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February totals:

Games played: 2360
Hours played: 63
Hours of coaching: 10
HHs reviewed: 12
Articles written: 1
Videos produced: 1
Misc hours for program (emails/skype chat/other developments): ~15

Estimated total hours: 100

My volume was unacceptably low this month, but, I was fortunate enough to run half way decent for the volume of games I actually did play. I’ve been adding $20s and $35s back in and trying to up my tables as well. So far it’s been going fine, but I’m not looking forward to that first major downswing. It will be a little more challenging than the swings that I’ve been so accustomed to dealing with in the $10s, but I know in the end I’m making more money by playing a little higher.

Life outside of poker:

As most of our students know, I’ve been working with a local rescue organization and fostering one of their dogs for the last several months. Her name is Bella and she’s a shepard/shar pei mix. She’s an awesome dog and has been an absolute joy to have around. She spends most of her day chillin’ on my bed while I work at the computer, keeping me safe from any cats or squirrels who happen to wander too close to the house. Here are a couple of pictures of Bella:

My responsibilities are to take care of her, get her acclimated to home life, and bring her to adoptions each Saturday afternoon so that she can be seen by potential families that want to bring her into their home (to be honest, I’m strongly considering adopting her myself…)

Last week the organization asked if I could take in one more dog who desperately needed a temporary home. I suck at saying “no” to people and I really do love dogs, so as of about a week and a half ago, Bernie, a saint bernard mix, took up temporary residence in casa de 300 chips. Here are some pics:

Bernie was in pretty rough shape when the organization found him, and he’s been quite a handful to take care of, but luckily I’ve found a way to tame him (see 2nd picture). He’s had surgery on his left eye at least twice and from what they told me, he was basically all mange (a condition that affects his skin and coat). He was also quite thin when I got him and has since put on some weight. I’ll be bringing him to the vet on Friday to get the stitches out of his left eye. All in all, he’s making leaps and bounds health wise. Unfortunately, he has quite a ways to go in the obedience department. A dog of his size (~90 lbs) will just never be a good fit for a home without the proper training. I’ve been working with him as much as I can and fully believe he’s trainable, it’s just going to be a slow process I think.

If you’re reading this and happen to live in the Los Angeles area, and also happen to be looking for a furry friend to join your household, I strongly recommend you check out the Tails of the City Rescue website and possibly come to a Saturday adoption event to meet some of their wonderful dogs. In addition to fostering some of their dogs, I do a little bit of work for their website as well.

I had some other “life” things to write about, but I feel like this post has reached it’s length requirement (that’s what she said) and will end it here. If any of it is still relevant mid-March, I’ll write about it then.

Study hard, play well, and GL at the tables everyone,
yardle

Being a shorter and more busy month than January, I assumed I’d have less time for volume.  Fortunately, that wasn’t the case.  By this point I hoped to have about 200 hours of poker played and around 10k games, but I’m running a little behind.

February Totals:

- 4857 games

- 92.25 hours

- pre-rakeback profit: $10747

- hours coaching: 15

- personal HH review videos: 32 videos

Year Totals:

- 9447 games

- 184.5 hours played

- pre-rakeback profit: $19,698

- basic 27% RB profit: $26,919

With other bonuses (blackcard, rake chase bonus, ironman, etc.) included, it’s around $35,625 total, but I haven’t taken the time to remove the MGR hits that a $5k bonus and cashout bonuses have accounted for so it’s probably between $34,500 and $35,000.

March is going to be a pretty busy month outside of poker, but maybe I can at least stay somewhere close to on track.

GL at the tables,

m0b

Hi guys,

This week’s hand history really isn’t a history at all. In fact it’s only one hand! It covers an incredibly important topic that the vast majority of super-turbo players never consider. If you master this concept and can learn to implement the adjustments, you will reduce your variance. Nothing will ever eliminate variance, but all of your opponents that heavily rely on HUD statistics and failed reasoning skills never consider the information contained in this 20 minute video.

I can’t stress enough how important this situation is and how often your opponents – even winning ones – severely limit their success by messing it up. Lots of people have asked us how our graphs are consistent without massive crashes along the way. This video is one of those keys.

Enjoy!
m0bsta

February so far:

Games played: 1227
Hours played: 34

I continue to run awful at heads up. Sigh. Hopefully someday it’ll just stop.

I’m going to try and play 7-8 tables these next two weeks, rather than my normal 6, and see how it goes. A fellow reg friend (hi Soul Coughing) has encouraged me to do so, and it’s hard to argue with him. I hope he’s right and it begins to feel comfortable because so far I feel like I’m missing spots/notes. Expect to see me in more $10s while I try to adjust.

Other ramblings:

So I’m off to a pretty weak start to the month. I’d like to have about 500 games more than I do at this point, but I guess it is what it is. I had a birthday, the Superbowl, and a day off due to illness, so I guess 1000+ games isn’t too bad. I’ll try to play catch up in the next two weeks.

The last two weeks have been pretty tiring for me, as far as the program goes and I think we’re pretty much at capacity for the number of students we can handle. I need an intern…and a hot assistant.

We’ve changed up our HH review process and so far it’s been receiving a lot of positive feedback. The forum continues to be a hot bed of discussion, which is also great to see. I’ve felt a little guilty for not getting in there as much as I want to, but I just haven’t had the time to do it. I do read almost every post, though, so I’m doing my best to stay in tune with each student’s thought process.

So there it is, short and sweet.

Study hard, play well, run goot,
yardle

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During a telephone conversation with my dad today, I came to realize some important things about the kind of program m0bstal0bsta and I are offering here at threehundredchips.com. I’ve decided to get these thoughts down as quick as possible in a blog post, so my apologies in advance for the lack of proofreading and editing. I’d like to get a discussion going as quick as possible, so please don’t hesitate to comment in the comments section.

As he usually does, my dad asked me how the card playing was going and how my (our) coaching program was going. He’s in no way familiar with the online poker world, but he’s a great dad and always takes an interest in my life. I told him how things were going, mentioning the number of students we’ve taken on, the experiences I’ve had coaching them, and the enjoyment I’ve had developing the program into something I strongly believe in, etc. One of the things I mentioned to him were the struggles I’ve seen from some of our members and the reasons for their frustrations. To be frank, I told him, some of them just aren’t studying/working hard enough. He then said to me, “It’s really no different than you taking trombone lessons is it? You can have your weekly lesson, but if you aren’t practicing the things your teacher told you to work on, you’re not going to get any better are you?” I was a bit shocked, not because he was right (my dad often is) but because of how spot on his comparison was and how quickly and effortlessly he drew it.

As some of you may know by now, m0b and I both have graduate degrees in music from a highly renowned school, and I think it’s no mistake our program has developed into what it is. We’ve opted to become the kind of site that tailors towards “graduate students” or poker players who already have a bit of experience. We’re not the University of Phoenix Online. We’re the Julliard School of Music for super turbo sngs. There’s an audition process for one, and a simple online application for the other. One of those schools accepts anyone with a checkbook, and the other is only interested in the top students. If you’re in an online class, you can sit back and chat on IM and watch a movie while taking your course. If you’re part of a music conservatory, you’re expected to show up to each and every lesson, more prepared and sounding better than you did the previous week. You spend hours upon hours in the practice room trying to make one note sound exactly the way you want it to before moving on to the next one. I could go on, but you get the point.

So back to what my dad was saying…

When I was in music school, I would show up to my lessons as prepared as I possibly could. Some weeks were busier than others, but I always put forth my best effort towards preparation, no matter what, because I knew it was the best thing I could do to get the absolute most from my teacher. If he told me to practice a certain kind of scale that week, I did it. If it were my high range that he suggested I spend some time on, I would work on that. I’d seek out other players in the studio whom I knew to have strengths in those specific areas and I’d ask them to listen to me. I did whatever I could to improve that one aspect of my playing that week. What I didn’t do, was go into the practice, get out my favorite solo, and just play it for fun everyday. Sure, I would sometimes play around for fun, but, the majority of my time was spent on things that were going to make me a better player. I also didn’t worry about the more advanced materials I knew were out there because I trusted that when the time came for me to work on those things, my teacher would let me know. Afterall, the reason I chose to study with the people I did was because I trusted their judgement on the subject more than anyone else, even my own.

So hopefully by now you can see where I’m going with this, but I’ll draw the comparisons just to be clear.

When your poker coach tells you that you need to study a certain aspect of your game, you need to do it, and you need to spend as much time on it as you possibly can before your next lesson comes up. You need to save hands that fall into that category, and send them to us. You need to find those situations in your database and study them in SNG Wizard. You need to ask other students who have had that lesson what they did to master the material. If a student makes an excellent post in the forum that is much like the thing we’ve asked you to work on, ask them how they got so good at analyzing those situations. The point is, you can play all the games you want in between your lessons, but if you’re not spending the time off the tables to improve the things we tell you need improving, you can’t expect to become one of the best in the game. You might as well go sign up for one of the many video sites that are available if that’s the way in which you want to study. There’s a reason we put the lessons in the order we did, and if ever we feel that you should have one lesson before the other, we’ll make the proper adjustment. So trust us, and quit worrying about heads-up play, or whatever topic it is you THINK is the most interesting. If you’re only getting to heads up 20% of the time because you are misplaying your bubbles, it’s not going to matter how good you are at it now is it?

I’ll leave you with a joke that I think applies quite nicely.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
You practice.

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Do-You-Get-to-Carnegie-Hall?-Practice-Guitar!&id=5541601

The Chain Reaction of Practicing

It’s been said over and over, but practice really DOES make perfect. It is when you practice that you really learn to apply the skills you are being taught. The more you are able to apply those skills, the better you will get. The better you get, the more fun you will have playing. The more fun you have, the more motivated you will be to continue practicing, and so on. Because of the learning curve, it is sometimes hard at first because you may not see progress as quickly as you would like. However, if you keep going, you will break through that curve, and sooner than you thought you will playing better than you ever imagined! Don’t let the early challenges stop you, because you will see it really is worth it in the end.

If you’re a member of Pocketfives.com, you are no doubt aware of the 8th wonder of the world that is the Off Topic discussion forum. OT is the reason God created sarcasm and SluggerWV (one of my favorite posters), so if you’ve never checked it out, I encourage you to do so. Just make sure you PM BillMueller before you make your first post to introduce yourself, as he is the Prez and will have you banned if you don’t.

The forum now has it’s own bi-monthly/quarterly/whenever they feel like it podcast in which they discuss the happenings on the boards as well as other worldly issues, such as L0bsta’s mom’s cooking. The show is hosted by my friends L0bstaM0bsta and BillMueller and can be found at http://otpodcast.com. I’ve helped them out with their website and they were kind enough to give threehundredchips.com a plug in the beginning of their latest show (Thanks!). Give it a listen if you’re in the mood to laugh (usually helpful after a rough session).

Gl at the tables,
James

Hi guys,

This hand history video covers a lot of detail on adjustments that need to be made during the course of a super-turbo sng.  Most players you encounter simply assume there’s one style or strategy to use throughout, but that’s absolutely not the case.  One of our American students, Keith, provide the hand history and it has lots of good “refresher” material as well.

Quick disclaimer: I repeat this a few times during the video, but if you haven’t reached our first milestone lesson yet, some of this material will not directly apply right now.  We will get to it and give you a detailed analysis when the time comes, but don’t employ some of these tactics yet.  We don’t want you to lose value because of missed shove opportunities!

Once you have some time available head over to the Videos section and check it out!

Thanks,

m0b