Duckblog: August 2011

25% off poker lessons!

I have decided to re-open my coaching services.

Now is the perfect time to improve your game at a huge discount, as I'm offering poker lessons for 25% off!!! Improve your game significantly so when online poker sorts itself out you can annihilate your opponents!

I have decided that I will offer my services at 25% off of what my hourly coaching rate was when I last coached in 2010, which was $250 per hour. It will now be $187.50 per hour. I think this is a great value and you have the added bonus of knowing that I'm a considerably improved poker player since the last time I was coaching students.

My coaching lessons are two hours in length and I feel like a minimum of 5 lessons (10 hours) is ideal for being able to fully convey my knowledge to you and have a significant impact on improving your game. If you choose to purchase a 5 lesson package, I will give you even a further discount of 20% off of the already reduced hourly fee of $187.50 on the entire lesson package. That's only $150 per hour for quality poker lessons! That's a total of 40% off my normal coaching rate!!!

My specialties are NLHE 6 Max cash games and mass tabling. I can help boost your # of tables played by at least a table or two by helping you understand how to use a few secret things that I've discovered in my VPP quest this year... I have slightly over 930k VPPs so far in 2011.

If you would like to contact me about getting lessons feel free to private message me on Cardrunners.com or email me at "Duckslayer2k@gmail.com" and I'd be glad to respond.

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

HILARIOUS youtube vid about poker

This is a pretty funny vid, especially if you've been dealing with crossing borders as a poker player.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMldLgwmU0Y&hd=1

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Fighting Sioux nickname retired

I'm really upset that after a battle that has gone on since I've been a little kid has finally been lost. The college I grew up around, went to, and graduated from has finally lost the battle for the right to name their sports teams "Fighting Sioux."

Personally, this is complete bullshit and I don't see how the nickname can be offensive to Native Americans. There are two major tribes close to UND and one of them was in support of the nickname... it was only a small amount of troublemakers that whined loud enough that eventually after years of work they finally see the fruits of their labor.

Now a really awesome name and logo will be forgotten forever. Now who will even remember there were Native Americans in ND if they didn't just finish reading a history book?

For more on the final, lost battle go here.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Portuguese Poker Cheat "Girah"

I'm sure almost everyone has heard of this by now, but basically a supposed young poker "prodigy" who appeared out of nowhere has been busted big-time cheating people in HU games by Teamviewering their screen while playing them HU.

Here is the link on 2+2 to the epic thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19/high-stakes-pl-nl/portuguese-poker-prodigy-jose-girah-macedo-scammed-hsnl-players-30-000-nvg-xpost-1079436/

There are plenty of rumors out there and it seems that CR pro (now former, he got fired) Haseeb Qureshi aka DogisHead aka INTERNETPOKERS is somehow involved in the entire scandal.

Either way, pretty crazy shit and what happened was terribly scummy. Girah is clearly a total dirtbag and scammer.

Certified CardRunners Coach

I have decided to re-open my coaching services.

If you choose to purchase a 5 lesson package, I will give you even a further discount of 20% off of the already reduced hourly fee of $187.50 on the entire lesson package. That's only $150 per hour for quality poker lessons! That's a total of 40% off my normal coaching rate!!!

If you would like to contact me about getting lessons feel free to private message me on Cardrunners.com or email me at "Duckslayer2k@gmail.com" and I'd be glad to respond.

Duckslayer2k's Poker Career

The summer after my first year of college, a bunch of my old friends from high school were all back in town after finishing up the 2005 spring college semester. We all decided to get together at a friend’s house to hang out and someone decided that we should play poker. I was totally clueless and had no idea how to even play. I had seen it on TV before but never paid much attention to it and didn’t even know the rules. I was reluctant to even play the small $5 tournament because I had heard so many horror stories about how people had become addicted to gambling and lost everything, so I didn’t really want open up the possibility of something like that happening to me as well. However, curiosity and eventually the realization that I was smart enough to control my losses led me to enter the $5 sit-and-go. I was the first player to bust out, but I had a lot of fun and the poker bug had bitten.

I played another half dozen of these tournaments with my friends and my play slowly improved as I began to fully understand the rules and basic strategies. Then in June of 2005, after seeing an advertisement on TV about Party Poker, I decided to put some money online and give it a shot. I deposited $50 on three separate occasions on Party Poker and lost it all each time playing $5 sit-and-goes with a $1 rake and blinds increasing at a ridiculous rate (they increased blind levels once ever 10 hands). I had heard from some of my friends that on PokerStars the SNGs were better due to longer blind levels and half the rake, so I decided to give online poker one last shot and deposited $50 onto PokerStars... this would be the last deposit I’d ever make and I turned that $50 into hundreds of thousands of dollars over my career so far.

Shortly after making the deposit on Stars, I purchased the Harrington on Holdem books and read them cover to cover while grinding the $5 SNGs on Stars. My quality of play increased dramatically after reading those books and I started to crush SNGs. I moved up from the $5 SNGs to the $10 ones once I had enough money in my bankroll. Then I advanced to the $20 SNGs and then to the $50 SNGs. At one point, I was actually making around $3k per month from playing the $50 SNGs.

As I began to move up to $100 SNGs I hit a big MTT score. In May of 2006 I got 5^th place in the $10 rebuy on PokerStars for a $3.3k score. I was thrilled at the time to win this much from poker at once and it was a huge boost for my confidence. I continued to play SNGs as well as the occasional MTT and then one month later I hit an even bigger score, winning the $10 rebuy on PokerStars for $9.3k. After this score I decided to move into cash games and jumped right into $1/2 NL Full ring cash games.

I grinded full ring for about six months without really knowing what I was doing. Over this time I managed to win slightly but I was getting pretty frustrated from cash games. One of my poker friends referred me to Cardrunners.com in December of 2006 and this was probably the single most important event in my poker career. I had no idea training sites like this existed and I began watching videos and learned a ton. I continued to play full ring for over a year and a half, winning at a much higher rate than before.

I moved up to $2/4 NL Full Ring in January of 2007 and played that up until August of that year. I had many great months at $2/4 NL Full Ring, but In August I realized in stakes above $2/4 NL Full Ring the games were pretty terrible. At this time, there were not that many fish at $3/6 NL Full Ring or higher. That fact, along with the reality that there was a relatively low quantity of higher stakes full ring games is one of the reasons I decided to transition into 6 Max.

I struggled for the first month of 6 Max and it was difficult for me to adjust to the more aggressive pace. At first I was playing too tightly; then later I was just going over-board with aggression. After a month of struggling I went to the Cardrunners coaching forum searching for help. After reading the coaching reviews that had been posted, it seemed clear to me that Adam Gefvert (CR member name of Primoman... He's now retired from poker) was the most popular coach on the site. After reading many positive reviews from his students, I decided to contact him for lessons. We proceeded to have a total of four lessons together; two at $2/4 NL Full Ring and two lessons at $1/2 NL 6 Max. These lessons helped my game tremendously and Adam discovered things that I was doing wrong which I was completely unaware of. I owe much of my success to Adam and his tutelage and without his help I may have never gotten good enough to become a pro.

In August of 2007 I actually quit my “day job” at Scheels All Sports as a sales associate to concentrate on poker. I continued to grind $1/2 NL 6 Max all the way through my last year of college and got plenty of solid experience while building my bankroll. By the time I graduated with my degree from the University of North Dakota in December of 2007 my poker skills were advanced enough that it was obvious to me that I wouldn’t be using my degree any time soon. I graduated from college with a degree in business management. In January of 2008 I began to put my degree to use managing my poker business as a full time poker pro.

I have been playing as a full time pro for over three years now, with my primary game being NLHE 6 Max. My game really took off in April of 2008 when I began taking lessons from Tim Nuter (CR pro, Nutedawg). My game jumped to a new level after the first few lessons with Tim and I have had dozens of lessons so far with him.

I am now a regular in the $2/4 NL - $5/10 NL 6 max online cash games on PokerStars. I have played well over 2 million recorded cash game hands in my career and I look upon building on that experience with getting into higher stakes in the coming months.

Duckblog

25% off poker lessons!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

HILARIOUS youtube vid about poker

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Fighting Sioux nickname retired

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Portuguese Poker Cheat "Girah"

Best Gaming Mouse for Poker!!!

Best SSD for $ for your poker databases!

Must-have gaming pad for multi-tabling!

Certified CardRunners Coach

My Students' blogs

Links

Blog Archive

About Me

Duckslayer2k's Poker Career

Duckblog

25% off poker lessons!

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

HILARIOUS youtube vid about poker

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Fighting Sioux nickname retired

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Portuguese Poker Cheat "Girah"

Best Gaming Mouse for Poker!!!

Best SSD for $ for your poker databases!

Must-have gaming pad for multi-tabling!

Subscribe to my blog HERE!

Certified CardRunners Coach

My Students' blogs

Links

Blog Archive

About Me

Duckslayer2k's Poker Career