My temperature regulator was still on the fritz, I'm afraid. It's getting better.

As for the win, most of that came courtesy of finding myself on the right side of a big old cooler: QQ vs JJ on a QJ838 board, where with a 3-bet pre and a chunky bbb line post, I was able to get all of Villain's 180bbs nestled safely and snugly next to mine inside the gold ring, without having to overbet the pot on the river.

Some of today's rungood came with the help of a $10 straddle, bumped up to $40 by QQ, flat called by AKs, then raised to $110 by my AA--and so forth--with my aces holding. Neither of the boys had a particularly big stack, but I got all of one and most of the other.

Tomorrow (aka later today), I will post some general figures relating to my hourly over the last 4 months. People have asked for it, and it's not an unreasonable request, so I will table that hand.

Bally's: 6 hours:
+$567

The Numbers:

Last July, when I made the transition from online tournament hobby player to full time live cash gamer, it took me a fair amount of time to figure out where the money really came from in the cash game; and moreover, it took me weeks or months to study, to develop and to execute the play style that was necessary to steer that money to me. That process will always be ongoing, but I've made some progress, to be sure.

I didn't start to grasp much of it until around mid-September. Before that, I won at a slightly better than break-even rate. At the time, I decided to write off this early period as my apprenticeship/internship in a new craft, and now I'm going to stick with that assessment.

So, the numbers here are from Sept 15th until the present.

My cash game hourly is $17.18/hr with an 18% ROI. I make $68.72 per 100 hands.

My freeroll and MTT hourly is $56.11/hr with a 474% ROI

Combining them nets me $24.23/hr before comps. Comps are generally $1-$2 per hour, not counting a fair number of free buffets.

This would not be a bad starting wage, if I could be arsed to work 40 hours a week. The goal, however, is not to stay stuck as a promo grinder. I will be moving up to $2/$5 full time at some point this year, and that should net me a few more ducats per hour.

Solid work SJ. To be earning a solid hourly after such a short time is impressive. It also shows just how important the free rolls are to your hourly (where you can use your MTT experience).

You must be pretty stoked about it after the break even stretch to start.

I am sure 2019 will be a success for you, hopefully both on and off the table. Keep up the hard work, someday I dream of taking a shot also.

Thanks fid!

It's a bit odd, i guess. The last time I came out here, it was for the blackjack. For that, I'd found a great low-level place where I could deploy a sophisticated dual count for betting and taking insurance, a place that let me spread my bets from $1-$40 with no heat, and that dealt the double deck down to a nub, just a place with absolutely ideal low stakes card-counting conditions--and I made $4.75/hr there.

A big part of me was expecting more of the same from $1/$2. I had no idea that you could make a living from it. I've seen a great number of people doing it, but I figured that they all had other sources of income: savings, settlements, pensions, trust funds, what have you. Also, skimming the stickied advice in LLSNL seems to come up with a lot of 'don't try it' caveats when it comes to playing poker for a living.

My verdict so far here is: **** it. Give it a shot. Tell them suited sent you.

Thanks robert!

I will try my best to provide you with a clear-eyed assessment of what it's like on this side of the rail.

Saturday night I played 2 hours of the $2/$5 challenge level at Red Rock Station. The table started with 3 potential donors, but after 2 hours they all left within 15 minutes of each other, and they were replaced by aggro kids.

Many aggro kids are beatable if you're allowed enough time, patience and observation. More that half a table full of them, however, is not my cup of tea. Still, 2 hours of challenge is better than no hours of challenge.

Saturday: Red Rock Casino: 2 hours:
+$74

At the Flamingo today, I was convinced that a fellow promo grinder was wearing an Ultimate Bet sweatshirt, and I was offended/terribly amused by it for at least a half an hour, before I realized that it was just an Ultimate Poker sweatshirt. Womp womp.

Sunday: Flamingo: 6 hours:
+$148

Three Stacks $600-$60,000 Challenge:$2/$5 Level:

Link to Challenge Rules

Starting bankroll: $600
Previous bankroll: $3325
Challenge day progress:$+74
Current bankroll: $3399
Bankroll needed for $5/$10: $3750

Ultimate Pokershirt Sweat is what you were experiencing the other day on the bus

Beardy McBeardface:

I'm in the midst of trying to grow a long biblical Patriarch beard, mostly because I can. For the last 20 years, up until around mid-December, I have been satisfied with growing the lazy man's beard: let grow for three to four weeks, cut off, repeat--year after year after year.

The idea for the Patriarch beard came a long time ago, back in the early nineties. I was at Northeastern University in Boston, taking classes and mostly hanging out in funky coffee shops at Central Square in Cambridge, where I could still smoke indoors while I wrote bad poetry and short stories and surreptitiously eyeballed the pre-hipster grunge and riot grrls.

One day I was standing in line at the counter, waiting for my Chai tea with a double shot of espresso, when I turned around and nearly bumped into a young man wearing a 3 foot long beard. I could not help but stare at his beautiful corn silk face waterfall, flowing in a single orderly and unbroken wavelet right down past his belt buckle. I was entranced.

Ye gods, it's a 25 year old Gandalf! I thought.

Except, back then, even before the movies came out, every good nerd knew that Gandalf had spent no less than 20,000 years growing his beard, yet here was this kid in front of me sporting nary a single gray in his yard long whisker kit. From that time on, more than anything, I too wanted to be a 25 year old Gandalf.

I didn't have the goods for it, though. Many beards take a lifetime to fill in. In my early twenties, mine was too spotty, too neckbeardy, too Amish in that the mustache was still vestigial at best. I'd also grown a ponytail down the the small of my back, so a long beard would have been too Jesus-like by half, even if I could pull it off.

Now in middle age, with short hair and filled-in whiskers and mustache, living thousands of miles away from disapproving conservative family members who don't enjoy the biker look, yet who are not quite conservative enough to enjoy the Duck Dynasty look, I've found a window to try to grow this **** out, for once in my life.

I have a lot of grey in there, maybe a little more than in Nick Offerman's beard,which is my current model. I keep wanting to claim that mine looks like Offerman's beard, but it doesn't. I don't have the length yet. I'm operating, at best, at .65 Offermen, and if Old Nick doesn't soon shave or at least trim things down, I'll never catch up.



Offerman's Beard
[x] necessary
[x] sufficient

Yesterday I played a nice lunchpail 8 hour session. I faded a bit towards the end, but that's something we all do at work. Normally, towards the end of a long session like that, the booze would be starting to catch up on me. That's not been the case in this dry January.

Flamingo: 8 hours:
+$127

Mr. SJ, you have opened the door to this line of questioning:

Can we see your beard?

At present the beard is only longish, and not substantially so. As such, it's not yet ready for prime time in terms of social media posting.

I intend to grow it until we get our first few consecutive 100°F (38°C) days out here, so until around late April. By that point it might be worth a look.

Thursday and Friday morning: Flamingo and Harrah's: 6 hours: (Flamingo "Freeroll", -$10)
(-$68)

Tonight, I'll hit Harrah's for the overnight. For the first time, I won't be drinking on the overnight, so I doubt that I'll be as amused as I usually am by the typical drunken antics.

Not much to report lately. I sat down for two sessions, both times going down a hundo almost right away, and both times spending the rest of the session going up and down from the -$100.

In the Bally's freeroll on Saturday, 89 entered and 80 were paid. I went out in 83rd. It's more than a little embarrassing when you miss the World's Earliest Bubble, but I don't show up for this event just to fold down to 3bb and mincash for $100. In this tourney, if you're lucky enough to make the final table with good chips, and willing to be a jerk and to veto the usual FT chop, you can take home around $1700 for firsties. Otherwise, the FT chop gives you $600+. One of those two results is always what I'm shooting for.

Speaking of tournaments, I just finished rereading James McManus's Positively Fifth Street. I last read the book in 2008, just after I'd discovered the possibilities of poker, and I was fired up almost beyond words by his story of being a journalist assigned to cover the 2000 Main Event, only to find himself satelliting in to said event and then making a deep run to the final table.

Rereading it in 2019, I was surprised to find that my opinion of the book has come around almost 180° in just 11 years. The book is the same, but poker and society have changed, and so have I. I think that writing a 'then and now' comparison review of it might be of some interest, though I've never written a review of anything, and I have no idea how to start, so I guess I'll just sit down and start writing and see what happens.

Harrah's: Saturday and Sunday: 12 hours (Bally's "Freeroll" -$10):
(-$102)

Little losses, nice scores, seems like happy days are in store!

wow, i have been missing out not coming here. Phenomenal fred SJ, ty for sharing and for the candor. I have to go catch up from page 5ish but am excited to catch up.

Thanks brother! That means a lot coming from a former grinder. I'll keep trying to hold my own here, with an eye towards hitting a score during WSOP time.

Yesterday I played a tournament with 2p2er and prolific trollbane Natamus. Neither of us cashed, but we had our fun, pounding on limpers and scooping pots from tourists.

I pushed for the tournament, rather than a straight sitdown; and here I'll admit that it's due in part to my anxiety around meeting new people face to face without first having a few drinks in me. I fear that my sober socializing skills have either atrophied or have never been properly developed during an overlong adolescence packed with steady drinking and drug use.

I need not have feared in this case. Natamus is fun, upbeat and easy to talk to. I look forward to hanging out again when he and his wife move out here and become proper Las Vegans.

Bally's $2K gtd Tournament: 3 hours:
(-$105)

I appreciate you, brother! It's comforting to know that an anti-Martin Shkreli exists, bringing good Pharma Bro-ing to the world.

Why do I keep coming back to Harrah's after swearing that I won't?





Ah well, freeroll in a few hours.

Harrahs: 3 hours:
+$34

Peanuts is a classic. I always see myself like Charlie Brown. I guess we all do somehow.

That was ****ing hilarious

Very well done SJ lol

I've been putting up a steady stream of red numbers lately, and I whiffed on another easy bubble freeroll: 43 runners, 30 paid, and yours truly out in 42nd. Downswings are an unavoidable part of the business that I've chosen. Nothing for it but to keep studying and forging ahead.

I might try the Red Rock $2/$5 tonight for some challenge hours.

Bally's: 4 hours: (Harrah's "Freeroll" (-$10):
(-$324)

Just got an unsolicited "Nice beard, man" from someone on the street. Sweet!

Today is a day off. I'm still having trouble motivating myself to put in the hours. I have sufficient bankroll behind me atm. My big problem is, I have sufficient bankroll behind me atm.

I fear that the motivation to grind will show up once my bankroll dwindles down to a more dangerous level, and by then an ill-timed downswing will make it all too late. This may be how a lot of otherwise +EV poker players go busto, but that revelation still hasn't been enough of an IRL scare card to get my ass in the seat for enough hours.

This is human nature in a nutshell. 70,000 years of living in the moment has left at least some of us without the wiring to make the proper provisions for potential future scarcity. If, like Barry Greenstein, I had a family to feed, that might focus me a little more. As such, I think I may just need to learn to love myself enough to worry about providing for myself before the crisis hits.

Not much movement in the bankroll; in fact, I broke exactly even over the last 6 hours. I'm not sure which color to use for that, so I'll leave it black (white if like me you're using the slick skin for your 2+2 browsing.) I've taken some nasty beats, so I'm actually quite happy to be even after shipping away a ton of Sklansky bucks.

On the non-poker front, I've been rereading Stephen King's On Writing. It's just a fantastic book, definitely in his top 5 with me, and I've read all of his except for Cujo (he says in On Writing that he was too drunk and wired on coke to even remember writing Cujo, so that didn't exactly close the sale with me on buying the book.)

Anyways, King's writing instruction book has got me fired up for writing again in almost a diametrically opposed manner that Positively Fifth Street failed this time to get me psyched up to play Main Event Satellites in a few months.

I've made some progress on that Positively Fifth Street review/reevaluation, and I should have that out soon. It's going to be a long one, so you'll need to either get ready to bear with me while I natter on for a while, or prepare your haha didn't read scrolling finger for heavy deployment. Why not both? Sure, why not a little of both.

I've also come up with a new book idea, for the first time in many years. I might look into that after I finish with the McManus review.

Bally's $1/$2 and Red Rock Station $2/$5: 6 hours:
$0

Three Stacks $600-$60,000 Challenge:$2/$5 Level:

Link to Challenge Rules

Starting bankroll: $600
Previous bankroll: $3399
Challenge day progress: ($-20)
Current bankroll: $3379
Bankroll needed for $5/$10: $3750