Bored. (mini-well)

[bikes]

I'm bored waiting for Full Tilt and Stars to verify my relocation change so in the mean time feel free to ask me anything about whatever and I'll answer as best as I can. Poker, Life, whatever you want. I'll answer until I'm bored of this or FTP/Stars gives me my account back.

[CBAT]

How did you get your start playing poker? And about how long did it take you before you felt comfortable playing for a living?

Lastly, biggest 'AHA' moment?

[bikes]

How did you get your start playing poker? And about how long did it take you before you felt comfortable playing for a living?

I started playing like most everyone I guess. I watched Moneymaker win it all. A fat nobody from bumfuck southland beat the stereotypical pro. Of course I was like "Wow that's awesome I think I could do that." Lol wat a moron I was. From there I played a lot of all night home games with my friends. Just $5 sng after $5 sng. Somewhere during this time I watched the espn series "tilt" which is so lols now looking back but at that time it was just absurdly awesome.

I deposited around June 2007 and probably blew through several $50 deposits probably totalling around $350 total. At some point during my first month of college I binked 3rd in a $2.20 MTT for like $150ish which was so like OMG THIS IS F AWESOME. I tilted a lot and lost like every tilt flip to fat-b. Which sucked. I tilted like a monkey during this time in my life which is kinda sad but shows how far I've come since then. I started flopping between 10nl FR and $4.40 180 mans. I've won several $4.40s around this time, including one night where I won 2 back to back. Which was also pretty awesome for the bankroll at the time. I owe this largely to my friend Mike who has been by far the largest as well as the most positive influence on my game. I was fortunate enough to join irc around the time #ftr was revived by spoon and even more fortunate to be allowed into the other channel once euphoricism started spazzing on everyone. The 2nd largest positive influence in poker and a large positive influence in my life has been this channel and I'm very grateful to the people who decided I was cool enough to be let in. That all being said I cannot disclose the name of the channel. Sorry.

Anyway around this time I got staked by my friend Mike for 50nl FR when the games were still lollersoft. Unfortunately I did not turn profit but learned so much from Mike about profitable poker and unfortunately once the stake ended it all came together and I went on a nice heater. I finished college with a decent BR all in all considering. Might have been low 4 figs. Anyway I had 2-3 weddings to attend and all of which were really fkn far away. Added to the fact they were all family weddings and I decided to chill with cousins from wedding to wedding resulted in me playing no poker during the summer of 2008.

School was coming in fall 2008 and I had transfered to the University of Illinois to pursue a degree in psychology. I devoloped strep throat during the first 2 weeks of class and on the advice of my professors and advisors I dropped all classes and decided to wait until the next year. I was living alone in a decently sized house, my roommates weren't going to move in until October. I cannot remember why. Anyway I got back into poker and started playing 50nl HU on like a 15 bi roll or something redic like that. I played well and everyone was absolutely horrible back then. I won at 50nl and 100nl at 15ptbb during this time 3 tabling most of the time. This was a pretty awesome time in poker for me because it was just printing monies. I'm sure I ran like god but still it was awesome. I eventually transitioned to 200nl 6m where I beat the games for 5ptbb for awhile around November 2008. I decided to go pro at this time despite the disapproval of my parents, who still aren't totally behind my decision but are strongly warming up to it. The rest is history.

Biggest aha moment was when I discussed merging my 3b range hu against everyone. This was back before merging was cool and everyone polarized. People played so atrociously against someone who was 3bing aggressively that it only made sense to include more value hands in my 3bing range. 3bing QJs became cool because people were defending Q7+ and J7+ to my 3bs. People played so fit or fold back then as well. People would get sick of my 3bing and take stands by shoving if they hit like bottom pair or better in 3b pots. Which is obviously very easy to play against. Yeah def biggest aha moment was starting to 3b like 25% hu and merging my 3bing range.

[bikes]

FTP gave me my account back within an hour. I'll try to answer a few more questions though when I find the time.

[celtic123]

Administrator questions , are the admins concerned about the decrease in traffic after the Doj intrevention ?
Whatever happened to xianti ?
Who gets paid for the adverts on FTR ?

[bikes]

I'm not allowed to answer most of those questions but I can say Xianti decided to pursue other options relating to social media.

[rong]

What's your screen name on tilt? I saw you were sometimes playing 50nl rush and I want to avoid you like the plague.

[Donachello]

Why aren't you a starcraft pro?

Is Thailand everything it's cracked up to be?

Estimate on how long it takes to get money back for US players at this point?

What do you think of my poker game?

Thai lady-boys?

[Micro2Macro]

What is your opinion of heads up nlhe bum hunters?

[kiwiMark]

Teach me, mister bikes.

[bikes]

@dan. i haven't outed my FTP sn and I don't plan on doing so. if you know it please don't publicize it.

@dc i still to this day have not played starcraft and am probably the only korean with internet access not to do so. did i mention that it doesn't pay nearly as well?

thailand is cool and all. i like it a lot. granted im not into sex so thus probably like 1/4th of the experience that people come here for isn't appealing to me but i still like it a whole lot.

atleast a month or three. ftp has a lot of accounting trouble to fix at the moment. probably when everyone has their pending withdraw reversed within probably 2-3 weeks of that.

well from what i've seen of your game i think it's okay. you tilted a fair bit which is obv a massive leak that is hard to fix much harder than say fundamentals. if you got over that you would probably advance through the stakes without too much difficulty. that being said what little i've seen i influenced a bit so i'm a bit biased.

there are a lot of ladyboys here and most of them 'street walk'. they stand in street corners. from what i hear they are very aggro with the accosting, i can't speak too much to this and also they are very skilled at pick pocketing according to some of the 2p2ers i've talked to. there are plenty of horror stories about someone who brought a lady boy back to their place and didnt realize till it was too late and the lady boy got offended and spazzed.

@ m2m i hate them. they killed hu which is already a difficult game to keep going due to the nature of it. but them clogging the lobbies and never playing each other is just awful.

[bikes]

@kiwi maaaahk maaaahkerson
<3

this deserves it's own post. i can't believe i'm going to miss the maaaahk vegas extravaganza

[Nekrogovner]

@dc i still to this day have not played starcraft and am probably the only korean with internet access not to do so. did i mention that it doesn't pay nearly as well?

1. Isn't like, being korean and not playing starcraft punishable by death sentence or something?

2. You are playing NL10 RUSH, unknown EP raises for 0.30$, you are in BB with AA and 3bet for 0.90$, flop comes 973 rainbow, you make 1$ cbet, villain goes allin. What do you do?

[rong]

2. You are playing NL10 RUSH, unknown EP raises for 0.30$, you are in BB with AA and 3bet for 0.90$, flop comes 973 rainbow, you make 1$ cbet, villain goes allin. What do you do?

You put the villain on a god dam range.

[Nekrogovner]

You put the villain on a god dam range.

I want bikes to tell me.

And range is AA-22, 9x, 7x, 3x.

[Donachello]

1. Isn't like, being korean and not playing starcraft punishable by death sentence or something?

2. You are playing NL10 RUSH, unknown EP raises for 0.30$, you are in BB with AA and 3bet for 0.90$, flop comes 973 rainbow, you make 1$ cbet, villain goes allin. What do you do?

You 4b preflop.

[Nekrogovner]

You 4b preflop.

[Penneywize]

Why did you call this thread a 'well' which is obviously 2p2 slang? I'm so so disappointed. Go to 2p2. We call these threads 'Ask me' threads. Jesus.

Edit: ok so I was going to edit the above and blah blah but you're an admin and will see all the edits anyway, so I decided I would update this post with a question.

Have you ever been with an asian woman, and if so, how do you feel they compare to western women in terms of how they are as girlfriends / lovers?

[philly and the phanatics]

dude tell me about thailand...how much did it cost in total to move over there (airplane/passport/getting a place/whatever side money you brought with you)....what city are you in? are you living with other farangs? how long have you been there?

[daviddem]

Just trying to get up to speed, correct me if I am wrong: you are a Korean and were living in the US, but you moved to Thailand because of the DoJ crackdown?

If so:
Did you leave nothing behind in the US?
Why did you choose Thailand over, say, the Philippines?

If you discussed all this in another thread or on p2p, link pls.

[Hoopy]

Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

[boost]

im not into sex

[rong]

LOL

[Penneywize]

should have read this before i posted my Q

[supa]

The bc is sucking right now due to some obv reasons and I know that I'm not personally contributing as much as I could/should. What can we do as individuals and as a group to make it better?

I should say that I think people like rpm and daviddem are putting in more than a solid effort.

Also, like no sex ever?

*edit* 500th post ftw!

[bikes]

@nek probably. i liked command and conquer for RTS's as well as the total war series and never decided to play anything else.

snapppppppppp wif AA. you're probably about an 80% favorite against his range if not higher.

@penneywise "well" is a 2p2 term. unfortunately for you so is the "ask me anything about .... " so pick your battles imo

no i've never been with an asian. either in asia or america.

@phillllllyyyyyy what can i say about thailand? umm all in all i spent probably like 1k on the plane ticket, $200ish on renewing my PP, and like $100 in hotels and i've been here for 10 days. food is redic inexpensive to the point where i can eat a really fufilling lunch or dinner for like $2-3. probably cheaper if i went to street vendors but i'm no where near brave enough for that yet. i'm currently living in chiang mai, we just found a house yesterday. it's been me and renton for the last 10 days, he's been here for about 14. deanglow arrives in about 6 days and boost sometime in august. pics of the house to come later as we move in today.

@david korean living in the us. but i was adopted at 6 months from korea to the us. so take that fwiw. i have family i love very much back home and lots of friends. thailand was chosen over say the phillipines, malta, canada, costa rica for a long list of reasons mostly involving safety, ease of transition, cost of living. stuff like that

@hoopy back in college or beating like 2knl or something. one of the other. i have no idea how likely me beating 2knl is in 5 years but i do know if im not making metric craploads of monies it will probably result in me going back to school.

[supa]

[bikes]

the bc sucks atm due to lack of anyone good posting or just in general the way the BC is. the constant ' put opp on a goddamn range' is redic. it certainly doesnt help as much as anyone thinks. also when good people post it takes time out of their day which coulda been used to better their w/e pokergame, life w.e so you have to remember that. it's hard to type and play at the same time so sorry if this is hard to read

like i said earlier. i was very fortunate in how i got good because i received lots of encouragement and help from those better than i. i really dont know what else to say other than when someone good posts stuff. your far better off disecting their advice and trying to understand what they posted instead of OMG WTF PLZ ELABORATE. it really does nothing but annoy the decent poster and makes him/her not want to post anymore .

sex, i haven't had sex in the last 3 years with 1 exception. i was wasted off my ass at my cousin in law's bachelor party and my cousin bought an escort for me. drunk retarded me had no idea she was an escort and she tasted like strawberries so i just kinda went with it. i've turned down a lot of offers relating to sex i'm just disinterested i guess. i could give you a long psychobabble why but dont want to

[EasyPoker]

the bc sucks atm due to lack of anyone good posting or just in general the way the BC is. the constant ' put opp on a goddamn range' is redic to

glad someone finally said this

[Moradis]

Wow - FTR royalty coming to Thailand! Welcome.

I'm new to poker, but an old hand in Thailand. I'll trade knowledge about Thailand for help with poker (serious, I want to improve!!). And no, I didn't come here for the sex industry! I was an exchange student in 1988 & my world has revolved around the place ever since.

I think I've lived here about 9 years all told since '88. I can read & write the language so that helps me in my work and life in general. I know a fair bit about the culture but am still shocked & surpirsed by stuff even now, 20 years on.

You mention this place is safe, please keep your head down during the elections. Don't forget there were nearly 100 people killed this time last year by the army. It's not as 'peaceful' as everyone thinks. Avoid all protests - even if it's just to buy milk, stay away.

Be aware that any gambling is illegal so keep your head low. Police are more likely to extort money than lock you up but that said I know of at least 6 professional poker players in the country. I've never met them, they are 'friends of friends'. All foreigners. Bangkok (3), Phuket (2), Samui (1). There's got to be plenty more.

There is an illegal casino in Bangkok if you like live action and a poker den that's a bit softer (I hear). You can also fly to Phnom Phen where the casino is legal. That's uber soft I'm told. PM me for the Bangkok casino details, I'm not putting that in a forum! Question: A group of guys went through the Bangkok poker den about 3 weeks ago in poker stars outfits, was that you??

Last point is that it can be hard to get money out of the country if you don't have a work permit - if I were you, don't send anything to Thailand other than your living expenses into the country if you don't have the permit. Chiang Mai is beautiful, good choice (work keeps me in Bangkok).

Good luck with finding accommodation, excluding the election coming up, Thailand is great.

[Icanhastreebet]

How do you keep yourself motivated, especially if you take shots @ higher stakes in very soft games and do poorly then play your regular game and never see the end of a downswing?

[bikes]

@mordanis no that most certainly was not us in bangkok. not going to gamble at all live in thailand when macau is like a 1000 baht plane ride away. also i dont plan on playing live mostly at all unless i take a vacation for a week in macau. yeah none of us have any interest in doing anything in thailand but sight seeing mostly and internet poker and have 0 desire to die esp when our chances of dying decrease dramatically by practicing avoidance of bad situations.

@treebetz. u stole mah name. it's really easy for me to stay motivated. i consider the alternatives i have. yes my college is paid for by my parents/trust but college isn't something i want to even remotely do at the moment and i have to remind myself in order to have a legitimate reason to stay out of college i have to be making proactive moves in order to stay out. if that involves grinding though an seemingly never ending downswing which you and i have both had in our careers so be it. it's far better to me than going through say pre law and then law school. at the moment anyway.

[Icanhastreebet]

thx for the reply, makes sense.

[OngBonga]

Why wasn't I raptured?

[bikes]

jesus hates red socks fans.

beginning to move in now. will try to answer any other questions but no promises.

[PlayToWin]

You have little interest in sex, but do you masturbate?

[Moradis]

You have little interest in sex, but do you masturbate?

Just ask for the 'happy ending' massage.

[bikes]

yes i fap but not for sexual gratification. its mostly when i want to go to sleep at a time before my normal sleep time and am not tired.

ive never caught wood or even a semi during any oil massage and i've had pretty awesome massages. massage is not sexual at all and lullll at people who think it is.

[rpm]

if online poker were to fall through for you, for whatever reason, what would be your 3 most likely-to-enter disciplines if you decided to go (back?) to college?

[daviddem]

If you like poker and look for a job that has many similarities with the game, study quantitative finance and aim for a career as a trader in a hedge fund... outrageously well paid as well...

Read books like "The Quants", "Liar's poker" and "When genius failed: the rise and fall of Long Term Capital Management" to get a feel for it. Fascinating world imo. And somewhat sickening as well. Technically the application of math and probabilities to stocks, bonds and derivative pricing is also very interesting.

What is also great is that you are allowed to f*ck up, loose billions of dollars, get away with it and retire comfortably with tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars in you bank account.

[kmind]

Do you consider yourself a band wagon sports fan?

Do you think I suck at poker/giving advice?

[bikes]

edges in day trading significantly smaller than that in poker

@kmind no. hate the lakers, hate the heat, hate the celtics, hate everyone but duke in ncaa, also my dad is alum. hate almost every college football team but boise state and michigan, anyone who flat out embarrasses chokelahoma ala fiesta bowl is just so awesome. am a die hard steve nash fan and if he goes to somewhere like the aforementioned laker, hear or celtics i'll probably die a little inside.

i haven't seen nearly enough of your game to know if you suck at or not. i haven't read most of your advices either so no idea pertaining to that either.

[kmind]

Gotcha I just remembered you like Duke/Patriots and wasn't sure what the connection was.

[bikes]

like every other child in america i was a packers fan in my youth because brett favre and i had the same first name. i became a pats fan when tom brady took over from drew bledsoe

[PKKFW]

How many tables do you play at once and at what limits?

[EasyPoker]

are you the same person as bbickes?

[Penneywize]

are you the same person as bbickes?

jesus christ, yes

[Carroters]

Are you azn?

[Sasquach991]

jesus christ, yes

bikes is Jesus Christ? Then where were you Saturday?

[Shotglass]

bikes is Jesus Christ? Then where were you Saturday?

too busy getting ruptured

[EasyPoker]

jesus christ, yes

LOLUMAD

[WillburForce]

do you pay taxes in Thailand???

[Moradis]

do you pay taxes in Thailand???

Does anybody here? Seriously, only people who work for large corporations (such as me) get the rough deal of taxes in the this country. If income is derived from online gambling no tax is declared because it is illegal.

Besides, even if you get caught evading taxes on ligitimate business a small "donation" to the government official (think about 10% of the tax you avoided is MORE than enough) and you're off the hook! Of course, if you are American and get caught doing such a horrible crime you will be subject to the Foreign Corrupt Business Act and tried accordingly in the US.

[bikes]

sick beat, got dragged off the street by a ladyboy who tried to make out with me.

[celtic123]

sick beat, got dragged off the street by a ladyboy who tried to make out with me.

You linked it to this thread and it backs off. GJ

[aka_red]

I was fortunate enough to join irc around the time #ftr was revived by spoon and even more fortunate to be allowed into the other channel once euphoricism started spazzing on everyone. The 2nd largest positive influence in poker and a large positive influence in my life has been this channel and I'm very grateful to the people who decided I was cool enough to be let in. That all being said I cannot disclose the name of the channel. Sorry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLsdJlfA23E

on a scale of 1-10 how well does this song describe this experience?

[bikes]

in the words of danny glover and joe pesci from the little known film 'gone fishin'


"it's a 10! a 10 plus! BORDERLINE ELEVEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bikes]

Boondogglers Extraordinaire

blog of the trip

[daviddem]

I briefly went through your blog. Couple of things:

- how is your internet connection out there? A severe problem we have in the Philippines is intermittent disconnects, from a few seconds to minutes or even hours. Every ISP in the country has this reliability issue (not even speaking of bandwidth being half of what is advertized). Obv the disconnect problem is pretty bad and maddening for pokers. One solution to this is to have two ISP's, for example one cable DSL and one 3G/4G wireless. Then you buy one of these routers called "load balancing router" or "dual WAN router". Via this router, when one provider goes down, the other one acts as a backup and takes over automatically.

- for bug repellent, here we have "Mosquito off" (Johnson company). Comes in spray or cream. Can be bought in any pharmacy or department store in the malls and often in the cosmetics row in the hypermarkets. Cheap and efficient.

[Penneywize]

Boondogglers Extraordinaire

blog of the trip

Hey man, just gotta say that I am really enjoying this blog and hope you keep it up. Well done sir, I must admit to a certain level of envy. It must really be something to be off on the other side of the planet, with an uncertain future, unfamiliar surroundings, and one goal in mind. And you're fucking 22 years old. Accomplish more, imo

Keep writing bra!

[daviddem]

Yeah and be careful. Even if it feels safe, it is not always. Philippines is the same, nice people, feels very safe, but there are lots of stories of robberies turned sour, carjacking, holduppers (as they call them here) in the public transportation, pickpockets also.

And beware of the ladyboys. Same stories here with the occasional street fight/stabbing.

Also tourist traps (like some guy slips something in your hand while you walk and the cops show up and accuse you of drug trafficing, or short changing when you change money, or an underage girl makes contact with you and the cops show up accusing you of child prostitution).

Also cover part of your credit card numbers with some tape and generally ignore people making unsollicited contact in the streets.

You will also find that in your normal business dealings, people try to take advantage because you are a rich foreigner... Useful to have locals helping you in you endeavours and asking for the prices before you show up.

[rong]

Cool blog bikes. Has got me all excited, I'm due in Thailand in about 6 weeks, can't wait.

[bikes]

@david we have 3bb's buisness adsl, costs an arm and a leg considering the prices of things around here but it's well worth it to us. we're probably getting air cards in the near future for times when the internet dies. ty for the bug repellent recommendation.

in general i always carry mugger money. which is monies that should always be in my wallet in the case that i get held up. this is to prevent the mugger from getting pissed and stabbing/shooting me if my wallet were empty. i'm pretty sure i get bent over every time i buy almost anything but i feel lame spending a minute haggling over what amounts to like 40c

[daviddem]

Don't feel lame, overpaying in less developed countries screws up their economy, and it's the poorest locals who suffer most from it. Also if you accept it people then take it for granted that foreigners should pay more and there is no end to it. Taken to the extreme, you end up with countries like Nigeria or Congo where it is totally ugly to travel because of that and where corruption has practically been institutionalized.

[Nekrogovner]

Got question for you bikes. If I remember correctly you are/were playing 50NL RUSH, and are pretty good at it.
Can you please tell me, why are players so obnoxiously annoying at 50NL, and higher, because, this is something I don't see at 10NL, any maybe to some extent at 25NL.

Example of typical NL50 RUSH hand:

UTG stares at his hand, few second burn on timer, he folds.
UTG+1 stares at his hand, half of timer burns down, he folds.
MP1 folds
MP2 stares at his hand, few seconds burn on timer, he raises for 3bb.
MP3 stares at his hand for a while, and folds.
CO instafolds.
BTN stares at his hand for like eternity and then 3bets.
SB stares MORE!!!!! and folds.
BB stares EVEN MORE!!!! and folds.
MP2 STARES!!!! Timer + extra timer burn down to 2 seconds, and then he folds.

Thats basically how NL50 RUSH or higher limits look like.
Wtf? Do you all have a personal butler that you give orders to, and he does the mouseclicking?

[kiwiMark]

yeah bikes you jerk

[bikes]

@nek some people play far too many tables and that is a result of many tabling rush and not being able to keep up. sucks but happens esp at rush where bad regs 4 table who probably shouldnt be doing more than 2.

as for taking time before 3bing thats something you should do by default as to not give away timing tells.

[aka_red]

why is your bored thread popular and mine only have views? :'(

what do you think/remember about my game?~!

[bikes]

why is your bored thread popular and mine only have views? :'(

what do you think/remember about my game?~!

less about popularity and more about us spending time in a little toy shop.

you make a lot of advanced plays that make absolutely no sense to me whatsoever but that's why you play HSNL and i've been stuck at MSNL/SSNL for the last 2-3 years.

[bikes]

bump, bored waiting for stars to call me back for the 2nd time today. any questions that would take time to answer should probably be asked now seeing as i'm bored out of my mind

[d0zer]

why are you a ladyboy magnet?

[aka_red]

just make sure you play this song at your guys' wedding

YouTube - &#x202a;99 Red Balloons&#x202c;&rlm;

[rpm]

are you religious? if so, what are your religious beliefs? or otherwise

[bikes]

no idea why ge00fish. its constantly a fml situation.

not at all religious