Feb was a pretty poker-free month. I basically played no poker until the last 2 days of the month. I was pretty busy w/ school, and then on reading week I went to New York w/ family.
Anyways, the most interesting thing that happened this month was I picked up a new desktop from Canada Computers. My friend helped me build it, and its one of the sickest computers ever. Its got like all the best parts (Intel Core i7, Asus EN9800GTX etc). Awesome for gaming, unfortunately I dont game anymore so its awesome for 24 tabling! The only thing that sucks is that my old PCI video card is not compatable with it so I can't use triple monitors at the moment, just double =(. I will deal with that issue later on though...
So anyways, on Thursday (Feb 26th) I decided to attempt to get Platinum Star on PS. I needed to get 10K VPP before the end of Feb (3 days), however due to my computer being a total pain in the ass I got 0 hands in for Thurs. I was like well damn, I got two days to get 10K VPP now, so lets get the grind on!!
So on Friday and Saturday I ended up playing 25K hands and like 18hrs later I finally achieved Platinum Star! I also ended up with a good win-rate too!
The highlight of my month was the following hand:
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3925237
I made a sick hero call and after, that fish who ran like 64/18/5.0 starts berating me in chat. He starts trashing talking me saying shit like '88 wow, awful' etc. So I just responded by saying 'ty fish', then he starts asking me to play heads up. I'm like okay, I close out all my other tables and wait for him at 100NL HU. Eventually he sits down. Over the next hour I rape him so bad and take like an extra $235
The funny part was I kept trash talking him in chat every time I won a big pot to make him tilt. The trash talk worked and it was pretty hilarious, I would say things like 'Please top off so I can have a free dinner tmrw' and 'ty fishy, i'll be here all night long'. Then the following hand occured where I value bet his ass so hard, and as soon as he called the river i typed in chat 'welcome to value city, population you' LOL. Viffer = hilarious.
http://www.pokerhand.org/?3925308
Anyways, that is basically my Feb. Now that I have reached Platinum Star, my new goal is to reach SN by the end of March. Once I get that, I will be 1/10th to SNE. I will need about 100K VPP each month, so it will be a huge grind. Stay tuned for updates...
VPP Count = 10,013
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Job or no Job
This post isnt going to be very heavily in poker-related material mainly cuz the last few days i've been super busy with school (exams, assignments) and my future when I graduate. This post is mainly going to be me ranting about my feelings about work and my current situation for jobs when i graduate. Anyways, at the end of August 2009 I will have finished University with a degree in Computer Science. I have been relentlessly trying to get a job in Waterloo so that way when I graduate I can nosedive into a life-long loving career of programming for others and grinding out the 8-4pm schedule. lol.
I applied to tons and tons of places, and so far no response because the market is really really shitty right now. With the recession and whatnot (I dont know much about economics) tons of companies are not hiring as many people as they typically would be, and their laying off even more people. Basically its a pretty shitty time to graduate. On top of that I have absolutely no work experience doing programming/CS related shit, so i am basically dominated by anyone who has any sort of work experience w/ coop or ppl who decided to do something with their summers off. I am strongly considering getting into a Masters program, but by the looks of it my marks aren't high enough so that is kind of out of the question. Ideally getting into masters would be awesome because when I graduate the market should be better and I would have a higher chance of getting a job. The obvious problem with Masters is that when I graduate i still have zero work experience and I will most likely begin at the bottom of the food chain again. Jeez trying to climb the corporate ladder is such a retarded grind. Basically my situation totally sucks right now. I will continue to try to hunt down a job desperately, and hopefully land something.
Anyways, where I am going with this post is that right now I am in the middle of a debate to become a full time grinder or not. If I dont get a job, I may very well have to take this option (which tbh I don't mind). The only problem with this is that it totally throws my CS degree away and my parents/family would 100% object to playing poker full time(they think it is just gambooling). It really sucks because these are the only two things stopping me from doing what I truly want to do. I would love to play poker full time, be your own boss and set up your own schedule etc etc. There are a lot of perks for playing full time, but there are also negatives (which i wont bother going into). The biggest reason for me to play full time is simply because the money playing poker is simply better than any job I can get. I talked to a lot of professors/relatives who graduated with CS at waterloo, and the conclusion is that I should aim for a salary between 40-45K a year. This turns out to be about $21/hr based off of 8 hour work days. The problem is that currently playing poker I make anywhere from $85-90/hr on a good month, and on a shitty month about $25/hr. Rakeback is already $18/hr on FTP for me LOL. Why the hell would I work full time when I can easily make so much more playing poker? The only reason that I prefer not to play full time is that the swings can be pretty ugly, and thats when a full time job truly beats poker, simply for the fact that the income is so stable and gauranteed. Basically I've been on the fence about job or no job for a while now with my dillema.... that is until I got pushed over to the no job side recently!
In comes Pokerstars Super Nova Elite program. I dont play on stars and I never bothered looking at their promotions, but wow this VIP program is the sickest on the net. It sure as hell blows ironman at FTP out of the water. I did a lot of research about SNE and what I found was some pretty sick numbers. Basically you need to accumilate 1million VPP in a year, and you become SNE and the bonus'es are just disgusting. Based off of what I found so far, (please correct me if I am wrong, it would help me a lot!) a SNE player would make about 110-120K a year in bonuses. This includes lots of tournament entries like sick packages to PCA, world series, WCOOP etc. So basically a I would be making six figures WITHOUT any of my poker winnings counted. That is just sick.
Now there is no such thing as free money, basically to grind SNE out it would take about 6.5K hands a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to get the promotion. I intend on getting SNE in about 6 months logging ridiculous hours a day (12K hands minimum a day) just so I dont have to play 7 days a week for the remainder of the year. I think once you get SNE you only need to play 3-4K hands a day to maintain it, which is no probems. I am still working out a lot of details, and learning about the program , but I have decided that once Jan 1st 2010 comes around, and there is no job in sight for me I will go SNE! It sure as hell beats any job that I can ever get.....
I don't know what the future lies for me, but these are my thoughts on my current situation. If I get a job, then meh I will have to suck it up and work, if I don't then its time to mass grind for the monies.
-Ian
I applied to tons and tons of places, and so far no response because the market is really really shitty right now. With the recession and whatnot (I dont know much about economics) tons of companies are not hiring as many people as they typically would be, and their laying off even more people. Basically its a pretty shitty time to graduate. On top of that I have absolutely no work experience doing programming/CS related shit, so i am basically dominated by anyone who has any sort of work experience w/ coop or ppl who decided to do something with their summers off. I am strongly considering getting into a Masters program, but by the looks of it my marks aren't high enough so that is kind of out of the question. Ideally getting into masters would be awesome because when I graduate the market should be better and I would have a higher chance of getting a job. The obvious problem with Masters is that when I graduate i still have zero work experience and I will most likely begin at the bottom of the food chain again. Jeez trying to climb the corporate ladder is such a retarded grind. Basically my situation totally sucks right now. I will continue to try to hunt down a job desperately, and hopefully land something.
Anyways, where I am going with this post is that right now I am in the middle of a debate to become a full time grinder or not. If I dont get a job, I may very well have to take this option (which tbh I don't mind). The only problem with this is that it totally throws my CS degree away and my parents/family would 100% object to playing poker full time(they think it is just gambooling). It really sucks because these are the only two things stopping me from doing what I truly want to do. I would love to play poker full time, be your own boss and set up your own schedule etc etc. There are a lot of perks for playing full time, but there are also negatives (which i wont bother going into). The biggest reason for me to play full time is simply because the money playing poker is simply better than any job I can get. I talked to a lot of professors/relatives who graduated with CS at waterloo, and the conclusion is that I should aim for a salary between 40-45K a year. This turns out to be about $21/hr based off of 8 hour work days. The problem is that currently playing poker I make anywhere from $85-90/hr on a good month, and on a shitty month about $25/hr. Rakeback is already $18/hr on FTP for me LOL. Why the hell would I work full time when I can easily make so much more playing poker? The only reason that I prefer not to play full time is that the swings can be pretty ugly, and thats when a full time job truly beats poker, simply for the fact that the income is so stable and gauranteed. Basically I've been on the fence about job or no job for a while now with my dillema.... that is until I got pushed over to the no job side recently!
In comes Pokerstars Super Nova Elite program. I dont play on stars and I never bothered looking at their promotions, but wow this VIP program is the sickest on the net. It sure as hell blows ironman at FTP out of the water. I did a lot of research about SNE and what I found was some pretty sick numbers. Basically you need to accumilate 1million VPP in a year, and you become SNE and the bonus'es are just disgusting. Based off of what I found so far, (please correct me if I am wrong, it would help me a lot!) a SNE player would make about 110-120K a year in bonuses. This includes lots of tournament entries like sick packages to PCA, world series, WCOOP etc. So basically a I would be making six figures WITHOUT any of my poker winnings counted. That is just sick.
Now there is no such thing as free money, basically to grind SNE out it would take about 6.5K hands a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to get the promotion. I intend on getting SNE in about 6 months logging ridiculous hours a day (12K hands minimum a day) just so I dont have to play 7 days a week for the remainder of the year. I think once you get SNE you only need to play 3-4K hands a day to maintain it, which is no probems. I am still working out a lot of details, and learning about the program , but I have decided that once Jan 1st 2010 comes around, and there is no job in sight for me I will go SNE! It sure as hell beats any job that I can ever get.....
I don't know what the future lies for me, but these are my thoughts on my current situation. If I get a job, then meh I will have to suck it up and work, if I don't then its time to mass grind for the monies.
-Ian
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