October Results, November Goals



[X] Play 100 hours

100 hours AND FIVE MINUTES to be precise!

This month, easily the swingiest of my live poker "career," involved plenty of character-building. All the records were broken: biggest winning session, biggest losing session, longest session, craziest session. After limping to the finish line this weekend, I managed to log a long, solid session to round out the month and hit my hours goal, and I feel good heading into another poker-filled month.

Read

[X] The Myth of Poker Talent, by Alexander Fitzgerald
poasted review above.
[ ] Once a Gambler, Part II, by Miikka Anttonen
Just got my copy and will be getting to it soon.

I also read Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad. Some of you may be familiar with Whitehead's The Noble Hustle--perhaps the best (nonstrategy) poker book that's been written in the last five/ten years. Whitehead's latest book, set in the slave-era South, couldn't be more different. It's a very powerful, affecting read, and I highly recommend it. If you don't trust me, then trust Oprah!

Overall, October was a busy and fun month. The weather is pretty much perfect and Nola is a great place to be this time of year.
Saints game, fifty yard line seats LOL

Puppy-sitting!

Nola

November Goals

[ ] Play 100 hours
[ ] Study 20 hours

Just took a note of The Noble Hustle, will get to reading it some time this year, thx

This is the first I heard/remembered you mentioning studying poker... 5h/week, that is pretty darn good, me thinks (I am happy when I hit 3h/week...). What software/mediums are you using for studying, if you do not mind me asking Bob?

Cute dogs!

Hope you enjoy it, Dubn. I think you will.

During playing months, I study pretty consistently. I'd guess I put in 20-30 study hours last month, although not sure--which is why I want to consciously track my study time this month.

At the moment I've been trying to get my ranges/frequencies right for LOLive poker. Ed Miller's Poker's 1% has been an accessible gateway into GTO territory, and I have a CardRunners subscription for Matthew Janda's theory vids. I especially like his live sweat sessions when he'll say, "in theory I should probably bet x amount, but in practice I'm gonna exploitatively bet y." I have neither the desire nor the ability to become a theory expert, but I find it helpful to have a decent grasp of what optimal continuing/defending frequencies look like in certain spots, which, in turn, helps me craft exploitative adjustments for live play/multiway pots, etc.

So yeah, Miller and Janda have been good, and I think that Alex Fitzgerald's book is also worth looking at. And, of course, Flopzilla. Lots of Flopzilla.

I haven't yet purchased Snowie or solvers like CRev/Piosolver. How's that going for you? I feel like you mentioned using those tools in your PGC.

indeed! lab/pit mixes.

Poker Faces in the Crowd: Miikka Anttonen

I interviewed Miikka Anttonen, a Finnish poker pro who recently released Part 2 of his memoir Once A Gambler. We discussed Miikka's poker and writing aspirations, the boundaries between fiction and memoir, gambling addiction, and the impulse to—literally—light money on fire.

***

Almost done watching this year's Nov Nine coverage. I was rooting for JohnnyBax and also found myself pulling for Ruzicka, who seemed to play the best. That said, I'm not sure what to make of his trippel barrel with AK vs Vayo's flopped set and wonder if he regrets that decision.

Was happy to see Qui win and wouldn't be surprised if I buy a raccoon hat in the near future. The guy showed a ton of heart/spazz, and running hot didn't hurt either.

Nice interview I will get to the second tome of Once a Gambler sometime soon... Was rooting for Ruzicka as well, partly because he is an acquaintance of my good Czech friend (a few of us from Dawson are looking to go to Czech Republic next October for the WSOPE ).


Not great. I have tampered with both, but have been reluctant to integrate either as part of my regular studying schedule... (although am thinking of upgrading my Pio license...). In the meantime, have been focusing on videos (can't even go through my database anymore, as I stopped using a hud ).

[QUOTE=Dubnjoy000;51101973]Nice interview I will get to the second tome of Once a Gambler sometime soon... Was rooting for Ruzicka as well, partly because he is an acquaintance of my good Czech friend (a few of us from Dawson are looking to go to Czech Republic next October for the WSOPE ).

TY. I'm almost finished with Tome Two, I'm sure you'll enjoy the read

I'm sure solvers can be helpful--in some contexts, esp online, they might be essential--but I haven't fallen down that rabbit hole and probably won't for the time being. Would be interested to hear your take on them if/when you devote some time. I admire your ability to swing between the live and online worlds. Not an easy task!

He Tells it Like it Is, Dostoevsky's Empathy

"The American writer in the twentieth century has his hands full in trying to understand, describe, and then make credible much of American reality. It stupefies, it sickens, it infuriates, and finally it is even a kind of embarrassment to one’s meager imagination. The actuality is continually outdoing our talents, and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.”

—Phillip Roth

Say what you want about him, but remember this: Donald Trump tells it like it is.

***

Some highlights from a recent piece on Dostoevsky, a writer worth reading these days:

"He wore five-pound shackles on his ankles every day for four years.

This was in the prison camp in Omsk where he was serving out a sentence of hard labor after being convicted of sedition for being part of a revolutionary cell dedicated to the liberation of the serfs and freedom of the press.

He wasn’t allowed a single book for almost four years. Except the Bible.

In all those years in the prison camp, he spent no more than a few seconds alone. Barely held a pen or pencil except for the brief times he was hospitalized and Dr. Troitsky slipped him a sheet of paper and a pencil. So many mornings and nights in a barracks where hundreds of beetles crawled across the floor, as gradually he came to feel close to others who at first seemed opaque, alien, threatening.

“I look at their pale faces, at their poor beds, at all of this impassable nakedness and poverty—I peer in—and it is as if I want to make sure that it is not the continuation of a disfigured dream, but actual truth. But it is truth: I hear someone’s groan, someone throws out his hands heavily and clangs his chains,” he would remember in The House of the Dead.

After ten years he was released. “These are the notes of an unknown,” he wrote in a letter to his brother.

Dostoevsky’s books offer the words to feel into pursued to their radical end, embodied. To feel into—which doesn’t mean to understand, or analyze, or interpret, or heal. Doesn’t mean to solve, define, make steady, claim knowledge of, but has something to do with drawing close, with how there’s a radiance more mysterious, more unspeakable than horror; more private in its wounds, more lasting."

November Results, December Goals



Went to my first big-time college football game. It was a good one; the game came down to the final play, LSU failed to convert on fourth and goal, and an entire stadium of Tigers fans went home grizzled. I, on the other hand, wore my Tim Tebow Jets jersey home with pride

Poker

[95] Play 100 hours

As punishment for failing to hit my goal, I will grind more this weekend. Overall, November was another step forward. You know games are good when you have 500bbs and scamper to the cage to get more chips in order to cover whales. Just another day in Harradise!

[30] Study 20 hours

Really enjoyed Matthew Janda's CR vids. Apparently he's writing a second book.

December Goals

read
[ ] King of a Small World
[ ] The Baltimore Truth

write

The sad reality is that I can't play/study poker and put in quality writing/studying hours at the same time. The best solution, for me, is to swing back and forth: if the last few months were about the poker grind, then the next few months will be about the writing grind.

LOLimit for Charity

The time has come to descend back into poker's netherworld. True, the abyss of 4/8 Limit may engulf me but--alas!--life is filled with suffering and injustice. Sometimes you just gotta trudge into the abyss weeeeeeee

A friend suggested an idea that I'll be adopting in December: a poker charity challenge in which I donate all winnings (or match all losses) to one of the charities on Dan Smith's website. Smith will be matching all donations, so my incessant LOLimit minraising will be doubly effective!

I'll be updating itt and perhaps live tweeting a few of my sessions.

Nice, and appropriate quotes you have there above. I like your derivation of Dostoevsky above. Your thread feels very familiar to me, as one of my best friends is a recent grad from Oklahoma State with his Masters in Creative Witting.

Pretty good progress on your goals, you didn't fall way short on hours either, so that is something to take solace in. Especially considering how many irons you have in the fire. Also, very admirable of you to donate your poker winnings/loses to charity, good on you.

Best of luck at the tables, and in general, and I will be continuing to follow.

This is the kind of dilemma that causes me to wake in the middle of the night, suffering pangs of guilt, like good/bad old Raskolnikov. I suspect that you've done better than most in trying to chase these two rabbits at the same time!

Poker Faces in the Crowd: Kenny Milam

This month I spoke with "the best-known unknown player in the country," Kenny Milam. We discussed Milam's hopes for Donald Trump, politics at the poker table, how he earned the nickname “Mega Master,” serving in Vietnam, and kissing Miss Universe.

TY Zombie! I hope that your own poker goals are going well. Maybe you can resurrect your PGC in the New Year?

thanks for the good wishes, Dr.! Hope you're not losing too much sleep. The goal is to be more like than Alyosha than Raskolnikov, which is easier said than done. Overall I feel pretty good about my progress and am content to stay patient/keep moving forward on all fronts. As you know, there are worse places to be than Nola/Harradise

Your welcome! Your thread is always an illuminating read for me. I do hope to raise my PGC from the ashes in the near future. Thanks for the well wishes.

Miikka Anttonen's Once a Gambler: The Drift, LOLimit Charity Challenge: Day 1

I reviewed the second part of Miikka Anttonen's memoir Once A Gambler. I look forward to the third and final installment!

LOLimit Charity Challenge, Day 1

The day started with the weekly Harradise donkament. Dreading my return to the LOLimit felt, my goal was to play the tourney for as long as humanly possible. When we were six-handed I unlocked Spazzmode and that was that. I gave a few hundred back in NL waiting for a limit seat and didn't get to 4/8 tables till about 5 pm. Played 4 hours, booked a $30 profit thanks to a pivotal $100 SPLASH POT! promotion. Poasting for posterity:

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$SPLASHPOT$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

UTG call
UTG+1 call
MP call
Hero CALL 36 otb
sb call
bb check

flop K95 ($124)

check

turn 3

check

river 6

MP bets $8, Hero CALL

LOLimit Challenge, Day 2

I logged about 6 hours last night, taking some early punishment and rebounding nicely for a $210 win. Looks like I'll only have time for 2, maybe 3 sessions before I leave town for the holidays. Back at it Wednesday. Let's hope the rungood continues!

LOLimit Challenge, Day 3

6:45, wake up
7:30, laundry
9:00, gym
10:30, buy The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
11:00, hop in the Harradise weekly donkament
12:45, ship air into a station and punt off stack
1:00, sit in 1/3, put name on LOLimit list
2:00, sit in 4/8, observe dude spin 20 bucks into 600
6:00, finish The Baltimore Truth
8:30, cash out +225

3/3 winning seshes, we are gonna book a profit phellas! one, maybe two more to go.

225$ is not too bad for a day's work (and perhaps is calming those lolimit urges of jumping off a bridge ). Also am halfway through A Baltimore Truth. Am enjoying it, despite a lack of polishing to the writing. What is this lolimit experiment Bob and why do you insist on doing it?

LOLimit Challenge Results

yep, can't complain! Well, I could complain about the $500 splash pot I lost flush over flush, but...

Glad you're enjoying TBT. I'm not a huge crime fiction guy (which is essentially what the book is; it's not a poker novel like King of a Small World) but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

I play poker for a few reasons, but the main one is to write about it--from as many perspectives as possible. Playing limit introduces me to an entirely different part of the poker room population; it allows me to see with a different set of eyes, so to speak, which will hopefully inform and reinforce my other experiences playing no-limit, reporting on donkaments, grinding online, etc.

This brief LOLimit challenge was for motivation. It's hard for me to log hours, and imposing foolish arbitrary goals helps!

Speaking of, the challenge is complete! Courtesy of Harradise's 4/8 grinders, we booked 4/4 winning sessions and shipped $466 to Dan Smith, who will be matching all charity donations through the end of the year.

Wrapping stuff up this weekend and then hopping on a train to AZ for the holidays.

2017 Year in Review

Poker

[700] log 1000 hours of live poker, supplemented by study and some online play.

At first glance this looks pretty bad, but two things hindered volume this year: (1) taking a live reporting gig at the WSOP, which meant almost no poker-playing in June/July; and (2) teaching this fall. My initial volume goal turned out to be unrealistic given these other commitments, and I'll try to come up with a more realistic goal for next year.

That said, I still have a lot of work to do on volume and session length. My average length was around 4-5 hours, which is still too short. An important trend I've noticed: when I play longer sessions and log higher-volume months, results are best. I think I'll be compartmentalizing even more aggressively next year, devoting whole days/months to poker (playing, studying) and others to writing.

I got better at poker this year. This fall went well poker-wise, as I was able to spend a lot of time playing and studying, and I'm feeling more and more comfortable playing live deep-stacked cash.

[X] play a wider variety of games and formats

540 hrs NL
150 LOLimit
100 donkaments

The majority of my NL volume was super-deep 1/3 that plays more like a deep 2/5 or 5/10. I'd like to log more hours at actual 2/5 and 5/10 next year.

I don't mind limit all that much, believe it or not, and I'm planning to hop in more limit variants next year, esp the Omaha high games that regularly run at Harradise. It's also been fun hopping in donkaments from time to time; I still feel like my edge is bigger here than anywhere else. Depending on how the summer goes I *might* play the Main for bucket list reasons. I'd say I'll definitely play within the next 4-5 years.

Writing

[X] finish book proposal

I finished a proposal pretty early in the year (did not get the fellowship that I applied for, but I can reapply every year) and received some good criticism from the reviewers.

What, indeed?

I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew. After finishing the proposal early in the year, I put it aside, and am only returning to it now. I accept that covering broad topics like poker or New Orleans or American culture takes time, and most of it (all of it?) defies explanation. The good news is I'm learning; the bad news is I'm learning slowly. I'm fine with that.

I've been spending a lot of time "on the ground," soaking in the mundane details of the poker environment (at the WSOP, at Harradise, in private games). In the next few months I'll be swinging back to more macro concerns, which will hopefully help me put "the poker room" in context.

[19] write 15 poker pieces
[2] and at least one "crossover" piece that appears in a non-poker magazine.

I love doing interviews, and this one with Hei "Sol Reader" was probably my favorite from 2016.

Really happy with where I am in the poker freelancing world. Feel like I'm producing a decent amount of content without overextending myself. The poker world is a weird little bubble, and I've met some fantastic people on the media side.

Not happy with my progress on "crossover pieces," in other words stuff aimed at general audiences. Haven't really attempted it yet, and plan to do so next year.

[X] return to Vegas as a writer/reporter/player. Bonus points for taking the train.

Live reporting was both fun and demanding, and I appreciate the experience. I expect that I'll keep doing it on a limited basis.

Didn't take the train to last summer's WSOP, but I just rode it 36 hours from Nola to Tucson. Pretty cool experience. Not sure where exactly this pic was taken--I think near El Paso.

A few other notables from the year. Mardi Gras carnage:

David Bowie second line, with Arcade Fire's Win Butler leading the way. I've recently come around to Bowie's greatness, better late than never I guess.

Lehhhhhbron!

inspired by Snowball2. his name's Bernie, and the pizza was delicious.

Let's be real, though. This is the best stuff.


***

Thanks, everyone, for reading and chiming in with feedback, however small. It really helps. Writing, like poker, is a solitary journey, and I appreciate being able to poast itt and engage with the best (and worst) that 2+2 has to offer!

Off the cuff, I would say the "larger goal/general audience/American culture" component of your proposal is definitely there and awaiting discovery. I mean, "poker in New Orleans" is a metaphor for American culture, as far as I can tell. I'm guessing that Leo Trollstoy knows his stuff when it comes to writing the big crossover novel!

It's clear (and was even before the write-up) that you've had a year of very solid progress on multiple fronts. Congrats, and hoping we can cross paths again some time in 2017!

Some thoughts on this:
Peer reviews and reviewers can drive you nuts. Take what you feel is useful, but don't get bent out of shape responding to any one review. The next may contradict it!

Grant writing is a tricky art. (Not one I ever got very good at.) If you can find someone who's got the knack, i.e. has succeeded in the past, and is willing to review your proposal, that can be a huge help.

You don't necessarily have to tell the whole truth about what you plan to do. You can emphasize your laser-like focus on whatever you consider your project's strongest selling points, and expand into larger (and probably hard to explain until you actually get into the writing) American cultural implications after you get going ...

I have identified what I believe is the softest room in the country. Can you guess which one it is?

Hint: I was in AZ for the holidays, driving back east to nola.

Sent from my XT1031 using 2+2 Forums

2017 Goals

[] Play 800 hours of live poker

Seems absolutely doable.

[] set monthly writing goals

Not sure how much is "enough," but it will be helpful to quantify hours spent writing/studying writing. Will set goals each month.

[] find an agent + publisher OR get rejected a lot

Will be starting the year here.

Oh, it's absolutely there. The trick will be figuring out Nola's relationship to the US (does the city represent an alternative, "riskier" space than the rest of our more risk-averse society? Or is the US better understood as a "risk society" with Nola as a prominent example?) and anchoring these incredibly broad questions in the lives and stories of real people.

I have half a mind to mail Leo Trollstoy a copy of McManus's Cowboys Full with a note that says, "Do u even read Bro?!"

Ty, same here? Maybe vegas this summer? I'm eager to hear about your latest adventures.

Ty Russell, I'll definitely keep these comments in mind as I reapply. I'm lucky to have some talented friends in the academic world who I'll keep pestering down the road.

I also think your last point is an important one and something I try to remind myself. There are some aspects of the project that I feel like I have a really good handle on, others not so much, and I need to stick to what I know.

**

Still crawling to Nola. Will be in Biloxi for some pokering this weekend and then back.

Assuming you don't mean our local Arizona favorite Casino del Sol, there are not many options taking I-10 back to New Orleans.

Would have to guess either L'Auberge or Golden Nugget, both in Lake Charles. But no experience with either one of them, so I'd be coin flipping to choose.