Remember that he is also making this thread for people back home so he will from time to time talk about poker at basic levels.

ahhh... that makes sense. I know they are tracking him via this thread.

my bad.

Hey guys, got a few interesting things for this update. My brother is back in town for an extended vacation of sorts. My parents are coming for Thanksgiving later this month and he came out early to grind for about 10 days.

I picked him up yesterday and we headed off to the V not much later. My session was extremely boring as I was card dead most of the day. Thanks to a late surge headlined by flopping a set and stacking a shortstack I did end the day in the black, but just barely.

Today I had a nice win basically all in 2 pots. Once AA all in preflop against KK (so he said, never showed) and the other I flopped a set of 3's and cracked a guy's JJ. Easy game right? Obviously I won and lost several other pots in the meantime, but I was pretty happy with everything and felt like I played well. Most importantly, I didn't let being up affect my play at all, and I was able to risk my chips when it was called for, even though it ended up costing me some of my profit a few times.

The last thing I want to talk about is something that happened at the table that just exemplifies one of the many things about being a professional poker player other than being good at the game. That is, not berating bad players or bad play. Now I never get mad at anyone for playing bad, after all, thats what I want. If they won this time, who cares, I'll get it eventually if they keep making bad plays. However, lots of people don't understand this and continually berate and embarrass bad players. Well that happened today.

This old woman sitting to my left, who I have had the displeasure of playing with before, won a pot off of a nice guy from the UK. Now this woman does nothing but whine and bitch about how unlucky she is and constantly tells whoever is sitting next to her things like what she would have had on that flop if she only would have played her crappy hand, how long its been since she's had a big pocket pair, and just things that no one else really gives a **** about. So after she wins this pot (which btw she played badly also), she begins to ask the guy from the UK "how can you call, you're pair doesn't even play, I mean you couldn't call a bet on the river" and all this nonsense, being just rude. Now the guy gets up from the table and says to his buddy, "we're done". He left his chips so I was hoping he would come back.

At this point I'm pissed because it seems this old hag is gonna make the two worst players at the table leave. Beyond that, they were really nice guys and I just hated how rude she was being to the one guy. I don't really want to show it because its not nice to make it obvious to the fish that you want them to stay purely to win money off of them, so I usually try not to. After the guy walked away, I said the the woman fairly sternly, but not so everyone could hear "Stop berating him, you won the pot. He's just here to have fun and gamble so let him; you need to shut your mouth". At this point I'm pretty sure this woman is gonna come back at me because she's 90 or whatever and I'm just some punk 21 year old telling her to shut her mouth. Surprisingly she just nodded and said "you're absolutely right, I apologize". She never apologized to the guy but she didn't berate anyone's play for the rest of my time there, though she still felt the need to mention to me every 10 minutes how bad of cards she was getting.

Fortunately the UK man came back and he and his friend stayed for a while longer (my set of 3's hand was actually against the guy that got berated). The message is still the same though. Not everyone is at the poker table to make money. Some people are just their to gamble it up on their vacation and the last thing thats gonna make them want to use their spending money at the poker table is getting berated by cranky regs. Some poker players think they are stupid but the reality is many of them are very intelligent people that make very good livings in other fields that just enjoy playing poker but aren't good at it. In my opinion it's part of a professional's job to keep these people happy at the table because in the end a lot of our income comes from people like this. Does the pit boss come over and make fun of a blackjack player for hitting on 20 and catching an ace? No, because that is gonna make the casino money. As a real world example, does the auto shop berate you for being too stupid to fix your own car? No, because fixing your car is how that shop makes money. Basically what I'm saying is, don't **** where you eat. And besides that, its incredibly rude to berate someones play. They are paying the same rake as you and have the same rights as you, so let them play their cards how they want.

This is getting long but I needed to rant about it because its one of the few things that really frustrates me at the table. So obviously don't berate bad players, but if someone else is, stick up for them. You don't have to make it obvious you are defending them because you want their money, but just saying something like "hey man, everyone gets to play their cards however they want, leave him alone" should suffice. It will go a long way to making that player feel more comfortable and will also probably get you some action because fish generally like to give action to nice players who they know aren't gonna make fun of them when they make -EV plays.

Thanks for reading. Hope those of you that made it this far found this helpful or at least interesting.

Great post. It's always been my dispute with the game of poker as well. We need to make sure the fish feels as welcome as anyone.

I guees it must be low selfesteam or something that makes these people berate the fish. Either low selfesteam with the game of poker or with life in general.

Indeed, a nice post and an extremely accurate description of how things should be. I got felted twice the other day at 2/5-Bellagio with a rivered boat and a rivered broadway after having the money in the pot and being way ahead... not once did a cross word come out of my mouth... as a matter of fact I joke and make light of it. It wasn't the first time it happened, and it wont be the last time it happens.

was playing once with a clueless young woman once who beat my KK with her 10/5os. All I said was '...that must be your lucky hand, good job!..."

Of course she left a little while later with no money. Folks like this fund the table but most players are too dumb not to 'tap on the glass'.

I was in the English guy who lost to your set of 3s.

Please can I have the money back?

haha wow no way! I'm at the table nearly every day, you will have plenty of chances to get it back.

you were 'in' the English guy. Unless you are a virus/bacteria/parasite logged into 2+2, that is just creepy

Nah, only joking

Hey guys, not too much for this update, just a few more sessions the last two days. I've gotten some longer sessions in and still felt good at the end so I think my stamina is starting to get better.

Yesterday was pretty swingy and ended up being what I'm pretty sure was my biggest losing day at 2/5. Started off in the hole quite a bit from losing lots of medium pots. I couldn't make a hand and my cbets were getting called/raised left and right. Just another one of those losing image situations. I built it back up to nearly even and then pretty quickly lost a few hands and I was again stuck pretty big.

Near the end of my session I had again grinded my way up to almost even when this hand happened. I raised a straddled pot with QJ and got 3 calls. Flop came 89T. Checked to me and I bet and one guy called and the next guy raised. I shoved and the first caller folded and the raiser pretty much snap called. The K on the turn had me drawing dead to my opponents QJ. Very PLO-esque, got the nuts all in on the flop and had 32% equity.

Today started off much the same, as I got set over set early with JJ no good on KJ5 flop against KK. From there I battled back pretty well, winning a bunch of small pots to get unstuck and make some profit. I was really happy with my session overall except for one bad river call late in the session.

First time reader of this thread.

OP, congrats. You clearly are an intelligent guy and a good player who approaches the game the right way (understanding the different mindsets of players, etc). Good luck making your dream a reality.

Just out of curiosity, what prompted you to choose taking this shot (maybe not exactly right language since you do seem like someone who could succeed long-term) over your other options? A degree in finance from UW-Madison is pretty sweet and no doubt you had other options upon graduation. I'd love to hear your thought process (as I'm someone who made the other choice, taking jobs in the business world and playing on the side). Regardless, congrats again on making this happen.

Thanks man. There are several reasons that lead me to taking a shot. Yes I feel like I can do it long term but my sample size before moving to Vegas was not even close to being meaningful enough to predict anything so I don't think calling it a shot is wrong, though I was much more calculated than your average shot taker.

Part of it is I'm young, I have time if it doesn't work out, and I'll never have to ask myself what would have happened if I tried. Although I always planned to get my degree before pursuing poker full time, since my freshman year of college I was planning on doing the Vegas thing.

On more of a "why poker?" level, it just appeals to me because I can come and go as I please and don't have anyone telling me what to do. I have always clashed with the higher-ups at my part-time/summer jobs throughout high school/college. Many times I thought I was smarter than a lot of them (true) and so that would cause problems when I was told to do something a certain way because "thats how we do it here". I didn't like that reason. So I like having something that I can be my own boss right out of college.

On top of that, the more I got into my finance coursework, the more I realized its not something that interests me enough to get a corporate job. I know lots of people that jumped through all the hoops in college; went to career fairs, did a billion interviews, and then got a job they can spend 40 years making a good living at and retire. Thats fine, but just not something that appeals to me. I didn't go to one career fair, didn't do a single interview. Academically I pretty much just went to class and got the marks I needed to get my degree because in my mind the degree was the backup plan and I focused most of the energy I would put into clubs/job hunting/internships into learning poker.

Some people say that its risky to pursue poker and that taking a job is the safer route. Thats probably true but I didn't have any job offers so its not like I turned down six figures to play poker. I also think the reason why 99% of people who try poker fail is because 98.9% of them are largely delusional and unprepared for it. I feel like I am prepared and it makes the chance I will succeed much higher than 1%. People also say that you can make more in the corporate world than you can in poker. Starberry recently made a post saying that there are people in fincance/technology/etc on the Forbes list but no one in poker on the list. Well thats fine because I could care less about being that filthy rich. What I want in life can be accomplished with poker so I don't need to worry about that ceiling. I really like the Limon model of playing poker and investing profits into passive income investments to increase earn. With this model eventually you don't have to keep much cash around because you know what you need for your game, which should be at least 5/10nl, and you can use the rest for investments. He preaches in his old thread about using poker to diversify, utilizing real estate, stocks, and other investments both in and out of gambling to make money. That is more or less what I am trying to do, but for right now the focus is on building my roll and getting to the games where I can start making a living on top of having extra money to start making significant investments and looking for passive income. 2/5 is not the end for me and I'm not gonna come on here and say playing 2/5 is better than a corporate job. Its much like how putting in your dues in entry level jobs is not the end. Its what you do so that you can get the upper level positions and increase earn.

The point of me explaining this is that if it was a choice between only playing poker and having a real job with poker on the side I'd probably choose the latter. But I'm not gonna just play poker. Eventually I should be able to have other passive income sources on top of my own poker playing and be able to keep the freedom of not having a 9-5. Whereas with the corporate world you are basically forced to work long, hard hours to achieve an income I'm not even interested in. Poker allows me to get exactly the income I want, and once I get it I don't have to put in hours where the marginal benefit of the extra income is < the marginal cost of having to work more (for me personally at least). Its still not nearly as safe because theres no health insurance and no guarantees poker will last, but at the end of the day going the safe route out of fear that something that could be better doesn't work out would be pretty boring.

I sincerely hope this answers your question because I got pretty carried away as one thought kept leading to another and I ended up probably answering some things that weren't even asked. If you or anyone else has further questions or wants clarification please ask.

^^^ Nice post man. Good luck.

how about a status update? BR amt$, win rate/hr, # hours played, # of sluts banged, etc.

For reasons I've explained the first two wont be answered with any specific numbers, but I've played 671 hours.

Awesome... this is exactly how I feel about my life....feel like I could have wrote this same thing. ( I have another 5 months till I graduate college and than Ill be saving up around 20k to take my shot) congrats cushlash on taking your shot while it's to be taken! I envy it!

thats fine - how many chick u bang?

how sick r teh gamez right now btw...had a dude at my table torque off 2k in short order his vpip...hunit percint no lie!!!

haha nice, yea games have been pretty great. Just got back and a guy's vpip was probably 95% but he literally never raised preflop, would just call and then call down all the way with any piece. Went from 1500 to busto in <1.5 hrs.

Whats vpip?

Mainly an online term. "Voluntarily Puts Into Pot"

Just wanted to stop in and say ive been enjoying the thread. Keep at it cush

Nice!

ty sir

Thanks, gl with your shot.

Thanks, glad to hear it.

Where? At the B?


Oh and nice thread cushlash, you are wise beyond your years. Keep up the good work!