Poker Blog – icemonkey9 on PokerStars

Inspired by the show “2 Months 2 Million” on the G4 TV network, three of my online friends who are all (technically speaking) poker pros decided to get a house together.  The idea is that they would live together for two months, play a ton of poker and enjoy the winter in a warm climate.  When I first heard that these three – Zachvac, BW07505 and AbstraktPB – were going to do this I tried to convince them to come to Southern California. They were all but settled on Myrtle Beach, but they took up my final suggestion of San Diego.  This is the city which I grew up in and ranks as one of the nicest places on Earth.  I think the clincher for San Diego was the abundance of poker rooms in the city (there are at least 7 solid poker rooms here) with two being 18+.

The guys found a house right out of MTV cribs in the posh city of La Jolla.  As I write this blog entry, I’m in the living room looking at a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean. It’s one of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen from a house in my life.  These three are renting the house out along with a fourth member who’s stuck in Las Vegas at the time being (lucky for me, I got to crash in his bed last night).

The guys here don’t have much experience with live poker but have all made a ton from playing online. Clearly, even a 50nl or 100nl regular online has a huge edge at any live game up to 5/10 and these three guys crush the 100nl regulars.  They’ve regularly hit up Barona with tremendous results and last night when the four of us played we all crushed it for gains.

It’s a funny thing though seeing these three young guys live together. As someone who has 10 years on the oldest guy here I’m reminded what it really is to be living on your own in a house for the first time. They just moved in this week, but the bathroom for guests doesn’t have a towel or soap yet.  There’s nothing but soda and 2% milk along with 8 sticks of butter and a half-used jar of salsa in the fridge. On the positive side, the guys have done a great job keeping the place clean.  It definitely takes me back to when I was their age.

I wondered though, what if I was their age and had all the poker knowledge and experience I have now. How would I handle the success? Would I take it up full time and live off my winnings as they have? It’s interesting to think what could have been. But I don’t regret anything, my life is good and I’ve been very fortunately personally and financially for something like that to stay in the back of my mind.

It’s 10:06am now and I’ve been up since around 8:30am after going to be at 2am.  (the first person to wake up past me was BW at 11am btw) … BW did a nice tilt job last night playing stakes he was massively underrolled for (online BR speaking) and it got somewhat uncomfortable at points. The good thing was that as soon as the shut the laptop, he went back into normal personality mode. If that kid ever figures out how to keep an even state of mind in robot-like fashion he could be one of the true superstars of mid and high stakes games. At 22, he has plenty of time to work on that.  As it is, he’s doing just fine!

The guys in general are a good group. I treated for their first In n Out Burgers here in San Diego, a true right of passage  for anyone living in Southern California.  We had a great time and played some poker at the Palomar Poker Room which was fun (we all left up except for Zach).

In the end I wish the guys well.  I hope their stay in San Diego is memorable and fun, and ideally, profitable.  I was lucky i got to block off 24 hours to hang with them and I’m not sure if I’ll get that opportunity again.

Can’t believe it’s been a week since updating my poker blog.  I remember there were months where I would update twice a day!  I guess without a raging inner beast to unleash, the venom behind a lot of the posts just isn’t there to fuel my desire to post something.

Computer Stuff

My order from TigerDirect came in to upgrade my main PC rig.  Unfortunately for me, my new Video Card is on backorder.  I was told by the agent on the phone that they were due to come in and ship out on the 15th.  Well today is the 20th and they are still on backorder. Sucks for me.  Windows 7 will be here on Thursday but I am sure I will be so dead tired I won’t have a chance to upgrade my computer for what looks like weeks. It might even be a Thanksgiving time activity. Just too busy with stuff.

Work Stuff

Work is going well.  I am still doing a ton of writing for various poker sites and that’s decent income and I’m very grateful for all the work I’ve gotten. It’s afforded me a lot and I definitely hope to keep it up as time moves on.  Right now my business (I actually own/operate a small interactive website design/development studio) is picking up and I actually agreed to work in-house at a large ad agency here in Orange County for the next few weeks.  The pay is good and more than anything doing it for the contact and ideally building a relationship that could bring in some good projects for 2010.

Poker Stuff – Putting the LAG in … uh … LAGuna

Okay I don’t really live in Laguna Beach, but I am very close at about 5 miles away. The wife and I get down there to the beach to eat and walk on the boardwalk quite often.  Our pug, Mr. Duke, loves it down there. Anyways, I didn’t mean to mention that, just wanted to write about totally re-vamping my game.

The last few months I went back to full ring, played like the nittiest nit who ever nitted up online poker and carved out a good solid win-rate for 100nl games. The advantage was playing a relatively low-variance style and winning modestly.  All was good.

Sadly, the 100nl FR experience started to dim. I wasn’t getting paid off when I had the nuts and coolers wiped me of the small pots I would win, which sadly, didn’t come in often enough.  Between the coolers and static play, I decided to move back to 6max this month full time. Clearly the move was a good one as I’ve really re-fueled my love for playing the game (hahaha, just WAIT for my next downswing to rue the day I said that!).  I’ve gotten back in touch with Clean from Stox Poker and we’ve resumed official coaching. What’s he telling me to do?

Well, I was playing 6max at 16/13 which is clearly way too nitty to be surviving full time as a 6max player. There’s just too many spots to be missing playing like that, so we put into practice a real method for opening up my game.  So far – so GOOD as I’ve been playing a lot looser (I’ll post some numbers after I play 8-10k hands at this style) and picking my aggression spots very well. It’s more fun to play this style, a lot scarier, but I am definitely seeing a difference in the way I’m approached and played back at while in a hand. Interesting.

Final Thoughts

Not much else. I’m f’ing drained from work haha.  See you all next time.

I’m a huge computer nerd that loves to have the latest and greatest when it comes to computers.  My main computer is actually a Windows PC which is where I do most of my work and play.  I do play PC video games, specifically excited for Command & Conquer 4, StarCraft II and Diablo III all of which are coming in 2010 (hopefully).

I never upgraded to Windows Vista because of a bad experience I had with it from Day 1 (like everyone else) and have been running XP which has served me well.  I have been closely following the development of Windows 7 and been asking friends how it’s been running that have been using the Release Candidate which is available for free from Microsoft.  All signs from my friends and industry reviews say Windows 7 is the real deal and is ready to rock n’ roll out of the box.  I pre-ordered my copy back in July when they were offering the 50% discount which I am happy about.  The only problem was the hardware!

I have a Intel Core 2 Quad processor that I wanted to keep as I read reports it is still one of the top processors around.  The problem is that my hard drive is nearly full (500GB) and my video card is old.  Originally I was just going to buy a new 1TB hard drive and that was going to be the extent of my hardware upgrade.  Then I learned that all the new video cards use a PCI Express 2.0 slot, which I didn’t have.  CRAP.  So if I wanted a new hard drive and a new video card, that meant I needed a new motherboard.  If I got a new motherboard, I might as well get the new memory (4GB) to go with it at the maximum speed.  Oh … if I wanted the new hard drive (on top of the two I already have) plus the new huge mega-powered video card it turns out my 500W power supply wasn’t going to cut it either.  Arg.

So this quickly turned into a “Cow jumped over the moon” story which boiled down to me weighing my options with the hardware upgrade.  I decided that if I really wanted to start fresh with Windows 7, I had to upgrade now to make the process as painless as possible.  So in the end I went with the:

- Hard Drive: 1TB 7200 RPM Hitachi SATA
- Motherboard: XFX nForce 750i
- Power Supply: 700W CoolerMaster
- Memory: Corsair 4GB Kit (2×2GB sticks)
- Video Card: XFX Radeon HD5870 (awesome card, but yes I am aware of the nForce/Radeon situation but I will not be using 2 video cards in tandem ever again)

So that set me back a pretty penny but everything is slated to ship right away and will be here with a few days to spare before the 22nd when Windows 7 arrives in the mail.  In terms what this means for poker, all of the software I use has stated (with more people chiming in on TwoPlusTwo who are using Windows 7 RC) that it’s 100% compatible.  It does mean the rebulding of my hand history database, but that seems like a minor nuisance compared to completely rebuilding my hardware system and installing a new OS.  Everything is already backed up data-wise, so I am not concerned there.

Anyways, that’s my big news – new computer here I come!

Wow it’s been a while since I’ve chimed in here on the blog but I hope everyone has been doing really well.  Let’s take this in chunks!

Personal Stuff

I volunteered at the American Diabetes Association’s annual Walk for a Cure at Knotts Berry Farm here in Buena Park which is about 30 minutes from where I live.  The number of volunteers was very small compared to the HUGE turnout which was a great thrill.  My day started at 5am and ended at 9pm (well, dinner with friends was after!) but it was a great day.

Tomorrow I am donating my platelets at the Red Cross along with some plasma most likely.  My “stuff” is used to help build immunity systems that have been destroyed as a result of chemotherapy treatments.  The Red Cross occasionally calls and when they sound urgent I understand the situation. So, that’ll be a couple of hours out of my day tomorrow.  Tomorrow night I have a baseball game and it HAS to go better than the last game.  I’ve played 20 games and hadn’t struck out one single time and had never made more than 1 error in a game playing 6+ positions during 9 innings.  Well, you guessed it, game 21 I was 0/3 with three strikeouts and three errors.  It SUCKED.  This time I will definitely be wearing my contacts

Everyone Has an Opinion About PokerPages

It seems every journalist with a blog is saying goodbye to PokerPages. To many that have worked “inside” the industry much longer than I have it’s the end of an era and many are feeling that it’s only the first domino to fall. The model for successful poker websites has changed drastically from what it was when PokerPages started up.  Reading Amy’s blog about her experiences there just shed more light on what I already figured to be true – the site wasn’t run well, had terrible direction and several key mistakes that left the site with high costs and little revenue.

I actually looked into advertising on PokerPages to drive traffic to a site I was developing for one on one poker coaching. To be honest given their traffic, their rates were much too high and shut the door on people like me that were willing to invest. Now, I don’t expect Joe Nobody to compete with say, Cake Poker with dollar for dollar advertising revenue … but it’s the internet and I really think anyone with even a small budget can be afforded an advertising solution somewhere if you have a little imagination.  Anyways, the content there wasn’t very good this past year with a bloated and boring blogroll and solid live tournament updates. The site will go out with a whimper with very few online-centric poker players caring it’s gone.

6max Returns!?

Well, many of you could tell my online poker exploits weren’t going well over the last 20k hands or so at full ring and many recommended I return to 6max. Some said I should just drop down a level and crush the peons at the nether-regions of poker. I decided to combine both of those and played 50nl 6max and just absolutely steamrolled the level which got me into the green for the month after being way too long in the red. Anyways, I’m overrolled for 100nl but it’s 6max meaning swings and weird donks so I’ll just focus on getting re-established with the game there moving forward. I’m hoping to resume my studies with Stox Coach “Clean” aka ChuckTs, but we’ll see what he’s feeling about the whole situation. I hope he’s in!

ShortStackers on FTP – Your Days are Numbered

As many know shortstackers are players that buy-in to a game for 20 big blinds, wait for a big hand, shove all in and then leave the table (ratholing). They are basically the scum of the Earth and actually use (the good ones anyway) a mathematical advantage of playing like this to win a nice profit. There’s been good debate on the TwoPlusTwo forums about abolishing these bastards (you can tell which side of the fence I’m on) and there’s growing sentiment and rumors that Full Tilt Poker will finally listen and change their buy-in structure. BelgoSuisse outlined a really good argument about how SSers don’t pay more rake (meaning it’s no difference to the poker site whether they stay or not really) and I’ve outlined hard data by doing manual counts of SSers at 100nl, 200nl and 400nl full ring games.  The problem is basically at these levels at full ring games, and it’s definitely time FTP listened and did something about the epidemic. If they don’t they basically risk losing all their FR regulars to PokerStars when the new year starts so they can take advantage of the SuperNova promotion.

Anything Else?

Nothing else really going on.  I wrote a great follow up to the Pitbull Poker closure for Poker News Daily which you can read here. The comments on the articles I wrote about this topic speak volumes including some from Pitbull’s former Network Manager, Dave Brenes.

Warning: This is, yet again, another “I run bad” post. The hands you are about to see are not for those with heart conditions or those subjected to motion sickness.

Let’s just say it.  Bad start to the month but it’s just the first few days so I’m not writing off poker and the month just yet.  Anyways I’ve run into some crazy non-standard coolers (well 1 standard) that you should enjoy.

This first hand … this guy has a fold to cbet on the flop and turn of 0%, so he never folds:

Holy hell right? He posts out of turn, calls my big raise with KJo and hits quads against my boat. Crazy.

This player is a 19/8/inf … I guess this is standard? Ha.

So it’s been not even 1,200 hands and I’ve had two boats lose to quads. Kinda crazy eh? Not sure how to deal with that lol.

This next hand was against someone I had no reads on at all and given his stack at the table I read as a huge fish.

That’s the one standard cooler. Gotta love starting out a month that way! Weee.

This one is simply beyond the valley of comprehension. The guy is a 43/14/inf who donk bets 100% (4/4).

I sat at a few non-deep tables, I try to sit at them if the game looks juicy and there’s no shortstackers in my blinds. Doesn’t matter, they always find their way to the table and always manage to run like this:

Just wow. Icing on the cake eh?

Enough of that!

I hate when I post coolers. It means I’m losing, running bad and somewhat tilted. Fortunately I am not uber-upset and slamming fists into things. I’m just a little disheartened. I plan to go do some chores, clean up a bit and see if I feel up for another session. It’d be nice to run okay and have a good time. Hard to do when you play two sessions and the above happens!

Anyways, hope all the readers have a much better start than I am having, just remember it’s not where we start but how we end up that counts!!

So How’d the Poker Go?

Frankly here’s the quick line for September 2009: You can actually run bad all month and hope to break even, and will eventually if you stick to it.

Last month started swingy, went well, then went rather poorly, then ended up with me at 1BB/100 for the month after 12k hands. Last month I remember I hit sets something like 19% less than I should have and that cut into my winrate for a sub-par month. This time it felt like big pocket pairs were cursed by a Furby possessed by the devil. I ran a HEM report for Preflop cards. Stunning.  I’ll actually reveal some numbers here …

• July 2009: Taking all AA+KK+QQ dealt for the month over 14k hands = +$1,399
• August 2009: Taking all AA+KK+QQ dealt for the month over 18k hands = +$1,950
• September 2009: Taking all AA+KK+QQ dealt for the month over 12k hands = +$51

It’s amazing how much of the win-rate comes from big pocket pairs and sets when you look deeply.  I’ve looked through the big pocket pairs in the replayer … I’d say three hands were botched, the rest very straightforward and standard.  Just variance, plain and simple … but quite a startling anomaly to say the least.  Back to back four figure months and suddenly one month that’s break-even.  Poker … it’ll drive you insane.

I’m hoping to realign and refocus myself and enjoy poker while also plugging leaks and staying on the mindset of just playing well for each hand I’m dealt and putting together an intelligent session.

Interesting Poker Articles

I was a busy bee in September and had a few stories that stuck out.  For PokerSoftware I reviewed the new Table Scanner for HEM which is a cool feature and a great way to find fishy tables, best used by HU and 6max players.  I did a lot of WCOOP and MiniFTOPS coverage which was interesting but not tremendously riveting.  The Marc Karam interview published on Poker News Daily was very interesting which leads to the two biggest stories of September – we saw not one but two poker sites die.

EuroLinx was on the Microgaming network and unfortunately for Marc, one of the good guys of online poker, he took a huge loss financially.  The site is gone and he is out a ton of money, but he has a great attitude and is moving on personally and professionally.  His interview was candid and a serious wake-up call to those that think the industry can self-regulate.

The other huge story was the Pitbull Poker scandal which apparently came to a final conclusion just yesterday with rumors being confirmed that the poker site had indeed shut down.  Our contact and former Network Manager, Dave Brenes, reported that the site was shut down and that he felt betrayed by ownership.  Apparently the allegations of superusers were indeed true and it might even have been ownership themselves with those accounts.  Again, quite a few people out there are now SOL with their bankrolls on that site.

In October I have a few articles coming that will be interesting.  The biggest one will be the interview with Bertrand Gospellier, otherwise known as ElkY, who just might be the best poker player on the planet.  He recently took down two WCOOP events at PokerStars.  The man is just plain sick.

October Goals

I really haven’t laid out myself specific goals for the month for a while.  I guess I just want to:

1. Play poker.
2. Have fun doing it.
3. Not worry about climbing the ladder to 200nl.
4. Cash out some money, put it to good use (computer upgrades!) should I win.
5. Play smart thinking poker when I do play poker.