Beth bought me an hour of coaching with Jonathan Little for my birthday back in April. A lot has changed since - I'm WAY more serious about poker now, I got fired from my job, and I'm trying to make a living playing. I've been slacking getting back to him and setting something up. I have been struggling between wanting to do a coaching session, but I'm also struggling to determine what information I should pass along to him before our session to make it productive. I can't imagine a single hour of coaching will be very helpful, but Jonathan looks to be one of the best around at coaching and I know he's helped a ton of people. I'm really excited to meet up with him, and I'll post again later to let you know how it went. I'm not expecting a miracle but hopefully this takes my poker game up a notch, or at least helps me understand what I need to do to make it to the next level.
Below is the email I sent to Jonathan, in case you want to see my thought process in setting up this coaching session.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Pro poker observations so far - work ethic
So I've been unemployed for the last month or so now. It's unimportant how that happened or why I don't have a job, so let's just move past that. :-) I don't know how organized I can make this, but I have some general themes I wanted to get written down. Here's the first observation:
Yeah, that paragraph makes sense. And I 100% agree that it makes sense to give it your all and I should be doing that. Am I? Not even close.
As it turns out, it's pretty fucking hard to make sure you are optimizing your time for poker when you have ZERO responsibilities, a wife with no job also that you love hanging out with, and you live in the entertainment/sex/sin/vice capital of the entire world. Yeah, it's tough.
Since the day I officially wrapped up at my job (5/24) I've played 120 hours of poker that I tracked in my results spreadsheet. Plus probably another 10 or 15 online. It's been about 3.5 weeks, so that currently puts me at just under 40 hours of poker per week.
Not horrible, but I'm clearly not dedicating myself 100% to poker. Nor can I or should I, really. When I was making a boatload of cash it was easy for me to push all other house work, paying bills, etc to Beth. Now that I'm an unemployed loser I need to pick up the slack and do some of that work myself. That all takes time.
Beth just had a foot surgery too, so some of the time I would have been playing was taken up by staying around here to take care of Beth. But that's certainly not what's keeping my hours down. It's mostly just laziness and having fun enjoying unemployment.
Then even when you are dedicated, a lot of things take time away from the table. Driving to/from the casino. Being on the waiting list. Taking breaks away from the table while you're there. Eating. Everything ticks away from the total time you need to be playing serious poker at the table.
These numbers aren't actually as bad as I feared, so that's nice. And I do think I can step it up more in the coming weeks. But it's interesting to me how difficult it is to really get the hours in.
I knew it was going to be difficult to balance everything. One thing that's helped me is that early on, I recognized that I would be pulled in different directions and I wouldn't be able to maintain the perfect schedule. Instead, I'm trying to just go with the flow, play as well as I can when I play, and just do my best. If I end up going out and playing $2/$4 limit after some shots and drinks, I'm going to play that $2/$4 game as good as I fucking can. And I have been, and the results have been good. So even if the hours are short, I'm trying to maintain a professional attitude and play as well as possible as often as possible.
Maintaining a Solid Work Ethic is Tough
If I play poker again, I'm going to give it 100%. I'll just wake up, play super long sessions, dedicate myself 100% to poker. Fuck everything else. I'll grind 80+ hours per week if I have to - after all, it's poker and I love poker. Plus I'm better than all of these other guys, or most of them. At least I know that if I play my game, I'll win overall if I get the hours in. So work ethic is really going to be my key to success.Yeah, that paragraph makes sense. And I 100% agree that it makes sense to give it your all and I should be doing that. Am I? Not even close.
As it turns out, it's pretty fucking hard to make sure you are optimizing your time for poker when you have ZERO responsibilities, a wife with no job also that you love hanging out with, and you live in the entertainment/sex/sin/vice capital of the entire world. Yeah, it's tough.
Since the day I officially wrapped up at my job (5/24) I've played 120 hours of poker that I tracked in my results spreadsheet. Plus probably another 10 or 15 online. It's been about 3.5 weeks, so that currently puts me at just under 40 hours of poker per week.
Not horrible, but I'm clearly not dedicating myself 100% to poker. Nor can I or should I, really. When I was making a boatload of cash it was easy for me to push all other house work, paying bills, etc to Beth. Now that I'm an unemployed loser I need to pick up the slack and do some of that work myself. That all takes time.
Beth just had a foot surgery too, so some of the time I would have been playing was taken up by staying around here to take care of Beth. But that's certainly not what's keeping my hours down. It's mostly just laziness and having fun enjoying unemployment.
Then even when you are dedicated, a lot of things take time away from the table. Driving to/from the casino. Being on the waiting list. Taking breaks away from the table while you're there. Eating. Everything ticks away from the total time you need to be playing serious poker at the table.
These numbers aren't actually as bad as I feared, so that's nice. And I do think I can step it up more in the coming weeks. But it's interesting to me how difficult it is to really get the hours in.
I knew it was going to be difficult to balance everything. One thing that's helped me is that early on, I recognized that I would be pulled in different directions and I wouldn't be able to maintain the perfect schedule. Instead, I'm trying to just go with the flow, play as well as I can when I play, and just do my best. If I end up going out and playing $2/$4 limit after some shots and drinks, I'm going to play that $2/$4 game as good as I fucking can. And I have been, and the results have been good. So even if the hours are short, I'm trying to maintain a professional attitude and play as well as possible as often as possible.
Sunday, June 19, 2016
My disclaimer for the remainder of this blog
DISCLAIMER : Being a professional poker player is a funny thing. There's no way to define it except long term success. So while I'm going to write here that I'm a "professional poker player", I know that it's a "fake it till you make it" situation for me and I'm not trying to be too cocky. I know I haven't done shit yet and calling myself a professional poker player at this point is a complete joke. Even attempting to play professionally at this point is a ridiculous goal because I have no results, haven't been training properly leading up to this, and so on.
From here out though, I'm just going to write like I've made it and I'm going to be a professional poker player. I think that's how I have to approach it, whether it sounds dumb or not. So that's just how it's going to go.
Do I think I can pull it off? Yes. Will I? Who knows. My results suck so far for sure. But I don't care, I'm going for it.
In the next blog I'll write some about how it's going so far and how I'm feeling. Lot to write about. :)
Saturday, June 18, 2016
My backstory - part 1
I haven't blogged much lately. I've been pretty caught up in enjoying a ton of poker as well as unemployment fun in general. I've mostly been posting on Twitter under my @BluffMeat account. I wanted to start documenting this experience though and getting all of my thoughts down, because this is something I've been waiting to try for years. Yes, I'm taking a shot at playing poker professionally. Maybe it will only be for a few months, but I'm giving it a shot.
In case anyone else ever reads this blog (besides Johnny - hey bro whats up), here's what happened with me the last 10+ years with poker.
I fucking hated "playing cards" growing up. I never got into it. People would play at parties, or at holidays with the relatives, and I always avoided it. I don't remember a ton of hold 'em being played but people played games like hearts. I didn't play any poker at all until I moved out of Detroit and was in Denver for years. I probably started playing when I was about 26, in 2003-2004.
I played a lot of sports throughout school because my parents put me into them, and I performed on the average to low side. For some reason I didn't have the competitive drive that I do today. That certainly hurt my performance in wrestling and other sports. I simply didn't think strategically enough. I really didn't care about winning the same way I do today. I'd try on the physical side (which isn't my strong suit anyway) but never really got into caring about strategy at a deep level.
I graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a Computer Science degree and immediately moved out to Denver. I had been working remote for a company there for the past year. I had aspirations to do a ton of snowboarding in Denver, but the first time out I blew out my knee and haven't been back since. That made me search for new hobbies.
Next came foosball. That's a whole other story, but I got VERY into the fun underground foosball scene in Denver. That's where my competitive nature started to really come out. I got pretty decent at foosball and traveled around the country playing various tournaments for years. I even met my future wife Beth at a foosball tournament right here in Las Vegas. :-) Foosball was a ton of fun and it ignited a competitive spark in me that carries through to today.
Some of my foosball buddies were playing online poker. Through them I saw some of the Moneymaker WSOP stuff on TV, and I started playing very low stakes on PokerStars. It was a ton of fun and I got REALLY into it. I was still young and irresponsible and my job suffered at times because of it. I would stay up ridiculously late and waking up for the job was rough. I wasn't super successful online by any means, but that's where I learned the game. I bought some poker books and I'd take long lunches and read every day. The Theory of Poker and Hold 'Em for Advanced Players were my first two books. Theory is still one of my favorite books (although I haven't read it in years).
It was really fun and exciting learning to play. I'd drive up to Black Hawk in Colorado to play $2-$5 spread limit hold 'em and buying in for a rack of $100 seemed like the craziest and most exciting thing ever.
I also got into the underground poker scene in Denver a little bit. The first live game I played was with a guy named Big City I knew from foosball. He took me to some ghetto apartments and the person whose apartment I was in had an ankle bracelet on. He killed someone in a DUI accident. We played 5 handed games like Follow the Queen and other random shit. I lost, and I was learning as I went.
Later I met a guy Jeremiah and we got together to play serious poker. He introduced me to a guy named Arthur who was extremely poor but he took poker really seriously. I remember going to his apartment and he had a set of chips made that were super fancy. They had a crown embossed on each chip (King Arthur, get it). I lost a huge (ie. I put maybe 15-20 bucks into it) Omaha hand because I didn't understand how Omaha worked. I also remember playing a hand of Chicago and I wasn't sure if an ace counted as low or high. I lost $60 the first time playing with that guy and it felt like I lost a ton.
One of my earliest and most satisfying poker successes was in that 3 handed home game. One night Arthur came over to Jeremiah's house to play. We were improving, and we simply crushed him. We were no longer the fish in that game. After that, he said he could keep playing but we would have to play at lower stakes. We were maybe playing $1/$2 at the highest, or some kind of spread variation that was really small. I think that's the last time I saw Arthur. I still remember he would always say things when he got dealt shitty cards like "this isn't a hand, its a foot!" Good guy.
At some point I met my future wife Beth. One of the very first things we did was get her into poker. I started by dealing out boards and had her identify the nut hand, 2nd nuts, and so on. It's crazy how fast Beth learned to play really, because I had a year of experience ahead of her and a billion hours online. She got up to speed quick and basically did better than me all through the time we played in Colorado. She played retarded aggressive and would pull off absurd feats like winning $500 in a $2/$4 limit game. Yeah, she would lose record amounts too, but she crushed limit.
At some point we started talking about the dream of moving to Vegas and giving it a shot. Beth is an adventurer and she was into it. And here I am today.
In my next blog I'll write about how my 2nd shot at professional poker is going so far. Hint - results-wise, it's not good. :-) I'm staying positive though.
In case anyone else ever reads this blog (besides Johnny - hey bro whats up), here's what happened with me the last 10+ years with poker.
I fucking hated "playing cards" growing up. I never got into it. People would play at parties, or at holidays with the relatives, and I always avoided it. I don't remember a ton of hold 'em being played but people played games like hearts. I didn't play any poker at all until I moved out of Detroit and was in Denver for years. I probably started playing when I was about 26, in 2003-2004.
I played a lot of sports throughout school because my parents put me into them, and I performed on the average to low side. For some reason I didn't have the competitive drive that I do today. That certainly hurt my performance in wrestling and other sports. I simply didn't think strategically enough. I really didn't care about winning the same way I do today. I'd try on the physical side (which isn't my strong suit anyway) but never really got into caring about strategy at a deep level.
I graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit with a Computer Science degree and immediately moved out to Denver. I had been working remote for a company there for the past year. I had aspirations to do a ton of snowboarding in Denver, but the first time out I blew out my knee and haven't been back since. That made me search for new hobbies.
Next came foosball. That's a whole other story, but I got VERY into the fun underground foosball scene in Denver. That's where my competitive nature started to really come out. I got pretty decent at foosball and traveled around the country playing various tournaments for years. I even met my future wife Beth at a foosball tournament right here in Las Vegas. :-) Foosball was a ton of fun and it ignited a competitive spark in me that carries through to today.
Some of my foosball buddies were playing online poker. Through them I saw some of the Moneymaker WSOP stuff on TV, and I started playing very low stakes on PokerStars. It was a ton of fun and I got REALLY into it. I was still young and irresponsible and my job suffered at times because of it. I would stay up ridiculously late and waking up for the job was rough. I wasn't super successful online by any means, but that's where I learned the game. I bought some poker books and I'd take long lunches and read every day. The Theory of Poker and Hold 'Em for Advanced Players were my first two books. Theory is still one of my favorite books (although I haven't read it in years).
It was really fun and exciting learning to play. I'd drive up to Black Hawk in Colorado to play $2-$5 spread limit hold 'em and buying in for a rack of $100 seemed like the craziest and most exciting thing ever.
I also got into the underground poker scene in Denver a little bit. The first live game I played was with a guy named Big City I knew from foosball. He took me to some ghetto apartments and the person whose apartment I was in had an ankle bracelet on. He killed someone in a DUI accident. We played 5 handed games like Follow the Queen and other random shit. I lost, and I was learning as I went.
Later I met a guy Jeremiah and we got together to play serious poker. He introduced me to a guy named Arthur who was extremely poor but he took poker really seriously. I remember going to his apartment and he had a set of chips made that were super fancy. They had a crown embossed on each chip (King Arthur, get it). I lost a huge (ie. I put maybe 15-20 bucks into it) Omaha hand because I didn't understand how Omaha worked. I also remember playing a hand of Chicago and I wasn't sure if an ace counted as low or high. I lost $60 the first time playing with that guy and it felt like I lost a ton.
One of my earliest and most satisfying poker successes was in that 3 handed home game. One night Arthur came over to Jeremiah's house to play. We were improving, and we simply crushed him. We were no longer the fish in that game. After that, he said he could keep playing but we would have to play at lower stakes. We were maybe playing $1/$2 at the highest, or some kind of spread variation that was really small. I think that's the last time I saw Arthur. I still remember he would always say things when he got dealt shitty cards like "this isn't a hand, its a foot!" Good guy.
At some point I met my future wife Beth. One of the very first things we did was get her into poker. I started by dealing out boards and had her identify the nut hand, 2nd nuts, and so on. It's crazy how fast Beth learned to play really, because I had a year of experience ahead of her and a billion hours online. She got up to speed quick and basically did better than me all through the time we played in Colorado. She played retarded aggressive and would pull off absurd feats like winning $500 in a $2/$4 limit game. Yeah, she would lose record amounts too, but she crushed limit.
At some point we started talking about the dream of moving to Vegas and giving it a shot. Beth is an adventurer and she was into it. And here I am today.
In my next blog I'll write about how my 2nd shot at professional poker is going so far. Hint - results-wise, it's not good. :-) I'm staying positive though.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Twitter/Snapchat - follow me!
I resurrected my poker Twitter account. It's @BluffMeat, follow me! :)
Also just set up Snapchat, same deal. BluffMeat is my username. I have no clue how to use Snapchat effectively yet but I'll get some content up there.
Just putting this out there - your support is really going to make a big difference for me. I really appreciate the follows, comments, and even just the fact that you're looking at my updates every once in a while. Playing poker for a living has been my dream for 10+ years and I'm finally going to play hardcore for a couple months and see how it goes. This is a big deal for me and I love having you along for the ride. Even if I just end up getting a job in 2 months, it will be an amazing journey until then. :)
Thanks for the support!!!!
Also just set up Snapchat, same deal. BluffMeat is my username. I have no clue how to use Snapchat effectively yet but I'll get some content up there.
Just putting this out there - your support is really going to make a big difference for me. I really appreciate the follows, comments, and even just the fact that you're looking at my updates every once in a while. Playing poker for a living has been my dream for 10+ years and I'm finally going to play hardcore for a couple months and see how it goes. This is a big deal for me and I love having you along for the ride. Even if I just end up getting a job in 2 months, it will be an amazing journey until then. :)
Thanks for the support!!!!
Out sick yesterday, Harrah's today
Yesterday I stayed home and didn't play at all. I've been battling a bad cold and have felt pretty rough. I got some DayQuil though which is really helping.
Yesterday although I didn't go out, I went through every 1/2 cash hand I've written down with Beth and we talked through them. It was really great and I came away with a few high level insights that I would not have been able to without having everything written down:
Yesterday although I didn't go out, I went through every 1/2 cash hand I've written down with Beth and we talked through them. It was really great and I came away with a few high level insights that I would not have been able to without having everything written down:
- I need to raise bigger preflop especially if more people have limped. I've been raising smaller based on a recommendation from a book I read, but I think I'm losing a lot of value with my best hands.
- I can tighten up preflop especially with really shitty hands in position like Axo and Kxo/Kxs. Those were again recommendations from the book (http://jonathanlittlepoker.com/smallcashcharts/) and while I like the idea of playing way looser on the button and cutoff, those hands are unnecessary and will just get me into trouble. Plus if I'm going to be bluffing more it doesn't hurt for me to have a tighter image.
- I'm trying to steal too many pots out of the blinds with marginal holdings after the flop.
- I should be more aggressive and straightforward with my big hands.
Today I'm feeling better and I'm waiting at Harrah's for a seat. My goal this week is just to get a bunch of hours under my belt at 1/2, just to get the rust off my game and get me more comfortable with playing some long sessions. I also think that qualifying for some freerolls is a responsible way to gamble so I'm trying to get my 12 hours in here for the weekly freeroll here. Game isn't moving much so maybe everyone else has that plan too. :)
Tuesday, May 24, 2016
Sick jump in readership upon announcement of my poker career!
In an unprecedented flurry of Internet traffic, Bluff Meat readership jumped 3x. Wow!
Yeah that's 3 people (maybe) - Johnny Dyzzl of course, Michael the Oregon software guy, and Raaa... mon? Raymond? I know that's not it. I always forget names. I'd feel awkward asking you what it was again here, so I'll write this instead. Sorry bro.
Grinded for about 5-6 hours earlier and I'm back at it tonight. Guy to my right tried to make this guy commit a federal crime by using his player card to claim a prize. Lmao that is a real bad beat - guy hits a jackpot and doesn't have ID so he doesn't get the money and he has to leave. Wait, he is getting the money tomorrow. Nice.
I'll put some more posts up here soon! Gl hf
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