Monday, March 11, 2013

Post Black Friday (4-15-11)

Well, It has been a while since I have posted. I will be posting updates as often as possible, to see how I progress and to hopefully look back and smile upon this blog :). If anyone is still following, cool. I was pretty much printing money (expression) right before black friday. For those of you unaware, on April 15, 2011 the DOJ seized the domains/ accounts of Full Tilt Poker as well as Pokerstars. Long story short, Full Tilt Poker did not have segregated player funds and operational funds and when all of this went down, they basically did not have enough money to pay out all of its players. Pokerstars on the otherhand did have everything in order and they payed out their players within a month with no issues whatsoever, it was very smooth ( bankwired to your account or by check etc). It was a chaotic time and many players still have money stuck online, ranging from a couple hundred dollars to a few hundred thousand dollars.

On this day, I ended up asking a non-usa friend if I could transfer him the money online and then have him wire it to me. He graciously accepted and I then sent him a large portion of my money to him, which he later sent to me as agreed. My friend on the other hand tried to do the same thing about 2minutes later, and the site had already blocked his ability to transfer money on the site. He was 2 minutes too late, and he has all his money stuck online. I was very very fortunate and my friend was very unlucky. This was a horrible day for all online poker pros.

So now, there I was, out of a job. A job I have had for about 7 years. A lot of ups and downs, both in poker and in life investments. I was at a point where I was just absolutely printing money and all of my hard work was finally paying off 10-fold. I had put in a shit-ton of studying hours and was at a point where my worst month would be 5 figures +, mainly because of my ability to optimally play lots of tables at one time. After Black Friday, I was literally waking up and listening to a shit-ton of podcast about this situation where they had guest lawyers, reps from online casinos and other insiders. While I kept pressing F5 on a poker forum for the latest updates. I mean I went crazy doing this, I did this allllll day. I would run downstairs grab some junk food go back upstairs because I did not want to miss a minute of the podcasts.

 Some online pros moved to Mexico/Thailand/Canada throughout this. As Pokerstars was up and running to everyone except US players. I thought about this, but wanted to wait a bit to see what would happen with this situation. I was optomistic/hopeful that something would progress and I would once again be able to play on FTP. Months passed by and it was now June/July. I was still somewhat optomistic as it felt sooo crazy that I would not be able to play online poker. During this my mom had this freight brokerage business that she was wanting me to invest in a couple months before black friday. I was still waiting for the dust to settle regarding online poker before I made a decision to move out of the country, so I grew tiresome of listening to the podcasts and pressing f5 on the forum hoping to see "ONLINE POKER IS BACK !!" posted somewhere, so I decided to hear more info about her business.

  I had not ever wanted to learn anything of her biz in the past because she would ask me for money here and there, which I would obviously give her. Because of that, I thought.. " If your business is so good, why are you always asking me for a couple thousand here and there." I did not want to waste my time or money on a breakeven or losing business while I was doing so good, and in my flow/zone. Well, now I was out of a job, soul crushed, and my only backup was I used to be a Loan officer and also had my real estate license. Both of which, I wanted nothing to do with anymore :). It just wasnt for me, I had no passion for it. I did not know what other career I wanted to pursue, as I was so used to having complete freedom in working whenever I wanted, being my own boss, and not having to answer to NO ONE. No ass kissing the higher ups in the corporate world, no dealing with scummy co-workers, and the ability to play in my boxers :).

 So here I am, now hearing the info about her freight biz. It sounded real interesting and after doing some numbers, I saw a potential to make some pretty good money but in a different way. Despite entering the biz with her where I saw she had about $7,000 in debt I needed to clear in order to expand the business I decided to invest and buy some diesel trucks/trailers and hire some drivers to drive them. With their (mom/stepad) help and knowledge I started to grow, albeit slowly. The past 6months it has been torture though. There is just too many repair costs going on with my trucks and have been breaking even lately. I am having to pay for her mortgage/bills as well, as I think its fair since they are helping run this business, as I am just the investor/ advisor/accountant for the biz. ( I have to be in control of all this as they do not take the math approach and are very nooby when it comes to that stuff. For example, I will put it in a gambling sense. Mom will goto the casino and play slots ( lol) and she will later tell me "I won $2,000". When I say really?, nice....I go and check the bank account and I see a bunch of withdrawals totaling $2,500. And I ask her, did you withdraw $2,500??. She says yea, I was losing but then I won the $2,000. This just really makes my head spin, and I have to correct her and show her the error of her ways countless times. I say okay so you did not win $2,000. You lost $500...why did you say you won $2,000 ?????? She says I got 3 cherries or whatever she always says. I then go on a rant and explain she did not "win nothing" because her net is - $500 no matter how you look at it. Anyways, that is the approach they have had in the trucking business as well and do not take into account all details to see the true profit of a specific lane/situation. Needless to say I have limited her casino outings.

So now here I am writing this blog today. I have been feeling very unhappy with my job lately. It just isn't fulfilling and I am not seeing the returns for my work. I feel I am just working for nothing every month and not seeing any progress. about 2 weeks ago, family came over. Poker came up as a topic for about 10minutes, because a cousin asked me what I did for a living. My brother chimed in and said she wouldnt believe how I got to what Im doing now ( poker money I used to invest in the biz). I told her my little story, but I know it went over her head, as I am sure 100% of latino older folks see poker as pure luck where I am just simply betting on black on roulette and crossing my fingers. I cant blame them for being ignorant on this subject, as I am ignorant in many other fields as well. It is a bit frustrating though. That night, made me reflect on my current situation a lot deeper. I was very mad at myself for basically giving up on poker at potentially my highest point. I did not move out of the country, I did not try live poker. I did nothing. I was mainly a high stakes sng player, and I had issues with tilt control on cash games a LONG time ago, which is why I had made the switch to sng games in the first place. So needless to say I was a bit scared of my inability to control myself at live cash games and not burn money there.

 Well, its never too late I guess. 2 years later, and I am now giving live poker a chance. I was going to give myself a $10,000 roll for poker and see where it got me using solid bankroll management. I had some money lying around, so I decided to check out the games. I said I would play 1/2 nl. When I got to the casino ( commerce) I saw that the 1/2 nl game was a $40 buyin or something ridiculous like that. Whereas online it was a $200 buyin ( the more the better as it allows you to play poker, and not make it a gamblefest of all ins. It was too horrible a structure, I saw that they had a 5/5 nl game $500 buyin. It was a much better structure so I decided to play that instead as my first time playing live. ( I had played a couple times before like 3-4 years ago, but not much).

 March 1st 2013, Saturday....I sat down and was very nervous at first, trying to calm my insides etc on each hand. after about 30 minutes and seeing the bad play by some of the players at the table, I started to relax and open up my game. I pulled some pretty solid bluffs and overall was very happy with the way I played except for one big mistake where I had 3-bet preflop to $70 and a guy with $350 shoved all in. He seemed like a solid reg, and I called off with QQ, and he showed up with KK. It was a horrible call by me and I should have mucked, lesson learned. I knew it was a bad call right after I called, now I am able to relax more and think it through and dont make snap decisions. I ended up playing only a couple hours that Saturday night and cashed out with + $308 profit. Not a very big profit, but at least a booked win, and some confidence to go with it.

 Everyone talks about how soft the games are during WSOP in vegas in June/July. I would like to build my bankroll and get an apt for the month and take a shot at some tourneys/ play some cash games and use it as a bankroll booster. Since my first outing, here are my results.
March 1st - +$308
March 2nd - +$555
March 8th - +$2086
March 9th - +$507
Total profit +$3,456.00

 My goal is to play Friday/Saturdays as it is the fishiest, while I continue to improve and plug my leaks for live cash games. I will no longer give myself a bankroll but rather use whatever money I grow from poker + the money laying around as my poker bankroll ( $100s only, non $100 bills I will just use for random stuff/food.) I will be playing weekends only, as I have work to deal with, but will try and play during the week as well. I have 3 months until June Wsop comes along, here are my goals.

Goal #1 - Maintain a $50/hr winrate live.
Goal #2 - Reach $10,000
Goal #3 - Take $2,0000 shot at 5/10 nl
Goal #4 - Reach $15,000 by Wsop

 Total Bankroll as of 3/12/13 = $5,600 ( found $400 lying around thats not pictured)
 

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