100NL Confidence

I'm starting to gain a lot of confidence playing at 100NL. I know I can always go back down to 25NL and never worry about going busto. I played a short 800 hand session tonight and ran kind of hot. I didn't lose more than $30 on any hand that I lost and there were only a couple of those so I am reasonably happy with my lack of spewing.

My 3 biggest winning hands - there were a lot of silly fish around today, which is always nice:

Hand #1
Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP1: $109.75
MP2: $128.80 (58/8/1.5)
CO: $42.45
BTN: $104.50
SB: $52.55
Hero (BB): $102.50
UTG: $115.60
UTG+1: $99.95
UTG+2: $101.50

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BB with A A
4 folds, MP2 calls $1, CO calls $1, BTN calls $1, SB calls $0.50, Hero raises to $8.50, MP2 calls $7.50, 1 fold, BTN calls $7.50, 1 fold
I'm never sure what to raise to with a premium hand in the blinds when it gets limped around. It's kind of obvious what I have, and I am worried about giving up too easy postflop when they rep a set.

Flop: ($27.50) 9 Q 7 (3 players)
Hero bets $16.50, MP2 calls $16.50, BTN folds
Pretty wet board and should have bet more like $21 so that it's easier to get stacks in on the turn. I'm not folding against this guy. After seeing results, I am trying to figure out why he didn't reraise or shove this perfect flop for him having the edge.

Turn: ($60.50) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets $77.50 all in, MP2 calls $77.50
I figure if he has 1 pair or a draw his odds are drastically reduced now. I don't mind taking this down here on the turn though either and I am past committed with any bet so I chose to just shove. Again, I wish I made the flop cbet larger to avoid the overbet.

River: ($215.50) J (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $215.50
MP2 mucks Q T
Hero shows A A (a pair of Aces)
Hero wins $212.50
(Rake: $3.00)

Hand #2
Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

BTN: $191.95
SB: $20.00
BB: $49.80
UTG: $110.95
UTG+1: $196.10
UTG+2: $266.70
MP1: $74.30 (unknown)
Hero (MP2): $100.00
CO: $21.35

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP2 with 9 9
UTG calls $1, 1 fold, UTG+2 raises to $3, MP1 calls $3, Hero calls $3, 3 folds, BB calls $2, UTG calls $2
Really great odds and action for set mining this.

Flop: ($15.50) 9 2 J (5 players)
BB checks, UTG checks, UTG+2 bets $8, MP1 calls $8, Hero raises to $35, BB folds, UTG folds, UTG+2 folds, MP1 calls $27
Middle set. I am not folding ever. If someone has JJ then oh well reload. The pot was about $33 when it got to me. I chose a raise to $35 to make a turn shove easy for 2/3 pot if I got 1 caller.

Turn: ($93.50) 2 (2 players)
MP1 checks, Hero bets $59.50, MP1 calls $36.30 all in
Perfect card if he was on a draw. If he has a pair it kind of sucks but he should be committed so I just shove before another club peels off and totally kills my action.

River: ($166.10) T (2 players - 1 is all in)

Final Pot: $166.10
MP1 shows A T (a flush, Ace high)
Hero shows 9 9 (a full house, Nines full of Deuces)
Hero wins $163.10
(Rake: $3.00)

Hand #3
Poker Stars $0.50/$1 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP2: $126.75
CO: $110.90
BTN: $107.35
SB: $72.70 (22/7/2)
BB: $100.00
UTG: $121.35
UTG+1: $128.30
UTG+2: $171.85
Hero (MP1): $100.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is MP1 with K K
3 folds, Hero raises to $3, 3 folds, SB calls $2.50, 1 fold
I have been getting dealt KK all over the place.

Flop: ($7.00) T J 6 (2 players)
SB bets $5, Hero calls $5
Weird donk bet. I put him on an OESD, top pair, or 2 pair (JT) or a set. I think pocket pairs make up the majority of a 22/7 type's preflop calling range from the blinds. I don't get called by worse if I raise and I'm not too worried about draws yet.

Turn: ($17.00) 7 (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $8.50, SB calls $8.50
I make a 1/2 pot bet that I think he can call with a top pair hand and maybe an OESD, because the rest of the range is either folding or has me crushed.

River: ($34.00) 4 (2 players)
SB bets $56.20 all in, Hero calls $56.20
I tanked on this one. His line made absolutely no sense. The draws missed except for 98 but that should have bet/3bet or c/r the turn. Same goes for a set or 2 pair. If he hit a backdoor flush draw I don't think he would overbet shove, but rather make a callable $20-$30 bet. To me it just was really looking like he needed me to fold to win the hand so he tried to maximize fold equity on the scare card. Really the only hands that I can put him on that beat me are AQs or KQs but the overbet just looks so bluffy when compared to the original range I put him on.

Final Pot: $146.40
SB shows 8 8 (a pair of Eights)
Hero shows K K (a pair of Kings)
Hero wins $143.40
(Rake: $3.00)

Thoughts on Blind Stealing

+6 buyins at 25NL before 6am this morning. I woke up at 4:30am and couldn't sleep so I fired up 18 tables. There weren't a whole lot of games running so I just took the 18 from the top of the list. This game is so easy when everyone is half asleep and nitty. I am also fairly sure I made a FPS play and got a reg to fold AA/KK on a scary board. Yay!

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

UTG+1: $25.00
MP1: $7.60
MP2: $4.90
CO: $5.40
BTN: $26.35
SB: $27.10 (14/5/2)
BB: $26.55
Hero (UTG): $29.15

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG with 9 9
Hero raises to $0.75, 5 folds, SB raises to $2, 1 fold, Hero calls $1.25
People are bad at 3bet sizing.

Flop: ($4.25) 7 T 6 (2 players)
SB bets $2.25, Hero calls $2.25
Float a 3bet pot with my gutshot - like I have a set. I have a read that this guy can think.

Turn: ($8.75) J (2 players)
SB bets $3, Hero raises to $6.75, SB calls $3.75
Take the standard donk "I has a set" line. Also the cheapest possible bluff if he shoves and leaves a good amount behind for a river bluff if he calls.

River: ($22.25) J (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $18.15 all in, SB folds
I probably get looked up for anything less than a shove, which is what I'd do if I had a full house. I think I look believable.

Final Pot: $22.25
Hero mucks 9 9
Hero wins $21.20
(Rake: $1.05)

I believe I have fully optimized my steal strategy as well in the past few days. Picking spots and bet sizing are as close to mathematically optimal as I can think of. Of course what is "optimal" is always changing with the game, so I'm sure I will continue to make adjustments, but what I am doing right now is going to be my baseline to go back to if I get off track or take the concept to far. So far this month I am running a 50% attempt to steal with a 61% success rate over 12k hands.

The one thing I didn't understand in NLTAP - well I understand it, I just think it's backwards - is that they recommend not stealing blinds all the time with hands that have value because the blinds are only a small fraction of a potentially large pot - they were comparing limit to no-limit here, where they said you should steal more often in limit because it's a bigger fraction of the final pot. They would rather open-limp a lot of hands in steal situations in no-limit. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons:

Why not to open-limp in a steal situation:
1. You can not put the blinds on any sort of range and have to play strictly on betting pattern reads. If you are doing any multitabling at all, these reads are not going to be even close to accurate because people tend to get a little crazy in the blinds for some reason and play way outside their comfort zone a lot. If you have AA on the button and limp in, wtf are you going to do when the turn gets check-shoved on you from the BB? Preflop steal situations are the only time I advocate to raise to "see where you're at" (this is a really bad idea most of the time because people don't know what information they are going to get or how to use it) - but in this case it allows you to remove somewhere between 75 to 90% of all hands from their range, which is pretty valueable for future action.

2. Blind stealing is wildly profitable in and of itself. So far this month I am running at 41 ptBB/100 when attempting to steal blinds. That is the equivalent of the winrate I'm achieving with hands located in the 5 to 10% range. And a lot of the time it's with any 2 cards, which adds value to hands that are actually -EV in terms of absolute equity.

3. Of course you can balance your range and limp AA and J6o on the button. But why limp them both to balance when you can raise them both and achieve the same balance? Balancing your big hands gets them paid off, and balancing your trash allows you steal pots with your trash. You can't win with trash if you limp unless you hit some weird 2 pair and that happens a lot less often than you get J6o on the button. I like the high frequency play.

4. Raising all sorts of trash from steal positions as well as your premium hands makes you look rather LAGgy to HUDbots. You are risking a very small amount, picking up blinds, and easily dumping hands when they decide that they are finally going to 3bet you after waiting 10 orbits for JJ+. But by then you are way ahead of the game.

Bet sizing in steal situations:
I find it is also a good idea to alter your standard open-raise size for blind stealing. You might want to experiement with a 3BB open instead of the standard 4BB. There's less risk, it has to work less often, and your opponent will usually take the same action regardless of your raise size.

People are really bad at 3bet sizing and you can actually get some decent implied odds when they 3bet extra small due to your smaller open sizing.

Another option that I've found extremely useful is to minraise steal against tight shortstackers. They are playing as many tables as possible most likely and do not have time to distinguish that the size of your raise is not standard. All they see is that they have fold/call/raise options instead of fold/check/raise options. Since their standard play is to shove or fold, this lets you off the hook a lot cheaper if they choose shove.

Blind stealing and your image:
Of course the frequency at which you choose to steal is going to be completely dependant on your style and how it fits your game and image. I've seen 11/8 types that steal 40% and resteal a lot too, that's all they do is steal and auto-fold everything else and some of them are even quite successful. Then there's the 40/10 types that have an ATS of 10%. They don't understand position, so they are not even really attempting to steal even though they look extremely loose in those situations when they are not.

Blind stealing can seriously mess with people's perception of your game. For example: if you folded from every position except for the button and cutoff, and were able to make a steal attempt every time from those 2 positions, you would be running at 22/22 and looking super LAGgy at a 9 handed table. Imagine what this does to your premium hands when you open from middle or late position.

This is also why you need to compare someone's ATS stat to their PFR stat when they are opening in late position, don't mistake a value raise for a steal if their ATS and PFR are low and relatively similar - they aren't positionally aware. In contrast, you'll know that someone is positionally aware and probably a decent player if their ATS is much higher than their PFR.

Most people will say there is no meta-game way down here in the micros. But eventually people will get to level 0.5 and realize that you've stolen their blinds a gazillion times in an hour and make a stand. Some won't at all. But the ones that start playing back at you are extremely exploitable. If it's a good reg, go ahead and leave the table or tighten up, but if it's a general drooler then it's only a matter of time until you get their stack. They are way out of their comfort zone and you can pick up some nice pots when they decide to stop believing your bets.

C'mon Stars - One Time!

100NL has been going well. 50NL has not been going well. Just finished a 1600 hand session and finished another 3 buyins below equity: -2 buyins total for the session:

set < set
top set < bare flush draw with undercards
99 on 983cc < two guys both with KK in a 350BB 3bet pot
4 Flush boards can bite me
sigh
I am utterly doomswitched at 50NL

^That almost looks like a haiku. Yay! Highlight of my day!

My thoughts on 4 flush boards - ie. The Bane of My Existence:
4 flush boards annoy me in every possible way. There should be a rule change stating that a flush must use both holecards and only 3 community cards. 4 flush boards completely ruin the game. They completely negate all strategic plays.

If you win a hand on a 4 flush board, unless you had some other big draw or your opponent is a station and you're betting, you probably sucked out and luckboxed your way into a win. You either called down or "semi-bluffed" and ended up getting a card that is not going to get you any action at all and it is incredibly obvious what you have if you put any money in the pot and you are never never never getting called with worse. So unless you were getting remarkable odds on the flop or turn, you are making a mistake drawing to a 4 flush board. There's no implied odds there.

What annoys me even more though is when I completely outplay someone and they call all in with whatever pair that I have utterly crushed with a big hand like a set or a straight and they luckbox their way into a runner runner flush. I could just about be a faceroller and achieve the same outcome. It takes all the skill out of the game. Prime example: my 99 vs KK and KK hand above where I'm 96% on the flop when the money goes in. Runner runner my strat to death.

Anways...
I am starting to wonder if Stars has a massive plan to keep the $ pool at each limit optimal to ensure the continuation of the games. $25NL has too much money --> ship it to me en masse --> let me deposit it at 50NL for you where there seems to be a shortage of $. lol :P

This just boggles my mind considering that I'm running at 10ptBB/100 consistently at 25NL. And it's completely based on 2 to 5 outers hitting every time I get stacks in. I checked the past 3 months and I am a total of -12 buyins below equity at 50NL.

I am still confident because I know my money is being put into luckboxes in some drooler's closet. I am not being outplayed, I am being out-rivered. They don't even understand what "playing back at me" means.

50NL is just cooler and badbeat city. Plain and simple. More fish = more bad beats/more money in the long run. I have to just repeat it over and over. Or go back to 25NL to fund my leapfrog to 100NL. It appears to be the only way to beat the "spread the wealth" system Stars has going. They'll never see the leapfrog coming...

Congratulations USA

Congrats to President-Elect Barack Obama. I was actually quite inspired by the US Election Day yesterday. Not necessarily because of the results - I wasn't particularly moved by either campaign - but by the reaction of Americans around the country. Most notably the voter turnout on all sides of the political spectrum.

Perhaps people are coming around and starting to actually think about the political process and want their voices heard again; a stark contrast to the growing apathy that has taken place over the last decade or two. The enormous lineups of eager voters were amazing - as if Americans had once again discovered democracy and felt that they could each make a real difference. This should actually be a congrats to the people of the United States in particular more than congrats to any particular winning candidates.

I hope that this trend continues and that the US can once again reclaim its status as democratic leader of the world. Someone to once again look up to. I don't know if Americans realize it or not, but the rest of the world is watching every move you make.

Lead by example, not by force. Make the rest of the world want to be like America, not have to be like America. A lot of us that live outside of the US are ecstatic to see the American spirit that seemed dead and misguided for the past 7 years revived.

To President-Elect Obama: I hope that you continue to inspire Americans and urge them to make a difference. Be true to your promises and honest with the electorate rather than reciting sound-bite rhetoric - we've all had enough of that kind of governance for a lifetime. I sincerely hope that you can Change America, perhaps Restore is a better word...

November - Good Times!

I think November is going to be awesome poker-wise. Since I watched Split's Stox Full Ring Series, I have completely overhauled my game. The style I am playing now drastically reduces the effect of running card-dead, gets my big hands paid off, immensely improves hand reading - I don't know why this is, but w/e it works - and it stops me from spewing and playing scared when moving up. It really just takes very common concepts that everyone knows (but probably aren't applying correctly) and puts them into a new, very easy to understand framework that allows for a lot of creativity. There is absolutely no downside afaik.

I had a major downswing in the 2nd last week of October and that series was exactly what I needed to get back on track, and to actually improve my game far beyond what it had been. Since then I've been running at about 12 ptBB/100 at 25NL over 12k hands. I've also put in a couple of breakeven 50NL sessions which I am very happy with, and I've had a couple of really decent sessions at 100NL.

This style is so much more fun, helps me improve my game, and makes me excited to play poker again. It's so dynamic and fluid compared to the regular nitty grind that I had been doing that was burning me out. I felt like a robot. Now poker feels easy and fun.

Last night's 25NL session was really fun: +12 buyins including my 5th lifetime Royal, and this morning's session was alright as well: +2 buyins. It should have been +4 but variance decided to have a bit of fun with 2 outers as well =)

I was happy on the turn already but the river was a nice little bonus:

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

SB: $13.55
BB: $9.95
UTG: $13.30
Hero (UTG+1): $25.00
MP1: $19.25
MP2: $5.00
CO: $14.85
BTN: $7.00

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is UTG+1 with T J
1 fold, Hero raises to $0.75, MP1 calls $0.75, 5 folds

Flop: ($1.85) K Q T (2 players)
Hero bets $1.50, MP1 raises to $3, Hero raises to $24.25 all in, MP1 calls $15.50 all in

Turn: ($38.85) 2 (2 players - 2 are all in)

River: ($38.85) A (2 players - 2 are all in)

Final Pot: $38.85
Hero shows T J (a Royal Flush)
MP1 mucks K A
Hero wins $36.95
(Rake: $1.90)

This one was kind of fun too:

Poker Stars $0.10/$0.25 No Limit Hold'em - 9 players
The Official DeucesCracked.com Hand History Converter

MP1: $24.50
MP2: $18.85
CO: $19.20
Hero (BTN): $29.95
SB: $32.25
BB: $30.05
UTG: $3.60
UTG+1: $29.55
UTG+2: $38.70

Pre Flop: ($0.35) Hero is BTN with Q Q
UTG calls $0.25, 2 folds, MP1 calls $0.25, 1 fold, CO calls $0.25, Hero raises to $1.75, 1 fold, BB calls $1.50, 2 folds, CO calls $1.50

Flop: ($5.85) 8 Q Q (3 players)
BB checks, CO checks, Hero checks

Turn: ($5.85) 5 (3 players)
BB checks, CO checks, Hero bets $2.75, BB calls $2.75, CO folds

River: ($11.35) 9 (2 players)
BB checks, Hero bets $5, BB raises to $10, Hero raises to $25.45 all in, BB calls $15.45

Final Pot: $62.25
Hero shows Q Q (four of a kind, Queens)
BB mucks 5 5
Hero wins $59.25
(Rake: $3.00)

In these hands, obviously all the money is going in and they are just BBV hands anyways, but I don't think I would be getting paid off as much with my monsters playing my old nitty style even at 25NL.

October Results

Poker was very swongy for me again this month. I finally started thinking about the strat I was using and how it was not optimal around the time I had a massive downswing at 50NL. I then watched a Stox series made by SplitSuit, and it totally changed what I'm doing now and the results have been solid for a week since I have started implementing it.

I haven't posted a graph in a while. This is October:


Surprisingly I'm really happy with the way the month turned out although I played way less hands than I wanted to and made less money than I had planned on. I haven't made less since February. You can see the point in the graph where I changed my game around and started basing them on Split's videos.

I'm really excited about playing again now because the new style is so much more dynamic and fluid that it has made poker interesting again. The nitty-TAGish 18 tabling was starting to wear me out and stunting my growth. I'm now 12 tabling with the new style and I am having more fun, making more (hopefully), and figuring out how to actually play this game!

Thoughts on "Energy Independence"

Both US presidential candidates are proposing a so-called energy independence plan. I'm not a foreign policy expert but this just plain sounds like a bad idea. The reasoning behind it is that the US has to import oil from countries that apparently hate the US.

This sounds like a good idea when you spin it up with all the rhetoric and the new fake patriotism brand. But if you really look at what happens, it's not as smart as it appears on the surface. Besides this being an isolationist policy, for which Ron Paul was slammed when he's not even an isolationist and was the last chance to save the integrity of the US government and avert a total superpower meltdown, it really doesn't make any sense when you take these points into consideration.

1. US oil imports do not come from countries who are branded as anti-American for the most part. Only 20% of total US oil imports are imported from the Persian Gulf and 60% of those imports from the Persian Gulf are from a US ally - Saudi Arabia. In comparison, a full 20% of oil imports are from Canada alone. Another 11% is imported from Mexico. The argument about America's enemies being in control of exporting oil to America just does not fly.

2. The majority of so-called American enemies can not shut off the tap without ending up in a full scale economic and political breakdown in their own country. Most of these countries rely very heavily on revenues generated by exporting oil. Unless they are able to switch all of their exports to China overnight, they are going to be facing food shortages at home, and when that happens, governments fall. Take Russia for example - threatening to shut off the tap to the UK. It's a total bluff and Putin wouldn't dare compromise his or his party's position of power in Russia to do this. If Russia can't shut the tap off, no one can. The global economy is far too inter-connected for any country to halt their main export.

3. Making America energy independent would require using up American oil, ldo. This is very important. What happens 30 or 40 years from now when that oil is starting to become harder and harder to find and becoming more and more expensive? Go back to importing? Hope and pray that technology finds a new solution by then? Are the American oil companies going to shut down that new solution again for the umpteenth time? That's quite a gamble when you apparently have enemies of America currently controlling America's oil supply already today. Are they even going to turn the tap back on in the future?

Right now the US can use it's own oil reserves as backup - insurance if you will - in case an "enemy" would be stupid enough to cut them off. So what happens when you decide that you are going to use up that insurance instead of saving it for - here's a thought - insurance?

Americans will be sitting ducks. You can't wage any wars when your enemies won't give you any oil because they've found new buyers and you've used up all of your own. The logical conclusion would be a new era of desperate resource wars, which would be a sad, sad state for the world to end up in.

This is just an average joe's opinion on the fallacy that is energy independence. I sincerely hope that Obama/McCain and Co. have actually looked at this viewpoint instead of hyping up the rhetoric to sound good and get elected. Rhetoric is for people that can't think for themselves and need someone to motivate them into thinking something... anything... regardless of its merits.* It sounds good with a little spin and would probably benefit Americans for the short run. But the long run would be disastrous.

*People that spew rhetoric go to the bottom of my list of reliable, trustworthy and honest people. They either think the average person is too stupid to understand wtf is going on because they have an ego problem or they have an agenda that is contrary to the good of their audience or both (in most cases both). If you can't tell me flat out what the deal is without spinning it and telling 1/2 truths in politico-speak, I have absolutely no use for you.

50NL - [?] Success

I took another shot at 50NL today. I am much more comfortable playing there now with my new style. I think I might call today's session a success. When you take everything into account, I think I did ok and held my own over 4k hands at -1 buyin:

- Ran into the bad end of set over set 2x
- Flush over flush 1x
- Luckboxing morans calling with second pair or worse and hitting after I get 2/3 of their stack in x6
- Getting outflopped a lot by 60/5 types and valuetowning myself

I was -3 buyins at one point and managed to fight my way back to +1 buyin. Then I ran into the above mentioned luckboxes and finished the session at -1 buyin. I also never hit draws or sets at 50NL:

J9ss < ATo on As4s9c after I shove over his min-c/r of my flop PSB, lol. Multiple examples of this.
I had 231 pocket pairs with a VPIP/PFR of 86/69 for those and managed to flop a whopping 11 sets.

I don't feel like converting HHs but the gist of my session and a summation of my experience at 50NL so far is:
Me QJs - raise a limper. Flop QJ8r. Get donked into, reraise him to 1/2 his remaining stack. Aggressive call by villain. Turn 8. He has A8. gg.

I am not going to let this affect my currently high level of confidence. On review, I played awesome except for 2 spewy reg war spots and I managed to run like ass for nearly the entire session. I am absolutely going to crush this level once variance regresses to the mean.

Traditional end of month heater

I tend to like to finish out every month with a heater. This month is no exception. Except I think this heater is actually not a heater but rather a show of skill. I made some very fundamental changes to my game in the past couple of days and they are paying huge dividends. My heater is not due to stacking people with the nuts or catching miracle cards and draws like they usually are.

I am actually out-playing people. I am LAGing instead of nitting. Poker feels easy. Like it all started to click. To the tune of 15 ptBB/100 over 5k hands. Something is very different when my non-SD line goes from a slowly descending red to a decent ascending red making up 1/5 of my profit consistenltly - so far, I think it can become an even bigger factor. I did not think this was possible in uFR, but it is.

This is still 25NL so I will still have to see if I can manage to translate this into 50NL success. I think that my next shot will be a success. That is my goal.

Incredibly Frustrated...

... with 50NL. I just can't get it. I'm a fish. 1 more shot down the drain. That makes 8.

LOL at everyone who keeps saying it's the same as 25NL.

Thoughts on Post-Secondary Education

Warning: VERY tl;dr, cliff notes at the bottom

I graduated from university in 2004, but since a lot of you are back in full school mode I thought I might blog a bit about my time there and what I thought of it. It's probably going to come across as a little negative, I had a good time while I was there but I'm disappointed with the results. So take what you can from it and don't make the same mistakes as I did.

Year 1
I decided to go to university right after high school. My thinking was that if I took a year off and worked and got my own place, I'd love it so much that I'd never go back to school. So I got myself a government student loan and did my first year on my 3 year B. of Arts at a satellite campus about a 1/2 hour drive from home. We then teamed up with other smaller towns that had satellite campuses and had joint classes via teleconference and internet based whiteboard. The actual university is about 1.5 hours away so I thought this would save me money since I wouldn't have to pay rent, could keep my current part-time job, and hang out at home instead of some stinky little dorm room. Gas was also cheap(er) compared to today.

This turned out to be a mistake. The class size was nice with about 40 people per class, but for some reason the university hired non-professors that happened to know something about the curriculum for us. For example, my statistics "prof" was actually a statistician that worked for the provincial government and was doing this class on the side. You'd think this would be a good thing - having someone from the real world as a prof - but the downside is that what they taught was so far behind what they were actually teaching at the real campus which led to me being way behind at the start of year 2.

They also had some random site admin running the place that was clueless so I had to make sense out of the university bible - aka the registration guide(s) - by myself. If this is your first year, think very carefully about what you want to do when you graduate. You can very easily waste a year if you don't have this figured out. There were so many people in first year, and even second year, that didn't have a clue what they were going to school for. With all of the pre-requisites for year 2 and 3 courses, you need to pick very carefully. You are better off taking a year off to think about it than waste a year's worth of tuition and rent.

I wanted to get a degree in computer science. I tried out the other math that was required for this - Vector Geometry and Linear Algebra - with one of the other non-profs. The linear algebra was lol easy and everyone in the class of 20 had at least a "B." Then the second term started with the vector geometry stuff and it was wicked hard. The final ended up being 80% geometry and needless to say, 15/20 people failed the class, myself included - I answered 4/25 questions on the final. The final was scheduled to take 1.5 hours and the room was empty before 30 minutes were up. So due to that experience I said screw computer science. If I had gone straight to the real campus I don't think this would have been the case.

Also, unless it's like 1 textbook for a class or something - DO NOT BUY THE "REQUIRED" BOOKS BEFORE YOU NEED THEM. I bought about $400 worth of useless books that ended up not being used for my first year courses because they were on the list. You'll get English profs who get you to buy an $80, 600 page anthology for 2 stupid poems that take up 1/2 a page each. Find as much material as you can online first, next check the library, - school and public - next check out used book stores, and lastly head to the university book store. Check out the libraries immediately after the book lists come out, because their are smart people out there that will have those books snatched up by the end of the week. And when you go to sell the store's books back to the them at the end of the year, they'll only take 1/4 of them back and on those you'll be lucky if you get 20% of what you paid for them.

Year 2
Year 2 I moved to the city and got a sweet deal on an apartment that was 3 blocks from campus. I was lazy obviously because I drove my car and paid for parking in the parkade while my street was full of cars from people parking there and walking.

Living in the city was fun although I didn't do much besides hang out with friends. Just the idea of being able to go out anytime for entertainment was good though, coming from a small town of 10k people.

I finally decided I wanted to be a high school teacher and picked a history major and geography minor as my teachables. Luckily most of the courses I picked for 1st year were transferable to this program. History was really fun. I had one prof for several courses that was a German Jewish guy that had lived through the start of Hitler's campaign and he told an eye opening story about how he had been in Prague as a 7 year old and his uncle had sent him to the store for bread and cigarettes and as he walked out the store, the tanks were rolling through the streets with no notice. He'd always go through the text for 10 minutes at the start of class, then say "... but here's what actually happened..." (he has travelled around the world helping with research projects in countless historical archives) and have these captivating stories for the other 1.5 hours. Best prof evar.

Geography was alright but I was expecting a little more out of it. Most of the profs in the department seemed to have left-wing social engineering agendas and really liked to put the spin on whatever topics they were covering. Out of 8 geography courses I really only liked the Tourism class which was actually more of a marketing class than a geography class.

I did a couple of other interesting courses as electives - basic psychology, sociology, and computer basics (this was pretty lol, I only showed up for the final as it was a course on how to use the MS Office Suite). I pretty much coasted through year 2. This is starting to ramble so on to the next year...

Year 3
I sublet my apartment for the summer and went back to my concrete construction job back home that I had for each summer break. For those of you out there getting student loans - GET A GOOD SUMMER JOB! None of this part-time, work 15 hours a week at some useless job cause I want to sleep in every day and be a teenager shit. Summer might suck, but believe me, living on a restricted budget for 10 years after graduation would suck more. I have been out of school for 4 years now. I paid off my student loans in 8 months after graduation because I worked frickin hard on summer break. The government student loan rep actually tried to talk me out of paying them off, while at the same time they complained in every major newspaper about students not paying back their loans. I know people that are still $20k+ in debt that I graduated with. That is just silly imo. FWIW school is fairly cheap where I live. Tuition = $3500, rent = $10k.

I had a panic moment in year 3. Here I am planning to be a teacher and sitting in Urban Geography class. The prof asks, "Just curious, how many of you are going into education post-grad?" 75/100 people raised their hands. I thought oh, shit.

So I coast the rest of the year and finish with a 3.2 GPA and apply into the education program. They tell me they have 300 spots available. I do some "research" around campus and the word is that there are 1500 applicants so I'm getting somewhat decent 5:1 odds.

I managed to get an interview. This did not go well. There were 5 applicants sitting in the interview and 3 interviewers - 1 was a city school superintendent, 1 was an education prof, and 1 was the dean of the education faculty. My whole reason for wanting to be a teacher is basically why I am not a teacher.

*** My opinion of the state of the public education system ***
This probably deserves its own post. Kids are being dumbed down in the public education system (PES). Sure the curriculum is being ramped up year after year and they are 'learning' stuff at an alarmingly fast rate. The problem with this is that they are not actually learning. The PES has become a school of memorization rather than a school of understanding. This is directly related to kids' interest in school and the drop out rate.

Kids are no longer engaged in what they are learning. They just know it, they don't understand it. They can rattle off all sorts of stats and dates and names, but they don't have a clue what they are talking about. Unless your kid's goal in life is to be a Jeopardy champion, the PES has become utterly useless. What % of the tests that kids are writing these days are multiple choice compared to essay form questions?

I did awesome in school because of little mnemonic tricks I used to remember and memorize everything. For example, you could ask a kid what year the Italian Revolution was or some other topic they might be studying in school. They might know it was 1848 and that the names of the time were Mazzini and Emmanuel II - these are easily memorizeable, multiple choice answers. I'd think of something like ME2/1848 and bam, instantly recall it. But try asking them what the driving forces were behind the 1848 revolutions and what else was going on in Europe at the time that was related to this and you will get deer-in-the-headlights response.

*** End Rant - Back to Year 3 ***

So I walk into this interview and get blindsided by my own stupidity as to what is acceptable. The other 4 applicants basically answered "I love kids! They're fun and great! By the way, did I mention I'd love to work with kids!" to every question.

My answer to why I wanted to be a teacher: "I want to teach children how to learn and how teach themselves. If they are only required to memorize facts with no understanding of them, what they are learning has no use to them and their education stops the second they walk out of the school - if they have even learned anything at all. If you can teach a child how to teach themselves, they will know how to find their own answers, adapt to changing life situations after school, and thus become a successful contributing member of society regardless of what kind of 'facts' they know."

Needless to say, all 3 interviewers gave me a very frightened look and I knew I was done. It was as if I had announced this revolutionary plan that they wanted no part of.

The next year, I didn't bother applying. 300 seats once again, but this time 5000 applicants. My school was the only one accepting out of province students into the program. I phoned a bunch of schools in other provinces to try there and the response was "Are you from X province? No? Sorry we're only accepting people from X province." Smart imo. Why is my school so stupid?

*** "Diversity" at my school ***
My school also followed a "diversity" policy in which visible minorities were given priority to get in regardless of ability or merit - almost identical to the affirmative action policies in the US. I'm not racist or anything. But I am a white guy. It kind of feels like there's this payback policy now, which is actually reverse racism - which is still racism. We had a bad form of racist social engineering until the 1970s, so what makes the current racist social engineering any better? It's just targeted at a different group. The oppressors have become the oppressed, and if you're not ok with this, then you are the racist. From my perspective, the whole notion is basically a big flashing neon sign that says "All white guys to the back of the bus."

Afterthoughts
I think if I could do it over again, I would figure out what I wanted to do and go to a trade school for it as these programs are generally more to the point and shorter. Employers, especially older ones, are looking for experience, not necessarily a degree. Everyone and their dog has a B. of Arts/Science. My general reaction to my results is that I paid for a 3 year extention of high school that didn't get me where I wanted to go anyways. There is also a few websites out there that rate professors. Check them out. Do not end up in a snoozefest.

Don't get me wrong. Post-secondary education is a good thing. But think it through very carefully. Plan your entire program from the start and watch out for flip-flopping administration policies that can mess up your entire path to your degree. And make sure that degree is going to be worth something once you get it.

Cliff Notes
If you made it through this entire post, good job! This is definately my longest post ever. It took me several sittings to write it. I hope you've gleaned something you can use or think about in your post-secondary education.

1) Do not attend Mickey Mouse satellite institutions - they set you up for epic failure.
2) Spend rediculous amounts of $ on unused books, yay!
3) City life is fun!
4) Go from Computer Science degree to Bachelor of Arts - History and Geography.
5) Plan on teaching high school.
6) Actual university courses can be fun. Others, not so fun. It depends.
7) Get a summer job! Do it!
8) Panic over being able to teach.
9) State of Public Education System (PES) -> (POS) FMP.
10) Teaching how to learn = bad, revolutionary.
11) LOL diversity. Racism = not racist, not racist = racist.
12) Figure out wtf you are doing before you do it.

Full Tilt?

I feel like blogging today, so you'll probably see a few posts from me today. I'm not sure what I feel like blogging about, but I'll come up with something.

I've been considering switching to Full Tilt for the rest of the year for rakeback since I am probably not going to achieve Supernova. If the last 2 days are any indication though, I am not going to like it and I think I am going to go back to Stars anyways.

The software is slow and tilts me.
The lobby is fast and tilts me.
The lobby is unorganized and tilts me.

And so far in the first 4k hands, I have not stacked anyone. There are apparently spewtards all over the place but I haven't found them yet, and the player pool seems incredibly small compared to the last time I played there and especially small compared to Stars.

25NL felt like 100NL at Stars. The aggression levels are unheard of at Stars 25NL. I'm not quite sure what to think of a table full of 25/18/3s that only go to showdown 15% of the time at this level, I've probably haven't encountered more than 20-30 of these types of players in the past 6 months on Stars. Normally they're bad and going to showdown 30%+ of the time.

It might just be variance and I should actually be valuebetting harder cause people just don't fold the flop or turn and float a lot. Maybe I was just running cold for 4k hands, but it reminds me of exactly what was happening over there when I decided to leave last time and it's tough to valuebet when you are missing more flops than usual and thus they think you have AK all the time.

Probably just head back because I just can't stand the software and it's really affecting my winrate. It's not worth the rakeback to cut my winrate in 1/2.

October = Variance

I've had a rediculously high variance month and have not managed to get more than +/- 8 buyins from breakeven until today. I've mixed in some 100NL and some 50NL as well as my regular 25NL.

100NL - I am down quite a bit due to set over set situations. These took a huge hit on my BR over the weekend. I still think I played the hands alright, so that's what matters.

50NL - I am not spewing anymore and I am surviving as a very slight winner, something like 0.5 ptBB/100 or something.

25NL - Very swongy in full ring with people catching draws all over the place against me. On the other hand, I'm absolutely crushing 6 max.

Today was probably the best day of poker I've had in a very long time. I took a break from my swongy full ring play and 6 tabled 25NL 6 max. I worked on a bunch of stuff with SplitSuit who did a coaching session with me and my goal today was to apply it to my 6 max game since I could get into a lot more positional pots and play less tables without going crazy and really really think through hands. I was quite pleased with the results.

I ran hotter than the sun, but 25NL 6max is stocked full of fish, the ratio is probably double compared to full ring. I've also switched up my HUD to get rid of all the useless stats that were just confusing me and making me make bad decisions and cluttering up the screen. I reviewed my session and only found 1 mistake that cost me more than 50BB - there were 5 pots where I lost more than 50BB. I was also winning a ton of 10-30BB hands.

Today:
VPIP/PFR/AF: 23/18/4
W$WSF: 45%
ptBB/100: 30 - YES, THREE-ZERO
Hands: just under 1700
profit: +11 buyins


I think I'm going to run with this for a bit. You can valuebet so sick at 25NL 6 max compared to full ring. I am kind of interested in the difference between 50NL full ring and 6max, perhaps I would have an easier transition doing that since 6max seems so much easier than the full ring version of the same level every time I try it out. I'm not quite prepared to jump on the 6max bandwagon yet, but I think I should leave it open as an option as I do really enjoy it compared to the full ring grind. I don't like playing a bunch of different games on a day to day basis, so I'll have to consider this quite carefully.