The sour taste still lingers, but it is not as bad as it once was.  I do have to admit though, I was extremely depressed for about 6 months there.  So much hard work seemingly down the drain.  I still look forward to the day that I can play online poker in the comfort of my home and easily transfer money from one site to the next.  Ahhhh, yes it is like an american poker player’s wet dream.

I did manage to sneak in a couple live sessions at the closest casino to my home which is in Charles Town, West Virginia (a 3 hour drive for me).  I ended up winning a couple hundred bucks I think in about 5-7 sessions playing for a total of 3-6 hours each session.  (pretty bad stat keeping, right?)  The last session though, made me realize just how I wouldn’t be able to make a living at live poker when the drive is 3 hours away.  I sat there, and sat there, and sat there some more just waiting for the hands.  Being the online action-junkie I couldn’t take it anymore and ended up playing out of my comfort zone.  This would prove to be disastrous as I dropped I believe it was around $800 in about an hour.  But hey, like I said, I still ended up overall.  Since that dead run of cards for a session, I haven’t been back.  The commute back-and-forth just isn’t worth it for the chance to go through another cold deck. So I haven’t played any poker online or live in a few months now.

Just to remind you, I do still have a full-time job.  On that front, things have gotten better.  I am still with the same company, though doing something a little different.  Something is more up my alley.  Though I feel I could be happier elsewhere, I am in no dire need to leave except for the reasons of money, which is definitely WAY TOO LOW.  Especially since half my income, what was my online poker income, is gone to me now.

But anyhow, about being depressed for about 6 months.  I didn’t do a thing.  I was just so extremely unmotivated.  I hope I never experience anything like it again.  Then something just kinda snapped around November/December (around the same time of my last live session).  It was that inner voice telling me I need to get my act together.  Sitting around moping isn’t going to bring online poker back.  All the ideas and things I talked about last post back in April of 2011 were still sitting there,  being left untouched.

So around the middle of December I decided it was time to get to work.  I created a new website.  Something that I hope can really catch on one day.  If it doesn’t that’s OK as I have learned a ton of new things in the short period of time that I have been working on it.  I already have some other great ideas that are in the works and might see the limelight here soon as well.

The site I am working on is called todaysRAGE. The general idea I will get from the about page on the site:

The idea

When you read an article, whether it be in your local newspaper or your favorite website, do you read every single thing from beginning to end?  Be honest.

If you are like most online users, the answer is NO.

Most people will read the title.  See the image.  Then if they are interested, they might read the first paragraph or two and MAYBE scan the rest.  Scanning is not reading though, and some important facts might have been missed by the reader.

Even if you do want to read just the summary from a news publication, it is often just the first paragraph anyway!

This is where todaysRAGE comes in.

The pitch

todaysRAGE is a news and trending-topics resource that provides fact-driven, brief stories based upon what is being sought and shared on the web at any given time.

…And that is pretty much it in a nutshell.  I do have more plans for the site, as they should be released here in the next week.  As of now I am still in build mode.  I started working on the site in the middle of December, and just to remind you… I have no idea what I am doing.  I am not some computer science major.  But one thing I am good at, is learning on the fly.  I have simply just done the same thing I did for nomenot.net.  I just googled “how to do this” and “how to do that” and then just stuck with it through trial and error.

Once I am completely done with build mode, which should be sometime in February.  It will be all about getting people to the site, marketing mode.  I am starting to tell more and more people about the site (as I am doing here), but when I say marketing mode….I mean really hitting up every avenue possible to drive people to the site.  Of course content is king, and that is kind of lacking at this point in time.  I went a week away from posting any new stories to really work on the front page of the site.  I know that is not a good thing.  But for now, I only plan to post one or two stories a day.  After all, there is so much one person can do, especially when it isn’t his full time job.  But maybe one day, it will be.

So to end this already extended update of a post.  I ask that you visit the site and let me know what you think.  I take criticism extremely well so don’t be shy.  You can post here or contact me through todaysRAGE either via the comment section or the contact page.

Until next time……(lets hope online poker comes back soon) good luck!

Black Friday And My Future

First let me start with the fact that I can no longer play on PokerStars or FullTilt Poker.  I am literally depressed too.  Even though poker is just a money-making hobby for me at the moment, I was seriously considering making a job out of it.  All my plans and hopes were instantly shattered when the United States DOJ handed out the indictment of 11 individuals tied in with online poker.  Specifically PokerStars, FullTilt Poker, and Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker.

I am so frustrated at the moment.  The only reason I have stayed at the job I currently have is because it was flexible enough to let me put in a considerable amount of time into my poker game.  Now that poker is basically gone for me, it is time to start looking for a new job.  I really hate my current job.  But the thing is what do I want to do? What skills do I have to offer?

The first question is much harder to answer than the second question.  I feel I have a ton to offer to a prospective employer. The only problem is….I just don’t know if I want to do it.  I just have lost the all “working for the man” lifestyle.  I want to be my own employer.  I don’t want to have to answer to a boss.  That is the problem, and I really just don’t know where to go from here.  As I have said before though, I guess I can be happy that I do still have a job in a time like this though.

So I have been thinking of learning how to program.  Maybe make some programs for Android (phones) or something.  Maybe get a job in programming.  I really don’t know.  But I feel like my personality really meshes well with programming; and if I get good enough, maybe I can start up a company.  Again, I just don’t know.

Was Gearing Up

Back on the poker debacle.  I haven’t hardly played that much at all this year.  I have been really busy working on my game.  I have basically been preparing for making the jump to play poker full-time.  I basically wanted to get all my ducks in a row.  I actually was thinking of making the jump at the turn of the year.  But since I had a pretty rough last couple months of ’10, and the fact that a possible blackout was looming if online poker was legalized and regulated, I decided to hold off for a little while longer.

I was really making great progress with my game.  I did some really in-depth analysis, and was ready to tackle what ever was thrown my way.  After all, I had to have some pretty big leaks to lose over 10k to one player at the end of 2010, right?

Cheated

Well, come to find out maybe I didn’t have as many leaks as I once thought.  Instead, I was playing against a player with an unfair competitive advantage.  If you recall, there was basically one player that was just giving me fits with 5 card draw.  In fact, I have never lost to one player the way I was to this player.  I was (and should have earlier) about to not play him due to the fact he was just better than me.  That alone is quite a lot, as I pretty much will play anyone.  I just have that much confidence in my game.  Yes, there is one or two other players I try to avoid, but if they REALLY wanted to play me, I would have.

But this one player that I was having fits with basically came out of nowhere and was sitting at all limits, and only playing heads-up.  I should have seen the red flags then, but I didn’t.  I mean how often does someone just come out of the blue and plays the better 5 card draw players and just absolutely crushes them?  In fact, this specific player was up on everyone he played except for one.  That “one” wasn’t even really a regular heads-up player either and his small profit was dwarfed by all the other players losses.

This “cheater” was eventually banned from PokerStars.  But the damage was done.  I lost well over 10k to him in a matter of a couple months, and I suspect that he easily made over 50k in that same time with all the opponents he was taking on.  I don’t want to name this “cheater” by name, though I should.  But here is the thing.  PokerStars banned him, but did not refund any of the players affected.  REALLY??? Ugh.  The thing is, once this player showed up and I was pretty skeptical; I emailed PokerStars about this player.  I basically just got a standard response email and it seemed I was just wrong about my assessment.  Remind you though, that just for me to send an email about possible cheating was totally out of character.  In fact, I have never done that before.  Though I have sent a couple “joke” emails asking that the “Doom Switch” be removed.

Anyway…about two months after my email was sent to PokerStars support, more evidence was sent to PokerStars about this player.  Some pretty damning evidence was provided too.  It was pretty obvious, that at the least this player tried to take advantage of the system.  Because of this evidence that was brought on by another player (I will not name names) PokerStars decided to ban this cheater from ever playing on PokerStars again.  But I later found out that PokerStars did not feel they had sufficient evidence to confiscate the cheaters account, thus paying back those that were affected.

What really upsets me is I was down maybe 1-2k at the time I first had suspicions and sent PokerStars an email.  I lost another ~10k over the time period until he was banned.  It was sad that a player had to find the evidence that was out there.  That should be the job of PokerStars security.  I was really let down by PokerStars.  But at least they did take some kind of action.  Full Tilt never did.

That’s right, FullTilt was still letting this player play!  Though, I wasn’t playing him anymore…he was sitting at nearly every limit.  I know they were presented with the same obvious clues to possible cheating that PokerStars was presented with.  The only thing that was ever sent in response from FullTilt, was just a standard response email.  Thanks!  Way to make me feel secure!

This type of stuff is the exact reason online poker needs to be legalized (though it’s not illegal, it just kinda like the Wild West) and regulated.  It will protect the consumer from this exact type of thing from happening.

What was this player doing?  I don’t really want to dive too much into the details.  I do know he had a program that assisted him with his play that no other player had access to.  Even if it just gave him a slight edge, that can be huge and the small edges can accumulate pretty quickly when playing heads-up.

The Aftermath

So after the whole cheating took place.  I was wondering what to do next, should I remove the PokerStars ad on my site?  Should I let everyone know what was going on?  Well I just didn’t know what to do.  But at the advice of the person who submitted the evidence-filled email to PokerStars, he asked that I keep it under wraps for a bit.  But now that time has gone by, and I am not dropping any names; I am letting the cat out of the bag.  What about still being loyal to PokerStars?  Well, I can’t play there anymore.  But really, they were the most secure site to play on.  It was just a shame that this happened and to be honest, I don’t know the whole procedure and righting the wrong over at PokerStars.

When all the smoke cleared from the cheating, lets just say my motivation for playing dropped to an all-time low.  I was having to scramble at the end of each month just to keep my supernova status on Stars.  But away from the virtual felt, I was analyzing what it was this player was doing “well”.  Now there are some things he did extremely poorly, but I think it was more as an image play.  This player, and his cheating ways, basically pointed me to some new directions as far as improving my heads-up game was concerned.  I slaved away at crunching numbers and probabilities.  I improved my game a ton over the first few months of this year.

I was all geared up to take my new-found knowledge to the tables……but then boom, I was not allowed to play anymore simply because I was an American.  Sigh, thank you Department of Justice!

This Blog and Other Websites

I am probably going to stop posting on this blog.  I am just going to let it expire when the time comes.  Sadly, I just don’t have the motivation to keep it updated.  I made a whopping 15 bucks from ads though!  Ha, I know it isn’t the most appealing thing.  Someone trying to make money from their blog, but I was simply just trying to pay for the cost of the website.  After all, I was hoping that I was providing some kind of entertainment/information to those that came to my site.

Instead, my time will now be focused more on some other sites that I have coming through the pipes.  They are strictly business-oriented.  Maybe, if I finish some of them before this blog reaches its deadline, I will provide links.

Again, I also plan to learn how to program.  I would like to make games and apps for computers/cell phones/etc.  This is my future, as I see it right now.

I will hopefully be able to play some poker a little here and there.  Whether it be on the smaller internet poker sites or a brick and mortar casino (closest casino to me is over 3 hours away).  I just don’t know.  But one thing is for sure, I will still keep myself in-tune.  I am looking forward to the day that this so-called “land of the free” allows me to have my hobby/perspective career back.

One thing I need to do is work on my holdem game.  Sadly, 5 card draw is just not that popular.  If it was as popular as holdem, I would already be a millionaire by now (assuming the same quality of opponents).  If I truly want to make the amount of money that I dream of, I don’t see 5 card draw as being a viable avenue.  However, it was a good start!

What could have been and more

One thing I never did was post my full name on this blog.  Mostly because I have bashed my current job situation so many times, I was worried someone at my workplace might come across it.  The day I was to turn pro in poker, I was going to title the post “Hello, My Name is Tommy ____”.  Well, that post is going to have to wait.  In fact, if poker is not legalized by time this blog runs its course.  I might start up another blog in the future, but it will likely just be a blog named after my name.

In fact, I have read how important it is to have a site under your name for possible networking opportunities.  I might create another website, just about me and maybe add a blog there.  It will likely have my work history and a resume for possible future employment opportunities.  Again, this is just a thought running through my head.  Right now I am still just in shock of the recent developments with online poker here in the USA.

Final words

I feel like I am leaving out a few things.  But if they deem to be important to mention, I may post again here in the near future.  But in the meantime, the best thing I can do is direct you to Poker Player’s Alliance’s website.  They are an organization that was created to fight for the right to play online poker.  So if you are from the United States, please email your local and federal representatives to protect this wonderful game of poker here in the States.

….but that will have to come on a later day as I am gearing up to go to the NCAA Men’s Basketball final 4!

That’s right, good ‘ole Virginia Commonwealth.  I have mentioned in past posts that I played baseball there for what now seems ages ago (I am getting old).  But watching this run they have made, when many of the so-called experts didn’t feel they deserved the chance to compete in the tournament, has made me feel like I am back in college all over again.

So, I am gearing up to get everything I need: airline tickets, game tickets, hotel, etc.  All on last minute notice.  I had to pull out some money from my poker account to help pay for the massive expenses.  Going to the final 4 is expensive!

When I get back from the final four I will post again about plenty of stuff.  Some of it pretty shocking.

Photo credit: ESPN

PokerStars Home Games basically allows you set up your own poker club.  Currently, it can be hard to play with your friends on PokerStars mostly due to the high traffic of players that are on there at all times.  How can you solve this?  Create your own poker club that only the people you choose to be allowed in can play.  This allows you to play against your friends (or enemies) and no one else.

Once creating your own club, you can create a variety of cash games and tournaments.  All the games that are currently offered by PokerStars are at your finger tips.  Though, currently there are a couple limitations on the limits you can play.  But since this new update is still in the beta stages, I would think these limitations will be lifted.

Ok, now that is the gist of it.  I think this will be especially helpful for people out there that currently run a home poker game and are looking for another option.  Hence the name “Home Games”.  I also think this will be helpful to all those people out there that constantly are wearing a tin-foil hat and accuse many players of some sort of cheating.  (I too can fall under this tag, as I have had my suspicions).  But if you are playing with only people you know, assuming that is who you let into your club, this excuse is pretty much thrown out the window.

So, I created my own club, which is already up to 35 members.  Centered around mostly limit 5 card draw.  Though, there may be other variations of 5 card draw implemented.  I have assigned a few people as being an admin, mostly so that the players that reside in European nations can have their own time-friendly tournaments.

I decided it best to not include cash games in this club.  Since the traffic for 5 card draw is not exactly all too high, I did not want to create something to directly compete with what was currently being offered by PokerStars.  However, currently PokerStars has an extremely weak offering of 5 card draw tournaments, especially limit 5 card draw.  SOOOOO, this is where this club comes in.  I am hoping to give other players more options to play some 5 card draw tournaments.

If you would like to join this club, log into PokerStars and under the “Home Games” tab, search for club # 8373.  PokerStars will ask you for a passcode.  The passcode for this club is “5 Card Draw”.  Make sure you capitalize the C and D in the passcode.  Once you do that, it is time to put on your online poker face and play some cards!  Good luck to all who decide to join the club!

My wife and I had no plans for New Years Eve.  However, we were invited to a few things on last minute notice, it can be hard to find a babysitter.  But hey, I didn’t care all too much anyway.  The degen in me wanted to stay home and play as much poker to reach this 200k VPP mark.  That is exactly what I did.

I ended up playing limit holdem to reach my goal.  Now in the past, I have played limit holdem.  Or I should say, fooled around with the game.  I felt I was adept in the game, but that was just a fallacy as I always seemed to lose.  See, you need to be a little bit on the tighter side in that game (at least I think).  That is something I just don’t like to do.  I am too much of an action junkie.

So to resolve that issue, and to get as many VPPs as possible….I played 20-24 tables of limit holdem at once.  Guess what?  It was a TON of fun too.  I used to ask myself how others could play that many tables at once, but if you stack the tables it is actually pretty easy.  For those that don’t know what stacking means when it is concerned to online poker, you basically put each table right on top of each other table and when it is time for your action, that window pops up.  You have all but a second or two to make your decision as a new table will likely pop up requiring your attention.

When it was all said and done, I ended up winning $461.25 over 7350 hands in a total of just over 6 hours of play.  That is well over 1000 hands an hour!  It was really fun.  Did I run well?  I have no idea!  Mostly because I didn’t really see how the hands went to showdown.  But according to my Holdem Manager program, it looks like I didn’t run all too well as my EV was expected to be around $541.90.

Not too bad I must say!  I might have to start doing that more often!

I hope you have a good 2011!  I am gonna take a small break to work on some aspects of my game.