Lin(dgren)sanity, motivation, and new deals

– Interesting how Daniel’s Negreanu’s real talk hasn’t been so real when it comes to one of his good friends, Erick Lindgren owing money all over town.  Daniel was quick to defend his theiving friend and at the same time insulted “new school” players for not understanding the rules of poker debt.  Watching Daniel spin this one will be entertaining.  Seems like Daniel is only “real” when its convenient for him.

As an aside, about 7 years ago, Daniel reported a hand in a poker magazine, that I actually got to witness.  In the article he bemoaned his luck in a tourney where he lost, “with kings to ace rag.”  How the hand actually transpired – Daniel tilt-shoved 10 bb’s with K3o UTG and was called by ATo, the flop ran out KxxAx.  Real Talk. 

– I knew about some of Lindgren’s debt issues a couple years ago, but the level of his actual explotation was way worse than I suspected.  Some people are chalking it up to degeneracy.  I think that’s a copout.  You can be a degen without stealing.  What Lindgren did was outright thievery, worse than someone with a gambling problem.  Taking a loan or making a bet without having a foolproof solution for payment/repayment is inexcusable and a permanent condemnation of your character.  Sure some of the old school players may have gotten paid back eventually, but the random kid in a fantasy league sidebet was getting conned pure and simple. 

– I’ve been thinking a little about motivation lately. Personally, I’ve had two strong motivating factors in my life.  The first was to make my dad proud.  He’s always believed in me, often times more than I did in myself, and I’ve always wanted to prove him right and reward him for his support.  That was certainly a very powerful motivator.  However, my strongest motivator was entirely different.  Namely, I could never let the people that wanted to see me fail, win.  The doubters, the schaudenfraude’s, the haters, etc – I would never let them have the satisfaction of seeing me broke. Every tilted session, everytime I wanted to play above my bankroll, every near catastrophe was averted because I thought about those people that would smile if I went bust.  I bet if you asked other successful poker players they’d have a similar motivation.  As Chris Paul was recently quoted, “”I hate to lose more than I like to win.”  While not exactly the same – it echoes a similar sentiment. 

As an aside, the schaudenf***heads that bother me most are not the people that are clueless.  “The casino always wins,” “Everyone goes broke,” “But how much did you lose?” types are just ignorant.  Whatever – they don’t get it, I don’t really care.   The people that really irritate me are the people that just want to see you fail because they want to justify their own lifechoices.  They don’t want to see someone playing a game for a living have success.  They don’t want that to be possible.  They want to see you fail only so that they can feel a modicum better about whatever conventional lifepath they took.  What a sad, sad group of people.  May they never be right. 

Real Estate

I had an offer accepted on a new property:

22624 Mylls. –

I am paying $63000 and getting some commission back.  The kitchen and bathroom are pretty dated, but I loved the location and the bones of the house.  Something in my gut told me ot pay a little more than I normally would.  I am hoping to rent it for $1100/mo. 

29810 Greater Mack – should close soon.  Still waiting on the release of a 2nd mortgage. 

I am close to closing a Land Contract on Elmira – I blogged about that earlier.  Really, really hope it doesn’t fall through. 

 20901 Hawthorne.  Short Sale, one of the many short sale offers I wrote last year.  Looks like I should get accepted around $30,000.  I haven’t even been inside yet, but it looks decent from the outside.  It’s in a borderline neighborhood for my usual standards, but its in the best part of that neighborhood and is in a really, really good school district.  Renters flock to the area because they can get cheaper housing and get their children into really good schools.  At that price, this deal should be a winner.  Still a long way to go before close. 

Rent and land contract payments have all been on time.  I had to buy a renter a new washing machine.  Other than that smooth sailing. 

I said I would blog about the banks and I do plan to get to that soon.