Man vs Machine, Day 2: Humans Win!
Date: Sat, Jul 5, 2008 Professional Internet
So that sets the official record at 2-1-1 for humanity (1 additional win for Polaris in my exhibition match with Victor). Today's team was Victor Amacosta and Rich McRoberts, a pair of tough mid-high HU regulars who know which raise goes where. The final score for the human team was +25BB, which counts as a statistical win. Tomorrow we have a special last-minute-announcement of Mark "Newhizzle" Newhouse as our on-the-floor competitor. Play will start at 1pm.
My sample-hocking skills are definitely getting honed, and to be honest I was a little exhausted after the con today. Afterwards we stopped by Dusty's PokerStars SNE suite at the Palms, which is some ridiculous condo-style apartment with a stripper pole in the shower which runs something like $3,000 per night. Dusty, being awesome, ordered up a room-service feast which made for a pretty wicked party. The Stoxpoker crowd, and the affiliated friends and associates of said crowd, is a great group to hang out with. I saw Stosh running around with a camera, so there may be a few pics we can throw up later on.
You can discuss this blog here.
Photos courtesy of the CPRG.
Bryce "Freedom 25" Paradis talking about Stoxpoker
[More]
A member of the public plays against Polaris
The Polaris team hard at work.
Rich in the background
The display showing the cards
Ali dropped by and is talking with Marty
Rich playing against the bot
The Team Polaris shirts
Man vs Machine, Day 1: Tie!
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008 Professional Internet
"Would you like a free sample of online poker coaching?"
In addition to working on my spiel and hocking tons of merch at the Stoxpoker booth today (booth turned out great, we have an awesome location) we kicked off day 1 of Man vs Machine. The match ended in a statistical tie, with Polaris edging out over Nick and Kyle by 2.5BB. All the content will be moving to our MvM webpage shortly, but since we've currently got a technical hickup you can review it all on the CPRG's MvM Website.
HHs from the match can be found here: http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/man-machine/Results/live/
Live CPRG blog from the event can be found here: http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/man-machine/Live/Day1/
Live blog and live HH updates should start tomorrow as we run the second match.
Photos courtesy of the CPRG:
The computer poker research group liveblogging station.
Nick "Stoxtrader" Grudzien taking on Polaris
The man-machine poker interface
Bryce "Freedom25" Paradis gives us the eye
Nick in concentration
IJay, Bryce, and Jim chatting while the match is going on.
One of last year's human competitors Ali Eslami stopped by the booth and
talked with Mike Bowling
A couple of the stoxpoker members
Some Stoxpoker swag
IJay talking to a couple of expo attendees
Nick in the background next to a set of University of Alberta poker
chips
Nick enjoying his comeback against Polaris
The view of the booth from the other side of the Hertz booth.
Looking down the expo floor
Nick hits four of a kind on the river. Polaris had fours full of
tens
Nick enjoys his four of a kind hand.
Nick gets up after his 500 hand session.
Nick does an interview with Dave after his session was over.
With just 11 hands to go, Polaris was nearly at the threshold of
winning. In the end, Polaris ended up just a small amount which counted
as a draw.
Everything but Poker
Date: Fri, Jul 4, 2008 Professional Internet
I haven't had time to even take a crap the past 3 weeks, nevermind play poker. I closed yesterday on land in my hometown in Massachusetts, and will be building my house starting (barring conservation nonsense) to build at the end of July. Note: by *build*, I mean to say I am the general contractor. A framer I am not.
It's taken nothing short of a miracle to procure this property. I got no less than 8 phone calls the day before the closing from my attorney that there were several title issues with the seller. Not so bad for him since he has an extra 30 days to cure the issue. VERY bad for me because my mortgage rate lock ended today. I locked in at 5.875%. If the closing were delayed by one day, it would be at 6.625% (I locked literally on the best possible day). In money terms that meant about $220/month extra in my mortgage payment for the next 30 years. Yay for closing on time. I have no idea what the issues were but all I care about is that they were solved.
In addition to building a house, I started with a new part time job as a nutrition manager consultant. Basically, I customize individual meal programs and menu plans for clients, while also holding group sessions about nutrition education. There are only a handful of people in the US with this certification, so if there is one in your area I'd highly recommend using them over a typical weight-loss program. I hope this takes off here as well as it did where I was previously doing it, unfortunately it means July may have fewer poker hands than June (about 3k, ugh).
cliff notes: closed on piece of property, building my house, starting newish job as a nutrition manager, all while my wife is now 7 months pregnant. I wonder if I can jam anything else into my life right now. I guess sleeping is overrated.
Vegas Is Here!!
Date: Thu, Jul 3, 2008 Professional Internet
So far Vegas has been absolutely awesome. I got to meet Stosh, Bryce, Ed, Hunter and his wife and brother, Jade, Jim (CEO), Ijay and should get to meet Matros as well as Colin here within day or so. Everyone has been great to hang with. The first night we got to all just hang out and shoot the shit over a few beers so obviously you can’t beat that. The Stoxpoker house is very nice although I luck sacked my way into a penthouse suite at the Palms courtesy of Poker Stars just being their usual awesome selves when it comes to customer service. I am going to post pics soon, and boy are you guys in for a treat. The room is pretty sick and let’s just say that it would be a single guys’ fantasy room. I’d like to go into more detail, but I think it would be best if I kept it a mystery and posted pics or maybe even a video blog that gives a tour. Ok, well I will give one sneak prevew. There is a shower that is bigger than some of the bedrooms at my house that has a stripper pole with flasing lights of all different colors on it with a jacuzzi right next to it. SICK!
I bought into the main event last night. I wanted to play in Sunday but so did everyone else and their mother so it was full. I am playing Saturday instead which cuts into my social life some (no 4th of July party for me because I definitely am not going to be hung over for the main event) and also means that I will probably not be at the meet and greet at Hooters. This really bums me out because I was really excited to meet some of the Stoxpoker members. I am going to be at the booth a lot during every day that I don’t play this week so if you were hoping to meet me for whatever reason, please come by the booth. I definitely don’t want to miss out on meeting anyone so please stop by if it isn’t too inconvenient.
Tonight my buddy Mike Lavery and his new girl friend are flying in from Carolina and we have a pretty baller night out planned. We are starting with drinks at the penthouse and from there going to Fix at the Bellagio which is my wife and I’s favorite restaurant. From there we are going to take a ride in a helicopter and see the strip from above. After that I scored some VIP passes to the playboy club at Palms that get all of us in with no cover and bypass all of the lines. If we can’t have fun on a night like this we should all just shoot ourselves…lol. I am looking forward to meeting Mike’s new girlfriend as well and in just a few hours the night will begin!!
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Matt Blogs the WSOP: $1500 NLHE Updated Update
Date: Wed, Jul 2, 2008 Professional Internet
Yeah, I made the final table. You might be able to watch on ESPN360 tomorrow. I'm going to sleep now for a bit.
Matt Blogs the WSOP: Didn't We Just Do This?
Date: Tue, Jul 1, 2008 Professional Internet
I thought I was playing a Limit Hold 'Em shootout today. Turned out I had my dates mixed up and I was registered for yet another $1500 No Limit Hold 'Em event with 2,700 people. Well, I'm in the money again, and again I have above average chips going into Day Two (41.8K). I'm not in nearly as good a position as I was last time, when I had 113.6K at the end of day one, but you can't ask for much more than to have above-average chips going into the second day of a tournament. I'm going to try to run up my stack tomorrow and give myself a chance at the final table. Wish me luck.
June, You SOB You Betrayed Me
Date: Mon, Jun 30, 2008 Professional Internet
I give up. I swear, I just don’t know what to do anymore about this game. I am just getting so fed up with this year. After having such terrible months In April and May I vowed to get on the right track again in June and even though you can’t control luck, just somehow will myself to having a good month. Well, as you guys know, I was having a fantastic month and on track for possibly even my best of all time. For once I was getting that little kick back in my step about this game and starting to feel like I was really accomplishing something. For once I actually put together 3 weeks of avoiding the massive downswings that make no sense considering my low standard deviation and my overall tight style, but wouldn’t you know it my entire month just went from great to meh in one unbelievable weekend where I actually lost 4ptbb/100 over 20k hands. Simply unreal. I had two separate 20+ buy in downswings in one weekend!!! Just when I thought I could finally feel good about my month, I once again feel miserable about how it turned out. I take some solace in the fact that I did accomplish my goal at the start of the month to make over 100k points. But I only set my goal that low because I felt like I should start taking baby steps again after such terrible months before. I had a very real chance for a banner month, and it just “hopped down the fucking drain and my fate is now with Grandma…lol”
July is probably going to be my lightest month in terms of hands in probably my entire career. I have the WSOP and I am going to take a week and hang out with my wife and probably not play any poker at all. In August I am going to have the $250k prop bet, hopefully, so that won’t be a normal month of playing either. Then to follow it up I will probably take some time away as I will surely be exhausted. So it looks like I won’t have any opportunity to have a big month until October and that leaves me feeling pretty empty. I was really hoping to snap off a big month and just ran so stupid bad to finish…..ughhhhhhhhhhhh. Overall I can’t complain about the month because I think I ran right at expectation which for me is $1 a hand. I just feel frustrated because I feel I am far below EV this year and if I had finished the month well I would have felt a lot better about April and May being so poor.
I will say one thing about poker in general. As much as I would love to do it for the rest of my life, I would be pretty surprised if I have much passion for this game 5 years from now. I never really thought I would say that and I think if my winnings this year had been much more balanced rather than a bunch of massive upswings/downswings (which makes no sense with my tight style but whatever) I may be singing a different tune. But as it stands right now I am putting a lot of effort into something that yields the highest possible frustration with absolutely no upside other than money. It’s not like I get to experience the thrill of victory nor do I even get to put hard work in and watch it pay off necessarily. If I prepare really hard for a session, it often times makes no difference as luck is such a big factor. If the poker world came up with some way where you could compete against the best and take the variance out of it (kinda like the man vs. machine where it is rigged to cut down on variance) then I would probably play poker for the rest of my life. I would LOVE to do something like that. But as it currently stands I experience minor thrills from doing well and massive frustration when it goes poorly. I mean when poker goes poorly I could not possibly be more frustrated. Before I played poker, I wasn’t even aware that my body was capable of feeling the way it does like I do when things go bad at the tables. It is hard to describe, but maybe if I can take the big lows out of the equation (through Jared’s help obv)I may love poker forever. But right now I haven’t fully accomplished that yet and as a result it has me doubting how long I want to keep doing this.
Anyway, hate to ne such a negative nelly. I wish I felt differently obviously and I wish that I could take satisfaction out of poker regardless of the results. That is the ultimate goal of course. I am doing a ton better. I actually played through the entire 20k hands and didn’t have a massive blow up. I probably was on the cusp 6-7 times throughout the weekend and went through my mental checklist that I have that helps me get on the right track when I am about to blow up. It has been quite a test this year. All I can say is thank God for Jared. Because this year has been by miles the most challenging of my career. In the 26 weeks so far I have won almost all of my money in the best 7 weeks that I have won all year. That is not even close to a normal distribution. I’m not saying your chart should go steadily up the whole time, but somewhere in between is pretty normal. Maybe the 2nd half of the year will be different and I can go back to having my ups and downs like anyone, but on a more normal level.
For anyone that is going to be out at the WSOP, I can’t wait to meet ya. Please feel free to stop by the booth or come to the meet and greet at Hooters. Hopefully I can buy lots of Stoxpoker members a beer on me and we can have a good time. Good luck to all who are playing.
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