If we can agree that a strong theoretical understanding is the best scale that we have to gauge value in the coaching industry, we can begin to devise a theoretically based written examination that attempts to rank coaches accordingly. This does not have to be the end-all-be-all of a coach's fixed hourly rate, but it can serve as a benchmark and push hourly rates closer to where they actually should be. For instance, if a coach scores mediocre on the standardized test, but is an extremely effective educator that has a very genuine personality, puts a ton of time into his course planning, received a myriad of outstanding reviews from past students, etc. -- then it's completely reasonable that his hourly rate could exceed the bracket of his test scores. The bottom line is that poor test scores should immediately raise red flags for a high-priced coach, and exceptional test scores should define the upper eschalon of coaches.

How it can work:

*Coaches will have "x" hours to complete a written examination, for simplicity let's say the test consists of 100 short answer questions. The test will increase in difficulty as it progresses. A sample question 1 & 2 could read:

1) Assume you face a range of entirely bluffcatchers. What is the percentage of value needed to balance a river betting range using the following bet sizings: A) 1 PSBB) 1/2 PSBC) 2 PSBShow your work.

Full credit will be given for an answer that resembles the following:
A) 2:1 odds laid = 33% equity needed for defender to reach indifference, Answer = 67% Value
B) 3:1 odds laid = 25% equity needed for defender to reach indifference, Answer = 75% Value
C) 3:2 odds laid = 40% equity needed for defender to reach indifference, Answer = 60% Value

2) Assume we are facing a range of entirely bluffcatchers:

A) Show the EV equation for a balanced range betting the river for 1 PSB vs an optimal opponent.
B) Prove that incentive to bluff is lost after the opponent begins to call a pot sized bet 60% of the time.
Full credit will be given for an answer that resembles the following:
A) (.67)(1) + ((.67)(0.5) + (.33)(.5) - (.33)(0.5)) = EV is 100% of the effective pot
B) (.33)(.4) - (.33)(0.6)) = EV of bluffs is now negative.

*Note how part B in question 2 is actually the exploitative version of part A. Questions will be designed to test the coach's understanding of equilibrium as well as the exploitative implications that arise from deviating from that equilibrium. In this way the test is still a legitimate representation of the coach's teachable exploitative talent.

Coaches' scores will be posted on a public domain, where students will finally have access to each coach's teachable understanding of the game. From this point, individual coahcing prices can become regulated according to test results, with greater and greater accuracy as more coaches take the test. If people who are currently on the leading edge of game theory put in the effort required to develop a standardized test like this, I think it could be a the best solution to the problem that we have in the current coaching market: we have no way of completely proving that people are full of shit.

I think the best way to cut through the minefield that is the current state of the coaching market is to find a way to accurately assess skill in a way that is applicable to the eductation process. In short, anything taught that is of any value is highly quantifiable.

There is clearly an elite level of poker that is inexpressable -- it consists of successfully mind-fucking the opponent by correctly toggling your frequencies and bet sizings to get the desired exploitative result. I don't mean to take anything away from this type of edge, but my problem with it is that it has no place in 99% of coaching. This is a skill that can't effectively be trained into 99% of students by their coach -- it is either an innate gift (some people are naturally hyper-sensitive to others' energies), or more commonly it can be developed through a repetitive experiential approach (i.e. playing a shitload of hands). It is NOT developed by the student being told by a coach with a highly adept spidey sense that certain spots "feel" right based on the coach's interpretation of how the opponent will react due to highly subjective metagame. In almost all cases, the student will not have the hard wiring that he needs to interpret this type of ambiguous information (if he did, he'd already be winning boatloads and not paying for lessons). This leads me to two main points:

1) There is a limit to the amount of exploitative play that a coach can effectively convey to the vast majority of the student base.

2) A strong theoretical analysis naturally lends itself to an understanding of appropriate exploitative adjustments in a way that is both clearly quantifiable and still highly effective.

Trying to help a student to improve without first giving him a sturdy theoretical foundation is a recipe for disaster. It is nearly impossible to build upon concepts in lessons if there is no theoretical groundwork laid. Furthermore, if the student does not undergo the proper thought process corrections that a strong theoretical understanding will help illuminate, the student will constantly find himself with leaks and mental contradictions that he is completely unconscious of -- a coach's (and student's) worst nightmare.

Anyone who argues that understanding game theory will not make you a better exploitative player does not understand game theory. We cannot effectively discuss exploitative play with out a centerpoint to compare it to -- trying to do so is like trying to describe the location of a point in space when no other points exist relative to it. I think if we can agree on this fact -- that theory is a precursor to all exploitative play -- then we can begin to develop a rating system that seeks to test a coach's theoretical understanding. Luckily high level theory, unlike some forms of high level exploitative play, is far more quantifiable and completely testable.

In my next entry I'll outline how I think standardized testing in the coaching industry can be implemented in an effective format. The intention is to establish a more legitimately regulated coaching market, and to ensure that students can feel comfortable knowing that they're getting the caliber of information that they pay for.

A lot of people talk about their stance against Allin-EV, how it doesnt mean much, isn't a good indicator of your true win-rate, etc. I've always believed AIEV is the best indicator of your skill level over large samples, but lately I'm seriously reconsidering what I consider a "large sample" to be. Strangely enough, i didn't come to this conclusion by running massively below EV ... but rather having a pretty long stretch of a winrate way lower than what i'm used to, while running above AIEV.

Recently I decided to run a filter on my last 300K hands, split pretty evenly between $200nl/$400nl/$600nl. I've played something like 7 million hands lifetime so i think i have a pretty good feel for when things are out of wack over relatively "long" stretches. Over this last 300K hands, my hunch was that there was a lot of variance working against me on my big river bets ... my big value seemed to get paid too rarely and my bluffs seemed to be failing at way too high of a frequency. Below are the numbers that I pulled from the filters:

Data is collected from pots > 40BB where i either bet or raised river. Sample size 300K.

Total Bluffs (River Bets or Raises): 310
Bluffs Succeeded: 36%

Total Value (River Bets or Raises): 901
Opponent Responds By Folding: 71%

Total Value Owned (River Bets/Raises) = 214 (23% of total value bets)

Opponents have folded to my bluffs at twice the frequency that they've folded to my value. Even though the majority of my value range has a higher EV when it gets a fold than a call, I think it's likely that i gain so much from calls when i'm toward the top of my range that i would be rooting for a call with my value range on the whole. I'm not sure about this, hopefully someone can correct me if i'm wrong, but i'm pretty sure my entire value range would benefit more from getting called at an overall higher frequency ... especially since i'm probably way more polarized than most in my 3-street value lines (my OOP c-bet is like 40%). If I wanted to look deeper into it, I could filter for the frequency that the top of my value range was called compared to part of my value range that is either close to indifferent or clearly wants a fold. Maybe that's worth looking into. Also the value owns seem to be coming at significantly too high of a frequency. Even if i was always at the bottom of my value range, the opponent should still have like 70% bluffcatchers ... so it doesnt make sense to me that i should be getting value owned with 23% of my total value range. I've yet to see a player who consistantly bluffraises the river wide, so it doesn't seem like a reasonable conclusion that i'm losing money by bet-folding when i do get raised in this line. All of the other value owns come from me either losing premium to premium or simply getting called by a better value hand.


Obviously my big bluffs are losing money. I don't think i go out of my way to bluff into very strong ranges, and i dont make a habit of running big bluffs against calling stations. The average fold to river c-bet over this 300K sample was 48% , so even if i closed my eyes and clicked random buttons i should be able to do better than my 37% success rate.

Lastly, these big-bet samples are not large by any means. 300 bluffs is nothing. No wonder i'm experiencing ridiculous amounts of variance. 900 value bets is more substantial, but the results for calling frequency still seem really skewed.

I'm starting to think that winrate's aren't worth killing yourself over if the sample size isn't at least 2 million hands. Obviously the majority of trials will give relatively accurate gauges of winrate over something like 300k-500k hands (probably between 0.5 PTBB of a player's true winrate)... But for a player who's proven to be a 1.5PTBB winner over his last 2 million hands to start revamping his entire game over a 300K BE sample seems like it's too harsh. Being concerned seems natural , but i'd be really careful to mess with my game too much without talking to a bunch of different sources who i thought were better than me.

I'm interested in hearing your guys thoughts on this type of variance and please correct me anywhere i made a mistake.

I made a decision this year that i'm going to be in poker for at least 5 more years. I really don't know how high i ever want to play again. I know that i'll be very careful about overextension, but I'm also extremely committed to my improvement + annual hand goals which should net me some serious figures in the years to come. I know i'll play 10/20 again, and probably even 25/50. Whether or not I decide to to try and grow from there is a decision i'll have to make when the opportunity presents itself.

With that being said, a few things have lined up this year that have presented me with the option to consider staking as a new start-up. An old roomate and good friend of mine who made me good money playing tournaments on my stake back in 2009 is broke and looking for backing. His current roomate is also looking to make the transition from tournaments to cash games as a primary source of income. So I have two guys who basically need to be retrained in poker, and i'm in a priviledged position where i'm pretty sure i have access to the best tools on the market for the job.

My coach MJanda uses a training system that we both agree is probably the most teachable/thorough/accurate in poker that either of us have seen. I've been lucky enough to get in with him relatively early on and i feel like i have a significant head start on "the future of poker", assuming it will evolve as virtually everything does.

I'm going to be traveling for at least the first 6 months of 2012, starting with Buenos Aires in January/Feb/March. I'm setting 20k aside and taking my friend and his roomate with me, setting them up with a monthly rental and living expenses. I whipped up this staking deal in about an hour about a month back, planning on having to revise final percentages b/c they were just rough estimates ... but all the numbers came out pretty much where I wouldve wanted them to so I'm pretty sure i'm keeping this. I think the horses are actually making out really well considering I'm going to be giving them unlimited free training and covering their living expenses. I'm locking these two in for 5million hands each which is serious volume (should take 2.5 years to complete). Seems like a really long time but i've already been thru a lot of poker with the one friend for over 4 years now so i'm pretty optimistic about the longevity of the deal.

One thing I decided to do was hedge my variance by taking 100% rakeback -- I think this is a solid decision for me in the longrun. Ultimately i'd love to be running a full stable of 10-12 horses, though i almost definitely be locking most of the future additions in for much smaller samples (1-2million hands). Here's the agreement for my two starters -- this copy was written for my friend who is indicated as "The King". (He enters into this at like $13,500 old makeup, which was another solid incentive for me to start him back up). I am indicated as "Nick". The bottom section includes annual projections based on a 1.5BB/100 winrate.

The King's Stake:

-Enter at $13,500 makeup

-150k hand per month minimum

-5 million hand minimum (roughly 2 1/2 years to complete)

-unlimited coaching


Stipulations:

*At the beginning of each month, living costs (TBD at a future date) will be shipped to King's account and added on to total makeup.
*Nick will always determine what stakes are to be played for how many hands/when to move up or down
*King will always log rakeback -- preferrably you should switch over to pokerstars exclusively b/c the progressive bonus structure will be better EV in the longrun, and it's way easier to track your bonuses. The bonuses for stars VPP milestone increments look as follows:

hands(vpps) % RB $ equivalent

100,000 VPPs 29.46% $4,910
200,000 VPPs 33.63% $11,210
300,000 VPPs 44.42% $22,210
400,000 VPPs 42.09% $28,060
500,000 VPPs 47.83% $39,860
600,000 VPPs 49.06% $49,060
700,000 VPPs 50.11% $58,460
800,000 VPPs 48.05% $64,060
Supernova Elite
1,000,000 VPPs 65.99% $109,990

-The stake will operate under the progressive payout structure shown below. The percentages vary based on what limit the hands are being played at (in favor of the king as he moves up in stakes). All of this is based on the king receiving his alotted living expenses at end of each month (i'm guessing it'll be around $1500-$2000, numbers might change if it's significantly more):

Limit Breakdowns:


$100nl: Nick gets 100% of RB bonuses and 75% winnings. No makeup will be required to be paid by King during this phase.

(with a solid 1.5 pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $4,500/month)
(at 2pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $6,000/month)



$200nl: Nick gets 100% of RB bonuses and 50% of winnings. King is required to pay 100% of his cut from winnings each month toward paying off makeup. Makeup will most likely be paid off entirely during this phase


(with a solid 1.5 pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $9,000/month)
(at 2pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $12,000/month)

*Once makeup is completely paid off, King will still receive living expenses monthly, but he will be required to clear the living expense makeup at the end of each month. In the event of one or more losing months, King will be required to compensate the makeup the following month from his monthly winnings cut.

Ex:

-king clears makeup entirely in Feb 2012
-king will still receive a shipment for march's living expenses on Feb 29th

-king has a winning month, and is required to reduce makeup to zero at the end of that month
OR
-king has a losing month, and living expense makeup will carried over to the next month, where king will be required to pay a higher % of his winnings next month toward clearing makeup
OR
-king has a winning month, but cannot clear living expense makeup entirely. He pays 100% of his winnings toward living expense this month, and the difference will be carried over. King will be responsible for clearing makeup next month *UP TO 100% OF HIS WINNINGS*.

-Basically king will never be penalized for multiple losing months, makeup will simply run up, and he'll be obligated to pay higher amounts of his overall monthly winnings toward clearing makeup in future months.
-The point of this is to make sure king has secure living expenses for each month, but to prevent makeup from ever building up too high again after its been completely cleared. This will be how we operate no matter what stakes King moves up to from this point on (unless of course he moves back down to 100nl , where 100nl stips will then apply again).


$400nl/$600nl: Nick gets 100% RB bonuses and 40% winnings



(with a solid 1.5 pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $18,000/month) <--400nl
(at 2pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $24,000/month) <--400nl


$1000nl: Nick gets 100% RB bonuses and 30% winnings


(with a solid 1.5 pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $45,000/month)
(at 2pt/bb winrate playing 150k hand per month, winnings = $60,000/month)


Other Stipulations:

-King will email nick a screenshot of his cashier on the 1st of every month before he plays any hands for that month. This will ensure that if for some reason any hands for the month go untracked thru Holdem Manager, we can refer to the cashier screenshot as the final authority for the monthly take. Also, the cashier will show the running FPP count so we can verify RB bonus statistics for that month

-King will email me a screenshot of his his VPP window on the 1st of each month before he plays any hands for that month. This will help to track VPP milestone reward progress.

-FPPs will always be traded in for $4k cash (250k FPP's) and shipped to nick

-All milestone bonuses will be cashed in when cleared and shipped to nick




--Yearly Projections for nick's take--
Assume you start on Jan 1st.
Assume you maintain a 1.5BB/100 winrate for the entire year (easily doable).
*I'm not counting the living expenses that i ship you as a loss for me b/c they'll be added to your makeup and paid off at a later time.

Winnings:

Jan - 100nl, nick takes 75% of $4,500 = $3375
Feb - 100nl, nick takes 75% of $4,500 = $3375
Mar - 200nl, nick takes 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Apr - 200nl, nick takes 50% of $9,000 = $4500
May - 200nl, nick takes 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Jun - 200nl, nick takes 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Jul - 200nl, nick takes 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Aug - 200nl, nick takes 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Sep - 400nl, nick takes 40% of $18,000= $7,200
Oct - 400nl, nick takes 40% of $18,000= $7,200
Nov - 400nl, nick takes 40% of $18,000= $7,200
Dec - 400nl, nick takes 40% of $18,000= $7,200

nick's total winnings take = 62,550 (+13.5k initial makeup)


RB Bonuses: Estimating you clear 700K VPP for the year


700,000 VPPs Rakeback % = 50.11% , moneteary equivalent = $58,460


nicks total take , winnings + RB + makeup = 62,550 + 58,460 + 13.5k initial makeup = $134,500



--Yearly Projections for King's income (after nick's take)--

Assume you start on Jan 1st.
Assume you maintain a 1.5BB/100 winrate for the entire year (easily doable).
*I'm not counting the living expenses that i ship you as monthly profit b/c they'll be added to your makeup and paid off at a later time.
*Once you get to $200nl, i'm counting you're 50% cut from winnings toward your yearly profit, even though it's all going toward paying back makeup until makeup is cleared.

Jan - 100nl, King keeps 25% of $4,500 = $1125
Feb - 100nl, King keeps 25% of $4,500 = $1125
Mar - 200nl, King keeps 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Apr - 200nl, King keeps 50% of $9,000 = $4500
May - 200nl, King keeps 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Jun - 200nl, King keeps 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Jul - 200nl, King keeps 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Aug - 200nl, King keeps 50% of $9,000 = $4500
Sep - 400nl, King keeps 60% of $18,000= $10,800
Oct - 400nl, King keeps 60% of $18,000= $10,800
Nov - 400nl, King keeps 60% of $18,000= $10,800
Dec - 400nl, King keeps 60% of $18,000= $10,800

King's total take = $72,450 minus 13.5k initial makeup) = $58,950

*Year 2 favors king more b/c he has no starting makeup and he begins the year keeping 60% of his winnings at 400nl. If king plays 400nl for all of year 2, his projected income is $10,800 x 12 = $129,600.

*King will be making SNE at 400nl quite easily in year 2, so nick still makes out very will with a ~$50,000 increase from Rakeback bonus. Nick's year 2 projections are ($7,00 x 12) = $86,400 winnings + 110,000 RB Bonus = $196,000.

Year 1 ratios: nick $133k : king $72.5K = nick 65%, king 35%
Year 2 ratios: nick $196k : king $129.5K = nick 60%, king 40% -- and a much higher % of nicks overall take is being paid by pokerstars instead of kings winnings than in year 1.

Last night i spent about an hour in HEM replayer scrutinizing my biggest lost pots of my past 10k hands -- something like 25 pots where i lost >50bb. The first time i cycled thru the hands, it wen't something like "top of my range, top of my range, stnd river bluff, stnd river value bet, top of my range, stnd bluff, stnd value bet" etc.

The second time i ran thru, i did mostly the same thing, but mainly focused on making sure my bluffs were actually good in practice vs the given villain on the given texture and not just an autopilot randomization. I was pretty satisfied with the spots i chose. The third time i ran thru, i looked at the standard value losses and they were just that -- standard spots where i vbet river and ran into the top of his range.

The fourth time i ran thru all the hands where i called rivers with the top of my range vs regs. I spent most of my time here. By the end of the review, i'm pretty convinced that 1/4-1/3 of these calls were correct folds. Not correct in theory obviously, but correct in practice vs current MSNL regs ... the vast majority of whom all play the river in relatively the same fashion. One ex i'll give:

I open BTN w/ QTss and flat a 3bet from SB reg, (100bb effective)

Flop comes 9c 3c 4s, he cbets i call.

Turn Qh, he bets i call

River 5c, he ships i call

Toppish of my range, right? I went on to find 8 other spots in the last 2 months on relatively similar textures where the reg 3bettor barreled the river to an interior completing flush and he shows up with value 7/8 times. Could obv be variance but i really highly doubt it, especially since it's the stand-out detail about the hand that i intuitively thought might be the gamebreaker for his bluffing fqcy. Also here's my biggest findings for leaks of most BE or losing msnl/ssnl players:

1) They don't barrel river enough in general.
2) They repolarize with weak relative value vs polarized ranges.

In other fun news i think im booking a 1 week all inclusive in Montego Bay for the wifes bday in september. I'm a huge fan of all inclusives and i've never been to Jamaica, will def be a sweet break after hitting the tables and the books hard for another 2 months.

I was talking to a kid i met at a barbeque today who randomly mentioned that he plays hyper turbo sng's on stars and that he's saving to try and play in the vancouver BC poker classic in november. I've lived in Vancouver for 18 months now and have yet to step foot in a casino, but I'm really excited about this series. When I was living in vegas, i remember some of most aggro regulars in our venetian 10/20nl game went up to vancouver for this series and came back raving about how they were made into nits in the cash games there, ridiculous action etc.

Anyway I encourage all to come who can make it, not sure if the schedule is posted yet but im pretty sure it always happens in november at River Rock casino. The main event is a 2500 or 3k, not sure, way more excited about the cash games than anything else. After having a lot of fun playing live on my quick stop in vegas recently, im really looking forward to making a week out of this at the end of the year before I head back to Toronto and NY for the holidays. Definitely up for taking some shots in some good games.



As for August, my expectations couldn't be higher. On the poker front, I'm looking forward to getting like 150 flops solved for my coldcall ranges, then switching over and doing the same for my c-bet ranges HU as the PFR. I'm working with a couple other guys on this which is really going to ease the workload and keep us from botching anything since we are all double and triple checking each other's work. If nothing else the 300 solved flops will make for a really nice start to a travel booklet or whatever you want to call it -- something you bust out on plane rides and just rip through as drills.

I'm aiming to play 120K hands at 400nl this month. I went on vacation for about 10 days in july and only booked about 50k hands, my worst month ever volume wise. I was lucky enough to run good and still booked a ~15k month after rakeback and some 1k nl in vegas, but july's volume for me paid extremely close attention to my emotional state in session and made it a bigger priority than logging hands. I made a big deal out of not starting sessions OR continuing sessions while harboring any identifiable negative emotion, and overall i'm happy with how sensitive and honest i was with myself about it. If i couldnt kick a negative emotion within like 2 minutes of its onset, i'd force myself to sitout and do some sort of breathing exercise before resuming. This gets sort of annoying when you're 18 tabling 400nl, since getting booted off ur tables usually means like a 20 minute delay before you can reset to full capacity and get thru all the waitlists again, so most of the time a sit-out result in quitting the session entirely and doing some sort of 30 minute centering activity before re-engaging with life, but w/e.

I'll post my thoughts on running well in another blog but i'll just say i dont think its any coincidence that the first month that i really noticed a big "clean-up" in my vibrational tone resulted in me running like 7K above EV. As for next month, playing about 120k hands at 400nl allows you to clear about 100k VPPs and at least 250k fpps, so it's the right amount of volume to grab another milestone reward and $4,000 FPP bonus for the month.

Im equally as excited about the new lifting progam i started, which can be found at www.crossfitfootball.com. My buddy recommended it to me and im really enjoying it after like 4 workouts. It's challenging me to really get acquainted with the "big-boy lifts" that i never really got comfortable with -- power clean, strict press, snatch, deadlifts, etc. One of the really unique things about the program is the lack of isolated ab work -- there's pretty much no straight up ab work from what i can tell. When asked why, one of the coaches is quoted:

"people ask me what to do for abs -- i tell them: stabilize the mid-line like a motherfucker."

I've definitely been missing out on this with my lack of effort in the big-boy lifts. Anyway check it out if your looking for a new program, the coolest thing about it is that the workouts are posted daily for you at amateur/collegiate/professional skill levels. Also bought colostrum last week, came highly recommended by the same friend. It's basically baby cow's milk and its packed with treats. One of its biggest side effects is promoting the growth of lean muscle mass while preventing fat gain. I guess it has to do that cuz if the baby cow gets fat it dies :(. I usually dont fuck with anything except whey but this stuff seemed pretty natural so i'm giving it a shot. Alright thats all i got --

gl all

All religious/spiritual seeking could effectively be paraphrased as a simple question: "wtf IS all of this?"

Rather than summarize some of the most potent words I've ever heard, I'm going to just attach the following clip. It's the most awesome take on what the fuck is going on in the universe that i've encountered thus far.

The speaker is Esther Hicks, though in the clip she is channeling a group of nonphysical energies -- which is why the clip is spoken in the first person plural form. I'm aware that this is fucking insane. I started listening to these lectures as a gigantic skeptic, waiting for this chick to show some signs of being a fraud. I listened to about 10 hours of her undergoing rigorous quesitoning and honestly, she is untouchable. Completely on point 100% of the time with instant answers and the caliber of her content is just totally unrivaled by any other buddhist'esque lecturers. After listening to hundreds of her miniclip lectures, I'm willing to wholeheartedly admit that there is something going on at a seriously powerful level behind the curtains -- in other words, I'm am no longer skeptical that "channeling" exists.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I1wjyrjWZI


*"vortex" is a word she uses to describe the vibrational realm of pure, infinite, positive potential.

"When you recognize that there is a voice in your head that pretends to be you and never stops speaking, you are awakening out of your unconscious identification with the stream of thinking. When you notice that voice, you realize that who you are is not the voice -- the thinker -- but the one who is aware of it."

If you asked a "mind-identified" person to define themselves, they'd more or less give and answer that they're the sum of all their parts -- their thoughts/beliefs (their brain), their body, their past and their anticipations of the future. This is how the ego fuels itself -- it needs the past for its identity and the future for its fulfillment. It's an extremely vulnerable, immature ruler.

Developing a steadfast presence is the deliberate return from the ego back toward purity. Since your purest potential has always been within you, i think its much better to view the process as a "road back to" rather than a "seeking forth". I say deliberate because it requires your focus. This shit doesnt just fall into you lap. Breaking free of life-long conditionings are probably the most difficult struggles that anyone will face in life.

It's been said that babies cry when their born because they're having their first exposure to the uncomfortable layers of energetic resistance inherent to the current the collective consciousness. I dont doubt it. As children, from the get go we're conditioned away from our unmanifested guidance systems of "what feels good" and forced into rolls as people pleasers: please your guardians and you'll be rewarded, cross them and suffer the consequences.

I recently enjoyed watching the Haseeb Qureshi seminar on poker theory versus poker play, and overall i thought it was extremely well done. The one part that i really disagreed with was the emphasis put on "making yourself feel like shit for your mistakes". I guess it was the degree to which he took it that just rang false to me and reminded me of this backward method of conditiong ... like, "Go to sleep knowing your a piece of shit for making that bad play", or "encourage your friends to bitchify your bad play when they're sweating you" . I do get it: negative conditioning makes you more aware of a mistake so that when it arises again, you're less inclined to repeat it -- and i completely agree. What i disagree with the amount of time and intensity spent in negative vibrations that's actually necessary to "take the bounce" from mistake to improvement -- i have a huge problem with learning programs that use fear/negativity as catalyst for growth.

As a kid, I played a ton of baseball for a coach who was a complete tyrant. He conditioned us to play better mainly thru fear and hostility. I watched some kids have complete mental breakdowns during practice under the onslaught of his criticism. Call them pussies, but they were just kids, and they were extremely vulnerable to authority figures at that point in life. Conditioning thru fear made us play better in the short run, but it fucked with our vibrational tone in a way that actually scarred me for a long time. It was the beginning of my era of unworthiness, which perpetuated itself for more than a decade. Here's the breakthrough point that changes everything:

You are a vibrational being, first and foremost.

The most imporant shift that i think a person can make is to acknowledge that a vibrational reality exists that is prior to the manifested reality that we experience. One of the best lecturers i've ever heard on the subject puts it this way:

"From the unmanifested perspective, this world that you call reality is actually the past -- and the present is the vibrational reality that you're experiencing constantly, emotionally".

I was playing 5/10nl in vegas a week back when i felt one of my old dreaded "twisted stomach" feelings creeping back up on me. Like i said, at some point i developed a really dysfunctional relationship with experiential life on the whole, poker being the most acute form of that dysfunction since it's probably the activity that ive tied in closest with my identity (a big no-no). I folded a few hands blind and managed to deconstruct the feeling to basic fear, and i was finally successful in pulling it out at the roots:

Fear worked as a motivator from a young age because we believed that we were vulnerable, and that we could be harmed in some way if we failed to live up to expectations. When anchored in your truth as a vibrational being, this makes pretty much no sense (you're no longer identified with your physical life -- you're an eternal being). Life becomes "adventure without trepidation", and matching that vibration gives way to a totally new and authentic set of emotions. Fear just doesn't work as well as positivity because fear holds a negative vibration in place, and since law of attraction only knows how to respond to you're vibrational tone, you will continue to hold your negative conditions in place.

This is also the reason why "The Secret" is bullshit -- it teaches law of attraction all wrong. It was marketed in a way that caters to the ego-self, and the main course is naturally WEALTH/POWER. So everyone comes out of it thinking, "if i want to be rich, i need to put my attention on being rich", but they suck at matching the vibrational tone of actually being rich, which is the most important part of creative reality. The problem is that people are addicted to physical manifestation, and they have an extremely hard time playing the match game with their vibration, which is prior to physical reality. Most of us are either too lazy or just dont know that this vibrational reality exists, so we send off all these mixed signals thru compulsive mind-body emotions, and as a result we keep bucking against the waves with way more resistance than is necessary to actually manifest what we want. I live my life by this:

Everything in your life at this moment is a reflection of the vibration that you've been emitting, and everything that you want in life depends on you making a conscious effort to raise that vibration toward a positive tone that matches your personal utopia.

To "sin" literally translates as "to miss the mark". Ironically enough, it's also what happened with the
translation of the bible over the past 2 millenia. The bible's message is very powerful and very succinct when viewed through the proper lens -- primarily the teachings of Jesus. I'm not an expert on all western religions but i'm pretty sure most of them acknowledge that Jesus at least existed. It's what he stood for that I think is almost universally misunderstood.

When you refer to Jesus as "the son of God", its really hard not to put him on a pedestal over your average joe. But when you deconstruct the word God toward what i think is much more openminded tranbslation, you can start to insert words like "the organizing force of the universe" or "consciousness" interchangeably. Under this definition, since consciousness dwells within everything that it creates in the manifested world, then consciousness or "God" is an integral part of all of us. Jesus wasn't some extraodinary human in the sense of his physical capabilities, he was just way more in touch with his pure nature than pretty much anyone else documented up to that point in time. He radiated an energy that benefited everyone in his presence because he stood as an example of the human being
in an unprecedented purity. To put it bluntly, jesus was enlightened in the way that the Buddha was. He embodied "presence", another word that could be subbed-in for "consciousness" or "God".

"Consider the lilies, how they grow: They neither toil nor spin" - Luke, 12:20

Jesus was a deeply intuitive being who understood that time is an illusion of the human mind and that the key to life was to access the present moment and ride that shit into the ground. He would call people out all the time for being "sinners", which to him had a different, less distorted definition. It was closer in meaning to any instance where someone became anxious for the future or upset about the past, and unrooted in the present moment on account of either. They were guilty of "missing the mark" of the present moment.

"Why are you always anxious?" He would ask his disciples. "Can anxious thought add a single day to your life?"

He didnt discriminate with the types of people he decided to befriend either. There was none of this "bad action = bad person" bullshit that religion is based on today -- Jesus had friends who were theives simply because they radiated a presence that proved to him that they had understanding of their truth beyond the manifested world.

Probably the best hidden gem in the bible is a quote from jesus where he literally destroys time in one fell swoop in this sentence:

"Before Abraham was, I am".

If you havent seen the movie "Waking life", its one of the best movies ever ... filmed in the same sort of way that they filmed A Scanner Darkly (same director). At the end of the movie the director makes a cameo and starts talking about the nature of the universe and its relationship with time.

"Theres only one instant -- and its right now -- and its eternity. And its an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically: 'do you want to be one with eternity, do you want to be one with heaven?' and we're all saying 'no thankyou, not just yet'. And so time is actually just this constant saying no to God's invitation, and it's pretty much the narrative of everyone's life -- that behind the phenomenol difference, there only one story, and that's the story of moving from the 'no' to the 'yes' -- all of life is like 'no thankyou, no thankyou, no thankyou,' and then finally 'yes, i give in ..yes i accept ..yes i embrace".




I felt like i had to squeeze this in before i left discussion on God and the gaping holes that i see in most organized religions. Understanding the power of the present moment is like the core foundation of the sort of spiritual path i've been outlining so i think it wouldve been an injustice to just skim over it. Most of my thoughts on this subject are taken directly from the writings of Eckhart Tolle in his first book "The Power of Now". I'll keep building on this over the next week, probably at least 3 more entries to get all my thoughts down on paper.

(Continued from my last entry "Intro to God")

My beliefs on "God" are actually pretty simple. Before i state my case, i have to say this is one topic where im constantly dumbfounded that so many intelligent people still define the existance of a God in close proximity to the way that the majority of organized religions in the western world define "HIM". This is one of those spots where its really effective to use theory to overturn a terribly backward societal conditioning that people have become sadly comfortable with:

God is not human

First and foremost. The need to express God as a human entity can very clearly be chalked up to humans being overstimulated by the ego-mind. The ego in it's mind idenfitied state literally must have things be on its own terms in order for it to feel unthreatened, and since it can only understand things in terms of form (rather than formless), it naturally chooses the most comforable conclusion on the table -- that God is a supernatural being with human form. The alternative would be to choose a conclusion that it could not clearly define, which to a mind identified ego pretty much equals annihilation.

God is not form

The belief that god is an entity of human form naturally leads into really disasterous territory for anyone trying to hold down that side of the argument. Not only does it force the support of a really messy pyramid scheme of on the chain down from God to "all of his children", bringing up the very scary notion of what could happen when "God gets angry", but it simultaneously strips humans of their core truth, which i'll get to in a moment. I want to stop to quote an old daily show classic, where steven colbert or one of the reporters at the time is doing a mock special on some super relgious christian town and they zoom in on some fake ass sign that reads:

"Don't make me come down there. - God"

God is in each of us, and God is formless.

The core truth. The only real way that it could be while keeping universal connectivity (instead of separation) and not standing directly in the face of quantum physics discoveries. For a really well done 5 minute video on the weirdest trippiest discovery in quantum physics to date, watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YqgPAtzho&feature=fvs .

in 1919, Max Planck won the nobel prize in physics for his work on the atom. As he accepted the nobel prize these were his words:

"As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science in the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about atoms this much: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of an atom together. We must assume behind this force the existance of a conscious and intelligent mind. This mind is the matrix of all matter."


Albert Einstein once said that the most fundamental decision that you have to make in life is this: "Do I live in a friendly or a hostile universe?"

This is the basis of Law of Attraction (LOA). In other words "When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change".

I think its really cool that great scientific minds played a role in "solving" spirituality to the best of their ability. Obviously the inner workings of the universe are ridiculously far from solved and almost certainly unsolvable, but i'd like to think it was a major step in the right direction ... like solving optimal preflop play in NLHE or something.

In my next entry, i'll discuss LOA thru a more vibrational lens, why "The Secret" doesnt work the due to the way it was marketed, and my beliefs on optimism and its role in creative reality.