bump + 2!

Bump +1000, don't let this amazing thread die pls

+1 this was one of the better pg+cs

up

Maybe he succumbed to too much Corona.....

Cheers guys! Was quite nice to log into 2+2 for the first time in a few months and see all the love and PM's.

Alcohol sales were banned at the beginning of the month

OK!
So after not posting for 2.5 months, this feels impossible to even begin to say what has been going on. These last two months have felt like over a year with all the craziness that has happened in the world.

Throughout most of February I was sporadically playing live and having meh results and pretty much made the decision to just focus on non poker things for awhile by the end of the month. I was sitting there after putting in pretty massive volume (especially in January with 2 poker trips) and having made $4k and just not feeling motivated to play or post here or do anything regarding poker. My last session was March 3rd and then the Coronavirus news started to get worse.

January/February/ 1 session in March




Coronavirus: It has honestly not been that bad here and I have felt extremely lucky. My town was very late to react but when they did they closed down everything very suddenly and effectively (schools, non essential business' etc). I went and bought enough groceries to last us forever and we hunkered down.

I have been really busy with a lot of different projects, I guess I'll get to that in a later post. I have also been playing a ton of poker. All I can say about that is HOLY **** the app sites are insane. I know that I am benefiting from all the new money in the games but I have really been regretting not starting on the apps earlier. I cannot believe some of the things I have seen going on there. I will definitely post more about that too, I have some pretty funny screen shots.

I've also been coaching two players which has been really fun for me as well and beneficial for them. It's also been a nice way to make some extra income and force me to talk poker. One of them is truly awful and it was like starting from lower than new because of how backwards his approach was to basic spots. Having to explain things in a simplistic way really has been valuable for me as well.

Anyway, thanks for the continued interest in the thread, it was great to come back and see people still here. When I have time later today I will do a better, more through post. Just wanted to throw something up here for now. Hope this finds everyone well and healthy. Cheers

This was very interesting and entertaining read. Glad to hear things are generally okay in Mexico. Hopefully those live games will begin again and you can resume that aspect of the story.

Ok quick update.

Town is shut down to foreign tourism which means the town is dead.

Almost all business are closed and the streets are ghost town.

The vacation rental platforms offered unprecedented cancelation policies to their guests, basically 100% no questions asked refunds.
This meant that I lost almost all March and April bookings, basically 18k of income lost in less than 10 days which was brutal.

Kids school is canceled but thank god their school set up an awesome online classroom quickly and I actually think they are gaining more from that then from physically being in the class room. The problem solving skills and thinking are taking a pretty significant leap IMO.

With the quarantine that has meant way more family time which is awesome/ horrible at about a 90/10 ratio which is fine by me. Basically some combo of doing puzzles, reading, watching movies, pool time and projects.

I have been spending my time doing the following things since I last posted 2.5 months ago.

Rental Work:
Losing all that income was something that caught me off guard but with all the free time I was pretty quick to respond. I gave all of the apartments/homes a deep clean and with 0% occupancy was able to get a lot of small repair work done that had needed to be taken care of for a long time. I'm not super handy but its pretty amazing what can be done with Google and unlimited time. I also did some nice cosmetic stuff

Rooftop Deck, fresh paint job, new table cloth



I also had to try to recoup the lost business, which basically meant listing in way more places and hustling with the rental pool that was already here in Cabo, since no new people were coming in. There was a surprising amount of people already here and instead of going back home decided to quarantine here or work remotely. I got some really nice tenants on month to month leases which was a nice bandaid. By no means did it replace the really nice night to night income but it was enough to pay the mortgages and overall I'm happy with how we responded under difficult circumstances.

I posted a lot in FB groups and Craigslist which meant I was getting about 20 responses a day the majority of which were not viable candidates for my places. So I started passing all contacts that didn't book with me to my friend who is a property manager and got some 50/50 commission splits on the people he converted into renters for his clients. Not a ton of $ but during this time every little bit seems to matter. In Spanish there is a saying about a lot of "little drips of water" meaning a lot of little income streams adding up to a river. So these are some new little drops.

Writing:
I wrote a long post on a short term rental and real estate investment forum and got a lot of interaction. So I published the same story on Medium.com and it got some views also. Medium pays you if people that are subscribers read your work so I wrote some other articles about vacation rentals in the time of Coronavirus and am making about $20 a week from it

But it also motivated me to start writing a little "how to survive down markets" book on short term rental that I am now almost 20,000 words into. I'm really enjoying it and posting excerpts in the forums and on Medium as I go which is 1. helpful for other people in tough spots and 2. good for me to gauge what people are interacting with. I think I will be done within a few weeks, time permitting, and will probably self publish on Kindle. I know the expected return on these self published books isn't amazing, but I have unlimited time right now, I have a lot of experience and knowledge on the subject and its an evergreen source of income. + I am really enjoying the process of waking up and writing a few thousand words per day. But again, Drops of Water.

Wife's New Business:
My wife has always made Kombucha at home for us and with the quarantine in effect and our supply chains a bit effected on items from the states, she had some people asking her for bottles. So.... she decided to order some bottles and start producing in larger quantities. I helped her with the ordering and with some Facebook advertising stuff and she sold the first 60 bottles out in about 2 days It was really cool to see her so excited and our girls helped too which was a great project for them as well. They sold before we even had the labels printed. The production is small right now, she can make about 100 bottles a week but if the demand continues we might expand. The markup isn't great as her niche is "all organic" which is expensive and she doesn't want to price outrageously during the quarantine. But this might be something that we continue after if she is still enjoying doing it.

Final stage of production


The Label, my wifes name is Patricia in spanish a lot of people call her Pato (short for Patrico) and pato also means duck. Hence the pretty Pato




Home Projects

Mostly just planting a bunch of eatable things and trying to turn our sandy soil more fertile. In the backyard we planted squash, carrots, peppers and in the little planters in front nopales, watermelon and tomatoes.

Eatable Cactus, nopales


Tomatoes



Building the fence to the mini farm to keep the dogs out



Poker:

When it became clear we were going to be quarantined I pretty quickly realized poker was going to be the best source I had to make money. Unfortunately in this country none of the debt has been paused and the government has done almost nothing to ease the burden on property owners/ business owners etc. All taxes, utilities are being paid at the same rate and all bank debt as of today is still due. Meaning, income had to be produced.

I had standing invitations to join a different clubs so I just shopped RB and chose the person that I trusted the most that was running a club. I don't really trust anyone and have been trying to keep as little money as possible on the apps. But up until this point, transfers and cashouts have been doing amazing quick and efficiently. So far so good. I hopped in the games with a $1000 roll and pretty quickly ran that up just taking 20 BI shots at the games. I'm now pretty much playing only 100NL and PLO or bigger with a lot of PLO 4/5/6 08 mixed in. Up until this point I have been cashing out almost daily and just keeping the roll small online, no more than 5k at any point, which makes me happy.

I'm trying to play 40 hours a week and I really feel like I stumbled into a goldmine. I don't think it's smart to hype the games too much but I'm sure that the majority of people reading this are playing anyway. I played 30k hands or so on 888 but it honestly just wasn't worth the effort. When 100NL on apps is playing like 10NL on the major sites I definitely now see the appeal of the apps.

I'll post one hand from yesterday at the anonymous games that kind of shows what I'm talking about. I was playing on my phone waiting to do
a check in at one of the rentals and almost leaving the game because nobody seemed to be getting too out of line and then this hand happened.



120bbs deep, Villain opens HJ 3bb, I 3b CO 10bb, he calls.

Flop comes 676ddx, I cbet 6bbs he rips 110bbs we call expecting to see a lot of combo draws and get shown the J7hh. Run it 3 times and hold all 3.

The amount of gifts I have been given in this exact manner are just mind blowing. The quarantine is really just putting people in the mood to punt. I've been trying to play as many anonymous games as possible and mix in some other stuff on the side as well. I really haven't enjoyed playing online this much in a long time. Long live poker!


I have been playing all on my own roll this time but having to constantly cash out money means I'm pretty capped at playing up to 400NL without taking massively risky shots. I reached out to a very good player I know here in Mexico, that has great connections in some of the private games online and asked him if he wanted to put me in to some of those games. We are still figuring it out but are definitely going to do a 2-3 week trial period on his dime in stuff up to 1k NL and then decide what we want to do moving forward. For obvious reasons I won't be posting about that here much but it's something that I'm quite excited for.

Coaching
I also took on two students that had been asking me for coaching before the quarantine. They are both absolutely awful so it is a slow process of starting basically from worse than 0 because they have so many bad habits. Both of these guys play in the live games for a few years, but with no sign of the live games returning I don't feel so guilty earning an hourly rate and really helping these two improve. I have also really enjoyed the coaching and having to simplify everything is actually a really effective tool for me as well. They both have a bit of money so the hardest part has been to get them to take 10NL online seriously. They both want to play bigger stuff but are drawing dead to win so I've been trying to get them to play smaller for awhile.




So in my usual fashion I managed to turn a quick post into a novel, but it has been over 2 months since I last updated. Overall I feel pretty lucky with quarantine life so far. I'm going to go and catch up on some of my favorite PGC's right now and see what people have been up to. Online poker feels so alive right now it has been really fun. As always thanks for reading, its always nice to spill all my thoughts.

Nice update! What's the medium article called?

Just reread that post and realized I screwed up the HH.

Flop was chk, 1/3rd, call.
Turn he open rips roughly 100bbs we call and hold all 3.


Also, if it came across as overly cheerful its probably because I am in the roll of chief optimist on a day to day basis at home. We are making the best of a bad situation but its obviously not ideal. Poker has been amazing though which is the one silver lining.

PM sent

Quick little update.

Been shotting bigger games since my last post and its gone well. Mostly 400 and 600 NL/PL05. I have been grinding like a maniac. With decent RB and the games like this it feels criminal not to play as much as possible.

I'm loving the min VPIP PLO tables and have some pretty basic strat that is working out well. Im only playing those tables if I'm starting the game. I'm sure you can work out the rest.

Had this little beauty come up yesterday. Got called by QJcc



Starting a little trial period on someone else's dime today. Hopefully it goes well because that will open up some amazing doors for me in the more private games.

Hope everyone's doing well and profiting!

Cheers

Also if anyone knows how to import hands to PT4 from PB's that would be much appreciated. I am running Bluestacks emulator on Macbook and not having any success. Is there an end around that works. Thanks, cheers

This is my favorite trick as well. Get in 15-20 hands HU and then you can just play a normal strat once it fills without ever getting kicked.

Even when you have to play normal though I've found that it's easy enough to find a couple more spots to play and bump the VPIP up to >40% without sacrificing too much. The other players OTOH seem to be terrible at adjusting to their weaker ranges.

Subscribed, great thread

Nice to read a thread from someone else who is living in Cabo. Starting tomorrow you can't even go for a drive with two people in the car. Need to have a valid reason for leaving your home as well. All rules set until May 30th at a minimum.

As good as any opportunity to play online and put in volume. Best of luck amigo

Mexico is such a beautiful country. Great pics and update.

Graph since quarantine incoming?

Several people much wiser than me actually reached out and pointed out that maybe its better to not be touting the untracked sites so much, and I agree. Not that I could post a graph of them anyway as I've been actually having a lot of issues running a HUD and/or importing stats which is driving me crazy.
I'm a big fan of review and it's pretty crazy for me to be playing 10's of thousands of hands without any way to review sessions.

I am 100% getting worse and just developing some really monkey habits that are probably optimal in the games I'm most frequently playing but not in normal online environments. Ridiculous exploit stuff is the best in good games but I feel myself getting dumber with each click.

I was really getting after it with PIO work in March but sadly that trusty PC is no longer with us, RIP. i'm down to just my Macbook and with all the stuff I'm asking it to do it's probably on its last legs also. Time for a new setup. I'm a tech fish but all I really need it to do is be able to run sims overnight and have 2 or 3 clients open during a session without overheating or crashing. Any advice is welcomed!

I've put in 30k ish hands at the micros mostly 20 and 50NL zoom and had very good results which I might post later (I know how much people love graphs) but feels kind of pointless posting micro graphs. I actually ran insanely hot right before I started playing the untracked stuff. Most of that was over a month ago now and its really hard to imagine going back there with the current state of the other games. So for now my game will suffer but I'm having fun and happy.

Cheers.

Agreed. I think in general minimum VPIP games are a great idea and something that legitimately makes the game more fun for your average rec. The obvious downsides of paying so much rake are more than made up for by the positive factors IMO.

Does min VPIP only calculate VPIP on that table that session, or overall account VPIP? Also, think H2N is best for those kind of sites, but could be wrong.

The games have been so soft on Pokerbros, I too have been really enjoying playing on that app. Anyways, might not help but I do know how to import hands but onto hm3. Might work for pt4 as well, but what you need is a hand grabber. I use elitehud, with hm3 and thats how i do it. There maybe other ones similar to that, im sure a simple google check will help you out. You can also get them to email your hands, but you have to do each hand individually.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's your VPIP for the entire time the table lasts (24 hours). So you start at 0% and if you play an hour at 60% then come back to the same table later on, you will start at 60% from that point on.

There are 2 types of vpip tables. Vpip tables that use your cumulative account vpip (frustratingly enough you can't find this info anywhere, at least afaik), and tables that you have to play a 25% vpip at, where if you dip below 25% you get booted and cannot rejoin. These vpip min's are not used on ante tables.

The tables I have played function like this. Also if you get booted from the table for falling under the VPIP number for 25 hands you are banned from that table for 24 hours. The #'s reset after a day.


I didn't know about a cumulative account VPIP # but that is pretty epic. That is the ultimate way to nit proof a game I guess. Maybe thats the future to protect game qualities, especially in NL.

FWIW I go through pretty nitty phases and have nothing against nits but I appreciate the desire to remove them from certain ecosystems.

Horrible session yesterday. After cruising along pretty easily this whole quarantine, to get smoked for 12 BI's feels pretty terrible. Was a mix of playing too long and too tired through the night and running pretty awfully AI. I didn't really tilt in game, but I also didn't quit when normally I would have. I woke up this morning feeling pretty awful which almost never happens as a result of poker outcomes.

Also unfortunate was the fact that it was on my staking arrangement which had been going quite well before that hiccup. This arrangement is in the "trial period" currently to see whether or not he wants to put me in the bigger games that he has access to. Without going into too much detail this is a massively +EV opportunity for me, so even though I didn't lose any personal $ I put a dent in possibly a lot of future EV and income. I was kind of embarrassed to even text the guy and say what happened.

I did two things which were pretty stupid

1. I've been trying to play a few shorter sessions and quit on a timer whether winning or losing. Better focus, more intention etc etc. Yesterday I was winning small, the timer went off, everyone was already asleep and I decided to just keep playing without setting a new alarm. 6 hours later I was still sitting in my office getting destroyed.

2. Played super deep when my goal during this period is to reduce swings and take the easy $. Near the end I was literally 1000 bbs deep with a fun player at PLO 400 and managed to get AI a 2-1 favorite and lose both runs. I am less tilted by the outcome and more by the fact that I was sitting so deep. My incentive structure under this arrangement right now isn't about generating current $'s but about proving consistent win rate. Sitting so deep with a super agro fish, while obviously very +EV, is a recipe for bigger swings than I was incentivized to take.

Going to just take the rest of the day off and spend time with the family and then get back at it tomorrow.