Boogster’s Blog

Pretty sick hand:

I’ve made some sick calls like this before, but not for $133k.  Usually, when players take this long to call, they’re bluffing.  The thing about that hand is that Durrrr knew that Safai didn’t have it him to check a monster on the river.  If I were Safai, I wouldn’t have checked so fast on the river.  That’s an insta-tell that he just had AQ or KQ.

I think that the biggest difference between the pros vs. the joes is that the pros know how to act like they have a big hand when they really don’t.  The pros don’t make it easy for you to bet into them for fear of being put to the test.  Guys like Safai wear their cards on their sleeves.  Not a good trait to have as a poker player.  WTF do I know though, I just play $0.50/$1.00 NL online.

I’ve made a nice little comeback over the past three days.  Up a little over $1,100 multi-tabling $0.50/$1.00.  The action is actually pretty good for $0.50/$1.00 NL.  I’ve only been playing because it’s been raining outside.  I swear it’s been raining for about 10 days straight now.  Anyways, this was my last hand last night:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4202272

This was really my only bad call of the day.  And to my defense, it was 3:30am when I played that hand.  The only hand that he calls me with in that spot is AK, right??  I don’t think that he would’ve raised that big after the flop with sevens or deuces and remember, I was the one who 3-bet pre-flop.  After the fact, it was a bad play, but I don’t think that it was really all that bad.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be playing online poker.  I am already getting bored of the grind.  Here are my two charts so far:

Definitely been running good in my second account.  The first account, not so much:

Although, if you compare the EV line vs. winnings, I really shouldn’t be down as much as I am.  The top line is where I should be, if my hands would have held up.  The bottom line is where I’m really at, based on the end result.  -$1397 in one account and +$930 in the other.  Counting rakeback and some winnings from the other sites that I play at, I’m down a little over $300 over the past month.

I will say that it is pretty nice having this software help me out.  The cool thing is that it displays quick stats on each of my opponents next to their names.  The addon software is called HUD (aka Heads Up Display).  You can instantly see how many hands the dude has played, his 3-bet percentage, continuation bet after the flop, how much he’s winning or losing, etc.  It’s such a huge advantage to have this thing running while I’m playing.   The thing that’s helped me most is seeing the VPIP% of each player.  VPIP is Voluntarily (money) Put In Pot.  The higher the VPIP, the looser the player.  There were some players who had VPIP’s of 50% or more.  That means that they’re playing 50% of all hands.  People have run stats on these things and based on the stats, the ideal VPIP is between 21.9 and 25.3.  I’m a big stats guy, so this thing is great.  Of the 8.6k hands that I’ve played, my VPIP is about 30, but I think it’s higher because I played headsup a few times.  If I filtered out the headsup matches, I think that my VPIP would be a lot lower.

So, I’ve been looking for an iphone developer.  Apparently these guys are in pretty high demand right now, since they all charge an arm and a leg.  This one company that I contacted, they are charging $100-$150/hour with a 20 hour minimum.  That’s a show.  Although, it’s actually probably not that bad.  I’m trying to create a standalone iphone app for <removed>.  I’ve got a ton of ideas in the works, and only 5 months to get them all implemented.  No chance that I can do it all myself, so I’m kind of in a bind right now.  Should I just invest the money and pay to get all of these things done, or should I just try to do whatever I can by myself?

One of my buddies that I played kickball with a few years back, he started a company with his friends and created a facebook app called Living Social, have you heard of it?  It’s the “pick your favorite 5″ app.  They have 20 million users.  Apparently, it was facebook’s top app a few months back, or perhaps it still is.  Anyways, I was walking around town today and saw a sign at one of the office doors, which read “Living Social”.  I guess they have their own office in DC, which is not cheap btw.  I don’t have a real office.  I work from my condo.  They say that you’re not a real “baller” until you have your own office.  I wonder how much this dude or the company actually makes.  I imagine that they make quite a bit, since they just acquired another website call buyyourfriendadrink.com.  I just read that they got $5 million in venture capital back in 2008.

Seeing these “average joes” do so well, especially since I know the dude personally, it makes me wonder if I am doing things the wrong way with my two sites.  I try to do everything myself, and the truth is, it’s just not possible.  The only way to make it really work is to spend the money to get it done right.  I’ve spent less than a nickel building these sites, since I did most of the work myself.  I don’t really know how to build an iphone app, but I’m going to spend months doing it anyways and I’ll probably do it wrong.  At the same time, do I want to spend $2k to $5k on an iphone app knowing that there’s a strong possibility that I will not get that money back immediately?  My answer is usually “no, I will do it myself”.

This type of thinking goes full circle for me because for this very same reason, I have not played higher stakes in poker.  I’ve always been too scared to really push my boundaries in the higher limits knowing that I could lose a ton of money, even though I’ve always been pretty confident in my poker abilities.  These guys like Durrrr and Ivey, and Negreanu, Brunson, they didn’t get to where they’re at by playing it safe.  They pushed their boundaries until they got to where they’re at.  I’m sure that it was the same with these Living Social guys.  Any new business that starts up is always uncertain of their future, but look at them now.  20 million+ users.  Office in downtown DC.  $5 million in venture capital.  Lock it up.  They probably all make some good loot.

I like controlled risk, but in order to make it big, I think you gotta step outside of the box and push the boundaries.  It’s really the only way to make it big.  If I were really brave, I would take $10k to $20k of my own money and get done right.  And if I were really confident, I would raise $100k and blow this thing up the right way.  Look for some sort of VC money perhaps.  The idea is there.  The execution, not so much.  The real question is, what am I gonna do about it?  I will probably blog about it for a next few weeks, then let it fizzle out, like I always do…hah.  We’ll see.  Maybe I will poney up the money and get everything done the right way.  Perhaps throw some money into marketing, like I should be doing.  The site grossed over $1000 last year and I’m pretty confident that we can get up to $10,000 this year if I did it right.  I’m pretty confident about that.

So, the market has been on the decline today.  After gapping up, we’ve been slowing drudging lower into the close.  If I had to guess, I would say that we’re going into a mini-fakeout to the downside, then we’ll explode higher one last time until a top is formed.  For that reason, I am going to remain neutral here.  If I do anything, I will probably get some index ETFs on the long side.  BTW…I just sold my 100 shares of GLD and I added 300 shares of IBKR.  I’m seriously going to hold IBKR for the longer term.  But it and forget about it.  I will add up to another 500 shares from here.

Alright, looks like the market is rallying a little bit into the close here.  Let’s see what happens tomorrow.  I may play the long side for a multi-day trade.  We’ll see.

Out.

This entry was posted on Thursday, 7 May 2009 @ 2:59 pm on the category business, poker, ramblings, random, stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.