Graduation

I graduated!!!!  It took me 9 semesters/5 years to graduate from Carnegie Mellon University with a BS in Economics and a Minor in Business Administration.  It was a very proud day for a couple of different reasons.  

The first is the fact that I went through a ton of adversity during college but was able to persevere through all of it and become a better person because of it.  For instance, my first 2 years of college I was chronically ill due to a deviated septum that was caused from a broken nose I suffered in High School when a baseball hit me square in the nose.  Now that might not sound like a big deal, but think about being unable to breathe through your nose at night and waking up 3-4 times every night due to your mouth being so dry that you can no longer breathe.  Not the best for trying to be productive day in and day out.  

I also changed majors during my college tenure.  I know that a high % of college students change majors at least once during their college career, but it is usually close to their current major or they are changing from being undecided which is foreseeable change.  My transfer out of engineering was as bumpy as you can possibly have.  I had to beg my dean to let me transfer 1.5 weeks into my 4th semester as an engineer.  I didn't know what I wanted to transfer to, so I took GenEd courses that I needed instead of any core classes so these classes didn't help me figure that out at all.  

Even though warned against this, I took a semester off because I did not want to waste time wandering not knowing what I wanted to study during college.  That is a waste of money and is something that I could do at home.  So, I went back to California the fall of my Junior year to find a direction.  I vowed that I would return the following semester and unlike the majority of people that say this, I actually did it.  I returned with a different view on life and was able to do much better (grade wise) in my new major.

Another reason that it was a proud day for me was that there were a lot of people in my life that helped me get to this point and I was able to reward their kindness and encouragement.  My Mom is at the front of this list of people and she was there in person to enjoy it with me, but she was not without a lot of help, especially when I was little.  Just a quick shout out to the most influential people in my life: My Grandparents, Chris Van Tassel, The whole Brennan Family, John Andikian, Mike Dodd, George Pascoe, Bob Jeski, Devric Lampley, Paul Renfro, Coach Yosh, and anyone else that I forgot.  I would not of accomplished anything in my life without these people helping guide me in the right direction.

The last reason that it was a proud day was because I know that my Dad was watching down upon me from heaven and he was proud of me and my accomplishments.  Even though I did not have a lot of time with him, he will have an everlasting effect on my life because he was just that kind of person.  I love you Dad.

If you have read so far, here is something inspirational.  One of my favorite commercials of all time.

Quick Update

School

So I am in the middle of an all-nighter.   This one is a little different than the others I have done during college for a couple of reasons.  First, I will be presenting twice during the middle of the day.  Usually(always), I do not stay up all night before a presentation because it is not a benefit to have bags under my eyes while I present in front of a class and a professor.  I do not have a choice on whether I can sleep before these presentations because I have soooooo much work. Also, when I stay up all night, it is usually because I have a test early in the day and can crash right after.  Today, I have 2 presentations and a final exam.  The kicker is that the final exam isn't until 6:30pm so I have to stay awake the whole time and after my final I have some Fraternity stuff that I must attend and prepare for... so long day ahead.

Carnival

I commented about carnival last year, but to recap it's where my university, which is a nerd school, goes crazy and we party for like 4 days and nights straight.  Pretty awesome being a state school for half a week.  This year, my fraternity got Wiz Khalifa to perform a private show for us.  Wiz is an up and coming rapper and the whole event was amazingly entertaining.  

Here are some pics from Pavillion.  Pavillion is where we rent part of a park and grill, drink and bronze.

Me playing corn-hole against a brother.

All of the brothers that attended Pavillion together.  I am in the middle left.

Poker

So April has been an up and down roller coaster ride.  I am not sure how many more hands I will be putting in because of finals, but May should be more profitable and educational, although during April I got some good hand reviews due to help from my friend Pete who plays professionally online.  I will post a graph at the end of the month and some interesting hands to talk about, along with my math post, which will finally come...I promise.

Job Front

Last week, I finally got a good reply from the many colleges that I applied for a coaching position.  It said that they were "interested" and to be patient as they go through the rest of the applications.  It is definitely a positive from a very dim process so far with trying to get a coaching position at a University.  I am optimistic that I will get a college coaching position before August and will excel at it.

More updates to come, with more focus on Poker and the future.

Spring Break '09

I went to Acapulco for Spring Break and it was absolutely epic. The weather was amazing, the atmosphere was even better and I actually didn't spend that much money, which I am very proud of myself for. The clubs that we went to were gorgeous. The best one was called palladium, which is #5 in the world (I think). Here is a pic with the lights going crazy.

Poker is going well so far this month. I need to get in a ton of more hands, but I am learning a ton by watching some instructional videos and implementing some new wrinkles into my play. When I first started playing 6-max, I noticed that some regulars would actually follow me around for a couple sessions. That put a hurt on my self esteem a bit. Don't they know who I am? That got me thinking that I really didn't have this cash game thing down the way I thought I did. These new wrinkles in my game make me a much more difficult opponent to play against and makes me happy that I'm putting in the time to input new weapons into my aresonal.

I have been in some heated discussions lately on 2+2 where I get hammered by using some of these wrinkles. There is a preconceived notion in mediocre players minds that poker is supposed to played a certain way and people doing anything else must be wrong. I remember when I used to think that people shoving all-in with overs and an OESD were "wild". How could they put in all that money on a draw? It's ridiculous!?! lol. When people do not look at reasoning why people make plays and just compare play during a specific hand to how they would play it, they are doing a disservice to themselves and are actually hindering themselves from learning more about poker. The best thing about poker is that I keep learning something new about it.

My next blog post will be dedicated on poker math. I want to post some math stuff on some forums so I figured I would use this audience as a guinea pig.

PEACE

March Goals, Midterms, and Spring Break

I have been up all night studying for my International Money and Finance class (probably the most challenging material that I have come across as an Economics student at CMU).  To take a little break from studying, I decided to keep the 5 people who read my blog updated with my life.

Poker Goals

I'm first going to go over February goals.

Step up to NL25 and play 10-20k hands: This goal was met, but it took me longer than I wanted it to.

Step up to NL50 and play 10-20k hands: This goal was not met.  My success at NL25 was marginal at best with a big downswing in the middle of the month.  I am going to put in a ton of effort into my game over the next month and hopefully by the end of the month I will be able to jump up at least 1 level

Play 60-80 hours of Poker:  This wasn't met either.  I played around 35 hours in February.  It is definitely an improvement from January, but if I want to be at my goal for the summer I will need to pick up the effort of actual time spent on the virtual felt.

March Goals 

Step up to NL50

Play over 100 hours of poker

Post ALL interesting hands on 2+2 right after every session

Think of poker when away from the tables more

Find a coach to help me progress faster

Midterms

I had/have only had 2 midterms this semester, which is much less than my average over the last 5 years.  However, I had to write a paper for my writing for economists class and actually had to make a midterm for my poker class.  The poker midterm was straightforward and easy imo.  I didn't want anyone to stress out over this midterm because CMU is stressful enough as is.  

My first midterm was on Tuesday night.  It was for my business law class.  I think I did pretty well and hopefully make up for my subpar performances on the first 2 exams in the class.  My 2nd midterm is in ~4 hours.  It is an open note exam.  We are given quotes from the readings and have to identify them in the 10,000 pages of reading we have done so far, so don't think that this test is going to be easy because it is open note...

Spring Break

So I will be on my way to the airport at this time tomorrow to go on spring break to Acapulco.  I am super pumped about it and it should be an absolute blast to go party for 7 days straight.  Here are my 5 Keys to having a good spring break:

1. DO NOT GET SUNBURNT YOUR FIRST DAY

This is something that has happened to me on a couple of vacations when I was little.  After this happens, you are just miserable for 2-3 days.  Since I dropped ~$1500 on the trip, it would be like me lighting $400-$600 on fire.  I don't like lighting money on fire so I did 3 sessions in a tanning bed to prevent getting fried.

2. Drink a ton of bottled water

Due to the fact that I will be drinking alcohol a lot during the 7 days in mexico, it is important to hydrate whenever you are not dehydrating your body.

3. If you get lucky, make sure your roommates don't interrupt

The last time I went on spring break, a friend of mine had this happen to him.  He was enjoying himself with a lady friend and one of his roommates interrupted them.  He stood and faced the guy with only a helmet on.  The guy looked him over and responded and said "Sooooooo..." 20 second pause,  "Should I come back later?"

4. Friends have one "Save me from dying" card

This happened to me a couple times.  As soon as the person is lucid enough to listen, I inform them that if they are in the same situation again later in the trip that I will not being helping.  You must stick to this rule or you will be stuck being the mom of your friends for the whole trip.

5. Leave your pride at the border and just have fun

If you try to get in a dick swinging battle with every state school d-bag, you will not have fun.  Who cares who has the best definition in their 6-pack?  Dance a lot, drink a lot, and enjoy the scenery because when you get back from the 85 degree beach weather it will be ~15 degrees snowing and shitty.

Pokerstars Down?

So I got up early to get in a session at NL25 and either my internet or the pokerstars software that is going haywire because I can't see any of the games on PS atm. As I am able to post this on my blog, I am going to attribute it to PS software. But lucky for you, I feel ambitious and productive, which is the reason for me writing this blog post.

Poker:

As it stands right now, I am way behind the pace that I wanted to be at for this month. The month is halfway over and I wanted to be at NL50 with around 20k hands in at NL25. Right now, I only have 6.5k hands in at NL25, which will not cut it if I am going to try to get some financial security before the end of the semester. I have put in a lot of time studying and thinking about different lines and sophisticated theories and breaking down hand analysis. This is all good and dandy and is improving my game, but in order for me to improve at the pace that I would like I need to put in A LOT of more hands in, which means rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty.

An interesting question that I am trying to have answered by a couple of my poker pro friends is whether it is a good idea to add more tables or to move up in stakes first. I currently 8-table NL25 but I would like to get up to at least 12 tables. With that being said, I think it would be good practice to do add tables while I am at lower stakes because there is a learning curve when adding tables and the learning will cost less. I am going to post this question (probably right after this blog post) on the 2+2 forums and see what other people think. Let me know what you guys think about it.

School:

Everything is going pretty hunky dory as far as school is concerned. I have been keeping up with my readings and getting my assignments done so as it stands I have a very good chance in passing all my classes and graduating, WOOOOOOOOO. The only class that worries me is international money and finance. I wrote about it in my last blog, but it is a very tough class. I think the teacher is very good actually, but the homework is being graded quite hard and I have had very poor marks on it. Oh well, just got to do better and complain less, lol.

Poker Class:

My friend Stephen is actually coming and teaching my class this week. He is a midstakes HUNL grinder. He does very well for himself and has avery good thought process when it comes to poker, so I feel my class is in very good hands. The topic this week is turn and river play. He prides himself in making good decisions and having good logic so I think this is a very topic for him to go over. He actually has very good timing to come teach my class because I have an IM bball game during my Monday lecture, which I would of gone to and cancelled my class, lol. I also have my class turning in their first paper for the class this week. I already had about 5 submissions for the paper so it makes me feel good that at least a couple of people listen and are doing work for the class.

Pong:

So I play in a couple of beer pong leagues and my 6 on 6 team was 4-0 going into the weekend. Feeling good and playing good, we went down to the wire with another team and ended up losing by 1 cup. That might not seem that uncommon to most people, but we started with 100 cups per side so it is very heartbreaking to lose by 1 cup in these games. My other team, which is in a 2 on 2 league, won by a very large margin tonight. We played a couple of Sig Nu guys and they were not used to the rules or table size of our house so we nOOb stomped them.

So I can't really think of anything else to talk about right now and the PS software is working again, so I'm off to grind my face off for a couple of hours. PEACE.

Plugging along

Well it's been a couple of weeks since I have blogged and I have a ton of stuff to talk about. I apologize if I ramble or go off on a tangent in advance.

Career
So as of right now, my career choice is to go into Football coaching.  Although I do not have anything materializing lately on this job front, I do have some fall back jobs that I could end up going to after graduation.  The problem with trying to get a college football coaching job for me is that I am not available to coach until after the semester is over and most of these coaches are being hired now.  Because I am unavailable now, I am less attractive to most employers, imo.

School

Classes are very hectic to start the semester.  I picked up two extra classes in order to complete my minor in BA.  Those two classes aren't that difficult, but the couple other classes I have started off very quickly and I have been on my horse to try and stay on course early in the semester.  My International Money and Finance (IMF) has been exceptionally interesting and challenging.  The professor is a very exceptional teacher, which makes the class have a much higher incentive to show up and be attentive.  I think this is something that a lot of professors negate and their attendance is down because of it.  This is also something that I am applying to my own course because I want to have strong attendance throughout the semester.

General Poker Theory Course

The course has been going well so far.  The first class I went over the very basics of poker (why people play poker, how to make money, Variance, etc.).  The second class I went over types of players and Bankroll management.  I think that I might of went over BRM too quickly or not emphasized it enough because most of the students didn't have questions on it.  It is a very difficult concept to apply over and over again, but it is absolutely necessary in order to survive poker.  With that being said, most of the people in the class are looking to how to attack certain instances instead the meta-game of poker.  Flawed thinking? Probably, but I can't do very much about it.  All I can do is teach as many important concepts that I can and they will get out of it as much as they put in.

Poker

So I have completely changed my goals for 2009 as they compare to poker.  They were:

Goals for STTs in 2009:
* Put in 3,333+ games a month
* Start at $16's and end up at $38's
* Find ROI at every level before moving up in stakes (2k games minimum)
* Win "Earth" SNG leader board 6 times (low or high orbit)
* Work a lot on my game non stop

I am still going to try and work on my game non-stop for the semester/year, but I have turned away from STTs for at least the next couple of months and have been focusing on cash games in January.  I started very low (NL10) because I want to slowly and progressively build my 6-max NLHE skill.  So far this month I have played 9k hands.  For me restarting school and being very busy and changing games, I am pretty happy about that volume.  I will be bumping up to NL25 come February 1st and would like to put in 10-20k hands there before I jump up to NL50.  

I am going to try and put in 60-80 hours of playing time (~40k hands) over the month of Feb. and hopefully that will get me through NL50 and I can bump to NL100.  A realistic goal would be to get to NL100 by March and grind my face off during that time in order to start making some real money at cash games.

Those are most of my random thoughts.  oh, and go STEELERS!!!!

Here's a video I saw on MTVU the other day and it's pretty awesome.  Gnarls Barkley "Who's going to save my soul".  Enjoy.

FWIW,

Falker

2009 Goals and Expectations for Poker

Poker
Goals for STTs in 2009:
* Put in 3,333+ games a month
* Start at $16's and end up at $38's
* Find ROI at every level before moving up in stakes (2k games minimum)
* Win "Earth" SNG leader board 6 times (low or high orbit)
* Work a lot on my game non stop
* Working on not being short term results oriented
* Make my poker class awesome, which I'm teaching at my university
* Make 365+ posts on 2+2 forum

So this was the post I made on 2+2 a couple weeks ago and they have already changed, at least while I am still finishing up college. First, I will not be able to put in the volume that I want to because I am getting my minor in Business administration. However, I am going to try and offset the potential $$$ that I will be losing by giving personal coaching sessions to some of my students of my poker class.

Winning a SNG leader board would be nice, but I don't want to put a figure at "how many". Instead I am just going to strive to win low orbit and at least qualify for the high orbit every week. As far as making my class the best I can, I will strive to do this because it is going to be a lot of fun and it will improve my game a ton as well (or at least I hope so).

The ROI that I am looking to obtain would be around +10-15% at the 16s and 7%+ at the 27s. These are very lofty goals, but I think that they are obtainable and I want to prove to myself that I can get there. This will be by far my toughest goal, but I am looking forward to getting to a point in the 16s where I just dominate.

Here's Obama's inauguration speech from 1-20-09. I think it is very encouraging for the new year. Happy new year everyone.

WOOOO QUADS

So this gem came about while playing on Pokerstars tonight.  I don't know if there is anything else I could of done to get anymore money out of the MP player.  He was a maniac and I was wondering if I could raise on the flop and see if I could get him to make a play on me.  I say this cause the hand before he had AKo and got 70 BBs in on the flop of 543.  The CO I had no reads on, but once he raised the turn I was pretty sure he had a monster.  Any other way to play this?

--------------------
HAND #1
--------------------

BB: $2.30 (23 bb)
UTG: $10.25 (102.5 bb)
MP: $17.90 (179 bb)
CO: $12.30 (123 bb)
BTN: $28.85 (288.5 bb)
Hero (SB): $22.85 (228.5 bb)

Pre-Flop: Hero is SB with 5c 5h
UTG folds, MP raises to $0.30, CO calls $0.30, BTN folds, Hero calls $0.25, BB calls $0.20

Flop: ($1.20) 4h 5d 5s (4 players)
Hero checks, BB checks, MP bets $0.70, CO calls $0.70, Hero calls $0.70, BB folds

Turn: ($3.30) 2h (3 players)
Hero checks, MP bets $2, CO raises to $5, Hero calls $5, MP folds

River: ($15.30) 7d (2 players)
Hero bets $7.20, CO calls $6.30 and is all-in

Results:

Spoiler:

$27.90 pot ($1.35 rake)
Hero showed 5c 5h (four of a kind, Fives) and won $26.55 ($14.25 net)
CO mucked 4s 4d (a full house, Fours full of Fives) and lost (-$12.30 net)

When cards don't matter

So yesterday I played in a live 2-3 NL game ($100 Max/Min buy-in) at Hawaiian Gardens casino.  I got there around midnight and played for about 5 hours on 3 different tables.  Of the 25+ opponents I played against, only about 1 of them I thought was a good player.  People either were playing way too tight and passive or they were the type of guys who had a VPIP of about 75% with a prf of 5%.  Everyone's range was polarized on every street in every hand.  It just makes me feel stupid when I once thought that everyone who played on the internet were for the most part bad and loose players and live play was wayyyyyyy tougher.  My view on live vs. online is now reversed where I view online as tough and intellectual playing and live play as just bad (there are obviously exceptions for this though, and you can definitely find tough live games, but for low to medium stakes, live<<<<<<<<<

The third table that I got moved to had a few characters on it with the only above average player on it.  He wasn't above average for the type of style he played (he was a little too passive for my taste and would limp/fold too often), but he made good reads on other players and trapped well.  There was a gentlemen to my right who was from Atlanta and was very talkative.  He mentioned hands he played (Bad beats and quad/straight flush type hands) and how he played them.  He would talk about different strategy he uses and the fact that he hates playing QQ (I told him that every time he got QQ, that I would take them off his hands).  After I heard his speech about hating QQ, I figured out that he was the pessimist type and that unless he had a flashy (straight flush draw or AA) or lock hand that he was easy to push off hands.  After absorbing all of the information on the table, I decided that I wanted to start 3-betting certain opponents much more lightly and the Atlanta gentlemen was a perfect target for this.  

We were playing 7 handed at the time, and ATL made a standard "pot building raise" to $8 ("real" raises are closer to the $15 mark at the Hawaiian Gardens) from UTG+1 and I look down at Th3c, so instead of folding I decide to 3-bet to $22.  Now I know that there are 5 people left to act, but the type of table it was I didn't have to worry about people calling light behind me.  After a 3-bet the table would only call with a top 3% hand.  So I make it $22 and the rest of the table folds to the ATL gentleman and he makes a comment right before he throws in his $14, "So you got those Queens then?", at this exact point when he is releasing his chips into the pot, I have his hand range polarized to Ace Face.  So unless an ace or broadway hand flops, I know I can bet and get him to fold.  Flop comes 8h9h4c, he checks and I bet $25 into the $49 pot.  He thinks for 5 seconds and open mucks AdJs.  

Although live play is probably MUCH easier than online, because of the minimal number of hands seen an hour, I still think that playing online is more profitable.  But it is hard to really find out one's profitability in a wiffle ball (live 2-3 NL) game when you only see about 1250 hands a week playing live.  

I saw this for the first time the other day and died laughing, so I figured I would share it with all of you guys too.  The guy in the video is a senator's son and he is trying to make a documentary on online poker.  He is playing a $0.10 MTT...THAT'S WHAT TIME IT IS!!!!