Made the Top Winners at PTR

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 14, 2010 in icemonkey9 | 1 comment

Having a hot day at the tables, so I decided that maybe just MAYBE I made the PTR top winners for today at 50nl at Stars.

BOOM!  Came in 33rd when I ran the query!

(Click to enlarge)

Okay So I Unquit Poker

Posted by icemonkey9 on Jan 23, 2010 in icemonkey9 | 3 comments

In news that will shock nobody, I didn't quit poker and this blog after all.

So I took off poker for a week completely following my meltdown.  I did some serious reflecting on whether I wanted to really quit and just unload my money and move on in life.  Basically, one thing stood out in my mind that I read in Dusty's book AND that Taylor kept drilling in my head - you have to play your way through variance.  You simply cannot look at 10, 20 or even 50k hands and say "okay that's a regular sample" because its just not true.  Given my level of tolerance to swings and ability to make time for poker plus the amount of 6max tables I am able to play at once, I really began to think that playing 4-6 tables of 6max was a bad idea for me.  Why?

• I simply don't get enough hands per hour.  5-tabling 6max is about 500-550 hands per hour.
• By not playing enough and getting so "few" hands per hour, I'm not able to put in the hands required to get me through swings
• Over the course of my life, I simply have never shown any success playing 6max despite two solid attempts

Assuming that I simply couldn't go back to 100nl 6max (which to this day is a repulsive idea to me), the thought was, well, is that it (I actually do quit) or is there something else I can do?  One thing I had never tried is playing more than 9 tables at once of any game ... and playing 14+ tables at once could get me all the way to 1k hands per hour.  That would let me "play through it a lot better" in theory.  So, I experimented back at PokerStars 15-tabling full ring at 25nl.  I gave myself 20k hands to just feel it out, see if I could process and think through hands in that scenario.  TBH, I didn't know what to expect, but I dove right in.  The goal was to simply assess my abilities while 15-tabling and to see if it was fun.

Fortunately, I didn't run terrible and got a fair shake.  Playing such a low stake level plus so many hands per hour also helped me greatly understand the swings and pings of variance.  The data started making sense and I could see where certain villain phenomenons would take place (for example I would have W$SD consistently at 60-65% for 90% of sessions, then 35-40% for 10% of sessions).  Playing so many hands also forced me to not look at the results hand-to-hand and get caught up in bad beats and coolers because it was constantly the next hand that required my attention.

I completed my 20k test run ... and it went well.  I enjoyed playing 15-tables, I felt I had a great grasp of what was going on, and stomping the competition's face in was fun too (I won 4.6 BB/100).  I'm well rolled for 50nl on stars and to a degree 100nl even if I so choose (note that I had a bit of a bankroll on Stars).  The graph is below:

The issue I face now is, "what now"?  I posed a bunch of questions over to Taylor and am awaiting his response since I take his opinion very seriously ... What do I do with my roll at Full Tilt Poker, where I am really disgusted to ever play at anymore?  What do I do in terms of 6max ... or do I go with what is working and to a degree historically worked for me?  What does this all mean for coaching, as I LOVE the fact that my "Poker IQ" has increased since sessions began with Taylor and I want to keep that going?

Stay tuned.

New Server with WordPress!

Posted by admin on Feb 21, 2009 in icemonkey9 | 0 comments

You might have noticed a small difference here at icemonkey.com, in the form of a new blogging software - WordPress.  Blogger proved to be too confining for my needs as well as managed to get me banned (ironically) from Google's search engine.  Bad stuff!!!  Anyways, I've made some changes to the links section by deleting out a lot of blogs that only get updated once a month.  I hope that doesn't hurt some feelings, and if you were one of the ones that got deleted out, you can feel free to delete me out of your blogroll.

The great things about WordPress are all the addons and how it's so open ended and has a huge community offering many different plugins and tools.  So far I am extremely impressed with the software, and have installed it here as well as at GIP.

Anyways, thanks for checking in and I was glad to be able to import all of the old blogger site into this one.  The only negative is that it did not bring in the PokerHandReplays code, so all the old hands I had posted in the blog are now gone ... and I don't feel like backtracking so I'll just be using it moving forward.  Thanks for staying on board here!

My Setup in my Office

Posted by icemonkey9 on Feb 6, 2009 in computer, icemonkey9, pc | 2 comments

Apparently it's cool to show off on the internet. So here's what I work on in my office, and there's two pictures. The first is my main PC area, and the second is my iMac where I do the bulk of my video editing.

PICTURE 1: My Main PC Rig Area

What you are looking at here is where I spend about 80% of my day typically. You'll notice on the left a big networked HP Color LaserJet 2605 printer. Moving to the right you see a wireless telephone on top of a filing cabinet (not really exciting). From there you see my PC computer, and mainly the dual monitors - the main one being a Samsung 24" 1920x1200 and the secondary an Acer 22" 1680x1050 monitor. My speakers are actually super baller even though they look weird, I got them while doing a review for Gaming Illustrated, and they are amongst Altec Lansing's finest 2.1 speaker systems. The PC is an Ultra case with a Quad Core PC and 3GB of RAM, and yes I am running Windows XP because Vista sucks. You can make out my special Microsoft ergonomic softball-shaped mouse (I love it) and my Razer blue-glowy keyboard. Fun, fun stuff I know.

Desk Area Part 2 : Here's my little beauty and long lost love.

On the other side of the room I have a built in desk where my wife will work when she is home, as well as my All In One fax/scanner thingie. But it's the gorgeous 24" iMax that is the prize possession here ... and I sincerely think it's the best computer I have ever owned. I think people are crazy if they do general computer (internet / write papers / make movies / picture stuff) and don't get a Mac. Professionally I use this to edit sound and build video content for websites. I upgraded the RAM to 4GB and have behind it two external Western Digital 1TB hard drives.

So if you're curious as to why NORAD sweeps the power consumption numbers in my room, you can now know why. MUUUuuaahahahaha!