Machismo

It all started with a check/raise:

$0.25/$0.5 No Limit Holdem
9 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:

UTG		($70.80)
UTG+1		($50.00)
MP1		($50.00)
MP2		($50.00)
MP3		($136.95)
CO		($47.75)
BTN		($50.50)
Hero (SB)		($80.40)
BB		($60.85)

Pre-flop: ($0.75, 9 players) Hero is SB

UTG raises to $1.75, 6 folds, Hero calls $1.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($4, 2 players)
Hero checks, UTG bets $4, Hero raises to $13, UTG folds

Final Pot: $12

Hero wins $20.40 ( won +$5.65 )
UTG lost -$5.75

FR

I’ve been playing a bit over the past week. Managing to eke out 3BB/100 over 4k hands (lol sample size) at $50nl with a bit of $100nl thrown in, but I’m improving daily and I expect to have a higher winrate soon.

I’m also planning to go down to AC next weekend with some friends, so I started working on my FR game. I got an account with DC (sorry Martin) since they had more FR vids than Leggo and I’ll be playing FR exclusively over the next 10 days to maximize the trip EV, and then I’ll see how it goes.

Might be coming back

I finished school and in the process of transferring to finish my Bachelor’s. I’m probably gonna grind over the summer and see how high I can get. Starting off playing a little $50nl for now.

Holla at me!

Poker Anthology

I just realized the site that hosted Pr0crast’s 2+2 Anthology has been down since November 2008, so I put it up here on my blog. Make sure you check it out if you play poker and like money.

The V-Cube 7

7^3 times the fun!

Got it in the mail yesterday and spent pretty much the whole evening playing around with it. I can solve the regular Rubik’s Cube in about 40-50 seconds, but the 7×7x7 requires different algorithms so I haven’t been able to solve it yet. This will probably be my evening today as well.

Also, I recently learned that The Wire kicks ass. Watch it. When you get to Season 5, read this series of blogs on The Freakonomics Blog: What Do Real Thugs Think of The Wire? Actually, you don’t even need to watch the show, the blogs are awesome by themselves. The author of this blog series (Sudhir Venkatesh) is the same guy who followed a gang and studied their “business” in Freakonomics (the book), and evidently he still has connections in the criminal world.

A Tale of Two Sessions

I got tired of doing Math, and got bored of video games. Played a couple of hours 2-tabling $100nl yesterday then moved down to 4 tables of $50nl today:

The games didn’t get tougher from what I remember 8 months ago, but the difference betwen $50nl and $100nl was pretty apparent. There are so many fucktards at 50 it’s crazy, I was getting paid by some stupid stuff. The villain ranges seemed much stronger at the $100s.

I don’t intend this to be a regular thing as there’s still too much math to be learned, but the $97 win was nice.

Also, I bought a new laptop recently. Nothing fancy, just a $850 Lenovo 15″. No shitty Vista, straight Windows XP and Ubuntu dual boot (though I mostly stick to XP). The hardware stats are about the same as my old desktop (which is sitting dead with what I suspect a blown mobo, but I’m too lazy to dig through the dusty thing), except the video card is worse so I can’t play new games but it runs math software and poker stuff perfectly well.

A Matter of National Lols

A couple of ways the cosmos can kill you:

http://fora.tv/2008/02/19/Neil_DeGrasse_Tyson_Death_by_Black_Hole

Locus of Control and Poker

Here’s something to think about while you’re going through a downswing. Remember Brian Townsend saying that his results began to improve once he decided to take responsibility for his results? If he went on a downswing, he studied more and reviewed his game.

There are a couple of studies in Psychology which show that people with an internal locus of control (believe they are primarily responsible for what happens to them, not the external world), tend to succeed more at tasks. The explanation is that in the face of adversity, these people try harder while people with external locus of control blame everything else and don’t put in the extra effort.

If you want to learn more, here are a couple of links to get you started:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_theory

In the end, I’m not really sure if it’s possible to change your mentality. Afterall, a person with an external locus of control can easily read this, agree with it, then just conclude the game is not for them and move on to other hobbies. Nevertheless, a healthy dose of responsibility is always useful.

Merry Xmas

As a wise man once said, “it ain’t Christmas without ASCII Santa”

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WSOD, WBCOOP, and $10+1 Donkaments

Played the WBCOOP on Stars and a couple of $10+1 donkaments. Lamed out of every single one, just one of those days where nothing exciting happens and you bust out on standard hands. Well, one was JJ vs 83s where a guy had to leave so he started shoving AI every hand, which means he went from 2k to 10k stack and took out a few guys in the process, myself included.

Then I watched the 2008 WSOP on PokerTube, but about 40 minutes in I remembered I didn’t like televised donkaments and realized I wasn’t enjoying it anymore, so I went outside instead and got the mail.