PrimordialAA's Poker Life

Rake-Crunch / Lock Poker - Launch / Promotion

2011-07-21T15:25:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, I know a few of you know, but i'm officially announcing the launch of my new affilliate site www.rake-crunch.com . Site still isn't perfect, but it's to the point where we're excited to launch it and get on with giving out rewards and launching some cool promotions.

So anyways, on to the promotion details. For next month (August) we're going to be offering the following promotion on Lock Poker.

Highest Raker in August: 30" Monitor (Dell U3011 30" Monitor), or $1,000 cash.

Two Random WInners: Apple's new Ipad 2 (2) or $500 cash
[new sign ups only, all who rake over $500 in August are entered into the raffle]

Four Random Winners: One Hour of coaching with PrimordialAA (2) , One hour of coaching with Pistons87 (2) or $150 cash per hour of coaching
[anyone who rakes over $250 is entered into the raffle]

Feedback always appreciated, still a really new site, working out alot of bugs, implementing some of the features, polishing, etc., but hope you all enjoy it, and the promos to come :).

If you have any questions or need help w/anything, don't hesitate to get in touch w/me at bryanpellegrino@gmail.com

Blog has been moved

2010-05-17T23:31:00.001-07:00

blog has been moved to:

http://www.cardrunners.com/blog/PrimordialAA

Costa Rica - Day 1

2010-03-12T17:41:00.000-08:00

So, a TON of pictures, prolly excessively slow, but this is all the stuff we did on our first day here

[People in the picture are myself, wife (Mel), sister (pregnant if you cant notice from pictures), and her fiance, who has been around our family for like 8-10 yrs, so really close w/him/them]

Walk down the beach and get some fresh squeezed orange juice, fresh tropical fruit, and omletes for breakfast :)

Play some pool after breakfast before we head out

Walk the beach for an hour after breakfast

Pass our house along the way :-p

Get back to the house and chill for a bit

Bust open a coconut for a snack/drink :-p

Some Random guys carrying compost, on our way for a horse ride

Horse riding time!

Our guide... spoke spanish only, he was the man! :) :-p

Finish off with some Costa Rican dinner and foosball :)

Tomorrow we're doing 8 hours out on a fishing boat, to catch these:

Sailfish, blue marlin, dorado, rooster fish, tuna and wahoo, some pics below:

NBC HU Championship

2010-03-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

alright, os, it comes but once a year, my favorite event to bet on, and to sweat. So anyways, just thought it'd be fun to show who I drafted, and let everyone else sweat if they want, Here are my pools $125, $250, and $500, and who I drafted.

$125

Dario Minieri
Brock Parker
Paul Wasicka
Jesper Hougaard
Kara Scott
Joe Hachem
Shawn Rice
William Huntress

$250

Cada
Eastgate
Annette
Houugard
Farha
Scott
Ramirez
Wilson

$500

Dario Minieri
Peter Eastgate
Leo Wolpert
Pieter De-Korver
John Paul Kelly
Joe Hachem
William Huntress
Stephen Quinn

You can follow the matches here:

http://www.pokernews.com/live-reporting/2010-nbc-heads-up/championship/day1/

and the brackets are up here:

http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/35642443/ns/sports-poker_on_nbc/

Even tho I didnt pull him in the draft, def. will be rooting for Mercier, and a special dark horse I can't reveal yet ;p

Best Month Ever -- New Record :)

2009-11-30T13:48:00.000-08:00

wow... pretty sick month. Alot of stuff has been going on, BOCP HU and ME were sick and I played INSANELY good, incredibly happy with how my live game has been, so couldnt ask for more there. Stuck in France due to some ridiculous laws with the puppy and the lame french government, so wife is back home in states at our new house and im here til Dec. 16th or so =/.

Anyways, online has been ridiculous, I think I set the record for most HU SNGs played in a month (obv largely due to FTP's super turbos).

Profit for the month from playing: $44,140.06
Rakeback from FTP: $7,155
Rake Race (2nd): $2,500
Rakeback from Stars: $1,081.84

Total:
------

+$54,876.90

Obv super sick, my best month previous to that was +35k, so a big jump, very very happy about it, even though most of it goes to taxes for the year :P.

Some graphs:

FTP Unfiltered (off some cause of 4mans, but not that much cause of FTP's chop feature, which makes it easier to even the score out):

FTP Super Turbos (Remember these are $1/game in rakeback, so adds alot):

Stars (Swings are amplified out of proportion in both directions (upwards and downwards), graph is off for sure though, had a few days SS had me -4k where I was +2k, not sure how much it's off, but it is, although I think my FTP is a bit too high as well considering my monthly profit from playing):

Anyways, not really sure on my goals for next month, just going to take it easy and see how it goes, really can't wait to get back to the states and move into the house :), so hope everything works out here, and hope your all had a great month as well, in both poker and life =].

Also, if anybody is interested, here are my figures for each day of the month, dont think it will be that useful but im sure some people wanting to move up might find a look at the daily swings interesting. Also I took off a few days so there aren't 30 of them ;p:

+3483 38 games
+$1,368.32 53 games
+$1,368.32 53 games
+1778.65 69 games
+1008.66 5 games
-227.01 47 games
+685 17 games
+380 2 games
+$61 319 games (super turbos started)
+799.66 (stopped tracking # games)
+2434 13 normal games & 10 super turbos
+1002
+210
+706
+536
+2564
+460
+1720
+3852
+9460
+421
-1706
-745.66
-350.34
+1520
+10,719.99
-2803.35
-2866
+2864

(bolded 3 biggest winning days, and italicized all losing days)

23 winning days, 6 losing days

biggest winning day: +10,719.99
biggest losing day: -2866

Crushing / Belgium / Pictures!

2009-11-17T12:08:00.000-08:00

Crushing
-----------------

So a few updates. It's been a super super sick month so far, I started +12k in first 5-ish days, and have taken a couple days off since then and been traveling all month, and am now currently:

+20,742.42

Really hoping the rest of the month goes even remotely this smoothly (obv). I've had one losing day so far, for -227. I'd say this month has been 70% 4-mans, 10% 2-mans, 20% super turbos. I'm up about 4k on super turbos, the majority of the rest through 4mans, and then a few k from 2mans.

Belgium
---------------

Off tomorrow v early in the morning to belgium, going to hang out w/Spamz0r (Mientjeuh) and hopefully learn a bunch, grind a bunch of HU SNGs, and crush his soul in Tekken :).

Then it's offff to the BCOP and the ME and Team HU Event. I have 100% of myself for the Team HU, so it will be by FAR the biggest buyin ive ever played (about 4k) out of my own pocket, hope we shippp!!!!

Pictures
---------------

few random pictures of the place I visited the other day in Switzerland (Grindelwald) and also of the new puppy we just bougth when we were in Hungary (100% english bulldog, champion Male, going to breed him w/my other female who ive posted pics of many many times =] )

October

2009-10-31T17:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, going to be brief cause i'm a bit tired (In France atm).

Started the month -11.6k , largely due to being -7k of buying action, recovered so im super happy about that, here it goes:

Graph THROUGH 23rd of Oct (when I came to Europe and my laptop didn't have HEM):

Final Stats for the month:

Profit before rakeback: $5,543
Profit from Rakeback: $3,721.10
Total Profit: $9,264.10

EV would have put me at $15,715.55 for the month, but I can't complain, def. gonna top it next month.

Exactly 1 year ago I was scammed for all my $$$ basically and then I recovered with a 35k November, I grinded a TON that month and this month i'll be in Europe traveling, so I doubt i'll be able to repeat, but my goals are:

[ ] 15k month (rakeback incl.)
[ ] Enjoy Budapest / europe w/wife
[ ] buy foosball table / TV / surround sound for house
[ ] Have everything at my house setup so I can move right when I get back
[ ] CRUSH the belgium team HU tourney w/spamz and mjw006 :)

Live Streaming of The LittlewoodsPoker World Heads-Up Poker Championship 2009!

2009-10-28T16:48:00.001-07:00

So it has yet to be tested, but this should work. Live streaming of the The LittlewoodsPoker World Heads-Up Poker Championship 2009! Dates and times for streams should be approx as follows:

12:00 GMT 29 Oct

16:00 GMT 29 Oct (Estimate)

12:00 GMT 30 Oct

12:00 GMT 31 Oct

18:00 GMT 31 Oct (Estimate)

[GMT is approx FOUR hours ahead of EST at the moment, it's typically 5 but cause of european daylight savings time it's only 4, so 16:00 GMT (when my match is), is noon EST, and 12:00 GMT is 8:00am EST]

Hrmmmm, it seems like the stream isn't formatting correctly in my blog, so please feel free to watch it at www.pokerineuropelive.com :)

5500 London HU Tourney

2009-10-28T03:01:00.001-07:00

yo guys, have to run pretty quick, but wanted to give an update:

Only 42 players, so that was dissapointing, and a SICK hard field, players in this small field include:

Myself, The Camel, DiBasio, Dario Minieri, AlfiosNob, Sorel Mizzi (Zangbezan/Imperium), Roland De woolf, R romanello, and a ton of other FTP pros / english pros, i mean Roland and Romanello arent top HUSNGrs, but I still havent seen a super soft spot all tourney, which is ridiculous.

I got a bye round 1, and beat R Romanello (FTP Pro) in round 2.

Day off today

Play Rivermani on Thursday at 4pm (noon EST)

1 match on Friday (if i'm through)

and the final 4 / Finals on Saturday

So 2 more wins til i'm ITM, 4 more wins to win it all. Payout is something like 25k / 25k / 50k / 100k, so glglglgl me :). Both myself and The Camel are in it, DiBasio busted, and I didnt get to see the end of dario/alfiosnob's matches

I'll keep you updated =]

-Primo

Picture Blog

2009-10-20T22:21:00.000-07:00

Made a picture blog of my puppy / WSOP 2009 HU Event, just a random assortment of a few pictures, but I like to post in both blogs, so it's here if anyone would like to check it out:

http://www.husng.com/node/1437

Bought a House / 5 Weeks in Europe

2009-10-19T18:36:00.000-07:00

yo guys, I know I said i'd be more active, and I promise i'll try, im hoping to post a ton from Europe :). So yea, about that, I haven't posted about it yet but I have a 5 week trip to europe coming up on Saturday. My stops look like this:

London 1 week, France (wive's parents) 1 week, Budapest 1 week, Amsterdam 1 week, Belgium 1 week.

In London i'll be playing the 3300 GBP (~5500 USD) Littlewood's HU Championship, 4 wins til the $, $200k GBP for first. DiBasio is also flyin out and going to play the event as well, so it'll be really cool to hang out with him again, and this time his gf will be there, so it should be a good trip. Also really looking forward to finally meeting up with Radeh and some other HU guys around.

In belgium i'll also be playing in the BCOP (Belgium Championship Of Poker), which has some sick events. The most exciting is a 2500 euro (3500-3750 USD) HU event... BUTTT, it's not a normal HU event, it's a 'team' event, in 4 person teams (10k euro per team). Our team looks like this:

Myself (PrimordialAA)
Spamz0r (Mientjeuh on FTP)
Nathan (1690 AD on FTP)
Mjw006 (Rocky2810 on FTP)

so sick sick team, should be a ton of fun, really looking forward to hanging out with these guys, and def. looking forward to us crushing the field.

If anybody is around any of the cities i'm stopping by let me know and i'll def. try to at least say hey.

Other than that Poker has been pretty Meh, I had a sick time in Atlantic City, and got to hang out with a ton of good friends, including Livb112, who ended up winning the event for 900k+, so huge congrats to him on that one. I have a ton of cool stories from that trip, but im gonna have to save it for a different blog. Online poker went pretty Meh last month, and this month im running 10k below EV and also down 6-7k from buying action, which is really brutal, i'll post graphs later, but nobody really cares about my whining, so onto some pictures of the house :).

Anyways, it's nothing sick baller like BCM / xSCWx / or QiHu00's houses, but it's a nice starter house for me and the wife and i'm super pumped to have bought any house. Really really happy w/the decision. Nothing is in there now obv, but ordering all the appliances and furniture and what not while we're in Europe so hopefully it will all be there when I get back from Europe (around Dec. 1st).

Anyways, info on the house:

Bought for $185,000
1950 Square feet
2.01 acres
was an older house here, just got torn down and redone 100%
Sprayfoam insulation (good stuff, should make the house pretty energy efficient, my uncle runs a sprayfoam insulation business and I guess it's baller)
Radiant heating in kitchen / dining room floors, which is sweet as well
(In pics house isnt 100% done, i'll post more once furnished :p)

anyways, here is a tonnn of pics ;p

Outside:

Kithcen:

Living Room:

Random Half Bath / Laundry:

Basement:

Up to bedrooms / Bathroom:

Bedrooms 1 / 2:

Office / Bedroom 3:

The Blog Revival Movement - WSOP / August Recaps

2009-08-31T10:49:00.000-07:00

Hey guys... it's been a pretty long time huh? :) Going to try to commit to blogging alot more frequently, but for this one i'm gonna recap WSOP and then this month (August).

2009 World Series of Poker / Vegas
----------------------------------

Wow, really a sick summer, I played as little poker as possible all summer but had my best experience in vegas for sure, it was a blast. I lived with Skilled_Sox, ShortSharpShock, NemoInDeniaL, and DaPokerGun. My wife was out there with us as well and the household got along super well, which made it awsome, and we also had a ton of guests in and out of the house so what would have been a household of 6 ended up being 10-14 for almost the entire summer. When we wern't playing poker we were gambling on EVERYTHING.

We played Color Yahtzee on the iphone for $1-5 / point, games take about 10 minutes and losses for $1 / point average about $75 / game. We also bet constantly on foosball and volleyball, I ended up winning $3k in a couple hours playing foosball 1v1 which was pretty sick :). We had a household olympics where it was me and my german friend agaisnt ShortSharpShock (SSS) and RumnChess. The events were Mini Golf, Beruit (Beer Pong), 2v2 Volleyball, Pool, HU Monopoly (bracket), Bar shuffleboard, and if need be, a 4-man live HU SNG for a tiebreaker.

We started with pool, which they ran pretty sick in to give them 1-0 lead. Then we came back from behind to win beruit for 1-1, and crushed volleyball and monopoly back to back to give us the 3-1 lead and what looked like a clear shot to victory. (The event was a $500 buyin per person), so $2,000 prizepool was pretty appealing. Mini-golf was close until the very end which they pulled away, and then they easily swept shuffleboard, bringing it allllllll down to HU SNGs. RNC and SSS are typically cash game players, so I thought we might have a decent edge, I beat SSS running pretty well and my friend Al lost to RNC. RNC ended up besting me 2-1 I think for the victory, and their team scooped the $2,000. It was alot of fun, but we were tilted to have lost ;p.

I got to spend alot of time this summer with pretty awsome poker players, we would have alot of nightly games of volleyball at our house and it ended up being kind of a whos who of HU SNGs, games frequently included Skilled_Sox, myself, SSS, Nemo, Livb112/Adonis112, Dibasio, Croixdawg, ScottyBCash, Leo2222, FU_15 (who took 15th in the Main Event this year, sick job Nick!!!), and many others, so it was awsome to have time to bounce ideas of those guys and really get to try to improve my game. I spent some time having liv sweat me which was awsome, and also spent alot of time grinding at Dibasio, Leo2222, and ScottyBCash's place so I got to talk alot of strategy with them as well.

Funniest night in vegas: We all decided to grab dinner and play poker at the Wynn, so we go to this restaurant they have, so dinner happens, good meal, big bill (which another_rack from 2p2 loses the CC roulette on, HUGE beat ;p), and then as we're about to leave, alot of prop bets begin to be discussed about THIS pool:

So the first bet was getting like 20:1 on 1k that you couldn't jump on those balancing balls in the water, you just had to get to the second orb (land one foot on it in any way) and you win 20k, I really though I could do it but was too much of a sally, so no takers.

The SECOND one was for Nemo to jump in the pool, go allll the way to the end of it (at the base of the restaurant), touch the wall, and come back, for $1500. he SNAP accepted, took off his shoes, and jumped in... and if any of you know Nemo at all you have to understand this was the funniest thing EVER, nobody could stop laughing, we were the last group in the restaurant and the waiters all said they were calling security so we decided to leave ASAP... so here is Nemo, standing there entirely drenched, dripping everywhere, with 40k in cash that we then had to move to some ghetto bag you get from shopping at one of the stores.

did it stop us? NO. We decided to go play poker anyways, we get a private table for all of us and play $4/8 mixed-game , we choose limit hold'em, O8, badugi, 2-7 triple draw, razz, and a few others I can't remember, everybody buys in super deep cause it's funny, Nemo is sitting there completely drenched bought in for his 40k... at 4/8 (ROFL), and we end up playing a ton of hours and it was the most fun poker I played in all of vegas, truly awsome night. (even though we got hushed by the floor cause we kept being super loud, and had random people railing our table, so funny ;p)

Anyways, so let's get to the events.

$1500 No Limit Hold'em events x 3:

All 3 of these were a joke, I didn't make the break in any of them, you start pretty short and I got coolered in all of them, was very frusterating.

$2500 Razz

AWSOME event, my table was stacked with famous people, Doyle Brunson, Sam Simon(creator of the simpsons), Barry Shulman (owner of Cardplayer), Chad Brown (PS Pro), Barry Greenstein's GF, and then 2 people I can't remember. did really well in the event for first 12-14 hours, had alot of laughs, really funny table, Doyle was hilarious to play with, talked a ton, told jokes, made fun of Jerry Bus (Laker's Owner) who was next to us, and traded me for candy bars (My skittles for his almond joy), rofl, it was super cool and funny. This was one of my most fun days, spent the day at that table chatting with all the big names and crushing them most of the time, went out to dinner with Dario Minieri on break and we just hung out and discussed both of our recent marriages, but then came back from break and got brought back down to earth, I had the table pretty tilted with my play and ended up having a guy call down with a 666 on his board (in RAZZ!!!!) vs my 248 on my board, and hitting perfect perfect to make a 7-6 low (to beat my 8-6 that I made), for a HUGEEE pot, so that was really brutal, and I ended up busting out about 5 minutes before the end of day 1, but a great event and I will def. be playing it next year.

$10,000 Heads Up World Championship

Sick event, my draws were ridiculously hard, but I REALLY played the best i've ever played in this event as far as my live game goes.

Round 1: Unknown, I crushed him, we barely played any large pots, I just chipped him down to 1/3 his stack and got him in when he was dominated I believe to make short work of him.

Round 2: Live Pro, Will 'The thrill' Fallia, has about $1,000,000 in live tournament winnings, including a $300k win for taking down a live HU MTT, he played OK, but I made a sick call down with K high and kept applying a ton of pressure to him, got him frusterated so he limp/called 3x w/89, flop 8 6 2, he jammed over my cbet and I had AA, GG

END OF DAY 1

so wake up early the next morning to look up our draws, and LOOK who it is, I draw ADAM EWENSTEIN... A.K.A. SKILLED_SOX ... my roomate, on the bubble round, SICK! I draw the #1 HU SNGr in the world, who is also my roomate and good friend, and it has to be on the bubble!

Round 3 vs skilled_sox: I played pretty aggro, there was a spot where he 3bet me and I flatted QQ and flopped quads, but he had nothing so I didn't really win that much, he played aggro and didn't run into alot of hands, and I knew we knew a TON about each others games, so I had him to about 35% of his chips, and he MR'd 20bb deep and I had AA, I decided he knew I would jam here wide as I often do online, and would call me pretty wide and it would a) look alot weaker than just 3betting, and b) be more +EV than flatting, so I jammed and he called 66 and I held, ship it into the $$$, my first WSOP cash... it felt great!!

Round 4: Brock 'tsoprano' Parker... Obviously a sick MTTr and great player, he had already won 2 WSOP bracelets this WSOP alone so I knew it was going to be a tough match. He played very tight and solid, but ran some bluffs and picked some off, it was a really tough match and he got me down pretty low and I got it in w/ TJ on 89x and hit, and then we got it in where I had a gutshot + overcard + flushdraw vs middle pair and also hit, and then I had him kind of low and won a big hand where I was actually ahead, but man, winning 3 all ins I guess I have to count my blessing, great player and tough match.

Round 5: Yevgeniy Timoshenko (A.K.A Jovial Gent / BBaller88), also a TOP HU SNGr, top cash game player, AND has $3,000,000+ in live tourney winnings to boot... WTF, sick draws! I played really well against him and know his aggro style, I ck/raised middle pair (A4 on 2 4 T) and called his 3bet on the flop on the very first hand of the match, board went brick brick and he showed 97o and when he saw my A4o you could just tell he was like "@!$%! , this guy isnt gonna let me run him over". Match went on being aggro, I bluff-reshoved his ck/raise w/ A8 on a K 9 K flop and he folded. Then finally I got it in w/2 pair against his 25ss on like As 4x 8s (I think I had A8, but I might have had A9 for 1 pair, dont remember), and I held, but again, I had him under 60% of his chips at this point so I was comfortable getting it in.

Round 6: Wow... down to the final 8... myself, johnny chan, john duthie, and 5 unknowns more or less, I was def. a favorite to win this event at that point IMO because none of them were experienced HU players. I get Nathan Doudney, an unknown who plays live MTTs and is staked by Erik Lindgren. He played super straightforward and nitty and I ran him over and he was getting obviously tilted. I had a huge rail of all my friends and alot of online HU SNGrs so it was an intense match, we were mic'd up and at the second 'TV' table for ESPN 360 and it was going really well, he was getting visibly frustrated at being run over, so we started with 960k chips and I had him down to 350-400k, blinds 5k/10k.

I have AQo

He raises to 30k, I reraise to 115k (an oversized 3bet) basically setting up a go n go, but mostly expecting him to shove or fold. He FLATS.

Flop 2h 6d Th

He had been really tight up til this point and I didn't expect him to bluff the flop much, so I checked to him, planning to ck/fold to a shove, but he took his time and bet 50k (into 230k). I run it through my head, taking a decent amount of time, he never does this w/ TP or a set with how he's played... thats for sure, I also am 100% sure he never has an overpair here, so maybe a draw, or a pair like 77-99, so I decide to jam. he SNAPS J7hh (LOL @ him calling the 3bet preflop for 1/3 his stack) and gets there :(. So then we get back to even-ish in chips, and even after that pot he is still visibly tilted, he knows he is getting outplayed and getting very frusterated. I end up 3bet/calling a shove w/ AQs... he also has AQs and ends up hitting a 3-flush on the board to lucksack me... SICKENING, $92,580 payout when it would have bumped me all the way up to $220,000. I didn't have 100% of myself, I sold alot of action, but it was still a great score and an awsome tourney. If I could do something differently I would probably play both AQ's differently, I would shove the first one because I was crushing him so much post-flop there isn't any reason to setup a small edge go n go, I know jamming is +EV so I should have just done it. And the second one, again because I had such a huge post-flop edge, he played SOOOO straightforward post,I would have just flatted and not 3bet and then I could have folded the flop and still had a full stack... oh well

$10,000 Main Event

Awsome event, a great atmosphere, and I was in the Amazon Room, so it was a great feeling, I had a pretty soft table with alot of french players, but one very aggro 25/50 cash player and the announcer for some poker show, Lacey Jones, who was cool. I got down from 30k to 22k, then up to 55k, then got in a sick spot with the aggro cash player, I c/r the flop and he flatted, I had a gutshot and a backdoor FD, turn brought me a flush draw, and the river brought my flush making Q J 9 8 on the board and he ck/shoved all in to my river bet. He had already ck/shoved one river against me, and I thought he could do this with a T trying to push out chops, he would DEF. do it w/ KT, etc., so I called w/my 85cc for the 8 high flush, using both cards, and he had A4cc... FML, busto day 1 :(

Well... I feel like that's been a ridiculously long recap, so I will keep the August Recap short.

Great month, took 3rd in Razz FTOPS for about 17.5k profit, and had a 30k month before rakeback. Really happy with the month and I hope to keep on doing well next month. Here is the graph for August:

Hope you all had an equally good month, look forward to more blogs in the near future!

-Primo

The Revival

2009-08-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

this blog will be back in action pretty soon, have alot of stuff I want to catch up on, including WSOP and results / sky diving / sponsorship / and this month :), so expect to see updates when I get some time

Brief Update -- March Results / April Goals

2009-03-31T19:04:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, sorry ive been slow with posting, as always, life has been pretty busy, march went OK, but still not as well as i'd liked it to have:

+$9,194

however a large % of this came from coaching, rakeback, staking, etc., so next month i'd like to work on having 6-10k profits just from poker, and the rest of the stuff as a bonus, so im a bit dissapointed with my poker results this month.

anyways, goals next month:

+10k or more
dont force volume, just play solid
get everything ready and booked for vegas
enjoy/relax a bit more

also hopefully big news to come in my life later this month

Vegas House stuff so far, we got the house, and a possible chef so far, my roomates will be:

NemoInDenial, JSnipes(Pez_Vela), Skilled_Sox, and ShortSharpShock , seems like it's gonna be great, here are a few pics of the house:

Description:

Las Vegas Mexican Hacienda Vacation Retreat

* Property type: Villa, 5300 sq. ft.
* Location type: resort
* Bedrooms: 6 Bedrooms, Sleeps 19
* Bathrooms: 6 Bathrooms
* Highlights: resort, swimming pool, air-conditioning, washing machine

Our property is very large and offers many outside recreational items for your pleasure. It is 1.4 acres surrounded by a 10 foot high security fence.

The Volley Ball Court...
A view from one of the upstairs bedrooms give a great view of our beach sand volleyball court. Regulation size with an extra 10-15 feet of extra running room on all sides. Included at court side is a cold shower plus a water hose to soak the court when the sand is too hot...Enjoy beach volleyball in Las Vegas...
Notice the running track.

The Putting Green...Ready for play and challenging!!!

Over 8000 square foot of professional putting surface for your pitch and putt enjoyment. We have 3 unique holes and an unlimited amount of entry points to provide a level of practice for your short game that you have never experienced before...and a huge sand trap. In our coarse the ball only goes into the sand trap, if you want it to for your practice.

The Running Track...Best to run this 1/8+ mile at night(lighted). Shown around the volleyball court and also zig zags through out the property.

Get your workout using our 1/8 of a mile running track. It winds in an out of the property but always behind the security gates...soooo no dogs will be chasing you. The surface is varied and we have a few stretching appliances for your use during your run. You can even pick some fruit when in season during your jog.

And...Our lastest addition...Our heated swimming pool

The other house we were comparing it to was this one, but it only had 5 bedrooms and we needed a guest bedroom so we ended up passing ;p:

Description:

* Property type: House, 8762 sq. ft.
* Bedrooms: 5 Bedrooms, Sleeps 12
* Bathrooms: 4 Bathrooms, 1 Half Bath
* Highlights: swimming pool, air-conditioning, washing machine, internet access, tennis

Anyways guys, I hope you all had a fantastic month, and Good luck in April, I hope to meet a bunch of you in vegas! :)

-Primo

Weekly MTT schedule

2009-03-14T16:10:00.000-07:00

Hey, I plan on playing a ton of live MTTs this summer, hopefully 20-30 of them when i'm in vegas this summer, most being the Venetian Deep Stack and Caesars Mega Stack series, for $300-500 average buy ins. To prepare a bit i'm adding the Sunday Million to my weekly schedule, as well as continuing to play the $216 HU MTT on Saturday (FTP), the $215 HU MTT on Sunday (Stars), and the $109 Super Turbo HU MTT (Stars). The HU MTTs obv won't help me any, but I plan on just 1 tabling (w/added HU MTT maybe if it's running) when playing the Sunday Million, to get my mind back into thinking deeply about MTT decisions. Anyways, this comes to just about $1300 / week in MTTs, which is pretty signifcant but i'm assumed to be +EV in all of them, so hopefully it works out and take down a decent score one of these times :).

Took a 3rd (KK < AKs for stacks), and 8th (JJ < ATo for stacks) in the nightly $109 HU MTT this week, I feel like I have a really big edge in that tourney, so I can't wait to keep playing it and hopefully crushing it.

Also got a trip to foxwoods planned for later this week, I think Wednesday - Friday/Sat. , so will be playing $2/5 NL cash and maybe some daily MTTs while im down there, going w/some friends from home but would be glad to meet up with anyone while im down there,

Hope you guys are all having a good month,

-PrimordialAA

(oh yea, i'm about +7k w/everything included this month, playing, coaching, FPP, I think im ~+4500-5k from just playing)

Y.T.D. update / Febuary Recap

2009-02-28T22:36:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, sorry I havent been updating that much so I figured i'd give you guys all an update:

Janary: Jan. was really dissapointing, I was up like 9-10k and went on a big downswing at the end of it, and ended ~+$1500 or so for a final

February: Feb. has treated me a bit better, still not as well as i'd like but def. a solid month overall

Poker (2mans / 4mans): +4,367
Coaching: +2,220
FPP/Bonuses: +1,693
Staking: ~ +1,000
---------------------------------

+$9,280

In other news, i've been SUPER motivated recently, I just got off a 10 day vacation in Florida with my gf and family and am really pumped to start saving to buy a house as I saw some awsome real estate down there, and I may actually be making an investment purchase w/my older sister down there, so that would be really awsome. I bought my GF a car ( 2002 Audi A4 Quatro ), but we haven't really had a chance to use it much as we left right away for vacation. Other than that you guys may have seen me at 110s for a bit, I dropped until I made 20 BI and got some confidence back, i've achieved this and so should be back around a mix of 110s/220s. And other than that i've been receiving a TON of super good feedback by theSNGacademy members, both on 2p2 and on the forums there, and it's really nice to hear that my videos are helping people out and people are appreciating it alot.

Anyways guys, I hope you all have had a great start to the year, mine has been a bit disappointing and I put myself in a real struggle if i'm still try to get to SNE, but I can't really complain about make 11k over 2 months, when I feel I havent been playing my best and have been running poorly overall, Best of luck,

-Primo

Mid Month Update

2009-01-16T21:57:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, just makin a quick update, it's been kinda a crazy month so far this month, my monthly graph looks like this:

It looks a little bit ridiculous, but my sharkscope was off by 11k at one point in the month, which is completely insane. anyways, it's currently off 3406 (too low), which puts my monthly profit at $4538 , add $1715 worth of FPP (just over 30k VPP), puts me at $6253, but im down a bit cause of cash, so i'd say im about +5400 this month overall. I've cashed out 5k and moved my spread of games back up a bit to include 220s/300s/330s , and still playing all limits of 4mans. Ive gotten alot of confidence back and I think I should definently be able to hit my goal of 10k this month.

Other plans for the month, I fly out to France on the 22nd (Thursday), and meet my girlfriend, who im bringing back on the 30th. So obviously not so pumped to be traveling again, but realllyyyy pumped to finally have her over here. Also planning a 1-2 week vacation with all my family in Orlando at the end of the month, should be 10 of us total going (parents, 4 of us children, + 4 gfs/bfs/wives). Gonna just hang out, relax around Disney, and meet up with People_Mover from 2p2, so looking forward to alot of stuff coming up. Anyways, will give a more detailed update at the end of the month, hope 2009 has start off right for all of you, Good luck,

-Primo

Jan: +$5400

Losing Month / 2009 goals

2008-12-31T10:17:00.001-08:00

Hey guys, So let me start off with the bad, I had my first losing month ever, or since I started playing full time at least, and the sad part is I had a positive ROI on both sites.

I took a TON of shots this month, I played alot of 1100s on my own, played a bunch of 2200s w/ 50% of my action, and also had one day where I was -14k between 1100s/550s, but most of that was me going 14-34 that day in 550s on FTP for like -12.5k, just a really sick month and I feel like I played super mediocre and ran terrrrible every time I was playing higher limit games, but oh well; Live and Learn I guess.

Anyways it was a big eye opener, and helped me get super motivated for the upcoming year, as did my trip to Atlantic City w/hokie. So below are my results

Pokerstars: 741 games, 1% ROI, -4,196 , SS is $6,552 too high
FTP: 315 games, 1% ROI, -8,329 , SS is $5, 806 too low

Month: Stars: -$4,196
FTP: -$8,329
Cash: +$1,835
Satts: -$262
Sports: -$1,460
FPP: +$2,534
Bonus: +4,000
SS off: -$746
AC trip:-$1,000
rakeback:$1,858
----------------------------------

-$5,766

As for the new year, I am unbelievably excited about 2009, it's really insane to look back and see how far I (we as poker players) have grown this year, it's really almost surreal to look at. I hope 2009 brings me the same success that 2008 did, and I hope to establish my permanence in the Professional Poker field.

Poker Goals:
------------

Make $120,000 from playing ($10,000 / month , not including bonuses)

Be playing (and rolled for) $550s/1100s consistently by the end of 2009

Make $175,000 in 2009 (including bonuses)

Win a package to at LEAST one big live MTT

Don't focus too much on making SNE, just play my best when im feeling good and if I end up on pace for SNE, so be it, if I don't make it, don't stress about it

Personal Goals:
---------------

Be less insane about poker, take more days off, relax and enjoy time with people more, just focus on playing great when I play, but don't obsess about volume

Try to pick up tennis or something else like it to keep me active / healthy in the coming year

Start to invest money or at least begin to set aside substantial money for a house

Get myself and gf cars

Hang out / meet up with hokie a few more times, that trip was the nuts and he always wants to go diff. places, so it'll get me out and doing stuff

AC bound

2008-12-26T21:14:00.000-08:00

3-3'd the prop bet, got crusheddd at ping pong, he is really nasty, he was in a table tennis club for 4 yrs in germany and whatever

anyways, AC-bound , goin to chill w/hokie for a few days, from the 28th to 30th so i'm pretty pumped, should be alot of fun, if I dont donk off like 5k live ;p.

Christmas Prop-bet-a-ments

2008-12-24T13:37:00.000-08:00

forgot to post this earlier :), happening today

Hey guys, I had a pretty huge downswing this month, but am slowly recovering and will most likely break even or turn a small profit this month. I had a single day that was -14k and that kinda set the tone for some other parts of the month ;p, but it's going well overall and it's not like anything has changed, I just need to wait a bit longer before taking shots at 1100s/2200s :).

Below is a propbet im doing with a friend, I posted it on 2p2 but thought I should also post it here:

Sick, christmas prop-bet-a-ments

I'm doing a 6 game prop bet w/a friend before he heads back to Germany, the events are as follows:

Event #1

HU SNG

he starts out 1600-1400, we 1 table turbos, best out of 5

Event #2

Pool

he gets 3 balls off the table on each rack, best out of 5

Event #3

Ping Pong

I get 5 points, best out of 5

Event #4

Tennis

I get 4 games / set , must win by 2 games (6-5 is not a win) , we play best of 3 sets

Event #5

bowling

I get 12.5 pins, best out of 3 strings

Event #6

Rock Paper Scissors

9 throws = 1 game, best of 5 games

Payout:

6-0: $1000
5-1: $600
4-2: $250
3-3: chop

fwiw he is a poker player as well, pretty solid at HU SNG (Paranoia87 on stars) , doesnt play much anymore but def. doesnt deserve much more of an edge in HU SNG, he CRUSHES me in tennis, and gave me 2:1 odds that I wouldnt win a single game vs him, and I didnt, even though we played 4 sets lol. I even had 40-love on my own serve and blew it =/

should be alot of fun, prolly gonna do it the morning of christmas Eve, goooo me, run good at HU and RPS 1 timeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :)

Coaching Available -- Accepting New Students

2008-12-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

hey guys, I just wanted to make it known that I am now back in the US and accepting new students. I have a 6 month coaching deal worked out for 2009, but I have some room in December, and will free up space in the new year if people want it. My rates can be found at the coaching link in my links section

Hope your all having a great month, and happy holidays,

-Primo

November Summary

2008-11-30T16:05:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, gonna be a short post as im really tired, but I had my sickest month ever to come off of the scam, which is great in helping me recover, the month re-cap looks like this:

90,898 VPP
1,041 games played on stars
325 games play on FTP

Stars: +$29,390
FTP: +$5,378
FPP: +$292
bonuses:+$7,000
cash: -$800
Satts: -$7,041
-------------------------------
+$34,219

(FPP is low cause 250k for a 4k bonus, and 50k for my 300k VPP ($3,000) bonus)

so pretty awsome month overall, im feeling pretty good at the 550s and comfortable there, so im hoping that continues, I still do feel slightly under-rolled (the swings get to me sometimes) , but im hoping at the end of next month that won't be too big of an issue. Anyways, i'm really really satisfied with my results, and if I can do half of this next month, I will consider it a huge success.

Good luck to everyone in December, and i'll do my best to try to update more often,

-Primo

oops... sigh, and -1k on a prop-bet, so +33k =/

October Recap -- meh

2008-10-31T12:07:00.000-07:00

meh, im sure most have you have heard about my story and all the chaos that happened, whatever, post is here if you havent:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/58/heads-up-nl/how-i-lost-my-life-roll-robert-andersson-super-lc-333108/index1.html

anyways, on to better things, October recapped:

played 626 games despite only playing like 1/3 of the month, maybe got in 12 or 14 days or something:

2-4 man stats:

626 $29 $287 7% $18,448

2man stats:

549 $31 $281 7% $17,243

The sad part... my sharkscope is off +10,605 (too high) so that means I got RAPEDDDDDDDDD in 4mans this month, where if I stuck to 2mans only i'd have 17k profit (little less cause of selling action, prolly close to 14k) I ended with like $8.5k or so, this is just insanely brutal and makes me mad to look at it :-p.

but despite that, im insanely confident lately, my SS stats for 2 mans for the <3 months are this:

1,497 $25 $270 7% $36,822

which for a $270 average stake, means i've been crushing pretty hard, so im excited about that.

Profit from playing: $7,843
Profit from FPP: $2,283
-----------------------------
total profit: $10,126

but I cashed out 1k and 3k of it was from the first day of the month (which means it got stolen), right now I have a 5k loan and a little over 5k of my own in stars from playing.

November Goals:

have a HUGE month (15k+ from playing)
Dont lose $ in 4-mans :(
pay down $2k on each credit card
put in 800-1k+ games
Figure out if im going back to the states or not, for certain

gl all in November, hope everyone has a great month :)

Selling Action

2008-10-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

so many posts / edits in a short time frame... really not like me

So this weekend the is a 2k euro ($3,000) tournament in San Remo, Italy (Friday -> Sunday). Almost every good MTTr is gone at EPT London and Alessio (from PS) tells me the field is going to be SUPER soft. My lifetime ROI in MTTs is ~100% over a pretty decent sample, ~800 games when I wasn't stake, and about ~60% lifetime including when I was staked/bad ;p. Anyways, that said im trying to sell off 50-67% of myself by tomorrow (Thursday), so if anyone is interested, im selling at 1:1, 5% = $150, 10% = 300 , leave a comment here, message me, or PM me on 2p2

last year had 180 - 200 entrants and first place was 100k euro ($150,000)

BALLER month, great move, bad decisions :( --- September recap

2008-09-30T15:48:00.000-07:00

sigh, gonna keep this short, sorry for the lack of updates lately:

Dog -- Awsome :)

Apartment -- I promise i'll post pictures soon, I really feel like I can settled here and like the setup and neighborhood alot, so it's great :). also the dog seems to love it here compared to where we stayed the first 2 weeks and has alot better space outside, so it's worked out great

Poker:

The Good: I had had a REALLY sick month, my SS was off 9164 (too low), but despite
the poor SS graph, I still passed 50k on sharkscope, which is a big accomplishment for me and I felt great about it.

All in all, FPP included I made $17,488 which i'm amazed at, but alot of it came from the past 4-5 days im prolly +7-9k or so over them, so that helped a ton.

The Bad: I only played 479 games this month, which is very very low volume and I plan on more than doubling it in october

The worst: My stars account is -2k from where I started from this month, cause im a huge idiot and loaned out like 10k to a person I dont even know that well and am waiting on a bank transfer, and I spent a ton and cashed out and stuff, and it's just been sick, it makes me sick to my stomach that i've made os much and should be almost fully rolled for the 500s and still have to consider it taking shots becuase of my bad life-management (mostly loaning $$$ :()

so yes, im putting up a huge sign, PLZ SCAM ME

Goals for October:

Play 800-1k+ games
make $15k
Don't have a DS and move up to 500s being mixed into my games for good ;)
spend more time w/the GF so she doesn't kick me out :)

anyways, too stressed about waiting to get the 10k payed back, im not in a really good mood so i'll post more later, and put up pictures of the apartment soon

edit time!!!:

1: Seriously, if your looking for a blog that isn't 100% focused on poker / results (like almost all of ours are), check our Raj (Whaassuuppp)'s blog http://whaassuuppp.blogspot.com/ , the conversation's are alot more diverse than mine and I enjoyed reading through the few posts alot already, so i'm really glad he got it up

2: Just read through this interview w/livb, I dunno why but I REALLY enjoyed reading it, I liked it alot and think the answers were well spoken and alot more than what I had expected from livb even if the questions weren't as in-depth as I might have liked them to be

http://pokerigged.com/portraits/interview-with-livb112/

enjoy both links, and GL in October

Puppies FTW

2008-09-09T14:38:00.000-07:00

obv I couldn't let Greg show me up, so I bought her:

Totally JK about the reasoning, but an English Bulldog has been my dream dog for my entire life, me and my brother saw one when I was about 5 yrs old and both have wanted one forever. He got one 2-3 yrs ago and it's a great great Dog, so I finally pulled the trigger and got one. It cost me WAYY too much ~$3500, but i'm having a sick month and have exceeded the costs already, so im trying not to stress too much about the price and just enjoy having it. She is almost 8 weeks old and will be available Sept. 12th, and I think I will go pick her up the 14th. Gonna hafta take some sick long trains to get it (about 16-24 hrs total), which adds another $200-300ish to the price, but I think it'll do so much good for me now that im not in school and my gf will be starting full time school again on the 22nd which will leave me just around the apartment alone for the huge majority of every day.

Anyways, im really pumped about it and will post some more pictures of it once we have it and are settled into the new apartment.

WCOOP HU Event on Friday, will be super tired cause I will have just arrived in France the day before, but im really looking forward to it. GL everyone w/the rest of the month,

-Primo

August Recap

2008-08-31T22:04:00.001-07:00

Alright, so ill be honest, I had a pretty great month which i'm excited about, especially preceding my move (Sept. 10th - .. end Sept. ?? =/ ). I really expected to play low volume this month, and shot for a pretty realistic goal of $5,000. However the month went on a quick upswing as I began taking some shots at 330s, and then eventually talked into 550s w/croix, knifefish, M@D, and a few others.

Anyways, I played 685 games, with only 275 of those being regular speeds, so all in all it was still a pretty low-volume month. I kept my 2 mans at 95% 220 turbos and 300 reg speeds, with occasional 200 reg speeds if action was slow or game selecting 330s. My results were as follows:

Profit from playing: $8,185
Profit from FPP: $2,193
Profit from bonuses: $2,000
-----------------------------
total profit: $12,378

Weird thing to note, my profit from 2 mans over this period was $7,492, and normally when I play 4 mans we sit 4-6 lobbies at a time and I stop playing any games on my own to focus for both my and my partner's sake, so maybe we just ran bad at 4mans this month, but the results were definitely pretty lackluster this month (only played just over 100 of them, so a small sample). But on an upside, I cleared 200k VPP and therefore got my $2,000 bonus, which was really nice.

Anyways, I jumped up in stakes a bit earlier than I wanted to, but it's gone great so far, and I am always ready to move down if I have to so i'll see how things play out for the next 2 months. September will be worse than this month for me in terms of volume I believe, as I leave for France on September 10th, and don't move into the new apartment til the 23rd, after which we still have to get internet setup, etc. so I really just don't see me as having a ton of time to play (even though I hope i'll find some). I don't have any real goals this month except to start to get accustomed to the new culture and get settled in the new apartment.

Things to do this month:

Play the WCOOP HU event (maybe even try to surpass my semi-deep run last year (top 16))
Buy my 50" 1080p for the new apartment :)
and making anywhere from just $3,000 - $5,000 in September would make me more than break even on all my moving expenses and probably put me in an even better financial situation than i'm in now (which im really comfortable with).

Hope all of you had a good August, and I wish us all a great September,

-Primo

And for all of those struggling with the variance of this career, just keep working on your mental fortitude. Remember to think about how fortunate you are compared to 99% of other people you know, your age or not, and keep in mind whats important in your life. GL & Keep working hard

Mid-July / Wisdom Teeth

2008-08-13T19:30:00.000-07:00

couldn't get the picture to show up larger without clicking on it and pretty tired, so stars are as below

198 Games
$37 average profit
$191 average stake
19% ROI
$7,227 Total Profit

if only this were the truth :(. Seriously though, the month has gone fantastically for me so far, my sharkscope is off a ton ($3,620) , mostly from $330/300 4mans with croix and some with psimalive.

so that leaves me +$3,607, and considering I really only expected / wanted to make about $5k this month, it's going great so far. However I also had expected to be mostly at 100s and some 200s, and i've played the majority of my games at the $220 turbos this month, as well as having started playing 330/300 4mans with some select players, all of which has been going fairly well. I still would probably prefer to play regular speeds, but my volume has been really low, and turbos are allowing me to get in a decent amount of games in a greatly reduced time-frame. Also I find the 220 action has been great lately, and the action fills much faster (in relation to # of regs playing) than the 200 regs do.

Tomorrow... the day im dreading ;p, all 4 of my wisdom teeth come out, so we'll see how that goes, I may not be playing for the next couple days due to it... or I could be back on while im couch-ridden tomorrow night or the day after (more likely). Just wanted to give an update, and give everyone a chance to wish me luck for getting my 4 biggest teeth ripped out of my mouth. Hope the month is treating you all well, and hope the rest of it goes well for all of us,

-Primo

July - Recap

2008-07-31T16:56:00.000-07:00

Well, July has passed me by. Vegas is gone, doubt of me not being able to succeed is partially gone, and im back in New Hampshire for the remainder of the summer. I played this morning and absolutely demolished :). In reg speeds I didnt lose a single match, even in 4men, not one (excluding flips with my partner). And in turbos I only lost 2, both in 4mans, one of which we won and one which we lost, so I decided to stop for the day, call July a month, and make this post.

So my last post was ridiculously long, so I really will try to make this one shorter:

Monthly figured:

Profit from playing: $6,737
Profit from FPP: $1,364
profit from staking: $700
-------------------------------
Total Profit: $8,802

monthly graphs:

July-unfiltered: 720 $8.99 $107 7% $6,471

2 mans ( > 50): 455 $3.83 $107 4% $1,743

4mans: 255 $18.53 $112 14% $4,725

So a few notes on things above, my 2mans is filtered for >$50 cause I played some $10s with some students of mine. My records have my sharkscope as being off by $655 (too low) for the month, which is a surprisingly decent number to end at, cause it started off being off way more than that.

Anyways, I spent wayyyyyyy too much this month, and August will be better but September will prolly be close to the same figure (close to 5k this month, expecting 3-4k for Sept. but that includes rent, flight to france, new TV, etc.) but after that I want to curb it a ton. I talked to my new (soon to be) financial advisers yesterday, and that was a pretty cool prospect, I really am looking forward to learning how to be alot better with my money and having more put away outside of poker.

Other news, Mel (gf) is coming tomorrow, so im gonna drive up to Montreal to pick her up, and then we get to relax around here and spend time with family, say goodbye to my friends, etc. before we take off Sept. 9th. Other than that, i dont have anything big planned for the month, just alot of little trips and showing her around as it's her first extended stay in the states and the first time she'll be able to visit around New Hampshire and meet more of my friends and what not.

Goals for August:

make ~5k (good goal considering im gonna try not to play too much since the GF is here all month)

make at LEAST 13k VPP (putting me at 180k for the year, so will hit 200k bonus in Sept. for a free $2,000 and then have a shot at 300k for $3,000 by the end of the year)

Spend less than $2,200 (including my plane ticket to France for Sept., this still seems like a TON given im not paying rent at my parents LOL, but we may take a like 8 day trip through Canada and some other stuff, so who knows)

anyways guys, post ran long again :), but I hope you all had a great July, and that August will treat you really well. I'll try to make at least 2 posts in august to keep up to date. Good luck guys, enjoy the upcoming month =],

-Primo

Week 3 - Recap

2008-07-22T04:29:00.000-07:00

so it's 4am and I traveled for close to 30 hours today and i'm pretty beat so it wont be too long of a post. As I previously posted I took the last week to go to France and visit my girlfriend and also got the chance to look up a bunch of apartments for the September move, and from what i've seen we should definently be able to get a pretty nice one for our price range which is great, since it will be my new "office". That said it brings up another depressing note cause I can already tell im gonna spend ALOT to get the place setup like I really want it (alot being like 3-5k and consisting mostly of concierging stuff lol). Luckily for me my gf has a ton of really nice furniture, so all I should be responsible for is the refridgerator, TV (which may be tax deductable ;p), and then like a nice TV stand and a desk / computer chair, along with whatever else, maybe a recliner, im not really sure yet.

So i'm really excited for the move now, it's just becoming more and more real to me, and the idea of moving completely away from home and the states in general kind of has me taking poker much more seriously, as I will have nothing to fall back on, it just makes it seem so much more real and strong to me and I think it will help me a ton with motivation. That said im back in Vegas now and TOTALLY not feeling it, im just ready to get home, so I think im gonna buy a plane ticket back for the 24th so I have a few days before I head up to Montreal to get the GF who will be in the states until we ship out to France in early September (maybe the 9th).

Anyways France was great, went out, hung out with some of her friends, traveled around a bit, and went and saw the Rheinfalls with her parents on the swiss/german border, which were pretty awsome.

As for poker I had a really great week and couldn't feel much better about my game overall. I had a few spots where I felt like I was just unfocused and may have tilted off a few buy ins, but I was very happy with my play overall, and my ability to keep it pretty low volume (for my standards). I only played 1-2 hours / day, generally in the mornings while my gf slept cause I was on a weird sleep schedule and kept waking up at 6am euro-time, and almost all of my time was 3-4 tabling. I played a bit extra tonight when I got back, and was pretty swingy but +$415 on the day so I was happy with that. Anyways here's my SS graph for the trip: (15th - 21st)

122 games played
$12.3 average profit
$104 average stake
11% ROI
$1,500 Profit

Played alot more turbos than I normally do (51 turbos / 71 reg speeds), and felt really good and comfortable while playing them, alot more so than I had the past few months, and 3-4 tabling them almost seems easier for me than reg speeds at the lower stack/blind ratios are really easy and straightforward for me and pretty easy for me to pick apart the majority of bad players at those stages (25/50)+. So im feeling great, and planning on getting a TON of volume for the rest of this 1.5x VPP promotion and hopefully end around 25 or 30k VPP for the month (at like 13.8k right now), which should put me in the right spot to hit my 200k VPP bonus towards the end of August assuming I dont move up (which I dont plan on). Anyways, gotta talk to some financial planners and maybe a decent CPA if I can get in touch with them tomorrow to help me plan out everything, especially getting the huge tax breaks of living abroad and also being able to write of a ton of what I buy in the next few months (hopefully specifically in the move-in to my apartment) as poker office stuff, which it will be justified in being categorized as that.

OH YEA, one more thing. I thought alot about this recently, and I guess with my good results and happy mindset have decided to set some goals for myself. Currently i'd state my TRUE net-worth at about -(negative) 45k or so... wow... so weird to think of myself having a negative net worth considering how well I am doing to most people I know my age, but im calculating my "TRUE" net-worth as (Total cash + money in poker sites) - debt, almost all of this is from my student loans, but 7.5k is from my car (which im selling), and like 4k on a CC, and some other misc. stuff. (This does not include my assets, I would add them if my car was paid off or I owned a house or something, but im not counting like my computer, TV, etc., etc. as part of my net-worth). Anyways, my goal, is to have my "TRUE" net-worth be at +50k by May 20th, 2009 (my 22nd birthday). i think this would be a HUGE accomplishment to pay down some debt, and put away / invest some money, as the money I spend doesnt factor into this. To be honest I would probably be happy at having it be at $0, but I am too much of an underachiever sometimes and there is no reason at ALL why +50k shouldnt be possible, so thats the goal im setting for myself, and im hoping I can look back on it in May and see that i've accomplished this. I also think it's really good for me to set some goals to slowly pay down my student loans and other stuff, I realize it's not a great idea to pay it down all at once cause there are much better ways to invest and use your money, but I think if starting in November or so I start just putting $1k / month to start towards all of my debt each month I should see some serious progress, and it would make me feel really good. So that's the plan,

sorry for the super-long (non-poker related) post, good luck at the tables this week of our 1.5x VPP promotion, and try not to sit with me while im tryin to pump out a bunch of tables at a time ;p,

-PrimordialAA

Week 2 (Week 3 mostly off)

2008-07-15T23:03:00.000-07:00

ok, so week 2 was not really at all what I / we had hoped for, im still having a great month because of all the staking stuff, etc., but we had hoped to be up like 7k at least by now and preferably moving up to 200s about this time. Current I am up $4875 including everything, but my spending this month has been insane. I paid $700 in rent + $150-ish for utilities for last month, $1100 to ship my car back out (paid a friend to do it, his flight, gas, hotels, + some $$$ for doing it), $200 for refunding my friend's ticket who was going to come out and drive back with me, $974 for my ticket to and from france, $150 for buses and taxis getting to and from LA and LAX, and about $250 for hotel/food here in Frankfurt. All of this is not including my normal food / expenses while living in Vegas, so this is wayyyyyyyyy above any normal month for me as I normally live super-cheap compared to most, so hopefully this doesn't become a recurring theme. But the good news is i've basically paid for almost everything im going to need to, so im freerolling on profits for the rest of the month ;).

I was getting really frustrsated at the end of this past week, and greg is leaving from the 17th to the 21st, so I decided to book a last minute flight to France to visit my girlfriend. So anyways, I didn't get to post yesterday as I was traveling all day (Las Vegas -> LA -> Frankfurt Germany... where I am now, and now we (me and her) will head back to France to her place). Should be a cool / relaxing week, im really glad to be here, depite all the FPP i'll be missing from 1.5x VPP promotion ;p, it'll be good to take a break and hopefully get my mindset back to a decent spot to continue crushing for the last week of the month. I'll still put in some play time over here, maybe 2-3 hrs / day or something if I can find the time, cause I dont have enough saved for the fall yet to take too much time off entirely, but I def. won't be over-doing it while here, im here primarily to relax and ease my mind a bit.

As per the normal lately it seems lol, my SS is off a solid amount this month. It's 895 too low from a 330 4man with psimalive, and chopping 2 110s and losing both flips. Also it's off another 2400 from hokie crushinggggggg me in flips this month, to set me off by a grand total of $3295. Also this last week has really made me question moving up at the end of the month, im still really open to moving up to 200 reg 4mans, but im not sure if i'll be moving up from the 100 / 110 2mans any time soon until maybe the end of august, as I know I can crush these limits and continue to build up my BR without a TON of risk, and right now I really need to be saving and preparing for my first real full-time year in France with no school or anything else so I think it will be better to take the safe route. And yea, at the end of the month I may be mostly rolled for the 200s, but I think it's better for me personally to just hang back for maybe another month until im really showing myself more consistency than just this one month, as my last shots have always been super swingy in one way or another, and it's just not what I need right now. Anyways, i'll see how im feeling and playing when the end of the month rolls around, and keep everyone updated on how France is. Be back the 21st, so hopefully you won't see me online TOO much until then ;), good luck and stay safe,

-Primo

Week 1

2008-07-07T18:02:00.001-07:00

So week 1 of having Greg here is almost finished. It's been really cool having him around, we get along well, and have been crushing the 4 mans pretty hard. The last few days we have run soooo bad it's really been sick, and greg will attest to that haha, even so we have played 105 games, are each +$2775, and around making a little over $25 / game / person, which is still super solid. Even so, our volume hasn't been even close to as high as we want it to, and we have been busy doing stuff, so to make our goals we have to step it up and start putting in 25+ games / day. I'd really love to hit 10k by the 15th or 20th of the month, take our trip to lake powell and come back and start crushing 200s.

Other stuff going on in the month, my Stakee/Student (PayPerChase) took down the 22 HU MTT and got top 16 again today which was nice, and is doing really well other than that so thats been cool. We did our first profits chop so im +$700 from that and plan on seeing another $800 from another student's profit chop sometime this month, so those are both really nice to get.

Random:

Put out an offer to pay someone to fly here + gas + hotels + pay them to drive my car back across the country for me, and got someone to do it, so it will cost me a decent amount (a little over $1,000, maybe even closer to $1200) but it would cost me $1145 to ship it and I need it for August when my gf comes out and also can transport the Ps3, TV, and all the other stuff I bought out here back with it. After August though it's getting sold and I'm off to France.

Speaking of France, cwar is like 95% coming to live out there next year, and hokie is also considering it, so it could be a really amazing year coming up, and with good poker friends around i'm sure it will lead to all of us getting alot better and hopefully making some really awsome $$$ out there, like hitting $20k / month would feel so good and open up so many opportunities in my life. I also have been reading one of Greg's Real Estate Investing books and that has got me really motivated to start doing some positive stuff with my money besides just paying down student loans and other debt and we are all considering getting into some investments together so there is alot of really exciting stuff on the horizon of the future for me with money and my future as a poker player. But for tonight we (Me, Hokie, Cwar) are off to the invite-only Pokerstars ME burlesque party, Alessio (stars name) got me 3 extra tickets so we'll probably meet up with him and Dario and see what the Star's parties have to offer :).

Anyways, I hope you guys are all having an awsome month with poker, but also enjoying it as much as I am :), Good luck at the tables, i'll give another update at the end of next week,

-PrimordialAA

A New Month

2008-07-01T13:56:00.000-07:00

So first off im really sorry for the lack of updates, have been very unmotivated with blogging lately, but definently plan to do alot more now that stuff will be picking up this month in vegas. As some of you guys know Hokiegreg just got out here and will be living with me for July, which is super cool, and has me really motivated to have a big month. June was kind of a dissapointment, I had an 11k downswing online, lost $1700 playing table games in vegas, and another $1500-2k playing live poker (including like a $550 venetian tournament). I still ended up about 4-5k total but that includes clearing a $1500 bonus.

Goals and plans for this month are pretty big:

Crush a 10k month
Rent jet skiis on lake powell w/cwar and hokie
Helicopter into Grand Canyon and rent ATVs... also w/cwar and hokie
Road trip to San Diego, LA, and San Fran... again with them
Improve on making most of my volume quality playing
put in 10k+ hands of HU Cash (50/100NL) , small I know but it's a start

enjoy the month =]

Anyways i'll keep updating more, hopefully post some pictures of our trip and def. keep track of results and keep everybody updated. Good luck to you all, and hope you have a great July,

-Primo

Monthly recap

2008-06-01T04:32:00.000-07:00

So first off, sorry for my lack of posts lately, since the 15th i've been moving constantly, I flew back to New Hampshire, went to UNH to visit some friends, took a trip to turningstone... -1k, then flew to vegas which has been pretty sweet so far, I love it here. I spent the first week here with my family and more or less completely off of poker, although I am like -1.5k at table games lol, but thats just running bad at blackjack I swear ;). My family (Brother, dad, and brother's wife) flew home on Wednesday and since then I have been living with cwar, which has been great. Put in alot of grind-time, got discuss hands and some general theory, and his roomates are great so it's just been alot of fun.

As I had mentioned a bunch in my earlier posts this month, I started off with a -1.7k downswing in the first few days and even though I didnt end quite where I wanted for the month, there were at least 6-10 days where I didnt play at all this month, and I pulled out of my downswing nicely imo. I also shipped a +1.5k day today but I lost about 400 between HU cash and HU Razz, but it was my biggest day this month so im happy with it. Also cashed out 1k today to build my live roll a bit.

Monthly graph here:

Graph was off $3786 this month, so although the graph is a bit deceiving i'm actually +$3193 this month, and I cleared a $1500 bonus earlier on. Anyways after playing more with croix and really getting to know his style more and talking to him on some of the finer points of the plays we are both seeing and making on a regular basis, paired with being able to discuss with cwar lately, im feeling muchhhh more confident with my game and really feel like June can be an awsome month.

On other news Caleb (my roomate for June and old friend from UNH) flew in tonight so I picked him up at midnight, walked the strip for a bit and checked out the casinos and then headed back. Got to cwars around 2am and decided to go to a local casino here with them lol, I pwnedddddddd $5 craps rolls and rolled for like 20 minutes straight without 'crapping out', it was so nasty and fun, +$123 lol. So im back now and it's 5am and I figure I should prolly go to bed and keep on a good schedule, but my goals for June and July still stand at 7k, but I feel like if I keep on top of things and continue to work on my game I can easily definently exceed those.

Good luck with your upcoming months, I hope May was good for everyone, in Poker, and life,

-Primo

Bound for the USA

2008-05-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

Well, it's almost time for me to end this 9 month, 2 semester 'vacation' abroad ;p; but I guess the good news is I get to start my real vacation in Vegas, which I am unbelievably pumped for, I mentally build it up more and more for myself every day so hopefully it's that awesome. Bussto'd FTOPS $500 + 35 HU event in the second round when I made a pretty ridiculous shove on the river with 0 chance of winning the pot and also busted the stars $215 HU matches first round but I played pretty well there and the kid just ran insane. Making a decent recovery still on the month, today was pretty meh and I ended down $500-ish, but it could have been worse and I feel really great when playing for the most part lately. The exception being today when I played when I should have been studying for my final.

So that said I passed all of my classes this semester, already got the grade back from my final, so thats good news. Like I said before I started the month -1.7k and am now at -970 on SS, but my scope is off by 2686, so im actually +1716 this month, which is fine for now as we're just approaching halfway through. I mean it's obviously not great for playing $100s, but coming from a bad start, putting in less volume than im used to, etc. i'd say im OK with it. I still plan on hitting 5k from playing though, not counting FPP or the $405 I got from E-check rebates, or the $1500 bonus I cleared this month ;p. So anyways that's the update for now, 5k is the goal, 7k next month and also to move 4k over to FTP to start learning HU NL (plan to 3-4 table $100 NL). Good luck to everyone, my next post will be from the states so I hope you guys are all enjoying what your doing and having good luck at the tables,

-Primo

(oh also, pretty cool cause I didnt even notice, I have only played 143 100 regs this month and I have an 11% ROI which im happy with now that i've seen it, and that's after I dumped $500 in them today. So that is a definite confidence booster and I know a ROI like that is maintained by a ton of people in regs so hopefully I can keep it up as long as I dont push the volume too much)

Cool night, Marginal day

2008-05-10T14:51:00.000-07:00

Picture Blog Timeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee,

So my day felt pretty awful, but I guess it wasn't so bad, ended up even with a bad stretch of 0-3 in some 4mans (200/220s) that wrecked my progress I had made at 100s, but I had a good +3 BI 4 man session with DiBasio a little later to make it a bit better. So today my SS graph plummeted back downward, about -1k, but its just from losing two flips in 220 finals so my graph is really off this month, $2246 off to be exact. So anyways I started the month into May 2nd on a -1.7k downswing, i've pulled out of it and since the 3rd of May i've about $3,000 from HU SNG, cleared a $1500 bonus, and satt'd for the FTOPS #8 ($500 + 35) HU Eeent (tomorrow), so it's looking like I should be able to make my goal of at least $5,000 (playing profit preferrably), even with all the downtime im gonna have when I get back to the states and am spending time with my family and what-not.

Tonight me, my girlfriend, roomate, and some friends all went out to this pretty cool medieval restaurant. We had heard really good things and im leaving in 5 days now (Thursday) so we figured we'd go check it out. There were girls dancing to arabic music and randomly dancing on tables, women doing some pretty intense dances while swinging flaming (something) on the end of chains, a few sword fighting performances, a strong man bench pressing women over his head, and a jester who did a bunch of crazy stuff, but probably the most impressive was he balanced a glass on the THIN edge of a long knife, flipped it up in the air so the cup flipped from bottom to rim, caught it on the thin edge, and then flipped it back and caught it on the edge again, there was just a ton going on, your were constantly kept occupied.

We ordered this GIANT plate, which really as pictured here doesnt look that big... but just trust me on this, it was HUGE, there were 7 of us and it was made for 6 and we didnt even completely finish it.

This was after we got done with it

And this is a random picture of me making a weird face for some reason

Anyways it was nice to get out from the house for a bit, and on Monday im gonna try to get out the Castle & Parliament (the parliament building here is pretty nuts) and that should about cover it for what I want to do. Until then, FTOPS 8 tomorrow, a 10 page paper starting... now... at 1am ;( , a coding project, and finallllyyyy gonna pass my Math Final. I'm gonna try my hardest to not put in a ton of hours... but anti-volume isn't really my deal ;). If anything exciting happens in the FTOPS tomorrow i'll give an update, good luck at the tables until next time,

-Primo

Trying to balance

2008-05-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

Alright, so I have always been a super high-volume player compared to most, but I am realizing that its forcing me to be mentally unfocused, and on my B/C games even when im 100% rested, etc. , it just keeps my in a constant state of mediocrity, so i've been working really hard at putting in less volume, but QUALITY games, and it's been going fairly well. My last 4 days were like +300, +250, -500, and then today was +1400 on stars and -370 or so on FTP.

The first 3 days were me playing all 100 regs mostly, with the -500 day being the exception when I (as I said I wouldnt) took a shot at a fish in a 200 reg when I was +300 and got lucksacked, and then owned in the 110s for like an hour and a half to end me -500, but I was glad I could stop when I felt like I was getting off my game and getitng frusterated. Anyways today I was about even at the 100 regs, and then me and stivolino went 4-0 in 200s/220s 4mans and then chopped one 3 way when a friend accidentally sat for a small $66 profit. I also played some with croix which was my first day doing so, we were 1-2 in the FTP $320 4-mans and like 4-1 in the 220s on stars I think, anyways after watching more of his game I can say that I can see why his stats are as good as they are, I wont get into detail about other's games on here, but I can say I see alot that he is doing super-well and he didnt seem to lose his cool at any point, so my respect grew alot just from getting to watch him a bit more; now hopefully I can take something from it and work it into my own game and get some more mutual respect outta people ;).

Other than that life's been normal, getting stomped on finals, had one Tuesday, one tomorrow, and one next Tuesday as well as a 10 page paper and a coding project to do, so i'll be busy this weekend but still gonna try to put in some play time. I also have a really creative/new idea for coaching sessions to help students who are having trouble implementing or retaining the information OR failing to make the proper adjustment(s) vs their opponents. I'm gonna try it in my next two face-to-face sessions with my student from Budapest, as soon as he gets back from Italy, so i'll let everyone know how it goes and hopefully can share some of it here. Good luck at the tables,

-Primo

Moving down & Goals

2008-05-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

I have been through this cycle multiple times in the last year to year in a half, where I move up slowly through my limits, make solid $, begin to beat the 110s and get on pace to make solid $ and consider stopping school, which I am really stressed with and dont enjoy much at the moment (one year left), and then hit the $200s / $220s and get RAPED and ... sometimes i've been stupid and gone broke, sometimes i've moved down, sometimes i've cashed out a bunch and moved down, probably happened 2-3 times and i've just gotten done another cash of it. Had a solid 6.5k upswing or so... stayed at 200/220s... and had a solid 8k downswing, and have finally (wayyyyyyyy too late, about 3-4k too late) moved down.

I mean I REALLY feel like I should be beating these games, the players are not that much different than the 110s and I am playing huge fish constantly, but just seem to run bad at the wrong times and try too hard to force winning, i.e. playing wayyy too many games (I played 411 regular speed games last week). So anyways I have dropped to the 110s/100s and am down 1.4k this month, so I am going to try to hit a 5k month from playing, which will be pretty tough to do at the 100s with my current winrate and starting downswing... but I hope it'll put me at about 6.5k or so with rakeback(FPP) included. I still really would love to stop school for a year or two and go live in France with my girlfriend, just because I really enjoy experiencing different and more than anything learning new languages (I studied Spanish for 12 years, even though I don't get to use it much anymore). But to do that I would like to make ~7.5k / month for the next 3 months (May, June, July), to feel financially capable of doing it, so wish me luck and we'll see how it goes.

New Goals:

Try to play a mix of regular/turbos

play NO HIGHER than $110/100 2-mans

only play the $200/220 4-mans if im feeling great and my partner is as well (I will still play these because the people I play 4 mans with right now are at that limit and 4-mans are greatly decreased variance)

Don't play past when your feeling optimal (stuck or winning, either way)

Set a 5 buy-in stop loss

Make $5,000 from HU SNG

Good luck in May everybody,

-Primo

meh

2008-04-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I had plannet to make like this really niceee big end of the month post with all my stats and #s and whatever but I am super-tired and really feeling horrible right now. Anyways, my awsome upswing was destroyed by me ... well being me and putting in like 50-70 reg speed games / day, letting my game deteriorate and blowing a bunch of $, the last 3 days in a row I have been +1k and ended -1k or more... which is miserable, and have just run like complete garbage for what seems like eternity (from playing too much). Also bought a $1500 bonus and used 9k FPP or so to satt into the sunday million to make myself feel a bit better (took the T$).

Won my first round match of the 2p2 HU tournament, 3-0 so that was pretty solid, I played really non-standard and overly aggressive, 3betting a ton as my opp was a cash game player and really just played a bit too tight when defending his button opens, I also won a flip and hit a FD (it was best 3/5), but I felt like I had the pace of the match in my hands for more or less all of it.

Anyways, took my gf out to dinner the other night which was nice to get out, she works super hard with school and we dont get to do much these days with finals coming up so it was nice to get out even if it was just for a dinner. She also has some special night planned she made reservations for (tomorrow night I think), so that should be cool too since we have tomorrow til sunday off here for some hungarian holdiday.

I ordered this:

which actually doesn't look that good in the picture and I don't remember the name of it (Hungarian), but it's delicious, and the salad at the bottom of the plate is iced salad and somehow goes fantastically with the hot meat, anyways it's the second time i've had it there and it's a great dish :).

and my gf (pictured below) got her standard carbonara cause im a pretty picky eater and she never finishes her meals, so she makes sure she gets something i'll finish for her (LOL).

So the month was still OK, but I made almost nothing in HU, just like 2.5k from FPP and a bit from HU, a bit from buying action, and like 2k live or something, far from the month I thought I might have. I should have dropped back to 100s / 110s like 1-2k in my downswing ago... but im gonna hang on for another 1k as I really feel like I should be able to beat them, it's no longer within my BR to do so... but im gonna go for it as I know I should be able to beat the 100s/110s for a pretty decent clip in may if this doesnt go well. Also if it does go well it will allow me to be farrr better rolled for NL HU this summer, which I kinda need to be to learn it and get into it without messing up my HU BR, so it would be nice if I could put together a good amount of extra $$$ to do that with as I get out to vegas and cwar and whoever else helps me try to transition into playing HU NL and actually being decent at it :).

So hopefully things will turn around, my goal is still 7.5k for May, so it is definently reasonable, even though i'll be putting in a bit less time since I will only be home for 9-10 days before I head off to vegas, and i've been in Europe for almost 9 months, so i'll want to catch up with family and friends. Good luck everyone, and i'll try to make my next post a little bit more up-beat and maybe have something informative in it ;p,

-Primo

2008-04-25T09:44:00.000-07:00

So my past 3 day's have been pretty awsome. I moved to 110 turbos and 200 regulars, and have been crushing, most of my 4man games have been with rokdafunk (with a few with nofear), but I have been playing alot of 2 mans, and was 3-4 tabling today when the games would fill fast enough, anyways, my days went +1500, +1850, +2150 or so, and my stats and graph look like this: 124 $40 $168 22% $4,988

anyways, so that's been really great, and put me on pace for one of my biggest months so far (about 10-12k) with this, my live play, and my FPP.

so for an update of where I stand this month it's something like this:

SNG : +$5k (yea... I had a really terrible start to the month)
Live: +$1300
buying action: +$500ish
FPP: +$1500 (88k FPP ~ $1500 through concierge)
$$ off in 4mans: +$1400
live blackjack: -$600 :(
------------------------------------
+$9,100

so by far my best normal month ever, I had some crazy times in September played a TON of 220s and 550s on FTP and placing top 16 in the WCOOP HU matches and was like +24k that month, and then broke up with my gf who was back in the states, life tilted and blew like 18k in a week on cash and 550s, regardless to say I was a huge degen and should never have been playing when emotionally stressed like that, so I dont like to count September as my best month, but I still count November as my worst, so this will be my best month under normal solid BR management, and im very happy with that, my goal this year is 60k and I seem to definently be on pace, although I won't expect 10k months monthly just yet ;p

anyways I had a pretty good day today, woke up and just hung out took it easy this morning didn't think about or play poker, then I had just started to play (2-1 in the 200 regs, with my one loss to cat5cane who is really solid, but I got it in good so I was fine with it) when my girlfriend called and asked me to go have lunch, so I ended up having a 'picnic' of sorts at the Buda Castle in Budapest, which was actually really nice and relaxing and had a pretty beautiful view so it was a nice break.

Yesterday I had my first face-to-face coaching session with one of my students who I found out was from Budapest (Szamvan from 2p2 and pokerstars), anyways we just started working together and it was cool to do a session like this, I spent some time going through games we played together and where I could pick out leaks in his game from an opponents stand-point (i.e. betsizing tells, obvious incorrect-frequencies, if his ranges are super-polarized on river bets, etc.) and we reviewed only from my the standpoint of my HHs for the games (7 matches) but reviewed his actions without knowing his cards. Then I sweated him for 3 matches commenting all the way through, basically walking him through spots I think he was doing things incorrectly in, and then I had him play one where I didnt comment at all but he to walk-through his logic on all major decisions and streets verbally, and then at the end we talked about what holes we found and tried to give him some things to work on. That was basically the end of the session but he watched me play a couple of the 200 regs (he is currently playing $20 + 1 non-turbos). It was a cool experience as it was my first time working like this, and we did a session online today, but I think I will try to get a few more face-to-face sessions in with him before I leave Budapest as I really enjoy being able to watch in real time and hear him explaining or thinking it through as it plays out (as I feel alot of players aren't completely honest with themselves when they review and kind of place 'perfect-reads' on some situations saying oh yea, he did this a ton so thats why it was OK here), but when they were playing it out they didn't really have that absolute concept which made it alot more marginal, I dunno, that's just what i've seen from alot of people

but this has turned into another long post so im gonna cut it short here, and i'll be sure to give an update on how I finished the month at the end of the month, so good luck guys, I hope you enjoy reading my ramblings occasionally (also im going to ask for comments after the blog has been up and running for a little more time on what you would prefer to see, keep it as it is (a mixture of everything, make it more strategy-based, leave out my personal-life stuff, see more hands, etc.). Until later,

-Primo

A better day

2008-04-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

So I don't plan on updating daily, but they will be sporadic and hopefully not just once a month or something. anyways, today I had a great day, I was 13-5 at the 110s, and 1-0 at the 220s, and 5-1 in 200(reg speed) 4-mans with a partner. But beside that, I started playing and just felt fantastic, I really felt like I had a mental breakthrough. After reading MLJ's Well and him talking about how he did small household things like making his bed EVERY morning to build discipline which in turn helped him with game and focus, I then was reading through a discussion sparked in the LC thread on 'warm-up' routines people do before they play. So today, when I got home I didn't jump right on the laptop, I put all my stuff down, relaxed, started up the comp, ate my lunch, got something to drink and put on some music and really got settled. I then went into my bedroom and did a few real quick stretches / breathing exercises just to give it a shot, even if it felt embarrassing, and I feel like it really helped out, I sat down 100% focused, relaxed and ready to play. Anyways, here is my graph for the day (the massive upswing up had half of the profit going to rokdafunk ($800), and the downswing had $1200 coming to me (600 profit + my buy ins back), so I ended the day about +1500 which is more or less what the graph shows, but it's easy to get off when your playing 4-mans.

So another thing that really made something click in my mind was discussing a hand played at foxwoods by a friend who is a really good full ring player:

Friend (9:10:19 PM): this guy
Friend (9:10:21 PM): to my direct right
Friend (9:10:26 PM): this is in the foxwoods 5/10 game
Friend (9:10:31 PM): its 11am
Friend (9:10:34 PM): and ive been playing for about an hour

Friend (9:10:36 PM): and have had like two beers.
Friend (9:10:41 PM): which seems to petrify the old dudes playing
Friend (9:10:43 PM): table is mega soft.
Friend (9:10:53 PM): one young live grinder kid (slick rick if you ever play the games, watch out for him hes actually good)
Friend (9:11:00 PM): anotehr guy who plays the SNG's but was sitting for some reaso
Friend (9:11:02 PM): but is probably OK
Friend (9:11:07 PM): and then like 7 random old shitty dudes
Friend (9:11:13 PM): the guy on my right
Friend (9:11:18 PM): was playing something like 95/1
Friend (9:11:21 PM): vpip/pfr
Friend (9:11:23 PM): if you know what im saying.
Primo (9:11:26 PM): yea
Friend (9:11:29 PM): he actualyl commented on me
Friend (9:11:32 PM): about why dont i try and see more flops
Friend (9:11:38 PM): cause i was like playing nitty
Friend (9:11:42 PM): i probably play like 12/8 in that game
Friend (9:11:43 PM): fwiw.
Friend (9:11:44 PM): so anwyays.
Friend (9:11:49 PM): folds around to the old 95/1 guy
Friend (9:11:52 PM): who limps (obv)
Friend (9:11:57 PM): i make it 40 with Q9 suited (hearts)
Friend (9:12:00 PM): and it folds back to him and he calls
Friend (9:12:05 PM): the flop is J84 rainbow
Friend (9:12:14 PM): he checks, i bet like 55 i htink and he snapcalls.
Friend (9:12:18 PM): turn is 3 putting up two spades.
Friend (9:12:21 PM): he checks and i check it back.
Friend (9:12:24 PM): the river is the Ts
Friend (9:12:36 PM): and he bets 1500 into the $200 pot
Friend (9:12:41 PM): we're both around 4k deep.
Friend (9:12:42 PM): thoughts?

So I debated over it for a minute and then asked a few questions

Friend (9:12:56 PM): (i stacked someone AA vs KK, and hit a set with TT vs AA prior, so basically i look like a luckbox probably)
Friend (9:13:04 PM): i dont know how he got his stack but running like god is presumably why,.
Primo (9:13:19 PM): hrmm, anything on what you've seen him do previously
Friend (9:13:22 PM): yeah
Friend (9:13:23 PM): limp
Friend (9:13:25 PM): call a lot of flop bets
Primo (9:13:25 PM): seen him ck/raise often (i.e. setting you up on the turn)
Friend (9:13:26 PM): and fold
Friend (9:13:27 PM): but he has overbet
Primo (9:13:30 PM): seen him overbet
Friend (9:13:30 PM): like 2-3 times
Friend (9:13:32 PM): w/o showdown.
Primo (9:14:27 PM): God, hrmm, lol, I dunno personally I prolly double barrell the turn but im a HU Aggro-donk, and luckily enough im actually just a big enough station to call there

so I was weighing a call or fold and finally said I would prolly hate it but call, but im not sure I dont play much cash and a fold seems like it can't be too bad there

and he said yea, maybe a call is OK

but..

Friend (9:14:41 PM): i shoved though.

and then it just clicked, while I was weighing the options in this hand I hadn't even taken into consideration a shove at all, just the mere fact on whether or not I was ahead of his range and could justify a call, but he brought up the point to me afterwards that when he fires out $1500 there he is NEVER folding basically, so your losing a TON of value from being ahead of his range by having his sets and 2pair hands and maybe even like AA/KK played horribly paying you off there, but just the fact that I hadn't even taken that into consideration was really shocking to me, and I could feel some previously barred doors suddenly *CLICK* being unlocked.

I mean this situation applies to alot of things though, not even the specifics of this hand and whether a call, fold or raise is best, as this hand could be mis-analyzed by both of us, but looking at the WAY we think about things, and if you guys ever take the time to read through JMan's the Well thread, verrrryyy good read and well worth it (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=88525&highlight=jman28&page=1)
he speaks about a similar moment when he was listening to HO@ENGGOL and someone else discuss a hand, almost the exact same situation, but it just comes down to the fact that for us to really be able to take our game to the next step, we need to be looking at ALL possible lines, I mean sure, I consider myself to be farr above average in analytical skills when it comes to analyzing spots HU, however just because it's so easy for us to break it down into the two obvious decisions and decide which is preferred over the other isn't always correct, we really need to look at ALL possible options from ALL possible lines to be able to maximize our EV in any given spot, and therefore our edge against any given opponent, I will try to elaborate on this further in some later posts as I feel like i'm rambling now, but it was a great day, both at the tables, and off of them, as taking the time to think and read about the game, as well as discuss it with competent players who are really trying to take topics into deep discussions can help your game a TON and it's something you can easily do when your feeling burnt out from playing, not focused for some reason, or any time really, I think about hands and concepts constantly on my tram ride to school, between classes, every free second I have alone, so be sure to open up your minds and your thought processes in your future(s) and you'll be sure to grow much faster and see better results for sure, good luck all,

and don't miss the 2p2 HU Forum ($50) Tournament coming up, you can find the thread to sign up here (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showthread.php?t=186330) , just send $50 to cwar20 (Las Vegas) on Pokerstars and send me (PrimordialAA) a PM on 2p2 letting me know you've done so,

-Primo

meh

2008-04-22T10:56:00.000-07:00

so yesterday was a really really bad day for me poker-wise. I enjoy live and have been crushing the casino here in Budapest as the game is super weak-passive. I got done my 8am class and skipped my noon one to chill, play online, was like +500 or so feelin pretty great except im tired, head over at 2 cause that's when the game starts. So long story short, I didnt have any discipline, had TERRIBLE table position, as the only 3 competent / semi-aggressive players were all to my left, anyways I was like +$400 before ending -$1200, I bluffed my stack off into two hugee $2,000ish pots. anyways, I played one pot that is always good for a confidence booster:

(1k forint = $6.1 or so)

10 handed... 500 / 1k (Forint) Pot Limit Hold'em

Dealt to Primo in the SB: 9s 3c

UTG Straddles to 2k
UTG + 1 calls
UTG+2 -> MP3 folds
hijack raises to 7k
CO + Button fold.
Primo raises to 24k

UTG checks and checks and says something in hungarian and folds his straddle ;p
UTG+1 folds
hijack checks his cards, thinks, and calls

ok, so for some history, i've played with the hijack a couple times, he is pretty tight but knows how to attack weakness and the UTG and UTG+1 fold a TON for a 7k bet in this game, it def wasn't to induce or anything, game plays really weak-passive, but he knows me to be (fairly) aggro but doesn't adapt enough to it, and last time we played I took a 130k (forint) pot off him and everyone at the table made fun of him for it cause he called me down super-light for 3 streets of value, so I dont expect him to want to call me down too light.

anyways, Hijack (older guy): ~48k after the call
Primo: 165k

after he called I figure he is reshoving QQ-AA (maybe counter-intuitively), flats AQ/AK/QK and maybe some other weird broadway combinations, he folds any low pp, and SOMETIMES flats 88-JJ but they play so weird here, like in a previous hand, HJ and CO limp and I make it 5k OTB and he folds TT face up.

so anyways, long story short, flop comes 3 9 3 rainbow I fire 27k and he thinks and folds and I take down like a $400-ish pot

anyways now that i've written about it I guess it really isn't a spectacular hand in any way/shape/or form, but I don't play much live and felt pretty fearless at the time :).

as for HU SNG, today was super swingy, I went 6-1 playing 220/200 4mans with my partner, then 0-3, 0-3 with a different partner, and finally 3-0 at 110 4-mans with ChicagoRy. It was kind of a crazy day and I ended basically break-even, (-$30) I think, but I think I will try to stay away from the 220s entirely unless im feeling really good and am playing 4-mans with someone for the lessened variance, i'll try to focus more on some key hands i've played in HU in my next post and maybe some on the topics of limping and non-standard bet-sizing that i've been working on, until later,

-Primo

The Beginning of a New Age of Primo

2008-04-20T14:20:00.001-07:00

So i'm finally pulling the trigger and making an HU SNG blog.

So i've played for a long time, like over 2 years of almost strictly HU, but hadnt ever studied, learned, been coached or found 2p2 until July of this 08. Since then I was taken under the wing of indyindiana on 2p2, worked extensively with him and cwar, branched out after a while and began coaching and continuing to study on my own, I coached bbbushu on 2p2 (waltermelon on FTP) along with some other shorter term setups and a semi-long term deal with Paranoia87 which fell out after a month or two as he found 6max to be his true love.

anyways, that's my past with HU SNG, I've played poker for over 5 years now, originating in STTs while always having some success in MTTs as well, and trying cash on and off, scoring big but never studying or improving past my own poker-sense, and then I fell in love with HU and found 2p2 and a great coach and now I am here.

Recently I have been playing 4 man's with Hokiegreg (although not so much in April) and we've had super-good results and been pretty dominant in them. I am currently playing the $110 level as an average buyin, dropping to 55s or taking shots at 220s whenever I am feeling bad or feeling good and game selecting.

so anyways I had no clue how to introduce myself to a blog, so just spewed some random info up there about myself. But now for what you can expect from me in the future. I plan on making this blog to track aspects of my life for those who are interested (im moving to vegas for 2 months this summer and just coming back from a year abroad in europe) so I may have some interesting stuff to post about, I am also staked in MTTs by Rarestake, so maybe the occasional update on that progress, but it will almost entirely be based around my progression with HU SNG, things i've noticed about the game, mental epiphanies, interesting hands, etc. So I hope you all enjoy and i'll be adding more as I can.

On a final note: I'm 20 years old (21 on May 20th), I play HU SNG, and this SS graph is where I begin this blog.

After reflecting on the graph for a bit, I feel like I will also try to add a great deal of psychology to the graph, as I have always had a problem with discipline and tilt, I have come a longggg way in recent months, most specifically since January 2008, but it is something I am constantly thinking about ways to really neutralize the dangerous parts of my own psychology, so I will try to touch on that as situations arise. Good luck all,

-Primo