Well I'm not interested in hunting you down But one question, did you know Paul Horn and Danny Teitelbaum when they were running a poker room in Ohio? I used to play with both of them in a private game in Virginia.

Hmm, not that I'm aware of so I definitely haven't played at their room, but there's a decent chance I'd recognize them if I saw them.

You won't be seeing them Dan apparently shot Paul dead a couple of years ago over a disagreement about the money Dan had invested in Paul's poker room outside Columbus. I'm not sure it's been fully adjudicated but my guess is Dan is getting life. Kind of a shame - he was a PHD economist and I'd never have thought he'd be in that situation.

I feel worse for Paul.

Well that's true but but when I got a call from a mutual friend saying "did you hear what happened to Paul Horn" my first thought was someone had killed him. He had always strolled on the shady side of life - but he was a damn good and fearless LHE player. The last time I saw Paul was at the Borgata - I'd been playing NL holdem. I was on the way to the cage and saw Paul sitting in a 50-100 LHE game. He was drunk and running over the table. Finally he and a younger guy decided to play heads up for a 10k freezeout. Paul buried the guy the first set, but he was getting drunker and drunker. I pretty much made him leave - he offered to pay me to sweat another set but I told him I don't need your money He had money hanging out of all of his pockets - got him back to his room and that was the last time I saw him. He was famous in the DC are for the Horn high-low which was k-3. He always played it like aces.

I love your stories. You should write a book

January/LA Poker Recap

Total January #s:
January Total +/-: +$15,685
Hours: 123:35
Hourly: +$126.91

PLO: +$10,681
PLO Hours: 77:00
PLO Hourly: +$138.71

NL: +$5,179
NL Hours: 36:25
NL Hourly: +$142.22

OE: -$176.00
OE Hours: 10:10
OE Hourly: -$17.31

LA Total +/-: +3,574.00
LA Hours: 40:40 (PLO: +$925, 4:50 hours) (NL: +$2,825, 25:40 hours) (OE: see above)
LA Hourly: +$87.89

All in all, I had a great month and I'm very pleased, but the LA trip came at an unfortunate time as games at home were off the chain. Halfway through the month, I was on pace to have my biggest month ever. Then, I left for LA, where I ended up playing half the volume that I would have at home due to distance/dogsitting restrictions and as such ended up with a disappointing monthly volume # by my normal standards. On the bright side, I built some confidence away from Ohio finally having a solid poker trip (the last two WSOPs have been disasters), even playing out of my comfort zone confined to short sessions largely during non-peak hours, and I enjoyed some awesome weather and spending quality time with my sister and her dog (who I grew to love). I feel great about things heading home tomorrow and hope to have an excellent February.

Not a bad hourly for a house sitting/dog sitting gig

Haha, indeed!

I respect that you didn't shirk your dog-sitting responsibilities, especially given that the pooch was a bit high maintenance. It would be easy for some people to roll their eyes about a dog being stressed out (I'm an animal guy, so I get where your sister's coming from) and just come and go as they pleased all week. Hell, if left in the care of some other poker players, that dog would have to worry about surviving the week, let alone having anxiety.

Nice results man.

Thanks, I appreciate this sentiment a lot. It ended up getting a lot easier the second half of the trip as the dog and I got into a nice routine; it ultimately was a lot of fun taking care of him and I already miss the little guy. It definitely affected the amount and quality of poker I could play, but at the end of the day I'd rather be a good brother and dogsitter than try to eke out max profit to the exclusion of everything else. I think the dog had a blast and I was happy to return the same happy and fun-loving dog to my sister that she had left.

Thanks, and too bad we never got to meet up. If every month this year goes like this one did, I'll be thrilled, but I know better than to have such expectations.



Taking off for Ohio in half an hour. Got some good reads ready for the flights (layover): The War of Art (already 25% through this one, not as good as I expected so far but hopefully it'll get better), Mark Cuban's How To Succeed at the Sport of Business, and Lori Greiner's book about entrepeneurship. Also have some recent James Altucher Show podcasts I may listen to.

Playing in Vegas has inspired me to play live more often. We'll see if I follow through though.

I liked the way you warded off the LA distractions. I don't reckon I could have coped with a needy dog, all that traffic and the lack of sleep. Nice one!

LA traffic blows, one of the main reasons I want to move away from here.

subbed. GL!

Subbed

Poker Update

The local poker gods seem to be angry at me for having left. In the 14 hours I've played since returning home (all 5-10 PLO), I'm stuck $1500, mostly because of several dumb decently big pots: 1) $2600 total pot, I get it allin pre with AAK4ds against AA43ss, we agree to run it twice, the first runout brings two treys and I end up getting quartered, 2) $1600 pot, I get it in on the flop with top set of jacks against bare bottom set of fives and we agree to run it once...I promptly get one outed on the river, 3) $1800 pot, I river aces full on a JJ610A runout where flop went check check, turn I get check-minraised, then river villain check-raises again...villain obviously flopped quads.

Life Update

So far, I'm meeting some of my goals pretty well while not making as much progress as I'd like on others but still making some progress. On the self-education front, I've done well, having read about five books since starting this thread and listening to a lot of episodes of The James Altucher Show and The B.S. Report. I've also watched a ton of episodes of Shark Tank to learn more about business and entrepeneurship (on a related note, I read Mark Cuban's book on the flight back home and started Lori Greiner's, both great reads).

Before I left for LA, I had been working out about every other day. I exercised a decent amount in Los Angeles as well, hopefully enough to maintain my progress. I'm heading to the gym after I finish this post, then heading to the casino.

On the dating front, I've been messaging again and have some dialogues going. There are a couple of prospects on match that seem promising.


Ha, thanks, it was a struggle but it got easier over time as I tempered my expectations to fit the circumstances, another skill I'm learning from the buddhist and stoic literature I've been reading. On a note related to sleep, even having been back home a couple days now and having slept 8 hours/night I still feel like I have some catching up to do. Hopefully I'll feel 100% again soon.

Thanks!

So, I've had a whirlwind couple of days of poker since that last post.

Thursday
On Thursday, a premonition hit me as I got into my car to head to the casino that I was going to have a really bad session. Among the dozen or so times I've had such a weird feeling, the premonition has proven true probably ten of those times. The logical side of my brain knows that such thoughts are irrational, but some other, more primitive part of my brain is superstitious enough to get worried when something like this happens. I suppose that there may be some basis in legitimately grounded fear as there may be things floating around in my subconscious that give me a vague awareness that I'm not going to play my best if I'm about to play poker, but typically when these premonitions come it's at a time when I feel on a conscious level like I'm prepared to play well.

It didn't take long for the doom forecasted by the premonition to manifest itself. Despite playing in a particularly amazing 5-10 PLO lineup, I ended up running into a lot of brutal spots and losing $4500 quickly. My traditional stop loss is $3500, but I decided awhile ago I'd let myself go beyond that for these 5-10 PLO games given how big they have been playing. I decided I'd let myself play a final $1000 stack. For awhile, it looked like I'd have a decent shot of getting it all back, running that buyin up to $3400 as my must move table turned into a very soft, short-handed game as players got moved to the main game. However, once I arrived at the main game, things went bad quickly, and I ended up losing a bunch with AAxx aipf then punting off my last $600 jamming pre with the first reasonable hand I was dealt thereafter, which of course is inexcusable.

I left the casino stuck $5500, my biggest loss ever, by at least $900. I left the casino furious and ready to punch a hole in a wall. What hurt as much as the big loss was my acute awareness that my attitude most of the night had been very poor, to an embarrassing extent. The moment the session started to go poorly, I got angry and I didn't put enough effort into managing my anger, instead doing things like cursing my bad luck, angrily/too forcefully mucking my cards, being short with dealers, etc. While I fortunately avoided saying anything pejorative directed towards other players, it was still inexcusable for me to be such a negative presence at the table. As I've mentioned before, I used to be a huge tilt monkey and have made a lot of strides to overcome that, but I still have a lot of ground to cover.

I place a high priority on being a respectful, positive presence at the table, as there are all kinds of reasons that's the best attitude to have, and when I find myself falling short of that it really bothers me. I'm especially disturbed by these shortcomings as I know logically that negative variance is simply part of the game and I'm not entitled to any better luck than anyone else; in fact, the negative variance is critical for poker to thrive, as it allows losing players to enjoy some good fortune and keep coming back. Yet, I can still get very angry; I can also become irrational and find myself falling prey to negative expectations as to outcomes before they happen because I'm "running so bad," which I'm sure affects my play. These mental game leaks of anger and irrational thinking have been an albatross around my neck and I'm ready to destroy them. One of my biggest resolutions for this year is to continue improving my mental game.

Friday
On Friday, I woke up and, surprisingly, I felt okay. After other sessions where I've lost big, it's carried forward to the next day, and several times I've woken up after them and found myself continuing to lie in bed with my eyes open, in sad disbelief as to what happened the previous night. I started thinking about these 5-10 PLO games and how amazing generally they've been. I decided instead of focusing on my bad luck I'd focus on the extent to which these games can be the catalyst for a huge month and start putting all of that mental energy previously directed into things I can't control instead into how to best exploit these games for maximum profit.

I arrived at the casino hungry and ready to have a big night. Fortunately, things started off well right away, and every time I looked down my stack seemed to have grown larger. I won one big pot, but other than that I won a lot of medium-sized pots, many on well-timed bluffs or semi-bluffs, just playing in the zone and keeping a laser focus on making as much $ as possible. Of course, I ran pretty well, too. When all was said and done, I finished +$5716, and was thrilled to have won back the previous day's huge loss in under 24 hours. One of the sessions of my career I'm the most proud of.

In other news, after I got home last night I had a blast watching my friend (and former live poker sparring partner) plzd0nate stream his bovada session (doing my part to get you more viewers, buddy!). It inspired me to consider streaming myself, although mostly for my own education, as if I did I would probably sit down at an o8 table or two and have players I consider better than me at o8 watch to offer advice on how I can play that game better.

Meanwhile, on the life updates front, I got a # from a girl who seems promising on match and plan on setting up a date soon, while also having promising developments going on with other girls. While this local PLO era has the potential for massive profit and I want to continue grinding a lot, I also don't want to lose sight of my other priorities.

Certainly some interesting psychological territory here. I wonder how this passage would read if you changed "premonition" to "anxiety". Would this be fair? If so, then might you have approached this "weird feeling" differently, perhaps addressed it more directly? It would seem normal to be somewhat anxious about getting off to a good start to the month or returning to your home poker room after the trip to LA.

Of course, the problem with a "premonition" is that it gives us the retrospective belief that an unwanted situation could have been avoided. That is, our vision of the future told us not to play today, and, yet, because we're not superstitious, we ignore the feeling. Hence, the anger and frustration when subject to a nasty patch of negative variance, not least because random events would appear to conspire against us and validate irrational thought patterns.

Anyway, really like the honesty of your post. Glad to hear you "weathered the storm" the following day!

Had another insane session last night that ultimately went 14 hours, ending at 10 AM. Gotta love the contrast between my poker experiences here and in LA, as I've averaged 10 hours/session since coming home Tuesday night and have already played over 40 hours here in less than a week versus playing 2.5-3.5 hour sessions in LA and playing 40 hours total there in over two weeks.

Last night started decently enough, as even though I was stuck in 5-10 PLO waitlist purgatory for 2.5 hours, I made an easy, stress-free $800 playing 2-5 nl. PLO got off to a bad start when I found myself in a weird spot.

HH: A couple limpers. Crazy lag player ($8k stack) raises to $50 on the HJ. Tight player ($2800 stack) who's a little tilted and angry with the lag player from a previous hand raises to $180 in the SB. I ($2100 stack) flat in the BB with KKJJss. Crazy lag player raises the pot. Tight player repots it.

Weird spot for me as obviously at least one of the players has AAxx and I don't have the best made hand. However, I still have a premium hand that is unlikely to be crushed, and if both players have AA (which seemed at least 50% possible given my history with these players) then I'm a favorite. I needed 30-31% equity for calling off my stack to be profitable and decided I probably had that. I called and ended up losing to the tight player's AsJsQQ (other player had a junk AA hand).

Ran the #s later and they suggested a call was appropriate, as I have 31% equity against a range of AA for one player and a range of top 5% hands for the other player. Meanwhile, I have 38% equity against two random AA ranges. The kind of spot where calling is profitable but my profit expectation is minimal, for a ~$6400 pot. In other words, variance is fun.



After rebuying for $1500, I built up a nice stack again when the following hand occurred.

HH: Player button straddles to $20. Several players limp. I ($3700 stack) raise to $100 in the CO with J1098ss (hearts), BTN ($3k stack) raises to $395 , crazy lag player ($7k stack) flats, I flat.

Flop ($1260) 10d7d4s. Crazy lag player checks, I bet pot, BTN quickly folds, crazy lag player calls.

Turn ($3780) 2s. Crazy lag player leads $2400. I call off my stack expecting to be an equity favorite as I know this player's tendencies well. We decide to run it twice. Villain turns over his hand and has K653sss for a flopped junk wrap and a turned flush draw.

First river: Kd; I lose to a pair of kings. Second river: 9s. I make a straight but lose to the runner runner flush.



As soon as I lost this huge pot, seemingly the millionth time in these big PLO games I've gotten it in as a favorite and gotten scooped RIT by a junk hand, I thought of my post from yesterday and kept my composure nicely, taking a breath and deciding getting angry wouldn't benefit me at all.

Now stuck $3800, I rebought for my last $1500 and prepared to play my best. Several hours later after playing very well in a now short-handed game, despite making few monster hands and mostly just getting thin value, I had built my stack up to $5k and racked up a winner for the day, stuck a little in PLO but still +$400 or so overall thanks to the nl winning session.

I felt extremely good, and more than that I felt very proud of my mental game resiliency compared to the other night. I am more proud of this session than any I've played in awhile. I'm very excited to hop back into these games after taking a couple days off, especially now that I feel more comfortable than ever playing $5k+ stacks.

I'm always glad to see you pop in here as you've been providing some thought-provoking content (btw, I've been enjoying reading your thread). My hunch is that you're probably correct that the premonition was probably tied to some unconscious narrative that I was either trying to perpetuate or avoid that had been the cause of anxiety. Perhaps exactly the kind of narrative that you suggested. And, of course, even though I mentioned that the premonitions have seemed to validate themselves the majority of the time, it's worth noting that I'm probably subject to a cognitive bias that makes me much more likely to remember when they've been validated as to when they haven't.

It's funny, I consider myself a very logical, rational person, but I find myself entertaining ideas sometimes that that side of my brain knows are ludicrous. For example, a friend of mine frequently lets me sweat his cards if I'm not in the hand, and the % of times he has made a monster hand with me sweating has been insane, like top 1% of outcomes good over a decent sample. Two nights ago, for example, he showed me three PLO hands that contained a big pair, and literally 3/3 times he flopped top set and won a big pot. This is totally normal when I've sweated him, and also pretty normal regardless of my sweat, as my friend seems to run 5 standard deviations above normal. That same night, he won a promotion among the 200 people eligible in the room, which is like the sixth promotion he's won playing 20% of the hours I've played when I've won like none.

Obviously, this is all just randomness expressing itself in a particularly entertaining fashion. My friend isn't inherently luckier than anyone else; I'm just as likely to win a promotion the next time we're in the room together as he is. Yet a part of my brain believes that he actually is a lucky person and that this will affect future events, even though I understand on an intellectual, conscious level that such an idea is rubbish. It's a weird cognitive dissonance that I find both a little amusing and a little disturbing.

Nice job keeping your cool and playing your game after being stuck 2 buyins in plo. The mental game is what seperates the good players from the great ones.

This place sounds rigged. Remind me to never play there.

Anyone can have a winning session. Getting stuck big, managing tilt and coming back is much much harder. Nice work DJ.

PLO full of variance, definitely a will tester.