Hi my name is Arcangelo, and I am a writer. I didn't know I was a writer until a guest that I had at my house asked me, after seeing all my journals: ''Are you a writer?'' and I said: '' Yeah, I guess I am.''

I am very glad that my first 2 attempts of starting a blog here where deleted by the mods. They where political posts.

Whoever that mod was thank you very much.

My first post is gonna be about how the people around you determine your chances of success in life.

When I first read Jim Rohn's super famous quote: ''You're The Average Of The Five People You Spend The Most Time With'', I knew i had some work to do in my social network.

I knew i had to take some distance from some of my friends and made the decision of cutting some of them off completely.

In my journals I started writing down the number of days i have gone without contacting them. This was with the ones I was trying to cut off completely. I was like if i can go 100 days w/o seeing this person that means I have succeeded in my goal of cutting ties completely.

It all started with Som. I knew Som when i started hosting cash games at my house. It didn't take me a lot of time to figure out Som was a pathological liar or something. You cannot be friends with someone that lies about everything all the time. So funny. When I discovered about Som's personality disorder I started reading about compulsive lying. Turns out these people perceive their lives to be pretty boring as they are. So they feel the need to spice reality with lies to look interesting and appealing to others.

Next one in the line was Freddie. Freddie was a scammer. The type of guy who would eat half a burger and then pull out one of his hairs and put in the burger so he could get another burger. This was in junior high LOL! Can not be your friend.

Next one in the line was Jay. Jay had psychological issues. His mom died from cancer and he is/was angry at life. Tried to be his friend but he didn't care about nothing, and had anger issues. He was a drug dealer who didn't care about getting busted. On top of that he decides to get a gun and to carry it wherever he goes of course with no papers. His anger was directed towards me one day at the casino and that was it. Can not be friends with someone with anger issues who hasn't got over his mom's dead who carries a gun everywhere.

And the last one is Dee. I have been struggling with how to deal with Dee. Some days i feel like cutting him off completely some days i feel like just taking distance from him.

I guess we can call Dee a deadbeat.

He has been unemployed for 10 years! He is like a 33 years old adult child (kidult) His parents pay for his everything. House, food, gas, clothes, weed.
He is being enabled. Dee is a total mooch not a desirable trait for a friend.
Actually Mooch and Friend can't/don't go in the same sentence.
He mooches from his girl too... Hard. Like he just got a laptop from her.
So funny. His girlfriend gets anonymous calls telling her that Dee is not good for her. And if she changes her phone # she gets the same call LOL!
It's obviously her parents. Pretty sure his girlfriend gives him gas money too.
Because the other day he came from his girlfriend and wanted to mooch smoke from me, he was like: -''I don't have money but I have gas''

LOL!

After writing this I see that what I really want is to cut him off completely.
Like limit my interactions with him to a maximum of 3 times a year. Part of me wants to not to cut him off completely just because of curiosity haha! I wanna see how he is doing 2-5 years from now. Because there's another quote, a mean one:

'' Success is not enough, your friends must fail ''

Don't know the author sorry.

I had what you could call ''relapses'' with all of this friends. One day I would say I would cut off Som completely just to go to the casino with him that night. I used him as my driver. Which wouldn't make me proud or happy.

One day I would say I would cut off Jay completely just to be smoking with him that night.

One day I would say I would cut off Dee completely just to be smoking with him that night.

As of right now i am still in the relapsing period with Dee. It has been 2 days w/o contact. But i have made some progress I don't call him he calls me. The thing is that I answer. LOL!

I am doing the slow-but sure fade away.

With all these relapses I started asking myself if i was destroying myself.
I started asking myself if i was addicted to toxic friendships/people.
So i took a codependency test. Think I scored high on that one. And I was able to recognize that Dee is a narcissistic **** LOL!

The exception was Freddie. Kinda. After months of no contact he called me because he needed a cash out but I never answered he was like ''why are you not picking up?'' LOL!

Couple of things I learned:

1. Acknowledge the warning signs. Wish I would have before, so it would have been easier and faster to cut them off. Because life is too short.

2. Liars, Thieves, Scammers, People with anger issues carrying unregistered firearms, and Lazy-Moocher Mofugas are not the best friends one can have.

glgl

Hi today's topic is gonna be TV addiction.

First i wanna talk about my own TV addiction and how it started.
When i was a kid in primary school TV would be my babysitter after school.
This was my routine: go to school come back and watch 4 hours of TV at my grandma's waiting for my stepdad to take me home. At home i will do school work before dinner and after dinner i would watch like 2-3 more hours of TV.
During the weekends i could very easily watch 8 hours of tv a day
This went on for 12 years, more than enough to develop any addiction

Thing about TV addiction is that people think is harmless. It isn't.

TV makes you lazy, dumb and it makes you fear the world.
TV makes your life 2 dimensional. You live your life through the characters of your movies and reality shows, instead of living your own life.
TV wastes a lot of time.

As of right now i have been TV-less for 3 days. This year I went TV-less from january to august but one sunday i was superbored and decided to watch a movie.

Another thing that i have noticed lately about TV is that it makes you to be OK with people making justice by their own hands.

All of us have watched a movie and say i hope this guy gets killed in this movie. And when the character is finally murdered by the hero we are satisfied we are happy that someone murdered someone. LOL!

it's kinda sick

glgl

Hi today's episode is called:

Poker addiction

Poker is addictive. You and I are addicted to poker. Diff is i came to accept it.
I thought playing all night all tired was ''working hard''. No it was not. It was just an addict exhausting his resources.

It all started with me and Dee looking for a safe place to smoke instead of the streets so we went to a home game.

Long story short: I got hooked.

Started going to the casino, going to home games, reading about poker, watching it on TV, and the worst: hosting games at my place 4-5 nights a week.
Some of these nights will turn into mornings. All these while developing an alcohol addiction and dropping out of uni.

Fast forward 6 months: no job, no car, no girl, no $$$
Freddie shows up at my place to tell me he found a job playing poker. I am like: -''U bluffing right?''
He then proceeds to tell me the details and that i am coming with. Nice!

These staking deal is super cool they gave you $500/month just by showing up, like paid training.

It was 50/50 30% rakeback. After the 3 months you are on your own. I kept playing for them for about a year making $60-$80 a week.

Somehow i find a ''real job'' and kept playing for the backers until they say that we all suck at poker and that they are leaving the country.

Freddie was good at poker so he convinces the backers to form an elite team. I was among the chosen ones. Even though i was no good i really put in the effort and the hands. So they had faith in me.

After these backers leave some other backers gather ALL the players from the previous staking deal and they asked if i want in i ofc say: -''Yes!''

So now i have 3 jobs, all from home.

Here is where my life goes to **** the next 3 years. I know that making 60-80 dollars a week is the very best definition of someone's life being ****, but it got worse.

I decided to quit my real job and only play for both backers.

BIG mistake.

Both backers drop me so i start playing for myself.

Fast forward 3 years : College drop out, depressed, broke, no girl, no car

Fast forward 3 years : College drop out, depressed, broke, no girl, no car, living with the rents at 34. Needless to say a total disappointment.

Only good thing that came out of this is that when i quit my real job i quit drinking for good (almost 6 years sober now)

After 5-6 years i had to accept the reality that i was no good at poker.

Found a minimum wage job and started from scratch.

Now when I sit at 10nl and watch some the same regulars i feel real pity for them. Cause i was one of them.

You reader are probably one of them.

Silly kid wasting the best years of his life chasing a pipe dream.

glgl

Hi today's episode is called:

Self Deception and Poker: Reality Check

Today I saw an old thread about hourly rates being bumped on this forum. Thought about putting this there but i decided to put it here:

Let's say you you crush 100 NLz.
Now a days crushing that level is like making 3BB per/100 hands.
Let's include the rake.
It takes 10-15 minutes to play 100 hands 4 tabling zoom.

So. A person with those skills makes 12-15 dollars per hour.
Personally things will be interesting if we where looking at 120-150 dollars per hour.
That'll be playing (and crushing) $1000 NL

When is gonna be that? Prolly never. So, why bother?
In the meantime an army of regs are basically breaking even or making chump change, raking for hours on end for the site that does not even want them there in the first place.
An army of regulars who got a spit on the face when Amaya took over.
But we all still play there. Why? Because is the best software ever.

We all fool ourselves in many ways. I can confidently say I self deceived myself with poker. Now i see it and it gives me peace. Funny thing is i still play, i still win, and i still dream about crushing one day.

Keep the mind on the grind.

live poker is basically all luck

Agree. There is no long term playing live poker. It is ALL short term. I don't care if you are Doyle Brunson playing 24/7

100 hands 4-tabling zoom = 10-15 minutes

100 hands live poker = 3-4 hours depending on the dealer.

You do the math

Hi it's been a while. I found this:

For years I have played poker and read this forum. What I write is meant for the beginners of this game. I personally think online poker is a scam, but in other ways and due to reasons few people, if any, realize:

1) each day young men start learning poker to become good enough to make good money (read rich) out of it
2) they believe that if they were good (among the best) at poker they would win
3) they spend months/years learning
4) they make some money
5) they lose that money as opponents get better
6) they quit having lost more money than they won and months/years out of their lives

Everyone agrees with these 6 steps, nobody wants to lose, everyone knows cases of degenerates and so on. This is not what I want to talk about.
I want to talk solely about point 2, I think here lies the biggest scam of online poker, and most players have no clue about it.

1) There is no poker skill, it is all a lie sold to you.

Sure, someone that played and read books and had coaching for years, will have a big advantage in a HU game against someone who has only learned the game 2 days ago. The experienced one would on average win up to let's say 60 games out of 100, that is a huge edge, though notice that it is upper bounded due to the very nature of the game.

So beginners are sold the dream that if you start playing the micros and learn , you will beat them, them learn some more and move to small stakes and beat those, and so on.

The reality is much much crueler: from the start (today) the ones winning the small stakes are way much better than those winning at the micros. And in the 1 year that a beginner needs to constantly study to beat the micros, today's small stakes winning players are getting even better. (They also constantly study, this is how they got to beat the micros then small stakes in the first place).

So it is a race where your average opponent (note that I've said average) starts with a huge advantage over you (the beginner) and puts in more if not just as much effort into learning as you do. If 2 guys were competing in running for 40 km, the faster guy was also starting 20km in front of the slower and thus had only 20km to run for him to win, is there anyone stupid enough to think the slower guy had any chance ?

2) Poker skill is not constant as they tell you, this is part of the scam. Any small stakes winner today would have made a killing in 2003. Back then almost everybody was a huge fish, and the average player was so terrible that we cannot imagine today. Simply because today in a few hours of reading/playing (against today's average opponent) every fish plugs a lot of his leaks.

Look at the pros from back then, are they still consistently winning now ? No way, most of them quit poker altogether, some only play live, some still play the tournaments they get free buy ins into from sponsorships but are not winning them. And we are talking here about people that made a living out of poker, and studied it for years as a full time job, see point 1. This would not be possible if poker skill was anything like a real skill.

No profession in the world has their experts and best men today to become mediocre or less after a few years. This is because jobs require real skills, learning a trade is actual learning not to be confused with "learning" poker which is not actual learning. This does not stop people to bombard you with the words "poker skill" as if it was the same as a skill.

3) As time passes your average opponent will be better than you or comparable in skill.

In 2004 the poker fad got millions of average Joe to deposit, play like crap and lose money. They lost and deposited and lost again for a few times then quit poker for good. Some degens tried some more before they quit, but in the end they gave it up. Who was left still playing poker ? The winners, the ones that won so much they pay their rent out of poker and they study and play 8-12 daily. So if you think it is possible to learn a lot and become skilled at poker, know that in time you will on average play only with better opponents. Go back and read point 1 .

Why will the losing player always quit poker, and fast ? First because he loses money, but most important because he realizes it is unfair for him to put his money against better skill, while he has roulette and all other gambling options that require no skill. This is hard to swallow for those who dream living out of poker, but the truth is fewer and fewer fish, if any, will try poker.

4) Online sites hate poker pros, fish hate poker pros, and average people who do not play hate poker pros. They will do whatever they can to cut down/cap your skill.

Why online sites hate pros&skill: the pro withdraws $ to pay his bills, if only fish were around they would just lose to one another till all the $ would have been accumulated, through rake, by the site. Also a fish's deposit would last him for 1 month instead of 1 day, making him a happier fish that would deposit for 10-20 times instead of only 5 times before he realizes that poker was not for him. 4 times as much profit for the online site if no pros existed !

Why fish hate poker pros: regs take their money, and make poker an unpleasant experience for them.
Why normal people have poker pros: they consume goods and services each day yet you produce nothing

What nobody talks about is how online poker sites used the illusion of skill and the dream of becoming a rich poker pro to attract customers, thus they can only indirectly kick out the pros, while still respecting the law. Yet online poker sites are waking a constant was against winning players, but in subtle ways:

- fast poker games are designed to minimize the advantage that skill gives you.For example in hyper turbo HU games, you only have a small faction of places where you can exploit your opponent compared to normal speed HU
- highest buy in tables have been lowered. So that a rich tilted drunk fish that goes to the highest buy in does not lose his roll in a few hours but in a whole day.
- rigged poker sites/scams hit the pros(who have $ in their account) a lot more than the fish when they get closed
- most sites have games available only for beginners
- I do expect that all sites will gradually impose a limit of maximum 2 tables, and that losing players will somehow be matched with equal skill players, and so on.

The biggest hit on poker pros comes from the average non playing guy. He will vote whatever party will take punitive measures against online poker, as poker pros are not seen as contributing nothing to society, and online poker is seen as just taking a lot of money from the people of that country. Also live casinos and tourism stand to profit form online poker banning.

Think there will be another online poker boom ? Lol, you are so deluded ) I am sure that many more countries than the USA, China and so on will ban online poker, or just restrict it like France or Italy does.

5) Skill is something that costs a lot of money and brings back little if anything.

You start out poker and learn to play for a month, reading and playing daily. After this first month your skill allows you to win, on average, 50+X HU games out of 100 against a guy who only this week started playing.

Then you learn and read for 3 more month, giving you a total of (study + play) time of 4 months. Against an opponent who only (study + play) for a week , will you win, on average, 50 + 4X games out of 100 ? LOL, not by a long shot ! I would be surprised if you would win, on average, 50 + X + X/5 games out of 100. I actually bet it would be less than a 20% increase in winnings after 3 more months of the same 8 hours a day effort.

Continue (play+study) 8h daily for another year. What will be your winnings ? I think they would be less than 50 + X + X/5 + X/5 out of 100.

So skill increases very very slowly once you understand this game. Goals of getting better than the average decent villain cost a huge amount of time (years) and effort. Compute the rent and food you need for 2 years of study, that is a lot of $. But the highest price you pay for skill is not even yet to come. No , it comes from step 5 and 6 out of the 6 steps I've started this post with.

Think about it, you invest 2 years to study & play 8 hr a day, then you can hopefully beat the micro and small stakes. You invest another 4 years, but you end up playing good opponents as you move up in stakes, and with an ever decreasing amount of fish (who probably do not even play at higher stakes). Then you lose a ton, you borrow/get staked/move down to grind a roll again, then lose it again. Repeat this a few times then quit poker for good.

The price you pay in those months before quitting is a few times the roll you have then, meaning the larger part (if not bigger) of your poker live time winnings. Add those $ to the cost of skill, you can already see that it brings very little in return.

6) Tilt, bad beats and grinding, dealing with these are a must if you want to gain "skill" at poker.

Tilt weakens your health, makes you age faster (neurons die) and causes hair loss, grinding 8h a day while multi tabling makes you fat, weakens your circulatory system, muscles, bones and eyes. Please add thousands, more like hundreds of thousands or worse to the bill one pays for "poker skill" if he is unfortunate enough to play for 5-10 years. Sad actually.

On the spiritual side, playing poker for a year will get your personality more similar to that of a cashier's at McDonalds, or more like the one of an old lady who sits 8 hours in front of a slot machine chasing her losses ? Tough question

7) Who profits out of you getting "skill" ? Online poker sites earn rake, but we established that they hate you. HUD sellers, coaches, sharkscope, HEM, forums and so on love it when people decide to grind to learn and to make it in poker.

If you never thought about online poker before, and one day you wake up with the idea to put in the next few years of your live to learn and grind, then you are solely to blame for the results. But it almost never happens like this ) You are not the one who thought by himself that you could make $ out of poker. No, you were bombarded with messages that it could be done, you were temped by talks of profits and you were described the step by step path of grinding that leads to these profits.

In fact, if you are pondering to study poker, you are nothing but a slave, your masters and owners are the one who promised you riches if you grind and put it the long term effort. Funny how none of you masters ever gave explicit promises, like in X months of hard work you will make Y $, it is always ambiguous promises like "in the long run", "you need to get better", "to overcome variance you must put in even more effort".


I agree with all of this except point 6. I made money playing poker just not good enough money to keep playing.

Any thoughts?

My point is that not everyone that puts in the effort and the volume will succeed at this poker crap

In , love your writing style and can really relate to some of your posts.

I did write a much longer post but timed out or made me sign in again

Good luck

Following on from that i dont really agree with your latest post

Alot of people still go through the stakes , but yes its tougher...

Skill/ Poker argument is a funny one , when i was playing alot i used to think 50/50 which was just ignorant but still there is alot of skill in poker (probably like 10 % if i was to guess but its all subjective)

Completely agree about people playing poker and taking times out of their lives to pursue poker, i was out of work 6months / year where i was doing the odd job here and there and i was playing poker to fund this, however i didn't put high volume in and possibly could have worked but i have never wanted to do full time. Maybe briefly but i felt it wouldn't suit me as i am very sociable and it would have restricted going out with my mates, this was around 6 and half years ago but still have the same opinion i probably could have played for a living online (was offered stake etc) but its not for everyone. Also as a general rule i would say its a negative impact on peoples lives if you are an online player and lose social interaction and general life, it obviously works for some though.

''And the last one is Dee. I have been struggling with how to deal with Dee. Some days i feel like cutting him off completely some days i feel like just taking distance from him.

I guess we can call Dee a deadbeat.''

Hey i want to tell everyone that i fired Dee out of my life for good. The only thing that i regret was not doing it earlier.

One day i woke up angry at myself for spending time with a freeloader deadbeat. And grabbed the strength to block the mofuga on my cel and all social media. No relapses, the without-warning-block-button is like a nuclear bomb to a friendship. BOOOM!

Bye Bye Dee see you in hell!

Cool! You might wanna check my PGC thread https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...0-znl-1622071/

Hating on Poker Part 1

Hi lately i have been expressing my negative opinions about poker. Just because 2+2 is filled with toxicity does not mean that i have to add to it. From now on i will be following the rule of: if you don't have anything positive to say, don't say anything.

I am growing to be indifferent towards poker. Since i am starting another PGC thread.

It's gonna be great!

Hating on Poker Part 2

Me: -''I love poker what are you talking about?''

-Aug. 18, 2019.


China’s Gob. Is taking Muslims to concentration camps. There are already 1 million+ UYGHUR Chineese detained. Muslims that have left china are getting threatened if they speak.

China is implementing a social credit score to control it’s citizens. You start with 1000 points. If you are a good sitizen you get rewarded with more points that means you get free stuff and free rides. But if you are a bad citizen they substract points from your original score that means: you can not take a plain or a train.

I can not believe what i am seeing on the news. Xi Jinping is the new and the Uygurs are the new .

I think 3rd world war is around the corner.

Right now china is having trouble with Hong Kong and it also doing a whole lot of other crazy **** like building military bases over reefs at international waters. China’s government is separating kids from their parents and vanishing entire villages. Adults go to re-education schools and their children go to kíndergardens. These are concentration camps for kids and adults.

IDK if this post is going to get deleted IDK if this post is gonna get the chineese gov to threaten me (you will never take me alive by the way). But what i know is that everyone needs to know what’s going.

Mark my words: We will have a 3rd world war in less that 10 years.

Get ready.

You didn't happen to self publish a couple of books about your hating poker, did you?

Some of what you say sounds really close to a guy who published a couple of books under the name Jeremy Stryker.

No.

Don't buy on that put in the work BS. That's what coaches and pros will tell you, so you keep trying, they need guys like you.

Reality hurts sometimes kiddo. The opportunity is waaaaayyyyy long gone. And yeah, you and everybody else that thinks poker is more than a hobby is wasting their money and their precious time during the best years of their lives.

But you will be ready when you are ready this post might be just fuel to someone: -''I am gonna prove him wrong'' The young man says. Go get them. Is better to try and fail than to think: -''what if?''

Poker is dead, but everybody wants to see it for themselves.

Do not tip the dealer

People who tip dealers are not smart.

Hey freedom of speech is important

Check out my opinion:

MGTOW is for old dudes that got raped during the divorce process. Thing is that a lot of damaged and resented women work in this courts and they TOTALLY HATE men, that's why all men get the wrong end of the stick in a divorce. That's why it is VERY stupid to get married in the first place.

What do guys think? is this hate speech?

For me there is no such thing as hate speech, only ugly free speech, but beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.