Haha dw I was just kidding with my comment anyways. I definitely feel the same way about a lot of that stuff, mainly since I don't have to deal with high concentrations of fans of any NFC East teams. Thanks for the goodwill. Best of luck in the pokering next year.

Only problem is duke needs this.

SWIM said a good place for things was behind the gas cap door, kinda depends on car

How much money does Uncle Sam get outta that 47K!

Lol obv this thread needs to be more "poker-oriented" to avoid the topics of taxaments and potaments

Duke if you somehow get computer access before you find your phone, check your PMs. Be safe.

And why was the thread title changed?

Rut-oh someone had too much fun on nye?

Cuse I think Duke's mom hacked your account

not clearly. clearly, it didn't help that the eagles lost their starting QB and were forced to play mark sanchez. how do you think the cowboys do with brandon weeden starting 8 or 9 games?

Also, the Eagles were 1-1 against the Cowboys and outscored them 60-48 in total. I think given the two teams styles, it's all about getting an early lead. The winning team lead 14-0 at the end of the first quarter in each game. Having the lead makes it a lot easier to impose your style on the game, and they both want to play very different styles.

like i said, i have no desire to be one of those eagles fans

waaaaaah waaaaaah waaaaaaaah is all anyone hears from you when you make these dumb excuses. the eagles benefitted last year heavily from injuries to tony romo and aaron rodgers. they may not have even made the playoffs if not for those injuries.

please take your whining somewhere else, dont really want this derail in my thread.

Except the statistical dropoff from Foles to Sanchez is negligible/nonexistent (Sanchez's efficiency stats are better, but that can be partially attributed to be working with a better Oline). Having Foles all the way at best adds one more win @WSH IMO. Going from Romo to Weeden for any extended period of time is basically a lost season, just watch us vs Arizona to see that.

Sorry for derailing your thread duke

Secret I guess?

Oregon sucks. Derail this.

no reason i guess, just for fun. the original title was pretty vanilla and there is another thread with the same title

gonna be so sweet spending ur hundo

Lol that hundo don't mean crap til it says 00:00

I will give the Eagles some credit. They clearly have a better backup QB than the Cowboys.

Got off to a good start in 2015, +$1,758 in 8:40 the other night... overall, I'm running extremely well since the beginning of December; +8k last 50 hours and +11k last 110 hours.

I did have one New Year's Resolution for last year.

[x] - Happy to say I knocked this out. The sample is only 650 hours, but I am winning +$53/hr (despite an $8k self-inflicted downswing), feel extremely comfortable in most spots, and basically never run into anyone at my home casino who outclasses me. I feel quite confident in any live 2/5 game. The next step is to feel the same way at 5/10. This is going to take a lot of work and definitely be much more difficult.

[x] - In July, I found myself down to my last $6k after a brutal losing streak. My goal was to reinvent my game, achieve the magical 10bb/hr winrate, and move out of my parents house (again).

Again, happy to say I knocked all of that out. I feel way more confident in basically every spot nowadays, I have managed a +13.28 bb/hr winrate over 850 hours since July 4th weekend, and have built my bankroll to the point where I support myself completely and feel no financial pressure to even put in any significant volume.

Its one thing to do all of this at 100bb low limit games... the next step will be to achieve all of this while playing in deeper games with better players at higher stakes. I have been working really hard and I hope I'm ready for that challenge.

[ ] - I also wanted to drastically improve my diet and exercise. I made some small baby-steps here and there but overall, I'd say this is a failure. Its something I'll work on getting on track at some point in 2015.

------

During my trip to Austin, I ventured into a shop on South Congress called 10,000 Villages. 10,000 Villages is a non-profit organization that operates with 95% of its staff being volunteers. The organization purchases, upfront, tens of thousands of pieces of handmade jewelry from "disadvantaged" artisans in many 3rd world countries. By disadvantaged, I mean people with, for example, facial disorders who are shunned from their peers. These people have very limited ways of earning income given their various conditions that cause them to be ostracized by their community.

Its a mixed bag of emotions when I envision how I got the long end of the stick compared to those disadvantaged artisans. I'm happy I went into that store so I could be reminded that even though working hard, improving myself as a person, and winning at poker feels really good and makes me happy... doing the little things to help and give back to others who are less fortunate feels really good and makes me happy too.

I ended up getting this thing called a singing bowl. You tap the metal bowl with this stick and the bowl rings... then you circle the bowl with the stick and the sound of the ring echos for a long time. Its peaceful and simple. They're known to help reduce the negative effects of PTSD in returning military people.

---------------

3/5 for the most part. Hoping to improve my 5/10 volume shortly.

Thanks for looking out, cuse... fun times fun times

-------------

Took the last two days off because I felt sick.

I spent my time watching House of Cards. I would definitely recommend this show. I find it interesting that Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright's characters use a lot of techniques outlined in the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

I also watched Mr. Nobody and Beyond the Black Rainbow on Netflix. Mr. Nobody was fun, BTBR was creepy.

I played 6.5-hours on Friday night at Talking Stick and made about 200bb at 3/5nl. The weekend was spent watching football; volume this year is off to a slow start.

There doesn't seem to be much to say about any of these individual sessions - maybe this is a sign of a leak but I'm not really finding myself in too many spots where I'm really questioning if my line was +EV or not.

Here's one - hand last night vs. an unknown

Preflop: AJ UTG+2. Hero raises to $20, MP calls, LP calls, CO calls, BTN calls, Villain calls from BB.

Flop: ($120) J98 Villain bets $40, Hero folds.

I would not blame someone for calling OTF - but based on some population reads in my limited 1.3k-hour sample at small stakes live, I tend to think folding is slightly better. I'd probably call vs. anyone who I recognized, but a lot of the Friday night randoms tend to make very small bets like this with their entire range. For that reason, I don't think I can take too much of his value range away. They also tend not to lead into 5 players with stuff like T9 and T8 unless its like T9dd. So I think we're crushed often, flipping sometimes, and crushing him rarely + we're expecting someone behind us to have 2p+ about 12% of the time.

~~~

I did make some New Year's Resolutions.

I'll post the ones that are related to poker:

[ ] 1,800 hours

-- I averaged about 29.5 hr/week in 2014; I think I should strive to increase this to 35 hr/week in 2015. Ideally, I'd like to put in 2,000 hours, if not more, but that may be difficult for me.

[ ] $100k profit

-- I guess there aren't too many 22-year-old's who make $100k in a calendar year so I'm blessed to have an opportunity where it is potentially achievable. If I achieve my volume goal, I'll need to average $55/hour to achieve this goal. I think that's attainable even if I exclusively play 3/5nl - but I hope to play bigger than that at some point this year.

[ ] $100k in the bank

-- I don't know if poker will always be a viable career option. Making and saving a lot of money should give me more options down the road.

[ ] 10 bb/hr winrate at 5/10nl

-- I'm hoping to put in somewhere between 700-1,000 hours at 5/10nl; based on my results over a similar sample at 5/5 and below, I think this is achievable.

[ ] 200 hours at 10/20nl

I made a few other NYRs related to my health, my relationships with people, improving myself as a person, etc - it was eye-opening to envision where I could be at the start of 2016. So I also wrote a letter to my 2016-self. Its an interesting thing to do for anyone trying to focus on self-reflection.

~~~

Another interesting idea I had was to go back through each month as far back as I can remember in my life and write something about that month. I haven't gotten around to that yet, but I want to.

Speaking of that, I also wanted to do a quick recap of my poker journey in 2014:

January: I moved out of my parents house, quit my job, played 1/3nl for a living with a $10k starting bankroll that I had earned mostly from playing 1/2 and 1/3 in late-2013.

February: Had a big downswing... realized I wasn't that good at poker... got depressed... but kept working hard. I bought a 1-way ticket to Vegas and crashed on Pure Aggression's couch for a week or two.

March: Took a trip to California and was blown away at how soft the games were. Made close to $5k grinding small stakes in Vegas. Experienced the city for the first time and made a lot of friends.

April: Went to Los Angeles and had my first 5-figure month. Didn't really experience the city, just grinding. I also made my first trip to Phoenix and loved it. Bought my car there - it wasn't my first car, but it was my first car that I paid for with my own money. Saw the Grand Canyon.

May: Drove from Phoenix to Philadelphia stopping on the way at Sandia, Winstar, and Horseshoe Hammond. Lost $6.5k total, 20 buy-in downswing... the roughest month I had all year.

June: Vegas for WSOP didn't go so well poker-wise but ended up becoming good friends with 2p2er Pay4MySchool. Got really drunk a lot... did a lot of stupid things... Made my first trip to Maryland Live and hung out with ashes to ashes. Broke even... got down to $6k bankroll and was sad. Got dropped by my coach in the midst of this all. He told me he only wants to focus on a special group of talented poker players; he said I wasn't part of that group. Felt hurt but extremely motivated.

July: Moved back down to 1/2... decided to get back to basics, focused hard on the grind, and made $5k at Parx 1/2. Some guy at Borgata heard me and some friends talking about poker at a restaurant... he ended up asking if we're "poker pros" and started grilling me a little bit about it lol.

August: Took another trip to Maryland Live. Stayed with 2p2er zoltan, met KyddDynamite kind of, and got stacked by ashes to ashes .

September: Booked a 450-hour month volume prop bet and lost. Left Philly; drove to Winstar and then Arizona.

October: Opened the doors to my first leased apartment. Made $11k my first month at Talking Stick.

November: Focused all on poker... made $4k and didn't really do much else.

December: Took a trip to Vegas and stayed downtown for the first time. Made $8.5k total and got my bankroll back to where it was in April. Took a trip to Austin, Texas and loved the city.

~~~

Graph from since I left Philly in September to present.



I've improved a lot recently with my mental game, eliminating FPS, and understanding/studying/applying game theory. I hope to keep improving and see how far I can go.

~~~

Barrett-Jackson car auction is in town right now so probably will be playing a lot this week. After that, there is the PGA Tour coming to Phoenix and the Superbowl as well - so should have my hands full down here.

Looks like I may be skipping Mardi Gras

But I still plan to go to Daytona Beach for race weekend, Miami from Feb 22-28, Vegas for March Madness, and maybe a trip home in April.

I'll be back to playing tomorrow. GL

Good job Duke. Seems like you've matured a little bit based on that post.

I wish you luck.

Just a little bit? I think 2014 duke is a completely different person than 2015. For sure in terms of poker, he's vastly improved based on what I've read but way he looks at life is ahead of the curve as a 22yr old.

Interesting concept about population read, reminds me a little of fogodchao. I'm assuming you are putting some heavy consideration into how boards will run-out based on sample runs, and of course you obviously said 12% of the time, someone shows up with better. I do like how you are thinking a lot broader than most other players do.

At first, I thought this might be one of those spots where a good player is increasing his overall edge against the field, but I'm wondering how often you encounter this type of situation where you dump your hand a one or even 2 streets earlier than is "standard". This situation is a 5way multi-way and the donker leads into the whole field (and you said you have no reads on him) so I guess its pretty unique. The problem I saw with folding is 1) You aren't realizing your end of the equity, whether its your equity when the board runs out good, or equity on how BB plays. If he's 3barreling vs you here, you get to see it, if he betrays his hand at some point after you call, you get to see that too. Furthermore, 2) you can look at the whole 12% of the time someone behind has you beat in reverse. How much are you giving up the 88% of the time you have the best hand versus the 3 people behind you?

thanks, rob!

Thanks for the compliment

Yeah, one consideration is that only like 40-45% of run-outs will be good for my hand (improving or dodging straights and flushes) - and even then, I may still be crushed.

I think it comes up more often than people think; there are many more situations in small stakes live poker where an opponent's range is narrow, uncapped, and value-heavy compared to other formats of NLHE. Coupled with the fact that they rarely value bet thinly and take weird lines with their nuts and nut-draws, I notice the situation to make a non-standard fold quite often.

I guess the fact that I don't have a read on him is a read in itself. An unrecognizable player on a Friday night is usually going to be a loose/passive, recreational player who does not think deeply about the game.

I wasn't too concerned with realizing equity just because I felt I had less than the 20% I needed to call. Against a range of 2p+, AJ, KJ, JTs, T9dd - I have just about 20%. But I'm not optimistic that he's going to be leading KJ and AJ all the time, if often at all.

I should correct my last post, though - each player, individually, behind me has about a 12% chance of having 2p+ OTF. But since these guys tend to play a very, very wide range, we'll call it about 9%. This means there is a 30% chance that someone behind us has 2p+.

Given that, we actually need 29% equity to profit on a call.

Against a range of 2p+, AJ, some KJ, JT, Q9dd, T9dd, and OESD+FD we have about 25% equity. In addition, my population read is that he's going to be much more weighted towards value than bluffs - so I think 25% is probably a bit high.

If he's 3-barreling, I disagree that I'd get to see it. Based on population read that people don't 3-barrel bluff often, coupled with the fact that I do have better hands in my range to call down with, I don't think AJcc is a hand I can stick to all the way down.

If he does check the turn, then I can increase my EV by value betting - but I don't think this scenario will come up often. He's going to bet a lot of turns with his bluffs and value which probably isn't a mistake and it puts me in a very uncomfortable, perhaps "un-winnable" spot with AJ.

Good thing you caught my error - if I'm only going to get raised behind 12% of the time, I do think that I can profitably call flop with the intention of folding to a big turn bet and calling a small one. But if I'm going to get raised off my hand over 30% of the time, its unlikely to be profitable to call a loose/passive's bet OTF.

fyp

You have definitely come a long way since I met you in February. Solid goals and all are attainable with focus and hard work.