"To Live and Die in L.A., it's the place to be"/Early SNE chase update with Graph!

"California---no matter what you say about Los Angeles/still the only place for me that never rains in the sun and everybody got love."

-Tupac, To live and die in L.A.

In case my very clever foreshadowing went over your head, I'm headed out to L.A. tomorrow for the national championship between Texas and Alabama on the 7th.

I'm driving with a few friends, which should be somewhere between brutal and epic, we shall see. Once we get there however, it's going to be nothing but awesome. Drink a few beers or ten, go out, see an old college friend or two; then tailgate and watch UT spank that ass and cheer them on while secretly envying my friends who get 2 Football national championships in their college careers while I'm stuck praying Michigan can have a winning season next year (one time?). Ahh well, I live in Austin and I've always liked the Longhorns, so when they win on Thursday, I'm claiming half a national championship, seems fair right? Then when they win the NCAA tourney in hoops in April i can add them up and have a full one.

As for poker, I've started out the SNE (supernova elite) chase pretty damn well. I currently have 8,334 VPP with the pace being 8,220. Obviously it's still ridiculously early, but I've been doing well in putting in the hours. I'm going to be missing 4 or 5 days because of the Cali trip, so the plan is to just bang out a week or two of 4,000 VPP days (daily pace is 2740) when i get back to get caught up.

I've been running pretty hot to start the month and the chase, which is always awesome, but the poker gods are fickle mistresses and can turn on you at any point, so ima try and stay humble.

Here's a graph and stats of the year to date(click on graph to enlarge):






















VPPs earned: 8,334
hours:16.63
VPPs/hour:501
$ made: $1,972.55
$/hour: $118.59
# of tables per session:18 (would like to start getting this up to 24 as soon as possible as more tables=more vpps/hour and less hours needed to be played overall. 24 is the max number of tables pokerstars allows you to play at one time)

Also as a quick explanation, for each VPP i earn, pokerstars credits my account with 3.5 FPP (frequent player points) which can be used to purchase electronics, books, and cash bonuses. I will be using them pretty much exclusively for the cash bonuses. As such they are worth $.016 cents each. So when i refer to rakeback, im talking about the value that these points are worth.

So far this year I've made 29,169 FPPs worth around $465. I for sure expect my hourly at the tables to go down as i'm running really hot right now, probably to something around ~$50 an hour or so, but with the FPPs they add around $28 or so extra an hour, so i'd be pretty damn happy making $78/hour.

I definitely don't wanna be one of those guys who only blogs when he's winning, so i plan to keep a good record throughout the year of all the ups and downs. For anyone else that's interested in the life/emotional roller coaster of a poker player it should serve as a cool window through which to view it, and for me it should serve as an outlet for my joy and my heartache throughout the year.

Anyway, much love, and do the damn thing Texas,
mikey miz

"On to the next on, on to the next"

So 2010's here and I think i'm more pumped than I've ever been to start a new year. That's not too say i didn't enjoy 2009 because i did, it was pretty awesome in fact. But I've set out some lofty goals for 2010 and am ready to start achieving them.

2010 Goals(1 and 2 are the most important):

1. Make Supernova Elite on Pokerstars
-This means i have to earn 1,000,000 FPPs (frequent player points) this year. It is the highest level of Pokerstars VIP program and as such has some amazing rewards to go with it. This will require me to play ~40 hour weeks on 20+ tables at a time. It is a huge grind, a huge commitment, and not for the faint of heart. If i make zero dollars at the tables all year (break even at the tables) Supernova Elite is worth ~115 thousand + dollars in and of itself. This will be an intense test of my character and resolve throughout the year, and I'm going to fucking crush this goal, so let's gogogogo!

2. Get back in shape
-I want to lose 15-20 pounds, get back to playing basketball regularly, eat healthier, not get drunk as often and stop being a lazy piece of shit basically lol. I've set up a pretty good schedule and reward/punishment scale to motivate myself in this regard. All i know is if you live in Austin you better hide you ladies come summer 2010 cause I'm gonna be looking sooo pretty hahaaaa.

3. 200k plus monies made in 2010
-Since making SNE (supernova elite) is worth around 115k, this means i need to make 85k+ at the tables to achieve this goal. I'm going to be playing around 3million hands of poker this year, or about 250,000 a month, so i should definitely make this one happen.

4. Take care of some life responsibilities
-This one includes but is not limited to:
-get health insurance: something stupid ive been putting of but need to take care of so that Mama won't be stuck paying a grip if i end up with cancer or something horrible.
-put money away for tax purposes, savings, investments/stocks, and paying of school loans etc.
-continue paying out student loans
-look into plans for the future for applying to and graduating from college (I have like~90hours completed so i need to get this done at some point before i quit playing poker and am ready to start teaching/coaching basketball)

5. Actively make self improvements
-This one seems sort of abstract, but i basically dont want to get complacent and stuck in a routine of just grinding mindlessly. I want to read more often this year, take time to go see movies im interested in, write/blog more, watch poker videos and review my play to get better. I want to continue working on my poker game and improve throughout the year, which is going to be a tough task coupled with the intense grind of SNE. I also want to improve my mental game while playing, so that I'm playing my A game for as long and as much as possible. there's no way i can be successful in making sne unless i stay mentally and emotionally in control of myself.

6. Have a good ass time
-this ones here just to make sure i remember the point of everything, which for me is the pursuit of pleasure. Can't take anything too serious, it's just life after all. I don't see a problem in making this happen.

Poker update:
-Finished out December okay, making around 5300 with rakeback/bonuses included and have hit the ground running in January.

January 1st:
hands played: 9,208
FPPs earned:3,114 (I need to average 2740 per day to make sne)
money made: +$421.60 (this is not including rakeback/bonuses)
hours played: 6.17
$/hour:$68.37
FPPs/hour:505 (at this pace i'd need to play 1980 hours this year or around 165 hours a month)

Life update:
Had a really good time over the holidays in Houston seeing friends, family and my sister for the first time in a while since she's been studying abroad in Spain since the summer. I went out a decent amount in Houston, went to a few Rockets games (we had sick sick seats to the Rockets-Hornets game and had a great time). Had a great time on New Years at some parties in Austin. Bought a couple new books to read including the book of basketball by Bill simmons which has been absolutely awesome so far as im 120 or so pages into it.


This is already really long so that's all i got for now. Day 1 of 365 down, just gotta take em 1 at a time and look to meet my weekly goals and everything should be all good.

much love/ happy holidays/holla at ya boy in the comments,
Mikey Miz