darinvg.sitngogrinders.com

I finally finished supernova elite today. I was on pace to get it in 10 months until everyone got back from the WSOP. The tables really got crappy so I decided to slow down and table select. Overall, a pretty good year (my 1st full calendar year as a pro). I didn’t make much from the tables but at least I was in the black unlike quit a few grinders this year (I noticed one high stakes grinder hit $100K on his downswing before moving down). Just the FPPs and milestones getting to elite is a six figure gig so I can’t complain.

A few stats:
Games played 28,500
Avg buyin: $89
Hours played: 1736

Plans for next year? I honestly don’t know. I would really like to get elite again since it’s a really good guaranteed income but the tables have gotten so much harder I’m not sure it will be worth it. Grinding -EV tables to get SOME of my rakeback is just silly. I plan to at least get 50K VPPs/month to maintain elite. If the tables are good I’ll go for it again but it’s hard to tell what they’ll be like. It was much harder to get there this year than last. The volume isn’t an issue, it’s just that the high buyins aren’t running much anymore and the ones that do are really tough.

You may have noticed on the front page that I’m exclusively at sitngogrinders now. Feel free to leave comments or questions. I have to approve them before they get posted so it might take a little while but I will read them. As you can see I also finally figured out how to post images so hopefully I’ll start adding some pictures so my blogs in the future. Happy holidays!

Katie and I just got back from a week at the all inclusive Sandals Grande Ocho Rios resort. We got a direct flight into Montego Bay and took a 1.5 hour bus ride to the resort. The trip started out a little shaky. When we got to our room, there was a hole in the ceiling and the plaster was on the floor. The room was also the basic, lower-end room and was a bit on the ghetto side. We called the front desk and they moved us to another room. The new room was much nicer with a nice king bed, shared pool (between 4 rooms), and we could concierge any alcohol we wanted. Since the resort was all inclusive, I didn’t feel the need to drink in my room but I got a bottle of Jamaican rum to bring home. I also won another liter in a small pool tourney so I have a good stock of rum for the house now.

We stayed on the resort the whole time. There were 11 restaurants, 12 bars and other various activities to keep us busy. We spent a good amount of time in the main pool with a swim up bar. I drank more rum than I think I have in my life. Jamaican rum is really good. We also went snorkeling, climbed a rock wall, learned to wind surf and got a couples massage (my 1st professional massage).

Overall, a fun and relaxing vacation. The all inclusive is really nice since you don’t have to worry about paying for anything. Leave your wallet in the room and enjoy.

In the poker world, I have a mere 45K VPPs to finish up. PokerStars also now has color coded notes which will make table selection much easier for the people smart enough to do so.

Really nice week for the Battle of the Planets leaderboard. 1st place in the Saturn ($100-$300) low and high orbit for a cool $2400. That bumps my ‘09 BOP winnings to $12,500. Pretty nice for not really doing anything extra. There are a couple times I’ve finished a good block on Fri/Sat when I wasn’t planning on playing but for the most part it’s just an extra bonus for running hot.

It’s getting cold in Philly now so I fired up the furnace. Upstairs radiators were working but downstairs wasn’t. I figured out it was the circulator pump on one of the zones. My plumber confirmed the problem and told me how to fix it so for less than $80 and an hour of work I got it going. Not bad for my first home owner problem.

I hit 900K VPPs today so I’m working my way back to elite. There’s also some talk about a rake reduction for SNGs on January 1st so I’m curious to see what the changes will be.

The PokerStars online pros are suppose to be announced next month. Apparently you can email support@pokerstars.com with suggestions so if you’re feeling kind it would be greatly appreciated to get your vote.

9 months is up so it’s back to being a regular supernova. At least it was extended to 9 months vs 6 months this year. I managed to crank out 850K VPPs so far for a nice 4.25 million FPPs. No Porsche purchase but Katie and I are really enjoying our house.

Also, PokerStars invited all 5000 supernova players to apply to be an online pro. The lucky 25 get $100K bonus (7x clearance rate). Not a bad deal. If you like my videos please give a shout on twitter to PokerStars_com for me. Thanks!

I went home for labor day weekend and my brother and two buddies went out to Deadwood (place where Wild Bill was killed) to ride 4-wheelers in the Black Hills National Forest. Gambling is also legal so we played some 3 card poker and Hold’em. I thought 3 card poker was really boring but we got free drinks and I wanted to hangout with my brother and friends. You can’t play NL so the Hold’em games were spread limit. We played 2-10 and 3-25 spread. My brother hit 4 of a kind tens at the Number 10 Saloon to win a $500 bonus. 2-10 was pretty slow and boring but the 3-25 game was pretty fun. I won a little playing hold’em and lost a little playing 3 card poker. Ended up only losing around $60 so no big deal and we got plenty of free booze. We also took a day to check out Mount Rushmore and the Custer National Park. Kind of nice to check out but I’m not big into the touristy stuff.

Getting back to the tables this week my internet kept giving me problems so I missed out on a bunch of equity. Turns out my modem was going bad so I got that replaced. Today the power went out so it’s been a fun 3 days of crap happening. I have an APC backup battery though so I did get to finish my games.

I haven’t played much this month but I’m almost at 800K VPPs.

Katie and I went to Buffalo this weekend to eat chicken wings. Oh yeah, we also bought the engagement ring from her Dad’s friend. Since he’s a friend we got a great deal on a nice looking ring.

I haven’t been playing much of the higher stakes games this month. It just doesn’t seem worth it to play the games that are going off right now which is pretty evident from some of the guys sharkscope graphs. There are multiple, really good players, having 25-50K downswings right now. I’m at 765K VPPs and table selecting like a mad man. Hopefully I can keep grinding to get elite this year but I’ve already planned on spreading it out. No more 10 month plan.

I did some calculations on what elite is worth to me. There’s no doubt I’ll finish the 800K milestone so I just figured the last 200K VPPs are worth $12,400, elite gives you $20K (as long as I can take cash instead of going to the WSOP) and next year I think I’ll just go for 50K VPPs per month which will be worth $10,800 vs normal supernova for a total of $43,200. A pretty nice chunk of change. The problem is the tables have been terrible lately with all the grinders. Even the 60s are pretty crappy. I also figured if I ran at neg 1% ROI I would only loose $4800 to get there but I if I run at neg 5% ROI I would loose $24K. Pretty sick thought but I guess that would still give me $19,200 in value from elite. Bottomline is I really want to grind it out but probably won’t go for it next. I really think it’s crazy that guys with only 500K VPPs are still going for it.

I also wanted to add a link to jhub3000’s blog. He’s got a lot of great info on table selection and how other regulars affect your ROI. His latest post also has a link for donations to a friend of his that has cancer so if you have some extra money you can help him out.

http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/

His friend’s story/donation page:

http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY09National?px=12596436&pg=personal&fr_id=15892

I asked Katie to marry me last week and she said yes (obv). We’ve been dating for over 4 years now, living together for over a year and we bought a house together. She’s a great girl and we get along really well. We still have to get the engagement ring. Her Dad is friends with a jeweler so we’re going to Buffalo to get it from him. I wanted her to pick it out and since he’s a friend, I won’t feel like I’m getting ripped off.

In the poker world, I’m at 700K VPPs. I was cranking while everyone was in Vegas but now that everyone is back the tables seem terrible. I’ve really cut my volume down since I don’t want to be playing at negative EV tables just to get elite. I guess I’ll keep table selecting and see what happens. If the higher stakes keep sucking I might try some lower levels to see how that goes.  For example, the last $114 that I scoped had ONE losing player on it at 10 pm on a Friday. Oh well, I’ll just hang back if I have to and let everyone beat each other up for awhile.

Going to a car show tomorrow about an hour North of Philly. I’m a pretty big car fan and it’s suppose to be a nice day so it will be a good excuse to get outside.

A dog? Cat? No, a hamster. I know, I know, not the most manly of pets. Katie has a lot of allergies so dogs and cats are out. I’m also not a huge pet fan in general. I have no interest in walking a dog everyday and picking up it’s poop isn’t something I’m going to do. Some of the exotic pets like snakes and lizards seem cool but seem like they’d get boring pretty soon too.

We’re going to Baltimore today to check out the aquarium and staying the night at the harbor to get out of town and relax.

I actually had to click way more times than I want to think about and only got 20% of a house but I still thought it was pretty sweet. I used the concierge service to turn over 3 million FPPs into the downpayment on my house. Katie and I are moving in on Saturday. It’s a two story, 3 bed, 2 bath bungalow style house. The place is about 80 years old but it has all new windows and is completely move in ready. Hardwood throughout the main floor except the kitchen which has a heated ceramic floor. The entire upstairs (15′x32′) is the master bed/bath with a whirlpool bath. We looked at some new houses as well and none of them really wowed us. This place has a ton of of character and we saved a bunch by not buying new. We’ll also save a ton on taxes since it’s older. It’s also a quick walk to the train and will only take 20 minutes to commute into Philly.

I hit 500K VPPs on Monday so I’m still cranking the 10 month pace. Nice to have $5K dumped into your account (actually only worth $4200 since you have to use 50K FPPs though). Seems like it keeps getting tougher to get VPPs though. The 114s are barely even running. There’s actually only 1 going now at 4:00 pm on a Friday.

Meeting Katie for dinner in Philly soon.

Good luck to everyone at WSOP. I would like to go and meet up with some people but have no interest in the live grind. Maybe I’ll go for the weekend next year to hang out.