diab0lic's Blog

Last Friday we played a $0.05/$0.10 dealer's choice cash game at my place on the new(ish) poker table that I brought back from my place at University. It was a 5 handed game the entire night and we played everything from pineapple, crazy pineapple, 2-7 TD, 7 card stud, 5 card draw, PLO, NLHE. I bought in for 200bb and walked away with around 820bb.

Last night we played a straight $0.05/$0.10 PLO cash game. I bought in for 400bb and walked away with about 800bb. We had some really insane action as two other players also bought in for 400bb and then most bought in for 200bb with a few at 100bb. It's not really a whole lot of money, but considering that my online bankroll is $0 and was only ~$300 before that... its big compared to what I normally played for.

As for studying poker I have been reading mathematics of poker, and taking notes on both Math Attacks and Applied Math. I've done no game specific studying, but I have been writing some ruby code here and there to do different things. I think my next big project will be a class to store hand ranges, likely as a probability distribution if I can get decent performance out of it. 

I have not been playing online, and have been debating between what game I will play when I do finally redeposit. Its between HUSNG / 6max PLO cash / 6max NLHE cash. I'll decide eventually... Anyway I'm off to play some SC2 with a friend and then Backgammon with my mother!

Bubble Factor Calculator

I took that ICM Calculator that I wrote the other day and extended it to include a calculator for bubble factor found in Kill Everyone. For those who are not familiar it is a measure of how much it hurts to lose chips to another player in your tournament, specifically based on stack sizes. Assuming we have 3 variables containing the ICM calculated equity of each situation icm_start, icm_win, icm_lose the bubble factor is evaluated as: (icm_start - icm_lose) / (icm_win - icm_start) The code looks like such:

I know posting code screenshots sucks, but as far as I'm aware there are no code or pre tags for the DC blogs, but you know maybe I should test that instead of just assume. :P I also like the color scheme I'm using on vim though.

In any case I also got started on writing test cases for the equity function as well as the bubble_factor function.

Edit: I just found a bug in the code that I will fix tomorrow night. You can probably spot it in the screenshot, even if you're not a programmer.

New Watch

Well, like I said in my last post I've been focusing a lot on style lately as part of making my self feel better. Its been all about style, fitness, skills, and socializing for me so far. Today I bought a new watch, its called the Stiletto and you can see why. Its a minimalist, all black look as well as being an eco-drive. Its got an ultra thin profile, and the best part is I got it 35% off because the Jewelry store was closing down. (Yes I shopped around online first)

 

I'll also include a photo of me if for nothing else than to document appearance and dress style as things are changing with my wardrobe and fitness.

I am back up in northern Canada, Yellowknife NT to be specific and working for the summer as a systems analyst again. To give a rough update on life this will be the first summer in my adult life, actually the first extended period of time, in which I am single. I've made some commitments to focus on style, fitness, skills and socializing this summer. I've been dressing nicely every day, jogging, going out a lot and reading to improve my programming skills. That last point leads me into what I am doing for my poker skills...

I've decided to write a series of tools to help mathematically analyze the game, starting with an ICM calculator:

I know it is a small start but writing tools like this has a lot of benefits. For one I am writing code that I will be publishing to a github repository so it has to look professional; I'm doing proper documentation, test cases and coding conventions. Nothing but the best for a public display of my skills. Second off I'll be implementing anything any everything I can think of starting with what I find in Kill Everyone and then Mathematics of Poker. Ultimately I plan to move onto using MacRuby to take these building blocks and create nice GUI apps for Mac users so that we don't have to use Windows for things like ICM calculations.

For now I will remain a student of the game by studying and writing these tools, and eventually I'll begin attempting to grind again. Stay tuned for more updates like this in the future.

I think all the excitement over the new series here at DC, specifically Bellatrix's math series and anything heads up related, and especially Saibot's upcoming series has really helped me pull my boots up and get playing. I played 40 games yesterday at an 18% ROI. Last night I pulled up Skype and told my buddy Byron that I was going to hit a $350 roll before I went to bed, and I didn't quite make the goal but i hit it this morning with some ease.

• Current ROI (Overall): 7.13%
• Current Volume (Overall): 257
• Current ROI (Month): 5.14%
• Current Volume (Month): 159

My targets for the month are 300 games at a 10% ROI. I'm 31 games behind "pace" this month as I expected to play about 10 games per day, and I'm obviously trailing in ROI but I feel great about getting there. I feel great about putting in volume and thats what matters most because when I'm playing lots and feeling good about it the win rate follows.

Overall Graph for HUSNG

I can't wait for Saibot's series premiere tomorrow!

I've felt very negative about poker as of late, just down on my ability to play. I sit down to watch Two Men Enter again and I'm so anxious I can't even sit through a video let alone the series. Despite this I am very excited about the upcoming season, it has an HUSNG series as well as Bellatix's math series. It should be very good for helping me improve my game. I think I'm going to have to begin doing yoga again to get my mind under control enough to sit through a review of some old series this week.

I really need to start showing myself that I can attain some results in improving my game if I am going to allow myself to continue to invest this much time into improving into poker. I recently read blah's thread about being here for 1 year, and there was another guy in a thread who had moved from 2NL to 100NL in 4 months. It makes me wonder why I can't have that same success, and I can't come up with an answer because there is no reason I can't do that too.

On an unrelated note I just started doing one of the iTunesU courses from Stanford on making an iPhone app. It is something I've always wanted to learn how to do, and I have to say this course is so far shaping up to be very good. Last night I couldn't sleep because I was so excited to continue on with the next lesson in the course, it reminds me of how I have felt about poker in the past.

I'm going to try to divide my time a little more evenly between poker and programming as programming is really helping with bringing my mood up right now. :D I think I'm going to try to program something poker related for the iPhone or the mac. Any suggestions?

I appear to have lost my edge when playing HUSNGs. Before the break I was surprising myself all the time with my reads and just generally happy with the way I could feel and see my game improving. I seem to have regressed and need to get that skill back if I want to continue my personal HUSNG challenge. I'm using this post to formalize my curriculum for myself.

• Two Men Enter by Bones
• Review Mathematics of NLHE notes
• Session Review on Saturday

I've got to watch those videos and quickly get my mind back into the game and meet my volume goals this month. I'm committing to having all of this done by the end of Saturday. I feel like even the poor quality of this blog post is reflecting my state of mind right now, something is just not working as well as it used to! Hopefully I'll feel more responsible to this studying since I've posted it here...

Hey Guys, I haven't written in a while. Between being sick last month, and then going to Cuba I totally missed my volume targets. I was aiming for 300 games and a 10%+ ROI. I did 100 games and met my ROI goal, so its not the worst outcome by far. In any case I feel I couldn't focus while sick, and couldn't play while in Cuba (obviously) so I'm going to let myself slide. However this month has a new set of targets, so lets get to them...

March Targets

• 300 Games
• 10%+ ROI

Same targets as last month, with the exception that if I still have a 10% ROI after 200 games at the $6.25s I will be moving up to the $11.50s. With that said lets get to work!

For those interested here are a few shots of Cuba:

I'm right in front on the one above. Taken in a natural cave that has a fresh water lake in it. Nice and warm swimming.

I'm far left on this one, taken at a quarry we stopped at while on a Jeep tour of the country side.

 Here are most of the people we partied with, I'm dead centre with the white shirt.

It's been months since my last post. You may or may not have noticed but I deleted all the previous entries on a whim. This post will be to re-introduce myself as a player, and this blog will be tracking my process in my newest challenge. As for a bit about me, I am a 23 year old male living in Canada and I attend the University of Lethbridge taking Computer science, of which I have one semester left.

I've been playing poker for quite some time, and I discovered DC about a year ago now. I've been an on and off subscriber and never really anything near a profitable player. I joined the DC 50k hand challenge and while I was winning at 2NL and 5NL before that... I tanked into a huge downswing right after joining so I stopped. In January I decided not to play at all for the month but just to study, and begin a new challenge February 1st.

I did just that, playing a couple of $0.10 MTTs in January (purely for fun) while avoiding any other play. I studied HUSNGs and anything I felt was related, watching videos such as Two Men Enter, Dogis Heads Up, Pr1nnyraiding, Mathematics of NLHE. I also reviewed a ton of hand histories of mine, and on the 2p2 forums. The first of the month rolled around and I started playing with a goal of 300 games and a 10%+ ROI this month. I've had a bad cold since the weekend, so my volume has slowed to a half since then. Below are my results so far.

Right now I should be at 150 games if I am going to reach my volume goal for the month. I need to average 15 games per day on the days that I am able to play, as I won't be able to play while in Cuba later this month. On the upside my ROI is right around where I'd like it to be and if I do hit my ROI and volume goals this month I'll feel confident moving up to the $11.50 HUSNGS.

 Thats it for now, but I'll be keeping this blog full of updates as well as other things relating to my grind.