Damn Ringer's Poker Blog

I am back from san diego and to be perfectly honestly, there really isn’t anything to blog about. The trip was a blast, but it was basically just really great to reunite with a few of my best friends from school. We went out got shitfaced and did some fun things around san diego, but honestly we were pretty lazy and didn’t do much outside of seeing the city. The town itself is awesome. It was around 70 degrees the whole time we were there and at night dropped to the upper 50’s. So definitely still put on a jacket weather. One thing that is worthy of pointing out in this blog is that one of the bars we went to had Pokertek’s Headsup Poker Challenge. This thing is ridiculous.

It consumed an entire night at the bar of me and my friends challenging each other to the game. We got shitty and played virtual cards at the bar. I know it sounds totally lame, but it was actually surprisingly not as nerdy as it seemed. Ok so we didn’t have any bitches on us, but not like I was trying to have bitches on me anyways. I’m sure if i wanted them there, i could have just fluttered an eye. I ended up getting my bar tab paid for from the game and that’s about it.

I didn’t play a hand of poker other than that drunk stupid game at the bars, which was relaxing. Nothing like taking 3 days off, and not thinking about cards at all. I did however get back into the grind today, and my brain welcomed me back to work. I managed to pick around 8.5 buyins off the tables today, which was excellent. My month is going fantasticly and definitely should be one of my best ever months at 1/2nl if it continues. I have already broken one of my commandments. I will not be making FTP ironman this month. I will be breaking an 8 month streak, but I have my reasons. I am taking a break from FTP for a little while.

I am on course to run well over 3ptbb/100 this month, but I am not on course for the number of hands. I think i have only played around 25k up to this point which would put me on course to only play 50k hands this month. We’ll see if i can grind it out of the holidays to bring up the big number I’m hoping for. My cake roll looks like it is going to have no trouble hitting the milestone i set at the beginning of the month for it, which is very good news as I’m hoping to make it as large as my FTP roll by february 09. I also haven’t found a long term student however I did get an IM today but missed him which I finally saw the message. And finally I have done a pretty good job at taking a weekend day off from drinking. I will be doing so this weekend, and have done so every weekend except while I was in san diego, but that’s vacation. So there’s my goals setup. With only one really failed, that not so bad, and I can definitely live with it.

I also turned 25 this weekend. I am getting old, this sucks.

I am off to San Diego for the weekend.

Trip Report to follow.

So i’m an idiot. I’ll explain that in a second. First, go to vinnyvt’s blog and watch the 30 minute video he embedded there. Its called I.O.U.S.A and is completely worth your time. If you are reading this on facebook, www.vinnyvt.com. If you are bored at work and don’t have a boss around, I’d recommend using your time wisely and watching.

Ok onto stupid me…

For those that don’t know, Monday Night Football was in charlotte last night. It was fantastic, and we tailgated heavily for it. It was a great time. However, we were tailgating right by my old employer as they are right uptown and have the cheapest lot for the panthers stadium within reasonable distance. We fired up the burgers and fired up all sorts of delcious. Sure enough a couple of my old bosses show up. Both of whom were in the meeting to let me know i was canned. Granted I really like one of the guys, and obviously don’t blame either of them. If i was in there spot, i, without a doubt, would have cut me too (maybe even earlier than they did). This isn’t the stupid part. One of the bosses who is 29, is a man genius, and i would generally call him a friend. I am in a fantasy football league with him, and often times run into him at the bars and am myself around him. He knows that I play poker and do well. I don’t think he knows how well but he knows that i’m capable of making a living and am not an idiot. However, the other member of the ‘firing squad’ (as i shall now refer to them as), is a little less personable, and never took the time to get to know me. Naturally, I’m about 8 beers deep and start talking with the less personable one. He’s asking exactly what i’d expect him to. The following conversation took place:

Boss: How ya holding up, boss? – I’m not sure if he actually called me boss, but it seems to flow
Me: Its going great
Boss: How’s the job hunt coming?

And shit… I don’t have a response. I mean I don’t even know what to say. I could bold-face lie to the guy and say its coming great or slowly or something to the lines of any ideas? But no I’m 8 beers deep, and apparently stupid. I say “Its not, I’m not even looking right now”. Of course he asked why, I say I have other things going in my life. I figure that would be enough, but alas it was not. He starts going off about its not a terrible idea to get into other occupations which now that I think about might be him telling me that i was a shitty engineer, but whatever. I could have just rolled with that, and likely the conversation would have ended. No no, not 8-Beer Ringer. I bust in with “well actually i’m playing poker for a living now”. DOH! I spend the next 5 minutes back-pedalling and making it sound like it was just for making ends meet and i really did want to be an engineer (which i do).

This being my first real experience with dropping this bombshell on someone who doesn’t know me at all. I get a blank face like i just told him “I can see jesus and we need to take our clothes off and go to him”. Whoops. He doesn’t get it. I’m an idiot, and look like a complete degenerate as well as lazy. Stupid me. It also probably doesn’t help for a reference in the future (which hopefully I can still get from cool boss, who i’m pretty sure knows how smart i am)

So my question to you poker pros and normal people is this. How do you say your occupation out loud to unknowns and not getting looked at like you just got caught screwing your neighbors cat? Or is there just no way normal people understand that poker isn’t the same as putting my rent on red?

I figure smart people will understand that another smart person would have a well thought out plan… but maybe everyone just assumes I’m an idiot. So there it is, I’m an idiot.

My dumb real life friends apparently like me to update this blog with hilarious shit about my real life and such observations. Usually, I just say ‘Fuck off, its a poker blog’ but with my new found facebook linkage, i suppose more people might be tired of reading numbers, graphs and hearing math spoken. It would remind me of multi-variable calculus too.

So lets talk about hilarious shit and stuff since i’ve become a poker professional and some considerations that I need to take into account. I have been professional for close to a month now, and its been a pretty awesome month, but after a month i realize I need to get some new fucking hobbies. Currently my life consists solely of poker, sleep, trolling forums, the gym, playing call of duty (damn you vizer), and of course, being a rampant alcholic 24 year old. Honestly, it has mostly consisted of poker though, well ok maybe a little more drinking than poker but poker none the less.

I have been trying figure out all my benefits shit i’m gonna need for the coming year. I’ve decided to give it a go for year, and see how I fair as well as how sane I am come next december. Alas, I will need health benefits, as I’m basically the hamburglar with how much I love to fondle cheeseburgers. Ok maybe I don’t fondle them, perhaps I eat them. Come to think of it, I’d prolly be healthier if I was just a cheeseburger molestor, but I digress. I think I’m just gonna roll with a high deductible, and money co-pay. I don’t really know much about it, but I likely will be going through my previous provider, which is NCBCBS, which of course is the short version of No Complications Because Cheese BurgerS… or perhaps north carolina blue cross blue sheild (i thought the first was more clever). That means I will have to get in tip top shape and not do anything stupid that will mess up my health exam like a delicious late drunk night cigarette, don’t get me wrong, i don’t smoke and think its generally repulsive but man are they good when you got 10 beers in you. On a more serious note, if any of you poker friends with your own health care have any pointers please feel free to comment.

I have been managing to stick to a mighty ridiculous poker schedule with playing 5 hour sessions per day being about the normal. This is where the ‘mostly’ in the title will come in but FB readers and bored LDI employees alike I will keep the math, numbers, and graphs outta this one. I have managed to completely botch my schedule, with my average wakeup time now somewhere around 11. Stay with me though people. Its not cause I’m lazy (ok maybe that has something to do with it). Its because the best poker games usually run at night, and on the East Coast that night time is from around 10pm to 3am. Alas, I have to play those times if i like money (I am quite fond (not fondle) of money). So I have a good reason to play these times, and its because I wanna be hella-rich and actually succeed at being a sick nasty pro player. Well actually, I care far more about being hella-rich than respected but if you respect me, that’s cool too.

Onto the completely self-leveling topic, You guys can be my shrink on this one. I mean i guess you don’t really have to, but since you are reading this far, I can only assume you have some extreme desire to help me out, or some hilarious desire to watch me fail (btw, it would be hilarious to watch me fail miserably at this, go broke and come crawling back to corporate america). However, all readers alike i’m sure would love to have the same problem I am about to list: Cronic Back Fatigue. Ok, I might be slightly kidding, but if there’s anyone out there that is say… 6′0″, blonde, female, 115 lbs and into rubbing backs of nude hairy poker professionals, please leave a comment. The problem i am talking about is too much fucking free time. This is the reason I liked having a job in the first place, I liked having something to do, and something to keep me on a schedule. I need a new damn hobby, and i am realizing it quick. I will go insane, if I don’t get something else to do in the next year. I can literally only stomach 5 hours of poker a day before my head starts hurting, and then i need to do something else entirely. I have been thinking about picking guitar up again, and then I remember why the fuck did I quit in the first place? I wasn’t going anywhere with it. Perhaps, I could pick golf up again, but then I realize the times I want to play golf, everyone else is slaving away at work. Well fuck, Its tough to find something to do, while all your friends are getting sodomized by the philosophical man. I mean, I really like hanging out with people all day, but my schedule seems to conflict with their free time.

Then I thought, why not teach AutoCAD? This my friends is brilliant. It takes little time out of my day, I’m incredibly nasty at the program, and it would technically keep me in the analytical, metaphysical, philosophical ‘industry’. I hear the warning from you people, you see that? “Eric, Poker might pay better than your day job, but what if you want to go back to work in 3 years… no one will want your old ass”… yeah i get that exact line like once a week from someone (ok, maybe slightly paraphased). Well ok people I get it. I should definitely protect my resume from having to say in an interview… “well i just said fuck it, I got time, I got money, who needs to work?” I could imagine that would go over like raining, chocolate-covered cinderblocks with a future employer. I shall definitely look into this one.

Alright, That’s really all the time I got for cutting into my prime poker hourage. Wish me luck on my daily adventure, and I hope all you FB’ers and LDI’ers enjoyed a none-math intensive post. You won’t get them often. Welp, See ya.

First let me say, I’m not Dino21Might. The original from FTP is absolutely not me. I did however steal his name on cake, so anyone who plays both sites would think i am horrible, and therefore i could do some sicko plays. I will be changing back to NityByNature in my next name change though, and likely leaving it there for awhile. That out of the way lets blog on…

November is gone. I turned a pretty nice profit in November despite running like complete shit. I still made $5.5k + 1.5k rakeback. Overall, not a terrible month but i put in so much volume i was expecting to take home a little more coin. Its a winning month though, so i’m not complaining. The reason i even managed to make that much was running like god at 400nl that cancelled out general awfulness across the 200nl board. Oh well… now cue the beginning of december.

And December first looks like I finally am running good. I played a monster session last night, which is something I’m definitely going to focus more on. I played over 3k hands in one sitting while 10 tabling. If you’ve been following the blog recently, i haven’t been able to break off a winning day like this one in months, and i had a few of them back in april and may. It was a much needed boost. When the smoked had cleared, I made 12.5 buyins in that time. I was getting handed money left and right, as well as running good. Honestly however, playing 3k hands gave me a pretty big headache, so if you guys have any tips for playing marathon sessions and still thinking 100% let me know. I know townsend and those guys use to pull like 48 hour sessions. How that is even possible, blows my mind. Here’s the graph from last night…

Now i will put my goals for December

[ ] Run Over 3ptbb/100 over the whole month at 200nl
[ ] Play 60,000 hands
[ ] Bring my Cake Roll up close to $15,000
[ ] Get one new student to coach, hopefully a long term student from lower stakes
[ ] Iron Iron Man
[ ] Drink less alcohol, likely by taking certain fridays and saturdays off to work