First, I'm happy to announce that fixed-rate coaching packages are now available on Team Moshman. We have some great players coaching at rates friendly to a variety of different budgets, check them out here.

After saying that I was pleased with how everything was going results-wise since getting back on Stars, and posting a decent-looking graph (obv the kiss of death), I immediately went on a $5k downswing. I wasn't running the best, but my games also seemed to be drying up. 9-mans were taking longer and longer to fill (this was at nights pacific time), with more and more regs in them and 18mans.

So I switched to playing earlier in the day, focusing on games where I had an edge that was very clear due to the ratio of recreational players to regs. Jorj95 has an interesting interview up where he points out that the label "breakeven rakeback grinder" is, in a sense, kinda dumb. If you're making $50/hour, it doesn't matter for your bottom line whether that's through breaking even at the tables and earning FPPs/rakeback totaling $50, or because you're crushing $5 games and have a huge winrate with little or no rakeback.

Apart from the potentially higher swings of higher-stakes breakeven rakeback grinding though, for me there are psychological benefits of having most of profit come through game profit rather than rakeback/bonuses. I've realized more and more that having edge at the tables is very important to me, and I would sacrifice a small amount of hourly rate to play in games where I'm happy with my edge relative to the other players.

The other thing I did was spend more time studying. A talented reg we stake said something that really stuck with me. He said he liked having LAG guys to his left. I asked why, since that didn't seem to make sense (traditionally you'd want tight players to your left, loose players to your right). He said because there were so many good light 4-betting opportunities.

Now I don't necessarily agree that given the choice, I'd pick LAGs to my left. But I loved the sentiment of finding opportunity in any situation, rather than focusing on the downside.

Anyway I've recovered from the downswing which is nice, and am very much enjoying the new schedule of games.

In other news ... living fulltime in Mexico has been going very well. Aspects like mail and banking aren't the best, but the ocean living and low cost of living more than compensate. The new place is very eclectically decorated; e.g. here's Wilbur in the entry. He's also had several occasions to chase seals on the beach, which seems to be a new favorite pasttime of his.

Now that I've gotten to over 5k games on Stars since moving to Mexico, I thought it'd be interesting to do an overview of how things have been going. Here's the overall Sharkscope graph for my screenname, tfnc314:

By no means the most baller stakes, but I think a decent/consistent showing at least. I play a wide mix of 9man SNG, 18man, 180man, and MTT, usually around 20 tables but I sometimes get up to 30 or so when a lot load at once. Currently I play stacked on a laptop.

Here's a more detailed breakdown by game type.

9man SNG: 2162 games, $33 ABI, 12% ROI. I'm probably running good at these as I'm not sure 12% is sustainable at midstakes even with nonturbos mixed in, but I also game select quite a bit, particularly at 60s and 100s. As I type this, the top 100 turbo filling has ICANTSNG, La_Alvarado, LBC.boliver, Raventhon, Skyblueah, and YugiohPro. I wouldn't sit a game like that and hope to breakeven before FPPs. (If the guys in it are going after SNE, then the decision to play could be very reasonable.)

18man SNG: 9% ROI after 1520 games. Lot of SNE regs grinding these, particularly at 60s/100s, but sometimes 30s/60s fill up pretty soft. I'd like to think I'm running below EV here, but possibly these are just tougher games and 9% is accurate.

180man: 70% ROI over 775 games. Small sample, running at an unsustainable pace, but definitely a lot of value in these games.

Scheduled MTT: 24% ROI after 1052 games. Wins or HU chops in $16.50 turbo, $27 KO turbo, Hot $22, $10k gtd $11r, $11 quad, and $109 turbo.

So far this year I've collected 25k VPPs in about 2.5 weeks of play which is at least something even though I don't get the best rakeback as Platinimum Star and definitely won't make SNE this year.

I study some every day, and having super-talented regs like Goldman_V, Newbguy, Losched16, and others in Team Moshman to give me advice and help me out is really invaluable. There are a lot of very talented regs in today's games, and there's no point in playing if I'm not going to at least keep pace with them as they improve every day.

In other news, Katie and I are moving to a nice new place in Rosarito hopefully on Feb 1, pics to come when we're there. It's very eclectically decorated!





Staking and Coaching Available at www.TeamMoshman.com

A couple of months ago I blogged on How do People Get Rich. As one commenter astutely pointed out, the perspective there was short-to-midterm; another option is spending more than you save, investing well, and letting 20-40 years go by (more on this below).

When you think of self-made rich guys, Warren Buffett probably comes to mind. For those interested, here's a basic breakdown of he got rich as described in The Snowball by Alice Schroeder.

He started young. Most kids today (myself included), at least in American families with some money, accomplish very little besides going to school until they're early to mid 20's. By contrast, Buffett was going door-to-door selling sticks of gum by age 6. By the time he graduated high school, he'd hired a farmer to work farmland he owned, had a successful pinball machine business, was active in the stock market, etc. I'll definitely encourage my kids to accomplish/earn as early as possible, and not wait until their 20's.

He compounded. Buffett was obsessed with the idea of compounding money (that is, profitably investing money, then reinvesting those profits to make more money, etc.). E.g. If you start with $10k and manage to earn 20% a year taking nothing out, you'll have a million in about 25 years. Buffett was super-cheap, spending almost nothing even on his own clothes after he was already pretty rich. The reason for that is because money saved is identical to money earned, and could be put to work compounding which is what he was singularly focused on.

He managed money. If you can mainly just increase your positions while doing the same work you would on your own portfolio, then managing money seems like a pretty nice gig. He had a ton more to compound from getting a percent of his investors' profits. Not applicable to all of us, but one component of getting rich in his case.

He had a tremendous work ethic. Buffett largely ignored spending time with his family (or at least, is portrayed that way in Snowball) in favor of constant stock research, business meetings, etc. People would say to him things like "You know those kids are yours, right?" Most (myself included) would be unwilling to make this large a sacrifice. In his case, it's actually not clear which decision would have been the sacrifice; possibly it'd be more accurate to rephrase that he refused to sacrifice increased income for the sake of spending time with his family. He spent most of his waking hours working, and overall enjoyed his work.

He specialized. His whole life was centered around identifying undervalued stocks, and related business activities like raising money for his partnerships, activist investing, etc.

He loved games. He was very competitive and always enjoyed games, even competiting in a major Bridge tournament. He also plays poker. Hard to say how related this aspect of his personality was to him getting rich, but I found it very interesting.

Of everything listed above, I think compounding is the most important, and Schroeder probably agreed as the title of her book references it. Let your money begin snowballing, and you have a nice start.

Staking and Coaching at www.TeamMoshman.com

A major evolution in tournies - both SNG and MTT -- has been the shift toward smallball at relatively short effective stacks. So let's say you're 10bb effective on the button pre-ante vs regs in the blinds. Everyone folds to you. You want to be trendy and minraise, but unlike openshoving, you don't have software that spits out your range. What should you open and call with?

The HoldemResources downloadable calculator answers questions like this for any payout structure (or cEV mode), giving equilibrium raise/fold/call ranges for the opener and 3bet ranges for the remaining players. I've been playing with it a ton and it's pretty awesome. For instance, here's the answer to the questions posed in the first paragraph:

We open top 34%, the big blind shoves top 27%, and we call it off with top 30%. This is a narrower gap between our open and call ranges than I would have thought before seeing the program's output. We can then use the Range vs Player Equities feature to determine that the minraising strategy performs slightly better overall. You can also determine balanced ranges for openshoving part of your range and minraising the rest. Equilibrium 4bet ranges are expected to be added shortly.

Another nice feature is locking a particular range to get exploitive results. E.g. You can determine your optimal raise/call ranges vs an opponent who 3bets way too tight or too wide.

You can get this software here.

(Disclaimer: While I would have made this blog regardless, the above is an affiliate link.)

The new Venetian poker room is awesome.

I played a bit of 2/5 this weekend, and was surprised how many regs there were. They knew each other by name and sounded like they played together often. One who I actually knew from outside of poker played quite well, but most were not particularly strong players -- routinely limp-calling large raises, a couple with very high fold-to-cbet letting you show a nice profit by iso'ing them wide and cbetting.

Here was one more involved hand played vs an 8x limp-caller.

Pre-flop: Six players limp, I raise to $40 with AsQs in the big blind, folds to button who calls, SB folds.

Analysis: I started the hand off with $535, button covers. He had been at the table for only a few hands, was late 20s and bought in for $1,000. I put him mainly on speculative hands like 22 or 98s that he decided to try and outflop me and float/bluff-raise a lot of flop textures IP.

Flop: Td 5s 4s

Action: I bet $55, he calls.

Analysis: Sizing such that if he raised it likely wouldn't be to more than $150 or so, leaving me plenty of room to shove.

Turn: Kd

Action: I check, he checks.

Analysis: His range heading into the turn consists mainly of floats, draws, and some made hands with marginal showdown value. I expected him to bet often, allowing me to check/shove my 12-out draw with a lot of fold equity. Slightly surprised when he checked it back.

River: Js

Action: I bet $45, he raises to $220, I shove, he calls.

Analysis: Sweet river! The problem with a normal bet of ~ $150 is unless it's a flush-over-flush cooler for him (in which case it probably doesn't matter all that much what I do, the money should go in regardless), there's not all that much he has that can call, and I don't think he bluff-raises a 2/3 pot bet very often here. Checking would be fine, but I decided to get fancy and fake a blocking bet instead. I try to look nervous, fumble around and slide out 9 red chips to rep a scared AT or something. I figure if my read on him is right, he won't be able to resist bluff-raising busted draws and turning hands with marginal showdown value into bluffs. Then once he tosses in the raises, a shove is only slightly more than a minraise, so there's not much decision left.

Most likely it was flush-over-flush and my cute fake blocking bet and hollywooding at the river were pretty pointless. Still a fun hand though.




www.TeamMoshman.com

Life in Rosarito is great. The #1 question I still get asked about Mexico is whether it's safe there; the funny thing is that inside of Calafia I really can't imagine feeling safer. Everyone who lives there seems like nice/good people, it's gated and there are guards on duty 24/7. The main guard, a very nice guy who loves dogs named Lalo, wears a kevlar vest all the time - which I think is pretty optimistic if he's looking for that kind of action at Calafia. (The town is safe too.)

A few quick stories from our time there so far.

Shoving 92o 75bb Deep

It was great playing again. I put in about 9 decent sessions (playing from around 6pm-midnight PT) playing a wide mix of all the 180s running, low and mid-stakes turbo MTT (and the occasional nonturbo), $30 9man, $60 9-man nonturbo, and $3/$6 FR LHE. It went really well, I was up around 100 buyins, made platinum star, felt really good playing.

On to the story though - I was usually playing around 16-18 tables stacked on a laptop with hotkeys. I hit my shove button deep in a 22 turbo and nothing happened, and it was a really clear shove so I stupidly hit it again and watched in horror as my next table activated and I 4bet shoved 92o 75bb in a $30 9-man. I pulled the table off to the side to watch the carnage. The first guy folded, and I'm thinking "please fold" as the 2nd guy tank-calls AK. But I binked the suckout! It was pretty sweet, you had to be there. Definitely one of the happier times I've had winning $27 in equity.

Cars Colliding at Border

The wait at the Mexican border to get back into the US can be pretty brutal, at times lasting 3 hours or longer. The whole time you're waiting, there are locals camped out by the cars aggressively trying to sell food and trinkets. You've got no choice but to wait there, knowing that when you get to the front your only reward is a grilling and possible search. (Cue the libertarian rant.) The effect is to make people a bit short. Look over into a neighboring car, and there's a good chance you'll see a head in someone's hands.

Nonetheless it was still a bit surprising to see the lengths one guy went to prevent someone from cutting in front of him. A truck turned into his lane such that it was slightly in front of him at a heavy angle despite his best efforts to prevent it, so he kept going and purposely collided with the side of the truck with his own beat-up truck to re-overtake it. Then neither got out of their cars, like it was just totally par for the course.

Katie and Wilbur

A picture/video story:

Video: Wilbur and Katie in Mexico




www.TeamMoshman.com

I recently got to play on Stars again for the first time in close to eighteen months, which was pretty great. One thing that I wasn't quite expecting though was how much slower the SNG traffic was. I remember when (said the old man) $109 and $215 9-man turbos went off frequently, and a level like the $30s went off super-quick. This time around, it seemed to take an average of 10-15 minutes for a 9-man $30 turbo to run. Granted this was night PT -- far from primetime on the now way more Eurocentric site. By far the SNGs that went the quickest were the 6-max hypers.

There were of course a ton of no-limit cash games and MTTs going, but it was also slower on the limit side, both with cash games and HUSNG.

I've heard a lot of people say that to play on Stars when you're on a PT schedule, you've gotta wake up earlier to hit peak times for the site. Despite seeing firsthand exactly what they mean traffic-wise, I still think both options are viable. The games seemed fairly soft when I was playing (at least at the mid-stakes), and from railing horses at different times of day, I definitely tend to see softer play at night PT. So if I were grinding fulltime, I'd be happy to play then, just mixing in a bunch of different formats and buyin levels to fill tables.

While I'm no longer a fulltime grinder, I'd really like to begin putting in some good volume on Stars, both to stay maximally current as a coach and because it's great to be back online. It's also pretty sweet playing on Katie's laptop on the balcony overlooking the ocean.

Unrelated, I had a friend and TM member ask me about putting up a banner on the site for his sister's new greeting card and wrapping paper company. I suggested that the two demographics -- poker and wrapping paper -- might not be the best match, but he asked me to take a look anyway. The cat drawings were epic, so definitely check out the site.

www.TeamMoshman.com

A TM horse who's a solid MTT reg asked me to go through a HH with him. I was happy to do this -- besides potentially spotting leaks and helping him improve, I also have the chance to gain insight from a top player and improve my own game.

In one hand, he bluff-raised a coordinated flop in what seemed like a pretty unusual spot for it.

Blinds: $2800-$5600-$700

Reg in MP1 raises to $11,200. Hero flats 99 on the button. Both blinds fold. The effective stack between Hero and Villain at the start of the hand is ~$205k.

Flop: Td Ah Qc

Villain bets $18775 into $37100. Hero raises to $44900.

My initial reaction was that unless Villain's on an abnormally wide opening range for MP1, his range connects strongly with this flop, making it a bad time to bluff-raise.

On the other side...

We're risking half of what's out there (and could arguably accomplish the same sizing even a bit smaller), so we show a nice profit if he folds even half the time. We're also representing a lot of strength raising over him here. From his perspective it's probably unlikely we're bluff-raising, and a typical value-raising range would be something like: ATs, AQ, KJ, TT, possibly AK at the bottom, and discounted QQ/AA. So if villain has a hand like A9s, given that he perceives Hero as fairly solid, I think he'd probably just toss it.

Quantitatively, let's say he's opening the top 18% or so, so about 250 combos. When we raise, he stays in (and we give up) when he holds: TT, QQ, AA, AT+, KJ+, QJs, QTs. That's about 120 combos he's staying in with, meaning he folds just over half his range given these assumptions.

So despite the fact that this looks like a bad spot to bluff-raise (or at least it did to me), depending on his opening range and whether he folds stuff like A9s/KK to a raise here, it looks like it could actually be a decent spot.

Since the announcement that Stars bought FTP, a lot more people are trying to sell their FTP money. There's definitely potential for buyer and seller to benefit, the seller from getting needed money immediately, and the buyer through paying a low enough price that he gets a good deal. Here are the factors affecting the value of FTP money:

Time preference. Money now is better than money later.

Risk of Full Repayment not Happening. For ROW players, it's very likely that repayment will happen in full, even if there are minor delays beyond the timeframe given by Stars. But it's never an absolute certainty until it actually happens. And for US players, there's a greater chance of further delays or lack of full repayment.

Risk of Player Scam/Hassle. The other party may delay or outright scam. With reputable people, this risk may be very low or negligible. But this is one problem for sellers - even if your plan is to snap-ship FTP funds the minute you receive them, the buyer is going to account for whatever they perceive the risk of scam/hassle in their offer.

Premium of Cash over Online Money. Stars money trades at a discount of at least a couple percent compared to bank money. The buyer of FTP money may be trading his BOA/wire/Paypal for what will (if everything goes right in a ROW FTP account) be online money.

Based on the above factors, what should FTP money trade at? Personally I'd rather Merge money than FTP money from a reputable ROW player, and Merge trades at 87% or so. So if I had to come up with #'s out of my head, I'd put reputable ROW FTP money at maybe around 5% lower than Merge, say 82% or so. The DOJ concerns for US players are serious, so I'd lower US FTP money by another 10-20% and say 67% or so.

I'm not sure how many trades are actually going through or at what prices, and I'm not necessarily buying myself even at these discounts. But if I had to estimate "fair" prices, those are roughly the figures I'd give assuming reputable sellers.

www.TeamMoshman.com

About 8 months ago, a friend and former student of mine got in contact about collaborating on some investment research. He sold a successful company years ago and has invested in just about everything since then, and the idea was that he would walk me through his ideas and strategies, and I'd in turn use my math background to help him where possible.

That experience led me to give a lot of thought to non-poker investments, and the question of how some people end up getting rich. I believe there are three basic ways:

Gift. Straightforward -- your parents are rich and you inherit $50 million. Ship the trust fund!

Select the right career and get lucky. In certain jobs, you're very unlikely to get rich. For instance, if you're a dentist or an accountant, you'll likely have a very stable income, but are very unlikely to end up rich. If you're an aspiring actor or athlete though, you have the potential to become rich if you reach the top of your profession.

Philosopher/investor Nasim Taleb labels the dentist-type jobs as being from extremistan and the athlete jobs as being from mediocristan. Despite the cooler name for the extreme jobs, they have a major disadvantage too. In particular, the people who don't succeed often end up earning very little. Getting rich in them requires the odds majorly going your way. For every Michael Jordan or George Clooney, there are countless aspiring actors/athletes who will never get rich due lack of talent or genetics for success at the very top levels, not getting noticed/casted, etc.

Find large edges and bet big. Suppose you're investing in stocks. While diversifying will help limit your losses, you're also very unlikely to get rich that way. Earning say 10% a year on your money, even compounded, is great but won't take someone without much money and make them rich. You need to find significant outperformers and bet big on them. If you're able to select a couple investments a year that return 70% a year, now you're on the path to getting rich.

This last category (finding edges and betting big) is kind of a subset of finding the right career, i.e. you're choosing to be an investor and if you're one of the most successful you have the potential to be rich. In fact you can do it part-time and without a lot of money. Start with $5k and average 50% a year, and in 20 years you've got yourself well over $10 million. The only catch of course is that it's an incredibly elite feat to accomplish, but Warren Buffett famously guaranteed he could manage it if he had a smaller portfolio.

There's a parallel between poker and investing with the goal of getting rich. Many of the players who make it to the top buyins have managed their bankroll aggressively (with that description putting it mildly in cases) at least at times, such as playing in a cash game that represents 25% of their bankroll because of a weak opponent. Find an edge, bet big.

I'm definitely not saying this hyper-aggressive approach is the right thing to do, either in poker or investing. If you always take the conservative route, such as investing in a diversified portfolio, you'll probably never get rich but you'll also have much lower swings. There's also nothing that says that getting rich is the ultimate goal -- for many it may not be.

If there's interest I'll talk in future blogs about my experience following the investments of my friend, and the types of non-poker investments that interest me at this point.

www.TeamMoshman.com