July - Recap

Well, July has passed me by. Vegas is gone, doubt of me not being able to succeed is partially gone, and im back in New Hampshire for the remainder of the summer. I played this morning and absolutely demolished :). In reg speeds I didnt lose a single match, even in 4men, not one (excluding flips with my partner). And in turbos I only lost 2, both in 4mans, one of which we won and one which we lost, so I decided to stop for the day, call July a month, and make this post.

So my last post was ridiculously long, so I really will try to make this one shorter:

Monthly figured:


Profit from playing: $6,737
Profit from FPP: $1,364
profit from staking: $700
-------------------------------
Total Profit: $8,802


monthly graphs:


July-unfiltered: 720 $8.99 $107 7% $6,471






2 mans ( > 50): 455 $3.83 $107 4% $1,743






4mans: 255 $18.53 $112 14% $4,725







So a few notes on things above, my 2mans is filtered for >$50 cause I played some $10s with some students of mine. My records have my sharkscope as being off by $655 (too low) for the month, which is a surprisingly decent number to end at, cause it started off being off way more than that.


Anyways, I spent wayyyyyyy too much this month, and August will be better but September will prolly be close to the same figure (close to 5k this month, expecting 3-4k for Sept. but that includes rent, flight to france, new TV, etc.) but after that I want to curb it a ton. I talked to my new (soon to be) financial advisers yesterday, and that was a pretty cool prospect, I really am looking forward to learning how to be alot better with my money and having more put away outside of poker.


Other news, Mel (gf) is coming tomorrow, so im gonna drive up to Montreal to pick her up, and then we get to relax around here and spend time with family, say goodbye to my friends, etc. before we take off Sept. 9th. Other than that, i dont have anything big planned for the month, just alot of little trips and showing her around as it's her first extended stay in the states and the first time she'll be able to visit around New Hampshire and meet more of my friends and what not.


Goals for August:

make ~5k (good goal considering im gonna try not to play too much since the GF is here all month)

make at LEAST 13k VPP (putting me at 180k for the year, so will hit 200k bonus in Sept. for a free $2,000 and then have a shot at 300k for $3,000 by the end of the year)

Spend less than $2,200 (including my plane ticket to France for Sept., this still seems like a TON given im not paying rent at my parents LOL, but we may take a like 8 day trip through Canada and some other stuff, so who knows)



anyways guys, post ran long again :), but I hope you all had a great July, and that August will treat you really well. I'll try to make at least 2 posts in august to keep up to date. Good luck guys, enjoy the upcoming month =],


-Primo

Week 3 - Recap

so it's 4am and I traveled for close to 30 hours today and i'm pretty beat so it wont be too long of a post. As I previously posted I took the last week to go to France and visit my girlfriend and also got the chance to look up a bunch of apartments for the September move, and from what i've seen we should definently be able to get a pretty nice one for our price range which is great, since it will be my new "office". That said it brings up another depressing note cause I can already tell im gonna spend ALOT to get the place setup like I really want it (alot being like 3-5k and consisting mostly of concierging stuff lol). Luckily for me my gf has a ton of really nice furniture, so all I should be responsible for is the refridgerator, TV (which may be tax deductable ;p), and then like a nice TV stand and a desk / computer chair, along with whatever else, maybe a recliner, im not really sure yet.

So i'm really excited for the move now, it's just becoming more and more real to me, and the idea of moving completely away from home and the states in general kind of has me taking poker much more seriously, as I will have nothing to fall back on, it just makes it seem so much more real and strong to me and I think it will help me a ton with motivation. That said im back in Vegas now and TOTALLY not feeling it, im just ready to get home, so I think im gonna buy a plane ticket back for the 24th so I have a few days before I head up to Montreal to get the GF who will be in the states until we ship out to France in early September (maybe the 9th).

Anyways France was great, went out, hung out with some of her friends, traveled around a bit, and went and saw the Rheinfalls with her parents on the swiss/german border, which were pretty awsome.






As for poker I had a really great week and couldn't feel much better about my game overall. I had a few spots where I felt like I was just unfocused and may have tilted off a few buy ins, but I was very happy with my play overall, and my ability to keep it pretty low volume (for my standards). I only played 1-2 hours / day, generally in the mornings while my gf slept cause I was on a weird sleep schedule and kept waking up at 6am euro-time, and almost all of my time was 3-4 tabling. I played a bit extra tonight when I got back, and was pretty swingy but +$415 on the day so I was happy with that. Anyways here's my SS graph for the trip: (15th - 21st)


122 games played
$12.3 average profit
$104 average stake
11% ROI
$1,500 Profit








Played alot more turbos than I normally do (51 turbos / 71 reg speeds), and felt really good and comfortable while playing them, alot more so than I had the past few months, and 3-4 tabling them almost seems easier for me than reg speeds at the lower stack/blind ratios are really easy and straightforward for me and pretty easy for me to pick apart the majority of bad players at those stages (25/50)+. So im feeling great, and planning on getting a TON of volume for the rest of this 1.5x VPP promotion and hopefully end around 25 or 30k VPP for the month (at like 13.8k right now), which should put me in the right spot to hit my 200k VPP bonus towards the end of August assuming I dont move up (which I dont plan on). Anyways, gotta talk to some financial planners and maybe a decent CPA if I can get in touch with them tomorrow to help me plan out everything, especially getting the huge tax breaks of living abroad and also being able to write of a ton of what I buy in the next few months (hopefully specifically in the move-in to my apartment) as poker office stuff, which it will be justified in being categorized as that.


OH YEA, one more thing. I thought alot about this recently, and I guess with my good results and happy mindset have decided to set some goals for myself. Currently i'd state my TRUE net-worth at about -(negative) 45k or so... wow... so weird to think of myself having a negative net worth considering how well I am doing to most people I know my age, but im calculating my "TRUE" net-worth as (Total cash + money in poker sites) - debt, almost all of this is from my student loans, but 7.5k is from my car (which im selling), and like 4k on a CC, and some other misc. stuff. (This does not include my assets, I would add them if my car was paid off or I owned a house or something, but im not counting like my computer, TV, etc., etc. as part of my net-worth). Anyways, my goal, is to have my "TRUE" net-worth be at +50k by May 20th, 2009 (my 22nd birthday). i think this would be a HUGE accomplishment to pay down some debt, and put away / invest some money, as the money I spend doesnt factor into this. To be honest I would probably be happy at having it be at $0, but I am too much of an underachiever sometimes and there is no reason at ALL why +50k shouldnt be possible, so thats the goal im setting for myself, and im hoping I can look back on it in May and see that i've accomplished this. I also think it's really good for me to set some goals to slowly pay down my student loans and other stuff, I realize it's not a great idea to pay it down all at once cause there are much better ways to invest and use your money, but I think if starting in November or so I start just putting $1k / month to start towards all of my debt each month I should see some serious progress, and it would make me feel really good. So that's the plan,

sorry for the super-long (non-poker related) post, good luck at the tables this week of our 1.5x VPP promotion, and try not to sit with me while im tryin to pump out a bunch of tables at a time ;p,



-PrimordialAA

Week 2 (Week 3 mostly off)

ok, so week 2 was not really at all what I / we had hoped for, im still having a great month because of all the staking stuff, etc., but we had hoped to be up like 7k at least by now and preferably moving up to 200s about this time. Current I am up $4875 including everything, but my spending this month has been insane. I paid $700 in rent + $150-ish for utilities for last month, $1100 to ship my car back out (paid a friend to do it, his flight, gas, hotels, + some $$$ for doing it), $200 for refunding my friend's ticket who was going to come out and drive back with me, $974 for my ticket to and from france, $150 for buses and taxis getting to and from LA and LAX, and about $250 for hotel/food here in Frankfurt. All of this is not including my normal food / expenses while living in Vegas, so this is wayyyyyyyyy above any normal month for me as I normally live super-cheap compared to most, so hopefully this doesn't become a recurring theme. But the good news is i've basically paid for almost everything im going to need to, so im freerolling on profits for the rest of the month ;).

I was getting really frustrsated at the end of this past week, and greg is leaving from the 17th to the 21st, so I decided to book a last minute flight to France to visit my girlfriend. So anyways, I didn't get to post yesterday as I was traveling all day (Las Vegas -> LA -> Frankfurt Germany... where I am now, and now we (me and her) will head back to France to her place). Should be a cool / relaxing week, im really glad to be here, depite all the FPP i'll be missing from 1.5x VPP promotion ;p, it'll be good to take a break and hopefully get my mindset back to a decent spot to continue crushing for the last week of the month. I'll still put in some play time over here, maybe 2-3 hrs / day or something if I can find the time, cause I dont have enough saved for the fall yet to take too much time off entirely, but I def. won't be over-doing it while here, im here primarily to relax and ease my mind a bit.

As per the normal lately it seems lol, my SS is off a solid amount this month. It's 895 too low from a 330 4man with psimalive, and chopping 2 110s and losing both flips. Also it's off another 2400 from hokie crushinggggggg me in flips this month, to set me off by a grand total of $3295. Also this last week has really made me question moving up at the end of the month, im still really open to moving up to 200 reg 4mans, but im not sure if i'll be moving up from the 100 / 110 2mans any time soon until maybe the end of august, as I know I can crush these limits and continue to build up my BR without a TON of risk, and right now I really need to be saving and preparing for my first real full-time year in France with no school or anything else so I think it will be better to take the safe route. And yea, at the end of the month I may be mostly rolled for the 200s, but I think it's better for me personally to just hang back for maybe another month until im really showing myself more consistency than just this one month, as my last shots have always been super swingy in one way or another, and it's just not what I need right now. Anyways, i'll see how im feeling and playing when the end of the month rolls around, and keep everyone updated on how France is. Be back the 21st, so hopefully you won't see me online TOO much until then ;), good luck and stay safe,

-Primo

Week 1

So week 1 of having Greg here is almost finished. It's been really cool having him around, we get along well, and have been crushing the 4 mans pretty hard. The last few days we have run soooo bad it's really been sick, and greg will attest to that haha, even so we have played 105 games, are each +$2775, and around making a little over $25 / game / person, which is still super solid. Even so, our volume hasn't been even close to as high as we want it to, and we have been busy doing stuff, so to make our goals we have to step it up and start putting in 25+ games / day. I'd really love to hit 10k by the 15th or 20th of the month, take our trip to lake powell and come back and start crushing 200s.

Other stuff going on in the month, my Stakee/Student (PayPerChase) took down the 22 HU MTT and got top 16 again today which was nice, and is doing really well other than that so thats been cool. We did our first profits chop so im +$700 from that and plan on seeing another $800 from another student's profit chop sometime this month, so those are both really nice to get.

Random:

Put out an offer to pay someone to fly here + gas + hotels + pay them to drive my car back across the country for me, and got someone to do it, so it will cost me a decent amount (a little over $1,000, maybe even closer to $1200) but it would cost me $1145 to ship it and I need it for August when my gf comes out and also can transport the Ps3, TV, and all the other stuff I bought out here back with it. After August though it's getting sold and I'm off to France.

Speaking of France, cwar is like 95% coming to live out there next year, and hokie is also considering it, so it could be a really amazing year coming up, and with good poker friends around i'm sure it will lead to all of us getting alot better and hopefully making some really awsome $$$ out there, like hitting $20k / month would feel so good and open up so many opportunities in my life. I also have been reading one of Greg's Real Estate Investing books and that has got me really motivated to start doing some positive stuff with my money besides just paying down student loans and other debt and we are all considering getting into some investments together so there is alot of really exciting stuff on the horizon of the future for me with money and my future as a poker player. But for tonight we (Me, Hokie, Cwar) are off to the invite-only Pokerstars ME burlesque party, Alessio (stars name) got me 3 extra tickets so we'll probably meet up with him and Dario and see what the Star's parties have to offer :).

Anyways, I hope you guys are all having an awsome month with poker, but also enjoying it as much as I am :), Good luck at the tables, i'll give another update at the end of next week,

-PrimordialAA

A New Month

So first off im really sorry for the lack of updates, have been very unmotivated with blogging lately, but definently plan to do alot more now that stuff will be picking up this month in vegas. As some of you guys know Hokiegreg just got out here and will be living with me for July, which is super cool, and has me really motivated to have a big month. June was kind of a dissapointment, I had an 11k downswing online, lost $1700 playing table games in vegas, and another $1500-2k playing live poker (including like a $550 venetian tournament). I still ended up about 4-5k total but that includes clearing a $1500 bonus.

Goals and plans for this month are pretty big:

Crush a 10k month
Rent jet skiis on lake powell w/cwar and hokie
Helicopter into Grand Canyon and rent ATVs... also w/cwar and hokie
Road trip to San Diego, LA, and San Fran... again with them
Improve on making most of my volume quality playing
put in 10k+ hands of HU Cash (50/100NL) , small I know but it's a start

enjoy the month =]



Anyways i'll keep updating more, hopefully post some pictures of our trip and def. keep track of results and keep everybody updated. Good luck to you all, and hope you have a great July,

-Primo

Monthly recap

So first off, sorry for my lack of posts lately, since the 15th i've been moving constantly, I flew back to New Hampshire, went to UNH to visit some friends, took a trip to turningstone... -1k, then flew to vegas which has been pretty sweet so far, I love it here. I spent the first week here with my family and more or less completely off of poker, although I am like -1.5k at table games lol, but thats just running bad at blackjack I swear ;). My family (Brother, dad, and brother's wife) flew home on Wednesday and since then I have been living with cwar, which has been great. Put in alot of grind-time, got discuss hands and some general theory, and his roomates are great so it's just been alot of fun.

As I had mentioned a bunch in my earlier posts this month, I started off with a -1.7k downswing in the first few days and even though I didnt end quite where I wanted for the month, there were at least 6-10 days where I didnt play at all this month, and I pulled out of my downswing nicely imo. I also shipped a +1.5k day today but I lost about 400 between HU cash and HU Razz, but it was my biggest day this month so im happy with it. Also cashed out 1k today to build my live roll a bit.

Monthly graph here:






Graph was off $3786 this month, so although the graph is a bit deceiving i'm actually +$3193 this month, and I cleared a $1500 bonus earlier on. Anyways after playing more with croix and really getting to know his style more and talking to him on some of the finer points of the plays we are both seeing and making on a regular basis, paired with being able to discuss with cwar lately, im feeling muchhhh more confident with my game and really feel like June can be an awsome month.

On other news Caleb (my roomate for June and old friend from UNH) flew in tonight so I picked him up at midnight, walked the strip for a bit and checked out the casinos and then headed back. Got to cwars around 2am and decided to go to a local casino here with them lol, I pwnedddddddd $5 craps rolls and rolled for like 20 minutes straight without 'crapping out', it was so nasty and fun, +$123 lol. So im back now and it's 5am and I figure I should prolly go to bed and keep on a good schedule, but my goals for June and July still stand at 7k, but I feel like if I keep on top of things and continue to work on my game I can easily definently exceed those.

Good luck with your upcoming months, I hope May was good for everyone, in Poker, and life,

-Primo

Bound for the USA

Well, it's almost time for me to end this 9 month, 2 semester 'vacation' abroad ;p; but I guess the good news is I get to start my real vacation in Vegas, which I am unbelievably pumped for, I mentally build it up more and more for myself every day so hopefully it's that awesome. Bussto'd FTOPS $500 + 35 HU event in the second round when I made a pretty ridiculous shove on the river with 0 chance of winning the pot and also busted the stars $215 HU matches first round but I played pretty well there and the kid just ran insane. Making a decent recovery still on the month, today was pretty meh and I ended down $500-ish, but it could have been worse and I feel really great when playing for the most part lately. The exception being today when I played when I should have been studying for my final.

So that said I passed all of my classes this semester, already got the grade back from my final, so thats good news. Like I said before I started the month -1.7k and am now at -970 on SS, but my scope is off by 2686, so im actually +1716 this month, which is fine for now as we're just approaching halfway through. I mean it's obviously not great for playing $100s, but coming from a bad start, putting in less volume than im used to, etc. i'd say im OK with it. I still plan on hitting 5k from playing though, not counting FPP or the $405 I got from E-check rebates, or the $1500 bonus I cleared this month ;p. So anyways that's the update for now, 5k is the goal, 7k next month and also to move 4k over to FTP to start learning HU NL (plan to 3-4 table $100 NL). Good luck to everyone, my next post will be from the states so I hope you guys are all enjoying what your doing and having good luck at the tables,


-Primo


(oh also, pretty cool cause I didnt even notice, I have only played 143 100 regs this month and I have an 11% ROI which im happy with now that i've seen it, and that's after I dumped $500 in them today. So that is a definite confidence booster and I know a ROI like that is maintained by a ton of people in regs so hopefully I can keep it up as long as I dont push the volume too much)