snowbank's blog

1st row at Lakers/Mavs game!

2008-03-02T19:28:00.000-08:00

Just got back from the Lakers/Mavs game. Alex and I got front row seats. The game was ridiculous! We were right behind courtside seats at mid court. Jack Nicholson was sitting pretty close to us. Lakers won in OT and Kobe dropped 52. I'll post pics as soon as I get back to Arizona.

in LA

2008-02-22T14:12:00.000-08:00

I'm in LA right now for a month with Alex(garystevenson). The Los Angeles Poker Classic is this month so we decided to come out and play the live games. Been playing 10/20nl. There have been some sick higher stakes games going, one 200/400nl game that included Jamie Gold, Kenny Tran and the guy from the Paris Hilton sex tape. Been pretty much playing poker and sleeping so far. Finally got the internet going so can play some online poker again. Have only went out a few times so far. We got a limo Monday night and went out with a bunch of poker players. We're heading to a Lakers game tomorrow night.(former Laker Jack Haley was at one of my tables tonight) Rob(bobbofitos) is coming to crash with us for a few days, and Jason(pbjaxx) might stop out. One of Alex's friends Owen is coming today from Vegas.

At one of my tables yesterday some businessman who owns a car dealership or something was needling me about not playing enough pots with him and I suggested we play heads up so we could play a lot of pots together and that it'd be a lot more fun. After some discussion we agreed to set up a match. He didn't want to do it then, but agreed to play me before I leave LA. Hopefully in the next week or so we'll set up a game. He wants to do something like a $10k freezeout, but doing just a heads up cash game might be a better set-up.

I'll try to post some more updates now that I have internet.

bumz

2008-02-11T02:03:00.000-08:00

A panhandler slips up and asks "Buddy, I haven't eaten all day, can you give me $50."

The man says, "I think you would be a lot more successful if you asked for $1."

The bum answers, "Look, give me a dollar or give me $50, but don't tell me how to run my business."

big pot i lost

2008-02-08T00:22:00.000-08:00

Lost this $6k pot the other day. Being a professional poker player isn't always good times and partying.

UTG ($1589.50)
snowbank ($4703.50)
CO ($1025)
Button ($1086.50)
villian ($2862.50)
BB ($1008)

Preflop: Hero is MP with As, Kh.
1 fold, snowbank raises to $35, CO calls $35, 1 fold, SB raises to $150, 1 fold, snowbank calls $115, CO calls $115.

Flop: 6s, Ac, 8c (3 players)
villian bets $460, snowbank calls $460, CO folds.

Turn: 6d (2 players)
villian bets $575, snowbank goes all-in for $4093.50, villian goes all-in for $2252.50

River: 2s (2 players)

Final Pot: $5882
Results in white below:

villian has Ah Ad (full house, aces full of sixes).

snowbankhas As Kh (two pair, aces and sixes).

Outcome: villian wins $5882 with full house, aces full of sixes.

update

2008-02-07T17:38:00.000-08:00

Been playing a decent amount of poker. Last month wasn't the huge start I was looking for to the year, but still did okay. Had a 25 buy in day at 2/4 a few weeks ago. Another player, pbjaxx came out for a few days to work on strategy together. He's been telling me to play some higher stakes, so while he was here I played a bit of 5/10 and did pretty well. I've been playing anywhere from 2/4-5/10 for the most part lately. I'm not used to 5 figure swings, so not playing a ton of 5/10 yet, but I'll probably make that my main game in the next month or two. I'm heading out of town for about a month, so won't get to play much online.

We are probably going to start having more home games when I get back. Our game is insanely talented though. Our last lineup featured: myself, my roomate Luke, Brett(mynameishov), Lee(bill_ivey), Jason(pbjaxx), Justin(billiards), and Garrett(alcohol4life.) We are going to hire a topless dealer for the game next time. Some girl e-mailed me asking if she could do it, and her pictures make me think she will make the cut, even if she's not the best dealer. Next game maybe I won't get wasted and bluff off all my money 3 barreling every hand and squeezing everytime I had a 2 in my hand just to be able to show the bluff.

updates/ stories coming

2008-02-06T03:53:00.000-08:00

been busy playing a ton lately, so will be posting a lot the next few days. for now, i'll leave you with this clip of chris berman going crazy:

http://deadspin.com/351147/chris-berman-is-somewhat-perturbed-with-the-help

cool craigslist ad

2008-01-23T14:59:00.000-08:00

chicago apartment for rent on Craig's List:

"$450 Wicker Park- seeking female roommate
Reply to: hous-542830561@craigslist.org
Date: 2008-01-17, 9:05PM CST
Close to blue line, pretty much brand new condo. THree decks including a private roof deck. Blocks away from Blue line, North ave bus, and Western Ave bus.
I dont really need a roommate, but i would like a girl to live here. Dont worry about being messy or whatever, i have a cleaning lady come twice a month. Drinks fine. No smoking as i just quit. You can do whatever drugs you want in your room. If their good, you need to share... hahahah.

Im a professional and barely even here. Male, in good shape. 27 years old. I have everything, tv, stereo, food processor, crock pot, good knives. all you need is a bed and bedroom furniture.
Rent is $450.00 including utilites if you are AVERAGE looking meaning a 6 out of 10. Each point up towards 10, you can subtract $100.00. So if you think you are a 7, $350, 10- you pay $50.00.
Same thing if it goes the other way. If you are a 1 or something, be ready to fork up $950 a month. I will obviously be the judge. If you want we can also pick three people off the street and get the average of the three. Oh, and the rent can change month to month ( i.e. you sit around and eat doritoes with french onion dip everyday and gain 30 pounds, you better be ready to fork over some dollars). How great of a person you are or your personality will have no bearing on your score. btw, no parties, not a lot of guests unless you are a 7 or above and your guests are equal or better females.
good luck. "

Bahamas

2008-01-20T14:03:00.000-08:00

Bahamas was awesome. Maybe I'll post some stories soon. Here's a few pics of random people in the club our first night out:

Bahamas

2008-01-17T13:56:00.000-08:00

Garrett ended up getting 24th place for $48,000. He got all-in with QQ vs. another guy's TT and he got sucked out on. He would have been in 2nd place if he wins that pot with 24 left. The guy who won that pot ended up winning $1.1 million. We'll get 'em next year. Congrats Garrett on a sick tourney.

8th place with 40 left

2008-01-09T07:04:00.000-08:00

He was up over $1 million in chips at one point yesterday. He has 733,000 right now. Here's the remaining prize payouts:

1 -- $2,000,000 2 -- $1,094,976 3 -- $800,000 4 -- $600,000 5 -- $450,000 6 -- $300,000 7 -- $200,000 8 -- $150,000 9 -- $120,000 10 -- $104,000 11 -- $96,000 12 -- $88,000 13 -- $80,000 14 -- $72,000 15 -- $64,000 16 -- $56,000 17 -- $48,000 18 -- $48,000 19 -- $48,000 20 -- $48,000 21 -- $48,000 22 -- $48,000 23 -- $48,000 24 -- $48,000 25 -- $40,000 26 -- $40,000 27 -- $40,000 28 -- $40,000 29 -- $40,000 30 -- $40,000 31 -- $40,000 32 -- $40,000 33 -- $32,000 34 -- $32,000 35 -- $32,000 36 -- $32,000 37 -- $32,000 38 -- $32,000 39 -- $32,000 40 -- $32,000

update from the bahamas

2008-01-08T15:35:00.001-08:00

There were 1,136 entries in the tournament. Last we checked there were 65 left and Garrett had 600,000 chips.(avg. was 380k at the time) 1st place gets $2,000,000.

Sick screenshot

2007-12-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a screenshot of my friend Garrett playing $25/$50nl on Stars. The max buy-in is $5,000 and he's sitting with $65,000 after winning $60k. Nice little day's work:

east coast + Bahamas

2007-12-18T00:31:00.000-08:00

Gonna be heading back to the east coast for the holidays to see family/friends. Also, have decided to head down to the Bahamas the first week of January for the PCA(PokerStars Carribean Adventure) I won't be playing in the tournament, just gonna hang out/party/play some cash games. I wasn't going to go, since I want to have a huge year in 2008 and didn't wanna start off the year with a slow month, but I figure Bahamas is worth postponing the grind. Also, I figure other than Vegas it's the only time I really see my co-workers(other poker pros), so might as well check it out. My friend Garrett won one of PokerStars $12,000 packages so hopefully I get to watch him take down a million or so in the tourney. Or at least watch him crush some people in high stakes HU matches like Vegas.

Heaterzzzz

2007-12-17T00:00:00.000-08:00

Won about 30 buy ins in the last 30 hours. 23 of them from yesterday. Brings back memories of my 35 buy in day back on Party Poker when I was playing 1/2. Here's a screenshot from one of my Party tables that someone took of me that night. Party and I were good friends.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii

2007-12-16T18:17:00.000-08:00

How do I know my brother and I are related?

Last night he didn't sleep at all except for a 15 minute power nap. Then he made some calls, went out on the town in the early AM, and a few hours later was back home with 11 wii's. (actually 10, he sold one in the parking lot) Couple hours work for probably $1,500-$2,000 profit.

That's how we roll.

Back on the grind

2007-12-13T10:32:00.000-08:00

Got back from Thailand about a week ago. I'll post a trip report when I get a chance. Been playing a decent amount of poker since I got back. Eating bankrolls one player at a time.

Happy birthday Marc!

Poker Documentary

2007-11-08T14:10:00.000-08:00

Here's the 5 part documentary I mentioned in the last post:

http://www.thepokerfilm.com/video.php?id=4

http://www.thepokerfilm.com/video.php?id=5

http://www.thepokerfilm.com/video.php?id=6

http://www.thepokerfilm.com/video.php?id=7

http://www.thepokerfilm.com/video.php?id=8

Poker Documentary

2007-11-04T13:35:00.000-08:00

There's a new documentary out about 4 poker players from Georgia. It's a pretty cool film. Will definitely give some people unfamiliar with online poker an interesting look into some of the players lives.

Here's the trailer:

www.thepokerfilm.com/video.php?id=1

Here's the intro:

www.thepokerfilm.com/video.php?id=2

Poker mansion?

2007-11-02T02:01:00.000-07:00

Been talking with a few other poker players about getting a place together next year. We've been talking about getting 5-6 guys and renting out a mansion for a year. Prices aren't bad at all. We could probably get some ridiculously sick places for like $5-$10k/month. Split between a bunch of guys it's not really that bad. Dunno for sure if it'll happen, but I think it'd be fun to do. Mainly looking at doing it in Arizona or California. If anybody's interested who I haven't talked to yet hit me up.

The other day when I played 12,068 hands, here's just my rakeback from the day:

Date Site Rakeback
October 27, 2007 Full Tilt Poker $580.85

Maybe the most rakeback I've ever made in one day.(rakeback for those who don't know, is the % of money you get back that you paid in rake. Has nothing to do with your winnings, it's just extra)

Ready for my vacation

2007-10-31T01:36:00.000-07:00

Getting construction done at my house right now. Been a long process. Also, something just happened with the pressure regulator for the water here so now I have to spend $500 to get that and something else on the pipes fixed. Moving in a new tenant tomorrow at my other house in the guesthouse over there. Have to get a bunch of other stuff done before I leave. Can't wait to finally be on vacation.

As far as poker, I've been getting crazy beats, and luckily not jumping off a bridge yet:

UTG ($107.60)
MP ($466.40)
CO ($339)
snowbank ($405.40)
SB ($529.80)
BB ($153)

Preflop: snowbank is Button with 2h, 2d.

1 fold, MP raises to $8, 1 fold, snowbank calls $8, SB calls $6, BB calls $4.

Flop: ($32) 2c, Td, Tc (4 players)

SB bets $23, BB folds, MP folds, snowbank raises to $46, SB calls $23.

Turn: ($124) Th (2 players)

SB checks, snowbank checks.

River: ($124) 2s (2 players)

SB bets $475.8 (All-In), snowbank calls $351.40 (All-In).

Final Pot: $826.80

Results in white below:

snowbank has 2h 2d (four of a kind, twos).

SB has Ts Ah (four of a kind, tens).

Outcome: SB wins $951.20.

Full Tilt Poker, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter

BTN: $213.80
SB: $449.50
BB: $410
UTG: $400
MP: $401.80
Hero (CO): $388

Pre-Flop: K K dealt to Hero (CO)
2 folds, Hero raises to $14, BTN folds, SB calls $12, BB calls $10

Flop: ($42) Q K Q (3 Players)
SB checks, BB checks, Hero bets $32, SB folds, BB calls $32

Turn: ($106) A (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets $69, BB calls $69

River: ($244) 8 (2 Players)
BB checks, Hero bets $273 and is All-In, BB calls $273

Results: $790 Pot ($3 Rake)
BB showed J T (a Royal Flush) and WON $787 (+$399 NET)
Hero showed K K (a full house, Kings full of Queens) and LOST (-$388 NET)

Full Tilt Poker, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter

UTG: $400
MP: $400
CO: $649
BTN: $400
Hero (SB): $880.80
BB: $262.60

Pre-Flop: 6 6 dealt to Hero (SB)
2 folds, CO raises to $14, BTN folds, Hero calls $12, BB calls $10

Flop: ($42) 7 2 6 (3 Players)
Hero checks, BB bets $36, CO calls $36, Hero raises to $109, BB folds, CO raises to $252, Hero raises to $866.80 and is All-In, CO calls $383 and is All-In

Turn: ($1,348) 2 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($1,348) 9 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $1,348 Pot ($3 Rake)
CO showed 2 2 (four of a kind, Twos) and WON $1,345 (+$696 NET)
Hero showed 6 6 (a full house, Sixes full of Twos) and LOST (-$649 NET)

Those were a couple of the roughest over the last few days. Here are just a couple from tonight:

Poker Stars, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 3 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter

SB: $477.70
Hero (BB): $823.80
BTN: $557.90

Pre-Flop: A A dealt to Hero (BB)
BTN raises to $16, SB folds, Hero raises to $54, BTN calls $38

Flop: ($110) K 3 5 (2 Players)
Hero bets $65, BTN calls $65

Turn: ($240) 9 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $138, Hero calls $138

River: ($516) 8 (2 Players)
Hero checks, BTN bets $300.90 and is All-In, Hero calls $300.90

Results: $1,117.80 Pot ($1 Rake)
Hero mucked A A and LOST (-$557.90 NET)
BTN showed 9 9 (three of a kind, Nines) and WON $1,116.80 (+$558.90 NET)

Poker Stars, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 5 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter

UTG: $398
Hero (CO): $675.45
BTN: $442.30
SB: $464.70
BB: $859.10

Pre-Flop: A A dealt to Hero (CO)
UTG raises to $16, Hero raises to $54, 3 folds, UTG raises to $140, Hero raises to $675.45 and is All-In, UTG calls $258 and is All-In

Flop: ($802) J J 2 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Turn: ($802) 6 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($802) K (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $802 Pot ($2 Rake)
UTG showed K K (a full house, Kings full of Jacks) and WON $800 (+$402 NET)
Hero mucked A A and LOST (-$398 NET)

Poker Stars, $2/$4 NL Hold'em Cash Game, 6 Players
LegoPoker Hand History Converter

Hero (BB): $1,079.70
UTG: $443.30
MP: $686.80
CO: $549.80
BTN: $441.70
SB: $196.10

Pre-Flop: A A dealt to Hero (BB)
2 folds, CO calls $4, BTN raises to $18, SB folds, Hero raises to $64, CO raises to $140, BTN folds, Hero raises to $1,079.70 and is All-In, CO calls $409.80 and is All-In

Flop: ($1,119.60) T J 3 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Turn: ($1,119.60) 2 (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

River: ($1,119.60) K (2 Players - 1 is All-In)

Results: $1,119.60 Pot ($3 Rake)
Hero showed A A (a pair of Aces) and LOST (-$549.80 NET)
CO showed K K (three of a kind, Kings) and WON $1,116.60 (+$566.80 NET)

Even though I've been running really crappy, I'm still been having decent overall results which makes me feel really good about what's going to happen if I ever start running well. I've had one session with my coach so far, and although it was relatively basic since it was the first session, I think we went over some really good things, that will hopefully get me where I want to be.

I've been working real hard trying to work one some of the things we went over in our session. On Friday I played for 15 hours straight, 8 tabling and playing 12,068 hands. I almost wish I could postpone Thailand since I think I would have a HUGE month if I wasn't going away for part of November. But honestly I can't wait to go. I'm going to write myself some strategy notes to study, and will probably study some futures trading on the plane as well. It's gonna be cool to have some time off to relax and have fun.

Thailand is booked + new poker coach

2007-10-15T02:57:00.000-07:00

Booked Thailand last week, so it's all set. There's four of us going. Should be awesome. We'll probably meet up with some other poker pros who live out there. I think we're just booking a hotel for one night, and then pretty much winging it from there.

I finally decided on a poker coach. He's expensive, but should be well worth the money. I'll talk more about it when I've had a couple lessons, we haven't had a chance to do one yet. I talked with a lot of different coaches, there's so many people coaching nowadays. Some seem like really good coaches, but it seems like a number of coaches are getting into coaching because they can't beat the games for very much anymore, which is kind of a scary thought for people who might hire them. I talked to pretty much all the good players who are coaching, and talked to a lot of players who recommended coaches, or recommended I stay away from certain coaches, and went with one who I thought would help the most for my game. If anyone needs any info on mid-high stakes coaches, let me know.

Investments

2007-10-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

Been looking into a self-storage facility for the last few weeks. Still waiting for some documents on it, but will hopefully make a decision in the next week or so. It's being built, so I wouldn't be buying an existing facility. This means more potential profits, but also more chance something could go wrong.

The duplex that I was going to buy in Oklahoma I have decided not to buy. Don't know if I posted many updates on that, but it's been a long process. I flew out to Oklahoma on my way back from Vegas this summer, and one of the units was not what it looked like when I initially got it under contract. There were some bad tenants on one side and the place was a mess. Definitely a little damage too. They weren't there to show us, so I couldn't even see the inside, so before I flew back east I told my agent out there to cancel the inspection scheduled for the next day because if they couldn't get into that side I didn't want to pay for an inspector to come out. I talked with the owners/their agents, and said if the tenant was evicted, that's the only way I'd consider still buying it. Took forever, but they finally evicted the tenant, but now it needs a little fixup and still needs to be re-rented. I guess there's still a little possibility of me buying it if they come down in price a bit and I decide it's worth the hassle. Thing is, the place might be worth $75k+, so if I could somehow get it at like $55k and have it cashflowing $500+/month, I think I might have to buy it. My investment strategy has changed a bit since I originally got it under contract though, so it'd have to be a steal for me to change my mind.

Long month ahead

2007-10-02T17:02:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to play 120,000 hands this month. I've never played that many before, so we'll see what happens. I played about 5,000 yesterday, so off to decent start. When I'm not playing poker, I'm going to keep studying the trading method that I'm trying to learn. I probably know about 5% of what I need to know to start trading, so I've got a long way to go. Probably going to Thailand next month so trying to work all month for October.

Traveling

2007-09-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

Going to be setting up plans to go to Thailand soon. Been talking about going with some people for a while, and we're probably going to figure out when we're going in the next couple weeks. Looks like we might go in November. It's supposed to be real cool there; different islands to go to, lots of partying, new culture, etc... It's wayyy cheap too, so we can live like kings and not spend a ridiculous amount of money. A bunch of poker pros have moved there for cheap living, ability to live outside the US(to get on foreign poker sites), party life there, etc... The island where the movie "The Beach" was shot was in Thailand. Have only heard cool things about it, so we're gonna head out there finally.

I've been traveling a decent amount this year. Vegas a few times, east coast a few times, Mexico etc... Traveling definitely helps break up the grind of playing a lot of poker. Rather than being lazy and not playing a lot of poker, I'd rather just play a ton when I'm here, and then take time off to travel and do cool stuff. So far this year I've been to: New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Arizona, Nevada, Oklahoma, California, Mexico and Canada. Thailand in the works, and might hit up some other countries next year. Might be cool to try out a cruise. Sending my parents on one for their anniversary this year to the Bahamas. Gonna see how they like it and maybe go on one myself sometime next year. Also, definitely gonna to hit up Vancouver soon. Probably before the year's out hopefully. Definitely the main benefit in working for yourself. Doing whatever you want, whenever you want. So if you're working a job, don't get trapped, get out while you're young!

Looking for a coach

2007-09-26T01:32:00.000-07:00

I've been looking for a poker coach the past week or so. I've been playing mostly $400nl games for the past few months, and had a lot of success in them. The money is great, but I'm pretty much just grinding, and not improving, which is usually fine for me since I'm trying to make a lot of money, but recently I've had the desire to get a lot better and start playing high stakes online. In order for me to do this the best way possible, I think I'll need to hire a coach. I think there's certain aspects of my game that playing higher stakes a coach who plays high stakes could help me transition a lot faster than doing it on my own. The coaches for higher stakes charge a lot of money though. The guys I've been talking to charge anywhere from $250-$500/hour. Definitely reasonable prices, but it's probably going to take a good ten or more sessions to get what I want to get out of it, so I need to make sure I'm working with the right person.

With all the money I invest in other stuff, I think it'd probably be a great investment to invest in myself for poker, since it's my main source of income. Thinking about it, I'm really surprised I haven't already hired a coach to move to higher stakes. Hiring coaches from time to time is a no-brainer if you're trying to improve your income potential. The ROI is probably bigger than almost any investment out there. The tough part is finding the right coach for you, when you're looking.

So, probably going to try and pick a coach within the next week or two if I can. I'll post updates.

Can you click a mouse fast? I might hire you

2007-09-25T03:15:00.000-07:00

My wrist has been killing lately. I don't wanna get carpel tunnel so I'm gonna start making some changes to my setup. I play more hands per month than like 99.9% of people who play, and don't want to have to slow down, so I'm going to be getting an ergonomic mouse, maybe two in case I don't like one. Also, I think I might start getting massages a few times a month or something. The person I mentioned who's helping me with the trading stuff, said when he had wrist problems it really helped. Business expense, so it's all good :)

I'm thinking about hiring a cook too. I'm trying to get in sick shape, and it's hard to eat real well eating lots of microwave meals and stuff like that since I don't cook. I'm interviewing someone tomorrow, and she's bringing me some samples to try.

I made a prop bet with my brother that I can get shredded and go from 175 to 160 by the end of the year. He's trying to go from 200 to 180. To make myself definitely make sure I do it, I bet him $800 against his $200. Will post nude pics after the bet obviously.

Sick scores

2007-09-24T00:37:00.000-07:00

Congrats to my boy Lee(aka poker phenom Bill Ivey) who got 5th place the other day out of 6,025 players in WCOOP event #5, taking home $96,701.25. I honestly think we have the sickest collection of poker players in Tucson than other place. myself, bill ivey, mynameishov, gman06, biliards, etc...

One crazy story I forgot to mention from a month or so back. So Brett(mynameishov) and I are chillin in our room our last night at Turning Stone. We decided to go for the 6 max tourney that was goin on. So anyways, we're just hangin out, and I get a text from someone I recently talked to online. He's a good tourney player, and was trying to learn short handed nl cash games. I told him to swing by our room to meet up. So, we chat for a bit, and he asks if I can sweat him. I say sure, and he goes and gets his laptop. He loads up a bunch of tables and I try and teach him some tricks of the trade for 6 max nl. He does pretty well, and seems to have a decent grasp for the most part. Brett(who passed out while we were doing the session) asked me the next morning if I thought he was going to be able to make the transition to 6 max nl, and I said that I thought he definitely could. Fast forward 24 hours. I'm at home at upstate NY, and looking through some online tournies. Turns out, the next night, there had been a huge 6 max nl tournament. He ended up winning the whole thing for $200,000. haha. how sick is that?

Poker Updates

2007-09-23T04:31:00.001-07:00

Haven't updated much poker in a long time. I'm still grinding away at 2/4nl, with a little 3/6nl and 5/10nl once in a while.

The 64 man HU tourney I ended up losing in the 3rd round to the worst player I had played yet, so that kinda sucked. He was gloating after winning hands, etc... He ran hot and played poorly, but winning confuses some people into thinking they are playing well. This is why poker will ALWAYS be profitable no matter what.

I played in the WCOOP(world championshop of online poker) event Friday. It was the HU event. I think I played pretty well for the most part. I was happy with my play. Some people ask me to include some strategy in my blog so they can see some of my thought process. Here is one hand people might find interesting:

PokerStars Game #12189581795: Tournament #70000010, $300+$20 Hold'em No Limit - Match Round II, Level II (100/200) - 2007/09/21 - 17:18:42 (ET)
Table '70000010 249' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: snowbank (16054 in chips)
Seat 2: BREAKURFACE (23946 in chips)
BREAKURFACE: posts small blind 100
snowbank: posts big blind 200
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to snowbank [As 7h]
BREAKURFACE: raises 288 to 488
snowbank: calls 288
*** FLOP *** [Jd 7s 3c]
snowbank: checks
BREAKURFACE: bets 538
snowbank: raises 906 to 1444
BREAKURFACE: calls 906
*** TURN *** [Jd 7s 3c] [Qd]
snowbank: checks
BREAKURFACE: bets 1946
snowbank: raises 3053 to 4999
BREAKURFACE: folds
snowbank collected 7756 from pot
snowbank: doesn't show hand
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 7756 | Rake 0
Board [Jd 7s 3c Qd]
Seat 1: snowbank (big blind) collected (7756)
Seat 2: BREAKURFACE (button) (small blind) folded on the Turn

The player seemed like he knew what he was doing. I have never heard of him before, but seemed solid enough. (he was stalling every hand though, kinda weird. not sure if he wanted blinds to increase so it could turn into a variance fest or what. that kind of made me seem like he might not be that good of a player, but that was my only read on him- had nothing else to go on) Anyways, for the hand: He raises pre-flop, and I call with A7o. I hit 2nd pair on the flop. I check and let him cbet, and then I raise. He calls on a board that isn't extremely draw heavy. The turn is a Q. There are no draws that could have hit. I check, and he bets again. I go for the double check raise, essentially changing my hand from what may have been the best hand, into a bluff. My analysis was that he would not be betting the turn there with many hands better than mine, since he will often want to get to a cheap showdown if he has 88, 99, TT, or a J. It looks to me like he is betting the Q as a scare card to the flop of J high where I show weakness by checking the turn, making him think I might be giving up and a bet will take the pot away from me. By raising him here, I think he will probably only be able to bet this turn, and call a raise with JQ. All other hands fold for the most part. A set is the only other hand that should continue.

A little bit later this hand went down:

PokerStars Game #12190006816: Tournament #70000010, $300+$20 Hold'em No Limit - Match Round II, Level IV (300/600) - 2007/09/21 - 17:42:21 (ET)
Table '70000010 249' 2-max Seat #2 is the button
Seat 1: snowbank (21794 in chips)
Seat 2: BREAKURFACE (18206 in chips)
BREAKURFACE: posts small blind 300
snowbank: posts big blind 600
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to snowbank [8s 5s]
BREAKURFACE: raises 872 to 1472
snowbank: calls 872
*** FLOP *** [5c Qd 8c]
snowbank: checks
BREAKURFACE: bets 2042
snowbank: raises 18280 to 20322 and is all-in
BREAKURFACE: calls 14692 and is all-in
*** TURN *** [5c Qd 8c] [Jc]
*** RIVER *** [5c Qd 8c Jc] [Jd]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
snowbank: shows [8s 5s] (two pair, Jacks and Eights)
BREAKURFACE: shows [Kc Ks] (two pair, Kings and Jacks)
BREAKURFACE collected 36412 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 36412 | Rake 0
Board [5c Qd 8c Jc Jd]
Seat 1: snowbank (big blind) showed [8s 5s] and lost with two pair, Jacks and Eights
Seat 2: BREAKURFACE (button) (small blind) showed [Kc Ks] and won (36412) with two pair, Kings and Jacks

This hand obviously pretty much crippled me, and a few minutes later I was out. Ahh well. Tournaments= life tilt
So, I was out in the 2nd round, in 610th place out of 1,886 people. On the bright side, I did finish higher than new PokerStars posterboy RaiNKhaN. He got 1,886th.

I rarely play tournies, just kind of do it for a change of pace once in a while to have fun. I did have a good result a few weeks ago in one that I played. I ended up getting 3rd in a 6 max tourney and it paid like $4.7k or something like that. Small payout for that high of a finish, but was a pretty small field of only like 350 people or something, so I was happy.

One update that I told one of my students I would do was from this post(last paragraph):

http://snowbank23.blogspot.com/2007/06/move-up-to-big-games.html

I forgot to update how he ended up doing for the month. He ended up making $13,000 for the month, which was impressive, more than doubling his previous best month. He put in a lot of effort and has become a very good player. Congrats again.

As far as how I'm doing in my games, I'm still doing well, just pretty much grinding when I can. I'll update more tomorrow.

Tay Zonday is the man

2007-09-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

my favorite song:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=9mSKBgvHdoE

here's the one that made him famous:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=EwTZ2xpQwpA&mode=related&search=

Nothin like a lil' Tay Zonday to get me ready for a poker session

Trading > Poker? We'll see

2007-09-20T03:49:00.000-07:00

Been a couple weeks since I updated cause I've been crazy busy. Been playing a lot of poker. Also been looking at ways to make more money. I've been doing a bunch of research into trading. I've talked to a lot of different people in the last couple weeks about it. A few weeks ago I was a total newb at trading, I literally knew almost nothing. Now, I still know pretty much nothing, but I know which area I'm going to focus on learning. I basically spent a couple weeks reading things in my spare time and talking to people who traded to find out what I should look into trading if I was going to try and learn it.

A lot of people when they hear "trading", they assume throwing money in the stock market and trying to make 10% or whatever. That's definitely not what I'm doing. I'm trying to make MONEY. What I'll be doing is daytrading, where the profits can be pretty insane. Probably the first thing that comes to people's minds is that I'm going to go broke, because most people do who attempt to daytrade. That's because they don't learn how to play the game. It has a lot of similarities to poker, in that only about 5% win, and a lot of people lose their shirts. The big difference in trading, in comparison to poker is that in poker your earning potential is essentially capped out at some point. I mean, you can always make a bit more in poker with a little more work, but very few people are making 7 figures/year at poker, where a lot of good traders are making that type of money. In poker, as you move up in stakes, you play against tougher competition, so although you are wagering more money, your EV(expected value) per buy in is lower since the game is harder. In trading, your competition doesn't change. The game doesn't get harder, so your EV stays the same, you just wager more money and return more profits at the same rate you were when wagering less.

Many people also think poker players make good traders, because psychologically they aren't effected by the money on the line, and they are used to making split second decisions under pressure. To us I think it would just be a game we're trying to win, and we wouldn't sweat the money involved, because we also have bankroll management skills from poker.

I'm not even going to actually trade for money for at least a few months. I plan on studying for at least a month or so, and then simtrading for another month or so to see how I'm doing, and evaluate what I'm doing right and wrong. Then when I feel I have a definite edge I'll throw some money in an account and start trading.

Money wise I think it'd be great if I ended up doing well trading. It'll take a lot of work to get there, but if I do get there, it will have been well worth it. There's obviously a lot more money in trading than poker. Don't get me wrong, the money is great in poker, and I love to play, but I also like a challenge and I like $5 better than $1, so I'm going to give it a try.

I'm currently studying the trading method I'll be using with someone here in Arizona who is seriously a genius with this stuff. He's the one who introduced me to this method and thinks it's the most similar trading type to poker. He even put me in touch with a guy who is pretty well known using this method and making ridiculous amounts of money doing it, so I gave him a call last week and got a chance to pick his brain a bit. Let's just say there is MONEY to be made. I'll talk more about it when I learn more, and get some practice.

LA Trip

2007-09-07T03:16:00.001-07:00

The trip to Los Angeles was good. Got a direct flight from NJ; sooooooooo much better than saving a few bucks and having to stop/take longer for the trip. Time is money, so from now on I'll be doing that every time that I can. Real life money is so much different than poker money( mindsets with them), and always trying to save money, but when you break it down to save $100 or less to spend another few hours flying/waiting in airports, etc... is not worth it at all.

My flight got in Thursday evening and 2 guys from the casino picked me up in a Lincoln Town Car. So comfortable/relaxing taking a ride in that after a long flight, rather than a smelly small cab. When I'm rich, if I ever don't want to drive as much I may hire a driver and buy one of those for them to drive me around in.

I checked into the hotel, and went up to the room. The hotel was real nice. The hotel at the casino was all sold out when I went to book the week before so we got a place a couple blocks away. Brett's plane didn't get in for a few hours, and I was beat so I just chilled in the room and watched a movie until he got in. When he got there we walked around looking for something to eat since the places in the hotel were closed by then. We tried walking thru a Carl's Jr. but they wouldn't take our order, so I walked up to a guy's car about to drive through and asked if he'd order for us. He said he would. We stood next to his car and waited for him to finish his order before telling him ours. Dude was a beast so he ordered like 8 things. Me and Brett ordered, and we walked up to the window next to his car. The guy started talking to us and Brett didn't understand what he was saying.(he was Mexican so talked with a bit of an accent.) Brett says, "no comprende senor. no hablo espanol." haha. I told Brett he was speaking english. Luckily the guy was cool and didn't kill us on the spot.

We pretty much just ate and crashed that night since we were both tired. Friday and Saturday we grinded the 10/20nl games. One hand that I remember, I was on Brett's left. He had the button, and raised to $60. I made it $220 from the sb with KQ. He calls. Flop is Q-9-T, 2 clubs. I bet $350. Brett makes it $1,000. He has about $2,000 behind, and I cover. Such a crappy spot since I know his range is huge here, and he will be semi-bluffing a HUGE portion of the time. However, the rest of the time he will have me crushed here and to guess where I'm at for $3,000 didn't seem like a great idea. I fold, and he shows me 9-7. :( That was really the only hand with Brett that anything much happened. No sense messing with eachother a ton when we can wait for home games. Like they say in Rounders, "We're not playing together, but we're not playing against each other, either. It's like the Nature Channel. You don't see piranhas eating each other, do you?"

Brett left Saturday night to go see a friend who lived near there before his flight in the morning. I stuck around and grinded. A lot of actors/professional athletes were out. James Woods plays like every minute it seems. Every time I walked in it seemed like he was playing, and every time I left he was still playing. He plays a TON of poker. He's like 60 years old, and had a good looking model type girlfriend he made out with lots who was maybe 25.(note to self: get rich and famous) I was sitting next to former NBA player Jack Haley, and another former NBA player, Chris Mills was sitting behind me. Other NFL/NHL guys were there as well. Bunch of well known poker pros there- Chad Brown, Vanessa Russo, Men the Master, Cindy Violette, Tuan Le, Barry Greenstein, Mimi Tran and a few others. Eskimo Clark was walking/sitting around all weekend, looking for a stake or something.

Funny story I just found out about Tuan Le: He went to Foxwoods Casino and played the main event of a big tournament there in 2004. He won the tournament for $1.55 million. He didn't have a bank account at the time, so he took his winnings in cash, bought a duffle bag at the gift shop and caught the next flight out.

When Jack Haley was sitting next to me, the guy next to him was an NHL player, so they were exchanging some stories. One cool story Jack mentioned was that when he started playing poker about 2 and a half years ago he was there during a tournament and wanted to rent a room out. The rooms were all sold out, but they did have one room, a presidential suite available. Jack said he'd take it.(I dunno what that costs, but I'm sure it's ridiculously high.) Anyways, he liked it so much he never checked out, and is still checked in over 2 1/2 years later, using it as his poker pad.

Sunday I played for a few hours before my flight. I forgot to set up a ride to the airport. I called the floorman over to the table I was playing at. I asked if he could arrange a ride for me. He said he'd see what he could do and went and made a call. A few minutes later he came back over to the table and said I'd have a limo waiting outside for me at 5. Beautiful!

We had to drop off two ladies in Beverly Hills on the way to the airport. The limo driver was telling me that the one lady basically owned Santa Monica. She was ridiculously wealthy. We dropped her and her friend off in a sick neighborhood that you could tell costs crazy money to live there. Makes me want to get filthy rich. She asked what I did and I told her I played poker for a living. She told me no one can win at gambling and I should quit before my luck runs out. :)

Going to Los Angeles

2007-08-30T04:41:00.000-07:00

Packing for LA right now. Heading out there for a few days with Brett(mynameishov) to play some cash games and party. After LA I head back out to Arizona(I'm in NJ right now.) Supposedly the Commerce will send a limo to pick you up from the airport if you're playing high stakes, so I'm going to call them to see if I can have them do that so that I won't have to pay lots for a cab through LA.

Haven't updated in a while, but will update soon as I get back.

The investing post I made yesterday was written a while back(6 months or so?) but I re-read it and seems to have good info for beginning investors if you wanna check it out. Have heard it was helpful for a bunch of people.

Investing info for beginners

2007-08-29T03:06:00.000-07:00

I wrote this a while back for some poker players who didn't really know much about investing, so this post is really basic/simple, and geared towards beginners. Thought it might be helpful to some people starting out or who haven't started investing yet:

I’m going to gear this post towards “small stakes” investing. I’ll talk about pretty basic things for the most part, but will hopefully open up new ways of thinking for investing for some of you. I know that some of you are probably making good money, and maybe don’t have any idea about investing. I’m not an expert by any means, but have read/experienced a decent amount with investing. I’ve also networked with quite a few investors, and tried to learn from/with them. I wouldn’t recommend one certain type of investment to any one person; basically invest in what’s best for you, and what your goals are. There are obviously some investments where you can make a lot of money(real estate, businesses, etc...), but may have to put some work in to make it a successful investment(active investing), and some that you won’t make a lot of money(savings accounts, bonds), but you also won’t have to do anything, and your money will grow by itself(passive investing), allowing you to do other things with your time.

First when investing, you need to decide what type of investing you want to do. Do you want to actively invest, putting in a little work to make your money grow, or do you want to passively invest, sitting back and watching your money grow without having to manage your investment at all. That’s something you definitely need to think about before you decide to jump in.

The ultimate goal for investors for the most part is to become a passive investor. The reason I say that is, because you can’t really retire if all you do is actively invest. When your passive income exceeds your expenses, you can retire if you wanted to. Many people’s incomes come from jobs, and they invest what’s left over passively, and they retire when they are old. Pretty standard for the most part. A number of people here will have the opportunity to retire pretty young if they invest wisely starting now.

Let’s talk about some of the different types of investing. You can obviously put your poker earnings in the bank, and maybe get around a 4% return on them.(note: rough figure, don’t know the current rate, just using it as an example.) The return you will get from your bank will be very low in comparison to other investments you could make. This is an investment that will not lose money. It’s insured and safe, but you aren’t going to make very much of a return. Another investment along the same path is cds. The rates will be a little higher, the difference is you may have them for a certain length of time(6 months, 12 months, 2 years, etc...) Your return will be a little higher than your bank, maybe around 5.5%.(again, rough number, as I haven’t looked at the current rates) You can invest in stocks. You can probably expect your return in stocks to be higher than either of the previous options. You might expect returns to be 8-10%.(again, estimate, not exact number) With the stock market, the big difference between this and a savings account or bonds, is that the return is not fixed. So you could have an annual return of 20% or more one year, but you could also potentially lose money. Also, you may have fees if you use a broker. I wouldn’t advise picking your own stocks. It may not be worth it to use a broker though, as they will charge you fees for using them, and 95% of them won’t be making you any more money than you could make yourself just putting it in a Vanguard or something along those lines. There is a joke that they are called stock”brokers”, because they are broker than you are. If they could really make a lot of money trading, they would probably not be a stockbroker.(note: to any stock brokers reading, please don’t take offense, not talking about all stockbrokers) Mutual funds are another option. They are a longer term investment for the most part, and diversified to reduce risk.

On to some active investments. These investments will produce higher returns if done correctly, but will have more risk. Kind of like poker. If you play small stakes you know what type of money you will make, and for a lot of you it won’t be very risky. If you try some higher stakes to make a lot more money, you may lose, but the potential for greater returns are there.

One active investment is obviously starting your own business. If you start a business, and it becomes successful, you can definitely make a lot of money. You could do this on a small scale, maybe just buying and selling things for profits, or on a much larger scale. There’s a million different types of businesses you could start, so I won’t get into all of that. If you do start a successful company, and decide you would like to do something else, but still want to keep the business, you could always hire someone to run your business, turning it into a more passive investment. Many of you are going to school and playing poker, or working and playing poker, so could take a good amount of time to build a big business from scratch also. Internet businesses are often a good way to get started, often using a lot less money to get started, and instead using your own personal time as your main investment to build your business.

The next investment I’ll talk about is easily the topic I can talk most about: Real Estate. Like having your own businesses, you can make a LOT of money in real estate. Along with the ability to make a lot of money in real estate, you can also lose money if you make mistakes.(done that too) Many of the other topics(savings accounts, stocks, bonds, etc....) people at least know a bit about. Real estate is one aspect I don’t think a lot of people here know about. It’s something you can build your money with a lot faster than most of the other investments, but is a lot “scarier” to get involved with since a lot of people don’t know much about it. I’ll give a lot of examples to explain some of the different types of investing in real estate. In real estate you can invest actively or passively.(note: even passively, like business, doesn’t mean you will never have to do anything. You still want to know what’s going on with your properties even if you are investing passively) Active investing is often referred to as investing in properties to fix and flip, etc... You buy a property for $100k, hire contractors to fix it up for $20k, and sell for $150k, and make a little money.(note: you wouldn’t make $30k on this deal, because there are a lot of other expenses involved- taxes, realtors fees, closing costs, insurance, title, holding costs etc...) “Flipping” as it’s often referred to is getting a lot harder to do these days. You can still find deals to make money from like this, but it’s definitely not easy to do like it was 5-10 years ago. This is often what people do to build capital in real estate. That was my original plan, to flip a few houses, and then invest the profits into an apartment building for passive income, and then repeat. I have since changed my plan a bit, since I have different financial goals, and different ways I want to do things.

One thing that can happen during a flip, is it can take longer than you initially thought, and the market can change. I was lucky enough to run into both of these things on a house I bought late last year that I intended to flip. I bought the property for $240k. The guest house was completely gutted. I planned on putting about $15k into doing the guesthouse. After talking to a handful of realtors, and reviewing comps, I thought I could sell after it was completed for about $300k. After all expenses, holding costs, and realtor fees($18k), I hoped I could make $15-20k. Well, the fix-up took a little longer than I had hoped, and the market softened a little bit more since I bought the property. With the increased holding costs, and the lower sales price I would sell at, I would barely make anything at all if I decided to flip it. If I was lucky I would have made $5k. Maybe I would have made nothing. I decided to hold the property and rent it out since it’d be around breakeven cashflow. I’ll probably hold the property for a couple years, and sell it once the market picks up again. So despite this example of what turned out to be a not so great flip, it will not turn out to be a bad deal at all for me since I bought right. The tenants will be paying my mortgage for me on the property, while slowly paying down some of it, and I’ll get tax benefits worth a few thousand dollars each year. Also, since I’m in no rush to sell it, when I do decide it might be a decent time to sell it a couple years down the road, I can talk with some other investors, or advertise to homeowners myself and save around $20k on realtors fees. So if the house appreciates some over the next couple years, some of the mortgage is paid down, etc... I could make a good profit(maybe $30-$50k if I sell without a realtor+ all tax benefits I receive while I own it that save poker profits come tax time) without a whole lot of work on my end.(note: not exactly passive, because it can be a pain to rent it out if doing it yourself)

Another property that I bought late last year, would have been a great flip, even though the market was slow. I got a great deal in a nice neighborhood. I used a “bird dog” to find this property.(Think poker tracker for real estate investors)- not really but kind of. A bird dog is someone who finds good deals, but isn’t going to invest in the deal themselves for whatever reason.(maybe not enough money, not enough time, etc...) The bird dog I used had too many deals going on at the time, and didn’t live in the area, so threw me the deal. If I closed, I paid him $1,000 for the lead. Well, did my homework on the deal, turned out to be a steal, so closed it right away.(actually drove 2 hours in the middle of the night to meet the owner to sign a contract with her before someone else got it, then 2 hours home- soooo worth it) After some expert negotiating, I bought the house for $170k. I thought the house was worth about $215k. It only needed about $5k worth of work, if that. Real simple stuff, that could have been finished in a week or so without much trouble. After the $1k I paid the bird dog, realtor fees,etc...I could have easily made $10-$20k, in a couple weeks time. Well, I liked the neighborhood so much I decided to move in. So decided against flipping it for the time being, but will realize the profits when move out and decide to sell.(note: might not be actual “profits” left when I move out, since I’ll be paying my mortage while living in the house, and not having renters pay my holding costs for me. Depends what the market does)- but I need to live somewhere, so it’s all good.

I’m currently talking with an investor I know about partnering on a deal that would be on a much larger scale than the two I mentioned, and we could potentially be looking at making 7 figures on that one deal.(obviously no guarantee, we’re just starting to look at everything involved with it) It would take a couple years to complete, but could be well worth it.(it would be a deal where we are adding value to some commercial property) The possibilities are really endless with real estate. I’ve obviously only invested in smaller deals up to this point, but once you learn, and are comfortable with the risks involved, there are much bigger deals out there, and much more money to be made if you find real estate is something that you like.

Anyways, enough about some of the deals I’ve invested in, just wanted to give some real life examples, good and bad. Here are some things you might not know about real estate. It’s not as hard to get into as you might think. You don’t have to buy a property cash. You can put a certain % down, and you take out a mortgage on the rest. This is a HUGE factor to consider when investing in real estate. This is why this is one of the main investments I choose to try and get ahead financially, because of the power of leverage. The reason is if you buy a $200k property, you don’t need $200k to invest in it, you can leverage your money and buy more properties. Let me give you an example:

Let’s say John buys a house for $200k. He’s a baller so he pays straight up cash for this place. He rents it out for $1500/month. Tenants pay all utilities. John’s taxes are around $100 per month, making his total cashflow $1,400 per month, since he doesn’t have a mortgage. John holds the property for 5 years. The property appreciates roughly 5% each year that John owns the property. John finds some very high stakes poker games that he wants to play, and decides he wants to have a good bankroll behind him, so he decides he wants to sell his house. He could just take a home equity line out on the property, but decides he just wants to sell it, since his long term tenants are moving out in a couple months after their lease ends.

John’s investment:

$200k invested
$1300/month= $16,800 per year cashflow
X 5 years= $84,000
appreciation: roughly $50,000

John sells his house for $250,000
Average profit per year: $26,800
He made around a 67% return after 5 years
Roughly 13.4% per year on his investment.

He profited $134,000 from the deal.

Tay also decides to invest some of his poker earnings. He has $200k to invest as well. He decides he wants to buy multiple properties though. Tay decides to invest in the same neighborhood as his friend John. He works out a deal with an investor who is getting out of residential real estate, and sells Tay 10 houses. Tay puts 10% down on each of his properties. They are worth $200k each. So roughly $20k on each property he has invested. Each of the houses are rented out for $1,500. Tay has a mortgage on all of his properties, and pays $1,300/month. He also has taxes of $100/month, so he only cashflows around $100 per month. He has 10 properties though, so total he cashflows $1,000 per month. After 5 years, Tay decides it’s time to sell his houses and buy an apartment complex. Tay can sell his houses for $250k each, just like John.

Tay’s investment:

$200k invested
$100/month cashflow per property
X 10 properties= $1000/month cashflow
$12,000 per year cashflow on his houses
X 5 years= $60,000
appreciation per property: $50,000
total appreciation: $500,000

Average profit per year: $112,000
Return: 280% over 5 years
Tay made 56% per year on his investment

Total profit: $560,000

These are obviously just examples, but you can see how big of an impact using leverage to your advantage in real estate can be. Obviously there is a lot more included in deals like these(vacancies, something in one of your houses breaks, etc...) If someone wants an in depth example of how to break down a deal, based on vacancy rates, etc... I can do that. Just kind of winging this post, and it’s already pretty long so trying not to ramble about every detail and make it really long.

One other huge benefit in real estate is that you can roll over your profits into other deals and not pay taxes on them(1031 exchange.) Meaning in this example, if Tay decided to buy an apartment complex with the profits he made from these houses, he would not pay taxes on those profits. That’s another HUGE benefit to real estate. You can keep rolling over your profits and not paying taxes on them(LEGALLY.) This is the one of the main reasons, along with the ability to leverage, why real estate is one of the easiest, if not the easiest way to become rich. (I think something like 80% of millionaires in the United States made their money in real estate.) You do have to pay taxes if you do not re-invest your profits.

One case where you can keep the profits of appreciation, AND not have to re-invest is where you live in a property for 2 years.(actual law I think is 2 of the last 5 years) This is one of the reasons why owning is often much better than renting.(definitely exceptions though) When you rent, and decide to move out, you walk away with nothing. Maybe your security deposit back if you are lucky. Someone who helped me learn a lot of what I know in real estate actually uses this to his advantage big time. He buys a house, lives in it for a couple years, and sells it. While he’s living in it, he does things to increase it’s value so that when he sells he’ll be able to sell it for more than he paid, regardless of what the market does. He’s also been fortunate enough to own houses in areas that have done very well appreciation wise, so he’s sitting on a lot of extra money these days thanks to the ability to keep his profits from the houses he lives in tax free.

Couple other things I wanted to mention before I wrap up this post: Roth IRA- you guys should definitely look into this. You do need earned income to be eligible to invest here though.(so poker money doesn’t count) You can invest up to $4,000 a year, and the profits you make on the money from stocks/ mutual funds or whatever is tax free for LIFE(pretty much). Probably a good idea to look into for many of the guys who maybe have a little earned income from jobs at school, or whatever. Good thing to invest in for retirement. I broke the numbers down for my younger brother one day and figured his Roth IRA would be worth around $2 million by the time he was eligible to start withdrawing for retirement.(based on putting the max in each year: $4k, or a little more as you get older)- compound interest is HUGE. Definitely something to look into. There are also other types of IRA’s for people who are self-employed(poker players). Different types, but HUGE tax advantages, so worth checking out.

Hard money lending: another way to make money passively. You can lend to someone who needs money. Your money is tied to an investment(real estate, a business, a car, etc...) You just need to make sure whatever it is that it’s tied to is worth at least as much as your money, because if they default you get the property, business, or whatever it is that you get. I got an offer from some investors who were in need of capital for 37.5% annual. They needed $40,000, because all their money was tied up in other investments. They would give me $7,500 to use my money for 6 months. I turned it down because they were highly leveraged, and my investment would be tied to a highly leveraged property.

To wrap this up, there are a lot of different ways to invest. I talked most about real estate, because I know more about it than I do the other things, and there’s a lot more to expand about in that too, in comparison with the other things mentioned, especially since many people know a bit about some of the other stuff(stocks, bonds, etc...), and most of you that I’ve talked to didn't know as much about real estate. Real estate is my main investment choice right now, but when investing, choose what is right for you. Real estate might not be the best option for you. Maybe you want to start your own business. Maybe you want to just get some mutual funds and not worry about managing your investments too much. Maybe you are interested in doing something I didn’t mention.(day trading) There’s so many ways to invest. I think it’s important for people playing poker and maybe making a lot more money than other people their age, to think now about investments. You can get WAY ahead financially if you start now. Just because most of people don’t retire until their 50's or 60's doesn’t mean you can’t retire in your 20's or 30's. Hopefully I didn’t ramble too much throughout this post. Hopefully it was helpful for some people, and to the guys who haven’t invested, things like Roth IRAs, etc.. are definitely things to look into. To the guys who are looking to make money with their poker profits, hopefully this post at least gives you some ideas of some things you can do. I was pretty basic/general with things, couldn’t really go into tons of details on everything since this post would be way longer than it already is. If you want me to go into detail about something I said, just reply with what you want me to talk more about and I’ll do the best that I can. Hopefully some people can pick up some things from this post.

our house caught on fire

2007-08-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

Last week our house caught on fire.............

I live at the beach house with my brother for the summer, but this weekend the house was pretty packed. My parents were here for the month, and my sister and niece had come down for the weekend, along with my sister's friend and her little girl. My brother was out of town for the weekend, so my sister's friend Gale, and her daughter Macy slept in my brother's room.

I went to bed early, I was extremely tired. I fell asleep at around 12:30 AM, which if you know my schedule is realllly early for me. At around 4 o'clock I woke up. I was wide awake for some reason. I was tired but was sitting up wide awake. I tried to get back to sleep. 4:20, I'm laying in my bed kind of still awake, and the fire alarm goes off. The fire alarm had gone off a few times earlier this summer because of the batteries. Sometimes it would go off in a minute by itself, or else we'd change a battery or something. So I layed there in bed for a second getting ready to get up and go see what battery needed to be changed. All of the sudden I hear, "SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP US, THERE'S A FIRE!!!!" It was Gale. I jump up from my bed and sprint down the hall. When I got to the room I could see it was filled with smoke. Macy, Gale's little girl was crying. My dad had gotten there just before me and was helping Gale put out the fire. A battery pack for a DVD player that was charging had overheated and exploded, and set on fire. It was real smoky but Gale had pretty much gotten the fire out. I went over to the window to open them up since the room was filled with smoke. All of the sudden there was a huge BANG! The other piece of the battery pack exploded and set off another fire that shot up about waist high and set the carpet on fire. I grabbed the blankets/mattresses and pulled them away from the fire so they didn't all set on fire. My mom yelled for me to call 911. I ran in the other room and grabbed the phone to call 911. I picked it up to dial and it says, "searching...". I hung it up and tried again, "searching...." WTF. For some reason the phone wasn't working. I sprint down the hall and grab my cell. I dial 911 and literally as soon as I finished saying our address to the operator I can hear sirens. Ridiculously fast response time. I run back in the room to see if my dad needed help with the fire but he'd kind of started to suffocate it when I went to call 911 and he'd been able to put whole thing out by the time I got back in, but we weren't sure if anything else was going to blow up or catch on fire, so we took the kids outside.

Luckily there wasn't another fire after that. The firemen came in with some sort of device to make sure nothing was hot behind any of the walls since some of the stuff that went shooting across the room from the battery pack could have gotten in a wall or something, and also the wiring could have been affected. The head fire guy stuck around for a while to take pictures, etc... After everyone finally cleared out, my dad and I spent the next 3-4 hours cleaning out the entire room. We had to move and clean everything since soot was everywhere. The damage could have been a lot worse, but the carpet was ruined and the wall was pretty messed up, so the carpet had to be replaced, walls painted, etc... The closet door actually had plastic from the battery pack that had shot over and melted onto the door. There were pieces of it all across the room. After we got done cleaning I blew my nose and soot came out.

It was around 9 am or so. I thought maybe I'd try and get a couple hours of sleep, but the adrenaline from the fire was still kind of going, so I figured I might stay up for the day. Nothing like a small house fire to start off the day. At some point while we were cleaning Macy wanted to come in and look again at the damage. Since we were in the middle of cleaning and there was still soot we didn't want her to walk around in there since she might get soot on track it around the house. She started walking in and I told her to wait a while.

Macy: "why"
Me: "we're cleaning in here"
Macy: "why are you cleaning"
Me: "because it's still dirty in here"
Macy: "why is it dirty"
Me: "because there was a fire, we're still cleaning it up in here. you can come check it out in a little while"
Macy: "why was there a fire"
Me: "because the battery pack exploded"
Macy: "why did it explode"
Me: "i dunno, good questions though, I like where you're head's at."
Macy(looking confused): "thanks"
and then she walks away.

Luckily no one got hurt. I was gonna send my brother a text message that said, "hope you're having a good time. p.s. your room caught on fire." My mom told me not to though since she thought he'd stress out.

lil tourney action, lil sidebet action

2007-08-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

There's a March Madness style heads up tournament that I'm involved in right now. 64 players, $250 entry. It's pretty cool since a lot of the players in the tourney know eachother, so it's more of a fun tourney than anything else. Here's the bracket:

http://www.bracketmaker.com/tmenu.cfm?tid=236092&tclass=SSNL%20HU%20Tourney%202007

I've played 2 rounds so far and gotten past my first two opponents, so I'm into the Sweet Sixteen. Each round you play a best of 3. Here's the payout structure:

1st = $5.25k
2nd = $3.5k
3-4th = $1.75k
5-8th = $750

I also have some side action on the tournament. I'll probably end up having around $1,000 in side bets once the tourney's over. One bet is with "gimmetheloot" for $250. We each picked 6 horses for the tournament, both of us keeping ourself, so basically 5 other players. We picked like a draft so once we selected someone they were off the draft board and unavailable for the other person to select. Here's how it ended up:

my horses:

carrotsnake, idonkedyoo, 23act, nirzhar_k, sputnik3000 and myself.

gimmetheloot's horses:

danj, nuggetz87, pbjaxx, nolves, fonkey and himself.

So if one of our guys wins the tournament that person wins the $500. If none of them win then nothing gets paid out.

I have another bet with nirzhar_k that's pretty much the same type of bet. We're betting $200. Here's our guys:

me:

carrotsnake, sputnik3000, pbjaxx, idonkedyoo, 23act, me

him:

0evg0, danj, nuggetz87, mused01, kaz2107, him

I gave him 1.1:1 odds on this bet. He didn't know the guys very well.

Also did a bracket bet where a bunch of us put money in and filled out the whole bracket and based on a points system winner takes all.

golfing

2007-08-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Been golfing a decent amount lately. Trying to become a decent player again. I used to golf all the time one summer in like 8th or 9th grade, and became a pretty good golfer, but over the last 9 years or so have only played a couple times a year on average, so I'm not very good.

I decided I want to become a good golfer. I went to a well known golf store(I think it was called GolfSmith's or something like that) and I spent $1,300 on new irons, driver, etc.... it was sweet cause they have a place set up to test out the clubs, so I got to hit a ton of balls with a bunch of different clubs to see which ones I liked best. My clubs were pretty old and I decided I should have an upgrade if I was going to get back into it. Since I play poker for a living, I have a lot of free time to do whatever I want, and since I live in Arizona most of the year I'll be able to golf all winter, which will give me a chance to become good, especially since there's a golf course a few blocks from my house so I won't have any excuses not to go play.

I went golfing on Thursday with my Dad, and I hit more houses(2) than fairways, so I have a long way to go. I'm pretty sure that was a personal record though; I don't think I've hit 2 houses in one round before.

If I decide I'm definitely going to go all out and get good at this crazy game, I'm going to hire a golf pro for some lessons. Golf is a lot like poker. It's extremely frustrating at times, and very fulfilling at other times. Probably the biggest similarity is both are definitely addicting.

vegas: the day at the venetian continued........

2007-08-05T18:30:00.000-07:00

I get down to the table and Garrett decides he'll quit for the day and start drinking with me. As I'm waiting for Garrett to finish playing up to his blinds, guess who walks by me. You guessed it........... Jamie Gold himself, 2006 WSOP Champion. He heads in the back room for a 50/100nl game that's going on. A couple other players I recognize back there are Phil Laak and Gabe Thaylor. I walk back and check out the table. Jennifer Tilly(the actress turned poker player) aka Phil's girlfriend is sweating Phil.(she was in "Seed of Chucky"- the crazy doll; and a bunch of other movies) I'm like the only one standing around watching the game. Jennifer looked over and I'm pretty sure she was undressing me with her eyes. I'm not sure. I went to see if Garrett was done cause Phil was there and I didn't want it to get awkward.

Garrett is finished. He cashes out and we go look for some drinks. We walk around, check out some sick, sick photos. They were like huge professional photos of beaches, islands, things like that. They were all lit up and it seemed like you were actually there they were that sick. I'm definitely getting a bunch of them when I get rich. We are walking around drinking, and decide we should play some blackjack. We are just kickin it playing blackjack, talking with other poker players at the table(basically everywhere we went there were other poker players who came to Vegas for the WSOP, so was pretty cool)

Quick interruption/funny story:

We are eating in a nice little place in Venetian earlier in the day for lunch, and we are eating at a table next to some basketball players.(not sure who they were) Anyways, a couple waiters are asking them about basketball or whatever at their table. Our waiter asks us if we play poker. No clue how he knew.(He said he thought we "looked like poker players.") I dunno how you can look like poker players but I guess you can. One minute later we are getting wayyyyy more attention than the basketball players. It was funny/odd. Our waiter told his waiter buddies that we were pros. A bunch of the waiters came over and were asking us about being professional poker players, etc.... Was really weird. The basketball players were left waiterless. Was funny in an odd way.

So anyways, we're hangin out with some other poker players, playing blackjack, ordering drinks every time we see a cocktail waitress. I am ridiculously drunk after a while of this, since I had already drank quite a bit before we started playing blackjack. Fast forward an hour or 2. I dunno what time it is, but some chinese girl sits down next to me and starts playing. It's kind of blurry from there but she tried to make out with me at the blackjack table, and turns out she got kicked out by the Venetian security. Garrett made sure to remind me of this and make fun of me in the morning, and many other times throughout the day. I don't remember getting back to the room.(I left before Garrett) I remember doing really well playing blackjack, but don't remember cashing out my chips at all. Did the chinese girl take them!?!? Did I leave them at the table??????(ohhhhhhhhhhhh shiiitt there was some poor dude who kept celebrating for me when I won hands and asking me for money. he rob me on my way out??) Who knows. When I woke up I quickly looked for my wallet. I opened it up and it was filled with money. Sweeeeeeeet. I was so relieved. As I jumped back into bed ridiculously tired and hungover Garrett starting counting out a bunch of money and handed me a big stack of $100s. Turns out I had lent him thousands of dollars the night before and didn't remember.

Good times.

vegas: the day at the venetian

2007-08-04T01:54:00.000-07:00

So we decide to try the Venetian out since we haven't played there yet. Finally we get called into the must move game and it's 5 nits, myself and Garrett(ya, I dunno why they took so long to call us either) So we've been playing for 10 minutes or so, nothing too exciting has happened. Older man who has raised pre-flop before and folded to a 3 bet, decides to try raising pf this time. I have A2 on the button, and I 3 bet him. The sb cold calls $120, and everyone else including the older guy folds. Heads up to the flop:

Flop: K-T-3

He checks. I check behind.

Turn: J

He checks. I bet $150. He calls.

River is a blank. He checks and I fire $300 into his ridiculously obvious QQ. He thinks for a while and finally folds. I flip up my cards and show my bluff, trying to get some action going at this very nitty table. He says, "bet you can't guess what I had." "QQ," I said. He is impressed, strokes my ego and lets me know that I am correct.

Then, instead of pushing me the full pot, the dealer attempts to take $42 out of my pot for a time pot. When I tell her that I just sat down, and that no time pot was announced she called the floor.(Normally when players sit down they either, A. pay the time($6), B. pay half time($3), C. don't have to pay time since they just sat down, and are often allowed to play until the next time) None of these options include paying everyone else's time in an unannounced time pot that we definitely wouldn't have agreed to playing with 5 nits.(self-explanitory, but I'll explain this in a second) So this floor guy comes over(younger guy) He asks what happened and the dealer said everyone was doing a time pot. I tell him that I just sat down and never heard of any time pot/and wouldn't have agreed to a time pot anyways.(when time pots are being done, players either agree to them, or they pay the time- since we had just sat down we did not know any time pot existed- so obviously we wouldn't be a part of a time pot that we weren't there for) He says in a condescending manner, "sir here's how a time pot works- what happens is instead of paying time, the person who wins a certain sized pot will pay the time for everyone. see thats how it works. does that make sense to you?" If I dislike anything, people talking to me like that is definitely up there. I politely explained I knew how a time pot worked, but we were new players to the table, so IF we had to pay any time, it wasn't a time pot for everyone that we knew nothing about. He was still talking to me like I was an idiot, but finally realized that he was actually the idiot and agreed that Garrett and I could pay time.

Quick tip for when/when not to be involved in time pots: the table we were at was full of nits.(nits for those reading who don't know the poker lingo are very, tight players. meaning they don't play a lot of hands, and don't put a lot of money in.) Garrett and I would attempt to run over a table like this, and so this would mean that we would be paying most of the time pots just between us. So instead of paying $6/ 30 minutes to play poker there, one of us would probably end up paying $42-$60(depending on # of players)/ 30 minutes to play there, because we'd be getting involved in most of the pots, and winning the majority of them over the course of a session. So we could easily end up paying $500 in rake instead of like $50. If it's a full table and everyone's doing a time pot it's usually the friendly thing for everyone to do the time pot to keep the game moving, etc... If it's a shorthanded table with guys who are never going to have to pay a time pot because they are waiting for aces it's a horrible decision to be in a time pot. If I were a very tight player, I would love to be in time pots, because it would mean I could play poker for free without having to pay time until I woke up with a huge hand.

I probably explained it way more than I had to.......so anyways..............

Finally we get called from the must move game. I rack up my chips, grab my phone, water, etc... and head over to the other table. I put everything down at my new seat and the player who just left there says he wants to stay there now. Floor says, "okay, you can stay." I have to go back to the must move game. wtf. So I'm repacking up my stuff, and another seat luckily opens up that I can take. So instead of having to go back to the must move the floor person tells me I can take that seat. Sweet. Now some other guy comes over and says, "no this is my seat." Floor guy had told him he could have it first. WOW. They send me back to the must move game. WTF. I had heard good things about the Venetian Poker Room, but seriously these guys are idiots. They probably are good, let's just say it was variance, but wow. Left a bad memory about that room to me.

I'm as close to life tilt as I can get right now. I finally sit down and get my first hand: AA. That's one cure for potential life tilt. Some younger guy raises it up to $50. I make it $200. Folds back around to him and he calls. Flop is: 9-Q-3, 2 spades. He checks. I bet $250. He shoves. arhhhhhhhhhhhhhhg. Live players can have anything, so I really don't have a range for him since it's my 1st hand at the table. He could have a set, KK, AQ, KQ, flush draw, straight draw, etc... I call. he flips over 99. He scoops the $4,000 pot. Life tilt. I get up and go for a walk. You can't walk off life tilt. I decide to drink it off. I find a bar upstairs and ask the lady to make me her strongest drink. She does. I text Garrett and tell him I'm done playing for the day. I come back down to the poker room............

more vegas......

2007-08-03T17:15:00.000-07:00

Figured I'd post a bit more about the trip in Vegas:

One night we are playing some 5/10nl. Some guy comes up to the table with a girl and says in a really foreign accent, "do you mates mind if the lady watches while I play." We say of course not, and I grab a chair that was behind me for him so his girl can sit down. He says, "thanks mate."- in the awesomest accent ever. I think he was from the UK. A lot of the guys playing the cash games in Vegas were from other countries because they were in town for the WSOP. Often the majority of the table was made up of foreigners, and only a couple people from the US. I start talking to him(David), and he is wasted. Every other word he's swearing. It's pretty funny. Not in a negative way, just randomly in sentences. We are playing at the MGM, and they are the most hardcore poker room ever about not swearing. The dealer mentions to him to stop swearing. "Was I swearing?" he asked. She nodded. "Ahhh fuck, I didn't even realize it," he said. I'm sorry, I'm just so fucking pissed," he said with a big smile on his face. I said, "you seem pretty happy to me." Turns out pissed where he's from means drunk. This guy was the happiest guy ever. Everyone's loving this guy, as he continues to accidently swear a couple times per sentence.

He asks his girl if she wants to play. She wants to. "Are you sure you know what you're doing?," he asks her. "I'm really good," she says. He reached in his pocket and gave her $500 to play with.

So, after the first few hands it's pretty obvious to everyone at the table his girl has no idea what she's doing. "What the fuck are you doing!?!?," he says after she loses some more of the money. He's saying it in a drunkenly friendly manner, but it's pretty funny because anything she does he's doing commentary on it. She limped in every hand, which is pretty terrible as you know if you play poker. "Why are you LIMPING???? Raise!!! I'm going to raise you just to show you how bad that is," as he raises it up. He literally did this like every hand, while swearing at her in his crazy accent. The table was loving it. Since this guy showed up the table was in such a good mood, we decided to order a round of shots for everyone. I'm pretty sure he swore lots to find out where the cocktail waitress was since she was taking a long time. The poker room manager came over and asked him to leave. He pleaded with him to stay, and said he wouldn't do it anymore. He said, "no," and said she had to go. The whole table pleaded with the manager so that David and his girl could stay, cause they were a blast to be around. Finally the manager agreed to give them one more chance . "Fuck, thanks guys. I don't even mean to swear I just do." "Don't fucking swear, or we're going to get fucking kicked out of here," he said to his girl as the manager was walking away. Luckily he didn't hear him.

We finally got our drinks, and I pick up AK. There was a bunch of limpers to me, and I think I made it $100. Somehow I got like 6 callers, one of which was obviously David's girl, who played just about every hand, and somehow still had a bunch of money in front of her. The flop was K-K-6. The pot was around $700 and his girl donked out $50 first to act. David just about falls out of his seat laughing. "What the fuck are you doing!?!? You're not going to scare anyone betting $50!," he says to her, continuing to make fun of her in his awesome accent every hand. There's 2 hearts on the board, so I decide with another 5 people behind I'm just going to bet my hand hard. I reach next to my chips and grab my stack of money. I pull off 7 bills and throw them out into the pot. Everyone folds back around to the girl. She quickly and confidently takes the rest of her chips and pushes them into the middle before flipping up AQ. Obviously this was followed by David telling her how terrible she is and everyone at the table laughing hysterically. The dealer pulls the money into the pot and deals the Turn: T. Burn card. River: J. She hits a straight, and scoops the $1,700 pot as the table goes ballistic. I couldn't even tilt, we were having such a good time. She said, and I quote, "it was woman's intuition." Solid.

No way I could get mad at her. She was very good looking and a lot of fun to be around. She even reached her hand out after to shake my hand. haha. I love these foreigners.

Anyways, fast forward 30 minutes and all the money she had in front of her was gone. She said goodbye, and left. David kind of ran off and talked to her for a minute as she was leaving. He came back and we started talking some more. Turns out, he didn't even know her. He met her in a club that night, and got drunk with her, and decided it'd be a good idea to stake her to play poker.

By far one of the most fun nights of poker I've played.

update

2007-08-02T00:20:00.000-07:00

more posts on the way. i'll post a lot in august. had lots of family visiting and had other stuff going on like looking for my golf balls in the woods.

i'll post updates soon on poker, the duplex i'm buying/trying to buy, more vegas stories, upcoming trips, etc...

stay tuned

vegas................................

2007-07-20T00:56:00.000-07:00

walked by Shannon Elizabeth(chick who gets naked in American Pie)- she's a pro/semi-pro poker player now for those who don't know.(I dunno if she makes much money though, from what I've heard she gets mad when she loses at like $2/$5 no-limit in casinos) Her husband/ex? was walking with her. He must have some serious game cause she's like 47 levels out of his league.

I got my picture taken with the legend, Patrick Antonius. One of the top 3 poker players in the world and basically the man. If I can figure out how to put the picture up I will.

My friends saw Kevin Durant wandering around the casinos. I wasn't there yet I don't think.

Lebron James got turned down trying to get into Pure, which is supposed to be like the best club in Vegas. They have a dress code, and Lebron was wearing baggy jean shorts and sneaks with a t-shirt, and they wouldn't let him in. Who the hell turns away Lebron James from your club. He probly woulda dropped like 10 G's on bottle service. That's like what, a 30 second time out's pay for him.

vegas continued.......

2007-07-19T00:56:00.000-07:00

I didn't have time to find a money belt before I left. I'm not talking about one of the money belts you wear around your waist so everyone knows you are carrying money. I want one of the ones you can wear hidden under your shirt. I haven't seen many online yet, but am going to start looking around. I first saw one in Atlantic City when I was playing at the Borgata a couple months back. Some young kid is playing high stakes and an older guy starts talking trash to him telling him to 'get some more money kid' or something. The kid says , "I've got plenty more" as he lifts up his shirt to show that he's got stacks of money lined up all around his waist in this money belt or whatever you call it.

So, wanted to feel safe with a lot of cash on me, so I decided to break out my aikido shirt for the trip. I took aikido last year for a bit, and got a t-shirt when signing up that says "Mushin Kai Aikido" on the front with a guy flipping over a dude. I figure, if someone's gonna try and rob someone, they probably aren't gonna target the guy wearing the aikido t-shirt. So that's my traveling attire. Keeps me safe on the road.

So Vegas, 2nd or 3rd day, we're playing some blackjack. Garrett is betting like $1,000 per hand. We are staying at Hooters, so for Hooters it's like the biggest action ever for them.(side note: Hooters is wayyyyy cheap to stay- like half price of other decent hotels, well worth it imo) Anyways, we get approached by some suits. Alright, just one dude. So he tells us to come back to his office when we're done playing.(and by us, I mean Garrett, but it's a given we are down for the VIP meeting) He gives Garrett his card and heads back to his office. So after Garrett is done winning some money, we head back to his office. So this guy is like, "I take care of people who bet a lot, etc, etc...." He's telling us to have a good time while we're in Vegas, charge whatever we want to the room, and come see him before we leave and he'll take care of it. "Sky's the limit" he says. We are glad to hear this and head out talking about getting limos, maybe getting helicopter rides, etc...

vegas

2007-07-16T00:03:00.000-07:00

I'll post some stuff that happened in Vegas in the next few entries. It may be out of order some. I'll post it as it comes back to me.

My friend Garrett played in the main event for the World Series of Poker. So the first day we went to watch. We passed by '12-pack' on our way into the Rio from the show "I Love New York." Saw him again later at the expo walking around. Saw a bunch of pros while walking around- Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, Marcel Luske, Joe Hachem, etc...

A bunch of friends from Arizona came down to watch Garrett and to hang out in Vegas for a few days. We went into the poker room to watch Garrett for a bit. He made it past the first break, and was doing pretty well. A while after we started watching from the rail, he put a big bluff on a guy at the table with air. We started cheering. Andy Black, who is a well known pro at the table behind them turned around and said something along the lines of, "I guess they don't make IQ a requirement to get in here huh?" Good one Andy.

Unfortunately, Garrett busted out day 1 with 2 pair vs. a straight.

Met up with 2+2er Pbjaxx a bit later. We hung out/drank a bit, then headed over to Red Rock Casino to meet up for a dinner with a bunch of 2+2ers.(for people reading this who aren't poker players, 2+2 is a website where a lot of professional poker players frequent to talk strategy, etc...) mig.com- the guy who won a world series event recently was in front of us in the taxi line so we introduced ourselves. So we have dinner at the Red Rock, with like 30 2+2ers. Was real cool meeting all the guys. There was a couple people I might not have met there since there were like 3-4 tables of people. A bunch of guys were gambling/flipping before dinner came.(the people running the restaurant eventually put a stop to it) Before they could though, I think Tufat flipped for like $100, $200, $500, and then $1000, martingaling to win his money back.(could be off on the amounts, but something like that.)- Flipping for people who don't know is when you get 2 cards and you bet all your money before the flop comes, so you play for the money you wagered no matter what 2 cards you have. Martingaling is doubling your bets to try and win your money back. Tufat tried to get me to flip for $2,000 but I turned him down. Tufat is the man.

After dinner a bunch of us headed over to Caesar's to play in some private games that were arranged for us. We drank and played a bunch of games no one knew how to play. Actually, some people knew how to play them, I was probably the worst player there. I only play hold em so all these games were new to me. I was learning as I went. We played 2-7 triple draw, some games I can't even remember the names to, etc... I was the fish at the table no doubt. Once we switched everything to no-limit, I benefited a bit since I was not afraid to shove all-in at anytime, including betting $400 into $20 pots pf. Could have cost me lots, but I didn't get caught. Was lots of fun and only cost me a couple hundred bucks to learn the new games. We finished off playing lots of double board hold em. That's a GREAT game.

I'll post some more later.

back from vegas

2007-07-15T01:16:00.000-07:00

Haven't updated because I've been in Vegas. Just got back after stopping in the midwest on the way back to check out a property I'm buying. I'll update a lot this week, and will put up some good stories.

Best month ever

2007-07-01T01:13:00.001-07:00

June was by far my best month ever in poker. Actually made almost double my previous best month, so was a great month. I played mostly 2/4 this month. I played some 1/2 and 3/6 as well. My internet kept going out tonight(30th) so I had to cut my session short.

Leaving for Vegas in 4 days. Debating how much money I want to bring cause I'm not sure what stakes I want to play while I'm there. The games are playing pretty deep in Vegas from what I hear, so I'll probably end up playing 5/10, but was debating playing some 10/20, since I'm not really there in Vegas to work, more to have a good time. Would be cool getting some experience playing tough players in the 10/20 games. Don't know if I feel comfortable playing with $5,000+ in front of me against really tough pros though, so we'll see.(would probably need to bring a bunch of buy-ins too, so chances are I'll end up playing 5/10)

I'll need to get comfortable playing larger stakes with deep stacks soon, because in September I'm planning on going to Commerce again out in LA and playing in the 10/20 games out there. Also been debating trying the 10/25 game at the Borgata this summer since I'm so close to Atlantic City, but the buy ins are crazy for that game. Supposedly most of the regulars buy in for $10-$20k. I wouldn't want to buy in with like $5k and be the short stack.

Gonna kind of relax for the next few days before Vegas, and then get back to grinding when I get back the middle of July. Time to celebrate the big month.

one more day of grinding

2007-06-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

This is going to be the 2nd time in my poker "career" that I've played over 100,000 hands in one month. Last time was in February when I had a prop bet with "carrotsnake" for $1,000 that we'd both play 100k hands that month.

I got 1 outed tonight with 1 card to come. Can't remember the last time that's happened. Still had a really good night tonight though, so I shook it off even though it cost me $800, and I didn't tilt at all.

I have family coming so I won't be playing as much after today, until I get back from Vegas. I definitely need the break. I don't want to get carpel tunnel.

8 days till Vegas

2007-06-27T13:04:00.000-07:00

Can't wait until Vegas. Been working really hard lately, so can't wait for a break. Last night's session was another real frustrating session. Was up about $3k within the first hour, then got up to about $4.5k at my high point a couple hours later. Was hoping that I was going to have a huge day. Then, literally within 45 minutes I got some ridiculous beats/cold decks and only finished the day up around $1,300. Realllllly frustrating. I was playing a bunch of tables heads up and heads up can be real swingy. Losing thousands of dollars within minutes isn't fun, especially when I get the money in ahead. One hand I was playing a tough/aggro player HU who had been playing too overaggressive with me. He min raises pre-flop and I make it $32 with KK. he calls. Flop comes 753. I bet $45 and he calls. Turn is a 6. I check because he was trying to bluff me out of pots everytime he could, so I check to trap, and he fires pot. Perfect! I push all-in, and he calls with AJ!!!! River: A wtf!?!?!?!? This was after I had just taken some sick beats on some other tables and I punched my table. My sound on my computer went off, so I figured that I somehow managed to break my speaker. Playing with no sound, and knowing I need to buy a new speaker for my computer tilted me even more. I rarely tilt when I play, but the last few nights have been crazy. I think it's stupid posting about bad beats in a blog, but figure it'd be interesting to people who read this blog who don't play poker, to understand what it's like. I wish I could give a good analogy on what it feels like. Picture you're a sales person and you've worked all month wining and dining a client, trying to land your biggest deal ever, and finally they decide they want to do business with you. So you have the deal just where you want it, about to be rewarded with a huge payday for your all your work, and then when the person comes to sign the contract with you, as you see him approaching your office coming across the street he gets hit by a truck and dies.

I really can't complain though about rough nights, as I'm hopefully going to have my best month ever this month. I stopped playing early last night since I didn't feel I was on my game since I was frustrated. I didn't want to blow any money to tilt. Turns out the punch I landed didn't actually break my speaker either, it somehow muted it. Weird. I didn't even know how to mute it regularly!?!? I think I'd like to buy something I can hit and keep it next to my computer. Maybe a mini-punching bag or something.(any suggestions?) People who don't play poker who are reading this probably think I'm some maniac. I really am probably the calmest/most non-tilting player I know. If you lose thousands of dollars within minutes to bad beats though you'll understand.

I think I might stay away from a lot of HU. I'll still play HU, but if I'm playing HU at a bunch of tables, and get bad beats/get real swingy it makes me want to tilt at my 6 max games, when playing 6 max I almost never tilt. I actually debated trying to play HU full-time because I feel that in heads-up play a good player can create a HUGE edge on their opponents if they are a very good heads up player. I think mentally playing HU full time would be more stressful than I'd want, since you go on more swings. That would make me not want to play as much. Not wanting to play as much would = less money.

Anyways, Vegas in just over a week so I'm going to work hard until then, and then it's vacation time.

I changed my flight on the way back from Vegas to stop in the midwest so I could stop by and see the duplex I'm buying. I couldn't cancel the 2nd part of my first trip or I'd have to pay like $130 for canceling, and then I'd have to book a new flight going to Vegas, etc... Since the roundtrip flight that I had booked was only like $300+, I figured it'd probably just be cheaper getting a new flight on the way back, which is like $400ish, than paying $130 to cancel and then having to book a new flight for when I leave too, which will be more now since the date is much closer. I hate wasting money though, which is what it feels like. I think I may be able to get a credit for the flight I don't go on though since I kept it and it was roundtrip, so we'll see.

Cool story I heard

2007-06-26T02:08:00.000-07:00

I heard this story last month from a friend of mine, who's another professional poker player. The story happened to his friend, who also plays poker professionally. There are all sorts of entertaining stories that happen with poker players. Heres one of them(I'll do my best to get all the details right):

So Zack(not his name; we'll call him this for the story) decides to move to Los Angeles to move in with some other poker pros out there. He's an online player, but decides he wants to give the live games a try for a while. The guys he moves in with are live regulars out there. He's only 19 years old, but he has a fake ID. So, he lives out there for about a month with those guys, and does really well. I think he started out playing 5/10nl, and played all the way up to 40/80nl by the end of the month since he was doing real well.

Anyways, he gets tired of the grind, and decides he's had enough of live poker in LA, so he gets set to head back home. He packs up his belongings, which now includes about $130,000 in cash. He thinks nothing of it, throws it in his backpack and heads on the plane. Or at least, that's what he intended on doing. During the screening at the airport security stopped him for having all that cash on him, and authorities ended up seizing all of his money!

They didn't believe him when he told them he was a professional poker player and he made the money at the casinos. It took him a few months to recover the money, with the help of his lawyer.

Grinding away.......

2007-06-25T01:52:00.000-07:00

I've been playing a ton of hands lately. I just checked and in the last 9 days I've played about 50,000 hands. I'm probably not going to play anymore tonight since I want to make sure I don't burn out. Been getting a lot of coolers lately, so that makes it easier to burn out. I think I've gotten 2 outed about 10 times within the last 72 hours, also lots of KK vs. AA hands in $1k+ pots. Amazingly, I've still been having really good results through it. Today was actually my first losing day since June 14th. I think I'm playing real well lately, but sometimes going through rough sessions you start questioning a lot of your play. One play today I raised pf with 34s. One of the blinds called. Flop was 2-3-2. He checked, I made a continuation bet, and he raised me. I decided to put him all in because I felt I was ahead of him(and he didn't have a full stack), even though the only hand that I beat is air. I thought he was making a move with overs. He's a regular and I feel he usually 3 bets hands like TT+ pre-flop, and he doesn't usually raise flop here with hands like 44-99 on the flop, I felt that he would normally just call. I felt that even if he did decide to do that this hand, I could potentially push him off 44-99 type hands, so I went with my read and I pushed. He calls with KQ. Turn: Q. :( A bunch of hands like this over a couple days span will make you lose your desire to play pretty quickly.

Although I've been taking some bad beats, I don't think I've taken any as bad as this guy:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1381587673

Prodigys in the making

2007-06-24T01:22:00.001-07:00

The student I mentioned in the June 12th post has been doing real well. After about a week or so he was already up around $5k. He's had some internet problems in the last week, but is still well on pace to hit the $15k goal we set for him. I can't take much credit, he's been grinding, putting a lot of hands in and doing real well. We've only done a couple sessions.

I've also started helping my brother get started in poker. Since we're living together this summer he's been watching me play some of my sessions and asking me questions, and I'm trying to turn him into the next small stakes superstar. I wrote him out a hand chart I wanted him to use, and I've been watching him play a bit to make sure he's doing okay. He just started up this last week with a bankroll of $90, and has already turned it into like $160. I have him just playing the penny tables. The plan is to have him play the .01/.02 tables until he reaches $200. Then I'm going to have him play the .02/.05 tables until he reaches about $300. Then I'm going to have him play the .05/.10 tables until he hits $500, where he'll move to the .10/.25 tables. When he gets to that point, that's when he can start making some decent side money. He's working a full time job this summer, so he's just playing a couple hours here and there when he's off from work. I'm hoping I can get him to the point where he's making a decent hourly rate so he'll have a good side income when he goes back to school in the fall.

Here's a couple hands with a fish that I played with the other day that was followed by some chat:

I'm playing this guy heads up at $2/$4 no-limit. One hand he raises, and I re-raise QQ to $55. He calls. The flop is 6-8-T. I bet, he pushes, and I call. I think he only had like $300ish so there's like $600 in the pot. He flips over K9 for the inside straight draw, and ends up hitting on K on the river. I think he says something, trying to taunt me or something. Then a few minutes later this hand comes up: I raise to $14 from the button with 66. He calls. He has just over $600 and I cover. Flop is QKJ. He checks and I check behind. The turn is a 6 and he checks. I bet $27 and he min raises me to $54. I call. The river is a K. He checks and I bet $135. He pushes all-in for $539. So I start wondering if he could have KQ or KJ here for the higher full house. He easily could since he check raised the turn, but it's doubtful he's checking two streets with hands like that since I was the pf raiser and he'd probably at least bet the turn. His hand seemed more like AT which he was slowplaying the flopped nuts. If I was wrong, he still might have pushed any K all-in on the river there. I called him, he showed AT and and I took down the pot. He was not happy:

snowbank wins $1,214.70 with Full House, Sixes full of
Kings
fish: fukc you
snowbank: ;)
fish: this site is full of $hit
fish: fukc you
fish: fukc you
fish: you ruined my life
fish: fukc you
fish: you lucky piece of s**t
fish: you cheat
fish: you piece of fukcin s**t

Buying a duplex

2007-06-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

I've been negotiating back and forth with a seller on a duplex in the midwest for the last couple weeks. Their initial starting price was $79,900, but they had recently dropped it to $74,900 since they hadn't gotten it sold yet after being on the market for a while. The property had good cashflow, so I decided to make an offer. I offered $58,000. They came back with a counter offer of $72,000, saying that was their final offer. I countered back again at $65,000, splitting the difference. They came back later that week and said they could do $69,200, but that was the lowest they could possibly go.(my realtor told me they even dropped the commission from 8% to 6% to be okay with this price- we weren't sure why they initially were paying their broker 8%) I waited a bit and decided to come back and offer them $67,500, although they seemed to be close to maybe taking no deal at all and just holding out. I figured that since it had been on the market for 100+ days and my counter was just $1,700 short of their last "final offer", they'd be crazy not to take it. If they really wanted to sell, I figured they should take the deal. I heard back a couple days later, and they decided to accept my offer. So, now I need to get out there and check it out soon. I may try and change my flight on my way back from Las Vegas and make a stop in the midwest to do a walk-thru, meet with some property managers and check out the neighborhood. Also, I'd really like to meet with the realtor I've been working with. She seems like she really knows her stuff, and if things go well with everything I plan on doing more business with her. It's very hard to find realtors who actually know about investment properties, and she knows a lot about them, and does a lot of investing herself, which seems to be rare with most realtors who just want to sell you whatever they have, regardless of whether or not it makes sense as a good investment. I wouldn't mind gearing my investment strategy towards cashflow properties if I have a good team(realtor, and property management) where I don't have to hassle with much. I can focus on making money, and I won't have to worry about all sorts of different deals, I can just buy something that will cashflow and have my PM deal with everything. That's the tough part though. Hopefully I'll find a good PM.

Vegas, staking update, etc.....

2007-06-22T01:42:00.001-07:00

Been a while since I updated. I've been putting a ton of hands in, which is why. I'm going to Vegas the first week in July so I'm trying to make a lot before I leave, since I won't be working as much while I'm in Vegas. I'll be there for about 10 days. The main event for the WSOP(world series of poker) will be going on, but I'm not playing. I'm just going to hang out, party, and play cash games. My friend that I'm going with is playing, and I know a handful of other people playing, so hopefully they do well.

The person that I was thinking of staking came to meet with me a couple days ago. We talked some poker, talked over terms of the deal, and I told him I'd get back to him in the next 24-48 hours. The next time I talked to him he had received $400 in rakeback payment and turned it into $1,800 that day, so he didn't need a stake anymore since he only needed a couple thousand anyways. So, glad it worked out for him.

Just finished a long session and I'm going to try and get a coaching session in with a student tomorrow when I wake up, so I'll update more later.

Staking proposition

2007-06-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

I was approached recently by a player about staking them. I usually try to stay away from staking deals for the most part, since you hear a lot of bad stories about them, and it's so hard to track. Staking for those of you who don't play poker, is when someone invests, so to speak, in another player. They put up the money for the player to play the games, and receive a certain % of their profits for providing the stake.

I coached this player before, so I know he's a decent player. So it has nothing to do with him about my hesitation in staking him, it's just that I try to stay away from the business in general. There's actually a kid I know of who's like 18 and has supposedly made hundreds of thousands of dollars from staking players, so it can definitely be very profitable. It's just another thing to have on my plate/worry about. He only needs a small investment, probably a few thousand, so I may end up helping him out. We'll see, I'm still debating.

Move up to the big games???

2007-06-12T11:05:00.000-07:00

I've been debating a lot lately about playing high stakes games. I see a handful of online pros having $100,000+ months, and I think I have the potential to be there if I dedicated myself to beating high stakes games, instead of just grinding out smaller stakes games. I've really been debating getting a high stakes coach, and focusing on moving up to high stakes, rather than making money for a couple months. Getting a coach would help get me where I wanted to go a lot faster. I just haven't decided on whether or not I want to do this. I've been thinking of trying to get a successful high stakes player to coach me for a % of my profits. That's mutually beneficial, and I think coaches often want to see you succeed a lot more when they know what they make depends on what you make. It's tough to find someone willing to do this though. Most coaches would rather have variance free coaching rates, which is understandable. I'm going out to Vegas in a few weeks during the WSOP(World Series of Poker), so hopefully I'll have a chance to meet up with a few of the guys I'd consider hiring, and chat with them a bit in person.

I've been arguably the top player on the internet at my stakes for a while now, so some view my decision to stay at those stakes stupid, since I don't improve as much staying at the lower stakes, and my earn is essentially capped out to some degree. However I may give up profits for a couple months to play against much better players, and learn some new strategies/styles. So it's a tough decision for me, since I don't like the idea of potentially going a month or two with little to no profits, so we'll see.

On the other side of coaching, I did my first session with a new student today. I haven't been taking on many students since I'm trying to play a LOT this summer, and I've limited my students to players I know, or players who are already somewhat successful, since it was too much hassle dealing with players who expected to become superstars overnight with little to no effort. The student I took on was someone I've talked to a bit before, and has been asking me to coach him. He's already a good player, and seems like a good guy, so I decided to take him on. His best month so far has been $5-$6k. I talked to him today about his goals with poker, and what he wanted to achieve. I worked out some numbers with him, and I set his goal for the next 30 days to be $15,000. I think he can do this. That would be about 3 times his previous record in 1 month, so it'll be a challenge, but I really think he can do it. At the smaller stakes it's easy to tweak some things in a player's game, and increase their winrate relatively quickly, and have their earning potential skyrocket. I asked him to send me an e-mail each night so that I stay updated with his progress. I'll keep people posted on how he's doing if he's okay with it.

quote

2007-06-08T22:03:00.000-07:00

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."

Live games in Atlantic City

2007-06-07T17:44:00.000-07:00

Like I mentioned yesterday, I didn't have a computer to play on for a few days, so I played the cash games in AC. I was dead tired the first day, so only played a couple hours since I was almost falling asleep at the table. (Still hadn't caught up on sleep. When I left AZ, my flight left at 5am on the 31st, so I just stayed up until my flight. I couldn't get to sleep on the plane, so when I got here(to NJ), I just decided to stay up for the rest of the day so I could get on a semi-normal sleep schedule. So I ended up staying up for like 40 hours straight- which has become almost standard for me every 2-3 months or so to adjust sleep schedules)

Anyways, about the cash games. The games in AC were good, as usual. I played the 5/10 ($1,500 buy in) games. I'll probably end up going once every other week or so to AC to get away from the grind of online poker since I'm so close. Live poker gets pretty boring, but is a good change of pace. It's soooo much slower though, so after a few days I'm usually pretty bored with playing live. Online I 8-table and play about 800 hands per hour, and live I play about 30, so it's a huge difference.

I'm always curious about the people I play with live, like what they do for a living and how they have a lot of money to gamble with. At the higher stakes games people are often throwing around thousands of dollars like it means nothing, sometimes rebuying several times, so I always wonder what some of the people do to get their money. Obviously you have your older crowd(businessmen, retired guys, etc...) - but I'm talking about the 20-something year olds who aren't other pro players. I'm always curious as to where they are getting so much money to be flashing around. Obviously some are into illegal stuff, but they can't all be, can they? I see some of the same guys there every time I'm in AC, pockets stacked full with wads of $100 bills, and they definitely aren't making their money from poker.

Here's a few hands from AC:

I think this was from the 2nd day I was there- I had been at the table for about an hour. I hadn't been picking up many hands at all, but had been trying to make some plays with any hands I had gotten to that point, so didn't have too tight of an image. I pick up KK and I raise it up to $50. Folded around to a player in middle position, and he makes it $100. I had seen him do this one time so far, and he showed down Queens. I hadn't seen him three-bet other than that time, and he seems relatively tight for the most part. He seemed to be a pretty good player, possibly a pro. A shorter stack called from the blinds. I decided to re-raise. It got back to the player who had three-bet me, and he made it another $1,000 or so. That would just about put me all-in if I decided to call. The shorter stack called, and it came back to me. I thought for a minute, and folded my Kings face up. The table reaction was hilarious. "what are you doing!!!!!!!" said the guy next to me. "wtf, did he just fold pocket kings!!" I would have felt like the biggest idiot in the world if my read was wrong. The players flipped over their cards, and he showed AA against the shorties AQ, so my read was right, and ended up saving me $1k there. In most situations with 150 big blinds or less I'm usually getting all my chips in with KK, but this situation I felt I was behind. I won't get into a lot of boring detail here, I'll do some strategy blog posts in the near future.

One interesting hand was against a rich guy who played extremely crazy.(I assumed he was rich because he played like money didn't matter, and when he went to reload he pulled out a ridiculous amount of money) A few hands earlier I busted him when I had AA. He reloaded and was raising pretty much every pot pf. He was a regular, and what a couple other players mentioned was that although he plays kind of crazy pre-flop, he definitely knows what he's doing post-flop. He did his standard pf raise to about $60, and I pick up AQ with position on him, and call. Heads up to the flop.

Flop: Q-J-9- rainbow(rainbow means none of the same suits)

He checks, and I bet $100. He thinks for about 3 seconds and pushes out $1,500, and goes all in. I definitely hadn't seen him overbet a pot like this yet, and although he played crazy, I didn't think he was an idiot, and I think in this spot I'm either way behind, or he's got a Ten and wants to draw. Maybe a pair + draw. Since there's no flush draw, I think it's less likely that he'd make a play like this with a draw, and I haven't seen live players do this much, as opposed to online players. He said, "if you don't have two pair, you should fold." I think for a while, and decide to fold my AQ. I had good position on him, so figured I'd wait for a better spot against him where I didn't have to call $1,400 with one pair, although I hated folding since he was playing like he was on tilt, constantly showing down bluffs, raising blind, etc... He said, "good fold" and showed me a Jack, but didn't show the other card.

A hand from the last day I was in AC- Tuesday, is just kind of a funny hand. This player it was against was literally one of the biggest fish I'd ever played against. I was playing very aggressively at the table, and raising a ton pf, and taking down a lot of pots on the flop. This player was getting very agitated by the way I was playing. "You don't even have anything, you are just betting every time. I'm going to catch you." He said, as he stared me down, and folded for like the 5th straight time on the flop to my continuation bet. I kept playing pretty aggressively, and he kept mumbling to himself and staring me down like an angry bear. He was maybe in his 40's, with a big beard and a baseball cap, and looked grumpy like he hadn't slept in a while. From what another person at the table told me, he had been at his table all day, and he was down about $3,500.

Anyways, fast forward a little bit. Over the next 30 minutes or so this guy goes on a ridiculous run. Hits quads, runner runner flush, full house, etc... Gets his stack up to around $5k, and we finally get into a hand heads up together, which I'd been waiting for. I raise QT from middle position, and he calls from the blinds, all while staring me down and mumbling(seriously.) I have around $4,200, and he has me covered.

Flop: Q-3-J

He donks out $400 into a pot that's only around $100. I literally started laughing out loud( I didn't mean to it just happened- wasn't like a loud laugh, more like a chuckle, but I don't chuckle) and called. The turn was an Ace. He takes about 5 seconds, and fires out $1,000. I fold, and he instantly slams down KT for the nuts and says , "ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!! how did you know........man i play bad!!! i should have bet small again." I said, "no you are playing well sir, nice hand," trying to keep him happy, and at the table. Pretty much the whole table was laughing hysterically at this point. Unfortunately for me, he had $5,500 at that time, and it quickly dwindled down to about $2,000, before he got up and left, and I got none of it.

Anyways, AC was good, nice to play live for a couple days, but definitely happy to be back to playing online. I talked to a guy who plays the 10/25 in AC, and says the standard buy in is often $10,000+ in that game. I had been debating playing in it this summer, but I wouldn't want to buy in with that much. I'd want to buy in with like $2,500-$5,000(like I'd initially planned), but I don't want to be one of the short stacks at the table if the game plays real deep. I don't think I'd be able to play my game if that was the case. So when I'm in AC I'll just keep playing the 5/10 games for now.

update

2007-06-06T20:41:00.001-07:00

Haven't had much time to update in the last week. I am in NJ at the beach for the summer, and just got my computer and monitors today. They cost me way more than I thought they would to ship here- almost $300. I need to find a better way for next time.

I put an offer on a duplex a week or two ago. It was listed at $130k, I offered $115k and they countered back at $128k, and said they weren't willing to budge since they recently sold one for $130k in the same area. Judging by the comps it seems they're probably justified with their price. I'm going to look around a bit, and possibly come back to it.

Another duplex I just put an offer on Saturday, and they countered back on Monday. I am going to see if they would be willing to meet somewhere in the middle. The property has good cashflow for being a relatively small investment. It's been on the market 100+ days, so hopefully I'll be able to negotiate a bit with them and get them to drop their price some more.

The tax sales I mentioned last week, I probably won't be doing, since some of my online cashouts are taking forever- which means I won't have the cash in time before the tax sales. That's okay with me though, since it would take some time to fly out, set up people to fix it, have someone manage it, fly back out, rent or sell it, etc.... It'll be much easier for me right now to get a good duplex that's already rented and cashflowing, and to concentrate on poker. I want to have a big summer with poker, so I want to stay focused and not get distracted by getting too many things on my plate.

Since I didn't have a computer, the last few days I've been "working"(aka playing poker) in Atlantic City. I'll post tomorrow a bit about it.

The Ant and the Grasshopper

2007-05-29T18:13:00.001-07:00

"The Ant is working his butt off at his job. He is putting his money in his 401K, but if he read his company's 10k report, he would know it will never payoff. But he is a good employee, shows up on time, does his 40 hours per week and thinks he is an "investor"because of his 401k. He takes vacations in the summer with his kids and puts it all on his credit card. He has the newest SUV for which he has a loan, he is STILL paying off his student loans, but hey, he has a degree which makes him a more valuable employee. He has a home mortgage and really thinks that this is an investment. His salesman at the car lot called his car an investment too. His wife, Mrs. Ant, does volunteer work for the community. But she is thinking about quitting because she may need to take a job to save for the little Ant children's college education. They need to be prepared to get a good job. They spend years and years being diligent...Then there's the Grasshopper. The Grasshopper disdains having a job. He wants to be an entrepreneur. His neighbors, the Ants, think he is a lazy bum and that the word "entrepreneur" just means he doesn't have a job. He tries to explain to his neighbor, the Ant, about leveraging money, leveraging credit, and collateralized enhancement. The Ant thinks theGrasshopper is crazy. The Grasshopper goes to his Real Estate Investors meetings, seeks out mentors for more information about entrepreneurship, and learns aboutpaper assets. He buys a duplex with a downpayment tha the borrowed from a family member, and it doesn't appear on his credit report. It appreciates in value. His tenants are making the payments. He takes cashout, gets another duplex. Finally, he has four duplexes. He uses a 1031 tax exchange to get anapartment building. He learns more about paper assets as well, and becomes a member of a corporation set up by one of the Grasshopper relatives. His portolio grows and grows. He continues to leverage his money,but likewise his debt grows. His neighbor, the Ant, thinks this is too scary because the Grasshopper is thousands of dollars in debt even though he is now a millionaire and moves to a better side of town.FINALLY... One winter, the Ant learns that his 401K has crashed because of mismanagement by his fund manager, his job got outsourced overseas, and his home is in foreclosure. It was bought by the Ladybug whotook a real estate course taught by....You guessed it!..... The Grasshopper. The Ant and his wife are now homeless and thinking about getting a job flipping burgers. The kids decided not to go to college, andjust want to party with their friends. They see theirparent's advice was not too good, but don't know what else to do, and they are also convinced that theGrasshopper is nuts...The Grasshopper is attending a banquet where he is getting the Award for Insect of the Year from his community. All his friends are there to toast his hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, and the good he has done for his community. The Grassphopper wipes away a tear as the crowd cheers and acknowledges him. He's actually remembering the "lean years" and what it took to get here. He lifts his Champagne glass as he looks over the banquet table ladened with food and sees the smiling faces all around. He thinks, for a moment, about his old friend the Ant and wonders where he is today...."

Balllllllllllllin'- Poker player getting 7 Aston Martins

2007-05-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

Professional poker player "BigJoe2003" who plays on PokerStars is on pace to receive 3 Aston Martins(http://www.astonmartin.com/home) in 2007 as "bonuses." For people who read this blog who don't play online poker, at PokerStars you get rewarded in points for how much you play/rake that's paid. You can then redeem your points for items in the PokerStars store. You can get things like: poker books, entries into tournaments, ipods, tvs, etc... Even cars for some of the guys who play a ton. 'Joe" plays a LOT, so he gets a lot of points to redeem. He has said in his blog that if he does well at the WSOP this summer, he will be getting 7 Aston Martins, and getting the license plates to be: "MONDAY", "TUESDAY", "WEDNESDAY", etc.... which would be pretty sick. I think Aston Martin's are worth $100k+. So in the next 12-18 months he should have almost $1 million in Aston Martins if he ends up sticking with that plan. SICK.

As someone commented in his blog: 'I would suggest you get an eighth aston in case you are staying overnight somewhere away from your garage. You'll look pretty stupid driving home in a Tuesday aston on Wednesday.'

Well said.

tax sales

2007-05-27T14:13:00.000-07:00

Been thinking about a lot of different real estate strategies that I'm considering. Been debating a lot on what I want to focus on most.(I'll talk more about that in another post) One of the areas I've been looking into quite a bit lately is getting into some cashflow deals. You can't really cashflow here in Arizona, so I've been looking into some other areas.

In one of the areas I've been looking into pretty strongly, my friend passed on some information to me of a guy who was investing heavily in that area, and was going to be bidding on properties at a tax sale there next month. The information that I received was that he was looking for investors who wanted him to bid for him at the auctions. He buys a few houses for himself, and bids for others for a fee. So in those transactions, he basically works as a bird dog for you. He does the research, and even the bidding for you. I decided to give him a call.

We spoke for over an hour yesterday. He currently owns 17 properties in that area, and has been investing there for 5-6 years, so he knows the area very well. He buys the properties for cash, which is why he can only buy a couple at a time. The good news is, they are very cheap to buy. They do need work done to them though. My exit strategy would be to flip the property if I thought I could make $15k+ on it, and if not hold for cashflow. Based on the numbers he was talking about, I should be able to have positive cashflow of around $300/month after fix-up. He goes down a couple weeks before the auction, and does all his homework on the properties. He even hires people out to bid for him at several different auctions throughout the area. Often, the auctions require you to pay with cash right there at the auction, so I'm sure this lowers the competition from homeowners, which is good for investors.

I am thinking of buying one or two properties there with him, leaning towards probably just one this time to see how everything works out with him, and the deal. I would want to be there myself to bid on the properties, so I may fly out next month. I don't usually like carrying a lot of cash on me when I travel. When I fly somewhere where I think I'll play poker, I sometimes have a bunch of cash on me, and am always afraid I'm going to lose it somehow while traveling. The good thing about flying with cash, is that I probably won't get robbed since no one can bring a gun/knife through the airport. This would be much more cash than I'm used to carrying though, so I'll have to think of a good/safe way to travel with it if I decide to go. I heard a great story a few weeks ago from one of my friends about a situation traveling with a lot of cash. I'll post the story sometime this week.

my blog

2007-05-26T01:55:00.000-07:00

I am a 24 year old professional poker player and entrepreneur currently living in Tucson, AZ. I graduated college 2 years ago, and I knew that spending my life working for someone else wouldn't make me happy, and wouldn't make me rich; so I chose a unique path, that's worked out pretty well so far. My blog will include parts of my life as a professional poker player, as well as some of the current investments/business opportunities I'm involved in, and some other things that people may find interesting.