Damn Ringer's Poker Blog

I managed to create some time today to blog a little bit. I have been using all the time I have recently to try and grind. I’ve already played 20k hands in march and that’s basically unheard of. I’ve had maybe one other month where I’ve grinded 60k hands. Hopefully, I can put in some at least reasonable volume and actually pretend like I would like to save up for a down payment on a house this year. That being said, I don’t want to buy a house this year.

I’ve had an epiphany that putting in 30k hands a month is just not acceptable though. It’s not acceptable on the money front. I’ll still make 60k year doing that, but its completely unacceptable on the laziness front. I am spending almost no time actually grinding when I play 30k hands in a month. I could be at least doubling that profit. I am planning to start buckling down Monday through Friday night and really get some volume in and then take some vacations in the middle.

I went to visit my girlfriend a few times in February. I can’t really bring my entire desktop with me, nor do I really want to. I have a laptop that I bought for the purpose of grinding on the road with, but I really can’t play cascaded tables effectively. Solution: Rush poker. It’s perfect for what I’m trying to do. The games are a little crazier but for the most part the same thing as normal Full ring. I get in as many hands as I could 16 tabling by just playing 4 tables. I’ve had pretty good success with it. The rush poker will definitely help me meet my goals of 60k hands while I’m on the road as I tend to grind at least 3 hours of rush at a time. Its basically perfect.

Speaking of february here’s my results minus the 1500 or so I shipped playing rush on my laptop…

+$3k in coaching so about an 8k February overall

I’ve been coaching a ton recently, and its been a pretty damn enjoyable distraction from poker. I’ve been helping my students get their games on track and really focus on their mistakes. I’m beginning to amaze myself with how far I’ve come in the coaching game. I started coaching a few years ago and really had no idea what to do or how to express my thoughts on the game. Recently, I’ve gotten so much better at verbalizing everything and making each student hold themselves accountable. I’ve had several of my hardest working students really climb the ranks into the next limit or even up 2 limits. I have a slightly reduced coaching schedule for March but its slowly starting to fill up again. So let me throw a plug on here, if you are stuggling to beat 50nl or 100nl FR games, feel free to contact me about coaching. I have an excellent record of vastly improving winrates of my students at those limits. /self promotion

I have a few things planned in march already. Firstly, I have a trip to atlantic city planned on saturday. I really am not one for atlantic city but it sounded like a pretty fun time with a bunch of people I really like. I will be doing very little gambling and maybe a little poker. I have a feeling I’ll be more interested in the drinking and carrying on part though. Atlantic city is just such a trashy place that I get turned off by just about everything. The following thursday however, I have a trip to vegas planned. It’s a bachelor party for the weekend with one of my old roommates being the bachelor. I am going with a group of guys who love to blackout while drinking and have a ridiculous time. Its going to be a REALLY ugly situation but likely one of the most fun trips I’ve ever had. I look forward to it though. Haven’t been to vegas in awhile.

I actually ended up staying an extra day in vegas by myself cause I’m such an airfare nit that I didn’t want to pay the extra $300 for flying home on sunday. I was planning on staying with a friend when I bought tickets but I didn’t actually confirm they would be around. I checked to see if they were around and boom. Not there. So I don’t have a place to stay on sunday night. If anyone lives close to the strip and would be interseted in hanging on sunday or monday, let me know. I’ll be bored likely grinding all day with live poker (kill me now).

Anyways, I got a lesson scheduled now so I can’t blog aimlessly any longer. Until next time.

I mentioned it before but It looks like its here to stay… If you like the blog, You’ll likely like the twitter updates. I rarely update it with poker info but if ya like funny comments, sarcasm and useless info feel free to follow me. My twitter is “DamnRinger”. First name Eric.

If ya haven’t heard, there was a blizzard in DC this weekend. A little background about my “snow” life. I’d never seen more than a foot of snow before this year (unless you count skiing in CO). I grew up in Arkansas for most of my life and if we ever got enough snow to make a footprint, the city was shutting down. I moved to MD for a year before going to college and there was never any serious snow there either. At VT, I saw two snowstorms which I thought were big storms.

Cue December. We got 2.5 ft. of snow. I snowed myself in that weekend with about 8 of my friends and we got quite drunk and had a ton of fun. See this video of my dog playing in it if you are friends with me on FB. Deep Snow Video I had a great taste in my mouth about blizzards!

Cue 3 days ago. I had plans to hang with my gf this weekend and me and a few of my friends were gonna drive to blacksburg (home of the hokies) and go to a basketball game and pretend like we were still in college. Basically, my friends all backed out cause of the impending blizzard and it being pretty unlikely we’d make it home by monday morning… not to mention leaving town at the beginning of a blizzard isn’t a good idea either. I ended up deciding that I’d still go to blacksburg and hang with the GF due to previously discussed superbowl watching. Anyways, I get in the car on thursday night, hit traffic and decide I don’t want to do this drive. I turn the car around and go home, meanwhile I massively piss off the girlfriend in the process.

I get home and prepare for the blizzard. Snow starts coming down and I decide not to snow myself in with my friends again. I really had fun the last blizzard but their house is far too small for 10 people to function in. I didn’t feel like getting cabin fever again plus I really was looking forward to grinding this weekend since I have actually kinda managed to turn the losing around. I let my roommate talk me into going out Friday night to a pregame. We walk about a mile to get to a buddy’s house. We throwdown and get bombed. A pretty awesome time too. I got to the bar and then got word that my friends and gf were all doing a skype power hour. Now I dunno who came up with this idea, but it sounded amazing. Not to mention I’m like the king of skypia with how much I use it for coaching. I am pretty excited while I’m walking the mile home in the snow. I notice the snow is really starting to pile up while I was drinking. I turn onto my street finally and something doesn’t seem right. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but something just seemed off. I get to my house, unlock the door and BOOM no power. Of course, there were no lights on my street that’s what was off. And with a fell swoop of the tree any chance of me having a pretty fun blizzard were basically over.

The worst part of not having power in a blizzard isn’t the fact that you can’t use all your awesome electronics or even that the house is kept @ 40 degrees because you have no heat. No no the worst part by far is the fact that i couldn’t make coffee. Haha… ok maybe that wasn’t the worst part. Maybe the fact that our perishables in the fridge weren’t’ gonna go bad cause the house was a fridge. The house was cold. I went to bed that night in a kinda warm house without heat and I woke up to a freezing pillow on the otherside of the bed and a dog that couldn’t be more interested in spooning. I ended up reading magazines until my roommate finally woke up at 2pm. I called the power company and they said the power would be back by 3pm. I was skeptical but sure. I didn’t know at the time but apparently some 200k people lost power in the DC area so the power companies had their hands full.

One cool thing the power company did have was a phone alert message when the power was back on! I thought that was amazing since the last thing I wanted to do was walk a mile every time I wanted to find out if we still had an icebox with a foundation. Me and my roommate decided to walk a mile and go hang with one of our friends who had power. We ended up drinking pretty heavily again as that’s basically all there is to do while cooped up with 10 other people. I finally decided at 10pm that I needed to go home and make sure my dog was doing ok. Now I felt pretty bad about leaving him in the 40 degree house for any extended period of time, but there’s not much I could do about it. I figured he’d get way colder walking a mile in snow that completely surrounded him. Not to mention my friend’s place didn’t allow dogs.

I still hadn’t received any alert on my phone telling me that power was restored. On my walk however I saw 3 power trucks go rumbling by from the direction of my neighborhood. That had to be a good sign right? I get home and all the lights are on and its still freezing. I check my phone and it would appear that I missed the call from the power company while I was walking home all bundled up. It was back! and the best part is shooter (my dog) was good to go!

I have a feeling it was because I put him in his snuggie. Clearly he loves the damn thing. See picture below…

*Note I didn’t purchase clothing for my dog, it was a gift from my gf*

After the Blizzard was done snowing we got close to 30 inches of snow (the most I’ve ever seen in a storm by far). I believe that broke the record snowfall in one event for DC ever. Pretty impressive that it was the second big snowstorm in 3 months and there’s still a month to go in winter. Even with deciding not to go to tech, not snowing myself in with a bunch of friends, and getting the power knocked out. I feel like I made the best of the 2nd Blizzard of my life and realized that I really like snow. Here’s holding out for number 3! and maybe I should move to Colorado next?

I’m now looking to get some grinding in before the superbowl. I haven’t managed to do a serious squares game yet. If anyone is putting together like $100 squares *cough* Vizer *cough*, hit me up as I’d be down for a few. On that note, I will root with vizer this round. Go Colts! Peyton Manning will be the first QB to win the Superbowl and win the Superbowl Commericals in the same night. How can you not root for history?

I’m intentionally not mentioning poker much. You’ll get your update someday and hopefully its sweet.

Full Tilt Poker gets my bravo for their recent actions. I’ve kinda been all over poker sites for the last 2 years. I spent a year at Cake Poker and before that have played Stars, Paradise and Party. Full Tilt has gone from a cartoony site to a true industry leader.

Its incredible to think that just 2 weeks ago there were an average 4 shortstackers per table on Full Tilt mid-stakes full ring tables. Literally over night the games went from ok/bad to amazing. Full Tilt hasn’t gotten enough praise for this risky move in my opinion. They literally closed the door on hundreds (if not thousands) of players who put in very good volume and said they weren’t interested in their business. This is a pretty damn tough thing to do in any aspect of life especially business. Turning off a known fixture for promise of a better situation. I was thinking today while playing that I have completely forgotten about shortstackers ever playing in my games and that’s pretty F-ing awesome.

The shortstackers were claiming that fish liked to buyin for the table minimum and that if they raised the minimum they would scare the fish away… couldn’t be more wrong. I’ve played with more deep stacked fish than ever in the past 2 weeks. Its just funny to think with all the threats and possible things that could go wrong, it would appear by just listening to their bread and butter customers Full tilt has knocked one out of the park. I think this is going to be a very good sign for things to come with the site. They have already added more new features to help make their software smoother since D-Day (doom day for the shortstackers). I was talking to another regular on FTP today and we were talking about FTP doing the little things.

I hadn’t really thought about it, but FTP has been adding little features constantly since i’ve moved back over from cake poker. I really think its software is better than stars now. If FTP ends up creating a system to reward their regulars on top of rakeback, i think stars is done for in the cash game department.

All that praise said, I think there is probably some serious caution that FTP will need to exercise in the future. They are turning into a genie in a bottle recently. They essentially do what is asked of them and that’s really something amazing. But with this there is going to be ideas that just plan don’t work. They are going to sink money into an idea that sounds good on paper but doesn’t work. I hope that the powers to be realize that failure on some level is going to happen and to not be stubborn. Just let those ideas that didn’t work go, and move onto the next awesome feature that looks good on paper.

Notice I haven’t mentioned Rush poker yet. I think this is an amazing idea by them, but i don’t think its going to ever really pan out. I give it probably another 3 months before the only games running of it are 50nl and below. I don’t see any interest staying maintained. If rush poker does end up not being as big a hit as thought, I hope FTP has the guts to admit it didn’t work and not try to force it down the players throats.

I look forward to things to come in the future from FTP. I have a feeling that if online poker ever gets completely “legalized” that FTP will be there first making crazy innovations. I, for one, am pretty happy with FTP being the leader of the industry and of innovation in the industry.

***sorry ahead of time for typos… I don’t feel like proofreading this monster***

Its 4am, I just finished watching 3 episodes of South Park, a Daily Show and a Colbert. I also just read the entire Muk well on 2p2. I think its a safe bet, I’m not as tired as I wanna be. This blog might actually be one of those epic ones that is completely TL;DR. I’m on my laptop in bed, so sadly I don’t have fun graphs or any fun pictures.

First things first, one of the players I personally have grown to respect the most and personally think is an awesome guy, GoMukYaself is doing a well on 2p2. Its a phenomenal read so far, and I’ve never partaken in a well before but i’m gonna change that with him. For those that don’t know, a “well” as its called is a poker player starting a thread saying essentially “ask any question and I will answer”. I’d always personally had it on my to-do list if I ever became big time enough for people to care about my answers. However, after reading some of the questions people ask you on these things, I’m not sure. The one that stands out is being asked by another man how often you do your own deed. I mean if that’s not the most awkward question to ask another male over the internet, I dunno what is. Here’s the link to his “well” for those intersted or too internet stupid to get their on their own… http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/117/medium-high-stakes-full-ring/well-gomukyaself-693792/

Another ridiculous thread that I think is now finally over was the Jason Ho coaching scam. I personally don’t know the guy or any of his students but the entire situation is a complete shit show. If you wanna read about that whole ordeal, here’s the link: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/101/coaching-advice/where-did-jason-ho-thread-get-moved-695466/ Its a really long thread but the basic jest of it is the following: a coach allegedly lied or coerced students into giving him money, he’s allegedly a bankrupt deadbeat and he makes some pretty incriminating posts in the thread in my eyes.

Being very active in the coaching world myself, I see on basically a daily basis how much your students trust you as a teacher. They hire you and for the most part give you the reigns to their bankroll. I did always think that coaching could be a very dangerous thing in the control of a bad person. I’m not calling Jason Ho a bad person at all because like I said, I don’t know a thing about the dude other than what is alleged. I am just saying its a situation where if I weren’t honest or wanted to rip someone off, I could easily do it and get away with it. Luckily, I respect my reputation as well as my conscious. I find it ridiculously interesting however to see just how far it really was possible to take advantage or people. I guess that’s really all I have to say about that. I’ll end this segment by saying, never trust anyone on the web with a transfer or your passwords. I know its common sense but sometimes you get messages from “pros” and feel obligated. I know I have. Just keep the dick attitude and tell other “random” players “absolutely not” unless you are 100% comfortable.

Let me segue that talk about coaching scandal into a paragraph about my own coaching. I personally have the highest volume of students I’ve ever had at the moment. I currently have 8 students with another in the wings and have been contacted on a nearly daily basis by interested parties. I always love having a number of students. It might sound ridiculous but its always a learning experience for me taking on a new student. Every student I’ve ever had has brought something new to the table and at the very least reminded me of something simple I had forgotten and at the most actually made me better. I am still taking students so please don’t take this as me saying I have too many students. I am never going to be a guy who steamlines his coaching and cookiecuts his students. That said perhaps I need to up the price as everyone seems to think they are getting a bargain . Sorry that paragraph kinda rambled. Cliffnotes: I have gotten alot of interest in my coaching recently, I love coaching, and I am not overloaded.

So I was talking to my parents today, they just got back from a 3 week trip to New Zealand and Austrailia. I was giving them the update on my life and I came to realize I’ve basically accomplished accidentally everything I wanted to do awhile back. I just booked a trip to Europe for Oktoberfest (travel abroad). I am starting volunteering for the American Cancer Society on wednesday (volunteer). I have a ton of coaching opportunties (focus more on incorporating myself). I am on the p90x workout plan and loving every second of it (get fit and stop being a lazy dick). My days now have some congruency to them. I coach in the afternoons, workout in the evening, coach a little more, play poker (work) from 11pm til around 3am. Sleep and do it again. Its definitely no 9 to 5 but I feel better about myself and have more human interaction than I did basically all of last year. Pretty cool that I did all that stuff without even trying… it just sorta happened.

As far as the poker goes… rigged January is over, and it was another down month and it will mark the first time in my pro career i’ve had back-to-back losing months. I have moved back to 200nl for the time being. Especially with tax season coming up, I want to make sure I don’t overextend myself as I really don’t want to drop my online roll below a comfortable shottaking level and I don’t want to pull money out of stocks or savings. I hope I don’t run badly through April as that would be incredibly disheartening. I am focusing alot on my non-sd winnings for the time being and trying really hard not to give money away post-flop and focus on spots to win pots that I would usually squander. I think that’s my personal biggest leak. I fire bets and just give up on them. I know its my biggest leak, but for some reaosn I’ve just never made a conscious effort to eliminate it. I will be focusing on that for february and try to have a break even red line for once. Did i just admit that my red line isn’t positive? Imagine that. Won’t hear a winning mid/low stakes reg admit that very often.

As you can tell by this blog post, I’m pretty happy with my life at the moment. I have surrounded myself with people that make me happy and its doing wonders for me. I would usually be at stressed factor 5 having 2 losing months in a row, but I’ve set myself up financially at this point for it really not to be a big deal. I will win again, and this will seem like a hilarious period where I overadjusted my game to try and get levels above. My support group is perfect at the moment. I owe that alot to such good friends and in part to a good girlfriend. I look forward to 2010 being more profitable than 2009, but if it isn’t I suppose I’ll survive.

oh and here’s a picture that made me laugh out loud at my desk…

So I’ve been kinda all over the board with poker recently. The running bad hasn’t stopped and has led to the inevitable playing bad. I’m treading water but that’s kinda boring so on the poker front. Just know that I’m not doing well this month. There have been a ton of new amazing updates in the poker world though. Rush poker is amazing. Alot of people have been bitching that it will ruin poker, and its perfectly possible. But anything that allows me to play 2000 hands of poker in an hour is absolutely amazing. I don’t know if I’m good at it yet either. I have been pretty much breaking even mostly due to the fact that I like to play like an idiot alot. The regular games look good too without shortstackers. Most people are very anti-shortstacker and I’m certainly no different. I wanted them gone because i just couldn’t beat them and had to play around them. It was very annoying. Thankfully, we’ll be seeing ya shorties. Start full stacking.

I made a new year’s resolution that I wouldn’t eat anything with a drive thru in 2010. I’ve done fine on that resolution so far, but I managed to fall into a new one as well. I started doing p90x (a set of workout DVD’s). It’s a pretty intense workout program that requires you to work hard for 90 days to see results. So far, I’ve really enjoyed it. I look forward to the workout time every day. The best part is that it has me doing exercises I would never do on my own and working me way harder than I ever would work myself. Its like my own personal trainer. I’m by no means a fat guy but i’m certainly not in shape. I have been just constantly putting on weight over the last 2 years and i guess its time to stop. I weigh 195 and am 6′1 at the moment which I think makes me fat. I’m 2 weeks in and have no desire to quit. I will try to update the blog a little more regularly with results and developments about the workout plan.

That’s about all i got.

Well Happy New Year Guys! I have been kinda all over the place between spending a week at the beach. I had a terrible end to the year and its really been messing with me mentally. The mid-stakes kinda did a number on me… and i’m trying to recover mentally. Here’s my graph from December…

click to enlarge

I’ve been trying to step down to 200nl to recover and just get my groove back. That graph doesn’t include about 1.5k worth of losses from my laptop. I ended down on the year and down on mid-stakes.

The new year so far has been less than lovely, but that’s mostly from the confidence I lost in my play and making bad decisions on the tables. I also keep making decisions to play on my laptop and that’s really been ugly. I finally looked at my laptop database and my non-sd winnings are going straight down and i’m playing something like a 14/10. I am going to stop grinding on my laptop for the time being until I can learn to cascade profitably.

One side note, I joined twitter and will be updating quite regularly. Alot of it will just be gibbish about my life and daily happenings but feel free to follow me. My screen name is damnringer on there.

I’ll try to update the blog again soon with a life update as there’s been quite alot happening. I just figured I need to update something here, cause you guys are getting restless! Later.

click for the full view of pain

Well, I’m getting drunk now.

The murder mystery party was this weekend. It was absolutely awesome. The party wasn’t a disaster as I previously said it could be. It was a great time, and everyone did their characters wonderfully. I went balls to the wall with my character. I shaved a goatee and even grew out my hair and then shaved the top of my head to look like an old creepy dealer. I also put on a southern draw, and talked a little slower. I thought my character was pretty fun.

The rundown of the party was basically celebrating and socializing for 3 hours. We met each other’s characters, flirted with our “love” interests, and complete our character’s objectives. This of course was done while putting down a ridiculous number of liquor drinks. That’s right, we made our murder mystery party a bring your own fifth liquor party. Things got pretty out of hand pretty quickly.

My objectives were to protect my love interest and please my boss the casino owner. I thought I did a good job of both. After the socializing, we got called into the living for a toast to the casino’s success and the lights went out and my roommate “the high roller” was “dead” on the ground when the lights came back on. We then all acted shocked and my roommate then went into another room and came back as the inspector sent to investigate the murderer. Overall, It was great and well done. Obviously everyone knew the murder was coming when he had the toast, and the only thing I knew was that I wasn’t getting murdred (cause i didn’t know to fall down). We then went around doing our own interrogations and determining motives from the other guests. Everyone had a motive and there were a few piece of evidence as well.

In the end, I ended up guessing wrong. But I leveled myself because I didn’t think there was anyway that the murderer could be so obvious. Only one person in the party got it right, and he won more alcohol. The cast of the party was as follows:

Casino Owner
Casino Owner’s Wife
Casino Owner’s Daughter
Casino dealer (me)
Elvis Impersonator
News Reporter
Security Guard
High Roller
Showgirl
The High Roller’s wife
Bartender
Waitress
Bookie
Piano Player

I think I got everyone. The party was kinda elaborate and there was a “script” to follow basically. I can’t imagine coming up with our own characters and storyline. I think we are gonna try to do another one sometime in the future. Perhaps a high school reunion theme!

After the party, we went to a local bar in costume and got trashed further. Overall, it was a great night. Here’s some pictures from my facebook album:

Me and the Roommate (Showmeflops on FTP)

The Bar Situation

Piano Paul

The Girls and the High roller

Me and the Bookie

Playing fake money blackjack… how it didn’t turn real is beyond me.

Elvis!

Bottle Service!

Obviously respect our champagne room.

Bottles. Bottles and Bottles.

There’s been a murda!

Me and Elvis

The Inspector demanding information

Late night drunkenness.

Overall an awesome night. Later guys!

November is wrapping up and good lord was it swongy! Here’s the graph…

Click to Enlarge

I’ll get the generic bitching out of the way first:

[x] I ran 2k under ev
[x] I run terrible @ 2/4
[x] Should have been a 10k month
[ ] I was actually tilted by these swings

All that said, these months happen. They can’t always been rainbows and butterflys with a straight line to the moon. I had to rearrange my schedule a bit to start taking 2/4nl shots. I could play mornings at 1/2nl and really only worry about playing with Ren as other decent competition. The 2/4nl tables in the morning tend to not only be crap but also there’s like 8 running. I have started going to bed at closer to 5am or 6am now as to allow maximum grind window at 2/4nl. I think I played fine this month all things considered just a bumpy one.

Now onto the life part of the blog post, my thanksgiving was great. I ate an abundance of ridiculously delicious food and my mother has once again outdone herself on the awesomeness of the food. We did thanksgiving with just my immediate family and a close friend of my sisters’. This is absolutely the way I prefer my holiday dinners. My other relatives that live close to us tend to be a little stuffy and “proper”. We did thanksgiving there last year and while it was great, I just like being inappropriate at the drop of a hat and that just isn’t the place for it. My family dinner however, is the place. This is, of course, the people that raised me. Other than the holidays, It’s been a pretty relaxed month.

A group of my friends have decided we want to a murder mystery party. If you are up to date on the office series, you know exactly what inspired us. We are doing it this Friday, and I’m ridiculously excited about it. It will be a “Las Vegas Murder”. Its not often that you can pull together 15 friends for an “in-character” murder mystery party. I will be playing the part of a womanizing black jack dealer… not too far from mark i suppose. If this one goes well, we will likely be doing these on a semi-regular basis. It should be sick, oh and not to mention there will be an open bar. Watching people stay on objectives while 8 beers deep should be interesting at best. Could be the greatest party of all time, or a complete disaster.

I suppose I should address a few other things. I’m still hooked up call of duty: MW2. I’m still hooked on mario party parties. I’ve been a total slack-a-potamus on the working out. Dreary weather for some reason just makes me not want to put heavy things in the air repeatedly. I passed on an Atlantic City trip this past weekend for no reason other than “i didn’t feel like it”.

I think that just about sums up everything. Til next time, Collini Out!