My Affiliate Marketing Blog

So here is a link to a blog i started a few days ago that features my dive into Affiliate/article marketing.

Flamm's Marketing

Definitely could use any help any of you can offer. I figure this will be a great to look back on someday and maybe send some others who are interested to.

I'm at My lowest point

Well, today wasn't very good. Two days ago, I dropped back down to 25NL, cuz my bankroll is pretty low and I absolutely murdered that level. I gained 8 buy ins in about 2000 hands. So last nite and today, I go back up to 50NL and drop another 4 buy ins. So, that's -15 buy ins at 50NL in less than a week. It's pretty sick. I mean I'm not going to blame it all on bad luck, cuz i don't think bad runs are ever only bad luck, however, I don't think I'm making any more mistakes then I usually make during the course of my hands. I'd say I make about 1 bonehead mistake every 4-500 hands. But, the difference with this run is that my mistakes are so much more magnified because of the terrible luck I'm having between them. Unfortunately, it put me into a frame of mind today that I thought I would never be in again. I basically just sit in front of my computer screen asking myself in my head "what's going on?" I've also been pretty negative the last few days. I will say this however, if there is an upside or a positive out of the last week, its that I've been playing really good poker despite all of this. I mean, it's pretty easy to throw your hands in the air and say F- it all. But, I haven't done that. I'm not forcing things and I'm not playing poor. I'm just losing money, constantly.

I switched back to 25NL and I guess I will wait longer til I go back to 50NL. I plan on putting in a ton of hands over the next few days, so if any of you message me, don't be offended if I dont respond. Today I played about 3000 hands and 25 sngs. (which is a sick amount of poker for 1 day)

I inquired about a weekend job today. An old friend told me he might be able to get me a job simply checking IDs outside a club for 100$ a nite. Seems like some pretty easy money so if it's available I'm going to take it. It will help to have that extra income that way when i have weeks like this it wont hurt me so bad.

Week's Stats/Graphs

Okay, so once again not nearly enough hands. I do have a good excuse this week, which was already mentioned. My EV graph shows that I was making a profit for the week and was running at what I should've been around about 5500 hands but then the next 2000 I run really poor. So, that is why I ended up losing money this week. This is the first week in a very long time that i have lost money in poker. I think I've been playing great poker, but that isn't always good enough as you can see. Unfortunately this all comes at the worst time possible. Rent is due in 1 week and my bankroll is really really low right now. I may be forced to withdraw my whole roll to pay bills then look for alternatives for a little money until rakeback comes in next month. Right now I really don't know what I'm going to do. All I can do is keep playing, I guess and hope it turns around.

This may be the end of this attempt at being a professional poker player. I hope not, but I certainly know why it is if thats the way it ends up. We'll see.

Sunday Stew

*Today we had a Freeroll for PDynasty. I had a good time and met some new members. Unfortunately I only made it to about 23rd place (or something like that). I was pretty card dead throughout and ended up pushing with Q6s and ran into KK and 77. Oh well. I didn't embarass myself at least. Lex79 was the winner, after missing the first half hour and then being down to 300 chips at one point. Congratulations Lex!

*This week in poker I really fell short of the number of hands I was supposed to play. But, I have a decent excuse. I've been working a lot on the material for my new site. This week I wrote an entire series of articles and even shored up an affiliate. I plan on launching in less than a month, so I have to get that stuff done in order to have a great site.

*My youngest brother's 20th birthday was Saturday. We did a little partying on Friday night and he spent his birthday praying to the porcelain god. There have been a lot of people with birthdays in February.


Nothing else really going on. Next week I get in my hands!!!!

A poker article preview

I wrote this article a few months ago and I wanted to post it here. This isn't the full article but this should give you an idea of what my new site/blog is going to be like. I plan on writing a lot of articles about poker on the site. Hope you enjoy.

Looking deeper into your HUD stats: The Check/raise, aggression, and the Move Street

With poker ace HUD you are able to click on the players at the table and get a deeper sense of how that person plays. Quite a few things are listed there when you do that and I’d like to go over what I look for when I need to find something out about that opponent.

1. The first thing I look at is the number of hands I have on that opponent. The more there are the more accurate the numbers are. For instance, if I only have 10 hands on the opponent, I can’t really say that the numbers are true. Do they really raise 40% of their hands? Probably not. With only 10 hands they have raised 4 of them, that could easily be a good rush of cards. But if I have over 100 hands of a person, and they are raising 40% still, I can assume that they might just be a maniac. Of course 100 hands still isn’t a great sample size. Maybe they are drunk, maybe they are just messing around, who’s to know? But, at least it’s a decent number of hands. I’d say if you have over 400 hands of an opponent, it’s probably very close to being accurate of how they play. But, you must always be wary of that person changing their style or improving or even digressing since those 400 hands were tallied.

2. The next thing I look for will be their overall aggression factor. If I’m facing a raise from a villain then I will look to see how aggressive they are. If that number is 3 or higher than I know they like to play their hands aggressively and they might or might not actually have something, this is the range that most of the better players are at. If its 2.xx or below and they are raising me, I would tend to believe that they have a hand more often than not. Players like this don’t make many plays at you. They play when they have something they fold when they don’t. If a player has an aggressive factor of 4 or higher then it becomes very likely that it’s a player who is making a play at every opportunity. Some players with such high numbers can still be very good, it’s important that you don’t just automatically assume that he is a maniac and spewing chips. He could be very good at reading situations and if you’re not careful you could run into one of his monsters. This is especially a spot where I like to have a lot of hands on an opponent. It is very hard to maintain aggressiveness throughout a long period of time. If they are staying that aggressive with so many hands under their belt, then that means they are making it a purpose to be aggressive. The best players are the aggressive players, generally. But, there is a lot of money to be made off an opponent who is too aggressive.

Like I said, this is not the entire article. I'd like to save the rest for when I switch sites. Any input is always appreciated. Thanx!

Another Case of tha man

trying to keep me down. Woke up today and in my mailbox was a post card from my neighborhood Police department. No frills thrills or even my name inside, simply:

A warrant has been issued for your arrest.

Damn. Insta Street Cred.


The story. I was late in getting my car re registered. I had old tags. Mostly due to procrastination but then when i went to do it I had some issues to resolve still. So, I got pulled over and issued a 30 day warning. So, what happens? My car breaks down and now I really can't get new tags. Well, i forget about the 30 day notice and apparently I'm issued a court date. The problem is they send it to the wrong address (my old address) and I don't get it until a week after the court date has passed. OOOOPSSS. Which apparently now leads to my wanted sign poster being placed on telephone poles. Well, not exactly, but wouldn't that be awesome? like in the old wild west movies. Right next to Billy the Kid. Anyways, so now I'm expected to go skipping into the police station and pay my fines. You think it's a trick? They might just arrest me. You know, you can't have people driving around without tags on their car... no no. They are the main reason this world is so crazy right now. I mean if you can get legitimately registered cars on the road then everything would be fine, wouldn't it. Shit, this crime is so baddddd I'm surprised they didn't just show up at my door and lock me away. Oh ya, they probably did. Thing is i dont live at the door they showed up at.

what a joke, i mean really. I've always told my wife, that someday I have a feeling I will be arrested. Not because I do bad things or anything, but because of shit like this where it's so dumb to me that I don't care enough to follow by the book. I'm just too hard core sometimes, i guess.

Extra Sources of income

Alright, so I'm really starting to immerse myself in this article/affiliate marketing thing. Today, I began a squidoo page, joined a training site, and made a list of poker articles I think I can write. But, then I found out squidoo doesn't allow poker so, luckily i didn't do very much with that and I can easily 86 it. So, my plan as of right now is to have my own kind of blog/training site for poker. I have a wealth of poker knowledge and I was actually able to generate a list of about 50 topics that would creat close to 100 articles that I believe I could write a good article on. I plan on posting those articles daily on my site and having affilliates advertise. With my training site that I joined today, I will learn how to generate traffic to my site and also how to stay fresh with new ideas and opportunities. Eventually, I will branch off into other subjects besides poker, but poker is what I know most about so it makes sense to work the hardest on this first. When the site launches I hope you will all check it out. I will certainly post links to it from here. Something like this is so ideal for me. I love writing and I love poker, I just have to figure out how to get paid for that. I am starting to understand the jargon and terms that these people use, but I must say it would be like having 1 of them with no poker knowledge go over to 2+2 and reading their forums. At times I'm lost. But, I know I am willing to work hard for something I believe in and so I'm positive this will work.

I honestly have no idea how much potential income this could produce, there are a lot of options out there for people, I just have to make sure that I am producing the best quality I can and that I'm bringing something to the table everyday. I think this will be a lot of fun.

If anyone knows anything about article marketing/affiliate marketing, please send me an email, flammpoker@yahoo.com or post a comment below. I am always willing to seek the help of others, especially when it comes to new ventures.

Week's Stats/Graphs

So here are my stats and my EV graph for this week.

The stats say this...
1. I didn't play nearly the 20k hands i was supposed to
2. I profited 318$ this week, 3.76 ptbb/100 (my overall for 80k hands is @4.5 ptbb/100)
3. Vpip/Pfr = 19.85/14.5 decent, id rather it be more like 20/16, but its ok
4. Showdown % won = 51% which i like
5. My aggression Factor is 2.96, which i like
Not bad stats, would like more hands though cuz hands = $$$

Now the graph is my EV graph. The Red line is Sklansky dollas, which is what I should be making, and the green is what i actually made. You cant tell exactly, but in SD i have @1300$, in actual I have >600$. Now this is since the beginning of February and is >20k hands. Goes to show you how much variance does come into play. Also shows, that I'm playing well. A program like this is great for a little reassurance in the rough times. So like i said in the last post, I'm really not running well. My graph since January is even a little more worse at 50NL.

Sunday Stew

So, today was a weird day. My dad showed up with some Bar B Q today and him and my brothers all sat around playing cards, catch with the football and just overall having a good time. Now, I say weird because that hasn't happened in a VERY long time. My brothers don't like my dad at all. Probably something to do with him going to prison when we were all young. (I was 13, my youngest brother was 7). Anyways, somehow things remained civil and we all had a great time. I managed to get in 1000 hands of poker after all was said and done, but I totally just remembered a few minutes ago that I was supposed to have one of the MM group meetings tonite.

I'm not getting enough hands in on the weekends. Right now, my brothers and I are addicted to this stupid ass wrestling game on ps2. That's right i said PS2, my brother sold his ps3. It's smackdown vs Raw 2007. I've never really played a wrestling game before and I haven't watched wrestling since Hogan/Macho Man/Roddy Piper days. But, it is seriously soooooooooooo much fun. My one brother is off work on weekends so I guess that's why we've been playing it so much then, but we have to start playing more earlier in the week, cuz I need to get my hands in while all the fish are out.

I'm going to post a graph/stats after this post of my week. I'll start doing that weekly.

I am running so bad at poker lately. Yes, I'm still winning but variance is really owning me right now, once i post the graph you'll see. It hasn't really bothered me much, I'm still playing great. Which is obv a great sign. But, it gets old. Bills are right around the corner.

I might be switching blog sites soon. I'll keep those that read this updated though and make sure that i post the link to the new one as soon as I do. I'd like to be able to do more with my blog, but this free one has its limits. It's been almost a year since I started this, so I guess it's about time for an upgrade.

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am that I don't have to get up in the morning, or evening for that matter, and go to work. When I do remember though, I remind myself to not take it for granted. I really am fortunate right now. I hope I'm able to continue doing this.

Speaking of Days Off, I had one last nite

I don't like to take any of the weekend days off, but last nite was my brother in laws birthday. We went to a pool hall/bar with a bunch of family and friends. Then after that about a dozen of us went to the casino. I got there like 45 minutes before everyone else, so I sat down at the 1/2 NL game. I only had about 60$ so I wasn't expecting to get more than 1 good hand in. They were all planning on playing blackjack so, I didn't care if I had money when they showed up anyways. I don't really like blackjack and if I'm going to attempt to win money, it might as well be poker. So anyways, I was broke by the time they all got there. Lol. I didn't play a hand for the first 2 orbits. Then, I look down and see AK. I had decided in my head that when i finally picked a hand that if someone raised in front of me I would just push pre. (preflop raises live are usually 7-8x the bb, for those that dont know) But, in this hand i had 4 limpers in front of me, so i made it 15$ to go. The SUPERDONK on my left makes it 40$ to go, it folds to me, i push, he instacalls, obv. He had TT. Flop A, river T. Just for good measure guy at the table lets us know that he folded a T as well, so it was the case T that hit. Oh well. Live poker = obv rigged for fish

I call this guy a superdonk cuz he called a 40$ raise on the turn against this other guy with only a gutshot, leaving himself 30$ behind. He hit his gutshot on the river and instapushed, other guy, to his credit, folded his 2 pair. The SD then gave a 10 minute speech about the young guys need to take lessons, he doesn't play the outs, the cards, sometimes you just go with a hand. OOOOOOOOOKAY. I'm sure this is heard throughout every card room in America by some fossil that believes in his head hes been winning at poker for 35 years, when in actuality he's one of the reasons poker is profitable for the rest of us. Preach on brother, preach on. People like that are funny, I hope I'm not like that when I get old.

So, the rest of the party finally gets there and I rail the blackjack table with them for a few hours. It was a good time and everyone had lots of laughs. Unfortunately, I didn't get to do any drinking, I was driving, but w/e. Watching drunks while sober is always +EV.

My new schedule

Alright, so I think I finally nailed down a schedule that works for me. I started with crunching some numbers to figure out how many hands I need to play weekly. I figured out that playing about 80,000 hands a month would net me a pretty good chunk of Rakeback. 80,000 hands seems like an incredible amount but really it's not. It's about 2600 hands a day. But, I really dont like to play a lot of poker on Mondays and tuesdays so, I'm not breaking it down that simply. here is my poker schedule:

I want to get most of my playing in on the weekends. I also only play in 2 hour blocks, 2 hours = @ 1100 hands, 6 tabling.

Mon/Tues = 1 1/2 sessions, both at nite = @ 1600 hands each day
Wed/Thur = 2 sessions, both at nite = @ 2200 hands each day
Fri/Sat/Sun = 4 sessions, 2 day 2 nite = @ 4400 hands each day
so that comes out to 20,800 hands a day, so that gives me a little grace if i dont get in a session or 2.

Figuring out the expected income, I'm finding is pretty pointless. Variance erases any $$$ amount i can put on 20,000 hands. I can however, estimate something like 80,000 hands because variance doesn't play as big a roll in that large number. Obv you can still run very poorly over >80k hands, but it's not nearly as likely. So, in 80,000 hands I figure/hope to make close to >6400 big bets. Which is some nice coinage, obv. Another great thing about playing that many hands is that my lifestyle doesn't require me to earn that much, so variance can kick me pretty hard and I can still pay my bills. Hell rakeback alone with that many hands on it would pay > half my bills.

As far as the rest of my schedule goes, i stopped trying to make a weekly schedule for myself. I don't stick to it. So instead, every day when i wake up I get on the computer, check email/websites then make my DAILY schedule and set it as my background on my computer, so that i see it all day. It's been great doing it this way. I'm getting everything I need to get done, done.

The easiest part of all this has been playing poker. I'm turning into quite a poker player I think. Between the constant searching for poker knowledge/mastermind meetings 3x a week/playing a ton of hands, its kind of hard to not improve almost daily. I'm very happy with where I'm at and where I'm heading right now as a professional poker player.

A Movie Review - Juno

So, this movie's been out for a few months. But, my wife and I went and saw it today. Juno is about a teenage girl (Ellen Page-from X-Men) who gets pregnant by her best "boy" friend and decides that she wants to give it up for an adoption. I figured the movie would be more about the emotions a woman would go through and how tough of a decision it would be, but the plot didn't really focus on that very much. It focused more on the thought of finding someone who loves you for you. Michael Cera (Superbad) plays her friend that knocked her up. He doesn't have too many appearances in the movie and isn't nearly as comedic as in Superbad. He does a fine job in his role though, and he is quickly becoming one of my favorite up and coming comedic actors. Ellen Page does a very good job at being a quirky-weird teenage girl. Some of the lines seemed a bit far-fetched and a little too not real, if that makes sense. But, overall I thought it was a fine performance. The movie wasn't as comedic as I though it would be either, it did have its moments however. It's definitely a movie geared more towards the opposite sex, but it's a nice "settle for" movie for the guys that have to put in their time with their girlfriend/wife. If you are thinking about taking ur partner to a movie for valentines day, I suggest watching this movie.

I give it an A, good acting, good plot, good storyline, nice humor, great soundtrack, fun movie.

Sunday Stew

Here's what's going on in various different subjects in my life...

*Unfortunately, I've had to cancel my plans of playing football on an adult team with my brothers. I found out that I would have to end up spending over 600$ and I just dont have any money right now and I can't ensure that I will have that amount to spend on something like this any time soon. I'm pretty dissapointed. I mean for me it was all about the workout and just something to get me active. But, I can spend far less than that on a Y membership. My brothers are still going to play which is pretty cool. It'll be fun to watch them.

*Playing good poker has been pretty easy lately. That feels great. Unfortunately, in poker great poker doesn't mean great money, at least not short term. Ryan showed me this program that calculates sklansky dollars for you. For those that dont know, sklanksy dollars is basically an amount you can figure out that you can use to show what you actually SHOULD be making at poker. When you get all your money in as a favorite you can still lose the hand, but you make sklansky dollars, so in the long run (sometimes very long run) you should be making the same amount of actual money that you are making in sklansky dollars. In the short term your actual profit can be very different from your SD. So this program tells you what your results would be in sklansky dollars. Hope that makes sense. So, in sklansky dollars I should have about a 1600$ profit and in actual dollars I only have a 200$ profit. HUGE difference. BUT, what that does show is that I am playing great. It also means I need to play more hands and hope that the variance evens out.

*Man, I wish i had more exciting stuff to talk about. but I dont. I have been thinking about something lately. I am reading a book referred to me by a reader of my blog called Think and Grow Rich. It's very uplifting. Very encouraging. In one of the chapters it talks about changing your mindset and in turn that will change your life. Over the past year I have been all about trying to change my life and improve as a person. But, I notice not everyone does this. I wonder why. Why aren't more people, at least the people I know, trying to improve their life? So many people are so unhappy with who they are, yet they continue to live the same way. Is it laziness? Is it insanity? Is it fear? IDK. I hope I never know what it feels like to be content. This could turn into a post of its own, so I'll stop. I think this week I'll reread my post about Changing my stars and do a part 2 to it.

-No man is ever whipped until he quits in his own mind. Napoleon Hill

A look back on January - My first month as a poker pro

Last month was a dissapointment-slash-achievement. I say dissapointment because I didn't play nearly as much as I should have. Achievement, because I made it out alive and I'm still employed. Obviously, i wanted a bigger bankroll, but as we all know, that is not at all in our control as poker players. I felt like I improved as a poker player. I have been spending a lot of time studying and a lot of time in 3 different mini mastermind groups.

here are my goals for February:
*A more regular schedule - ive written a few schedules, but haven't stuck to any of them
*play more hands - so far so good this month
*Continue to improve as a player- being able to step back and look logically at your own play is what makes you able to improve. I have begun to go over my sessions in ptracker after playing and I am always asking questions to better players than I am.
*Look into Article Marketing, as a side income- Ryan has been telling me about this, it seems like something I can do. A little extra money each month never hurts.

Okay, I'm over it

Alright, so I'm no longer on tilt. Although, I am still dissapointed. What can you do? There are a few smaller buy in FTOPS so I might be hitting those up still, we'll see.

As I'm playing more and more cash games, I am continuously picking up things or reaffirming beliefs that I have. I've always heard people say that the best way to learn was to play, while I don't believe that 100%, I think it is a vital part of your growth as a player. The biggest things I'm learning are betting patterns and timing tells in the other players. So many players play certain hands in the same way all the time and I'm beginning to take note of it. I mean if you think about it, it makes a lot of sense. If they are a thinking player, then I've probably read the same articles around the net that they do. They frequent sites like 2+2, p5s, maybe a training site or two. So, that gives me an edge into how they play in standard situations and how they might play in a "move" situation. At the low levels there is not a lot of reason to be crafty or to change gears. With so many fish coming to the tables you pretty much just play "your" game. The difference between the bigger winners and the smaller winners I think is simply consistency. How do you play after you've lost 3 buy ins at one table? What about if you're up 3 buy ins? Then how do you adjust to the better players? The really bad players? People who play 1 way all the time, may be winners at these levels, but they will never reach their full potential and they will struggle trying to move up in levels.

Until recently I've been very uncomfortable playing 25NL. Now, I feel like I can own it any time I choose. Why? Because I've been able to not only notice the trends and the type of player that plays at this level, but also I've been able to adjust my own play to work against what they are trying to do. Of course, that doesn't mean my work is done. I have to continuously be looking for new trends and be willing to change as many times as needed. Ideally, I wont be at this level for too long, but that is something that I can't control, so I do what I must for as long as I must. I have thought of an extensive research project. The only problem is it will literally take FO EVER! So, we'll see if I do it or not.

Still tilting

I'm still thinking about how bad today was. I just tried to play a cash game session and couldn't concentrate. I even misclicked and folded KK preflop.... maybe i should just take tonite off.

Tomorrow is a new day

All over before it even began...

Today, was the worst satellite day in the history of my life. I am probably like 40% lifetime in satellites. Today I went @ (cuz i lost count after 15) Zero for 21. -$400 and -60,000 FTP points. WTF! I have never lost when dominating people so many times in my life. It was amazing. My final satty was few minutes ago and right now, I'm just in complete shock. I am writing on here to avoid tilting and throwing even more money away. I just can't believe I did so horribly in these. I guess I wont be playing any more satellites and I won't be in any FTOPS events. Barring some crazy cash game results.

I've been waiting 2 months for this shit. So disappointing. Back to cash games.

Playing Lots of Pokers

This week I've been determined to play a lot of poker. So far so good. I'm even learning more and more everyday as I'm playing so many hands. There is certainly something to be said about experience at the poker table being a great learning tool. Obviously, it's not the best method of learning for some people. They play the same way everytime and get upset over the bad results and blame it on luck and then continue to go on playing poorly or just the opposite, their bad play gets rewarded so they think they are right and still continue their poor play. The only way to improve your game as you play is to continuously analyze what you are doing. For me, I find what works best is to have a running dialogue in my head. It allows me to maintain focus as well as plan each hand out. Whatever you can find that works for you I say do it. I've thought a few times about recording some sessions that I do. Not necessarily to post anywhere, but I think if I feel like I'm being watched I'm less likely to do silly stuff. Talking out loud isn't a bad idea either. You'll feel silly doing it and people might think you're nuts, but it's your money, you should do whatever it is you need to do in order to maximize the amount you can make.

I haven't been running too good lately, quite the opposite actually. But, I'm still winning and for the most part playing good poker, that's all that matters. I'm hoping to satellite into the FTOPS events within these next couple weeks. So far I'm 0 for 7.

Sorry for no Sunday stew (no I didn't eat it, well maybe). The Superbowl took up my entire day. What a Game huh? It wasn't the result i was hoping for, cuz I wanted to see history. But, I'm definitely not disappointed that New England lost. It was a great game though and since none of my teams were in it, thats all I cared about. David Tyree-FTW.

Saturday Night Fun

Tonite my brothers and I decided we wanted to go checkout the UFC 82 matches at Hooters. Of course, we waited until the last moment to leave and we had to wait an hour to even get seated. I haven't seen many UFC matches, but the ones I have seen I have enjoyed. The fight of the night was Brock Lesnar vs Frank Mihr. Lesnar is a former WWE champion and is built like a mother Fing tank. At the beginning of the fight he was just hammering away at Mihr. But, the inevitable happened. An inexperienced octagon fighter is going to commit some errors. It didn't take long and it only took 1, Mihr soon had Lesnar in a knee hold and with the threat of a very shortened career, Lesnar had no choice but to tap out.

The big game is tomorrow. I hope it's at least a good game. Unfortuntaley, I don't think it will be. My prediction, Patriots 41 Giants 6. Moss MVP. I am not a fan of the Patriots, but I do want them to win. I think it's pretty awesome to get a chance to see history. A team may never go undefeated again.

I've been playing some 50NL lately. I had a nice 5 buy in upswing yesterday. I have to withdraw some money for bills soon though, so I'll be back down to 25, once that happens. I can't wait until I can be up to 50NL permanently. I definitely need to get a lot of hands in over this month. I am dissapointed with last month's work ethic. I'm happy I've made it past the first month though. Over the next few days I'll have my monthly recap and goal.