So since everybody decided poker was bad for you and we can't play it inside the United States I have been pretty much doing nothing. Realistically I probably been doing "more" than I was when I was at my peak of playing online, but in regards to actively making money and challenging myself intellectually I have been doing nothing. This past summer though, I found a way to combine my three favorite things, Gambling, Sports, and Math, and make money doing it. What combines all of these things? The answer is daily fantasy sports.
What are daily fantasy sports? Daily fantasy sports use classic rotisserie scoring, but instead of picking a team for the entire season of football, baseball or whatever, you pick a new team every day. They offer a variety of buy ins and structures, very similar to what online poker sites offer for poker. For example, they have their large field tournaments where they pay 10-15% of the field with 50+ players often registered. This closely mirrors MTTs. They also have 3-10 man tournaments where they pay 33% of the field, much like the Sit n' Go for poker. They also have the 50% of field gets played structures, aka double ups. I would recommend draftday.com to get a feel for the industry.
My friend and I had dabbled with baseball the summer before, but basically just got a feel for the different sites and the concept of DFS. This year we started the summer with specific bankroll guidelines and areas where we thought we could gain an edge over our opponents. As the summer rolled on, my eyes were opened to how much the sites were failing at pricing players. They neglected many factors, giving the observant player a significant edge over the casual fan. Using the available advanced statistics that attempt to counter the effect of luck in the short term, and interesting park related and match up related discrepancies in player performance, one could win enough to beat the site fees and then some. This summer we won the Draft Day DOCOFs Baseball Championship main event for $6,200 and gain not one, but two seats into the Draft Street DSBC( Draft Street Baseball Championship) valued at $2,500 per seat. We had success in other smaller tournaments on a variety of sites, giving us a very solid profit for the summer. All while doing something that was fun and mentally stimulating. The best part of DFS is we were operating within the law of the United States(Fantasy sports are given a skill based exemption under UEIGA) and receiving very fast payments on Paypal.
What interested me the most about playing Daily Fantasy Sports though was the strategy and theory behind selecting your team. Do you play the same team in the small 3-10 mans as you do in the big multi-entry tournaments? Is it wise to enter more than once in a tournament and if so what level of overlap can your team have and still be profitable? With specific regards to baseball, should you select a lot of players from one team in hopes that they score a lot of runs (stacking)? If so, what tournaments do you you do this in? There are plenty more questions like this that deal with the theory of DFS, and there isn't really a formulaic answer to any of them, but I do think I have come up with some basic guidelines to help in these situations that I will share in later blog posts. But anyway, just wanted to get that up there that I have a new focus and it's pretty sweet and I will be posting about it.
Thanks for reading,
-jshilling09
Saturday, November 24, 2012
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Back
After a school year where I played almost no poker, I am back at it. Basically spent the year balancing overcompensating for only playing poker the year before by not playing it this year. But I really can't stay away from poker, as proved by my constant refreshing of high stakes db every few hours this year. I played a little on ACR(America's Card Room) where I had a pretty sick $15---->$8k----->BUSTO PLO run (10/20 not good brm???). I didn't really notice it because I don't usually check my bank account, but without money coming in my funds started to go south pretty hard during the year. I was pretty shocked at where they were at the end of the spring semester which was probably due to having a lot of fun. Going into the summer I knew I had to work for my dad and the way that works is I make not a lot of money but i get a lot towards my college. So I knew I had to get back at it Matt Damon style. Reasons14 served as my Edward Norton and before I knew it I was sitting at Foxwoods playing 2/5.
First day of summer and I won $500, but I played like shit. I had no idea what was going on and was lucky in card distribution/ some very easy straight forward spots that came up for me. Driving back I was thankful for the money but very aware I was rusty. I was also aware that for the first time in at least two years I wanted to improve my game more than anything else. I had switched to PLO cash from NLHE, but Foxwoods only has a 1/2 plo game and that only runs on weekends. I needed to learn no limit again.
Back at my house I hit the training websites hard. I looked at 2+2 forums for all the live hands I could find, I started watching High Stakes Poker and other cash games shows(mostly entertainment value, but it fueled the fire to learn). I started figuring stuff out, especially about live poker. I have an EP limping range(crazy I know), am 3-betting slightly less, and I am picking up on some live tells that I think have been pretty helpful to me. I am basically becoming a live pro. I also have messed up though. I made a live misclick in a big pot that ended up going my way. I don't take enough breaks and don't pay attention to the action enough when I am out of pots. I am also unsure as to if I give off massive live tells or not. But I feel like I have hit a stride with playing and have been reading hands very well. I am up about $7.5K this summer in live cash games playing 2/5-5/10. It's a small sample, so these results are not super significant, but what is significant is that each time I sit down at the table and each time I leave I feel more comfortable and confidant. I have had a sick lucky run of 5 winning live sessions in a row, so expect me to slow down a little, but I think in general my live future is bright.
After talking a lot with Ben(reasons14) I started to play online tournaments the last two days. And by deciding to play online tournaments I mean I had $15 left in my blackchip account and entered what I thought was a $11 fo because I was up watching hellmuth and ivey try and ship bracelets(yep im a fanboy too now). I then realized it was a 11 1R1A and ben shipped me an extra $20. Obviously I won the tournament for $900 and am back on the online grind as well. Feel like I played the tournament well, but I really dominated HU play. I switched my game up at 30+ bbs a lot (possibly because I was watching Ivey play a 30bb HU match) and played smaller pots where I could exert my edge post flop more, and chipped him down from him in the lead to me with a 2.5-1 chip advantage without a single all in. I then re-shipped A5s for somewhere around 15-18bbs into A8o but chopped than won A9 against KJ i think. But the point is im running hot as shit right now and feeling good. I am also doing a lot of daily fantasy sports with my friend and we are up like 2k on the summer. We bet on this website called Draftstreet.com , (promo code jshilling09) and it's a lot of fun.
Long story short I am back in the poker/ gambling scene and ready to go. This is usually the section where I set goals and then try kinda hard to achieve them. But for the first time ever I am not going to set $ goals or volume goals. I have made over $10k so far this summer and it has been less than a month, so right now I feel like I can really focus on improving my game and getting me in a good spot for when I return to school and am much closer to Foxwoods. I want to play a lot of tournament sessions, but i am cutting my tables back a little, and never having over 6 because I want to be thinking and learning. I do want to play this deepstacks series at foxwoods in two weeks, it looks like some good buy ins/prize pools to get my feet wet in live tourneys again. The only specific goal i have is to be at next year's WSOP for at least two weeks. To do that I need to build my bankroll and continue to improve my game. A goal that feeds off that one is winning the $2,500 Razz event. Im like 2/1 to win that I am sure so it won't be hard. So I apologize for the tldr nature of this post, but I had to put something out there after i saw Frenzuh and BigBluffzinc putting out some recent blog posts.
Good luck everyone,
jshilling09
First day of summer and I won $500, but I played like shit. I had no idea what was going on and was lucky in card distribution/ some very easy straight forward spots that came up for me. Driving back I was thankful for the money but very aware I was rusty. I was also aware that for the first time in at least two years I wanted to improve my game more than anything else. I had switched to PLO cash from NLHE, but Foxwoods only has a 1/2 plo game and that only runs on weekends. I needed to learn no limit again.
Back at my house I hit the training websites hard. I looked at 2+2 forums for all the live hands I could find, I started watching High Stakes Poker and other cash games shows(mostly entertainment value, but it fueled the fire to learn). I started figuring stuff out, especially about live poker. I have an EP limping range(crazy I know), am 3-betting slightly less, and I am picking up on some live tells that I think have been pretty helpful to me. I am basically becoming a live pro. I also have messed up though. I made a live misclick in a big pot that ended up going my way. I don't take enough breaks and don't pay attention to the action enough when I am out of pots. I am also unsure as to if I give off massive live tells or not. But I feel like I have hit a stride with playing and have been reading hands very well. I am up about $7.5K this summer in live cash games playing 2/5-5/10. It's a small sample, so these results are not super significant, but what is significant is that each time I sit down at the table and each time I leave I feel more comfortable and confidant. I have had a sick lucky run of 5 winning live sessions in a row, so expect me to slow down a little, but I think in general my live future is bright.
After talking a lot with Ben(reasons14) I started to play online tournaments the last two days. And by deciding to play online tournaments I mean I had $15 left in my blackchip account and entered what I thought was a $11 fo because I was up watching hellmuth and ivey try and ship bracelets(yep im a fanboy too now). I then realized it was a 11 1R1A and ben shipped me an extra $20. Obviously I won the tournament for $900 and am back on the online grind as well. Feel like I played the tournament well, but I really dominated HU play. I switched my game up at 30+ bbs a lot (possibly because I was watching Ivey play a 30bb HU match) and played smaller pots where I could exert my edge post flop more, and chipped him down from him in the lead to me with a 2.5-1 chip advantage without a single all in. I then re-shipped A5s for somewhere around 15-18bbs into A8o but chopped than won A9 against KJ i think. But the point is im running hot as shit right now and feeling good. I am also doing a lot of daily fantasy sports with my friend and we are up like 2k on the summer. We bet on this website called Draftstreet.com , (promo code jshilling09) and it's a lot of fun.
Long story short I am back in the poker/ gambling scene and ready to go. This is usually the section where I set goals and then try kinda hard to achieve them. But for the first time ever I am not going to set $ goals or volume goals. I have made over $10k so far this summer and it has been less than a month, so right now I feel like I can really focus on improving my game and getting me in a good spot for when I return to school and am much closer to Foxwoods. I want to play a lot of tournament sessions, but i am cutting my tables back a little, and never having over 6 because I want to be thinking and learning. I do want to play this deepstacks series at foxwoods in two weeks, it looks like some good buy ins/prize pools to get my feet wet in live tourneys again. The only specific goal i have is to be at next year's WSOP for at least two weeks. To do that I need to build my bankroll and continue to improve my game. A goal that feeds off that one is winning the $2,500 Razz event. Im like 2/1 to win that I am sure so it won't be hard. So I apologize for the tldr nature of this post, but I had to put something out there after i saw Frenzuh and BigBluffzinc putting out some recent blog posts.
Good luck everyone,
jshilling09
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Losing 17k, live poker, and Batman ldo
So lets get the shitty stuff out of the way first. I had 17k in pending transactions on quicktender/usemywallet which is now all gone because the site got its accounts seized and it doesn't look like we/ me will get our money back from what their e-mail said. So i am pretty bummed about that. It is like half my roll so bleh so gay. I really don't know what I am going to do right now, have been playing a little PLO on the merge network but I haven't really committed to grinding yet. If I do it will most likely be the MTT grind with PLO added, although I could be coaxed into an almost full time PLO grind.
Before I found out about being out 17k though I was at Turning Stone for the East Coast Poker Championships with Reasons14. I played a little 2/5 cash and was probably stuck like 1.5k from that, but I chopped a $100 prelim tourney HU with my boy Matt who I had met earlier on in the trip for like 2.8k, cashed the $350 on friday and final tabled the main on saturday which was a $1650. Only 74 people played and 10(the final table) got paid. I ended up getting 10th with AQ<ATs :(.
To release some steam me, Reasons14, Matt, and another kid that was staying with us, Brady went to the arcade and gambled. It turns out I am a huge arcade fish and I lost about $250 in assorted games like air hockey and this stupid motorcycle racing game. I had a few extra quarters so i went over to the claw and dropped a few in. On my first try I got this pink bear in the grips of the claw. I get excited and see that not only did grab the bear, but the cape of batman as well. I was celebrating like crazy as batman is my favorite superhero+ my stars avatar. Just as the crane was about to get over the edge it lost batman leaving him hanging on the edge but dropping the bear. I told my friends i was locked in to getting batman no matter what. I try a few more times, but I ended up pushing him further and further down. Suddenly I was $25 in and there was no end in sight. Batman was stuck between these two footballs. To make matters worse you could not rotate the actual claw, so there was a lot of luck involved in getting the right angle. I was visably tilted, and buying quarters in $10s. I drop two complete bricks and swear. My friends are making fun of me. The next try, which by my count made $28 worth of trys, I get the claw into a position I like, I press the button and it drops. This time it was rotated just right to where it missed the two plastic footballs and wrapped itself around batman. I held my breath, it could just be another in a line of slowrolls that had occured over the claw session. The claw clamped and started to rise, and as it did, batman rose with it. I breathed a sigh of relief and held my hands up in the air. I had done it. I figured this is what the winner of the main event will feel like later tonight when he ships it. My friends were going nuts as the claw dropped batman into the chute. I reached in and held him up. Better than a bracelet imo.
Peace,
jshilling09
Before I found out about being out 17k though I was at Turning Stone for the East Coast Poker Championships with Reasons14. I played a little 2/5 cash and was probably stuck like 1.5k from that, but I chopped a $100 prelim tourney HU with my boy Matt who I had met earlier on in the trip for like 2.8k, cashed the $350 on friday and final tabled the main on saturday which was a $1650. Only 74 people played and 10(the final table) got paid. I ended up getting 10th with AQ<ATs :(.
To release some steam me, Reasons14, Matt, and another kid that was staying with us, Brady went to the arcade and gambled. It turns out I am a huge arcade fish and I lost about $250 in assorted games like air hockey and this stupid motorcycle racing game. I had a few extra quarters so i went over to the claw and dropped a few in. On my first try I got this pink bear in the grips of the claw. I get excited and see that not only did grab the bear, but the cape of batman as well. I was celebrating like crazy as batman is my favorite superhero+ my stars avatar. Just as the crane was about to get over the edge it lost batman leaving him hanging on the edge but dropping the bear. I told my friends i was locked in to getting batman no matter what. I try a few more times, but I ended up pushing him further and further down. Suddenly I was $25 in and there was no end in sight. Batman was stuck between these two footballs. To make matters worse you could not rotate the actual claw, so there was a lot of luck involved in getting the right angle. I was visably tilted, and buying quarters in $10s. I drop two complete bricks and swear. My friends are making fun of me. The next try, which by my count made $28 worth of trys, I get the claw into a position I like, I press the button and it drops. This time it was rotated just right to where it missed the two plastic footballs and wrapped itself around batman. I held my breath, it could just be another in a line of slowrolls that had occured over the claw session. The claw clamped and started to rise, and as it did, batman rose with it. I breathed a sigh of relief and held my hands up in the air. I had done it. I figured this is what the winner of the main event will feel like later tonight when he ships it. My friends were going nuts as the claw dropped batman into the chute. I reached in and held him up. Better than a bracelet imo.
Peace,
jshilling09
Thursday, April 28, 2011
What happened?
i heard there is something going on with the DOJ taking over pokerstars and full tilt??? I'll keep you updated don't worry.
peace
peace
Thursday, February 24, 2011
3rd in the 75k
What's up kids?
Thought i would throw a post out there after binking a nice $12.2k score in the FT 75k GTD. FT had some decent players and I ended up taking a K up the ass on the river to bust 3rd with AT<KT. Guy who won is really good, Jburleson, but he ran like a combination of every God possible at the FT. Kid is up 2 mill online though, so i can't say much. Anyway it is a big score and I am happy about it. Playing more on FT and Stars cause i can't figure out getting money off merge, if someone wants to help me with that please contact me on skype, would be much appreciated.
That's all for now
Thought i would throw a post out there after binking a nice $12.2k score in the FT 75k GTD. FT had some decent players and I ended up taking a K up the ass on the river to bust 3rd with AT<KT. Guy who won is really good, Jburleson, but he ran like a combination of every God possible at the FT. Kid is up 2 mill online though, so i can't say much. Anyway it is a big score and I am happy about it. Playing more on FT and Stars cause i can't figure out getting money off merge, if someone wants to help me with that please contact me on skype, would be much appreciated.
That's all for now
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Stuff Happened
So basically I went deep in a few tournaments on Tilt the last 3 nights. I haven't cashed a tournament on stars in months so don't even ask me about it. First i spewed like a monkey from 2/12 in the 109 6-max to out in 11th. Got 5th in the turbo Fiddy which was cool I guess, I think I lost a flip but I don't really remember. Then today I went deep in the $216 FTOPs. I was losing and winning flips like nobody's business, and basically it looked like I was going to win a freaking huge flip for a 600k+ stack with QQ v. AK till a K came on the river, so I busted 50th for something that wasn't 250k. Im over it though and ready to ship lots of tournaments. I haven't been playing on Merge since I won the 10k prop bet earlier this week because I am still trying to figure out how to cash stuff out.
It looks like I am going to vegas this summer to grind online basically and buy pieces of my friends as I am only 20 :( but I am def looking forward to it. I am also really pumped about MTTs. Don't really know why, but I just want to load tons of sessions and win lots of money. This actually may be because I recently took a backing deal for my stars and tilt action which I am happy about. Get lots of freedom, so I can just load up tons of good stuff and go nuts for a few hours.
What else? Well it was kinda warm today, which means golf should be starting up soon. Basically that's it.
Peace
It looks like I am going to vegas this summer to grind online basically and buy pieces of my friends as I am only 20 :( but I am def looking forward to it. I am also really pumped about MTTs. Don't really know why, but I just want to load tons of sessions and win lots of money. This actually may be because I recently took a backing deal for my stars and tilt action which I am happy about. Get lots of freedom, so I can just load up tons of good stuff and go nuts for a few hours.
What else? Well it was kinda warm today, which means golf should be starting up soon. Basically that's it.
Peace
Friday, February 11, 2011
Tilt
There is only one thing that puts me on real tilt these days. Yep, internet problems. I was at the FT of a $16 FO on Carbon, and deep in the 70k nightly on Stars, + a few other tournaments. I was 2/7 at the FT and I was just running it over. Anyway, it all crashes. I go into panic mode. Clicking frantically, plugging into the ethernet cable, nothing is working. A wild search for my AT&T card ends 30 minutes after the internet initially crashed, and I plug it in. I find that busted the FT in 4th, and am down to 50k in chips in the 70k. In total it was like around $800 in equity in 30 minutes. I lost every pot in the 70k until I went bust and that was it. I don't mind losing $800 because that is just part of the swings of poker. I mind when something that is supposed to work costs me $800 though because that is something someone can control. My internet company should be on top of that, and I should have my wireless card somewhere I can find it, so the blame is split. I also busted the Razz FTOPs very quickly, and misclicked for a stack after the rebuy period in a $75r so this was probably the most tilting evening of MTTs I have had in a long time.
-Jshilling
-Jshilling
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