November: Turbulent Times (2015)

Los Angeles

For a while I've been entertaining the idea of moving to California.  Having lived there for a year when I was 13 I have very fond memories of it being a beautiful place with truly genuine, compassionate human beings.  For demographic reasons it is by far the best place in the US for an asian male to thrive and being just a 4.5hr flight from Hawaii makes it feel close to home.  I envision finally having a life outside of poker and building real friendships with people who never step foot in casinos, something I imagine would do wonders for my overall well being.

As much as I'd love to rave about how great California was, the trip turned out to be a harsh reality check.  The poker I experienced during my two week stint here couldn't have been more disappointing.  Dead doesn't properly describe the quality of the games here.  Factoring in the high rake, low cap, and extreme toughness of the games, any reasonable person would agree that expecting to break 10bb/hr here even at the 5/5 level is seriously delusional.  The following highlights should give you a good idea of what the Commerce in particular is like...

• $2 rake for every hand even if its chopped
• $7 rake anytime a flop is dealt
• $20 opens at 5/10 going undefended almost 1/3 of the time
• Old guy folds AQ face up UTG 7-handed and no one bats an eyelash 
• 6 chopped pots in a single orbit and no one complains about nits because it is so normal here

Heading west would make it extremely difficult to ever become well off as I would have to deal with significantly higher costs of living on a smaller income.  Moving to the latest poker mecca on the east coast would put myself in the best financial position to build wealth, but aside from that it would be quite a miserable lifestyle in such a cold & depressing place.  I've never been good at making critical life decisions.  This is a real dilemma I'm not sure how to properly address yet.  Accepting the fact that my homeland Hawaii has become a distant pipedream is hard in itself, but realizing that the next best thing California has also become an impractical move is a very tough pill to swallow.  As much as I despise Florida it makes the most financial sense to be here.

Beneath the Glitz & Glamour

Recently I wrote a twoplustwo thread questioning how many of the young poker players in Miami are able to live such extravagant lifestyles playing the same stakes that I do, clearly living well beyond their means with no regard for tomorrow.  Very interesting discussions were sparked as it made some undeniably good points, even being brought up on JoeInGram's podcast.  The majority of the posters who attacked me in the comments were Miami players themselves, angered that I had torn apart the facade they desperately strive to uphold.  

There was never any malicious intent but the Miami crew treated it as a hateful & spiteful callout.  They took it so seriously that they were somehow able to get a mod to trace the IP address of the thread's creator.  Because of all this animosity towards me my trip to the semi-annual SHRPO this month was very interesting.  A guy at the table who I've never seen before in my life was threatening to spit in my face (to which I egged him on) and that there would be serious consequences for the cowardly act I pulled online, which the dealer completely ignored.  Usually I constantly have to table hop but a whale who I pointed out in the thread bumhunted my every session I was there, desperately trying to stack me so he could record it for his Snapchat and Instagram.

Many people would say I burned bridges and created a very uncomfortable workplace situation for myself.  While I understand where they are coming from, the only reason I step foot in a casino is to make money and I feel this ultimately did not hurt my earning potential.  Given the chance I would certainly would have done things a bit differently, mainly taking caution to be more discreet. However, I find that any rapport I had with these acquaintances held little value anyway.  I am glad I got it off my chest and taught myself once again that most things aren't what they appear to be on the surface.

Capital Ship Devastation

Breaking even in poker for so long has left me desperate to create another source of income.  Putting in long hours at the casino day in and day out but getting nothing in return has taken a serious toll on my sanity, and my judgment has been severely clouded by desperation.  Although I had been having steady success in forex the numbers were far too small to be worth mentioning as a side income, so I decided to get what I thought was professional help in managing my account.  This turned out to be one of the dumbest things I have ever done, which is an impressive statement given my history.

It all started off with me paying for a $200 3 month signal service from Market Tech.  I am well aware that in forex the real money is being made in scamming people rather than actual trading, but I figured them to be different.  Unlike all the other services out there they were not promoting these unreasonably lofty goals of crushing the markets to live a materialistic lifestyle, but rather just seeking financial stability.  They claimed one of the major things that made them unique was their transparency, meaning that they openly showcase all of their losing trades rather than only their winning ones.

All of this turned out to be complete bullshit.  Every single one of the 9 trading signals they sent to me were losers, though they only posted 4 of them on their Instagram.  Some of the signals weren't even sent to me because they carelessly forgot to add me to the CC list.  Aside from the fact that their trading analysis was worthless garbage, they spent more time posting frivolous trading memes than actual trading content.  Their trading history which they so proudly advertised has been removed from their website and any form of criticism towards them is swiftly deleted from their profiles.

By diligently following their signals roughly 25% of my $20,000 account was wiped out from losing so many trades in a row.  I quickly destroyed another 25% of my account attempting to make back the losses asap by overleveraging an AUD/USD short and not having the breathing room to fade a reasonable amount of drawdown before it went in my direction.  Losing my Paypal dispute to get back the $200 I had sent to the Indian scam artists was salt in the wound.

Dedicated or Stubborn?

Nearly everyone tells me to steer clear of forex trading but I often dismiss their well meaning advice because as a poker player our attitudes toward money are completely different and I see them as being far too risk-averse.  You hear the standard rule of never risking more than 1% on a trade being thrown around all the time, but in my eyes this conservativeness is too passive.  As someone who has gone through massive downswings with no backup I feel that people who lack the same experience cannot properly relate.

A few years ago I read an article about a young anonymous forex trader blowing $323K in a nightclub.  Recently another article came out revealing his identity as Alex Hope, a con artist who stole the funds of his clients to fund his outrageous lifestyle.  What first started off as an inspiration turned out to be the exposure of a real life boiler room.  On social media today I frequently see the name Timothy Skyes everywhere.  This obnoxious scumbag flaunts his lifestyle by posting pictures of wads of cash, private jets, lavish vacations, and fast cars.  He labels himself as a whizz kid trading prodigy, but the real source of his income is selling gullible people his bullshit system.

One of the biggest obstacles in trading is the fact that there's no one to really learn from.  When these so-called experts claim to be analyzing a pair all they are doing is listing a few technical support & resistance points that they came up with in one minute.  If USD/JPY is hovering at 120.50 they will tell you that if it breaks resistance at 121.00 then we could see a break to 121.50, but if it breaks support at 120.00 then we could see a break to 119.50 and below.  It is a complete joke that these rejects label themselves as professionals, but it shouldn't be that surprising since the same thing happens in the poker world.  So many people claim to be professional poker players even if it painfully obvious that they are a serious loser.

Lies are the best product in the world.  You see it in the pick-up artist industry and religious movements as well.  They feast on the hope of mankind by placing an ideal before them and claiming that they are the ideal or that they can help achieve it.  The gullibility of people (myself included) is disgusting...and it's profitable as fuck.
A friend of mine who has had experience working behind a trading desk says most people fail to realize how fast these trades actually take place.  On the stock exchange floor everyone has to use the same length extension cord to connect their servers to the terminal because even an extra 10 foot of cord, while only amounting to nanoseconds is a considerable disadvantage.  While all of this is discouraging my passion still lies in trading and I am convinced that it is the next big thing for me after poker.  Rather than talk about a card game all the time and going through poker hand histories I hope to eventually be discussing real world financial events and reviewing/planning trades on here.

Results:+1907/155hrs

So much has happened this month that I found this to be an exceptionally difficult update to write. Even as a proficient writer I feel I cannot properly express the significance of the critical moments that occurred in a concise summary.  Some of the events are too personal to discuss.  Others, while having created a lot of stress & drama, don't offer much in the way of intelligent discussion to reflect on moving forward.