hey guys, so i moved out to vancouver on august 15th and had an absolute blast my first 2 weeks out there. the city is really beautiful and its probably the #1 city ive ever been to at this point in my life. I live in yaletown which has tons of restaurants, bars, shops and things to do at any hour of the day.

it also helps a lot that some of my best friends live less than a block away from me. the first 4 days up there i just spent setting up my apartment, sending my information into pokerstars and exploring the city. i didnt take a lot of pictures, but anyone who just moved or is moving to vancouver i would suggest renting a bike and riding around stanley park. probably the most picturesque bike ride ive ever been on. here are a few pictures from that ride:












i got pokerstars up and running by the 19th and in the 13 days i was able to play i managed to put in 60,000 hands of mostly 1/2 full ring no limit. i guess i had pretty good results overall, but im a little disappointed with how I played at times and need to cut some slight spews out of my game.

results so far:



Im actually back in orange county for the next week visiting my girlfriend and my dog and while im home i decided to make a few videos out of old 25/50 cap plo sessions i played. I picked a session where i lost 8k and it turns out I played like total shit and made lots of mistakes in the session so you guys get to see how bad I play sometimes.

thats all for now, hopefully when i head back out next week i run good in plo and mtts and will have some good video material for everyone.

On monday of last week I moved up to canada so I can play online. I didnt bring my camera so i dont have pictures. Ill make a bigger post later about moving up here and the whole process with lots of pictures and reports to show how awesome vancouver is.

I've been grinding a bit on stars, all 1/2 full ring NL so far. I didnt deposit any money, just had a friend send me 10k, going to slowly run it up. Anyway, im going to make a video and was wondering which of these you prefer:

1) 4 or 6 tables of full ring prerecorded so i can pause with live commentary
2) replay a session with vpip=true and go through a few hundred hands
3) some type of theory video

I was leaning towards #2 because 4 tables of full ring can get a little slow and 6 tables of full ring in a small enough window to fit on a video can get a bit compressed, and i havent used powerpoint since 9th grade so i cant imagine making a theory video, but whatever gets the most votes in the comments i will do.

good to be back playing and making videos!

Spent a lot of time at .5/1 working out stuff but feel great about my rush game now and can comfortably play 6 tables if i want which results in 1500 hands an hour. my hourly is lower than it was playing PLO, but there are no wait lists, smaller swings and through the summer its a good idea for me to be mainly a NL player so ill keep grinding this for now during the week and playing good tourney series.

So a couple weeks ago I chopped the sunday million for 208k. This was the first time ive ever had a substantial cash in an online tournament. It felt great to get the monkey off my back per se, and while I have no delusions of cashing for 50k every week or being one of the best online mtt players in the world, I think there is far too much value in too many online tournaments to play as little volume as I have in the past 18 months.

From the 2009 wcoop main event up until the november 2010 ftops I believe I played 4 online tournaments. While it doesnt make sense for me to be playing things as small as the daily 50 freezeouts or things as hard as the daily 100 rebuys, I should definitely be playing sundays and big tournament series with lots of soft tournaments. Despite my lack of playing I have improved in tournaments by watching some horses deep and noticing changes in the game such as vastly different betsizing, but I think I have fallen behind the top tournament players and am really lacking in some areas.

In the past 2 months I have probably played 200 tournaments and am starting to get a feel for the adjustments I need to be making. But its not really enough to just learn through trial and error as its too easy to become results oriented in a variance fest like mtts. So im going to start watching a couple videos a week to try to get insight into some of the better tournament players games, because the muscle memory I have built up through the years works against me finding creative new spots that are second nature to some of those guys.


My desire to improve in tournaments also comes with one to improve in NL cash. About the same time I gave up tournaments, I kind of gave up NL for PLO cash. It just seemed like there were too many shortstacks+regulars and not enough fish in the NL games. And while that hasnt changed too much, its resulted in me falling behind a lot of people in the no limit realm. Partially due to ego and partially due to the value I see in improving my NL game ive decided to put in a lot of hard work into getting back near the upper echelons of poker.

Along with watching some videos, Ive been playing in some tougher midstakes games to get in there and battle a bit and toy around with different things I need to work on. I have a long road ahead of me, but I think it is worth the effort to get better at NL in the next few months with some good opportunities to play live cash games at LAPC and WSOP coming up. Hopefully in a month or so I can post some positive results.

I've had a busy few months since my last entry almost 5 months ago, haha. so ill just talk about some quick stuff cause theres too much to possibly recap. ill try to make 2 updates a month from here out.

I was up in seattle the last 2 weeks of july visiting schaefer and it was a blast. While I was out there I played a lot and managed to make about 20k playing 5/10 to 25/50 plo. After that I took it easy for a couple months only playing a random session here or there. It kinda seems my whole life is like this. I have a temporary addictive personality to things. I do something hardcore for a month then i take a few months off from it, no matter what it is: poker, jiu jitsu, doing my blog, whatever it is i tend to fall off the wagon and pick up something else for a while then return to it later.

Anyway I started playing again this month and im addicted. I literally cant leave the computer, wont quit games, just keep grinding all day long. At first i was playing 8 tables of mostly 2/4 to 5/10 plo, mixed between the shallow and capped tables. I wasnt doing so well though. I was spewing a little bit here and there, had trouble adjusting to the changing stacksizes (200bb effective vs a good player on one table and 30bb effective vs the entire table somewhere else) and was just generally rusty.

I decided to cut my tables down, trying to not play more than 4 unless there are really amazing games and to concentrate solely on cap. With cap I can use the same strategy on every table cause im always 40bb effective with the entire table. And ive had really really great results in cap plo:



With results like that it seems I should just play all cap from here out. The cap games dont run as much nowadays since the shallow tables have been introduced, so I've had to play some lower stakes a bit which I am ok with because the 1/2 games are really soft. My priority is to play 5/10 and 10/20 along with bumhunting some 25/50 games mixed in when they are whalefests, but if there arent enough games running im fine opening up 1/2 - 3/6 cap tables.


So enough of that, I have an mspaint for you guys that I just drew. I posted this pic on my blog a few years ago from when i was 15 years old:

A few of my buddies told me I looked really old for my age and I was a stud. Well sadly I didnt get any ladies back then, but when I was 11 i was a REAL stud and got all the ladies. I didnt have access to any pictures of me at 11 so I had to go draw one. It's very accurate though, so I dont even need to go home and find an old picture.



As you can see, at 11 i was a real girl magnet. Ill get back on the mspaint grind and try to refresh my old skills. Thats it for now though, ill post an update in a few weeks

Hey guys, been a while. This entry turned out really long so I will partition it into poker, social, working out sections so you can read what you want.

Poker

I havent posted any blogs because for a few months I have been avoiding poker. This happens with me a lot, my desire to grind undulates every 2 months or so. I usually have 2 months of solid grinding, then take it easy and play maybe one session per week over the next 8 weeks; i.e. from the end of march til about may 14th I only played 12 hours total. I often get criticized by people for being lazy and not taking full advantage of the opportunities I have in poker, but I get burnt out a lot and at the end of the year I end up playing around 600 hours usually which isnt that bad.

Anyway about 10 days ago I started playing again. One of the first days back I lost about 5k playing plo and decided to play mostly rush since where I'm doing pretty well. I cant print screen on my laptop because my 2nd monitor screws it up, but I am up 55 buyins in 138k hands (about half 1/2, half .5/1) which is pretty exactly a 2ptbb winrate.

I gotta say its a really weird feeling moving down from 10/20,5/10 in plo to 1/2,.5/1 to play rush poker AND to have my winrate go from 4 to 2, but I 6 table so I can see 1500 hands an hour which translates to roughly 6k hands per day as well as a good amount of rakeback. And while I dont make as much per hour, including rakeback my hourly went from about 375 to 240, I will basically never have a 4k downswing which is awesome. To give up that much in profits is too much though and I dont plan on grinding rush forever, but WSOP is time to concentrate on the people I stake, and I never want to go on a big downswing while that is going on.

So far my guys have cashed 5 times: two in the 1k, two in the 1500, and one made day 2 of the 5k shootout, first place is 441k, gogogo. Keep the sweats coming baby!

Social

Outside of poker I've just been hanging out around here and working out a lot. Things in arizona have been really fun the last 6 months so I decided to stick around for another year. There just wasnt enough to do in new jersey, and i love the area so staying seemed like an obvious choice.

A bunch of my friends and I went to a benny benassi concert for my birthday, I am not the biggest fan of electro house but it was awesome. I guess pictures are required in between all these blocks of text:

wtf lollipop?

brush that shit off, love dem asians

benny doin his thing

me looking like the typical scottsdale dbag lol

end of the night, still fired up

I have one pretty funny story from a few weeks back that I'll share with you guys. Schaefer was on facebook and finds out that the channel TLC did a show on the top 10 ultimate sandwiches in the united states. Apparently the top 2 sandwiches were from this place in seattle called Paseo's that he took me to while I visited him last september and from scottsdale arizona at the lodge: our most frequented bar. So we watch the show and sure enough the #1 sandwich is from the lodge. We had been going to this place probably 2-3 times a week for 6 months and never once ordered this sandwich.

It's called the sasquatch burger. 8 ounce burger, BLT, and in place of buns are two grilled cheese sandwiches. 1995 calories, 155 grams of fat in this monstrosity:

So Schaefer and I decide we need to go eat one. We show up and order two of them. Immediately a news reporter walks over and says "Hey im from channel 14 news, I am doing a story on the sasquatch cause it was voted the #1 sandwich by TLC and I heard you guys ordered two, mind being on the evening news?"

We oblige:

[ ] schaefer is sober

scarfing

Interview time: The reporter basically asks schaefer "is it the best sandwich youve ever had?"

Schaefer goes off on a tirade. First he says that the #2 sandwich is really #1, the cuban pork sandwich from seattle:

Then he says something along the lines of "ok look. i like burgers, i like BLTs i like grilled cheese sandwiches, so i like combining them. But you know what, i also like peanut butter, pickles, and french toast, so why dont you make a sandwich out of that, id eat it" We never got a chance to watch the news but one of our buddies saw it and watched the entire thing. Hope I can find a video one day.

Working out:

I have taken a roughly 2 month break from jiu jitsu. I really liked Megaton's gym, but it was over half an hour away, the hours they had classes were tough for me to get to and I just never made it over there. Instead of BJJ I have been doing a lot of hiking, bikram yoga, and some lifting/cardio just to stay in good shape for when i start up MMA again this summer.

I'm heading out to vegas in the next 6 days, going to be a squatter at panorama with apestyles and stevie444 most likely. Panorama is right down the street from Wanderlei Silva's gym so I will try to make it to at least one class 5 days a week. I wont be playing any events besides the main, so I will probably head over to the rio, hand out money then go to the 12:00 bjj classes and the 1:00 muay thai classes.

The BJJ classes are taught by Vitor Vianna, a 185 pound pro mma fighter. He is 8-1 in his career with his only loss coming by way of injury vs thiago silva who is a weight class above him. Should be awesome.

ah well thats it for now, long entry. will update when im in vegas after I get back from wands gym

been grinding a decent amount since late october.

plo the last 3.5 months:







As you can see i've been running pretty well but i have improved a ton in the past 3 months and feel very confident in my 50bb and lower plo game. im not all that great at deepstacked plo, but after grinding out a bit more profit im going to put in some time at lower stakes and watch some videos and put in some effort to get good at 100bb+.

I've also been playing a decent amount of RUSH POKER. it's pretty fun. i started out playing the 6max games and the first 3-4 hours i played i was just dumping money getting adjusted to the games and not being able to take it seriously cause it was only 100nl. here are some funny hands and my hilaribad graph:


***** Hand History for Game 17827042199 ***** (Full Tilt)
$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, January 22, 10:10:38 ET 2010
Table Afterburner (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 2 is the button
Seat 1: employeenum12 ( $145.00 USD )
Seat 2: d1ickerchen ( $132.60 USD )
Seat 3: Arnz18 ( $293.55 USD )
Seat 4: Ryan Daut ( $674.55 USD )
Seat 5: kecchino ( $52.00 USD )
Seat 6: mihain ( $663.05 USD )
Arnz18 posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
Ryan Daut posts big blind [$1.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Ryan Daut [ 7c 8c ]
kecchino folds
mihain folds
employeenum12 folds
d1ickerchen raises [$3.00 USD]
Arnz18 raises [$11.50 USD]
Ryan Daut raises [$34.00 USD]
d1ickerchen folds
Arnz18 calls [$23.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 9c, Jc, Js ]
Arnz18 checks
Ryan Daut bets [$54.00 USD]
Arnz18 calls [$54.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 3s ]
Arnz18 checks
Ryan Daut bets [$585.55 USD]
Arnz18 calls [$204.55 USD]
Ryan Daut shows [7c, 8c ]
Arnz18 shows [As, Ac ]
Ryan Daut wins $381.00 USD
** Dealing River ** [ Jd ]
Arnz18 wins $587.10 USD from main pot

After playing only plo a few months my nl game was pretty off. And when your nl game is off retarded hands like this happen.

***** Hand History for Game 17824320269 ***** (Full Tilt)
$100.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Friday, January 22, 08:22:29 ET 2010
Table Afterburner (6 max) (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: Ryan Daut ( $180.40 USD )
Seat 2: 4HighGood ( $112.40 USD )
Seat 3: mihain ( $1274.70 USD )
Seat 4: 828_Frank_White ( $131.95 USD )
Seat 5: Vegas Shayne ( $84.40 USD )
Seat 6: Monch23 ( $100.00 USD )
4HighGood posts small blind [$0.50 USD].
mihain posts big blind [$1.00 USD].
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to Ryan Daut [ Jc Ah ]
828_Frank_White folds
Vegas Shayne calls [$1.00 USD]
Monch23 folds
Ryan Daut raises [$4.00 USD]
4HighGood folds
mihain calls [$3.00 USD]
Vegas Shayne calls [$3.00 USD]
** Dealing Flop ** [ 4d, 3c, 3s ]
mihain checks
Vegas Shayne checks
Ryan Daut bets [$8.00 USD]
mihain raises [$22.00 USD]
Vegas Shayne folds
Ryan Daut calls [$14.00 USD]
** Dealing Turn ** [ 9d ]
mihain bets [$40.00 USD]
Ryan Daut calls [$40.00 USD]
** Dealing River ** [ 8c ]
mihain bets [$1208.70 USD]
Ryan Daut calls [$114.40 USD]
mihain wins $1094.30 USD
mihain shows [7h, 8h ]
mihain wins $362.30 USD from main pot
Ryan Daut doesn't show [Jc, Ah ]

just a funny hand.


and my lolgraph:

After that valley I started getting a decent grasp on the games and decided to switch over to playing the full ring rush games. I've done pretty well in them and feel like i have a good solid approach to those games now:




Would anyone be interested in seeing a rush video? i dont think anyone has made one yet, and id be willing to do a live one if you guys want. it wouldnt have that much great commentary cause stuff is happening so fast, but id show my overall approach to the games and id get in plenty of hands in a video or two.

So overall poker has gone pretty well the last 3.5 months. I've been making 275 an hour playing over 270 hours and am up a little over 100k including rakeback. It's nice to put in a good amount of hours a month and push out 30k months consistently again.


other than poker ive just been dicking around in arizona. we have a really good crew out here and theres always something to do. josh (reddog133) and clint (beatifulman) both live within 20 minutes and we have a lot of other friends out here so theres always something to do.

isnt that cute? picture was taken at a sushi place near us called geisha gogo, not the same as the geisha house in LA or other places, but a lot of fun. we live in a great area called oldtown scottsdale and we are right in the middle of everything, so we can walk to a lot of good restaurants and bars, its like college but even better. the girls out here are just completely unreal hot, im seriously amazed everytime i go out, i love arizona.

im rooming with brandon schaefer, but he just left for a month to go to seattle, new york and then israel with ansky so i have been working out and playing a lot the past couple weeks. ill post some pictures of our apartment in a week or so when i stop being lazy.

after a few months off i finally went back to jiu jitsu. ive started training under another royler gracie black belt named megaton out here. the gym is pretty high intensity but i like it a lot. ive gone to 4 classes the past 2 weeks and am almost back at the point i was in october.

so far this year i have gone to 3 of the easier classes and one advanced class. in the easier classes ive tapped out a few people with mostly armbars and keylocks from side control or mount and have only been tapped out once. it was a little disappointing to get tapped out by a white belt after training for almost a year but my guard games are pretty rusty and he did a nice mount choke on me so i cant complain too much. my cardio is also really bad now, but its improving pretty quickly and i should be in good shape again in a few weeks. i am going to get a few private lessons and work on my bottom game because i dont feel comfortable there anymore.

the advanced class was no gi and was much much tougher and consisted of basically all purple, brown and black belts. i just got my ass handed to me for an hour straight. but its good practice and ill probably go to that class once a week along with maybe a muay thai class as well to work on my striking a bit.

other than jiu jitsu ive been going hiking about 3 times a week. i live about 5 minutes away from Camelback mountain which is a moderately strenuous hike. It usually takes about 90 minutes to hike up and down and its a good workout.

here are a few pictures of it:




view from the top with an exhausted schaefer:




i guess thats enough rambling for now. take it easy guys

I havent made a poker post in a long time so i guess i should now.

about 3 weeks ago i realized that ive been really lazy with grinding and that i should put in a lot of hours to prepare for an expensive december backing wise and hopefully make some money to offset the variance a bit.

i have mostly been playing cap plo, with some deeper plo and midstakes full ring mixed in although the results in those havent been so good. i feel really comfortable in the cap games and its been going very well. including rakeback im up a little over 30k the past 3 weeks which is really good for me as i havent played a lot of hours since maybe april.



i recorded a video playing 4 tables of cap plo cause i think its a good transition for people who are NL players to move into plo and the NL games have been pretty hard recently. ill finish that up with the added audio sometime this week and get that uploaded.

i really should be playing a lot more cash, ive just been so lazy this year. ive maybe played 200k hands total and my results really arent that good. not including rakeback or tournaments, im probably up about 30k in plo, 5-10k in mixed games and maybe another 20k in nl. thats some pretty terrible results given how badly ive done in online mtts this year ( i dont think i have a 10k cash all year in maybe 200 mtts lol) and that the games will only get harder in the future.

i should be putting in lots more hours but i got super super lazy in april, may, june, july, and september. i put in a good amount of hours in august playing tournaments and mixed games, but nothing really came out of that as i lost a bit in mtt and made some in mixed games. id like to put in a lot of hours from now til the end of the year and maybe i can finish the year strong and make another 50k before its over. thats pretty optimistic given its the holiday season, but its nice to have at least some sort of goal for poker as i have not had any ambitions in a while.


im also moving to arizona in about a week. going to rent a place with brandon schaefer for 6 months and see how we like it out there. there just isnt much for me to do in new jersey as most of my friends have normal jobs and i hate the cold. i also have a lot of friends out there already so it should be a lot of fun. i cant find any really good pictures online, but let me post what i can find for now until im out there and can take some for myself:







hope you guys enjoy the video when it comes out, sorry its been so long to make one, but ive really been off of grinding for a long time and wasnt inspired to make one. take it easy

FEDOR INVENTING THE WALKOFF KNOCKOUT: