Hey guys, my new video is out on Cardrunners today so please check it out and let me know what you think. Also I am looking for some new leakfinder submissions from 200nl-50nl with 200nl preferred. Outside of making CR videos, I have been focused on improving my golf game, smoking cigars, and playing a ton of live poker. Golf has been going horribly, I think I started out the year with an 84, was in the low 80s early on in the season and things have been going downhill from there. I went on my annual golf week trip to Myrtle Beach with my best man and played horribly at the best courses down there. Finished up with a 78 and MBN Kings North, but really played some pretty poor high 80s low 90s type golf on some really spectacularly manicured and scenic golf courses but not overly challenging places like Caledonia, Tidewater, and Dunes Club. Then last Tuesday my game went to complete shit and actually posted my first > 100 round since I was 12 (It is tough hitting 3 and sometimes 5 off the tee on every hole). Hopefully that turns around.

On the poker front, I have pretty much dedicated my time towards crushing the low stake live games. My edge is just too gigantic to pass up and I think I have drastically improved my live game over only about a month of serious play. For the longest time I relied almost exclusively on just taking the best lines, but live that is simply not enough. I have now become far better at paying attention to every hand so that I can get good reads on all the players at the tables, and more importantly actually picking up a lot of live tells. I watched vitalmyth's video series about three times and sometimes the simplest information can be the best. Just by looking to my left and seeing how interested players look in their hand, or looking at my opponents before I make my bets, I have saved or taken down countless amounts of pots because of how obvious the players are. Also I am now very comfortable with betsizing, which if you just rely on standard online bet sizing you are missing a lot both in value and opportunities to play with fewer players. I still have a lot to work on, particularly concerning games where I am not the most aggro player at the table, or when I am at a table with one massive fish where everyone is targeting only one player and going out of their way not to play hands with anyone else.

Despite how profitable the games are, I am still struggling with the overall lifestyle that comes with going to casinos and live games. I find myself eating terribly, getting no sleep during my casino trips, not spending enough time with my wife, and not working out much at all. It is definitely a goal of mine to find a good balance and schedule with live poker so that I have a happier and healthier life outside of poker.

Hope you guys enjoy the video and please pm or post comments on the blog or on the video page and I will get back to all of them. If you are a cigar smoker, I just received a box of My Father El Hijo's from Smoke Inn and they are absolutely fantastic, enjoying one now.

Salud!

Hey guys, thanks for all the support you have shown my first video. I will be continuing with a number of other leakfinder series videos. If you are interested in having your game coached in one of my videos, please either pm me or leave a comment at the bottom. I will not only use your game in my video, but will contact you directly and give you my indepth notes on pretty much each hand, my overall thoughts on your game, and ways you can improve. I am ideally looking for 100nl and 200nl videos. Thanks again!




Salud!

Just released my first CR video guys, really looking forward to the feedback that I get on the first one so that I can make the best content possible for the CR community. I am playing live the next day or two, but will definitely be checking up on the video comments, my pms, the blog comments, or the forums. Any questions about the video I will definitely answer them all so ask away. Thanks for your interest and input.




Salud!

Hey guys! Long time no blog, sorry my account was not working on CR for awhile and I also had my wedding and honeymoon; both were absolutely amazing and I really could not have asked for more. After the two week honeymoon, I sort of had to get back to reality and the new poker landscape. I was really disappointed that I couldn't afford to play the main event, but it was probably out of laziness more than anything else because I still am confident in my results and skills as a poker player and probably could have found a backer even if it was at a lower markup after 4/15. Also at the beginning of July I had some good news and bad news. Good news: I received my first check from merge poker which was encouraging. Bad news: it took 3 weeks, the correspondence with support was not great, and I followed it up with a 22 bi downswing (biggest of the year up till now was 16 I think). Bottom line, I ran like horse shit, but I also cost myself about 3-6 buyins in tilt or just wasted headspace in thinking about how bad I am running as opposed to what are my future plans when dealing with opponents. I decided to switch things up and actually traveled to wild and wonderful West Virginia to play some live poker. Monday I made 800 playing 1-2 in about 6 hours, and then went again on Tuesday at 1pm, and ended up leaving at 10am on Wednesday. I played 21 hours straight, I was stuck 550 and close to my stop loss for the first 7 hours or so, and then went on a steady pace of winning medium sized pots, making good reads on my opponents, and using my bluffy image to get a ton of easy river value bets. I got back to even, and then from 1am to around 7am I was playing a lot of short handed poker and even heads up for a half an hour and that really wasn't fair to my opponents :). At one point I had about 2700 in red 5 dollar chips in front of me and the dealers said it was the most money they had ever seen at 1-2. Finished up 1800, really happy with my play and I do believe I am getting much better quickly at picking up live tells (actually watching all of the WSOP coverage helped me a lot with this) and hopefully diminishing my own tells I am giving off. I really dislike spending that much time away from my wife, and the hour and fifteen minute drive is not a lot of fun (especially after a 21 hour session), but so far I am having fun playing live so I will continue to do it. If you are in NOVA or DC and have a game to recommend let me know too.

Also, I have a really cool announcement: starting Wednesday July 27th, I will be making my first video for Cardrunners. I have been a member since 2007, I owe a lot to Cardrunners and the community for my poker success, and the day after Black Friday, I immediately contacted Taylor and said I was ready to start making videos for you guys if they would have me. I will be making leakfinder videos, hh videos, concept videos, and possibly my own play in the future. If you are interested in having me review your video and play 200 or 100nl, pm me or leave a comment and there is a good chance you will be in one of my future videos, plus I will give you one on one feedback of your play. I hope that I have a lot to offer the community in these videos and give you a different perspective than some of the other video makers on the site. Thanks for your support and I hope you get a lot out of my first video, if it is successful I will be making a lot more. Big week or two coming up with my video coming out, and some big full tilt deadlines, good luck everyone!

Salud!

Hey guys, I think its a pretty big day coming up in terms of the full tilt withdrawal questions. There have been a lot of indications that today will be the day we get some sort of announcement, although there have been "announcements of an announcement" in the past few weeks that have also fallen through. I am hopeful that we will finally hear something positive but at the same time my level of worry will drastically rise if there is no news tomorrow. Really interesting take on the FTP withdrawal issue that I just read:

http://www.billrini.com/2011/05/12/player-account-segregation-explained-simple-version/

It would be very nice to know what the future holds in terms of our withdrawals because so many of us that play for a living are in the dark about how we should proceed and if we can rely on the large amount of funds in our FTP accounts as real money and desperately want to plan accordingly.

And finally on a totally separate note, let Adam Carolla speak for all of us:

http://www.adamcarolla.com/ACPBlog/2011/05/13/one-mans-opinion-rosie-odonnell/

Fingers crossed for tomorrow

Salud!

Hey guys, looks like I finally had my breakthrough week on a site not named FTP. Really was a huge relief because I only had enough confidence in online poker in general to risk putting $2,000 on a site and for the first week even with an amazing rakeback deal and grinding hard I lost half my roll in a combination of not truly understanding the mentality of the regs there and just running worse than I can really ever remember in online poker. This downswing at the worst time really served as an avalanche of self pity, I was in an absolutely terrible mood for like ten days, I was really questioning my overall life plan of playing poker for a living instead of taking the hard but safe road of becoming a lawyer, and a shit storm of other bad stuff outside of poker started coming my way as well. Thank the good lord, something just really started clicking this week, I am on a 35bi upswing in 4 days, with the high point being a massive 16bi winning day over only 3k hands yesterday. My overall poker game returned to my FTP days, I felt very comfortable understanding regulars ranges, started winning all of the small pots that I have hung my hat on since I started playing poker, and most importantly I now have a very good understanding of the image I am projecting to my opponents and how to adapt to their view of my game. I really thought that I evolved as a poker player in the last 5 years and that my overall happiness was not predicated upon my wins and losses at poker, but I certainly have to work on that based on the last month. I also hope that my overall mood was not necessarily based on my wins or losses at poker, but the surrounding circumstances of having a massive amount of money online as well as my livelihood in jeopardy.

Speaking of money in jeopardy, I am really regretting my decision for the last two or three years playing exclusively on FTP. Unfortunately my overall personality is resistant to change (I am sure you all could guess that considering the massive amount of time I have spent just playing 1-2 cash) so even though I was constantly complaining about Full Tilt's terrible customer service and vastly inferior reward system, I refused to switch to Stars because I was so comfortable with the games, software and players at FTP. Wow I am really regretting that decision and quite nervous about my money. Stars deserves all the credit in the world for preparing for the situation way ahead of time, alerting the players to their current situation quickly, and of course getting money to the players. On the opposite side of the spectrum, it becomes painfully obvious that Full Tilt is reacting in a save their ass paradigm as opposed to worrying about their customer base, something that I have always believed was the case between the two majors. Tony G had a very interesting podcast today with Gary Wise:

http://www.pokerstatic.com/garywisevstheworld/the-gary-wise-interviews-tony-guoga/

While he openly admits that self promotion is something he is always thinking about, he also states and I believe that he is one of the few people that is looking out for the players. He makes the obvious but excellent point that almost complete silence is the absolute worst approach towards the situation and is completely unacceptable. He goes on to say that even if Full Tilt instituted a long term plan stating that they are guaranteeing the players their money, even if it is very long term (1 year+), while not ideal and certainly not what we are hoping for, is far better than the alternative of making all poker players exceptionally nervous with relative silence. Of course the person I am most looking to for information that has completely disappeared is Howard Lederer. His twitter has been inactive since the 12th, apparently he moved to Ireland immediately after Black Friday. As the face of the company, this strategy of just hiding out is completely unacceptable. Just small updates or reassurances would go such a long way to appeasing the players and if he still wants FTP to be a force in the poker world long term I think it would also foster a loyalty to the brand. I have been following it a lot, and it seems like the general consensus is that while FTP is not handling the situation very well, most people are very confident about getting their money off. I am still very worried, please post your thoughts on this and your current confidence levels about getting all of your money.

I had a lot of fun writing and responding to my Bin Laden blog. I was on a traveling debate team in high school for 3 years that took a ton of my time and have always enjoyed the process and the challenge without taking anything personally. So always post any comments to anything I say in the blog, I read and respond to all of them and it is flattering that you guys spend a few minutes reading what I have to say.

As always, I still have plenty of coaching spots available, and am still looking for some live games to play in the DC or NOVA area. Gl guys, hopefully I do not succumb to the post blog bad day of poker.

Salud!

Hey guys, been a very crazy month for me but I think things are turning around. First of all thank god for the US military, not sure what this means for the overall war on terror but from a symbolic perspective, as well as to all of the servicemen and families that were irreversibly impacted by this devil's actions, yesterday was an amazing victory. It definitely made me feel very thankful and proud to be an American despite the comparatively small setbacks that we as poker players have faced. I will be very interested to hear what develops in the upcoming weeks, but I think by far the biggest story going forward will be how involved Pakistan was in protecting bin Laden. From all the reports I've read, it seems impossible that they were unaware of his presence. In my opinion, their realization and possible protection of his whereabouts is just about as close to an act of war against our country as I can imagine so I will be very interested about Obama's reaction. Speaking of Obama, I think this act most likely cemented his second term. As a staunch conservative, I have yet to find a really compelling Republican candidate anyway, and finding Osama I think has decided the election. Finally, I still cannot for the life of me understand why we would be offering him a religious funeral. I suppose our country is worried about what possible retributions will come from his death, but I have said this many times: there are no levels of hate, either you hate someone or you don't. So I am not sure why we have to go out of our way to be politically correct to one of the worst humans ever put on this planet.

Back to the poker aspect of my blog, I finally had a big breakthrough day online by winning 8bi. Since moving away from Full Tilt, just a ton of laughable things have happened to me while playing, I was stuck a bunch of bi in EV every single day, I have taken some of the most brutal beats/suckouts/coolers in the span of a two weeks that I can ever remember, and of course my computer completely crashed twice for the cherry on top. With all of that said, I am up a small amount of money finally since playing on a different site, am working as hard as ever on my game and am still very confident that the games are very beatable.

I should also point out that since a lot of my students were Americans, I definitely have a lot of free time when it comes to coaching, so if anyone is interested in coaching get in contact with me, this is really an excellent time for non Americans to make a killing and for Americans to really get their A games together in the harder online environment. Pm me or leave a comment and we can certainly work something out if you are an American too.

Finally, my buddy Zaitsev made a blog about looking for live games in his home town and I am also interested about finding some local games since I am very worried that my previous home game was not above board. If anyone has local games that are trustworthy in the DC or even better Northern Virginia area let me know please.

I am getting more hopeful that a big announcement about withdrawals will come from Full Tilt in the next week or two, so lets all keep our fingers crossed, but in the mean time I will be working hard as hell on my online game as well as probably taking some trips to AC and West Virginia to take advantage of the soft live games, gl everyone

Salud!

Hey guys, been a super frustrating week for me. I think the combination of all the fallout from Black Friday, the shitty beat I took live, and just a very frustrating beginning to my non FTP career has really gotten to me. It is irritating that it also has effected the rest of my life, just have been in a shitty mood most of the time, and have been thinking far too much about poker.

Two days ago, I definitely played too long trying to make some money, and probably lost about 3 bi I did not need to when my mindset was exceptionally shitty and I was probably tilted over an exceptionally long day of poker that did not go well. Then yesterday my computer completely crashed with a virus, I thought I lost everything but I think was able to save most of the things on my computer thanks to the help of my friends. As all of my friends can attest, I certainly am not a great guy when it comes to computers, but when technology fails me it really does tilt the shit out of me. Ended up going golfing today but it ended up raining like crazy on the first hole and did not stop all day and it was about 48 degrees so not the best conditions but it was fun to just get out of the house and not think about poker. Tonight I put in about 4 hours of grinding and I think that I played just about as well as I am capable of, but unfortunately dropped 3 buyins.

So far, merge has been quite frustrating for me. I have been playing 100nl, and really haven't made the best adjustments to the regs that I need to be making. I definitely have an overly aggro image and have been caught in a number of bluffs so obviously reducing my bluffs and increasing my value bets is needed. Additionally, I have run 15bi under ev, but more importantly it just feels like I have not hit many big hands at all. Just constantly it feels like I have been up against stronger than average hand ranges, but am being called down with weak type hands so that is not exactly a recipe for success. One element that I am very hopeful about is that for the first time I will be able to focus solely on coming up with strategies for beating individual regs. In the past, it was not really the best use of my time to come up with individual strategies for beating regs at 200nl on FTP because there were so many of them, but on merge, there aren't a ton of regs yet (although hopefully more regs and fish start coming over) so coming up with individual strategies for each reg is going to be a very fruitful endeavor. It is also interesting that the "average" reg at merge is quite a different animal from that at FTP. I won't go into too much detail here, but there is definitely a different approach and playing style from most regs here then I have seen in the past so that will take some adjustments to my own game and some in depth studying to figure out.

Pretty much a breakeven first week after Black Friday, now I am just going to work my ass off and hope that things improve. I won't simply be putting in a ton of grinding but also am going to watch even more videos now that the weather has turned and I can watch a few videos while smoking a stogie, and also will be very diligent in reviewing my hands not only to find patterns in my own game but to pick up on other regulars tendencies.. Also, I need to become exceptionally strong minded and when things are going poorly, do a better job of brushing them off and staying in the moment and not thinking about extraneous things that are distracting me from making the best decision in that moment. I am going to spend this weekend celebrating Easter, my bday and my fiance's bday with my sister tomorrow night and my family in Baltimore on Sunday with my sister's awesome cooking, should be a nice break from the grind

Salud!



Btw refreshing take from John Stossel on the recent events:

http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2011/04/20/5384/

Hey guys, just got back from a live game, lost a 900bb pot with the only guy at the table who covered me with the nuts/top set versus a gutshot (of course we ran it twice and he hit the 4 outer on the turn two different times kill me). Sort of summed up my week I suppose. In the short term I was pretty devastated, not just because of the bad beat, but also because it made me think of the biggest cash and tourney live pots I have been involved in and they all were spots where I was a massive favorite and got sucked out on. With that said, I should also be hopeful since live players are on such a weak level compared to internet players, and even playing in a 9 handed game where my best skills are not on display, my edge is absolutely massive due to their incredibly obvious bet sizing, tendencies, and approach to the game. I might have to take some time off of live poker because the beat was so bad for such a big pot, but ultimately I see a massive edge that I need to exploit.

Also figured that I would take this time to just list my tilt that has ensued in the last week, and finish my pitty party for myself and be done with it.

1. The timing of this could not be worse, I just paid a massive amount of money to the government for taxes, I am getting married paying for wedding stuff and a really baller honeymoon.

2. I am getting married, I think I would be able to handle this better if I were single, could play 16 hours of live poker a day and grind out a nice living, but I have responsibilities and moving to play online is a much bigger decision than just: "where can I move to make the most money with poker?"

3. My roll previous to Friday was at an all time high, ironic that the last time it was at this level was the day before UIGEA when I was on a tourney luckfest and was crushing the $200 sngs on party without having a clue about what I was doing

4. I have a lot of money on FTP, even despite the fact that I was trying so hard to get money off of there in the last three months but withdrawals had probably a 33% success rate

5. I also have a lot of money just floating out there that is not in my account, probably will never reach me, but I have 4 checks and one large bankwire that will probably never arrive

6. Thursday I made the great decision to cash in a 5k bonus on FTP, also have over a million FTP points that are probably now worthless

7. Smaller note, but all of my student's escrow funds for lessons are online

8. I had to cancel my Vegas bachelor party mansion for a week that I have been looking forward to for over a year

9. I have been playing just on FTP for over 3 years, I am so used to the software that transitioning is very difficult

10. Getting a stake for the Borgata 5k right now is just about impossible and even getting a main event stake will be very difficult

11. I started out my year on pace to make a ridiculous amount of money

12. I finally was starting to feel comfortable and confident at 2-4

God, I think I made myself sick thinking about all of this, sorry to the readers, this list was pretty damn lame. Honestly, things were probably too easy and going too well in my life. I am done complaining and its time to get down to business. Made 8bi today at 100nl online, am becoming more comfortable with the software, and am working my ass off which are all good things.

Gl everyone, I am going to have a positive mindset moving on and am just going to focus on what I control which is playing really good poker

Salud!

Hey guys, wrote I think about 30 blogs before finally posting one. They all ranged from the feel sorry for myself, complain about how in trouble I am with my roll, thankful that I at least had a huge year, but this is the bottom line: I am a poker player. I live and breath the game, and right now I need to prove to myself that I can thrive under the hardest circumstances. I am still not sure my exact plan right now, but I am starting off with a small amount of money online, grinding my way up, and when I am not playing online playing some live games. I plan to put in an absolutely massive amount of grinding and studying. If this doesn't work, maybe I will have to move 5 minutes away to dc if the online rooms ever open up, might have to move to vegas or close to other casinos, or even go really crazy with it and move to canada or an island so I can grind online. Bottom line though, I am a poker player, I proved that I can adapt after 2006 with the UIGEA bill passing only 3 months after I turned down law schools, and I plan to prove it now. GL everybody. I am sure in the future I will not necessarily be this optimistic or motivated about Black Friday, but for now those feelings are simply clouding my ability to continue making a very healthy living at a game I love




Salud!