CARDRUNNERS
What's Your Edge
tc
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As an aside, I think this will be very, very, very, good for poker, especially in Europe. I really hope this is broadcast someplace where a lot of people will watch it, because a young girl beating out all of the pros (even though she is a very seasoned player herself) is probably "better for the game" than even chris moneymaker winning in 2003.
tc
ps - note to american cash game players - move to europe post-EWSOP TV airing to play on the non-american poker sites.
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Aside from the occcasional 10-15kish swing from 25-50, poker has been smooth. Feeling real confident about my game and enjoying life. Leaving for europe on monday so i'm real excited about that. Will be playing in the irish poker open, nordic masters of poker, san remo, and monte carlo. I hear europe lives a much healthier and enjoyable lifestyle so I'm looking forward to that the most. Not much more to write about except, I feel like a I'm about to defy the odds and score a million this trip. Watch the words come into fruition...
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So I'm not going to write a trip report about this......at least not here anyway! But here are some pictures from Europe. Fun times!
Beer Gardens are way fun!!! This was obviously first round as by a couple hours in you usually couldn't see the table!
Me and my cousin from Detroit.
Standard mess of a hotel room. Who decides hotel room cleaners are going to come in at 9 am everyday anyway? WTF!?! I think our room got cleaned like 3 times over the course of 11 days or so because we were never up before 9 am. Change that shiznit to 2 pm FTW!!!
Mercedes UPS truck deserved a mention, lol. So funny over here you're a baller if you drive the cedes and over in Europe they use them for cabs. Pretty much the same as us using a Ford or whatever because it's manufactured here but still funny nonetheless.
Random cool painting at a church.......
Must be nice to wake up to this every morning, lol.............and a couple more............
Probably the best picture I ever took in my life right here. Soooo sick!!!!
Even after 2 weeks of partying out in Europe I still managed to do it up in Michigan within about 3 hours of getting off the plane. I'm a trooper!!!!
And by some sort of miracle I made it back to CA in one piece!!! Fresh with a newly acquired soccer jersey and 1.5 liter beer mug! GG me!!!!!!
Well, that's about all I'm going to include in here. Hope you all enjoyed.
I don't think I'll be playing much poker for a while as I am still in the moving process and started a new job about 2 weeks before I left for Europe and quite frankly just don't have the drive to play right now so I'm not going to force it.
Peace out,
Z
Aug 13, 08 23:17:14
it's official...that just happened
Nice pics man makes me want to go to other parts of Europe...oh wait, i wanted to go to these places before i left for "Europe: The Gay Tour" lol
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Hey guys. I recently booked plans to make a trip to Europe! My sister is studying abroad in London and I'm going to visit her. I'm flying from NYC - London on the night of Saturday, March 14 (on Virgin Airlines, wifi!), and I'll arrive in London Sunday morning then probably just sleep a bunch if I don't on the plane (I'm pretty bad at falling asleep in cars and planes). We don't really have any set plans for London yet, but my sister is having a blast there and I'm sure we'll find lots of fun stuff to do. If anyone has any recommendations, please let me know. Also, she has class during the daytime on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so perhaps I could meet up with some CR members for lunch? My alternative is probably playing online poker in my hotel until she gets back, so I'd def be interested in meeting up with some of you. If anyone is in London and wants to grab some lunch or do anything else during the daytimes then, let me know also.
On Friday the 20th, we're going to fly to Barcelona for the weekend. Saturday we're going to see a Killers concert. The Killers are probably one of the top 5 bands currently touring that I'd like to see, so it's awesome that the dates matched up so well. I've been getting into them more recently, partially because of a recommendation of a CR member in my well thread, also because I always kind of liked what I heard but didn't know much of their music. I just downloaded their newest CD and have 8 other songs of theirs, if anyone has any recommendations of songs I'd love to download and listen to them. Here's a sample clip that has me excited:
Then, the day after the concert we're going to see an FC Barcelona home game against Malaga. I'm not a hardcore soccer fan but I do watch more games than the average American sports fan, and if I had to pick a favorite team it would be Barcelona. Their level of skill is unbelievable and unlike Man U I'm not focusing half my attention on watching Cristiano Ronaldo diving all game. I'm really looking forward to this, I've always wanted to go to a major European soccer match, I even ordered a Messi jersey yesterday! We should still have a little time to tour the city too and maybe do a good night out, I've heard the city is amazing and really can't wait.
As for poker, February went pretty well, after a slowish start I ended out on a tear and won about $180k for the month. I did have a disturbing trend in my PTO though where I basically crushed 2-5 handed and got killed 6 handed, but it's probably just a lot of variance. Still I think I might be playing a bit too aggro 6 handed and I'm going to focus on that to start March. Included in these February results was a 1 hour 4 table 25/50 PLO session vs Mafews where I won about $34k. He actually played very well I think but I ran very good, we were playing over $10k deep for a lot of it so $34k isn't really that hard to lose. I think it's debatable whether I have an edge on him paying $1k/hr but I'll probably give him more action if I have the time and he wants to play. I also have interest from a couple others so I'll probably be playing some fun HU matches soon, although I am kind of busy in the near future.
As for CR, I recorded about 85 minutes of 4 tables of 5/10 PLO today. I'm debating whether or not to use it though because I think I played kind of poorly and lost almost 6 buyins. I think I'll probably do it anyway though, because I think correcting mistakes is pretty educational and I made a few fairly big ones I think. Also it's good for my image to put up videos of me being a fish! (Just kidding. Sorta.) Let me know what you guys think but I'm leaning toward using this for a 3 part series which would go up on the site in about 2-3 weeks with part 1.
That's all I got for now. Hope everyone wins lots of monies in March!
Brian
Mar 3, 09 16:27:54
Brian, don't feel that you should only release videos where you run like God or play well. No one is perfect. Why not do the video and simply point out what you feel your mistakes were and what you'd do differently.
I think you'd be surprised at how well received that would be.
Have a fun & safe trip!
Mar 3, 09 16:44:52
Additional songs to get:
Read My Mind
The River is Wild
All These Things That I've Done
Mr Brightside
Basically the entire Hot Fuss Albumn IMO
Under the Gun
Change your Mind
Mar 3, 09 17:23:17
I agree with Przytula, often when people make videos where they're playing good, running good and just crushing, there's not that much to learn. For a lot of people I think it would be more interesting to see how you learn from mistakes, and how you deal with sessions where you run/play bad.
I live in London and have a fair amount of free time at the moment, so if you're serious about meeting members, that'd be really cool. Hope you enjoy it here either way.
Mar 3, 09 17:28:39
stinger i think you should post the video and just talk about what you'd do differently. I think i'd learn a lot more.
Mar 3, 09 20:15:44
if you dont have it, get 'Hot Fuss'. Think its the 1st album and defo the best imo. Whole album is gold. Gonna listen to it now actually!
Mar 3, 09 20:26:15
Why don't you do a combo with CTS with half leakfinder/half-what you were thinking when you made the decisions so we can see where you made mistakes and also get a different take on it.
Mar 3, 09 20:27:23
Please do use the recording, I always have the urge to scrap it to when I don't play A game but it is without a doubt more valuable.
Bring on the slop : )
Mar 4, 09 00:53:37
Hay Brian,
If you are up for some lunch on Thursday I know an excellent Japanese place in Camden, I may even shout you a bento box, Oh and camden is hella cool.
Mar 4, 09 02:30:08
Barcelona rocks and the FC Barcelona stadium is sick. It's sooooooo big. I'm sure you'll love it.
Don't expect to get into too many clubs though, when I was there in the summer of 07 you had to be 21 to get in any of them.
There's still plenty other stuff to do though, the beach is awesome and the rest of the city is really really nice too.
Mar 4, 09 04:51:47
Brian you should check out this versions of when you were young and sams town, mandatory as a killersfan imo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_33SUlDer0
Mar 4, 09 04:54:13
I live in London and would recommend the following places to go to:
Clubs: Boujis or Cuckoo
Restaurants: Zuma (best sushi), Roka, Hakkasan (Asian Fusion)
Also check out Camden market and Soho which is fun and a bit alternative. If you have time walk around and the whole Knightsbridge, Kings Road area for shopping and to see high end London, which will be a nice contrast to Camden ;)
Mar 4, 09 06:01:32
Please make sure to use the videocontent. I agree with the guys here that it's very valuable to discuss mistakes being made and some tough spots where u could've acted differently. Ã think it could display how tight it actually is between winning and losing.
Mar 4, 09 07:12:09
There's just TOO much good stuff to do in London, depends what you're into. If you're into culture/museum I'd recommend the Natural History museum in South Kensington then walk down to the Saatchi Gallery (near Sloane Square), then down Sloane Avenue and then take a walk through Hyde Park past the Serpentine lake and world renowned contemporary art gallery. As this would have all been free you can then walk across Park Lane and head into Mayfair with some of the most expensive and fashionable boutiques anywhere and spend loadsa poker winnings, carry on up through to soho and enjoy the sleaze and the sophistication of central london all in one heady mix then break through to Soho'ites, cross Oxford Street into Noho and either eat at one of the great restaurants on Charlotte Street (Roka, Passionate, Pescatori, Bambou) or head behind the Zavvi (formerly Virgin) megastore and down into Hakkasan, which, for my money is the greatest restaurant in the world with the coolest bar ever.
Surprisingly enough I live there and if you wanna do lunch I'll be more than happy to be your guide!
Mar 5, 09 13:19:44
Use the video! I like whoevers idea it was to get CTS to leakfinder it or have both of you talk it over and debate they make the best videos. Maybe you can make it into 2 videos.
Mar 7, 09 13:24:59
i second the plo series vid. we haven't had one from you in a while, and would love to watch you play a few sessions.
Mar 10, 09 07:13:15
Hi Brian,
I live in London and would happily meet you for lunch next week if you want some tips on what to do etc, send me a pm if interested.
Mar 11, 09 13:51:59
I am tv producer and journalist living in london. I am currently writing a book about poker and am keen to get psychological insights from players who have reached the top of the game. The book is different to anything on the market at the moment and is centered on the psychological processes that underly decisions at the poker table. If you are interested pm me and I can send over a more detailed synopsis.
Thanks,
Dan
Mar 11, 09 18:58:03
Camp Nou is a great venue. If you have a bad seat, don't forget to bring binoculars :P
Mar 11, 09 19:05:04
Hi Brian - I am 19, a student and living in London. Would love to meet up for lunch with you and maybe several of the other cardrunner members who have posted responces.
The Wolseley http://www.thewolseley.com/ and The Ivy are very very cool places to eat. Hard to get a table, but family are pretty tight with the staff at both so should not be a problem. I think it would be fun to go somewhere nice with a few CR people!
Keep me updated either via PMs, or via my email which I will PM to you.
Regards,
Josh Summers
Mar 11, 09 19:07:00
Lunch In London
Hi Brian - I am 19, a student and living in London. Would love to meet up for lunch with you and maybe several of the other cardrunner members who have posted responces.
The Wolseley and The Ivy are very very cool places to eat. Hard to get a table, but family are pretty tight with the staff at both so should not be a problem. I think it would be fun to go somewhere nice with a few CR people!
Keep me updated either via PMs, or via my email which I will PM to you.
Regards,
Josh Summers
The links fucked up on the previous one so:
http://www.thewolseley.com/
http://www.the-ivy.co.uk/
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Hey guys. I'm happy to say that tomorrow I leave for London! I am very excited and can't wait to get there already! I had a midterm last Thursday and another on Monday and since then I've just been taking it easy, which has been great. I'm definitely ready to leave though.
In my last blog entry I asked if anyone was interested in meeting up in London. I received several responses both on my blog comments and PMs, and I think I responded to everyone, but if not, read on. I'm going to try to organize lunch with CR members on Tuesday, Wednesday, or maybe both. If you're interested, PM me and include your email address, I'm going to send out a group email to try to coordinate things. I'm looking forward to meeting up with some of you!
In other news, my new computer arrived a few days ago. I ordered a Dell Studio XPS 16 based on a recommendation by RodeoBlue and a bit of research, and so far I couldn't be happier with it. It's a 16" laptop, weighs less than 7 pounds, and supports 1920x1200 resolution (enough to 6 table with no overlap), which is all I was looking for in this computer. I still have my massive XPS, which I use as a desktop basically, but this computer will be great for traveling and just playing outside of the "office" of my bedroom. For anyone looking into new computers, I'd definitely check this one out though, it's been great so far. I'm just hoping it doesn't start bluescreening every day or something, but so far so good!
After getting the computer I decided to purchase Holdem Manager for it (using Cardrunners' own great deal, obviously). I had held off because they didn't have an Omaha equivalent and I like the continuity, but it's due out soon so I figured I might as well. HEM seems really impressive, although admittedly I still don't fully know what I'm doing with everything. I've had 2 real issues so far, one is that I can't get a HUD to load on Stars, and the other is that when it processes my hands it moves my PLO hands to the processed folder as well. I had to dig them out today when I got PTO for this computer and retrieved them fine, but this would be a major annoyance if I had to do it regularly. If anyone can help me on these it'd be much appreciated.
So given that I purchased poker tracking software, I figured that I'd avoid being a complete lazy bum and play a little poker on the new computer. I did play a little bit of NLH and won $12k or something in 2 fairly short 25/50 NL sessions, but I'm not even sure if I could retrieve hands from HEM right now if I tried so I'll just stick to some good ol' PLO. The most noteworthy session I played was at 500/1k against Gus Hansen. I ran really hot at first and went ahead by about 300k before he flipped the doomswitch and started winning every pot. Gus won about 389k off me, although I only had a small piece of myself so my personal loss is much smaller.
Before I get to some hands, I want to address action sharing and tracking sites (namely Highstakes DB). Pretty much every player who's not an everyday regular sells off a bunch of action when they play nosebleed games. Although I hadn't done this before 2009, I realized it's a smart way to manage risk while still being able to play in good games. To play 500/1k with all my action, I would ideally have a net worth of about $10 million, maybe even more, as winrates aren't especially large given that even if there is a fish, the rest of the competition is made up of world class players. For example, say an unnamed fish sits at 500/1k HA in a 6 handed game and is a 10ptbb/100 loser in the game. That means that the net win of the other 5 players in the game is 10ptbb/100, or an average of 2ptbb/100. At 25/50 (especially PLO), this is still a great situation for me, even if I think the other players are all at least marginal winners, because I am often the best player in the game and thus winning much more than 2ptbb/100. At 500/1k, however, like I said, the other players are often world class players, like Phil Galfond, Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey, Patrik Antonius, and the Dang brothers. Also, a fish losing 10ptbb/100 in a lineup like this is a much better player than a fish losing 10ptbb/100 at lower stakes against weaker competition. So in a 6 handed game with 10ptbb/100 losing fish, the 2 Phils, durrrr, and Hac Dang, all 5 of us are clearly winning poker players, but our winrates are not going to be very large in this game. Even in PLO, where I think I can hang with these guys step for step, if I'm winning at an equal rate to each of them we're each winning 2ptbb/100 with a ton of variance. And in practice, the fish in this game is often just a fish relative to the competition who's losing quite a bit less than 10ptbb/100 in this game and may be a winning poker player in games that are a bit softer. With all the variance in PLO, the confidence interval for a reasonable hand sample might be something like {-4ptbb/100, 8ptbb/100}. So you can see how silly it is when a big fuss gets made about results over a few month period, even longer given the relatively low volume of hands that are played by nosebleed players.
That was pretty longwinded and hopefully made sense, but I wrote it because people post some dumb stuff on the internet and I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, especially family members and friends who don't play poker. If you Google my name you can probably quickly find Highstakes DB results that have me losing about $1 million this year, although in reality I'm up a few hundred k. Tracking sites don't cover action sharing, so while HSDB has been quite accurate in tracking my play at 50/100+ in '09 (although it missed lots of hands in '08), it doesn't tell anywhere near the full story when it comes to my personal results. Another example is whitelime last year, there were some posts questioning his skill level and financial means because HSDB had him down $800k or something. Well obviously he didn't have 100% of himself, and he lost a max of 20 buyins and a min of 8 depending on whether he was playing 200/400 or 500/1k. Every poker player has downswings like these. My 10 buyin downswing to Gus is probably about my 5th worst downswing buyin-wise this year, and I'm still up a lot of money.
If you read all that, I hope it made sense and maybe you learned something. If not, at least I have a simple link to post the next time a "Brian Hastings going busto" thread pops up in NVG. This did get quite long though so I'll hold off on hands til next time. Thanks for reading.
Mar 14, 09 03:41:57
good post, I think most of us know that, and also that you busting is way more likely to occur from parking tickets than poker =P
Mar 14, 09 12:58:30
you know you made it when you have a busto thread on 2plus2.
I dream of the day when I see one too. Congrats.
Mar 14, 09 15:09:22
No one with a brain, who knows poker at all, thought you were down \$1 mil, but i understand making the post for friends and family who probably don't get the whole action sharing thing and HSDB only tracking the super highstakes. GL getting back up there Stingaaaaa!
xxxx
Mar 14, 09 15:50:52
in other words you are full of crap and trying to cover your ass with lies just to make yourself and this sell out operation Cardrunners look good..ok thanks for the confirmation.
Mar 14, 09 19:29:21
hello the name is robert i live in london, i just read your blog and if the offer is still open would like to meet up for luch or something, i know your on your flight now, when you get time to work out what your doing pm me.
ty
rob
Mar 14, 09 20:42:00
would you consider it collusion to share action with a player thats playing in the same game as you?
Mar 14, 09 21:37:20
Hi brian,
i think i am to stupid to send u a private message.
Would be nice if zou could tell me where u meet the cr guys.
thanks
markus
Mar 15, 09 02:06:26
Long? you should check out Raptor's blogs. by the way, what did you eat today?
Mar 15, 09 07:15:38
AlwaysLimp,
Yeah I don't think that's too cool, never done it and never will.
Mar 15, 09 23:35:46
i was reading about the dell, thinking about getting it, but then i saw that its really 1920x1080, and i decided the new macbook pro was way cooler.
Mar 16, 09 02:49:02
good job brian...
Nice of you to come out here and set the record straight for us that your up a few 100k.
i love watching u destroy ziggy...always fun when u shove on the turn and make ur hand on the river lol
peace
Mar 16, 09 06:44:46
Dave,
Oops, whatever, it's enough to 6 table without overlap. I don't know how the Pro works with VMWare (probably much better) but my Air overheats when I 2 table on Windows, let alone 6. And it's just a hassle.
Mar 17, 09 04:28:31
Sounds like classic denial to me, Brian. The first step towards forward progress is admitting that you're busto.
Mar 17, 09 20:56:03
Good post, Stinger. I have a question regarding selling action at the nosebleed games. Can you honestly say that it doesn't affect your decision making process when you have a piece of someone else's action and vice versa in these games, especially in multiway pots with someone else? For instance, as a complete hypothetical, say that you and Brian Townsend have a piece of each other's action, and there is a lot of preflop raising in a nosebleed plo game with you, Townsend, and let's say Gus Hansen (of which neither of you have a piece of and vice versa). Suppose all the money gets in on the flop when the betting gets to you and you have a very marginal hand which you normally would fold. But since you and Townsend have each other's action, aren't you more inclined to get the money in, since there's a better chance to pick Gus off between the two of you? Rambling question, but I hope you understand what I'm asking. Appreciate an answer.
Mar 18, 09 08:45:34
don't know how I missed your reply to Always Limp.
Never mind.
Mar 18, 09 12:38:35
Hi;
U really had Gus nailed last session and he was lucky to turn things around. I just watched a new match between you and from what I saw you took some back. Would be great to see you challenging him again cause I'm certain you have an edge longterm from what I can tell.
Mar 29, 09 23:40:58
lol sounds like your mom doesn't get variance, god damn table ratings
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