There’s none to spare for blogging.

Making our reader base feel like rejects,

We surely deserve a flogging.

Up to our ears in work at the moment, and you’ll probably be glad to hear, a new blog site is at the top of the list and should be live and completely functional within the next couple of days. We’ve saved our trip reports to kick off the new site and hopefully you guys will all head on over there and enjoy our exploits. The blog is going to combine about 6 or 7 existing blogs of Life Fish’s (our study group) members and posts from members who don’t have a blog. It’s going to a great way to combine all our services and experience in one sexy, sleek place (I obviously had the biggest hand in the design direction). We’re really hoping to take poker blogging to the next level and give readers something they aren’t used to, I’m hoping once I get a tiny bit of free time I’ll get a chance to make (or get assistance in making) a webcomic which will be linked to the Life Fish Blog.

The book has hit a hurdle, apparently it’s too hard to read for our target demographic. This has lead to the powers that be advising us to split it into two separate versions, a cover-to-cover readable book, and a manual. Frustrating as this is, it’s probably the smartest way to go about it if we want to hit people with a great (but readable) book.

Don’t go anywhere, the best is yet to come, we gonna blow yer mo’fkn mind, yo.

Ps: Apparently my contributions (Or lack of other people’s) is noticed:

Top 5 names for new blog:
5. Aussie Poker
4. Lacie’s Ladyboys
3. Grinder’s Paradise
2. 70% Dutchin’s Blog
1. Wizards Of Oz (or Aus, but having WOO as initials seems better)

<3 DoubleFly.

http://doubleflypoker.blogspot.com

The world we live in today is dog eat dog, money and sense are assets which can be traded freely. You need to be thrifty to keep your wallet full, since every taste, pleasure and need can be sated.. for a price. Casual players (fish) come into poker with multiple mindsets, they can think they are better than they actually are, or they can think that it’s all about luck. They could do this with craps, roulette, blackjack, sportsbetting or any of the house games just the same, yet we field the majority of the blame, because instead of the money being dispersed amongst partner owners of an RSL club, they are split between you, the poker site, and your rakeback affiliate. I don’t know of anyone who looks down upon a club manager for the millions they make for nanna burning her pension through his slot machines.

Everyone in this world save for children and the mentally handicapped are trusted to look after their own finances, it’s assumed that they are intelligent enough to realise that whenever they pay for a product or service, someone else is making money. If you put money into an online poker site and don’t know what rake is, you’re throwing it away.

Ok, so who do I think is on the same level as professional poker players?

Owners of pubs and clubs: They put cover charges in place that only apply to males, they won’t let you in if you’re in a big group of guys, they charge upwards of $12 for drinks that would cost them less than 50c to make, they prey on the young and stupid.

Government run lotto agencies: They never announce your odds or show you how many people have entered each lotto, they are allowed to advertise at any time of the day, encouraging the general citizen that their dreams are but a lotto ticket away.

Advertisers: I’ve spent a bit of time in my life creating flash banners for websites (though nothing with ‘you’re a winner!!!! click here’ emblazoned on it) and I think they do much more damage than poker sites, convincing people to part with their savings to buy stuff they don’t need is scummy to say the least. The way tv advertisements prey on their target audience between shows, advertisments for toys in childrens programs, hardware during the DIY shows, useless crap during the daytime soaps. Advertisers have always, and will always be the sum of the earth, another group of money-grubbers I’m proud to call myself a part of.

The tax office: They use underhanded tactics to force people to pay an unfair amount, and make estimations that can screw families out of their homes, with no proof whatsoever. The way they can go ‘Ok, we assume you made this much this year, prove you didn’t or we’ll tax you accordingly’ and ‘Ok poker player, you won 400,000 and lost 300,000, we’ll tax you 25% of your 400,000′. Unfair legislation, once again proving why people try so hard to screw them back.

Insurance companies: More scum of the earth. They get to have their cake and eat it too, they get a constant income from the premiums, which they never question, you can go in, sign a contract with a huge flaw in it, and you’ll be none the wiser for 20 years until you try to make a claim. They will NEVER let you know you’re unable to make a claim until you already have. Once you make a claim, they’ll fight tooth and nail not to pay it, lawyers included.

Coke and Mcdonalds: While I love their products, and their availability at any time of the day, the likes of them are killing the first world slowly. Mcdonalds and other fast food chains destroy competition with their heavily streamlined food preparation systems which makes their prices impossible to beat. The food and drink is available everywhere for a cheap price, and alternatives are pushed out of the market. Someone who buys two or three fast food meals a week will be doing a lot more damage to their arteries and hip pockets than any poker player could ever hope to do.

Politicians: They’re politicians.

Banks: Banks give credit and finance to those who are unable to reasonably pay it back. They offer credit cards to people on minimum wage without even meeting them in person. This goes for furniture and electronics stores who give those ‘buy now pay later’ deals which involve an interest free period which ends after 12 months or so and the interest is jacked up to over 20%. They give out token invoices to the consumer saying ‘Your bill this month: $0.00′. Scum.

Of all the self-serving scum in the world (and I only counted the legal ones), I don’t feel too bad at being part of a group that takes people’s money in exchange for their enjoyment. Nobody is forcing fish to play poker, if they are going to gamble the money, they can do it against a casino or against us. We aren’t forcing them to take credit, we aren’t locking them into any deal, and we aren’t taking any more than they put on the table.

It’s unethical, yes. But on whose scale?

It’s a good feeling knowing that I have a solid edge, but it’s weird at the same time, spending so much time on the one table. I haven’t done much study into live play and tells but the biggest thing I picked up on was so many players to my left had their hands either on their cards or stack preflop, giving away a huge tell as to what they were going to do. I thought they might have been leveling me, but they more often than not followed through with the action they were representing. A lot of the play was incredibly loose, which made value-betting the premium strategy. You couldn’t really bet for fold equity, there just wasn’t any, plain and simple. Skelm ended up winning a bit, so we walked out with a profit on the night since we were splitting action.

Been cramming the book work lately since we’re behind schedule, something I didn’t want to happen, but with a project that has more than two hands in it, that’s often the case. I’ve been polishing off the articles that I was assigned, and we had a guest author drop out (to be fair we only added him at the last minute, and he’s still helping us with the article), so I’ve taken on that article as well, since we still want to include it.

I’ve handed the last of my Apprenticeship modules in to work as well, which I’ll be a tradesman within the next 3 or 4 weeks. Though poker is quickly becoming a sustainable part of my income, it’s good to know I’ll always be able to get a job for the rest of my life. Overhead Lineworking companies are extremely undermanned in Australia and around the world, there’s a critical skills shortage in the industry and I’ll be able to get a job anywhere on the planet for the rest of my life. I’m glad I stuck it out through the first Lineworking job I had for as long as I did, it made me appreciate the company I’m with now all the more. I guess there’s a lot to be said about long term financial security, it can make a 24 year old do something crazy like go out on a limb, invest his time and money into writing a book and take a leap as large as quitting his job to gamble for a living. Oh well, I’m still young, there’s plenty of time to rebuild losses if I can’t ride the wave long enough.

It’s always best to be your own harshest critic in this industry, and I know that I’m mine. But I think I’m playing a winning game, I can more often than not put myself at the advantage and find profitable situations. I’m still not as aggressive as I’d like to be, but I’m beginning to widen my opening ranges as I get tougher to play against postflop. Skelm has offered to up my stake, and begin coaching me at 100nl, but I still think there’s a lot to learn here that’s going to be the same, but for half the price.

The biggest leak most players that I’ve come up against at 50nl full-ring seem to have is reading flop textures, the person you’re up against and the flop texture should take precedence over the cards you hold. Fortunately for me, the opponents at this stake don’t often bet the flop. There’s just so much money to be made from continuation betting it’s crazy, whether the opponents are playing fit/fold, or they just get scared when they see a 2/3 pot bet, they are bleeding money. Of course though, you want to factor in position, player type and board texture before you just start burning cash, but generally the best way is to throw a bet out there and charge them for the turn. If you’re playing position well your cbet will often be behind a check, whether they call, fold or raise will tell you so much about their hand, and though you had to pay, you have a lot more information than if you checked behind, regardless of your hole cards.

It’s really just basic aggression with a little bit of depth to help you narrow their range, when their range is narrow, you know where you stand, and you have solid reasoning behind making each play.

We’ve been having some problems with out net connection late during the nights, which is good, because the games get horribad around the time the net dies, so I spent some time running a couple of people through the intricacies of TableScan Turbo. Was a pretty fun experience to see the alternative ways you can look at a program based on the games the player is sitting at. I have everything for myself customized down to a tee, table scanning takes into account the custom scoring system I’ve set up, which ranks tables by assigning + or – values to the number of: People in the waitlist, TAGs, regs, fish, multitablers and such. But the other guys I was helping set the program up play at 1/2, which has far less tables, and far tougher regs, so it was a challenge to help them set something up that was customized for their stake, since they perceive ’good tables’ not as the ones with the most fish, but more the ones with less soul-crushing regs.

I’ll also probably be making the official tutorial video for the program which I’m looking forward to, since we’re trying to make names for ourselves as the guys who are on the forefront of the poker software development, it would help our cause if I had some accessible media with a blog/rakeback plug on it.

Sweeney’s one of those cool guys who just seems to have a really relaxed and laid back approach to life. He knows his shit, has solid fundamentals and a grasp on where everything’s at, but he also has a good history, integrity, and character. He taught Skelm and I beer pong when we were in the states last year, and we met a few of his friends who were also pretty awesome, looking forward to catching up with him this year when we head over. Check out his site http://www.splitsuit.com/

Case Study 3: ODog79

ODog79 (William) applied for a stake to play to play $16 18-man turbo SNGs on Pokerstars. He had one reference, a respected member of 2+2 with over 6,000 posts. With an 18% ROI in these games, I gladly accepted his application. Over the next two months, he did exceptionally well in his games, maintaining a 14% ROI with an average of 250 games/week.

Within two months, he was playing the highest-buyin 18-mans that actually fill up — the $60 level. Like many horses and coaching students, we also became friends, talking about poker and other topics over Skype.
I was therefore disappointed when he told me he wanted to end the stake and start playing low-stakes MTTs. I was confident in his poker ability however, so I offered to switch to an MTT stake, so long as he continued playing a smaller volume of 18-mans.

William agreed. He then hit a long breakeven stretch at the 18-mans, while doing very poorly at MTTs. I asked to see HHs, and it was clear he wasn’t adjusting well between the formats. He was starting to play the early game of the 18-mans too loose to reflect his MTT style, and he was making clear errors in the deep-stack portion of his MTTs.

I never require a horse to change game type or buyin when in makeup, as we believe that’s unfair. Nonetheless we made the request that he voluntarily take a break from the MTTs. He agreed, but couldn’t seem to regain his former dominance of 18-mans. It took him six weeks of up-and-down swings to get out of makeup, and he became so frustrated with the swings that he eventually quit playing.

While I will still sometimes let a player transition to a related game type, it’s important not to assume that players will be profitable at the same buyin as their established game. Agree on a maximum percentage of volume that comes from the new game type until the player has a clearly winning track record.

Please note that all player names in the above quotation have been altered for the sake of privacy.