It's been a while...

 So we haven't spoken in a while. How are you doing? That's nice. Anyhooo...
The last time we spoke, I was on my way to Las Vegas and in the midst of some run bad (a.k.a. play bad, downswing, crap burgers). Right before I went to Vegas, my laptop decided to put a stop to my poker playing and overall Internet usage by having an aneurysm. I have been without Internet access (on my laptop) or over a month, 6 weeks to be precise and to be honest I haven't gone through the DTs. I think the time off from poker was good and gave me time to do other things, like reading, exercising, laundry...

  I will hold off from getting everyone caught up to date on my life.

  So a few days ago I received a new laptop and put Cake poker (juicy stakes) on so that I will be up and ready to roll in to the run good. My family and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of food and alcohol. Today I was given a day off and decided to make a trek out to the local casino for some hot 1-2 live NLHE action. The first 2 hours were quite stale and pretty soon I was down $180. I didn't lose any huge pots, just constantly missing flops and having other players call my c-bets. Finally I was dealt AQ suited in LP and raised 3 limpers to $12. I flopped top 2 pair and had the UTG limper donk in to me for about 1/2 the pot. I min raised and he called only to donk the turn which was a low brick card. the pot had grown and I just raised all in. He thought for a moment and called with his worse 2 pair. The river was kind and I got back to even. That's why you don't limp call a raise preflop with A5o out of position. An orbit later I pick up JJ in MP and raise to open to $10. I get one CCer on the button and the SB, a bad LPP 3 bets to $30. I have the 2 villains covered (SB just by a little) and decide to call and see the flop. The button obliges and WHAMO- Jc 6c 3s. The SB C-bets $50 and I am in no mood to call with a flush draw out there. I raise to $100 and the SB calls with a confused look on his face. I am now putting him on pocket 10s, or Queens through Aces. There's a chance he could have AcKc here because he's a passive player without the present nuts, but that doesn't matter because I flopped a monster.
  The pot now has $290 in the middle and there's no way I am doing anything, but shoving just about any turn if given the chance. The turn is the 5c and SB checks. I go all-in and he is dumbfounded. I can only put him on an overpair and more likely than not, he has a big club in his hand which must be the only reason he's even considering this call. By the way I have played this hand, I have a set or a King high flush at least. How can he consider this call with a non-club overpair? Well, he takes 5 minutes and even asks if I will show after folding. I don't respond and he unhappily folds. I give him a little consolation by saying that I had him beat. He tells me that he had pocket Queens with no club.

Anyways, I end my 4 hour session soon after and leave up $170 which is nice.

Hopefully this will be signs of good poker things to come because October sucked some major donkey balls for my NLHE game. The good news is that I am still learning and have been getting much better at not tilting. Just let the game come to you, don't force it.
Have fun and I will talk to you soon.

September results (Good God!)

  As you can see, the month started off rather well, and then I hit a combination of runbad, play bad, and perhaps variance. I was happy to finally finish up, albeit for very little. This was the 2nd month that I have been focusing on my online NLHE game more serious than ever before. I started off August as a bad, cold calling, LAG and managed a winning month. I began shaving off the LAG image throughout September, yet had hands like KK<QQ, AA<KK, trip 9s lose to flush on the river (standard) KK<AA, all of these all-in pots either when I was ahead or preflop.

  I went back on to Deuces Cracked to watch some micro stakes NLHE videos and felt as though I was gaining some good info. I watched the 2nd series of "New Kid on the Block", by Sean Nolan and began another more recent series. I have been posting more hands on 2P2 forums and have been "grunching" a lot more hands as well to see if my thought process is in line with others. I still have a long ways to go before I feel comfortable with my game, especially when it comes to the prospect of moving up to NL10, not only from a BR perspective, but many other facets as well. Bad results have been hard to deal with at times and I can see myself tilting much more than I had hoped for at this point. It's obviously not the money as NL4 is nothing compared to amounts I have won or lost in the past. It's the thought that I suck at poker. I went through this a bit, if you recall from earlier blog entries, while learning LHE. My results had some big swings and I would live and die with each session, which is not healthy in any regard. I am more frustrated than ever because I am starting at the lowest level and having a difficult time being a winning player. When I look up results for some of the other names I am up against, they all are major losing players. The one consolation so far is that I have only played about 12,000 hands since August 1st and that is quite a small sample size to go off of.

  I am hoping to continue the process of truly learning NLHE and feeling confident in my game, so that if and when federal legislation is passed, hopefully by 2014, I will be ready to grind out some cheeseburgers. Oh well. Thanks for reading and I hope to hear from any of you out there. I will be off to Vegas in a little over 2 weeks so I hope ladyluck has some good things in store for me there.
Auf Widersehen!

Scotch & Cigars

If you've ever read my blog before, you'll probably remember that I like a good scotch to drink and occasionally a nice, light cigar (preferably robusto). Last year when I went with some friends to Las Vegas, I really looked forward to a cigar bar called Casa Fuente. It's right near the bottom of the escalator near the Forums Shops inside of Caesars. The have some nice scotches to match your cigar as well as some specialty drinks that they are known for. The day I went with 4 other friends was memorable not only for the cigars, scotch, and comraderie, but for the fact that Dick Butkus was signing autographs across from the cigar bar in a sports memorabilia shop. My friends and I got the chance to meet him and take some pictures.

  This year, I will be traveling to my spiritual home in the desert once again, but not with a group. Originally I wanted to go with my wife, as she is a big fan of Las Vegas, but with 3 kids all under the age of 6, it's rather difficult to get child care even for a 4 day jaunt. Instead, I will be making the pilgrimmage alone. Yes, my wife trusts me, which she has every reason to. I love you honey!
I am already feeling the excitement of Vegas and am looking up other Scotch bars that I can relax in. I cam across this list, which is reassuring and will go well with my intention of eating some nice steaks. I had never heard of the Freakin Frog before and am looking forward to making it out to the UNLV campus if time permits to taste some of the owners myriad of scotches.

 The last time I was in Vegas with my pseudo bachelor party-like amigos, we did a lot of group activities, such as eating, drinking, gambling, and gambling. No, I didn't go to a strip club! I love you honey! During that trip, I missed out on 3 important things that I wanted to accomplish while in Las Vegas. Playing poker, drinking scotch, and sipping a big gulp sized Pina Colada poolside right after breakfast. This trip will be a redo, if you will, in order to check those things off and enjoy some relaxation time, sans children. I love my 3 kids more than anything else, but one does need some "me time".

  Well, I'm sure you get the drift of this post, so I will bid you adieu, as I need to get back to researching things to do on my Las Vegas trip. Auf Wiedersehen!

August Results

So August was officially my first month of seriously focusing on NLHE for online poker. I posted quite a bit in the micro full ring NLHE forums on 2+2 and reread through Ed Miller's No limit Holdem-Theory & Practice. I started off the month rather well, and then hit some terrible coolers in my last 500 hands. At one point, I lost trip 9s to a flush on the river which in itself, is no real cooler other than the fact that the villain in the hand check raised the flop with a Queen high flush draw and shoved the non-flush turn for more than 1/2 his stack. The very next hand, I flopped a set of 8s and got a player to shove all-in on the turn once again, but he had 2 pair and a nut flush draw. He missed his flush, but hit an Ace on the river to make a better full house. That combined with pocket Kings running in to sets made the end of August quite disappointing. The following graph doesn't include about 1,000 hands at the beginning of the month due to some hand history problems, but I was up almost 3 buy-ins at that point.

  My plan for September is to not look at any results purposefully and just focus on making good decisions. I find myself thinking about my session results which skews my decisions making when up against a player with a large stack of chips in a big pot. I played my first September session last night and still am making mistakes. I hope to be much better by the time I fly to Vegas near the end of October. Thanks for reading and have fun.

Changes--Poker Blog

  As I attempt to take NLHE more seriously and actually read up on strategy, post in the 2+2 forums, and basically start all over again at the lowest online levels, I find that I am forced to take a long look at myself not only as a poker player, but as a person. I have described in past blogs, that I tiled very easily when playing poker. That has improved over the years, but not as much as I would like due to the fact that I approached losing sessions as an indictment of my overall ability which is a ridiculous thing to do. I would go from bubble to bubble of tilt, so to speak rather than really making a concerted effort to change my way of thinking so that I wouldn't allow this to happen. It was obviously challenging to do so when running bad, playing bad, losing money, or all of the above.

  I believe that I mentioned a few posts back that I have been "gambooling" a bit more when I go to a nearby casino that doesn't have a poker room. I've been playing the $10 slots and winning, luckily. This was my attempt at an exercise in learning not to care about losing money. I would limit myself to the amount I could play or lose and although I wanted to win, the point was to let go of being afraid to lose money. Now this was just one small step in trying to change my outlook on poker and there isn't much strategy in playing a slot machine. It was a very basic step in disassociating myself from playing scared. There were times when I lost $400, to $500 in a matter of 10 minutes. Luckily I won a bunch of money which allowed me to continue playing slots as well as take that money and play poker at my local casino.

  The one problem with not caring about the amount of money is the slippery slope of playing well. In poker, the basic bottom line is to win money. I don't want to go to the opposite extreme and just play wild because I have no value for money (which has not happened). I began focusing on NL4 online, which is basically playing the smallest stakes on CAKE poker. $4 is the maximum buy in to start with, and the big blind is .04 cents. As I have stated in past posts, I have played NLHE before and even won some money in a tournament soon after Black Friday, but I have quite a bit of work to do, not only to get the fundamentals of the game in to my brain, but to then catch up to where the above average player is. The last part is going to be the big challenge. given the fact the I don't have as much free time to spend studying and playing poker. So far I winner at NL4 since I made an effort to play better and learn, but recently have had some tough hands that cost me 4 buy ins. Combined with a 2 buy in loss at the live tables last week, my focus of not valuing money at the poker table has been faced with some resistance. 2-3 years ago, I would have had some major blowups and tilting behavior, but this time around, I had less of a blow up or tilting behavior. I still tilted a little, but nothing like before. I consciously told myself that I needed to focus on making good decisions and not looking at the win or loss. It worked for a while, but I still allowed my emotions to get the best of me at times.

  One thing I am doing this week is to take more time to post in the poker forums so that I can keep my mind on making good decisions and learning about common situations that will arise. If I just try plugging on and playing poker, I may not learn the fundamentals as well as I would like. The other thing that is more of a long term challenge for me is to not look at my results when playing online. I have the auto rebuy set and keep the HUD display over my stack. There are times, that I have to check how much I have in a hand, but that won't give me a clear idea of where I am at win/loss wise. Beginning in September I am going to make an effort not to look where my bankroll is at so that I can just focus on making good decisions in each hand. I don''t expect to be completely successful, but you have to start somewhere.

Online Poker update

It has been a while since I have given anything resembling a update for my online poker challenge. Right after Black Friday, I decided to cash in some gold cards on Cake poker, which at that time was one of the few online poker sites that US players could use for real money games, and grind my bankroll up Ala Chris Ferguson style. I didn't plan on following all of his rules, but it would be an interesting test, given the fact that any winnings would be gravy and online poker legislation was not going to be happening anytime soon. Things were rocky at first, especially as I dove in to NLHE, but by the end of the year I had stopped playing poker as much as I would have liked. I didn't feel serious about keeping my game up and being a stay at home dad was becoming more and more challenging itself as my 3 sons were all toddlers.
  I still was playing poker on CAKE from time to time, but it was at the lowest stakes and I was basically maintaining my $50ish bankroll by earning rakeback for the amount I lost, which came mostly at LAGGy NLHE play. In the middle of the summer, I decided to start rereading Ed Miller's NLHE book, No Limit: Theory & Practice as well as looking at the NLHE forums in 2+2. Once I began to refocus my game, things immediately got better with respect to my winnings.

 Since July 12th, I have won around 12 buy ins at NL4 (which is $4 max-100 BBs) over the course of 4,000ish hands. I plan on moving up to NL10 when my bankroll hits $250. I am currently at $150ish in my bankroll and would like to see where my win rate is after 10,000 more hands. Hopefully I came have some more leaks plugged over the next 2 months so that I won't get fleeced when I go out to Las Vegas in late October. On a side note: I have been playing a good deal of slots at the local casinos as a way to let go of my fear on losing money and slots are a good way to lose money. The only problem is that I am winning a lot more than I am losing. I won $700 earlier in the summer, another $300 in July, and then hit a jackpot of $1,400 a week ago. The trick is to play the $10 slots rather than the .25. You will lose more, but when you win, ho ho ho ho....when you WIN!!!

Deregulation--1987-1988 The rise of Alan Greenspan

 Here is the 3rd rough drat installment of my financial crisis/online poker piece. Obviously I have yet to get in to the online poker part. just as a reminder, this is a rough draft that needs corrections. Thank you for any feedback.



  The Savings and Loan crisis of the mid 80's was a fresh wound when the calls for deregulation started up again. Like previous financial crashes, the S&L debacle could have been a reminder that unrestricted behavior on the part of banks without supervision will most likely cause financial destruction on some level, but because the cleanup was done in an efficient manner compared to those catastrophes before, opponents of regulation could point to the inexperience of smaller institutions and their risky behavior that put them closer to the inevitable tipping point of insolvency. Large Wall Street S&Ls took financial hits as a result of the crisis, but came out on top having rid themselves of regional competition. This gave them clear site of a new target in the global financial sector and they had a relatively new weapon at their disposal in the form of the growing derivatives market. The $160 billion bailout of the S&L industry did little to slowdown the money churning lobbying effort of the large banks to seek further deregulation and in 1987 they had a new hero. On June 2nd, 1987, then President, Ronald Reagan nominated Alan Greenspan as the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Alan Greenspan was a staunch advocate of deregulation and was in favor of letting the market take care of itself, while his predecessor, Paul Volcker was against allowing barriers to be torn down that would allow large banks to become even larger.

The Treasury Department at that time, like Greenspan, was in favor of allowing banks to get bigger in order to better compete with financial institutions around the world, namely Europe and Japan. George D. Gould, Under Secretary of the Treasury, was reported in the New York Times as saying,

''If we are going to be competitive in a globalized financial-services world, we are going to have to change our views on the size of American institutions,'' Mr. Gould said. ''People are going to have to accept that some big American financial institutions will need more capital to be competitive.''

Those who sought out less restriction believed that as the financial products became more complicated, the competition for capital investments became unbalanced due to the lack of regulation in foreign markets. The United States no longer had the largest banks in the world which was what many on Wall Street were looking to regain. Gould cited more lenient restrictions on the part of foreign banks in areas of capital to asset ratio as well as their ability to offer a wider variety of underwriting services to go with the everyday banking that had put them ahead of their American counterparts. Asian countries were experiencing a higher than normal growth rate and Japan was in the midst of their own bubble with rising home prices, low interest rates, and easily obtained credit.

Hans Angermueller, vice chairman of Citicorp said, ''We have been the beneficiaries of living in a relatively insulated big economy, and only recently have we found out that the Japanese can make automobiles better than we do, We are discovering that the same thing may apply in the financial services area, and to meet that challenge, we need to get leaner, meaner and stronger. We don't do this by preserving the heartwarming idea that 14,000 banks are wonderful for our country.'' Greenspan is later reported as saying that given the current banking environment, ''I do not have a fear of undue concentration of banking powers.''

 The Congressional Research Service released a report in June of that year on the subject of commercial banks vs. investment banks, in which they reiterate the reasons for supporting Glass-Steagall,  citing "...the distinctions between loans, securities, and deposits are not well drawn."
Banks that would be able to issue securities and take deposits are in nature at odds within those activities. Securities have a larger risk associated with them and institutions that take deposits are intended to minimize risk.
 The report acknowledged how American banks were losing market share to their deregulated foreign competitors and it advocated for legislation that wold reduce the "conflicts of interest".
  "The securities activities that depository institutions are seeking are both low-risk by their very nature, and would reduce the total risk of organizations offering them by diversification."

 

  Later that summer, Congressmen, Charles Schumer wrote an Opinion piece in the New York Times speaking out against repealing Glass-Steagall and the possible negative effects of large Wall Street banks. Schumer responded explained that in his opinion, Japanese banks had grown because of a similar regulatory protection from outside competition. Schumer also cited the fact that American banks had seen more profit in the mid 80's than that of the their large foreign competitors and warned of the classic risky behavior  in financial markets.

 "The banks’ proposals also defy common sense. Given the chance to speculate, some institutions are going to gamble poorly. This in turn will undermine confidence in the whole banking system. The recent experience of the thrift industry reinforces this lesson." Schumer goes on to say, "A bailout of the much larger commercial banking sector, if it got into a similar problem, would make the recapitalization for thrifts seem insignificant...Today's bankers promise they will be more careful. But to accept their assurances runs counter to the simple principles of fairness and common sense."

 It seems that Schumer, who was an advocate for the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, had a bit of a turnaround in light of the rampant fraud and gambling of the Savings and Loan crisis.

 In mid October 1987, called Black Monday, global financial markets plummeted, starting in Hong Kong and quickly working west like a financial Tsunami through Europe and then the United States. There are many causes that have been cited for the sudden drop, with Program Trading being one of the most popular, in which computers conduct rapid executions of strategies based on inputs. Proponents of this explanation state that once the crash started, those who were holding portfolio insurance derivatives were forced to sell with each down tick movement, hauntingly reminiscent of the stock market crash of 1929.

Economist David Mullins was asked to head the Brady commission for the purpose of investigating the causes of Black Monday. The conclusion directed a great deal of blame on derivative traders and portfolio insurance. 2 years later Mullins was nominated to fill a vacancy for the Federal Reserve board of Governors under George W. Bush until he left to be a part of John Meriwether's hedge fund, Long Term Capital Management. Others attribute the cause to global monetary policies as well as the collapse of the US-European bond markets that had a ripple effect in other areas of the Global financial sector. The Dow Jones fell 508 points (22.61%) which became the largest one day percentage drop since 1916. By the end of the month world markets had fallen from 22% up to, in some cases, 45%. The DJIA did not reach its high of 1987 for another 2 years.

 Despite the tremor in the vastly intertwined global financial markets, Alan Greenspan continued to voice his opinion that Glass-Steagall should be repealed.
"Warning that banks will become the dinosaurs of financial services if the Depression-era law is not repealed, Greenspan said that the Fed believes banking can be tied to securities underwriting without subjecting federally insured deposits at banks to the risks inherent in the stock market."
"The risks can never be fully eliminated, but they can be sufficiently contained to be acceptable," Greenspan said.
In February 1988, the GAO released a statement, summarized by Charles Bowsher (Comptroller General of the US) answering the concerns raised by Congressmen Edward Markey, as to the possible outcomes with the repeal of Glass-Steagall. In the view of the GAO, the integration of the banking and security shows how the Glass-Steagall Act may be antiquated, yet the nature of financial innovation may not be entirely stable.
  It's  "...potentially dangerous because it has not allowed for the systematic consideration for the legal and regulatory structure needed to better reflect the realities of today's financial marketplace."

 The statement summarizes the supporting legislation needed in the opinion of the GAO in order to preserve the safety and soundness of the banking system as well as protecting the consumer’s interest.  Maintaining an adequate level of capital reserves in order to cushion against losses and keeping the bank holding structure in order to preserve liquidity are the classic problems in most cases of financial downturn. The GAO raises the question of how far should the Federal Reserve go in times of financial crisis. The report goes on to state that "Ultimately, the degree of comfort that one has with the repeal of Glass-Steagall depends on one's faith in the regulators' abilities to effectively oversee the newly allowed activities..."
This report reflects the concerns of a changing financial sector that, like technology, was growing no matter the obstacle. The underlying concern raised was how new legislation would better support and protect the changes of a diverse market place. The GAO warned of the possible confusion and complexities of a cutting edge investment area that could end in a crash much similar to 1929 despite its technological leaps. What many knew, unwilling to admit was that for all the changes the world had seen, ultimately human desire for riches may be it's undoing.