I've got $5 sitting idly on stars... So if your taking bets count me in!
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Interesting challenge, I wish you good luck and hope you succeed if not come close!
Thanks for the information Dawidas, guess the culture is not quite the same here, i dont have friends for benefits its just her alone and i see her only... maybe thats not the best but... oh well.
@jbpatzer - just gonna play my best man... and not be affected by the $$$
@TwiceT - oh no when you take a bet thats time to relook at my odds, anyway the purpose of this is to push me forward... not going to take a bet on something im very likely to lose. lol
@holmeboy - not taking any bets!!
@acephalia - thank you very much! the idea is to... get as close as possible.
Hi,
played about 328 minutes on the first day, clocked 3,794 hands, down USD359.30. I think I played fine really, maybe not betting enough turns. EV is negative 163.06.
Did not work as hard as I hoped to, but its the first day... Went out with supper with friends, I want some kind of balance in my life, aiming to work around 8-10 hours daily but also have some sort of fun like meeting friends for dinner/supper maybe 3-4h hours daily.
Looking to put in some exercise, but I'm really lazy, so the haze in Singapore is a great excuse probably for the next 10 days. I am actually going to Safra mount faber for a swim now, going to have dinner with friends before swimming and then coming home to play poker.
I think I played pretty ok, we will see more samples soon. Might not hit the USD5000 target I set, but am definitely going to shoot for it.
Some of my friends expressed concerns about my goal, saying its unrealistic and some wanted to take bets against me... The odds are not good, the problem is a realistic goal does not work for me. And i made US2000 in a week before and I need something that looks unacheivable yet low enough for me to reach for it so i think US5000 is a good target.
Some adjustments I made to my life...
1. I learnt during my university internship that songs help to affect the mood alot so i am listening to empowering songs, sometimes singing along with it and i can actually feel my body move and the energy to want to do things. that helps with poker. If i didnt have the target and made this adjustment i would probably play less than 100 minutes on the first day... and we have 300+ minutes... pretty cool
2. watching 2M2M series helps alot, they screwed up thier results on the first week too, im not alone!!! but hey, check out the guy in the first episode in a dress and big boops, girls actually sat with him and gave him his number and went on a date... Image does not really matter right? maybe i dont have to change my berms and polo T image. it looks like crap but it feels pretty comfortable. I guess ill stick with it.
3. I prepared ice water in my fridges so that i always have a cool fix to the hot weather and i am eating less crazily now. I used to eat so much that i want to just fall and sleep. Now i still eat the same unhealthy crap... but in a smaller portion that does not negatively affect my mood. guess thats a good thing. probably going to munch some crap again tonight. will control the portions though. have to come home to a 6 hour grind.
4. i saw they have a tilt room in 2M2M, where they thrash stuff when they feel angry. I remember leatherass (dusty schdimt) wrecked his screen and keyboard and mouse. I dont want that to happen to my computer so I guess when I come home im going to buy 2 big water melons and when i get pissed Ill just hit it until it breaks. Watch for the video its probably going to happen.
Thanks
Cutegoldfish
Originally posted by summermonkey
I wish you good variance!
Oh yea I'm going to need that. Alot of it actually. Hahaha. Thanks!
Originally posted by Gregor86
Nice challenge. GL!
Thank you Gregor. Do you have a blog?
Originally posted by maritsula
Good luck ! Go crush them!
Thank you maritsula. Nice blog you have on zoom. Hope you rise in the limits soon!
Originally posted by cutegoldfish
@TwiceT - oh no when you take a bet thats time to relook at my odds, anyway the purpose of this is to push me forward... not going to take a bet on something im very likely to lose. lol
fail!?
Originally posted by cutegoldfish
Originally posted by Gregor86
Nice challenge. GL!Thank you Gregor. Do you have a blog?
Had one - currently inactive. Maybe I'll start it up again anytime soon.
Hi,
I don't know how to segregate the results in the graph so its always cumulative from day one. and there will be a daily change report.
2nd day report
played time - 327 minutes (alot of interruptions in between)
hands played - 2536 hands
$ made or lost - $508.23
EV change - $285.31
Played slightly better than yesterday although a little bit lazy, but ran pretty well. alot of bad beats in the first day but 2nd day i went in like 3 pots with set and held up.
Started eating the same crappy food but in smaller portions and spread out over time. Read somewhere in Tim ferris 4 hour body that this helps to lose weight a little. Of course the most important is to eat right but that is a huge challenge for me so ill make other smaller adjustments along the way.
Discussed with some friends about the idea of giving allowance to my family, and most of them disagreed because my parents are poor managers of money. and when i give to them it just sits in the bank account and i have no control over it. So instead of giving them cash, i would create a bank account with my and their name in it and put money in it for them, where i state clearly i have full control of the monies so we can use to plan for insurance, medical bills, investments etc.
watched 2m2m... up to maybe 4 episodes. that nerdy guy actually managed to get a hot girl to remove her panties!!! and put on his head. can anyone do that? who knows what happened after that....
This challenge is going pretty ok... Been opening tables more often than usual, although stopping every 5 minutes because of a distraction but thats still better than being always on the distraction.
i recently have some ideas on self image i would like to seek this community's input. Its about happiness.
I went into one of my friends home and saw that she was upgrading her internet connection from ADSL to fibre optic, a decision made by her father. Previously she was experiencing problems with her internet due to possible poor cables and heavy usage by the father.
I went to speak to the father a few times about this and he expressed many concerns, appeared to close his ears on me and scolded my friend for ridiculous reasons. I asked for evaluations from my poker buddies and we reached a conclusion that the best course of action would have just been to ignore the entire problem because it was never going to be fixed and that i was never ever getting any form of benefit from it.
i now change my mind. I got berated for being an idiot, and yes there is no benefit, financial or in any other way that i am going to receive. and in fact the father still thinks im a pretty crappy gambler good for nothing. but hey, this is not the first time he executed my advice, its the 3rd time. and there are improvements to my friend's life. and there is an immense amount of satisfaction i receive.
If i have done nothing, well nothing would have changed, maybe her dad's perception of me would be better because i did not irritate him but i would never have gotten this... satisfaction.
I shared this with my friends and they seem to think I'm crazy, so i worked out possible reasons why this could be right.
so i drew up a graph. all of us are trying to pursue happiness, and one source of it is this thing (i think) that comes from self image. the more we behave like who we believe we are, the happier we are. Steve jobs mentioned something on this, that if you receive happiness and joy from doing something, thats the direction you are headed towards.
But most of us usually focus on money being the means. But how does money actually help us to achieve happiness? lets focus on the spending of it. its spent doing things we like to achieve happiness. could be buying a car, paying for someone else whatever.
There is this course on coursera under irrational behavior that carried out an experiment that showed that by spending some money on other people it causes us to be happier instead of spending that same amount on ourselves and this held true throughout different income groups.
So i looked at some of my friends... and i realised they spent money in ways i would never have, but why did they do it? to achieve happiness. so the final result we really want is not the money... but the happiness. and if i am doing something that does not make me money but makes me happy should i do it?
i think theres a good chance that its a yes. suppose i have one hour of time... to say talk to my friends father to make that internet improvement. say its successful, i receive... 100 points of happiness. in that same one hour i could have made $50, and spend it on something, but no matter what i spend on, maybe it could only give me... 20-30 points of happiness. but what we really wanted was not the money... we already have enough, if i was able to get more than 30 points of happiness by making some positive changes in my friend's life, then it makes sense for me to do it because i am more happy that way.
I tried behaving like a bad dude, making people pay for me, exploiting people where possible when i was in bangkok, i mean i made money, but i felt terrible, maybe because i was getting negative happiness points from me not behaving like the self image of myself?
Please share your valued opinions.
Thanks
Cutegoldfish
Hi,
3rd day report
played time - 364 minutes
hands played - 4060 hands
$ made or lost - lost $119.02
EV change - lost $93.4
i think i played ok, non showdown winning is a little crappy, ran into many lousy flops, saw my turn CB drop to like 30%, not good, been betting way too little turns. going to buck up on that... i been thinkng what turns to bet on? and i realised the answer is pretty simple. the top 50-60% of turns that improve our hand or appears to improve our hand or weakens our opponents range.
I took some shots at NL200... getting more comfortable at it... I mean i still feel like a pussy, after i look at my opponents stats i quickly look away because they are professional players and that taunts me... but then i look back again and i think i played as if they were any other player. but thats better than the last time i just bet without thinking that much. so the psychological barrier is lower now. I think i'll run 3 NL100 tables and 1 NL200 table everytime I play. I dont want to keep waiting for the NL100 tables to time out before I can open again.
Went for a swim yesterday... swam like... 4 laps. thats like 500metres maybe? thats my first exercise in this month. but spent 2-3 hours lazing in the pool. Does help to lose some weight right? heat loss to the water... Tim ferris said that swimming is good for weight loss because alot of heat is being lost the the water... but singapore water is so hot... I aint going for a run, not going to break my knees. I know too many people who are athletes and end up hurting themselves. I prefer low impact sports. Not going to hurt myself again. Broke my arm before and realized that the risk was not worth the adrenaline rush.
Today is the first day of the month i hit my 1500VPP target i set on pokerstars. Been in bangkok the whole month and didnt play alot. So thats some improvement in the volume of hands i have been putting in. 4k hands today... thats increased momentum. I will probably set 1-2 days of lockdown for maybe 18 hours where i just sit at the computer and keep playing and the only breaks i take are for sleep, food and toilet breaks. Never done that before, always did like a maximum of 3 hour sessions and then i stop. I think i need much more volume to get closer to my US5000 goal. Looks so far away now...
I been thinking... How different am i from say... 3 months ago? I ask myself that question once in a while. I like to see improvement. So these are the things I think i improved
1. Better idea of my self - image. I am someone that likes to help others, but i don't help everyone. I only help those who like to help themselves. and there comes a time when i ask for help, and if they return the favor the relationship continues, otherwise i end it. I love to be the best, and i need constant feedback that I am the best, or at least moving towards it, which is the true purpose of this blog. Just seeing some $$$ or an A is not good enough, i need feedback from people, i am a extroverted person, i need to speak to someone even if i did badly to get some feedback. letters and emails dont do the same trick, they lack the "human interaction" that i need to propel me further in my work.
2. Food habits - eating slightly healthier and smaller portions. Taking berocca, which consists of vitamins and this vitamin B thing helps me to be more awake in my work which is good. Also taking this algae called sun cholera, its pretty good. stopped it for a long time and recently from start of june i started taking it again because i was in bangkok and wanted my body to be in top form and soon it became a habit. Helps to give energy too. But dont take it at night, its gives energy so the result is me unable to sleep. Take it in the morning, or afternoon.
3. Income - better understanding of poker, higher hourly rate, found the right people who were willing to help me. understood what my problems were, not betting turn enough, and came up with an idea of what turns to bet on, what not to bet on. saw that sometimes checking back is superior to betting because their range is so wide and they tend to bluff with crap so thats better than betting with a moderate hand and fold out their crap.
4. social understanding - somehow its agreed among my friends that my EQ is pretty low. so i took up a course on cousera on irrational behavior to better understand how people behave socially. I realized i committed a great mistake which is i always talk about money. Once you talk about money, the social capital that you build between your friend goes away. and thats not good. So now i try to avoid talking about money to people who are not poker players.
and i realised that the "money" of relationships is called social capital. It means i do something for you and then you owe me something, and thats social capital. After that you treat me better and return me a favor because of this. But the moment i talk about giving you say $5 for this task, everything we built dissolves away and its very hard to get it back.
I been asking myself about my job as a pokerplayer/business person whether it was the best for me. and deliberated it over the past... 2-3 years so i thought i should pen it down to make it clearer.
Lets compare playing poker to a few jobs to make it clearer.
1. Poker
2. Insurance and real estate salesman
3. Government job, with specific reference to teachers because i know that the best
4. Bank job ( this is the job i would probably have gotten if i did not become a poker player)
comparing poker to insurance and real estate salesman
i actually took up the full insurance certifications M5, M9, HI and then attended the training course to sell insurance. i paid for all these myself because i did not want to give commitment to the person who brought me in. it actually happened twice.
I was pretty direct about it and asked about their income. The first person was Chris from prudential. i spoke to him and asked about his income... i think he was making something like 3-4k? he said he had like 2nd upper honours or something and was an accountant. you see, i take great interest in investments and approached several insurance agents when i was 18 years old to buy a policy but many of them ignored me because they thought i was not going to buy. i remember i saw this girl, she was quite pretty, her name was tracy, after speaking to her for like 5minutes she directed me away to another salesperson called pamela, she thought i was asking for fun. I ended up buying a $40/month saving plan which i think was a bad investment but that set me on the path to discover more about investments and insurance. I wanted to learn from someone who was competent and knows what hes selling and why hes selling it. So i started asking chris about his investments and planning... i can tell you he was crap at it. His financial knowledge was worse than mine. he kept wanting to sell something to my family and he had no idea what he was selling. all i can remember about him is that he loses poker some weekends and he wants me to bring friends to him so he can sell them savings plans. very quickly i left.
the 2nd person was referred to me by my friend brian, i cant remember her name. I started asking more about her life and everything. she said she was having a great lifestyle with something like a 8k income. she was in this job for like... maybe 6-8 years? at this point in time i was making about 1000/month in poker and i have friends who were making 5k+/month
so i asked about her lifestyle, she said she was very free, had flexible time schedules. she said that the job gets easier through time because she had more returning customers. but that was not the same story i was seeing, she had to attend to some customers who fell sick, i mean that is your responsibility and i would do the same, but the thing was every week someone was in an accident, or had cancer or something. And she had to go down to attend to them. That is hell lot of responsiblity and i think i need to be paid more than 8k for that. and she was usually busy during weekends. but they had this annual trip thing. at the end of maybe every 6 months whoever met a certain target would have an incentive trip to some country for... a few days all expenses paid. then i thought back to poker, i have that too, but i had something different. i could choose to buy that 2k trip to some casino, or i could just take the 2k in cash. i think that sounds like a better proposition. and i asked my boss if i could not go can i like sell the trip away? i dont like to go on overseas trip and she said no it would be forfeited.
i turned around and look at my friend who was making a little less... somewhere around 4-5k. he had no one to attend to, he really had flexible hours, i mean he plays when he feels like it, orders macdonalds and he is always free to meet me, unlike my insurance boss. and he goes all over the world too, and he chooses where he wants to go and apparently his income is always increasing. and he can afford to stop work for like 2-3 months without giving anyone any notice and just came back to the game. no calls on his phone except for his friends and girls asking him out... i mean he earns less... but i would prefer this rather than a higher income with much less freedom.
ok back to insurance, i started to ask janice, i remember her name now, about insurance planning, and i believed that the first person i should plan insurance for is myself and my family. Why should other people believe you when you dont even have a proper plan for yourself? all i had was a savings plan and 100k coverage by AVIVA and if i died i would collect 120k for my parents. thats grossly insufficent because i was the only child. and my dad and mum does not know what insurance policies they have so i wanted to find out... i told janice my thoughts... on more than 3-5 separate occasions. her response each time was the same, why not get your friends to come for a consultation? erm... not exactly my thoughts. i want my stuff planned out well. i mean i dont have money to buy it yet, but i wanted to know for myself what i should be buying once i had the money to, which was more important and what exactly i was lacking. the exams didnt teach those.
i now teach poker, for like 500 per month but i rather do this than insurance because i know what i am teaching, i use it myself, and i can stand up for it and challenge my student to a match to prove that concept and of course after he listens to me he makes $$$.
and then there is this... passive income they talk about. lets say you sell someone a plan for 100/month. you receive 50% commissions for the first year, 25% for 2nd year, 10% for 3rd year and then 5% for 4th and 5th year something like that.
so you recieve something like
year 1 - 600
year 2 - 300
year 3 - 120
year 4 - 60
year 5 - 60
i happened to be in university and i recalled that such payments are like annuities and can be expressed as a single value. if you add them all up together its $1140 paid over 5 years (closer to 1000 after discounting 10% a year). but the true value now is lower because it has to be discounted over time. one dollar now is worth more than a dollar later. and if you leave the company before this 5 years the payment stops. and if the client cancels the plan your payment stops too. so basically you are being paid less than 1140 over 5 years for getting someone to sign a 100/month plan. so there is no passive income about it.
and by the way there is no passive income in any job that i have seen, not poker. not anywhere else that i know. everything requires work even a business. and a business dies over time without its owner so its very much like delayed payments we are seeing in this case.
lets talk about... the environment in insurance. recently MAS (singapore monetary regulatory authority) came in and suggested that insurance agents charge fees instead of commissions. basically this means that you are paid less. the entire insurance organisation went against it and they are in discussion. what the hell? everything you built over 10 years is now at risk? because some MAS dude decided that he did not like commissions? this is bullshit. ok maybe you think this is a small deal.
lets look at some other changes that happened in the insurance and real estate industry. insurance industry used to have no educational requirements. now you need some O level or something and its the same for real estate. what happened to all those people with no formal education? they now have to go get an formal education. come on guys, you want a 50 year old chinese speaking salesman to learn science? you must be joking. and then there is this compulsory maybe 100 hours per year education requirement. which means you have to spend 100 hours every year in a seminar room listening to someone teach you something which is close to useless. thats a liability. the point is not the 100 hours or the fees. the point is that you are at the mercy of a superpower, which wields their sword every few years and usually that cuts your income or threaten your job in some way. and thats not your fault. your fault probably lies in your choice of the job. not in its execution.
lets go to poker, things were not looking good in black friday. basically full tilt, the 2nd biggest site went bankrupt. what happened to poker players? actually not much. i mean they lost a whole load of money... but most of them readjusted and played on another site on pokerstars. this is just about the worst thing that can happen to us. but our earning capabilities are not crippled too badly. just slowed down for maybe a few months. anyway we got all our money back. but thats not the point. even if we lost all the money in full tilt i still think thats better than doing insurance because we only lost some money. the insurance agents lost their entire lives. how are you FFFFing going to rebuild 10 years of things that just went bust? like AIA. they were pretty screwed. so you see... this risk we are talking about here is not specific to poker. AIA was hit by some bankruptcy thing too.
but there is this disadvantage in poker. things improve super fast. someone who used to make 300/hr in 2009 is now a sucker that i take money from. but guess what? other industries are also improving, so is real estate and insurance agents. but the top poker players are also earning more. if you are incompetent, you are going to die in all trades so that does not matter. and if you are of moderate competence you should not be selling anything either. and if you are of low competence... go elsewhere. i like to think of myself being very competent and i think my competence is fastest shown in poker.
lets talk about feedback speed... janice told me i needed 1 year to learn insurance and build up my network... and earn some moolah. poker on the other hand, i paid for some coaching and my earnigns just shot up, it took like 2 weeks for the results to show. and of course when i did crap i lost money really quickly, within a few days. if you want to improve, you want feedback as fast as possible, and that comes from poker. you want to be promoted as soon as possible. insurance has this 2 year thing where you have to be a salesman for 2 years before you can promote to a manager. no such thing in poker. if you are better than me just deposit $100 and you can challenge the best in the world immedaitely and take money away from them.
lets talk about self image. lets say i i tell you i have a friend that is an insurance agent. and you met some insurance agents in your life. what is your image of that person? usually its an uneducated person trying to build a career, hard selling or something. and you are usually right. of course the better ones are not like that but as an insurance agents you mix around these people and you absorb a little of their bullshit. how does that feel? do you like yourself?
how about poker players? anyone here thats not a poker player probably thinks we are couch potatoes and useless gamblers who gamble their money away and drink alcohol late into the night.
everything is correct except they are not useless gamblers. they are profitable gamblers. and they can afford to be couch potatoes and drink all night, now thats positive. and if you meet the higher stakes poker players, you realise their abilities, skills and plans are so fantastic. then i realised that they were poker players. immediately i saluted them and they are all my role models and i want to learn from them.
and not everyone has a plan. but the thing is they know they do not have a plan, and they know they can afford not to have a plan. speak to a profitable poker player and you will see the difference.
i feel very proud when i am known as a poker player because whenever the word "poker player" comes out immediately i think about all these people making 20k+ at home and going out all day doing what they like and having amazing plans and intelligence. i have not met a single profitable poker player earning more than 1000+ (one thousand only) per month that has a crappy personality. well i did meet one and she is no longer playing poker.
I recently thought about a concept... The mistake concept... Here is how it goes... You go to eat and see 2 chicken rice stalls,
1. Great chicken rice with good reviews selling for $5 a plate.
2. Unknown chicken rice stall, someone said it was nice, the chicken looks... like a different colour, but its on discount at $2 per plate and the aunty is smiling at you telling you she will give a bigger portion.
One of the above choices is correct, the other is a mistake. but we won't know until we choose it. We could choose 1 and be right because 2 sold spoilt chicken. or we chould choose 1 and be wrong because 2 tasted just as good and we would saved $3 and got a bigger portion.
Let's say we go with 2, which i think is the choice that most Singaporeans would make (people from my country). If it turns out to be the right choice, thats the end of the discussion. But lets say... the chicken turns out to be... bad tasting, a little wierd, probably left there for like 2 days . What would you do now?
1. Finish eating the chicken and suffer the experience and possibly feel sick the rest of the day.
2. Throw away the chicken rice and buy the $5 chicken rice(or something else).
I see some of my friends forcing themself to eat that chicken rice because they don't want to waste food. and then end up with a suffering 15mins eating session and feel crappy the whole day because of it.
The clear decision here is to throw away since it tastes so damn bad and could cause discomfort for the day. But the problem here is that they try to cover the previous mistake, with another one. When i throw away the chicken rice they think I'm wasting food, but I think thats the right choice because i did not feel crappy after forcing myself to eat crap.
Thanks
Cutegoldfish
Hi,
closing today early,
played time - 241 minutes
hands played - 2954 hands
$ made or lost - lost $357.55
EV change - lost $465.24
made a video for my coach to evaluate and comment. hoping to get some feedback on my play on what went wrong or what was correct.
went to swim but instead decided to play some tennis in slippers. stupid mistake got punished for it with a broken toe nail. and i was careless at home, kicked the broken toe nail into my chair twice, didn't bother about it anymore.
some thoughts on my work image... i realized in the past few years especially when i was in university... i got criticized heavily for my work attitude. i was lazy, irresponsible, did not do the work i promised etc. however this was not congruent with my results. i did fairly well.
on the other hand there was a small group of people that admired my work attitude. they said it was good. and i identify myself with this group of people. they are usually doing something of my interest.
how is there a discrepancy? a large group of people saying i sucked and a small group saying i was good? i think its because of the job at hand. in that large group, i didn't like the tasks involved or what we were working towards. i knew i was scoring a reasonable grade. the lowest grade i had in university was a B although i absolutely did not study for the mid terms and gotten a F grade. and that is 0/15 out of 100 marks. every other grade was a B+. i knew i was not going to hit the A or A+ (unless i really liked the subject). so my grade was usually B+ A- and any work involved was not going to change much. and i realized that what i learnt could not be applied in real life, in a manner that directly benefits me, usually earn $$$.
the other small group i had was a forex trading group. i regularly attended meetings and helped out here and there and was pretty well respected although being the youngest in the group, i was about 20 years old and the next youngest was 30. i did my work diligently and even asked for more work and went through the "questions" and answers and even used excel models to try to better understand the situation out of my own initiative. i also taught and shared my discoveries with the group and often led them in discussion.
there was hope that i was going to make huge $$$ (it did not happen but i did learn a great deal which i applied in poker). and also if i succeeded there was direct benefit to me, $$$.
i learned from this reflection that i should focus on what i like to do. and what i do should make reasonable improvements in my "grade" and there must be a way that i directly benefit from it.
Thanks
Cutegoldfish
