winner, LEGGO!

If you are interested in taking poker lessons or would like any information visit http://variance101.com/# or email me at variance101@gmail.com. #TeamVariance101

Tweaking the System

dtools22 — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 19:35:23 GMT

The following blog post all stems from one simple act of carelessness and or douchebaggery. This past Saturday night I was grinding as always. After grabbing dinner I went to put my name back on the list for a 1/2NL game. Since it was Saturday night the poker room was pretty packed and there was a sizable list, so I put my name on it and sat down on a nearby bench to read a magazine. As I shifted on the bench I felt my pants stick to its surface, someone in their infinite wisdom left a wad of gum on the bench and I now had a 5 inch long smear of it on my pants. I tried my best to get the gum off at the casino but sadly my efforts yielded little more than frustration. I was so furious about the scenario that I just left the casino entirely. Given how outrageously furious this minor nuisance caused me, I decided to take Sunday off from the grind and do some review work.

March and April are the first two months after having tweaked my game out in California. Those minor changes so far have led to very solid results. March was the most profitable month I have had in my 16 month career. I’ll do a full report in a couple of weeks for April but signs now are pointing to another month of significant improvement from the dregs I was pulling in a year ago. I’ve mentioned a few times before, the biggest priority on my list is to get to the 2/5NL game and start beating it at a solid win rate (between 5 and 10 bb per hour). With the financial success of March and April, it looks like I’ll be able to start mixing in 2/5NL by the end of May. It’s a small step in a much longer journey, but it’s a huge weight off my shoulders to finally after nearly a year and a half to finally cross that one off the list. Even if I get delayed a bit in May, the bankroll is getting 2/5NL worthy. It’s just a matter of time.

With my career trending upward, I’ve started looking into significant upgrades into my personal life. For about a year I’ve been living off of $1000 a month. At the beginning of each month I would take $1000 as bill money. That’s just barely enough to pay off my debt each month (credit cards and student loans), pay my rent, and buy food. Gas money for my car has come out of the poker money as needed and is not included in that $1000 a month. I’ve been living a Spartan life, and I’ve been enjoying it. It is part of the sacrifice of trying to build something up from nothing, whether you’re starting your own business or you’re spending 50+ hours a week in a casino, you need to pour much more of yourself into it than you would dump into any regular job. With that said, I’ve reached some limits and I’d like to improve my overall quality of life a bit. After these past couple of months it seems like the sweet spot number is $1500 a month. That takes care of gas and allows me to go out to dinner with friends, go to a movie, I can have leisure money. That also would let me pay off bigger chunks of my credit card debt each month each month and help me get that expense of my books.

This little vacation has led me to really think more about my financial standing in life and how to best improve it. My career has started trending up so now my life can do the same. I’m going to spend some time this week planning out my monthly expenses and finances more in detail. Once I finish that I’ll post my list here. Open the question up to some feedback; see if you guys find something I missed in my plans.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dtools22
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dtools22

FOCUS...

Cre8ive — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:58:16 GMT

1 mirrion

cracker9ball — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:07:54 GMT

I woke up early and drove the 3 hours from Tulsa to Durant yesterday to play in the 1 million gtd series at Choctaw Casino. Yesterday was a $350 50k, a $240 10k, and a $125 5k. I played all three and finally go above start stack in the $125, lol. I was off to a good start but didn't make the money. There is a 50k Player of the Series contest that pays 30 places and 10k for first. We get 2 pts per registered event and then a point per place in the money, so there is incentive to grind. I was lucky enough to have a god 2/5 nl session between the noon and 5pm MTT to cover most of my buy-ins for the day, but still came out a little loser.

Today is the Silver Ring event the $450 100k. Tomorrow is the Gold Ring a $550 200k, and next weekend is a Platinum Ring 1k 300k. Through the week there are lots of 20k, 10k, and 5ks and should be a few guys chasing points.

I would like to throw a shout out to Daniel Hughes for getting 9th in the 50k yesterday, he got it in good with JJ vs 97 but the villain flopped the nuts, lol, run better. Also congrats to Louay and Willie both from Tulsa who got 8th and 7th. Nice work Tulsa players.

248 players in the noon yesterday, so today should have even more. Pretty impressed with the Thursday turnout, this may be a bigger series than I thought. Good luck to all the grinders out there, keep improving and play your A game.

I have a new article coming out on P5s this weekend so keep your eyes out. It is about Live Reads and Leveling ourselves, hope y'all enjoy it.

If you are interested in taking poker lessons or would like any information visit http://variance101.com/# or email me at variance101@gmail.com. #TeamVariance101