The Finish

I made it to 200k VPPs. It's over. Done. Complete. Finito.

And it feels...weird. More on that later.

Games: 11,429
Profit: $13,715
VPPs: 72,016.11


Plus I need to factor in the bonuses.

$4k - 250,000 FPP Reward Bonus
$2.6k - 200,000 VPP Milestone Reward Bonus
$410 in BOP Bonuses

Then there's additional money from staking/coaching/videos/cash/etc which is somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.5k. So the total is $22,225 in profit for 50 days of work. Not too shabby. Annnnnnnnd I'm running $1900 below EV.

Right now, I definitely feel a sense of accomplishment. I knew it'd be difficult to earn 72k VPPs in such a short span and I'm proud I was able to stick with it, despite downswings and life-related distractions. I'm relieved I don't have to play another SNG until mid-January. At the same time, err, I might load a few games. What else am I going to do? The challenge has consumed my life over the last month and a half and I've somewhat forgotten how else to fill my days. What do normal people do? Haha. I guess I'll start with a three week vacation in San Diego/Las Vegas and figure it all out once I return to Vancouver. It's a fun problem to have.

Yeah, I'm obviously all smiles right now. If it were earlier in the day I'd go celebrate with a steak but it's almost 2 AM and I'm not settling for a t-bone from Denny's. No sir. I deserve much better than that. GL to the rest of the regulars grinding for milestones and for the low to midstakes STT players, enjoy the abarone68-free games.

The Flight

On a whim, I double checked my flight to San Diego and discovered that I'm supposed to leave on the 29th. Whoops. Thought I was departing on the 28th. And while that means I have one less day to spend with friends in SD, it also means I have one more day to reach my goal. Silver linings, people.



After learning of my extra day, I found myself significantly less motivated to get on the grind. Dropping $600 over my last 150 games also might have had some effect. Because of that, I only played a few sets today and decided to hit the casino for some live action.

Only brought two bullets with me and I was out of ammo within an hour. First hand, limped J7cc behind 5 limpers and it came J54 with two clubs. Checked to me, I bet $9, three callers, and an aggro lady makes it $65. I tank, eventually ship for $300. Folded back around to her, she snaps and I cringe...until she tables T3cc. Sweet. Turn 10, river 3. Puke.

I actually made a sick soul read/call to lose the second bullet but I still left the casino with an empty feeling. Meh. I know I'll feel better once I finish the challenge and that's what I'll focus on tomorrow.

The Prize

Good things about this week:
- I've accrued 3k VPPs, leaving me 5400 short of my goal

Bad things about this week:
- Everything else

Haha okay, it's not thaaaaaaat bad. But the past two days have been pretty sick. The red line isn't great, the green is much much worse, and I've had some gross finishes in some of the softest MTTs. Minutes ago, I had AA vs QQ for the chiplead of the $30+3 $6k Guaranteed with 20 left and busted. Not a good feeling.

In total I think I'm down $550-600 ish when I could easily be up $1-2k. But I've got to shake it off and keep my eyes on the prize. In time, the variance will even itself out. Maybe not before the challenge ends, but at that point I'll be too busy having the time of my life to care about such trivial things.

Five days.

The Fan Page

After discussing it with a few friends of mine, I decided to make a 'fan page' on Facebook. Some of you may already be aware of this as you're reading it from the actual page.

It may not come as a surprise, but at first I was a bit iffy about making a page -- having a fan page means I must have fans. And, well, I'm still getting used to that. The two quickest ways to get famous in poker are to be on television or hit a big score and I'm 0-2. I'm not going to sit here and guess why people have become 'fans' as it'll get self-indulgent really quickly but I will take the opportunity to thank them for doing so.

Feel free to check it out here. I'll be posting tweets, random thoughts, coaching 'specials,' pictures, graphs, news, links to each blog entry, etc.

This seems appropriate.

The VPP Challenge VI

Almost done.

Games: 1,299
Profit: $3,425
VPPs: 8,097.02




A huge chunk ($2.3k) of this week's profits came from the $25 Hyper MTT I shipped on Wednesday. Maybe I shouldn't complain about running bad since I did ship a high variance tournament, but I'm another $600+ under EV this week in STTs, bringing me to $1700 or so over my last 2500 games. It's approaching 'gross' territory and but I'm hopeful I can make it all up next week.

Despite the numbers for this week's volume and VPPs being down across the board, it doesn't feel like I put in less time. I guess I took a 1/2 day after the MTT win and another 1/2 day to focus on the Sunday 10 Million, but I bet I played as many hours as the previous week. In fact, this was the first week where I neglected the gym -- in the past, I had been running/lifting 5+ days a week. This week? I think I went twice. Wow I just wrote the word 'week' like a bajillion times in one paragraph.

8,400 VPPs left until I can pop the champagne. I could have wrapped this up by Christmas if I maintained my earlier pace but what's the fun in that? Much more fun to give myself a sweat and the sickest part? I'm actually excited about it.

The Priorities

Just busto'd the Sunday 10 Million yet I'm surprisingly in good spirits. Maybe that's because I'm happy with the play I made and didn't make a deep enough run (Ironic, considering I outlasted 25,000 people) where it would hurt. At no point did I legitimately think I'd ship the $2 million first place prize, even though I spent an hour or so last night thinking about how the money would change my life.



My roommate, David (Sandmanness) was knocked out of the tournament a few moments earlier but he's not handling it nearly as well. After busting, he slammed his mouse down, sulked in his chair, and has now moved the moping party to his room. Before the tournament began, I told him I didn't think he should be playing in it and instead be focusing on grinding games/building back his 'roll. I've been staking him for a few months and I thought him putting $200+ on the line in one high variance tournament was a horrible idea. But he was really excited at the prospect of winning millions and honestly, who wouldn't? I can't blame him, I felt similarly.

What bothered me most about the conversation was something he said towards the end of it. He implied that his parents were almost more enthusiastic about it than he was, as they'd get a chance to watch a big tournament and that'd be much more exciting than the 150+ SNGs he grinds on a daily basis.

That didn't sit well with me. I'm a SNG guy. Pretty much always have been and I don't see that changing any time soon. Are they less exciting than other forms of poker? I won't deny that. But who gives a shit? My bills aren't paid with excitement, they're paid with actual dollar bills. And how do I earn a lot of those? By playing SNGs. I don't play for the rush -- I play because it allows me to live life on my own terms.

I don't mean to disparage the idea of playing poker for entertainment. That's fine. But most people who play for fun aren't trying to make a living out of it and that's good, because a very high percentage of those people would fail. As I've said many times before, being a professional poker player is a job and needs to be treated like one. This doesn't mean you're forbidden from enjoying your work -- but the key word in that sentence is 'work' and the main goal should be financial stability not chasing a pipe dream.

The Promise

Early Wednesday morning, I woke up eager to start a new 'week.' STTs weren't loading that quickly, so I glanced at the MTT lobby to see if any good ones were about to start.

$25 6-max Hyper



I'll be honest -- I didn't play it because it sounded profitable; I played because it sounded fun. And less than an hour and a half later, I shipped the tournament for $2.4k.

Obviously I ran well (as its impossible not to when you win a MTT) so I guess that that makes up for last week's runbad. I even joked with a few friends of mine that I wouldn't complain about variance until Saturday. So, uhh, what are we going to talk about?

...crickets....

Oh! I know! So in one of my tournament today, I got it in as a 3:1 favorite and lost (Not complaining) and the villain in the hand wrote, "You can put that in your blog." Huh? Is this a theme now? Not sure if my opponents are trying to get shout outs or simply add insult to injury. You want to suck out annnnnnnnnnd berate me? Hmm. I'm not used to this sort of behavior but I know another blogger who is. I'll ask him what to do.

14k VPPs left.

The VPP Challenge V

Yes, this blog still exists despite some clamoring for me to shove it up my ass.

Normally I'm pretty excited to write weekly review entries because it means I get to post pretty looking graphs and thinly veiled brags. But no, not this time.

Games: 1,496
Profit: $298 (+$80 BOP)
VPPs: 10,466.80




Definitely the worst week of the challenge and possibly my worst week as a professional. Well, scratch that -- I've had losing weeks before but never when putting in this much volume. I still might play another set or two today but if I do, I'll count it towards next week's totals. I told a friend of mine that before this week, I had been running at expectation at for so long that I forgot how it feels to run below it. Well, now I remember. Hold'em Manager shows I'm down $1200 in EV the last 7 days. Yuck.

I do think it's important to point out while I'm disappointed I got unlucky to the tune of $1200, I was only supposed to make $1/game this week -- a number that's lower than I'm used to. Obviously it could simply be variance, but the games are markedly worse right now for two reasons:

1) Grinders (like myself) frantically trying to hit their milestone bonuses
2) PokerStars doubling the cash prizes in its BOP promotion

That promotion ends Saturday so the second reason will soon cease to be an issue but I fear the first will only become more of a detriment. Even so, if that means I'll only make $1/game the rest of the way (16,417.32 VPPs), I'll take it. Plus I'm due for a sick heater and in the words of Bart Scott, 'Can't wait!'

The Zombie

I've meant to crank out a blog entry the past few days but whenever I sat down to type, I was exhausted and lacked the ability to write coherently. It's been an exhausting couple of days, partially due to quite a bit of runbad but also because humans aren't meant to function on my current schedule -- I've been waking up around 9 PM, working throughout the night/morning, and going to bed in the early afternoon. After I finish this entry my head will hit the pillow, so hopefully that changes soon.

When I decided to push for 72,000 VPPs, I knew that meant I'd be sacrificing equity on a per game basis. Under normal circumstances I can play my 'A' game but having to grind for most of conscious hours ultimately results in sub-optimal play, the 'B' game. Recently, there have been times where 'B' game has felt more like 'Zombie' (Zom-B?) game; My mind simply isn't processing information at the same rate and so I'm falling behind, missing spots, and ultimately making plays that are +EV but not the most +EV. The good news is that I only felt that way for two sets (70 games) although my profits/red line for the past 300 games might make you think otherwise.



I'll reserve the weekly update stuff for tomorrow and finish with this -- earlier today, I had the chiplead in a STT and shoved 74o to 'bubble own' the short/medium stacks. The SB, with 3.5 BBs behind, snapped with 44 and I ripped a 7 off on the flop to win the pot. He then proceeded to call me a 'fking fish' and said quite possibly the funniest thing I've ever read in chat:

"Shove your blog up your ass."

Unfortunately my blog isn't tangible so I'm not sure how to do that but if I shoved 74, I guess I can shove anything.

The Hole

Initially I wanted to title this 'The Chase' but I used that before in reference to Chase bank when I was in the Bahamas and couldn't get the proper paperwork. That was in May? Man, it feels like a lifetime ago.

Most gamblers are familiar with the idea of 'chasing your losses.' You start out by losing a little bit and increase the betting amount or frequency until you get even or run out of money. It's normally the latter as most games are -EV to begin with, so the goal of running multiple trials to reach a supposed long run isn't really a solid strategy.



But in poker, as long as you're skilled and disciplined, the games are +EV so there's a much better chance to recoup those losses.

It might sound odd, but one of my favorite things is to start a day by digging myself a deep hole and trying to climb out of it. I'm not saying I like losing a bunch of money in my first few sets, but I do relish the opportunity to chase the losses in hopes of a positive day. Today, I got a shot.

After my first 125 or so games, I was stuck $600. I had actually started the day down $400, pulled back to almost even, and then dropped even more. Gross. But I had nothing better to do today than stay on the grind and that's what I did. After another 150 games (and a bit of run good in the $60s), I was able to make a $12 profit.



That's a nice story and all, but the bottom line is I worked ten hours today and made $1.20/hr. There's a 7-11 less than a block from my house and the homeless guy outside probably made way more than me. Maybe I should be bothered by that, but I'm not. It's such a euphoric feeling to just get back to even after being in the red and I was able to make a teeny tiny profit. Woot.

The VPP Challenge IV

That's right, roman numerals!

Before we dive into this week's results, let's look at the goals I set for myself four days ago.

1) Play 1000+ games (250/day)

Yep. 225+ each of the four days and that includes 300 from today.

2) Make $1719

Well, I made more, does that count? It should. This isn't 'The Price is Right' where I have to come as close to the number without going over, so I'm going to call this one a win.

Feels good to hit goals, especially since I set so many for myself and often lose my passion as time goes on.

Games: 1517
Profit: $2,417 (+$20 in 'refund' credit)
VPPs: 9,437.85

The totals are down again this week, but I took the first three days off. Sort of. Still put in a few hours each day but didn't dedicate myself to the grind like I have the past four weeks.




I'm sure my motivation to play over the first three days had a little to do with that 500 game break-even stretch and thankfully I was able to ship a $3R-180 and turn things around. I hadn't planned on playing 180s, but the games are soooooooo profitable and mixing in a few with my regular games won't hurt.

Now that I think about it, I'm not even sure what my 'regular' games are anymore. When this challenge began, I was playing $7/$15/$30 18-mans. But after a week, I went back to my bread and butter, adding $15/$30 STTs. Then I discovered the KO variation and threw those in. Another week passed and at night my sets weren't full enough so I would load 6-max and 180s. I've even played a handful of Heads-Up Hypers. Oh, and I can't forget regular speed STTs too. Once this is all over and I go back to playing at a normal pace, I'm not sure which game I'll focus on. Maybe I shouldn't pick just one.

But I shouldn't get ahead of myself -- there are about 27,000 VPPs left to earn and I have 21 days to do it. Even at this week's "leisurely" pace, I still would get there. Ahhh I'm three weeks away from freedom. Can't wait.

The Matchup

I've sat at my desk for the better part of a half hour now, trying to choose between playing one more set and going to bed. I even registered for 10-12 games in the lobby and then found myself frantically clicking 'unregister' at the last minute. What to do, what to do...

Reasons I should play poker:

1) I still need VPPs. And a lot of them. A shade over 29,000. Playing now would knock a few hundred off of that amount.
2) It's been a solid day -- I'm up $850 ish through 225 games. Whenever I get close to $1k profit in a day, I always like to go for it.
3) I'm not that tired.

Reasons I should go to bed:

1) It's 4:50 AM. Once again, I'm in danger of ruining any semblance of a normal schedule. If I stay up now I won't go to bed until 7-8 AM and therefore won't wake up until 3-4.
2) Traffic peaks between 11 AM and 4 PM so I should try to play during those hours.
3) Yes, I made $850 today but according to Hold'em Manager I should have only made $170.



Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I think 'bed' wins this match-up. If I go to sleep now, I'll be up by noon and be able to put in another 250-300 games before the fourth week of my challenge comes to a close.

The Name Drop

Yesterday, my roommate David went down to Edgewater casino to shortstack $1/$2 NL while I stayed at home to grind games/VPPs. When he returned home later that night, he and I discussed a few hands he played and then revealed an interesting bit of table chatter.

A few players had deduced he wasn't Canadian (his southern drawl, my guess) and they asked him what he was doing in Vancouver. He told them he moved here for work, to play online poker, and at that point another player at the table chimed in.

Random: What games do you play?
David: Sit n Gos, $15s and $30s
Random: Do you know acbarone?

I am not making this up. Somehow, a random player at a $1/$2 NL game knows of me (By my 2+2 screenname, I might add) and just happened to bring it up to my roommate, who has been to that particular casino twice before in his life. What. Are. The. Odds.




I wish I could give more details on how this all went down, but David has quite possibly the worst memory of any poker I've ever met in my entire life. Or he doesn't care enough to relay the step by step process of how I got name dropped. I suppose those two things aren't mutually exclusive.

My initial reaction was "Really?" A combination of shock and pride, I suppose. Feels weird. The random player, by the way, is a 180 man grinder named Alain who follows the blog. He and I have talked briefly over Skype, but after this we made preliminary plans to grab a beer sometime in the near future. The moral of the story -- mention me in public and I'll buy you a beer.

The Gas Pedal

Since November 8th, I've been incredibly diligent about chasing the 200k VPP Milestone Bonus, putting in 6,000+ games and accruing half of the necessary VPPs.

But three days ago, I took my foot off the gas pedal. It's not that I've given up, as I will still certainly reach my goal, but I'm in a bit less of a hurry to do it. Before, I been 'full speed ahead,' hoping to finish as soon as possible and fly back to California the following day. The question you might be asking is 'What changed?'

Friends of mine in San Diego all seem to be in agreement that the last week of December would work best for them. I booked a flight arriving on the 28th, giving me 27 days to earn 35,000 VPPs and finish the challenge. Yawn. I'm sure I can do that. So now, there's no need to rush. No need to put in 250+ games a day. Instead, I get to relax and spend more time enjoying life. Yeah, this seems like a good decision.

Two days ago I ran errands, last night I went out to a club, and today I spent a few hours playing live at the casino. Nothing too notable happened, except I lost a blind flip for $220 and a race for $175. Still had a great time. It's funny -- I feel I've been lazy the last three days but still played 450+ games over that period. The profit is pretty much non existent, as I think I'm up $50 or so. Womp wahh.

I've got four days left before the 4th week of my challenge comes to a close, and I'm going to set some goals for myself:

1) Play 1000+ games (250/day)
2) Make $1719 (I'd finish with $1 more profit than my worst week)