Chip Stack Overflow: A Los Angeles Endboss Origin Story

go go go

Are you starting all the way at the bottom? And where are you playing?

glgl!

TY!

Yeah, starting over from the bottom unfortunately(didn't have to be this way). So probably means 2/5/10NL for me. Not sure 2NL is worth it after Stake closing here, gotta look at options. Ignition sucks but probably best for now, and I think I'm gonna check out ClubWPTGold and their California Days.

Ideally I get a job and just hop into the 5/5 or 5/10 games at HP/Hustler/Lucky Lady soon. Haven't had much luck on that front and the job market sucks so probably be grinding up online and transitioning to playing both online and live eventually with the goal of beating both.

Here's my Pooh-bah post if anyone's interested...

Is that still a thing now? lol

Funny to go back and read that now, almost 19 years later! I'm certainly a better player now, but can't say I've worked as hard as I can at everything in life over those years.

surprised to see you'll be focusing on online play despite living where i hear the live cash games are incredible

Few days in and I'm up ~$42 on the 2NL(4NL? max blinds are .01/.02 but max buy-in is $4) tables at ClubWPTGold. Good start and running good but apparently ClubWPTGold rigs it when you're new to the platform, according to our thread here and other places lol, we'll see. I know micros aren't the sexiest but maybe I won't be there for too long and things will get more interesting in a few months.

Fair point, and to be clear, I'm focusing on online right now to rebuild. I wish I could hop into the 5-5 game, or even 1-3/2-3, right now but I don't have the roll or means to reload if I sit with one $100 buy-in and lose it. Once I have the money I'll absolutely be prioritizing playing live here in LA.

A note on playing online: I do want to climb the stakes and be a winner at midstakes and above(if possible, I realize that takes an extreme amount of work - fairly confident I can beat 5-10 live in LA already). Mostly because focusing on live, and especially playing on streams if I'm able to(big if), I'm not sure how much I can improve my game. Also because I love the game and the challenge of testing my limits. Guess that's more dependent on how complacent one becomes vs continued studying/improving though.

Little overdue for an update, but since I'm in micros I figured daily updates aren't all that necessary lol.

So far, so good. Been a little busier than I anticipated so I haven't gotten in as many hours/hands as I'd like. Would love to get over 30k, ideally 40k. I got deferred from plasma which took up a lot of time just getting there and back, so that'll free up time, and hopefully if things go well with poker I can stop doing it altogether again.

I've built up enough to where I'm comfortable buying in full at 10NL for $20 and taking a shot there, so hopefully it goes well. For some reason when I jumped up to 10NL on Stake I ran terrible and couldn't beat it lol, constant roller coaster. Some drunk play mixed in there too but that's no excuse.

Here's my numbers from Stake btw:

Guess they'd look better in a graph but I'm kinda lazy right now. Also I don't have my full numbers for December. I assumed I'd still be able to access the poker client after they locked us out but couldn't. Most of that play was at 100NL/200NL that went about the same as above but some of the hands were at 500NL that didn't go well at all. Is what it is. Also this was all NL, I had quite a few PLO hands, written down in a notebook somewhere. Hit a jackpot there, and rode the lightning up to 500PLO but lost a ton of flips, lost a lot, and swore off PLO for a while.

Right now on ClubWPTGold I'm at ~14k hands, +$191 in profit, so about 68 bb/100 which isn't too bad.

In other news, had a great week in sports betting. Got a little more serious with refining plays and tracking better, and had a good week. Obviously running hot and it's not sustainable but I might take a few bucks from there and toss it on WPTGold as well.

Hope you're all running good as well! Just not against me lol

More of a life update than poker update, picked up a client to help them with some AI/software engineering, not sure how long the gig will last. Could be a week, a month, longer, but good to be working a job however brief using my (non-gambling) skills. And its a cool guy and a fun project. Mostly just been working on my own projects or unpaid stuff. Will be a shot to the bankroll though so I'll probably just exit the micros at this point instead of grinding it up level by level. Maybe take a shot live, but that feels risky since i'll have at best a few buy-ins. I do have a couple recruiter screens in the works, but not getting my hopes up there.

Poker continues to go well too. 20k hands this month with a few days left, I've built the initial $22 stake up to $370, mostly 2NL/10NL/20NL. Funny enough, my "roll" for sports betting has grown faster than poker this month. Had a bonus of $250 from that come in too on BO because I moved up a tier. Trying to grow it some more. System is still working, had another profitable week last week. Been a great month overall. One guy in a Discord I'm in has been red hot on IIHF hitting something around a 65% clip, 21% ROI, so that's been a fun ride. French Open has gone well so far for me too. Plug in some plays, go to sleep, wake up to profit(most days at least) lol.

Should be done with plasma for the forseeable future, unless something goes terribly wrong.

not even the best professionals in the world have anywhere close to this win rate or roi

variance is a bish

and nobody sharing or selling picks is a winning sportsbettor

Yeah I know it's variance(him and me, although I'm more around 55% this month), it's only 100 bets or so from him for this tournament, tiny small sample, and a limited event. No expectation from me that he keeps it going long-term, just been tailing responsibly.

I've also been around long enough to know not to buy picks from people lol

if you look at sportsbook data, 99.9% of all their users over a large enough sample hit a near 50/50 win rate

the market is that efficient

but the variance will let you think you have a system with an edge

you can definitely win doing top down, using the market as a guide, or by originating and developing a model more accurate and sophisticated than the teams of quants who set initial lines and other sharps who move the market, or you can do well having insider information

you're never going to do better than 50% without one of those 3

a monkey throwing darts at the board is going to win 55% or more of his 100 wagers 18% of the time - let that sink in, a full 1/5 of the time you're going to just randomly be winning at that clip over a sample of 100 wagers

variance for this is way bigger than poker

Little overdue for an update here. Should've posted a monthly wrap-up for May but I was pretty busy with the client I picked up and with life in general.

Anyway, we reached a milestone, poker bankroll is over $1k on ClubWPTGold! From a $22 start at the beginning of last month. Obviously poker is up and down so tomorrow it might be below $1k again but for now we're at $1.1k. Probably stick to 40NL for the next couple weeks but I'll be moving up to sooner than later.

Also, with these mystery boxes or whatever, won a few tickets for tournies/satellites that I mostly bricked: 111, 55, couple 22s, an 11 I think. I did finally qualify for the Gold Million Event this Saturday. I don't play donkaments at all, but guess I'll give this one a shot. I do kinda hate tournies and don't know what I'm doing. Last time I played tournies regularly I was grinding SNGs on Party Poker. The pages dedicated to tournaments in my copy of Modern Poker Theory are practically untouched. I did read the Harrington tourney book whenever that came out though. Anyway, I don't expect much from the tourney but we'll see what happens.

As for sports, for May results: +45.9u across ~253 bets (~147–97, 1 void), one crazy 4 day run of +25u which skews things.
June, so far(missing the last few days): +19.99u across ~145 bets (80–62, 3 void)

Might be missing a few plays here or there from Action but that's what I have in my github repo for sports betting. I need to be more vigilant on keeping those two in lock step. Again, super duper tiny sample and just on the good side of variance for now.

Trying to decide whether I take some offline cash(so NOT withdrawing from wpt) and take a shot live or just wait and keep playing online. Would hate to sit at a 500 game and get set-over-setted or flush-over-flushed or something stupid two or three times and just be done with live again lol. But maybe I'll run good and be off to the races, who knows. I started a poker vlog and quickly abandoned it after how terrible it was but saw my short is still getting views somehow, so if I do return to live maybe I'll record again as well where I can. Hollywood Park wouldn't let me.

I always doubt myself as a poker player which is why I hesitated to play online forever after Black Friday and solvers becoming huge. Kept hearing how tough the games were. I have a ton of holes in my game but ClubWPTGold seems beatable. Still pretty sure I'm a losing player online though based on how Ignition went and I'm just running good over a tiny sample at Stake and ClubWPTGold vs worse players(which should be the focus I guess, not measuring d*cks). I'm nowhere near a 5 million hand sample or whatever you need to be certain on winrates and being a winner. But it's going fine right now so we'll see. Tough to get big volume playing 4-tables. Definitely not putting in enough hours either but I'm working on that too.