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Showing posts with label 6 max. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 6 max. Show all posts

Thursday, February 9, 2012

Weekly Interview Series: Jeff "hurricanejeff" Romano


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Fellow Lock Pro Jeff "hurricanejeff" Romano is my next interviewee for my new weekly interview series.  You can read the interview below.

How did you get started in poker?  How old were you?  What did you play?  How did you progress through the stakes and different games?
 I started playing in college (UMass Amherst), we had some really good players.  The game was usually just $1 $2 no limit but the players were some of the highest caliber.  A lot of the guys were high stakes online players even playing up to $25 $50 No Limit on pokerstars, so it was a great way to learn from them.  I used to crush that game and then deposit it all online and lose it, or spend the rest I made on beer.  I was 18 at the time and pretty much just degened my way up stakes.
What has worked best for you over the years in regards to improving your game?
 Learning from past mistakes, and donating to better players.  Losing is a huge part of the game, and probably the fastest way to learn.  I used to watch the WSOP on t.v. but I think that made me worse.
How old are you now?
 26
Jeff doing a little wine tasting in France for the Lock Pro retreat:

How many tables do you usually play online?
 I play a lot of different types of games, but when I play sit n goes I try to get as many games going as possible up to 30.
How many hours per week do you usually play?  How many total hours a week do you usually spend on poker-related activities?
 Well it’s funny because I put in my highest volume last month and lost the most I’ve ever lost.  I was playing 70 hours a week, which is way above my normal 30.
Over the years you have played a lot of 6 man SNGs, HU SNGs, DONs, & MTTs.  What’s your current mix of games like and what do you focus on the most?
 I’ve played everything.  I break even at just about every game except for MTTs which I crush.  However, playing 15+ tables of sit n goes rakes a lot of money, and breaking even is very profitable. 
What is your favorite game to play?
 2-7 lowball with bigdogpocket5s
What kind of a computer setup do you have for playing?  Do you use any poker software?
 Laptop and 27inch monitor…HEM2
What are your short term & long term poker goals?
 Break even for life.  I don’t plan on playing poker for a very long time.  It would obviously be awesome to win a WSOP bracelet or whatever, but it just doesn’t matter to me.  I get into these arguments on the felt with players, they all say I’m terrible at poker and that I’m a rakeback whore.  Then I look them up in the forums and it turns out they are backed to play all of their games…well good one guys.  They don’t understand that playin 20 tables at break even poker isn’t easy, but its very profitable.  Last month I raked about $9,000…how many players are capable of that?
Do you plan on getting into any other games in the future?
 Yeah I plan on getting into “Game of Thrones” season 2 coming out in April.
At this point in your career does poker feel more like a hobby or a job?  Do you still enjoy the game as much as you used to?
 A job right now, I hate playing.  Well actually I hate grinding, I love getting deep in a MTT.  But playing in June at the WSOP is extremely fun.  So I look forward to that every single year and it gets me through the online grind.
How long do you plan on playing poker professionally?
 I will be applying to grad school in the fall, hopefully able to buy my way into Harvard. I’ll probably play throughout my educational career, and then try to open a business of sorts. 
If you weren’t playing poker for a living what would you be doing as a career?
 Working for a startup company in Boston.
How long have you been a Lock pro and how has your experience at Lock been so far?
 Well, since the first day the site opened.  I was one of the sites very first sign ups, legend status I think.  I hated playing for the site while they were on cake, but that’s because I hated cake.  
What do you like to do in your spare time besides poker?
 Eating, cooking and drinking.  I’ve thought about going to culinary school many times, you can impress just about anyone on this earth with good cooking, it’s a timeless skill.
What are your favorite movies and TV shows?  Who are your favorite bands/musical artists?
 Clint Eastwood and older Nick Cage movies are great, and probably my “go to’s” when there is nothing else on.  I like a ton of music but despise dub step, I think its trash and I don’t care if it’s the future of music.


Thanks for taking the time to do this & good luck at the tables.

You can sign up for Lock Poker here http://download.lockpoker.com/jaredhubbard for a 150% deposit bonus and VIP benefits (http://jaredhubbard.com/lock%20vip.htm)
In case you missed the past weekly interviews, here they are:

Monday, January 2, 2012

Happy New Year! 2011 Year in Review


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I started the year 16 tabling 6 man ST SNGs on FTP.  I still wasn't playing as many of the $300+ games because I didn't think enough +EV games ran to really bother with the extra variance.  I ran pretty below EV in the 6 mans but still made a good amount of money in rakeback.

In February I started to study HU.  For the time being it would help me HU in my 6 man games, but the idea was that I would evenutally switch over to HU SNGs full time.  Making the switch to HU SNGs is something I should have done a long time ago, but I was too big of a change nit.  While I crushed HU in 6 mans, the competition was usually very weak when it came to HU poker.  6 man SNG players are pretty awful at HU in general.  If I wanted to crush HU SNGs I had work to do.  Around mid March I started to play some HU SNGs part time, starting w/ $50s & $100s, and quickly starting $200s & $300s shortly after.  I had studied my ass off and was definitely ready, although I still had plenty to learn before I could crush the highest levels.  I played well and ran well starting out, making over $13K pre rakeback playing HU SNGs part time for 2 weeks in March.  As I played more and talked to more HUSNG players, I learned that high stakes is mostly about being able to open sit and not get sat by other regs.  Not many regs sat me, I was already much improved, and I clearly had the bankroll, so about a week after starting HU I began to play some $500s.  Toward the end of March I had started to play $1Ks.  In April I started playing HU SNGs full time, rarely playing any 6 mans.  I made another $22K+ pre rakeback playing HU for 15 days in April.

Then came the infamous Black Friday.  I got about $88K frozen on FTP & about $12K on AP.  At first, I was really only only worried only worried about how I would be able to continue to make a healthy living.  I was pretty sure I would get my money from Full Tilt & wasn't really too worried about losing $12K.  FTP was so reputable and it didn't make sense for them not to pay US players when they still had a ton of non-US players as customers.  I considered going to Canada a few days a week to play online, and even discussed the possibility of moving to Costa Rica or another country with my wife.



Obviously as the FTP saga developed, my opinion on getting my money back changed.  However, I still wasn't overly worried.  I had invested my money and if I lost the $100K I would just look at it as having made $100K less during my career.  That's still some pretty nice career earnings.  Whether to large amounts of money on an online poker site is a simple risk vs reward problem.  Keeping a large roll online allowed me to play the highest stakes games.  I earned enough extra income from my higher stakes games that I was essentially freerolling the $100K I lost on Black Friday, as I had clearly made far more than an extra $100K because of keeping the roll online to play high stakes.  That said, if it had been a month earlier, I probably would have had $70K less online.  I hadn't been maintaining a high average stake in 6 mans, whereas in HU I had been playing $1Ks, which require a large bankroll because of the swings.  I still think I could have been a little more cautious and kept about $50K less online.  If my online roll got really low I'm sure I probably would have been able to get money online.

After Black Friday, I fiddled around with 6 mans on Cake and Bodog for a while.Then I went to Lock Poker on the Merge network and the traffic was surprisingly good for a US site post Black Friday. I started playing 6 mans there as well.  I was talking to LiarzDice on AIM and he said that he knew the owner of Lock and thought I was worthy of a pro deal. He introduced us through email.  I pitched myself to the owner and Eric Lynch, and within a couple weeks I signed a contract as a Lock Elite Pro.  Lock has since become the largest US site accepting US players.

Since I had stopped playing 6 mans, I was curious how the top 5 all time single table SNG sharkscope total profit list looked when combining player screen names from all sites.  In late May I put together the list.  Here's how it looked:

All Time 5-10 Seated Sharkscope Total Profit (as of May 25, 2011)
1. jorj95: $814,309
Pokerstars
2. Jared Hubbard: $555,761
Global Alias
3. Spacegravy: $438,864
Pokerstars
4. Gramps: $435,038
Global Alias
5. Scoss: $434,183
Global Alias$179,425

I was #1 until 2009 when jorj95 decided he was going to become an absolute BEAST.  Congrats to him again.

In June I started playing HU on Lock.  At the time, the highest stake on Lock for HU STs was $254.  Lock's HU ST structure starts with 30BBs, which I think I like better than 25BBs because it is still quick and good for hourly rate, but allows your opponents to make even bigger mistakes.  My HU game was definitely rusty at 1st, especially when playing tougher regs like phmerc and skilled_sox, but I worked on it and improved.  In late September Lock added $500 & $1K HU STs, which was very exciting.  

In October, Lock's CEO Jennifer Larson was kind enough to rent out an entire castle in France for the 1st ever Lock retreat.  I won't go into any details since this has already been done, but if you missed it, here's a couple links: http://jhubpoker.blogspot.com/2011/07/july-update-lock-pro-retreat.html & http://jhubpoker.blogspot.com/2011/10/september-monthly-update-lock-pro.html



When we got back from the Lock Pro retreat I played some Canterbury Fall Classic events for a change of pace, which is the biggest live tournament series in Minnesota.  I played 5 events total.  Before the main event I didn't cash in anything, although I had a nice stack going and bubbled the $500 6 max event.  I ended up winning the $1K main event for a little under $71K.  It was only the 13th live poker tournament I've ever played, and also my 1st cash.  It sure felt good after Black Friday.  You can read more about the win here: http://jhubpoker.blogspot.com/2011/10/2011-canterbury-fall-classic-main-event.html



Up until November I was 4-6 tabling HU and mixing in some 6 mans.  In November I stopped playing 6 mans.  I focused only on HU and had a monster month, making over $61K pre rakeback.  The $500 & $1K action was ridiculously good, with one monster fish accounting for over half of my profit.  

Please click image to enlarge.  My HU stats for the year:


The biggest change I can think of now compared to pre Black Friday is that I rarely play mornings anymore.  I have to play a lot more nights.  Before April 15th I basically worked around my wife’s schedule.  While I certainly wasn’t maximizing my hourly or anything, I was still able to make a ton of money and live a nice balanced life.  Now most of the players are from the US so it’s tough to get good action in the mornings.  I still play during some dead times, which I think is a must if you want to live a balanced life, but a lot of the time when my wife works a morning shift and goes to bed I will start playing & then play late and sleep in.  It’s what most single poker players do normally but it’s a change for me.

I led the entire Merge network in Sharkscope SNG profit this year, with almost double the profit of the 2nd place player.  Running above EV definitely widened the gap between myself and 2nd place, but I would have still finished #1 running at neutral EV.  Needless to say, the transition to HU SNGs has gone pretty smoothly.  I've had people tell me they're amazed at how I got so good at HU so quickly.

Please click image to enlarge


Despite Black Friday and putting in my lowest # of hours in a year as a professional poker player, I had my 2nd best year in terms of total profit.  Making almost $143K pre rakeback between October and November helped out with that.  When you just look at the number without thinking, 1,395.76 hours sounds like a lot, but that's less than 35 40 hour weeks.  That's like taking 1/3 of the year off completely.  Now that I'm playing HU I'm not sure that my total playing hours will be higher next year, but I'll be spending plenty of other hours on poker-related activities like studying, and social media in an effort to promote Lock and myself as a player.
Please click images to enlarge



Here's the media on me this year:


For more of my media, please visit http://www.jaredhubbard.com/#/media/4554797893

My Favorites of the Year:

Comedy Movie: Horrible Bosses
Kevin Spacey's character was absolute money and Colin Farrel's was pretty damn funny too.  I can't think of anything that really competes here.

Non comedy movie: nothing really jumps out here...Tv series are way better than movies anyway

Best TV Series: Dexter
It's hands down the best show on TV.  The beginning of this season wasn't as good as the past seasons but the end of the season was epic, as usual.  I wouldn't have a beef with anyone arguing for Boardwalk Empire here.

Best Comedy TV Series: Curb Yoour Enthusiasm
It's my favorite comedy series of all time and it gets better every season.  Larry David is a comedic genius.  Please make more episodes!

Best Rap Album: Jay-Z & Kanye West: Watch The Throne
The album wasn't really as good as I expected from these 2, but it's tough to not have a really good album when Jay-Z and Kanye are teaming together.  I don't really think this one is that close.  I guess the Eminem & Royce Da 5'9 CD deserves consideration but that's about it.  Lil Wayne is overrated and his newest CD was highly overrated.  Hell, I'd take Nicki Minaj's CD over Lil Wayne's CD in a heartbeat, and she's a female rapper.  Oh yeah, Drake is overrated too, although he's probably the best of the next generation of rappers, which is pretty sad.  The fact of the matter is rap gets worse every year.  Once Eminem, Jay-Z, & Kanye retire rap is going to get even worse, unless somebody else comes along, but I'm doubting it considering what rap has turned into with some of the new guys.

Best Rap Song: Jay-Z & Kanye West: Ni**as In Paris
There really weren't a lot of great rap songs this year.  I'd actually give the top 3 to Jay-Z and Kanye, with H.A.M. & Otis being in my top 3 as well.  Jay-Z & Kanye might have a couple other songs I'd put in the top 10 too.  I know I'd definitely put Gotta Have It in there.  I would put Lil Wayne's Mirror up there, but let's be honest, it would probably be the 10th best song on most Eminem albums.

Best Country Album: Eric Church: Chief
There's a lot of good songs on this CD.  My favorites are creepin', drink in my hand, homeboy, Jack Daniels, & Springsteen, in no particular order.  Kenny Chesney's CD was reasonable but his new music simply doesn't match his old music.  Brad Paisley is a little too obsessed with guitar solos for me, although he does come out with some good songs.

Best Country Song: Luke Bryan: Country Girl (Shake It For Me), Jake Owen: Barefoot Bluejean Night, Eric Church: Homeboy
Pick any one of them.  It all depends what mood I'm in.

Best Rock Album: None.  Rock died 20 years ago.  At least classic rock was so good that it never gets old, because there sure as hell isn't any new stuff coming out.

Best Rock/Alternative song: Foster The People: Pumped Up Kicks
I don't listen to enough new rock or alternative to even have an opinion on this, but I like this song a lot.

Santa & Mrs. Claus made a surprise visit to my mom's house on Christmas Eve:


For an individual look at each of my other 4 years as a professional poker player please see these posts:


We had a New Year's party this year, which was a great time.  We got a keg of Amstel Light and had plenty of mixed drinks & shots.  About 30 or 40 people showed.  We might make it a yearly tradition.



2011Results:

1,395.76 hours played
Pre Rakeback SNG Profit: $165,048.78
Live MTTs: $68,209
Total Pre Rakeback/Sponsorship Profit: $233,257.78

Thanks & GL,
Jared


Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A Look Back: Year in Review 2010


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This will be the last of my Look Back: Year in Review Series.  Hopefully this helped familiarize some of my new readers with my poker career, and was still interesting to my long-time blog readers.  I will post my 2011 year in review sometime shortly after the new year.

2010 turned out to be another good year.  I made a lot of profit both pre rakeback, and in rakeback.  I finished the year #1 in 6 man SNG profit when combining usernames & #4 in 6-10 seated total profit when combining usernames.  While I had a much better year in 2008, 2010 almost felt better because of the year I had in 2009.  To get knocked down like I did in 2009 and climb right back up to the top just felt amazing. 

Click Images to enlarge.


Here's the top 5 total profit earners for 6-10 seated SNGs & 5-6 seated SNGs from 2010 when combining usernames based on sharkscope data:

6-10 seated SNGs:
1. jorj95: $198,410
Pokerstars
2. leoc00: $165,376
Global Alias
3. Josselthekiller: $143,730
Global Alias
4. Jared Hubbard: $131,354
Global Alias
5. Spacegravy: $128,667
Pokerstars

5-6 seated SNGs:
1. Jared Hubbard $123,554
2. Gramps (luckboxfromhell, etc...) $116,025
3. jorj95, pokerstars $114,738
4. 6maxgr1nder/Pokerpro333, cereus, pstars $ 89,706
5. 666AceOfSpades, full tilt $ 84,131
Click Images to enlarge

Yes Cutiepie85 was my screen name on AP.  I pretended to be a girl at first.

jorj95 unblocked his pokerstars stats & we all found out that he had absolutely been murdering the 10bb starting stack pokerstars hyper turbos at a level we had never seen before.  This brought a lot more grinders into the hyper turbo games.  Full Tilt finally significantly lowered the rake on their 10bb starting stack 6 man & 9 man SNGs and the trend started to take place there as well.  Within time hyper turbos were now the most popular structure of SNG.  The amount of games you can get in an hour and the rakeback made these a pretty easy choice for many grinders.  

I spent much of the year experimenting with different #s of tables, speeds of structures, and combinations of different sites.  I came to a conclusion that a break from the ultra high stakes was a good idea.  The games simply didn't run enough to ever get to the long run and I simply didn't want another bad run at them crushing an entire year of profits.  I needed to get my confidence back.  Shortly after FTP lowered their rake on hyper turbos I started playing some of the 6 man hypers.  At the end of the year I was playing strictly FTP and 16 tabling hyper turbos.

In 2010 some people who played both 6 man and 9 man SNGs had told me that the 9 man SNGs on FTP were actually softer than the 6 mans.  My had things changed since I started playing online poker.  Not only were 6 mans now tougher than 9 mans, but the traffic in them was actually higher than 9 mans as well.

As far as vacations in 2010, a couple of our friends got married in the Dominican Republic.  A group of about 20-30 of us made the trip for the destination wedding and stayed for the week.  It was a blast.  Other than that all I can think of was our standard week long camping trip in the summer.

My wife Paula, me, my brother's girlfriend Katie, & my brother Jeff in the Dominican Republic:

Posing for a pic w/ my bro & some friends after kicking their asses in a 5K race.

At Target Field with the wife.  We finally have a nice stadium in MN!

Halloween with wife & some friends: I'm Ron Burgundy?
Year 2010:
1,759.11 hrs
SNG Profit: $134,514.80
Rakeback/Bonuses: $134,412.98
Total Yearly Profit: $268,927.78

Monday, December 26, 2011

A Look Back: Year In Review 2009


If you like my blog please click the BlogTopList vote button to the right. This will give my blog a better ranking & help increase traffic to my blog. Thanks.

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After signing up please make sure jhub3000@hotmail.com is listed as a safe sender in your email. You can also email me with any questions. Before you begin playing on Lock, or even if you already do play on there, you will probably want to read this post about optimizing the software: http://jhubpoker.blogspot.com/2011/06/making-most-out-of-lock-pokers-software.html


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Going into 2009 I was on cloud 9.  I was coming off an amazing year where I led the world in single table SNG profit, & had led the world in 6 man SNG profit in each of my 2 years as a pro, doubling the profit of the 2nd place guy the year before.  2009 was going to be such a great year!  I was going to lead the world in SNG profit again & make $600K+.  After all, I led SNG profit by so much in 2008, how hard could it be to repeat?  Man was I in for a rude awakening.

I started out the year where I left off in 2008 with a $23K upswing.  The good parts of my poker year stopped there.  From there, I went down, down, down, into a burning ring of fire.

I always considered my mental game to be pretty strong.  I never went on raging tilt.  I always heard stories of pros breaking multiple laptops.  To do this day I have never broken anything because of poker.  However, I didn't know nearly as much about the mental game in 2009 as I do now, and I think going from such a high point that 2008 brought, to a complete crash in 2009 would challenge anybody's mental game.  Needless to say, 2009 was quite challenging mentally.  While I knew a large part of my losses were due to running really bad at high stakes, we didn't have the adjusted EV luck calculators out there to confirm like there are now.  I started trying to fix things that weren't broken.  I basically tried way too hard to improve.  While I was still making really good money off of rakeback, it wasn't enough to satisfy the competitor in me.

The haters also really came out of the woodworks.  All I heard was that everybody had caught up to me and I was just a luckbox before.  In my frustrated and less experienced state I responded almost every time.  Today, I delete most of the hater comments on my blog.  However, I still sometimes respond when they post comments on other sites where I can't delete their comment, even though it's probably better to just not respond.  One good thing that came from the hater comments is that they fueled me to improve more and come back strong.  I've always been motivated to prove people wrong.

In 2009, table selection was getting more advanced, as people were doing more calculations & analysis on the topic.  I wrote this post on the topic, which is probably my most popular blog post of all time: http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/84368.html.  Later in the year I wrote a more advanced version: http://jhub3000.livejournal.com/87736.html.  However, I didn't really table select on Cake or Absolute, because my rakeback was so high.

During much of 2009 I played up to 16 tables to take full advantage of the ridiculous rakeback I was getting.  Considering the structures I was playing and the fact that I was usually managing 3 sites at once, I certainly don't think that playing this many tables was optimal.

As far as vacations we went on a week long camping trip with Paula's family and overall had a great summer, as usual in Minnesota.

I played my last game on Pokerstars in July. I felt that Pokerstars SNGs basically became a reg fest with a bunch of regulars obsessing over supernova elite.  I decided I'd rather table select between Cake & Absolute, where I was hardly paying any rake after rakeback.

In August Paula and I got married.  It was nice to have a bright spot in the year.  Our wedding went great.  We went to Aruba for our honeymoon.  We had a good mix of tours where we weren't sure if we'd make it out alive, going to shows, having drinks, and relaxing on the beech.  We also bought a time share that we haven't even used yet.  That was a good purchase.



Not too long after we got married we got a white lab and named him Gunnar:


In the fall a bunch of us flew to Ohio on a Friday night.  We partied Friday night, tailgated Saturday morning, went to the Minnesota vs Ohio State college football game, drove a rented child molestor looking van to Pittsburgh, partied again, & then tailgated, went to the Vikings vs Steelers game, partied again, and flew out the next morning.  Overall it was a great short trip and nice to get away.  We wanted to make this a yearly trip but it hasn't worked out since.

Toward the end of 2009 I started talking to the guy who ran the red pro program on Full Tilt.  While I didn't get a red pro deal, I finally got a form of rakeback on the site, in the terms of bonuses, which were actually worth more than the standard rakeback.  I previously didn't have rakeback on FTP because I signed up for the site when I was a major n00b and had never even heard of rakeback, and there was a strict policy on not adding rakeback to old accounts.  I started to mix FTP, AP, & Cake together, table selecting between the 3 sites.

Toward the end of the year I also started reducing the # of tables I was playing, even experimenting with playing as little as 8 tables at a time.

Overall, I think this year was a good experience for me.  I think going through a tough year like this makes you stronger in the end.  While that might sound silly considering I still made $233K+ after factoring in rakeback and staking, I think competitive poker players would understand, especially if you're coming off a huge year.  No matter how much money you make off of rakeback, losing money at the tables is not fun.  This year sure prepared me for handling downswings.



In later years I plugged some hand histories into HEM to calculate my adjusted EV, and it turns out I ran $60K+ below EV.  That means I would have made $40K+ pre rakeback if I was running at neutral EV.  While that confirms my assumption that I was running way below EV, $40K was also nowhere near the pre rakeback profit I made in my 1st 2 years.  This shows that I clearly wasn't playing my A game very often, and is probably evidence to the fact that I was trying to fix a lot of things that weren't broken.

Today almost all of the top all time single table total profit leaders have had a losing a losing year pre rakeback.  It sounds pretty crazy, but they're low edge games with a lot of variance.  Playing a lot of tables, as most of the top profit earners do, further decreases that edge per game, and playing a wide range of buy-ins further increases the variance.

In 2009 Pokerstars introduced hyper turbo SNGs where everyone started with 10BBs and a different payout structure.  Meanwhile, jorj95 studied his ass off (I'm assuming), blocked his stats, and laughed at the world:


Clearly these new hyper turbo SNGs would change the landscape of SNGs.  However, not everybody had realized this at the time.  Apparently jorj did.  When he unblocked his stats during the following year I was simply amazed.  To have a year like that playing single table SNGs is simply unbelievable.  Congrats again to jorj.  I'm impressed.

Please click image to enlarge.

2009 5-10 Seated Total Sharkcope Profit combining multiple screen names:

1. jorj95: $466,347
Pokerstars
2. chapmoney: $198,411
Global Alias
3. Gramps: $139,596
Global Alias
4. azntracker: $96,834
Pokerstars
5. Kenny05: $95,326
Global Alias

Year 2009:
Hours: 1,577.65 
SNG Profit: $(22,746.37)
Rakeback/Bonuses: $213,977.09 
Total SNG Profit: $191,230.72 
Staking: $42,219.80 
Total Yearly Profit: $233,450.52