Damn Ringer's Poker Blog

Hopefully this isn’t turning into a habit for me, but I have lost the bug to play again. It’s like I work so hard to get a month complete and feeling really good about my game then I almost push the reset button on my drive. I think it comes from the fact that I basically live in months where people with jobs live in years. I shoot for a monthly goal and then if I meet it, I’m content and have a feeling of pride. This in-turn i suppose leads to having no interest in playing the next few days of a month. That said, I have played around 6k hands, and have run about $1k under EV. Probably leading to my lack of love for the game at the moment.

I have been trying to move to 400nl, but to be honest its really almost impossible with the times I play. The games are just so infested with shortstackers and there’s so few games, there’s almost no way to do it. I have been subbing in 1/2 deep and 1/2 ante deep tables to play to the size of those games. I’m perfectly comfortable with the idea of $800 pots again, but I am not comfortable with playing against 7 ssers. Lets hope that FTP finds a fix to this issue and stat.

Enough Poker.

The hokies suck. Haha. I went to the game, and got blitzed while hanging with some pretty awesome friends so i can’t complain too much. That said, that was the least amount of fun I could have possibly had in blacksburg without getting arrested. See Fuppnasty on FTP for hilarious stories about being arrested. Either way, that was great fun minus the hokies sucking part.

We came back on saturday morning so we could do halloween in DC. I dressed up as “rocking out with your cock out”. This is something new for me. Usually I do awesome costumes but I’ve never gone the raunchy route, and I don’t think I’m doing it again. It was a huge hit among my friends, but basically everybody I spoke with at the bar was kinda creeped out. The fake unbuttoned fly looked so real that I think people actually thought I had my pants unbuttoned all night, thus I creeped people out. I think in the future of my halloween onwards I will be something cute, cuddly and fun. Here’s the pic of me from halloween:

Its just a fake fly that went over my real jeans.

We tried to go to the biggest party in northern VA at a place called clarendon ballroom. This went over terrible as by 8pm there was a line that was literally around the block and it was already 1 in and 1 out. We aborted that plan and went to another bar which was actually surprisingly not packed because the fire marshall was there making sure they didn’t go over capacity. It was great, and definitely the least packed i’d ever seen that bar. We basically had the patio to ourselves.

I went a few “dates” to movies in the past weeks. I went to go see “the invention of lying” which I thought was really funny and clever, but I was the only person in the theater laughing, which made things awkward. I also saw “zombieland” which was pretty great. I liked that it didn’t really go anywhere but just murdering zombies. I have a few more movies I’d like to see, but that will likely be with dudes instead of with a girl as apparently I love burning bridges with chicks right now.

That’s basically all that is exciting. We have another hokie game tonight, and I honestly don’t care if we lose or not. But I will be throwing down for it. So on that note, LETS GO! BUD LIGHT!!!

Lets hope i get some motivation to play some volume before Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 comes out… cause ain’t nothing getting done for days after that thing drops. Have a good weekend ya’ll.

Also, Look forward to a “1 Year as a Pro” post coming up in the next week or so. I will discuss how much my life has changed and how stress-less being a professional poker player really is when you do it right.

Let me start this blog off by talking about how much fun I had this past weekend. The weekend started a little early and we did our normal happy hour on thursday. It was a blast minus one key fixture of the happy hour. We came back from the bar a little bit early because we have a mario party addiction in our house. My friend, Lindsay, brought over Mario Party for Wii, and myself and all my friends have been hooked since. I even gambled on a game of it. For those that have never heard of it, Its basically a board game for Wii where you have challenges against your friends for points. Its pretty fun for drinking.

Pretty much every night this weekend started off with Mario Party and 8 beers. Friday night I went to a b-day party for one of my ex-gfs (no, not that one) and it was an awesome time. It really helped that I brought along 3 of my boys as I didn’t really know too many people. She had the downstairs of a lounge to her party and one other. Everyone got basically blacked out and I’m sure she had a really good time and that’s really all that’s important right? We ended up coming home and playing drunk Mario Party until like 5am. Are you catching the theme yet? We are absolutely hooked.

Saturday it was a Hokies bye week so a rare opportunity to actually have a productive Saturday in the fall. I played a little poker while running like god. I also played some more mario party when a few of my friends came over. We started pre-gaming at around 8 for another birthday party at Clarendon Grille (a local bar with live music). I had another great time and hung out with basically every friend I had in the city, which was fantastic. I love combining groups of my friends, as it makes for an optimal good time for me. The girls at the party wanted to go out in DC 2am since the bars in virginia close at 2 but in DC they close at 3. Me and my roommates thankfully passed on that option, cause I clearly already had enough alcohol.

That was pretty much my weekend and hopefully I have a bunch more like them.

Onto other stuff… Shooter, my dog, hurt himself somehow a few days ago. I can’t quite figure out what he did but he’s incredibly tender on his back and belly. I’m taking him to the vet tomorrow, so hopefully its nothing serious and they just give him some doggy pain killers. He won’t jump which is just depressing, cause the dog has crazy ups and can’t get to alot of his favorite places (mainly my bed). The one thing that sucks about owning a dog is paying $300 for a vet visit, but it doesn’t happen very often and i guess he’s worth it.

And last but not least, Poker stuff. I have got my motivation back to play. I don’t know what happened but these past 2 weeks I’ve felt like I can do no wrong in poker. It’s really an awesome time. I have made about 25 bi’s in the last week after breaking even for the rest of the month. Hopefully I can finish off strong as I’m going to be heading off to VT on thursday and that will end my month. Either way, I’m pretty happy with my poker progress and I’m really starting to reap the benefits of living with better poker players in vegas. I think I’m 3x better than I was when I first went out. I can’t wait to see what else progresses.

I’ve been trying to play 2/4nl recently, but the games are just totally crap. I have been substituting that urge with the 1/2 deep ante tables that basically play like 2/4 tables in size. I thought the shortstacking problem was bad at 1/2 but scouting out the 2/4 games, its absolutely awful there. I can’t believe the regs are willing to sit with 5 shortstackers to get to a fish. I’ll continue to try and take shots there, but i’ve been more tempted to just shoot for 600nl as the games tend to have less shorties and a few less regs too. I’ll get back to you guys after I take a few shots at each. Hopefully, I don’t busto myself in the process.

This will prolly be the last blog for the month, barring something hilarious or horrible. So look for me on Thursday night football at VT… and ya know, have a good week and all that jazz.

I got tons of motivation. The only problem is its motivation to totally immerse myself in football and beer! I haven’t been playing poker too much and when I do I’m simply doing it to make iron man. I think this is going to turn into a trend with me, I have spurts of heavy motivation followed by a burnout period. I am currently in the later.

If you’ve seen me at 100nl, its not because I’m on a downswing/busto/geting beat at 200nl. Its simply because I don’t want to think too much. I have been making some pretty terrible plays this month and definitely don’t want to the spew to hit me to the tune of 4 figures. I am playing only deep tables however, but the competition is hilariously different. I mean the deep tables at 200nl have pretty much only the best regs and 2 to 3 fish. At 100nl, the deep tables have 4 fish regs, 3 fish, and another decent reg. I’m gonna hate writing this next paragraph but I feel like its gotta be addressed at some point…

Shortstackers are suffocating the 200nl+ games. I haven’t been able to play a decent 200nl table for more than 30 minutes without it getting mobbed by shortstackers. I don’t like being the guy who complains about this stuff but its getting out of hand. If full tilt doesn’t do anything about this problem, they are going to lose their regulars. That’s all I’ll say. I don’t have a grand solution and don’t care how they take care of it, but it needs to be done.

Onto the life part of the blog and we’ll get the nasty outta the way first, I appreciate all the comments about the ex/cheating stuff. Either way, I’ve completely removed her, as well as, my old friend who let me look a fool for months, from my life so she won’t be a reoccurring theme on this blog. /annoying woman stuff on blog

I have been following hokie football like its going out of style and really enjoying it. The hokies look hella-good this year and its been an absolute blast to watch. I can’t wait for this weekend and hopefully we beatup GT, and move onto a nice bowl game. I’d argue there’s almost no way we make the national championship even if we win out so i’ll settle for an awesome bowl game.

I’ve also finally decided what I will do with my free time as well as made some action towards it. I am going to start volunteering for the American Cancer Society. I haven’t picked a cause before but I figure cancer is a logical choice since it sucks ass. I haven’t decided what exactly I’m going to do yet but I’m excited about my options. I will likely start with a few little things at events like registration desk or something easy like that til I get the hang of this charitable thing. I’m excited to see where this takes me and start using my downtime for good.

I also started playing in a live poker game that’s a really fun time. Its a 50nl game, and no one takes themselves seriously, which is always key. The last thing I need is to play a game where people actually take it so seriously they get upset or angry. I deal with that crap the rest of the time when I play poker. It is nice to unwind at a live game and really just play dumb poker and drink beers. The guy who hosts the game I learned has a podcast which is a really really cool idea. Basically him and his roommate (and sometimes guests) just get shitfaced while talking about all sorts of fun stuff. I can’t believe I never thought of that. Me and my roommate have been joking about how funny we’d be on a radio show forever, and yet the idea of just up and creating a website for ourselves has never crossed our mind. Kudos to the guys for doing a really fun awesome idea. I won’t plug their actual podcast til I know they want it but maybe in a few update I’ll plug em.

That’s about all I have to say… now off to happy hour! And if you see me at 100nl tonight try to stack me cause I’ll be playing like a muppet!

What’s happenin boys and girls? Its been awhile… My bad, I’ve been feeling sorta down recently so writing was like the last thing I wanted to do. Alas, I’m back to feeling somewhat like a real human being. I’ve been pretty impressed with my skill in leaving my emotional shit at the door when I have been playing poker. So that said lets look at my crappy September…

click to enlarge

I ran like total crap in the beginning of the month along with playing terribly. I managed to put in a decent volume though and net 7k + coaching so something like 8k for september. This is only the second month in my life i’ve played more than 50k hands. My 1/2 WR was over 3.5ptbb… which was solid. I also had a little running bad at 2/4 at the end there. Overall, I feel like things are really starting to come together, and I love the fact that the awful breakeven stretch is over. I realize now how high strung I was then. I actually hit my desk more than once, which is pretty damn out of character for me. I am going to be looking to take more shots at 2/4 this month when the games look good. Alright so there’s the poker results stuff outta the way from last month.

One more poker thing i’ll touch on is TableNinjaFT. I just got the program and I can’t say enough good things about it. I can’t understand how I did this before. The mouse over option is ridiculous. Its allowed me to add 3 tables onto the 12 I already play. So I should be 15-16 tabling from now on as long as I can keep my WR up. I’m also waiting for FTP to add a 30 inch monitor to their store. I don’t need another mammoth TV but I’m gonna default to it if that thing doesn’t show up soon.

Onto life stuff, like I said i’ve been feeling down recently. I am just in rut with never leaving my house. I feel like I’m going crazy. I’ve been trying to go on like a few dinner dates a week, but its still not really enough. I need to find someone to hang with during the day, that I can just shoot the shit with. It isn’t gonna happen because real people work and I don’t want some creepy bum in my house haha. Last week, I was so bored I just up and drove to charlotte for the week. It was a good time, but clearly this can’t become habit for me. On top of just being generally depressed from never leaving the house, I got the wonderful news my ex has already got a new bf, and it was exactly who I figured it was and exactly who i thought was responsible for it. Knowing didn’t make it any easier though. It’s a shitty feeling confirming you got cheated on (which is a first for me), and then left because some dude is better than you (which is a second for me). It doesn’t help the likely reasoning was “he’s in vegas, he’s probably doing girls, I gotta have some fun”. Makes me sorta regret the Vegas thing and especially the being a loyal bf thing. Its super weak sauce, but I’ve coped with similar feelings before so I’ll be fine… just hopefully its sooner rather than later. Writing that down did make feel better. WOOOO!

On a lighter note, I got a book for recreational reading. This is big news for me as I’ve never done this before. I love the Dan Brown books however, so one about the city I live in is hella-exciting. Its called “the lost symbol”. I think my plan at the moment is read the book, then go explore the book’s momuments around dc on a date or something.

Panda Bear Madness Minute!!!!

Ok so I might have sucked you in with the title. There’s not a ton of new stuff to talk about but we’ll give it a go. I’ll break it down into categories as promised:

Hokie Football:

I went to ATL for the VT/Alabama game. I know alot of guys aren’t into college football or anything other than poker, but if you can’t handle this chatter move onto a category that interests you. We managed to lose the game barely but we really should have lost by 30 pts. Our offense is a joke and we just ran hot to be able to force a turnover and run back a kickoff. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have been on the board. It was a blast though. Let me say however 8 hours of tailgating is too much tailgating. I’m going to be going to several more games this season especially since I don’t have much else to do and my drive to play poker this month is just none-existent (see later).

Bengals Football:

Kill yourself bengals. I hate watching your games because I know something bad is going to happen.

Kanye West:

Poker:

As mentioned above, I really have no desire to play this month for some reason. It would seem I am getting a ton of invites from people I haven’t seen in awhile to go out and get drinks and I’m really enjoying it. I will likely get back on the horse and play cards for some amount this month. Currently however, I’m about breakeven on the month and 12k hands in. I can’t seem to get anything going and can’t seem to run good to save my life. The only reason i’m breakeven on the month however is that I really brought my D game for the first few days of the month. I let me non-sd winnings just slip into a ski slope. That’s the one crappy thing about being a poker player, if I show up to work half-assed… I donate my bankroll off. Be happy you don’t have to pay your boss when you do half-assed work some days.

Life:

Nothing too new on the life front. I have really bored recently, and still need to pick up a new hobby. I have really fallen in love with guitar again, and have been learning a new song basically daily. I need to start graduating to some harder stuff however, I just keep playing acoustic songs that are fun to sing to like “If you could only see” by tonic and “All for you” by sister hazel (no homo). I am thinking about picking up some zepplin tunes and trying to nail down some sweet solos which I rarely have the patience to learn. Drums are coming along well too. I am about 20 beats through this DVD and starting to feel pretty good about my drumming skills. I think i’m above average now, but still totally suck and it definitely doesn’t come as naturally as it should when i’m rocking out.

I have also been working out a ton. I am starting to make progress however I’m still lifting puny weights by normal guy standards but you gotta start somewhere. Hopefully within a year, I’ll have changed my body from blah to awesome. Working out everyday should help that along.

here’s another kanye moment:

I think its more than safe to say that my breakeven stretch is finally over. I had been breaking even since the end of May before this month. I really started to doubt my game but was quite impressed with the way I came out of the stretch. I have already figured out that vegas made me a much better player and much better hand reader. It feels great to put in some serious volume and finally be enjoying poker again. I am still running about 1.1k below expectation this month but its not too big of a deal. I am pretty close to even at EV on the year. I plan to put in some more volume the rest of this month. My current plan is to probably play another month of 1/2 and start trying to move back up to 2/4 and 3/6 by the end of the year. It’s a pretty reasonable goal i think. Hopefully, that will also aid in getting me to my financial goals for the year.

On a personal note, I have had a few things going on in my life recently. I moved to Washington DC to live with my long time gf, Leigh. We lived together for about 3 weeks and things were just weird. I finally got her to talk last weekend and she was in fact “not in love with me”. I figure a ton of you guys think that the status change was another elaborate prank by us (which its understandable why you might think that). It isn’t and I would say there is a 99.9% chance we are done for good. However, there was no big to-do. No big fight and I think she felt really guilty for even doing it. It’s likely just she is interested in another guy, which I’m surprisingly fine with (which was the main reason I realized it was time to move on). I am more happy to not be in a relationship that is treading water. It was pretty crummy timing however, considering I moved from a city I absolutely loved to one I really kinda hate and stayed faithful to a girl while I was spending 3 months in Vegas. I do however get to live with my best friend from college, so that’s a definite plus. I’ve gotten so use to change recently I’m really kinda falling in love with it. I’m gonna stay in DC for a full year, and then re-assess in 2010.

On a different note, I went to a wedding this past weekend in Richmond to watch one of my fraternity brothers get married and shindig afterwards. It was a great time, but let me say… I hate Richmond. It was just a terrible city. We had a really great time though, and I met alot of fun new people and got some see alot of old faces I hadn’t seen in forever.

I have also decided to pick up the drums. Me and Klein setup the drumset tonight and were messing around with it. I think i’m going to take some lessons and try to get really good. It’s gonna sound gay, but I got the urge to play drums after playing the new guitar hero: world tour game all summer. I was doing several songs on expert and really really enjoying the riffs. I felt like I had a natural gift with the drums so I’m gonna pursue it. My room is gonna be setup with 2 guitars and a drumset… it will be the rockout room of our house. I’m pretty excited about it. I’ll post pictures after I get the whole thing setup.

I think that’s about everything in my life at the moment. So on that note, this blog ends.

3 days ago I woke up in the morning to that elusive scratchy throat. I knew it was coming and despite drinking as much orange juice and water as possible all that day, I woke up the next morning with the shittiest sore throat ever and a likely fever. I pretty much decided to sleep all day and just watch ESPN. However, I kept getting phone messages from PTR telling me that a few of my favorite fish were online. One particular fish who multitables 200nl was on 8 tables so I decided to just weather the storm and sit with him. It was a terrible idea. I quickly found myself getting outplayed and just playing overall bad.

I managed to lose 3.5 buyins before I decided it was a bad idea to continue on in my state. I went back to laying down. About 2 hours later, I get another alert. This time for a really big 72/13 fish. I knew i wouldn’t have to play for long with him before he stacked himself off to someone (hopefully me). I went to go see what he was playing and what the waitlist looked like. To my amazement he was on a 2/4 table with another 50/20 fish. The average pot at the table was climbing above $150. I decided again that I must sit down with them for the sake of liking money.

I managed to get cold decked and coolered by one of the fish. I lost a buyin there as well. Overall a pretty ugly day at the tables when I really shouldn’t have been playing at all. I think i learned a vital lesson though. Don’t play when you know you don’t have your A game. The C game isn’t enough to even have my competing against the likes of sainter and berlinsbest.

Today, I am feeling better but still feeling a little sick so I stuck to 100nl. I usually wouldn’t have played at all but I really have this itch to play a ton of hands. It must be just feeling out my new style of play and really starting to get my head around very good postflop play. I decided I would only play deep tables with a $200 stack (this catered to my ego). I knew i would play against likely the best 100nl regs, but I think I can crush just about all of those guys. I wasn’t wrong in my assumption. I absolutely bulldozed the tables. I managed to win 15 bi’s in 3000 hands. It was pretty awesome, but makes me wonder why I can’t just run like a normal human at 200nl. Click HERE to see a link to the graph from today.

I dunno what i’ll play tomorrow, but hopefully I feel better. At least good enough for some happy hour!

I am writing this bad boy before I go out for some awesome day drinking with my friends. I managed to do it again this month, and have a massive heater on the way out of the month. I cleaned up a 3/6 table today, which is always nice. I got in 36k hands, which is one of the largest volume months i’ve ever put in sadly. I ran ok. I ran 8.8bb/100 at 1/2 and only 2bb/100 at 2/4. I started the month running horribly at 2/4 so it was nice to get back to at least even.

This month, i’ve been starting alot of new tables and really starting to hone my hu game against some of the regs on cake who start with me. I haven’t felt outclassed by anyone yet, and most regs won’t even sit in to start a new table. I have to have one of the largest winrates on cake, which is a good feeling.

I finished receiving my coaching from Rask and I gotta say it really opened the door to a few new plays and considerations when I’m playing in pots. I think i’m a much better player but i’m not going to follow my plan to play 2/4 on FTP. I just have grown so accustom to not using a hud and my villains not having one either, and I really enjoy it. I am trying to imagine FTP without the use of a hud and I bet the games would be 2 folds better if no one used them. Fish can see how much they lose, and how bad their numbers are… and i think that kills games.

I will be moving out of my condo in the next few days and making final preps for going to vegas. I can not wait! The blog might suffer due to that though. I promise I will update a ton while I’m in vegas. Also we have just decided to get a cornhole set in our backyard at the house, so that should be awesome!

Here’s the graph/WR’s:

(Click for Full Size)

As you can probably assume, I’m still on course for my yearly fiscal goal. Ship it.

I am finally done with this test. The hell is over, and I’m 75% sure I passed this time. I raped the early morning section of the test, and got tore up on the end (which was stuff I didn’t really study). I definitely did 2 points better than last time, and that’s really all i need to pass. Alright so its smooth mothafuckin sailin to vegas!

So I got a ton of running around to do until may 14th when I am starting the 3 day trek out there. I am pretty pumped about doing the cross country drive and will get to stop in Arkansas on the way, which is where I grew up and went to most of high school. I plan on seeing a few people I haven’t seen in probably 8 years… maybe even more. I will then stop in New Mexico and then go straight to vegas baby! Its about 2 12 hour drives and then an 8 hour one into vegas. I can’t put into words how excited I am to have a ridiculous poker house. I am tempted to buy a video camera too, cause I feel like a camera won’t do this trip justice… and I’m sure other people will wanna see some of the hilarity that will inevitable ensue.

So I got the PLO add-on for Holdem Manager. I was really excited and started to import all my hands from the past. To my shock however, I’m not even a winning omaha player. This is mostly due to a little drunk night I forgot about from ages ago, where I dumped $2k on a 200plo deep table. Other than that session I’m almost completely break even. I would post the graph but it’s exactly like i’m explaining. Just picture breakeven with a 2k downswing in the middle. I’m actually not too upset about being down $1500 at omaha. It is my drunk game of choice and I usually play hu drunk… so that’s not too bad all things considered. It is the best drunk game ever as I can get it in pre-flop after spazzing with garbage and still be 60/40.

Anyways, I will grind out the rest of April and hopefully can pull this month up close to a 10k winner. Peace.

I’ve been hella-busy recently with studying for the FE, as well as trying to get a reasonable number of hands in PLUS getting ready for a vegas move. Weirdly enough, not a lot of time to blog. Bear with me though. The blog will start to blossom with outrageous Vegas stories within the next month.

Alright so first things first, I am going to pass the FE this time. I am meticulously studying like nothing I’ve done in 3 years. I am in the process of taking a practice test and even my dreams are getting flooded with FE stuff. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to engineering, and honestly right now, I’m leaning towards just being a pro my whole life… but I want this parachute badly. The test is as always at the same time as the Virginia Tech Spring Game. So I will be in blacksburg in a test while every one of my friends + girlfriend are out getting shitfaced in tailgate situations. However, Leigh (my gf) did tell me she will be waiting with a beer in hand at 5pm when I get out so I couldn’t be more excited for that. That, boys is how you know your GF is a keeper. The test is 8 hours long and this will be the 4th time I have taken it. Every other time, I’ve just strived to get a 70%. After the first time I failed with a 69%, I have just been assuming I would squeak one above that number and pass. It hasn’t happened yet. So I am shooting for an 85%. Here’s to doing work on that.

On the poker front, I’ve actually played more hands than usual this month. I am currently sitting on about 34k hands which puts me on pace for about 45k for the month. Not bad. I’m running at 8bb/100 at 1/2 and even at 2/4… The even at 2/4 is painful, cause I just can’t seem to have anything good happen to me on those tables. I also can’t seem to gain any steam this month. I keep having a winnings session followed by 2 breakeven sessions. It is just frustrating because I want to have like 6 winning sessions in a row and finish the month up 10k. Oh well, I guess I need to have a down month this year, and if this is the worst of it, so be it (I don’t actually think running 8bb/100 is going to be the worst month I have this year btw). Hopefully I finish strong, and make over 5k on the month before rakeback. That’s a reasonable goal i think. I have played 120k hands this year, and that’s definitely the most i’ve put in in such a short period of time. It feels good to run solid over that sample though, especially considering how much FTP loves to rape me.

Once I take the FE on saturday, its smooth sailing to Vegas. I will just have to move things out of my house, and that’s really the only thing I have left to do before I leave. With this house already on the horizon, I am really pumped. I’m actually going to do this. Me and Vizer talked about it last summer, but in the back of my head, I always assumed that something would happen that would keep me from doing it. Well nothing did. It’s going to be the time of a lifetime, and afterwards, I get to go live with Leigh in DC. Granted DC sucks, but living with her should be great. I can’t wait to see how much my game improves from just being around poker 24/7 and thinking out loud around other solid pros. It’s weird, because none of my friends in Charlotte really understand how the poker thing works. They all assume its just free money, which for the most part is true, but having people understand that just because I made $1500 last night, doesn’t mean I am picking up the tab, will be nice.

Anyways, the countdown begins and there’s 24 days until I’m sitting pretty in our Vegas house. Wish me luck on this god damn test, and I hope to see most of you in vegas at some point this summer.