What downswing?

I always have prided myself in having great self control and never really allowing myself or my play to become too affected by losing. The reason this is so important is because it is very easy for losing to breed more losing if you let it affect your play. Recently, I had my biggest downswing ever in terms of money lost, but thanks to some serious grinding in the last 15 days I have almost completely erased my downswing in online poker (I didn't keep track of my live losses, but those need some recovering as well, lol). I would show you my lifetime graph so you could see for yourself how drastic my downswing and subsequent upswing were, but I am holding off showing my lifetime graph until I have reached the 1,000,000 hand milestone. I am almost at 600,000 hands right now and hopefully I will make it to the million hand mark sometime around the end of this year or beginning of next.

Anyway, since I have been back in Vegas and really had grind on the mind I have won around $14k in about 15 days and I am not stopping here! I did however notice when I was looking at my graph that following every sharp upswing there is usually a semi-sharp downswing. I don't know if I get cocky and/or complacent or lose that feeling of my back being against the wall, but somehow I always seem to have a small downswing after big upswings. I guess you can't just win all the time or there wouldn't be any upswings...it would just be, well....winning all the time! Makes perfect since, huh? Regardless, I am going to work hard at staying focused and not lose my money making work ethic this time and hopefully I will go on my biggest upswing of all time!

Time to go watch the Lebron show in game 3 against the Magic.

Here is my tentative WSOP schedule....there is no way I will actually play in all of these, but these are the ones I have interest in:

WSOP Schedule
Saturday May 30th $1,000 NLHE
Tuesday June 2nd $1,500 NLHE
Wednesday June 3rd $2,500 PLHE + PLO
Tuesday June 9th $1,500 PLHE
Saturday June 13th $1,500 NLHE
Saturday June 20th $1,500 NLHE
Saturday June 27th $1,500 NLHE
Monday July 6th Day 1D of Main Event $10,000 NLHE

Jurrasic Poker

So poker has been going less than fantastic lately, but I finally had my first great day in a while yesterday. I played over 5,000 hands and won over $6,600 in about 9 hours worth of playing. When I was finished playing I obviously had to spend sometime admiring my fantastic looking graph. I couldn't help but notice the resemblance to a brontosaurus. In case you aren't as creative as I am I have done you a favor and filled in the rest of him with some of my amazing MSPaint skills. It was nice to run so well for such a long session and it was really awesome to top it off with such a crazy heater at the end of my day. Enjoy.



Here is a more realistic picture of a brontosaurus in case you didn't pay attention in 2nd grade.

Horse Handicapping 101:

Tip #1: Go to the $20 minimum so you don't have to wait in the long lines since you will definitely be making $20 worth of bets. Then, once the lady tells you it is a $20 minimum bet for each wager (as in only $20 exacta boxes and not a $4 exacta box totaling $24) pick one of the horses at random that you had planned to use in your exacta and place a $20 straight wager on the horse to win. Therefore, you will still avoid waiting in the long lines at the regular window and its not like you knew what you were doing in the first place. Here is the result:




The horse went off at 4:1 and paid me back $100 :)

Tip #2: After you make all of the bets you are going to make on the derby and the last race of the day ask yourself if you have enough action on the race. The answer will almost always be "No!" so march right back to the window and pick a number of very random horses and put them in some sort of exacta or trifecta box. I went with the additional $1 exacta box with 3 horses totaling $6. Here is the result:


Just like I knew it would happen; the 50:1 longshot, Mine that Bird (edited to the correct name of the horse thanks to "anonymous"), won in convincing fashion despite having speed ratings much lower than the rest of the field. Also, the two other random horses I picked somehow managed to run in 2nd and 4th position giving me the exacta for $1,030!

**Disclaimer: I have no idea what I am doing when it comes to handicapping horses and these tips should not be attempted with real money, unless you are a degenerate like myself and don't mind losing a few hundred dollars about 95% of the time.**

Here is the obligatory picture of me and Jessica in her derby hat complete with transvestite/cross-dressing/shemale in the background!



Here is the view of the derby from our seats as the horses ran by the first time.


Here is our view as the horses are being loaded into the starting gates.


I am still in Indy for now and have Derek's graduation to attend on Saturday, but I am looking forward to getting back home and back on the grind.

Swine Flu

The last I saw, the US had one death from the swine flu and it was some kid from Mexico that was brought here for treatment. I think it is pretty ridiculous that people get so worked up over something that has as close to a zero chance as possible without actually being a zero chance of killing them, just because it is a new disease they hadn't heard of before a week ago. I have seen about 4 people wearing allergy masks that were obviously to protect them from contracting the swine flu. There are two things that really really bug me about these people. 1. All 4 of the people were old fat ladies. Let's not worry about being old and fat killing us (only about a million % more likely), but we have to protect ourselves against a practically mythical swine flu! 2. All 4 of these old fat women were wearing their stupid masks not on their mouth, but around their neck! If you are going to be stupid enough to wear one of those awful masks at least put it over your mouth. If there has to be another person that gets fatally infected with the swine flu, I hope it is one of these old fat ladies with their mask around their neck.

Excuse me for being totally over the top condescending, but I am reading "A Catcher in the Rye" and Holden Caulfield is hilariously condescending and it must have rubbed off on me. I'm gonna try to get a picture of one of these old bags for you...stay tuned.