Sunday, July 24, 2011

A Post About Poker, ldo

This blog is called "the online poker life..." right?

So why haven't I posted about poker? Because I thought the other posts would be more entertaining? Partly, yes. But truthfully, I was kind of embarrassed about my results.

Confession time...

Before Black Friday (the day online poker was shutdown in the US), I was killing it. I had played nearly 1,100 hours and over 250,000 hands of online poker and was winning at a rate that would embarrass other heads up players at my stakes.

So what happens when I get to Canada...

I lose. And lose some more. Then I win...but then I lose again. Win. Lose. Win. Lose. After a week of (luckily) breaking even I realize things aren't good.

This is not good.

Drastic measures must be taken.

I wake up, watch a 1 hour training video on CardRunners, review all my hand histories, then I play. 10-12 hours per day, constantly making mental notes of the situations that give me the most trouble and thinking how I can better adjust. Nick watches me play and lets me know what adjustments he thinks I should be making. Halfway through the day I stop and watch Nick play for 30min-1hour or so and I take more mental notes, then I keep playing until I'm exhausted, I climb into bed, watch another CardRunners video and review hands...rinse and repeat.

I've been doing this for about 6 days now. AND I'M BACK BABY!!!

Not only do I feel I'm back to where I was previously, I feel even better.

This trip is gonna be epic. I've ran terrible the last 3 days and still managed to clear nearly $2,000 playing $.25/$.50, $.50/$1, and some $1/$2. The original goal was to make $60,000 in 6 months, but I'm pretty sure $60,000 is a joke at this rate. Cleared $120/hour today and am thinking this should be the normal winrate within two months.

Big thanks to TC the MFCEO (Nick, my roommate) for helping me with my leaks and another big thanks to my staker for allowing me to use his CardRunners account for a week.

Alright girls and boys, I'm off to bed.

Sunday, July 17, 2011

First Big Night Out in Whistler

So after having two decently strong sessions, I decide to go out in Whistler.

This was a pretty eventful night.

First, I call up the girl who I met at the visitor center. She meets up and we head to the village to watch Hot Hot Heat, a band who's here for Kokanee's Crankworx Mountain Bike Festival. I have my first Kokanee and my first poutine (poutine is french fries, cheese curds, and gravy...pretty tasty when you're drunk).

From the show we make our way to Cinnamon Bear, one of the only bars in Whistler that has pool tables (YESSS!). For anyone who doesn't know me well, a little background information: I don't want to toot my own horn, but I finished 4th in the Southeastern United States Amateur 9-Ball Tour back in the day. That's not spectacular or anything, but your average local bar room hustler IS GONNA GET F'N SPANKED, that's all I'm saying.

There I proceed to make friends with all the pool players, Martin, James, Danielle (a cute girl from the UK), Chris who runs weekly tourneys.

The girl I originally came with gets smashed, puts her backpack (with wine bottle in it) on a chair and wanders off. Moments later all money is missing out of her backpack ($150), she realizes this after someone (Danielle) accidentally knocks over the chair the backpack was on. Wine bottle busts and is all over the floor. Girl is furious. Goes ape-shit. Flips out on everyone. Leaves.

Danielle and I go to a club (Garfinkles). Club doesn't accept credit cards. UK Danielle buys my drinks (yayyy, i owe her). Danielle meets some other guy and wanders off (I don't owe her anymore, lol).

I leave Garfinkles and meet some girls from Vancouver. They invite me to a late night poutine stand. Poutine stand doesn't accept credit cards. Vancouver girl buys me poutine (yayyy!). I hang out with Vancouver girl until 5am, she says I have to visit her in Vancouver, I leave.

Walking 5 minutes back to Tantalus Lodge, the sun is up, I'm in the middle of the village, I look to my right, and see AN F'ING BEAR!!!! 20 feet away, on the side walk, in the middle of the damn village, with nobody around, there is a massive black bear, A BIG ONE!!! The distance from the 3-point line to the hoop, that's how close this black bear was. It seemed somewhat disinterested in me, but I decide that I should probably try and scare it off to discourage it from coming any closer, so I clap my hands and make loud obnoxious retarded noises at it and sound like a total idiot and it immediately runs off...black bears are pussies.

I of course felt like a bad ass, but constantly look behind me the entire rest of the way home.

Good first big night out in Whistler. I knew I brought my iPhone out for a reason tonight. Here are some snapshots of the bear!



Thursday, July 14, 2011

OMG SGC

As I've said previously, Whistler is the Mecca of downhill mountain biking. That's AWESOME...sort of.

"But Chris, how is that not awesome?" you ask.

There's something called Summer Gravity Camp (SGC). If you're between the ages of 11 and 18 years old, you have a $5,000+ downhill mountain bike, and your parents are willing to cough up $2,500 for the program, then you get to downhill mountain bike in Whistler for a week being coached by the sickest pros in downhill mountain biking...AWESOME RIGHT!!??

NO.

Not when Tantalus Lodge, my home in Whistler, is where all these high energy, rich, spoiled, 11 through 18-year-old kids are staying for 3 weeks.

For 3 weeks we have to deal with these little bastards running around, unsupervised, terrorizing the Tantalus Lodge.

Half the time we're playing poker it's like earthquakes are happening in the rooms above us. Any day now the ceiling is going to cave in. Sometimes after playing poker all day, we wanna go down to the hot tub and relax, have a beer, maybe see if there's a 1-percenter hanging out (as I mentioned before, 99% of the girls in Whistler are less than attractive). But what happens when we arrive at the hot tub? There are twenty 14-year-old kids sitting around in silence (most of them anyway). Most of them are actually alright, Oooooh, except that one kid who is obviously the cool kid in the group. You know the one that won't shut the hell up, the one who you swear might be the most annoying child on the planet and he's obviously here because his parents think it's worth it to spend $2,500 just to get him the hell out of their house. Oh, Colt McClellan, you little snot-nosed punk.

Colt McClellan was that kid. A blonde haired, 100-pound 16/17-year-old, mountain biker who looked more like a 14-year-old girl. Think Taylor Hanson.

I'd like to think I'm above verbally bashing a kid in front of his friends, but Colt was pushin' it. Trying to make the most of a crappy situation, Nick and I say "screw it" and decide to chill in the hot tub anyway. When asking about SGC and downhill mountain biking in general every kid was cool and helpful, except for Colt (nice name btw).

Colt: Have you ever downhill mountain biked before?
Me: No, the only extreme sports I've done are snowboarding and a lot of skateboarding when I was younger.
Colt: Skateboarding's for pussies
Me: *lol, this is gonna be a swell time in the hot tub*
Nick: Have you ever done any motocross?
Colt: pffff, motocross isn't nearly as dangerous as downhill mountain biking.
Nick: Orly? The steel rod holding my femur in place says differently.
Colt: In mountain biking when you do a jump you go long and not high, it's definitely more dangerous.
Nick: I've done 110' jumps on a dirt bike. How far have you gone on a mountain bike?
Colt: About 50'. But you have to go insane fast to hit 50' on a mountain bike.
Nick: How fast do you think you have to go to hit 110' on a dirt bike?
Colt: It's not the same. Trust me it's a lot more dangerous.

About every 10 minutes Colt would chime in to explain how he was the sickest downhill mountain biker, how he totally hit on some girl in the sauna, how he liked the taste of beer (lol).

Man, I can't wait for SGC to be over. For now, enjoy this video of last year's Summer Gravity Camp

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Stressful Times

So the first 7 days in Whistler have come and gone and poker is kicking my butt...and by kicking my butt I mean I'm not clearing the standard amount of money I've grown accustomed to, not even close!

Before I was sitting $50nl-$200nl heads up cash games and occasionally taking shots at $400nl. So, what do I do when I get to Whistler? Immediately multi-table $400nl. Why not, I was DESTROYING $200nl and beating the crap out of $400nl whenever I took shots at it...so why shouldn't I start at $400nl? ...maybe because I hadn't played online in nearly 2 months due to Black Friday and I was way out of practice.

So what happened? I immediately make $1,000 only to run several buyins below EV that evening and end up in the hole a pretty fair amount. Upon realizing that I've been sitting on the bench ice cold for 2 months and I'm in no position to sit $400nl, I immediately move down to my normal games and squeak out a small profit for the week.

Now, after a week of playing and getting unstuck I'm definitely back at the $60-$70/hour level again and will probably be moving up to $2/$4 by next month and hopefully clearing $100+/hour.

Nick has had better luck. Playing $400nl-$5,000nl heads up cash games, Nick has cleared almost $25,000 in less than 7 days...I should sweat his games more.

GOALS:

Chris
1) $10,000+/month (July excluded since all of our sites aren't funded yet)
2) Run 4 miles per day, lift 6 days per week, eat uber healthy

Nick
1) Clear $100,000 in one month
2) Lift, eat healthy.

I'll try and post some pictures soon!

Friday, July 8, 2011

First Week in Whistler

So it's been almost a week now and things are starting to come together.

Some things I've learned about Whistler:

1) It is not uncommon to drill a bear while flying downhill on your mountain bike...people literally crash into bears here. AWESOME!

2) 99% of the girls here are unattractive...not awesome. The few girls that are hot have boyfriends (of course).

3) The food hear tastes amazing and costs a fortune. $17 for my burger combo at Splitz. I'm going to be surviving on PB&J for awhile.

4) Weather and scenery are incredible!

5) There is a full moon rave every full moon.

6) There are no fat people in Whistler. Not even close.

7) Bud Light is considered a pussy beer here. All Canadian beers are 5% alcohol or more. Bud Light is less than 5% and has no flavor. If you are caught drinking Bud Light you will be made fun of. When I asked one girl what was worse, drinking a bud light or drinking a raspberry mojito, she said it was too close to decide.

8) Zipline here is top 5 in the world and looks insane!

9) Whistler has a beastly disc golf course (if you're into disc golf).

10) There are an infinite number of hiking and mountain biking trails.

11) Crankworx is next week. Week long freestyle/slopestyle mountain biking bash that is going to rock so hard! Look up crankworx vids on youtube.

12) Whistler is the downhill mountain biking capital of the world. It's easily the Mecca of big air mountain biking.

13) Everyone here gets around via bike and/or skateboard (wish i was here 10 years earlier).

14) Awesome paragliding in Pemberton (just down the road)

15 Top-notch bouldering and rock climbing in Squamish (not far at all)

There are a ton of other things, but what it basically boils down to is Whistler is awesome and there a ton of things to do here.

Cons: it's hard to find good looking single chicks and it's expensive.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Border Patrol

I'm not sure how it is for most people, but entering Canada as a professional online poker player is not fun.

This is Canada's primary concern: You have to leave America in order to make a living...you have the ability to make tons of money while in Canada. You have no reason to come back to the states other than to see family. How do they know you don't just plan on disappearing into Canada for longer than 6 months (the maximum amount of time you're allowed to stay on a tourist visa)? It also kinda looks bad when everything you own is in the back of your truck.

Rachel (250lb pissed off black woman, aka Border Patrol Rottweiler) was NOT happy to see us!

Rachel: So what you're telling me is that you're leaving America to make a living in Canada?
Me: Yes
Rachel: That you've packed up everything you own and are moving here?
Me: Not "everything". And we're only staying for 6 months.
Rachel: Really? What ties do you have to the US?
Me: Umm...my parents and friends all live here.
Rachel: So? Who cares? Do you have a mortgage?
Me: No
Rachel: a lease?
Me: No
Rachel: a wife?
Me: No
Rachel: So what you're saying is you're coming to live in Canada in order to make money because they won't let you in the US and you have no reason to come back?
Me: Um, I have a gym membership that's currently frozen until I get back (she didn't find this funny AT ALL).
Rachel: Are you serious? *Staring at me like I'm retarded* Are you in school?
Me: I just graduated (I thought it was easier to say this than explain I have one online class left. BIG MISTAKE).
Rachel: We searched your car and found a text book in your grey bin. What do you need a text book for if you've graduated?
Me: Ummmm...uh...I'm taking an online class. Technically I'm ABOUT to graduate.
Rachel: Oh, so you're moving to Canada to make a living, no reason to return to the US (other than my gym membership Rach! C'mon!), and you're a liar! Do you really think I'm gonna let you into Canada?
Me: ...I hope so.

After about 2 1/2 hours of this we finally convince Rachel that we're worthy of Canada.

In the end I thanked her for letting us in and she gave me a smile as if to say "you're lucky I'm not a COMPLETE bitch or I'd send your happy ass back across the border. I'm pretty sure we were getting in all along and she just wanted to light a fire under our asses for kicks. She wasn't so bad. Nick's still convinced she's the anti-christ.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

So long gay boys!

Apparently, some people find what I'm doing interesting, so they've suggested that I start blogging about it.

What am I doing exactly? For anyone who doesn't know, I've been playing online poker as my primary source of income for almost 2 years now. On April 15th, 2011 the US Department of Justice decided to shutdown online poker within the United States. The largest online poker sites were shutdown to American players and I could no longer make money playing online poker in the land of the free :(

So what do I do? Get a real job working 9-5 making ~$45,000 per year?

NO WAY JOSE!!! I put all my stuff in a big-ass truck and hightail it to Whistler, BC baby!!!

Beautiful, amazing, incredible, EXPENSIVE Whistler. For those who don't know, Whistler is similar to Aspen in the United States.

So, here's the plan: pack, drive 49 hours to Whistler with my friend Nick (also an online poker pro), see America by truck, arrive in Whistler and set up a bank account, set up a phone, find a place to live, open online poker accounts at European websites, continue to make a living, learn to downhill mountain bike (Whistler is considered THE BEST place in the world for downhill mountain biking), snowboard, meet new people, live an amazing life!

I'm so lucky to have this opportunity and I'm gonna try my best to keep you guys posted.

So in the words of Mr. Chow, "so long gay boys!" I'm going to Canada.