Adam Winter

broke even this week. Lots of ups and downs. I play some higher buy in games and ran bad, either losing flips/70s or running into monster hands. Also, I went deep in just about every turbo mtt but I have been bubbling everything. Sometimes I get a gut feeling before making a shove that I am going to lose… almost always my gut is right. It’s a weird intuition thing that I should follow more. I did manage to get a 2nd in a 3r180 yesterday which helped. I’m up around 3k this month and only played 2 and half weeks so that’s actually really good.

I have been contemplating making a run for supernova so I can start 2011 that way. However, I have so few vpps right now I’m not sure I’ll make it unless either I move up to higher buy ins, or grind a ton of hours. Right now I need 78,000 vpps to get to SN by the end of the year. That is equivalent to paying $14,200 in rake, or $3550 per month for the last 4 months of the year. I think the only way I could get there is if I start playing a ton of hyper turbos. Even then I’m not sure I will have the time. Unless I win a huge score at the wcoop, I will probably just stick to my grind and keep building my bankroll.

Lately I have had to cashout a lot for bills and various expenses related to moving. My roll is very, very comfortable for the games I play, but it is not comfortable if I want to take shots. I am setting a goal to get my BR over $30k by the end of this year, and over $100k by the end of next year.

Today I won a $12/180 for $592 profit and finished 2nd in a $3r180 for $330 profit. I’m getting much better at $12/180s after playing really badly in them for while. I think I “forgot” how to play certain situations and thus made a ton of mistakes for a while. Time to make some more videos for smart poker training

Sorry about the lack of updates if anyone actually reads this… My girlfriend Dana and I moved to Tempe, AZ. We rented a budget truck which had some problems along the way. The whole ordeal caused us a ton of stress, but we ended up getting a $600 partial refund because of all the issues. We were actually lucky we didn’t blow out a tire and die according to the nice people at J & D Auto, where we were held up for 26 hours.

We are really liking Arizona so far. It’s been super hot, but still very nice weather. Once it cools down later this year we are really going to enjoy the outdoors. Our condo is really nice and our landlords are super nice people and we really like them. I think we got really lucky.

Poker has been going fine. I’ve only played 7 days this month and I’m up ~$1500. I have finished a lot of 2nds and 3rds in tournaments which is nice, but 1st is always much better. Usually 2nd is ~$300 in the games I play, and 1st is ~$500. So the difference adds up. Nonetheless, I’m still really happy with my play lately and I know I’m going to hit a big score again soon. After analyzing my play through half the year, I have played about 5000 games and won a bit over $32,000. If I grind really hard for the rest of the year and get up to 10,000 games on the year, I should easily be at +60k for the year.

Business is up and down. It seems like when one of my websites is doing well, the others not so well. Poker related sites are very hard to make any money from. The reason is because the margins are very small. Most sites make their money by “skimming” as I call it. This is making a very small % from users. This can be done in many ways – offering a service such as intersite-trades and taking a 5% cut, offering rakeback, selling training videos, direct referrals to new poker sites, staking, and other misc. services. I have yet to see a way to make huge money from poker sites. Small money is easy, but big money remains elusive.

Chopped a $33 turbo MTT heads up with jasonfp the other day. We did an even chop of the top 2 prizes which ended up being $3599 each. Today I won a $3 rebuy 180 man for $500 and got some other cashes. Overall in June I won about $7k, a very good result. Hopefully I can keep it up. I definitely ran super duper hot in the $33 mtt so I expect to hit another rough patch soon, even though I was running awful for 3 weeks.

It’s June 10th and 2010 is officially 44% complete. So far this year I am happy with my results on pokerstars, and excited about the rest of the year. The games have been good and even though I still make a lot of mistakes, I’m earning more than I did at my last job. In fact, the first year of my last job’s starting salary I have already earned this year.

Below is my graphs for the year. Note: this is not completely accurate, because I rebuy in tournaments more than average, and thus I have earned ~1k less than the yearly graph indicates.

I was extremely disappointed by the entire last season, and especially the finale of Lost. Why did a great show that lead everyone on such an amazing journey have to end in such an unsatisfying way?

The first 5 seasons were full of so many mysteries, scientific and mythical elements, spirituality, and of course deep character development. The ending simply ignored 3/5th’s of the show and only focused on the spirituality and character elements.

We get no explanation of why the island is magical, why jacob and his brother were special, what the numbers mean, where the island is (on earth even?), etc. etc. I could go on with another 100 interesting things that were major storylines for multiple episodes that were never resolved.

The final resolution is simply once everyone dies, they all end up in a purgatory which leads to a supposed afterlife?

Half the characters killed and tortured others! Many, many times! We’re supposed to believe the only one not worthy of heaven is Linus? What the fuck!? There was killing, torture, cons, beatings, stealing, kidnapping, forced imprisonment, cruelty, etc. etc. Are you fucking kidding me they all go to heaven or some kind of blissful afterlife?

Dana and I got back from Phoenix Saturday after being out there since Tuesday. The weather was terrific – sunny every day and about 90-95 for a high. Mornings and evenings were fairly comfortable at around 70-80.

We drove around downtown Phoenix the first few days and realized the downtown area is very very ghetto. Lots of boarded up houses, graffiti, “massage parlors”, strip joints, bail bonds, loan stores, dumpy fast food places, etc. etc. When we ventured into Tempe and Scottsdale, we liked those areas a lot more.

We found a nice 2 bedroom, 2.5 bathroom condo in southern Tempe, about 4 miles south of ASU. It has a nice community with pools, gym, sand volleyball and tennis courts. The place might be a bit small but it is really nice on the inside, a fair price, and in a really nice area.

We were both super exhausted from all the driving and searching around by the end of the trip. We’re both glad to be back in Madison for now so we can rest easy until moving time.

Today I got 3rd in an $11 turbo MTT for $2487. Sunday night I got 4th in the nightly $23.45 hyper turbo for ~$1550.

Overall this month I’m up almost $6k. If I keep getting good scores I might be able to hit 10k this month. I’ll be in Phoenix for 5 days next week, and I’ve got some other random stuff to take care of, but I should have close to 2 weeks worth of grinding left for this month.

April was a good month, I won ~4825.

Overall I am up ~18200 on the year.

Yesterday I played for around 10 hours and won ~550. Today I made 3 final tables, but didn’t hit anything big, so only a small win of about 150. I keep getting to final tables and losing coinflips, which is super frustrating. I had the chip lead briefly in two 12/180s today and finished 5th and 6th. At both final tables I never got action on my big hands, and then went card dead and blinded down to around 10bbs shoved a medium pair, got called by AJ/AQ and lost.

The Pokerstars SCOOP schedule has been announced and starts on the 2nd of May and I’m looking forward to taking a shot at some of the low buy in tournaments. I’m debating on whether to seek staking for the mid-range buyins (about $100-200). I’m pretty confident in my game, but I’d rather not risk $1000 on large field tournaments where there is such high variance.

Anyways, pokerstars has some cool new tournaments I’m excited about such as the PLO turbo, NL holdem 2x chance turbo, 6max PLO rebuys, NL turbo rebuys, horse, and the 8 game mix.

If you don’t know how to play the 8-game mix, here’s a few videos by pokerstars to explain things:

How to Play 8 Game Mix
How to Play Badugi