Well that didn't last long....

I totally didn't stick to my goals...I immediately saw a fish playing 3/6 PLO and jumped right into the game like an idiot. The good news is I crushed it! I am up $5440 in the last two days and it feels pretty good. I played an 11.5 hour session (really 3 small sessions with short breaks in between) of only PLO which is WAY longer than any other PLO session I have played. It is also could be the most hours of any kind of online cash game session I have ever played...if its not then it is really close. I have played 75 hours this month which is pretty good considering I was gone for 7 days and Justin and Kevin both visited this month. I still have one more day to play a few hours, but Matt and Brooklyn are coming in the morning so I doubt I will play much tomorrow. It was a much better month this month. I didn't make what I lost last month, but I am headed in the right direction at least.

Playing PLO really slows down my pursuit of a 1 million hand graph, but I will get there eventually. I only played 20,000 hands this month in 75 hours. I only play about half the hands per hour when playing PLO as I do when playing NL. I am currently at 676,314 hands in my database. I just did the math and that puts me about 1100 hours away from getting to 1 million hands if I continued to play PLO the rest of the way. That makes me pretty sad, but it really isn't all that big of a deal.

In some other sad news, Jeff decided not to play in the Reno/Tahoe Open this year so my caddying career has been suspended until the Vegas tournament in Mid-October. His wrist is bothering him quite a bit and he wants to rest it before he plays in the PGA Championship the following week. That should give me plenty of time to grind out some mortgage payments next month, but I still intend on taking a vacation somewhere.

I haven't done this in a while (goals)

I used to be very proud of how I used to make, write down, and reach lots of goals, but I haven't done it in a long time for some reason. Writing down goals makes playing poker have much more of a purpose and keeps you from getting careless which I have been very guilty of lately.

I just got really sidetracked while writing this and I really don't feel like writing anymore. I was going to say why goals are so awesome, but you get the idea anyway....

Goals:
1. Play only $200 PLO until I win 15 buy-ins.
2. Play $400 PLO until I win 15 buy-ins.
3. Game select and mix in 3/6 with 2/4 until I win 15 more buy-ins.
4. Take some shots at 5/10 PLO
5. Win millions.

Hopefully, this will get me to update a little more frequently since I will be reporting back on my progress.

Everything is getting back to normal....

Shew! I have been a busy bee the last couple of months and I was way out of my normal routine. Finally,things are starting to return to normal. Buying a house was way more work than I bargained for, but I am very happy to have put in all of that work and finally being able to enjoy my new house. I didn't have a losing month for the entire year of 2008, but I have already had 2 losing months this year. I lost in April, had a good May, and then had my worst month ever in June. It wouldn't be so bad if I just had my worst month ever, but to lose about 4-5 times what you have in any other month is pretty disheartening. I have always thought all that stuff about "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" was a bunch of crap and usually just a a way to not take responsibility for something that you failed at or didn't handle as well as you could have. Usually, people say that when they feel beat down or overwhelmed from something they are having a hard time dealing with.....I feel like I am not doing a very good job of explaining why is dislike that saying so much, but it almost seems that when people say it they are basically conceding that they can't deal with something and saying that makes them feel OK about it.

Anyway, I think a lot of people would take the "since it didn't kill me it will make me stronger" approach to dealing with my poor results from June. However, I prefer to take responsibility for those bad results and try to fix whatever problems/leaks were the cause of it.

I'll go ahead and say it.....I played the worst month of poker I have ever played.
There can be many reasons that someone doesn't play their best poker, but the most dangerous reason I can think of is if you are playing poker when you can't focus on it because you are stressed/worried about something else in your life. The reason this is so dangerous is because it is very hard to notice that you aren't playing your best in this situation. I had a lot of stuff out side of poker on my mind during the month of June and it really, I mean REALLY affected my poker. I knew in the back of my mind the whole time that all of this was probably causing me not to play my best poker, but I wasn't able to get myself to take time off. In fact, I played more poker last month than I ever have in any other month of my career. Great, huh?

Now I am feeling very focused on poker and am much more in tune with how outside stresses could possibly affect my play. I was out of town until about the 10th of this month and despite only having played about 40 hours of online poker I am having some great results.

I feel like I am lucky in that I don't get rattled or stressed about hardly anything in life and I can honestly say that is directly attributable to having such consistent success so far in my poker career. I had a small hiccup last month, but I think that kind of a breakdown happens way more often to other people/poker players than it does to me and I am thankful for that.

Jeff asked me to caddy again for him in the Reno/Tahoe Open and I think it will be perfect timing to give myself a break from poker. I used to do a better job about forcing myself to take vacations when I needed them and I think I might need to go back to planning them out ahead of time rather than just taking them when something pops up.

It feels good to finally get back to being in a great state of mind for playing good/winning poker and I look forward to staying in this mindset for a while....maybe even forever?!?! Muahahaha!

New House before and after pictures....

Stairs-after

Stairs-before

Kitchen

Backyard-before and after, but I intend on putting a pool in for next summer

Ping pong room-after

Dining and ping pong room after

Upstairs-after

Upstairs-before

Living room-after

Living room-after

Living room from upstairs-after

Living room-before

Living room-before

Living room from upstairs-after

My Bathroom

My office in my bedroom-after

My new TV and dresser

My bedroom-after. My bedding hasn't arrived yet so I am having to make due with queen sized stuff on my new king sized bed...most comfortable mattress ever! I also have not gotten around to hanging my mirror yet.

My room-before

My room-before

New homeowner

View from the street

I did not include any pictures of Josh's room, Josh's office, Josh's bathroom, Kevin's room, Kevin's bathroom, or the guest room because I took all of the the after pictures at about 1am and they were sleeping, but they are all pretty standard rooms that you wouldn't get much excitement out of anyway.

5 Bedrooms, 3 Bathrooms, 3550 Sq. Ft., 3 Car Garage, $268,000....and I'm pretty proud of it :)

I intended on including all of the ridiculous stuff I had to do in order to buy the house and get it in the shape it is in now, but just reliving all of that stuff will surely just put me back on life tilt. Just rest assured that owning a home is WAY more work than any human should have to do. That leads me to another point...how in the world do normal people find the time to buy a house? Almost everyday since I have moved in I have had to be at home (usually for a 3-5 hour window chosen at their discretion) in order to meet someone that had to do some work at my house. It has really sucked spending so much time waiting around for all these different people, but I don't understand how someone with a regular job would have been able to be available for all of these different scheduled time slots.

Attitude adjustment....

So being a home owner is way more work than it should be and hopefully all the stupid extra work will slow down a bit since I think I have taken care of almost everything I had planned.

Anyway, today my errand of the day was to go to the post office to get my mailbox re-keyed since I didn't get a copy of it from the bank when I bought the home. Google maps gave me incorrect directions to the post office nearest to my house and after running into a few different dead ends and no outlets and I got out my GPS to search for a post office. My GPS mentioned nothing about there being a post office anywhere near where I was looking. Oh well, I just decided to go to the nearest post office listed on my GPS. Guess what? There was no Post Office at the address it gave me and when my GPS lady said "you have reached your destination" there was no Post Office in site. I ended up finding that one, but it had moved a couple blocks down the road from the address my GPS gave me. Once I got inside and waited in line the lady told me I had to go to the Post Office for my zip code located at "Rainbow and Russell". Oh geez, that was supposed to be the first one I tried to find, but I was looking East of Rainbow on Russell and not exactly at the intersection. Guess what? When I got the the intersection of Rainbow and Russell there was no Post Office in site. Eventually, I found the Post Office I was supposed to be at, but it was about 4 blocks WEST of Rainbow on Russell. Google maps AND my GPS lied to me on different occasions. What should have been a 10 minute trip to the Post Office turned into about an hour and a half and I could feel the steam coming out of my ears.

So on the way home I stopped by Jersey Mikes Sub Shop and the worker was very friendly and asked me what I was up to today. Feeling sorry for myself I said "(sigh)....just out running errands". He said "Ah, you must have the day off today then, huh?" That really made me smile and I told him that I kinda had everyday off. It made me realize how much I would prefer doing an errand for 1:30 than I would to be making subs in a sub shop like this guy was and I immediately was in a much better mood.