Posts Tagged ‘poker’

It Generally Is Your Turn To Be Lucky

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

Question from a reader:”You still playing poker?  You haven’t posted anything on it in a long time.  Love your column btw.”

My answer is yes, I still am playing Hold’em and even though I still don’t like poker and defintely don’t preach that people should treat it as a career or business I have been playing lately.  I was at a $40 NL table a few days ago and I was fortunate to have left the session up another $50 for a total cash out of ninety bucks (see?  I told you that you can’t quit any dayjobs to try to make money at this, certainly not at the low and ultra low limits).  My stack was something like $60 at this point in the session having one some small hands mostly from players beating themselves (going in with small pairs for who knows why and things like that).

I had been dealt this:

ckdk

 

So preflop I made a raise to $10 and a gentleman to my left went ahead and called me.  Another person called and it was three of us to see the flop.  The flop came down:

h7h2hj

 

I wasn’t thrilled about the flop but I figured what the heck and let me see what are the chances somebody has the flush – and the nuts no less – on the flop.  So I bet another $15 and the man to my left goes all in with his stack of $30.  The other player folds.  I matched his stack and was waiting for the gloat.  The guy turns over his cards to show me:

h10h1

“I have you beat,” he said with pride.  “I got the nuts and I win.”

I turned over my pocket kings and said, “Well, let’s see what happens.”  I was already beat but having been rivered to death (and turned to death as well) just like the rest of you, and considering I am into the game for what, $55, where am I going to go?

The turn and flop came down:

skhk

 

At this point, I figured that I had cashed in any and all Karma that I was “due” and the moral of the tale, or at least point of the post is that, It Generally Is Your Turn To Be Lucky If All Other Things Being Equal When It Doesn’t Really Change Your Lifestyle.  It was pretty exciting to get four of a kind and win with my hmmm 2 something percent chances out of a hundred and the losing player after cursing was able to congratulate me and I received an entry for some sort of drawing that I couldn’t attend anyways because of work.  I would have rather won the lottery but who knows maybe I should break down and buy a longshot and see if I am in the zone or not.

So, yes, I still am playing cards and the reason you generally don’t see too many posts one way or another because I hate poker stories more than i dislike playing poker.  I need to have a sign on my neck stating, “I will listen to your great beats, your bad beats, your stroke of whatever fortune” for $50 an bour.  I will nod my head appreciately and cluck my tongue and shake it side to side in sympathy with you for that kind of money as well.”

Rumor was that somebody at one tournament did this and made some money though I suspect it has more urban legend to it than reality check especially since most players don’t even have money for a chair or a chip.

I have been playing 200NL with average results.  By average I mean that I am currently slightly down $318- which isn’t bad for the swings that one can get playing at the higher level game.  I have found that the caliber of play ranges from slightly better to shark mode when players from the $400-500 NL drop down and some of them are quite good-or there is a lot more collusion going on.  I think it is the former and not the latter and that is interesting in of itself though I have seen some very bad signals from a husband and wife team once.  They didn’t end up winning.  So much for trying to beat the system through crime.

Same advice still holds – only play with money that isn’t scared money.  If you are sitting down with bread and egg money – shame on you.  There are better things to do with your money and we are in a Depression.  You shouldn’t be taking money from your family, your business and trying to go on bad investment ideas or gambles where you literally are at the mercy of the flip of some cards.  Ugh.

I also spend some time throwing bullies off balance and they generally leave the table after I get the other sharks on to them.  One guy for an hour was constantly raising and finally on the flop (which had nothing remarkable):

c1djs7

 

I called him with nothing but this:

c3s5

 

I went in and said, “I am tired of you bullying us.  Come on and if you can get me, get me.” 

He balked and folded and he left the table two hands later.  Some players said to me, “He was bullying us, how did you know?”

“Everybody can’t have a great hand every time, can they?”

Of course, he could have had any pair, trips or two pair with an ace, or even just a high card of a six and I would have been dead in the water.  It does take some effort to think sometimes at the $200NL though I think my reads of people, not always cards, are okay.  Now you have another idea why I hate poker, huh?  Too much like work.

Be safe, sane and healthy.  May you all be making money as well.

July 30 2009

Also, please  don’t quite go anywhere yet.  Having some tax issues or tax questions?  Any problems with trying to make it through the financial Depression we are in that is making you depressed?  Please read on.

I am expanding  my practice and taking on new tax clients.  If you are interested in having somebody who is a successful businessman and tax professional with integrity review your returns discretely and see if your tax guy or gal is doing a good or goofy job, please drop me an email or post a comment with your contact information and time.

I have experience in international business, small businesses, partnerships, multi-state tax returns (they can get complicated) and anything else you can probably think of.

I also do business consulting and have ran several businesses (still running a few) myself so you are in good hands.

If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book, Practical Money Making, that is listed right after his paragraph in this very post. There are some great suggestions and ways to survive the Depression we are in.

Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Interested in any of my books? You may want to make a stop over here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.

Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax Idea“? Please order it today. The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars! Tax planning should be done year round and not just two weeks into January or later.

Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book go to Rett Syndrome research. One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes. My daughter Arianna has Rett.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

It Generally Is Your Turn To Be Lucky

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Sat Night Poker Winning and Investment Thoughts

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

Saturday night I went briefly out to play some $4/8 Texas Hold’em at Hollywood Park. It was after I visited my mother and I wanted to just briefly play for a little bit. The table was a little loose for my tastes but as anybody who has read my books or writings know, it shouldn’t matter if you stick to playing your game and adjusting slightly to compensate for any game climate changes (the game goes from too tight to too loose, etc). I was dealt the jack and five of clubs and I was under the gun. Normally, in a regular, “average” game where the players are balanced and not too tight or loose I would fold. I didn’t and I ended up winning big when the board flopped a pair of jacks to make me trips. I didn’t win many hands after that but I left a winner.It turned out to be a profitable evening. I bought in with $120 and left with $148 for a net profit of $28 or about 23 and 1/3% profit. Not bad.

When it comes to investments, people need to do a reality check to see if the percentage that they are making back is sustainable for the money they are investing. Some poker players are probably saying, “That isn’t poker, that is being a coward.”

If quitting with a return on investment (ROI) of 23.33% is cowardly, then I want to be the king of the cowardly lions. I wish ALL my investments could return that much money. The reality is that in poker, a lot of it is depending on luck.

With investments that is true to a point but if your money is supposedly in a “safe” investment that is government insured, you would hope that there would be less risk.

In most investments, if you take a little bit of a chance, you might be rewarded greatly. You need to remember, that often when you play suited jacks and fives, more times than not you will end up losing, depending on the complexion of the game you are playing.

In the coming months, if not years, play your hands and your investments a little closer to your vest. If you are getting a decent ROI on your savings or investments with not a lot of risk, be thankful despite what people are saying about losing money to inflation.

It is better to have money now and worry about losing money to inflation later on just as it is better for a poker player to leave a game with money in his pockets so he (or she) can play another day!

Some more financial information can be found from my new book on Practical Money Making.

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

Kim Greenblatt talks about Sat night poker winnings and investment thinking in his blog, profitable.

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Improve Your Product or Service With Each Release By Kim Greenblatt

Tuesday, August 5th, 2008

Unless you have a perfect product out of the chute everytime, and if you do, please call me or drop me an email because I want to work for you, you constantly should be looking at what you can do to improve your product, your service, your research. 

An example of this is my first book, Your Daughter Has Been Diagnosed With Rett Syndrome.  It was my first self published book and it wasn’t heavy in the number of pages, and in fact, I added a flip book inside which chewed up pages but still it was fairly well received.  The reason is that people searching for information are pretty forgiving if they get the information they are looking for.  In the case of my first book, I have been lucky and one of these days I need to get a sequel out with changes in Arianna that have been happening and our lives in general (from the perspective of coping parents).

My poker books were presented differently and there have been various comments on them ranging from hatred to delight.  I think the truth is somewhere in between that I didn’t right the great American poker book but something that had some practical value to the reader (hence the name of my series of books that start off “Practical”).

I did get better with subsequent books though my experiment into larger print for the Crazy Pineapple 8b book was either appreciated by the older set or booed and hissed.  Sales have picked up on the book and from emails I have been getting, I think again, that content is king and that is what people look for.

Incrementally, I decided to move onto cover illustrations and I added that for my fiction books, The Inappropriate Library and Clean, A Tale From The Inappropriate Library.

With each book – fiction or non-fiction, I get a little better and as the saying goes, instead of making a million mistakes I only make 999,999.  The take away for you, dear reader, is try and list one or several things that you are doing that the next time you try to do it, you will have improved it someway.

The Japanese built up their economy from the 1960s thru 80s by incrementally just developing existing products.  They did this by taking products like televisions and making them better, one thing at a time.  They improved size, color picture, etc.  They ended up owning large chunks of property for a brief time in the United States and companies like Sony are what people think of when it comes to electronics.  Their overnight success was accomplished by gradully changing one thing at a time and releasing it.

Apple took a pocket mp3 player, repackaged it and marketed it as the must-have device and the iPod has taken off and is still flying several years later.

If you aren’t making a product, think of what you can do with your service that will add value for your customer or client.  The little things go a long way like being polite, taking the time to listen to the customer and getting the orders right the first time. 

Hopefully I got the order right this time.  Did you want some fries with that?

 Kim Greenblatt


 

Questions or comments? Let me know about them! Thanks for taking the time to visit and for more information or to get back to the beginning of the blog, go here.

This entry by Kim Greenblatt, www.kimgreenblatt.com/wordpress, talks about growing your business by changing one thing at a time in production or service.  The Japanese did similar business growth from the 1960s to the 1980s.    From his profitable blog.

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Hold’em Turn Rats As Bad As River Rats and Random Reinforcement

Sunday, August 3rd, 2008

If you play Texas Hold’em, you have no doubt heard of the term, “River Rat”.  That is the unglamorous phrase used for people who by any stretch of the imagination should have folded their cards earlier but by sticking around and throwing in their money, they end up winning the hand.  

You may have encountered “Turn Rats” in low limit no limit games or games where people want action:

You are in the big blind at a $40NL table. Players just come in and no raises.  The stacks are all roughly the same.  Here is our flop:

You bet $5 and everybody folds except one player who calls.

 

              

You                                              Your Opponent

You are the favorite here but since it is low limit, no fold’em $40 hold em you aren’t sure if this player is holding pocket queens.  Well, you are actually.  He didn’t go all in so what can you do so you don’t make it worth his while to stay in the hand?

You can try to raise him $10 and in this case, and he may call.  If you go all in and he has enough money in his pocket to rebuy, he might call you to try and catch a miracle card.

With players like this who are action addicts, they will call you no matter what.

And if the turn comes like this (and it will once in awhile):

 

You will have to just force a smile, force the acid from coming up your throat and watch yourself lose no matter what.  The comfort in this is that players like your opponent will go bust and a lot of times in the same session after a few hours.  They have a lot of lucky hours but they might end up with unlucky days when the dust settles.

I’ve talked to some players and for the most part, they still remember the few times that they win with cards that come at the last minute.  I am tempted to ask some of them, and I do this of my friends, “But how many times have you tried that and lost?”  Generally you get a “I dunno” and a shrug of the shoulders.  It is random reinforcement.  People tend to remember the things they want rather than what actually has happened.

Hey, the truth can hurt but it is better in business and in gambling that you at least be honest
with yourself so you don’t end up bluffing yourself out of your money in the long run.

 

Kim Greenblatt

Questions or comments? Let me know about them! Thanks for taking the time to visit and for more information or to get back to the beginning of the blog, go here.

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Profitable Or Practical Book Titles and Marketing and Recession Thinking

Wednesday, July 30th, 2008

I have completed the secod draft of my next non-fiction book, tenatively entitled, “Practical Money Making-Surviving Recessions, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement”.  It is not quite as long as the longest pop song title in the world, but it is up there in terms of number of words.   When you are self-publishing, you are already swimming against the tide in the internet ocean.  You are competing with book chains, their websites, other authors, other bloggers and apathy.

One of the best ways to get your book noticed is to make it unique.  I’ve tried to do that with some of my other books on poker, on Rett Syndrome, tax preparation and dice and have had moderate success.  This new book is going to be interesting because the title is going to be so long.

The theory behind it is that the book will be easily picked up by search engines when readers like yourself try to find out information on making money.  As Morris Rosenthal had pointed out once, it is a lot easier to be found if you are in a unique enough niche but the problem is can you make a profit from writing a book in that niche?

RIght now we are in state of flux.  Some of the change is good and some of it isn’t so good.  There are a lot of people out in the United States who are losing their homes, their retirement, and don’t know what to do.  If they have special needs children or people that care in their house, it is even harder for them.  I hope that my book will at least give them direction, some inspiration and some pointers as to what they might be able to do to help extract them from their situation.

The problem I run into as a publisher, is that when it comes to money or savings or income, the internet is swollen with people trying to cash in on the words, pages or anything to get views.  A lot of it is spam, get rich quick schemes.  Some of it is legit and quite informative.   As others have stated, you have to get creative to become a clear signal from all the noise that is generated from the internet.

I tell people who are trying to self publish to try and come up with something unique but accurately defines their book if they are trying to market it. There is a lot of information on trying to find key words that are easily searched. If you tend to go with these words the risk you run into is that you will be caught in the blizzard of spam and other people trying to cash in the same way you are. One of Kim’s rules of being profitable is trying to do something different that the other person isn’t doing. Even if it is only slightly different because the market is so large, it still pays to try to do something to give it your brand.

In hard times, people really want honesty as well as money. A lot of people feel disgusted because their investment brokers, their former employers and their government have betrayed their trust. It pays to be honest if you are writing non-fiction and that in itself should help generate word-of-mouth sales and buzz to sell your book.

For fiction, I suggest you put up samples of your work. Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. There isn’t anything new under the sun and if you are worried, pay for a copyright before you post it. The only way that you will be discovered of creating the next Hobbit or Harry Potter or Dean Koontz book is for you to be out there. In keeping with my being brutally honest, fiction is A LOT harder to sell than non-fiction.

The reason is that fiction is very subjective in taste and what you find boring I might find exciting and original and vice versa. Non fiction is basically the facts and straight information. People usually don’t care who they get the information from.

Tying that back in from where we started, one way to stand out to shout “Hey I have the information you want at a moderate price” is to have a title that people can find or at the very least is unique.
The way I figure it, if they can’t remember the title, remembering “Kim Greenblatt” might be easier.

Don’t forget to post sample pages of your non-fiction on your website or blog. Listen to the feedback you get. Before you invest too heavily in your time and effort, make sure that there is a market – as well as an undogly long name-for what you are trying to do!

Kim

 

Kim Greenblatt

Questions or comments? Let me know about them! Thanks for taking the time to visit and for more information or to get back to the beginning of the blog, go here.

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