Its possible I'm wrong, it wouldn't be the first time. But given this

"Saw multiple of Bike's 5/10 young reg crowd opting not to play my NLHE game with a seat open with 5 ridiculously bad fish where there were only 3 players who could even remotely be considered decent. And people say poker is dead "

The "my" part implies that it did have something to do with him. And he is implying that they didnt realize that even though Don is better than them that 5 fish outwieghs any ev they lose to Don.

Secondly, the part of only 3 players that are remotely decent. 1 of which was myself, and the other was one of the top 5/10NL winners in LA over the last 5 years.

It seems I was misintrepting. I think your verbage was misleading though and/or innacurate. I am not trying to have a pissing contest. Im competive but not petty. I thought you meant it was because of you because, I would assume that you consider yourself better than "remotely decent". I consider you far better than that.
I consider myself better than that.
Mike is better than that.
That makes the game having 3 what I would call at minimum "good tough regs"

That Indian kid Raj, who I met just last night, played well from what I could tell as well.

Thats why I interpreted your comments as such. And often people (I assumed you were talking about Jeremy) have different game selection criteria. Do I think a player like Jeremy was +ev in the lineup? Yes. And I don't know him personally at all, but its certainly possible he didnt want to fight the higher variance 5/10 for a few $ more per hr agaisnt tough regs where he could play 5/5 and be the best player at the game. You recently wrote about playing 1/2NL and how high a WR was possible.

Regarding best player, that's a can of worms I will attempt to address without opeing the lid wide open. Winrates are an indicator but are over rated. Its a litmus test at best. I think the best way is to have dialogue of peoples thought process of poker which is still tough to evaluate without bias, then combine that with the more extraneous traits of a good pro if you incude that in being "good" such as BR management, discipline, tilt etc. On that table I considered you the 3rd best becasue, I considered myself the best based on mixture of founded beleifs and on confidence; hopefully more the former. I consider Mike to be exemplary at NL; fwiw he does some things way better than I and some things worse. And I didnt see anyone that was close to being as good as you after that. Its all just my opinion though.

I think its cool you have this blog. I enjoy reading it as do others. Its an entertaining read and it keeps me up on happenings at the Bike. I like following your progess as well. Zero wrong with you sharing stories of your success with people and even bragging. At times though I think youv'e been a little misguided. One instance was, you were upset that people who have been reading your blog didnt introduce themselves at the table. You provide this blog becasue you enjoy doing so, not as some philanthropic action. You rightly so get satisfaction from having people follow your progression and things like blogs can be beneficial in a counseling way as well. Your cost for recieving this following is opening your personal life and poker insight to the semi-public. Its a trade off but people don't owe it to you to let you know that they know stuff about your poker game.

You quit a guaranteed 6 figure income job? If your expenses are so LLLOWWWWWWW then why are you playing 1/2? I'm sorry, but I can't imagine any reason on earth I would QUIT a guaranteed job paying $100k or more and not playing poker in my spare time. Making a goal of $15 an hour after making descent and good money is dumb. Get real and stop lying fool!!!

POKER is DEAD!

Pass it on.

OK now back to printing money at HP.

Did you read the first page only? He has hit baller status already! I recommend you read the entire thread. It is actually very interesting. I know you will find this to be the case as well.

Poker will never be completely dead. This is due to the fact that poker is played by humans. These same humans must be patient and disciplined as well as have the skill to win. Many humans are incapable of exhibiting all of these characteristics perfectly at all times. I think you get where I am going with this. Game dynamics will change. The strategy required to win will change. When edges become less entrepreneurs will do whatever they need to do to make it a profitable venture again. New games will be invented. However, IMO an ante needs to become standard and not optional in no limit holdem to force people to play poker more than is required today. It would only be good for the game. Too many people are risk averse and just want to peddle the nuts and that is bad for the game.

@HustlerLA:

Regarding the wording on the 2nd bolded part, the reason I worded it like that because of the fish, not the good players. I would have said the same if Galfond was at the table. Because you know, sometimes there are games where it's 3 regs and 5 fish, but the fish aren't even that bad and they understand some poker concepts, or they are fairly tight and difficult to crush. However those 5/8 guys last night probably have an average VPIP of 50% and an average light 3-bet percentage of 0.5%, and that's being generous. That game was AMAZING.

Regarding the wording on the 1st bolded part, the thought never crossed my mind. It seems very standard to refer to whatever table you're playing at as "my table" instead of "the table I was playing at".

Not sure how well you know the guys I'm talking about, but betweeen the two tables next to us, there were 3 players who play 5/10 about 90% of the time it runs who chose to pass on that game. It's true people have different criteria for game selection. However I have seen all 3 of those guys FIGHT to gets seats in a lineups that were certainly less profitable for them than the one we played at (e.g., something like 7/9 mediocre-decent regs, 1 whale, and 1 nitfish).

Regarding best poker player, I agree it's not something I want to open a can of worms in this thread right now either. Feel free to PM me if you want to discuss.

If you honestly can't imagine any reason, then I can only assume 1 of two things:

You're either REALLY lucky to love your job, or REALLY unlucky to have never experienced happiness/freedom.

Thanks for the comments everyone.

All good Don, carry on. Sorry for jumping the gun and being a lil confrontational. Keep crushing the poker and the blog. I wanna see you hit the 100k mark soon.

No problem at all, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree 100% about that last paragraph you edited in that I shouldn't have been upset about that, however I'm still really glad I ranted about it because it actually worked way better than I could have imagined (results oriented? ).

No not really. I just know what its like to be broke and stressed out. Running bad, bad BR management, overall bills, and the girlfriend wanting the moola are a big part LOL. Whatever the circumstances, I just don't want people to experience being broke. Easy money sometimes is too good to be true.

Good luck at it anyways.

MoneyMike,
I completely understand where you are coming from. Aesah confirmed he has been very blessed in his life. He claimed he was simply unhappy in his job and it was more important to him to be happy than to continue receiving the money he was making. The truth is that life is not fair. Just go out there, believe in yourself, and go make yourself happy regardless of what that means to you. I am in the process of doing something similar myself. Aesah left his job to pursue happiness. Just go get it guy we all know you can do it. You just have to believe it yourself man. That is what I have learned. You cannot become anything significant in this life at anything if you are not happy doing it. You simply will not have the motivation to succeed. We are guaranteed life, liberty, and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. Happiness is not guaranteed. You have to go pursue it. Who cares what anyone else tells you to do with your life. You go out there and do what you want to do man.

Well, can't say I know what that's like, but I know what it's like to reluctantly end a night out early so I that I can reluctantly wake up to my alarm in the morning, reluctantly spend the next 10 hours bored out of my skull, repeat for 3 years.

As Hustle said I know i was very blessed to have that over worse alternatives, but it surely doesn't beat what I'm doing now.

I miss you we gotta catch up over dinner sometime

Most 9-5's are just repetitive mindless busy work. You are limited in your ability to grow. You are limited in your ability to learn and pursue the things that are important to you in life. You get so tired and burned out from no sleep that it is flat out damaging to your mind and body. I say go pursue your passions in life. Regardless of where you started out Aesah, there are people more fortunate than you and also people less fortunate than you. Therefore at the same time you were not actually given anything. You went out and took it. As I said below life is not fair. However, you have went out to pursue your unique happiness and that is something that I respect. I don't even have to ask the question. I know that you are happier now than you were at that job. On a side note there are certainly people who were handed the world and are miserable doing what was handed to them. This is because that is not what nature intended for them. They didn't have the courage like you to really go pursue what they want. END RANT

Playing LATB right now

Played 6 hours mostly PLO some NLHE. Played the NLHE portion very poorly in terms of basically everything, bad folds/calls/raises with bad betsizing/ranging, you can laugh at it on LATB replay. Really no excuse for that kind of performance, possibly my worst session in terms of play I can remember. Guess I'm still life tilt. GG.

Down $2500 in 6 hours. Blah.

LA total: $71835, 578 hours.

Regarding the other topic of conversation, every time someone says "man you're so lucky" if I win a flip or whatever, my mind immediately jumps to the fact I was born into a family that was able to feed me, send me to school, etc. fk yea I'm lucky.

Don't be so hard on yourself. Everyone has bad sessions. No one thinks you're a bad player either.

Aesah,

Have you ever struggled when switching between PLO/NLHE games? If I play any longer than 4 hours of PLO, it's almost impossible to play anything above my C-game in NLHE.

Yea switching games hurts but only when I havent played one for a long time, like several weeks.

Thx for the comments!

+1 to this observation.

There was a period of time where I would consistently arrive at the casino at like 11 AM, play 3 hours of NLHE while waiting for PLO to start, then playing several hours of PLO. That worked completely fine since I was still regularly playing both games every day, however recently I've been struggling to range/betsize properly in NLHE since I haven't played it much at all in the past month.

Some other stories/things going on in my life:

Found $20 on the floor at Subway. Asked people in front of me if they dropped, no one claimed, so I bought lunch with it.

Later that day, found $200 in the ATM at Bike. Not sure whether it's more likely that someone withdrew $200 and completely forgot, or something withdrew like $1000 and for some reason didn't count/pick up all the bills.

Played a pickup laser tag game on Monday. Average age of opponents was probably around 15, lol. I feel like such a kid.

Watched The Internship and The Hangover III. Both were reasonably enjoyable, I'm a really tough movie critic though so that's actually saying a lot.

DEFINITELY PLANNING TO GO TO VEGAS SOON. When is soon? Hell if I know. Could be today, could be in 2 weeks, life is good. I'd never be able to say something like this at my 9-5

Aesah,

I've been following your thread since the beginning and am a long time reader in the 2+2 forums. First, congrats on your ability to follow your true passion and play a game for a living. It takes a ton of patience and serious commitment to achieve the short-term success you have thus far. Props all around from me, and you seem like a really stand up guy on top of that, so hats off to you!

I am by no means a perfect individual, and I don't want to come off as preaching to you because that's not my place to do so, but was going to suggest that instead of keeping that $200 that you found in the ATM, you could put it towards a good cause such as: http://www.nokidhungry.org/

I am definitely a believer in paying it forward if you are ever in a position to do so, and seeing first hand some of the good that will go such a long way truly changes lives.

Just a thought, and by all means you can go tell me to pound sand. I wish you nothing but the best in your journey and hope to catch up with you sometime to grab a beer in one of the cities you may be in. If you are ever in the Orlando area, feel free to hit me up.

Kellen
321-960-7657

I don't want to discuss the charity topic here, but thank you for all the kind words!

Down $1k in 5 hours, can't think of any particularly noteworthy hands. Flopped an open ended straight flush draw with nothing to go with it on Kx8h6h heads up, bet and got potted vs. someone who will never really have a bluff here. I called, and check/folded a blank turn. Maybe should have just been a fold on a the flop? PLO hand ofc.

LA total: $70835, 583 hours.