Seems like forever since I have written a blog containing poker so here goes. I will also bump this thread with new blogs when I write them etc.
I have been getting some PMS/IMS from people checking to see if I am selling any LHE shares for WSOP or running any cash game stakes in the future and the answer is no. While I would have loved to play some LHE events the only way it would have worked is if I was living in vegas or if I rented a place in Vegas for the month (which I may do next year) but the LHE events are spread too far apart and considering I am playing the Main Event I don't want to make 2 trips or be in Vegas for TOO long before the main event.
First plans were to sell off the $5000 LHE and the $2500 6 max LHE and come to town for that period but after sitting around and thinking about it and talking with my backer we decided the Main Event had MUCH MUCH more value. I think I am a +ev in the LHE fields but the prize pools are not huge. I made 2 deep runs 2 of the last 3 years finishing like 12th and 13th in LHE fields and the payout was like 11k and 14k or something like that. The Main event has so much more dead money and there is a ton of value for any player who has played a lot of MTTS or any player who is a winning cash player IMO. I play limit hold em for a living and I know when to lay on the gas and I can hand read pretty well and know when to lay off the gas and a lot of that translates over to NLHE. Sure it isn't the same exact science but a lot of skills can translate over in certain instances.
So anyhow on the cash game stakes I hope to be done with them forever. I had a lot of ups and downs from Black Friday until about this past September and most of it wasn't due to losing in games. A lot of it was me slacking in volume and spending money at a much faster rate than I was earning it. And then when I was hopping in some bigger games and losing it nearly crippled me a few times. Looking back I was pretty irresponsible from Black Friday until September of 2011 and it cost me a lot. I went over a lot of this on podcast I ran here which can be found here in the link below if anyone is interested. Podcast ran about 4 hrs or so and I went over a lot of stuff. I got a lot of positive responses from people who listened and applied a lot of the stuff I talked about and since the response was pretty good I will prob run another one of these at some point.
http://pokerfraudalert.com/forum/sho...-It-03-04-2013
So around mid December I finally got back to playing on my own again and I have been doing well since then. I don't know the exact numbers but leading up to me departing the stake I was running I was on like a $50,000 upswing in about 4 or 5 months of play which led to the decision of me to go back on my own. Since I have been on my own I have been in the zone and I am crushing the games harder than I ever have and I am up close to $60,000 this year playing cash games. So over the past 9 months or so I am up over $100,000 which is pretty good considering I live in the US and I am mainly play limit hold em.
Most of the action has been @ LHE but it is drying up a bit and I am always in search of new games so one day I decided to mess around with $50 HYPER HU NL sngos and I won like my first 8 and I was hooked. I quickly moved on to the $100 level and I started crushing those too. I was taking on mostly regs since I am an unknown in these and I was beating most of them and the majority of them don't come back to play me which led me to believe I am probably playing optimal or somewhat optimal. I def have a lot of improving to do in these but more or less I think i have them somewhat figured out. My end game needs a little work but outside of that I think i am playing pretty well. So I decided when I hit $2,000 in profit I would take shots @ the $200 level and I have broken about even there over a tiny sample but I was still beating the $100s and I hit about $3,500 in profit over 200 matches before a recent $1300 downswing. Here is what the graph looked like a few days ago.
Anyhow I am sitting @ about $2200 in profit right now and feel really comfortable playing these. A lot of the stuff is VERY VERY similar to LHE in the early stages of these but that obv changes as the blinds go up. I am going to tinker with these and aggressively take shots @ higher levels if I keep winning. I only have a 200 match sample which is tiny but just from how I have been playing I feel confident to keep trying to pound these.
So i ahd a diet thread here and I have more or less abandoned it but will give an update. Last I weighed in which was a couple weeks back I was -24 lbs from my start and I don't think I have moved much from there either way. My goal was -50 lbs by wsop which doesn't look to good now but we will see what happens over the next 3 weeks. I have been juicing here and there and I am back to a low carb high protein diet and I am extremely motivated to take off more weight right now for a couple of reasons.
For one I should be extremely motivated to just lose weight period but that's not how the human mind works for everyone. For me I get wrapped up in doing other things and I just lose focus on what should be my # 1 priority which is fitness and weight loss. But about 6 weeks or so back I started back up in a 3 on 3 mens hoop league and my body has responded pretty well so far but I know for me to keep playing at a somewhat high level I am going to have to keep shedding weight. For a guy my size basketball can take a huge toll on the body and after games it is a MUST that I stretch. But 2 weeks ago I did not. I came home and just sat at my desk and started to play poker. All of a sudden I felt a pinch in my lower back then it went further down to my thigh and to my knee and I knew exactly what it was.
It was a sciatic nerve that first acted up in 2009 and when it came about then it happened when I woke up. I woke and I could not get out of bed. I had no idea what it was. After going to the doc sometime after that I got a cortisone injection and it felt like nothing had ever happened. Then it was fine for 2 years until around May 2011 it happened again. I got another cortisone injection. It has been fine since but it is back in the same spot. I only feel pain maybe 3-4 times per week but I am going to try and get another injection before I leave for LV.
Other than that everything has been great. I am looking forward to getting out to vegas for the main event and I hope I have a nice run. The way the year has been going I am hoping my cash results and focus snowball to the main and I can make a deep run!