Most hands played revisited and couple of thoughts

So there is a thread on 2+2 about who has played the most hands of poker ever. The link is here..

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/player-has-played-most-hands-ever-784704/

I was mentioned because of my blog post of assuming that I have played the most hands ever but tbh idk. I just speculated and thought it was possible because I am one of the very few that have been playing poker full time online since the inception of online poker. Again as I mentioned I don't really care if I have played the most hands or not and did not even think about it until I read that Bluff article about Leatherass having played the most hands.

Tbh I don't think the discussion is all that interesting nor that relevant to anything. I think knowing who the biggest winners of all time is way more interesting. I do think after reading some of the feedback in that thread that there may be others that have played more hands than me, eg the guys that chase sne on Stars and play 24-30 tables at a time 40+ hrs/wk. Idk how guys like that can play that many tables or so many hrs consistently. I struggle to find time to play 30hrs/wk...but I guess having a family makes it somewhat more difficult.

Also a good midstakes reg (whose play I respect) mentioned how arrogant I sounded in my blog so I just thought I'd comment on that (although for the most part I don't really care what others think because it's more important on how my friends and family perceive me and none of them would ever think arrogance, cockiness etc would ever apply to me). Anyway since this is my blog I was just gonna say whatever was on my mind when I wrote it and if some of it came across as arrogant, so be it, but again, those who know me know that I'm not like that in person. Also in order to be successful in poker over the long run, you can't be arrogant or cocky...you definitely need a good amount of humbleness. The cocky guys may have a good year or 2 but they usually tend to flame out eventually because they think they're really better than they really are. If you look at the guys that have succeeded over a long period of time, eg Doyle, Ivey, Greenstein, none of them are considered arrogant or cocky by any means although I'm sure they have a quiet confidence within themselves. I like to think I'm the same way, albeit w/ a much lesser successful career than theirs (side note: certain guys do seem arrogant eg Hellmuth and Matusow but for the most part it is just an act for them and from what I've heard, they're really good guys irl). Anyway I think a lot of peoples' personalities tend to come across the wrong way in online forums or when writing something for others to read.

With that said, when I was writing the Most hands played blog the topic veered off to basically saying how successful I was and that was not my intent originally. I was just reflecting on my career while writing about online poker through the years and I guess I felt a little frustration in the fact that lesser players got sponsorship deals w/ a limited amount of success while I've done well over many more years and have not received any kind of offer. With that thought I just started writing about how successful I was and actually I considered deleting that part because I felt like that's not really how I am as a person...telling everyone how successful I am, but in the end I just left it because I wrote it and and felt like, meh, whatever. I DO realize it's a more of a business thing for poker sites to try to sign players that may attract more customers and to not necessarily sign the most successful players.

Anyway the reason I started my blog was not to show how successful I am (if so I could've started one years ago) but that I wanted to write about a normal guy w/ a family and a couple of mortgages trying to make a good living playing poker full time, esp w/ most of the full time poker pros today being single and in their 20's. People don't stay single and in their 20's forever so I wanted to show how to live a normal and sane life as a professional poker player while having a wife, kid and obligations like mortgage payments and such (I mentioned this before but Doublefly's blog listed on my blogroll captures the same essence but w/ more humor and on a more frequent basis). Actually I guess I do want to show success in how to live a happy and fulfilling life balancing family life w/ playing poker full time (along w/ a few degenerate things from time to time but none that impacts my family life in any way). I added the $1mil goal this year to really motivate myself to get better and play more hrs and I thought anyone that follows my blog regularly would find it more interesting to see how I do in my challenge, although tbh it's a longshot to reach my monetary goal (again mentioned this before).

Anyway I thought I'd get those thoughts outta my head, esp. w/ my blog getting a ton of hits due to that 2+2 thread above. As for poker, it's going eh, ok. For the month up about 10k in cash games w/ my all in ev at +23k so still running below ev but thats just variance and comes w/ the job. I did finish 4th in the mid HORSE scoop yesterday for $12,400 so I'm over +$20k total for the month (I do subtract the mtt buyins, unlike poker magazines and websites). W/ the WSOP coming up I'm planning on playing a full slate of events and am seriously considering selling half my action mainly because I want to play in a ton of events this year. I think the preliminary estimate is about 50k worth of events so I'll probably look to sell about half of that w/ very little markup..maybe around 1.1-1. I'm probably deserving of a bigger mark up based on my track record in mtts but I feel and have always felt weird when asking others to pay a premium for taking a piece of me for playing tournaments when it's basically my job. I guess I will post on 2+2 soon that I will sell shares of myself and outline specifics inc. projected schedule and my track record in tournaments.