It's been a long while...

I finally got the time to update this blog. I see rust all over. It's been a busy 3 months for me. Working in the stock market has been quite stressful for me especially with the type of market we have now. I layed off quite a bit playing poker.. I've had just about 600 games the past 4 months, 300 of which i played in a month. However, I started playing live poker and did it twice at the Metro. It's my first time to be playing live cash games. I played the 10/20 tables (tried 6-tabling but wasn't allowed to). First day bought in 1k, went home with 940, pfffft!!! The 2nd day 1k in, 930 out... sigh!! I have to learn them cash games, they're so much different from tourneys. GL everyone.

Officially part of RP's workforce

Yesterday marked my official re-employment after getting out of work for 8 months to try out playing poker full-time. I was a good and profitable 8 months. It netted me roughly $3500, not much compared to the legend jackcadillac LOL. Anyways, I will still be grinding it out as a semi-pro. Work is from 9am to 6pm. I will be working as a newbie stock broker in an investment company in the PSE Tower, Ortigas.

I've been wanting to play the Metro75 as I have not had that many live poker tourneys. Hopefully I'd be able to join next month and finally meet some fellow pinoy poker bloggers(PSE is a stone's throw away from Metrowalk). To everyone, GL at the tables!

Busy days...Friendly home games...Learning to trade

It has been a busy month for me, not in terms of online poker but in terms of training at work and some late night outs playing live poker and Nintendo Wii. I feel like I'm slacking at poker just about good variance seem to catch up with me. Fulltilt has surprisingly been very generous to me in my last 30 games.

Just about a week ago, I was playing with 5 friends in a home game. Friendly buyin was at 200 pesos. Blinds were, hmmmm, only God knows what the blind structure were. So as what you would expect in a home game, there were chip splashing, chip stealing (literally stealing as in "look, its a bird!", then off goes one of your chips). There was also tipping to a fellow player, like giving a $25 chip to a shorty with $100 with blinds at 200/400 (just to add insult to injury). Of course, there were booze and food all over the table. Ok, so Friend A (SB) was facing an all-in against Friend B who was a shorty but enough to cripple the SBs stack. He was in deep thought literally for about 2 mins or so (quite long for a friendly game). He showed it to the player on his right. "Call but ask the bigfish first" replied the player. He showed it to me, I was expecting like a QT or lower type of hand. Guess what he showed, AKd. I almost pushed the whole poker table towards him "CALL!!!!". Like I wasn't convincing enough, it took him another 3 minutes or so before deciding to call. The BB had AJs, flop and turn did not help either; river was a Jd. The SB turned to me and said in jest with a little disappointment: "Sabi mo allin". I just smiled and said "We did the right move, we had him dominated. As long as you put the money in while you were ahead, you did good."

As for my stocks and forex trading skills, it's still in its infancy.. I'm learning new things everyday. Slowly trying to make it up the ladder. In trading, just like in poker, it takes a lifetime to master. No one is ever good enough. Trading=poker=life, 3 different things but similar some ways, you need balls patience, and discipline to succeed.

Playing a little worse than break even

I did not want to sound negative with the title. That "little worse than break even" is probably the worst that can happen, or is it? Right now, I really do not know where I stand. I don't know if it's variance or bad play. I hope it's not the latter. I have released $140 of the massive $600 bonus from FullTilt. My current balance stands at $612. I'm technically down $128. Poker sucks when you're losing. Here's a screen shot of my sharkscope.




Having said all that, I'm not going to give up my grind. Quitting is for wimps and I'm no wimp but I am human, I am having a self-imposed 2-week layoff which started last Friday. No poker for me until the 28th, hmmmm well, it depends :)

So why am I taking a break. Eventhough I do make money (but not in the past 2 weeks) by playing full-time, I had several factors which weighed heavily for my decision. First, I'm officially on tilt for the first time in my poker life. Second, my butt literally hurts. Third, I haven't seen beautiful faces for the past week. Fourth, earning money online is cool, but doing nothing for the past 6-7 months got me burned out.

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This was my itinerary last Friday. I went out to buy some stuffs for my girlfriend who is working in a cruise ship somewhere in Europe. Then I went to a barbershop instead of a salon. I could not remember the last time a barber took my hair off. It was definitely before college. I gave myself a new clean-cut boyish look as opposed to a dirty madman look that I'm used to. After my haircut, I had my car washed. A car which hasn't tasted car foam for the last 2 months. Then, while waiting for it to get finished. I called up my buddy: "Yo, let's hit the gym tonight" - a statement I haven't made in 5 longs years. True enough, I hit the gym at 8pm that night and took anything my body can handle. Then, I went home and called it a day. You all know what happened the next morning, I literally rolled out of my bed. It's like my meat is getting grinded everytime I move. Bye gym, see you in the next 5 years.

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Update on the stocks I bought: I took OM at .011, price is now .012. I bought GMA at P10.00 and it is now at P9.20. Just like poker, I'm about break even right now.

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Damn I really have to end this short post. The moral story of the lesson? Enjoy poker! You treat it as work, it will be like one. You feel like you are good enough, think again. You'll never know when the poker gods will frown upon you. My parting words.. FULLTILT! I'LL BE BACK!

P.S. Today, September 18, is my B-day. Happy birthday to me happy birthday to me!

Just another bad beat post..

Ok, after 154 games at Fulltilt's $11s. I feel like I'm getting totally fucked up by bad luck. I'm down $6.10 which would not mean much. For the first time in my SNG poker grind (2900 games), I had 8 straight games where I had a dominating hand at the bubble and getting sucked out, KK < AK, QQ < some kind of 95, A7 < K7, AA < QQ. There won't be enough space to list them all here. I'm normally a level-headed kind of player. Never in 2900++ games have I ever felt so fucked up than the last 20 games or so and that says a lot. The thing is I'm playing close-to-perfect poker! Maybe just blame it on variance. When variance hits you, there's nothing you can do but wait for the cards to go your way. Enough of the rant now. After all, like what I used to say (type) on tables after getting sucked out, THAT'S POKER!

Bought stocks

I recently bought stocks from Omico Mining (OM) at P.011/share and GMA Holdings (GMAP) at P10.00/share. I deposited P25,000 at CitisecOnline.com about a month ago but only made my first trades this week. Unlike No Limit Holdem, stock trading is definitely new to me. I'm just a novice investor testing out the waters. I hope I don't get drowned. If I can double my initial investment in 3 months that would be great. I'll keep you updated on my progress as a wannabee Chris Gardner :)

Reached $1000 target at Stars

Finally, I reached my target of $1000 at Stars after 75 days and 1,610 games at the $6.50s, Whew! I started playing at Stars last June 14, 2007 after getting fed up with the outrageous disconnections at Pacific. Pacific has probably the worst poker software around although I miss the soft games there. Anyway, I'm switching to FullTilt, all because of two things: $600 bonus and 27% rakeback. It sucks to know that after playing 1,610 games at Stars, I did not get a single penny for rakeback, however, I got to order some of their merchandise. I'm now waiting for my wire transfer to get processed at Click2pay to play at FTP. It'll probably have to wait until next week.

Do you think it would be feasible to be bonus whoring around poker sites? I used to bonus whore on online casinos and found it very profitable. Absolute, Ulimtate, and some other sites offer humongous 100% bonuses but their games are not that liquid compared to Stars and FTP. You think it's worth the hassle?

Power failure...

So one fine Saturday afternoon, while almost everyone is in Hyatt Hotel for the APPT event, I opened up the usual 6-table session at Stars. Everything was running goot. After doubling up on a couple of tables, boom! Blackout! Sucks! But what can you do? If your DSL goes down, you can always have a back-up dial-up connection. With blackouts longer than 30 minutes, you can only hope for the best. Hope that you get to the bubble and the other 3 players start feasting on your blinds with stupendous raises. Well, that's what happened. I placed 3rd on 2 out of the 6 sngs. Sh*t happens but as my friend mnlgrind used to say: "Nice guys run goot" (^,^)

Dumb and Dumber

I chanced upon this heads-up battle between Chad Brown and Kristy Gazes. Just wondering, is anyone of you guilty of such a booboo while multi-tabling?

Warning: The movie you are about to see contains outrageous sequences and is not suitable for novice poker players.



What the hell were they thinking? First, we had Kristy reraising preflop then check the flop with the somewhat nuts, then bets the turn with 9 high. On the other hand, Chad calls the turn with the nuts, then checks behind on the river with the nuts. NUTS!

Finished playing 12 $6.50-turbos

Finally got to play poker today, played two sessions 6-tabling Pokerstar's 6.50 turbo. I did quite well. Made 2 first places , 4 seconds, and 2 thirds for a total of $62.40. Not bad for an hour and a half's work. I just hope this happens everytime I play... unfortunately, like life, the game of poker involves ups and downs. It's up to you to minimize your losses when you get unlucky and maximize your winnings when cards keep coming.