So I have this thing for thigh gaps (I know, how picky can you be right?) and man, this is just exceptional.

Love this thread, especially, when it was more detailed with stories. You are a very good writer.

I found Meale's thread from your last update. It was well worth the time to read all of that one. Thanks for the recommendation.

Good luck OP. I know a lot of people don't post in this thread but I'm sure there are a lot of lurkers like myself.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

I also found Meale thread thanks to OP and as well a long time lurker. Please bring back the stories.

Home game pt.5

I didn't have any money to play and the only other way I had to make money was dealing home games. I had made some contacts so I was talking to some guys who hosted games and getting dealing jobs wasn't easy. One reason is if the hosts let the dealers play in the game they'd often loan them in order to keep the game going and collect more rake. This means they'll usually be indebted to the hosts. Those guys will always be prioritized over someone like me who's going to get payed out with cash at end of the night.

My daily routine would usually consist of me sleeping in till nearly dark. Once I woke up I would usually lay in bed for hours just looking at my phone and texting people. I might only leave my room to go to the kitchen or move to the couch to watch tv. I hardly ever left my apartment unless it was to go to the store or deal a home game. I had a couple dealing gigs but nothing consistent. I would prob make a couple hundred bucks one night a week or maybe 1-2 more if I was lucky.

One day a guy named Brett I'd dealt for a few times told me he needed a dealer and I agreed. He said that it wasn't his game but he'd be bringing the players and sharing the rake from the game with the host. He told me the address and I met him there. While we waited for the host to show up he was very open with me about the situation. Brett said that he was finished running home games and was planning to move somewhere else. He was selling his player list to this guy and partnering up with him in the meantime. His partner was going to make payments through the rake until he had enough to purchase the list. In the meantime this guy would hold onto it, text the players and take half. He seemed to bash him every chance he got so it seemed to me like he didn't like him very much. I asked about the rake and he said he didn't care about his reputation, he was leaving anyway and for me to take as much as humanly possible. For some reason I trusted him and told him how I could set the deck for him to win if he played in the game. He was very intrigued by this and didn't believe me at first. I layed it all out for him what we had to do and he was down. I had one problem, the table had an automatic shuffler. I asked him how we could get out of using it and he suggested we tell the host that it's too loud and to let me hand shuffle.

The host showed up, then some players and we got started. I dealt the game from the beginning and was completely straight. This went on for a couple hours and I texted him I needed relief so I could set the deck. He gets in the box and gives me a break. There was no backroom for me here so the only place I had to set the deck was the kitchen. The problem was all the players had to walk through there in order to get outside to smoke. I was constantly interrupted and had to pretend I was sorting decks when they walked by. The way I had originally learned I could lay cards out in front of me in the backroom on a poker table, but I couldn't do this on the countertop with people walking back and forth all the time. I had to hold all the cards in my hand instead. I managed to pull it off but this would require some practice.

I got back in the box, dealt the hand and he won. The problem was he was splashing around with this free money and gave a bunch back. I did it again and then just dealt straight for the rest of the night. After the game broke he did the numbers with the host and then me and him walked out to my car. I gave him a ride home and we chopped the money he had won. I mentioned how he should play tighter because it's my money on the table as well. He said next time he would count the pots from the rigged hands and we'd chop that only. All his play outside of those hands would be on him. I agreed to this and went home.

This game was running consistently, I'd say 3 nights a week at least. Players were complaining about how good he ran. He always was playing crazy and losing a lot outside of the set decks. He kept his word and covered all those losses. There'd be games where I'd do very well and he'd win small or be breakevenish. Sometimes he'd get stuck right away and be texting me that I need to set the deck and boss me around. He also had his own ideas about what should/shouldn't be done in order to avoid detection. I would give my input but at the end of the day it was his game so I had to do what he said. He'd also not care anymore about being too obvious about it when he was stuck a lot. He'd want to cover the biggest stack and bad beat them on multiple run outs in case they wanted to run it twice or three times. He wanted to scoop always. He'd also want to stack multiple people sometimes in the same hand.

His partner became suspicious. The first 1/2 dozen times he won he was laughing about it but after that he would ignore it when players brought up his rungood. Once he reached his hand into the tray and inspected the deck to see if it was sorted or not when I just sat down. Of course I had it stacked and ready to go. He never accused him but I could tell by his demeanor that he was onto us.

Pat and Michael

Pat and Michael were two of the house players from Martin’s game that I had become friendly with and warned them they were being taken advantage of when I quit. Pat had also dealt Martin’s game after I left. Michael had asked if he could rent the 2nd bedroom in my apartment and I agreed. They were best friends and Pat would often come over to hang out at my place and play FTP/stars MTT’s.

They had some sort of falling out with Martin and had broken into his game and stolen everything, tables, chairs, chips and cards. I came home one night and saw the table propped up against my fireplace in the living room and told them they had to get it the **** out of there. I despised Martin and thought it was funny that for the second time a disgruntled dealer had ransacked the joint.

We found a solution to our home game problem as well. Brett hadn’t had a losing session since I started dealing there and players were often muttering about it. The thing is most people didn’t stay until the end of the night so they wouldn’t know that he was undefeated. Regardless we couldn’t keep this up forever so we enlisted the help of Pat and Michael. Pat would deal sometimes and Michael being unable to deal was a house player. Pat would also play in the game sometimes when I dealt. This way we had 4 possible people who could get pots shipped to them. We’d pay them a flat fee to sit there all night when they played.

I had started playing MTTs online all day on my days off and so did Michael. We’d play a similar schedule and chat online the whole time and became very close. We’d talk strategy and hang out a lot. I even offered to teach him how to deal so he could make more money as well.

One day I woke up and went to fire up some MTTs and wasn’t able to login to stars. When I tried I got a pop up saying to contact security. I checked my email and had received one from them saying my account was temporarily suspended and asked me to explain my connection to a number of different accounts. One of which was the one Michael had been playing under. I immediately asked him about it and he told me that he had a negative balance on Stars and FTP and had been playing on his brothers accounts this whole time. The other accounts on the list were people that had transferred money back and forth to these accounts. I was livid and demanded he’d settle up with stars so they would unlock my account. He didn’t have the money so I was forced to loan it to him.

We had all planned a trip to a casino that accepted players 18+. Michael was broke and indebted to me now so I just assumed he wasn’t going to go anymore. The day before he messaged me asking to loan him more money for expenses and buyins. He had been looking forward to this trip so much and I had a soft spot in my heart for him so I agreed. He had planned on learning to deal when we returned in order to repay me.

We rented a car and drove to the casino. Another friend of theirs came with us who was a cash game player that grinded 100 NL on UB. We stayed there for about a week or so during a tournament series they were having. I’d play whatever MTT they ran and played a bunch of 5/10 and 2/5 after I busted or when they ran a non NL event. Pat played the main event which was a $2500 I think with his whole roll. I wasn’t having a great trip so I skipped it. After he bricked we all left. I don’t think any of us won a lot but we all had fun and enjoyed ourselves.

After we got back Michael was having some sort of trouble with his girlfriend and wasn’t coming to the game much. He was now into me for the FTP/Stars loan, loan for the casino trip and impending rent. He did not come to the game to learn how to deal like he’d told me and was basically MIA. I think he showed up and gave me some money towards rent but had fallen behind. I gave him an ultimatum and said if he didn’t pay me x amount by first of the month he had to move. He promised to get the money from his mom and settle up. When the day came he only gave me half of what he had promised and I told him he had 30 days to square everything. For the next month he had plenty of opportunity to come to the games and make money but he was too caught up with his gf drama to care. I kicked him out and Brett offered me pennies on the dollar to take over the debt and make him work it off at the game.

Black Friday

I logged in to my Stars and FTP accounts like I did everyday when I woke up and saw the FBI logo. I immediately went to twoplustwo and social media and everything was blowing up. I sat on my computer for hours reading and learned that Bodog and the Merge Network were still operational. I had a Bodog account for years and made an account on Carbon right away. Looking at the MTT schedules on those sites made me sick. It was nothing compared to stars/FTP and I was scared to even deposit on those sites in fear they would be shutdown as well. I had nearly felted my stars account the day before but had been running hot on FTP and had a 2500 withdrawal pending. My remaining FTP balance was nearly all the money I had in the world.

I decided I would take the $600 I had in my checking account to the casino and play some live cash. Got on the lists for 1/2 and 2/5 and unfortunately they called me for 2/5 first. I sat with all my money and luckily won a few buyins. On the drive home I imagined a world where this was my life and I never had to deal another rigged hand in that dirty home game or keep a poker face when the whole table was talking about how I had just won another huge pot with a cooler or bad beat. I knew this was my ticket to a better life and I wanted that more than anything else.

After a short time I had enough money where I was comfortable going to play 2/5 at the local casino with no fear of going broke. I refused to have anything to do with home games and would politely decline offers to deal/play in them. This was my first real foray into playing live cash full time and the only thing saving me was the games were ridiculously soft. I was quite bad and was making these awful squeeze plays with suited gappers and middling offsuit connected hands vs like 5x opens and tight ranges. I was literally burning money in that place and somehow still winning albeit not a lot. Since I had kicked Michael out I had ~4k usd in expenses per month and was lucky to even make that much.

One night this massive whale was in my game shoving preflop with any two cards and generally acting crazy. He got called for 5/10 and I ran to put my name on the list. When I got in the game I bought in for the max of 1500. Someone opened and I flatted with JJ, whale makes some huge raise and it folds to me, I jam and he calls, the flop is 647r and I look up to him holding 85o to show me before they even dealt the turn. I reloaded and got stacked again in some unmemorable hand. I reloaded a 3rd time and he left soon after. I went home feeling completely dejected. I was especially salty because of the 85 hand and it was going through my mind over and over.

I was invited to a Brett’s home game the next day and this time he convinced me to go. He told me how he had his own game now and there was a group of wealthy guys who played regularly. I came after the game had been running for a while and stacks were kind of deep. I was dealt a combo draw and won a 3 way allin vs some monster Hands I can’t remember what exactly. We ran it twice and I scooped, some guy took a pic of the board because it was so outlandish and such a big pot for the stakes. The game broke soon afterwards and once I had chopped with Brett it was like the previous night had never happened. I no longer felt sorry for myself but instead that feeling was replaced with guilt over stooping to this level again. I wanted to succeed in poker so that I would never have to feel this way again.

Vammooooooo, the goat is back! :')

Thanks for the story OP! Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

are you writing a 2018 recap ?
I would like to see some graphs

Yes, only graph I could show would be excel spreadsheet graph with my wins/loss per session prob won't do that. I think I played like ~65k tracked hands in 2018 and its possible I played 8x that amount in total.

Dec. Update

Had biggest month so far online. I got a cold for a few days and played right through it bc games were so good. Some regs got temp banned on my main site for using software so games were better than usual. Added another site and started playing 1k on there as well.


[x]Do not open chat box under any circumstances-

[x]Do not watch vids when playing-

[x]Before I buy anything ask myself two questions, Is it necessary? Can I postpone this purchase? -

[x]Update thread monthly-

[x]One day per week where I do as little as possible related to poker-

[x]One day per week where I dedicate time to off the table work- -really wanted to finish the year strong so was mainly focused on playing and volume last couple months. Still did this but ratio of play time to study is still way off kilter.

[x]Do not total up $ to see results while playing- -finally free of this, words can’t describe how it improves my state of mind during play.

[x]Journal once a day at end of the session-been doing this but its kind of ****. Still just jotting down some short notes from the session.

[ ] Start playing as many 10/20 tables as possible every day with 0 game selection at some point during 2018. Only add 5/10 games as filler when I need tables-I at some point during 2018. Only add 5/10 games as filler when I need tables-there’s still plenty of 10/20 games at my disposal and I don’t even have money on the sites. I do play 10/20 on the sites I’m playing but end up playing a ton of 5/10 as well still. Still game selecting some in those games.

NSFW

Need to catch up but in going forward. Love the back story

Nothing results related for end of year update?

If you don't want to share exact dollar results, can you give the people anything ? Was it a good year? Are you making more than you were when playing mostly live, etc.?

Also where do you see your career going next few years?

Will do a separate writeup for 2018

2018 recap

Overall I’m quite happy with how things went in 2018. To start the year I was playing 3-4 tables of 2k NL and when the year ended I felt quite comfortable 8 tabling and mixing in some 1k tables as well. I also am more consistent with the hours I play and my routine. I pretty much sit down and play the same times and the same days every week and play w/e games are available on the sites I have money on. I’m pretty comfortable playing 2-3k Hands a day 6 days a week now. Results wise I had a big year and only had two substantial downswings with 0 losing months

I do not regret the decision to move away from live poker and the quality of life is like night and day. Being able to do everything on my terms and only interacting with people I choose to is amazing. I did make a few trips to casinos. I played 3 live tourneys and bricked them all for net loss of ~20k. I also played cash games a few times and don’t really have a desire to do that anymore. The cool thing about tournaments is I can go to the casino with intention of playing a certain game and just sit down and play when I get there. With cash I have to get on a list and possibly play lower stakes while waiting to play higher. Big games can break abruptly as well which is pretty annoying. I think going forward I’m only going to casinos to play a few tournaments a year. If I play cash it’ll be a big game that I’m guaranteed to have a seat in, otherwise meh.

As far as off the table work I still have a lot of room for improvement in this area. I estimate I probably spent ~100 hours on my computer doing poker related things besides playing which is prob ~15:1 ratio or so. I can definitely do better and with some guidance that’s exactly what I plan to do. My main site not allowing HH importing into database is sort of a built in excuse for not reviewing my own play. I did try and do some screen recording but it’s time consuming and not practical. I have added a site that allows me to store hands in PT4 now so this will be a non issue. I spent a lot of time in 2018 trying to find someone to coach me in 6max. I did interact with some people but was unable to find anyone I wanted to work with. The last person I worked with was excellent so the bar is very high when trying to choose someone. If anyone here is in a similiar situation I’d say be very careful when trying to choose a poker coach. A lot of people out there are misrepresenting themselves. I do believe I’ve found someone now who is going to work for me luckily. I did some work with a mental coach before and I found this to be beneficial. My plan going forward is to have a poker coaching session and mental coaching session every single week. This will end up costing me roughly 1 buyin per month and I’m excited to see how it will benefit me. I look at the time I have to dedicate towards poker in two ways: 1. Time playing and realizing my current winrate and 2. Time spent working on improving my winrate. Since I will most likely continue playing for some time it makes sense for me to dedicate more time and resources towards #2 than I have been up until this point.

My poker setup has undergone a big transformation since the beginning of 2018. I now have a standing desk which I will stand at in conjunction with an anti fatigue mat for approximately 1 hour per day. I have a two computer setup, one for poker play and one for Poker sims. I am using Remote Desktop to access the 2nd computer with the same monitors. I used a tape measure to have everything on my desk perfectly symmetrical. I researched wire management and have everything I can out of sight and tucked into raceways or sleeves. I have a mini fridge right next to my desk where I keep food and plastic forks in case I’m forced to play a long session without a break Bc of game quality. I got an aluminum mousepad and some ergonomic rests for keyboard and mouse. The only real thing I could possibly improve would be aesthetic stuff but it’s ok for me as is. When I make purchases in the future I’ll be mindful of this, having similiar color schemes for lighting and accessories etc. The taskchair I bought during Black Friday sale is phenomenal. If you are playing decent stakes online I urge you to purchase a steelcase gesture with headrest. I can’t imagine there’s a better chair that exists for playing poker. Don’t skimp on deskchair, mattress or shoes you spend almost your entire life in these things and they last for a long time.

As far as health and nutrition goes I’ve made some improvements. I started eating vegetarian I think sometime in March and I’ve greatly enjoyed it so far. I really like having new food options at my age and I will prob continue this for as long as I live. I have stopped cooking completely and have been using a food prep service that allows me to pickup big boxes of meals twice a week at my gym. I think at some point when I have more time on my hands I’d like to get back to cooking myself but prob will continue on like this for the foreseeable future. It’s easy and frees me up to do other things like poker, errands and leisure activities.

My exercise routine has undergone some changes. I got into yoga at some point and I’ve now settled into a routine of going to 2 classes per week. I’ve also picked up running which I’m just now getting into, both indoor and outdoor. Between lifting running and yoga I’m able to do some form of exercise every day of the week. I think that besides poker fitness is my number one interest now and I’m very interested in educating myself more on the subject. I found the author Mark Rippetoe and from what I’ve read so far I can recommend him to anyone looking to learn more about lifting and so forth.

Most of my leisure time was spent watching television shows in full recline on my couch drinking herbal tea. I watched every decent show that came out and rewatched a ton of good shows. I like to watch tv when I eat so it sort of doesn’t cost me a ton of extra time. I will play some PC games but I didn’t really spend a lot of time with that. Sometimes when I play games I have to ask myself if I’m actually enjoying it or not. I think maybe bc I spend so much time on the computer with poker I just have no desire to do so for fun. I have gotten into listening to audio books which I can absorb while doing housework, driving or exercising. I can probably get through one book on average per month using audible.

The books I’ve completed and enjoyed in 2018:

The mental game of poker 1/2
The internet of money
Human Action
The 7 habits of highly effective people
Think and grow rich
How to win friends and influence people
The bitcoin standard
Superintelligence
The power of positive thinking(if you’re not religious just ignore all the god stuff, it’s still very applicable)
The power of now
Can’t hurt me

Books I’m in the middle of or want to read:

Practical programming for strength training
Outliers
Sovereign individual
Ethics of money production
Thinking strategically
Zerzerozero
The mind illuminated
Sapiens
Secrets of a millionaire mind
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Rich Dad Poor Dad
12 rules for life
Time management
Atomic habits

So all in all I’m happy with how things have been going and I think I have a very clear picture on how to create a path for success. I think I have an aptitude for poker and my work ethic is good enough that it’s possible for me to become an expert player. I will prob create a new thread for 2019 and if so I will drop the link here.

GLA in the new year

Ethics of money production is an amazing read after the Bitcoin standard.

Congrats on the great year! Sounds like you made a lot of strides, and overall optimized a bunch of little areas in your life.

Can you expand on the food service a little? How much does it cost you per week? How many of your total meals you eat for the week are from it?

I’ve used a couple different ones and the one I’m using now is ~1k per month and gives me 15 meals a week. I’ll usually just make myself a bowl of plain Cheerios with almond milk and almonds/cashews with a couple tablespoons of flax seed. I’ll sometimes have hot cereal instead and do oats with almonds, choc whey protein, cinnamon and chia seeds. Snacks I’ve been having lately are usually pretzels/crackers with peanut butter or just plain bagged salads without dressing. I always keep some organic apples in the house and try to eat 1 everyday. I do keep some bars by my computer to have when I need to play longer sessions. Besides that all my other calories come from the meals and these are a lot of tofu, lentils, beans, tempeh, split peas, eggs, veggies, rice, potatoes and noodles.

Here's some good products I bought for my computer:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/Logitech-G502...ords=g502+hero

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1.../#post54810133

You forgot the NSFW pic. Good luck on the new sites.

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Some more stories? ��