SplitSuit.com

So I think I mentioned in my last post that I have been getting a bit restless…so I decided to fly out to Boston for a week or so. I just need a chance of scenery. I leave tomorrow after a student and getting some other chores done. I also decided to take Air Tran due to hearing they have wi-fi on all of their flights…not sure if I will grind out on the plane…but it’s always nice to have the option =)

My body randomly decided to hate the hell out of me today. I woke up, ate a muffin, and almost passed out when I stood up. I think I have been pretty bad as far as getting my daily need of proteins (my diet has been pretty concentrated on sugars and carbs, oops)…so I made sure to get some chicken in my body today. Have been feeling much better since, but I need to remember to start eating more eggs and such.

Have just been coaching this week mostly. I have been meaning to play, but between trading learning/discussion and having really bad ADD attacks (due largely to being restless) I haven’t gotten around to it. This month got very lazy as far as my hand goal is concerned…but I also spent a lot of it learning this trading stuff (and following charts, and waking up at 6a some days, etc)…so I don’t feel really bad about it. I want to finish the year strong though…so hopefully I can find a better balance…

Past that, nothing else is really new. I DL’d “The Hangover” and “Taken” for the plane ride…I loved The Hangover when I saw it over the summer…and I’m pretty sure it has some re-watch value. I also need to load up about 10GB of music that I’ve been collecting over the last month. I officially have waaaaaaaaaay too much music on my computer…but there are worse things =)

Hope all is well with everyone…

*SS*

Things continue to move along. The weekend was odd. Woke up Friday, finished up with a student, and realized that the markets were fully closed. I didn’t really know what to do to be honest as the entire week had been based around following charts and markets and strat talk, etc. I figured at that point I would try to relax, which ultimately failed because I was stressing over trying to relax, lol. I really need to get better at chilling out and such. I honestly think it will be easier when I’m back east, but I struggled to badly this weekend. O well.

Got quite a bit of racquetball in this weekend which was good. We’ve been trying to do 1hr per day, and usually do 5-6 sessions per week. The matches have been fairly even, but probably slightly slanted in Cwa’s favor…O well. I swear having 2 poker players doing anything turns everything into a damn EV conversation. Every time we talk about racquetball it is discussed in terms of +EV, -EV, or neutral EV to regain position. I have had to do a large overhaul in my game due to this high front wall blast shot he uses, but I’m slowly making it a good reversal for me. Though I’m doing my best to have racquetball be fun, and not something that I get all worked about if I’m not the best at it.

Ended up putting in some good hours yesterday, though by accident. I started a session at 10p because I was feeling lazy, and ended up closing up around 2a…having no idea that 4hrs had passed. Games were good (obviously being a Saturday night) and I like usual rode the swings out. I need to figure out how to beat 1/2 stackers…they seem to be killing me…hitting their 2-5 outs like machines when they are all-in. Fave ones were 77 v AA ai on 742, KK v KQ ai on Q84, and KK v AJ ai on JT2… It is really only annoying because those pots add up so nicely at the end of a session. So instead of being breakeven, you would have been +2BI or so… O well, variance will even itself out eventually. I did have a fun hand at the tail end of my session last night. I ended up winning it, but the whole damn hand is kind of bizzare. Link if you are interested.

Not fully sure what I am going to do this week. I may just randomly buy a plane ticket at the end of the week and head back to Boston for a few days…really have no idea. I have quite a few coaching sessions set up, so I’m looking forward to that…and might start doing some trading as well. Meh, not sure. Here is a playlist that I played too all last night…enjoy if you are into chill out grind music.

Hope all is well!

*SS*

So this week has been a blur…hard to believe it is Thursday already. I decided to wake up for the markets on Monday and Tuesday. Now this would be no big deal on the east coast, as 9:30a is a more reasonable time to wake up and begin the day…but on the west coast you have to be up at the insane fucking hour of 6:30a…which is just stupid. I actually managed to be pretty awake and functional. We were just papertrading (treating it like we were actually trading, but not using real money)…and managed to do alright. Had a 65% WR I believe, which wasn’t bad at all considering we rushed a few trades and had some sloppy exits. But it was a good learning experience and gave us a lot of food for thought.

On Tuesday afternoon we went down for an interview at a local proptrading firm (a company that gives you extra leverage for trading (aka, you put up $10K, they give you $200K in buying power)). Was a very eye opening experience to be honest. Made me realize how much I am missing and how much I need to learn yet. The biggest thing it pointed out was that we were missing pieces of the big picture. As my roommate put it…we were focusing on how to play AK in one scenario, rather than learning what factors go into playing and handling AK well. We also learned that stocks might not be out best option off the bat. Lots of things to worry about, and a big piece of that being the bigger BR needed (which is really made available by a prop).

With that we decided to start looking more heavily into currency futures. The BR to get started is much lower ($5K v the $25K of day trading solo) and the markets are open 24hr. I have a strategy that seems to work fairly well and am still looking for new ones. The currencies seem to be heavily correlated (which makes sense as they are all X currency v the dollar) and there seem to be a lot of opportunities when there are pairs like that. I have a consultation with a currency futures coach tomorrow that I am very interested to see the results of. And again, just constant adjustment to new information and new situations =)

Went down to the strip tonight to meet up with a family friend. Had dinner with a bunch of his coworkers who were all very nice guys. Got to have a nice, though semi-heated, conversation about the current economy and how Obama is handling it. It was cool to discuss it with an economist and pick his brain on it. We shared a lot of the same thoughts on the whole ordeal and agreed on the “optimal end-game” of this whole situation. Got back home a little while ago to see that I ran mega bad on this trade (was shorting the 6A for a 20:30 (risk 20 to make 30)…the damn thing ran +20 ticks (and thus stop lossed me) then pivoted back 50ticks which would have been a nice profit…lesson learned…set stoplosses at 21 =) )…and just entered another which seems to be having a spasm (lol, as I’m typing this it went from -9tick to +55 ticks in 5 minutes). Damn trading =)

That’s it for now…Hope all is well

*SS*

The weekend was really good, well timed, and pretty much exactly what I needed. Went down to the strip on Friday night after I finished up with a student. Met up with Jon and Seth (college friends who live in Vegas as well) who were there with a poker player they had just met. Kid was cool, moved out here to be a stand-up comic which I thought was pretty dope. I felt so odd pelting him with questions that he was probably rolling his eyes to (same way that I roll my eyes when someone asks me silly basic questions about poker as a profession)…but I was legit interested. For all intents and purposes he will be named “Randy”…now and forever.

Met up with Skelm and his other Aussie friend Jonny at Blondies to play flippong. The game was pretty damn sloppy as I haven’t played in about 2 months (since my college friend visited last) and the Aussies had never played beer pong, yet alone flip cup. They got the hang of it pretty quickly and I believe my team ended up shipping it after 2 hours or so (damn game lasts forever, lol). Stopped over at ‘Earl of Sandwich” which was quite amazing, and necessary as I didn’t eat anything that day since breakfast. Bummed around for a bit and watched Randy and Seth play some roulette before bouncing home.

Got a PM from Damntra (from 2p2) that he was in town and decided to meet up with him on Saturday night. So we all met at Blondies again (the Aussies and Randy) and played another few hours of flippong. Felt bad as Damntra was not properly dressed for drinking games, my bad, lol. Was smart enough to eat this time before I went out, and picked up Create-a-burger with Jon and Seth. Holy shit that place is amazing. Def a must-eat for burger fans. And it reminded me how awful the 80/20 burgers I’ve been cooking for myself at home are. Was a good night, and odd because we ran into Jeff Madsen and the interviewer chick from CardPlayer there….you see so many random poker people around in Vegas…

Spent most of today just relaxing and getting some random stuff done. Also had a good talk with Skelm last night so hopefully I will be getting on the Stox calendar soon. Randomly got an email from a student today and set up a last minute session which went very well. I have to wake up for the market tomorrow, so I am just going to spend the next hour reading about charts and formations and then hopefully be able to crash. It is hard to fall asleep when you literally woke up 7hours ago, but hopefully I can do it. Hope all is well

*SS*

So this week is cruising along. It seems that weeks just blend together faster and faster and yet, at the same time, it feels like I have been in Vegas forever. It doesn’t help that I haven’t been sleeping very well at all. I have been lucky to get to sleep before 6a any morning, and have been waking up at like 4p everyday in which I don’t have a student. My body likes the sleep, but I really wish it were more normalized. It sucks that I have been missing the market (I literally sleep during the whole damn thing)…but I have been messing around in some currency futures for paper trading which is going well so far. My swing strategy seems to be pretty damn strong, I just need to improve on my day trading strategies…which I am putting work into.

Got a text from Skelm (2p2 and Stox guy) last night about meeting up and grabbing a beer or w/e. Went down tonight and met him, and a few other 2p2rs at the Mirage. Very good time and really nice to have some very in depth strat conversation. A lot of them were 100-400nl guys that played with a different reg group (over on FTP)…and I found it funny that I recognized a lot of their regs from my old 100NL game there. I find it sad that I will probably for the rest of my life know how Tulegit21 plays, but it is what it is.

Kind of felt bad as Skelm’s friend was just getting into poker and really wasn’t able to get into the conversation much, but that happens when you are talking about how to handle 4b pots postflop and junk. I will probably meet up with them again at some point this week and play beer pong over O’Sheas or something. I can only imagine how badly I will play, but it seems like most of them have never played before, so I should have a pinch of an advantage =)

Everything else has been pretty much the same. Still waiting on a few checks from FTP and PS…I think I may have fallen into the bad group of checks from FTP, so I may have gotten screwed there….but it happens. Fingers crossed they show up soon enough.

Hope all is well

*SS*

Coaching is so damn odd. I go through some stretches where I have maybe 2 sessions per week, and then I will randomly get an explosion of students and applications. I got like 3 or 4 applications last week and have been setting up a lot of new sessions, and some old students have come back at the same time. No complaints from me at all, except having to wake up for a 10a session this morning, lol. Going well though, and I think everyone is happy with what’s going on.

I do want to reflect a little bit about coaching this post…so if it bores you, lo siento. Coaching has changed a ton since I started, which was about 2 years ago. In that time I have coached roughly 120 students. I remember my first few sessions were pretty rough. I didn’t know how to structure a session or what to look for or how to approach improvement. I don’t think I used an application for almost 4 months, which is nuts being an application is a great time to get information from a prospective student.

The thing that shocks me the most, although it really shouldn’t, is WHAT is coached now v back then. Back then I almost ran a curriculum that I rarely deviated from. I would do a sweat session, then session on Isolating and LP play, then a session on CBing and 3bing, and mix that up with HH reviews and sweat sessions. The standard number of sessions was about 5.5.

Now, most all of my students already know about ISOing and CBing and have an idea on 3bing. The knowledge students already have is insanely different, and goes to show how much tougher the games are now v then. It is also very standard that a student takes like 3.5 sessions, and most just need detail fixing (betsizing, a little work on aggression, etc). And most want to learn how to be solid LAGs or a mixture of TAG/LAG…where as then people thought 17/15 was waaaaaaaaay too loose. How times have changed =)

I love coaching. I have grown so much as a player, coach, and person in general from it. Having to talk my thought process out and teach someone else how to think about something isn’t easy, and in doing it, has helped me improve ten fold. Growing from a 12/7 to a 22/19, and being able to explain the “difficult decisions” with relative ease. My coaching has gotten a ton stronger, (special thanks to Datakid for this, who spent a lot of time giving me feedback) and I hope it reflects nicely in my sessions. And I have grown a ton as a person. Learning how to work with many different student types and also learning about people, their motives, and normal areas of weakness.

I really hope to continue coaching for a long time, and although the money is cool, it really is a great experience (and thus a large part of the reason why I suggest people take on a protege). Sorry for boring those that don’t enjoy me talking about coaching…just wanted to get that out there. Hope all is well

*SS*

$0.25/$0.50 No Limit Hold’em Cash Game, 8 Players
Poker Tools by Stoxpoker – Hand Details

Hero (BTN): $56.90 (113.8 bb)
SB: $97.85 (195.7 bb)
BB: $56.15 (112.3 bb)
UTG+1: $44.50 (89 bb)
MP1: $58.20 (116.4 bb)
MP2: $52.75 (105.5 bb)
MP3: $61.40 (122.8 bb)
CO: $38.15 (76.3 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is BTN with T 6
5 folds, Hero raises to $1.25, SB calls $1, BB folds

Flop: ($3) Q 7 2 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $1.30, SB calls $1.30

Turn: ($5.60) 8 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero checks

River: ($5.60) 9 (2 players)
SB bets $4.50, Hero raises to $26.35

So this is the hand from last week. Villain is a very bad player, running 27/10 over 120hands. He folds to CB about 2/3, hardly 3bs, and just seems to be your standard fit-or-fold calling station. I make a small 2.5x raise on the button, a nice size to use as a steal (the BB is a nit 11/8, 2%3b over 1.3K hands). Only the SB calls, and we see a flop of Qs7s2c. He checks and I make a small 1/2PSB CB. No reason to risk much more in this spot as he is fit or fold, and this size means he only needs to folds ~1/3 for my play to breakeven. I expect him to fold about 55%-60% here given texture, so I make a decent profit in the LR here.

He quickly calls the CB, and the turn a blank 8. He checks again and I decide to knock back. Although I did pick up outs with a hand that has little, if any, SD value…this is not the kind of person to pressure here. He will never fold a pair, and his flop call leads me to believe he has one. DONT BLUFF THE MAN THAT CALLS!

Now the hand gets funky when I bink the straight on the river and he donks for ~80% pot. Here I have some decisions on what to do:

1.) call because I think he only has JT. this is silly…so I’m not flatting (or folding, ldo)

2.) shove! This is the kind of spot where he should really have a huge hand, something like TP+, with a heavy emphasis on 2pr (97, 87, Q9, etc). We can weight his range toward heavy hands because he donked, and donked fairly large on the river. Remember the player classification…we said he was a “fit-or-fold calling station”. That kind of player type doesn’t bet or raise unless they have a huge hand…if had something like 76 he would just c/c the river. A shove really pressures him and forces him to call off a lot of his stack. The only issue is, he might find a fold with something like QJ or so…a decent % of his range that I REALLY need to max value from.

3.) minraise. This probably sounds silly, but if I thought he would overshove his 2pr+ against a minR, then it is a good play (he might just flat a big raise with 97, but against a minR he might shove it). I am not sure enough of his actions given the sample size to use this play, and again, I really want to get max value from the QJ type hands in his range.

4.) something like I did, about 5x. I think this is a nice happy medium here. It puts in about 1/2 stack, should get called by just about his entire donking range, and gets max value against the 1pr hands.

I did end up going with option 4 and raised to $26.35. I personally think I could have pinched a little extra here, maybe $29.15 or so, but I am still happy with overall play. Make sure to consider your betsizing carefully to max value against the entire range, or as much of the range as possible.

SB calls $21.85

Results:

Not really sure why, but I’ve been super inconsistent with my mood the last few days. Just swinging from depressed to like super happy for no damn reason. I think my sleep schedule is hurting me, so I am going to try and do something about that (slowly crept from going to bed at like 10p back to like 4a). I have been kind of in a funk from poker, but not fully sure why. I’m about breakeven on the month, which started like absolute shitballs. Who knows…stupid mental status sometimes.

Got back to some racquetball today which was more than necessary. Was actually very cool because when we got there we ran into the only other people that play. So we played some doubles (first time I’ve ever played doubles before) which was a whole new experience. After that we put in a 2 hour HU session which was much more aggressive than it normally is. Really good workout, and thankfully my wrists and knees have been holding up much better (thanks to tape).

Have also been spending a lot of time reading and staring at charts the last few days. I hammered out a pretty solid strategy that is super basic but seems to be performing pretty well on a 10 year backtest. We are trying to figure out something that will allow us to get around the pattern day trading rule…so might be looking at futures, currency, or possible swing-trading of some sort. Plenty of options, just have to pick one and then exploit the market we choose.

Hopefully I will have something awesome up later today…so make sure to check back either later today or tomorrow.

Hope all is well!

*SS*

I swear I have to be one of the odder 23 year olds…or at least I feel that way. My life is just so odd in comparison to any other 23 year old I know or meet. Some of this stuff bothers me, some of it doesn’t…but let’s look at some of the odd shit I do:

1.) I arbitrarily decide to move cross country whenever I feel like it.

2.) I don’t party at all. I drink MAYBE once a month, I do nothing else. I have never even smoked weed (wanted to set a good example for my brother and sister…the irony in that is LOLable I assure you)

3.) I am more focused on being 30 than being young. I feel maybe I never grew out of the “I cannot wait to be older” stage of my life. Obviously when we are 8 we want to be older so we can drive and drink and w/e else comes with being older. At 21 I didn’t embrace that, all I thought about was “what do I need to do to make sure life at 30 is better than it is now?”.

4.) I have a minimal social life. This is partially due to #3 as I spend my time reading and learning to prepare for being older. I also have to allow a massive amount of time for relaxation, or at least attempting it. I am naturally stressed at all times over one thing or another, some real some not, and it drives my fucking blood pressure way up. This one I want to change

5.) I care 90x more about any other person than myself. This has its pros and cons, but overall I think it is a good thing. At least it keeps me driven to make enough where I can be more charitable when I am more liquid

6.) I live in Vegas and have done Vegas in the exact opposite way any other normal person would. I have been to maybe 2 clubs, no shows, no stripclubs, and really only go down to the strip to grind.

I mean there are a thousand other things as well (everything from thinking $100K/yr isn’t really worth much to doing a full EV analysis when deciding my driving route)…but these are the ones that come to mind. I think I want to change them a lil bit, so I have some work to do. The social thing really isn’t worrisome to me as I am not awkward in those situations…I just don’t do them often. I don’t really see the planning and stress thing improving much, but that is all part of being an INTJ I suppose.

Not sure why I wrote this…but w/e. In case people didn’t know (I cannot remember if I’ve mentioned it before)…but I use this blog to see where I was 1yr ago…so I like to write rando posts like this so I can see where my mental was at. Sorry if you didn’t enjoy it =)

*SS*