Cain is Abel

The ice storm that hit the midwest has been mentioned quite a bit in the news recently. Since my house is surrounded by trees, I was effected relatively strongly.  Since about 1am on the 28th, we started hearing large ice-covered branches crashing in our yard. At about 4am, one of the crashes resulted in the loss of our power. With a 1-year-old daughter, 2-year-old dog, a poorly insulated house, and a bunch of ice outside, it was a bit of an ugly situation.

We were able to find a hotel that accepts dogs, and get ourselves out to a room by about 9am.

This means much less work for me. Hopefully the power will be back up within a day or two.

In poker news, I’ve been testing out Omaha games, table selecting some higher levels, and improvising quite a bit more. I think I’m still quite a bit burned out from FRNL, so i’ve been experimenting around.

I jacked “The Daily Show”s title here, because it cracks me up so much.

Mary and I watched his cute little statement this afternoon, which sounded more like 15 year old talking his way out of trouble.

I wont bother copying the semi-famous transcript of him trying to sell Obama’s position, but it is definitely worth listening to if you haven’t heard it.

The scariest thing about the whole deal is that it seems like he truly believes that he was in the right. He is almost arrogant about it. Which just leads me to believe that our representatives work in the kind of atmosphere where this kind of action is relatively accepted.  Hopefully the example is set, and this scumdog is sent to a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison.

Those who watched Obama’s inaugural speech may recognize the title of this post.

While not everyone (including myself) agrees with Obama’s politics, I think most of us can agree that the speech was very strong. Our new Presidents’ mindset is exactly what this country needs. Intelligence, accountability, and hard work are all things that our mascot should encourage and personally exude. While all of these things are easy to say, the example needs to be set.

“it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things — some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor — who have carried us up the long, rugged path toward prosperity and freedom.”

To go from a President who took a record number of vacations, gave a record number of presidential pardons, and set the standard that “I don’t recall” is an acceptable answer when people of extreme power and responsibility are questioned (Thanks for the hand-me-down, Bill) -  To a president who speaks of scientific advancement, increased accountability for himself and his constituents, and practices these ideals – will hopefully be the start of some positive momentum for the US.

“And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Of course, words are words, and the actions in the near future will let us know how much truth there is to them. Sure, I may have been swept up by the excitement of this new big “Change”. Despite disagreeing with most of his politics, and quite frankly, being scared of the direction it could lead us – I personally feel much more comfortable, confident, and motivated as an American with Obama as my President.

For those of us who mass table at PokerStars, we build up quite a few FPPs in our cashier.  While the 60″ TV and 30″ monitor are pretty mouthwatering, using other options can increase the value of your points and earn more money.  Anybody who is Supernova or above should know the most efficient ways to spend their FPPs. It can earn you literally thousands of dollars over the course of a year! The best part is – it is extremely simple and easy to explain!  I must preface this though, if you are one of the many players who is already planning on buying a Porsche, your best option is to save the 5 million FPPs for that, because it is hands down the best $/FPP value (at about 2c/fpp).

All you need to do is break down the FPP value of each thing in the store. We wont even bother covering any of the electronics, because the value of those is very low compared to the other options in the store.

BONUSES:

Most players go for bonuses, because everybody loves cash. Unfortunately, most of the lower teir bonuses are terrible FPP rates compared to the higher. As a reference, i’ll show how much the value changes for someone who is reaching SNE, and will have 3.5million FPPs accumulated over a year.

$50 for 5k – 1c per FPP  – $35000 SNE value

$285 for 25k – 1.14c per FPP – $39900 SNE value

$650 for 50k – 1.3c per FPP – $45500 SNE value

$1500 for 100k – 1.5c per FPP – $52500 SNE value

$4000 for 250k – 1.6c per FPP – $56000 SNE value

The difference between the highest and lowest teired bonus amounts to a $21000 difference for a Supernova Elite! Of course no SNE chaser is going to waste their time on 50$ bonuses, but there are plenty of people who don’t see how much value they are missing by going for anything other than the $4000 bonus.

To take it a step further requires a little more work. The PokerStars Concierge is an excellent service, and you just need to send them receipts of things you would like them to “buy” for you. The minimum amount for a receipt is $500, and it must show the name on the receipt. They convert your FPPs to $ at a rate of 1.61c per FPP.  For a Supernova Elite, this is $56350 worth of value, and your most efficient option.

Not everybody has 56k worth of receipts every year. The $4000 bonus is very close to the exchange rate of the concierge, and is also an extremely good option.

So for anybody who is a Supernova or Elite at Pokerstars, you will make significantly more money if you exchange for only the 4k bonus and Concierge receipts. Anything else is giving up value.

Unless it’s the porsche…

So there’s my short and sweet guide to FPPs! Hopefully it helps some of you readers build your rolls a bit.

VPP COUNT: 17418

Pennsylvania Judge Rules that Poker is a Game of Skill

This is very good news!

I’m definitely getting a bit more time in the past few days, but my late/slow start is still pretty obvious. I’ve been very happy with my play, and have been doing a good job of balancing the rest of my life out as well.

I put in an early AM session this morning, and ran pretty crappy. The early AM games were pretty good though, and that is a convenient time to play with the rest of the house asleep.

Another random thought – Slumdog Millionaire is a great movie. I highly suggest it.

VPP COUNT: 12285

Alright, so my VPP count is still a little pathetic, but I’m very happy with the way work has gone so far this year.  I’ve been putting in some solid hours at coaching, and the results have been staggeringly good.  And while I’m sure this post will hype all you readers up, I’m running out of time in my days, and need to get the VPPs coming in.  I’ll have to stop applications soon, and giving this new pursuit some time to settle in. I’ve got a pretty good schedule going where I can take care of coaching things in the morning, and play in the afternoon/evening.

Results at the table have still been pretty solid. Once I can get myself back to averaging 5-6h per day, this money train will be moving full steam ahead.

http://citizensbriefingbook.change.gov/

Obama’s website has put up a list of issues that you can vote for/against. The issues are ranked based on popularity, and Legalization/Regulation of Poker is moving up the list quickly (hooray for a large online community!)

So take a minute, and help support my right to take money from fish

VPP COUNT: 5542

Yesterday was my first real day of work, which consisted of 3 sessions.  I couldn’t seem to work up the enthusiasm to put in much time the days before. At least the ball is rolling! It also helped quite a bit to start the year off with a nice little heater. I still have not put in any work on my MTT game… I need to get to that soon.

http://www.pokerhand.org/?3698061 – My favorite hand of the night

In other news, my mention of coaching in my last post got quite a bit of a response, and I haven’t even put up a full blown coaching page yet.  I’m looking forward to pursuing this more.

So in the coming days I will be putting together a bio, and more detailed coaching information under permanent links up top. For those who have been following this blog for a while and are interested in applying before I organize and start advertising – contact me via 2+2 private message. (not posting email here)

VPP COUNT: 0

I’m gonna do it again!

The benefits are just too great to pass up. I need to take advantage while I can.

With about 1 week late start, I’ll be putting in my first session today. I haven’t played a single hand of poker since December 28th, but coming back should be easy.

A quick scan of the tables shows that the quality of the games has improved quite a bit.  With my game revitalized, I could very well exceed 2008’s success.

My goal in 2009, though, is to be a bit more well-rounded while accomplishing the goal.  I had to devote quite a bit of time to the quest in ‘08, and usually was too tired to add much to my agenda when the playing was over. (Aside from getting married, traveling abroad twice, and raising a 1 year old)

I’d like to start putting a bit more time into studying Internet Marketing again. It is a great skill to have, in that it can improve the traffic/sales of essentially any business idea.  I’ve given it a few random shots in the past (this blog being one of them), and still have a pretty good general idea of what is required. Unfortunately, the effort involved in the idea process, making the site, etc are all very consuming if starting from scratch. Buying an existing/profitable site is also an option, but a gamble. I will definitely be dabbling more into this field in ‘09.

I am also going to be looking more seriously into training other players. Coaching is a field with lots of potential, and I could definitely stand to make some more connections in the poker community.  I’ll be writing a page to put on this website detailing the kind of services I offer. I will likely be consulting players based on 3 different areas:
Multi-tabling: likely a flat rate, set # of hours where I will walk you through the tools/techniques of advanced multi-tabling

Supernova Elite: Everything from working out VPPs/hr, finding a suitable game, backup plans, br management, motivation/burnout, time management strategies, etc. I’ve done it and I know the speedbumps along the way, so I will be making myself available to coach others as well.

FRNL play: After ~2.5mil hands of solid, consistent profit – I consider myself seasoned enough to guide other players to a winning strategy. My experience/guidance will extend far beyond game theory as well.

With all of these new pursuits lined up, this will unfortunately leave me with much less time to spend on training videos. While I did enjoy making the video, and was very pumped at the response from you (the audience), this project will be taking a back seat.  Cardrunners is set up in a way that makes it difficult for my type of training video to be a very effective use of my time.  My time would be much better spent 1-on-1 with other players, and pursuing SNE again in ‘09. So the other videos in the series, which were supposed to be released in January, will be pushed to some future date.

I’m off to a bit of a slow start this year, but am still very optimistic.

VPP COUNT: 1000007

WINNINGS: Great!

HOURS: 1685

HANDS:1932845

I’m still somewhat in a state of disbelief now that this is over. It really is incredibly satisfying to work so hard on something for an entire year, and to finish the way I planned.

I did plan on doing a little recorded video for my final point, but when I got to that last hour of play, I just decided to finish it all off.  My final day was actually shaping up to be one of the better days of the year – until that last hour.  The graph of my play will show very conclusively that if your mind is on something other than poker, you’re not going to play very well.  So I booked a small loss for the day, and finished off the year.

This goal really put me to the test.  I think that accomplishing any endurance trial like this is much more of an inward battle than outward. By this, I mean that the biggest part of the struggle was with my own personal willpower, as opposed to learning and playing poker.  I think one could learn the poker theory/knowledge needed to reach SNE in less than a month. It really is not difficult to beat the lowest level needed to accumulate the vpps. However – to teach someone to be able to play >2mil hands in a year while maintaining their sanity would take much longer.

My poker future is still a bit vague. December has definitely re-infused my motivation, as the results and new style have been very positive. I will be doing some serious work on my tournament game over the coming months.  After my results with Doug (WCGRider), I think it will be pretty easy for me to find a top-notch coach.

Another major lesson I learned this year was how easy it is to let your game get stale, especially during long exhausting periods of play.  I experienced a breakeven stretch for an amazing 800k hands this year. It was initially triggered by a huge downswing at 400 and 600 buyin levels. After this downswing, I decided to cool down, tighten up, and just grind vpps for a while. This was the absolute worst decision I could have made, as the regulars were getting much more aggressive and taking advantage. Because of this, it took me a long LONG time to recover from that initial downswing. I now know I’ll need to be much more assertive about maintaining and improving my strategy, and not settling for just sitting back and grinding out points.

I am incredibly glad I kept a blog through this challenge. It really helped to keep me focused throughout the year.  During downswings and breakeven stretches it was very nice to be able to come back and read that I’d gone through it before and come out fine. It will be nice to be able to go back and read it in the future to reflect on this year.

I am feeling more positive about going for SNE again next year.  With 1 year already under my belt, I should be able to do it even better next time, and the rewards are even better.  I’ll still be putting in the minimum 50k vpps/month to maintain my SNE status until June. If I’m in good shape by the end of February, I’ll probably follow through in 09.

Every single year I’ve played poker, I’ve made more money than the previous. This year went far beyond my expectations, and it was due to having a clear goal and the will to pull it off. Most years I feel like I could have done more or worked harder, but not this one. 2008 was a success on every level.