Let me briefly introduce myself. I used to post here on as crashwhips until I self-banned my account. I made three "milestone" posts that were very well received, here they are:

500th Post: Mental Game and the Poker Mindset

1500th Post: Poker and Life

2000th post: + I am d3g3n and I Never Give Up On a Pot +

First two are high content, 2000th post is just some fun.

Some highlights of my poker career:

-In 2008, won $50,000 in three months time playing no higher than 2-4 and mostly 1-2

-Won $5000 in a single 4-way $6500 pot.

-Played in 5 WSOP events.

-In my first WSOP event, made day 2 and played sitting next to Phil Hellmuth, joking around with him the whole time.

-At the end of my time with Hellmuth had him shout at me "What the hell are you doing kid?!"

-I played one hand with PH and won it, which, judging from the movie Rounders and the Johnny Chan scene, makes me a world class player.

-Spent a ton of time in Vegas, meeting up and doing fun things (Hiking, BBall, pool, fine-dining with credit card roulette at the end, bars, nightclubs, Spearmint and other strip clubs) with lots of 2p2 regs there. Lots of them have/had popular and active PGC and LVL blog threads including tmckendry, aesah, ecgrinder, cushlash, pureaggression, robfarha, and wheydacheese.

-Went to Bellagio Nightclub and Sapphire strip club with a group of Euros including Jeans89 on the night of the day he played the inaugural $1 million buy-in One Drop tourney. Got bottle-service at the nightclub and lost a $800 credit card roulette flip.

-Spent some time with Phil Galfond in 2013.

-Spent some time with some PLO highrollers including doorbread, johan5390, nod!cebaby, oddoddsen, isildroon, and bigbadboss. Witnessed a couple crazy prop bets.

-Played basketball with ChicagoJoey

-Went to the celebration party for Felix Stephensen at the 2014 November 9 in a suite at the palms that had two floors, a basketball court, a pool table, and lots of cute Scandi woman

-Lived in a poker house in Ft Lauderdale

-Played in a private 5-card PLO game with $tinger88 and vietrussian and got brutally slow-rolled by Hastings

-Was briefly a poker ex-pat living in Vancouver.

-Met Ziigmund in Finland while watching Patrik Antonius lose a 6-figure tennis bet.

-Went to Thailand and met up with some 2p2ers there.

Anyway, enough with the brags and back to the intro. I've been playing poker since 2004 and playing professionally since 2008. I've played almost all cash games. I started with ring NL, then moved to 6m NL, then HUNL, then to PLO. I was moderately successful as a pro, making a peak of just under 100k in my two most successful years, and never having a losing year from 2005 - 2016. In 2013, I started traveling extensively and also playing lots of live poker for the first time. Also in 2013, I stopped making enough money to cover my lifestyle expenses. I haven't formally declared bankruptcy yet because I have no assets, but I owe $50k+ on my credit cards and haven't made a payment in years and all my accounts have long since been sent to collections.

I have not been a winning poker player since October 2016 and in January 2017 I took a hiatus from/quit online poker. I tried out live poker again in summer of 2017 but it didn't work out. This past September, I deposited $100 on ACR. I put in a ton of volume and was able to run it up as high as $1400. I won $1000 in the Beast rake race a couple times. I was a significant loser pre-rb and a slight winner (EV-adj) post rakeback. I ended up losing everything in November after getting in a PL50 hu grudge match against a nit who put me on demolition tilt.

Shortly after, I deposited $25 on ignition and ran it up to bout tree-fiddy playing a combo of 5NL Zone and 50bb buy-in 25NL zone. I took a shot at 50NL zone, couldn't move back down after it didn't go well, and went busto again.

Then I deposited another $50, ran it up to $150 at 5NL then moved up to 25NL and lost everything. Or so I thought. It turned out I had $1.80 in my account, not enough to play zone but enough to play normal cash. I took it to 5PLO, won, and a few weeks later had $750 in my account. But as the pattern went, I moved up to NL50 and self-destructed the entire roll.

I then deposited $140 over the course of 3 deposits. I got it up as high as $500 but am currently am sitting on a measly $270 in my account. I'm currently playing 2 zone 5NL tables and 2 10PLO tables and plan to stick to proper BRM this time so I don't have to re-deposit again.

As far as real life stuff, my main objective at the moment is getting back in shape and losing weight. In 2017, I weighed a buck-fifty, could easily run 10 miles in one go at 7-minute per mile pace, and could do 25 pullups and 50 pushups. 19 days ago I weighed 225 pounds, could only do 2 pullups and 10 pushups, and could barely run half a mile at a light jog. I'm currently going to the gym 1.5hr+ per day, walking 10k steps, eating only around 1200 calories, and doing 16-hr intermittent fasting. I'm at 210 lbs now and want to get down to 160.

I plan on posting weekly updates on my progress here in this thread.

Thanks for reading, GL everyone

glgl!

Also not mentioned in list of accomplishments is author of one of the most captivating short stories on 2+2

I had a nice read on your 500th and 1500th posts.
You are one of my favorite posters here!
Good luck and enjoy your time here and on the tables!

gl boss

Gl Man U crushed in the past can def do it now. Will be following.

PLO itt? I'm in. gl!

tyty for the well-wishes


Lol thanks. Which one was this? I’m actually really embarrassed of all my early short fiction but I have a 40k word novel rough draft that I’m proud of.

SPOILERS IN CASE YOU REPOST

Thanks for updating us and good luck. Especially with your health.

Twosevoff has a fanboy named Tres
Legend he is I'm available anytime to help him on the come up
Good luck buddy

GL dude!

I know I said I'd only update once a week, but I think I'll just post updates whenever I feel like it or have something notable to post. Today was a good day life-wise and an up and down day poker wise. I just wrapped up the poker and I'll give a brief summary of my day.

I started off in the gym with 1hr40 min and 18 miles on the exercise bike and another 40min on the elliptical while listening to music and grinding 2p2 and Twitter. It was a very nice day out for winter in the Northeast and I then took a two mile walk outside. After that, I went to the park with a friend and played basketball for around an hour.

I started my poker grind around 4pm. I decided to play all PLO, which is not what I've been doing lately. I think fast fold tables are much better than normal and the only Zone that runs is Texas, but there's a dead zone between 5NL and 25NL and for my current BR 5 is too low and 25 too high. For a while I really appreciated the "purity" of NL and liked getting back to my roots, but I've come back around to considering PLO a more enjoyable game. Also, I think I've been wasting my potential playing Texas, because I'm much better at PLO than NL. Finally, it's nice to actually be able to develop some reads on opponents going into a hand other than stack-size due to the nature of anonymity combined with fast fold. So for these reasons, I think that I'm going to abandon my NLHE conversion and revert back to, as ChicagoJoey would put it: "THE GREAT GAME OF PLO."

While I played I mostly listened to this Youtube station which is great for keeping mellow and focusing but also finished the last two episodes of the HBO documentary The Jinx, which I'd highly recommend if you haven't seen it.



Here were my stacks towards the end of the session:

While I ran up some big stacks, I was in an absolute death spiral of run-bad the first four hours of the session, and I actually ended up stuck 40 dollars on the day. I was down to only $120 left in my account at one point and dreading having to head back down to the nickel tables. I handled the negative variance well and tilted almost not at all. A few times while playing I thought of what Aeseh wrote in his PG+C about tightening up when losing and that helped.

Current Bovada bankroll: $250

Oh yeah that one, that was pretty solid even in its early form. I used much of it in my novel rough draft.

Yesterday was disastrous for my bankroll. I started off playing sharp and keeping my head above water, but then got sucked into another death spiral of run bad and by the end was playing sloppy.

Among other various typical negative variance, it was staggeringly improbable how often I’d get it all-in on the flop with a huge combo draw against bare two pair and my opponent would boat up on the turn leaving me drawing dead and without even a sweat on the river, and also eerily frequent the times I’d get it on the flop or turn with a monster unpaired draw only to lose to a dominated draw that had a weak pair.

By the end I was definitely playing sub-optimally. For example, I reflexively 3b K642ds when it was clearly a fold and ended up calling first a 4b and then an all-in for 270bb in a 3-way pot and bricked out. I also made some other small but yet clear mistakes (ie opening the hj or co too wide) that led to more money down the tubes later in a hand I shouldn’t have been involved in in the first place.

When I finally quit for the night I estimated I had about 110 in my account but it was actually 80. Sigh, I guess I need to move back down to the slums of the 2cent nickel tables. It’s frustrating to lose so much in such soft games, but I guess a 16 buy in swing in PLO in wild games is pretty standard.

I’m considering redepositing but think I’ll try to run it up. I was able to run less than $2 to $750, so I have enough ammo in my account to still do some damage.

On the bright side, my life revitalization is still going well. Health-wise I’m down to 206 lbs and most of my gut is gone and I’m up to 4 pull-ups and 17 push-ups. I’ve also continued reaching out to many friends and family I thought I burned my bridges with, with some good results. I wish I had more money to gamble with, but I can’t complain. For the first time in over a year I feel happy and with a purpose. In March of 2018 I thought I was drawing stone dead with my life and I don’t feel that way anymore, thankfully.

I thought maybe I could share some of my creative output in this thread too. I mentioned my fiction, and if anyone wants to take a look at my novel rough draft let me know. It's not about poker or gambling per se, but there's a decent amount of gambling in it and one of the characters is even a highly successful poker pro.

In addition to fiction, I also wrote a bunch of freestyle rap style written rhyming poetry in late 2016 and early 2017. Here's one of the ones I'm most proud of:


Beware

Got carried away in the last freesty, afterwards got to asking myself “why?” Whenever I try to interact with others, seem to end up lyin in bed lonesome with sighs. But let me try to rhyme some considerate, intelligent vibes.

Meditated last night, got to thinking bout the old days, 10,000 BC and before, years of tribes. For life, there existed no strategy guides. Got stranded in harsh wilderness alone, you died. Didn't live near the ocean, only source of salt when you cried. No bottles of spirits, only rotten fruit imbibed. Seedy cannabis bushes had to wait to dry, in order to get high. Not public humiliation, straight up exile. Anger your tribe, get left alone in the wild, couldn't hang around AA meetings smoking Black-and-Milds. Sure, didn't hafta worry about records kept in files, but did have to worry bout being defenseless, killed by reptiles.

No grocery meats, Buy 2 ribeyes get 1 for less, had to sustain by eating rotten mammoth flesh. No recourse for those left molest. Killing the offender in retribution was best. Even back then, the wise and virtuous knew it was part of Jah's test. I told you this was going to be serious, and not jest.

Their insights passed down on papyrus, reeds and parchment paper. Tao, Bible, Gita, these all originated from the ancient speakers. Fables designed as lessons, originated at some of the very first tables. Thinking about how to more ethically treat the slaves in their stables. No way to pass the lessons on direct, like we do today with cables. Language all a jumble, so many mislabels.

There must have been so much lost in translation. Nowadays we panic, if we don't have a GPS at the train station. Imagine being lost at sea in a storm, end of your life facing. Cramping, exquisite physical agony, pupil dilation. Finally catch sight of the shore, just imagine the elation.

Spend months building a new ship. Chopping down lumber, makeshift axe and chapped lips. Far cry from waitresses saving up for cruises by getting tips. Lounging by the pool with daiquiris taking sips. People still work in factories. Upton Sinclair, that style of life isn't fair. 1900, lost fingers on hands in primitive machinery wares. Maybe humans were happier back in 10,000BC when childbirth was a 50/50 affair, and it was cholera and tigers they beware.

Fascinating back story!

Have you played on apps before? They’re ridic soft for PLO. If you have any graphs with results you could show me we can chat about a staking arrangement if you’re interested in playing on PPP.

Cant imagine people as a whole were happier back then lol. Good reminder to count our blessings during runbad

Never tried apps not looking to commit to a staking arrangement at this very moment but will definitely keep it in mind and let you know.

For sure a lot of capable hunter gatherer tribes living in comfortable climates abundant with clean water and all types of food and free from predators were much happier than the typical low wage indoor 9-5 grinder who is single, doesn’t have many friends he sees in real life, and rarely exercises or is out in sunlight, imo. Nature is a beautiful place, and people are happiest when fulfilling our natural human instincts organically.

Made a bit of a run at the nickel tables then moved up to 10cent tables got as high as 170 then hit the wall for about the 200th time since resuming online this year, and by the time I quit account was down to a paltry $60. The frustrating thing is the walls keep getting lower and lower. Back down to the slums of the nickel tables.

I wasn’t playing very well by the end. Not like aggressively tilting or anything just a bit sloppy. I think I might have to swallow my pride and do the most ev thing and get a stake. It’s just too difficult to take the games seriously enough and make significant money playing for pennies.

Since the poker content in this thread isn’t going to be very interesting at least for a while due to the micro stakes, maybe I’ll tell some stories.

First one: a quick day in the life summary of a (relatively) responsible adult among degens in Vegas November 2014.

I had plans on this day to go to the Grand Canyon with the Swedish high stakes PLO sensation Johan5390 and tmckendry. I’d talked a ton with Johan on skype over the years and had urged him to go on the trip. At the time, he was one of the biggest 10-20 and 25-50 crushers on stars but still living with his folks.

Anyway, we got a late start on the day and after picking up tmckendry at cushlash’s house in my rental car we decided to go to the Hoover Dam instead. Not much to say about that, was impressive and interesting to see for the first time but a typical sightseeing experience.

On the car ride and throughout the day we did some plo strat talk and lots of play money “Lodden Thinks”. After we got dinner we went to bowl at the south point but the wait list was too long so we abandoned that plan. I had two impromptu Seinfeld style footraces with Johan there. The first he cheated with a head start but the second one he beat me fair and square and, not gonna lie, was pretty tilted about that.

We then went to O’Sheas and played beer pong for a while. I was sober and Johan was drinking mixed drinks so tmck was picking up the slack on drinking the beer but despite this was still beating us. Chicagojoey put in a brief appearance, coming by with Lauren Kling and stomping us at pong with his high arcing basketball style shot before announcing “I gotta get the f out of here. This music tilts me,” as a live band played a very loud rock music version of daft punk get lucky.

We then met up with OddOddsen and BigBadBoss at a high end lounge at Aria. Tmck and I were still wearing beat up T-shirt’s and basketball shorts, mind you. Oddsen is a bit larger than life in person, around 6ft3 and resembling a James Bond Villain. He was dressed sharply in a sport coat and slacks.

We tried to sit down at a booth but the bouncer took us aside and curtly said we couldn’t do that and had to stand around a small table. Oddsen then went to the bar and returned with a dozen shots of Jager and a dozen gin and tonics. The bouncer came back over and said we could take the booth when he saw this. I handed him $10 and suddenly he was all smiles and asking us if we needed anything else, anything at all.

Oddsen lifted up his pant leg and showed us a really really gnarly gash, probably close to a foot long and that looked like it definitely should have received medical attention when it happened. “I don’t know what happened. Last thing I remember I was at Sapphire [a strip club], then I blacked out and when I woke up this morning in my bed my leg was on fire and my sheets covered in blood. I poured vodka on it to disinfect it.”

There was a group of people in their 30s nearby, two couples and one woman by herself. Oddsen set his sights on the lone woman. “What odds will you lay me that I can get a picture of her in my bed tonight?”

There was much discussion with the initial line offered 5:1 and oddsen scoffing. At one point, big bad boss made an offer of 5 million to 500k. Oddsen seemed like he was genuinely considering it. “I think it’s too good to pass up. When do I have to get you the money by?” A couple minutes later he went to the bathroom saying he’d think it over more and I made the soul read “There is zero chance this bet gets booked”

Well, the bet did get booked, but for Johan’s 7k vs oddsen 1k. Oddsen swaggered over started to try to work his charm but after about 20 seconds one of the guys put his arm on oddsen and shur him down. “That fkn dentist ruined everything” he said in disgust. “Let’s get out of here and go to Spearmint [another strip club]”. We bounced, leaving about half the alcohol oddsen had bought untouched.

The euros took a cab and tmck and I took my rental. We couldn’t locate the scandis once we got there and took a seat by the stage. I looked over a few minutes later and tmck has a girl on his lap and is making out with her. A little later there is a dispute between him and the girl. Apparently tmck was under the impression that was a complimentary encounter but the girl wanted 60 bucks for a three song dance. He pulled out his wallet and it had like ten bucks in it. I gave the girl 40. “You should have established the price first,” I told her.

We left after that and hit up the del taco drive thru. Right before we pulled up to the speaker, tmck opened the car door and puked all over the parking lot. We ate out Tex mex on the picnic benches then I dropped him off and I went back to my hotel.

Before I went to sleep I shot a text to Johan telling him I hoped he had a good night and I’d talk to him tomorrow. “Things didn’t go so good,” he texted back. “Oddsen was supposed to get a limo back but they left without me and I’m all out of cash and my bank card is getting declined and I’m not really sure what to do.” I told him to hang tight and brought him back to Vdara.

As I drove back to my hotel for the final time I smiled to myself at having a legendary day taking satisfaction in having matured enough and moved from complete disaster in party situations into almost a caretaker role.

lol. more please

hell yea. MORE! subbed obv.

To put some faces to the names, here's Johan playing a hand like a boss on a recent live stream. Such a good bluff because the way the hand played out his Ks effectively works as the NFB and the 2NFB.

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/377895115?t=04h54m30s

And here's a couple pictures of Johan and I when we finally made it to the Grand Canyon later in the trip

poor Johan, at least he made 1k