Doublefly Poker

2012-02-03T08:00:00.003-05:00

I can't believe we're a month into the New Year already. Just thought I'd post a few updates:

1. POKER - I ended the month 25 BIs under EV, and ran really bad in non-EV situations. Ouch. But I still managed a decent month - and 41 consecutive months of profitability. As the games get tougher, rakeback becomes more important. When I do my quarterly update on poker sites next week, I'll talk about this more. You may be wondering, "what made you stop posting graphs?" Since I'm a numbers guy, I enjoyed posting graphs and talking about it as much as you guys probably enjoyed seeing them. Talking about the bad times (as well as the good times) makes a poker blog interesting - I suppose I can still do that without the graphs. But it turns out that in many states, playing online poker is legally "frowned upon" and I was advised not to be so religious about publishing my results. CT (my old state) and TX (my new state) are both in this category. Neither are one of the states where the poker sites want nothing to do with and it was extremely unlikely any action would ever be taken, but I suppose nowadays you can't be too careful.

2. WEIGHT - Weighed in at 235. Lost 2 pounds. Yawn. I didn't try particularly hard... I had a bunch of carb-filled meals. When it's the holidays, vacation, Mrs. Fly's birthday and my birthday all in just over a month, it's going to be brutal on the waistline. I started developing a taste for margaritas (both frozen and on the rocks). When you go to a bunch of tex-mex restaurants and you keep seeing ads for various premium tequila, it gets to you after a while. Turns out a 10oz margarita has 550 calories. Doh! Damn you Texas Roadhouse and your $2 frozen margarita happy hour!!! My sister (from NY) couldn't believe it was so cheap and wanted to take the sign home. Anyway, after this week, I should be back on a more healthy eating and drinking schedule.

3. BOOK - I'm almost done with the research phase of my book. I'm currently reading Split's book. I have to say, as much flack as Daily Variance is getting on 2+2, their books aren't terrible. "Not terrible" is not exactly a ringing endorsement, but I'm sure most of you will agree that the bookstores are overflowing with poker books that are just outright TERRIBLE. Hi Phil H! Especially for online poker - I didn't know Doyle had a book on online poker. Really Doyle? As much as I like him, I find it hard to believe that he's logged many hours online. I'm hoping to have a rough outline by the end of the month, and I pretty much know it will be more entertaining and informative than anything currently out there now. I'll talk about the book more in the coming months.

After not playing much lately, I need to get back on the grind!

2012-02-01T15:08:00.002-05:00

It's my birthday this week. I'm crossing that threshold from being in my "early 40s" to "mid 40s". And another year closer to the grave. The average life expectancy in the U.S. for a male is 75.6. So I have about 30 years left (since bigger people probably dies faster - old wives' tale?). Sounds like a lot, but it's not really.

I suppose that's why I like the poker lifestyle so much... it just makes spending time with the family that much easier. Earlier this week, Mrs. Fly and I spent a few afternoon marathon sessions... sadly, not of what you think - we watched Korean dramas together. Can't do that with a 9 to 5. Yesterday when G got home from school, I helped him with his homework, we putzed around together in my office, had a nice family dinner, and took him to his cub scout pack meeting. Another dad was saying how they hadn't eaten yet because he got out of work late. D is sitting next to me as we speak, watching Sesame Street. Today, we're taking the kids to one of those inflatable playgrounds after school and going to this buffet that has the best crab legs. Can't beat free time with the family.

The other day, G asks me if there's anything I want (gee G, that was pretty unobvious why you were asking), and all I could think of was a new pair of running sneakers. My brother supposedly sent me an ipad, so I'm all set on things I "need." We don't really celebrate birthdays (other than the kids'), so we usually don't get presents. But just for laughs, here are the TOP 5 THINGS I WANT FOR MY BIRTHDAY:
5. Pair of running sneakers. I forgot I threw all my old sneakers out when we moved... so that's why I haven't been able to exercise! Really!
4. Decent sushi. The sushi around where I live is sooo mediocre. I did not realize gulf coast seafood in general was so meh.
3. Someone to shampoo the inside of my car. D spilled his kid's cup of milk last week and the interior is starting to smell like a cheap hooker.
2. Legalized US online poker
1. Mrs. Fly. Eh hem. Maybe Mrs. Fly could dress up like a poker geisha, provide me with some sushi and exercise, and then shampoo the car afterwards. I can't imagine a better birthday.

[x] Happy Birthday to Me!
[ ] This will happen

2012-01-30T14:17:00.002-05:00

I'm a softie. You may not think it from some of my "aggressive" views on capital punishment, public holidays, Bernanke, public toilet urination, not putting in enough hours, etc. But long time readers know better - probably that "crying" post a few years back was the clincher. What can I say? I like a happy ending (all varieties).

So it will come as no surprise to you that one of the (many) movies I like watching is Disney's "Beauty and the Beast." I even bought it on DVD (and Blu-ray, and Blu-ray 3D and digital copy - all for $30 on Amazon). Disney is so annoying how they only sell their movies once every 10 years or whatever. Anyway, I'm now set for life.

There are plenty of reasons why I can relate to this movie. I obviously like animation (Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, etc). Long time readers will know I like nerdy women and nice voices. And the beast is large and hairy. I'm large but not hairy (since I'm Asian) but I do have this anus... And I am also into kidnapping women and holding them captive in my dungeon. Puts the lotion in the basket! Call me old school - it only took 6 months in the well for Mrs. Fly to agree to marry me. But I digress...

Anyway, we'll watch a few movies a month as a family. Even tho this is a Disney "princess" movie, I thought the boys might like it. They'll basically agree to watch any movie (since we let them have popcorn). It can't be horrible to know what the girls in their class are talking about. It's important to watch movies / TV with your kids, so you can talk about any issues that arise. It's just another way to spend time some quality time with you kids.

The movie starts and the first thing G says is, "I don't really like Disney movies - they sing too much." Sing too much?!? This is coming from an 8 year old who needs to sing "I got passion in my pants and I ain't afraid to show it... I'm sexy and I know it" every friggin time he gets into the car. You don't know how ridiculous that sounds coming from an 8 year old. It was a bit more merciful last month when it was "We will rock you." Obviously from the public urination episode a few weeks ago, he's not afraid to show it. G - future pervert. I feel like lmfao is laughing at me.

Apparently B&tB was a little too "violent" for D in the beginning. So he would walk out the movie during the "scary" parts and come back in when the coast is clear. Can you guess the part he really enjoyed? The early musical numbers. Why? Because he couldn't stop talking about the three bimbos who were in love with Gaston. He just kept talking about how he liked girls with the yellow hair - the one in the green and the red and the yellow. All THREE of them. And he even talked about them long after their 15 minutes were up. D - future swinger.

Pervert and menage boy. I have no idea where they get that from... eh hem.

I suppose the big take-away from this blog post (my next LDO public service announcement) is this... spend time with your kids (including watching TV). This way, you'll know when your kids are going to be deviants, and you'll know you'll have to grind even harder to get that bail money ready.

2012-01-27T13:30:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, a former FT reg makes a thread titled "Almost Busto" and explains his situation...

So, I was never really a huge winner to begin with...you know, made a couple of gs here and there, lost a couple, etc. But I swear, no one ****ing runs worse than I do. I was a pretty decent winner pre blackfriday; I took a break for maybe 4 months after, and ever since then have been running worse than I ever thought possible (I guarantee no one has ever run this bad, ever...no one).

Anyway, I need some advice. I currently have a little under 1,000 left to my name. What should I do? I've tried moving out of the country to play...that didn't work. I've tried playing live poker....and that has been meh as well. I just want to win again but it's so hard when my KK always runs into AA, when fishes stack off with JJ against me bvb and hit vs my QQ, etc....basically, run worse than any of you could even comprehend.

I don't want to be one of those people that just disappears from the poker community and everyone forgets about. I want to be a winner. I guess I'm just desperate for any advice.

Next post:

Well, I have a wife and a baby on the way...so no family yet but soon. I really want to make it as a poker player though, should I try to look for a stake?

My response was this:

SC, a few comments for you:
* if poker's been tough for you so far, I have bad news - it's probably going to get worse. the games get tougher every year. I realize you ran bad, but a lot of times, "run bad" isn't "all" run bad.
* you should try to get a job, if at all possible. are you qualified to do anything?
* I hope you guys have some kind of health insurance that will cover maternity (not all do). if not you need to get a job with benefits ASAP. you can always retry poker in your spare time, but you need to take care of your family first.
* can you post a graph since BF? with ev line (yeah - this only scratches the surface of types of runbad, but I'm just curious what we're talking about here).

GL.

And then it occurred to me that a lot of you guys may be in a similar situation, since most of you are in your twenties or early thirties, and that's around the time you may be thinking about starting a family. *IF* you are thinking of starting a family, I can not stress enough the importance of having health insurance. As a single, young and healthy person, you probably got by okay without it. After all, your demographic is somewhat unlikely to develop a major illness. And at the end of the day, health insurance is not "cheap," and you may have more pressing monetary needs.

But when you start becoming responsible for a family, things will be different. The medical costs of giving birth to a child are just astronomically high. I wish we had some kind of malpractice and administrative reform, because there is just an absurd amount of unnecessary overhead in the structure of medical costs. You will not be able to afford the costs of having a baby without insurance.

But it's not just about the delivery. We know *A LOT* of "healthy" people. And more people than you would think have problems with their kid. Not sure if it's all the cell phone towers, genetic engineering of foods, the Mayan 2012, whatever. But we probably know almost two dozen kids who have some kind of medical issue, from mental retardation, to various speech issues, to autism, to various food allergies (some bordering on lethal) to milder issues like ADD. As the HEAD of your family, you are not going to want this burden of not being able to give them the proper medical care.

FWIW, we know someone who works as a manager at a local department store chain 1 day a week (Sundays) at zero salary, just to get their generous health insurance package. If you can't give up poker, think about getting at least a part-time job to make sure you have insurance. So plan ahead and do what you need to do to take care of your family - it's not just about *you* any more.

You can act like a man! [slap] What's the matter with you?

2012-01-25T15:13:00.005-05:00

F.U. Bernanke!!! Rates on hold for 3 years?!?

Sigh. My interest rate curve newsletter business is going to keep taking a beating.

But it's a good time for people to try and save up in the next few years for a house.
House > gun > food > gold.

You can thank me later. Grind baby grind! GL.

2012-01-23T15:17:00.003-05:00

A couple of quick hits:

* Happy Asian New Year! It's the Year of the Dragon, and for some reason, it's considered a lot "luckier" than other years (obviously the Chinese and Mayans don't see eye-to-eye on this one). So may the luck of the dragon be with you at the tables and in your life this special year. In the poker world, I'd like to give a lucky DoubleFly 2012 shoutout to the following people:

   * to DamnRinger, who got a new full-time job and got engaged. The dream is over... twice. ;-)
   * to Andrew Song, who has almost half a buck tied up on FT. I think you're going to see some of that money this year.
   * to JohnK and family who have been dealing with a severe family illness. We continue to wish you the best.

Spongebob cookies we got for Xmas

And in my personal world, I'd like to wish the best of luck to my sister, who just started a new pastry business (maybe later post). She's a freelance graphic designer, but she took a few pastry courses last year and decided to channel her impeccable eye for detail into the world of pastries.

Masters of the Universe Castle Greyskull. Towers made from rice krispies and castle made from chocolate cake.

* Finally, I have to give a shout-out to my New York football Giants. They looked like crap during the regular season and barely got into the playoffs, but their defense got healthier, and they are on their way to ekeing out another victory of the favored Patriots.

How ironic that the Giants beat the local DALLAS Cowboys to take the last playoff spot in the NFC. LOL.

Who's that knocking at my door?

2012-01-20T01:00:00.000-05:00

Just to present all facts, here is the mystery coach's FT graph (the other graph was for Stars) - hasn't made money in almost 2 years there since 2009 as well. And again, a negative win rate over an adequate sample. And the dude owns his own coaching site!!!

Oops. Forgot to wipe out the name that time. So between the two sites, that's like a 300K hand break-even in the last 2 years. Actually, "break-even" would be kind, since he's dropped almost $500K in that time on the two sites. So would you want coaching from this guy?!?

If someone offered me 5 hours of free coaching and my choices were aejones or a small stakes guy "crushing" at 3ptbb, I'd take aejones - easily. What would you do? If someone offered me $7,500 in coaching and I could have 5 hours or aejones or 50 hours of some small stakes dude, I'd rather just pocket the money. I'm a cheap ass, what can I say? But I'd still take aejones.

Oh and funny that aejones happens to be Vinivici's boss at Leggo Poker. "Boss, you really shouldn't be making videos or coaching anymore - you are no longer qualified. Oh, and you need to stop charging $1,500 an hour on coaching. We need to start policing ourselves as a community. Aw-ight? Umm... BTW, can I get a raise?"

I just wanted to illustrate that you don't *have to* be a winner in today's games to provide some valuable insight into today's games. I've learned a lot from watching aejones' videos. He plays a completely different style than I do and I generally find his videos entertaining. There are MANY different facets of poker... there's the mind game (like discipline, attitude), the business end (rakeback, bankroll management, etc), philosophies and metagame, styles of play, understanding opponent tendencies, nuances of preflop (ranges, bet sizing, table dynamics, 3+bet pots, etc), and all the various postflop scenarios (too long to mention). For me to get some value out of a coach, I would much rather talk to some dude who is the best in one area - that can turn a losing or weaker areas area of my game into a +ev one, rather than some dude who does well all the things that I currently do well ALREADY. To accomplish that, I don't think I need someone who crushes overall. While I will probably "lean" towards the person with a great win rate all thing being equal, win rate is just one of many factors that go into deciding on a good coach for your particular needs.

In aejones' case, just talking to him about his reads on the other Stars 5/10+ regs could be worth over a multiple of his coaching rate of $1,500 an hour - especially the ones who are vulnerable to playing in 3bet pots. For those who don't know, AE specializes in forcing people to play in 3bet pots oop (something I don't do much). And that's the area of my game I would want the "coaching" on. I'm not going to want to talk to him about spots to 4bet-shove or opening ranges from the BB, because I don't know that he's particularly good at that. But all he needs to be to be a good coach *FOR ME* is for him to add some value to *SOME* part of my game. And he can do that - potentially in a huge way. I can't say that about a crushing small stakes guy who basically plays my game.

If you suck at poker, you probably want to get coaching from the small stakes guy. But that's how markets are set. People like me would want to pay a premium from aejones, and the noobs are happy to get the small stakes coaching at relatively bargain basement prices.

Not to mention all the things other than win rate that go into being a good coach - effective communications, organization, problem solving. I know a guy who got coaching from a mid stakes crusher (also a good video maker) and even tho he seems to work hard, it didn't seem to translate into a noticeably positive win rate. So win rate should be only one of many criteria you need to consider before hiring a coach. And you should probably have some realistic expectations of what a coach can do for you. But since I have limited experience with the coaching process, maybe I'll save that for a later post.

All I wanted to say today was... "Yes. You can be a losing player and still be a good coach."

2012-01-18T21:26:00.004-05:00

I haven't written about poker in a while and since this *is* a poker blog, I should talk about oh I don't know... poker? There are a few big things going on right now... so I'll talk about one of them now and the others when I have more time.

A few of the small stakes coaches (mostly led by Vinivici) seems to have gotten together and decided to start a thread mostly directed at Tri Nguyen and Daily Variance Publishing. The gist is that Tri is no longer a winning player and made his alleged million dollars at poker during the glory days (when all you needed was a micro stakes understanding of the games). So basically a "poker coaches should be CURRENTLY winning players" thread. And apparently Tri charges $5,000 an HOUR for his coaching. Secondarily, it talks about unscrupulous marketing practices, such as books being titled "How to make $100K a year...", people not posting their graphs, coaches positing recommendations from their friends, etc.

I don't think anyone is going to argue for less deceptive advertising. But I'm not going to get on Tri for no longer being a winning player, because as far as I can tell, his books are actually quite good and some of the better ones in the market. At least until MY book hits the shelves. ;-) And as for him having made his "million" at poker during the glory days and that he is nothing more than a break-even player now, it passes my "resume test". If you can honestly put it down on your resume, it passes. It's part of his background and part of what he did (I'm assuming), so I'm not going to fault him for using that credential in his marketing. I think with information being publicly available, if his latest book sucks, the ratings will show that - just as soon as enough people can override his buddies posting the first few 5-star reviews. Oops, my inner cynic got out.

It reminds me of when I first started trading around 2000 and one of the quants on the desk kept saying, back in the good ol days of bond trading (1980s), if you knew how to use a calculator, you could have made tens of millions of dollars. Apparently, people barely knew how to calculate discounted cash flow of coupons back then. Now those same people can't make any money in today's markets. But it's okay - they've already retired to their private islands in the Caribbean by now. You just have to make the best of the opportunities that are presented to you at the time. But I digress...

So I'll talk about the more interesting topic of: can you be an effective poker coach WITHOUT being a winning player? I don't have any experience with coaches - I've never had one. Part of the fun of poker is just trying to figure things out on my own. But I thought I'd illustrate with an example... Should this guy be allowed to coach?

The dude hasn't made money in 2 years!!! In fact, he's just dropped money like Charlie Sheen at a strip joint. Negative win rate, adequate sample size. His published coaching rate is $1500 an HOUR. Makes tons of videos, so anyone playing online poker seriously will know who he is. Oh, and I forgot to mention... he can't calculate pot odds.

I bring this up because I don't think you need to be a current winning player to be a good coach. Stay tuned Friday for the exciting conclusion! (Sarcasm intended)

2012-01-15T11:25:00.005-05:00

One of the nice things about playing poker for a living is that we can take random trips whenever we feel like it. G had Friday (and Monday) off for Martin Luther King Day so we took a little overnight trip. [Warning: random digression ahead]

BTW, MLK Day is complete B.S. Of all the "influential" figures in American history, *HE'S* the only one to get his own holiday?!? It just irks the hell out of me. Not saying he wasn't a great guy... "Probably" in the top 10. But the ONLY person in the history of these fine United States to get his own holiday? This can only be the result of a bunch of ass-kiss politicians trying to get the black vote.

"Probably" because I hadn't really thought about it. So I decided to do a little research. My vote would have been for George Washington. But last time I checked, being pro-George Washington doesn't win you many votes. Michael Hart wrote a book that listed the top 100 most influential people in world history. George Washington was on there, and so was Martin Luther (the Protestant dude), but no Martin Luther KING. Don't feel bad - Gandhi didn't make it on the list either. Anyway, there was an interesting list in Atlantic magazine and the top 10 influential figures in American History went like this:

10. Woodrow Wilson. I guess beating the hell out of Nazis is considered a good thing.
9. Thomas Edison. "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration." I wrote a college essay on that quote and got in somewhere... decent.
8. Martin Luther King Jr. If getting 8th place gets you the top prize, there would be a lot of happy swimmers out there. (there are 8 lanes in a pool, for the sports-challenged out there)
7. John Marshall. I must've been asleep during this portion of my American history class. Maybe that's why I didn't get into Haaavaaad.
6. Benjamin Franklin. You don't get on a box of Quaker Oats for nothing. Wat? That's not him?!?
5. Alexander Hamilton. The dude on the $10 bill. Very underrated the $10 bill.
4. Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Nazi-hating confirmed.
3. Thomas Jefferson. Setting that fine American precedent of schtupping the help... JFK, Clinton, Schwarzenegger, etc.
2. George Washington. Yup.
1. Abraham Lincoln. Mrs. Fly's vote. I guess they gave him some style points for getting shot.

So I think there's some merit to my claim that MLK Day is all the work of politicians. Number 8! LOL. Hey! Ass-kissing politicians! I think there are a lot more poker players than blacks in the US. How about kissing *our* fat hairy-anused asses and get this regulated online poker thing moving along? Everyone knows you're busto and can use the money. So stop pretending like you're not popularity and money whores (because you are and everyone knows it) and let's get the legislative ball rolling, aw-ight?

Hmm... ran out of room for that trip report. Tune in next time.

2012-01-11T13:16:00.004-05:00

"Funny" G story:

We luckboxed and picked a neighborhood where there are a lot of other 3rd graders. So G has a bunch of friends within a few houses away. It's very nice to have a lot of friends that close. We have a small shed/barn in the back yard, so the boys like to use the upstairs as a clubhouse. Our house is also centrally located, so oftentimes they will come over here to play. The other parents like us and seem to think that G is an awesome, super-polite and super-socially mature kid. Because he is - most of the time.

My next door neighbor has a 5th grader who none of the other 3rd graders seem to like (and vice versa). So when they see each other, they exchange the typical verbal pleasantries that you would expect - "Baby", "Stupid" etc. LOL upper middle class suburbs. Growing up in NYC, you're used to hearing more stuff like "mother f*cker", "cock s*cker" etc. Ahhh memories.

Anyway, the other day G is playing outside with his buddies. I get a ring at the doorbell so I go answer. It's the 5th grader and his friend. I'll call the neighbor's kid "EH" because he has a bit of Eddie Haskell in him (for those of you too young to remember, EH was a character on Leave It to Beaver who acted super polite in front of adults but was pretty mischievous). Apparently, in the midst of their lover's quarrel, EH claimed that G called EH and his friend "shits" (denied), "stupid" (confirmed) and PEED ON THEIR LAWN (CONFIRMED!!!).

Of course I had to put on my best poker face and act all enraged - I called over G and told him to get in the house... told him why that was bad and disrespectful, and at the same time, made it a point to tell EH he's older and shouldn't be "instigating" fights by name calling towards the 3rd graders. And Mrs. Fly took G over to the neighbor's house later so that G could apologize. G is grounded indefinitely (I'm guessing a "few" weeks - the Mrs. and I haven't talked about it). Yada yada yada.

But c'mon! A "small" part of me wanted to give him a high five. Because a lot of kids when confronted by an bigger and older kid would shirk away. Gotta love that tenacious, go f*ck yourself spirit. I wonder where he gets it from? I like my kids to have a little fight in them... you don't get to the top of anything by being a mousy little follower.

Of course, a lot of people in prison are probably saying the same thing, so in case my parental talks with G are ineffective, I have to grind hard to get that bail money ready.

[sigh. My posts are going to suck once G figures out I'm blogging and I know he's subscribing to it. But don't worry - I think that's still a few years away.]

2012-01-07T09:00:00.012-05:00

The next trip report is when some friends of ours bought us tickets to see a Holiday show called the Gift of Christmas at one of the large local churches. She said it was something her family liked to see every year and it was nice that she included us.

On the date of the performance, I punched it into my GPS and off we went. I was a little puzzled when we saw a huge billboard for the show and a huge church behind a large field. But the GPS said we were 1.7 miles away. I could see the church, but the GPS entrance was still 1.7 miles away! I realize we're in the Bible Belt, but I was amazed at how large this church was. It was easily the largest church I've ever seen (aside from the Vatican). Having lived most of my life in NYC, you just don't see huge church complexes. My idea of a big US church was St. Patrick's Cathedral. But it's just dinky by comparison. And it turns out it's not even on of the 5 largest churches in Texas! Toto, we're not in New York any more. Welcome to Prestonwood Church.

(the panoramic glowy things in the photo are all TVs!!!)

The church seated 7,000 people in its auditorium. SEVEN THOUSAND PEOPLE. The Paramount Theater in NY (part of Madison Square Garden) only seats half as many people. They also had choir seating for 500 singers above the stage. 500 people in the CHOIR! My local church back in NY was lucky to get 100 people show up for a friggin' mass. And they had a pit for a 50 piece orchestra. You don't even see that in Broadway theaters. They also had large video displays for people in the Uecker seats (that's us).

So I'm expecting this high-school-musical-quality of performance, but this was actually quite good. Mrs. Fly thought it was at least as good as the Radio City Christmas performance. I didn't think it was as polished, but I have to cut them some slack since these people are just church members. Some of the singers were quite good, and it wouldn't surprise me if they sang for a living around the Dallas area. They even had some minor pyrotechnics and a bunch of acts involving flying sleds and angels. Apparently, this church is well known for their Holiday performances and you can get a copy on DVD (I only see MP3 downloads on Amazon).

The first half was very entertaining, as they did all the pagan songs like "Frosty the Snowman", "Rudolph", etc. Interspersed were the commercials, where one of the ministers said a few words. The second half was mostly religious songs, so it kind of dragged on. It was actually a very long performance. I was only expecting it to be like 1.5 hours, but it went on for at least 2.5. They even had an intermission, for people to go pee.

Of course, my little pee machine (aka D) needed to go during the 3 hours we were there. Upon entering the bathroom, it looked very nice and clean. Yes!!! These are all good Christians after all. So I go into one stall and I see one of the parishoners had previously needed to exorcise some demons... out of his ass. And it was not one of the minor demons either. So that toilet was unusable. I go to the other available stall and of course it was had urine on it. Apparently the good Lord wants you to pee all over the friggin' rim so the next person can't use the toilet. Sometimes, you need to look under the hood before you buy a car. What looks nice on the outside may not be so nice. Later on, I find out the church had a major sex scandal a few year back - a 53 year old minister tried to have sex with undercover 13 year old. Shocker.

Overall, it was a positive experience. I would like to go back again for more holiday performances, and maybe even a Sunday service. A Sunday service?!? Aren't you a devout atheist? Won't your martyred Catholic ancestor be rolling in his grave that you are going to a non-Catholic church? As I've traveled a lot, I like to see how people in different parts of the world live. If I can go see women spitting out ping pong balls from their hootch in Bangkok, why not see a Baptist service in a mega church in Dallas? Yes. I just compared a tiger show to a church service. Performance is performance after all.

Wait... who's that knocking at the door?

2012-01-05T18:13:00.004-05:00

I owe you a bunch of trip of trip reports. So I suppose I'll just go chronologically...

Why did I get buck naked and let some squat Korean man rub me down? No - I did not get sent to a North Korean prison for l(ing)mao when Kim Jung Il died. [Good riddance, you dumb f*ck! Sorry - just the South Korean in me. :-)] And I did not decide to walk both ways. Mrs Fly and I decided to go to a Korean bath house. We see people do it all the time on the Korean dramas we watch, and we thought it would be a "fun" thing to after we got settled.

It turns out there's a large Korean bath house in Dallas. It's somewhat upscale, and not one of those "Korean massage" places that Koreans are known for. There's a nude "wet" area (sounds like one of those "Korean massage" places, I know) where they have five pools of different temperature water (from like 60 degrees to 110+ degrees). This area is NOT co-ed. So I was basically sitting around naked with a bunch of other dudes. This is going to *seem* incredibly gay to most Americans, but in a lot of cultures (mostly Asia and Europe) this is considered normal. I feel weird telling you it's "normal" when it sounds so gay as I'm writing this. Who am I kidding? It felt good to be in the water for a few minutes but when I looked around it was pretty gay. So I went for a massage and "scrub down."

[BTW, I'm not homophobic - I have several good gay friends.]

One of the more interesting things you can get at a Korean bath house is the scrub down.
They take a semi-abrasive glove (kind of like a loofah) and they rub down your skin surface. The grossest thing about it is that no matter how clean you *think* you are, they are able to rub off strands and strands of these "black noodles" off your skin. This is just your dead skin in rolls. The massage table is just covered with them. Of course a little dead skin is actually GOOD for you, but whatever. As I was retelling this story the other day to a neighbor at a holiday party, she asked me if it came with a happy ending. WTF?!? I'm not going to get a happy ending from a guy! A GUY?!? I suppose if I closed my eyes, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but it was reaffirming to know that Junior wasn't the least bit interested.

They also had a bunch of co-ed clothed areas - like over a half dozen different kinds of steam rooms and saunas. One room was so hot it was like sitting in an oven, and I had to leave after like 15 seconds. I got to enjoy an afternoon of hearing "bok bok" from Mrs. Fly. WTF?!? I didn't realize it was some kind of contest! Other rooms had herbs, crystals, various temperatures, etc. They also had a bunch of lounge chairs in front of a giant projection TV and a full service restaurant (food was meh but adequate). I basically fell asleep while Mrs. Fly walked around for a few hours. Apparently, you can stay for 24 hours for the $25 admission and some people actually use it as a hotel. In those Korean dramas, whenever the husband gets kicked out of the house, he goes to the bath house to sleep, so I guess that makes sense. I think in one drama, some of the husbands were "regulars" so they formed a club IN THE BATH HOUSE where they sat around bitching about their wives. Pussies! All I know is if I get in an argument with Mrs. Fly, *I'm* not the one leaving the house. Sure, I may not get sex for the rest of my life, but I'm sleeping in the comfort of my own... sofa! :-(

2012-01-01T12:50:00.002-05:00

Happy New Year! I wish you guys all the best in 2012.

You guys probably thought I ditched the blogging, with fewer and fewer posts every month. But actually, I want to write even more about poker, as you will see from one of my New Year's resolutions...

DOUBLEFLY'S NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS:

1. WRITE A POKER BOOK. That's right! That's my big news. After scouring the market for a half-decent book on online poker and not finding it, I decided to write one. The subject could be pretty boring, but I think I can add some DoubleFly touches to make it very entertaining. I had talked about writing a poker book when I first started this blog, and I can't believe it's been 3 years already. Well now I'm pretty motivated. Volume 1 (yes - there will be multiple volumes) will mostly be geared towards the noobs, but there should be stuff in there a lot of people will have missed or had not thought about. The later volumes will have more advanced topics that you should find interesting. You may be thinking that writing the book will take away a little time from writing in my blog. But I think I can post some excerpts from the book, and get your opinion on it, so that can be win-win. My goal by the end of the year is to "substantially complete" volume 1. Stay tuned.

2. GET UNDER 200 POUNDS. I got as low as 225, but over the holidays, I gained 12 pounds. :-( So it's back to the low carb diet for me (starting tomorrow). Starting at 237, I want to get back to under 200 (which is what I weighed in college). I'm pretty sure I can get this done. I'm going to try and add a little more exercise to my routine this time around.

3. SEE MORE OF THESE FINE UNITED STATES WITH THE FAMILY. Now that we're all settled, I want to take more "work" vacations and take the family. One of the nice things about writing a book and playing poker is that you can do that from anywhere. We started the family road trips with a nice short visit to San Antonio and had a pretty good time (later post). We have a 2 month long trip planned for next summer back on the East coast, and we may try to squeeze something in over Spring Break and a cruise during the warmer months. Stay tuned for trip reports.

2011-12-22T13:17:00.001-05:00

OMG! I can't believe it's been over a week since I blogged. That must be some kind of record. I've been super busy the last week because of the holidays, and now I'm waaay behind on my posts. You can read about my adventures at the second biggest church complex I've ever been in (other than the Vatican), and how I let a short Asian man rub me down in the nude.

Oh, I'm going to have some big news next week... :-)

(and it's not that I turned ghey, in case you are wondering what the deal with getting naked with another dude is all about).

A Xmas joke to tide you guys over... the kind of joke that I would find funny, but Mrs. Fly would not.

A couple was shopping at a packed mall on Christmas Eve. Walking through the mall, the wife looked up and was surprised to see that her husband had disappeared. She was very upset because they had much Christmas shopping to do.

Using her cell phone, she called her husband and asked him where he was. The husband, in a calm voice said, "Honey, remember the jewelry store we went into 5 years ago - where you fell in love with that diamond necklace that we could not afford, and I told you that I would get it for you one day?" His wife, crying, said "Yes, I remember that jewelry store."

"Well," he said, "I'm in the bar next to it."

2011-12-13T13:19:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago, someone noob posted this on 2+2:

Just wondering how long do you give it. I was just playing 5/10 live the other day and after 1 &1/2 hours of seeing 62, and my small and big blind raised when I have 73. i just left. i realized it was not happening for me. do any of you have a time limit?

My response was this...

1.5 hours in a live game? What is that, like 50 hands? So basically, you played 50 hands and decided it wasn't your day?!? [As an online multitabler, you can play 50 hands in under 4 minutes. So the post was basically saying... "I didn't get a hand for 4 minutes..."] And in your other thread you mentioned you sometimes drive 2 hours to get to the casino?

As my good friend Vito Corleone used to say, "you can start by acting like a man!"

Not being a troll/hater, just if you want to seriously play live for a living, you need to suck it up. It's like if you were a baseball pitcher... sometimes you don't have your "A" stuff. But if this is your job, you need to suck it up and try to get through it. (Unless you're terrible and will lose money with anything but your "A" game - in which case you need to find another job).

FWIW, If you play online, you can just take a break and try again in a few hours.

Which I think brings up an interesting point... should you play at all when you are not "feeling it"? I think I've heard several "poker coaches" say NOT to play. But my view is a little different. I think if you are playing poker FOR A LIVING, you need to get in a certain number of hours a week. Otherwise, you end up like those "pros" who only play like 30-40 hours a month - probably when the tables are really good and (coincidentally?) they feel on top of their games. Yeah - their win rates are spectacular, but they don't make much money. Last time I checked, most restaurants take AMEX, Visa, Mastercard and Cash. They don't accept Win Rate.

Have you ever talked to one of those "old timers" who talk about the golden years of online poker (between 5-10 years ago)? They always say something like "if I wasn't so lazy and put in some more hands..." Well, the games aren't getting any easier, and the legislative environment is more uncertain. Can you be sure *you* won't be saying the same thing yourself 5+ years from now? You can say the games are getting tougher, but they are still pretty good.

I guess my PTR is going to take a beating, throwing in all those long sessions where maybe I do a little better than break even. But you LEARN how to get by when you're not at the top of your game, which is an acquired skill. Some people just start falling apart when it "not their day". The last time I checked, the WSOP occurs at a certain time, so does that high stakes poker game at the Playboy mansion you're supposed to show up to. If you are not ready to play, it's going to play without you. Knowing how to make the most of your days where you don't have your "A" game is a good skill and mindset to have.

Some of my best sessions have occurred when I wasn't "feeling it." And on top of it, I still make like $40 an hour in rakeback, so it's not like I'm being unproductive. Over 1,000 "B" hours a year, that's a lot of Chanel purses for Mrs. Fly, and more future bail money for G and D. At the end of the day, that's just time I would have otherwise just been sitting on my ass surfing the net for more horse porn anyway. That's what the DVR is for.

2011-12-08T11:53:00.002-05:00

Have you ever wondered why certain states get certain stereotypes? I thought I would confirm / deny the Texas sterotypes...

* everyone wears 10 gallon hats. DENY. I have yet to see one, other than in the historic district. And the guys here don't look like Yosemite Sam... well, most of them.

* everyone owns a pick-up truck. CONFIRM. I wouldn't have thought I would have noticed a difference between one major city suburb and another, but for some reason, most of our neighbors own a pick-up truck... and we live in one of the nicer parts of town. The only people who owned pick-up trucks in CT were the landscapers. But you need one if you want to schlep your boat, camper, dirt bikes, etc.

* everyone owns a horse. SOMEWHAT DENY. There are probably a half dozen houses outside of our development that have horses on their property. Rumor has it that you get some kind of tax break. Or maybe these folks were super-saavy about the recent FDA decision to remove it's ban of funding horse meat. Horse is the new cow, ldo.

* everyone loves George Bush. CONFIRM. I drive by the President George Bush Turnpike like once a week. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's "HW" (the dad) and not "W" (the son). But they are both pretty popular. I also walk by the Rick Perry alley once a month, when I can remember to.

* everyone carries. CAN'T COMMENT... thankfully. But I can see where this stereotype gets started (later post)

* everyone is a bible beater. OMFG! (later post)

2011-12-03T16:08:00.003-05:00

So you may be wondering how my staking has been going. I have two stakes - a part time NL50 player (staking 100%, let's call him "Ace") and a full time NL100 player (staking 50%, let's call him "Big slick"). The "good" news is that ev-wise, they are a combined +6.13 over 54K hands in November. Sadly, that is dollars and not win rate. Thank god for rakeback! The BAD news is that they are a combined -$1,504.16 in actual dollars. Playing NL50 and NL100?!? LOL? Is anyone running good out there ?!?

As I was going over their big hands on the replayer, I actually found some of the bad beats pretty funny. I think I would have been agonized and annoyed if it happened to me while I was playing, but something about it not happening to you (even tho it's still your money) kind of makes it more entertaining. LOL! Runner-runner flush. Masochistic, I know (as does Mrs. Fly, eh hem).

But I figure this is only month 1, and their PTR graphs were mostly flat when I met them. I feel good about the value I'm adding to their games. I'll go over their DB and send them a few things a week to think about and go over their big hands to see where they could improve. Assuming they are taking my suggestions seriously (and my emails aren't going straight into their recycle bins), I think we'll start seeing better results in the coming months. Quads was looking for a stake, but where's the fun and challenge in staking a 4ptbb winner? Stay tuned to the next monthly report.

So here's a tip I recently shared with Ace. Ace is a laggish player who hadn't played in 6 months. The thing that's different now than a year ago is that players are now defending much more aggressively vs cbets - whether it's floating (sometimes multiple streets) or bluff raising. So you can't open wide, cbet and expect to take the pot down. Ace's EP flop cbet success rate was 35%! Assuming your flop cbet sizing is 2/3 pot, you need that to work like 40% of the time (very simplified - the actual calculation is a lot more complex). So "raise-cbet flop-take the pot down" is not a good formula for today's games. You need to start adding more creativity to your game.

Anyway, I might be looking for 1 more stake - I can't be saturating the tables with my stakes, lest I incur the wrath of Vini (possible later post, if I ever get caught up with my post backlog). So if you are a higher volume break-even-ish grinder, preferably someone who with a (soon-to-be?) family situation, send me an email. I did say I was a masochist, didn't I?

2011-11-30T17:07:00.000-05:00

So much to blog about so little free time... So here are a bunch of quick notes...

* J.O. (the popcorn lottery winner) seems to have liked my comments (a 2+ page write-up of the things he is leaking money on) and hopefully I'll hear back from him some time next year on progress. He doesn't play a lot of hands, so it may be a while before we get any kind of decent sample.

* I just narrowly averted my first losing month in three years. A special thanks to the Rakeback Gods for making this possible. Of course if their cousins, the EV Gods didn't wang me for $6K in -ev, this would not have been necessary. Hmm.. maybe I need to update my popular post on the Poker Gods.

* A few readers seem to be interested in my trading background so I created a new Label called "trading" on the right hand column. Now, you can just click on that link to read all my old posts on trading, rather than have to wade thru hundreds of posts containing my ramblings. There's also a "best of" label, in case you want to read all the posts that the readers seem to have enjoyed. People don't seem to be giving me any feedback since Black Friday, so I haven't updated it since then. But I can if there's interest.

WHAT'S FOR DINNER?

Since someone asked about our Thanksgiving...

Thanksgiving at the Fly's is not just one meal. It's a long series of meals. We went over to a friend's house for Thanksgiving, but Mrs. Fly got the itch to cook up a storm. On Tuesday, she started us off with a palate cleanser of baked ham. We were about to gorge ourselves on poultry the ensuing days so she thought this would be a nice change of pace. We hadn't had a baked ham in about a year. I don't know why we don't have it more - it tastes so much better than the regular deli ham. Unfortunately, we got the "regular" smoked ham instead of the "low sodium." The regular is so absurdly salty it takes away from the ham flavor imo. Americans sure love their salt.

Mrs. Fly enjoys cooking during the holidays and she wanted to make something nice for the family, so Wednesday night we she made us a feast. That's a roasted goose. This was the first time she tried making it and it turned out pretty well. The skin was crispy and the meat extremely flavorful. If you like duck, you should try this - it's a nice change of pace. The orange thing in the casserole dish is Mrs. Fly's sweet potato casserole. She recently won her second "Breakfast Queen" nod in a row for it. It's almost like a dessert - it's so savory.

Then on Thanksgiving we went over to a friend's house. They almost feel like family. We recently helped their son with his college essays, so hopefully he'll get into the college of his choice. Imagine that! An Asian kid wanting to go to Rice. The stars were a regular turkey (left), a fried turkey (right) and a baked ham (back right).

The other side of table was where all the bench warmers hung out - all the various forms of starch and veggies. I thought this bread cornucopia thing was very clever. I had never seen one before - probably because I don't do the shopping, and on the rare times I do go, I'm usually hanging out in the meat and seafood departments. Imagine that!

Dessert was okay. The host baked a pecan pie that was pretty good - and we had a bunch of stuff I didn't really try for fear of gaining all my weight back.

I was in too much of a food coma to remember what I ate on Friday. I think we went out. Damn tryptophan!

Yeah! Yeah! That's the ticket! It was the tryptophan and not my senility!

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving.

2011-11-24T00:17:00.002-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

This Thanksgiving, I thought I would share my list of Top 5 Unobivous and Stupid Things I'm thankful for. It goes without saying that I'm thankful for family, friends, health, etc. But here are some things you would would never have guessed.

5. Thankful... to the Scheduling Gods for making the 4 days of Thanksgiving so awesome. A day of gluttony and football. Followed by a day of shopping. Followed by a day of college football. Followed by a day of pro football (handegg for you Europeans).

2. Thankful... that the Merge BBJ is finally back above $250K. It's kind of depressing thinking I'm flushing 50 cents down the drain on very flop I see. I play a lot of hands - over 100K hands a month... altho the lags out there would laugh and say "yeah, but you don't see any flops, nit!" Now that it's $250K, the BBJ finally becomes +EV. Gotta get in some heavy grinding now!

3. Thankful... for that Twisted Kilt billboard on highway 35. That stretch of highway is kind of industrial looking (lots of auto dealerships and gas stations)... so the Tilted Kilt billboard is an oasis in the eyesore desert. It's apparently like Hooters. But tartan miniskirts >>> t-shirt and shorts. Looove plaid skirts. Hmm... I'm starting to sound like a pedophile. Looove plain skirts ON WOMEN. Oops! Did I just drop my fork? Again?

2. Thankful... to suddenly be in the sports mecca of the world. I move to Dallas, and the Mavericks win the Title, The Rangers go to the World Series, the Cowboys are tied for the NFC East lead, and the Stars are ahead in the Pacific. Luckboxing transferrable? Considering I watch a lot of sports while I play, this has been a pleasant surprise. All I need now is for Aaron Rogers to break his throwing hand to have a decent shot of keeping this run-good going.

1. Thankful... to be alive. Seriously. Mrs. Fly seemed to think my last post about the MILFs was just a joke. Let's keep it our secret, while her computer is broken. Shhh.

2011-11-18T20:51:00.000-05:00

So what was my other community service "fail"?

When we moved to Dallas last spring, we went to G's elementary school and told them we were both at home all day and would like to be involved in the PTA in some fashion. Well, it turns out they had a position open. A position so VILE that none of the other parents wanted to have anything to do with it - it was heading the book fair. It's a lot of organizing, decorating and getting people to volunteer for shifts. Anyway, Mrs. Fly volunteered to chair the book fair this year.

Mrs. Fly - Book Fair Chair. Not sure if you guys know how marriages work... but this made me the unofficial... Book Fair Bitch. Any task too laborious for the Book Fair Chair goes to... that's right! The Book Fair Bitch. All right. I'm exaggerating (a little) - we knew it would be a lot of work but I told Mrs. Fly the school needed the help and I would help her any way I could. I never really noticed this before, but everyone in the school is female - the office staff, the teachers and all the PTA board members. I think I'm the only dad that actually does anything with the school. So this means all the grunt work involved in the book fair - moving furniture, moving books and...

...making the rocket decoration for the space theme - goes to me. Not sure why the aliens look like they just spent a week in Area 51. It probably took me a good 5 hours (over a few days) to cut this out of a cardboard wardrobe box and paint it. You can't really see, but that's glitter paint. Mrs. Fly could have just bought one, but the school only gave her a $300 budget, so I was told to make one. She also wanted a "home-made look." It turned out okay and some of the volunteers decorated it. The kids seemed to really like it. The book fair went pretty well and Mrs. Fly was commended for doing a good job. She was only $500 short of the high set last spring (they had an evening event last spring to help that book fair out).

But then it got me to thinking... maybe I should have (again) just sat on my ass, watched some (more) football, and instead of helping Mrs. Fly with the book fair, just donated the money from 1 session. Not only would that have been a more win-win use of my time, but WE WOULD HAVE MADE A NEW HIGH FOR THE BOOK FAIR!!! Sigh.

On the bright side, many of the PTA moms think I'm quite awesome, and I may have changed some preconceived notions around here about Asian men. We have souls after all! A few of them even told Mrs. Fly I was a "keeper." That works for me... As you all know, I'm all about creating options for yourself. So if that cute nerdy looking teacher (I have a thing for hot nerdy looking women), the former state beauty pageant winner (Miss America top 10), or the Charlize Theron look-alike want to have coffee or something, I've made myself known to all.

PS. If I'm found dead tomorrow, tell the police it was Mrs. Fly. I fear I may not survive this time.

2011-11-16T11:47:00.002-05:00

Congrats to J.O. for winning the Duke popcorn lottery. Full report coming in less than a week!

Today, I want to talk about community service. Recently I've have two episodes that is starting to make me question the best approach of "pitching in" to do your part.

The first is obviously the popcorn sales. I'm probably going to spend between 6-8 hours on trying to sell popcorn to you guys - all the blog posts, taking and sending the orders, and doing the database analysis. And I only sold 9 boxes to poker players!!! NINE! 500 hits a day on my friggin blog, and I only sold NINE. The last straw was when G and I schlep all the boxes to the post office and I find out that I can't ship the popcorn in a Priority Mail pouch for $5.10 or whatever. The letters are a fixed price. Apparently the pouches are not. So I had to shell out $10.95 a box to send out the popcorn. At the end of the day, it was only $6 a box that I was eating, but it was annoying. Thank God I only sold NINE.

But seriously, my 6-8 hours would have been better spent had I not even bothered to try and help the Cub Scouts sell popcorn, sat on my ass (like I usually do), watch some football, just play 1 "standard" session of poker and donate that money to them. That would have been almost $1,000. Pretty sure if I asked the CubMaster what I should have done, he would have said, "F*ck the popcorn - go play poker, you clueless heathen bastard and give us da moniez!!!" [Not worth another post, but I inadvertently took my FT folding chairs to a Cub Scouts event and I felt like such a degen sitting there near the front, advertizing a poker gambling site that just perpetrated massive fraud to a bunch of 8-9 year olds in the bible belt. Nice DoubleFly. Nice. O wait! Who is that knocking at my door?]

Community Service part II coming up next week.

2011-11-11T10:52:00.001-05:00

A couple of quick notes...

* Happy Veteran's Day. As I was scanning through for a funny picture, I came across this one, and was reminded how not that long ago, the world was a pretty f*cked up place. As horrible as war is, sometimes you have to do what you have to do. Veteran's Day is officially always on the 11th but it's usually celebrated on a Monday. It's pretty cool how today's date, 11/11/11 is so symmetric. It happens only once every hundred years, so make the most of it.

* I shipped the popcorn yesterday. Thanks again to everyone who bought some. I can't wait to see who the lucky winner of the database coaching is going to be. I was looking through some people's databases to see who good candidates for staking were, and I think I can provide some useful insight, regardless of the skill level.

* I also shipped my first stake his money yesterday. And I'm talking to a few other people about doing some kind of pseudo-staking (50-50), and no staking with just profit sharing. I mentioned the other day that 20% of winning regs one year become losing regs. Why not work with a few of them to create a win-win situation? I guess Vini would disagree (later post), but it' just on a small scale. It should make for some interesting posts down the line... because the most likely scenarios are: 1) he does better and I can talk about some of the more interesting things we did, 2) he runs off with my money. Either way, the posts are sure to be entertaining.

* I am watching The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson right now (have been since earlier this year), and I have to say, he is sooo funny - easily the funniest guy on late night. This episode from last night (the one with Larry King) was particularly funny. Leno is a little too PG, Letterman is just tired, and Fallon is too dorky. I'm not sure I care too much about the ghey skeleton sidekick, the dudes who come out dressed like a horse or asking the guest if they want to touch his glittery ball, but his no-nonsense humor can be hilarious. Check it out.

2011-11-08T09:00:00.015-05:00

Something interesting happened to me the other day... A long time blog reader emailed me and asked me if I wanted to stake him. For the non-poker players out there, a "stake" is where one person puts up the cash and another person plays. It's not that different from when I was a trader. The bank theoretically gave me a "bankroll" ("capital"), and I used that money to make more money, and they paid me a share of what I made (usually 10-12%). Maybe I'll talk about how this worked in a later post, in case people are curious how this works in finance.

In a nutshell, he has a full time job, lost a small chunk on FT, promised someone not to deposit until the landscape became clearer, hasn't played since then, and is now getting the itch to play. I hadn't really thought about staking before, but after some thought, I figured why not?

Having basically raised myself in NYC, I'm not some clueless schlub. New Yorkers are cynics by nature. But at the end of the day, I think it could be "interesting" and we're not talking about a lot of money (maybe just a few grand). And what can I say, I like my loyal readers.

So what's in it for me?
* Allegedly staking "can" be profitable if you find the right people - I seem to be getting some mixed reviews on this.
* I get another pseudo-member in the Poker Coop. The benefits are different, but the more the merrier.
* I want to see if I can help a marginal winning player be a better player. I helped "Mark" last year, but I'll have a little more at stake with this one. When I was a little kid, I always wanted to be a teacher. That was before I later found out how much they made. LOL.
* Breaks up the monotony of watching the interest rate curve do nothing all day.
* Maybe I make a poker buddy.

What's in it for him?
* Zero risk of bankroll loss from DOJ or other site-related issues, since it's all my money.
* Zero risk of poker losses. It's like buying a (smaller quantity) call option on a stock instead of buying the stock itself. Upside with no downside.
* Free leak-finding, some hand analysis and other pseudo-coaching. He had a million hands on PTR and was a little better than flat over the last several hundred thousand hands at nl200 on FT. I think the Merge nl100 games might be comparable to those games. When your win rate is close to zero, 50-70% of something is better than 100% of nothing.
* Free cashouts. Considering my last Lock cashouts are taking 7 weeks (poker side) and 13 weeks (casino side) AND COUNTING!!!, this is no small benefit. Just one poker player trading with another poker player, in case anyone from the DOJ is reading. ;-)

I think you could easily argue that the above is worth at least 30%. I mean people are regularly paying 15% on 2+2 for every cashout, small to mid stakes coaching isn't cheap (even tho I'm not offering "full" coaching, but that's still worth something - we cover a little bit every month), and he has ZERO financial downside in a volatile and challenging market. Anyway, we're going to start at 50-50 (winnings+VIP benefits+BBJ; he gets deposit bonus and other minor promos) and see where that goes.

It seemed like it could be win-win. But in a few months I may be singing a different tune. But hey! Sometimes you have to try something to know.

Like that's what I told Mrs. Fly about those hand cuffs and the duct tape, before she punched me in the head. Eh hem.

I'm starting to talk to another blog reader, so maybe this will make for some interesting posts.

2011-11-03T01:00:00.001-04:00

The big news in the poker world is that the DOJ apparently reached an agreement with the Taipe Group to allow US players to get paid. Basically, Tapie will pay out the rest of world players, and the DOJ will pay out the US players. Tapie will throw the DOJ some money to make this happen. My initial reaction was, "awesome... now I can sell my FT money for 60 cents." Because I didn't see how Tapie would fork over enough money to make US player whole. But then I started to think about it from the DOJ's persepctive...

So if I'm the DOJ, I'm sitting on the following (that I assume was being legally contested by the poker sites)...
* all the processor money I've been sitting on from years of seizures
* all of the FT player deposits that were never processed (allegedly mid-8 figures)
* all of FT's money I just seized on Black Friday (allegedly 9 figures)

And I just agreed to...
* an ADDITIONAL "payment" from Tapie to drop all the legal charges and let them buy FT (I'm guessing 8 figures)
* no responsibility to the players from the rest of the world
* and what I can only assume is an agreement from FT to drop all contests to the seized money listed above.
* and I may get a hearty thanks from my buddies at the IRS for ensuring all current taxes get paid, and possibly some past taxes.

And I can still...
* try and criminally prosecute FT owners (and seize more assets).

By reaching this deal, all the money that I (as the DOJ) was holding that was subject to legal proceedings suddenly become mine! (more or less) Just from eyeballing the above sums, the total seems to be WAAAY greater than the alleged $150mil owed to US players. So that is why I think the US players will be paid in full - eventually. We are talking about the US government after all - nothing gets done quickly. Ironically, the rest of the world players may get paid less (depending on the "repayment structure") but they will get paid quicker.

I always thought those DOJ guys were kind of retarded - you know, the guys who couldn't get jobs at a "real" law firm. Hmm...

But God bless those 'tards for getting us our money back.

2011-11-02T10:02:00.000-04:00

The other day, I had one of those sessions where you can't believe you could ever run so poorly at poker. That's over 10 buy-ins of -ev, and close to a dime. In one SESSION!!! I think it may be my worst session EVER - both ev-wise and dollar-wise. "Ever" = a little over 3 years. Call me a drama queen. It just started off poorly and just kept going and going. And then I remembered I never finished the second part of my "what to do when you run bad" post. In my case, it was just a day of horrific run-bad, but eventually most poker players will hit that point where they won't be able to beat the games any more *with their current game*.

3) Reassess. So it's super-important that from time to time, you do a thorough review of your game. A lot of the time, I'll hear "they were all standard coolers" - but I find that a lot of the time, they are not. For example, if you are a nit and you seem to be getting in KK vs AA (6 combos) waaay more than you getting KK into AK (8 combos), that's not a cooler. You created that situation thru your play. If you are an aggro lag and you are always 3-barreling into the top of everyone's range, that may not be a "cooler" either. As the games get tougher, balance becomes a lot more important.

Last year I wrote a post where I said I thought 20% of winning regs one year will become losing regs the next. I still think that is true. So when you find yourself being in that 20% (and before you reach that point), you need to regularly reassess your game to make sure you stay in the 80%. No matter how good you *think* you are, you can always get better.

For me, I always start my reviews with a thorough database analysis. I'll even do a review even when I'm running okay. Review where you are making money and losing money - that's basically what it all comes down to. If you can't be objective, maybe you should buy some friggin' popcorn to get someone else to do it for you!!! Alas, the shop is now closed, but there are plenty of ways you can tweak your game. "Your game" should be constantly evolving and improving.

Despite my sh*tty session, I still had a pretty solid five-figure month, thanks to rakeback, the Law of Large Numbers, a +ev game and the Poker Gods deciding to give me back my ev losses.

2011-10-27T19:12:00.008-04:00

TIP: I made an addition to my poker set-up recently that I think will be super-helpful to most players. I think my last such recommendation was for the f.lux, and I'm kicking myself for not installing it on my new machine until this past week. But I think this new suggestion is just as good, if not better and it's one that is SEVERELY neglected by post people who talk about their poker set-ups...

That's right - they are plants. Most people don't really think of plants as part of a "poker set-up," but I think they are a *must*. I have 3 computers, 4 monitors and 2 printers in my office. It wouldn't surprise me at all if a decade or two from now, they have definitive proof that all that EM radiation, wi-fi and who knows what other crap is coming out of the machines is bad for your health. Considering I have to bombard myself every day - I feel like I clean nuclear reactors for a living - it's nice to have a little respite. Here are some reasons for getting some plants in your office:

* They look nice. Some plants look like crap, but I like the aestheitcs of the two I picked out from Lowe's. The one on the left is a sago palm. How can you go wrong with anything tropical? Most places where you want to vacation has palm trees (unless you are one of those freaks who like going on cruises to Antarctica). I like the one on the right (an anthurium) because it's pretty - and some of the proceeds go towards breast cancer. I'm a big supporter of breasts... um... I mean breast cancer.

* They generate oxygen. If 'tards are paying $50-100 an hour at oxygen bars, you can get yours for pennies! Who knows? Maybe on the very very very margin, it may help my decision-making.

* They add humidity to the room - all of the electrical equipment adds a sh*t ton of heat to the room. My office is probably the hottest room in the house, which means the air just gets really dry. I'm just amazed at how quickly the soil dries out. Plants help with that - not sure how - that's just what the tag that came with the plant says.

* They are low maintenance - I just have to water them every other day. And I just have to throw in a stick of fertilizer very few months.

* They are absurdly cheap (most of them anyway) - I bought both of the above for less than $30. regardless of your financial situation, there really aren't many more +ev purchases than this one.

So do yourself a favor and get some plants!

[ ] sylish paper plates.
[x] need to get new pots to replace the ones they came in (altho the pink one is growing on me)

2011-10-23T19:14:00.006-04:00

[Here's that chicken enchilada recipe I promised you. I'll put in a simpler recipe the next time. Costco has the best rotisserie chicken - use that if you can.]

Mrs. Fly's Smothered Chicken Enchiladas

This is a short cut version. The original involves a roux as well as making a chicken stock that simmers for hours... you need poker time not stove time. This version gets awfully close to my original. Trust me on this.

Pick and shred one rotisserie chx. I use Costco's. Use dark and white meat. Set aside.

Enchilada Sauce:

1 can cream of tomato soup

1 can cream of chx soup

1 can chx broth

1/3 cup heavy cream

Season to taste with cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, smoked paprika, and coarse blk pepper. Or use 1/2 packet of taco seasonings. Do not add salt.

Place all ingredients in a medium sauce pan and whisk thoroughly until sauce is nice, creamy and heated through. Turn off heat, set aside. You'll use approximately 1/3 of sauce for filling, 1/3 to top enchiladas and rest to serve on side.

Enchilada Filling:

1 diced large white onion

1 diced green bell pepper

3 cloves minced garlic

2 seeded jalapeno peppers (optional)

3/4 cup mexican blend cheese

1/3 of enchilada sauce (or more as needed to your preference)

chx meat

12-14 fajita size flour tortillas

In a large deep pot, saute veggies until soft. Add enchilada sauce and cheese and mix well. Add chx meat and mix thoroughly until all ingredients are incorporated. Turn off heat.

Assembling Enchiladas:

Lightly grease casserole pan. On a cutting board, place filling onto tortilla and roll. Place seam down onto casserole pan. After last tortilla is rolled, pour sauce over enchiladas. How much you want to smother the enchiladas is up to you. Lightly and evenly sprinkle with cheese.

Cover with aluminum foil. Bake 30 minutes at 350. Uncover and bake for another 7-10 minutes or until cheese is nice and bubbly. Let stand for 10 minutes. Garnish with cilantro or scallion. Serve with sour cream, pico de gallo and/or guacamole. Serve enchilada sauce in a gravy boat for diners who like their enchiladas extra saucy.

Make rice and beans, toss a salad and you have a fabulous Mexican brunch or even company fare dinner. Great for potlucks and tailgates b/c it's yummy at room temperature. Also freezes extremely well. Just defrost overnight and pop into oven. Enjoy!!

2011-10-20T00:14:00.004-04:00

Well, I finally fulfilled my year-long dream of going to the Texas State Fair the other day. Life is short. So one of the things I like to do is to make a Pail List. Not quite as grand as a Bucket List, but some stuff I would like to do in the next 12 months. Number 1 on that List was to go to the Texas State Fair.

The verdict?

Boy! I hadn't been that disappointed since that Father's Day when I thought I was getting a special "gift," and Mrs. Fly fell asleep.

To be honest, it was a perfectly fine State Fair. There were a lot more boardwalk games than I thought, and there were about as many rides as I thought. They had better entertainment than I thought - they actually had performers that you would have heard of, like Randy Travis and the Bangles. I wonder if they are going to sing a remake of their 80's hit - "Walk Like A Fat-Tex-an." And they had a lot of animal-related activities for the kids. But not really the kind of place to sneak in some equine luvin' so I just skipped the animal attractions, lest I start jonesing

What was the (other bigger) problem? The food.

I have no one to blame but myself. For some reason, I thought there were going to be vendors from all over the area, selling their awesome championship brisket, chili, tacos, and all the other foods that Texas is known for. They had like 100 food stalls. Unfortunately, about 80% of the food was either fried food or food that a quadriplegic could grill better in their backyard. I guess I always thought the State Fair was where the locals duked it out for blue ribbons and bragging rights. Nope. This actually seemed a little too commercial - it was pretty obvious a number of the larger food companies rented out 5-10 booths each all around the Cotton Bowl. This wouldn't be that bad if the food was awesome. But it wasn't.

Here is a sampling:

Chicken Fried Bacon (past award winner). How can anyone not like bacon? One thing I noticed about Texans is they love anything chicken fried (fried in fried chicken coating). Mrs Fly added some Tabasco to the ranch dressing - I'm married to a god damn spice mutant. This was somewhat interesting. It's not as greasy/fatty tasting as you would think. Unfortunately, on one of the pieces, the oil didn't taste very fresh. The bacteria in my intestines responsible for diarrhea thanks you.

Kraut Balls (this year's award winner). It's basically saurkraut... can you guess? That's right! Fried in batter. It was okay... until I realized there was no dead animal in saurkraut. I need some cow NOW!

By far the longest line was for some company whose name I can't remember who sold "original corn dogs." One of the oldest tricks for finding good food in a foreign land (and Texas) is to just follow the crowds. Let the locals tell you what's good. It was pretty good. You really can't go wrong with dead animal meat with supplemented with dead animal fat surrounded by dead animal casing, and wrapped in enough batter to soak up as much dead animal grease as possible. Good, but not exceptional.

Fried Frito Pies (past award winner). How to wash down all that fat and grease? That's right! More fat and grease! I had never heard of this before, so I had to try it. Basically it's a ball of chili and cheese wrapped in crushed Frito chips and deep fried in batter. It was actually quite good (a little too salty) and we were enjoying it... until Mrs. Fly found an eyelash (we hope) in the basket. She kind of freaks out about stuff like that. But hey! That's more for me! And chili adds such an awesome olfactory experience to diarrhea.

We saw some fried butter (last year's award winner), but by that point I wasn't sure if my anus could take any more, so we went home.

BTW, the portions were larger, but I'm a big believer in eating street food while walking, but Mrs. Fly has to sit. So by the time I got the food to the table... you can guess the rest. It doesn't seem like it takes much to win recognition (an award) at the State Fair. Now on the Bucket List...

Open a food stall with Mrs. Fly at a future Texas State Fair.

[x] Old Man has too much free time
[ ] Talked to Mrs Fly about this
[x] Mrs Fly needs to do most of the work
[x] Killed any chance of getting a special "gift" any time soon

2011-10-17T20:03:00.001-04:00

Lately, I've added something to my daily routine that I find pretty useful so I thought I'd share it with you.

I LOOOVE sleep. But because I have sleep apnea, I sometimes wake up kind of groggy (must be all that insane snoring and skull rattling). When my sister came over to visit two months ago, she got me hooked on Scrabble (for the itouch / ipod). I hadn't played Scrabble in years (possibly longer), but I vaguely remember being pretty good, so I figured what the heck? Anyway, I find that a dozen or so scrabble words in the morning wakes me up and gets me a little more alert. I suppose some people pick up the morning newspaper or have that cup of coffee to get their brain going. For me, it's been Scrabble. I think it's something about having to think (to a degree), and the natural competitiveness in me just gets the juices going. I also find it relaxing, so I'll play a little before a session and after a session.

I don't think I'm "great" at it - since I probably only get the "optimal" word like 20% of the time. Even my kid sister beat me 5 games out of 8. But my record so far is 188-24 and my rating is 1824. Pretty good. But I think a lot of people who play are like 10 year olds because I'll have games where the score is like 450-150. Or maybe they are just retarded adults. One time, I thought I was playing with a pedophile because he was asking me questions like "are you a kid?" "are you a teenager?" "where do you live?" But later on it seemed like he was just a kid who wanted to play other kids. Not sure why Scrabble doesn't have have like some sort of "easy," "medium," "hard" type of thing. But you know what? It really doesn't matter.

I always thought of Scrabble as a game where you play against OTHER PLAYERS, but in a way, it's a game you play against YOURSELF. I guess it's like golf. On one level, you want to beat the other guys you are playing with, but a lot of times, you are just trying to play the best that *YOU* can. So you can even have fun at it when playing in a foursome with Tiger, Phil and even Charles Barkley.

So if any of you guys want to take down the old man in an old fashioned game of Scrabble, look me up - I'm "doublefly22." Send me a note so I know you're a blog reader.

Maybe I'll post some Scrabble tips later in case you have to visit your grandparents at the nursing home and they want to play.

2011-10-12T19:23:00.002-04:00

OMFG!!! Finally! Subject Poker claims that Merge is allegedly going to take new customers starting at midnight.

If you were thinking about signing up at another Merge skin, consider signing up thru me by clicking one of the links to the right. I really want to get this informal network of players going, and I now have a couple of good international contacts in the group to help the cashout process, in case there are any check disruptions. But this is one of those systems that work much better when there are more people.

And you get the free insurance. We had a minor scare last month - and that won't be the last one.

Remember how crappy you felt when people were scrambling to get their money off and you were sitting there with your 5-figure roll with no where to go? If you are going to play poker seriously, you can't play under those conditions. Give yourself another outlet - outs are always useful. The DOJ isn't going to just sit around if Merge gets much bigger.

If you are an international player... You can collect low-risk vig by participating in the network. The insurance will still be useful (see FT and AP/UB) and I'll count rake on all non-US sites towards your insurance.

AND!!! YOU GET THE SAME BONUS YOU WOULD HAVE GOTTEN HAD YOU SIGNED UP THRU THE POKER SITE. If you are a high volume reg, send me an email and we can talk about other incentives. Just more win. Join now.

2011-10-10T09:00:00.001-04:00

NOW ANSWERING NOOB QUESTIONS! I thought I would start answering those noob questions that no one seems to answer. So if you have a question you would like to get a STRAIGHT answer for, post it at the bottom of the thread. Or send an email to doubleflypoker@gmail.com

#1 NOOB QUESTION: What is the softest site?

ANSWER: Any site other than PokerStars. Seriously.

I did the following: I looked at PokerTableRatings for the top 50 winners at the NLHE 1/2 tables this year. It seems to me that 50 is an adequate sample (altho 100+ would be better) to determine how competitive the games are. Poker is a zero sum game, so for the winners to win *more*, they have to have a large pool of people to win *more* FROM. I chose 1/2 because not all sites have an adequate sample of 2/4+ games. I ranked sites in the table below in terms of WEIGHTED BB/100:

Of course, with any statistics, there are going to be some caveats. THIS IS IN NO WAY INTENDED TO BE A COMPREHENSIVE STATICAL ANALYSIS. But the data was out there, and I wanted to see what conclusions could be "inferred" (even remotely). Sites where there aren't a large number of hands played (or sampled by PTR) will probably get skewed. PTR only started tracking certain sites a few months ago. And some sites allow frequent name changes. So those sites are generally going to have an upward bias on win rates. There may also be a game availability issue on the smaller sites - that games only get going during off-peak hours when there are fish wanting to play. These are *some* of the reasons Cake and Bodog are such outliers.

I wouldn't start flocking to Cake and Bodog just yet. You can only 4-table on Bodog. If all regs 4-tabled on any other site, the "top winners'" win rates would be much higher. Cake has limited HUD availability and they (along with Party) allow regular name changes (which makes it tougher to develop reads). Both of these factors will stunt your online poker development.

For US players feeling like they are missing out because they only have access to a few sites, stop using that as an excuse for your lack of success. If you can't make it here, you won't make it anywhere.

The data above pretty much is in-line with what my impressions of site "softness" was from my own experience and from what I had been reading on 2+2.

A few other takeaways:

* It seems interesting that with all the talk of bots on ipoker, the win rates seem in-line with the other sites. Probably anything within 0.5ptbb is probably just noise (I pulled that number out of my ass).

* The real outlier in the tables is Stars. Those games are obviously the toughest out there. I was a little surprised that the win rates for the top 50 "winners" were so low. The thing I find interesting though is that the average "winner" on those sites make 3x more MONEY than the other grinding sites. Of course, the play 5x as many hands.

The moral of the story: playing with software bots >>> playing with human bots.

2011-10-06T01:00:00.004-04:00

WARNING: VARIANCE AHEAD...

I Googled "volatility funny" and this photo came up. I have no idea what this has to do with my search, but if Google says it's okay, I approve.

On the poker front, I had my best month of poker on Merge. Yeah - it's only been 5 months, but I think it's saying something when the number was larger than most months I had on FT - especially since the average stake is much smaller. I'm also up over 5 figures after less than 5 days this month.

Which got me to thinking... why aren't people buying more popcorn for my database review?!? Only 5 boxes sold so far. I didn't realize I was writing to a bunch of god-damn bustos. $22 for a chance at something that could be worth THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS doesn't sound good to you?!? And it helps a bunch of cub scouts. AND YOU GET POPCORN!!! How is every reg worse than me (and a lot of regs better than me) not buying popcorn?!? What else are you going to be doing on a Saturday night, except playing online poker and watching a movie by yourself? Maybe you would have more friends if you bought some god-damn popcorn!

Having received all your emails over the years, and I've spoken to many of you, I'd just like to say... GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud! I mean, I can't believe how lethargic you are! You've turned an enjoyable little hobby, that I did as a lark for a few years, into a COLOSSAL WASTE OF TIME!

I mean, how old are you people? What have you done with yourselves?

Most of you must be almost 30... have you ever kissed a girl?

I didn't think so! There's a whole world out there! When I was your age, I didn't surf the net! I LIVED! So... move out of your parent's basements! And get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP! I mean, it's just some popcorn to help some kids, IT'S JUST POPCORN THAT COULD CHANGE YOUR LIFE!

HEY, YOU GUYS ARE... THE LAMEST BUNCH... I'VE NEVER SEEN...

PS - This was all in jest and my take on a SNL skit where Shatner goes to a Star Trek convention and goes off on the audience for not having a life. It's one of the more memorable of the "old SNL" skits - maybe because I was laughing and crying at the same time (eh hem). <3 you guys! ;-)

But seriously, buy some popcorn - send an email to doubleflypoker@gmail.com. The deadline is Saturday October 9 (I must have received your payment by then). And I decided how I'm going to choose the winner. As a nod to TheMightyJim

(who recently named me as one of the 3 regs he wanted to spend with on a desert island), I'll use the score of the Duke (he went to Duke) - Michigan State game on Nov 15 at MSG. BTW, that link is to his "well" on 2+2 - he's one of the better grinders out there, so if you have any questions for a solid winning mid-high stakes reg, this is your chance! I think the game's going to be on ESPN. Something along the lines of me assigning everyone numbers corresponding to the last digit of the final score (ie. A wins if Duke's score ends in a "0", B wins if Duke's score ends in a "1", etc). Buy some popcorn before Evil Doublefly comes back. Engage!

Oops. Wrong version. WARP FACTOR NINE!

Live long and proper (with popcorn).

2011-10-05T15:10:00.001-04:00

WARNING: BEAT AHEAD...

Ugh. I weighed in last month at 226.5. I didn't try particularly hard (at all... eh hem). And as promised, at the bottom of the post will be that embarrassing photo of my "hair" that you've all been waiting for since the hairy nipple photo. I was a little surprised at how strangely matted my "hair" looked. But you guys can look forward to that in a few secs.

The month started off poorly when I got invited over to our Vietnamese friend's place for dinner, and ate some carbs. Had some more carbs when we had the Director of D's preschool over for dinner (enchiladas). Had a few bites of the kid's desserts (including Mrs. Fly's trailer trash toffee). Had fruit all month because I was feeling a little dehydrated from sipping too much wine and not enough water. Yeah... basically a mess.

But I still lost weight!

Unfortunately, *THE* thing I was most looking forward to about moving to Texas... the Texas State Fair (the largest of its kind in the country) is upon us - crazy street food, food contests, livestock, and live entertainment (later post). And the holidays are just around the corner. So I think this will be my last weigh-in for the year. I've lost 40 pounds this year, and I'm pretty sure I can keep it off. We've also had a long year and I think it's about time for a little break. So my goal for the rest of the year will just be to maintain my weight loss.

Lameness... thy name is DoubleFly.

To those who are disappointed that this wasn't an anus photo (altho Whale would argue that it *IS* an anus photo), I decided the blog was venturing into gross territory - nipple hair, the hairy armpit, etc. Gotta keep it clean for all the "yutes" out there. Can't get much cleaner than Charlotte's Web (well, other than the fact that they were going to kill the pig and eat it, and Charlotte was obviously a ho since she had babies and we don't know who the father is. It's always the ones you don't suspect who get knocked up).

In case you ware wondering that was a photo from the FT MSFR Secret Santa we did last year - I got a Homer Simpson clock with the same pose. Still have it.

[ ] wondering

2011-10-03T09:00:00.003-04:00

WARNING: BRAG AHEAD

You may have been wondering, "what happened to all the food posts?" Well, we got a little disorganized after the move, then Mrs. Fly's laptop died and then I never got around to networking the new laptop. She is the keeper of all photos, LDO. Well, now that I finally got around to setting up all the computers, I can start posting food posts more regularly.

She's always made awesome dinners, but since we've moved here, she's taken it up a notch. The food's never been better. I think when D no longer goes to pre-school part-time, and starts school full-time, she may pursue her interest in food. We're not sure what yet, but that's a ways away.

Anyway, lately she's been making a lot of her famous chicken enchiladas. This is easily one of the ten best things she makes (and she makes a lot of good dishes). I can't order enchiladas at restaurants any more because it's just so inferior in all ways - not enough meat and filling not savory enough being the two biggest complaints. The last hope for outside enchiladas was when we went to our favorite beef fajita place (Uncle Julio's), but it was no contest (even tho they had a head start with their great freshly made tortillas).

Am I just deluded? I don't think so - I've eaten at most of the best restaurants in NYC and a handful of the top restaurants around the world. And early on in our marriage, her cooking was decent but not great. I'm not one of those people who is going to lie to perpetuate crappy dinners. I didn't get to 270lbs eating crap. But here are other testimonials:

* A good MEXICAN friend of ours in CT and another MEXICAN friend here in Texas thought it was easily the best enchiladas they've ever had.
* One of our silver spoon friends (who's eaten at a bunch of good restaurants) got into a fight with his wife because the wife decided to serve two of the three trays of enchiladas (we had made for them before we left) to their guests.
* A local guy who hates ethnic food thought it was the most amazing thing he ever tasted and had to fight with his brother-in-law for the last piece.

And more recently, she took the enchiladas to a pot luck brunch at a local women's organization and overwhelmingly was voted... "Breakfast Queen."

Recipe to follow in a future post? ;-)

2011-09-30T15:06:00.001-04:00

One of the good guys I know on 2+2, Sparky (he did the dog guest blog post and writes for LifeFish), was saying how frustrated he was getting with poker. Apparently he is now down over 100buy-ins under EV lifetime. So for the non-poker players out there, that means that if he's played mostly NL400, he's made $40,000 less than he should have. That's a pretty huge number - probably around the 40th percentile of the ANNUAL household income in the US. So although I think of poker primarily as a game of skill, there's definitely some luck involved.

Part of playing poker for a living is dealing with those stretches where things just don't seem to go right. So here are my tips to deal with run-bad:

1) Vent. Preferably, this shouldn't involve anything expensive - like punching your 30" monitor. But whatever you need to do - punching bag, talking to friends, starting a thread on 2+2 where you'll get berated by the community, popping in that VHS of some fine equine luvin' ... whatever it takes. It's okay to be angry, frustrated, depressed, horny (eh hem),... whatever. It's like when you have to let one rip. If enough pressure builds up and you try and hold it in too long, your head will explode. It's true - New England Journal of Medicine, Issue 350.

2) Take some time off. Pro poker players have a higher threshhold than most for dealing with agonizing beats. But sometimes, you'll reach a point where the day-after-day of pummeling will wear on the best of us. Isn't it sweet that we're in a profession where you can take as much time off as you need? Nothing wrong with clearing your head and taking some time off to enjoy an activity that won't cause your blood pressure to go thru the roof.

3) Reasess. Now that you've cleared your head, here's the thing you probably didn't want to hear... You need to carefully examine whether *everything* was run-bad. (later post)

2011-09-25T09:00:00.004-04:00

I ended up getting the following from Dell for $649 plus tax (no shipping).

* Inspiron 620, Intel Core i5-2310 processor(6MB Cache, 2.90GHz). Like I said before - a midrange processor. You can look up computer processor speeds on this site: www.cpubenchmark.net I found it very useful when looking at what's out there. My old processor is about half as fast, and probably comparable to a current low-end CPU. CPU prices are almost exponential, so I really don't think it's worth it for *poker* to get a high-end processor. I'm going to get a new machine in 2 years anyway.

* 6GB DDR3 SDRAM,1333MHZ. 4 GB is about as low as I would go for poker. Memory is cheap, so get as much as you want. But again, when I know I'm getting another machine in 2 years, I generally don't get *that* much more than I need.

* 1TB Serial ATA 2 Hard Drive 7200RPM. 500 GB is as low as I would go for poker. I used over 400GB on my last computer (lots of pixels on those horse movies).

* AMD Radeon HD 6450 1GB DDR3. Make sure your video card can support at least one 30" monitor (or whatever monitor configuration you are planning to use) - many only support up to 24".

* Dell 21.5-inch Wide ST2220LB Flat Panel Monitor. I didn't really need the monitor, but it was only $100 and it was full 1080p, so I just got it. Who can't use another TV nowadays? My office looks a bit retarded with 4 large monitors on my desk (30", 24", 24" and 21.5" - two of which can be used as TVs), but it's super-functional.

Dell was having a sale that ended last week, but they have sales pretty regularly. You can get an extra 2-4% back if you go thru a site like ebates. Twenty bucks for a few mouseclicks isn't bad, and if you are a shortstacker that's a full day's worth of shoving for you.

The last 5 or 6 desktops I got have been from Dell - you can probably save a few bucks getting some no-name brand, but TBH, computers are so absurdly cheap now that I just can't be bothered to looking around and reading reviews of various brands. You can also save a few bucks building your own machine, but that's not really something I want to spend time doing. I'll also be "losing" money on it if you factor in the time I would have to spend on it, so it's really something you should do if you enjoy the process. All I can say about Dell is they don't suck (which is different from "they are awesome"), and they have decent customer support (except for that one time they routed me to Mumbai for an hour long phone call).

At the end of the day, it only cost me a buy-in and I'm pretty happy with the equipment, so that's all that matters. Now I can focus on furious mouseclicking.

2011-09-23T17:26:00.004-04:00

Ahhh... The happiest day in a computer gamer's life... The day he gets his new computer! Having bought about 15 computers in my lifetime for my personal use, I have some opinions about buying a computer. Here are my thoughts on buying a machine for poker:

* you're generally not going to need a high-end computer. No need to spend $2-4K on some Alienware machine unless you are into some other graphics intensive games. Have you seen the poker table graphics lately? If you told me the graphics were from two DECADES ago, I would believe it. And I like it that way - no need to have distracting or CPU-intensive graphics to slow down my multi-tabling.

* My general computer strategy is this - I always buy a "mid-range" machine and expect it to last about "4 years" - "2 years" as my #1 play computer and "2 years" as my backup and home computer. I keep the software on my poker computer to a minimum (partly for speed and partly to reduce the chance of getting any kind of malware, viruses, etc). The backup computer is where I do things like blogging, reading 2+2 and storing my libraries of horse porn. The kids also like sitting with me sometimes while I am working, so I let them watch Netflix or TV on the computer I'm not using. Occasionally, I'll hear, "Daddy, what's that horse doing to that man?" But figuring out creative explanations for it is all part of "good" parenting.

* I also usually have 2 laptops. The old one just died a few weeks ago, but I think I may wait a while to get another. I'm thinking I may go ipad this time (not for poker ldo). In our house, Mrs. Fly uses the laptop as "her" computer. I have a hard time playing on a 19" monitor. Call me spoiled, but when you are used to having a 30" monitor, it just feels really claustrophobic trying to play as many tables as I do on a small screen. And hooking up my 24" to the laptop isn't the same. Laptops are nice when you want to play while you are away, but let's face it, 99% of the time, most of us play in the same place all the time. I never really have to leave my office - I have two computers, a TV, beverages and snacks. If they invented a comfortable toilet chair, I would never have to leave my office.

Next... what I ended up buying and my buying suggestions for a poker computer.

2011-09-22T09:00:00.002-04:00

Obviously, that hand is villain dependent. I'm also a big believer in randomizing play to keep opponents off-balanced and your play less predictable. But here are my general thoughts on the hand:

* A 12% 3bet 6 handed probably means he is 3betting the button from the blinds with almost a 20% range. 66 vs a "top20%" range has 47% equity. 66 is AHEAD of a "top 7%" range plus "top 13%" bluffs with hands too weak to flat. You are getting 2 to 1 to call and you are IN position. FOLDING PRE WOULD BE RETARDED! If you want to fold pre, you might as well just change your sn to "RapeMe."

* So there is some merit in just shoving pre. I'm not sure if it's *that* +ev - it really depends on what dominating hands you think he calls with. It's pretty close. Maybe you do it once in a while for image/shania.

* I prefer to just call the flop. Sure - there are lots of flops I have to fold on. But I got 2 to 1 to make the call and 12% of the time, I'm going to have the nuts, and this guy seemed pretty aggressive on the first two streets. I'm also IN position, so I think there are a reasonable number of post-flop scenarios where I can win the pot (like this one).

* I'm pretty sure on that flop, villain is going to bet 100% of his range. Wouldn't you? But this flop rarely hits him. My equity on the flop is about 55% vs a "top 20%" range, and we know his range is even more full of crap. I think there is "some" merit in raising and getting it in, but this is really villain-dependent. Villain in this hand is a relative unknown, so I have no idea what he would do with say KJ here. If he re-shoves, then raising flop is probably the best play.

* A brick on the turn. The fact of the matter is, pocket pairs make up a VERY small part of his "20% range." My equity now is 59% vs his range. So the question is, do I raise and take it down or let him bluff again? If he has a made hand, I'm f*cked because there's no way I'm folding. But that's only like 3-4 percentage points of that 20% range. Folding turn would be RETARDED - I just told you your equity was 59%, right? The "standard" play seems to be to let him barrel the river and snap. Unfortunately, I'm a nit. Nits don't call 2 streets with less than the near-nuts - I'm assuming he knows this. I'm also a bit of a calling station (we haven't played many hands, but I'm not sure if he datamines). The key is, "how likely is he to barrel the river vs a nit?" His most likely hand is two overcards (6 outs) and unfortunately the turn just gave him 3 more outs, so he has 18% equity even with his un-made hands. He may have as many as 17 outs.

The break-even would be that he needs to bet about 1/3 of the time WHEN HE MISSES - I'm assuming he bets when he HITS. His river aggression over a small sample was on the low side, so I did not think he would bet river on another blank - not vs me. So I shoved the turn, he tanked and folded. It was only later that I realized it was possible he would have hit the "7" turn and folded the best hand. Possible - but not something I was counting on.

These are just *my* thoughts on the hand - I'm curious to see what you think of my analysis.

BTW, I'm using an itouch app called PkrCruncher to do all the calculations. Check it out.

2011-09-21T17:28:00.000-04:00

I had a good DAY of poker the other day - over 9 BIs. Yes - I am a luckbox. I don't play as much as I would like, but even for US players, the games can still be profitable. And if you know enough people, you can figure out ways to cash out fairly easily and quickly. We all have to work together. I basically zeroed out the bankroll on one of the Merge skins and have been playing solely on another skin.

As mentioned in the comments section of the previous post, I've so far only sold 5 boxes of popcorn. Some dude is going to get some unbelievably cheap database coaching. But this really isn't meant to be any kind of brag post. I'm a big believer in supporting the institutions that are close to me. The Cub Scouts seem to be providing a lot of benefits to my son and I want to give a little something back to them. Many Asian kids tend to be a bit more on the introverted side, and having G talk to people he doesn't know to sell popcorn seems to have given him a little more confidence.

I'm also a big believer in helping out people I know. So as previously hinted at a few posts ago, I'm going to open up the database coaching raffle to people who don't like popcorn - anyone who buys anything off of the YellowJackets' web site will also be leigible. They run a sportswear / workwear company and they do a lot of wholesale business with companies and schools. Their full wholesale site is www.gamesportswear.com and their retail site is www.realityworkwear.com. They do a lot of team and customized uniforms and will beat any price (for equal items). Not sure why they have better stuff on the wholesale site, but you can order anything from either site. Don't be shy about getting that "stylish" HU4ROLLZ varsity jacket. I suppose you can order from tons of online sites, but all other things being equal, I'm a big believer in supporting the efforts of people around me (even if things aren't so equal).

You can place the order online directly and send me a copy of the receipt, or I'll offer to take your order and accept Merge funds (which would be getting a 15-20% discount - the value has rebounded nicely since the 30% last week) as payment. I'm getting nothing out of this - just trying to help a friend. In times like these, it's nice to know you have friends.

2011-09-20T13:20:00.001-04:00

I thought I wold try and have a strategy discussion on the blog. Let me know what you think of the following hand. Villain is redxbob14, a lag I had never seen before, playing 30/27, with a 12.3% 3bet (mostly resteals) over only 341 hands (about half of them after this hand). FWIW, WWSF is 55%, AF is 47/30/14 and CBET is 74/63/50. My image is on the tighter side of TAG (ie nit).

Merge, $5/$10 No Limit Hold'em Cash, 6 Players
Poker Tools Powered By Holdem Manager - The Ultimate Poker Software Suite. View Hand #10609342

Hero (BTN): $1,074.25 (107.4 bb)
SB: $2,329.32 (232.9 bb)
BB: $2,322.73 (232.3 bb)
UTG: $1,130 (113 bb)
MP: $732 (73.2 bb)
CO: $1,000 (100 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BTN with 6 6
3 folds, Hero raises to $26.66, SB raises to $89.98, BB folds, Hero calls $63.32

Flop: ($189.96) 4 9 9 (2 players)
SB bets $94.98, Hero calls $94.98

Turn: ($379.92) 7 (2 players)
SB bets $199.96, Hero ???

There is $580 in the pot after the turn cbet, $200 for me to call and another $689 behind ($889 total). Do you fold, call or raise? And why. If you call, do you call any river? Post your thoughts in the comments section, and I'll reveal my thoughts in a future post. FWIW, I like the way I played the hand. And after some thought, there is a lot of nuance to this hand. If there isn't much interest in a discussion, I'll just post the results at the bottom of this post.

2011-09-14T12:53:00.007-04:00

So a few days into the popcorn sales drive, I look at my email to see who bought popcorn, and all I see are the usual suspects - friends and family. No poker players. I know things have been tough with FT and AP/UB shutting down, Cake taking months to process a cashout and with people scrambling to get money off of Merge. But is it going to kill you to buy a lousy $22 box of popcorn (includes postage) to help a bunch of cub scouts?

Perhaps in my quest for humor, I played down my poker skills a tad too much. Perhaps I may have undersold the value of my database coaching. Come around... sit by the fire while I tell you a story... A week ago while I was playing a bunch of tables, I notice some chatter on one of the tables. A casual player was saying that I WORKED for Merge Poker because I played so many tables and played "perfectly" - like I knew what all the cards were. Always made the right fold and always put in money ahead. He didn't say that about any other reg at the table - just yours truly. This really happened. A testimonial... from a fish! And who knows how many *countless* people are thinking that. You too can get a *chance* to glean such knowledge from the Master... all for the low price of $22. Quack quack.

Seriously - no poker player's bought any, so you may get free coaching for as little as $22 (and an awesome box of popcorn - 18 microwaveable packs inside). I personally prefer the microwaveable kettle corn for $25 - it's a little sweeter.

How many times have you and your lady friend been sitting around with nothing to do after a romantic interlude? Smoking is so 1981. Popcorn is the post-coital silence-filler of the new millennium. And when the time comes for her to take the walk of shame... what more thoughtful way than with a bag of popcorn? There's also a light version ($22), in case she needs to lose a few.

So to summarize:
* box of 18 tasty microwaveable bags of popcorn for $22-25 ($2 more for delivery confirmation)
* impress the ladies with your sensitivity to the needs of little cub scouts
* a chance to win a database read of your game, worth at least $500 (and waaay more if you are a weaker reg in the games)

Here is a link to the catalog. You can also send a popcorn donation to our military troops or buy pre-popped popcorn (white chocolate, carmamel, toffee, cheddar). Don't order online - the prices are higher and the shipping and handling is a rip-off. I'll have G send it to you (along with a hand-written thank you note) via priority mail. The prices above include shipping and handling. And as an added bonus, I'll take Merge transfers (Carbon and Lock) as payment! I just saw it trade at 70 cents. That's like getting a 30% discount on the popcorn! Act now! Send an email to doubleflypoker@gmail.com with your name and address, and your perferred form of payment.

Not into popcorn? I'll add another item to the Poker-Master raffle later in the week.

2011-09-12T13:30:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of 9/11. There are some moments you have that stay with you the rest of your life, and that was one of them. I've been a "New Yorker" most of my life and most of my family and friends are still there. There are three things that standout to me about that day, other than the deep sense of tragedy:

* Some of my relatives and friends knew I worked on "Wall Street," but did not realize our offices were in midtown, and not downtown. Midtown Manhattan was basically unaffected. So they had some frantic moments wondering if I was affected. I suppose I'm lucky that I did not work at one of the many downtown firms. I'm also lucky that I did not know anyone personally who died that day. But having worked in finance, I'm two degrees of separation away from dozens of people who died. Lots of people who had enormous potential.

* A few months prior to the event, I was given a small amount of capital to start trading. I had gotten out of business school the year before and had been working on the desk for a good 6 months before they decided to let me trade. On a trading desk, you have the TV on all the time (usually CNBC). I find that channel annoying (my head wants to explode every time Rick Santelli comes on), but as proprietary traders, you need to have the news on (unless there's a soccer game on, apparently). I remember the whole desk was just mesmerized to the TV when the first plane hit. We had no idea what was going on, since there was no previous precendent for such an explosion. Because I was still a relative noob, it never occurred to me to sell S&P futures or buy fixed income. It's kind of like a surgeon who is mesmerized by the sight of gushing blood, without doing anything about it. My job was to trade, and I lost focus. So did the all the experienced traders on the desk, because the event was *THAT* surreal. The big life lesson I took away that day was - no matter what happens, always keep your head.

* Finally and most importantly: You don't f*ck with certain people and certain entities. The People came back strong. The City came back strong. The Country came back strong. And everyone who f*cked with us are dead. Was it worth it, bitches?!?

/ post

2011-09-10T17:01:00.001-04:00

I know people say this a lot, but kids really grow up fast. It doesn't seem that long ago I was changing G's diapers, and now he's a young man. This month, he started the Cub Scouts. Scouting wasn't very popular in the Northeast (probably because of all the pedophiles), but out here it seems like the outdoors was a little more prevalent in the culture. Anyway, we thought it was a good way for him to meet even more boys in the area, and develop some good life skills so we signed him up. Scouting also turns out to be a great way to meet other active parents, because most of the scout events are family activities.

Help! I've fallen and I can't get up!

Over the weekend, we had the first activity, which was "Raingutter Regatta" - you basically build a wooden ship and race them down two gutter channels full of water. The ships are air-powered (you have to blow on the sails). I'm going to be honest and say our boat sucked. We just decorated the boat out of the box and thought we were set. Did I mention that people take family activities seriously here? People showed up with catamarans, they whittled the hull to be more aerodynamic, and they had all these different sail configurations. Really dad? little Timmy sawed the hull in half, shaved the hull and sprayed it with marine varnish? Really?!?

Yes - that is the sound of a slacker parent and a sore loser.

So those of you who have been scouts know what's coming up...

Their big annual boy scout fundraiser is to sell popcorn. They do it every fall to fund all the activities for the year. G's already had shifts at the local supermarkets and has gone door to door. Both were really good experiences for him - especially for a kid who tends to be on the shy side. But I figure since I have a blog, I might as well try and make some money for the pack. So here is why you should buy the WAAAY overpriced Boy Scout Popcorn thru G:

* 70% of the proceeds go to the Boy Scouts, and according to the manufacturer, it's partially tax-deductible. If you order online, they will ship to you.

* You will get a hand-written letter of thanks from G. Mrs Fly is from the South and believes in thank you notes - sadly, it's kind of a dying gesture nowadays. Despite our best efforts, his handwriting is so crappy it'll be good for a laugh. From my end, I also want to expose him to the world of online businesses.

* And I decided to throw in a little kicker for all you poker players. I'm coming out of retirement on the database analysis. I'm going to have a raffle (weighted by dollar volume) and pick one lucky person who will get all of my database reads and leaks on them. If we get a lot of sales, maybe I'll do more than one. The only guy I ever did this for really found my comments helpful and it helped him go from being a slightly losing player to a reasonable winning player. Poker is a lot more fun when you win (more). Now some of you regs may be saying, "Yeah, but you suck." Perhaps - but I have made money THIRTY SIX MONTHS IN A ROW. I must know "something," right?!? And even if I sucked, if you have something glaring that a suck-ass such as myself can spot, wouldn't you want to know about it? And if you are one of the few regs who regularly get pwned by me (yes - such people exist), this could save you thousands of dollars a year (at least), because you are probably getting hosed by other regs too.

* And you get some pretty good popcorn. We got the kettle corn and it tasted much better than the Orville Redenbacher we usually get from Costco.

Send me an email to doubleflypoker@gmail.com and I'll send you a link to the online catalog. Popcorn never looked so good. Um... maybe not...

[topless photo of popcorn lady got censored]

I didn't really want any nudity on the blog, but after that hairy armpit photo, I figured I owed you guys one. Also, the number 1 rule of sales is... sex sells, baby!

2011-09-09T20:26:00.006-04:00

I was arguing with a guy about how much I thought FT funds were (he was being rude to other regs who thought FT funds was near "worthless" and his estimate of 50+ cents on the dollar was absurd), and it seemed like an interesting thing to re-post:

If FT funds worth anywhere near 50 cents, people would be snapping them up at the current market price of 15 cents (including me). The market is made up of buyers and sellers. Sellers want to sell because they think it's worth less and buyers want to buy because it's worth more. Obviously the number of people who want to sell have overwhelmed the number of people who want to buy. And it hasn't been a sudden panic... this has gone on for MONTHS. The slow and mounting volume of people wanting to sell have overwhelmed the few people wanting to buy and have driven the price down. I have no idea where you are getting that there are tons of smart people buying. "Tons of smart people buying" would mean the price would have stablilize or to go up at some point. I haven't seen that happen.

Also, I don't think the corporate standards for asset accounting holds for this company, as evidenced by past management actions. The longer this goes on, the less money they have. The industry is also (effectively) unregulated, so I suspect the standard bankruptcy/liquidation procedures may not take place. "Class action lawsuit" sounds much better than it is.

As previously mentioned, I see no way ANY investor is going to want to invest in the current company. Why should they pony up $200 mil in lost player accounts, AND take on all the legal woes? This makes sense to you? There might be some other work-arounds, but the "pay off player debts" is not in most of those scenarios.

You have become blinded by what you think the valuation is. You have to ask yourself, "why is this the case?" the fact of the matter is, there are plenty of people who know more about this situation than we do, and we haven't seen any that buying. Really? You think Ivey, Galfond, or any of the other odds-saavy people in the forum somehow magically got together to say they are boycotting this awesome trade where they can buy for 15 cents when it's actually worth 50? Really?!? I just don't understand how you can keep arguing this.

I even gave you a benchmark - Cake is OPEN FOR BUSINESS and the last week, I've seen it trade as low as 45 cents for a 5-figure size. All those sellers crazy too? And all the buyers not showing up for the same reasons?

I'm hoping you (and Whale) are smarter than everyone else and it really is worth 50+cents, since I have money on FT too. But I doubt it, because all evidence is to the contrary.

Analogy: a few years ago, there was an prestigious bank called Lehman Brothers. It traded as high as $86. We had the credit crisis and it started plummeting. TONS of people thought as you did, that all the sellers were retarded and panicky, and gave reasons x, y, and z for why there were no buyers. That at $30 it was an awesome buy, and at $20 and at $10 and even at $3. That it still had assets, too big to fail, yada yada yada. You know what? It is now a penny stock. All those "tards" selling at $10 are pretty friggin happy they sold there. A lot of the "lifers" got wiped out - you know, people who grew so attached to the money on their site and thought the thing *had to* go back up because it was "worth" more, all evidence to the contrary. Sound familiar?

So unless you somehow think you are smarter than everyone else, know more about the situation than everyone else (and there are tons of people out there with insider information, which we do not have) - both of which are highly unlikely - you're doing what we in finance call WAGing (wild-assed guessing). I just don't see how you can ignore the evidence when YOU are about as clueless as everyone else. Sorry if I've troubled you with the facts.

Do I think 15 cents is low? Possibly - Maybe it's worth 20-25 cents. But if given the choice of buying Cake at 55 cents or FT at 25 cents, I'm going to take Cake (and I have). What would you do?

Just to get Whale off of suicide watch, the only think I'll say for FT is that it's possible it can turn on ONE piece of news. But that event is unlikely.

2011-09-08T16:06:00.000-04:00

Possibly more bad poker news. According to Subject: Poker:

According to our sources, the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland plans to seize the assets of payment processors who facilitated transactions between the Merge Network and its US customers. It is unclear exactly which payment processors are reportedly being targeted, whether indictments are planned in addition to seizures, or whether the DOJ intends to seize domain names as well.

Here's what I wrote in the Reg's thread:

Just to give a balanced view so people don't freak out more than necessary, the article talks mainly about processors (which wouldn't be as big a deal). It then SPECULATES that a bigger action may be POSSIBLE. And the "bigger" action may just be against one or two skins. My guess would be Sportsbook (which had been accepting new US cutomers). There's an off-chance it may be Lock since it seems suspicious their normally stellar cashouts have ground to a halt recently. The absolute worst thing would be if the whole network gets taken down, but even in that case, there's a chance we'll see our money eventually.

The more I thought about it though, it really didn't sound like the whole network was being taken down. I think if it was a huge operation, the source is more likely to have said "plans to seize the Merge network" - not the "payment processors of..." It's kind of like a conditional probability exercise. Given the informant specified "payment processors," it seems much more likely the scope is going to be smaller than bigger.

Solid logic? Or wishful thinking? Who the hell knows? But if you had been careful about your bankroll, like I had been urging for a while now, you have much less to worry about. It's ironic that JUST YESTERDAY I was was having an argument with a few other regs about what an appropriate amount of money to keep online is. My rule of thumb for a full-time reg was a 2 to 1 bankroll (including cashouts) to monthly income ratio. Maybe as high as 4 to 1 if you are a part-timer. Mine is less than 1.5 to 1 (mostly from having three cashouts pending), fwiw. Anyway, don't keep repeating the same mistakes from FT over and over again.

2011-09-05T15:11:00.003-04:00

My cashout suggestions, continued form the other day. (And it's about time too, because something about the armpit photo from the last post is really disturbing).

One of the things you learn in the first semester of business school is the idea of process management. For anyone interested, The Goal is a pretty good book on some of the thought processes involved. It's a little hokey, but it helps you to think outside the box.

Cashouts are a process management issue. They obviously have capacity constraints on OUTFLOW - it's not easy finding ways to process a bunch of payments. So if you are having problems with outflow, doesn't it make sense to try and alleviate some of the INFLOW? That is, reduce the number of cashouts that are required. How can the Merge network alleviate cashouts? Rather than having a us vs them attitude between the skins and players, why not work together? I have THREE thoughts on how to do this:

1) Cashouts don't have to be MONEY. Offer other forms of "cashouts" - like maybe a (somewhat discounted) store. It probably costs them like 15% or so (my guess) to process a cashout. So you can offer products at a 5-10% discount and still be making money. Players are paying 15% vig to get money off. There's plenty of room there for a win-win situation. Maybe something we can all use, like Apple products? If given a choice between a full loaded ipad for $675 ($699 retail) or waiting 3-6 weeks for a cashout, I'll take an ipad. Shoot - I may even get extra ones as gifts to my family. I'm also in the market for a high end computer and a 50+" TV. You get the idea. Dealers get margin off of the retail price (Merge makes margin AND saves on processing cash) and players get stuff they want asap without paying vig. Win and win. Merge doesn't even need to set up any infrastructure - just work with the existing vendor or manufacturer to drop-ship items. But please don't be busto like the FT store used to be - send stuff right away, instead of in 4-8 weeks.

And I have TWO more ideas, that I think are just as good (to be continued)

2011-09-01T16:30:00.002-04:00

Another mini- post. I didn't think I was going to make weight this month because my sister came over for almost 2 weeks and we pigged out like mad, but I made it! I already had my "embarassing photo" all planned. Hint: it's related to the hairy nipple. I had been practicing squatting in front of the camera all week.

But I won't need to take that pic now. Phew!

[ ] my armpit
[x] made money playing poker last month

2011-08-31T20:34:00.001-04:00

No full post today, but can I tell you how impressed I was that Minted got me a cashout - from request to receipt in 15 HOURS? I had a small amount of money on there and I decided I couldn't play there because they only had micro and low small stakes tables, so rather than just leaving the money on there, I cashed out. It's all about bankroll leverage. Less than a day in today's environment is absurdly good.

2011-08-29T09:00:00.012-04:00

I played a session the other day on Merge and as I was looking around at the tables, I realized that I basically knew everyone at the tables. Not personally - but everyone looked like they were regs I had played thousands of hands with (other than a scattering of players on a few tables I had never seen before). And then it dawned on me that Merge is a closed system, since the almost 2 month long freeze on accepting new players.

What is a closed system? It's a system where no one can get in. What happens when you take a table of regulars and have them play for a long period of time? Player B wins the first pot and pays the rake. Player U wins the second pot and pays the rake. Player S wins the third pot and pays the rake. Player T wins the fourth pot and pays the rake. Player O wins the fifth pot and pays the rake. Lemme get this straight... the money keeps changing hands between the players and the house takes money out of every (flopped) pot. And then throw in an extra 50 cents for the Bad Beat Jackpot. Can you figure out the happy ending to this story?

Now I'm not saying that a cash game among regs can't be a fun and challenging game. But you have to realize if the game continues long enough, there will only be two winners. The winning player and the especially the poker room. I'm not sure if a freezeout among regs is what cash game players are interested in. If your local casino shut its doors to new entrants, would you still go? After a few days, all the bad players will have left (except for maybe the few die-hard fish), and then only the better players would be around. Purists would say the game's the same. But not really. The challenge might be there, but the other major reason people play poker is to make money.

Which brings me to this... a closed poker system is a game of attrition. I am reposting Merge's graph from last week. See the attrition the last two months? This is not sustainable.

I suppose on the one hand, I appreciate the fact that Merge is being so careful about making sure customer service is adequate and that cashouts can be processed quickly before taking new players. But you can't have this closed poker system continue. It's like starting a dating service and not accepting new people - after a while, you're just going to be left with a bunch of people no one is going to want to be with.

So my message to Merge is two-fold:

1) Just re-open now! - before your player pool ends up like the the dating service full of undesirables. This situation is going to be very unhealthy for business if it continues. Allegedly, cashouts are only taking 3 weeks, and I think it's only reasonable to expect cashouts will take longer once they start accepting new players. Cashouts taking 2 months like Cake is going to kill business too, but you are already killing your business NOW. So rather than delaying the re-open, just bite the bullet and do it now.

2) Think about how you can alleviate pressures on your cashout system. How? Tune in later...

Don't be like the closed-to-new-entrants dating service.

2011-08-26T12:54:00.000-04:00

I had noticed the last few weeks that FT funds are now trading between 20 and 25 cents on the dollar. So a bunch of people on the FT thread were discussing what FT money was actually worth. Here is a paraphrasing of my original posts on 2+2:

Sadly, the markets don't lie. So 25 cents is probably somewhat "close" to fair value. I think this price is a little skewed because most people who would like to buy at 25 cents already have a ton of money on there (like maybe Galfond, Durrr, regs, etc). But it's not going to be *that* much higher. Not 50 cents. What I find interesting about 25 cents is that it is so low, if given a choice, I would MUCH prefer to just take the full money as extra rakeback (like an additional 50% on top of the regular rakeback, so we would get close to 100% rakeback). I think most of us could make the money owed to us in less than a year, possibly two (obviously there are exceptions). It would only take me 2 months (bankroll leverage, baby!). Of course this assumes FT will reopen to the US. I still think FT is a good buy (unless that moron Bitar thinks he needs to still run the company), and it could be a win-win if the potential buyer can pay the players back in future rake.

It's just speculation, but I don't see how a deal gets done without Bitar stepping down. I also don't see why any buyer would want to accept $150mil of player debt (probably a lot more since I thought $150 was the amount of US player assets). Considering how idiotic FT management is, it wouldn't shock me if they didn't even have all of the non-US funds whole (i.e. they spent some of the non-US player's money that they weren't supposed to). Because if you were a potential buyer, would you make everyone (US and non-US) whole? The shortfall could be anywhere from $150-300mil. If it was me, I most certainly would not. But I think offering all former players a credit is a very good gesture.

I've never worked in private equity, but I do have a pretty good sense of estimating business parameters. And if I was a potential "investor" (and I'm not) here is what I would be thinking:

* The FT software is the best in the industry and they have the rights to Rush, which was the best poker invention since the hole card cam.

* I refuse to "invest" in any company with the current management intact. There is obviously a lot of waste and incompetence going on, and I'm not trusting those bozos with more money.

* I would be interested in purchasing the assets of the company (maybe just license the software), but would have no desire to participate in their legal woes or their outstanding obligations to current players. I would want to start a new company.

* My plan for getting the players back would involve me offering 40-50% additional rakeback to current players, until their accounts are paid in full. Maybe kick in an extra 10% afterwards to massage any leftover bad feelings. Really, who is going to refuse this offer? *I'm* not the one who lost your money - I'm the one who's trying to give you a chance to get your money that SOME OTHER PERSON lost. How can you realistically expect anyone to pay off someone else's debts? Not for $150-300 mil. I don't see how any rational person would have any bitter feelings towards the new company.

* Current FT affiliates get screwed. Sorry - I'm a new company now. Wow - I just increased my take by 15% of rake, which is going straight to the players.

* I do not have enough information to determine if I will re-open in the US. But the player credit will be there whenever the US allows online poker again.

This is all just random musings. I think it's a reasonable idea for the players. For me, 20-25 cents on the dollar is not something I'm going to care about. I'd rather just ride that baby down to zero. But tell me I'll have a chance to get all of it back in a short amount of time AND I get to play Rush again, and now we're talking! If I thought this was likely, you would see FT funds head north of 50 cents (assuming the "credits" are transferrable) and I would be buying.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the current management is going to want to step down. Right now, FT isn't worth very much and taking an 8 figure amount to GTFO can't be too bad for a bunch of chimps. My advice to Ray Bitar comes from my good friend Kenny...

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away and know when to run.

2011-08-25T06:38:00.001-04:00

It's been 4.5 months since we moved to Texas. For the most part, we've been very happy here - the schools, restaurants, shopping, attractions, the house with a pool, and the people. Well, except for our neighbor who happens to be the town bitch (later post). Lucky us! The biggest gripe?

The weather. No wonder people around here are so religious - it seems like the "wrath of God" is showing up every other week. In the short amount of time we've been here, we had the worst tornado season in decades, a bunch of unusually large hail storms and the clincher? Not sure if you guys in the rest of the world know, but we have had almost 60 consecutive days of over 100 degree weather. This is the second-longest stretch... EVER. Like in the history of recorded time! (all right, I may be exaggerating). What are the chances we move to an area and within 4.5 months we get the worst winds in decades, the worst hail in decades and the worst heat wave in decades? All in 4.5 months?!? I guess the only thing missing from the above illustration is the snow. Joy. All I know is, if our pond turns into blood, or the pool is teeming with frogs or the skies get dark from locusts, we're getting the hell out of here.

You literally can't stand in direct sunlight for more than 10 minutes at the highs before you feel like you are going to spontaneously combust. I feel like Birdman for 30 seconds and then after that, Birdman wants to go back inside where there is air conditioning. Call me Birdboy. My electric bill the last two months averaged $900. That's an unrealistically large number of small stakes full ring nits I have to overset every month just to pay for AC.

At least this means Mrs. Fly will keep having to wear her skimpy outfits - especially by the pool. On second thought, maybe this heat isn't too bad. "Oh honey, let me put some more sunscreen on your decolletage. You don't want to get all leathery like Magda from There's Something About Mary. Stop resisting - I'm doing this for you baby!"

Ewww...

2011-08-22T09:00:00.042-04:00

Since someone asked me about Girah...

I generally know what happened, but I really haven't been been following the exact details of the case, so I can't speak to who's misleading who, etc. For those of you who don't know, some guy hyped himself up as the next big poker super-star by chip dumping (so it looked like he made almost $2mil in a short period of time) and posting under various accounts on 2+2 to have him sound even more awesome. He even got signed as a pro on a poker site. He then went ahead and scammed some people out of money by cheating at heads-up games. Here's an old man's BIG-PICTURE perspective on the situation:

1. Your reputation and honor are worth more than money (or a cheap thrill/laugh). All right, maybe for most people only up to a certain point, like 7-9+ figures, but we are not talking about that kind of money here. You would have to be some kind of whore to be to sell yourself for 6 figures, but that's just me. I think this should be self-explanatory to most decent people. Anyway, they did this for 5. What is below whore? Girah and Dog-Is-Head are both going to be looked on like Russ Hamilton and Ray Bitar (you still have a chance Ray!) - social outcasts of the poker world for the rest of their lives. I mean you can't ever show up to another WSOP, or set foot in a major poker room every again without being mocked. Maybe they just didn't like poker that much. But even outside of poker, how can you look at yourself in the mirror every morning?

2. In many arenas, you make more from your image than actually playing that sport. Many sports stars make more from endorsements and other opportunities outside of their sport than actually playing their sport. Like Tiger Woods. Oh yeah - he tainted his image and look at him now. But whether he was at his peak or trough, he's made waaay more from endorsements. You don't even have to be that good at what you do - look at Dale Jr. or Anna Kournikova. So it's just mind-boggling that you get yourself to a place of prominence (as crooked as Girah's methods were) and you decide the best thing to do is to try and cheat people out of a dozen buy-ins. Because people would never suspect anything - not high stakes poker players, who are trained to look for patterns of unusual play. For a full-time grinder like I used to be, an endorsement deal could be easily worth 6 figures a year (free rake, tourney sponsorships, etc) for possibly the rest of my life. Maybe if things work out, you get a sweet deal like Benyamine's where you get get paid $500K a year to eat beignets all day. The dude just pissed away possibly several million dollars over his lifetime to cheat for some buy-ins. Wat?!? O mudo prostituta.

3. The Spiderman Syndrome: With great power comes great responisbility. Poker has an image problem to begin with, and having a high profile douchebag add to yet another unsavory story of poker just tilts me. Because you know the next time any kind of poker legislation comes up, Girah is going to come up, along with the AP cheating scandal and a host of other stories. As it is, the most recognized player by the masses is probably Hellmuth. As awesome as Ivey is at poker, he has a sick degenerate craps and props problem. Jungleman is tainted with this whole affair. Can someone please step and be an ambassador and role model for the game? It's such an awesome game, but many of our most vocal or well known representatives are all douchebags or people who have no self-control. It's kind of like those dudes who work their whole lives to gain a place of prominence in the community (governors, senators, etc) and then they decide the best way to use that power is to call up some hooker or send X-rated photos of yourself to people. Nice.

If any of you guys ever get that big in poker, my advice to you is, "Don't be a moron. But if you can't help being a moron, at the very least don't be a whore."

2011-08-19T09:00:00.001-04:00

A bunch of people got scammed on the 2+2 Player to Player transfer thread the other day. Apparently "ericlee" decided he wanted to do a bunch of trades with various people using Chase QuickPay. It's kind of weird because I have a 2nd nephew named Eric Lee. The scammer's real name is Eric Fields - the motherf*cker is trying to bring the Asian man down (again)!

Apparently he was able to cancel all the transactions because according to Chase: "You further agree not to use the Chase QuickPay Service to receive money from anyone to whom you are obligated for tax payments, payments made pursuant to court orders, fines, payments to loan sharks, gambling debts or payments otherwise prohibited by law." The douchebag ripped a bunch of people off and then had the nerve to post that in 2+2. I need to get a special tree branch for this dude.

I guess stuff like that really sickens me... because in this low time of online poker, players should be COOPERATING WITH EACH OTHER to make the most of our current situation - NOT RIPPING EACH OTHER OFF! There seems to be way too little cooperation and way too much of everything else. Anyway, in light of the current state of cashouts, transfers and liquidity, I'm curious to see how successful my informal group of buddies is going to be on working together to improve liquidity.

From a theoretical business school process management perspective, you have say 10 people and each person can only cash out $2,500 a month. That sucks. The group should be able to take out $25,000 out of the system assuming perfect and optimal funds transfer. That's like burger-flipping money. Make that $50,000 a month if each person has two accounts. $75,000 a month if that second account is on a site that has two cashout mechanisms. Multiply by a factor of 1.5 to 2 if some of those members are international and can cash out easier. Multiply by another factor of 1.5 to 2 if you can combine some cashouts to take advantage of the faster wires that some sites offer. That's $169K to $300K a month between 10 people. What cashout worries? The big hurdle is getting that trust and teamwork together. I think the best answer is by having everyone only have to trust as few people as possible (that's me!) and have everyone put up collateral (at no cost to them). It seems so simple.

How it looks on paper can be vastly different than in real life. It is going to take a strong player network to be able to achieve something like this, so I'll be curious see how things go. So far, my goal by the end of the year is to improve liquidity by 50%, but as you can see from the above, it's theoretically possible to do over an order of magnitude better. It never hurts to think big.

2011-08-18T09:00:00.004-04:00

It's time for my quarterly review of US poker traffic. I'm trying to remember if anything's changed since May... Oh yeah! FT went busto and stole our money! I hope Ray Bitar enjoys living outside the U.S. the rest of his life. I have a special oak branch just for him.

Stars is no longer a US site, but I think looking at the traffic of the world's number 1 site will give a good indication of the industry. US poker customers were about 1/3 of the market. They seem to have made a nice recovery off the lows, even with the loss of US customers. Seasonally adjusted, I'm not even sure if they lost any customers, because the summer is the low period in terms of online poker (see a graph from the same period last year, where they went from 35K to 25K). Imagine that! When you take care of your customers' money, the strength of online poker just takes care of everything else. Shocker.

Among the US sites, Merge is the #1 network. And it's really the only option for mass multitabling regs. I suppose taking 4-6 weeks for a cashout AND halting new sign-ups is going to put a damper on growth. I hear cashouts are now only taking 3 weeks or so, but it's hard to say if that's a fluke. And after they get flooded with new accounts when they open, it wouldn't be surprising if cashouts went back to the 4-6 week average. Not trying to be Debbie Downer - just putting together 1 and 1. But I think the graph is more of an indication of their self-imposed no new inflow, and not of demand. Hopefully they will open soon, because I really like the site.

Bodog is the #2 US poker site, but they are being spun off at the end of the year. I hear their VIP benefits suck, but I suppose when you can only play 4 tables at a time, you're going to eliminate a lot of multitabling regs, so the games must be soft enough to compensate. I'll look into the site more when I have time.

I've been playing a little bit of Cake to see what it's all about. My review in a later post. I'm actually shocked that they actually had some growth, considering it takes 2 months for a cashout, and there was some issue with them refusing to pay out a high stakes player on suspicion of chip dumping. Most of the trades I've seen on 2+2 have been for 0.5 to 0.65 cents on the dollar. I'll have a review later, but I'm having some trouble getting past the fact that I have to use PT3 and there seem to be no full set of hotkeys that works.

I was bored last week so I put some money on there to check it out. HUDs and mass multi-tabling are okay. The US games have the standard rake up through NL200, but the Euro games have a max rake of 5 EUROS. WTF?!? The games seem somewhat soft tho and the rakeback and promos are probably a little above average. I'll keep my eye on it, but there just aren't enough (or any) tables at the stakes I'm interested in. But it might be worth taking a look at if you are a beginning player.

2011-08-16T09:00:00.014-04:00

Texas is a Bible Belt state. I see more churches in our area (mostly Baptist) than in the Northeast. I don't see as many ads for things like the lottery or planned parenthood. And after four months of living here, I still have no idea where the strip joints are because there are no ads - anywhere! But as God is my witness, I'm going to find them!!! (If I'm dead tomorrow, tell the police it was Mrs. Fly)

Even tho I'm an atheist, I really enjoy seeing some of the magnificent places of worship. We've traveled all around the world and some of the most impressive architecture and art has been at the major religious centers. Since my sister is visiting us, I thought it was only proper to take her to the biggest church of its kind in the world and where over a hundred thousand go to worship on Sundays.

Cowboys Stadium! In Texas, football is a religion. In the Northeast, there are so many transplants that I'll meet Bears fans, Niners fans, Seahawks fans, etc. But may God have mercy on you if you live in Dallas and don't like the Cowboys - enjoy being a social outcast.

I'm generally not a fan of going on tours of stadiums, but the architecture was so spectacular that I wanted to take a peek before the football season. I don't mind spending a few bucks on baseball tickets and only stay for a few innings, but I'm not going to shell out primo bucks to take my boys to a football game and only stay for a few quarters - not for $100-1,000+ a ticket. My family room is too comfortable. So I'm not sure when I'm going to go... maybe when my brother and Sister-in-LAW come over. My brother is a huge Eagles fan, but SlawFly is a huge Cowboys fan. What's funny is my brother-in-law (Mrs. Fly's brother) is a huge Redskins fan, so between the four of us, we have the NFC East covered.

The stadium is super-clean and probably the nicest sports stadium I've ever been in. They even have quilted toilet paper in the bathrooms... and I didn't have to scrub the toilet down! Sure - it's the offseason, but there were plenty of people at the tour. What was nice was that you got to go down and run around on the field. I was a little surprised the field was somewhat lumpy and you could see gaps in seams on the turf. I'm pretty sure this must be one of the nicest turfs in the NFL. So now when I see some running back or wide receiver stumble for no reason, I won't attribute it to the alcohol or crack the night before. I guess it's like what I hear about the Boston Garden, where the playing surface is remarkably uneven for a major sports venue. Maybe there's more to this home-field advantage than I thought.

But the best part was going into the cheerleader's locker room. Seeing the player's locker room was a little meh. Been there, done that. Call me a dirty old man, but there's something kind of exciting about going into a place where hotties congregate and get undressed. It was kind of cheap-looking to be honest. Just the way I like it. The player's locker rooms had wood - the cheeerleader locker room had laminate. But they had huge sexy glamor shot posters of each them above their lockers. I felt like the Sultan of Brunei. Been there, want to do that! (Seriously, if I'm dead tomorrow, tell the police it was Mrs. Fly).

2011-08-14T15:45:00.006-04:00

It appears Merge is starting to take new sign-ups again - at least one skin (Sportsbook) started taking new signups a few days ago. It seems reasonable to assume that other skins will be following soon.

As much as I think the player cooperative is a great idea, it doesn't make sense for me to run a full-blown business like I was considering. I was actually thinking of having a feature-laden web site, a forum on 2+2, etc. Interest was rather tepid, but more importantly, it appears some of the potential legal headaches just aren't worth it. Thanks DOJ. You've won the battle, but not the war. One day, if you find a big Asian dude squatting and laying a huge deuce on your well-manicured-from-robbing-US-poker-players-lawn on your night-vision surveillance cameras, that'll be me. You will know it's me for sure if you zoom in and see the letters "F.U. DOJ" on the left cheek and "<3 Doublefly" on the right (I have a big ass), with some hair in the middle.

I still play some online poker when I have time and I have a network of poker buddies. So we are going to incorporate some of the concepts, just to make playing poker a lot easier post BF. Some of those ideas were pretty good (if I do say so myself). As I always say, as you go through life, it always pays to have outs. Having a network of peers (like ours) give you some outs. Sometimes outs are presented to you, and other times you have to create them, but always make sure you have outs. If you're interested in participating, send an email to doubleflypoker@gmail.com. If you use one of the US poker referral links on the right, I'll automatically include you.

Speaking of referral links, I decided the best thing to do with the "void" left by those cheesy Google "buy gold" and vocational school ads was to refer people to various poker sites. You'll get all the standard VIP benefits, bonuses and promos of all the US sites by signing up thru me, and you'll get a lot of extra perks. I also teamed up with Schwallie (RakeTakers) to provide players with non-US referrals. There are also some undergound sites for both US and non-US players. At the end of the day, promoting online poker is my own version of civil disobedience. Poker's not illegal (unless you live in WA state). So F. U. DOJ!!! I am going to sit in the front of the bus if I feel like it. God help anyone who tells me otherwise.

I get internet access in prison, right?

2011-08-11T17:34:00.000-04:00

I'm going to have to take a little break from the blog... my sister came to visit us for 12 days. Yee haw! I love my family!

And I'm happy to announce that we recently had a VERY welcome addition to the Fly family. No - Mrs Fly is NOT pregnant!

That's right! It's a gas smoker. I think I went a little too hard-core last time when I got the wood/charcoal smoker. That's like starting to play poker at NL10K. As my friend Lawrence Jamieson used to say, "Know your limitations. You're a moron." So the next level down is the gas smoker. I almost don't even feel like I'm smoking, since I just set the temperature and let the wood and water work its magic. I might as well make sure I get all the other BBQ concepts down, without the complication of maintaining low temperature with fast-burning wood and charcoal over 6-12+ hours.

We had no immediate plans to get a smoker, but the Food Gods seem to be pointing us in that direction. Lately Mrs. Fly has really been into marinade and rub recipes (not the good kind of "rub"). Last week, we ordered in from Dickey's (a large regional BBQ chain). We ate the brisket and we were shockingly unimpressed - no smoke flavor, but it was moist. A few days later, we were at the supermarket and a 14 pound slab of beef brisket was only $20 (LOL), we decided it was time to get the smoker.

Since we can't eat 14 pounds of brisket by ourselves, we decided to invite some of the neighbors and have a little initiation party of sorts. We had never made brisket before, but we figured it's dead animal - how bad could it be?

Well, we sorta found out. The thin part of the brisket was meh and chewy, but I think it's mostly because the thermostat was off. But the center of the thick part (that we left 4 hours longer in the smoker) was really outstanding. Mrs. Fly wasn't too happy with the rub, and I think it would have been better if we trimmed all but 1/4" of the fat. But we love eating and trying new recipes. So we're looking forward to it. I'm hoping we'll get it pretty close in out next few tries.

We're now that much closer to officially Texans!

2011-08-09T09:00:00.057-04:00

LOL. You may have noticed the ads on my blog are gone. ONE DAY after I started putting Google ads on my blog, they send me the following email:

As mentioned in the welcome email, we begin to review your AdSense account when you begin serving ads. During a recent review, we have disapproved your account for the following violation(s).

Issues:

- Gambling-related content
- Site does not comply with Google policies
- Adult content

Wow. Not just one or two reasons... but I got a threesome - and not the good kind. I did not realize I was so "offensive." Most people think I'm a pretty nice guy - at least that's what my mother tells me. Sorry, you Censor-happy B*tches! It's a POKER blog! Poker's a perfectly legal social and competitive activity enjoyed my hundreds of millions of people!!! My head is spinning from all the censoring going on around here. First Google and then the Boss. Am I really *that* messed-up?!?

I think what must've put me over the edge was the hairy nipple. It was the last post before they reviewed my account and apparently it was a little too much for them. Obviously, the my nipples pose some kind of risk to society, scarring all women and children in its path. Why focus on that when you cold have focused on the importance of weight loss in our obese society? And the importance of having goals?

Maybe the head of AdSense has a brother-in-law in the DOJ. I'm seriously tempted to mail their corporate offices a photo of my hairy anus. You want something to censor?!? Censor that!!! Hmm... I just remembered all my oak branch ass-raping posts and when I said I wanted to sell my kids. Maybe I *AM* "offensive."

Meh - no big loss. Those ads looked sooo unbelievably lame. After only 24 hours I felt like a cheap hooker. Selling myself out for a few dollars (literally). I have no idea how much the ads paid, but I'm thinking it must've been like a fraction of a penny per click-thru. Now my blog looks nice and neat again. It all ended for the best, and everyone's happy.

2011-08-08T09:33:00.004-04:00

OMG! I don't see how the last post could have been censored, but whatever. I'll post the "cleaned-up" version in a few days.

2011-08-05T09:00:00.002-04:00

And then there’s the FREE insurance. Obviously, I’m no dummy and am only going to insure as much as you contribute. So if Merge shuts down tomorrow, you’re just as screwed as you were before. But if you take me as an example, I can be 70% insured in 6 months: I generally keep around a $4K on a site, and I have $2.5K in perpetual cashouts. I generate over $5K a month in rake. That means after 6 months, I’ll have the max 70% coverage on one site. So I can actually open a second account and get that protected as well by the end of the year. Two accounts are enough to get me two to three cashouts every 4-6 weeks. That’s not bad. Add another cashout (or two) from my new Co-Op buddies, and I’m sitting pretty – mostly insured and a cashout every 7-10 days. Black Friday will be a distant memory.

The insurance money would kick in on a number of different contingencies:

1)    If a site actually goes under (whether it be seizure, bankruptcy, fraud, etc), you have the right to transfer your account balance in exchange for the 70%. In effect, you are guaranteed 70 cents on the dollar on your bankroll (including pending cashouts, but not including non-cash benefits like points, tourney tickets, freerolls, etc.). That’s pretty good as a fail-safe, considering Merge funds are trading as low as 80 cents on the dollar now… and Merge is up and running!

2)    If a site has “difficulties,” like they have some temporary legal woes or it takes longer than 2 months to process a cashout (like Cake), you can borrow against 50% of your share of the fund. I think the way this would work is you sign over a prorated share of your bankroll, and when things calm down, you can repay that amount. This gives people the comfort of knowing that they can have good cash flow even when times are bad.

3)    As mentioned yesterday, the fund would also kick in should any member not follow thru on a trade. It's unpleasant to think about, but the protection is there.

I think each player needs to take some responsibility for their bankroll management. That’s why I’m reluctant to have the cooperative insure more than 70%. 70% sounds about right to balance the objectives of peace of mind and responsible bankroll management.

The framework has been discussed in the last three posts, but I'm still mulling over some details, so let me know what you think - or if you have any concerns. I will probably start with Carbon, Black Chip and Lock (if they'll ever get back to me) as the Merge sites, and then go from there. Merge should be opening its doors in the next few weeks to US players, and this means you can actually start playing with some new fish. I’ll also open up an Everleaf site, Minted Poker (see my review next week). Bodog’s not taking any affiliates right now because of their management change, and Cake is just a mess. So if you are a US player, these are your best two options. Or is it?!? (later post)

This could potentially be great for everyone, and it is a live example of the "cooperation between players" I talked about in a previous post. Since no one stepped up the last time, I figure *I* should.

(For the non-nature lovers out there, there is a high probability the first penguin gets eaten)

2011-08-04T09:00:00.016-04:00

Liquidity post continued from yesterday. I made two claims the other day about the Co-Op… how in the long run, 1) you won’t get scammed and 2) that all trades will happen. How so?

1) In the long run, the reason we we will all be able to trust each other is that the Co-Op is holding each member’s poker site insurance. The poker site insurance is going to be a significant percentage of most player’s bankroll. If a member goes “rogue,” you can be compensated out of their insurance money. But I would be surprised if most people didn’t find all the benefits of the Co-Op to be worthwhile enough to make sure their reputation in the community was impeccable.

I’m not sure what the exact procedures are going to be yet, but an easy solution is to have a secure web site where I post everyone’s Co-Op email account and “pre-approve” people to trade certain quantities (like $250, $500, $1,000, $5,000, etc). This way, you can transact up to that amount with peace of mind. This will severely limit the scamming possibilities.

Just the other day, some poor schlub on 2+2 may have gotten scammed for $900 – he hadn’t heard from the counterparty for 2 days. It pays to have a network of players where everyone has posted collateral.

2) So you might be wondering how I can be *sure* the trades will happen. You may not remember, but I used to be a trader. As a fellow player, I can provide a back-up market to all members, in case no one is interested in your request. Volumes will be small in the beginning but will increase over time as the insurance fund grows. I can post a 5 cent wide market for each of the sites: for example, 85 cents to buy Carbon funds and 90 cents to sell Carbon funds. The prices will change, based on supply and demand. The huge bonus is that once I post those prices, all the members can trade INSIDE of that price range. If you know you can buy Carbon funds from me at 90 cents, people wanting to buy are probably going to bid somewhere between 85 and 88 cents. Similarly for people who want to sell. I’m think most transactions will occur very close to the middle of the range I set. A similar concept would work for transfers across sites. I’m hoping we have enough member flow so I don’t have to get involved at all.

In the beginning, I may have to limit the sizes of transactions until I get a feel for supply and demand and how the cashouts at various sites work. But as time goes on, I will be able to do more size. Again, we have to make sure the transfer volumes aren’t “excessive,” so as not to annoy the sites. But with many members, one trade here and one trade there among fellow players shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

2011-08-03T11:09:00.014-04:00

The "Idea," continued from yesterday. I think people care more about what can be done with providing liquidity, so I’ll talk about that first, and I’ll talk about the poker site insurance second. This one is probably going to have to be a two-parter.

This Cooperative is basically the parable of the sticks – in a nutshell, a bundle of sticks is stronger than each of the sticks individually. How does this parable apply to you and the Co-Op?

* It takes US players 5 weeks to cash out. It takes international players 3 days to cash out. It takes 1 day for an international player to send money to the US. In finance, we call this an arbitrage opportunity. It’s just easy vig for one of our foreign members to do an “occasional” transfer with a US player. Everyone’s happy.

* Several skins have faster bank wires, but those usually have five figure minimums. It’s kind of retarded for a bunch of people to each wait 5 weeks for check if a wire can be done faster. Some sites allow the Affiliate to get paid by bank wire. Hmm…

* If you have two accounts (and some networks like Merge allow accounts on multiple skins), you can cash out twice as fast. It sure would be nice if you could find a “buddy” who could transfer you some money to a secondary site. Or maybe a whole network of buddies...

* Poker is a game of skill, but it does have some volatility. Some members are going to be on an upswing and others are going to be doomswitched. Rather than taxing the already-stressed deposit and withdrawal system of the US poker sites, we can trade amongst ourselves to even out those peaks and valleys. That's a win for everyone - including the poker sites. And in the big scheme of things, this should help sites process cashouts quicker overall.

* People probably leave more money online than they need to because they don’t want the hassle of having to redeposit. Well, what if redepositing was as easy as sending the Co-op members an email and receiving the funds in as little as an hour? (12 hours at the most) And you would pick up some VIG. Ka-ching!

The sites don’t want us to get too "crazy" with the transfers, but they won’t mind one here and one there. So we'll have to tone it down a little from what I was originally planning, but the framework is still very workable. All of the above already goes on in the 2+2 player to player transfer thread (directly or indirectly), so it’s not like I’m making up anything that’s revolutionary – I’m just packaging it in a sexier and more convenient form.

But you might be saying to yourself, “why would this be different from the 2+2 transfer thread where most trades never happen and even when it does it sometimes takes days? And how do I know I won't get scammed?”

Once this is going strong, all trades will happen and you won't get scammed - because *I’M* holding the sticks together and you have the strength of the Co-Op. (To be continued)

Send an email to me at doubleflypoker@gmail.com if you're interested. I probably need a minimum number of people interested, otherwise we'll go with Plan B.

2011-08-02T10:23:00.003-04:00

So here is the second attempt at presenting my "Idea:"

The state of US online poker is a bit depressing. Stars and FT lost over 15,000 players A DAY because of Black Friday (according to PokerScout), and the other US sites picked up only about 700. (later post) Where did all the players go? Part of it may have been the WSOP and summer vacation. But where is everyone else? Surely only the top few hundred players could afford to go abroad to set up foreign accounts.

People seem to have two main concerns with playing online poker nowadays:

a) Having their money stuck (or even lost) on a poker site that shuts down. With FT money trading below 35 cents on the dollar, people are nervous about putting any money back online.

b) Getting their cashouts in a timely manner. Taking 4-6 weeks for a measly $2,500 cashout is just way too long - especially if you play for a living.

Here is my solution. There is still a lot of money floating around in the poker economy, and I figured out a way to take care of "most" of the above problems. Unfortunately, when I went to confirm the idea with some of the sites, they discouraged the use of "excessive transfers." I'm ironing out some of the details, but here is the general idea. What if some big-headed, hairy-nippled, goofy Asian dude you all know and love were to do the following:

1) Open up a bunch of poker site affiliates. Yawn.

2) Get you to sign up for those affiliates. Yawn.

3) Here's the part you care about. Rather than pocketing the affiliate money, I set the bulk of that money aside as "poker site insurance." You would get ALL the standard VIP/rakeback/deposit benefits. The insurance premium is funded only by "my" affiliate referral fees. So I take the affiliate fees from your last 12 rolling months of play to “insure” up to 70% of your online bankroll (including pending cashouts). This is all FREE to you! Obviously in month 1, you'll have very little insurance, but by month 12, I think most players will have hit the 70% max. And there are a few situations where you could "borrow" against the insurance. I’ll explain the details in a later post. But having a floor as high as 70 cents on the dollar should be comforting - especially since Merge money can be seen trading at 80 cents on the dollar NOW - when they are still fully operational!

In effect, over a rolling twelve months, this is more of a player COOPERATIVE - I'm making virtually no money for those 12 months. I'm organizing the structure through which we as players can all feel more comfortable about playing online poker again. I have several great ideas on how we can improve liquidity and cashouts thru this cooperative framework. The fact that everyone has posted insurance collateral means transfers can be more readily available. Even with the sites' transfer restrictions, I think we as a group of players can find ways to increase effective cashouts by 50% or more. (see later post for the details)

But my mamma didn't raise no fool. (Don't ask Mrs. Fly tho) Maybe that MBA wasn't a total waste of time. After the rolling 12 months, this is more of a standard affiliate deal - so in month 13, you have the rolling 12 months of protection, and I finally make my first full month of money for signing you up. I have to show the Boss (Mrs. Fly) that I'm not just wasting my time and I do have to pay my assistant something for her help, after all. But if US poker is still going strong after month 12, I think you'll be extremely happy (unless you suck at poker). If we get A LOT of volume, I could even give you additional benefits starting at month 13 and the benefits of the Cooperative should exceed that of the best rakeback site. But there are a lot of things that need to happen between here and there.

I have no idea how much interest this is going to generate. I'm hoping this will make you feel more comfortable and help get US poker going again. If not, I only wasted a few hours of my time, and I can just scrap the whole idea and become a "regular" affiliate like anyone else. TBH, Plan "B" will be much less work for me. But I love the game of poker and would like to see it take off again in the US. Also, I hate it when I think someone screwed me over and got the best of me. So F.U. DOJ!

It's win-win. Well technically it's like the photo: fail (poker haters) - win (you) - win (me, after 12 months) - win (poker sites).

Send an email to me at doubleflypoker@gmail.com if you're interested. I probably need a minimum number of people interested, otherwise we'll go with Plan B.

2011-08-01T08:33:00.001-04:00

I started putting up ads on my site over the weekend. I'm quite disappointed at what Google thinks appropriate ads for my site are. In between my most recent post and the previous post is an ad for gold investing. WTF?!? This is a POKER BLOG!!! Maybe they are keying in on that Flavor Flav post I did a while back. And the second ad I see is for a trade school - ITT Tech. I guess they are telling everyone to go get a job. F U Google!!! I'm going to see how things go for a few months, and if I can't even buy a couple of cheezburgers, I'm just going to ditch it. I feel so dirty.

And can I tell you how much I hate this Blogger software? Somehow, it deleted my "Awful Idea" post, and now I have to rewrite the whole friggin' thing! Aaaagh!!!

Well, weight loss was a complete disaster this month I weighed in at 232.1. That week-long visit from our out-of town guests really wrecked me. I had basically lost no weight thru the first half of the month, and that was too much for me to make up. I actually got to my target of 229 a few days ago, but I seem to have ballooned back up. I vaguely remember promising to post something embarrassing, if I fell below my "2% a month pace." I think I may have to work my way up to progressively more embarrassing, so I'll just start with this...

That is my hairy nipple. It's kind of embarrassing/freakish, and I always feel weird about walking around shirtless (oh yeah - and also because of my huge gut and the weird birthmark I have all over my shoulder). It is probably the weirdest feature of my body. Well, other than my hairy anus, but that's a story for another day. And I'm not taking pictures of that... I wouldn't want Google to start posting links to bizarre fetish sites. Or do I???

At least some streaks keep going on...

(For the new blog readers out there, that's 35 consecutive months of making money playing online poker.) F U Idiot Congressmen who think poker is not a game of skill!

2011-07-31T09:52:00.001-04:00

Today, I want to talk about a topic that I've never seen mentioned before in poker, and that's BANKROLL LEVERAGE. Having been a finance guy, you don't measure success JUST by the absolute dollars you make, or your ptbb. When it comes to money, it's all about the RETURN (and an adjustment for risk, but that's another can of worms). So if you take $100K and make $15K a month, that's a 15% a month return. Sexy! But not quite as impressive as having a $10K bankroll and making $15K a month. 150% return a month! I can take the other $90K of my money and use that to make money somewhere else. Next to 150% a month, 15% is NOT so sexy. I get better leverage (as well as better diversification). There's no reason why you can't apply finance saavy to something as "crude" as poker - a business is a business after all.

Since Black Friday hit us, you now have to factor in something else - a sizable risk of loss on your capital. If you play on a US site, you probably need to factor in a 5% a month risk that the DOJ comes in and shuts down your site, with your money on it. That makes it even more silly to keep a lot of money online... because the baseline goes from being a 0% return to a -5% return. It's fine to keep some money online when my return is going to be over 100% a month. But you have to be a retard to keep A LOT of money online when your baseline is -5% and you make 15% on top of that. Hmm... a 5% chance of losing up to 100% vs making 15%. You might as well just invest in your Uncle Cletus's Used Panties From Fat Chicks mail order business.

If you are going to play poker as a BUSINESS post-BF, you should figure out what kind of return you're making on your bankroll (including pending cashouts). And try to optimize that. Some things you can do include:
* playing with a minimal bankroll. Just think of it as an automatic stop out, when you run bad. If you need to redeposit, people will pay you a vig.
* moving down in stakes if your win rate is almost double what it is at the higher stake - similar winnings, half the bankroll.
* playing on sites with fast cashouts. A site taking only 3 weeks to cash out vs taking 6 means you have half as much cashout money online (on average).
* playing on sites with multiple cashout methods. For example, on Lock Poker, you can simultaneously have a cashout from their poker side and their casino side. I'm hearing similar rumors from sportsbook poker sites, but I don't know for sure.

Online poker is still profitable - you just have to be smart about money management to make the most of it.

2011-07-30T09:00:00.001-04:00

I can't seem to stop blogging. Mrs. Fly could be buck-naked eating a porterhouse for two, G could have figured out how to get porn on streaming Netflix, and D could be walking towards a filthy public toilet, and all I want to do is blog. Mrs. Fly can't eat a steak that fast anyway. It's a nice relaxing "time to myself" from a busy day. And even tho I've told you guys a few times in the past that I was going to stop, you keep coming back. It's always nice nice when others appreciate your hobby.

Now that I realize I have an addiction, I think I should try and make the most out of it. I've had a bunch of offers to rent ad space on my blog in the past, but I've always declined. A few times, it's been because I had no idea who they were, and I thought they might put some weird virus/hacking software on everyone's machine. But lately, I've been getting offers from people representing actual poker companies. I suppose if they were randoms wanting to put some weird virus/hacking software on everyone's machine, that's exactly what they would say. Hmm....

But maybe it's something about the 15K hits the blog gets a month. At the end of the day, I hate giving up control of any part of the blog. So I came up with an idea...

Then he got an idea. An awful idea. The Grinch got a wonderful, *awful* idea!

Seriously tho, it's something that could benefit me, and something that COULD BENEFIT YOU (assuming you like to play online poker). (later post)

2011-07-29T11:00:00.015-04:00

I can't believe I finally got my second friggin' Carbon check. I requested it 6/20, approved 7/26, and received today. I guess there was a very small part of me that was thinking I was never going to see the money again. I have no idea why I would think that, since they told me 4-6 weeks, and it's been... 4-6 weeks. Shocker. But it just goes to show you what reading 2+2 regularly will do to you. So now I've had SIX successful Merge cashouts in the last 2.5 months (all near the max). A SEVENTH is allegedly "approved" and "on the way." If you're nimble you can make post-BF your new BFf. (later post) Apparently, they have these gift cards now for transactions under $1,000 and these take less than 2 weeks. I have no idea - just something I heard.

But in these weird times, having any kind of poker money in limbo doesn't feel good. Especially since most of us have money still on FT that now looks like is under 35 cents on the dollar. Ouch. I had previously told you guys in my Post BF Money Management Tips not to play more on a skin than you can cash out (i.e. if you can only cash out $2,500 every 6 weeks, stop playing once your bankroll reached your base bankroll + $2,500). You should then play on another site or skin. What's the point of building up a massive bankroll when you can't cash out? And maybe this will give the skins even more incentive to improve communications and processing times.

On a related note, I helped another person cash out of Carbon Poker. It was someone who signed up through me, so I felt a responsibility to cash him out of his original deposit with NO vig. At the time, the RakeTheRake's Carbon Poker Monster race was the best value out there for US players, so that's why I became an affiliate. Now that Merge has scaled back its promotions, the waters are a little murkier. I would definitely recommend a DIFFERENT skin now (later post).

But I'm glad I got a bunch of you to sign up for Merge rakeback accounts (even if it was on Carbon) before they took that away. The rewards on Merge (on any skin) look like they are going to suck unless you put in a moderate amount of volume (over $1,000 a month in rake). Thanks to that new rakeback account you opened before deadline (you listened to me, right?), you can play as little as you want and still get your 35% (plus a $10K rake race). And it cost you nothing to get that FREE OPTION FOR LIFE! (Well, you may need some minimal amount of play to keep the account open, but whatever).

I'm not going to lead you guys wrong... well, most of the time. Eh hem.

2011-07-27T09:00:00.001-04:00

Congrats to Jade Lane for "winning" the $800+K bad beat jackpot last week - his quad tens was worth a cool $286K. And M/TClark was also at the table, and got $29K. Since then, I think the BBJ got hit two more times, so it got to about $10K. That got me to thinking about the BBJ's effect on the games.

On a previous post, I showed why overall, the BBJ was +EV for me, and for most other full ring regs. However, when the BBJ is close to zero, you are basically paying around an extra 45% more in rake. Now we're talking about something equivalent to playing on PokerStars.fr or PokerStars.it, except there aren't that many French or Italian fish. CQLB?!? (that's WTF?!? in French) Is this really how I want to spend a few free hours? And it's not going to give the casual player any additional incentive to play. Altho I suppose the fish may be so clueless, they may think $10K is still a lot of money.

Someone on 2+2 had estimated the average BBJ jackpot before it hits is going to be around $250K. Empirically, that seems about right, but I'll ask the Merge folks at some point for some more BBJ data (whenever I get around to sending the email and whenever they get around to answering it). So when the BBJ is around $500K, you are getting about a 50% reduction in rake paid (after factoring in your ev of the BBJ). Considering you can get almost 50% of your rake back, that's like playing RAKE FREE! That just makes it super-enticing for a high volume reg to play.

Unfortunately, now, the opposite is true, so not only will this be unattractive to fish, it will also drive out all the meh regs (who know that they are meh regs). Because the rake structure on the small stakes games are really hard to beat if there are few fish or many regs. The rake alone at NL100 is around 20ptbb for a full ring table, and add another 9ptbb for the BBJ. If you are sitting at a table full of regs, you have to be pretty delusional to think that your awesome poker skill is going to make up the 29ptbb the table has to pay to the casino.

For me, it's not like I had ever seen a red cent off of the BBJ in the past, and I was still able to make money. So it's not like I *NEED* the BBJ to play. It just makes it less exciting and more of a "grind" because of the huge cost structure involved. But don't despair. It seems to me that a majority of the 6max games are non-BBJ. And I think any well-rounded poker player needs to know how to play both games. So give that a try when the BBJ is super-low.

2011-07-26T09:00:00.005-04:00

This past weekend, we went to our first Texas Rangers baseball game. Someone had given us tickets, so it was an opportunity to experience yet another "Dallas" attraction. I had always thought Arlington wasn't a great part of town, but I was pleasantly surprised at how clean and pretty the area was. Cowboy Stadium is next door, and the Six Flags park and Hurricane Harbor are a few blocks away. It's a pretty nice old-fashioned ballpark. It looks nice by itself, but looks a little strange right next to the glass and steel Cowboys Stadium.

The day didn't start off well... it was Josh Hamilton jersey day, so the first 10K kids 12 and under got a replica jersey. Hey! We have TWO of those! ka-ching! Unfortunately a very active morning in the pool caused the whole family to wake up late from our naps. Mrs. Fly didn't care about getting the free jersey (since we would have to show up at the ballpark 2 hours early), so we didn't set any alarms. But that just meant we didn't have to sit in the 100 degree sun for two hours. It only took like 15 minutes and the whole family was sweating. The box office lady said these were "nice seats" (for busto seats - but hey! they were free!), but the seats were exposed to the sun for about the first hour of the game. After the sun went down, it was actually very cool with the breeze (even tho it was still in the mid-90s).

The ballpark has a very nice family feel to it. The only stadiums I had ever been to were Shea Stadium (a hovel), old Yankee Stadium (less of a hovel) and new Yankee Stadium (pretty sweet). As you may imagine, Yankee Stadium has more of a commercial feel. I was surprised that you were actually allowed to bring soft-sided coolers into Rangers Stadium. Before the Rangers took the field, they had a bunch of local little league kids stand on the field and get an autographed ball from the players at each position. It seems that if you are not the New York Yankees, you actually have to do more community outreach to get people in the stands. And most nights, they seem to have some sort of giveaway or promotion or entertainment (like fireworks). Even with the giveaway, the stadium was not full. At Yankee Stadium, the ticket just says, "get in and sit your ass down."

My original plan was to stay for 5 innings. The game started at 7:05PM, which was a little late for D to stay thru the whole game. I knew I was in for a long day when after the second batter D said he wanted to go home. And two innings later, G said he wanted to go home. And of course, because of the heat, D drank all of his large beverage. Not sure if you remember about his small bladder. So about 30 minutes into the game, he says he has to go to the potty and of course I'm cringing because if I had to rank the top GROSSEST public bathrooms, "ballpark" would have to be right up there.

The first two stalls were a complete disaster, so I walk to the handicapped stall (so that the two of us can fit comfortably), and there was a guy waiting in front. Just as I get there his young DAUGHTER walks out from just having used the toilet. A GIRL! YES!!! She HAD TO have sat down, so I'm in the clear! It feels like I just won the Bad Beat Jackpot. I gleefully walk D into the stall, look at the toilet, and all I can think is, "dude, how the f*ck could you let your baby girl sit on that!?!" I'm pretty sure that girl is going to end up on the pole. So I had to revert to my unofficial part-time job and start cleaning. This is what it must feel like to be the lowest of Indian castes, except without the benefit of being able to sell your kids.

The game was a brisk pitchers' duel thru 5 innings and then the Blue Jays scored a run. Mrs. Fly got so excited that someone finally scored (did something - anything!) that she started cheering. Loudly. That's when I knew we had to leave. Fast. I didn't want to find out first-hand if it's true that people in Texas all carry.

But overall, the family had a good time, and at the end of the day, that's all that matters.

2011-07-25T09:41:00.000-04:00

About a month ago, my eyes felt particularly tired, and I think it was from having to dart them from table to table for long stretches of time on my 30" monitor. I like tiling the tables because I like to know what is happening at particular tables... in particular the higher stakes tables I play. So after a few days of this, I decided to look into an additional piece of software. Something that might help me reduce the amount of sudden eye movement.

The last few weeks, I had been tinkering with a new piece of software called StackAndTile. Basically the concept is that you have a main stack you put all your tables in. And once you click "check" or "raise," the table automatically gets moved into a predefined grid (that you determine). So your main stack are all your hands for preflop play, and any hands that see a flop get moved into the grid, so that you can watch those tables more carefully. That's just how I set mine up - you can also have tables go into the grid whenever you get dealt hole cards. But considering my VPIP is between 15 and 18 for FR, it means most of the time, I can keep my eye on one place. You can move a "must watch" table permanently into the grid by pressing a hotkey. This program works over multiple sites... so if you want to play 4 Bodog tables, 4 Merge and 4 Party tables, the software manages the tables.

Now, I'm not saying this product is perfect. I guess some combination of the various pieces of software I use... sometimes causes the tables not to pop up correctly. So it's very important you have a way of cycling thru the tables (you can do this several ways). I can do it either thru MergeKeys or StackAndTile. It actually took me about 3 weeks to get the playability feeling *somewhat* close to the way I want it. The two main things I'm missing is that I wish I had a "betpot" script that worked 100% on Merge (I have yet to find it on 2+2), and on the StackAndTile side, it would be nice if a table in the grid returned to the stack automatically once the hand is over. Right now, the table returns to the stack only when I click "fold." But I guess around half the hands the other guy folds, so every so often, I need to click the "stack all tables" hotkey to put everything back in place. But these are minor details.

The pricing is a little steep... $17.95 a MONTH for the full version and $8.95 a MONTH for the small stakes version. You get 3 months free by buying a year. The writer (Greg Nice on 2+2) is very helpful, but we have a difference of opinion on the pricing. We had been having this back-and-forth about how only a small subset of the population is going to be interested in this product at this price level. But at the end of the day, I just made $15K last month grinding, part of which was due to my new increased efficiency. More importantly, my eyes feel less tired. I think I can afford to ship him $17.

Here's a demo video:

If that looks interesting to you, then check it out. There's a free 3 week trial so it couldn't hurt. And if you use the coupon code "DOUBLEFLY," you get an additional 10% off.

All I'm getting out of this is 6 months free (and I guess the 10% off once I use my own coupon code). But I write about new things I find useful anyway, so Greg throwing in those 6 months is just gravy. As with most industries, it's very important to keep up with technology, lest you get left behind.

Speaking of which, HoldEm Manager 2 is finally open for beta testing... Ruh Oh! (later post)