Working Out is Working Out!

I've lost over 15 lbs in a little over a month!!!

For those who aren't familiar, I mentioned some weight loss bets I made a little over a month ago in my previous entry.

Basically, before Christmas, I had a $50 weight loss bet with a friend to lose 15 lbs over 2 or 3 months. I was doing all right, I think I lost 10 lbs or something but then eventually gave up and gained weight back. As a sort of New Year's resolution, I decided to try to redeem myself and asked the friend if we could do a double or nothing weight loss bet (I pay $100 total if I lose, or break even over both bets if I win). We came to an agreement of 15 lbs (I started at 215!) over a 3 month period.

I also made a second weight loss bet with a friend at school. This was also a 3 month $50 bet but involves losing more weight than the other. We decided to put a cap on weight-loss such that if both of us lost the cap amount or more, then we'd tie. This cap started off as 35 lbs (~3 lbs/week) but we lowered it to 25 lbs (~2 lbs/week) since 35 is a ridiculous amount to lose over 12 weeks (and probably unhealthy). I describe the changes I've made below along with progress updates.


Weight Loss Bet Update:

Well, so far so good. Everything is working out much better than I expected. I had two weight loss bets and I've already won the first one (assuming I can at least maintain my weight for another two months).

I've essentially changed my whole lifestyle in a month. Here are some of the changes I've made:

• I now eat breakfast (before I never had the appetite)
• Instead of two square meals a day, I now eat ~6: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, supper, snack
• I've reduced my caloric intake
• I've replaced bad/junky foods with good ones (generally)
• I get more protein, fruits, and veggies now
  
• I haven't had any alcohol yet (I likely will but not like I used to)
• I drink 8+ glasses of water a day (and don't drink pop or juice anymore)
• I've switched from 2% milk to skim milk (something I thought I'd never do)
• I'm now waking up between 6:30 and 7:30 AM every weekday (where it used to be anything up to 10 or 11 AM)
• I've switched from large lunches to smaller ones (I usually have a Subway 6" Ham with no cheese and mustard)
• I started taking multi-vitamins and minerals daily
• I'm walking to campus and back every weekday (~15 min. each way) instead of taking the transit system
• I'm doing weight training with a friend at 7 AM on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and having a having a protein shake afterwards (skim milk, banana, and chocolate whey protein powder; 37g protein for 45g whey)
• I'm doing one day of cardio (exercise bike, elliptical, etc.) on the weekend and taking one day off (I didn't take a day off for the first two weeks or so). I'm still playing about 1.5 hours of squash every Tuesday and Thursday
• I've been recording pretty much everything I eat, all my workouts, my weight, and sleep in a spreadsheet
• I've also been recording a bunch of things in the above bullet at fitday.com which is a pretty sweet site. It will calculate approximately how many Calories you take in, how many you burn, how much fat, protein, and carbs you take in (and a ton of other stuff).
• I signed up for a nutrition program where a nutrition student outlined about how many Calories I should take in per day as well as what types of foods and how much protein and carbs.
  

Some results I've seen so far:

• I've already lost over 15 lbs!!
  
• I don't get really hungry anymore
• I don't get heartburn anymore
• I have lots more energy
• I can think much clearer
• I am more confident

One thing I still really need to work on is getting better and more consistent sleep. However, I have improved so that's good.

Our workout thus far has been a beginner workout found here. Here's a list of our exercises (3 sets of 12-15 reps):

• 5 min. elliptical warm-up (sometimes we miss this)
• Bench press (with free weights)
• Bent-over barbell rows (with free weights)
• Seated shoulder press (with free weights)
• Lunges (with free weights)
• Barbell curls (with free weights)
• Overhead tricep extensions (sometimes with free weights, others with the machine)
• Crunches
• Back hyperextensions (sometimes replaced with another exercise)
• Core exercise (I think sometimes called bridges or something)
  

We're going to start a new workout intending to work different muscle groups (with pushing and pulling exercises).

I mentioned FitDay earlier, here is a link to my FitDay public profile. I haven't updated the food log in a few days but you can go through an archive of approximately what I've eaten every day since the competition started. It gives nutritional information and shows the weight fluctuations for that week.

Here's a graph of my weight change so far (all graphs/tables from FitDay; click on pics to see larger versions):

The short-term fluctuations were mostly from me weighing myself during different times of day. Your weight can easily fluctuate 2 lbs (I've even seen 3-4) over a day. Here's the same graph but with my weight loss goal (25 lbs):


It's always nice to see that my weight loss graph has stayed below my goal for the duration of the bet!

Here's a table showing the Nutrition Facts for the foods I've eaten since we started the competition (showing the average daily intake compared to recommended daily intake):


along with a corresponding graph (recommended daily value being 100%):

and finally a graph of my average Calorie intake since we started:

Some of the high numbers after starting are from not recording and thus averaging over a smaller week sample (like when I caught the flu). Anyway, in terms of my Calorie breakdown (in percentages) in Carbs/Fat/Protein, I've averaged 55/23/22. I've heard of two different goals to aim for: 40/30/30 from a friend and 60/20/20 from a Smoothies recipe book. I'm not too disappointed with my numbers as it's somewhere in between.

If anyone has any comments, questions, or especially suggestions about nutrition/working out/lifestyle, please leave some comments for me at the end of the blog.


RL (non-poker):

Melissa and I recently got digital cable and one of the channels we ordered as the Game Show Network (GSN). I'm pretty pumped about this because it hosts "High Stakes Poker" and the season 5 premiere starts this Sunday. On another note, my birthday is in a week (March 3) and I have a midterm exam that day :(

When browsing Google Reader the other day --this site has literally saved me hours of internet browsing a week by combining everything into one handy page with updates/RSS feeds-- I discovered a website called www.obamicon.me which gives you the opportunity to create the Barack Obama campaign type pictures. This can be done easily by either uploading a photo or taken directly using your webcam. Then, you can subtitle it with whatever you want (up to a certain number of characters, of course). Here are a couple I took while fooling around:

and nothing rounds out a blog like a NSFW pic, obv:


Now on to my poker blog, you can stop reading now if you came to read about the weight loss bet.


Cash Games:

Here's a screen shot of my overall stats for January:


I had a pretty good January, especially considering how few hands I put in. I obviously ran really well (especially at heads-up). However, I think my game has really improved a lot over the last little while (thanks a ton to my coach BigBadBabar from 2p2/DeucesCracked). The main strategy help I got from involved 3betting the SB from the BB and capping HU in position. Most of the improvements, however, have simply been psychological as I have a much better approach to the game now. I generally play fewer tables than I used to, don't check my results during a session (generally), and am trying to implement a daily stop-loss.

Here is a screen shot of my Session Stats:

I played for about 25 hrs and made $74/hr + rakeback (over $10/hr) which is pretty sweet.

Here are my positional stats filtered for 6max (5-6 handed) LHE:


Note that I am becoming even LAGgier. I played 35/27/1.9 but believe I had a significant edge on most of my opponents. I try to table- and seat-select a bit when I play so that always helps. It looks like I'm becoming even more stubborn and showdown-bound. I won when I saw the flop 47% of the time and went to showdown 47%! Thus, my W$SD is obviously < 50%.

Here's a graph of January in terms of big bets (BBs):


and here is the same graph except represented in dollars along with the rakeback made:



Tournaments:

I didn't really play tournaments at all. I played a few on a whim but didn't get into them.


Bankroll:

FTPoints: 199,328 (2/3 of my goal for this year)
Iron Man Medals: 1422

	Bankroll
Party	$119.70
Stars	$51.32
FTP	$13,059.88
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$40.00
Staking3	$640.00
Rakeback	$29.95
Total	$15,486.75

I was talking to a friend recently (actually, the one I'm competing against in the weight loss bet) and he got me thinking. I should withdraw a bunch of my roll and deposit it into a high-interest savings account. I could always redeposit onto the poker site if I had a downswing. Withdrawing some now might be a good time as the exchange rate is something like $1 US = $1.25 CAD. That means withdrawing 5k US would be equivalent to over 6k CAD. Also, I need to pay off my student credit card, I didn't know that your credit card rating is affected negatively just for having an outstanding balance, I thought you only get dinged when you are late on payments. I should have done this a while ago anyway because of the ridiculous interest rates the credit card companies charge.


Miscellaneous (poker):

Research has been going much better as of late. I'm working on multiplayer (specifically, 3-player) texas hold'em games. However, there are lots of complications with creating a 3-player equilibrium (and even if said equilibrium could be created, we're unsure of its effectiveness). Anyway, one thing we decided to do is to look at situations where you initially start with 3 players but then move down to 2 players when someone folds. We can easily solve such 2-player games so I've created some small blind-vs.-big blind bots in a 5-bucket abstraction. Something interesting that I've discovered is that the SB raises about two-thirds of his hands (mostly folds the rest with little limping) and the BB defends pretty much any two cards. Of these BB defends, the BB 3bets about 29% of the top bucket and about 14% of the middle bucket, IIRC. I actually lost a $5 bet to Bryce where we guessed how often the SB and BB would fold. I guessed something like SB folds 18% and BB folds 8% and Bryce guessed SB folds 25.5% and BB folds 0%. He said he was going to guess a larger number for SB but didn't want to come off as a nit, haha!

Also, I recently got access to a 32GB RAM machine to run a long memory-intensive 3-player hold'em game on. However, after seeing how quickly (slowly is actually a more fitting word) it was running, I discovered that the estimated time of completion of the program was about 15-25 years! Yikes!


Goals/Resolutions:

Here's a recap of this year's goals/resolutions from my previous blog entry. I sucessfully cleared the TFPT bonuses last month, I'm not sure if I'll be able to this month (it will involve a lot of Friday/Saturday play, if so).

• [x] Lose 15 lbs by April 15 (midnight)
• Lose more weight than Johnny (competitor) by April 16 or at least 25 lbs
  
• Have a win rate of over 1 BB/100 at 6max LHE cash
  
• Play and win at 10/20+ stakes by the end of the year
• Clear TrulyFreePokerTraining (free CR/Stoxpoker) memberships every month (7000 FTPoints)
• Get 300k+ FTPoints
• Make $30k+ profit
• Finish Thesis
  

A Glance at 2008

I've included stats and graphs for the poker I've played over the last year. I also discuss my [again] late New Year's resolutions (along with a look at last year's).


Cash Games:

Here is my 2008 graph for all cash games (LHE/NL/PL) at Full Tilt. The green represents just table profit while blue represents profit including rakeback.

and here are the corresponding stats:

A few things are depressing about the above. Firstly, I played less than 10k hands/month on average. If I was playing full-time (8 hrs/day), I'd be able to play the same amount of hands that I played all of last year in just one month. Secondly, I am still playing the same stakes that I was playing last year (whereas I moved up from $0.25/$0.50 to 3/6 and 5/10 in a few months).

The upside to the above stats is that I could easily do this as a full-time job if I so choose after my Master's. I'd be able to clear $4k-$5k/month if I played 100k hands and another $3k+ profit. That's also assuming that I don't improve at all (same winrate and not moving up in stakes at all). There's a regular at my stakes (over 3/4 of his hands are at stakes that I play) whose played ~660k hands in the last 9 months (according to tableratings). He's made ~$82k profit + ~$42k rakeback at a similar winrate to mine.

Here are my 2008 stats for just LHE:

My average win rate was ~$24/hr (including rakeback) last year. For the last 6 months, it has been ~$30/hr.

Here are my 2008 stats for 5- to 6-handed LHE:

and my last 6 months of 5- to 6-handed LHE:

Notice that (even though it's over a smallish sample size) I have a higher win rate by about 1/4BB and my average stats have changed from 27/19 -> 33/23.

Here is my small sample of NL/PL:

The 5c/10c was me shoving most hands at a $3 CAP game. If it wasn't for me seeking out tougher regulars at deep stack $50 HU NL, the win rate would have been much better. Of course, none of that really matters since the sample size is so small.

I recently hired a coach, BigBadBabar from 2p2/DeucesCracked, to look over hands I've played and give me feedback (through documents/Skype). I've payed him for 6 hours of work so far. The biggest changes to my game haven't really been strategy-related but more of the psychological aspect. Here are some of the changes I've made:

• I cover my stack sizes so that I don't know how I'm doing
  
• I don't look at my results (through Cashier/HUD/HEM) until I've finished a session
• I play shorter sessions
• I play less tables
• I pay more attention (not chatting/browsing internet)

I recently sent my coach a link to a video of myself 4-tabling 3/6 6max LHE on FTP (with a sweet DeucesCracked table mod). If you're interested, click here for the link (I can also email his comments on the video, if interested).

Since the coaching session, I've been running super hot:
Over this small sample size, it looks like I've become LAGgier preflop, I 3bet more, steal more. Something that I've really been trying to work on is bet/folding more on the turn and river. I'm also valuebetting thinner and not check/calling so much (along with check/folding more). This has done two things, I have a higher river AF and I have a higher W$SD (it's 51.6% whereas it's normally 49-50%).


Tournaments:

Here are my OPR stats for the last year (~$14k profit, 29% ROI, 16% ITM, $32 ABI, ~1500 MTTs):


It's pretty sweet that my rating is in the 99th percentile (and top 2000 players) for 2007 and 2008 even though I only played part-time during part of the year. I haven't really played MTTs for a while because I needed a break after the brutal $5k or $6k+ downswing. Luckily it followed my biggest month. Also, I want to get back into LHE cash games.


Bankroll:

FTPoints: 186,762
Iron Man Medals: 1422

	Bankroll
Party	$119.70
Stars	$179.97
FTP	$10,250.81
Staking1	$1,545.90
Staking2	$50.00
Staking3	$500.00
Rakeback	$52.09
Total	$12,698.47

The reason why this month's BR is lower than last months is because I've withdrawn $3k ($1k for Xmas and $2k for tuition since I used tuition money to buy plane tickets home to PEI). I really hate withdrawing from my roll all the time. This brings the total to ~$15k+ withdrawn. I'd almost be rolled for 15/30 had I never withdrawn. Oh well, I'll just have to start logging more hands.

Combining the cash game hands, rakeback, and MTTs, I made about $22k last year. I'm pretty happy with this considering I didn't get to play too much (an average of 1 hr of cash games and 4 MTTs per day) while going to school (at least compared to a full-time grinder).

Here is a graph of my BR plotted monthly (based on numbers from blog entries):

and here's a chart of the rakeback earned for each month of 2008:

Notice how it decreased almost linearly every month for the first half of the year. This is because I kept logging less and less hands (due to school, research, laziness, playing MTTs instead of cash). The most rakeback was ~$1500 a year ago (Jan 2008).


Miscellaneous (poker):

I haven't worked on the Preflop program I was describing in the previous blog entry. Instead, I started writing a new program. I originally started writing it in Java but it took a ridiculous amount of time to run. I then tried to figure out how to set up the Pokersource project but ended up giving up on that (their nice Java code was old, unused, and nonfunctional and I didn't really wanna use their C stuff). Instead, I found the C# project that's used by the Pokerazor guys. Of course, I didn't know any C# but I decided to learn a bit of a new language, and hopefully come up with a faster way to computer what I wanted. I ended up with a primitive program that is much faster (but I still wish it was faster). I really like how easy it is to create a GUI.

What it does: Given a board, it ranks every possible holding (hot-cold equity and current hand strength). These can then be sorted from highest to lowest or vice versa. There's a huge list of things to add/change but I haven't worked on it since before Xmas. For instance, I need to group equivalent/canonical hands together and be able to output ranges/subranges (e.g. top 50%) or compare equity of hands vs. another range or distribution.

Here is a screenshot of the preliminary program:



RL (non-poker):

Okay, so I obviously lost the weight loss bet I had with my buddy for before Xmas. I kinda just gave up (although I was moving at a good rate for a while). However, he's giving me a chance to redeem myself. Another 15 lbs /3 month weight-loss bet. If I win this one, I'm even, otherwise I owe him $100. I also have another $50 weight loss bet with a different friend; this one is for whoever can lose more weight than the other guy.

That said, I've been making pretty major changes already. I'm drinking 8+ glasses of water a day, exercising every day (fitness room and squash), eating less, eating breakfast every day, eating healthier. Melissa and I also ordered a blender and a slow cooker today with our grocery store points. Today, I got a decent 1L water bottle and "My Weight Loss Coach" for the DS today. To top it all off, I've been reading a bit about exercise/nutrition (book, magazine, online) and asking others. I might even look into getting a personal trainer or someone to teach me proper gym techniques for a bit. Finally, I have something where I can implement my competitive drive (aside from poker). I'm going to crush you ______! (you know who you are).

On a somewhat related note, I've also worked out a deal with Melissa. It's a pretty win-win deal for both of us IMO. She wanted to go on a trip/vacation with some friends in a few months (with a budget of ~$800-$1k). I proposed that she cook a healthy meal for me every night (that she doesn't work) and I'll give her $800 (since I'll have extra time to play poker) and we settled at $825. Both of us are pretty pumped about the deal.


Goals/Resolutions:

Below are last year's goals/resolutions (from my old Cardrunners blog). I'll use the standard 2p2 [x] vs. [ ] check boxes to denote whether I succeeded or not.

[ ] Reduce my procrastination significantly (I am a very bad-- or good, depending on how you look at it-- procrastinator). Although I've done well (school-wise) in the past, I can't really do that for my Master's.

[x] As mentioned in an earlier blog entry, I want to have a $10k bankroll online by April 4 (3 months from when we got back from our Xmas trip).

[ ] Get into the top 100 on the tournament leader board (TLB on Full Tilt) for at least one month.

[x] Have a tourney score of over $5k

[ ] Be a winning player at $10/20 or higher at 6max LHE

[ ] Start playing and winning at NL 6max cash and SNGs as well as some more HU LHE and possible HU NL.

[ ] Get into better shape

[x (if you count withdrawn amount)] Have a BR of > $25k by the end of the year

[ ] Spend more time studying/calculating/reviewing hands and situations

[x] Always use proper BR-management

[x] Take a break/quit when I'm (a) tilting or (b) not playing well

Well... 5 out of 11 obviously isn't that great. Here are my new goals/resolutions for 2009:

• Lose 15 lbs by April 15 (midnight)
• Lose more weight than ______ by April 16
• Have a win rate of over 1 BB/100 at 6max LHE cash
  
• Play and win at 10/20+ stakes by the end of the year
• Clear TrulyFreePokerTraining (free CR/Stoxpoker) memberships every month (7000 FTPoints)
• Get 300k+ FTPoints
• Make $30k+ profit
• Finish Thesis