Done

Coming down the homestretch

So I'm at 905k VPPs now and should hit the 1 million mark sometime next week, becoming the first Supernova Elite on PokerStars this year. I'm not exactly sure of the reason, but it really motivates me to try to be the first/best at things, even when it's goofy stuff like this. There's no reward for being first (other than watching people say "omg that Jorj95 is sick, he must play 48 tables for 35 hours a day") but still I feel the need to do it. I started playing seriously on PokerStars in April of 2007, and in May of that year I played pretty much every day and got over 500k VPPs in that month alone, just because I wanted to see how many I could get in a month. The next year I decided I wanted to be the first to hit Elite, and I accomplished it on March 18 (becoming the quickest ever to do it), and ended the year with 3 million VPPs (the highest 1-year total ever).

But my obsession with being the first/best goes way beyond poker. I remember back in about 1997 there was a trivia game on a local BBS where everyone would sit in a chat room and trivia questions would come up every 15 seconds or so and the first person to answer it correctly would get a point. It would tally your score for the month and people were put onto an all-time leaderboard for the best scores in a month. So some retired lady had the record score which was like 3 times as high as anyone else's score, something like 15,000 questions answered in a month. And everyone would say how amazing it is that someone scored that much higher than everyone else. So I decided one month that I wanted to break the record score, so I played this stupid trivia game all month except when I was working or doing other stuff, and ended up crushing her score by getting like 20,000 points, then I never played the stupid game again.

When I worked at the movie theater during the summer before my senior year in high school, someone worked 32 days in a row and everyone thought he was crazy for doing it. So obviously I had to work 37 days in a row (at a minimum wage job) just to do it.

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Since I became a "pro" last week, I've been getting absolutely crushed in the games. I doubt it's related in any way, but it's definitely frustrating. I'm 0/10 in step 6s since then (at $2100 a pop). I'm pretty sure I have an edge in these, but when my average game is around $100 buyin, obviously losing 10 $2100 buyins in a row is going to affect my results a lot. In a way it makes me not want to play them because of how much it affects my results and I doubt my edge is all that big, but part of me enjoys the silliness of playing a 10 minute tournament with a $2100 buyin. I might reconsider if I lose another 10 in a row though.

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Thanks to everyone for the congratulations on signing with PokerStars, whether it be through chat during the games, private messages on 2p2, in my Well thread, or here on this blog. There's no way I can respond to everyone but just know that I do appreciate and am thankful for every comment. I would never have gotten where I am without you guys taking an interest in what I do.

Where I want to go with this blog

First and foremost, I want this blog to be appealing and interesting to hardcore poker players, casual players, and people who don't play poker at all who are just interested in following what I'm doing.  I realize that might be quite a task to appeal to all 3 groups, and obviously every post I make will probably be directed more to one of those categories of readers than the other 2, but I will try my best to accomplish this.

I would like this blog to somewhat emulate my Well thread that I linked to in a previous blog entry, which means I would like questions from you guys.  I will probably have trouble coming up with enough interesting subjects to write about without the help of you guys (every entry would probably be something like "grinded for 6 hours again today, won/lost some $, and got a few VPPs"), and also it lets me know what you guys are interested in hearing about.  The one thing I probably will not write much about is "how to play this hand" type of posts.  Honestly it bores me for the most part and also I feel like I have a lot to lose by sharing strategy.  Pretty much any other subject is okay with me (including non-poker-related subjects that you're curious about).

For this, I created a message submission form under the Contact Me link.  This was my first time using html so I hope it works properly.  I did test it a few times and it seems to work so far.  If you notice any bugs in it, feel free to use the Contact Me page to tell me about them...errr...just leave a comment here.  :)

March Madness brackets can go screw themselves, I'm pretty sure I'm almost eliminated from every pool I entered already.  I probably won't watch many games this weekend (what fun is it if you don't have any $ on it?), so I will probably be playing more poker than I expected to.  I'm at 825k VPP (for non-poker people, think of frequent flyer miles for poker players...and using this analogy it's probably the equivalent of me being on a plane for 16 hours a day all year), and I would like to get to 1 million by the end of the month, but I don't know if it's going to happen.  I will definitely get there in the first few days of April otherwise.

I feel like a true member of Team PokerStars now because I got 6 patches in the mail today to wear at live tournaments.  It's looking like I won't be playing any live tourneys until the WSOP though.  I wanted to go to NAPT Mohegan Sun in Connecticut but it's just so far out of the way and my wife can't go, and I didn't win a seat yet.  It just sucks to fly all that way then bust in 3 hours or whatever, especially if the wife isn't going.

I'm already excited about the WSOP even though it's over 2 months away still.  Wife & I (and the dog) just got a house in Vegas for the duration.  Hopefully I can do better than in previous years.

Team PokerStars Pro

As many people guessed, the news is that I am now officially a member of Team PokerStars.  It is quite an honor to be able to represent what is by far the best online poker site and to be on a team with so many great players, and I'm very excited for the opportunity.

It's funny, for the last week I was thinking of all the things I wanted to say today when I broke the news, and now that I'm writing this I can't remember any of them.

I'll try to post more in the next day or 2 about this and also about where I want to go with this blog.

I probably won't be playing online much the next few days because I'm going to a St. Patty's day concert, and then obviously March Madness where I have about $12k worth of bracket action (and this number will probably go up before the tourney starts), but I'll try to play a few games here and there while I'm sweating the basketball if any of you want to chat or whatever.

1000 posts about me

For those of you coming to this blog from somewhere other than twoplustwo.com, you may not know that much about me.  A good place to get started is by reading my Well thread.  A Well is a thread where people ask a bunch of questions to one person who is "in the Well".  The thread has been running for over a year now, so you can follow my transformation from playing turbo sit-n-goes to playing hyperturbo sit-n-goes.  I also talk about what it was like getting 3 million VPPs in 2008, the state of sit-n-goes on PokerStars, and what it was like to be a sports bettor, amongst many other subjects.  Warning, it's a really long read now (over 1000 posts), but I think it's pretty entertaining.

Here is a link to it:  http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/well-jorj95-george-lind-iii-377142/

If you just want a quick synopsis of me, then you probably want to go to the "About Me" section of this blog.

The "exciting news" I talked about in my first blog entry was delayed a bit, but will definitely be revealed by the end of next week.

I will have alot more to write once the news is revealed, but for now you will have to wait.  :)

What could it be?

Exciting news coming SOON, stay tuned for more info!