Guess you meant 4-2=2 and 5-2=3?

Nice on the HH! Plus a small win besides, good day!

Yes. I was thinking I presented that formula backwards but didn't bother correcting.
Should have not happened.

Thanks golddog!

I know what you meant

RIP Doyle

Poker pioneer and legend Doyle Brunson died Monday at the age of 89. His No Limit chapter in the 1976 classic book, Super System, is one of the first lessons I learned in my poker journey.

I no longer remember much of Doyle's chapter, but I do believe that he introduced the idea to me that being aggressive and betting or raising could win your hand in two ways: either by having the best hand at showdown, or by getting your opponent to fold. I also remember that Doyle was less than enamored with holding AA; he wrote that it either won a small pot or lost a big one.

I was thinking about both of those concepts yesterday when a passive opponent holding AA tried to trap me with a slow play, and I cracked his aces for a $250 pot.

Doyle was also famous for winning consecutive WSOP Main Events with the same hand: T2. His T2 was suited in 1976, then offsuit in 1977. A little more than 30 years after those amazing wins, "RIP Doyle" became a chat box meme on the Full Tilt Poker site, but Doyle would go on to live and play successfully for another 15 years to spite the wags and trolls.

On Monday, I texted Gambelina with the idea that I wanted to win a hand with T2 and then announce "RIP Doyle" at the table, but she talked me down from it, as it is a crappy hand. Even heads up, it's not great, and Brunson had to put a bad beat on his 1976 opponent and catch runner-runner 2s in order to win with it.

Later on that day, someone else at my table won with T2o, and I said the catchphrase, and only one other player acknowledged the reference, and it wasn't the player with the T2.

In retrospect, the Doyle hand is well-known enough in poker circles that the other players at the table probably understood the reference, but they didn't find it to be of interest. Tough crowd.

Yesterday, however, I participated in a more appropriate tribute to Doyle when UTG+1 open-shoved just over $100 preflop, and I called from the SB with AKo. BB got out of the way, and the runout came T high, giving my opponent—who held T2o—the win. I announced RIP Doyle, and Villain threw his hands in the air in triumph.



MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
+$616.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$1.80

Running Poker Total: 288.5 hours, +$9112.00

Running Slot Total: 84.5 hours, +$2646.25

Grand Total: 373 hours, +$11758.25

Yesterday, I brought my A game to a soft table for the opening 6 hour leg, but I found myself down around $60 by dinner time. That's just how the game works: you put in the hours and you trust that the numbers will fix themselves over time, and that time in your case is not measured in eons or generations.

After dinner I sat down at possibly the toughest $1/$2 table I've ever seen. Nearly no one was limping, opening hand selection and bet sizing were spot on, preflop 3-bets were plentiful, and postflop play was optimal given the player types, positions, boards, ranges, action and bet sizes. I wasted little time in asking for a transfer off the table, but the sharks there ripped and tore another $80 off me before I was allowed to go.

The new table was soft, and I started at it with 90 minutes still left in the day to dig myself out of the hole. I pulled ahead for the day with 30 minutes left, only to then lose all of my gains and more at the end from a few unfavorable hands.

I'm feeling a little logy today, so I'll take today off and go in tomorrow. The high hand promotion is $300 on Saturdays, which is not as good as the weekdays' $500, but at least it's something.

At the tables yesterday, I heard a rumor that one of the Asian action players was a human trafficker. A random white dude was the sole source of the rumor, and no one else collaborated it, so I would list its provenance as doubtful for now...but it did get me thinking.

What if my purported Asian Slot Syndicate isn't a voluntary cooperative, but is instead a human trafficking operation? Let's say that they milk the slot machines all day, then hand most or all of the proceeds over to their handlers to pay down their debts for their trip and their (meager and crowded, I would assume) accommodations. And their sole source for meals might be from their slot points.

I have zero creditable evidence for this, of course, but that's never going to stop my writer's brain from seeing a story in it.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
(-$199.00)

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
(-$8.25)

Running Poker Total: 296.5 hours, +$8913.00

Running Slot Total: 86.5 hours, +$2638.00

Grand Total: 383 hours, +$11551.00

Was his name Mr Bump?

Nice updates Mr Justice! Congrats on hitting 10K

Thanks Colin!

Last night I had the good fortune to sit down next to a bona fide punter and his $500 stack. Unfortunately, I ran poorly, and the rest of the table got all of his chips, along with many of mine.

Then Fortune's Wheel spun a bit, and I found a lucky slot play, and that mitigated the poker loss somewhat.

The week is over, and I played a full 40 hours between the poker and the slots, and that makes me very happy. I had a few 40 hour weeks back in Las Vegas, but not nearly enough. I'll be back on Monday with the goal of making it two full weeks in a row.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
(-$356.00)

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$257.47

Running Poker Total: 304.5 hours, +$8557.00

Running Slot Total: 88.5 hours, +$2895.47

Grand Total: 393 hours, +$11452.47

Well, that didn't last long. Yesterday, I cut my poker session short after 4 hours. I could argue that I had a mild case of the sniffles at the time, and that the other players at the table don't appreciate that sort of thing now that we've been through a pandemic, but the sniffles cleared up after 20 minutes, while I was still at the casino, and I could have jumped back on a table fairly quickly, as the wait list was not very long.

Instead, I went home.

I'm old enough to know myself, and to know that I harbor an irrational fear of success, and that whenever I've been heading in that direction in my life, I've occasionally done things—or left things undone—that have sabotaged my becoming too successful. Recognizing this part of myself has been half the battle; fighting upstream against it will be the rest of it. Back to work today.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 4 hours
+$338.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$239.62

Running Poker Total: 308.5 hours, +$8895.00

Running Slot Total: 90.5 hours, +$3135.09

Grand Total: 399 hours, +$12030.09

Another element to my leaving early on Monday was that I'd started that day way up: +$550 or so, but then I began to give it back, losing hand after hand. In Las Vegas, my aversion to booking a loss after initially going up big led me to cut many sessions short. This is a habit that I will break here in New England, or go busto trying.

It's all one big session, and I'm up several thousand dollars at the current one: MGM $1/$2, and it's very likely to stay that way regardless of a single day's results.

I mention all this because it didn't take me long yesterday to lose a $350 chunk of my stack to a nice lady holding quad 9s vs my measly overpair aces. I played the hand fine: the SPR on the flop was around 2.1 due to my 3-bet pre and a three overcalls (lol), I'd seen Villain bluff on the river, and I'd seen her overvalue top pair hands, but it went to show that "preserving" my $338 win on Monday was a fool's errand. All of that and more can disappear in a single hand.

I clawed those chips back over the course of several hours, and I booked a modest win, but even that doesn't matter in the long run. The formula is hours * EV/hour = EV. That's not going to change. Assuming that my play is consistent, more hours will always = more EV.

I'm working today, and off tomorrow, which is a family dinner day, which we have scheduled every couple of weeks, as my parents are old and may not be terribly long for this world, so we like to spend time with them.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
+$256.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$20.15

Running Poker Total: 308.5 hours, +$9151.00

Running Slot Total: 100.5 hours, +$3155.24

Grand Total: 409 hours, +$12306.24

Following with interest, SJ, and pulling for you.

I hope you don't beat yourself up too much over the early departure the other day. Perhaps the reason you left, but not the fact of. While I don't play for-profit, I have read and heard enough about those who do to have learned that while getting hours in is important, it's equally important to do so under favorable conditions. So, DON'T feel obligated to play just to get the hours in if any of these conditions exist: the table is bad & changing tables isn't feasible; you feel physically sub-par; you're tired or feel mentally/emotionally sub-par. Similarly, just because you have reached your eight hours for a day shouldn't mean it's time to leave, if the above conditions are favorable. While you want to accumulate hours for the reason you state, you are no longer punching a clock. In fact, one of the reasons you've chosen this path is because you don't want to punch a clock. If you can mentally and physically sustain the occasional 9-, 10-, or even 12-hour session (taking breaks as warranted, of course) and the table conditions are favorable, do so!

Best wishes!!!

Thanks TopGun in VA! I appreciate you.

While I don't think that I'm currently fueled for 9-12 hour days, that could change. Once I've been on the grind for a few months, some of the basic mental work should become more automatic and presumably less tiring. I would then be open to longer sessions if the table conditions are excellent.

Yesterday, my golden $500 high hand streak continued with a jack high straight flush. Big kudos to the villain in the hand, who was holding the "nut" flush with Ax on an 874J6 board, and who only called my $100 reraise on the river, and didn't 4-bet shove his remaining $300, saying "It has to be a straight flush."

On the slot front, things have entered a new and predictable stage. Before I get to that, I'll make a quick mention of definitions. There are two basic types of slot grinders: roamers and vultures. I came up with those terms during the first generation of advantage slots, around the turn of the century, so my roamers predate the Walking Dead ones by a few years.

I am a roamer. I have a mental map which pinpoints all of the potential +EV slots on the casino floor, and I walk from one to the other, checking them all in turn, and playing them only when they're in the +EV state. If someone is playing one of the machines, I quietly move on, making a mental note to check that machine again on a later sweep.

This is a fine strategy when there are plenty of +EV plays and little competition. At this current stage, however, there are more slot grinders on the floor every day, and fewer and fewer +EV plays per grinder.

This stage begets the birth of the vulture.



When a vulture finds someone playing a +EV slot, they sit down near them and wait in the hopes that that person will get up before they trigger the jackpot event that makes the game +EV at certain times, so that the vulture can swoop down on the +EV opportunity before anyone else.

You can imagine what happens when two or more vultures sit down with the same machine in mind. Given the labyrinthine layout of the slot machine banks, the vultures can be unaware of each other's presence until that time when they rush to sit down at the same machine at the same time.

In addition to getting into yelling matches and fistfights with their colleagues, some of the vultures are also not above trying to intimidate—subtly or otherwise—an unaware regular player into getting off the machine before that player triggers the jackpot event.

Casinos won't stand for their regular players being made uncomfortable, and rightly so. In this way, vulturism led to the death of the first generation of +EV slots—the more obnoxious slot grinders were banned, and the casinos gradually sunsetted the advantage machines—and now I'm starting to see the beginnings of that pattern emerging here in the second generation.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
+$720.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$0.12

Running Poker Total: 316.5 hours, +$9871.00

Running Slot Total: 102.5 hours, +$3155.36

Grand Total: 419 hours, +$13026.36

Yesterday did not go well for me. When I wasn't card dead, I was making good second-best hands and paying off, over and over again.

The worst thing about the day was that I had a motor mouth sitting on my left for 3 hours. I doubled him up early on a missed nut flush draw, and it was then that I gave him what is known in the game as his "chirping chips".

Chirping chips—basically a large influx of chips into a player's stack that tends to increase that player's gregariousness—can turn the most laconic and antisocial player into a chatterbox, and given these chips, somebody who is already a motor mouth can become unbearable, particularly over the course of several hours.

The motor mouth was a donkey, a complete fishcake, but he was also quite an expert at the game, in his own mind. And he insisted on gifting us with his wisdom on every hand. Every hand.

He was wrong a great majority of the time, except for the times when the players showed down, then he was correct every time. "I knew he had the ace. I knew it."

I never berate donkeys. I don't tease them, nor do I make sarcastic or passive-aggressive remarks directed at them. All of these things result in two negative outcomes: either the donkey leaves the table, and possibly they play the game less going forward, or the donkey makes an effort to play better. A surprising number of them can play better after being challenged, they'd just rather forgo the difficult analyses and gamble it up and have a good time as a default strategy.

In any case my losses, combined with the constant inane chatter in my left ear, wore me down. I should have changed tables, but I wanted the man's chips; or failing that, I wanted him to get stacked by someone else, and to STFU. Neither of these things happened within a reasonable amount of time, and I quit after a frustrating 5 hour session.

I may try something different today; or I may not. More on that later.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 5 hours
(-$460.00)

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$53.65

Running Poker Total: 321.5 hours, +$9411.00

Running Slot Total: 104.5 hours, +$3209.01

Grand Total: 426 hours, +$12620.01

I just about never listen to music/use earphones (with noise cancellation) at the table, but always have them on me if need be. I was very much tempted to do so when the Argentino MTT player that I despise the most was sitting to my left last week ; his palpable arrogance is intolerable as is his know-it-all snark to always police the game/that tendency of his to want to demonstrate his superior knowledge Thankfully, in last week's ME in a series I was playing, our table broke down a mere 2h after having to endure his despicable vibes

Congrats on passing the 12k mark and on the graph positively climbing friend

Feel for you, SJ. In the last iteration of our home game, had someone on my right who didn't STFU for more than two consecutive minutes the entire evening. Not about poker, though. Equally idiotic, but on the social/political spectrum.

I did not play my best game. Hopefully tonight she's not there, will STFU, or I'll be better able to ignore her.

Hey SJ,

With the volume of play, are you completing any study?

Thanks Dubnjoy000! In this iteration of my poker career, I've decided to forgo the backpack and headphones image in favor of being a middle-aged guy in a Hawaiian shirt.

As far as having a rival goes, I'm on the fence as to whether it contributes or detracts from us living our best lives. Think Mozart vs Salieri, Larry Bird vs Magic Johnson, or the two Oasis brothers.

Nevertheless, I have taken the liberty to choose a rival. He's a young, aggro $2/$5 pro, and he's very good. He occasionally plays $1/$2 when there's no higher game running, and when he does he invariably runs over the table. I want to figure out his game and rock his world. This ought to make me a better player, possibly, eventually.

Stacking these folks often takes away their chirping chips. Try to sit on her left, get involved in hands with her, and hope for the best.

GL golddog.

I watch at least one instructional or vlog video per day, often two or three. My favorite coach right now is Bart Hanson. He runs a Monday call-in show where he gives advice on live cash game hands. Afterwards, he'll break the show into pieces and release each hand as a separate video, over the course of the week.



Next, there's Jonathan Little, who you briefly played against. His shorter advice segments are excellent, but during the longer ones, he tends to get distracted by the idiots in his live chat, so I don't always watch the longer ones.



Next is James "Splitsuit" Sweeney. He's not putting out as much content as he used to, but my subscription to his Poker Bank makes it so I don't miss him when he does put something out.



Next is Doug Polk, who is a bit of a smarmy ass who enjoys drama, but he's also a world-class player who gives very clear and solid hand advice, so he's worth a watch whenever he breaks down a hand.




Finally, there are the vloggers: the folks who take a camera to their live poker sessions and talk about their play. From their ranks, I like Brad Owen, Andrew Neeme, Jaman Burton, Ashley Sleeth and Rampage.

You have some memory on you. I had forgotten I'd played with JL!

This looks good. Kudos to MGM Springfield for rewarding lunchpail grinders like me, especially as they're running this new promo alongside the existing $500 hourly high hands.

I've already budgeted 32 hours a week for poker, so if I'm steadfast in putting in my hours, I should be able to hit the 125 hour tier and make the $400. The 150 hour tier would be a stretch for me, and only worth another hundo, so I probably won't bother with it.

Can I crack the top 20 grinders of the month for an additional $300? We'll have to wait and see, as I have no idea how to estimate such a thing, given no advance data. I have no plans to try to leather-ass it for the $5000 top prize, unless I'm close to it near the end. That seems unlikely but; again, no data.

Yesterday my stack went wildly up and down during the day, reaching +$550 and -$400 and all points in between. After dinner, I sat at a splashy and maniacal table, and with 25 minutes left before my scheduled end of the day, I found myself down around $250. Fortunately, I made a nice run during the final two orbits.

If I'd been using best practices, I would have stayed at that juicy table an extra hour or three, but I was getting tired, my game was slipping, and two of the bigger action players had already been felted and left, so I called it a day.

MGM Springfield $1/$2 poker: 8 hours
+$235.00

MGM Springfield Slots: 2 hours
+$11.59

Running Poker Total: 329.5 hours, +$9646.00

Running Slot Total: 106.5 hours, +$3220.60

Grand Total: 436 hours, +$12866.60

Sounds exactly like best practices to me and staying would have been pressing unwisely. GLGL!

How will you know if you're close to it or not?
Typically when such promos are running, you can track the progress on their website I assume?

SJ: "If I'd been using best practices, I would have stayed at that juicy table an extra hour or three, but I was getting tired, my game was slipping, and two of the bigger action players had already been felted and left, so I called it a day."


I couldn't agree more. If you are tired, and your game is slipping, and two of the action players have left, then the game is no longer as good, and it's not only reasonable, but prudent, to call it a day.

[Sorry, I didn't know how to double-quote both SJ's initial post and Black Aces' response.]