Completely Results Oriented Brag

Since the day I quit my job I have won $21K in 240 hours, including everything right up until I picked up 15 minutes ago for an extremely silly reason. Most likely the upgrade in results has had almost nothing to do with my decision to quit, but I'm going to let myself be very happy about it and do some serious self back patting nonetheless. Objectively my stress level has been quite a bit lower and I'm getting in way more hours (it's been less than 7 weeks and I basically took 9 days off straight when my dad was in town), and I'm having no trouble putting myself in great spots. Like sure, from time to time (like now) the must move game is amazing and I'm trapped in the main game, but that's the exception, not the rule. The bike promotion has also been extremely kind to me, netting me so far MORE than I would have been getting paid. So really I guess the only question left regarding the quit is "what took you so long?

In other news, and this is some seriously scary shit, I'm 30 years old now. That's right...three...zero. Nothing terrifying has transpired, yet, unless you count the funeral I went to that day. Seriously, no joke, I went to a funeral on my birthday. Running hot for sure on that one. It's hard to believe that I've been at this for close to 4 years now and to be completely honest don't really have any sort of long term plan or exit strategy. For now I'm pretty content to keep grinding pretty stress free, spend some more time studying up and trying to get better, and hopefully book another good year.

I was thinking about responding to the comments that my last post generated, but don't really feel like it's that big of a deal. I wasn't trying to sound like I actually have a fucking clue what I'm talking about or anything, I just wanted to write down some thoughts and opinions, as is my custom since last time I checked that's one of the main reasons this blog persists. A hand I played today kind of illustrates my point, though:

I open OTB with tens (freaking tens!) and Mr. Lee defends his big blind. The flop is

J43ss

And he check/raises me. Let's pause the action right now and state some facts

1. Any strategy hoping to replicate any sort of nash equilibrium demands that I never ever consider folding my hand. I am WAY too far up in my distribution for that to be acceptable.

2. Mr. Lee is a stone nit who bifurcates his ranges too early. He is HEAVILY weighted towards having a jack here.

So we play out the rest of the hand and it comes like 6-8r and as he's betting the river it occurs to me that just what on Earth am I trying to beat when I call? Like, everything about the hand screams "he has a jack" and yet there I am putting 2.5 big bets into the pot with less than 20% equity and of course he shows me the queen jack ball (with the queen of spades no less). And this is one of those weirdo hands that always have and always will give me trouble. No self respecting poker player would ever fold tens here...ever. But against Mr. Lee I have a sinking suspicion that doing so could actually be correct. I can't post the hand on 2p2 or really anywhere else, because anybody with half a brain will say the same thing....lol you can't fold. And here's the kicker....if you're going to fold, the place to do it is probably on the flop. Because if you call the flop you're certainly not drawing; you're doing it because you have enough equity to call down. So once the turn and river sorta brick off (they aren't really bricks because they make two pairs sometimes and fill in sets which are the only value hands I could ever conceive of him showing up with) there really is no good exit ramp in the hand. Back in 2008, when I won $55/hour playing 20/40 for 700 hours, I used to bet fold flops like this. And sometimes I wonder if growing out of that nittery was perhaps a bad thing.