Recent Poker Thoughts

I was playing $1/2 until the end of April then I had to make a big cashout to pay my last tuition bill which resulted me to move down to $.50/1. After I get my job settled, I no longer had to cash out my winnings from my account because I now have full time job secured kicking pay check to my bank every month. This resulted me to play no more of scared money poker tight uh huh rock style anymore and in addition to good run of cards, I moved from $.50/1 to $2/4 within 1 month and half with only 2 hrs of day playing everyday =) Click here to download if you wish to see larger version of the graph.

June 2008 BB/100: 4.49, NET: +$13,992.45


July 2008 BB/100: 2.54, NET: +$11,193.00


Today, I was playing very good session with good run of cards and this one hand came across my mind which caused me to start thinking about my leak some more. The opponent is 15/11 TAG and I have him over 5,000 hands and my notes are saying that he never gets out of the line. Lets look at the hand.

PokerStars Game #19527214670: Hold'em No Limit ($2/$4) - 2008/08/11 - 01:21:26 (ET)
Table 'Frigga II' 6-max Seat #6 is the button
Seat 1: gandi9 ($451.95 in chips)
Seat 2: zawaaa ($240 in chips)
Seat 3: LuxuryMaster ($395.60 in chips)
Seat 4: Marius2910 ($306.85 in chips)
Seat 5: DCal Zone ($425 in chips)
Seat 6: jnpn ($731.30 in chips)
gandi9: posts small blind $2
zawaaa: posts big blind $4
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to LuxuryMaster [K A]
LuxuryMaster: raises $8 to $12
Marius2910: folds
DCal Zone: folds
jnpn: calls $12
gandi9: folds
zawaaa: folds
*** FLOP *** [9 9 A]
LuxuryMaster: bets $24
jnpn: raises $56 to $80
LuxuryMaster: raises $108 to $188
jnpn: raises $224 to $412
LuxuryMaster: calls $195.60 and is all-in
Uncalled bet ($28.40) returned to jnpn
*** TURN *** [9 9 A Q]
*** RIVER *** [9 9 A Q 3]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
LuxuryMaster: shows [K A] (two pair, Aces and Nines)
jnpn: shows [7 9] (three of a kind, Nines)
jnpn collected $794.20 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $797.20 | Rake $3
Board [9 9 A Q 3]
Seat 1: gandi9 (small blind) folded before Flop
Seat 2: zawaaa (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 3: LuxuryMaster showed [K A] and lost with two pair, Aces and Nines
Seat 4: Marius2910 folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 5: DCal Zone folded before Flop (didn't bet)
Seat 6: jnpn (button) showed [7 9] and won ($794.20) with three of a kind, Nines


I read the book of TJ Courtier and he said: "Making a good fold is same as winning because by not losing the money in the situation where you would have if you had called". I completely agree with his line. He also talks about how good player extracts the most value out of the hand and I felt that the challenge is to find a border line between folding and call/raise.

With this in mind, thinking about this hand back, I think I could have played in two different ways, 3 bet with intention of shoving all in or fold to his raise. Now, considering how tight this opponent is, I should have leaned towards fold. I really don't think 3 bet shove is a bad idea but I felt like I am playing cards this way. You are pretty much committing money into the pot despite opponent's tendency and I didn't feel much of science and skill this way.

In same situation if the opponent is 26/20 LAG, I will more easily put the money into the pot as his range includes any ace, FD. I really think 3 bet + with intension of shove is better in this situation.

Poker is game of intellectual guessing. The reason I belive for my shove was incorrect against TAG was based on the observation of opponent's tendency. I felt like I just talked out of myself on this hand and put the money into the pot. Something to think about. Any comments on this would be great.

First Full Time Job - Transperfect | Translations.com

During the middle of May, I had to make a tough decision among my pending offers and pick a company to work for after I graduate from the college. I was invited by Microsoft to fly to Seattle, Washington for the full time job and I guess I wasn't good enough just yet. Damn working for Microsoft or Google was my dream as a software engineer but too bad I didn't make it. I still feel proud of myself because they sent about 2~3 people from the University of Colorado and I was among those top candidates that Microsoft had chosen. They had open eyes to see my potential!

Anyways, after careful consideration among my offers, I decided to work for this company called Translations.com. We provide software translations, localization, and any other translation service you can imagine. This company is the best IT translation company in the world and we work with Google, Microsoft, Cysco, Wellsfargo, and etc. I work as Java/JSP developer in the Boulder office. They offered me such a good salary and I saw a lot of learning challenging aspect that I can also gain while I am working.

The challenging aspect is I am the only Software developer in this office as other developers work remotely in the other locations of the office spread around the world. This is tough in the beginning. However, I have been picking up and getting myself used to the development process while gaining a lot of good experience. I will try to grasp and be more professional on what I do and hopefully I will be able to work from home soon enough.

River Runners (Buena Vista, CO)

I went to RiverRunners for rafting at Buena Vista, CO after partying all night on friday. Everyone was fairly tired and all but we all managed to go and have fun. There were some photographers in the middle side of the river and they took a lot of pictures while we were coming down through the river. I was agile enough to the photographers in the middle of the river and waved my hand although I almost fell off from the boat while doing so lol!

It was absoulutely becautiful and it was my first rafting experience and I loved it very much! Up and Down! sPlashing the water!!! b00M! It was so fun to irritate the other team's coach by splashing the water to them while we were going down. They will punish you with huge water splash with their huge row!





I would like to thank you for Sun and my other friends who actually managed to organize this and prepare food and etc. Too bad I couldnt stay up a night in the beatiful mountain with fresh air but I was just way too exhausted.





Pictures were really rip off. Check this out. Price was like single for $25, double picture was $40, group picture (like 6 pictures) was $50, and $90 for all 3 groups. I was like lol and guess what LuxuryMaster have done :) I decided to buy it anyways as it came out so well in such high quality. I lost the cd and had to ask for mail replacement which costed me another $15 but it is all good! For those of you who wish to see all the picture from all of our group, please click here to download! and gimme some hollas on this post after you get the pictures.

Good Bye CU

I finally graduated from University of Colorado at Boulder and received a BS degree on computer science and mathematics on May 09, 2008. When I was in my commencement ceremony, I had a flashback of memory when I first came to the United States on Feb, 2000. It has been a long journey for me as it has been very challenging financially, technically, and emotionally. When I first came to the United States, I spoke no English and was fortunate enough to meet a professional 30-years of experienced English teacher, Mrs. Sargent. I also remembered a moment where I had no money to buy the dinner and all I had left on my apartment was a piece of egg, a bowl of rice, and some soy sauce.



However, I have never gave up on myself and my future. I worked diligently and invested my time and effort in both my poker career and my education during last 3 years. Now I have a list of pending offers to choose from and will use those offers to negotiate the best possible salary once I decide the company that I will be working for. I feel very proud of myself. However, this is just another turning point of life for me. I will keep working my way up on both poker career and IT experience. My next goal is to play $2/4 and become a consistently winner and become a Google employee =)

I feel a little outdated on my posts but pictures are coming up pretty soon as soon as I get my camera cable from Ebay =)

Negreanu Explodes

What an art! check out the above interview with Daniel Negreanu conducted by Sik Tilt in Monte Carlo. Is this made up or 4real? What do you think? I laughed hardcore on this one.

Las Vegas Trip (March, 2008) and Recent Poker Success

I was unable to cash-out as I recently made transition to 200NL from 100NL and there has been an unlucky swing and obviously due to new level challenges. Due to this, I was suffering a bit of financial trouble as I have been cashing out at least 3k a month to cover my college expense and tuition. Having such cash flow stop for a few month struck me bad :)

Despite this difficulty, I decided to fly to Las Vegas again to play some poker with my buddy Justin, Ersan, Brandon, Duskslayer (Sorry, I forgot to contact you!), and Kevin :). The last time I was Brandon was at CPL for professional warcraft III gaming tournament. He now made translation to poker and showing a great success! Anyways, we played Wynn $2/5 NL together. As many of you already know, Wynn poker room has no buyin cap so the amount of money on the table is a lot more and you get to see more actions. I would say it is equivalent to playing $5/10 as you need about 1k to play this game stably at Wynn. Anyways, I became fascinated by Brandon's tight crazy aggressive style. He also taught me the conceptual ideas behind it and I appreciate it very much!

I have been doing overall fine but a lot of unlucky hands. I now realize that I tried bluffing a small pot where I didn't really need to and lost a lot of money. Errr..... I have must have left my discipline and patience somewhere?

I was overall even until the last day. I got dealt AA from UTG. I made x6 BB raise to $30. This tight passive player who limp calls with AKo, AQo late pos calls me from late pos. BB for some reason calls my raise - Pot $92 going to the flop.

Flop was 3 3 6

I lead out with a bet of $85 which is pretty much a pot-sized bet. Tight passive passively calls from the button and BB folds - Pot $262 going to the turn.

Turn was 3
Now board looks 3 3 6 3

I lead out again with a bet of $240 as I get called from 99-JJ pretty easily and he passively calls. I have about $500 behind - Pot $742, I put him on 99-JJ.

Turn was 6
Now board looks 3 3 6 3 6

I obviously went all in as I will have to call the river bet if he bets and I lose EV by checking. He said "Bad river card" and pondered a call for like 5 seconds. I was like "Yes, I must have him beat" and he said "I call" and turns over 6 9 for 6-full house which beats my nut 3-full house. Sick.....!

Bamn! Everyone at the table was a bit intimidated by his behavior to me and told me how unlucky I got on this hand. I quit playing for a bit and came back to Colorado with about 1k downswing.

Back on Colorado, I started playing a lot more poker and been really successful due to my realization on a few important concepts from my trip. I can't reveal how much bankroll is but I made about 7k within 2.5 weeks by playing 8 tables of 200NL :) I showed a lot of aggression and mixed it with my tricky play in certain spot and people had hard time putting me on the hand :)

I hope my good luck continues :)

Insane Poker Session + Interview Results

Yesterday was one of the astonishing turning point of my life as I stayed all night since sunday to play $1/2 poker where I played $18 preflop table in $1/2 with deep stacks. I was deep as $400~$500 had AK from SB. There were these 2 players going crazy each other over $1,000 deep stack and I tried avoiding the action in between as much as can but I can't fold AK :) UTG raised to $18, CO called $18, I made it $92 to go. UTG mucked, CO called. Flop was AK7. I perceptively checked to him and he makes the half size of the bet about $130 and I paused and well all-in for another $350 and he instant called with 89. Turn blank and River completes his flush :)

I further tilted a bit on that table and ended up losting about $1k :)
I had other beats on the other tables where I flop a set the big stack fish bets into me and I make pot-size bet and he keeps completing river flush. At the end of the session, I found myself down a bit over $2.5k during 18 hours session and was under big frustration and went to school at 4pm.

I am doing this web project for the amateur skating company (http://icehound.cs.colorado.edu) as my senior project which is the graduation requirement in the University of Colorado at Boulder. It is written in LAMP environment (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) and it is not fancy but currently somewhat functional :)



When we are done with the meeting whereas the projector was setup and my group members are present. I had to send an email so I logged onto my email account. I found an email titled "Microsoft Interview Result" and my group members screamed to open it and I declined it because I didn't think I did well enough on the interview to get selected. I took care of the business on the email and I scrolled back up to log myself out and realized the email was actually around 800k which means that it contains some sort of attachment. I was kinda spaced out for a momement and opened it.

Surprisingly, it was their congraturation letter with applications for the flight to Raymond, WA where the final interview will be held ^^ (obviously all the costs covered). I checked out the following images from the Google Image and it seems like a sweet place to work for as it is known to be the best software engineering company in the world. Google is probably best right now but hey MS has bigger avenue so :)







I also heard back from the National Instruments and they sent me an invitation to fly to Austin, TX for the final onsite interview. This is my 2nd best preference of my job choice and I better prepare and do well for this in case Microsoft final onsite interview doesn't work out well for me.







They sponsored my stay at the Embassy Suite and offered me to rent a car also but I chose the shuttle method because I don't really need a rental car. Look at the picture below :)



A lot of prestigious company actually invites you to fly to their onsite as their final recruiting evaluation process and I am very pleasured to visit Austin, TX as I will be visiting Hejin again. The last time we saw each other was when I was in Ausin, TX for the CPL Cyber Programming League with my friend Justin and Rob.

We didn't do too well but it was a lot of fun to meet all the people from the world and hang out. I still remember the poker game we had at Gaylord Texan hotel where I had AA and Pillage had KK and we both slow played preflop by not raising and fireworked on the flop :)

Software Engineering Position Offers and Intervews

As many of you already know, I have been pretty diligent about my study on computer science and mathematics. I am graduating this may and have been job hunting :) This semester, in additional to my intership & parttime software engineering experience, I decided to some research assistant work for the professor who I admire in the university. He specializes his area of research in the wireless sensor node network and his paper is awarded and published in Sensys 2007 as 1st place. (http://mantis.cs.colorado.edu)

Therefore, he is receiving funding from the prestigious corporations for his ongoing research. I help him to integrate the operating system for the sensor node network. This was a nice addition on my resume and I applied to a few companies that I was interested at the career fair.



Surprisingly, I have received an interview offer right at the career fair from 2 companies and all the companies I handed my resume to got back to me for the further interview except Motolora ;) (There are probably looking for electrical engineer oh well). I did an interview with National Instruments and got an invitation to Ausin, Texas for the final interview where they cover all the flight and hotel cost for me.

I did an interview with TCS (Tata Consultant Services) (http://www.tcs.com) and they offered me a position in Los Angeles, CA for fulltime. However, they offered me such a sniff salary so I had to decline their offer.

I have also received a nice offer from my current job (http://www.verbalworld.com) and they want me to stay but hey, lets see if I can find anything better first okay?




About an week later, Microsoft informed our engineering department that they will be coming to our campus to recruit interns and fulltime position employees for 2 days. I obviously applied and I am sure most of the students from the engineering department did. I had been chosen to interview with them on this upcoming friday. I went to the website for the time slot selection for the interview and there about 10 slots over 2 days. I was proud of myself for being chosen as one of the candiate which proves that the hard work I have been doing over 4 years during the college wasn't for nothing. I am going to go Allin(...? lol poker) for the interview and get a few days off from my work to prepare for this. It has been one of my dream to work for the prestigous company for my software engineering career. Please wish me good luck!

Recent Poker Improvements

I have been playing $.50/$1 until the end of January of 2008. Although I have been winning a lot of money in that limit, I was unable to move up the limits because I had to spend a lot of money for life essencials :) However, I decided to risk myself a bit to play higher limits as I gradually preceive my improvments on my play. I still make a lot of mistakes on certain types of sitations but hey, who can really play perfect? I am still an amateur :) I felt so bored about my limit and decided to play 12 tables of $1/2 (200NL) 6 handed.

When I first started playing, I didn't do too well, overplaying and misplaying a lot of hands. I was also got little nervous due to drastic change on my bankroll in a short period of the time - Swing. I finally start realizing how people in this limit plays differently from lower limits. People tend to play a lot more aggressively and being able to analyze the pf raising range of the player's hand and consistent 3 betting have started showing some success. I have been playing on $1/2 for about 2 weeks and already being successful.

I think the key to success in higher limit is aggression and 3 betting preflop is definately key - Thanks to Shock from WC3 who advised me to start doing this :) I hope I can make a strong enough bankroll before next week so that I can go to the vegas during the spring break :)