I'm not really sure what you mean by it being related to play style, and obviously it doesn't include all forms of variance (it would be a very boring graph if it did). The point is though that it will be closer to your true win rate than you winnings line will be because it eliminates one aspect that contributes to variance.

I don't think you understand what AIEV is.

How does this debate always come up lol. If you dont think EV adjusted winrate is a better predictor of true winrate than straight up winnings I just dont even know what to say to you really.

Anyone who thinks this isn't true is denying a basic fact about statistics. Obviously EV adjusted winrate has lower bias and lower variance than actual winrate, thus it is a better estimator of the true parameter.

No doubt

I would never contend that loving the game is a prerequisite to becoming a successful (profitable) pro. I just said that I personally wouldn't recommend anyone to go down that path in 2012 without it. If someone had to force me to put in the amount of work that is required to maintain my winrate, I would be miserable. As it is, it is not work, and my level of happiness is very high.


+1

personally i think the best play is to disregard all the different types of graphs that show you how lucky or unlucky you are getting. focus on analyzing hands before during and after sessions. i have never in my life looked at a graph that showed any of the lines that i see frequently posted on this site. who gives a ****, seriously. this might be also tied to my semi frequent feeling of laziness involving poker, so possibly disregard my point about graphs. i had times throughout 2005-2011 where i massively cared, sweated different tables for hours, watched, analyzed, then played, looked at hands after, lived it breathed it dreamed of it loved it. then i had other times where i just felt lazy, wanted to just play and jumped into different tables. sometimes i could easily get through downswings, sometimes it would fk me so hard mentally. i can say that the times that i was weaker mentally and more prone to think **** this was the times i was considering giving poker up as a full time thing and focusing more on school/internship/potential job. take a few months off after a awful run, then come back and run awful, and take a few more months off. but to bring this back to what you are saying thepizzlefosho, every single time i have taken a break, eventually i feel the BUG and just want, NEED to play. i cant escape it. i just took like 3 months off this year for various life reasons, was enjoying it mostly, but eventually i just had to return to tables and play. so i really do love the game an don't see myself ever quitting because im addicted to the rush. this whole paragraph has no flow, but need to add 1 more thing. in my earlier years i loved playing all the time, and everything else was mostly a joke. it was a video game that was so fun and somehow made me lots of money. but lately, i am most happy when feel like i am living a balanced life: personal relationships, coming up with and working on different start ups, paying more attention to everything else that goes on in real world besides sports, and then poker. so it definitely has something to do with age imo. but everyone has their own vision for how they want things to unfold in poker and life. just try to make yours happen without getting sidetracked by obstacles and noise.

since you popped in here, mind sharing thoughts on leaving poker and coming back? if not no worries.

fwiw guys I think we can all just drop the AIEV discussion. It's been discussed a million times, and pretty much everything has been said.

this.

and this.

and this!

lets forget about variance and just enjoy thanksgiving!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?featur...&v=ZSBq8geuJk0

is this a joke cover or were they serious when they made it? so hard to tell what level the internet is on these days.

I mean it's so bad I'm not even sure it's funny.

my mind is blown. I just watched the whole video and kept saying "Is this real?"

just

wow

lol next rebecca black

That song makes me hungry, also great inclusion of 14 yo rich white girl rap towards the end, inspiring.

quit at 1:28, too bad

lol her rapper sidekick im pretty sure is the same guy in the rebecca black classic

if only i could make a living off being horrible...oh wait

blows my mind every time lol.

quitting the game for a year and a half while I finished up college really made me realize how good mid-high stakes pros have it. I was really close to getting a job in finance back in May/June, but instead decided to grind live. pretty happy with my decision.

what Rollinhand said about alternate income streams is important too. I'm working on educating myself on a lot of things right now. I already know most of what I need to about basic personal finance/investing, but I'm trying to learn more about business and real estate currently.




whoever was talking about how bad the Florida poker scene is for NLHE - I look on the Bravo app all the time and it seems like 10/20NL runs weekdays at one or two casinos. that is not true at Borgata.

how are you going about educating yourself? im trying to work on this and struggling. Never took a single economics or buisness class. There just seems like so much to learn that im finding it rather intimidating and getting kind of lost along the way.

So not that he wasn't creepy in the RB video, but the black dude looks extra rape-y in this vid. I'd keep an eye on him if I were her parents.

Yea I mean for me the transition has just been about all the obvious stuff. On one hand there's the amazing freedom that comes with being a self employed poker professional. No alarm clocks, no arrogant bosses to answer to etc. I'm going to Africa for six weeks in January which is something I could never even dream of doing a year ago.

On the other hand I very easily fall into the trap of completely isolating myself from the outside world. Becoming nocturnal, ordering in all my meals, grinding 10 hours a day etc. When I was working that obviously wasn't an issue at all and I really enjoyed interacting with other people constantly and the sort of second social life working in an office for a largish company creates. I was exposed to a lot of young, smart professionals and definitely made some new friends. There was also a sense of being part of something, or doing something meaningful if you will (as much as is possible working for a wall st firm I suppose). That is completely absent for me playing poker.

As far as getting back into poker specifically it was definitely hard in the beginning. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things strategy wise but eventually it felt like I'd never left. The funny thing is when I'm on a heater I wonder why I even considered quitting poker but recently I've been on a bit of a downswing and I find myself checking job listings... All in all I've realized that while poker was be great way to go through my 20's I really don't want to do this for the rest of my life. I definitely don't love the game enough to grind play money or even ssnl for that matter

PC-

Are you still located in NYC? How much of coming back to poker can be attributed to the unluckiness of working at a firm that got liquidated? Did you turn down other jobs to play? Were you happy going to work every day?

yes but i spend a decent amount of time in Norway as well. roughly 100% no, but i stopped actively seeking work to focus 100% on playing mostly because I felt the search was futile. My game also suffers quite a bit when I play part time. I mean there were definitely times when I was pretty upset at being woken up by my alarm clock but for the most part yes. However my stint was way too short to really answer that question.

anyone here have any recs for epic fantasy series like Game of Thrones?

Malazan Empire books by Stephen Erickson (sp?). They're amazing, and at the same time require a ton of work because his universe is magnitudes larger than Game of Thrones. He just drops you in the middle of it and let's the back story kind of organically unfold throughout the course of the dozen or so 900 page books. Sometimes you'll be reading for hundreds of pages kind of wondering why you should care about some character, some journey, etc and then suddenly it reaches the climax and you're kind of blown away by the resolution of the book.

That being said, I was about 9 or 10 novels in to the series when I just couldn't get through one of them and then my Kindle broke and I haven't made it back to finish them. I'm sure I will at some point, but it's ****ing intense reading and when I have other stuff to do I just don't have it in me.

If you're looking for something lighter, Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss is kind of a mix between GoT and Harry Potter. It's really good, but I actually think his prose kind of sucks. I find myself constantly reading sentences and thinking how his editor should have encouraged him to rewrite them because they are so awkward. Or his wording clearly missed what he intended to convey. But he's very good at setting, creating characters, and the plot moves along quickly so it's a light read. He just falls into common Deus Ex Machina writing traps sometimes, and again I think his prose is a little lacking.

There is also Wheel of Time, but I'm going back through it now and I find it pretty tough to get excited about after GoT. The first book is a Tolkein ripoff (not a bad thing necessarily), but then the next 4-5 novels are really great. And then (novels 7-10) his world gets so complex that things start to drag at times. And his characters are often very one dimensional, and his female characters are (imo) totally stereotypes of an old semi-misogynist. He is a great writer though, and the world-building is pretty fantastic.

Lastly there is Black Company Books by Glen Cook which start out as a really fun and fast paced fantasy stories. They're interesting because most of the characters are anti-heroes, and his world seems more like the Vietnam War than your traditional black and white Fantasy scenarios. But a few books in things get kind of silly and confusing, and I wish I had just read the first book and left it at that. His attempts at world-building kind of fall flat after his initial setup, and the plot gets very weird later on (3-4 novels deep). By the end I was just finishing it to finish it, but I can't say I really enjoyed the "conclusion" or the evolution of the characters and locations.

Malazan seems to be the next one to get if I feel like doing the work. I thought Wheel of Time was lolbad. Name of the Wind sounds formulaic, meh. I'll check out Black Company though, that sounds good at the start at least.

Any opinions on some other books I'm looking at, like Prince of Nothing, Long Price Quartet, or First Law?