http://www.deucescracked.com/blogs/fenderjaguar/11081-Group-Coaching-FENDER-s-JAGUARS-">Group Coaching *FENDER's JAGUARS*!

What's up CR, just stopping by to say hello and let everyone know that I'm making a midstakes 6-max series with Krantz on DC this month. First episode is out already (it's called Never Tell Me the Odds). I'll be blogging a few times of week over there. I'm super happy about being selected for this and I'm going to make the most of it.

Have a holly jolly Christmas everyone :) Electric sex in the window style.

I have to admit there's nothing blingy or blangy about this blog, it just sounded cool. This will likely be my last Cardrunners blog unless something randomly insane happens or is worth cross-posting etc. because I've started to blog at Deuces Cracked. Poker is going well save for 1 sick hand where I triple barreled some dude in a 3b pot at 3/6 200bb deep and he called me down with bottom pair and it was good :/ haha. Weeeee!

Sunday on DC I'll be in a vid vs. my current coach. Look for it, it should be pretty cool.

So I may see you again in the future CR, if not you can find me on DC or 2p2.

From all of us to all of you, this is your favorite guitar saying Happy Halloween, ship the razorblade filled cookies! (j/k, that would be GAY!)

Christopher Leather

FenderJaguar

What the hell have I been up to? Coaching and improving my game, in a nutshell.

I've brought myself back from the dead poker-wise. In 2008 I didn't play much, some live, a brief stint at 100NL online but meh, I was not very much in a pokering mood. After being on the brink of hitting 400NL at the end of 2007 and being destroyed by a lemony snicket style series of unfortunate events (see cashout half roll + big downswing) I was sick tired and done with the game. I couldn't turn away from the game though (because ultimately I love poker and didn't want to go back to hustling magic cards lol , and with the help and support of friends, I battled through to where I am right now. I am super lucky to know some really good people in this world, even if they're just "online buddies". Having a supporting network of other poker playing friends is really crucial to success in such a lonely and mentally destructive line of work. I know that I would not be nearly as successful as I have been this year w/o their support.

At this point I've been coached by a couple of high stakes players, and currently playing a mix of 2/4 and 3/6 (games willing) 6 max and doing well. I feel really comfortable with the stakes/slinging stacks. I used to be so nervous about moving up because though I felt my skill set was good enough I was always timid about the money. I'm glad I've finally gotten past that.

Jared Tendler is also a huge inspiration. The man is a wealth of knowledge that will improve your game soooo much it's insane. I suggest him to everyone I know that has any sort of mental hang-ups in poker, and I feel like not enough people watch his vids and pay him any mind. The most common response is "it's boring". I disagree. I think it's actually really interesting and when he gets down to the nitty gritty he really makes a ton of sense and I've adopted a lot of the ways he suggests approaching learning/improving.

My volume still isn't as high as I would like but my quality of play is very good imo. I'm not going to force myself to play when I don't feel like it and I'm not going to try and play a bazillion tables because like a lot of other people, my play really suffers. I am WAY more likely to spew stacks on 8+ tables and even though I can perceive to increase my hourly by increasing tables, it doesn't work for me b/c it just doesn't fit my style of play. I think that's probably one of the most common things I request from students, is to just play 4 tables for the duration of our sessions. It's way more important for you to increase your hand reading ability and postflop skills than it is to be a cool reg grinder on 8+. Maybe you're one of the guys that can def profitably play a ton of tables, and that's cool. You're going to need to improve your fundamentals and tilt control first.

I have cats named after sock puppets.

It's super laughable how spewy a lot of SSNL regs are. When I'm coaching I see so much unwarranted ridiculous high variance spew it amazes me. I mean, yeah be aggressive, yeah 3b light some, yeah play position and run some barrels etc. but HOLY FUCK stop being so paranoid. I think to myself "too many CR vids for that guy" way too much when observing/playing in these games. If ya'll just chilled the fuck out w/the FPS high stakes fancy disco-dancing glitter fuck fest you would find that your win rate would go up, your variance would go down, and you wouldn't be so mentally strung out about poker. You really need some history/metagame to make really speculative high variance plays and saying something like "well he's a 31/25 with an 8 aggression doesn't cut it. EIGHT AGGRESSSION HOW CAN I NOT CALL/CALL/CALL????? Bottom line is that you're hindering your ability to improve as a player and you're limiting the amount of time you spend playing your A game at the table. You're not Travolta so take a pill and relax on the saturday night fever. You don't have to be pre-equipped w/ready to spew syndrome.

I was working on a website w/some friends for SSNL, and that's why I stopped coaching for CR earlier in the year. That may be falling through due to mainly laziness and a lack of care on everyone's part, so meh. I think I'm going to just pull the plug on that and try to make SSNL vids for a training site because I do enjoy making vids but I def want to make them somewhere they will be appreciated and utilized. Will it be CR? Time will tell.

Anyway I'm done rambling for now I guess.

Props -

Ebinsugewa for stickin' it out when the going gets retarded

Hizzle for Cappin' fools lol

Mars for never giving up and having more heart than valentine's day

Jewperman for being the master of a mad full ring planet, and thanks for the steady stream of mics sir

Balbomb for having a work ethic sick enough to put millions of mexican van brigades out of business, you fuckers are lucky he doesn't build hospitals and shit (no racism)

FTP for the lobby filters and mini-security jam

Sublime, no explanation necessary

Slops -

FTP for that retarded update debacle

A certain 2p2 poster that needs to down downers like fucking gatorade

Dominos, that shit was cold as frozen monkey balls :/

Modo updates that take all day

You can't think for yourself. Your understanding of the game of poker comes from what you've been taught, like a cookie-cutter. You don't have the ability to come to your own logical conclusions, and you have no idea what to do in new situations that you haven't been cookie-trained in (no fear though, you can in some cases be taught how to be logical lol). That's why you lump in with the rest of the grinders, spending seasons in the abyss trading coolers with other people too stupid to realize "hey, there's 5 TST's (Training Site TAG) at this table and myself. I could probably find a better spot, like maybe a table with an actual fish ).

You play too many tables. You rely on rakeback. You "chalk it up to a cooler" too much. You don't do enough homework. You don't think about your game enough. You think you know it all, when really you don't know jack fucking shit. You spew in spots where your crushed like a retard asking out a prom queen. You assign qualities to your opponents that they just don't have. You overthink, you underthink, you estimate terribly. You don't value bet well. You fail to stack people where you can, leaving tons and tons and tons of ptbb's laying all over the felt. You don't have a plan for the rest of the hand. You fire too many barrels. You fire too few barrels. You don't even know what you're going to do when you face a raise a lot of the time, let alone what turn and river cards are awesome/terrible. You're complete shit when it comes to reading hands. You let whimsy control your game. You play too many tables. I know I already said that one but you know what, it seems like a good time to reiterate it. You play too many FUCKING TABLES. You can't make good decisions 8 tabling if you don't already have a good internal idea of what those decisions should be. If you haven't been there through a ton of 2-4 tabling repetition, you won't "get it" while 8 tabling. So stop, retard. You make nonsensical whimsical plays that smell of unadulterated bullsnickety. You don't know how to count card combinations (an excellent way to increase your hand reading ability). You let your emotions influence you and you tilt too much, even if you "aren't the type to tilt too much". You don't work hard enough. You don't put enough hands in and you quit winning sessions too soon, hanging around while you're losing and on tilt (IE your winning sessions are your shortest, and your losing sessions are your longest). You're not honest with yourself. You self-soothe and do whatever you can to justify your plays or lack of motivation to yourself. You find others to be miserable with, you may even have a network of dreamsowers lamenting their every lost flip and overpair vs. a set. You may even sit around and talk about how good you all are or will be, and how you just crush the game, and are just unlucky. Jacking off each others ego so you can feel good about how great you play just to spite how shitty you're running. Most of all, YOU KNOW A LOT OF THIS ALREADY.

I could go on and on here, but I think you get the idea. Am I talking about you? Am I talking about me? To some extent. I'm talking about all of us in some way or another. We're all guilty. Anyone who takes this game seriously and wants to make a living, an income, a business out of poker. It's like I tell my students all the time, It's there if you want it. Do you? When are you going to be honest with yourself and change? How many years are going to go by before you realize you haven't improved and you're still where you were? It's true that poker isn't for everyone. Some people can absolutely not stomach the swings. Some people can't weather the storm of mental beatings and abuse that you go through in this game. Some people aren't mentally tough enough. Above all you need to be honest with yourself. If you're happy being an SSNL grinder, making a better-than-average income, hats off to you. But for those of us with something else burning inside, there's a whole world we haven't discovered yet in this beautiful game.

WARNING: there will be no poker in this blog, just a fire-fueled rant on the retardation of customer service and how bad it makes me want to hurt people :D

I am so sick of talking to fucking robots. Corporations should be forced to have qualified customer service reps that you can get to quickly. I'm tired of spending 15 minutes on the phone with some automated asshole clicking buttons, only to reach some dumb bitch doing her nails thinking about all 8 of her kids at home, rockin' the welfare and wishing she was dead while she goes through the motions and has no idea what I'm talking about.

It's insanely frustrating when you hit CSR's that are 10x dumber than you. Short of contacting upper management or blowing up their offices to end the misery, you have no outs. You can talk to their supervisor but they're retarded too. That never gets you anywhere. It's absurd how little these people know, even if they have a script to read from. Companies like Full Tilt, Bank of America, numerous cable companies. ALL GUILTY of having really shitty customer service. There seriously needs to be some kind of pay upgrade for CSR's, and maybe even a course in college to take, become the professional CSR. We need intelligent people who know the ins and outs of the company and situation. These fucking dimestore trailer park white trash whores and non-chalant slow-witted idiots are driving me batshit apeshit insane.

What we want: We want you to help us fix our problem, and we don't mind if you take a bit of time as long as you're intelligent, know what you're doing, and aren't just wasting our time. We want you to keep us updated, help us along, explain things clearly, and finish the call to the best of your abilities in the least amount of time.

This is obviously a pipe dream. Call centers are like slave labor sweatshops and corps don't really care about customer service too much. I think it's insane to have people like that representing your company.

The reason why this hasn't changed: We haven't done anything as customers to change it. We haven't unified and expressed our displeasure with a large enough voice. Do you really think they care? Not when 90% of callers take the CSR's word as gospel. I can't imagine the amount of ignorant people getting taken advantage of because they just don't know any better, or aren't smart enough to go to a logistical war with these fools. You may as well be getting scammed by telemarketers, it's pretty close to the same thing in some cases.

Anyway, /end rant I suppose.

R.I.P. Jeremy Lusk

Here's to better days folks....

Fender

Hello all you Card Runners. Your favorite guitar is back on the scene at CR. I kinda disappeared in 2008 and I'm doing the opposite in 2009. I plan on being an active CR Coach and forums poster, and hopefully I'll update my blog a good bit too. I kinda got complacent and lost touch with people and things last year. I went on what I call a "Mental Downswing". I'm sure we've all had one from time to time. The past is the past though, and the future is whatever I want it to be.

When you have like no schedule at all. Sometimes I think it's kind of unhealthy and that I should try to get on more of a schedule. A lot of my poker playing friends share the same sentiment. The theory is rarely put into practice though, as I just can't change it. My sleep habits rotate around the clock non-stop, with a big focus on being a night person. My entire life I've been awake at night. It fucked with my ability to go to school, it fucked with my ability to lead anything resembling a normal social life, and it fucks with my ability to wake up, eat breakfast, exercise, and do like normal people stuff. It's just not for me. I woke up at 9 pm tonight. I've come to terms, and accepted that this is just the way it is, and this year I'm going to try and work some of those healthier practices directly into my insane insomniac sleep habits. Maybe I need to fight club out and hit some meetings ;D

I posted my 200NL hand history review vids in member contributions again. They were up there like a year ago but got lost in the mix when CR updated. I think they have a lot of pretty good information that's still relevant these days. I'm really happy to be a CR coach and can't wait to help some students seriously improve their game. I've got a pretty good track record and I absolutely love seeing people succeed.

I think sometimes I should practice what I preach. I know my poker game is really strong, but my personal management isn't as strong. I don't play as many hands as I should. I get complacent too easily because I expect to "just win". Maybe I don't respect the amount of work that's necessary to consistently win at this game. I know I have the skills, I feel like I have the skills to beat games much higher than I play. If I could just train myself to put the work in to see the results, I would be a monster. I need to channel the powers of Leatherass.

On a funnier note, this is just too hilarious. Ya'll will love this....

www.pokerhand.org/ One hand of destruction (I think nearly the only win in this session)

What you are about to witness is a landslide of certain evil. A cornucopia of disgusting random events. Small pots, big pots, medium sized pots. The whole 9 yards. Surprisingly I wasn't tilted but I quit anyway, after about 700 hands.

www.pokerhand.org/ Kx hands are a small part of his range, and by check/raising I set up for a good turn shove to fold out all the hands he peels the flop with, unless he hits a 2 outer on the turn lol. He snapcalled the flop btw, so I knew he had a hand like 99 or 77 or something similar. A pair that didn't want to fold. Just no thought, snap. I'm sure if he didn't hit the 5 on the turn he was folding. Tks poker.

www.pokerhand.org/ This is actually kind of a tricky spot. Maybe I can fold/3bet preflop but I figured I'd peel for a bone. Good flop, want to see what everyone else thinks, dumb c-bet from the minraiser, 3x raise leads me to believe he has any KQ KJ KT etc. etc. any 2 pair, flush draw, like his range here is going to be pretty wide, small raise, prob has a decent hand, and I'm only down to AJ and TT essentially. I decide to call to see if the preflop dude shoves and the other guy goes wild behind, so I could fold then. I'm going to get it in on a blank turn. I could c/r but I didn't want him to check a draw behind so I bet/call it off. I could see c/r as well. meh.

Standard non-HH KK vs. AA intermission....

OK we're back

www.pokerhand.org/ Extremely sick nuts or nothing situation. His minraise on the flop can be any Ax hand, any flush draw. J5 is prob possible too lol. I decide to just call him down here because I see no value in raising, I'm only going to get played with by better, and I'm basically hoping he's losing his mind with AT. Vs. this specific dude I felt this was better. Voila, I'm busto'd.

www.pokerhand.org/ His minbet 3 bet line is kinda suspect but I can't be folding top 2 w/nut BFD etc. to his stack. Fuck that. and FUCK him haha.

www.pokerhand.org/ I go for 3SOV here vs. any 1 pair hand, fearing a limped QK or the nightmare QT. Yep, QT, VALUUUUUUUUE!

well, I won't bore you with a bunch of other small pot spots where I flopped 2 pair vs. 2 bigger pair or made trips vs. a flush or boat, and lost the min. meh. today I'm taking no prisoners. there's literally no chance anyone gets out of here alive. be afraid 100NL'ers....

In for 1k hands today so far, +2 buy-ins. Can't complain really. Couple of sticky spots but what can you do, you can't win all the time. For some reason I was listening to the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack while I was playing lol. Funny. I had a couple of hands where the chat that was going on between the spewtards was so hilarious that I just have to post it. It's like better than scripted. Great stuff. Here goes the interesting hands so far (indicating that I'm going to play again later obv)...

www.pokerhand.org/ LOL read the chat. read it read it read it. "that's why I'm getting up." MAN he sure was getting up haha because I busted him lol. Funny stuff.

www.pokerhand.org/ hobiejuankenobie sick of my garbage, 4 bet jammin' w/AK. obv the money goes in.

www.pokerhand.org/ Putting the cooler on shorty the pimp.

www.pokerhand.org/ I think I played this turn badly. I think I can c/r this bonehead all-in or c/f vs. a tighter player. This guy was kinda insane. meh.

Not much else to say atm. Hopefully my next 1k hands has more interesting spots to post.