6/29/11
6/9/11
Email to FTP Support
Dear helpful customer service representative,
no offense but you're one generic email away from losing my business so think hard before you copy/paste yet another ready-made reply please.
Let me break it down for you pretty simply: I need money to live.
Like, really really badly.
Without it,
I will go hungry
and homeless
and maybe even turn a little homicidal.
Not knowing when I will have access to my own personal funds (weird how there were no delays in depositing), makes it impossible for me to continue playing on your site since my uber-demanding wife thinks I should actually make a contribution towards our cost of living.
I know, Womenz.....amirite?
And telling me my money is safe over and over again is great and all, but my landlord said that he unfortunately can't take your word for it. I told him Howard and Durrrr pinky promised everything will be OK but he just mumbled something about lolinternets and walked away....so no go on that front.
So if you could kindly provide me with at least a ballpark time frame for when us Canadians will have free access to our funds, perhaps I can evade my landlord for a while longer and go back to surviving on white rice and tunafish by pretending I was in university again. Werd?
no offense but you're one generic email away from losing my business so think hard before you copy/paste yet another ready-made reply please.
Let me break it down for you pretty simply: I need money to live.
Like, really really badly.
Without it,
I will go hungry
and homeless
and maybe even turn a little homicidal.
Not knowing when I will have access to my own personal funds (weird how there were no delays in depositing), makes it impossible for me to continue playing on your site since my uber-demanding wife thinks I should actually make a contribution towards our cost of living.
I know, Womenz.....amirite?
And telling me my money is safe over and over again is great and all, but my landlord said that he unfortunately can't take your word for it. I told him Howard and Durrrr pinky promised everything will be OK but he just mumbled something about lolinternets and walked away....so no go on that front.
So if you could kindly provide me with at least a ballpark time frame for when us Canadians will have free access to our funds, perhaps I can evade my landlord for a while longer and go back to surviving on white rice and tunafish by pretending I was in university again. Werd?
6/6/11
Monday June 6th
I have yet to officially begin my 100K hands challenge since I still haven't received my cashout from FTP. I've been playing about 2K hands/day so far this month; just enough to continue earning the bonus ironman medals in the hopes that everything turns out OK with Full Tilt.
But the longer this test cashout takes, the more I wonder if I should just throw in the towel and switch sites...because, even if my money finally does comes through after 2+ weeks, I question if I'll have to go through this process every time I need to access life funds. Knowing that FTP has such big issues to deal with right now, I dont know how or when they'll be able to convince me that things are back to normal for us Canadians. And with each passing day it seems more and more unlikely that that will happen before they fix the American cashout problem. So it appears as if we're all in the same ship (The FTPTitanic?) when it comes to Full Tilt Poker...and I think we can all agree that it hasnt been the most pleasant of trips so far.
As far as retaining my loyalty though, Rush Poker was the greatest thing FTP ever did. Every time I think about switching sites I just log on to a couple of other ones and groan at the amount of time I'll have to spend on waiting lists to get my hands/hour number high enough. I think being able to sit down and instantly be playing 1K+ hands/hour is a luxury I've been spoiled by and am having a hard time giving up....so for the time being, I'll continue to be patient with the shitstorm that is FTP right, but I doubt I have much of that left in me, so if you could get your shit sorted ASAP, that would be much appreciated Howie!
But the longer this test cashout takes, the more I wonder if I should just throw in the towel and switch sites...because, even if my money finally does comes through after 2+ weeks, I question if I'll have to go through this process every time I need to access life funds. Knowing that FTP has such big issues to deal with right now, I dont know how or when they'll be able to convince me that things are back to normal for us Canadians. And with each passing day it seems more and more unlikely that that will happen before they fix the American cashout problem. So it appears as if we're all in the same ship (The FTPTitanic?) when it comes to Full Tilt Poker...and I think we can all agree that it hasnt been the most pleasant of trips so far.
As far as retaining my loyalty though, Rush Poker was the greatest thing FTP ever did. Every time I think about switching sites I just log on to a couple of other ones and groan at the amount of time I'll have to spend on waiting lists to get my hands/hour number high enough. I think being able to sit down and instantly be playing 1K+ hands/hour is a luxury I've been spoiled by and am having a hard time giving up....so for the time being, I'll continue to be patient with the shitstorm that is FTP right, but I doubt I have much of that left in me, so if you could get your shit sorted ASAP, that would be much appreciated Howie!
6/1/11
Off To A *opposite of roaring* Start
So I didn't end up starting my challenge today after all. Instead, I was up all night listening to QuadJacks discuss the mess FTP finds itself in now that Ivey has sued them and most of the rest of their pros stopped wearing their patches at the WSOP and so my sleep was messed up again and i just felt too tired to play much.
I'm still not 100% sure what this all means for me right now but I think within the next month or two I'm going to start moving my action off of Tilt (if they last that long). I would just switch now but this is the worst time of the year to do that since the midyear ironman bonus comes in at the end of the month, so I'll think I'll just grind that out and then gtfo if things haven't improved dramatically.
In the meantime I'm going to try to get the majority of my money off FTP (been waiting for a moneybookers transfer to go through for 3 days now), and grind with a shorter BR....just in case this FTP cashout nonsense expands beyond just Americans (I've heard rumors it's already spread to places like Brazil and even here in Canada).
I haven't decided fully what to do about my 100K hands/challenge since I no longer feel confident that when I wake each morning FTP and, more importantly, my money will still be there waiting for me. So I think what I'll do is just grind like usual for a couple of days and see if anything develops. If I can get most of my funds into my MB account this week, I'll feel more comfortable letting this thing sort itself out while I grind but otherwise it seems silly to bust my ass all month and in the end find out I have nothing to show for it.
Either way, it seems as if Black Friday has affected all of us on an even deeper level than we had originally realized. Of course, the silver lining here is that if FTP really was doing even a fraction of the shady stuff that they've been accused of (hard to imagine an alternative at this point), then Black Friday might end up being the day that saved Internet poker as opposed to the one that crippled it.
'You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one'
I'm still not 100% sure what this all means for me right now but I think within the next month or two I'm going to start moving my action off of Tilt (if they last that long). I would just switch now but this is the worst time of the year to do that since the midyear ironman bonus comes in at the end of the month, so I'll think I'll just grind that out and then gtfo if things haven't improved dramatically.
In the meantime I'm going to try to get the majority of my money off FTP (been waiting for a moneybookers transfer to go through for 3 days now), and grind with a shorter BR....just in case this FTP cashout nonsense expands beyond just Americans (I've heard rumors it's already spread to places like Brazil and even here in Canada).
I haven't decided fully what to do about my 100K hands/challenge since I no longer feel confident that when I wake each morning FTP and, more importantly, my money will still be there waiting for me. So I think what I'll do is just grind like usual for a couple of days and see if anything develops. If I can get most of my funds into my MB account this week, I'll feel more comfortable letting this thing sort itself out while I grind but otherwise it seems silly to bust my ass all month and in the end find out I have nothing to show for it.
Either way, it seems as if Black Friday has affected all of us on an even deeper level than we had originally realized. Of course, the silver lining here is that if FTP really was doing even a fraction of the shady stuff that they've been accused of (hard to imagine an alternative at this point), then Black Friday might end up being the day that saved Internet poker as opposed to the one that crippled it.
'You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one'
5/30/11
And So It Begins. Again. Again.
So I managed to find a partial backer/co-investor quickly on parttimepoker.com and have been slowly getting back into the flow of 200nl. Instead of playing on my own vs playing backed, I decided to chop the difference and sell my action @ 60/40 and take about a third of it myself, effectively making my cut 72% while still permitting me the luxury of not having to keep a big roll online. I think having a backer is also going to help keep me accountable as far as volume is concerned; which is definitely something I could use going into my next challenge.
Overall, since I started playing rush approximately 4 months ago, I've averaged about 50K hands/month and so, for my next challenge, I will attempt to double my production and put in 100K hands in June, hopefully all at 200nl. While this may sound like a standard prop bet/challenge that many players make to try to trick themselves into being motivated when other factors are causing the opposite effect, my plan centers around getting back to the tireless grinder I was before the money meant something to me. See, before I had to worry about a wife, a house, or a future child (the one my wife will eventually have, not a child brought back from 2112 to John Connor it up), I used to be able to grind for days on end and pretty much lived in the space between my bed and computer. But, through the help of Jared Tendler's incredible new book The Mental Game of Poker (you can find it here: http://www.mentalgameofpoker.com/), I've come to realize that my irrational fears of failure have been steadily increasing along with my responsibilities. It now makes complete sense that my motivation would wane...why would I want to grind every single day when I was subconsciously going into every session fearing the worst? I've come to learn a ton about this mental stuff over the past week but I'd basically be paraphrasing Jared, so I'll just say that if you have any motivation, fear, tilt, or confidence issues surrounding poker, you will literally never make a better investment than buying his book (and no, I unfortunately do not get a cut of book sales).
So what I will be doing going forward is getting myself back in the grinder's mindset by putting in 5K hands/day, 5 days/week. I plan on generally doing this Mon-Fri so I can finally get my internal clock realigned with the rest of the real world and, if I succeed in keeping to this schedule, I should reach 100K hands on the 28th of June with 2 official playing days to spare.
I am also going to get back to working on my game on a daily basis. Right now I generally only 'study' about once a week; which I don't think is really enough for anyone to stay on top of their game. I mean, professional athletes don't only practice once a week, so why should I?
I think adding a relatively insignificant 15 minute review at the end of each day, in addition to an hour session during one of my off days, will go a long way to ensure I'm playing my A game as often as is possible and that, when I'm not, my D game might instead turn into a B- game. Thanks again Jared for teaching me that equity comes in all shapes and sizes!
I will be celebrating my last day of slackerism tomorrow by watching the Miami Heat beat up on Dirk and then the grind will begin.
I'll try to post lengthier weekly updates here but most of the time I'll just be using twitter so feel free to click that button at the top right and say hello.
For (hopefully) the last time, this is SlackerSentin signing off.
Overall, since I started playing rush approximately 4 months ago, I've averaged about 50K hands/month and so, for my next challenge, I will attempt to double my production and put in 100K hands in June, hopefully all at 200nl. While this may sound like a standard prop bet/challenge that many players make to try to trick themselves into being motivated when other factors are causing the opposite effect, my plan centers around getting back to the tireless grinder I was before the money meant something to me. See, before I had to worry about a wife, a house, or a future child (the one my wife will eventually have, not a child brought back from 2112 to John Connor it up), I used to be able to grind for days on end and pretty much lived in the space between my bed and computer. But, through the help of Jared Tendler's incredible new book The Mental Game of Poker (you can find it here: http://www.mentalgameofpoker.com/), I've come to realize that my irrational fears of failure have been steadily increasing along with my responsibilities. It now makes complete sense that my motivation would wane...why would I want to grind every single day when I was subconsciously going into every session fearing the worst? I've come to learn a ton about this mental stuff over the past week but I'd basically be paraphrasing Jared, so I'll just say that if you have any motivation, fear, tilt, or confidence issues surrounding poker, you will literally never make a better investment than buying his book (and no, I unfortunately do not get a cut of book sales).
So what I will be doing going forward is getting myself back in the grinder's mindset by putting in 5K hands/day, 5 days/week. I plan on generally doing this Mon-Fri so I can finally get my internal clock realigned with the rest of the real world and, if I succeed in keeping to this schedule, I should reach 100K hands on the 28th of June with 2 official playing days to spare.
I am also going to get back to working on my game on a daily basis. Right now I generally only 'study' about once a week; which I don't think is really enough for anyone to stay on top of their game. I mean, professional athletes don't only practice once a week, so why should I?
I think adding a relatively insignificant 15 minute review at the end of each day, in addition to an hour session during one of my off days, will go a long way to ensure I'm playing my A game as often as is possible and that, when I'm not, my D game might instead turn into a B- game. Thanks again Jared for teaching me that equity comes in all shapes and sizes!
I will be celebrating my last day of slackerism tomorrow by watching the Miami Heat beat up on Dirk and then the grind will begin.
I'll try to post lengthier weekly updates here but most of the time I'll just be using twitter so feel free to click that button at the top right and say hello.
For (hopefully) the last time, this is SlackerSentin signing off.
5/24/11
Time Off
Going up to my parents' cabin for a bit of R&R with a couple of buddies tomorrow morning before launching my 100K hands challenge. Also going to be posting a review of Jared Tendler's amazing new book when I get a chance.
Be back in a few. Good luck everyone.
Be back in a few. Good luck everyone.
5/14/11
Close Enough?
So after spending the last few days thinking about it, I've come to the conclusion that I kind of prefer playing backed...even when I'm sufficiently rolled to play on my own dime.
It's strange and I sort of feel silly about it but I realize now that I've grown accustomed to some of the perks that come with playing backed. Yes, there is that ever-important hourly hit but, with a good backer (or group of backers), there is also the freedom of never having to worry about downswings, bad beats, or money in general. Not only that, but I also find that I miss the comradery that comes with being part of a stable (a group of players all staked by the same person/people). It's nice to be able to vent your frustrations and enjoy your upswings with people who understand and appreciate what you're going through. I think for someone like myself who plays this game for a living and doesn't live in a poker house (I can only imagine my wife's reaction if she walked into a house with 5 of me bumming around), the days can start to feel pretty monotonous and repetitive. Being part of a good stable also helps to keep you interacting with your peers; which I believe is a key element to continually improving your game. I mean, there's a reason most of the high-stakes guys travel in packs, right?
So, for all those reasons (not to mention the joy of never having to have your life funds tied up), I've decided to look for backing once again through 2+2 and/or Parttimepoker.
As far as my 25nl-200nl challenge goes, my bankroll has now grown from $500 to just under $3000 meaning I am halfway to moving past 100nl entirely and am already adequately rolled for a mix of 100-200nl. About $1500 of my profits have come from direct game-play and the rest was from rakeback + bonuses. I may end up finishing this challenge before I sign on with a new backer but if a good opportunity comes along in the meantime, I may just declare this a moral victory and begin a new volume and/or profit challenge. Besides, spending more than a month on a single task is just too hard on my A.D.D.
Stay tuned!
It's strange and I sort of feel silly about it but I realize now that I've grown accustomed to some of the perks that come with playing backed. Yes, there is that ever-important hourly hit but, with a good backer (or group of backers), there is also the freedom of never having to worry about downswings, bad beats, or money in general. Not only that, but I also find that I miss the comradery that comes with being part of a stable (a group of players all staked by the same person/people). It's nice to be able to vent your frustrations and enjoy your upswings with people who understand and appreciate what you're going through. I think for someone like myself who plays this game for a living and doesn't live in a poker house (I can only imagine my wife's reaction if she walked into a house with 5 of me bumming around), the days can start to feel pretty monotonous and repetitive. Being part of a good stable also helps to keep you interacting with your peers; which I believe is a key element to continually improving your game. I mean, there's a reason most of the high-stakes guys travel in packs, right?
So, for all those reasons (not to mention the joy of never having to have your life funds tied up), I've decided to look for backing once again through 2+2 and/or Parttimepoker.
As far as my 25nl-200nl challenge goes, my bankroll has now grown from $500 to just under $3000 meaning I am halfway to moving past 100nl entirely and am already adequately rolled for a mix of 100-200nl. About $1500 of my profits have come from direct game-play and the rest was from rakeback + bonuses. I may end up finishing this challenge before I sign on with a new backer but if a good opportunity comes along in the meantime, I may just declare this a moral victory and begin a new volume and/or profit challenge. Besides, spending more than a month on a single task is just too hard on my A.D.D.
Challenge Update:
And overall graph since moving to cash games:
Stay tuned!
5/9/11
Moving On Up
Had a good day today.
Woke up late, put in a quick half hour session and made a little more than a buyin. Then I met up with my brother in law and his aunt and had a nice round of pitch and putt at Stanley Park here in beautiful British Columbia.
I'm pretty terrible at golf still but slowly getting better. No birdies today but we did see a goose chasing a raccoon and Auntie Linda launched a ball off the course within 5 feet of a baby stroller so that was funny in a horrifying sort of way.
After I got back I decided to put in a short session cause I wasn't feeling like playing much but wanted to get my ironman points for the day since it's my birthday in a couple of weeks and I figure I'm bound to miss a few days later this month. So I needed 200ish points which only takes about 20-30 minutes 4tabling 50nl. I started off slow stealing a few blinds and taking down a couple of small 3bet pots...then, all heaven (?) broke loose.
In a span of about 45 minutes, I managed to hit: quads once, 2 overpairs that got me paid off decently, 5 top-pair/top-kickers combinations with AK (none of which got cracked) and 7 sets...2 of which turned into a full-house and one of which allowed me to stack a guy with boat over boat!
I want to say that I played all my big hands really well and extracted max value...but it feels like I'm bragging about winning a gunfight when I was the only one allowed to shoot real bullets so....
Having said that, I did reach another milestone by cracking the $2000 mark which means that I'm now rolled for 100nl!
Moving from 25nl to 100nl took exactly 14 days and just over 36K hands. Not the greatest volume by any means but it's decent and I'm running at 7.3bb/100 so I'm happy with it. I've made 60% of my profits from direct game-play and the other 40% through rakeback and bonus clearing. I also converted some points into a $26 token for the fun of it and turned it into $52ish in a matrix SNG (which is a great way to turn points into cash quickly for anybody who doesn't want to clear the larger bonuses).
So now it's on to 100nl. I may still mix in a couple of 50nl tables depending on the hours I end up playing since people seem to mostly play either 50nl or 200nl and I'm thinking that getting 4 tables running at 100nl (without delays) might be tough at times...but we'll see how it goes.
2 levels down, 1 to go!
Woke up late, put in a quick half hour session and made a little more than a buyin. Then I met up with my brother in law and his aunt and had a nice round of pitch and putt at Stanley Park here in beautiful British Columbia.
I'm pretty terrible at golf still but slowly getting better. No birdies today but we did see a goose chasing a raccoon and Auntie Linda launched a ball off the course within 5 feet of a baby stroller so that was funny in a horrifying sort of way.
After I got back I decided to put in a short session cause I wasn't feeling like playing much but wanted to get my ironman points for the day since it's my birthday in a couple of weeks and I figure I'm bound to miss a few days later this month. So I needed 200ish points which only takes about 20-30 minutes 4tabling 50nl. I started off slow stealing a few blinds and taking down a couple of small 3bet pots...then, all heaven (?) broke loose.
In a span of about 45 minutes, I managed to hit: quads once, 2 overpairs that got me paid off decently, 5 top-pair/top-kickers combinations with AK (none of which got cracked) and 7 sets...2 of which turned into a full-house and one of which allowed me to stack a guy with boat over boat!
I want to say that I played all my big hands really well and extracted max value...but it feels like I'm bragging about winning a gunfight when I was the only one allowed to shoot real bullets so....
Having said that, I did reach another milestone by cracking the $2000 mark which means that I'm now rolled for 100nl!
Moving from 25nl to 100nl took exactly 14 days and just over 36K hands. Not the greatest volume by any means but it's decent and I'm running at 7.3bb/100 so I'm happy with it. I've made 60% of my profits from direct game-play and the other 40% through rakeback and bonus clearing. I also converted some points into a $26 token for the fun of it and turned it into $52ish in a matrix SNG (which is a great way to turn points into cash quickly for anybody who doesn't want to clear the larger bonuses).
So now it's on to 100nl. I may still mix in a couple of 50nl tables depending on the hours I end up playing since people seem to mostly play either 50nl or 200nl and I'm thinking that getting 4 tables running at 100nl (without delays) might be tough at times...but we'll see how it goes.
2 levels down, 1 to go!
RRRRROOOOOAAAAAAARRRRR!!
5/6/11
May 6th
Still running like garbage but getting (slightly) better. I did lose with the nut-flush vs a straight flush today for the first time (I think?) tho so that kinda sucked.
Bankroll is still down a little from my peak but it could have been much much worse the way things went the last few days so I'm hoping the small downswing has worked it's way out and I can get back on track now.
Playing profits: $400 ($550 EV) in 34K hands.
RB/Bonus: $583
Overall BR: $1483
My hourly right now is about $28/hr which is decent for the lower stakes but I'm ready to get back to 100 & 200nl soon and start making serious money again. 10 BIs to go before we move on up.
Bankroll is still down a little from my peak but it could have been much much worse the way things went the last few days so I'm hoping the small downswing has worked it's way out and I can get back on track now.
Playing profits: $400 ($550 EV) in 34K hands.
RB/Bonus: $583
Overall BR: $1483
My hourly right now is about $28/hr which is decent for the lower stakes but I'm ready to get back to 100 & 200nl soon and start making serious money again. 10 BIs to go before we move on up.
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