The end of an 8 year journey

All good things must come to an end, and poker is no exception. It's been a lot of hard work and effort, and it has paid off well over the years. Unfortunately, real life, namely graduate studies and my career, have simply become too time-consuming for me to dedicate the proper amount of time poker requires. Also, despite having a nice hourly playing cards, my real-life career hourly is now higher with much less effort and much more long-term benefits; thus, the opportunity cost of poker has now become too high for me.

I started playing casually in 2004, and more seriously in 2009 up until now, and poker has been a great teacher for many life lessons. Discipline, mental toughness, work ethic, emotional roller coasters, psychological tests of strength, poker has honed me in all those things and more over the years. It also allowed me to never work a "real" student job all the way through college, which was a very nice perk.

Perhaps one day when i'm much more established in real life I will come back as a casual player; but as of now, my online bankroll is 0$ for the first time in 8 years. Almost 2,000,000 hands later, this chapter of my life comes to an end. It's been a lot of frustration, sweat and effort, but overall i'd say poker has brought more good than bad in my life, even discounting the financial benefits. Thus, to all the grinders still playing out there, I say one final good luck at the tables!

- Zapatos80

Zooming to victory!

Zoom poker has been very good to me lately. I've been modifying my game quite a bit lately and it has brought great success. Not only is my winrate better (10% less rake than before is not bad at all!) but i'm actually getting more VPP/hand than with the dealt method! Best of both worlds! Of course, running hot is always a plus (brag graph inc)

Tiny sample of course but hey, it sure beats a downswing! The number of times people stacked off top pair vs my sets in this sample is also pretty sweet, and the amount of random spew i've seen on Zoom makes for very healthy games. Interestingly enough, i'm doing better without my HUD. Maybe i'm just too ADD, but i've found that the amount of additional concentration required to analyze HUD stats was just too draining for the actual gain I was getting, especially in Zoom where you're constantly changing opponents.

Of course, free info is always better but in this case, I found myself actually making better decisions and being able to play longer without a HUD. I guess having a lot of experience helps in that regard. I may try it back on at a later time but what i'm doing now is working quite well, so i'd rather not fix something that isn't broken. If things continue to go this well, 2012 should be quite a good year. Good luck at the tables grinders!

God do I love Zoom Poker

I can finally take a break when I want to, I can go to the bathroom like a decent human being! I can play for an hour without wasting 15mins starting & shutting down 24 tables. Plus, Zoom attracted a lot of fish so might as well take advantage while it lasts. With school/life taking up a lot of my time I almost gave up the grind for Supernova, but with Zoom poker things flow so smoothly, and I can fit 1 hour here and there much more easily than before, making the whole grind a pleasure. Thanks Pokerstars for making mass-grinding humane!

Back in the games after a 2 month poker vacation!

And it's good to be back! I've been very busy with RL these past 2 months, with my master's degree taking most of my time. A lot has a changed on Pokerstars lately, and that meant some good news and bad news for me personally.

Of course, the worse news is the very significant VPP/hand drop. I'm down to about 0.18VPP/hand at 100NL, about 25% less than before. However, there have been a lot of significant benefits to these changes. First of all, they gave me an extra month to focus on getting started with school, so thanks Pokerstars! I realize the extra month you can take off is insignificant for most Supernovas but for me it was quite a nice boon. 

They also reduced the monthly VPP requirement to 6500, so about 14% less. Doesn't quite make up for the VPP loss per hand so i'll still have to grind more than before per month to keep Supernova, but it's not that bad. You also don't need to reach 100,000VPP this year if you're already a Supernova, so I can basically grind only 6500VPP/month until the end of the year and still keep it going into 2013. I may or may not need this but as a mostly "casual" player now, it's always nice to have the option.

But the two major benefits i've noticed are these ; first of all, a significant rake reduction (roughly 10% across the board with a slightly dropped rake cap at 100NL, not bad at all!). This should help my small winrate which is always nice, especially since i'll need to play more hands/month. The other thing i've noticed is that the number of shortstack leechers has dramatically dropped. I only played a quick 2500 hands session today so take it for what it's worth, but that's still amazing news for game quality!

Overall I think the changes were necessary, especially considering Zoom poker is just around the corner. To have the Zoom pool polluted with 8/6s and leeching shortstackers would have made for some unfun/bad games all around, so overall this was a much needed change by Pokerstars. With all that they've given to make up for it, i'd say things are looking good for 2012, and i'm pretty psyched to be back in the games. Best of luck to you sicko grinders that are still going for Supernova Elite, and see you at the tables!

Take a stand for Internet freedom!

I don't want to use this blog as a soap box for political issues, but this is so big, and threatens the very core of the internet, that it deserves attention. If you are a US citizen, please take a moment to help protect internet freedom and see how you can contribute!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_317237&feature=iv&src_vid=_6Ye21JEOOo&v=JhwuXNv8fJM

If you have a website, join the Internet blackout movement on January 18th! See more here : http://sopastrike.com/strike

Together we can stop this thing. Together to the top!