)VERY LONG, CLIFFNOTES UP FRONT)

Today is a good day for an update as it is my birthday and my six-month anniversary of going pro.

Cliffnotes: Even with my worst downswing ever this month, still best…decision…everrrr.

Poker (8.5/10)

Since May, I have grown significantly as a poker player.  Back then, I was getting my feet wet at 100/200 but primarily played 15/30-50/100.  The games were quite soft and I rarely waited longer than a half an hour for a game.

Over the summer I went on an absolute poker tear.  I lucked out into some huge poker days, including the $54,000 win in one 8-hour session of $100/$200 vs. HIV.  I promised my fellow HU regulars I would stop posting graphs and talking about specific results, but suffice it to say I just about doubled my $ goal for the year by the end of the summer.

I also travelled to Vegas this summer for my first WSOP with requin from 2p2, a fellow McGill alumni.  To my surprise, I made it very deep to the end of Day 2 in my first (and only so far) WSOP event -the $1500 event.  I ended up cashing in the top 50 out of 2800 for $10500.  LOL DONKAMENTS.

After that I got sick, probably from handling chips all day and took the rest of the week off from tournaments and played some 5/10NL and 100/200 limit at the bellagio and the 10/20nl at the wynn.

I also spent some time partying with what can only be described as the’ ‘headsup limit brain trust’.  It consisted of Fatal Fog, RobLP and SallyWoo, womenandwine, greasylarry and a few others.

We had a blast, especially at the NY, NY piano bar.  The two pianists were excellent, but kept on playing absolutely horrible modern country music, to the delight of the other half of the audience.  Drunkenly, I stumbled over to the piano player and asked him how much to not play any more Country music for the rest of the night.  He glanced at me briefly and replied ‘$100′.  I whipped out a wad of hundos and slapped one in his tip jar.  He looked at me, looked at the $100 and stopped playing the song immediately.  “I have an announcement,” the piano player said.  “This kid just gave $100 to not hear anymore country music for the rest of the night”.  Half the crowd cheered and half the crowd booed loudly.  “Anyone want to beat that?”.  No one stepped up to the plate to defend Alan Jackson and friends so the rest of the night was Country-free.

When I came back from the WSOP I started playing 200/400 online and, after a rocky start and a month break from poker in July (Europe vacation, see below), I destroyed the games in August for my biggest month yet.  Now I was sitting from 30/60 to 300/600 exclusively.  Even though it was my biggest month, already the games had gotten significantly harder at all levels, there were more regulars at high-limits and thus there were less fish to go around.  As a result of worse games and sitting at higher limits and my refusal to play good high-limit regulars, I waited longer and longer for games.  Back in March I would wait around maybe 15 minutes for a game and only had to sit at my computer for a few hours a day.  In the last six weeks I sat around all day and played probably an hour for every four hours I waited.  The players that stick around also tend to be a lot tougher so both my edge and overall hands per hour decreased significantly.

In September the ground fell out from under me:

I just could not win.  I can also say with complete honesty that I did not tilt at all during this entire time.  My biggest strength as a player is my emotional intelligence, my ability to avoid tilt and to stay consistent and calm under pressure.  And damn there was a lot of pressure this month.

Some of the lines that are straight-down are not even one session.  In three different session of $200/400 and 1 session of $300/600 I lost 70k in under 1000 hands.  I would lose 20k at 200/400, then leave and take a break, come back lose 20k to another mope, rinse, repeat.  In fact, I think this month is the best limit poker I have ever played in my life and I still game selected as well as I could given the current game conditions.  Either I am delusional, or heads-up limit poker is a cruel, twisted game - or both.

As you can probably tell from the last chunk of the graph, I have moved back down to $15/$30 to $100/$200 (no more huge jumps, just little bumps).

The one saving grace of this month poker-wise was my trip to Vegas with my best friend from highschool who introduced me to poker.  In four days, I made $10,000 playing the $10/$20NL deepstack at the Bellagio and the Wynn, with a little $60/$120 limit mixed in as well.  There’s so much to talk about but I will just give three quick highlights:

1) I got stood up by Iceman

“Iceman”, as he calls himself, or “Black Teddy” as everyone else calls him, started talking **** to me at a $10/$20NL game.  I didn’t even play a hand with him; it was pretty hard to since he plays a few hands, gets up and walks around talking to floor staff and showing off his absurd bling, comes back, plays a few hands, gets up, visits his friends at another game.  I would be surprised if he averaged more than 5 hands per hour in a poker room.

Anyways, after I made a bad 4-bet bluff against his friend and sucked out on him, Teddy started talking ****.  “I was playing this game when you were in diapers”, “my son is about your age”, etc.  I generally just laughed it off and ignored him and then he started talking smack about how he was the greatest limit player in the world.  So I asked him if he wanted to play headsup and he just kind of laughed and shutup.  I kept pestering him until finally he agreed to a $10,000 headsup freezeout.  We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet the next night at midnight at the Bellagio.  Everyone at the table told me Teddy is all talk and probably wasn’t going to show.  Sure enough, he never showed up in the poker room the next day and missed our midnight HU game.  If anyone sees him, tell him he owes Gildwulf, the kid who was in diapers when he was playing $10/$20NL, a $10,000 freezeout.

2) I met Crazy Mike and he obviously challenged me to huhu.  Anyone who has met Crazy Mike can tell you how OCD, off-the-wall crazy he is so in the interest of time I’ll just move on.  Long story short, we played two $10k freezeouts that lasted nine hours in the middle of the Venetian; he won the first one and I won the second, so I ended up down about $200 in rake overall.  I actually really enjoyed hanging out with him, playing him, especially the epic trashtalking.

Back to online.  Overall, I am still up a ton for the year and even with my terrible downswing this month I beat my $ goal for the year.  I still have $150,000 online so I’m comfortably rolled for whatever I feel like playing.

In a way, I’m actually glad this downswing happened since it gave me time to think and prepared me for the worst poker can dish out.  It taught me a few things:

1) Even though I don’t tilt and psychologically I can handle these downswings and I am definitely a winner at $200/$400 and $300/$600 and have the bankroll to play, it’s not life +EV to play $200/$400+.  There are almost no games now and the sample size ends up being so small it’s not worth it.  Waiting around for 7 hours to play a $300/$600 game and then having some guy hit and run you for $5000 is not my idea of a productive poker day.

2) Now that I realize that, I am happy playing $15/$30-$100/$200 and probably making just as much since there is less waiting.  Maybe one day when poker isn’t 99.9999% of my active income or if there are more games available I will take a stab at the nosebleeds again, but for now it is just not worth my time.

3) It’s clear to me the writing on the wall for headsup limit.  When I went pro in March, I thought I had a couple of years of good games left.  I would be surprised if headsup limit on Full Tilt at the $100/$200 and above lasts more than a few months before it completely dries up.  I need a backup plan fast.

3) My back up plan is moving down to the limits I was at in May, as I mentioned above, and also to take up PLO seriously.  I played 3000 hands this month at $1/$2 PLO 6-max and eked out a decent profit.  Hopefully in a few months I will be able to move up and make a decent living off of it if headsup limit dies.

That’s my poker update in a nutshell.  Bad downswing, but I came through and learned a few things about myself and where my next move should be.

New Condo, aka ‘The House That HIV Built’: 10/10

Speaking of move, after a lot of thought I bought a two-bedroom condo townhouse ($320,000) for my girlfriend and I.  We just moved in September 1st!  The place is in a great neighborhood right in downtown Toronto and is absolutely stunning.  I will post pics later this week before I ruin it with my birthday houseparty this weekend:)

In terms of getting a mortgage as a poker player, it was difficult but doable.  I basically explained to my broker the situation- I had just quit my job and because I had declared my poker income on my US taxes (I’m a dual citizen, it’s complicated) I had no real history of poker income in Canada.  I showed him how much money I had though and offered to pay 25% down.  He worked the system so I just needed my last two years of stated income, my girlfriend’s current income, the downpayment and good credit.  Overall, considering the extenuating circumstances it went pretty smoothly.  Also, we put a clause in where I can pay up to 20% of my principal down in one month every year which means I can feasibly pay it off within five years.

So far living in my new place is incredible.  I have my own room just for poker and music (a desk on one side and a keyboard on the other) and huge kitchen space with granite countertops.  This was a big selling point for me since I do a ton of cooking and use up a lot of space.

The general plan is to stay in the place for at least 4-5 years while my girlfriend works and possibly gets an MBA in Toronto.  Depending on the real estate market we will either flip it in five years or rent it out and I’ll just buy another place.
Travel: 10/10

Over the summer, I travelled all over including a month in Europe with my girlfriend.  We hit up Barcelona, Rome, Florence, Athens and the Greek Islands and had an absolutely amazing time.  Our favorite spots were Florence, the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen, and the Greek Islands, where we stayed in a scenic hostel right by the ocean, suntanned, relaxed and ate home-made Moussaka.

Briefly, some other travel highlights of the summer included:
-traveling to DC visiting close friends
-going to Virginia to be the best man in one of my highschool buddies’ wedding
-going to Montreal for his bachelor party before and just running absolutely hog-wild
-surprising my brother by flying into Boston for five days to attend my niece’s first birthday party (thank you, flexible poker schedule)
-my niece making the baby hand signal for ‘i love you’ (two crossed arms) and cuddling on my shoulder (thank you again, poker)
-Vegas twice (as I said)

Lots of traveling!  I was considering going with my parents to Mexico for a few days in October and to Hawaii with some poker players in November for ten days but, honestly, I am traveled out.  I want to explore my new neighborhood, find my new favorite butcher, coffee shop, cd store, etc.  Also, I am taking some classes and traveling royally messes that up.

Cooking: 6/10. No real update here, the cooking classes were suspended for the summer.  I’m taking a class on Mediterranean cooking now, spurred by my visit to Europe and I have learned a ton.  I actually turned down an opportunity to T.A. a class on vegetarian cuisine because I was traveling so much this fall and I have (relatively) a lot on my plate.  In October/November I am going to take a vegetarian Indian course and in the Winter I will probably take ‘Culinary Arts 2′ (the sequel to the basic cooking course I took last Fall).

Music: 7/10

Because I have been traveling so much I haven’t had much time for music or gigs since my last update.

However, I signed up for classical voice lessons with the Royal Conservatory and had my first lesson last week.  We clicked instantly and I immediately signed up for a years’ worth of lessons afterward.  I completely blew the teacher away and we are both excited to work together.

One other exciting piece of music news: I told him I was interested in going back to school to get trained in voice but I didn’t want to get another B.A. and spend four years doing it.  He told me that there are diploma programs in performance (two great ones in Toronto, actually) that are only two years and just focus on performance aspects (ear training, harmony, choirs, opera, master classes, coaching, etc.).  This is right up my alley and I am very excited to apply for next September (unfortunately the Jazz faculties don’t do this with voice).  The one catch is that applications are due December 1st and you have to send in an audition DVD with three different arias in different languages and do an audition and interview in February.  My classical technique is very rusty so this will be a challenge, but we both think it’s doable.  In fact, after just one lesson my teacher said he would speak on my behalf to his friend who heads the opera program at [the school].  He said “I referred [the head] of the program this tenor a few years ago that had a lyric tenor voice similar to yours and now is studying at [the school].  I’ll meet with her and let her know you are coming and that you are like the guy I sent, but better”.

I should have plenty of time to play poker and do this program at the same time.

Wish me luck!

Overall Quality of Life: 9/10

A month ago I would have said 10/10 for my quality of life.  Even with the worst downswing of my life though, I am still at 9/10.  Because at the end of the day, even if I have a bad poker day or get sick of playing, I can remember all the good things poker has brought to my life in just six months: more time with my family, more time to pursue music and the means to travel wherever I want whenever I want.  Because of poker, I played in a World Series event for the first time and paid for my Vegas trip and then some.  Because of poker, I am the first person in my friend group to own his own home.   Because of poker, I got to know my family a little better this year.  And because of poker, I’m going to have the time to cram a year’s worth of music preparation into two months and kick ass at those auditions.

Zach

In Canada, we like to keep things simple.  We like our igloos warm, our politics boring, and our beer served to us on little conveyor belts at ‘The Beer Store’.  This last item is a great Canadian invention.  We have an entire store dedicated to beer with a very simple process: you point to the beer you want from a wall of logos, a server brings it to you and you pull it along on a conveyer belt and pay at the front.  Very simple and easy.  The only problem is the occasional crazy homeless person, which The Beer Store attracts in droves.

A few days ago, I hit up the beer store in my new neighborhood to restock for my regular Sunday night dinner party with friends (yes, I am a yuppie).  Inside the store is a serious line-up with a commotion at the front.  I ignore it for now, order my beer and dutifully start rolling it along the conveyor belt.  The commotion gets louder and I turn to see what it is.

A haggard-looking red-faced man in his 40s is gesturing wildly and yelling at a 20-something clerk about, what else, beer.  Apparently, the clerk refuses to serve him because he is drunk:

Clerk: Sir, I can’t serve you, you’ve had too much to drink.

DG: Look buddy, I’ve only had one drink! (hiccup)

Clerk: I’m sorry sir, that is the policy.

This is when Clerk 2 steps in and says to DG “Sir, he (clerk #1) is just doing his job’.

The DG is so drunk though that he misinterprets this completely as saying ‘get a job’ and just FLIPS out, swearing and pointing and yelling “Don’t tell me to get a job, you little shit!” while Clerk 2 is trying to apologize and point out that’s not what he said at all.  At this point the line is 20-or-so people long and everyone in the room is watching.

Finally, Clerk 1 asks DG to leave.  DG turns to him, gets right in his face and yells “go fuck your mother”, clears his throat and hocks a big loogie RIGHT IN THE GUY’S FACE.  Clerk 1 is just completely stunned, mucus dripping down his forehead.  Clerk 2 starts yelling and threatens to call the police.  Finally, DG storms out and gives everyone the middle finger.

Moral of the story: don’t get between crazy drunk homeless guys and their beer.  Nobody wins.

Hello 2p2!

Over the last year I have recorded a blog at cardrunners here. Mat’s offer of unlimited hookers and blow were too good to pass up though, so I’ve decided to move it to my old stomping ground, 2p2.

I’m super jetlagged from traveling around Europe with my gf (more on that soon, possibly with pics…of Europe) so I will give a brief poker introduction and call it a day.

I’ve been playing poker as a student of the game for about three years now and have been a professional poker player since March 25, 2008, when I quit a well-paying career-track job to go pro and pursue writing and playing music.

My bread-and-butter poker game is headsup limit, anywhere from 15/30 limit to 200/400 limit. You can find me at the Full Tilt tables waiting for fishies under the same name.

In the real world, my name is Zach and I’m 23 years old. I live very comfortably with my girlfriend in Toronto.

I used to work as a public opinion research consultant downtown doing mostly public affairs research (running polling for political campaigns, governments, etc.), but also managing projects in other sectors such as health, education, and non-profit.

My other interests include singing/songwriting, cooking, reading (I read 8-10 books a month on anything from political philosophy to Russian literature to crime fiction), politics, and the other usual 20-something activities.

Since my last post on cardrunners, a lot has happened including:

-my first world series of poker, where I played one event and ended up cashing for 10x buyin (yay donkaments)

-I traveled to dc/virginia for a week to be the best man at a high-school friend’s wedding

-I spent the last three weeks travelling around Europe with my girlfriend, from London to Spain, Italy and Greece and back again

-I’ve gotten fat off of moussaka and wine and lazing about in the sun

So stay tuned for more updates with pics after I get back from London and sleep off the jet lag.