This weekend my father and I painted some more of our bedroom. The first time we painted the walls and it wasn't so bad. This time we painted the ceiling and trim and I got covered in paint. the first time we painted I didn't mind it at all. This time it wasn't so fun. Oh well. The room looks pretty good though. I can't wait until we get the rest of the house painted. Its going to look so nice.
March is coming to an end and boy was it a swingy month for poker. I've played almost 30,000 hands of poker online this month. I started the month by being hit with the boomswitch, meaning I couldn't lose a pot. In the first 10,000 hands I won $1400 at 100nl. However, the next 10,000 hands things didn't go so well. I not only lost back everything I won, but I also lost an additional $600. The last 10,000 hands things have mostly turned around, somewhat back to normal and now I'm up about $400 on the month, which isn't that impressive, but after a rough month I'm happy for the win. According to my new poker tracking software I should be up over $1000, so its pretty clear I've had the shit kicked out of me. But wow, a $2k swing in one month. Crazy stuff. Now, hopefully, on to winning.
In other news, I was able to basically set up my guitar amp and play a little rock and roll the other day. My amp needs some repairs because the clean channel isn't working. But at least it still works. It felt good to play some real music after only playing Rock Band for so long. I look forward to playing more and more. Amen.
I started school last week. The first class I have to take is just a general class about coming back to school and how to study and set goals and crap like that. Seriously, it is a huge waste of time overall. I may be able to pull a few nuggets out of it, but as of right now its just annoying. Oh well, only a few more weeks of this then its on to my real courses. Hopefully those won't be as inane.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
try the veal
So I'm sick as a dog (are dogs really sick? where did that phrase come from?). I haven't been sick is a while and this especially was a little brutal for a few hours. However, I'm starting to come out of it now, no small thanks to my precious wife. Now we're just sitting in the bed watching The Godfather, a classic, classic movie, while Catherine reads gossip things on the internet. Relaxing. Peaceful.
I finally broke down and set up Microsoft Windows on my computer so I could run Holdem Manager, a software program that tracks online poker play to the gnats behind (I think I understand that phrase). This program will let me know how often I do everything, and how often my opponents do everything. All this so I can locate "leaks" or poor play in my game and my opponents games that make me lose money. I will plug my leaks and I will exploit the leaks of my opponents. This is really just a long winded way to say that this new program will make me a poker ninja. So watch out bitches!
Right before I got this program though I had my worst single day downswing ever. I lost 9 and half buy ins at 100nl. Which, for those who don't know, means I lost $950. Pretty brutal, but I went over the hand histories of the big pots with my poker coach and all the big losses were standard hands, nothing I could do. I was surprised at how not utterly pissed off I was at the time. It was frustrating, mind you, but not devastating. This is why we have poker bankrolls that are sufficient for the game you're playing. Swizzle dizzle.
Enough pish posh. Time for rest.
ps. a guy online called me "fils de pute". I love this game.
I finally broke down and set up Microsoft Windows on my computer so I could run Holdem Manager, a software program that tracks online poker play to the gnats behind (I think I understand that phrase). This program will let me know how often I do everything, and how often my opponents do everything. All this so I can locate "leaks" or poor play in my game and my opponents games that make me lose money. I will plug my leaks and I will exploit the leaks of my opponents. This is really just a long winded way to say that this new program will make me a poker ninja. So watch out bitches!
Right before I got this program though I had my worst single day downswing ever. I lost 9 and half buy ins at 100nl. Which, for those who don't know, means I lost $950. Pretty brutal, but I went over the hand histories of the big pots with my poker coach and all the big losses were standard hands, nothing I could do. I was surprised at how not utterly pissed off I was at the time. It was frustrating, mind you, but not devastating. This is why we have poker bankrolls that are sufficient for the game you're playing. Swizzle dizzle.
Enough pish posh. Time for rest.
ps. a guy online called me "fils de pute". I love this game.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
garfunkeling
I miss my old friend Ben Heywood. I used to be so intimidated by him when we first met because he was so damn cool. As I got to know him though I found him to be a great friend. Since I've moved back up to Northern California from Pasadena we haven't kept in touch and I regret that.
One thing I remember that Ben taught me was to always consider the "why" when you write something. I was speaking with him about a paper I was writing for a college course I was taking and he told me that the best thing he learned about writing was to ask why someone would want to read what you're writing, what's the point. That's something to consider when writing my blogs. Note to self: some people read this thing, which is a good thing. Why would they want to keep reading?
I used to keep good records of all of my poker playing, both live and online. I found that tedious and it was difficult, using the system I used, to differentiate between my live results, which tended to be larger swings, versus my online results, which had smaller swings. Now I just use a poker software program to help me keep track of my online results only, and it does an excellent job of that.
One thing I noticed while reviewing my results is the effect variance can have on short term results. Variance, in the manner in which I'm using it, is a statistics term. Technically it means "a quantity equal to the square of the standard deviation". Most of us don't know what that means, and even if we did it might not be useful. Perhaps a better definition is "the difference between actual and expected costs, profits, output, etc., in a statistical analysis". What this means is that sometimes your actual results, in poker specifically, especially in the short term, are sometimes different than your expected results. Take a look at the following graph:
This is a graph of a very swing-y time in my poker playing. Its over a period of about 18,000 hands, which is the equivalent of about 3 months of live poker playing.
Now look at this graph:
This is my overall graph as of yesterday. You'll see the sample of the first graph in the center. Notice how the huge peaks and valleys of the first graph seem more tame in the second one. This is variance. In the short term the swings are larger, because variance has more of an effect. But in the longer term variance has less of an impact and the truth comes out. In this case its clear that this is the graph of a winning player, whereas the first graph was unclear.
So what's the point? A brag post, obviously.
No. Poker is like life. Variance affects us all. Sometimes, in the moment, all we see is the negative, the reasons why what we're doing won't work, the excuses why we are failures. But when you push through the negative and look at the larger picture I think we'll see the truth. Now, variance works both ways. Sometimes success falls like manna from heaven, but that doesn't mean it was deserved. In poker we say that you're running "above expectation". The big picture tells the truth, in either case. So perhaps we should focus not on short term results, but on what we're doing to produce results. If what we're doing is the right thing the results shouldn't matter, because, in the long run, our output will match our input.
This reminds me of something else that Ben taught me. Sad times are usually consciously experienced in the moment, whereas happy times are usually consciously experienced in retrospect. Its easy to identify when we're down, but not as easy to identify when we're happy, in the moment. What if we changed that? What if we tried to focus on identifying the happy times while we're living them? Maybe we'd learn to savor those times in the moment and make them last.
One thing I remember that Ben taught me was to always consider the "why" when you write something. I was speaking with him about a paper I was writing for a college course I was taking and he told me that the best thing he learned about writing was to ask why someone would want to read what you're writing, what's the point. That's something to consider when writing my blogs. Note to self: some people read this thing, which is a good thing. Why would they want to keep reading?
I used to keep good records of all of my poker playing, both live and online. I found that tedious and it was difficult, using the system I used, to differentiate between my live results, which tended to be larger swings, versus my online results, which had smaller swings. Now I just use a poker software program to help me keep track of my online results only, and it does an excellent job of that.
One thing I noticed while reviewing my results is the effect variance can have on short term results. Variance, in the manner in which I'm using it, is a statistics term. Technically it means "a quantity equal to the square of the standard deviation". Most of us don't know what that means, and even if we did it might not be useful. Perhaps a better definition is "the difference between actual and expected costs, profits, output, etc., in a statistical analysis". What this means is that sometimes your actual results, in poker specifically, especially in the short term, are sometimes different than your expected results. Take a look at the following graph:
This is a graph of a very swing-y time in my poker playing. Its over a period of about 18,000 hands, which is the equivalent of about 3 months of live poker playing. Now look at this graph:
This is my overall graph as of yesterday. You'll see the sample of the first graph in the center. Notice how the huge peaks and valleys of the first graph seem more tame in the second one. This is variance. In the short term the swings are larger, because variance has more of an effect. But in the longer term variance has less of an impact and the truth comes out. In this case its clear that this is the graph of a winning player, whereas the first graph was unclear.
So what's the point? A brag post, obviously.
No. Poker is like life. Variance affects us all. Sometimes, in the moment, all we see is the negative, the reasons why what we're doing won't work, the excuses why we are failures. But when you push through the negative and look at the larger picture I think we'll see the truth. Now, variance works both ways. Sometimes success falls like manna from heaven, but that doesn't mean it was deserved. In poker we say that you're running "above expectation". The big picture tells the truth, in either case. So perhaps we should focus not on short term results, but on what we're doing to produce results. If what we're doing is the right thing the results shouldn't matter, because, in the long run, our output will match our input.
This reminds me of something else that Ben taught me. Sad times are usually consciously experienced in the moment, whereas happy times are usually consciously experienced in retrospect. Its easy to identify when we're down, but not as easy to identify when we're happy, in the moment. What if we changed that? What if we tried to focus on identifying the happy times while we're living them? Maybe we'd learn to savor those times in the moment and make them last.
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