For A Better Tomorrow

Something happened last night which got me thinking a lot lately about my current situation in life. As I have mentioned before in my previous post, 2007 will be a year that I will never forget. Since then, I’ve been pretty clean from a lot of the dramatic events that occurred in my life. I was thinking recently about my life routine lately and I am pretty damn proud of it. I’ve been waking up early on weekdays at around 730-8am for workout to start my day. I get in enough poker hours by the end of the week to make my weekends a bit more comfortable and relaxing. I celebrate my productive days during my nights with friends to relax and forget about poker. Everything is well balanced right now and I feel really good about that. I feel like my future has a lot of potential even though poker has been pretty slow lately. I recently got a poker coach to work on my 6 handed game so I will be very busy with that. I am pretty much living, breathing, drinking, eating, and dreaming about poker right now. I feel like that is the mentality I need in order to succeed in this game. I admire a ton of athletes and that is all they do when it comes to the specific sport they play. So rather than drinking and partying constantly, I must keep my life in check in order to survive in this game. I am a professional after all.

With that said, I feel like there’s not much that can disrupt my current life routine except for myself when I am undisciplined, and one other thing that is pretty hard to control….relationships. I’ve reached an age where I feel like I need to really work on my life. I repeatedly see friends ending their 4-5 year relationships because they started so young and they end up becoming extremely depressed. I’m currently working on a game that requires my mind to be consistently free. I need to have a clear mind. I do not want to stress with girlfriend problems while I am in control of thousands of dollars in front of my screen. I think the next relationship will likely be a serious one. So until I can focus on that relationship and drop certain bad habits, there’s no way I will be in one soon. I want to have a healthy relationship now that I am older and a bit more mature. I feel like in order for me to obtain such a thing, I am going to have to go by the same philosophy that has always worked out for me, and that is being patient.

As of right now, I’m going to enjoy my bachelor life even though you can get pretty lonely sometimes from not having a “female bond”, but I believe that that is a great thing to sacrifice during my time of growth. I have many trips that I plan on taking this year and the next, and the majority of them are for poker. I don’t want to complicate my plans for the next couple of years with a relationship.

I remember reading the law school dropout blog, and he was writing about how he would go nuts if he had like a -5k day. At the time I was playing low stakes so I couldn’t even comprehend what that would be like. Now that I’m chasing for the higher stakes, I now know how he feels. Yesterday was one of the most unpleasant poker days of my life.

It feels like bad beats are occurring much more often. A poker friend of mine said that if the games get tougher, it means it’s getting more aggressive, and if that’s the case, we will be in more coin flip situations. The more coin flip situations we are in, the higher the variance of the game will be. Which, in a nutshell, will increase the chances of us having more bad beats in a given month.On top of all of that, the United States is now in a recession. Which means people do not have money to gamble and play poker. The legislation (U.S. related) has already made an enormous effect on the game already and now with the recession happening, there will be even less fishes than the aftermath of legislation. Which means that the games are at it’s toughest state and will continue to get tougher. This is all just my opinion by the way.

It is probably the most difficult time to move up in limits. Which sucks because I am currently taking shots up in higher stakes. But due to my bad timing, I ran really bad at nl1k and I am now forced to just stay at 400 for the time being. The shitty problem is that I have grind up my losses at 1k at nl400 and maybe nl600. I really do pray that the online poker game will be legal one day. To be honest, I think all of the low to mid stakes professionals are developing their game right now to wait for that moment to happen. I can’t imagine what the game will be like if it was just like the pre-legislation days. At that time, I had a winrate of 4+ playing a standard tag game. It was stressless and carefree. It was like heaven. I guess we just have to do what we’ve been training ourselves to do while chasing this grotesque game, we have to be patient.

I’m closing in on the 2 year mark playing poker full time. I remember quitting work in summer of 2006 to attempt a rollercoaster lifestyle. Before that, I have been playing poker part time for 3 years and a year of just being a complete rookie. So that means that I have been involved with poker for almost 6 years now. How scary is that? And within this timeframe, I have never ever in my life seen so many bad beats in one month. I will now consider February 2008 the month that killed my poker momentum. I have not had a break even month since last year and currently I am in danger of breaking even or LOSING. At this point, I am in the negative for the month right now.

I have been using the poker ev software religiously to track this new “style” that I am playing (which is sorta LAG for full ring). I wanted to carefully access whether or not I am leaking with this new style or not. When changing styles, you’re basically opening yourself up to new leaks in the game and I wanted to make sure that I was losing because I was running bad, not playing bad.

One of the toughest things to do in poker is to experiment a new game. Why? Well, it’s because it takes a lot of work to have a decent sample size and you sacrafice your regular monthly earnings from your original style. In order to tell if the new style works, you need a clean sample size. And just my luck, I happen to run terribly according to poker ev on the month that I am experimenting. I know what you’re all thinking, maybe this new style doesn’t work? Maybe. But I will say that I am not leaking as my green line is above my blue line in Poker EV and that it also says I am unexpectant for 13 buyins in 9000 hands. Keep in mind, that this is different from being on a “13 buyin downswing”. Unexpectant for 13 buyins is when you are literally getting outdrawn when you have the best hand. So coolers such as AA vs KK preflop does not count (when it can count in a downswing)! Well, it counts a little bit, but barely to the point where it’s not even considered.

I can continue playing this lag style and see what happens but because of these coolers/bad beats, I am unable to focus correctly with it. Lag play relapses tilt a lot easier, so therefore I must go back to my old style for now. I will continue on with my experiment later when I am back on my feet.

But yeah, I am absolutely crushed right now. My heart for poker is currently crushed. But I’ll mature and get over it. It just hurts me so much right now though. But, I think back at the time when I quit the work to live the “rollercoaster” lifestyle. And here it is folks, the current drop in the rollercoaster that I signed on for, so don’t necessarily feel sorry for me now. I just need to vent that’s all.

I’m finally in the position to be able to attempt some high stakes play. I’ve been talking it over with some of my poker buddies and I am now really excited to jump into the new game. Due to my set back last year, I’ve been yearning to move on from the middle stakes level. It feels very similar to leaving my day job a couple years back. I was so hesitant but it worked out when I grew the balls to do it. I find myself in that situation a lot in life it seems, but I always go with the idea of being patient patient patient to really prep for the next level. It’s good and bad, good in that I am being patient which is always a good philosophy in poker but bad because I can possibly be deterring myself from reaching my greatest potential. Last year, I witnessed many players moving up incredibly fast and I was very jealous of not being able to do that myself. It’s been over 2 years now at the middlestakes ground, I think I am ready. Don’t get me wrong, you will still see me at the middle stakes for awhile, but you should see me at the 1k table as well:)

I remember being extremely excited when I was working my day job and reading the forums on poker on the potential earnings in poker in general (low stakes to midstakes). I have that feeling yet again about NL1k but everything needs to go well. I know the stakes are going to be rocky, and if I lose like a few buyins I’m going to have to move down and lose some of my profits for the month. But hey, great risks comes great rewards. Wish me luck guys because I’m going to attempt a new beginning. A path that leads to a game where people are playing beyond the rim.

At one point last year, I decided not to vent anything else on this blog regarding my personal life because I felt like I was constantly doing it. I guess that’s one of the reasons why I avoided and then later got lazy writing in this blog. I’ve probably lost a lot of readers, if there were any. I will update more often as there is so much to catch up on. I am looking forward to this year though. I find that every year, I struggle in some way with poker. While I did overcome one of the biggest hurdles ever in my life last year, I still find myself constantly on the defensive side in life struggle.

So here’s to a new year: I’ve decided to make some changes in my game even though I am doing pretty well with my current style. I really feel like I need to learn something new as I finally get my chance to move beyond the middle stakes games. I’ve been stuck at NL400 for the longest time, and everyday in the midst of it, I was yearning to be able to move on. I am now released from all the problems that I had last year. Finally, I am able to take shots and try to conquer more of this game.I think I’ve thought about how I’m going to do this so many times already. But now that I am free to do it, I am kind of in shocked. It’s kind of like when you’re rehearsing something over and over, and when it is time to actually say it, you go into shock.

2007 will stand out really well in my life. I don’t really remember much from 2004, 2005, or 2006, but there are events that happened in 2007 that will forever be stand out. It’s amazing how the toughest moments in your life are remembered, I would think one would rather forget about such things. I hope I can win a WPT event that way I can have something that stands out that made me super happy. Oh well.