Leo. Fucking. Wolpert.You are a better man than me and deserve it as much as anybody. [img]http://photos-f.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/hs114.snc1/4837_656191225583_22202925_38530789_2998309_n.jpg [/img]That’s all. Congrats buddy.
admin :: Jun.17.2009 :: General :: No Comments »
When you're signing up for new online poker accounts I recommend checking out Poker Source Online. PSO was founded in 2004 and they've given out millions in free gifts and free poker money. If you'd like, you can also get rakeback at PSO. PSO is arguably the most trusted affiliate in online poker and they support all the major poker rooms including Party Poker, Poker Stars, Full Tilt Poker, etc.
PokerSourceOnline
authors note- found this from well over a year ago, saved in my drafts. A lot has happened since my last entry. I went to Australia for the Aussie Millions and played the $100k event, the $10k main event, and the $5k HU tournament. I built a big stack in the $100k but was unlucky to lose many large all ins at the final table before the money and ended up losing out in 7th place, very disappointing. I never got anything going in the main event and lost most of the pots I played, busting on the first day in the 3rd level of play. However, I managed to redeem myself for the trip and get unstuck in the $5k HU tournament, taking it down for $100k! My pairings were very tough with all of my matches getting tougher up until the final against Masaka Kagawi, a very friendly Japanese businessman who has gotten better and better at poker every time I’ve seen him. The last time I’d played him was in Monte Carlo in $20k and $40k SNGs with him and many Scandinavian pros including Johnny Lodden, William Thorsen, and many others. In this final match, for the 5th time in the tournament I lost my first game and won the next two to take down the tournament. Since then I haven’t played much poker. A little online without much success, but I have been busy with many other things and am going to be playing much more in the near future. The most important announcement is that I’m back with CardRunners! We negotiated a deal, and www.cardrunners.com and I are working together again with me as their main MTT pro. My first video is already up and I will be posting at least 2 videos a month. The next video will be the $1k 6 max FTOPs tournament I went deep in. I’m happy to be working with Taylor and Brian again; they are both very determined people who tend to bring success to whatever they focus on. My videos should be high quality and better than any in the past, as I’m putting a big effort into thoughtful analysis of all hands and making the videos as informative and interesting as possible. Our software has improved a lot, and I now have a replayer to work with, so expect many good things to come. My dieting and workout has gone very well. Leading up to Australia I started taking my lifting more seriously and bringing a lot more intensity to the gym, and made a lot of progress. For about a month and a half starting right before Australia I went on a new diet. My lifting progress stalled a little but I still made some gains- however I also lost over 30 pounds, dropping to 182 pounds. I transitioned off the diet for a couple of weeks and was finally done with dieting over a week ago right before a family vacation to Florida. I had a lot of big dinners and overall ate bad on the vacation but I still made it to the gym a few times and it was a very relaxing deload week. I felt very strong after all of those days of eating and taking it easy, and have hit 2 personal records in the gym since, and I only got home on Monday night! I was told it wouldn’t be a good idea to be on this diet while playing live poker, but I stuck on it for Australia anyway and still managed to win a tournament and lose over 10 pounds the 2 weeks I was there haha. I’m thinking of getting an olympic weight set at home but I’m not sure if there’s enough room downstairs for it or if the ceilings are high enough, and the garage is too cold most of the year. There aren’t any other good gyms around, especially that are appropriate for weightlifting, but I will continue looking because something’s gotta give. I seem to hit a personal record and improve my form every time I go to the gym now, I am hoping for big things and huge gains in the near future. As for poker, expect to see me more at the virtual tables the next couple months leading up to EPT Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo last year was fucking awesome. I am not into drinking or the whole party scene much anymore, but I still expect to have a very enjoyable experience. I’m actually thinking of bringing my father since he’s never been there and I owe him a good birthday present. If anyone wants to dress up and get reservations for Louis XV, shoot me a PM cuz I’m not missing that restaurant again after skipping last year.-Jeff
admin :: Jun.17.2009 :: General :: No Comments »
I was thinking about my recent poker decisions and play after having a poor month, and was brought back to this concept. Focusing on what’s important and the macro elements is the primary thing to have in check before the minute details.Log hands. Base your play off of a solid game. Ask yourself if you are a winner in the games you are playing and what you are doing accomplishes. Look at the entire situation and consider your game plan when it’s relevant and how you are setting yourself up to be a long-term successful player, not just a brief evaluation of potential lines in one hand. A skill that is important, but that even very good players make the mistake of overlooking. You are creating a winning strategy, not just analyzing one game.The same applies to health and fitness. Most of the people reading this are lazy poker players. It’s a fairly simple process even for a sedentary person to make healthier decisions that will improve their quality of life.The key is just doing something instead of nothing. Start now.And someone remind me to bug Nat to help me figure out how to use pictures on here! -JeffEDIT- PCA pics are linked in the PCA post now.
admin :: Feb.07.2009 :: General :: No Comments »
I had this kind of epiphany as I drove home in the dark and cold rain, heat blasting in my face and my favorite album looping in the background, reflecting on the first 3 classes of the semester, my plans for the week, what I’m gonna do in the near future, yet nothing in particular and really mellow. A great pastime for me.
I was just discussing this with Leo. I think my quote from my HS yearbook was pretty much perfect. I had the taste to pic among the best verses in all of music to me, which perfectly captured my mood and exact concerns as I was graduating that followed me around like a plague in my dreams and waking life for too long afterward.
“A man walks down the street he says
Why am I soft in the middle now?
Why am I soft in the middle-
the rest of my life is so hard
I need a photo-opportunity
I want a shot at redemption
Don’t want to end up a cartoon
In a cartoon graveyard”
Maybe not my favorite song, but definitely my favorite album and verse
You know, I don’t need to risk lots of money and my time stressing about things or playing really high if I don’t dig it. I mean, I could just play Sunday tournaments and some live stuff and other games whenever I feel like it this year and make a killing. Or nothing at all. And if I’m enjoying playing more and making more money, then I can do that too.
Even now, I’ve got my friends, school, lifting, poker, girls, money to indulge myself, fuck. I’ll be alright and am the only thing holding myself back.
I can pretty much just fuck around, party, whatever, and then if I don’t want to work or do anything in particular, probably have groups of friends all over the place and just play poker and move where I want and do whatever I want and I’ve kind of taken this for granted. And that’s a worst case scenario. Who knows what opportunities will present themselves.
admin :: Jan.20.2009 :: General :: No Comments »
I just got back from a great trip to the Caribbean. I stayed for 9 days in a suite in the Cove with my good friends Leo Wolpert and Adam Junglen. The trip was awesome and I had a ton of fun.
I played the $10k main event and $5k side tournament with no luck. I took two very bad beats in the $5k to lose, but I don’t even remember what happened in the main event. It was such a fun trip it was hard to think about poker.
The jet skis are very overpriced and shoddy but still easily worth it. I ended up paying $300 for 3.5 hours total on the trip. For anyone whose been, there’s an island to the far right from the jet ski area. The back of it has bigger waves and you can circle the entire thing in less than an hour. A group of us went and did that and also found a cool lighthouse worth checking out. I wish I had my camera because there was an amazing view, riding back right into the sunset to the shadow of Atlantis miles away reflected on the ocean.
The Cove itself was great. The room is normally $1k/night but I got a special deal and it averaged out to around 550, which is pretty cheap for a very nice 700-800 sq ft. room split a few ways. The Atlantis resort is greatly improved from two years ago. It’s no Crown Casino but I found the water rides and other features very relaxing and fun. Definitely recommended. The room was very big with a great view. If I find my camera adapter and figure out how to use the image option on here I will upload some pictures from the trip and put them here.
edit- I made this album viewable to the public. 2009, and then two years ago in 2007. Unfortunately I don’t know how to host here and didn’t get many pics outside of scenery, but enjoy!:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=81745&id=508171297&saved#/album.php?aid=81745&id=508171297
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=863&id=508171297&saved#/album.php?aid=863&id=508171297&op=12
The action online has been bad. I can’t get any games in HU NLHE and 6-max is never running. Only a handful of the best players want to play anyone but a fish it seems, and even then it is relative. There are one or two weaker players who are continuing to give me some action so I will have some games and hopefully that will continue. I always stop loss, and don’t log long sessions or big losing sessions or play more than 1 table most of the time (except perhaps against a fishy opponent), so hopefully some of my short sessions will go well this year. Although I feel I may have to look for profits at higher stakes or in live tournament action since it is pretty likely a lot of these players will go broke or drop down pretty fast. Man the games are terrible now.
I don’t know what the next live tournament will be but my schedule is limited because of school.
Jeff
admin :: Jan.15.2009 :: General :: No Comments »
I’ve had a good couple of days. Yesterday I only played for a few hours total, and played some $2k HU sngs and PLO along with the Stars $1k Super Tuesday. I played very poorly in the $1k despite getting a 12k chip stack, but the rest of my games went very well. I made $8k in the HU SNGs and another $15k playing 10-20 HU PLO and some 50-100 6m.
I’ve been playing a lot of PLO lately and have been happy with my results. The game is very swingy but I believe I have a very good feel of heads up play and will continue playing most takers HU at 10-20 to 50-100 and hopefully will continue to show good results. My 6-max game is a lot sloppy as I feel slightly uncomfortable with my play in the first 2 seats. I nearly always open limp utg except in some short stack situations, but I think my open limp range may need some reworking. I also am uncertain about sizing open raises in the hijak, although I am happy opening for a pot-sized raise in CO or button with some exceptions. Would love to hear input from regular players on this.
If anyone who plays higher PLO regularly and has some experience wants to talk strategy, shoot me on a pm on 2p2 or p5s!
My introductory entry didn’t have much as far as content, so I’m going to use this opportunity to bring you guys up to speed about what I’ve been doing the past several months.
For those unfamiliar I went on a huge rush early in 2007 in the nosebleed FTP NL games at the same time as I went on a big downswing on PokerStars cash games. I think I have lost around $100k in the Stars games this year, but at my peak on Full Tilt was up well over a million. I had one very bad day months ago where I went from being up over $400k to down $250k and that night I cashed out nearly all of my FTP roll and left myself under $60k online.
I’ve struggled online since then. I’ve payed a lot of live buy-ins online for myself and backees and have dropped a good amount in the nosebleeds taking shots and playing and stupid times, so I have only gotten my online roll back over $200k a few times in that time period and never hit a big rush.
I did a mid limits challenge months ago where I wanted to win 100 buy ins at 5-10 and work my way up the limits. I crushed 5-10 winning over $75k in 25k hands or something, but I have not played much 10-20 since and have probably made only 20-30 buy ins there.
I was traveling a lot at the end of the summer and beginning of this fall, and went to Barcelona, London, Aruba, and Niagara over a period of under 2 months. I final tabled the WPT in Niagara but ran bad from 7 players onward and only managed 6th place for $183k and a nice tv final table finish. This was my second significant live score and my biggest yet, the former biggest being a win in the Johnny Chan Classic $1k 6-max NL for $84k in Vancouver. Canada seems to be a lucky place for me.
I’ve basically been on a poker break since then, playing on and off. The break has been really good for me and a nice change of pace. I found I weighed 218 pounds after my London trip. That’s not very overweight for a 6′1, big boned guy like me, but I just felt unfit and wanted to change it. I was working out on and off prior to the big trip but I wasn’t doing a great job. I’ve completely turned that around recently. Since Niagara I’ve been taking my workouts much more seriously and have shown great results. I’ve lost over 10 pounds and have gained a ton of muscle weight. Even though I have a long way to go i feel a lot fitter and happier.
I went to Turning Stone last week to relax and have fun, but it was a really shitty trip. I’ll write about that later, some funny stuff happened. I didn’t work out the entire trip and as of this morning hadn’t worked out for 5 or 6 days. I had been pretty pissed over nothing for a few days, but I hit the gym today and I feel a lot better. I guess its become a more important part of my routine than I realized, if not going makes me emotionally unbalanced, lol. I mostly did arms and shoulders today and had one of my best workouts since I started lifting. Maybe my body needed a break? I had been lifting intensely 5-6 days a week prior to the Turning Stone trip, and was really tearing myself up. I had been having the problem of my workouts being low energy, so maybe this is a sign of good things to come.
I’ll talk about my routines in future blogs and keep track of progress. Most of my lifting program is from Arnold Schwarzennegar’s Encylopedia of Modern Bodybuilding (the updated one thats like 700 pages). I don’t have much experience with fitness books but imo its a great book and I learned a lot from reading it.
I took a shot at some high stakes today and it went well. I sat in a 200-400 6m game with position on a psycho but was stacked the first hand with AK. I probably misplayed the hand but wasn’t too unhappy with being down $40k and decided to keep playing as long as the game was good. I didn’t make any more money and quit when the psycho player left.
There weren’t any other games going but I decided to keep rolling high and played Jman (OMGClayAiken) in some 200-400 HU. I probably wouldn’t have done it but my friend Ansky
and I were talking HU NL the night before and he noted that he thought I would be a good match with Jman and that my game would do well against his, although I had not previously played him.
I checked all my PT stats and other info on Jman’s HU game and sat down to play him. Overall I feel I played tight but well . There was one interesting hand where I check-raised the flop with J10o on a K56 2 spade flop and jman called my raise and bet on 9 turn with 86o. The river was a very bad 9 and I checked and gave up the $35k pot. I may or may not have misplayed this but overall I played a good match and made something like $70k with very few showdowns. Near the end of the match I realized I was running out of time to go to the gym and still make the 9pm tournaments. Jman was also starting to 3-bet me a lot, which normally I welcome, but considering the stakes I felt I did not want to sweat the variance of the 3-bet game so I quit. Unfortunately I lost track of time at the gym and made it home at 9:01 to just miss the FTP $100r 6-max =/
I’m going to post tons of more stuff including some pictures from old tournaments in the upcoming blogs, as well as my plans the next few months and some fun hands for discussion and analysis.
GIFAFI,
-AJ
admin :: Dec.05.2007 :: General :: 4 Comments »
I’ve decided to start my blog up again for the hell of it. I’m working on getting my old posts from over a year ago moved, not sure how big a problem that’s going to be.
For those unfamiliar with me, I’m a 19 year old high school graduate. I’ve lived all over the country and have lived in MA for the past four years. I’m a professional poker player who is taking time off between high school and college to travel the world and play poker.
I’m going to try to update this blog regularly with pictures, graphs, and non poker related stuff too. I quit my last blog over a year ago and have hundreds of pictures from my poker trips since, so I’ll write some short trip reports and get those up. There should be plenty of poker content and hand histories and analysis and updates on my poker results and business ventures.
-Jeff
admin :: Nov.14.2007 :: General :: 10 Comments »