Predator314's Poker Journal

A day that will live in infamy!



I've embarked on this journey time and time before. A quest if you will. What is this quest you ask? The quest is to clear a Poker Stars bonus without losing my ass! Many times I've went on this quest. Many times I've failed. Not this time.

As you can see from the graphic above, I've cleared the Poker Stars bonus. I've also cleared it without losing. I deposited $600 leaving me a $600 balance and 750 FPPs to clear. I just logged off after clearing the bonus with a $34 profit plus an additional $150 bonus. I guess my letter to Lee Jones paid off. I tell you what, Lee, just for being such a good sport and not turning on my "We hate Wes" button, I'll keep that money on your site and try to build it up.

Here are some stats for my bonus clearing:

Hands: 2,277 all $2/4 6 max
VP$IP: 27%
Att. To Steal Blinds: 31.39%
Won $ WSF: 40.51%
Amount Won: $89.50 (I blew some on a few tournaments)
BB/100 Hands: 0.98 (bleh!)
Went to SD %: 35.83%
Won $ at SD: 54.48%
PF Raise %: 19.38%
Total Rake: 169.00

I also played a few sit n goes and tournaments. So the rake will be higher. It sure seems like I played more hands than that.

Anyway, I've been in a poker mood all weekend. I had a marathon session last night playing nearly 1500 hands. In fact, so far this weekend, I've played almost 3000 hands up through today. 3000 hands of break even poker. It would have been nice, but there was a 500 hand stretch or so last night where I lost around 100BBs.

I've spent most of my time playing the bad beat jackpot tables. They were extremely juicy. There's so many interesting hands that I'd like to post on this site. However, my brain is fried right now and I'm going to take a break.

I'll probably play some more later on tonight. I think I'm going to stick with the $2/4 6 max on Stars. I might just play some tournaments or a few sit n goes. It depends on how I feel.

Mind, body, soul, poker


The Party Poker jackpot is up to $555,000! That's getting pretty large. Let me tell you, the games were juicy last night too. I'm talking some horrible play here. Nothing too unusual.

I finished last night's session with a nice victory. Not the couple hundred thousand I was hoping for, but I'll take it. However, once again, I didn't get to take full advantage of the juicy tables by playing enough hands. I vowed yesterday to play 1000 hands. I got half that. My bad.

It all started with me getting home from work. I was prepared to get some poker played. However, I had 3 shiny new DVDs from Netflix in the mailbox. I gave in to temptation and watched Super Size Me. Pretty good flick that will wing you from McDonald's food. Although I believe it was a bit biased. The dude was from West Virginia which was pretty cool. If I learned anything from the movie, it's that I will never date a vegan.

I also watched part of Oceans 12, but was getting too tired to finish it. So I went to bed.

I had some time to play poker yesterday. I just couldn't make myself do it. I was just tired, my brain was tired, which pretty much put me in a foul/tilt-able mood. That's been happening to me a lot lately.

After watching the movie yesterday, I started thinking. Maybe the reason, I don't feel great anymore is the shitty food I've been eating. I'm out on my own now in a bachelor pad. My diet is for shit right now.

I know one reason that I feel bad anymore is my lack of sleep. Those of you that read my old blog may know that I constantly battle insomnia. I've never been much of a sleeper. However, I'm a night time person, so that is a brutal combination. I like to go to bed late, but I can't sleep good and I'm always up early.

However, I think a healthier diet and exercise, I could only improve my health and general feeling of well being. Here is a list of things I'm doing to try to improve my health.

1.) Cut out all non-diet sodas and limit to 1 diet soda per day

It feels weird to type the word "soda", but I think that's how most of the world knows it. Of course, in my part of the world, we call it "pop". Whatever you call it, I drink too much. I used to drink water all the time. I love water. For some reason, over the past year, I've started drinking more and more soda/pop. So, I'm switching back to water and milk.

2.) NO Fast Food!

This is the biggie. I'm not a big fan of fast food. In fact, I down right hate it. However, it's cheap and easy. Just like my ex-girlfriend. Now, that I'm out on my own, I don't have anyone to cook for me either. I think that if I can get past this hump, then things will pretty much get back to normal. I love salads and they are easy to fix, so I figure I'll start with that. I have some basic cooking skills and a George Foreman grill. I should be able to whoop up a meal that can beat these stats for my favorite foods by fast food joint:

McDonalds: Favorite Meal - 2 Double Cheeseburgers, Small Fry, Large Coke. 1,580 Calories and 62 grams of fat.

Wendy's: Favorite Meal - Spicy Chicken Combo with a Coke. 1220 Calories, 43 grams of fat.

Taco Bell: Favorite Meal - 2 Chalupas, 1 Soft Taco meal with a Coke. 1290 calories, 58 grams of fat

Hardees: Favorite Meal - Sourdough Burger with a Coke. 1801 calories!!!, 97 grams of fat! What the fuck!?! How am I still alive?

KFC: Favorite Meal - Twister Combo with Wedges and a Pepsi. 1080 calories, 50 grams of fat.

Burger King: Favorite Meal - Whopper w/ cheese, Fries, Coke - 1600 calories, 74 grams of fat.

Long John Silvers: Favorite Meal - 2 fish, 3 chicken platter with extra hushpuppies insted of slaw - 1690 Calories, 91 grams of fat!

Arby's: Favorite Meal - Giant Roast Beef with Curly's and a Coke, occasionally throw in some jalapeno kickers - 1161 calories 41 grams of fat, 1470 calories 60 grams of fat with the kickers.

Subway: Favorite Meal - Foot long Subway Club on Wheat (no mayo) with Baked KC Masterpiece chips and a coke - 940 calories and 12 grams of fat for just sandwich and coke. The Coke accounts for 1/3 of those calories. So this is a viable option for eating out. Maybe that Jared fucker is onto something. Cut out the coke, and I got a nutritous meal.

I also kind of like Pizza. Once slice of Pizza Hut meat lovers (my favorite) has 314 calories and 19 grams of fat. I usually eat 3 or 4 slices, so now we're up with the other meals as far as calories and ahead of most of the others in fat.

I knew the numbers were high, but never really paid attention to how high until yesterday. This food is dangerous if eaten in regularly.

So to replace my fast food meals, I'm going to have to cook for myself more often. I love chicken, so I'll probably fix a bunch of that on the Foreman. I also like rice, and salads. I'm not high up on other veggies, but I can stomach things like green beans in moderation.

3.) Exercise

Of course, you healthy fuckers out there know that food is only half the battle. The 2nd half is to get your fat ass off the couch and get some excerise. I'm way out of shape right now. However, I have a health club membership that I never use.

Also, my office where I play poker currently has a desk with my computer and the rest of the room is filled with boxes of shit that I've never unpacked. I'm going to spend this evening cleaning that room out and making room for a treadmill and weight bench.

I do have a friend that is willing to help me with this. I used to go to the gym 5 days a week. I had a friend that went with me all the time. We would work out and then hit the racquetball courts for an hour or two. Talk about feeling great. Unfortuantely, our friendship hit a bumpy road and it sucked going to the gym by myself. A few months ago, I started going back with a girl I was interested in. That shit didn't last long and it sucked working out with a girl too.

4.) Drink a shitload of water

I used to drink nothing, but water. Gradually, I slipped and started drinking more and more soda. Enough where I hardly ever drink water now.

Also, I'm on the lookout for the best price on Fiji water. That shit is the bomb. But the price is higher than camel cock. It's like $25/case or something like that. I tried eBay with no luck. If anyone has any tips, lemme know.

5.) Don't be results oriented

One thing that will drive you crazy in poker and in health is to be results oriented. This should be fairly easy for me. I don't own a set of scales. I don't know how much I weight right now either. The only way I can tell my results will be in how my clothes fit and how I feel health-wise.

6.) Don't treat this as a diet

I cannot treat this as a diet; this is the most important step in my outline. It's more of a lifestyle change. Something I need to burn into my brain. I need my body to know that this is my way of life now. Get used to it. So I'm sure with reduction of calories and suger, my body will go into shock. I'm expecting some sort of withdrawl symptoms. I'll almost bet $5 that I'll have a headache for the first couple days. We'll see.

Well, I guess that's all I have for right now. Hopefully with a healthier body, I'll be able to squeeze in more poker play time which will lead to more poker content on this site.

Quite possibly the worst played hand in poker. I lost IQ points just watching the hand get played:

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (5 handed) converter


Preflop: Hero is UTG with Th, 3h.

2 folds, Button calls, SB raises, BB 3-bets, Button caps, SB calls, BB calls.


Flop: (12 SB) 8s, 5h, 3c (3 players)

SB checks, BB bets, Button calls, SB calls.


Turn: (7.50 BB) 9c (3 players)

SB checks, BB checks, Button bets, SB calls, BB folds.


River: (9.50 BB) Qd (2 players)

SB checks, Button bets, SB calls.


Final Pot: 11.50 BB


Results in white below:

SB has Ac Qs (one pair, queens).

Button has Td Ts (one pair, tens).

Outcome: SB wins 11.50 BB.

Brides Maids


Yesterday was our big day on the Wednesday night bowling league. We hit the final week of quarter #1 with a 4 point lead over two fantastic teams. Of course we drew the better team. All we needed to do is win 2 games to guarantee our victory.

In game 1 I started off really poorly, opening up in my first 2 frames. I finally get things lined out and finish the rest of the game clean with a couple strikes and a score of 172. However, a couple of our players also started out poorly and never could get things squared away. We lost the first game by 145 pins. Not good.

In game 2 I made an adjustment because I just couldn't get my ball in the pocket. The adjustment worked out great and I cruised to a game of 201. The whole team bowled better in game #2 and we had a nice score. However, the other team bowled their asses off and beat us by like 75 more pins.

At this point, the only way we can win the quarter is to win the last game by about 220 pins. We could also just win the final game and tie for the quarter with that team. We bowled our asses off in game #3. I had another good game and a score of 200 even giving me a 573 series. My best in a Wednesday night league. However, the other team bowled great again. But this time we beat them, but only by like 50 pins.

Ok...i'm pumped up for a tie breaker. I know I got another 200 game in me. Pffft. Remember the other 2nd place team? They took all 8 points against their opponents and squeaked in ahead of both of us. So we end up tied for 2nd place. It's still going to be a decent payday, but I wanted that win.

We bowled shitty in game 1, but games 2 and 3 were above par for us. We just couldn't catch any breaks. We kept tossing up splits over and over. The other team would leave a split and then one of the pins would just fall 5 seconds later. It was like that all night long.

We will win a quarter this year. Our team is too good not to.

Another thing that left a bad taste in my mouth from last night was the sportsmanship of the team we were playing last night. They really had a good time dancing around, hooting, hollering every time they would throw a shit ball and it ended up getting a strike. These guys were all in their 50's and 60's. Our ages are 25,23,28,28,33. Who do you think they cocky bastards would be? I finally got fed up to one point where I just told the one guy "You can dance all you want. You're not beating me tonight". And he didn't. I beat him all 3 games.

On to poker. Yesterday was a great day for me for poker. Not great because I won a lot of money. Although that would have been nice. Just great because of how I handled myself.

Of course we all know by now that Poker Stars hates me. That much is a given. Even though they hate me, I still play there. Right now I'm trying to clear the $150 bonus. I only have a few more hands to do that.

I played 800 hands yesterday. During the first 600 or so, I was getting hammered. You name it, it happened. Bad beats, dead cards, action flops, etc. Just one of those days.

I never tilted though. I did get mildly aggravated at some of the beats I was taking, but just for a minute or 2, then back to poker.

Then something happened. In those last 200 hands, the cards started to fall for me. Before long, I had taken my potential -100BB day and turned it into a +5BB win.

I think my short handed game can only get better after yesterday. Sometimes I wonder if my brain can handle the short handed swings. It's not there yet, but getting there as my bankroll swells. I cushiony bankroll really helps reduce tilt.

Tonight, I've got only one small errand to run, then I'm gonna fire up some poker. The bad beat jackpot on Party is at $475,000 and counting. So I figure I'll 6-8 table the BBJ $2/4's tonight. It ought to be nice and juicy. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky.

I also vow to play 1000 hands of poker tonight. I'll probably split it up and play 2 500 hand sessions.

Myself and a couple other affiliates were able to setup a special deal with Party. We are being allowed to offer deals at Party at this time whereas some other affiliates may not be able to since these affiliates went through different contacts. I've spoken to my contact at Party 3 or 4 times today and he has mentioned that Party is aware of the special arrangement myself and a couple other affiliates have. Before I had asked players to send me a message through my website if you were interested in a deal at Party. In about the last 12 hours I've received about 300 messages and at the same time I've been on the phone most of the day. If you are interested in a deal at Party (even if you have sent me a message already through my website) I ask that you please click on the Request Offer link at the top of this page. Please fill out that form and put Party as the site you are interested in. Also, please make sure that you enter your username at this website and also mention whether or not you have an existing account at Party in the comments section. I will then start getting back to players as soon as I can. Due to the tons of e-mails I expect to receive I ask that everyone please be extremely patient as it may take me 3 or 4 days to send you an e-mail back.

More good news from my affiliate on rake back at Party. I'll believe it when I see it.

In other news, Lee Jones is back to his old tricks. Dealing me KK 5 times yesterday and not letting me win a single one. Pokerstars hates me.

However, I move on clearing that bonus. I'm officially 1/2 way to clearing it. The combination of me not cranking out a large # of hands and having to clear it at $2/4 are making this thing take longer than expected.

To sum it up, I'm down $0.48 and I'm 1/2 way to clearing the bonus. Bah, I was up almost $200 while doing the clearing. Yesterday and today has taken a toll on that outcome. C'mon Lee Jones! You can do it! Let me win for Pete's sake!

I should have everything setup with Party Monday night or Tuesday. Shortly after that I will be able to start signing up players. If you have an existing account at Party there will be a solution. If you are interested in a deal at Party please send me a message through this website. I will then get back to you as soon as possible. Due to the # of e-mails I expect to receive my response time may be a little longer than usual but I will try my best to get everyone signed up in a timely manner.

Some more good news on the rakeback situation at Party. I'll patiently wait. I have a good feeling that this deal won't be as sweet as the 27% I was receiving, but something is better than nothing.

Until that dust cloud settles, I'll continue bonus whoring. I've been clearing the bonus at Poker Stars. I'm about 1/3 finished with it and I'm up quite a bit from just playing. I've been playing $2/4 short handed to clear the bonus. These games are absolutely insanely good. At least they were yesterday. They can be very profitable.

Once I get that Stars bonus cleared, I'm going to work on the Empire 100% bonus that starts today. It takes 1000 raked hands to clear it, but that's nothing. After that, I'll probably go back to Stars and play there full time until the Party situation gets settled. However, I'll probably still play a few tables on the Party BBJ tables. It's almost $340,000 right now.

Tonight I'm gonna watch the main event on ESPN. I also have to run to radio shack and pick up an AC adaptor. I bought a firewire card for my laptop, but it needs an external power supply. What a ripoff. But my iPod is just collecting dust in the corner.

After that, I'll hop on the tables for some bonus whoring and bad beat jackpot hoping. So far, this month has been quite profitable for me, despite losing over 100BBs on Friday night. If I could add a BBJ to my bankroll, that would be SUPER! It's been almost a year since I won a jackpot :)

Trifecta for the day.

Here's a couple interesting hands from my afternoon session. Maybe Lee read my letter already? I'll reserve judgement on that. He has a knack for yanking my nut hairs out.

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (6 handed) converter


Preflop: Hero is BB with Jd, Js.

UTG calls, 1 fold, CO calls, Button calls, SB completes, Hero raises, UTG calls, CO calls, Button 3-bets, SB folds, Hero caps, UTG folds, CO folds, Button calls.


Flop: (13 SB) 2h, Kh, As (2 players)

Hero bets, Button raises, Hero calls.


Turn: (8.50 BB) 3d (2 players)

Hero checks, Button bets, Hero calls.


River: (10.50 BB) 6c (2 players)

Hero checks, Button checks.


Final Pot: 10.50 BB


Results in white below:

Hero has Jd Js (one pair, jacks).

Button has 5s Qs (high card, ace).

Outcome: Hero wins 10.50 BB.

Who says only good players play at Stars. Limp re-raising with Q5s? I'm kind of glad he did because it let me weed out the over cards that had originally called.

Here's a nice heads up hand (for me):

PokerStars 2/4 Hold'em (2 handed) converter


Preflop: Hero is Button with 8d, 8c. Hero posts a blind of $2.

BB raises, Hero (poster) 3-bets, BB caps, Hero calls.


Flop: (8 SB) 7d, 5c, Jc (2 players)

BB bets, Hero raises, BB 3-bets, Hero calls.


Turn: (7 BB) 8s (2 players)

BB bets, Hero raises, BB 3-bets, Hero caps, BB calls.


River: (15 BB) 2h (2 players)

BB bets, Hero raises, BB calls.


Final Pot: 19 BB


Results in white below:

BB has Kh Kd (one pair, kings).

Hero has 8d 8c (three of a kind, eights).

Outcome: Hero wins 19 BB.

Nice suckout for my biggest pot yet. Anyone play that one differently heads up? He complained, but there's no way I'm not going to see a showdown with that hand and that board (even without the 8 on the turn).

So, my afternoon session went well today. I played a little $2/4 full and $3/6 6 max on Party and had a nice winning session. Then some $2/4 short on Poker Stars for a nice win.

I'm about 1/7th of the way to clearing my bonus at Stars. I should have that thing cleared either by tonight or tomorrow night. Then I'm going to start on the Empire bonus that begins tomorrow. 100% up to $100.

Just in time for Halloween. Pokerstars is offering a 25% up to $150 deposit bonus. It takes 750 FPPs to clear the whole bonus which doesn't take very long playing short handed 2/4.

I know the folks at Poker Stars will be checking this blog at some point to verify that I have my blogger tournament ad posted. So I'm going to post this letter:

Dear Mr. Lee Jones & Poker Stars:

I've been a good boy this year. I've played on your site multiple times and I'm sure you've made you some money in the past.

All I want is for you to flip on my win switch while I whore this current bonus. In previous attempts to clear a bonus on your site, I've lost considerable amounts of money on your site. Can you please let me win?

If you honor this request, I promise to leave a Poker Stars ad on this site forever.

Sincerely,

Mr Predator314

"Myself and some of the other affiliates are in discussions with Party and we will be able to offer rakeback at Party. I hope to have everything setup within the next couple of days. As soon as I have more details I will let everyone know. "

-- My Current Rakeback Affiliate

Well, I logged into my rakeback affiliates site and was greeted with the above information. So that's good news. We'll see how things work out.

Party must have read my site yesterday too. I had a pretty good day at the tables in some wild games. Those BBJ tables are fantastic. Also the jackpot is nearing $300,000. Which means that the games will just get more fantastic. Now I remember how I ran 3 BB/100 before.

Yesterday I also watched that 18 inning steaming pile of dogshit they called a baseball game yesterday. I didn't get as aggravated with the Braves back in the 80's when they lost 100 games a year as I do now. Win a fucking World Series already. It would be fun!

Due to the marathon ballgame, I almost missed my bowling tournament, but I showed up just in time. This was something new to me. It was a king of the hill format. Everyone bowls 3 qualifying games. They cut the field to the top 8 and then you work your way through brackets like a normal tournament. The good news was that they were using last years handicap which for me is 30 pins lower than this year's handicap. THe handicapping gives you 90% of 220 with a max of 55 pins. I got the max.

My buddy Moose (the guy that bowled 286 scratch last week) and I were on a pair of lanes with 2 powerhouse bowlers. I stunk up the joint in games 1 and 2, bowling a 147 and 148 respectively. With my handicap, it was up to a 202 and 203, but still pretty far out of the running. In game #3, I guess I lost all nervousness, because I knew I wasn't going to make it. However, something happened. I found a line I could use. I rode that line to 7 straight strikes to end game #3. I finished with a 231 (286 with handicap). This boosted me to 6th. I also won the high scratch and high handicap game sidepots. I'm freerolling this bad boy.

In match play, I didn't get a good draw. I was hoping to draw one of the scratch bowlers, but instead I got a guy with just 13 less sticks than me. We both sucked ass in our match. He sucked just a bit less. I went in to the 10th needing 2 strikes and a 6 count to win. I got strike #1. Ball #2 went brooklyn on me and I left a 9 count for a tough loss. It was a pretty shitty game and there was no reason that I should have been in that position.

I do have an excuse for my crappy bowling. The lanes were so dry and I was getting some shitty ball reaction. I'm also not used to bowling across the middle, but my ball was breaking so much, it was necessary.

So tonight, I'm going to play some more poker and try to hit me a bad beat jackpot. Or at least put some bad beats on unsuspecting fishes.

Ugh. I don't know what to think. My initial impression was that Party fucked a lot of people over hardcore by separating their cash game tables from the skins. However, I think it could be good in the long run.

Right now, the tables are overrun with rakeback whores. These are the guys sitting at your tables with a VP$IP of somewhere around 7.5%. Normally this would be a losing to break even strategy. However, with rakeback, people make a living sitting for hours on end clicking the fold button.

Now I don't make a living playing poker. I just use it to help pay bills. I've worked hard on my game and rely on my winnings to make me some money. However, it's nice to have that GUARANTEED money every month. For me, it was usually a $750 to $800 payment every month. Somewhere I gotta make up for that loss of money right?

I've almost fully convinced myself that the loss of rakeback will send some of these rakeback whores back to their shitty jobs and allow one more seat at the table to be open for a LPP type fishy. These additional seats that are open will hopefully make up for the lost wages.

Now, their are some TAGs and winning players that lost their rakeback as well. Some of these guys will be dusting off their resumes. The others will probably trickle back to Party Poker. I don't think this will make that much of a difference at the limits I play.

I think all that Party Poker effectively did was make it impossible for a $2/4 player to be a pro.

I have already cashed out my bankroll on Empire. I have just a few bucks left in that account for some of their tournaments. I put a chunk of money back into Party so I could 4 table the BBJ tables last night. Those things are always full of trout and salmon.

I have signed up for rakeback at Ultimate Bet. I'll probably also sign up at one of the prima networks. The rates are a lot better anyway.

Other than that, I'm just going to keep working on my game. I can continue building my bankroll by actually winning at poker. I've done it before. I am probably going to be doing a lot more bonus whoring too. I think I'm going to start with the Titan $500 bonus. I also haved $50 left at Full Tilt to whore. That should go very quickly. I'll probably do it first. Also, as I was typing this, I was offered a $200 bonus on UB. So that will most likely be my next victim.

My biggest thing though is where am I going to play when I'm not whoring a bonus? I think all roads are leading to Poker Stars. 1.) I love their interface. 2.) The FPPs are actually useful. I can use them to actually enter satellites and other tournaments instead of crappy freerolls where 3500 people battle it out for $150.

I just need to practice better game selection in general. If I find a good game on UB, I'll play there, Full Tilt, there I go, etc.

So in conclusion, you're probably going to read how this is the end of poker as we know it! I think it could be the start of something good.

In other news, I didn't play in that tournament yesterday. I slept late, didn't feel good, and the WVU game was on. I ended up washing dishes and cleaning a little house. I played in a few tournaments. I made it to the final 2 tables of one on Full Tilt for a decent cash. I should have made the final table, but dumbass me takes a stand against the chip leader when he actually has a hand better than mine.

Today, I'll probably get quite a few hands played. I'm going to stick with Party today because the BBJ is over $230,000. I'll just play those tables until the jackpot is hit. By that time, hopefully my Empire cashout will have hit my neteller account. I can then move from there.