How to show tilt who is boss....

So I lost a really disgusting hand at the Bellagio that I don't even care to discuss here (I got it in good). I was pretty steamed up about it and decided that I was going to do a few loads of laundry when I got home to help get my mind off of the hand. Obviously, our dryer has decided to stop working which further added to my tilt. I refused to let it win though....I called upon my friend Mr. Google and found the nearest 24 hour Laundromat and I went and did ALL of my dirty clothes. Since I stay on top of my laundry very well all of my dirty clothes ended up being only 3 loads. However, these weren't just any loads of laundry....this Laundromat had the biggest washing machines I had ever seen. They only had one of the biggest kind and it took 28 quarters and the other two took 20 quarters per load. I am estimating it probably would have been about 12-15 loads had I done it at home. Here are some incredibly rare photographs that can only be captured a few times in a lifetime....where the only dirty clothes that I own are actually on my body currently (actually that isn't even true, because somehow I missed some dirty clothes and you can see them already piling up in my laundry basket).

My finished work at the laundromat


My work pants on the top shelf. Tons of treasure (clean socks and undies) on the second shelf.

A birds eye view of my shorts, jeans, and shoes all folded and arranged neatly (this should stay like this for at least 2 full days).

1 million collared golf shirts.


You can't hold me down tilt! I own you!

I nominate this blog post for the top 3 most boring blog posts I have ever written...deal with it, you cannot have back the last 4 minutes you just wasted reading about me doing laundry. Muhahahah!

I never got around to blogging about this....

I meant to write a blog about something that happened to me while I was home for Christmas, but I never got around to it. I think I'll get a kick out of re-reading this story to myself a few years down the road and if I don't blog about it I might end up forgetting about it.

Anyway, my little brother, Kevin and I were at Shnuck's Grocery Store doing some shopping for our mom. We had a decent sized list of stuff we were supposed to be picking up for her. About half-way through our list I had a pretty instant onset of "If I don't poop in the next 20 minutes it is not going to be a good thing". I decided I was going to try to tough it out and finish the shopping trip and just hold it until I got home. This was going to put me over the 20 minute mark, but I am pretty good at convincing myself that I can always hold it much longer than it feels like I can. Also, it is always nice to poop in the comfort of your own home rather than a grocery store bathroom. Apparently, I was a little overzealous about my ability to will myself into holding it and with about 5 items left on the list I told Kevin he was going to have to finish up because I it was go time.

Running was out of the question (for obvious reasons if you have ever had to poop this bad) so I did the butt clenched quick walk back towards the bathrooms. The bathrooms at Shnucks are one person bathrooms and OF COURSE the men's restroom was occupied. Usually, it takes somewhat of an emergency before I will consider using the women's restroom, but this was a no brainer. Using the women's restroom in a situation like this always feels so wrong to me for some reason. I always fear that a woman will catch me coming out and think the worst thoughts imaginable about me.

The lock for this bathroom was the kind where you have to push the metal button in to lock it and then to unlock it you just turn the handle. About mid-way through of me taking care of business one of my worst fears came to fruition...someone tried to come in the locked bathroom and then knocked when they couldn't get in just to make sure it was occupied. Obviously, I felt really weird about using the women's restroom in the first place so I didn't make a peep and just hoped they would get tired of waiting and they would be gone by the time I finished. Afterall, it was going to be an unpleasant experience for anyone that had to use this restroom for a good 15 minutes after I was done. I certainly didn't want to have to look a woman in the eye whom I had just made wait to use the restroom that I had just stunk up. A few minutes went by and apparently they had decided that no one was in there (since I didn't speak up the first time they knocked) and this time they shook the door handle from the outside semi-violently. I couldn't say anything now for sure so I just sat there pooping and staring intently at the locked button on the door handle while they shook it from the outside.....POP! The door unlocked! Now, I had no choice...it was time to shamefully reveal my masculine identity and I quickly shouted out "Don't come in! I'll be done in just a minute!" She apologized and I am sure she was just as startled as I was.

Of course she was still waiting outside as I took the walk of shame upon leaving the bathroom. I apologetically said to her "I had to go really bad and couldn't wait on the Men's." She was cool about it and didn't make me feel like too much of a criminal, but it sure was embarrassing! My advice to you should you ever be in a similar situation is to speak up the first time they knock, because you never know when the lock on the door could decide to malfunction at exactly the WRONG time.

In case this story wasn't descriptive enough for you here is an actual photograph that Eric took of me in Orlando a few years ago when he picked the lock for the sole purpose of taking an embarrassing picture of me. As you can tell I get embarrassed very easily since I am choosing to post this in my own blog...ENJOY!

Long break was much needed...

I had been having a great month, but I got very sloppy, cocky, and careless and it came unraveled rather quickly. I set a goal for 35 days since that was how long it was going to be until I had my next scheduled that would be taking any significant time away from poker. I made some very lofty goals in terms of the amount of time and hands I wanted to put in during those 35 days, but a somewhat modest goal to make $20,000 (considering how much I planned on playing). About 20 days into the 35 days I was right on pace for the amount that I wanted to play, but I had already made over the $20,000 that I intended to make! Reaching my monetary goal so quickly caused me to get over-confident and I let my guard down a little bit. I had been winning nearly every session that I played live and I was avoiding playing ANY bigs pots in doing so. Then one day at the Bellagio I made 2 very marginal plays, and got coolered once in another hand for a total of 3 buy-ins of $3,000. It is no fun losing $9,000 in about an hour and a half and it is certainly no fun when you do it playing live and you have to suffer the personal aspect of it on top of the money lost. Even though I know better, I thought I could just go on unaffected by my fairly substantial loss and I decided to play online the next day and played very poorly on subtle tilt the entire day. I have even blogged about how live losses affect my confidence/quality of poker for much longer than online losses do I still didn't take heed. I ended up compounding my $9k loss by losing another $7,300 the next day online. I did get very unlucky to lose so much that next day online by running about $5,000 below expectation, but I can be honest enough with myself to admit that I didn't play well at all. Thankfully, I had enough discipline to do what I should have done earlier and I took a break from poker. This time I was so sure I needed a break I had Josh change the passwords to my poker accounts and I didn't play any poker for about 8 days.

During my break I played some golf, had some friends come in town, and I even went skydiving...yes skydiving :) I always knew that at some point I was going to go skydiving I had just never gotten around to it up until now. I went with my friend Anne who was in from out of town and it was a pretty cool experience overall. I think poker has made me into sort of an emotional robot. I never get very excited, sad, or even nervous about anything anymore. It seems like something must be wrong with me, because I didn't get nervous for even one second throughout the whole skydiving trip.

We jumped from 15,000 feet and that means we got to free fall for about 2 miles (about 60 seconds) before he pulled the parachute about a mile from the ground. The free fall portion of the jump was pretty awesome, but the parachuting part was pretty uncomfortable on by inner thighs where all of my weight was supported on the harness for the 3 or 4 minutes it took us to get down...yowsers!

For your viewing pleasure:
Walking to the plane.

On the ride up.

Getting closer to go time and Anne getting mounted by the skydiving nazi before she goes out the hatch.

It’s too late now!

Freefalling…weeeee.

Being a good student and keeping my head back.

I don’t think we’d be able to survive from this high up if our chute malfunctions…do you?

That says skydivelasvegas.com in case you can’t read their shameless advertising.

The chute just after he pulled the chord.

Right about now is when my inner thighs are getting owned pretty good.

Me steering the parachute.

Safe and sound on the ground.

Justin congratulating me on a good jump and helping me up.

Sorry for posting so many pictures, but I paid $70 for them and I'll probably never look at them again so I gotta do something with them.

Anne and I also went to the David Copperfield show and she got randomly chosen to be a participant. He made tissue paper float in the air above her hand, but I could see the string for a brief second from where I was sitting. Then he folded the tissue paper into a paper rose and lit it on fire and it "magically" turned into a real rose. However, the crowd camera only showed Anne's torso and Anne was the only person that saw the girl laying on the steps hand David the real rose while everyone else was distracted from the flash of fire from the burning tissue paper. He also did some pretty amazing tricks that I have absolutely no explanation for...like making a some old school car appear suspended on top of two support beams that wasn't there only a few seconds earlier.

So, since my break I have played 3 days and things are going much better. I lost about $500 online the first day after starting off pretty rusty and being down $2500 about half way through the session. Then, I won about $2,000 that night playing live. The second day I won $1600 online and then won $600 more goofing off with friends while playing .5/$1 PLO digital poker at the Excaliber. Today I ran really well and never really lost a pot, but I didn't feel like I was giving it my best effort and was lacking focus and motivation. I quit after only an hour and a half or so, but I ended up winning about $2500. So a little over $6,000 in my first 3 days back is a very nice boost to my confidence level and I look forward to making lots more money before I head home for the Kentucky Derby and Derek's graduation from Med School at the beginning of May.

I need to keep making lots of money, because I finally got approved for a home loan! Eric is co-signing for me and we are going to split a house. The banks weren't to excited about the whole poker/self employment thingy and my credit wasn't very good due to some stuff from when I was in college that had nothing to do with anything other than me being a lazy bum and not taking care of silly bills that I had plenty of money to pay. Let that be a lesson to you kids out there....just be a go-getter and pay that kind of stuff off and you'll be in much better shape later. Oh well, we still got approved and we are going house shopping this weekend. I am pretty excited about being a first time homeowner and apparently the government is too because we qualified for an FHA loan which means I get an $8,000 tax credit :)

Sorry for this being so long, but I had lots of stuff happen since my last blog post.

I got a great deal on a new book!

I have to admit, I felt like a bit of a sucker when considering buying the most recent poker book I bought. Then I started to think about it from more of a business point of view and realized it was pretty much a no-brainer. I know what you are thinking already..."Geez, Pat is such a tightwad. How can he be fretting over buying a stupid book and having to rationalize it as a business decision before he does?" Well, not so fast there big spender...this was no ordinary book...this one was only 80 pages and it cost....wait for it......$1850!!! Now I really know what you are thinking...."Geez, Pat is such an idiot. Why would he EVER spend $1850 on a stupid 80 page poker book?"

I had read lots of great reviews on it and once I started thinking about whether the book would be worth it or not I realized that even if the book sucked and I ended up only learning ONE thing from it would definitely pay for itself over my lifetime. There is almost a zero percent chance that the book won't help me in some way and judging from the reviews I have read it will probably help me a great deal in which case it will pay for itself many times over.

Today I took most of the day off from playing poker and went outside to lay on the trampoline and read my new book. I only ended up getting through about 16 pages of the book because 1. I am a an amazingly slow reader and 2. I took detailed notes on everything I read and worked through all of the examples on my own. If I just read something I don't retain much, but if I make myself take notes on something I usually retain it very well.

Once my brain was full for the day I decided to come inside and play a quick session to try out the new stuff I had learned. Here is a statistical breakdown of my 1.5 hour session after reading today.



Thats right...$3700 in 1.5 hours. Now, obviously the book didn't improve my game THAT much, and I clearly ran super duper hot. I did learn some new stuff today that I think will definitely improve my game and I look forward to learning more stuff soon.

Shew!!

I ended up only making it for 18 hours of the scheduled 24 hour lock-in. I played from noon on Friday until 6 am on Saturday. I was up a quick $2,000 within the first 2 hours and then it was a pretty miserable next 11 hours or so and I ended up being down somewhere around $4,000 and I felt like I had no shot to get even no matter how long I played. However, around 1am I made a mental readjustment to my attitude and started listening to some Rage Against the Machine on my IPOD. I tried to get myself in the mindset of expecting to win and for good things to happen.

It is tough to be aggressive when you have the image of a losing player or someone who is running bad. If people notice that you are winning you get much more respect and people tend to fold to you MUCH more frequently. I sat up tall in my chair and tried to focus extra hard. I began noticing some spots where I could steal a pot here and there and things started to turn around. I climbed all the way back to only being stuck $500 until I rivered a straight at the same time someone else rivered a full house and I was back to being down $2400 at about 2:45am and I almost quit feeling like I wouldn't be playing my best and I would just have to take a loss for the night. Really soon after that I flopped a set of aces vs. two pair of aces and deuces and won about $2,000 getting me somewhere close to even again. Then a really drunk rich guy moved to our game and the game got fantastic once again. I ended up winning just under $4,000 for the 18 hour session and once the super rich guy went broke the game broke up and the main game didn't look very good so I just called it a night.

Obviously, I am super tired and need to hit the sack, but I am pretty proud of my somewhat gutsy performance in making such a big comeback after being stuck for so long. Nighty night.