ThePokerhaus.com

To start, lets see how I did for the month of November. Now while November didn’t turn out as well as I thought it would, I’m not too dissapointed in my results.

Total $60 Turbo Sngs Played: 506

ROI: 8%

Total Profit: $2,409

Keep in mind, I only played poker 15 days out of the 30 in November. I feel like my numbers went down for several reasons. The first is that I moved up to a level where there are a ton more regulars and overall just much better players than the $36s. Another reason is that instead of playing 4 tables and then taking a break and playing another 4 tables this month I six tabled for hours on end. I have to figure out what I’m going to do next month but I have a lot to do before I even to get to playing poker. More on that later.

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On Saturday I got a call asking if I wanted to play poker. This home game was different than any I had ever experienced. Besides Matt and two other friends that came with us, the 14 other ppl there was at least 3 years my senior. They were all in their twenties. It was at Bob’s whom I knew from talking to online but thats it. I figured they were all chill guys but ya don’t know till they get bad beated. The buy in was $40 which was the biggest live buy in I’ve ever played. The structure figured to be pretty good as we started with 10k in chips and 25/50 blinds. I got up to ~14k pretty early but the structure started to get crapshooty and I found myself short stacked for a long time. With blinds 300/600/50. Nervous player makes it 4k in MP with 2200ish behind and this other dude comes over the top AI for little over 2k more. It folds around to me with 5k and 99 in bb. Online I’m throwing this away the majority of the time but with real poker you can actually use physical reads to influence decisions. I felt the 4k raise screamed KQ, KJ, QJ, JT and not a pp. The reship scared me because of the actual play and the soft way the chips were placed into the pot. I felt it was somewhere in the AK, AQ, 55+ range. The structure had turned into a multi table sng and I knew if I won this pot I’d be in great shape going forward. I finally decided I probably had the best hand and called as did the OR. OR had JTo, and reshipper had AQo. Flop: 10xx and that was it. When the FT started, Matt and Justin were still left. Matt busted kinda early while Justin folded his way to the final 5 aka the bubble. At this point you got two guys that are completely trashed and being obnoxiously funny. lol  One of the drunks busted so Justin cashed. He got to heads up even in chips and decided to chop. Matt had to be home and Justin felt the other player was very good. Overall the experience was great. I got to see a little bit into the poker professional’s world, play with older players I’ve never met, and just have a good time. I would definitely go again.

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So if you’ve been alive the last couple days I’m sure you’re aware of the online drama going on. Imper1um has been accused of buying an account in order to play the FTOPS final table which he ended up winning. Nothing is proven yet but from everything I’ve read, I think its pretty safe to say hes guilty. Just way too much evidence to believe otherwise. This is truely sad. Here you have this phenominal poker player who is supposidly very nice and humble yet hes a cheater. Then the story comes out about how he took over for a player to rob MattG of a 17k package and rubbed it in his face not but a couple minutes later. Theres also all of his “friends” coming on with their “i’ve met sorel and hes a great guy/friend, very humble, has good ethics, everyone makes mistakes” like STFU, GTFO. Its not the time or place for that. Then when Sorel finally responds he outs Andy McLeod for being underage? To what, try and differ some of the attention off himself? Totally disgusts me. I’m sure Sorel has been cheating for a while now and he finally got caught. You’d also have to be pretty naive to think that a bunch of other ranked players aren’t involved in some form of cheating.

I was glad to see that in Andy McLeod’s case, ppl didn’t seem to care thats hes 16 or 17 years old. I understand its against the rules but its not equivilant to multi accounting or other forms of cheating. It doesn’t give someone an unfair advantage. Sometimes I find myself thinking that I shouldn’t be able to win the money I win or that players shouldn’t have to lose to me. So people that are a little upset about it, I completely understand. I just find it extremely impressive that he finds time to put in the volume he does. I know personally with high school, that takes up so much of my time that I could never put in that kind of volume during the school year.

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Alright so I’ll be turning 18 very soon at which time I’ll be able to create my own account. I didn’t realize all the things I’m going to have to figure out. For example, in the IronMan bonus thing, you have to qualify for a medal in December and then you can get some extra bonus money that you have to work off in January. So do I wait to create my account till then or is the money not worth it? This might take a while to figure out but I know once its all sorted out, it’ll be worth it.

Till Then

—-Don—-

About a week ago when I turned down going out so I could finish up my session I thought man I wish I never started playing this game. I thought what if I was never introduced to poker. Where would I be in my life? What would I have done differently throughout my high school years? The truth is, I think a lot of things would be different. Some for good, some for bad. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized that there are a lot of negative effects to playing online poker at my age. One that really stuck out in my mind was the fact that I look at money so much differently than I used to. In one of my early blog entries I wrote about how I wondered why million dollars didn’t seem like a lot of money. I came to the conclusion it was because you see people on TV winning that every WPT event. Times have changed. Now I look at money differently because of how much I’m making. Not to say what I make is so spectacular just that I’m making more than most kids my age. Unfortunately I think this is going to really hurt me long term. I just don’t value money the way people my age do. When someone has to pay a couple hundred bucks for something, I dont see that as a huge deal. I just wonder if down the road I’m working a job and not making a ton of money if i’ll think “fuck this, lemme go play online and make this months salary today”. I mean I strive to be able to make enough money to at the very least pay for my tuition through college but would that be good for me? In the short run, possibly, but the in the long run I’m not so sure. I’m not going to say that these things will make me quit online poker all together but its definitley pause for concern.

Until next time

—Don—

My laptop has been fucked up for the last 5 days so I havn’t been able to do much of anything. I finally called Dell today and after talking to their support for a good 90 minutes or so, they came to the conclusion that they’re going to have to strip the hardware and replace it. Excellent. Just what I want to hear. As a result I wont be playing for a couple days but hopefully I get it back and running soon as I have a couple things I wanted to mention. Until then, I’m gonna go tilt.

—Don—

Its amazing what a couple of lousy sngs can do to your confidence. If you asked me a couple days ago if I thought I could make $12k this month in $60 stts, I would say absolutely. Now I’m begging to get to $6k. Since Friday, I’ve run ungodly bad in sngs. I just cannot win for the life of me. Its very strange; whenever I think I’m down money on the day, I’ll check Sharkscope and see I’m up a ton. But tonight I played for 5 straight hours because I needed to get some volume in to get on pace for 1000 and I was positive I put up a great session. I played virtually perfect, didn’t tilt once and knew I did well. I sharkscope the day and I’m down $523. Like what the fuck.Through the first 10 days of November, I’ve played 337 $60 turbo stts, I have an ROI of 7%, and profited $1,412. Thats so fucking aweful I dont even know where to start. If I keep this up for another 60 stts, and you compare these 400 $60s to last months 400 $36s I would be making $1000 more in the $36s. I dont want to go into a panic or anything but I mean this is fucking rediculous. I know I’m running ungodly bad right now but I still think I should have an ROI of at least 10%. The competition is not THAT much better at this level. I know every move the regulars are going to make before they make them and the rest are morons. I know I said to myself at the end of last month that I’d like to make 5k this month and I’m slightly behind pace in doing that but that was before I decided on playing 1000 and before I realized that I could put up a 20% ROI in the $60s. I need to really start putting up some sick days to get my ROI back up to 20%. All I can do is keep playing as well as I’m playing right now and hopefully things will turn around.

Peace

—Don—

Once again, I’ve been late on writing this blog entry but I’ve been pretty busy with school and poker so I havn’t had a lot of free time. I think last time I left off where I had finished the month of October in sngs and the sox won the World Series. Well, I’ve figured out a plan for this month. I want to play 1000 stts. Does it seem a little unreasonable? Yes. Is it? Absolutely not. I played 400 last month and while it seemed pretty hard to put that volume in, I dont see this as impossible to do. My plan is to play a couple hundred $60 turbo stts and see how I do. I missed playing the first two days of November so I’m playing catch up but I’ve already played 187 with good results. I have a 14% ROI and $1601 profit. The thing is, if I play 1000 of them this month and have a 5% ROI I still make more than I did last month. If I have half the ROI I did last month, then I make 6 grand; and if I have the same ROI then I make 12k. I really dont think its that far out of reach. I mean there a ton of more regulars and very good players at this level but I think I can adjust my game enough to potentially have a 20% ROI.

I find most of the regulars to be very exploitable. Mostly because they’re 12 tabling and I’ve played with them enough to know their standard lines. For example if they limp in early to middle position they always have a small to medium pair. I’ve also noticed that they’re callng my shoves a lot lighter which is may be due to the fact that they’re ICM bots but can’t say that for sure. Btw, I’d like it noted that I have not done a single ICM calculation to date and I dont think I’m a much worse player because of it. I think I just know basically whats right to push and when ICM means nothing. I dont know, I feel as far as strategy is concerned, I’m at somewhat of a standstill in that I feel like my overall game is good enough to have a solid ROI and the only reason it drops is when I make bad plays due to tilt or just not thinking. Maybe I’m totally wrong and I’ll have a real wake up call in these $60s but we’ll find out. My plan is to 6 table them one after the after for a couple hours a day. I need to average 33 a day to get to 1000 but right now I’m at 27 a day. I have a lot of days off in November so hopefully that can make up for the first 2 days in the month I didn’t play and the weekends where I won’t be able to. As for getting ranked, I wanna make top 10 on the Sng High Leaderboard and top 3 on Sharkscope.

Wish Me Luck

—Don—

Un-be-lievable. From the second spring training starts, to when the season comes to a close, your dream as a fan is for your team to win it all. Well, every Red Sox fan in the world has been fully satisfied this year. In Spring Training as usual we felt good about our team. We put Papelbon back in the bullpen where he belongs and added some big free agents over the off season. They started out of the gates playing really well but thats what usually happens with the Sox. They usually start off strong but later in the season they fade into second place. But this team was different. This team was focused on going wire to wire and thats exactly what they did. Throughout the season, our pitching carried us. The bullpen in the first half was phenominal and the starting pitching was very strong. Fortunately this carried into the post season. Once again we swept the Angels in the ALDS and were onto the ALCS. We were down early 3-1 to the Indians but once again no one went into panic mode. Terry Francona just as he did in 2004, employed the one step at a time strategy. I don’t think he gets enough credit as a manager because hes expected to win, but the little things he does, and the player’s manager he is have really made him one of the best Red Sox managers of all time. So when we were down 3-1 of course just like in 2004 theres some panic but once Beckett won game 5, I think the pressure was on the tribe. They had to came back onto our turf against Schill and a streaky offense that could not be stopped. Incredibly we did come back to win the series and moved on to the World Series. I was very happy to see the Rockies make it into the World Series because I like rooting for the underdog and they had done so much to just get there. It was a match up of the best record in the regular season and the best team on paper against the hottest team of recent years. Once again just like in 2004, we swept the World Series. And just like in 2004, after the final out was recorded, I went balistic. I was running around my house screaming and jumping and ran outside at midnight screaming at the top of my lungs, “WE DID IT!!! WE’RE WORLD CHAMPIONS!!!” Its hard to describe the feeling you get, when you follow something for so long and have such a passion for something, and then its all paid off with a championship. I think you just have to be a die hard Red Sox fan to understand. Which brings me to a negative effect of all this winning. Bandwagoners and haters. I like that theres a lot more people becoming Sox fans but please dont pretend like you’re a die hard fan when you’re a bandwagoner. Also, fuck the haters. Now its not just Yankee fans that are haters of the Sox. We’re not a dynasty yet but if you want to hate America’s team, then go ahead.

Anyways so its been great to win and I have a lot to look forward to in other sports. My other favorite teams are: Dallas Cowboys, Penn State, Uconn Football, Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic, and Uconn Men and Women’s Basketball.

Ok so onto the total numbers for poker in the month of October.

I played 396 $36 Turbo Stts Sngs

Average ROI 19%

Total Profit $2,643

Hourly Rate $40.66

I acheived the Iron Man Medal, also played every day for the month of October, ranked 118th on Sng High Leaderboard, 5th and 7th on the Sharkscope Leaderboard.

So I achieved most of my goals and almost made top 100 for Sng High Leaderboard. I think it was a good month. I expected to win $3k so I was pretty dissapointed not to but I think I’m gonna take a couple days to think about what I want to do next. I’ve been experimenting with 6 tabling and might even go to playing more tables because I’d like to make $5k a month if possible. I’ve even thought of going back to multis for a while because I feel like a stronger player now. I want to consider all my options and then make a decision of what I’m going to do. I’ll keep you guys updated.

Peace

—Don—-