Caught 1st break of the day, got in 415 to win 972 on Bengals before Fournette announced out. Also 622 to win 971 on Miami tonight.

Model loves Giants too but I'm worried they might be in full on tank mode so I'm laying off

Got the luckbox working today with a double akdd vs ako, flush came backdoor for maximum pain. 120k

ITM w 134k vs 173k average, let's gamble

top 100 DC all time money list here you come

Oof, built it up to 307k (at 2500/5k) at one point but went busto 42nd for $2879 on a hand that I think is standard, but will recap in a bit.

Bust hand: 2500/5k/500, I have 293k and villain covers. Villain opens button to 11k, I make it 46k in the SB with AJo with the ace of diamonds and villain tank calls. J98dd, I bet 55k and villain calls. Turn 7d. I check, villain shoves, I call, he has 87cc and I miss (on the fly, I think I have 15 outs to win and 3 more for the chop?). Always tough to lose 59 BBs late in a tourney but I feel fine about this one, I'm playing to win not to ladder.

Forgot to post football picks today. I have 500 on cowboys to win 850, and 1524 to win 600 on the alternate line of Denver +14.5. also lost a very small bet of about $70 on the Redskins.

200 on dolphins to win 680, trying to snap a 12 game losing streak in NFL (though to be fair I was getting odds on most of these bets). May make a full update while watching game tonight, I'm overdue.

Off to the races in the Lucky Chances Gold Rush $1105 tournament. Last big tourney of the year, probably last chance to go black on the year in tournament p&l.

It's funny, this morning i wasnt feeling great about my game and even wondering if I should play something smaller. Then I jump in the tourney and 15 mins later a dude punts 250 BBs preflop to me with 99. Even after he busted the table draw is great. Could be a fun weekend.

Cowboys +6 one time to snap a 13 game NFL losing streak!!

Busted 1st bullet at Lucky chances yesterday, fired a 2nd bullet today and have avg stack with 83 left, 34 move on to tomorrow (when 54/58 returning players will cash)

Mixed results today as the L streak in NFL extends to 14, but we put 320k in the bag vs 227k avg in the LC gold rush. 58 coming back tmrw, 54 cash, $139k up top.

Busto 51st for a mincash. Got in 36 BBs on a button 4bet aqo, called by ajo in the SB and couldn't hold. This pot would have been for a top 3 stack easily. Oh well.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. This year I am thankful for somehow being up money for the year NFL gambling despite my current 14 game losing streak. Cowboys ml -101 and Giants +9 -120 to try to bust it.

Did we end up having a fun, degen, +EV 2017?

Post 27
Moving Forward

I guess it’s time to formally shut this thing down – I wanted to make one final post here to close out this PGC. I had a ton of fun doing this over the past year, but I have realized that I lack the attention span and time management skills to make long form blog posts. I’m going to keep engaged in the poker community in other places – namely, I am starting an Instagram because it’s way less effort for me to keep up, and seems to be a popular way for our community to interact. I’m @steelers_holdem, follow if you’re interested! I’ll be making my first post tomorrow.

For more in-depth strategy posts I’m gonna move to a training site. I'll make a thread on the Upswing forums and link it here. Being on Upswing has been a huge boost to my game, but there's a slight chance I'll move to RIO or something at some point, simply because Upswing focuses a lot on cash games rather than MTTs.

Finally, I'll make short updates here with any big milestone updates.

Final results update:

As I think I mentioned earlier, I mostly quit algorithmic trading as I didn’t think I was beating the current market on a risk-adjusted basis. I moved my money to a couple other ventures (answering the obvious question: some are crypto related, some are not; I’m about breaking even right now despite the brutal crypto downturn).

I kept chugging along in poker for the rest of 2017, then started absolutely sunrunning after the new year, making January 2018 my greatest ever month in poker P&L-wise. On Saturday the 6th I chopped the Oaks monthly $340 tournament with a massive chip lead for a $7,100 score. The next morning I went to Lucky Chances and made a deep run in the $250 weekly, briefly holding the chip lead at the final table before sputtering out and taking 3rd for $2,900. Finally, I went back to Lucky Chances on the 28th for their monthly $350 and this time I would not be denied, chopping with the chip lead for around $17.5k. I know this is stupid and inconsequential, but given the field sizes I have to believe I’m the first person ever in the Bay Area to win (chopping with chip lead counts as a win, yes?) the Oaks and Lucky Chances monthlies in the same month.

After my insane NFL betting losing streak I mostly quit betting sports. Amazingly, because I started betting smaller as the losing streak went on, I just about broke even for the season. The Super Bowl was interesting. The Sunday of the championship games I was convinced the Pats should have been around -8 or so against Philly so when the line came out Pats -5.5 I smashed in around $1500 on New England. Obviously it got bet down to -4, and you know the rest. However, the day before the SB a group of friends told me they wanted to bet squares and I agreed to be the house – I took 21 squares @ $100+$3 vig, we drew squares randomly, and I pulled off a clean fade for a $2,163 cash and an overall profitable super bowl.

It is after midnight and I am too lazy to post my final P&L for 2017 but I’ll do this at some point in the future. I think it will end up being in the region of $50-60k, down from the $81k I posted last time due to some trading losses.

Looking forward:

On a personal note I love living in Northern California and I’m really glad I moved here last year. The insane good poker games here are just a small part of the equation. I can see myself being here long term.

My main focus in gambling is still live MTTs. At this point, I believe I am a big favorite in any tournaments in the $500 buyin range or below (and a MASSIVE favorite if said tournaments are in the Bay Area). I think I need to exercise a little game selection, but not much, in the $1k-2k range. I think I’m probably at least a small favorite in a significant number of $10ks, but due to Kelly considerations, I don’t see myself playing many other than the WSOP ME (which I plan to finally do this year for the first time).

I booked WSOP travels. I’m going for Colossus June 2-4, back for an extended run June 15-24, and unless I run like ass between now and then, back one last time for the main event on July 4.

Sooner than that, I’m heading to the LAPC next weekend. This will include some shots in the $1100 satellites for the $10k main. Even though I expect these to be incredibly soft, I think this kind of counts as degenning; the variance in large field MTTs is so freaking high that people (such as I) with a net worth south of a milli probably should not play $10ks other than the main event.

Most importantly, I’m going to keep busting ass trying to get better at this game. I feel like I have come so far in the past year. It feels great seeing hand histories from a year ago and knowing that I’d now play them totally differently. I’m in the market for a coach. As I mentioned before, will keep grinding Upswing/RIO. And I’d like to play a little more online this year – though it’s not a great way to make money, it is an amazing way to get in reps to sharpen your game.

It was a pretty lucky moment in my life in 2002 when I randomly found a WPT broadcast and got immediately hooked on poker. 16 years later it keeps getting more and more fun to me. I’m excited to keep gambling in 2018 and see what it brings. Thanks for reading, and cheers!

Quick stream-of-consciousness update here as I'm in line to reg the WSOP Giant. It's been a pretty momentous year for my poker career.

*It's continued to be a pretty good year for me in tournaments. I made a last minute trip to Vegas colossus weekend and won a Wynn daily for $30k which is my biggest score to date. I also made day 2 of colossus, but ran KK into AA to bust 308th for around $2700. I did come back for a 9 day trip in mid-June and dropped about $11k, bricking almost everything I played except for a mincash at the Wynn.

*Now I'm back in Vegas until the 8th, and will be firing into my first ever main event on Wednesday

*I am temporarily relocating to London for 6 months starting in August. I want to use this time to grind a lot on Stars/Party/etc. These games are pretty tough, so my focus isn't really so much on profit as on game improvement. I'm probably in the market for a coach to help me review HHs, which I should have a lot of

*One potential area of focus for me this year is mixed games. The value in NLHE tournaments is really on the decline. Even the $1600s here in Vegas have a ton of tanking euros (the Bay area games are still amazing), so I dunno if I really aspire to start playing higher, other than great spots like the ME. On the other hand it sounds like people still suck at mixed games so maybe theres some potential here. In particular, I hear the big LHE games in the Bay Area are amazing, so maybe I'll focus on that and play some limit tourneys at the 2019 WSOP

*I also kinda want to do a bankroll challenge of some sort. This would motivate me to play way more cash, if I had some sort of concrete goal to shoot at. Maybe try to run $1k into $100k over the course of a couple years?

Anyway I hope the next post I make here is next week when ive made day 5 of the ME. Cheers!