It's been a pretty hectic last few weeks. The wife and I gave birth (well, she did) to a healthy 8lb 7oz baby girl on Friday the 3rd. We've been adjusting at home and taking it easy, and it's been amazing.

My son is also with us for the summer. He was staying with relatives for a few days while we were in the hospital, but now he's with us and has been a really big help and a great big brother.

Suffice it to say, most acitivities have been placed on the back-burner. I did complete nearly all of the slides for the second part of Happy Fun-Time Time before the baby, and just finalized the rest yesterday, so it's simply a matter of recording (easier said than done in this crazy house) and getting it on the schedule. Parts 3 and 4 should flow shortly thereafter.

I also wanted to pause and shamelessly plug that I'm still coaching!!! I haven't figured out payment yet, but I don't see why PayPal wouldn't work. In order to be competitive with the other coaches out there, my rate is now $150/hour, and I can provide a plethora of references if you need. A lot of my former students are out there succesfully coaching as well mainly because the way I teach gives you the ability to answer your own poker questions. PM me here or on 2+2 (MasterLJ) and we can get something going.

Trading has been going pretty well, I've been making some great strides over the last few months but hit a wall shortly before the chaos of a new baby. I feel as if I'm stagnating some. Today I traded for the first time in several weeks and was able to put up 4 winners for 12 ticks in less than an hour. There were some more ticks to be had, and one of the four trades was "meh", mostly because I could have waited for a better way to enter, but the idea ended up being correct. For those still interested in anything YTC, check out my last blog post, and remember to check out his blog. I can't tell you how useful it is to see how another successful traders trades.

The future is sort of a question mark for me and the family. I think it's about time to blow the dust off the ole resume and look for some programming jobs. That said, I'm pretty much taking the Summer off anyway and wanted to work on some interesting programming projects to hone my skills. It does suck to give up on the dream of self-employment, but I think it's going to take me a while before trading really starts to click. One of the most gutting experiences of the whole Black Friday fiasco was that the wife and I had 2 offers in on houses and were super excited. We both don't really care for the apartment we live in now, and always knew it was just temporary. So that said, it's time to swallow a bit of pride and get out there and do what's best for the family. I don't think sitting here burning through savings is going to do us any good at all.

Best of luck at the tables, waters, or charts!

A few people have expressed interest in the YTC program, and a few have even picked up copies of the ebook. I was a little surprised that the number of purchases of the YTC Scalper outnumbered the YTC Price Action Trader. I shouldn't really be *that* surprised considering the latter is $197 (YTC - PAT) and the former (YTC - Scalper) is $97.

So that said I really wanted to be EXPLICIT about each book, who they are for, who they are NOT for.

Let me start by saying that YTC - Scalper is an ADDITION to YTC - Price Action Trader (PAT). Reading the Scalper before the Price Action Trader will most likely cause some confusion.

Here is the description of the Price Action Trader, including Table Of Contents.

Who is YTC - PAT for?

It is for anyone who has spent a reasonable amount of time studying Technical Analysis (TA). You certainly don't need to be a profitable trader with years of experience under your belt, but you will get the most benefit if you've struggled with some of the concepts yourself, and you have a reasonable TA vocabulary. The great thing is that www.yourtradingcoach.com has a plethora of free articles anyway. Spend an hour or two on these articles every day, for a few weeks/months, and you will be ready for the ebook. Also, you will have a very good gauge on Lance's teaching style, and what type of topics he teaches, so you'll know if it's right for you. I've spoken with Lance at length, and both of us really only want to put this book in the hands of people who have an interest, and will benefit. I hate turning my blog into an infomercial, but I have noticed a large amount of poker players interested in trading, and given that a lot of you have lots of free time now (American players anyway), it's something to look in to.



Who is YTC - Scalper for?

First and foremost, YTC - Scalper is for anyone who has read YTC - PAT first. I don't like speaking in absolutes, but the overwhelming majority of people will not find use from YTC - Scalper unless they first read YTC - Price Action Trader. The problem is that being successful with TA is about which trades you DON'T take. That is to say, it's extremely hard to make a mechanical or indicator based system of trading work, without taking into account market structure, timing, news, etc. YTC - Scalper teaches you how to trade on very small timeframes (1 range trading timeframe, 1min mid-big picture, 5 min big big picture) and therefore requires some things to be simplified, due to the speed of those markets. To the novice, they will appear to be mechanical. To the seasoned Technical Analyst, who has spent time with concepts from YTC - PAT, they will understand the difference between a valid setup, and an invalid setup.


So to speak plainly:

1. Look through all the free stuff on www.yourtradingcoach.com. Spend a few hours a day for several weeks/months, until you get a good sense of what's going on. Look around the internet (EXTREMELY CAUTIOUSLY!!!!) for other resources. Try to avoid anyone selling you a "system" or any site that emphasizes indicators. If you take nothing else from this blog, or ytc... please remember that reading a naked price chart effectively is absolutely imperative to succeeding at TA.

2. If you're ready to take the next step and get a very clear, concise ebook that will save you time (Again, just as with poker coaching, this ebook doesn't necessarily teach you anything you can't learn on your own. Hell, Lance had to develop these ideas, so obviously it's possible to do it yourself... however, for 99%+ of us, it will save us LOADS of time, and time = money). Start with YTC Price Action Trader

3. Spend some time sim-trading the concepts learned in YTC - PAT. Do replays or real time trading. Keep track of your results, and take it seriously. One of the beauties of being a poker player, is that along the way to success, we've gained fantastic tools for processing information quickly and efficiently. For many of us, that means we will want faster-paced trading (a.k.a. Scalping)... this simply means trading on lower/faster timeframes. If you want to see how Lance adapted YTC - PAT to the faster timeframes, get the YTC - Scalper add on.

4. Lance just recently started a blog, that I linked to in my last post: http://www.yourtradingcoach.blogspot.com/. He updates nearly every trading day, with trades that highlight the concepts he teaches in his ebooks. For the record, he has moved to a scalping style, so most of his current trades will be based on the YTC - Scalper. Follow the blog, track your results, be disciplined and be honest with yourself! Quite often when a trade goes wrong, there are reasons that can be seen in price, don't ignore them! Learn under which market context your "setup" works, and under which it does not.




So as for my results last week, Wednesday went pretty poorly(?), just as predicted in my blog. The random questionmark stems from the fact that while my results were horrible, I really learned a lot. I learned quite a few areas to avoid in the future, that look good "mechanically" but will be long term losers.

Using my new found knowledge, Thursday went very well, and I was looking forward to Friday to bag a 4 out of 5 day streak of profitability. I ran it up to +18 ticks, and continued to trade. There were a few minor mistakes, a few fills missed by 1 tick, and one blatant error... when I decided to risk 26 ticks on one trade. There's really no excuse for this (was a two part, scaled into, trade). The great part was that I ate my stop, price went 1 tick higher, and immediately bombed to what would have been a nice profit on both trades. It was nice icing on the cake to make me feel foolish about the risk I had taken. Even in sim, it's important to be disciplined and stick to your plan. It was literally the only time I had done such a foolish thing all week, and in hindsight, I'm glad I felt some pain from it... preserve capital!




I'm really looking forward to trading this week, but more exciting things are on the horizon... We went to have our normal weekly prenatal checkup (this late in the pregnancy they check her weekly) only to find the baby is breech (upside down)... so tomorrow they are going to try and turn her, bright and early, so trading will have to wait. Hopefully everythings goes well, but if not, it's c-section time... in any case I don't care how she comes out, so long as she's healthy. There's a risk that we might have to have an emergency c-section tomorrow, if the baby's heartbeat lowers during the attempt to turn her.... and a smaller chance that a successful turn can induce labor.

I just noticed my newest video will be released on Thursday! I'm excited, I really think you guys will like it. To be honest, I've revealed the subject matter to some close friends (very successful HU players) and both were more or less not happy that I was releasing this level of material (because it's very good stuff). I have a clear game-plan for videos 2-4, but I want to hear feedback from you guys before I lock anything in stone. That said, I probably won't get video 2 done as quickly as I had anticipated due to the baby, but it takes 2-4 weeks to get on the schedule anyway.



No fishing to report on, as this weekend was the baby shower, it'll probably be a while until I get back out on the water, but man I can't wait for Salmon Season!!!!!!!!!


Oh and btw, if anyone has any questions on the YTC material, if it's well suited for you, specific questions for those that have purchased it... don't hesitate to PM me.

Best of luck on the charts, tables or water!

I'm starting to feel really comfortable with my trading lately. I'm sure tomorrow will bring the soul crush as sharing feelings of confidence in a blog whether it's poker, or trading, seems to have the same effect.

My short term goals has been to get above 1.0 for my trades in terms of win vs loss. There certainly are trading styles where you can win with less than a 1.0 ratio, but it doesn't bode well for me. I am awfully skiddish with my trades and will often take profits early when it doesn't really make sense. I'll see the smallest stall and freak out. Lately I've been relaxing a lot more and trusting my knowledge of the markets. This has enabled me to let price run a bit more than usual and I've held to my goal over the last 40 trades (again, still in sim). Overall my winrate is about 55%, which is nice, but needs significant improvement before moving to real money trades as commissions would wipe out about half my profits.

I'm still making mistakes, which is a good thing. When you don't see areas of improvement and you aren't getting reasonable results, that's when you should worry.

A word of caution for those who are also skiddish while trading. The more skiddish you are, the harder it is to see if your trading plan/ideas about the market, are correct. A friend of mine pointed this out to me the other day. Like poker, trading requires confidence in yourself and your ideas about the game. I don't have a clever poker analogy, but if you are not letting the majority of trades run their natural course (realizing profits or hitting your stop) then you aren't actually trading your "system". I use "system" in quotes because I don't ever want to suggest that what I'm doing is systematic or mechanical. There certainly exist profitable trading systems that are mechanical, it's just way out of my realm to even be able to comment. But to the point, successful TA trading requires you to have "correct" ideas about the market. By correct, I simply mean ideas that yield an edge. A simple example, when price is in an uptrend and pulls back to higher timeframe support, it should hold. That is a very simple idea, but if you have confidence in this idea, you can profit. Does every higher timeframe support hold when price pulls back in an uptrend? Absolutely not. Just like your AA doesn't hold every time you get it in all-in preflop. Don't let a few bad experiences shake your confidence in bigger picture ideas... Know Your Edge! If you trade your idea about the market over a very significant sample, and it fails to yield profits, then you can question your edge... but there's only one way to find out, to do work!

I'm almost to the point of comfort where I will start sharing daily results and trades. I think I will have the confidence necessary in a few weeks, and I'll start posting charts regularly. There are a few blogs out there of TA traders that do post a ton of trading days:

http://forexbird.blogspot.com/
http://protradered.blogspot.com/
http://www.yourtradingcoach.blogspot.com/

The last one is obviously Lance Begg's from www.yourtradingcoach.com. If you are interested in purchasing his ebook please use this link. If not, there are a ton of free articles there to browse, in conjunction with his blog, it's a LOT of information. However, if you plan to do some serious study and sim trading, it would absolutely serve you well to get the two ebooks so you can know exactly what he's trying to accomplish.

As a related example, taking trading tips from other people is generally a bad idea. You need to have the understanding yourself or else it simply won't work. Even if Warren Buffet whispered in your ear every day, which stocks to pick and at what price... you'd be lost. What's Warren's exit plan if price turns against his position? What is his profit target? How does he manage his trades? So that said, the ebooks give you all of that information so you can simply see a real system in real time. I can't tell you how valuable that is. Whether you buy the ebook or not, it's really something you should seek out if you're a novice trading who wants to make the transition to intermediate+... find a trader willing to share a working, profitable system with you, and watch them trade it live.

Fishing has been good. I absolutely love having a weekend. With poker, I was absolutely terrible about giving myself time off. If I wasn't playing, I was browsing 2+2. If I wasn't playing or browsing 2+2, I was coaching. If I wasn't coaching, I was talking about poker.

I went fishing with two friends of mine, we landed 4 fish. One tiny striper, one tiny catfish, one large striper, one medium catfish. We get the larger cat and striper. Despite appearences, mine that I posted in my blog last week, was longer and heavier. I have to admit though, this one was fatter and just a better fish:




My buddy didn't want to keep it, so I took it. I cooked it up on Sunday evening using this recipe. It was delicious, although I doubled the portion of shrimp and didn't use mussels since the store I went to didn't have any.

It's hard to believe we are bringing a new life into this world in less than 3 weeks. I feel like we have so much to do and so little time to do it. The baby shower is this weekend and I've been helping to get everything prepared. It's already been amazingly overwhelming how much support people have shown, as we have boxes and boxes of things already, and I'm sure we will get the lion's share this weekend. I'm incredibly thankful, as I'm not sure where my next paycheck is coming from, although I have stored a bunch a way... it's what we will most likely be living off of for the foreseeable future.

As for my new video series, I guess it will debut next week.

Best of luck at the tables, on the water, or on the charts!

Went fishing on Saturday and bagged a nice 8lb Striper, was delicious! Looks like I'm about to take a bite!




Going again this weekend, hopefully will have more success. It's nice to get outdoors before the temperatures start hittng above 100. This week is supposed to be no higher than the low-80s.

The baby is about 3 weeks away! I can't hardly wait, but have been working hard at trading before my sleep gets reduced.

The last few days have been going pretty well. I'm really starting to hone in on trades that work and don't work within the scalping environment. You really just want to follow the path of least resistance when scalping, go with the flow... and avoid big picture traps where flow is likely to reverse. The beauty of scalping is that there is so many opportunities to trade in a day that you learn much faster, and can also cherry pick. For me, I do best in clearly trending markets and often get burned when that inevitable reversal comes in. I've been doing pretty well to avoid those situations or wait for extra confirmation in price before I choose to enter.

In the coming weeks I will start posting some trades if people are interested. I still want to spend a bit more time getting comfortable with my new methodology so I don't make a complete fool out of myself. From there I will start posting my sim results.

Before that I have to run the standard disclaimer:

Risk Disclosure

Trading foreign exchange on margin carries a high level of risk, and may not be suitable for all investors. The high degree of leverage can work against you as well as for you. Before deciding to trade foreign exchange you should carefully consider your investment objectives, level of experience, and risk appetite. The author is not liable for any loss or damage which may arise directly or indirectly from the content of this blog or any linked site.

This week has been pretty hectic. We had birthing classes on Tues and Wednesday evenings, and some family favors to take care of (had to get a lawnmower fixed).

On a total tangent, do you have that one vocal friend who isn't shy about asking for stuff? "I like that painting, can I have it?" My good friend... we'll call him "Mike"... is the king of this. He is quite blunt, and almost makes it a game sometimes to see what he can get from you because he realizes it's not exactly standard in America. He's from Eastern Europe and in general, it's really a sign of closeness if you treat others like they're family, and possessions as if they are familial possessions. Your friend's PS3 game is almost as good as it being your PS3 game. On the reverse side, he invites me over to his brother's house all the time for ridiculous BBQ's of whole lamb, delicious sides and all kinds of stuff. Bringing anything to the BBQ is considered kinda rude, because you are basically saying "you aren't a good enough host". We went over there on Saturday and only the younger guys were drinking, neither the brother nor the parents drink either, but the second we ran out of beer the mom was out the door before anyone could object, only to come back with a case of beer. My fiance's family are also Eastern European, and it's exactly the same.

Anyway, as a born and bred American, it takes a while to get used to and lately Mike has been borrowing a ton of my PS3 games. Definitely not at all a big deal, I consider myself a generous person... but yesterday I finally got him back! Not only was yesterday his birthday, it was his 30th. We were chatting on Gmail about a game that I have that I never play (requires login info). He's been asking for a while if he could have this info, and I just kept forgetting. Of course if it's a game I'm not going to play, I'd be happy to give it to a friend. Yesterday he reminds me, and I ship him the info. Then finally, I take a play out of Mike's playbook and say "you know, you probably should just buy me a game". To my surprise he says "yeah, you're probably right, what do you want?" After a quick browse of Amazon, we settled on Dungeon Siege III pre-order, and he immediately shipped it.... on his birthday!!! Don't ask, don't get, I suppose. Shipppp!

It's hard to imagine I'm going to have a little baby in just a month! I was only 19 when my son was born and I didn't do any of the birthing classes. At 19, you're pretty retarded, no matter how "smart" you think you are.

Last night in the infant CPR/baby safety class they were showing slides of staircases and I couldn't help but get a little angry as it reminded me exactly of a house we had put an offer in on (and a winning one, come to find out later) just before Black Friday. It really sucks that if I found a new profession today, I'd still be 2+ years away from home ownership (self-employed home loans require 2+ years in same occupation in most cases)... but in any case I need to manage my money in ther interim. I am certainly thankful that Black Friday happened well before we got into the house, as it leaves our options wide open.

But c'est la vie. Black Friday made me really think about the downsides of self-employment, regardless of what it is... I'll never feel all that great planting my roots in my city, as I have very little chance to find employment in a programmer capacity if all other avenues fail.

I've been studying a bit on trading this week, although not consistently. I made a few realizations about my personality and how it relates to the type of trading I should be doing. In this respect, trading is exactly analogous to poker... you should play what style suits you best. Don't force a nitty style if you're an action junky... Don't force a laggy style if you are risk averse. Often times the WORST line is to fire 2 barrels as a bluff, and give up on the river (very very very very general statement, I know... but hopefully the point is clear). In the same line of thought, scalping is truly for me, and I've been reading the Your Trading Coach - Scalper, and it's helped me a lot. While you never can throw out fundamentals of price reading, there are a few simplifications for entry/exit that goes well with my style.

Some of you have been following my blog for a while, and probably have noticed that I've reviewed a few products over time... last being Slow Habit's book. I don't use this blog for anything other than connecting with my friends, CardRunners members, and as a way to keep a log on what's going on... I was given a copy of Slow Habit's book in exchange for the review.

I have been following www.yourtradingcoach.com for the last year and a half. In my opinion, it's one of the best free resources out there for trading material. Some that followed my blog during early 2010 when I was exclusively trading might remember that I linked to articles from that site. The reason I love the site so much is that it teaches how to be a good reader of market sentiment. 90%+ of online resources for trading teach very generic setups. What I mean by that is stupid stuff like "when the 15 MA crosses below the 30 MA, short". There is no strategy that robotic that will ever lead to profits. It doesn't incorporate the objective data such as... which direction is the market going? Is it trending up, trending down, or in a range? What does the market structure look like? Where is the resistance, where is the support? What is the market sentiment? Who is winning the price wars, the bulls or the bears? What are my expectations when price interacts with this next level of support/resistance?

These are the important questions, and quite frankly, all you need to know to trade profitably. Don't take that statement lightly though... by "all you need to know" I really mean "what you should be focusing on for the next 1-3 years to even begin to trade profitably, and you will probably spend your lifetime enhancing". Again, it's perfectly analogous to poker... you can work hard at it for a lifetime and only approach mastery.

All that said this is sort of a preliminary announcement that I've decided to be an affiliate for the YTC - Price Action Trader and YTC - Scalper. I paid full price for both, sought them out as a resource on my own, and found them both to be absolutely helpful. I realize that Black Friday may have sparked some trading passion in some American poker players, and really think this is a great resource. As I said, this is a preliminary announcement and there will be more on this in the coming weeks... I'll share my trading struggles more frequently... but before you consider buying the ebooks you really should know who it is and isn't for:

- It is NOT for brand new traders. While it explains some fundamental concepts, just as I would never attempt to charge someone for poker coaching who has never played a hand, you need to have struggled with some of the core concepts of Technical Analysis and really be ready to accept the reality of markets as changing bullish/bearish sentiment within a framework of support and resistance. That is to say, it is NOT about systems, or indicators. If you are intellectually aware of this, but still find your charts absolutely littered with indicators, and entering trades solely because an indicator "tells you to", you are probably not ready.

- If you feel comfortable reading a naked chart, with only your markings of support/resistance, and maybe 1 MA (which isn't necessary really, it just helps read the market bias a little more quickly), and have a reasonable idea of how and why price moves, then you are most likely ready.

- Finally, while I think it's a steal for the information given, the YTC - PAT and YTC - Scalper ebooks are $197 and $99 respectively, it's still roughly $300 for the pair. Spend a LOT of time on www.yourtradingcoach.com reading the articles there, view the videos, they are all free!!! Maybe that's enough info to get you going... but more importantly you will have a very clear read on what Lance is all about, his style of teaching, and his type of trading... so you will be able to determine whether the ebooks make sense for you. He even has sample chapters on there, so definitely check it out before purchasing.

If you've done your homework and are ready for the next step, please use this link . As an affiliate I do get commission but it has to be via that link... but really I think it's an awesome resource, and I know some poker players want to make the switch... but like I said, do your own study first, and read up all the free resources on the site to both educate yourself, and to get the jist of Lance's style... if the free articles are enough to get you trading profitably, maybe you can buy the ebook with your profits in a few months?

I'm not really the salesman type person, so it always feels a little weird pushing a product, but suffice it to say that in the 3+ years I've had this blog going I've never felt compelled to recommend too many things at all, but I found the ebooks useful enough to want to share them with others who might find them equally as useful.




So super long winded blog... I've been doing a lot of fishing lately... I can't be the only one who enjoys it? The boat is running better and ever, striper season is gearing up here in Northern California. And most excitingly, after 5ish years of a total ban on salmon fishing, our season opened up for both Ocean and River salmon fishing starting July 16th! When I was growing up we lived very close to the river, I used to fish all the time in the Fall, but haven't since. I really hung up the rods in college, but it's good to be back.

Going fishing tomorrow after the trading session, and early on Saturday with Mike, hopefully I'll have some pictures.

Oh yeah, I'm taking a different approach to the new series that I'm making for CardRunners... I am releasing the first video before I make the rest of the series. I really want to take in member feedback to really give you guys the "wow factor". Again, the theme is as if someone asked me "what does it take to crush?"... coupled with a framework of how to think. This is primarily what I teach in my private coaching sessions. I don't want to simply present a spot and show you what I do... I want to show you all the elements that go into the decision making process, and let you figure it out. Of course there will be some hand-holding examples of how to do this, but it should be 3-5 videos, and if you have anything in particular you want to see that you think coincides with the theme (or hell, even if it doesn't) just leave a comment here.

Best of luck at the tables, charts, rivers or lakes!

I'm back to waking up at the butt-crack of dawn to practice trading again. This week started off pretty good, but the last two days have been a little brutal. One step forward, two back, I suppose. In any case the gaping holes in my trading skillset have been highlighted, which is certainly a positive thing. Mostly I'm getting slammed on entries.

One major revelation I made this week had to do with the price bar at the right edge of your screen, the one that is forming. After much debate and frustration, I leanred how to handle the little guy... treat it as if it doesn't exist.

The only thing constant about that bar is its opening price, everything else can, and probably will, change by the end of the time ( if you're using minute charts ) or ticks (if you're using tick charts). Drawing conclusions about an unformed price bar can really hurt you. But that's why it's often good to use a lower timeframe chart for entries, because you don't have to draw conclusions on a forming price bar, you can look at the shorter/low timeframe and see how those bars are forming, and detect the weakness required to make an entry.


As for the new video series, I am pooling all of my poker knowledge and coaching experience to bring you what I hope will be an exceptional and defining series for all No Limit Hold'em players. The examples will probably lean heavily towards HU examples, but the concepts are universal for all things NLHE, and the framework can be applied to any game and even life. Doing my best to keep it entertaining as well! DONT JUDGE ME!

Can't wait to get some feedback... For those curious, it's an extension of "Know Your Edge"... it's basically a collection of videos to answer the question "LJ, what do you think a player needs to know to crush?"

Best of luck!

I'm sure most of you have read the good news so I won't spend much time on it, but in case you haven't:
http://blogs.forbes.com/nathanvardi/2011/04/20/u-s-online-poker-players-will-get-their-money-back/ (we're getting our money!!).

Sometimes the best things in life come in unexpected packages. I learned some hard lessons over the last few years. I probably gave up on literally hundreds of thousands of actual and future action, to chase the dream of being the next world beater. I ate a big slice of humble pie and moved down again and again, until I was so broken that I left the felt for a while to study trading. The thought of a single stream of volatile income kept me awake at night, but yet I stubbornly cling to the idea of being self-employed.

Looking back at my time spent trading in 2010, I defintely had unreasonable expectations about how long it would take to become profitable, and quite frankly, was enamored with the idea of succeeding and not with the journey of learning. This is a recipe for failure. I'll be the first to admit that running calculations of how much money you could be making, is always alluring... but it's destructive. With poker I've been shown time and time again that success is an equation consisting of passion, focus and confidence. But then I made the connection... EVERYTHING is an equation of passion, focus and confidence.

We all hear the same statistics thrown around... "only 5% of restaurants survive for 5+ years", "only 5-10% of poker players are profitable", "only 5% of traders are profitable"... yet for most we accept these daunting numbers as if they are saying our own chance of survival in a given venture is 5%. Has poker taught you nothing? There are no rewards with out risk, and nothing worthy of pursuit comes with a guarantee of success... you simply stack the odds in your favor and put your money in. That's all you can do. You need to the passion to get up every day and repeat the action, you need the focus to be at your best, and you need the confidence to weather the inevitable bad streaks.

The point is, a confident, passionate and focused person isn't a statistic, they are a force to be reckoned with. I can't even venture a guess on their level of success in a given venture, and if you're still wondering, "if I'm focused, passionate, and confident... what are my chances of succeeding?" then you've completely missed the point.

As applied to moving forward from poker make sure you are realistic with your self... What were my biggest successes? What were my biggest failures?

For me, my biggest success was providing for myself and my family for roughly 5 years. Having lots of time to pursue what makes me happy, take my family on adventures, and enjoy life. I would also say that in the last 2-3 years I grew the most as a person... shed a certain level of immaturity (Ok, so a little came back in my last blog =P), and overall became a better person.

My biggest failure was two-fold. First, and of lessor importance... I lost a lot of actual money, and even more in money I could have made, to learn that I'm not a world beater. While I am proud of how quickly I moved down, it was a big slice of humble pie resulting in almost no play in 2010 (most was to study the markets). Secondly, and more importantly... I simply didn't work hard enough. To me the winners in that category would be Leatherass and kaintd77. Especially kaintd77. He's probably laughing his ass off right now, and for as much unneccesary hate as he's received, I don't really blame him. If the rumors are true he's made "retire at 30" type money by playing across many sites, and from running his own stable.

So hopefully I will take all of these lessons forward.

This is a good kick in the ass to get out there and try something new, and maybe start a new chapter.

-Best of luck

March went pretty well. I missed my hand goal by about 15% in mid-March. That said, I generally set pretty lofty goals for myself (wanted 30k by the 18th), ended up with 25k by the 15th and took the next 3 days off. Pretty extraordinary volume for me.

My son came to visit for Spring Break and we had an awesome time. He's really in to the sciences, so we explored some Discovery centers both here, and in San Francisco.

After he left I only played two additional days in March. I think I played very well, made a little bit of money, ran pretty poorly. Overall though, March went well. I've dropped my gameselection standards a tiny bit at the nl200 level, and even less so (but still some loosening at nl400). This decision came mostly because I put my PLO studies on hold for a bit to focus mainly on NL.

A few years back CR flew me out to Chicago to do some live videos. I remember Taylor commenting that I play way too fast. I defended my quick play and I think we agreed to disagree. Years later I can categorically say that he was right, and I'm wrong and I've been working hard to slow things down and think about decisions. Right now I think it's my absolute biggest leak by far, although it stems from a good habit... some of the reason that I act super fast is that I have mental plans for each hand, making my decisions clear and simple. That said, it comes at a cost of accuracy and affords no chance to double check your reads or re-assess.

HU games have changed so much over the last few years that you can't make many mistakes anymore, even at mid and low stakes. Spots that were once considered "thin" against fishier players have been elevated to objectively "bad". One of the biggest leaks I see with fish now compared to fish 2-3+ years ago is that they shovel in chips for value by overbetting, CR monsterously etc. They've always done this, but it used to be with wider ranges. They don't care at all about getting proper value. To combat that the most obvious choice is to make larger folds. I'd say I'm probably at about 6-7 out of 10 at doing this as it's against my stationy nature.

But that said the future of poker is looking bright and I'm very happy with where I am in my game development. I hope to dabble in the upper tiers of MSNL this year and really have no aspirations to breach any higher than that. The main things I'm focusing on are volume, keeping my focus up, knowing when I need to quit/take a break, and taking more time with decisions.


As for trading, there had been an e-book that I wanted to buy for some time and had put off since I stopped studying the markets. I recently purchased it and have been really satisfied with the content. Basically it is a really nice guide for the exact type of TA I was doing last year, but with more detail and stronger definitions of core concepts than I was working with. I have no aspirations about making real money trades anywhere in the immediate future, but have been looking at price again and will be studying the concepts. In the medium-length future it would be fantastic to trade and play, and make enough to get some Real Estate investments going to have three streams of income instead of just one.

Speaking of which I'm still looking for a programmer for TableRetriever. I am willing to give a generous share of the profits for someone to help me take the program from beta to market (early beta), and provide support. This is a great opportunity to get some entrepeneurial experience in a extremely low risk environment for someone with a reasonable programming background. If you are interested, please PM me here or on 2+2 (MasterLJ).

Best of luck at the tables

Heya Guys,


Due to some family events I have pretty much booked my March. Personally, when I play I like to have the entire day dedicated to grinding etc which will not be the case for the next week or so, so that said, it opens the door for some coaching. So if you're interested I'm cutting my rate to $150 for the next week or so. Group coaching is encouraged, so if the hourly seems steep just grab a friend or two.

For a description of my program, go here.

I've been meaning to put together some references, but they are certainly available upon request. As always, I encourage you to check out my videos to gauge whether you feel my style will help you, although I have certainly improved my coaching and approach to poker over the years.

March was pretty good for me, I was trying to hit 30k hands before this date, but ended up with 24k (mostly NL this month) and 50 or so tourneys. For me to put in 24k hands in half a month is a huge accomplishment, and I will have a few days towards the end to see if I can top 30k.

PLO has been a little too good to me as I'm running significantly above EV, although I'm not entirely sure how good of a job HEM does at determining PLO EV. Assuming it's correct it bothers me a little. I'm a winner, even EV adjusted, but not by much at low stakes, so I think I need to plug some leaks there. It really is quite a weird game... I've been watching some of the higher stakes matches and it isn't even the same game as the low stakes.

I have a new goal for the medium term and that's to win an MTT. It's been years since I won one, in fact, I think the Iron Man promotion was the last one, and that was yeaaaaars ago. I've always been a mediocre tourney player and feel that it's probably the easiest for a HU player to adapt to mostly because players don't know how to deal with the rising pressure and generally make horrible bluffs postflop... and the preflop game is pretty simple to figure out with only a few minor tweaks needed in accordance with reads. Some of you may remember a while ago I blogged about how nasty the variance is in MTTs. While I'm still painfully aware of that, MTTs are amongst the softest form of games and of course binking a big score is always nice.

Why the change of heart? A few Sundays back I loaded up on MTTs in lieu of cash and made two final tables. I wasn't really able to capitalize on either... I won the majority of my flips (1 or 2 suckouts iirc) to get to the FT, but lost my only two flips at the FT. I had a nice run in the miniFTOPs $30 event last week, taking 188 out of a staggering 33,000. That day in particular was pretty disgusting for me on the MTT front as I lost just about every AI. I had 4 entries in the event and had been knocked out of 3 and was approaching the bubble. It was the last tourney out of about 20 played that day across PS and FTP, so I made a somewhat deliberate bad shove with KQo when I open from the CO and SB raises... now it could be justified, but in this case it truly wasn't and I knew it. I ended up sucking out on AA and decided to play right, which landed me the 188th. As they say you either leave the tourney with a story or 1st place.

As for videos I have one in the can which is a lowstakes leakfinder. I think a lot of you will find it interesting as a refresher.

My next handful of videos I'm going to really focus on breaking th emold and trying to re-invigorate HU content that's available. My goal is for a large portion of people to take something with them from each video, and I realize there's a lot of content out there, some of which is very good already. So that said, my next few videos will be an extension on Know Your Edge, with the goal in mind to help find definitive answers to questions, and going over in gorey detail how to find those answers and limit assumptions etc.

Best of luck at the tables!

As some of you might know from my previous blog entries, I created TableRetriever (www.tableretriever.com) a few months back and put it on hold. I definitely want to see this product go to market but don't have the time to finish, so I thought I'd throw it out there that I'm looking for someone to take it home for a share in the business.

Qualifications (you must have these):
- Strong proficiency in C++ and C#
- Knowledge of PokerStars client
- MS Visual Studio (very very preferably 10), legit!
- very strong ethics/character as well as references.
- Previous experience releasing a product, preferably in an ISV type environment, or basically anyone who has experience in all aspects of releasing software (licensing, supporting, etc). Design and most coding is done.

(strongly desired)
- Web programming skills
- some type of Database/web interface experience
- lots of poker experience.


The heavy lifting has been done, I just need someone to come in and manage the beta, clean up my crappy code, provide support, and add features. I was going to sell TR, but I figured this will be the best value for all parties involved. We would be partners and share in the success of TR, with no money out of your pocket upfront (we may share future marketing costs or whatever, we can discuss that separately).

If this interests you please PM me here, e-mail me at admin@tableretriever.com, or PM on 2+2 and we can discuss it further.

Thanks, and best of luck at the tables!