2011 Update: Park City, Pretty Lights and Final Tables

View from the peak of McConkeys bowl in Park City Utah. This was ~13,000 feet at the top of the peak, and a forty five minute hike from the top of the tallest lift. After taking a break every ten steps struggling for air, we finally reached the peak. The view from the top was amazing and the ride down was second to none. I've been snowboarding for four years and this was my first trip out west - I fell in love. I'd love to move out there the second that I graduate from college. The town was amazing, bars up and down main street, which made the IU bar crawl very enjoyable, but whoever made the decision that we should go to the bar with steps from the street down to the front door should be shot. We will just pretend that I didn't fall down the last few steps at bar number 3 (I'm actually amazed i made it down as many as I did before tumbling into the front door).

Besides being the most amazing start to any year that I could have dreamed for, I was introduced to my new favorite music artist. Pretty Lights = perfect. Both for rocking out on the slopes for hours, and for keeping motivated during a long grind session. All of his music can be downloaded for free at his website which can be found here. It is more of a softish techno style, which helps me keep focused and tilt free (for the most part :p). I highly suggest downloading all of his CDs and putting them on shuffle for your next session and see how it works.

Ok now to poker, which seems fitting seeing as this is a poker blog. As many of you know, we've been looking to add new students to our team of SNG grinders for awhile now. After months of whining to Alain about starting students, we've finally been able to find and start working with three new micro grinders. I'll go into more depth about them on another page later, but I would just like to say that we are very pleased with all three of them. They all come from different backgrounds poker-wise, which has made coaching fun and a huge learning experience for Alain and I.

The amazing thing about poker is there is a million different ways to win. My favorite commercial is the Full Tilt commercial with Tom Dwan about him learning how to play. You can watch that commercial here. It gives me chills everytime I see it while I'm watching Poker After Dark. This commercial is amazing and I can relate to it completely. When I first started off, my goal was to mimic my cousin, who had been playing for just over a year before getting me into poker. I tried to learn cashgames by 9 and 12 tabling .01/.02 before I even knew what the term "double barrel" meant. When we first start out playing or moving to a new game, we need to focus on how the game plays before we start upping our volume. If we never learn how to play correctly, we are going to be either losing money or we are not going to be making as much as we could be.

My advice to new players is to watch as many videos as possible and talk to friends or other players about specific hands, but do not try to mimic their play exactly. You want to have your own style. The best compliment you can get as a poker player is when people argue about what type of player you are. A few months ago, I was playing live and I play at a the casino and I know lots of the players down there, both good regulars, and terrible players with money who think they are good. But one guy mentioned to me how tight I was playing that night, and thats not how I normally play. And another guy jumped in and said I always play super tight, I never bet without the nuts. This is exactly what we want as poker players, the more deceptive we are, the more effective we are going to be while we are playing.

So just a quick update on the beginning of this year. Running well doesn't come close to describing how I've been playing for the beginning of this year. In just a handful of weeks I'm well ahead of pace for my goal to make $25,000 this year. If I reach that goal well before the end of the year, I will definitely be setting a new goal for the rest of the year and trying to move up to the highest stakes I'm comfortable at. Yesterday I final tabled my first MTT, it was just a 3$ Rebuy that paid a cool $4,000 to first. I ended up getting 5th, but I should have been KOed sooner after getting coolered shoving 66 into QQ for 4 Million chips. Anyways, it felt good finally final tabling a bigger MTT and I'm looking forward to playing more of those small MTTs in the future.

Here's A graph of 2011 so far:



Good luck and see you guys at the tables.

- LUCKBOX

2010 Recap and 2011 Goals

I haven't been the best at keeping this updated, and I apologize to the two subscribers for not posting anything for two months, I'm sure you're heartbroken and I promise thats the last thing that I want. Last summer Addicted19 and I took on coaching hughezy1 for the 90mans. He was a recreational player who wanted to learn how to play poker semi-seriously. Hughezy1's progress and results can be found here. Through lots of three hour hand history reviews and lots of hard work, Hughezy1 was able to post some great numbers. Moving from a complete fish playing the 3/90s, to beating the $13 sngs in just two short months. Personally, he has been an inspiration to me by proving that, although poker may not be fair, the harder we work, the more often we will be putting ourselves in great situations. Thanks Hughezy1 for being such a great first student.

We've picked up 2 more students since the summer and would like to continue adding more as the year progresses. I will be making a page for one of them soon. We are also looking to pick up another student in the next day or so once we figure out the details.

I didn't have a great finish to the year, but it wan't bad either. I didn't put in as much volume as I would have liked, but I was still making (a lot) more than I was losing, so I can't complain. I was even able to cashout enough to fund my entire snowboard trip to Park City Utah during hte first week of Jan. I also cashed out enough to play live two nights before we left for Utah, and did well enough to treat myself to a goPRO HD video camera that took some amazing footage of every run in Utah.

When I came back my bankroll was running low and on top of that I was coming off a two week period without playing. I broke even for the first few hundred games of January and I was really getting frustrated with poker... But thanks to Hughezy, January has been my highest profiting month, and I've only played half the number of games that I have in previous months.

Here are my 2010 sng results on ftp. Keep in mind that I didn't switch to fulltilt until late June, and I played cash for two months as well as playing some live with great results.



I recently switched to a new game, just to try out this year and I'm in love. I know I'm running well, but I'm also playing very well at the final table, which has led to some deep runs and some very solid profit in just the two short weeks I've been playing them. Here's the last two weeks:



I kept telling myself at the end of last year that this was probably my last year to play poker seriously. I'm probably not going to pursue it as a profession, but I will always use it for some extra spending money. That being said, my goal this year is to make $25,000. To accomplish this, I'm going to need to play at least 800 games/month all year. 2011 is my year, and I am ready for whatever is going to be thrown my way.

Good luck at the tables,

LUCKBOX

November Wrap Up and December Goals

Before I post results for the month of December, I'd just like to blog about what is happening in the Senate in regards to the future of online poker. In 2006, a bill was passed (UIGEA) which would prohibit US players from playing online poker. UIGEA states that it is illegal for financial institutions to accept or send money to online gambling sites. Long story short, this weekend the Senate is voting on a bill that would regulate online gambling in the United States in the near future. The official bill hasn't found its way online yet, but I'm sure it will later this weekend. More information can be found here on twoplustwo.

I'm ecstatic about the possibility of this passing so soon. The second poker boom could happen in the next year or two. My favorite quote of the year:

"Michelle Minton, Director of the Insurance Studies project at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, supports Sen. Reid's change of heart. "Not only is a ban impossible, but legalizing the activity could result in increased tax revenue, job creation and economic growth," said Minton. "While some politicians might personally find online wagering distasteful, it is not their job to babysit adult Americans, especially when almost every state has some form of legalized land-based gambling such as casinos and state lotteries."

Okay now on to results for November. They aren't as solid as I would have hoped, but I only put in half of the volume I was aiming for. The month started out fantastic. Alain and I brought down over 500 during our first lockdown of the month. Things were looking great as I was well on pace for one of my biggest months ever. Then apparently the cashout curse (lol) decided to come along and spoil the fun.



Addicted19 had another solid month as well:



My goals for this month are to play 1,000 games. I'm going to create a schedule that will force me to play so I can achieve this goal. I'm playing the 3s again because I had to cashout for bills and such, but I could be playing the 6s (if I wasn't such a br nit).

Good luck in December, and keep your fingers crossed about the bill being passed this weekend.

-LUCKBOX

"One Time"

November Lockdown v1

As you may know, Alain and I are setting pretty lofty goals for the rest of the year in terms of volume. To help accomplish this, we are going to have to take part in a series of lockdowns where we play long sessions. Today we had a smallish lockdown where we both played for ~8 hours.

The results:

Name Games ROI Profit

Addicted19 62 104% $307

OMG its LUCKBOX 79 57% $231

Lockdown 1 Totals 141 80.5% $538

Graphs:

Addicted19

OMG its LUCKBOX

Definitely pleased about the results, its about time we both had a decent lockdown. I would definitely contribute our run-good to the late night HH review session we had last night. Reviewing your game is crucial, almost as crucial as winning flips at final tables :)

All in all, today was definitely a success. I can't wait to move up to playing the 6s and 13s. Hopefully I'll be up there by the end of the month (crosses fingers)

Good luck at the tables,

LUCKBOX

Goals for the rest of 2010

I just wanted to put in a little update with how I've been playing, and what my goals are for the rest of this year. I'm at the point in my poker career were I need to decide if I want to continue being a recreational player with decent results, or if I want to become a poker player. It is so easy to have a lackadaisical mindset when we are thinking about or playing poker, but this is the exact opposite of what we should have if we want to become successful.

Poker is a beautiful thing. What other job can you have where you can play (not work), whenever you want, from the comfort of your own home, and make more than almost all hourly jobs? Not to mention if you are an MTT pro and you bink a $25,000 first place, or if you are a 1/2NL cash grinder making over 30k a year in rakeback + bonuses and your winrate. I don't want people to know this but if you work hard, poker could easily make you over 50k a year. That isn't a ton, not enough to raise a family on, but once you reach that point in your career, you are playing higher and higher stakes. Going from making 10k a year to making 50k in a year is a huge jump. But jumping from 50k to 100k isn't huge.

I've always been passionate about playing poker. I quit my job for a few months to play 1-3 NL live and did pretty well for myself. I've played well over 1 million hands playing micro cash games, and almost 7,000 sng's. I can't stand going into work and making 14$ an hour (if I get tipped well), when I can sit at home and make double that whenever I want. Maybe I can't support myself fully from poker, there is nothing that says I can't try. And that is what I'm going to do.

Last month I palyed almost 50k hands of fullring and made ~$850 at 25nl. Took 3 shots at 50nl and dropped 5bi's running 4 bi's below EV. This month I'm going to go back to grinding the 90 mans. I've proven to myself that I can beat cash, and thats all I wanted to accomplish last month. I'm going to grind the sng's until the games get bad, then transition to cash. I honestly believe that I could beat 100nl much easier than I could beat the 25nl games. People are much worse at poker, and much harder to assign them ranges.

Either way, my goal is to become a poker pro by the end of 2011. To accomplish this I'm going to need to be playing the 6s, 13s, and 26s. I'd like to start the year rolled enough to mix 6s and 13s so I'd like to make $3,000 between now and Dec. 31st. I don't like having goals based on monetary values because there is a little variance involved in sng's o:) So my real goal for myself is to play 2,000 games between now and December 31st. That is a lot of playing, but most of the month of December I'll be out of school, and I've got a good class schedule that allows me to play long hours when I don't have class.

Next year, I'm going pro.

Luckbox

grind time

Im about to start a 45 man low stakes (3.25, 6.50) grind on pstars and hoping to play out 200 games. Haven't played these in awhile so curious as to how I do.

Goals for 27th oct- december 31st

Just wanted to write down some goals to hopefully make them a reality and be motivated enough to achieve them.

Profit goal for next two months : 10k

volume goal : at least 4000 sngs/mtts

How I will achieve this will be mainly playing the 90s on ftp along with some mtts, and some play on pokerstars at the 45s/180s/mtts.

I think this will set me up nicely for the beginning of 2011 where I want to focus my attention to cash and rise up the limits.

Must update this blog with an update every week about how things are going.

From Donk to a Stud: The Hughezy Story

When we started working with Hughezy1, our goal as coaches was to get his lifetime graph into the green. We had him for 2,000 games and we thought we had a very good chance of him making almost $1 a game. It wasn't until we started coaching him that this dream became a reality. But it wasn't just us that turned his graph from looking like a fish to a true grinder.

Tim (Hughezy1) is a very driven motivated and driven poker player. Every coaching session he would show us hands that troubled him and we would do our best to help him to the best of our knowledge. He constantly asked us why we were telling him to play how he was playing. This is the most important thing we must do as poker players and in life for that matter. We shouldn't just go through the motions because someone tells us what is right. I know there was some point in his series of lessons where we shoved 72o. I'm pretty sure villain woke up with AA, but thats besides the point. He trusted our judgment and started looking for smaller and smaller edges.

Now the results:

Hughezy1's lifetime graph

Hughezy1's SNG Graph during our coaching period:

Over 2,000 games, he profited $1,410 over 2,000 games playing mainly the $3 and $6 SNG's. He also had a 22% ROI. He had very minimal SNG knowledge when we started, but like I mentioned before, he really worked very hard and put in a sick amount of volume.

I just wanted to thank him for being such a great student, and I wish him luck in the future.

Thanks Tim,

Luckbox

Hughezy the Hero

Hughezy runs good. Good is an understatement. In the last two months he has completely turned his graph around from looking like Darvin Moon's lifetime graph before his lotto-like 4.5$ million dollar bink, to a solid grinder (he isn't crushing like me, but better). I dislike typing, so I lucratively outsourced this blog post to Hughezy. I'd like to turn it over to him. I asked him to tell us a little about his history and what he has enjoyed about the coaching thus-far.

Take it away Tim:

"I'm a 42 yr old retired Police Officer and in keeping with my generation, a complete computer idiot. So, having to write, save and send this is a real pain in the ass...Thx OMG! I started playing poker in 2007. I have always been a casino goer and used to enjoy blowing thousands at Blackjack.

One Friday night I noticed a large crowd sitting down for A £10 r/b and sat down...10 rebuys later I was pretty muched hooked. For the fist 15 to 18 months I only played live and was the biggest fish ever. I played like a rock waiting for premium hands and had limited success. In Sept 2008 I got hugely lucky in a £250 live f/o final tabling and eventually finishing 2nd for just under £5k ( at that time 10k us ). I thought at that time that I had made it and was a good player ( how wrong I was lol ) and from the confidence of the win went and bought in 2 weeks later to the GUKPT ME (£1k buyin) and the Gala CBMT ME (£1.5k Buyin) some weeeks later. I busted out of the first with a real donk play but folded my way into Day 2 of the second before losing with AA v KK. Anyhoo..The first table I sat at in Blackpool I was sat next to this 6'5" german kid who clearly knew what he doing. We got chatting and had a real laugh. He had qualified online for the event and my £5k bink impressed him. During the course of the conversation he asked where I played online..I hadn't even considered playing online and he went on to recommend the usual sites and I began to enter the online world.

Once again I hit it lucky.I managed to FT the 5$ 20kgtd on stars and chip chopped 4 handed for $2.1k and the same day FT'd a $24 on FTP for nearly $800. "This is fucking eeeezy" I thought. Unfortunately those were the only notable successes. My donk play was catching up with me and I was almost alwasy the biggest fish on the table. I couldn't multi table and playing 1/2 tourneys for a min cash, if I was lucky, ceased to be fun. It was around this time that I accepted that I wasn't a poker genius and invested in Harrington On Holdem. I read both books and didn't understand wtf he was on about..I realised I didn't know the first thing about poker whatsoever. In March this year I was surfing the net and came accross a certian well known SNG grinders site. I was inspired. I knew I had to 'go back to school' so to speak and learn how to multi table for volume purposes. I started on the $4.40 180's and $2.20 180 turbos on stars.

I read strategy articles and started posting hands on 2+2. I immediatly started on a heater racking up over $1k at these stakes. It was posting of hands on 2+2 that led to me making contact with OMG its LUCKBOX. I was posting 4/5 hands per day there and a member thought I was taking the piss by asking such elementary questions and flamed me. OMG cam to my defence and contact was made. I had made the jump to 90 man KO's on FTP. I started adding tables in order to get my volume up. At the start of this coaching contract I was barely able to 5 table..over 1000 games later in I can easily handle up to 12...Such a difference.

Prior to starting the contract I had discussions with OMG and Addicted19. When they said they felt confident that could make me, a donk, into a winning player I jumped at the chance but stated I wanted to sart at the lowest levels and learn from the ground up, so to speak.The guys have the ability to explain in lay-amns terms the principles, strategies and reasons behind them for the 90 mans so much so that even I understood them. They're also great ppl to just 'chew the fat' with.

I look forward to each coaching session and always learn something new which I am able to apply to my game with positive and immediate results. I have become a winning player after only 1000 tourneys aking my Sharkscope from red to black. I now aim to play 40-60 tourneys a day and my goals are to keep climbing the stakes. I starated with $280 in my FTP BR and am now nearly rolled for 12's allwith OPM (other ppl's money). I am proud to say I am a winning player and its alldown to Addicted19 amd OmG...I cant thank you two enuf....

Peace"

Hughezy1's lifetime graph:

Hughezy1's SNG graph since coaching:

Congratulations Hughezy1, we are both very pleased with your progress and are excited to keep seeing you crush for the rest of the contract.

Good luck at the tables,

LUCKBOX

New Student! Welcome LOL DARVIN MOON.

I wanted to welcome our second student, LOL DARVIN MOON. Although he isn't really Darvin Moon, in less than a week he'll be better than Darvin(not a huge brag, just like being able to count to 10, but it is still a brag).

We are starting him from ground zero and he has very little poker experience. I am confident that within two months we will have him crushing the games. I'm actually a little jealous because it took me 4 years of teaching myself how to play sng's before I met Alain. He tweaked some major leaks in my game and has pointed me in the right direction. It is going to take Matt(LOL DARVIN MOON) four months to get where I am now.

He is going to be playing the 1$/45s and then moving the fulltilt when his roll will let him. I'll update his own page soon.

Welcome Matt.