I have spent a lot more time this year working on my game and really trying to improve.  A few weeks back I caught myself drifting a little too far off into the danger zone that many poker players fall victim.  It is very easy to get caught up in the million dollar pots or the “big score.”  To make sure I learned my lesson I decided to give myself a 20,000 180man SNG punishment.   This would be a good reminder that this job is about work, discipline, and consistency, and not stupid dreams or shortcuts.

I pride myself on the fact that I lace em up just like you, I hit the tables, I grind the small stakes, I am in the fucking trenches day in and day out.  I am not some douchebag sitting back making videos that never plays and has no idea what really is going on in the current state of the game he proclaims to be an expert.

I know I am a much better 180 man player today then I was two months ago.  I am playing more focused and reviewing my own HH day in and day out looking for ways to get even better.  This 20,000 game punishment is about as sweet as a punishment can get.  My goal is to average $5 profit per game, so in about three months when I have completed the games, I will have hopefully won $100,000.

I played 288 games on Monday and woke up a little late this morning and only managed 240 games.  Here are the results since I started the mission and going to try and avg 200 games a day until I finished.

Been very sick last two days up in Santa Barbara, but nothing stops the Rainman.  I came up here to prep for the upcoming “Live Review” that I am hosting this Saturday.  I am really looking forward to this experience and already have had great feedback.  Will probably have to close the registration later today or tomorrow since I want to keep it fairly small.  We already have 350 people signed up and will cap it around 500.  Make sure you do not miss out, check out the info on the main page, www.rainmanpoker.net

I had a nice day on Friday playing a ton of games and slipped a few MTT’s in as well.  I won a $4 MTT with 1500 players and finished 2nd in a $3 Turbo with just over 2500 players.  It was my personal best for 180 wins, as I took down 6 championships and believe it or not, had zero 2nd places.

Back to the tables and leave you with a graph of the grind in 180’s that I started a few days back.

Had a lengthy coaches meeting tonight and it was a lot of fun.  We decided to try something out and have me host a webinar review for anyone and everyone willing to pay the price of admission.  We had a fun time setting the line at people we thought would sign up, and will post the number soon.  The student reviews on webinar have been awesome and no reason not to try it out on a larger scale.

Clint and I were having breakfast at the Pacific Dining Car yesterday morning around 3:30am and were wide awake and decided to drive up PCH for a beautiful scenic drive and play a little poker in a small private game in Montecito.  I was lucky enough to flop middle set vs bottom set and won a nice chunk of change.  It was a great time, but enough live poker to keep me grinding online for a long time.

I also added a new page, check it out  Gold, Silver, and Bronze blog readers I have received quite a few transfers the last few months and thought the least I could do was to acknowledge these nice folks.  If your not running good and need something to turn things around, you will be amazed at what happens after sending $.01 to the Rainman aka MI_turtle on PokerStars.

I played a pretty good nice session earlier today and about to fire up more games now.

Feels great to be grinding the 180’s.  It truly is printing money and I have had top notch focus for every game.  A few days ago I did not time out for a few hours straight and I had a lot of tables going, could just feel myself in the zone and it was a lot of fun.  Today was a little tougher, caught my mind wandering a little, tempted to fire up High Stakes Poker on YouTube, but stayed focus and had no Skype, email, or music going.  I was not able to play very much on the weekend, so going hard this week.

I have played a little over 600 games since last Thursday and my goal is to play4000 this Month and should be a nice profit.  My goal of 100% ROI is a little bit of a stretch, but it is going to make me play as focused as ever because if I want to even think about it, I have to play near perfect.

Might goto the Lakers game tonight, going to take a nap now and see what the plan is when I wake up at 6.

Two months have wrapped up and it is time to take a look at how they are doing.  Overall things are going very well, of course some bumps in the road and a few trouble makers, but all in all, way above the expectations.  Had my first scammer  get me, only for $200 but still annoying and now harder analysis and background checks into any applicants.

I am getting everything all set up for the new students that are starting up the next few days.  About 25 are hitting the tables today and will be announcing another 50 to start on April 1st, my favorite day as you can imagine.

Here are some of the top student’s results from Jan 1, 2010.

The new students have some strict guidelines and requirements.  As you can most the top students avg around 1k games a month.  Well 1k games is the absolute minimum for the new group.  I would like to see 2500 games at least and will not be very forgiving when it comes to hard work.

Vertek and Chip210 are starting to coach this month and they have put a lot of work into preparing for the adventure, they are great guys and a privilege to work with.  I am looking forward to them coming out to LA to get some more intense training and grind.

Had a big night of TV and watched Big Love, what a show, things are getting intense and not sure how anyone could go without watching this show.  I caught the 3rd period of the USA & Canada gold medal game, and what a game it was.  I missed High Stakes Poker and the WSOPE final table, but will watch online later today.

Will be back to the 180 man grind later this afternoon and hopefully get in over 100 games and get back on track.  I was very sick over the weekend and unable to play other then a little Sunday morning.

Sometimes you need to punish yourself to make sure your still strong and see how good you really are. So for the next 14 days I am going to play 200 180 mans a day.

Not bad results, I would like to push myself to have a ROI over 100% after 2000 games. Everyone will say this is impossible, well you know what, go fuck yourself. Why you sit there on your lazy ugly ass telling people what they can’t do, I will busting my ass to make the impossible look like a walk in the park. If it wasn’t for pieces of shit like you, I wouldn’t have the hunger and desire that pushes me everyday to raise the bar.

We had the draft tonight and I assigned a few students to coaches in advanced and drafted about 20 players. The students in this group are a lot more advanced and the ship is going to be run with a little more intensity. March 1st – March 31st they will be expected to play 1000 SNG’s at the absolute minimum. Starting March 15th, I am going to publicly execute one student from the group who is not keeping pace or meeting the standards of the system.

Imagine a poker “Apprentice” board room type firing and it will be broadcast live online, at least the audio. I will be holding the orientation tomorrow night and make sure everyone understands what they are getting themselves into. This is not a joy cruise, this is the most intense program of any sort in the poker world. In a matter of weeks you can become a money making machine and that is 100% fact. Most people have a hard time admitting that they are idiots and worthless pieces of shit. God has given me the job of saving these people and with my help they can make something of their lives. Until they accept the truth, I cannot help them.

Check out this video for a good look at what my students will be hearing tomorrow night.

lol at you losers playing 2 tables

Recently I have read and heard a lot of discussion about training sites, poker coaches, and the coaching industry and thought I would weigh in with my two cents.  The training sites really changed the entire online poker world in a few ways.  First, the best players at the different games become hot commodities and could make videos for the sites.  Second, all these players giving out information made it very easy for someone with some good learning skills and work ethic to improve and make the games tougher.

If you ever wondered how much training sites pay their pros, I do not know everyone’s arrangement, but can tell you what I have been paid and what I have been offered.  PokerVT initially paid me $200/hr of video and after showing some hard work and going above and beyond, bumped me to $400/hr of video with $1000 monthly bonus.  After I left PokerVT to focus on playing and becoming the most profitable SNG player on Full Tilt in the <$30 buy ins, I had a few nice offers from different training sites.  I decided to go with a site that was by far the most professional of anyone I have ever dealt with in the poker business and they had offered me $800/hr of video.  But I never had time to make any videos because it was the end of October and I started the EeeTee2008 prop bet.  $800/hr is not bad at all, but it takes awhile to make a good 1hr video.

A big difference of opinion about poker coaches is whether or not they need to be great players to be a great coach.  Personally I believe results have little to do with how well somebody can coach.  Many great players would be hopeless trying to coach novice players.  Does not mean every fish is a great coach, but if someone knows his stuff, but just has a hard time practicing what he preaches, does not mean he cannot be a great coach.

The big problem in our industry is elevating someone to celebrity status after one accomplishment.  You often hear Daniel or Phil H talk about the test of time, and the longer your in this business the more you appreciate what they mean.  Nowadays when someone wins one MTT or has a great month in cash games, they become an online hero overnight, and usually have set the bar at some unattainable rate that no one could live up to.  They are not able to match those results and the fear or presence they once had at the table is washed away.

All this thinking, got me to Sharkscope to investigate who really is the best 180 man SNG players on PokerStars.  To see who is the best now, and not a year ago, I am looking at the last 5000 games, so it is constantly changing.  Other requirements are “Av. Stake” over $10.

If I left somebody out, please let me know and will update the rankings.

Will write about the Venetian $5000 event later today, had a few interesting hands that I will break down. Right now we are getting ready for the big draft later this week.

I came up with the idea instead of assigning students to a coach, I would give the coaches the list of students and let them do some research and draft the players. Not going to publish the draft results, but will be funny to see how the students do that are picked last, probably a sleeper or two in there.

Around 30 new students will be announced and hit the tables March 1st. Some have been waiting awhile and their patience will be rewarded and others have shown some potential and raced up the charts. The current students will have some new blood to push them and reminder that they need to set a good example.

A couple current students were awarded “Gold” stars on Sharkscope which is quite an accomplishment. Big congrats to “drago1989″ and “luvmywife” whom have nice golden stars spinning beside their names. “Chip210,” “FoxyShazam,” and “fried liver” have all crossed the 2000 SNG mark in 2010, great work gentlemen.  And finally would be unfair not to recognize the class clown “vertek” who learned everything he knows from myself, his coach Aaron, and Chip210. “Vertek” has been absolutely crushing and is closing in on $10,000 profit in 2010 and he deserves it. He works hard, listens well, and good things are happening for him.

Closing in on two months in 2010 and I have a good idea of which students are going to make it. Those are the ones who I am going to spend the most time with and really push to step it up in March and have them going full steam by Summer. A few of the students are taking on students of their own March 1st. It is a lot of fun seeing all of this develop and become a reality. I spent a lot of time dreaming up this system and worked hard so it could happen, going to make sure its better then I could have imagined.

I enjoy reading the students’ blogs and thought Ketan’s latest post was excellent.  He gives away too much credit, but it is so awesome to see the difference in his results since he started and I am excited for his poker future.  He really gets the psychology part of this business and that is really the secret to this crazy game we all love.

Will be another Victory Poker Freeroll in a few days, same password and please only sign up if you signed up through my blog.  Should be a free-roll almost everyday starting next week and keeping track of which students manage their money well and which ones blow it and keep asking me for more.

Been really busy the last few days taking care of things off the felt. Found out a few days ago that my grandfather passed away which was very sad. I spent every Christmas vacation from a very young age at his house in Phoenix and have countless fond memories from those visits. He was a real character, very sharp and good looking in his old age. He was incredibly hard working and was always willing to help others before he helped himself and I hope I can live my life with that same attitude.

I have been doing a lot of work with the students and a few diamonds in the rough have started to appear. My two superstars have some competition closing in and could heat up the race for “class favorites.” I often pull up PokerStars and search for a few random students and watch some hands without them knowing. Then later in the day I will ask them about a hand and they cannot believe I saw a terrible shove, hero call that did not turn out so well, or a sneak into the cash instead of playing to win. Most the time it’s “oh no” but that is my job to fix those mistakes and get people playing as profitably as possible. Which leads to something I find so interesting and that is people just do not allow themselves to be helped in most cases. Forget that they emailed me asking for coaching, or showed up for the review session, and ask yourself why they will not do what I tell them to do? I cannot figure it out for the life of me. Do they not believe me? Obviously the way they have been doing it does not work as well as they would like, and I seem to do prettttty good my way. I guess it comes down to not accepting the fact that their way is not good and until they can just admit that and be open to learning all over again, it is just a waste of time for both of us. This is not the case in very many of the students, but it is for a couple. Call me mean or arrogant, but I do love being the one with the right way, kind of nice. I can barely read and write and never graduated from high school, but now I am top of the class. Shows with hard work you can get wherever you want to go.

Going to hit the tables hard this afternoon and try and play 100 180 mans. Will post a graph of the results when I finish up.

If you are interested in becoming a student of the RainmanPoker system, email coaching@rainmanpoker.net for details.