Rolled On The River

So Skelm convinced me to have a shot at the Dream Job (Australia) tournament on Stars, I’m not really a tourney guy, and I didn’t really feel like dedicating my whole night to it but it was pretty good for a freebie. I was planning on writing that that evening, which I skipped since being fairly new to tournaments I wanted to learn as much as I could. The field was, 2986 players, with the last 9 making it into the finals. I got out 11th. Pissed off..

It was interesting, but annoying all the same, with no cash prizes or consolation for the hours lost staring at the screen and winning flips, but that’s poker. We went over some of the spots I could have played better, which was enlightening, but I don’t think I’ll switch to being an MTT pro any time soon. Some interesting things the last few weeks in town, 5,200 people stripped naked for photographer Spencer Tunick in front of the Sydney Opera House. How they organise something like that, and what type of people attend those sorts of things puzzles me, but each to their own, it’s a pretty impressive feat and brings the city a little publicity. Secondly, we had the Queen Mary 2, a huge luxury cruise liner pull into Sydney. I was in town at the time so I saw this thing and it’s pretty fucking sweet, incredible how something so huge can stay buoyant.

Anyway, back to it.

I’ve been blogging here about the book recently, which has taken up most of my time as of late, but I wanted to steer away from that and just ramble on about a subject that has been floating around in my head.

I tried to steer as far away from social networking sites as humanly possible for a long time, I have the attention span of an ADD puppy and it takes a fair bit of effort to get me to sit down at the tables or to research and write for the book. It’s hardly that I’m not passionate about those things, it’s just that it takes discipline and a conscious effort for me to not let my mind wander onto something else. Enter Facebook, this wonder of the internet and similar programs/sites are annihilating the productivity of the world, our most base curiosities can be sated instantly as we’re electronically tethered to almost everyone in our life through it. We want to know who’s the same and who has changed. Whether we’re there for the gossip, pictures of loved ones, meaningless quizzes, stupid games we are all giving in to our desires and ignoring what we should be doing.

Most of the people I have on my Facebook are people I knew from high school, co-workers, or poker players. Just reading through some of the posts and comments makes me want to hold my head in my hands and cry, you see the same people saying the same stupid shit and going through the same cycles over and over again. Girls complaining about how guys treat them one day, then heading out to a club to get hammered the next. Guys beating their chest and acting tough one day, wondering why they got into a fight and ended up in overnight lockup the next. I’m not better than these people, maybe I’ve learned from others’ mistakes to avoid making them myself, but that’s all. I’ve seen the womanizing jocks from high school end up having kids they didn’t plan on, then trying to convince everyone else that because they can father a child they’re more mature and further along on the road of life than everyone else. It’s just sad that so many people who had hopes and dreams back in school just end up coasting through life, their biggest aspiration is a new car or a pay rise.

This could steer into a philosophical post but I’ll leave it before it get’s to that. I’m still working, I have a long way to go, one of the best things about the poker industry is you’re working with people who are independent and goal-oriented. Sure, you may get your toes stepped on by someone climbing their way to fame and fortune, but the majority of people are full of life and chose poker because they wanted to break out of the norm. I guess what I’m trying to say is plan ahead, pick some goals and stick to them, don’t get caught up in everyone else’s shit, and don’t let other people drag you down with their mediocrity. If you want money, it’s out there to be made, if you want good friends, they’re out there too. It’s been proven time and time again that success is mostly due to planning and determination.

Or you can add me on Facebook and cry on your wall about failing another university subject. I’m sure if you go out drinking or shopping to relieve the pain your marks will magically improve, it’s not like you need to work for anything in life, I’m sure things will change for the better.

No regrets, right?

We’re at a pretty strange place right now, Skelm has been on Skype constantly the last week or so co-ordinating guest authors, reviewing content and writing. The poor guy has been clocking 19 hour days, working in between grinding sessions. I came into the office after a week of being interstate to find McDonald’s rubbish strewn across the office desk and an unshaven, red-eyed fool sitting there.. ‘Oh I got into contact with some of our guest authors, should be getting the Legalities chapter in soon, and the Rakeback content is coming along swimmingly’. He hadn’t slept for over 30 hours and was prepared to soldier on, my recommendation was for him to go to bed but what would I know?

‘Oh and Zandry said he’s been waiting ages for you to send him the TableScan Turbo article for final approval’. The funny thing was, I had sent Michael the article to review and then forward to Zandry. Five days ago. My confusion was met with a blank stare. ‘Oh, THAT’S what that was’. I thought it would be in our editor’s mailbox by now. Time for sleep dude, do it when you wake up.

We’ve only got one chapter that hasn’t been started in one way, shape or form. This is really good news, everything else has been written, is being written, reviewed, researched, allocated, or collaborated on. It’s all moving ahead, and within a month, the workload will be shifted from us to Scott, our editor. I’m really looking forward to/dreading the day when the flow of content is out of my hands. It’s still our baby, a foetal imprint of our collaborative input, eugenics of information flow, without the Nazi overtones. Soon it won’t be ours to shape, the delivery will be handed over to the powers that be, and its acceptance or rejection will be on the shoulders of the community and public.

Infanticide is commonplace in Sparta.

Will it be appreciated for what it is? What will it be remembered for? What will the average reader get from it? Will Scott be pissed that I used a metaphor to describe him as a midwife?

I guess time will tell.

We’re in the thick of it, at the point of no return, I’ve been typing like a madman trying to pump out as much book content as I can at every opportunity. I’m still working full-time though, and I’ve been travelling away for work 5 days a week, which is really killing my productivity, I’d like to just take a few weeks off and do everything I can get done but it’s not feasible at the moment. We’re pulling everything we can together so we can get content off to our editor right away, but things just get in the road, the review process takes time. Contacting sources, getting permissions, making deals, changing schedules, reworking scopes, rewriting articles and then hoping to god the developer of the program you’re writing about, or the in-house review team don’t shoot your hard work down in flames.

I just finished one of the introductory articles, I got a little freedom with this one, It’s about the jump to taking poker on as a profession, it was a breath of fresh air being able to just write. I still worked from the notes Skelm and I created, but it flowed so much easier than writing about software since we gave ourselves the liberty of expression, compared to the stricter tutorial style we had been keeping to before. Not that there’s anything wrong with the software articles, they just leave little room for interpretation, let alone opinion. We’re doing the (hopefully) last change to the table of contents today, removing just as much as we’re adding by taking away some of the fluff and chapters that don’t add enough or change too rapidly to really fit into the book while also adding some more tournament content.

I’ve been writing about this little table selection tool for Away From The Table, the book Skelm and I are writing if you’re behind on the news.. Or just didn’t care.

It’s really great, I know I’m supposed to table select like a madman, it’s as important as playing position, but I’ve never really delved into how deeply you can customize these programs. I got put in contact with the… I don’t know what he want’s to be called, lead developer? Programmer? The guy who makes the thing do the stuff it does. Anyway, I sent Zandry what I had been writing about his product and he seemed pretty excited, it’s great to have these industry contacts and really work with the guys who have poured their heart and soul into a program. We want to do good by them, not in the sense of a masturbatory crusade of self gratification, but this is someone’s baby, this is their passion, job, and often, livelihood. We’re just a couple of douchebags cataloging the highlights of their works, and taking credit for bringing their stuff a little more exposure while they plod along adding updates, tweaking their code and listening to community feedback hoping to god the poker world doesn’t collapse into it’s own asshole, or someone with a billion dollar bankroll doesn’t snatch their idea out from under them.

Anyway, before this turns into a shed-a-single-tear hero montage, I’ll quickly run through what makes TableScan awesome:

You can use multiple databases, and multiple sites simultaneously: I haven’t tried this yet, but I will by the time I’ve finished screwing around.

You can set custom fish definitions based on statistics: Fish come in many shapes and sizes, identifiable usually by their VPIP and PFR stats, but they can often slip under the radar, you can set multiple different fish definitions based on statistics you choose. Your game/stake/limit probably has a completely different style of fish to mine, therefore you can make the weak players stand out straight away.

Both Scan Filters and List filters: You can define everything that appears in your list, if you only want to see tables with 8/9 players, you can filter them, colour them, or order them any way you want. You can set custom filters for players that have VPIP’s between 10-30, are playing on 3 tables and have less than 20BB and colour them fucking purple if you want.

Bend me, shake me, any way you want me: Totally customizable table columns, if you got any more customizable it would be a fucking excel spreadsheet, you can move everything around, add and remove about 26 default table columns or create your own.

Right Click is your friend: I hate programs that make you choose from the File, Edit etc, dropdown lists for something that you need right now. TableScan, like many great programs has a comprehensive right-click menu, you can assign players as regs, do one-click poker site searches, or click-drag over a bunch of tables, right-click and sit down/join waiting lists on all of them.

I feel like I’m selling the Slap-Chop here. It’s in beta, Download this shit.

Johnny.

As you may have seen, Jason Ho is all over the popular poker forums, this is because former students have made allegations against him:

The overall feeling is that Jason owes his students a full refund, but also that StoxPoker.com should share in part of the blame because their coach quality control measures weren’t stringent enough in weeding out someone of this nature, and students were basing many of their financial decisions regarding coaching and staking based of the reputation StoxPoker gave Ho.

When confronted with these allegations in the StoxPoker.com private forums, Jason dodged the issues, made veiled threats and tried to organise a prop bet to combat the claims about his winrate, even though that was the least of anyone’s problems. I never had to deal with the guy personally, but being Stox’s productions manager, Skelm did.

It’s just a shame to see what happens when someone has the power of influence over many, and abuses their trust. Whether or not every detail of every allegation is true, the common theme is that Jason Ho is not, and was never the million dollar winning high stakes pro that was only out to help people improve their game through his charitable nature. StoxPoker’s damage control measures are to refund a portion of coaching to each of the people who have been burned by Jason. How many people come forward, and how they will determine who has a legitimate claim and deserves a refund I’m sure we’ll find out soon.

Original Stoxpoker.com thread – http://www.stoxpoker.com/forums/showthread.php?t=29205

TwoPlusTwo thread – http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/101/coaching-advice/where-did-jason-ho-thread-get-moved-695466/

One of the many programs I’ve been focusing writing on for the book is StoxEV, this little beast is a really in-depth EV calculation tool. You create a hand in flowchart format, giving each player specific hole cards or ranges, and then you can throw some actions in, add a bunch of conditions, set parameters for flops, and weight decisions. You can basically make a tree that represents something that did happen and fuck with it to find more profitable lines, or you can create a big tree full of ‘what if’s’ and build scenarios.

This is true EV, risk vs. reward with all the facts, and all the assumptions. Blinds, site rake, caps, antes, tournament structures are all catered for, including ICM conversions. You can use the program to make unexploitable shoves, create ranges with only +EV hands for situations, or use the powerful math engine to get results accurate enough to hang on your wall.

I’m glad I had to research, play, and try to break this program for the book, it’s taught me a lot, and I hope what I’ve written about it will do it justice.

You can grab it from http://www.stoxev.com

As you may or may not have noticed my blog has been merged with Skelm’s, the reasoning is twofold, firstly, we want to create a fun and engaging blog that combines his technical expertise and my overwhelming bullshittery. Secondly, we have a little announcement:

We’re writing a book.

Around the time Dusty Schmidt was finishing up writing ‘Treat your poker like a business’, he contacted Skelm to see if he could write an article for the book relating to Rakeback and Affiliate deals, upon completion, the cogs started turning in Skelm’s entrepreneurial little skull. People didn’t know much about rakeback, it takes a long time for everyone to learn about affiliate deals and VIP schemes. Coaching site and staking knowledge doesn’t come instantly, you don’t just pick that sort of information up from a book… yet. Professional Poker – Away from the table, the concept was born, a book about everything ELSE, no strategy, no tips and tricks for taking down a pot, a book about the community, the resources available, the tracking software, HUD’s, scripts and the like.

He sat with me in KFC as we were discussing prospects for writing something that would be worth reading, we know a guy who has just self-published a book, through Skelm’s position with StoxPoker we know coaches for all stakes and game types, designers, programmers, software authors, representatives for various sites and products, the foundation was there all along, waiting for us to take the initiative. In addition to this Skelm has also worked for Hold’em Manager Support helping him have a grasp of the areas people struggle to learn early on.

We aren’t known for squandering opportunities, and this one came begging, small enough to turn over in a few months, large enough to destroy anything that could resemble a social life, but important enough to cause a sick feeling in the stomach at the thought of letting it pass by waiting for someone else to pick it up. Within a couple of weeks the idea picked up momentum and we presented it to Dusty who agreed that it needed to be done, and we were the right guys to do it. A day later we were on a call with Scott Brown of Imagine Publishing creating a work schedule and debating the terms of a contract.

It’s been a little over a month since that fateful Toasted Sweet Chilli Twister Combo meal (Pepsi Max, I’m on a diet, thanks), and we’re getting stuck into the meat of it, we’ve invited a few specialist guest authors to write articles about their forte, but kept the bulk of the content for ourselves. The table of contents list has changed twice, and we’re having new ideas for articles every day, so it’s hard to pinpoint an exact release date (however it will be in the next few months), but we’re well on our way with most of the people we needed to contact having responded positively. We’ve got at least 15 people contributing or assisting with the project in their various fields, and clocked well over 10,000 words of writing so far.

In addition to all of this my handle has been changed from padawan to Dutchin to represent my symbolic coming of age in the wide world of poker, though I’m still a fledgling apprentice, I hope I can step up and be worth my weight in information for this monster of a project. Watch this space!

Dutchin.

I haven’t had much time to play poker lately, with work shutting down for Christmas, apparently lots of people want their powerlines up and ready to go for the silly season. This has lead to 18 hour shifts, 7 day weeks, and all the drama that comes with that. I decided to stay home for the holidays and work on my game, as well as a few other little things, and one secret project, which I hope comes to fruition since it’s been something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid, and should net a decent amount of money, which is helpful.

My ratio of study to play, for a few reasons, has been unhealthily skewed, I suppose time constraints have given me grief in this department, but It’s been 90:10 study:work, which is always a bad idea. Being able to implement strategies you’ve learned is so important, and yet I’m failing miserably. I’ve taken comfort in the fact that I had my first sleep-in for two months last night, and I LOVE sleeping in, so other forces must have been at work in regards to time restriction.

I’ve been reading Dusty Schmidt’s ‘Treat Your Poker Like A Business’, and so far (I’ll reserve final judgment for when I’m finished, of course..) it’s pretty frikkin’ sweet. The moral is ‘you reap what you sow’, but the level of depth is awesome, the different perspectives make the book a worthwhile purchase. I’m a big girl when it comes to reading books, I’ll do anything to procrastinate or get out of study, it’s one of the faults I’ve been working on since the beginning, not getting distracted. So when Skelm gave me the book and said ‘here, read’, I didn’t know what to expect, previous books that have been shoved in my face tout ‘over 200 hand examples’, and as such, chip away at a portion of my soul, but this book isn’t like that. It’s refreshing, well, so far anyway.

The target came flying at me, my reflexes kicked in… I stumbled and it slapped my hand, hard. Enough force to soar beyond my reach from the rebound against my stinging flesh, but then the agreed rule played over in my head, a voice that called: ‘One hand, one bounce’. In my dress shoes I launched my body forward, stepping with the power and tenacity of an enraged Spartan. I eyed the objective in slow motion, it moved so effortlessly away from the earth it had just kissed, another touch of the ground and it was all over. I dived, soaring through the field, tucking my head for a roll, knowing that all calculations had been made, the trajectory plotted, my hand on an intercept course for victory.

My grasp was firm, my resolve true. I had caught the ball.

I met up with some friends of Skelm at the APPT poker tournament in Star City, I didn’t participate in any events, but was more there for the networking, getting to know some of the local talent, making new friends. They all stayed in Sydney for a few days, in a hotel room for the duration of the tournament, drinking, grinding, and generally having fun. The group composed of LacieK, Newmanni, Eurekakid, Petteytheft, Skelm, Ponchoco and myself, with a few others who we met along the way. We all got drunk and played a rotation game that turned into a crazy shove-fest even though we were playing mixed games we wouldn’t have much of a grasp on when sober, let alone drunk. I was there for 3 meals that were paid for via credit card roulette, with Petteytheft losing one, and Eurekakid losing twice, freeroll, baby!

On the last day we had a game of cricket, Petteytheft being American had no idea what was going on, but somehow showed great potential, and bowled Newmanni out, we played a rotation, with whoever took the wicket got to bat, and all ended up with a pretty fair game. LacieK got injured and sat down in his fielding position, and snatched the ball out of the air when it was belted towards him like a true champion. But it was late in the day, when we had all decided to call it quits next wicket, when I spied my objective screaming towards me at mach 3, and it was on.