November is in the books!

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

Well, I have played my last session for the month, and I have to say I am pleased with my turn around this month. I think by the end of the month I had back my A game in my online play, and it was nice to run really good playing live for the week when I was bust online.

In total, it was my best month ever, and my second best month for online poker. I wound up approximately +$85K. Here are graphs for how it broke down.

Live:



Online Holdem:



and Pot Limit Omaha:



There were two other cool developments that I am excited about at the end of the month. I started to play high stakes limit holdem again, with decent results after my initial adjustment period where I dropped a ton, and i wound up positive in both the 50/100 and 100/200 games on stars over the last few days.

I also am in discussions with pokerzion.com about having a bigger role in the site. I can't announce anything official yet, but I am very excited about the possibilities and hope to have an exciting announcement in the upcoming weeks.

I also finalized my plans to go to vegas for part of 5 diamond next month.

Bring on December, and I hope everyone runs good in life!

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Riding out the month

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

I'm sorry its been so long since I updated my blog, but I was doing family stuff over the weekend as there was thanksgiving at my wife's cousin's house, followed by my father-in-law visiting for the weekend. Thanksgiving was great, as we really get along well with that part of Elena's family. The only funny thing about it is that that particular branch of the family tree loves poker. They have all been playing for a lot longer than I have, and play constant home games and home tournaments, and this includes men, women, and children. So after dinner, they pulled out the table and we played a couple of $10 buyin tournaments. There was lots of fun, and trash talking, and suckouts, and I think I was outplayed most of the time. It was a blast.

Anyhow, I didn't work until Sunday night as I was staying up playing so I could drive my father in law to the airport at 4:30AM. I am finally playing well, and running good online though. But I have learned a couple of things I thought I would share. When i am playing well and running well, I often want to play at any time, no matter what the games are like, and how tired I am. So often I pull and all nighter, then bring the kids to school, sleep for a few hours, and get up and play another session, and in that other session I often lose back too much of my profits. So I am making a rule, for the time being that if I stay up all night I take some serious time off, taking it easy the next day.

I had a very good week online so far, and I am pretty excited as unless anything goes wrong, this should be myu best month ever earnings wise. I am finally in the green for the month online, even including my shots at 25/50 where I am -$18K for the month. Here are my graphs for this week, notice even when I run good how swingy things can be:



And here is the graph of my 1 session of PLO, where I also ran pretty well:

YAIY FOR POSITIVE VARIANCE!!

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Swings and more swings

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

Well, I feel like apologizing to my family over and over again because I have been a pain to live with this past week. Poker has just been super frustrating for me this week. I think I was pushing a little too hard. I put in 18K hands in one week, and wound up -$6K. Furthermore I went from 0 to +15K to -2K to +13K, to -1K to +6K to -$6k during the course of the week. So on Sunday, I just took the day off altogether. Then on Monday, I sat at a bunch of tables and started playing and just was not feeling it, so I quit after 10 minutes, and decided to just go to Commerce and enjoy myself playing poker for a day. There I also started out playing not so well, and lost my first 5K buy-in pretty quickly, but I came back strong, and started playing really well, and wound up +$24890 for the day. So if you are keeping track that means I am down ~20K online, but up about 57K live, so up 37K for the month, but not feeling great about my game for the moment. At least I love this fickle game still, and love "going to work."

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aaaaa now thats better!!

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

I almost forgot this very important equation in my life (illustrated below with visual aids):







YOGA:



+



POKER:



=



PROFIT:



Yep, the above graph is from my 1.5 hour morning session, in which I thought the games were not that good. I think that its probably a sustainable winrate ;).



Oh and I had this amusing conversation with my friend Russell who has been running horribly via AIM this morning. Names have been changed to protect the innocent

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My spewtastic and triumpant return

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

I was kinda nervous about returning to play online this week, and part of me (ok, a lot of me) wanted to just keep going back to commerce to play the softer live games for the rest of the year where I am fairly confidant I am one of the best players. And because I could play the 20/40 there for the rest of the year, and then the 25/50 at the Bellagio, it becomes even more tempting, as I could probably make a comparable hourly rate to what I would make online in the same time-frame.



But while thats probably the easier path in the short term, I went back to playing playing online anyhow. Why? Well a couple of reasons. I need to remember that if my primary short term goal is to move up and play in the bigger games (and eventually have a much higher hourly win rate), namely making 25/50NL and above online my main game, and my primary midrange goal is to have a 500K bankroll by the start of the WSOP, then I need to improve my game. And while there is some chance I could run really good and meet my monetary goal playing only at commerce, its unlikely, and relying solely on running way above expectation to get there. Basically, Its not a good plan to reach my goals. Also, while I will adjust and probably learn how to play deep stacked better than I can right now, there is nothing like the level of play online to make me get better faster. Also, I am still a winner online, but my confidence was a little shaken after busting my accounts trying to move up too quickly, so I needed to "get back on the horse" and show myself I can hang.



Well, I started my first week playing primarily at poker stars, where I have not been a regular for some time. I have probably made some buddylists (or "bad players to follow around lists" for non online poker people) for at least of few of the regulars on there, as 1) I am relatively unknown on this site 2)I spew pretty bad when I am off my game 3)I was really off my game for a few periods in my marathon comeback session. I'm too embarrassed to post the hand, but lets just say I value stacked myself with AA unimproved for over 300BB ($6000 in a 10/20 game). As some of my family is reading this blog who might not know what that means it translates roughly to "I really really really suck at poker at certain times." But just so you don't worry about my chosen profession my results suggest that I suck at least a little less than most other people playing the game.



Speaking of results, I don't think I ran particularly good during this session, but I played a ton of hands over 3 sessions over the last 36 hours, and started to remember what my A game looked like. I wound up +$4K over 9800 hands (5800 at 10/20 and 4030 at 5/10) for a pitiful win-rate. Looking back through hands I played I can find at least $6000 profit in blatant mistakes I made that when I am even playing pretty well, I won't normally make. But I am pretty happy, because i feel like I can still crush these games once I am back into the swing of things. And, as far as controlling the "compulsive gambler inside of me" I never was tempted at all to even look at the 25/50 line up, even after a friend mentioned there was a really juicy game going on. Self control: 1, Gambling beast: 0 (take that gambling beast)..



The other thing I'm really happy about is I got up and did a short yoga practice this morning. I had been off the wagon for a couple of weeks (since before egypt), and I forgot how addicted I was to yoga and how it helps me clear my mind and focus. I'm hoping this brings about a yoga bender of sorts this week. It may even be starting, as the games are probably the juiciest right now, but I am considering forgoing playing to go to a 5:45AM yoga class at the studio down on Crenshaw. I'm such an addict, first day off the wagon, and I'm already blowing off work to get my fix.



Oh I had also promised some folks that I would post a bunch of pictures from the Egypt trip, so before I forget:



chillin with the crocidile mummy



hmm, old stuff



wow



yeah, this is sort of how i like to remember hanging out in Egypt







no captions necessary, isn't this crazy cool!!



one mean ass camel



should I be worried?

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Well i should have had a losing day yesterday

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

I played the commerce 20/40 again yesterday, and it was a very swingy day. For much of the day I felt like I was playing very well. I got there at 6:45AM because my kids woke me up, and I wanted to try to catch the remains of the table from the night before, and man, they looked like they had been there for the night. Which is usually perfect for my game, and its really nice to be a clear thinking fresh player. I often when I play on the internet start my sessions at 3AM PST when I feel like some of the regulars are stuck and semi tilted along with the bad players.

Then the game got even better as a really fun gambler loose canon sat down at the table. Whoever "got lucky" and won big pots against this guy was probably gonna be the big winner for the morning. One of the most important skills, in my opinion, in games with someone who is going to double someone up before to long, is to beat the other players to his money if at all possible. Since the table was playing loose and gambly, and once he entered a pot he generally didn't like to fold, if he limped it was very smart to raise big to isolate him with a very wide variety of hands. He wouldn't just give up the pots post flop, but if you did hit a good hand, you were definitely liable to get paid. So the big hand, where at least a few people at the table thought I was a donk as well as him. There were two limpers including him, and I raised Qs4s on the button to 240, the BB called , and my friend to my right called. The flop came 644, now if any decent player wanted to play a giant pot, I would be very careful, but if he had me beat with trip 4s, I was going broke. Here is why I wanted to ply pots with him, the main thing I noticed about him was that if he thought he had the best hand, i we over-bet the pot, no matter if he thought anyone would call him or not. So into a pot of 700 he bets 2000 into me, I raised to 5000, he insta-calls. The turn can a 2 and he pushes into me for another 6000, I call and he shows down TT in the hole, and I scoop a $25000 pot.

After this I wound up getting sucked out n 3 times in moderately big sized pots, and losing a big hand when someone flopped a straight on a rag board and I flopped a big flush draw with AQs.

Then came my giant suck out hand where I prove I run better than anyone else ever in live poker. I was pretty tired by this point, and I think to be honest I was a bit tilted because I had because after being up 20K, I was only up about 6500 now. Anyhow, I had been quiet for a little while and this guy raises to 140, I repop him out of the small blind to 600 with KQs. Now I think this was actually pretty bad against this guy preflop, because he didn't raise a wide enough range, and we were both about 12000 deep, and KQ doesn't play that well OOP in big pots deep. Then the flop comes K87, and I bet 1200 (this was my second mistake in the hand, as I think a 800 bet would have done the job), he thinks for a second and reraises to 2500. Now I know that his almost his entire range here is AK and QQ, he really seemed like the type this deep to 3-bet with AA or KK, and he also was the type to trap post flop but he raised for information usually and to make a hand easier to play. And I think for the most part he has AK here and I should fold, but then I think about it a little more, and I can legitimately represent both KK and AA here, and he will have a hard time calling a push with just one pair. So I decided to make a big move. He tanked for like 5 minutes and finally decides to call with AK. Oh well, turn comes a Q, and I hit my 3 outer, and will forever be able to get paid off in the commerce 20/40 from now on :D.

Just to show how sick I have run this year live, here is a screen shot of my statistics for every live session I have played in 2007:



So no matter how bad I run in the coming months I need to remember I have run hot hot hot at least live..

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Maybe I should only play live poker

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

So I played this week on Tuesday at the Bike and Wed. and today at Commerce during the day time hours. I am running insanely hot this year playing live. I wound up +$15620 for the 3 days. Yesterday was my biggest day where I made tons of hands playing 10-20NL and won $10100, but today I felt I played my best poker I have in some time, especially when I helped start a second table of 20-40NL short handed.

During that time period I won about $3000 without ever showing down a hand. I ran one big bluff after which the player I bluffed (and he folded to my river push) got up from the table and left the game. I like to think it was because I was to his left ;). When I got moved to the main game, there was this one really aggressive player who played way to many hands, and was basically trying to run over the table. I was really happy how I handled him, as I got him to fold when I wanted him to, and call down when I wanted to, and even induced a few bluffs against him. I was playing tons of hands against him, because he was in the blinds when i was in the hijackand the cutoff, and the table was very passive, so I was raising limpers or opening with any playable hand, because he was defending his blinds out of position with almost any two cards. I think he thought I was a weak spot at first because he didn't recognize me, so he was playing almost any pot I opened, which probably wasn't as bad in position because he could make my life miserable at times, but OOP he was in real trouble against me.



Anyhow, its really nice to be winning again. Even if I have money online tomorrow, I am considering playing the 20-40 at commerce. I'll think about it more tonight.

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Rock, I'm about to be back in action!!

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

Note to self: don't bust your account again..



After 2 money transfers between my own banks, getting a check and overnighting it today, and two days of playing live in LA card rooms, I am pretty excited that by tomorrow night I should have money online again!!



Anyhow, playing live at the Bike was fun yesterday, even though the 10-25 never got going while I was there. The 5/10 was fun to play, and pretty uneventful other than the side bets going on. Moe, one of the hosts for the game, and one of the regulars, AJ, were playing a 7-2 bounty for $100 and never being one to turn down some gambling, I joined in too. It works like this, if you win a hand holding 72 as your hold cards, everyone else participating pays you $100. So I ran really bad in this bounty. I got 72 against Moe's 72 and he was utg and I was in the small blind. He wound up putting in the last and ballsiest bluff, and not only did I lose ~$200 in the pot, but then I needed to pay him the extra $100 (I was really close to coming over the top again, because the way he played the hand, I thought there was a strong posibility that he had 72 too lol).



Then I wound up getting it all in for 400 against AQ with my 72. Also, let me just say, that this bounty is the worst (or maybe the best) for my already too crazy live image. As it is whenever I reraise, no one ever gives me any credit anyway, due to some choice showdowns from the past, but if I am playing the 72 bounty, it made it so I could almost never squeeze or make lots of preflop plays that I would normally be able to get away with, because now on top of my image, they can legitimately put me on 72 as well.. damn, should have thought of that. In all I wound up down about $700 playing.. gamble gamble..



Luckily, I made it up, when 6 of us flipped for $100, and my 68o held up by rivering a straight to take it down. Is it wrong that I got more excited about that then winning a $4000 pot with the nut flush against top set all in on the flop?



Anyhow, it was a swingy day, and I played ok, but only wound up +$500 for the day, well, better than losing.



I'm deciding if I'm gonna play at the bike again today, or if i'm gonna hit the commerce 10/20. I should probably go play the bigger game, but I really enjoy the everyone knows everyone else atmosphere at the bike. It almost feels like I got invited to a home game because everyone seems like they play there every day. I should enjoy this, because I need to grind a ton of hands the rest of this month, and probably the next time i get to play live (which I really like doing) will be when I go to vegas in december for 5 diamonds.



Alright, off to commerce, or the bike, or commerce..

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Wow, even better

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

So just to add to yesterday's post, my wife read my blog post and was like, "you didn't even put the real reason I told you for trying very agressively to move up to high stakes." I was like, "what, now?"

So she reminds me how I have been talking about how much I want to have a ton of money bythe World Series in Juneso that I could jump into whatever live game I think is profitable for me (100/200+), and that I seem to play very well in big live games. She also thought my staking strategy (that I'm not going to share here) will make $$. WOWOWOWOWOW I am soooo in love.

Oh, and one other thing. I got a couple of IM's after my last post about how lucky I was to have found my wife, and commentsabout girlfriends not understanding. Wellour "poker partnership" wasn't always like this. Early in my playing days she absolutely hated poker and wanted me to quit. She hated late nights without me, she hated how i was obsessed, she hated how i would go into debt while running bad, etc. In fact, as of last summer, I had an ultimatum where I deposited the last $500 I was ever gonna put into poker, and she was hoping and expecting me to fail. Since then, she has seen me put the family first, and restrict my playing hours, worked with me on bankroll managment, so she would understand the swings, I am not ashamed to say that after our second son was born we started couples counceling which has made are relationship much stronger, and now we have learned how to run a poker business together.

Oh, and in other news, i should have $$ back on stars and FTP by tuesday or weds!!! so I will be back in action and giving updates!

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My Wife is smarter than I am

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

Yesterday I realized, again, how lucky I am to have my wife supporting me, and also, how she understands making money as a poker player better than I do at times. I was talking to her about how even though I have a lot of money in my bankroll, I was just going to deposit 10K and grind up from 2/4 like i did over the summer. So she was like "Oookaaay," but I could tell she didn't like my decision.



When I questioned her, she responded by asked me these questions:

1)Had I been beating 5/10 and 10/20 for the last 3 months, and how much money I had made playing 5/10 and 10/20 on full tilt over the last 3 months online, and how much had I made at 2/4 and 3/6. I wasn't sure, so we went to the computer and pulled up poker tracker.



Here are so here are some screen shots all of them are from 8/1/2007 to 11/2/2007 filtered to exclude my attempts to move up to 25/50-







note: the hourly rate in the above graphs are not actually accurate, as i was typically playing 2/4, 3/6, and 5/10 tables all at once, so the hourly rates aren't accurate, but if you just look at the $$ made /hand played you get an accurate win-rate: therfore overall= $0.44/hand 2/4-3/6= $0.36/hand 5/10-10/20= $0.65/hand



2) So when she looked at this, she asked me if I had the bankroll to play 5/10 and 10/20, with a fairly low risk of ruin.



Answer: Yeah, I'll would be ok if I could deposit the money I have.



3) Why do you want to play 2/4 again?



Answer: I don't. I don't know. To punish myself really.



4) Can you find a way to get the money online?



Answer: yes.



5) Do you think it was a mistake to try to move up to 25/50 when the games were juicy?



Answer: no.



And neither did she, then she launched into her analysis of the situation:



You have not yet proven that you can't beat 25/50, but you have proven you don't yet have the discipline to deal with the swings involved without melting down (true). But, you have proven you can beat 5/10 and 10/20, and you handle the swings very well, often being down 15K in a session and still seeming to be able to bring your A game. If you have the money, and you did nothing wrong by taking a shot at 25/50, then why are you beating yourself up and costing yourself money by playing lower than you should be?



WOW. SHE GETS THE BIG PICTURE SO MUCH BETTER THAN ME...



And suddenly, I have a plan.

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Back from Egypt and Online Busted :O

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

So in short, this vacation was the best time I have had in ages! I got to spend time with Elena without the kids, which reminded me how much I love her. Also, some of the history was really amazing. The trip also reminded me how complex the world and political decisions really are in the 3rd world. Just to share one example, we were brought on a tour of the High Dam, that was build during Nassar's government in the 70s with the help of engineers from the Soviet Union. The issues around the dam are immense. The dam paved the way for the modernization of Egypt, it controlled the annual flooding such that industrialization was possible, and the sustainable hydroelectric electricity that this one dam provides is enough for all of Egypt, and even exported to other parts of Africa and Palestine.















However, it completely changed the way of life in Egypt that had been prevalent for thousands of year, specifically it ended the annual flood times, where the Nile would rise and nearly completely flood the livable land in Egypt. This created the fertile lands and the basis of the early civilization in the Nile River Valley. Now agriculture in Egypt relies heavily on chemical fertilizers, and irrigation. Perhaps more importantly, the major remaining Nubian (indigenous and black) City and its rich history was completely covered by Lake Nassar, which was created by the dam, and the Nubian's themselves were displaced. To this day most of the Nubian population harbors a deep seeded anger towards Nassar.























However, much to Elena's dismay here's what i did a large portion of the trip:























Anyhoo, after I got back I was excited to play some pokah, but in the past two days, I let my inner compulsive gambling degenerate all but bust my online accounts :(. I still have over 75K in my bankroll, the problem is, almost none of it is online. I have to give Poker Stars support much bigger props in this regard than Full TIlt Poker by the way, as they are bending over backwards to help me make a large deposit, where at ftp, it will take me almost a month to deposit a reasonable bankroll with my current deposit limits.. ugg. Lets just say, when you are trying to move up on a short bankroll, it takes a very big toll and you are likely to tilt if you are up say 20K in a session, and right before you are about to quit, wind up down 1K, so much so that you might keep playing even though your are too tired and tilted to play... More about that in another post!















Oh, so after telling you about busting my accounts, I figure people would be lining up to get poker instruction for me, so I have taken time out of my hectic life and recorded a few instructional poker videos. PokerZion.com is planning to sell my videos and offer them as part of the coaching packages, but this one which I made playing small stakes (4 tabling .5/1 6 max on Poker Stars) had a few technical problems and the audio is a little choppy at parts, but I think the content is good, so I am just giving it away.















You can get it at http://www.driveway.com/ljkze58019 enjoy!

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A few fun graphs before I go

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

So, we just got uploading pictures to work for my blog, so I figured i would post a few fun graphs and pics before I leave for Egypt. I'm posting from my parents house in philly, here is a picture of me and my son that we took of ourselves at our layover in chicago:





However, I have to say I am sooo fuckin relieved because of playing poker this past thursday its not even funny. Sometimes, even when you have played hundreds of thousands of hands, you lose your spark and confidence a little, but this past Thursday, after having a big losing day on Monday, and small losses on tuesday and weds, I went to commerce for a few hours because my wife had a bunch of errands to run in the area, and it seemed like it would be fun. I played in a fairly good 20/40 NL game that started shorthanded, and lost a little bit, I think $1700, but for the first time since monday, I really felt like playing when I left. I was so itching to play that that night I jumped on stars, and for the first time in a while was really excited to play a session of 5/10 and 3/6 tables, and book a decent win of about $4000.



The main reason I'm so happy, is how excited I was and am to start playing again, even if its only at 5/10. I have big goals for december and the first half of 2008. I want to have a very big bankroll when the WSOP comes around next year, as I have fared very well in deep stacked live games, and if a big game is going in which I am a favorite, I don't want to have to decide not to play it because it is too big. Also, I hate playing tournaments, and in general I don't think the smaller ones are worth my time, but I hate giving up in the making money in the crazy fish fest known as the World Series of Poke. , So I would much rather just put a bunch of horses in all the holdem events, and just play the TV events and maybe the $5000 HU and $10K PLO events, and focus on the side games other than that. But again, to do that I need a lot of cash.



Here's praying to the poker gods that I run good!! :P



So without further ado, here are some amusing graphs that I posted to 2+2 this last week:



2007 So Far Annotated Graph:







2007 live results, I run sick hot!!:





And my graph of online play for October, which is a little depressing:

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Reposting a few entries

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

I had just started a more general blog on myspace this week, and there were a few entries i wanted to put here.



Oh if you want to add me as a friend www.myspace.com/ddipasquo

October 14, 2007 - Sunday

So I’m gonna write a blog Since I don't do as much self endulgent crap as i used to , I've decided to write a blog. I don't care if anyone is interested in reading this, because I will probably use this mainly as a (public) diary to work stuff out for myself. Since most professional poker player's blogs bore the hell out of me, I probably won't focus on that too much, but as it is currently a large part of my life, I probably can't avoid it. So a little about me. I'm 31 years old, have a 4 year old (Tony) and a 1 year old (Diego), and have been married (Elena) for 5 years. I am politically very active and very to the left, but ironically I make a living playing games with rich people and possibly exploiting those with gambling problems. I give a lot of my time and resources to the The Labor/Community Strategy Center, which I consider my political home. I was a professional computer geek up until about 4 months ago. I worked for the last 6 years at Symantec, the majority of the time as a senior software engineer on their emerging mobile security product line. I was pretty good at my job (unfortunately, because if i sucked at my job i would have just gotten laid off and gotten like 6 months pay in free $$.. damn it), but I really didn't want to program computers anymore, so when Symantec decided to off-shore our mobile development to China, the thought of getting together my resume and applying for other programming jobs, or even starting on the job i was being transfered to was pretty unbearable. As "luck would have it", I had been wasting a ton of my time and considerable money learning how to play poker, mainly because I am a big kid and it gave me a chance to shirk my primary responsiblilities, and provided tons of stimulation for my ADHD, and I had been beating my income from symantec playing on the internet part time. So I had the perfect excuse to quit working and play games for a living. This also allows me to throw around fairly obscene amounts of money, and become pretty desensitized to losing or winning more than i used to make in 2 months, in a couple of hours.. fun stuff, and i can pretend to be fairly baller. For instance, I had the most baller phone call that a friend overheard the other day when I called commerce and the bicycle casinos, ask for the top section, and what the biggest NL game they had going was, and decided, it wasn't worth my time to go play in it... lol

October 16, 2007 - Tuesday

3 hours, 13 minutes, -$36,221.70 I came to the realization when I was 20 years old that any time I had grown, really grown, as a person, that it was very difficult. It hurt. A lot. I remember the first time school was a challenge to me (freshman year in college), when I started a business and faced failure for the first time, being immersed alone in another culture without enough of the language to communicate with people, working as a young white organizer in a primarily black and latino civil rights organization and being challenged on my subtle chauvinism, my first extended downswing as a poker pro, etc. Well yesterday I grew a bunch.. I mean, my biggest lose to date was a -$14K day. I knew a bigger one was coming since I've been moving up in stakes, and I had been trying to prepare myself mentally, but damn, when it actually happens.. THIRTY-SIX THOUSAND DOLLARS!!! There were lots of reasons for having such a bad day, some of which I could have controlled and some of which I had no control over, and you know what? When I woke up this morning and processed what had happened and began to figure out what I had learned, I would honestly say that I am glad this happened now, and it will be better for my development as a poker player than any winning streak I could have. There is one thing I feel the need to clarify here. A period of intense growth is, in my opinion, necessarily a trying time of extreme pain or distress in which a person changes a lot. Also trying times and times of extreme pain or distress will also always cause a change in a person. But it requires either consciousness or dumb luck to make a period of extreme pain or distress not just change you, but cause you to grow. In fact, these periods can also change people for the worse, and allow a person's biases and prejudices become even more pronounced. Often time, in the most extreme examples of these periods, there is most likely both extreme growth and extreme damage simultaneously. For example Fanny Lou Hamer, a brilliant and under recognized civil rights leader during the height of the black power movement was certainly transformed and revolutionized by the severe beatings and police repression to which she was subjected. She would not have been the same leader nor had the same powerful politics without this. That said, I have no doubt that anyone that went through this sort of repression also had tremendous psychological damage. In poker, there is always a huge danger in being what we call "results oriented." It means judging your actions based solely on the results. It's the reason why very, very few people can become experts in a game like poker without studying the game away from the table. In the short run, in poker, and in life, you are too likely to be rewarded for bad decisions or behavior that will hurt you in the long run. Likewise, you are punished for making good decisions. So it's with this consciousness that I attempt to move forward and figure out all the things I can learn from yesterday. Besides, its pretty baller to say that I lost more than the individual median income of the US in one afternoon, and that I'm still up about 40K for the month ;). -Dan

October 18, 2007 - Thursday

Vacation at a perfect time! So I am officially on vaction. Saturday we are flying to philly to drop off the kids with mom-mom and pop-pop, and monday, Elena, My brother, his wife, and I are flying for a week long trip to.... EGYPT!! Also, this will probably be the longest I haven't played or thought about poker in 2 years or so! I honestly couldn't come at a better time, as I have been playing high stakes, been on a bit of a bad run and need to move down, so when I get back I will be chomping at the bit to play 5/10NL instead of disappointed that I am back playing 5/10 NL. Anyway, I am off to read some more about Egypt before I go!!

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Starting a poker blog

Date: Tue, Dec 11, 2007 Professional Internet Live

If you found your way to my home on teh intrawebs, welcome!



I want this blog to mainly be a place where I talk about the insights that my friends and I come up with, about life and poker, and a place to reflect on my chosen profession of being a degenerate while having two young kids and a wife.



I met Russell playing a 2/4 HU match about 6 months ago. I guess he thought I could play poker ok, and we exchanged AIM's and we have had a budding friendship since then (and staked each other in tournies, borrowed online cash from each other ect). Pretty cool even though he was 10 years old when I graduated college :(.



Anyhow, he proposed I start creating some content for PokerZion, and I thought that this format would be the best way to start.



Here is the introduction I wrote on the Poker Zion website:

I just joined Poker Zion and am pretty excited to be here, as I am always looking to work on my game, and I love thinking about and "talking poker."

I'm 31 years old and since mid July, I have supporting my family as a professional poker player. I play primarily online, the majority of my hands at 5/10 and 10/20 NL on FullTilt Poker under the screen name 3-2-1BuStO, and have been doing pretty well so far. I also feel I am a very good short handed and heads up player, but don't play heads up as often, as it brings out the ego in me a little too much, which is one of my biggest leaks I am constantly battling.

I started playing poker as a hobby during the height of the poker boom in June of 2005. I loved watching the WPT on TV and after I went to a home game and was a winner one night for like $50 I made an initial deposit into Pacific Poker, which I, of course, lost in a few days. I then began reading and studying the game and probably made about 4 $50 deposits over the course of the summer, usually running my account up a bit, and then inevitably busting. At the time I was making good money as a software engineer, so this was just some fun for me.

In September of 2005 I started playing live poker in the card rooms in LA, and had sick beginners luck (it also helped that I had read a lot about poker and played a ton of hands online, and the live games were super soft at the limits i was playing). I won about $5000 by the end of 2005, and thought I was a really good poker player.. lol.

Because poker was "just a hobby", I didn't really have a bankroll, and just spent most of the money I had won, so when I started running bad in January-March I just wound up going into a bit of credit card debt. By my records I was a slight winning player overall, but poker was definitely costing my family money, and more importantly, it was all I thought about, so it was costing my family a ton of time. So around June I went back to playing smaller stakes online, but again I wound up busting my account by August 2006.



I was at a cross roads, I loved poker so much, and had put a ton of time into learning how to play half decently, but I was clearly spending too much family time and money playing the game. My wife wanted me to quit, and I was almost there too. So I made a deal with her. On September 12, 2006 I deposited the last $500 I was ever going to put into poker into FTP. I also made a deal that I would only play after I put my kids to sleep for a few hours each night.



So by May of 2007 I was beating 2/4 NL and had made more from poker part time than I had from my job for 3 months in a row, but was still not considering playing for a living. Then my company (Symantec) decided to off shore our mobile development to China (I was a senior developer on the team), and I was to be transfered to a team that I really didn't want to work for. As I went to put together my resume, I was really down, I for about a year I had decided I wanted to do something other than programming computers, but it was difficult to look for another job besides my expertise. My wife suggested I just live off poker for a while and figure things out. When I realized how excited I was about it, I thought, this was what I should do for a couple of years at least.



My current goal is to be able to retire by the time I am 41. I probably won't be able to do this through poker alone, but I'm learning a lot as I go!

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