Latest news straight from Juan Carlos Alvarado. http://www.jcalvarado.com/index.php en-us Well, I signed up for about $200 or so and it took me a few days before I went to my first class, it was a Jiu-Jitsu class that was WAY more than I could handle. I was dead within 30 minutes, and had to get the hell out of there before I puked on someone’s face. I did end up puking at the first stop light on my way out though, and that was when I realized that poker had totally fucked up my health in less than 3 years. I’ve been back since and I absolutely love it. Ever since I was a kid I’ve had a love of Martial Arts, I watched all of the Bruce Lee movies, read his book, and practiced it sporadically throughout my life. I started with Taekwondo as a kid and then practiced Judo and Aikido as a teen. At this point in my life I actually regret not continuing regularly since I started, as a kid though it’s hard to actually understand how much of a positive impact a discipline like this can have on your life. I always lost interest in things after a year or two of doing it, I was a jack of all trades and a master of none. Luckily for me, my recent obsession with MMA got me re-motivated to start training again and get back to a healthy lifestyle. I’ve actually managed to get through entire classes now without puking. I always get my ass kicked but I like it, it’s very humbling. Unfortunately right now my knees are completely messed up, I can’t even cross my legs without pain, hopefully this gets better soon so I can continue with the classes. Another cool new “first” for me was floating. Sounds weird, I know. I’ll explain to the best of my ability though. I learned about it by reading Joe Rogan’s blog, and I was very intrigued. I’ve known about it for about 6 months but never really got around to doing this until a couple of weeks ago. This is a very crazy and unique experience involving a tank that is known as a “sensory deprivation chamber” or “Isolation tank”. It looks like a big rectangular box, or some sort of gigantic safe. Inside it has 11 inches of water with a 800 pounds of Epson salt, this makes you buoyant as you lay in the water. The water is heated to body temperature (94 degrees I think) and the tank is sound proof and pitch black. Now that you get the idea of what these tanks are I’ll try to explain the experience when I finally got in one. It was very strange at first and I was quite nervous that I would freak out or get claustrophobic. I closed the door of the tank and couldn’t see anything, I laid down and instantly felt very weird as soon as it felt like there was no gravity. I started getting itches on my nose, but I was explained that this would happen and I shouldn’t scratch. Apparently when your brain loses all it’s senses it starts trying to “trick you” and makes your face itch so that you’ll touch it or something. As you float you stop feeling that you’re in water, and you totally lose the sense of reality. I didn’t know if I had been there 5 minutes or 30, I kept feeling that I was spinning in a very slow counter-clockwise motion, but I knew that the tank wasn’t wide enough for me to spin so I was probably in the same spot I was when I started floating. My mind was going insane with thoughts of just about everything from poker to health, to trying to get the song “always talking bout what you got” out of my head. At some points it felt as though someone had just taken my brain out of my body, so I couldn’t see, anything or feel anything and I was just free to think about whatever my mind felt I should think about, it’s very hard to explain. Unfortunately my lack of experience didn’t let me get “deep” into the moment for too long, and I would suddenly start to freak out and reach around with my hands until I could feel the wall of the tank. Suddenly I felt a knock on the tank, which meant my hour was over and I had to get out, it was kind of startling as I didn’t expect it at all, afterwards I felt incredibly relaxed my back pain from BJJ training was almost completely gone and my “head” felt very clear and focused. I plan on going at least once a week now, it’s really amazing to be alone with no distractions for an entire hour, it’s like meditating times 100. Rogan made an awesome post once about these things, he explains it WAY better than I do and knows much more about it, if you guys are interested I think you should read this and look for somewhere to float where you live. Here’s the link to Rogan’s blog about Iso tanks As far as the series goes, I was very motivated to start. I decided to take a different approach to this world series and focus on winning a bracelet, unfortunately I haven’t been 100% disciplined. I started out the series by going to sleep at 2 am and waking up at 10 am (tourneys start at 12). I would meditate on my balcony for 10 minutes, do yoga for 15, and then go downstairs to the gym for a 35 minute workout. I would come back up, shower, and make breakfast. I also bought an Xbox just so that I have something to do every time I bust out of an event, just so that I won’t be tempted or bored enough to play online. Here’s the downside though, my place is a MESS, my room, my kitchen, everything looks like a tornado hit it. If I bust out early I’m too pissed and tired to clean and I just play Xbox for hours until I go to bed, I really have to get around to cleaning my house. Everything was positive, and going on track, I was sticking to my routine, I made 3 dinner breaks in my first three events which I’m pretty sure is more dinner breaks than I made last year (not that it’s an accomplishment to make DB’s but it is pretty hard in these events with thousands of people). And I cashed my 3rd event, the $5k mixed hold’em event. The field was REALLY tough deep in the tourney, and the limit levels were absolutely insane compared to the NL levels. The hands that killed me were both limit hold’em hands that I couldn’t play any differently. The first one, Phil Laak raised 7 handed and I 3bet KJ at 4k/8k he called, the flop was K36 and he check called the whole way and just as I thought I was scooping a huge pot that would take me from 100k to 135 and possibly top 5 in chips, he turns over KQ. After that the level went to 5k/10k and the biggest donk at the table raised it UTG with 28 left I 3 bet AQ he called the flop was As8s3c he check raised and I just called to get an extra big bet in on the turn, which was a Qs he bet and I raised and he just called, at which point I feel pretty sure I have the best hand, the river was an 8c and he checked so I put in a V-bet and he called, I was almost sure he’d flip over AT but once again a guy played his hand terrible and flipped over 4s6s, and I was crippled. After that small cash I still felt well and I was extra motivated now that I had gotten close. Last Saturday though, was the beginning of my first bump on the road in this series. I played the $2500 (where I played that hand in my last post) and without really getting any good situations I got my stack up to about 40K (start with 5k) before the dinner break. After the break we came in to 300/600 and I got moved from a great spot I was in at my table, so that was my first beat. I get to the new table and I’m kind of pissed that I have to re-establish an image and get a read on the players, very first hand I see is KT and I minraise like I always do. The SB and BB call and the flop is TT3r the BB leads out 3k and I just call the turn is a 2 and he leads 5k and I just call, the river is a Q and he moves in for the rest of his stack (less than pot sized bet) and I call he has AT for the gross cooler that took a little more than half my stack. After that I raised JT and a guy called, the flop was 8T3r and I got it in vs. another donk with A8 the turn was an A and I was on tilt for the first time in the 08 WSOP. The next day I went to sweat my friend Tmay at the 5k shootout FT and lost some money to one of my friends while prop betting the flops. When I got back home, with a few beers in me, I decided to drink a few more, then I got the brilliant idea to “gamble” a little bit online. I sat in a 25/50 game with 1k behind just to try and run it up, I lost that and then realized the game was actually really juicy so I bought in for the full 5k, then I bought into a 25/50 plo game. I was up about 1500 and about to quit when I got it in with JJ vs. A2 for stacks on a 539r board and lost a monster pot, now I was stuck about 4k, and I reloaded, I had 4k behind in the plo game and I got set under set where I probably should have folded but I was already on banana tilt, and lost that 4k….then I went on to lose another 7k just tilting every hand, and all of a sudden I was stuck about 15k. I made a bit back playing 8/16 nl HU and ended up stuck 9k on the night. This tilt session kind of ruined my mood and stability for a bit, next day I didn’t work out or meditate before I played, I lost 4 handed in the shootout with KK to JJ all in pre. For the past 3 days I haven’t gone to sleep or woken up early enough to work out in the morning, I’m running late and haven’t eaten breakfast, and I’ve been in a shitty mood. I’m refocused though and I’m going to sleep early today so that I can do my whole routine again before the 2k tomorrow. I’ll start posting results in the “schedule” section of this site, and I’ll try to blog at least once a week so that it doesn’t have to be this long. Finally, I’ve been “LOL’ing” pretty hard that I’ve somehow managed to get haters to read my blog, I think it’s pretty funny so I decided to address these guys since it‘s obvious they are pretty desperate for attention, keep in mind I‘m only writing this for selfish entertainment purposes, I‘m sorry if it makes the blog entry too long: “BY Dan theman AT June 11, 2008, 1:59 pm Thats a pretty bad play overall. Early in the tournament making a bluff like that has no EV at all. I guess thats why we don't hear you making too many Final tables these days.” “BY poker player AT June 7, 2008, 8:26 pm HA HA. nice 1. I c you do that quite often, thats why you havent made another final table.” Both of you are giant morons. In fact, I really hope you’re both the same giant moron posting under different names because that would reduce the number of giant morons that read my blog by one. I made a final table (3rd place) in my last 15 live tournaments, what have you done? I’m saying that just so you realize how dumb you are without having to explain any poker to either of you, I’d rather keep your poker knowledge to a minimum (unless of course you decide to pay for it at www.pokervt.com). I didn’t post that hand as a brag that I made a move, I make moves like that every time I play and that’s not even in my top 50 sick plays, I made the post as a joke because the guy who I bluffed told me to. Next time I post a hand that I play and you feel the urge to post some strategy, please realize that I’m good friends with some of the best players in the world and the advice of people that call themselves lame shit like “Dan The Man” or “Poker Player” will NEVER be taken seriously by me, EVER. Have fun being a giant moron. On to the next clown: “BY Rolando Mota AT June 9, 2008, 10:25 am All the stupid Internet player lingo: "limping from the Hijack" and "minraised"....you sound like a retard! Texas is that-a-way---à” I feel sorry for you, but at the same time I’m glad your kind still exists in this world so that you can remind me that no matter how shitty my life can ever get, It’ll never be shitty enough to the point that I need to make a fake name on someone’s blog to try and make them feel bad. Look man, I’m sorry if I turned down your friend request on Myspace or whatever it is I did to piss you off. Send me another one if you still want to be my friend,…in fact, you should send me one either way, just so I can get a glimpse at your pathetic life as a poor, pizza delivering cholo. You probably speak spanglish too. I think it’s sad I can get such a good read on your life by just reading the fake name you chose and your senseless replies to each of my blog posts. The fact that you go through two or three thousand of my written words every time I post a blog with the intent to find something to “hate on” means more to me than any other single person reading my blog on a regular basis, so thank you. I think next time, I’m going to write a blog called “I live in a luxury apartment, drive a Range, get ringside seats to fights, and gamble for $300+ restaurant bills every day (oh and I‘m watching a 60 inch plasma)” The blog will focus ONLY on the awesome things in my life and will only be written with the hopes that at some point you’ll read it and realize that you’re life is shit compared that of a 23 year old college dropout who considers himself unaccomplished so far in life. I have thousands of people who read my shit every time I write, I DARE you to write about your life, you can call it “memoirs of a worthless cholo”. You’ll be sad when you realize that the only comments you’ll ever get are posted by me, under my real name, and all I will do is ask questions like “do you get paid more to wash a minivan than a ford focus?” “don’t you get tired of eating hot pockets every day?” “why do you drink Keystone light? You don’t like Chimay?” ….nice life loser. J.C.]]> http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=52 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=52 Thu, 12 Jun 2008 04:14:32 -0400 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=51 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=51 Sat, 07 Jun 2008 16:12:07 -0400 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=50 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=50 Wed, 30 Apr 2008 06:30:20 -0400 juan@jcalvarado.com trying to distinguish one from another . So the two options (outside of just sticking with it and staying in vegas another year, which is another option) are going back to L.A. or going to live in a beach in Mexico like Acapulco or Playa Del Carmen. If you only knew how much of my day lately has been spent fantasizing of me lying on the beach waiting for a sign of skin cancer to inevitably appear on my heavily tanned body, while I have a beer in my left hand and a mouse on right as I play multiple screens of fishy euro sites and easily cash out through neteller like the golden days in 2006. Seriously, my biggest goal is to one day live in a Corona commercial. Ideally, I’d be able to have a place on the beach and one here, and I could just come stay here for 2 or 3 weeks at a time for the series and the Bellagio tourneys. But that won’t happen until I get some big score (hopefully by July?). There’s just some sort of reality I’m desperately missing and although living in a Mexican beach isn’t that much closer to reality, at least it’s relaxing and not full of weirdo’s. Anyway, this blog got way too long and out of hand. I did not intend it to break any JCAlvarado.com length records, and actually considered splitting into 2 parts and posting the 2nd one in a few days. But screw that, I wrote it and I’m posting it, if you don’t have the attention span to read 2k words, too bad. I’ll try to get back into writing as I really do enjoy this but I usually lack motivation. I’ll post something next week. Until then, have a good weekend. J.C.]]> http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=49 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=49 Sat, 05 Apr 2008 08:42:02 -0400 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=48 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=48 Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:32:01 -0400 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=47 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=47 Sat, 23 Feb 2008 15:09:53 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=46 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=46 Sat, 23 Feb 2008 04:40:44 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com Here's my pokerlistings write up on the 1k event. JC]]> http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=45 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=45 Tue, 19 Feb 2008 20:36:58 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com I felt like I should have won a lot more. Last night (thursday) I went out to some hollywood bars with a friend of mine. I like the whole Hollywood scene despite the fact that most of the attractive girls are usually all over the LA douchebags that feel the need to look like Jhonny Depp. Seriously, I saw like 25 dudes in the club trying to look like him and acting cool but looking like assholes to the outside observer, I haven't seen this anywhere but in LA and it's pretty mind-boggling. Must be an identity issue. You're a tool. Aside from that I actually like the nightlife better in LA than Vegas and I kinda wish I was 21 back when I lived here. Anyway, I woke up fairly early today and Hoosier was awake. We were pretty bored and he comes up with the brilliant idea to play heads up online while we're in the same room. So we sat and started playing 1/2 nl, it seemed pretty harmless at the time but I should have known early on that I rarely end up on the right side of these things -see beer pong blog-. The session was fairly swingy and hoosier was up about 2 buy ins on me, then I came up with the idea to play the 2-7 game which makes absolutely no sense HU. We decided that if anyone won a hand with 2-7 we'd ship the winner $100, half a buy in. 20 minutes later we added 10-4 and 8-3, It turns out hoosier got the hand 3 or 4 times and maybe lost once. I got the hands like 12 times and he had an ace or a pair almost every time, and I never sucked out. I was stuck about $1200 and decided to do $200 flips, of course I lost $800 more and donated $2k. I was on absolute tilt. I should have just short stacked 50/100 plo if I felt like gambling that much. I fell asleep like at 4 pm and woke up at 7 so I went downstairs to play some 10/20 nl. I bought into the game for 3k and I was about to leave because the game was pretty horrible. Vanessa Rousso comes in and sits to my right. I've only played with her in tourneys but never in cash, I still couldn't imagine her being any good so I decided to stay. I had played exactly two hands in 45 minutes, one was blind vs blind and the other I bet/folded the flop. So I'm assuming my image is reaally tight. Then this hand comes up: old guy limps the hijack(who's been limp folding a ton), Vanessa raises to 80 from the cut off. This is the fourth time she raises the dude's limp and I was doing the same thing before she got to the table. About 30 minutes earlier she went to showdown with 10s7s after making the exact same raise vs the limper. So I'm on the button with Ad9d and thought to myself that this was a good spot to re-raise her and either pick up the $130 in the pot or get her to call and check fold a lot of times on the flop. It folds back to her and she starts asking what my stack was (about 3k) she then starts talking to herself and says "I call", I put her on JJ-AA AK-AQ and maybe a mid pair. The flop came Qd4d4c, she checks, I bet $500 and she quickly raises to $1200. I deduced her range down to AQ,KK,AA and very slight chance of her having JJ or total air. Now here's the thing, in tourneys I've seen her reraise half her stack and then make a terrible fold when the guy puts her all in, I've also seen her think for 8 minutes before calling with a set on the flop. I honestly thought that AQ would have to fold to an insta shove 100% of the time, KK would have to think about it because it can't really beat much at this point (I still thought I'd probably get called though) and AA would obv call me, then there was a tiny chance that she had cheese and would just muck. So I ended up insta-shoving because I already have close to 1/3 of my stack in the middle. She snap-called and turned over KxKd. Now, I'm not blaming her for calling at all, but I would think that having the Kd in that hand would be a huge deterrent from snap calling because AKdd is eliminated from my range, of course I would never shove TT or JJ, and why would I shove AQ and turn it into a total bluff? So pretty much she's in a 60/40 spot if she guessed correctly and drawiing to 2 outs every other time. I know I have outs in that spot 95% of the time, so I don't mind my shove at all. What I do wonder about is my reasoning for re-raising her PF, obviously if I flat call I would only lose like $600 instead of 3k. I'm just trying to honestly figure out if I three bet her pre-flop because I don't like her or because I actually felt it was the correct play. I really hope it's the latter because re-raisning someone in a bad spot just because you don't like them is really not a good thing if you're making a living at this. But it's hard to accurately judge what you would have done in the same situation vs someone random. All in all I don't mind the play too much, I certainly could have lost a lot less, but at the same time thats the kind of spot where I'll double up if I hit and at the same time get a really good image going for myself that would allow me to get paid off later in the game. So once she stacked me when the board bricked I locked up my seat and went upstairs to get more money, it ended up taking me a little while because I got sidetracked and when I got back down my seat was taken. I decided not to play if I wasn't going to be able to play in that game, so I just called it a night. Definitely a day that started off terribly right off the bat and ended on the same note. If things don't get better in the next 2 or 3 days I might just drive back to vegas and stay there until the main event. We'll see what happens. J.C.]]> http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=44 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=44 Sat, 09 Feb 2008 08:01:27 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com Anyway, we got to The Palms and had dinner before the show started, I had been to the Palms for a stand up before to see Jim Gaffigan, he performed in the Palms theater which is of decent size. For some reason though, they had Rogan performing at a very small venue with about 2 or 300 seats, it turned out to be a more personal setting than I imagined, this made the show great. His bits were funny as hell, but him dealing with some retarded chicks that heckled him really had me in tears,….keep heckling Rogan bitch! At the end of the show he did a little Q&A and answered some of the usual stuff he gets asked. Overall I thought it was a great show, I’m a huge fan of standup and this really got me thinking I should make sure to catch all the good comedians perform in Vegas, laughing for an hour or two non-stop can’t ever be a bad thing. The show wrapped up and we ended up at a bar on Freemont St. I’d been there before and I really like the place, we ended up having quite a few beers and talking about all those drunken subjects like politics and religion, it turned out to be a fun/chill night where I ended up going to bed at 9 am. At 1 pm I had to wake up to get dressed go pick up my friend Steve who flew in from LA , and we headed down to the Mandalay Bay for the UFC fights. We got to the sports book fully expecting to be able to wager on all 8 or 9 fights of the night, I already had my carefully studied picks, but then they informed us that for some dumb reasoning we were only able to bet the 4 main fights. We didn’t think much of it, but we were slightly disappointed because watching any fight with money on it makes it 10 times more exciting. It wasn’t until after the first four or five fights that I realized I had gotten yet another bad beat to cap off the month, it turned out that I would have won 4 out of the first 5 fights according to my picks, which would have returned me about a 3-4k profit. C’est la vie I guess, I ended up breaking even after Frank Mir made that Ape they call Brock Lesnar tap out. The weekend culminated with me placing a $300 bet Patriots so that I would actually care and get into the game. We bought food, beer and all the snacks, and even with all of that I couldn’t stay awake through the first half. I woke up during the 3rd quarter only to realize that I probably had no shot. Nice bet. On Monday we drove out to LA and got here at night, I went to bed at about 8 am and now my sleep schedule is right where it always is when I stay at Commerce. I don’t plan on playing too many tourneys this month like I did last year, the cash games are way too good to pass up. I might head back to Vegas for 2 or 3 days to play the sattelite for the NBC Heads up invitational, it’s my only shot at getting into that tourney and there is so much value in playing it that I really want to give this $500 buy in satty a try. Unfortunately it is held the same day as the $2500 FTOPS event, so we’ll see what I end up doing. For the next month this blog will be ALL poker okay? No more restaurant reviews, or UFC stories, I’m sure I’ll see the most ridiculously played hands of the year in this place so I’ll make sure to give you guys some good stories. J.C.]]> http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=43 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=43 Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:58:18 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com If that doesn�t make your mouthwater then I dont know what will.. 8. Bonito Michoacan. Off the strip is always nice, when I'm feeling like I need something to remind me of home I always drive 5 minutes away and order the "Queso Fundido" as the appetizer, a Bohemia Beer, and a nice main course. It's not as good as something you'll have in Mexico but it's the closest I've had here in Vegas. It's also great for hangovers, I go there on almost a weekly basis. 7. Spago at Caesar's Palace I'm pretty sure it's mentioned on "Entourage" every other episode. If that won't convince you to go, Maybe Wolfgang Puck himself can. 6. Naked Fish's If I get a text message from Steve Sung that says "yo are you in Vegas?�" I know the very next one will say "Lets go eat at Naked Fish" . Very good sushi, Very good service and a huge plus for being off the strip. Number 6 and 5 can definitely be swapped, both have their up sides. 5. Kaizen Sushi Great Sushi...open till 4 am daily ....Happy hour from 12-4 am...need I say more? 4. FireFly Tapas Kitchen I've been there once and it's already one of my favorite places. It got points for being off the strip, being open late, Trendy, hot girls, good Spanish music, and good food... oh and you can get pitchers of Mojito...take a cab, I'm glad I did. 3. Japonais at Mirage I'm sure by now you can tell I love sushi, this place is great, kind of expensive but order their best bottle of Sake and you won't care. 2. Craftsteak at MGM OMG. Expensive as fuck, but by far the best steak house I've ever been to. It wins the prize for best Lobster Bisque I've ever had and for best Kobe beef I've ever had. Go with friends, Roulette for the bill and pray to the god that you don't lose. Thanks Tom ;-) . 1. FIX and Stack..the combo I had a tough time deciding what the best restaurant I've been to was, so I decided that instead of ranking Stack in sixth and FIX at number one or two I'd just list the two sister restaurants as number 1, because two is always better than one right? FIX is at Bellagio and the other at Mirage, FIX get's a 10 in in food, atmosphere, class, service and in location. Right next to the poker room makes it a favorite amongst poker players when the day ends in a tournament or when you're celebrating your final table. Best appetizers on earth, often you won't have room for a main course. If you're still hungry for desert you can stuff your face with the sickest doughnuts ever. As for Stack, it looks just like fix, but the menu is a bit different, appetizers are still the best thing they have try the hot rock or the tiny hot dogs, really good stuff. Unfortunately the two times I went there the service was terrible. It takes the prize for smallest tip I've ever left in a restaurant, but I'm sure she enjoyed her dollar. Aside from that, the food is awesome in both restaurants and you'll definitely love them. Quick honorable mentions: -24/7 Cafe at Palms has the best spinach and artichoke dip I've ever had, that alone makes it worth visiting. -RM Seafood at Mandalay is very very good. -Shinatro at Bellagio, you'll be missed. If it hadn't closed down a month or two ago I'd have it in my top 3, the place was awesome. On the plus side the owners of FIX are putting a "FIX" style sushi restaurant that I'm almost positive will blow away any sushi restaurant there is.I cant wait. Anyway, If you're in town now you know where to go, enjoy and send me some recommendations if you've had something better. JC PS- If you happen to manage or own one of these restaurants and want to give me free meals for the plug, I'll gladly take them. Thanks in advance. ]]> http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=42 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=42 Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:26:13 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=41 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=41 Fri, 25 Jan 2008 11:08:43 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=40 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=40 Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:36:26 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=39 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=39 Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:44:14 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com this new hollywood trend going around. This book is really eye opening and in some points it makes a lot of sense "Think positive, be positive, and get positive results" ....sounds legit to me. There's millions of examples of dudes that fit this picture, my most successful friends are the ones that never complain and never seem too worried about stuff. At the same time, you can find the exact opposite examples, and a lot more of them, in everyday life. One example I like to use in poker is Matusow, the dude is the most negative person I've ever seen he never says he runs good and always says he's the unluckiest poker player alive, and guess what? EVERY TIME I play with Mike he gets the nastiest beats and coolers, I've never seen anything so consistent in poker, it's really frightening. It's all about positive thinking and visualization, at the very least it can't hurt, can it? Another poker analogy would be "rushes" and "slumps", everyone that has won a tourney or had a good score has experienced this thing they call a rush, whether it was in that ONE tourney you won or in the few tourneys you might have won or gone deep in afterwards, in my opinion this all constitutes a "rush" you "ran well" be it for 9 hours or 1 month. If you go back and analyze the feelings you had during that "rush" you'll realize that negativity is usually nowhere in the equation, it usually consists of you being happy, motivated and there is still a residual feeling of triumph in you. At some point however that triumph residue is washed out of your mind and then it's anyones call what happens after that, if you have a big losing session that can snowball into a terrible run, or vice-versa. Up until that point I think The Secret is great and has a very good base as far as how to guide yourself into improving your thoughts and actions, how to be a better person and use that to achieve what you want. However, "The Secret" is very broad, and seems very easy to master, which is why it's such a huge hit. It's the American, or better yet human dream in a nutshell, "think of shit that you want, even if you don't need it, be a greedy fuck and keep thinking of it and then just sit on your fat lazy ass and it'll appear right in front of you" life would be nice huh? At some point in the book or DVD (I forget which) this chick starts talking about how broke she was and how out of work she was and how she started visualizing checks coming in the mail and magically she started getting "unexpected" $5k checks to her face and soon she was swimming in a pool of checks written to her name and her problems were over...okay she probably never said she was swimming in checks or that her problems were over but that's what they make it seem like. The 'Ol Preston ball watches "The Secret" After watching the DVD I was totally sold on this new Secret thing, but after reading it and doing a little thinking I realize that the notion of "hey think about shit and wait for it to come" is just about as ludicrous as the concept of "Hey get on your knees and pray to God that you get this new Ferrari for no reason, don't worry bro, he's listening and he'll ship it within a month of some hard praying action." So as much as I believe in positive thinking, and have a decent understanding and belief in the "Law of attraction", I think that a lot of this "The Secret" stuff is very misunderstood and way too wishful. Too much dreaming and not much doing. Enter "The Silva Method" (or other varieties of the same concepts), this consists more of meditating and bringing yourself down from Beta brainwaves to lower (Alpha and Theta) brainwaves in which the brain is actually proven to work better and be more accurate. This is kind of a guided self hypnosis where you analyze your problems or your goals from within. To me this is very very interesting stuff that you don't actually get to talk about with people on a day to day basis because either they don't want to get into a deep conversation, or people just think it's weird (mostly the same type of people that will openly talk about religion while you're out drinking), which is why I'm writing about it now, and why I actually looked forward to meeting my mom's friend. I have been reading books and listening to tapes on this for a while now and had a ton of questions about it. The other day for instance, I was listening to this audio book that helps you learn to get down to lower levels of Alpha as a beginner with pretty much a guide that walks you through it. For the first few days I felt like it was working but not as much as I thought it would, and after a few weeks of practice I got to this point where I felt like I was asleep but fully conscious for about a full 20 seconds I felt like my body wasn't there anymore and my mind was just staring into this black space of nothingness, it was so weird to be so conscious and feel so much of nothing that I totally freaked and opened my eyes and turned on the tv, I felt like I needed to see something material, it's very hard to explain. Anyway, I told this to Sylvia and she pretty much explained that that's how she felt the first time and explained what it's like to be in Theta state (one below Alpha, which is pretty much REM sleep, except fully conscious, thats some crazy stuff). For the most part this is not only a way to visualize your goals and things you want, but a way to realize exactly how to work in order to get them. It's really very interesting stuff to learn, I'd highly recommend reading up on this even if you don't want to subscribe to one way of thinking just researching what meditation is and the actual powers of your brain can be very enlightening and beneficial. Bring back what I was talking about earlier, about the "rushes" and how when the rush seems to die down it's more like your mind washing out that feeling of triumph over time. Now even though your mind washed it out on the surface your brain stores that exact feeling and vivid emotion of winning in your subconscious, like a computer. Have you ever had a dream of someone you haven't seen in 5 years, and you see a very vivid and real image of them, they smell and sound the same as they did last time you saw them? That's how perfect your memory is and you don't realize it. Now imagine if every night before you go to sleep and every day when you wake up you can go back into your "brain files" and get that exact feeling you had when you had your biggest score and played the best poker of your life, and now you get to start your session with a vivid feeling of triumph and invincibility still running through your brain. That would probably be better than starting your session like you have been for the past few years, wouldn't it? I mean, you'll still go through the mathematical swings of poker, we all know you can't fade those, but think how much more money you'd make if you always played the best poker of your life. Shit gets you thinking doesn't it? JC]]> http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=38 http://www.jcalvarado.com/blog.php?id=38 Sat, 22 Dec 2007 08:40:54 -0500 juan@jcalvarado.com