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?

The Book

The book is very near completion. We’ve tagged a couple of extra guest chapters on right at the end but the authors we chose along with the content is worth the added work / delay. I’m hoping by this Sunday Johnny and I can have everything that’s required from us more or less complete so our editor can make more headway and the book can hit publication in the very near future.

Poker

For the most part I’m pretty happy with everything going on around me. Dusty and I had a bit of a break from coaching for a while so he could catch up on his various business ventures and also play in the Party Poker Big Game but now that is out of the way we’ve resumed regular coaching sessions which I feel is helping my game progress at a steady rate. In addition to that I have a very active and tight nit study group consisting of primarily mid-high stakes players that has meant I’m never short of somebody solid to sweat me or to discuss a hand with. I’ve been meaning to get back to writing more strategy posts on RolledOnTheRiver (and will do so) but unfortunately between the book, poker and CaptureRake I either lack the motivation at the end of the day or simply don’t have the energy.

I’ve also started playing live poker on the weekends. There’s a couple of very soft 10/20 and 2/5 games running lately at StarCity and although the rake is rather bad (albeit improved recently) – it’s a change that keeps poker more interesting for me. Both games (on initial impressions) play much softer then any online table (100nl and above respectively) and I definitely think I have a large enough edge to justify taking a night away from online play to log some live hands. Oddly enough I’ve never lost my taste for live poker even though almost every online pro that I know can’t stand the thought of it. I’m hoping that by resuming a semi-active live schedule I can get some interesting posts on the topic as I think a lot of people coming from online poker to live poker either disregard the live table dynamic or continue stacking light in situations where many a live player wouldn’t (button vs blinds being the primary example).

CaptureRake

The affiliate Johnny and I started just a couple of months ago (http://capturerake.com) is now finally making considerable money that makes it feel a lot more like a legitimate business. I thought that the FullTilt affiliate change would be the nail in the coffin but it seems that it hasn’t slowed us down in the slightest. We’ve continued bringing on board 10k+ MGR guys who are converting from PokerStars to FullTilt (thank-you horrible shortstack changes) and are now at a point where if we didn’t bring anybody else on board at all we’d still have money to burn.

Life

Not too much to add here. I’ve made a few interstate trips recently but nothing too exciting and for the most part I’m just content playing and improving on my poker. I’m more or less working as much as possible now as of mid June I’ll be travelling to Hawaii, New York and Las Vegas with my study group (very much a social poker group also) so I don’t see any reason to travel between now and then and would rather get hands logged.

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.