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Using a few examples from my poker experiences, I have written these initial thoughts on the similarities of poker and everyday life....keep an open mind when reading and try to make a your own correlations.

1. WE FAIL SO WE CAN LEARN TO MASTER OUR UNIQUE GIFTS FOR FUTURE ACCOMPLISHMENTS. Up to individual to make the effort in this acknowledgment.

2. Players who make bad decisions and get instant rewards…. However, these players are hurt more when putting it into a context of a successful long term career because bad habits are formed…

3. Hands we fold pre-flop that would have been the winner….reflect post tournament on how we perceive this “missed opportunity”. Say in this same session/tournament we end up victorious… would this have happened if we played our hand in question?

4.Picking on players at our table…important rule to live by = never criticize the dumb or deceased You may think/claim…you know their reasoning behind actions…are you sure? Are you comfortable admitting you are justified/qualified/in the position to criticize a thought process which was not your own?

5.Only lock = the one on the front door………….Hero’s AA vs. villains hand of XX

6. Maximizing certain risky hands/decisions to determine our decision to take them….factoring in the best and worst outcomes.

7. No matter if you are the best at your table or just think you are, understand the odds that you are not. If you happened to be that ONE player, don’t settle….there will be new challengers awaiting.

8. Taking bad beats “in stride”. Why do we remember all of poker/life situations where we got the unfortunate outcome because of variance as opposed to the situations where we benefited from the opposite result?

9. Putting aside ego….learn to be honest with yourself when someone is taking advantage/bluffing and when someone is not.

10. Don’t be selfish!!!! (late stages of sit and go/LIFE): arguably a fundamental economic principle…..Informal definition from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_eq...mal_definition

“Informally, a set of strategies is a Nash equilibrium if no player can do better by unilaterally changing his or her strategy. To see what this means, imagine that each player is told the strategies of the others. Suppose then that each player asks himself or herself: "Knowing the strategies of the other players, and treating the strategies of the other players as set in stone, can I benefit by changing my strategy?"
If any player would answer "Yes", then that set of strategies is not a Nash equilibrium. But if every player prefers not to switch (or is indifferent between switching and not) then the set of strategies is a Nash equilibrium. Thus, each strategy in a Nash equilibrium is a best response to all other strategies in that equilibrium.[3]
The Nash equilibrium may sometimes appear non-rational in a third-person perspective. This is because it may happen that a Nash equilibrium is not Pareto optimal.
The Nash equilibrium may also have non-rational consequences in sequential games because players may "threaten" each other with non-rational moves. For such games the Subgame perfect Nash equilibrium may be more meaningful as a tool of analysis.”


11. Realize your place in poker/life. How many players have come before you and experienced similar or exact discrepancies…..your one problem will seem insignificant in comparison.

*****What to take away from reading this….TWO ENORMOUS BUT SEPARATE TASKS- REALIZING PERSONAL FAULTS AND TAKING INITIATIVE IN FIXING THEM****
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Playing Against Donkeys

It makes me crazy when I am sitting at a table and I see other players criticizing each other based on cards they have played previously, or bet amounts ect.. First of all, how stupid can you be? This is a simple rule boys and girls…..if someone is playing horribly……WHY TELL THEM????? Next time you are at a table and player A says to player B “How can you play that hand?”, you can go ahead and assume Player is a moron and not very experienced in the winning method of poker, and of course Player B is just dumb for playing bad starting hands…but hey, to each, his own.

For you winning sit and go grinders out there, lest you never forget, that while we want to occasionally throw our monitors out of a window when someone has no business in beating us with a inferior starting hand……Golden Rule: If every player at our table was playing correctly, would we really be winning all this money?

Graphs

1 Week Complete

I know I haven't written anything in a while, but here are some quick stats for the first 7 days.

Hours: 46.25
Net $ Won: $1,379.23
$29.82/Hr

$8.70 18Man SNG's: 126
Hours: 28.68
Net $ Won: $135
$4.73/HR
ROI: 12.39
In The Money: 41.27%
$26 Tokens Earned: 42

$26 9Man SNG's: 59
Hours: 15.10
Net $ Won: $599.00
$39.67/HR
ROI: 39.05%
In The Money: 50.85%
$75 Tokens Earned: 17

$75 9Man SNG's: 7
Hours: 2.65
Net $ Won: $339
$127.92/HR
ROI: 64%
In The Money: 57%
$216 Winners: 4

***Just for my own personal reflections, I am going to post graphs from each level as well as the total overall******

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Graph of SNG's from August 2nd (When I began this Token Method)

New Sharkscope Graph after HOT afternoon

Day 4

I started this day with an idea of playing at least a couple $75 SNG's because of the heavy traffic, with the FTOPS Event #1 later tonight. First a breakdown of the first two steps....

$8.70 SNG: 21 Played; $13.30 Net
$26 SNG: 8 Played; $74 Net

So I decided to play 4 $75 SNG's which were 9Man and top 3 received entry into tonights FTOPS EVENT #1 ($216) which could be redeemed as soon as you unregister from the tournament......if you aren't familiar with the site, you get tournament $ back, which are the same as cash, only used for tournaments obviously. So I collect these Tournament $'s and sign up for the first two steps...get it..ok good.

Now, played 4 of these tournaments as I explained and did well, cashing in 3/4 which gave me a profit of $348, a nice way to start. I will most likely play another 4-8 $75 SNG's on Friday, but I will assume nothing as anyone could have gotten lucky in 4 tournaments....still, I think I played very well.

August 5 1:16 (Remember, I started with $500 only 4 days ago)
Cash: $428
Tournament $: 648
$26 Tokens: 2
$75 Tokens: 3
Grand Total (Including the tokens): $1353


*An $853 profit for 4 days....YES I STILL KNOW THAT IT IS A SMALL SAMPLE SIZE


*I also got the shark icon back on my Sharkscope stats page, I think I am actually most excited about that!

A

Day 3 Overall #'s and Future Goals

While it is still early in my new system, here is an update so far as well as my future plans on how to go about the rest of the week.

STARTED WITH A BANKROLL OF $500*****

Total Hours: 18.82 $24.09/hr
Total Tournaments Played: 95
ROI (8's+26's Combined): 38.09%

Here is what I have in my account (including the 2 $26 Tokens left over from previous system)

Available Cash: $326
$26 Tokens: 4
$75 Tokens: 7

Total (Including the tokens): $955

A $455 profit so far......with the $75 token SNG's yet to be played....so who knows where I could be after that.....I would guess my first attempts would put me......who knows.

Day 3 $26 SNG's

Yes I know it is only relying on a 21 SNG sample size, but hey.... I am pretty damn excited about the "hot streak" I am on as of late. I will still put myself in reality when looking at the big picture here because there will be days when I do not cash in 60% of these tournaments.....that being said, my expected win/cash rate in these are still roughly 45%. However, lets look at the 21 completed so far since I started with the $500 bankroll August 2.

$26 SNG: 21 Completed
Net Profit $: $375
ROI: 69%
4 Hours @ $91/hr

*OBVIOUSLY I KNOW I CAN NOT EXPECT THIS HOURLY RATE!!!!! But hey, nice little start for me and puts me in a good place.

Day 3 ($500 Bankroll Plan) $8.70 Breakdown

So far I have been very pleased with my results in this new system of token SNG's I have tried ever since Sunday. If I were to break down each tier I played.....

$8.70: 74 Played; 15 Hours; $78 Net; $5.13 Hr; ROI: 12.15
Obviously if you look at my net profit in these the standard outrage here would be why am I wasting my time in these tournaments. However, starting with my $500 bankroll which I began this system with, these tournaments prove necessary in practical bankroll management. Two ways I look at my results.....1. I have run horribly, seems as if I could never get good momentum in accumulating the $26 Tokens, but looking at my overall graph (shown above) I have been consitently staying out of the negative regions. 2. Another way to look at these personally is that I still have averaged $5.13 an hour....now while 74 tournament is not nearly enough sample size to predict future income, I can refer back to my previous charts to see that from 270 $8.70 SNG's I am averaging about the same......basically I am comfortable in refering to these past 78 SNG's at this level as "the norm" for me from now on.

Sharkscope Graphs (1st graph is SNG only tournaments; 2nd graph ALL tournaments)

Just when I thought I was done.......

Well, a lot has happened since my last post....much success today, August 2nd 2009. When the clock hit midnight starting this day, I was running terrible. It seemed as if every three outer was being hit against me, my bluff atempts late in the SNG's were being caught by "the coolers", overall....I was mentally exhausted. One thing I leaned back on to give me faith was that poker might as well be called variance. What I mean is, websites aren't out to get you, poker gods are not damming you to bankruptsy....basically the opposite of every whiner's complaints when they think they were a victim in any hand.
I am not going to go over my stats for the ending days of July or even for August 1st. I would like to put that in the past and focus on a fresh start with my ever growing bankroll. Here is the new plan I am working on to make the token tournaments the most profitable for myself.

Bankroll when I began my new plan: $500
1. 50 $8.7's
2. 25 $26's
3. 10-15 $75's

As of 5:30 PM August 2nd:
1. 28/50 $8.7's Completed
---------->Net: +$32; 9 Tokens earned
2. 6/25 $26's Completed
---------->Net: +$201; 3 Tokens earned
3. 3/10-15 Available

Bankroll: 5:30 PM
Cash: $248
Tournament $: $166
$26 Tokens: 5
$75 Tokens: 3
*2 $26 Tokens left over from previous plan
Sum total (including tokens): $769

Soooo Close.....

So last time I wrote was late last night and I was having some succcess with the $8's and $26's at the time. I actually put in a nice session up to now and am ready to call it quits for a while, but I can not help but think of what might have been. I know, I know.... poker is all about patience and in the long run you will be successful if you make the right decisions.... I don't have nearly enough of a sample size yet to even gage my succuss for long term...whatever you were thinking when you read the previous statement, trust me, I am aware.
With that being said....I decided to play 3 $75 SNG's comming out with 1 $216 victory and 2 4th place finishes....ugh! Anyways, in that session I did manage to win a $26 SNG to make the hour or so session profitable....but wow, could have had a lot more money if I had converted on those two bubbles. Oh well.....here are my stats for the day/from Sunday the 26th/and so on:

As of July 29
206 Tournaments Total
Net$: $584/$2.84 per SNG/ ROI: 19.9%

Day Totals: 37 Played
Net$: $134
ROI: 18.97
9.25 Hours ---> $14.58 hour

New Monitor = WOW

I just recently received my new 24 inch monitor and it has certainly made a difference in my career. I will now be playing 6 tables at one time @ the $8.70 level....first attempt at this has gone smooth. Late start today and while I will be putting in around 6-8 more hours until I post again, early success has left a small smile on my face tonight. Hopefully by sunrise, the smile will be much larger!

Graphs of Both Levels

Above is the graph for the $26 SNG's while the one below focuses on the $8.70 level.