GUEST POST FROM Sparky999 (continued from Tuesday):

The breeder will often give you some food to last you the first few days until you get a chance to buy your own. What you choose to feed your dog is a difficult choice. There are a million brands and several different types of diet.  I used to feed my dogs a dry biscuit diet brand name 'Eagle Pack' but changed about 6 months ago to a raw food diet of ground up human grade turkey or lamb, ground bones seaweed/kelp, butternut squash, apples, carrots, wheatgrass, spiralina and bilberries (high anti-oxidant berries) and last but not least some salmon oil. There is obviously a lot of price difference between the cheapest and the best dog foods. In my opinion feeding a dog a biologically appropriate diet instead of some dry biscuit that has been sat in a warehouse for 6 months is a no brainer now. 

There are two issues with feeding a raw diet, firstly is that of course it’s more expensive it costs about $5-6 per day per dog for my two they both weigh about 25 kilos obviously larger or smaller dogs would cost more or less respectively. The second issue is that the company that makes this food deliver it frozen to your door once a fortnight and you have to remember to take the next day’s food out to defrost. In my opinion these are just minor inconveniences that our vastly outweighed by the benefits. My dogs just love their raw food the second they hear me open the food pack they come bolting into the kitchen and are sitting ready for their meal before I've even got the lid off.

A good dry biscuit on the other hand is roughly $1-$2 per dog per day from memory and you can store month’s worth of food in your house if necessary.  If you do decide to use a dry biscuit please don't just get some crap from your local supermarket. Pay the extra money and get a good brand in my opinion Eagle Pack and Ziwi Peak are the two best but there are many others that are probably just as good.

I'd like to make it clear to anyone who was wondering, I have no affiliation with any company or website I mention in this post and all opinions are my own, that have been formed after extensive research.

This website is American based and has a lot of good info on feeding a raw diet to your dogs.

http://www.barfworld.com/

For any of you who live in the U.K. this is the website I get my food from

http://www.naturalinstinct.com/

For treats I recommend dried apricots, almonds, brazil nuts, berries and peanut butter(low or no salt variety), I think you should avoid the treats that you tend to find in supermarkets, anything with strange colours, salt or additives I do not want to feed to my dogs. Essentially if I won't eat it then neither do my dogs.

Usually puppies need two sets of vaccinations the breeder will often have the first set done for you, but you will need to find a local vet to get the second set done and get a microchip fitted so your dog can be identified as your if he/she ever escapes, after the second set of shots you can start taking your puppy outside and begin training him/her.

Training has two main categories;

Socialising - a puppy needs to learn how to interact with other dogs, people and children. A great way to do this is by attending a puppy school; classes are very cheap and usually run for 1-2 hours a week for 6-12 weeks.

One-one training - you need to teach your puppy where you want him/her to go to the toilet, and the basic commands sit, stay and heel. Many people with much more experience have written numerous books on training and there are a million videos on you tube.

The only thing I will say about training a dog is that you should NEVER under any circumstances hit, strike or kick your dog. They simply do not learn this way. Training is about building a mutual respect, not about making your dog fearful of you. You should try to do 3-4 10-15 minute training sessions with your puppy every day for the first 6 months, basically the more the better but try to keep the sessions short and fun.

What I really want to get across to you as readers is that there is a dog that will fit your lifestyle and if you put the time and effort in when they are young you will get more than a decade of happiness in return. I once posted on 2+2 that the hour or so a day I spend with my dogs exercising them, is often the most enjoyable hour of my day. Dogs have no concept of money, they don't judge you based on how many Benjamins are in your clip, they don't lie to you and if you treat them with dignity and respect they will be loyal for life. These are the characteristics I look for in people, and sadly too often I find them lacking. Owning a dog is a lot like poker in the sense that invariably in the long run you get back what you put in.

If any of you have any questions I would be happy to point you in the right direction just shoot me a PM on 2+2.

[Thanks for those great dog tips.  I knew last year's Xmas present was the right call.]

GUEST POST FROM Sparky999 (on 2+2):

[Sparky was one of the first people I met on 2+2, and over the years our friendship has grown (mostly because I keep giving him money at the tables).  He's a true professional - by being nice to the fish.  He's super-knowledgeable about dogs, and he was nice enough to write this two-part post.]

I decided to write about what I know and for those of you who play with me you will know I'm not talking about poker! Ever since I was a child I have loved dogs, some of my earliest childhood memories are of our family pets and even now at the age of 26 I enjoy spending time with my dogs more than most other activities.  I have two dogs at the moment a black/white Siberian husky named 'Mia' and a pure white Samoyed named 'Shimba' and to put it simply I know a lot about dogs, so I thought I would give you a poker players guide to buying a dog, since most of us are in our early 20's and in the next few years we will be buying houses and possibly considering buying a dog.

The first and most obvious thing is breed selection. There is obviously a huge amount of choice and it is the most important decision you will make when buying a dog. It's not as easy as seeing someone walking a cute dog and saying I want that one. You need to consider a million questions; How much exercise does the breed need? How long do they live for on average? How big do they grow? How much time will the dog have to spend alone? Do you travel overseas often or for long periods of time? How difficult to train are they? Is the climate you live in suitable for this breed? Are there any significant health problems associated with the breed you are considering? Is it a breed that needs other dogs company or that does better as the only dog in the household. I really could write a million questions but the point I am making is that different breeds have amazingly different needs and if you don't fully understand the breed then you are setting yourself up for an unhappy experience for both you and the dog.

The breeds I chose I simply would never have bought if I didn't play poker for a living, it enables me to be at home much more often than someone with a 9-5. Although Huskies and Samoyed are incredibly independent they don't do well being left alone for long periods. They also require a lot of exercise, I try to spend a MINIMUM of an hour exercising them a day, EVERY day. Come rain or snow, upswing or downswing my dogs need daily exercise. I use two main methods of exercising them either a 30 yard nylon tracking lead, where I just let them run around as they choose. The other is a lot more fun and still relatively little effort on my behalf, dog scootering! I can't describe to you how much fun this is and the dogs love it so check out this link below to give you an idea.

Once you have chosen a breed that fits your lifestyle and budget (I'm assuming cost is not much of an issue for most readers so I'll just say dogs cost $500-$5000 depending on breed and heritage) the next thing you need to do is find a breeder. Wait! Can't I just cruise down to the local pet shop and pick up a cute puppy so I can pick up chicks? No!!! In my opinion you should never buy a dog from a pet shop. There are several reasons for this the most important being pet shops sometimes buy puppies from puppy farms also called puppy mills where dogs are kept in horrendous conditions with the sole purpose of producing as many offspring as possible, with complete disregard for their welfare. Although it is less common now than 5-10 years ago it still happens a lot and this is not something you want to support.

 

You can use Google to find most breeders but you need to check out their credentials before you go any further. A good breeder will almost never breed more than one or two breeds of dogs and they should know everything about those breeds. They should actively encourage you to come to there residence to meet there dogs, and also for them to meet you. When I purchased each of my dogs I had an informal interview from both of the breeders to make sure that I was right for their puppy and that their puppy was right for me. Pure breed dogs are often artificially inseminated so you usually only get to meet the mother of your puppy but you should try to spend some time with her and see how her temperament is, how she interacts with you and you should also make sure she seems to be in good health. A good breeder should be proud of their kennels and want you to see where they keep their dogs, if they seem secretive about this kind of thing you should walk away. It's not easy when you have a pile of cash in one hand and a cute puppy in the other but purchasing your dog from the right breeder is very important. When you buy a pedigree dog you should be given a formal copy of its heritage going back at least 2 but preferably 3-4 generations.

So we have chosen a breed and a breeder, we have met the mother of the puppy we want to buy and seen the conditions in which they are kept.

That’s it right? We can go home and start trying to pick up chicks? Well, almost. Before you bring your dog home you need to make sure your house and garden are dog proof! Some breeds are escape artists and will find any small gap in a fence to try to escape so they can explore. Both of my dogs are like this and the Samoyed is just the worst not only will she find any gap in a  fence she can chew her way through most wooden fencing and even some metal mesh fencing. The last thing you want is to get your puppy home wake up the next morning and he/she is gone. Trust me I've been there and it's not fun. Puppies love to chew anything that’s on the floor so you need to make sure those Gucci trainers are locked away and your bedroom floor isn't covered in clothes.

To be continued...

I was thinking that I would take the rest of the month off from poker, until the poker landscape clears up, but then I realized that I played a session on FT earlier in the month and I was down $660 for the month.  Not sure if you guys know, but since I started playing poker professionally in Sept 2008, I have made money every month (including rakeback).  Well I wasn't about to let the DOJ kill my streak of 31 consecutive months of profitability.  Not over $660.

So I did a little research and deposited on Carbon Poker.  I'm up $1,650 over a few days of mostly 0.5/1, so that I can at least write a "+1K" as my total for the month.  It was basically a case of bonus whoring gone bad (see yesterday's post), as I was "sure" I could play enough to collect the full $2K deposit bonus.  But that's not happening now.  I actually wrote them an email to switch to the $600 ($7.50 for $1) bonus, which I think is better.  Anyway, since this was a "test" to see if I could even get a working US account going and to see if I would like the software, I only deposited $1,000.  I figure I just grind that baby up from there.  Poker is poker after all.  Or maybe not...

Not sure if this is standard for NL100 (or for Merge), but I don't remember being in a hand where FOUR people got all-in on the flop.  What are the odds that four people see a flop and all four go all-in?  I was like, WTF!  UTG+1 probably has a set of kings.  But I'm not folding middle set.

Merge Network $0.50/$1.00 No Limit Hold'em - 8 players

DeucesCracked Poker Videos Hand History Converter

UTG: $47.00 (41/1/2.7)
UTG+1: $169.20 (21/17/5.6, 538 hands)
MP1: $64.30 (57/14/0, 8 hands)
MP2: $126.48
CO: $78.45 (43/22/inf, 23 hands)
Hero (BTN): $170.05
SB: $110.84
BB: $100.00

Pre Flop: ($1.50) Hero is BTN with 6 6
UTG calls $1, UTG+1 raises to $4.00, MP1 calls $4, 1 fold, CO calls $4, Hero calls $4, 3 folds

Flop: ($18.50) 3 6 K (4 players)
UTG+1 bets $13.00, MP1 raises to $42.66, CO raises to $74.45 all in,

Hero calls $74.45, UTG+1 raises to $165.20 all in,

MP1 calls $17.64 all in, Hero calls $90.75

Turn: ($483.65) Q (4 players - 3 are all in)

River: ($483.65) 4 (4 players - 3 are all in)

Final Pot: $483.65

UTG+1 shows 3 3
MP1 shows 9 K
CO shows A 2
Hero shows 6 6 (60% equity)

Hero wins $180.37
Hero wins $42.19
Hero wins $258.09

(Rake: $3.00)

<3 NL100.  I had never played NL100 before... I just started at NL400 and will play 1/2 occasionally to retool, or when I'm not feeling it.  And LOL - I just realized there were three players with 40+ VPIPs at my table.  You never see that at NL400.  Altho tbh, at 0.5/1 there seems to be like one (maybe two) 30+ VPIP players on average.  Now I can see why Quads just plays NL100, even tho he probably should be playing mid stakes.

WHAT NEXT?  Continued from yesterday...

4) PLAY ON THE MERGE NETWORK.  You have three choices for playing in the US:  Merge, Bodog and Cake.  You can play on Cake (but it's kind of retarded with no HUD).  But I don't know - maybe you're into that kind of thing.  You can play on Bodog if you somehow lost both your arms during the whole Black Friday thing so you physically could only handle three tabling (which is their max - some places say 4 is the max, but since I'm not a quadriplegic, I don't care to find out).  So your only "real" multitabling choice is the Merge Network.  The mid stakes full ring game selection is pretty putrid.  For 6max, it's not bad - you'll have enough 2/4+ tables most nights to be able to multi-table.  But for small stakes (0.5/1 and 1/2) full ring, there are actually some nights with over 20 tables.  That's about as good as can be expected.  A lot of times, it's mostly regs, but at least half of the regs don't look particularly solid.  Merge came from nowhere and surged up the list of top poker sites, so that in the US evenings they have the third highest cash game volume, behind only Stars and FT.

HEM works fine (and I think PT3 does also).  And the site is big enough where there are third party pieces of software you can get like hotkeys, table scanners and mods.  Sometimes the software seems to stick a little, but otherwise, the software is not too bad.  Yes!  I've played there (later post).  A Western Union only costs 1.5% and is at all of our local supermarkets, so depositing was pretty painless.

Anyway, I decided to follow my own advice and start generating income streams outside of playing poker.  So I started a rakeback affiliate site with RakebackPartners (RaketheRake).  They seemed to offer the best deals, and it's really not that much work on my end.  I thought the best skin for the Merge network (for me) was Carbon poker.  It's because in addition to the 35%, RaketheRake has a personal rake chase that offers up to 40% more in additional rakeback (for up to 75% rakeback).  That's if you don't believe in sleep and can play 24 hours a day for 30 days.  Or if you are one of those Korean pros on FT who share accounts and can generate that kind of play.  For normal multitabling grinders, it's probably going to be an additional 15%.  But even 15% is a lot of money.  And they credit your rakeback to your account daily, which is actually nicer than waiting until Fridays.

[Edit:  UGH!  Apparently the promotions vary from month to month.  But I can't imagine April's was so awesome (pre DOJ), and May's is gonna suck.  But we'll see.]

Carbon also offers a $2,000 200% deposit bonus (deposit $1,000, get $2,000).  But TBH, that deposit bonus is kind of a scam.  You basically need to rake $12.50 (net) to earn $1 of that bonus (more "standard" is $7.50 for $1 in bonus).  And those numbers are post-rakeback, so you need to pay $19.23 (vs $11.54) in rake to get a measly dollar in bonus.  And the deposit bonuses disappear once you make your first withdraw!  Like WTF?  Have they heard of a little thing called a DOJ crackdown?  I'm supposed to generate $38,460 in rake for you to clear that crappy bonus and you're not going to let me withdraw if I want the whole bonus?!?  Oh.  And you have three months.  FU!!!  (I know I'm an affiliate, but I'm going to tell it like it is.)  They also have a new player freeroll that's too busto for me to play in, but the other promo that's nice is they're giving away a bunch of ipads this month.  Not sure what they do other months.  [Edit:  I just noticed that on my rakeback site, they are offering a $600 100% deposit bonus instead of RTR's $2,000 200% bonus.  But the $600 bonus clears 67% faster (only $7.50 in NET rake per $1 in bonus), so I think that's better for most people - unless you are a high volume grinder.  I seriously doubt I can pay anywhere near $38K of rake in 3 months on that site.]

I was more concerned with the longer term benefits of getting 50+% rakeback than any short-term deposit bonuses.  I'm assuming that personal rake chase is a regular promotion, but I have an email I sent them over the weekend that I'm waiting on a reply for.

Anyway, if you sign up at Carbon thru me, I get an extra 4% of your rake.  You still get all the benefits if you signed up directly - it's not coming out of your benefits.  But you'll be helping Mrs. Fly look even more fly.  So basically, it's win-meh-win (you-me-Mrs. Fly).  I really like this deal - I would never recommend something that I didn't think was the best deal for you.  If you email me at (doubleflypoker@gmail.com) the site you're interested in and your rake volume, I'll point you in the right direction.

DISCLAIMER:  I am not URGING you to put money in US sites - there are significant risks.  But if want to play, and the other playing options don't look appealing to you, I think Carbon Poker is the best way to go (for reasons listed above).  And I think RaketheRake has the best offer for high volume players.  Also, I warn you guys against putting A LOT of money on a US site.  Making a deposit is usually just a trip to your local supermarket, and you don't save on fees by depositing more.  It's not clear to me that the US Dept of Justice has used up all of its bullets, so in case the new trio of US poker sites get raided, don't get caught with your pants down (again).  Leave as little money in there as possible.

The second question most of you guys have is probably...  What do we do next?

Well, obviously, you can go get a "real" job.  It's interesting that before I left on my break, I was going to write about how you should start doing stuff with your poker money: either to save for the future, or to generate additional income streams for yourself.  I'll get into this more later, since that's probably not your immediate concern.

For this post, I'll assume you still want to play poker.  Your options are:

1) LIVE POKER.  No comment.  Actually, I took a trip over to the local casino over the weekend, and I'll post a trip report in the next few weeks.

2) MOVE ABROAD.  I suppose if you were young and didn't have kids, this is a great opportunity to see the world.  For me, we ruled it out before we moved to Dallas.  If any of you want to do a guest post on this topic, let me know.

The world is an awesome place, and it's going to be tougher for you to see it once you have kids.  The Chinese characters for "risk" is a combination of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity."  There is rarely any gain without risk.  So rather than looking at this Black Friday situation as the glass half-empty, look at it as an opportunity.  I think this could be a good money-making opportunity as well, if you want to have some "roommates."

3) OTHER WAYS TO PLAY ABROAD.  To be discussed later, after I figure out if they work.  As of now, there seem to be a few hangups, like VPN detection, transferring funds, etc. so once I get up-and-running, I'll let you know.  You can email me at DoubleFlyPoker@gmail.com and let me know what sites and kind of volume and I'll point you in the right direction on the best deals (later post).

4) PLAY ON US-FRIENDLY SITES.  Tomorrow, I'll tell you how you can play on a fairly decent site and get as much as 75% rakeback.

Stay tuned...  (oh, and between me and the Guest Posts, I should be back to posting 5x a week now).

I wasn't planning on posting this month, but I had a request due to all the happenings-on, so here goes...

credit to pizzle on 2+2 for the photo

I made a few posts in the past about how retarded it is to keep a lot of money online. Like this one.  And this one.  But it appears that a number of people kept practically their entire net worth online.  Me?  I had $7K in my FT and PS accounts combined.  Why?  Because I listened to my own advice and didn't keep more money online than I needed to!  I wasn't planning on playing Stars until the fall (mostly because of the move), and when 3 tabling 2/4 rush on FT and a $9K deposit limit, why would I need to keep more?  I may not be one of the better regs out there, but I'm certainly not going on a massive downswing more than once a year.  I'm pretty sure I'm the least-affected midstakes reg out there.

I'm not trying to gloat and be a douchebag or anything.  I consider you guys my friends and I genuinely want to see you do well.  Part of being a responsible professional gambler is taking care of your money.  Putting your money at risk with no chance of gain is just -ev.  Luckily, I think we'll eventually see our money again (see below), and you'll get a second chance.  So in the future, treat your money better.  And that concludes my PSA.

In case you're wondering what I think of the cashout situation...

There is definitely a non-zero chance (LDO) we'll never see your money again.  But IN MY OPINION, we'll eventually get our money back.  The odds of us seeing our money is much higher than as reflected in the 20-30% vig some people are looking to pay for an immediate cashout.  Unfortunately, because all the payment processors got shut down, it could take a while before the sites figure out a way for you to get your money back.  I mean really, what do you expect the sites to do when the DOJ shut down all processors?

I'm not basing my "positive" opinion on any insider knowledge.  But what I DO know is the following:
Remember this table from a few months ago?  This was a summary of FT and Party data.

But since Party is tiny, this is basically FT.  Yes- the US is a huge chunk of business.  But it is only 30-40% of revenues/volume (net, hands or players).  If that goes to zero, at the end of the day, FT still has a pretty good business.  They have some of the best software around and they have a patent on Rush, which can be super-addictive.  So maybe instead of having 750mirrion a year in revenues, they get 500. And with all the processor issues over the years, the US business was probably not a huge contributor to their profit margins.  So basically they are still a pretty good multi-billion dollar business (legal issues aside) with higher profit margins than before.  If the US players don't get their money back, most international players will withdraw.  Would they really want to jeopardize that business by stiffing US players?

I think "NO."  I have no idea if there were other shady things going on behind the scenes, like comingling of player assets, etc.  But I haven't seen any huge amounts discussed wrt the seizures.  So I assume FT still has a lot to protect and so I think by the end of the year, they'll find a way to get most of your money.

I'll keep my fingers crossed with the rest of you.

(Oh, and my intention is only to post like once or twice a week until next month).  But my friend Sparky has an awesome guest post on one of his passions...

For the sake of completeness, I wanted to post my March results:

Not many hands, but a pretty good win rate.  One of my goals was to have  4ptbb win rate at least one month.  But it's pretty lame to get it on a 14K hand month.  Oh well... plenty of months left tho to do it again.

As for the weight, my official weigh-in was 250.5.  I haven't seen a weight with a "4" handle since we got married, so I should be able to do it at my next weigh-in.  I didn't lose much weigh this month, but part of that may be that last month's weigh-in was very low.  I think with all the stuff related to the move, I should be getting a reasonable amount of physical activity next month.  But then again, I'll be surrounded by all that Texas beef!

Even off of this generic map, I'm pretty sure I made the best choice.  Location.  Location.  Location.  See you in a month!