Jun 12 – Update

Long ass 6 days of poker. I was able to finish 150th out of 8,809 in the WSOP (World Series of Poker) Millionaire maker. Pretty wild, 5 of 12 of us in the coaching group finished in the top 150 the other 4 were pro (coaches). Pretty wild result and testament to the studying. I am utterly exhausted. It’s been 12-14 hour days and there’s no chance I could play any more tournaments right now. I busted the 1k and marathon pretty quickly and entered a 1k in the Venetian which had a fantastic structure and though there was re-entry I think I made a few mistakes that was telling me I was fatigued.

Hand 1:

I’m CO, I open 56hh to 1600

BB raises 4,100 so I call given size

Flop AA7h

He bets 1/4th pot. I call

Turn 8h

He checks. I think to myself that he’s most likely missed and unlikely to have an ace given the sizings of his flop bet and he insta checks turn so I pot it (stupid) to fold out everything else in case I miss the million outs on the river. He jams…Ugh oh. Now I am forced to call w/ those million outs… I miss (no 9 or 4 or heart). I also thought I had much higher equity in the pot but I didn’t and I should have checked back and folded a missed river. Too high variance in a weaker tournament.

I should have checked behind and c/f on a miss. I forced myself into an all-in pot with a pot sized bet.

Hand 2: AA MP

I raise and BB calls

Flop is 873 rainbow

Check, I bet pot, he min click raises back to me. I jam for the remaining 25bb. My initial gut was that I was beat and I could make an exploitative fold but then thought that was nuts on a 783 board with AA. I’d mandatory call the min-raise and probably a small bet on the turn and fold rivers if he triple barrels. I wouldn’t normally jam here and it was a rec player so a min raise back is probably pretty strong. I call one all day long here against anyone else but def not jamming. Instead, I think that I can get max value out of all pockets lower than mine and any pair of 8s and jam. I am obv wrong and I end up with 30% equity against 78 two pair and missed. Way to borderline a spot to get it in. I doubt rec player min-clicks back like that with anything worse. Maybe a small pair but I block A8. He has all sets and two pairs. Meh.

Not a whole lot going on with the trades. The run-up makes things boring (though tonight it seems like we’ve had a bit of a market fall). Might make for some STT opportunities tomorrow.

I am stuck right at about 24% and I don’t have a whole lot of opportunity for big increases until I can get on more trades.

Jun 6 Trade and Travels update

My account is at 24% as of yesterday. A big increase and I removed all of my August trades throughout this week. I have September expiration which I’ll remove next week grossly above profit target but neutralized. October is also just above profit target so I may have to remove that next week as well. Normally, they’d be removed right away but the downside room is incredible and it’s got a profit tent built and my theta ratio to margin is still good. I am going to remove soon but I’ll give it another 7 days. Not much exposure now and locked in loads of profit. I have significant ability to take advantage of more vol if it does happen. Else, things can slow down again like it did in April. Profit comes in bunches during higher vol times. The majority of my potential profit came in the last 4-7 days so I doubt I’ll have the same trajectory through the remainder of this month. I’ll be happy to end around 25-26% for H1 2019. We had some vol but it came out on this gigantic move up from 2725 and that is the majority of my P/L increase. That 25% is on actual capital I have in total in my account. That’s pretty damn good. The thing that I am noticing is that since I put on STTs in every expiration on higher vol days, is that I end up with 4-5 expirations that the older ones act as medium hedges to the newer ones. In all of the vol we’ve had in the last 6 weeks, I’ve just been going up and up and up in P/L. If we had significant moves, they’d be fine because of the BSHs. All in all, I am loving how multiple expiration and maturity of STTs interact with each other.

I’ve been in a whirlwind of traveling since May 29th. I started off in Montreal which got a bit messy. I had some friends visit me and we brought our nanny so for a few nights things got a bit out of control especially given the fact one of our favourite bands was in town 🙂 Suffice to say it was a bit indulgent. A few days after that, I got to play a few poker tournaments there which went well in terms of applying the recent coaching etc but just didn’t have the luck deeper in. Next up is WSOP Millionaire maker tomorrow.

After MTL, I headed to Ottawa to do a whole slew of meetings for my software licensing business. Those ran long but we hashed out our future pathways. It was very productive and everyone got on the same page after hours of board room meetings. I have the best partners you can ask for and given we’ve been in business since 2004, we’ve never in all that time not ended up on the same page after a face to face nor have we ever had emotional disputes. I guess we’re all lucky, as I have heard other companies can have nightmare situations. I am fortunate to have good partners.

I ended up quite tired after the week of partying and heavy meetings. We stayed at this awesome airbnb house on the Gatineau river where I tried to recoup for the next leg.

After Ottawa, we met with a private educator in Toronto to see if we get along. We’re using next year as a year to get our kids top notch and ready for the real world and ready to apply for competitive private schools. They’re currently in Montessori and its just not cutting it. My daughter doesn’t thrive in a Montessori environment. Long story short. Lemons making lemonade, use the year to travel w/ a private educator and use the year as an opportunity. Soon come, the kids will be older and it won’t be possible to travel.

Then my wife and I departed Toronto sans kids while the kids left w/ her sister to Cayman. We upgraded our flights and flew to Denver and spent two days there. Awesome town but def some sketchy areas. We had to call the police because a guy was dying in the middle of the road (this would be the second death we seen on this trip face to face……) Horrible to see. We had some pre-wedding parties to attend and ended up having a pretty good time. We rented a car and drove 5 hours to Moab for a glamping wedding. Was awesome but again my liver is suffering a bit. We ended up sky diving which was the highlight of the trip.

After that we drove to Las Vegas for a night and unfortunately saw ANOTHER dead person on the side of the road….we checked the news after and they’re still investigating it as a potential homicide. Horrible thing to see, still see it in my head. Was very close to where we were (right on side) saw it clear as day. Death is apparently following us….

We spent a night in LV and had an awesome dinner and got an epic suite. It took about 6 hours to get there from Moab. We left at 8 and arrived around 2pm. We were just stopping through on our way to LA for our final leg together (which ends today).

In LA, the first night we went to the Laugh Factory and were so luck to have stumbled upon one of those surprise unlisted guests (George Wallace) who free styled and actually crushed it. Was one of the best experiences I’ve had re comedy. Super lucky. We were right up front too. The following night we decided to go and spend time in the room where comedy goes to die (The Belly Room) and again had an awesome time. We’re staying near Santa Monica Blvd in the gay district and it’s coming up on the 50th anniversary parade so it’s high action. I get loads of compliments while walking with my wife. Love it lol. The wife leaves tomorrow early for Cayman and I stay for 4 days to play a few WSOP events (I’ll drive to Vegas from LA tomorrow). I miss the kids way to much though now as it’s been 7 days so I’ll be looking to book an earlier flight on any bust out. But I’ll be back with the family Jul 1 for the main event.