Not much to blog about....

Since I got my big tourney score I haven't done a good job of setting short term goals for myself or keeping track of how much I have won/lost. I honestly don't even know if I am up or down money since then which is really bad. I haven't played very much, but I know I have had some big swings when I have played.
These are the swings I can remember:
Lost about $2500 in a live session.
Lost about $4500 one day online.
Lost 3,000 online and won $4500 live in the same day.
Lost around $1000 live
Won 1200 online
Won 2200 today playing online.

If these were the only swings that had happened I would be down around $3100 since I got back from Louisville, there are other wins/losses that I am forgetting. I am sure I am down a little bit over this time, but I need to do a better job of keeping track for sure.

Andy Liedolf gets in town tomorrow afternoon so I am sure I won't be playing much while he is here and we are going home on the same flight on the 31st.

I probably won't play very much while I am home either, because I will be pretty busy seeing all my peeps and visiting with family. Eric and Kelly will have already moved to California by the time I get home so that will suck not having them in Evansville when I go back to visit. I could always count on Eric to keep me entertained while I was home and I was always a favorite to sleep in their guest room a few times during my visit.

So, I guess my new short term goal will be to enjoy my upcoming time off and to make sure I set some goals before I get back to playing once I am back in Vegas.

I like visiting home and I am excited to get there, because I haven't been home since Christmas. I think this is probably the longest stretch of time I have ever been away from Evansville in my entire life. I will be home on the 31st and am staying until the 9th. Then I will be back in October for Kyle and Natalie's wedding. I will also for sure be back for Christmas. I usually end up staying for about a month around Christmas time, but I don't know if I will do that this time. My brother, Nat, is trying to convince me to come home for Thanksgiving and then co-hosting a bonfire party with him the Friday after Thanksgiving. I don't know if I want to come home 4 times in 4 months though. I guess a lot of it depends on if I have any other travel plans come up or not.

Sorry for the boring blog, but I thought I should post something before I got too far down the slippery slope of not blogging for a while.

Don't let them fool you....they are scurred!

The guy that that owns Cirque Du Soleil is super rich and loves to play poker. He plays the biggest games online and he is by far the biggest loser in the history of online poker, but he is a billionaire and doesn't mind one bit. Every time he plays the the waiting lists get insanely long with people wanting to take a shot at him. The list was 11 people long at both tables that he was playing on, but when I sat down with $40,000 at an empty table not one of those people waiting for his game wanted to play against me...an unknown nobody with $40,000 to give to them. I don't blame them at all considering that if I did actually play them I would most likely end up not being a nobody and would be one of the regulars in the game playing on a friends account.

I can now say that I tried to sit with the best players in the biggest game offered and they were too scared to play with me. Look...see for yourself!


Edit: A player named Urindanger ended up sitting with me and bought in for $8,000, but it took anyone about 15 minutes before they sat with me....wusses.

Bored blog....

I am about to start playing for the day, but the first tournament of the day that I will be playing in doesn't start for an hour. I played my second FTOPS event yesterday and made another decently deep run. It was the $100 PLO with rebuys and I was in for $309. I ended up getting 64th place for $849. Its really a pretty big waste of time to play in tournament unless you are going to make the final table and hopefully get top 3, but that can't happen unless you play in them. So today I am playing the $215 Sunday Million on Stars and the $535 FTOPS main event along with some PLO cash games on the side. Hopefully I will get top 3 in one of these, but don't hold your breath.

I am trying to get back into swimming everyday again. Watching the Olympics got me re motivated to start working on my form again. In case you have never tried it let me just tell you that the little move that they do during the freestyle stroke where they flip around and push off in the opposite direction when they get to the wall is HARD! I am about 50 times more likely to get a nose full of water and be unsuccessful in my turn around than I am to successfully turn around when trying this move. Actually, I am a much bigger underdog than that to be successful considering I have tried it about 50 times and haven't done it correctly yet. However, if I do ever get that trick down I'll be in good shape, because I have a mean dolphin kick! I worked on that this morning too....I dove in and dolphin kicked it ala Micheal Phelps and I was shocked at how fast I had gotten to the other end of the pool with out taking a single swimming stroke. For some reason my dolphin kick angles me towards the bottom of the pool instead of back towards the top....I'll work on fixing that tomorrow.

This is pretty much what I look like when I swim. The move I am talking about is at about the 1:40 mark right at the end of the video.....so sick.

Well, they disabled this video from being embedded so you'll have to click the link if you want to see it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax77_hHq9Dc

Speaking of the Olympics....I have an issue with the female marathoners. Basically, I don't think that they are dedicated enough to their sport or their country for that matter. These women probably weigh 100 pounds (if that much), but for some reason I see some of them sporting huge pony tails of hair sometimes half-way down their back! You say who cares huh? Well a marathon is 138,435 feet in distance and if you assume they average 6 feet per stride (just an estimate) that is over 23,000 steps per race. Some of these huge pony tails have got to weigh 2-5 pounds. I challenge you to do anything 23,000 times with something that weighs 2-5 pounds. I just can't believe that these women train their whole lives to be the world's best marathoners and yet they carry around a 2-5 pound weight on top of their head while running in the biggest race of their lives. Seriously, it is the Olympics, if you want to turn in the best possible time you can...shave you head! The part about them being 100 pounds is the worst part of all...they are carrying an extra 2-5% of their body weight around. If I had to do that it would be like running a marathon while having a gallon of milk strapped to my head....please tell me you see my point now!

Tough to get motivated.....

I didn't play any poker for about 5 days after my tournament score partly because I was at Landon's lake house with no internet, but I was also weary of playing unmotivated poker which can be very dangerous. I felt like I wouldn't have my edge of being really patient and able to grind knowing that I had just won so much money and I was playing to try and win such a small percentage of what I had just won. I have played two really short sessions since then and thankfully I ran really well although I could tell me motivation and focus wasn't at its best...just as I thought it would be. I have probably only played about 2 or 3 hours total and I am up around $2500 which is very nice. I am trying to force myself to play a little higher than I am normally comfortable playing and hopefully I will become more comfortable since my bankroll is much more healthy these days. I have been playing some 3/6 and 5/10 cap PLO instead of mostly 2/4 and some 3/6. Of course the players are better there, but I still feel like players play PLO much worse in general than they do Hold'em so I think I will stick with PLO for the time being.

I am having fun thinking about what I am going to do with my new found money, but I want/need so very little that it is almost like I have to force myself to find things to spend it on. So far I have come up with a few ideas. I am considering lasik eye surgery, a new king size bed, a new cell phone, putting some money in my online stock account in case I get some random tips down the road and I want to take a shot, and putting a pretty good chunk of money in my retirement accounts. If you have any other ideas that you think I might be interested in please feel free to share them with me.

I must say....it is a pretty sweet problem to have when you can't think how to spend your money

Always a bridesmaid and never the bride.....

But this time being a bridesmaid is pretty SWEET! I finished 3rd in the FTOPS Event #4 a $322 entry with one rebuy and one add-on allowed for a whopping $74,658. It hasn't really sunk in at all to be honest and I have no idea what to do to celebrate. I am at Landon's house by myself waiting for Jon and Whitney's flight to get in so I can go pick them up. Landon and Brittany are still at the wedding. Thanks to everyone that sent me good luck wishes during and after the tourney.

In other news I beat Landon in the $500 prop bet where I had to use a baseball mitt and throw the ball and he got a racket in a tennis match. We agreed to play a 3 set match and I won 7-5, 6-3. I was down 5-2 in the first set, but made a roaring comeback. He has since won $350 of that money back by beating me in golf and other tennis bets. A special congrats goes to Landon for beating me STRAIGHT UP at golf. I shot 91 and he shot 82 I think. In my defense I was using a rental set of clubs and the clubs seemed like they had womens shafts in them which made it feel like I was swinging a belt. I hit it all over the place and that is not good at Lake Forrest (literally out of bounds on the left AND right side of EVERY hole).

What in the world am I going to do with the $74,000 that I didn't have when I woke up today?!?! I have no idea, but I am sure I'll enjoy it whatever I choose to do with it!

Quick Update....

Caddying is going great and Jeff is playing awesome. He shot a 7 under 65 yesterday and has a 2 shot lead going into the second round. It seemed like he never had to hit a tough shot and could have made a lot more putts than he did. He only missed one fairway and one green all day and that was the hole he bogeyed. He was never anywhere close to making another bogey. I am not sure what the longest putt he made for par was, but it couldn't have been much more than 2 or 3 feet. So basically he either made birdie or a tap-in par on every hole. It was pretty cool to watch.

Oh yeah, something else that people might find interesting is that we played 9 holes of our practice round with Michelle Wie. I thought she would be a little stuck up or arrogant, but she was very cool and really nice.

Its time to go crush some IHOP before our round today.

I just thought I would let you all know that I officially (actually really unofficially) have the lowest first round scoring average for caddies in the history of the PGA Tour....Jeff shot 65 in the first round when I caddied for him in Vegas too.